Editors note: Candidates for Flagstaff City Council and mayor have each been offered a 500-word guest column to supplement the weekly candidate questions.

As a long time Flagstaff resident, Flagstaff High School graduate, former NAU student, and third generation Flagstaff small business owner, I am excited by the opportunity to serve our community on the Flagstaff City Council. I work hard at whatever I do. Last spring I collected more ballot-qualifying signatures than any other council candidate. I want to provide my experienceas a small business owner, Vice-Chairman on the Water Commission, service to my Church as a councilman and as Past President of the Councilto help ensure that all of Flagstaff, and our children and our grandchildren, will have a community that prospers now and into the future.

There are many things I wish to accomplish for the residents of Flagstaff as a member of the City Council.

A recent survey found city traffic to be the number one concern of community residents. Flagstaff must start planning and working purposefully on long-term solutions for its traffic congestionand funding for those solutions. We should proactively seek ways of getting some municipal control of vehicle traffic on State of Arizona arteries that are inside the Flagstaff city limits.

Flagstaff needs to be perceived as open for business. I have talked with so many business owners and operators here in Flagstaff who want to grow their businesses, but need help identifying locations. We as a city government should be proactive partners. So that, as a city, we can clearly explain what we want for our differing neighborhoods, we need to re-examine city zoning codes. The 2011 code has not worked as intended in some areas. We need to re-look at the code from the perspectives of personal safety, traffic, and the character of each neighborhood.

We can and must do even better in significant and sustainable water conservation. During my tenure on the Water Commission we have made significant strides in viable water conservation measures. We need to complete them with funding and implementation.

I believe the City Council should strongly voice our concern over state actions that have a negative impact on our communitywhether those originate with the Arizona Legislature, or the universities Board of Regents. One of my personal projects has been to meet with key state legislators and members of Congress on a one on one basis. They know me, and my values, so when I contact them with an issue or concern, I believe they will listen and consider it in a serious manner.

I will work tirelessly to support and foster those issues, and others, with sensible policies that will create a sense of Place that our Regional Plan calls for. I will have an ear to your thoughts or concerns. I will work to bring different backgrounds, knowledge, beliefs, and values together, and work in a constructive manner that will represent all of Flagstaff. I will do my very best to maintain the character of Flagstaff and represent all of you fairly and respectfully on the Flagstaff City Council.
(Spoiler alert: This article is based on the most important scenes in the movie Doctor Strange. If you have not seen the movie and do not want any spoilers, please do not read any further.)

If Deadpool revitalised superhero films with its unique and refreshing brand of humour, Doctor Strange lived up to the huge expectations from Marvel after Deadpool simply by making us witness some of the most jaw-dropping visual effects.

In the movie, we see massive buildings in Manhattan bending in ways that make the similar scenes in Inception look obsolete, beautifully choreographed gravity-defying stunts during action sequences, a cloak with a personality of its own, and, most importantly, vast expanses of multi-coloured other-worldly dimensions which remind one of an extremely big supernova.

Apart from the absolutely stunning imagery, the cast also delivers a powerful performance. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Doctor Stephen Strange, the cocky but talented superhero whom we just can't help but love ('Genius billionaire playboy philanthropist' anyone?). Tilda Swinton effortlessly portrays the mysterious and all-knowing The Ancient One. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays the loyal and righteous Mordo.

But the best performance perhaps comes from Mads Mikkelsen, who plays the dark, brooding villain Kaecilius with a sharp 'Mister Doctor?' wit and a very convincing motivation to be 'evil' which almost makes one side with him (more on this later).

Without a doubt, Doctor Strange is one of the better Marvel movies in recent times. However, it has some glaring flaws which prevent it from becoming a Marvel classic like The Avengers.

Doctor Strange suffers from some massive plot loopholes, which get revealed in the most important scenes.

Let's do a quick recap of the plot before analysing the loopholes. Doctor Stephen Strange is a neurosurgeon who travels to Kathmandu to find a cure to the damage to his hands caused by a car accident. He is trained there by a sorcerer called The Ancient One in the mystic arts and taught of the other dimensions which exist apart from the universe human beings live in. Kaecilius is a former student of The Ancient One who betrays her and joins Dormammu (an evil, immortal being residing in the Dark Dimension) in his quest to (surprise, surprise) destroy and devour the earth. After the Ancient One is killed by Kaecilius, it is up to Doctor Strange and his friends to stop Dormammu from devouring the world.

Now, put your geek hat on and let's look at the loopholes.

The final confrontation with Dormammu

In the final battle, Doctor Strange eventually confronts Dormammu in the Dark Dimension and tries to negotiate. Dormammu, the evil and immortal being that he is, quickly kills him. But then, something rather 'strange' happens (C'mon, you knew this pun was going to be used at some point).

Strange comes back alive and Dormammu realises to his surprise that the entire confrontation takes place all over again, like an extremely real deja vu.

It is then revealed that Strange trapped himself and Dormammu into an infinite time loop using the mystical Eye of Agamotto, which can turn back time. Thus, Dormammu and Strange are doomed to re-live the time from Strange confronting Dormammu to Strange's death over and over again.

There is just one problem: Time does not exist in the Dark Dimension. So how can Doctor Strange turn back something which does not exist? It's like saying one changed the flow of water in a world where water does not exist.

But hey, this is science fiction, I hear you say. One could argue that the Eye of Agamotto was so strong that it transferred time from earth into a dimension where it does not exist (even though Strange always uses the Eye to bend time earlier in the movie, never transfer it like a commodity).

But then, this looks like a cop out. Even if this ridiculous argument was assumed to be true, the Eye of Agamotto becomes like one of those shiny gadgets which filmmakers create when they are too lazy to figure out an intelligent way to help the protagonist out of a tight spot in a movie. It's like one of those lazer-shooting pens or an invisible car which James Bond films have been criticised for.

Let's be a bit lenient, though, and say that science fiction is anyway illogical, and move on.

After the time loop has repeated itself many, many times and Doctor Strange has died painful deaths those many times, Dormammu decides he cannot take the pain of re-living the same moment over and over again and decides to leave earth alone. Doctor Strange then breaks the time loop and returns to earth.

Really, Marvel? Dormammu let Doctor Strange go because he got bored?

Remember that Dormammu is an immortal being who has existed for an eternity. Doctor Strange is a mortal human being who is experiencing excruciating death over and over again.

These two are playing chicken in an endless time loop. But the mortal being dying infinite painful deaths wins in the end. How convenient.

Most probably, the filmmakers decided to go with this version of the final battle because they wanted to give us a break from the same final battle formula filled with stunts and special effects and involve the characters in something more psychological, which works to some extent.

But while it is refreshing to see the concept of time being used in the final battle, the fact that there were two major loopholes (one of which is, at best, a cop out) during the climax of the film is extremely annoying.

Moral ambiguity of The Ancient One

The most crucial plot point in Doctor Strange has a massive loophole. In the movie, drawing power from the Dark Dimension can grant one immortality. But The Ancient One forbids her disciples from doing that because Dormammu's "eternal life is not paradise but torment".

Kaecilius betrays The Ancient One because he is convinced that she has been able to live an unnaturally long life because she secretly draws power from the Dark Dimension. His allegation is eventually proven true and Doctor Strange and Mordo are outraged.

But Strange's outrage against the Ancient One's hypocrisy suddenly and inexplicably disappears even before she says literally the only line in the movie which is remotely connected to the reason behind her links with the Dark Dimension:

"I've hated drawing power from the Dark Dimension, but as you well know, sometimes one must break the rules in order to serve the greater good."

That's it? So other human beings should be deprived of immortality but the Ancient One can get that power because she has the burden of "serving the greater good"?

Here's an idea: Why didn't The Ancient One train her disciples to secretly draw power from the Dark Dimension? That way, they could lead a normal, "torment"-free life like she had been leading till her death and also "serve the greater good".

The film also never specifies what "greater good" she had been exclusively using those powers for.

Not only does this one line make absolutely no sense but this also shows the lack of thought given by the filmmakers to the most important plot point.

The massive question mark about the moral ambiguity of The Ancient One, which was the cause behind so many other events in the film, certainly deserved an answer longer than a single sentence.

The significance of this loophole can be understood once you realise that this loophole almost made Kaecilius, one of the main villains, look like the real hero of the film.

Without any proper explanation, The Ancient One looks like a hypocrite and this almost justifies Kaecilius' motives, which is why one may find oneself siding with him at a point in the film. In fact, this completely justifies Mordo's motives for leaving Doctor Strange and Wong in the end because poor Mordo loyally followed every instruction of The Ancient One until he realised he was being hoodwinked by her. Mordo, as Doctor Strange comic fans will know, turns into a villain later on.

When a movie makes the villains look like nice guys, you know it had a serious loophole. So, as much as we loved Doctor Strange for its amazing visual effects and brilliant acting, some better writing and a full-proof plot would have given this film the greatness it deserved.
Donald Trump has been making waves in India through his statements in favour of Hindus. His fellow American presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has also made it to the Indian discourse now. No, not for her proximity to any particular community or for her election campaign but for inquiring who Amitabh Bachchan is.

According to a report by NDTV, a leaked email of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary shows that she had asked about the Indian megastar to her close associate Huma Abedin.

What's the name of the famous older Indian actor we met a few years ago?

"Amitabh bachan (sic)."

While the Indian Twitterati took to the social networking site to bash the politician for her aloofness, they also attacked Abedin, who is from a Pakistani origin, for not getting Bachchans spelling right.

According to a report by PTI, the leaked email surfaced on Twitter when Jose A DelReal, national political reporter with The Washington Post, posted a picture in which the former US Secretary of State had asked Abedin about the actor they met a few years ago.

Bachchans fans did not take it kindly. As per a report by The Indian Express, a number of fans even demanded that Hillary be arrested for her lack of knowledge about the four-time National Award winner.

The series of leaked emails has been an issue for Clinton for a long time now. In the final leg of the election campaign, FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congress about a renewed inquiry into her leaked emails.

Abedin is currently in the middle of a political storm after FBI started reviewing some 6,50,000 emails found on a laptop belonging to her estranged husband, former Congressman Anthony Weiner, that may be related to the investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State during President Barack Obama's first term.
The latest Marvel Cinematic Universe movie: Doctor Strange is a bit of a contradiction since it feels both familiar and alienating at the same time

Structurally, it's just another superhero origin story. But on the other hand it's going on to a different trip (read psychedelic) as opposed to other comic book movies.

After so many movies of this sort, Doctor Strange echoes its predecessors.

The well-off arrogant guy who is brought down a peg after a near death experience and remade into a hero is what the Marvel Cinematic Universe had built on with Iron Man. There are also a few shades of Batman Begins in the film as Strange travels abroad and studies with a secret group, although his motivations for going there are quite different.

Still I wish Doctor Strange didn't feel quite as familiar as it did at times. The trappings may be different but it follows a pretty standard path.

Rachel McAdams is an innately likable actress but in the film she doesn't have a role beyond reacting to things happening around her.

The idea of Mads Mikkelsen playing a Marvel villain is exciting and indeed he and Cumberbatch have interesting chemistry but his character Kaecilius simply isn't enough for the movie to feel fully formed.

Doctor Strange is still a very entertaining movie, thanks to the actors and the visuals. This is an incredible cast and it's hard not to smile seeing the actors fully immerse themselves in the mystic part of the Marvel Universe.

Visually, Doctor Strange is stunning. Director Scott Derrickson does a great job in portraying the mind and world bending imagery here.

Some of you must have noticed that a couple of shots in the trailer are reminiscent of inception but the visuals in Doctor Strange is much broader than that.

There are some incredibly outrageous surreal moments here which are true standouts.

Bennedict Cumberbatch in the midst of this feels like the perfect choice to play Strange. He has his own mixture of gravitas and an off-beat nature that allows him to feel right at home even in the midst of bizzare scenarios.

Ultimately the basic structure of Doctor Strange is a bit overly familiar but the elements that brings it all together are fascinating and thrilling with a lot of potential for the future.

I'm going with 3.5 stars.
"Calling all the people here to see the show

Calling for my demons now to let me go

I need something, give me something wonderful"

As someone who almost opted to become a professional DJ, its fortunate that my favourite song of this year is Love and Hate by Michael Kiwanuka, with the lyrics above.

Last Monday, I was on a panel in front of 100+ young students and managers who were participating in a competition that Tata sponsors annually called TBLA. The theme was big data, and since I led this group wide initiative by setting up a new company focussed on data analytics, the participants were quizzing me on its potential. Suddenly, a colleague comes and whispers in my ear that Chairman Cyrus Mistry has been asked to step down. My head jerks  what? But I am on a panel, so keep answering the questions but signal to the facilitator that we need to wrap this up early. I let the organisers know that I will skip the dinner that follows.

Back in my apartment trying to get information from the company with little success. At 9:00 pm, I get a call from a colleague with whom I had worked very closely and got along famously as we were often on the same side of arguments. He informs me: "it is my unpleasant duty to say your services are no longer required". No explanation. I query does this mean I do not need to show up tomorrow morning? Receive an affirmative reply. Thats it. Its all over in a minute. Now readers, no pity is needed. It is something that has happened to many, and there are entire reality shows on TV built around the theme "You are fired!" But, still nothing prepares you for this. I realise that I am unemployed for the first time since the age of 18.

My first thoughts go to the 70+ people I had accumulated in the Big Data team over the past year. What is going to happen to them? They joined on my word that we were going to make this a core capability of the group. Quickly, I shoot off a text message to a colleague with a plea to take charge of this venture. My four-member team, I am less concerned about as they are enormously talented and familiar enough with the group to land on their feet.

"You cant break me down

You cant take me down"

The following morning, what to do? Well, a bit lost, and ready at 8:30, instead of the usual 8:00, I head for my morning Starbucks coffee. I find a new proposition for Starbucks that never occurred to me previously: a place for unemployed managers, all dressed in suits, with nowhere to go. Yes, there is the office to clear out and a final settlement to be agreed on, but I am in no mood to go to Bombay House for this. It can wait for another day.

Once fired, you discover your friends and the integral qualities of those who worked with you. The interesting insight for me was that the higher in the organization you go, this "human" aspect declines. The people at the "bottom" of the pyramid treated me with the same respect and affection as always. Their smiles were genuine and open. Those in the middle, like my team were sincerely sad to see me go. They repeatedly mentioned what fun it was to have worked with me. It was not as if I was fired for non-performance (my last evaluation was excellent). I always do my best  its the least I expect from myself and the most anyone can expect from me. I was fired for just being there at my position  working intensely and extensively with Cyrus.

The reaction at the top of the pyramid was interesting. With three exceptions, the many CEOs and top executives I worked with closely for three years went silent. I wonder what it is that the more we have, the more we become prisoners at the thought of losing it, rather than having it set us free. The lesson for my team was clear. I told them these people have made it to the top. They know how the system works. When in future anyone mentions me, please dont say anything positive. Throw me under the bus to gain credibility in the new regime. Its my parting advice.

"You cant steal the things that God has given me

No more pain and no more shame and misery"

Despite the unceremonious and un-Tata like end, I have nothing negative to say about the Tata group. It was not the fault of the 670,000 Tata people and does not reflect on them. What I found exceptional about the group was the kind of person that Tata attracts  unpretentious and dedicated. Yes, they really drink, as we would say in America, the "koolaid" of Tata. But I observed how hard they work, and how committed they are to the group and its values. They deserve a great Chairman.

Finally, I really loved the job. It gave me, an academic, a ring side seat to a 100+ billion dollar group. The amazing discussions we had on what the group should look like in 2025, bouncing ideas back and forth, challenging each other, and then coming to a joint view and understanding of the potential portfolio 2025, after debating the trends and financial prospects. In my 30 year career, I had only three bosses who inspired me: Lou Stern, my PhD advisor at Northwestern University; Laura Tyson, my dean at LBS; and you. Thank you, Cyrus.

Let me end with the lines from Bruce Springsteen that were plastered on my walls as a teenager:

"Someday girl I don't know when

We're gonna get to that place

Where we really wanna go

And we'll walk in the sun

But till then tramps like us

Baby we were born to run"

Well, folks, I am there, despite being unemployed. And, I am done running.

Warmly

Nirmalya

This article first appeared on nirmalyakumar.com. The writer is an academician and former GEC council member, Tata Sons. You can read it here.
New rates of Goods and Services Tax (GST) declared by GST Council on Thursday will increase incidence on the consumer of services, says Punjab Haryana Delhi Chambers of Commerce. The increase is likely to be around 20 percent says Bimal Jain, the Chairman of Indirect Taxes Committee of the organization.

Speaking to Firspost, he said, Service tax in India is 66 percent of the countrys GDP. Hence it can easily be understood that 20 percent hike in GDP is going to affect a huge section.

He further added that as per the Minister of Finance's statement, taxes on services have been increased from 15 percent to 18 percent, which amounts to 20 percent increase.

There are 96 services on which service tax is imposed. The increase in taxes on services which are likely to impact common man are mobile phone services, internet cafe, beauty parlor, ATM operations mange ment services, cable operator, life insurance, cab operation, outdoor catering, transport of goods by air and road, transport of goods by pipeline, air travel agent and airport services, dry cleaning, general insurance, internet telephony services.

Jain lauded the effort of the GST Council led by Finance Minister Arun Jaitely to keep a big number of food items in the tax exempt category and commodities of mass consumption in the bracket of tax as low as 5 percent.

More than 50 percent of the commodities in the CPI basket are not going to be taxed. That is a good news for consumers, he says. He further added that prices of goods of mass consumption are not going to increase, since only 5 percent tax is fixed on them.

On the other hand prices of luxury cars may go up as GST on this product is decided to be 28 percent instead of present 15 percent VAT.

He says that some of the white goods may also be included in the 28 percent tax bracket along with luxury and demerit goods, as per the Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramaniams statement made on Thursday.

It is not mentioned as to which of the white goods will fall in this tax bracket. But prices of television, refrigerator, air conditioners, which are also white goods may substantially increase, he adds.

He says that if the above said goods are included in the 28 percent tax bracket, it will affect the middle class strata of the society.

Jain said that prices of demerit goods such as tobacco products, pan masala and luxury goods are likely to fall under 28 percent tax bracket.

The GST Council yesterday announced a four tier taxes on goods and services. The rates of taxes of commodities which do not fall in the Consumer Price Index basket will be 5 percent , 12 percent, 18 percent and 28 percent.

A list of commodities which will be taxed under 12 percent and 18 percent bracket is yet to come.

Bimal Jain expects that the rates of taxes will not be increased from the present rates.

Let us assume that a manufacturer pays 11 percent tax on his commodity. He will expect that his produce finds place in the list of commodities that fall in the 12 percent bracket or a bracket lower than that. I think this expectation should be met to contain price rise,he said.

GST Council also decided to impose cess on tobacco made products, luxury goods and aerated drinks.

But the trader will not get credit of paying cess in the new regime. This will decrease the ease of doing business. So the government should introduce system to provide credit of paying cess, he said.
By Amanda Becker and Emily Stephenson

| CLEVELAND/HERSHEY, Pa.

CLEVELAND/HERSHEY, Pa. Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump battled over the strength of the economy in the final stretch of their race for the White House on Friday, with Clinton praising the latest U.S. jobs report and Trump dismissing it as a fraudulent disaster.With four days left in an often bitter contest that has tightened considerably in the last week, each candidate attacked the other as unfit to be president in a late push for votes in battleground states that could decide the outcome in Tuesday's election.Clinton leads Trump by 5 percentage points, according to a Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll released on Friday, maintaining her advantage in the national survey even as the race tightens in several crucial swing states.In the Oct. 30-Nov. 3 opinion poll, 44 percent of likely voters supported Clinton while 39 percent supported Trump. At a rally in Pittsburgh, Clinton cited the government's latest jobs report as evidence of the economy's strength. The report showed higher wages for workers as well as the creation of 161,000 jobs in October and a fall in the unemployment rate to 4.9 percent from 5 percent."I believe our economy is poised to really take off and thrive," Clinton told the gathering, after being introduced by billionaire investor Mark Cuban. "When the middle class thrives, America thrives."Trump disputed Clinton's rosy view, telling a crowd in New Hampshire that the jobs report was "an absolute disaster" and was skewed by the large number of people who have stopped looking for jobs and are no longer in the labour market."Nobody believes the numbers anyway. The numbers they put out are phoney," he said of the figures released by the Labor Department at a rally in Atkinson.The economy and the candidates' competing visions for the future could be critical in swaying voters in ailing Rust Belt states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan.Both candidates made stops in Ohio and Pennsylvania on Friday, with Trump adding a stop in New Hampshire and Clinton adding one in Michigan. Each of those states is critical in the state-by-state quest for the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House.The race has tightened significantly in the past week, as several swing states that are considered must-wins for Trump shifted from favouring Clinton to toss-ups, according to the Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation project.

The two candidates are now tied in Florida and North Carolina, and Clintons lead in Michigan has narrowed so much that the state is too close to call. Ohio remains a dead heat, and Clinton has a slight lead in Pennsylvania.Clinton is still the favourite to win Tuesday's election, with a clearer path to winning of the Electoral College. But Trump now has a plausible route to victory, especially if there is a sharp fall in turnout among African-Americans from the levels of the 2012 election.(For grpahic on race to the White House, click tmsnrt.rs/298mTyD)THE RUST BELT VIEW

Trump, a New York businessman and former reality TV star, has made a pitch for blue-collar workers who have been angered by free-trade deals and feel abandoned by Washington. But his protectionist rhetoric - he has promised to review trade agreements - appears to be having mixed success in the Rust Belt.

Reuters/Ipsos polling from mid-October found a majority in both Ohio and Pennsylvania, that international trade benefits Americans by keeping the cost of goods low, although they also think it hurts "average Americans" by depressing wages and causing job losses at home.Clinton appears to be leading among labour union households in both states, the poll found. She has a double-digit lead with women in both, while Trump has a more modest lead with men. Among whites, Trump has a 7-point lead over Clinton in Ohio and a 3-point lead over Clinton in Pennsylvania.In the final stretch, the two candidates continued to paint a dire scenario of life in the United States if their opponent captures the White House. Trump said the FBI's fresh examination of emails that may be related to Clinton's use of a private email server for government work while she was secretary of state could lead to "a constitutional crisis.""Aren't we tired of all this stuff?" he asked. "America deserves a government that can go to work on Day One."

GET OUT THE VOTE PUSH

Clinton suggested the volatile Trump, who has feuded with and insulted a wide array of people and groups including Muslims, Mexican immigrants and women, was too unpredictable to trust."Think about what it would mean to entrust the nuclear codes to someone with very thin skin who lashes out at anyone who insults him," Clinton said.Clinton has deployed high-profile supporters to campaign for her in the final days of the campaign. President Barack Obama praised her work as his first-term top diplomat during an appearance in North Carolina.She was outstanding in her job. She was loyal to me, he said. Obama is trying to energise African-Americans, with whom he is very popular, and young people to turn out for Clinton the way they did for him in 2008 and 2012.Hispanic groups in swing states cranked up their get-out-the-vote efforts for the final stretch of the race on Friday, hoping to push the contest Clinton's way.Lizet Ocampo, director of the Latinos Vote! programme for People for the American Way, said the group has Spanish-language radio and television ads up in Nevada and North Carolina and radio ads in Pennsylvania, and will soon launch Arizona radio ads as well.The Love Bus - an old school bus repainted in various colours by nine Miami-based immigrant artists - will make the rounds in south Florida all weekend offering to take voters to the polls early in Haitian and migrant worker communities, said Ruth Moreno, state coordinator for the immigrant rights group iAmerica Action. (Additional reporting by Maurice Tamman and Luciana Lopez in New York, Roberta Rampton in North Carolina; Writing by John Whitesides and Jeff Mason; Editing by Frances Kerry and Leslie Adler)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Mandi: At least 18 people were on Saturday killed and 24 others injured when a private bus plunged into the Beas river near Vindravani in Mandi district, about 155 km from Mandi.

The ill-fated bus with over 40 passengers on board was travelling to Kullu from Manali when it veered off the road while trying to avoid a motorcyclist and fell into the turbulent Beas, police officers said.

Fourteen people died on the spot, three succumbed to their injuries in the zonal hospital at Mandi, while one critically injured person died on the way to Indira Gandhi Medical College in Shimla, police said.

The incident took place hardly 3 km from Mandi. The injured people were rushed to the zonal hospital there. Mandi Deputy Commissioner Sandeep Kadam and IG Ajay Yadav immediately reached the spot along with rescue teams.

Though there was only a remote possibility of passengers getting washed away in the river, divers have been called in as a precautionary measure to locate missing persons, if any, Kadam said.

The Mandi DC said rescue operations were in progress and all possible help is being provided to the victims. Mandi SDM, Vivek Chandel, said Rs 15,000 has been given as immediate relief to the next of kin of the deceased while the injured have been given Rs 5,000 each.

Transport minister GS Bali expressed deep shook over the accident and said a magisterial inquiry has been ordered to ascertain its cause.

He said besides the insurance claim of Rs 1 lakh, the next of kin of the deceased would be given Rs 4 lakh and seriously injured persons Rs 25,000 as relief. Most of the people travelling in the bus were from Mandi and Kullu and other places on the Mandi-Kullu National Highway 21.

Meanhwile, Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh conveyed his condolences to the bereaved families and wished speedy recovery to injured. He directed the district administration to provide all possible assistance to the family members of the victims and those injured in the accident.

In his condolence message, Governor Acharya Devvrat expressed sympathy with the families of the deceased and prayed for peace of the departed souls. State Health Minister Kaul Singh Thakur, Excise and Taxation Minister Prakash Chaudhary and Panchayati Raj, and Rural Development Minister Anil Sharma, all hailing from Mandi district, have also expressed grief over the accident and conveyed their condolences with bereaved family members.
Mumbai: Six people were killed and three others injured when a taxi they were travelling in turned upside down on the Eastern Freeway at Wadi Bunder junction towards south Mumbai here on Saturday morning, officials said.

The accident occurred around 9 am and severely hit the morning peak hour traffic towards the central business districts and other parts of the city.

The six people who died are Rajkumar Verma (8), Anantra Verma (35), Harkesh Verma M (45), Rajshree Verma (35), Ragini Verma (20) and Asha Verma (12), while the three injured were identified as Vinay Verma (21), Ravi Verma (14) and taxi driver Mangru Verma (35).

The DCP of Mumbai Ashok Dudhe told Firstpost that a case will be registered against the driver

The injured were rushed to Sir JJ Hospital for treatment and the cause of the accident is being probed by Dongri Police.

With inputs from IANS
Mumbai: Indian Army's surgical strikes conducted on 29 September this year across the Line of Control are long over but the after-effects of the military action are still on albeit outside the battlefield.

This time around Nationalist Congress Party MLA from Maharashtra's Kalwa-Mumbra constituency Jitendra Awhad has sent a Rs 100 crore defamation suit against Times Now editorin-chief Arnab Goswami among others for allegedly using "uncivilized" and "uncouth" language on The Newshour Debate programme.

The debate was aired at 9 pm on 6 October to discuss Rahul Gandhi Crossed The Line With 'Khoon Ki Dalali' Comment.

Accusing Goswami of "casting wild and baseless aspersions" "which have severely harmed my client's (Jitendra Awhad) impeccable reputation" and blaming the channel of starting a "hate campaign" against Ahwad, the notice sought the channel "withdraw the defamatory statements."

The notice sent by Ahwad through his lawyer Prashant B Kadam asked Goswami and others mentioned to "tender unconditional apology on your programme 'The Newshour Debate' telecast live on Times Now as well as on your website, within 7 days from the receipt of this notice" failing which a suit for damages amounting Rs 100 crore would be filed in a court of law. Firstpost has a copy of the notice.

Apart from Goswami, the notice was also sent to Times Now bureau chief Megha Prasad, Times Now chief executive officer Avinash Kaul, Times Global Broadcasting Co. Ltd chief executive officer Sunil Lulla and to Times Global Broadcasting Co. Ltd.

Claiming that Awhad "is a prominent citizen of Thane, having been in public life for more than two decades", the notice said that Goswami, who anchored the debate "unleashed verbal deluge of accusations... without any reason" on the legislator during the course of the discussion.

Awhad through his lawyer said that despite being invited to participate in the live television show, he was not given the chance to respond to a query on a certain comment made by NCP chief Sharad Pawar on the surgical strikes.

"... my client (Jitendra Awhad) was ready and eager to give appropriate answer to your question but even before my client (Jitendra Awhad) could respond and reply, you no. 1 (Arnab Goswami) cut short my client...," the notice said.

The notice said that Goswami "had some sort of preconceived grudge against my client (Jitendra Awhad) therefore you (Arnab Goswami) chose to forbid my client (Jitendra Awhad) from speaking his views and instead attempted to intimidate by hurling accusations and abusive words at my client (Jitendra Awhad)."

Talking to Firstpost, Awhad said, "Arnab is a liar. He never allows others to speak. How can he always insult the guest who he asks to come for his show? He has repeatedly insulted people hiding under the banner of the Times group. He always shows that he is right and all others are wrong. Arnab has always insulted the guest and so in order to teach him a lesson I have sent him a Rs 100 crore defamation suit against him and the channel too. He abused me in his live show. I will not let this issue down. How can Arnab throw labels on me like 'uncouth' and 'uncivilized'? Does he have the authority to do this?"

Speaking from Jantar Mantar in Delhi on 6 October, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi had accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of "playing with the blood of soldiers", in reference to the Indian Armys 29 September surgical strikes.

While referring to the surgical strikes, he said that "humare jawan hai jinhone khoon diya hai, jinhone surgical strikes kiya, unke khoon ke peeche aap (Modi) chuppe huye hai (Our soldiers conducted surgical strikes and gave their blood. Modi is just hiding behind their sacrifices)," he said. "Unki aap dalali kar rahe ho (You are brokering them)," Gandhi added, while telling Modi that the Indian Army has done its work and he should do his.
Congress scion Rahul Gandhi has never been accused of being very bright. His ignorance is often appalling especially on Twitter.

Look at this:

Detaining opposition leaders, blacking out tv channels- all in a day's work in Modiji's India. #NDTVBanned-shocking & unprecedented https://t.co/PXR7c2x20y  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) November 4, 2016

The Congress vice-president must know that the draconian law that empowers a government to black out TV channels at whim was first brought in by his own partys government in 1995. Will somebody please tell him that? He should also be told that it was again a Congress government, which actually banned a channel for a month in 2007 though for different reasons.

To start at the beginning, the Narasimha Rao government of the Congress enacted the law that was patently hostile to the media. Later, NDA's Atal Behari Vajpayee government made it downright nasty.

The Narendra Modi government has found it handy to force NDTV India to go off air for a day on 9 November for having allegedly revealed sensitive details of the offensive against terrorists at Pathankot in January this year. Modi must consider those officials and politicians who came up with or supported this idea to be his enemies.

The law in question goes by the title of The Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act 1995, and has a vaguely worded and absurd Section 20 that gives the government sweeping powers against channels. This Section 20 originally had the following paragraph in 1995 when the Narasimha Rao government enacted the law:

20. Power to prohibit operation of cable television network in public interest

Where the Central Government thinks it necessary or expedient so to do in public interest, it may prohibit the operation of any cable television network in such areas as it may, by notification in the Official Gazette, specify in this behalf.

The Vajpayee government thought it fit to add the following lines to it in 2000.

Where the Central Government thinks it necessary or expedient so to do in the

interest of the 

(i) sovereignty or integrity of India; or

(ii) security of India; or

(iii) friendly relations of India with any foreign State; or

(iv) public order, decency or morality,

it may, by order, regulate or prohibit the transmission or re-transmission of any channel or programme.

The words used in (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv) are so conveniently vague and wonderfully elastic that any channel can be anytime accused of committing ghastly crimes against the country if the government so wishes.

This unilateral and draconian section  which reminds us of a wartime clamp-down  befits a banana republic or a rogue nation, but not the vibrant democracy that India claims to be or must strive to be.

This is not the first time that Indian channels are being questioned about the way they go about covering anti-terrorist operations. The Supreme Court went to the extent of using the word "reckless" to describe the reporting of operations against Ajmal Kasab and other jihadi members who attacked Mumbai on 26 November, 2008.

While confirming the death sentence on Kasab on 29 August, 2012, Justices Aftab Alam and CK Prasad said the coverage of the Mumbai attacks led to a situation where, on the one hand, the terrorists were completely hidden and the security forces had no means to know their exact positions or the kind of firearms and explosives they possessed and, on the other, the positions of the security forces, their weapons and all their operational movements "were being watched by the collaborators across the border on TV screens and being communicated to the terrorists".

The Bench minced no words when it said the channels had been chasing TRP ratings. Whether TV channels indeed inadvertently helped the perpetrators of 26/11 attacks, though theoretically possible, is not only doubtful but can never be proved.

Earlier, the Manmohan Singh government issued "advisories" to TV channels twice in 2008 and once in 2009 telling them to desist from reporting details that would give away the location and movement of security forces during anti-terror operations.

The present government came up with similar dos and donts during March 2015 anti-terror operations and has now gone a step ahead with the one-day ban on NDTV India. This was, of course, just what the legion of "liberals" and compulsive Modi-baiters were waiting for. They were quick to lash out at the Modi government as if its the first one after Indias Independence to be hostile to media. But thats another matter.

This is not the first time that Indian channels are being questioned about the way they go about covering anti-terrorist operations.

Last year, when Arun Jaitley had the I&B portfolio, he said: "...a very strict discipline on the kind of reporting which is to take place from the place of the incident will have to be maintained".

But the question that comes upfront is: Who should enforce this discipline if such discipline is indeed necessary?

Accusing journalists of compromising national security is as old as the media itself across the world. And advising governments to allow the media to regulate itself is nearly as old.

But it must be said at the cost of repetition that self-regulation by the media continues to be the best bet in the interests of democracy and as insurance against abuse of law and score-settling. Instead of brandishing a flurry of advisories and enacting questionable laws, the government can enter into a dialogue with whatever channel or channels it has a grouse against. And a dialogue, it must be remembered, is a two-way thing.

Forcing channels to go off air reeks of censorship of the worst kind and official vindictiveness. To deal with individuals, be it journalists or others, whose actions allegedly go against national interests, the government has the option of using the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) after hearing what the alleged offender has to say.

But even if the channels have not erred in their coverage of anti-terror operations, they are not entirely above blame in their treatment of news and views in general. Those who run channels must use their own better judgement to decide whats good for the country and leave no scope for allegations of "reckless" coverage of things whether its the rape of a woman or an operation against terrorists.

Televisions credibility has been taking a beating and a little explanation to viewers why its doing what its doing can help restore trust. Self-policing by way of appointing ombudsmen of unquestionable integrity or by other means can ward off or reduce assaults on medias independence by governments and political parties.

Besides, the mindless coverage of sundry news events on most English and other language channels in India is a direct result of not just the TRP race but lack of enough training for the editorial staff. The exponential growth in channels is not matched by the availability of the right kind of people in sufficient numbers to run news operations. As a result, those who have no business to go anywhere near newsrooms actually run them. Their clumsiness is clear to even casual TV viewers, leave alone professionals. Some channels can boast of a few bright and very talented journalists, but they are too few.

Together with self-policing, the channels must think of ways to deal with the manpower crisis and raise its own credibility so that its better off to deal with attacks of the kind it is facing now.

The author tweets @sprasadindia
When one asks Tarek Sayed Tawfik about the centuries of theft of Egypts historical treasures, he becomes visibly angry.

We are not encouraging anybody to continue stealing Egyptian objects, declares the general director of the Grand Egyptian Museum, which is set to open at the beginning of 2018. In spite of it being difficult and agony to retrieve objects, and its not cheap and it takes time. But  anybody who in an illicit way tries to take objects out of Egypt will be prosecuted.

The Root was in Egypt as part of a media delegation sponsored by the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt. According to Egypts was in Egypt as part of a media delegation sponsored by the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt. According to Egypts Ministry of State for Antiquities , the North African nations archeological treasuressome of which include mummies and sarcophagi that are thousands of years oldhave been targeted by looters since around 1800. There are laws in place aimed at preventing the theft of the historical objects, including the 1970 UNESCO Convention requiring the repatriation of objects illegally removed from many countries. But Shaaban Abdel Gawad, general supervisor of the Antiquities Repatriation Department, says the problem has gotten worse because of both the 2011 revolution in Egypt and the ongoing battle against the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS.

Its still a big problem now, says Abdel Gawad. One of the main sources of money for ISIS terrorists is from monuments. We had a conference in Jordan, showing us that in Syria and Iraq, ISIS has been destroying the monuments. It brings money to them, and it is used to buy guns  and do terrorist actions like in France.

In May 2015, Egypt hosted an international conference to discuss ways to stop terrorists from profiting from cultural history. The Embassy of Egypt in Washington, D.C., issued a fact sheet (pdf) noting that artifacts smuggled out from war zones around the world account for $2.2 billion a year in illicit global trading.

On top of that, Abdel Gawad says that as the new Egypt is being built atop the old Egypt, where legitimate discoveries are still being made, the construction opens up opportunities for the unscrupulous.

You can imagine most of the land of Egypt is covered by monuments, he explains. Some build a house and can dig inside their house, and when they start to discover something, they can sell it illegally and send it out of Egypt and we cant find it. The big problem we are facing is that we dont have a recording of this object because of the illicit digging and theres no description of it.

Another problem is that stolen or illegally excavated objects with false documentation sometimes turn up in auction houses and museums, which makes it difficult to have them repatriated back to Egypt.

Its washing monuments like washing money, Abdel Gawad explains.

But Egypt is fighting back, with increased security, as well as political and diplomatic efforts to retrieve priceless objects that have been stolen, and are often displayed outside of its borders. The Ministry of State for Antiquities has a team that scours the web for objects illicitly for sale online and at auction houses and seeks to stop the sale and check for certification.

If an auction house doesnt have certification, it must be stolen from Egypt, Abdel Gawad says. Some auction houses and museums have started to negotiate with us, and sometimes they can repatriate objects by sending them back to Egypt.
The increasing politicisation of the issue of the One Rank One Pension (Orop) for the retired armed forces personnel seems to be disturbing the delicate civil-military relations (CMR) in the country. India has been one of the few decolonised countries where there have been neither military coups nor distinct domination of the military over the politics. And it is not a mean achievement, compared to what we have seen in newly independent countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, including those such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar in our immediate neighbourhood.

In fact, controlling the military has been one of the biggest challenges for all the post-colonial democracies. There are many factors why India has not been military-dominated, but two of them are particularly noteworthy. One, of course, is the democratic nature of our freedom struggle and deep commitment to democracy by Indias political leaders, cutting across parties and regions, soon after independence. Secondly, the Indian armed forces have been thoroughly heterogeneous in the sense that the composition of the forces has been from not only all the regions of a vast country but also representative of all classes, castes and ethnicities. This explains why a Subedars son has become the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) as is the case with present Chief, General Dalbir Singh Suhag. This will be unimaginable in a country like Pakistan. Invariably military coups or dominations take place in those countries where the armed forces come from a dominant community, class or region. For example, in Pakistan, the Army has an overwhelmingly dominant representation of about 70 per cent from Punjab, its largest state, and most of its officers happen to come from the upper feudal strata of the Society.

The Indian military, over time, has internalised the idea of civilian control and its professional ethos prides itself of being apolitical. This phenomenon can be best described in terms what late American political scientist Samuel P Huntington had described in his 1957 classic, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations, the theory of objective civilian control, according to which, the optimal means of asserting control over the armed forces is to professionalise them. This is in contrast to subjective control, which involves placing legal and institutional restrictions on the militarys autonomy.

According to Huntington, professionalism entails a mutually binding relationship between society and its professionals (officers). The latter are entrusted with evaluating the security of the state and providing expert advice to its leaders, who, in turn, must afford a measure of deference to their professional expertise and institutions, without usurping, for instance, the military hierarchy such as appointing a lieutenant to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Huntington argued that allowing military professionals autonomy within their own realm minimised the danger of military intervention in politics by rendering them politically sterile and neutral and at the same time, ensuring that a professional officer corps carries out the wishes of any civilian group which secures legitimate authority within the state.

Subsequently, some scholars brought slight modifications in Huntings thesis of objective control. In his 1999 book, Civilian Control Of The Military: The Changing Security Environment, Michael Desch espouses a construct with a thin permeable layer operating between political ends and military means. In this model, though there is substantial military autonomy in the military, technical and operational realms (how to fight wars) in return for complete subordination to civilian control of politics and grand strategy (when, and whether, to fight them), in exceptional circumstances there can be civilian intervention in what would normally be the military realm and vice versa. But Desch is emphatic that in the ultimate analysis, civilians must prevail in the event of divergence between civilian and military preferences.

On the other hand, the subjective control presupposes military participation in politics, with the society or the state moulding the military in its own image either by transplanting civilian elites into the military or by promoting senior military officers on the basis of their political beliefs. Huntington described how the two ideologiesfascism and Marxismbased on authoritarianism resulted in subjective control, which, in turn, could boomerang in military backlash and coups.

In the specific context of India, there are scholars who cite traces of subjective control during the India-China war in 1962 and fight against the LTTE in 1987-90. Dealings with the Chiefs sometimes by the government of the day have also shown some political overtones. In a clear violation of the seniority principle just before the imposition of Emergency in 1975, late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi appointed Lt. General T N Raina as the COAS by superseding a more senior officer. She did this for the second time in 1983 by appointing Lt. General A S Vaidya as the COAS, who was junior to then Vice Chief Lt. General S K Sinha. The latter, to keep his dignity, resigned from the Army. Next such incident was under the Vajpayee regime, when in 1998 the Navy Chief, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, who was having a turbulent relationship with the then Defence Minister George Fernades, was dismissed from the job on the ground of deliberate defiance of the government.

However, despite these aberrations, Indian military, by and large, fits into Huntingtons framework of objective control. The political class in the country has rarely intervened in purely military matters. And the military has hardly threatened the civilian leadership on any issue. But this does not mean that there have been no healthy differences between the two. However, these differences have been essentially on the personnel policy - pays, perks, distribution of power and responsibilities between the military and civilian officials. It is a fact that while the military does not have any problem with the supremacy of the civilian political leadership, it does grudge the increasing domination of the civilian officials (bureaucracy). Its consistent demand for integrated ministry of defence, an issue that needs a separate analysis, has fallen on deaf ears.

It is perhaps not well-known that even in individual services, there are substantial civilians. In his book, Society, State and Security, Vice Admiral Verghese Koithara has shown that civilians constitute 42 percent in the three uniformed services. In addition, there are lakhs of civilians working in ordnance factories and defence public sector undertakings, and they make up nearly 26 percent of the personnel. Naturally, therefore, there are frequent frictions over pay and perks.

It is also a fact that since independence, ranking military officers have come down in the governments warrants of precedence vis-a-vis the civilian officers. There are also unhealthy practices of neglecting the military inputs in determining strategic goals and over-influence of the bureaucrats in the Ministry of Defence. So much so that the late strategic guru K. Subrahmanyam wrote, This directly translates into a system where politicians enjoy power without any responsibility, bureaucrats wield power without any accountability and the military assumes responsibility without any direction.

However, the heartening feature of Indian democracy has been that these legitimate grievances of the military have been subject to a healthy system of negotiations and bargaining by the government of the day. Unfortunately, this delicate balance  seen under objective controlseems to have been broken by the current manner of agitation over the Orop. And here three aspects of the agitation are really worrisome.

First, the agitators main arguments that armed forces are unique, that their services to the country are incomparable and that they must get superior treatment compared to other services. This demand is essentially fascist in nature. Because of the nature of their work, they need special treatment and special incentives. One may have no problem with that. But when they openly say they are superior to others, the demand becomes dangerous. They are not in a mood to listen to any voices towards compromise and rationality.

Secondly, most of the Orop agitators seem to be hailing from four to five states, thus negating the principle of heterogeneity in the composition of Indian armed forces. Thirdly, there are distinct political overtones in their demandssee the way they are trying to lampoon some ministers and bureaucrats and the way some political leaders are blindly but dangerously supporting their causes and leaders, without hesitating to be seen publicly with them. Incidentally, some of the agitators have even formed special outfits to fight elections. There is already one by Major General (retd) Satbir Singh, who, many military veterans (with whom I have interacted) agree, is playing possibly the dirtiest role in politicising the Orop agitation.

In my considered view, the Modi government is the most military friendly government in independent Indias history. It is not often highlighted that Modi has two ministerial colleagues who are from the military background (I do not think it ever happened before)a former Army Chief and a former Colonel. Earlier one had only seen retiring bureaucrats entering the electoral race and becoming ministers. In the last general elections too, a former Home Secretary and a former Commissioner of Police were successful in becoming the ruling party MPs, but Modi broke past pattern by choosing General V K Singh and Col. Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore as members in the Union Council of Ministers.

Under normal circumstances, it is under the Modi government that two long-pending but much needed goals of the militaryan integrated Ministry of Defence and a Chief of Defence Servicescould be easily achieved. But the agitating veterans are virtually taking those two goals out of reach, with each passing day. They are missing the wood for the trees.
Politicisation of the unfortunate demise of Subedar Ram Kishan Grewal continues shamelessly. TV channels were referring to some 12 letters on Orop written by Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Member of Parliament, to the Prime Minister, Defence Minister, Chairperson UPA and Rahul Gandhi during UPA-1 and UPA-2. But then the open letter dated 4 November, 2016, from Rajeev Chnadrasekhar to Rahul Gandhi arrived on the scene.

The above letter completely exposes the most insensitive manner in which both UPA governments treated genuine grievances about long-pending implementation of Orop. It demolishes Congress claims of Orop despite Orop being a part of their election manifesto before UPA-1 came to power. The letter also refers to a Parliamentary Committee of Petitions under a Shri Koshyari that studied a petition (Rajeev Chandrashekhar being instrumental in its submission) that was ignored by UPA, as was the Koshiyary Committee Report submitted in 2011.

Despite the above, the theatrics of claims and counter-claims continue: histrionics by the Congress and AAP, AK Anthony emerging from his refuge to squeak his bit, BJP claiming Orop promise fulfilled, and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar quoted by the media saying, "Only one lakh ex-servicemen out of over 20 lakh are not getting pension as per the Orop scheme due to some technical difficulty or documentation problems." Ram Kishan Grewal was one of those unlucky one lakh veterans who despite two months having elapsed was denied Orop.

The question is not whether the suicide of Subedar Ram Kishan Grewal was of his own volition or politically motivated. It is clear he was denied the benefit of Orop irrespective of whether the announced Orop was 'partial' or 'full'. The pension disbursal agency (PDA), in the case of Subedar Ram Kishan, was SBI, the premier bank of the government. If about one lakh veterans had been denied Orop for two months, what if more of this unfortunate group of veterans had decided to act like Grewal  not that lives of military personnel (serving or veterans) matter much to many in this country beyond perhaps politicising?

As per newspaper reports, Subedar Ram Kishan was receiving around Rs 3,000 less than what he was entitled to after 30 years and nine months of service: he was receiving a monthly pension of around Rs 25,000 instead of Rs 28,000; his case was among the "complicated ones", since he first served for six years in Territorial Army followed by 24 years in Defence Security Corps before retiring in 2004, delay in him receiving Orop was due to problems in calculation at his bank  SBI branch in Bhiwani district of Haryana.

The media also reported that MoD is mulling a central mechanism to handle Orop. Hopefully this will not be used to establish Dorop (Department of Orop) manned by bureaucrats on the lines of the Department of Ex-Serviceman Welfare (DESW) manned solely by bureaucrats and taking the veterans, widows and disabled to court for every penny they are due. What governments fail to understand is that having a vision is perhaps only 10 percent of the requirement, the remaining 90 percent must be the follow up  the execution, which mostly is missing. Were the instructions on Orop comprehensive enough for the PDA to work out the pension  obviously not, but why not? On the other hand, if the Orop instructions were comprehensive enough, then doesnt the PDA deserve to be kicked?

If the Orop instructions were not comprehensive enough, who is to blame? Rather than talking of establishing another mechanism, why is Orop implementation not part of the DESW charter? Is taking veterans, widows and disabled to court only function of DESW? Why did the Defence Minister only discover 'now' that one lakh veterans hadnt received OROP? Obviously there was no system of feedback and Parrikar would not have discovered so if not for the tragic demise of Subedar Ram Kishan. So why was there no system of feedback?

Why with all the hype about "technology" and the government's messages through texting throughout India to send greetings to soldiers on Diwali, why couldnt Ram Kishan and other one lakh veterans, who didnt receive Orop, be sent a message that the disbursement of Orop was delayed, giving reasons and a date by which the due amount would be credited to their accounts? Is the government aware that with all the hype about Digital Life Certificate how many banks and branches in the capital have not still implemented this system and veterans still have to personally visit banks to fill up the form? Why were banks not given a date for implanting the Digital Life Certificate and why a completion report was not asked?

The Finance Minister is stating on TV channels that overall Orop and arrears granted at cost of 'X' thousand crores is being disbursed in four installments, first of which has been disbursed. He was as vocal in Parliament that Orop has many definitions. Some veterans have also been brought on electronic media to say that Orop has been already granted or much of Orop has been granted. Not that in forefront is one who has been switching political parties and allegiances on the drop of a hat.

Ironically, a military veteran holding political appointment referred to veterans peacefully protesting at Jantar Mantar last year as having aligned with Pakistan and the ISI. It actually amounted to him abusing the uniform he wore, whatever years he served in the army. Field Marshal Manekshaw had described this type saying, "A 'yes man' is a dangerous man. He may rise very high, he might even become the Managing Director of a company. He may do anything but he can never make a leader because he will be used by his superiors, disliked by his subordinates. So shallow  the 'yes' man." By holding political office this fellow may claim being 'leader' but the stink will stick..

The Congress dumped 12 letters about Orop by MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar. BJP would do well to heed five lines by him in his letter of 4 November, 2016, to RahulGandhi that reads, "Yes, there are some pending complex issues in Orop, including some fundamental issues to ensure consistency with the definition of One Rank, One Pension. These were referred to the One Man Judicial Committee set up to look after these anomalies. This committee has only recently submitted its report and we should look into them."

If the above is not hint enough, the undeniable fact remains that what has been granted is partial Orop, not full as promised. By doing so, the BJP lost the support of veterans who voted wholeheartedly in bringing the party to power, just for few hundred crores, despite Orop being revived after 1973. Opportunity is now available to correct the same via the Reddy Commission Report, whose recommendations after months of interaction with veterans logically should be to grant full Orop. Nevertheless BJP can seize the moment, rectify anomalies and grant 'full' Orop, ending veteran protests for the past two years. This would be the right move even as the Finance Minister may like to make it a prestige issue.

The alternative with BJP is to stick to the stand already taken: keep portraying that Orop has been granted in full. Some media can be made to sing that tune and so would some veterans to earn brownie points due to political leanings or seeking individual gains. Not without reason General Chandra Shekhar, former Vice-Chief of Army Staff, in his autobiography draws attention to army getting affected by declining value of society. But should this course be taken, the issue of Orop will not die down to the detriment of BJP.

Additionally, Orop will likely be a major shouting match in the forthcoming session of Parliament. Prudence requires that the government resolves it earliest  preferably before the Parliament reconvenes.

The author is veteran Lieutenant General of the Indian Army
It is not every day that a police officer tries to persuade a Lashkar-e-Taiba militant for surrender without a shot being fired. But on Thursday evening that is what happened in the Tujar Sharief area of the restive Sopore town, when police and the Army cordoned off a cluster of villages after receiving information that a militant was holed up inside a house in the village.

It took five hours for a Kashmir police team led by the Superintendent of Police, Sopore, Harmeet Singh Mehta, to motivate a recently-infiltrated Kashmiri militant, Umar Khaliq Mir, to surrender before the police and the Army on Thursday evening.

Mir, 24, had crossed the LoC, according to police sources, a month ago along with few foreign militants, and was operating in and out of his village, Tujar Sharief.

At 5 pm on Thursday evening, the police and Army cordoned off a cluster of villagers in the area and zeroed in on a house were Mir was hiding. The police first asked the owner of the house to try to speak to the hiding militant, and gave him a cell phone so that they could talk to the hiding militant.

Mir, a local resident, had been perhaps under surveillance for a long time after he had crossed over to this side, along with some other foreign militants, but had managed to give the slip to forces many times for the last one month.

"The negotiations," says SP Sopore, Harmeet Singh Mehta, continued for hours and "we were not in a rush". The police first evacuated the entire area.

"We told the house owner, to motivate Mir for a surrender and if he lays down his arms, we will not go for an encounter," Mehta said.

Mir crossed the LoC in May for arms training in Pakistan, police said, but there has been no case registered against him in any police station. According to police, since his arrival back to Kashmir, he had largely remained confined to his village. After the cordon was put in place, a police officer had a conversation with militant. He was asked to "surrender" on the condition that there will not be any gun battle.

When Mir refused and instead asked for his father, the police got nervous, but did get his father, Abdul Khaliq, who agreed to come to encounter site.

Khaliq arrived at the scene and was briefed by Mehta, who told the former that the police will not kill his son if he surrenders. "We sent his father along with some respectable people from the area and then told him that there would be no harm done to him, if he surrenders. Then he came out with his hands up and we arrested him," Mehta said.

"He finally gave up at around 10 pm." Khaliq said.

The surrender of Mir, a Kashmiri militant, is rare in recent times, as most of the militants who get caught in situations like this prefer a gunfight instead of surrender.

"But this," Mehta says will also encourage others to surrender when they realise that police will honour its commitment of not killing them if they choose to lay down their arms.
Chennai: Denouncing references to the Emergency in the context of the one-day ban on NDTV India channel, Information and Broadcasting minister Venkaiah Naidu said on Saturday that the action against the Hindi news channel was taken in the interest of the "country's safety and security".

Addressing a press conference, he said the NDA government has the highest regard for freedom of media and politicisation of such issues will only affect the safety and security of the country.

He also slammed Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi for "talking about the dark days of Emergency".

"I was surprised, aghast. Some people talked of Emergency-like situation. The action was taken in the interest of the country's safety and security," he said.

"I do not know how they are saying this is the first time. I read in a newspaper today that it is first time (that Government has issued a ban on a television channel). Shall I give the list of how many times channels were ordered to go off air?", he asked.

Listing out the names of some of the channels that were banned in the past, he said, "AXN was banned for two months. FTV was banned for two months. Enter10 for one day. ABN AndhraJyoti seven days. Al Jazeera was banned for five days for showing wrong map of India.

"These are all done earlier. Now they are saying it is done for the first time, murder of democracy, Emergency

reminiscent and all", he noted.

"People know what is good and what is bad and people understand what is required in the larger interest of the country. That is why I saw that people on social media supported the Government's stand except some people who are not well informed", he said.

"Politicisation of such issues will affect the safety and security of the country", Naidu, who is here to attend a conference organised by Builders Association of India, said.

Maintaining that the Government was duty bound to act on such issues and does not require to approach the courts, he said, "I have to answer tomorrow in Parliament. I have to answer people tomorrow."

"Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi is talking about dark days of Emergency. Do you know what is Emergency? Some people who were in the Congress at that time and now in different political parties also joined the chorus now because it has become a fashion. They just want to use each and every occasion to criticise the government and take the name of the Prime Minister for each and everything", he said.

Naidu said the BJP-led NDA government has the highest regard for the freedom of media and would never allow any infringement of it.

"I will never allow any infringement of the freedom of the press. In this case, we have nothing against any particular channel...The government does it in the best interest of the country", he said.

"Freedom of press is very important security and unity of the country is most important. That is how this government has taken this decision. Otherwise there is no reason", he said.

The Minister said the reactions suggest a motivated design to create a controversy where none existed.

He asserted that people of the country should know that the UPA Governments, during 2005-14, ordered several TV channels to go off air in 21 instances, for a period ranging from one day to two months for showing obscene visuals including 13 cases of telecasting 'Adult' rated certified films.

One channel was taken off air for 30 days for telecasting a sting operation, he said.

"People of the country are also wise enough to appreciate which of the two violations  showing obscene visuals at the stroke of midnight and risking the lives of defence personnel and civilians through a live telecast of anti-terrorist operations in broad daylight- is a serious threat to the interests of the nation including its sovereignty, integrity and security," Naidu said.

The Minister said the decision against NDTV India was not based on any newly invented rule and principle.

"The ground on which action has been proposed against NDTV India was only a logical conclusion of concerns clearly articulated by the UPA Government in various advisories issued after 26/11 terror attacks on multiple targets in Mumbai in 2008," he said.

Rejecting criticism that compared the present case to Emergency, Naidu said many BJP leaders and a large number of activists were at the "worst receiving end of Emergency and would shudder to even think of doing the same to others and particularly, in respect of freedom of media."

Responding to criticism by Editors Guild of India, Naidu said, "The Editors Guild of India, a responsible organisation that took a full day to come out with its response should realise that under Sub-section (2) of Section 20 of the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995, Central Government is required to regulate or prohibit the transmission of any channel or programme in the interest of sovereignty, integrity and security of India and as per Para 8.1 of Uplinking Guidelines, is empowered to take action for transmitting any objectionable content inconsistent with public interest.

Therefore, the Government is not required to approach the Courts in such cases, as suggested by the Guild, he added.

"I leave it to the wisdom of the Editors Guild to ponder if the decision against NDTV India for the reasons explained, is really reminiscent of the dark days of Emergency," he said.

Naidu said that very recently in an interaction, he had stressed that effective self-regulation by media is the best way of protecting its freedom and we are committed to it.

"I also said that freedom is best upheld when its value is fully appreciated. In this case, that much valued freedom was not put to best use by NDTV India. I am happy to note that the people of the country are broadly with the decision in the matter of NDTV India," he said.

Always, there will be a minority who are critical of whatever the Government does in the best interest of the

country, Naidu added.

The minister also said that in several advisories issued by the previous UPA Government, all news and current affairs TV channels were clearly asked to exercise restraint, maturity and sensitivity while reporting on anti-terrorist operations in the larger interest of safety and security of security forces involved in such operations and civilians.

Expressing concern over continued violations, the then UPA Government concluded that any coverage violating such norms amount to coverage against the interests of the nation, he added.
New Delhi: On Saturday Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid stress on a humanitarian approach to address problems concerning Jammu and Kashmir and said Vikas and Vishwas will be the cornerstones of the central government's development initiatives for the state hit by the unrest.

He said growth and development of Jammu and Kashmir are high on his agenda, particularly the development of villages where a majority of people live.

The Prime Minister was interacting with a 30-member delegation of the All Jammu and Kashmir Panchayat Conference, an apex body of Panchayat leaders representing 4000 village Panchayats of the state. The delegation was led by Chairman of the organisation Shafiq Mir.

During the interaction, Modi "reiterated stress on a humanitarian approach and said that Vikas (development) and Vishwas (trust) will remain the cornerstones of the Union Government's development initiatives for the state of Jammu and Kashmir," a PMO statement said.

Modi "stressed that growth and development of Jammu and Kashmir is high on his agenda," it said.

He added that development of the villages, where a majority of people live, is vital to the overall economic development of the state, the statement said.

The delegation apprised the Prime Minister of the prevailing situation in the state while strongly condemning the burning of schools by anti-national elements, it added.

PM Modi assured that students of the schools that were burnt can take admission in any school in India: Shafiq Mir pic.twitter.com/hdXvgyYRU0  ANI (@ANI_news) November 5, 2016

The body, which represents people at the grassroot level in Jammu and Kashmir, reiterated its faith in the democratic institutions and processes in the country, the statement said.

Mir said a vast majority of the people of the state want a life of peace and dignity and that "vested interests have exploited youngsters and are playing with their future", the PMO said.

He urged the Prime Minister to take personal initiative to restore peace in Jammu and Kashmir.

Members of the delegation briefed Modi on development issues concerning the state, and said that benefits of central assistance have not reached the villages due to non- empowerment of the Panchayats, in line with the rest of the country.

They also submitted a memorandum which they urged the Prime Minister to consider extension of the 73rd and 74th Amendments of the Constitution of India  which pertain to local bodies  to the State of J&K, the statement said.

Extension of these Constitutional provisions to the state would empower the Panchayats to undertake basic development activities in the rural areas, they said.

The members expressed hope that this would accelerate the development process in the state, and enable the people of there to take benefits from various central government schemes, the statement said.

They also demanded that elections to Panchayats and Urban Local Bodies in the state be held at the earliest. They said that elections held in 2011 had witnessed enthusiastic turnout of voters.

The Prime Minister assured the delegation that the Union Government will look into their demands.
Editors note: Kannur, the northern district of Kerala, hit the headlines for a spate of political violence that saw two murders in just 48 hours last month. The murders have given rise to fears that the cycle of violence, which had ebbed to an extent in the last few years, may be returning to haunt the regions. The new political context  the state ruled by the CPM-led LDF and the Centre ruled by BJP-led NDA  makes the situation in Kannur all the more complex, since the key parties that are involved in the violence are the CPM and BJP. Firstpost travelled to Kannur, probing the historical, sociological and communal dynamics of the political violence in the region. This is the fifth in a five-part series from ground zero.

Read Part I here: Political killings in Kannur: With corrupt cops and netas, settling scores is easy in this Kerala district

Read Part II here: History of political violence in Kerala's Kannur: Killings became endemic after RSS entered the fray

Read Part III here: Kannur political killings: Flourishing 'party villages' lead to all kinds of malpractices

Read Part IV here: Political killings in Kannur: Peace unlikely to stand a chance with sketchy leadership in Kerala

Ten-year-old Vidyanands question 'why the issue that took the life of his father on 12 July could not be solved through talks' still echoes in the ears of his mother Sajini.

She herself has been trying to figure out the reason all these days. The 35-year-old widow could not find anything other than her husbands allegiance to the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

She may not know that even mere association with a party can be fatal in a district like Kannur where politics is like religion to the people. Most parties in Kannur believe that they can create their political space in the district only through annihilation of their rivals.

In their mad pursuit for political supremacy, the leaders of the warring parties have no time to ponder over the question posed by innocent children like Vidyanand, who saw his father dying in front of him, or hear the desperate wails of women who have lost their husbands and sons.

The unintended victims of the bloody clashes are women and children. The series of killings and counter killings going on in the district for the last five decades have left scores of women without sons or husbands and many children father-less.

I do not know what to tell 3-year-old Vijayanand when he asks about his father after he grows up. I have now made him believe that his father has gone out for work and will come back after completing it, says Sajini.

Vijayanand was sleeping when the gang hacked his 38-year-old father C V Dhanraj to death in the courtyard of their house on the night of 12 July. Sajini said he was asking everyday when his father will return.

The families of all seven people killed since the Left Democratic Front (LDF) led by the CPI (M) was elected to power in Kerala in the 19 May Assembly elections have the same stories to tell.

The shades of the parties they belong to may be different but the colour of the blood that the killers have shed on the streets of Kannur and the agonies they caused to their family members are the same.

While the children, who saw the still bodies of their fathers, are in a state of perpetual shock, the women are clueless about how to bring up the children and take care of the aged parents in the absence of their husbands.

M T Padmini, who lost her only son in the current spell of violence, wished that the killers had spared her son and taken her life instead. The 28-year-old young man was the sole support for the family that included Padminis sick husband and her aged parents.

P M Bineesh, who was a supporter of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), was hacked to death at Thillankary under Mattannur Assembly segment on the night of 3 September while returning with the medicines for his mother.

Padmini, who is disabled by rheumatoid arthritis, cannot even eat and pick anything without help. Similarly her parents, who are in their nineties, also cannot do their chores without support.

Bineesh used to feed me and do all the household works, including cooking food and fetching water. I do not know how we will live without him. If they had killed me Bineesh would have taken care of the others, says Padmini.

She still doesnt know why her son was killed. Bineeshs friends and neighbours are also groping in the dark about the motive behind the brutal murder.

There was no reason for the CPI(M) to nurse any grudge against Bineesh as he was not an active worker of the RSS. He never interfered with the political choices of his family members, who traditionally supported the CPI (M), said Rajan Puthukudi, BJPs Mattanur constituency president.

Bineesh only supported the RSS ideology. He never tried to impose that on us. He did not object our decision to vote for the communists. He took us for voting even in the last assembly election knowing that we will vote only for the CPI (M) candidate, says Padmini.

The same is true in the house of K Mohanan, who was allegedly murdered by RSS workers on 12 October, at Pinarayi, the home town of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. A gang barged into the toddy shop, where Mohanan worked as a salesman, and hacked him to death.

Even though Mohanan, 50, was a branch secretary of the CPI (M), he never bothered with colour of the party when people approached him with their problems. The neighbours say he used to help everybody irrespective of their political affiliations. They called him Mohanettan and respected him like their brother.

When I fell down from a coconut tree and broke my spine, Mohanan mobilised funds not only for my treatment but also the marriage of my daughter. He gave money even from his pocket for painting the house before the marriage. His death is a big loss for all of us, says Ibrahim, Mohanans neighbour.

His wife Suchithra still likes to believe that her husband was killed by mistake. She wonders how anyone can kill a person who has done good things for others. She doesnt know how she and her two children, who loved their father a lot, will live without him.

Suchithra did not wish this fate for anybody else. But two days later, tragedy struck again in the house of a 52-year-old woman barely 3 km away. Narayanis only son Remith, an RSS worker, was stabbed to death allegedly by the CPI(M) workers in what looked like a revenge killing.

Narayani, who had lost her husband Uthaman in crossfire between CPI (M) and RSS workers 12 years ago, was living for Remith. After she lost him, Narayani made an open request to the CPI (M) leadership, to kill her too.

Killings and counter killing have been a routine affair in Kannur. In the past the parties targeted only those who attacked or betrayed them. The killings that followed were over disputes or differences over political and other issues.

The current series of killings show that the parties were picking up even innocent people. CK Vijayan, a journalist, who extensively covered the seven killings in Kannur since 19 May, said that none of them were either part of aggressive politics or involved in any kind of disputes.

Most of them were poor workers who struggled hard to bring up their families. Some of them were highly respected in the area they live. They seem to have been killed to keep the scores even, says Vijayan.

Raveendran, who was the first to be killed in the current cycle of political killings, was a saw mill worker. He was killed when a bomb hurled at the victory rally of the CPI (M) at Dharmadam exploded.

Dhanraj of the CPI (M), who was killed on 12 July, did not have any regular job. C K Ramachandran, a Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) leader who was murdered two hours later, was an autorickshaw driver.

Bineesh (RSS), who was hacked to death on 3 September, was a painter. K Mohanan, who was murdered on 10 October, was a salesman in a toddy shop while Remith, who was done to death on 12 October, was a taxi driver.

All of them were sole breadwinners of their families. These families are now at the mercy of the concerned parties for their future living.

In the past, the parties used to take good care of the families of the martyrs, but with the rise in the number of victims they have reduced the assistance. Still there is no dearth of people, who are ready to die for their parties.
Saharanpur: Kicking off UP poll campaign, BJP president Amit Shah today took a dig at infighting in the Mulayam Singh Yadav family and targeted ruling Samajwadi Party as well as BSP, saying neither party is bothered about development of the state.

Addressing 'Parivartan rally' (rally for change) in Saharanpur in western UP, he said the state has lagged behind in development because of SP and BSP rule and that only a BJP government with full majority can bring it back on track.

"While on one hand, it is the nephew (Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav) who is abusing the uncle (SP state unit president Shivpal Yadav), on the other Behenji (BSP supremo Mayawati) is abusing both of them...No one is concerned about the development of the state," Shah said.

"The state has lagged behind a lot...SP and BSP cannot improve the situation here and it will be only the BJP government with full majority which can bring the state back on tracks," he said.

Attacking 'goonda' elements in the ruling SP, he alleged that the party is mired in illegal mining among other ills like corruption. Shah said while Akhilesh wants to project himself as 'vikas purush' (development man), people like mafia don Mukhtar Ansari are in his party despite the Chief Minister claiming they would not be allowed in.

"The entire SP is filled with such people," he added. Targeting Mayawati, the BJP chief said, "behanji says she will improve the situation but she has Naseemuddin Siddiqui". He contended that, "it is between devil and deep sea for the people of the state in the context of these two parties."

Shah also took veiled dig at Samajwadi Party's efforts to form a 'mahagathbandhan' ahead of the upcoming Assembly polls by hosting senior leaders of the erstwhile Janata Parivar in the state capital today, saying "they are happy shaking hands with each other..but what would happen by your shaking hands? In a democracy, government is formed only when the people shake hands with you".

Attacking Mayawati, he said though she claims to make the state "goonda free" (criminal free), she needs to recall the number of scams which took place during her previous government."

Citing the different scams worth thousands of crores, Shah alleged that all the funds meant for development were used in setting up memorials and statues. "If she returns to power, she will set up 200 to 300 more of her statues instead of doing any good for the state," he said.

Alleging that SP, BSP and Congress have spoiled UP, Amit Shah said only BJP can provide a "goonda-free" UP. Attacking Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi for his stand on 'One Rank, One Pension' (Orop), the BJP chief said, "he seems to have forgotten that the issue is very old and despite Congress being in government led by his relatives all this while, nothing was done to redress this demand."

"It is very shameful that vote politics is being done on the suicide of an ex-serviceman to mislead the people...But they will not get influenced as they know the reality and servicemen know that it is the Modi government which has given them OROP," he stressed.

He also criticised Rahul Gandhi for his comments after surgical strikes that Prime Minister was doing 'khoon ki dalali' (using blood of soldiers for political gains). "During your (Congress governments), there were firings on the borders regularly but it is the Modi government which is at the helm now and it knows well how to give a befitting reply," Amit Shah said.

Attacking BSP, SP and Congress for raising a lot of hue and cry over the Modi government's stand on triple talaq, Shah asked, "should the rights of Muslim women not be safeguarded? Should the triple talaq like arrangement not be done away with? ..What is this mockery you are playing with the rights of women for vote bank politics?"
The ruling Samajwadi Party's grand silver jubilee celebrations on Saturday may be a prelude to the pre-poll alliance talks ahead of the UP assembly elections.

The party is all geared up for it's mega silver jubilee celebrations on scheduled to be held later in the day with prominent JD(U), RJD, and RLD leaders set to share the stage with Uttar Pradesh's first family. While the leaders' presence on the same stage is sure to give out a signal of unity, this may well serve as the right backdrop to kick-start formal talks on pre-poll alliance between these parties.

According to CNN-News18, Samajwadi Party's state party unit chief Shivpal Yadav has said that alliance talks may take place after the event, while adding that "like minded people" have come together to participate in the event.

However, Bihar Chief Minister and JD(U) national president Nitish Kumar, who was part of the earlier attempts of forging a 'grand alliance' at the time of Bihar assembly polls, appeared vary of making any comments. Clarifying that SP's silver jubilee celebrations should not be taken as a prelude to pre-poll alliance talks, Nitish said it was courteous of the SP to invite people who share "similar ideological and emotional affinity to any function."

"The preparations for the historic event have been made. Samajwadi and Lohiawadi leaders will be sharing the stage with 'netaji' [Mulayam Singh Yadav]", SP state president Shivpal Yadav told reporters at party office on Friday.

Nitish, who was invited personally by Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh, will skip the silver jubilee celebrations citing the Chhath festival being celebrated in Bihar.

Former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda, RJD Chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, RLD Cheif Ajit Singh, JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav, Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) leader Abhay Chautala, KC Tyagi (JD-U) and noted lawyer Ram Jethmalani are some of the prominent names to attend the event.

"With the event, SP will be formally launching its election campaign from tomorrow (Saturday)," Shivpal said, adding that its main objective was not to let BJP form government in Uttar Pradesh.

In a press conference on Thursday, the SP state unit chief had said, "After forming majority government in UP in 2017, all secular forces will unite to uproot the BJP government at the Centre."

In a bid to portray a united front ahead of the 2017 state Assembly elections, the feuding first family had come together to flag off Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's 'rath yatra' here yesterday. Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav and Shivpal, with whom the Chief Minister was locked in a bitter power struggle, extended him "best wishes".

Meanwhile, Shivpal said that the entire route from SP headquarter to Janeshwar Mishra park, the venue for the silver jubilee celebrations, is dotted with hoardings and banners welcoming workers for the event.

"We are expecting a huge crowd tomorrow. The workers have already started coming to the state capital. We are expecting over 5 lakh people. The event will also pass a strong message for BJP and rival parties," convenor of the event and Cabinet minister Gayatri Prasad Prajapati said.

Elaborate security arrangements have been made by police to ensure security of VVIP guests and party workers. "Besides a DIG level officer, there would be five Superintendents of Police (SP), 24 ASPs, 39 Circle Officers and a considerable number of PAC personnel as part of the security cover for the event," IG, Lucknow Zone, A Satish Ganesh said.

The SP state chief said that he also met with party supremo Mulayam Singh at his residence for the success of the event. Shivpal has also asked the district administration and police to ensure that expelled party leaders are not allowed inside the venue of the event. The SP leader was reportedly peeved by the presence of expelled leaders including MLCs Santosh Yadav Sunny, Sunil Yadav Sajan, Anand Bhadauria and others at Akhilesh's rath yatra on Thursday.

Though there is no official word from the party or administration on the matter, party sources said that Shivpal was strongly batting for restricting the expelled leaders at Saturday's event.

With inputs from PTI
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Recounting the past years of Janata Party, he said that even at the time, there was a lot of confusion and ruckus on stage due to enthusiasm but Samajwadis always came together in the end.

Lalu Yadav sought to downplay the apparent differences between the Samajwadi Party top brass. He said that Akhilesh & Shivpal have come together to prove that there is no fight in the party. He said that Yadav brothers don't fight with each other and are always united against communal powers.

What is the use of a 56 inch chest when you are not able to control the situation in J&K for so many days?: Lalu Yadav pic.twitter.com/X7mr5pXMyd

He also brought up the Kashmir issue, stating that Modi's 56 inch chest is useless if the government cannot control the situation in the restive state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Lalu Yadav spared no opportunity to lash out at his arch political rival, BJP. Amid other issues, he also targeted the Centre stating that the governments' attempt at gagging the press only showed that India was moving towards "dictatorship."

Apart from praising Akhilesh, Lalu Yadav also pledged his support to the Samajwadi Party and said that the party will defeat communal powers. He also addressed Akhilesh Yadav as the future CM of the state, signifying his acceptance of Akhilesh as the face of UP government.

He also added that the recent one-day ban on NDTV was reminiscent of the period of emergency, calling for defeating the BJP in 2019 elections.

Speaking at the silver jubily celebrations of the party, Sharad Yadav said the Samajwadi Party can overcome any challenges thrown its way by standing united.

"Hum sab logo ne mil ke Samajwadi andola khada kiya hai, chahiye kisi ne party ka koi naam rakha ho," Mulayam Singh Yadav said at the event. He also recalled his old affiliation with Om Prakash Chautala, Lalu Yadav and other veteran leaders. Recalling their struggle together he said that "none of us got the power as gift."

He said that only Samajwadi ideology can help the poor and the hungry. Asking his party cadre to pay special attention to women and the underprivileged section of the society.

Amid fiery speeches by Akhilesh and Shivpal Yadav, party old guard and national president Mulayam President chose to stay silent on the rift within his party. He rather chose to speak about the developmental issues and urged the party workers to ensure the well-being of the poor and the marginalized in the state.

UP Govt has done impressive work during its tenure, we are a party and Govt for the poor: Mulayam Singh Yadav pic.twitter.com/mndpyBWDFo

He said that the Samajwadi Party governmnet is the only hope for poor and the neglected.

Mulayam Singh Yadav praised Akhilesh led UP government and said "It is true that the UP government has done good work." He however cautioned him against overlooking other challenges that remained unattended.

UP govt has done well but much more to do: Mulayam

He however advised the party cadres to focus on becoming the voice of the poor and continue the governmnet's development work.

Mulayam Singh Yadav although chose to remain quiet on the apparent rift within the party, he said that the Samajwadis will remain united to take on the communal powers and defeat them. He also said that the four terms at the helm of the state were not any one persons contribution but a result of hard work of all party workers. Mulayam also added that Samajwadi Party has got the support from all sections of the society.

One who were given power to bring in development are busy insulting each other, chacha bhatije ko gali deta hai aur Bhatija chacha ko: Shah

While speaking at BJP's 'Parivartan yatra' in Saharanpur, party president Amit Shah took a dig at Samajwadi Party's uncle-nephew duo Shivpal and Akhilesh Yadav and noted how those responsible for the development of the state are busy 'insulting each other'.

The ruling Samajwadi Party's (SP) grand silver jubilee celebrations on Saturday may be seen as a prelude to the pre-poll alliance talks ahead of the UP assembly elections.

Samajwadi Party's state party unit chief Shivpal Yadav told CNN-News18, that alliance talks may take place after the event, while adding that "like minded people" have come together to participate in the event.

The party is all geared up for it's mega silver jubilee celebrations along with prominent JD(U), RJD, and RLD leaders set to share the stage with Uttar Pradesh's first family.

Security arrangements have been beefed up in the state capital ahead of the event and arrangements have been made to ensure the security of VVIP guests. Shivpal has also asked the district administration and police to ensure that expelled party leaders are not allowed inside the venue of the event.

The tight security arrangements are also being looked upon as a way to prevent expelled Samajwadi party leaders from attending the event. According to PTI expelled leaders including MLCs Santosh Yadav Sunny, Sunil Yadav Sajan, Anand Bhadauria and a few others came down to attend Akhilesh Yadav's rath yatra event on Thursday. Shivpal, apparently miffed at their presence, is ensuring that no expelled leaders attend the event.

The event will be attended by prominent leaders from RJD, JD(U), RLD among others. Former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda, RJD Chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, RLD Cheif Ajit Singh, JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav, Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) leader Abhay Chautala, KC Tyagi (JD-U) and noted lawyer Ram Jethmalani are some of the prominent names to attend the event. According to CNN News-18, Congress' Raj Babbar had earlier also given indication that he may attend the event if he was invited. It is unclear, however, whether any Congress leaders will be present on the event.

However, JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar will, skip SP's silver jubilee celebrations citing the Chhath festival being celebrated in Bihar.

While the leaders' presence on the same stage is sure to give out a signal of unity, this may well serve as the right backdrop to kick-start formal talks on pre-poll alliance between these parties.

With inputs from PTI
Following the trail of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's rath yatra, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has come out with its own version of the widely used campaign strategy  dubbed 'parivartan yatra'.

But unlike Akhilesh's yatra, flagged-off by Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav on Thursday, the BJP variant will not be focused around a single leader. Nonetheless, it is expected to raise the poll fever in Uttar Pradesh and further spice up the campaign narrative ahead of the upcoming Assembly elections.

This Saturday, when the BJP yatra will kick-off in Saharanpur, will mark an important point in the poll season calendar. BJP president Amit Shah, along with Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, will officially sound the poll bugle for the party.

The choice of venue is rather interesting and politically loaded. Incidentally, a few months ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also chosen Saharanpur to hold a public rally  to celebrate what he called vikas parv  on completion of two years of his government.

This particular western Uttar Pradesh district is known for its near equal ratio of Hindus and Muslims. As per the 2011 census, around 51 percent of the population is Hindu and 46 percent is Muslim.

The city is also known for the old theological seminary Mazahir Uloom, which was established way back in 1866. It is also adjacent to Kairana, the famed site for the Hindu 'exodus', where BJP had claimed that Hindus were being forced to sell off or lease their property and migrate to different parts of the country.

More than that, this place is home to Imran Masood, the present Congress Uttar Pradesh vice-president, who has become an important part of Rahul Gandhi's scheme of things. Masood had hit national headlines in the run up to 2014 Parliamentary elections, when an old video of him surfaced where he allegedly threatened 'to chop Narendra Modi to pieces'.

That particular statement helped polarise the electorate, turning it pro-Modi, and helped turn the contest in BJP's favour. The subsequent Parliamentary polls saw BJP win the election triumphantly, routing its rivals  Samajwadi Party (SP), Congress and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)  thoroughly in the process. According to reports, posters and hoardings featuring Masood have popped up all over the city this time as well.

Though Shah and other BJP leaders may not have kept that particular development in mind, things like these on the ground, connected or unconnected, tend to have their own bearing.

In the last few days, Shah has broadly set the tone for his party's poll campaign. Besides focusing on development and targeting the opposition in SP and BSP, he narrowed down on the Indian Army's surgical strikes against Pakistan.

He referred to the strikes while speaking at the Diwali milan programme at the BJP headquarters on Thursday, and earlier at a public rally in Mulayam's home turf Etawah. The surgical strikes and the Pakistan issue could potentially become an emotive one, provided the BJP does not overplay this card.

While speaking at the rally in Saharanpur in May, Modi had referred to himself as an "Uttar Pradesh wala". Though back then, he had not referred to coming UP polls and had strictly contained himself to enlisting his government's achievements in the last two years, Rajnath had made it clear that it was all a build up for the elections. The home minister was clear in his intent: "It is now time to end this 14-year vanvas for BJP in UP and bring back the BJP government with a clear majority."

Clearly, Modi's reference, of calling himself as one of their own, did manage to strike an emotive cord with the locals.

"Main Uttar Pradesh wala hun. Uttar Pradesh ka sansad hun, aur Uttar Pradesh ke sansad hone ke naate mera swabhavik man karta hai aap sabka aashirwad prapt karne ka [I belong to UP, I am an MP from UP and, therefore, its natural that I seek your blessings]," Modi said at the rally in Saharanpur, according to a report in The Indian Express.

Modi himself will hold six rallies as part of BJP's parivartan yatra. While the locations for five of the rallies have not been decided yet, his last and concluding rally would be held in Lucknow on 24 December. This will be the second time in three months that Modi will address a public gathering in the UP capital. He was last in Lucknow on Vijaya Dashami or Dussehra, where his "Jai Jai Sri Ram" chant had become a huge talking point. Rajnath will also join Modi in Lucknow for his final rally.

Following Saturday's launch of the parivartan yatra from Saharanpur, three more rallies will be flagged off in quick succession  from Jhansi on 6 November, Sonbhadra on 8 November and Ballia on 9 November. Rajnath, Uma Bharti, Kalraj Mishra, Keshav Maurya will be leading these yatras at various points.

A national leader, a state leader and an MP (by rotation) would be present for all four yatras. The party has also has formed a team of 15000 parivartan sarathis, who will visit 50,000 village panchayats in the state and hold 'parivartan chaupals', asking people to bring about change. They will cover around 1700o kilometers in 402 Assembly constituencies.
ATHENS About 1,000 Kurds and pro-Kurdish supporters marched to the Turkish embassy in Athens on Saturday, chanting "Fascist Erdogan!" to protest against the detention of Kurdish leaders in Turkey.The leaders of Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) were jailed pending trial on Friday as part of a terrorism investigation, drawing condemnation in the West of a crackdown on dissent under President Tayyip Erdogan.In Athens, demonstrators unfurled large Kurdish flags and held up banners depicting HDP co-leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag. "No to Erdogan's dictatorship," a banner read.The representative of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Greece, Ibrahem Muslem, said the arrests were "an attack against democracy and humanity around the world."

"We want freedom for Selahattin Demirtas," said another protester, 23-year-old Levent.Police in riot gear blocked the demonstrators from reaching the embassy.

On Saturday, Turkish authorities ordered the formal arrest of nine staff members of a leading opposition newspaper and detained more pro-Kurdish officials.

More than 110,000 officials, including judges, teachers, police and civil servants, have been detained or suspended following a failed coup in July. (Reporting by Gina Kalovyrna; Writing by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Stephen Powell)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
British Prime Minister Theresa May may have been late by four days in telephonically conveying Diwali greetings to her Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi. But the import of the conversation between the two leaders, just days ahead of her India visit in which they took note of the "substantial scope for further strengthening ties", cannot be missed.

The sentiments set the tone for the Conservative leader's upcoming trip to India. The new British PM arrives in New Delhi on 6 November for a three-day visit, barely four months after taking over as her country's PM. It's a measure of significance the Theresa May government attaches to her country's ties with India in choosing to make her first bilateral visit outside the European Union (EU) to this country.

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi met PM May on the margins of the G-20 Summit in Hangzhou, China, in early September, the two leaders are expected to get to know each other better during her visit.

Prior to becoming PM, May served as her country's home secretary for a record six years. Early on in her stint, she took a tough stand on controversial tele-evangelist Zakir Naik by banning his entry into the UK in 2010 on the grounds of his "unacceptable behaviour" with regard to certain remarks made by him. The Islamist preacher is now under the scanner of the Modi government too.

Apart from seeking to deepen ties under the rubric of their strategic partnership, an important item on the agenda for both sides will be to take a look at the implications of a post-Brexit UK on bilateral relations.

Tasked with steering her country through its exit from the 28-member EU to which the UK gave its nod in a referendum in June this year, the Theresa May government has been at pains to reassure India of the numerous trade and economic opportunities that can be explored even in a post-Brexit Britain.

May herself will be looking to see what economic gains her country can make in the long run from a developing market like India, in what is essentially a trade mission for the new British PM. Indeed, the British PM has already stated in unequivocal terms that the message she'd like to convey during her India visit is that "the UK will be the most passionate, most consistent and most convincing advocate for free trade".

As part of the Theresa May-led governments efforts to forge stronger trade and commercial links with countries outside the EU, since she took charge as PM in mid-July, several Tory ministers have made a beeline for India. Indian-origin minister Alok Sharma was swiftly dispatched to New Delhi in late July barely a week into his new job as the minister for Asia and the Pacific in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

While here, Sharma sought to allay any fears that New Delhi may have as a consequence of Brexit stating that this "does not restrict the relationship" between the two countries and rather provides "an opportunity to strengthen it further".

Sharma was in India again in late October to participate in the Global Investors Summit in Indore last month wherein he described the India-UK economic partnership as "a real success story".

Other high-level members of the May cabinet who have already set foot on Indian soil are another India-origin minister Priti Patel, a prominent Brexiteer who was in New Delhi in August. Patel is Secretary of UK's important Department for International Development (DFID). A stronger economic partnership with India was on her agenda too.

It's a measure of significance the Theresa May government attaches to her country's ties with India in choosing to make her first bilateral visit outside the European Union (EU) to this country

Less than a fortnight after Patel's visit, the UK's Secretary of State for International Trade, Liam Fox was in India seeking to deepen commercial ties with a country it sees as a key strategic partner in trade, investment and defence.

Fox will be part of May's delegation when she sets foot on Indian soil and jointly inaugurates the India-UK TECH Summit, the flagship event during her visit.

The possibility of an India-UK Free Trade Agreement will be explored during the visit though such a pact can only be inked once the UK has formally exited EU. India on its part has been in negotiations with the EU since 2007 on a Broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA). The negotiations remain mired in serious differences between the two sides.

At present, the UK is among Indias major trading partners and was ranked 18th among the Indias top 25 trading partners in 2014-15. Bilateral trade in 2014-15 was pegged at $14 billion. India is the third largest investor in the UK and the latter likewise is the third largest investor in India.

Like the UK, India too is keen to deepen the bilateral trade and investment engagement. The Modi government is keen to attract greater investments from the UK in infrastructure projects here including its smart cities initiative. An important decision towards this end was taken during PM Modis UK visit last year when the two sides agreed that the city of London would play a role in channelling investment into infrastructure projects in India.

Amidst the upbeat tenor on both sides as they seek to forge closer links, the UKs visa policies remain a matter of concern for New Delhi. Indeed, it was during Mays tenure as home secretary that the UK tightened visa norms for students by putting into place restrictions on a post-study stay. The external affairs ministry says as a result in the last one year alone, the number of Indian students in the UK has reduced by 50 percent.

Apart from pushing for less tough norms for Indian students, New Delhi will also be looking to have a more liberal visa regime for people, including its skilled workers, ironically from a politician who wants to enforce tougher immigration rules in her country.

So while Mays visit comes on the back of her governments hopes to explore to "to look beyond our continent and towards the economic and diplomatic opportunities in the wider world" post-Brexit, New Delhi too will need to ensure it gains equally from the burgeoning ties.
Editor's Note: As the US Presidential Election draws near and the battle between Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump gains more teeth, it might prove instructive to examine the constituency at which the twin campaigns are directed; to understand what America means to its citizens and what these men and women seek from their politicians. To do this Firstpost assembled profiles of a broad section of people, each telling a story that speaks of the (anticipated) state of the union.

In the fourth part, 27-year-old Kedarious Colbert, an urban planner living Longview, Texas talks about the Black Lives Matter movement and his idea of America.

What is your favorite American city, maybe not just from a design standpoint, but also emotionally?

(Washington) DC is one of the most incredible cities. The narrative of how DC came about is interesting. Its history. Additionally, its on a grid, its well planned. You can really navigate DC with your eyes closed if you look at the plan one time. You can get around through transportation and it literally has our nations secrets. It has kind of preserved our nations history in such a small area. I love DC, the local side, outside of the federal side, because its a very unique community in itself. And I think its evolved from the 1800s. Its had its periods of different communities and now its undergoing a major dislocation. Different people are coming in, different people are kind of being pushed out or migrating out to the suburbs. However, I think the city in itself has an identity, which is kind of unparalleled to other cities. You have your Atlanta, your Houston, San Antonio, or New York, or other major U.S. city, but I love DC just in the fact that its a big, small city and so much is happening that impacts the world. And that place, thats unincorporated, its not even a city really, its a district. Its a really cool place, just multifaceted.

Can you identify a symbol, image, or cultural touchstone thats uniquely American?

Initially, I want to say theres nothing uniquely American because America is a melting pot. However, at the backdrop of America is slavery, and slavery produced a lot of things. First off, the black American identity, that particular culture, is specific to the US. And Ill say soul food, the food of African-Americans, is truly American. Its not found on any other continent. Its just truly American food. I will go out on a limb and say its the only American cuisine because its truly a product of America, even though its a product of the negative history.

Speaking of DC and the black experience in America, have you gotten a chance to go to the African American History Museum in DC and how do you feel about it?

Im excited about it! Its important. Its so important and Im glad you asked that questions because the reason why I talk about DC and why I feel like DC is such an important city is because it preserves so many of our histories in America. And African American history is one that is often omitted because we dont want to tell the ugly story of slavery in this country. We dont want to talk about the ugly period of civil rights and we dont want to talk about the movement that were in right now, the Black Lives Matter movement. But its true to who we are as Americans and we cant erase that particular history because it in fact makes us who we are as Americans. It has allowed us to be one of the greatest democracies on earth. Thats really born out of our mistakes. I havent had the opportunity to personally experience it. Multiple friends have been there, Im going in the spring. So Im looking forward to the opportunity to go and experience you know, an era that is reflective of experiences that my grandmother and my great-grandmother had and that are finally on display. So Im excited about that. And the fact that the daughter of a sharecropper and a black president were able to ring the liberty bell that opened the museum was I think something people would never have imagine would have occurred in America. It gives weight to how far we have come and also how far we have to go. So I think its truly symbolic of American progress.

Were coming off of eight years having a black president. What do you think has changed since Obama was elected, if anything?

In America, I think a lot has changed. The treatment of the most powerful man in the world has changed because he is an African-American. Weve seen the disrespect from Congressional representation, from American citizens who call themselves patriots. Weve never witnessed the type of disrespect that President Obama has experienced as a sitting president in the Oval Office. President Obama is a politician just like any other politician. He just happens to be African American. So there were expectations I think people desired of him. There were people on the far left who were demanding reparations and people on the far right who said Obama would not provide any difference. I think hes met us in the middle. We saw the culmination of years of policies by the former Lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy, come to life with the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. He successfully brought that to fruition. Weve seen dont ask, dont tell repealed in addition to a number of advances for the LGBTQ community. Weve seen a lot of mandatory minimums change, and hes attempted to create policies to reverse the trend from the Clinton administration and weve also seen a man who has redefined the role of the Oval Office and what it means to be president. Hes the first sitting president on Facebook, on Twitter, to have a Blackberry. We have seen a technological revolution of the White House. Him giving those speeches, going live, and really embracing the technological future has revolutionised technology in the White House. He has raised two beautiful daughters there, which we havent seen since the Kennedys. I think President Obama has changed the way in which American politics will be experienced forever because we can now in this moment say we have a sitting African American president. Will we be able to say that in the future? I dont know. He nominated incredible Supreme Court justices, one of Latin descent. He did a lot of stuff, I could go on and on. I cant say that he filled my pocketbook, but what American president will? Hes done a lot. Hes what I would expect a politician to do.

Could you talk a bit about how youre seeing current movements like Black Lives Matter contributing and where do you see it going in the next five to ten years?

I think its gonna go, hopefully, into some type of political formation that pushes for policies. I think that is the direction that it needs to go in even if its not going. There is a push for unification across the mission of what Black Lives Matter means because in different communities, Black Lives Matter means different things. For BLM, the meaning in Detroit or Flint, Michigan could mean creating equitable infrastructure and having water. Black Lives Matter in D.C. could be having equitable transportation, access to rail lines and buses. Black Lives Matter was a response to police brutality but is a reverent call to communities and to the government saying, Dont forget us. Were here, we exist, and you need to treat us as if our lives matter. And that is ensuring that resources exist for us, that experiences that we have are comparable with our white counterparts. That also means that that the justice system should work for us, not only work against us. African Americans are tried, convicted, and incarcerated at rates higher than our white counterparts. When people say black lives matter, it comes from so many different emotional points and experiences that you never know truly until you ask, what do you mean by that? And it really creates a conversation. So I want policy formation and responses of major policy changes to be the movement of Black Lives Matter. I think Black Lives Matter should really pick up where the Civil Rights Movement left off. I think that movement should pick and really advance some of the policies to ensure that we dont reverse our trend or that racism and inequality isnt just covertly maintained in institutions. I truly hope Black Lives Matter does that, but more so than Black Lives Matter, I really hope that people began to value people and see others humanity.

What does Black Lives Matter mean to you?

As a city planner, as an African-American male, as a Texan, and a privileged black cis male, Black Lives Matter to me is ensuring that my future as an African-American in this country is equal, equitable, and experienced at the same level as other Americans of any color. Black Lives Matter is more existential to me because I just believe in being. I just want black people to have the ability to be, whatever that is. And not have to be contextualised, like, Oh this black guy went to a particular school, or This black guy dresses a particular way. I just want the ability to be an American. Black Lives Matter is just a protection of who I am and my ability to exist and be, like every other person. We just want our lives to matter, to not be shot, to not be targeted, to not be discriminated against, to not face inequality and less access to greater education, to live in great communities, to afford to get home and not have to face illegal bank impractical. Black Lives Matter is just the assurance that black people get the experience that Americans are deserving of. I just know my life matters!

Can you tell me what your ideal America is?

My ideal America is when people, whoever they are, wherever they live, are able to exist and experience their ideal of America without imposing upon my ideal of America. And it is kind of an extension of the previous answer of being. I realise we live in a country where some white folks have never experienced or been around black people, and they want that experience to remain that way. And that is okay. That is fine. I have a problem with white people who havent experienced black people and they begin to impose particular beliefs on us that result in harm, whether physical, mental, or other. I love our country because everyone should have the ability to be.

This is the time when we create our ideals of America. This is the time when we demand local change from our local government, from our state legislators, and stop looking for top-down changes and look for bottom up changes, and start with the grassroots movement. If every community makes a change, then we really wont have to worry about federal issues, but I just want my ideal of America to not be hindered by others ideas of America.

Do you have anything to add?

I went to the polls to vote, and for the first time in my life, I realised the magnitude of this ability that I have as a black man in America to vote that my grandfather didnt have when he was this age. I have had the opportunity to vote twice for an African American and once for a female president. To me that speaks volumes about where we are as a country. It speaks volumes about where we have come from and where we have the potential to go.

Although were in a muddle-y moment, where we dont know whats going to happen on 8 November, and some people are vying for different candidates for different reasons. I know why I voted for my candidate. Im voting for a Supreme Court justice. However, at the same time, I know that theres so much work to be done, and I just encourage others to do the local work. Thats what brought me back home. I know that I cant continue to talk about making changes and not actually be about the change. No one wants to do the work, but someone has to stop going to Wall Street and working, stop getting the fancy job, stop passing the buck and do the work. Thats what America needs, people who are really about doing the work, and that doesnt start in the White House.
Washington: On Friday Donald Trump alleged that Hillary Clinton is the "most corrupt person ever" to contest for US presidency and said her election to the White House would trigger an unmatched constitutional crisis in the US.

At his maiden stint at the Republican Party's weekly address to the nation, Trump said the time has come "to close

the history books on the Clintons, and open a bright new chapter focussed on the great citizens of our country."

The controversial real-estate tycoon was referring to Hillary and her husband and former US president Bill Clinton.

"Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency of the United States, and if she were to win it would create a constitutional crisis like no other. She's under multiple federal investigations, has committed many crimes, including perjury, and she's now facing the prospect of a federal indictment," Trump said.

He addressed his plans to steer the US in a new direction from what he alleged was a failed leadership of the last eight years of Barack Obama, in the first term of whose presidency the Democratic nominee served as the secretary of state.

He asked the American people to elect Republicans "up and down the ticket" to make that "new direction" possible.

"I'm asking for your vote and your help in electing a Republican majority in Congress, so that we can finally change this broken system and Make America Great Again," he said.

"It's a once in a lifetime chance to take our government back from the donors and the special interests, and return the power to you, the American people," he said.

Trump said 15 days ago, he proposed a contract with the American voter  a 100-day action plan to bring change.

"We need change so badly. If we win on November 8, and elect a Republican House and Senate, we can finally deliver the change the American people deserve," he said.

"My Contract includes a plan to create 25 million new jobs. We will cut taxes on the middle class Americans by 35

per cent, and we will repeal and replace the total disaster known as ObamaCare  it doesn't work," he said.

A Trump administration will immediately fix the "terrible trade deals" and stop the jobs from leaving the country.

"My Contract includes a pledge to end illegal immigration, and end it rapidly, cancel federal funding for sanctuary cities, and suspend the admission of Syrian refugees into our country. They're coming in by the thousands, and Hillary Clinton wants to increase that by 600 per cent," he said.

"We will rebuild our badly depleted military, and take care of our great, great veterans," Trump said.

"We will undertake a national effort to reduce crime and poverty, and bring jobs and safety to our inner cities  finally, at last," he said.
First Saturday Prayer

TWIN FALLS  All are invited to the first Saturday of the month regular prayers for all meeting at 328 7th Ave. E. This is a nondenominational-inter faith prayer meeting for all. It starts at 10 a.m. November 5. This months topic will be "Communion with God." There is a sign in the front yard to leave your prayer requests if unable to attend. Information: 208-221-8621.

Raffle to benefit Neighbors in Need

TWIN FALLS  Items including a 24-speed bike, car-mount bike carrier and snowshoes will be raffled to benefit Neighbors in Need, a community outreach program located at Ascension Episcopal Church in Twin Falls. The drawing will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Holiday Festival at Our Savior Lutheran Church, 464 Carriage Lane North, in Twin Falls. The Holiday Festival will be from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tickets are $1 each or 6 for $5. You do not need to be present to win. Advent calendars will also be for sale at both churches. Selection is limited. Prices range from $4 to $10.

Neighbors in Need works with Magic Valley social service agencies to provide food boxes and limited financial assistance for local families. Neighbors in Need also supports a residential unit at Valley House, funds a weekend hot meal at the Mustard Seed, and helps in the referral process to connect needy families with helping agencies in the Magic Valley. Neighbors in Need is funded only through donations and fundraisers.

Harvest potluck dinner scheduled

HOLLISTER  The Hollister Community Presbyterian Church will hold its annual Harvest Potluck Dinner after the 11 a.m. worship Sunday. Gary Terrell will be the speaker. Following dinner, the church will also be hosting a baby shower for Chase and Brook Lanting. Visitors are welcome and invited to attend. The church is located at 2461 Central Ave. in Hollister. For more information, contact Linda at 208-733-9183.

United Methodist holds KIT CAMP

JEROME  Everyone is invited to come for KIT CAMP from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at 211 S. Buchanan St. in Jerome. There will be projects for everyone whether you sew, knit and /or crochet for mission (UMCOR). Lunch will be provided. Information: 208-435-3202.

The soup kitchen will need help at 4 p.m. Nov. 7 at the Catholic Parish Hall and at Martha and Mary Food Bank Nov. 9. Plastic bags and egg cartons are also needed. Prayer Partners Group meet every Monday morning at 10 a.m. in the parlor. If you have a prayer request write it on the slip of paper and put it in the Prayer Box at the back of the sanctuary. Anyone is welcome to come and join for a special prayer time. Expresso Readers book group will not meet on Election Day, but will resume Nov. 15 at the home of Lulu Mae Coates.

United Methodist Women General Meeting will be held at 12:30 p.m. Nov. 10. All ladies of the church and community are welcome. Advent Bible study will be held in the parlor at 10 a.m. Nov. 22.

Oregon pastor to share work in Mexico

FILER  The Rev. Rick Troyer of Salem, Ore. will share his travels and work in northwest Mexico at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at Filer Mennonite Church, 109 5th St. in Filer. A fajita meal will follow. Troyer will also speak at 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. Sunday. All are invited to attend. Informatio: 208-326-5150.

Buhl Calvary Assembly prepares for Holiday Bazaar

BUHL  Buhl Calvary Assembly's Women's Ministry is hosting a Holiday Bazaar from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Nov. 19. The bazaar will include chocolate, stocking and sparkles, fudge, ornaments, Christmas stockings, bake goods, plus holiday desserts and gifts for sale. Sunday school is held at 10 a.m., 11 a.m. for the morning service and 4:12 p.m. for the children's service. Nursery is provided Sunday morning. Refuge youth family night is at 6 p.m. Sunday. Calvary Assembly is at 110 Fruitland Ave. in Buhl. Information: 208-543-5559.

Unitarians to discuss life changes

TWIN FALLS  Change is a constant of life and these are often challenging. We go through them a lot better when we approach them from spiritual strength and a spiritually centered vision.

The Rev. Elizabeth Greene will reflect on how the process of transition  the actual way we go through change  is worth our attention. The Magic Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship meets at 10:30 a.m. Sunday at the Vendor Blender and Event Center, 588 Addison Ave. W., in Twin Falls.

United Methodist Church celebrates All Saints Day

TWIN FALLS  All Saints Day will be recognized at 9:30 a.m. Sunday at Twin Falls First United Methodist Church, 360 Shoshone St. E. Holy Communion will also be celebrated.

A new worship service called "Simply Worship" will start at 6 p.m. Sunday in the Wesley Chapel at Twin Falls First UMC. It will be led by the Rev. Mike Holloman. Hear God's word. No matter what your previous church experience or life experience is, you are welcome here.

All Magic Valley Ministries youth (grades 6 through 12) are invited to Twin Falls First UMC at 4:30 p.m. on the first and third Sundays of each month. This is a time of learning with Hollomon and other adult leaders.

Final Sunday ingathering of winter donations

TWIN FALLS  Sunday worship services at Ascension Episcopal Church will be held at 8 and 10 a.m. Healing Prayer stations will be offered at both services. Child care is available from 9 to 11:15 a.m. A fellowship coffee hour is held after the 10 a.m. service. Ascension Cafe , the adult discussion group, meets from 9:10 a.m. to 9:55 a.m. Sunday, with Tim Dodd leading a discussion of the scriptural readings of the day.

This is the final Sunday for the ingathering of winter clothing, blankets and basic kitchen needs to be distributed to the CSI Refugee Center. All Episcopal churches in the Episcopal Diocese of Idaho are collecting these items for the Refugee Center as part of the Diocesan Convention taking place in Pocatello Nov. 11 through Nov. 13.

On Wednesdays, Knit-Us-Together, the handwork group, meets from 1 to 3 p.m.. All are welcome for worship, study and fellowship at Ascension.

Ascension Episcopal Church is at 371 Eastland Drive N. in Twin Falls. Information: 208-733-1248.

Public invited to Operation Christmas Child packing party

TWIN FALLS  An Operation Christmas Child packing party will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the First Baptist Church Fellowship Hall, 910 Shoshone St. E. The public is invited to join the group to help fill more than 1,000 shoe box gifts to send to children around the world for Christmas. A free lunch will be provided for those participating. Information: 208-358-0991.

United Methodist annual turkey dinner

WENDELL  The Wendell United Methodist Church will hold its annual turkey dinner with all the trimmings from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at 175 E. Main St. A free-will offering will be accepted. For more information, call Ken and Mary Lou Ruby at 208-536-6583 or Margaret Presnell at 208-536-5751.

Moms in Prayer schedules meeting

TWIN FALLS  Moms in Prayer will hold a meet-and-greet from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday at First Baptist Church, 910 Shoshone St. E., and from 2 to 3 p.m. Saturday at Twin Beans Coffee, 144 Main Ave. S. This meeting is for mothers, grandmothers, aunts and any woman desiring to pray for children and schools. Join to to learn how to team up with other women to help carry the heavy burdens we have for our children. For more information, call Kathy Stockdale at 208-944-4224.

To submit information about church events and news. Contact Matt Gooch at mgooch@magicvalley.com. Deadline is 5 p.m. Wednesday for publication on the Saturday religion page. Please insert Church News in the email subject line.
A hot button issue on the Nov. 8 ballot at the local level is the general obligation bond of $34.88 million that would fund a new elementary school for all preschoolers through fifth graders of the Beatrice Public Schools district.

The new school would be built on land north of the high school, which is owned by the district and leased to farmers. Included in the $35 million figure are the costs to demolish each of the existing four elementary schools, which were built in the 1950s.

All property tax payers in the district would pitch in for the next several years until the bond is paid off. The bond repayment schedule is not final, but BPS Board of Education members most recently were opting for a 27- to 30-year period.

The estimated tax levy (property tax) for the project is estimated between 16 and 18 cents, depending on the repayment schedule.

A package with a 30-year repayment timeline has an estimated tax levy of 16.26 cents. That means that owners of a property in the district valued at $100,000 would have to pay $162.60 annually toward the project for the next 30 years, if the levy stays at the same rate.

The estimated tax levees for bonds paid out in 27, 28 and 29 years are 17.30 cents, 16.92 cents, and 16.55 cents, respectively.

Talk of a consolidated elementary school stemmed five years ago in discussion by groups comprised of community members with a goal of helping the district plan its five-year strategic goal.

Opponents of the single-site school say they prefer the small, neighborhood schools and that the new school would be too large, too impersonal and too hectic in terms of traffic and other logistics. Other concerns are rooted in the price tag and the tax burden, especially on farmers of the district.

Proponents of the single-site school say it would be more efficient in terms of energy usage, shared resources and staffing. Employees such as the media specialist and the head nurse split time between the four schools, as do the two elementary principals. They also like that the new school would have a cafeteria (food is prepared at the high school and sent daily to the four elementary schools), more space and modern technology.

The same proposal was pitched last year and was voted down by about 60 percent of voters in September 2015.

Since then, BPS officials say they have been proactive in talking to and listening to elementary school staff, parents and other community members about the four elementary buildings that are becoming more high maintenance as they continue to age. Administrators and board members have repeatedly said "doing nothing is not an option."

In the past several months, officials have cited major repairs to the four schools such as a $800,000 roof needed at Paddock Lane and new heating, ventilation and air conditioning units needed in the schools.

They have also called for electrical, technological and security upgrades, improved vehicle access and parking, and cafeterias, as elementary students currently eat food transported from the high school into their school gyms. Additionally, a priority goal of the school board is to group all preschoolers under one roof. Currently, they are taught in classrooms at two of the elementary schools and in Southeast Community College in Beatrice.

Three alternative ideas to the consolidated elementary school were presented at a July community meeting held at the high school. The alternatives involved renovations and additions to the existing schools, each with price tags ranging from $18 million to $33 million. A paper survey filled out by 92 people of the total 140 at the meeting showed support for the consolidated elementary school.

Information about the elementary bond issue was publicized at other community forums, in utility bills, in pamphlets given to parents at BPS parent-teacher conferences, on "table tents" in area restaurants and other venues, and published in the Beatrice Daily Sun.

More information about the elementary schools can be found on the BPS website, beatricepublicschools.org. The website includes video clips explaining things such as classroom space concerns.
KIMBERLY  A fired Rock Creek Fire District training captain who recently settled a wrongful termination lawsuit through arbitration was gunning for Chief Jason Kellers job, a district commissioner said.

The arbitration resulted in a settlement payment of $26,000 to former training captain Brent Blamires, both sides confirmed Friday, though Blamires union representative said the agreement remains unsigned.

The lump-sum payment will be paid by the fire districts insurance company, Commissioner Doug Fisher said Friday. He was unsure if the fire districts insurance premium would go up after the payment was made.

But Fisher said despite the lawsuit and settlement, he and his fellow commissioners Marvin Norris and Brad Perkins would make the same decisions again to terminate Blamires employment.

We concluded he wanted the chiefs job, and he didnt really care how he got it, Fisher said.

The fire district commissioners decided to break their court-ordered silence about the case after a story was published Sunday in the Times-News quoting Ricky Walsh, an arbitrator for the International Association of Firefighters who orchestrated the agreement. By speaking about the case, Walsh violated the terms of a confidentiality agreement, Fisher said, making the agreement null and void and allowing the commissioners to tell their version of events.

I would say that I deny (breaking the confidentiality agreement) and disagree with their perception or their opinion, Walsh said Friday when asked to respond to the commissioners claims.

Blamires did not immediately return a call seeking comment, and Walsh said he didnt have a response to the commissioners claim that Blamires was gunning for Kellers job.

That was never talked about or revealed to the union during this investigation, Walsh said.

Either way, both sides are now openly talking about the settlement. Walsh and Fisher both confirmed it was for $26,000.

Thats about $80,000 less than what Blamires originally sought from the district, according to documents provided by Fisher. Blamires initially sought $35,000 for lost wages and benefits; $30,000 for three years of lost income; $12,000 for attorney fees; and $30,000 for travel and moving expenses.

The commissioners do not want to disparage Blamires publicly, Fisher said. But they want to tell their version of what led up to Blamires firing, and whats happened since.

Blamires did a dang good job when he was first hired, Fisher said, and helped improve the district.

But the trouble started in August 2015, around the time Blamires accused the fire chief, Keller, of driving a district truck while drunk. The commissioners looked into the claims and ultimately punished Keller with a week-long suspension.

Blamires lawsuit claimed Keller harassed and retaliated against Blamires for reporting him. The commissioners saw it differently.

(Kellers) was another situation taken care of through the rule book, Fisher said. (Blamires) tried to turn it into a vendetta.

About a year ago, the commissioners spoke with Blamires and the situation improved, Fisher said. But then firefighters under Blamires command began complaining about him. In separate interviews, two firefighters each told the commissioners theyd lost trust in Blamires and felt they could no longer work with him.

They started having trouble with morale, and thats a problem, Fisher said. These guys run into burning buildings, not out. They have to have trust and confidence in each other.

Blamires was fired in January for disorderly conduct. Fisher said Blamires conduct boiled down to him wanting Kellers job and doing anything to get it.

We disagree on the version of events, Walsh said Friday.

After his termination, Blamires filed the wrongful termination lawsuit against the district and Keller, also accusing the chief of violating Idahos Whistleblower Act.

Meanwhile, the entire incident has had and could have a much further-reaching impact than just a wrongful termination lawsuit.

In August, Keller was a finalist to become Twin Falls fire chief but was dropped from consideration over allegations in the suit.

Over the course of the past several days, allegations against Mr. Keller became too much of a concern for us to continue to consider him a candidate, city spokesman Joshua Palmer said at the time.

And on Tuesday, with the lawsuit in the back of their minds, voters will go to the polls and decide whether to increase a levy to give the fire district more money. The levy needs a 67 percent super majority for approval.

The levy hasnt increased since 1992, Fisher said, despite a 200-square-mile coverage area with a growing population.

Were past a volunteer fire district, the commissioner said, adding voters should approve the levy for their own protection.

This is for taking care of the people of the district, Fisher said. Weve got to stay ahead of this ballgame, not be behind. It could save somebodys life.
BUHL  A Twin Falls man sentenced to prison Monday was on a two-week binge of meth, cocaine and alcohol July 28 when he attacked several Twin Falls County Sheriffs deputies, a prosecutor said.

John Dale Jones, Jr., 37, pleaded guilty in September to battery upon an officer and was sentenced Monday to three to five years in prison.

They were fighting for their lives, Twin Falls County Sheriff Doug Carter said in August while praising his deputies for not using lethal force.

A deputys AR-15 rifle fired accidentally during the struggle, court documents said, but the deputies used stun guns to try to subdue Jones despite his repeated attacks. He was charged with punching Deputy Tommy Robinson, causing injuries that so far have resulted in about $8,800 in medical bills and counting. Jones was ordered to pay restitution covering the medical costs, which have been paid from the countys insurance fund.

Robinson declined an interview request for this story, and sheriffs office spokeswoman Lori Stewart said she couldnt comment on Robinsons injuries.

Jones admitted to the weeks-long drug use leading up to the fight, said he had no recollection of attacking the deputies and accepted full responsibility during Mondays sentencing.

Reading the police report, it was a terrible night, Jones said. Do I really know how close I came to losing my life that night? I dont. But I do know it was close. I was walking on a razors edge.

Jones said his drug addiction completely changes who he is.

Im not a defiant person toward law enforcement, Jones told District Judge Randy Stoker. I wish the deputies here in the jail could vouch for me  Im a different person when Im on meth, but thats not who I am.

Charles Rodriguez, a Twin Falls County deputy public defender, said he was expecting the case to go to trial when he first received it. But Jones told Rodriguez he was sorry for what happened and immediately wanted to take responsibility.

I can tell your honor, he wanted to send (Robinson) a letter of apology, Rodriguez said. Im like, no, you cant do that, you cant, its not time, thats for a later time. I can tell your honor he was extremely remorseful from the get-go.

Deputy Prosecutor Stan Holloway painted a darker picture, telling Stoker this was Jones fifth felony conviction, with a history of violence that goes back to a juvenile battery charge in 1994.

He ended up getting in a physical battle with the deputies, Holloway said, where despite being Tasered, (Jones) advanced on the deputy and struck the officer in the head and face with his fist.

The state concludes a to-serve (prison) sentence is appropriate, Holloway argued.

Stoker sentenced Jones to serve three to five years in prison while acknowledging his seemingly split behavior.

I will agree with one thing you and your counsel have said, Stoker told Jones. When in youre in court, stone-cold sober, you seem like a perfectly decent person to me  Youve always been respectful to the court, you speak well for yourself, you have good tendencies. But, theres the other side, and you know that.

Stoker said Jones is clearly an addict and the only way to help him at this point is to send him to prison, where he hopes Jones will received treatment for an attitude and actions that should have ended years and years ago.

I dont know what happened to the officer, but when I see $8,000 in medical bills, and more to come, this was more than just a punch in the nose, Stoker said. Thats significant.

Jones is now in the custody of the Idaho Department of Correction, where hes also serving sentences for drug possession and domestic violence. Online court records show hell be eligible for parole July 28, 2019, three years from the day of the fight with the deputies.
Cassia County

Felony sentencings

Juan Antonio Rebollozo; felony battery aggravated by causing great bodily harm, disability or permanent disfigurement, dismissed on motion of prosecutor; felony injury to child, dismissed on motion of prosecutor.

Kali Jo Langer; felony battery - aggravated by use of a deadly weapon or instrument, dismissed on motion of prosecutor.

Annastecia Fey Polston; felony battery - aggravated by use of a deadly weapon or instrument, dismissed on motion of prosecutor.

Manuel Gomez Vasquez; felony burglary, dismissed on motion of prosecutor; misdemeanor arrests and seizures - resisting or obstructing officers, guilty, 20 days jail, ten days credited.

Driving under the influence sentencings

Norma Jean Eppers; misdemeanor driving under the influence, guilty, $250 fine, $100 suspended, $202.50 costs, 180 days driver's license suspended, 12 months probation, 180 days jail, 177 days suspended, one day credited; misdemeanor injury to child - adult transports minor in vehicle while under the influence, dismissed on motion of prosecutor.
TWIN FALLS  The city of Twin Falls is looking to hire a victim services coordinator.

The city publicly posted the job, which according to the advertisement will pay in the $35,000-to-$42,000 a year range, on Friday. The job duties, it says, are to advocate for victims constitutional rights, assist officers in investigations, responding to the emotional and physical needs of the victims involved by securing appropriate resources such as emergency medical treatment, counseling, shelter, employment services and transportation.

The position wasnt originally included in the draft 2017 budget. The Council started to discuss publicly putting it in the budget after news came out of the sexual assault of a 5-year-old girl at the Fawnbrook Apartments by three Middle Eastern boys in early June, although city officials have said it wasnt added as a direct reaction to this and it was on Chief Craig Kingsburys wishlist before the incident. The Council was working on the city budget when this happened.

Kingsbury has said a victim services coordinator will especially help the department deal with the rising number of domestic violence cases.
TWIN FALLS  Stinker Stores wants your help to stomp out hunger.

The Stinker Stores annual food-drive campaign began Friday and runs through Nov. 14. Customers at any store in Idaho can add to their purchase with a donation to The Idaho Foodbank. A $1 donation could help provide enough food for four meals.

Idaho Foodbank is trying to raise $1.8 million by the end of the year to distribute food for 2.5 million meals over the holidays. Stinker Stores locations compete to raise the most funds.

In 2015, store customers donated more than $48,000. Stinker Stores added another $20,000. This year, the company aims to collect more than $54,000 from customer donations, plus a match of up to $20,000.

Heres a list of Stinker Stores around the Magic Valley:

401 Old U.S. 30, Bliss

981 E. Main St., Burley

1715 E. Main St., Burley

702 North Overland Ave., Burley

S. Main St., Hailey

326 Highway 24, Heyburn

700 W. Main St., Jerome

800 E. Main St., Jerome

2259 Addison Ave., Twin Falls,

880 Shoshone St. W., Twin Falls

1777 Kimberly Road, Twin Falls

402 Oneida St., Rupert
On Tuesday, Americans will elect a president without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. The last time that happened they were deciding between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater  more than a half-century ago.

In 2013, the Supreme Court declared that voter discrimination was no longer a problem and effectively struck down the only portion of the act designed to stop discrimination before it affects an election. The court let stand the provisions of the act that allow lawsuits after a discriminatory law takes effect, but unfortunately, the United States has learned the hard way that there is no satisfactory cure for discrimination after an election occurs.

At issue is a practice known as preclearance. Under the 1965 law, jurisdictions with a history of discrimination had to submit changes in voting practices to the Justice Department for review. But in 2013s Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court struck down the trigger used to determine which jurisdictions would be subject to preclearance, effectively removing this safeguard.

Along with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, and Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Michigan, I introduced the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2015 to modernize the original law and to respond to the Supreme Courts objections in Shelby County. The bill recognizes the importance of preclearance, but applies it evenly across all 50 states. Under the new law, any state or jurisdiction that demonstrates a consistent pattern of discriminatory voting practices would be subject to preclearance. When the discrimination stops, the jurisdiction would automatically be freed from the requirement. This bill offers a modern and thoughtful response to voter discrimination that ensures the minimal possible federal interference in state elections. Unfortunately, despite the legislation having more than 100 co- sponsors, Congress still has not acted on it.

If opponents take issue with the details of how preclearance would operate or the way the bill defines consistent discrimination, I will happily work with them on changes. But to not act at all suggests they believe that Congress should not allow federal oversight of local elections no matter how discriminatory and unfair those elections are. I do not believe that is an acceptable position.

The country is already suffering from Congresss failure to modernize the Voting Rights Act. Without the full law in place, Americans face unnecessary legal battles, confusion and inefficiency at the polls, and a potentially discriminatory election process.

To date, there have been a number of significant cases brought against states regarding election laws  some with litigation still pending as Election Day approaches. The case League of Women Voters et al. v. the State of North Carolina challenged the states new voting laws, which implemented a state voter identification requirement and made changes to early voting and same-day voter registration practices. In early October, the Florida Democratic Party filed suit against Gov. Rick Scott and Secretary of State Ken Detzner seeking to extend the voter registration deadline in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. In Arizona, litigants brought suit against the Arizona secretary of states office, challenging polling-place closures in Maricopa County, which reduced locations by 70 percent since 2012  opening only 60 polling stations in the 2016 primary election compared with more than 200 in 2012 and 400 in 2008.

Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, each of these cases would have been reviewed directly by the Justice Department, eliminating the need for costly litigation and ensuring that election laws were settled before Election Day. The Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2015 would not only restore Section 5 and preclearance practices, but also help relieve complications caused by state and local changes to voting laws. It would modernize the VRA to apply to all states equally and include transparency provisions, such as requiring officials to give public notice within 48 hours of certain voting changes that are made 180 days before a federal election. This would help reduce hours-long wait times for voters, give the public ample time to adjust to changes in polling locations and secure proper identification in states that require it.

At the core of the Voting Rights Act is the desire for equality in elections. I supported the acts reauthorization in 1982, was instrumental in its reauthorization in 2006 and now urge my colleagues to pass the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2015 during the upcoming lame-duck session.

The opportunity to reauthorize the VRA for the 2016 election has passed, but enacting the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2015 would be an enlightened congressional response to what has been an ugly presidential race.

The right to vote is fundamental to a successful, prosperous nation. It is imperative that the process is fair, accessible and protected from discrimination, doubt and partisan gamesmanship. If voters are worried about rigged elections, Congress must act with urgency to pass the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2015.
Video: After uncovering the stone slab venerated as Jesus Christ's burial place, archaeologists have now examined the interior of the tomb in Jerusalems Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Jesus Christ's 'tomb' found to contain limestone burial shelf and an engraved marble slab.













Researchers uncovered a cover layer of marble and discovered underneath a marble slab with a cross carved into its surface. The researchers also found that the original limestone burial bed was still intact. Many believe that Jesus Christs body may have been laid on limestone burial bed following his death. According to the Bible, the body of Jesus Christ was laid on a burial bed, or slab of limestone following his crucifixion.





The original surface of the tomb was uncovered in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem during restoration work and has been covered by marble cladding since at least 1555 A.D.





The marble cover was pulled back, and researchers were surprised by the amount of fill material beneath the covering, Fredrik Hiebert, an archaeologist-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, and a researcher on the restoration project, told National Geographic.





It will be a long scientific analysis, but we will finally be able to see the original rock surface on which, according to tradition, the body of Christ was laid, Hiebert told National Geographic.





The marble lid (on the left) was pulled off, revealing a partly broken gray slab of marble. Under that is the debris-covered limestone layer where Jesus; body was said to have been placed after he was crucified. Credit: Daniel Estrin

All of this might seem normal until you read Nostradamus Book Century where Quatrain 6:66 occurs and exactly describes the opening of the marble cover of the tomb in the Sepulcher. According to the Bible 6:66 is The Number Of The Devil:





Quatrains 6:66





At the foundation of the new sect,





The bones of the great Roman will be found,





A sepulchre covered by marble will appear,





Earth to quake in April poorly buried.





Could it be that Nostradamus speaks about the new World Religion that is just about to be officially launched and which has been promoted all through 2016 by Pope Francis? Last week Pope Francis even celebrated the Protestant Reformation day in Sweden as a means of uniting the Protest and and Catholic Church  something unimaginable a few decades ago.





Most likely this new World Religion is referred to by Nostradamus in this prophecy and he warns people that it is an evil religion by giving it the number of 6:66 and therefore he predicts that earth will quake next spring.





Nostradamus has historically had an incredible ability to predict every major event of mankind including the persecution of Falun Gong in July 1999. Lets be prepared and hope for the best. - ExpandOurMind
Tunisian Prime Minister Youssef Chahed Friday revoked his Minister of Religious affairs, Abdeljalil Ben Salem, after the official chided Saudi Arabias Wahhabism for being source of terrorism expansion in the world.

Nobody messes up with Tunisias diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia. That was the Prime Ministers message to Abdeljalil Ben Salem.

A statement from Chaheds office said the religious affairs ministers remarks have distorted Tunisias diplomacy basics and principles.

Ben Salem angered the Prime Minister when he pointed out during a hearing at parliament Thursday that he was the only one who courageously asked the Saudi ambassador and another Saudi official to reform their countrys schools because they are the cradle of terrorism.

For the minister takfir  calling non-Muslims unbelievers- originates from Wahhabism schools. He further noted that terrorism and extremism one way or the other have originated from the Saudi Wahhabism school.

Ben Salem was appointed minister late August after Chahed was sworn in as new Premier.

The anti-Saudi comments sparked outrage among Tunisian politicians who fear that these remarks will trigger diplomatic crises for Tunisia. Apart from accusing Saudi Arabia for backing terrorism, the religious affairs minister also lambasted France.

Ben Salem also raised eyebrows after he indicated during the hearing that he asked political parties to field names for imams appointments after his ministry failed to receive applications for the religious positions but never received feedbacks.

Politicians deemed the ministers request awkward as the presence of political parties in mosques would be dangerous for the country and put imams required neutrality on the line.

Few hours after the controversial comments, the religious affairs ministry posted a statement on facebook attempting to sooth tensions. It said that diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia were harmonious and that the ministry respects all Islamic branches.
King Mohammed VI has chosen the Senegalese capital Dakar to address the Moroccan people on the 41st anniversary of the Green March as he is set to start an official visit to the West African country on Sunday.

Considering the close fraternal, spiritual and human links between Morocco and Senegal, the special place that Africa represents for the king and Moroccans as a whole and the Sovereigns high solicitude towards the continent, Mohammed VI has decided to deliver the royal speech to his faithful people on the occasion of the 41st anniversary of the glorious Green March, from the city of Dakar, the statement said.

King Mohammed VI has just wrapped up a royal tour in Eastern Africa that led him to Rwanda and Tanzania. He is currently in Gabon, on his first visit to the West African country since the re-election of President Ali Bongo last August, and is expected in Dakar on Sunday.

President Macky Sall of Senegal welcomed as a historic initiative the kings decision to deliver from Senegal his historic speech on an historic event saying this translates the trust between the two countries and illustrates the depth of their friendship as well as the strong ties that unite the two peoples.

The Senegalese President paid tribute to the King for his attachment to the African continent and hailed his ambitious and farsighted vision for Africa.

During his visit in Dakar, King Mohammed VI will confer with his Senegalese host and the two heads of state will co-chair the signing of several agreements covering an array of domains.

The Sunday visit will be the 8th by the Moroccan monarch in Senegal since ascending to the thrown in July 1999.

The Moroccan monarch has embarked on a diplomatic seduction African tour to express the kingdoms attachment to the continent. The tour and the royal speech from Dakar bear a strong significance, especially that Morocco is set to reintegrate the African Union during the coming summit of the pan-African organization next January.
An investigation by Aljazeera is suggesting that Yasser Arafat may have died from poisoning after highly-radioactive polonium was found on his personal belongings, body liquids and excretions forcing his wife to ask for an exhumation for further tests.

Aljazeera carried out a nine month long investigative report in Ramallah, Cairo, Paris, Tel Aviv, Amman and Washington to conclude that the death of the late Palestinian leader was an international plot to bring weaker figures from the Palestinian Liberation Organisation to the front seats.

In Gaza, Ismail Haniah urged legal authorities in Ramallah to order an exhumation and an autopsy to determine the cause of death especially when theres doubt about it.

Late in a 2005 investigative article, the New York Times pointed clearly to the poison possibility while talking to Arafats personal doctor, Ashraf al-Kurdi, who claimed that the Palestinian leader was poisoned.

On November 2006, a similar case involved the former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko who died in a London hospital as a result of poisoning unlikely by radioactive polonium-210. British authorities charged Andrey Lugovoy, but Russia failed to cooperate and the investigation is still underway.

Contacted by MEC, a highly ranked Palestinian official who worked for Arafat during the three years isolation in the compound in Ramallah concluded that this could be possible only with the help of his staff claiming that Arafat eats and drinks from the same plate and bottle with his bodyguards and security personnel.
King Mohammed VI of Morocco will start an official visit to Senegal on November 6, the day commemorating the Green March epic.

On this occasion that celebrates the retrieval of the southern provinces from the Spanish colonial power, the King will deliver a speech from the Senegalese capital, The Ministry of the Royal Household, Protocol and Chancellery said on Friday in a communique.

The Royal decision to give the Green March speech from Dakar is reflective of the longstanding ties between Morocco and Senegal and the special place of Africa in the hearts of the Moroccan King and people, the communique added.

Part of a Moroccan endeavor to reinforce ties with African countries, the visit will feature talks between King Mohammed VI and Senegals President Macky Sall. The two leaders will also chair a signing ceremony of several cooperation agreements, the statement said.

In a statement to Moroccos 2M TV channel, President Sall welcomed the Kings visit saying that his country is pleased to receive His Majesty the King.

He described the decision to deliver a Royal address from Dakar as historic event and an expression of special friendship towards the Senegalese people.

President Sall also thanked the King for choosing Senegal to give such a landmark address, a gesture that represents the depth of relations between the two countries as well as the Kings willingness to speak to Africans.

Macky Sall who underscored the particular importance King Mohammed VI attaches to Africa, said, the King has an ambitious and farsighted vision for Africa.
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."
Usupashvili to create new opposition force

By Messenger Staff

Georgias Parliament Speaker David Usupashvili, who has just quit his Republican Party, says he will take steps to create a new, pro-Western political force that will have a chance to win the 2020 Parliamentary Elections.Usupashvili made the statement in the wake of his decision to leave the Republican Party, which he chaired between 2005-2013, after the 2016 October 8 Parliamentary Elections in Georgia, where the party failed to overcome the minimal 5% threshold.Usupashvili stressed he could not agree with the other founders and leaders of the party about the future of the Republicans.However, he respected his former allies for their position and made his decision independently.Usupashvili excluded the possibility of appearing in any judicial or executive posts under the new Government.The Parliament Speaker, who will keep the role allegedly until November 19, as the New Parliament must gather that time, claims he is initially is ready to listen to all individuals who support the countrys European development and are ready to fight.Usupashvili stressed that Georgia requires a new, pro-Western political force that will win the 2020 Parliamentary Elections.The Republican Party was composed of professionals, but during all elections in Georgia they lacked public support.The Republicans gained seats in Parliament in 2012 as the party was a member of a Georgian Dream coalition which defeated the nine-year rule of the United National Movement.This year the coalition split and the Republicans participated alone in the race.After the elections Usupashvili stressed the race expressed the will of the Georgian people and said the party must examine the reasons behind its failure.Usupashvili is a professional politicion and if he establishes a new political team with new faces and strategy, the country will benefit.Georgia requires new political parties with healthy attitudes which know how to do a good job for the country.
The News in Brief

Georgias national flag to be raised every morning in military brigades and Defense Ministry



Starting yesterday, all divisions of the Georgian Armed Forces will start work with a performance of the national anthem and the ceremony of raising the state flag.



According to the decree of the Defense Minister, Georgias national anthem will be performed at all military bases and academies at 09:00 AM.



We welcome the ministers decree. The national anthem is a very important part of the military creed for all soldiers, Eastern Commander Shavlego Tabatadze has said. (IPN)







Indonesia impressed by Georgian reforms, wants to share them



Indonesia is interested in the reforms Georgia has implemented and wants to share the experience of the countrys successful governance.



The southeast Asian state sent a high-level governmental delegation for a two-day visit to Georgia to receive information regarding the successful reforms carried out in the Georgian economy and the innovations introduced in the sector of public services.



The Indonesian delegation was comprised of senior officials of local governments of cities and provinces, representatives from the Indonesian Investment Coordinating Board and other officials.



Diah Natalisa, Indonesias Deputy Minister for Public Service Affairs said the Indonesian Government was particularly interested in two fields:



The reforms which have been carried to make the public service sector more effective; and



The reforms which improved the business environment in Georgia, and which let the country advance in the Doing Business rankings.



The Indonesian side also expressed its commitment towards further intensifying cooperation with Georgia in the areas of economy and tourism. (Agenda.ge)







GYLA evaluates second round of elections



The voting process of the second round of the parliamentary elections proceeded in a calm environment. The voters mainly expressed their will freely.



The problems we have identified were related to inking (cases of casting of votes and attempts to do so by previously inked voters), marking of ballot papers in a different form (isolated cases of marking the ballot paper in a square or triangle form and of placing the voter invitation card in the envelope together with the ballot paper), threats to observers and interference with their activity/restriction of their rights, and the accuracy of the data on the badges of observers. We also identified other procedural violations, as well as 1 case of physical abuse (in Gori) and 1 case of interference with the activity of representatives of the media (in Batumi).



Unlike the polling day of the first round of the elections, no significant deficiencies were observed in the process of counting of votes and summarization of results (for example, procedural violations in filling in summary protocols).



However, we should give a negative assessment to the fact that candidates continued the malpractice of mobilizing their coordinators and activists within areas adjacent to precincts, who recorded the names of voters arriving at the precincts and, in isolated cases, recorded the electoral choices made by them, which can be assessed as indirect control/attempt to exercise control over the voters will (for example, by representatives of Georgian Dream and observing organization Georgian Barristers & Lawyers International Observatory at precinct no. 72 in Zugdidi district).



We should give a positive assessment to the fact that, unlike the first round of the elections, no acts of violence within the outer perimeter of precincts or cases of raiding on precincts took place on the polling day of the second round. One of the important factors for ensuring a calm and non-violent election environment was the readiness of law enforcement to provide a quick response at precincts. We should also mention the election subjects contribution to the prevention of tension and violent incidents.



We have identified 5 cases of casting votes and up to 70 attempts to cast votes by previously inked voters.



Information regarding alleged control over voters will:



On October 29, the GYLA made an explanatory statement that giving voters an instruction to mark the ballot papers in a different form and to make a photo of this fact would constitute a violation of the Georgian legislation. It should be noted that the political association Georgian Dream denied having given such an instruction.



The GYLAs observers have paid particular attention to the process of counting of votes and summarization of the results, in order to verify the veracity of the aforementioned information.



At the precincts where the GYLAs observers were represented (up to 300 precincts), we identified up to 80 cases of marking a ballot paper in a different form (in a square or triangle form), as well as up to 40 cases of violation of the secrecy of the vote (at precinct no. 72 of Zugdidi district, voter invitation cards were found in more than 30 envelopes and at precinct no. 65.67.80 of the same district  in 8 envelopes; at precinct no. 20.10.23 of Gldani district, 2 ballot papers bore the voters signature). The aforementioned may raise questions regarding contol over the voters will and the use of administrative resources in individual cases.



We identified 3 cases of marking a ballot paper in a different form in favor of the UNM (at precincts no. 92, 97 and 108 of Samgori district); in the rest of such cases, the ballot papers were marked in favor of Georgian Dream.



If any coercion, in any form, regarding the expression of voters will has taken place or takes place in the future, we ask the voters to approach us in our central office in Tbilisi and in the regional offices in Telavi, Kutaisi, Rustavi, Batumi, Zugdidi, Ozurgeti, Dusheti, and Gori.



We also identified interference with the activity of observers/restriction of their rights (5 cases) and problems related to mobile ballot boxes (2 cases).



At this point, the GYLAs observers have lodged up to 60 complaints and made more than 59 remarks in the logbooks in connection with the aforementioned violations.



The GYLA has actively observed the elections of legislative, executive and local government bodies since its founding (in 1994), trying to contribute to the conduct of elections in a quiet and fair environment and to steadfast observance of the Georgian legislation during electoral processes.



On October 30, the GYLA was observing the polling day of the second round of the parliamentary elections in Tbilisi and nine regions with up to 400 observers.



Static observers were deployed to 300 polling stations across Georgia, while mobile groups were active in 45 majoritarian districts.



On the election day, the GYLA operated a special hotline by which citizens were able to get legal advice regarding the polling procedures. The GYLA also operated a hotline for journalists and media organizations. By calling the hotline, journalists and media organizations were able to get information that was interesting for them and legal consultation about electoral procedures, violations on the polling day, and the response provided, as well as to provide us with information about violations they had observed on the polling day. The hotline number is 223-63-48.



On the election day, the GYLAs observers and analysts deployed to all the regions of Georgia were entering information into the electoral-analytical database in real time and analyzing it.



To receive comprehensive information about violations that took place on the election day, you can visit www.electionsportal.ge where you can write about violations you have observed by filling out an online form or sending a free-of-charge text message to this number: 90039.



The GYLAs monitoring mission of the polling day of the parliamentary elections was made possible by the funding of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sweden, the Open Society  Georgia foundation, and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).



The opinions expressed in the statement belong to the Georgian Young Lawyers Association, and their content may not express the views of the donor organizations. (Gyla.ge)




Proponents of Amendment 1 lost a crucial supporter Friday as the union representing the state's professional firefighters withdrew their endorsement of the utility-backed amendment and demanded that the political committee pull its television ads featuring firefighters. Story here.

"It is clear to the elected executive board of this organization that our membership would prefer to pursue any future firefighter safety regulations related to the still developing alternative energy industry through legislative or rulemaking action, as opposed to a constitutional amendment that many believe to be misleading,'' the Florida Professional Firefighters said in a press release issued late Friday.

Firefighters had been heavily featured in hundreds of television ads run by the Consumers for Smart Solar, the political committee financed by the state's largest electric companies. The ads urged voters to support Amendment 1 and implied that rooftop solar panels could be a fire hazard.

But after weeks of complaints from members, the executive board reversed its endorsement, suggesting that the amendment was misleading.

We assure Floridas firefighters that their safety remains our top priority and this decision, by no means, indicates that we will be any less vigilant in advocating for their health and well-being when it comes to rapidly evolving, environmentally friendly, and sometimes confusing alternative energy systems, said Jim Tolley, FPF president.

Richard C. Silvestri, a retired fire captain for the City of Miami, was among those who complained to Tolley about their endorsement of the amendment. He said saying that portraying solar panels as a fire hazard was having "aided and abetted one of the biggest scams on Floridians in the history of the state."

Silvestri has recently installed solar panels on his home in Fort Pierce and he said that he process required numerous permits and inspections -- including by Florida Power & Light -- to be hooked up to the grid.

"I am in an expert's position to say the procedure followed was above and beyond,'' he wrote in the letter to Tolley, which he provided to the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times. "The only way these solar installations could be anymore unsafe than the thousands of other electrical and electronic devices in use on the grid either in businesses, homes, factories, marinas, airports, etc. would be if they are installed without permits."

He strongly urged the union to reverse their endorsement.

"If this amendment passes you will have done a major disservice to the public, to at least one retired firefighter and I am sure there are others, and you have aided and abetted one of biggest scams on Floridians in the history of the State,'' Silvestri wrote. We are engaged in a David vs Goliath battle and having a phony firefighter on TV ads hoodwinking the public that they should support this fraud is so repulsive to me, words do not suffice, not to mention the harm is does to us in attempting to defeat this.

In the ad, paid for by the utility-backed committee, Wayne Bernoska, Jr, a member of the firefighters union, declares that "in my job, I see a lot of fires that could have been stopped before they were started. Thats why Floridas firefighters support Amendment 1. Amendment 1 does solar the right way."

PolitiFact Florida has recently debunked similar safety claims made by the Amendment 1 campaign which suggested in web ads that Amendment 1 "protects Florida seniors from scams and rip-offs." PolitiFact concluded the amendment doesnt alter current consumer protection laws and, if there were no amendment, the effect on consumer laws and regulations would be the same.

Sarah Bascom, spokesperson for the Consumers for Smart Solar political committee, said they have asked television stations to pull the ads as requested by the firefighters.

"While we are disappointed that they no longer want these policies enacted through a constitutional amendment, we are glad that Florida firefighters continue to be on record in support of policies that encourage solar,'' she said.

Opponents of Amendment 1 welcomed the news of the firefighters change of position.

"We have known all along that the utilities drawing beloved firefighters into their scam to advance Amendment 1 was beyond shameful,'' said Stephen Smith of the Floridians for Solar Choice, the political committee supported by the solar industry which is opposing Amendment 1. "Thousands of firefighters across the state have told us they are 'Voting No on 1.' This is all the more reason for every citizen of Florida to do the same.

Here's the text of the release:
@PatriciaMazzei

Jeb Bush will join the faculty of Texas A&M University come January, the university announced Friday.

The former Florida governor will teach a 10-day elective course "on the role of gubernatorial leadership and its impact on government." His title at the Bush School of Government and Public Service will be executive professor and John D. White '70 Distinguished Professor of Practice.

"Governor Bush is a dedicated and accomplished public servant who will provide our students -- future leaders in public life -- with a vivid perspective of the challenges facing state officials," Dean Mark Welsh said in a statement.

Bush will have a co-instructor, Prof. Blease Graham.
via @learyreports

Patrick Murphy's campaign, at our prodding, responded this afternoon to questions about the candidate's in-tandem political donations with friend Ibrahim Al-Rashid, who may be the subject of a federal investigation.

Here is spokesman Joshua Karp's response in full:

"Patrick makes donations to people who he supports for public office. Some of these donations have been at fundraising events or in response to invitations.

While this has been a topic among right-wing bloggers, I don't really see what this story is about.

http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/story/patrick-murphys-political-career-rose-wings-scheme-and-his-rich-saudi-friend

http://freebeacon.com/politics/patrick-murphy-used-saudi-donor-network-gain-favor-florida-democrats/

The list you are looking at lacks a lot of context...

Mitt Romney received $81,650 in donations from South Florida on 11/30/07.

Charlie Crist received $81,708 in donations from South Florida on 3/18/10.

Keith Fitzgerald received 68 donations on 6/29/12 and 6/30/12, with the vast majority coming from Florida.

Murphy and the Rashids donated to Steve Israel nearly two weeks apart.

The DCCC received 552 donations on 2/25/11.

Senator Nelson received $26,000 in donations from south Florida on 1/20/11. Stephen Bittel, a well known Democratic fundraiser, donated to Nelson on this date."

--ALEX LEARY, Tampa Bay Times
PIEDMONT, Ala. (AP)  A new movie captures the character and the integrity of Desmond T. Doss well, according to people who knew him as he lived the last years of his life in Piedmont.

They recall Doss as an humble, devout man  one of the charter members of Piedmont Seventh Day Adventist Church. Without the "seed money" Doss donated, the church might not have been built in 2006.

He attended the church with his wife, Frances, as long as his health allowed. Pastor Rick Blythe and his wife, Ginger, remember them sitting on the first or second row, even though Doss couldn't hear the sermons anymore. Frances would take notes and Doss, using a magnifying glass, would read along.

This Medal of Honor recipient served in World War II, saving countless lives  including 75 saved in a series of offensives on Okinawa  without ever touching a gun. This weekend the movie "Hacksaw Ridge" brings Doss' story to the big screen.

Directed by Mel Gibson and starring Andrew Garfield, the film is being marketed broadly with special direction toward military and faith audiences.

"I know who I owe my life to, as well as my men. That's why I like to tell this story to the glory of God, because I know from the human standpoint, I should not be here," Doss said, in his Medal of Honor oral history.

Doss was the nation's first conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor. That's what the Army called him, anyway.

Blythe and Doss' stepson, Mike Duman, said it was a classification he always rejected.

As a Seventh Day Adventist, Blythe said, Doss observed the Sabbath on Saturday, and he rejected weapons of any kind. However, the denomination does not oppose saluting the flag or wearing the country's military uniform.

Doss has long been a sort of hero in the Seventh Day Adventist church. Along with his commitment to go into combat as a medic without a gun, he was determined to observe the Sabbath, abstaining from work from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Both brought him trouble in the Army, from leaders who thought he was cowardly, disobedient and shirking duty, and from fellow soldiers who saw no value in an unarmed man on the battlefield.

***

Doss grew up in Lynchburg, Virginia, but lived much of his adult life on Lookout Mountain in Rising Fawn, Georgia. Doss' first wife  the young bride portrayed in the movie  died in 1991. A few years later, Doss married Frances Duman.

Mike Duman recalled that someone arranged a date between his aunt and Doss. His aunt wasn't interested, Duman said, but his mother was.

The couple were dedicated to one another, and when their health started to fail, they came to Piedmont to be closer to Mike and his family. Doss had come to consider Mike as his son, Blythe said.

Mike Duman grew close to his stepfather, though he remained a bit awed by Doss.

"He definitely had an aura around him," Duman said, an unshakable integrity.

Meeting with the Blythes and Duman at the Piedmont SDA Church, Duman has a framed print to show. It's an old-style print of the 10 Commandments, with illustrations of each commandment around the border of the print. It's the same print that hung on a wall in Doss' home when he was a child.

"Desmond would stand on a chair and look at the print," Duman related. He was especially drawn to the image accompanying the Sixth Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." It depicted Cain standing over his slain brother Abel with a club.

The print helped to inspire Doss to the commitment he maintained through his time in the Army: that while others were taking a life, he would be saving it.

When the movie was screened, Duman said, everyone expected some alterations might be made to his story, to make it more dramatic for the screen. A scene where Doss' fellow soldiers beat him in training camp didn't happen, though he was mocked, harassed and had boots thrown at him while he prayed.

However, Duman said, when it came to portraying Doss' character  his humble nature, and his determination  the movie rings true.

"The filmmakers were very concerned with getting the story right," Duman said, and he believes they did.

***

Doss' life after the war was not easy. Injuries and illness  he contracted tuberculosis that was treated by removing one lung and five ribs  left him 90 to 100 percent disabled. He was given an overdose of antibiotics that destroyed his hearing for 12 years, until he had a cochlear implant.

After moving to Piedmont with his second wife, Blythe said, Doss was a great supporter of building the church there. His health was failing at the time, but he would come out and watch the work on the church.

Duman said workers got the sanctuary built in about six weeks  hurrying, he believed, so Doss would get to see it.

When it was time for the church dedication ceremony, Blythe said he didn't expect Doss to be able to attend. But Doss told him he was going to be there, and he was.

Days later, Doss passed away.

At a time when on-screen heroes are often superpowered, or super violent, those who knew Doss are anxious for people to see the story of a hero who was not.

"I believe this world is hungry for real heroes," Blythe said.
Harley and Sturgis are a goofy pair of older gentlemen who enjoy the simple things in life; lounging, snacking, napping in the sun. These senior canines are pleased to invite you to the Hogs & Hounds adoption event at Grizzly Harley Davidson! Join the Humane Society of Western Montana and Missoula Animal control this Saturday, Nov. 5 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for an exclusive adoption event. Walk the lot with your new furry friend and enjoy an afternoon of family-friendly fun! Support your community shelter pets, like Sturgis & Harley, and meet your local H.O.G. chapter this weekend! We hope to see you there! More information online at www.myhswm.org.
MCCALL, Idaho (AP)  An 80-foot Englemann spruce has been cut down in western Idaho and is heading for Washington, D.C., to be decorated as the Capitol Christmas Tree.

Workers used a traditional crosscut saw on Wednesday to bring down the tree on the Payette National Forest's Little Ski Hill near the town of McCall.

The Little Ski Hill ski area was built in 1937 as a diversion for for local forest workers.

The Little Ski Hill is an important part of the McCall community, and now the 2016 U.S. Capitol Christmas tree will be part of the Little Ski Hills legacy, said Keith Lannom, Payette National Forest supervisor.

This tree and 3 others were identified as final candidates for the Christmas tree in July of this year, according to a press release from the U.S. Forest Service. The requirements for the Christmas tree are that it must be 65 to 85 feet tall, have full branches around the entire tree, be of a rich green color and be cylindrical in shape  generally, it must look like a fantastic Christmas tree. Engelmann spruce is a native tree species the Payette National Forest.

The Forest Service said that over 18,000 handmade ornaments representing the state symbols of Idaho were made by Idahoans to appear on the tree in addition to 70 companion trees in offices throughout Washington, D.C.

Two Payette employees, Jared Schuster and Chris Niccoli, cut the tree using a crosscut saw to honor the traditional skills used in wilderness areas.

Cranes prevented the tree from falling, and then positioned it on a semitrailer.

The tree's national tour started Saturday in McCall; it will make several stops in Idaho and other states as it travels east.

It will be placed on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol for a lighting ceremony set for Dec. 6.
The General Election is days away and the Missoula County Elections Office has the top five reminders for voters to ensure a successful voting process.

1) All ballots are due by 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 8.

If voters are registered as absentee and have not yet put their voted ballot in the mail, voters are encouraged to deliver their ballot in person. The Elections Center at the fairgrounds offers a 24/7 ballot drive-thru until Monday and until 8 p.m. Tuesday. Ballots can also be dropped off at the courthouse. Postage is not needed if hand-delivering a ballot. Its important to remember that postmarks do not count. The Elections Office must have received a ballot by the 8 p.m. deadline to be counted on Election Day. The MyVoterPage will indicate whether or not mailed ballots have been accepted by the Elections Office.

2) The Elections Center, at the Missoula County Fairgrounds, is a voters one-stop-shop to handle all voting needs on or before Election Day.

Elections officials are available to assist voters with extended hours on Saturday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., and Monday from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. (The office is closed Sunday.) The Elections Center provides a 27/4 ballot drive-thru, 20 election judges to issue replacement ballots if a voter has lost or spoiled theirs, absentee voting, an ADA accessible AutoMark voting machine, and late registration.

Registered voters have until Monday, Nov. 7, at noon to request a ballot. Late registrants have until Monday at noon to complete their registration and receive a ballot before Election Day. Same-day registration opens on Election Day at 7 a.m. and closes at 8 p.m. statewide. Voting services close at noon the day before the election to allow elections offices to run polling place reports ahead of the General Election. If voters are registered to vote in-person at their designated polling place and miss the Nov. 7 deadline to vote early via absentee ballot, they must appear at their polling place to vote their ballot on Election Day.

3) If you are a registered voter, and have not changed your registration status before the Nov. 7 deadline, you must vote at your designated polling place on Election Day.

Polling places are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Election Day. If voters do not wish to appear at their polling place on Tuesday, the deadline to request an absentee ballot is Monday, Nov. 7 at noon. Statewide, voting services close at noon so that election offices can run polling place reports for Election Day. Voters can check their polling place by visiting MyVoterPageMT.com As a reminder, due to MCPS construction, three polling places have temporarily been reassigned from Rattlesnake, Lowell and Franklin schools.

4) You can vote early at the Fairgrounds by casting an absentee ballot.

Registered voters and those looking to complete late registration can cast their ballot at the Elections Center ahead of Election Day. Go to the Elections Center to request and vote an absentee ballot today.

5) The ballot is three pages long. To help reduce voting times on Election Day, polling place voters are encouraged to view their precinct-specific ballot on MyVoterPageMT.com.

Sample ballots are available on the Montana Secretary of States MyVoterPage. All those who have not yet cast their ballot are encouraged to view their ballot and review the Voter Information Pamphlet.

With only days remaining, if voters are not already registered to vote, now is the time to go to the Elections Center to register and cast their ballot. Despite many efforts made to reduce wait times on Election Day, including 20 election judges ready to assist voters, it is inevitable that there will be lines at Elections Center. Addressing any voting needs early will drastically cut down on the time it takes for a voter to cast their ballot.
On October 18, the Civitas Center for Law and Freedom (CLF) filed suit against Roy Cooper in his capacity as North Carolina attorney general, alleging he illegally diverted money from public education to special interest groups.The North Carolina Constitution, as well as a 2005 NC Supreme Court decision, require all fines and forfeitures be directed to public schools. The Civitas Center for Law and Freedom lawsuit alleges that Roy Cooper, in his capacity as attorney general, directed funds resulting from a 1999 agreement with Smithfield Foods that appear to be equivalent to fines and forfeitures to favored environmental groups.One of the environmental groups that received funding under this agreement may have supported political advertising against Roy Cooper's opponent in the current race for governor, Gov. Pat McCrory. Additionally, the funds were paid out by Smithfield Foods, which is a subsidiary of a Chinese corporation. The Civitas Institute filed a complaint with the State Board of Elections demanding an investigation into the use of those funds and whether they are American in origin.In the late 1990s, Smithfield Foods, Inc., now the nation's largest hog producer, was on an acquisition spree. In 1999 Smithfield bought Carroll's Foods Inc., the nation's second-largest hog production company, for $500 million. In the few years preceding that purchase, Smithfield had bought controlling interests in meat processors in France and Canada and across the U.S. Smithfield already owned an 86 percent stake in Browns of Carolina, and 77 percent stake in Circle Four, a Utah-based hog producer. Also in 1999, Smithfield purchased Western Pork Production Corp. in Colorado.But Smithfield had its eye on a much larger pork producer: Murphy Family Farms, based in Rose Hill, NC.Smithfield Food's acquisition of what appeared to be every pork producer of notable size in the U.S in pursuit of vertical integration and greater control of the hog production supply chain did not go unnoticed by Attorneys General across the country. Both Missouri AG Jay Nixon and Iowa AG Thomas Miller (both Democrats) sued to stop the Smithfield-Murphy merger - ostensibly because of their opposition to the consolidation and monopoly of the hog production industry.In North Carolina, another Democratic attorney general, Mike Easley - now a convicted felon, disgraced attorney, and former governor - had plenty of political reasons to make a deal with Smithfield Foods rather than joining with other attorneys general in suing Smithfield. By not taking Smithfield to court, he could pressure the company to fork over millions of dollars with an "environmental enhancement agreement," winning political points among his supporters. Meanwhile, as he looked ahead to running for governor, he would also be keeping Smithfield on his side by not costing the company millions more in legal fees and a possible delay or blocking of the merger. Anything Smithfield could do to prevent more costly litigation and allow the Murphy purchase to go through would surely be more-than-welcome news for all the hog producers involved.It would also be welcome to others on the state's political scene. One of the founders and owners of Murphy Family Farms was Wendell Murphy, a former Democratic state legislator who had already been listed on the "Forbes 400" list of the richest Americans.Smithfield was about to become the largest hog producer in the country, in a deal that would cement Murphy's status as a billionaire.Through news reports, it appears that all parties involved reached an agreement requiring Smithfield Foods to pay $15 million to North Carolina State University immediately for the development of "Environmentally Superior Technologies," and up to $50 million over 25 years for "Environmental Enhancement."The agreement was a win-win. It appeared to the public that Easley punished Smithfield for "hurting the environment." Yet the fine might be considered a slap on the wrist for a multibillion-dollar corporation, and Smithfield got to proceed with the merger without another lawsuit from yet another state attorney general.Since Civitas filed its lawsuit, Cooper's spokesperson saidessentially saying that the company agreed to give up to $65 million out of the goodness of its heart.Based on facts, however, it is not hard to reach a different conclusion: that pressure from the state compelled Smithfield into accepting the "agreement." Any agreement with government by its very nature carries either an implicit or explicit threat: "comply or else." Furthermore, the fact that Smithfield Foods agreed to deliver the money directly to the Attorney General and not the General Assembly strongly suggests a quid pro quo.Every year since the agreement was signed, Smithfield Foods has given up to $2 million to the North Carolina Attorney General's Office to give out in the form of "Environmental Enhancement Grants."A simple review of the NC Attorney General's website indicates that after signing the agreement, a grant-making operation that would be undistinguishable from a charitable grant-making foundation was set up in the AG's office, complete with capacity to receive and review letters of intent and grant proposals. More than $25 million has been granted out to more than 100 projects since the agreement was signed, with nearly $25 million more slated to be doled out in the future.Looking at everything that was happening around the time the agreement was signed - Easley's upcoming gubernatorial campaign, the Smithfield-Murphy merger, and the other lawsuits brought by Democratic attorneys general - it seems this agreement was signed under threat. It appears the payout resulting from the agreement is tantamount to a fine or forfeiture, and thus falls under Article IX, Section 7 of the North Carolina Constitution, which states:One might ask, if the practice of diverting settlement funds to these kinds of environmental programs is unconstitutional, why has no one taken action to stop it? In a similar case, someone did.In 1998, the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources implemented a policy that allowed parties found violating environmental law to direct a portion of civil or criminal penalties to a "Supplemental Environmental Project." The North Carolina School Boards Association and several individual school boards filed suit against State Treasurer Richard Moore. They demanded that those fines be directed to the public schools as is constitutionally required.After several years of litigation, in 2005 the state Supreme Court agreed with the School Boards Association that the funds paid for Supplemental Environmental Programs were subject to Article IX, Section 7 of the Constitution and therefore must go to public schools. The Court also held that the previous three years of fines paid that went to SEPs must be recovered.Roy Cooper was a named party in that lawsuit, and had been attorney general since January 2001, so it stands to reason that he had knowledge of the Court's ruling.Mike Easley arranged the 1999 agreement with Smithfield Foods, but since his election to the Attorney General's Office Roy Cooper administered the grants resulting from the agreement. As explained above, the state Supreme Court ruled that Supplemental Environmental programs were unconstitutional.The "Environmental Enhancement" programs administered by Roy Cooper appear to be identical to the Supplemental Environmental Programs set up by DENR in 1998. As a result, Francis De Luca, a North Carolina taxpayer being represented in court by Paul "Skip" Stam, sued Cooper on the grounds that the funds expended for environmental enhancement should go to the public schools in the future and the past three years of grants should be recovered from their recipients.Each year, up to $2 million is given out to, on average, 10 organizations.There is one grant recipient in particular whose activities are cause for additional concern: the Pamlico Tar River Foundation. In 2014, Roy Cooper announced that the group had been awarded $123,309 "to install and restore wetlands to treat and reduce storm-water runoff on the campus of Edgecombe Community College." Since 2004, the foundation has received a total of $387,794 from Roy Cooper.In 2015, the Pamlico Tar River Foundation merged with the Neuse River Foundation to form a new organization named "Sound Rivers." Sound Rivers, such as it is, is a member of an umbrella organization called the North Carolina Environmental Partnership (NCEP). While the NCEP has never filed a report with the State Board of Elections, the Center for Public Integrity shows NCEP as the largest sponsor of ads by far in the governor's race - all opposing Gov. McCrory.The NCEP has spent at least $1.6 million on TV ads opposing McCrory in this election cycle, and spent more than $1.6 million in 2014 to defeat Republican legislative candidates. See Civitas' SBE complaint on this subject here Since there is no public disclosure of the source of funds the NCEP uses for its anti-McCrory ad campaigns, and to date, no evidence of an audit or verification as to what the Pamlico-Tar River Foundation did with the money, it is reasonable to assume that some or all of the money goes directly to the NCEP for ads opposing Republicans, and Gov. McCrory this year.It appears that Attorney General Roy Cooper is sending Environmental Enhancement Grants to a group that is sponsoring ads attacking his opponent in the race for governor.In 2013, Smithfield Foods was sold to a Chinese company, Shuanghui International Holdings , China's largest meat processor. Since the 1999 agreement between Smithfield and the NC attorney general has not changed and Smithfield is now part of a Chinese corporation, it would stand to reason that the money that funds the AG's environmental enhancement grants could be Chinese in origin. If this is the case, Cooper's grants would be a violation of the prohibition of foreign national funds being used in U.S. political campaigns, and the grants are a federal crime that should be referred to federal prosecutors.The Civitas Center for Law and Freedom's lawsuit alleges Roy Cooper, in his capacity as attorney general, both knew about legal precedent prohibiting the direction of fines and forfeitures to environmental programs and apparently ignored the Constitutional provision requiring fines and forfeitures to be directed solely to public schools. Cooper directed funds that appear to be equivalent to fines and forfeitures resulting from a 1999 agreement with Smithfield Foods away from public schools and instead diverted them to environmental programs. A related Civitas Institute complaint to the State Board of Elections alleges that a recipient of the diverted funds, the Pamlico Tar River Foundation, may have supported political advertising against Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, Democrat Cooper's opponent in this year's gubernatorial race. Smithfield Foods is a subsidiary of a Chinese corporation. It is possible that Chinese money is influencing the 2016 gubernatorial campaign.The underlying issues here are important and bear repeating: Using the threat of government force, it seems clear that elected officials coerced a private business to give millions to liberal special interest groups. Not only do these groups actively work against the interests of that business, but based on available information, it also looks like they are backing - some monetarily, some otherwise - Roy Cooper's run for governor. This is but one example of how a massive network of liberal organizations and insiders can use government to their advantage. The next attorney general would do well to stop this practice and ensure that any and all fines and forfeitures go to public education as the Constitution demands and not to favored individuals and organizations.
HELENA  Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock and his Republican challenger, Greg Gianforte, are feverishly crisscrossing the state looking for every vote they can scrape up as their bitterly contested campaigns draw to a close.

Theyre visiting the places where they need to run up big advantages  and shadowing each other in the communities where both need to make a decent showing to win.

Bullock and Gianforte, a high-tech entrepreneur from Bozeman, have set an aggressive travel schedule, with Bullock planning stops in 20 communities between last Monday and the day before the election and Gianforte on a 42-town tour that started last Sunday.

The incumbent governor is spending a significant amount of time in counties where it's relatively likely hell defeat Gianforte, including the counties he won over Republican Rick Hill in the 2012 governor's race.

Those counties include Butte-Silver Bow, where Bullock took 74 percent of the vote in 2012; Glacier (74 percent); Big Horn (72 percent); Missoula (68 percent); and Blaine (64 percent).

Silver Bow County is home to Butte, a historically pro-union and Democratic town. Missoula County has a liberal university city. And Glacier (Browning), Big Horn (Hardin) and Blaine (Chinook) counties have a high percentage of Native Americans, a strong Democratic voting bloc.

So why spend time in counties that will vote for him already?

It has everything to do with turnout, said Lee Banville, a University of Montana political researcher and journalism professor.

Essentially its not enough for Steve Bullock to win in Glacier County or to win in Missoula County. He has to win them by a lot. The more he can win them by a wide margin with big voter turnout, the more he can weather the parts of the state where hes really not going to do well.

Those are the areas where Gianforte has gone in the lead-up to Election Day. The Republican has been to or will make stops in Richland (Sidney), Musselshell (Roundup), Phillips (Malta) and Daniels (Scobey) counties, in Eastern Montana. Bullock is only stopping in Blaine County to visit Harlem.

Gianforte will run the table in these places anyway  theyre among the counties Hill carried most solidly in 2012 with 67 percent of the vote or more. But absentee voting data shows that relatively few people have already cast ballots here, and its important for Gianforte to get those voters to show up. In Richland County, for example, only 20 percent of those registered have already voted, compared to about 40 percent statewide, according to data updated Saturday by the Secretary of State.

But time in these counties is valuable, Banville said, and plays into Gianfortes campaign narrative that Bullock has left eastern Montana behind.

Gianfortes side is trying to make a bigger point here. His campaign is really stressing that hes going to listen to eastern Montana. To try and close the deal and drive up turnout, hes going to spend a lot more time going to a lot more places that have a lot fewer people. Hes got to run up the numbers in lots of smaller places to be able to counter Bullocks efforts in Missoula, Butte, even Bozeman.

These counties are small, with only 13,663 registered voters among the four of them, less than a sixth of the registered voters in Missoula County.

Gianforte and Bullock have spent a lot of time in Yellowstone County, the most populous in the state, through the election. Bullock lost here, but not by much, to Hill in 2012  49.39 percent to 50.61 percent.

Even though about 55 percent of registered voters in Yellowstone County have voted absentee already, there are still 42,824 people who haven't voted, which is more than the total population of all but six of Montanas 56 counties.

Gianforte dominated visits to the far northeastern corner of the state, but Bullock wasn't absent in central and eastern Montana, hitting Blaine, Hill, Custer, Rosebud and Big Horn. In Rosebud County, Bullock vised Lame Deer, on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, while Gianforte went to Colstrip, 25 miles to the north.

Though the towns are a short drive apart, they could not be more different. More than 40 percent of people in Lame Deer, where the median household income is $28,700, live below the federal poverty line. In Colstrip only 7 percent of people live below the poverty line and the median household income is $55,650.

Preserving Colstrip's way of life, which comes from jobs at the coal-fired power plant and nearby coal mine, has been a key message of Gianfortes campaign. Hes repeatedly said Bullock has not done enough to stand up to the federal government and its proposed emissions regulations that could shut down the plant, though other factors such as economic forces are at play.

Democrats typically do well in Indian Country, including the Northern Cheyenne Reservation and the bordering Crow Reservation. Earlier this year Crow chairman Darrin Old Coyote criticized Gianforte after a statement he made during a campaign stop in Huntley saying reservations struggle because of lack of consistent rule of law, respect for property rights, nepotism and lack of a culture that celebrates success.

Bullock lost Rosebud County by just 14 votes in 2012 but won Big Horn with 58 percent of the vote.

Bullock and Hill were closest in Gallatin, Lake, Park, Rosebud and Yellowstone counties in 2012  the governor won Park County by just one vote  but thats not why both he and Gianforte are in all those places leading up to the election.

Its just a question of population, Banville said. Theyre going there to get as many people out to vote as they possibly can.

About 40 percent of voters in Montana had already voted by Saturday morning, according to data from the Secretary of State, leaving 411,914 registered voters who have not cast ballots. The deadline to mail ballots in was Tuesday, but they can be dropped off at county election offices before 8 p.m. on Election Day.
THOMPSON FALLS  As Sanders County election officials announced that problems with voting tabulation machines discovered in early testing had been solved, Montana Secretary of State Linda McCulloch said the systems in place to ensure accurate counting on Election Day are working.

She called a demand this week by the chairman of the Montana Republican Party that her office conduct a 56-county audit of every voting machine in the state prior to Tuesdays election, based on the Sanders County early testing, shameful.

GOP Chairman Jeff Essmann, in a letter to McCulloch on Wednesday, said we hereby demand that your office conduct a statewide audit of every countys voting machines to ensure the machines proper functional ability and compliance with Montana law.

Essmann cited news reports about the Sanders County situation, and wrote, The integrity of the upcoming general election should be your offices highest priority. The citizens of Montana deserve to have confidence that their votes will be properly counted on Election Day.

In her response Friday, McCulloch  a Democrat who is not running for re-election because of term limits  said she agreed with that.

The Secretary of State laid out all the pre-election testing requirements  which uncovered the problem that was isolated to the one tabulation machine in Sanders County  and post-election audit that is done to make sure tabulations are accurate.

I think it is shameful that you would attempt to cast aspersions on the 56 County Election Administrators and their offices and undermine the hard work they have been doing preparing for this election, McCulloch wrote to Essmann.

***

Sanders County Election Administrator Bobbi Christenson told the Missoulian that the Clerk and Recorders Office has run 10 tests, including a public testing Friday morning, since new software was installed on its lone tabulation machine.

All 10 have matched exactly  including Friday, when one of two members of the public who participated initially reported that results in one race didnt align with his five test ballots.

It turned out the man had read it wrong, Christenson said. It just shows that the machines are less likely to make an error than humans are.

Sanders County discovered the problem last month, when it first ran a test deck through the tabulator and the results were off.

Clerk and Recorder Nichol Scribner contacted Election Systems and Software, the Omaha, Nebraska, company that provides machines, software, ballot stock and sometimes printing services to 44 of Montanas 56 counties.

Scribner believed it was likely a software problem, but ES&S first insisted that the ballot stock sent to Sanders County  which hires a local business to print the ballots  had been incorrectly cut, causing the tabulating machine to misread them.

It sent the county almost 7,900 new ballots, and printed them at no charge. When the test deck for the new ballots also delivered incorrect results, Scribner called the company again, and again suggested the problem was in the machines software.

It was. The county has re-tested its lone tabulating machine four times with the test deck from the initial ballots, and six times with the test deck from the new ballots, since the new software was installed.

All have come back 100 percent accurate.

***

In addition to pre-Nov. 8 testing, McCulloch told Essmann, all counties re-test their machines on Election Day itself before real ballots are put through the machines after polls close. After the election, the Secretary of States Office also selects random precincts from random counties for hand counts, to make sure results match the numbers machines delivered.

I have confidence in the county election administrators ability to test their voting systems and to identify any potential problems, McCulloch wrote to the GOP chairman, and to properly secure the systems through the use of tamper-resistant security seals and chain-of-custody logs, as you should.

Elections in Montana have a history of being open, honest, accurate and well-run, she continued. I think you should have more faith in your local county officials to do their jobs.

In his Wednesday demand for a state-wide audit of all voting machines, Essmann had asked McCulloch to provide us with any and all records in the possession of your office which demonstrate that such audits have been performed, the results of the audits, and copies of the certifications of proper performance of voting systems from every county no later than Friday, Nov. 4, 2016.

In addition to her reply to Essmann, McCulloch attached her Aug. 4 directive on ballot and voting system testing and security procedures, and a copy of her offices 56-page Uniform Ballot and Voting System Procedure Guide."

***

Meantime, in Sanders County, Scribner canceled a hand-count of absentee and late-registrant ballots, now that tests show the tabulator is correctly counting both the ballots first sent to the county, and the replacement ballots.

More than 3,600 of the first ballots had already been given to absentee voters, and people who registered to vote after Oct. 11, when the problem was detected.

With the new software programming stick, its reading them perfectly, even if they were (improperly cut) a bit, Christenson said. Everything boiled down to the flash drive.

The remainder of the first batch of ballots have been locked in a vault, Christenson said, and the properly cut replacement ballots will be used at polling places.

Scribner had contacted the Missoulian after the problem was discovered last month, saying she believed it was important that the public know was going on, and how the county was dealing with it.

If any of the multiple tests done since the new software was installed had not been 100 percent accurate, Scribner said at the time, the county would hire extra election judges and hand-count all ballots after polls closed on Tuesday.
As dusk gathered, so did the crowd on Mount Jumbos southwest face.

It was the evening of the fourth day of October in 2006. By the time Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones rushed the stage in Washington-Grizzly Stadium across the river to the opening strains of Jumping Jack Flash, hundreds stood or sat in the darkness on the slopes of Jumbo for a free and very audible rock and roll show, the likes of which Missoula had never seen.

Home to 75 elk and at least one large moose that wandered down to Cherry Street a couple of years ago; scene of a devastating avalanche on the last day of February 2014, and playground to a steady stream of hikers and paragliders, the Elephant Hill that frames the northeast end of the Missoula Valley became Missoulas own 20 years ago.

On Nov. 21, 1996, Florence Smith, a retired social studies teacher, sold 225 acres of Mount Jumbo stretching from Interstate 90 almost to the summit, a parcel that encompassed the L and the bench from which many of the Stones gawkers watched 10 years later.

It was the last of four properties secured in 96 by Five Valleys Land Trust and a host of partners that included Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and the U.S. Forest Service to preserve Mount Jumbo from development. The purchases amounted to more than 1,600 acres and cost $3.3 million.

Two million dollars of that cost were earmarked from a $5 million open space bond passed by Missoula city voters the year before. Five Valleys led the effort to raise the rest of the purchase price, with substantial support from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and hundreds of individual contributions and pledges. Because $100,000 of the pledges to Jumbo werent available until the following year, the Nature Conservancy loaned the money, interest-free, to Five Valleys, which turned Jumbo over to the city in 1997.

On Saturday, runners and revelers planned to cut an anniversary cake and talk about the citys purchase of the mountain and the 20 years of preservation projects that have followed.

The celebration was scheduled after Run Wild Missoulas 15K Elk Ramble over the Jumbo saddle to Marshall Creek and back, through 216 acres on the backside that were added to city holdings in 2010. The Elk Ramble has become the annual farewell to the mountain run before the North and South Zones of Jumbo are closed Dec. 1 to protect elk wintering grounds.

***

Twenty years later, its impossible to quantify the impact the preservation of Mount Jumbo has had.

Would the bench where those Rolling Stones fans gathered be someones back yard? How many trophy homes would have crept higher up the mountain above the Rattlesnake Valley? What fate awaited the elk herd?

Whats more certain is the purchases were a cornerstone of the citys open-space system thats loved and used by many humans and wildlife alike, Missoulas open space program manager Elizabeth Erickson said.

My impression is it really opened the communitys mind to what it could achieve in terms of land preservation, said Grant Kier, executive director of Five Valleys Land Trust (FVLT).

The success started with the passage of the $5 million open-space bond in 1995. It came on the heels of two unsuccessful countywide attempts in 1994.

One thing I remember very clearly was that, as we approached the vote, almost everybody I knew said, 'Youll never pass that bond,' said John Talbot, a founder and longtime board member of Five Valleys Land Trust. 'People arent going to go for that much money.' But, by God, it passed, and I think it passed primarily on the strength of people in Missoula wanting to see Mount Jumbo remain the way it was and not get developed California-like on those slopes.

Talbot said even he thought it was a dream at first. But Greg Tollefson, who headed Five Valleys at the time, was absolutely convinced we could get it done, he said.

The land trust itself was fledgling, with many of its land conservation projects far from the streets of Missoula. The Mount Jumbo purchase opened other doors.

Having something right on the edge of Missoula brought the idea of land conservation to people who were living in the urban area, said Talbot.

That in turn boosted the profile of Five Valleys Land Trust, which gradually transitioned from accepting conservation easements to pursuing large tracts of land itself.

Kier said the original large purchases on Mount Jumbo in 1996 have been catalysts to a lot of other things, including four subsequent additions on the same mountain:

 In 2001, 10 acres of the Marshall Cromwell property in the saddle were purchased for $40,000 and sold to adjoining landowners after conservation and public access easements were placed on them. The landowners placed conservation easements on 23 additional acres in the area and made a $16,000 gift to the open space bond.

 In 2009, the $31,000 purchase of 59 acres on the east side of Jumbo above East Missoula made it possible for people to hike all the way into Missoula on public land. The land was owned by the Yawle Seven, a partnership formed by guys who were into John Elway, a city official said.

 In 2010, the city completed purchase of the 216 acres on the Marshall Canyon side of the mountain for $410,000, preserving a well-used road over the saddle, sections of which date back to aboriginal times.

 In 2011, a $9,910 conservation easement was purchased on 26 acres on the lower west slope of Jumbo north of the "L" from Bonnie Thompson and Rodney and Barbara Huff.

The latter three purchases followed on the heels of the $10 million open-space bond passed in 2006, which the city and county share.

I think the community realized the success of the Mount Jumbo purchase and that led to a desire to keep investing in open space in 2006, said Kier, who took over as executive director of Five Valleys the following year from Wendy Ninteman. Ninteman had succeeded Tollefson in 1998.

Its a Missoula mind frame now.

What we have been told time and time again is how much this community values its access to outdoor recreation, open space and our clean rivers, Kier said. Those are the qualities of life we have here.

That translates to the Missoula business community, which tells Kier that Missoula is able to punch above our weight in attracting talent from around the world, in large part because of its ready access to outdoor amenities.

The 1995 open space bond was paid off earlier this year, and the 2006 bond is almost exhausted.

As we come close to the end of that, its time for the community to reflect on whether this is the right thing to do going forward, said Kier. "I think we'll see that the (open-space bonds) have been incredible assets to Missoula."
Friday was the last day that patients were admitted to the Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility at Providence St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula.

Hospital officials say the 20-bed facility, which served patients recovering from strokes and other serious conditions, will be closed permanently by the end of the year.

While these decisions are never easy, St. Patrick Hospital remains committed to be conscientious stewards of our mission, said Joyce Dombrouski, chief operating officer of Providence Western Montana. Western Montana administration and other leaders continually survey our services and programs. Through a thoughtful, careful process, and by exploring other options and partnerships, we arrived at this decision.

The inpatient rehabilitation facility opened in 2005 and is used by patients who need rehab therapy before being transferred home or to a lower level of care. In a statement, the hospital said that patients seeking this type of facility after they are discharged will be given other options for inpatient rehab, as they have done when the unit is full in the past.

There are inpatient rehabilitation facilities at several other hospitals in Montana, including Community Medical Center, St. Vincent Hospital in Billings, Kalispell Regional Medical Center, and Benefis Hospital in Great Falls. However, Providence has said in the past that its Missoula facility was the only one in Montana with three specialty accreditations  in stroke, traumatic brain injury and amputation  from the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities.

The hospital did not say how many jobs would be affected by the move. Earlier this year, St. Patrick CEO Jeff Fee was informed that his position was being eliminated as part of a cost-cutting measure, and that Dombrouski would be taking over his duties.
Montana is roughly about 600 miles long and 250 miles wide and covers an area of 147,000 square miles. I have trapped, hunted and fished in this state since I was about 6 years old. I am now 57 and live in Plentywood.

As a bird dog owner and avid bird hunter, I am far more concerned with porcupine problems than traps. As a coyote trapper, I help pay my bills by trapping problem coyotes. I also remove problem beaver and muskrats for private landowners and some is done on public lands also.

The beauty of the whole equation is that all of these resources are renewable and usable by the general public of Montana. If this initiative were to pass, Fish, Wildlife and Parks loses $70,000 in license fees, and individuals lose hundreds of thousands in fur sales throughout the state. Fish and Game is already understaffed and asking them to take care of problem animals for residents would be very costly for all of us. Regardless of what the animal rights people say, the chances of your dog getting caught in a trap are close to zero and in reality is a nonissue.

As the District 6 director of the Montana Trappers Association, I have met with many trappers and land owners who need trapping to ensure their livelihoods. Much of my part of the state is Bureau of Land Management land or state land. Is it fair for someone from another area to make decisions on how we live out here?

Our problems are real and need real solutions. Banning trapping on public lands would create very costly problems for many who live out here. We have ample wildlife and will continue to have wildlife in the future. Please vote no on Initiative 177.

Harold Johnson,

Plentywood
Denise Juneaus favorite strategy lately has been attacking Congressman Ryan Zinke on his stance to sell public land in Montana (after he has repeatedly said time and time again that he never has and never will vote to sell or trade public land). While shes been busy distracting Montanans with this false rhetoric, I took a look at her own record.

In December 2009, Denise Juneau was the only member of the state Land Board that voted against leasing 572 million tons of state-owned coal in southwestern Montanas Otter Creek Valley. Montanas top five elected officials, comprised of Democrats, voted in favor or leasing the coal because they understood it meant clean, affordable energy and high-paying jobs for our state. She argued we should preserve the land for future use and offered no real substantial plan.

Then in March 2010, she voted against leasing 570 million tons of the same coal at a lower price than what was offered in December. The lease was again supported by school superintendents from southeast Montana.

Juneau has a record of repeatedly putting politics ahead of Montana. She is not fit to serve us in a larger capacity with more responsibility in Washington, D.C.

Ron Fick,

Dillon
I read Oct. 23 about Judge McKeon of eastern Montana, who has caused some outrage over a lenient sentence of a man who raped a 12-year-old girl. The Montana statute requires a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison for anyone convicted of rape, incest or sexual abuse of a child 12 years or younger. The piece also pointed out that judges are allowed to dole out less severe punishment in a case where a court-appointed evaluator determines that the person so convicted is afforded a better opportunity for rehabilitation and for the ultimate protection of the victim and society. The judge cited this exception when he gave the man a 30-year suspended sentence with 60 days in jail, followed by sex offender treatment and probation with many restrictions. The victims mother and grandmother wrote letters in support of community-based treatment in order that the offender and his family better heal.
HAMILTON  Pearl Jams Jeff Ament is at it again.

The band's bassist has pledged $60,000 to Hamilton to help jump-start efforts to build a skateboard park. This is the 10th park the longtime skateboarder has helped finance in Montana in the last 10 years.

Last year, it was Stevensvilles turn.

After Aments donation and an equally generous offer from Bill Watkins of Discover Care Center, the community raised the money needed to make that dream come true.

Recently, Ament offered the same amount to the Circle 13 organization that has been working for years to bring a skateboard park to Hamilton.

The Circle 13 group jumped over its first major hurdle when it acquired about a half-acre on the southeastern edge of the county fairgrounds in Hamilton.

Not long after that, Watkins stepped forward to offer a $50,000 matching grant to kick off the fundraising effort. And then came Aments pledge.

Circle 13 president Bryan Dufresne said they have about $120,000 of the estimated $500,000 that it will cost to build the park, which will include a restroom, lightning, landscaping and a paved parking area.

In a 2015 interview with Vice, Ament said he has been an avid boarder since 1975 but fell away from the sport for a few years. When he took it back up while on tour in Australia, he was inspired to help share the experience back home.

His first donation was to help build a park in Seattle, where he was living at the time.

"After that I went to city council meetings for about five years to try and get something built in Missoula,'' he said in the Vice interview. "That one was a brutal process because it was such a big city. But then I helped get the St. Ignatius Park built and that was super-easy because it was a small town.

"That's when the focus became on these rural towns and these isolated areas, whether they're reservations or not  I don't really see color when it comes to that. I think kids who are in isolated places have a tough hill to climb,'' Ament, who grew up in Big Sandy, told Vice.

According to Pearl Jam's website, Ament has helped build skateboard parks in the Montana communities of Missoula, St. Ignatius, Helena, Big Sandy, Glendive, Browning, Baker, Havre and Stevensville. He also has helped build parks in Pine Ridge and Wounded Knee in South Dakota.
The Proliferation of Free Market Centers on College Campuses Is Not Educationally Harmful

Editor's note: This week the Pope Center addresses a controversial issue that has arisen at dozens of American colleges and universities-whether outside funding for free market programs and centers undermines academic integrity. In recent years, as organizations such as the Charles Koch Foundation have provided that funding, a variety of arguments have been made that schools should reject the money and the programs.Today, Hillsdale College economics professor Gary Wolfram argues the opposite-that wherever the funding comes from, the expansion of free market teaching is to the good. In Part I of this debate- available here -Ralph Wilson of unKochMyCampus argues that universities should reject outside funding for free market centers. Each advocate will be asked to respond to the case made by the other in the comments.It has been suggested that the expansion of free market think tanks on our college campuses is educationally harmful. Actually, it is just the opposite. Expanding competition in the battle of ideas is how we keep an informed and active society.In 1927, at the height of the "Roaring Twenties," Ludwig von Mises insightfully wrote in his book, Liberalism in The Classical Tradition:Notice he did not say that the impending Great Depression would be caused by improper monetary policy, or lack of aggregate demand. Rather it was the movement from a political philosophy of limited government and the reliance on markets to create wealth for the masses, that is, liberalism, to a movement of central planning that would cause the economic collapse. He went on to effectively predict that the political philosophy of fascism, based on central planning, would lead to World War II. Of course, eight years later Mussolini invaded Ethiopia and we know the end result.It is thus very important that there be a debate about the proper role of government and how we organize ourselves in the economic sphere. There should be at least two sides to such a debate. The Founders were well aware of this. The Federalist Papers and Thomas Paine's pamphlets, such as "Common Sense," as well as the Anti-Federalist Papers, are examples of attempts to influence the social order through an exchange of ideas.The Bill of Rights of the Constitution contains many rights that are there to ensure a free debate of ideas. These include freedom of the press, the right to peaceably assembly, and the right to associate with whomever we choose.The funding of think tanks on college campuses, in particular centers of thought that lay out the principles of the limitations on our government and explain why the market system has led to human flourishing, certainly follows in this tradition. Indeed, the fact that there is a perceived need to provide such analysis to college students, a need great enough to cause individuals such as the Koch brothers to donate hundreds of millions of dollars of their money to do so, should be an indication that these ideas are not being presented in our current higher education system.We should indeed not be surprised that colleges like Hillsdale, whose trademark is Educating for Liberty since 1984, are few and far between. Public colleges and universities are in fact government colleges and universities. This is simply due to the manner in which they are funded and operated. I was on the Board of Trustees of a public university in the state of Michigan for nine years. I was appointed to the position by a Republican governor. My appointment was not renewed when the new governor was a Democrat. No one was surprised. These positions are government appointments.The government-appointed or elected boards of public colleges and universities have oversight of the institution. They hire and fire the president of the institution. They set the budget, and while not having direct control over the curriculum, can certainly influence its direction. A significant portion of our university budget came from state and federal tax dollars. Some of these dollars were an appropriation from the state, some were grants from the federal government to pay for research by our faculty, and some were tax dollars that subsidized the tuition of our students.While it is possible that government educational institutions would provide an education where students would learn that the proper role of government is limited and that market forces rather than government intervention will be the answer to solving today's difficulties, and that these difficulties are often the unintended consequences of government actions, this is somewhat unlikely. Such discussion might sow the belief that we are not better served by a system of a large government run by experts.Frederic Bastiat, writing in 1850 in his book The Law, discussed at length the beliefs of those who are socialists. They believe that they know more than the average citizen about what is good for mankind. As such, they should be given the power to direct the citizenry, which is incapable of knowing what is best for them. Who are these experts that will be in charge of the direction of society? Certainly college professors would have their share.Is it not interesting that according to the UCLA Higher Education Research Center's 2014 survey, 60 percent of full-time faculty consider themselves liberal or far left, which is five times the percentage of those who consider themselves as conservative or far right, and that this gap has widened significantly since 1990? Would we be surprised to know that a primary constituency of Bernie Sanders, the proclaimed socialist would-be Democratic nominee for president, were college students?Given this situation it is to the credit of the Koch brothers and others that they are willing to fund with their own money centers to teach on our campuses what Mises called classical liberalism. Why in the world should we be afraid of competitors in the marketplace of ideas? Should we shut down the Hoover Institute at Stanford because one of its scholars, Walter Williams, writes and teaches about the virtues of the market?It is necessary for a free society for students to be exposed to the philosophy of classical liberalism in our colleges and universities. Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek, in his 1949 paper "The Intellectuals and Socialism," speculated thatWe should be thankful that the private sector is keeping the ideal of freedom alive on our college campuses.
Mr. Irastorzas arrest makes it difficult for the terrorist group to reach any of its objectives, the ministry said.

ETA has killed more than 800 people since the late 1960s as part of its campaign to establish an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France. The United States and the European Union consider it a terrorist organization.

The group has not killed anyone on Spanish soil since 2009, and its last victim was a French police officer, shot in 2010 during a botched car theft near Paris.

In October 2011, ETA declared a cease-fire but refused to surrender unconditionally and turn over all its weapons. Since then, the government in Madrid has continued to round up its members, in close cooperation with the French police and police forces in other countries. Security experts now consider the group unable to carry out significant operations.

Weapons have also been seized, including a cache that was found in a forest north of Paris last month, containing about 145 handguns. The Spanish government has since refused to comment on whether it believes the group had planned to hand over those weapons rather than use them to carry out an attack.
Bratwursts and hot dogs sizzled on the grill in Stokes Fresh Food Markets parking lot Friday afternoon during a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the grocers newest addition: an attached True Value hardware store.

Maria Pochervina, director of the Montana Convention and Visitors Bureau, started the event off by thanking Stokes's owners, brothers Steve and John Stokes, for investing in Butte. Meanwhile, Colin Higgins, president of the Butte Chamber of Commerce, described the store as another great addition here to our business community."

In addition to being owned by the Stokes brothers, the 10,000-square-foot hardware store is owned by employees Chad Booth and Russ Harper.

Stokes employs around 80 people while the hardware store will boast a staff of five to seven, and many of those employees have vested interest in Stokes Fresh Food Market.

Steve and John said employees acquire vested interest over time, which can provide incentives and make the job more meaningful.

John, meanwhile, said what makes the hardware store unique is its ability to serve on-the-go people who want to meet their grocery and hardware needs at the same time.

This is our third hardware store, said John, who owns with his brother a total of six grocery stores in Montana, Idaho, and Utah, three of which now boast attached True Value hardware stores. We felt like there was a real opportunity here and a good niche for us to be able to provide a one-stop shopping experience for our customers.

Highlights of the store include a comprehensive selection of fasteners, cleaning supplies, pet food, and birdseed among a variety of traditional hardware-store goods. Both stores are open from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week, and customers can check out items from either side at any cashier.

Steve and John Stokes, residents of Idaho, are fourth-generation grocers. In the 1930s, their great-grandfather Harold Stokes opened the O.P. Skaggs store in Preston, Idaho.

As a giant pair of scissors cut through the red ribbon during Fridays event, John thanked employees.

We think that this new addition is going to be a big win for them as well as for us and the community, said John. We feel like we fit in in Butte.  Its very independent, and we feel like we fit in here because were very independent (too).

In April 2015, Stokes Fresh Food Market, an Idaho-based chain, took over operation of the Harrison Avenue Albertsons in Butte, where Stokes resides today. The company also took over the former Safeway, 1525 W. Park St., in Anaconda in 2015. The deal was struck after a national merger between Safeway Inc. and Albertsons took place.
MISSOULA  U.S. Fish and Wildlife is proposing a dramatic reorganization of its National Wildlife Refuge system in Montana and seven other states that would result in significant staff and program cuts.

In the reorganized Western Montana complex, for example, the number of employees at the Benton Lake, Swan River, Lost Trail, Nine-Pipe, Lee Metcalf and National Bison Range refuges would drop from 26 to 14.

"This is our new reality,'' said a report released internally Thursday.

In some areas, reductions in staffing will lead to a shrinking commitment to active management on refuge lands, even while the land base grows, said the report.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials said the "Realignment Strategy Staffing Framework" was a draft document that had been in the works for three years.

"Status quo is not an option," said the report. "We cannot operate with high numbers of vacant positions on organizational charts while we try to continue to do the work of those vacant positions  it is simply not sustainable."

Like other federal land management agencies, the national refuge system has undergone budget reductions that have required cuts in staffing, said Will Meeks, assistant regional director for the Mountain Prairie region that covers Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas.

"And so it comes down to priorities,'' Meeks said. "We're looking at larger landscapes; the Crown of the Continent and Blackfoot Valley. Engaged private landowners are now a key component of our conservation mission."

A 2011 planning document called "Conserving the Future" defined the agency's vision, which included developing new partnerships and constituencies to remain viable.

"With our growing workloads and budget realities, we will have to look for creative solutions and an increased reliance on volunteers," said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Public Affairs specialist Ryan Moehring.

In the mountain prairie states, that means taking a more regional approach.

The proposal calls for Montana to be carved into three large wetland management districts in western, central and northeast Montana where staff would be shared among refuges.

In addition to the Benton Lake district in western Montana, the plan calls for creation of:

The Charles M. Russell district, made up of the Charles M. Russell, Hailstone, Grass Lake, Lake Mason, Warhorse and UL Bend wildlife refuges.

The Northern Great Plains district, made up of the Bowdoin and Medicine Lake wildlife refuges

Instead of assigning staff members to specific refuges, the positions for each district are pooled, without an indication of where people will be headquartered.

Meeks said those decisions await feedback from people in the field. But the report noted that some refuges today have no staff members assigned to them.

Shared staff and a heavier reliance volunteers may work on paper, but some refuge managers worry it may not work on the ground.

Volunteers need someone to lead them. And at the Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge north of Stevensville, that person is getting ready to retire.

Bob Danley has been the longtime outdoor recreation planner at the refuge. The proposed new list of positions doesn't include his job.

Without that position, Lee Metcalf Refuge Manager Tom Reed said the refuge's environmental education programs will be eliminated. Last year, Danley worked with 800 students and a volunteer that he mentors served another 1,200 in nearby schools.

That doesn't count the hundreds of bird watchers who count on him throughout the year.

Danley also directly works with volunteers at the refuge. Without someone in that position, Reed said there wouldn't be anyone left to manage those people.

"That takes an enormous amount of time," Reed said. "Every volunteer is different. They all come with different expectations. They want to be productive and be fulfilling a role."

Staff numbers have been declining at the Lee Metcalf Refuge for years. When Reed first came on board in 2010, there were nine permanent positions and four seasonals.

Today there are three permanent positions and one seasonal.

"We're going into our third year with no maintenance help," Reed said. "I wear a lot of hats and don't wear them all very well."

Under the current staff structure, there are five maintenance workers at four different refuges. The future staffing proposal calls for one maintenance worker for the entire Western Montana complex.

State Sen. Fred Thomas, R-Stevensville, is a member of a friends group to the refuge. He said there's been talk that significant adjustments to management of Lee Metcalf were coming soon.

"We've been waiting to see what was going to happen next," Thomas said. "Even though, it's a relatively small refuge, it's still a large tract of land that needs to be taken care of for both the wildlife and the community."

"There's a lot of work that needs to be done out there on a continual basis," he said. "The Friends group will keep a close eye on this and will work with the refuge management to come out of this as good as we can."

Meeks doesn't expect the changes will happen this year.

"We're operating on a five-year time frame," he said. "This is the first phase of implementation for meeting the needs of future."
Amerman best choice for auditor

I am writing this letter in support of Jeff Amerman for auditor. I know him as a person of great character and integrity. His experience and qualifications make him the best candidate for auditor. Jeff is a CPA who has been an auditor. Jeff spent nine years in the courthouse as finance and budget director. He knows the budget inside and out.

He is not afraid to tell the truth when others choose to lie or deceive the public. This is the kind of person we need as auditor. In reviewing the current situation regarding the Commissioner of Political Practices Decision, it doesnt look to me like a timing issue; it looks like either Wendy McGrath didnt know how to complete the reports or she didnt want to do the reports by the due date.

Either way she did not complete a basic campaign report that every candidate must file. Is this who we want for auditor? I encourage everyone to go to https://campaignreport.mt.gov and look at the reports in question. It is easy to search and you can see for yourself what these reports look like.

As a CPA, Jeff is trained to pay attention to details. As an auditor details matter! Please join me in voting for Jeff Amerman for Auditor. He is the most qualified and the best choice for Butte.

-- Tina Folio, Butte

No thanks to transferring federal lands

Ya, Jennifer (Jennifer Fielder: Time to transfer federal lands to states, Montana Standard, 11-4-16), lets turn the stewardship of our federal lands over to the Bundys and their ilk, or perhaps, the sane and steady "alt-right fanatics hanging around out there, or better yet, the states. Ya, sure, Jenny. Thanks, but no thanks. The feds are the best we got and they're doing a pretty damn good job at that; so thank you very much, Jenny, but no thank you.

-- Bill Graber, Anaconda

Retain Daniels for ADLC chief executive

To the citizens and voters of ADLC:

We support Connie Ternes Daniels for CEO of Anaconda-Deer Lodge County. She has worked tirelessly for the betterment of our county for the past five years and we are lucky to have the opportunity to vote for her to continue the work she has started.

She is the most qualified candidate by far. She is educated in the areas needed to keep our county running smoothly, she has shown she can bring in grant dollars needed to improve our infrastructure, and she has the necessary experience to solve difficult problems daily that improve our standard of living here in Anaconda and the surrounding area.

If you want to keep our county running smoothly, and prevent the budget shortfalls of the past, please vote for Connie for CEO.

-- Joan and Bob Morris, Anaconda

Support trapping, require dogs be leashed

It was last hunting season when I experienced the genuine concern of the Footloose crowd. These are the folks who are pushing for the end of trapping.

I stopped out at the area I wanted to hunt and before I could leave my truck, the neighboring environmentalists would let their dogs loose to run through the area I was planning to hunt. Every deer was stampeded out ahead of the dogs.

The folks who were responsible for the anti-trapping measure seem to forget that many counties in Montana are now or have been recently under quarantine for rabies. It has been the independent trappers who have kept the animals under control.

Soon it will be time to vote for or against trapping, and I plan to vote to support continued trapping and requirements to keep pets on a leash while they are in the woods.

-- Richard Funk, Kalispell

Anti-trapping initiative best for wildlife, Montana

A billboard in the Bitterroot Valley says that Initiative 177, the initiative for trap-free public lands in Montana, is bad for wildlife, bad for ranchers, bad for Montana. Hows that?

How could trapping possibly be good for wildlife? Science doesnt support this claim, and several letters to the Missoulian have already convincingly said so. And the costs in pain and suffering to target animals and to trappers trash are tremendous.

And how could I-177 be bad for ranchers? I-177 restricts trapping on public land only. Private land owners, including ranchers, can do whatever they want.

I-177 bad for Montana? What kinds of bads could restrictions on a tiny minority (0.5 percent) have on the entire state? The economic value of trapping is very minimal (approximately $2 million a year) compared to wildlife watching (between $376 million and $500 million), and trapping actually costs Fish, Wildlife and Parks money.

As for recreation, I-177 makes outdoor recreation safer and more fun in Montana. Two of my neighbors dogs (one dead, one crippled) and one of my brothers cats are victims of concealed traps. So when proponents of I-177 warn pet owners about traps, theyre not just using scare tactics. If youre hiking or even walking the dog on public land, you should be afraid, which is not why youre out there.

No one in Montana can or needs to make a living trapping anymore. Torturing, and then bludgeoning or strangling animals to death is by any conceivable standard of decency not something people should do, and it is not good for Montana to be known as a state that condones treating animals this way. Colorado, Arizona, Washington and California have ended or severely restricted trapping on public lands with no bads.

Please vote for I-177. Its good, better, best for wildlife, people and for Montana.

-- Deborah Slicer, Huson
BILLINGS  Montanas superintendent of public instruction, Denise Juneau, is being suggested as education secretary in a Hillary Clinton presidency.

The Washington Post in its Answer Sheet political column Wednesday mentioned Juneau as a potential education secretary candidate under Hillary Clinton.

Juneau, a Democrat, is also a candidate for Montanas lone U.S. House seat.

From the Post: According to several sources with connections to the campaign, should Juneau lose her race for Congress, she would be a leading candidate. Juneau is openly gay and a Native American, a candidate who could help Clinton in her stated effort to pick Cabinet members who reflect all of American society. Juneau, who is now in her second term, was a critic of the controversial K-12 education law, No Child Left Behind (which was replaced by Congress last year), and she is a proponent of local control of education.

Juneau was traveling Friday morning to a get out the vote event in Lame Deer. Cell phone service was spotty, but Juneaus campaign spokesman, Les Braswell texted that Juneau was flattered.

"Denise is very flattered that she's being named a candidate for Secretary of Education, but she hasn't been contacted about the position," Braswell said. "Right now, she's focused on winning her election."

Braswell didn't respond when asked whether Juneau would accept the education secretary post if offered.

Juneau is a popular figure in national Democratic politics. She spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2012. Juneau spoke not only as a state education superintendent but also as the first American Indian woman in history to win a statewide election.
Butte-Silver Bow Chief Executive Matt Vincent has marshaled a retinue of endorsements from 33 small business owners, local politicians, and patrons of the arts. His challenger, county commissioner Dave Palmer, is taking a different approach.

The incumbent's endorsements include former Butte-Silver Bow Chief Executive Judy Jacobson; former U.S. Rep. Pat Williams and his wife, former Montana legislator Carol Williams; former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer; and key figures in Butte's resurgent arts community.

Palmer has announced few endorsements and told the Standard hes counting on the voters he knows are already backing him. He said he hasnt explicitly asked for endorsements like Vincent and doesnt want to make anyone feel put on the spot.

"We'll let Tuesday speak for itself," Palmer said.

Three of four losing primary candidates for chief executive have endorsed Palmer in radio advertisements on local stations.

Two of the losing primary candidates are Palmers fellow commissioners: Cindy Perdue-Dolan and Jim Fisher. The commissioners cited Palmers experience and inclusive style in an interview with the Standard last week as well as in their radio spots. The third losing primary candidate endorsing Palmer is architect Mark Reavis.

Three other commissioners  Dan Foley, Sheryl Ralph, and Brendan McDonough  endorsed Vincent in the ad, commending his leadership in moving Butte forward in the last four years.

The other commissioners on the 12-person council  John Sorich, Dennis Henderson, Bud Walker, Bill Andersen, and Cindi Shaw  have yet to endorse either candidate. Palmer himself is the 12th commissioner.

Vincent's list of endorsements ran in a full-page ad in Thursday's edition of The Montana Standard.

Vincent and Palmer got a little over and a little under a quarter of the primary votes respectively and are fighting for the 6,000 votes that went to the losing candidates.

One of those backing Vincent is Montana Tech professor and Butte Natural Resources Damage Council member Chad Okrusch, with whom the chief executive co-authored the book "Butte Then and Now."

"His education and work experience make him the best person in our community to lead our Superfund restoration efforts," Okrusch said in his endorsement.

Montana Tech professor and Citizens Environmental Technical Committee member John Ray disagrees with Vincent's policy on Superfund and has contributed to Palmer's campaign.

Ray said the local government and chief executive have no clear direction for what they want out of the Superfund process and said Butte needs an aggressive instead of reactionary policy. Ray said this is because the county executive branch isn't open to ideas from the community that contrast its own.

"The executive branch relies on a few handpicked individuals with whom it is comfortable. It does not seek to build broad coalitions of persons with divergent views," Ray said.

Ray also called Palmer a friend of labor, backed up by one of the endorsements Palmer has publicized: that of the Southwestern Montana Central Labor Council.

The council could not be reached for comment.
C.J. Ryan, 51, Tipton, Iowa, is a candidate for Muscatine County Sheriff. He was appointed the Muscatine County Sheriff in 2015 following the retirement of Dave White and is seeking election for the first time. Ryan was hired as a Muscatine County Deputy in 1986 and was promoted up through the ranks to the Civil Service rank of Captain. He has commanded both the Criminal Investigation Division as well as the Muscatine County Drug Task Force and was Chief Deputy of the office for six years before being appointed Sheriff. A graduate of Mt. Mercy College, Ryan has also attended Criminal Justice Administration (three years), the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy, and has taken professional ongoing instruction during the course of his career.

The Muscatine Journal asked each of the candidates a series of questions. Following is his response to those questions.

What are the major issues facing Muscatine County in the coming years?

Drugs are always an issue, and drug abuse can spike both property crimes and violent crime as well, so well continue our support of the Drug Task Force. I also think that more has to be done to address mental health. A lot of the mentally ill end up committing crimes and being incarcerated, and the county jail system in Iowa is not set up to adequately address this issue. We also need more local bed space for mental and substance abuse committals in eastern Iowa. Its commonplace currently for us to have to transport people to treatment as far away as Council Bluffs.

What are your goals and expectations for the department and for the county if elected?

We are going to carry out our public safety responsibilities as courteously and professionally as possible, while maintaining a good relationship with the citizens we serve. Some areas of the country have a lot of animosity and angst between the police and the citizens. Muscatine County citizens have shown a lot of respect and support for law enforcement, and we appreciate it.

We are going to continue to engage in grant programs, which substantially supplement our budget. One example is that weve recently replaced all of the A.E.D.s in our squad cars with an $80,000 grant.

Training is vital for our personnel to be as up to date and skilled as possible, and develop the leaders of tomorrow. So Ive increased our training dollars for both the deputies and correctional officers, and we will continue to make this a priority.

Security is another issue that many law enforcement agencies, big and small, have to deal with especially with the threat of terrorism both domestic and foreign. The Muscatine Courthouse is not as secure as some would like it to be. As sheriff what options would you like the county to take to make the courthouse more secure or is it safe enough?

Over the course of the last 18 months the Board of Supervisors has invested thousands of dollars on security upgrades, both for alarm systems as well as video surveillance both inside and outside the courthouse. We provide a full time deputy at the courthouse also (salary and benefits cost approximately $87,000/yr). The courthouse is an area where we traditionally have few problems, and if we have a high profile case or anticipated problems, we increase our presence there. There are law enforcement officers in and out of the building frequently in connection with court matters. The local police have excellent response time to the courthouse in the event that there is an incident there. I certainly am 100% behind having all of our buildings be as safe as they can be. My opponent has suggested having 4 or 5 deputies assigned at the courthouse full-time, with a tag line of, I dont care what it costs. As someone who actually runs a budget, I care what things cost, and that type of investment isnt justified.

The use of body cameras has become a large issue in protecting law enforcement personnel and the general public. What is your stance on wearing body cameras or are there better options to protect the integrity of law enforcement personnel?

Body cameras certainly have their good points, such as collecting evidence for the prosecution, and safeguarding against claims of misconduct. The County Attorney is working on a county-wide policy in regard to the cameras, so that their use is consistent and legally defensible. To finish our in-car camera upgrade and add body cameras at this point is a $90,000 project. Weve been replacing several in-car cameras per year with grant funds as we transition to our new Watch Guard video system. There are ongoing costs associated with storage and retention also. This is one of the items that will have to be addressed during budget planning.

The Muscatine County Jail has become a source of income earner for the county by housing inmates from federal and state prisons, and from other Iowa counties. Do you see this process continuing and what benefits would the residents of Muscatine County receive from this process?

We dont hold State Prison inmates, but we do currently hold for Johnson County and the federal government. When I took over as Sheriff we housed around 25 federal inmates, and generated around $600,000 a year in revenue.

Ive worked with the government to get that federal prisoner number up, and we now have over 100 federal prisoners currently, and generate over two million dollars revenue annually. The Johnson County revenue is variable, but was around three quarters of a million dollars last fiscal year. Both of these factors caused the cost of operating the Jail to lower by about $869,000 last year, and that is important to the Muscatine County taxpayers.

In addition, these revenue funds are utilized to pay the bond in connection with the Jail expansion project from 2011. The whole idea behind the original construction of the Jail in 1996, and the expansion of 2011 was that this revenue would pay for the Jail, rather than the Muscatine County taxpayer. The protection of the taxpayers is important to me, and Ive worked diligently to protect these revenue streams.
WASHINGTON, NC Students who would like to receive a Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice from Elizabeth City State University can now start their coursework at Beaufort County Community College. The two colleges entered into an articulation agreement on Thursday, November 3 to help students on this career track seemlessly transfer their courses.Colleges around the state often have slightly different required coursework tied to a major. An articulation agreement acknowledges that the college where the student will finish their coursework, in this case Elizabeth City State University, will accept all of the classes taken at BCCC. Students in the criminal justice program often go on to a four-year institution to complete a bachelor's degree.Crystal Watts, instructor for criminal justice technology, said,Probation and parole positions require a four-year degree."More of our students are coming to BCCC as a way to save money on their four-year degree," said Dr. Crystal Ange, vice president of academics at BCCC.The criminal justice technology curriculum is designed to provide knowledge of criminal justice systems and operations. Students focus on local, state, and federal law enforcement, judicial processes, corrections and security services. They also look at the criminal justice system's role within society.Students with a degree in criminal justice can find careers in a variety of local, state and federal law enforcement, corrections and security fields. Examples include police officer, deputy sheriff, county detention officer, state trooper, intensive probation/parole surveillance officer, correctional officer and loss prevention specialist.According to Vann Newkirk, provost at Elizabeth City State University,As a constituent institution of the University of North Carolina, Elizabeth City State University offers baccalaureate, professional and master's degrees for a diverse student body. Its mission is to promote economic, social and environmental progress for the people of northeastern North Carolina, the state and the nation. The historically Black college enrolls nearly 2,500 students in 37 baccalaureate programs and three master's degree programs.The university achieves its commitment to the highest quality education by maintaining a rigorous focus on academic excellence through liberal arts programs and using innovative and flexible technology-based instruction models to enhance its signature areas: integrating technology with education, improving human health and wellness and advancing the natural and aviation sciences.Beaufort County Community College provides accessible and affordable quality education, effective teaching, relevant training and lifelong learning opportunities to the people of Beaufort, Hyde, Tyrrell and Washington Counties.
Michael Channon, 44, Wilton, Iowa, is a candidate for Sheriff of Muscatine County. Originally from Thornton, Colo., he now resides in Wilton. Channon has 18 years of experience in law enforcement starting as a Corrections Officer for the Muscatine County Jail. He has also worked for the Wilton and Muscatine Police Departments, and is currently working patrol for the Muscatine County Sheriffs Department. He has worked many aspects of law enforcement including patrol, a member of the Street Crimes Unit, general investigations, a crisis negotiator, and a member of the Special Response Team and Drug Task Force. He is also a veteran, serving 14 years in the United States Army including active duty and Army Reserves. Channon is working on an Associate of Arts degree.

The Muscatine Journal asked each of the candidates a series of questions. Following is his response to those questions.

What are the major issues facing Muscatine County in the coming years?

I feel there are many issues facing Muscatine County in the coming years. The lack of transparency when it comes to law enforcement and citizens is an issue and I believe it will only continue to grow unless we do everything that we can do minimize it. The increasing minority population and the lack of diversity training in the Sheriffs Office, the implementation of body cameras for each and every deputy (transparency), a more secure courthouse and we must bring the morale of the department back to where it needs to be. We must also have a sheriff that will be fiscally responsible with spending and balancing the budget. The if its not broke, dont fix it mentality, is the wrong mentality, in my opinion. Theres always room for improvement, especially in law enforcement.

What are your goals and expectations for the department and for the county, if elected?

I have many goals and expectations for the department and the county. If elected, some of these goals include increasing the trust between the community and law enforcement by having community meetings regularly to discuss issues that are important to the citizens of Muscatine County and having an open door policy for the citizens.

A better working relationship with neighboring law enforcement agencies such as joint trainings and joint community programs. We all do the same job and serve the same citizens; we should be working together more as a team instead of individual entities.

I would like to implement better training for both the deputies and the Jail correctional staff. I feel the deputies and jail staff are currently lacking in training, from diversity and mental health to specialized trainings like defensive tactics.

The morale of both the Sheriffs Department and the Jail is at an all-time low. I believe with that a positive leadership change; we can accomplish boosting the morale of the department back to where it should be. Leadership isnt just about what hat youve worn over the years and it isnt just about following in the footsteps of your predecessors. Leadership is listening and changing with the times and improving upon what you have learned to make it better for your employees. I believe I can be the positive leadership change that this department needs and I do believe we can and will accomplish boosting the morale.

Another goal is to have sound responsible fiscal spending with the budget provided to the sheriffs office. We will apply for and utilize many law enforcement grants that are out there to help offset the budget. When purchasing vehicles, we will not go outside the state bid price, nor will we purchase vehicles that arent necessarily needed. when those extra funds (Commissary funds from the jail) could help pay for higher-priority items.

Security is another issue that many law enforcement agencies, big and small, have to deal with especially with the threat of terrorism both domestic and foreign. The Muscatine Courthouse is not as secure as some would like it to be. As sheriff what options would you like the county to take to make the courthouse more secure or is it safe enough?

It is the responsibility of the Sheriff to protect all citizens and staff at our Courthouse and Administrative buildings and I feel this is a big area that is lacking. In July of this year, in a courthouse in Michigan, a subject opened fire killing two court bailiffs and wounding a deputy. This was not an isolated incident, more and more courthouse violence is occurring more frequently across the country. I do believe that it is a matter of WHEN something is going to happen at our courthouse, not IF and I do believe that by being proactive and increasing security at our courthouse we can minimize the likelihood of a major violent incident. We shouldnt be waiting for something horrific to happen before we act. Recently, video cameras were installed in and around the courthouse, which is a great step, however, cameras are only going to record the incident; they arent going to protect the citizens and staff.

The current, appointed Sherriff, was quoted saying this [courthouse security] is an area where we traditionally dont have any trouble, well, the Berrien County Courthouse in Michigan hadnt had any trouble either prior to their courthouse shooting. We have had multiple incidents over the past 18 months where the panic alarms were set off by staff and law enforcement as well as jail staff responded. Had any of those incidents turned out to be an active shooter situation, the time for those responding officers to arrive could have been too late. My opponent estimates the price of increasing security at $300,000-$400,000; my estimations are less than one-third and would provide mobile metal detectors and staff.

The use of body cameras has become a large issue in protecting law enforcement personnel and the general public. What is your stance on wearing body cameras or are there better options to protect the integrity of law enforcement personnel?

In this day and age, we cant turn on the news without seeing a story of an officer-involved shooting or excessive force used by law enforcement and most, if not all of these videos, are captured using smartphones. These videos do not typically show the incident in its entirety, nor do they show the officer or citizens perspective. With body cameras, the videos will show the officers perspective of the entire incident and will protect the officers and the citizens, alike. Up until October of 2015, several deputies had already been wearing body cameras, but they were instructed by the current Sheriff to stop using them because there was no policy in place. The current Sheriff has been asked multiple times by the Board of Supervisors over the last 18 months about the status of this policy, which he says he has been working on with the County Attorney, however, the Jail supervisors currently use body cameras and do not have a policy in place. There are many other Law Enforcement agencies in Iowa that are currently using body cameras for officers. If I am elected, we will immediately draw upon their already in-place policies and work with the County Attorney to tailor it to fit the needs of the Muscatine County Sheriffs Department and the Jail. I believe this is also an area of high-priority.

The Muscatine County Jail has become a source of income earner for the county by housing inmates from federal and state prisons, and from other Iowa counties. Do you see this process continuing and what benefits would the residents of Muscatine County receive from this process?

Housing federal inmates, as well as other County inmates, is a huge revenue base for Muscatine County. When we talk about federal inmates, it is not the current sheriff that has created this revenue. This has happened due to a multitude of reasons. Scott County did not want to house federal inmates like they had in the past, so the U.S Marshals chose Muscatine County because of the close proximity to the Federal Courthouse. The increase of inmates and the revenue generated by them, would have come no matter who was sitting behind the desk as Sheriff. As for housing other County inmates, I would make it more appealing for other Counties to house their inmates in our jail by offering financial incentives, say for housing a certain number of their inmates at one time. If elected, I will continue to generate revenue for Muscatine County by housing both federal and other County inmates, as well as looking at any other revenue based programs that can be expanded on or implemented. Keeping the doors open at the Jail and having a constant revenue stream will greatly benefit the citizens of Muscatine County.
Nathan Mather, 37, Muscatine, Iowa, is a graduate of Muscatine High School, earning his bachelors at Northwestern University in 2001 and his law degree from New York University in 2004. An attorney-at-law by trade, Mather is also a current member of the Muscatine School Board and served as its president from 2013 to 2015. He is a member of Rotary, a member of the Muscatine History and Industry Center board and the Muscatine Red Cross board, and on the audit committee at the Mulford Evangelical Free Church. He is a candidate for Muscatine County Board of Supervisors in District #4.

What are the major issues facing Muscatine County in the coming years?

1 - Economic Development. The county provides invaluable services in maintaining our roads and bridges and ensuring public safety. However, that is no longer enough to promote the success of our citizens. Muscatine County should be cutting through the miles of red tape that hamper families and employers, not adding to it. We need a vision for a future county government that attracts people to Muscatine County and persuades the next generation of citizens and business leaders to stay here at home.

2 - Generational Poverty. Despite our many success stories, too many citizens of Muscatine County find themselves trapped in a cycle of poverty that lasts from generation to generation. Shattered families, drug abuse and lack of education have all played a role in this tragedy. The good news is that we have the people, we have the resources and we have the willpower to do something about it. Government cannot solve these problems, but the right leader is the one who brings together the people who can. I have led our school district's community partnering efforts, leading to substantial improvements. In fact, the University of Iowa is currently conducting a study on our partnering program.

3 - Mental health. Mental illness is devastating Muscatine County. It accounts for huge percentages of our jailed inmates, the homeless, the unemployed and underemployed and high school dropouts. It is nearly impossible to overestimate its impact on our economy, our public safety, our education and our families. Effective treatment may be all that is needed for someone suffering from mental illness to escape the misery of drug abuse, incarceration or chronic unemployment and once again begin living a happy, productive life. Sadly, the county has limited resources to address the problem - made worse by a 20-year-long funding freeze and a regionalized care system that sucks over $1 million of our taxes out of the county every year. It is not enough to just plead with Des Moines to change the system; the county can and should change the makeup of our region to stop the never-ending draining of our mental health dollars.

What are your goals and expectations for the county if elected?

1  Share my vision of a county that is growing and well-positioned to meet the challenges of the future.

2  Lead the county in partnering with cities, local businesses and schools to boost economic development and combat generational poverty.

3  Reform the failing regional mental health care system by restructuring our region and partnering with legislators and administrators to achieve greater local control.

4  Improve transparency and accountability of the Board of Supervisors both by holding meetings around the county on a rotating schedule and by developing policy on the personal actions of supervisors in their official capacities.

5  Maintain high level of day-to-day services while avoiding tax increases.

6  At the end of my term, leave the county in better shape than when my term began.

Security is another issue that many agencies, big and small, have to deal with especially with the threat of terrorism both domestic and foreign. The Muscatine Courthouse is not as secure as some would like it to be. As a member of the Board of Supervisors what options would you like the county to take to make the courthouse more secure or is it safe enough?

As we just witnessed in the tragic murder of two police officers in Urbandale, there can never be a guarantee that we are safe from all harm. The board of supervisors is responsible for the safety of the entire county, and not just individual sites in it.

As an attorney, I travel to many different courthouses in Iowa and Illinois  all with varying levels of security. At some, I have been frisked. In others, I have been waved through after flashing my attorney association card. No matter the level of security, however, it has always been obvious that a truly dedicated evildoer could cause immense harm before being stopped. Even though I have been in more courthouses than perhaps any other candidate for the board of supervisors, I would never trust my judgment on security matters above that of a law enforcement professional. It is their lives on the line, and they know what they are doing. The sheriff and the county attorney are our countys top law enforcement officials. A good board member will rely on their guidance and expertise in providing for public security.

The other factor, of course, is cost. Every officer stationed at the courthouse is one that cannot be stationed somewhere else. It would make no sense to make the courthouse a fortress while exposing county residents elsewhere to a threat. Once again, we must rely on the informed judgment of our law enforcement officers about what is needed. Once we have that information, we must move heaven and earth to supply what they need to protect every single one of us.

The regional mental health and disabilities service system has been questioned recently. The MHDS of Eastern Iowa includes five counties and some of the discussion has been on the contribution each country provides. Another topic has been region leadership. What do you see as the future of this system and Muscatine Countys level of participation in the system?

My opponent touts her work in helping to put the mental health/disability regional system together, but unfortunately it has been a disaster in many ways. It is a textbook case of politicians with good intentions trying to impose a top-down solution that ultimately results in failure. It has been a failure because it unnecessarily ties the hands of the brilliant and dedicated men and women who provide these incredibly valuable services to our county.

Pooling resources among counties can be an effective strategy when the counties themselves are free to decide how, and if, it will be best to do so. Instead, Des Moines and the region itself dictate the type and amount of services we can provide. Their heavy-handed approach results in over $1 million of Muscatine County tax dollars being sent out of the county every year.

Also, those who have supported regionalization in spite of this travesty claim that all would be well if the State would simply lift the tax levy freeze that has been in place for 20 years. But that is nonsense, because they went to the regional system with the freeze already in place. So either they pushed for a regional system they had to know would fail or else they had no idea that it would not work. In either case, we need new leadership in the county on mental/disability health matters.

As a member and president of the Muscatine School Board, I have fought for the recognition of mental illness as a serious problem in our community. I have worked to expand the network of options available to those who, like myself, have experienced challenges with mental illness. And most importantly, I have recognized the need to bring the right people with the right resources together, and not simply throw money at the problem.

Should the state mandate a uniform minimum wage, should that be left to each county, or should there be no change in the minimum wage?

The states minimum wage is pegged to the federal governments minimum wage, so the reality is that it does mandate a minimum wage. That is a decision made in Des Moines. The real question people are asking is whether should counties take it upon themselves to require higher minimum wages.

Those who push for a higher minimum wage rarely, if ever, say what that wage should be. Witness the responses to this question at the League of Women Voters Forum on October 4th, in which my opponent said she supported a living wage without offering any specifics. What a clever way of appearing compassionate without having to worry about the downside of her position.

Personally, I think that any time politicians tell us we cant do something that is otherwise legal and beneficial  like working for a living  they are hiding something from us. If I am willing and able to work for $7.25 per hour, or $10, or $50, and someone is willing and able to pay me for that work  why should some elected official be allowed to prevent us from making that arrangement?

Moreover, as we saw with the mental health regionalization, top-down solutions from politicians are all too likely to backfire. During my campaign I have asked local small business owners what a higher minimum wage would mean for them. Virtually every one said they would have to cut jobs or close their doors. So not only would this forced solution harm our local economy, but it would harm the most vulnerable workers at the lowest end of the wage scale. High school kids would not be able to get the resume-building experience needed to advance their careers. Retirees feeling the pinch of a sluggish economy would be locked out of jobs they need to make ends meet. Single mothers and struggling families would find themselves with fewer opportunities. How much worse the problem would be if were only a county-based minimum wage  which would merely push Muscatine County jobs across the line into neighboring counties. Once again, noble-sounding intentions hide the sad reality of failed policies. We can do better, Muscatine County.
WEST LIBERTY, Iowa  A Monday crash near West Liberty involved four vehicles, and three of the four drivers were transported by ambulance to Iowa City Hospitals after complaining of pain related to the accident.

Muscatine County Sheriffs Deputies responded to a vehicle crash at 5:44 p.m. Monday, Oct. 31, at Highway 6 and Davis Avenue, West Liberty, according to a press release from the Muscatine County Sheriff's Office.

Maria Gonzalez, 38, of West Liberty, was operating a Mazda 3 and was attempting to turn left onto Davis Avenue from Highway 6 just west of West Liberty. Two cars came to a stop behind the Mazda before another car was unable to stop and caused the vehicles to all collide with each other, according to the press release.

A Chevy Lumina operated by Alma Availa, 25, of West Liberty, was traveling westbound on Highway 6 and came to a stop behind the vehicle operated by Gonzalez. A Cadillac STS operated by Marissa Harris, 19, of West Liberty, was also traveling westbound on Highway 6 and came to a stop behind the vehicle operated by Cruz, according to the press release.

The fourth vehicle involved in the crash, a Chevy Silverado operated by Steve Harper, 48, of Muscatine, was also traveling westbound on Highway 6 and was unable to stop his vehicle before colliding with the Harris vehicle. The impact caused a chain reaction and all of the vehicles collided with each other impacting all four vehicles at the intersection, according to the Muscatine County Sheriff's Office.

Gonzalez, Harris, and Harper were transported to Iowa City Hospitals by West Liberty Ambulance after complaining of pain at the scene, and all drivers reported wearing safety belts, according to the press release.

Agencies also assisting in the crash scene were the West Liberty Police Department, Fire Department and Ambulance.

Investigation into the crash is ongoing by the Muscatine County Sheriffs Office.
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In the absence of an update to the outdated national Integrated Resource Plan for Electricity, IRP2010-2030, the CSIR Energy Centre has presented its own study to re-optimise the South African power capacity and energy mix from 2016 to 2040.

The CSIR study by Dr. Tobias Bischof-Niemz, Jarrad Wright, Joanne Calitz and Crescent Mushwana was presented at the Windaba 2016 conference in Cape Town on 3 November 2016.

The capacity and energy mix re-optimisation by the CSIR takes into account the considerably lower electricity demand forecast for the years ahead, the significantly reduced cost of electricity from solar photo-voltaic (PV) and wind capacity, and South Africas international commitments to constrain CO2 emissions following the countrys peak-plateau-decline objectives.

Following a similar modeling exercise, and using the same software platform as that used by the Department of Energy and Eskom planners to prepare the IRP, the CSIR study in effect does what the long-awaited 2016 IRP Update should have done ages ago.

As such, the CSIR presents what it calculates to be the re-optimised, least-cost mix for new electricity generation capacity technologies for the years ahead to 2040, taking into account and updating all the necessary economic, electricity demand, technology cost and other assumptions.

On 15 September 2016, at the second meeting of the Ministerial Advisory Council on Energy (MACE) since it was first conceived in June 2014, Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson presented the 2016 Draft IRP Update report to her advisory forum of energy experts and stakeholders.

The minister sought MACEs endorsement of the Draft before its submission to the cabinet, after which the minister indicated that it would be made available publicly for wider input and comment through a public promulgation process.

However, instead of simply endorsing the 2016 Draft IRP Update, the advisory body established a subcommittee comprising Prof. Anton Eberhard, Dr. Tobias Bischof-Niemz, Prof. Johan van Dyk and Mr. Mike Levington to analyse it fully, and to report back to MACE and the minister with its recommendations.

In the meantime, submission of the 2016 Draft IRP Update to cabinet and the public was delayed.

It is understood that the final recommendations of the MACE subcommittee were presented to MACE earlier this week.

In addition to updating the economic, electricity demand, technology cost and other assumptions, the CSIR study has removed the artificial capacity delivery constraints of approximately 1000 MW per annum for solar PV, and 1600 MW per annum for wind that had been applied in IRP2010-2030 and the 2013 Draft IRP Update (which was never accepted by the cabinet), as well as the wind and solar PV constraints that exist in the 2016 Draft IRP Update.

The CSIR study shows that without these artificial and arbitrary annual constraints on the delivery of new solar PV and wind capacity, together with the reduced electricity demand forecast and the reduced wind and solar PV costs, the need for new coal and new nuclear power is completely removed from the re-optimised, least-cost mix for the years ahead to 2040.

At the same time, the increased role of PV, wind and gas in place of new coal and nuclear power in the re-optimised, least-cost mix, and the declining role of coal as Eskoms old, coal-fired generation plant is retired, results in CO2 emissions that are some 60% lower than that of the business as usual scenario based on the 2016 Draft IRP Update assumptions.

Similarly the avoidance of new coal power in the re-optimised, least-cost mix, and the declining role of coal as Eskoms old, coal-fired generation plant is retired, results in a water usage some 60% lower than that of the business as usual scenario, with a saving of 40-billion litres of water per annum by 2040.

But most importantly, the CSIR study shows that the re-optimised, least-cost mix for new generation capacity in South Africa between 2016 and 2040, with its emphasis on new solar, PV and gas, while avoiding new coal and new nuclear, would save some R330-billion over this period, rising to R87-billion per annum by 2040.

This would translate into a price of electricity some 18% lower per kWh if South Africa followed the re-optimised, least-cost mix proposed by the CSIR, as compared to that of the Business as Usual scenario based on the 2016 Draft IRP Update assumptions.

Dr. Tobias Bischof-Niemz concluded by saying that solar PV, wind and natural gas now provide the cheapest new-build mix for the South African power system, and that a cost-optimal expansion should aim for a 70% renewable energy share of mix by 2040.

He further argued that the building of the re-optimised capacities in the years to 2040 would provide a steady anchor off-take for a South African solar PV and wind manufacturing industry.

Avoiding CO2 emissions and least-cost is not a trade-off anymore  South Africa can de-carbonise its electricity sector at negative carbon-avoidance cost, said Dr. Tobias-Niemz.

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Contact: McCrory Communications

McCrory Communications govpress@nc.gov

Governor Pat McCrory, North Carolina Commerce Secretary John E. Skvarla, III, and the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina (EDPNC) announced today that JELD-WEN anticipates it will add 200 jobs at its headquarters operations in Mecklenburg County. The global manufacturer of windows and doors is planning a new multi-million dollar corporate campus and training center in Charlotte.said Governor McCrory.Since Governor McCrory entered office in January of 2013, North Carolina's economy has generated more than 300,000 jobs.Founded in 1960, JELD-WEN is one of the world's largest manufacturers of windows and doors. The company designs, produces, and distributes an extensive range of energy-efficient doors, windows, and related products for use in residential and commercial buildings. The Charlotte-based company operates in 25 countries with 111 manufacturing facilities located primarily in North America, Europe, and Australia. JELD-WEN's worldwide workforce totals more than 20,000 people. It currently employs more than 400 in North Carolina.said Secretary Skvarla. "Charlotte's excellent air service, for example, puts JELD-WEN's leadership team within easy reach of its operations around the world."The company plans to hire administrative, management, and other staff. Compensation will vary by job function, but the average annual payroll for the incremental jobs will be more than $15 million, plus benefits.said Mark A. Beck, president and chief executive officer of JELD-WEN.JELD-WEN's expansion in Charlotte will be facilitated, in part, by a Job Development Investment Grant (JDIG) approved by the state's Economic Investment Committee earlier today. Under the terms of the company's JDIG, the company is eligible to receive up to $2.4 million in total reimbursements. Payments will occur in annual installments over 12 years pending verification by NC Commerce and NC Revenue that the company has met incremental job creation and investment targets. JDIGs reimburse new and expanding companies a portion of the newly created tax-base with the goal of increasing the overall tax benefit to the State of North Carolina. The state reimbursement is contingent upon local participation from Mecklenburg County and the City of Charlotte.By law, JDIG projects must result in a net revenue inflow to the state treasury over the life of the award. In the case of JDIG-supported projects in Tier 3 counties such as Mecklenburg, 25 percent of the award is directed to the state's Industrial Development Fund - Utility Account to help finance economic infrastructure in less populated Tier 1 and Tier 2 counties. JELD-WEN's expanded operations could provide as much as $813,750 in new funds for the Utility Account. For additional information on county tier designations, click here Numerous organizations joined North Carolina Commerce and the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina in supporting JELD-WEN's expansion. They include the North Carolina General Assembly, North Carolina Community College System, Mecklenburg County, the City of Charlotte and the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce.
Considering that Hillary Clinton, from the recently concluded email investigation, is charged with gross negligence, dereliction of duty, was recommended that she lose her security clearance, while pathologically lying to congress, the press and the American People; and even though she was not referred for indictment because she is a Clinton: Will you? 11.84% Vote for Hillary 78.78% Vote for The Donald 9.39% Vote for none of the above 245 total vote(s) Voting has Ended!

And now for your additional voting pleasure:

What should be the priority of the Federal Government after the "Pulse" massacre: Should we turn our attention toward destroying, earadicating ISIS as Candidate Trump suggests, or, as Democrats' President Obama suggests, broaden our efforts to effect stricter Gun Control laws to limit "Gun Violence?" 88.24% After many years of trying to degrade and contain the murderous ISIS, we should make it the nation's policy to destroy ISIS immediately. 3.68% Gun Violence in America can be eliminated by limiting access to guns for all American citizens. 8.09% I don't care either way; I just live here. 136 total vote(s) Voting has Ended!

Should Americans be thankful for North Carolinians setting precedent in taking a stand for their state's right to manage the safety of their public facilities, where separation of the sexes remains, or should they follow Bruce Springsteen's lead and boycott the state as bigots since they will not allow grown Transgender men to use the same bathrooms /locker rooms as pre-pubescent girls? North Carolina is right to control the separation of the sexes as a matter of decorum and safety. North Carolina is a bigoted state to not require that children of opposite sexes share the same public facilities with adults of the opposite sex, although misidentified - the Transgender. I generally prefer the natural environs of the vacant, although rather public, large tree. 236 total vote(s) What's your Opinion?



Donald Trump is probably the most flawed candidate that the Republican party could have put up this year. Not only is his understanding of conservative principles and ability to defend them weak, he has no discipline and enjoys picking fights that he won't benefit from winning. His personal morality and temperament is often called into question, and rightfully so. All this considered, I still plan to vote for him on election day because of one simple fact: barring something crazy happening on November 8th, our next president is either going to be Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. There really isn't a way around that at this point. We have a clear choice on our hands about which direction we want to head in as a country. If Hillary Clinton wins on Tuesday, we will have elected a woman who is under criminal investigation and we will be giving electoral legitimacy to the big government progressivism of the Obama administration. This is simply unacceptable.Many conservatives who I greatly respect and have learned very much from, including Ben Shapiro and Charles Krauthammer, have refused to endorse Trump. Several of my conservative friends remain committed to voting third party or not voting at all. While I do admire these stands on principle, I also find them to be flawed and void of practicality.American healthcare is falling to pieces because of the disastrous Affordable Care Act. The immense tax burden from Washington is killing economic growth, middle class families and driving businesses either out of the country or into the ground. Absurd and arbitrary regulation is chipping away at the rights of business owners, big and small. The labor force participation rate is also much too low for comfort. House Republicans, led by Speaker Ryan, have a thorough but largely ignored agenda that would go far in solving these issues with limited government solutions. The only way the "Better Way" agenda, as Ryan calls it, will pass, is with a Republican in the White House. Conservatives who find themselves more closely aligned with Ryan than Trump from an ideological standpoint would be smart to remember this.Conservatives would also all agree that the Obama-Clinton foreign policy has been one of utter failure. The infamous Iran Deal all but guarantees that the American-hating theocracy will possess a nuclear weapon within the next 10 to 15 years. The reckless pull-out of troops from Iraq has had obvious and destructive ramifications including the rise of ISIS and loss of territory that American troops died for. The administration's Syria policy has been an abject failure. Sadly, this list doesn't even come close to covering everything. What should be evident though is that we need serious change in both our approach to national defense and attitude on the global stage. Donald Trump and his administration would undoubtedly provide that.On a more basic level, Trump has also shown a strong commitment to rebuilding the military with twenty-first century technology, which is critical to our national security going forward. A President Trump would also be much better for our veterans in general, both in improving the performance of the VA and in building more public support for the men and women who serve and have served.The politicization of law enforcement by the mainstream media and leftist politicians has also been extremely harmful, with anti-police riots becoming a common occurrence in major American cities and the number of police officers getting shot considerably higher than last year. With a Hillary Clinton presidency, this trend would likely continue and may get even worse. Clinton has shown support for the violent Black Lives Matter movement and never hesitates to place the blanket accusation of "implicit bias" on law enforcement. This rhetoric has been anything but useful, and gives legitimacy to thugs attacking cops and destroying cities. While Donald Trump is certainly a polarizing figure in his own right, he will stand up for police and end the war on cops coming from Washington.Another argument for Trump that has been peddled repeatedly involves the Supreme Court and preserving the conservative majority. While making this case may seem recycled at this point, it is nonetheless an important one. Replacing the late Justice Scalia with anyone that is not absolutely dedicated to interpreting our Constitution the way the Framers intended would be harmful to the principles of individual liberty and federalism for years to come. While many fear that Trump's possible attempts to abuse executive power may be more harmful to Constitutional government than any court nomination, it is almost a guarantee that the Trump administration will be subject to unprecedented media scrutiny. This, along with generally tepid congressional support, will act as a solid restraint on Trump as an executive.Perhaps the most important thing that would come as a result of a Trump presidency, however, would be the casting of the Clintons out of American politics. They have managed to corrupt nearly every institution they have touched, and it is time that the cancer they have wrought on our government be cured. Donald Trump is not a perfect individual, in fact he is very far from it. He is, however, a change agent. In Washington, God knows that there are few things we need more.
ST. HELENA  Returning to St. Helena for Homecoming, Armando Torres-Garcia shared his personal story with seniors at the St. Helena High School.

Brought to the U.S. from Mexico at the age of 9 months, he grew up in St. Helena fully aware of his lack of citizenship and legal documentation. Even without these credentials, today hes an ABC News reporter and associate producer.

My grades werent the best in high school, he told the assembled class. But in my senior year I decided on a senior project that got me interested in journalism. I decided to make a short documentary on farmworkers in the Napa Valley. It was enough to fuel an unlikely dream for an undocumented immigrant: to become an international broadcast journalist.

It was while making that small high school documentary that something clicked for Torres-Garcia. I discovered that I enjoyed listening to the stories of other people. And I remembered that even as a kid growing up behind Sunshine Market I was very aware of my undocumented status. Wed play emigras (emigrant) against the coyotaje (human smugglers).

After SHHS he enrolled at Santa Rosa Junior College, in Social and Behavioral Studies, and wrote opinion columns for The Oak Leaf News, the SRJCs award-winning newspaper. Then in 2011 he transferred with his associate degree to California Polytechnic State University, studying Journalism. He graduated in 2013. There began his journey in the real world of news reporting, working as an intern for Cal Coast News, helping producers and reporters in various aspects of the newsroom.

After graduation I began dropping off my resume at every TV station and newspaper along the way, even if they said they werent hiring, he continued. At a lot of places they wouldnt even let me past the receptionist.

But his perseverance paid off when he was picked up by CPTV in San Luis Obispo as a multimedia journalist. This led him through a series of jobs that culminated in a position as news reporter, anchor and producer for Univision Costa Central in 2013.

It may sound glamorous, he told the seniors. But most of the time I was driving up and down the coast, following leads, living out of the car. But then, he said, he was assigned to cover a murder of a gang member in the Central Valley. He said it changed him.

Most of the time these stories just become another news statistic, he said. But I was standing just a few feet from where they had roped off the victims body, and it made me want to interview the family of the victim, to listen to their stories. I was determined to do a story that was more than about a statistic of another gangland murder.

Torres-Garcia started thinking about what lay ahead in his career. He said hed heard about the Columbia School of Journalism and  despite having no real plan  decided to apply. I was amazed, he told the seniors. I was accepted into their program. The only problem was finding the funds to attend.

Fortunately, Im from a very amazing community here in the Napa Valley, he said. When people in St. Helena heard that I had been accepted at Columbia a number of people helped to raise the money for my tuition. A lot of money was raised, he said, though still not enough  especially when considering the cost of living in New York City.

Despite all the obstacles, despite all the challenges, despite the constant struggle to earn enough to simply make ends meet, he was surprised when he received a letter from Columbia offering him a scholarship that would pay for half the cost of tuition.

Torres-Garcia started in Columbias Masters in Journalism course in 2015. Throughout his coursework he picked up every odd job he could find while often couch-surfing in the apartments of friends. He graduated this last spring.

During that time he wrote and produced an investigative story on the use of K2 synthetic marijuana among high school students in the Bronx; produced an investigative story about the disintegration of the healthcare system in Syria; and filmed a short documentary about two young Syrian women from Aleppo and their resettlement in Rome and New Jersey.

Today Torres-Garcia is working as an associate producer and reporter for ABC News, reporting and producing across various departments at ABC News including the TV news program 2020. His most recent project was conceiving, producing and writing a project called This Is Home about child refugees in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan who were provided with cameras to record their daily lives.

Torres-Garcia played two videos from his Columbia masters project about Aleppo refugees and the Zaatari refugee camps from 2020. The seniors watched intently as the two contrasting views of the lives of refugees streamed across the screen. Afterwards, the applause and the questions asked by the students transformed the story of Torres-Garcias homecoming into a forum about every seniors future dreams, about career, about purpose, and about the meaning of home.

Torres-Garcia had come a long way from the time of playing emigras and coyotaje behind Sunshine Market. Now he was telling the stories of others who faced similar  though very different  challenges as displaced emigrants.

Asked about his future goals, Torres-Garcia said, I still really want to be an international journalist. But thats nearly impossible at the moment because I am undocumented. Asked if he ever planned to become a U.S. citizen, Torres-Garcia said Absolutely! But right now there is no path for someone like me. Some people say Get in line to become a citizen. But for children who are brought into this country as babies, there is no line. There is no pathway.
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A team of doctors at Fortis Escorts Heart Institute (FEHI) performed a lifesaving heart transplant on a 61-year-old male recipient suffering from ischemic cardiomyopathy. The donor was a 55-year- old ex-serviceman who had met with a road accident and was brought to Fortis Hospital, NOIDA in a critical condition. After sustained efforts to revive the patient, he was declared brain dead by the Emergency Response Team and a battery of Neuro Surgeons. The family overcame their grief and came forward to donate the organs of the departed, following counselling. The team of highly skilled doctors who carried out the heart transplant was led by Dr Z S Meharwal, Director, Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, FEHI. The donor organs were carefully harvested at Fortis Hospital, NOIDA. The liver and a kidney were transplanted at Fortis Hospital, NOIDA benefiting two needy patients experiencing organ failure. One of the kidneys was made available to the Max Super specialty Hospital, Saket, in accordance with the allocation plan by the National Organ & Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO). A green corridor was immediately created between Fortis Hospital, Sector 62, NOIDA and FEHI at Okhla in Delhi with swift coordination by the traffic police at Ghaziabad, Noida and Delhi. The donor heart was transported speedily through the 22 km stretch in a matter of just 16 minutes and 20 seconds. Given the criticality of an early transplant for success, traffic was briefly halted, and gracious Delhi and Noida stood by to give the waiting patient a fresh lease of life. The recipient of the heart had been suffering from chronic problems for over 17 years which had progressively worsened leaving the heart in refractory failure for 3 years. This condition limited daily life despite the best possible medication. The only alternative was a heart transplant. Dr Z S Meharwal said, "The patient had been suffering from a severe heart condition for very long. Despite the multiple treatment solutions administered during the interceding years, his heart continued to deteriorate and a heart transplant became essential. The surgery was successful and the patient is stable now and responding well to the treatment. He will be under constant observation for the next 72 hours." Emphasising the need for more organ donations, Dr Ashok Seth, Chairman, Fortis Escorts Heart Institute said, "We took solemn pride in transplanting a soldier's heart to save the precious life of a patient in dire need. Not only did he serve the country bravely during his life, but his selfless service continued even in his untimely death, as he saved four more lives. We remain indebted to him and his proud family. Taking a leaf outof his book, I request everyone to give a deep thought to the noble cause of organ donation. This saved four precious lives and also enriched the quality of life of the entire family. We hope that everyone embraces this cause." Dr Somesh Mittal, Zonal Director, FEHI added, "This is indeed a moment when all of us extend our heartfelt gratitude to the donors family for acting in the kindred spirit of organ donation. We take earnest pride in our doctors for the crucial surgeries performed by them leading to a fresh lease of life for their patients. These momentous surgeries would not have been possible without the tireless cooperation from all concerned authorities like NOTTO, and the NOIDA, Ghaziabad and Delhi Police." The wife of the recipient (name withheld for patient confidentiality) said, "We are extremely grateful to the family of the noble soul whose heart has saved my husband today. Our sincere gratitude to Dr T S Kler who has treated my husband in the best possible manner for over 17 years. I am also very grateful to the entire Fortis team for making this dream a reality." (ANI)
Decks are cleared for inking a historic pact between India and Japan on the bilateral nuclear cooperation, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi sit across his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe for the annual summit meeting during the former's visit to Tokyo on Nov 11-12. Top officials in the External Affairs Ministry told UNI that after the completion of negotiations on the bilateral Nuclear Cooperation Agreement at the last Summit in Delhi in December, the two sides have completed internal procedures including a legal and technical scrub of the agreed text. A joint statement after the previous summit had declared that the Agreement will be signed after the technical details are finalised, including those related to the necessary internal procedures. The proposed Agreement is aimed at facilitating the expansion of civil nuclear energy in India through the construction of Light Water Reactors in order to meet India's clean energy needs, the officials said. Mr Modi will be visiting Japan on November 11-12 for the annual summit, which will be third highest level interaction between him and Mr Abe. During the visit, Mr Modi will also call on the Emperor of Japan. Mr Modi visited Japan in August-September 2014, which was his first bilateral visit outside India's immediate neighbourhood. The relationship was upgraded to a 'Special Strategic and Global Partnership' during that engagement. At the last Summit Meeting in December 2015 in New Delhi, both the prime ministers had outlined a Vision of Working Together for Peace and Prosperity in the Indo-Pacific Region and the World. "The forthcoming Annual Summit meeting will be an occasion for the two leaders to have in-depth exchanges on bilateral, regional and global issues of mutual interest to further deepen the broad-based and action-oriented partnership between India and Japan," said the officials. UNI MK CJ ADG 1352 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0090-1007724.Xml
Exercise SAMPRITI is an important bilateral defence cooperation endeavour between India and Bangladesh and will be the sixth edition of the exercise which is hosted alternately by both countries.

The joint exercise SAMPRITI 2016 will simulate a scenario where both nations are working together in a counter insurgency and counter terrorism environment under the UN Charter.

The exercise curriculum, according to Colonel Rohan Anand, spokesman of the defence ministry, is progressively planned where the participants will initially get familiar with each other's organizational structure and tactical drills.

Subsequently, the training will advance to joint tactical exercises wherein the battle drills of both the armies will be practiced.

The training will culminate with a final validation exercise in which troops of both armies will jointly practice a counter terrorist operation in a controlled and simulated environment. (ANI)
Organized by the Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau, the Cultural Affairs Bureau and the Macau Government Tourist Office, the highly anticipated 19th Lusofonia Festival 2016 was held from October 28 to 30 at Casas - Museu da Taipa, with all the Portuguese-speaking communities of Macao.

The very first Lusofonia Festival was held on June 10 1998 on Portuguese National Day to honor Portuguese-speaking individuals residing in Macau who had contributed to Macau's development.

Held in front of the Taipa Houses-Museum, Lusofonia is the ideal place for families to indulge in the festive season bringing in people together from various countries and regions.

The 19th Lusofonia Festival 2016 showcased culture and cuisine with authentic food, drinks, and handicrafts from Portuguese-speaking countries around the world.

Known for providing a true, popular festive atmosphere, the Lusofonia Festival perfectly demonstrated the vibrancy of Macao as an international tourism city in the heart of Asia, which has retained the rich culture of its Portuguese-speaking communities. (ANI)
Kolkata based AMRI Hospital today proposed the Tripura government to allow its Neurologists and Cardiologists to extend periodical OPD service free of cost in any of the civil hospitals here as a gesture to it's empanelment by the state government as referral hospital. Mr Rupak Barua, CEO of AMRI Hospital, said here that most of the untimely death in Tripura happened due to inadequate medical intervention of Neuro and Cardiac patients. The State government was not able to manage the specialists of these subjects and was yet to develop adequate infrastructure. Besides, surgical intervention in most of the cases of Neuro and Cardiac problem, real time consultancy and medication could save life. Since Tripura does not have the infrastructure and doctors, patients have to go either to Kolkata or Guwahati for consultation, which gets delayed due to communication bottleneck. "We have come up with a well-equipped clinic at Agartala now and specialist doctors from Kolkata will regularly attend the patient for consultancy and medication. Since, we cannot set up operation theatres, the surgical intervention is not possible at present but based on necessity the patient can be shifted," Mr Barua stated. According to report, Neuro and Cardiac problem appeared to be the biggest killer in Tripura after cancer. However, even after a decade of running two PG level medical colleges in the state, the government was not able to ensure adequate and sufficient treatment facilities of the killer diseases. UNI BB AD SHS ADG 1201 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0108-1009112.Xml
With the BJP launching it's first Parivartan yatra from Saharanpur today to grab power in Uttar Pradesh during the coming Assembly polls, the party has well prepared to launch the second yatra from Bundelkhand region tomorrow in presence of galaxy of leaders. The second Parivartan yatra would be launched here tomorrow when BJP president Amit Shah will flag off the yatra which will cover almost the entire Bundelkhand region, a fertile political field for the BJP. Union ministers Rajnath Singh, Kalraj Mishra, Uma Bharati, Thavar Chandra Gehlot along with other party leaders would be present on the occasion when the BJP president will flag off the yatra at around 1400 hours from the Numaish ground. Before flagging off the yatra here, Mr Shah along with some other leaders are also expected to go to Datia in the adjoining Madhya Pradesh to worship at the Pithambara Peth tomorrow morning. State party general secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak, who is camping in Jhansi for the past couple of days, said here today that the yatra would be a historical one when the party will launch it's poll campaign. He said for the first three days-- the Jhansi yatra will be held by Union Minister Thavar Chandra Gehlot, BJP vice- president Dinesh Sharma and BJP's backward cell national president S P Singh Baghel. On the first day of the yatra, after going around in Jhansi district, it will have a night halt in Lalitpur, Mr Pathak said. Mr Shah will flag off all the four Parivartan Yatras in the presence of senior leaders. The party leaders will highlight the achievements of the Narendra Modi government with special thrust on the surgical strikes, development and the corruption-free National Democratic Alliance government. The BJP will give the slogan of 'sushasan' (good governance) and 'vikas' (development) as it's agenda for the people of UP and also hit out at the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party for misrule, corruption and law and order problems across the state during their rules. All the four Parivartan Yatras would criss-cross the state and touch all the 403 Assembly constituencies before culminating in a rally in Lucknow on December 24. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the public meeting on the eve of former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee's birthday. The third yatra would be flagged off from Sonebhadra on November 8 and the fourth one from Ballia on November 9. The main attraction of the Parivartan Yatras will be that Mr Modi will address one public meeting each in six regions. The four yatras will cover a combined 17,000 km touching all 403 Assembly constituencies. Of the public meetings planned in nearly 380 constituencies, 36 will be major ones that will be addressed by Union ministers and other Central leaders. The party has deputed nearly 10,000 'parivartan saarthis' to organise crowds. Nearly 50,000 'parivartan chaupals' will be held where MPs, MLAs and other senior leaders will interact with the public and highlight the achievements of the Narendra Modi government. The four air-conditioned 'rath' can accomodate 15 people and is equipped with hydraulic elevator, besides arrangements for a meeting inside. The GPRS enabled, motorised vehicles will carry photographs of Mr Modi, Mr Shah and Union ministers Rajnath Singh, Kalraj Mishra and Uma Bharti. At least 15 four-wheelers will accompany each 'rath' and the yatras will be given reception at more than 4,500 places.UNI MB ADG 1137 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-1009096.Xml
The effort for a grand alliance during the Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections seems to have been rolled on a positive way today, when Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav met senior leaders like former PM H D Devegowda, JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav and RJD president Lalu Prasad Yadav. Mr Yadav dashed to a starred hotel in the city, where these leaders were put on by the Samajwadi Party, who were here to attend the silver jubilee foundation day function. The CM, who stayed with these leaders for about 50 minutes, talked at length about the possibility of the grand alliance. He, however, refused to talk to the media. There was also a report that Congress poll strategist Prashant Kishor was also staying in the same hotel and his presence has given a new dimension to the possibility of the grand alliance. But Congress had maintained that PK was meeting the SP leaders on his personal capacity. But SP State President Shivpal Yadav told mediapersons that like-minded people are attending this party's silver jubilee foundation day event. He said there has been no talks with Congress yet and the discussion with the leaders over alliance would happen after this event. Earlier, Mr Akhilesh had on Thursday last said that he was not aware of any alliance but the final call about the issue would be taken by his father and party's national president Mulayam Singh Yadav. However, a few days back, the CM was totally against any alliance and even one of his minister-- Shailendra Yadav-- had commented that Akhilesh is a ' Kohinoor' while his uncle Shivpal was in search of the 'stones' in New Delhi for pre-poll alliance. But during his interaction with the media here at the hotel, Lalu Prasad Yadav said that they will do anything to chase out BJP from the country. "Samajwadi party will again form the government in the state and we will not allow the communal forces to come to power in UP," he stated. Meanwhile, at the silver jubilee foundation day function, being held at the Janeshwar Mishra park, the supporters of Shivpal Yadav have taken control over the dais and the function as all the three sacked ministers from the state cabinet-- Om Prakash Singh, Narad Rai and Ms Sadab Fatima-- have been authorised to conduct the function. On the other hand several expelled party leaders have also reached the venue much before time along with their hundreds of supporters and were raising slogans in favour of the CM. Yesterday, Mr Shivpal had banned the presence of the expelled party leaders in the event, who are the supporters of Mr Akhilesh. CM's wife Dimple, who accompanied her husband on the Rath Yatra on Thursday last, too was seen on the dais. There was also a new slogan in support of Mr Shivpal, when his supporters at the venue raised -- 'Naujawano aur Bujurgo ke samman me , Shivpal maidan me'. UNI MB SHS ADG 1155 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-1009107.Xml
The Minister was responding to a question on the I and B Ministryordering NDTV India to go off air for a day for its coverage of Pathankot terrorist attack revealing strategically sensitive detailsof the government's offensive against terrorists.

The Ministry said the channel had breached the programme code governing content in news channels.

Talking to reporters here, he said it was not new that the NDTV channel was banned.

He said during the previous Congress-led UPA regime severalchannels had been banned after making it clear that the channelsshould not telecast matters in support of terrorism.

''Based on the same rules, now the NDTV India has been askedto go off air for a day'', he said, adding, there would be no compromiseon internal security.

Mr Naidu said the NDTV India has violated several rules.UNI GV CS 1207

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In a brief chat with reporters at the airport here, he said hespoke to the State Chief Secretary and enquired about the healthcondition of Ms Jayalalithaa.

''He told me that the Chief Minister has been recovering well'',Mr Naidu said.

Yesterday, Apollo Hospital Chairman Dr Pratap C Reddy, in hisfirst ever interaction with the media since the hospitalisation of the Chief Minister, said Ms Jayalalithaa has completely recovered and it was for her to take a decision on when to get discharged from the hospital.UNI GV CS 1209

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Police said Aboobacker Siddique, native of Omassery and sorcerer Hydrose were arrested on a report from hospital.

According to the report, superstitious Aboobacker under the influence of the sorcerer prevented his wife to breast feed their new born child insisting that it would be done only after five 'adhan' (call for prayers).

Born in E M S Cooperative Hospital in Mukkam on November 2, the baby boy was denied breast milk for almost a day despite warning by doctors and policemen that the child may inflict diseases.

Adamant Aboobacker has given an undertaking that the hospital will not be blamed if anything happened to the baby.UNI PCH CS 1251

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Taking ahead of his outburst on October 24 during the party's meeting, Samajwadi Party, Uttar Pradesh, president Shivpal Singh Yadav today announced that he has no aspiration to become the chief minister and will continue to serve the party as a worker even without any post. " Post has no relevance for a person to become great and leaders like Gandhi, JP and Lohia were the leaders of the country without getting any post. But it is certain that several SP workers who sacrificed for the party did not get anything till now but some people who were just close to some leaders got everything," he said in an indirect attack on chief minister Akhilesh Yadav besides even warning the party leaders that ," some infiltrators were trying to create problem and indiscipline in the party." Addressing the silver jubilee foundation day function at the Janeshwar Mishra park here in presence of senior leaders, Shivpal warned that indiscipline in the party and insult of party president Mulayam Singh Yadav would not be tolerated at any cost and those who are indulging in it would not be accommodated in the party at all. However, during his speech, Shivpal, turned emotional in an indirect attack on his nephew," Kitna bhi mera apmaan kar lena, kitni bhi baar mujhe barkhast kar dena, main jaanta hoon ki maine accha kaam kia hai( Insult me whenever you like, sack me when you want, but I know that I have done good work in the government)". He further said," Khoon mangoge toh khoon bhi de denge, CM kabhi nhi banana; kitna bhi apmaan karlo, main jaanta hoon accha kaam kia hai"( If you want blood that too I will give. I don't want to become a CM. You can insult me anytime but I know I have worked good)." However, he also questioned on the CM post , saying that," Akhilesh felt bad when I said some people did not deserve the post they got. But it is the truth that some people got the post due to family legacy and while some got for their hard work." In an indirect attack on sacked party leader and his cousin Ram Gopal Yadav, the SP state president said," Hum jante hain hum logon ke beech ghuspetiye ghus gaye hain;jo aise mahoul paida karte hain,unse savdhaan rehne ki zarurat hai( I know there are some inflitrators in the party who are creating such atmosphere. We have to be cautious about them)". He further said that he was ready to give any sacrifice for the party and any directive of party president Mulayam Singh Yadav. Appreciating Akhilesh for doing good job as the CM even though his department did not fare well like the departments he was managing before his sacking, Shivpal claimed the PWD and Irrigation departments did record work while in the revenue department, the revenue code bill was adopted after 36 years besides in past two year 42 new tehsils were established. Similarly in the water resources department 3500 new ponds were dug in his regime. During his speech, the SP state president also welcomed the guests from other states and senior leaders who were attending the function. Former PM H D Devegowda, RJD president Lalu Prasad Yadav, JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav and K C Tyagi, RLD president Ajit Singh, senior advocate Ram Jethmalani along with several other leaders were attending the function. Earlier, on October 24, a spat between Akhilesh and Shivpal were witnessed and even both leaders tried to snatch mike from each other during the meeting in presence of Mulayam Singh Yadav. Later, supporters of both the groups were raising slogans against each other and immediately there after an SP MLC was thrashed by a minister inside the CM residenceUNI MB ADG 1337 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-1009231.Xml
Police said the deceased had been identified as Maagali Ravi (35)and his body borne serious head injury. BJP Yuva Morcha formerPresident actively participated in the party affairs.

The incident occurred when Mr Ravi was returning from a partymeeting last night in which the Tipu Jayanthi issue was discussed.

Periyapattana police registered a case in this connection andinvestigation is on.

The body of the deceased was brought to K R Hospitalhere for post-mortem and was carried out under tight police security. Police haderected barricades at the morgue of the hospital.

This is the second death of an RSS worker in less than one month. Last month RSS activist Rudresh was hacked to death in broaddaylight in sensitive Shivajinagar area in Bengaluru city. Policehave arrested five persons including Bangalore district head ofPopular Front of India, Azim Sheriff, in connection with the murder.UNI BSP-RS CS 1345

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A day after Pakistani media reported about the imminent recalling of envoys by both the countries temporarily, India today rejected it saying there is no truth in the report. Pakistan and India may temporarily recall their high commissioners and scale down the size of diplomatic staff in each others' missions in the wake of the latest diplomatic spat over the espionage scandal, a report by Express Tribune from Islamabad had reported. "The report is completely baseless and false," government sources told UNI. "The news story is pure fabrication and nonsensical," added the sources. India, in the past, had only three times recalled its envoy from Pakistan, that too, at the height of tension between the two neighbours. Last time, New Delhi pulled out its High Commissioner Vijay Nambiar from Pakistan in December 2001 after the terrorists attack on Parliament. Before this, Indian envoys were recalled from Islamabad during the 1965 war and 1971 war. India had ordered Pakistani High Commissioner Ashraf Qazi to leave in the backdrop of Kaluchak terror attack in 2002 but the diplomatic ties were restored the very next year. The fresh diplomatic standoff has escalated after a Pakistani staffer was caught red-handed exchanging sensitive documents from his local accomplishes. Pakistan moved out its six staffers from its high commission in New Delhi in the wake of its official being ordered to leave due to his involvement in the espionage racket. Immediately after this, Pakistan put out names of Indian officials working in Islamabad mission. Though, the External Affairs Ministry has officially deplored the Pakistani authorities for naming eight of the Indian diplomats, putting them into security risk, it did not confirm the eventual recalling of these officials. More UNI MK SW SNU 1418 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0090-1009323.Xml
School Director Amit Jain used to scold the accused Parwaliya village-resident Kamran, who remained absent frequently and did not wear school uniform despite several warnings. Kamran came to school sans uniform this morning. Mr Jain rebuked him for not wearing uniform and asked him to go out of the class.

Peeved over the incident, Kamran came back after ten minutes and shot at Mr Jain at his chamber and fled from the scene immediately.

Mr Jain, who received bullet shot at his lower abdomen, was rushed to the local hospital. As his condition was critical, he was referred to Indore for further treatment.

City Superintendent of Police Deepak Shukla said that the student most probably opened fire from a 12-bore crude gun. He said a manhunt was launched to nab the culprit.UNI XC-BDG SW SNU 1550

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Taking up the cudgels against the Modi Government's dictatorial one-day ban on NDTV, Punjab Congress president Capt Amarinder Singh today announced a day-long protest on November 9 to coincide with the TV channel's blackout if Prime Minister Narendra Modi fails to withdraw the ban order. Addressing the media here, the PPCC chief said if the authoritarian orders were not withdrawn, his party would stage a dharna on this 'dark day for India's democracy' outside the Punjab Governor's residence here. He hoped that better sense would prevail on the Prime Minister and he would ensure that the obnoxious orders are taken back by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Alleging a similar effort in Punjab by the Akali regime to gag the media, Capt Singh said his government, once in power, will immediately unshackle the media from the control of the Badals and their cronies, and allow all media organisations equal opportunity to flourish and grow in a professional environment. He appealed to the media across the country to show solidarity with NDTV, and come out on the streets against the repressive orders of the central government. Condemning the development as an attempt to rip apart the country's democratic fiber by stifling the free voice of the independent media, the PPCC president said the nation could not remain a mute spectator to this brazen murder of democracy and assault on free speech by the Modi Government. Reacting to the BJP stand that the ban order had been necessitated in the interest of national security, Capt Amarinder questioned the new definition sought to be given to national security by the Modi government. "Are you questioning the media's nationalism and patriotism," he demanded to know from the Prime Minister. When the Modi Government had itself invited an ISI team to the Pathankot Air Force Station post the attack how could it possibly consider an Indian TV channel's coverage to be anti-national, he asked.MORE UNI DB SW SNU 1537 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-1009478.Xml
Even as the State Government is going aheadwith its plans to celebrate Tipu Jayanti on November 10 despiteadverse intelligence reports anticipating trouble, a BJP activistwho was returning after a peace meeting on Tipu Jayanti celebrationswas allegedly hacked to death last night in Periyapatna. As a precautionary measure and to avoid trouble in Periyapatna,the Police brought the dead body to Mysuru where the post-mortem wasconducted amidst tight security. More than 200 people had assembledat the K.R. Hospital mortuary and the premises was barricaded by the Police preventing them to enter into hospital. The murdered activist is Magalli J. Ravi, former Vice- Presidentof Periyapatna Taluk BJP Yuva Morcha. A bachelor, Magalli Ravi wasvery active in BJP and according to party sources, he was consideredas a growing youth leader. Police said that following the State Government decision tocelebrate Tipu Jayanti, some groups had opposed it in Periyapatna.Following this, a peace meeting was called at Circle Inspector'soffice and Ravi too attended the meeting along with other local leadersand religious heads. After the meeting held by Circle Inspector Siddaiah, Ravi left theplace on his bike to Magalli that is 4 km from Periyapatna. Somepassers-by on the stretch noticed that Ravi was lying in a pool ofblood with his bike fallen nearby. There was a deep gash on his headand he had died due to bleeding. Passers-by alerted Ravi's brotherSwamy who informed the Police. Swamy identified before the police that the body belonged to hisbrother. Soon, a huge crowd had gathered at the spot as the newsspread and the Police decided to take the body to Mysuru to preventtrouble. Accordingly, the body was brought to K.R. Hospital . Speaking to reporters, Swamy and Periyapatna Taluk BJP PresidentB.J. Ravi said that it was a murder by some anti-social elementsthat needed to be probed. While the Periyapatna Police were preparing to shift Ravi's bodyback to Magalli after post-mortem, BJP leaders objected to this andtold the Police that they were waiting for the arrival ofMysuru-Kodagu Member of Parliament Pratap Simha. This led to heatedarguments between the BJP activists and the Police. Finally, it wasdecided to wait for the MP who was on his way to Mysuru from Bengaluru. Pratap Simha said that he would demand a speedy and impartialprobe to bring the murderers to book. "As the murder took placeafter the peace meeting in the wake of the State Government's moveto celebrate Tipu Jayanti, it must be thoroughly investigated. I amin touch with the Periyapatna Circle Inspector and have directed fora fair investigation," he said.UNI BSP MSP CS 1816 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0286-1009904.Xml
The AIADMK and All India N R Congress today lodged a complaint with Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Candavelou alleging that the election officials are functioning in support of the ruling Congress party. Both the parties submitted separate memorandums to CEO in this regard. AIADMK Secretary Purushotaman, legislature party leader Anbazhagan, Rajya Sabha member Gokula Krishnan and N R Congress legislator Jayabal, and General Secretary V Bhalan met the CEO this evening. Later, Mr.Anbazhagan told newspersons that Chief Minister V Narayanasamy out of fear of defeat in the by-election is taking steps to stall the peaceful electioneering by the AIADMK and N R Congress.The AIADMK cadres are being harassed by police and vehicles of the party team is being impounded. Further, the Election Department is functioning in support of the ruling party, he alleged. Hence, a complaint was forwarded to the Chief Election Commissioner through the CEO here, he said. He further said that since Mr Narayanasamy is contesting the election, it should be held under the direct supervision of the Election Commission of India and CRPF would be deployed for security .UNI PAB CS 1900 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0275-1010040.Xml
Stating that BJD in Odisha is very much scared of the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan today said this was the reason why the ruling party was trying to enter into an unholy alliance with the Congress. Addressing the workers at party office here on the preparation for November 25 'Maha samavesh,' to expose the 'corrupt and inefficient BJD government' in the state, Mr Pradhan said his part welcomed the 'unholy and vested alliance' of the BJD and Congress in the state. The Union Minister said BJD Parliamentary Party Leader in the Lok Sabha Bhartruhari Mahatab's recent statement indicating the possibility of an alliance with the Congress in the changed political scenario, must have the clearance from Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. For a seasoned and senior BJD leader like Mr Mahatab, such statement must have the approval of the Chief Minister, Mr Pradhan remarked and said his party welcomed the 'unholy alliance between the BJD and Congress'. The Union Minister said the denial of the Chief Minister and also the Congress leaders in the state after 24 hours on Mr Mahatab's statement, had given enough indication about the opportunistic politics in the state. The 'understanding' between the Congress and BJD was nothing new in Odisha politics as the Naveen Patnaik government had survived in 2009 with the support of Congress, after the breaking of alliance between the BJD and BJP in the state.UNI DP RN RJ 1927 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0311-1010090.Xml
Gunmen looted the motorcycle of a policeman and jewellery of his wife near Nahar bridge under Ramgarh police station area in Kaimur district today. Police said here that four desperadoes looted the motorcycle of the policeman Parmanand Yadav and also jewellery of his wife near Nahar bridge when he was returning to his in law's house at Nonar village on his motorcycle after purchasing various commodities from Ramgarh market in connection with Chhat festival. He is posted at Kaimur Police Superintendent`s office. They also fled after committing the crime. A massive manhunt is on to nab culprits. UNI XC DH RN SW 1936 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0311-1010166.Xml
MISSOULA  A former employee at the Montana State Crime lab has been charged with stealing narcotics meant to be used as evidence in criminal cases.

Steven Conrad Brester, charged with felonies for tampering with public records, criminal possession of dangerous drugs and tampering with or fabricating evidence, made his initial appearance in Missoula County Justice Court on Thursday.

According to a court affidavit, supervisors at the Montana State Crime Lab  where Brester, 54, worked as an evidence technician  told investigators in June 2015 they believed he had been stealing narcotic medications that had been submitted as evidence in criminal cases. The Montana Department of Justice opened an investigation into the allegations.

The affidavit outlined the following:

Brester allegedly reported in April 2015 he had lost an oxycodone pill while processing evidence, but a search of the facility did not find the drug. The incident caused a supervisor to conduct an audit of the evidence held in the labs vault, which found two pieces of evidence  in the form of hydrocodone pills  were missing.

In May 2015, the Missoula crime lab was informed by law enforcement agencies across the state that evidence returned from the lab was missing items, including narcotics, that had been submitted. An investigation found 18 times when Brester allegedly created a shipping receipt that didnt have the evidence, then made another showing the items had been sent back to the law enforcement agencies.

Because of those receipts, police and sheriffs departments thought the crime lab still had the narcotics while the crime labs own records would see them as having been returned, according to the affidavit.

Brester had worked at the crime lab since September 2014, and was fired in June 2015 after one of his supervisors allegedly saw him receive a package of evidence containing around 70 pills. The supervisor photographed the pills when Brester left his workstation, and later that day saw the pills had been crushed, with roughly half the amount of original count appearing to be missing.

The inspection of the vault also found that multiple packages of evidence containing narcotics had been cut into, and found instances where non-narcotic pills had been substituted in place of narcotics. During the investigation into Bresters alleged crimes, the Montana Attorney Generals Office said at least 50 drug cases across Montana were affected.

Before working at the crime lab, Brester was an officer at the Missoula Police Department from 1992 until 2012, when he retired at the rank of lieutenant.

During his court appearance Thursday, Missoula County Attorney Kirsten Pabst said after charges were filed in October, Brester came to court voluntarily after receiving a summons to appear. She did not ask for a specific bail amount, but requested that Justice of the Peace Marie Andersen put Brester on drug testing.

For our sake and his own sake, we just want to make sure hes staying clean, Pabst said.

She also asked that he not be allowed to go to the crime lab or speak with any crime lab employees, past or present.

Bresters attorney Mat Stevenson asked for his client to remain free on his own recognizance. He added that Brester had already been voluntarily going through drug testing on a weekly basis.

Andersen allowed the release and imposed the restrictions about the crime lab and its employees, and told Brester to continue his drug testing.
Mr Singh laid special emphasis on sharing the knowledge base and advance technologies with the under developed economies, and enabling investments in multi-hazard early warning systems.

He said India was ready to make its space capabilities available to any country for the purpose of disaster risk management

The Minister was speaking at the closing ceremony of Asian Ministerial Conference for Disaster Risk Reduction (AMCDRR).

He also called for focusing on mainstreaming the marginalised sections, which are most vulnerable and suffer irreparable losses in natural or man-made disasters;

Mr Singh emphasised on greater involvement of women, in both disaster risk management and post-disaster management.

He also stressed on adoption of traditional practices of risk reduction, which have evolved and been perfected over centuries.

Noting that the Sendai Framework focuses on preventing new disaster risks, reducing existing disaster risks and strengthening disaster resilience, he said this required a shift from stand-alone disaster management to a more holistic risk resilient development practice, supported by regional and international cooperation.

By hosting the First Regional Platform, this Asian Ministerial Conference of 2016, India has underlined its commitment to such cooperation, he said.

India was ready to work with partner agencies and multilateral agencies to establish a facility for technical support to post-disaster construction of houses, Mr Singh said and hoped that India's contribution of USD one million dollars will be used as seed money towards this.

''This Conference has provided us a platform, not only to share our experiences and best practices, but also to arrive at a consensus roadmap to implement the Sendai Framework in our region,'' the Minister added. UNI NAZ RJ 2038

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Strongly condemning the one-day ban on NDTV for covering the Pathankot airbase attack and calling it as a brazen attempt to muzzle the freedom of press, the Delhi Union of Journalists and the All India Newspapers Employees have urged for immediate withdrawal of the 'undemocratic' ban. Meanwhile, in a statement issued to the press, Delhi Union of Journalists president SK Pande and General Secretary Sujata Madhok said,''the Federation will hold an emergency executive meeting on November 7 at the body's office preceded by its executive where action plan against the ban will be finalised.'' The statement added,''we see no reason for singling out NDTV's Hindi channel in this manner when all channels reported the attack in a similar fashion. In a democracy no bureaucratic body such as the Inter-ministerial committee of the Information and Broadcasting ministry that issued this order should have arbitrary powers. Exercise of such powers reminds one of the dark days of the Emergency when the media was suppressed and citizen's freedom lost.'' It further added , ''We commend the Editor's Guild for issuing a strong statement protesting the ban and call upon all media bodies and journalists to unitedly protest this attack on media freedom. We demand an immediate revocation of this undemocratic order.'' In a joint statement, President SD Thakur, Vice-President SK Pande and General Secretary Balagopalan of the All India Newspapers Employees Federation said,''We express full solidarity with the movement against the ban, which is ominous, unprecedented and an attack on the freedom of the press. It is indeed arbitrary and a colorable exercise of power to muzzle the press by the authorities.'' Calling the ban ''a selective attempt at targetting NDTV'' ,the AINEF demanded its immediate withdrawal.UNI SY AE SNU 2000 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0093-1010142.Xml
Tribal land was encroached by some influential people and a dispute was going on over the issue between them for sometime.

Last night, these people came in a trolley along with others to the village and attacked with sharp-edged weapons on tribal folk killing Madan Singh Adivasi (25) and his elder brother Bhuralal Singh Adivasi (40) on the spot.

The tribesmen also retaliated and in the clash, total 16 persons including some women from both sides were injured.

The injured were referred to Bhopal for treatment after being administered first aid. The accused were yet to be arrested.UNI XC-BDG SW SHK 2148

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The indigenous minority communities are sons of the soil and there is no need for them to be afraid of any political discourse, said Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal today while interacting with the leadership of indigenous minority organisations of the state here. The Chief Minister said any discourse may take place in the political arena but the indigenous minority people being the sons of the soil should not be swayed away or be afraid of any such discussion. Instead he called upon them for devoting their energy for positive works and overall development of the state. "Government is committed to develop Team Assam involving all communities living in the state and will safeguard the indigenous minority communities from all threats", Mr Sonowal asserted. The Chief Minister also urged the indigenous minority community to play a bigger role in the developmental activities in the state and to act as a major stakeholder in the functioning of the Government. Stressing on the need for joint effort by the majority and minority community of the state for upholding harmony, understanding and fraternity amongst all, Mr Sonowal further appealed the leadership of the organizations to give impetus to build compassionate and tolerant society and vowed for working with dedication for equal development of all indigenous people. The interaction programme was attended by about 40 indigenous minority organizations of the state representing Islam, Christian, Buddhist, Sikh and Jain communities. Each of the organisations submitted memorandum to the Chief Minister and unanimously raised demands for survey of their respective communities for identification and constitutional safeguard. The interaction programme was attended by state Minister Naba Kumar Doley, Commissioner & Secretary, Govt of Assam Rajesh Prasad, President of BJP Minority Forum Mominul Awal and BJP Spokesperson Rupam Goswami among others.UNI SG RN CJ SHK 2140 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0311-1010269.Xml
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today got a shot in the arm when five members of two Autonomous Councils joined the party here in Meghalaya. Four MDC elected to the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council (GHADC) and one from the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council (KHADC). Those who joined the party included Laitumkhrah MDC, Neil Antonio War of the KHADC, who recently resigned from the Congress, former Congress legislator and Ismail Marak, Righteous Sangma of the Nationalist Congress Party, Independent MDC, Soifur Rehman, Kurush Marak (all GHADC) and former KHADC MDC, Field Marshal Mawphniang. Mr War had recently resigned from the Congress in protest against suspension of KHADC chief PN Syiem as MLA and MDC. He claimed that his joining the BJP will further strengthen the ruling PDF executive committee led by Mr Syiem. BJP national spokesman Nalin Kohli said that the "countdown has begun" in as far as MLAs and MDCs leaving the ruling Congress. "The countdown has begun and more and more people are feeling that staying in a sinking ship will be injurious for their survival," he said. Mr Kohli claimed that more and more people are feeling that staying on the sinking ship will be injurious to their own survival and health and they will have no face to go to the people due to lack of development. Mr Kohli also urged voters in the upcoming by-elections to the district councils to defeat the Congress party. The BJP leader also said that the Congress is rattled by the fight of one individual and therefore it "politically" removed him. "It is time for the voters to oppose the corrupt, inefficient and ineffective state government through the mandate of their vote," Mr Kohli said. He said that those who joined the BJP today chose to do so because of the BJP's slogan of "Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas". Mr Kohli said those who joined the party had told him that they did so because they wanted development. UNI RRK CJ SHK 2206 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0098-1010402.Xml
Claiming that neither SP or BSP can bring development in Uttar Pradesh, BJP president Amit Shah today said that if people of the state want progress and prosperity, then they need to elect a BJP government with full majority in the coming state Assembly elections. "The approaching Assembly elections of UP are crucial for the state's future. In the last 15 years, it was either SP or BSP that formed the government and as a result, development in the state has completely stopped", he said. Mr Shah, along with senior party leaders, including Union Minister Kalraj Mishra and state party president Keshav Prasad Maurya, was here to flag off the first Parivartan yatra of the party, to launch the poll campaign in the state. Mr Shah said UP has become a laggard on the development index and those responsible for progress of the state are fighting among themselves. "Uncle (Shivpal Yadav) is abusing his nephew (Akhilesh Yadav) and vice versa, while aunt (Mayawati) is abusing both. None of them are bothered about development", he alleged. "You already have PM Narendra Modi at the centre who has been elected by you. If we have BJP CM in UP, we will make it India's number One state in the next five years," he promised. Commenting on Mayawati's claims that if BSP wins, law and order will become robust in the state, the BJP president said, "I wish to remind her that during her rule between 2008 and 2011, there were maximum cases of atrocities against the Dalits. Maximum murders took place during Mayawati's rule, while crime rate was 30 per cent more than the national average. There was also rampant corruption, when Mayawati was CM." He added if BSP again comes to power, UP will not benefit, but Mayawati will have additional 200-300 statues of her own across the state. Further claiming that it was during Kalyan Singh's tenure as CM that UP became free of goonda elements, Mr Shah said during the present SP's rule, the land grabbing incident in Mathura hurt UP's image across the country. "The goondas of SP have been responsible for grabbing land of the poor, while the mining mafia has cornered the state's resources. Besides, during SP's rule, crime grew by a massive 161 per cent. Western UP has been worst hit and as a result, the original inhabitants of this region have been forced to migrate to other states", he further charged. "I assure all of you that if BJP forms government in UP, no one will have to leave his or her village. If anyone has to leave, it will be those, who are trying to uproot you from your homes and villages". Talking about the importance of western UP for BJP, he said in 2014, this region had laid the foundation of BJP's spectacular victory in Lok Sabha elections. ''This time too, we are kick starting our campaign from western UP to repeat the feat,'' he added. First of BJP's four Parivartan Yatras will be taken out through the state and conclude on December 24, in Lucknow. The second yatra will be flagged off by Mr Shah from Jhansi tomorrow, the third one from Sonebhadra on November 8 and the fourth one from Vallua the next day.UNI MB RJ SHK 2252 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0098-1010392.Xml
A 41 year old ex-service man who now workswith a bank as a security guard has been today arrested along withhis second wife on the alleged charges of repeatedly raping histeenage daughter. Police PRO Sukhada Narkar stated in an official release late tonightthat the victim aged 17 resided with her brother in Darbhangadistrict of Bihar after the death of her mother. Her father got married to anotherlady and in the meanwhile got employed with a nationalised bank.It was on September 11, 2016 the victim came down to Thane to residewith her father where already her step mother was residing.On the first day of this month at about 11 pm her foster mother forcedher to go to the room where her father was drinking. The father raped the girl in presence of his new wife.This continued repeatedly every day and the "mother" warned her not to let anyone know about the sexual harassment. The couple locked the girl in the house. As days passed the father also showed her objectionable pictures in mobile and laptop and sexually abused her. It was this morning at about 7.30 a.m. when her father had left forwork and her mother was fast asleep the victim sneaked out andinformed the girl in the neighbourhood that her father wasmisbehaving with her and asked her to take her out of the clutchesof the couple. As luck would have it the mother got up from thesleep and upon seeing her plea pulled her inside the house andlocked her once again after warning her.The girl did not not give up and again today, when her mother hadgone for a bath she came to the balcony and raised an alarm callingout the neighbours. The neighbours who felt something fishy rushed to rescue the girl and handed her overto the police.The Naupada police who took down the complaint of the girl arrestedthe ex-army man and his wife and charged them under sections376(f), 323, 342, 506, 120(b), 34 of the IPC and also sections5(N), 6, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 12 of the POCSO Act. UNI XC CJ SHK 2315 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0171-1010405.Xml
The San Diego Union-Tribune says a flier inserted in the October 16 bulletin of the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church called voting Democratic a mortal sin.

It cited five policies -- including support for abortion and same-sex marriage -- that will doom supporters to eternal damnation, the CBS News online reported.

On October 30, the bulletin itself took a Hillary Clinton quote out of context to claim she is influenced by Satan. It also criticised immigration policies and gun control.

The church doubles as an election polling site.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego said on Wednesday that the messages do not reflect Catholic teaching and are inappropriate. The diocese says people should vote their consciences.

"By descending into endorsing one party or another or suggesting outlandishly that if you vote for one party you will go to hell is just flat out wrong," spokesman Kevin Eckery told CBS San Diego affiliate KFMB-TV.

--IANS lok/

( 188 Words)

2016-11-05-03:52:02 (IANS)
Pakistan's participation at an important global anti-tobacco conference in India next week will, at best, be limited. "Islamabad will not be sending a delegation to the event, but some local representatives from its High Commission in India will attend it, a report in The Express Tribune quoting official sources said today. The confusion arose after a statement issued by the Minister of State for National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination(NHSRC) was denied by other officials at the Federal Ministry of Health. Minister Saira Afzal Tarar was quoted by Reuters as saying : "It is a very important meeting on tobacco, but our visit does not appear feasible due to ongoing tensions." Health Ministry officials had been unable to secure visas to attend the conference, the newspaper quoting further Ms Tarar's statement. However, Director-General NHSRC Dr Asad Hafeez, he said: "It is wrong to suggest that Pakistan will not participate in the conference next week. Pakistan is very much participating in the conference." He said "A country could participate in a conference by sending a delegation or it could participate at local level". "Some officials from the Pakistan High Commission in India are going to participate in the conference on behalf of the federal ministry of health," he said. Dr Hafeez said that two to three weeks ago it was decided that no delegation will be sent from Pakistan to attend the conference and Pakistan High Commission was asked to nominate some officials for this purpose. He asserted that no member of the Pakistani delegation had applied for visa so "there is no way the Indian High Commission can refuse to issue visas".UNI XC SS -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0089-1009221.Xml
HELENA  A Montana lawmaker is suing Commissioner of Political Practices Jonathan Motl after Motl said the legislator faces penalties for revealing a confidential ethics complaint.

Republican Rep. Brad Tschida of Missoula says in the federal lawsuit filed Friday that Motl's threat of penalties has silenced him and prevents him from performing his legislative duties.

Tschida wrote a letter to a number of legislators about the Sept. 21 complaint accusing Bullock, a Democrat, and Commerce Director Meg O'Leary of malfeasance. Tschida also accuses Commissioner of Political Practices Jonathan Motl of covering up for Bullock and O'Leary.

Tschida's complaint is over allegations that Bullock misused the state plane for short trips and to attend a 2014 Paul McCartney concert in Missoula. O'Leary, who was a passenger on that flight, violated ethics laws when she accepted the flight as a gift, Tschida alleges.

Bullock is in a close race against Republican challenger Greg Gianforte. The governor's use of the state plane has been an issue raised by Gianforte, Tschida and other Republicans throughout the campaign. Bullock has partially reimbursed the state for times he used the plane to attend campaign events scheduled the same day as official business.

The ethics complaint was filed with Motl's office. State law says the person filing the complaint and the subject of the complaint must maintain confidentiality until the commissioner issues a decision. Motl said Tschida violated that law and he would seek a severe penalty.

"His issue is not larger than the requirements of the law," Motl said. "Mr. Tschida is not God."

Motl said the violation amounts to official misconduct, which carries penalties of a fine up to $500 and up to six months in jail.

Tschida did not return a call or email for comment. In the letter, he says Motl told him the matter is confidential but the Montana Constitution grants him immunity to speak about it.

He cited the constitution's Speech and Debate clause, which says a legislator "shall not be questioned in any other place for any speech or debate in the legislature."

Motl said that clause does not apply. Tschida's letter is not "speech or debate in the legislature," and prior Montana Supreme Court decisions have ruled a legislator's interest in the outcome of an ethics complaint is no greater than an ordinary citizen's, he said.

Gianforte spokesman Aaron Flint said it is disturbing that Motl has not acted on Tschida's complaint for two months.

"Once again, we have a governor demonstrating that he believes he is above the law," Flint said. "Even after being caught red handed flying to rock concerts and campaign events and fundraisers, he continues to abuse taxpayer resources for his own gain."

Bullock campaign spokesman Jason Pitt said it is Tschida who believes he is above the law.

"He crossed the line by violating ethics rules and abusing his role as a state lawmaker to peddle Mr. Gianforte's New Jersey-style political attacks just days before an election  and Montanans deserve better," Pitt said.
Turkey's military hit 71 Islamic State targets in Syria over the last 24 hours, the army said today, intensifying strikes against the militant group, which has claimed responsibility for the latest bomb attack in southeast Turkey. Five Islamic State fighters were killed in the strikes, as were five Turkey-backed rebels and one Turkish soldier, the army said in its statement. It said coalition forces conducted five air strikes, killing another eight Islamic State militants. Turkey is backing a group of Syrian Arabs and Turkmen in northern Syria in its Euphrates Shield operation, which has swept Islamic State from its southern border. The Sunni hardline group has claimed responsibility for a car bomb in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir yesterday that killed nine people and wounded more than 100.REUTERS SHS VP1238 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0329-1009210.Xml
Two Italian workers and a Canadian kidnapped in Libya in September have been freed and were flown to Italy early today, Italian and Libyan officials said.Danilo Calonego, Bruno Cacace and Frank Poccia - were abducted on Sept 19 in Ghat, southwestern Libya, near the site where they worked by an armed group that blocked the vehicle in which they were travelling, the Italian foreign ministry added in a statement.The two Italians were technicians employed by construction group Conicos, the foreign ministry said."The three were released in the early hours of Saturday and were handed over to Italian authorities," said Hassan Ottman, a spokesman for the municipal council in the Libyan town of Ghat.All three men were working on airport projects in Libya's southwestern desert near the border with Algeria when kidnapped, Ghat's mayor said at the time.Numerous criminal and armed groups are active in Libya's vast southern desert, and al Qaeda-linked Islamist militants have long had a presence across the border between Libya and Algeria.REUTERS SW VP1528 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0101-1009484.Xml
Turkish authorities ordered the formal arrest of nine staff members of a leading opposition newspaper today and detained more pro-Kurdish officials, widening an anti-terrorism probe that has drawn condemnation from the West.The arrests, a day after the co-leaders of the pro-Kurdish opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) were jailed pending trial, are likely to spark more concern among Turkey's allies about President Tayyip Erdogan's intolerance of dissent.More than 110,000 officials, including judges, teachers, police and civil servants, have been detained or suspended following a failed coup in July. Erdogan's critics say he is using the coup as a pretext to squash the opposition. Ankara says the crackdown is necessary to root out terrorists.Authorities ordered the formal arrest pending trial of nine executives and journalists from the secularist Cumhuriyet newspaper, including the editor and senior staff of the paper, broadcaster NTV and other media reported. They had been detained since Monday.In addition, nine HDP officials, including some provincial and district heads, were detained in the southeastern province of Adana, a party official said.The HDP, Turkey's third-largest party, made history last year by becoming the first Kurdish-rooted party to win the 10 per cent of the vote required to enter parliament.Erdogan and the ruling AK Party accuse the HDP of links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has carried out a violent insurgency in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast for three decades. The HDP denies direct links and says it is working for a peaceful resolution of the Kurdish conflict.NATO MEMBERYesterday, the co-leaders of the HDP, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, were jailed pending trial after being held in overnight raids. Ten other HDP lawmakers were also detained, although some were later released.The arrests heightened concern among Western allies about the political direction of Turkey, a NATO member and a buffer between Europe and the conflicts raging in Syria and Iraq.European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said she was "extremely worried" by the arrests, and raised her concerns in a telephone call with Turkey's foreign and EU affairs ministers late on Friday. The United States expressed "deep concern".News of the arrests also shook financial markets on Friday, with the lira currency falling to a record low.Hours after the detentions on Friday, a car bomb killed 10 people and wounded more than 100 near a police station in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir where some of the lawmakers were being held.Islamic State jihadists later claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the militant group's Amaq news agency.CRITICAL MEDIAIstanbul prosecutors have said staff at the paper, one of few media outlets still critical of President Tayyip Erdogan, are suspected of committing crimes on behalf of Kurdish militants and the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. Turkey accuses Gulen of orchestrating the coup attempt, though he denies any involvement.Cumhuriyet's previous editor, Can Dundar, was jailed last year for publishing state secrets involving Turkey's support for Syrian rebels. The case sparked censure from rights groups and Western governments worried about worsening human rights in Turkey under Erdogan.Additionally, 170 newspapers, magazines, television stations and news agencies have been shut down, leaving 2,500 journalists unemployed, Turkey's journalists' association said in a statement protesting against Monday's detentions. REUTERS SW AS1800 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0101-1009860.Xml
Turkish police used water cannon and tear gas against crowds of protesters in Istanbul on Saturday, a Reuters cameraman at the scene said, in an attempt to block them from marching to the office of an opposition newspaper whose staff had been arrested. The protest in central Istanbul came hours after Turkish authorities ordered the formal arrest of nine staff members of the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper and detained more pro-Kurdish officials, widening an anti-terrorism probe that has drawn condemnation from the West. On Friday the co-leaders of the pro-Kurdish opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) were also jailed pending trial. Tear gas filled some streets in the Sisli neighbourhood of Istanbul, another Reuters reporter near the scene said, while police helicopters were heard buzzing overhead.REUTERS CJ BL1956 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0400-1010240.Xml
Ireland's foreign ministry is investigating reports that an Irish citizen died in a suicide attack near the Iraqi city of Mosul, a spokesman said on Saturday. The Islamic State's (IS) al-Jazeerah Province in northern Iraq on Friday said Abu Usama al-Irelandi detonated an explosive-laden vehicle, killing and wounding dozens, the SITE Intelligence Group, a U.S. company that monitors Islamist websites, reported. Abu Usama is a pseudonym used by Irish Islamic State sympathiser Terence Kelly. Pictures posted by Islamic State sympathisers on Twitter showed a man resembling Kelly posing with a machine gun in front of an armoured car. "The martyrdom-seeking brother Abu Usama al-Irelandi - may Allah accept him - set off with and detonated his explosives-laden vehicle on another gathering of apostates, in Aghazil al-Kabir village, south of Tal Afar, killing and wounding dozens of them, and destroying several of their vehicles," SITE quoted the IS statement as saying. Tal Afar is around 80 kilometres west of Mosul. Reuters could not immediately confirm the report.Ireland's Foreign Ministry said it was looking into reports of an Irish citizen's death, but declined to comment on their identity. "The department is aware of media reports concerning an Irish citizen in Iraq and is seeking to clarify the situation," the Irish Foreign Ministry spokesman said. Kelly was brought up Catholic in central Dublin and converted to Islam in his early 30s in Saudi Arabia, where he worked as a nurse for three years, converting in prison after he was arrested for illegally brewing alcohol. He also used the pseudonym Khalid Kelly. Kelly repeatedly praised al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden in interviews with the Irish media and was arrested in 2011 for making threats against U.S. President Barack Obama ahead of his visit to Ireland. He travelled to Pakistan and later told interviewers that he had trained with militants there.Iraqi troops on Saturday advanced towards Mosul, battling for the last town left between them and the Islamic State stronghold to the north, which was already under assault from special forces inside its eastern districts. Recapturing Mosul would effectively crush the Iraqi half of a self-proclaimed caliphate declared by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque two years ago. His Islamist group also controls large parts of east SyriaREUTERS CJ BL2120 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0400-1010364.Xml
LUSAKA, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Zambia's energy regulator on Friday refuted media reports that it intends to increase fuel prices in the coming days, barely few weeks after increasing fuel pump prices.

Last month, the Energy Regulation Board (ERB) increased fuel pump prices by 40 percent following the removal of subsidies.

There have been reports on social media that fuel prices will be increased anytime.

But Kwali Mfuni, the energy regulator's public relations manager, said there will be no further increase in the pump price of fuel and called on members of the public not to panic and ignore the unverified reports.

"Contrary to reports that there is a pending fuel price increase, the ERB wishes to categorically state that the board has not made any decision to further adjust pump prices," she said in a statement.

The fuel pump price will remain unchanged, she added.

The energy regulator, she said, has continued monitoring international oil prices and the performance of the local currency against the United States dollar, which are the two factors the regulator consider whenever assessing fuel prices. Enditem
NEW DELHI, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Indian authorities have ordered the popular news channel NDTV India to go off the air for a day over its coverage of an attack on an Indian airbase in Punjab state.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) said in an order to owners of the channel on Thursday that it was being penalized for broadcasting "strategically-sensitive details" of the attack on the military base in January.

The ministry said the channel's coverage of the attack "put India's national security at risk."

A four-day gunfight inside the Pathankot airbase ended with the killing of seven Indian troops and six gunmen.

The news channel however said it's coverage was not different from other TV news channels and it was exploring options to challenge the ban.

"It is shocking that NDTV has been singled out in this manner. Every channel and newspaper had similar coverage. In fact NDTV's coverage was particularly balanced ... NDTV is examining all options in this matter," NDTV said on Friday.

As per the government order, the 24-hour ban on the channel would come into effect on Nov. 9, starting from 12:00 a.m. local time.

The ban has evoked sharp condemnation from journalists and India's editors body - Editors Guild of India, which describe it as an attack on freedom of press in the country.

"The Editors Guild of India strongly condemns the unprecedented decision of the inter-ministerial committee of the Union Ministry of Information Broadcasting to take NDTV India off the air for a day and demands that the order be immediately rescinded," it said in a statement.

So far it is the first order in India against a news channel to go off the air.
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during an awarding ceremony in Moscow, Russia on Nov. 4, 2016. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday awarded Order of Friendship award to Chen Ping, president of the National Grand Theater in Beijing, for his contribution to promoting Russia-China ties through cultural exchange. (Xinhua/Bai Xueqi)

MOSCOW, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday awarded a national award to Chen Ping, president of the National Grand Theater in Beijing, for his contribution to promoting Russia-China ties through cultural exchange.

Putin commended Chen for his efforts in strengthening relations between Russia and China with theater projects.

"I am glad to present you with the Order of Friendship," Putin said at the award ceremony. "Thanks to exchanges between peoples of both nations, the relations between Russia and China have reached an incredibly high level of true strategic partnership."

Founded in 1994, the Order of Friendship is meant to reward Russian citizens and foreign nationals for outstanding accomplishments in strengthening peace, friendship, cooperation and understanding between peoples.

Among those awarded are former President of the International Olympic Committee Jacques Rogge and Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon.
ABUJA, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Nigerian troops have foiled two suicide attacks by terror group Boko Haram in the country's northeastern state of Borno, an army spokesman said on Friday.

Five people involved in the botched attacks were killed by vigilant troops in Yamatake and Gwoza districts of Borno State late Thursday, said Sani Usman, the army spokesman.

He told Xinhua a female suicide bomber was among those gunned down as she attempted to enter a military location in Yamatake district.

A soldier also died in the process of foiling the attack, he added.

The Nigerian government has launched several military operations over the past months to eliminate the terror group, which emerged in northeast Nigeria's Borno region. Enditem
BRUSSELS, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Belgium's federal police launched a new website listing the "most wanted" criminals in the country, announced the federal police on its official website on Friday.

Created by the federal police's Fugitive Active Search Team (FAST), this website aims at collecting clues on fugitives, allowing everyone to provide tips that may lead to their arrest.

A list of 20 criminals has already been published: "These 20 fugitives were sentenced in Belgium and are wanted by the Belgian police. They are only convicted fugitives, not suspects on the run who are under criminal investigation," reads a sentence above the pictures of the fugitives.

"At the moment, the main contribution to fugitive research is provided by international arrest warrants, but they are dedicated to the police whereas this website can be used by everyone," explained Belgian justice minister Koen Geens to local media RTL Info.

FAST's Martin Van Steenbrugghe explained that a similar European initiative has proved successful in the past.

A bill should also be submitted to Belgian parliament in 2017 by Geens in order to improve methods of fugitive research.
PARIS, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- France is seriously concerned after Turkey arrested Kurdish lawmakers, French foreign ministry spokesman Romain Nadal said on Friday.

"France calls on Turkey to respect the rule of law and fundamental rights including democracy and freedom of the press," Nadal told reporters in a daily e-briefing.

Earlier on Friday, Turkish authorities arrested Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, co-leaders of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and nine lawmakers of main pro-Kurdish opposition party, in a "terrorism" investigation, according to reports.
AMMAN, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- The number of American trainers killed in an exchange of fire in Jordan rose to three, the state-run PETRA news agency reported.

Two American trainers were killed in Jordan on Friday in exchange of fire, a source at the Jordan Armed Forces said earlier.

A third American trainer who was injured early Friday in the incident also died at hospital later Friday.

The source said a Jordanian officer was injured in the incident that occurred on Friday morning, adding the American trainers did not obey orders from guards at the entrance of an airbase in Al Jafr area.

The army said investigation got under way.

The U.S. embassy in Amman said it was following up on the incident.

"We have received reports about a security incident involving US personnel. We are in contact with the appropriate Jordanian authorities. We will report more information when available," the U.S. embassy said in a statement on its website.
Chinese Ambassador to Kenya Liu Xianfa (front, R) donates Chinese text books to Ben Ogutu(front, L), a senior official at the Kenyan ministry of foreign affairs, at the University of Nairobi's Confucius Institute in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, Nov. 4, 2016. A total of 30 Kenyan diplomats serving in various departments in the ministry of foreign affairs will undergo a four-month training in Chinese language. (Xinhua/Li Baishun)



NAIROBI, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese language training course for Kenyan diplomats was launched on Friday at the University of Nairobi's Confucius Institute where it will be carried out beginning next week.

A total of 30 Kenyan diplomats serving in various departments in the ministry of foreign affairs will undergo a four-month training in Chinese language.

Speaking at the launching ceremony, Chinese Ambassador to Kenya Liu Xianfa hailed the Chinese training course by terming it a milestone in China-Kenya bilateral cooperation.

Liu said the course, as a diplomat's capacity building program, is a latest testimony to the enhanced cooperation of the two sides.

He noted that proficiency in mandarin among Kenyan diplomats will enhance working relationship with their Chinese counterparts to revitalize bilateral cooperation.

"Joint efforts of both countries' diplomats will integrate our shared interests, combine the wishes and aspirations of both peoples toward common development and prosperity," Liu remarked.

"Kenya is expanding its engagement with emerging powers like China, and language will play a crucial role in this endeavor," Kenya's Cabinet Secretary for Foreign Affairs Amina Mohamed said in a speech read on her behalf by Ambassador Ben Ogutu, a senior official at the ministry of foreign affairs.

According to Mohamed, a grasp of spoken and written Chinese language among diplomats dovetails with Kenya's quest to cement strong and mutually beneficial ties with Beijing in diverse areas like trade, education and skills transfer.

Fluency in Chinese language among diplomats will advance cultural and economic diplomacy with the Asian giant, she added.
BEIRUT, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Hezbollah Chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah announced Friday that his party would not join the new government in Lebanon should Speaker Nabih Berri refrain from taking part in it.

"We won't join the next government if Speaker Berri and the AMAL Movement do not take part in it, and Speaker Berri is authorized to negotiate on behalf of the AMAL movement and Hezbollah," said Nasrallah in a televised speech.

Nasrallah stressed "Speaker Berri is a major guarantee and everyone who disagreed with him over the presidency must realize this."

"One must thoroughly recognize the major positive role that Speaker Berri played and his delicate administration of this juncture... He could have stripped the (presidential election) session of its quorum but he didn't," he said.

The Hezbollah chief called for the formation of a national unity government and the cooperation of all forces, pointing that Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri "has said that he will exert efforts in this direction."

"After having facilitated the designation of a new premier, we are also keen on facilitating the formation of the new cabinet, but positivity, cooperation and non-exclusion are needed," Nasrallah underlined.

Lebanon saw Monday the election of former Army Commander General Michel Aoun as president ending more than two and half years of vacuum following the end of the six-year tenure of former President Michel Suleiman in May 2014.

On Thursday, former Prime Minister Saad Hariri was asked to form the new cabinet.

He started his parliamentary deliberations on Friday in order to name his ministers.
LONDON, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Rothamsted Research announced Friday it had submitted an application to British regulators for a permission to carry out field trials of GM (genetically modified) wheat plants, which have the potential to produce higher yields.

The GM field trials are planned to be carried out on the Rothamsted Farm in 2017 and 2018, if a permission is granted by Britain's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), according to the Rothamsted Research, a British agricultural research institute.

Being one of the major grain crops worldwide, wheat provides about one-fifth of the total calories consumed globally.

Teaming up with researchers at the University of Essex and Lancaster University, scientists at Rothamsted Research have developed wheat plants that can carry out photosynthesis -- converting light energy into plant biomass -- more efficiently, which might lead to higher yields, according to Rothamsted Research.

The purpose of the proposed trial is to evaluate the performance of the engineered plants in the field, the institute said.

Britain tightly regulates GM crops, and the authorities have so far only green-lighted one field trial project of GM crops.

"If we are granted permission to perform a controlled experiment in our already established facilities here at Rothamsted Research, it will be a significant step forward," said Malcolm Hawkesford, lead scientist at Rothamsted for this trial.

"We will be able to assess in 'real environmental conditions' the potential of these plants to ultimately produce more, using the same resources and land area as their non-GM counterparts," said Hawkesford.
CAPE TOWN, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Southern African Development Community (SADC) Facilitator Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday met with three exiled leaders of Lesotho opposition political parties in Pretoria to brief them on efforts to ensure their safe return.

Ramaphosa, who is also South African Deputy President, briefed the opposition political leaders on deliberations and outcomes of the 36th Ordinary SADC Summit held in Mbabane, Swaziland in August 2016 regarding regional efforts to assist the people of Lesotho to consolidate peace and stability, said Ronnie Mamoepa, spokesperson for Ramaphosa.

Ramaphosa highlighted the SADC Summit decisions on the constitutional and security sector reform processes, efforts to facilitate the return of exiled political leaders and the deployment of the SADC Oversight Committee, according to Mamoepa.

In this regard, Ramaphosa will soon pay a working visit to Lesotho to introduce members of the Oversight Committee to all relevant stakeholders in the country, said Mamoepa.

The Oversight Committee, working in consultation with the Facilitator, will serve as an early-warning mechanism and assist the government of Lesotho with respect to constitutional and security sector reform.

Ramaphosa will also utilise the working visit to Lesotho to review progress regarding implementation of SADC decisions on the Phumaphi Commission of Inquiry and the Facilitator's recommendations on the constitutional and security reform process, Mamoepa said.

The meeting was attended by Lesotho opposition political leaders in exile. They included Former Prime Minister Tom Thabane, Theselle Maseribane, leader of the Basotho National Party and Keketso Rantsho, leader of the Reformed Congress of Lesotho who were joined in the meeting by leaders of the opposition.

Lesotho was forced into an early election in late February 2015 following an attempted coup in August the previous year. Pakalitha Mosisili emerged as the winner in the elections, becoming the kingdom's prime minister.

Following the coup, Thabane and his followers fled the country, claiming they were tipped about plots to kill them.

There have been reports that Thabane would return home in accordance with an agreement he signed with Mosisili.

But Thabane has said that if the plight of the other opposition leaders, soldiers, lawyers and journalists who fled with him were not addressed, he would remain in South Africa.

Ramaphosa has been mediating the political strife in Lesotho since the coup.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (R) and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton participate in the third and final presidential debate at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) in Las Vegas, Nevada, the United States, Oct. 19, 2016.(Xinhua/Yin Bogu)

By Matthew Rusling

WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Conservative-leaning Fox News Network has walked back claims that an indictment of U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is likely, but it remains unknown whether that will stop the rumors from circulating.

Fox News put out a report Wednesday claiming an indictment of the Democratic nominee was "likely," after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced it would re-open an investigation into alleged wrongdoing on the part of Clinton.

The news spread like wildfire and was re-printed by a number of highly-respected news publications, including Real Clear Politics - famous for its average of polls - and The Hill, as well as countless conservative websites and blogs.

But later, Fox appeared to walk back the comments, with the host, Bret Baier, saying he had spoken "inartfully." A number of other U.S. media outlets refuted Fox' s claims, with news outlets including NBC News, ABC News and CNN saying that their sources have told them otherwise.

On Thursday evening, Clinton's campaign called on the FBI to release a statement to put an end to what it called baseless news reports by Fox News.

But many search engine searches still show the initial Fox reports at the top of the page of search results, depending on the keywords used.

Moreover, conservative talk radio has latched onto the topic, and it remains unknown whether the rumors will continue to spread.

Such rumors are expected to cause further damage to Clinton campaign so close the the Election Day, as experts said they would dampen the enthusiasm among her supporters.

Clinton has been plagued by several scandals investigated by the FBI, including her use of a private email account instead of a secure government account while she was secretary of state, and the "pay for play" charges against the Clinton Foundation, a charity founded by Hillary Clinton's husband and former President Bill Clinton.

INDICTMENT WOULD BE DEVASTATING, BUT UNLIKELY

U.S. experts said an indictment would be devastating for Clinton- especially if she clinches the White House, but emphasizing that such indictment is unlikely.

"It would be devastating for a sitting president to be indicted. That would be very disruptive to the political system and the ability of that leader to function in the future," Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Darrell West told Xinhua.

Still, West added that an indictment is unlikely. "However, I don' t think there is much risk of this happening," he said.

Indeed, the ultimate decision maker on an indictment would be the Attorney General, who is appointed by the president.

"It is unlikely that an Attorney General appointed by President Clinton is going to allow an indictment to go forward," West said.

Dan Mahaffee, an analyst with the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, told Xinhua that if Clinton win the Nov. 8 election, any future indictment would create a shadow over her first 100 days and arguably delegitimize her presidency in the eyes of many Republicans.

That would further the partisan deadlock in Washington and exacerbate the negative tenor of politics, Mahaffee said.

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Commentary: The game of power that keeps American voters in suspense

PETERSBURGH, the United States, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- An adaption of American novelist George R. R. Martin's epic fantasy novels, A Song of Ice and Fire, Game of Thrones is a popular TV series which chronicles the violent dynastic struggles among the realm's noble families for the Iron Throne. Full story

News Analysis: FBI fiasco may dampen enthusiasm among Clinton supporters
by Maria Spiliopoulou

ATHENS, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras reshuffled his cabinet on Friday in an effort to pull the debt-laden country from painful austerity and recession to growth.

Outgoing government spokeswoman Olga Gerovassilis announced on national broadcaster ERT the composition of the new cabinet, about 14 months after the general election which saw SYRIZA, the prime minister's party, claim a large victory.

Key ministries, which hold a crucial role in the implementation of the bailout program, remained unchanged.

Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos retains the critical portfolio, leading negotiations with lenders on the next steps.

Hardliners were removed, while new faces, technocrats and close aides to Tsipras, joined the new lineup, local media noted when commenting on the reshuffle.

Ministers who served in the previous cabinet were included in the 48-member strong cabinet. Fifteen new ministers entered, 11 were ousted, Greek national news agency AMNA reported.

It remains to be seen whether the team will address more efficiently the major challenges ahead, such as the talks on the debt relief Athens is requesting and the migrant crisis, according to political analysts in Athens.

In recent months, the popularity of the ruling party has declined and the conservatives have taken the lead in opinion surveys, as the government has implemented a new round of painful measures under bailout agreements.

Yannis Dragassakis retain his post as deputy prime minister and Nikos Kotzias kept his post as the country's foreign minister.

Panos Kammenos, the leader of the Right-wing Independent Greeks, the junior partners in the two- partite ruling coalition, keeps the portfolio of the defense minister.

Former labor minister Yorgos Katrougalos was appointed deputy foreign minister in charge of European affairs, while former environment and energy minister Panos Skourletis was named interior minister.

Outgoing interior minister Panagiotis Kouroumblis is the new shipping minister, while economist Dimitris Papadimitriou is the new economy and development minister, replacing Yorgos Stathakis, who will be in charge of the environment and energy sector.

Yannis Mouzalas retains the critical upgraded portfolio of the Ministry of Migration Policy, Elena Kountoura stays as tourism minister, actress Lydia Koniordou is the new culture minister and Nikos Pappas, the former state minister, is the new minister of digital policy, telecommunications and information.

Gerovassilis was appointed minister of administrative reconstruction and Dimitris Tzanakopoulos is the new government spokesperson.

The sworn-in ceremony of the new ministers was scheduled for Saturday.
OSLO, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of Norwegian bank clients have to get new bank cards as a bank card fraud increases in Norway, newspaper VG reported on Friday.

Two biggest banks in Norway, Nordea and DNB, have confirmed that some of their clients had been affected by security breach when paying in a popular online store.

According to the report, it was revealed on Thursday that 150,000 bank clients in Denmark and Norway would have to replace their bank cards with new ones, after they had shopped in an unnamed online store. 45,000 of the them are in Norway.

Many of the affected people are clients of several Norwegian savings banks who have used the services of the company Nets, which monitors possible deviations in the payment flow.

"We have sent a notice to 5,000 clients that they should replace their cards after a possible safety breach connected to the online store," Christian Steffensen, chief press officer at Nordea, told VG.

DNB said that it had not sent a mass announcement to their clients.

"We have had some fraud cases related to the mentioned website and handle it in the usual way. It is detected by our system and we will make a call to the customer," information advisor of DNB Andreas Nyheim said, adding that the bank monitors the use of bank cards and tries to stay ahead and get an overview of future fraud trends.

"When concrete incidents occur, we naturally follow up on this with an extra care. When it is necessary we will implement preventive measures to make sure that the clients will not be affected. In the cases where we detect abuse, we do the follow up directly with the customer. Our clients are not affected by the Nets' call for cancellation of cards," Nyheim said.

According to VG, the company Nets has still not released the information about the online store mentioned in the case.

"The only common denominator we have is that the cards were used in this online store at some time or other. This could thus be a completely innocent third party and a warning not to shop in the online store out of preventive considerations could correct erroneous focus on the online store," Stein-Arne Tjore, press officer of Nets Norway told online newspaper E24.

"Since we do not know what is the reason that the card data have gone astray and how this has happened, we cannot name an online store," Tjore concluded.

Nets does not have any direct relation to the online store and therefore has no mandate to conduct its own investigations. Nets has to instead report it to the international card companies, like Visa and MasterCard, that will then investigate the online store and the event more closely.
Montanas superintendent of public instruction, Denise Juneau, is being suggested as education secretary in a Hillary Clinton presidency.

The Washington Post, in its Answer Sheet political column this week, mentioned Juneau as a potential education secretary candidate under Hillary Clinton.

Juneau, a Democrat, is also a candidate for Montanas lone U.S. House seat.

From the Post: According to several sources with connections to the campaign, should Juneau lose her race for Congress, she would be a leading candidate. Juneau is openly gay and a Native American, a candidate who could help Clinton in her stated effort to pick Cabinet members who reflect all of American society. Juneau, who is now in her second term, was a critic of the controversial K-12 education law, No Child Left Behind (which was replaced by Congress last year), and she is a proponent of local control of education.

Juneau was traveling Friday morning to a get out the vote event in Lame Deer. Cell phone service was spotty, but Juneaus campaign spokesman, Les Braswell, texted that Juneau was flattered.

"Denise is very flattered that she's being named a candidate for Secretary of Education, but she hasn't been contacted about the position," Braswell said. "Right now, she's focused on winning her election."

Braswell didn't respond when asked whether Juneau would accept the education secretary post if offered.

Lewis and Clark County property records show Juneau sold her Helena condominium in August. Juneau's campaign staff said Juneau plans to move to Missoula after the election.

Juneau is a popular figure in national Democratic politics. She spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2012. Juneau spoke not only as a state education superintendent, but also as the first American Indian woman in history to win a statewide election.
ROME, Nov.4 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese musical manager and educator has received a honorary degree in the University of Turin for his education activities in China regarding the opera, particularly the Italian opera.

The honorary degree, Doctor of Languages and Civilizations of Asia and Africa, was given on Thursday by the University of Turin to Chen Ping, President of China's National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA).

According to the organizers, Chen contributed to developing collaborative and exchange relations with the most important lyric theaters in the world and with leading Italian and international artists.

"This honor really represents the symbol of new friendly relations between Italy and China. I experienced a very important and unforgettable moment of my life here," Chen told Xinhua on Friday.

Born in 1954, Chen holds a MBA degree in China. He became the first President of the National Center for the Performing Arts, since its opening in December 2007.

During the degree-awarding ceremony in the University of Turin, Chen showed a clip of a special version of Turandot, the well-known Italian opera, which attracted many university students and professors.

The video shown on the occasion was part of the Turandot composed by the NCPA, which features a conclusion written by a Chinese composer.

Stefania Stafutti, Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Beijing and professor of the University of Turin, said Chen has been an important figure in the dialogue between the Chinese and Italian cultures.

According to Stafutti,the NCPA president combines the best expressions of the performing arts with the best of the local tradition.

"With an activity whose importance is recognized and highly appreciated by operators in the sector at international level, Chen has inspired his work to some key lines of action, addressed to the artistic value, the internationalization and the attention to public and civil society, with the conviction that 'art transforms quality of life'," said Stafutti.

"Under the leadership of Chen, NCPA's strategy is based on three points: excellences universally recognized, globalization of the activities of the theater, and promotion of talents," she said.

Since the opening of the NCPA in 2007, Chen has helped promote Italian music, hosting more than 20 companies including the Royal Theater in Parma, the Theater La Fenice in Venice, the Symphony Orchestra of Santa Cecilia, the Toscanini Philharmonic Orchestra, the Ballet of Rome.

He collaborated with artists including Claudio Abbado, Maurizio Pollini, Leo Nucci, Giancarlo Del Monaco, all of them renowned conductors.

Over the past seven years, NCPA has established partnership relations with the Royal Theater in Turin, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Royal Theater of Parma and the Theater La Fenice in Venice for the co-production of Rigoletto, Madame Butterfly and the other world-famous operas.

NCPA also has a long-standing collaborative relationship with 15 Italian cultural organizations, such as Puccini Foundation, Theater San Carlo in Naples, and Rome Auditorium.

In September 2015, the opera "The Rickshaw Boy", the original creation of the NCPA was presented in six Italian cities, during which the first international show was at the Royal Theater in Turin.
LONDON, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Britain's Ministry of Defense (MOD) announced Friday it has awarded a contract worth 125 million U.S. dollars to deliver a key defensive weapon for the Royal Navy's new Type 26 Global Combat Ships.

The advanced Sea Ceptor air defence missile system, designed and built in Britain by MBDA, will be fitted to each of the new Type 26 ships.

The MOD said using innovations in radar and datalink technology that will guide powerful missiles with pinpoint accuracy, Sea Ceptor will provide the Royal Navy with a shield against airborne threats such as the new generation of supersonic anti-ship missiles, fast jets, helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles.

A new Demonstration and Manufacture phase contract will support additional design work and allow equipment to be manufactured to equip the entire Type 26 fleet.

MBDA's Sea Ceptor system has already been selected by the Royal New Zealand Navy for use on board their Anzac class frigates, with considerable potential for additional overseas orders in the future.

An MOD spokesman in London said Sea Ceptor is also planned for use on board the Royal Navy's current fleet of Type 23 frigates, which will eventually be replaced by Type 26, with three vessels currently being fitted with the system to allow sea trials throughout 2017.

"The system offers significant improvements over previous air defence systems, such as Sea Wolf, with the ability to engage multiple targets more effectively at a longer range," said the spokesman.

The Sea Ceptor is due to enter service on Type 26 in the mid-2020s, and on Type 23 in 2017.
by Xinhua writer Fei Liena

BEIJING, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- The European Union should rethink about its new "country-neutral" method and take a more free and convenient EU-China trade into consideration, as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is on a central and eastern Europe tour to foster cooperation.

Besides visiting Latvia, Li is to attend a meeting with government heads of the 16 central and eastern European (CEE) countries, among which 11 are EU members, and to discuss trade and economic cooperation with them.

It's also expected that both parties are to discuss whether the EU would fulfill its WTO obligations to grant China market economy status (MES) by Dec. 11 this year. The deadline is just a month away.

China has been repeatedly calling on WTO members, including the EU, to end the surrogate country practice against China in anti-dumping cases after the deadline.

The Article 15 of the Protocol on China's accession to the WTO in 2001 has clearly dictated that China will automatically switch over to market economy status when the surrogate country approach expires in 15 years, which means, by that day, the legal foundation for treating China as a non-market economy is gone.

Facing the pressure of the expiry, however, the European Commission has decided to do the bait and switch trick and have it both ways after six months of mulling -- it proposed in July to abolish its "non-market economy" list, and set up a new "country-neutral" method to strengthen its trade defense instruments.

In the new methodology, the EC proposed to take "international prices" into account in its anti-dumping investigations, yet the WTO protocol has clearly regulated that after the expiry date, any future anti-dumping cases against China should make comparison with prices or costs in China.

The new method also speeds up the anti-dumping and anti-subsidy procedures, and imposes at least the same, or even higher duties in certain circumstances.

By doing so, Brussels is gearing up to the American approach toward Chinese imports, which allowed Washington to impose heavy duties on Chinese commodities.

Though the method hasn't been officially proposed to the European Council and Parliament yet, China is keeping a close eye on its development, while at the same time urges the EU to "neatly and cleanly fulfill its WTO obligations without any additional conditions by Dec. 11," said Chinese Assistant FM Liu Haixing.

The WTO protocols are the consensus reached between China and other WTO members during the accession negotiation. No signatary party should evade its obligations by trying to change the rules of game or playing it vague. Doing so would be a distortion of rules and deliberate misinterpretation of the WTO protocols.

During Li's visit, it's highly possible that he will negotiate China's MES issue with CEE countries, the most vibrant economies on the European continent.

As there are 11 EU members among the CEE countries, China expects them to prompt the EU to fulfill the obligations in due time.

China is the EU's second-biggest trading partner, with daily trade flows of over 1 billion euros (1.13 billion U.S. dollars).

Giving China MES will make China-EU trade ties, including the China-CEE relations, even stronger, as at such a difficult time, the world's two major economies need each other more than ever.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- The United States on Friday expressed grave concern over the detention of pro-Kurdish lawmakers by the Turkish government.

When talking with Turkish Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Umit Yalcin, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken raised Washington's concern, State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters at a regular briefing.

Co-leaders of Turkey's pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, and nine lawmakers from the party were detained early Friday as part of a terrorism investigation.

According to Anadolu News Agency, the detentions were ordered because the politicians refused to testify for crimes linked to terrorist propaganda.

Blinken told Yalcin that "when democracies pursue legal action against elected representatives, they must do so in a manner that reinforces the public's confidence in the rule of law," according to Kirby.

The HDP, with 59 seats, is the third-largest party in the 550-member Turkish parliament.

On May 20, 2015, the Turkish parliament approved a bill to amend the constitution to strip lawmakers of immunity from prosecution, a move that paves the way for charging pro-Kurdish and other opposition legislators.
BEIJING, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- He left as a boy, but after two years in the army Zhao Songqing returned to college as a man.

Zhao, 23, an undergraduate, has now returned to Beijing-based Beihang University to complete his studies, one of 150,000 college army recruits in 2014.

In an attempt to add vigor and diversity to the military, China's armed forces have conscripted undergraduates since 2001, and an increasing number of highly educated students are joining up.

The army lets them express their patriotism in the most direct way possible: by putting down pens and picking up guns.

"It's a great honor for a soldier to make contributions to the nation and its people," Zhao said.

The most difficult but memorable period of Zhao's service was fighting severe floods with his fellow soldiers as China experienced a pattern of freak weather this summer.

It was July 6, just before he finished his service, when Zhao's company was put on "first-degree combat alert." They needed to stand ready to hit flood-ravaged areas -- floods that went on to kill hundreds across China.

They received the order in the afternoon. Hours later, more than 20 soldiers and a lot of supplies crammed into the back of the truck to begin a grueling 30-hour journey.

"It was too hot to sleep, and I could only focus on two things," he said. "I must keep myself safe for my parents' sake, and more importantly, I had to do my best for those flood victims."

Zhao went into the danger zone, not even telling his parents what mission he was on.

Honghu, where Zhao's company was stationed, is a small riverside city in central China's Hubei Province and was one of the areas worst-hit by the flooding.

Every day, the soldiers reinforced the dams with sandbags. Sometimes, they had to jump straight into the river to rebuild the dams.

"The military uniform bestowed us with a sense of honor, so we were willing to work hard and take risks," Zhao said.

Two years ago, just before becoming a senior, Zhao's classmates were busy applying for jobs or graduate school, but he was set to join the army instead.

"I'd always wanted to do something for the nation," he said. "I saw two years in the army as an opportunity to harden myself."

Army authorities are keenly aware of the bravery it takes for young undergraduates to enlist.

"It requires great courage for college students to make the decision," said Qi Jianli from the military office of Beihang University. "College students usually have more opportunities, more choices. They have varied voices around them to give them advice."

Like many enlisted college students, Zhao's parents did not agree with his choice at first. Instead, they hoped that we would follow a "normal" path -- go to grad school, get a good job and make a fortune. But Zhao was insistent, and finally they relented, encouraging him to be the best soldier he could be.

Over two years, Zhao gradually got used to the army's fierce collectivism. He toughened up and turned into a real soldier, inside and out.

After the victory of the Long March of the Red Army in 1930s, more than 100,000 people, mainly educated young people, trudged into war zones to join the army in Yan'an, Shaanxi Province, and other bases of resistance against Japanese aggression. Their arrival promoted literacy in the army and fueled the great victory of the revolution.

The China's Ministry of National Defense recruitment brochure states: "Enlisting more college students can improve the average quality of the army, and inject vigor and vitality into the army's knowledge-base."

In 2001, China's armed forces, for the first time in its history, recruited more than 1,000 undergraduates from universities in a pilot program.

Since 2005, conscription has expanded to cover all colleges and universities. As more and more preferential policies and compensation have been issued for such students, over 100,000 college students have joined the army every year since 2009.

"For the students, joining the army is not just about military skills, but also to toughen themselves up," Qi said. "I remember the first female soldier from Beihang, Wang Yunhong. She looked delicate, but in the army she behaved tough and won many honors."

Zhao recalls that when he was on duty in Shanghai in August last year, a devastating explosion ravaged his hometown, Tianjin, resulting in the deaths of more than 100 rescue workers.

"They came from all over the nation, and died for my hometown. At the exact same time, I was guarding the hometown of other people."
CARACAS, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Venezuela's proposal for oil-producing countries to freeze oil output could stabilize prices in the next few months if adopted, President Nicolas Maduro said Friday.

Venezuela, whose economy has been hit hard by the drop in oil prices in the past two years, suggested members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other oil producers agree on output-cutting measures.

"Venezuela has proposed an initial agreement to OPEC and non-OPEC countries, and I am very optimistic that this agreement is going to be signed very soon, and it is going to provide a first level of stability, and realistic and fair prices," said Maduro.

Maduro made the remarks after signing an accord with India's state oil company ONGC Videsh.

Once the agreement is signed, those countries could take second-step measures by adopting "new mechanisms and formulas to ... balance the market and prices," said Maduro.

"We have to guarantee this first step has a positive outcome right now in November, for the good of us all. It's a win-win situation," he said, referring to the upcoming OPEC members' ministerial meeting on Nov. 30 in Austria, where members are expected to reach a consensus on the production freeze.

"A price of 70 (U.S. dollars per barrel) was long ago accepted by the market. A price of 80 benefits the global economic system, does no harm to anybody ... and benefits energy stability," he added.

Maduro argued the oil price should not be subject to the whims of market speculation.

"It's not fair ... for us to do the investing and exploring, apply the technology, maintain the workers, the drilling and the pipelines, and extract the oil, and for speculators in the world to say how much oil should cost," the Venezuelan president said.

Maduro, whose government is in talks with the conservative opposition over the political crisis partly sparked by the country's battered economy, said he would present his economy-boosting plans to political opponents to get them on board. Enditem
HAVANA, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Cuba's 34th Havana International Trade Fair (FIHAV 2016) concluded on Friday, following robust participation from Chinese companies.

The five-day fair brought Cuban and international firms from 73 countries together to explore potential business opportunities, the organizers said.

Among the highlights on the last day of the event was a Cuban campaign called "I choose Cuba," which aims to promote health tourism. Health travelers to Cuba can get first-rate medical care and access a range of services, from cancer treatments to Heberprot-P applications to treat diabetic foot ulcers.

More than 60 Chinese companies took part in the trade fair, with the Chinese pavilion at ExpoCuba on the outskirts of Havana attracting thousands of companies and entrepreneurs from around the world.

Hosted by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, Beijing's pavilion underscored China's strong economic ties with Cuba, especially in providing advanced technology, world-class equipment and infrastructure.

Midea, one of China's leading home appliance manufacturers, has been operating in Cuba for 7 years.

"We have just started selling fans in the Cuban market. In 2013, we introduced products like air conditioners, refrigerators and rice cookers, which have made a positive impact on the Cuban market," Gu Junqiu, Midea's manager in Cuba, told Xinhua earlier this week.

"We will continue cooperating with Cuban companies to introduce other products to this changing market and build a post-sales system for providing spare parts and quality service," he said.

China's Geely Automotive has sold over 15,000 cars on the island since 2008, mainly for the tourism industry.

"We have been successful since the first year we entered the Cuban market. We will continue to provide our buyers in this country with high-quality cars which are already quite well known here," Du Shaokui, one of Geely's representatives in Cuba, told Xinhua.

One of the latest technological products entering the Cuban market is the high-definition (HD) TV decoder. The Chinese company Soyea has sold over 500,000 decoders in Cuba in the last two years along with over 20,000 TVs, making it one of the most popular brands on the island.

China is Cuba's second-largest trading partner following Venezuela. Numerous Chinese companies are involved in multiple areas of this nation's economy and development, particularly in technology, transportation, biotechnology, agricultural machinery, household appliances and textiles.
TOKYO, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries issued a ban on Saturday on a number of poultry products coming from Hungary.

The ban, covering chickens, ducks and turkeys, along with other Hungarian-based poetry, was initiated following the detection of traces of bird flu at a poultry farm in in eastern Hungary.

Statistics for 2015 showed that imports for of all poultry here totaled 1,393 tons of which just 0.15 came from Hungary.

Meanwhile, the Hungarian food safety authority NEBIH, on Friday announced that it had found traces of bird flu at a poultry farm in the east of Hungary.

Officials there said that 9,000 turkeys would be destroyed to protect other populations from receiving the strain.

The strain is harmless to humans.

The farm located close the Romanian border at Totkomlos, has seen high levels of infection and a rising rate of expiration due to the H5N8 strain of the flu virus, the food authority said recently.

According to the NEBIH thhia was the first strain which caused an outbreak of bird flu in Asia in early 2014 and was first detected in Europe two years ago,

Cases were also founded in Hungary in 2015, the authority also said, with this being the impetus for Japan's agriculture ministry to take action and issue its latest orders on restricting some poultry imports from Hungary.
HOUSTON, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- The governor of the U.S. state of Texas on Friday warned of a possible terrorist threat against the state, urging the public to be vigilant and report anything suspicious over the coming days.

Greg Abbott's warning came following a statement of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in which the agency said that they had received a possible al-Qaida terror threat against the United States on the eve of Election Day on Nov. 8.

Texas, along with New York and Virginia, was listed as a possible target of the attack.

In a statement, Abbott said that his office was monitoring the situation and working closely with the Texas Department of Public Safety.

"Texans should go about their daily lives as usual, but remain vigilant over the next several days and report any suspicious activity to state or local law enforcement," Abbott said, vowing the state will continue "to do everything it can to ensure the safety and security of its citizens."

The FBI is working to assess relative intelligence so as to disrupt any potential threats.

Shauna Dunlap, spokeswoman for the FBI's Houston Division, said that "the counter-terrorism and homeland security communities remain vigilant and well-postured to defend against attacks here in the United States."

Meanwhile, Jodi Silva, spokeswoman for the Houston police, said that anti-terror efforts are ongoing.

"We don't confirm any specific threats, however we are always monitoring and assessing the environment and take actions accordingly," she said.

Last month in Texas's largest city of Houston, a 24-year-old man who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) and plotted to detonate home-made bombs in local shopping malls pleaded guilty on a terrorism-related charge.

Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan stockpiled circuitry components, wireless remotes and other bomb-making implements in his west Houston apartment, according to court documents. He faces up to 20 years in prison.
MADRID, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- The Sixth Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee is very important in the crucial phase of China's current reform and the Party is the key to its successful implementation, a Spanish observer has said.

Xulio Rios, director of Spain's Observatory of Chinese Politics, said this in a recent interview with Xinhua.

With far-reaching structural changes, the formulation of the rule of law and the comprehensive construction of an affluent society, the CPC is ready to deal with a decisive stage, during which the definitive foundation should be built to complete the modernization process not only in the economy, but also in society and politics, he said.

"The CPC is the key to a successful reform and everything depends on the CPC's good health," Rios said, adding that its concentration and sustainability will guarantee success and that "a stricter governance that preserves its leading status and public credibility is essential."

It has been more than three decades since the beginning of the reform and opening-up and the country's economic success has helped garner social support for the reform and the party, the observer said.

During the process, there have been unwanted side effects, such as imbalances, environmental degradation and corruption, and it is necessary to implement corrective measures at all levels to prevent their increase, he added.

"The decisions made at the Sixth Plenary Session mean a qualitative leap in dynamics of the Party," Rios said. The assertion of individual responsibility and the preservation of a collective leadership suggest a new balance in decision-making and management of government affairs at all levels.

Measures for the standardization of domestic policy and observing discipline and morals in line with the regulations reflect the need to adapt to changing times, which must be led by a demand for rigorous ethical standards for those involved in public affairs, Rios said.

This emphasis will increase the quality of public management and will effectively result in the enforcement and implementation of the necessary measures for the progress of the reform.

"Without a cohesive and disciplined party, cracks can affect the stability of the building," he said.

Rios stressed that the CPC is facing unprecedented tasks. The unity and authority of the Party are now essential to ensure the implementation of the measures. The decisions will lead to a new atmosphere that should imbue all political institutions, including the central government, local authorities and others, raising the significance of the Party.

He said the modernization of the country by means suited to the country's unique characteristics will once again define China's path and offer an alternative based on the Chinese ideology and culture.

He also pointed out that insisting on the purity of the Party has become a key factor in defining a path for China in the context of the global economic crisis.

New rules and procedures should be consolidated to raise the moral standards of the CPC and its members to face more challenges and ensure public recognition of their suitability and ability to realize the two centenary goals of building an all-round moderately prosperous society and becoming a modern socialist country as well as the Chinese Dream, the observer added.
At least 50 veterans were given something Friday that has been more than 50 years in the making  gratitude for their service during the Vietnam War.

The veterans, many of them wearing caps describing their Vietnam experience, were each handed a pin and a presidential proclamation commemorating the 50th anniversary of U.S. involvement, a document first issued by President Barack Obama four years ago.

Obama has proclaimed Memorial Day in 2012 through Veterans Day in 2025 as the period that Americans should honor the nations estimated 7 million living Vietnam-era veterans, the 58,000 men and women killed in battle or in theater, the 1,627 still counted as missing in action, and their families.

Bryan Gray, team leader at the Billings Vet Center, spoke during a brief ceremony before asking vets to come forward and accept their pins, copies of the proclamation and the thanks of the crowd gathered outside the West End office.

Fridays turnout was large enough to move the ceremony outdoors, where veterans enjoyed sparkling weather and the satisfaction of knowing their sacrifice and their pain were at last being acknowledged.

People saw us as baby killers, said John Dehoyos of Shepherd, 69, who served for a year in Vietnam in law enforcement for the U.S. Air Force as part of his 22-year military career.

Dehoyos said he was injured in a 1968 explosion while serving at the Phu Cat Air Base in Vietnam, was exposed to Agent Orange and received a 60-percent disability. The explosion knocked out some teeth and left him with a permanent ringing in his ears. But, Fridays ceremony left him with a good feeling, both he and his wife Robyn said.

As a bonus: Robyns son, Isaac Reiss, whom John Dehoyos helped raise, has himself chosen an Air Force career. Dehoyos said the familys newest airman is three weeks away from completing basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.

Will Dehoyos and his wife be on hand to help Isaac celebrate his accomplishment before hes shipped off to his first assignment in South Korea?

You bet we will, he said with a proud grin.

In his proclamation, Obama, speaking at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, said the nation sees in the reflection of what's commonly called The Wall the military family members and veterans who carry a pain that may never fade.

Obama called the 13-year observance a way to honor and give thanks to a generation of proud Americans who saw our country through one of the most challenging missions we have ever faced  Let us remember that it is never too late to pay tribute to the men and women who answered the call of duty with courage and valor. Let us renew our commitment to the fullest possible accounting for those who have not returned.

You sacrificed during one of the most painful chapters in our history, Gray told the assembled veterans and their families. You were blamed for a war you didnt start. You were denigrated when you should have been celebrated. We owe you a debt of gratitude.

Fridays ceremony, he said, gives us the opportunity to do something we should have done 50 years ago.

The Billings Vet Service, at 2795 Enterprise Ave., Suite 1, offers mental health and other services to Billings-area veterans. Phone 406-657-6071 or visit www.va.gov/directory/guide/facility.asp?ID=618 for more information.
SYDNEY, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Indonesian President Joko Widodo has postponed his visit to Australia following an outbreak of violence in country's capital Jakarta.

The Indonesian president, commonly referred to as Jokowi, is due to visit Australia from Sunday as the two countries forge closer ties. However, tensions flared late Friday following a protest demanding the immediate jailing of Jakarta's governor over comments he made about the Koran.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Saturday that Widodo had called him to express regret his first visit will have to be rescheduled as the security's situation demands his personal attention.

"I said we were sorry we would not be able to welcome him to Australia tomorrow but entirely understood the need for him to remain in Indonesia at this time," Turnbull said in a statement.

"We both expressed disappointment that the visit would not go ahead, particularly given the strength of the bilateral relationship and our personal friendship."

The relationship between the two countries hit historic lows during former Prime Minister Tony Abbott's tenure over Australia's harsh border protection policies and the execution of two convicted Australian drug smugglers in Indonesia.

Since Turnbull ousted Abbott in a party room coup in September 2015, Australia and Indonesia have embarked on negotiations for a comprehensive economic partnership and enhanced cooperation in other areas of the relationship.

"President Widodo thanked me for Australia's understanding (of the postponement) and noted his desire to conduct the visit as soon as mutually convenient dates can be identified," Turnbull said. Enditem
TORONTO, Nov. 4 (Xinhua)-- Canada's main stock market closed the week at its lowest point since Sep. 19 influenced by concerns about the upcoming U.S. presidential election, despite favorable economic data released by the federal government.

The Toronto Stock Exchange's benchmark Standard & Poor's/TSX Composite Index dipped 74.17 points, or 0.51 percent, to end the session at 14,509.25 points. All but one of the ten sub-sectors lost ground on the day.

After rising to its highest point in 16 months on Oct. 21, Toronto stocks have given back 429.79 points in the last two weeks, a cumulative 2.88-percent decline. Furthermore, seven of the past nine sessions have ended in losses.

Prior to markets opening on Friday, Statistics Canada reported that the economy added 43,900 jobs in September, shattering the consensus expectation of a 15,000 loss. During the month, part-time jobs rose by 67,100 while full-time jobs declined by 23,100. With an increase in the workforce, the unemployment rate remained at 7.0 percent.

Also, the government body released international trade figures for September which saw Canadian imports growing to a record-high 47.6 billion Canadian dollars (about 35.5 billion U.S. dollars). Compared to August, imports grew 4.7 percent, while exports ticked up 0.1 percent.

Trade with China fell compared to August, with exports falling 10.5 percent to 1.75 billion Canadian dollars (about 1.30 billion U.S. dollars) and imports fading 2.7 percent to 2.99 billion Canadian dollars (about 2.23 billion U.S. dollars).

The positive statistics were overshadowed by the concern of a potential victory by Republican candidate Donald Trump in next Tuesday's U.S. presidential election.

The TSX Materials and Energy groups saw the biggest dips on the day, dropping 0.98 percent and 0.95 percent respectively.

The Materials group, which features miners of gold and other metals, fell despite the spot price of gold rising 1.80 U.S. dollars to 1,305.10 U.S. dollars an ounce. Shares of Kinross Gold Corp. and B2Gold Corp. also contributed to the loss, dipping 2.65 percent and 1.53 percent respectively.

The energy sector did not fare much better, as crude oil prices ended the day down for a sixth straight day and the ninth of the past ten days. The price of Brent for January delivery retreated 73 cents to 45.65 U.S. dollars a barrel.

Shares of Calgary-based energy maker Encana Corp. slipped 0.23 percent to 13.16 Canadian dollars (about 9.82 U.S. dollars) and was the most actively traded stock on the day with volume in excess of 8 million shares. Baytex Energy Corp. and Suncor Energy Inc. also trended in the wrong direction, dropping 0.80 percent and 1.06 percent respectively.

The industrials sub-group dropped 0.43 percent on the day as Montreal-based Bombardier Inc. shares fell 2.20 percent to 1.78 Canadian dollars (about 1.33 U.S. dollars). The airplane and train manufacturer was formally notified by Metrolinx, the company responsible for Toronto's new light rail project, of their intention to terminate a deal worth 770 million Canadian dollars (about 575 million U.S. dollars) due to repeated delays by Bombardier.

The utilities sub-sector was the only group to come out ahead on the day, gaining 0.77 percent.

The Canadian dollar ended the week at 0.7461 U.S. dollar, compared to Thursday's closing rate of 0.7472.
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- At least one person was killed and two others injured as a bomb blast struck the vehicle of a district governor in the eastern Nangarhar province on Saturday, a spokesman for provincial governor Attaullah Khogiani confrimed.

"Governor of Batikot district, Hajji Ghalib Majahid, was probably on the way to office today in the morning rush hour when an explosion obviously a sticky bomb targeted his vehicle killing his driver and injured the governor along with a bodyguard," Khogiani told Xinhua.

Earlier another official on the condition of anonymity said that the attack on district governor was a roadside bomb organized by militants.

Investigation has been initiated into the case to determine the nature of the blast and bring to justice the culprits involved in the attack, Khogiani asserted.

Neither Taliban nor Islamic State militants who are active in parts of Nangarhar province have claimed responsibility for the attack.
CHENGDU, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- After a flight of more than 20 hours, Mei Lun and Mei Huan, the first pair of surviving giant panda twins ever born in the United States, arrived at Chengdu early Saturday morning in their first trip to China.

Breeders with the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, the zoo's Chinese partner, and a throng of panda-lovers greeted the three-year-old bears at Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport around 5 a.m.

Expert Lan Jingchao with the base said the twins would not meet the public immediately until a month-long quarantine check to ensure their health was completed.

Born on July 15, 2013, the twins got their names meaning "something indiscribably beautiful and magnificent" through an online vote.

They are the fourth and fifth offspring of Lun Lun and Yang Yang who came to Zoo Atlanta in 1999 under a collaboration agreement between China and the United States.

Lun Lun has so far produced seven cubs in five births. As part of the agreement, panda cubs born in the United States to parents on loan from China are to be returned to China when they are of age.

Giant pandas in Chengdu have visited 13 countries and regions in total, including Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Mexico, and gave births to 27 cubs overseas.

The Chengdu Research Base is also conducting technical cooperation with their peers in five countries, the United States, Japan, Canada, France and Spain.
RABAT, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of protesters gathered in the northern city of Hoceima Morocco on Friday to mark a week since the tragic death of a fish vendor in the city.

After gathering in the Mohammed V Square in Hoceima, protesters marched in the main streets of the city demanding justice for the fish vendor who was crushed to death by a garbage truck last Friday in the northern city.

Mouhcine Fikri, 31, jumped along with some friends into the truck to retrieve his merchandise after being confiscated by local authorities on the basis that it is a protected species in this period of the year in the country.

The death of Fikri has sparked nationwide outrage. Since last Saturday, numerous demonstrations and sit-ins have been staged in the city of Hoceima. On Sunday, thousands marched in protests across the country, including the capital Rabat and major cities like Casablanca, Tangier, Marrakesh and Agadir.

On Tuesday, prosecutor announced the arrest of 11 people, including two local security agents and the head of the local fisheries department, on charges including manslaughter and other offenses relating to the death.

The Moroccan Interior Minister visited Sunday Hoceima to offer condolences to the family of Mouhcine Fikri.

According to a statement by the Interior Ministry, the minister informed Fikri's family of King Mohammed VI instructions for conducting a "careful and thorough investigation and bringing charges against whoever held responsible in this incident."
YANGON, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar authorities will deploy more border guard policemen with local ethnic youths in western Rakhine state, which has recently seen attacks by armed men, official media reported Saturday.

A high-ranking official of Myanmar Police Force said that anyone aged 18 to 35 can join the police force and will be trained.

Nine policemen and five soldiers died in the violent attacks by armed on Oct. 9 on three border posts in Kyikanpyin of Maungtaw, Kotankauk of Rathedaung and Ngakhuya Office.

Islamic extremists were believed to be involved in the attacks, which were financially supported by foreign terrorist organizations, the government said.

The situation in Maungtaw is returning to normal although the dusk-to-dawn curfew is still being imposed on Maungtaw district since Oct. 10.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Ties between Latin America and China have continuously strengthened through efforts on both sides, according to a Brazilian political observer.

In the lead up to the summit of leaders from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, scheduled to take place in the Peruvian capital Lima later this month, Mauricio Santoro, professor of international relations at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, spoke with Xinhua about Latin America-China ties.

Recent high-level visits between the two sides underscore the importance of the relationship, noted Santoro.

Visits by Chinese President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and other senior Chinese officials are significant evidence that China attaches great importance to its relations with the region, and another indicator is growing investment from Chinese companies, especially in infrastructure, said Santoro.

Trade between China and Latin America has grown more than 20 fold since 2000, said Santoro, citing data from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). The speed of growth is also confirmed by Chinese official statistics.

"China is now the largest or second-largest trading partner of most Latin American countries," he added.

What's more, both sides have made it clear they favor expanding ties further, as partnerships such as the Forum of China and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) suggest, he said.

"The creation of the China-CELAC Forum is significant as it unites the Asian country with the various countries of the region, allowing them to debate relevant topics from a broader multilateral perspective," said Santoro.

More importantly, he added, "it shows the interest both sides have in deepening ties against the backdrop of the global economic crisis and sluggish growth in the United States and Europe."

Since the forum's creation, the political climate in South America has grown more conservative, with center-right governments coming into power in Argentina and Brazil.

However, these political changes are transient compared to the more farsighted goal China and Latin America have of joining forces to better weather the uncertainty of the world economy, he said.

"These are the long-term objectives, which are beyond changes in government in Latin America, and beyond left-wing or right-wing presidents," said Santoro.

He noted the two sides need to address the imbalance of trade between China and Latin America.

Latin American countries are mostly exporting raw materials (food, minerals, oil) and primarily importing manufactured goods from China, he said.

In a bid to reduce the imbalance, China and agencies such as ECLAC have called on Latin American governments to invest more in human resources, education, science and technology, as the two regions continue to boost cooperation in trade, investment and production capacity.

"We have a positive example in the agreement between the Brazilian postal service Correios and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, to cooperate in their logistical chains," said Santoro.

"Today, there is much more that can be done in terms of economies of scale, cooperation and partnerships. The challenge for Chinese and Latin American companies now is to develop their ability to improve their commerce intelligence, analytic capacity and political involvement with foreign partners," Santoro said.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (R) and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton participate in the third and final presidential debate at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) in Las Vegas, Nevada, the United States , Oct. 19, 2016.(Xinhua/Yin Bogu)

by Xinhua Writer Zhang Yongxing

HOUSTON, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- This year's presidential election is unarguably the most unconventional, drama-ridden and divisive in the history of American electoral politics, according to political observers in the United States.

Peter Li, a political science professor with tenure at the University of Houston, said that "this year's presidential election has divided American society into two camps. Never before were presidential elections so divisive."

From his point of view, this election is indeed a battle between two mind-sets and two policy directions.

Li said that Hillary Clinton is undeniably one of the most qualified candidates to run for the White House while pointing out that "her use of a private e-mail server, questions raised on her handling of the crisis in the Middle East, Libya in particular, and her connection with the Clinton Foundation have been undercutting the effectiveness of her campaign."

As for the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, his political views and sexist and misogynistic remarks "have earned him both popularity and controversy," said Li.

However, Li also pointed out that Trump's "lack of political experience, his bluntness, and his 'outsider' status have even been seen as an advantage and are attractive to a part of the American voters."

Li believed that the start of the e-mail probe by the FBI is not good news to the Clinton campaign, "making the uncommitted voters to vote for Trump."

The second largest state of Texas and a Republican support base has been a die-hard red state for many presidential elections, but there is speculation that it could become a battleground state that could swing Democrat.

Li's view about the presidential election was also echoed by Ling Luo, chairwoman of Asian Americans for the Hillary National Committee, and Jingjing Clemence, Republican Precinct Chair and Texas Asian Republican Club Vice President.

Ling Luo said that this year's election is the most critical one in American history. It's the choice between progress and regression of American democracy. The candidates of both sides are not liked very much by voters.

She believed that Texas used to be a strong Republican state but could become blue this election.

Jingjing also believed that this year's presidential election is unique with both candidates of the two parties being very unpopular, and each loathed by the supporters of the other. ( "In my view, people who are favoring or supporting Trump are doing so not only because they like Trump's conservative views, but rather it is regular people's expression of their dissatisfaction towards the current administration's policies," she said.

"To a lot of Texas Republicans, Trump is not their first choice. But since he is the GOP nominee, and because the Supreme Court justices will be pointed by the newly elected president, Texas GOP or conservative voters will vote for Trump despite the fact that they may not like him as a person," she said.

"Clinton is unlikely to stand a chance in Texas as a whole, but it could be closer than at any time in the past 20 years. The reason for that is because of two demographic groups - Republican-leaning suburban women offended by Trump's comments about women, and Latinos, who are fired up to vote against him."

She believed that Asian American voters have shown great interest and participated much more in this election than any other presidential election in recent years. Most Asian American voters support Trump because of issues like gay marriage and anger at programs such as the Affordable Care Act, all of which are pushing the Asian voters to the right.

As for the prospect for China-U.S.relations after the election, Li said that he was not worried about China-U.S. ties whether Trump or Clinton wins the election.

From his point of view, Beijing-Washington relations are the most important bilateral relations in the world today.

"No U.S. president can afford to mismanage the relationship. A mal-functioning U.S.-China relationship will make life difficult, if not miserable, for Washington. The United States needs China's cooperation in matters concerning security and stability on the Korean Peninsula. A stable Korean Peninsula allows the United States to tackle challenges in other regions of the world," Li said.

He also stressed that managing U.S.-China relations is a bipartisan responsibility, with both Democrats and Republicans understanding its importance.

"China has been a rising power in the world over the past few decades, and a new U.S. president will have differences in style and priorities in his or her China policy," Li said. "But he or she will has no choice but to maintain a good working relationship with China".
BEIJING, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- The top legislature on Saturday deliberated a draft interpretation to Article 104 of the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR).

The draft interpretation was submitted to legislators for deliberation at the third plenary meeting of the bimonthly session of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, which concludes Monday.

Entrusted by the chairpersons' meeting of the NPC Standing Committee, Zhang Rongshun, vice chairperson of the Legislative Affairs Commission of the top legislature, delivered an explanation of the draft interpretation, introducing the implication of the legislation and its legal principles.

Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, was also present at the meeting.

Article 104 of the Basic Law of the Hong Kong SAR stipulates: "When assuming office, the chief executive, principal officials, members of the executive council and of the legislative Council, judges of courts at all levels and other members of the judiciary in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region must, in accordance with law, swear to uphold the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China and swear allegiance to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China."
Branches protrude above water on the Kariba dam in Harare, Zimbabwe, February 19, 2016. Kariba, Zimbabwe's main hydro power dam could stop producing electricity in six months if water levels keep falling after the nation's worst drought in more than two decades, an official said on Friday. Picture taken February 19, 2016. (REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo)

HARARE, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Chinese contractor Sino-Hydro has signed an agreement with the Zimbabwean government for the construction of a new dam north-east of the capital Harare that will augment supplies from four other reservoirs which are failing to cope with demand, water minister has said.

Minister of Environment, Water and Climate Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri told news agency New Ziana Wednesday that an environmental impact assessment will be done before the construction of Kunzvi Dam begins 67 km outside the city.

The estimated cost of building the dam is 400 million U.S. dollars, but all major works including laying a pipeline and building a new waterworks will push the bill up to between 850 and 900 million dollars.

"Government policy is that wherever there are such major developments many people will be displaced so we are going to carry out that exercise to make sure that component is addressed," Muchinguri-Kashiri said.

The government had intended to build the dam as far back as the early 1990s, with interested contractors in the private sector being invited for on-site tours on a number of occasions, but financial challenges had stalled the project.

Muchinguri-Kashiri said Sino-Hydro had agreed to do the project under a build, operate and transfer arrangement.

Kunzvi Dam, which is situated on the Nyagui River in Goromonzi district, Mashonaland East province, is seen as the solution to the city's water woes which have persisted for decades, forcing authorities to impose water rationing during the dry months.

Currently, some residential areas are going for five days a week without municipal water supplies.

The new dam is expected to produce 250,000 cubic meters for the city daily.

Harare has 2.5 million residents and also caters for another 2 million consumers in the satellite towns of Chitungwiza, Norton, Ruwa, Epworth and other settlements on its boundaries, putting the combined need of water at 1,200 megaliters a day.

On its own, the city requires 800 megaliters a day but is only pumping 450 megaliters.

All its four reservoirs -- Harava Dam, Seke Dam, Lake Chivero and Lake Manyame -- are on the Manyame River and suffer heavy pollution from the surrounding urban settlements and farming areas.
Understanding Jesus starts with comprehending the context of the first century world in which he lived, a biblical scholar said Friday in Billings.

Amy-Jill Levine engaged an audience for two hours at Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, drawing on her extensive knowledge of the Old and New Testaments, and her humor. She welcomed questions and spoke often with individual audience members.

Her talk, titled Understanding Jesus Means Understanding Judaism, was the first of four she is giving this weekend at the West End church.

Levine is a professor of the New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. She told the crowd of more than 50 people she wanted to clear up some common mistakes regarding Judaism in the time of Jesus, often referencing specific Bible texts.

Christianity, Judaism and Islam are historically based religions, she said, standing in the middle of the sanctuary.

We talk about people in a particular time and a particular setting, Levine said. Jesus in the first century in Galilee and Judea or Moses in Egypt and then the wilderness. Or King David in the beginnings of what becomes Jerusalem.

Without knowledge of the culture and traditions, she said, were going to get the person within that context wrong.

Levine talked about how inaccuracies are perpetrated, saying the majority of divinity schools and denominational seminaries do not train clergy how to avoid anti-Jewish teaching.

Every problem I mention I learned in graduate school, and I believed it, she said. If I was listening to misinformation and didnt realize it was wrong, how could somebody who didnt study know?

The globalization of Christianity also has caused other cultures to view the faith through their own lenses, Levine said. And they may not even realize that their beliefs are offensive.

She gave an example out of her own life of that, saying when she was a kid, her mom might say something to her Levine and her siblings like, stop acting like wild Indians.

My mom was not a bigot, Levine said. But she became more aware of how offensive that was. If nobody tells you, you keep going with it.

She began to list misperceptions about the typical Christian view of Judaism in the first century. Levine talked about what she called the "problem of law," where the law is viewed as bad and Jesus as good.

Jesus often argued with other Jews about the law, Levine agreed, but that kind of arguing is part of the fabric of Jewish life. The name Israel means one who wrestles with God, and one way to wrestle with God is to wrestle with the words in the text.

Another case is people think Jews are following the law to earn Gods love or place in heaven, she said.

In truth, Jews got the law under divine grace, and they respond to grace by following the law. Levine equated that to married people who follow simple rules such as not going to bed angry, or putting the toilet seat down.

Youre not doing it to earn love, Levine said. Thats what you do because you love somebody.

In the time of Jesus, following the law enabled Jews to keep their identity in the broader Roman Empire. Rome thought everyone under its purview should worship the Roman gods and follow other Roman customs.

The Jews, by following their own laws, remained distinct, Levine said.

Turning to the topic of women, she said the view often was that the first century represented the epitome of misogyny, where women were completely downtrodden.

Jesus comes along and invents feminism, Levine said.

That way of thinking evolved especially in the 1970s, when women in critical mass began to earn Ph.D.s in the New Testament. They were not only interested in the New Testament as history, she said, but in the role of women in the church.

If Jesus was proactive for women, they could go to seminaries and say you ought to be ordaining us, putting us in leadership, Levine said.

What is known, she said, is in the time of Jesus, women owned their own homes. Women of means supported the ministry of Jesus or other apostles. They had the freedom of travel, following Jesus on his travels.

On the other hand, Jesus didnt appoint women to leadership positions. No women were at the Transfiguration or part of the Last Supper or at Gethsemane.

Is Jesus progressive on women? she asked. No more and no less than any other Jewish rabbi.

Levine addressed a number of other misconceptions. She closed with one about the temple, where it's often taught that Jesus cleansed the Jewish temple because of his fury at the greedy merchants.

Instead, she gave a different perspective, that Jesus was upset by people who spent their work week sinning and then came into the temple, offered a sacrifice and thought everything was OK.

"A modern analogy is if you're an inside trader or loan shark during the week and then on Sunday you come to church and put $50 in the plate and think everything is keen between you and God," she said.
Photo taken on Jan. 7, 2010 shows an armed Somali pirate along the coast in Hobyo, northeastern Somalia. (AFP/Mohamed Dahir)

NAIROBI, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- A global maritime body has urged foreign vessels to remain vigilant when they transit the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Aden despite no piracy incidents in the waters in the first nine months of 2016.

The latest report by the International Chamber of Commerce received on Friday shows zero piracy incident was recorded off the Somali coast except one attempted attack in the Gulf of Aden during the period.

The drop in piracy incidents is a relief to shipping companies using the Indian Ocean that had in previous years been the target of pirates. They often paid heavy ransom to secure release of their vessels and crew.

"This is due to increased/active military action on suspected skiffs, military land-based anti-piracy operations, preventive measures and increased armed guards on board ships," the report says.

The report, however, called on shipmasters to follow the industry's Best Management Practices and to remain vigilant as they sail through waters off Somalia.

It also said kidnapping persisted off the coasts of West Africa and South East Asia, despite a 20-year low in piracy on the world's seas.

The African maritime industry along the Indian Ocean had until 2013 been greatly affected by piracy, which raised the costs of shipping as insurance and private ship security companies increased their premiums to mitigate the risks.
MOGADISHU, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Fighting between forces from Somalia's Galmudug and Puntland states broke out in the central town of Galkayo earlier this week despite a ceasefire, according to the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Saturday.

The OCHA said that while a peace agreement was reached on Nov. 1, renewed fighting erupted on Nov. 2 and that the situation in Galkayo remained tense with armed forces maintaining their positions.

"More than 80,000 people were displaced from Galkayo town in Mudug region after armed violence broke out on Oct. 7. Intermittent fighting left 23 people dead and 65 injured," the OCHA said in a report.

It is unclear how many people died in the renewed fighting since Nov. 2.

Galkayo is currently divided into two districts, with Galmudug governing the southern district and Puntland state the northern one.

Leaders of Galmudug and Puntland earlier this week announced a ceasefire brokered by the United Arab Emirates. The two parties are scheduled to hold further talks to implement the peace agreement on Nov. 20.

Some 40,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Galkayo have faced secondary displacement. Most of them have moved to villages and settlements on the outskirts of the town.

"The conflict has worsened the situation of IDPs, especially those facing secondary displacement. Humanitarian partners are concerned that the impact of the conflict is straining already depleted humanitarian supplies meant for response to those affected by flooding and drought in the region as the Deyr rainy season (October-December) begins," the OCHA said.

Commercial activity has been disrupted and more than 20,000 students have been affected as schools remain closed, the OCHA said, adding that some humanitarian organizations have been forced to limit staff movement.

Livestock owners and traders who rely on Galkayo as a transit route to the port of Bossaso have also been affected.
BEIJING, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- In this year's U.S. presidential race, which comes to its epic conclusion on Tuesday, the Republican nominee Donald Trump accused the Democrats of making use of the U.S. mainstream media to manipulate public opinion.

The media he mentioned included NBC, CNN, CBS, ABC, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

It's true that these media have unanimously stood behind Trump's rival Hillary Clinton and depicted the Republican mogul as unfit to lead and a "Democracy's Wrecking Ball."

The question is whether these media, hailed as "the Fourth Power" in the United States, have operated conscientiously or as tools for interest groups.

Some fifty top TV news anchors and journalists had attended a gathering at the New York home of Joel Benenson, the chief campaign strategist for Hillary Clinton, two days before she announced her candidacy in April 2015, according to emails Wikileaks has published from John Podesta's purported accounts.

What had been discussed at the banquet was off-the-record, but it's noteworthy in a living TV broadcast when CNN anchor Chris Cuomo interviewed Republican Congressman Chris Collins of New York about Hillary Clinton and the election, CNN directly cut the signal right after the congressman mentioned Wikileaks.

Trump cited this as an example of CNN's bias and the mainstream media's collusion with the Democratic Party.

In fact, Western media, though boasting of independence and impartiality, have irresistibly become the vital means for the elite of society to deeply interfer with the political, economic and social reality of the country.

In 1983, 90 percent of the U.S. media was controlled by fifty companies; today, 90 percent is controlled by just six companies. Those six decide what Americans listen to and watch, and ultimately control their political choices.

But Americans are no fools; they're increasingly skeptical of their media. According to Gallup, Americans' trust and confidence in the mass media "to report the news fully, accurately and fairly" has dropped to its lowest level in its polling history, with only 32 percent saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media, down eight percentage points from last year.

Believing that Trump has received unfair or negative attention by the media, Republicans who say they have trust in the media have plummeted to 14 percent from 32 percent a year ago, the lowest in 20 years.

While mass media is supposed to serve the broader public, they have instead become pawns of interests groups.

In 1988, renowned linguist and political scholar Noam Chomsky co-authored a book with Edward S. Herman, in which he pointed out that the Western corporate media "manufactured consent" in the interests of dominant and elite groups in society.

With "filters" which determine what gets to become "news" -- including media ownership and advertising, he showed how propaganda can pervade the "free" media in an ostensibly democratic Western society through self-censorship.

In the case of the ongoing presidential election in the United States, Rasmussen Reports in mid October released a report, which finds that 56 percent of likely U.S. voters believe it's more likely that many in the media are working to get Clinton elected president.

Moreover, 91 percent of voters in favor of Trump think it's more likely that most in the media are trying to help Clinton, according to the report based on a national telephone and online survey.

Though abandoned by the mainstream media, Trump is adept at utilizing social media to turn himself into an anti-establishment pioneer. While the old forms of media are no friends of Trump, the Republican nominee's saving grace may be in media's newer forms.
Ben Ogutu, a senior official at the Kenyan ministry of foreign affairs speaks during the launching ceremony of a Chinese language training course at the University of Nairobi's Confucius Institute in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, Nov. 4, 2016. A total of 30 Kenyan diplomats serving in various departments in the ministry of foreign affairs will undergo a four-month training in Chinese language. (Xinhua/Li Baishun)

NAIROBI, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese language training course for Kenyan diplomats has been launched at the University of Nairobi's Confucius Institute where it will be carried out beginning next week.

A total of 30 Kenyan diplomats serving in various departments in the ministry of foreign affairs will undergo a four-month training in Chinese language.

Speaking at the launching ceremony on Friday, Chinese Ambassador to Kenya Liu Xianfa hailed the Chinese training course by terming it a milestone in China-Kenya bilateral cooperation.

Kenyan diplomats attend the launching ceremony of a Chinese language training course at the University of Nairobi's Confucius Institute in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, Nov. 4, 2016. (Xinhua/Li Baishun)

Liu said the course, as a diplomat's capacity building program, is a latest testimony to the enhanced cooperation of the two sides.

He noted that proficiency in mandarin among Kenyan diplomats will enhance working relationship with their Chinese counterparts to revitalize bilateral cooperation.

A Kenyan diplomat learns basic Chinese greetings during the launching ceremony of a Chinese language training course at the University of Nairobi's Confucius Institute in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, Nov. 4, 2016.(Xinhua/Li Baishun)

"Joint efforts of both countries' diplomats will integrate our shared interests, combine the wishes and aspirations of both peoples toward common development and prosperity," Liu remarked.

"Kenya is expanding its engagement with emerging powers like China, and language will play a crucial role in this endeavor," Kenya's Cabinet Secretary for Foreign Affairs Amina Mohamed said in a speech read on her behalf by Ambassador Ben Ogutu, a senior official at the ministry of foreign affairs.

According to Mohamed, a grasp of spoken and written Chinese language among diplomats dovetails with Kenya's quest to cement strong and mutually beneficial ties with Beijing in diverse areas like trade, education and skills transfer.

Fluency in Chinese language among diplomats will advance cultural and economic diplomacy with the Asian giant, she added.
Protesters hold placards reading "Park Geun-hye step down" as they attend a rally calling for the resignation of South Korean President Park Geun-hye in Seoul, South Korea, on Nov. 5, 2016. (Xinhua/Yao Qilin)

by Yoo Seungki

SEOUL, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Tens of thousands of South Koreans engulfed a square in central Seoul Saturday, shouting for the ouster of President Park Geun-hye even after the embattled president's second apology to the nation over a scandal surrounding her longtime confidante, Choi Soon-sil.

From couples wheeling a baby carriage, teenagers in school uniforms to gray-haired old men, all took to the Gwanghwamun Square, with red posters reading "Step Down, Park Geun-hye" or paper cup-wrapped candles in their hands.

Slogans in the posters vary from "Shut up and Resign" to "Saenuri is an accomplice." Saenuri is the name of the ruling party affiliated with President Park.

Police estimated that about 43,000 people attended the rally, almost quadrupling a 12,000-strong protest held a week earlier. Organizers said as many as 150,000 turned out when including those coming back after early participation.

People screamed for Park's resignation in chorus at an event organized by civic groups that formally kicked off at 4 p.m. local time. With angry shouts, they looked reaching out to the presidential Blue House that is Park's office and residence located just 1-2 kilometers away from the square.

A long procession marched along the road for around two hours before gathering again in the square. During the march, they shouted in unison, "We want no apology. Step down, Park Geun-hye."

Park's Friday apology, her second since the scandal involving her decades-long confidante and former advisors came into focus last month, ended up a failure in appeasing public fury. Public anger seemed to have exploded with the emotional apology.

In the televised address to the nation, Park said with a quivering voice that the scandal was "all my fault and mistake" and that she as the country's chief executive had put too much faith in her personal relationship with Choi, who the president said had stood with her during the toughest times.

Park admitted that she lowered her guard toward Choi, whose father Park had portrayed as mentor. Park's toughest times indicate the assassinations of her mother in 1974 and then her father, military strongman Park Chung-hee killed in 1979 by one of his closest aides. Park's friendship with Choi dates back to the mid-1970s.

"It's a pity to think about President Park's personal history, but she can no longer run our country," said Seo Hyun-ah, a 39-year-old housewife who came to the square together with her mother and child in a baby carriage.

"Park must distance herself from state affairs and let a neutral prime minister form a coalition cabinet."

Park has fired eight presidential secretaries and nominated three cabinet members, including the prime minister who worked for former progressive President Roh Moo-hyun. Opposition parties have boycotted the "unilateral" nomination, demanding a new prime minister be picked by the parliamentary agreement.

Public fury is centered on the president's presumable connivance or protection of Choi suspected of peddling undue influence for personal gains and meddling in government decisions behind the scenes.

Choi has been formally detained on charges of fraud and abuse of power as she allegedly pressured conglomerates into donating tens of millions of U.S. dollars to two nonprofit foundations she actually controls.

Media reports speculated that Choi had accessed confidential presidential documents on diplomatic, defense and economic affairs on a daily basis to influence government policies.

The 60-year-old private citizen, who has no public position and security clearance, allegedly allowed her daughter to be granted special treatment in entrance to a prestigious university by using her close friendship with the first South Korean female leader.

"The Choi Soon-sil case is a complete nonsense. Park, who people elected as the president, transferred her sovereign power to a private person," said Seong Eun-joo, a junior high school student who attended the rally with two other fellow students in school uniforms.

The three female students also took to the streets to demonstrate against an attempt by the Park administration to approve a state-authored history textbook, which they expect 100 percent to beautify former military dictatorships for three decades that ended in late 1980s and the 1910-45 Japanese colonization of the Korean Peninsula.

Long dissatisfactions stacked in the past four years of Park's presidency seemed to burst into a big flame on the streets as labor unions, student unions and civic groups censured right-wing, business-friendly government policies such as easier layoffs of employees, widening income inequality and approval of state-authored history textbook.

Gray-haired old men, who are usually difficult to find in such protest rallies on the streets, marched in central Seoul, shouting together for Park's resignation. It indicates Park's loss of credibility even from those in their 60s and more, a traditional support base for the president.

"(President Park) has no sense of shame and didn't frankly confess to her sins. She can neither endure nor swim against the minds of the people," said Kim Ok-hyun.

"(Park) must resign not to humiliate our country any more. People must take this opportunity to turn evils into blessings," the 74-year-old added.

According to a weekly survey released on Friday, Park's approval rating tumbled to 5 percent, the lowest for any South Korean president.

Park, who has 16 months left in office, had seen her support scores move from 30 percent to 50 percent in the first three years since her inauguration in early 2013.

Related:

S.Korean political arena divided over President Park's address on scandal

SEOUL, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Rival political parties in South Korea showed different reactions to President Park Geun-hye's national address on Friday, her second since a scandal involving her longtime confidante and former aides came into focus last month.
ISTANBUL, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Nine more pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) officials were detained on Saturday in southeastern Turkey, local media reported.

The provincial and district heads were among the detainees, the Hurriyet daily said.

Special operations teams, backed by police helicopters, raided the homes of the HDP officials in Adana city, it added.

The detainees were taken to the police headquarters for investigations, it noted.

A day earlier, Turkish authorities arrested HDP's co-chairs, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, and several lawmakers from the party, the third largest in parliament.

The party's officials and lawmakers have been accused of having links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which security forces are fighting in Turkey's southeast.

In a statement, the HPD claimed that Friday's bomb attack in Turkey's southeastern Diyarbakir province targeted its members.

The governor's office blamed the PKK for the attack, while the Islamic State reportedly claimed the responsibility.

In a statement on its website, the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul advised Americans to "maintain a high level of vigilance," warning of expected demonstrations in the city against the HDP arrests.
MOSCOW, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- The high-level partnership between Russia and China has played a crucial part in helping maintain a fair and just world order, a leading Russian expert has said.

The two nations are firmly on the track of upholding stability and security in the world, Sergei Luzyanin, Director of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and an expert at the international Valdai Discussion Club, said in a recent interview.

This was stated clearly in a joint statement by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in June 2016 in Hangzhou during the G20 Summit, he noted.

The scholar believed that there are two important levels defining Russia-China relations.

The first level is the high degree of mutual cooperation and understanding in the military and political spheres.

Both countries face complex regional and global problems, especially Russia, which has been under great pressure due to Western sanctions and is caught up in a difficult situation in Syria, the expert said.

Therefore, cooperation between the two countries within a host of global and regional frameworks has increased significantly.

Moscow and Beijing are indeed trying to support and maintain stability in the world through institutions like the United Nations Security Council, the BRICS bloc of nations and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, he explained.

The second level, Luzyanin said, is in the areas of trade, the economy, investment and technology, which he believes lags far behind the first one.

However, he emphasized that this does not mean the second level is at an impasse, as new windows of opportunity have opened for boosting bilateral cooperation in such areas as the booming e-commerce industry. Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has brought new opportunities for Russia, he said.

Infrastructure is also a promising area for cooperation. Building roads is tough for Russia given their current poor state and the huge distances often required for travel; therefore Chinese investment and joint projects are expected to play a huge role in Siberia and the Far East regions, Luzyanin said.

In this regard, China's Belt and Road Initiative, aimed at boosting infrastructure building and financial cooperation across Asia, Europe and Africa along the ancient Silk Road, could be worthwhile for Russia, he concluded.
China Spokespersons Forum is held in Shanghai, east China, Nov. 5, 2016. (Xinhua/Fang Zhe)



SHANGHAI, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Spokespersons from Chinese government departments and state-owned enterprises gathered in Shanghai on Saturday to attend the China Spokespersons Forum.

The forum, hosted by the State Council Information Office and the China Executive Leadership Academy based in Pudong, Shanghai, was also participated by experts and scholars in the field, as well as media representatives, who discussed ways to better tell the Chinese stories.

China officially set up its spokesperson system in the early 1980s.
Moroccans hold placards during a demonstration on November 4, 2016 in the northern city of al-Hoceima to demand justice for a fish seller whose gruesome death, when he was crushed in a rubbish truck, sparked nationwide outrage. (AFP/Xinhua)

RABAT, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of protesters gathered in the northern city of Hoceima Morocco on Friday to mark a week since the tragic death of a fish vendor in the city.

After gathering in the Mohammed V Square in Hoceima, protesters marched in the main streets of the city demanding justice for the fish vendor who was crushed to death by a garbage truck last Friday in the northern city.

Mouhcine Fikri, 31, jumped along with some friends into the truck to retrieve his merchandise after being confiscated by local authorities on the basis that it is a protected species in this period of the year in the country.

The death of Fikri has sparked nationwide outrage. Since last Saturday, numerous demonstrations and sit-ins have been staged in the city of Hoceima. On Sunday, thousands marched in protests across the country, including the capital Rabat and major cities like Casablanca, Tangier, Marrakesh and Agadir.

On Tuesday, prosecutor announced the arrest of 11 people, including two local security agents and the head of the local fisheries department, on charges including manslaughter and other offenses relating to the death.

The Moroccan Interior Minister visited Sunday Hoceima to offer condolences to the family of Mouhcine Fikri.

According to a statement by the Interior Ministry, the minister informed Fikri's family of King Mohammed VI instructions for conducting a "careful and thorough investigation and bringing charges against whoever held responsible in this incident."
RIGA, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- More than 40 experts from 16 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries attended a symposium here on Saturday, exchanging views on how to enhance Sinology research and Chinese language pedagogy in the region.

The experts were joined by representatives from Hanban, China's national office for teaching Chinese as a foreign language, and Chinese linguistic experts at the symposium which took place in the University of Latvia.

Co-organised by Hanban and the Confucius Institute of the University of Latvia, the symposium focused on three topics -- the Belt and Road initiative and Sinology studies, the role of Confucius Institutes in Chinese language pedagogy and the state of play of Sinology studies in the CEE countries.

Hanban representatives also introduced participants to new projects that aim to promote Chinese studies in these countries, including collaborative doctoral programmes, research fellowships, and publication grants.

In a welcoming speech, Indrikis Muiznieks, rector of the University of Latvia, highlighted the extensive opportunities for Sinology studies in Europe that come along with the Belt and Road Initiative.

The initiative was proposed by China in 2013, with the aim of building a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient Silk Road routes.

Muiznieks said that with the Belt and Road initiative elevating China-CEE relations to a new level, people in CEE countries needed to deepen their knowledge of the Chinese language, history and culture.

"Founded in 2011, the Confucius Institute of the University of Latvia is the first one in the country, and it has gone through rapid development for the past five years," he said, adding that the symposium have brought together the most esteemed Sinologists in the region, and will contribute tremendously to the China-related studies in universities and institutions in Latvia and its neighbouring countries.

Peteris Pildegovichs, a senior expert on Chinese linguistics and pedagogy at the university and co-director of the Confucius Institute, said he had witnessed the development of Sinology in the country, and looked forward to more young talents joining in the endeavour to promote mutual understanding of China and CEE countries.

The 16 CEE countries are Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia.
As a fur trade historian, I believe that a brief look at trapping along the Missouri River in the past provides insight today on Initiative 177, which bans trapping on Montana's public land. After studying the complex trading enterprise that was sustained largely by trapping beavers to satisfy the European demand for felt hats, I have concluded that I-177 promotes an ethically valid and scientifically sound approach to managing fur-bearing animals in Montana.

It's helpful to remember that the fur trade depended on indigenous peoples and had a profound effect on their way of life.

"Every intelligent man saw the poverty that would follow the destruction of the beaver" observed the fur trade explorer David Thompson in 1797. Four years later, Thompson described how "almost the whole of the extensive countries were denuded of beaver, the natives became poor, and with difficulty procured the first necessaries of life, and in this state they remain, and probably forever."

This is particularly tragic since the Plains Indians weren't very interested in trapping beavers in the first place. A Canadian fur trader in 1805 complained that: "Beavers are plentiful, but the Indians will not take the trouble of attending to them. They often remarked to me that they would think it a pleasure to supply us with beavers if they could be secured the same as buffaloes by a chase on horseback, but they considered the operation of searching for them in the bowels of the earth, to satisfy the avarice of the whites, not only troublesome, but very degrading." Lewis and Clark, Manuel Lisa, and other traders encountered similar attitudes among the Indians on the upper Missouri River.

Aggressive trapping across the continent didn't cause the extinction of the beaver, but it came close. When artist John James Audubon traveled 2,200 miles up the Missouri River from St. Louis to Fort Union in 1843, he was disappointed that he didn't see a single beaver. Nor could Audubon obtain a specimen to paint, even though he hired an experienced trapper. By 1850, the fur trade was largely over in Montana.

Many Montanans today are surprised to learn that thousands of beaver are trapped every year in our wetlands and waterways using equipment and methods largely unchanged in more than 200 years. Unfortunately for the beaver, the result remains the same  a cruel death by jaws of steel. David Thompson once recovered a trap with a severed leg in it. The beaver had gnawed off its own paw to escape, but two days later, the same beaver was caught again. Another time, a beaver managed to swim away with an improperly fastened trap still attached to its leg, only to drown some days later in another trap.

David Thompson also heard the Indians' misgivings about trapping: "We are now killing beaver without any labour, we are now rich, but shall soon be poor, for when the beaver are destroyed we have nothing to depend on to purchase what we want for our families. Strangers now overrun our country with their iron traps, and we and they will soon be poor." Thompson knew the Indians were right, but he didn't know how to help. Fortunately, today, we do.

The restoration of beavers in the 20th century is one of North America's most notable success stories. We now recognize the beaver as a keystone species  an animal that plays a vital role in how an ecosystem works. Beaver dams create wetlands and meadows that improve water quality and increase biodiversity. And their dam building stores water for summer irrigation and recreation including fishing. As the climate gets warmer, letting beavers be beavers is a simple solution to water conservation.

The intensely competitive fur trade played a formative role in creating the United States and Canada. And it's plain to see that trapping adversely affected native peoples as well as natural ecosystems by decimating beaver populations. In modern society, however, it makes no sense to allow the commercial exploitation of beaver and other fur-bearing species to suit the whims and fancies of fashion. Trapping is part of Montana's heritage to be sure, but it's time that we embrace the values, ethics, and science of the 21st century. Banning trapping on Montana's public land is a way to make things right by correcting a historic injustice. Vote yes on Initiative 177.
ROME, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Two Italian nationals kidnapped in Libya were freed, and made a safe return to Italy early on Saturday, the Italian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Danilo Calonego, 66, and Bruno Cacace, 56, had been taken hostage near the southwest town of Ghat, at the border with Algeria, on Sept. 19, together with Canadian colleague Frank Poccia.

All three of them were freed in southern Libya during the night, and the two Italians were flown with an institutional flight to Rome in the early hours of Saturday, the ministry said.

The three men worked as technicians with Italian Con.I.Cos construction company, which is currently carrying out a maintenance project at Ghat airport.

They had been kidnapped near the company's compound by an armed group, which had blocked the road on which they were travelling, according to the ministry.

Their liberation was made possible "thanks to the effective cooperation with Libyan local authorities," the statement added.

No further details were provided about the circumstances of their release, or the identity of the kidnappers.

The two Italian nationals would be in good health conditions, and received no abuses during their captivity, ANSA news agency cited Foreign Affairs Ministry sources as reporting.

They would meet with Rome prosecutors investigating into their abduction on Saturday, ANSA reported.

Four other Italian technicians working with Bonatti construction company had been kidnapped in the western port of Mellitah, near the industrial complex owned by Italy's energy giant ENI, in July last year.

Two of them were allegedly killed in a shootout between the kidnappers and local Libyan militias, Italian media reported at the time citing security officials.

Their colleagues Gino Pollicardo, 55, and Filippo Calcagno, 65, were freed in a blitz, and safely returned to Italy, in March 2016.

Another Italian technician working in Libya, Marco Vallisa, was kidnapped in July 2014, and freed in November 2014.

Libya is Italy's former colony, and the presence of Italian companies is large, especially in energy and construction fields, despite its instability.

The north African country has long been engulfed in civil war after the fall of former leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, and is now struggling to conclude a difficult political transition.
TEHRAN, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and the Polish Oil & Gas Company (PGNiG SA) on Saturday signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate in an oil field in Iran, semi-official Fars News agency reported.

The deal was inked by NIOC's deputy chief for development and engineering affairs, Gholam-Reza Manouchehri, and the president of the PGNiG SA management board, Piotr Wozniak.

Under the deal, the Polish company will carry out studies on the development of Sumar oil field in southern Iran.

Iran is hopeful that the agreement will result in more engagement between the two sides, Manouchehri of NIOC was quoted as saying.

He said the Polish side will have a six-month deadline to complete the study on the field and provide the NIOC with the results.

The final decision on developing the field will be made once the studies are complete, and the NIOC will ultimately seek to offer the project for implementation through tender, he added.

For his part, Wozniak said his company is well experienced in the field and hopes for good cooperation with the NIOC.
MOSUL, Iraq, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi security forces on Saturday advancing north along the Tigris River towards Mosul recaptured the last town in south of the city, as battles continued against Islamic State (IS) militants in the eastern part of Mosul, a security source said.

The Iraqi army and federal police entered the town of Hammam al-Alil, some 15 km south of Mosul, after heavy clashes with IS militants in the town, Lieutenant General Abul-Amir Yarallah from the Joint Operations Command (JOC) told reporters.

The troops recaptured the local government building around noon and raised the Iraqi flag on the building, Yarallah said.

Later on, the troops started clearing operation in the town as sporadic clashes continued in some small pockets of IS militants in the town, Yarallah said, adding that the troops also started to defuse many landmines and booby traps planted earlier by the extremist IS group.

Also in the day, the federal police forces advanced to the village of Tal al-Dhahab, just northeast of Hammam al-Alil, as part of their troops advance toward the southern edges of Mosul, he said.

The fall of Hammam al-Alil, the last town in south of Mosul, is expected to speed up the advance of the security forces, who have to recapture a few villages on their way toward Mosul, he added.

Fighting continued inside the eastern side of Mosul as the commandos of the Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) are fighting fierce clashes with IS militants in the residential areas in an attempt to push deeper into the city, but the IS militants showed stubborn resistance, a source from the Operations Command of Nineveh Liberation told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, the troops carried out search operations to clear the districts which were recaptured the day before in eastern Mosul, the source said.

On Friday, hundreds of the CTS commandos and Iraqi army made a significant progress in the morning at the eastern side of Mosul, and managed to seize the districts of Aden, Samah, Karkukli, al-Khadraa, al-Ikhaa and al-Quds, a source from the STC told Xinhua.

Friday advance unleashed the most intense street battles against IS militants since the offensive to retake the city began nearly three weeks ago.

The battles inside Mosul pushed the number of civilians who were displaced from their homes to around 30,000 since the start of the military offensive on Oct. 17, according to the recent report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

"Most of the new arrivals (to displaced camps) came from Gogjali and other suburbs on the eastern outskirts of Mosul, which saw heavy clashes three days ago and are now under the control of the Iraqi Security Forces," the report said.

On Oct. 17, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the start of a major offensive to retake Mosul, the country's second largest city.

Since then, the Iraqi security forces have inched to the eastern fringes of Mosul and made progress on other routes around the city, preparing for a major battle to storm the city and drive out IS militants.

Mosul, some 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, has been under IS control since June 2014, when Iraqi government forces abandoned their weapons and fled, enabling IS militants to take control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions.
COLOMBO, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka and India on Saturday agreed to create a joint working group to find a permanent solution to longstanding issues pertaining to fishing and fishermen between the two countries.

Sri Lanka's Foreign Ministry said that the agreement on the working group and its mandate was reached during talks held in India between government ministers of both countries.

Major objectives of the joint working group include expediting the transition towards ending bottom trawling, working out modalities for handing over apprehended fishermen and cooperation on patrolling.

The working group, which will meet every three months, should also ensure there would be no violence or loss of life when the navies or coast guards are involved.

Ministers for Fisheries from both countries will meet every six months starting from January 2017.
An Iraqi woman, who fled the violence due to the ongoing operation by Iraqi forces against Islamic State group jihadists to retake the city of Mosul, sits in a car driving through the village of Gogjali, on November 4, 2016, as families head to camps for displaced people. (AFP/Xinhua)

MOSUL, Iraq, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi security forces on Saturday advancing north along the Tigris River towards Mosul recaptured the last town in south of the city, as battles continued against Islamic State (IS) militants in the eastern part of Mosul, a security source said.

The Iraqi army and federal police entered the town of Hammam al-Alil, some 15 km south of Mosul, after heavy clashes with IS militants in the town, Lieutenant General Abul-Amir Yarallah from the Joint Operations Command (JOC) told reporters.

The troops recaptured the local government building around noon and raised the Iraqi flag on the building, Yarallah said.

Later on, the troops started clearing operation in the town as sporadic clashes continued in some small pockets of IS militants in the town, Yarallah said, adding that the troops also started to defuse many landmines and booby traps planted earlier by the extremist IS group.

Also in the day, the federal police forces advanced to the village of Tal al-Dhahab, just northeast of Hammam al-Alil, as part of their troops advance toward the southern edges of Mosul, he said.

The fall of Hammam al-Alil, the last town in south of Mosul, is expected to speed up the advance of the security forces, who have to recapture a few villages on their way toward Mosul, he added.

Fighting continued inside the eastern side of Mosul as the commandos of the Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) are fighting fierce clashes with IS militants in the residential areas in an attempt to push deeper into the city, but the IS militants showed stubborn resistance, a source from the Operations Command of Nineveh Liberation told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, the troops carried out search operations to clear the districts which were recaptured the day before in eastern Mosul, the source said.

On Friday, hundreds of the CTS commandos and Iraqi army made a significant progress in the morning at the eastern side of Mosul, and managed to seize the districts of Aden, Samah, Karkukli, al-Khadraa, al-Ikhaa and al-Quds, a source from the STC told Xinhua.

Friday advance unleashed the most intense street battles against IS militants since the offensive to retake the city began nearly three weeks ago.

The battles inside Mosul pushed the number of civilians who were displaced from their homes to around 30,000 since the start of the military offensive on Oct. 17, according to the recent report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

"Most of the new arrivals (to displaced camps) came from Gogjali and other suburbs on the eastern outskirts of Mosul, which saw heavy clashes three days ago and are now under the control of the Iraqi Security Forces," the report said.

On Oct. 17, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the start of a major offensive to retake Mosul, the country's second largest city.

Since then, the Iraqi security forces have inched to the eastern fringes of Mosul and made progress on other routes around the city, preparing for a major battle to storm the city and drive out IS militants.

Mosul, some 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, has been under IS control since June 2014, when Iraqi government forces abandoned their weapons and fled, enabling IS militants to take control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions.
Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko(L) and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg talk after a bilateral meeting at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, capital of Belgium, Dec. 17, 2015. (Xinhua/File Photo)

KIEV, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Kiev is holding talks with NATO over a possible assistance in the introduction of the innovative C4ISR command-and-control system in the Ukrainian armed forces, a senior Ukrainian parliament official said recently.

"We are trying to negotiate about the need of introduction of the C4ISR command-and-control system in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. That would be a real revolution for our army," Iryna Friz, the head of the Ukrainian parliamentary delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, told reporters.

The C4ISR -- command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance system, can ensure the development of Ukraine's security and defense sectors according to the standards of the 21st century, Friz said.

She emphasized that NATO's support for Ukraine, particularly under a Comprehensive Package of Assistance approved in July, has already helped Kiev to step up implementation of reforms in its security and defense sectors.

The establishment of the C4ISR system is a part of the Strategic Defense Bulletin of Ukraine -- the roadmap for the country's development of defense sector by 2021.

Ukraine is not a member of NATO, but closely cooperates with the alliance and participates in NATO's Partnership for Peace Program.
Protesters hold placards reading "Park Geun-hye step down" as they attend a rally calling for the resignation of South Korean President Park Geun-hye in Seoul, South Korea, on Nov. 5, 2016. (Xinhua/Yao Qilin)

SEOUL, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Tens of thousands of enraged South Koreans rallied in Seoul and other places Saturday night to demand President Park Geun-hye's resignation over a scandal involving her longtime confidante and ex-advisors.

The nationwide rally followed the president's second apology for the scandal surrounding Choi Soon-sil, suspected of peddling undue influence for personal gains and meddling in state affairs behind the scenes.

In the capital Seoul, police estimated that about 45,000 people gathered in the Gwanghwamun Square to attend the rally, almost quadrupling a 12,000-strong protest held a week earlier.

Around 18,000 police officers were deployed to the square to prevent a possible march toward the presidential Blue House that is Park's office and residence just 1-2 kilometers away from the square.

Organizers said as many as 200,000 turned out in Seoul when including those coming back after early participation.

An additional 100,000 turned out in other places nationwide, with smaller rallies in many major cities.

Candlelight vigils took place in southwest South Korea, traditionally seen as a major support base for the opposition bloc, and in the metropolitan area close to the capital city, according to local media reports.

Protests happened even in the country's southeastern regions, a political home turf for President Park and the ruling Saenuri Party. Participants held posters reading "Saenuri is an accomplice."

Another large-scale rally is scheduled for next Saturday, with some expecting the anti-government protest to reach another pinnacle over long-stacked satisfactions with government policies.
Zhang Dejiang (C), chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, attends the third plenary meeting of the bimonthly session of the NPC Standing Committee in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 5, 2016. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei)

BEIJING, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- China's top legislature on Saturday deliberated a draft interpretation to Article 104 of the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR).

The draft interpretation was submitted to legislators for deliberation at the third plenary meeting of the bimonthly session of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, which will conclude Monday.

Entrusted by the chairpersons' meeting of the NPC Standing Committee, Zhang Rongshun, vice chairperson of the Legislative Affairs Commission of the NPC Standing Committee, delivered an explanation of the draft interpretation, introducing the implication of the legislation and its legal principles.

Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, was present at the meeting.

Article 104 of the Basic Law of the Hong Kong SAR stipulates: "When assuming office, the chief executive, principal officials, members of the executive council and of the legislative council, judges of courts at all levels and other members of the judiciary in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region must, in accordance with law, swear to uphold the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China and swear allegiance to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China."

In the group discussion in the afternoon, legislators believed it is both "timely and necessary" to make an interpretation to the article.

In recent years, advocacy of "Hong Kong independence" has emerged in some sections of Hong Kong society, according to a statement released after the discussion.

The statement said that some people have displayed "Hong Kong independence" flags and established "Hong Kong independence" organizations. They have even pursued violence.

A handful of Hong Kong legislators-elect violated the oath intentionally, publicly advocating "Hong Kong independence" and insulting the Chinese nation at the swearing-in ceremony for the sixth Legislative Council (LegCo) of the Hong Kong SAR. After their oath-taking was declared invalid, the legislators-elect involved chose to break into the LegCo, making the body unable to hold normal meetings.

"These words and actions have openly challenged the Basic Law, hampered the normal operation of the authorities of the Hong Kong SAR and undermined the rule of law in Hong Kong," the statement said.

"They have hit the bottom line of the 'one country, two systems' principle and posed a grave threat to national sovereignty and security," the statement said.

"If the situation is allowed to continue, the immediate interests of residents in the SAR and the development interests of the nation will be damaged," it said, stressing that the central authorities cannot afford to idly sit and do nothing.

It is in accordance with the rights provided in the Constitution of the nation and the Basic Law of the Hong Kong SAR for the NPC Standing Committee to give a legal interpretation in time, the statement said, adding that the draft interpretation "complies with the provisions in the Constitution and the Basic Law."

Legislators proposed that the interpretation be adopted at the session, according to the statement.

"Those who were present at the discussion agree that the legal interpretation given by the NPC Standing Committee has the same effect as the Basic Law of the Hong Kong SAR," the statement said.

The legislation implications of the oath at swearing-in and its legal principles explained in the draft interpretation will help make clear the understanding in Hong Kong society, it said.

The draft interpretation is necessary for safeguarding the authority of the Basic Law and maintaining the stability of Hong Kong, it added, calling on the administrative, legislative and judicial organs of the Hong Kong SAR to obey the interpretation.
SRINAGAR, Indian-controlled Kashmir, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Fresh protests and clashes broke out in restive Indian-controlled Kashmir Saturday after government forces fired warning shots, tear smoke shells and shotgun pellets to disperse a funeral procession, officials and locals said.

At least 35 mourners were injured in Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, when contingents of police and paramilitary tried to stop the protesters carrying body of a 16-year-old boy, Qaisar Ahmad Sofi, who succumbed at premier health institute after days of hospitalisation.

The slain boy's family alleged he was tortured and poisoned by Indian forces, which was refuted by police.

Witnesses said hundreds of young men participated in the funeral procession shouting anti-India slogans. Police action triggered clashes with some young men throwing stones and brickbats towards them, while others carried the boy's coffin to Martyr's Graveyard in the old city for burial.

Locals said police action on mourners prevented funeral procession from growing larger.

Sofi, according to his family, went missing on Oct. 27 and was found lying unconscious in the neighbourhood a day after. His family claimed he was abducted, tortured and subsequently poisoned by Indian security forces. Police spokesman denied the family allegations saying he consumed poison on his own.

Indian-controlled Kashmir has been witnessing the largest anti-India protests in recent years since July 8, following the killing of a popular militant commander in a gunfight with Indian troops.

Authorities imposed curfew and restrictions to contain street protests, besides resorting to arrests and sweeping military crackdown.

Clashes between civilian protesters and government forces have so far resulted in killing of at least 90 people, mostly young men and children, besides injuries to at least 12,000 others including those blinded and maimed.

Kashmir, the Himalayan region divided between India and Pakistan, is claimed by both in full.

However in the Indian-controlled part, anti-India sentiment runs deep in the psyche of majority of Kashmiris. A separatist movement and guerrilla war challenging New Delhi's rule has been going on since 1989.
MOSCOW, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Russia on Saturday demanded a response from the United States to media reports that U.S. military hackers have penetrated Russia's telecommunications networks, electric grid and "the Kremlin's command systems."

"We expect a response from the U.S. authorities, including the White House and the Department of State, with a legal assessment of the reports," Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry, said in a statement published on the website of the ministry.

"The absence of an official reaction from the U.S. administration will signify the existence of state cyber terrorism in the United States," Zakharova said.

If the threats are carried out, Moscow will have full authority to bring charges against Washington, she added.

On Friday, the NBC News reported that the U.S. military hackers have penetrated Russia's electric grid, telecommunications networks and the Kremlin's command systems, making them vulnerable to attacks by secret U.S. cyber weapons.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang addresses the Sixth China and Central and Eastern European (CEE) Countries Economic and Trade Forum in Riga, Latvia, Nov. 5, 2016. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)

RIGA, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said here Saturday that China will surmount all difficulties confronting the Chinese economy, maintain steady growth, and speed up economic transformation.

While addressing the Sixth China and Central and Eastern European (CEE) Countries Economic and Trade Forum in Riga, Latvia, Li updated his audience on the latest developments of the Chinese economy.

China's confidence in its economic development comes from the country's vigorous efforts to adapt to the economic new normal and pursue supply-side structural reform while appropriately expanding aggregate demand, he said, adding that this has bolstered the internal development momentum of the Chinese economy.

He said China has consistently followed proactive fiscal policy and prudent monetary policy, and adopted new ways of macroeconomic regulation.

The premier noted that his country has also endeavored to advance economic restructuring and foster new growth drivers through energetic reform, opening-up and innovation.

Moreover, he said, China sought to apply market-oriented and rules-based methods to forestall and defuse risks.

Li added that looking ahead, the Chinese economy enjoys great potential, solid strength and ample room for maneuver, saying it is well-positioned to sustain medium-high growth rate and move to medium-high level of development.

China has every confidence in achieving this goal, said the premier.

China's development offers the world an opportunity thanks to the ever more open Chinese market, which will surely bring huge business opportunities to global companies including those from the CEE countries, he said, calling for concerted efforts from all sides to build a new type of partnership featuring inclusiveness and reciprocity for a bright future of China-CEE business cooperation.

Li is currently in the Baltic country for an official visit and a leaders' meeting within what is known as the "16+1" framework, which groups China and 16 CEE nations.

His trip marks the first time for a Chinese premier to visit Latvia since it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Baltic country is the third stop of his ongoing eight-day Eurasia tour, which has already taken him to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and will conclude in Russia.
People visit the booth of Yutong in Chinese pavilion at the 34th International Trade Fair of Havana, in Havana, Cuba, on Nov. 3, 2016.(Xinhua/Str)

HAVANA, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Cuba's 34th Havana International Trade Fair (FIHAV 2016) concluded on Friday, following robust participation from Chinese companies.

The five-day fair brought Cuban and international firms from 73 countries together to explore potential business opportunities, the organizers said.

Among the highlights on the last day of the event was a Cuban campaign called "I choose Cuba," which aims to promote health tourism. Health travelers to Cuba can get first-rate medical care and access a range of services, from cancer treatments to Heberprot-P applications to treat diabetic foot ulcers.

More than 60 Chinese companies took part in the trade fair, with the Chinese pavilion at ExpoCuba on the outskirts of Havana attracting thousands of companies and entrepreneurs from around the world.

Hosted by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, Beijing's pavilion underscored China's strong economic ties with Cuba, especially in providing advanced technology, world-class equipment and infrastructure.

Midea, one of China's leading home appliance manufacturers, has been operating in Cuba for 7 years.

"We have just started selling fans in the Cuban market. In 2013, we introduced products like air conditioners, refrigerators and rice cookers, which have made a positive impact on the Cuban market," Gu Junqiu, Midea's manager in Cuba, told Xinhua earlier this week.

"We will continue cooperating with Cuban companies to introduce other products to this changing market and build a post-sales system for providing spare parts and quality service," he said.

People visit the booth of Geely in Chinese pavilion at the 34th International Trade Fair of Havana, in Havana, Cuba, on Nov. 3, 2016.(Xinhua/Str)

China's Geely Automotive has sold over 15,000 cars on the island since 2008, mainly for the tourism industry.

"We have been successful since the first year we entered the Cuban market. We will continue to provide our buyers in this country with high-quality cars which are already quite well known here," Du Shaokui, one of Geely's representatives in Cuba, told Xinhua.

One of the latest technological products entering the Cuban market is the high-definition (HD) TV decoder. The Chinese company Soyea has sold over 500,000 decoders in Cuba in the last two years along with over 20,000 TVs, making it one of the most popular brands on the island.

China is Cuba's second-largest trading partner following Venezuela. Numerous Chinese companies are involved in multiple areas of this nation's economy and development, particularly in technology, transportation, biotechnology, agricultural machinery, household appliances and textiles.
Aerial photo taken on Sept. 19, 2015 shows the Waigaoqiao container pier of the Shanghai free trade zone (FTZ) in Shanghai, east China. (Xinhua/Pei Xin)

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Ties between Latin America and China have continuously strengthened through efforts on both sides, according to a Brazilian political observer.

In the lead up to the summit of leaders from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, scheduled to take place in the Peruvian capital Lima later this month, Mauricio Santoro, professor of international relations at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, spoke with Xinhua about Latin America-China ties.

Recent high-level visits between the two sides underscore the importance of the relationship, noted Santoro.

Visits by Chinese President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and other senior Chinese officials are significant evidence that China attaches great importance to its relations with the region, and another indicator is growing investment from Chinese companies, especially in infrastructure, said Santoro.

Trade between China and Latin America has grown more than 20 fold since 2000, said Santoro, citing data from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). The speed of growth is also confirmed by Chinese official statistics.

"China is now the largest or second-largest trading partner of most Latin American countries," he added.

What's more, both sides have made it clear they favor expanding ties further, as partnerships such as the Forum of China and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) suggest, he said.

"The creation of the China-CELAC Forum is significant as it unites the Asian country with the various countries of the region, allowing them to debate relevant topics from a broader multilateral perspective," said Santoro.

More importantly, he added, "it shows the interest both sides have in deepening ties against the backdrop of the global economic crisis and sluggish growth in the United States and Europe."

Since the forum's creation, the political climate in South America has grown more conservative, with center-right governments coming into power in Argentina and Brazil.

Workers sort out goods bought by customers online at a deliver center in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, Nov. 9, 2015. (Xinhua/Huang Zongzhi)

However, these political changes are transient compared to the more farsighted goal China and Latin America have of joining forces to better weather the uncertainty of the world economy, he said.

"These are the long-term objectives, which are beyond changes in government in Latin America, and beyond left-wing or right-wing presidents," said Santoro.

He noted the two sides need to address the imbalance of trade between China and Latin America.

Latin American countries are mostly exporting raw materials (food, minerals, oil) and primarily importing manufactured goods from China, he said.

In a bid to reduce the imbalance, China and agencies such as ECLAC have called on Latin American governments to invest more in human resources, education, science and technology, as the two regions continue to boost cooperation in trade, investment and production capacity.

"We have a positive example in the agreement between the Brazilian postal service Correios and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, to cooperate in their logistical chains," said Santoro.

"Today, there is much more that can be done in terms of economies of scale, cooperation and partnerships. The challenge for Chinese and Latin American companies now is to develop their ability to improve their commerce intelligence, analytic capacity and political involvement with foreign partners," Santoro said.
SEOUL, Nov. 6 (Xinhua) -- A South Korean court approved arrest warrants early Sunday to formally detain two ex-aides to President Park Geun-hye over a scandal surrounding Park's longtime confidante Choi Soon-sil.

Ahn Jong-beom, 57, former senior presidential secretary on policy coordination, was formally arrested on charges of abuse of power, according to local media reports.

He has been suspected of pressuring conglomerates into donating tens of millions of U.S. dollars to two dubious nonprofit foundations presumably controlled by Choi.

During the court hearing, Ahn allegedly had said he would take responsibility for wrongly assisting the president. He will be in custody for as long as 20 days for detailed investigation into whether President Park was involved in or ordered the forceful donations.

Jeong Ho-seong, 47, former presidential secretary in charge of presidential documents, was also placed under a formal detention as he is accused of leaking confidential papers to Choi on a daily basis.

He will also be detained for 20 days for a probe into the president's involvement. Prosecutors urgently arrested him on Thursday night for fear of flight and a possible attempt to destroy evidence.

Ahn and Jeong resigned last Sunday when Park accepted resignations of eight advisors. Jeong has been seen as one of so-called "three knobs of a door" that leads directly into the president due to his longtime aid since Park went into politics in 1998.

The former presidential advisors are suspected of helping Choi peddle undue influence for personal gains and interfere with state affairs behind the scenes by using her decades-long friendship with President Park.

In the televised national address on Friday, Park vowed to accept an investigation by prosecutors into herself if necessary, saying anyone found to have done something wrong would take responsibility for their wrongdoings.

During the address, Park made her second apology to the nation since the scandal came into focus last month, but her tearful apology failed to appease public angry as tens of thousands of protestors took to the streets nationwide on Saturday night to demand the president step down.

Views have spread that Choi, a 60-year-old woman who has no public position and security clearance, could not have committed wrongdoings without the president's connivance and protection.

As Park accepted the direct investigation into herself, prosecutors are expected to probe into the president's involvement in the scandal that put the first South Korean female leader into the biggest crisis since her inauguration in February 2013.

According to a weekly survey released on Friday, Park's approval rating tumbled to 5 percent, the lowest for any South Korean president.

Park, who has 16 months left in office, had seen her support scores move from 30 percent to 50 percent in the first three years since her inauguration.
SRINAGAR, Indian-controlled Kashmir, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- A militant was killed and a trooper wounded Saturday during a gunfight in restive Indian-controlled Kashmir, officials said.

The gunfight broke out near Dobjan village of Shopian district, about 60 km south of Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir.

"In a gunfight near forest area of Shopian, a militant was killed while a trooper was wounded fighting them," army officials said. "The wounded trooper was evacuated to military base hospital in Srinagar."

Meanwhile on Friday night, three policemen were wounded, one of them critically, after militants targeted their vehicle using an improvised explosive device (IED) at Dadsara village in neighboring Pulwama district.

A guerrilla war is going on between rebel militants and Indian troops stationed in Indian-controlled Kashmir since 1989. The majority of residents there would favor independence or incorporation into Pakistan.

Kashmir, the Himalayan region divided between India and Pakistan, is claimed by both in full. Since their Independence from Britain, the two countries have fought three wars, two exclusively over Kashmir.
President of the National Grand Theater in Beijing Chen Ping delivers a speech during the awarding ceremony in Moscow, Russia on Nov. 4, 2016. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday awarded Order of Friendship award to Chen Ping, president of the National Grand Theater in Beijing, for his contribution to promoting Russia-China ties through cultural exchange. (Xinhua/Bai Xueqi)

ROME, Nov.5 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese musical manager and educator has received a honorary degree in the University of Turin for his education activities in China regarding the opera, particularly the Italian opera.

The honorary degree, Doctor of Languages and Civilizations of Asia and Africa, was given on Thursday by the University of Turin to Chen Ping, President of China's National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA).

According to the organizers, Chen contributed to developing collaborative and exchange relations with the most important lyric theaters in the world and with leading Italian and international artists.

"This honor really represents the symbol of new friendly relations between Italy and China. I experienced a very important and unforgettable moment of my life here," Chen told Xinhua on Friday.

Born in 1954, Chen holds a MBA degree in China. He became the first President of the National Center for the Performing Arts, since its opening in December 2007.

During the degree-awarding ceremony in the University of Turin, Chen showed a clip of a special version of Turandot, the well-known Italian opera, which attracted many university students and professors.

The video shown on the occasion was part of the Turandot composed by the NCPA, which features a conclusion written by a Chinese composer.

Stefania Stafutti, Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Beijing and professor of the University of Turin, said Chen has been an important figure in the dialogue between the Chinese and Italian cultures.

According to Stafutti,the NCPA president combines the best expressions of the performing arts with the best of the local tradition.

"With an activity whose importance is recognized and highly appreciated by operators in the sector at international level, Chen has inspired his work to some key lines of action, addressed to the artistic value, the internationalization and the attention to public and civil society, with the conviction that 'art transforms quality of life'," said Stafutti.

"Under the leadership of Chen, NCPA's strategy is based on three points: excellences universally recognized, globalization of the activities of the theater, and promotion of talents," she said.

Since the opening of the NCPA in 2007, Chen has helped promote Italian music, hosting more than 20 companies including the Royal Theater in Parma, the Theater La Fenice in Venice, the Symphony Orchestra of Santa Cecilia, the Toscanini Philharmonic Orchestra, the Ballet of Rome.

He collaborated with artists including Claudio Abbado, Maurizio Pollini, Leo Nucci, Giancarlo Del Monaco, all of them renowned conductors.

Over the past seven years, NCPA has established partnership relations with the Royal Theater in Turin, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Royal Theater of Parma and the Theater La Fenice in Venice for the co-production of Rigoletto, Madame Butterfly and the other world-famous operas.

NCPA also has a long-standing collaborative relationship with 15 Italian cultural organizations, such as Puccini Foundation, Theater San Carlo in Naples, and Rome Auditorium.

In September 2015, the opera "The Rickshaw Boy", the original creation of the NCPA was presented in six Italian cities, during which the first international show was at the Royal Theater in Turin.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang arrives at the airport in Riga, Latvia, Nov. 4, 2016. Li arrived here Friday for an official visit to Latvia and the Fifth Summit of China and Central and Eastern European (CEE) Countries. (Xinhua/Zhang Duo)

by Shuai Rong, Zheng Jianghua

BRUSSELS, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- The cooperation between China and the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, dubbed the "16+1 cooperation", has maintained sound momentum of growth over the past four years, and has become a new, important engine for China-Europe ties, a senior Chinese diplomat has said.

Ambassador Yang Yanyi, head of the Chinese Mission to the European Union (EU), made the remarks during an exclusive interview with Xinhua, ahead of the fifth Meeting of Heads of Government of China and CEE Countries that is set for Nov. 5 in Riga, the capital of Latvia.

She said the "16+1 cooperation", a platform jointly created in April 2012 by China and CEE countries to deepen traditional ties and widen practical cooperation, is an important, integral part of the China-EU Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and it complements the partnership.

China, the world's second-largest economy, and the CEE countries, many of them emerging markets seeking foreign investment to upgrade local infrastructure, are highly complementary.

To find synergy between China's enterprises and investors wishing to "go global" and the CEE countries where demands for inbound investment are increasingly rising, provide great power and opportunity for the "16+1 cooperation", according to Yang.

"The Chinese side is willing to work with the European partners to seek synergies between their development strategies, and turn each other's demands into 'visible, tangible' cooperation projects, with an aim to complement each other's endeavors and achieve common development," the Chinese diplomat said.

The win-win cooperation between China and the 16 CEE countries over the past four years have always been conducted through consultation to meet the interests of all, Yang said.

She said China fully respected the 16 CEE countries' willingness to cooperate, noting that most of the existing China-CEE cooperation projects were actually first proposed by the CEE countries.

The "16+1 cooperation" has so far achieved early harvest in implementing the China-proposed Belt and Road initiative in Europe and linking the initiative with the development strategies of the CEE countries, according to the diplomat.

Citing examples, she mentioned that China and CEE countries such as the Czech Republic had signed an inter-governmental memorandum of understanding on jointly promoting the Belt and Road initiative.

China's increased imports of CEE agricultural products not only provides more consumption choices for Chinese residents but also helps CEE countries' economic development, Yang said.

China's active involvement in CEE countries' local infrastructure projects, such as the Hungary-Serbia railway, not only helps Chinese enterprises and equipment "go global" but also contributes to the upgrading of CEE countries' infrastructure and to the improving of European transport connectivity, she added.

The "16+1 cooperation" mechanism is now increasingly mature, advancing the China-CEE cooperation in various areas and laying a solid foundation for further cooperation, Yang said, noting that the Medium-Term Agenda for Cooperation between China and CEE Countries, adopted during last year's China-CEE summit in Suzhou, has set the roadmap for the future cooperation between both sides.

Noting that this year marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of China-Latvia diplomatic ties, Yang said China considers Latvia an important partner in the Baltics and values its ties with Latvia.

Moreover, she hoped for a fruitful fifth Meeting of Heads of Government of China and CEE Countries.
A Harbin-Europe freight train sets off from the Xiangfang Railway Station in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, June 18, 2016. (Xinhua/Wang Song)

RIGA, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- The first trans-Eurasia container train linking China and Latvia arrived here on Saturday afternoon, marking a milestone in the history of the two countries' cooperation in transport and logistics sectors.

Amid the sounding of trumpets and drums, the bright-colored freight train consisting of 84 containers entered the Central Station of Riga around 1:20 p.m. local time, and was greeted by a huge round of applause from a crowd of government officials, entrepreneurs, rail workers and journalists.

The direct freight route was then announced successfully inaugurated at a welcoming ceremony on the platform as representatives from both countries cut through a long red ribbon with golden scissors.

The train departed on Oct. 20 from Yiwu, a vibrant manufacturing hub in east China, and finished a journey of over 11,000 km following the China-Russia-Latvia route.

The containers were packed with small commodities made in Yiwu, mainly decorative items and souvenirs, Xiong Tao, deputy major of the city, told Xinhua ahead of the ceremony.

"Riga is the destination of the train, but not of these commodities. After the arrival, they will be distributed to different eastern European or Scandinavian countries within one to three days," he said.

Staff members examine a China-Europe container train at Suzhou West Railway Station in Suzhou, east China's Jiangsu Province, June 8, 2016. (Xinhua/Sun Can)

Latvia is the first Baltic nation to have established a direct rail freight route with China under the unified brand China Railway Express which refers to all rail routes connecting China and Europe, thanks to the country's position as a major transport and logistics transit in the region.

The project was conceived in July during a visit to China by the Latvian Minister of Transport Uldis Augulis, who at Saturday's ceremony lauded the tremendous efforts made by both sides to fulfil the ambition within only three months.

"Every success story begins with an idea to try. China and Latvia made a decision to try something unprecedented, and now it has been realized. A lot of hard work has been put into it," said the minister.

He hailed the historical route as a great opportunity for both China and Latvia to work shoulder to shoulder to bring benefits for their economies.

"Latvia serves as a gateway to Europe because of our geographic location and China opens gates for us to Asia," he explained. "We're seeing a good example of our cooperation today on this platform. If people want to work together, if they share common understanding of ideas, then they can achieve great results."

Speaking at the ceremony, He Lifeng, deputy head of China's National Development and Reform Commission, said that the trans-Eurasia container trains were a "new organization model of international cargo transport" in response to the expansion of investment and trade between China and Europe.

He attributed the recent boom in China-Europe rail freight routes to the steady progress made in the implementation of the China-proposed Belt and Road initiative.

The Belt and Road initiative aims to build a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient Silk Road routes.

Since the Initiative began to take shape, over 2,000 trains have passed from China to Europe along some 40 lines.

"As an old Chinese saying goes, a one-thousand-mile journey can only be completed with incremental steps. We'll take such steps with Latvia to boost investment and trade, and we will welcome more Latvia products to China on the container trains," He added.
Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic (L) and China's National Development and Reform Commission deputy head Wang Xiaotao (R) iniciate the project of construction works of Belgrade-Budapest railway in Novi Sad, Serbia, Dec. 23, 2015. (Xinhua/Predrag Milosavljevic)

BELGRADE, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- A meeting between the heads of the governments of China and 16 central and eastern European (CEE) countries, or the "16+1" summit, will further strengthen ties among China, Serbia and the rest of CEE countries, an expert said on Saturday.

Aleksandra Joksimovic, head of the Belgrade-based NGO Centre for Foreign Policy, said CEE countries will prioritize infrastructure construction and privatization of public companies while seeking cooperation with China.

The expert believed "China is strategically oriented towards the further promotion of the New Silk Road" at the summit in Riga, capital of Latvia.

"China sees Central and Eastern Europe as a promising market where the country can offer its products," she said.

Joksimovic says joint projects in the past have shown deals sealed at "16+1" summits are serious.

Citing Serbia-China cooperation as an example, Joksimovic said Chinese company HeSteel's acquisition of Serbian steel mill in Smederevo was conducive to local economy.

Acquisition and revitalization of troubled public companies is important to Serbia because it solves problems and allows the country to further its economic development, according to the expert.

"China is one of the world's biggest steel manufacturers and it wishes to expand its industry to Europe. This has strategic importance for us because it solves some of problems hindering our economic development and stabilization," she continued.

Besides the steel mill project, the two countries now have moved forward their cooperation towards the construction of a high speed railway linking Belgrade to Budapest.

Joksimovic said infrastructure projects were of key importance in Serbia-China cooperation.

"As an important country in the Balkans, Serbia has an urgent need for infrastructure construction and connection with other countries of the region in order to become a part of the transit route between the East and the West," she said.

Talking about the Riga Summit, Joksimovic said it will continue the good momentum of developing bilateral ties between Serbia and China on the basis of the achievements during previous summits.

Cooperation with China is of strategic importance for Serbia, who needs to seize the opportunities that China provides, she said.

She also believes China is preparing for bigger investments, as proved by the expected arrival of Bank of China in Serbia.

"When serious investments are planned, banks from the investor are established," she said.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic in Riga, capital of Latvia, Nov. 5, 2016. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)

RIGA, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- China and Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries on Saturday pledged to further strengthen their cooperation in areas such as infrastructure construction and production capacity.

The pledge was made by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in separate meetings with leaders of some CEE countries and Belarus, who was an observer for the fifth summit of China and CEE countries (16+1) held in Riga on Saturday afternoon.

VOICING SUPPORT FOR TOURISM COOPERATION

While meeting Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, Li appreciates Croatia's efforts to promote relations with China and cooperation between China and CEE countries.

China would encourage companies to participate in infrastructure construction in Croatia in line with the principle of equality, mutual benefit and win-win results, and hopes Croatia provide favorable conditions and policy support, Li said.

He also voiced support for the two countries' tourism cooperation.

Next year marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral ties between China and Croatia. Plenkovic said his country will take it as an opportunity to strengthen the conjoining of their development strategies and conduct cooperation on equipment manufacturing.

The Croatian prime minister also welcomed Chinese companies to take part in Croatia's infrastructure construction.

BOOSTING COOPERATION WITH ESTONIA IN E-COMMERCE

While meeting Estonian Prime Minister Taavi Roivas, Li said Estonia is China's good friend and partner in the Baltic Sea region.

China would encourage its companies to join hands with the Estonian side and participate in local infrastructure construction such as railway and ports.

Beijing will also support Estonia's efforts in utilizing its advantage in information technology and e-commerce, and exploring new cooperation areas under the 16+1 framework, Li said.

Roivas said Estonia was ready to strengthen bilateral cooperation in transportation and logistics so as to promote cooperation in e-commerce within the 16+1 framework.

MORE COOPERATION WITH BULGARIA IN AGRICULTURAL PRODUCT PROCESSING

While meeting Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, Li said the two countries are good friends and partners of mutual trust.

China will encourage its firms to work with the Bulgarian side in agricultural products deep processing, said Li, adding that the two sides could also jointly expand markets in third parties, said Li.

Borissov said Bulgaria attaches high importance to the 16+1 cooperation and wants to speed up its cooperation with China.

He also hopes that companies from the two countries could enhance their bilateral cooperation in markets of the third parties.

CHINA, POLAND ECONOMY HIGHLY COMPLEMENTARY

When meeting Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, Li speaks highly of the development of China-Poland relations and praises Poland for its active role in promoting 16+1 cooperation and China-EU relations.

The economies of China and Poland are highly complementary to each other with great prospects for mutually beneficial cooperation, said Li.

China is willing to step up efforts in aligning the Belt and Road Initiative with Poland's re-industrialization development strategy, seeking broader converging interests and exploring more cooperation areas in line with the principle of mutual respect, mutual benefit and win-win results, the premier said.

China would participate in the construction of ports and industrial parks in Poland, using its advantage in equipment manufacturing, Li added.

China is also willing to enhance communication and cooperation with Poland in the fields of technology and education, and boost the mutual understanding and friendship between the two peoples, the premier said.

For his part, Szydlo said the development strategies of Poland and China are compatible to each other with great prospects for economic cooperation.

Poland highly values the development of Poland-China relations and is willing to make more efforts to work out a plan for bilateral pragmatic cooperation, Szydlo said.

Poland is also willing to, in the light of its re-industrialization process, expand cooperation with China in the areas of infrastructure, industrial parks and technology, and deepen cooperation within the framework of 16+1 cooperation, Szydlo added.

BELARUS' ROLE AS OBSERVER WELCOMED

While meeting Belarusian Prime Minister Andrei Kobyakov, Li said China always views Belarus as a close friend and important partner in Europe, and welcomes its attendance of the 16+1 summit as an observer.

China stands ready to maintain the sound momentum of bilateral ties, keep close high-level exchanges, strengthen cooperation in production capacity and equipment manufacturing while increasing people-to-people exchanges with Belarus, so as to push forward the development of their friendly cooperation, Li said.

Kobyakov said Belarus is willing to strengthen bilateral cooperation in production capacity and equipment manufacturing, promote bilateral trade while expanding financial and tourism cooperation.

COOPERATION WITH CHINA IMPORTANT TO BIH

While meeting Chairman of Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) Denis Zvizdic, Li said China is willing to discuss financial cooperation with the BiH while encouraging its companies to participate in BiH's infrastructure construction in such fields as thermal power and transportation.

China has an advantage in agriculture-product equipment manufacturing and stands ready to conduct cooperation with the BiH in agriculture-products deep processing, he added.

Zvizdic said cooperation with China is very important to BiH, adding that BiH is willing to strengthen bilateral cooperation in such key areas as electricity, transportation and agriculture, and promote the implementation of relevant projects.

REALIZING WIN-WIN COOPERATION IN BETTER WAY WITH HUNGARY

When meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Li said China and Hungary enjoy strong mutual political trust, as their pragmatic cooperation is growing steadily and rather fruitful.

As for the Hungary-Serbia railway project, Li said China is willing to work with Hungary and other relevant parties to continue to build the railway, a flagship project, in good quality, so as to realize mutual-benefit and win-win cooperation in a better way.

China expects Hungary to play an active role as an EU member in prompting the EU to fulfill its obligations under Article 15 of the Protocol on China's accession to the World Trade Organization in due time, while promoting healthy development of China-EU trade relations, said the premier.

For his part, Orban said Hungary, a reliable partner of Beijing, attaches great importance to its ties with China.

Hungary stands ready to elevate bilateral ties to a new height, while making joint efforts with China to continuously deepen the "16+1" cooperation, said the prime minister, vowing to play an active role in boosting the development of EU-China relations.

CHINA, SERBIA ARE TRUSTWORTHY FRIENDS

During his meeting with Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, Li said China and Serbian enjoy deep friendship and a strong momentum of development of bilateral ties.

The two countries lifted bilateral relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the Balkan country in June.

China is willing to continue to maintain good relations with Serbia in the principle of mutual respect, benefit and equality, said Li, adding that China supports Serbia in safeguarding its sovereignty and independence and exploring a development path of its own.

China is willing to work with Serbia to ensure a quality construction of the Hungary-Serbia Railway and highway projects so as to promote the development of bilateral cooperation for more fruitful results, said Li.

Stressing that China and Serbia are "trustworthy friends of each other," Vucic said the two countries have conducted sound cooperation and scored achievements in areas of infrastructure construction, energy and mining.

Serbia appreciates the fact that China attaches great importance to the relations with Serbia, said Vucic, noting that his country is ready to further deepen cooperation with China.

Li arrived in Riga on Friday for an official visit to Latvia and the 5th summit between the heads of government of China and 16 CEE countries.

This is the first time for a Chinese premier to visit Latvia since it declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Latvia is the third leg of Li's eight-day Eurasian tour that has already taken him to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and will wind up in Russia.
ANKARA, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Nine pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) officials, the third biggest party in the Turkish Parliament, were detained on Saturday, which triggered the western countries' alarm on democracy in Turkey, a member of the NATO and candidate to European Union.

A day earlier, Turkish authorities arrested HDP's co-chairs, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, and seven lawmakers in a probe that was launched against the party's deputies over alleged links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

The crackdown on pro-Kurdish HDP deputies was set in motion over May, when the immunity of the representatives were lifted by a parliamentary vote, a move strongly supported ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

The trigger for these arrests was the HDP lawmakers' refusal to show up in court after prosecutors called them to testify as part of a sweeping investigation of the deputies' links to terrorism.

The HDP lawmakers are obliged to respond to legal summons, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Friday, adding "those who come to power by elections but prefer to embrace terrorism will naturally be held accountable by the law."

HDP co-chairs and lawmakers are the latest arrests after co-mayors of predominately Kurdish southeastern Diyarbakir were detained. The government also silenced more than a dozen pro-Kurdish media outlets.

The move against Kurdish politicians came in the heat of detention of journalists and writers from the renowned opposition daily Cumhuriyet.

Early on Oct. 31, executives and columnists of Cumhuriyet , one of Turkey's oldest a newspapers, were detained in a series of raids after prosecutors initiated a probe against them on "terrorism" charges.

The politically whipped up demands to reinstate the death penalty in Turkey makes matters worse in democratic life of the country. The European Union member states alarmed over regression in democratic life in Turkey which has been negotiated for accession to the Union.

"We expect Turkey to safeguard its parliamentary democracy, including respect for human rights and the rule of law," EU High Representative Federica Mogherini and Commissioner Johannes Hahn said in a written statement on Friday after the detentions of the HDP lawmakers.

"With this last high profile string of detentions, Turkish authorities are not just pushing Turkey further away from democracy, they are also turning their backs on the values, principles, norms and rules underpinning EU-Turkey relations," European Parliament President Martin Schulz said.

The United States, an ally of the NATO member Turkey, also expressed "deep concern" over the Turkish detentions of opposition members of parliament.

The arrests drew swift condemnation from the EU and leaders of the member states and the US officials called their Turkish interlocutors one after the other in order to express their grave concerns. Germany and Denmark summoned the Turkish envoys following the detention of senior Kurdish lawmakers.

Turkey's democracy is under question as the Turkish government uses excessive authorities after a coup attempt in July 15. Granted by the state of emergency, the government has detained or suspended more than 110,000 officials under a decree law.

"All these developments in the wake of the coup attempt take place under the shadow of the debates about shifting from a parliamentary political system to an executive presidential one through a new constitution, as has long been targeted by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan," Murat Yetkin, columnist in local Hurriyet Daily News, wrote in his column on Nov. 5.

The government has long been pursuing a constitutional amendment for change to presidential system, but the ruling party needs support of Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) votes at the parliament to go to a referendum.

The AKP and the MHP has been in talks for the amendment, as the MHP pledges conditional support for the ruling party.

The MHP leader wants to introduce death penalty in Turkey and objects a settlement process with the Kurdish militants.
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- A review of the way carbon offset credits have been used internationally to reduce carbon emissions suggests that the program needs independent monitoring, as it is now subject to inaccurate self-reporting.

The research, led by Amy Pickering, an engineering research associate at the Stanford University Woods Institute for the Environment's Program on Water, Health and Development, examined a carbon offset program involving distribution of water filters in Kenya and found inaccuracies in self-reported data.

"Our message to recommend independent monitoring of greenhouse gas emission projects is especially timely considering global ratification of the Paris Agreement has reached the threshold needed for the agreement to go into force," said Pickering, who co-authored the study submitted to Environmental Health Perspectives, a peer-reviewed open access journal published by the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

The Paris Agreement, an international climate change pact that includes provisions relating to carbon markets, went into effect on Friday, Nov. 4. As agreed to by delegates at international climate talks, implementers of carbon offset programs are allowed to collect their own monitoring data to be used by certification organizations to determine how many carbon credits they should be awarded. They can then sell their credits and profit from the programs.

Curious whether organizations are estimating their offsets accurately, Pickering and her colleagues analyzed one such carbon offset effort in Kenya's Western Province, known as LifeStraw Carbon Credits, under which the Vestergaard Frandsen company distributed for free more than 800,000 carbon-based drinking water filters to rural households. The idea behind the program is that water filters help households avoid the need to burn fuel to boil and purify water, earning carbon offset credits for Vestergaard.

Under the rules of the voluntary carbon trading market, the company could use its own data to quantify the amount of carbon its program offset and, therefore, the number of credits it had earned. In generating baseline data, Vestergaard calculated the amount of emissions theoretically released from households that would ordinarily boil drinking water if they had access to sufficient fuel and resources. It earned Vestergaard nearly 4.5 million credits during a 32-month period ending in January 2014, which the company could sell in the market or on its website for 12.95 U.S. dollars each.

Headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, and initially a uniform maker in 1950s, Vestergaard now claims to be a manufacturer of public health tools for people in developing countries. It is best known for inventing the LifeStraw water filter and the PermaNet mosquito net.

Pickering's team found that only 19 percent of households reported continued use of the free filters 2 to 3 years after receiving them - four times fewer households than reported by Vestergaard's internal monitoring. Of the households Pickering and her colleagues surveyed, half reported their filters were not working after 24 to 36 months. When asked about issues preventing use of LifeStraw, 35 percent of households that received a filter said it was too slow or took too much time, 17 percent said it was blocked or not working, 8 percent said it had a bad smell or taste and 7 percent thought the filter was bad for their health.

Acknowledging that carbon financing could be a financially sustainable tool for scaling up water treatment and improving health in low-income settings, Pickering and her co-authors conclude that no one can know for sure without third-party monitoring.

Katharine Mach, a senior research scientist at Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences, was quoted as saying in a news release from the university in northern California on the U.S. west coast that carbon offset programs are relatively new, and many need to be adjusted over time in order to ensure they are effective. "As we experiment with new approaches to climate responses, learning will be an essential part of the picture."
Tobago gas operators say increase the margin

This was the proposed solution following a decision by President of the Tobago Gas Station Operators and Petroleum Dealers Association Hochoy Charles to the Trinidad and Tobago Petroleum Dealers Association (TTPDA) decision to discontinue all electronic payment on-site options in an effort to cut operating costs.

The solution was proposed as Charles spoke at a press conference called at the Taxi Cooperative Society building in Canaan on Thursday as he called on the Government to address the issue as a matter of urgency.

The margin offered to the gas station operators and dealers is too low you are not making any money in order to keep your business in operation.

What is required to be done the solution to the problem is that they need to increase the margin and that is all the PDA (Petroleum Dealers Association) is saying. They are quite accurate they are right and it is since 2005 we have been attempting to get this margin increased.

Even with the recent increase in fuel the Government adjusted the price for the margin at one level  he said.

Charles indicated that once this margin is increased especially in these times of recession and the challenges in the economy somebody some institution in this case the Government would have to accept less than they are making so somebody will have to bear the burden of the increase. The Government will have to bear the burden NP will have to bear the burden in our case in Tobago.

That is what the Government will need to look at and we proposed a solution to the Government that NP could still be profitable even if they increase the margin without suffering any loss and any defeat. Increase the margin of profit and we say if you increase the margin we are frank and fair enough and truthful to say if you increase the margin it means that somebody will have to forego part of the profits that they are making now and I am saying that the wholesaler should be that one and how can they be profitable still by changing the business model under which the state enterprise operates  Charles said.

The president said that these proposals were made to the Government previously but no solution has ever been offered.

We proposed to the Government the previous as well as this one the way you do that is that the business model under which NP operates should be changed and that can be done early to allow NP to be just strictly the wholesaler of fuel and lubricant petroleum products and allow the private sector the gas station operators and dealers to deal with the retailing  he explained.

He said that while the gas stations in Tobago continue to accept credit cards they are expecting that there will be a solution to the problem immediately. They still accept credit and debit cards at gas stations in Tobago especially southwest.

There are people that talk to us public servants police teachers employees sometimes at the end of the month after they pay mortgages and insurance on their cars they dont even have enough money to buy food for the month so its their credit cards that they live on month to month.

So if we dont accept them our business will close down but we are concerned about the public too if we discontinue this you will see a lot of cars parked no movement no gas Charles said. Should there be no solution in the next coming months Charles said that Association will meet again before making a decision.
Women in court for stealing

The women, Shenell Ali, 21, and Nnika Forde, 35, pleaded not guilty to the charges and were granted $75,000 bail while the accused man, Eric Latroy, entered a guilty plea. He was sentenced to three years in prison with hard labour by Senior Magistrate Maria Busby Earle-Caddle presiding in the Princes Town First Magistrates Court.

The charges read to the trio by the magistrate alleged that between the period October 21 to 31, they broke into the dwelling house of a woman and stole several electronic appliances, jewelry and grocery items. Court prosecutor Sgt Roger Richardson told the court that on October 21, the owner of the house in Princes Town secured her home and went away. The court heard that on October 23, the owner was informed by a neighbour that her house was broken into.

Sgt Richardson said that police officers were contacted and Latroy attempted to escape but was detained minutes later in the Princes Town district. Two other persons were allegedly detained inside the victims house. The trio were charged with house-breaking and larceny of items together valued $37,950. An additional charge was read to Latroy for possession of one gramme of cocaine which was found inside his pants pocket upon his arrest.

He pleaded guilty to the charge.

The magistrate also heard that the accused man had 11 previous convictions within the last 15 years. Some of his convictions include housebreakings, larceny, and drug possession.

Attorney Petronilla Basdeo, who represented the accused women, said that Ali was an outpatient of the Princes Town Psychiatric Clinic.

The attorney said that in 2014, Ali had also spent time at the St Anns Psychiatric Hospital.

Busby Earle-Caddle granted the women bail in the sum of $75,000 each to be approved by a Clerk of the Peace.

Latroy was sentenced to three years with hard labour in prison on the charges of housebreaking and larceny. On the charge of possession of cocaine, Latroy was sentenced to nine months in prison. The magistrate ordered that the sentences run concurrently.
Coast guardsman in court

Supt Patsy Joseph, of the Southern Division, charged him with malicious damage of a pair of eyeglasses, assaulting a woman police constable, discharging a firearm in a public place and robbery with violence.

The offences allegedly stemmed from an incident which occurred on Sunday last at Skinner Park, San Fernando, where a party titled Bae Jouvert was being held.

It is alleged that the coast guardsman robbed a male patron (Hakeem Saunders) of a gold chain and an altercation ensued. A police woman intervened and was allegedly assaulted.

Her eyeglasses was also damaged. Yesterday Sylvester was not called upon to enter any plea as the charges were all laid indictably (must be determined by a judge and jury if trial is ordered by a magistrate at the end of a preliminary inquiry).

Magistrate Forde- John granted the accused coast guardsman $100,000 surety bail to cover all charges and adjourned the case to January 3.
Cops shoot, kill escapee

A police report stated that officers of the Point Fortin CID received information about Lendores whereabouts on Wednesday shortly before 5 pm and went to an abandoned and dilapidated house at Rig Road.

On arrival, police observed Lendore outside the house holding a firearm. The report added that police called on Lendore to drop the weapon, but instead he pointed it in their direction.

Police reported that they became fearful for their lives and shot him in the upper body. The wounded man was rushed to the Point Fortin Area Hospital where he later died.

Police allegedly recovered a firearm and ammunition at the scene.

Lendore had been on the run from police since August 24, having escaped custody while receiving medical treatment for tuberculosis at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex (EWMSC) at Mount Hope.

At the time Lendore, who had several firearm and robbery matters pending before the Point Fortin Magistrates Court, was being guarded by a prison officer.

He was first admitted to the San Fernando General Hospital following several complaints of feeling unwell.

Doctors transferred him to EW MSC where he was admitted to Ward Five.
One Yoga TT brings Seane Corn

In fact, the practice of yoga has brought Hadeed closer to his Christ.

This teaching is one he hopes to share with the wider TT , in the hope that it inspires the change TT and the world needs.

Hadeed, a yoga teacher and practitioner along with international yoga teacher, Seane Corn, is hosting a weekend workshop entitled the The Yoga of Awakening at the Queens Park Oval. Corn is an internationally celebrated yoga teacher and an impassioned global activist. Featured in magazines, NPR and Oprah.com, Corn uses her platform to educate, unite and awaken people through the practice of yoga and beyond. In 2007, she co-founded the non-profit organisation Off the Mat, Into the World. Described in a release as a weekend vinyasa flow yoga immersion, the weekend will feature Corn in a candid discussion on what it means to be an agent of change in the world. The weekend began at the Queens Park Oval, eastern entrance yesterday with corn delivering a dharma session entitled, Embodying Spiritual Activism: The Yoga of Individual and Collective healing. Today and tomorrow 100 spots would be open for Corns yoga sessions. For Hadeed, yoga is that reflection into ones self. A practice which predates organised religion.

When asked if he felt that the practice of yoga was growing in TT , he said, what he saw happening was the wider adoption of the art of yoga by the West. He said the yoga being practised today was not the real yoga. He acknowledged that the majority of yoga is slightly disconnected and that someone might come to yoga to pick up a date or build up muscle.

But if yoga was done in a connected way the participant might soon find something deeper in it.

While at Fatima College, Hadeed remembered, studying with a teacher named Gayadeen where he would read books such as the Bhagavad Gita among others.

He recalled after graduating from university and he began studying with local and international teachers such as Karen Blackman, Father Joe and Ryan Leier in Canada. Hadeed said he immediately connected with Leier because he connected to Jesus Christ, Bob Marley and, for me that was big, we were connected to the same line of living yoga I would like to represent. At first Hadeed said he was not attracted to studying Corn as he saw her as a pop yoga teacher but after some coaxing by a friend, he went and after the first five minutes of meeting with her they connected.

He has been studying with Corn ever since. She was the first person who got me to understand that yoga was a form of prayer, he said.

Through research, Hadeed said he also learnt that the etymology of the word spirit is to breathe. So, for Hadeed, In my everyday life, every breath is a prayer. In 2012, Hadeed opened One Yoga TT and has hosted other events but this is the biggest event the organisation is holding.

The gift of Corn is not for One Yoga TT but rather, my intention is for the yoga teachers of TT to get some of the food I have been fortunate to get.
Lying intern fired

We had to treat with her compassionately because she is a human being who did something I think she regrets. We have to be firm because the whole health care system was in danger and lives were going to be put in danger because her colleagues had decided to take industrial action and natural justice had to prevail, the minister said.

He added that he had no role to play in making this decision.

I set up a team led by the permanent secretary, chief medical officer, a legal officer and the director of human resource management to treat and deal with the matter. The minister of health played no role in any of this because any decision that had to be made must be free from political interference. The minister said all decisions were signed off in agreement by the intern as investigations were carried out.

After alleged claims, the interns colleagues stated they had serious security issues, which Deyalsingh did not dispute, saying there were legitimate issues that were raised and industrial action was threatened.

As far as the industrial action is concerned, one has to understand that we have a duty in this country to serve those who we are supposed to serve. Many of our professionals in the medical field and elsewhere owe their education to taxpayers of Trinidad and Tobago because it is GATE, (Government Assistance for Tuition Expenses) via the taxpayer that funds tertiary education in TT whether you are a doctor, a lawyer or nurse.

But when contacted yesterday, a senior doctor expressed concern as to whether the intern could be fired. She is not a permanent worker, so she does not have full registration yet. That would have to be up to the Medical Board of whatever country she applies to.

She still has to go through application from the Medical Board for them to decide whether she would be admitted as a doctor to work in the country. I dont even know how legitimate firing an intern is because being an intern is a learning process.

If she does not complete her internship, she would not be qualified (as a doctor). She can apply to another country if she wanted to under the UWI jurisdiction.

You cant fire an intern, you can suspend with investigation, the doctor said.
Govt corruption lawsuit shrouded in secrecy

Attempts to view the documents filed on Wednesday at the Civil Registry of the Supreme Court in Port-of-Spain were futile.

Newsday was told by a clerk at the Civil Registry counter that, if there is one (a file) it is sealed. The clerk also indicated that filed documents were not public documents and permission from the attorneys in the case or the Registrar was required to view them.

Attempts were also made to ascertain on whose authority or direction the documents were sealed and Newsday was told that the Registrar of the High Court has the power to order that documents be sealed.

Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi on Thursday said the lawsuit was the first to arise out of extensive audits and investigations ordered by the Peoples National Movement (PNM) Government after assuming office in September last year.

In this particular matter, there are nine defendants, including public officials and persons who have had control of certain entities of the State.

The nature of matters surround the core of corruption, unjust enrichment, the breach of certain duties but it is squarely designed to tackle corruption, mismanagement and to ask people to account for what they have done, Al-Rawi said. The AG was judicious in his statements, insisting he could not reveal the parties named in the lawsuit and the wrongdoing they are alleged to have committed as the case was at a sensitive stage.

It involves several hundreds of million of dollars in transactions which are under position and there are damages requested on top of that, he said.

Newsday understands the lawsuit involves former officials of the HDC, a State-run company which falls under the Ministry of Housing and surrounds a land transaction. At least two companies are among the nine defendants named in the suit.

Attempts to get a comment from AG Al-Rawi yesterday were futile.
Cruise liner Sirena docks today

A statement from the Tourism Development Company (TDC) says twenty- one cruise ships will call in Trinidad this season bringing an expected total of 22,000 passengers.

The World Odyssey will be the next vessel to visit from November 13-14 and it will bring 600 international students and lecturers to Trinidad as part of the Semester at Sea (SAS) programme.

To recognise the visit, the TDC will host a Pan Yard Experience for the visiting students to introduce them to Trinidad and Tobagos culture.

The SAS was established in 1963 as a global education programme for students attending universities around the world.

The World Odyssey functions as both a travelling university and residential home to over 700 SAS participants while they circumnavigate the globe and acquire the broadest cultural and intellectual exposure possible from the destinations they visit.

Students also help to promote the various destinations they visit by documenting their experiences on all forms of social media.

In addition to the Sirena and World Odyssey, other major cruise lines like the Seven Seas Navigator and the MSC Poesia are scheduled to berth in the port of Port of Spain.

The TDC says that as usual it will have visitor guides stationed on the port and at strategic locations in Port of Spain to assist the visitors and provide them with information where necessary.

It is also offering free Wi-Fi, a variety of quay side activities and on-shore tours available both in and around the city of Port of Spain for the cruise passengers.
Hazel: Values linked to being a productive citizen

Do you live your lives by those values ? I put it to you that because you have the support of teachers, mentors and parents who also guide you with additional values to do very well, that you have the responsibility to be productive and with integrity and respect, to take care of the underprivileged in our country, Manning said.

Manning, wife of the late former Prime Minister Patrick Manning, made the remarks yesterday while delivering the feature address at Presentation Colleges annual Prize Day function held at Carib Street, San Fernando.

Manning told the gathering that for over 30 years, she lived in a home with three Presmen namely her late husband and their two sons- Brian and David.

Thus, the vision and values of Presentation College became an integral part of their lives.

The schools Mission Statement is:  To form well-rounded and balanced youth with God as the center of their lives to inculcate practical awareness of their underprivileged brothers and sisters. Manning referred to the schools history as fascinating adding that it is a story worthy of living and worthy to pass on to the people of Trinidad and Tobago and to the rest of the world Just as Patrick did.

On July 2, the former leader of the Peoples National Movement, passed away at the San Fernando General Hospital at the age of 69.

Ths schools Mission Statement is: To form well rounded and balanced youth with God as the centre of their lives to inculcate practical awareness of their underprivileged brothers and sisters. With a smile, Manning said: Over 60 years later, this Mission Statement still guides the school today. Patrick and my two sons, Brian and David, lived that Mission and my sons are still living with the purpose buried deep in their hearts.
Daughter of popular DJ needs surgery

Holassie, who often operates under the moniker, DJ Ray, has lived in Florida for over 20 years now where he has served as an amateur Jockey, radio talk show host and political activist, has returned to Trinidad, in order to assist his daughter in her time of need.

Newsday spoke to Holassie yesterday, who said that he was committed to raising the necessary funds required for his faughter to undergo the much-needed surgery.

Its been really hard on all of us.

My daughter is a single mother of two children ages 2 and 3 years old.

Since returning to Trinidad, Ive been trying my best to help out however best I could, but its still very difficult for her, because her eysight is very poor, a distraught Holassie said.

Raenatha, 26, suffers from Bilateral Keratoconus, a condition in which the cornea loses shape which reduces the amount of light entering the eyeball, causing blurred vision and if left to progress, blindness.

The operation which is expected to take place at the Medical Associates Nursing Home in St Joseph at the cost of $35000 per eye. Holassie said that the National Lotteries and Control board (NLCB), has already agreed to assist in covering some of the expenses, but he still has a long way to go in order to reach the requisite sum.

She has suffered with this condition since birth and has undergone operations in the past to help correct some of the problems she has had, unfortunately the operations has left her scarred, which is very difficult for her throughout her life. She isnt coping well and I am determined to ensure that she receives the treatment she needs to give her another chance. I owe her that much. Holassie said that Raenatha was expected to undergo surgery in the United States, but was forced to return to Trinidad due to personal issues.

Despite the deterioration of her eyesight however, he said that Raenathas doctors were optimistic that she could make a full recovery provided that the surgery takes place in time.
YTEPP employees protest

From as early as 8 am, approximately 90 employees from different departments of the educational institution marched in front the building demanding better working conditions.

The head office, which was once located at Mulchan Seuchan Road, was moved to the location at Chaguanas/ Woodford Lodge nearly three weeks ago. Since then, employees told Newsday, they have been forced to work under inhumane conditions.

This building was converted to our head office even though it was incomplete and there are a number of health and safety violations and the health of employees are in jeopardy, said one employee.

This building and the environment is unsafe. He further told Newsday that the sewer problem which has persisted over the past few weeks only continues to worsen. Raw sewage is running into the drains and offices and the strong stench is unbearable as employees are also getting sick. He alleged that the building is also infested with rodents and roaches. When staff are having their meals, there are rodents and roaches crawling around. In addition to that, when you are eating you get the smell from the sewer which is overpowering, he said. Another employee said that there are no walkways to get to and from each department and as a result, employees are forced to jump over drains to get to and from another department.

Employees have vowed to step up the protest action.

Efforts to contact officials from the Education Ministry proved futile.
Despite a $1.2 billion loss over the last three months, Chesapeake Energy is no longer bleeding dollars in a market thats still establishing balance after the bust.

In a call with analysts Thursday, leaders of the Oklahoma City-based company projected confidence in the strength of its quarterly results, and anticipated growth in the Powder River Basin among other regions in the next two years.

With an inventory of over 17,000 wells still to be drilled across six major operating areas, with 5,600 of those wells currently having a rate of return greater than 40 percent, we are confident that the Chesapeake operating machine is stronger today than at any other time in our history, said CEO Robert Douglas Lawler.

The company's confidence was mirrored on the market. The value of Chesapeake's shares jumped in pre-stock trade Thursday.

Chesapeake is one of the largest oil producers in Wyoming and one of the biggest natural gas producers in the country.

It has made good on a attempt to cut spending significantly for 2016, something it announced in February after the company suffered an almost $15 billion loss in 2015.

Chesapeakes billion dollar loss over the third quarter this year was considered a good development, better than expected by analysts. It was also down from a $4.7 billion loss in same period of 2015.

Revenue was down this quarter by 33 percent. The decrease is a result of the lower commodity price and lower production, the company said in a statement.

Production averaged about 640,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day, 14,000 from the Powder River Basin.

Cutting back also accrued costs for Chesapeake in the third quarter, including buying out $334 million gathering contract with Williams Partners. Chesapeake will sell about 5,600 wells in West Virginia and Kentucky, along with associated acreage and property to further slim down its portfolio.

The company has also shed $1 billion in debt since the second quarter, settling at $8.7 billion and down from the end of the third quarter last year when it was $11.7 billion.

Chesapeake was not the only company battered by a tanking market. In 2014, oil prices exceeded $100 a barrel, increased drilling and company expansion ballooned. The price fell by half the following year. Production, investment and earnings suffered in response.

Though oil and gas companies do not appear to have fully rebounded, the third quarter has shown some profitable moves and many companies have tightened their balance sheets, cut assets and focused efforts on most profitable plays.

Earlier in the week Anadarko, the oil and gas giant based in Woodlands, Texas, posted a third quarter loss of $830 million. However, Devon Energy which has operations in the Powder River and Wind River basins, had a strong three months, with earnings totaling $993 million.
Rowley: Demand accountability!

He pointed to the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) as a model of good governance that he hoped Trinidads local government architecture could adopt.

Rowley traced the 20 year history of the PNMs past opposition to the then THA PNM, but said the party had eventually seen the writing on the wall, had accepted more local content in governance structures and had then began to win THA elections.

Vowing true consultation to enact new legislation, Rowley promised fundamental reform of Trinidads local government, and no mere tampering.

However Rowley said he was mortified to learn that Trinidads local government agencies had some 11,000 employees.

He said that if one sees uncut grass in areas such as Arima and Tunapuna, one doesnt know who to turn to for remediation, but that in Tobago things are different.

Saying all community centres are properly maintained in Tobago, by contrast he complained of a rotting edifice at Lopinot, lamenting, In Trinidad you dont know whos in charge. Urging Trinidad voters to support the THA model, Rowley mused, Is it that Trinidadians are happy with a lack of accountability?.

Saying nothing annoys him more that the tabling of local government reports in Parliament tat are 10 or 15 years old, He declared, I want accountability now! This year for this year! Rowley asked aloud if the Opposition would help the Government to change or remove countrys moribund Services Commissions? Lamenting a poor work ethics in areas of local government, he bemoaned the piling up of three truckloads of garbage at Scorpion Alley in his Diego Martin West constituency.

Saying someone is being paid to collect it all, he said reform will improve accountability and peoples quality of life.

He vowed to do more with less funds, such as shifting some police officers from motor vehicles to bicycles.

Rowley rejected Opposition taunts about property owned by the PNMs Rohan Sinanan, and said any donations from new Minister of Rural Development, businessman Kazim Hosein, had been approved by the PNMs Donations Committee.

In contrast to the PNM, he said politicians of other parties often visit contractors with a bag.
MSJ: UNC stole our campaign slogan

Speaking at an emergency press conference at the MSJs office on St Joseph Road, San Fernando yesterday morning, MSJ political leader David Abdulah said that the MSJs local government campaign slogan Send Them a Message was created several weeks ago by the partys strategy team. It was printed on t-shirts, brochures and a campaign song composed and sung by soca artist, Preacher to party candidates and activists last Sunday. The slogan was published on the partys Facebook page earlier this week.

However, it came to the partys attention that the UNC published a flyer advertising its public meetings with the MSJs send them a message slogan as its tagline. This act demonstrates just how bankrupt and bereft of ideas the UNC is, said Abdulah. Indeed it is also yet another manifestation of the moral corruption of the United National Congress, as it was corrupt while in Government so it is corrupt in its appeal to the electorate. Abdulah said the MSJ would not be daunted by the UNCs use of its slogan and took the opportunity to send the UNC a direct message.

As the MSJ campaigns in the Boroughs of Point Fortin and Arima, the party will tell the burgesses to send the UNC a message by not voting for corruption. UNC Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar was engaged in a meeting when reached for comment. Calls to other UNC officials went unanswered.

Abdulah said that the MSJ has not and will not have any communication with the UNC on the matter and indicated that it will be passed on to the MSJs attorneys.

The MSJ will officially launch its local government election campaign at 2 pm on Sunday in the auditorium of the San Fernando City Corporation.

Abdulah and the MSJ were one time members of the Peoples Partnership coalition with Abdulah being offered a Government Senatorial appointment by then prime minister Persad-Bissessar.

However, Abdulah and the MSJ parted ways from the Peoples Partnership.
Minister probes pan monies

The Minister spoke to reporters after yesterdays meeting of the Joint Select Committee on Human Rights, at Tower D, Port-of-Spain. Any delay in Pan Trinbagos payment to individual pan-men is a question for that body to answer, she said.

Their internal politics, we are not privy to it, nor are we getting into it, Gadsby- Dolly said.

However it does concern us because the allegations are of a financial impropriety, and those concern us, because they are entrusted with large amounts of taxpayers money in order to run Panorama. She said she has spoken to NCC chairmen, to agree on an approach. Weve not made a definitive position as yet but we are looking at it. Wed feel a bit troubled by these kind of allegations. She expected to make a decision by next wee, even as she said she may request more financial details from Pan Trinbago.

We have to look very carefully now as to whether we are getting value for money, with respect to the money given to Pan Trinbago.
Truck driving was a PP idea

Standing by suggestions she had made in her recent Senate Budget Speech, she hit out at criticisms by Couva South MP Rudy Indarsingh, as she said the PP was the original author of the idea, and that Indarsingh ought to have known that. In a recent interview with Newsday, Indarsingh had said the plan could break up TT families, and was an admission of failure to create new jobs in TT.

Baptiste-Primuscited a Cabinet Minute dated June 21, 2012, that said former PP labour minister, Errol Mc Leod, had once led a delegation to Edmonton, Canada, to explore job opportunities.

Saying the same firm the Government is now negotiating with to supply TT workers - Hire Pro Drive - was also engaged by Mc Leod. the Minister accused Indarsingh of dishonesty in his remarks.

He said TT has a tradition of sending to Canada seasonal agricultural workers, whose welfare is protected by a raft of legislation, plus oversight by the International Organisation on Migration (IOM) and World Bank.

Where was Rudy all the time? she asked.

Sleeping on the job? New Energy Minister, Franklin Khan, in his speech said that in these economically challenging times, many persons are living on the edge.

The vast majority are supporters of the PNM, he added.
Gadsby-Dolly: Can bad lads survive?

The JSC grilled members of bodies coming under the Ministry of National Security including Prison Service top-brass who oversee the Youth Training Centre (YTC), plus heads of the Gender and Child Affairs Unit of the Office of Prime Minister (OPM), and heads of childrens homes and Childrens Authority which fall under the OPM.

The Minister was concerned about the conditions under which youngsters live in childrens homes, and whether they were being adequately trained to survive in the outside world upon leaving their home. A major disconnect may exist between the law courts committal of youngsters to YTC and the meeting of their needs as determined by a psychological assessment.

Asked about training schemes at childrens homes and the YTC, St Michaels Home manager, Mary De Here, said trades such as masonry, plumbing, carpentry, barbering and baking are among courses offered. These courses help keep youngsters away from the lure of gangs, added De Here.

Prisons Commissioner, Elvin Scantlebury, said such courses can be a springboard to get onto more advanced courses such as YTEPP.

Opposition Senator Rodger Samuel, asked about the capacity of St Michaels, to be told it was built for 12 youngsters but now has 22 persons.

Replying to queries by Gadsby- Dolly, Scantlebury said the YTC does not use corporal punishment nor solitary confinement but does separate miscreants from well-behaved youths.

She said the old Act governing such homes actually mentions corporal punishment, and must be repealed. While experts in psychology and psychiatry are attached to St Michaels no psychiatrist lives on site.

In conclusion the Minister said tracer studies will be used to help prevent recidivism by youngsters becoming adult offenders. While admitting to a shortage of resources such as staff, the Minister said new legislation will improve the assessment and placement of youngsters.
Education Ministry praises Chaguanas North Sec

I can say that we are very pleased, we are very impressed at the tremendous strides the school has undertaken. In fact where discipline is concerned there has been a tremendous improvement and I must compliment the School Principal, the Vice Principal and the teaching staff for the wonderful work they are doing, Garcia said.

In a press release, Garcia stated that the visit to the school was to get first hand information on progress made at the school in the area of discipline, after a group of students was removed from the school environment and sent to Learning Enhancement Centres in February 2016.

The release said the Ministrys team included Dr Lovell Francis, Minister of State in the Ministry of Education, Chief Education Harrilal Seecharan and Acting Permanent Secretary Angela-Sinaswee Gervais.

They also visited the Charlieville ASJA Muslim School and Caroni SDMS Hindu Primary School where they met with the teaching faculty.

Students of Caroni SDMS Hindu Primary School also took the opportunity to entertain the executive team with a National Song and a religious Bhajan.
58-year-old booked for husband's suicide in Gurgaon

Haryana,National,Crime/Disaster/Accident, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Gurgaon, Nov 5 (IANS) A 58-year-old woman was booked for abetment to suicide after her husband ended his life by consuming a poisonous substance, police said on Saturday.

Geetam Singh, 60, a resident of Pathredi, was a class four employee at the Government Polytechnic in Manesar here on Delhi-Jaipur National Highway 8.

According to the police, Singh consumed poison in the college and was found unconscious near its main gate.

Students informed the police and Singh was rushed to Rockland Hospital in Manesar.

"The victim died during the treatment and has left a suicide note blaming his wife Usha Rani for his extreme step," police official Suresh Kumar told IANS.

"We are investigating the case further and accused was yet to be arrested," Kumar said.

The police have registered a case under Section 306 (Abetment of suicide) of the Indian Penal Code against Usha Rani, a housewife, on the complaint of a student Mohit alias Monu, a resident of Manesar.

--IANS

pradeep/ss/vm
Future growth of IT is in innovation: Vice President

Uttar Pradesh,National,Politics,Technology,Business/Economy, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Noida, Nov 5 (IANS) The future growth of the Indian IT industry lies in innovation, creating more futuristic business scenarios and engineering digital disruption, Vice President Hamid Ansari said here on Saturday.

"The future growth of our IT companies will, thus, be in being able to create futuristic business scenarios and engineering digital disruption rather than coping with its aftermath. In short, you will have to be more innovative," Ansari said at the inauguration of the new Nasscom building here.

Talking about the role of the IT industry, the Vice President said the sector has been a major contributor to the Indian growth story in the last 25 years. It has provided improved brand image, created employment, contributed to gross domestic product growth, created avenues in technology education and contributed to e-governance.

He said while the growth trajectory of the sector was well charted its challenges will come, in the shorter and intermediate term, from industry shifts such as cloud computing, evolution in Software as a Service model.

There is a constant need to develop new products to embrace the challenges.

"These challenges will come, in the shorter and intermediate term, from industry shifts such as Cloud Computing, evolution in Software as a service models, need to develop new products, Digital Disruption, and shrinking manpower needs because of software automation. It is likely that your present and new clients will increasingly look for innovation partners rather than software partners," Ansari said.

Emphasising the central role of innovation, the Vice President said while the Global Innovation Index 2016 ranks India at 66 out of 128 countries, the government is proactive to create an innovation-friendly environment in the country.

--IANS

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Row over proposed 'Beach Love' festival in Vizag

Andhra Pradesh,National,Politics,Art/Culture/Books, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Visakhapatnam, Nov 5 (IANS) Amid an uproar over the proposed "Beach Love" festival being planned in this coastal city, the Andhra Pradesh government on Saturday clarified that it will not allow any programme "inimical to Telugu culture and traditions".

The authorities termed as "rumours" some media reports that the programme proposed to be held at one of the beaches during February 12-14 (Valentine's Day) would hurt the cultural sensibilities of people.

Andhra Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation and the Municipal Corporation of Visakhapatnam condemned what they called the misinformation campaign.

"It is speculated that over nine thousand couples from across the world would descend upon Visakhapatnam to indulge in a no-holds barred beach love and that preparations are on to organise the private event sanctioned by the government," an official statement said.

It clarified that the government had received a proposal by a private agency about organising a mega event during February 2017 in Visakhapatnam to attract foreign tourists. Accordingly the government formed a committee to liaise with the event managers.

"As of now the private agency did not put forth any blueprint of the proposed event before the said committee, and as and when it is done the same would be examined as per standard procedure," it added.

A Mumbai based agency, which holds similar events in Goa, has submitted the proposal to the government.

Women's organisations have come out strongly against the proposed programme.

Even political parties including the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is sharing power with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), have condemned the proposal. They said such an event which goes against the state's culture can't be allowed.

BJP leader and local legislator P. Vishnukumar Raju said there was no question of allowing such a programme.

"Come what may, we will not allow this event," said R. K. Roja, a leader of opposition YSR Congress Party.

--IANS

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Time for opposition unity under Mulayam: Deve Gowda

Uttar Pradesh,National,Politics, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Lucknow, Nov 5 (IANS) Former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda on Saturday made a fervent pitch for opposition unity and said that time had come for all like-minded parties to come together and ensure the defeat of communal forces.

Speaking at the silver jubilee function of the Samajwadi Party (SP) here, the former Prime Minister said all secular forces should rally behind SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Referring to his tenure as Prime Minister when Mulayam was the Union Defence Minister, Deve Gowda said not a single incident was reported at the Indo-Pak border during those days. Even Jammu and Kashmir was peaceful and not once was section 144 clamped down there, he pointed out, referring to the months of prohibitory orders in the Kashmir Valley at present.

Exhorting the leaders of the SP and its supporters to ensure that their party always remained strong in Uttar Pradesh, the senior Socialist leader said if such a thing happens, then opposition unity will get a boost.

Taking a dig at the BJP government at the Centre, he said that a party which is enjoying power at the Centre by taking the name of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was actually working contrary to the great leader's character.

"Patel merged all states into one united country while the BJP was out to divide states and its people," he said. Seeking unity among opposition parties under the leadership of Mulayam Singh, he said the opposition should come together at the platform to catch the train they missed in 1997.

He was apparently referring to the time when differences within the Janata Dal family led to their downfall and fragmentation.

--IANS

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Cooking gas crisis continues in Tripura, Mizoram

Tripura,National, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Agartala/Aizawl, Nov 5 (IANS) Even as the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) monitors the cooking gas situation in Tripura and Mizoram, the LPG crisis persists in the two northeastern states, officials said on Saturday.

According to officials in the Tripura and Mizoram governments, technical, transport and workers-related problems have led to the crisis of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) in the two hill states.

The people of these northeastern states are forced to buy a LPG cylinder for prices ranging from Rs 1,500 to Rs 3,000 against the official rate of around Rs 650, excluding subsidy.

A Tripura Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Department official, on condition of anonymity, said that the PMO is monitoring the situation arising out of the LPG crisis.

"Due to short supply of LPG trucks by the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) from Guwahati and technical and labour-related problems in Tripura's only gas bottling plant at Bishalgarh (in western Tripura), production of LPG cylinders has come down drastically," Tripura Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Department Joint Director Dibyendu Chakraborty said.

He said that the Tripura government has asked the IOC to increase its supply to overcome the crisis of cooking gas.

"The IOC last month transported the LPG and other petroleum products from Guwahati to Tripura through Bangladesh, as the state's lone national highway was badly damaged due to heavy rain," the official said adding that the IOC is now looking to carry more LPG via Bangladesh.

To carry these products, the IOC, under the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas of India, and the Roads & Highways Department of Bangladesh had signed a Memorandum of Understanding in Dhaka on August 18.

The route via Bangladesh had saved time and cost in carrying petroleum products from Assam to Tripura as the existing over 400-km mountainous route requires many hours to carry these essential items.

Mizoram is also experiencing a similar situation as people are facing a harrowing time due to severe scarcity of cooking gas.

In view of the severe crisis since July, people are buying a cooking gas cylinder for Rs 3,000 from the black market.

"The scarcity of cooking gas further deteriorated after a transport contractor refused to carry LPG cylinders to Mizoram in view of the members of Young Mizo Association (YMA) launching a crackdown on drivers and their assistants for alleged tampering with LPG cylinders," an official of Mizoram's Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Department said.

The YMA volunteers have seized over 600 cylinders tampered with during transportation.

According to the officials, the contractor's bid for the IOC tender was too low and unviable, which prompted the drivers, who were poorly paid, to resort to tampering with cooking gas cylinders to get additional money.

Minister for Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs John Rotluangliana, however, said the scarcity will soon be over as the IOC has allowed coking gas distributors to hire trucks for transporting cylinders.

--IANS

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6 killed in tribal clash in Pakistan

Pakistan,Indo-Pak/Pakistan,Crime/Disaster/Accident, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Islamabad, Nov 5 (IANS) At least six persons were killed and 22 injured on Saturday in a clash between two tribes in Pakistan's Balochistan province, media reported.

An armed clash took place between two tribes of Lashari in Jhal Magsi district of the province which resulted in the death of six people, Geo News reported.

Security forces cordoned off the area after the incident and arrested 17 people.

--IANS

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Those supposed to govern UP are abusing each other: Amit Shah

Uttar Pradesh,National,Politics, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Saharanpur, Nov 5 (IANS) BJP President Amit Shah on Saturday attacked the ruling Samajwadi Party over the ongoing feud in the Yadav family, saying those responsible for governing the state are busy abusing each other.

"The ones, who were given power to bring development in the state, are today busy in insulting each other," Shah said while addressing a public rally before commencing the "Parivartan Yatra" of his party.

"Uncle is busy in abusing his nephew and nephew is busy in abusing his uncle," Shah quipped.

The BJP President's remarks came after Samajwadi Party General Secretary Shivpal Singh Yadav on Saturday again made an indirect attack at his nephew at the Silver Jubilee celebration of the party in Lucknow.

Referring to his dismissal from the state Cabinet twice, Shivpal said that he was neither greedy for any post nor any ministry. He also said if the party so wishes, he is ready to give even his blood and everything at his command for the Samajwadi Party.

"While some people get power in lineage, there are many who are silent workers," Shivpal said.

Even Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav took a dig at his uncle after the latter presented him a sword and said, "You have given me a sword and I will use it," he said.

Targeting Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati, the BJP President said, "Remember your rule Behenji, when most attacks on Dalits took place in Uttar Pradesh."

He also reminded the BSP chief of the scams which took place during her tenure.

He slammed the BSP and SP for the poor condition of the state and said that during their 15-year rule, they have derailed the growth process in Uttar Pradesh.

Shah also asserted that "The BJP will get majority in assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh."

"Like 2014, we are bringing our campaign from western Uttar Pradesh again," he added.

The BJP in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections won 72 out of the 80 seats in the state.

Shah said the Parivartan Yatra will pass through all the assembly constituencies of the state and reach Lucknow on December 24.

Attacking the Congress for doing politics over the death of an ex-serviceman, Shah said, "A soldier commits suicide and they are doing politics for vote bank. This is disgusting."

Slamming Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, Shah said, "Rahul Gandhi talks about OROP (One Rank, One Pension), but it is the BJP government that implemented the policy while the Congress dragged for decades."

--IANS

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Jamaat terms Madhya Pradesh shootout staged, demands probe

Delhi,National,Politics,Religion,Terrorism, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

New Delhi, Nov 5 (IANS) Muslim group Jamaat-e-Islami Hind on Saturday termed as "staged" the jailbreak of eight undertrials from a jail in Madhya Pradesh and their deaths in a gunfight with police, and demanded a probe into the matter.

"How could the escapees got access to weapons? Why are there contradictory statements from police on whether they had weapons or not? How did they get new clothes, watches and bands? If they had connections to get weapons, why couldn't they get vehicles to escape?" asked the organisation.

The Jamaat, which had expressed its concern about the matter earlier, demanded a high-level judicial probe to bring out all the facts about the October 31 incident, calling it fake.

Hours after they escaped from a high-security jail in the Madhya Pradesh capital after killing a guard, eight undertrial activists of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) were shot dead by police in an alleged gun battle.

However, a judicial probe was ordered by the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government on Saturday.

The Jamaat also accused the Narendra Modi government of "straitjacketing" the whole society by bringing the Uniform Civil Code.

"India is known for its plurality. It has so many tribes and communities which have their own distinct cultures... by imposing this code they (the government) are trying to destroy the society," its Secretary General Saleem Engineer told IANS.

"And to those who are advocating for the UCC, must know that they in no way represent the crores of Muslim women living under the current laws," he said.

The Jamaat also condemned the role of police and JNU administration in failing to do enough in tracing Najeeb Ahmed, the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student who disappeared after being beaten up by other students on the campus.

"They are not taking action fearing adverse repercussions from the NDA government whose Hindutva line they are toeing. I am very dissatisfied with the whole investigation," Engineer added.

The Jamaat also expressed its dissatisfaction over the government's one-day ban on NDTV news channel.

--IANS

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Delhi has become like a gas chamber: Kejriwal

Delhi,National,Politics,Environment/Wildlife, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

New Delhi, Nov 5 (IANS) Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday said that the national capital has become like a "gas chamber" due to pollution.

"Pollution level has increased so much in Delhi that it has developed situations like a gas chamber," Kejriwal told reporters here.

He also said that initially our inquiry suggested that the reason behind pollution is crop burning in neighbouring states. He also said that the Delhi government needs help from the central government in tackling pollution.

"I am going to meet the Environment Minister, we need intervention of central government," Kejriwal said.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convenor's remarks came after the air quality in Delhi remained bad for the ninth consecutive day on Saturday.

Kejriwal said that his government is going to hire an agency to know the reason behind the pollution in Delhi.

The AAP leader emphasised that he will reduce all the factors responsible for pollution in the national capital.

"Vacuum cleaning of the roads will begin from this week. It will remove dust from the roads which also contributes to pollution," Kejriwal added.

Delhi Health Minister Satyendara Jain visited the Bhalswa Landfill site on Saturday morning to take stock of the air pollution.

--IANS

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Lengthy lines and healthy absentee vote counts indicate a strong interest in Tuesday's presidential and general election, according to local county auditors.

With 6,685 absentee ballots returned of the 8,370 that were requested, and 6,536 early voters turning in their ballots by noon Friday, Burleigh County Auditor Kevin Glatt said it was above normal participation by voters.

He expects the same on Election Day.

Glatt attributes the large turnout to the presidential race and the convenience of early polls being open for the past two weeks. Burleigh County has about 85,796 eligible voters.

In the 2012 presidential race, a total of 43,680 Burleigh County residents voted, Glatt said. Of those, about 10,547 voted absentee and 6,316 voted early.

About 36,796 total votes were cast in the 2014 midterm election.

Early voting counts vary on days and times, but it has been strong or at least steady this year, Glatt said.

Friday's average wait time was 22 minutes, he said.

In Morton County, Auditor Dawn Rhone said 2,524 absentee ballots were sent out and, as of Friday, 2,066 had been returned. She said 2,083 people had voted early by 3 p.m. Friday.

Numbers of absentee and early voters are comparable with four years ago. In 2012, 13,762 eligible voters cast ballots in Morton County. Of those, 2,592 used absentee ballots and 2,165 voted early.

In 2014, 11,542 voted, including 2,122 absentee and 1,511 early ballots.

Early voting polls will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday at the Morton County Courthouse and the Burleigh City/County Building.

Deadline for submitting absentee ballots is 5 p.m. Monday.
Patanjali setting up production unit in Assam: Baba Ramdev

Assam,National,Politics,Business/Economy, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Guwahati, Nov 5 (IANS) In what may give the required industrial boost to Assam, Yoga guru Baba Ramdev's Patanjali Ayurved is going to set up one of its biggest production units in Assam, which is expected to give direct employment to over 5,000 youth of the state.

Ramdev said this on Saturday while addressing a press conference in Guwahati and added that the proposed production unit at Balipara in northern Assam's Sonitpur district will have the capacity to roll out 1 million products every year.

Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal is expected to lay the foundation stone of the industrial unit at Balipara on Sunday.

"The industrial unit will directly give employment opportunity to over 5,000 youth. Besides, over 50,000 farmers of the area will be benefited due to the project and it would also help thousands of other people of Assam through indirect engagement in series of activities related to the proposed industrial unit in form of supply of raw materials, retailing etc." Ramdev said.

He said that the unit will be completed by January next year and it is expected to start production by March next year. "Our efforts will be to start the production by January itself. However, our deadline is March 2017, by when the production will surely start," he added.

He said that Patanjali had already deposited Rs. 13.82 crore as fixed by the government of Assam as the land lease value for the 120 acres of land taken by Patanjali for the project.

The Yoga guru, who is in Assam on a two day visit, added that the apparel brand to be launched by Patanjali would promote Assam's Eri, Muga and Pat silk.

"We (Patanjali) are going to make it big in apparel sector soon. We are going to promote the Pat, Muga and Eri silk of Assam under our apparel brand. Initially, we are going to help the artisans involved with these three silks and help them market their products in international markets," he added.

He expressed concern over the fact that India's apparel and textiles market was largely dominated by foreign brands at present.

"Our plan is to capture at least Rs 50,000 crore to Rs 1 lakh crore of the apparel market under our Swadeshi apparel brand," he said.

--IANS

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Naik's IRF has to seek government nod for foreign funds

Delhi,National,Religion,Defence/Security,Terrorism, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

New Delhi, Nov 5 (IANS) The central government has put IRF Educational Trust of controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, under prior permission category.

This would prevent the trust from receiving foreign funds without permission from the central government.

In a gazette notification, the Home Ministry said that the IRF Education Trust has violated various provisions of the Foreign Contribution Regulations Act (FCRA) 2010.

"The Central Government is satisfied that I.R.F. Education Trust has violated certain provisions of the Act," the notification issued here said.

"Now, therefore, the central government in exercise of powers conferred by sub-section (3) of section 11 of the FCRA 2010, hereby specifies that the IRF Education Trust shall obtain prior permission of the central government on each occasion before accepting any foreign contribution in accordance with the provisions of section 12 of the Act and rules made thereunder," the notification said.

The move comes after the government reportedly found the Islamic preacher to be involved in utilising funds meant for his NGOs for radicalisation of youths, sources said.

Some other organisations, being run by Naik, have also been under the government scanner, they said.

Earlier, the Union Home Ministry had suspended some of its officials for renewing the Islamic Research Foundation's registration under the FCRA.

--IANS

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Congress reconstitutes North East Coordination Committee

Delhi,National,Politics, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

New Delhi, Nov 5 (IANS) The Congress on Saturday re-constituted its North East Coordination Committee which will be headed by Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma.

"Congress President and Vice-President have reconstituted the North East Coordination Committee," Congress leader Manish Tewari told reporters here.

"A new Committee has been constituted and would be convened by Mukul Sangma, Chief Minister of Meghalaya," Tewari said.

Tewari also said there were repeated intrusions by the Chinese into Arunachal Pradesh. In Ladakh, there was another stand-off with the PLA (People's Liberation Army).

Among others who will be a part of the committee are former Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Nabam Tuki and Manipur Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh.

Meanwhile, after being nominated in the new Coordination Committee, Sangma said, "India has its own inherent complexities. It is important for leaders who are familiar to deal with the various issues there (northeast)."

"There is no other party apart from the Congress, whose leaders have been able to create great change in north east India," Sangma said.

Sangma also said that the Congress leaders will look at issues in the north east, bring leaders on one platform and ensure that they protect the region from "agendas which are detrimental".

"We look forward to serving the people, because our mandate is to carry forward agendas which are in sync with the aspirations of the people," the Meghalaya Chief Minister added.

"There are various issues with the present government, like non-release of funds as per the Finance Commission to the states," former Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Nabam Tuki said.

--IANS

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Delhi remains engulfed in thick smog, residents complain of respiratory problems

Delhi,National,Environment/Wildlife,Health/Medicine, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

New Delhi, Nov 5 (IANS) Residents continued to complain of respiratory problems and burning eyes as entire Delhi and NCR area remained covered in a shroud of smog the entire Saturday, while experts ruled out any respite with the situation expected to continue for a couple of days.

The air quality continued to remain alarming in Delhi-NCR because of calm winds.

The average level of particulate matter 2.5 (PM 2.5) was above 400 micrograms per cubic metre or the "severe" category at all the pollution measuring centres including at Anand Vihar in east Delhi, Punjabi Bagh and Dwarka in the west, R.K. Puram in the south, Mandir Marg in central Delhia.

The maximum level - 500 microgrammes per cubic metre - was at Anand Vihar, Punjabi Bagh, Mandir Marg and R.K. Puram whereas it was marginally lower at 493 in Dwarka.

Private weather forecaster, Skymet Director, Mahesh Palawat said that entire Delhi-NCR was engulfed in a thick layer of smog due to calm winds which stopped the pollutants for dispersing.

He said that the passing of 'Western Disturbances' over Himalayas made the conditions worst in north India including Delhi.

"Whenever western disturbance passes over Himalayas, it increases the level of humidity which enhances the capacity of air to bear the pollutants for a long time. This results in thick layer of smog over the cities," Palawat told IANS.

"The situation is expected to remain same tomorrow (Sunday) and the day after. The smog will start dispersing after November 7 (Monday) as dry north-westerly winds with speed 10-15 km/hr are expected to sweep through the region," he said.

Palawat also held the burning of paddy stubble in Punjab and Haryana responsible for sad state of affair in Delhi.

People living in Delhi-NCR complained about respiratory problems and itching in the eyes due to smog all over the region.

"It was difficult for me to breath properly and my eyes were itching because of high level of air pollution today (Saturday). I did not go for morning walk due to smog. Due to smog the gaze was also turning hazy," Devi Das, a resident of R.K. Puram area, told IANS.

Similarly Kartik Kumar, who works with a marketing firm, said that his eyes were itching and were turning watery because of high level of air pollution.

"This is the worst level of pollution I have ever seen in Delhi. Entire city is engulfed in smog. The authorities have to take some very serious steps to deal with the situation," he said.

Vivek Chatopadhyay, a senior researcher with NGO Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), said that burning of crop residue in Punjab and Haryana was not the only source of the smog in Delhi but pollutants emitted from diesel cars and truck were also major contributors.

"Such situation is usually witnessed a day after Diwali but now this is happening on a normal day. This indicates that the condition has become very very serious. Now the air quality in Delhi is constantly under highest alarming level," Chatopadhyay told IANS.

He said that the present level of smog has proved that the current system of air pollution is a complete failure.

"There is a need to curtail down the pollutants and the government will have to take some very serious measures to deal with the crisis," he added.

--IANS

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Maharashtra-Karnataka boundary row: Sena wants CM's intervention

Maharashtra,National,Immigration/Law/Rights,Politics, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Mumbai, Nov 5 (IANS) Amidst reports of alleged high-handed tactics against the Marathi-speaking population in Karnataka's Belgaum district, the Shiv Sena on Saturday asked Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to intervene and resolve the issue.

Sena spokesperson and Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Raut said Fadnavis must take up the issue on a priority basis even as agitated Shiv Sainiks stopped buses entering Maharashtra from Karnataka and put up road blocks on the Bengaluru-Pune highway today.

Referring to the alleged atrocities against Marathi speaking people in Karnataka's border areas, Raut said he would raise the issue during the winter session of the Parliament.

"There are unanimous resolutions on the issue by both houses of Maharashtra legislature. Now the matter has to be taken up even at the central level, and all parties must come forward for this," Raut told reporters.

Warning that the party would take to the streets in New Delhi, he said the boundary dispute between the two states is already pending before the Supreme Court, yet Karnataka acts in a unilateral manner.

Kolhapur district Sena chief Sanjay Pawar said the manner in which Karnataka is targeting Marathi-speaking youths for taking part in the 'Black Day' protest in Belgaum on Karnataka foundation day on November 1, smacks of authoritarianism.

"This is not 'lokshahi' (democracy), but 'thokshahi' (authoritarianism) on the part of Karnataka authorities," Pawar told media.

Meanwhile, agitated Shiv Sainiks stopped several passenger buses from entering this state at the boundary in Kolhapur on Saturday and ordered them to return to Karnataka.

Hundreds of passengers, including senior citizens were compelled to get down, cross the border and arrange alternate means of transport to reach their destinations even as local police were deployed.

The Sena is an alliance partner of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-led NDA at the Centre and in Maharashtra.

--IANS

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British PM visiting Bengaluru on Tuesday

Karnataka,National,Diplomacy,Business/Economy, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Bengaluru, Nov 5 (IANS) British Prime Minister Theresa May will be in this tech hub on Tuesday on the last leg of her maiden three-day official visit to India starting Sunday, an official said.

"May has a busy schedule during her day-long visit on Tuesday as she will participate in as many as five events soon after arriving from New Delhi," a protocol officer told IANS here.

The 60-year-old British leader is arriving in New Delhi on Sunday for her first bilateral visit outside the European Union after she assumed office in July following the resignation of David Cameron in wake of Brexit, or Britain's vote to leave the European grouping.

"May's first engagement will be at the international airport around 11 a.m. where she will meet Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in the VIP lounge for bilateral discussions," said the official who declined to be named as he is not authorised to brief the media on the visit.

May will then drive to the state-run Stone Hill model school near Papanahalli in the city's northern suburb to interact with its students.

She will visit Dynamatic Technologies Ltd at the Peenya industrial state for a firsthand account of the aerospace firm's manufacturing facility.

"From Peenya, May will go to the Someshwara Temple at Halasuru in the city centre and seek blessings of its deity, Shiva. The 15th century temple is one of the oldest in the southern state, dating back to the Chola period," the official noted.

May's last engagement in the city will be a luncheon meeting with chief executives of India Inc at a leading hotel before flying to London in the evening.

An Indo-British Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) delegation will also call on her after the luncheon meet.

"Elaborate security arrangements are being made for the safety of May and her delegation. Vehicular traffic will be diverted and regulated to facilitate quick and smooth passage of her motorcade," the official added.

May will be the fourth British Premier to visit Bengaluru after her (Conservative) Party's then leader John Major on January 9, 1997, his Labour Party successor Tony Blair on January 4, 2002 and Cameron on July 28, 2010.

--IANS

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Congress reconstitutes North East Coordination Committee

Delhi,National,Politics, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

New Delhi, Nov 5 (IANS) In a bid to counter the BJP's North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA), the Congress on Saturday reconstituted its North East Coordination Committee headed by Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma.

"Congress President (Sonia Gandhi) and Vice-President (Rahul Gandhi) have reconstituted the North East Coordination Committee," Congress leader Manish Tewari told reporters here.

"A new Committee has been constituted and would be convened by Mukul Sangma, Chief Minister of Meghalaya," Tewari said.

Among others who will be a part of the committee are former Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Nabam Tuki and Manipur Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh.

The Congress leader also said that there is the whole "spectre of internal subversion, the repeated destabilisation of elected Congress government notwithstanding, very severe strictures which were passed by none other than the Supreme Court of India".

He also accused the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) and the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh) of making insidious attempts to try and communally polarise northeastern India.

The Congress party's coordination committee came months after the BJP in July formed the NEDA as part of its 'Congress mukt northeast' move.

Tewari also said there were repeated intrusions by the Chinese into Arunachal Pradesh. In Ladakh, there was another stand-off with the PLA (People's Liberation Army).

Meanwhile, after being nominated to the new Coordination Committee, Sangma said, "India has its own inherent complexities. It is important for leaders who are familiar to deal with the various issues there (northeast)."

"There is no other party apart from the Congress, whose leaders have been able to create great change in northeast India," Sangma said.

Sangma also said that the Congress leaders will look at issues in the northeast, bring leaders on one platform and ensure that they protect the region from "agendas which are detrimental".

"We look forward to serving the people, because our mandate is to carry forward agendas which are in sync with the aspirations of the people," the Meghalaya Chief Minister added.

Former Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Nabam Tuki accused the Central government of not releasing funds to the states and said, "There are various issues with the present (central) government, like non-release of funds as per the Finance Commission to the states."

"Many of the major infrastructural development funds have also been curtailed," he alleged.

He also said that instead of strengthening the Look East Policy, the central government was withdrawing all powers and development policies.

"This forum will raise all these issues and take them to the central government," he added.

--IANS

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Government says criticism of NDTV ban 'politically inspired', faces more flak (Roundup)

Tamil Nadu,National,Media,Politics, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Chennai/New Delhi, Nov 5 (IANS) The government on Saturday dismissed criticism over its move to ban for a day NDTV India news channel, terming it "politically inspired", even as it faced fresh political flak for the move.

Union Information and Broadcasting Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu, speaking to reporters in Chennai, said, "I am happy to note that the people of the country are broadly with the decision in the matter of NDTV India."

He said the NDA government has the highest regard for media and freedom of media and would never allow any infringement on it.

"Always, there will be a minority who are critical of whatever the government does in the best interest of the country," he said.

"The belated criticism of the action, proposed to be taken against NDTV India for violating the norms of live coverage of anti-terrorist operations by the security personnel in Pathankot in January, is clearly ill informed and politically inspired."

He said reactions came a day after the government's decision on November 3, and were "clearly an after-thought, suggesting a motivated design to create a controversy where none existed".

Pointing out that the Congress-led-UPA government had ordered several television channels to go off air during 2005-14 for a period ranging from one day to two months, Naidu said the channels were banned for obscene visuals or adult rated movies.

He said the decision against NDTV India was not based on any newly invented rule and principle but based on what was clearly articulated by the Congress-led-UPA government in various advisories issued after the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008.

Naidu said NDTV India has violated the government advisories and was found to be unrepentant about what they have done.

"This channel was also found to have resorted to similar violations earlier," he said.

Naidu said the Editors Guild of India took a full day to come out with its response on the ban on NDTV India.

Earlier, in a series of tweets, Naidu had justified the ban, saying that "freedom of press is important but the country's security can't be compromised".

The NDTV India channel has been asked to go off air for a day -- from midnight of November 8 to midnight of November 9 -- for allegedly violating norms in its coverage of the terror attack on the Pathankot Air Base in January.

Meanwhile, political parties and leaders including Congress, Communist Party of India-Marxist, Janata Dal-United leader Nitish Kumar and RJD leader Lalu Prasad strongly criticised the ban.

"It's a message to entire Indian media -- either play ball or get shot," the Congress said.

The CPI-M condemned the ban and termed it a "brazen attack on media freedom and an attempt to gag freedom of expression".

"It reveals the increasingly authoritarian attitude of the Modi government," the party said.

Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav said: "Ban on NDTV is an attack on democracy. This country is heading towards dictatorship...There is an emergency-like situation in the country."

Lalu said that since NDTV channel "exposes certain people", it has been targeted by the government.

K.C. Tyagi of the JD-U said the ban should be revoked immediately.

"This act of the government reminds me of the Emergency days," he said.

DMK leader M. Karunanidhi termed the BJP government's action as "transgression of the right to freedom of expression".

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar condemned the government's decision and said that a free and impartial media is a must in any democracy.

--IANS

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Time to end goondaraj of SP, graft of BSP: Amit Shah

Uttar Pradesh,National,Politics, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

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Saharanpur, Nov 5 (IANS) BJP President Amit Shah on Saturday attacked the ruling Samajwadi Party over the ongoing feud in the Yadav family, saying those responsible for governing the state are busy abusing each other.

"The ones, who were given power to bring development in the state, are today busy in insulting each other," Shah said while addressing an impressive public rally before commencing the "Parivartan Yatra" of his party.

He said western UP had contributed majorly to the stunning victory of the BJP in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, so the yatra has been kicked off from here.

"Uncle is busy in abusing his nephew and nephew is busy in abusing his uncle," Shah quipped.

The BJP President's remarks came after Samajwadi Party General Secretary Shivpal Singh Yadav on Saturday again made a veiled attack on his nephew at the Silver Jubilee celebration of the party in Lucknow.

Referring to his dismissal from the state Cabinet twice, Shivpal said that he is neither greedy for any post nor any ministry. He also said if the party so wishes, he is ready to give even his blood and everything at his command.

"While some people get power in lineage, there are many who are silent workers," Shivpal said.

Even Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav took a dig at his uncle after the latter presented him a sword and said, "You have given me a sword and I will use it."

Shah exuded confidence that by December 24, the party's target of two-thirds majority would be met, as "the people of the state are now in no mood to tolerate the corruption of Mayawati and the goondaraj of Samajwadi Party government".

These two parties, he alleged, have brought the wheel of development to a grinding halt in the state and that for development to ring in again, the BJP is the best choice.

The BJP President pointed out how under the watch of Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, Jawaharbagh incident had happened, in which a SP and a police inspector had died, apart from 24 others.

He also said that the Bulandhshar gang rape, killing of policemen, police officers' posting scam and many other incidents are a poor reflection on the Samajwadi Party government and the time has come for the people to bid adieu to them.

Targeting Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati, the BJP President said, "Remember your rule Behenji, when most attacks on the Dalits took place in Uttar Pradesh?"

"Maximum murders took place during Mayawati's rule, while the crime rate was 30 per cent above the national average. There was also rampant corruption when Mayawati was the CM," Shah said.

He also reminded the BSP chief of the scams which took place during her tenure.

"If BSP again comes to power, UP will not benefit but Mayawati will have additional 200-300 statues of her own across the state," Shah mocked.

He slammed the SP and the BSP for the poor condition of the state and said that during their 15-year rule, they have derailed the growth process in Uttar Pradesh.

Raking up the issue of migration from western UP, Shah said, "During SP's rule, crime has grown by a massive 161 per cent. Western UP has been worst hit, and as a result, the inhabitants of this region have been forced to migrate to other states."

"I assure all of you that if the BJP forms government in UP, no one will have to leave his or her village. If anyone has to leave, it will be those who are trying to uproot you from your homes and villages," he said.

The BJP President also targeted the SP and the BSP for giving tickets to criminals and said, "Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav had said that till the time he is the CM, Mukhtar Ansari and Afzal Ansari will have no place in the SP. The voter of UP today wants to know whether now both of them are in SP.

"Why do you continue to be the CM of the state?" he asked.

He also said, "The entire SP is full of Mukhtars, Afzals, Ateeqs and Azams, while the BSP has Naseemuddin. There is devil on one side and deep sea on the other."

Attacking the Congress for doing politics over the death of an ex-serviceman, Shah said, "A soldier has committed suicide and they are doing politics for vote bank. This is disgusting."

Slamming Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, Shah said, "Rahul Gandhi talks about OROP (One Rank, One Pension), but it is the BJP government that implemented the policy while the Congress dragged it for decades."

Attacking the opposition over triple talaq issue, Shah said, "The Congress, SP and the BSP have been protesting the government's response to the Supreme Court query on the issue of triple talaq."

"Even Muslim women have the right to a secure and safe life and practices like triple talaq should go. For the sake of votes, these parties are playing with the rights of Muslim women," Shah alleged.

The Parivartan Yatra will pass through all the assembly constituencies of the state and reach Lucknow on December 24.

--IANS

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Charitable works satisfy me more than winning awards, says Vivek Oberoi

Maharashtra,Cinema/Showbiz,Bollywood,Human Interest/Society, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Mumbai, Nov 5 (IANS) With Food For Life Vrindavan (FFLV) kicks off a fundraiser with Tuk Tuk Challenge 2016, Bollywood actor and FFLV's international brand ambassador Vivek Oberoi said that working for social cause gives him more satisfaction than winning film awards.

Addressing a press conference here on Saturday, Vivek said: "In my life, I am blessed to win awards for my acting. While after winning the award I do nothing but put them in a showcase, but when I go to Vrindavan and meet our kids, see them growing, it gives me immense joy and feels like their growth is my living award.

"Charitable work satisfies me more than winning awards. So I urge all the citizens of my country to join us to give our girls a better future."

Fifteen working professional from all walks of life, including filmmaker Ravinol Chambers, award winning hair dresser David Jameli, and Ravin Ganatra will fly in here from Britain for their arduous 1,800 km 12-day journey from Mumbai to Kanyakumari in an auto-rickshaw.

The non-profit organisation FFLV aims to empower little girls and women in rural parts of Uttar Pradesh's Vrindavan and bring change by stopping child marriage, child prostitution and helping all the unprivileged girls to get education and nutrition.

"There are days I have seen when parents take their girls of 10-12 years away from our school for marriage. It is difficult to believe that when we are talking about globalisation, such inhuman acts still happen with girl child in our country.

However, we realise that we have to create awareness and have to bring a change in people's way of thinking to stop such injustice. We have three schools where around 1,500 girls are studying and dreaming for a bright future," said Vivek.

On joining the Tuk Tuk Challenge, Chambers, who is planning to make a documentary on it, said: "Living here in India, I gained an experience that has changed my life. Now that I am joining the cause, I am happy to do something for the society here. I will shoot the road journey of the activity, interact with kids and people who are joining us. I am looking forward to the trip."

FFLV founder Rupa Ragunath Das also urged everyone to join the challenge and support their cause.

--IANS

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"It's November next week, and, by the time it's built, it would be midwinter already. If you're waiting, don't hang your hat on that. Two months is a long time when it's 5 degrees below zero."

 Tribal Councilman Chad Harrison, discussing the complexities of partitioning tribal land from private ownership for a pipeline protester camp near Cannon Ball. He spoke last week at a town hall meeting.

q q q

"This situation has been well-handled from start to finish. Going forward, hopefully we have persuaded protesters that public roadways and private property is not the place to hold a protest."

 Gov. Jack Dalrymple, after law enforcement moved protesters from private land.

q q q

"This is not a loss, we always knew this camp was at risk. We want the world to see how far North Dakota and their police will go to protect an oil company."

 Protest organizer Dallas Goldtooth, after officers moved the protesters.

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"Suffering breeds character, character breeds faith, and, in the end, faith will prevail. We will not leave. We will hold out, one day longer, to stop this pipeline."

 The Rev. Jesse Jackson, talking to Dakota Access Pipeline opponents.

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"I defend the people who are righteously protecting their environment. I'm an old lefty lawyer and proud of it."

 Bill Tilton, a Minnesota attorney defending Dakota Access Pipeline protesters.

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"I wasn't able to do my job. It took away my ability to report."

 Adam Schrader, a freelance journalist based in New York, who was arrested in the midst of a protest that took place at the front-line camp off of Highway 1806 in Morton County last week.

q q q

"We had some concerted effort and resources dedicated to reaching them. I think we've just spent some time and energy to figure out how our learners are learning best, specifically our Native American students."

 State Superintendent Kirsten Baesler commenting on how fourth- and eighth-grade students scored above the national average in a science exam.

q q q

"Our officers have better things to be doing than to be responding to such childish acts."

 North Dakota Highway Patrol Lt. Tom Iverson, after someone spilled oil in front of the Capitol entrance.

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"This is really irritating. I can't tell you how disappointed I am ... on an issue that is clearly a federal issue. This is 110 percent wrong that we have to do this."

 Rep. Al Carlson, R-Fargo, after the Emergency Commission approved $4 million to deal with pipeline protests.

q q q

"We want to show community members it doesn't matter what's your race or where you're from you have a place to come get your message out there."

 Kirsten Kelsch, who organized a Capitol rally in support of pipeline protesters.

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"My view is that there is a way for us to accommodate sacred lands of Native Americans. We're going to let it play out for several more weeks and determine whether or not this can be resolved in a way that I think is properly attentive to the traditions of First Americans."

 President Barack Obama, in an interview with NowThis on the Dakota Access Pipeline dispute.
Government asks Assam news channel to go off air for a day

Delhi,National,Media,Politics,Immigration/Law/Rights, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

New Delhi, Nov 5 (IANS) After NDTV, the central government has ordered an Assam-based news channel - News Time Assam - to go off air for a day on November 9 for violating programming norms.

The Information and Broadcasting ministry order dated November 2 said that the channel may be taken off air for one day.

"It was alleged by the Child Welfare Committee that this channel telecast a clear video clipping of a male child aged about 7 years who was reported to have been brutally tortured while working as a domestic servant at the residence of a government servant.

"News Time channel disclosed the identity of the minor by revealing his name and showing his face without blurring or morphing. Revelation of identity could scar the child for life," the order said.

It further said: "The channel showed the visuals of the minor child repeatedly. Owing to physical harm and cruelty, the child appeared to be emotionally traumatised. These visual not only appeared to compromise the privacy and dignity of the child, he was also exposed to harm and stigma.

"By telecasting the above programme the channer (News Time Assam) appeared to have violated provisions of the Cable Television Networks Rules, 1994."

The Inter Ministerial Committee noted that the channel cannot escape from their responsibility by merely apologising for their error, especially when the channel carried the content which could cause immense harm to the child and denigrate him.

"Based on the material on record and the submission of channel's representatives, the IMC opined that the channel had violated the proqramme code and that it should have exercised caution and care while telecasting a child-related programme.

Therefore, the IMC recommended that the channel may be taken off air for one day," it added.

NDTV India had also been ordered off air for the same date over its coverage of the Pathankot attack.

--IANS

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2 Bihar teachers arrested for alleged sex with LKG student

Bihar,National,Crime/Disaster/Accident,Education, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

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Patna, Nov 5 (IANS) Two women teachers of a reputed missionary school in Patna were arrested for allegedly having sex with a six-year-old girl student, police on Saturday said.

The victim is a LKG student of St. Xaviers School near Gandhi maidan in Patna.

Patna Senior Superintendent of Police Manu Maharaj said two female teachers were arrested after an FIR was lodged against them under sections 376 of IPC and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012.

"Police have been interrogating them at woman police station here, they may or may not be produced before the court on Saturday," he said.

He said police have also interrogated the school Principal, Father Jacob, over the incident.

Medical examination of the victim has confirmed internal injuries to her private parts, the police said.

The police have recorded statement of the victim's parents.

Maharaj said he has asked Patna city Superintendent of Police Chandan Kushwaha to investigate into the matter.

According to the FIR, filed by victim's grandfather, the child had complained to her mother about the pain in her private parts and informed her that two female school teachers, whom she addressed them as "Badi Mam" and "Chhoti Mam", had been playing with her private parts in a room despite her protest.

"Victim even revealed to her mother that two accused female teachers during school time used to take her to a closed room, undress her and played with her private parts."

A team of Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) experts have visited school premises where the girl was allegedly sexually exploited on a portable bed and collected evidences.

The school Principal said the school management has constituted a sexual harassment inquiry committee that will look into the incident.

"The school will take action against the two accused if they were found guilty," he said.

--IANS

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White House race: E-nailed, WikiLicked and Trumped up (Washington Diary)

United States,Politics, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

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Washington, Nov 5 (IANS) What a difference a week makes in politics! Last Friday, Hillary Clinton was said to be "measuring the drapes" in the President's Oval office before the FBI struck with what her camp called an "18 wheeler".

Now three days before the November 8 presidential poll, Democrats are curled up in the foetal position, as a pundit put it, fearing a loss that would once again shatter the former First Lady's 16-year-old dream to return to the White House.

For the Clintonites the "Friendly Bureau of Investigation" suddenly turned into the "Federal Bureau of Intrigue" as FBI reopened its probe of her "damned e-mails" three months after letting her go scot-free despite finding her "extremely careless".

Pundits and pollsters still gave the Democrat an edge amid tightening polls, but they also saw a potential breach in her electoral firewall in several swing states giving her Republican rival Donald Trump a broadening path to victory.

And as the FBI started wading through some 650,000 e-mails found on a laptop her desi "second daughter" Huma Abedin shared with her estranged husband, WikiLeaks kept up its relentless exposure of shenanigans in her campaign and her family charity.

Abedin, daughter of a New Delhi-born Islamic scholar and a Pakistani mother, went into hiding and husband Anthony Weiner checked into a rehab facility as the Clinton campaign cried foul at FBI and threw the kitchen sink at Trump.

From President Barack Obama to First Lady Michelle Obama to Vice President Joe Biden to Bill Clinton joined Hillary in calling Trump "uniquely unfit" to be President.

Breaking his silence over the FBI action, Obama declared "we don't operate on innuendo and we don't operate on incomplete information and we don't operate on leaks".

Yet days earlier his press secretary Josh Earnest had affirmed that Obama still has confidence in FBI director James Comey and "doesn't believe that he's secretly strategising to benefit one candidate or one political party".

"The president thinks very highly of Director Comey," Earnest said, calling him a man of "integrity and good character".

Meanwhile, smelling victory, Trump, highly prone to the foot-in-mouth disease, took on an all-new avatar, reminding himself in public to stay laser focused on the prize.

"We've gotta be nice and cool," the brash billionaire admonished himself at a rally in the battleground state of Florida. "Nice and cool. All right? Stay on point, Donald. Stay on point. No sidetracks, Donald."

"Niceeee," said Trump delivering yet another uncharacteristically disciplined speech. "Because I've been watching Hillary the last few days and she's totally unhinged."

His campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, credited with keeping Trump on a tight leash, exulted over Clinton's "scandalabra" finally catching up with her.

"This is somebody who has already proven how she would handle classified information, confidential information, and frankly, how she handles lying about lying," she said asking Democrats to dump their nominee.

With early voting revealing a huge enthusiasm gap for her among black voters and the millennials, Clinton, painting the spectre of a Trump presidency, exhorted them not to sit out this election.

So did Trump, asking supporters to "go out and vote. Do not blow it up. We're on the cusp of an incredible historic change".

He even invited Democrats with "buyer's remorse" in the light of "lot of stuff" coming out against his rival to change the early ballots they cast for Clinton in states where it's permitted.

But a record number of voters still not buying either of the most unpopular candidates in history were planning to exercise the write-in option that allows one to write any name that takes one's fancy on the ballot.

Popular choices include from Michelle Obama to comedian Jon Stewart and Snoopy, Charlie Brown's pet beagle in the comic strip "Peanuts" created by Charles Schulz.

"Snoopy was a liberating candidate in 1968 and will be a liberating candidate in 2016," wrote Time, recalling his first bid complete with an official theme song, "Snoopy for President".

Alarmed at his popularity in 1980, Ronald Reagan jokingly urged Schulz, "Anything you can do to talk Snoopy out of running will be appreciated. How would he feel about a cabinet post?"

But if Trump wins, he knows who has earned his gratitude. "Thank you, Huma. Good job, Huma," he said at a rally. "Thank you, Anthony Weiner."

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)

--IANS

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New strand of fundamentalism surfaces in Kashmir (Column: Political Circus)

Delhi,National,Politics,Opinion/Commentary, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

With no sign of the unrest in Kashmir subsiding, the state is passing through one of the worst phases of its history. The scene has been made gloomier by the fact that both the Centre and the state government appear to be clueless about a solution.

Although Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti believes that only five per cent of the people in the state are supporting the insurgency, she has been unable to rally the remaining 95 per cent in the government's favour.

Her administrative inexperience and political timidity may be responsible for her seeming helplessness.

But, unfortunately, her coalition partner, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has also been unable to come out with ideas other than the use of strong-arm methods, of which the pellet gun remains the primary weapon, to bring the situation under control.

It has to be noted that these guns, which can cause blindness, are not used anywhere else to control agitating mobs as, for instance, when the Jats went on a rampage in Haryana or when there was anti-Tamil violence in Bengaluru over the Cauvery waters dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

If there is a feeling of alienation among the ordinary Kashmiris, it cannot but have been accentuated by such patent differences in crowd-control measures.

It is also undeniable that like the people of the northeast, the Kashmiris are also nowadays being looked at with mistrust for being "different".

Quelling the turmoil in the Kashmir Valley should not be the only objective, therefore, of the government and civil society. There is also a need to reach out to the Kashmiri students and others who are studying and working in other parts of the country.

However, winning hearts and minds does not appear to be high on the list of priorities of the Centre as when the then Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, spoke of insaniyat, or humaneness, while dealing with Kashmir.

Instead, the BJP leaders still seem to be guided by their customary hardline attitude although there hasn't been any talk recently of abrogating Article 370 (of the constitution) which confers a special status on Kashmir.

In a belated attempt to douse the flames, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh did go to the valley to mediate with the putative trouble-makers -- the separatists of the Hurriyat Conference.

But the latter showed no interest in talking to the all-party delegations which accompanied the Home Minister. Having succeeded in cornering the Centre and the state government, the separatists obviously saw no reason to come to their rescue.

But the situation is now taking a turn which is causing concern even to the Hurriyat. It is the burning of nearly 30 schools, including a 113-year-old institution in Anantnag district, which has made even the hardliner, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, describe the arsonists as "enemies of the people of Kashmir".

It is possible that the Hurriyat has realised that the situation is going out of its control, which is why it does not seem to know who the arsonists are.

The Lashkar-e-Taiba has been mentioned in this context. But whichever organisation is behind the incendiary attacks, what is a matter of deep concern is the surfacing of a brand of Islamic fundamentalism associated with the Taliban of the Af-Pak region, which is known for the attack on a Peshawar school in 2014 and the shooting of the school girl, Malala Yousafzai (now a Nobel peace prize winner), in 2012.

While the Taliban's opposition to women's education may have currently metamorphosed into a rejection of education in general, it is a pity that Kashmir should have become the venue of their depredations.

It is sadly ironic that a state, which was known for the most gentle form of Islam associated with the pluralistic concept of Kashmiriyat, should fall prey to a vicious expression of hate.

Even if Geelani is today criticising the arsonists, he and the others in the Hurriyat cannot ignore the fact that it is their pursuit of a Shariat-based society with its cruel medievalism which decrees the cutting off of a thief's hands and pushes women indoors, which has encouraged fundamentalism to take root in Kashmir at the expense of democratic norms.

The burning of schools is only to be expected in such a negative atmosphere since a modern education is anathema to the zealots. If the latter can ensure that a generation will grow up unlettered and untutored, they can be easily manipulated not only to throw stones at the police but also swell the ranks of the militants.

Any failure to bring them to book will only make the conditions even more anarchic, turning the once widely acclaimed paradise on earth into a lawless tract of land where no civilised existence is possible as in large areas in the Af-Pak region.

As before, Kashmir remains a test case for the success of the multicultural ethos. But only large-scale investment, starting with the rebuilding of the burnt-out schools and creating widespread employment opportunities, can dispel misapprehensions about a hard-hearted Centre and bring the people in the valley closer to the rest of the country.

(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)

--IANS

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Indonesian president condemns violent protest

Indonesia,Politics, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Jakarta, Nov 5 (IANS) Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Saturday condemned the violence in Friday's protest by Islamist groups against the governor of Jakarta, who has been accused of blasphemy.

Around 50,000 people took part in the protests, organised by the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), to demand the prosecution of Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, a Chinese Christian widely known as Ahok, Efe news reported.

The police, who deployed 18,000 officers, used tear gas to disperse the crowd of demonstrators, who threw stones and bottles at the authorities in front of the presidential palace after a peaceful march.

Groups of protesters tried unsuccessfully to enter the grounds of the presidential palace and clashed with the police until early Saturday.

The violence spread to several parts of northern Jakarta, where the country's ethnic Chinese community lives, as protesters set fire to vehicles and garbage bins and looted some shops, according to The Jakarta Globe newspaper.

President Widodo lamented the chaos and violence following the march caused by protesters who refused to disperse after 6 pm on Friday.

"And we see this was steered by political actors who were exploiting the situation," he said after a meeting with the army and police chiefs and cabinet members.

The Indonesian President, who met religious leaders this week in a bid to reduce tensions, ordered the demonstrators to disperse and said the investigation into blasphemy charges against Ahok will be carried out in a "firm, quick and transparent" manner.

Issues with Ahok reportedly stem from a verse in the Koran, which the hardline groups have used to argue that Muslims should not allow themselves to be led by a Christian or a Jew.

Ahok has been accused of blasphemy since a recent speech in which he quoted the Koran and claimed that the verse was being used to manipulate voters ahead of the regional elections.

Before the protest, Ahok denied that he had any intention to insult Islam and apologized to all Muslims who had been offended by his remarks but added that the video in which he was seen making the controversial remarks had been manipulated.

Meanwhile, Widodo cancelled his official trip to Australia, scheduled to start Sunday, following the protests, officials announced Saturday.

Widodo was scheduled to travel to Sydney and Canberra on a three-day visit, which included an address to the Australian federal parliament on Monday.

--IANS

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Indian American woman poised for historic election to US Senate

United States,Politics,Diaspora, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

New York, Nov 5 (IANS) California Attorney General Kamala Harris is set to become the first Indian American elected to the US Senate in next week's election, having built up a commanding lead over her rival, according to polls.

Indian Americans also appear to be heading for a breakthrough in the House of Representatives, where more of them are expected to join the sole Indian American, Ami Bera from California.

At least two candidates for the House, Pramila Jayapal of Washington State, and Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, have near-certain chances of winning, while Bera has shown a strong lead in the primary and that could see him re-elected.

Another candidate, Ro Khanna, who is running to represent the Silicon Valley, is reported to have a slim lead over the veteran incumbent Mike Honda.

All these candidates are Democrats and since the election of Republican Bobby Jindal to the House in 2004, no viable Indian American candidate for Congress has emerged in that party, although Nikki Haley, the current governor of South Carolina, belongs to it.

Mary Thomas, who sought a Republican Party ticket from Florida, was defeated in the party primary.

Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, 35, is the only Hindu ever elected to Congress although she is a not of Indian descent, and she appears set for re-election.

Strengthening her chances, the Hawaii state Republican Party leaders have withdrawn support to their own candidate, Angela Kaaihue, who is challenging Gabbard because she made anti-Hindu statements and called Gabbard a "pathetic Hindu 1,000 gods leader".

Kamala Harris leads her rival, Loretta Sanchez, by between 17 and 20 percentage points according to different polls released earlier this week.

Senators are elected by the entire electorate in their states and 52-year-old Harris has already won two state-wide elections for Attorney General in 2010 and 2014, and this adds to her edge in the upcoming Senate race.

Harris has a dual identity: She is also counted as an African American as her father is a Jamaican of African descent and she follows the Baptist faith.

She would become the second American woman of African descent elected to the Senate and join the two other African Americans there.

She derives her equal claim to Indian heritage from her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a cancer specialist from Chennai.

Because in California and Washington states the primaries that are used to whittle down the number of candidates in the election are common for all parties with the top two irrespective of their parties moving to the general election stage, Harris, Khanna and Jayapal are facing fellow Democrats.

Ami Bera, a 51-year-old doctor, who had an eight percent lead over his Republican rival Scott Jones in the common primary, has come under a cloud after his 83-year-old father, Babulal Bera, was found guilty of illegally funding his son's election campaign and sentenced to a year in prison.

Prosecutors, however, cleared Ami Bera of involvement in his father's crime and he appears to have put it behind him.

Jayapal, 51, who is a state senator, had a 23.1 per cent lead over her fellow-Democrat, Brady Wilkinshaw, in the primary election. A financial analyst by profession, she was born in India and has been a civil rights activist championing immigrant causes.

Krishnamoorthi, 43, is running from a traditional Democratic stronghold where the party candidate won the last election by a margin of 11 per cent. Born in India, he is a technology entrepreneur heading two companies and has also served as Illinois state deputy treasurer.

Khanna, a lawyer and former federal deputy assistant commerce secretary, lost the last election to fellow Democrat Honda by 3.6 percent, but in the primaries this year he was ahead by 1.7 percent. He has the backing of former President Jimmy Carter, while Honda could not get President Barack Obama to endorse him this time.

Another Democrat, Peter Jacob, has a long-shot at winning from a New Jersey constituency that is heavily Republican and where that party's candidate won the last election by a margin of 21 percent.

But a private poll conducted for Jacob's campaign reportedly found that he was lagging by only four percent. The 30-year-old was born in India and is a social worker by profession.

In 1956 Democrat Dilip Singh Saund, a Sikh, became the first Indian American elected to Congress. After a gap of 48 years Jindal followed him in 2004.

Jindal left Congress in 2007 to become the governor of Louisiana and ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for president this year.

Five years later, Bera won his Congressional seat. Bera left Hinduism for the Unitarian faith and Jindal for Catholicism.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)

--IANS

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There is no rift, SP will unitedly fight elections: Akhilesh

Uttar Pradesh,National,Politics, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Lucknow, Nov 5 (IANS) Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday denied any rift within the ruling Samajwadi Party and said all party leaders will "unitedly" fight the 2017 assembly elections on the SP symbol.

"There is no rift in the party, and all of us will fight the elections on the party's symbol 'cycle'," Akhilesh Yadav told reporters on the sidelines of the SP's Silver Jubilee gala here.

The Chief Minister's remarks came after his uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav earlier made an indirect attack on him at the event.

Asked if there were chances of an alliance with the Congress, the Chief Minister said, "I have left the decision of alliance with Netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav)."

Emphasising on the 25th year celebrations of the party, Akhilesh said, "We are spreading the ideology of Samajwad (socialism) in the country."

The Chief Minister also thanked former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, Janata Dal-United leader Sharad Yadav and noted Supreme Court lawyer Ram Jethmalani for attending the event.

Addressing the crowd earlier, Akhilesh's uncle, Shivpal Yadav, referring to his dismissal twice from the state cabinet recently, said he was neither greedy for any post nor any ministry.

If required, the SP leader said he was ready to give even his blood and everything for the Samajwadi Party.

--IANS

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Robot-generated tweets compromising US presidential polls: Study

United States,Politics,Technology, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

New York, Nov 5 (IANS) Software robots masquerading as human beings are influencing the political discourse on social media as never before and could threaten the very integrity of the 2016 US presidential election, researchers have warned.

In the study, the researchers analysed 20 million election-related tweets created between September 16 and October 21, this year.

They found that a high percentage of the political discussion taking place on Twitter was created by pro-Donald Trump -- Republican Party nominee for President of the US in the 2016 election -- and pro-Hillary Clinton -- Democratic Party nominee for President of the US in the 2016 election -- software robots, or social bots, with the express purpose of distorting the online discussion regarding the elections.

Robots, rather than people, produced 3.8 million tweets, or 19 per cent.

Further, social bots also accounted for 4,00,000 of the 2.8 million individual users, or nearly 15 per cent users on the microblogging website, the study said.

The presence of these bots can affect the dynamics of the political discussion in three tangible ways, the researchers observed.

First, influence can be redistributed across suspicious accounts that may be operated with malicious purposes. Second, the political conversation can become further polarised.

Third, spreading of misinformation and unverified information can be enhanced.

"As a result, the integrity of the 2016 US presidential election could be possibly endangered," said Emilio Ferrara, Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California.

In addition, the researchers found that Trump's robot-produced tweets were almost uniformly positive, boosting the candidate popularity.

By contrast only half of Clinton's were, with the other half criticising the nominee.

The sophistication of these social bots' makes it often impossible to determine who created them, although political parties, local, national and foreign governments and "even single individuals with adequate resources could obtain the operational capabilities and technical tools to deploy armies of social bots and affect the directions of online political conversation," the study noted.

The "master puppeteers" behind influence bots, often create fake Twitter and Facebook profiles, Ferrara added.

They do so by stealing online pictures, giving them fictitious names, and cloning biographical information from existing accounts.

These bots have become so sophisticated that they can tweet, retweet, share content, comment on posts, "like" candidates, grow their social influence by following legitimate human accounts and even engage in human-like conversations, Ferrara said, in the study appearing in the journal First Monday.

--IANS

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Fresh protests rock Srinagar after teen's mysterious death

Jammu And Kashmir,National,Crime/Disaster/Accident, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Srinagar, Nov 5 (IANS) Security forces on Saturday clashed with a group of protesting mourners carrying the body of a teenager who died in a hospital here previous night days amid conflicting reports about the cause of his death.

Qaisar Ahmed, 16, was brought to the hospital on October 28 in an unconscious state. His family alleged he bore torture marks when he was found a day after he went missing from his home in Shalimar area on outskirts of Srinagar city.

However, police claimed that the boy had consumed poison. Ahmed died around 10 p.m. Friday.

His body was taken in a procession on Saturday morning for a funeral at martyrs graveyard in Eidgah area of the old Srinagar city.

A police spokesman said some angry protesters from the procession threw stones at security forces, resulting into a clash. Police used tear smoke shells and pellets to disperse the angry protesters that caused injuries to over a dozen civilians and security men.

In another incident, three policemen, including a junior level officer, were injured on Friday night in an improvised explosive device (IED) explosion in Dadsara village of Pulwama district.

Police said militants fired some shots in the area to lure the security men out of the police station after which they exploded the IED.

A school was torched in Saidunara area of Bandipora district during the night taking to 29 the number of educational institution set ablaze by unknown miscreants during the past few weeks in the Kashmir Valley.

--IANS

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Ban on NDTV: Country heading towards dictatorship, says Lalu

Uttar Pradesh,National,Media,Politics, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Lucknow, Nov 5 (IANS) Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav on Saturday hit out at the BJP-led central government for the one-day ban handed over to NDTV India, terming it an attack on democracy and said the country is "heading towards dictatorship".

"Today you have seen what has happened to NDTV, they (government) said that you (channel) showed the Pathankot terror attack," Lalu said, addressing the Silver Jubilee celebrations of the Samajwadi Party here.

"Ban on NDTV is an attack on democracy. This country is heading towards dictatorship," he stressed.

Lalu also said that since the NDTV channel "exposes certain people", it has been targeted by the government.

The RJD leader's remarks came after the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting directed the Hindi news channel to go off air from the midnight of November 8 to midnight of November 9 for allegedly breaching broadcast norms in its coverage of the January 2 terror attack on the IAF base in Pathankot.

The RJD chief also asserted that there is no rift in the Samajwadi Party.

"There is no rift in the Samajwadi Party, and we gave proof by bringing Akhilesh Babu (Yadav) and Shivpal Babu (Singh Yadav) together on stage," he said. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal, the SP state unit chief, are not on amicable terms.

Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Lalu said, "We have seen the condition of Jammu and Kashmir for the last 100 days."

"Someone had told us about their '56-inch chest', but look what is happening at the (India-Pakistan) border now?" he said.

He also said that cross-border surgical strikes were first carried by the Indian Armed forces when Mulayam Singh Yadav was the Defence Minister.

"They are claiming that they had carried out surgical strikes across the border, but they must know that the surgical strikes were first carried out by the forces when Mulayamji was the Defence Minister," Lalu said.

He also said that people were feeling betrayed for voting the BJP to power. Lalu said that once again the BJP was trying to fan communal passions, and was starting to rake up the Ram temple issue as state assembly polls had neared.

"Whenever elections come in Uttar Pradesh they remember Ram Mandir. And as elections are again due in the state, they are remembering Ram Temple to do politics over it," he added.

Reminding the BJP of having stopped its Rath Yatra in Bihar in 1990, Lalu said, "We have stopped their rath in Patna, Samastipur. And again we will unitedly stop them."

Lalu Prasad had stopped BJP leader L.K. Advani's "Rath Yatra" in Samastipur in Bihar when he was traversing across India to gather momentum to construct a temple in Ayodhya.

The former Bihar Chief Minister said that time had come for all secular parties to come together and oppose the BJP.

Lalu Prasad later called Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav near him and asked him to take his 'Rath Yatra' forward and ensure victory for his party. He also asked him to respect his elders and take their blessings.

--IANS

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A former government official of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation accused of accepting bribes and kickbacks from a construction contractor has pleaded guilty to federal charges in North Dakota. Randall Phelan was an elected representative of the governing body of the Three Affiliated Tribes from the end of 2012 to the middle of 2020. Investigators say Phelan used his official position to help the contractors business by awarding contracts, fabricating bids and managing fraudulent invoices. His trial had been scheduled to begin Tuesday. Phelan and two others were originally charged with receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from the bribery scheme on the oil-rich Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. The contractor has pleaded guilty to bribery.
Kirpal Singh Badungar elected SGPC president

Punjab,National,Politics,Religion, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Amritsar, Nov 5 (IANS) Sikh intellectual Kirpal Singh Badungar was on Saturday elected as the new president of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), the mini parliament of the religion, officials said.

Badungar will replace outgoing SGPC president Avtar Singh Makkar, who remained in the post for 11 years.

The election for the SGPC top post was held after nearly six years. Punjab's ruling Shiromani Akali Dal dominates the SGPC.

The SGPC general house had, on Friday, authorised Akali Dal President Sukhbir Singh Badal to select the new SGPC president.

Badungar, who is known for his work on Sikh history, will have a new team of office bearers and executives to work with.

Shiromani Akali Dal spokesman and Punjab Education minister Daljit Singh Cheema welcomed the "unanimous election" of Badungar.

"He has all the qualities and experience to be the SGPC chief. He has been elected for the third time," Cheema told media.

The election and change of guard of the SGPC president has come at a time when the Sikh religion is facing crisis in Punjab due to repeated incidents of sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib.

--IANS

js/ksk
Many injured as fresh protest rocks Srinagar

Jammu And Kashmir,National,Crime/Disaster/Accident, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Srinagar, Nov 5 (IANS) At least a dozen of persons were injured on Saturday when security forces clashed with a group of protesting mourners carrying the body of a teenager who died in a hospital here the previous night amid conflicting reports about the cause of his death.

Qaisar Ahmed, 16, was brought to the hospital on October 28 in an unconscious state. His family alleged he bore torture marks when he was found a day after he went missing from his home in the Shalimar area on the outskirts of Srinagar city.

However, police claimed that the boy had consumed poison. Ahmed died around 10 p.m. Friday.

His body was taken in a procession on Saturday morning for a funeral at the martyrs graveyard in the Eidgah area of old Srinagar city.

A police spokesman said some angry protesters from the procession threw stones at security forces, resulting in a clash. Police used tear smoke shells and pellets to disperse the angry protesters, causing injuries to over a dozen civilians and security men.

In another incident, three policemen, including a junior level officer, were injured on Friday night in an improvised explosive device (IED) explosion in Dadsara village of Pulwama district.

Police said militants fired some shots in the area to lure the security men out of the police station after which they exploded the IED.

A school was torched in Saidunara area of Bandipora district during the night taking to 29 the number of educational institutions set ablaze by unknown miscreants during the past few weeks in the Kashmir Valley.

--IANS

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Never aspired to become UP CM, says Shivpal

Uttar Pradesh,National,Politics, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Lucknow, Nov 5 (IANS) Uttar Pradesh's ruling Samajwadi Party tried to put up a united face at its silver jubilee gala here on Saturday, but the peace seemed fragile as state party chief Shivpal Singh Yadav took several pot shots at his nephew and Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.

The two have been locked in a bitter turf war over the past two months, even coming to blows at a public function. Shivpal, who was sacked as a minister twice in a month by Akhilesh, said he wanted to once again reiterate that he was not after any post or ministry.

"I have said it in the past and am saying it again that becoming Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh was never my ambition, and I reiterate it," Shivpal said as his supporters applauded. He also said his contribution to the party's growth and the state government headed by Akhilesh was no less.

"Have I not worked hard? Have the departments I held did any lesser work?" he asked Akhilesh and informed how maximum work in the present government was done by his departments like PWD and Irrigation, which he was divested of by Akhilesh. He listed various projects to support his contention.

Shivpal also informed the gathering at the sprawling Janeshwar Mishra Park here that 42 new tehsils (revenue subdivisions) had been created in the last two years alone, while he was state minister. Asking for respect, a visibly emotional Shivpal said the Chief Minister can go on and ask for any sacrifice from him.

"If the party so requires, I am ready to even offer them my blood," he said.

Referring to his dismissal from the state cabinet twice, Shivpal said he was neither greedy for any post nor any ministry. He also said that while some people get power in lineage, there were many who were silent workers.

His apparent hint was at Akhilesh being anointed as the successor of party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Later, when a former minister of state and member of the youth brigade Javed Abdi started speaking on the dais and started eulogising Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, he was pushed away by Shivpal Yadav. Before this, Shivpal was called by party supremo and elder brother Mulayam Singh Yadav and asked to tell Abdi to go away.

This, political observers here say, was another indication that all is still not well within the party.

Earlier, the two sides showed unusual bonhomie and when RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav tried to ensure a shake hand between Shivpal and Akhilesh, the latter touched the feet of his uncle and former PWD minister.

As the organiser of the event that saw lakhs turn up to witness the old socialist allies come together, Shivpal first welcomed guests like former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, former Janata Dal-United president Sharad Yadav, RLD chief Ajeet Singh and others.

--IANS

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NTPC inks MoU to set up polytechnic in Odisha

Orissa,National,Education, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Bhubaneswar, Nov 5 (IANS) The Odisha government on Saturday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) for setting up a new state-of-the-art polytechnic in Sundargarh district of the state.

The Skill Development and Technical Education Department signed the MoU with NTPC for the institution to be set up at Darlipalli village of the district.

"I am happy to announce that the Skill Development and Technical Education Department, Odisha has entered into a partnership with the NTPC Ltd for setting up of a state-of-the-art polytechnic college at Darlipali in Sundargarh district," said Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.

NTPC will spend Rs 25 crore for infrastructure development of the polytechnic. The college would offer diploma course in electrical engineering, mining engineering and instrumentation and controls engineering. Each branch would cater to 60 students, said an official.

Informing that the state government accords the highest priority to skill development, Patnaik said it has taken up an ambitious target of skilling eight lakh youth of the state in the next three years, and to position Skilled-in-Odisha as a global brand.

Earlier, NTPC had taken up the establishment of a modern ITI at Seragarh, Ganjam and it shall start functioning from the next academic session, he added.

"Consistent efforts have been made by my Government to create an eco system for collaboration with industry to set up more such technical education institutions to hone the skills of our youth," he said.

In order to meet the requirement of shop floor supervisory level workforce, efforts have also been made in recent years to set up at least one Government Polytechnic in each district, he added.

--IANS

cd/ss/vm
India, China discuss terror, but no word on Azhar ban

Delhi,National,Indo-Pak/Pakistan,Terrorism,Diplomacy, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

New Delhi, Nov 5 (IANS) India and China agreed to continue "the pace of high level exchanges" on subjects of mutual interest and concern, including counter-terrorism, during a meeting between National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi, an official statement said on Saturday.

The statement was silent on whether the two sides had discussed issues related to India's NSG membership or India's move for a ban on Pakistani terrorist Masood Azhar.

Doval met with Yang, the Chinese State Councillor, on Friday in Hyderabad. It was Yang's third visit to India in the last two months.

Doval and Yang are the Special Representatives on the Boundary Question of India and China.

"The discussions, conducted in a friendly, open and cordial environment, covered a wide agenda spanning bilateral, regional and international issues of mutual interest," according to a Ministry of External Affairs statement.

"They agreed to maintain the pace of high level exchanges including in the political, economic, defence and counter-terrorism fields."

The statement said the officials also agreed that the forthcoming high level engagement on counter-terrorism "is yet another manifestation of growing convergence of views of the two countries on this pressing challenge facing international community".

However, there was no word if Doval raised the issues related to China hindering India's membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

The statement also didn't mention if they discussed China's vetoing of Indian efforts to get Azhar, chief of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed terror outfit, banned by the United Nations.

However, the statement said, "the two leaders agreed that their consultations during which they exchanged views on various important and pressing bilateral issues have helped to enhance mutual understanding and will contribute to greater mutual trust".

"The two sides appreciated that 2016 is an important year for bilateral engagement with President Xi Jinping's visit to India for BRICS Summit and PM Modi's visit to China for G-20 Summit being the major highlights of high level exchanges.

The two officials also "agreed to hold the 20th Round of Special Representatives Talks on the Boundary Question in India next year."

--IANS

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French police detain chief of separatist group ETA

Spain,Politics,Crime/Disaster/Accident, Sun, 06 Nov 2016 IANS

Madrid, Nov 6 (IANS) French police arrested Mikel Irastorza, the leader of the Basque separatist group ETA, in the town of Ascain in the south of France, the Spanish Interior Ministry confirmed on Saturday.

Irastorza is the seventh ETA leader being arrested since the band announced a definitive ceasefire in November 2011. A 59-year-old Spanish man and a 56-year-old French woman, whose name are yet to be announced, were also arrested during Saturday's operation, Xinhua news agency reported.

Irastorza was considered to be the most important member of the ETA, whose 40-year armed campaign for the independence of the Basque Region in the north of Spain claimed over 820 lives.

--IANS

lok/
It's been quite a year. And I make no predictions about the one to come. I do know that it will -- at least where we are -- start ou...
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The Bundesrat, the upper house of the German Parliament, has refused to classify Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia as safe countries of origin, which entails that migrants from the three Maghreb countries cannot be deported.

The UK paper, the Daily Express, reported that Thomas de Maziere described the Bundesrat decision as incomprehensible after the lower parliament already classed these nations as safe in May.

Opposition to considering the three Maghreban states as safe countries came from the Greens, who fear that deported migrants may face persecution back home.

Last October, Moroccos Interior Minister visited Berlin where he discussed with German officials the repatriation of Moroccan illegal migrants and expressed the Kingdoms commitment to facilitate the return of a maximum of illegal immigrants, particularly those who entered Germany in the context of the migration crisis triggered by the civil-war in Syria.
MINOT -- The greatest threat to world peace today is North Korea, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp told members of a military affairs committee this past week.

Heitkamp just returned from an official Senate fact-finding trip to several sites in the Asia-Pacific Region and Alaska. The trip with other congressional members from both the Senate and the House looked at missile defense capabilities in Alaska, Japan, South Korea, Guam and Hawaii.

Heitkamp's group spent considerable time in South Korea, including visiting the demilitarized zone.

"Anyone who thinks that Kim Jong-un is crazy is wrong," said Heitkamp, referring to the North Korean leader. She said her dad used to use the phrase "crazy like a fox." That phrase means someone is seemingly foolish but in fact extremely cunning.

"He (Kim Jong-un) wants the whole world to think he's an irrational actor when all of his actions have been rational if you deal with the assumptions that he lives under. He clearly is very much a disruption agent in the region and he clearly is looking to create a capacity to endanger the homeland in the United States of America. He clearly wants that power, he wants that authority. We have to do everything we can to make sure he doesn't get it, and that we continue to support our ally," she said of her visit to South Korea. She said South Korea has an "incredibly talented military."

"Pushing back against North Korea is a day-to-day thing," she told the committee, a part of the Minot Area Chamber of Commece.

Asking the Minot committee, how many people have been to Guam, a number of the military members raised their hands. Members of the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot AFB deploy to Guam as part of the continuous bomber presence in the Pacific region.

Heitkamp, a co-founder of the U.S. Senate Defense Communities Caucus, said there's an incredible number of assets in Guam and those assets must be protected.

A number of U.S. Marines are moving from Okinawa to Guam following a U.S.-Japan agreement to reduce the presence of U.S. troops in Okinawa.

"The Japanese government unlike what you've heard in the media when people say Japan should just step up and pay, Japan pays every day. In fact, Japan's paying a great deal of the ticket to move the Marines from Okinawa," Heitkamp said.

"The real challenge here is protecting these assets, the real challenge is making sure that they're appropriately deployed and that we send the message that we stand ready to defend our country and we stand ready to defend our allies in the region and we have the ability to do it with the finest Air Force that has ever been deployed on the face of the earth," Heitkamp said.

Heitkamp said she met great North Dakota people in the military every place she went in Alaska and the other areas.

In addition to be sure there are the best active defense systems being used to address and deter threats from potential adversaries in these areas, Heitkamp said, "We've got to continue to do everything we can do to build relationships, to build our intel, especially as it relates to North Korea. I think the largest existential threat to United States of America is in North Korea and we need to have the resources to prevent injury to our allies and importantly, to prevent injury and mayhem on American mainland.

"We can't do it alone in the military," Heitkamp said. She said she has reviewed the TransPacific Partnership and that many people do not look at the partnership as a critical piece needed for national security, saying it's a trade agreement.

"As we look at the shift to China and as we look at growing China influence in the region, we know that a big part of that China influence is going to be economic and if we abandon the region economically without a trade agreement, without a trade relationship we will have lost ground militarily and lost ground for our national security," Heitkamp said. She said many admirals in the Navy have suggested that it's worth three destroyers. "That's how significant the TransPacific Partnership is," she said.

Heitkamp also pointed out to the group that the presidential election is about the national security of this country.

Noting the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, just visited Minot AFB and also many other top military brass have visited over the past months, she said those visits will continue.

"That doesn't just happen by accident. It happens because your leadership and DoD (Department of Defense) believes what you do every day is important and your senators in Washington, D.C., believe that everything that you do every day is important. And the men and women who do it, I couldn't be prouder of them," she said.

Minot AFB is the base with two nuclear-capable wings  the 5th Bomb Wing with its B-52 bombers and the 91st Missile Wing with Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles in underground facilities in the Minot missile field.

Heitkamp also visited Minot AFB Thursday as part of November's Military Family Appreciation Month. She read to young children at the base's Child Development Center and then talked to elementary schoolchildren and parents at the David C. Jones Youth Center. She thanked them for their sacrifice and spoke with families about ways to strengthen defense communities and support military families.
Custom has it that the King of Morocco addresses his countrymen on the celebration of outstanding events that marked the history of the nation, such as the Revolution of the King and the People, the National Day, or the Green March that enabled the North African country to recover its southern provinces peacefully.

And custom has it that the royal speeches are delivered on such occasions from capital city Rabat or from the city where the commemoration is taking place.

But this year, on the occasion of the celebration of the 41st anniversary of the Green March, King Mohammed VI made an unprecedented move: deliver the Green March speech on November 6 fromDakar where he will be on an official visit.

This is a premiere and some may find the move surprising, but those who know the Moroccan Sovereigns attachment to Africa, the new era of multidimensional cooperation he ushered in between Morocco and African countries and his Africa-oriented foreign policy will grasp the meaning of the royal initiative.

Delivering the Green March speech, addressed principally to Moroccans, from the Senegalese capital translates the depth of the spiritual and human ties between Morocco and so many African States, and primarily the centuries-old special bonds between Morocco and Senegal.

The decision to deliver the Sahara liberation speech from Dakar also bears a special significance as the Sahara provinces are Moroccos natural extension in Africa and its gateway to the rest of the continent.

Senegals President Macky Sall welcomed the Kings decision to carry on his African tour that already led him to Rwanda and Tanzania by an official visit to Senegal.

In a statement to the Moroccan 2M TV, he described as historic the Sovereigns choice to deliver his historic speech on the occasion of a historic event, for the first time, outside the Moroccan territory, and specifically in Dakar.

The mere fact to have chosen an African country, other than Morocco, to deliver a historic speech, symbolizes a special relationship and shows that His Majesty chose to speak to Africa and Africans, said President Sall, adding that this initiative is a token of friendship to all the people of Senegal.

The Senegalese head of state who hailed the Kings farsighted and ambitious vision for Africa and its future recalled that since coming to power, King Mohammed VI has made eight trips to Senegal, with the latest lasting nine days. So, these are no longer traditional and diplomatic relations. This is a special friendly relationship, he said.

Delivering the royal speech from Dakar is actually a strong symbolic gesture at a time when Morocco is preparing to rejoin the African Union (AU) with the support of a majority of member countries of the pan-African organization, including Senegal.

During his visit to Senegal, King Mohammed VI will hold official talks with President Macky Sall and the two Heads of State will preside over the signing ceremony of several cooperation agreements.
Northwest Reverb - Reflections by James Bash and others about classical music in the Pacific Northwest and beyond
Photo: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AFP/Getty Images

New Jersey governor Chris Christie is reportedly no longer taking a weekend trip to New Hampshire to campaign for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. The cancellations in the battleground state come less than a day after two of his former allies were convicted in the Bridgegate scandal. Christie was not charged in the plot, and he, once again, denied involvement in the political scheme after the verdict came down Friday  though, revelations from the trial indicate otherwise. Either way, its not the best look for a surrogate of a candidate whose top campaign theme revolves around locking up his political rival.

Christie is leading Trumps transition team  with the help of the governors close associates  and appears to still have his job. Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told CNN Friday that Trump and Christie hadnt talked after the verdict. All of our personnel remains the same, she said.



Democrats on Friday did call on Christie to step down, including Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. Two of Christies top aides today were just convicted of corruption for political intimidation, Podesta said. So rather than just crisscrossing the country and hopscotching and talking about cleaning up the swamp, [Trump] might start by draining his own swamp and asking Mr. Christie to resign as the head of his transition.

Trump himself has remained pretty quiet on the Bridgegate court saga, telling Fox News in an interview last week that he had great confidence in Christie while also admitting that he had not been following the trial. But during the GOP primaries, before Christie became Trumps hostage, Trump declared that Christie totally knew.
Photo: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

Even as Democrats nervously watch Donald Trump try to break through Hillary Clintons firewall of states where she was leading handily until recently, an aroused Latino population may be winning one of the true battleground states, Nevada, with an impressive showing in early voting.



CNN, which published a poll earlier this week showing Trump with a commanding six-point lead in Nevada, reports today that Democrats have built what could be an insurmountable edge in early voting, which ended Friday night with a burst of heavy Latino voting in Clark County (Las Vegas). Democrats appear to have exceeded the early-voting edge they had in 2012, when Barack Obama carried Nevada by seven points. As veteran Nevada journalist Jon Ralston noted, early votes will probably represent two-thirds of the final vote, unless Republicans generate a crazy-high rural turnout.

David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report calculates that Trump would need to win Election Day voters in Nevada by a double-digit percentage margin to overcome Clintons early-voting lead. Democrats actually led in Election Day voting in 2012. And Democrats should continue to have an advantage on Tuesday in get-out-the-vote resources, particularly with Harry Reid at the controls.

Retiring Senate Democratic Leader Reid has over the years put together a legendary organization, and it appears to be kicking out the jams this year in an effort to elect Clinton; Reids designated Senate successor, Catherine Cortez Masto; and Democrats in two competitive House races. Democrats are also fighting to regain control of the state legislature, lost in 2014.

If Nevada really is out of Trumps reach, his Election Day math gets tricky. Hed definitely need not only to win the other battleground states like Florida and North Carolina, but also to win one of the larger or two of the Clinton firewall states as well. As Ralston suggests, Trump may have ultimately lost this contest by choosing to denounce Latino immigrants as drug-running rapists and murderers the day he announced his candidacy.
Bernie bros will be back, just when you least expect them. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

If youve finally convinced yourself not to be a bed-wetter, heres a development that might change your mind. Americans could narrowly vote to preserve our republic and wind up with a Donald Trump presidency anyway, thanks to one Electoral College voter. Robert Satiacum, a Democratic elector in Washington State, announced on Friday that he will not vote for Hillary Clinton when the Electoral College affirms the election results on December 19, even though she is expected to win the states 12 electoral votes.

The Associated Press reports that Satiacum, a member of Washingtons Puyallup Tribe, supported Bernie Sanders in the primary. He said he cant vote for Clinton because shes a criminal, she doesnt do enough for American Indians, and shes done nothing but flip back and forth. He does not think Trump is fit to lead either.

Electors arent constitutionally required to vote for the candidate voters in their state select, but in some states, faithless electors can be penalized for failing to do so. Satiacum is facing a $1,000 fine, but he said he doesnt care and hopes other electors will join him. This is a time we all need to stand up and speak out, he said. We have a feeling Sarah Silverman will have something to say about this.
not a baz luhrmann fan at all, but i looove R+J sfm! the film's aesthetic is everything.

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Well, now I want to rewatch this. Leonardo DiCaprio was at peak hotness at this point and this movie is such an iconic teen movie.



This and Moulin Rouge are my favorites of Baz's

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He was so baby faced in this. I didn't appreciate him back then but I appreciate young Leo a lot more now oddly enough. I want that hawaiian shirt now

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He was baby-faced. I'd actually say this was the beginning of peak hotness and The Beach is probably at his best (even though the movie was not good)

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Leo is unbelievably good looking in this movie.



But seeing Leo as Jack Dawson definitely was my sexual awakening. I still can't watch Titanic without feeling so much for him.

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he was so beautiful. ;_;

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I can't help but continue to be suprised by how many people think Leo was so hot in this. He really was so baby-faced and I've always thought that's really unattractive. Even when I was a teen it turned me off!

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He was my first celebrity crush. I never understood when people said someone was cute and then I saw this when I was 8. When there was that first shot of him all backlit with a ciggie hanging out of his mouth, I remember thinking "Woah."

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#1 Crush, the best thing about this movie!

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yasss, the soundtrack is amazing

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That song is incredible. I commented below that it remains in my top 5 songs of all time and I suspect always will. I saw Garbage live a couple of years ago and hearing that song in person was incredible. And this week I'm actually going to hear my favourite song of all time (TLC's 'No Scrubs') live, too! Sad that Lisa isn't here, but I never thought I'd hear that live so it's exciting.

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This movie was the first time I ever really paid attention to soundtracks that weren't from Disney.



Lovefool and all those amazing tracks. guh.

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thank you :)

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This is one of my favorite movies and one of my fave soundtracks

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I was obsessed with this soundtrack. I'd have it in my portable CD player (lol) and have it on repeat whenever I could.

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yes! The Cardigans <333

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ugh yes, 1st band on the moon is actually a good album beyond lovefool

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same! it got me into radiohead

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yes to this. the ost is sacred to me. also, obligatory young leo was god in the flesh.

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SAME HERE! I still have the soundtrack in my car!

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I listened to that soundtrack SO many times. I remember I recorded the CD onto cassette for a friend too; ah those were the days!

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the soundtrack is seriously amazing







(sorry for all the edits, LOL)



Edited at 2016-11-05 09:55 pm (UTC)

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same

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The soundtrack was (AND STILL IS TBH) everythingggggggggg.



From Des'ree's "Kissing You", to Garbage, The Cardigans....the "Everybody's Free" interlude.



UGH. I love it SO MUCH.

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Such a gorgeous movie.

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I love this movie sfm and the soundtrack >>>>



It irritated me as a kid that Titanic overshadowed it, bc I can't stand that movie.

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Me too. I'm one of few who really can't stand Titanic at all. Nothing about it I like tbh.

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for some reason i've never liked claire danes much, so i was never able to get into this movie as much as i wish i had.

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Yes, and it looks like Lukas Haas between him and Leo. lol

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How many people here have seen Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet? That is really beautiful, if you haven't checked it out you might want to.

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My mom was obsessed with that version because it was the first version where they actually cast teenagers in the role. I've watched it with her a handful of times and then I watched both versions in our English class. My teacher paused before the morning scene and was like 'Guys. Close your eyes. You shouldn't be seeing bare breasts. Girls, enjoy what you see'. He was a funny teacher.

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we watched that in 9th grade english. i remember the boys got excited because there were boobs

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i have. it's gorgeous, but (i know it's almost blasphemous to say this) i still prefer this one tbh.

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yeah, we watched it in 9th grade english class.

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I saw it in 9th grade lol

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One of my English teachers in high school had us watch this and then Romeo+Juliet. We all much preferred R+J.

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It's one of my favorite movies of all time. I think Olivia Hussy is so gorgeous in it too.

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We watched it in grade 9 English and I went to an all girl's school, so we all fell in love with the guy who played Romeo

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I actually watched Zeffirelli's version for the first time a few months ago.



SO BEAUTIFUL / EMOTIONAL.

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That version is the greatest ever.

Great soundtrack too!



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Yeah we watched it in Grade 11 when we studied R+J. We watched that one, Baz Luhrmann's version, a recording of a play that was set in the '20s and another one I can't remember. My english teacher told us the Baz Luhrmann version was probably the most accurate to the play as written even though it was set in modern times.

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I remember when this came out - we used to decorate our school agendas and lockers with photos of whatever we were into (bands, actors, etc) and some magazines came with a tear-away Romeo & Juilet inserts. It was genius and having one was life or death.

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I still have some of those tucked away with other old school papers and stuff. I was always bummed that i never collected all of them.

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i still want leo's hawaiian shirt

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me too! (but highly doubt i could pull it off)

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I still am so obsessed with this movie. I listen to soundtrack #2 ALL THE TIME

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(indie psych duo from San Francisco)

Elizabeth & Sam France :

if Jimi Hendrix had slapped his girlfriend boycotting all Woodstock would be ridiculous!", calling her 'crazy' and eventually saying inane defensive things like 'mainsplaining is reverse sexism'

- she eventually publicly shared one of his DMs, which angered him

(rather childish)

single from her album :

she isn't perfect and has said/done questionable things, and she's the 1st to recognize that. but the hush-hush on this whole story is very weird: online articles being taken down, other artists dissociating themselves from her, troll accounts that stalk and insult her on a regular basis... i know she's an obscure artist & Foxygen aren't exactly well-known on ONTD either, but i just thought this could be a good way to give her story some visibility - since so many people seem to be trying pretty hard to make sure it doesn't have any.

- talks about how she was abused by former boyfriend & Foxygenfrontman Sam France, then silenced & framed by his abuser and his family- she was part of Foxygen for a while, and the relationship caused major & much publicized drama and power struggles within the band- says the relationship was toxic on both sides from the start, and ended when he eventually punched her in the face - at the time she posted a photo of her swollen cut lip as proof, which she then also produced in court- the case went to court and she lost, as she didn't have a lawyer and had to represent herself- claims she was falsely accused by France's mother of trying to break into their house, and a restraining order against her was eventually obtained on those grounds- is frequently bullied by stalkerish trolls and treated as an 'hysterical woman' because she 'refuses to move on', when all she wants is her story to finally be heard and the truth to be known- recently got into a feud with Sean Lennon after she asked him to share her story weeks prior, while she was protesting against Foxygen playing Desert Daze festival- he was dismissive, saying "- he ended the feud with an instagram post with a picture of himself & his mother Yoko and acomment as his last comeback- she talks about how she's been systematically silenced by the industry, calls out a lot of self-proclaimed feminists' & former friends' hypocrisy for refusing to share her story and give her a voice- talks about her album 'The Orange Glow', an autobiographical psych folk recordsource 1
The Brazilian government on Friday reported that its oil and gas production rose to record levels in September with a total oil equivalent of 3.36 million barrels per day (bpd).

According to data from the Agencia Nacional de Petroleo, Gas Natural e Biocombustiveis (ANP) energy regulators, September oil output reached 2.67 million bpd, which represents a monthly jump of 2.4 percent and an annual increase of 11.5 percent.

Production from the offshore Lula oil field located in the Santos basin grew to 639,700 million bpd in September; thus, beating the monthly record for a Brazilian oil field previously obtained by the Marlim site in 2002.

While oil output rose for the fourth straight month, natural gas production in September climbed to 110.4 million cubic meters per day (cmd). This represents 1.5 percent more than the mount reached in August and a 13.4 percent spike compared to September 2015.

Output from the sixty-six wells in pre-salt fields in the ninth month of this year was around 1.17 million bpd and 46.1 million cmd of natural gas for a total oil equivalent of some 1.46 million bpd. This marks an increase of 7.3 percent compared to August based on ANP figures.



Related: Pirates Threaten Oil And Gas Shipping In The Red Sea

The ANP data is a breath of fresh air for a Brazilian oil industry burdened by low global prices, and the Lava Jato probe looking into corruption at state-owned firm Petrobras. Petrobras will likely continue being the main energy player in Brazil, and the expected multibillion-dollar renegotiation of a contract with the government could help boost investor confidence in the company. Meanwhile, the fact that Petrobras is no longer required to be the operator of all new exploration and production projects could lead to greater interest from foreign oil companies in Brazil.

The push for stronger output by Brazil stands contrary to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) campaign to limit supplies in order to boost prices. As we reported on Tuesday, as far as Brazil is concerned any call from OPEC  or even a plea for help  is likely to fall on deaf ears, regardless of appearances and general statements of understanding.

By Erwin Cifuentes for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Like many parents, Deanna Singh loves to read to her sons Zephaniah, 8, and Zion, 4, before they go to sleep each night. Reading has always been a high-priority activity in the Singh-Ponder household. Its so important that Singh woke up in a panic one night thinking about her familys books.

"Oh my gosh, what does my bookshelf look like?" Singh thought. "Are my sons able to find themselves in our bookshelf?"

Concerned about the negative images of brown and black boys that abound in the media, and thinking about how to show her multiracial sons that their parents and communities see them as beautiful, good and full of potential, Singh recently wrote her first book. Singhs mother is African-American, and her father is Sikh. Her husband, Justin Ponder, is African-American and German-American.

In "I Am a Boy of Color," which is aimed at children ages 3 to 7, Singh speaks to her sons, and to all boys of color, of their value. The book is illustrated by award-winning local artist Ammar Nsoroma, who is known for his drawing, painting, murals and mixed media, and is also an avid reader.

The book guides boys through a practice of self-affirmation. "When I look into a mirror, I see POSSIBILITY, the range of my ability. When I look into a mirror, I see LOVE, for others and also for me. When I look into a mirror, I see HONOR, images of those who came before."

On the night she suddenly awoke, Singh stayed up searching the internet for books that appropriately reflected her kids. "I thought, 'Let me find some books where there are superheroes who are boys of color, where there are scientists who are boys of color, where there are doctors or thinkers or artists,'" she said.

Wondering, too, if there was a larger conversation taking place about the issue, she discovered the University of Wisconsin Madisons Cooperative Childrens Book Center (CCBC) website.

Each year, the CCBC lists all new books that show children of color. In 2015, Singh learned, there were more books featuring animals and trucks than books about African-American children. White children were shown in 73.3 percent of childrens books published and only 7.6 percent showed African-American children, according to the center.

"It blows your mind, in this day and age. Its incredibly frustrating," Singh said.

Singh envisioned illustrations that highlighted the beautiful features of the boys in her life and despaired of finding the right artist; then she came across one of Nsoromas pictures on Facebook.

"Someone posted a drawing of a child (by Nsoroma), and it was completely spot on to what I imagined," Singh said.

Nsoroma, who works with young artists at Express Yourself Milwaukee, Artists Working in Education (A.W.E.), Arts @ Large and elsewhere, was hesitant as first because he had so many other artistic commitments. But Singh continued to ask him, and in the end, he agreed. He realized that if he turned it down, he would not be happy with the result, he said.

Although the book only has been out for a few weeks, it has received an overwhelmingly positive response, Singh said.

"I have had six parents I dont know who have had tears welling up in their eyes when they look at the book," she said. The most moving response came from a mother of grown children who said that she wishes she had this book when her kids were younger. "Everyday I had to put a shield on him and on myself as I sent my son out. I didnt feel like I had the words to pour on him to shield him," she added.

Singh recently stepped down as CEO of the Burke Foundation and will soon head up the Dohmen Company Foundation. She explained that she and her husband have created their own Flying Elephant Foundation, making their sons co-chairs, in part to show them how they can support other children of color. Initially, proceeds from "I Am a Boy of Color" will support two boys at We Got This Milwaukees 500 Black Tuxedos 2016 on Dec. 17.

A book launch party will be held at the Ambassador Hotel, 2308 W. Wisconsin Ave., on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 5 to 7:30 p.m. Though it is open to the public, registration is required.

Singh believes its important to tell children that they can use their abilities and talents to do good in the world.

"This project is not just about this book," she said. "Its about starting a conversation and about how we can create other opportunities."
From Our Future

A team of political scientists, writing in the Washington Post, concluded that "Trump supporters who are struggling economically perceive U.S. economic performance overall to be much worse than it actually is."

Those voters believe that the unemployment rate is three times higher than the official figure, and these new figurers aren't likely to change that.

"It is noteworthy," the researchers added, "that the impact of additional factual information about the national rate did not move their perceptions much."

They may not know the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but they know their own economic reality and those of their peers and their communities. So do the African-Americans, women, manufacturing workers, and other workers who confront economic injustice on a daily basis.

These diverse groups of working people could become a new coalition for change. Where are the reports that speak to, and for, them?

By the Numbers

The latest employment report looks good at first glance. Hourly wages rose 2.8 percent year over year, slightly higher than recent gains and the largest increase since 2009. The jobless rate fell by a tenth of one percent to 4.9 percent. The "U-6" figure of jobless workers, people seeking work, and those working fewer hours than they'd like, is nearly double the official number. But it fell slightly too.

And yet, underneath these favorable numbers, a darker story is being told. The labor force participation rate -- the number of Americans who are working or are actively looking for a job -- slipped by a small fraction and remains near its lowest level in four decades. Many workers have simply been left out of the job economy.

The centrifugal force of inequality is tearing our economy in two, creating a small aristocracy and a permanent underclass. As the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) recently noted, "Wage inequality has grown tremendously over the longer-term period from 1979 through 2015."

The 161,000 jobs added last month is lower than economists' modest projections and the latest three-month average of 176,000. Average job growth is actually down from recent years. The manufacturing sector lost 9,000 jobs as the overall trade deficit reached $36.4 billion in September.

Adjusting for the average number of hours worked, that hourly wage gain remains pretty much unchanged from previous gains. And it includes the highest-paid workers. "Private-sector production and non-supervisory employees," a category that covers 80 percent of all workers, saw a lower wage increase of 2.1 percent, roughly half of the 4.0 percent annual increase for workers before the Wall Street the financial crisis of 2008.

African Americans

The African-American unemployment rate is 8.6 percent, twice the white rate of 4.3 percent.

Black workers are paid less than white workers, according to the EPI -- and the gap is growing wider, not narrower. The gap is greatest among workers with the highest incomes, meaning that -- at least where income is concerned -- there still isn't "room at the top" for everyone.

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(Image by Egberto Willies) Details DMCA



Bill Maher called out evangelicals for the dangerous hypocrisy they are displaying with their support for everything they preach against, which Donald Trump exemplifies. You can watch the video here.

"Before leaving this election behind we must all thank Donald Trump for the one good thing he did," Bill Maher said. "He exposed evangelicals who are big Trump supporters as the shameless hypocrites they have always been. I don't know if you noticed, but Republicans didn't get to play the Jesus card this time around because it is hard to bring up the ten commandments when your candidate spent his life breaking all of them. Trump's commandments are like the regular commandments with LOL at the end."

Bill Maher then went on to itemize with examples the commandments Trump continuously break. He displayed the women he committed adultery with. He played clips of him cursing and bearing false witness. He used Trump University to illustrate his stealing. He displayed Vladimir Putin as an example of Trump having false idols.

"He is the world's least godly man," Bill Maher said. "Jesus saw the good in whores and lepers, but if he met Donald Trump he would say 'Sorry man, that's a preexisting condition."

Maher said that with four days left until the election, he wanted to celebrate one thing. Because evangelicals chose the most ungodly character to support, they could not inject religion into the campaign.

"But I still think we are owed an explanation from the values voters as to how they could line up behind Trump," Bill Maher said sarcastically. "A man who love to say, 'Nobody loves the Bible like I do.' Who when asked couldn't name a single passage. Even Sarah Palin said 'Hey for f$ck sake, it's not a newspaper.'"

Maher reminded the audience about the fiasco that occurred when Trump tried to name a book of the Bible. Instead of saying second Corinthians he said 'two' Corinthians.

"Trump has nothing in common with Jesus who was from the Middle East," Bill Maher said. "Trump wouldn't even let him into the country. Jesus healed the blind. Trump mocked the handicap. Jesus turned the other cheek. Trump grabbed her pu$$y. Jesus turned water into wine. Trump just whines. The Bible says, 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife.' Trump says fine. What about my daughter?"

Maher further illustrates the hypocrisy of the evangelicals.

"In the primaries, evangelicals had a whole bouquet of religious nuts to choose from," Maher said. "Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson. Ben Carson who doesn't just walk with Jesus. They shower together. But they went with the foul mouth, thrice married, pu$$y grabber with one exception. I never thought I would hear myself say this. But, let's hear it for the Mormons."

Bill Maher went on and pointed out that evangelicals support Trump 75%/14%. Mormons only give him 19% support. He gave kudos to the Mormons.

"Apparently the Mormons believe you shouldn't vote for a lying infantile scumbag just because he is on your team," Maher said.

While his typically crude self, Bill Maher hit this one out of the park again.


(Image by coed.com/2016/05/19/ivanka-trump-hot-photos-sexy-pictures-best-instagram-donald-trump-daughter/) Details DMCA



Mr. Trump is not my patient and I have never met with him. However by using accepted rules of psychology, observation of his behavior, reading his biography, exploring the significant childhood events, assessment of his behavior under pressure and in public, measurement of his vocabulary and syntax, reading of close relatives' writings about him, and spending a significant amount of time analyzing his interaction with others, I could come to a reasonable diagnosis of his character.

Obviously people who are more public and extroverted are easier to understand than those who are more quiet and introverted. Since Mr Trump is quite flamboyant, talkative and impulsive in his speech, he made my job easier.

By using methods of psycho-history, I have been able to come up with reasonably accurate diagnosis of famous people of the past. I have written several article about psychopathology of people in the past which have not been refuted yet. Considering all the limitations in this field we can come up with a few statements regarding Mr. Trump.

IQ :

Assessment of Mr. Trump's IQ is probably the easiest part of our work. His scholastic achievement is limited to a BA degree from an average university, his vocabulary is quite poor. It is very rare to hear an articulate word in proper context from him. The content of his speeches are redundant and does not include any significantly new ideas. Even at the most important events he talks with a vocabulary similar to any average person. Therefore one can conclude that his IQ just at an average range at best.

FUND OF KNOWLEDGE:

This aspect of a person's abilities is a good measure of how much data the person has picked up through the years and stored in his brain.

Mr. Trump's fund of knowledge is extremely poor. For a person who is running for presidency of the United States it would be extremely important to know about different rulers of the word and to be able differentiate between friends and foes. We all can remember that he did not know the difference between Kurds and Quds force and I am sure he does not know who Sheik Fazllolah is, while if elected he will have to deal with these groups and their leaders every day of the week. Just knowing a few superficial things about Putin will not get the job done. Also one should keep this issue in mind that there is no "on the job training in oval office". In all honesty he makes George W Bush look like a genius. A good comparison would be to compare his fund of knowledge with Dick Chaney and Bush Sr.

Underlying psychiatric problems:

Although this aspect of Mr. Trump's psychiatric problems are quite vivid he has been able to do a good job of covering them for people around him. Unfortunately he has very limited insight to his problems and would never get any better because he takes every minor criticism as an attack to his ego.

Major Psychiatric problem:

(1) Bipolar disorder "hippomanic"

Bipolar disorder manifests itself in several different forms, anything from unipolar depressive disorder to manic depressive rapid cycler to major depressive syndrome .

In the case of Mr. Trump we are dealing with a person who is mostly stuck in a hippomanic stage. The criteria for this syndrome is mostly manifested in the following manner:

For a person to be diagnosed as hippomanic, the first requirement is that there must be an abnormally sustained, elevated, expansive or irritable mood, plus unusually and persistently increased activity for most of the day over at least four days. The mood and the activity must be observable by others and clearly different from the way one is when not depressed.

Before one can be diagnosed as having a hippomanic episode, one will also have to be experiencing at least three of the following symptoms - or four if one's unusually sustained mood is only irritable:

- don't need much sleep.

- more talkative than usual or feel pressure to keep talking.

- experiencing a flight of ideas or feel that your thoughts are racing.

- easily distracted.

- driven toward accomplishing specific goals (either socially - at work or school - or sexually) or you are experiencing psycho-motor agitation.

- grandiose thinking. For example, you believe you are better than anyone else at doing something or that you can accomplish a difficult task in hours instead of days. For more, see "What Is Grandiosity?"

It should be noted that the treatment of this condition requires taking psychiatric medication with unlikely chances of sticking to treatment.

Mr. Trump's Narcissistic Personality Disorder

It's human nature to be selfish and boastful now and then, but true narcissists take it to an extreme. They don't just have extra self-confidence, they don't value others' feelings or ideas and ignore others' needs.

But there's a difference between being self-absorbed, often called a narcissist, and having narcissistic personality disorder, which is a mental illness.

ADDITIONAL PROBLEMS:

Mr Trump exhibits additional psychological problems which require in depth testing. These problems include but are not limited to ADD, deep inferiority complex, antisocial behavior as well as Oedipus complex.

(Article changed on November 5, 2016 at 15:17)

(Article changed on November 6, 2016 at 09:26)
Remember the character in the movie "Citizen Kane," a media tycoon who aspired to political office? And the egoist, builder in Ayn Rand's novel, "The Fountainhead." Or the character in the movie, "A Face in the Crowd"--a media-created demagogue. Human imagination through fiction writing has foretold future reality and fictionalized past reality. Now comes Donald Trump, egoistic builder, blustery persona, projected by the media through the t.v. screen onto the country for a decade, vying to be elected president.

The fictional examples are the least insidious comparisons and forerunners. A Republican Utah congressman asserted, "He's our Mussolini." Remarkably, besides personality comparisons, there's a physical resemblance to Il Duce.

http://facthole.com/post/134741867171/8-major-differences-between-trump-and-mussolini

The fictional and historical cases and the present case have in common both the character involved, and most significantly, the susceptible, mesmerized segment of the public that exalts him, looks to him as a savior.

We once wondered how an intelligent people that produced classical music and great scientists could fall for Adolf Hitler. That dictator pledged to make Germany great again. "It could never happen here" was smugly asserted. Yet, with circumstances, fate and human culpability, history is repeated. The then homogeneous Germany is paralleled by today's white America. U.S. white men today, like "good Germans" then, will vote for a fuhrer.

Underpinning this, in every election there's the "33% factor." A third of the electorate votes for the Republican, regardless; with an R by his name Satan would get their vote. Why? A Brain study showed that those who identify as "conservatives" have a segment of the brain--the amygdala--which is larger than the rest of the population's. Significantly, that brain section relates to fear and emotional reactions. Conversely, those who identify as "liberal" or "progressive" also have an outsized portion of the brain--the anterior cingulate--that governs empathy, decision-making and impulse control.

Despite the increased support for this right-wing phenomenon, the mitigating factor in this election will be U.S. diversity. The non-white population, non-Christian, Jewish, Muslim, black, Hispanic, Asian citizens and college-educated white women in a country founded and ruled till now by white Christian male Caucasians--those diverse groups combined, ironically, will save that country from itself.

This deus ex machina will not occur because those segments of society are necessarily intellectually or morally superior. They may be, but it's because they are threatened that matters. The human brain can be governed by fear. Trump, like his fictional and historic forebears, knows that instinctively. Playing that card got him the Republican nomination. Republican Joe Scarborough on his morning MSNBC pundit fest termed it the dark underbelly of white fear. And it's the fear in those he threatens that will defeat Trump in the general election.

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Well-respected stock-picker Louis Navillier had some interesting things to say about the election in his latest investor's update (emphasis added):

The outcome of the Presidential election is more uncertain now. The possibility of "recounts" in close states is growing more and more likely due to recent events. There's also a strong possibility that Evan McMullin may win Utah, which could deny Clinton and Donald Trump the 270 Electoral College votes necessary to win the election. If that happens, then the House of Representatives would pick the next President. So the national soap opera may not be over with next Tuesday's vote.

OMG (Oh, My Government!), will it never end??!!

President McMullin, anyone? If he wins even one state, he is theoretically eligible to be picked as a compromise less controversial candidate by the House. If Hillary is recommended for indictment by the FBI a few weeks from now, and Trump is just seen as impossible to deal with even by his own party - and expect the Trump accusations to fly if there's any kind of close contest - beleaguered House representatives might see McMullin as a no-drama choice.



ABC news agrees (with video) and adds:

But anti-Trump conservative independent Evan McMullin has thrown a curveball into the 2016 election, with the possibility that his winning even just one state could throw the presidential race into chaos and extend the election season into January. The former CIA agent's longshot White House odds rest on attracting the support of Mormon voters in Utah, who have been reluctant to throw their support behind Trump. McMullin's strategy is to block both Trump and Clinton from hitting the 270 electoral vote threshold to win, which would send the tiebreaker election to the House of Representatives. An election hasn't been decided by the House since 1824. Still, this path is very unlikely as it would require a precise set of circumstances. Utah has only six electoral votes -- so a surprise win there wouldn't guarantee that Clinton or Trump don't hit 270 anyway. And a third-party candidate hasn't won electoral votes since 1968.

At one point, this was the scenario for a win by Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, but Johnson's poll numbers have slipped to 5% in the latest Real Clear Politics match-up (Green Party Jill Stein's are around 3%) and he is not expected to win in any state. Without at least one electoral college delegate, Johnson can't be considered by the House if neither major party candidate gets the required 270 electoral college delegates. Of course, a delegate could defy the will of the voters and nominate Johnson, but in some states such a vote would be voided, though this would mean an even lower count for the two major nominees. And Johnson is seen as too ignorant by many based on his recent flubs to questions about Aleppo and which national leader he admires. Johnson's star is fading fast, but not so McMullin who appeals to his fellow Mormons in the state dominated by them.

Progressives will be disappointed in conservative McMullin's positions. He is pro-life and vows to appoint justices to the Supreme Court that will overturn Roe v. Wade. He seeks to enable "competition" in Medicare (read: privatize). He wants to boost military responsiveness, though not necessarily their budget, and favors cost-cutting over new spending. National security is the first item on his website's list of issues. He wants to deregulate and lower taxes, presumably mostly on the rich who pay the most.

Although his running mate, Mindy Finn, is a woman, he can hardly be called a feminist. However, he will be a big relief to woman-bashing, misogynist Donald Trump, even to Republicans. It's conceivable, however, that in a House floor fight, Democrats may only be persuaded to vote for McMullin if they are allowed to substitute moderate Tim Kaine in the V.P. slot. This may be less likely if disgruntled pro-Hillary supporters see their opportunity for a woman president being taken away with no realistic possibility for at least another 4 years. They may demand a "heartbeat away" in exchange for a "lost historic opportunity" even if that replacing heart beats in a conservative chest. And McMullin is wasting no time in c alling out Trump for his sexism, boosting his chances in Utah.

The election: anything can happen! Aren't you proud to be an American?

*** UPDATE ***

A careful reader pointed out to me that it is actually the Senate who picks the Vice President if the V.P. choice does not have the required majority - 270 electoral votes in this case too. The Senate is also Republican held, but not so heavily, and it includes the Democrat current V.P. in case of a tie. So it may be more likely that V.P. designee Tim Kaine might get chosen in that case.
More Horse Footage at End (UPDATE)

On a beautiful sunny day in June, 2014 President Barack Obama came to the banks of the Cannonball River on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. June is the month of the Strawberry Moon and celebrates the first harvest of wild fruit. The occasion was Cannonball Flag day and Native Americans from Standing Rock and the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservations turned out to welcome the President. For one day the hills and buttes and prairies of North and South Dakota were the center of rare media attention, and the people who welcomed the President into their homes and hearts were ecstatic. Michelle Obama was with him, babies were thrust into their arms for photo ops, children danced, and a powwow sealed good will and belief in the promises Obama made to the Sioux nation.

The Washington Postreported that stories of Native children made the president cry in the oval office.

"I love these young people," Obama said shortly after meeting them. "I only spent an hour with them. They feel like my own."

It is a little over two years later and these people whom the president claimed as his own are being arrested on minor charges by a seemingly omnipotent Sheriff in Morton County. They are herded into dog kennels at Fort Rice and the insides of their arms are marked with a number in black ink. Women suffer broken bones from batons wielded by police officers and deputies. Memories of others wearing brown shirts in 1939 Germany, who also marked people with black ink, cause fear and apprehension.

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From Greg Swank, 12-4-2 You are about to read a list of 45 goals that found their way down the halls of our great Capitol back in 1963. As...
Meteorologist Paul Douglas writes about Minnesota weather daily, trying to go beyond the "highs" and "lows" of the weather story to discuss current trends and some of the how's and why's of meteorology. Rarely is our weather dull - every day is a new forecast challenge. Why is the weather doing what it's doing? Is climate change a real concern, and if so, how will my family be affected? Climate is flavoring all weather now, and I'll include links to timely stories that resonate with me.
The mathematical (and other) thoughts of a (now retired) math teacher,
NDC Member of parliament for Gomoa Central in the Central Region, Hon. Rachel Nana Adwoa Appoh has donated items worth thousands of cedis to farmers in her constituency last Wednesday as part of her birthday celebration which fell on October 6.



She celebrated her birthday with 2000 farmers at Gomoa Abasa.



They received wellington boots, knapsack spraying machines, cutlasses, weedicides and cocoa spraying machines.



According to her, the donation was motivated by the hard work farmers in her constituency keep doing to ensure constituents and Ghanaians at large do not go hungry.



She said these items will motivate them to even work harder and also protect themselves and their crops to yield more as government seek to help farmers grow more and increase export to generate more income.



The District Director of Agric received the items on behalf of the Gomoa Central farmers.



Last year she donated items worth Ghc 50,000 from her MPs Common Fund which included; 1,200 pieces of cutlasses, 100 pieces of knapsack spraying machines, 100 pairs of Wellington boots and 10 pieces of cocoa spraying machines.



Some of the beneficiaries were farmers in Gomoa Aboso, Ekroful, Benso, Akropong and Ekwamkrom.



She said since most of her constituents are farmers, she promises to support them every farming season.

Short Profile And Achievements of Hon. Rachel Appoh

Hon. Rachel Florence Appoh, aka Nana Adwoa, was born on 6th October, 1980 to the late Mr. Peter Eric Appoh and Mrs. Elizabeth Appoh.



She holds a Master of Science degree in International Accounting and Finance, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from the Pentecost University College, Ghana. She also attended the Cape Coast Polytechnic and Nsaba Senior High Schools respectively. She holds ACCA Certificate and a Certificate in Local Government Administration.



Hon. Rachel F. Appoh has a lot of experience in public service, having worked in various capacities with various corporate organizations including Social Security and National Investment Trust (Ssnit), TAJ Investment Limited, Ramani Distribution Limited, AngloGold Ashanti and KAMA Group of companies.



She has also held various positions including: Former Deputy Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Deputy Ranking Member of the Public Accounts Committee, Member of the Parliamentary Committee on Health, and Youth and Sports. She is also a Member of Central Regional NDC Communications Team and a member of the NDC National Elections committee.



Hon. Rachel F. Appoh is very affable, confident, honest, reliable and hard working. She believes in working for the upliftment of the vulnerable in society and giving respect to all and sundry in society irrespective of class or social standing.



As a result of her hard work, probity and accountability, and her resolve to be a good steward to her constituents, Hon. Rachel F. Appoh has been able to bring unprecedented development to her constituency including but not limited to the following:



 Lobbied for Community Day SHS at Gomoa Gyaman



 Support over 500 students with school fees.



 Supported over 2,000 students with educational materials; like mathematical sets, computers, laptops, exercise books etc.



 Constructed sixteen (16) basic schools at Gomoa Achiase, Gomoa Lome, Gomoa Aboso, Gomoa Asebu, Gomoa Kwame Adwer etc.



 Constructed 14 boreholes at Gomoa Akropong, Gomoa Aboso, Gomoa Mpota, Gomoa Beseadze, Gomoa Benso, Gomoa Gyaman etc.



 Furnished five (4) CHPS Compounds at Gomoa Aboso, Gomoa Lome, Gomoa Dahom and Gomoa Ekwakrom.



 Provided farm inputs such as cutlasses, cocoa spraying machine s, wellington boots, knapsack spraying machine to all the 58 communities in the constituency.



 Distributed 4000 pieces of cloths to widows, disabled and orphans in the constituency.



 Lobbied for LEAP benefit for more than 2,000 constituents.



 Built toilet facilities for Gomoa Achiase, Gomoa Osamkrom and Abasa.



 Constructed markets for five (5) communities including Gomoa Oguaakrom, Gomoa Mangoase, among others.



 Facilitated loan facilities for women in over 20 communities.



 Bitumize six (6) major roads in Gomoa Manso, Gomoa Kwame Adwer, Gomoa Dahom, Gomoa Ayensuadze, Gomoa Lome and Gomoa Nsuaem (Project Ongoing).



 Distributed over 3000 bags of cement and 200 packets of roofing sheets to support community self-help projects in over 20 communities.



 Extended electricity to communities such as Gomoa Akropong, Gomoa Mpota, Gomoa Kwame Adwer, Gomoa Abamkwamu etc.



A vote for Hon. Appoh is a vote for Development and Unity in the Gomoa Central Constituency.



A vote for Hon. Appoh is a vote for enhancing and developing human resources.







Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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" " Instructions for voters are displayed at a Homestead, Penn., polling station on November 2, 2004. Jeff Swensen/ Getty Images

Voters in 32 states may be in for a rude awakening when they arrive at the polls on Election Day, in the form of an ostensibly innocent question: "May I see your ID?" You've heard it before, of course, but the query could decide the next election.

New voter identification laws have sprung up across the country, requiring registered voters to show a government-issued identification card  a photo ID in 17 states  in order to cast a ballot [source: NCSL]. Supporters of these new voter ID laws argue that tighter security at polling stations cuts down on voter fraud and ensures cleaner elections. But critics of voter ID laws see something far more devious: a plot to disenfranchise or at least discourage targeted segments of the American electorate.

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Voter suppression  also known as caging  is any action or behavior intended to deter an individual or group from voting. In the history of American politics, a wide range of dirty tactics have been used by both major political parties to intimidate or disqualify voters traditionally aligned with the opposition. During the "Jim Crow" era in the southern U.S., state and county governments evaded the 15th Amendment  prohibiting voter discrimination based on race or color  by imposing a series of literacy tests, poll taxes and even thuggish "poll workers" to block African-American voters from casting a ballot. Modern methods of voter suppression are more subtle, but the intention is the same: to employ legal and illegal means to affect voter turnout in an election.

Critics of voter ID laws are crying foul, accusing the states of imposing a solution in search of a problem, citing Justice Department statistics that voter fraud is extremely rare: 86 convictions out of 300 million votes cast in recent elections [source: Berman]. The real reason for the rash of new voter ID laws, critics argue, is that certain Democratic-leaning voters  African- and Hispanic-Americans, students, the elderly and the disabled  are less likely to possess a valid government-issued ID [source:American Civil Liberties Union]. Strict voter identification laws, they say, have the intended effect of discouraging or disqualifying traditionally Democratic voters.

Supporters of the voter ID laws insist that voter fraud, particularly by third-party voter registration groups and illegal immigrants, is a serious problem. Moreover, if requiring a photo ID to vote is discriminatory, where are the cries of civil rights violations at the airport security kiosk or the liquor store [source: Tobin]? In a landmark 2008 decision, the Supreme Court sided with voter ID supporters in Indiana, citing a "valid interest" in deterring fraud and finding no significant obstacles to obtaining an ID [source: Stout].

In an era of passionately partisan politics, both parties will do everything in their power to gain a political advantage during an election. The question is, when does a savvy political tactic become an unconstitutional breach of civil rights?

In the rest of this article, we'll examine the line between dirty politics and voter suppression, and see where Congress and the Supreme Court have weighed in. Let's start with a look at the ugly history of voter suppression in the U.S.
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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.

Nine-year-old Elizabeth Hughes, daughter of Charles Evans Hughes, has the same charisma and determination as her father, The Malone Farmer suggested in it Sept. 27, 1916 issue.

If Miss Elizabeth keeps on, she may yet be governor of New York, chief justice of the United States, and there is no telling what, the paper suggested. But at the present her chief interests comprise of a bicycle and a Maltese kitten.

Elizabeth attended Glens Falls Academy in the 1919-20 school year, and a few years later stayed a summer with Louis and Charlotte Hyde on Warren Street.

Elizabeth kept close ties with Glens Falls in her adult years.

She did not become a politician or judge, but she did co-found and serve as president of the Supreme Court Historical Society.

The full Malone Farmer report can be read at the New York State Historical Newspapers website, a project of public libraries.

Click here and here to read previous posts about Elizabeth.

Click here to read the most recent previous post in the series.
(This post was updated at 12:40 p.m. Saturday to include a response from Congressional Leadership Fund.)

A new television advertisement the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican Super PAC committee is airing, trivializes the commitment of military personnel, said Democratic congressional candidate Mike Derrick.

Derricks campaign said U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, should publicly denounce the PAC ad, which states, Derrick just moved here from Colorado, where he owns six expensive properties.

The add suggests that because of Derricks military service in Colorado, he is not from the North Country, Derricks campaign said Friday in a press release.

Derrick, a retired Army colonel, lived in Clinton County as a child and teen, and moved back to his familys home in Peru in 2015.

He has said the real estate he and his wife own in Colorado is an investment to pay for his childrens college.

Elise Stefanik does not understand that I lived in Colorado on military orders, along with 10 other states and three foreign countries, Derrick said in a press release. I am the only candidate in this race who knows what it is like to put my life on the line for this country.

The Stefanik campaign said it would not comment on the ad because a political action committee is airing it independent of the campaign.

Ruth Guerra, a spokeswoman for Congressional Leadership Fund, said Derrick's criticism is "puzzling" considering his support for President Obama's health care plan.

Derrick and Stefanik, along with Green Party candidate Matt Funiciello, a bread company owner and political activist from Hudson Falls, are running in the 21st Congressional District.
This is the latest in a series of posts about general election 48 hour notice reports in the 21st Congressional District race.

The campaign is in the period when contributions of $1,000 or more must be reported within 48 hours of receipt.

U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, and Democratic opponent Mike Derrick are now tied in labor contributions, with $58,000 each, as of Saturday afternoon.

Derrick, a retired Army colonel from Peru, in Clinton County, reported new 48 hour notice contributions on Friday of $5,000 from Office and Professional Employees International, and $1,000 from Communications Workers of America.

Steffanik reported $17,800 in new 48 hour notice contributions on Friday, including $5,000 from Laborers International Union.

Stefanik's other new 48 hour notice contributions are as follows:

$2,700 each from Las Vegas casino industry billionaire Sheldon Adelson and wife Dr. Miriam Adelson;

$1,000 from political action committee of U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona;

$1,000 from Richard Rogers, executive chairman of Mary Kay;

$2,700 each from donors in Texas and California.

This brings Stefanik's total 48 hour notice contributions reported to $88,800, as of Saturday afternoon, and Derrick's to $27,500.

Green Party candidate Matt Funiciello had not reported any 48 hour notice contributions, as of Saturday afternoon.

Click here to read the most recent previous post in the series.
QUEENSBURY  Warren Countys budget will increase by a little more than 1 percent next year, but most county taxpayers will actually see a tax decrease.

That is possible because the value of the assessed property in the county jumped by 2.7 percent to just under $10.9 billion, which will result in the 1.7 percent tax levy increase that the budget would bring being spread out over more and higher-valued property.

A person with a home assessed at $200,000 will pay about $8.60 less in county taxes next year, though equalization rates by community will affect final tax bills.

The Warren County Board of Supervisors tentatively adopted the $150.1 million budget during a 90-minute meeting Friday that saw a feisty debate over a number of budget decisions.

The budget adds eight full-time positions and three part-timers, while also deleting 10 vacant full-time and two part-time positions.

The county used $4.2 million from a variety of fund balances to close the budget gap caused by 2 percent raises for non-union employees, higher costs for prosecution and public defense related to law changes and more indigent legal defense costs, said Stony Creek Supervisor Frank Thomas, the countys budget officer. (Unionized workers also get contractual raises).

Queensbury at-Large Supervisor Rachel Seeber questioned the raises, particularly whether there was significant review of the work performance of the workers who will get them.

Thats a lot of money to give in raises where we dont have documentation for these raises, if you are meeting your performance objectives, she said.

We did put some thought into it. Most of them didnt get what they asked for, Thomas said.

Seeber also urged the board to consider a proposal by Warren County Airport fixed base manager Rich Schermerhorn to fully privatize the airport. Thomas said it will be reviewed, and pointed out that the airport budget has dropped by nearly $200,000 over the past four years, including a $39,450 cut for next year.

Part of the budget increase also stemmed from cost hikes in health insurance for employees and retirees, with health insurance costs growing to $11.5 million for next year. Thomas said the county will look at possible self-insurance in the future.

Supervisors from Glens Falls questioned a cut to funding for East Field, while there was also a proposed cut to money for combating invasive species. At the suggestion of Bolton Supervisor Ronald Conover, money from the occupancy tax (from a 4 percent room tax) surplus will be used for invasive species, which allowed the board to restore funding for East Field at the 2016 level.

Thomas also warned that using money from fund balances to close budget holes is not sustainable over the long term.

The path we are on is not sustainable over the long term. We are going to go broke, Thomas said.

Thurman Supervisor Evelyn Wood said the county wants to avoid the difficult budget decisions as had to be made during tough financial times in the late 2000s.

Its going to be a very ugly, mean process, she said.

The Board of Supervisors will consider final adoption of the budget at its regular meeting Nov. 18.
An elected politician is supposed to be a voice for her constituents. Politicians are not bureaucrats, following rules while working quietly behind the scenes. Our elected representatives are supposed to be the ones who serve as the public faces of their districts and draw attention to problems that need to be solved.

But speaking out is what Sen. Kathleen Marchione, by her own admission, did not do this year after high levels of perfluorooctanoic acid, known as PFOA, were found in the water supply in Hoosick Falls.

While her constituents in Hoosick Falls were crying for public hearings, and while her counterpart in the Assembly, Republican Steve McLaughlin, was blasting the Cuomo administration for its slow response to the emergency, Marchione was unaccountably quiet and resistant to holding hearings.

She now says she was working all along to help the residents of Hoosick Falls, and she still believes creating a state task force that could bring all concerned parties to the table would be the better way to proceed.

She also defended her handling of a bill to increase by three years the statute of limitations on lawsuits over the contamination. She took that bill off the Senate floor for last-minute rewriting because other state senators didnt like its wording, she said. Then, she said, when she found the bill had been gutted in the rewriting process, she insisted on a return to the original bill and managed to get unanimous support for it.

Other people have suggested Marchione was under political pressure to weaken the bill, but backtracked in the face of a public backlash.

Even if you accept Marchiones explanation, the story exposes clumsy handling of legislation important to her constituents.

And not everyone accepted her explanation. Some Hoosick Falls residents felt so betrayed by her actions, they took to using the hashtag #BenedictMarchione on Twitter.

When it comes to addressing the corruption that has been rife in New York politics, Sen. Marchione doesnt want to limit the outside income of legislators. The vague financial disclosure forms legislators must fill out dont need to be made more detailed, she said. She does not believe the law that allows individuals to exceed campaign contribution limits by donating through LLCs needs to be changed.

She said legislators should be allowed to continue to spend state money on informational mailers that serve the cause of self-promotion at least as well as they keep constituents informed.

She wants to consider campaign finance reform holistically, not issue by issue, she said, but offered no details on a holistic approach.

For Shaun Francis, limiting the influence of money in politics is a top priority. If elected, he will work toward a publicly funded campaign finance system, he said. He wants the loophole in the LLC law closed.

Francis wants to establish an independent citizen-led commission that would draw the states legislative district lines, which is the way redistricting happens in some states, such as Iowa. Removing political gerrymandering from the process in this way would make state politics more fair and less partisan.

We were glad to hear from Sen. Marchione that she supports reforms of specific gun control measures in the SAFE Act to make it more palatable to gun owners, because she has in the past wasted a lot of time pushing for repeal of the entire act, which is politically not feasible.

But we didnt hear enough from her about ways she is working to help her constituents and better their lives. A chair in the state Legislature can be a great perch from which to advocate for improvements; or at least, it can be a place to stand and shout, when something has gone badly wrong and must be addressed.

We need someone willing to speak up for the residents of the 43rd District, which is why we urge a vote for Shaun Francis on Tuesday.
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Ray Mabus @ Ingalls 006.jpg

U.S. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus (left) visits with 25-year Ingalls Shipbuilding employee Byron King of Biloxi during Mabus' tour of the Pascagoula shipyard Friday afternoon.

(Warren Kulo/The Mississippi Press)

PASCAGOULA, Mississippi -- As part of what he acknowledged is his farewell tour, U.S Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus took a whirlwind tour of Ingalls Shipbuilding Friday, meeting with company officials, a group of shipbuilders and visiting the ship for which his wife is serving a ship sponsor.

"I'm going around thanking the people who have done the work," Mabus said "who have built these great warships, who have given our Sailors and Marines the tools they need."

Mabus was appointed Navy Secretary by President Barack Obama in 2009. He noted he has served in the post longer than anyone since World War I.

"What I'm so proud of are the decisions and actions have substantially changed the Navy and Marine Corps, but they've also strengthened our Navy and Marine Corps. Our Navy and Marine Corps are stronger than they were eight years ago."

U.S. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus (right) with U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo during Mabus' tour of Ingalls Shipbuilding Friday afternoon.

A native of Ackerman, Miss., Mabus served in the U.S. Navy from 1970-72 as a Surface Warfare Officer aboard the cruiser USS Little Rock, holding the rank of lieutenant.

Mabus was elected the 60th Governor of Mississippi in 1987, serving one term, after previously serving as State Auditor. He also served as U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1994-96.

"I've had two great honors in my life -- being elected Governor of the State of Mississippi and serving as Secretary of the Navy," he said.

Mabus spoke standing in the shadow of LHA 7 -- the amphibious assault ship Tripoli, currently under construction. Mabus' wife, Lynne, is the ship sponsor for the Tripoli.

Mabus noted that during the eight years prior to his appointment, the Navy Department put 41 ships under contract.

"That wasn't enough to keep our fleet from declining," he said. "Nor was it enough to keep our shipyards in business or busy."

During his tenure, 86 ships have been put under contract for the Navy and Mabus said at the current rate the fleet will be back to "where we need to be" by 2021.

"It takes a long time to build a ship, a long time to rebuild a fleet," Mabus said. "That's why, going forward, the next administration has got to keep this building pace up, or we will see our fleet begin to shrink again.

"They've got a great base to start with now, because we're building about as many ships as we can build every year right now."

Mabus told a group of about 250 Ingalls employees from across the spectrum of departments, as well as the media, that the skill and dedication of shipbuilders has allowed ships to be built faster and better.

"Their skill, their talent, their dedication is the reason we've been able to build so many ships," he said. "We've driven down the cost of every single ship. The destroyers being built here are $300 million less than they were when I came in.

"That's because they're doing it better, doing it faster, and their skill level is so great. They're coming in ahead of schedule and on budget. That's a great deal not only for the American taxpayer, but for the security of America."

Mabus said he will be "looking for work" once his tenure as Navy Secretary ends in January, noting he has three children still in school.

"So I've got to keep working for a while," he said, smiling.

As for his as-yet unknown successor, Mabus offered this advice.

"Keep tight with the American people," he said. "The Navy and Marine Corps are America's away team. When they're doing their job, people don't see how good they are or how hard the jobs are we ask them to do.

"The next administration needs to keep the connection between those doing the protecting and those being protected."

Mabus was accompanied on his Ingalls tour by U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, and Ingalls president Brian Cuccias.

"Ingalls is pleased to have had the opportunity to host Secretary Mabus, a native Mississippian, today as he spoke to our workforce about the important role they play in America's national security," Cuccias said. "Building four classes of ships simultaneously takes skill, experience and dedication. Our shipbuilders are committed to providing our military with the most technologically advanced warships in the world.

"Secretary Mabus' visit to Ingalls validates that they are doing exactly that."
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"The impression created in the media is false. Let me state for a fact that the agriculture sector is not in decline. A sector that is growing at 2.5 percent cannot be said to be in decline," president Mahama said at the 32nd National Farmers' Day celebration held at Kintampo in the Brong Ahafo Region.

READ MORE: Frozen chicken collapsing local poultry industry

His statement was response to a press conference by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in which they complained about the sluggish growth in the sector.

By the measure of annual growth performance, Ghanas agriculture has been sliding or, at best, sluggish. From 7.4% in 2008, and 7.2% in 2009, agricultural growth slowed to 5.3% in 2010, hitting the bottom of 0.8% in 2011. It then stayed down at 2.3% in 2012, recovering somewhat to 5.7% in 2013 and then 4.6% in 2014, , Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, Minority spokesperson on Agriculture, said.

But president Mahama challenged his critics to crosscheck their facts with the statistical service, adding that: "The fact that agrics contribution to the GDP is not what it used to be in the past, does not mean that it is declining, it simply means that other sectors of the economy are also doing well; which is good for the economy and normal for every developing and developed country."
READ MORE: Robert Crentsil wins National Best Farmer

In 2015, the former boss of the EC said in a media interview that he intends focusing on his farm which he has maintained for quite some time now.

READ MORE: Nana Addo advocates modernised agricultural practices

Dr Afari-Gyan chaired the conduction of presidential and parliamentary elections in 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012 and was part of the commission that conducted the 1992 elections, as a deputy commissioner.

The 32nd National Farmers' Day celebration was held at Kintampo in the Brong Ahafo Region under the theme: 'Agriculture: A Business Response to Economic Growth.'

Robert Crentsil, a 42-year old emerged as the national best farmer from Ejumako-Enyan-Essiam in the Central region.
The former trade minister under the Kufuor administration said the NPP will establish a national entrepreneurship and innovative plan to drive local business ownership.

He was addressing students of the University of Cape Coast on the last day of Nana Akufo-Addo's campaign tour of the Central Region.

The NPP government under Nana Addo wants to encourage you to own your own business and that is why we want to establish a national entrepreneurship and innovative plan that will support every individual that wants to establish their own business, he said.

Alan Kyerematen also assured the students that enough jobs will be created under Akufo-Addo's presidency so as to employ them when they graduate.
Dr Ndoum, who spoke on a wide-range of issues in an address to the leadership of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), said he will follow the footsteps of the Chinese and Koreans in building a resilient economy for Ghana.

He made the statement when a question was thrown at him by a member of the Union on whether Ghana needs the Bretton Woods institutions, especially the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

We do not need anybody from anywhere to come and tell us what to do as a sovereign nation. Ghanaians want the easy way out hence always running to the waiting arms of these multinational institutions anytime there is difficulty, Dr Ndoum answered.

See where China and Korea are? This is the kind of decisions we will opt for in order to build our economy, he added.

Touching on job creation, Dr Ndoum promised to create thousands of jobs for the many unemployed youths.

He said his track record in job creation makes him the most credible candidate among the all the presidential nominees.

My party when voted, will create jobs for the teeming unemployed youth scattered across the country, he said in an address to the leadership of the TUC.
Maple Lawn Winery

Maple Lawn Winery is located in New Park York County and open for business Saturdays and Sundays.

(Submitted)

The annual Wine Just Off The Vine event that the Mason Dixon Wine Trail stages as one of its two annual events is adding four participating wineries this year to a list that already stretches across southcentral Pennsylvania and northern Maryland.

That event will begin next weekend and also run the weekend of Nov. 19-20, featuring 17 wineries and cideries. Tickets cost $20/person and can be purchased at any of the wineries.

One of those is Maple Lawn Farms & Winery in New Park, in extreme southern York County, right near the Maryland line. Maple Lawn is operated by the McPherson family, with roots in fruit growing that date back to the 1870s. They have assembled a list of products that includes several fruit wines and ciders, and are nearing the completion of the first year in business after spending 2015 ramping up.

Hugh McPherson explained by email just how quickly he and his family were able to take the winery from an idea to something they could open to the public and how that idea has been received:

"Maple Lawn Winery spent 2015 in a mad dash to get open. Fall Harvest is the time when we have retail guests on the farm for pumpkins and Maize Quest's Fun Park, so

A peek at the tasting room at Maple Lawn Winery. Business hours are noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays and 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays.

we wanted to get product ready for the people. It didn't happen. Like any such project delayed approvals and tasting room construction time pushed us back to Dec. 5, 2015, but we got the doors open. What happened next was amazing. People liked what we made on our first try! In just 3 weekends we started serving guests and selling Peach Blossom, Apple Blossom and Apple Hard Cider. We promptly closed until the March Mason-Dixon Wine Trail event.



"Over the winter we created our Cherry Blossom and Blueberry Blossom wines and our brandy-fortified Apple Infusion later in summer 2016. Cherry and blueberry were challenging from fermentation to bottling as we learned the hard way the value of temperature control. The Apple Infusion was an experiment with Old Republic Distillery in York to make a 20% ABV dessert wine. My son looked over my shoulder one day and found me struggling to regain my algebra skills rusty from 20 years of disuse formulating that one! Our local partners, in particular Allegro Vineyards, Naylor Wine Cellars and Old Republic Distillery, have been invaluable in this first year. York County has a very open and sharing wine industry.



"We worked through the summer hosting events with LIVE music, food trucks, wine slushes and more, all experiments to see our local response. We hired more pouring staff and prepared for the fall harvest season. The Maize Quest crowds brought inventory challenges and a scramble to complete new products in time for the fall rush. Selling another ticket to the maze is one thing, running out of your signature Apple Blossom wine would be a travesty! Managing production for seasonal demand peaks is a real challenge when we're running a full-scale production farm AND a Fall Harvest Festival. We have been blessed with great seasonal staff and awesome full-time employees without whom, this adventure would never have gotten off the ground."

McPherson was asked for an overview of the first year, and noted in an email that the winery is the fourth major project his family has created on the farm over the past 20 years.

"I always have high expectations, but realistically it takes a long time to reach critical mass of awareness for new products," he wrote. "The response from our existing visitors short-circuited that process. We feel as though the wines & ciders fit so well; they make so much sense with our local food and pick-your-own orchards that guests could easily connect with the products. We're struggling to make sure we have enough product on the shelves instead of struggling to sell products. That is an amazing, wonderful outcome for a family farm that took a big risk starting a new venture while learning new, complex processes and building new skills within our staff and ourselves.



"There is nothing more rewarding than selling delicious, local wine in a fun environment to nice people."


Speaking at the launch of the Accra Digital Centre in Accra, he said notable among the investments is the seven billion dollars ENI Sankofa project.

Th Sankofa project, he said, will further open up the oil and gas sector and create jobs in addition to the 5,000 Ghanaians employed in that value chain.

He also disclosed that about 69 companies have registered and set up in Ghana in the last four years under the Free Zones Board.

"These companies have invested a total of over $1 billion in our economy and currently employs almost 25,000 [people] right here in Ghana," he said.

He said a new tile company set up under Free Zones Board is ready for commissioning in the Western region and will employ close to 1,500 Ghanaians.

The factory will produce about 40 million square feet of tiles every year thereby saving Ghana a lot of foreign exchange use to import tiles for the building industry, he said.

President Mahama further said, "government will work assiduously to establish new factories and revamp old ones."

In recognition of the role the private sector plays in job creation, the president disclosed that GHC400 million have been invested in the private companies and organisations under the Export Development and Agriculture Investment Fund and the Skilled Development Fund.
We want to invest some of the resources of this country for the future. If I stand here and just say that the alawa has been reintroduced, you will be happy and then we will go home; but then it will have an implication for the futurebecause it means that the school blocks that we want to build for the growing population, we may not be able to do it.

The government argues that trainees can now assess the Students Loan Trust Fund to support the financial demands that accompany their studies.

However the opposition NPP has used disaffection following the scrapping of the allowances as a key campaign promise. The party has promised to restore the allowances in full when voted into power. This has forced the government to recently announce a reintroduction of the allowances albeit to a very small amount.

READ MORE:Over 200 patients to be forced out as nurses strike
It's amazing how Edem can easily merge in any song and display his versatility to the highest point. King Chorus made sure the rhythm kept moving your dancing and gets you to sing along with the catchy chorus. This could mean he has more for us and about to make it up to all those who missed his voice.
She, therefore, called on the Mahama-led administration to license their activities, adding that government can generate revenue from them through tax.

She cited other countries where the government is taxing commercial sex workers because it is legal.

Mama Sweat said she will vote for any party who plans to legal prostitution.

Asked why she indulges in prostitution, Mama Sweat said it was due to poverty. According to her, she was introduced into prostitution by her friends after she lost her husband and her in-laws took everything away from her.

On how much she charges her customers, Mama Sweat said she charges GHC100 for 'half night' and GHC300 for a full night for customers who do not want to use a condom.

For customers who prefer condom, she charges between GHC30 and GHC50.

She explained that she charges high for non-condom users because the potential of contracting a disease from a customer is high.

On a good day, Mama Sweat says she gets seven customers and on a bad make, two to three customers.
As Election Day approaches, the police administration has adopted strategies to deal with potential troublemakers before, during and after the 2016 election.

He said: We met all the leadership of the political parties at a forum in Ada, and they all signed a communique saying that they are not going to give any backing to any vigilante group.

"We have denounced the use of vigilante groups. If you are following them to cause trouble, it means that whatever problem you create, you will face it.

The Attorney General has made it clear that activities of vigilante groups are illegal; so dont give yourself out to any politician to misuse you.

"When you get yourself into trouble; the laws will deal with you, so send this message to all your people, and tell them that the Police and other security services will not sit down for any vigilante group to cause trouble in this country.

Security experts have urged the police to be tough on potential troubles makers following the identification of over 5000 potential areas of conflict on Election Day by the National Security.

Meanwhile, the police have formed Counter Terrorist Unit to deal with any quasi-military groups.

Director of the Unit Adofiem Raymond Wejong said that vigilantes were supposed to be people who were vigilant, law abiding and to report any bad deeds to the Police to deal with.

Anyone who commits any act of violence in the name of any political party or under any cover is a common criminal and we will deal with such individuals as common criminals and not as political vigilantes, he said.

In addition, 365 police personnel drawn from the 10 regions have been trained to form an anti-violence advocacy group to combat violence and other crimes ahead of the December polls.

The training was aimed at preparing and toughening up the personnel to be able to deal with hardened criminals across the country.
Touray, a development expert and campaigner against female genital mutilation, said the choice of a single opposition flagbearer was "an unprecedented achievement in our nation's history" and one she felt compelled to support.

She added that "Team Isatou" would now focus on supporting the "formidable force" fighting to remove Jammeh, who has been in power since 1994.

Touray had said she would stand as an independent candidate in the polls, focusing on welcoming back the Gambian diaspora and creating jobs.

Now in her sixties, Touray has had a colourful career, winning a US State Department award for empowering Gambian communities in 2008 but arrested in 2010 over corruption allegations when she was deputy director of the Gambia's development institute.

She was acquitted of all charges.

Touray is currently executive director of leading women's group the Gambia Committee against Harmful Traditional Practices, which fights to stop female genital mutilation.

Barrow is a member of the United Democratic Party (UDP) -- the country's principal opposition movement -- whose leader and several top officials are serving three-year jail sentences for holding public protests.

Campaigning for the election begins on November 16.
St. Alfonso Maria Fusco canonized a saint

St. Alfonso Maria Fusco was canonized a saint by Pope Francis on Oct. 16, 2016. (Courtesy/Vatican Radio)

(Third-Party-Submitted)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The Sisters of St. John the Baptist, an order based in the Bronx who serve both in New York and New Jersey, are celebrating the canonization of their founder, Blessed Alfonso Maria Fusco.

His elevation to Sainthood took place in Rome, Italy on Sunday, Oct. 16 by Pope Francis along with Jose Gabriel del Rosario Brochero, Ludovico Pavoni, Jose Sanchez del Rio, Salomone Leclerc, Manuel Gonzalez Garcia, and Elisabetta Della Santissima Trinita' Catez.



It's interesting to note that since 1922, the Sisters of St. John the Baptist have staffed St. John Villa Academy, Arrochar and Monsignor Farrell High School, Oakwood, as well as in St. Raymond Elementary School and the Providence Rest Home in the Bronx.

Additionally, the Sisters serve Staten Island in pastoral work at Blessed Sacrament R.C. Church, St. Christopher/St. Margaret Mary and Holy Rosary parishes, and are involved with religious education and faith-formation throughout Staten Island.

As a young priest in Angri, Italy during the late 1800's, Father Fusco alleviated the plight of poor and abandoned girls and boys.

Back in 1878 with the help of four young women from the parish who shared his vision, a small house was opened to feed, clothe and shelter the many children who were in need.

He often reminded the Sisters: "We must develop a great love for little children because they are innocent and the hope of tomorrow's society."

The founder's trust in God made possible the growth of the ministry, as well as that of the young community of Sisters who dedicated themselves to the task.

Today, the Congregation numbers are close to 900 Sisters and they are present in 17 countries. The Sisters continue to meet the needs of the times in new ways, but especially through education and caring for the elderly.

In 1976, after the Church acknowledged that Fr. Alfonso M. Fusco had lived a model life of heroic virtue, he was proclaimed venerable by Pope Paul VI.

To be canonized a saint at least two miracles must be performed - usually of healing.

They must be recognized as having been performed through the saint's intercession after his or her death.

For Blessed Alfonso Fusco, the first miracle can be traced to the overnight healing of a 6-year-old African boy, Gersham, who suffered from a rare form of malaria.

The other miracle is the healing of Sr. Mary Dulcis Miniello, a Sister of St John the Baptist. Sister was diagnosed with a massive hemorrhage of two brain aneurysms and she wasn't expected to survive. Both recipients of the founder's healing were at the canonization ceremonies.

The formal process for the investigation of a miracle commenced in 1999 and closed not long after. The medical testimonies and documentation were compelling and submitted to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

Pope John Paul II granted papal approval to the miracles in 2000. Father Fusco was beatified on Oct. 7, 2001.

St. Alfonso Fusco has promised always to pray for and be present to those who ask for his healing. Many graces and blessings have been received through his intercession.

About 50 Sisters and others traveled from here to Rome and then made the trip to the founder's home town of Angri, where a celebration of thanksgiving will took place in his honor.

A celebration in America will be slated at Blessed Sacrament R.C. Church, on March 25, 2017.

Further information will follow.
READ MORE: Police on the hunt for Fulani herdsman for murder

The deceased had been watching the Champions League match with his visiting uncle at home when he decided to visit a friend next door.

He left the door slightly opened on his return and his assailants put the gun around the door, shot him thrice and he fell to the floor just inside his house.

Deborah tried to stop the blood coming from the wounds on his son's stomach but was pronounced dead on the scene.

Mr Amiah, who employed Mr Owusu in his shipping firm, told the UK's standard.co.uk that: His mother ran to him and said Qwasi why has this happened? Have you done anything to anyone? He said: Mum I havent done anything to anyone.. I dont like trouble.

She did what she could to try to help him before the ambulance arrived. She was distraught, she felt helpless and hopeless. She was still clearly in shock when I saw her.

None of us know why this has happened, its a complete mystery. He was a good boy, he worked hard and studied hard and wanted to be a success.

I ve known him since he was six years old and he was like family to me.

He would talk to me about things. It seems impossible he had a double life we didnt know about that someone would want to do this to him.

Mr Owusu is only child of his parents who re-located to the UK before he was born.

No arrested has been made as detectives from the Homicide and Major Crime Command launched a murder inquiry.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: Police were called by the London Ambulance Service at 10.45pm on Wednesday to reports of a shooting in Tynsdale Road.
The election of the first black president of the United States on November 4, 2008 sparked scenes of jubilation in Kenya, the homeland of Obama's father. A public holiday was declared in honour of his victory.

There were widespread hopes that Obama would do much for Africa, but as he prepares to hand over to either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, he is accused of neglecting the continent.

"Africa had unrealistic expectations towards Obama given his origins," said Aly-Khan Satchu, a Kenyan economic analyst. "Especially during his first term, Obama was less involved in Africa" than his predecessor George W. Bush.

"People judged him very harshly during his first mandate because he didn't do much for Africa," said Liesl Louw Vaudran, an analyst at the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies think tank.

Satchu attributes this to the US recession and the need for Obama "to show the American public that he was the president of the USA".

"During his second term, I think he tried to address this issue and he did more for Africa," Satchu said.

Obama slow to engage

Obama was slow to engage in Africa, a continent far from the heart of US interests, preferring to make the Asia-Pacific region the centrepiece of his foreign and economic policy.

Unlike George W. Bush, whose PEPFAR programme has helped save the lives of millions of Africans with HIV/AIDS, Obama has launched no transformative initiatives on the continent. His 2013 "Power Africa" plan has fallen well short of its promise of doubling access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa, generating just 400 megawatts (MW) of the 30,000 planned by 2030.

Obama's African appearances have also been limited. There was a brief stopover in Ghana in 2009 -- where he declared, "Africa doesn't need strongmen, it needs strong institutions" -- and then a tour of Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania in 2013, followed by a visit to Ethiopia and Kenya in 2015.

On each occasion he urged Africans to take their destiny into their own hands, and sought openings for US companies to invest in the continent.

He has moved to substitute a traditional aid-based policy with one of more equal trade-based partnership, with some success: African exports to the US, excluding oil, increased by nearly a half between 2009 and 2015.

Security and counter-terrorism remained a key priority for US efforts. Obama "expanded considerably the US military presence in Africa," said Achille Mbembe of South Africa's Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research. Nevertheless, success in the fight against jihadist groups such as the Shabaab in Somalia and Boko Haram in Nigeria has been elusive.

Similarly, efforts to foster democracy have faltered with a string of disputed or deficient elections and a growing trend among African leaders of clinging to power in defiance of constitutions.

'Arrogant... racist'

African frustration with Obama has found resonance even in his own family, with half-brother Malik enthusiastically campaigning for Trump on Twitter, and even accepting an invitation to attend the final televised presidential debate in Las Vegas last month.

Malik's position is not, however the norm, and many Africans readily denounce Trump's views.

"Hillary Clinton, she is someone with a vision but this guy -- how do you call him? -- he is arrogant and a racist, he can be angry and even start more wars," said Benjamin Namkobe, a 31-year-old motorcycle taxi driver in Nairobi.

Neither candidate has made much mention of Africa in their major speeches since being named their party's candidate, but this is no surprise, said J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington.

"Africa largely does not figure into the electoral dynamics of the United States," said Pham, adding that "foreign policy in general" takes a back seat.

He pointed out that US policy towards Africa "tends to enjoy bipartisan support", meaning it does not represent a point of differentiation in debates.
My party when voted, will create jobs for the teeming unemployed youth scattered across the country, he said in an address to the leadership of the TUC.

He added: "We are talking from what we have done in the various sectors of the economy in some communities across Ghana, which we know and believe it will work for the whole country."

On Monday, the Supreme Court will rule on whether a high court ruling in favour of Dr Ndoum should hold or not.

The ruling will affect all other suit filed against the Electoral Commission (EC) by the remaining other disqualified presidential nominees.

Dr Ndoum and 11 other presidential candidates were disqualified for multiple errors on their forms by the EC.

But an Accra high court quashed the EC's decision, saying Dr Ndoum and Hassan Ayariga should be given the opportunity to rectify the errors.
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Ibrahim, who has been separated from her first husband, Kwadwo Safo, has stated that she is ready to give love a go if she finds the right kind of man.

She however has no particular preference as far as Mr. Right is concerned but he must at least be God fearing.

In an interview published by Punch News today, November 5, 2016, she dismissed any possibility of getting back to her ex husband though they have a cordial relationship.

I speak with my ex-husband; it is a must we speak because we have a son together.

"Everything is fine between us. But there is no way we are getting back together because it is in the past and he has moved on."

Concerning what she would appreciate in her new type of man, she said she would know when the right one comes now that she is open to love.

Of course I am open to love. I dont really look out for anything in a man because I believe if the right person is there, God would definitely bring him my way and I would just feel it. I would just know.

"I dont have a list of quality a man must possess. It also has to do with the mans personality because from the first greeting, you can tell if we would click or not.

'I dont really have so much I expect in a man but I know that he has to be God-fearing. With the kind of industry that I have found myself, you can only pray for a God-fearing man who would not listen to rumours."

She has an admirer in Nollywood actor, Emmanuel Ikubese, who at a time hinted that he had an interest in her.

He constantly posted emotional and heart touching words on social media expressing how much he cherish her.

On the other hand, the actress feels unhappy influences are out to prevent people in the limelight from finding fulfillment in their relationships.

"There are lots of evil spirits and people who are always ready to break relationships because we are in the limelight.

"They feel we do not deserve the best; that is what I noticed. They just dont want us to be happy."
He was apprehended during a raid organized by the Inspector-General of Police Special Task Force on Pipeline Vandalism and Illegal Bunkering.

Other members of his gang managed to escape the clutches of the law enforcement operatives.

ALSO READ: Oil bunkering suspect confesses he was introduced into it by mother

33,000 litres of adulterated fuel, jerry cans and other tools were recovered from the suspect and his gang, Punch News reports.

A police officer who spoke to Punch on a condition of anonymity said, The scene of the crime has also been sealed by the IG Special Task Force on Pipeline Vandalism and Illegal Bunkering."
According to reports, the terrorists attacked 119 Battalion, Nigerian Army location at Malam Fatori in northern Borno, on Friday, killing one officer and four soldiers.

The Army Spokesman, Col. Sani Usman, said in a statement on Saturday that the troops fought gallantly, repelled the attack and killed 14 Boko Haram terrorists.

Usman gave the name of the officer that died in action as Lt.-Col. Muhammad Abu Ali, the Commanding Officer of 272 Task Force Tank Battalion.

He said that four other soldiers sustained various degrees of injury during the encounter.

It will be recalled that because of the late senior officers exceptional bravery and gallantry, he was given an accelerated promotion from the rank of Major to Lieutenant Colonel and was decorated by the Chief of Army Staff, Lt-Gen. at Gamboru Ngala on Sept. 9, 2015, during an operational visit, he said.

ALSO READ: Terrorists attack village near Chibok

Usman, however, said that the troops recovered one General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG), seven AK-47 rifles and a large quantity of ammunition.
Safeway Loses Disability Lawsuit, Rehires Clerk and Pays $27K

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced a settlement with Safeway, Inc. that will require the nation-wide grocery chain to rehire a food clerk and pay $27,000 in damages after she was fired following a work-related injury. The settlement sheds light on the kind of accommodations employers are required to make for injured employees and how long those accommodations are necessary.

Here's a look at the EEOC's settlement and the lessons for small business owners.

Time's Up

According to the EEOC, Patricia Bonds was working as a food clerk at a Safeway in Westminster, Maryland when she sustained a work-related injury that substantially limited her ability to lift heavy objects. Safeway initially reassigned Bonds to the customer service desk, but then claimed she had exhausted her time limits for modified duty and abruptly placed her on indefinite unpaid leave.

The EEOC then filed a suit on behalf of Bonds, alleging that Safeway violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by firing Bonds because of her disability. The ADA "requires employers to provide a reasonable accommodation, including reassignment to a vacant position, unless it would cause a significant expense or difficulty to the employer," and does not include a time limit after which reasonable accommodations are no longer necessary. As long as an employee has a qualifying disability, the employer is required to provide reasonable accommodations.

Serious Settlement

The EEOC claims it tried unsuccessfully to reach a pre-trial settlement with Safeway, but was only able to settle after filing a lawsuit in federal court. Along with the $27,000 monetary award,

... the three-year consent decree resolving the suit requires Safeway to rehire Bonds with her continued seniority status and to provide her with a hand scanner or other reasonable accommodation to allow her to perform the food clerk job duties. Safeway is enjoined from violating the ADA, including refusing to provide reasonable accommodations. Safeway will provide annual ADA training to all managers and supervisors at its Westminster store and to all members of its eastern division accommodations committee. The grocery store will also report to EEOC on how it handles any complaints of disability discrimination and post a notice regarding the settlement.

The lesson for small business is the same as ever: don't discriminate against injured or disabled employees, and make sure you know your obligations under the ADA before reassigning or firing injured employees. An experienced employment lawyer can help.

Related Resources:
Local sources told a correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ado Ekiti that the victims included one Pastor Ojo, his driver, Jimoh and three others.

They were said to be travelling in two vehicles on Ise Ekiti road in Ise/Orun Local Government Area of the state when they were abducted.

Spokesperson of the State Police Command, DSP Alberto Adeyemi, confirmed the incident.

He said that two of the victims had been released, and the police were on the trail of the hoodlums to rescue the remaining three persons.

Adeyemi urged residents to help the police with useful information to track down criminals in the state.
Katuka said this when he presented relief materials to representatives of affected communities of Godogodo crisis on Saturday.

He said that reprisal and counter-reprisal only worsened situations by widening the dimension of the crisis.

The chairman, therefore, urged the affected parties to choose the path of peace as they relate with one another to promote mutual trust and understanding among them.

Katuka, who said the council was bent at ensuring that the displaced persons returned to their villages, added the Federal and state governments would assist by providing adequate security operatives to achieve the objective.

Villages represented were Ninte, Golgofa, Ungwan Ajo, Gaza Biyu, Dogon fili, Godogodo, among others.
Omoleke was reported to have been kidnapped around Iwaraja in Osun on Thursday while traveling to the state from Akure.

The Osun Police Public Relation Offocer, SP Folashade Odoro, confirmed this to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Osogbo on Friday.

Odoro said Omoleke was rescued on Friday evening from his abductors and had been reunited with his family.

The PPRO said that Omoleke was in good condition.

He said the Commissioner of Police in the state, Mr Fimihan Adeoye, led the rescue operation.

ALSO READ: Gunmen kidnap EKiti INEC Secretary

According to him, the police will intensify efforts to apprehend the kidnappers and bring them to justice.
Mr Taku Miyazaki, Trade Commissioner of JETRO, disclosed this in a statement to newsmen in Lagos on Saturday.

JETRO is a Japanese government-related body that promotes trade and investment between Japan and other nations.

Miyazaki noted that the import from Japan to Nigeria in 2015 was 358.7 million Dollars while export was 2,829 million Dollars.

He said that the trade volume between Nigeria and Japan decreased significantly in 2015 due to forex scarcity and lower price of natural gas.

Although, Nigeria is in the midst of a severe economic recession, many Japanese companies are still eager to tap into this attractive market to expand their business.

About 28 Japanese exhibitors are presently showcasing their products and technologies within the Japan Pavilion at the ongoing Lagos International Trade Fair.

Their durable products, developed with highly advanced technology can eventually give customers cost-saving merit as well. Miyazaki said.

According to him, there has been an increasing trend of manufacturing among Japanese companies in Nigeria in the past years.

Some of the exhibitors are not only selling their products but also producing here in Nigeria. CFAO Yamaha Motor Nigeria started assembling its motorcycles in Lagos last year.

Olam Sanyo Foods, a joint venture of Japanese Sanyo Foods and Olam International in Singapore, is also producing instant noodles Cherie and Mama Gold in Lagos.

Panasonic and Suzuki Motor have Nigerian partners to assemble their products locally and West African Seasoning has a long history of packing and selling Ajinomoto in this country.

These companies are not just making and selling their products in Nigeria. They create jobs, educate staff, transfer technology and share values of Japanese craftsmanship. he said.

The commissioner noted that Canon Nigeria Imaging Solutions recently established an office in Lagos to expand its business network in Nigeria.

Miyazaki quoted Mr Roman Troedthandl, Managing Director, Canon Central and North Africa, saying, we came here to make a long term commitment to the Nigerian market.

Although, Nigerian economy is now in a tough time, we are quite optimistic about the future business outlook and ready to serve Nigerian citizens quality of life with our cutting-edge products.

Miyazaki said that the benefits of the Japanese companies presence in Nigeria would enhance industrial development, boost trade volume and contribute to the governments diversification agenda.
According to a report by The Nation Newspaper, Omisore, a former Deputy Governor of Osun State, paid back the sum, which is part of the N1.7billion public funds traced to him.

It was reported that Omisore first made a payment of N300million and another N50million to to the anti-graft agency on Friday, November 4, 2016.

This is coming after Minister of State for Defence, Mr. Musiliu Obanikoro said out of the N4.685billon transferred to Sylva McNamara Limited, N1.7billion was given to Omisore.

ALSO READ: EFCC confirms return of N1B by ex-Customs boss
According to The Sun UK, Mondragen was just 10.5 inches long and weighed 14oz when he was born on September 29, 2016.

Doctors determined that he was not getting enough oxygen when he was just 21 weeks old and still in its mother's womb.

To this end, the mother, Marissa Mondragon, 23, from Othello, Washington, USA was given two shots of steroids to aid breathing.

This did not help however, prompting the doctors to insist on C-section in a bid to save the life of the baby.

ALSO READ: Meet 7 months old baby who looks like a newborn

Though hesitant at first, Marissa eventually conceded to the doctors' advice, as she did not want to take chances with the baby's life.

At first I didnt want to take Rayden out.

I would feel him kick at night and he was felt perfectly fine.

But I didnt want to risk his chances.

A foot print of Mondragen showed it to be very small.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Air Djibouti, Mr Mario Fulgoni, made this known in a statement issued in Abuja.

He stated that the pilot had on Oct. 14 embarked on the second leg of his historic journey in a Cirrus aircraft from North Weald airfield in the UK.

He noted that having already completed a transatlantic crossing from Washington D.C. in the light single-propeller aircraft, the Nigerian aviator is now heading to Malta.

He will then head on to Djibouti, where he will fly as a commercial pilot for the national flag carrier.

From there, Odujinrin will continue around the rest of the world, through India and Australia, and intends to set a further aviation milestone with the fastest U.S. coast-to-coast flight in a single-prop aircraft.

According to him, the flight is part of 'Project Transcend', a foundation aimed at inspiring young people to achieve their goals, regardless of their personal circumstances.

The airline boss then quoted Odujinrin as saying fewer than 115 people have completed a solo circumnavigation of the globe by air, and it has been my dream since my youth to join them.
Bolant believes in accepting partners along with all their baggage, and that is what he did during his wedding to his new wife, Nicole.

After the usual ceremony that involves saying wedding vows and kissing the bride, the groom got down and asked his wife's daughter, Isadora to be his daughter for life.

Like her mother, she accepted!

ALSO READ: Couple exchange pythons during wedding ceremony

This happened at Sao Bernardo do Campo, Sao Paulo, Brazil, where the wedding ceremony had taken place.
Archbishop Angelo Becciu, who acts as the Vaticans Deputy Prime Minister, told newsmen on Saturday, in comments later picked up by Vatican Radio.

He said These are offensive remarks for believers and scandalous for non-believers.

Since Aug. 24, central Italy had been hit by five earthquakes with magnitudes of 5 or more and 22,700 seismic events of lower intensity.

Almost 300 people died amid the quakes, which left tens of thousands homeless.

During a call-in session on Thursday, Radio Maria presenter, Father Giovanni Cavalcoli, said the natural disasters are Gods punishment for the original sin.

But may also be a rebuke against laws that offend Church views on family, marriage and sexual morals.

It really makes you think, let us call it Gods punishment, for sure it is a very strong rebuke from Gods providence to rediscover what are the principles of natural law, Cavalcoli said.

However, Becciu dismissed the remarks as pre-Christian and contrary to the image of God given to us by Christ and to the Virgin Marys merciful nature.

May earthquake victims please forgive us, the solidarity of the pope is with you all, he apologised.

On its website, Radio Maria apologised and distanced itself from Cavalcolis unacceptable views, saying they run against the key Catholic message of mercy and Pope Francis pastoral actions.
Turning the ship before it hits the iceberg
Finding Peace of Mind: Discover These Five Places in Europe to Unwind
A blessing of living in Southern Nevada is easy access to landscapes of different elevations. That circumstance is especially fortunate in October, when outdoor people start to fancy fall foliage. Because of the great disparity in elevation, fall colors will be at their peak, somewhere within easy driving distance, on any given day for at least five weeks. The annual show will be playing in nearby Southern Utah from now until early November.

Right now, the aspens are at peak in high-elevation areas such as the Markagunt Plateau, east of Cedar City. Lower elevations, such as Zion National Parks main area, usually peak in late October and early November.

The Markagunt Plateau, with elevations generally ranging from 9,000 to 10,000 feet, includes Cedar Breaks National Monument, Brian Head, Panguitch Lake and Duck Creek Village. A good drive in the area is what is known as the Fall Color Loop. It takes motorists through a variety of elevations so you are almost guaranteed to find good color somewhere along the route any day within the next two weeks.

This good leaf-peeping route starts in Parowan just off of Interstate 15 and travels up Highway 143 to Brian Head. From here you continue following the road over to Panguitch Lake. You will turn right onto Mammoth Creek Road and follow this over to Highway 14. Head west on Highway 14; youll travel past Duck Creek Village, Navajo Lake, then drop in elevation and end the drive in Cedar City. I would recommend allotting at least half a day for this excursion, so you can stop to enjoy the scenery and the overlooks, and take pictures.

If you cant find time to visit the Markagunt Plateau over the next few weeks, I would wait till the end of October or early November and head to the main area of Zion National Park just east of Springdale. Merely driving along the Virgin River, the last ten miles or so before the park entrance, is usually quite nice that time of year, for the Fremont cottonwood trees flanking the river will be resplendent with yellow and gold.

Once you reach the park of course, the six-mile scenic drive up Zion Canyon is a must. Until the end of October youll need to take the free shuttle bus, but starting in November and through March you can drive your own vehicle. However, spectacular as the drive may be, the two-mile round-trip Riverside Walk is even better. On foot you can not only see the foliage up close but also smell it, hear it as the wind makes it rustle, feel that same wind on your own skin, and stand there till your senses are sated. The walk begins where the drive ends, at the Temple of Sinawava shuttle stop.

This paved trail follows the rich riparian environment along the North Fork of the Virgin River. There are Fremont cottonwoods, bigtooth maples and also some velvet ash and box elder trees, so you can get quite a color palette of yellow, red and gold leaves, arrayed against the backdrop of Zions signature red, pink and orange sandstone cliffs and monoliths.

Of course Mother Nature doesnt always cooperate by following a precise timetable for coloring fall foliage. There are several reasons why leaves turn their vibrant colors. The primary one, shortening hours of daylight in fall, is completely predictable, but rainfall, wind, and the amount of sugar stored in the leaves in a given year, are not easily forecast. The ideal conditions also would include sunny days, cool but without a killing frost. With so many variables, weathermen dont know what Mother Nature will do; she seems to decide at the last minute.

But even if you travel to Southern Utah and dont happen to win the fall-foliage lottery, you surely wont waste the weekend. For the colorful monoliths of Zion glow winter and summer, the hoodoos haunt Cedar Breaks National Monument and Bryce Canyon National Park at all seasons.

Directions to Zion National Park, Utah: From Pahrump take NV-160 south about 52 miles to Las Vegas. Merge onto Interstate 15 north and drive about 135 miles to Utah Route 9 (Exit 16-Hurricane/Zion National Park). Follow Route 9 east for 19 miles to the main entrance of Zion National Park.

Directions to Parowan, Utah: From Pahrump take NV-160 south about 52 miles to Las Vegas. Merge onto Interstate 15 north and drive about 198 miles to Exit 78 to Utah 143/Parowan Utah.

Photo Credit: Deborah Wall

Photo: The fall foliage season has started in southern Utah and depending where you go, runs into early November.
The recent 7.9-monster quake that hit the capital city of Katmandu, Nepal on April 25 has one Pahrump resident scrambling for more information and one former Pahrump Valley teacher trying to let everyone know he is OK.

The recent 7.9-monster quake that hit the capital city of Katmandu, Nepal on April 25 has one Pahrump resident scrambling for more information and one former Pahrump Valley teacher trying to let everyone know he is OK.

Former music teacher at Pahrump Valley High School, David Tomasini let all his former students know he was fine through his Facebook on April 25:

(7.9) earthquake near Katmandu. I am okay. Others are not, and we should be thankful for every moment we have in this world. It was scary, Ill post more details when the dust settles. I love you mom and dad!

Ten hours later he posted a statement by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry offering condolences to the people in Nepal.

Tomasini was the music teacher in 2012 and after that left for Nepal in 2013 to teach kids in Katmandu. KTVB in Boise, Idaho reported on their website that the 30-year-old teacher has been teaching music and earthquake awareness. His mother, Barb, thinks that could be the reason why he, and his students survived.

Tomasini was the drum major at Boise State prior to him coming to Pahrump. He should return to the states in June, according to his family.

United Nations officials said Tuesday that the death toll has now passed 5,000, and could climb to 10,000. The UN has estimated eight million people have been impacted by the quake, a quarter of the population.

Water, food and electricity are in short supply and there are fears of outbreaks of disease.

Tomasini is not the only person with ties to Pahrump in Nepal.

Peter Davis, a retired federal agent, had little time to think about or even worry about his daughter Joy Davis who is currently living in Katmandu.

Peter Davis just woke up on Saturday morning to a Facebook message from his daughter telling her father that she was OK.

I was asleep when it happened so I really just woke up on Saturday to her email telling me about it, he said. There is no way to contact her and I only got a message through Facebook telling me she was OK.

The 36-year-old Joy Davis works in Katmandu as an art historian who has dedicated her life to returning stolen art from Nepal and bringing it back to the country.

Peter Davis said his daughter had a whole museum floor dedicated to the art she has recovered and that has yet to be recovered.

The museum has an exhibit where she has painted the artifact and where it is supposed to go in a temple or shrine, he said.

Joy Davis speaks the native language and has been there since 2007. He said most of the cost of her work has been out of her pocket.

I am not too worried about my daughter, Peter Davis said. She is not injured and she is super resourceful.

On Tuesday he received another update from his daughter that said she had gone without electricity and Internet for 74 hours and is boiling rain water to drink.

I am doing a survey of damages to temples and shrines, Joy Davis told her father. I am trying to see what is needed and what can be done. Im in Bhaktapur today (22 minutes out of Katmandu), which is very badly damaged; temples and homes collapsed and many lives lost. Local phone communication is also spotty so communication has been hard. We have been sleeping outside mostly, but last night I slept inside under a sturdy table. The tremors have finally slowed, but people are still afraid to go indoors.

Peter Davis shed some light on the country for he had visited Nepal before and according to him, There really is not much there to begin with.

He talked about what it was like to fly into the small airport of Katmandu.

Its not third world, but its more like fourth or fifth, Peter Davis said. You land and then they push a ladder up to the plane and you have to walk across the tarmac.

He then talked about airport security or lack thereof.

I was told I needed some cash and I had nothing on me so I had to leave the airport to get some, he said. I just walked out, before I cleared customs, so I had no passport and then I had to sneak past the armed guards to get back in.

He also said Katmandu lost their only train and that was not to the quake, but the royal government who he said is corrupt.

Also according to Peter Davis, the capital of 700,000 only had limited power prior to the quake. Power was only available for three to four hours some days of the week. In addition to that, modern medicine is not available at all and so these two factors make it harder to survive and its even harder to get messages out of the country.

Besides not having much electrical power, everything is corrupt there, he said. When I was there in 2009 I mailed 10 post cards to friends and family in the states and not one made it home because the mail people in Nepal stole the stamps.
Salutes all nonprofit organizations that help support, grow, anchor and promote the Muscatine area. Lets Walk Together Blue Zones Project encourages people to improve well-being by finding more ways to move naturally each day. And since spending time with our friends can have a big impact on our health and happiness, its better when we move together. When: November 9th-Noon-1pm Where: The Mississippi Harvest Statue The Clammer located on the riverfront bluezonesproject.com Support MuScatine nonprofit eventS save the date! Lets do wine @5 hoLiday stroLL When the workday is done, please join me for some fun. Well practice the Power 9 & unwind with a glass of wine. When: November 15, 2016 5pm-6:30pm Where: Port City Underground 208 W 2nd Street bluezonesproject.com Friday, December 2nd Downtown Muscatine If your non-profit group or business would like to participate, contact Jaime Limoges at (563) 262-0552, jaime.limoges@muscatinejournal.com TheThe Muscatine Journal history of supporting this community andyears, local non-profits. annually to a Quad-City Timeshas hasover beena a175-year leader and advocate for the community for 160 including a We richinvest history of number of localnonprofits. organizations. addition, employees also donate to numerous organizations aimedand at supporting the supporting We In invest moreour than $250,000 each yeartheir in a time number of Quad-City organizations our community wedonate proudlytheir serve, such the Blue Zones Project. employees time to as numerous organizations. Quad-City Times is proud to offer to charitable nonprofit organizations TheThe Muscatine Journal is proud to offer this this pagepage to charitable non-profit organizations 501(c)(3) for promoting events or services. 501(c)(3) for promoting events or services. ForFor moremore information on this page, contact Jaime at 563.262.0552 Jaime.Limoges@MuscatineJournal.com information on this page, contact Jennifer oratemail 563.383.2296 or email spotlight@qctimes.com
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Finally!

No, this has nothing to do with the Chicago Cubs' history-making World Series. Rather, the long-anticipated Popeyes Louisiana Chicken is opening its doors Monday in west Davenport.

Having looked ready to open for weeks, the casual restaurant at 1310 W. Kimberly Road opens at 10 a.m. Monday. It is in front of what many remember as the former K's Merchandise.

It is the ninth store for franchisees Rick Wali and his wife Susan, of Springfield, Illinois, and their entrance into Iowa.

"We're just going to establish the whole market," he said. "We'll see how many more after we open Moline next year, maybe one or two."

Hours are 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. The drive-thru will be open until 11 p.m.

Food truck craze leads to new insurance

Farmers Insurance should find Iowa and the Quad-Cities to be fertile ground for its new food truck insurance policy.

As of last Tuesday, Farmers rolled out a new policy across Iowa that caters to food truck owners. The policy combines commercial auto coverage with a restaurant business owner policy and includes business interruption coverage.

"We are the first, we know of, that is putting all the coverage that a food truck operator needs on a single policy," Jake Rothfuss, head of commercial auto insurance for the Woodland Hills, California-based Farmers, said Friday.

The Quad-Cities certainly ate up Food Truck Tuesday and Food Truck Friday events this fall. But the mobile food business is sweeping the country.

"A few years ago, our brick-and-mortar restaurants purchased a vehicle for use at special events and were just using them occasionally. Now, they became a real revenue source," he said.

Farmers' new policy now is available in 28 states after a launch in July in Utah and New Mexico. It was rolled out in Illinois earlier this fall.

"Food truck owners could get insurance before, but typically they had to go to multiple carriers," Rothfuss said. Food business owners would need policies to cover the commercial truck, the business owner and the restaurant, such as liability, food spoilage and business disruption.

"We are one of the largest small business insurers in the country and one industry we are proud to serve is the restaurants,'' he said, adding that the concerns raise by them led to the new policy.

For more information on the Farmers Mobile Food Vendors Insurance policy, contact Farmers at 1-800-FARMERS, visit Farmer.com or contact your local Farmers agent.

RI Bard Optical hits milestone

In celebration of its 35th anniversary, the Bard Optical Rock Island office will hold an eyewear event this week benefiting Christian Care.

Dr. Jeffrey Heden, manager JoAnne DePauw and their staff will host a Designer Eyewear Show from 3-5 p.m. Thursday at the 4032 Blackhawk Road office. A portion of the profits will go to Christian Care Homeless Shelter, Rock Island.

Dr. Arthur Bard opened Bard Optical in downtown Peoria in 1941. In 1981, Diana Hall purchased the company and began growing it to its current 21 offices. Bard is recognized as one of the Top 50 optical retailers in the country.

Arconic joins the Q-C landscape

In case you missed it, the giant aluminum plant we've always known as Alcoa shed its name last week when the company split in two. It is Arconic for the Davenport Works plant from here on out.

As with all historical moments today, the plant's manufacturing director Rob Woodall consented to taking a selfie as part of the name-changing ceremony.

But he had to ignore another request made just as he raised the new Arconic flag in front the Riverdale plant  to hang a blue W flag signaling a Cubs win instead.
Finally, we as a people can come together and focus on that which really matters in life.

That's right, the new Taylor Swift album is out.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following story was written by Michaele Niehaus, Education/Health reporter for The Hawk Eye in Burlington, Iowa, and used with permission from The Hawk Eye.



A barred owl was released Thursday at Starrs Cave Nature Center after a month-long stay at the Raptor Advocacy Rehabilitation and Education Center in Iowa City.

The owl was taken to the center Sept. 21 after Sam Warner of Burlington saw him sitting on the pavement alongside U.S. 61.

Warner circled around to get a better look and take a picture. When Warner got out of his truck, he noticed the owl had one eye shut and blood splattered on the ground next to him.

He looked like hed had a really bad night, Warner said Thursday.

He changed his mind about taking the picture, worried the camera noise might scare him to fly into oncoming traffic. Warner didnt want to leave him there, so he put on gloves, picked up the owl, placed him in a box in his truck and went to work at Reif Oil Co.

Warner called Michele Nigg, a registered veterinary technician, a Muscatine Community College instructor and a field team member at RARE  Raptor Advocacy, Rehabilitation and Education  Group about the bird. She agreed to take the owl to the raptor center.

Nigg and others at RARE believe the bird was hit by a car, but the only thing indicating injury was fresh blood in his right ear. The owl also was suffering from exhaustion.

RARE gave the owl subcutaneous fluids for three days as well as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medicine. He was fed once a day.

Raptors, water fowl and song birds the center takes in are admitted to the clinic to determine whether the injuries are life-threatening and if they will be able to be released. Nigg said the birds often come in with fractures, poisoning or exhaustion.

Its a very hard life (for a bird), Nigg explained.

She said the bird likely hatched last spring, making him too old for imprinting to be a concern.

The center has taken in more than 131 raptors and 65 non-raptors this year. Nigg said about a third of the birds who arrive are able to be released. The barred owl was one of them.

When she was comfortable releasing the bird, she placed him in a flight cage.

Quickly, we realized he was ready to go, Nigg said.

Hannah Clark of Burlington, one of Niggs vet tech students, took the owl to Starrs Cave in a box, trying to be certain she could hear if he was in distress. That meant keeping the radio off for the duration of the ride.

This is Clarks second year in the vet tech program. She will intern next summer at the Henry Dooly Zoo in Omaha, Neb., and hopes to get a job there. Thursday was the first time Clark handled the owl.

I really feel like being up that close gives you a whole new appreciation for (owls), Clark said.

Clark scouted out a spot with plenty of branches the owl could land on about 10 feet into the trail along Flint Creek. She put on gloves and carefully pulled back one side of the travel carrier. The owls wings began to flap as Clark grabbed his feet and lifted him toward her.

After giving him a moment to acclimate to his surroundings, she walked a few steps and gently tossed him into the air, providing momentum for his takeoff.

The owl clung to the trunk of the nearest tree before taking off for another tree further down the trail.
Iowans are used to living in a battleground state, their six precious electoral votes highly coveted by Republicans and Democrats alike.

It's been that way for years.

In 2004, George W. Bush and John Kerry criss-crossed Iowa so many times, they ended up in Davenport at the same time on the same day, Aug. 4, 2004.

In 2012, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney each dropped in on five cities, and that was in the last two weeks of the election.

In fact, the leader of the free world even spent three days in Iowa's summer sun in August 2012, traveling by bus from the Missouri River to the Mississippi, because he wanted those six votes so badly.

But this year, Iowa's getting a bit of the cold shoulder. The Hawkeye State may still be a battleground, but judging by the time Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have spent here, it's more like a skirmish.

And that's not what the first-in-the-nation caucus state is accustomed to.

Still, there's a reason for it.

"It's a mathematical hierarchy," said Steve Grubbs, the longtime Republican consultant from Davenport. Simply put, other states, with more electoral votes, are in play this year and are more important in their calculation to getting to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election. Thus, those states are occupying more of the candidates' time and attention.

North Carolina, for example, an important state for Trump to hold, has drawn significant visits from both candidates.

Pennsylvania, which the GOP nominee has pledged to win, also has drawn a lot of face time from Trump. Then, of course, there's Florida, which has 29 electoral votes and has drawn frequent visits from both Trump and Clinton.

It's not as if Trump and Clinton have bypassed Iowa. Trump has been here on six different dates since July 1. (He also will be in Sioux City on Sunday.)

Trump was in Davenport on July 28, but has not returned since.

Clinton has deployed an army of surrogates to the state, including musicians, actors, family and fellow politicians. But in the general election, she has been to Iowa only on four different days. She also made a Labor Day stop in Hampton, Illinois, which brought her in front of Quad-Citians, although it wasn't technically in the state of Iowa.

Jeff Link, a longtime Democratic strategist in Iowa, thinks the Clinton campaign made a strategic decision early on to lock down states such as Virginia and Colorado, which also are both important swing states and have higher minority populations, which is a strength for Clinton.

Iowa, while typically a Democratic-leaning state in presidential politics, also has a more difficult demographic profile for Clinton because of its relatively high proportion of non-college educated white voters. In fact, the data-analytic site, FiveThirtyEight, last month created a county-by-county map that sought to demonstrate where Trump and Clinton might best be positioned to pick up votes from those who went with the opposite party in the 2012 election.

Some of Trump's most fertile territory is in the upper Midwest, in places such as Scott and Clinton counties.

Still, Iowa is considered a tossup by most nonpartisan analysts, and Democrats and Republicans who are here are determined to pull it to their side of the ledger.

The latest poll in Iowa says that the race is a dead heat between Clinton and Trump. A Quinnipiac University poll, released last week, had the two tied at 44 percent.

One-sided TV ad war; social media rising

In a normal election year, the presidential candidates would be focusing much of their firepower on television, inundating Iowans with nasty 30-second attack ads.

In 2012, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama and allied groups dumped more than $75 million into TV ads in Iowa.

This year, it's a mostly one-sided battle. Bloomberg Politics reported Wednesday that Clinton had spent $211 million in television advertising in the previous 21 weeks nationwide. But Trump had spent only about a third of that, $74 million. Those figures don't include third party groups. Up-to-date data on Iowa spending wasn't available last week.

Trump's campaign has, more recently, bought TV time. Last week, it announced a $25 million ad buy in several battleground states.

Still, the Republican nominee made clear early on he wasn't going to invest as heavily in paid media, relying more on news coverage and his own powerful social media network, especially Twitter.

It's an unusual strategy. But at least in Iowa, polls had Trump either tied with or leading Clinton.

Whether this is the start of a trend is not clear. Much will likely depend on what happens Tuesday. Dianne Bystrom, who studies political advertising at the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University, also says Trump is a unique candidate with an ability to draw media attention without spending big on television.

But she and others say that, as the public is using social media more, there is a clear shift in how campaigns are delivering their messages.

"I do think over time were going to have much more reliance on social media," Bystrom said.

A Pew Research Center study, released in July, said 24 percent of U.S. adults turned to social media posts by Clinton or Trump to get information about the campaign in the previous month.

Those social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, are taking on a bigger load in how campaigns communicate with the public, shifting attention in some ways away from more traditional campaign websites.

Grubbs, who runs Davenport's Victory Enterprises, thinks that also is true when it comes to more traditional advertising.

"I think we're seeing a paradigm shift to digital TV away from broadcast TV," he said.

Campaigns are distributing video on their own platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, to reach voters.

Bystrom notes even as Clinton has spent on broadcast television, the campaign's own social media outlets and website are being used to drive messages to its audience.

"Theyre putting out news content," she said.

An example last week was a tweet that linked to a nearly three-minute video segment on her website featuring a man she had met in the 1990s who aged out of the foster-care system and attested to her dedication to helping improve the system. The video had been viewed more than 2.6 million times.

The Pew study said that Clinton was more apt to use social-media platforms to link to her campaign's content, while Trump linked to news stories, often from conservative sites.

The study also said that while they posted about the same number of times during the three-week study period, Trump's activity got noticed far more in the way of Facebook shares and retweets. On Twitter, anyway, the Pew study said the greater number of interactions may be because Trump has more followers.

Outside interests bypass Q-C congressional races

Between 2010 and 2014, outside interests dumped $20 million into Quad-City congressional races.

In the three campaign cycles before the 2016 election season, local congressional races were, to varying degrees, shiny objects that drew lots of outside attention.

This year: crickets.

This year, no outside groups have bothered to play in Illinois 17th or Iowas 2nd congressional districts. (We dont really count the $20 the Sierra Club reported spending on each of the races.)

Typically, the big money flows to races that are considered the most competitive, and there are a mere handful of them across the United States.

One doesnt have to look far to see the big-money flow. Upriver in Iowas 1st Congressional District, special interest groups have pumped $2.7 million into the race between Rep. Rod Blum, a Dubuque Republican, and his Democratic rival, Monica Vernon of Cedar Rapids. And that's just through the end of September.

The 17th District race between Rep. Cheri Bustos, a Moline Democrat, and Republican Patrick Harlan of Galesburg has sparked little interest outside the confines of its western Illinois boundaries.

Likewise, in Iowas 2nd District, where Rep. Dave Loebsack, an Iowa City Democrat, is competing with Republican Christopher Peters of Iowa City.

The lack of fireworks may be a break for television viewers who are used to digesting the bile in these two races. The 2012 race was the granddaddy of them all, when outside groups poured $9 million into the district and the battle between Bustos and former Rep. Bobby Schilling. It was an exceedingly negative race.

Still, for those eager for that sort of thing, theres always the battle for Illinois local legislative races to keep the dirt flying.

Really, almost $4 million for a Statehouse race?

You read that right. It's entirely possible the spending for the 71st District Illinois House race could get close to $4 million.

To put that into perspective: Most congressional races don't cost that much. In fact, in 1998, one of the most competitive Quad-City congressional races  between Mark Baker and Lane Evans  saw similar spending.

This year, it's Illinois Rep. Mike Smiddy, D-Hillsdale, and Republican Tony McCombie, the mayor of Savanna, who are battling it out for the Statehouse seat. The 71st is one of the eight most competitive House races in the state, according to Kent Redfield, emeritus professor of political science at the University of Illinois. Television commercials and near-daily mailings are telling the increasingly nasty story.

"This is one of the primary targets," Redfield said.

That the 71st turned into a knock-down, drag-out shouldn't be surprising. Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner is determined to wrest seats from Democratic House Speaker Mike Madigan, and he and his conservative allies are pumping millions into this and other races across the state. Meanwhile, Madigan-controlled committees, allied labor unions and other groups are spending millions to hold onto those seats.

So far, according to Illinois Election Data, a private website run by Scott Kennedy, about $2.6 million has been spent by Smiddy, McCombie and outside interests on their behalf. And with a week to go until Election Day, the candidates still had $1 million at the ready.

In fact, the gusher of money in this year's Illinois General Assembly races is so heavy that, in the 72nd District, which has been in Democratic hands for decades, spending among Democrat Mike Halpin, Republican Brandi McGuire and a conservative special interest group already has topped $1 million.

"Republicans have got a ton more money than they have in the past, so they're out contesting not only the usual suspects, but they're also playing in districts where they might not otherwise," Redfield said.

Illinoisans voting early

If youre going to vote, the waits going to be an hour, the man in the Cubs hat said on a sunny Friday afternoon.

John Sargeant of Moline had just pulled up to the Moline Public Library on 41st Street about noon Friday, Oct. 28. He planned to vote, but that hope was dashed when he saw the line at the door.

Too long; Sargeant had too many things to do that afternoon before work, so he gave up.

Ill give it a try on Monday, he said.

Early voters in Rock Island County are seeing something new this election cycle: Lots of company.

On the first day of in-person voting, the line at the library, one of five early in-person voting sites in the county, the line snaked around the block.

On the 28th, it wasnt that bad, but the line still was a lengthy one. In it was Samantha Remley, a nurse from Orion. She said she had an 11-hour shift on Election Day, so this was how she would cast her ballot.

She didnt expect a line this long. The last time she voted early, she said, I walked right in and walked right out.

Karen Kinney, the Rock Island county clerk, says it's possible 40 percent of voters this election will cast ballots in the days before Election Day. Four years ago, it was 22 percent.

Theyre rattling our doors in the morning before we can even get them unlocked, she said.

As of Friday, about 25,000 people had cast early votes in the county.

Early voting is not so unusual in the Iowa Quad-Cities. Iowas perennial battleground status means presidential campaigns invest heavily in wringing as many votes out of the populace as possible. And in recent years, that's meant a heavy focus on early voting, by mail and in person.

In 2012, about half of Scott County voters cast ballots early.

This year, the numbers are down a bit. Scott County Auditor Roxanna Moritz said Friday about 35,000 people in the county had voted early, down about 6,000 from the same time four years ago.

Some of the drop off could be because of a change in strategy by the Democrats. But Moritz said she thinks it may be a sign of a smaller overall turnout because of the electorate's disillusionment.

"I hope I'm wrong," she says, but adds that people "feel like their vote doesn't matter" this year.

Still, things have changed a lot from the days when absentee voters had to cite a reason to cast a ballot. And this election cycle, Illinois voters appear to be embracing early voting like never before.

That's prompted local campaigns to react earlier than before, says Don Johnson, a longtime Democrat in Rock Island County who runs a direct mail company.

"I think campaigns are just starting to catch up with it," he says.

At the Moline library, Louis and Joanne Wiklund of Port Byron were casting early votes for the first time last month.

They said their Election Day polling place, at the local library, has little parking and usually is crowded.

So, the Wiklunds, who are figuring this Election Day will be especially busy, took the drive into Moline to cast ballots.

Id rather sit at home on Election Day and not be out in the mess, Joanne said.
Do you know a good place to hunt pheasant? Tony Jones would like to know about it.

Jones, an author and theologian, is this year's speaker for the 17th annual Faith & Life Series set for Sunday, Nov. 13, at St. Paul Lutheran Church, Davenport.

"Jesus' Crucifixion  The Ultimate Political Act," is at 4 p.m. This lecture is free and open to the community.

Jones is also a passionate hunter, and picked up the sport as an adult. Hunting and being outdoors makes him feel close to God, he wrote in a recent newspaper article.

In fact, Jones went duck hunting and preached in North Dakota in October, and in addition to Iowa on Nov. 13, is set to pheasant hunt in South Dakota and preach in December.

Hunting trips are typically hosted by a local enthusiast and church member, who knows the best spots.

Jones, described as a provocative voice in Christianity, has recently published his 14th book, "Did God Kill Jesus?" This was an outgrowth of his former blog and an e-book.

The resident of Edina, Minn., spent two years researching the book. He is currently discussing it in places like Davenport, and on television shows like "Morning Joe" with host Joe Scarborough.

Jones is concerned about young people, those from Generation X and millennials, who don't have a church affiliation. This was brought out in a 2015 report from Pew Research Center.

One reason, he said, is because much of Christianity is explained as if it were part of Aesop's Fables, to a second-grade Sunday School reading level.

The actual, historical account, such as with the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, is much more dramatic and telling. The author said he believes God is involved in what was ultimately a political act.

There is a lack of engagement and participation in any kind of organized religion. "We've botched telling the story and we can fix that," Jones said.

In his presentation, based on the new book, he argues that a viewpoint of Christianity is that all are "sinners in the hands of an angry God." That, he said, was an invention of the medieval church and it became enshrined as orthodox Christianity.

St. Paul's pastor, the Rev. Peter Marty, came in contact with Jones as Marty published his magazine, Christian Century.

The minister admires Jones, who he calls "adventurous" and "clear-thinking."

The discussion: If God is violent, how did the bloody execution on the cross happen and be characterized as a example of parental love?

"It's a good, tough subject," Marty said. "What good parent would do that to their child?"

Jones served as a pastor and non-profit executive in places like the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He later received his doctorate in theology from Princeton Theological Institute.

He was 28 years old when he started writing books, which now include "The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier" and "The Sacred Way: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Life."

Jones is married and has three children in Edina, a suburb of Minneapolis.
Once upon a time, the Quad-City area had many schools that were little more than one-room buildings with one teacher, one classroom, and all g
Whoever wins Tuesday's presidential election will face an assertive, aggrieved Russia whose risk-taking behavior under President Vladimir Putin is increasingly worrisome to American experts.

Today's pushy, headstrong Russia presents a paradox: By most measures, it's a country in decline, with a sagging economy, an underdeveloped technology base and a shrinking population. Corruption pervades nearly every sector. The collapse of the Soviet Union is still an open wound, and many Russians blame the United States for taking advantage of them during their years of decline.

Yet this inwardly weak Russia displays the cockiness of a street fighter. It is waging war in Syria, Ukraine and in cyberspace with a seeming disdain for American power. According to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Russian hackers sought to "interfere with the U.S. election process," on authority of the highest levels of the Russian government.

"Putin's definition of risk-taking has evolved in the direction of greater boldness and less attention to how it will affect the U.S.," argues Dimitri Simes, president of the Center for the National Interest. "Putin thinks that American positive inducements are next to nonexistent, and that the penalties are minimal, and will be imposed whatever he does."

The next president must assess how to alter Russian behavior, without direct military confrontation. Is that best done by cutting deals with Putin, as Donald Trump suggests? Or should it be a firmer process of asserting U.S. power and interests, as Hillary Clinton has argued? This may be the biggest national-security issue in the election.

Future U.S. strategy should begin with a clear understanding of how Putin's Kremlin looks at the world. And here, leading American analysts offer some disturbing warnings. Moscow sees itself as the wounded party, fighting back after decades of U.S. supremacy. Putin, the ex-KGB officer, is turning the tools of covert subversion and information operations developed during the Cold War back against the United States.

"The evidence does not seem to suggest that Putin favors one candidate over the other this November. Instead, it suggests that he favors chaos. He wants the American political process to look bad," writes national security analyst James Ludes in a post titled "The Russians Read our Cold War Playbook." Moscow's new propaganda themes include U.S. government surveillance, political corruption that benefits elites and rigged elections, he argues.

Russia's strategy has been characterized as "hybrid warfare," but historian Angus E. Goldberg contends in Small Wars Journal that a better term is the Russian word "bespredel," which means "absence of limits," or "anything goes." The word is often used to describe the behavior of the corrupt oligarchs who have prospered in Putin's Russia.

Moscow's new weapons range across the spectrum of hard and soft power, overt and covert. "What binds them together as a coherent system is the willingness of the Russian Federation to implement them without any constraints," writes Goldberg.

Putin himself displays an unusual combination of personal traits. "He can be emotional, headstrong, even impulsive," argues Stephen Sestanovich, a Russia expert at Columbia University. But Putin is also calculating. "The Russians have a saying: Measure seven times, cut once. He's that kind of careful guy."

Over the last few years, Putin's risk tolerance has clearly grown. "In the history of the Cold War, they never did anything remotely like the intervention in Syria," notes Sestanovich. Moscow calculates that "the risk of dangerous payback is less than it used to be."

Putin's behavior is also shaped by the increasing ascendancy of military and intelligence officials in his inner circle. Like Putin, they are Cold War veterans with a sense of grievance against America. A well-placed Russian recently described to Simes the worldview of these Kremlin insiders: "We are being surrounded. America wants to destroy us. The only thing they understand is force."

So back to the question for Election Day: Which approach to dealing with this newly threatening Russia makes the most sense? Many analysts fear that Trump's conciliatory words would be read in Moscow as a sign of American exhaustion, and feed new demands. Cybersecurity expert Dmitri Alperovitch argued in a recent podcast with War on the Rocks that if Moscow's covert meddling isn't deterred, it's "going to be played over and over again across the globe."

Clinton's tougher stance sounds like a better way to protect U.S. interests, so long as she doesn't make Putin feel humiliated or backed into a corner. This Russia is weaker than it looks, but it has been wounded by recent history and is all too ready to lash out.
I met Davenport Community School District board member Mr. Ken Krumwiede three years ago on the annual school bus trip to Des Moines to visit with legislators and Gov. Terry Branstad. He was a Davenport school board legislative advocacy member chaperoning and leading the yearly trip for Davenport high schools. Mr. Krumwiede helped me understand the true meaning of advocacy, the importance of having conversation with legislators, and the process for communicating with legislators.

Our next encounter was during my senior year at Davenport North High School. I was class president and also elected as a student school board member. I had the honor of working with Mr. Krumwiede, Dr. Art Tate and the other board members on several issues that impacted all of our Davenport schools. A very significant issue was school funding. I learned about the difficulties that school boards face with inadequate funds to keep daily operations going. I also learned about the funding inequalities and inequities between school districts, including Davenport and North Scott.

As a part of the Worth-Less Student movement, I will be supporting Mr. Krumwiede. He is the candidate in our District 92 who best understands education, school funding and knows that education will lead to a better Iowa for all. State Rep. Ross Paustians record on education funding speaks for itself.

Please take time to vote on Nov.8 for my friend, a guy I met on a bus trip three years ago. Mr. Krumwiede cares about all Iowa families and students.

Andrew DeNoyer

Davenport
Ken Krumwiede is an outstanding and well-qualified citizen candidate for Iowa state representative. He has been recognized locally and nationally for his work in education. During nine years of volunteer service on the Davenport Community School District board, Ken had proved himself as a champion for our children.

Ken Krumwiede has been a strong voice for equal and adequate school funding. He wants to make sure that our kids get the same funding as kids in other areas of the state. He supports our outstanding superintendent Dr. Arthur Tate in his belief that every child in our school district should get a fair shake.

We know Ken will take that fight to Des Moines. As Harrison Elementary School parents, Ken fought to make sure our kids could stay in their neighborhood school and he listened to the concerns of all of the parents and neighborhood.

Ken Krumwiede is a success-driven educator, a veteran and a mental health advocate; our community needs Ken Krumwiedes representation in Des Moines.

Gabe and Jen Knight

Davenport
From the Wall Street Journal tonight, just a few days from the presidential election on Tuesday, a sleaze expose involving the GOP Presidential nominee Donald Trump.

The National Enquirer's parent company (they back Trump) agreed to pay $150,000 to a former Playboy centerfold model for her story of an affair she had a decade ago with Donald Trump. But they didn't ever publish that story, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing documents and sources familiar with the story.

Snip:
As a mother and an experienced child care professional, Donna Fedderson knows that choosing the right provider for your little one can be a stressful time for parents.

My best thing I can tell any parent is your gut reaction when you walk in the door, says Fedderson, who has worked in day care for 30 years. For the last 10 years, she has worked at Angel Care Daycare in Sturgis, where she serves as general manager.

For parents who are looking for safe and affordable day care that you can trust, the South Dakota Department of Social Services and local experts say the best way to put your mind at ease is to do your homework before making that crucial decision.

The South Dakota Department of Social Services recommends that parents find out the fees. In Rapid City, the cost can range from approximately $120 to $147 per week for a 3-year-old and $135 to $165 per week for an infant," according to Tia Kafka, the Departments communications director.

"In some cases the cost can be higher depending on the age of the child and type of child care provider.

Parent who need financial assistance can find more information at dss.sd.gov/childcare/childcreassistance.

Hours of operations, number of children, and provider education are other important questions parents should ask, according to the department. Find out how many adults there are to children, what their licensing is ... the age groups," Fedderson said.

"And one thing that Ive never had anybody ask me is, Do you do ongoing education  if you do what is it?

Brenda Showalter, owner of Rapid City Harmony Child Care and Preschool, LLC, in Rapid City, likes to incorporate learning lessons along with fun and creative activities. I feel that kids need to have fun and they need to learn and also do fun and learning together, said Showalter, who opened her facility five years ago.

One of her goals is to prepare children for preschool and kindergarten, which includes teaching them letters, numbers, how to write their name.

The Department of Social Services also encourages parents to ask about guidelines for discipline, nutrition, safety and emergency plans. Day cares are required to have a staff member onsite who is CPR certified.

If you're still unsure about the facility, visit the place and talk to other parents who bring their children to the day care.

When I talk with a parent when they come to my in-home child care, its not just them interviewing me," Showalter said. "I interview them to see if they are going to be a good fit for my program just to make sure they are on board with all the policies."

For more tips on selecting a day care, visit dss.sd.gov/formsandpubs/docs/CCS/choosingchildcareinSD.pdf.
SPEARFISH | In the wake of increased racial tension throughout the U.S., along with several highly publicized protests, Black Hills State University is hosting its inaugural Presidential Lecture Series with a nationally known speaker.

Dr. Kevin D. Rome, president of Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Mo., will speak on the topic Leading Beyond Anger, African-American Male Leadership in Todays Society, with a social at 6:30 p.m. and Romes lecture at 7 p.m. Sunday, in Meier Hall on the BHSU campus.

A limited number of tickets are available for this event, which may be requested via email at Corinne.Hansen@BHSU.edu.

BHSU President Tom Jackson Jr. created the lecture series to draw attention to current events and ideas with the potential for great impact on todays college students and communities, according to a prepared release.

Dr. Rome will discuss African-American leadership. Future guests may speak on sustainability, enrollment, globalization and research, he said.

A nationally recognized and dynamic speaker, Rome brings a unique perspective on the recent racial incidents occurring in communities throughout the U.S. Rome began serving as president of Lincoln University in 2013.
PIERRE | The three members of the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission operate mostly in obscurity. That is, until someone wants to construct an oil pipeline or build a large wind farm or an investor-owned utility company wants to raise prices on customers.

Or if an oil company wants to build a pipeline beneath a river that provides a quarter of the state's population with clean water, as is the case with the controversial Dakota Access pipeline project.

One seat is up for election on Tuesday. The incumbent is Republican Chris Nelson, who is seeking a second 6-year term and previously spent two terms as South Dakota secretary of state.

The challenger is West River Democrat Henry Red Cloud of Pine Ridge, who said he has never before sought an elected office and directly descends from 19th century Oglala war chief Red Cloud.

Nelson was term-limited in 2010 as secretary of state and finished second in a three-way primary election for the Republican nomination for South Dakotas single seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. The PUC wasnt a consideration for Nelson until he received a call one day inquiring about possibly filling a vacancy.

Gov.-elect Dennis Daugaard was forming his new administration and planned to hire Dusty Johnson as his chief of staff. Johnson had just won re-election to the PUC that same month of November 2010. Daugaard wanted to know whether Nelson would accept an appointment from Daugaard to replace Johnson on the PUC.

Nelson took the job. Under the state laws regarding the PUC, he needed to seek election for the remaining four years of the six-year term at the next election in 2012. Nelson won the 2012 contest. Now he wants a second full term.

While on the PUC, Nelson has participated in the decisions allowing the Keystone XL pipeline to be built through South Dakota and permitting the Dakota Access pipeline to be constructed through South Dakota.

Keystone XL crews never started work because President Obama refused to allow it to pierce the Canada-U.S. border.

In the case of Dakota Access, which would carry oil from North Dakotas Bakken formation to Illinois, the president originally helped drillers by letting them take Missouri River water for a period.

The waters availability has since been shut off again.

Companies planning Keystone XL and Dakota Access carefully drew their routes to avoid crossing through tribal reservations in the Dakotas.

Now the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, whose reservation straddles the Dakotas on the west side of the Missouri River, is leading a protest to stop Dakota Access.

This came after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave permission in July for Dakota Access to cross the Missouri River via a tunnel 90 feet below the river bottom. The crossing is upstream from the reservation and downstream from Bismarck. Originally, Dakota Access considered crossing upstream from Bismarck.

Red Cloud, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, is an outspoken advocate for solar power in homes. He runs a business at Pine Ridge tied to a solar-power business based in Colorado.

Red Cloud wants to stop the Dakota Access pipeline from crossing the Missouri River. His position can be boiled down to no pipelines.

In that respect he is similar to Chief Red Cloud, who led many of the 1866-68 attacks against U.S. troops and civilians along the Bozeman Trail, trying to keep soldiers and white settlers out of the Powder River basin west of the Dakotas.

Chief Red Clouds guerilla actions caused wagon traffic to nearly cease along the Bozeman Trail. The U.S. government shut down three forts  Reno, Phil Kearny and C.F. Smith  as part of negotiating peace with him.

Those negotiations produced the 1868 Fort Laramie treaty that gave Sioux tribes all of the land west of the Missouri River in what today is South Dakota and a strip of land in what is now North Dakota.

The treaty, however, allowed the construction of rail roads, wagon roads, mail stations, or other works of utility or necessity, which may be ordered or permitted by the laws of the United States.

Therein is the irony of the current matter. Some Dakota Access protesters cite the 1868 treaty, but they dont mention that it contained a loophole big enough for a train track or wagon road to go through. Many protestors instead cite the 1851 treaty, which granted more land but also contained a loophole for the U.S. government to build roads.

The 1868 treaty replaced the 1851 treaty, which was honored for one year. In both instances the treaties dealt a lot with tribal bands stopping attacks upon each other and fighting over hunting territory.

Now, some 150 years later, the Dakota Access pipeline has turned the debate back in time. While the protest is in the news almost daily this fall, the PUC election campaign hasnt received much public attention.

The PUC seats are one of the statewide offices that arent subject to party primaries. Instead, the nominees are chosen at the summer statewide conventions held by the political parties.

As a result, Nelson and Red Cloud didnt have a forum to express their views side by side until last weekend in Sturgis.

During their one hour together, Red Cloud clearly knew the renewable energy business.

But he readily acknowledged he doesnt yet grasp all of the other laws and rules regarding the PUCs regulatory duties that can run from misdeeds by grain dealers to consumer complaints to approval of major energy projects or rate hikes.

This is Nelsons fourth statewide campaign and he clearly knows how to present as a candidate.

Nelson listed as priorities remaining very tenacious and intentional about keeping a lid on utility rates, dealing with the rural-rural divide in South Dakota for broadband telecommunications services and continuing his record of making decisions based on fact and law.

Red Cloud said he was born and raised in South Dakota on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He worked in structural steel in his young days on projects in New York City, Washington, D.C., Cleveland and Los Angeles.

But my heart was always back here in South Dakota, he said. So in the summer of 1995, he decided he wanted to return to South Dakota. He started building his own house and started to look at energy sources. That led him to start his renewable energy business at residential level.

I was looking for the homeowner, immediately empowering the homeowners saving, Red Cloud said. South Dakota should be and will be a state leading in renewable energy.

He said he has trained almost 1,000 individuals in a five-state area on renewable residential energy. We can create our own future around renewable energy. We can. Thats where I would like to work.

Nelson runs cattle at White Lake in addition to his government job in Pierre. On his ranch ground and all around it are wind towers.

Responding to an audience members question, Nelson said there is an objective in state law that 10 percent of electricity come from renewable energy. Each year the PUC publishes a report.

Most of the companies in the state are well beyond that. There are a few that havent met that, Nelson said.

He added that 75 percent of electricity in South Dakota comes from renewable resources: 25 percent from wind and 50 percent from hydroelectric dams on the Missouri River.

Red Cloud said people could cut their residential electricity costs by 50 to 75 percent through renewable systems. Nelson said he agreed and theres nothing that prevents a person from installing a wind or solar system.

Out among the voters, Nelson put his home-style signs in place along the highways months ago. Red Cloud came into the forum with some residential yard signs for his candidacy. Both come across as people who would make good neighbors.

Neither man is raking in cash for his candidacy.

Nelson reported last week that he had received a bit more than $67,000 for his campaign this fall. That included $1,600 from federal-level political action committees; $12,050 from state-level PACs; $2,531 from political-party organizations; $31,462 from individuals who gave $101 or more; and $19,392 from individuals in amounts of $100 or smaller.

Nelson said he received three $1,000 contributions from Rod Bowar of Kennebec Telephone Co.; Jim Sullivan of Birmingham, Ala., who was a public service commission member for 25 years in that state; and from Tim and Kristie Fiegen of Sioux Falls. She is a member of the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission.

His largest state-level PAC contributions included $3,000 from COTEL; $2,500 from Midcontinent Communications; $2,000 from South Dakota Action Committee for Rural Electrification; $1,500 from South Dakotans for Quality Cable TV; and $1,000 from Second Century, a PAC based in the Woods Fuller Shultz and Smith law firm in Sioux Falls.

The campaign committees for U.S. Rep. Kristi Noem and U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds each contributed $500 to their fellow Republican.

Nelson reported spending $55,567 to date, mostly on advertising and consulting. He came into the race with $36,834 cash on hand as of Jan. 1, and reported $48,333 remaining as of the reporting deadline.

Red Cloud reported $6,227 in contributions of $100 or smaller amounts and $3,547 in individual donations of $101 or more. He didnt show any contributions from political action committee in-state or out-of-state. He received $1,450 in donations from political party organizations.

Among his individual donors, there is former U.S. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin of Sioux Falls for $500, Ted Skantze of Pine Ridge for $500 and former PUC member Jim Burg of Wessington Springs for $500. State Sen. Bernie Hunhoff of Yankton gave $150 to Red Cloud from his legislative campaign committee.

Altogether Red Cloud listed $11,374 of revenue and cash expenses so far of $6,746. He started without any cash for the campaign and showed $4,628 cash remaining.
The trend of renovating tired yet historically significant buildings into vibrant working and living spaces has arrived with vigor in downtown Rapid City, where due to the age of many buildings, such opportunities are many.

Prior successes include The Shops at Main Street Square in the former Sears Building; the stores, eatery and professional spaces in the former Fairmont Creamery; and the snazzy new apartments and commercial space in 919 Main, the former Dusek Building.

Now, a group of investors pushing that type of rebirth are at it again with the renovation of the Dean Building at 329 Main St., most recently the downtown location of Tire Muffler Alignment.

Some of the same forces that found success with the creation of The Garage, a shared creative space in the former Motor Service Co. building on St. Joseph Street, are behind the latest reformation of a downtown structure.

Matthew Ehlman and Ted Stephens III, principals in The Numad Group, saw the Dean Building project as a way to add more mixed use space, along with trendy urban residential space, to the east side of downtown.

We thought we could potentially create a space that contained a number of apartments, as well as some commercial area and professional office space, Ehlman said.

The building fronting Main Street is in the process of a $1.5 million remodeling project that should wrap up next month.

The Dean Buildings long history includes years of selling gleaming new Chevrolet automobiles that beckoned customers from an auto showroom facing Main Street. More recently, mufflers, new tires and custom wheels were sold at TMA.

Now the transformed showroom will be home to Harriet and Oak Cafe and Roaster and Kicks and Giggles, a baby boutique.

Behind the old showroom, the former auto garage will become office and conference space for Evergreen Media, a Rapid City publishing house formerly known as Visitor Publishing.

On the east side of the building facing a spacious off-street parking lot, six one-bedroom apartments, or flats, already have tenants waiting for the final construction touches to be completed.

The building dates to 1929 and is named for its original owner, Roy Dean, founder of Dean Motor Company.

Dean also served as vice president of the Federal Building and Loan Association, and was later president of Rapid City National Bank.

C.K. McDonald bought Dean Motor Co. and changed the name to McDonald Chevrolet.

By 1941, the name had been changed to Rapid Chevrolet, which remained in the building until 1976, when the dealership moved to Deadwood Avenue.

Midwest Tire & Muffler, later TMA, bought the building in 1978 and remained in business there for more than 30 years. TMA still operates eastside and westside locations in Rapid City.

According to Pennington County records, a limited liability corporation, TMA LLC, (an investment group with no connection to the automotive repair company) purchased the 40,000-square-foot modern broad front brick building in March for $800,000.

The city issued a permit for interior demolition valued at $25,000 in October of 2015 to the former owner, MWT Leasing Co., of Rapid City.

A permit for the remodeling, valued at $1,473,000 was issued to the investment group in May of this year.

The mission of architect Eric Monroe of TSP Architecture was to keep the historic flavor of the Dean Building intact as much as possible, working with National Historic Register guidelines. The building was added to the register of historic places in 1995.

One of his most daunting challenges was working with a building constructed 86 years ago.

There wasnt a right angle in the building, because it was from the 1930s, Monroe said.

The building was gutted from its concrete floor to the peak of its rounded roof.

New utilities, plumbing for the new apartments, efficient LED lighting and a sprinkler fire suppression system were installed.

Monroe kept as many tribute touches to the buildings heritage as he could, including tire scuffs on a former mezzanine stairway wall, now part of the wall in a mens restroom.

The apartments, commercial shops up front and office space on the west side all share design cues preserved during the demolition and remodeling, cleaned and sealed concrete floors, exposed original brick, wood accents fashioned from mezzanine flooring saved during demolition, and ceilings soaring from 14 feet to 24 feet.

The main challenge was preserving the integrity of this beautiful building, Monroe said. We wanted to preserve the integrity while giving new life and new use to it.

The parking lot in front of the apartments includes cutouts where low-maintenance buffalo grass will be sown.

Ehlman said the investment group behind the project kept a low profile during the demolition and remodeling process and wishes to remain anonymous.

Word got around and interest in the building led to all the leases being filled, including rental of all six apartments even before construction is completed.

Theres a desire in our community for more residential space and creative space to be developed. That was the driving force of the investors that took part in this. Theyre all community members, Ehlman said.

One of the lessees, Rick DenHerder, hopes to move his publishing firm, Evergreen Media, from its current location out by Cabelas as early as this weekend.

Evergreen publishes Black Hills Visitor, Impact Magazine, Black Hills Parent, Black Hills Bride, Black Hills Coupon Book, Southern Minnesota Bride and North Dakota Prairie Bride.

DenHerder was attracted by the continuing revitalization of downtown, led by the building of Main Street Square and the push to connect downtowns social and commercial business core with the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology campus.

There seems to be a lot happening all over downtown, but particularly east of Fifth Street, DenHerder said. We had outgrown our current location and really looked hard at something that put us a little closer to the heart of the city.

DenHerders wife, Lisa, will open Kicks and Giggles, a boutique for baby items, next to Harriet and Oak Cafe and Roaster.

Aaron and Tina Neiman also own and operate Green Bean Coffeehouse and Blackbird Espresso in Spearfish and Belle Fourche.

The coffee roaster set to be installed later this fall in the Dean Building will be a new addition for the Neimans.

Matt approached us about going into the Dean Building in January. Visiting with him and hearing his vision for the East of Fifth district, we just concluded it would be a good fit, Aaron Neiman said.

The vision of turning old into new again resonates with Neiman, along with others who have fallen for what the Dean Building represents.

I love the concept of repurposing and using something thats been there for years and years, Neiman said.
When Frank Garcia was only 8, he remembers going to the library in West Tampa, Fla., and opening up a book about dinosaurs. The first page he saw featured a depiction of the massive ancient marine reptile called a mosasaur swimming in deep blue water.

"I saw that and I thought to myself, gosh that is so cool, I sure would like to find something like that some day," Garcia, now 70, said during a phone interview on Friday. "It fueled my passion for paleontology."

In October  more than 60 years since opening that book and after a long career as a world-renowned paleontologist  Garcia finally found what he had been looking for while on a dig in South Dakota.

"It's a dream come true for a child who never grew up," Garcia said with a laugh.

Garcia, his wife, Debby, and his friend Gary Brown uncovered an extremely well-preserved skull of an ancient marine reptile within the mosasaurus genus along with several other pieces of the skeleton.

Peter Larson, president of the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, called the discovery "very significant." He said other mosasaurs have been found in South Dakota but nothing this complete.

"This looks to be the very nicest one from what I have seen," Larson said, adding that the Black Hills Institute has one partial fossil of a mosasaur. "It's definitely in the mosasaurus genus but it's unclear what the species is."

Larson said mosasaurs are closely related to the Komodo dragon of today but lived only in water. He said they would have been an air-breathing reptile that was carnivorous, could grow to more than 40 feet long and lived more than 60 million years ago.

"From the looks of this one, it's a nice big adult," Larson said.

Garcia moved to Edgemont two years ago after spending a career making significant discoveries in Florida, where he said it eventually got too crowded. Though he had a hand in the discovery of more than 30 previously unknown species of prehistoric animals and his work is featured in museums across the country, Garcia called last month's mosasaur discovery his "greatest thrill."

He wouldn't divulge exactly where the fossil was found but did say it was on private property near the Black Hills, in a Pierre Shale formation. He is afraid other fossil hunters may come bother the landowner if they knew its location.

He and his friend Gary Brown first found vertebra sticking out of the soil while on a fossil hunting mission in late October. They started clearing away the dirt to free the pieces of vertebra and hoping they would find more.

"I figured if I dug down just a little bit in the area, sure enough, we would start finding more," Garcia said.

After a day's work, he came back to the site with his wife the next morning. They sat down and started meticulously brushing away the small pieces of dirt in hope of uncovering more of the ancient reptile.

"As we started to dig, we found ribs and parts of its hand or flipper, all the time I kept thinking if we follow this spinal column, that head has to be here somewhere," Garcia said. "We uncovered more, and I was thinking 'This is the biggest thing I have ever seen.'"

Debby suggested digging under a small bush near where the rest of the fossils were found.

Fourteen inches below the surface under that bush, they found exactly what they were working for. A beautifully preserved, 4-foot long mosasaur skull with two 4-foot long jaws. Garcia figures with a head that large, this specimen would have been more than 50 feet long  about the size of a humpback whale.

The team was able to cast the fossils to protect them and remove them from the site. The skull alone weighed more than 300 pounds.

Garcia said he plans on working with the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research to prep the specimen. "It's going to be gorgeous once it is done," he said.

Garcia said Friday afternoon he plans on donating the find to the Museum at Black Hills Institute in Hill City.

"It was found in South Dakota, so I think it should stay here," Garcia said.

As for the name of the fossil, Garcia plans on calling it Debby, after his wife.
PIERRE | South Dakotas new panel that is responsible for ensuring that school districts increase teacher salaries with the additional state sales tax aid theyre receiving will hold a meeting next month about how the new process is to work.

Members of the School Finance Accountability Board met by videoconference Friday. They discussed the draft version of the rules and several forms that schools will use when submitting information to the board.

The Dec. 8 meeting will be a first reading of the proposed rules.

The public hearing on the rules likely will come in March after the Legislature has finished its main run of state business, according to Travis Jordan, a staff member of the state Department of Education.

The draft rules outline the steps that would be followed:

 School districts submit their financial information to the state department by August;

 School districts seeking a waiver from the state board for special circumstances would need to submit their requests by Nov. 1; and

 The state board would complete its reviews of the waiver requests no later than the last Monday of November.

Most districts would already know in August whether they would be seeking waivers, according to Mike Lodmel, board president and superintendent for the Tri-Valley school district at Colton.

There should be no surprises, Lodmel said.

The boards recommendations on waivers then would be forwarded to the Legislatures joint committee on appropriations for a final ruling.

School districts found to be in violation of the salary requirements could be penalized if they didnt receive waivers.

School districts have the right to argue their side, Lodmel said.

I think they would want to, replied Tamara Darnell, the departments finance chief.
Pennington County Sheriff Kevin Thom has sent 12 deputies to help patrol the protests over the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota over the past few weeks.

The dozen deputies split a two-week stint in Morton County, N.D., where thousands of protesters have gathered in opposition to the construction of a $3.8 billion, 1,200-mile pipeline that will carry oil from the Bakken formation to Illinois. The first six deputies were sent the week of Oct. 23 and returned on Oct. 30. The second set of six deputies left then and will return on Sunday, Thom said.

Thom said the costs to county taxpayers will be reimbursed by government agencies of North Dakota.

He said he made the decision to send deputies to the protests because North Dakota law enforcement agencies, including the Morton County Sheriff's Department, requested assistance.

"We view it as a public safety matter," Thom said. "We're not taking a position on the pipeline whatsoever. Ours and everyone else's goal is to keep the protesters and the public and the community safe up there."

He said North Dakota authorities have not asked for more assistance so he does not plan to send any more deputies at this time.

Two of the deputies deployed to North Dakota were involved in an incident where a protester fired shots at police, Thom said.

Thom said neither of the deputies or any protesters were injured in that incident, "which was a good way for that to end," he said. A Colorado woman faces an attempted murder charge in the incident.

The Pennington County deputies will have to return to testify in a trial if necessary and those costs will also be covered by North Dakota, Thom said.

There have been 416 arrests for crimes related to illegal protest activities since Aug. 10 in Morton County, according to information posted on the Morton County Sheriff's Facebook page. The agency said only 8.4 percent of those arrested are from North Dakota. Individuals arrested are from 43 states, the District of Columbia and Canada.

South Dakota also sent an undisclosed number of Highway Patrol officers to the protest site for two weeks in mid-October and they returned home on Sunday, Oct. 30, according to South Dakota Department of Public Safety spokesman Tony Mangan.

Mangan said they provided assistance as part of a mutual aid agreement states sign called the Emergency Management Assistance Compact. This is activated when a state of emergency is declared, he said.

"States use this when they need more public assistance, and South Dakota was requested to provide that assistance," Mangan said.

Mangan said North Dakota officials have not requested more assistance from South Dakota Department of Public Safety for now.

He said the cost is not available, as it will come from North Dakota officials, and all actual expenses to South Dakota will be reimbursed by North Dakota.

Officers from several other states have assisted the North Dakota authorities including Wisconsin, Minnesota and Indiana.

North Dakota officials have borrowed $10 million for law enforcement costs from the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.


An imminently forthcoming version of Google's Chrome browser will flip the way that browsers convey information about privacy and security to users: instead of discreetly informing users that the HTTPS-enabled sites they're browsing are more secure, they'll flag any non-HTTPS site as insecure, with a series of escalating alerts that will end  at some unspecified date  by displaying an exclamation point inside red triangle and the letters HTTP next to the web addresses of non-HTTPS sites.

The red triangle/exclamation point icon was arrived at after the Chrome team commissioned research around the world to figure out which symbols alarmed users the most.

The increased interest in encrypting all web-sessions is part of a wider movement that includes two EFF-affiliated projects: HTTPS Everywhere (which turns on secure connections wherever possible) and Let's Encrypt (a certificate authority that gives free cryptographic certificates  necessary for secure web connections  to anyone who asks).

It's also related to Certificate Transparency, which catches certificate authorities who issue bogus cryptographic credentials, which allow cyber-arms dealers to create weapons to let governments spy on internet connections.

Last month, two Chinese certificate authorities were outed for issuing bogus certs, leading to browser vendors blacklisting all certs issued Wosign and Startcom in their browsers.

Since she started as a security engineer at Google nearly a decade ago, Tabriz has approached her job as a white-hat hacker with an understanding that security problems are not merely technical but human. After repeatedly finding and fixing the same bugs in the company's code, for instance, she says she became determined to instead fix Google's coders. So in 2010 she and a fellow Googler started Google's "Resident Hacker" program, a crash course in information security training for programmers so they could learn to find, exploit, and patch bugs in their own work. Tabriz's interest in HTTPS in particular was piqued in 2011, when her colleagues on the security team discovered that the certificate authority DigiNotarone of the companies tasked with handing out the certificates that authenticate the identity of an HTTPS websitehad been breached by hackers. The attackers then used their access to fake encrypted connections to Google sites like Gmail and eavesdropped on visitors. The attack appeared to be the work of the Iranian government, affecting more than 300,000 mostly Iranian victims. For Tabriz, whose father is an Iranian who periodically returns to his hometown of Tehran, the attack carried personal resonance. She remembers reading a comment from one Iranian on a blog post about the incident: "For you guys, a fake certificate means a stolen password or personal information," he wrote. "For me and thousands of other Iranians, it leads to jail, torture or even death sentence." So when Tabriz took over the Chrome security team in 2014, she put a new focus on not just locking down Chrome but the entire web that users see through it. Google has long fought to advance Chrome's security beyond that of other browsers. Chrome was the first popular browser to implement a rigorous "sandbox"a security measure that limits how deeply a malicious web page can reach into a user's computerto automatically install security updates, and to pay bounty rewards in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for information about the browser's security flaws. But Tabriz's HTTPS push meant looking beyond Chrome's own code and pulling up the rest of the web's security to meet its standards.

Google's Chrome Hackers Are About to Upend Your Idea of Web Security [Andy Greenberg/Wired]
In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, creating the interstate highway system. Along with 41,000 miles of roadway came construction of interstate rest areas, which served a dual purpose: to provide basic services for motorists and give travelers a place to get out, stretch their legs and rest.

South Dakota currently has 21 rest areas, some of which were constructed as long ago as 1969. Due to age, several of these facilities are in dire need of major maintenance, renovation or complete reconstruction.

Additionally, the availability of information over mobile devices is changing the way that visitors plan their travels and access information about our state. To address these challenges, I asked staff from the departments of Tourism and Transportation to develop a revitalization plan for our rest areas.

After nearly a year of review, analysis, research and discussion, this work group developed a plan that addresses the needs and expectations of todays motorists. Over the next few years, this plan will bring our rest areas into the modern era of travel and help us prepare for the future. Upon completion, South Dakota will offer five staffed welcome centers at our states borders and at Chamberlain, along with 12 additional rest areas along interstates 29 and 90.

The plan includes construction of two new welcome centers near Vermillion and on the Minnesota border, as well as an expanded and remodeled welcome center at Wilmot. These centers will be staffed during the summer months and, in addition to providing a safe place for travelers to stop, serve as South Dakotas front door for vacationers seeking tourism information.

The welcome centers will be more extensive than our current rest areas. They will contain enhanced displays and exhibits as well as modern stations for travel-related information, such as road closures, weather conditions and construction. The welcome centers will provide a great first impression for our visitors, and I know South Dakotans will be proud of how well they represent our Great Faces and Great Places. For more information go to sd.gov and type interstate or rest area into the search engine.

Challenges very often lead to great opportunities. Through the changes outlined in the rest area revitalization plan, we will continue to meet the needs of our travelers and we will make South Dakota even more enticing to visitors. Its a plan that will benefit our state well into the future.
Stevensville High School is honoring members of the military by hosting its annual Veterans Day Program at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday in the school gym.

Stevensville principal Brian Gum said the assembly for grades 4-12 will feature band and choir students from the middle school and high school.

Each year we like to put this assembly on to honor our men and women who have so bravely defended our country, Gum said. This is our way to thank them for their service and hopefully foster more connections between the school and our local community.

Keynote speaker Lucas McCormick, school board member and veteran, will speak about how being raised in rural Stevensville provided him skills for success.

I got to do a lot of things thanks to the experiences I had growing up, McCormick said Im a combat veteran and Ill talk about the things Ive done way outside of the expected. Ill talk about how the students also have unique abilities to offer.

McCormick said his experiences as a youngster in agriculture and construction gave him opportunities to work on similar projects while overseas in the military, from rebuilding a farmers coop to working on a school and $8 million highway project. He also worked with the State Department to deliver drought-resistant seeds to a country experiencing a 20-year drought.

They were importing food and it helped them become more sustainable, McCormick said. I was an artillery officer and was managing projects.

His wide range of experiences continued when he returned home from his overseas service. He was the project manager for a robotics event in Ft. Hood, Texas,where robotic manufacturers showed their work for the Department of Defense. He also was the writer and producer of a training film still used today on how to conduct training meetings.

Ill draw connections to public service and why it is important to volunteer with the fire department, or Pantry Partners or some pet project that you feel passionate about that gives to the community, McCormick said. You can provide a service right here in the community. American people are the most giving people in the world. Thats whats great; we take care of each other.

All veterans and active service men and woman are encouraged to attend and have a place of distinction at the assembly. The public also is invited.

Stevensville High School is at 300 Park Ave, Stevensville.
Guwahati: Journalists' Forum Assam (JFA) expresses concern over the recent directive from the Union information & broadcasting ministry to take Hindi news channel 'NDTV India' off air for 24 hours with effect from 01 hours on 9 November till 01 hrs of 10 November 2016.

The directive came after an inter-ministerial committee set-up by the I&B ministry found the news channel violating the programme code set under the Cable Television Networks (Amendment) Rules, 2015. According

to the committeeas observation, the NDTV India in a live telecast had revealed the crucial and strategically sensitive information when the terror attack on the Pathankot air base was being carried out.

The JFA argues that the news channels of the country should be brought under the purview of Press Council of India (PCI) with more power to the quasi-judicial body to deal with such situations. In need, the

council can be named as Media Council of India (MCI), said the JFA in a statement issued to the media outlets.

'We also demand appropriate initiatives for the news channel employees for their due benefits in the line of Majithia Wage Board meant for the print media employees including the journalists,' said JFA president Rupam Barua and secretary Nava Thakuria.
Guwahati: Journalists Forum Assam (JFA) expresses its worries over the recent submission of the management of Janasadharan (www.janasadharan.in) about its inability to continue publishing the city based Assamese daily newspaper for a longer period as it was losing its readers rapidly. Unconfirmed report also reveals that the management has decided to cease its publication by 30 November.

The JFA argues that many newspaper house-owners in northeast India start closing their outlets fearing of the Supreme Court's verdict over the implementation of Majithia Wage Board recommendations for the benefit

of the print media employees.

According to the apex court of the country, each and every newspaper & news agency in India must hike the salary & other benefits to their employees since November 2011 under the new wage board

recommendations. As most of the media houses in the region have not implemented the recommendations till date, every employee now claim 60 months' outstanding payments.

The JFA appeals to the Janasadharan management not to think of closing the newspaper as it would render over hundred employees jobless immediately. It also urges the editor of the newspaper, who is a recognized Assamese intellectual, along with his colleagues to pursue with their management to resolve the crisis amicably. Issued by Rupam Barua and Nava Thakuria for JFA
MUMBAI: The Indian business process outsourcing sector is looking to benefit from Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte 's obscenity-filled rant directed at US President Barack Obama and his threat to have the US remove its military bases from the country.Over the past few months the Philippines president has lashed out at critics of his war of drugs in his country. The crackdown and the condemnation that followed are beginning to fray ties with the US, the country's largest trading partner.Over a million Filipinos work in the call centre industry, which has managed to attract a large chunk of the voice-based customer service business from India. But the recent spat means that India has a chance to take some work back. "We have seen some American companies become more hesitant about the Philippines. They have centres there and in other geographies but now they are coming back and looking at India for their investments. That would not have been on the table before," Christopher Caldwell, CEO of US-headquartered BPO company Concentrix , told ET.

"At least three customers who have over 1,000 full-time equivalents in our centres in the Philippines have started discussions about whether they could move incremental work here. It's a question of hedging their bets," a top executive at a large Indian BPO company said. He declined to be identified because the company has a presence in the Philippines.In October, the senior advisor to the American Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines told media that several trade missions and BPO investment plans in the country had been cancelled. A second BPO CEO said even a 10% shift could see 100,000 jobs become available for India to grab. The CEO added that given the expected rise in the minimum wage in the US it was likely that there would be another wave of call centre work to be offshored and that India could position itself to benefit.India had already started taking work from the Philippines as a stronger focus on email, social media and chat-based customer service meant that the lack of an American accent in voice is no longer as big a drawback. But experts say that though Indian companies may win the contracts, there is no guarantee that all the incremental jobs will be created in India."We have already seen high-value work come to India but clients may ask Indian companies to help them relocate some of the premium voice work to countries like South Africa," KS Viswanathan, vice-president at industry body Nasscom , said.Indian BPO executives also hope that the government will work with the industry to attract the business to India."My company will get the revenue whether we do the work here or there or in any other geography. But if the jobs have to be created here, then the work has to be done here. For that the government has to help out," one of the CEOs quoted above said.The BPO sector has asked that the government make it easier for them to do business and use some of its heft in attracting the customers even suggesting that there could be some kind of 'offset-like' requirement for companies which do business with the Indian government.
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Rebecca Solnit (previously), one of my favorite writers, has published an open letter to Donald Trump, "New York City Is a Book Conservatives Should Read," which celebrates the city's teeming, messy, multicultural vigor  something she delves into deeply with Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas, a book about the "innumerable unbound experiences of New York City [with] twenty-six imaginative maps and informative essays" (just ordered mine).

Solnit celebrates the immigrants, Muslims, inner cities, Latin@ culture, acceptance of LGBTQ people; the city's incubation of Planned Parenthood, Black Lives Matter, and all the other Trumpian bogeymen. Then she asks, how is it that Trump manages to hate all these things and still profess a love for NYC? Maybe it's because he never "comes down from your tower, other than to stuff yourself into a limousine en route to a jet."





Solnit schools Trump: "the New York of rich white people is a small slice of the city. Beyond it are a thousand New Yorks with thousands of ways of living and working, hundreds of languages, dozens of religions, and it all comes together every day on subway platforms, on the streets, in the parks, the hospitals, the kitchens, the public schools. Because ordinary New Yorkers get out and mix, and this coexistence with difference is the beautiful basis for a truly democratic spirit, a faith that we can trust each other and literally (and figuratively) find common ground by mingling in public."

A-men.

But we were talking about Muslims, not gay and lesbian residents, though I'm sure there are some gay Muslims to include, because everyone is here. Everyone. New York City Muslims are taxi drivers, the guys inside some of the halal food carts all over Manhattan, as well as lawyers and scholars and professors, programmers and designers. They are fathers, toddlers, grandmothers, high-schoolers. Part of what's so beautiful about this city is how complex the cross-categorizations are. A lot of Muslims are immigrants or children and grandchildren of immigrants, from Africa as well as Asia, but a significant percentage are African-Americans whose roots go far deeper in this country's history than yours or mine do. Their ancestors built this place, including, literally, the wall that Wall Street is named for. Speaking of African-Americans: have you ever been to Harlem or the Bronx? You keep talking about black people like you've never met any or visited any black neighborhoods. Seriously, during that last debate you said, "Our inner cities are a disaster. You get shot walking to the store. They have no education. They have no jobs. I will do more for African-Americans and Latinos than she can ever do in ten lifetimes. All she's done is talk to the African-Americans and to the Latinos." Dude, seriously? Did you get this sense of things from watching TVin 1975? And by the way, talking to people is a really great way to discover where you are and who they are. You should try it. "Inner cities" is a stale, leftover term from when cities like New York were crumbling from divestment and declining population, and crime really was high (news flash: it's declined nationwide over the past quarter century, even though you like to harp on the hiccup in Chicago). When you talk about the "inner city," you sound about 40 years out of date.

NEW YORK CITY IS A BOOK CONSERVATIVES SHOULD READ

[Rebecca Solnit/Lithub]





(via Kottke)
SAHMAT

Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust

29, Feroze Shah Road,New Delhi-110001

Telephone- 23381276/ 23070787

e-mail-sahmat8@yahoo.com

5.11.2016

SAHMAT Statement on censorship of NDTV

We strongly condemn the arbitrary and vindictive action by the Narendra Modi government, ordering the popular Hindi news broadcaster NDTV-India off the air for a twenty-four hour period. NDTV-India has been accused of violating a 2015 amendment to the cable TV rules, which obliged news broadcasters to restrict live reporting of anti-terrorism operations and confine themselves to facts revealed in aperiodica briefings by adesignateda officials of the aappropriatea government.

There can be no more vaguely worded restraint than this on media reporting and the public right to know. Clearly, the intent here is to forcibly enforce the model of media irrationality and hyper-chauvinism that the Modi government has actively promoted ever since it assumed office. The alleged violations by NDTV-India, according to the official statement from an inquiry by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, include reporting that the terrorist intruders into the Pathankot air-base in January this year, had managed to approach the near vicinity of an arms depot.

We learn that an NDTV-India reporter allowed most proximate access to the operational theatre by security forces, mentioned the possibility of the terrorist intruders gaining access to the arms depot within the Pathankot air-base. The news broadcast then made the inference that if the task of neutralising would become more complicated if the terrorist intruders actually did gain access to the arms depot.

These points, we may be permitted to say, would be obvious to the meanest intelligence. To say that Indian media consumers should be deprived of this information because it could promote an alien terrorist enterprise is to insult them.NDTV-India is also accused of reporting the presence of a school and civilians on the airbase, not to mention revealing that there were strategic investments such as jet fighters within the Pathankot air-base.

Again, there is a gross insult to the awareness of the average Indian citizen here.

We reiterate that the Modi governmentas vindictive action is an assault on the peoplesa right to know. We need hardly remind the public of the confused and chaotic response of the government after the first shots were fired in the terrorist intrusion in Pathankot. These included an ill-informed and unfounded statement from the Union Home Minister, Rajnath Singh, claiming that the attack had been repulsed, when there were still intruders alive within the air-base, adequately equipped to carry on their mission for another 36 hours.

We also remind the Modi government that clamping down on the media will not efface public memories of its monumental misstep in inviting a team from Pakistanas Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to visit the Pathankot air-base in an obviously misguided effort at gaining international endorsement for Indiaas fight against terrorism.

An effective fight requires a strong domestic consensus. By attacking the media and the public right to know, the Modi government seriously undermines this possibility.

SAHMAT

29 Ferozshah Road, New Delhi-110001

Tel:011-23381276/011-23070787

email:sahmat8@yahoo.com

Website: www.sahmat.org
sacw.net - 6 November 2016

I have always viewed Kashmir as a palimpsest on which there are several overlapping discourses, most of which have valid historical and theoretical contexts. Several academics and scholars are contemplating the study of the ancient and modern history of the Kashmir region as a discrete political and cultural entity, as well as its unique and crucial role in global and South Asian politics and culture.

Somewhere along the way the rich historical trajectory and multilingual narrative tradition of Kashmir have been relegated to the realm of oblivion by colonial, orientalist, and nationalist, some ultra right-wing, productions of history. The ugly scars of insurgency, counter insurgency, mass exodus, displacement, dispossession, and despair have underscored brutal aspects of the history of Kashmir, while consigning aspects of the historical and sociocultural evolution of Kashmir, which did not conform either to colonial, statist, or insurgent agendas, to the catacombs of history.

Several historical narratives, textual, oral, and aural were designed to enable the people of Kashmir to take charge of their social and political destinies. Storytellers, performers, folklorists, hagiographers, and historiographers were able to wield temporality and spatiality as powerful tools and challenge the imposition of history on them. In this process of national self-imagining, I would point out, allegory could be taught to re-create and preserve a jeopardized way of life. Post-independence narrative is characterized in this work as well as in some others as the rewriting of history and the creation of the symbols of nationhood. The causal narrative in this kind of framework imparts resolvability to a disharmonious history. The effect of myth and folklore enabled, in the Kashmir context as in other postcolonial contexts, a metaphoric entry for popular culture into the plot, eroding colonial and orientalist histories. The Kashmiri storyteller, performer, historiographer employed the process of tropes and imaginative usage to create the postcolonial world. The array of neologisms and innovations that such writing and telling drew on reconstructed the normative form. This insertion of language variance incorporated and foregrounded cultural differences, challenging essentializing and universalizing readings of texts with respect to social and cultural forces.

The adaption of the dominant languages, Sanskrit and Persian, into a vernacular form, Kashmiri, exemplified the creation of subjectivity. This is compatible with Michel Foucaultas analysis of subjectivity as historically constructed, which I have employed in my work. Foucaultas analysis of subjectivity as constructed by various discourses of power, which vie with each other to control it through systems of domination, applies to the subjectivity of Kashmiris as well. The individual, I would emphasize, is determined by ideological discourse which establishes identity as an outcome of these factors. Various discourses are produced by those who rule the roost in order to circumscribe the subject by producing and inscribing arealitya on the parchment of knowledge and truth, emphasizing the need for a historiographic study.

In the context of Kashmir, the dAtente between intertextual linguistic, historical, and storytelling traditions to form a national consciousness annuled the cartography of empire, Mughal, Afghan, Sikh, and Dogra, as this historiography highlights. This is aptly reflected in Gloria Anzalduaas theory of language, which I delved into years ago, as an equation to which people connect their identities. The insertion of language variance diminished the marginalized status of the aother.a In its evolved form, Kashmiri folklore established itself as an oppositional discourse that did not unquestioningly accept the dominance of the norm. Syntactic fusion in the telling/ performing of history was compiled from a vast array of cultural influences which, successfully, reinscribed categories that were officially sanctioned. The Kashmiri postcolonial storyteller, bhand, dastaan goh, and ladishah, creates a site, even today, on which indigenous thought patterns, structures, and rhythms are accompanied by the delineation of an alternative reality.

My education has taught me that there are no value free judgments. Historical and political judgments, inevitably, get distorted by an inability to recognize the biases that result from oneas own location in time and space. Unlike some people, I do not think that Kashmiriyat is an aoutdated academic concept.a On the contrary, my position is that Kashmiriyat or pluralism, like any other idea lives its ideational life in a particular historical and political context, to which it not only lends itself but also derives meaning in return. It is a concept which is generative and has been used to articulate political aspirations. This significant concept does not attempt to simplify the complexity of religious, social, and cultural identities. At a time of political and social upheaval in the state, this notion engendered a consciousness of place, territory, and culture that offered a critical perspective from which to formulate alternatives to ultra right-wing nationalist discourses. In the polarized and fragmented society and polity of Kashmir, the concept of a syncretic identity or aKashmiriyata can be effectively employed to name a cultural alterity through the nation, and create a situation in which the nation-states of India and Pakistan are forced to confront an alternative epistemology.

The younger generation of Kashmiris has been disfigured by the inability of global consumer culture, the national security apparatus and nation-states, either secular or theocratic, to recognize their political, socioeconomic and cultural aspirations. This generation of Kashmiris is war-weary, embittered, and despondent. I would venture to say that we, Kashmiri Muslims as well as Kashmiri Pandits, crave a world in which social justice, political enfranchisement, cultural pride, and self-realization are the order of the day. I yearn for a world in which the living tradition of legends, myths, fables of yore, is resuscitated, reviving the imaginative life of Kashmir. Myths and legends have, historically, been the collective expression of a peopleas identity, enabling them to voice their cultural reality. Haitian writer, Jacques Stephan Alexis articulates the potency of myths and magic more convincingly than I, aThe treasure of tales and legends, all the musical, choreographic and plastic symbolism, all the forms of Haitian popular art are there to help the nation in accomplishing the tasks before it.a The recuperation of a culture, the reinvigoration of Kashmiras rich heritage, and the revival of Kashmiras mythos, might not heal the greatly mauled body politic overnight, but it would certainly provide a much needed step in the right direction.

In the greatly circumscribed anarrative public spacea of contemporary Kashmir, folklorists and storytellers donat enjoy the free rein that they did years ago, which is why multigenre, multivalent and layered narratives would provide a much needed breath of fresh air. Also, Jammu and Kashmir is a conglomerate in which regional, communal, and ethnic divides have been exacerbated in the wake of the recent Assembly elections in the state. My primary interest is to ensure that future generations of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir do not forget, which is why I emphasize that these seemingly unbridgeable chasms underline the need for interdisciplinary academic interventions that seek to bridge the divide between the three parts of the state as well as explore historical linkages with parts of the state in Pakistan. And, I reiterate, there are no value free judgments.

Nyla Ali Khan is a faculty member at the University of Oklahoma, and member of Scholars Strategy Network. She is the author of Fiction of Nationality in an Era of Transnationalism (Routledge 2005), Islam, Women, and Violence in Kashmir (Palgrave Macmillan 2010), The Life of a Kashmiri Woman (Palgrave Macmillan 2014), and the editor of The Parchment of Kashmir (Palgrave Macmillan 2012). She is guest editor of the Oxford Islamic Studiesa Regional Spotlight on Jammu and Kashmir.
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Looking at the world through the eyes of the Web
Dario Argento's nightmare ballet masterpiece Suspiria is heading back to the big screen in a brand new 4K restoration, as reported first by Variety. The project is a major undertaking, as the original 35mm elements of the film haven't weathered the passing of four decades terribly well. The new restoration is expected to premiere at next year's Berlinale in February in a special section, along with special theatrical screenings to follow.

According to Variety, Videa - the company who owns the rights to Suspiria - hired German lab, TLEFilms to work on the restoration. Of course, down the line there will be plenty of new home video options for Suspiria, which has had a spotty record on Blu-ray around the world. Only a few days ago, German film scholar Marcus Stiglegger posted images on his Facebook page showing the recording of a new video commentary for the 4K restoration.

Hardcore home video nerds will be aware that US cult specialists Synapse Films snapped up the US distribution rights back in 2013, and they have been working on a 4K restoration for the last couple of years. The version showing in Berlin will be a different scan of the film from the restoration that Synapse has been working on, so we can expect competing 4K versions of Suspiria in the coming year. The good news for North Americans is that we will get a restored Blu-ray of the film eventually, and it will likely also get a limited theatrical release, though it will be through a different company from the one announced above.

This follows closely on the news that the upcoming Suspiria remake has added original star Jessica Harper to the cast of their new project. Harper joins Chloe Moretz, Tilda Swinton, and Dakota Johnson in the impressively cast film to be directed by Luca Guadagnino. Guadagnino's previous films include the highly praised A Bigger Splash and I Am Love, both starring Swinton, and his pedigree lends a bit of class to this project that may have otherwise drawn instant condemnation.

Suspiria is truly one of the finest gems of Italian horror and the upcoming restoration is long overdue. Check out the new trailer below.
And here it is: a sturdy hard cardboard box. Alas, this time the BBFC certification logo is non-removable (a shame). In the box: five amarays and a 128-page booklet. The contents removed. Each of the amarays holds two of the Dekalog episodes, a selection of the other televison works, and some extras. All contents opened. There's a DVD and a Blu-ray in each amaray. A closer look at the booklet: at 128 pages, it's quite the pocket. In it are essays, Stanley Kubrick's (often quoted) eulogy, and Kieslowski's own reflections on every single episode of the Dekalog and the other included films. The (back) end. A fine, fine boxset. Now hurry up with releasing A Short Film About Love and A Short Film About Killing, Artificial Eye, so I can put them next to this one in my bookcase!

(is it a Criterion? Is it a Eureka MoC? No, it's...Arrow Academy again!)Blimey, the good people of Arrow Academy are on a roll this year, what with their release of Kobayashi Masaki's The Human Condition and now this, a giant boxset of Krzysztof Kieslowski's television work, including his legendary. Again we're not talking about some fringe art-house director here either: Kieslowski is widely recognized as one of the best European directors ever, and the arrival of his films on Blu-ray are a much-anticipated event.Indeed, over in the United States, Criterion has released a similarboxset a month ago, making collectors worldwide wonder in despair which of the two to get.And that's not an easy question to answer either. Two of the stories inhave been theatrically released in longer versions, calledand. Criterion owns the US-release rights for those two films and has included them in their set. In the UK however, those films belong to Artificial Eye, who are rumoured to release them on Blu-ray sometime in 2017. Therefore, Arrow Academy wasn't able to include those two longer versions in their set.Faced with a losing battle of boxsets, the people at Arrow did something brilliant though: focusing on the fact that their version ofis a television series, they began collecting as much of Krzysztof Kieslowski's other television works as they could get their hands on, and have made this a "Krzysztof Kieslowski television boxset". They found over five hours worth of television movies by Kieslowski, and another five hours of interviews and documentaries ABOUT Kieslowski.His first feature-length film, his first fictional narrative... they're all included. Meaning this is now an entirely different object than Criterion'sboxset, and (also) a must-own for Kieslowski fanatics.On top of that, Arrow Academy's boxset is quite the eye-catcher, so here is a gallery of shots of it. Click on the edge of the pictures to scroll through them, or at the centre of each to see a bigger version.
Joyce A. Nashawati's debut feature Blind Sun has been making the rounds of festivals for a year, so I was surprised to discover it had yet to be reviewed on Screen Anarchy. I was also quite pleased, as it was one of my favourite films of last year, and I welcome the opportunity for our readers to discover it. Set in the near future, exploring themes of isolation, immigration, xenophobia, paranoia, and environmental degradation, Blind Sun is an incredible impressive film, a nightmare thriller bordering on surrealism while telling its all-too-possible story through the eyes of a man on the brink of madness.

Set in the not-too-distant future, Ashraf (Zias Bakri) is in Greece to housesit for a French family while they briefly return to Paris. Greece is in the midst of a water crisis, with government controls on the use of the necessary liquid, and riots against a company that seeks to control the dwindling supply. A policeman, none too happy about an 'outsider' taking a job, confiscates Ashraf's residence permit during a routine stop. Left alone in the house, Ashraf must navigate the authorities, the family's strange neighbour Katarina (Mimi Denissi), the annoying cat, and those in the community who resent his presence, all the while suspecting that someone is sneaking into the house, attempting to drive him crazy, while the heat continues and even water might not cure the oncoming insanity.

Nashawati introduces the set-up for the story, and then lets it takes its course with little exposition all interference, which makes the tale all the more creepy and devastating. With her director of photography Giorgos Arvanitis, we are blinded (no pun intended) by this world; the searing hot sun turns everything shades of yellow, with bright oranges of fire to intensify this heat (I recommend having water on hand when you watch it), and only blue to occasionally quench the thirst, both literally and metaphorically. This is a world slowly drying up and burning out.

Greece is the perfect setting for this metaphor, given its worldwide status at the centre of the European austerity and refugee crises, and its roots in ancient mythology give the impression that this decline into chaos and desperation might have been inevitable. Indeed, the ancient world keeps popping up; in an archaeological dig that Ashraf encounters, the French woman (symbol of the modern, moneyed world) he meets at the dig, and the small sculpture of half of a woman's face, as if taunting him like the Sybil of Greek mythology.

A pet peeve of mine in film is when directors use voice-over to 'explain' the story (if you need that much voice over, you're not making a film). Thankfully, Nashawati gives just the right amount of information to get the audience into this world, and inside Ashraf's slowly fracturing mind. While this might seem to favour style over substance, in fact, the substance is given by a few choice shots of the landscape and/or characters, and a few choice words of dialogue that then allow the audience to see and hear as Ashrif does, to look through his perspective at this country in which he is seen as either an interloper, a servant, or a brief moment of enjoyment, and his isolation both emotionally and geographically.

Sound designer Frederic Le Louet aids in creating the tricks on Ashraf's mind (if indeed they are tricks), as the one place of seeming safety, the villa, becomes the centre of Ashrif's undoing. Switching from fire to water, Nashawati creeps in the symbol to be just as dangerous as its outdoor counterpart, even though it keeps Ashraf alive. These devices, the visual and audio clues, are the story as much as the dialogue; it's a way of storytelling too often lost in an age of constant action and digital effects.

Nashawati strips down to its elements, essential cinematic storytelling, in a tale that will seem all too familiar and all too possible, with an equally all too possible and terrifying conclusion. Blind Sun is a remarkable debut, assured and detailed in its construction, fine-tuned to hit its mark with incredibly accuracy.


Werowocomoco is the name of the new restaurant at Francis Ford Coppola's one-year-old Geyserville winery Virginia Dare, and as foreshadowed a month ago, the fictionalized origin-story of the winery, as well as the restaurant, attempts to link it to the earliest days of the American colonies, and the myth of the "White Doe," a young European girl who ended up being raised among a Native American tribe. The name Werowocomoco, the early political and spiritual capital of the Virginia Algonquian tribes, and it was revealed last week via Eater and elsewhere that the theme of the menu would be "American native" cuisine, which of course raised a few Bay Area eyebrows.

Now the Chronicle has given Coppola a platform from which to defend this choice, in the form of an editorial in which the director and wine entrepreneur says he became fascinated with Native American food and culture as he did research for the concept of the new winery, including from rare books like History of the Indian Tribes of North America, "assembled by Thomas L. McKenney and James Hall between 1836 and 1844."

I'll let him explain:

I was filled with awe and respect for these people and fascinated with their story and wanted to learn what I could. I also wanted the opportunity to taste and experience what Native American food is like today, and so over several years I traveled in search of it. I shared meals on Indian reservations in Arizona and New Mexico, in private homes and eateries for local people. I had a wonderful opportunity to have a dinner prepared by Loretta Oden, an acclaimed Native American chef, and subsequently began to arrive at the concept of a menu inspired by my experiences as well as my own ideas of appealing dishes for our visitors, including items such as fry bread with bison meat and bison ribs... Eventually I formed a council of advisers consisting mainly of Native Americans of different tribes from around the country, to bring authenticity and respect for these traditions as well as support for what I feel are important issues of health, youth and education, employment, preservation of language and culture, food and ingredient acquisition, and art. I confess that I used my own imagination and creative powers to bring this project to life much in the way that I would have in making a film.

Werowocomoco is moving forward, for better or worse, opening Saturday, November 5, and Coppola plans to donate percent of its pretax profits to Americas Native People.

Apparently Coppola himself phoned the Chronicle this week saying "This is a very sensitive situation," and asking to present the background of the restaurant in his own words.

Per John Diaz, editorial page director:

Cultural appropriation is good, it fosters inter-communication between people and cultures through what they love most: food, art, etc., Coppola said. However, cultural misappropriation is not good, as it misuses culture without giving back, and is hurtful. Especially to peoples who need to benefit by it.



Previously: Francis Ford Coppola Hints Of New Restaurant At His Virginia Dare Winery
A photo posted by Jordan Ferney (@ohhappyday) on Nov 3, 2016 at 4:39pm PDT



Mission Street ranks a little higher on the festive scale today thanks to a 5,000 balloon art installation above the Mi Ranchito Produce market at 18th Street. According to Jordan Ferney, whose Oh Happy Day business is located above the market, the colorful display was done to celebrate the company's 10th anniversary.

"I never would have dreamed that this little ol' blog I started 10 years ago would grow into a career, a shop, and a team of wonderful people," Ferney wrote on Instagram. "I'm feeling so grateful tonight as we celebrate our 10 year anniversary. Special thanks to my awesome team, @geronimoballoons for this crazy installation, and @alisonpiepmeyer and @paulferney for sticking it out with me."

Hoodline reports that the project was designed by LA artist Jihan Zencirli. Zencirli has done this kind of thing before, and told the publication that she loves how the work changes over time as the balloons deflate. "I actually love them more as they start to break down," she explained. "They look like little jewels on a line, and they fall against the building, like a little adornment. I know it's weird, but I actually prefer it to the inflated balloons."

And while yes, we're sure it looks cool after a few days wear and tear, it sure is pretty now (hey, even Martha Stewart is a fan).

A balloon a day keeps the blues away  (Photo from @darcymiller via @ohhappyday) #colorinspo #balloons #balloonart A photo posted by Martha Stewart (@marthastewart) on Nov 4, 2016 at 12:27pm PDT

A photo posted by Liz V (@lizzz_vee) on Nov 4, 2016 at 12:01pm PDT



Related: Photo Du Jour: Your Grandparents Partied In Dolores Park Too
This week, SFist had news of changes to Nopa's late night hours, Safeway's move to buy up Andronico's, and a primer on the tiniest new bar in the Mission. It was a big week for chef Michael Chiarello, who was arrested in Napa on DUI and posession charges a day after a settlement in his sexual harassmet case. And, I swear to god I had a dream that I made crab toast  Jesus, I know  that was inspired by the news that, come Thanksgiving, local Dungeness crab would be available without problem this year.

Finally, we just got word that Doughnut Dolly plans to finally open in The Market of the Twitter Building on Monday after a bit of a holdup. Owner Hannah Hoffman's opening day lineup is a winner: Naughty Cream, Cherry Jam, Bourbon Cream, and Dark Chocolate will be available.

Other foods news was as follows:

Aster, Brett Cooper's Mission District darling, is losing its pastry chef Sean Ehland to Marla Bakery, but not before a revamped dessert menu launches. Eater has some detailed photos of those items that border on the pornographic but are safe for work.

The plans for Emporium SF are moving forward according to Hoodline. That's an arcade bar chain SFist wrote of here that's been hoping to move into the old Harding theater on Divisadero next to the Independent. "Our sense is people are ready for it to not be a big vacant building," Emporium's co-owner Danny Marks told SFist (and that was last October!)

Oakland's Claremont Diner, which had just reopened earlier in the year under new management, has folded per the East Bay Express. Also in East Bay closure news: Pathos Organic Greek Kitchen of Berkeley is closed, perhaps temporarily according to Berkeleyside, depending on how negotiations with its landlord on Shattuck go down. Last, Grand Fare Market, which closed to retool and came back to life once already in the last year, will now close for good. Eater had that news, with owner Doug Washington saying that I dont regret any of it, (English for "je ne regret rien.")

When was the last time you went to the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market? There are several new reasons to swing by, as Inside Scoop enumerates. 4505 Meats, for instance, is out, and coming in is a former butcher with that company, Giovanni Betteo, with his Salt Pt. Butchery and Provisions. There's also Crumble & Whisk (personal cheesecakes from Charles Farrie), Kantine (Scandinavian-style smrrebrd from Nichole Accettola), Volcano Kimchi (organic and vegan plus kimchi juice shots from Aruna Lee), and Fifth Crow Farm with produce and flowers from Pescadero.

A former Google employee, Hetal Shah, is opening a new Indian restaurant in the Mid-Market area on Van Ness with her husband according to the Business Times. That's called August 1 Five after the day marking India's independence, and it opens November 11. In San Francisco, "there is decent Indian food, what we consider slightly heavier with more use of butter and cream, which is not the case in traditional Indian food," Shah told the Business Times. "There wasn't a lot of options when it came to really good Indian food."

La Boulangerie de San Francisco, the chain snatched up by Starbucks under its former name La Boulange, then shuttered, then bought back and brought back to life, has reopened its sixth spot, this one in the Financial district. Eater had the news about the spot at 222 Sutter (at Kearny) that's serving up such pastries as pumpkin spice kouign-amman.

Sofia Cafe is opening on Monday in the former Cafe Sophie space (a naming coincidence) on 16th. Tablehopper says that it will be breakfast and lunch with coffee to start. Another coffee shop replacement of a sort: The Fueling Station is headed to Russian Hill on Polk where The Brew once was. This new venture, Hoodline writes, comes from Lillian Wong whose classics with a twist approach includes a caprese waffle: "If you love fresh mozzarella, sun-dried tomatoes, and pesto in a liege waffle, this is for you," she told Hoodline.

This Week In Reviews:

Peter Kane at the Weekly wanted to check out the late night dining gravitas of 12-year-old SoMa spot Oola. His take: "Prices are good, and the atmosphere is lively." In the end. "This wouldnt necessarily be my first choice for date night, but as an after-work spot to talk shit about your passive-aggressive coworkers with your cool coworker who totally gets you, or for a late-night nosh before youre about to sleep it off, Oola works very well."

Kane also tackled a new offering from the chain Osha Thai, Lao Table, which he says is a contender for the most beautiful dining room in the city. "The interior is hung with checked prints, and there are huge arrangements of flowers among large yet tasteful statuary," writes Kane. "If youre going to throw down for crying tiger steak or a coconut Alaskan king crab curry with fermented rice noodles, you might as well do so in amid gorgeous environs." Of the food: "Its safe to say that the freshness of flavor that characterizes upmarket Southeast Asian cooking has found a new benchmark for excellence here," Kane writes, praising the work of chef Lalita Souksamlane. However, vegetarians might have a different reaction to this meat-centric menu.

Finally, Ann Roth went to Tartine Manufactory for the Chronicle, which she declares to have lived up to the hype, a considerable accomplishment. "Of course I love Tartine Manufactory, if that werent obvious," she says glowingly. "It represents everything Ive come to admire and respect about the simple elegance of California cooking." Her recommendations: basically everything, but also the porchetta sandwich in particular, available at breakfast and lunch.

Mr. Bauer didn't have an update review this week, apparently, but for his Sunday review he makes his three visits to the new Limewood at the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, which replaced the extremely short-lived, Dominique Crenn-led Antoinette. Chef Joseph Humphrey is no stranger to the Bay Area dining scene, having worked as executive chef at Meadowood (before its current incarnation), Murray Circle in Sausalito, and his southern-inspired Presidio spot Dixie, before serving as opening chef at The Advocate, nearby in Berkeley, which closed after a year. Despite the many moves in the last few years, Bauer says his food is "finding an appropriate home" here. He floves a snack course of cornmeal-battered fried eggplant with sumac and and Green Goddess dressing that he says is "probably the best fried eggplant Ive had." He also enjoys a mussel and corn chowder and some fried oysters, and says the lunch meny burger is top notch and worth a trip. All told: two and a half stars.
Submit your vote and get ready to party, because Election Day is the perfect excuse to throw a patriotic-themed celebration to keep everyones spirits high as the results roll in.

Seattle event planners are full of ideas on how to create a fun and unique Election Day party. There must be good food, drinks, games, decorations, and of course, the TV must be accessible at all times. Here are some ideas to make your Election Day party a winner:

Decorations: Red, white and blue everything. Marion Clifton, president of BanquetEvents.com, a Seattle website that connects people with party-planning services, recommends using red, white and blue streamers, bunting and balloons.

Small American flags, elephant and donkey printouts or stickers are a great way to decorate a space. Extra campaign or political party posters, presidential candidate lawn signs and buttons from campaign headquarters would also be a nice touch to adorn the walls.

Another idea from Clifton is to fill donkey or elephant pinatas with red, white and blue candies. Greet your guests with I voted printouts that can be turned into name tags by attaching a safety pin.

You could also go with a more vintage presidential theme and decorate your home with Uncle Sam and get-out-the-vote posters.

Give your guests top hats to recreate the Lincoln era, an idea from Emily Anderson, creative director and president of Lola Creative, an event-planning company in Seattle. If you have a very spirited guest, he might want to reenact the Lincoln speech on a stool behind a piece of furniture decked out in red, white and blue bunting.

If you plan to invite supporters of both parties, Erika Peterson, owner of PlanningSavvy, a Seattle event-planning company, recommends dividing the room or multiple rooms into different color themes to represent both political parties.

Make one Democratic room with blue balloons, streamers and Clinton posters. Another room can be Republican-themed with red decor and Trump posters.

No party is complete without a photo booth. Anderson is planning an election party with an Oval Office photo booth. On a empty wall, tack curtains and a printout of the presidential seal, then add a big chair and desk to create the perfect presidential backdrop.

Since both presidential candidates have iconic hairstyles, wigs would make perfect props as would printouts of funny catchphrases or elephants and donkeys. A White House or voting booth would also be great photo backgrounds. Tape large pieces of butcher paper onto a wall and paint a White House background or post a voting booth sign onto a set of curtains.

Games: Election night is a long one, so to keep your guests entertained Clifton recommends doing a scavenger hunt around the neighborhood to collect voter signatures.

Teams go to nearby houses, and the team that comes back after a predetermined time with the most signatures of people who have voted, wins. She also suggests holding a remember the initiative contest. Read off initiatives and whoever can explain the most initiatives wins.

Anderson is planning a name that president game. The idea is to print photos of real and Hollywood presidents and do a guessing game. How many of your guests can spot the real President Kennedy among the slew of Hollywood actors who have played him? Or read out quotes from Clinton, Trump and fictional presidents. Can your guests guess who said what?

Each guest could also write down his or her prediction of which presidential candidate will win, with the majority prediction to be revealed before the winner of the election is announced.
SIOUX CITY | A private eye has been hired to look into the shooting death of a lumberyard cashier. The official explanation of a botched robbery doesn't hold water and, soon, the detective is on the trail of duplicitous military officers, international arms traffickers and a cadre of corrupt government officials.

Is this the plot for the newest James Patterson novel or is it another espionage epic from the mind of John le Carre?

No, "La Oscura Memoria de las Armas" ("Dark Memories of Arms") was written by prolific Chilean writer Ramon Diaz Eterovic in 2008.

Morningside College Spanish and modern language assistant professor Patrick Blaine is currently translating Eterovic's Spanish-language novel into English.

"There is a surprisingly large market for English translations of international books," Blaine explained. "This is especially true for thrillers which, as a genre, have a naturally large fan base."

However, providing English translation for a no-nonsense detective named Heredia is a new experience for Blaine, who previously translated academic materials and legal documents.

"It's very challenging, exacting and very time-consuming," he said. "It's also a lot of fun."

Blaine decided to become a translator of long-form fiction after learning about AmazonCrossing, a full-service publishing arm of Amazon.

The largest publisher of English-translated international books, Amazon offers mysteries, romance, historical fiction, young adult, fantasy and science fiction by writers from around the world.

Blaine said tapping into the English-speaking market can be advantageous for both new and established authors. It also helps the English translator, who gets a cut of the translated book's royalties.

Still, it's not an easy gig for Blaine, a professor with a busy work schedule as well as a 9-month-old son named Sebastian at home.

"The trick is to capture the Chilean flavor of the original work without completely confusing English-speaking audiences," he said.

That means being cognizant of the fact that certain phrases are impossible to accurately translate from Spanish into English.

"It's like working on an elaborate puzzle," Blaine said. "You suddenly find yourself looking for all of the different ways to say 'hat' in Spanish. Is (detective Heredia) wearing a sombrero or is he wearing a fedora?"

Currently, Blaine is able to translate 4,000 words on a good day and, perhaps, 6,000 words a day whenever celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay is on TV.

"My wife Monica enjoys watching reality cooking shows," he explained. "I've discovered that the best time to write is when (Ramsay's) 'Hell's Kitchen' or 'MasterChef' is on."

Once he's finished with the translated manuscript, it will go through several rounds of editing before it hits the market.

"It's slated to be published sometime in the fall of 2017," he said.

Blaine said he'd like to translate other books because there's a growing market for it.

Even more than that, he said there are plenty of authors deserving greater worldwide notoriety.

"A translated book will give readers the chance to explore a place they've never been before," Blaine said. "It will also give them a chance to read an author they'd wouldn't ordinarily be reading."
ANNAPOLIS (Nov. 4, 2016)Since Suboxone film strips were removed from the Medicaid Preferred Drug List in July, the amount of the drug recovered in Maryland correctional facilities as contraband has decreased by 41 percent, according to Maryland's Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.



Suboxonea drug used to treat opiate addictionhas a high risk of addiction and dependence, and can even lead to death when paired with other drugs or alcohol, according to the Food and Drug Administration.



The medication is easily smuggled into state prisons and jails when it is in the form of a strip, designed to be placed under a user's tongue, said Gary McLhinney, the director of professional standards at the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Corrections.



"It is an epidemic, the amount of Suboxone that comes in," said Terry Kokolis, the director of corrections for Anne Arundel County, Maryland, at Wednesday's meeting of the legislature's Joint Committee on Behavioral Health and Opioid Use disorders. "Strips come in, they're sold, they're bartered, they're cut into four pieces and the inmate population is always looking for Suboxone. It's the preferred drug."



In May, the Maryland Medicaid Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee made recommendations for the Medicaid Preferred Drug List.



The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene removed Suboxone from the preferred list and instead made comparable Zubsolv tablets preferred on July 1, making Maryland the first state to do so.



The tablets are more difficult to smuggle into prison than the film strips, which can be easily concealed.



If a drug is on the Medicaid Preferred Drug List, a person covered by Medicaid can obtain that drug for a small co-pay. If a drug is denoted as non-preferred, a person must get prior authorization for the medication through a doctor or prescriber in order for it to be covered or partially covered by Medicaid, according to the Maryland Medicaid Pharmacy Program.



On Sept. 23, 35 statesincluding Marylandand Washington, D.C., filed a class action lawsuit against Indivior, the company that produces Suboxone. The states allege Indivior impeded the sale of generic versions of Suboxone in tablet form until it forced other generic alternatives out of the market, driving up the price of the film strips, according to a Sept. 27 release from Indivior.



The release is the only comment the company has on the lawsuit or on the Medicaid restrictions at this time, said a representative from Indivior.



Between July 1, when the film strips were removed from the Medicaid Preferred Drug List, and Oct. 31, the Department of Public Safety and Corrections has recovered 940 pieces of Suboxone film strips, compared to 1,603 recovered from July 1 to Oct. 31 in 2015.



"We've also had our teams monitor inmate calls and they're overhearing some frustration about not being able to obtain the strips behind the walls as easily as it was prior to July 1," said McLhinney.



The disparity between the asking price of contraband Suboxone strips has also sharply increased since July 1. The street price for a film strip is only $5, while the price behind bars can be up to $500, said McLhinney.



Typically, the film strips are cut into four pieces and sold separately within prisons to increase an inmate's profit margin, Kokolis said.



"We've done numerous cases where Suboxone has been smuggled in the jail behind stamps or in envelopes or where the paper was colored with Suboxone and then the inmate would get the paper and eat it," said Dan Alioto, the commander of the vice/narcotics division at the St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office.



Though the amount of the drug recovered in St. Mary's County has declined slightly since July, Suboxone strips are still being abused and traded for other drugs within jails and prisons, he told the University of Maryland's Capital News Service.



"I think it has slowed down, but it's still an old trick, so it takes a little while for the next thing to emerge," he said.



Local jails have become the "biggest detox facilities in the state of Maryland," Kokolis said. However, 85 percent of the prison and jail population who reported using drugs prior to being sentenced also reported using heroin within 24 hours of imprisonment, while they were incarcerated, he said.



"All of the good that we try to do is very easily compromised by the easy intake of Suboxone," he said.



Maryland officials are also working to collect more data on heroin and opioid use statewide, said Glenn Fueston, the executive director of the Governor's Office on Crime Control and Prevention.



"We need to make sure that we're getting more access to that data as a whole so we can make better decisions and better understand the current threat that we have," he said. "Understanding the threat is a very important part of this problem."
Enamullah Hashim has spent most of his life afraid. Relocating to Maryland changed all that. (Photo: Eleanor Mueller)

ANNAPOLIS

(Nov. 5, 2016)Enamullah Hashim has spent most of his life afraid.Afraid of the Burmese soldiers in his home village of Kyaukkyi, where he grew up with his parents and siblings. Afraid of the Malaysian police in Sungai Buloh, where he moved with his wife in 2008. And afraid, after applying for refugee status with the United Nations in 2009, that the processwhich would span almost six yearscould eventually prove futile.But after arriving in Frederick, Maryland, on Aug. 5, 2015, those feelings of fear were finally lifted. Hashim, who now lives in Halethorpe, Maryland, with his wife and daughter, says life in America makes him feel full for the first time in his life.I feel like a human being here, Hashim, 38, said through an interpreter. If Im not doing anything wrong, theres nothing to be afraid of.Hashim is Muslim, making him a persecuted minority in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar (formerly known as Burma).From 2009 to this week, 71 percent of Burmese refugees entering the United States were Christian, 15 percent were Buddhist, 10 percent were Muslim and 4 percent were some other religion, no religion or it was unknown, according to data from the U.S. State Departments Refugee Processing Center. (Statewide data was unavailable.)Like many of the 531 Burmese refugees who arrived in the state during the last calendar year, he chose Maryland as his safehaven because he had friends already living herea community waiting to welcome him.However, that network is poised to shrink in the coming years.Once Marylands largest incoming refugee population, the Burmese are arriving in smaller and smaller numbers; a trend likely to continue given President Barack Obamas lifting of sanctions against Myanmar last month.Quite frankly, if you look at it over the last seven years, the Burmese have steadily been the largest nationality weve resettled, said Ruben Chandrasekar, executive director of refugee resettlement agency International Rescue Committee Baltimore, which helped aid Hashim and his family.This year is the first time they are not in the No. 1 spot, Chandrasekar told Capital News Service.For most of the past decade, the Burmese have been the largest group of refugees resettled across Maryland. Of the 9,915 refugees the state has welcomed since Jan. 1, 2009, 2,676about 27 percent, the biggest share of arrivalshave been from Myanmar, according to the Refugee Processing Center.Since January 2009, 126,163 Burmese refugees have come to the United States, according to the Refugee Processing Center.The states attractiveness to Burmese newcomers likely stems from its well-established refugee community, Chandrasekar said.Not only is Maryland politically welcoming and economically prosperous, but it boasts a supportive and robust population of refugeesBurmese and otherwisethats welcoming to new arrivals.Theyre coming into existing communities, Chandrasekar said. They have churches that support them, theyre networked, they help each other.Baltimore boasts the largest Burmese refugee population in the state, with 1,258 arrivals since Jan. 1, 2009. Close behind are Silver Spring, with 351, and Frederick, with 207.When Hashim was resettled in Frederick, he was over an hours drive from the nearest International Rescue Center office in Baltimore. Thus, many of the services he neededEnglish lessons, job searches, medical assistancewere originally provided by members of the refugee community, he said.The community was very, very helpful to me, Hashim said.However, this network may soon stop growing.The stream of incoming Burmese is poised to trickle out; as of Sept. 20, the state had seen just 178 new arrivals so far this year, a mere fraction of last years 531.The decrease is so significant that it likely precludes a complete halt in arrivals, Chandrasekar said.I anticipate in the next couple of years, the Burmese will stop arriving, Chandrasekar said.The slowing is due to the fact that most Burmese living in Malaysian and Thai refugee camps have already been resettled, Chandrasekar said.In Myanmar, decades of conflict between various armed ethnic groups have resulted in the deprival of human rights for millions of its citizens. However, the nations recent transformation from a military government into a primarily Democratic one has meant relative peace and thus, a less pressing need to flee.While some human rights advocates still critique its slow pace of change (the military still controls some parliamentary seats and various ministries), most populations are now able to survive there without fear of persecution. This progress was highlighted last month with President Obamas decision to lift long-standing economic sanctions against the country in his first meeting with the nations de facto leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.In part because of the progress that weve seen over the last several months, the United States is now prepared to lift sanctions that we have imposed on Burma for quite some time, Obama said when he announced the move.The move left some Burmese advocacy groups dismayed.Some said that without sanctions in place, the Burmese government will not be dissuaded from resorting once more to violence; a likely cause of concern for Maryland refugees with family still back home.Refugees here for a long time will certainly be dismayed, said Jennifer Sawicz, a spokeswoman for non-profit Burma Task Force USA. If they have family left in Burma, Im sure their fear for their families will increase.If violence does result, its possibly the U.S. could once more welcome greater numbers of Burmese refugees, said Simon Billenness, executive director of non-profit U.S. Campaign for Burma.If the situation takes a turn for the worst, we could see refugees fleeing from Burma again and taking to the seas again, Billenness said. Were very concerned.But with members of the military still wielding significant power, its doubtful the sanctions will have any impact, Hashim said.The sanctions might change, but the people who were in powernothings changed for them, Hashim said. So its nothing different for me and my family.
Northwest Passage NASA/ESA/STSCI

There was a time when the Northwest Passage was a sort of maritime Holy Grail, a route so desired and sought after, but so elusive.

For most of the recorded history of North America, the Passage has been nearly impassable and often deadly. But with the modernization of ships and the warming of the Earth, cruising and sailing through the Canadian Archipelago from Baffin Bay to the Beaufort Sea has grown more common and easier. But its not necessarily easy.

The top image above shows the Northwest Passage as it appeared on August 31, 2015, to the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi-NPP satellite. The second image was acquired the same day by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8. The white box on the top image shows the area depicted in the Landsat view. Both images are natural color. Note that much of the white covering the Northwest Passage in the VIIRS image is cloud cover, not sea ice.

The Northwest Passage is a complex, winding maze of sounds, channels, bays, and straits that pass through often ice-choked Arctic waters. Mariners refer to two main routes: a southern passage and a northern passage.

The southern route generally follows the one taken by Roald Amundsen from 1903-1906, when his crew completed the first successful transit through the region. The southern passage goes south of Prince of Wales Island and Victoria Island (and sometimes King William Island) and enters the Beaufort Sea south of Banks Island. It includes several narrow and shallow waterways that are better suited to small ships than large commercial vessels. This southern or Amundsen passage has been open for several weeks in the summer of 2015.

The northern passage runs through Lancaster Sound, Parry Channel, and McClure Straitwaterways that are wider, deeper, and more suited to large ships. In the satellite images above, the Parry Channel is filled with a melange of sea ice, though it does not appear to be completely frozen over. According to an August 31 analysis by the Multisensor Analyzed Sea Ice Extent (MASIE) product (created by the U.S. National Ice Center and posted by the National Snow and Ice Data Center) the northern route was considered mostly ice-filled for the sake of navigation.

As NASA ice scientists Walt Meier and Claire Parkison note, the opening of the Northwest Passage is not that unusual anymore, particularly along the southern route. However, with the warming of the Arctic and the shrinking of sea ice in the past three decades, the southern passage is now open more often and for longer stretches of each summer. According to Canadian government sources, as many as 30 passages were made as recently as 2012. The number of ships crossing the Northwest Passage has been steadily growing since the 1980s.

But even as Arctic sea ice declines, the opening of the Northwest Passage is not necessarily a sure bet in any given year. The Northwest Passage does not always correlate with the overall sea ice because it is dependent to some degree on ice drifting into and out of the channels, Meier said. You can have a relatively high ice year overall when the passage clears out, and you can have a relatively low ice yearlike this yearwhen the passage still has ice. There is less ice in recent years than there used to be and the passages are more easily navigable than they used to be, but specific conditions from year to year can vary substantially.

A new paper published in Geophysical Research Letters notes that a warm and mostly ice-free Arctic will not necessarily mean smooth sailing through the Northwest Passage any time soon. The ice that forms in these channels and bays is often some of the thickest in all of the Arctic. That makes it more likely to survive through the summer at a thickness that could harm ships.

Imagery and references
On Thursday, November 3, the Michigan Gaming Control Board released the 2017 race date schedule for Northville Downs and Hazel Park Raceway.

According to a piece by Crains Detroit Business, Northville Downs will host a total of 54 live race dates.

Northvilles programs will take place on Fridays and Saturdays from March 3 to June 10, and from September 8 to November 25.

Hazel Park will host a total of 36 cards of live Thoroughbred racing. The programs will take place on Fridays and Saturdays from May 5 to September 2.

(With files from Crains Detroit Business)
The fall racing schedule hits full stride this weekend with harness racing cards Saturday and Sunday afternoon at Red Shores Charlottetown Driving Park.

First-race post time for both programs is 12:30 p.m.

Looking To Do Some Damage Saturday; Drive For Charity Presentation To Take Place

Doing Some Damage has drawn the rail in the Saturday afternoon top class for driver Corey MacPherson, trainer Trevor Hicken and owner Kent Livingston, Cornwall. The seven-year-old is coming off a fourth-place in the mud at Summerside last week and steps up to take on Clic K, owned by Plo stables, Donagh, PE, who is listed as the 5-2 morning line favorite. Marc Campbell will do the driving for trainer Jackie Matheson. Campbell is having another great season, as he has racked up 117 wins at Charlottetown heading into the program. He broke the all-time wins title on December 10, 2011 with 119 victories and ended the 2012 campaign with a new season benchmark of 130 trips to victory lane. Campbell is potentially on a record setting pace to reach his 2012 milestone with 12 cards remaining on the 2016 calendar.

The feature also has Motorino with trainer Terry Gallant in the bike for his co-owner Eric Johnston, Summerside, PE. The black pacer, who has great gate speed, put in a big trip last week from Post 8 and will get to rally from Post 4 in Saturdays match-up. The field also includes heavy hitters such as Forever Paradise (to be driven by Michael McGuigan), DBS Rosco (Kenny Arsenault), First Art Down (Ken Murphy), Rash B Havior (Gary Chappell) and Perfect Escape (Ron Matheson).

Mr MacLeod is favoured to win the Joyriders Pace in Race 7 for MacPherson, trainer Kyle Wilkie and owner Mallory Lewis, St Peters Bay, PE. The annual Drive for the Charity will come to a close on Saturday, as trackside cheque presentations will be made to local charities by the participating business sponsors and drivers. The ceremony will be held after Race 2.

To view the harness racing entries for Saturday at the CDP, click the following link: Saturday Entries  Charlottetown Driving Park.

DGs Camme To Look For Third Straight Win

DGs Camme will take aim at his third win in a row during Sunday afternoons feature (Race 9). The Jackie Matheson trainee, owned by driver Ron Matheson, Tom Clark, Quentin and Hal Bevan, Charlottetown, PE, has recorded eight scores from 15 starts this season and has banked close to $30,000 in earnings. The son of Blissfull Hall will start from Post 5 against Painted Desert (Adam Merner), Drivingthedragon N (Jason Hughes), Ramblinglily (Ken Murphy) and Eagle Jolt, who also has back-to-back victories. Regular pilot Marc Campbell has booked off his drives Sunday to attend the Harrisburg Mixed Sale in Pennsylvania, so young Ryan Desroche has received the driving assignment from the boss.

Conditioner Jennifer Trainor of Vernon Bridge has two stable stars riding win streaks on the card. Santanna Sam will be looking for his fourth win in a row in Race 7, while Cheyenne Ford will take his three-race win streak into Race 13. Michael McGuigan has received the call to drive.

To view the harness racing entries for Sunday at the CDP, click the following link: Sunday Entries  Charlottetown Driving Park.

(Red Shores)
Do not blame Israelis for settlements or excessive use of force Clinton stance was clear a year ago -

In no clear order of importance, lets have a look. Im starting with the gossip. Ill get to the policy position in my headline at the end.

One question: the images of Bibi and Abbas w the narrative being the cease fire are off. The images are from our peace efforts not the cease fire. Worried well be criticized. There should be photos from cease fire announcement in Cairo.

One question: the images of Bibi and Abbas w the narrative being the cease fire are off. The images are from our peace efforts not the cease fire. Worried well be criticized. There should be photos from cease fire announcement in Cairo.

Its that nickname, Bibi, parallel with Abbas. You know who counts. Even Dennis Ross calls Abbas by his informal name, Abu Mazen.

This email sent to the campaign braintrust last year by Haim Sabans aide links to a Jerusalem Post list of the worlds most influential Jews. Saban is number 6, and pictured with Hillary Clinton. The list includes also Janet Yellen, Jack Lew, and Wendy Sherman. Netanyahu and Sheldon Adelson and Malcolm Hoenlein and Ron Lauder are in the top ten too. Sabans aide comments to the Clinton team: You are all in good company.

Politico says today in a report based on the emails that Saban is Team Clintons favorite billionaire. And here is Saban last night, thanks to Jewish Insider, with Patriots owner Robert Kraft at the fundraiser for the Israeli Defense Forces which is to say, these men are funding human rights atrocities.

Back to the leaks. Heres Stu Eizenstat in March 2015 crowing over the fact that Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations issued a statement saying that Hillary Clinton is going to restore relations with Israel to a more constructive footing than President Obama, thereby throwing Obama under the bus for his criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu for racism in the recent election.

Eizenstat soon got on the Iran job: positioning Clinton inside the Jewish community by guiding her July 2015 statement against Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) of Israel, which was used to balance her eventual support for Obamas Iran deal. In June 2015 , Eizenstat urged Jake Sullivan to have Clinton consult a wide range of Jewish leaders before condemning BDS, and to call BDS odious.

Have Hillary call a select few on the list, for example Malcolm [Hoenlein], Abe Foxman, David Harris, and Jerry Silverman [of the Jewish Federations of North America]Then issue a statement, mentioning the wide outreach.

Have Hillary call a select few on the list, for example Malcolm [Hoenlein], Abe Foxman, David Harris, and Jerry Silverman [of the Jewish Federations of North America]Then issue a statement, mentioning the wide outreach.

Pretty conservative definition of outreach! The point, said Eizenstat, is to make it a serious effort to get their input.

A few days later, Eizenstat pressed Amatzia Baram, an Israeli scholar on Iraq and ISIS on Jake Sullivan, Clintons foreign policy guru/Rhodes Scholar apparatchik. Writes Eizenstat: He was consulted extensively by the USG during the Bush Administration. Like thats a recommendation? It is to Israel supporters, Bush was very popular in Israel. Sullivan writes back that he would love to see Barams article and: Hopefully we will meet soon!

More Saban. In February 2015, Politico sends the campaign questions about Bill Clintons relationship to Saban. Bill Clintons chief of staff, Tina Flournoy quotes Politicos questions, and answers the second one

It has been reported that the State Department rejected a consultancy [Bill Clinton] proposed with Saban Capital Group. Is that so? Or was there never a formal objection from State to that arrangement? Did it go forward?*

It has been reported that the State Department rejected a consultancy [Bill Clinton] proposed with Saban Capital Group. Is that so? Or was there never a formal objection from State to that arrangement? Did it go forward?*

Later that spring, Saban held a fundraiser at his house with Hillary Clinton ; and lots of his friends had foreign policy questions. Podesta promptly got back with Sullivans name. Meantime, Saban hooks Podesta up with Isaac Lee, an executive at Univision, a Colombian Jew who studied in Israel

Enough networking. Here is substance. Back in October 2015 as the intifada of knives broke out in occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Clinton team prepared new Talking Points on Israel and Palestine, and an aide communicated them to Podesta. Many of these statements would be reflected in Clintons public comments in months to come, especially the refusal to condemn Israeli settlements.

On the outbreak of violence, blame Palestinians:

The State Department had lately condemned an Israeli stabbing attack against Palestinians in Dimona as an act of terrorism. Asked if the campaign goes along with that, it ducked and dodged:

What is most important right now is to do all we can to encourage deescalation and help restore calm. That is what will make a difference in peoples lives.

What is most important right now is to do all we can to encourage deescalation and help restore calm. That is what will make a difference in peoples lives.

Heres the settlement stuff. The Clinton campaign wants no part of the Obama administrations condemnations of settlements.

Secretary Kerry has been criticized for implying that settlement activity is the cause of the recent violence. He stated at Harvard two days ago that: Whats happening is that unless we get going, a two-state solution could conceivably be stolen from everybody. And theres been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years. Now you have this violence because theres a frustration that is growing, and a frustration among Israelis who dont see any movement. Do you agree with that assessment?

 What is most important is that we remember two things. First, violence and terrorism are never the right response. They are unacceptable and must stop.
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Lenovo Phab 2 Plus to go on sale in India via Amazon from Tuesday

Lenovo Phab 2 Plus, which has made its debut back in June, will now launch in Indian smarpthone market on November 8. The company has sent media invites for the same which also confirms that the handset will be Amazon exclusive. It might launch in Champagne Gold and Gunmetal Grey colour variants.

The main highlighting feature of Lenovo Phab 2 smartphone is fingerprint sensor, which is coupled with a dual 13-megapixel of primary camera setup at the back, which is featured with with dual-LED Flash, PDAF, laser auto focus, f/2.0 aperture, Fujitsu Milbeaut ISPs, and 1.34-micron pixels. While, the handset is fronted with a 6.4-inch FHD 2.5D curved glass display and an 8-megapixel of selfie shooter f/2.2 aperture and 1.4-micron pixels. It is fueled with a whopping 4050mAh battery.

Running on Android 6.0 Marshmallow with the companys Vibe UI skin on top, the smartphone is powered by a 1.3GHz MediaTek MT8783 octa-core processor with MaliT720 GPU and 3GB RAM. It also boasts 32GB of internal storage which could be expandable up to 128GB via a microSD card.

As far connectivity is concerned, the Lenovo Phab 2 Plus comes with 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 ac, Bluetooth 4.0, and GPS.

The device was introduced in premium variant of the two, with a starting price of USD 299 (around Rs. 20,000). Hence, we can assume that the Indian price will go around Rs. 25,000, however, the official confirmation from the company will be release on Tuesday.
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SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Friday his space launch company is aiming to return its rockets to flight in mid-December following a launch pad accident two months ago.

During an interview with CNBC, Musk said investigators had figured out why a Falcon 9 rocket burst into flames on 1 September as it was being fueled for a routine, preflight test.

The accident destroyed a $200 million Israeli communications satellite and grounded the Falcon 9 fleet for the second time in 14 months.

The cause of the accident was a fueling system issue that inadvertently produced solid oxygen inside the rockets upper stage tank. The oxygen then reacted with a carbon composite bottle containing liquid helium that sits inside the oxygen tank, triggering an explosion.

I think weve gotten to the bottom of the problem, said Musk, who is also chief executive of Tesla Motors Inc. He added that the issue had never been encountered in the history of rocketry.

Musk did not specify what mission would launch next, nor whether SpaceX would fly from a new launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, or from its West Coast site at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

SpaceXs primary launch pad, located just south of Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, was damaged in the Sept. 1 accident. SpaceX has declined to release details on the extent of damage.

The company has a backlog of about 70 missions, worth more than $10 billion.

Also on Friday, NASA and Orbital ATK Inc said Orbitals next cargo run to the International Space Station would use the heavier-lift Atlas 5 rocket, made by United Launch Alliance, rather than Orbitals Antares booster. The switch will allow NASA to fly an extra 660 pounds (300 kg) of cargo to the station while SpaceX returns to flight.

NASA hired Orbital and SpaceX to fly cargo to the station after the shuttles were retired in 2011.

Terms of Orbitals contract with United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, were not released. The launch is targeted for early 2017, NASA said.

Reuters
News / National

by Daily Maverick

LONDON - At any question-and-answer session, there's always someone who asks something inappropriate.In Harare on Wednesday night, at a panel discussion on Zimbabwe's post-Mugabe future, that person was Pride Mkono, an unemployed university graduate turned youth activist. In fact, his wasn't really a question, but a verbal assault aimed at Catriona Laing, Britain's ambassador to Zimbabwe."I speak for the youth when I say that the British ambassador has tried everything and failed. It's time you leave this country! We don't desire to be a colony again!" Mkono, visibly angry, before being chastised by the moderator, said  not so much for his sentiment as for his tone.Laing, ashen-faced, slunk further into her chair. She's not very popular here at the moment, and she knows it. She arrived late and scuttled off before anyone  including this journalist  could get around to raising any difficult subjects.An economist by training, Laing is not a career diplomat, having joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2012. Even for an experienced diplomat, Harare  where Britain struggles to escape its colonial history  is never easy.As a spokesperson for the British Embassy explained, in a written response to Daily Maverick questions: "The British Ambassador is a politically charged role in Zimbabwe, given the history, and always subject to more scrutiny than most other Ambassadors."The Ambassador is also criticised by government for supporting opposition and civil society. That is the nature of the job. We are dealing with the febrile political atmosphere in a country facing profound difficulties  but it will not distract us from our overall aim to support the people of Zimbabwe in our shared aspiration for a more peaceful, prosperous and democratic society."Laing, however, has attracted more opprobrium than her predecessor, seemingly alienating almost the entire spectrum of opposition parties and social movements.She is accused of intervening in the ruling party's internal faction-fighting in favour of Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa; and of encouraging the international community to organise a bailout for Robert Mugabe's cash-strapped regime.Laing has also been criticised for facilitating a meeting between finance minister Patrick Chinamasa and Peter Mandelson, a former British cabinet minister and now head of Lazard International investment bank, earlier this year.It was subsequently revealed that Lazard's engaged in later negotiations with Chinamasa on a potential $1,1-billion bailout.Laing firmly denies these accusations."We have been crystal clear, we do not back any party, faction or individual. There is little we can do about a rumour mill other than to keep restating and explaining our position.We focus on the policy outcomes that are required to get Zimbabwe back on track  through improvements in economic governance, human rights and the rule of law. It is for the people of Zimbabwe to choose their political leadership," said a spokesperson for the British Embassy, in a written response to questions."If we had to suggest why the rumours persist it may be that because the UK, as part of the EU and along with most other foreign partners here, has been willing to engage with the government's Lima Plan for economic re-engagement."There is a view among some groups in Zimbabwe that this pathway to reform, even with all the conditions attached, should not be an option for Zanu-PF."That view is not shared by the EU or UK. The incentives to reform have to be available to any ruling party without discrimination. How they respond is for them to decide," the spokesperson continued.She added that Britain was "completely hard-nosed" in ensuring conditions on economic, political and human rights reform were met before any bailout could be considered.Denials notwithstanding, the strongly negative perceptions persist."I'm very concerned about the British. They've been very vigilant in their support of Mnangagwa. They even denied some activists visas to the UK."The Brits should let Zimbabwe determine their own destiny. As far as we are concerned, Mnangagwa is the same if not worse than Mugabe," said Promise Mkwananzi, spokesman for Tajamuka, a prominent youth movement.Mkwananzi himself was denied a British visa, as was fellow activist Linda Masirira. Both believe the denials were politically motivated, although the embassy disputes their account.Mnangagwa is a stalwart of the ruling Zanu-PF, and a frontrunner to succeed President Robert Mugabe. He is from the party's hardline wing, and is implicated in multiple human rights abuses, most notably in the infamous Gukurahundi massacres of the 1980s, in which thousands of people in Matabeleland were killed by government troops.Mnangagwa is not, in other words, a very nice guy. But in a series of interviews, Zimbabwean activists andpoliticians said that behind the scenes he is being actively supported by Ambassador Laing. They claim that she views his succession as the best way to encourage stability in Zimbabwe. Her name was mentioned repeatedly as a major roadblock in the pursuit of substantive political reform.Tendai Biti, head of the People's Democratic Party and former finance minister during the Government of National Unity, said that the United Kingdom  under Laing's guidance  is attempting to shore up the Mugabe regime."They say let's bail out this regime, because things might get worse and clearing the mess might be more expensive. For Christ's sake, things reached rock bottom a long time ago. Ask the 79% of Zimbabweans living in extreme poverty. Ask the 91% who don't have a job It's absolutely nonsense, it's ghoulish.Opposition MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai"[They] are arguing that Zimbabwe needs a strongman. By that they mean a man called Emmerson Mnangagwa, who suddenly is a reformer. He has been in government for 36 years and I know of no single act of reform he has done."It doesn't end there. This guy was part and parcel of Gukurahundi. I call him the Butcher of Esigodini [a village in Matabeleland]. So now you want to impose the Butcher of Esigodini on our people. Shame."Morgan Tsvangirai, former prime minister and leader of the Movement for Democratic Change-T, the largest opposition party, was more diplomatic than Biti but ultimately no less scathing about Britain's approach."I engage the British ambassador. She has vehemently stated her position that people are labelling us this left, right and centre. But her position is we don't support individuals, we support the people of Zimbabwe, and I take her word for it."But I think their initial position of believing that Africa must have a strongman still influences their perspective of what an African leader should be like, and hence they are kowtowing with better a reformed Zanu PF than a change of government'. From that perspective, they will be wrong. They will be wrong," said Tsvangirai.The severity of this criticism from key voices in Zimbabwean politics and civil society leaves the British Ambassador in a tricky position.In this context, the truth or otherwise of the allegations against her hardly matters  it is the depth of those negative perceptions that is going to complicate her relationship with key stakeholders, and undermine her ability to do her job.The British Embassy claims that the controversy simply comes with the territory. This is true, but disingenuous. Good diplomacy requires the ability to navigate the complexities of tricky positions: to deflect criticism, to maintain difficult relationships, to calm stormy waters. Her Majesty's representative in Zimbabwe appears to be having exactly the opposite effect, exacerbating tensions in an already delicate political situation. Maybe not all ambassadors are diplomats, after all.
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German prosecutors are investigating Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives, a spokesman for the Munich prosecutor's office said on Friday, following a complaint alleging the company broke national laws against hate speech and sedition by failing to remove racist postings.

The spokesman declined to provide further details. German attorney Chan-jo Jun had filed a complaint with prosecutors in the Bavarian city in September and demanded that Facebook executives be compelled to comply with anti-hate speech laws by deleting racist or violent postings from its site.

Facebook's rules forbid bullying, harassment and threatening language, but critics say it does not do enough to enforce them and has failed to staunch a tide of racist and threatening posts on the social network during an influx of migrants into Europe.

Prosecutors in Hamburg earlier this year rejected a similar complaint by Jun on the grounds that the regional court lacked jurisdiction because Facebook's European operations are based in Ireland.

"There is a different view in Bavaria," his firm Jun Lawyers of Wuerzburg in Bavaria said in a statement.

"Upon Jun's request, Bavarian Justice Minister Winfried Bausback said that Hamburg's view was wrong and German law does indeed apply to some of the offences," it said.

Jun's complaint named Facebook founder and chief executive Zuckerberg and nine other managers at the company, including Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.

Facebook said it had not violated German law and was working on fighting hate speech online.

"We are not commenting on the status of a possible investigation but we can say that the allegations lack merit and there has been no violation of German law by Facebook or its employees," a company spokesman said.

Jun has compiled a list of 438 postings that were flagged as inappropriate but not deleted over the past year. They include what some might consider merely angry political rants but also clear examples of racist hate speech and calls to violence laced with references to Nazi-era genocide.

Following a public outcry and pressure from German politicians, Facebook this year hired Arvato, a business services unit of Bertelsmann, to monitor and delete racist posts.

A rash of online abuse and violent attacks against newcomers to Germany accompanied the influx of hundreds of thousands of migrants last year, which led to a rise in the popularity of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and has put pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Reuters
tech2 News Staff

Indian tablet manufacturer Lava has announced a brand new, entry-level tablet called the Lava Ivory Pop. This tablet will retail for just Rs 6,299 and comes with dual SIM support.

Considering that this is a budget tablet, the low-end specs are understandable. It runs on an Intel Atom 1.2GHz processor (Sofia 3G-R) and features a 7-inch TN display panel with a resolution of 1024x600 (171 ppi). This is backed by 1GB of RAM and 32GB onboard storage. A Mali 450 GPU provides the graphical grunt required to drive that display. The battery is a 3,000mAh unit.

In terms of cameras, you get a 5MP rear camera and 2MP front camera.

Interestingly, the tablet can double as a phone, though putting a 7-inch tablet to your ear is obviously not a comfortable prospect.

Other than the screen, the one downside with this tablet is the fact that it doesnt support 4G connectivity, which is surprising when you consider that many budget phones these days support 4G.

The tablet is cheap and on paper, seems to be functional enough for the budget-conscious consumer. The 1GHz RAM and the lack of 4G support are significant downsides, but then again, a dual-SIM 7-inch tablet that can also double as a phone and sell for under Rs 7,000 seems like a steal.
Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blog spot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

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..Commentary Magazine..04 November '16..The Palestinians already had a long list of grievances against the state of Israel. Some are understandable, albeit a function of the conflict they have refused to end. Some are not reasonable. Their objection to the expansion of Jerusalems light rail system falls into the latter category. The t hinly-veiled threats of terror from Palestinian Authority officials , who claim that the extension of mass transit to the Old City and the Western Wall will explode Jerusalem, are not just irrational. They are yet another sign that the PA considers any excuse for exacerbating the conflict a higher priority than what is good for the citys residents. Its also a clear sign of their intentions for the citys future, which ought to send a chill down the spines of those who imagine a two-state solution would bring peace.The light rail project, which was begun in the 1990s, has been a remarkable success for Israels capital. It has made getting around the congested city more manageable and has, as The Tower noted in August , done much to improve the lives of both its Jewish and Arab population. Though Israel has been rightly criticized for not providing the same level of municipal services to Arab neighborhoods as to Jewish onesan unfortunate truth that is, in part, the result of Arab non-participation in local governmentthe light rail is an example of a project that works for both communities. Even the left-wing Haaretz newspaper reported that it had contributed greatly to social cohesion and integration of Jews and Arabs in the city, as well as to the entire citys economic well-being.But that is perhaps exactly why Palestinian leaders have consistently opposed it. The light rail became the target of sabotage and arson from Palestinian terror groups specifically because it united the entire city. Even though affordable and convenient mass transit brought economic benefits to Arabs as well as Jews, the PA and Hamas regard it as a symbol of the occupation and a threat to efforts to re-partition the capital.While their past efforts to undermine improvements to the citys insufficient infrastructure contradicted their other complaints about the unequal resources devoted to Arab neighborhoods, the threats about the Western Wall expansion represent the kind of incitement that could lead to mass bloodshed.The PA has sought to politicize improvements to the Old City before with results that were catastrophic. The opening of excavated ancient tunnels that led to the Wall in 1996 were used as a pretext for terrorism, which cost the lives of Jews as well as Arabs. The purposes of those protests, just as threats about a light rail extension to the Old City (which would be constructed in such a manner as to do nothing to the Old City Walls and any other historic buildings or homes) was not to highlight discrimination or even high-handed behavior by the Israelis toward Arabs. Rather, the point is to resist anything that makes permanent both the Jewish presence there or the citys unity. The attempt to depict mass transit as yet another mythical threat to the mosques on the Temple Mount is a canard aimed at promoting religious hatred and violence.Should the Palestinians ever relent from the refusal to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn, it is possible a deal might allow them to gain control of Jerusalems Arab-majority neighborhoods. But even under those circumstanceswhich would be difficult, if not impossible, to manage even with the best of wills on both sidesthe light rail system would, in theory, remain to serve all of the citys people and to ensure that peace could work to enable the city to continue to thrive.But that is not part of the Palestinian vision for the future. At a minimum, they clearly hope for a return to the situation that existed between 1949 and 1967 when the city was divided between the Western portion controlled by Israel and an Eastern sector illegally occupied by Jordan. During those years, the city was not only blighted by a wall between the two sides and a dangerous no mans land on either side of the armistice line. Jews were also prohibited from entering the Old City and from praying at the Wall. The light rail ensures that horrible vision would never recur. But the real Palestinian goal, as is evident by their continual refusal to make peace, is to deny Jewish sovereignty in any portion of Jerusalem.No one who loves Jerusalembe they Jew, Christian or Muslimwould think of blowing it up under any circumstances, let alone as a protest against an effort to make it a better place to live. Opposition to the light rail system is yet one more indication that Palestinians are unreconciled to coexistence, let alone a two-state solution.
Existing UGC law to be amended soon

Top bosses can now exercise power to run varsities

M M Jasim :

The University Grants Commission (UGC) is going to be a powerful institution instead of toothless tiger as the government has been working to amend the existing "UGC Law" with the absolute authority to ensure quality education and to take action against any faulty university.

The government has taken the initiative to change some articles of the UGC Law-1973 after the demand from experts of higher education in the country for making it a strong higher education controlling body, Education Ministry sources said.

Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid told The New Nation on Friday that

the existing UGC Law is very old. The ministry has taken initiative to amend the law.

"We have taken opinion from all quarters. The draft law has been made and it will be placed to the Cabinet soon," the Minister said.

He added: "The UGC Law was enacted in 1973 when only six universities were operating. Now there are 38 public universities and 96 private universities in the country. The Law was amended many times but not sufficient. It is high time to amend the Law and turn it into a modern Law."

Nahid said that the new law could help the UGC to exercise its appropriate power to run the universities smoothly.

The ministry officials think that the UGC has no power to take action against any irregularities of the public and private universities.

Even it has failed to take any step against those private universities who did certificate business in the name of higher education. It just investigates of an irregularity and gives some recommendations to the ministry, they said.

The officials said the UGC will get enough power after approval of the amended law.

The UGC top bosses have been demanding to make the higher education controlling body autonomous for long. But the governments did not pay any heed in this regard.

As a result, they said, the UGC has become a toothless tiger. "Even some private universities like North South University have been violating the instruction of the UGC."

The officials said it is impossible to compel the universities to follow the UGC's direction without the amendment of the Law. They also hailed the government initiative.

UGC Chairman Professor Abdul Mannan told this reporter that the commission had made a draft and submitted it to the Education Ministry.

"We have requested to make the commission strong and modern to ensure quality higher education. We have also requested to form a Higher Education Commission," the UGC chairman said.

"India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Pakistan have autonomous body to regulate the higher education. The Indian autonomous body can shut down a university at any time. We have wanted that," he said.




Trump inspires his own brand of fashion on the campaign trail

AP Washington :

Donald Trump's insurgent bid for the presidency has not only cast aside conventional wisdom about what it takes to be a candidate for the White House, it has also inspired a different kind of campaign fashion.

In addition to Trump's ubiquitous "Make America Great Again" trucker hats, the business mogul's supporters have turned out to his massive rallies all over the country wearing shirts - many of them homemade - that are as unique as the candidate himself.

Unlike past elections, in which candidates' supporters wore clothing with a basic campaign logo or slogan, Trump fans have shown up in shirts that cast the celebrity businessman turned GOP nominee as everything from a cartoonish superhero out to save the country to an American patriot with wild hair who has bullishly overtaken the Republican Party.

At the same time, Trump supporters have also appeared in garb that expresses their distaste for Democrat Hillary Clinton, wearing shirts that depict her behind prison bars or poke at the email scandal that has dogged her campaign. At least one shirt, spotted on a Trump supporter in Florida, seemed to call for the former secretary of state's murder, reading: "I Wish Hillary Had Married O.J."
PM`s visit to Tungipara suspended

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina`s today`s scheduled visit to Tungipara in Goplaganj has been suspended due to inclement weather.

"The visit of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to Tungipara in Goplaganj scheduled for today has been suspended due to inclement weather," PM's Press Secretary Ihsanul Karim told BSS.

Sheikh Hasina was scheduled to go to Tungipara today to pay homage to Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman after her reelection as the Awami League president.

Sheikh Hasina was reelected president of Awami League unanimously in the 20th national council of the party on October 22, 23 while Obaidul Quader was elected as its new general secretary.

This is the eighth time Sheikh Hasina, the elder daughter of Bangabandhu, was elected as the head of Awami League, one of the oldest political parties of the subcontinent.

Bangladesh Awami League (AL) has also suspended its today's programme to place wreaths at the mazar of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman due to inclement weather.

"A delegation of the newly elected Awami League Central Working Committee was scheduled to go to Tungipara on Sunday to place wreaths at the mazar of Bangabandhu but the programme has been postponed due to inclement weather," said an AL press release.
Duminy and Elgar dominate Australia

Jean-Paul Duminy of South Africa celebrates with Dean Elgar of South Africa after reaching his century during day three of the first Test match between Australia and South Africa at WACA in Perth, Australia on Saturday.

AFP, Perth :



Dean Elgar and JP Duminy guided South Africa into a commanding position on the third day of the opening Test against Australia in Perth Saturday.

At tea on the third day the visitors were 295 for three in their second innings, an overall lead of 293 with seven wickets in hand.

Elgar was unbeaten on 112, but Duminy fell to the last ball before tea for 141, the pair adding 250 for the third wicket after the Proteas lost two early second innings wickets late on the second day.

Duminy chased a wide ball from Peter Siddle (2-35) and got a fine edge, being given out on a decision review after umpire Aleem Dar had turned down the Australian appeal.

The left-hander had faced 225 balls, hitting 20 fours and one six.

Both batsmen made their Test debuts at the WACA Ground and the pair each notched their fifth Test centuries between lunch and tea.

For Elgar, it would have been particularly sweet as he was dismissed for a pair on debut in 2012.

At tea he had faced 281 balls, hitting 14 fours and one six, reaching triple figures with a lovely cover drive from the bowling of Nathan Lyon.

Duminy and Elgar had few problems with an Australian attack which appeared to wilt in the heat, with first innings destroyer Mitchell Starc struggling with his control and looking little like the player who claimed four wickets on the opening day.

Starc, in his first Test since a nasty leg injury and coming off a limited preparation, bowled a host of wayward deliveries and grew increasingly frustrated as the day wore on.

His woes were compounded when he misjudged a high ball at mid-on when Elgar was 81 and failed to get a hand to the difficult chance.

The South Africans will be one bowler down in the Australian second innings, with champion quick Dale Steyn expected to be out for at least six months due to a shoulder problem which is likely to require surgery.

However, they will also be encouraged by some inconsistent bounces on the third day as the pitch started to deteriorate.

That they could be in such a strong position was remarkable given they appeared to be all but out of the match 24 hours earlier.

After winning the toss and being dismissed for 242, the South Africans appeared certain to be facing a massive first innings deficit when Australia cruised to 158 for none before lunch on day two, but the home side then collapsed in stunning fashion to make just 244.


Project on CHT food security launched

A Correspondent :

A new project named "USAID SAPLING" was launched yesterday aiming to improve food security and nutrition, empower women, and build resilience in some of the poorest areas in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

USAID in partnership with the Ministry of Chittagong Hill Tracts inaugurated SAPLING, its new five-year Sustainable Agriculture and Production Linked to Improved Nutrition Status, Resilience, and Gender Equity project, in Bandarban district, implemented by Helen Keller International, according to a press release of the US embassy in Dhaka on Friday.

The project will bring together the government and international and local NGOs to work in partnership with individuals, communities, and traditional institutions to help the poor families to improve their circumstances and lift themselves out of poverty.
The dark night of 7th November 1975

Maj Gen (Retd) Syed Muhammad Ibrahim Bir Protik :

Not a planner, not an actor, not a gainer, yet I became part of history being created on the fateful morning of the 7th of November 1975. Mobile phones were not yet born, wrist-watches were the more popular means of confirming date and time. But there was an exception. When the entire sky over the Dhaka Cantonment became lighted because of bullets and illuminating fire in the sky, and the deafening noise of dozens of Machine Guns spitting out bullets at the rate of minimum a hundred per minute, I knew that the date in the calendar has changed from the 6th of November to the 7th. I had to take a decision. This was not the first time that, decisions involving my life and profession had to be taken quickly.

Mutinies are no unknown matter, but all mutinies are not highlights in a history. The mutiny on HMS Bounty on the 28th of April 1789 involved less then 50 people; yet is a popular name and date. Compared to that, a date not known much is the 19th of March 1971. I was only twenty one and half years old, a Second Lieutenant with only six and a half months of service. I was serving in the Second Battalion of the East Bengal Regiment located at Gazipur, the place as we know now, about 30 km north of Dhaka city. Back then, it was known as Joydebpur, and the battalion was housed in the famous palace of the Zamindars of Bhawal. Political situation in the-then East Pakistan was as tense as one could imagine. The Pakistani Military high command suspected the allegiance of the battalions of the East Bengal Regiment then located in East Pakistan. The Pakistani high command suspected that, in times of deep crisis, the battalions may side with the Bengali population as opposed to continued loyalty to the Pakistani military high command. Their suspicion proved right. On the 19th March, Brigadier Jahanjeb Arbab commanding the 57 Infantry Brigade of the Pakistan Army in Dhaka, led a contingent of about 70 officers and soldiers, heavily armed, to Joydebpur. Their mission: to disarm the second battalion. The local people were agitated and buttressed the agitation of the soldiers. The Brigadier ordered Bengali officers of the second battalion to bring fire upon the agitating locals, specifically saying, "I want dead bodies; only then I will be sure whether you are with us or with them." The senior and junior officers: Lieutenant Colonol Masudul Khan, Major Shafiullah, Major Moinul Hossain Chowdhury, Captain Nasim, Captain Azizur Rahman, one by one disobeyed the command of the Brigadier to fire bullets the Bengali locals. Youngest officer Ibrahim also decided to disobey. It was indeed, a mutiny. The stage was set for the mutiny to become a massive rebellion.

In the early hours of 26th of March 1971, Pakistani Military Forces launched, what they called the 'Operation Search Light'. Bengali people decided to resist. In Joydebpur, we had to decide. We recalled our mutiny of the 19th March. We decided the expand. I was the youngest officer, so according to the tradition of the Bengal Regiment, I was the 'Intelligence Officer' of the battalion. Duty and tradition demanded that the intelligence officer is always with the Commanding Officer. So was I. The Commanding Officer on that day was one Lieutenant Colonel Abdur Rakib, who regretted and said, he cannot lead the battalion into rebellion against Pakistan. The Second in Command of the Battalion Major K M Shafiullah took over the onerous task of leading the battalion. I accompanied the new Commanding Officer Shafiullah. Second East Bengal Regiment opened a new chapter and a new front in the war of liberation of Bangladesh on the 26th of March 1971. During the following 266 days of the war of liberation, fondly called nine months of the war, I remained with the battalion, commanding troops and fighting the enemy, in the process earning the gallantry award 'Bir Protik', for actions in December, in Akhaura near the Eastern border of Bangladesh. The bondage among comrades which develops in the battle field is usually unbreakable. So is the case with me and my battalion: the Second Battalion of the East Bengal Regiment.



Late in the evening of 6th November 1975, we knew that soldiers will be rebelling. Leaflets circulated by the leaders of the prospective rebellion, lashed out at the officers of the army. The sponsor of the rebellion was 'Secret Soldiers Organization' (in short SSS) which was growing over last two years or so. They had their own vision. They were linked to a young political party named Jatio Somajtantrik Dol, in short JSD. The political slogan of JSD was 'Scientific Socialism'. The tried their level best on the streets of Dhaka city to cow-down the political government of Bangladesh which was being headed by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman; they failed. Late in the year 1973 or very early 1974, the party, JSD, concluded that efforts on the streets must be simultaneously or at the final moment, supplemented by the entire military or part of the military or armed soldiers. With this in mind, JSD contacted the SSS.

After taking birth, the SSS had made much progress and consolidated itself among soldiers. Poor governance by the political government, corruption by politicians at all levels, neglect to the military by the political government, neglect to the security of the borders of the country and awful high-handedness by the law-enforcing agencies influenced the minds of the soldiers to go against the government of the day. The soldiers did not stop at that; they thought political co-operation from politicians will be needed in their armed-efforts to dislodge the government. Or, at the minimum, political co-operation will be urgently needed to sustain the situation should the SSS be able to dislodge the political government by armed-efforts. Thus the SSS looked for political cohorts; they found it in the JSD. It was a historic coincidence and confluence of interest of JSD and SSS. It therefore became a combined effort of the JSD and SSS. The mutiny or the rebellion of the soldiers of SSS began at the zero hour of the 7th of November 1975 in Dhaka Cantonment. They began by firing bullets towards the sky and parallel to the ground along all roads and streets, so that no movement can take place.

I was not in command of any body or section of troops in those days. Although I was an infantry officer, in 1975 I was a young major serving in the Army Headquarters of Bangladesh Army as a Staff Officer. We are now in 6th of November 1975. The buzz-word of the day travelling from mouth to mouth of soldiers here and there was, soldiers are brothers, soldiers will rule, kill officers. Rebellious soldiers were likely to kill any officer whom they might encounter during the night. They had declared their marauding intentions earlier. As an officer, that to one who fought for his country, I did not want to die casually. I wanted to make sure an honorable death for me. How do I do it? Finding an answer and acting on it, at the midnight of a terribly frightening dark night was not easy. I pondered, what might be the attitude of the soldiers of the Second Battalion of the East Bengal Regiment, with whom I had taken part in the war of liberation. I decided to take a chance. If my death was inevitable, let it be in the hands of soldiers most dear to my heart. The soldiers will also have to think several times before killing their one-time commander in the battle field.

The Dhaka Cantonment is spread more North-South than East-West. The main communication artery was a wide road, in those days only two lane, ran North-South in the center of the cantonment, with barracks and establishments spread on either side. In the Northern part of the cantonment there is an East-West road called 'Staff Road' in Pakistan days. In independent Bangladesh it was named Shaheed Bashar Road. In the Western end of this road, was the Signal Officers Mess were I had a room to stay. Towards the East, the road crossed the railway line to link with the new airport road. The railway line was, as everywhere in the country, a piece of high ground or like an embankment. I took the help of Abdus Shukur who was a senior attendant in the officers mess and a close buddy during the war also. With Shukur beside me, I approached the railway line, then literally ran northwards. Barracks of soldiers in the extreme Eastern part of Dhaka Cantonment, were abuzz with activities of rebellious soldiers. They were firing bullets in all direction. The railway line protected us because I was in the Western slope in the railway line. In few minutes I reached Second East Bengal. I was prepared to be shot by the first soldier who will encounter me. But providence and events proved otherwise. I was surprised, and it appeared that the battalion was waiting for a senior officer. My length of service was less than six years but emotionally I was very senior to the troops because I have fought with them.

In total darkness, I reached their command center and found two Captains, Kamrul and Enam, already there. They were relieved to find me in their midst at that crucial hour of their profession. The senior most soldier in an infantry battalion used to be called the Subedar Major. In this instance, it was Subedar Major Abdul Mannan. Abdul Mannan had joined the British-Indian Army 1945, saw through the 1971 war and was now at the fag end of his soldiering-career. Mannan came to meet me along with another dozen senior soldiers.

I asked them, "what do you want to do with me and the two Captains? Soldiers elsewhere in this very cantonment are killing officers. I am ready for death, should you order or else I will order and you will obey." In one voice they said, "the Bengal Regiment honors its traditions. We fought under your leadership, we will again fight if needed tonight, under your leadership. We have not been contaminated. They, the SSS, dared not even approach us." Now that, I found my protection in the battalion that I was born in, in the battalion that I fought with, it was my duty to protect the battalion at this tumultuous hours. I will now make a departure from intimate details of me and the battalion towards, higher and different plane of events.

(The writer is a Liberation War veteran, columnist and now heads a political party)
Nat`l Professor MR Khan no more

Staff Reporter :

National Professor MR Khan passed away due to old age complications on Saturday at the age of 88.

The country's pioneer paediatric surgeon Professor Khan breathed his last at 4:25pm at Central Hospital in the capital.

He was also suffering from cardiac complications for past few months and was admitted to the intensive care unit of the hospital, said Fariduddin Faruqi, Assistant Director of Central Hospital.

His first Namaj-e-Janaza will be held at 10:00am today (Sunday) at Central Hospital. The second namaz-e-janaza would be held at Shishu Shasthya Foundation Hospital at Mirpur. He will be buried at his family graveyard in Rasulpur of Satkhira Sadar.

President Abdul Hamid and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina expressed their profound shock at the death of Professor MR Khan. They recalled the great contribution of the child specialist and said the death of Dr Khan would cost high in the specialised field.

Health and Family Welfare Minister Mohammad Nasim also expressed deep shock at the death of Dr Khan.

Born on August 1, 1928 in Satkhira, MR Khan passed MBBS from Calcutta Medical College in 1952. He subsequently completed DCH, MRCP, FCPS, FRCP from London (1957), Edinburgh (1962), Bangladesh (1974) and Edinburgh (1978).

Khan has served as physician and teacher in the field of child health for a half century in Bangladesh and was regarded as father of Paediatrics in Bangladesh.

He served as a professor in different medical colleges in Bangladesh such as Dhaka Medical College and Rajshahi Medical College.

He has been appointed as National Professor since 2011.

He was awarded 'Ekushey Padak' for his contributions in child health and medicine on March 24 this year.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina also awarded Bangladesh's highest civilian honour, the Swadhinata Padak or Independence Award to Khan.

In his long career, Khan founded several organisations and national institutions. Among those are the Child Health Foundation Bangladesh, Institute of Child Health and Hospital at Mirpur, Dhaka and Children's Hospitals at Satkhira and Jessore.

He has written a number of books including Practice of Paediatrics Medicine, An Essential Aid on Paediatrics Medicine, and Essence of Paediatrics.
Fate of sensational cases uncertain

Investigation process slow: Interference of influential quarters alleged

Sagar Biswas :

Fate of several sensational cases, including the murders of Sohagi Jahan Tonu and Mahmuda Akter Mitu, have been facing uncertainty while police maintain dilly-dallying attitude in the investigation process.

There is widespread allegation that, many cases relating to violence against women have been suppressed because of interferences of influential quarters apparently responsible for the crimes.

The police could not make any progress into the murder of Mahmuda Khanam Mitu, 32, wife of SP Babul Akter though five months have elapsed in the meantime. She was killed near her house in Chittagong city on June 5 in front of her minor son. The law enforcers are yet to ascertain the motive behind the murder.

When contacted, Chittagong Metropolitan Police Commissioner Iqbal Bahar told The New Nation on Saturday night: "There is no progress at all about Mitu murder case. .What you have heard earlier, it is still in the same stage."

More than seven months have gone, but the investigation of Comilla Victoria College student Sohagi Jahan Tonu murder still remained a mystery. She was killed after rape inside the Mainamati Cantonment on March 20. But the law enforcers are yet to arrest any of the killers for reasons best known to them.

At a recent programme, Tonu's mother Anowara Begum said: "Several months have passed  how long we will have to wait? Unidentified callers are threatening us almost often."

When contacted, Comilla's Superintendent of Police Shah Abid Hossain said on Saturday that Tonu murder case was not under his jurisdictions, the CID [Criminal investigation Department] can say well about it.

CID Chief of Comilla zone Barrister Mosarraf Hossain said that the investigation process was yet to finish, and so he, therefore, could not comment about it.

Not only that, there is no progress about the mysterious death of Afsana Ferdaus, student of architecture department of SAIC Institute of Management and Technology in Mirpur, despite severe protests by her colleagues.

The family of Afsana had accused one Robin, a leader of Chhatra League's Tejgaon College unit, as 'murder suspect'. Afsana's brother Fazle Rabbi, who is a BCL leader in Thakurgaon, said his sister was a BCL activist herself, and she knew some BCL leaders. Someone of them might have killed her, he said.

In the latest incident, Khadija Akter Nargis, 23, a student of Sylhet Government Mahila College, was hacked indiscriminately allegedly by Badrul Alam, a Chhatra League leader of Shahjalal University of Science and Technology [SUST] unit on October 3.

Badrul was arrested, but the investigation procedure for submission of the charge sheet relating to the case is very slow despite enough evidences and eye witnesses.

A youth stabbed 14-year-old Suriya Akter Risha, student of Willes Little Flower School and College when she was crossing the street on a footbridge after her classes on August 26.

She succumbed to injuries in the hospital after two days. The killer 'Obaid', a worker of a tailoring shop at Eastern Mollika Shopping Complex at Elephant Road, was arrested and sent to jail. But police still did not submit the charge sheet.

Manzill Murshid, president of Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh, said about 12% cases relating to violation against women were not disposed and staying idle for many years because of interferences by influential quarters.

In this situation, trial proceedings cannot run and the cases cannot be disposed of quickly resulting to sufferings of the victims, he said.


PMO, Home Ministry, AL form probe bodies

Staff Reporter :

The Prime Minister's Office (PMO), Ministry of Home Affairs and ruling Awami League have formed three separate committees to probe into attacks on Hindu homes and temples at Nasirnagar in Brahmanbaria.

The probe bodies have already started their investigation by paying visit to Nasirnagar, sources said.

Meanwhile, Brahmanbaria district administration yesterday held series of meetings with various professional groups to ease religious tension now prevailing in the district.

The meetings were held at the conference room of the Brahmanbaria deputy commissioner in presence of Chittagong Divisional Commissioner Ruhul Amin, Deputy Commissioner Md Rezwanur Rahman, DIG of Chittagong Range of Police Shafiqul Islam and Superintendent of Brahmanbaria Police Mizanur Rahman.

Representatives of professional groups during the meetings demanded exemplary punishment to the

perpetrators of the Nasirnagar mayhem, reported our Brahmanbaria correspondent quoting officials of the district administration.

They also asked the local administration to take necessary security measures in the trouble-hit Nasirnagar upazila to avert further untoward situation.

Earlier, the authorities deployed 5000 cop members in six trouble torn unions of the upazila amid escalating tension after Friday's fresh attack on six Hindu dwelling structures.

As part of security beef up, the government already deployed two platoons of the border guards at Nasirnagar.

Meanwhile, police on Friday night arrested 33 more people for their alleged involvement in the recent attack on the Hindu community in Nasirnagar.

"Police conducted separate drives in different areas of the upazila and arrested them," Nasirnagar Police Station's officer-in-charge Md Abu Zafar, told The New Nation on Saturday.

He said police have so far detained 44 people in connection with the incident.

The detainees have been produced before the court on Saturday noon, he said.

Brahmanbaria district unit Awami League on Saturday rejected the allegation that the Nasirnagar mayhem took place as a result of AL factional feud.

Brushing aside the allegation, Brahmanbaria district AL president Obaidul Muktadir Chowdhury said, "I will step down from the party post if one can prove the Nasirnagar incident was an outcome of AL's intra party feud."

Muktadir Chowdhury came up with the remark at a function held in the district in the morning.

"We have suspended three leaders of Nasirnagar upazila unit AL for their alleged involvement in the attacks," he said. He said the district AL formed a five-member committee, headed by its vice-president Helal Uddin, to investigate whether the suspended leaders were involved in the attacks.

Besides, a team of Ekattorer Ghatak-Dalal Nirmul Committee led by its executive president Shahriar Kabir yesterday visited the Nasirnagar upazila.

During the visit, Shahriar Kabir demanded army deployment to ensure security for the Hindus living in Brahmanbaria district's Nasirnagar upazila.

He also suggested a judicial inquiry into the heinous attacks. "The government has failed to prevent the attacks on the minorities. Moreover, it is yet to ensure proper rehabilitation of the victims, although six days have already passed since the start of events," said Shahriar Kabir.

On Saturday, residents of Rashipara under Nasirnagar have foiled an attempted attack on Hindu homes. The bid took place in the morning.

The attackers fled by a boat facing resistance from the locals.

"We have heard about the attack bid. The attackers fled the scene before our teams reached the spot," said Nasirnagar OC Md Abu Zafar.

In the evening, unidentified miscreants set fire on a pile of straw near the house of Anjan Kumar Dey, an upazila vice chairman and also the president of Nasirnagar upazila unit Jubo League in Duttapara.

The fire also spread to the tin-shed of Anjan's house. But no casualty was reported from the fire, said Mahiuddin, a sub-inspector of Nasirnagar Police Station.

On October 30, several hundred people had attacked and ransacked at least 15 Hindu temples and over 20 households in Nasirnagar under Brahmanbaria's district after a Facebook post by a Hindu youth deemed offensive to Islam sparked massive outrage in the area.


BD nat`l found dead in Sharjah

UNB, Habiganj :

A Bangladeshi young man was found dead in Sharjah, one of the 7 United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Friday.

The deceased was identified as Zohur Ali, 28, son of Idris Ali, hailing from Inatabad area of the district town. He had been living in Dubai for the last 13 years. Family members said that Zohur went out from his residence on Thursday night and did not return. They also found his phone switched off.

Later his body was found 2km from his residence, according to his co-workers who spoke to the

family members on Friday night. Police recovered the body and sent it to Sharjah Medical for autopsy. Police primarily suspect that Zohur was stabbed to death by sharp weapons. Yasinul Haque, officer-in-charge of Sadar Police Station, said they had heard about the murder of the Bangladeshi youth in UAE.
Arrest of BNP men motivated: Fakhrul

UNB, Dhaka :

BNP on Saturday termed politically motivated the filing of a case against its newly elected Union Parishad (UP) chairman in Thakurgaon on charge of ransacking Hindu temples.

In a statement, party secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said, "A politically motivated and false case was filed against Thakurgaon BNP organising secretary and newly elected UP chairman Poigam Ali in connection with the damaging of a temple. It's a deep-rooted conspiracy against him to malign him politically."

He said the incidents of damaging worship places and plundering valuables of those at different parts of the country are very disturbing as well as suspicious. "It's nothing, but an evil effort to destroy the religious harmony prevailing here for ages."

The BNP leader alleged that the ruling party has chosen an evil strategy of shifting the blame on opposition leaders and activists for anything bad to hide its failures. "A vested quarter's plot to harm religious harmony by hurting different religious communities' sentiments is pushing the country towards a deep crisis."

He alleged that the government is falsely implicating BNP leaders and activists with such heinous incidents to make its political gain. "Poigam Ali has been a victim of the government's such move to make its political gain." He demanded the government withdraw the 'false' case against the Thakurgaon BNP leader.

Miscreants swooped on Pokati Durga Temple and nearby Kali Temple at Nargun union under Thakurgaon Sadar upazila in the early hours of Friday. They dragged a Kali idol and a Durga idol from the temples and set those on fire.

Following the incident, police called Poigam Ali to the police station in the afternoon and showed him arrested in a case filed in connection with the incident.
The Undead Archives

I have finally salvaged my pre-Blogger TDR archives and added them into Blogger. They are almost totally in the form of one giant post for each month. And the formatting strayed from the originals. Sorry. But historians everywhere can rejoice that this treasure trove of my thoughts is restored to the world.
"The DDoS is killing our business. We have a challenge with the DDoS. We are hoping someone can stop it. It's killing our revenue. Our business has frequently been targeted" an employee with one Liberian mobile service provider told PC World.

"At first I thought it was a problem with my internet provider, which often suffers from slow speeds. But this feels more serious. Even when you do get online, the connection repeatedly cuts out." BBC Africa's Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Liberia shared his experience.

Latest Insights On Liberia DDoS Attack Story

"From inspecting our logs at the Liberia IXP, we didn't see any downtime in the past three weeks. The general manager of the CCL also couldn't confirm any issues with the ACE cable," Siakor said.

Mirai Malware Threat: Protect Your IoT Devices

On Thursday, we compiled a story based on research published by a British security expert reporting that some cyber criminals are apparently using Mirai Botnet to conduct DDoS attacks against the telecommunication companies in Liberia, a small African country.In his blog post , Kevin Beaumont claimed that a Liberian transit provider confirmed him about the DDoS attack of more than 500 Gbps targeting one undersea cable servicing Internet connectivity for the entire country.Later, some media outlets also confirmed that the DDoS attack caused Internet outage in some parts of the country, citing 'slow Internet' and 'total outage' experienced by some local sources and citizens.Network firm Level 3 confirmed Zack Whittaker of ZDNet that it had seen attacks on telecoms companies in Liberia making access to the web spotty. Other reports suggested mobile net access was affected too.Of course, based on the high concern, the story went viral and Kevin's research was covered by other media outlets, including BBC, PC World, The Guardian, Forbes, IBtimes, Quartz, Mashable, although few of them interpreted the incident incorrectly and claimed that the attack took down the entire country's Internet.In our article, we explicitly mentioned multiple times that criminals are "" and "The only mistake in our previous article was the image caption which briefly said, "." We apologize to our readers for an incorrect image caption, which has now been corrected.After Kevin's story, some new developments with more insights have appeared.Doug Madory, the Director of Internet Analysis at Dyn Research tweeted that DYN and Internet-infrastructure company Akamai have no data that supports any nationwide Internet outage in Liberia.The Hacker News has also been contacted by Kpetermeni Siakor, who manages infrastructure at the Liberia Internet Exchange Point, stating that only Lonestarcell MTN, one of the country's four major telecommunication companies, faced 500 Gbps of DDoS attack for a short period, which was mitigated successfully.In our previous article, the primary concern surrounds around two facts: The Mirai Botnet capability and ACE submarine fiber-optic cable capacity.Where just 100,000 Mirai bots were successful in knocking down the majority of Internet Offline two weeks ago, how easy it could be for millions of bots to DDoS the ACE submarine fiber-optic cable, whose total capacity is just 5.12 Tbps that is being shared between all of the 23 countries, including Liberia.So, when we said that someone was trying to take the entire country down, we meant that cyber criminals have such capacity to do so, and since they have targeted one network operator, does not mean they would not attack other network operators that could impact the Internet services in the country.The incidents involving the Mirai malware is extremely worrying because it can take over insecure cameras, DVRs, and routers, which are widely available all around the world  Thanks to lazy manufacturers and customers.Mirai malware scans for Internet of Things (IoT) devices that are still using their default passwords and then enslaves those devices into a botnet, which is then used to launch DDoS attacks.So, the best way to protect yourself and your devices is to be more vigilant about the security of your smart devices.In our previous article, we provided some basic, rather practical, solutions that will help you protect your IoT devices from becoming part of the Mirai botnet. You can also check also yourself if your IoT device is vulnerable to Mirai malware.
If you are looking for the new Immoral Minority posts, you should know that they can be found here at our new home Please stop by to get caught up on politics, join the conversations, or simply check out the new digs.
Landman-turned-whistleblower Dan Collins said publicly in a radio program this week that he long ago filed an ethics complaint against his former superiors at DNR that was deferred pending the outcome of his suit.

Dan Collins Photo by Robin May

Whistleblower Dan Collins revealed in a Baton Rouge radio interview Wednesday that he has a pending 6-year-old ethics complaint against two of his superiors at the Department of Natural Resources.

In an interview with Wayne Parker on WHYR, Collins, a landman by trade, said he filed ethics complaints against DNRs then-secretary Scott Angelle and the Atchafalaya Basin Programs Robert Benoit for their failure to act on wrongdoing Collins uncovered in connection with what was billed as a water quality improvement project on Bayou Postillion. Collins had been hired to do land title work on that project by the ABP. He later discovered that the project had actually dredged the bayou to make it wide enough to accommodate drilling barges and had opened up the area to the drilling of seven wells.

Scott Angelle Photo by Robin May

Collins won his whistleblower lawsuit against DNR in 19th Judicial District Court in Baton Rouge last December in which he charged that he and his firm had been cut out of land title work for DNR and the ABP after he blew the whistle on the Bayou Postillion project.

At an oil and gas industry trade show in Houston in 2007, Collins discovered that the state, through DNRs Office of Mineral Resources, had leased its mineral rights under Bayou Postillion and other water bottoms in the area. He later learned that maps produced by OMR in the mineral lease process had been altered to camouflage the actual location of tracts where the wells were drilled at the end of the water quality project.

I found that in the public bid process the name on the bayou had been changed in order to throw off competitors and environmentalists, Collins said.

Collins told the program host that he was obligated under the terms of his contract with DNR to report any wrongdoing he identified.

I brought what I had found to Secretary [Scott] Angelle and to Robert Benoit after I discovered that what had been described as a water quality project to benefit fisherman and crawfishermen had seven wells sitting at the end of it, Collins said, adding that it took him three years to put all the pieces together of what had happened.

Robert Benoit

Collins told The Independent in a phone interview that he filed a single ethics complaint naming Angelle and Benoit on Dec. 23, 2010. Collins said the state Board of Ethics had deferred action on his complaint pending the outcome of his whistleblower lawsuit. The jury verdict on Collins behalf is being appealed by the state, which is being represented by the Lafayette firm of Oats & Marino.

Angelle is now a public service commissioner running for Congress, and Benoit works for Lafayette Mayor-President Joel Robideaux as his confidential assistant.

Collins said his ethics complaint caused an uproar when he was questioned about it by his attorney during in his trial.

The attorneys for DNR immediately objected to the introduction of it in my testimony, Collins said. After about 45 minutes of argument between my attorney Crystal Bounds and attorneys for the other side, Crystal proffered my complaint into the record. She then asked me if I had continued to seek a remedy for the wrongdoing I believed I had exposed. I said, yes, I had. She asked how. I told the court I had filed an ethics against my superiors, Secretary Angelle and Mr. Benoit.

Collins did not reveal the content of his complaint in the radio interview or during his interview with The IND.

You can hear the WHYR interview with Collins here.
Pre-purchase property inspection is a relatively new thing in the United Kingdom. Its not something that most people have heard about, but it has become increasingly popular over the last few years with the rise in property prices and increased demand for high quality homes.

What are the benefits of pre-purchase building inspection? What can you expect to find out when you pay someone else to inspect your home before you buy it? And what should you look for during an inspection?

Many people want to know if theyre buying a house thats been well maintained or if its had any serious problems. If youve found a place on the market that seems attractive, but then discover some issues after moving in, you may not be as excited about buying it as you thought you were.

Its important to do your due diligence when looking at properties. A lot goes into making a property appealing to potential buyers, from the landscaping to the flooring to the kitchen appliances. The same applies when inspecting a property  there are many things that need checking over to make sure everything is running smoothly.

Here are some of the benefits of performing a pre-purchase inspection:

You get to see exactly what will happen to your money

When you go shopping for a new car, youll probably be shown several different models. You might even be shown one that looks like a great value, but doesnt fit around all of the extra features that you want. When it comes time to actually buy the vehicle, however, you wont have seen how your money will be spent on it once you drive it off the showroom floor.

Likewise, when you shop for a new home, you dont really know what youre getting yourself into until you move in. In order to get a feel for whether the home youre considering is what you want, you normally have to spend quite a bit of time inside it. This allows you to learn more about everything that youre going to be spending your hard-earned cash on.

A pre-purchase building inspection gives you much the same kind of experience without having to spend thousands of dollars. Since youre paying for the service, you can expect to see exactly what youre paying for, instead of just seeing a vague idea of what you might end up with.

You find out about potential major repairs

Some buildings are very expensive to maintain, which means that owners often neglect them for the sake of saving money. While youre paying for a building inspection, youre also paying for a professional who knows how to spot signs of trouble and repair work that needs doing.

If you notice that a particular area of your new home needs fixing right away, you can call in an expert to take care of it quickly. If you find that theres something wrong with your boiler, you wont have to wait weeks for a plumber to come over and fix it. Instead, youll have access to a solution immediately.

You can save hundreds of pounds by finding out about potential problems early on

One of the biggest expenses when you first buy a home is the cost of moving in. Many people dont realize this until its too late. Buying a home involves not only paying for the actual house, but also for moving costs, furniture, and other items that have to be moved along with the home.

Having a good idea ahead of time of what youre likely to encounter can help you avoid these kinds of costs. If you know youll need to replace the plumbing system, for example, youll be able to put together a budget for the expense and plan accordingly.

You can protect your investment by finding out if the homes been well cared for

While there are plenty of people who think that houses always look better when theyre newly built, youd be surprised at how well maintained older residences can still look nice. Sometimes, though, those homes need some additional maintenance to keep them looking their best.

This could involve repairs that arent so noticeable or small improvements that you wouldnt consider otherwise. Even worse, some houses have fallen into disrepair without anyone noticing. This is why having a professional perform a building inspection prior to purchasing a home is such a big benefit.

Not only will it give you insight into the state of the property, but it will also give you peace of mind knowing youre not getting taken advantage of. As long as youre aware of the potential pitfalls, youll have less reason to worry about the state of your new home.

You can use information gathered during a building inspection to negotiate a lower price

If youre worried about buying a home because you suspect that it may need extensive renovation work, you may already have a rough idea of how much work youll need to do to bring it up to scratch. That knowledge can come in handy if you decide to buy the home.

You can use all of the details that you gather during a building inspection to present a realistic picture of what the home is worth to prospective buyers. If a potential buyer thinks that the home is worth more than what you paid for it, you can try negotiating a lower price.

You can sell your home faster and for more money

If you decide to list your home on the market soon after buying it, youll need to price it accurately in order to attract buyers. But if youve already done a thorough building inspection, youll know exactly what work is needed and what the current market conditions are.

In other words, youll be able to make a more accurate estimate of the amount of money youve invested in the home and how much its worth. If you find that youre selling your house for close to its full market value, you can use this information to convince the potential buyer that your home is worth the asking price.

Even if youre planning to stay in the home for a while before you decide to sell, the fact that you did a thorough building inspection will give you more confidence when listing it. Prospective buyers will know exactly what theyre paying for.

Your home will hold its value longer

As mentioned earlier, the value of a home depends heavily upon the condition of the building itself. If your home is in bad shape, potential buyers wont be interested in buying it. On the other hand, if youve performed a thorough building inspection and know what sort of repairs are necessary, you can offer your prospective buyer a compelling reason to invest in your property.

When you buy a home, youre essentially agreeing to have it inspected periodically to ensure that it stays in top shape. Not only does this allow you to avoid expensive repairs down the road, but it can also increase the value of your home.

You can make smart decisions about property investments

Buying real estate isnt as simple as just driving a couple of minutes to pick up a house. There are lots of considerations involved, ranging from location to cost. The same is true when youre investing in property.

If you find a house that meets all of your requirements, youll want to make sure that you have a solid understanding of where it stands with regards to the rest of the market. If you havent spent enough time researching the area, you could inadvertently end up with a bad deal.

There are lots of resources available online that can help you determine the overall level of competition in your area. They can also help you figure out if there are any properties that meet your requirements that you didnt know about.

If you own rental property, you can use the information to identify tenants who might cause damage

If you own rental property and youve noticed that certain tenants consistently cause damage, you can use the results of a building inspection to identify them. You can then contact them directly to let them know that youre watching them closely and that you dont appreciate the problem theyre causing.

They might start taking better care of their homes, which would be good news for everyone. It could also be the case that youll find out that theyre responsible for previous damages that werent caught during a previous visit.

You can make smarter decisions about hiring contractors

If youve hired contractors to build or repair your home, you might want to ask them for references. However, unless you perform a thorough building inspection, you might not know exactly what to look for.

For instance, maybe you only checked the roof for leaks or the walls for cracks. You might not have looked underneath the foundation for anything that could cause a future issue. By performing a building inspection, you can ensure that you hire reputable contractors who will be trustworthy with your money.

You can avoid purchasing a home thats in poor condition

Of course, the main benefit of structural inspections perth is that it helps you avoid purchasing a home thats in poor condition. Before you make the decision to buy a home, you should do whatever you can to find out about the state of the building.

You can also ask your realtor about what sorts of inspections are typically recommended. Some agents say that its standard practice to check the heating system, the roof, the electrical wiring, and the floors. Others will tell you that they recommend that you check the entire structure.

Either way, if you choose to hire an inspector, youll find out exactly what needs to be fixed and how much it will cost to do so.

As a result, it can be concluded that a pre-purchase building inspection is highly important for the buyers because it provides transparency regarding the current conditions of the structure. Additionally, the building owner is made aware of any upgrades or repairs that are required, which could lead to a fair deal throughout the purchasing and selling process.
I've been a procrastinator all my life. I keep meaning to do something about that.

Procrastinationputting things off till laterdoesn't mix very well with photography. To the best of my knowledge, Jay Maisel is the strongest sane voice regarding this, in his book It's Not About the F-Stop, which I recommend for all photographers, especially young ones or beginners of any age.

Jay writes short. He's pithy. He packs a lot of wisdom into few words. The short section titled "Shoot It Now" ends with the line, "Never go back. Shoot it now. When you go back, it will always be different."

I chose photography in part as a corrective. It compensated for many things for me. My frustration with drawing, for one. And I needed a subject to master and make my ownintellectually I'm a generalist, ranging broadly but not deeply, and I was an expert in nothing. (I still know very little about photography; I just know more about it than most people do.) I needed to learn the culture of something in order to give a useful core to my thinking, my experimenting, and my observations...but it had to be something complex that had a lot of different facets to it. Photography fit that bill. And I needed something to write aboutI love to write, but you can't write about nothing. (Well, Proust could, but most people can't.) Mostly, I was introverted and cerebral and tended to get lost in my head. I needed something to get me out of the house and out into the world. Photography served that last purpose particularly well.

I also chose photography because I had no aptitude for computers, and I needed a field that didn't involve computers!

(Sigh.)



But another corrective was this: I had an entrenched tendency to put things off till later, a tenacious mental habit of always thinking I'd forego doing something now and instead wait until some unspecified "later" when I would ostensibly be able to really do it well. Oh, the wonderful things that I've put off, the accomplishments I've never gotten around to! I'm getting much better at that as I get oldermy current kitchen has never been left messybut to be honest it's something I still struggle with.

A case in point happened just yesterday. I was driving down to Bath, New York, to the aptly named Bath Plumbing. As I drove the winding road along the shore of Keuka Lake I was thinking to myself, this is itthis is the most beautiful Fall day I've ever experienced, Number One, never better. When I got below the lake and away from the crowding woods, on the flat valley floors that offered vistas to the rising hills, I saw a spectacular sighta vast hulking mountainside completely covered with peak Fall foliage, brilliantly lit by the slanting sun, with a huge stormcloud behind it.

Now, I'm pretty much the furthest thing from a Fall foliage photographer, but even I will stop to pick up a twenty-dollar bill lying at my feet.

So what did I find myself thinking? Wow, that's really stunning...I should think about stopping to photograph that on the way back from Bath.

@#%!

Remember Jay's words: when you go back, it will always be different. I drove on a ways, wrestling with myself. Finally I thought no, I'm going to shoot it now. I turned the car around and drove a mile or so back.

You know the upshot. I looked for a spot, parked the car, got outand the hillside was shrouded in shadow. The sun had gone behind a vast, magnificent cloud.

So I waited.

And when the sun reappeared, ten minutes later, the dark cloud behind the mountain was gone. And so was my picture. The picture that had been right there was no longer anywhere.

Now, landscapes have the reputation of being lastinga subject that's unchanging, a subject that will wait for you to take your time.

Don't believe it. Don't believe it for a second. Had I screeched to a stop and leapt out of the car I still might have missed the picture. Or maybe I would have gotten it. But I would have had a chance. Sometimes you have to be just as quick shooting landscapes as you are shooting kids or sports.

Whatever your aim, fight the impulse to procrastinate. When you see it, shoot it. Get the moment. Shoot it now.

Someday I will learn!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)

Featured Comments from:

Mark Hobson: "When the wife and I are traveling by carto a specific destination or just to enjoy the beautiful place in which we live (the Adirondack ParkI live in a park)the wife always adds at least 20% more time than the the navi estimates to reach our destination for, you guessed it, my picture making. And every time I stop for picturing, the navi lady asks if I am having a car problem or experiencing heavy trafficshe never asks if I have stopped to make a picture."

Jeff: "Reminds me of Ansel's famous 'Moonrise' shot. He saw the scene and pulled his car over despite the end of a day's shooting, couldn't find his meter, had to quickly remember the brightness of the moon to estimate exposure, in addition to getting his view camera set. After the first shot, he pulled his film holder to get a second exposure just in case, but the foreground light went dark. I wonder how much money he made off that split-second."

Mike replies: Daniel Grant, writing on Artnet, says, "In 1996, Adams biographer Mary Alinder estimated that 1,300 prints of Moonrise, Hernandez had been made over 40 yearsoften produced by Adams whenever an order for a copy came in, most of them done in the 1960s and 70sworth a cumulative $25 million." The value on the secondary market has been much greater than that; Grant notes that the presale estimate for a 1970s print offered at Sotheby's in 2011 was $300,000$500,000. The highest price ever hammered for a "Moonrise" print was $609,600 in 2006.

Joe Holmes: "Yes, what Jeff saidthat Ansel Adams story sets the standard for me. Slam on brakes! You can read Ansel's telling of it. I, too, had too many of those 'I'll shoot it next time' moments, so that I've finally trained myself not to fall for that. Remember what Elvis sang. 'It's now or never.'"

Manuel: "Photographic opportunities don't have the habit of popping up whenever we need them. Once lost, they're lost forever. Which is not bad, as it assures uniqueness to the photographs. (Would we value that famous picture if all Parisian police officers would routinely jump over a pool behind St. Lazare's railway station?)

"This entry brought a little episode to my mind; not exactly a case of procrastination (I can't help thinking about Lee Morgan when I read this word!) [I have that on vinyl, CD, and as an MP4 file Ed.], but one of opportunities never repeating themselves: some three years ago I was walking by the seaside on a sunny sunday afternoon, camera hanging from neck, when I saw this rustic family sitting on a concrete wall by the beach and facing the sea. It was a typical Portuguese countryside family, which added strangeness to the landscape and made for a scene Cartier-Bresson and Doisneau wouldn't have disdained. I got close and shot the rustic family; I rejoiced, imagining I had a keeper there, but then, as I was going through the routine of checking the pictures taken so far and deleting the failed ones, I accidentally erased the photo of the rustic family! Even though I was alone, I swore loud when I realized what I had done. (I screamed the portuguese equivalent of the f-word...)

"As this mishap occurred shortly after I took the photo, I went back to that spot to see if the rustic family was still there. As you might have anticipated, they had already left. The portuguese equivalent for the f-word came to my mind again, but this time I was able not to shout it. I went back homethe debacle made me lose my enthusiasm and end the photographic session earlier than expectedand posted an entry on my blog asking my readers if they knew of any means to retrieve the lost picture from the memory card. Fortunately one of the readers informed me there was an application for that. And it worked. But the Portuguese equivalent for the f-word haunted me again when I realized the picture wasn't that great. (Well, you can judge for yourselves.)"

Mike replies: Hmm, maybe not a stone hit, but good to look at. My eye went right to the six boats and the boy and bird on the rocks. The activity of photographing is so interesting, isn't it?

John W.: "Years ago I was in charge of a group of foresters working in China to help train some Chinese foresters in modern forestry techniques. At one point we were each assigned a trainee interpreter. One day we were all walking through a new plantation when the trainees started asking their assigned experts what they were 'experts' in. Each explained their various expertise. Finally my trainee asked me about mine. I told her I was more of a generalist. She thought for a while, then her face lit up and she said, 'I understand. An all-round genius.' I never heard the end of that, and one of the wise-asses even had cards made up for me with that title."

Terry Letton: "Mike you have picked up a mirror and I think we all see our reflection in it."

John Camp: "Several years ago I was in Washington D.C. when a bus passed me and suddenly jerked to the side of the street a hundred feet away, and the panicked passengers began piling out. I realized then that the bus was actually on fire, with fire running up the back of it, and fire actually dripping onto the road (burning fuel, maybe diesel). People were yelling, 'get back get back,' and so on, and then the fire truck arrived, with the back end of the bus now fully involved in flame. The firemen put it out in a couple of minutes with foam (or maybe some kind of powder, I don't remember.) About the time they started the cleanup, I remembered that I had a camera hanging off my shoulder."
Leon S. Johnson and Connie L. Lewis of Miami were both arrested and charged with Class X felonies for the unlawful possession of drugs on Friday.

According to Williamson County State's Attorney Brandon Zannoti, Johnson and Lewis were found inside a Herrin residence with a large amount of cocaine and money.

A total of about four pounds of cocaine and five pounds of marijuana was seized from the suspects.

A news release from the Herrin Police Department and the State's Attorney's Office states that a subsequent search warrant was executed at a separate location in Herrin, where officials further discovered large amounts of cocaine and cannabis.

The investigation was a combined effort by the Southern Illinois Enforcement Group, the Williamson County Sheriff's Office SWAT team, the Herrin Police Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

"This is one of the largest cocaine busts in Williamson County in decades," Zanotti said. "This is a huge amount of illegal narcotics that are now off the streets. I cannot thank the law enforcement agencies involved enough for their excellent police work here."

The charges against Johnson and Lewis include a possible sentence of up to 30 years in prison.

The pair's bond is set at $500,000 each and both Johnson and Lewis are due back in court at 1:15 p.m. for a preliminary hearing on Nov. 21.
Orangeburg City Council has called a special meeting for Monday to discuss Department of Public Utilities Manager Tommy Miller.

The agenda calls for council to gather behind closed doors at 2 p.m. to discuss a personnel matter involving DPU.

Once it exits executive session, council is scheduled to discuss the employment of the DPU manager.

Mayor Michael Butler said he could not discuss the situation.

Im not at liberty to speak about it, he said.

City Councilman Charles Barnwell said, I cant give you any information until Monday.

Miller was named interim manager of DPU in 2010. He became manager in 2011.

Miller officially retired in 2013 before state retirement rules changed but has continued to lead DPU.

Council discussions about DPU have lately centered on the concerns of the utilitys linemen.

A 22-year lineman came into contact with a 14,400-volt power line in June, leading to the amputation of both arms.

Council members met with the DPU linemen on July 28 to show their support.

Following their meeting, the linemen presented council with a list of nine changes they want made to the current DPU practices to create a safer environment for the employees.

The list includes: paying competitive wages at least equal to other utility companies in South Carolina, hiring a safety person to help teach new and veteran linemen the dangers of the job, replacing old equipment more often than every 25 to 28 years, and better treatment by DPUs office personnel.

A letter, signed DPUs Electric Division Linemen, stated, We linemen are treated like a number, as if we could be erased at any time. We put our life on the line every day and should be respected in that fashion.

During a September council meeting, Councilman Bernard Haire said he provided a copy of the letter to DPU management.

After two weeks without a response, Haire said there appeared to be some foot-dragging and resistance to providing relief to the linemen.

He added there seems to be a "take it or leave it" environment and council wants to put a halt to any feelings of intimidation the employees may be experiencing.
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A total of 700 executives from across the shipping, ports and related sectors, from close to 70 different countries, attended the recently concluded third annual Maritime Standard Awards, which was held in Dubai, UAE.



The event, held under the patronage of Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, president, Dubai Civil Aviation Authority and chairman and chief executive, Emirates Airline and Group, celebrated and rewarded the achievements of leading companies and individuals active in the Middle East and Indian Subcontinent, said a statement.



The event was hosted by well-known TV journalist and former CNN anchor, Jim Clancy, and model and presenter, Dubai's own Rania Ali, it said.



Maritime Standard Awards founder and managing director Trevor Pereira, said: This has been a difficult year for the industry, but the backing of Sheikh Ahmed who is so widely respected as a visionary leader gave the business the tonic it needed."



A key message to emerge from the event was that, though these are uncertain economic times, this is a business that continues to show innovation, creativity and determination to succeed in adversity, it added.



In total 28 awards were presented to individuals and companies following the deliberation of the judging panel. Clive Woodbridge, editor of TMS and chairman of the judges, said, "This year we received a record number of nominations. But quantity did not mean a reduction in quality.



We received some excellent nominations and entries in all categories and I think all the judges were impressed by the approach to the market being taken in the Middle East and Subcontinent, he said.



Companies are not sitting back - they are being proactive. It was a hard job to separate the winners, and not just those who went away with an award, but all of those shortlisted, can be justifiably proud of their achievements over the past year, he added.



In addition to the awards determined by the judging panel, there were seven special awards presented by the TMS team for particularly impressive individual achievements.



The Maritime Standard Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Dr Abdullatuif A Sultan, chairman of the Organisation of Islamic Shipping Associations; The Hall of Fame Award was given to Khamis Juma Buamim, managing director and group chief executive of Gulf Navigation; The Personality of the Year Award went to Yasser Nasr Zaghloul; chief executive of National Marine Dredging Company; and the Editor's Choice Award was presented to Shaikh Daij bin Salman Al Khalifa, chairman of ASRY, it stated.



Other awards selected by The Maritime Standard included Noura Al Dhaheri, of Abu Dhabi Ports, who was the recipient of the Woman in Shipping Award for her work within the cruise shipping field; and Ali Lakhani, of DTA Shipping Agency, who secured the Young Person in Shipping Award.



Rajiv Agarwal, of Essar Ports, won the Excellence Award in recognition of his work in the Indian ports sector; and Abu Dhabi Ports scooped the Deal of the Year for the awarding of a multi-million dollar contract to National Marine Dredging Company to enable the development of a second container terminal at Khalifa port, it added.



Pereira added: "It was a tremendous evening and we showed that we continue to deliver the biggest and best awards of its type in the region.



I am really humbled that so many leading players support these awards as sponsors and in other ways, and hopefully we return that favour by putting on a real show that raises their profile locally and internationally, he concluded.  TradeArabia News Service
Leading international technical service provider TUV Rheinland is set to showcase new solutions and techniques, including its latest e-inspection strategy for plants operating at high temperatures, at the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (Adipec) show in Abu Dhabi, UAE.



One of the world's most important oil and gas exhibition and conferences, Adipec will be held from November 7 to 10 at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre.



The exclusive four-day event is being held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE.



During the event, companies operating in the Middle East will have the opportunity to meet TUV Rheinland experts to learn about these and further solutions in the area of ultrasonic inspections at elevated temperatures with the help of their interdisciplinary expertise.



The German-based global provider of safety and certification services said the objective placed by the strategy is aimed towards assisting plant operators of oil companies in maximizing the availability and production efficiency of their assets and to reduce or even avoid shutdown time.



The application of conventional and automated ultrasonic techniques is currently possible up to temperatures of 475C.



Experts at TUV Rheinland have developed a set of standard procedures to be able to conduct corrosion mapping and weld inspections in low-alloyed carbon steel at up to 350C.



The resulting services can be performed quickly and reliably at reasonable costs all over the world. Besides regular inspections, TUV Rheinland has made progress in providing the appropriate solutions for inspections from 350C up to 475C at elevated temperatures on complex geometries.



Clients benefit from higher production efficiency based on standardized high quality services and from reasonably priced inspections according to the highest safety standards, it added.-TradeArabia News Service
Leading regional green economy experts and international companies operating in the energy field will highlight the strategic role of district cooling in fighting climate change at an upcoming industry event in Dubai, UAE.



The seventh 'International District Cooling Conference' will be organised from November 13 to15 at Jumeirah Beach Hotel under the theme of A Climate Solution.



The event will reunite all the elite green experts who will provide the participating companies key insights into the district cooling techniques and green air conditioning, said the event organisers Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corporation (Empower).



The conference will kick off with in-depth talks at a dedicated workshop to the best practices in district cooling system in term of design, operation and optimization, stated Ahmad bin Shafar, the chief executive of Empower.



"We promise fruitful three days of knowledge and experience exchanges. We are bringing valuable input from many sectors like design, architecture, engineering, environment and related businesses into the environmental question, to share with all participants and to benefit the local and regional needs in the GCC countries," remarked bin Shafar.



"District cooling technology is very specific topic and we are proud to reunite experts and specialists in a think tank that aims at saving natural resources of the world as far as district cooling is concerned," he added.



The leading industry players at the conference will include Rob Thornton, the president and chief executive of International District Energy Association (Idea); Tim Griffin, chair of Idea and conference general chair; Pablo Izquierdo Lopez and Thomas Bosse of Dubai Carbon Center of Excellence; Anwar Hassan, of Johnson Controls; Steve Benz of Evaapco; Bob Smith of RMF Engineering; Srinivasan Rangan of Carrier Corporation; Henry Johnstone of GLHN Architects & Engineers; Bernt Andersson of Komage Energy Group; and Mohammed Khan and Gary Hicks of Delta District Cooling Services.



Lopez will detail the contribution of district cooling in the carbon reduction, the role of his organisation and collaboration with Dubai Supreme Council of Energy (DSCE) and the United Nations Development programme (UNDP) in capturing a growing niche market that gets ready for a low-carbon and green economy.



This will be followed by a presentation of Key Issues in System Design made by Juan Ontiveros from the University of Texas at Austin.



This in-depth session will introduce the University of Texas at Austin energy model, which is based on keeping fuel at 1976 levels, reducing water consumption, using TSE and TES, recovering water from buildings for plant use and optimizing continually the energy and water control and conservation.



Benz will discuss about the thermal energy storage types, and best practices for optimizing chilled water dispatch; while Henry Johnstone from GLHN Architects & Engineers will address the question of managing Delta T in buildings.



Two sessions are planned for the afternoon with respectively the focus on the role of controls, metering and the use of tools and data in optimizing performance and "Leveraging Technology and Innovation with the impressive experiences of Empower, Johnson Controls and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries from Asia.



The panel discussion will take place the second day of the conference with insights on deployment, operations and business best practices of district cooling as an environmental strategy in support of the Paris Agreement (COP 21).



This will be followed by a discussion on financing district cooling via the system life cycle, moderated by Thornton.



"We are proud to take part at this event which constitutes a leading global gathering of well-known experts and confirmed connoisseurs of the green solutions and of the theme of the conference in particular," stated Thornton.



"I will be moderating several panel discussions and I am happy to meet all the speakers and to get the opportunity to interact with the delegates in order to come up with doable strategies that would help in dealing most efficiently with the energy conservation," he added.



According to him, the district cooling industry is growing rapidly in the Middle East, yet many challenges are faced in managing resources, meeting climate objectives and creating customer value.



This global conference will dive in the local policies adopted globally and regionally as it will feature presentations on the environmental innovations, the design considerations and the applications around the world, stated Thornton.



Practical cases from the Middle East will be discussed on the third day of the conference, with real experiences from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan.



Low Carbon Champion Award will be presented at Idea conference in an effort to recognise outstanding achievement towards reducing CO2 emissions by using district cooling, said the organisers.



This award helps in the transition to a low-carbon and green economy through the consolidation of knowledge by looking to district cooling as an enabler of efficiency and great contributor to CO2 saving and to minimising the impact of climate change, they added.-TradeArabia News Service
Global technology leader Honeywell will be presenting its connected downstreaam offering at the 12th edition of the exhibition of the Sabic Technical Conference (STC) which opens tomorrow (November 6) at Jubail Industrial City in Saudi Arabia.

A trusted provider of intelligent technology solutions worldwide,Honeywell said the move is in line with its commitment to support industries in achieving the goals set out in Saudi Vision 2030.



The company will demonstrate how its connected technology and innovation are unlocking new opportunities for industrial customers to improve safety, productivity, organizational responsiveness and profitability.



This is driven by Honeywells Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) solutions, Industrial Cyber Security portfolio, and products for connected workers, connected buildings and connected plants, said a top official.



"Honeywell has been present in the Kingdom for more than 40 years, and has established a track record of trust, innovation and R&D. By continuing to share our knowledge of, and experience in, the Industrial Internet of Things, Honeywell is well placed to help Saudi Arabian companies to realize the ambitions of the countrys Vision for 2030," remarked Mohamed Al Mousa, president, Honeywell Saudi Arabia.



"Today, our solutions are being deployed within some of the countrys most important initiatives, helping to improve the safety, efficiency, and productivity of Saudi people," he noted.



The visitor journey at Honeywells exhibition at STC will begin with a look at the companys Industrial Ecosystem, combining, among others, Honeywell UOPs Experion Process Solutions Suite, as well as Honeywell Process Solutions automation technologies, and its Experion Orion Console, which is part of Honeywells initiative to shape control rooms of the future.



Honeywell Industrial Safety will also present its offering around wireless gas detection controllers and connected workers, he stated.



Al Mousa said Honeywell was proud to support the Sabic conference, which was the largest industrial exhibition in Saudi Arabia  converging more than 12,000 industry professionals  and a critical platform for Honeywell to engage with our valued customers and stakeholders.



Under Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia is looking to develop domestic engineering and innovation capabilities to increase local production, lower operational costs, and create new job opportunities.



With its industry-leading product portfolio and expertise, Honeywell is well positioned to help Saudi Arabia grow its industrial future through increasing localized production and investment in cutting-edge engineering technologies, he stated.



Honeywell's fully integrated solutions are creating new opportunities for safety, productivity, organizational effectiveness and improving the bottom-line, remarked Al Mousa.



Under the guidance of its ambitious Vision, Saudi Arabia has every opportunity to lead the way for the industry on a global scale when it comes to embracing and deploying smart technology. As a company, we are proud to be a part of this journey, he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Air Arabia, the Middle East and North Africas largest low-cost carrier, was awarded Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative of the Year for its Charity Cloud programme at Aviation Business Awards 2016 held recently in Dubai.



Currently in its 10th edition, the Aviation Business Awards is a prestigious event that gives out awards annually in 15 categories, covering the airline, airport and cargo sectors to celebrate the achievements of leading players and their contributions to the regions aerospace industry.



Adel Al Ali, group chief executive officer of Air Arabia, said: To be singled out for recognition for our CSR efforts speaks at length about our business philosophy that has helped us cruise to high altitudes of success. As a responsible business, we believe that in addition to striving to make air travel more affordable and delivering a high-quality passenger experience, we must also commit to creating opportunities that will improve the quality of life for underprivileged communities.



Long recognised as a CSR leader within the aviation industry, Air Arabias Charity Cloud Program was launched in 2005 in collaboration with Sharjah Charity International and is dedicated towards improving the lives of the underprivileged through investing in education and healthcare establishments across the world. Today, Charity Cloud is home to a large number of schools and clinics operating in needy communities. - TradeArabia News Service


Air France-KLM has announced plans to create a new long-haul international airline to compete against growing competition from the Middle East and regain its market share in key routes.



"This new company will constitute the Group's response to the Gulf State airlines which are developing at low production costs on key markets where Air France-KLM is pursuing its growth ambition," Air France-KLM said in a statement.



This initiative to regain market share has been dubbed Boost.



It will be focused on ultra-competitive markets and will enable the Group to go on the offensive by opening new routes, re-opening routes closed due to their lack of profitability and maintaining routes under threat.



This new company will propose a simple, modern and innovative offer, whose positioning will not be low cost. It will offer its customers business and leisure destinations with standards comparable to those of Air France in terms of product quality and the professionalism of the crews.



The new company will also serve as a laboratory for the Groups innovative ability in terms of products, digital and technology, catering, cabin design, services and the customer experience, as well as for working methods.



It will number 10 long-haul aircraft by 2020 with some 30 per cent of operations focused on newly-created routes. It will operate with Air France pilots on a volunteer basis at work conditions adapted to its competitive positioning. For cabin crews, an independent career path will be created to enable this new company to be operated at the level of market costs.



The ground operations, handled by Air France, will also be optimized by benefiting to the maximum from digitalization. The HR framework for this new company will be negotiated with the unions in the coming weeks.  TradeArabia News Service


The TransGriot is available for speaking engagements, college lectures, panel discussions, media interviews, conferences or Trans 101 education efforts for your school, business or professional organizations.



For local Houston area, Texas or national events, you can e-mail me at transgriot@yahoo.com



For events outside the Houston metro area, I ask that my travel and lodging expenses be covered.



This is separate from my speaking fee.



If you are interested in having me appear as a speaker or panelist, you can e-mail me with the date and details of your proposed event.

Please book as early as possible because my speaking and event calendar slots during the year rapidly fill up.
Sunday's Highlights

Sunday support meetings

Alcoholics Anonymous: 10 a.m., 500 S. Wolcott, Ste. 200; 10:15 a.m., 917 N. Beech; noon, 500 S. Wolcott, Ste. 200; 6:30 p.m., 1124 Elma, Imitate the Image Church; 6:30 p.m., 500 S. Wolcott; 6:30 p.m., 328 E. A; 8 p.m., 917 N. Beech; 8 p.m., 328 1/2 E. A. Douglas: 1 p.m, Douglas, 628 E. Richards (upstairs in back), women's meeting; 7:30 p.m., 628 E. Richards (upstairs in back). Unless otherwise noted, all meetings are open. Casper info: 266-9578; Douglas info: (307) 351-1688.

Narcotics Anonymous: Noon, 500 S. Wolcott, 12-24 Club; 6:30 p.m., 500 S. Wolcott, 12-24 Club; 8 p.m., 15th & Melrose at the church. Web site: http://www.urmrna.org.

Nicotine Anonymous: 5 p.m., 500 S. Wolcott, 12-24 Club. Info: Pam M., 577-0518; Troy Y., 267-6326.

Sunday breakfast at the Elks

Breakfast is served every Sunday at the Casper Elks Lodge. Open to the public from 8 to 11 a.m. Serving pancakes, biscuits and gravy, bacon, sausage links, potatoes, scrambled eggs, French toast and omelets to order. New to the menu is build your own breakfast burrito. Also served is toast, juice, tea and coffee. All you can eat for $7, children 5 to 12 are $3, 4 and under are free. Come down for the best breakfast in town and see the old crew again. For more information, call 234-4839.

Breakfast at Eagles

Twice-monthly Sunday Eagles Breakfast are back, come down and support our many charities. Serving from 8 to 10:30 a.m. on the first and last Sundays of the month, at 306 N. Durbin. Order off our menu and let us serve you. 235-5130.

Super Flea Nov. 5-6

The Casper Antique and Collector's Club hosts the Super Flea Market from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Fairgrounds Industrial Building. Adults are $2 and ages 12 and under are free.

Pioneer group meets

The Natrona County Pioneer Association will conduct its fall quarterly meeting at 12:30 p.m., at the Parkway Plaza.The cost of the luncheon buffet is $10. Anyone interested is invited to attend. Contact Vaughn Cronin at 315-4659 for reservations or more information.

Casper Chorale fall concert

The Casper Civic Chorale, in its 44th year, is pleased to announce "Love Songs" at 2 p.m. in the newly renovated John F. Welsh auditorium at NCHS. We are excited that CCC will be the first community group to perform in this state-of-the-art facility since the renovations have been completed.

"Love Songs" will feature musical literature that expresses the many types of love that humans feel, including romantic love, Love is a Many-Splendored Thing; parental love, Davids Lamentation, and love for God, Te Deum, a major choral work written by Mark Hayes.

Tickets cost $15. A limited number of tickets will be available at the door. For more information, contact Gary at 259-0771.

'Marrying Walt' at theater company

Casper Theater Company and Greater Wyoming Federal Credit Union will present Marrying Walt, at 2 p.m., 735 CY. Adults are $15, seniors $13. Tickets can be purchased at Greater Wyoming Federal Credit Union, Charlie Ts Pizzeria, Casper Senior Center, and at the door.

Verismo Trio in concert

The Verismo Trio will play at the Casper Chamber Music Society concert at 4 p.m., at Shepherd of the Hills Presbyterian Church, 4600 S. Poplar St. Tickets are $10 adults, $8 senior and students and children 12 and under are free. Tickets may be purchased at the door.

The Verismo Trio includes Nicole Riner, flute; saxophonist Scott Turpen and pianist Theresa Bogard. The trio has toured extensively through the United States and South American since forming in 2010.
Its bird season.

Temperatures are dropping, morning frost covers the grasses and ducks and geese are on the move.

While most bird seasons, including waterfowl and upland birds, have been open for a few weeks, November can be popular as many big game seasons are winding down.

But what if you want to start bird hunting and dont know what to do? Maybe you stumbled over your grandfathers old 12-gauge shotgun one too many times and want to try it out. Maybe you remember sitting by the banks of a pond as a child while you waited for ducks. Maybe youre an avid goose hunter but dont know the first thing about chasing chukars.

Well, here is some help, or at least some tips to get started. The Star-Tribune tracked down expert bird hunters to offer advice on what to look for, what to bring and what to know.

Find the right habitat

To find birds, you have to know where they spend their time. As a general rule, look for ducks on rivers and stock ponds and geese in agricultural areas, said Nate Huck, the Wyoming Game and Fish Departments migratory game bird biologist.

You have to find water first. Thats the big deal, Huck said about duck hunting. Once you find water, then you have to find birds.

Shallow water is generally the best. Diving ducks feed in about 4 feet of water, and puddle ducks feed in 18 inches.

Find chukars in the high badlands country of the Big Horn Basin, offered Ken Kucera, manager of the Outdoorsman store in Worland. The quail-sized birds like to live in dry, rocky areas with scattered sagebrush and grasses.

Their cousin, the Hungarian partridge, could be almost anywhere but is most often in lower, creek bottom areas, he added.

Find pheasants raised by Game and Fish on various habitat management across the state.

Put in the time

Bird hunting in Wyoming, especially on public land, isnt for the impatient hunter. It requires the willingness to walk miles or sit and wait for hours.

Huck tells stories of spending entire mornings driving from one piece of public land to another along a river, scanning the water and skies for ducks. And then if you find a place you like, you also need to be willing to wait for ducks to come to you.

For upland game birds, hunting mostly involves walking, Kucera said. A lot of walking.

Put some good boots on, and be ready to walk, Kucera said. It keeps you in shape though, those chukar hills.

Check regulations

Seasons vary depending on the location or bird species, even closing for short periods in between open seasons. Anyone hunting needs a game bird license and conservation stamp. Duck hunters need a federal duck stamp, and someone hunting migratory birds needs a free Harvest Information Permit, also called HIP.

Types of ammunition will also vary. Duck hunting requires steel shot, for example, but most upland game bird areas still allow lead shot.

Also be aware that certain days in some areas with planted pheasants are open only to youth hunts, said Bart Kroger, Game and Fish wildlife biologist in Worland. If you are hunting with someone under 18, those can be good way for an inexperienced hunter to find birds and success.

As with any hunting, he said, check the regulations.

Invest in decoys

If you want success duck hunting, you should buy some decoys, Huck said. A dozen would probably be enough to begin.

I like to fool them to think the decoys on the water are real birds, so I can shoot them at close range when they are dropping in, Huck said. Theyre naturally a social creature and tend to trust each other.

Calls can also be a good option, but only if you know how to use them, he added.

Kucera recommends a chukar call. It wont draw them to you, like a duck or goose call, but it can help locate them in the field.

Ask for help

The best, and often quickest, way to figure out bird hunting is to ask for help, Huck said. Find a friend who hunts and see if you can go along. At minimum, ask for some pointers for local hot spots.

Budding hunters can also call a local Game and Fish office or outdoor store for advice.

For more information on species, regulations and permits, go to wgfd.wyo.gov.
Sixty-one Democrats are running for the Wyoming Legislature this year, a notable increase from previous election cycles.

In 2014, only 30 Democrats sought legislative seats. The party recruited just 24 candidates in 2012. Seventy-five legislative seats are up each election cycle, meaning the Republican Party has been largely unchallenged in Wyoming.

But theres no telling whether the states minority party is going to gain seats in Cheyenne.

Over the last 18 months, when the Wyoming Democratic Party was recruiting candidates, the Wyoming GOP was quietly fundraising. Its chairman recently announced the party had raised nearly $500,000 and was in a position to spend up to $150,000 on 17 candidates in key legislative races this year.

More candidates and more advertising  positive and negative  make the outcome of Tuesdays elections uncertain.

The faces in Cheyenne may be more progressive, or they could be even more conservative than the current makeup, since many of the Republicans who won primaries are social conservatives.

We dont have polling, really. It makes it all kind of hard, said Bri Jones, executive director of the Equality State Policy Center, a watchdog and civic group.

Many lawmakers are not seeking re-election, including several moderate Republicans whove held leadership positions. The result is many new lawmakers, regardless of party, along with new leaders.

Its very different to campaign versus govern, Jones said. Usually theres a pretty good mix of legislators who have been there for a long time, and maybe that moderates. People who have served longer, have experienced different things. That pushes them to the center. In a way fresh off a campaign is not as moderated.

In postcards that the Wyoming GOP is mailing to voters, the party has hammered on the message that the states economy is in bad shape, thanks to President Barack Obama, and it doesnt make sense to elect legislators of the presidents party. Many of their postcards have pictures of Obama next to photos of Democratic candidates.

Youve seen a very well-coordinated effort on the Republican side, where theyve sent mailers and spent a lot of money, Jones said. They seem to be very disciplined on their messaging. I havent seen that level of sophistication coming out of the Democratic Party.

Democrats have another hurdle to overcome  theyre considerably outnumbered. As of Tuesday, 160,000 Wyomingites were registered Republicans, 46,000 were Democrats, 26,000 were unaffiliated and about 2,100 belonged to other parties, according to the Wyoming Secretary of States office, which oversees elections.

For their part, Democratic candidates  and groups that say theyre spending money independently of the Democratic candidates  are arguing in their postcards that the Republican candidates arent taking the measures necessary to help the states economy, such as supporting Medicaid expansion, or arent firm enough in opposition to radical ideas such as the transfer of federal lands to state ownership.

The Wyoming GOP has complained to the Wyoming Secretary of State about the independent expenditures on the Democrats side. Many Democrats have hired a campaign management company to run their campaigns. That company is being advised by some of the same people who are advising groups involved in independent expenditures.

It is interesting to see how much money is flowing in, how much third-party is flowing in, Jones said.

The Wyoming Democratic Party has field organizers in several locations in Wyoming to assist candidates. The party was able to write checks to some Democratic candidates, but nothing near $150,000, said Bruce Palmer, Wyoming Democrats vice chairman.

I think we have a number of competitive races, he said. I think there will be a number of surprises.

The quality of candidates matters most in Wyoming, said Wyoming GOP chairman Matt Micheli.

I think we have just an outstanding slate of candidates up and down all over the state, he said. Im really proud at how hard theyve worked, the effort theyve made and I feel good about their chances.
CHEYENNE  Leaders at the Cheyenne VA Medical Center said theyre making improvements for the military veterans they serve.

Still, some veterans enrolled at the local VA said theyve experienced issues, particularly in regard to scheduling.

VA leaders held a public forum at the hospital Thursday night, and a number of veterans attended.

Paul Roberts, who has been the Cheyenne VA director since July (after being the interim director) said the hospital is working to make its systems easier for veterans to use and connect with the care they need.

Roberts outlined five goals the hospital plans to take on during the fiscal year: improve the veteran experience, engage staff, build community networks, leverage best practices and reinforce trust.

Of the latter, Roberts said, I think weve regained a lot of trust from three years ago.

Roberts said hes maintained an open door policy since becoming director and that has helped identify problems veterans have been experiencing.

People need to have access to headquarters, people need to have access to leadership, he said.

Roberts said the Cheyenne VA has almost 300 more staff members than three years ago and also has a larger budget.

There are more people to process referrals to community doctors and two additional patient advocates.

But while several veterans who attended Thursday night said theyve noticed changes, there were still some issues they wanted addressed.

One frequent complaint was scheduling for primary care doctors, especially after visiting the emergency room.

Roberts said that problem was brought to his attention several weeks ago, and the hospital is working to create a process that will help veterans schedule follow-up visits with primary care physicians.

That process should be up and running over the next month, he said.

Others said when new doctors came into the hospital there was not a smooth transition for patients.

Ive had so many primary care people and nobody follows up, nobody knows who you are, one man said.

Roberts said the hospital raised its salary cap for physicians in an effort to keep doctors in Cheyenne longer.

He said a recurring problem was losing doctors to facilities in Northern Colorado, in part due to lifestyle amenities the region offers.

Roberts said the VA plans to expand its Greeley, Colorado, clinic over the next year, which will help relieve some pressure on the Cheyenne hospital.

Both Roberts and Renaye Murphy, the regional director of the Veterans Benefits Association Denver office, said they want feedback from veterans to see where improvements can be made.

Were really, really looking for assistance from you because we want to get better, Murphy said. Theres always room for improvement.
When people think of womens rights, few imagine a 75-year-old Laramie pioneer woman  an apron over her house dress and an empty tin pail in hand  making history on her walk to the bakery.

But when Louisa Gardner Swain cast her vote in September 1870 as the first female voter in U.S. history, she began a decades-long tradition of Wyoming women breaking glass ceilings.

Wyoming is home to a list of the countrys groundbreaking women: the first female voter, the first female juror, the first woman to hold judicial office, the first woman to hold statewide office and the first female governor. These women earned the state its nickname: The Equality State.

Yet the countrys first female presidential candidate from a major party is expected to perform worse in Wyoming  an early standard bearer for the right of women to hold public office  than almost everywhere else. Like the states uneasiness with Hillary Clinton, the more recent history of women in state politics is an uncomfortable one.

Wyoming elected the countrys first female governor in 1925 but hasnt elected a woman to the office since. Wyoming has never had a female U.S. senator. Of the 29 U.S. representatives elected since Wyoming was a territory, only two have been women. The state has the second-lowest percentage of female state legislators in the country as well as one of the worst gender pay gaps.

We started out pretty good, but weve been losing ground ever since, said state Sen. Bernadine Craft, the only woman in the 30-member Wyoming Senate.

Earning equality

Although men allowed women to cast their first votes peacefully in 1870, opposition to women voting was strong.

I think women were made to obey men, one male legislator said, as recorded in a 1872 newspaper article. I dont think women should mingle in the dirty pool of politics.

Another male legislator expounded on the dangers of allowing women serve on juries.

I dont blieve shes fit for it, no how, he said. Wot right has she got on a jury, anyhow?

Both male and female detractors thought allowing women to vote would make them less motherly and less gentle, old newspaper articles show. Women were too pure and refined to work in politics. Further, allowing them to vote would endanger family life.

They were wrong.

There were no revolutionary, startling or spectacular effects from womens voting such as were conjured up in the wild and excited imaginations of its opponents, read a newspaper column published in the early 1900s.

There are many theories as to why Wyoming became the first state to pass a womens suffrage bill when several states and Congress had already tried and failed.

Women in Wyoming generally had more freedoms than women in more populated areas and were obligated to take on more public responsibilities, said Shannon Smith, director of the Wyoming Humanities Council and author of several books on women in the West.

We were a smaller population, and women were more engaged with running society because the societies were smaller, she said.

Some historians say legislators passed the bill as a way to market the territory to prospective residents. Others believe there was genuine support for equal voting rights. Others think the bill passed because the legislators thought it was only right that white women be able to vote if black men could do so.

I think there were just as many motivations as there were members in the Legislature, said Phil Roberts, professor of history at the University of Wyoming. But if you look to the leadership, at least some modicum of principle was involved.

At least one newspaper article backs up the claim that women were given the vote as a way to attract more women to the territory.

We now expect at once quite an immigration of ladies to Wyoming, reads a brief article published in the Cheyenne Daily Leader on Dec. 11, 1869  the day after the bill was signed into law. We say to them all, come on  Well even give her more than the right to vote  she can run for Congress!

State lawmakers tried to overturn the suffrage bill a few years later, but the governor blocked them. The legislators then tried to override the governors veto but fell short by one vote, Roberts said.Yet the womens ability to vote had little to do with the election of the states first female governor.

Wyoming elected Nellie Tayloe Ross as governor in 1924  the nations first woman to hold a governors office. The Democratic party nominated her to run against Republican Eugene Sullivan after Ross husband died halfway through his term as governor.Her recent loss weighed on her the day she was elected, the Casper Daily Tribune reported. When she accepted the position  holding the yellow telegraph paper bearing the news of her election  she evinced no elation over the distinction of having been commissioned to be the first woman ever sworn in as the chief executive of an American state. She made no mention of the historic nature of her election in her inaugural address.

In his speech after losing, Sullivan asked that the people of Wyoming help the little lady as she learned to lead the state, according to a Casper Daily Tribune story from a few days after the election.

Texas elected a woman to the governors office that same year, and a wire service ran an article with the headline: Womens Triumph in Two States Is Another Step Toward the White House. It would be another 146 years before a woman was even considered for the Oval Office.

After serving two years as governor and losing her re-election bid, Ross later became the vice-chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, in charge of womens issues. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed her director of the U.S. Mint, a position she held for the next 20 years.

Yet since Ross election in 1920, the pace of progress for Wyoming women has slowed.Roberts believes the change is in part due to the states transition from a pioneering territory to a more settled state, as well as changes in the way elections and the Legislature are run.

We were pioneering, but theres a lot to say that much was about circumstances, he said. Women were often called to positions because the men were all working or otherwise occupied.

The change from a legislature that was chosen via at-large elections also damaged female politicians chances, Roberts said. Voters used to be able to choose a slate of candidates to represent them in Cheyenne, instead of selecting only one near where they lived.

I think that had a big impact because running wasnt a direct, in-your-face challenge to an incumbent, he said. Thats not something comfortable for Wyomingites, especially women, to do.

Demands are also greater on legislators now, Roberts said. Instead meeting for 40 days every two years, legislators must meet every year for as well as attend committee meetings. That places a burden on working legislators of both sexes, but especially on women, who still generally do more housework and take on more responsibility with children.

Sexism and well-intentioned chauvinism continued to shape Wyoming life, despite the states history of firsts, Roberts said. During the Great Depression, married female teachers were laid off and their jobs given to men in an attempt to spread the jobs around. Similarly, women who filled jobs historically held by men during World War II lost their jobs as the soldiers returned home.There are things like that that have happened that have caused us to slip back in our principled stance on equal rights, he said.

Women in politics today

Studies show that if women run, they are just as likely to be elected as their male competitors. The problem, state Sen. Craft said, is that women are less likely to run at all unless someone else suggests the idea.

It took multiple people persuading her over many months before Craft decided to run for an open state House position in 2006.

It was almost like she asked me how I felt about running naked through the streets, Craft said. I would have never run if somebody hadnt identified me as a possible candidate, recruited me and supported me.

Women dont need to start out at the state level, said Rep. Rosie Berger, the founder ofthe Wyoming Womens Legislative Caucus. They could begin with positions on the boards of local charities or on city committees where they could gain the knowledge and confidence to run for higher offices.We have all the firsts, Berger said.

But we really need to focus on creating leadership opportunities for women across Wyoming. None of this will happen overnight.

Craft and Berger have both worked on programs that help train and mentor women who are considering running for a position at any level of government. Unlike men, there are a select number of female politicians to connect with and learn from.

You never heard about the good old girls club  but you heard about the good ol boys, Craft said.

But there are larger, more abstract barriers as well  negative cultural norms about women that have been repeated so often and for so long that even women have come to believe them.

I think sometimes we tend to hold back a little because we undervalue ourselves, Craft said. I think sometimes we buy into those old stereotypes that men are assertive and women are b-. Weve heard it too many times.

When she was a girl, Craft told her mom that she wanted to be a priest in their Episcopalian church. Despite her moms feminist leanings, Craft said her mom opposed women in the priesthood  she thought it was unwomanly.

I think theres just this mindset sometimes that women are not supposed to be priests, should not be in government, should not hold positions of authority, shouldnt drive a front loader, Craft, who is now an Episcopal priest, said. I think that many women address that on a daily basis in politics and elsewhere.

Since shes been in the Senate, Craft said shes never felt disrespected or diminished. The men treat her as an equal.

After she passed her first bill, another senator gave her an antique campaign button that reads: Dont call me honey, baby, or girl. Call me senator. She still treasures it.

Ive never felt intimidated, Ive never felt excluded, Ive never felt anything but acceptance from them, Craft said of the other 29 senators.

Berger echoed the sentiment that her male colleagues in the House have always been welcoming and respectful, but she also believes politics could gain from having more women present.

Having women involved, typically theyre more sensitive to others feelings and consider them when making decision, she said. Theyre very aware of whats going on for the others around them.

Despite Clintons relatively poll numbers in Wyoming, both women said the simple fact that a woman is running for the nations highest office sets an important precedent.

We know there are all these barriers for women out there  spoken and unspoken  but I hope that Clinton will empower women to say Wow, she became president of the U.S., I can run for the school board, Craft said. Im hoping that maybe the ultimate glass ceiling will be shattered.
Refinery update

The Sinclair Refinery in Evansville is wrapping up a major overhaul. The updated facility, which began operating Oct. 18, will be more efficient, cut emissions and improve worker safety, officials said. Some of the old parts had been in service since the 1920s. The whole project is set to be finished by the end of next year. Were glad to see the company investing in the refinery and the community.

Generation Casper

City residents are being asked to share what they believe Casper should look like in the years to come. If you have thoughts about how Casper should change or what should be preserved in the future, visit generationcasper.com to make sure city leaders know about your vision.

Flying high

Theres good news for beleaguered frequent flyers in Riverton and Fremont County: The Riverton Regional Airport has welcomed a new carrier, Denver Air Connection, and unlike days past, this carrier hasnt canceled one flight since July. Thats a positive for residents as businesses who might be thinking about making the area their home.

Tip line

A new program called Safe2Tell lets Wyoming students report threats or safety concerns to authorities. They can use an app, website or phone number to anonymously share an array of worries, such as suicidal tendencies, threats, bullying or drug use. Members of the Legislature have been working on this for years. Safe2Tell launched recently in Natrona County and is set to be officially introduced across the state by the end of the school year, but it will respond to any report a student files, leaders said. This is a win for our students and our schools.

Cast your ballot

The general election is just days away. If you havent already participated in absentee voting, make sure you go to the polls Tuesday to make your voice heard. Before you go, take time to research the candidates and issues. Looking for reference material? Visit trib.com/election to click through the In Their Own Words voter guide.
Celebrated restaurateur Chris Bianco is in talks to come back to Tucson, possibly to a Peach Properties location on South Stone Avenue blocks away from his former Congress Street restaurant that he closed in mid-September.

But for now its just talks; Bianco and Peach Properties principal Patricia Schwabe said no lease has been signed. Schwabe and her husband, Ron, own and run Peach.

Im still looking for something. Im still working and have been working with Patricia and Ron, Bianco said Friday. I think we are looking at it and we want to do it, but the lease is not signed.

The Schwabes, who own Penca Restaurante at 50 E. Broadway, are in partnership with developer Marcel Dabdoub on several downtown redevelopment projects including 123 N. Stone Ave., where Bianco is penciled in on development plans filed with Rio Nuevo as a possible tenant.

The Stone Avenue property is one of several in the so-called Peach & Dabdoub project that includes the old Brings funeral home at 236 S. Scott Ave.; the Chicago Store at 2130 E. Congress St.; and the Arizona Hotel residential project on North Sixth Avenue.

(Bianco) is excited to work in Tucson and hes excited to work with us. And we are trying to find the right formula, Patricia Schwabe said.

Schwabe said they have been talking with Bianco about the possibility of becoming an interest partner  part owner  in the project, which has retail and office space.

The project also could include 1,700 square feet of event space, according to plans filed with Rio Nuevo.

Bianco, who owns several restaurants in the Phoenix area, closed his namesake Pizzeria Bianco at 272 E. Congress St. on Sept. 17 after just over two years in business.

He has continued doing catering work, including a party later this month for the band Calexico, Bianco said.

Bianco, a James Beard Award-winning chef, said closing his Tucson restaurant was one of the hardest decisions he has had to make in his 30-plus-year restaurant career.

But challenges related to the development of AC Hotel by Marriott, 151 E. Broadway, behind the restaurant  including losing available off-street parking  were factors in his decision.
On Sunday, venerable Tucson conductor Laszlo Veres will mark the 60th anniversary of his escape from his native communist-controlled Hungary.

And hell do it the best way he knows how  through music.

Veres and his Arizona Symphonic Winds will present their 30th annual Veterans Day Concert on Sunday, Nov. 6, that will include Hector Berliozs Hungarian March to commemorate Veres escape.

The program also includes tributes to veterans going back to the American Revolution (the Arizona premiere of Marilyn Harris and Mark Wolframs Colonial Scenes) and through to more recent battles including Vietnam (David Gillinghams Heroes, Lost and Fallen).

Also on the program; Ferdinand Davids Concertino for Trombone featuring 16-year-old Tucson trombonist Seth Roland performing the allegro movement; the Armed Forces Salute, arranged by Bob Lowden, for all branches of the U.S. military; John Philip Sousas The Pathfinder of Panama; and Jules Stynes Ive Heard That Song Before featuring Winds principal trumpeter Carl Fetkenhour.

The Winds A Musical Tribute to Our Veterans, Past and Present begins at 1 p.m. Sunday at Catalina Foothills High School Auditorium, 4300 E. Sunrise Drive.
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All her 100 years, Anna Rogovin had one very simple rule: Dont say anything bad about my Uncle Sam.

She wasnt referring to an actual blood relative but rather that patriotic personification of the U.S. government. The Tucson transplant felt she owed a lot to her generous uncle.

People dont appreciate what Uncle Sam has to offer  education, service, travel, Rogovin said in an interview before her death. She checked all those boxes after serving during World War II with the WAVES  Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, a unit of the U.S. Naval Reserve. She retired as a lieutenant with 20 years in the Naval Reserve.

A former chemist who packed a lot into a century  including recovering from a horrific hit-and-run accident that left her a double amputee at 91  Rogovin died after a brief illness Oct. 27, which also happened to be Navy Day. She was buried in Elmont, New York, next to her parents in Beth David Cemetery.

To those who knew her, calling Rogovin indomitable would be a supreme understatement.

Shes just incredible, said volunteer Jerry Dahlmann, who along with his wife, Nancy, visits residents at Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging, which Rogovin called home for the past eight years.

The Dahlmanns always stopped in to see Rogovin, and Jerry marveled at the centenarians sharp sense of humor and joie de vivre.

In an interview three weeks before she died, Rogovin and her niece Leah Richter shared Rogovins story. It started in the Bronx, where she was born and raised by hardworking Russian immigrants who owned a store and loved their adopted country.

The youngest of three children, Rogovin was a good student and enrolled at Hunter College when she was just 16.

In elementary school, I skipped fourth grade and seventh grade, Rogovin explained.

She majored in chemistry and after graduating, headed off to Washington, D.C., When World War II broke out, Rogovin joined the WAVES. If shed had her way, she wouldve directly signed up for the military. Of course, that wasnt an option.

There was great antagonism against women joining the services, she said. They wanted only men.

Rogovin loved the WAVES work and the uniform  navy-blue, wool suit in the winter, seersucker in the summer.

Part of the team tasked with the vital wartime effort of coming up with a synthetic alternative to rubber, she worked with Carl Shipp Marvel, considered one of the worlds top organic chemists. He was a University of Arizona professor from 1961-1988. Marvel encouraged Rogovin to study with him at the University of Illinois, said her niece, Leah Richter. She earned a masters degree there, attending under the GI Bill.

She was on track to earn a Ph.D. next when Rogovin  the only of her siblings who was unmarried  was summoned home to help her father care for her mother, whod suffered a stroke. The long commute to night school ended up derailing Rogovins Ph.D. plans.

She continued to work as a chemist and sailed to the Mediterranean and Gulf of Mexico, among other exotic locales as part of her Naval Reserve training duty.

I liked being onboard a ship and traveling, she said.

After she retired, she stayed busy in her Bronx neighborhood and was a daily fixture at the Mosholu Montefiore Community Center across the street from her apartment for more than 20 years. She was on her way to the senior center on March 13, 2008, when an 18-wheeler hit her.

She just stepped off the curb, said Richter, whom Rogovin called her guardian angel. The truck grazed her on her face, knocked her off her feet and ran over her.

Rogovins legs were crushed and had to be amputated high above the knee.

I woke up in the hospital, I couldnt believe my legs were gone, she said.

Police investigated for two years but never found the truck or driver, Richter said.

The woman whod spent most of her life in the Bronx and had always been fiercely independent moved across the country to start again. She wasted no time getting to work. She created a book club at Handmaker as well as a Torah study program.

The consummate hostess, she kept packaged cookies on hand for guests  even the four-legged ones. A box of Milk-Bone dog biscuits always sat on the counter next to the fridge.

Among Rogovins cherished photos was a creased, sepia-toned snapshot of her dressed in a winter WAVES uniform, her dark curls tucked neatly beneath her hat.

Ive always been so proud of her accomplishments, her niece said during the interview.
The University of Arizonas bid to raise $1.5 billion in donations has ended successfully  and well ahead of schedule.

The Arizona Now campaign, launched publicly in 2014, reached its goal two years early with support from more than 100,000 donors, officials said.

The campaigns success ensures the UAs place as a premier institution for cutting-edge research and academic achievement, said John-Paul Roczniak, president and CEO of the UA Foundation, who was busy planning a celebration event after the news was announced Friday.

The donor money supports a wide range of projects and initiatives, including student scholarships, support for faculty and research, and upgrades to university programs and facilities.

UA President Ann Weaver Hart, in a news release Friday, said the campaigns outcome shows what is possible when the entire UA community  faculty, students, staff, alumni and friends from around the world  come together to help drive the future.

UA fundraising boomed the first few years after Harts 2012 arrival, but slowed this year as some donors protested Harts decision to take a side job on the board of for-profit DeVry University. Despite the controversy, officials said fundraising topped $200 million in each of the last three school years.

The campaign total includes donations that date to 2010. The campaign began then in what officials described as a quiet phase, and raised around $860 million before the public announcement.

The donation that put the campaign over the top came from one of the UAs fundraising trustees. Peter Salter, a retired health-care executive, and his wife, Nancy, gave $2.5 million to endow the Center for Management Innovations in Healthcare at the Eller College of Management.

The impact of other major donations stretches across campus. They include:

 A gift of more than $50 million that created the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice.

 A $20 million gift from the family of renowned horn player Fred Fox that renamed the UAs School of Music in his honor.

 A $20 million donation from Richard F. Caris that secured the UAs role in building the Giant Magellan telescope.

 A $5 million addition to McClelland Hall funded by a lead gift from Karl and Stevie Eller.

Not all donations were so large, of course. Donations ranged from $15 to $50 million, officials said.
PHOENIX  Unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes, Arizonans wont face the possibility of prison time for helping a neighbor or anyone else return an early ballot.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday blocked Arizona from enforcing a new law that makes it a felony to collect the ballots of anyone else and bring them to the polls.

The law, adopted earlier this year by the Republican-controlled Legislature, provides only narrow exceptions for family members, those in the same household and certain caregivers.

Fridays ruling does not mean HB 2023 is illegal. That will be hashed out through a trial, a process that could take months or longer.

But Chief Justice Sidney Thomas, writing for himself and five others on the 11-member panel, said he and his colleagues believe it is appropriate to prevent the law from taking effect for this election.

Thomas pointed out that ballot-harvesting was never considered illegal until this year. He said that weighed heavily on the decision of the majority to conclude there would be no real harm to the state in perhaps only delaying its implementation while its legality is decided by the courts.

The injunction does not affect the states election process or machinery, he wrote. It simply would enjoin enforcement of a legislative act that would criminalize the collection, by persons other than the voters, of legitimately cast ballots.

Judge Diarmuid OScannlain, writing a dissent on behalf of five of the 11 judges, called that argument incomprehensible.

Of course HB 2023 directly regulates the states election process or machinery: It governs the collection of ballots which obviously is integral to how an election is conducted, he wrote. But under the majoritys Orwellian logic, regulations affecting get-out-the-vote operations are somehow not regulations of the electoral process.

And OScannlain called it irrelevant and incorrect for the majority to say an injunction is appropriate because a violation of the new law could land someone in state prison for a year.

Fridays order may not be the last word.

Within hours, attorneys for the state and the Arizona Republican Party asked Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has purview over the 9th Circuit, to issue an emergency stay. They point out the law has been in effect since August, including during the primary and for most of the last three weeks of early voting.

The 9th Circuits eleventh-hour order enjoining the law at this point simply makes no sense and risks significant electoral confusion, they argued to Kennedy.

Late Friday the high court gave those seeking to block the law until Saturday morning to file a response to the states request.

Arizona law allows voters to request an early ballot. It can be mailed back or taken to a polling place.

Until now, there has been another option: Give the ballot to someone else to drop off. That has allowed political parties, community groups and even special interests to go door-to-door  especially after its too late to put a ballot in the mail  and ask people if their early ballot is sitting on a table and needs to be taken to the polls.

Groups aligned with Democrat interests have generally been more active with those efforts and more successful.

Earlier this year the Legislature, at the behest of Secretary of State Michele Reagan, a Republican, voted to make the practice a felony amid arguments that it created the opportunity for fraud.

The Republican majority was undeterred by statements from Democrats that tampering with ballots or refusing to return them already is illegal and there has never been a proven instance of fraud.

The state and federal Democratic parties, along with the Clinton campaign and others, sued, charging the law is racially discriminatory. That allegation is crucial as the federal Voting Rights Act makes it illegal for states to enact laws or regulations that have a disproportionate impact on minorities.

Thomas, in an earlier three-judge ruling that upheld the law, said the evidence is there.

The record demonstrated that, in many rural areas with a high proportion of minority voters, home mail delivery was not available, and it was extremely difficult to travel to a post office, he wrote.

Thomas also said that 14,000 registered voters on the 2.8 million-acre Tohono Oodham reservation have no home mail delivery. He said a ban on allowing people to collect ballots from residents there clearly affects them.

But Judge Sandra Ikuta, who wrote the majority opinion for the three-judge panel, said there was no evidence that these categories of voters were more likely to be minorities than non-minorities.

She acknowledged there are several rural communities that lack home delivery that are almost exclusively populated by minorities, places like San Luis and Somerton. But Ikuta said there also are lots of rural places with few minorities, places like Colorado City, Quartzsite, St. David and Wickenburg, which also lack home delivery and are equally affected by the ban.

Similarly, while the record shows the Tohono Oodham Nation lacks home mail service (the plaintiff) does not point to evidence showing that HB 2023 has a disproportionate impact on members of the Tohono Oodham Nation compared to non-minorities who also live in rural communities, Ikuta wrote.

Both the majority of the 9th Circuit and the dissenting judges do agree that there is no evidence of fraud. Thomas said that undermines the arguments made by Republican lawmakers of why the new restriction is needed.

But OScannlain said none of that matters legally. He said the states desire to prevent fraud before it happens is important enough.

Arizona does not have to wait until it possesses such evidence before it acts, he wrote. It may be proactive, rather than reactionary.
PHOENIX  Federal judges are giving Democrats one more chance to convince them that people who cast their ballots in the wrong polling place should have their votes counted anyway.

In a brief order Friday, the full 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to review a decision by a three-judge panel saying there is nothing illegally discriminatory about the practice by state election officials of discarding ballots from people who are not signed up to vote at that specific location. The order gave no reason for the decision to take a second look.

But the judges said late Friday they dont intend to review it before Tuesdays election, meaning the law remains in place for this election.

Fridays order is at least a temporary victory for Democrats, though not an immediate one.

They contend that minorities are more likely to be disenfranchised by showing up at a polling place other than the one assigned to the precinct where they live.

But not everyone on the court is convinced. Judge Carlos Bea, writing for the majority in the 2-1 ruling earlier this week, said none of that is evidence of illegal discrimination.

Arizona law allows those who have received early ballots to either mail them in or drop them off on election day at any polling place. But those who wait to vote in person have to go their assigned precinct.

If a prospective voters name does not show up on the official list, they can be advised that they are in the wrong place and directed where to go. There was evidence, though, that that does not always happen.

And if the person insists on voting there anyway, he or she is given a provisional ballot, which is set aside.

If a review of records later shows the person was entitled to vote there, the ballot is tabulated. But if not, it is discarded.

The lawsuit filed by Democrats and allies contends the state should at least have to count any votes that the person would have been able to make had he or she been in the right location.

That obviously includes president and U.S. senator. But depending on the location, it could also include congressional, legislative and local offices.

To have the practice voided, though, challengers generally have to show that it is racially discriminatory. Chief Justice Sidney Thomas, dissenting in the ruling earlier this week, said that evidence exists.

The numbers are startling, he wrote. The rate at which in-person ballots were rejected and not counted because the votes were cast out-of-precinct was 131 percent higher for Hispanics, 74 percent higher for African-Americans, and 39 percent higher for Native Americans than for white voters.

Attorneys for Democrats suggested that is because minorities are more likely to be renters and move more often, resulting in confusion about where they are supposed to vote.

Bea did not dispute the numbers, but called them irrelevant and said it does not prove discrimination.

There is no evidence in the record that minority voters were given misinformation regarding the locations of their correct precinct polling places, while non-minority voters were given correct information, he wrote.

Nor was there evidence that minority voters precinct polling places were located where it would be more difficult for minority voters to find them, than were the corresponding precinct polling places of non-minority voters.

And Bea said nothing in the law creates an undue hardship for voters.

It requires voters to vote in their precinct or their vote will not be counted, he said.

It is analogous to a registration requirement: If prospective voters do not register to vote, they cannot vote; their vote will not be counted.

On the other side of the equation, Bea said there are legitimate reasons to limit people to voting at a specific location. He said it caps the number of people who go to any one location on Election Day and ensures that each ballot at each location lists only those races on which everyone who shows up there can vote.

Thomas, however, said the sheer magnitude of the problem suggests something is wrong.

He said that since 2006, Arizona has rejected more than 121,000 provisional ballots, 2 percent of the total.

Thomas said in the 2012 general election, more than one out of every five ballots cast on election day were provisional ballots.

And over 33,000 of these  more than 5 percent of all in-person ballots cast  were rejected, Thomas said. No other state rejects a larger share of its in-person ballots.

He said the problem is particularly acute in Tucson and Phoenix.

The answer largely is there are relatively few polling places in those cities, and polling sites change with great frequency, the judge said.

And Thomas said geography also can play a role.

Many polling places are located directly on precinct boundaries, he said, with multiple polling places often clustered together, sometimes even in the same building. And some of these polling places are not even within the voters actual precinct.

Many voters cast their ballots in incorrect precincts simply because they stood in the wrong line at a multi-precinct location, Thomas said.
PHOENIX  Saying evidence is lacking, a federal judge refused late Friday to issue an order directing the Republican Party, Donald Trump and his supporters not to harass or intimidate voters.

U.S. District Court Judge John Tuchi acknowledged news reports quoting Trump as telling supporters the election is rigged. He also said there were statements made by the GOP presidential nominee telling backers to go out and watch for vote fraud and to go to polling places and go sit there with friends and make sure its on the up and up.

But Tuchi said none of that rose to the level of violating the federal Voting Rights Act, which makes it a crime to intimidate, threaten or coerce ... any person voting or attempting to vote.

Also, the judge said that the things Trump was telling supporters to do are in some ways impossible to accomplish.

For example, he said, even if Trump was telling people to keep an eye out for people who are not in this country legally It is beyond question that no one can tell a persons citizenship based on what that person looks like or sounds like.

Simply arguing there is voter fraud and urging people to watch out for it is not, without more, sufficient to justify the extraordinary relief that an injunction constitutes, Tuchi wrote.

He separately said there was no evidence that the Arizona Republican Party was involved in any effort to get people to violate the rights of would-be voters.

But the judge left the door open a bit for reconsideration. He told the Democrats who sought the injunction that they can come back to court, through Election Day on Tuesday, if they receive additional, material evidence.

Fridays ruling is a setback for Democrats who are arguing in federal courts in various battleground states that the actions of Trump and his allies, and the actions Trumps supporters will take in response, threaten to keep people away from the polls on Tuesday out of fear. They sought orders from various judges to block moves that would intimidate voters.

As in Arizona, most of these efforts have been rebuffed, though a federal judge in Ohio did say that anyone who harasses or intimidates voters at or near polling places in that state would face charges of contempt of court. The Ohio order specifically blocks anyone from either party from hanging around polling places unless they intend to vote and from questioning voters and taking photos or videos around polling sites.

Tuchi was unwilling to go that far, saying the Arizona Democratic Party failed to prove that any actions by the Trump campaign rose to the level of conspiring to have people intimidate voters.

It produced no evidence that the Trump Campaign organized, trained or otherwise facilitated any volunteers actual attendance at a polling place as an observer, in Arizona or elsewhere, the judge wrote. Added to that, the judge said, is that there is no evidence the Trump campaign engaged in any prior voter intimidation in Arizona.

And despite that early in-person voting has been ongoing in Arizona for over three weeks, it (the Democratic Party) produced no evidence of any attempts at voter intimidation, or any voter reporting they felt intimidated, during this cycle, Tuchi wrote.

The judge separately refused to block Stop the Steal, run by Trump ally Roger Stone, from conducting exit polling at certain locations.

Democrats argued that the real goal of Stone and the organization was another form of intimidation because these polling efforts were being set up solely at sites where minorities and Democrats are the likely voters. That, they argued, showed this wasnt true scientific polling.

Tuchi said that does raise questions.

If Stop the Steal does intend to conduct its polling only at Democratic-leaning or majority-minority districts, its actions are facially suspicious, the judge said, adding, Neither Stop the Steal nor Mr. Stone have offered legitimate reasons for conducting polling in those targeted locations.

But Tuchi said thats not enough to block the activity.

There is no requirement for exit polls to be scientific, the judge said.

Unscientific, targeted, unreliable ... exit polling, by itself, does not violate any voters rights, Tuchi continued. Without a demonstration that Stop the Steals planned exit polling is likely to intimidate, the court may not enjoin it from conducting its polling.
PHOENIX  With the fate of legalized marijuana in doubt, supporters and foes of Proposition 205 are amassing cash for a last-minute blitz to convince voters.

A new poll of 550 Arizonans conducted this past Tuesday and Wednesday finds the ballot measure leading  but only slightly.

Of those questioned, 48 percent said they are likely to support the initiative, with 47 percent opposed and the balance undecided.

Pollster George Khalaf, who conducted the survey for Data Orbital, a Phoenix based consulting firm, said that difference is statistically insignificant, being well within the 4.1 percentage point margin of error.

With victory on the issue clearly within the grasp of either side, both are raising lots of last-minute cash to close the deal.

Reports analyzed by Capitol Media Services shows that the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol has more than $5.2 million. More than $2 million of that has been donated in the last six weeks.

For the foes, the late infusion is more striking.

As of Sept. 19, Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy had collected less than $1.9 million. But since that time, it has secured additional donations of more than $4.4 million.

Both sides can boast some major donors.

The Marijuana Policy Project and its separate foundation have put in close to $1.6 million, both to pay circulators to get the measure on the ballot and to promote it to voters.

Theres also $410,000 from Dr. Bronners Magic Soaps, a California firm that makes cleaning products, including those that use hemp oil. But the company says various restrictions on growing hemp  essentially a version of marijuana without the psychoactive ingredients  have forced it to look elsewhere for supplies.

This isnt the first outing for the company, which says it donated money to previous successful legalization initiatives in Colorado and Washington.

There also was a $350,000 donation just days ago from Drug Policy Action, which advocates for the reform of drug laws.

On the other side of the fight, the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry has been the main source of dollars, putting in close to $1.5 million to keep recreational use of marijuana illegal in Arizona.

And Discount Tire has contributed another $1 million on top of that. It is a private company owned by Paradise Valley resident Bruce Halle. Forbes pegged the 86-year-old Halles net worth Friday at $6 billion. The tire chain has more than 900 stores in 31 states with estimated annual revenues of $4.2 billion.

There also is $500,000 from Nevada casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and an identical amount from Insys Therapeutics, a Chandler firm that manufactures a spray opiate for pain relief and is seeking to market a non-psychoactive version of marijuana that could be prescribed by doctors.

Hanging in the balance of what happens Tuesday is who will be able to buy and use marijuana.

A 2010 initiative, also financed by the Marijuana Policy Project, allows those with certain medical conditions and a doctors recommendation to obtain a card from the state Department of Health Services as a registered user. That card entitles individuals to obtain up to 2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks from one of about 90 state-licensed dispensaries.

Prop. 205 would extend the right to buy and use the drug to any adult, albeit with a limit of one ounce at any one time.

It also would expand the number of places where marijuana could be sold to 147 through 2020. And existing dispensary owners would have first dibs on those new permits.

Much of the campaign to date has been focused on what has happened in Colorado where voters approved legalization for recreational use four years ago.

There are various claims of whether use of marijuana by teens, who are not legally permitted to have the drug there, has increased since 2012. Much of the conclusion depends on which report is cited and what starting date is used for comparison.

Proponents of the Arizona initiative point out that Prop. 205 would raise additional money in taxes for schools. But, here too, there are conflicting claims about how much reached individual schools in Colorado.

According to Data Orbital, 455 of those questioned said they were extremely likely to vote in this election with another 88 very likely.
Its not what healthcare.gov was saying this week, but the Carondelet Health Network says it will be an in-network provider on the federal marketplace selling health insurance to Pima County residents.

Open enrollment in the marketplace, created through the Affordable Care Act, began Tuesday and goes through Jan. 31. The marketplace is where working-age people who dont get health insurance via their employer or through a government program may purchase health plans and qualify for federal subsidies to help pay for them. Many people refer to the insurance available on the marketplace as Obamacare.

When open enrollment began on Nov. 1, the limited offerings for Pima County residents on the marketplace listed both Carondelet and Banner Health as out-of-network for all the plans offered.

All the plans being offered this season are HMOs, which means consumers must use in-network providers or face higher out-of-network costs. The exception is if the service is not offered anywhere in network and is necessary. The burden is on the consumer to show thats true.

While the Carondelet Health Network was listed as out-of-network for the three plans named as options for Pima County residents on the marketplace, officials with the Southern Arizona hospital chain say that is about to change.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona confirmed Thursday that it is partnering with Carondelet on so-called catastrophic plans for people under 30, but that the information has not been displaying correctly on the federal website.

The insurance carrier said it has contacted the U.S. Department of Medicare and Medicaid Services about fixing the problem. Catastrophic plans do not qualify for federal subsidies and were purchased by just 1 percent of Americans who bought marketplace plans for 2016, an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows.

On Friday, Carondelet officials announced they had negotiated a contract with Ambetter, which is the only company offering plans on the marketplace to Pima County residents of all ages. Ambetter is owned by Missouri-based Centene Corp.

The process of negotiating contracts can be complex but we are pleased to have reached an agreement with Ambetter to provide healthcare services to their members, Carondelet officials said in a written statement.

That contract means Carondelet will be considered an in-network provider for all the Pima County marketplace plans.

The news of Carondelets participation in the marketplace adds provider choice to a narrow Pima County marketplace that has shrunk significantly since 2014, when seven insurers offered more than 100 plans.

The Carondelet Health Network operates two local hospitals: Carondelet St. Josephs and Carondelet St. Marys.

Banner Health, which also operates two Tucson hospitals, is not an in-network provider for any of the Pima County marketplace plans, officials with the nonprofit Phoenix-based company confirmed.

Banner didnt opt out. Banner is not an insurance company and cant elect to participate on our own, but only through relationships with payers, Banner Health officials said in an emailed statement. This year we are not a provider network for any for the remaining plans on the marketplace in Arizona.

The Affordable Care Act seeks to have as many people insured as possible, which is why there are fines for people who are uninsured  2.5 percent of ones income, or $695 per adult and $347.50 per child, to a maximum of $2,085.

However, there are certain scenarios where people can apply for a hardship exemption and avoid penalties for not having coverage.

Most Americans get their health insurance via their employer or a government program, and a minority need to buy it through the individual marketplace, which is sometimes called a health exchange. Some states have set up their own exchanges. Arizona uses the federal exchange.

A federal report released last month said 72 percent of marketplace consumers in states using healthcare.gov will be able to find plans with a premium of less than $75 per month and 77 percent will be able to find plans with premiums below $100, taking into account financial assistance.
We've all seen the articles and the Facebook proclamations: The Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos has been "Columbused" by white people who just want to have a good time. They costume themselves in iconic sugar skull makeup, thoughtlessly claiming the culture of the oppressed. They drink, they insult the holiday, they take it for our own.

(On the other hand, we've also seen the barrage of flippant lifestyle articles like this Vice piece: How to build an epic cocktail fountain for Day of the Dead. Proof?)

There is no doubt that Tucson's 26-year-old All Souls Procession has parallels to the original Aztec celebration. But is our homegrown holiday different than, say, the San Francsico hipster fest that takes place in the gentrified Mission District every year? To find out what locals actually thought, I reached out to dozens of students, academics, activists, All Souls Procession attendants and more. I asked them what they felt about appropriation, and how a white person can march in a culturally responsible way.

Unsurprisingly, the most passionate responses I recieved were from those who are personally connected to the longtime celebration. So take these answers with a grain of salt. Or if you're hungry, some colorful sugar ...

On the similarities and differences between All Souls Procession and the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos

... All Souls Procession certainly borrows the aesthetic of Dia de los Muertos, at least as it is celebrated in some parts of Mexico, and follows the pattern of having a separate time dedicated to children and another for everyone. ... Other elements of the All Souls Procession are non-traditional to the Mexican holiday. My understanding is that in many parts of Mexico, Dia de los Muertos is celebrated quietly with the construction of altars at home or wherever loved ones are buried ... The urn, which is fairly central to the All Souls Procession, is also non-traditional to the Mexican celebration ...

 Misty Ring-Ramirez, PhD candidate in sociology

It is easy to see the influence of Dia de los Muertos and All Saints Day because of the timing, because of the region, and of course because so many who attend bring that association with them. However there are many other similar traditions that also provide inspiration. That list includes New Orleans Jazz funerals, Irish wakes, Samhain, Ohigan (the equinox tradition), Zhong Yuan Jie (the Hungry Ghost Festival), and Bon (or Obon) in Japan; the Double Yang Festival and Qingming in China; Gai Jatra in Nepal; the Hindu Pitru Paksha, Chuseok in Korea ...

 Susan K. Tiss, Tucson native and longtime All Souls Procession participant and volunteer

The procession is a gathering of many cultures, many beliefs and has never held its roots with Dia de los Muertos. But naturally, Tucson resides in a largely Latinx population. ... It is normal that a majority of the participants would identify with the culture of the Day of the Dead celebrated in Mexico as part of their Mexican, Catholic, or Aztec roots. And that is okay. 

 Eva Pena, All Souls Procession Urn Spirit Group volunteer

Is All Souls cultural appropriation? (Are white people stealing the idea from Mexican culture)

It is akin to or the cultural equivalent of gentrification. 

 Roberto Rodriguez, associate professor in the Mexican American and & Raza Studies Department at the University of Arizona

We live in a city that has deep and intimate roots in Mexico. To me, it feels natural that celebrations in Tucson reflect the diversity of the city itself. ... The spirit of the procession and (most of) those who participate in it, seems very different from wearing a culture as a costume, which in my opinion is unequivocally negative. But, as a non-Hispanic person, it is not my place to define what is and is not offensive cultural appropriation.

 Misty Ring-Ramirez

Personal relationships with Dia de los Muertos

I am a native Mexican-American Tucsonan and a former Catholic. Our family never celebrated the Day of the Dead. ... Day of the Dead back in my day was something that was celebrated in Southern Mexico, and was considered a pagan ritual. The procession today is an extension of Halloween, with a central theme of skeletons or painted skulls, and very much more paganistic.

 Alfred Quiroz, painter, professor at the University of Arizona School of Art

"As a Hispanic child growing up, I didn't even understand this. I had never heard of such a celebration in my own culture. It wasn't until a coworker of mine brought in pictures of him participating at an All Souls Procession back in 2003 that I became knowledgeable of the history behind it. Today as a parent, I am able to teach my children the meaning behind Dia de los Muertos, and All Souls Procession."

 Michelle Beltran, All Souls Procession attendant

Honestly, since I'm Mexican but was raised by white Mormon parents, it makes me happy to participate in All Souls. It makes me feel more connected to being Mexican, even though I wasn't raised knowing my traditional background. Anyway, I love that Tucson invites the city to participate, and I feel like the city is pretty respectful of the tradition.

 Rikenna Lines, Chicago resident traveling to Tucson for the procession

Does All Souls address something that's lacking in mainstream American culture?

The procession mimics the doom and gloom feeling that is prevalent in this country since the days of 9/11. The cultural obsession with death, vampires and, of course, zombies are all inherent in this celebrative event for those that have departed. It has become a big art party. Which I think is positive.

 Alfred Quiroz

"So many people have become immune to loss and death. Some do not know how to express loss and grief. My heart opened up after my first experience with All Souls. I have since introduced family and friends to the event and we work together on our displays."

 Anna M. Mendoza, native Tucsonan

We spend so much time working, taking care of duties, on the go, planning, we can forget to take time to grieve, to express that grief, share it openly and sometimes even just feel the grief. I believe All Souls Procession gives space for all of that. 

 Davina Araiza, All Souls Procession attendant

I think mainstream American culture represses grief and confrontation of death in a way that is really pathological. People who experience loss (of a loved one, of a dream, of a relationship, of health, etc.) are urged to 'think positive!' and move forward with their life immediately. We dont know how to grieve as individuals or communities, and we dont even know how to be around a person who is grieving. I think that is part of the reason so many people are drawn to the procession, and even travel to Tucson to be a part of it. It feels cathartic and healing to publicly share our losses, and to dedicate time to facing and remembering them. It is subversive to acknowledge death in a forum that is neither about horror nor sensationalism.

 Misty Ring-Ramirez

It is all too often frowned upon for people to publicly grieve. It is something that society expects to be a private process. ... There are always those conversations when someone has to say, in a whisper, "and then he died," like it's something dirty, something feared. The Procession provides a way for those who need it, to have a creative or artistic release as part of their healing and grieving.

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 Eva Pena

How can a white person celebrate All Souls respectfully?

"Not making it a Halloween celebration. Two different events."

 Terri Lynn-Cross, market analyst with the Arizona Daily Star

The All Souls Procession could be seen as a giant funeral march, and people should act accordingly to that notion. It isn't a party, it is not Halloween, but it is a celebration and it is easy to confuse the two. Celebrations of spirit are always sacred, so they should be treated with the most respect. A party is where you go to imbibe and socialize.

 Adam Cooper-Teran, director of the Ancestors Project at All Souls Procession

Everyone has their own way to celebrate. My father passed away earlier this year, and his birthday is coming up. Being with my family and carrying out our own traditions, and passing those on to my kids is the best way I know to honor his memory.

 Regina Romero, Tucson City Council member

The procession is a big party, no two ways about it. ... There are actually no rules in regard as to how someone should celebrate this sensibly. The procession is a new celebration of an event that was actually never celebrated in Tucson, at least not publicly. Some individuals are offended because they feel that the spiritual aspect has been depleted, but a celebration is a celebration!

 Alfred Quiroz

What about wearing sugar skulls on our faces?

I would never tell anyone not to wear sugar skull makeup. Every year we have various artists, some of them Hispanic and Latino, who paint the faces of the public who want to look like calaveras. It isn't something to deny the public because we are an inclusive event."

 Adam Cooper-Teran

I think the most important thing is for people to be aware of the purpose of the procession, and to celebrate in a way that honors that purpose. If wearing sugar skull makeup, rather than being a costume, is a ritual that helps a person reflect on life and death, confront her/his own mortality, or view death with less terror, it seems acceptable to me.

 Misty Ring-Ramirez

"I believe as long as love and respect are your first thoughts that go into your dress or art, that's all that matters."

 Miguel Beltran, procession attendant

For some people, wearing a calavera (a.k.a. "sugar skull") makeup may feel sacred. For others perhaps a drink to honor the dead may feel sacred. I think the key word here is respect. To participate in the All Souls Procession responsibly, we all need to respect each other and hold the space for each other to practice what we fell is right and sacred for us.

 Susan K. Tiss

If someone wants to color their face in the likeness of a Catrina skull, that is fabulous. But don't do so without regard for that practice as a long tradition with deep roots in Mexico. But, does that mean that everyone at the Procession is attempting to be insulting to Mexican culture? Absolutely not. So I believe there has to be a mutual respect from everyone, those that hold that tradition as sacred, and those who do not. Those who do, must understand that someone in Catrina/Calavera makeup does not automatically mean appropriation. And those who want to use that representation as part of their way of honoring their grief, should make sure they know the history and roots of where that imagery comes from and what it stands for.

 Eva Pena

Is it acceptable to drink?

 I think the key is to respect other peoples safety and right to participate in a meaningful way. Any behavior that is obnoxious, dangerous, or crude can ruin an important experience for others  especially children and families with children  and is irresponsible.

 Misty Ring-Ramirez

"I don't mind those who indulge in adult beverages or celebrate how they see fit. I do think that if you choose to celebrate by drinking alcohol, just be mindful of your limits and stay respectful."

 Michelle Beltran

Does All Souls have the power to unite the community, rather than divide it?

It creates a spectacle ... with drunks littering the route all along the way.

 Roberto Rodriguez

The procession is a unifying element for the city. Hundreds of individuals dressed in black donning face-paint show up from the youngest to the oldest for the procession of the celebration of the dearly departed. It is also a good place to take visiting relatives and tourists.

 Alfred Quiroz

Whether you're more solemn, somber, and stately affair, or rollicking jazz line, spectral Highland pipes or frenetic samba, ghost bikes or hungry late-night food-seekers lamenting the loss of Grill. Whether you walk for family or friends, or strangers, or cause. Whether you carry a photo, a uniform, a flower, a light, a sign, or a ribbon: The procession has room for you, welcomes you and encourages you to bring your customs, share your heritage and traditions, seek solace, be present, create, invent, treat others with kindness, and contribute to the dynamic collective atmosphere. And this, is why we walk.

 Nick Tomazic, All Souls Procession urn attendant, volunteer
Help India!

By Kashif-ul-Huda, TwoCircles.net

TCN Malabar series part 2

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Local traditions have it that Cheraman Juma Masjid in Kerala was established in the year 629CE. An inscription in Arabi-Malayalam language on the gate of the masjid gives the date as 5 Hijri. This makes Cheraman Juma Masjid in Kodungallur in the Thrissur district of Kerala, the first mosque of India and one of the oldest in the whole world.

Legend has it that the king of Kodungallur, Cheraman Perumal accepted Islam and traveled to Madina to meet the Prophet Mohammad (salallahu alaihi wasallam). He died on his way back and is now buried in Salalah, Oman. Before dying, he instructed his travel companions to spread the message of Islam in his homeland.











A group of Muslim travelers led by a companion of the Prophet, Malik Bin Dinar (not to be confused with the famous scholar of the same name) came to Kerala and according to the wishes of Cheraman Perumal, established this and other mosques in Kerala and also instructed people in Islamic practices. These mosques survived and continue to be functional mosques where regular prayers and educational functions are conducted even to this day.







Inscription in Arabi-Malayalam dates the mosque to 5th year of Hijri



Located on National Highway-17, Cheruman Juma Masjid is an important Kerala landmark. The place is called Cheraman Malik Nagar in the honor of King Cheraman Perumal and Malik Bin Dinar. The masjid has seen some renovations over the years but the original hall and internal structure have been preserved. Four minarets have been added in one of the later renovations but attempts have been made to give the look and feel of the old structure in the exterior of the building.







Cheraman Juma Masjid, as it stands now.



Ignore the minarets, and the small dome and you can imagine how this building would have looked like hundreds or a thousand years ago. The museum on site has pictures and a model of the old structure to help you imagine. Located on the side of the main street (now NH-17), the masjid is surrounded by shops and homes. It is a community institution situated well within the community.

The original structure did not look like anything foreign, the architecture and design both inside and outside resembles local influence. It was a double storied structure with a sloping tiled roof. Unlike the mosques of North India, there are no minarets or Arabic calligraphy or complex geometrical patterns on the outside the building. The simple entrance must have been inviting and not intimidating, a reflection on how Islam came to Kerala and got well entrenched in the land.

The main room, which is the part of the original structure, is small. It probably can host only about four rows of 15 people for prayers. There is an old wooden mimbar with an intricate design. Along with fans hanging from the ceiling, there is a big brass lamp, not unlike what can be found in a Hindu temple. But my enquiries did not reveal anything special about this lamp.







A model of the older building exist in the museum.



Just left of this main prayer hall are the grave of Malik Bin Dinars son and wife. Malik Bin Dinar himself is buried in Kasargod, about 350 kms from here. The right side of the masjid is a big graveyard; since many graves have been reused, it is difficult to tell how old the oldest grave is. Behind the mosque is an artificial pond that was used for making ablution.

The Masjid is run by a committee and they are doing their utmost to preserve the history and traditions of this important landmark of Islam in India. One of the living history is the Muezzin of the mosque. He upholds his family tradition of several generations by being the current Muezzin. The Imam and Muezzin live in quarters that are located behind the masjid.







Syed Muhammad is giving azan for the last 77 years



There is a museum on the premises which is in desperate need of more historical artifacts of the glorious past of Malabar Muslims.







Links:

http://cheramanmosque.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheraman_Juma_Masjid

http://www.iosworld.org/interview_cheramul.htm


Help India!

By Raqib Hameed Naik, TwoCircles.net

Mashhad (Iran): Two young Kashmiri seminary students who are presently studying in Al Mustafa International University of Iran participated in the 4th Model Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Summit held at Mashhad city of Iran, where they briefed the participants over the continuing violation of human rights in Kashmir.

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Waseem Reza and Syed Owais Abbas Mosavi, both from Srinagar district of Jammu and Kashmir, also spoke over the subjects of human rights, national security, common market and Islamophobia in OIC countries.

The 4th International Model OIC was held from Oct 22 to Oct 28 2016 and saw a participation of over 100 students from 40 top tier Universities in the OIC member states.

More than 100 days of curfew has crippled the life of common people besides more than 90 people got killed while 12,000 wounded and hundreds have lost their eyesight due to pellet gun, said Reza at the OIC Summit.

He further informed the participants that Kashmir is a peaceful movement and Kashmiri nation is fighting politically while gun has no role in Kashmir.

The need of the hour is to resolve the Kashmir dispute through result-oriented dialogue process and implement the UN resolution, he told TwoCirles.net over an email interview from Iran.





Waseem Reza and Syed Abbas speaking at the OIC summit



While expressing sorrow and worry over the innocents killings in Kashmir,Syed Owais Abbas Mosavi appealed India and Pakistan to resolve the long-pending Kashmir issue peacefully without wasting time through talks between three parties.

He also condemned the human rights violation across the globe and termed the action of DAESH and other terrorist organisations in Muslims countries as unislamic and inhuman.

On the sidelines of the Conference the two Kashmiri youths also met with Advisor to Turkish PM Ali Osma, President of the fourth Model OIC Summit and others.

The event saw the participation of Iran, the host country, along with countries like Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Jordan, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Mozambique, Philippines, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Georgia, Somalia, Bangladesh, Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, Serbia, Uganda, Turkmenistan, Sudan, Yemen, and Lebanon.

The event was attended by Deputy Foreign Minister of Iran Abbas Araqchi, Turkish Parliament Member,Cultural and Islamic Guidance Minister of Iran, Advisor to Turkish PM and many dignitaries of Muslim World.
According to Brexit secretary David Davis, Article 50 cannot be triggered before an Act of Parliament have passed through both House of Lords and House of Commons, unless the government can overturn the High Court ruling that happened Thursday.

Three senior judges upheld Mays powers to trigger the referendum as she wanted to use her royal prerogatives to leave instead of formally applying for an EU exit by the end of March 2017.

The government has been given the go-ahead to appeal the ruling at the Supreme Court. It is like a bullet leaving a gun, a reporter for the Sky News program All Out Politics said.

Extraordinary development

The historic case hands the Parliament opportunity to challenge, or even delay, the process of leaving the European Union, but the campaigners are saying that this is not about anything else than politics and UK law policies.

Business and philanthropist, Gina Miller, who was one of the main claimants who led the challenge, said the intention was to answer a fundamental legal question about the powers that can be used by the prime minister and whether they can side-step parliament, according to The Guardian.

Parliament voted for the people to decide

It was the 1972 European Communities Act that gave the parliament the victory in yesterdays High Court drama. The Act shows that the government does not have the power to leave the EU without Parliaments approval.

The remedy would be the Parliament forwarding and passing a bill or a white paper.

The Brexit secretary also stated: Parliament voted six to one to give the decision to the people, no ifs or buts, and thats why we are appealing this to get on with delivering the best deal for Britain - thats the best deal for growth, the best deal for investment, the best deal for jobs.He added: "It will certainly allow the opportunity to debate the issues surrounding Brexit but it is worth bearing in mind that it's a bit difficult to fetter the government as to what it should do after Article 50 is triggered because actually, what the government can deliver is entirely dependent on the negotiating position of the 27 other member states. So you can't really order the government to stay in the single market because that may not be something that the government can deliver, according to The Independent.
In an election cycle filled with scandals, one that has been kept hidden by the mainstream media has been the lawsuit claiming Donald Trump took part in a group rape of a 13-year-old girl. While the story has been relegated to the internet and social media, it was finally discussed on cable news.

Trump lawsuit

While Trump has been dealing with a dozen sexual assault allegations and the now infamous Access Hollywood hot mic tape since the beginning of October, there are other issues that he will be forced to deal with well after Election Day. One lawsuit that has gotten a lot of media attention has been the Trump University fraud case, whose trial will start at the end of November.

However, just weeks later, Trump's legal team will head to another courtroom and face a lawsuit that alleges Trump raped a minor during the summer of 1994. As reported by Raw Story on October 31, Trump's campaign manager was forced to deal with the lawsuit during a live interview.

(The rape lawsuit is referenced at 2:10 in the above video.)

Joining CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin, author of "Too Big to fail," was Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway. The conversation began by focusing on FBI Director James Comey's controversial decision to inform Congress that a review of newly obtained emails would be taking place, that could be "pertinent" to their prior investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server.

Conway ripped into Clinton, questioning if she is fit to even hold the office, asking, "Whos really unqualified? Whos unfit to be president? Who has shown what they would do with their national security information?"

After Conway brought up that Clinton could face legal trouble if she makes it to the White House, Sorkin cited the aforementioned rape lawsuit.

"If Donald Trump is the president, he's got the child rape case thats going to happen that was just given a date," Sorkin said.

Federal Judge Orders Hearing in Donald Trump Rape Lawsuit https://t.co/FfKUktP2pm pic.twitter.com/sdhn3mUWx3  LawNewz (@law_newz) October 7, 2016

Looking stunned, Conway fired back "Oh, come on. I can't believe that you would analogize the two.

Give me a break." After Sorkin said he was simply bringing up the comparison to Clinton and Trump's potential legal issues in the White House, Conway responded "That's such a ridiculous conflation."

Lawsuit clarification

Trump's attorneys will head to court on December 16 for a status hearing on the case. The lawsuit was brought on by "Jane Doe," later identified as Katie Johnson, who claims she was the victim of multiple group rapes by Trump and convicted pedophile Jeffery Epstein. Part of the lawsuit alleges that Epstein would send for young girls to attend his house party events, while claiming she was raped by Trump on as many as four different occasions. Trump has denied the allegations, with his legal team calling them a "hoax."
Sri Lanka will firmly pursue the one-China policy Updated: 2016-11-05 07:14 (China Daily)

Sri Lanka will continue its support for the one-China policy and push forward greater development of relations with China, a parliamentary leader and government officials said.

Sri Lanka appreciates the great achievements Tibet has made in various fields, Thilanga Sumathipala, deputy speaker of Sri Lanka's parliament, said as he met with a visiting delegation of Tibetan deputies of the National People's Congress of China on Wednesday.

He also said Sri Lanka would further deepen exchanges in the economy, trade, culture and other fields with China.

The Chinese delegation also met with Wijayadasa Rajapaksha, minister of Buddha Sasana, famous Buddhist figures of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka's Parliamentary Friendship Group and a number of Sri Lankan and Chinese friendly groups.

Penba Tashi, head of the delegation and vice-chairman of the Tibet autonomous region, briefed the hosts on the achievements in Tibet in the areas of political democracy, economic development, social undertakings, ecological protection and freedom of religious belief since the peaceful liberation of Tibet.

During their three-day visit, Penba Tashi also advocated the system of the NPC, the national legislature of China, clarified China's principled stance on Tibet-related issues and expressed hope that Sri Lanka would, as always, support China's principled stance on Tibet-related issues.
Modern technology brings back digital Old Summer Palace

Updated: 2016-11-04 15:07

By Li Hongrui(Chinaculture.org)

Digital image of Old Summer Palace. [Photo/Chinaculture.org]

In 1860, Beijing's Old Summer Palace of Emperor Qianlong (1736-1795) was burned down by Anglo-French forces. The great loss of this exquisite palace was a tragedy in history.

However, modern technology has brought it back to life again, in terms of digital images and experience.

An exhibition featuring a digital Old Summer Palace, based on 10 years of research, was held at the Center of International Cultural Exchange in Beijing on Tuesday.

With a total of 14 general showpieces, the event provided 11 digital interactive experience activities, six digital films and presentations of 50 historical sites from the palace.

The showcase also features a series of lectures, documentaries, books and cultural creative products fairs.

Running through Nov 27, the exhibition offers free admission.
Kenya diplomats use language to deepen relations with China Updated: 2016-11-05 16:11 By Lucie Morangi(chinadaily.com.cn)

Ambassador Ben Ogutu gives a speech at the ceremony. [Photo by Liu Hongjie/China Daily]

Kenya has stepped up efforts to deepen diplomatic relations with China by launching a Chinese language class for diplomats at one of the Confucius institutes. Thirty students from various departments at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will commence their courses next week for four months.

This is a strong move towards breaking cultural and language barriers that have long been cited as a challenge in China-Kenya bilateral relations.

Students will attend classes two times weekly and learn basic Chinese language to support trade and cultural relations between the two countries.

While launching the class, in line with an agreement between the Foreign Service Academy and University of Nairobi, Ambassador Ben Ogutu, Director General of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) VI Secretariat, said the classes will go a long way to increase the ministry's pool of versatile diplomats.

Speaking on behalf of the cabinet minister of the foreign affairs ministry, Ogutu said emerging nations, particularly those in the BRICS group of nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), have shifted world power and attention, giving a new impetus to the south-south cooperation.

"It is therefore prudent for us to conform to the times and be strategically placed to enhance and expand relations with China," he said.
Premier Li: China willing to help build infrastructure projects in Baltic Sea area Updated: 2016-11-05 20:16 By Hu Yongqi(chinadaily.com.cn)

Premier Li Keqiang vowed on Friday to strengthen cooperation with Latvia in infrastructure and production capacity and showed willingness to participate in railway and port projects in the Baltic Sea area.

Latvia is a crucial partner for China in Central and Eastern Europe and under the framework of European Union, Premier Li said when meeting with Latvian Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis in the country's capital Riga.

Li is on his first visit to Latvia, where he is also scheduled to attend the 5th Meeting of Heads of Government of China and Central and Eastern European countries, which kicks off on Saturday.

For the past 25 years since the establishment of diplomatic ties, both countries have consolidated political trust, deepened pragmatic cooperation in various fields, and nursed increasing people-to-people exchanges, Li said.

China has cost-effective equipment and rich experience in building railways and ports, and is willing to participate in Europe's infrastructure projects such as Rail Baltica, a trans-European railway linking Riga and Berlin, and the construction of ports and a logistics park under the framework of a three-sea harbor district cooperation initiative, Li added.

The initiative refers to cooperation programs concerning the Adristic Sea, the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea. It was proposed by Premier Li in last year's China-CEE countries meeting in Suzhou, Jiangsu province.

Li said China is willing to strengthen other pragmatic cooperation with Latvia, which will be taken as an important transit point for China-EU trade.

Kucinskis said Latvia will cultivate a stable environment for Chinese enterprises and strive to become a portal for Chinese enterprises to enter the market of Central and Eastern European countries.
Premier Li calls for enhancing agricultural cooperation between China, CEE countries Updated: 2016-11-05 20:52 (Xinhua)

KUNMING - Premier Li Keqiang on Saturday called for enhancing agricultural cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries to bring new vigor to global trade and investments in the area.

In a congratulatory letter sent to the Meeting of China-CEEC Ministers of Agriculture, the premier said China is willing to share its experience with CEE nations for better cooperation.

China and CEE countries have achieved successful results in technological exchanges, industrial cooperation and the production and trade of farm produce, Li said.

In the letter, Li hailed the importance of agriculture in the country's development, highlighting the role of government in rural reforms, structural adjustment and rural infrastructure to spur growth in agriculture.

The meeting, focusing on a green environment and innovative agricultural development, was held in the southwestern city of Kunming. Agriculture ministers and business representatives from the 16 CEE countries attended.
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HA NOI  Vietnamese businesses spending on environmental protection remains modest compared with their total investment and operation expenses, according to a survey released on Wednesday.

The survey, conducted by the National Centre for Socio-Economic Information and Forecast under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, looks into domestic enterprises investment in updating environmentally-friendly technologies.

Tran Thi Hong Minh from the centre said the survey covered 357 enterprises in the northern provinces of Bac Ninh, Thai Nguyen and Quang Ninh, which were home to a large number of industrial parks. Most of the surveyed firms operate in the processing and manufacturing industries, which require significant spending on production and waste treatment technologies to avoid pollution.

Data showed that nearly 40 per cent of the companies invested in environmental protection and regularly spent money on this activity. However, up to 74 per cent of these firms spent less than 10 per cent of their initial investment expenditure on environmental protection, Minh said.

It also found that State-owned enterprises had the highest investment in environment protection, accounting for 76 per cent. Non-government firms accounted for 26.5 per cent, while that of foreign direct invested companies was 55.5 per cent.

On average, businesses regular spending on environmental protection accounted for just over one per cent of their total operation expenses. Close to 70 per cent of the firms said they had updated their technology once since their establishment, with 30 per cent of those using technology imported from China.

Meanwhile, only 22 per cent of the respondents said they had switched to using environmentally friendly technologies. The ratio of companies investing in technological updates was even lower in the metal work industry, despite the fact that this is an industry that poses a high risk of environmental pollution, according to the survey.

The survey also noted that existing policies supporting technology updates were still inconsistent, overlapping and impractical. Only a few companies had received assistance, not to mention the irksome administrative procedures.

Nguyen Ngoc Anh from Nam Anh Company suggested that the Government should review the current policies to help businesses get easier access o funds and supporting programmes. This could help them renew technologies to protect the environment.

The Government is calling for environment protection, waste water and trash treatment. However, businesses have found it hard to invest into friendly environmental technologies due to high costs. We expect more realistic policies to be able to invest into new technologies, he said.

Luong Van Khoi, deputy director of the National Centre for Socio-Economic Information and Forecast, said the survey aimed at assessing favourable conditions and difficulties facing enterprises in updating technology and environmental protection, thereby suggesting feasible solutions for them.

The centre suggested establishing a green bank to provide credits for technology renewal. It proposed to connect credit institutions and businesses in the activities while promoting the role of environment protection funds.  VNS
HCM CITY  New land lots of smaller size are available at the Hiep Phuoc Supporting Industrial Zone for supporting industry start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises, the Hiep Phuoc Industrial Park Joint Stock Company has said.

They range in size from 750sq.m. The company said it had begun to lease out land in the supporting industrial zone, which is part of the Hiep Phuoc Industrial Zone, since November last year, but the lots measured 1,500-2,700sq.m.

Seeing the demand from companies and to respond to HCM Citys plan to develop supporting industries, it decided to offer smaller plots of land.

But the bigger ones are still available, Vuong Huu Man, general director of the company, said.

The Hiep Phuoc Supporting Industrial Zone now houses 34 projects on a total area of 22ha, he said.

Yesterday, the company also signed lease agreements with five tenants, namely Anh Hung Construction Join Stock Company, Cat Phuong Joint Stock Company, GBP Plastic Company, Gon Sa Joint Stock Company, and International Pharmacy Company. Three other companies received licences on the same day to invest in the zone.  VNS
Human resource development is the key to enhancing the countrys economic development, social stability and international integration.  Photo viettimes.net.vn

HA NOI  Human resource development is the key to enhancing the countrys economic development, social stability and international integration, Nguyen Thanh Hung, deputy minister of Information and Communications, said on Thursday.

At a conference in Can Tho City, Hung said ICT human resource development should be the first mision to be implemented to turn Viet Nam into a strong ICT country by 2020 under the prime ministers Decision No. 1755/QD-TTg, dated September 22, 2010, approving the scheme to make Viet Nam a country strong in information and communication technologies.

In addition, under the prime ministers Decision 698/QD-TTg, dated June 01, 2009, approving the overall plan on development of information technology human resources up to 2015 and orientations toward 2020, the target is to develop a qualified ICT human resource and high competency in technology to promptly respond to the demand of building and developing an information society and a knowledge-based economy.

By 2020, 70 per cent of employees working in companies must be trained in information technology, Deputy Minister Hung said.

He said the ministry has worked with various ministries and agencies to issue a nunber of documents to continue facilitating human resource development in the ICT sector and issue IT application.

The minister said the training system for IT has been widely deployed at schools, with 54.8 per cent for primary schools, 81.7 per cent for secondary schools and 100 per cent for high schools. There are 290 universities and colleges and 200 vocational schools for IT and telecom training, with enrolment at between 80-90 per cent.

Currently, the Ministry of Information and Communications has also coordinated with associations and enterprises nationwide to undertake and review the implementation of the Law on Information Technology.

In addition, Hung also highlighed shortcomings. He cited the inconsistent management by local governments and poor supervision and inspection of the implementation of the Law on Information Technology. He also complained about policies on procurement of information technology products and investment in IT.

The ministry said it had found many provinces incentive policies to attract IT human resources were insufficient even though IT human resources play a key role in production and business.

In the near future, the ministry will work with relevant ministries to spur ICT human resource development in state-run companies and businesses. By doing so, the ministry wants to collect suggestions and comments from the business community and the IT association concerning ICT human resource and application of IT to address shortcomings in a timely manner.  VNS
HCM CITY  The Viet Nam Association of Financial Executives was formed yesterday in HCM City to create a forum for financial executives.

Pham Thi Thanh Nga, chairwoman of the financial information services provider Vietstock, is its chairwoman.

Speaking at the ceremony, ang Quyet Tien, deputy general director of the Ministry of Finances corporate finance department, said financial management played an important role in the success of the economy and businesses.

However, financial management is still quite young and does not receive proper attention in Viet Nam, he said.

The establishment of the association is expected to improve things, he said.

At the event yesterday AAA (An Phat Plastic and Green Environment Joint Stock

Company), DPM (PetroVietnam Fertiliser and Chemical Corporation), FPT, KDH (Khang ien Investment and Trading House JSC), and VNM (Vietnam Dairy Products JCS) were honoured with the top five IR awards for having the best investor relations after being voted for by investors and financial institutions.

Nga said the annual awards, instituted by Vietstock in 2011, sought to raise awareness among listed companies of complying with disclosure requirements and relations with investors, especially shareholders, to develop an open, transparent and effective stock market.

For the first time this year the awards were given in collaboration with the VAFE, she said.

Listed companies had been better at complying with information disclosure requirements, she said.

A survey by Vietstock found that 18 per cent of companies listed on the HCM City and Hanoi exchanges have fully complied with disclosure requirements this year compared to 10 per cent last year and 4 per cent in 2014, she added.  VNS
HA NOI - Viet Nam Competition Authority (VCA) under the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) will hold a public consultation with related parties on investigations for anti-dumping tariffs on coated steel sheets.

The consultation, related to coated steel sheets imported from China (including Hong Kong) and South Korea, will be organised on December 22 to help related parties express their opinion on the anti-dumping tariffs.

Each party can have three people participating in the consultation. The event is not compulsory and related parties which do not join in the consultation will still be ensured their rights and benefits under the law.

Applications to participate in the consultation should be sent to the VCAs Trade Remedies Investigation Division before 5pm on November 22. Related parties can send their contents before 5pm on December 1.

The ministry promulgated the decision on applying the temporary anti-dumping tariff on imported coated steel sheets from China (including Hong Kong) and South Korea into Viet Nam.

The tariff is in effect for 120 days -- from September 16, 2016 to January 13, 2017.

Steel production surge

MoIT said in the first 10 months of the year domestic steel production continued to see high growth after Viet Nam imposed anti-dumping tariffs on long steel and steel billet. The solutions have assisted local steel producers while reducing imports.Raw steel productivity last month was more than 468,000 tonnes, posting a 26.5 per cent year-on-year increase. The productivity of rolled steel rose by 30 per cent from the same period last year, while that of steel bars was estimated at 397,000 tonnes.

Raw steel reached some 4.2 million tonnes in the 10-month period, or 19 per cent higher compared with the same period last year. Rolled steel and steel bars were 4.29 million tonnes and 3.9 million tonnes respectively.

The ministrys Planning Department said higher building demand in the country has contributed to the increasing productivity. The surge of both steel sale and production over the past 10 months showed that the local steel sector could meet the building demand. Steel prices have been stable in the January-October period.

The latest report from the Viet Nam Steel Association also revealed that its members productivity reached more than 1.48 million tonnes, posting a year-on-year rise of 19 per cent. Steel sale also reached over 1.2 million tonnes, or 23 per cent higher than the corresponding period last year.

Nguyen Van Sua, VSAs vice chairman, said the year-end months would be the peak time for steel consumption, resulting in high demand for steel.

However, it would be difficult for local producers to prevent the flood of cheap steel from China in the context of integration.

The association said imported steel from China so far this year has reached over 7.29 million tonnes, accounting for 60 per cent of the total steel imports into Viet Nam.

Sua said the government should come up with solutions to prevent trade fraud to help local steel producers have strong growth in the near future.

In addition, Vietnamese firms should improve products quality and invest in technologies to reduce production costs and enhance competitiveness in their own market.

The ministry will continue to apply trade defence measures to ensure fair competition with imported products to promote the countrys steel sector. -- VNS
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has ratified the Paris Agreement of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change. The agreement went into force globally yesterday.  Photo tiepthithegioi.vn

HA NOI  Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has ratified the Paris Agreement of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change. The agreement went into force globally yesterday.

Phuc signed Resolution No 93/NQ-CP on October 31, on behalf of the Government of Viet Nam to ratify the agreement.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment said yesterday that the Instrument of Approval was submitted to the United Nations Secretary-General early Thursday.

Having ratified the Paris Agreement and the Action Plan to implement it, Viet Nam was making efforts to join the international community in dealing with climate change, the most serious challenge to our planet, the ministry said.

The Paris Agreement, adopted at the 21st session of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, is the first legally binding document for all Parties to address climate change. This is reflected in the intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) of Parties.

The agreement, signed by about 180 Parties at the United Nations Headquarters in April 2016, has been ratified by 95 Parties so far, including Viet Nam.

The adoption of the Paris Agreement has opened up a new era of development on the globe, characterised by low carbon development, environmentally-friendly production and consumption models, reduced reliance on fossil fuels, and promotion of renewable energy.

To achieve Viet Nams committments to the agreement, the environment ministry has actively been co-operating with relevant ministries and development partners to develop the Action Plan through 2030.

The plan outlines systematic tasks and solutions to adapt to climate change, mitigate greenhouse gases, mobilise resources, create transparency of responses and supports, and strengthen state management of climate change.

Viet Nam plans to reduce 8 per cent of its greenhouse gas pollution by 2030, and is aiming at 25 per cent reduction with adequate support from the international community.

It is estimated that Viet Nam is in need of US$30 billion to pay for climate change adaptation and mitigation activities through 2020.  VNS
Whether it is for power generation or irrigation, all upstream developments on the Mekong River put Viet Nam at risk as the last downstream country, experts said yesterday.  Photo vfpress.vn

HA NOI  Whether it is for power generation or irrigation, all upstream developments on the Mekong River put Viet Nam at risk as the last downstream country, experts said yesterday.

Hence all countries in the Mekong River basin should rethink their approaches and adopt measures to minimise impacts on communities and the ecosystem, said Trinh Le Nguyen, director of People and Nature Reconciliation (PanNature), a Vietnamese non-governmental organisation.

He was speaking at a workshop titled Opportunities for More Efficient Water Use in the Mekong Basin and Implications for Viet Nam held in Ha Noi yesterday.

A number of hydropower dams are being built on mainstream Mekong River, and a number of irrigation projects are being implemented in Cambodia and Thailand. All these projects are proceeding despite grave concerns expressed by other riparian nations.

"However, it is not too late for the countries to revise their policies and develop a regional blueprint with the aim of mitigating the impacts on humans and the ecological system while ensuring the development needs of all countries in the region," Nguyen said.

Participants at the workshop agreed that by pursuing exclusive national interests in the use of the river waters, all nations in the Mekong Basin would miss the opportunity to synergise planning in order to optimise benefits of water use on a basin-wide scale to ensure energy security, water security, food security and ecological security for the common good.

According to Nguyen Nhan Quang, a river basin management specialist, Viet Nam has developed a system that irrigates around 1.9 million hectares, approximately 48 per cent of the total irrigated land on the Mekongs lower reaches.

Under current development plans stretching to 2030, 339 irrigation works are planned for the Se San and Srepok (tributaries of the Mekong) river basins, which cover 125,165 hectares.

However, the expansion of irrigated rice areas in the Mekong Delta has been restricted by saltwater intrusion and alum contaminated soil.

Jake Brunner with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said that to use water resources efficiently for mutual benefit, multinational collaboration between partners in the Mekong River basin was vital.

He emphasised the need for critical reviews of hydropower development.

Quang said Viet Nam should collect and update information about water diversion projects in the basin to make them more effective.

Basing on the information collected, appropriate policies would be devised urgently to protect the interests of Mekong Delta residents, he said.

He called on the Mekong River Commission to ask member nations to abide by regulations under the Mekong Agreement on notifying neighbouring countries about water diversion plans.

The MRC and national Mekong Committees of each member country should create favourable conditions for local residents and civil society organisations to access all information, he added.

Quang also suggested that the Vietnamese government restructure its crops, shifting to plants that do not consume much water, and avoid a singular focus on rice cultivation.

It is also necessary to operate and regulate reservoirs in Central Highlands properly to help ensure stable water flow to the Mekong Delta, he said.

Quang also said existing Mekong co-operative institutions, including the Lower Mekong Initiative, should be strengthened to increase regional co-operation.  VNS
HCM CITY  The second Vietnam Designers Fashion Week for Fall-Winter 2016 will open at the HCM City Television HTV Studio in District 1 on November 25.

The two-day event will feature more than 200 items of clothing for women, men and children, including 11 collections by famous designers such as Kelly Bui, Li Lam, Thanh Nga, Ha Linh Thu, Truong Thanh Long, Huy Tran, Lek Chi and Ha Truong.

The brand names Cashew, Maschio and Xita Cashew will also present their latest collections which include 70 designs. Ready-to-wear designs in traditional materials will be highlighted.

Female designer Kelly Bui of HCM City will introduce her new trends for children on November 27. Her clothes in pink, green and black will be presented by boys and girls aged five to 11.

Designs from the Bomber Jacket Collection, a collection of jackets and coats for women co-produced by 20 designers, will be introduced and sold to raise funds for people living in flooded areas in the central provinces.

More than 70 fashion models, including top models such as Le Thuy and Minh Trieu, will be featured.

The event will include a trade exhibition which will offer opportunities for local fashion houses and designers to promote and sell their brand names.

To attract customers, several hundred designs will be displayed and on sale at a 10-30 per cent discount.

Dozens of leading garment and textile companies and fashion agencies will be invited to participate in the event exhibition.

Vietnam Designers Fashion Week was organised by a group of fashion designers and stylists to promote Vietnamese brand names and young designers.

We want to create a place to connect Vietnamese brand names, designers and customers and to help young designers develop their business, said Xuan Lan, the events catwalk director, one of the members of the organising board. VNS

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HA NOI  Offering celebrities the chance to wear new designs is an effective way to advertise your collection and brand, Jean Paul Cauvin, CEO of Julien Fournie Haute Couture house in France, told Vietnamese designers yesterday.

Cauvin, who has worked in the fashion industry for more than 40 years, joined Vietnamese fashion experts and foreign designers like Joe Chia (Malaysia), Frederick Lee (Singapore), and Chung Chung Lee (South Korea) for a two-day workshop.

They discussed the development of Viet Nams textile, apparel and fashion industry in the context of global integration.

The workshop is part of the Viet Nam International Fashion Week (VIFW) being held in Ha Noi from November 1-6.

Panelists sketched an overview of the Vietnamese fashion industry, and discussed its potentials and solutions for global integration.

The Vietnamese fashion industry has more than 6,000 enterprises which employ more than 2.5 million workers, accounting for five per cent of the nations labour force, said ang Phuong Dung, former vice chairwoman of the Viet Nam Textile and Apparel Association (VITAS).

She said Viet Nam ranked sixth among 153 apparel exporting countries, behind China, Hong Kong, India, Taiwan and Pakistan. However, Vietnamese designers and brands are still relatively unknown, she added.

There are very few Vietnamese designers whove had the chance to showcase their collections on international catwalks, Dung said.

She stressed the importance of developing the textile and garments industry as a foundation for developing the fashion industry.

Designers, stylists these are still unfamiliar concepts here. We should become more professional and have a clear and methodical development strategy, she said.

She said designer talents have to be nurtured through effective management in order to gain a higher international profile, and the link between the fashion industry and culture should be further strengthened.

Foreign designers and brand owners participating in the workshop mentioned the importance of using social networks to promote the business.

The see now, buy now trend is being applied for the first time at the VIFW in Ha Noi, said VIFW President Le Thi Quynh Trang.

A See Now Buy Now showroom has been set up at Trang Tien Plaza in Ha Noi for the event

The see-now-buy-now model adopted by businesses that are predominantly direct-retail could work well with fashion-loving consumers whove previously seen collections a season ahead, the workshop heard.

Designers can show their collections to exclusive buyers and media months before the actual show to ensure store delivery and press coverage are planned for a timely launch, Trang said.

Customer behaviour has changed so dramatically. They can now buy the latest collections immediately after they have been shown on the runway. Designers should prepare well to serve the customers by launching a campaign on social media to advertise their collections.

They have to pay attention to building an effective and efficient distribution network, and improve shop decoration, she added.

Cauvin emphasised the importance of using music and special effects during professional shows.

At Julien Fournie, we choose music very carefully for the fashion show, he said.

Music is very important to inspire an audience. We use music to evoke emotions and send messages about the collection to consumers.

A fashion show is not about clothes only, it must bring emotion, liking and impress the audience. If they love the collection, they will buy it. And music has a decisive role in leaving an echo in the audiences mind.  VNS
HA NOI  The Viet Nam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) will launch a new website to promote Vietnam tourism abroad during World Travel Market which will be held in London this coming Tuesday.

The new website, www.vietnamtourism.vn, is expected to be among the top 10 best tourism websites in the world, thanks to its professionalism, rich content, and beautiful photos.

Tourists and those interested in traveling in Viet Nam will find articles about different regions of Viet Nam and activities they can pursue in the country, written by well-known tourism bloggers and journalists worldwide.

Videos highlighting major tourist attractions of Viet Nam and useful information about visiting the country will also be available on the website.

The website is available mostly in English. It is connected to social networks, including Facebook, Instagram and Youtube, allowing visitors to share travel information about Vietnam with others easily. It is expected to attract about 10 million visits per year and 1 million visits per month.

The site is expected to attract more foreign tourists to Viet Nam.

In an effort to attract even more foreign tourists from all countries, Viet Nam will also grant e-visas to foreigners, starting on January 1, 2017. The new e-visas will be valid for 30 days. Tourists who apply for an e-visa will not need an invitation letter or a letter of guarantee from Viet Nam.

The decision to grant online visas to foreign tourists is a breakingthrough for the Vietnamese government in its policies to develop tourism, Nguyen Van Tuan, VNATs General director, said at a press conference on Friday. We are doing our best to make tourism a key industry for our economy by 2010, he said.

During the first ten months of this year, Viet Nam attracted more than 8 million foreign visitors, an increase of 25.4 per cent over the same period last year. The tourism sector in Viet Nam expects to attract 9.7 million foreign tourists and 62 million domestic tourists in 2016.

During the last two months of this year, VNAT will organise various shows to promote tourism in nine cities in China and Spain and participate in two tourism fairs in London and China, to further promote the countrys tourism. It will also organise conferences to promote tourism in the Centre of Viet Nam to help Central provinces restore their tourism development after the recent environmental disasters.VNS
HA NOI  Application of a uniform standard not tailored to meet specific needs of communities is limiting the success of the nations rural development programme, National Assembly deputies said yesterday.

While agreeing with a report that the programme has brought about several positive changes in the nations rural areas, they said applying homogeneous development criteria was a major shortcoming that had to be addressed.

The report, reviewing five years of implementing the national programme on building new rural areas, said the face of the Vietnamese countryside had been changed for the better, with increasing incomes and a significant reduction in the number of poor households.

It was tabled by Vu Hong Thanh, Chairman of the National Assembly Economic Committee.

The rate of poor households dropped to 8.2 per cent last year from 17.4 per cent in 2011, the report said.

As of September this year, 2,045 communes managed to meet the new rural development criteria. Annual incomes of people in communes that met the new rural area criteria went up to VN28.4 million (US$1,300) in 2015 from VN16 million (US$700) in 2011.

The Govenment has mobilised about VN851 trillion (US$37.3 billion) and the National Assembly allocated VN15 trillion (US$658 million) for the national programme over the past five years, the report said.

It said agricultural restructuring, which was carried out in tandem with the rural development programme, had contributed to increasing incomes, changing rural labour structure and developing sustainable new rural areas.

In the last two years, the agriculture sector has maintained a sound growth rate and considerably improved productivity and quality of many agro-products.

Animal husbandry was shifting gradually from a small household scale to that of large farms, and aquaculture had become the mainstay of fisheries instead of fishing. The forestry sector also grew at a rapid pace, the report said.

Nonsensical targets

Most of the deputies agreed with the report, but pointed out shortcomings and obstacles hindering the rural development programme.

They said the criteria set by the programme were not region-specific, and this was slowing rural development.

For instance, the programme sets the number of schools, markets, clinics, post offices and cultural houses for a commune to match the new rural area requirements.

However, this number is not changed based on the size of the commune.

Deputy Nguyen Ngoc Phuong of central Quang Binh Province said: Applying the same criteria to all communes is nonsense.

Building more schools and cultural houses are more important than building markets. In fact, in many communes, markets were built but deserted because both sellers and buyers preferred to go to small traditional markets rather than the modern ones, Phuong said.

Meanwhile, in rural areas, especially remote mountainous regions, people need cultural houses where they can gather on special days or organise community meetings.

Many targets set by the programme did not work because they did not suit the specific region or account for rural peoples traditions and customs, other deputies pointed out.

Nguyen Hong Van, a deputy from southern Kien Giang Province , said vocational training projects failed in many areas because they were impractical. Teaching ethnic minorities to make western cakes is an example.

Many deputies also pointed out that funding and allocation of funds were some of the main obstacles.

Bach Thi Huong Thuy, a deputy from northern Thai Binh Province , said: The capital (for the programme) is still modest and capital allocation among regions is not even.

On restructuring agricultural production, most deputies felt the pace was slow, making the sector lag behind other countries in the region at a time when Viet Nam was trying to speed up its international integration process.

Ha Tinh deputy Vo Kim Cu said some of the obstacles that should be addressed soon include small-scale production, lack of professional marketing and low application of advanced technology.

Our countrys agricultural production is still in a small scale and self-sufficiency mode, so Made-in-Vietnam agro products have not been able to get a foothold in the international market, Cu said.

He suggested that special production areas are established to ensure sufficient supply for the processing industry.

Private investment

Luring investment from businesses to implement the new rural area programme was a key issue discussed at yesterdays meeting.

Deputies agreed that the Government should issue policies to attract private business investment in agricultural production. This would provide the needed leverage to comprehensively restructure the agriculture sector, they said.

The NA asked the Government to review the new rural area development programmes criteria for the 2016-2020 period.  VNS
LANG SON  President Tran ai Quang has urged the northern mountainous province of Lang Son to fully tap its potential and strengths to develop border trade, services, tourism, agro-forestry and its rural economy.

Addressing a ceremony to mark the 185th anniversary of the provinces establishment (November 4, 1831-2016) in Lang Son city on November 4, the State leader suggested the locality should apply science and technology in production, protecting the environment, and minimising negative impacts caused by natural disasters and climate change.

While congratulating Lang Son on its recent achievements, President Quang asked local authorities to focus on developing the ong ang-Lang Son Border Gate Economic Zone to turn the province into a service centre in the northeast region.

"Lang Son should work harder to realise its poverty reduction goals and ensure social security sooner, while safeguarding national sovereignty and border security," he said.

Located in the nations northern gateway, Lang Son enjoys a long history and culture. Its name Lang Son first appeared in a royal ordinance issued by King Minh Menh of the Nguyen Dynasty on November 4, 1831. It holds a strategic position in socioeconomic development, security-defence, and the nations foreign affairs.

The province is targetting economic growth of 8-9 per cent and an average per capita income of VN35-36 million (US$1,569-1,614) this year.

According to the provinces report, the local economy grew 3.64 per cent in the first half of 2016.

Build express railway soon

The Peoples Committee of Lang Son has proposed the Government instruct the Ministry of Transport to construct an express railway connecting the province to China soon.

Under the project which is aimed at providing passenger and cargo services between Viet Nam and China, a high speed rail route will run between the capital city of Ha Noi and Lang Sons ong ang town, linking it with Chinas Nanning-Pingxiang high speed railway.

According to the provinces Peoples Committee, the current rail route allows trains to travel at an average speed of 50 km per hour, which is slow compared with trains in China.

The railway is expected to boost trade between Viet Nam and China, ease the pressure on road, and reduce traffic accidents, it said.

The committee suggested the project be carried out in 2016-2020 with ong ang station built to international standards.

Previously, Hai Phong and Lao Cai proposed building an express railway to connect with China, said deputy Minister of Transport Nguyen Ngoc ong.

But demand for cargo transport from Ha Noi to Nanning City (China) via Lang Son was not high, ong told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

Demand is also reported to be low between Nanning to Ha Nois Gia Lam District.

Most cargo transport operates on the Hai Phong-Ha Noi-Lao Cai route to the Chinese province of Yunnan.

"The feasibility of the project should be studied carefully, as constructing an express railway involves technology, capital, and operating capacity," he said.

In related news, ong said the government has asked the ministry of transport to complete a report on the feasibility of the North-South express railway to submit to Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc for approval in 2017, before submission to the National Assembly in 2018.

But priority would be given to constructing sections with high transport demand, instead of building the whole project at once, he said.  VNS
A stable macro-economy, quality of growth and speedy economic restructuring are constant goals of the Party and the Government, a senior Party official said yesterday.  Photo dantri.com.vn

HA NOI  A stable macro-economy, quality of growth and speedy economic restructuring are constant goals of the Party and the Government, a senior Party official said yesterday.

Receiving an International Monetary Fund (IMF) delegation in Ha Noi, Nguyen Van Binh, head of the Party Central Committees Economic Commission, also said that particular attention is being paid to bad debts and reforming the banking system.

Binh told the delegation led by Alex Moumoura that the nation appreciates the IMFs support for Viet Nam, especially in policy consultations, which have proved effective.

He also informed the delegation about outcomes of the 12th National Party Congresss fourth plenum, focusing on several major policies initiated to renew the nations growth model, improve labour output and enhance economic competitiveness.

Moumoura briefed Binh about the IMFs assessment of Viet Nams macro-economic, fiscal and monetary-banking prospects and made several recommendations on the reform of public finance, commercial banks and State-owned enterprises.  VNS
HA NOI  Shortly into the new academic year, a sixth grader in Soc Trang Citys Le Vinh Hoa Secondary School was recently demoted to first grade.

He could not read or write fluently, and was unable to perform the four basic mathematical operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Writing his name was a hard task for him.

His mother, To Thi Huynh Giao, was shocked. She knew her son did not perform well at school, but could hardly believe that his knowledge was not more than that of a first grader after six years at school.

Strangely, his report records of previous years showed above average grades, meeting the requirements for being promoted to the next grade.

As shocking as this case is, it is only one of many cases of sitting in the wrong class that have come to light in the city.

A month ago, eight third graders in the citys Le Hong Phong Primary School were sent back to first grade as they could not write or read.

The provincial Peoples Committee has since ordered inspections to ferret out more sitting-in-the-wrong-class cases and directed officials to deploy measures to deal with the issue.

Dr Vu Thu Huong of the Ha Noi Pedagogical University said she was not surprised that several such cases were found in some localities just days into the new academic year.

The reason, she said, was achievement disease. The term is used to describe the phenomenon of schools trying to obtain high overall rankings at all costs in order to gain recognition as a national standard school.

Nguyen Thu Van, a teacher in HCM City, said most teachers were burdened with the target of having 70 per cent of good students and keeping the number of weak students to less than five percent.

If they fail to meet these targets, they cannot get salary increments. Thus, some of them give students high marks and let them go on to the next grade irrespective of their actual learning capabilities, Van said.

Another HCM City teacher in Thu uc District who wished to remain anonymous said parents unintentionally worsened the achievement disease by questioning their children everyday.

She said some students cried in class, telling her that they would be shouted at or punished if they presented bad grades. In some cases, teachers tried to give them average grades because they did not want the students to get hurt.

Several educators have said that it is necessary to revise targets of national standard schools and eliminate improper and unfeasible criteria.

For example, schools for gifted children would have different criteria, and schools in urban areas would have different criteria than those in remote areas.

Nguyen Kim Dung, deputy head of the Institute of Education Studies, said the pressure to meet standards was necessary to push schools improve their teaching quality.

But experts say what is needed is a new standard that all students are encouraged to achieve, instead of being forced to achieve, as is happing now.

Many of them have repeatedly argued for a change in mindset on education, saying students should be evaluated by their study process instead of exam grades.  VNS
HA NOI  Labour disputes kept increasing over the past years and became more complicated, demonstrating a need for adjustment of related regulations and measures to improve relations between workers and employers.

The country recorded 3,146 strikes in 40 localities nationwide over the past three years, according to the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs. As many as 132 strikes were reported during the first six months of this year.

A representative of the ministrys Department of Legal Affairs told Tin tuc (News) Newspaper that disputes relating to the interests of each side are inevitable because of on-going changes in the labour market.

"Labour disputes, especially strikes, have proven more complicated, particularly with any changes in policies relating to wage and social insurance," he said. "This was seen in a number of cases earlier this year," he said.

Hundreds of workers of Inkel Ltd.Co in the Me Linh District of Ha Noi went on strike in February, after the company failed to increase their minium wage as regulated and reduced their allowances. The dispute was only resolved after employers and employees negotiated, with help from Ha Noi authorities. The company then agreed to increase wages for workers in line with current regulations, maintain allowances, and improve working conditions.

In June, more than 350 workers of the Vietnam National Textile and Garment Groups branch in central Quang Ngai Province stopped working to ask for appropriate payment from their employer. After dialogues held between the two sides, the company agreed to adjust wages and arrange more reasonable working hours, while workers agreed to return to work.

Experts said employers and workers must understand related policies and increase dialogue with each other. This is currently a weak point in labour relations, leading to strikes and causing problems for businesses and workers.

Deputy Head of the Ha Noi Industrial and Export Processing Zone Management Board, Nguyen Chi Hung, said workers themselves did not understand their interests and responsibilities.

"Most Ha Noi strikes were related to salary, working hours, and food safety and hygiene. But the strikes that resulted did not follow legal processes," he said.

When labour disputes or strikes happen, local authorities must step in and handle them.

"Inspections showed that only 160 out of 500 businesses signed collective labour agreements as regulated by the Labour Law," Hung said. "Workers did not know their rights and interests while working at enterprises."

Head of the Department of Legal Affairs, ang uc San, said mechanisms exist to deal with labour disputes, but these procedures were not implemented and workers failed to follow regulations when striking.

Deputy Head of the Labour Relation Board of the Viet Nam Labour General Federation Le inh Quang said all strikes did not meet the Labour Laws of 2012. This shows that some legal regulations were ineffective or not effective enough, particularly regulations on handling labour disputes and strikes.

"The law should be adjusted to increase mechanisms related to dialogues and negotiations between employees and employers, but it should not be altered to reduce workers interests," he said.

Increasing information dissemination to raise worker awareness of related laws and to increase punishment for violations was also needed, he said.  VNS
The International Rice Research Institute has honoured Former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao uc Phat for his ardent support to the Viet Nam-IRRI collaboration.  Photo baodautu.vn

HA NOI  The International Rice Research Institute has honoured Former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao uc Phat for his ardent support to the Viet Nam-IRRI collaboration.

The former minister is now Vice Chair of the Economics Commission of the Central Committee of Viet Nam Communist Party.

Under his leadership of MARD, several milestone initiatives were reached in partnership with IRRI, most notably a multi-stakeholder effort that helped refine a national strategy to restructure Viet Nams rice industry.

The restructuring aimed to improve the incomes of Vietnamese rice farmers in the face of global rice market challenges and climate change. The national strategy is now part of MARDs master plan for developing the rice industry.

The Viet Nam-IRRI partnership started in 1963. The long-standing collaboration has seen the development of high-yielding  and more recently, climate-resilient  rice varieties for the country, sustainable farming practices, conservation of rice diversity, climate-smart agriculture, particularly in the vulnerable Couu Long (Mekong) Delta, and the hosting and training of more than 850 Vietnamese scholars and course participants.  VNS
01:54 RBA lifts cash rate by 25 basis points to 2.85 per cent Sky News Business Editor Ross Greenwood says the Reserve Bank of Australia has lifted the cash rate by 25 basis points to 2.85 per cent.

03:30 Democrats distance from stammering and stuttering Joe Biden ahead of midterms Democrat candidates are running further away from US President Joe Biden and are turning to his former boss Barack Obama to get them across the...

03:00 Furious driver drags leftie protesters off busy road Sky News host Caleb Bond says one man in the UK tried to reason with some "lefties" before having to resort to dragging them off a busy road...

01:32 Where is Generation Zs resilience? Sky News host Caleb Bond says one "poor leftie" student in America has posted a video online complaining about having to work an entire day....

08:51 No perfect solution to fix gas prices Assistant Minister for Treasury Andrew Leigh says there is no perfect solution to fix rising gas prices.
CEDAR FALLS  U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., had two requests of the more than 300 people gathered outside of the University of Northern Iowas Maucker Union Friday night. Neither were particularly easy tasks.

Please, please in the next four days do everything that you can to bring people to the polls so that Hillary Clinton wins what will be a very tight race here in Iowa, Sanders said of his one-time rival for the Democratic nomination for president.

Polls in Iowa show Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump with a slight lead over Clinton or have the pair tied. She leads in most polls nationally.

While pulling out a win for Clinton in Iowa is no small task, his second request was grander.

But then the day after the election, after Hillary wins, I want you to pledge yourself to work as hard as you can with your friends and your co-workers to make this country what you and I know that we can become, Sanders said. Stand up for economic justice, social justice, racial justice, environmental justice. Lets go forward and transform America.

Sanders said people need to stay involved to see to fruition the Democratic platform, which both Sanders and former Iowa U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin called the most progressive in the nations history.

Sanders, whose campaign focused on income inequality, said billionaires are trying to buy the election, and people must be involved in politics to improve the lives of average Americans.

He said change never comes from the top. Womens rights, civil rights, marriage equality and the minimum wage are examples of the bottom on up crusades.

My point is that what seems impossible today becomes very realistic and occurs when people stand up and demand it. Think big, not small, said Sanders, who has started a nonprofit called Our Revolution.

Sanders noted the differences between Trumps and Clintons agendas during his 40-minute speech. It was a message delivered by several speakers, many of whom had supported Sanders and now back Clinton.

I know that Hillary heard Bernie supporters, like me, when she crafted her proposals. I know that because they address so many of the problems and the issues that are dear to me: climate change, income inequality, and of course, mental health care and affordable college education, UNI student Aaron Friel said before Sanders spoke.

Friel continued, There is only one person running for president this year who wants to address their issues, who wants to make sure every person has an opportunity in this country, and that person is Hillary Clinton.
MANCHESTER -- One person is dead after a pickup truck sideswiped a tractor on 165th Street northeast of Manchester Friday morning, the Iowa State Patrol reported.

Troopers said the westbound pickup, driven by Eric Silas Smith, 72, of Manchester, sideswiped the eastbound tractor, operated by Beau Vaske, 20, of Manchester, and struck a manure applicator, coming to rest in the north ditch.

Smith died in the accident.

Vaske, 20, was not injured.

The accident occurred shortly after 7 a.m. Friday. Troopers were assisted by Delaware County deputies and Manchester fire and rescue personnel.
GASTONIA, N.C.  Druid Daniel Scott Holbrook, also known as Cu Meala, was arrested Wednesday and charged, according to records, with one count of the dissemination of obscenities. As noted by the Gaston Gazatte, 29-year-old Holbrook allegedly sent [an undercover] detective a photo of a nude child around 8-10 years old.

TWH has been in touch with the local Gaston County authorities, but have not yet been unable to confirm the reported specifics of the sheriffs investigation or details of the arrest. What we do know is that Holbrook was in fact arrested Wednesday on the stated felony charge and placed in the Gaston county jail. His bond was set at $25,000.

Holbrook is a resident of Gastonia, but is originally from Maryland. He recently took a job at a local Walmart and, along with his wife, is co-owner of Cait Sidhe Designs , a company specializing in specialize in original artwork, devotional jewelry, and spiritual and ritual supplies.

Over the past five years, Holbrook has become an up-and-coming leader within Ar nDraiocht Fein: A Druid Fellowship (ADF)s eastern-based communities. He began his own spiritual journey with Maryland-based Cedar Light Grove and then, after moving south, he started Ravens Hollow Protogrove in 2015. As noted on its site, Ravens Hollow was conceived when its founder was told in ritual by the Irish goddess the Morrigan to establish a Druid Grove in honor of Herself, in order to bring together the widely decentralized Druid population of the Carolinas, and provide a public space for Pagans of all denominations to feel safe to come and worship.

After the groves establishment, Holbrook reached out to Coru Cathubodua, another Pagan organization uniquely dedicated to the Morrigan. In response, the California-based group sent a gift and a blessing to Ravens Hollow for their growth and continued success.

Additionally, Holbrook is one of the organizers for the areas Piedmont Pagan Pride Day event. His grove led the 2016 opening ceremonies. He, himself, hosted a talk on The Many Faces of the Morrigan: Worship of the Great Queens, Past and Present and participated on an interfaith panel representing Druidry.

Holbrooks community efforts did not go unrecognized. In May 2016, he was appointed to the position of Deputy Regional Druid by the Regional Druid Rev. Nancy McAndrew.

Public reaction to the news of Holbrooks arrest has been heated and varied, from surprise and disappointment to frustration and anger.

Rev. Caryn MacLuan of Marylands Cedar Light Grove told The Wild Hunt, Scott was a member in good standing with our grove for a number of years. We have never known him to be less than honest and ethical at all times. I have spoken to two witnesses of this event and it sounds like a download trojan of some sort. We will wait for the outcome of the legal system before considering further moves.

Coru Cathubodua issued a reaction, saying, The Coru Cathubodua stand firmly and unwaveringly against all forms of abuse and predatory behavior. We have not met Mr. Holbrook personally.The ADFs Ravens Hollow Protogrove reached out to us based on their devotional focus on the Morrigan. Given that they were an ADF Protogrove, we felt that their values would be in alignment with ours and wished to encourage and support a new group in their devotion. We would never knowingly tolerate or support a child predator and we stand with the community in protecting itself from dangerous and predatory behaviors.

When ADFs Mother Grove learned of the arrest, the organization was quick to announce that it would be assessing the situation very carefully. On Nov. 4, the board released this public statement:

It has come to the attention of the Mother Grove that one of our Grove Organizers was arrested a couple of days ago on a single charge of distributing inappropriate material. We pray for the family involved, and we hope that, innocent or guilty, justice will prevail. In the United States, we work under the presumption of innocence until proven guilty; however, the Mother Grove has a responsibility to act accordingly for the protection of its members, and we also will allow the party involved to work through the justice system. This individual has been removed from all leadership positions while they are navigating through the legal system. If the person is found innocent of the charge, they will be allowed to ask for reinstatement if they so desire.

As noted in the ADF statement, Holbrook has been removed from all leadership positions, including his new Deputy Regional role. Additionally, ADF chose to make Ravens Hollow Protogrove inactive; Holbrook has since closed it down completely.

We were unable to reach Holbrook, his family, or grove members for comment in time for publication.

TWH did learn that, after being taken into custody, Holbrook appeared in court on Nov. 3. He was assigned a public defender and a trial date of Nov. 22. Holbrook posted bond and is no longer being held.

We will continue to follow this story and update you as it unfolds.
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UK nuclear developers explain private financing approach

04 November 2016

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NuGeneration and Horizon Nuclear Power expect the strike price they agree with the UK government for their respective new build projects will be lower than the one agreed for EDF Energy's Hinkley Point C plant.

Tom Samson, NuGen CEO, and David Stearns, Horizon's business development director, spoke in a meeting with British parliamentarians on 1 November. Their evidence to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee's inquiry The Economics of UK Energy Policy, followed that of EDF Energy executives, who said the 92.50/MWh strike price they had agreed with government in 2013 was a good deal for electricity consumers.

Consisting of two European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs), 3.2 GWe Hinkley Point C plant will be the first new nuclear power station to be built in the UK in almost 20 years. It is expected to start operations in 2025. EDF Energy has state backing for the project - the majority owner of its parent company, EDF Group, is the French government, and its Chinese partner, China General Nuclear, is state-owned. In contrast, Horizon and NuGen are working on privately backed new build projects.

A joint venture between Toshiba and Engie, NuGen plans to build a nuclear power plant of up to 3.8 GWe gross capacity at Moorside in West Cumbria. NuGen will use AP1000 nuclear reactor technology provided by Westinghouse Electric Company, a group company of Toshiba.

Established in 2009 and acquired by Hitachi in November 2012, Horizon aims to provide at least 5.4 GWe of new capacity across two sites - Wylfa Newydd and Oldbury - by deploying Hitachi-GE UK Advanced Boiling Water Reactors (ABWRs).

Asked for the total cost of their projects and the Contract-for-Difference (CfD) strike price they would require, Samson and Stearns stressed they could only give estimates at this stage.

"NuGen is still in the development, engineering phase and we're hoping to have EPC [engineering, procurement and construction] estimates for the complete project in the early part of next year, so any numbers we have today would be premature to share in specific terms," Samson said. "But roughly 13-15 billion for the cost of the project and our aspiration and goal is to deliver a strike price that's less than Hinkley."

Stearns said: "Hitachi has spent north of 1.5 billion on development, engineering and preliminary site works to ascertain what those costings are most likely to be on a full build-out basis and commercial operations by 2025." He added: "We have four operating ABWRs that have been built on time and to budget in Japan, and one of those plants - Kashiwazaki-Kariwa 6 - is our reference plant. At this point we don't have a number, [but] we believe it will certainly be less than Hinkley, and I say that as well from a strike price perspective."

Both expect to complete the Generic Design Acceptance process for their respective reactor designs with UK regulators early next year and to each make their final investment decision (FID) about two years later.

Public versus private sector roles

Asked for their view on the potential merits of nationalising the UK's nuclear power industry, Samson said: "Certainly the government has a role to play, but I think a nationalisation strategy would be a rather extreme solution to the challenge of delivery capability, which relies on an international marketplace."

Asked whether the private financing model was appropriate, given that the government could borrow at lower rates than a private company could, Samson said government could take a role "in some of the enabling infrastructure". He said: "The National Grid is already funding that through their process, but potentially the common works, the seawater intake, the civil works. But, again, it's a departure from an existing proven model, which is to put the risk into the companies that are going to be required to deliver the project."

Asked whether NuGen is "still going to be around in 60 years" for the decommissioning phase of its project, Samson said: "I certainly hope so and we're factoring that funded decommissioning plan and the associated economics to ensure that the decommissioning burden is fully reflected in the strike price."

Asked if NuGen would be, like EDF Energy, looking to secure government guaranteed bonds, Samson said: "For us the financing challenge is quite unique. We need to build on the technology experience and delivery capability of our consortium, with Westinghouse and Toshiba, and look at ways of, if possible, attracting debt and share that funding burden with sources of capital that might be willing to provide loans or investments against the technology of this nature. Certainly, with export credit agencies that's a viable path to pursue."

He later added: "NuGen's owners are two private based companies and we expect more private based equity, but I would hate to rule out any source of capital, investment, debt or loan to the project at this stage ... Government is an essential stakeholder in any nuclear project."

Stearns said that nationalisation "seems like a fairly radical, revolutionary approach to solving a problem that is actually more practical". He told the committee: "This government, and successive governments for the past ten to 15 years in this country, have worked hard and quite consistently in delivering a framework for delivering low-carbon generation. Nuclear is part of that and Hinkley is maybe the first beneficiary as an investor as well as the end-users.

"I don't see the government's role in energy projects as naturally being that of a developer of the daily heavy lifting of choosing technology, driving it through regulation, raising all of the financing and the public sector taking all of the risk ... The model we have here in UK is quite advanced and leaves quite a material amount of risk with the developer."

He added: "I don't see that government necessarily has a role in financing nuclear - certainly on a post-completion basis. But in a competitive financial market we are faced with a funding gap. We would not exclude anybody, but we are solving what is and what should be a private sector asset."

Regarding the "appetite" in debt markets for nuclear new build projects, Stearns said: "These are new assets, new projects, new risks for lenders, for potential bond holders, for export credit agencies. I wouldn't say they're not keen, they need to understand, and I think that they are prepared to, and we have found that there is a market that is willing to listen."

Samson added: "You've got to have a deal structure that is bankable if you've going to look for debt. And that requires you to have a contracting structure in place with an EPC consortium that you can allocate some risk to and hold them accountable to deliver against. That's slightly different to the Hinkley model where there isn't a single EPC entity; that's a difference that allows us then to structure the deal differently and present something that's more attractive to potential lenders and investors.

"This is not a traditional commercial, financeable venture where you go and talk to the likes of Barclays or Citibank and ask them to give you money, but you do have conversations with export credit agencies where there is content and strategic rationale for supporting the export of technologies, and you do look to build on that with a confident delivery plan to attract other investors. So, it's incumbent on us to deliver that narrative and to secure that participation and those are conversations that we've begun and need to complete over the next 12 to 18 months."

Asked for the percentage of public sector involvement in reactors built so far, Samson said of the eight AP1000 units under construction, four are in China and four are in the USA. In China, these projects are funded by the Chinese government, while the US projects are funded by customers in a regulated asset base, he added.

Stearns said that the four operating ABWRs in Japan were "financed in a regulated environment, through the rate base very similar to the US model, but on the balance sheet of investor owned utilities, such as Tepco and Chubu".

Part of the strike price analysis that "gets lost" in criticism of the cost of nuclear new build in the UK, Samson said, is "the GDP impacts". These are: "The jobs, the scale of the effort, the 60-year nature of its life, the significant money spent over the plant's lifecycle, as well as the supply chain opportunities and industrial potential that can be realised to regenerate the nuclear industry in the UK."

Diversity of technology

Asked about the "French policy of buildings tens of reactor to a similar design compared with different contractors building different models in the UK", Samson said there are benefits to having "diversity of technology in a market place".

He said: "If you look at some of the largest nuclear markets in the world, the US or Canada, they have quite a diverse fleet. We think that the track record of delivering each technology is clearly the important element here. We're going to be the nth of a kind - 17th, 18th and 19th - AP1000 unit in the fleet. There are currently eight under construction and there will be eight more under construction when we begin in Moorside. And I think the delivery certainty and the confidence comes from taking the lessons learned from that global experience and building it into a UK mindset for delivery in this country."

He added: "We tend to focus heavily on the EPR challenges in Olkiluoto and Flamanville, but there are many other technologies that have been delivered on time and on budget - in Japan, South Korea, the UAE. There are examples of successful delivery. They are not necessarily technology dependent; they are delivery dependent."

Stearns noted that Hitachi has been involved in 20 new build projects beyond the four operating in Japan.

Asked whether the "controversy with Hinkley" made their own projects more difficult, Stearns said: "It seems to me that Hinkley and the controversy around it has simply been a victim of its own specificities - the time it took to get to FID, the nature of the financing, of the shareholders, the amount of government support. They are absolutely unique to Hinkley."

He added: "We don't consider ourselves comparable really at all with Hinkley: this is a technology we have built before and that our shareholder has taken and delivered and which is licensed in three different countries. It's very difficult for us to compare ourselves to Hinkley, but we do appreciate there will be a comparison because 92.50/MWh is a very material price-tag for that [plant] once it's switched on. We're prepared to be compared, but we believe we have a fundamentally more competitive supply chain and ability to deliver, and that will reflect in our risk allocation, the financing that we've got and, we believe, in the strike price."

Market issues

Samson described the CfD devised by the UK government as "a solution to a market challenge". The "true cost" of carbon emissions isn't reflected in wholesale electricity markets or in economic comparisons of nuclear with renewables. "That is right now an intangible in terms of what are the consequences of not delivering another generation of nuclear in the UK. We've benefitted from 60 years of nuclear and we should as a country benefit from another 60 years of nuclear, from both a stability, but also from an emissions perspective."

Some 10% of the world's power comes from nuclear, but 40% of the world's carbon abatement comes from that 10% of nuclear, he noted.

"So nuclear is a meaningful way to make a difference to climate change. How the government values that component is a subjective discussion. Certainly, renewables are part of that and it would be a folly for me as a nuclear proponent to argue against renewables. We want a mix that benefits from renewables because when it runs its not consuming fuel and it's providing power, so it's a valuable source."

Stearns added: "There are a lot of things that the market is not pricing. The day-ahead electricity market today is quite depressed. Is that a reflection of the tightness of supply that we read about in the newspapers every day? Somehow there seems to be a disconnect. There's the economics of energy and there's the sociology of energy. What do we feel about security of supply and how do you price that? How do we price a megawatt and a tonne of carbon avoidance? None of that is being properly factored into the wholesale market prices. Those signals do not exist."

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

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ST. LOUIS, MO, November 05, 2016 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Talent Assessment and Development (TAD) is proud to announce the addition of Caitlin Breuer to their team as a Senior Human Resources Consultant.



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"I've been working with TAD for more than five years as a client. Now I get to help other HR and OD people achieve great things," Breuer said. "I'm looking forward to continuing my professional development and working with great people."



Breuer graduated from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, earning a B.S. in Psychology and an M.A. in Industrial Organizational Psychology. She is a member of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), and the Association for Talent Development (ATD).



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Adam Shatz in The LA Times:

He had inherited the catastrophic wars that his predecessor had launched in the Middle East, and just before he entered office, came the financial crisis. But the hope that Obamas presidency would be (as he himself put it) transformative also reflected an older longing that he might help the country to overcome its racial divide and become genuinely united.

Hand in hand, we would follow him to the post-racial Promised Land, as if he were one of those magical Negro characters in Hollywood films who devote their lives to solving their white friends problems. There was always something a bit kitsch about this dream, which was mainly expressed by whites; for obvious reasons, black Americans tend to have a far more sober view of the countrys ability to address, much less transcend, its racial divisions.

As it turned out, the Obama era would supply only one racial miracle: his election. Determined not to be seen as the president of black America, he studiously avoided the subject of race; when forced to address it, he succumbed to banalities about the need for a national conversation. Faced with the deepening crisis in black America  police killings of unarmed civilians, including children; the epidemic of mass incarceration; economic and political disenfranchisement  Obama seemed unwilling, or unable, to respond with the sense of urgency that once had led him to become a housing organizer in Chicago.

As late as July 2014, Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy wrote that for many black Americans, the thrill is gone.

In the last two years, however, Obama has finally assumed his historic role with moral seriousness, in part, one suspects, because he accepted the fact that his presidency would not be transformative, and that he could, at best, be a bulwark against the racist furies that it unleashed; a civilized counterpoint to the vengeful white noise of the red states. As Regis Debray famously argued, Revolution revolutionizes the counter-revolution. And so it has been with the racial counter-revolution in America, a know-nothing white nativism that has found its fuhrer in Donald Trump.

More here.
Scott Lemieux in The New Republic:

The next president will enter office with a potentially pivotal Supreme Court seat vacant. Its an issue that may pale next to such world-historically important questions as Hillary Clintons email management, but its still very important. If Clinton captures the White House but Republicans retain the Senate, it is extremely likely that the Supreme Court blockade the GOP started in March will persist for four more years. Just as congressional Republicans have reconciled themselves to Donald Trump, they have already convinced themselves that the only principled course is to deny Clinton the ability to nominate anybody to the Supreme Court. The result would be the hobbling of an entire branch of government, which is just one example of how the chaos of Trumpism will live on even if he loses the election on November 8.

There are scenarios in which we could see the confirmation of a ninth justice to fill the seat left vacant by Antonin Scalias death. If Trump pulls off an upset victory, it would almost certainly come with a Republican Senate. This would lead to generic Republican nominees being confirmed to the federal courts. Some conservatives have been skeptical that Trump would reliably nominate conservative judges because of his less-than-robust commitment, historically speaking, to social conservatism. But such doubts are almost certainly misplaced. Even if Trump secretly wanted to appoint moderate judges, its not clear where he would find them (David Souter, one of the last of his kind, is not going to come out of retirement). And as George W. Bushs failed nomination of Harriet Miers showed, Senate Republicans would reject any Supreme Court or crucial circuit court nominee who doesnt have a demonstrable record of conservatism.

More here.
Laws crafted by those elected should do most good for most people
Top 6 Firm BDO USA brought on 15 new Securities and Exchange Commission audit clients in the third quarter, leading the auditor pack, while Hong Kongs DCAW (CPA) Ltd. netted the most, with nine.

BDOs new clients came from a mix of organic and merger-driven growth: Seven of its new clients came from its May merger with Utahs Mantyla McReynolds, and two from its August merger with South Floridas Goldstein Schechter Koch, while the remaining eight came over individually from a scattering of other firms. BDO netted eight new firms altogether in the third quarter, putting it tops among large firms (see Q3 Client Gains & Losses).

DCAW, meanwhile, brought on 11 new clients and netted nine, the most of any firm in the quarter (see Net Engagement Leaders). Seven of those new clients came from fellow Hong Kong firm Crowe Horwath HK (CPA) Ltd., which started telling its audit clients in September that it would no longer offer audit services to U.S.-regulated public companies. The other four came from a variety of firms in Hong Kong and the U.S.

BDO and DCAW also led most of our tables by type of filer: The former topped the ranks of new accelerated filers and new smaller reporting companies, and the latter led among non-accelerated filers. Big Four firm PricewaterhouseCoopers topped the list for large accelerated filers (see Audit Leaders).

PwC also led the way in new market capitalization and assets audited, and new audit fees, thanks, primarily, to the addition of two new clients: power company American Electric Power Co. (with $28.6 billion in market cap, $61.6 billion in assets, and audit fees of $11 million), and energy management and control technologies creator Johnson Controls International (with $14 billion in market cap, $12.3 billion in assets, and $15.9 million in audit fees) (see New Client Leaders).

Data for the quarterly rankings are provided by Audit Analytics, a premium online intelligence service delivering audit, regulatory and disclosure analysis. Reach them at (508) 476-7007, info@auditanalytics.com or www.auditanalytics.com.
DENVER, Nov. 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, a Denver federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against an outdated Colorado statue that prohibits voters from showing their completed ballot. State Senator Owen Hill (R-Colorado Springs) was the lead plaintiff on the case brought forward to challenge the law.

"Today is, quite simply, a big win for Colorado voters. In this crucial time leading up to Election Day, the court's ruling is proof that the First Amendment will continue to be a pillar holding up the roof of our Republic," Senator Hill said.

"Coloradans can be assured they won't be prosecuted for taking a picture of their ballot in order to have their voice be heard."

The "ballot selfie" hearing spanned two days and Judge Christine M. Arguello wrote on Friday in her order that:

"By issuing an injunction in this case, Coloradans get what they are entitled toclarity on an issue that implicates fundamental constitutional rights."

Senator Hill observed that, "As we continue to make advancements in technology and grow into many new methods of communicating and sharing information we need to make sure our laws evolve with that - to advocate for free speech while still safeguarding important voter privacy."

Hill testified that he personally had dozens of people who contacted him on social media after he called for the outdated statue to be ruled unconstitutional.

A simple keyword search on various social media platforms reveal hundreds of examples of Coloradans posting their ballots and many others who openly expressed desire to share their ballots, but were intimidated or confused by messages sent by District Attorney offices throughout the state.

"This order affirms the important free speech right of all voters to sharing ballot selfies without being prosecuted," the plaintiffs' attorney, Michael Francisco, said.

"We are pleased with the result and grateful to have this clarification before the election. After Tuesday we will seek a permanent injunction and declaration that this law is unconstitutional," Francisco concluded.

The Plaintiffs in the Hill case were represented by a strong team including Michael Francisco of MRDLaw, former Colorado Solicitor General Daniel D. Domenico, now at Kittredge LLC, and Steve Klein, from the public interest Pillar of Law Institute in Washington D.C.

Judge Arguello's Friday ruling is big first step in clearing up confusion and mixed messages sent by various authoritative agencies in Colorado on this important First Amendment issue.

The court's full opinion is available here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/62156009/%5B33%5D%20Order%20granting%20in%20part%20preliminary%20injunction.pdf

Contact: Kyle Forti | forti@dco.consulting | 719.377.0646

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/colorado-state-senator-owen-hill-victorious-in-ballot-selfie-case-as-judge-orders-preliminary-injunction-300358001.html

SOURCE MRDLaw
Former Presidential Contender and California Drug-Price Initiative Endorser to Speak Out Against Big Pharma in Hollywood, Los Angeles, Sacramento before Election in appearances Sun. Nov. 6 & Mon. Nov. 7

Yes on Prop 61/Californians for Lower Drug Prices announced today that U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, in partnership with the California Nurses Association, will speak at two public rallies in California on Monday, November 7. Sanders will appear in downtown Los Angeles in Pershing Square at 10:00AM and at a second rally in Sacramento at the California State Capitol that afternoon at 1:30PM. Prior to the Monday events, Sanders will also speak after a screening of Your Money or Your Life, a half-hour documentary exposing pharmaceutical industry greed at the Hollywood Palladium on Sunday night (11/6/16) that features the Senator.

HOLLYWOOD: What: Senator Sanders Prop. 61 rally & screening of drug-pricing documentary, "Your Money or Your Life" When: SUNDAY, 11/06/16 at 7:00 PM Where: The Hollywood Palladium 6215 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA Who: U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders Supporters of Prop 61, including nurses, seniors, veterans and doctors On-site Media Contacts: Ged Kenslea, 323-791-5526, gedk@aidhsealth.org Sarah Palacios, 310-489-4865, sarah@alzamedia.com

Note: Like the other events, this event is free and open to the public. However, seating is limited at this venue. RSVP here: https://www.facebook.com/events/324376044600454/

Sanders will appear at the rallies alongside other Prop. 61 supporters, including the California Nurses Association, AARP, VoteVets, Social Security Works and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, to speak out against Big Pharmas price-gouging and the lies being told by the drug company-funded No on 61 campaign regarding the measure.

We are delighted that Sen. Sanders is returning to California to campaign on behalf of Prop. 61, said Garry South, lead strategist for Yes on 61. It is a real testament to his longtime commitment to fighting the drug companies price-gouging and profiteering that his last official act of the 2016 campaign will be speaking out in California for the Drug Price Relief Act.

Prop. 61, the California Drug Price Relief Act is the only initiative on the November ballot in all 50 states to address the pressing issue of drug company price-gouging. The Los Angeles rally follows the recent release of a documentary, Your Money or Your Life!, that features Sanders and others as they examine the drug industrys power and greed.

LOS ANGELES What: Senator Sanders Prop. 61 rally When: MONDAY, 11/07/16 at 10:00 AM Where: Pershing Square 532 S Olive Street, Los Angeles Who: U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders Emcee: Pilar Schiavo, California Nurses Association organizer Kristan Delmarty, Pediatric RN, UCLA, and a Veteran Ernie Powell, Social Security Works, formerly with AARP Steve Dunwoody, VoteVets, Afghanistan War Veteran Dr. Christopher G. Goring, Orthopedic Surgeon, 15-year Veteran Laila Goring, U.S. Military Veteran and longtime community mobilizer Michael Weinstein, President, AIDS Healthcare Foundation On-site Media Contacts: Ged Kenslea, 323-791-5526, gedk@aidhsealth.org Sarah Palacios, 310-489-4865, sarah@alzamedia.com SACRAMENTO When: MONDAY, 11/07/16 at 1:30 PM Where: California State Capitol  West Steps 1315 10th Street, Sacramento Who: U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, Emcee: Stephanie Roberson, California Nurses Association Asm. David Chiu Carmen Balber, Consumer Watchdog Michael Seaman, VoteVets, Navy Seabees Veteran Blanca Castro, AARP California RoseAnn DeMoro, Executive Director, National Nurses United Contacts: Roger Salazar, 916-284-1255, RSalazar@alzamedia.com

Background

Proposition 61 would require the state of California to negotiate with drug companies for drug prices that are no more than is paid for the same drugs by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA). Unlike Medicare, the DVA negotiates for drug prices on behalf of the millions of veterans it serves, and pays on average 20-24 percent less for medications than other government agencies, and up to 40 percent less than Medicare Part D. Prop. 61 empowers the state, as the healthcare buyer for millions of Californians, to negotiate a better deal for taxpayers, saving the state billions.

Prop 61 Endorsements

Prop. 61 has been endorsed by AARP California, the California Nurses Association, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and his organization Our Revolution, former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, civil rights and labor activist Dolores Huerta, Rev. Al Sharpton, the Urban League, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Campaign for a Healthy California, Progressive Democrats of America, Social Security Works, and the Vote Vets Action Fund. A full list of endorsements can be found at: http://www.yeson61.com/endorsements

www.Yeson61.com

Paid for by Yes on Prop 61, Californians for Lower Drug Prices, with major funding by AIDS Healthcare Foundation and California Nurses Association PAC. FPPC ID#1376791

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161104006171/en/

Yes on Prop. 61

Roger Salazar

916-284-1255

RSalazar@alzamedia.com

or

AIDS Healthcare Foundation

Ged Kenslea

323-791-5526

gedk@aidhsealth.org
A World War II bomber pilot has finally been given recognition for his actions during a bombing raid more than 70 years ago.



Former Maj. William Joe Schneider was awarded the Silver Star during a ceremony here Nov. 1, for his actions while commanding an 18-plane bombing raid on Feb. 23, 1945, over Italy. Maj. Gen. Christopher Bence, the U.S. Air Force Expeditionary Center Commander, presided over the ceremony.



I dont think I deserve what theyre proposing for me to get, but I think its good for generations to come to be able to understand what happened, Schneider said.



At that time, Schneider was assigned to the 310th Bombardment Group. His unit was known as the Bridge Busters because they bombed bridges in Italy to slow down the supply lines and the Germans ability to provide reinforcements to the Italian peninsula.



During the mission, Schneider was responsible for not only directing the bombardment mission, but also the safety of all men in his formation. As his formation approached the heavily defended rail link at Dogna, Italy, an extremely accurate anti-aircraft barrage enveloped the B-25s, severely crippling Schneiders plane and damaging many other bombers in his formation. With his right engine not functioning, the propeller control mechanism inoperative, as well as the airspeed indicator destroyed and a smashed elevator trim tab, Schneider led all the bombardiers to drop their payloads on the communications point.



Afterward, Schneider contacted an air-sea rescue unit to be continuously updated with accurate bearings of their location. He also communicated with a fellow B-25 aircrew in his formation and relayed to his pilot vital information to assist with the return flight. During the landing procedure, Schneider assisted the pilot with a successful emergency crash landing and the safe return of all his crewmembers.



"Its not often you get to stand in the presence of a true hero, Bence said. A man who not only answered his nations call, but whose actions directly saved the lives of fellow Americans and helped defeat the Axis powers.



Schneider was told by his commanders that his actions warranted being awarded the Silver Star, but the paperwork was lost with the Army in the rush to close down the war. However, with the support of his children and Rep. Scott Garret, 5th District of New Jersey, Schneider was finally able to get proper recognition.



After returning home in February 1946, Schneider went back to Fordham University to finish his degree. While in school he met his wife, Lucille and raised eight children in the house he lives in to this day. He now has 22 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.



The strength of family life and the holding together of each generation, thats the glue that keeps it all together, said Schneider addressing the audience during the ceremony.



Schneider enlisted in the Army in November 1941, one month before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Before reporting to Maxwell Field, Alabama, Schneider earned his private pilots license and upon arriving, he was selected to become a military aviator.



"Even before the war, I wanted to be in the sky, Schneider said. With that pilots license, I was pushed to the front of the line to become an Army Air Corps pilot.



In just two years, Schneider advanced from second lieutenant to major and became a squadron and group commander in charge of 72 aircraft. During his service, he earned the Air Medal with 11 oak leaf clusters and the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Algerian counter-terrorism forces on Sunday searched around the eastern city of Constantine after a policeman was killed in a rare urban attack by gunmen believed to be from a local Islamic State affiliate, a security source said.

Bombings and attacks are rare since Algeria ended its 1990s civil war with Islamists that killed 200,000 people. But Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and small brigades of Islamic State affiliates are still active, mostly in mountainous areas or the remote south near the countrys borders with Niger and Libya.

Three gunmen shot the officer in a restaurant in a northern district of Constantine late on Friday, the security source said. Witnesses have been shown images of potential suspects in the attack, the source said.

According to witnesses, these individuals went straight to the victim as he was eating and shot him and then took his service weapon, another security official told El Watan, a daily French-language newspaper.

Authorities have made no official statement.

In March, police shot dead a would-be suicide bomber in a small town east of the capital, Algiers. The last suicide attack in Algeria was in 2011 in the same town, when a militant tried to drive a bomb-packed truck into a police station, injuring 29 people.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in March also claimed a rocket attack on an Algerian gas plant, operated by BP and Statoil with state-owned Sonatrach, though it caused no casualties or notable damage.

In August, Algerian forces said they had cleared out Islamic State-affiliated militants, known as Jund al-Khilafa or Soldiers of the Caliphate, from the mountains east of Algiers, two years after they kidnapped and beheaded a French tourist in the former al Qaeda stronghold.
Turkeys military has begun deploying tanks and other armored vehicles to the town of Silopi near the Iraqi border, in a move the defense minister said on Tuesday was related to the fight against terrorism and developments across the border.

Fikri Isik said Turkey had no obligation to wait behind its borders and would do what was necessary if Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants took a foothold in northwest Iraqs Sinjar region, around 115 km (71 miles) south of Silopi.

We will not allow the threat to Turkey to increase, he told broadcaster A Haber in an interview.

The army deployment, disclosed by military sources, came after President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that Turkey was aiming to reinforce its troops in Silopi.

The deployment coincides with an Iraqi operation to drive Islamic State from the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and after Iraqi Shiite militias launched a related offensive to push the jihadists out of the town of Tal Afar further west.

Erdogan said on Saturday Ankara would have a different response for Shiite militias if they cause terror in Tal Afar, home to a sizeable ethnic Turkmen population with historic and cultural ties to Turkey.

Sinjar, where Ankara believes the PKK is developing a presence, is situated some 50 km west of Tal Afar.

PKK

Sirnak province, where Silopi is located, is also one of the main areas of conflict between Turkeys army and the PKK, whose main bases are in the mountains of northeast Iraq.

Designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, the PKK has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state for Kurdish autonomy. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

Largely Sunni Muslim Turkey and the Shiite-dominated central government in Iraq are at loggerheads about the presence of Turkish troops at Iraqs Bashiqa camp and about Ankaras demand to take part in the U.S.-backed Mosul operation.

Turkey says it has a responsibility to protect ethnic Turkmens and Sunni Arabs in the area around Mosul, once part of the Ottoman Empire. It fears both PKK militants and Shiite militias, which the Iraqi army has relied on in the past, will be used in the campaign and stoke ethnic bloodletting.
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini on Tuesday called for more investment to revive the economy of Tunisia, home country of the Arab Spring, calling it a strategic priority.

Today, I want to convey a very strong and very clear message to all Europeans Tunisia is truly a privileged and special partner, she said on a visit to Tunis.

Investing in Tunisia, in its present and its future and especially in its young people, is a strategic priority for the European Union, she said after meeting Foreign Minister Khemaies Jhinaoui.

Mogherini recalled that EU financial support for the North African country would be 300 million euros in 2017.

Prime Minister Youssef Chaheds government hopes that an investor conference scheduled for later this month will help boost Tunisias economy, which has suffered since the fall of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011
King Mohammed VI has postponed his visit to Ethiopia. A statement from the Royal Cabinet said that the sovereign would make Addis Ababa the first step in a second phase of the Kings African tour after the COP22.

According to the statement from the Royal Cabinet, Addis Ababa will be the first step of the second part of the Moroccan monarchs second tour in East Africa.

The statement from the Royal Palace followed a telephone conversation between King Mohammed and the Ethiopian Prime Minister. During the phone call, the two leaders agreed to reschedule the royal visit just after the holding of the COP22, which will take place in Marrakech from November 7-18

Mohammed VI and Prime Minister of Ethiopia agreed that the royal visit was a fundamental step in strengthening the bilateral economic partnership and reconciliation between the two brotherly peoples, the source added.

During this interview, King Mohammed VI and the Ethiopian Prime Minister stressed the importance of ensuring the best possible preparation for the upcoming royal visit.
Social Media and political manipulation: the story of the death of fish seller Mohcine Fikri between reliability and falsehoods

The Brother of the Mouhcine Fikri, the fish vendor who was killed in a garbage truck compacter on Friday, gave a statement to Moroccan TV channel 2M following the death of his brother in the Northern city of Hoceima that descried the angry posts on social media.

The video report that was aired on 2Ms noon News today shows Mohsens brother in front of the familys house amid neighbors and relatives. He said, This was certainly a huge shock for the family, the neighbors, and everyone who knew him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkapaz81Qmw

The victims brother added that the family is not worried about the course of justice regarding the tragic death of Mouhcine Fikri inside the garbage trucks compacter, as the family had received personal guarantees from the Minister of Interior that the matter would be investigated.

We are satisfied with the guarantees of the Minister of Justice that the investigations will take their normal course in connection with the incident and that every official who has the blood of my brother on his hands will be held accountable, said Fikri.

The victims brother asserted that the family would make a detailed statement describing the circumstances of the incident based on the testimony of reliable witnesses in order to clarify how the incident actually took place, apart from the political manipulations and the lies that have spread across social media.

Moroccan intellectual and researcher in propaganda, Amine Sossi Alaoui, commented on this statement on his Facebook fan page stating that it is a balanced remark that would pull the rug from under those who seek to ignite conflict or promote rumors.
King Mohammed VI and Tanzanian president John Pombe Magufuli, chaired, on Monday at the presidential palace in Dar es Salam, the signing ceremony of 22 bilateral agreements.

These agreements involve economic, scientific and cultural cooperation, the establishment of a mechanism for political consultation, the field of hydrocarbons, energy, mining and geology, air transportation, agriculture, fisheries, fertilizers, renewable energy, tourism, culture insurance in Tanzania, the promotion of industrial and logistical clusters, and the development of logistical and railway corridors between Tanzanias ports and industrial clusters.

These agreements touch also on the partnership between the two countries employer associations, health, the banking sector, the promotion and funding of trade and investment in Africa, insurance, as well as the setting up of a unit for upmarket tea packaging.

The agreements, which are meant to foster the legal framework governing bilateral cooperation, are in line with the royal vision seeking to reinforce south-south partnership.

In a speech on the occasion, the Tanzanian president thanked HM the King for his official visit to Tanzania along with an important delegation.

Tanzania is ready to cooperate with all its strength with You, said president Magufuli, who underlined that the 22 cooperation agreements, inked today, will contribute to the industrialization, transformation and modernization of the economy of Tanzania, a country boasting important natural and mining resources. At the beginning of the ceremony, Tanzanian minister of foreign affairs and East Africa Augustine Mahiga lauded the fact that these agreements will write a new chapter in the history of relations between Morocco and Tanzania, noting that the visit of HM the King helped promote bilateral ties diplomatically and economically.

Mahiga hailed the holding, over the past three days in Dar es Salaam, of the first Moroccan-Tanzanian trade and investment forum, marked by the participation of a host of officials and economic operators from both countries.

Tanzanian minister of industry, trade and investment Charles John Mwijage submitted, on this occasion, recommendations of the report on the Moroccan-Tanzanian trade and investment forum, underlining the importance of this first meeting that will give a boost to economic cooperation.

The Tanzanian minister noted that the said recommendations include the reinforcement of air routes between the two countries through direct flights.

Moroccan foreign minister Salaheddine Mezouar, for his part, affirmed that HM the Kings official visit to Tanzania is historic as it opens a new page in bilateral relations, stressing that it is high time to work hand in hand to build a sustainable partnership.

Mezouar noted that the signature of these 22 agreements mirrors the tangible model of south-south cooperation as advocated by His Majesty the King in favor of the promotion and the development of Africa. Chairwoman of the Moroccan employers association (CGEM) Miriem Bensalah-Chaqroun commended the huge efforts by Tanzania regarding economic transformation, as part of the countrys 2025 development vision.

She also paid tribute to Tanzanias political stability, a central factor for economic dynamism and entrepreneurship.
King Mohammed VI, Commander of the Faithful, who is visiting Tanzania since Sunday, has launched construction works for a new mosque in Dar es Salaam.

The religious institution, dubbed the Mohammed VI Mosque, will be built over a 7,400 m2 plot and will accommodate more than 5,000 worshipers. The mosque will also include a library, a conference room, a cultural center and other facilities.

The Royal initiative came in response to the request made by Mufti Abubakr Zubair Ben Ali, Head of the Muslims National Council of Tanzania, who expressed need for this mosque in the city of Dar es Salaam.

King Mohammed VI donated 10,000 copies of the Holy Quran to Tanzania Muslims Council, which signed on this occasion with the Moroccan ministry of Islamic Affairs a cooperation agreement in religious education, based on an Islam of the middle path doctrine, a vision of religion based on tolerance, intercultural dialogue and respect of other faiths.

The Mufti Abubakr Ben Zubair Ben Ali of Tanzania is member of the newly set up Mohammed VI Foundation for African Ulemas. This Moroccan academic institution, based in the city of Fez, seeks to enhance further the special religious and cultural ties existing between the Kingdom and African countries.

This new Foundation has been set up within the frame of Moroccos religious training program for imams and sustained efforts to counter Islamic radicalization. Sound religious training is the best tool to fight ISIS and other dangerous lunatics preaching extremist ideas.

Part of these efforts, King Mohammed VI had also dedicated in March 2015 a leading Institute that provides training to hundreds of imams of various nationalities, including some from Africa and Europe.

The center educates Imams to the precepts of a tolerant and non-violent form of Islam based on the Maliki rite and teaches them how to fight extremism and religious radicalization.

On Monday, King Mohammed VI and his host President Pombe Magufuli co-chaired the signing ceremony of 22 accords, meant to open a new chapter in the two countries relations in the realms of economy, finance, renewable energy, agriculture, fisheries, air transport, hydrocarbons, mines as well as science and culture.

Under one of the deals, Morocco will set up a high-quality tea packaging plant. The Kingdom will also help develop railways and logistics corridors between Tanzanias harbors and industrial clusters.

Morocco thus shows willingness to share its expertise with Tanzania particularly in the fields covered by the sealed agreements.

The Royal visit to Tanzania, the second leg of the Sovereign tour in East Africa, adds substance to Moroccos foreign policy towards Africa, which is underpinned by the principles of co-development and solidarity that is in line with the Kings vision.

Before Tanzania, King Mohammed VI visited Rwanda. He is also expected in Ethiopia, last stop in this tour.
Information and Broadcasting minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Saturday attacked those criticising the one-day ban on NDTV India over its Pathankot coverage, saying the belated criticism is clearly ill informed and politically inspired to create a controversy. The belated criticism of the action proposed to be taken against NDTV India for violating the norms of live coverage of anti-terrorist operations by security personnel in Pathankot in January this year is clearly ill informed and politically inspired, he told reporters.

Such reactions that came a day after the Governments decision was in public domain on November 3, 2016 was clearly an afterthought, suggesting a motivated design to create a controversy where none existed, the senior minister said. He asserted that people of the country should know that the UPA Governments, during 2005-14, ordered several TV channels to go off air in 21 instances, for a period ranging from one day to two months for showing obscene visuals including 13 cases of telecasting Adult rated certified films.

One channel was taken off air for 30 days for telecasting a sting operation, he said. People of the country are also wise enough to appreciate which of the two violations  showing obscene visuals at the stroke of midnight and risking the lives of defence personnel and civilians through a live telecast of anti-terrorist operations in broad daylight- is a serious threat to the interests of the nation including its sovereignty, integrity and security, Naidu said.

The Minister said the decision against NDTV India was not based on any newly invented rule and principle. The ground on which action has been proposed against NDTV India was only a logical conclusion of concerns clearly articulated by the UPA Government in various advisories issued after 26/11 terror attacks on multiple targets in Mumbai in 2008, he said.

Rejecting criticism that compared the present case to Emergency, Naidu said many BJP leaders and a large number of activists were at the worst receiving end of Emergency and would shudder to even think of doing the same to others and particularly, in respect of freedom of media.

Responding to criticism by Editors Guild of India, Naidu said, The Editors Guild of India, a responsible organisation that took a full day to come out with its response should realise that under Sub-section (2) of Section 20 of the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995, Central Government is required to regulate or prohibit the transmission of any channel or programme in the interest of sovereignty, integrity and security of India and as per Para 8.1 of Uplinking Guidelines, is empowered to take action for transmitting any objectionable content inconsistent with public interest.

Therefore, the Government is not required to approach the Courts in such cases, as suggested by the Guild, he added. I leave it to the wisdom of the Editors Guild to ponder if the decision against NDTV India for the reasons explained, is really reminiscent of the dark days of Emergency, he said.

Naidu said that very recently in an interaction, he had stressed that effective self-regulation by media is the best way of protecting its freedom and we are committed to it. I also said that freedom is best upheld when its value is fully appreciated. In this case, that much valued freedom was not put to best use by NDTV India. I am happy to note that the people of the country are broadly with the decision in thematter of NDTV India, he said.

Always, there will be a minority who are critical of whatever the Government does in the best interest of the country, Naidu added. The minister also said that in several advisories issued by the previous UPA Government, all news and current affairs TV channels were clearly asked to exercise restraint, maturity and sensitivity while reporting on anti-terrorist operations in the larger interest of safety and security of security forces involved in such operations and civilians.

Expressing concern over continued violations, the then UPA Government concluded that any coverage violating such norms amount to coverage against the interests of the nation, he added.
Read Dan and Mark's posts earlier this week:



Child in Polio-like Cluster Linked to Californias Winemaking Industry and

Polio-like Cluster in California Has Eerie Echoes

By Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill

One of the California children with polio-like symptoms ate raspberries right before she got sick, her mother said Wednesday -- but that didn't seem to set off any alarm bells about pesticide residue from the medical experts investigating the baffling outbreak.

She was wheezing, then she had lunch with raspberries and then we went to [the] pediatrician's office where they said she sounded like asthma, Jessica Tomei said in an email, describing the symptoms her daughter, Sofia Jarvis, experienced in November 2012.

On the way home she threw up. The next day we were in the hospital. 5 days later her arm was paralyzed. I kept mentioning the raspberries but botulism was ruled out.

Doctors and public health officials have focused on microbes in their hunt for the cause of the cluster, which so far comprises five children in the San Francisco Bay area and a reported 20 more throughout the state. The five cases occurred between August 2012 and July 2013. Officials said a rare enterovirus  a stomach bug  was detected in two of the cases.

But given Jessica Tomeis account, pesticide residue seems to us like a prime suspect. Fruit is notoriously difficult to grow organically and without pesticides, Jeff Moyer, farm director at the Rodale Institute, an organic research institution, is quoted as saying on the institutes Web site. According to the institute, Because most fruits have soft skins, the pesticides that are used to kill those bugs (and the molds and fungi that also love fruit) get into the flesh and into your mouth, and no amount of peeling or washing can remove them.

We reported Wednesday morning that Sofias parents, Jessica Tomei and Jeff Jarvis, are professional winemakers, but her mother was dubious of a chemical connection via that route. On Wednesday, she mentioned the raspberries as a likelier source of pesticide.

She had raspberries the morning of her illness -- they ruled out botulism. If what you are saying is true, perhaps the raspberries played a part. I believe more chemicals are used in that type of agriculture vs. vineyard. Interesting thoughts.

In our 2011 series, The Age of Polio  How an Old Virus and New Toxins Triggered a Man-made Epidemic, we proposed that beginning in the late 1800s, the poliovirus  for millennia a harmless enterovirus  was rendered dangerous by its interaction with the new agricultural pesticide lead arsenate. Our theory: the pesticide caused damage that allowed the virus to penetrate the nervous system and reach the spinal cord, where it caused the paralysis called poliomyelitis.
We were the first to report last month that the CDC was informing state health departments of a new wave of acute flaccid myelitis (AFM) cases starting this summer, and we again put forward our idea that the environment, probably in the form of pesticides but whatever the case something besides a microbe, was involved. (Some of our readers will suspect vaccines, which is also certainly plausible.) AFM is basically medical code for WTF?, since it does not describe an infection but a condition. It's like calling poliomyelitis infantile paralysis, the term it went by before anyone figure out what was going on.

Sofia had been hospitalized and gotten an IV antibiotic in the same arm that became paralyzed, which is similar to the provocation polio caused by needle sticks that allowed the virus to travel, through a process called reversal axonal transport, to the anterior horn cells at the top of the spinal column that control movement. (It was upon hearing about this phenomenon while we worked on our 2010 book The Age of Autism that Mark and I looked deeper at polio. It seemed to mimic a process we were investigating involving the combination of syphilis and mercury treatment triggering the worst form of that disease, general paralysis of the insane. Note paralysis.)

Now it pays to be humble in the face of a new illness. There was a lot going on in this cluster of early cases, which spread from California and Colorado to Illinois and across the country before seeming to fade out last year (its back now on a scary cycle that also recalls the periodicity of polio). Some of those patients two years ago tested positive for EV-68, a virus in the same enterovirus family as polio, but others didnt, and a conclusive link between the infection and the neurological damage couldn't be made in any case.

So when this new outbreak of polio-like paralysis among children arose in California, we looked into it. We interviewed the mother of a child, Sofia Jarvis, who developed a paralyzed arm, and we came up with a possible pesticide connection. Heres a screen grab from a story Mark and I wrote in April 2014 .

Here at AOA, which focuses on autism and other environmental, man-made threats to childrens health, we first called out this issue as urgent in early 2014 because it lined up eerily with work Mark Blaxill and I had done about the original paralysis-inducing epidemics of poliomyelitis. In 2011, we first proposed a new theory for those outbreaks  suggesting the poliovirus combined with novel manmade toxins, most notably the pesticide lead arsenate, to kick off the Age of Polio. The ideas is simple: Toxin plus microbe = polio outbreaks. Without the toxin, polio is a minor, often unnoticed infection. With it, the virus can gain access to the nervous system and cause polio's dreaded effects.

The alarm bells are ringing louder over the increasing number of cases of sudden paralysis among children in the United States. But the predictable focus on germs by disease hunters is obscuring what surely must be a strong environmental component.

It's the same old story: The mainstream  in medicine, in big media, in the government  seems resistant to the point of oblivion to the idea that the environment, especially manmade chemicals and medical interventions, especially ones they create and promote, could have anything to do with human health. It is after all the Centers for Disease Control that takes the lead and tracks the numbers in these things, and we know from close experience  autism  that they cant (or wont) get their mind around the idea of environmentally induced epidemics, especially not when they get money from epidemic-deniers and make their living studying the creepy-crawly end of the disease-causing spectrum. The idea that some dumb manmade chemical like a pesticide (or thimerosal) could tip the body's exquisite but delicate balance into a new epidemic of illness just does not compute. They seem to forget that something is new here; new means novel, and novel implies either some mutating or new virus, or a toxin that wasn't there before in the way it is now.

So when EV-68 starts to look dubious as the cause, they widen their aperture just enough to fit in every other germ known to mankind (but not manmade chemicals like lead arsenate or DDT or the new generation that appears to be killing bees wholesale, and maybe bats, and maybe now children). That reliable CDC downspout The Huffington Post (which after years of being friendly to the vaccine-autism concept got bought up and out by AOL and now Verizon and promptly shut up) reported this week under the headline A Mysterious Neurological Condition Is Paralyzing Children:

One alarming complication is that AFM appears to be triggered by common viruses. Oh, so now its viruses, plural. Experts arent sure what causes AFM, as scientists havent been able to consistently isolate a germ in a patients spinal fluid that could explain what triggered the condition.



A germ  it must be a germ. That is the box outside of which we will not get as long as those inside the germ paradigm are running the show. And since they cant find a germ it must be any number of germs, none of which, as far as I know, has been implicated in any way but hey, lets toss em out there: They have found that it appears to be triggered by a variety of diseases, including viral infections like West Nile virus, Japanese encephalitis virus, the virus that causes polio and those that can cause the common cold, pneumonia, bladder infection or gastroenteritis.

Well theres a greasy nothingburger of causation gibberish if Ive ever tasted one. First of all why weren't these things triggering mayhem five years ago? We have a truly scary and rising epidemic of childhood paralysis under way and the CDC has no idea whats happening. Hey, it could be EV-68, or any other viral infection like West Nile, or Japanese encephalitis, or polio, or the common cold, or a bladder infection, or a stomach bug. Anything the CDC is in charge of figuring it out, and nothing its not.

The HuffPo story is written by someone passingly familiar with medical issues, someone obviously not suited to push this story forward rather than stenographically repeat the CDC, containing half-somnambulant statements like this:

Its important to note that despite the spike in case reports, the condition is still exceedingly rare; less than one in one million people in America will experience it. And how in the heck do they know that less than one million people are going to experience this thing? The rate right now might be one in one million, but it is increasing, you dodoheads! Thats what dangerous diseases can do! And it is paralyzing kids. Quit worrying about the flu and start worrying about some new polio-like thing that is leaving children paralyzed for life from the nose down, and killing others outright.

There's always a chipper quality to these things. The LA Times made it into a mother's quest for answers, which is wonderful but needs a lot of help and not just cheerleading; HuffPo offered this: "Complicating matters is that doctors arent sure how to treat a child once acute flaccid myelitis is present." How do you sit at your laptop and write soulless dreck like that? The reality that a paralytic and sometimes fatal disease cannot be treated at all is not a complication, people! It's a nightmare.

Im sticking with the pesticide idea, in part because it certainly hasnt been looked at but most of all because of of our work on polio and our reporting on raspberries. Raspberries? In the recent Washington State outbreak, two children were from Whatcom County. Look it up  the place is an agricultural heartland stretching clear accord the northern tier of that state. According to Bellingham.org:

With 140 miles of marine shoreline and 100,000 acres of highly productive farmland, Bellingham and Whatcom County, Washington are a fresh food haven stretching deliciously between the Salish Sea and snow-capped Mount Baker, near the U.S.  Canada border.

Farm production in Whatcom County ranks in the top three percent of all counties in the United States. Whatcom County is also the nations largest producer of red raspberries, growing 60 percent of the U.S. crop, first in the nation for milk production per cow, and first out of 39 Washington state counties in overall dairy production.

Being the nations largest producer of red raspberries gives me a hill because it reminds me of the story we ran more than two years ago now  see the raspberry photo above. Little Sofia ate raspberries the morning she started getting sick. Her mother told the doctors about it. But since Sofia didnt have botulism, they discounted any connection. End of story, until this new one: The outbreak is at least partly in raspberry country, and the child who died lived a dozen miles or so from Lynden, Washington, home of the Northwest Raspberry Festival every July.

Its not that raspberries cause paralysis or that these two facts prove causation. But it makes me want to keep looking. That small round buckyball sphere is just perfect for conveying more than its share of toxic agricultural chemical per mouthful. If you were to pick an advance warning system that our food might be awash in manmade impurities creating a terrifying new disease, a humble little raspberry might be an ideal contrivance. It has more surface area than Norway has shoreline and it is damnably hard to keep sterile. We wrote in 2014:

Pesticide residue seems to us like a prime suspect. Fruit is notoriously difficult to grow organically and without pesticides,' Jeff Moyer, farm director at the Rodale Institute, an organic research institution, is quoted as saying on the institutes Web site. According to the institute, Because most fruits have soft skins, the pesticides that are used to kill those bugs (and the molds and fungi that also love fruit) get into the flesh and into your mouth, and no amount of peeling or washing can remove them.

And you cant peel a raspberry.

--

Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism.
To give thanks to all the officers and deputies around Aiken County a Law Enforcement Appreciation Day cookout was held at Lakeside Baptist Ch
Andrew Thompson, a former spokesman of Scuttle's Island water park, appears at a press conference to discuss the proposed attraction that's now facing Chapter 7 liquidation.
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The dust settled and operations returned to normal this week at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico, after an underground 
November 4, 2016

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud-led coalition opened the winter session of the Israeli Knesset with a decision by coalition members to walk out every time a member of the Joint List  a unified slate of predominantly Arab parties  speaks. The move, initiated by hard-liner Minister of Defense Avigdor Liberman, came as a punishment for Arab Israeli members of Knesset who did not attend former Israeli President Shimon Peres funeral on Sept. 30.

In response, all 13 members of the Joint List walked out of the Knesset when Netanyahu addressed the session on Oct. 31. The decision of the Likud-led coalition has little more than symbolic value, and it is not expected to last more than a week, according to multiple sources contacted by Al-Monitor.

Speaking to Al-Monitor, Aida Tuma-Suleiman, one of the leading members of the Joint List, expressed her bewilderment at Netanyahus hypocrisy in regards to Peres. When Peres was alive, Netanyahu was constantly inciting against him.

Tuma-Suleiman believes that the Israeli prime minister takes advantage of every opportunity to slander us and, through us, the Arab population in Israel. She added, He doesnt have the right to punish us for expressing our political beliefs. Netanyahu doesnt care about us staying away from the funeral of Peres; he simply uses every occasion he finds to attack us.

Smadar Perry, senior reporter at the widely circulated Yedioth Ahronoth, told Al-Monitor that the absence of the Arab Joint List Knesset members at Peres funeral was a mistake. They infuriated not only the Israeli Jews, but their own constituency.

The veteran Israeli journalist was more critical of the list leaders such as Ayman Odeh and Ahmad Tibi. I dont have great expectations from Hanin Zoabi or Jamal Zahalkeh. I was expecting something more clever from Tibi and Odeh. If Abu Mazen [President Mahmoud Abbas] is attending, they should be more sophisticated by sending a different message.

Tuma-Suleiman, however, rejected these attacks. I know that Jewish Israelis were unhappy with our decision not to attend the Peres funeral. Our political compass should not be whether we please this group or that, but whether we are true to our principles, our political approach and our public, she said. All 13 members of the Joint List decided to boycott the Peres funeral.

Tuma-Suleiman, who is the only Arab member to chair a Knesset committee (the Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality), did admit to Al-Monitor that she and her parliamentarian colleagues have failed to make a breakthrough into the Israeli public, saying, We need to make serious advancements into the Israeli media in order to explain our positions to the Israeli public.

Despite the mutual boycotts between Netanyahu and the Arab Knesset members, the Joint List was able to table a resolution on the first day of the Knessets opening session. Reut Mor, a media adviser to Odeh, the head of the Joint List, told Al-Monitor that a resolution initiated by the Joint List regarding Holocaust survivors was passed on the first reading on Oct. 31.

Seth Frantzman, the Jerusalem Posts opinion page editor, told Al-Monitor that the recriminating boycotts will not last. The issue of the boycott seems a bit silly. The populist right and center are just using this as an excuse to show they stand up to the Joint List," he said.

However, Frantzman warned that the societal division is likely to stay. The boycotts will fade away, but they symbolize a real boycott in the views of the other in society  the chasm of understanding between the different groups. That won't fade, he concluded.

The Israeli editor is referring to the division that is widening between citizens of Israel  whether they are Jews or Arabs, Ethiopians, religious or secular. Conflicts between various groups reflect a high level of intolerance in Israeli society.

There is no doubt that the mutual boycotts between the Likud-led coalition and the Arab Joint List and the recriminatory language that has followed is a reflection of deep fractures that dont bode well for the relationship of citizens in Israel. The ruling powers in Israel are clearly trying to integrate Palestinian citizens of Israel into the Israeli economy, which is to its favor.

The ruling Israeli right-wing powers, however, are drawing the line when it comes to collective rights and national identity. The idea that they can buy their way into forcing Palestinian citizens of Israel to submit to these Israeli dictates are clearly the focus of the current political struggle  and no one knows how it will come out. The continuity and survival of a 13-member Arab bloc in the 120-member Knesset cant be easily erased. That this unity would last this long has clearly caught the Israeli political establishment off guard. The Joint List won 13 seats during the March 2015 elections.

By staying united and refusing to bow to pressure, the Arab Joint List has shown unprecedented resilience and strength. No effort to boycott or sideline the Arab legislatures, who represent 20% of the citizens of Israel, will succeed as long as they stay united.
November 4, 2016

In an alley in Cairos populous Shubra neighborhood, tattoo artist Osama Ayoub challenges stereotypes by inking peoples bodies in a conservative and religious society that considers body art a taboo.

Despite social pressure and deeply rooted traditional ideas, I have been running a very successful business so far, Ayoub told Al-Monitor while tattooing a young woman. The art is getting more and more popular here, he added.

Ayoub, who has been tattooing for about 20 years, said he gets two customers every day on average. Egyptians love art, and tattoos have a very unique artistic side, the veteran tattoo artist added.

Ayoub, nicknamed Osos, was originally a barber. He was working at a barber's shop in Shubra while studying commerce at the same time. Then, he traveled to the United States where he learned tattooing. I have been lucky to work with many professional tattoo artists who taught me the secret of the practice, he said.

After learning the basics of the body art, Ayoub returned to Egypt where he started practicing tattooing. First, I began working in Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada. But after the revolution, the number of tourists dwindled. So I came back to Shubra, he said.

Although Shubra is not an upscale district and tattooing was not popular at the time across Egypt, Ayoub won widespread popularity. I have gained customers from most segments of the society  young and old, rich and people from the middle class, men and women, Muslims and Christians," said Ayoub.

I have also many customers from several countries all over the world. They come to Egypt to get tattoos as souvenirs and reminders of their journey in the country, he added.

Many Muslims consider tattoos to be impermissible under Islamic law. Coptic Christians, meanwhile, who make up about 10% of the country's population, have long been practicing the art.

At Christian festivals, it is common to see tattoo artists inscribing crosses on the wrists of babies or images of saints on the arms of young men.

Al-Azhar, the highest seat of Sunni Islamic learning, says that tattoos are forbidden in Islam and those people who get tattoos are cursed by God.

Ayoub said that most of those who get inked love to feel different. They love something or someone and they want it on their bodies. This can be a girlfriend or a boyfriend, a wife or a husband, a zodiac sign, among others. These things make him or her feel unique, he explained.

Other customers usually love to get inked as a kind of psychological and physical treatment. It is not just a tattoo, Maryam Bolas, a 25-year-old woman who got her first tattoo a few days ago, told Al Monitor. It is a kind of relief and cure, she added.

Bolas said she has been suffering from acute depression for several years but has now gotten through it. She believes that inking the tattoo of Warrior on her wrist will always remind her of her perseverance and get her out of any future depression. I think that it will give me a push to keep up with my life, she said.

Although her parents did not accept her getting inked, Maryam was determined to have that tattoo. It is my desire and my decision. And I think that I am adult enough to decide for myself, she said. That tattoo will breathe life back into me, she added.

A young, veiled woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said she has not told her parents about the hidden tattoo she has had above her breast for years because she is afraid of them. Of course, I have not told. If I told them, they would have killed me, she told Al-Monitor.

In Egypt, many people prefer to get their tattoos in areas where they can be hidden with clothes.

The veiled woman said she got inked because the tattoo gives her positive energy and power to get over all obstacles. I have also been through very hard times, and the tattoo helps me not to [go] back to these times, she added.

Mohab, another young tattoo lover, said he likes tattoos because they represent a distinguished kind of art. I am so fond of any art. I love the ink, the pain and the noisy sound of the tattoo gun and how it draws things that I love on my body, he added.

Antoan, a Jordanian tattoo artist who refused to disclose his last name, said that tattoo artists in Egypt, however, face many challenges working openly in such a conservative society and also amid government bureaucracy.

Tattoo shops are loosely regulated in Egypt and mostly performed by artists using licenses for beauty parlors and barbers.

We struggle here. Actually, we have been through many ups and downs. I think that tattoo artists across the conservative Middle East region are struggling. But I believe that such a struggle and these obstacles push us to work harder to pursue our passion, Antoan, who is sharing a tattoo shop in Cairo, said.

Antoan added that it would take years for people to accept the art of tattoos in a country like Egypt. But it will happen one day. From the time of the pharaohs, Egyptians have always been known for loving art, and tattooing can be found in Egyptian ancient history, he added.

Examples of Egyptian tattoos date back to the Middle Kingdom (about 2000 B.C.). Several tattooed mummies of women were found at Deir el-Bahari, which is a complex of mortuary temples and tombs located on the west bank of the Nile, opposite the city of Luxor.

The markings mainly consist of dots and dashes, often grouped into geometrical patterns such as lozenges, and are usually placed on the chest, the abdomen, the arms or the legs.
November 4, 2016

An investigative report published Oct. 30 by the financial daily Calcalist in cooperation with The Public Knowledge Workshop reveals that Ariel University in the Samaria district is the beneficiary of massive state funding. In fact, its the best funded university in Israel, while other academic institutions are crippled by enormous deficits.

According to the report, since 2007, Ariel University has been given some 162 million shekels ($42 million) through various contractual engagements with state institutions, while other universities received far smaller sums, some negligible. For example, Hebrew University in Jerusalem got only 63 million shekels ($16.5 million) during those years, and Ben-Gurion University in southern Israel received the least of all at only 2.3 million shekels ($604,000).

Ariel University, formerly Ariel College, was accorded university status only four years ago under political pressure from the right. If it continues with its current growth rate and preferential funding, it could become Israel's biggest and richest university. Indeed, after the school was officially declared a university, a five-year plan was presented calling for massive development, including construction of a giant campus and student center with housing for 7,000 students.

Ariel University was founded in the Jewish West Bank settlement of Kedumim as a regional public college in 1983. In 1991, it moved to the settlement town of Ariel and offered academic studies under the aegis of the recognized university of Bar-Ilan. Former Education Minister Gideon Saar was one of the main proponents of the push to turn it into a university. But Israels Council for Higher Education opposed the move, citing a lack of legal authority to fund and supervise institutions located outside the 1967 borders, known as the Green Line. The government then instructed Maj. Gen. Gadi Shamni, the commander of the central front that includes the West Bank, to appoint six people to serve on what was dubbed the Council for Higher Education of Judea and Samaria. This entity went on to recognize Ariel College as a full-fledged university, and Saar then urged the heads of other Israeli institutions who opposed the move to go embrace your little sister.

But the heads of the other universities not only did not rush to embrace their new sibling, they argued that what was once a mediocre and unimportant college, in their view, is now eating away at more and more budget allocations in various devious ways, just as the settlements have been doing for years.

The 2016 budget of the Council for Higher Education, which details the allocations to all institutions of higher learning, makes no mention of Ariel University's budget since the school is not under the councils purview. But this does not mean the university is being deprived.

The Calcalist investigation indicates that the funding is funneled to Ariel through contracts with the state, obtained by preferential treatment in bids for contracts to provide various services or skipping the bidding process altogether.

Ariel has been getting lots of money over many years for political reasons, the head of one of the universities told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. We are boiling mad at the things going on there. We struggle daily with immense difficulties to keep some of the worlds most reputable and best-known academic institutions afloat. And then the state goes and establishes a special council for higher education, especially for a university that has never received any recognition in the field of research. The data about the funds being funneled to Ariel was never complete and was always hidden between other line items. They get budgeted teaching positions, bus services, scholarships, buildings and dorms. They have established an empire. We feel that any criticism we make is turned against us. Theres nothing that can be done. They control the state.

Zeev Tzahor, one of the founders of Sapir College in the southern town of Sderot, wonders why Ariel should even be considered a university. Colleges have a role in conveying knowledge, he explained to Al-Monitor, whereas the main task of a university is to create knowledge. These are two totally different roles.

Tzahor recalled that even before its recognition as a university, a political figure identified with the right offered to declare Sapir College as a university, too, in a combined move. I said no right away, he said, because a college is something else. The head of my board of governors, Shai Hermesh, was even angry at me because a university means more money.

Yuli Tamir, formerly minister of education and currently the president of Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art Design, said in an interview with Al-Monitor, This is what political budgeting looks like. Quality is second to the goal. She said one can compare the development of the university with the marketing of housing in the settlements by offering Israelis an inexpensive, comfortable and improved lifestyle. Tamir claimed students at Ariel University are offered more housing, for example, compared to other universities, generous scholarships and donations  and these, in turn, contribute to the university thriving and luring young students. This brings the students to live in the territories and, of course, strengthens the settlements, she added.

When I told Tzahor that some of his colleagues in academia had refused to be named in commenting about the Ariel report, he answered, True. One expects people in higher education to be more courageous and firm, but sadly, politicians from the right have stormed the budgets and we have given up.
November 4, 2016

ANJAR, Lebanon  Images of wounded children and displaced families continue to emerge across the Middle East and along the shores of Europe, as the ongoing Mosul offensive has left more than 10,000 Iraqis in refugee camps for the displaced and the Syrian crisis continues to push masses of people to a stateless condition.

Syrians continue to escape war-torn cities and villages that are bearers of daily attacks carried out by a cadre of adversaries that include the Bashar al-Assad regime and its allies, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), terror groups and mercenary forces. As host countries like Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon continue to struggle with assimilating and supporting the large influx of refugees, a group of young Syrian refugee professionals in Lebanon are striving to break the burdensome stereotypes of refugees.

Many of the refugees you see here in Lebanon wanted to stay in Syria, but had no choice, Dr. Fadi al-Halabi, a Syrian refugee who fled his hometown of Damascus to Lebanon in 2013, told Al-Monitor. He was completing his last year of residency as a neurosurgeon back home, and is currently the general director of Multi Aid Programs (MAPS), a grass-roots organization in Lebanon founded by Halabi and fellow Syrian refugees through the support of a virtual Lebanese board.

Since its establishment in 2013, MAPS has provided various medical and educational services to some 300,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon and has served vulnerable members of the Lebanese host community.

Dr. Ibrahim al-Masri is a Syrian refugee from the suburbs of Damascus who serves as the health program manager of MAPS. We are doing what we can with the limited resources that we have, he told Al-Monitor. According to Masri, who is a physician, 13 Syrian doctors and nurses as well as two Lebanese physicians support 150 patients on a regular basis at MAPS Ghiras al-Khair clinic in Anjar, at a fee of $2 for the Syrians and $6 for the Lebanese. A patient can pay this amount and get any needed service, from dental care to a visit with a nurse or pediatrician.

Halabi said that if professionals like himself and Masri do not provide support for the Syrian refugee population, there is no infrastructure in Lebanon to support this massive influx. We are working hard to keep the integrity of the Syrians, and keep our hope alive, said Halabi, who used to work at a public hospital in the regime-held city of Damascus and was forced to flee his home after two of his fellow physician colleagues were arrested and interrogated by the security forces in Syria over allegations of treating opposition forces.

According to the Physicians for Human Rights campaign, since the beginning of the Syrian crisis, more than 269 hospitals endured over 400 attacks  90% of them conducted by the Assad government and its allies, whose defense department is in charge of the countrys blood banks. These blood banks, according to an August 2016 investigation by The Guardian, have received more than $5 million in aid from the World Health Organization since the beginning of the crisis in 2011.

Being a doctor in Syria is the first and worst person to be accused by either side  the Assad regime accuses you of healing the opposition and the opposition accuses you of healing Assad supporters, said Halabi, as he sat in a modest office in Anjar pointing at the VEX prize the MAPS robotic team won in April for their Hope of Syria robot during the international VEX robotics competition in Kentucky.

Hope is something that is hard to hold on to. Lebanon is the hardest place to be a refugee, said Mohammad al-Masri, a young Syrian teacher who fled his hometown of Homs in 2014. Masri (not a relative of Ibrahim) is MAPS education manager and oversees the organizations informal education programming. He told Al-Monitor that there is a large gap between the work of the UNHCR, what the Lebanese government demands and what Syrian refugees want to do to support their peers in need.

According to both Ibrahim al-Masri and Halabi, health care and education remain the top two challenges for Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Many of them are not registered and live in unofficial camps along Lebanons borders with Syria, and those in the urban areas have no prospect for work or education due to the host countrys limited capacity.

Masri recalls last winter when his pregnant aunt, who fled Homs, was refused admittance by three hospitals in Tripoli as she was bleeding at the entrances of the hospitals. We kept saying that she was bleeding, but they turned us away because they wanted her UNHCR papers first and we didnt have any  the discrimination you feel is heavy and is everywhere, Masri said.

Many of the MAPS employees suggest that if refugee professionals such as doctors and teachers were able to receive a work permit from the Ministry of Labor in Lebanon, they could tackle many challenges, not just for the refugees but also for the Lebanese government that continues to struggle with this influx.

Lebanons Labor Minister Sejaan Azzi told Al-Monitor that his country of 4.5 million people does not have the capacity to either hold the refugees or give them work permits. Lebanon is like a very small hand  it can hold 5 kilograms, but cannot physically hold 15 kilograms. Thats what we are facing today and the solution is for the refugees to go back, Azzi said.

According to reports released by the UNHCR, there are over 1 million registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon. In reality, however, the number is much higher given that many of them are unable to register with the UNHCR because of a 2015 government mandate that stipulates that the government does not want the refugees to stay considering its limited infrastructure and capacity to support this influx of people. This further complicates conditions for refugees whose numbers, according to local nongovernmental organizations, reach close to 2 million.

Despite work permit and funding limitations, and with the financial support of the Qatari Red Crescent and the Syrian American Medical Society, Halabi and his team have built medical clinics and facilities that were not available in their villages and communities. Their services are available for both the refugee population and the Lebanese in the various neighborhoods of Anjar, Arsal and Tripoli. This includes a medical hotline, a mental health clinic, physiotherapy clinic and a modest-sized breast cancer clinic that is the first of its kind in Lebanon.

Even though they currently do not have the capacity to provide surgery or cancer treatment, Masri takes special pride in the newly opened breast cancer clinic in Anjar. He said that the UNHCR does not provide any cancer medication or treatment to refugees, and that the organizations aim is to at least detect and prevent the disease from spreading among women.

In response to possible solutions to alleviate some of the challenges facing this influx, Azzi said, Syrian refugees have to go back and the international community has to find a safe zone in Syria or somewhere else so that these people can go back.

Despite the lack of any proper infrastructure, doctors and educators like those at MAPS are hopeful they can defy these challenges. Halabi said that their vision is not to stay in Lebanon, but to keep working and creating an infrastructure that one day  God willing  we can take back with us to a new Syria.
November 4, 2016

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip  The Ministry of National Economy in the Gaza Strip announced Oct. 31 the cancellation of exclusive commercial agencies granted to a number of traders. These traders had monopolized the importation of some basic commodities, such as baby formula, gluten-free wheat and cleaning products, as well as some nonbasic commodities, under exclusive agency agreements between them and foreign companies.

The ministry said the decision, which will become effective at a maximum of six months, would curb rising prices in favor of consumers.

Undersecretary of the ministry in Gaza, Ayman al-Abed, told the Palestinian Press Agency that the monopoly by a large number of traders over commodities and their prices in Gaza triggered the decision to cancel exclusive agencies. "The ministry called on traders to regularize their situation before the entry into force of the decision, within six months at the latest, in consultation with their respective legal counsel," he said.

The decision to cancel exclusive agencies stirred the wrath of companies with exclusive importation licenses, many of which attempted to pressure the ministry into reconsidering its decision. Some traders tried to use their connections with senior officials at the ministry, but to no avail.

It should be noted that the Ministry of Economy did not provide any statistics on this issue, which also angered the concerned traders, who described the decision as unjustified.

Salah al-Din Makadmeh, the marketing and public relations director of Mareb Co. for Trading & Industry, denounced the ministry's move, describing it as a "unilateral decision." He told Al-Monitor, "Instead of taking an arbitrary unilateral decision, the Ministry of Economy should have discussed such a decision with us and with all parties concerned with consumer protection."

Maher al-Tabbah, an economist and the director of public relations and media at the Chamber of Commerce in Gaza, told Al-Monitor that the move reflects the government's indifference to the interests of the private sector. "Such decisions should have been taken based on in-depth studies and continuous consultation through workshops with the private sector, where all participants would convince each other of the appropriate steps to ensure local consumer protection," he said. "If the ministry's decision aims to protect the consumer's purchasing power and reduce prices, such a decision must also protect the interest of the private sector."

Makadmeh explained, "The ministry's justifications are unacceptable and inaccurate, we do not monopolize the commodities and we are not behind the rise in prices. For example, Mareb Co. has Egyptian, Turkish and other agency agreements to import foodstuffs, baby diapers and raw materials. There are numerous imported alternatives for our products in the market. We do not want to pressure the consumer into buying the goods we are offering. We know the prices of our products are high, but so is their level of quality compared to the alternatives available in the market. Ultimately, the consumer always has the freedom of choice."

Makadmeh expects this step will lead to the counterfeiting of brands and quality fraud. He warned the government of the disputes that will flare up among traders as a result of this decision. "These traders worked very hard to obtain these exclusive agencies and licenses and maintain consumer satisfaction by offering high-quality goods. They spent huge amounts of money on commercial campaigns to promote their products," he said. "They will not easily allow other traders to import the products subject to their exclusive commercial agencies."

He added, "If the ministry is really concerned with the consumer it must supervise the products supplied to the local market, which do not meet the minimum packaging standards. Many of these goods do not indicate their country of origin and do not meet the marking and labeling requirements."

But Rami Abu al-Rish, registrar of commercial agencies at the ministry in Gaza and director-general of trade and border crossings, told Al-Monitor, "The ministry wisely examined its decision to cancel commercial agencies to prevent a specific category of traders from monopolizing the import of basic and nonbasic commodities and to reduce the prices of goods that are currently under this monopoly. Only around 50 traders have importation licenses in the Gaza Strip."

He said, "The cancellation of exclusive agencies will allow small importers to conduct import activities, which will reflect positively on local consumers due to the end of the monopoly. This will also lead to the emergence of diverse products and multiple importation companies, and a price decrease of 20-30%, particularly the price of basic goods, such as cleaning products, and food commodities such as baby formula, gluten-free wheat and frying oil."

In a related context, Rish believes that the decision to cancel exclusive agencies has angered Israeli authorities, which communicated with traders in Gaza to ask them about the government's motives behind the decision. "Exclusive agencies are an integral part of the Israeli blockade policy on Gaza," said Rish. "Around 20 traders from among the 50 traders [in Gaza] who hold exclusive import licenses also hold import licenses from Israeli companies.  Since the 2007 blockade, the Israeli authorities deliberately and repeatedly reduced the number of trucks transporting goods to the Gaza Strip, to decrease supply in domestic markets. This has led to higher prices. Within the last five days, the number of trucks declined from 300 to 190 trucks per day."

Rish explained that just like the blockade imposed on Gaza, exclusive commercial agencies also put pressure on the consumer, since some traders deliberately take advantage of the lack of imports to raise prices and reap more profits.

Economist Ayman Abu Aisha told Al-Monitor that the government's decision is a confused decision void of any new economic vision. "It is an acquired right for any trader to have an exclusive agency," he said, "and the cancellation of such exclusive agencies is a violation of the property rights and would lead to the emergence of a black market, where products would be sold outside the formal market, due to uncontrolled prices. Should a number of traders import different quantities of the same commodity, the price of the product will differ, due to different importation cost."

He also added, "Developed countries resort to exclusive importation agencies to restructure their economy, support their domestic production and apply the import substitution strategy aimed to replace foreign imports with domestic production. Yet, the cancellation of exclusive agencies in Gaza would undermine the Ministry's declared policy of protecting local products."

He stressed that the alternative is to adopt other policies based on lowering taxes, preventing double taxation, subsidizing local products and encouraging domestic production.

Abu Aisha linked the government's decision to its need for additional tax revenues to pay employee salaries. "The government secures 45% of Gaza employees' basic salaries from tax revenues," he said. "It seeks through this decision to increase the number of importing traders and thus increase its revenues from taxes on imported goods."

While the government insists on its decision to allow new traders to import as a way to broaden the tax base, some traders continue with their opposition. Meanwhile, consumers wait to see whether their purchasing power and the quality of the products will be affected.
November 4, 2016

The Palestinian government continues to talk about its fiscal deficit and questions its ability to meet Palestinians' economic needs. Most recently on Oct. 24, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah said that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is facing a severe financial crisis, calling on nations and donors to fulfill their obligations toward the Palestinians per the Oslo Accord signed between Palestinians and Israelis in 1993.

On Oct. 30, the director of the Budget Department at the Palestinian Ministry of Finance, Farid Ghannam, pointed to Saudi Arabia's failure to meet its financial obligations toward the PA since April, noting that the value of this seven-month failed contribution is estimated at $140 million. Ever since January 2013, Riyadh has raised the sum of its monthly financial support to the PA from $14 million to $20 million.

On Oct. 26, Ahmad Majdalani, a member of the PLO's Executive Committee, confirmed that the PA has not been receiving financial support from Saudi Arabia. He attributed this to economic factors in light of the Saudi Treasurys economic crisis due to the war it is fighting in Yemen and the oil prices slump.

Al-Monitor tried to contact Ghannam several times but to no avail. However, a former Palestinian minister of economy who is familiar with the PAs financial status, told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, The PA wanted to keep Saudi Arabias failure to provide financial support away from the media, because it does not want to create any tension. The PAs officials contacted their Saudi counterparts to find out the reason behind the delay in funds but have yet to receive any answers.

In addition to Saudi Arabias failure to meet its financial obligations toward the PA, the relationship between the two parties has been declining against the backdrop of President Mahmoud Abbas failure to reconcile with Hamas and to respond to the Arab Quartets demands to allow Mohammed Dahlan back into Fatah's ranks after Abbas dismissed him from the movement in May 2011. The internal Fatah dispute is also a reason for the decline in the PAs relationships with Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Jamal Nassar, the chairman of the budget committee in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), told Al-Monitor, Saudi Arabia's failure to pay its share of support for the PA is mainly due to political reasons in light of the chill in the political relations between the two. The lack of Saudi support will certainly affect the PAs budget and this will be evident in future measures such as reducing the government expenditure in vital aspects such as staff salaries and operating expenses, per the finance minister's decisions.

Other donor countries also halted their financial support to the PA, such as Britain, which decided Oct. 7 to freeze 25-million pounds (about $31 million) worth of financial support to the PA, a third of the annual British aid to the PA. The reason is that Britain feared the money would be used to fund armed Palestinian operations against Israelis and their families.

On Sept. 15, a World Bank report stated that the Palestinian economy is facing a budgetary crisis because foreign aid to the PA dropped by 50% in the past three years, putting huge pressure on the budget.

For his part, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Malki said Sept. 9 that foreign support for the PA dropped by 70% compared to 2014 and 2015. The PAs financial situation requires seeking new sources, like the Arab states, to overcome the tough situation. He demanded to supply an Arab security network that would give the PA $100 million monthly to face its financial crises and pressure.

Nasser Abdel Karim, an economics teacher at Birzeit University, told Al-Monitor, Stopping Saudi support might not have a negative impact on the Palestinian budget. The proof is that the PA is paying its employees salaries normally despite the halted Saudi aid since months. The PA is increasingly relying on financial resources from taxes, customs, fees and offsetting charges. These amount to around $250 million per month, which means Saudi Arabia's $20 million constitute less than 10% of Palestinian local funds. The Saudi decision will not have a huge impact. However, it might push the PA to austerity measures and expenditure cuts to maintain its financial stability.

Palestinians are well-aware that the Gulf states financial aid, like Saudi Arabias, is conditional, even if indirectly. The aid banks on the PAs commitment to the general political line of the kingdom. When Palestinians deviated from this, the support of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states stopped, namely as soon as late PA President Yasser Arafat supported Iraqs invasion of Kuwait in 1990. It was then that the Gulf states decided to kick out the Palestinians living in these countries and cut off funding to the PLO before the PA was established in 1993.

Khalil Shaheen, the director of the Palestinian Center for Policy Research and Strategic Studies - Masarat, told Al-Monitor, When Saudi Arabia halted its aid to the PA, it was clearly expressing the decline and coldness in relations between them. Palestinian officials statements reflected this decline on Sept. 1 when they attacked the stances of some Arab capitals [without specifying which ones] for meddling with Palestinian affairs and considered these interventions an Arab desire to impose tutelage on Palestinians. Perhaps the statements did not resonate well in Saudi Arabia, hence the decision to stop its financial aid to the PA.

Although the PA has broken the silence and announced Saudi Arabias decision to halt its aid, the kingdoms next step toward Ramallah is hard to predict as it has yet to confirm or deny said news. Will the aid halt persist, or will Saudi Arabia take back its decision and resume helping the Palestinians? And will this depend on the PAs agreement to meet Saudi Arabias demands in the internal Palestinian issues like reconciliation between Abbas and Hamas, or Abbas and Dahlan?
November 4, 2016

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey  Candidates who subscribed to the Kurdistan Workers Party's (PKK) politics were elected as mayors for the first time in the 1999 local elections.

In that landmark election, the Peoples' Democracy Party (HADEP) won 37 municipalities including metropolitan Diyarbakir. Feridun Celik was the first pro-PKK mayor of the city. One day in February 2000, less than a year after the elections, Celik was stopped by police. He was detained together with the mayors of Siirt and Bingol on charges of assisting the PKK. The detention of HADEP mayors triggered instant tension in the region. Thousands of people assembled in front of the municipality and protested for days on end despite occasional police intervention. The mayors were released a few days later to be tried without detention.

16 years later on Oct. 25, Diyarbakir Metropolitan Municipality was the target of another operation. Co-mayors Gultan Kisanak and Firat Anli were detained on charges of "membership in a terror organization." Police and gendarmerie squads raided and searched the municipality offices. As the search went on, few municipality workers and residents waited outside. There were some occasional minor protests in front of the building, as the co-mayors were kept in detention for five days, just like 16 years ago  but it's different this time.

While the streets were angry when HADEP mayors were arrested 16 years ago, protests this time were low key and participation was insignificant. According to pro-government media, Kurds are not supporting their politicians anymore. Selahattin Demirtas, co-chair of the major Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), noted the situation in a meeting attended by Al-Monitor. He said, There is nothing they can do except repression. They are standing up thanks to the state of emergency. Protests are banned; so are demonstrations and politics. With whatever power we have in 81 provinces, be it five or 10 people, we will come out to the streets peacefully.

The security measures Demirtas was referring to are now permanent features of the streets. Any location that could be used to demonstrate for the mayors' release was blocked off by the police. Hundreds of police were tasked with preventing illegal demonstrations. Another security measure that caught great attention was the disruption of internet connections at the same times as protests. The municipality was surrounded by police barriers and vehicles.

Only the municipality staff were allowed into the building. People predicted that all these measures were a prelude to the appointment of a government-elected trustee to run the municipality. They were right. For the first time since the military coup of Sept. 12, 1980, a trustee was appointed by the government. The new administrator took over the next day.

Kurdish politicians were angry, but the streets remained calm. Why?

Cihan Ipek, a member of the board of the Diyarbakir-based Dicle Social Research Center and a lawyer by profession, said the appointment of a trustee was not legal. Speaking to Al Monitor, Ipek said, A mayor can commit crime. Within the perimeters of law, you can take him to court. If you have strong proof, you can punish him. If he is disqualified because of a crime he committed, a new mayor will be elected according to the law on local administrations. But we saw nothing legal was done to replace the mayors in total defiance of the law. This was a political decision.

According to Ipek, the cause of the subdued public reaction is the prevailing atmosphere of fear in which city residents are living. He added, We are under a regime of emergency. An authoritarian power does what it wants, ignoring law, basic rights and freedoms. I dont think the people's passiveness means their approval of the action taken by the state. Democratic reactions need democratic means of expression.

Associate law professor Vahap Coskun of Dicle University also thinks the appointment of a trustee is problematic. Speaking to Al Monitor, Coskun said, The government, benefiting from state of emergency provisions, immediately resorted to issuing decrees with the power of law. That is extremely troublesome because it totally sidelines the parliament. The charges listed against Kisanak and Anli cannot persuade the public, who by large believe that what they see is not a legal but a political process.

Coskun said fear cannot be the only explanation for the weak public reaction. He said it is also a protest of Kurdish politics. The state of emergency has created an intimidating atmosphere. People are reluctant to go out to the streets and believe engaging in protests could cost them heavily. That is why they are restraining their reactions. Their silence is not only because of the state of emergency. People were truly disappointed by the lack of democratic reaction to the ditches dug by the PKK in towns. People were justifiably questioning why the support they gave to the HDP in elections was translated into violence in towns. The HDP's weakness in opposing ditches and barriers in towns led the people to distance themselves from the PKK and the HDP. They no [longer] listen to calls of the PKK and the HDP. So if there is so little public reaction this time, it is time for the HDP and the PKK to come to terms with the fruits of their political choices. If people dont go out to the streets today, it is because of those ditches and barriers. People are truly worried with the events in their region and the Middle East. I believe people are much more careful when they go out nowadays.

The suspension of thousands of public servants who used to participate in mass protests is another reason for low attendance in protests. Many are afraid of losing their jobs. Nevertheless, not many believe that the current meekness of reactions will continue for long. There are genuine fears that if the situation doesnt change, reactions could erupt in a much more violent manner.

The detention of 12 HDP parliamentarians on Nov. 4 may well provide that spark.
The UAB Educational Foundation has purchased the on-campus DoubleTree by Hilton for $6.7 million.

UAB owns the land at University Boulevard and 20th Street South that the hotel sits on. The Foundation is seeking feedback before renovating the hotel.

Renovations are expected to take 18 months, and the 298-room hotel will stay open during the renovations. The hotel is 15,000 square feet.

The Educational Foundation has retained Pyramid Hotel Group to manage the hotel.

"The hotel occupies an important location and is uniquely suited to meet demands of the university campus," Jodie Mote, Educational Foundation treasurer and controller, said in a statement. "The significant planned upgrades will transform the facility to better support UAB and the broader community's needs."
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Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus speaks Friday, Nov. 4, 2016, at the Austal Inc. shipyard in Mobile, Alabama. Visible behind him is the expeditionary fast transport ship USNS Yuma, EPF 8, which hit the water in mid-September. (Lawrence Specker/LSpecker@AL.com)

Here are the top stories in Alabama business for Friday, Nov. 4, 2016:

Books-A-Million will begin selling self-published books as part of a new partnership with Silicon Valley tech firm FastPencil. Through the new partnership, authors won't only be able to publish their own books, but to actually get them on shelves.

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The UAB Educational Foundation has purchased the on-campus DoubleTree by Hilton for $6.7 million. UAB owns the land at University Boulevard and 20th Street South that the hotel sits on. The Foundation is seeking feedback before renovating the hotel.

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Elected officials, nonprofit representatives and others cut the ribbon Friday for the Fuse Factory, a 6,000-square-foot nonprofits-only workspace in downtown Mobile. Fuse Factory is a side venture of the Fuse Project, a four-year-old nonprofit founded by Grant and Breannne Zarzour.

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Outgoing Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus said Friday during a visit to Austal's shipyard in Mobile that Austal will have a bright future. Mabus is a former governor of Mississippi whose eight years as secretary will end with the close of the Obama administration.

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There are two potential buyers for more than 13 acres of riverfront property along the Coosa River. The National Auction Group announced an auction Thursday ended with one high bid among five bidders.

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Huntsville voters have another option to get to the polls on Tuesday: Zipcar is making select vehicles free to its members on election night from 6 p.m. until 10 p.m. Polls in Madison County close at 7 p.m. - one hour after the free cars become available - but anyone in line at 7 p.m. will be allowed to vote.

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Follow all of Alabama's business news here anytime.
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Jesse Reid, Jayden Scearcy and Donna Scearcy

Two missing children from Anniston were found today in Indiana, police confirmed.

Jayden Scearcy, 13, and Jesse Reid, 4, were reportedly abducted from the Anniston area on Tuesday by their grandmother, Donna Scearcy, 56, according to police and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

They were thought to be traveling to Lafayette, Ind.

The children were found safe, police said.

Donna Scearcy was arrested and charged with kidnapping of a minor.

No other details were immediately available for release.
Anniston police are looking for two children missing from Calhoun County.

Sgt. Kyle Price said 13-year-old Jayden Scearcy and 4-year-old Jesse Reid apparently left the Anniston area on Tuesday. They have not returned and may be traveling to the Lafayette, Ind. area.

Price said the two may be in a 1999 Green Pontiac Montana, with Indiana tag USM486.

Reed is described as standing 3 feet 6 inches tall and weighing about 50 pounds, with blonde or strawberry blonde hair.

Scearcy stands about 5 feet tall and weighs about 80 pounds, with blonde or strawberry blonde hair.

Anyone who has any information about them are asked to contact the Anniston Police Department at (256) 238-1800.
An Etowah County man has been charged with trafficking in spice and marijuana possession.

Etowah County Drug Enforcement Unit Commander Randall Johnson said Emanuel Thomas, 28, is being held in the Etowah County Detention Center.

Gadsden police reponded Wednesday to a call on North 9th Street of two men, one of whom was suspected of stealing a car on Tuesday. One of the men was Thomas, who had two outstanding warrants with the sheriff's office for failure to pay fines.

During a search, officers found a "large amount of spice," marijuana, and $2,370 in cash in a backpack. Thomas is being held on a $26,000 cash bond.

The FBI North Alabama Safe Streets Task Force took part in the arrest.
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Zackary Kuykendall, left, and Jimmy Suggs (Boulder County Sheriff's Office)

Two Alabama men charged with starting a Colorado wildlife that burned 600 acres and destroyed eight homes in July pleaded guilty to arson on Friday.

Jimmy Andrew Suggs, 28, and Zackary Ryan Kuykendall, 26, both of Vinemont in Cullman County, pleaded guilty in Boulder County, Colo. to fourth-degree arson/endangering people, a Class 4 felony, the Boulder Daily Camera reported.

A trespassing charge filed against both men was dropped as well as a possession of a weapon charge against Suggs.

Both men will be sentenced on Nov. 18. Suggs faces a sentence of two to six years in prison while Kuykendall could receive a sentence of four to 12 years because he was on probation in Alabama at the time of the fire.

According to the report, the men, along with Elizabeth Burdeshaw, 21, also from Alabama, illegally camped for several nights on private property near the small mountain town of Nederland, which is outside of Boulder.

Police said the men started the fire with lighters and didn't extinguish the blaze. Suggs and Kuykendall reportedly told police they used the fire to read their Bibles.

Witness statements and burn patterns were used by investigators to determine a campsite was the cause of the fire.

While the wildfire was still burning, Kuykendall and Suggs were 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.

The group was arrested 24 hours later.

Burdeshaw previously pleaded guilty to one count of misdemeanor trespassing and was sentenced to probation.
Mike Hale

Sheriff Mike Hale speaks about Jefferson County sheriff's deputies executing a search warrant at the Anchor Club in Brighton, Ala., on Monday, April 4, 2011. (Michelle Campbell/AL.com file)

(Paul Beaudry)

The U.S. Justice Department this week asked a judge to order Jefferson County Sheriff Mike Hale to comply with a subpoena for mental health records of jailed juveniles, and to allow investigators to interview those inmates.

A Jefferson County Sheriff's spokesman questioned the tactics the DOJ is using to get access to records and inmates. He also said the sheriff has complied with some of the requests.

U.S. District Court Judge Madeline Haikala by early Friday night had not acted on the request Thursday by the DOJ to force Hale's compliance with the subpoena.

The subpoena is part of a DOJ investigation into how juveniles are being treated in the county jail.

"The Department is conducting its CRIPA (Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act) investigation of the Jefferson County Jail in Birmingham, Alabama, for a legitimate purpose: to determine whether there are conditions that deprive detainees at the jail of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States," according to this week's motion by the DOJ.

"Specifically, the Department's investigation focuses on allegations that juveniles detained at the Jefferson County Jail are placed in cells with adult detainees, putting them at risk of sexual abuse and other physical violence, or in repeated and prolonged lockdown, exposing juveniles to a significant risk of serious psychological harm, in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments," the DOJ motion states.

DOJ had begun the investigation last year and had submitted a subpoena to the sheriff at that time. But Hale did not comply with the subpoena.

After notifying Sheriff Hale of this investigation, DOJ attorneys met in person with the Sheriff and his counsel on June 24, 2015, according to the motion. "During an initial onsite tour of the jail later that day, the Department requested mental health records. (and) Sheriff Hale's counsel refused to provide them, stating that mental health records are privileged from disclosure under Alabama law," the motion states.

"The Department also sought to interview juveniles in the housing units at the Jail," the motion states. "Sheriff Hale's counsel at first requested to sit in on these interviews. When the Department declined this request, Sheriff Hale's counsel objected to any contact between the Department and juvenile detainees without written authorization from their parents or attorneys."

The DOJ stated it immediately produced written authorization it had obtained from counsel at the Southern Poverty Law Center -- which represents several juveniles regarding their conditions of confinement at the jail--to interview their clients, according to the motion. "Yet, Sheriff Hale's counsel rejected this written authorization as insufficient and ended the tour" and the Sheriff's attorney told DOJ attorneys to leave the jail immediately.

After that tour, DOJ sent several letters and had a teleconference with Sheriff Hale's counsel explaining the basis of the Department's authority under the CRIPA to access the jail, interview juvenile as well as adult detainees, and obtain any documents necessary for the investigation, providing supporting legal citations of authority.

"On July 30, 2015, the Sheriff responded to the Department's document request, stating that the Sheriff's Office would not allow the Department or its agents access to interview juveniles at the jail absent written parental or criminal defense attorney authorization," according to the motion.

"Sheriff Hale's Office has thus made it clear that, in order to comply with the Department's request for mental health records or allow the requested access to interview juvenile detainees, it requires a court order to that effect," according to the motion to Haikala.

After Hale's response the DOJ's Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General issued another subpoena on April 13 of this year.

Hale, however, failed to produce all of the requested mental health documents, objecting on the basis of the patient-psychiatric privilege, the DOJ motion states. The sheriff also maintains that DOJ will be prohibited from interviewing any detainee under 19 years of age without presenting written authorization from his/her parent or attorney.

Jefferson County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Randy Christian responded to the court filing Friday evening.

"Our stance was they are adjudicated as adults criminally but for all other intents they are still juveniles," Christian told AL.com. "We asked them to get consent from parents for the release of mental health records and we would be happy to give them to them. That wasn't good enough so we said see you in court."

"We believe the DOJ who professes to have these Juveniles interest are themselves violating the rights of these juveniles without consent from their parents or guardians," Christian stated. "They want us to release their medical and mental health records without consent of a parent, guardian or attorney. I'm wondering if we are still in America."

Christian also stated that the sheriff has complied with some of the requests for the DOJ's investigation.

"We've turned over thousands of pages of documents, allowed the DOJ to tour the Jail 3 times, allowed the DOJ to interview staff, and allowed them to interview inmates," Christian stated.

"We asked them to get the attorneys' or parents permission to interview inmates under 19 because they're not adults (under civil law) and can't give legally binding permission," Christian stated. "The DOJ then went and got that permission and we let them interview the inmates. We asked them to get the same consent on the release of mental and medical health records and apparently they didn't like that. We thought that was not only reasonable but we believe it is the law. You report civil rights violations to the department of justice right?"

DOJ Petition on juvenile jail investigation by KentFaulk on Scribd
Former Birmingham Health Care CEO Jonathan Dunning was supposed to report to prison Nov. 29 to begin serving an 18-year sentence for health care fraud.

Instead the Hoover resident was thrown behind bars on Wednesday for failing to pay child support to two of his children.

He owes six figures in child support to the children he had with Sharon Waltz, a former co-worker at the health clinic Birmingham Health Care. Jefferson County District Judge William E. Hereford determined Dunning was in contempt of court and ordered him to jail.

Bond has been set at what Dunning owes the children: $121,800

Dunning also owes more than $13 million to government agencies and health care clinics.

"He said the government had taken all his cars and homes," said Bill Bright, Waltz's lawyer, who was present. Dunning is supposed to pay $4,000 per month in child support, Bright said.

Bright said Dunning didn't have a lawyer present. Robin Burrell, his previous attorney on this case, could not be reached for comment.

On Oct. 14 Dunning was sentenced to 18 years in prison on 98 counts related to his role in a $13.5 million fraud scheme that siphoned federal dollars meant to provide health care for the homeless and poor.

Dunning was one of four charged in connection with the fraud which took place over a 7-year period at Birmingham Health Care and Central Alabama Comprehensive Health in Tuskegee.

Former Birmingham Health Care CFO Terri Mollica last year pleaded guilty to stealing $1.7 million from the federally-funded center for the poor and homeless, was sentenced Aug. 9 to serve 17 years in prison.

Problems were first reported by AL.com and the Birmingham News in 2012 when it was revealed that CACH and BHC paid more than $2 million to Dunning's private companies for contracting service, including while Dunning was CEO of the companies.
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Senate budget chairman Trip Pittman talks to reporters after the General Fund committee approved a budget plan earlier this year.

(Mike Cason/mcason@al.com)

A state senator has filed a bill that would authorize Alabama to carry out executions by firing squad.

Sen. Trip Pittman, R-Montrose, said he was prompted to introduce the bill because of the case of Tommy Arthur, whose execution was stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday night.

Arthur suggested a firing squad as an alternative to lethal injection in an appeal.

"He didn't want to die by lethal injection," Pittman said. "I guess he wants to die by lead injection."

By law, Alabama carries out executions by lethal injection. The law still allows inmates to opt for the electric chair, but the chair has not been used since the state adopted lethal injection.

Pittman's bill would allow an inmate to choose death by a five-person firing squad of law enforcement officers.

"I certainly want Mr. Arthur to have the right to end his life in his preferred method," Pittman said.

Thursday night was Arthur's seventh scheduled execution date in 15 years.

The Supreme Court voted 5-2 to grant the stay to allow the justices time to determine if they will hear Arthur's appeal.

Arthur was convicted for the 1982 murder of Troy Wicker of Muscle Shoals.

Wicker died from a single shot through his right eye while he slept.

Pittman said he believes it would be fitting for Arthur to die from a gunshot, in line with his belief that the punishment should match the crime.

Arthur was also convicted in the 1977 slaying of his sister-in-law in Marion County.

Pittman sees hypocrisy on behalf of the federal government in the latest delay of Arthur's execution.

The senator noted that the Justice Department is investigating the state's prisons, which are overcrowded and understaffed.

Arthur's decades-long case, with its many appeals and delays, is a drain on state resources, Pittman said.

"Then they won't even let us carry out a sentence," Pittman said.

The legislative session begins Feb. 7.

Pittman said he hopes his bill will pass because he said the state needs another option when inmates object to lethal injection.

Corrected at 3:52 p.m. to say that Arthur was also convicted in the 1977 slaying of his sister-in-law in Marion County.
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Authorities have identified the two individuals who died in a two-vehicle wreck in Limestone County on Friday.

Decatur Police Lt. Proncey Robertson said officers received a call about the accident on Alabama 20 east of U.S. 31 at 12:40 p.m. When police arrived, it was determined that Perry Romine, 38, of Madison, was driving west in a white 2016 Freightliner M2 when it rear-ended a 2007 Mack TR driven by Billy Smith, 35, of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee.

Romine was ejected from the vehicle and pronounced dead at the scene. The passenger in Romine's vehicle, identified as 25-year-old Darius Collins, of Huntsville, was flown to Huntsville Hospital where he was pronounced dead. Smith was uninjured, police said.

No more details about the accident were released since the investigation is still ongoing.
A 26-year-old Athens woman was killed and two others were injured in a two-vehicle collision on Friday morning.

Brittany Renee Millican, 26, of Athens was killed when the 2007 Kia she was riding in was struck by a 1999 Chevrolet pickup truck, according to Alabama state troopers.

Millican was not using a seat belt and was pronounced dead at the scene.

The driver of the truck, Joyce Hall, 75, of Athens, along with the driver of the Kia, were injured and transported to unspecified hospitals for treatment, troopers said.

The crash occurred at 8:14 a.m. on Johnson Road, four miles north of Athens.

Troopers continue to investigate.
A man convicted of first-degree robbery escaped from a work site in Franklin County on Friday, the Alabama Department of Corrections said.

Adryll Detise Banks, 37, escaped from his assigned job location in Russellville at noon, authorities said. He was last seen wearing a black T-Shirt with colorful design on the front and blue jeans. Banks was sentenced to 20 years in June 2012 for a robbery out of Lee County. He was incarcerated at the Hamilton Work Release Center, authorities said.

Banks is nearly six feet tall and weighs 230 pounds. He has black eyes and hair. If anyone sees the inmate or knows of his whereabouts, please contact local law enforcement or ADOC at 1-800-831-8825.
voting booth

(AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill.

By Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill

In reading the latest "blog" post from Mr. Kyle Whitmire, I have decided it is time to clarify a couple of things, since Kyle is insistent on distorting facts.

First, to address the question Kyle asked, should Alabama get credit for something that other states have already done. The answer is yes, the citizens of Alabama should. Shortly after I took office in January of 2015, we discovered that the office was not in compliance with the motor voter provision of the National Voter Registration Act, and we immediately began a conversation with the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency to resolve this issue.

Kyle is correct that this is a law that the state had failed to comply with for over two decades, but that is why I ran for Secretary of State, to ensure that Alabama is all that it can be.

While it is true that other states had established online voter registration systems before we had, does the fact that it was done here in Alabama, for our citizens, and that it is an important component for more than 25 percent of the 584,252 new voters to register to vote not show our commitment to each and every citizen in Alabama? I think it does. I think giving the people of Alabama, our people, the resources and the attention that they expect from their elected officials is leadership.

Leadership is creating online voter registration and an accompanying mobile app for the first time in state history. Leadership is creating a bi-partisan committee to propose legislation to modernize voter registration at the local level. Leadership is working with other Alabama leaders to develop legislation to make it easier for those previously incarcerated to have their voting rights restored. Leadership is working to modernize elections in the state by piloting a program of electronic poll books to eliminate long lines at polling places and make sure more voters have time to vote on Election Day. Leadership is creating the first successful election night reporting system in state history. Leadership is having more presidential candidates in state history visit our people through the SEC Primary on March 1, 2016. Leadership is having 3,330,802 registered voters, which is the highest in state history.

Leadership is action.

I think the results speak for themselves.
With just days to go until Election Day, presidential hopefuls crisscross US in final attempt to woo voters.

America is a big place. Now I know everyone knows that, but I have been reminded of it again this week as we follow Donald Trump around the country.

It takes a while to get from Detroit to Eau Claire in Michigan. And from there to Orlando in Florida is a pretty long haul. Swing back to North Carolina, across to Pennsylvania, back to North Carolina. A quick check of his schedule and hes set up an event where? Milwaukee? Can we get there from here? Hes going to Reno? That will take us out of the loop for two days so thats a no. Look, we need to be in New Hampshire on Monday and definitely in New York on Tuesday. You wake up wondering, what day is it, where am I going? I always count down how many days it is until its over.

The candidates of course fly in their own planes, whisked through traffic by police escorts, and straight into the venue.

Its a bit harder for members of the media who are leapfrogging him around the country.





We have security and hire car companies and flight delays to deal with. Then theres finding the right entrance and making sure our names are on the list.

We monitor the Trump speech, checking for new lines, new angles of attack, even new jokes or insults.

As the stage and the media riser is pulled apart and the power is killed, we pull together a report.

Then at the end of it all, theres the journey back to the hotel, the decision about what is more important, eating or sleeping (sleeping wins) and then setting the alarm for five hours later so we can do it all again.

Its always like this in the final week of a presidential campaign.

The candidates and their campaigns try to squeeze in as much as they can. With the timescale short and the stakes so high, they want to get as many events in as many states as possible, hoping to reach as many undecided voters as they can.

In such an extraordinary and bitter campaign, it is hard to believe that not everyone in America by now has decided how to cast their vote.

An important narrative to win in the last few days is what they call the big Mo  who has the momentum in the final days.

Polls tighten

And the Trump campaign can claim that. Things were already tightening before the director of the FBI sent his controversial letter to Congress last Friday.

He informed senior members of important committees that new emails that might impact the investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server may be among a trove found on a computer shared by a top aide, Huma Abedin, and her estranged husband, Anthony Weiner.

That was enough to give the Trump campaign a lift when it looked as though the election was all but over.

It gave him fresh lines of attack, energised his base and made polls even tighter.





There was perhaps a homecoming for Republicans. Voters and politicians who said that they could never support Trump now felt he was the least worst choice.

There are still some notable holdouts. Ohio Governor John Kasich did not vote for Trump. And the Republican candidate from four years ago, Mitt Romney, still insists he wont vote for the businessman.

So those are two votes the campaign did not and wont get.

The Trump campaign hopes his last-minute dash will turn the few voters he needs in swing counties in important swing states to win the election.

The polls still give Hillary Clinton the clearest path to 270 electoral college votes  and with it the White House.

Donald Trumps campaign might fail. But by visiting 11 states in the last few days, covering thousands of kilometres, speaking to thousands of voters, it wont be for the lack of trying.
Some analysts believe many are simply reluctant to admit theyre on Hillary Clintons side.

It makes fans of Hillary Clinton very anxious every time I state this simple fact: attendance at the Democratic candidates rallies is mediocre at best.

The pictures have told the story over the past six months. Republican Donald Trump is filling convention centres, airport hangars and parks. Clinton, on the other hand, is filling community centres and small colleges, but just barely.

The people campaigning for her  the rock stars of the Democratic Party such as First Lady Michelle Obama, President Barack Obama and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders  have bigger and more energetic crowds.

Moreover, as Clinton goes into the final weekend of campaigning, she is drawing on mega-celebrities to attract people to her cause by holding separate events with musicians Pharrell Williams, Jay Z and Katy Perry.

There was a momentary spike this past week in Tempe, Arizona, where, aside from Julys Democratic National Convention, she had one of her biggest rallies yet.

More than 10,000 people attended an event where she went solo. But you could chalk that up to the fact that a Democratic presidential nominee in Arizona is rare. Unlike Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and other battleground states, Arizonans arent bombarded with campaign stops.

Conservative media and Trump himself have pointed to the smaller size of the rallies and bring it up all the time.

I have to say, we have rallies like this and we have seven, eight, nine, ten thousand routinely, he boasted back in September at a stop in North Carolina. Hillary goes out for rallies and yesterday I think she had 200 people, maybe 300.

But some analysts believe that, contrary to Trumps persistent assertion that theres a silent majority in the United States who want him to win, the opposite may be true and that could explain at least some of the low numbers at Clinton rallies.

Proud Trump supporters

There is no doubt Trump supporters are proud to say theyre voting for him. Thats been evident since the beginning of his campaign.

But Lara Brown, an associate professor of political management at George Washington University, argues size doesnt necessarily matter.

Trump is a novelty and for some, to say that they went is like saying they went to a sporting event, she argues. Trump has also regularly been going to places where he is most beloved, not where the ground game is most competitive.

Other analysts believe many are simply reluctant to admit theyre on Clintons side.

The controversies surrounding her  the use of a private email server while secretary of state, allegations that she gave special access to world leaders while in government in exchange for donations to her familys foundation and, more recently, an FBI investigation into her staff emails  have made it harder for people to show their love.

TIMELINE: Who got the right to vote when?

Ive had a number of students tell me that theyre reluctant to be too public or too publicly enthusiastic over their support for Clinton, says Chris Galdieri, assistant professor at St Anselm College in New Hampshire. But he believes the support is there.

My wife recently took our daughter to see Clinton at an event here in New Hampshire, he says. And met women from New Hampshire and other states who had brought their daughters with them specifically to see Clinton, because theres a good likelihood she will be the first woman president.

The Clinton campaign insists theyve baked the small numbers into their strategy. At a stop in Winterville, North Carolina, I asked one of Clintons top aides whether she is concerned about the mediocre attendance.

Weve gone into less populous parts of the state for a reason, said Jennifer Palmieri, Clintons communications director. There are voters in this area [North Carolina] that we want to turn out, so if you go to a place where there arent as many people who live there, you arent likely to get the crowds.

On a Friday conference call with reporters, Robby Mook, Clintons campaign manager, said theyve had success in early voting getting people who havent cast a ballot much in the past  so-called low propensity voters  to come out to the polls.

But on the same call campaign officials barely addressed questions about reports that African-American early voting is down from 2012. Thats a key group of people for Clinton.

At the end of the day, the voting booth is where the attendance really counts.

Enthusiasm is great, but it doesnt predict the result, says Brown.
The deep discontent over jobs and the economy among large sectors of the American electorate goes a long way to explain the strange nature of the US presidential race this year.

White, working-class voters who have been negatively affected by trade and technological change have rallied to Donald Trump, propelling him to the head of the Republican ticket. Their economic concerns were ignored by both parties for decades, giving rise to resentments and anxieties that are fertile ground for Trumps nativist, populist appeals.

Meanwhile, dissatisfaction with the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton runs high. Voters doubt her commitment to middle-class employment challenges given her husbands and her past support for trade deals, and their connections to Wall Street, reflected in her high-priced speeches to financiers.

In fact, polls show that jobs and the economy are the top priority for as many as 44 percent of voters in this election. And yet there has been little serious examination of the candidates jobs plans in the campaign.

We went on a road trip through Americas heartland to see if their proposals can work, and if they address basic challenges facing American capitalism.

End of the American Dream

The journey started in Trumbull County, Ohio, which lost 49 percent of its manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2010. Ohio is a battleground state that Trump must win, and Trumbull County has been targeted by both presidential campaigns.

In the past, the area was a Democratic bastion. Steel mills, auto parts manufacturing and car assembly at General Motors Lordstown factory provided the jobs that enabled thousands of blue-collar workers in the area to attain the American dream: a home, money to enjoy a holiday and put their children through school, and benefits for a secure retirement.

It was the way we thought life was going to be forever, says Mark Zigmont, who worked as the economic development coordinator for the county for more than 20 years.

Donald Trump is the kind of candidate that I think a lot of people have been waiting for by Randy Law, Republican county chair

But auto parts manufacturing jobs in Trumbull County have dropped from 10,000 to 1,500 or fewer over the past 30 years. In the 2000s, thousands of jobs were lost at steel mills that closed and at GMs Lordstown plant.

Today, according to Randy Law, the Republican county chairman, the support for his partys presidential candidate is unprecedented. Forty percent of the people who come in requesting Trump signs to stick on their lawn tell us they are Democrats, Law says.

The essence of Trumps jobs policy, getting tough on trade, resonates with voters who blame their economic problems on globalisation. He promises to levy hefty tariffs on American corporations who send their production offshore, and on Chinese imports.

Donald Trump is the kind of candidate that I think a lot of people have been waiting for, Law says. Complete free trade just opens everything up. We have to look out for American interests.

But Zigmont thinks it a mistake to blame the job losses only on globalisation. Auto parts jobs began moving to anti-union southern states in the 1970s, he points out, so it had nothing to do with trade deals or anything like it, it was more to do with lower wages.

And he is convinced that at least 50 percent of the lost jobs in the county are the result of technological advances. He doesnt think getting tough on trade can bring the jobs back. A lot of these jobs are gone, he says.

Economist and author James Galbraith agrees. Galbraith, who teaches at the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, notes that out of about 152 million American jobs today, only about 8 percent are in manufacturing.

It is not going to go back up to 30 percent, which it was in lets say 1950, he says.

The costs of globalisation

Erecting barriers to foreign imports would drive up the price of goods for consumers. Meanwhile, the firms that ramped up domestic production to replace the imports would go for the best available productive technology, Galbraith argues, involving fewer workers than the old manufacturing systems. And so the scope for actually achieving a jobs renaissance through the manufacturing sector isnt as large as Trumps trade strategy would appear to make it.

But the strong support for Trump reveals that the costs of globalisation have become too great for millions of American workers and manufacturers.

Herb Schuler, the owner of General Extrusions, an Ohio-based company that molds aluminum parts for consumer and industrial parts, is not sure Trump would be able to pass the 45 percent across the board tariff on Chinese goods that he has proposed. But Schuler believes something is appropriate.

READ MORE: Whats Happening to American Democracy?

From 2000 to 2010, the Chinese were dumping aluminum parts into the US, and American extruders like Schuler were on the verge of being wiped out. Then the US government levied a 35 percent tariff on Chinese aluminum imports allowing the American industry to regain market share and jobs.

Hillary Clinton has said that she will appoint a chief trade prosecutor to bolster trade enforcement, and that her administration also wont hesitate to impose targeted tariffs.

However, Chinese companies have tried to get around the aluminum tariff by shipping products into third countries like Malaysia. Schuler says theyll repackage them, put Malaysian tags and Malaysian bills of lading and then ship it into the United States because we won the sanctions against China not Malaysia. Applying and enforcing tariffs, Schuler says, is going to be a constant struggle, not just for our industry but the entire global trade order.

The key point is this globalisation thing is not working as we were told and we've got to fix it. by Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute

According to Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute, dealing with Americas $500bn annual trade deficit is going to require more than tariffs, but neither presidential candidate is offering the type of comprehensive approach needed to tackle it.

The key point is this globalisation thing is not working as we were told and weve got to fix it, Prestowitz argues, and when you says it that way youre raising not just trade, youre raising investment, youre raising technology flow, youre raising the issue of whats the purpose of the company.

Prestowitz, who worked on trade negotiations in both Democratic and Republican administrations, says that trade agreements were sold as a way to increase American exports and jobs, but that their real purpose was to make China and Mexico safe for US corporate investment.

These negotiations are strongly, strongly influenced by US corporations who all have large lobbying operations here in Washington, Prestowitz says.

The US trade representative has an outside advisory committee, and the vast majority of its members are CEOs of major global US companies. It has led to pressure on US negotiators to negotiate arrangements that facilitate the offshoring of US-based production.

The terms of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, make it easier for American companies such as the Carrier Corporation, a division of United Technologies, to send production offshore.

Offshore production: All for more money

Last February, Carrier announced plans to shut down its Indianapolis plant, eliminating 1,400 jobs, and move the work to Mexico. Trump has attacked the plan repeatedly on the campaign trail, promising to levy a 35 percent tariff on the products of Carrier and other companies that shift production offshore.

We headed to Indianapolis to meet two Carrier workers who are losing their jobs, TJ Bray and Mark Smith. Smith, who is 55 years old, worries about maintaining the life he has had for the past 30 years. The jobs that are left over after outsourcing by American companies, he says, are paying way less and way less benefits.

Carrier is in the most profitable division of United Technologies, a company which made more than $7bn last year. The move to Mexico is saving the company $65m a year. Bray says its all for more money, to maximise profits. When you go down there you pay less than $3 an hour probably with no benefits, no union, you have no regulations that you have to deal with.

READ MORE: Dont believe what you hear about the US economy

United Technologies declined our request for an interview, but its chief financial officer said the Carrier decision was necessary to increase shareholder value. According to economist William Lazonick, who tracks stock buybacks of companies listed on the S&P 500, United Technologies also repurchased $10bn of its own stock in the months preceding the Carrier announcement to pump up their stock price.

There are so many things that they can do with that [$10bn], Lazonick says. They certainly dont have to get rid of 1,400 workers.

Market manipulation and rules of trade

Large stock repurchases by corporations used to be considered market manipulation, but Ronald Reagans Securities and Exchange Commission made them legal. At the same time, the increase in the use of stock options as a form of compensation incentivised executives to pump their companys stock price.

The result, Lazonick argues, has been a lot of damage to the economy. He believes that dealing with the buyback phenomenon is central to addressing the jobs challenges in America.

In the 1960s and 70s, major US corporations reinvested about 60 percent of their earnings in capital expenditures, innovation and their workforce. Today, according to Lazonick, its only 10 percent or less.

Retain the money, invest it in people and productive capabilities. Thats the foundation of both a prosperous company and a prosperous economy. And buybacks are just the opposite of that. They are taking the money out of companies, distributing it to shareholders and these companies are being looted. This is trillions and trillions of dollars of the companies that have been at the bedrock of the US economy. If you dont create a middle class there, youre not going to have middle-class jobs, says Lazonick.

Hillary Clinton has talked about combating short-termism in corporate boardrooms and on Wall Street.

But Lazonick says thats not enough. We should ban stock buybacks, he says, and to get rid of that problem you have to call the whole ideology of maximising shareholder value into question.

READ MORE: US economic policies are devastating society

The ideology of maximising shareholder value also took off during the Reagan years.

It was founded by conservative, free market thinkers at the University of Chicago led by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman.

In a seminal 1970 article, Friedman argued that since shareholders own the corporation, the only social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.

Prestowitz points out that after World War II until the early 1980s, the chief executive was seen as a custodian of a public trust who needed to balance the interests of various stakeholders  not just shareholders, but communities, workers, and customers.

Then, he says, Wall Street essentially needed to shift the loyalty of the CEO away from his people, towards the shareholders. And how do you do that? Well, you tell the CEO, listen, if you start holding down the wages of your people or better yet if you move their jobs to Chin, well make you so rich that you wont believe it. And thats essentially whats happened.

Mergers and their impact on jobs

Mergers are another strategy pushed by Wall Street to drive up stock prices. We travelled to St Louis to examine their impact on jobs.

In the 1980s, St Louis had 23 Fortune 500 companies headquartered there. Today, as a result of takeovers, there are only eight. According to Brian Feldman, a researcher for the Open Markets Programme at the New American Foundation, the result was thousands of lost jobs and the decline of the local economys dynamism.

Between 1997 and 2012 more than two-thirds of some 900 US industry sectors became more concentrated, according to a recent study by the Economist.

Mergers have led to major cuts in the research divisions of companies in pharmaceuticals and other corporate sectors, reducing the resources devoted to innovation. In addition, consolidation decreases the number of new start-ups, Feldman says. As companies acquire market power its harder for new entrants.

Mergers in the banking industry have also made it harder for small businesses, which generate most of the new jobs in America.

In St Louis, the takeover of Boatmens bank, a local bank that had strong ties to the community, had a fairly devastating impact, according to lawyer Eric Vickers.

The digital revolution is an aggressive destroyer of jobs. by James Galbraith, economist

In 1996, Vickers led protests against the takeover of Boatmens by NationsBank. Two years later, NationsBank merged with Bank of America, becoming the second largest bank in the US. Local lending decreased dramatically, Vickers says.

The truth is I think most minority businesses have basically given up on going to the major banks to get any sort of financing. They feel thats a waste of time.

Galbraith says that what is needed is a much larger number of smaller banking institutions to keep the influence of the major Wall Street banks under control.

Bernie Sanders spoke to this very clearly, about the need to break up the banks and to place them under a much stricter form of regulation.

Neither Clinton nor Trump talk about breaking up the banks, but Sanders influence resulted in it becoming part of both the Republican and Democratic platform. The Democratic platform also mentions anti-trust issues for the first time since 1988.

One of the early tests for the next American administration will be the proposed takeover of the media company Time Warner by AT&T, which Trump says he opposes. The German company Bayers proposed mega-merger with Monsanto, the giant agriculture and biotechnology firm, will also be on the table.

Increasingly, consolidation is taking place on a global scale. Emblematic of this is the Belgian company In-Bevs 2008 takeover of the St Louis brewer Anheuser Busch. It resulted in the loss of thousands of jobs at the iconic American company.

As a human resources professional at Anheuser Busch, Roni Chambers laid off hundreds for In-Bev. Then she was let go. The corporate culture after In-Bev took over was ruthless, Chambers says. Its about cost reduction and its about returning profits to the shareholders.

Today, Chambers is a career counsellor with an office at Cortex, a business incubator for high-tech start-ups in St Louis. She is convinced that places like Cortex will create the good paying jobs of the future to replace the lost middle-class jobs of the past. I have grandchildren today and I dont believe their jobs exist yet.

Trump vs Clinton: Who can resolve the jobs challenge?

However, its not clear that the digital revolution will generate as many jobs as it eliminates, a topic neither presidential candidate has addressed. Analysts such as Martin Ford, author of The Rise of the Robots, say that a guaranteed basic income will be needed to deal with the dislocation that is resulting from advances in digital technology.

The digital revolution is an aggressive destroyer of jobs, Galbraith says. But he argues for a job guarantee rather than a basic income grant. Its this question about imagination, thinking about what should done and institutions to achieve it. Thats what Franklin Roosevelt and the people around him did when they came up with the Civilian Conservation Corps as part of the New Deal.

But talk of a federal job guarantee is taboo in American politics today.

The closest Clinton and Trump have come to direct government support for jobs is infrastructure investment. Trump talks about investing billions in repairing roads, bridges and airports, but he hasnt offered any serious proposals to pay for it.

Clinton says that she will tax the wealthy and set up an infrastructure bank to tap private investors to help fund her $500bn plan. Her proposal emphasises clean energy projects such as installing half-a-billion solar panels in her first term.

The problem, Galbraith says, is that the overwhelming majority of workers today are in the service sector. Rather than construction, jobs need to be created in areas like education, healthcare and care for the elderly. The US needs to develop institutions in which people can go to find useful work, he says.

Both presidential candidates are trying to convince the public that their economic proposals can generate a high-growth economy that will resolve the jobs challenges facing American capitalism.

But Galbraith does not think that it is possible to attain the growth rates that were achieved from the end of World War II through to the 1970s, and from the early 1980s through to the end of the century.

So I think we are looking at two camps, both of which are in illusions about the conditions that we actually face, Galbraith says. The basis for his presidential choice, he says, is which candidate will more effectively adjust to reality when it hits them on the head.
Trump would govern the US the way he ran his casino business.

As Donald Trumps campaign limps towards election day, held together primarily by emailgate and Islamophobia, it still touts his Washington-outsider status as his essential qualification for the presidency.

His main attack ads paint Hillary Clinton as the consummate insider riddled by pay-to-play scandals and ties to every major special interest. The US media has also been slow to scrutinise Trumps career to reveal his connections to corporate lobbying.

On October 24, Trump received his first major US city newspapers endorsement from the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Republican casino magnate Sheldon Adelson covertly purchased the paper to influence Nevada politics.

The depth of the ties between Adelson and Trump reveal the falsity of Trumps corporate-outsider persona. Camp Hillary have inadvertently allowed this myth to take hold, preferring to play defence on Clintons myriad scandals rather than attacking Trump on his own ties to special interests.

In fact, it is Trumps extensive participation in the casino industry that has shaped many of his core beliefs about taxes, global trade, and the role of government.

Lottery and casino gaming are two of the United States big businesses. And yet while it is an open secret that the US government is in cahoots with big pharma, big oil, and the big banks  who use their influence to make sure new laws dont disrupt shareholders bottom lines  their colleagues in the gambling lobby often slip under the radar.

Those who dismiss Trump's rhetoric as mere populist bravado, clinging to the notion that he does not really intend to build a wall or start a trade war, are guilty of both misreading and dangerously underestimating him. Twisted as it may be, Trump possesses a coherent world view and when you investigate his back story, it's obvious where he nurtured it. by

The American Gaming Association may be a relative newcomer on K Street, the home of Washingtons lobbyists, but its covert political power is on an even footing with the National Rifle Association.

Unlike guns and drugs, gaming in the US enjoys widespread bipartisan support: the anti-tax Republican establishment appreciates the casinos and the lotteries capacity to generate state revenue, overlooking their evangelical bases moral outrage. And Democrats deflect minorities and womens concerns over gamblings social cost by earmarking lottery revenues for disadvantaged communities.

Trumps business tactics

Trumps lifelong connections to the gaming industry and the sway it has given him in state capitols reveal both to whom he is indebted and what core values define his business practices.

In the 1980s, Trump grew his casino business, deflecting criticisms about his reliance on overleveraged debt, by deploying political and alleged mob connections.

He also ensured that regulators in New Jersey denied his competitors the chance to do the same. He has on numerous occasions funded media campaigns to smear the reputation of Native American tribes that were attempting to open casinos in the New York City metropolitan area.

These practices offer a taste of the economic policies which Trump is now proposing on a global scale  stifling competition through monopolistic market capture.

Blocking competition is a tried and tested pattern for Trump. When his initial casinos failed to turn a profit, he practised stock manipulation, leveraged buyouts, and engaged in other questionable activities to buy out competitors and shore up his monopoly over Atlantic City gaming.

OPINION: Why the rich cant be trusted with money

In 1993, he also testified that Connecticuts Pequot tribe did not look like [real] Indians hoping that they would not be granted tribal sovereignty to open Foxwoods casino  correctly predicting that doing so would decimate his Atlantic City ventures.

In short, over the decades, Trump has been the brazen bully of a monopolistic cartel, winning the plaudits of the likes of Sheldon Adelson.

Zero-sum logic

So what do Trumps competition-suppressing practices in Atlantic City tell us? They certainly shed light on why he believes the US is getting screwed on trade  and that making America Great Again necessitates high tariffs on the Chinese.

He sees Americas prosperity as akin to a gambling cartels monopoly  upheld via restricting access. Trump also preaches another philosophy that derives from the milieu of the casino: the worldview that one is either a winner or a loser.

As the hustlers saying goes, If you cant spot the sucker, then youre him, and in his businesses in Atlantic City, Trump became an expert at spotting and exploiting suckers: he bankrupted his investors (whose money he lost) and his contractors (who he defaulted on).

His outrageous promises that he will force Mexico to pay for the wall and demand that the US NATO allies spend more on defence are not mere bluster  they epitomise Trumps transactional philosophy learned and perfected in his own casinos.

OPINION: We should all be allowed to vote on November 8

So it seems that decades of mimicking the darker tactics of the casino industry have indelibly informed Trumps political instincts.

Those who dismiss Trumps rhetoric as mere populist bravado, clinging to the notion that he does not really intend to build a wall or start a trade war, are guilty of both misreading and dangerously underestimating him.

Twisted as it may be, Trump possesses a coherent world view and when you investigate his back story, its obvious where he nurtured it.

But unfortunately for Trump and the many Americans hoodwinked by him, the gambling industrys tactics wont wash elsewhere.

Winning in the real world cannot be achieved by sheltering US firms from competition or stiffing our allies with the NATO bill.

Real world economic policy must grow the global pie by forging coalitions  conceding various gains to trading partners, and even opponents, in the process.

Trump doesnt see an interconnected world characterised by trust and win-win relationships, he sees diplomacy as akin to the avarice and zero-sum logic of the gaming tables.

Trumps background as a bully of the casino lobby provides a shockingly accurate picture of how he is likely to govern.

Jason Pack is the founder of EyeOnISISinLibya.com and a researcher of world history at Cambridge University.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Clinton has masterfully used Trumps sexist blunders to her advantage.

Gina Benevento is a former UN diplomat living and working in Madrid as a strategic communications consultant.

Its pretty strange to put something like that out with such little information right before an election. In fact, its not just strange, its unprecedented and deeply troubling.

These were the words of an angry Hillary Clinton, responding to a letter sent to Congress by the FBI director James Comey regarding newly found emails on a device belonging to a close Clinton aide.

Anger hadnt been part of Clintons carefully constructed 2016 political campaign. Speaking alongside Donald Trump at a charity dinner in New York on October 20  the last time the two presidential candidates would be seen together before November 8  Clinton had quipped: Donald Trump really is as healthy as a horse. You know, the one [Vladimir] Putin rides around on.

Smiling radiantly, pretty in a Ralph Lauren pink gown (no pantsuit!), Clinton had been so comfortable with her audience that she convincingly cracked that joke and quite a few more.





Its never easy being a woman candidate for political office. Throughout a long political career, Clinton was hounded about her looks: her hair, her clothes, her laugh, her smile. Even her ankles came in for criticism.

And she was persistently warned by handlers never to appear aggressive. Or bossy. Or shrill.

But the look Clintons 2016 presidential campaign had most worried about? Serious face.

No man would ever be at fault for having a serious look on his face, Elizabeth Kuhnke, author of Body Language for Dummies, explained in a recent Newsweek article. Resting bitch face doesnt exist for men simply because its a face of authority.

Sexism plagues the career of every woman aspirant for office in the US. Yet, when Madeleine Albright, and then Condoleezza Rice, became secretary of state, they consistently scored high marks for popularity.

Clinton followed suit. In polls taken in 2011, she was viewed favorably by 66 percent of voters  making her more popular than both President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

Victims elicit sympathy - the precise quality Clinton is unable to arouse on her own. And victims, when they fight back at their attackers, make us respect and even like them. by

But a woman appointed to a Cabinet position by a male president  Clinton, Bush, Obama  is quite a different thing than a woman who decides to run for the presidency herself.

Running for president screams not public service but  Ambition.

So what should a self-described policy wonk  who happens also to be ambitious, and female  do when running for the presidency?

A calculated risk

Lets go back to last April. Frankly, I think if Hillary Clinton were a man, she wouldnt get 5 percent of the vote, Trump told a crowd of supporters. The only thing shes got going is the woman card.

Clinton was quick in her reply: If fighting for womens healthcare and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the woman card, then deal me in!

Within hours, Clintons campaign offered The Official Hillary for America Woman Card for sale for $5. Women across the US responded in droves, and within three days Clintons campaign raised a record-setting $2.4m.

Coolly strategic, Clinton took a calculated risk.

Trumps misogyny didnt take long to reveal itself. During a radio interview with Howard Stern, Trump was asked if he would stay with his wife if she were crippled from a car accident. Trump asked Stern: How do the breasts look? The breasts are OK, Stern answered. Sure! Trump replied, Because thats important.

One bad comment about women followed another in record speed. Women are fat pigs, dogs, existing solely to be judged on their grade from men: 9 means youve got a babe, 4 a rottweiler.

The other woman running for the presidency, Carly Fiorina, didnt escape Trumps body shaming either. Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Trump joked.

A trust fund baby accustomed to having his way, Trump had never needed to listen. He couldnt hear the anger building up across the 50 states of the US.

OPINION: Hillary Clintons faux feminism

But Clinton did. She heard it  and played her hand well. In the first and second debates, instead of calling her opponent Mr Trump, Clinton called him Donald.

Clinton suspected that he would lose his cool. And he did. And when Donald lost his cool, he attacked women  starting with that nasty woman across the dais from him.

Trumps problem with women became the focal point of the Clinton campaign.

With each Donald, Clinton goaded her Republican rival into another outrageous blunder, until Trumps infamous meltdown during the third debate.

Playing the victim

Women have always known the risk of entering the old boys club that is American politics  take Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, first woman candidate for vice president, for example.

The morning after her vice-presidential debate with George HW Bush  a debate many commenters said she won  Bush met a group of longshoremen and proclaimed: We kicked a little ass last night!



OPINION: US elections  What the polls wont tell us

Its a long and hallowed American political tradition: a male politician and his supporters sharing a few sexist laughs at a female hopefuls expense.

But, as Trump discovered  it stopped working.

Was it that millennial women werent swallowing the old gender status quo? While older women  many of whom had fought hard for equal rights in the 1970s and 1980s  finally smelled a chance at grabbing power?





Trump banked on Clintons unlikability to win. Carelessly, he attacked her  and in attacking her, made her a victim.

Victims elicit sympathy  the precise quality Clinton is unable to arouse on her own. And victims, when they fight back at their attackers, make us respect and even like them.

But now Clinton is fighting back against the FBI director  a very different opponent than Trump. And its impossible to predict this wild cards impact on voting November 8.

A New York Times op-ed from October 15 stated: For whatever it has done and failed to do, the presidential candidacy of Donald J Trump has revived a national discussion of misogyny.

But it wasnt Trump who brought misogyny out from darkness into the light of national debate. The one who did that was Clinton.

With consummate skill, Clinton dug the holes for Trump to fall into. She directed him as to their location. And she made sure that the moment(s) of his fall(s) would be when the largest number of Americans were watching.

Whatever ones opinion of Clinton  and I, for one, am not a fan  thats one masterful performance.

Gina Benevento is a former UN diplomat based in Jerusalem, now living and working in Madrid as a strategic communications consultant.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
If the third debate freezes the campaign at this date, Obama might just have won the US election.
Using balloons and a camera, Palestinian refugees have been working on a detailed map of Lebanons Burj al-Shamali camp.

Burj al-Shamali refugee camp, Lebanon  Amal Said and Mustapha Dakhloul expertly wind their way through the maze-like streets of Burj al-Shamali, squeezing through the refugee camps narrow alleyways past local children playing on the cracked pavement.

This was one of the spots, says Dakhloul, 18, looking out over the refugee camp after ascending a metal ladder to the rooftop of a residential building, past racks of drying clothes.

Despite their young age, Dakhloul and Said, 20, are making history in Burj al-Shamali: They have completed several weeks of aerial mapping using a low-cost digital camera and helium-filled balloon flying high above the camp.

With the photos, they hope to craft the first ever detailed map of Burj al-Shamali.

The projects organisers  including another young participant from the camp, 19-year-old Firas Ismail  say it will also be the first locally made map of a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.

I was very excited, Said told Al Jazeera, noting that the group started out with around 10 participants, but shrunk to only three in the end. It was very hard work.

A bright red balloon was affixed to a light but sturdy string, and slowly raised to more than 200 metres above the camp. A camera was tied to the balloon, and it took between 3,000 and 5,000 images from each spot, Dakhloul said.

It was not always easy: Electricity wires hang precariously overhead in many areas of the camp, making raising the balloon impossible in some places. The narrow streets also posed a challenge, as the large balloon simply could not fit between the buildings.

Bored teenagers in the camp shot the balloon down once, while Lebanese security officials confiscated the cameras memory card after the group drew their suspicion when flying the balloon just outside the borders of the camp.

Depending on the location, the team sent the balloon into the air from the ground or from rooftops. They chose the balloon because it was the cheapest option, and gave them a better chance to interact with camp residents along the way.

According to Said, the map aims to help residents to see where free space exists to build parks or play areas for children, or to plant vegetables or plants with medicinal purposes on rooftops.

When people look at the map, they will see where the important areas are, she said. Every person who sees the map can also draw their own idea from it  about how we can benefit.

Three kilometres east of Tyre, in southern Lebanon, Burj al-Shamali was built in 1948 to house Palestinian refugees from the Hawla and Tiberias areas of northern Palestine in tents. In 1955, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees began providing services to residents in the camp, who had gradually built concrete and tin structures.

Today, Burj al-Shamali is home to almost 25,000 Palestinian refugees.

Mahmoud al-Joumma, president of the camps branch of the youth support group, Beit Atfal Assumoud, said that children and camp residents had been running after the mapping group, curious because they had never seen balloon mapping before. In the beginning, really, I didnt believe it was possible, Joumma told Al Jazeera about his own initial reaction to the project.

But he said that holding a physical map in their hands might help to change the fact that many residents in the camp do not fully understand the conditions in which they are living, and the challenges the community faces.

We by Mahmoud

for the future, to give a future to [the youth].]

Some people know their home, here, he said, but they didnt know exactly what they would find on the other side [of the camp], how life is on the other side.

He explained that unemployment and poor educational opportunities are major concerns in Burj al-Shamali, but the project is a clear example of how solutions are possible.

Its just to encourage our youth, Joumma said. We understand our situation, our difficult conditions inside the camps, but we believe that even if there are difficulties, there is the possibility to [build] for the future, to give a future to [the youth].

When it is finished, the map will mark services in Burj al-Shamali  health and dental clinics, schools, mosques, and local organisations  as well as important points on the main road, which makes a circular loop around the entire camp, Joumma said.

It will also include the demarcations of different neighbourhoods, which remain named after the villages in historic Palestine from where the refugees originally hailed. Every region in the camp has a name  Here Hatoum, here Safouri, here Al-Naima, here Ez-Zouk, he said.

The project is now in the final stage, and organisers are raising money to print the maps and distribute them among residents, government officials, human rights groups and humanitarian groups in Lebanon, among others.

They also hope to send the three Burj al-Shamali youth map-makers  Said, Dakhloul and Ismail  to the United States to meet US mapping experts and speak to groups about their experiences.

But according to Claudia Martinez Mansell, coordinator of the Greening Bourj al-Shamali project, their US visa applications were recently rejected on the basis that they could not prove sufficient ties to Lebanon.

Consular officials reportedly said this could be proven by showing marriage certificates, job contracts or property ownership certificates  all impossible things to ask 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds who are still at university, Martinez Mansell said, noting that they would apply for the visas again.

I have not given up, Martinez Mansell said. To me it is so important that they get the opportunities to learn and be recognised for their work, so that they can come back and carry out the work they are doing.
Two days after the killing of 32 in Kunduz, US army concedes its raids likely resulted in the loss of innocent lives.

US forces in Afghanistan conceded on Saturday that their air strikes in the northern province of Kunduz had very likely resulted in civilian killings.

At least 32 people, including babies, children and women, were killed and dozens wounded on Thursday when their houses on the outskirts of Kunduz city were bombed as they slept.





The killings sparked angry protests in the village of Boze Qandahari calling to bring the perpetrators to justice.

The strikes were in support of US and Afghan forces during an attack targeting senior Taliban commanders, according to local officials.

US military spokesman Charles Cleveland said an initial probe showed the attack very likely resulted in civilian casualties.

General John Nicholson, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, also admitted that the strikes had likely caused the loss of innocent lives.

We will work with our Afghan partners to investigate and determine the facts and we will work with the Government of Afghanistan to provide assistance, he said in a statement.

What was their crime?

The carnage triggered impassioned rallies in Kunduz city, with the victims relatives parading mutilated bodies of dead children piled into open trucks through the streets.

Look around me, everyone is in deep pain, Sultan Mohammad told AFP news agency, carrying the body of a victim for the mass funeral ceremony on Friday.

What was their crime? Why were they killed like this?

Ordinary people were sleeping in their homes, another protester said. All night the airplanes were bombing  What did those children do wrong? I want justice for the killers.

READ MORE: US air strike reportedly kills 13 Afghan civilians

The civilian killings underline the precarious security situation around Kunduz, which Taliban fighters came close to over-running last month, a year after they briefly captured the city in their biggest success in the 15-year long war.

The strikes also killed some top Taliban commanders, defence ministry spokesman Daulat Waziri said.

Some civilians killed were members of their families, he added.

Civilian casualties caused by NATO forces have been one of the most contentious issues in the campaign against the Taliban, prompting strong public and government criticism.
Faruq al-Qahtani, groups leader for northeastern Afghanistan, killed in October strike in Kunar, Pentagon says.

A US army air raid in Afghanistan last month killed one of the senior al-Qaeda leaders in the country, the Pentagon said.

Faruq al-Qahtani, who served as al-Qaedas leader for northeastern Afghanistan and had been assigned by the groups leadership to re-establish safe havens in the country, was killed in the October 23 bombing in Kunar, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said on Friday in a statement.

Al-Qaeda has yet to comment.

We can now confirm that the precision strike conducted by the US military on October 23 in Kunar, Afghanistan, resulted in the death of senior al-Qaeda leader Faruq al-Qahtani, Cook said.

He said the Pentagon was still assessing the result of a separate air raid on the same day targeting another al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan, Bilal al-Utaybi.

Big military offensives in Pakistan against the local Taliban have pushed hundreds of fighters across the border into Afghanistan where they seek safety in areas controlled by the Afghan Taliban.
At least two children killed and four wounded in an explosion officials blame on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party.

A bomb blast in the southeastern Turkish province of Sirnak killed at least two children, local officials said on Saturday.

Four more children were also wounded in the attack, the governors office said in a statement, which blamed the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) for the explosion.

Earlier on Saturday, authorities appointed a new mayor to the Sirnak municipality.

Turkish authorities have been replacing municipal officials in the mainly Kurdish southeast, accusing them of supporting the PKK.

The government has also stepped up a military campaign in the troubled southeast to eradicate PKK fighters, who have launched repeated attacks since the rupture of a fragile ceasefire last year.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed since the PKK first took up arms in 1984, with the aim of carving out an independent state for Turkeys Kurdish minority.
At least two soldiers were killed and five wounded in a suicide car bomb attack on Saturday near Somalias parliament in the capital Mogadishu, according to police.

The blast, which targeted an army convoy near the Sayidka junction checkpoint, was claimed by the armed group al-Shabab.

Two soldiers died and five others were injured, Major Hussein Nur told Reuters news agency, adding that police, military and security forces were on the scene when the attack occurred.

The attacker, who also was killed, was trying to cause the maximum number of casualties but failed as he struck only one of the convoys vehicles, Captain Mohamed Hussein told the Associated Press news agency.

READ MORE: Somalia in a Snapchat, more than just violence

Al-Shababs radio station Andalus said a suicide car bomb had been driven by a mujahid into Sayidka junction where a convoy of the apostate government security forces were passing.

The group told Reuters it had killed 17 soldiers and wounded more than 30 others in the attack.

Al-Shabab usually gives far lower numbers of casualties on its side and much higher death tolls for the security forces.

It was pushed out of Mogadishu by the African Union peacekeeping force AMISOM in 2011 but has remained a potent threat in Somalia, launching frequent attacks aimed at overthrowing the Western-backed government.
Almost all on board heavily-guarded convoy were families who had escaped ISIL-held territory.

Two roadside bombs struck a convoy carrying Iraqi families fleeing an ISIL-controlled town in the north of the country late on Friday, killing at least 18 people, a police officer said.

The bombs targeted a truck carrying people from Hawija, about 120kms south of ISILs stronghold in Mosul, as they were being taken to the town of Al Alam, next to the River Tigris.

Seventeen of the dead were from the displaced families, regional police Colonel Nemaa al-Jabouri told the Reuters news agency. One policeman in an accompanying patrol car was also killed.

READ MORE: Is it wrong to call Mosul battle a liberation?

Pictures published on social media by a group linked to Iraqs defence ministry showed several blackened corpses next to the twisted wreckage of the lorry.





The victims were being transported there by Iraqi armed services, so even though they felt they were safe in this convoy, they were still attacked, said Al Jazeeras Mohammed Jamjoom, reporting from Khazir, north of Mosul, at a camp site for people fleeing the fighting.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ISIL group, also known as ISIS, took control of Mosul in 2014.

Last month, two years later, Iraqi troops and special forces, Shia militias, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and other groups backed by US-led air raids launched a campaign to retake the city.

READ MORE: Can Mosul survive ISIL?

The attack on the convoy came as Iraqi special forces cleared buildings on Saturday in neighborhoods they entered in eastern Mosul a day before, after pushing out ISIL fighters.





Fighting continued in the morning, with both sides firing mortars and automatic weapons at each others positions, while Iraqi troops also responded with artillery.

Clashes were most intense in the al-Bakr neighbourhood. Sniper duels played out from rooftops in the mostly residential areas, where the majority of buildings are two stories high.

[ISIL] is in the city centre and we must be very careful as our forces advance, said Major General Sami al-Aridi of the Iraqi special forces.

With more densely packed neighbourhoods ahead, his forces will be challenged to avoid both higher military and civilian casualties.

As he spoke, dozens of civilians in the Tahrir and Zahara districts emerged from their homes, some of them carrying white flags, and headed towards the troops to be evacuated from the battlefield.
Armed group fighting Turkish troops in Iraq says it was behind blast near police station in Diyarbakir that killed nine.

ISIL said on Friday that it was behind a car bombing that killed nine people in Kurdish-dominated southeastern Turkey, according to US-based monitors.

An insider source for Amaq Agency: Fighters from the Islamic State detonated an explosives-laden vehicle parked in front of a Turkish police headquarters in Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey, the SITE Intelligence Group said, citing Amaq, which is a name ISIL often uses when claiming responsibility for attacks.

In an audio message released earlier this week, reclusive ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi broke a nearly year-long silence to call for attacks against Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia, and for his fighters to hold their ground in their stronghold of Mosul, Iraq.

Ankara has troops stationed at a base just outside Mosul and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans escalating rhetoric has raised fears of an expanded Turkish military intervention in Iraq.

[The attack] could be retaliation by [ISIL] for the fact that Turkey is now participating in the coalition against [ISIL], Bulent Aliriza, the director of the Turkey Project and senior associate at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told Al Jazeera.

Aliriza said, though, that Turkish support of Syrian opposition fighters effectively prevented the establishment of a Kurdish belt across northern Syria, and that was something that must have annoyed the YPG.

READ MORE: What is Turkey trying to achieve in Iraq?

Turkey views the Peoples Protection Units, or YPG, as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which it initially blamed for the blast outside the police station in Diyarbakir, Turkeys main majority-Kurdish city.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said the PKK had again shown its ugly face with the attack.

The attacks came as Turkey jailed the two leaders of the countrys main pro-Kurdish party and 10 of the partys MPs.

Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, co-leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party, were jailed pending trial after being held in overnight raids, officials said. Ten other of the partys MPs were also detained, although some were later released.

The arrest of elected members of the Turkish parliaments third largest party, and the detention or suspension of more than 110,000 officials since a failed coup in July, may go beyond what is permissible, the United Nations human rights office said.

The United States expressed deep concern, while Germany and Denmark summoned Turkish diplomats over the Kurdish detentions, and European Parliament President Martin Schulz said the actions call into question the basis for the sustainable relationship between the EU and Turkey.
Iraqi special forces meet resistance from ISIL fighters who attack in the east with a ferocious counter-assault.

ISIL fighters launched ferocious counter-attacks on Saturday in territory Iraqi special forces captured in Mosuls eastern edges, highlighting the tough battle ahead as troops push into densely populated neighbourhoods.

ISIL emerged from deeper in the city to target Iraqi soldiers with mortars and suicide car bombs. It also attacked the southern edge of the Gogjali district, which Iraqi forces declared liberated earlier this week, pushing back some gains.

READ MORE: Civilians fleeing Mosul killed in roadside bomb attack

Street battles continued, with both sides firing mortar rounds and automatic weapons at each others positions while Iraqi troops also responded with artillery.





Clashes were most intense in the al-Bakr neighbourhood. Sniper duels played out from rooftops in the mostly residential areas, where the majority of buildings are two storeys high.

Lieutenant-Colonel Saad Alwan, from Iraqs counterterrorism unit, told Al Jazeera the street battles were vicious.

Were facing fierce resistance. Theyre digging trenches and using car bombs, Alwan said.

More evidence of daunting fortifications emerged on Saturday, with satellite images showing ISIL had set up defences to bog down advancing forces, including rows of concrete barricades, earth berms, and rubble blocking key routes leading to the centre of the city.

Slow southern advance

Advances towards Mosul have been slower from the south with government troops still 35km away, yet some progress has been made, Iraqi forces say. They assaulted ISIL positions in the town of Hammam al-Alil on Saturday, which lies along the Tigris river about 15km from the southernmost parts of Mosul.

Kurdish television channel Rudaw broadcast live footage of Iraqi troops and armoured vehicles amassing outside the city as an attack helicopter fired rockets.

Truckloads full of as many as 1,600 civilians may have been forcibly moved from Hammam al-Alil to Tal Afar earlier this week, and may be transferred onwards into Syria for possible use as human shields, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned on Friday.

Another 150 families from the town were moved to Mosul itself, it said.

IN PICTURES: ISILs blazing trail of destruction in Qayyara

Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, on what state television said was a visit to forward lines near Mosul, urged ISIL fighters to surrender.

My words to the terrorists are that if you wish to save your lives, you should lay down your weapons. There is no place for you in Iraq, said Abadi, surrounded by soldiers dressed in black from the counterterrorism unit.

My message to the people in Mosul: Be ready, any minute now we will enter Mosul and cut off the head of the ISIL snake.

Mosul is the only major Iraqi city still held by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIS, which seized control of the city in 2014.

Last month, Iraqi troops and special forces, Shia militias, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, and other groups backed by US-led air raids launched a campaign to retake the city.

READ MORE: Money and patience grow short in Iraqi Kurdistan

Meanwhile, an aid agency said on Saturday that the number of displaced people had risen sharply, with more than 9,000 new arrivals in camps outside the city.

This is the beginning of a massive exodus from Mosul city, Wolfgang Gressmann, of the Norwegian Refugee Council, warned. We must insist that civilians fleeing have genuinely safe exit routes out of the city.

The agency said at least 1.2 million people were thought to be trapped inside Mosul and some 700,000 might soon require humanitarian assistance.
Nigerian troops find one of the missing Chibok girls seized by Boko Haram in 2014, weeks after the release of 21 others.

One of the more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram fighters in the town of Chibok in 2014 was found by Nigerian soldiers on Saturday, according to the army.

The rescue comes weeks after 21 other Chibok girls were released by the armed group following negotiations with the government brokered by the International Red Cross and the Swiss government.

READ MORE: Kisses, tears as freed Chibok girls reunite with families

Army spokesman Sani Usman said the girl, Maryam Ali Maiyanga, was discovered by troops who were screening escapees from Boko Harams base in the Sambisa forest on Saturday morning in Pulka, in Borno state.

Usman said Maiyanga was carrying a 10-month-old baby when the soldiers found her.

She has been taken to the units medical facility for [a] proper medical check up, said Usman.

The news was welcomed by the Bring Back Our Girls lobby group campaigning for the release of all the abductees.

Another #ChibokGirl back!

Wow!

The euphoria is unbelievable

Yes we can

Nigerian government can

196 To go #BringBackOurGirls NOW & ALIVE pic.twitter.com/EGBQjyy4NU  Aisha Yesufu (@AishaYesufu) November 5, 2016

In a statement, the campaigners said preliminary investigations showed the girl was number 198 on its register of the kidnapped girls.

They added she was from Askira Uba, a district of Borno state, and was abducted along with her twin who is yet to return.

Boko Haram seized 276 pupils from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok on April 14, 2014.

Fifty-seven managed to escape in the immediate aftermath of the abduction, but nearly 200 other girls are still missing. The government has vowed to rescue those still held.

Army offensive





The kidnapping has become a major political issue in Nigeria, with the government and military criticised for their handling of the incident and failure to rescue the girls.

In recent weeks, Nigerias army has been carrying out a large-scale offensive in the vast woodland area and other parts of Borno state, the epicentre of Boko Harams violent campaign.

Usman said troops killed 14 suspected Boko Haram fighters on Friday during a clash.

We lost an officer and four soldiers, while four other soldiers sustained various degrees of injuries during the encounter, he said.

About 2,000 girls and boys have been abducted by Boko Haram since 2014, with many used as sex slaves, fighters and even suicide bombers, according to Amnesty International.

The unrest in Nigerias mainly-Muslim north has killed at least 20,000 people and made more than 2.6 million homeless since 2009.
Tens of thousands refuse to accept Park Geun-hyes apology in scandal caused by close friends access to power.

Tens of thousands of South Koreans have taken to the streets of the capital Seoul, calling for President Park Geun-hye to step down over a political scandal that has gripped the nation.

The protests on Saturday, expected to draw more than 40,000 people, come after Park addressed the country on Friday, admitting that she had allowed her friend and confidante Choi Soon-sil to become too close to the corridors of power and decision-making.

Choi allegedly helped her with political appointments and policy decisions, even though she is a private citizen without security clearance. Park apologised for the scandal. She called the controversies that allegedly allowed her confidante to manipulate power as heartbreaking.

READ MORE: Will South Koreas president be forced out of office?

But thousands of South Koreans are refusing to accept her apology. The main opposition issued a set of demands to Park, including the call for a full investigation by politicians and an independent counsel.

Al Jazeeras Harry Fawcett, reporting from Seoul, said that people from all walks of life had turned up to protest, indicating that people were still outraged and unwilling to accept her apology.

Many here say they dont feel the apology is a sincere one and they are here to call for her to step down, our correspondent said.

The wheels of goverment are turning but [President] Park is running out of luck on the political front as she is on the popular front, our correspondent said.

Crucial moment

Smaller protests have taken place daily in the past few weeks amid growing calls for Park to step down, although opposition parties have yet to make a serious push for her resignation or impeachment for fears of negatively affecting next years presidential election.

Parks comments on Friday come at what may well prove to be the crucial moment of her presidency. Park is attempting to show the contrition and sense of responsibility that South Koreans demand, while re-establishing her tarnished credibility.

She is in the fourth year of a single five-year term and faced criticism even before this scandal, particularly for the governments response to a 2014 ferry sinking that killed more than 300 people.

Only Choi has been formally arrested in connection with the scandal.

Prosecutors on Friday requested an arrest warrant for Ahn Jong-beom, a former Park aide, for his alleged involvement in extracting $70 million in donations.

Earlier in the week, prosecutors held another ex-presidential aide, Jeong Ho-seong, for allegedly leaking confidential documents to Choi. Prosecutors said they were reviewing whether to seek an arrest warrant for him, too.
Petar Nizamov spends his days trawling the border with Turkey to find hopeful refugees to try and send back.

Petar Nizamov hunts through the Strandja mountains on an autumn afternoon. But he is not searching for animals. He is looking for refugees.

A self-procaimed migrant hunter, Nizamov believes he is carrying out a noble mission by finding those who are trying to enter Bulgaria irregularly via Turkey, and persuading them to turn back around. He claims that authorities support his endeavours.

He has, though, previously been placed under house arrest and been condemned by rights groups. Pushing people back over the border without processing them is illegal under European Union law.

Theyre [refugees] coming like an army and they dont respect our society, he told Al Jazeera. They dont respect our women and they want to make a Syria here.

The 249-kilometre border between Bulgaria and Turkey is largely unfenced. Since the Balkans route was shut earlier this year, the journey to Bulgaria is viewed as an alternative to those fleeing war, persecution and poverty.

Between 200 and 300 people are found each week trying to cross the border  some by police, others by vigilantes.

READ MORE: Syrians in Bulgaria ask Why dont they help us?

Asked what he expected of refugees if they managed to safely arrive in Bulgaria, Nizamov said: Just slavery, rapes, mass rapes, robberies of people.

Petar claims that he only stops undocumented economic migrants, not legitimate refugees. He also says he does not use weapons, but Al Jazeera saw he was armed with a machete on his travels.

In mobile phone footage seen by Al Jazeera, Nizamov can be seen ordering three Afghan nationals who are restrained in handcuffs to go back Turkey now, now, in broken English.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov has been criticised by other EU states for failing to condemn vigilantism. Migration is a sensitive topic in Bulgaria, with increasing intolerance of offering refuge to asylum seekers.

In the run-up to presidential elections, few politicians want to be seen supporting refugees.

Our prime minister said that every day there are around 100 cases of people who are caught and immediately brought back to Turkey without being able to access any formal procedure, Krassimir Kanev, director of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, told Al Jazeera.

The United Nations says attacks and abuse against migrants and refugees are an alarming trend.

Follow Neave Barker on Twitter: @NeaveBarker
Police say Rolando Espinosa shot after firing at guards, becoming second mayor in fortnight to be shot dead.

A Philippine mayor President Rodrigo Duterte named as being involved in the illegal drug trade was shot dead in jail on Saturday, police said, the second local official implicated in drugs to be killed in two weeks.

Duterte, 71, won May elections in a landslide victory on a promise to kill tens of thousands of criminals to prevent the Philippines from becoming a narco-state, and has launched an unprecedented war on drugs that has left more than 4,000 people dead.

He had named several local officials, policemen and judges as being involved in the narcotics trade and urged them to surrender.





In August, he accused Rolando Espinosa, the mayor of Albuera town in the central island of Leyte, and his son of drug trafficking and demanded they turn themselves in, giving police a shoot on sight order if the two resisted arrest.

Espinosa then surrendered to the national police chief, saying he feared for his life, and was arrested last month.

But early on Saturday morning, police said Espinosa was killed in his cell in the provincial jail after he shot at officers during a search for illegal firearms.

He fired on the raiding team. The raiding team fired back and this led to the mayors death, Chief Inspector Leo Laraga of the regional police told AFP news agency.

He added that another inmate accused of drug trafficking was also killed, after he too fired at the officers.

The national police said that it was investigating the circumstances surrounding Espinosas death as well as possible collusion between guards and inmates to get guns and drugs into the jail.

Drug protector

Police chief Ronald dela Rosa previously said that Espinosa had been listed in official records as a drug protector, whose son Kerwin controlled the narcotics trade in the Albuera region.

Kerwin was arrested in the United Arab Emirates last month and is to return to the Philippines to face drug trafficking charges.

READ MORE: Inside Dutertes killer drug war

In August, six of the Espinosas supporters died in a gunfight with police outside the mayors property in Albuera where officers said they recovered guns and several grenades.

Another mayor accused of drug trafficking was killed in the southern Philippines in late October.

Police said Samsudin Dimaukom and his security personnel opened fire after anti-narcotics police stopped their vehicles at a checkpoint on suspicion they were transporting illegal drugs.

Al Jazeeras Jamela Alindogan, reporting from Tacloban  the provincial capital of Leyte, said: Human rights lawyers were quick to condemn this incident [the killing of Espinosa]. Even senators have said this was one of the most brazen acts ever committed by police under Dutertes presidency.

She added that any have termed Dutertes war on drugs a war against the poor.

Because the majority of those being killed are living in shanty towns who really have no strength to fight what they call abuse of police power. Last week the police said there would be no scaling down when it comes to drugs.
President cites decade in jail during apartheid era after report suggests judicial probe into alleged corruption.

A defiant South African President Jacob Zuma says he doesnt fear prison days after an anti-graft watchdog released a report recommending a judicial probe into alleged corruption.

The State of Capture report, which stopped short of saying crimes had been committed, suggested a judge should take the investigation forward into whether Zuma, cabinet members, and some state companies acted improperly in their dealings with wealthy Indian businessmen.

Zuma on Saturday noted he had served time as a political prisoner during South Africas apartheid era.

Im not afraid of jail. Ive been to jail during the struggle, Zuma told a cheering crowd in Kwa-Zulu Natal, his home province and political stronghold.

Zuma spent 10 years as an anti-apartheid activist in prison on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela during the 1948-1994 rule by the countrys white minority.

Zuma criticised the report by anti-graft watchdog Public Protector released on Wednesday, saying he was not given a chance to provide meaningful input into the investigation.

Theres no longer any space for democratic debate. The only space there is for court arguments by lawyers. Thats not democracy, Zuma said.

READ MORE: S Africa: Corruption report increases pressure on Zuma

The Gupta brothers  Ajay, Atul and Rajesh, who are friends of Zuma and work with his son  have been accused of influencing cabinet appointments and securing government tenders. Zuma and the Guptas deny any wrongdoing.



Police and anti-Zuma protesters clash in Pretoria

Thousands of protesters called for the president to resign after the 355-page probe was released, and some opposition politicians said Zuma should face criminal charges.

In one case, the report cited extraordinary and unprecedented government intervention in a private business dispute involving Zumas friends and his son.

This, it said, may have created a possible conflict of interest between the president as head of state and his private interest as a friend and father.

Zuma faces a no-confidence vote in parliament next week. He has survived two similar votes this year, backed by the support of his African National Congress (ANC) party, which controls about two-thirds of the assembly.

Since taking office in 2009, Zuma, 74, has overcome several corruption scandals with the backing of the top echelon of the ANC.

In June, South Africas Treasury recommended that Zuma should pay back more than $500,000 of public funds spent upgrading his private residence, including with a chicken coop and swimming pool.

The ruling came three months after the countrys highest court found that the president had violated the constitution by defying an order to repay some of the money used in the $23m non-security upgrades for his home in Nkandla, in KwaZulu-Natal.
Prime Minister says Kurdistan Workers Party behind Friday blast that also wounded more than 100 after ISIL makes claim.

Confusion over who carrried out a deadly bombing in Turkeys southern city of Diyarbakir swirled on Saturday a day after the massive blast outside a police headquarters.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim blamed the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, for the explosion that killed 11 people and wounded more than 100. The armed group has regularly targeted security forces since ending a truce in 2015.

However, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) earlier claimed responsibility on Saturday for the Diyarbakir attack.





So far there has been no denial or claim of responsibility from the PKK.

Yildirim said the PKK had once again reared its ugly face with the bombing outside the police station, with two officers among the dead.

The state-run Anadolu news agency said the attack left a swathe of devastation, blowing out the entire front of a nearby apartment block and leaving the surroundings covered in rubble.

Emergency workers on Saturday sifted through the damage, while residents arrived to gather whatever belongings they could salvage, an AFP news agency photographer said.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed since the PKK first took up arms in 1984 with the aim of carving out an independent state for Turkeys Kurdish minority.

The PKK has been designated as a terror group by Turkey, the EU, and the United States.

ISIL call for attacks

Meanwhile, the US-based SITE Intelligence Group  citing the ISIL-affiliated Amaq news site  said fighters from the Islamic State detonated an explosives-laden vehicle parked in front of the police headquarters in Diyarbakir.

In an audio message released earlier this week, reclusive ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi broke a nearly year-long silence to call for attacks against Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia, and for his fighters to hold their ground in the battle for their stronghold of Mosul, Iraq.

Ankara has troops stationed at a base just outside Mosul and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans escalating rhetoric has raised fears of an expanded Turkish military intervention in Iraq.

[The Diyarbakir attack] could be retaliation by [ISIL] for the fact that Turkey is now participating in the coalition, Bulent Aliriza, director of the Turkey Project and senior associate at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told Al Jazeera.

READ MORE: What is Turkey trying to achieve in Iraq?

The local governorate in Diyarbakir on Saturday issued a new statement insisting the bombing was carried out by the PKK, saying this conclusion was based on intercepted radio conversations.

It said the three tonnes of explosives used in the bombing were activated by a PKK operative with the codename Kemal.

This information clearly shows that the attack was carried out by the separatist terror organisation, it said, using the customary official phrase for the PKK.

The pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) said six of its MPs, including its co-leaders, narrowly escaped injury in the attack as they were being held in the police complex after their detention overnight.

Fighting between the PKK and state security forces resumed last year after the collapse of a fragile two-and-a-half-year ceasefire.

Since then, more than 600 Turkish security personnel and thousands of PKK fighters have been killed.
The story of Turkeys media crackdown, told through the numbers. Plus, the state of the media in Serbia today.

On The Listening Post this week: The story of Turkeys media crackdown, told through the numbers. Plus, the state of the media in Serbia.

Turkeys media: After the attempted coup, the closures

Since the attempted coup in Turkey in July, not a week has gone by without news of a journalists arrest, a revoked press card or the closure of a media outlet. We look at the scale of the crackdown  how many news outlets have been closed and how many are left?

Talking us through the story are: Ahmet Sik, journalist, Cumhuriyet; Beritan Canozer, journalist, JINHA News Agency; Mehmet Akarca, general manager, Press Regulator; Ceren Sozeri, media scholar; and Yildiray Ogur, journalist, Turkiye newspaper.

On our radar:

Police in the Canadian province of Quebec are facing questions about why they have been spying on journalists.

Leaked Clinton campaign emails push CNN to part company with Democratic Party operative, Donna Brazile.

Venezuela denies access to yet another foreign journalist amid the countrys ongoing political and economic turmoil.

A curious media exhibition in Serbia

The Serbian government is pushing back against accusations of censorship by sponsoring a travelling exhibition of critical media content called Uncensored Lies. We went to take a look. All was not as it seemed.

Talking us through the story are: Maja Kocijancic, spokeswoman, EU Foreign Affairs; Vukasin Obradovic, president, Association of Independent Journalists; Nebojsa Stefanovic, Serbian vice president and interior minister; and Aleksandar Dordevic, investigative journalist, BIRN project.
Dr Marc Lamont Hill is an award-winning journalist and author and is the Steve Charles Professor of Media, Cities, and Solutions at Temple University. Hill is known for his work addressing the intersections of race, justice, politics and culture. His latest best-selling book is We Still Here: Pandemics, Policing, Protest and Possibility which follows on the success of Nobody: Casualties of Americas War on the Vulnerable from Flint to Ferguson. Hill has received numerous prestigious awards from the US National Association of Black Journalists, GLAAD, and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.










English News J&K resolve to NOW control politics of India and Pakistan instead of present vice-versa

Alwihda Info | Par Hem Raj Jain - 5 Novembre 2016



Bengaluru, India

---As mentioned in my letter http://aapress.com/ethnicity/indian/another-opportunity-to-solve-kashmir-problem/ on the invitation of Nazir Ahmad Gilkar (candidate J&K Assembly election 2014) I went to Kashmir (Srinagar) and on Thursday November, 3 we discussed (with some socio-political activists, separatists, HR NGO persons, journalists etc. invited by Gilkar) the matter of bringing normalcy to Kashmir and of solving Kashmir problem either through existing party (prepared to adopt our program and policies) or by launching a New National Political Party (NNPP).



In this meeting I told that I have come to Kashmir due to two reasons (A)- Kashmir problem is a martial problem (Union subject) and not a civilian problem (State subject) hence is the responsibility of entire India. Hence it should be a matter of shame to every Indian politician if Kashmir problem is not solved. Therefore as a responsible politician I have come to Kashmir to assist in solving Kashmir problem (B)- Due to personal reason. About 30 years back I came in contact with Quran and since then I have been immensely benefitted by its preaching hence I consider myself under obligation to help Muslims (the followers of Prophet Mohammad) anywhere in the world (whether in Kashmir or in AF-PAK region or in NAME region, Syria etc) wherever they are bleeding and weeping profusely (as mentioned also at https://kashmirobserver.net/2016/letters/time-mirwaiz-act-6846 )



It is a matter of great satisfaction that after wide discussion (where generally the following was consented / agreed upon) it has been decided in this meeting to launch a national level new political party (NNPP) with its registered office at Srinagar:-



(i)- Without unification of J&K there is no Kashmir solution (ii)- Pakistan much less powerful than India cannot snatch remaining J&K from India (iii)- Hindu India due to communal mind-set not interested (unlike Hindu Goa) in retrieving Muslim PoJK (iv)- India will not give J&K to Pakistan or will allow independence to J&K (v)- Pakistan will not give PoJK to India. Even if government of Pakistan (including its military) allows it then Jihadis, who as per media, laid down the lives of ~ one hundred thousand Jihadis for Kashmir will not allow it (vi)- Such helpless India & Pakistan (who have been controlling politics of J&K for the last 70 years) is the main reason for Kashmir problem (vii)- J&K will have to reverse it for Kashmir solution by controlling the politics of India and Pakistan (viii)- Neither rest of India nor Pakistan can solve Kashmir problem. It can be solved only by Kashmiris because Khud marya hi swarag deekhe (Paradise can be seen only when you yourself die) (ix)- Hindus since the days of Gandhi, Nehru Patel etc have not been able to win the confidence of Muslims (hence partition in 1947) and still the situation is same (because being majority the Hindus are simply not interested in secularism (the commitment of so-called secularists / moderate of India is either too feeble or skin-deep) (x)- Hence now Muslims (through only Muslim majority State J&K) should try to win the confidence of Hindus through a genuinely secular NNPP (xi)- For controlling politics of Pakistan a writ petition should be filed at Srinagar for seeking clarification from / position of Government of India (GOI) and Government of J&K about retrieve of PoJK (xii)- For controlling politics of India in addition to this writ 7 other writs should be filed in Supreme Court by NNPP and NNPP will contest all the coming elections in various States and at Union level (xiii)- Objective and policies of NNPP should be in consonance with human rights friendly Islam but it should be called HR Friendly Socialism as people (most of Hindus and Christians the powerful West) have problem with name Islam due to bad name brought to Islam by terrorist Jihadis like ISIS etc (xiv)- NNPP will have its website displaying its Constitution members / office-bearers list etc (xv)- NNPP as its objectives will work (as per HR friendly Socialism for international order through UN) for bringing succor to Muslim countries of AF-Pak region and NAME region (Especially Syria) and even in Western countries (where people are suffering due to wrong policies about housing, health-care education and right to work / employment) (xvi)- NNPP as its policies will cooperate with China and Pakistan in China-Pak Economic Corridor (CPEC) in order to ensure its success so that India can also benefit from it (xvii)- Some suggested name for NNPP were Akhand Bharat Party, United India Party etc which will send a message that NNPP will work for United India and Pakistan (UIP, may be through Realized SAARC) (xviii)- UIP will be made possible through writ in Srinagar Court because world community will not allow war between nuclear India and Pakistan (xix)- India and Pakistan were together but parted in 1947 because there was no genuine secular party in India (xx)- Now UIP will be possible only when some secular party like NNPP emerges in India and that too from Muslim majority State J&K



For the launch of this NNPP following decisions were taken at this Thursday Nov, 3 meeting:-



(1)- With the assistance of members and office-bearers of this NNPP it will be the responsibility of Nazeer Ahmad Gilkar to start party office at Srinagar, registration of this NNPP at Election commission of India, managing Srinagar party head office, staring website of this NNPP etc



(2)- It will be the responsibility of Hem Raj Jain (myself) to visit various states of India to make members for this NNPP and for motivating party members to contest coming elections in States for all the seats (including in UP)



(3)- The salient features of the Constitution of this NNPP will be:-



(i)- Membership will be subject to condition that members (having faith in its constitution) will give Rs 10 monthly membership fees and will sign a personal attendance register at area party office every month.



(ii)- Organizational election of the party will be done only by ordinary and active members and election candidates will be decided by relevant local bodies of the party.



(iii)- This NNPP will work on the principle that office bearers who will sit in area party offices (in order to get justice / relief to the people / victims through various organs of State) will have more power and importance in the party than Panch, Sarpanch, Corporators, MLLs, MPs, Minister etc of this NNPP.



(iv)- This NNPP will have allegiance to the policy of (A)-Federalism (where only martial matters will be with Union and all civilian matters including natural resources will be with States), (B)- HR friendly Socialism (which is nothing but joint-capitalism where like private capital the State capital will also be deployed profitable especially to eradicate unemployment) and health-care & education will be brought under the control of the people (first health care through modified ESI where in addition to government representatives the representatives of employees and employer will be in the management). And residential and business buildings will be made by governments which will be given on rent to be determined by Rent Commission (C )- Secularism for the restoration of which some writ petitions will be filed in J&K High Court and Supreme Court of India (D)- Democratic Republic for which NNPP will ensure periodic organization elections and filing of annual returns of the audited financial accounts of this NNPP and will get reservation laws repealed (through writ in SCI) because these are given in the name of oppressed and backward castes which demoralizes the beneficiaries and which is anti-democracy (NNPP is not against corruption but it should not be given with demoralizing tag and should be given to any identifiable group of people who think that otherwise they cannot get proportional representation in government services)



(4)- NNPP will file following writ petitions in SCI (i)- Legally expected restoration of Status-quo-ante of Babri Masjid which was demolished in 1992 in the presence of Observer of Supreme Court (ii)- Query about retrieve of POK in the interest of removal of AFSPA etc from J&K (through writ first in J&K high Court and then in SCI if needed) (iii)- Prosecution against guilty found by Sri Krishna Commission about 1992-93 communal riots in Mumbai / Maharashtra (while rightly asking for deportation / action against Dawood Ibrahim etc, the guilty of serial blasts which were direct fallout of said riots) (iv)- Identification, tracking and deportation of illegal immigrants, mainly from Bangladesh (v)- Quashing of discriminatory (especially against Muslims) Reservation Policy (vi)- Delhi 1984 & Gujarat 2002 riots about section 130 & 131 Cr.P.C. (vii)- Constitutional obligation about Public debt under Article 292 & 293 and not under unconstitutional FRBM (viii)- For recovery of Rs ~ 1,000 Trillion tax out of black money (as mentioned at http://www.alwihdainfo.com/Now-India-bound-to-get-Rs--1000-Trillion-income-tax-as-Delhi-Police-steps-in_a31456.html ) which, when recovered, will solve most of the problems being faced by India especially arising due to economic hardship



(5)- For managing the initial expenses for launch of this NNPP like for office rent, for various writ petitions (first three writ petitions will be filed on priority), for starting party website, for getting this NNPP at ECI etc it was considered in said Nov, 3 meeting at Srinagar that this NNPP will need Rs 50,000 (fifty thousand) per month which some members will have to bear. This can be got from especial category of 500 founding members who each will give Rs 100 per month till NNPP starts getting funds from other sources (various contributions). All other present in this meeting said that this money could have easily come from Kashmir itself (and this NNPP could have been in launched from Srinagar in second week of November, 2016 itself) but due to Bandh / strike in Kashmir for the last ~ 4 months Kashmiris do not have spare money hence it will not be possible for them to give this seed money. Therefor an effort will be made to enlist such 500 founding members for this NNPP from rest of J&K and from rest of India.



We are sure that this genuinely Secular National Political Party (launched form Muslim majority State of J&K / Srinagar) will win the confidence of Hindus from all over India and thus will be instrumental in bringing peace, justice, harmony and prosperity not only to Kashmir / J&K and India but also in entire SAARC and other troubled regions of the World.



Regards



Hem Raj Jain



(Author of Betrayal of Americanism)



Bengaluru, India



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As presidential campaigns go, the 2016 election will be remembered as one the filthiest and coarsest ever. Donald Trumps direct and unrestrained manner of speaking has brought on sharp criticism by the establishment and its surrogates in the media. On the other hand, Hillary Clintons judgment and actions as Secretary of State involving national security matters while also working hand-in-glove with Clinton Foundation were breathtakingly reckless -- violating over a dozen laws that would have put anyone else in jail.

When the Clintons left the White House in 2001, pilfering over $190,000 worth of china, flatware, rugs, and furniture as they cleared out, they claimed they were flat broke. Their net worth today is now in excess of $150 million, accumulated not by traditional means of work and investment, but rather by pay-for-play influence peddling through speeches and Clinton Foundation fundraising -- with the tacit understanding that the Clintons would be in a position to return favors to donors after Hillary won the 2016 presidential election.

The Clintons symbolize the institutionalization of corruption in Washington, which now permeates almost all the government agencies. Even the so-called independent Federal Reserve has been corrupted by politicians whose profligate deficit spending puts pressure on the Fed to maintain a zero-interest policy that artificially masks the real cost and risk of a growing unsustainable level of debt.

For the better part of eight years of the Obama administration, polls have consistently shown that nearly 70% of Americans believe that the United States is headed in the wrong direction. Separately, a recent MSNBC poll shows liar is the most common word that comes to mind when voters think of Hillary Clinton. Another recent NBC poll shows that only 11% think of Hillary as honest and trustworthy. Even if one doubts the accuracy of these polls, how is it possible for a majority to think the country can get on a better track by electing as the next U.S. President a liar who embodies the corrupt status quo?

When Donald Trump raised the issue of federal government corruption in his acceptance speech at the 2016 Republican National Committee convention he was tapping into what most intuitively understand -- that political corruption may be the single-most important factor in causing the decline of the United States.

In his Farewell Address of 1796, George Washington laid out the essentials for the rise and prosperity of America:

Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

What has distinguished America from other nations has been its Christian moral foundation of limited Constitutional government designed to protect the inalienable rights of its citizenry -- a rule of law that provides for both equal opportunity and equal accountability. That foundation, which checked government corruption, catapulted Americans from what was little more than a state of nature with minimal wealth in the 1700s at the time of the nations founding to the most prosperous and free people the world had ever seen by the early 20th century. Historically, that is like going from 0 to 60 in three seconds.

Echoing Washingtons views in his survey of the vast scope of the rise and fall of nations, historian Will Durant concludes: There is no significant example, in history before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.

It seems increasingly apparent that the dominance of moral relativism and secular progressivism in the Democrat Party is related to the rotting of its core in Washington. To his credit Donald Trump has made government corruption a central campaign issue in this presidential election year, with his opponent being Exhibit A.

This was also confirmed by a bipartisan focus group whose participants watched all the proceedings and speeches of the RNC convention. The needle measuring Republican, Democrat, and Independent audience response to every speaker of the four-day convention went off the chart in all three party affiliation categories when, in his acceptance speech on the last night, Trump specifically spoke about political corruption being the most critical issue in America, asserting that:

When the Secretary of State illegally stores her emails on a private server, and deletes 33,000 of them so the authorities cant see her crime, puts our country at risk, then lies about it in every different form and faces no consequence, I know that corruption has reached a level like never ever before in our country.

One should never discount or doubt the hidden hand of Providence at work in human affairs. It is perhaps a grand irony that the Hillary Clinton candidacy that had previously skated by the private email server scandal that violated numerous national security laws appears now ensnared at the eleventh hour by a source entrapped by sex-related sins that the Clinton campaign has relied on to smear the Trump campaign.

Within two weeks of election day while working on separate and unrelated investigations, the FBI has uncovered a treasure trove of incriminating evidence residing in the laptop computer shared by top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her estranged sex deviate husband, Anthony Weiner. In this time of crisis, Americans need to vote their conscience and also find reassurance in the transcendent insight of Deuteronomy 32:35, wherein God says, Vengeance is Mine, and retribution, In due time their foot will slip; for the day of their calamity is near, And the impending things are hastening upon them.

Scott Powell is senior fellow at Discovery Institute in Seattle. Reach him at scottp@discovery.org
This political season has become especially emotion-driven. That may be understandable for the general public, for whom politics is neither a passion nor a preoccupation, but it is another matter when our elite who shape public opinion and whom we expect to elevate public discourse promote non-thinking.

Consider three examples.

First is a leading editorialist who excoriated various Republicans for their support of Donald Trump, whom the author labels a dangerous fascist:

I am talking, for example, about Sen. Marco Rubio, who in the primary called Trump an "erratic individual" who must not be trusted with nuclear weapons -- and then endorsed him for president. I am talking about Sen. Ted Cruz, who called Trump a "pathological liar" and "utterly amoral" -- and then endorsed him for president, even though Trump never apologized for threatening to "spill the beans" on Cruz's wife and suggesting Cruz's father was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Most of all, I'm talking about House Speaker Paul Ryan, a man whose pained, blue eyes suggest he desperately wants to cry for help. He's a man who runs around the country pathetically trying to pretend that Trump does not exist and that the key issue is his congressional caucus' "Better Way" agenda. And he's a man who, of his own free will, seeks to help Donald Trump become president.

One would think that a writer critiquing his opponents would demonstrate familiarity with their thinking. But here not even a cursory understanding of it is demonstrated. After providing nothing but a few obscure quotes from the primary season, he smears Messrs. Ryan, Rubio, and Cruz by concluding that their support of Trump is proof that they love their careers more than they love America.

But those who have read the perspectives of Ryan, Rubio and Cruz know that they love America, but that they believe Secretary Clinton represents a greater threat to the country than Trump. Whether one agrees with their assessment is irrelevant.

Furthermore, empirical evidence contradicts the slander that theyre merely self-interested. Indeed, its likely that association with Mr. Trump has hurt Republicans in many congressional and Senate races. But acknowledging those facts requires an open mind and serious thinking about differing views, not emotion-driven close-mindedness masquerading as substance.

A second example is a major New York Times columnist, who similarly chastised Republicans for supporting Mr. Trump. After attacking them for failing the character test, the author similarly accused them of deliberately sacrificing the good of the country for doing whatever it takes to guarantee their own political survival:

They knew who he was all along, they knew that this was a man who should never, ever hold any kind of responsible position, let alone become president. Yet they refused to speak out against his candidacy as long as he had a chance of winning.

It is the writers prerogative to believe that Republicans are damaging the country, but as past is prologue, he provides not a modicum of evidence to support his personal attack. That Republicans desire the best for the country is apparently too unreasonable a concession for those driven by their feelings.

A final example also comes from the pages of Americas most prestigious newspaper. The piece opens with the baldly matter-of-fact salvo, Donald Trump is a domestic terrorist. After several hundred words that both insult and delineate the sins of Donald Trump, the editorial provides nothing more than an emotionally cathartic, self-righteous exercise, vacuous of any engagement with Mr. Trumps ideas. This from the outlet which purports to provide some of our most substantive commentary.

The point here is to defend neither Mr. Trump nor Republicans, as one need be neither a Trump supporter nor a Republican to recognize the trend among opinion-makers. But emotional vitriol from our punditry degrades our public dialogue. The consequence has been increasingly shallow thinking among the public, which explains routinely close-minded social media posts like this:

Donald Trump did not hijack the Republican Party. This is always who Republicans were. Their Southern Strategy of the 1960s (that still colors their strategy today) was specifically designed to stoke racial hostility and harm black people.

Most regrettable is not the ignorance demonstrated here of both the Republican platform and U.S. history, but that opinions like this are propagated by elites who demonize opponents rather than debate ideas.

We deserve better. It was Abraham Lincoln who warned that America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. One wonders how long a nation whose public discourse is guided by feelings can survive.

David formerly worked for the Heritage Foundation. His work has been published in the Federalist, Roll Call, the Daily Caller, and other outlets. He is currently a freelance writer who resides in the Twin Cities. Find more of his writing at diversityofideas.blogspot.com.
Few serious people doubt the dishonesty of Hillary and Bill Clinton. Both lie all the time about almost everything, the petty as well as the important. Few serious people doubt the shameless self-promotion, the naked avarice, the depthless lust for power and privilege of these two crooks. There is, however, one fundamental difference between William Jefferson Clinton and Mrs. William Jefferson Clinton. Bill was smart, and Hillary is stupid.

References to this fact have popped up again and again in emails and related correspondence within Hillary's inner circle. She often seems confused, her close aides tell each other. She often forgets things. While she can do well in rehearsed performances by parroting the same line over and over again, the same is not true when Hillary is required to think independently and make decisions that are not dull dogmatic repetitions of political cant.

The contrast with her husband is stark. Bill had an almost photographic memory for names and could call up clever rhetoric off the top of his head. Bill won a Rhodes Scholarship, something pretty hard for a poor boy from a small Arkansas town. He was able to persuade voters in Arkansas that he was a decent governor and Americans that he was a successful president  things not true, but Bill made do with a slipperiness that earned him the nickname of "Slick Willie."

Would anyone ever consider Hillary to be "slick" or "clever" or "smooth"? Most people attribute her clumsiness when not rehearsed to poor aptitude for politics  "We were dead broke  we couldn't pay the mortgages on our homes" or "What difference, at this point, does it make?" (regarding the dead she left behind in Benghazi) or the weak thinking that led her to set up a private server in her basement.

Surely this is simply poor aptitude, period. When has Hillary ever done anything we might reasonably consider smart? Her college studies were mired in the dreary feminist claptrap of the late 1960s, when being an angry young female leftist automatically earned you "As" and "Bs" in most subjects she took.

Hillary flunked a bar exam that nearly everyone in the District of Columbia passed, which strongly suggests that she learned little in law school. Hillary quickly hitched her star to the smart half of the marriage, the guy who would be Arkansas attorney general (a nice entree for Hillary in the Little Rock law business) and then governor of Arkansas again and again and again.

One also must imagine that when Bill began his serial adulteries, sexual assaults, and other vile behaviors, at least in the beginning, he tricked his wife over and over again. She clearly decided that he was the breadwinner of the family  at least via the only route these folks knew to make money, which is influence-peddling and political corruption.

When Bill ran in 1992, he generated some actual excitement about what he might do as President Clinton. He was even then, of course, a crook and a creep, but sometimes those types, if smart, can be effective presidents. ("He may be an SOB, but he's our SOB.")

When Hillary decided to run for office herself, she picked the very safest place she could run, for the Senate seat being vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in strongly Democrat New York. When she for the Democrat nomination in 2008, Hillary had every conceivable advantage but lost to a political unknown. Everything she did as secretary of state was a disaster. Hillary came close to losing the Democrat nomination this year to an old man with no influence or base, who was not even a Democrat.

Every new batch of emails we have seen come up in regular eruptions during the closing days of this campaign season suggests that Hillary is simply stupid. This is particularly stark when compared to Donald Trump, who  whatever one may feel about him  is a smart guy. When voters ponder which candidate to support on Tuesday, they ought to consider that Mrs. William Jefferson Clinton has really done nothing her whole life to suggest intelligence while Donald Trump has navigated the treacherous waters of the high-flying business world with great success for many decades. The choice, in a dangerous world, ought to be pretty easy.
Perhaps in the history of mankind, there has never been so enjoyable a teaching as Objectivism from so unlikeable a teacher as Ayn Rand. Jesus Christ was so magnetic that He spent His days ruining dinner parties and insulting His followers  and despite this, He was so fun that even the children loved Him. Joseph Smith was so popular with women that he felt forced to reintroduce polygamy to the Americas. Mohammed was so interesting that he was illiterate and still ended up with one of the most propagated books in all of human history. Ayn Rand's insults stung more than her teachings soothed. The men who should have naturally been her allies ended up becoming her enemies.

William F. Buckley wrote in her eulogy not only of her infamous romantic split with fellow Objectivist Nathaniel Branden, but of her "incompatibility" with libertarians such as Henry Hazlitt and the almost incomparable genius known as Ludwig von Mises. Her first words to Buckley were that he was too intelligent to believe in God  which the conservative commentator Wilfrid Sheed sardonically referred to as certainly an ice-breaker. She was known for throwing fits when she couldn't get her way. She was (according to Slate Magazine) addicted to speed and uninterested in even keeping the pretenses of marital fidelity. The producer of The Godfather fell in love with Atlas Shrugged and wanted to film it, but she was so difficult that she forced him to drop it. In short, she was a woman who preached happiness and was almost incapable of showing it, and to those who knew her personally, she was incapable of sharing it. We can adore her because she had hated (and in some instances suffered) the worst things out of communist Russia. What's difficult to excuse is her not enjoying and loving the best men in America.

It seems almost natural that someone who titled her masterpiece The Virtue of Selfishness should herself be selfish to the point of being sociopathic. But the truth of the matter is that, as the balanced and sensible Epicureans were told they were interested in pleasure only because they said we ought to live pleasurably, the balanced and sensible Objectivist is interested not only in himself. In fact, it may safely be said (by Rand and anyone else with a brain) that in order to be interested in your happiness, you have to be interested in the happiness of others. Objectivism isn't a philosophy of loners and sociopaths. It's a reactionary backlash against the idea that you should live only for others  and even more important than this, a backlash against the idea that others will choose whom we are going to live for.

In fairness to Rand, the idea that you ought to live for yourself is something that everyone already does and most are too fearful to admit. The reasons why we refuse to admit it are simple. First, it makes people wonder what exactly we are about to do. Second, at the bottom of our hearts lies the haunting understanding that when other people are living freely for their own happiness, we are going to be carefully evaluated. So everyone begins to wonder if what he's offering is really worth others' investment and whether others are sticking with him because they want to or because they ought to. It's the difference in many cases between having a wife and having a girlfriend. One relationship is ruled by duty; the other is ruled by pleasure. Objectivism challenges an entire series of duties and leaves everyone wondering whether we're pleasurable. Jesus says love your neighbor as yourself. Rand says if you love yourself, make your neighbor love you.

In many respects, Rand's hatred of duty was deplorable, and a decline in a nation's sense of duty may be safely correlated with a decline in a nation's safety. But it is worth asking if the alternative is worse. An Objectivist is never essentially opposed to giving your life for your country. He is only asking whether your country is worth giving your life for, and he has the nasty tendency to ask the question about every other relationship as well. Rand never said that you had to lack a life-defying meaning. She merely said you had to mean it.

Perhaps most unfairly on our part, Americans are quick to judge Rand for the one thing she was most likely to suffer  and that is her (ironically) being a product of Soviet Russia. Orlando Figes writes in his historical masterpiece A People's Tragedy that centuries of censorship had had an illiberal effect upon the Russians and that, like the sheltered Russian intelligentsia who'd discovered Hegelianism in the 1840s and Darwinism in the '60s and Marxism in the '90s and took them too seriously, a person who has never heard anything but an "official" philosophy is likely to take his next one religiously. And while we might wish she'd found her religion in something as temporizing as Buckley's or Chesterton's or Acton's liberal Catholicism, she found it instead in an unbalanced worship of capitalism.

We often excuse foreigners for some of the backward things they do after coming from backward countries. Rand's unyielding dogmatism is a product of her intellectual starvation, and while we may laugh at her for saying Aristotle was the only good philosopher, we never considered that she might have thought so because in youth she was never introduced to Burke or Macaulay.

Ayn Rand, of course, failed so miserably at being happy that she made it difficult to take her philosophy seriously. But she had purpose, and pleasure is very different from purpose. We might also say it is inferior to purpose. We might even say that if you want to have a really good time, you have got to have a gospel. And when we look at Rand's life and we see her falling in love with freedom while the free world was openly flirting with tyranny, and asserting the truth when so many Americans were toying with relativism, and holding so passionately to the things that a lazy and willfully ignorant society was taking for granted, we begin to see something more than just a frumpy, bigoted, implacable Jewish girl running from communist Russia. We see the dawn of classical liberalism happening in someone's soul, right as she was entering a civilization where classical liberalism was dying.

As such, we appreciate her anger. We only wish that in her love of classical liberalism she had remembered her liberality, and that in her love of the abstract concept of capitalism she had remembered to love her fellow capitalists.

Jeremy Egerer is the editor of the troublesome philosophical website known as Letters to Hannah, and he welcomes followers on Twitter and Facebook.
With her lead in the polls shrinking by the hour, Hillary Clinton has gone from personally attacking the character of Donald Trump to fantasizing about what a Trump presidency would be like.

Clinton told supporters in Pittsburgh that electing Trump will lead to war because the thin-skinned Republican is bound to start a conflict if he's insulted.

Like I said; fantasy.

Washington Times:

After spending the week assailing the character of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton on Friday warned voters that the Republican presidential nominee is likely to start a war if elected, possibly because he felt insulted by another nation. Speaking at a rally in Pittsburgh, Mrs. Clinton largely avoided talking about Mr. Trumps past inflammatory comments about women, or the dozen sexual assault allegations against the billionaire businessman. Instead, she appealed to voters who may feel angry or frustrated with the political system, telling them she understands their anger but that electing Mr. Trump is not the solution. In fact, the former first lady said, choosing Mr. Trump would have disastrous consequences. Imagine how easily it could be that Donald Trump will feel insulted and start a real war, not just a Twitter war at 3 oclock in the morning, she said. Mrs. Clintons warning was aimed at Americans still considering a vote for the Republican nominee. She made a direct appeal to those voters, saying that theyd regret backing Mr. Trump. People say all the time they want change. Well, we will get change. Change is inevitable. That is certain. The question is what kind of change we will have, Mrs. Clinton said, going on to tell supporters how to approach friends and family considering voting for Mr. Trump.

I don't know if Trump is crazy enough to start a war over being insulted, but I do know that Hillary Clinton is far more likely to commit American troops to conflicts currently underway. That's what makes this such a curious line of attack. Clinton has been running around the country bragging how "strong" a leader she is - presumably able to better stand up to the bullies of the world like Vladimir Putin. There is far more danger of a miscalculation by her in playing a brinksmanship game with Putin than Trump's idea of placating the Russian strongman by de-emphasizing NATO and bringing American troops home.

I don't think voters will buy the idea that Trump would go to war over getting personally insulted. But in a campaign that is obviously thrashing about looking for any attack that will change Trump's momentum, even a fantasy like this sounds good.
According to a Breitbart article discussing the reasons for the FBI's renewed interest in the Clinton scandals, that move came at the insistence of the New York Police Department, who were the LEOs who claimed first possession and had first access to pervert Anthony Weiner's laptop. The source for Breitbart was Erik Prince, former Navy SEAL and founder/former CEO of Blackwater, who says he has sources within the NYPD who have assured him that the Democrat pedophile's computer contains an ambitious prosecutor's dream's worth of evidence of criminality against many Democrat politicians in Congress  and also, of course, the Clintons and their immediate entourage.

According to Prince, as quoted by Breitbart:

"They found State Department emails. They found a lot of other really damning criminal information, including money laundering, including the fact that Hillary went to this sex island with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Bill Clinton went there more than 20 times. Hillary Clinton went there at least six times," he said. "The amount of garbage that they found in these emails, of criminal activity by Hillary, by her immediate circle, and even by other Democratic members of Congress was so disgusting they gave it to the FBI, and they said, 'We're going to go public with this if you don't reopen the investigation and you don't do the right thing with timely indictments,'" Prince explained.

Note that word disgusting and consider that those who are disgusted are members of NYPD, some of the most hardened dicks in the world, investigators who have seen every form of human perversion and criminality the mind can imagine. And they were disgusted by what that computer contains about the Clintons and their cronies.

Breitbart goes on:

"There is all kinds of criminal culpability through all the emails they've seen of that 650,000, including money laundering, underage sex, pay-for-play, and, of course, plenty of proof of inappropriate handling, sending/receiving of classified information, up to SAP level Special Access Programs," he stated. "So the plot thickens. NYPD was pushing because, as an article quoted one of the chiefs  that's the level just below commissioner  he said as a parent, as a father with daughters, he could not let that level of evil continue," Prince said.

"That level of evil"? That a chief of the NYPD uses the descriptive evil rather than criminal should speak worlds as to just what the Clinton's really are  lawless and immoral predators, as so many of us have been insisting for years. But according to Prince, his NYPD sources say they have faced nothing but obstruction from the federal Justice Department, which is easy to believe when you consider that sources within the FBI have been saying the same thing.

And that, folks, is reason enough to vote against this evil criminal enterprise the Clintons have constructed. If Hillary gains control of the Justice Department, all her evildoing and criminality will be swept under the rug of history. We must follow the example of the NYPD and not let that happen.
See also: Qatar gift to Clinton Foundation underlines blackmail potential for Bill and Hillary

Hillary Clintons contempt for rules that apply to others could not be clearer. Thanks to Wikileaks, we now know that her ethics agreement with the State Department meant nothing. As Jonathan Adams of Reuters explains:

Clinton signed an ethics agreement governing her family's globe-straddling foundation in order to become secretary of state in 2009. The agreement was designed to increase transparency to avoid appearances that U.S. foreign policy could be swayed by wealthy donors. If a new foreign government wished to donate or if an existing foreign-government donor, such as Qatar, wanted to "increase materially" its support of ongoing programs, Clinton promised that the State Department's ethics official would be notified and given a chance to raise any concerns.

Qatar plays a double game (also known as Taqiyaa), hosting the Sixth Fleet, but also funding Islamic radicalism, included allegedly ISIS. You might think that such a strategic, duplicitous, medieval monarchy would be at the top of the list to monitor, something to take extra care on. But:

The Clinton Foundation has confirmed it accepted a $1 million gift from Qatar while Hillary Clinton was U.S. secretary of state without informing the State Department, even though she had promised to let the agency review new or significantly increased support from foreign governments. Qatari officials pledged the money in 2011 to mark the 65th birthday of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton's husband, and sought to meet the former U.S. president in person the following year to present him the check, according to an email from a foundation official to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta. The email, among thousands hacked from Podesta's account, was published last month by WikiLeaks.

Nor is Qatar the only example:

At least eight other countries besides Qatar gave new or increased funding to the foundation, in most cases to fund its health project, without the State Department being informed, according to foundation and agency records. They include Algeria, which gave for the first time in 2010, and the United Kingdom, which nearly tripled its support for the foundation's health project to $11.2 million between 2009 and 2012.

So we had a secretary of state, and a potential president, whose family business receives milliins from foreign coutnries and keeps it secret.

The excuse: it was too small to take notice, pocket change in the scale of Clinton operations.

"Qatar continued supporting Clinton Foundation at equal or lower levels" compared with the country's pre-2009 support, he [foundation spokesman Brian Cookstra] said. He declined to say if Qatar gave any money during the first three years of Clinton's four-year term at the State Department, or what its support before 2009 amounted to.

Accepting a fortune from an Islamic tyrant fuelled by petrodollars and keeping it secret? What could go wrong?
Hillary must be concerned and worried about the vote in Pennsylvania because she and her surrogates have been campaigning there, and in Pittsburgh specifically, every day.

Yesterday, Hillary was in Pittsburgh. Last week Bon Jovi was at the University of Pittsburgh trying to rally the students. Two weeks ago, Hillary and Kaine were in Pittsburgh's 14th Ward, a predominantly very liberal section home to many college professors, doctors, lawyers, and historically the "Jewish" area of Pittsburgh. Hillary is trying to rally her base. Hillary is up an average 3 points, but she is spending lots of time and money in Pennsylvania. The Senate race between Republican Pat Toomey and Democrat Katie McGinty shows McGinty with a slight lead. Toomey is another weak Republican, like Paul Ryan, who has not endorsed or supported Trump.

As reported on 08/24/2016:

Pennsylvania's Democratic registration edge has shrunk from 1,135,173 to 917,192 since November 2012, but most of that is attributable to party switching[.]

But this voter registration lead is misleading. In Pennsylvania's primary system, you can vote only for the party for which you are registered. This causes many who live in the cities to register as Democrats so they can vote in the primary for mayor and council, because the real election is the primary. For example, Pittsburgh has had Democratic mayors for the last one hundred years. The primary elections are usually a choice among an Irish Democrat, a Jewish Democrat, or an Italian Democrat, and sometimes a combination thereof. Many of the mayors have been social and economic conservatives who would be more at home with the national Republican Party instead of today's Republican Party.

The problem for Republicans is Philadelphia. It usually produces a 300,000-vote advantage for the Democrats that must be overcome by what is referred to as the "T," which means the northern and central counties that vote overwhelmingly Republican.

But Hillary's attention to Pittsburgh means that her internal polls show weakness. At this stage, Pennsylvania should be safe for her, and she should be in Florida and North Carolina. Yet she, and her surrogates, are in Pennsylvania almost daily. Pittsburgh seems safe but not overwhelming for Hillary, but the counties in southwestern Pennsylvania seem strong for Trump. The small towns outside Pittsburgh have been devastated by the closing of mills and factories, which makes them responsive to Trump's attack on NAFTA and free trade. The city of Pittsburgh has recovered to some extent from the closing of the steel mills because of the creation of jobs in the hospitals and universities. Pennsylvania is also a strong Second Amendment state.

The key is how many votes Hillary gets in Philadelphia. Hillary has scheduled an event in Philadelphia on election eve, Monday, with Barack and Michelle Obama, and a Saturday, November 5 event with Katy Perry in Philadelphia.

It appears from Hillary's attention to Pittsburgh, and the rest of Pennsylvania, that Hillary is worried. If Trump wins Pennsylvania, he wins the election.
A federal court jury found that the magazine Rolling Stone and reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely defamed Nicole Eramo, a University of Virginia dean who oversaw sexual assault cases at the school. Significantly, the jury also decided that the magazine and Erdely had acted "with actual malice" which will probably lead to significantly more damages awarded than the $7.5 million Eramo was asking for.

The saga associated with the article, "A Rape on Campus," centers on the tale told by "Jackie," a supposed victim of a fraternity gang rape. The horrific details shocked America when the article was first published in November 2014. It galvanized sexual assault activists on campus across the country and fed the narrative that sexual assault was at epidemic proprortions on America's college campuses.

But within days of the article's publication, Jackie's story began to fall apart. The Washington Post wrote an investigative piece that proved the accuser had created people and events that never happened. And as exposed at the trial, reporter Erdely took deliberate aim at Eramo, making her the villian in her allegorical tall tale. The jury decided that was deliberately malicious.

Rolling Stone continues to tout its innocence.

Washington Post:

Regardless of potential damages, the verdict showed the jurys willingness to slam a major media outlet for the impact of getting a story wrong. Originally hailed as a brave triumph of reporting for its raw accounts of rape and attempts at bringing accountability to a storied public university, the article led to protests of the U-Va. administration, vandalism of a campus fraternity and outrage among activists trying to prevent sexual assault. Once its flaws were exposed, the articles deeper message of the effects of campus rape  a pervasive national problem  was lost amid the allegations of shoddy reporting. In a statement after the verdict, Rolling Stone said that the magazine, for nearly 50 years, has aimed to produce journalism with the highest reporting and ethical standards, and with a humanistic point of view, noting that Erdelys story attempted to tackle the very serious and complex topic of sexual assault on college campuses. In our desire to present this complicated issue from the perspective of a survivor, we overlooked reporting paths and made journalistic mistakes that we are committed to never making again, Rolling Stone said in the statement. We deeply regret these missteps and sincerely apologize to anyone hurt by them, including Ms. Eramo. It is our deep hope that our failings do not deflect from the pervasive issues discussed in the piece, and that reporting on sexual assault cases ultimately results in campus policies that better protect our students.

Note that Rolling Stone is claiming that since the issue of sexual assault was so important, the story's flaws should be placed into some kind of context that absolves the magazine of responsibility. "Our heart was in the right place," RS seems to be saying.

It's clear that in their desire to advance a narrative, Erdely and the magazine exaggerated the role of Ms. Eramo, actually making up facts to portray her as a typical uncaring college administrator:

Eramos attorneys presented evidence that Erdely had a predetermined notion of what her story would be, discussing the concept of the story that became A Rape on Campus well ahead of her reporting, including a note describing how college administrations can be indifferent to rape survivors. They said that Erdely had a preconceived story line and acted with reckless disregard by ignoring conflicting information in her reporting. Once they decided what the story was going to be about, it didnt matter what the facts were, Clare said. Clare noted that despite Rolling Stones reporting, Eramo had, indeed, cared for Jackie in the aftermath of her alleged assault, counseling her and organizing a meeting with police detectives to help bring her attackers to justice. But Jackie refused to participate in any police investigation.

This is not the end of Rolling Stone's ordeal. The fraternity Phi Kappa Psi has also filed suit against the magazine and is seeking $25 million in damages. If the frat wins their case, the damages Rolling Stone will be forced to pay could bankrupt the magazine, forcing them to close.

For those whose reputations were destroyed by this act of journalistic malpractice, it's a punishment to be devoutly desired.
Barack Obama, along with his wife Michelle and Joe Biden, have been campaigning daily to help Hillary win. Obama is desperate to win a third term because he knows that Trump will undo most of his so called "accomplishments" to fundamentally transform our country. Trump will sign a repeal of Obamacare, rescind the Iran nuclear appeasement deal, build a wall on the southern border and enforce our immigration laws, reduce income tax rates, and appoint conservative judges to the Supreme Court. That means the end of Obama's efforts to transform our country. Hillary will continue and expand Obama's transformation of our country.

Obama is also concerned that a Trump victory means the FBI investigation of Hillary's email scandal and of the William J. Clinton Foundation, aka the William J. Corleone Foundation, will continue. The email scandal will involve Obama because he knew that Hillary was using a private unsecure email server but lied that he did not know until reported by the media. If Trump wins, Obama will have to pardon Hillary to protect Hillary and himself.

As a result, Obama and his gang have sunk to new lows to attack Trump. They accuse him of being a racist because the KKK endorsed him. Trump did not ask for the endorsement or accept it. Obama knows this, but he will do anything to get Hillary elected. They use the KKK story to appeal to black voters so they vote for Hillary.

Obama said:

If you disrespect women before you were president, you will disrespect women when you're in office. If you accept the support of a Klan sympathizer, the Klan, and hesitate when asked about that support, then you'll tolerate that support when you're in office.

Obama does not say that Hillary praised Democrat senator Robert Byrd, a KKK member, when Byrd died. Nor does Obama say that Bill Clinton worked for Democrat senator William Fulbright, who voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Nor does Obama say that Al Gore's father, Democrat senator Albert Gore, voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Nor does Obama say that Joe Biden described Obama as "clean and articulate" for a black man, and Senator Harry Reid said the same, that Obama does not speak with a ghetto accent.

Many voted for Obama because they believed that electing the first black president would help heal the racial divide. But Obama has made the racial divide worse, and now he shamefully uses false, inflammatory racial charges to help Hillary.
See also: Hillary violated ethics agreement and accepted million-dollar secret donation to foundation from Arab petrostate

It seems the media are trying to misattribute the 1 million from Qatar to the Clinton Foundation to Bill only. If it went to the Clinton Foundation (when Hillary was SecState), the quid pro quo is likely to have been State Dept. favors. Qatar and Saudi Arabia have now been identified as the two main ISIS funders (ISIS atrocities against civilians have been approved as jihad SOP by the Wahhabi priesthood in S.A.).

Notice that there are two attributions for the "one million dollar recipient" in the news: 1. to Hillary and 2. to Bill. But it's all the same foundation, and money is presumably fungible. The Saudi royals are now generally thought to be the perps for 09/11/01, and, I believe, many other terror attacks. (See here.)

I have previously pointed out the pedophilia blackmail risk for Bill Clinton (since Qatar and Saudi Arabia both practice quranically approved pedophilia, following the model of Mohammed). Bill has been reported at Jeff Epstein's Lolita Island. A blackmailable ex-president of the U.S. is powerful clout and could explain the failure by Hillary, Bill, and Obama to pronounce the word "jihad."

Alan Dershowitz is now also implicated. In Britain, the leading BBC children's show host, Jimmy Savile, has now been accused of thousands of criminal sexual contacts. Only disclosed after his death, so he was well protected by the BBC when he was doing it. This is relevant because a pedophile in the U.K. or U.S. could simply be invited to visit Qatar, Saudi, or Indonesia (Bill Clinton) to legally practice pedophilia by Muslim standards, giving jihad plotters videotape evidence to be used in the U.S. Jeff Epstein videotaped his sessions, and apparently Dershowitz got him off. This practice is described in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, and child porn is shown on the cover of Edward Said's book Orientalism (see Amazon). Obama took classes with Said at Columbia.

It's easy enough to see Bill getting caught in a honey trap and Hillary being blackmailed as a result. That could have been used to bring Huma and her friends into the Clinton money world, etc.

The KGB did this with British homosexuals in the 1930s and essentially destroyed British intelligence for decades.
In the midst of the Depression, a major engineering task when building the Hoover Dam (whose name also became a political issue) was what to do with the Colorado River while the dam was being built.

The untamed Colorado River was wild, powerful, and unpredictable. Remember: carving out the Grand Canyon is on its resume. If you weren't able to control its flows, disastrous outcomes would result, hazardous to lives, property, and the environment. (There  we took care of the politically correct component of this article.)

The solution of the brilliant engineers (a redundancy) was to build a series of temporary dams (cofferdams) and diversionary tunnels to hold back and control the waters of the temperamental Colorado. While the dam was the objective, it required these interim measures of equal import to effect its construction. Though this temporary measure was a major and necessary engineering feat by itself, it was lost in the history of the greater accomplishment of the dam it made possible. The earthen cofferdams and cavernous tunnels were never meant to look pretty or to endure forever.

And that is where the analogy of the Hoover cofferdams pairs up with the Donald Trump candidacy.

The continuing experiment that is America and its governance is also a mean and meandering river of competing political currents and dangerous cultural swirls, prone to go out of control, to damage rather than sustain that fertile experiment.

For too many in this political season's "conservative" establishment, it is a metaphorical lesson to be learned, even if their political science degrees had not prepared them for comprehending such technical complexities.

These establishment conservatives dream about an ideological Hoover Dam, a world governed by their conservative principles executing their conservative values, but they ignore the ravaging river beneath them that first needs to be stopped. Disappointingly, they have shown themselves not to be up to the job. In their interludes of power, they have shown that their actions fall far short of, or frustrating to, their words, promises, and ideals.

Donald Trump is not a Hoover Dam, with its grace and beauty. No, he is that quintessential dirt cofferdam. He doesn't look pretty, and he was not meant to be permanent. But he is the necessary stop on the flood of malign forces  political corruption, cronyism, amorality  that are destroying America's culture, cohesion, history, and goodness.

With Hillary Clinton in command, the political Colorado will run wild and dangerous, washing away the once firm embankments of governmental accountability, the rule of law, personal freedoms, a secure America, and truth. With her, there will not ever be a Hoover Dam.

But the "Republican" NeverTrumps just can't or won't understand that. They prefer to dream about a rhetorical Hoover Dam in the raging liberal progressive stream rather than first stop the flood with an ugly but functional cofferdam. Or, uncomprehendingly, they would prefer to put the project in the charge of Hillary Clinton.

Only Donald Trump in this year's crowd of wannabe engineers seems to understand that you need to first do the dirty work to contain the flood, before the more grandiose scheme of a monolithic conservative dam can be realized. These others are more concerned about being the chief engineers rather than the unkempt, dirty-handed construction workers.

So if you are disturbed by or fearful about the destructive waters you see enveloping you  uncontrolled borders, runaway debt, expanding terrorism, political corruption, bureaucratic oppression, deteriorating health care, weakening national security, liberal courts, depressed wages, ridiculed religiosity  do you dream about the sanguine dam of conservatism, or do you first build that cofferdam?

Yes, someday you hope to see that majestic edifice arching across the stream. But first you need that cofferdam.

Graceless, unbecoming, maybe dirty, that cofferdam is Donald Trump.

William Campenni is a retired engineer, business owner, and Air Force fighter pilot.
Fairies have invaded the city of Ann Arbor, thats what long-time resident Jonathan B. Wright, a graphic designer, wants you to believe. He will then point out to tiny doors scattered all around the city as evidence. There is a door hidden inside a coffee shop, one beside a grocer's steps, and another beneath a toy store window. There is at least a dozen. Of course, they were installed by Mr. Wright himself.

It all started in 1993 when Jonathan Wright was renovating their 100-year-old family home, and on a whim, decided to install a tiny door in the house to entertain his kids. The door opened into a tiny room with an equally tiny staircase and railing leading up to a second door. The children's delighted response prompted him to build more.

A fairy door at Selo Shevel Gallery in Ann Arbor. Photo credit: bagaball/Flickr

In 2005, he installed the first fairy door in public, on the exterior of a coffee shop. Since then, about a dozen more doors have shown up around Ann Arbor delighting local children and adults alike. Sometimes fairy hunters would leave fairy-sized gifts for the fairies candies, socks, tiny felt hats, letters, pennies. The doors also attract tourists.

Now fairy doors are popping up elsewhere, such as in San Francisco and New York City. In Atlanta City, it has spawned a new project, Tiny Doors ATL. Its director and principal artist Karen Anderson, whos from Ann Arbor herself, says that the project is a direct inspiration of Ann Arbors fairy doors. Tiny Doors ATL, in turn, has inspired other artists to install fairy doors in their own places.

Jonathan B. Wright keeps track of all fairy doors on Ann Arbor on his website, and so does Tiny Doors ATL on theirs.

Fairy door at Peaceable Kingdom, 210 South Main Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Photo credit: Dwight Burdette/Wikimedia

Close-up of fairy door at Selo Shevel Gallery, Ann Arbor. Photo credit: Dwight Burdette/Wikimedia

Photo credit: Mark Stephenson/Flickr

Photo credit: The Ann Arbor News

Photo credit: The Ann Arbor News

Photo credit: The Ann Arbor News

A Tiny Door in Old Fourth Ward Skatepark on the BeltLine, Atlanta. Photo credit: Tiny Doors ATL

A Tiny Door in Atlanta. Photo credit: Eddie Krebs/Flickr

Photo credit: Tiny Doors ATL
The last eighteen months or so have been a busy time over at Alphabet, formerly Google. Since the Google of old became Alphabet, the rebranding of the various Google services (be they Alphabets Other Bets or still Google services) has been ongoing. Multiple arms of the Alphabet and Google empire have seen their name and their logo changing. Some of those that have gone through the process include Google X which simply became X and Google Life Sciences which became Verily. An aspect which seems to be still ongoing as the latest to undergo a rather quiet makeover is Google Capital.

In fact, to all purposes, Google Capital is no longer Google Capital. Instead, it now seems to be CapitalG. So while the change is not massive, it is one which is rather symbolic. Google has been adopting a big G in many aspects of its branding, including its apps and its general logo. As such, it does make some sense that Google Capital has now become CapitalG  at least in branding terms. At the moment, this still seems to be a formerly unannounced (by Google) change, although the effects are there for all to see with the old Google Capital domain now redirecting to the new CapitalG website. Likewise, the Twitter and Google+ accounts for Google Capital also seems to now have been succeeded by ones which are assigned to the CapitalG branding, @capitalgtweets and +capitalG respectively. It is worth noting that while the branding has changed the purpose has not, with both the new CapitalG social media channels noting our goal remains the same: to make returns-driven investments in leading companies around the world.

For those that are unfamiliar with this specific Google tentacle, CapitalG (formerly, Google Capital) is one of the two investments arms of Google. This one in particular, focuses on investments in companies or businesses which are already established. In contrast, the other arm of Googles venturing is GV. Which itself went through its own rebranding at the end of last year, as back then it was more obviously known as Google Ventures. So to cut a long story short. The arm of Google which focuses on early investments (formerly Google Ventures) is now GV and the arm that focuses on later investments (formerly Google Capital) is now CapitalG.
Google Home is now officially available for purchase at a price of $129, and if youre among the group of consumers who either pre-ordered their unit or went out to one of the local participating retailers who will be carrying the smart home speaker and bought one on the spot, then chances are youve likely already set it up, or will be trying to do so very soon. While its common knowledge that you can issue the Ok Google command to fire up Google Homes listening powers and get it to respond to your commands, it might not have been common knowledge for many that instead of saying Ok Google, you can simply say, Hey Google.

Googles support page for Google Home is now live, and towards the top the Hey Google command is one of the first details that is highlighted. Of course, if youve seen the very first promotional ad for Google Home any number of times, which was the demo that was initially shown off during the Google I/O developer conference earlier this year, then you probably would have noticed that the people in the ad use the Hey Google command more than once to ask it a question or issue a task for completion. If youre unsure about what youre new Google Home speaker can do for you, youre in luck as the Google Home Help page lists of a ton of different commands so you can be prepared to use the speaker to its full potential.

At the top of the list youll find straightforward and simple commands like Stop, which Google states can be used anytime, as well as other simple commands like Pause which can be used for times when you have music or podcasts playing through the speaker. There are tons of other commands too, like Whens my first appointment tomorrow? for helping you get a handle on your day in regards to planning things out, and theres even a command for setting the kitchen timer which can be especially useful for anyone who tends to cook instead of eat out. To get started with using your Google Home speaker you will have to allow Google Assistant to detect the command, which means youll need to speak it, and is the same thing users will need to do when setting up Google Assistant on their new Pixel phones.
Back in early September during IFA, Sony announced its flagship device of 2016, the Xperia XZ. While Sony is known for making pretty solid smartphones, how well does the Xperia XZ put up against a YouTubers infamous torture test? YouTuber JerryRigEverything, or also known simply as Zack, tests all kinds of smartphones to its limits so you wont have to do it yourself.

In a video posted by Zack, he puts the Xperia XZ against various durability tests, starting with the display of the device. Zack performs his usual scratch test on the display with his various picks based on Mohs scale of hardness and like most smartphones which come with a tempered glass display, it scratches at level 6 on Mohs scale of hardness. Next, he tries scratching the 13-megapixel front facing camera but yields no result and he also scratches the earpiece beside it which is protected by a thin layer of plastic. Next up, he scratches the bottom part of the rear of the device which is made out of plastic, and was easily scratched. However, the larger portion of the back panel is made out of metal but it can be scratched too. The LED-flash beneath the camera sensor was easily scratched as it is only protected by a plastic covering while the rear camera which has lenses made out of glass seemed pretty durable when the scratch test was performed on it, leaving no scratches in the aftermath. In comparison, the Xperia Z5 Premium came with a rear camera with plastic lenses, which was easily scratched.

The sidebars of the device are surprisingly made out of plastic and was easily scratched during the test. The plastic is painted on the exterior but once it is scratched off, it will reveal plastic which is unpainted, exposing the color difference. Zack also scratches the fingerprint scanner and when he tested it out later on, it was unable to read his fingerprint. Moving on to the burn test, the pixels on the screen of the Xperia XZ started turning black after 13 seconds, after which the screen fully recovers. In the last test, Zack performed the famous bend test on the device, and it managed to spring back into its original shape after being bent but the plastic sidebars did snap on both sides of the device. If you would like to watch the Xperia XZ being put through the torture test, you may watch it below.
Manchester United Transfer Balls: Godins pension, Depay flops out and Martials moans about Zlatan

Transfer balls: the BBC is reporting that Manchester United will trigger Atletico Madrid defender Diego Godins 30m release clause in January.

The Beeb says Man United manager Jose Mourinho has earmarked the 30-year-old Uruguayan to provide his team with leadership.

The Sun says United will throw loads cash at Godin, topping his current 70,000-a-week wages by a distance

Can money lure Godin from the superb Atletico to pressurised and underwhelming Man United? In 2013, Godin opted to extend his Madrid contract. This is my home, he said. They make me feel great despite being away from my country, my home, my friends. What better than to be here with people who love you and make you feel like one of them.

In 2015, he signed another contract extension.

In 2014, the Express reported: MANCHESTER UNITED may have to abandon their plans to sign Diego Godin in January. Said the player:

I would like to stay for many years here [at Atletico Madrid]. But it is true that I also have an attraction from my country and at some point in the future I would like to return to Uruguay.

In the summer of 2015, the Mail reported: Manchester City have identified Atletico Madrids Diego Godin as the man who can help alleviate their pre-season malaise.

The Indy added:

According to Marca, Manchester City were willing to trigger the 29-year-olds 40million (28m) release clause to bring the Uruguayan to the Etihad, but he turned down the chance to move. The paper reports that City offered the centre-back around 4.5m (90,000-a-week) to join.

As Godin ages and considers Uniteds pension package, and Untied grow ever more desperate for a quality centre-half, the Guardian says the club are ready to offload Memphis Depay, who cost Manchester United a mere 31m in May 2015. The 22-year-old, we learn, is open to a loan move to Fenerbahce in January.

And United forward Anthony Martial was surprised and disappointed to lose his No 9 shirt to Zlatan Ibrahimovic, says his agent. Martial was number 9 during his first season at United but he now wears the No 11 after Ibrahimovic took over the No 9.

I am not going to lie to you, says M. 15%. Yes, this has affected him, yes this surprised him, yes it disappointed him for a few days. But he is a professional. He then got back into the swing of things. Personally, I have not accepted this decision that I deemed uncalled for and disrespectful towards my player. This feeling, I have directed this towards Manchester Uniteds directors. We turn the page and move on but its hard to digest it. They have a very professional relationship. I am sure that Jose Mourinho will know how to bring the best out of Anthony like Louis van Gaal did before him.

Ah, yes, Louis Van Gaal. Anyone miss the hammer-headed Dutchman?

Anorak

Posted: 5th, November 2016 | In: Back pages, manchester united, Sports Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
Brexit: you cant have it because Parliamentary sovereignty is corrupt

Brexit continues to make news. The people voted. But to some they came up with the wrong response to the question. We now get Brexit is the hard or soft versions, whatever that means.

Writing in the Guardian, Polly Tonybee notes:

The ruling on article 50 is a huge opportunity. It would not be anti-democratic to try to stop what many other countries see as economic suicide.

It would not be undemocratic to prevent a democratic vote. Got it?

Stephen Phillips,Tory MP for Sleaford and North Hykeham, has stepped aside. In an open letter he writes:

The campaign to give parliament the right to determine our future relationship with the EU is not about reversing the referendum result. Nor is it about subverting the will of the British people, or having a second bite of the cherry. Its about the sovereignty that I and others cherish, a sovereignty that resides principally in the House of Commons and in its ability, when given the opportunity, to inform and direct the government of the day.

And did you get that, peeps? Westminster gets to make the final decision on Brexit. Parliamentary sovereignty was earned the hard way to ensure the will of the people won the day. Parliament should not be bound by the rule of the monarch. Parliament should support and ensure the will of the people. If MPs now subvert the vote, what purpose do they serve?

Do you trust MPs, like Paul Flynn (Labour MP for Newport W), who opined, The Brexit vote deserves the same respect as Boaty McBoatface

The Brexit vote deserves the same respect as the vote which chose to name a state-of-the art ship Boaty McBoatface (it was named RRS Sir David Attenborough instead).

Ah, TVs Voice of God, Sir David, who opined:

The veteran broadcaster, 90, said the decision about the future of the UK should have been left to MPs who could have voted on behalf of the electorate. Attenborough said allowing the public to vote on the monumental decision earlier this year has created a mess. In an interview with Emily Maitlis for Radio Times he said: I mean, thats why were in the mess we are with Brexit, is it not? Do we really want to live by this kind of referendum?

Interesting times, indeed.

Paul Sorene

Posted: 5th, November 2016 | In: Politicians, Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
Media balls: steely Middlesbrough get undeserved equaliser after Manchester City score soft goal

Media Balls: a look at reporting on Manchester City 1-1 draw with Middlesbrough in the Premier League.

The headlines:

Manchester Evening News: Man City 1-1 Middlesbrough LIVE De Roon stuns Guardiola after Aguero opener

The Gazette (Middlesbrough): Man City 1 Middlesbrough 1: Boro show their Premier League steel

Sergio Agueros goal:

MEN: Almost 80 per cent possession and a shot count of 19-0 was rewarded shortly before the break as Sergio Aguero times his run to slot home Kevin De Bruynes through ball.

TG: a simple cross from the right, and Aguero ghosted into the area between Antonio Barragan and Calum Chambers to stab home.

Manchester City website: Kevin De Bruyne picked a pearl of a pass, curling a low ball into the six-yard box for Sergio Aguero to guide home

Middlesbrough website: De Bruyne delivered an exquisite cross low from the right and Sergio Aguero nipped in between Antonio Barragan and Calum Chambers to tuck home from close range.

The late equaliser:

MEN: Aguero and De Bruyne both missed good chances in the minutes just before Boro equalised. City left ruing them.

No details on the goal.

TG: All 3,000 Boro fans were sent home delighted as Marten de Roons bullet header lifted the roof off the Etihad Stadium. George Friends sizzling ball from the left was as good as youve seen all season, and the Dutch midfielder just had to get his effort on target to give Boro a point.

Man City: the cruellest of sucker punches came in added time when Marten de Roon powered home a header from close range. It may have been undeserved

MFC: Marten de Roon arrived in the box to plant home a powerful header from George Friends whipped cross.

Such are the facts.

Anorak

Posted: 5th, November 2016 | In: Back pages, Manchester City, Sports Comment | TrackBack | Permalink


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The two full flight simulators (FFS) are for the B737 and A330 aircraft operated by Oman Air along with a flight training device and virtual cockpit classroom for the B737NG aircraft.

The suite of training products provided for the B737NG share the same software, thus allowing the same high-level fidelity across the product suite. TRU will also be providing a full turn-key maintenance service for the devices.

The new flight training centre is located adjacent to the companys headquarters in Muscat. TRU is also responsible for the full operation of the centre, including operation and maintenance of the newly-delivered FFS.

We are honored to work hand-in-hand with Oman Air to support the setup and operation of the flight training center in Muscat, said George Karam, VP and general manager of TRUs air transport simulation division. Oman Air joins a number of other fast growing airlines around the globe that have opted to train their pilots and aircrews at home and TRU is able to supply customised solutions to meet all such customers training needs.

Captain Ali Hassan Sulaiman, executive vice president & chief operations officer, Oman Air, said: The Oman Air Flight Training Centre will enable Oman Air to continue operating to the highest safety standards and with absolute professionalism. Furthermore, Oman Airs investment in this training facility  the first of its kind in Oman - will add an important milestone in the airlines contribution towards the development of the Sultanate.




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ARTESIA POLICE DEPARTMENT

Nov. 3

SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY

12:16 a.m.  Officer dispatched to the 1000 block of North Fourth Street in reference to a suspicious subject.

1:20 a.m.  Officer dispatched to North Fourth Street and West Texas Avenue in reference to a suspicious vehicle.

Nov. 2

ARRESTS

2:58 p.m.  Leisha M. Duran, 33, of Artesia, arrested on a magistrate bond revocation.

4:15 p.m.  Sheila C. Sanchez, 46, of Artesia, arrested on a magistrate warrant for failure to pay and charges of possession of a controlled substance.

11:08 p.m.  Stephen M. Catano, 26, of Carlsbad, arrested and charged with trespassing.

ACCIDENT

10:07 a.m.  Officer dispatched to Wal-Mart in reference to a hit-and-run accident.

UNWANTED SUBJECT

10:42 a.m.  Officer dispatched to Crouch Plumbing in reference to an unwanted subject.

VICIOUS ANIMAL

11:28 a.m.  Officer dispatched to the 1900 block of West Feather Avenue in reference to a vicious animal.

SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY

1:31 p.m.  Officer dispatched to Champ Clark Court in reference to suspicious activity.

RECKLESS DRIVING

1:46 p.m.  Officer dispatched to the 600 block of West Hermosa Drive in reference to reckless driving.

WANTED SUBJECT

2:02 p.m.  Officer dispatched to the 400 block of West Grand Avenue in reference to a wanted subject. An arrest was made.

ABANDONED VEHICLE

3:02 p.m.  Officer dispatched to the 4000 block of West Missouri Avenue in reference to an abandoned vehicle.

HARASSMENT

3:27 p.m.  Officer dispatched to the 1800 block of South 26th Street in reference to harassment.

RECKLESS DRIVING

3:50 p.m.  Officer dispatched to South 13th Street and West Hermosa Drive in reference to reckless driving.

ACCIDENT

4:28 p.m.  Officer dispatched to the 1100 block of North Eighth Street in reference to an accident without injuries.

RECKLESS DRIVING

4:38 p.m.  Officer dispatched to the 1800 block of West Hermosa Drive in reference to reckless driving.

ARMED SUBJECT

5:21 p.m.  Officer dispatched to Artesia General Hospital in reference to an armed subject.

FOUND PROPERTY

6:56 p.m.  Officer dispatched to Wal-Mart in reference to found property.

VANDALISM

8:14 p.m.  Officer dispatched to 804 S. 17th St. in reference to vandalism.

ANIMAL BITE

8:36 p.m.  Officer dispatched to South 26th Street and West Missouri Avenue in reference to an animal bite.

UNWANTED SUBJECT

8:42 p.m.  Officer dispatched to the 1400 block of West James Avenue in reference to an unwanted subject.

VANDALISM

9:27 p.m.  Officer dispatched to 1901 W. Washington Ave. in reference to vandalism.

ALARM

10:02 p.m.  Officer dispatched to McAlisters Deli in reference to a burglary alarm.

GAS LEAK

10:11 p.m.  Officer dispatched to the 700 block of West Richardson Avenue in reference to a gas leak.

DOMESTIC

10:36 p.m.  Officer dispatched to the 1400 block of West James Avenue in reference to a domestic dispute.

EDDY COUNTY SHERIFFS OFFICE

Nov. 3

SUSPICIOUS SUBJECT

5:08 a.m.  Deputy dispatched to Pueblo Road, Lake Arthur, in reference to a suspicious subject.

Nov. 2

ALARM

8:13 a.m.  Deputy dispatched to 807 W. Fairgrounds Road in reference to a burglary alarm.

LARCENY

9:12 a.m.  Officer dispatched to 224 Rockin R. Red Road in reference to larceny.

ALARM

3:57 p.m.  Deputy dispatched to 455 South Rural 13th St. in reference to a burglary alarm.

ARTESIA MUNICIPAL COURT

Judge Kaye L. Kiper

Brandon J. Whitten found guilty of interference with officers. Total fines and fees $129.

Zane R. Truog found guilty of trespassing. Sentenced to five days in the Artesia Detention Center. Total fines and fees $229.
The measure, which will remain in place until a special law is adopted, comes after Cambodia became a privileged destination for surrogacy following restrictions in India, Thailand and Nepal. Companies offering the service now fear for their business. The price of surrogate motherhood can range from US$ 32,000 to 45,000.

Phnom Penh (AsiaNews/Agencies)  Cambodia announced a "total ban" on surrogate motherhood until the government approves a law regulating the possibility for a woman to give birth to the children of other parents.

Hok Khieu, director of the Health Ministrys legislation department, said that the ban gives the government time to draft proper regulations for the practice, which developed quickly following a crackdown by governments across Asia.

Mr Khieu said it was too early to say when the new law would be introduced or what specific services might be allowed and regulated.

However, The Justice Ministry, he said, will organize the drafting of the surrogacy law and figure out what advantages women can receive from surrogacy.

It remained unclear how the ban would affect women who are already pregnant as a result of surrogacy arrangements with the would-be parents of the babies they are carrying.

Some experts estimate that up to 50 surrogacy providers and brokers are operating in Cambodia, many of which moved here in response to tighter regulations in other Asian countries like India, Nepal and Thailand.

Staff at one surrogacy provider, who asked not to be identified, expressed concerns about the economic impact of a total ban.

One company charges between US$ 32,000 to UW$ 45,000 per child for its services and pays mothers who rent out their wombs US$ 10,000 in installments  more for twins.
Playboy Model Dani Mathers Charged For Body-Shaming Naked 70-Year-Old Woman

Trending News: Playmate Dani Mathers Faces 6 Months In Jail For Body-Shaming

Why Is This Important?

Because this is a lesson for everyone to not take pics in the showers.

Long Story Short

Playboy model Dani Mathers is facing six months in jail for rudely taking a picture of a 70-year-old woman who was in the shower.

Long Story

Sure, Snapchat photos delete automatically, but that doesn't mean you can post just anything. Especially if you have thousands of followers.

Playmate Dani Mathers learned that important lesson the hard way and is facing some serious consequences. In July, Mathers shared a picture of a naked woman in the showers at an L.A. Fitness. In the photo, which you can still see here, Mathers is covering her mouth as she takes a selfie with a 70-year-old woman behind her. In the caption, Mathers wrote: "If I can't unsee this then you can't either."



Mathers faced backlash on social media this summer and had her L.A. Fitness membership stripped. But now she faces more serious backlash in the courts. Mathers was charged with one count of invasion of privacy (the body shaming), which carries a sentence of up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine, according to The Wrap.

Body shaming is humiliating, with often painful, long-term consequences, said Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer in a statement. It mocks and stigmatizes its victims, tearing down self-respect and perpetuating the harmful idea that our unique physical appearances should be compared to air-brushed notions of perfect. What really matters is our character and humanity. While body-shaming, in itself, is not a crime, there are circumstances in which invading ones privacy to accomplish it can be. And we shouldnt tolerate that.

Thank you 70k people who follow my sometimes boring sometimes crazy world! I love and appreciate every one of you? pic.twitter.com/GRGQfPGjaL  Dani Mathers (@DaniMathers) March 12, 2016



In a world where every second of our lives is being shared on social media, it's good to see that the courts are at least trying to uphold some decorum. Although, I'd honestly be shocked if she gets any jail time for this.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

Should there be stricter and more clear laws on what you can and can't take a picture of?

Disrupt Your Feed

Hopefully, she gets what she deserves.

Drop This Fact

Mathers' lawyer is the same guy who represented Michael Jackson during his molestation trial.
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The Montero is available in just one variant and is priced at Rs 67.88 lakh; powered by a 192hp 3.2-litre diesel engine.

Mitsubishi's largest offering, the Montero, has made its comeback to India, after being discontinued in 2014. As far as styling is concerned, the updated SUV is near identical to the discontinued model but gets additional features and revised front styling.

Engines

The Montero carries forward the 192hp 3.2-litre direct injection diesel engine but with tweaks to improve performance. The motor is mated to a five-speed automatic gearbox with power sent to all four wheels via Mitsubishis Super Select 4WD II system. The system gives the car four driveline modes  2WD High (2-H ), 4WD High (4-H), 4WD High with locked center differential (4-HLc), and 4WD low with locked center differential (4-LLc). All but the 4-LLc mode allows for shift on the fly.

Features

Available in one trim only, the Montero gets features such as HID headlamps with auto high beam and levelling, LED daytime-running lamps, fog lamps, rear wiper, sunroof, front and rear tow hooks, leather upholstery, heated and powered front seats, reclining second row seats, auto climate control, rear air-con vents with manual controls, rear parking sensors and a 860W Rockford Acoustics touchscreen infotainment system.

On the safety front, the Montero is equipped with dual front, front side and curtain airbags, multi-mode ABS, EBD, traction control and three-point seatbelts for all occupants.

Price

The updated Montero is available in seven colours and gets customisable dual-tone interiors. Brought in via the CBU route, the Montero is priced at a whopping Rs 67.88 lakh (ex-showroom, Mumbai), which puts it in the crosshairs of premium SUVs like BMW X5 and the Mercedes GLE.

Review

Watch this space for our driving impressions of the 2016 Mitsubishi Montero
A one-off NCAP test between a 2016 Nissan Versa from the US and a 2015 Nissan Tsuru from Mexico has demonstrated the gulf in safety standards.

A car-to-car crash test has demonstrated the huge gulf in automotive safety standards between different countries.



A test between entry-level compact saloons from Mexico and the US resulted in catastrophic damage to the Mexican car, while the American equivalent performed well. The event in Virginia was organised by road safety organisation Global New Car Assessment Program (NCAP), along with Latin NCAP and the US Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The cars involved were a 2016 Nissan Versa from the US and a 2015 Nissan Tsuru from Mexico.



The Tsuru is based on a design from 1992 and was involved in more than 4,000 deaths between 2007 and 2012. A previous Latin NCAP test awarded it no stars, and this latest test showed why.

After the head-on crash test, with a 50 percent overlap and combined closing speed of 80mph, readings from the cars crash test dummies showed that the Tsuru driver would likely have been killed. The driver of the five-star rated Versa  which unlike the Tsuru was fitted with standard airbags  would have suffered relatively minor injuries.



David Ward, secretary general of Global NCAP, said he hoped the test would put more pressure on manufacturers to voluntarily improve the safety of cars globally, and not wait for regulation in each country. Its probably the worst result Ive ever seen in a crash test, he said.



Nissan were not involved in the supply of vehicles or in the test itself. Ward stressed that the event was not singling out Nissan in particular, and that similar gulfs in safety standards were found around the world from a range of manufacturers. He renewed calls for manufacturers to take their own action, and also to work together and commit to improving global safety standards. We think all car manufacturers should be actively seeking to cease producing zero star cars in any market in the world, he said.



Renault has just launched a Kwid [a compact SUV] in India that doesnt have airbags as standard and has tested at zero stars. Were lost for words at why manufacturers are not applying things that theyve been doing for 20 years in Europe and North America. They say that theyre complying with the laws in that market, but thats not good enough. They all know how to do this, and while there may be extra cost to fit airbags, they should tell the governments to give fiscal incentives. Governments respond to their lobbying and in other countries thats been done.



The United Nations launched the Decade of Action campaign in 2011, supported by 100 countries, to reduce road deaths around the world. Ward said more needs to be done to meet the campaigns goals by its conclusion in 2020.



The industry needs to step up to the challenge, to take global initiative and agree collectively that they should be producing vehicles that meet the most basic minimum UN crash standards, he said. Back in 2006 the industry agreed a global commitment that all passenger cars would have seatbelts and they did that in response to UN initiative around road safety. Since the UNs Decade of Action started in 2011, nothing has happened. There hasnt been any joint initiative by car manufacturers to do anything like that.
SUV

While the brand currently has a hybrid crossover in its portfolio, the DS5, it is far from an SUV . The other model in the range that can be considered anis the DS4 Crossback , but it is also a crossover.Meanwhile, in China, the DS brand sells an SUV called DS6. It is joined by the DS 5LS, which was initially unveiled as another China-only product The European market is on an SUV craze, just like the USA, and the marketing specialists at DS have surely seen the trend. One would have to wear horse blinders not to observe the popularity of SUVs around the world, and the French brand needs a new product to sell more units.While DS officials have announced that the SUV they sell in China will only be marketed there, the platform can be reconfigured to suit the taste of European clients.Since plug-in hybrids are gaining popularity in this market, and the DS brand is also focusing on new possibilities, the idea of a plug-in hybrid SUV from the French automaker has no grounds to be ruled out.At this time, we do not possess an official confirmation of the companys plans to launch a plug-in hybrid SUV per se. However, DS already sells the DS6 in a market outside China , and their 2020 offensive announced in 2014 includes launching six all-new models by that year.Just like other DS models, the new plug-in hybrid SUV from the brand will share underpinnings with Citroen vehicles. This would happen even if DS is developing technologies and solutions on its own, but it would not be financially sustainable for the recently-founded branch of PSA Peugeot Citroen to make new models from scratch.The PSA Group has already confirmed its plan to launch its next generation of plug-in hybrid cars, which is set to reach the market in 2019.They will come with quick charging solutions, as well as Lithium Ion batteries. From the moment this was officially announced, the DS brand was included in the plans, so it is just a matter of time till we see a production DS SUV with a plug-in hybrid powertrain.
I waw tagged my @392srt_ghost for #transformationthursday if i tag you you know what to do (day late but better late than never) #mopar#dodge#challengerfam#xlume#srt8#hellcat#srt#carporn#moparchallengers#musclecarpics#challenger#dodge_mopars#musclecar#thetruechallengers#dodge_challengers#mopar_nation#moparfam#srt392#scatpack#challengersrt#thatsmydodge#srtaddicts#lasvegas#sslv#streetsociety#skepple A photo posted by antony morfin (@tonys_srt_fighter) on Oct 28, 2016 at 12:16pm PDT

A photo posted by antony morfin (@tonys_srt_fighter) on Oct 21, 2016 at 2:08pm PDT

Great day today. All @skepple challengers together for the first time thanks to Scott for his hard work he put into this cars #mopar#dodge#challengerfam#xlume#srt8#hellcat#srt#carporn#moparchallengers#musclecarpics#challenger#dodge_mopars#musclecar#thetruechallengers#dodge_challengers#mopar_nation#moparfam#srt392#scatpack#challengersrt#thatsmydodge#srtaddicts#lasvegas#sslv#streetsociety#skepple A photo posted by antony morfin (@tonys_srt_fighter) on Nov 3, 2016 at 12:26am PDT

A video posted by antony morfin (@tonys_srt_fighter) on Oct 26, 2016 at 10:41pm PDT

In fact, we're here to show you the latest example of a wrap that can easily sweep an aficionado off his or her feet. We're talking about the Challenger Figther in these images.And while this is the nickname the onwer of this Dodge Challenger SRT 392 gave to his machine, you can easily notice the World War II Shark Teeth Figther theme on the thing.Then there are the rest of the car's details. Whether we're talking about the camo-loaded engine bay housing the devilish HEMI heart of this beast, or the luggage compartment, which comes with an American-themed air suspension setup, this machine has an overly military theme.The design for this eye-catching wrap comes from digital artist Skepple, whose creations we've featured on past occasions - check out the bottom image to your right and you'll notice this machine accompanied by three others of its kind. Well, we've dedicated a story to each of the Hellcats on the left side of the pic ( 1 and 2 ). And yes, their second skin styling was also signed off by Skepple.And since the photo shoot that delivered the image took place in Las Vegas, you'll meet some, if not all, the Mopar machines seen here at this year's edition of SEMA, which is taking place as you are reading this.And since all the aggression displayed by such a wrap would be worth nothing without a proper display of the muscle machine's matching firepower, we've added a few goodies from the owner's Instagram account below.For instance, the hungry burnout video should be enough of a display of this Challenger's muscle.
As traditional automakers like Toyota broaden their artificial intelligence (AI) footprint in Silicon Valley, Automotive News reported that Honda Motor Co. is breaking from tradition by establishing its AI research home in Tokyo, where the car giant is also based.

Honda hopes to resettle its current AI teams, now working from Silicon Valley, Europe and Japan, into the new Tokyo lab that will open next year and serve as its flagship research and development center for AI.

Yoshiyuki Matsumoto, president of Honda's research arm, said the company would be unable to innovate if they simply followed the trends in Silicon Valley. He added that not every company succeeds in the tech mecca that is home to industry giants like Facebook, Google and Uber.

Setting up shop in Tokyo also bridges the gap between Honda's researchers and engineers, he said. Honda hopes this will speed up efforts to translate AI research into viable products that the company can sell to consumers across the globe.

Matsumoto envisions a future where AI is the driving force behind autonomous vehicles, incorporating a range of technologies like robotics, navigation and sensing.

AI has rarely found its way into commercial markets, Apple's Siri service being one of the recent exceptions, but Matsumoto seemed optimistic about future application of AI under their new Tokyo lab.

"By adding a brain, which is AI, to hardware such as robotics, we will be able to venture into various new businesses," he said.

Unable to abandon Silicon Valley completely, AI experts from the area might be brought onboard on a contractual basis to pass on any developments or breakthroughs from the U.S.

Honda first began delving into robotics two decades ago. Their latest development in AI, the Asimo humanoid robot, has the ability to decipher postures, facial expressions and gestures and move its own fingers.
SpaceX says it will resume rocket launches in mid-December, now that the company knows what triggered a Sept. 1 launch pad explosion. Meanwhile, NASA advisors continue to raise concerns that fueling practices were a factor in the accident. As described by the New York Times on Friday, CEO Elon Musk said the cold liquid oxygen used to propel the rocket reached temperatures that made it solidify, then it reacted with helium-filled tanks, which burst and set off the series of explosions.In a CNBC interview, he called it a really surprising problem thats never been encountered before in the history of rocketry. The dramatic burnup, showing a series of loud booms and fireballs erupting from the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, destroyed the rocket and its cargo, a $200 million Israeli satellite. The investigation of the accident isnt yet done, but the main cause has been found, Musk said. So this was the toughest puzzle solved that weve ever had to solve. It looks like were going to be back to launching around mid-December, Musk told CNBC.

Ongoing safety concerns about SpaceXs practice of cooling fuel and then loading it just before launch  and someday doing this with astronauts on board  continue to be voiced by a NASA committee advising on International Space Station missions. The committee raised the issues in 2015 and again in October during the investigation into the explosion, according to a Wall Street Journal report. SpaceX uses supercooled fuel that must be loaded just before launch, with a crew already strapped into the spacecraft. Traditionally, the practice of fueling rockets with people on board has been considered too dangerous, although NASA and SpaceX said in the Journal report there have always been ongoing evaluations of the risks and theyll continue to update the committee as the investigation continues.
AeroJones, which took over manufacturing and distribution of the Flight Design CTLS line, said it plans to expand early next year with a new facility in Florida. At the Deland Sport Aviation Showcase this week, AeroJones John Hurst told AVweb in this podcast that the company hasnt settled on a site yet, but the new sport aviation village on Deland Airport is under consideration.
5 November 2016 12:23 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend



Over the past 24 hours, Armenias armed forces have 31 times violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, said Azerbaijans Defense Ministry Nov. 5.

The Armenian armed forces stationed in the Vazashen village of the Ijevan district, Shavarshavan village of Noyembryan district, Aygedzor village of Berd district opened fire at the Azerbaijani positions located in the Bala Jafarli and Farakhli villages of Azerbaijans Gazakh district and the positions located on the nameless heights of Tovuz district.

The Azerbaijani army positions also underwent fire from the Armenian positions located near the Armenian-occupied Bash Garvand village of Aghdam district, Ashagi Veyselli, Horadiz, Gorgan, Garakhanbayli villages of the Fuzuli district, as well as from the positions located on nameless heights of the Goranboy, Tartar, Fuzuli and Jabrayil districts.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

--

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
5 November 2016 11:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend



Large-scale military exercises, which are to be held on Nov. 12 by Azerbaijans Armed Forces, are a serious signal for Armenian President Serzh Sargsyans regime, Azerbaijani expert Emil Huseynli told Trend Nov. 4.

Azerbaijans Armed Forces will hold large-scale exercises from Nov. 12 through Nov. 18. More than 60,000 members of military personnel, over 50 planes and helicopters, over 150 tanks and armored vehicles will be involved in the exercises, according to the ministry.

The exercises will be held in line with the plan approved by Azerbaijans President, Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Ilham Aliyev in order to inspect the system of control over troops and weapons.

Huseynli noted that the amount of military equipment and personnel involved in the exercises gives a clear notion about the level of potential threat for Armenia.

The amount of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces members involved in the exercises actually exceeds the amount of Armenians living today in Nagorno-Karabakh, he said. The dictatorial regime of Armenia must understand that war is not over for Azerbaijan, and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is not frozen.

The expert added that success, achieved by the Azerbaijani army during the April events, showed that Azerbaijani Armed Forces can liberate the occupied territories from separatists at any time.

Azerbaijan has the right to restore its territorial integrity that fully complies with principles of international law, said Huseynli. It is well known both by Armenia and countries protecting it, and it is not a secret for them that if the status quo doesnt change, war will be inevitable.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.



--

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
5 November 2016 17:30 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijani MP Sabir Hajiyev will participate in PACE meetings in Paris, France, on November 6-8, Azertac reported.

Situation in Aleppo and the financing of ISIS will be key points on the agenda of the PACE Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy.

PACE's Subcommittee for events which took part on July 15 in Turkey will elect its members and discuss preparations for their visit to Turkey. Participants will also exchange views on the visit of members of the Subcommittee on foreign relations to New York in December and meetings to be held in the UN.

Members of the PACE Monitoring Committee will listen to a report on the conflicts between member states of PACE, dialogue with Turkey during the post-monitoring period, results of the visit of the fact-finding mission to Kiev, elections in Georgia, Montenegro and Bulgaria.

--

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
5 November 2016 10:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Gunay Hasanova

Tajikistan is in need of energy. Despite its quite favorable location in an energy-rich region, the Central Asian country faces energy-related problems.

To solve the uneasy problems, Tajikistan has constructed several hydropower plants on its territory.

Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has put forward a goal to construct Rogun Hydro Power Plant (HPP). In November 2012, the Tajik government announced that over $251 million will be allocated for the construction of the Rogun Dam on the Vakhsh River as part of the Rogun HPP project.

A few days ago Tajikistan has officially started the construction of the Rogun Dam, a massive project that, if completed, would be the world's tallest and should give the Central Asian nation a stable energy supply.



Tajikistan, one of the poorest former Soviet republics, is heavily dependent on hydroelectric power imports and regularly experiences electricity outages.

Authorities say the Rogun Dam will be able to provide electricity for the whole country. They say the dam could also provide parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan with cheap electricity.



However, this plan is opposed by neighboring Uzbekistan, which voices concerns that the dam in Southern Tajikistan will reduce water flows to its cotton fields, along with damaging the ecology of Central Asia.

The Rogun HPP is seen in Tajikistan as a solution to the energy independence and a tool for economic growth. By implementing the project, Tajikistan will be able to generate about 13 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually. This will not only help the country to meet its domestic needs but will also make Tajikistan a major exporter of electricity.

Disputes over the construction of the Rogun HPP further complicated the strained relations between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

The economy of Uzbekistan largely dependent on agriculture uses more than 90 percent of its fresh water for irrigation purposes. Uzbek President Islam Karimov has repeatedly stressed that the Rogun HPP will cause problems for Uzbekistan's agricultural sector. Tashkent argues that the formation of a giant reservoir behind the Rogun Dam would affect the flow of water to its cotton fields.

In turn, experts also hold contradictory views regarding this issue.

On one hand, some experts assure that additional regulation of water in the Amu Darya River would have a serious negative impact on agricultural production as crop growing in Uzbekistan is water intensive and extra water availability in winter does not make up for the reduction in growing-season irrigation capacity.

On the other hand, another group of experts considers Tashkent fears that the Rogun HPP would give Tajikistan significant control over the Uzbek economy and crucial geopolitical authority in the region. Uzbekistan, with the biggest population in Central Asia, has always had ambitions to be the leader of the region, they believe.

However, the Uzbek authorities say that the massive dam would have an adverse environmental impact and induce higher scale earthquakes in an already seismically active area. According to Uzbek experts, a large earthquake would destroy the Rogun Dam and tens of cities in Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan would be flooded.

The Chief Editor of Problems of National Strategy journal of Russian Strategic Studies Institute, Ajdar Kurtov, believes that Rogun HPP will exacerbate water shortages in Central Asia, and the project will lead to tensions between Tajikistan and its neighbors, particularly Uzbekistan.

The construction of the Rogun hydroelectric is a gamble. UN scientific surveys, environmentalists, Greenpeace and other authoritative bodies indicate that climate change through one or two generations will result in a significant shortage of water in South and Central Asia, said Kurtov.

It is impossible to prevent this situation, since the countries of the region cannot afford to create a diversified agriculture based on drip irrigation, similar to the ones in Israel, says the expert, adding that transfer of Siberian rivers of Russia to this region wont happen due to many reasons.

The construction of large hydraulic structures, according to Kurtov, will inevitably lead to even greater shortages of water.

Candidate for Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, Professor of the Russian-Tajik Slavic University and a former senior adviser to the Prime Minister and President of Tajikistan on the national economy issues, George Koshlakov holds a completely opposite opinion about the impact of the Rogun hydroelectric power station on the ecology of the region.

In an interview with Trend he recalled that a full-scale study conducted a few years by a group of international experts has recently been completed with the support of the World Bank, which, in turn, indicates that Rogun project is totally safe for the region.

In the meantime, Saroj Kumar Jha, the World Bank Regional Director for Central Asia, believes that the Rogun HPP would not threaten regional security and the slope stability and the proposed dam type "appear to be acceptable."

Moreover, he reminded that the Rogun HPP project was developed by Russian "Hydro- project", an institution that has built dozens of hydraulic structures, including the Nurek hydroelectric power station in Tajikistan, which worked without any problem for 40 years and will work for many years.

"It is possible that those who are opposed to this project simply do not possess the situation. Perhaps, Uzbekistan is afraid, that the key to introductory resources of the Amu Darya basin will be in the hands of Tajikistan," said Koshlakov.

Koshlakov recalled that in 1995, all the countries of Central Asia have signed the Nukus Declaration, which specifies each country's demand in water.

"All will get water in accordance with the conditions of the declaration," said the expert.

Commenting on the prospects of financing the construction of the Rogun hydroelectric power station, Koshlakov noted that Tajikistan will be able to build a hydroelectric power station without external funding, however, in the future foreign investors can be involved to finance the project.

Unlike Koshlakov, Ajdar Kurtov believes that the chances that Tajikistan will be able to attract foreign investors to finance the project are insignificant.

He relates that to the fact that the project of the hydro-electro station was designed back in Soviet times, while 25 years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Therefore, not many foreign investors would undertake this project.

In addition, the expert said that Tajikistan, except the environmental risks, faces the risks associated with the sphere of security, since the country borders on politically unstable Afghanistan.

Taking into account the new developments regarding the issue in the region, it seems like the project will remain as a subject of dispute for a while.

The Tajik president repeatedly stressed that the Rogun issue is nonnegotiable and that the completion of the project is "imperative" and "of life or death importance" for Tajikistan. He referred to the construction of the HPP as "our national idea" and a "battlefield" for "national pride and honor."

However, Dushanbe should consider that Uzbekistan is currently Tajikistan's only supplier of natural gas and its most important transit link to the world.

Experts believe that in order "to punish" Tajikistan for construction the Rogun HPP, Tashkent repeatedly stopped the natural gas exports to Tajikistan, refused to allow the transit of Kyrgyz and Turkmen electricity through its power grid and blocked the transit of all rail freight into Tajikistan.

Some analysts believe that disagreement between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan over the Rogun HPP is not about technical features of the project or its potential environmental impact. The main problem in the negotiation process is the politicization of the debates.

If Tajikistan and Uzbekistan agree on energy cooperation, electricity might become cheaper, while irrigation could be better managed. However, such a scenario appears unlikely given that the project gains more political coloring day by day.

Its worthy to mention that earlier Uzbekistan also rejected Tajikistan's invitation to participate in building Rogun as a way of allowing Tashkent to carefully monitor progress in the HPP's construction.

Previously, Uzbek First Deputy Prime Minister Rustam Azimov said that Uzbekistan would never support the Rogun project.

The Rogun Hydropower Plant is being constructed on the upper reaches of the Vakhsh River in the Pamir mountain ranges, Republic of Tajikistan. The project is being developed by OJSC Rogun Hydropower Plant (HPP) on behalf of the Government of Tajikistan.

The 3,600MW power plant will have an output capacity of 13.1bn kWh, accounting for half of the country's electrical installed capacity.

Part of the electrical output from the project will be sold to its neighboring countries, especially Pakistan, conveyed using the Central Asia-South Asia power project (CASA-1000) transmission line.

The 13.3 sq.km reservoir created by the dam will further serve the purpose of irrigating 300,000ha of arid land and reduce sedimentation on the existing Nurek Dam, which is located 70km downstream of Rogun.

The project is estimated to require an investment of $3.9bn and the dam is designed for an operational life of 115 years.

The techno-economic assessment study (TEAS) and environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) phase for the project were completed in July 2014 with funds provided by the World Bank.

The Rogun plant is slated to start generating power by late 2018.

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Gunay Hasanova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @gunhasanova

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5 November 2016 15:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend



Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has criticized the stance of EU on Turkey's fight against the PKK terrorist group, Anadolu reported.

Speaking to reporters in the western Izmir province Friday, Cavusoglu said: "Most of the European countries, unfortunately, give very strong support to the PKK today. We do not accept that they [EU] teach us the rule of law or democracy again."

The minister's speech came after the reaction of the European countries to the detentions of co-chairs and several deputies of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) on Friday for failing to answer court summons linked to a counter-terrorism investigation.

Cavusoglu said the EU states only criticized Turkey, never describing the PKK as a terrorist organization or urging the group to lay down its arms.

"Likewise, I have not seen any [European] country or officer advising the HDP to put some distance between terrorism and itself," he said, adding that he hoped the EU would take lessons and recognize the Turkish government, Turkish laws, its courts and institutions.

Friday's detentions came after prosecutors in Turkeys east and southeast ordered the arrests of HDP co-leaders Figen Yuksekdag and Selahattin Demirtas along with 13 other HDP deputies.

However, Europe criticized the detentions, warning Turkey to respect democratic norms.

These developments add to the concerns we expressed after the immunity of more than 130 democratically-elected members of parliament was lifted in May this year. They compromise parliamentary democracy in Turkey and exacerbate the already very tense situation in the southeast of the country, for which there can only be a political solution, the EU said.

The HDP lawmakers face prosecution under anti-terrorism laws after their immunity was lifted earlier this year.

After the EUs reaction, Cavusoglu spoke with the EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, and the secretary-general of the Council of Europe, Thorbjorn Jagland, about the detentions over the phone.

According to a diplomatic source, Cavusoglu gave detailed information about the summons process and said that all steps had been taken in line with the countrys law.

EU Affairs Minister Omer Celik also spoke over the phone with Mogherini, who told her that Turkey expected the bloc to not become an instrument to the propaganda of the terrorist PKK group, Celiks ministry said in a written statement late Friday.

Turkey would be in touch with the EU regarding the developments. "EU should make balanced statements instead of one-sided calls on the Turkish institutions with imperfect knowledge," he added.

Among the charges facing the HDP lawmakers are offenses of spreading terrorist propaganda in relation to comments made in October 2014, after Daesh militants entered the Syrian border town of Kobani, also known as Ayn Al-Arab.

--

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Bakersfield, CA (93308)

Today

Sunny skies during the morning giving way to clouds and a few showers late. High 73F. Winds NW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Cloudy with rain ending overnight. Low around 50F. Winds NW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
#SafariconResultsBusiness in Kenya is thriving to the people who are close to the government and have links and connection to tenders. The majority of SMEs' are always asking themselves how to do business in Kenya and flourish. Here are some of the businesses that do good in the Kenyan economy.Safaricom Company.This company thrives in Kenya because of support from the government and it is also prioritized in terms of tenders that involves communication and security. The government also helps in the company customer exploitation by allowing them to charge according to what they want. The sales of the company were up 13% compared to last year. The company now is looking forward to exploring other markets like real estate and financial investments.Nation Media Group.The nation media group is the leading newspaper vendor in east Africa and more of in Kenya. The company merged with other subsidiaries and partners which had a direct link with the government. The group this year had a decline in profits compared to last because of digital improvement and skills. The only country which had an increase in profit compared to last year is Tanzania. This was due to the elections. The overall Cost of sales was down 3.4% to KSh 2.452 billion shillings.MediaMax company.The company owned by close friends of the president had an average income. The company which provides free newspapers to the citizens outlined to be the best media house in relations to customer service.
United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit. PEDRO HERNANDEZ-ALBERTO, Petitioner - Appellant, v. SECRETARY, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, ATTORNEY GENERAL, STATE OF FLORIDA, Respondents - Appellees. No. 14-14092 Decided: November 04, 2016

Before ED CARNES, Chief Judge, ROSENBAUM, and JILL PRYOR, Circuit Judges.

In this appeal, we consider whether, for purposes of federal habeas law, a Florida postconviction petition properly filed by a death-row prisoner claiming incompetency remains pending through the final resolution of the postconviction proceedings despite the state court's having found the prisoner competent before the end of those proceedings. We hold that it does and conclude that the prisoner's federal habeas petition was timely filed.

I.

A.

In 2002, Petitioner-Appellant Pedro Hernandez-Alberto was sentenced to death by a Florida court, following his convictions for murdering two of his wife's daughters. Hernandez-Alberto v. State, 889 So. 2d 721, 724-25 (Fla. 2004). Hernandez-Alberto's conviction became final on May 9, 2005, when he failed to file a petition for writ of certiorari with the United States Supreme Court despite having been given an extended window to do so.

After 308 days elapsed, on March 10, 2006, Hernandez-Alberto filed a motion for postconviction relief under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.851. See Hernandez-Alberto v. State, 126 So. 3d 193, 199 (Fla. 2013) (Collateral Appeal). Hernandez-Alberto did not sign the motion under oath, as required at the time by Rule 3.851(e)(1). See id. at 199, 200-01. But on March 13, 2006, Hernandez-Alberto's attorney filed a motion requesting a competency determination under Rule 3.851(g) that, under the rules, replaced the signed oath required by Rule 3.851(e)(1). Id.; see Fla. R. Crim. P. 3.851(g)(2). All parties agree that when the competency motion was filed, Hernandez-Alberto's postconviction petition was properly filed under Florida law.

The state court appointed experts who evaluated Hernandez-Alberto and testified at a competency hearing. Collateral Appeal, 126 So. 3d at 201. On June 3, 2008, the state court ruled that Hernandez-Alberto was competent to continue with his postconviction proceedings, a ruling it confirmed by denying reconsideration on July 15, 2008. See id. The state court provided Hernandez-Alberto sixty days to file the verification required by Rule 3.851(e)(1). Id. He did not do so.

At an October 2008 status hearing, Hernandez-Alberto stated his desire to dismiss his collateral counsel and represent himself. Id. The state court conducted a Faretta inquiry and found that Hernandez-Alberto knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily dismissed [his counsel] and chose to represent himself. Id.

On October 30, 2008, the court dismissed without prejudice the petition filed by counsel and permitted Hernandez-Alberto to file a pro se petition within sixty days, a deadline that it subsequently extended another sixty days. Id. But before expiration of the deadline, the state court concluded that, while legally competent to proceed, Hernandez-Alberto was not competent to represent himself, citing Indiana v. Edwards, 554 U.S. 164, 128 S. Ct. 2379 (2008). Id. at 201-02. So the state court reappointed collateral counsel for Hernandez-Alberto on January 12, 2009, and gave counsel ninety days to file an amended petition. See id. at 202. The amended petition was timely filed but again without Hernandez-Alberto's signature, on March 18, 2009. See id.

In April 2009, Hernandez-Alberto's counsel was granted an extension of time to obtain his client's signature, but by June 2009, counsel conceded that Hernandez-Alberto was unlikely to ever sign his petition. See id. The court again, at counsel's request, appointed experts to evaluate Hernandez-Alberto's competency. Id. After hearing testimony from the experts at a second competency hearing in June 2010, the court again found Hernandez-Alberto competent to proceed. Id.

After the second finding of competency, Hernandez-Alberto persisted in his refusal to sign his amended postconviction petition. Id. The court dismissed the petition without prejudice on August 17, 2010, giving Hernandez-Alberto another sixty days to file a properly verified postconviction petition. Id. Hernandez-Alberto failed to do so, and on November 1, 2010, the trial court dismissed his petition with prejudice. Id. at 203.

Hernandez-Alberto sought review of the trial court's dismissal of his petition and its competency determinations in the Florida Supreme Court. See id. at 199. In an opinion issued July 3, 2013, the Florida Supreme Court upheld both the competency finding and the dismissal of the petition. See id. at 199-208; id. at 210 ([W]e affirm the trial court's determination that HernandezAlberto was competent to proceed with postconviction litigation and the order dismissing his postconviction motion with prejudice for failing to file a facially sufficient motion.). Rehearing was denied, and the Florida Supreme Court's mandate issued on December 2, 2013.

B.

On January 21, 2014, Hernandez-Alberto filed a federal habeas petition under 28 U.S.C.  2254 in the Middle District of Florida. The district court ordered the state to address the timeliness of Hernandez-Alberto's federal petition.

In response, the state argued that Hernandez-Alberto's federal petition was time barred under the one-year statute of limitations set forth in the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C.  2244(d). In the state's view, Hernandez-Alberto ceased to have a properly filed application for postconviction relief pending in state court once the state trial court deemed Hernandez-Alberto competent and he refused to sign his petitionas of July 15, 2008, or at the very latest, when the state court first dismissed the unsigned petition without prejudice in October 2008. So the remaining 57 days of the one-year AEDPA limitations period would have expired, at the latest, in December 2008, well before Hernandez-Alberto filed his federal petition in January 2014.

The district court agreed with the reasoning proffered by the state, finding no properly filed application for postconviction relief pending as of the trial court's first competency finding in July 2008, and concluding that the AEDPA clock ran out in December 2008 at the latest. In reaching this conclusion, the district court highlighted language in the Florida Supreme Court's opinion affirming the dismissal with prejudice of the postconviction motion for failing to file a facially sufficient motion. The district court also rejected the notion that the extended deadlines given to Hernandez-Alberto to file a verified petition or the amended petition filed by counsel in March 2009 could toll the AEDPA limitations period on the basis that extensions of time do not toll the clock, and after the clock expired in December 2008, nothing was left to toll in March 2009. For these reasons, the district court denied the federal petition as untimely.

This Court granted Hernandez-Alberto a certificate of appealability on several questions, including the following:

Was Hernandez-Alberto's state postconviction petition no longer properly filed and pending, for the purposes of 28 U.S.C.  2244(d)(2), after the state trial court's first competency determination and dismissal with leave to amend in 2008, or did it remain properly filed and pending until the Florida Supreme Court issued its mandate on December 2, 2013, following its review of the dismissal of his state petition?

II.

We review de novo the district court's dismissal of a  2254 petition as untimely. Day v. Crosby, 391 F.3d 1192, 1193 (11th Cir. 2004).

III.

Under 28 U.S.C.  2254, a state prisoner asserting that he is being held in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States may, in federal court, challenge his incarceration. He must do so, though, within one year of his conviction's becoming final, either on direct review or when the deadline for seeking direct review has expired. 28 U.S.C.  2244(d)(1)(A). This limitations period is tolled, however, while a properly filed application for State postconviction or other collateral review with respect to the pertinent judgment or claim is pending. 28 U.S.C.  2244(d)(2).

The Supreme Court has instructed that an application is properly filed when its delivery and acceptance are in compliance with the applicable laws and rules governing filings. Artuz v. Bennett, 531 U.S. 4, 8, 121 S. Ct. 361, 364 (2000). And an application remains pending until it has achieved final resolution through the State's post-conviction procedures. Carey v. Saffold, 536 U.S. 214, 220, 122 S. Ct. 2134, 2138 (2002); see also Lawrence v. Florida, 549 U.S. 327, 332, 127 S. Ct. 1079, 1083 (2007) (State review ends when the state courts have finally resolved an application for state postconviction relief. After the State's highest court has issued its mandate or denied review, no other state avenues for relief remain open.).

Based on these guidelines, we conclude that Hernandez-Alberto's federal petition was timely filed on January 21, 2014. We agree with the parties that Hernandez-Alberto's state petition was properly filed as of March 13, 2006, when counsel filed a motion requesting a competency determination under Rule 3.851(g) that, under Florida's rules, replaced the signed oath required by Rule 3.851(e)(1). Under Saffold, Hernandez-Alberto's properly filed petition remained pending until it achieved final resolution through the State's post-conviction procedures. Saffold, 536 U.S. at 220, 122 S. Ct. at 2138 (emphasis added). Hernandez-Alberto's petition was not finally resolved until the Florida Supreme Court affirmed the competency determination and dismissal of the petition and issued its mandate on December 2, 2013. Since Hernandez-Alberto filed his federal petition on January 21, 2014, the filing timely fell on the 50th day after his conviction became final, within the 57-day period remaining on the one-year AEDPA limitations period.

IV.

Florida advances two arguments for why statutory tolling does not save Hernandez-Alberto's federal petition. First, the state contends that while Hernandez-Alberto's petition may have initially met the filing requirements of Florida law, once the state court found him competent and he still refused to sign the petition, the petition ceased to be properly filed. Second, Florida asserts that even if properly filed, Hernandez-Alberto's refusal to sign the petition after the finding of competency resulted in its pending status being withdrawn. Florida's arguments do not comport with applicable law and precedent.

A.

Florida bases its first argument on Pace v. DiGuglielmo, 544 U.S. 408, 125 S. Ct. 1807 (2005). To understand Florida's contention, we must review Pace, but to understand Pace, we begin with a prior case, Artuz.

In Artuz, the Supreme Court faced the question of whether a state petition was properly filed when it contained two claims that were procedurally barred by state law. 531 U.S. at 7, 121 S. Ct. at 363. The Supreme Court held that an application is filed when it is delivered to, and accepted by, the appropriate court officer for placement into the official record. Id. at 8, 121 S. Ct. at 363. The Court held that an application is properly filed when its delivery and acceptance are in compliance with the applicable laws and rules governing filings, including, for example, rules on form, timeliness, and filing fees. Id. at 8, 121 S. Ct. at 364.

In Pace, the Supreme Court confronted a question left open in Artuz: [W]hether the existence of certain exceptions to a timely filing requirement can prevent a late application from being considered improperly filed. 544 U.S. at 413, 125 S. Ct. at 1811 (quoting Artuz, 531 U.S. at 8 n.2, 121 S. Ct. at 364 n.2). The Supreme Court answered the question in the negative, holding that time limits, no matter their form, are filing conditions and that when a state court rejects an application for failing to satisfy that condition, the application was never properly filed. See id. at 417, 125 S. Ct. at 1814.

The prisoner in Pace filed a second state postconviction petition that would have been untimely unless it fell within at least one of three exceptions to the state's time limit. Id. at 410-11 & n.1, 125 S. Ct. at 1810 & n.1. The state court ultimately dismissed the state petition as untimely, finding, among other things, that Pace had neither alleged nor proven that his case fell within one of the exceptions. Id. at 411, 125 S. Ct. at 1810-11.

Pace then filed a federal  2254 petition that would have been time barred absent any tolling of the AEDPA limitations period. Id. at 411-12, 125 S. Ct. at 1811. The district court concluded, though, that Pace's second state petition had tolled the AEDPA deadline, reasoning that because the Pennsylvania statute set up judicially reviewable exceptions to the time limit, the deadline was not a necessary filing prerequisite. Id. at 412, 125 S. Ct. at 1811. The Third Circuit reversed, finding that the state time limit is a condition to filing, and that if the state petition is untimely, it could never have been properly filed. Id.

In affirming the Third Circuit, the Supreme Court observed that a petition filed after a time limit, and which does not fit within any exceptions to that limit, is no more properly filed than a petition filed after a time limit that permits no exception. Id. at 413, 125 S. Ct. at 1812. In rejecting Pace's various arguments, the Supreme Court noted that it made no difference whether the condition to filing was mechanical or required judicial scrutiny; failing to meet a filing prerequisite meant the state petition was never properly filed in the first place. See id. at 414-16, 125 S. Ct. at 1812-13.

Florida attempts to liken the signature requirement in Rule 3.851(e)(1) to the Pennsylvania time limit discussed in Pace. In other words, the state draws an analogy between the Florida court's determination that Hernandez-Alberto was competent and thus required to sign his petition, on the one hand, and the Pennsylvania court's determination that no exceptions made Pace's petition timely, on the other. Florida contends that signing the Rule 3.851 petition is a condition to filing, see Hurley v. Moore, 233 F.3d 1295, 1297-98 (11th Cir. 2000), and that competency is merely a judicially reviewable exception to the signature requirement.

We find Florida's argument flawed. Unlike the time bar in Pace, Florida's Rule 3.851(g) permitted counsel's good-faith competency motion to take the place of Rule 3.851(e)(1)'s oath. Fla. R. Crim. P. 3.851(g)(2). So while in Pace a finding of untimeliness meant the petition was never properly filed, here, a finding of competency did not change the fact (conceded by the state) that Hernandez-Alberto's initial petitionaccompanied by the Rule 3.851(g) motionwas in compliance with the applicable laws and rules governing filings when it was delivered and accepted on March 13, 2006in other words, was properly filedregardless of the ultimate finding of competency. See Artuz, 531 U.S. at 8, 121 S. Ct. at 363-64.

The key takeaway from Pace is that an untimely application was not, and could not ever have been considered, properly filed. But here, Hernandez-Alberto's petition was properly filed, and that status rests on counsel's good-faith competency motion, not on the eventual outcome of the competency evaluations. Moreover, nothing in Pace supports the idea that a properly filed petition can change into an improperly filed one, and Florida has not pointed to any authority suggesting that such a transmogrification is possible. Cf. id. at 10, 121, S. Ct. at 364 (The statute, however, refers only to properly filed applications and does not contain the peculiar suggestion that a single application can be both properly filed and not properly filed. ). Accordingly, Hernandez-Alberto's petition was properly filed, and once a petition is properly filed, the inquiry shifts to how long that petition remained pending.

B.

Florida bases its argument that Hernandez-Alberto's petition ceased pending, at the latest, in December 2008 on Saffold. In Saffold, the Supreme Court considered the meaning of pending in  2244(d) within the context of California's unique postconviction procedures. 536 U.S. at 217, 122 S. Ct. 2136. The Court began its opinion by finding that in the usual state process, not unlike Florida's, a prisoner's petition remains pending as long as the ordinary state collateral review process is in continuancei.e., until the completion of that process. In other words, until the application has achieved final resolution through the State's post-conviction procedures, by definition it remains pending.  Id. at 219-20, 122 S. Ct. at 2138. The Supreme Court reached this conclusion, in part, by noting that requiring a prisoner to exhaust a full round of state collateral review serves AEDPA's goal of promoting comity, finality, and federalism.  Id. at 220, 122 S. Ct. 2138 (quoting Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 420, 436, 120 S. Ct. 1479, 1490 (2000)).

California, however, did not follow the usual pattern. Its postconviction process was unique in that, instead of requiring a prisoner to file a notice of appeal from a lower court's denial of a collateral petition, it requires the prisoner to file an original habeas petition in the state supreme court. Id. at 221, 122 S. Ct. at 2139. California did not set a deadline for filing this original petition but merely required that it be filed within a reasonable time. Id. at 222, 122 S. Ct. at 2139. In applying AEDPA's pending requirement in the context of California's process, though, the Supreme Court found these distinctions unimportant, noting that California's process essentially functioned as the appeals procedures in other states, and commenting that AEDPA demands a certain measure of deference or protection to the states' postconviction processes. Id. at 222-23, 122 S. Ct. at 2139-40.

The Supreme Court acknowledged, however, that California's indeterminate reasonableness standard could make it more difficult for a federal court to apply  2244(d)'s tolling provisions. Id. at 223, 122 S. Ct. at 2139. The Court remanded Saffold's case to determine whether his delay was unreasonable. Id. at 225-227, 122 S. Ct. at 2141. But while it was unclear whether Saffold, specifically, had unreasonably delayed filing his petition, the Court observed that if the state court had clearly ruled that the delay was unreasonable, the petition would not have been pending, for purposes of AEDPA tolling, during the period between when the intermediate court denied Saffold's petition and he filed his original writ in the state supreme court. Id. at 225-26, 122 S. Ct. 2141.

Florida seizes on this last observation to argue that a prisoner's failure to comply with state procedural requirements after a dismissal can result in a petition's pending status being withdrawn prior to completion of an appeal. The state contends that Hernandez-Alberto's refusal to sign his petition after being found competent has an effect similar to the effect of a California prisoner's failing to file a writ with the state supreme court in a reasonable time: lack of compliance with the procedural requirement results in pending status being withdrawn.

Assuming for our purposes that Florida is correct that Hernandez-Alberto was required to sign his petition after being found competent, Florida's argument nevertheless goes astray because it conflates filing conditions with appellate procedural requirements. Saffold made clear that an application remains pending through completion of the state's collateral appeals process. Id. at 219-20, 122 S. Ct. at 2138. Saffold suggests, at most, that if a prisoner fails to comply with appeal requirements, his petition may lose pending status for the period between when the lower court issued its decision and the higher court takes up or dismisses the appeal.

But the record in Hernandez-Alberto's case includes no indication that Hernandez-Alberto failed to satisfy any appellate procedural requirements in appealing the trial court's competency determination and its dismissal of his postconviction petition. Until the Florida trial court dismissed his petition with prejudice, Hernandez-Alberto could not appeal those issues and resolve his postconviction proceedings. See, e.g., Christner v. State, 984 So. 2d 561, 562 (Fla. 2d DCA 2008) ([A]n unfavorable ruling on one or more postconviction claims with leave to amend is not an appealable, final order.); Howard v. State, 976 So. 2d 635, 636 (Fla. 5th DCA 2008) (holding that denial of a postconviction motion without prejudice and with leave to amend is not a final, appealable order). And AEDPA insists that we respect these procedural realities. See Saffold, 536 U.S. at 222-23, 122 S. Ct. at 2139.

When the court finally dismissed Hernandez-Alberto's postconviction petition with prejudice in November 2010, Hernandez-Alberto timely appealed to the Florida Supreme Court, which considered his appeal on the merits. The postconviction process that began with his properly filed petition on March 13, 2006, was finally resolved with the issuance of the Florida Supreme Court's mandate on December 2, 2013. See Lawrence, 549 U.S. at 332, 127 S. Ct. at 1083. For purposes of AEDPA, Hernandez-Alberto's properly filed application was pending during this entire period. Saffold, 536 U.S. at 219-20, 122 S. Ct. at 2138.

V.

In conclusion, Hernandez-Alberto's properly filed application for State post-conviction or other collateral review was pending from March 13, 2006, through December 2, 2013, tolling the deadline during this period for Hernandez-Alberto to file his federal habeas petition. As a result, Hernandez-Alberto's federal petition, filed on January 21, 2014, was timely filed under AEDPA, within one year of untolled time of his conviction having become final. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court finding his petition time-barred is REVERSED. This case is REMANDED to the district court for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

FOOTNOTES

. In January 2015, Florida amended Rule 3.851(e)(1) to remove the requirement that a postconviction motion be verified under oath by the prisoner, requiring instead that an attorney merely certify that the motion was filed in good faith. See In re Amendments to the Florida Capital Postconviction Rules, 148 So. 3d 1171, 1175, 1182 (Fla. 2014) (per curiam); see also In re Amendments to Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.851, 156 So. 3d 1036, 1036-37 (Fla. 2015) (per curiam). Nevertheless, because Hernandez-Alberto's postconviction proceedings occurred before these changes, all references to Rule 3.851 in this opinion concern the prior version of the rule.

. Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806, 95 S. Ct. 2525 (1975).

. The other two questions in the certificate of appealability addressed whether Hernandez-Alberto could overcome the time bar of  2244(d) through equitable tolling or an actual-innocence-of-the-death-penalty exception. Because we conclude that Hernandez-Alberto's federal petition was timely filed based on statutory tolling under  2244(d)(2), we need not and do not reach these other avenues of avoiding the statute of limitations.

PER CURIAM:
The annual International Quilt Festival is not a weekend looking at your great-grandmother's bedding.

No, it's a collection of 1,700 of the most beautiful quilts that are works of art. Many are machine made, but some are still hand quilted the old fashioned way. All of them are works of art made by quilters using much more than fabric, needle and thread. There are trims and hand painting and all sorts of artistic treatments in many of the pieces.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. ALISON PAIGE HILL, Defendant - Appellant. No. 15-4782 Decided: November 04, 2016

Before TRAXLER, DUNCAN, and AGEE, Circuit Judges. Elisa Cyre Salmon, SALMON LAW FIRM, LLP, Lillington, North Carolina, for Appellant. John Stuart Bruce, Acting United States Attorney, Jennifer P. May-Parker, Barbara D. Kocher, Assistant United States Attorneys, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellee.

Alison Paige Hill pled guilty, pursuant to a written plea agreement, to conspiracy to manufacture, distribute, dispense, and produce with the intent to distribute 50 grams or more of methamphetamine, 21 U.S.C.  846 (2012). She was sentenced within her advisory Guidelines range to 108 months in prison. However, with respect to her supervised release, the district court varied upward and imposed a 10-year term. On appeal, Hill challenges the district court's decisions with respect to certain Guidelines in fashioning her sentence, the reasonableness of her Guidelines sentence, and the reasonableness of her 10-year variant term of supervised release. The Government seeks to enforce the appellate waiver as to all but the last claim. For the reasons that follow, we dismiss in part and affirm in part.

We review the validity of an appeal waiver de novo, and will enforce the waiver if it is valid and the issue appealed is within the scope of the waiver. United States v. Copeland, 707 F.3d 522, 528 (4th Cir. 2013) (internal quotation marks omitted). The validity of an appeal waiver depends on whether the defendant knowingly and intelligently agreed to waive the right to appeal. United States v. Blick, 408 F.3d 162, 169 (4th Cir 2005). To determine whether a waiver is knowing and intelligent, we examine the totality of the circumstances , including the background, experience, and conduct of the accused. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Generally, if a district court questions a defendant regarding the waiver of appellate rights during the [plea] colloquy and the record indicates that the defendant understood the full significance of the waiver, the waiver is valid. Copeland, 707 F.3d at 528 (internal quotation marks omitted).

In her plea agreement, Hill waived her right to appeal her conviction and whatever sentence is imposed on any ground, including any issues that relate to the establishment of the advisory Guideline range, reserving only the right to appeal from a sentence in excess of the applicable advisory Guideline range that is established at sentencing. The language of this appeal waiver is clear and unambiguous, and the record reveals that Hill understood the full significance of the waiver. The court also confirmed that Hill was competent to plead guilty and was entering her plea in the absence of threats, force, or promises outside of those contained in the plea agreement. Accordingly, we conclude that Hill's appeal waiver is valid and enforceable as to issues within its scope.

In her first two claims, Hill argues that the district court erred in imposing an enhancement under U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual  2D1.1(b)(1) (2015) for possession of a firearm in connection with her drug offense and (2) denying her a reduction under USSG  3B1.2 for her mitigating role. In her third claim, she argues that her 108-month Guidelines sentence and 10-year variant term of supervised release are unreasonable. Hill's challenges to her within-Guidelines sentence of 108 months' imprisonment are clearly within the scope of, and consequently, barred by the appellate waiver. We therefore dismiss these claims.

Because the district court imposed an upward variance on the supervised release term, however, Hill's challenge to this aspect of her sentence is outside the scope of the waiver. Hill argues that the district court did not explain why a 10-year term of supervised release was necessary or why the 4-to-5-year advisory Guidelines range was inadequate to address its concerns. Because Hill did not object to the term of supervised release below, this court reviews the record for plain error. United States v. Webb, 738 F.3d 638, 640 (4th Cir. 2013). To establish plain error, Hill must show (1) that the district court erred, (2) that the error is clear or obvious, and (3) that the error affected her substantial rights, meaning that it affected the outcome of the district court proceedings. United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 73234 (1993). Even when this burden is met, this court has discretion whether to recognize the error and may deny relief unless the district court's error seriously affect[s] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings. Id. at 736.

A term of supervised release  [is] part of the sentence, United States v. Evans, 159 F.3d 908, 913 (4th Cir. 1998), and is therefore reviewed for reasonableness. Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007). If a sentence is procedurally reasonable, this court reviews for substantive reasonableness  under an abuse-of-discretion standard. United States v. Carter, 564 F.3d 325, 328 (4th Cir. 2009). The sentence must be sufficient, but not greater than necessary, to comply with the purposes of sentencing. 18 U.S.C.  3553(a) (2012).

A district court is required to consider the following factors when determining the length of a term of supervised release: the nature and circumstances of the offense, the history and characteristics of the defendant, deterrence, protection of the public, the need to provide the defendant with treatment or care, the applicable sentencing range, public policy, and any need for restitution. 18 U.S.C.  3583(c) (2012).

Here, the district court noted the severity of methamphetamine addiction and expressly considered Hill's troubled youth, addiction, and criminal history. The court stressed that Hill had a history of probation violations and that she had committed the instant offense while on a sentence of probation. The court then tailored a term of supervised release that would monitor future criminal activity and payments of restitution, noting the upward variance was warranted in light of the nature and circumstances of the offense, the dangers of methamphetamine production, and the need to protect the community. The 10-year term was well within the statutory maximum supervised release term of life. We conclude that the supervised release variance was procedurally and substantively reasonable and, therefore, affirm this portion of Hill's sentence. We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the materials before this court and argument would not aid the decisional process.

DISMISSED IN PART; AFFIRMED IN PART

PER CURIAM:
Here are 12 ASCs that were opened or announced in October 2016.

Winchester, Va.-based Valley Health broke ground on a new $6.2 million ASC that will include orthopedics, ENT, neurosurgery and podiatry.

Resurgens Orthopaedics based in Atlanta opened its 7th ASC in Covington, Ga.

Optim Orthopedics opened a new ASC in Savannah, Ga.

Georgia Ophthalmologists opened a new 8,000-square-foot ASC in Covington.

The Athens (Ala.) Planning Commission approved the preliminary plans for Athens-Limestone Hospital to construct a new 77,000-square-foot surgery center that would include six operating rooms.

Daytona Children's is opening a new specialty care center that includes an outpatient surgery center in Miamisburg, Ohio.

Arkansas Urology is planning to build a $6 million outpatient center in Little Rock.

Yale New Haven Health completed a new medical center that includes an ASC in Trumbull, Conn.

Shriners Hospital for Children in Los Angeles is building an outpatient center equipped with an ASC in Pasadena, Calif.

The LASIK Vision Institute opened an ASC in Lubbock, Texas.

The Gastroenterology Group of Northern New Jersey partnered with Englewood Hospital and Medical Center and Physicians Endoscopy to open the Northern New Jersey Center for Advanced Endoscopy in Englewood Cliffs.

The Retina Center of Ohio opened in Euclid.
Here are five gastroenterologists in the news this past week.

David Hudesman, MD, spoke with Huffington Post about how to manage Crohn's disease.

Paul Moayyedi, MD, PhD, and Anne Marie Lennon, MD, PhD, are slated to present at Semana Nacional de Gastroenterologia, or Mexican Gastroenterology Week, Nov. 22 in Mazatlan, Mexico.

Ashkan Farhadi, MD, spoke with Mic about lactose intolerance.

Myron Knell, MD, and his wife Marilyn Knell, were selected as artists of the month by Zanesville, Ohio-based arts organization ArtCoz, according to the Zanesville Times Recorder. Dr. Knell is a woodworker and Ms. Knell is a painter.
In an effort to help clear the backlog of Medicare appeals, CMS has offered to pay hospitals 66 percent of the net allowable amount for short-term inpatient stays in exchange for hospitals dropping their pending appeals of denied claims.

Here are six things to know about CMS' offer.

1. Acute care hospitals and critical access hospitals are the only types of providers permitted to take part in the settlement process with CMS.

2. The settlement does not apply to any short-term hospital admissions that occurred after Oct. 1, 2013.

3. Claims subject to pending appeals before an administrative law judge or the Medicare appeals board are eligible for the settlement.

4. CMS will make the settlement process available Dec. 1. The deadline for hospitals to submit an Expression of Interest is Jan. 31, 2017.

5. CMS will host a call Nov. 16 to offer more details on the settlement process.

6. CMS made a similar offer to help clear the Medicare appeals backlog in September 2014. That settlement offer resulted in CMS paying nearly $1.5 billion to 2,022 hospitals across the nation.

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Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton's broad healthcare proposals could create near-term benefits for nonprofit hospitals. However, if her proposals are implemented, it could lead to uncertainties and operating risk in the longer term, according to a Fitch Ratings report.

Ms. Clinton has proposed expanding Medicaid in the 19 states that have opted not to do so. This move would benefit nonprofit hospitals in those states in the short term, as it would likely lead to an increase in patient volumes and a reduction in bad debt and charity care, according to Fitch. Over the longer term, the benefits would diminish, as the hospitals would likely see fewer patients with commercial insurance.

Fitch said Ms. Clinton's proposals to expand access to health insurance exchanges and to increase reimbursement to aid access in rural areas are likely to be positive for nonprofit hospitals. However, her plan to broaden Medicare eligibility and provide a public option, which would involve a government-run health plan competing with private options on the ACA exchanges, have the potential to negatively affect nonprofit hospitals.

Fitch said it has not commented on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's healthcare plan "due to the lack of specificity on what would be implemented after 'repeal and replace.'"

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13 recent hospital outlook, credit rating actions

Connecticut hospitals continue fight against hospital tax

8 changes to the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule in 2017
The following 10 hospitals and health systems improved their total joint replacement programs through participating in alternative payment initiatives, aligning physicians and staff and using data analytics to realize better quality and cost savings.

Becker's Hospital Review published the list "How 10 hospitals took their joint replacement programs to the next level" in September. Here are 10 more, selected based on nominations and editorial research:

Augusta Health (Fishersville, Va.). Augusta Health partnered with Stryker Performance Solutions in 2013 to implement a Destination Center of Superior Performance for Total Joint Replacement. The hospital used the proprietary Marshall | Steele 4 A's Methodology to bring together staff and physicians around benchmarking service lines; creating goals; implementing new processes and protocols; and reporting clinical, operational and patient performance data. Three years after beginning the program, 76 percent of the patients were able to walk more than 300 feet before discharge; prior to the program, only 10 percent of patients reached that goal. The hospital was able to reduce blood transfusions by 84 percent which led to $324,000 in savings since the program began. The hospital also reduced length of stay to just over two days, saving $323,000 since 2013. The total direct cost per case dropped 14 percent from 2013 to 2016.

Euclid (Ohio) Hospital. Euclid Hospital, a Cleveland Clinic hospital, participated in the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement initiative, treating 271 patients hipe and knee replacement patients in the first year. The hospital promoted physician engagement and established a specialty care coordinator to manage the joint replacement patients. One year after the program began, the hospital reported average length of stay dropped to 2.4 days from between 2.67 and 3.01 days. The 30-day readmission rates decreased from 5 percent to between 1.6 percent and 2.7 percent for each quarter after program implementation. The percentage of patients discharged home with and without home healthcare increased from 39 percent to a quarterly range of 68 percent to 75 percent. The hospital realized a financial value creation of $522,389 across all episodes of care.

Herrin (Ill.) Hospital. Carbondale, Ill.-based Southern Illinois Healthcare's Herrin Hospital supports an all-inclusive joint replacement surgery program that includes an alliance with the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. The hospital has experienced success with its Joint Camp Program and hired an orthopedic coordinator. Since then, the hospital saw improvement in length of stay, readmission rates and pain management after surgery. Herrin Hospital has certification in hip and knee replacements from The Joint Commission.

Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center (Baltimore). Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center has developed a total joint program focused on improving patient care in both quality and safety, improving efficiencies in an academic setting and decreasing variability around safety and costs. The program includes a robust preoperative screening process, dedicated joint replacement team, multimodal pain control, zero catheter and drain usage and tranexamic acid usage to promote a decrease in transfusion rates. Since its inception in 2013, program outcomes comparing 2013 to 2015 are notable for a 56 percent reduction in length of stay, 33 percent reduction in 30-day readmission rates, 40 percent reduction in transfusion rates and 70 percent of all joint patients discharge directly home. HCAHPS scores continue above benchmark for hip and knee pain management. JHBMC in one of only four hospitals in the country that participates in the Employer Centers of Excellence Network from Pacific Business Group on Health, which assists in negotiating bundled payments for self-insured employers, for total hip and total knee arthroplasty.

Providence Health & Services (Renton, Wash.). Surgeons at Providence Health & Services, which includes hospitals in five states, perform more than 21,000 joint replacements each year. The health system built its own internal registry and works with clinicians at each location to develop a patient-reported outcomes tool so clinicians working in multiple practice locations could use the same level of aggregated data. The health system also gathers cost information and adds their data to the analytics from the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement claims to project a stronger picture of the total joint patient episodes of care. This initiative created alignment between the clinicians and outcomes improvement efforts. For example, the hospital identified the strong and weak performers for readmissions and examined the patient selection criteria at the strong sites. Then the information was spread throughout the hospitals in the system to reduce readmissions in the poor performing sites. The health system is also transparent with surgeons about their costs and is seeing movement toward standardized implants and approaches to care.

PinnacleHealth System (Harrisburg, Pa.). Surgeons at PinnacleHealth System perform around 1,600 knee replacements and 1,000 hip replacements annually. The system's Bone and Joint Institute opened in 2012 to enhance the patient experience, reduce cost and improve clinical outcomes. Twenty orthopedic surgeons from three independent orthopedic practices collaborated with PinnacleHealth System to open the institute. The institute includes a perioperative optimization program to identify patients at high risk for postoperative complications and manages them accordingly. Since implementing the program, the hospital reduced the average length of stay by two days, and many patients are discharged one day after surgery. Only 8.7 percent of joint replacement patients discharge to skilled nursing facilities and 5.9 percent to acute rehab facilities. The system realized a $6.5 million reduction in overall costs associated with hip and knee replacements.

Sacred Heart Medical Center (Springfield, Ore.). PeaceHealth's Sacred Heart Medical Center updated its joint replacement program with the Back On Track program in 2012. The program now includes femoral nerve blocks, group exercise classes, an individual physical session each day after surgery and discharge from the hospital on within two days of surgery for many patients. Surgeons perform more than 1,200 knee and hip replacement procedures at the hospital annually and after implementing the program in 2012, the hospital saw the length of stay drop 20.3 percent for knee replacements and 21.45 percent for primary hip replacement patients.

Santa Rosa (Calif.) Memorial Hospital. Irvine, Calif.-based St. Joseph Health System's Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital set out to become a an Intralign Health Total Joint Arthroplasty Center of Excellence in 2014 to combat increased competition for patients, concern over operational changes and cost pressures across the episode of care. The hospital partnered with Intralign Health to lead the Center of Excellence initiative and navigate healthcare reform programs such as Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement. By the third quarter of 2015, the hospital realized a surgical volume increase and around $1.5 million in savings. An additional initiative included optimizing the OR and block plan schedules, which resulted in 213 more block hours and 315 hours of urgent/emergent and service-line block per month.

St. Vincent's HealthCare (Jacksonville, Fla.). This nonprofit health system partnered with Stryker Performance Solutions in 2012 to prepare for the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement initiative. The hospital previously partnered with Stryker on physician alignment through orthopedic co-management and population health initiatives through the formation of an ACO. St. Vincent's HealthCare created a lower extremity joint replacement bundle at its Riverside Medical Center and Southside Medical Center, both in Jacksonville, Fla., on Jan. 1, 2014, and since then the health system has realized $3.89 million in cost savings. Riverside decreased the average episode cost by more than 15 percent and Southside decreased the average episode cost by 20 percent.

Virtua Joint Replacement Institute (Voorhees, N.J.). The Virtua Joint Replacement Institute in Southern New Jersey specializes in minimally invasive, quad-sparing total knee replacement surgery and hip replacement. The JRI operates with a rapid recovery model; patients are able to walk within a few hours of their surgery and most are discharged the next morning. Of the 90 percent of patients discharged home, 60 percent go directly to outpatient physical therapy. All patients work with a clinical nurse navigator to guide the patient through the pre- and postoperative periods. The Virtua JRI entered into CMS' Bundled Payments for Care Improvement initiative and achieved $4.6 million savings in the first year. Since it opened in August 2012, the JRI has been ranked in the 99th percentile in a patient satisfaction rating, according to the HCAHPS national survey.

Please contact Laura Dyrda with any questions or comments on this list at ldyrda@beckershealthcare.com
More than two decades after he first read it and four decades after it was published, Bill Gates says Business Adventures by John Brooks is still the best business book he's ever read, according to CNBC.

Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, lent Mr. Gates his copy of Business Adventures after Mr. Gates asked him for a book recommendation. More than 20 years later, "John Brooks is still my favorite business writer," Mr. Gates wrote on his blog in 2014, according to the report.

Mr. Brooks, a former staff writer for The New Yorker, published the book in 1969 using 12 stories from Wall Street that were originally published in the magazine.

"Unlike a lot of today's business writers, Brooks didn't boil his work down into pat how-to lessons or simplistic explanations for success. (How many times have you read that some company is taking off because they give their employees free lunch?)," Mr. Gates wrote. "You won't find any listicles in his work. Brooks wrote long articles that frame an issue, explore it in depth, introduce a few compelling characters, and show how things went for them."

Although the business world has changed substantially from the 1960s, Mr. Gates said the fundamentals of building a strong business have not, writing, "Brooks' deeper insights about business are just as relevant today as they were back then," according to the report.

According to Mr. Gates, the key takeaway is: "There's an essential human factor in every business endeavor. It doesn't matter if you have a perfect product, production plan, and marketing pitch; you'll still need the right people to lead and implement those plans."
Stay in the know with Becker's Hospital Review's weekly roundup of the nation's biggest healthcare news. Here's what you need to know this week.

1. Nearly 1,000 pregnant US women have Zika

Zika virus is especially concerning for pregnant women, as it can cause birth defects like microcephaly in infants. In the U.S., the number of pregnant women with the virus continues to grow: 953 pregnant women had the virus as of Oct. 20, up from 899 reported as of Oct. 13.

2. 8 changes to the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule in 2017

CMS issued its update to the 2017 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule on Wednesday. The changes include a number of new policies that reflect a broader agencywide strategy to enhance quality, spend smarter and improve Americans' health.

3. CHS to sell 17 hospitals to drive down debt

Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems is in talks to sell hospitals and other assets to help trim its debt load, said CEO Wayne Smith during a third-quarter earnings call Wednesday. The decision to sell the hospitals comes after the hospital system recorded a $79 million loss in the third quarter of 2016.

4. One dead, 9 hospitalized with rare polio-like illness at Seattle Children's

A child from Snohomish County, Washington was recently admitted to Seattle Children's Hospital with an acute neurological illness characterized by polio-like symptoms, representing the ninth case of the condition seen at the hospital since mid-September.

5. CMS releases final OPPS rule for 2017: 11 things to know

CMS released its final 2017 Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System and Ambulatory Surgical Center Payment System rule on Tuesday, which implements site-neutral payment provisions of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015.

6. Blackstone to acquire TeamHealth in $6B deal

The board of TeamHealth, a Knoxville, Tenn.-based physician services organization, unanimously approved an agreement to be acquired by Blackstone  a private equity, investment banking and asset management corporation  for $6.1 billion, including debt and other factors.

7. Armed man reportedly impersonated Virginia Mason employee to steal patient information

A 46-year-old man dressed as an employee of Seattle-based Virginia Mason Hospital & Medical Center was arrested at the hospital last week and charged with first-degree burglary, second-degree robbery and cocaine possession.

8. 1,600 hospitals see payment bump under value-based purchasing

In fiscal year 2017, more than 1,600 hospitals will receive a positive payment adjustment under the Medicare Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program, while about 1,300 will receive a payment reduction, according to recently released data from CMS on nearly 3,000 U.S. hospitals.

9. Number of first-day ACA exchange enrollees up 50% over last year

The first day of open enrollment for 2017 ACA marketplace health coverage saw a 50 percent increase in applications over last year's start date, reports CNBC.

10. Where are the 20 Leapfrog F hospitals?

Out of the 2,633 hospitals that received a Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade this fall, 20 received a failing grade, up from the 15 that earned an F in the spring.

11. Banner Health, Carondelet among providers not accepting ACA insurance plans in 2017

In Arizona, two major healthcare providers  Phoenix-based Banner Health and Tucson-based Carondelet Health Network  are not considered in-network by any health plan offered on the state exchange in 2017.

12. UnitedHealth Group to roll out national ACO in 2017

Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealth Group plans to launch a national ACO called NexusACO beginning in 2017, Forbes reports.

13. Massachusetts hospital to lay off 64 with closure of transitional care unit

Brockton (Mass.) Hospital, part of Brockton-based Signature Healthcare, will lay off 64 employees when it closes its 29-bed transitional care unit, according to The Enterprise.
United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit. United States of America Plaintiff - Appellee v. Shameris Lashawn Jefferson Defendant - Appellant No. 16-1019 Decided: November 04, 2016

Before WOLLMAN, BRIGHT, and KELLY, Circuit Judges.

Shameris Jefferson pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute a mixture or substance containing a detectable amount of cocaine, a mixture or substance containing a detectable amount of methamphetamine, and marijuana, in violation of 21 U.S.C.  846 and 841(a)(1), and was sentenced to 48 months' imprisonment and 3 years' supervised release. He appeals from the district court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence. We affirm.

A clerk working at a St. Charles, Missouri, hotel reported to law enforcement officers that a guest had been acting suspiciously, had registered to stay for only one night, and had paid in cash. After identifying the suspicious person as Jefferson, officers began surveillance on him.

Jefferson left the hotel, taking a taxi to a home-improvement store in Bridgeton, Missouri. After he left the store, he entered the passenger's side of a red pickup truck that was occupied by his codefendant, Richard Williams. Williams drove to a location in St. Louis, where the two men entered a residence and stayed for approximately one hour before returning to the St. Charles hotel in Williams's truck. Jefferson exited the truck, entered the hotel, and returned to the parking lot shortly thereafter. Jefferson entered the driver's seat of a grey car and followed Williams's red truck as they drove away from the hotel. With officers pursuing in unmarked vehicles, Jefferson and Williams began driving erratically, eventually parting ways.

Jefferson pulled into a parking lot of a high school, circling the lot three times before parking in an empty space. St. Louis County Detective Joseph Brandt parked near Jefferson and exited his vehicle as Jefferson rolled down his window. Detective Brandt smelled raw marijuana, waited for another officer to arrive, and then ordered Jefferson out of the car. Detective Brandt then deployed his drug dog, which alerted to the presence of controlled substances. Officers searched Jefferson's car and seized cocaine, marijuana, $6,500 cash, a cell phone, and some documents. Following the district court's denial of the motion to suppress, Jefferson pleaded guilty, reserving his right to appeal from the denial of the motion to suppress.

We review the district court's factual findings for clear error, but we review de novo its determination that the Fourth Amendment was not violated. United States v. Pile, 820 F.3d 314, 316 (8th Cir. 2016) (per curiam) (citing United States v. Pratt, 355 F.3d 1119, 1121 (8th Cir. 2004)). The Fourth Amendment is not triggered by a consensual encounter between an officer and a private citizen.  United States v. Aquino, 674 F.3d 918, 923 (8th Cir. 2012) (quoting United States v. Villa-Gonzalez, 623 F.3d 526, 531 (8th Cir. 2010)). The following non-exclusive factors may render an encounter between an officer and a private citizen non-consensual:

[o]fficers positioning themselves in a way to limit the person's freedom of movement, the presence of several officers, the display of weapons by officers, physical touching, the use of language or intonation indicating compliance is necessary, the officer's retention of the person's property, or an officer's indication the person is the focus of a particular investigation.

Id. (quoting United States v. Griffith, 533 F.3d 979, 983 (8th Cir. 2008)).

The initial encounter between Detective Brandt and Jefferson did not implicate the Fourth Amendment. The record supports the district court's finding that when parking next to Jefferson, Detective Brandt did not position his vehicle in such a way as to limit Jefferson's freedom of movement and that Jefferson then rolled down his window without being ordered to do so, voluntarily releasing the scent of raw marijuana. There were only one or two officers near Jefferson at the time, Detective Brandt was not displaying his weapon, and there is no evidence that he touched or spoke to Jefferson. The initial interaction between Brandt and Jefferson did not implicate the Fourth Amendment, because the encounter was consensual in nature. Upon smelling marijuana, Detective Brandt had reasonable suspicion to investigate further, see United States v. Scott, 818 F.3d 424, 428 (8th Cir. 2016), and after the drug dog alerted to the presence of controlled substances, the officers had probable cause to search Jefferson's car, see United States v. Gonzalez, 781 F.3d 422, 429 (8th Cir. 2015). In light of this holding, we need not reach the district court's alternative conclusion that probable cause supported a traffic stop.

The judgment is affirmed.

FOOTNOTES

. The Honorable Rodney W. Sippel, Chief Judge, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, adopting the Report and Recommendation of the Honorable Thomas C. Mummert, III, then Chief United States Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of Missouri, now retired.

PER CURIAM.
From a federal appeals court halting a proposed health system merger in Illinois to physicians in Tennessee suing CMS, here are the latest healthcare industry lawsuits and settlements making headlines.

1. Adventist Health System accused of improperly relying on ERISA 'church plan' exemption

Altamonte Springs, Fla.-based Adventist Health System is accused of underfunding its pension plans by $134 million.

2. Armed man reportedly impersonated Virginia Mason employee to steal patient information

A 46-year-old man dressed as an employee of Seattle-based Virginia Mason Hospital & Medical Center was arrested at the hospital Oct. 28 and charged with first-degree burglary, second-degree robbery and cocaine possession.

3. 21 physicians sue CMS over attempt to recoup Medicaid payments

Twenty-one physicians in Tennessee filed a federal lawsuit against CMS to stop the agency from recouping $2.3 million in Medicaid payments.

4. Feds secure $1.2M judgment against former Texas hospital owner

The federal government secured a $1.2 million civil judgment against Tariq Mahmood, MD, the former owner of several Texas hospitals.

5. Appeals court halts Advocate-NorthShore merger: 8 things to know

A federal appeals court paused a proposed merger between Downers Grove, Ill.-based Advocate Health Care and Evanston, Ill.-based NorthShore University HealthSystem.

6. West Virginia Supreme Court blocks release of documents in Cabell Huntington, St. Mary's merger

The West Virginia Supreme Court blocked the release of 89 documents held by the state attorney general's office related to the merger between Cabell Huntington (W.Va.) Hospital and Huntington, W.Va.-based St. Mary's Medical Center.

7. Man accused of 2014 Boston Children's DDoS hack pleads not guilty

The "hacktavist" accused of planning and carrying out a distributed denial of service attack against Boston Children's Hospital in 2014 pleaded not guilty to the attack.

8. Former cancer center director sues Dartmouth-Hitchcock for wrongful termination

The former director of Lebanon, N.H.-based Dartmouth-Hitchcock's Norris Cotton Cancer Center filed a lawsuit against the health system claiming officials retaliated against him for whistle-blowing.

More articles on health law:

10 latest healthcare industry lawsuits, settlements

New era of healthcare fraud investigations puts spotlight on the C-suite

8 latest False Claims Act settlements
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The end of Northern Ireland's only transatlantic air route due to an EU block on bailout cash has been blasted as an "international embarrassment" by "unelected blinkered bureaucrats".

United Airlines is scrapping its Belfast International to New York flight in January. It was due to receive a 9m bailout - two-thirds of which was coming from the Executive - to retain the link.

However, the European Commission has blocked the funding package under State aid rules.

But others, including the Green Party leader Steven Agnew, criticised the decision to give cash to a multi-national airline as a "vanity project".

And economist Andrew Webb said that, while it is "unfortunate" United is pulling out, "there were questions over the value for money and the process that was used to try and support the route".

Belfast International Airport boss Graham Keddie said he blamed the EU and said the "abysmal" decision was "absolutely appalling", which was made by a "bunch of faceless bureaucrats".

"You could hardly get a worse example of process-driven madness," he said.

"To block a support package for an airline that delivers direct access to the United States is almost beyond comprehension."

Economy Minister Simon Hamilton said it is "deeply regrettable that unelected bureaucrats in Brussels have effectively scuppered this important flight for Northern Ireland".

He said that "faced with the same circumstances again, I would make the same decisions".

Mr Hamilton said public money paid to United already "has been recouped with interest".

It is understood one objection was received by the EC in relation to the bailout.

DUP MP Sammy Wilson said the decision further highlighted the EU's "blinkered attitude of bureaucracy".

"I don't think it's even a revenge attack by the EU, it's just typical of the EU, on their thinking and inflexible bureaucracy," he said.

Ulster Unionist economy spokesman Steve Aiken said the decision is an "international embarrassment".

"We need to know what checks were made with the European Union over State aid and who took the decision that it was not an issue," he said.

However, Steven Agnew said the "decision presents us with a huge opportunity, as the money can now be used on projects which have a much greater benefit on ordinary people's lives".

It is understood many of the New York flights were around 80% full.

Mr Keddie said the airport was already exploring "hot leads" in relation to finding a replacement airline to fly to New York.

Addressing the issue of State aid, Simon Hamilton said: "We were always aware of the potential of an issue around State aid compliance, but given the tight timescale to put a package of support in place, approval by the European Commission could not be sought in advance of agreeing a deal with United and it was our view, on balance, that given this was our only direct flight to the USA, State aid was not a factor."
Stephen Daldry wanted surgeons to be used in filming of the scene

Big-budget royal series The Crown saw a team of qualified surgeons used in a scene instead of actors, it has been revealed.

It is thought to be the first time real doctors have been used in a television production to add plausibility.

A leading surgical team from Guy's Hospital in London appears in Netflix's lavish new drama about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II in the first episode.

The transplant experts were asked to take part in a scene showing King George VI undergoing lung surgery after the production team decided it would appear more realistic if professionals were involved.

Keen to replicate the surgery to remove a cancerous tumour from the King's lung, conducted by Sir Clement Price Thomas in 1951 in Buckingham Palace, producers asked for the help of Mr Pankaj Chandak, a specialist registrar in transplant surgery at Guy's Hospital.

It was then decided by director Stephen Daldry that Mr Chandak, who offered his knowledge in recreating the historical moment, should be part of the scene along with members of his team at the hospital.

Mr Chandak also advised on how to create a prosthetic body and diseased lung to add to the credibility of the on-screen moment.

The doctor said that taking part in The Crown was, for his team, "an experience we will never forget".

He said: "Despite having the film crew around us, once we settled in it felt like a normal day in the operating theatre. The prosthetic body was incredibly life-like, complete with a beating heart, and there was meticulous attention to detail on set to recreate the surgical world from 1951."

Mr Chandak, who is also an honorary lecturer and research fellow at King's College London, later asked the production company to donate the "body" to the Gordon Museum of Pathology at King's College London as an educational prop.

He explained: "I would like to use it for future demonstrations and lectures to show how far we've come with surgery since the time King George VI was operated on.

"At Guy's Hospital we carry out minimally-invasive techniques through keyhole and robotic surgery, meaning that patients can leave hospital sooner and recover more quickly than they have previously been able to."

The scenes for the series, which cost a reported 100 million to create, were filmed in November last year.

Guy's Hospital consultant transplant surgeon Professor Nizam Mamode played the role of Sir Clement, and he was joined by Mr Francis Calder, Sister Kim Well and Sister Abigail Keen.

A spokesman for The Crown's production company Left Bank Pictures said: "Attention to detail was absolutely vital to the series as a whole, and the operation on George VI did actually take place in Buckingham Palace as shown.

"Director Stephen Daldry requested that we used real surgeons instead of actors to make sure that every detail was authentic and the surgical team were absolutely invaluable to making the scene as believable as possible. It was first in TV and we are incredibly grateful to the surgeons who agreed to take part in filming."

Claire Foy stars as Queen Elizabeth II in the series, along with Matt Smith as Prince Philip and John Lithgow as Winston Churchill.

The first 10 episodes were made available to stream on Netflix on November 4.
Gina Miller's 11-year-old son thinks she is a superhero. "He said, 'Thank you, mummy, it'll be me and my friends that suffer if we don't have democracy'. My kids are obsessed with Marvel and think I'm Wonder Woman."

Miller talks to her children about work and the landmark legal case she won on Thursday. Using her own money, the 51-year-old who runs the investment firm SCM Private with her husband Alan brought a legal challenge to ensure that Theresa May cannot trigger Article 50 without a vote in Parliament.

"We won three-nil," she laughs. "All three judges ruled in our favour. What we did was preserve democracy. But the media frenzy meant it didn't sink in." She had a glass of champagne at home in Chelsea to celebrate but now she's busy. We speak on the phone as she rushes around, dropping off her children and going to work. The decision has disrupted May's plans to begin Brexit negotiations in March next year and made the prospect of a 'Soft Brexit' more likely.

"I'm a very level-headed person, so I was just thinking 'What happens now?'. It's not just about the day of the victory. Now the Government should be drawing up a Bill (on Brexit). To not frustrate the Brexit timetable they should put the Bill before parliament as quickly as possible.

"If we hadn't won, the implication would have been that any prime minister in the future could do what they want. The judges said we have a rule of law in this country that cannot be taken away by politicians."

Miller decided to fight last month. She only slept for 36 minutes on the night of the EU referendum. In the morning, her son told her she'd do something about the result because she always acts.

It's been tough. She's had rape and death threats and is in close dialogue with the police about protecting her house and her children's school.

"I'm not naive, I knew people can be hateful and spoke to police about security early on. There's been a hateful backlash. It's been racist, sexist, xenophobic - anything you can possibly imagine - but I'm not backwards in coming forwards and speaking.

"I spent the past 10 years fighting rip-offs in the City and I'm vocal when I think things are wrong. I can't think of a better way of spending my money.

"I've gone from being a single parent in a one-bed flat in Stoke Newington to where I live now. Fortunately I have strength of personality and resources to speak out. It's the right thing for me to do so I do it."

Miller was born in Guyana, where her father was leader of the opposition. When politics became dangerous he stepped down and was attorney general. As a child, Miller would go see him in court. At 10, she was sent to Roedean school, but was badly bullied and experienced racism for the first time - a time she credits with making her steely.

She ran away to live with her brother in Eastbourne when she was 14, supporting herself by working as a chambermaid. She studied law at the University of East London, but didn't sit her finals because her parents wanted her back in Guyana. But London was home.

At 21 she married and had a daughter at 23, who is disabled. She divorced her first husband and worked as a model while also setting up a marketing agency. She remarried, to Jon Maguire, a businessman known for his Christianity and anti-homosexual attitude. They divorced in 2002. Then she met Alan Miller at a fancy dress party in 2003. He started one of Britain's first hedge funds and had made more than 30m. When they were first dating, he was in the middle of a divorce and she urged him to fight for a fair deal - again driven by principle. Now she is sanguine about the abuse she's had.

"I can't get upset about people getting angry with me, because they were played by politicians. I blame the politicians.

"The problem is that people were upset and they've been upset for years. Politicians have either blamed Europe, or been irresponsible. Everyone who voted, Remain or Leave, wanted change. They believed whatever way they voted they were doing the best for their families.

"But the politicians misled the public into believing whatever the outcome of the advisory referendum was would be made law, knowing well that would not be the case. That unleashes anger."

Would she go into politics? "Absolutely not. You have to play games. Maybe I would if it was about honesty and integrity, but the politics we have now needs massive changing. The airbags and lunatics seem to rise to the top and the hard-working majority of MPs don't."

It's "too early to tell" if May will change this here. "A lot of what she says is fantastic. I'm delighted it's a woman who is taking us forward, but she's in a difficult situation.

"The boys playing their politics games in the playground left and she's been left to pick up the pieces.

"I can't say there are a huge number of politicians who I feel hopeful about changing it - and that worries me.

"We don't have a functioning opposition. That sense of mistrust that the majority feel, I feel, too."

She felt upbeat about the case. "We'd kept it to the legal argument and our case was based on hundreds of years of constitutional law, focused around whether the Government could use the royal prerogative to bypass Parliament, so I was confident we would win."

But she was upset by how emotional it became. "Because the case had become very politicised it was a disgrace that parliament didn't address the central legal pillars of our argument. They wasted time and effort."

Will it slow the process down? "It won't. They could get on with it now."
They say that life is the most precious gift of all. But it's death that presents a rare breed of benefactors in Northern Ireland with what might be called a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to leave the ultimate bequest for the good of future generations by donating their bodies for medical research.

Upwards of 25 people a year leave their bodies to Queen's University in Belfast, but they are in fact only "lending" them out.

For after teachers and students in the Medical Biology Centre (MBC) are finished with the cadavers, they are returned to their families for burial or cremation - sometimes up to three years after their deaths.

A new documentary on BBC One Northern Ireland is about to lift the lid, so to speak, on the rarely discussed subject of body donations - the ultimate sacrifice from people who want to play an unsung, but vital role in the education of young doctors at Queen's, where up to 1,000 students a week learn about some aspect of anatomy.

True North: Gift from Death digs down into the reasons why people donate their bodies and what happens when they die, with most of the documentary filmed in the MBC on the Lisburn Road. But for the squeamish viewer, it has to be stressed that the programme isn't Casualty or even the last series of The Fall, where graphic depictions of medical procedures were the order of the day.

The producers of the documentary linger on the faces of the students and doctors, rather on the bodies that they're examining or dissecting, treating the deceased with the same respect shown by medical teams who give all their cadavers names.

One student says: "You realise it's a human being. It's someone's mum, someone's sister, someone's daughter. We don't treat them like an object - it's like a person in front of us."

A number of people who've agreed to leave their bodies to the university are interviewed for the programme, and they really are living proof that selflessness is still alive and well across Northern Ireland.

One donor who's thinking ahead is 49-year-old firefighter Noel Henry, a father of two sons who says that his job gave him a new outlook on death and dying and showed him just how fragile life really was.

"I was thinking about what's going to happen whenever I go, and what I would like to do with my body when it's left behind," he adds. "The only thing I could think of was the last act of giving, which was to donate it to Queen's."

Noel talks of the difficult discussions he had with his family about his decision. "We have sat and talked about it at such length," he says. "What I wanted in place was so much preparation for my sons and for my wife that a lot of the work was done beforehand."

On a day out with his family, Noel tells the documentary producers that his body donation will be talked about regularly as the years go by, but he adds: "At the same time, I will talk about how much I love them (his family) and how much I care about them while I'm alive. And a part of me will always be with them whenever I die."

Noel rues the fact that many people put more preparation into their nights out or holidays than properly prepare their family for what's going to happen in the future. But he also makes light of his decision to donate his body, joking that his nose is so big that the university would be able to do a skin graft from it for a small village.

He says he also took stick from his colleagues, but once the banter calmed down one firefighter asked him for more information because he wanted to donate his body to the university, too.

Noel explains that he told QUB to hold on to his body for as long as they needed it. "Put me in whatever jar you want, and whatever's left hand back to the family," he says.

Noel adds that after his death he doesn't want undertakers putting rouge on him and people saying that he'd never looked better before "putting me in an oven and burning this very expensive bit of MDF".

Elsewhere in the documentary, relatives Jim Harper, who died aged 64, speak movingly of their heartbreak at not being able to give him a normal funeral. His wife Linda says that after she and her husband watched a TV programme about body donations, he asked her to email QUB's anatomy department. She joked to him that there was so much wrong with him, the university probably wouldn't want him. "But they did," she adds, "and I think he was happy when he got the letter saying they were going to consider taking his body."

Jim's daughter, Jennifer, says that after doctors told his family to prepare for the worst, her father gathered them all together to make his wishes clear.

"They were shocked to begin with that they wouldn't have a body to bury," she explains.

Linda tells how the family had until the following day to say their goodbyes to Jim before the university came to collect his body.

She explains that her husband believed that people couldn't be cured without doctors, and the donation was his way of letting Queen's train new doctors and a means of thanking medics for all the treatment that he had received from them.

But for Jennifer, the hardest part has been not having a grave to visit. Fighting back tears, she says visiting her grandmother's grave enabled her to deal with her death. "But I have found it tough that with dad I have nowhere to go and remember him, and I won't have that for possibly two years," she adds, but admits she wouldn't stop her mother from donating her body because "it's an amazing thing".

Surgeon Brian Wilson says students occasionally faint during their first visit to the dissection room, but once they get used to their surroundings they look forward to coming back again.

"It's a standard joke that if you're going to fall, you don't fall into the cadaver, you fall on to the floor," he says.

Another retired surgeon, Victor Loughlin, talks of the "extreme" altruism of body donors. "If we are to follow their wishes, we have to dissect it as much as we can," he says. "It may look at times brutal, but it is the way to learn."

The producers are told that while QUB staff have representative models of body parts in the anatomy learning room, there's nothing like real bodies, which are also used by dental and ear, nose and throat trainees for learning purposes.

Stephen McCullough, from Queen's, says: "It's a very generous act to donate your body, which is the one thing you can definitely say belongs to you."

Technician Alison Allen adds: "It is a gift. People that donate their bodies are very thoughtful. They thought about what they could do to help society, and that is a very honourable thing."

Alison has worked in the anatomy department for 30 years, but she says she still gets sad when she realises that a body that has arrived with her was someone she had talked to just a short time earlier.

She adds: "But life comes and goes with everyone, and it's just part of it."

Most of the MBC donors are in their 70s or 80s, although there are younger people,such as Noel.

Students also feature. First-year student Ciara says: "A scheme like this shows how death can have a life. It is going full circle. You have lived and donated your body and you are helping someone else to save life."

Many of the families whose loved ones have donated their bodies to Queen's University have memorial services for them after their deaths. But eventually the bodies are returned to their families for a funeral.

Alison says: "Whenever a body is finished with, every part of it would go back into the coffin, placed in sensitively and with discretion as well. The only difference is that it's in a dissected form. It still is a person."

At Roselawn, tearful relatives are filmed gathering for the cremation of Jessie Morton, who died aged 97.

A cleric tells them that Jessie enjoyed a rich, full life, adding: "She wanted after her death to do something for people who are in desperate need, and she bequeathed her body to medical science nine years before she died."

Jessie's granddaughter, Linda, says: "She did a good thing, but at the same time it has been hard for the family, because although when she died we had a memorial service, there was no coffin and there was no body. It has been a long 15 months waiting."

Jessie's daughter, Vivienne, explains that they respected her mother's wishes regarding her body donation because they knew doctors would give her the respect that she deserved.

"I'm very proud of the way it all went," she says.

Jessie's granddaughter, Lesley, says she would like to do what her grandmother did.

The last word on what will be his final act goes to Noel, who says that after his cremation he wants his ashes to be scattered on top of Slieve Donard, which he explains has always been a home for him, a place of calm and serenity in the Mourne Mountains.

"Whenever I am scattered there, I can live with that," he adds. "I can live with dying."
The councils planning committee is considering new regulations

Proposals to ban 'to let' signs are being considered by Belfast City Council.

The move follows complaints from residents, particularly in student areas, about signage blight and the length of time boards are displayed.

Ulster Unionist councillor Peter Johnston, who chairs Belfast City Council's planning committee, said: "We are concerned about the adverse effect the large number of boards have on neighbourhoods and are exploring more effective ways of controlling them."

The signs are controlled by the Planning (Control of Advertisement) Regulations 2015, which contain a number of classes of "deemed consent".

The council wants members of the public to give their views on whether it should impose a blanket ban or merely introduce fresh restrictions.

New rules to limit the size of signs and to have them set flush to the building for restricted timeframes would reduce adverse visual effect, but may result in additional costs for estate agents and would require continual enforcement.

An outright ban on boards would provide an immediate visual improvement, but may mean letting agents have to rely on alternative advertising, the council said.

The public consultation will open this Monday, November 7.

Last night, Botanic SDLP councillor and local landlord Declan Boyle welcomed the council initiative. Mr Boyle said that he had brought the issue of ugly signage to the attention of Belfast City Council some two years ago, and he was delighted that it was now initiating a public consultation on the matter.

"My understanding is that this planned regulation is likely to apply to areas in south Belfast like Malone, Botanic, Stranmillis and the Lisburn Road, which are blighted by these boards," Mr Boyle added.

"Some of them left up for more than half the year. These 'to let' boards make the areas look run-down, unloved, poor and rejected.

"There's no need for them in this day and age.

"No one goes around these days noting down addresses that have boards up.

"People check the internet to see what flats or house are available to let.

"If landlords really feel a need to put up a notice, they could put something small up in a window, rather than a huge board on the front of the property."

Mr Boyle was convinced that the value of the improvement to the visual amenity of an area produced through getting rid of the signage would greatly outweigh what he felt was a minor restriction on landlords' freedom of action.

It is understood that the Belfast City Council proposals will affect only signs advertising rental property.

Estate agents' boards and hoardings offering properties for sale are not expected to be covered by any new regulations that may be introduced.
Four state-of-the-art Nato warships docked in Belfast for the weekend yesterday.

The vessels, from the Standing Nato Maritime Group One, include the Belfast-affiliated HMS Duncan as well as others from Spain, Portugal and Germany. They are manned by more than 700 sailors.

It is expected that they will be at Gotto Wharf in the city until Monday, but they will not be open to the public because of safety issues associated with being docked in a commercial port.

However, a number of private groups, including the Sea Cadets and veterans, will be invited on board HMS Duncan.

The ship's commanding officer, Charles Guy, said that crew members would use their time in the city to catch up with affiliations, including at City Hall, the Northern Ireland Children's Hospice, the Sea Cadets and the Royal Naval Reserve unit HMS Hibernia. "We have also got some charity money which the ship's company collected last year when it was on a deployment to the Arabian Gulf to present to the Northern Ireland Children's Hospice as well," Mr Guy added.

The fleet of ships had been due to visit the city last month, but they were diverted to track a Russian aircraft carrier through the North Sea and then on to the Mediterranean.

Rear Admiral Jose Enrique Delgado, the commander of the Nato group in Belfast, said the vessels were never in danger.

"We were tasked to monitor the Russian task group movements from the northern seas into the Mediterranean," he added.

"There was no threat at all. We were just conducting normal maritime surveillance, which is a routine activity."

The fleet is expected to sail out of Belfast on Monday.
Northern Ireland and other UK regions should be given powers allowing them to negotiate directly with the EU over parts of the Brexit settlement, Gordon Brown has suggested.

In a speech in London the former Prime Minister said the UK appears united in name only and needs wholesale constitutional reform to ease the strains caused by the referendum vote.

Scrapping the House of Lords and replacing it with an elected senate to represent different areas in the UK should be considered, he told the Fabian Society.

Mr Brown called for a constitutional convention to be set up that would look at giving Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the English regions control over areas grabbed back from Brussels, such as agriculture and fisheries, when Britain quits the bloc.

It should also look at granting the nations and regions power to deal directly with the EU to decide what links they keep with Brussels in areas like research funding for universities and the European Arrest Warrant.

The Brexit vote means that further devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should be examined, as well as a system of co-decision making between the UKs four nations, the former premier said.

This would ensure that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland could not be forced out of the European Convention on Human Rights against their will.

We should agree that if England wishes to leave the ECHR, Scotland should have the ability either to veto that or to remain part of it, he said.

The nations and regions should be able to sign up to international organisations that tie in with their devolved powers, Mr Brown added.

I suggest there is now an overwhelming case for a UK-wide peoples constitutional convention, mandated with setting a roadmap towards a more federal constitution that empowers all of the nations and regions.

The convention would focus on the areas of concern to people right across the country  jobs, the economy and standards of living  and ask what constitutional settlement can best meet their needs and aspirations.

Meanwhile, a poll carried out by the Press Association found 480 MPs were intending to vote against Brexit, 159 were intending to vote for, with 11 undecided.
The prisons crisis escalated last night after the local head of the Prison Officers Association (POA) announced he wanted to ballot the groups members over an all-out strike.

POA chairman Finlay Spratt spoke after 190 prison officers at Maghaberry and Magilligan started work late yesterday in a protest over a pay dispute that they claim has been running for more than a year.

The strike ballot call came just a day after Ulster Unionist MLA Doug Beattie called the failure to reach a settlement shameful.

Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph, Mr Spratt said the mood of prison officers was one of despondency at the way they had been treated.

The staff are totally frustrated, the POA chairman added. I intend to ballot the membership for an all-out strike.

I hope to get approval to hold a ballot when the executive committee of the Northern Ireland POA meets next Tuesday, with the ballot held a couple of weeks after that.

It will then be up to our members to tell us what to do, and I believe that if necessary we should go on strike. It is so sad that we have to go to those extremes to make the management sit up and listen.

Mr Spratt also angrily accused Prison Service management of exploiting members of the POA. What theyre doing is, theyre playing politics with the lives of prison officers, he said.

I think theyre acting in this way because they have the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill behind them.

They believe that they dont have to talk to us and they believe that we cant go on strike because thats what the law says  and thats what theyre depending on. Thats why they ignore us.

Mr Spratt claimed that in 2012 local members of the POA were promised that a 37-hour week would be introduced by 2014 in return for their co-operation with Prison Service reform. They have refused to give that to us, he added.

We have also reduced the running costs of the Northern Ireland Prison Service over the last four years by 52m per year  and this is the thanks that we have got.

Mr Spratt claimed that pay and conditions for prison officers in Northern Ireland were significantly worse that those offered to their counterparts in the rest of the UK.

In England, a prison officer working additional hours is paid 22 per hour, he said. In Northern Ireland, its 11. Thats the same work for half the money.

In a statement issued last night, the Northern Ireland Prison Service said talks had taken place over pay.

A spokesman added: Some staff took unauthorised action for a short time this morning at Maghaberry, but this has now ended and the prison regime has returned to normal.

Discussions have been taking place between the Northern Ireland Prison Service, managers and the trade unions on a 2016 pay award for prison grades.

The (Justice) Minister has met the POA and advised them that she is in discussions with her ministerial colleague, the Finance Minister.
The number of early voters in the US presidential election has already exceeded the total from 2012 in Florida, with four days still to go to election day.

With voting set to continue through the weekend, state election officials reported that nearly 5.3 million Floridians had voted by mail or at polling precincts.

In 2012, the total figure was nearly 4.8 million.

The voting between Republicans and Democrats is just about even, with Republicans having an edge of fewer than 2,000. Nearly a million voters registered with no party affiliation have also voted.

Polls indicate a tight race in the state between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Mr Trump must win the state to have a chance of collecting the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency, and both candidates have made repeated visits to the area.

Georgia has also broken an early voting record set eight years ago. Secretary of state Brian Kemp, the senior elections official, announced Georgians had cast more than 2,180,000 early ballots  over 50,000 more than were cast in 2008.

Mr Kemp said the number was continuing to climb yesterday, the last day of advance in-person voting. Mr Trump is favourite in Georgia, long a Republican stronghold.

The Republican has said a cloud of investigation would follow a victorious Ms Clinton into the White House, evoking the bitter impeachment battle of the 1990s in a closing campaign argument meant to bring wayward Republican voters home.

Meanwhile, Mrs Clinton and her allies, led by President Barack Obama, told voters to get serious about the dangers of Mr Trump.

As polls show Mr Trump closing in on Mrs Clinton in key battleground states, her campaign is rushing to shore up support in a number of long-standing Democratic strongholds.

Mrs Clintons shrunken lead has given Mr Trump a glimmer of hope, one he is trying to broaden into a breakthrough before time runs out, zeroing in on questions of Mrs Clintons trustworthiness and a new FBI review of an aides emails.

The attack is aimed at appealing to moderate Republicans and independents who have been the holdouts of his campaign, turned off by his behaviour but equally repelled by the possible return of the Clintons.

Mrs Clinton, meanwhile, sought to keep the spotlight on Mr Trump, claiming his temperament and his disparaging comments about women and minorities make him unfit for office.
There were signs of a split emerging at the highest levels of Sinn Fein last night after Martin McGuinness declined to rule out the possibility of the party's four MPs taking their seats at Westminster to cast potentially crucial votes against Brexit.

The Deputy First Minister told a Press conference at Stormont: "Who knows where all of this is going to end up? There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that all of us face immense challenges that lie ahead.

"But one thing is for sure and that is I have no faith in the British Parliament supporting the democratically expressed wishes of the people of the North to remain in Europe."

But also yesterday, Sinn Fein spokesman Michael McMonagle was quoted by London's Times newspaper as indicating that the republican party would not change its long-held position under any circumstances.

"Our policy is quite clear and it's one that we have maintained at every election," he added.

"We will not lift abstentionism, and it's a policy that has been strongly supported by the electorate."

Sinn Fein has a policy of not taking up any seats at Westminster. The party contests the relevant elections, but does not sit in Parliament.

Mr McGuinness's announcement came just a day after party leader Gerry Adams told RTE that Sinn Fein would not take seats to exploit the opportunity to vote against leaving the European Union.

"No, and you knew the answer to that before you asked me," the Sinn Fein president said after he was asked if the party was planning to change its position over sitting in Westminster.

Mr McGuinness's refusal to rule out the move came after the High Court ruled that MPs must approve plans to trigger Article 50 and instigate Brexit.

Wednesday marked 30 years since Sinn Fein lifted its abstentionist policy in the Dail, thereby recognising what it had historically called "a partitionist parliament" for the first time.

The latest fallout from the Brexit controversy came just 24 hours after the High Court in London ruled that Parliament should vote before the mechanism to kick-start up to two years of detailed negotiations is triggered.

The Government is to appeal the ruling, and permission has been given for the case to bypass the Court of Appeal. It will instead go to the Supreme Court - the highest legal body in the UK.

It has been confirmed that former Northern Ireland Lord Chief Justice Brian Kerr will be involved in the hearing, which has been scheduled to take place in December.

Prime Minister Theresa May said she was confident the Government would win its appeal and told European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and Germany's Angela Merkel she remained committed to triggering Article 50 by March 2017.

But she was dealt a further blow as Conservative MP Stephen Phillips announced that he was standing down due to "irreconcilable" differences with the Government.

His surprise departure increased the pressure on Mrs May's administration, which has a working majority of just 17.
A Stormont committee has fired a series of questions to Arlene Foster and Martin McGuinness over the controversial appointment of Executive press secretary David Gordon.

But the First Minister and Deputy First Minister defended their decision to recruit the former editor of the BBC's Nolan Show to the 74,000-a-year post.

Letters between the Executive committee and Stormont's leaders were obtained by the Belfast Telegraph as it emerged the row over the appointment could be discussed when MLAs on the Executive committee meet again next week.

Despite speculation, no decision has been taken on inviting Mr Gordon to appear before the committee.

Mrs Foster and Mr McGuinness used special Royal Prerogative powers to ensure that they could appoint the 51-year-old without advertising the position.

Civil Service commissioners said they had not been informed or consulted on the process used, and the public appointments commissioner, Judena Leslie, who oversees non-Civil Service public sector appointments, said she heard of Mr Gordon's job through the media.

In their letter, the Executive committee asked what Mr Gordon did that they former director of information, Stephen Grimason was unable to do.

In their response, the First Minister and Deputy First Minister made clear Mr Gordon would have no power to manage other civil servants and that his job would come to an end at or before the next Assembly election.

"He has been appointed by us and works under our direction and control," they explained.

Mr Gordon's role is to ensure that all communications activities enhance the profile and image of the Executive. The job description includes regularly briefing on behalf of Mrs Foster and Mr McGuinness to "ensure their agreed position is accurately communicated".

The First Ministers also revealed that Mr Gordon was tasked with developing "meaningful relations" with the national Government as well as the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales. And they added it had yet to be decided whether Mr Grimason would be replaced.

Mrs Foster and Mr McGuinness further said the reassignment of the former director's responsibilities was still under consideration. Mr Gordon, the former political editor of the Belfast Telegraph, said he did not wish to make any comment.

At a previous committee meeting, the chairman, Ulster Unionist leader Mike Nesbitt, said the appointment "could set a precedent that could come back to haunt us, and there is a danger that the public could see us as roll-overs and irrelevant."

Alliance MLA Stewart Dickson said the process behind the appointment had not been as transparent as might have been hoped.

"If we are to fulfil our role, the public should have confidence in all the processes of this establishment," Mr Dickson added.

The SDLP's Richie McPhillips argued that there should have been more openness and the episode was "another blow to the body politic", showing the need for "less smugness" from the Executive parties, the DUP and Sinn Fein.

But the DUP's Christopher Stalford and Sinn Fein's Sean Lynch said there was no need for Mr Gordon, who does not start his job until next month, to come to the committee.

Mr Lynch called the appointment "legal and above board".

And Mr Stalford said: "The man has been dragged through every newspaper in the country and people... have had their pound of flesh and should let the man get on with his role."
Charles and Camilla will undertake 50 engagements in seven days

The Prince of Wales started his official tour of the Middle East by taking part in a ceremonial sword dance with local performers.

Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall will undertake 50 engagements in seven days during their visits to the Sultanate of Oman, the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Bahrain.

Their visit, at the request of the British Government, is to promote the UK's partnership in the region in areas including wildlife conservation and supporting women in leadership.

Charles and Camilla received a cultural welcome at the Ceremonial Boulevard in Muscat, with five groups of performers showcasing dances from different regions of Oman.

The prince was given a sword and joined in with a group performing an Al Razha dance.

His wife was then presented with a bouquet of flowers.

Charles and Camilla are in Oman as guests of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said.

Following their welcome, Charles toured Muscat's new National Museum which showcases the history of the nation from its first human settlement two million years ago through to the present day.

He viewed demonstrations of traditional handicraft-making, including Kuma hats and brightly coloured threads.

Charles was shown around the exhibits by Jamal Al Musawi, acting director of the museum, which opened in July.

The museum houses items including a Magan boat, Islamic gates and three Royal Rasulid tombstones on long term loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum.

It has more than 5,500 objects and offers 43 digital immersive experiences for visitors.

Camilla visited the Oman Cancer Association's Dar Al Hanan Hostel, where she met children and parents before attending a reception with supporters and sponsors.

The association, which became active in 2002, was established by prominent Omani woman and four-times cancer survivor Yuthar Al Rawai.

Charles and Camilla then attended a service of celebration at Bait Al Noor Church, which was led by the Bishop of Cyprus and the Gulf.

The service marked the 125th anniversary of the final visit to the country by the First Bishop of Lahore, Bishop Thomas Valpy French, who travelled to Oman in 1895 to establish an Anglican Church in Arabia. He was in poor health and died a few months later but his work was continued by others
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has called on Theresa May to set out her Brexit negotiating terms to Parliament "without delay"

Jeremy Corbyn ducked questions over whether he would welcome an early election as he accused the media of harassing him.

In a speech to a left wing think tank, the Labour leader said Theresa May must set out her Brexit negotiating terms to Parliament "without delay" in the wake of the High Court ruling that MPs should be allowed to vote on the triggering of Article 50.

He claimed the Government opposes democratic scrutiny of its plans because "there aren't any".

The surprise legal ruling followed by the resignation of Tory MP Stephen Phillips has fuelled speculation that Mrs May will end up going to the polls before 2020.

Mr Corbyn refused to say whether he would be happy if there was an early election when asked by ITV.

The single question pitched at the Labour leader after his address in central London left him clearly irked.

As aides intervened to stop him being quizzed by the media, he walked away saying: "Can we go outside because we are being harassed here?"

Mr Corbyn told the conference organised by Class (Centre for Labour and Social Studies) that the Prime Minister was leading a "mean minded, backward looking" government that is stuck in a Thatcherite time warp.

Labour would go after tax dodgers and put an end to "shabby" sweetheart deals with big business, he said.

"There is nothing more unpatriotic than not paying your taxes," he said.

Calling for greater transparency about the Government's plans for EU withdrawal, Mr Corbyn said all UK businesses should be given "assurances" over the impact of Brexit to match those made to Japanese car-maker Nissan before its announcement of new investment in Sunderland.

He said: "All our businesses need the kind of assurances that apparently Nissan has had about the shape of the Government's Brexit plans to make the right investment decisions.

"Thursday's High Court decision underlines the necessity that the Prime Minister brings the Government's negotiating terms for Brexit to Parliament without delay.

"We accept and respect the decision to leave the European Union. But there must be transparency and accountability to Parliament about the Government's plans.

"I suspect the Government opposes democratic scrutiny of its plans because - frankly - there aren't any plans, beyond the hollow rhetoric of 'Brexit means Brexit'."
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (right), makes faces at four-month-old Gabriel as she talks to his mother Hlengiwe Sithole during a visit to the Nelson Trust Womens Centre in Gloucester

The Duchess of Cambridge has met inmates at a women's prison as part of her work on addiction and mental health.

Kate spoke to staff and a small number of prisoners about their personal stories during a private visit to HMP Eastwood Park, in Gloucestershire.

Kensington Palace tweeted: "The Duchess has visited HMP Eastwood Park to learn what support is available to women prisoners and their families with complex needs. The Duchess wants to see the support helping vulnerable families break the cycles at the heart of issues like addiction and mental health."

Later, Kate also visited a women's centre that works closely with the prison.

The Nelson Trust Women's Centre, in Gloucestershire, was set up in 2010 and is designed to support vulnerable women, particularly those who have experienced abuse and trauma in their lives.

Kate, who wore a Mulberry coat and Dolce and Gabbana skirt, met staff and learnt about the various strands of work including prison in-reach, social inclusion support, the sex worker outreach project and rural outreach.

The Duchess also unveiled a plaque marking her visit.

Before leaving, Kate was presented with a bouquet of flowers by four-year-old Tilly Penhale and her mother Natashia.

The Duchess told Tilly: "Thank you so much, I think George will like them."
The brother of three men who were given substantial prison sentences for sexually exploiting teenage girls in Rotherham has been sent to prison for a total of 19 years for inflicting a "campaign of violent rape" on his 13-year-old victim

The brother of three men who were given substantial prison sentences for sexually exploiting teenage girls in Rotherham has been sent to prison for a total of 19 years for inflicting a "campaign of violent rape" on his 13-year-old victim.

Sageer Hussain (30) was jailed yesterday by the same judge who sentenced his brothers Arshid, Basharat and Bannaras to 35, 25, and 19 years in prison respectively in February.

Seven other men were given sentences of between five and 17 years alongside Hussain at Sheffield Crown Court for what Judge Sarah Wright called the "degrading and violent" sexual exploitation of teenage girls in the south Yorkshire town.

Over the course of two trials this year, the Hussain brothers and their associates have now been given prison sentences by Judge Wright totalling 198 years for their grooming and abuse.

The judge heard how Hussain's victim, who was abused by all eight defendants, had complained to police in 2003, but the inquiry was dropped, partly because she was so terrified of her abusers.

The month-long trial heard how her family told police and their MP and then-Home Secretary David Blunkett about the abuse and eventually moved to Spain to get away from the men.

Judge Wright highlighted one incident in which the girl was taken to a flat where she was made to perform oral sex on five men in turn, including defendant Masoued Malik.

In a victim impact statement read to the court, the victim, now in her 20s, said she had all the normal events of teenage life "ripped away from me".

The woman, who cannot be named, described how she has panic attacks every day, has self-harmed and suffers from mental health problems.

Judge Wright told the eight men: "The victim of all eight of you was vulnerable. She was just 13 to 14 years old. Although she had a loving family and was doing well at school, she was susceptible to the attention that you and others gave her.

"She was targeted, sexualised and subjected to acts of a degrading and violent nature."

The judge rejected claims by one defence barrister that the fact the victim had written a book about child sexual exploitation and lectured on the subject was evidence that the harm she had suffered was not at the most extreme end of the scale.

Judge Wright shook her head as she dismissed the lawyer's arguments.

She said to the defendants: "The extreme damage that you have caused to her makes it all the more impressive that she has had the courage to bring her own story out into the open and has put herself into forums where she has discussed the issues of child sexual exploitation in order, selflessly, to seek to help others."
Harvey Proctor has described the US election day timing of the publication as 'completely outrageous'.

Scotland Yard has been accused of a "PR cover-up" as it plans to publish findings from a report into its doomed historic sex abuse probe on the day of the US election.

Former MP Harvey Proctor, who was investigated as part of Operation Midland and was cleared of being part of a Westminster paedophile ring, described the timing as "completely outrageous".

The former Conservative politician received a letter inviting him to see the material before publication on Tuesday November 8, followed by a meeting with Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe.

"It was like a diktat. It was like a carpeting by a headmaster to his naughty pupil," Mr Proctor told the Press Association.

He said it was not convenient for him to attend the meeting on Tuesday as he would be doing part-time work and had a medical appointment.

"So I cannot meet Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe without sacrificing some money which I can't do without as a result of what they did. And then Sir Bernard has the temerity to summons me to London to meet him with no alternative dates," he said, adding: "They have chosen this date deliberately as a PR campaign, as part of their PR campaign to cover up the disaster that was Operation Midland."

Operation Midland, Scotland Yard's probe into the claims by the lone complainant known as "Nick", closed in March without a single arrest, but Mr Proctor, former Army chief Lord Bramall and late Tory peer Lord Brittan were publicly named in connection with the investigation.

Detectives also looked at claims that three victims were murdered.

The investigation was abandoned amid widespread criticism and calls for Sir Bernard to resign.

Scotland Yard has apologised to Lord Bramall, whose wife died before his name was cleared, and the widow of Lord Brittan, who died in 2015 not knowing his name had been cleared, for aspects of its handling of the case.

Mr Proctor is calling on Scotland Yard to delay the publication of Sir Richard Henriques's report by one week so that he can meet Sir Bernard on a "mutually agreeable date" between November 9 and November 15.

"I'm telling you when they're proposing to publish it, and I'm appealing through the Press Association to the police to delay the date one week," he said.

Mr Proctor added: "Knowing how disastrous this investigation was, the Metropolitan Police Service have been pursuing a PR campaign to cover up the horrors that was Operation Midland. And it is not surprising that here, almost at the death, with the Henriques report, true to form, they continue their PR cover-up and announce that they're going to bring out their report on obviously a very busy press day. Completely outrageous."

Mr Proctor said the letter he received from Scotland Yard on Friday said: "Our intention is to publish material from the report on Tuesday the 8th of November. We will be publishing the key findings that Sir Richard has made together with his recommendations and material relating to Operation Midland.

"We will also be making a public statement. The Commissioner would welcome the opportunity to discuss the report with you on Tuesday. We have noted your wish to have sight of material from the report in advance of that meeting.

"With this in mind we would like to invite you to attend a central London location to be confirmed at 12.30 for the purpose of reading the material that we will be publishing and our statement before meeting the Commissioner at 1.30 at the same location."

Mr Proctor said Sir Bernard should take responsibility "for this PR disaster which is looming and resign immediately".

Asked if he thinks he will get closure from the findings of the report, he said: "None whatsoever."

Scotland Yard said: "The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) received Sir Richard Henriques' finalised report on the afternoon of Monday, 31 October.

"The MPS made clear when Sir Richard was commissioned to look at the issues that key findings and recommendations from his independent review would be published but that the full review would remain private as it would contain confidential and sensitive information.

"We are giving the report very thorough consideration to ensure that the publication of any material does not compromise any legal process, responsibilities or duties of care to any party.

"It is right that those most directly affected are able to have sight of appropriate parts of the report prior to publication, and courteous to give sufficient notice. The earliest opportunity to publish is Tuesday, 8 November."
Rachel Bradley, one of three Britons who spent five days stranded in a Mexican jungle

Three Britons have spent five days stranded in a Mexican jungle, surviving on a pack of peanuts and scavenged fish, after taking a wrong turn on a boat trip.

The trio and a Mexican companion were exploring in the Yucatan Peninsula when they flipped one of their canoes, containing their food, and stranded the other in a narrow stream.

Rachel Bradley, from Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, was one of those eventually rescued from the Mexican jungle by a stranger named Juan de Dios - "John of God".

Ms Bradley, 31, told how they became lost in a combination of unexpected rapids and a "labyrinth" of swamps and waterfalls created by heavy rainfall.

The team then ambled, swam and climbed through the vast jungle before finding a mangrove they decided to stay in.

Ms Bradley said: "For the next two days and two nights we stayed in this tree and explored a few different exit routes, walking to the other side of the palm field and swimming up and down stream.

"However, the best thing was to stay put. We had a safe place to sleep and a clear area if anything came overhead.

"We had a bag of M&M's which we shared on the first evening and then we rationed a bag of caramelised peanuts I had - five each per sitting.

"By day three, my colleagues had started testing a local fruit they recognised and had caught some small fish using my mosquito net.

"They cut the heads off and swallowed them whole."

After the rescue on October 23 the team rejoined their colleagues from Ninth Wave Global, an environmental consultancy operating in remote areas.

But the experience has not put Ms Bradley off her intrepid life.

She said: "At the time I thought it would do, but in the morning I start two weeks on the Usumacinta River so I guess not.

"I think it's a really great thing to do to get out there, explore and to learn how to live in the outdoors.

"You have really special moments."
Gina Miller has been subjected to online rape and death threats since her High Court victory in the campaign against triggering Brexit without Parliamentary approval

Gina Miller - the face of the successful legal battle against launching Brexit without Parliament's approval - plans to report online trolls to police after receiving rape and beheading threats.

Ms Miller was also targeted with racism for spearheading a High Court challenge to uphold Parliament's right to vote before triggering the mechanism for the EU exit.

The torrent of abuse intensified after the investment fund manager and philanthropist celebrated the judges' ruling.

She told Radio 5 live that it included "I should be beheaded, gang raped, I'm not even human, I'm a primate, I belong in a kitchen - that's the nicest of some of them. It is unbelievable".

When asked if she had reported it to police, she said: "I'm considering what to do and I will be, but others have done so on my behalf because, I have to say, I have stayed away from social media and Twitter etc. For my own sanity, I haven't read an awful lot of the press and things today.

"But other people on my behalf have felt concerned and have said they have reported it on my behalf and I'm aware there is a sort of feeding frenzy happening and that I may well have to do so in the next few days."

The High Court ruling, which she was among a group to campaign for, means Prime Minister Theresa May cannot formally start the Brexit process without consulting MPs.

Ms Miller, 51, laid the blame with certain politicians and elements of the media which she believes encouraged the abuse.

She said: "I'm apparently the most hated woman in Britain and the vitriol continues but I am really cross at the politicians and the media who are whipping this up because they are the ones inciting racism and violence and acrimony."

Among the threats were calls for Ms Miller to be deported to Guyana, South America, where she was born.

One Twitter user wrote: "Gina Miller is NOT even British this black immigrant bitch should be deported she is a f***ing traitor to the UK."

Another tweeted: "Get the f*** out of our country deport the bitch."

One troll wrote on Facebook: "I hope she gets f***ing killed", while another said: "Kill her! 2 behind the ear. Throw her in the garbage. Dustbin, whatever."

If convicted under the Malicious Communications Act, online trolls can face up to five years' imprisonment.
Millions of visits to GPs for ailments such as colds and insect bites could be avoided by patients looking after themselves, according to a new report.

The Local Government Association (LGA) said doctors could play a role in educating people to treat their own minor conditions, estimating the reduction in "unnecessary" appointments could free up an hour of a GP's time.

The body, which represents 370 councils in England and Wales, cited figures suggesting one in five appointments is for back pain, headaches and colds, costing the NHS an estimated 2 billion a year.

In March 2015, data from the Proprietary Association of Great Britain (PAGB), the UK trade association for manufacturers of over-the-counter medicines and food supplements, showed 19.1% of visits (3.6 million) to A&E are for minor issues, while GPs preside over more than 57 million consultations a year for minor ailments such as back pain or flu.

The LGA said councils, which have a responsibility for public health, have been behind a drive to improve "health literacy" among patients.

Councillor Izzi Seccombe, chairman of the LGA's Community Wellbeing Board, said: " We need a new culture of care, where people stop and think before calling the doctor.

"GPs and A&E departments are already overstretched. However, many appointments are unnecessary and for minor conditions that a person could treat or manage themselves.

"But patients need to be helped in learning how to look after themselves, for example in managing long-term conditions such as heart disease or diabetes, and GPs can play a key role in this.

"Many patients want to be more involved in their care, as it gives them a greater sense of control and improves their quality of life. Better self-management could make a huge difference to a person's physical and mental wellbeing.

"Instead, the lack of knowledge among the general population about how they can do this is placing a huge burden on surgeries and hospitals."

Professor Ian Banks, Self Care Forum Trustee and former A&E doctor, said patients needed support to be confident enough to care for themselves.

He added: "Self care is not no care. Far from it, for example you will find the local pharmacist an excellent source of health advice and information. There are also reputable health information websites such as NHS Choices or the Self Care Forum website."
Attacks on the judges involved in the High Court Brexit decision have shocked many MPs.

Labour will only let Theresa May trigger the process for leaving the European Union if she agrees to the party's "Brexit bottom line", Jeremy Corbyn has said.

The opposition will join forces with Tory Remain supporters and other parties to block Article 50 if the Prime Minister does not guarantee access to single market, the Labour leader told the Sunday Mirror.

Mr Corbyn suggested Mrs May, who has a slim Commons majority, would be forced into an early election if she fails to meet Labour demands, according to the newspaper.

The Government is appealing a High Court ruling ordering that the PM must seek MPs' approval to trigger Article 50.

Mr Corbyn told the Sunday Mirror: "The court has thrown a big spanner in the works by saying Parliament must be consulted. We accept the result of the referendum.

"We are not challenging the referendum. We are not calling for a second referendum. We're calling for market access for British industry to Europe."

The Labour leader dodged calls earlier over whether he would be happy if there was an early election but told the newspaper the party was "ready for it".

"If the Government calls an election, we're ready for it," he said.

"We have the members, the organisation and the enthusiasm. We welcome the challenge.

"It would give us the chance to put before the British people an alternative economic strategy for this country."

It comes after the PM was urged to calm the backlash sparked by the controversial High Court ruling on the process for leaving the European Union.

Former attorney general Dominic Grieve described the attacks as "chilling and outrageous" and "smacking of the fascist state".

Justice Secretary Liz Truss bowed to pressure from barristers to speak out but only went as far as saying the independence of the judiciary is the "foundation upon which our rule of law is built".

The Bar Council had urged Ms Truss to speak out as a "matter of urgency", saying: "A strong independent judiciary is essential to a functioning democracy and to upholding the rule of law."

Ms Truss said: "The independence of the judiciary is the foundation upon which our rule of law is built and our judiciary is rightly respected the world over for its independence and impartiality.

"In relation to the case heard in the High Court, the Government has made it clear it will appeal to the Supreme Court. Legal process must be followed."

But shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon said the comments were "too little, much too late" and condemned Ms Truss for "failing to adequately stand up to attacks on (the) judiciary".

"Liz Truss has still failed to condemn these attacks on the British judiciary as being 'Enemies of the People' and talk in the press of the sexuality of a judge," he said.

"I'm afraid that it's far too little, far too late from Liz Truss."
At least 74 civilians, including 25 children, have died after an offensive by Syrian insurgents targeted at the government-held part of the northern city of Aleppo, monitors have reported.

The insurgents launched the assault eight days ago, hoping to break a months-long government siege on the rebel-held eastern part of the city, which has been subjected to months of devastating Syrian and Russian air strikes.

The insurgents have seized a district on Aleppo's edge and a nearby village.

While the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed 74 people had died, the Syrian military claimed that the first three days of the rebel offensive killed more than 80 people.

Rights groups and the UN have sharply criticised the rebels over the shelling of western Aleppo districts, which has killed a number of civilians.

Such criticism had mainly been focused on the government and its allies, accusing them of indiscriminate shelling and air strikes on rebel-held areas.

Moscow declared a halt to air strikes on eastern Aleppo on October 18, but Syrian and Russian warplanes have continued to strike around the city's edges and in the surrounding province.

The strikes, which have hit a school and several medical facilities, have killed more than 400 civilians in less than a month and wounded more than 2,000 people.

Monitors recorded three civilian deaths in rebel-held Aleppo districts in the past week.

On Friday, a renewed 10-hour Russian offer of a moratorium on air strikes expired. None of the estimated 275,000 residents of eastern Aleppo departed during the unilateral ceasefire, after being urged to leave by Russia and the Syrian government.

Russian officials have not outlined what would happen when the deadline expired. But the arrival of a Russian aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, into the Mediterranean and its movement towards the Syrian coast suggests Moscow may intend to escalate its operations.

The chairman of the Russian parliament's defence committee, Vladimir Shamanov, said this week that the carrier's arrival in Syria is part of a rotation schedule and also "a show of the flag".

On Saturday, Syria's pro-government Sama TV said another Russian ship, the frigate Admiral Grigorovich, has arrived in the Mediterranean to "reinforce the other military ships already present at the Syrian coast".

Admiral Grigorovich is one of the most advanced classes of frigates in the Russian navy and can fire cruise missiles. There was no immediate word from the Russian defence ministry.

By late afternoon on Saturday, there were no reports of air strikes in Aleppo, but Syrian activists reported air raids in the surrounding province.

Footage from the activist-run Thiqa News Agency appeared to show missiles targeting the town of Darat Izza in north-western Aleppo province. A team of first responders known as the Syrian Civil Defence, or White Helmets, said at least three people were killed in the air strikes and 15 others were wounded.

There has been an intense aerial bombing campaign in the western Aleppo countryside and nearby Idlib province in recent days. Rebels said it appeared to be an attempt to sever their supply lines.

An insurgent alliance known as the Army of Conquest, which includes the al-Qaida-linked Fatah al-Sham Front, has led the attack on western Aleppo.

It is the second time insurgents have tried to break the siege imposed on the territory since July. An earlier offensive that breached the siege in August for a few weeks was repelled.

Abu Saeed al-Halabi, a Dutch member of Fatah al-Sham based in Aleppo, said Russia has intensified its air strikes during the insurgent-led offensive on Aleppo's western countryside, "the proposed end destination" for the potential evacuees from eastern Aleppo.

He said that the aerial campaign has not curtailed the rebel offensive.

Also on Saturday, a Lebanese soccer team paid condolences to Qassim Shamkha, a 20-year old former player, who was killed fighting alongside Hezbollah in Syria.

The Lebanese Shia group has sent thousands of fighters to aid the Syrian government in Aleppo and other parts of the country. Other Iraqi Shia militias and Iranian fighters also fight on the side of the Syrian government.

At least 21 Hezbollah fighters are reported to have been killed in the rebel offensive against western Aleppo.

A total of 93 pro-government fighters have been killed since the offensive began, compared to at least 86 insurgents killed in the same period.

AP
Black clergy are taking to the pulpits and the streets nationwide this weekend to try to energise black voters ahead of election day.

Many expect a drop in black voter participation this year, primarily because Barack Obama, the nation's first African-American president, is not on the ballot. His historic candidacy in 2008 and re-election in 2012 helped to fuel record black turnout.

"Voting, for us, is both a spiritual and a political issue," said Rev William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP and architect of the Moral Monday Movement in North Carolina. He will be one of several clergy at the Riverside Church in New York City on Sunday evening for a revival service to encourage voting on Tuesday.

In battleground states like Florida, Ohio and North Carolina, other black clergy are extending "Souls to the Polls" efforts for a second weekend to get black churchgoers to cast ballots early or on election day.

Souls to the Polls events are based around black churches that encourage their parishioners to vote - although they cannot tell them who to support - and try to make it easier for elderly, busy or just reluctant voters to cast ballots.

The number of African-American voters has increased steadily: 12.9 million in 2000, 14 million in 2004, 16 million in 2008 and 17.8 million in 2012. In the last presidential election year, blacks for the first time voted at a higher rate, 66.2%, than did whites, with a rate of 64.1%, or Asian-Americans or Hispanics, with rates of about 48% each.

No one expects those numbers for blacks this time around, said Derrick McRae, pastor of The Experience Christian Centre in Orlando, Florida. "But I'm pretty confident we're going to show up."

Mr Obama will travel to Florida on Sunday to campaign for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and encourage get-out-the-vote efforts. Mrs Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump will be crisscrossing the country, too, with the Democrat in Michigan as well as Pennsylvania and Ohio and the Republican in New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Get-out-the-vote efforts are under way outside the churches as well, in vote-rich places like Ohio, where Clinton appeared alongside hip-hop mogul Jay Z and other artists who she hopes can persuade black millennials to vote for her.

Florida and North Carolina are considered key states for both Mr Trump and Mrs Clinton, with the potential to push either of them toward the electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

In addition to helping people vote, several black churchgoers also plan to monitor polling places to ensure potential voters are not intimidated by anyone trying to depress turnout through trickery or misinformation.

"If it's an older woman who's on a cane, if it's somebody who's thirsty, if it's someone who just needs some encouragement, we're there to do just that," said Rev Dr Alyn Waller of Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church in Philadelphia. "And if anyone comes around to do anything that would deter from the free, fair opportunity to vote, we will shut that down."

AP
An ballot is cast in early voting in San Jose, California (AP)

Lawyers for Democrats all over the US are filing lawsuits claiming Republicans and the Donald Trump's campaign are pushing supporters to intimidate and confront voters on election day.

Mr Trump has called on his supporters to act as "election observers" in certain areas to help prevent fraud.

In Ohio, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against Mr Trump's campaign and his friend and informal adviser Roger Stone, barring them from harassing or intimidating voters during Tuesday's election.

But in Arizona, a judge denied a similar injunction request.

Democratic Party lawyers argued in a New Jersey court on Friday that the Republican Party was co-ordinating with Mr Trump to intimidate voters, accusations the Grand Old Party (GOP) denies in that state and in five others where Democrats are waging similar battles.

Cases being heard in:

NEW JERSEY

The case is different than the ones filed in the states as it relates to a consent decree in place since 1982 regulating what the Republican National Committee can do when it comes to issues of ballot security.

The consent decree was created after Democrats claimed that the RNC helped intimidate black voters during New Jersey's 1981 gubernatorial - governorship - election.

The RNC and New Jersey's Republican Party allegedly had off-duty law enforcement officers stand at polling places in urban areas wearing "National Ballot Security Task Force" armbands and some had guns visible.

The RNC admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to the decree to settle the case. The decree regulates only work done by the RNC and is due to end next year. The Democratic National Committee wants it extended another eight years, but needs to convince a judge that the RNC has broken the 34-year-old rules.

Joshua Kaul, representing the Democratic National Committee, told the judge in Newark on Friday that Mr Trump had "repeatedly encouraged his supporters to engage in vigilante efforts" in the guise of ferreting out potential voter fraud. Mr Kaul said the RNC was participating.

Bobby Burchfield, for Republicans, said party volunteers were engaging in normal poll watching and Democrats had not found one instance where someone was intimidated or prevented from voting.

Judge John Vazquez did not immediately rule.

OHIO

Issuing a temporary restraining order against Mr Trump's campaign and his friend Roger Stone, US District Judge James Gwin said anyone who engaged in intimidation or harassment inside or near Ohio polling places would face contempt of court charges, regardless of political alliance.

The judge's written order blocks activities from both campaigns that include unauthorised poll watching, the admonishing or questioning of voters, and taking photos or recording voters inside or near polling places.

The Ohio Democratic Party had claimed in its lawsuit that the Ohio GOP, the Trump campaign, Mr Stone and Mr Stone's political action committee Stop the Steal were conspiring to suppress minorities in urban areas from casting ballots on Tuesday.

The lawsuit cited comments made by Mr Trump and his surrogates about voter fraud and efforts by Democrats to steal the election.

MICHIGAN

The Michigan Democratic Party filed a lawsuit on Friday asking a judge to order the state Republican Party not to intimidate voters on election day.

Democrats sued in Detroit federal court, seeking an injunction against Republicans, Donald Trump's presidential campaign and GOP allies. The court filing listed no specific allegations in Michigan.

Republican spokeswoman Sarah Anderson said the lawsuit is "insulting and shameful." She called it a "desperate act" by supporters of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

NEVADA

A judge in Las Vegas will hold a hearing on Monday before deciding whether to restrict election day exit polling in Nevada by Stop the Steal.

Paul Jensen, representing Mr Stone, said he needed time to prepare because he only recently received legal notice about a lawsuit claiming Mr Stone was encouraging what Nevada Democrats called "vigilante voter intimidation" by exit-pollers.

US District Judge Richard Boulware said he was also keeping time open for a Tuesday hearing, in case allegations of voter intimidation come up during morning voting.

ARIZONA

A judge in Phoenix refused to issue an injunction sought by Democrats that would have ordered Republicans not to engage in illegal voter intimidation tactics at the polls next week.

US District Judge John Tuchi's ruling said the state Democratic party had not shown evidence that the Republicans were conspiring to conduct illegal voter intimidation. He said he was willing to revisit the issue if evidence of voter intimidation appeared.

PENNSYLVANIA

A judge has scheduled arguments in Pennsylvania for Monday.

AP
An Irish jihadist has died in a suicide bomb attack in Mosul, according to claims by the Islamic State.

Abu Usama Al-Irlandi, better known as Khalid Kelly, was reportedly killed during fighting for Iraq's second largest city.

ISIS twitter accounts and reports from Iraq suggest that he died in the name of the Islamic State.

The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs said it was aware of the media reports and was seeking to clarify the situation.

Al-Jazirah, an ISIS outlet, and several known ISIS twitter accounts posted a picture of a bearded Kelly posing in front of the VBIED (vehicle-borne improvised explosive device) clutching a Kalashnikov rifle.

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Brother martyr Abu Osama Irelandi, may Allah accept his soul, attacked a group of animals from the Hashd [Shia militia] in the village of Ghzayel Al-Kabir, the statement said.

Kelly, aged in his 40s, allegedly used the VBIED to attack Iraqi state forces as they moved through the ISIS-held desert territory in the Niniveh Governorate.

Another picture posted purported to show the moment Kellys vehicle exploded in the village west of Mosul.

The reports of Khalid Kelly's death have not officially been confirmed.

Born and raised in Dublin Terence Edward Kelly (49) converted to Islam after he was jailed for making bootleg alcohol in Saudi Arabia in 2000.

He had trained and worked as an intensive care nurse. Reports have suggested he has a daughter and two sons living in Ireland.

Upon his return to Europe he became an outspoken supporter of Al Qaeda and even appeared on the Late Late show alongside controversial British cleric Anjem Choudary.

He was arrested by Gardai ahead of the visit of US president Barack Obama in 2011.
The Nigerian army has rescued one of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram Islamic extremists more than two years ago in a raid on a forest hideout.

A spokesman said the schoolgirl was found with a baby boy born to an extremist. It was the first army rescue of a Chibok girl.

Nigeria's government last month secured the freedom of 21 of the schoolgirls in the first such release negotiated with Boko Haram. Another girl escaped from captivity in May.

Some 276 girls were seized from a school in north-eastern Chibok town in April 2014. Dozens quickly escaped.

Officials have vowed to secure the release of nearly 200 who remain captive.

AP
The three men were taken hostage in Libya

Two Italians and a Canadian citizen who were kidnapped in southern Libya have been freed unharmed.

Italian authorities said the intelligence services of Libya, Italy and Canada cooperated in securing the release of the three men after nearly seven weeks in captivity. They have been returned to Italy.

The men, technicians working on a construction project at an airport, were seized on September 19 by armed, masked men who blocked their vehicle in Ghat, a Sahara Desert city in south-western Libya near the border with Algeria.

A number of criminal and extremist groups operate in the area, but it was not immediately clear which group was involved or what their motive was.

There was also no information if any ransom was involved in the men's release.

Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi said: "Today is a moment of relief and joy that I would like to share with the families of our technicians."

He also thanked Libyan authorities and their security forces.

Italy identified the Italians as Danilo Calonego and Bruno Cacace, and the Canadian citizen as Frank Poccia.

Foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni said the two Italians had not been mistreated during their captivity and were in good health.

He did not comment on Mr Poccia's situation but said Canadian authorities were also involved in securing the men's release.

Authorities said they were freed overnight and brought to Rome on a special flight.

The Italians were reportedly employed by an Italian construction company. It was not immediately clear whether Mr Poccia worked for the same company.

Italian prosecutors are questioning the three men in an attempt to gain more information about possible terrorist involvement in the case.

Their relatives told Italian media of their huge relief at the news as they waited to be reunited.

Maria Margherita Forneris, Mr Cacace's mother, said: "I lived through hellish days, but now it's all over."

Libya was once an Italian colony and Italy continues to have a strong commercial presence in the North African nation.

It has fallen into chaos since former dictator Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in 2011 and killed by Libyan rebels.

AP
Sinn Fein is a party whose members seldom, if ever, go off message, so it is little wonder that the apparently mixed signals coming from Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness over taking seats at Westminster has led to some bewilderment among commentators.

Sinn Fein is a party whose members seldom, if ever, go off message, so it is little wonder that the apparently mixed signals coming from Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness over taking seats at Westminster has led to some bewilderment among commentators.

McGuinness' s refusal to rule out such a move is in stark contrast to Adams' declaration that there will be no change in party policy even if Brexit presents an opportunity for Sinn Fein to make its voices heard in all three parliaments in Dublin, Belfast and London.

Abstentionism has long been a central plank of republicanism which for many years recognised the first Dail formed in 1919 as the only legitimate government on this island.

But McGuinness and Adams have been instrumental in forcing republicans to take a more pragmatic view, firstly by taking seats in Dublin and then in Belfast. This pragmatism has coincided with their vision of the party becoming a major political force on the island - it is now the largest nationalist party in the province and a growing influence in the Republic.

But Westminster is something different. Republicans have never accepted its right to govern any part of Ireland - even if by membership of the Assembly it is acknowledging by implication the influence of London in our affairs. After all, the Assembly is to a large extent just administering the funds handed down to it by the Treasury.

Yet it has to be accepted that Sinn Fein has its backwoodsmen, die-hard republicans who cling onto the old ideals. While the party wins votes from plenty of nationalists who would want it to represent them at all available institutions of government it cannot risk any schisms or granting any legitimacy to dissidents.

Adams and McGuinness are men who have worked closely and in harmony to forge the political long war. They don't give out mixed messages. The party doesn't harbour open dissent. So is this testing the water? The party's support in Northern Ireland has plateaued, but might dropping abstentionism give it a new vigour?
Consumers today are more discerning and demanding than ever. They want brands that have a story to tell, that are crafted and nurtured, but that are also innovative and creative. Irish whiskey has stepped up to the challenge and this once traditional spirit has been reborn. Driven by Jameson  the worlds number one Irish whiskey  the category is undergoing a revival and is growing globally, bringing a whole new legion of fans along with it.

Irish Whiskey Style Guide

Every whiskey style has a distinct taste, which is driven not only by its ingredients but also the maturation process. Each barrel has its own unique colour and character, which imparts a distinct flavour to the whiskey aged within it. The quality of the casks is crucial  theyre painstakingly selected for their aroma to ensure consistency and superior taste of the final product.

Single Pot Still

Unique to Ireland, this style is made from a mash including both malted and unmalted barley, which is triple-distilled in traditional copper pot stills. Unmalted barley is not used in the production of any other style of whiskey anywhere else in the world. Its the unmalted barley that gives single pot still Irish whiskey its wonderful creamy mouth feel and full, complex flavours.

The term single comes from the fact that production takes place in one distillery. Once the highest selling whiskey in the world, the single pot still style is undergoing a huge comeback and is considered to be the quintessential Irish whiskey. Midleton Distillery in Cork is unique as the location where the craft of traditional Irish single pot still whiskey has been protected, nurtured and perfected for almost 200 years.

Malt Whiskey

Malt whiskey is made exclusively from malted barley and is distilled using a copper pot still. Although malt whiskey is made in Ireland, this style is generally associated with Scotland. Single malt whiskey is the product of an individual distillery.

Grain Whiskey

Grain whiskey is typically produced from a mash of malted barley and any other cereal grain, distilled in a continuous distillation apparatus known as a column still.

Blends, Marriages and Staying Single

A blended whiskey is one that contains two or more types of whiskey. Jameson is a blend of single pot still and grain whiskey. In the case of a whiskey like Redbreast, single pot still whiskeys  some aged in ex-bourbon barrels and some in ex-sherry casks  are married together to create this distinctive, rich brand.

The term married rather than blended isnt just poetry  all of the whiskey used to make Redbreast is single pot still, rather than a blend of two different styles.

The term single cask refers simply a whiskey bottled from single barrel. Its usually numbered and labelled with the cask it came from. These whiskeys are considered more exclusive and are available in limited quantities.

Try it yourself: Irish Old Fashioned

Inside the Irish Whiskey Magazine in Fridays Belfast Telegraph, Michael Patterson, bar manager at Belfasts new Bullitt hotel has created a series of whiskey cocktails. Heres one for you to try at home

A classic cocktail from the days of yore, this cocktail works on the simple mixture of booze, bitters and dilution. A simple but beautiful stirred drink, this is the old fashioned (but still great) way of making cocktails. Dating back to the 1880s, its a potent concoction of spirits and bitters with a touch of sugar and is the antithesis of sweet, fruity cocktails that were beginning to explode at the time.

Ingredients:

60ml Powers Gold Label

5ml sugar syrup

2 dashes orange bitters

2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Garnish: orange twist and cherry

Method:

Add all ingredients into glass and stir. Pour into a whiskey tumbler. Stir again in the glass and serve. Garnish with and orange twist and cherry.

For more Irish whiskey news, visit
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First up, Joe Biden is thinking about dropping tariffs against China. But theres a spy in prison this morning that helps us understand why he shouldnt. Ill explain.





Your second brief, If youre looking for a good paying job, you might consider being a CEO for a health insurance company. One executive made $142M dollars last year. Let's talk about that.





And as always, Im keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put this one on your radar. Mexican cartels are grooming American kids online and paying them cash to traffic illegals or run drugs across the border. Ill share details.





If you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief, remember to subscribe and listen daily at podfollow.com/pdb.

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It can be tough to be a vegetarian. You have to work harder than everyone else to make sure youre getting all the nutrients your body needs. So, when its time to take a
On this coming Friday, November 11th, in addition to the communitys celebration of Veterans Day a special hike at Reflection Riding and its miles of nature trails is occurring to commemorate the 101st birthday of local resident and Signal Mountain Women of the Year, Ms. Jean Dolan.

A longtime advocate of Girl Scouting, Ms. Dolan has been an active trail hiker and outdoor enthusiast for much of her long life. She continues to be an advocate for the health benefits of nature based activities at Reflection Riding and has become a symbol of the virtues derived from activities in the outdoors and her true love - hiking, said officials. This love of the outdoors can be traced back to her early days when she met her husband who was leading a rock climbing event many decades ago.

Her hiking friends from Signal Mountain are inviting people to come to Reflection Riding Arboretum and Nature Center next Friday and sign up as a $50 annual member or pay the admission fee of $7 for seniors, $10 adults to support the center and celebrate with Ms. Dolan. For more information call Ms. Nancy Thompson at 718-8305.


Recently, my younger brother, Mike Delices provided me with some critical feedback regarding my article, Hurricane and Crisis in Haiti: Where Deadly Diplomacy Meets Harmful Humanitarinism that was featured on October 13, 2016 in the "Black Star News." Although he enjoyed my article and found it very informative and insightful; he was somewhat disheartened as to why Haitians cant solve their problems. Thus, in his estimation, the problems of Haiti require solutions from Haitians at home and abroad.

Both my brother and I (who are Haitians of African descent) seek solutions to Haitis problems. As a soldier who participated (fought) in what the U.S. press and political pundits deceptively dubbed as Operation Enduring Freedom, but it is actually the U.S. War in Afghanistan, my younger brother seeks solutions in the form of selfless service and sacrifice.

However, as a scholar, who continuously fights in Intellectual Warfare (Afrocentricism versus Eurocentricism and decolonialization versus colonialization) at the colleges and in the communities, I too seek solutions, but in the form of study and scientific research.

Although my brother and I seek solutions to the problems of Haiti, we have different approaches. Scholars tend to be thinkers instead of doers; whereas, soldiers tend to be doers rather than thinkers.

The synthesis therefore between scholars and soldiers can be found in Governor-General Toussaint Louverture, who was more than a soldier and a scholar. Toussaint Louverture was a military and intellectual strategist who was skilled in developing ideas into actions and transforming those actions into policies in both war and politics. Henceforth, Toussaint Louverture is the apotheosis of Black public intellectuals as well as the tradition of scholarship and service ascribe to Black intellectuals.

Toussaint Louverture successfully solved Haitis problems (slavery, colonialism, and white supremacy) by electing to use both the sword and the script. The sword symbolizes weapons and armed struggle to liberate ones nation, land, and people; whereas, the script symbolizes literary scholarship, the transmission of the written text in the intellectual struggle to free the enslaved and colonized African mind.

Born on June 6, 1776, Haitian soldier and scholar, Louis Felix Mathurin Boisrond-Tonnerre followed in the intellectual footsteps of Toussaint Louverture. Boisrond-Tonnerre, who served as General JanJak Desalins secretary, was responsible for using the sword and the script to pen Haitis Declaration of Independence in 1804. According to historian David Nicholls, in From Dessalines to Duvalier, Boisrond-Tonnerre in scripting Haitis Declaration of Independence declared,

All that which has been formulated is not in accordance with our true feelings; to draw up the Act of Independence, we need the skin of a white man for parchment, his skull for a writing desk, his blood for ink, and a bayonet for pen.

Therefore, in the Haitian Revolution, the sword and the script were used effectively to make Haiti better by empowering the people of Haiti, where they not only controlled their own land and resources, but they also controlled their own lives which mattered to them while establishing the first sovereign Black republic in the Americas as they became the first enslaved people to eradicate slavery and colonialism in the Western Hemisphere.

To that degree, in warfare (militarily and intellectually) it is not only about Black Lives Matter; it is more about making Blacks Lives Better. Moreover, in war, it is not only about Speaking Truth To Power; it is about Speaking Truth To Empower.

Despite the fact that my brother and I have different approaches to solving Haiti's problems, both the sword and the script should not be overlooked in solving the problems of Haiti. However, for now, the weapon of choice should be the pen, but only time will tell if it is indeed mightier than the sword. And if the pen is not mightier than the sword, perhaps, it will be the soldiers not the scholars, who will write in blood with a bayonet the new script to solving the pernicious problems of Haiti.

Patrick Delices is a political analyst/commentator for the Black Star News and the author of The Digital Economy in the Journal of International Affairs. Patrick Delices has taught the History of Haiti, Black Politics, Afro-Caribbean Politics I & II, and Afro-Caribbean International Relations at Hunter College and served as a research fellow for the late Pulitzer Prize recipient, Dr. Manning Marable at Columbia University. Patrick Delices can be contacted at [email protected]. Please visit his website at www.patrickdelices.com.
Chattanooga firefighters and volunteers with the American Red Cross walked door-to-door Saturday morning in North Chattanooga, installing free smoke alarms. This event coincides with the weekend when the public changes their clocks back one hour to Eastern Standard Time before going to bed on Saturday .





Chattanooga Fire Marshal Beau Matlock encourages everyone to change the batteries in their smoke alarms at least once each year. Chattanooga Fire Marshal Beau Matlock encourages everyone to change the batteries in their smoke alarms at least once each year.





This smoke alarm distribution event covered about 250 homes in the North Chattanooga area. Mr. Matlock said they installed 64 smoke alarms.





Facts and figures about smoke alarms:


The two held talks in Tokyo on several issues including bilateral relations, challenges in the region, ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty-CTBT and the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) to be hosted by Myanmar in 2017.

In the talks in Tokyo yesterday, Kishida said Japan will offer a new passenger boat to Myanmar with the aim of supporting its efforts to ease inter-communal tensions in Rakhine.
PR Newswire

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 5, 2016

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Gigastone, the Leading Global Mobile Technology Accessory Brand announced today; that in light of the recent torrent of press, relating to Apple claims regarding counterfeit Apple products, it feels it is important to reiterate that its entire range of iOS Flash Drive and Flash Drive Reader products, are Apple MFi Approved. Gigastone wants to assist customers with strategies to prevent purchasing fake substandard products.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161104/436491

In much the same way customers are being duped into purchasing Apple products that are not the real thing, many other leading brands are suffering the same fate. For example, those same customers are being duped into believing that certain products that bear the MFi logo and appear to be Apple approved, are in actual fact cheap reproductions. Apple has a stringent program whereby manufacturers of Apple mobile technology accessories, can submit their products and receive the coveted "Made for iDevices," MFi approval. The process maintains that certified Apple accessories bearing the MFi mark, meet the high standards required to be associated with the high quality authentic Apple products.

Harold Katz, Gigastone Chief Marketing Officer commented, "Many mobile technology accessories available online, claiming to be MFi approved, are not and don't meet the exacting standards required for MFi approval." He went on to elaborate, "Companies like Gigastone expend huge effort, ensuring that its products are of a high quality and meet and exceed industry standards. Maintaining these standards can make it more difficult for quality conscious suppliers, like Gigastone, to effectively compete in some situations. The end result is that the real loser is the customer, who is left with a substandard product that many times does not work."

Gigastone urges all customers to take the time to investigate the authenticity of products prior to their purchases;

This is a global issue across all product lines and Gigastone urges customers to make a stand, in an effort to ensure that products offered by suppliers are authentic.

Gigastone distributes a full range of memory products as well as mobile technology accessories, including the Gigastone iOS Flash Drives. The iFlashdrives come in a number of configurations to meet the needs of the Apple iPhone and iPad users. The Gigastone iFlashDrive software allows users to:

The full Gigastone i-FlashDrive range can be viewed on the Gigastone Web Site.

About Gigastone

Gigastone is the leading global mobile accessory brand, specializing in state-of-the-art, high-end mobile peripherals and technology. For two decades, Gigastone has been distributing technology to all the major big-box and Electronic Commerce stores. Gigastone has leveraged its engineering, manufacturing and quality control skills to drive world-class production and deliver quality products. A uniquely positioned company, poised to continue to grow and maintain its leadership in the fast paced consumer electronics space.

Gigastone currently has eight major offices around the globe; USA, Canada, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, France, Brazil and China, with distributors in Asia, the Americas, and Europe. Notable distributors include Walmart, Costco, Target, Best Buy, Amazon, Guo Mei, JD.com, E-Mart and The Source. Gigastone continues to launch world-class mobile peripherals, constantly diversifying its product range to meet consumer demand. Customer focus is the key to ongoing Gigastone global success.

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BBC - Apple complains Amazon's US site is selling fake products Los Angeles Times - Many 'genuine' Apple products on Amazon are dangerous fakes, Apple says

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RFLmZ5920c

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gigastone-urges-customers-to-be-on-the-lookout-for-fake-products-and-confirms-its-entire-range-of-ios-flash-drives-are-apple-mfi-approved-300358002.html

SOURCE Gigastone
As Jesus was preparing to return to His Father, He gave some parting instructions to His disciples. Those instructions apply to all Christians in all places and in all times. Thankfully the promises embedded in the command apply as well. Matthew 28:18-20 records these instructions, Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."(NASU) There is only one command in this passage: make disciples.

All of the other phrases revolve around the simple command to make disciples. The promises found in the commission are crucial. Christians can make disciples because all authority to exercise power has been given to their leader. Jesus makes it clear that it is precisely because He has this authority that He is sending His disciples out on mission. The second promise is that Jesus will be with His disciples, then and now, all the days and until the end of the world. Christians can follow Jesus and obey His teaching because of the authority that is present in Jesus who has promised to be with them always until the end of the age. The book of Acts is one long illustration of just how this should work. Because Christ and His authority are present with Christians, we can make disciples.

A disciple is much more than a convert. A disciple is one who is continually learning at the side of the master. A disciple is more like an apprentice. A disciple should be consistently becoming more and more like his teacher. A disciple learns by doing what the teacher has modeled. One of the first steps a new convert should take is to follow Christ in baptism. Jesus was baptized in order to identify with us sinners who needed a baptism of repentance. Christians need to be baptized as a symbol of being buried with Christ and being raised to a new life. Disciples must progress to the point where they become disciple-makers themselves. That is precisely the meaning of bearing fruit. Just as God told Adam and Eve to reproduce and thus fill the earth, so God is telling Christians to reproduce and fill the earth with born-again believers. A disciple is commissioned as a missionary. Christians speak of certain persons being called to the mission field. However, the truth of the matter is that, every Christian is called to the mission field. Nations in verse 19 indicates that the whole world is the target group.

In Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus said that we should be disciple-making as we go. Our everyday activities should be avenues for disciple making. Work, play, shopping, etc. should be times of sharing the good news of forgiveness available in Christ. Repenting of sin and trusting Christ is the first step in making a disciple. Learning all that Jesus commanded is a further step in becoming a disciple. Perhaps you hadnt noticed what a monumental command that is. Teaching the new convert all that Jesus is commanded is a huge undertaking but a necessary one in the making of a disciple. Being a Christian is so much more than a simple mental decision to swear allegiance to Christ. It is much more than an act of the will to trust Christ. Being a Christian involves making disciples. This begs a very important question: Can you point to even one person whom you have made a disciple?
 Flash

British Prime Minister Theresa May spoke Friday with Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker following Thursday's High Court judgement on triggering Britain's exit from the European Union, according to an official statement.

Three judges in London ruled that May's government does not have the authority to trigger the departure process known as article 50 without first taking it to the British parliament.

A Downing Street spokesperson said in a brief statement Friday: "The PM explained to both Chancellor Merkel and President Juncker that while the government was disappointed with the judgment, it had strong legal arguments ahead of the case moving to the Supreme Court.

"The PM also confirmed that the government's planned timetable for notification of Article 50 remains unchanged," the statement added.

May has already announced she wants to trigger Article 50 by the end of next March which would mean Britain leaving the EU in March 2019.

The decision in the court Thursday could throw May's timetable into chaos, with some politicians already indicating delays when the issue comes before the Houses of Parliament.

The government will be urging the Supreme Court, the highest court in England, to overturn Thursday's ruling. The appeal will be heard by all 11 law lords early December, with a decision expected early January.

The Downing Street spokesperson added: "Later today the PM expects to speak to both President Hollande (the French President) and the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk."
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 05/11/2016 (2187 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The first draft of Brandon Universitys Sexualized Violence Policy is ready for input from the community.

The policy, which was released on Friday, debuted approximately six months after the Sexual Assault Advisory Group was formed. The exact protocols on how the policy will be carried out are still under review, according to Carla Navid, BUs sexual violence education and prevention co-ordinator.

Im looking forward to consultations  Im hoping our community has some good ideas and shares what theyd like to see, Navid said. I think theres going to be a lot of questions (surrounding the policy) as well.

The new, stand-alone, draft policy was recommended after BU faced a public backlash when a first-year student was forced to sign a behavioural contract after reporting in April that shed been sexually assaulted in a residence in September 2015.

The new policy takes trauma-informed and survivor-centred approaches to reports made by sexual-violence survivors.

When we talk about things being survivor-centred, it means we are going to do what is ultimately best for the survivor of sexual violence, not whats best for the institution, Navid said. We give them as much control as we can over the process so it can help them heal. When youve been through a trauma like a sexual assault, the way that we help people heal is to give them as much power back by letting them make as many decisions as they can so they can start to feel in control again.

Language, such as sexual assault, sexual harassment and consent, is thoroughly defined, which was the most challenging part of the policy for the group to put together, Navid said.

Language is crucial on how we as a university talk about sexualized violence. But the language is also education. Some terms were new even for a lot of people on the committee, so it just shows that we really need to focus on our prevention education efforts, Navid said.

Sexual violence education is also an extensive component to the policy, with BU committing to develop a yearly education strategy, including presentations, awareness campaigns and workshops, along with an expansion of the already existing bystander training.

We want to see training for bystanders go university-wide, Navid said. Most of us probably wont be victims of sexual violence on campus  and most of us wont be accused of sexual violence on campuses, but one thing we probably will be is a witness to a possible threat of sexual violence. (Bystander training) teaches us to learn our own comfort level of intervening in a crisis situation.

Navid will also start compiling annual statistics of incidents of sexualized violence, which she said, to her knowledge, hasnt been done before.

Just because we didnt have any reports doesnt mean we didnt have any sexual assaults on campus, Navid said. It just means no one was reporting it or bringing it forward.

Manitobas Progressive Conservative government recently introduced a new sexual assault bill, the Sexual Violence Awareness and Prevention Act, striking down a similar NDP bill to include 46 additional schools, a section on social media and clear definitions of sexual violence.

Although they were aware of the bill, Navid said BUs policy wasnt affected or changed by the bills announcement because they had already checked all the boxes.

We went above and beyond, Navid said. We basically just went through and made sure it met the guidelines, which it already did.

Three town hall meetings are being held on campus throughout November for faculty, students and the public to provide input.

The first one will take place Nov. 17 beginning at 1:40 p.m. The second meeting is Nov. 21 beginning at 2:40 p.m. and the final meeting is Nov. 22 beginning at 10:30 a.m.

Suggestions and changes will be reviewed and the policy, along with protocols, should be ready to go to the board of governors by January, Navid said.

We want everyone on campus to pick up that policy and see themselves in it  We want everyone to feel included in this, Navid said.

 edebooy@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @erindebooy
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 05/11/2016 (2187 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Then and Now: Life in the Regiment, a documentary film produced by Street Media in conjunction with the XII Manitoba Dragoons Museum for MTS TV Stories From Home, will be premiering at Brandon Universitys Evans Theatre on Nov. 11 at 2 p.m.

Hosted bydocumentary filmmaker and Assiniboine Community College interactive media arts instructor Graham Street, this documentary follows in the footsteps of the XII Manitoba Dragoons as they trained within the province and then when overseas to fight for their country in the Second World War. Using film footage gathered during the conflict, Street pieces together the regiments journey, capturing the Now footage and comparing it to what the regiment saw Then.

It was a highly educational and fulfilling experience to work with the XII Manitoba Dragoons Museum on this project, Street said. With the support for local storytelling and independent production provided by MTS TV Stories From Home, we were able to literally follow in the footsteps of the XII Manitoba Dragoons during the Second World War, starting right here in Brandon and then over to the United Kingdom, Belgium, Holland and Germany.

File Graham Streets latest documentary film Then and Now: Life in the Regiment will debut at the Evans Theatre Nov. 11 at 2 p.m. Street is flanked by Shaun Cameron and Nate Bower, who were two of many industry professionals to help make the film.

Local filmmakers Shaun Cameron and Nate Bower were two of many industry professionals to also work on this project.

The documentary that Mr. Street has produced is a must-see for anyone who has a relative who served in the Canadian Army in World War Two, Dragoons curator Edd McArthur said.

The integration of the original film and the Now footage is seamless and helps explain the original film. I would recommend seeing this film to everyone. My thanks to the museum volunteers for their help with this project.

 The Brandon Sun
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 05/11/2016 (2187 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Brandon student was named Innovator of the Year along with her team of 34 students from across Canada.

After spending last summer at Queens University in Kingston, Ont., Karen Cuadros, a Grade 12 student at Vincent Massey High School, found out last week her team had won SHADs John Dobson Entrepreneurship Cup.

SHAD is a registered charity that focuses on exceptional high school students, helping them recognize their capabilities and realize their potential as the leaders of tomorrow.

Submitted Karen Cuadros (front left) and her group presented a business plan for Farm2Forks, an online grocery store utilizing local products, in a bid to eliminate food poverty.

I was really surprised, Cuadros said. We all worked very hard on this. We were very focused on it and wanted to make it really good, but we were up against people who were also very hard-working.

The team worked to come up with a business that would tackle the food security problem in Canada, Cuadros said.

They created Farms2Forks, an online grocery service utilizing local products.

Families could create an account and select what food to purchase, and that food was grown by farmers in that region. We were the portal between the farmer and the family, Cuadros said. Once all the purchases were made, 30 per cent would go to people with lower income in the form of food.

The team reached out to hundreds of small-scale farmers and processors around the country and received feedback from several prominent business and political leaders, who encouraged them that Farms2Forks could be a viable business.

The research and hard work paid off.

There were eight categories (overall) and we won four out of the eight, Cuadros said.

Being only one of two Manitoba students at SHAD, Cuadros said she hopes more students apply to take part in the future.

SHAD was amazing, every single day was packed with activities  They taught us how to think in different ways, Cuadros said. It gives you a bigger perspective and allows you to see the world in a different way than what youre used to and see in high school  youre always challenged and you learn a lot about yourself.

 edebooy@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @erindebooy
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 05/11/2016 (2187 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Why does every column about the U.S. election make me feel so dirty  like a vote for Hillary is dancing with the devil and a vote for Trump is a deal with the dunce?

Supporting Bill and Hillary Clinton has always been about making a bargain  accept their personal foibles in return for their progressive policies. There may be movement on womens rights and welfare reform, but voters also get Whitewater, emails and defining what is is.

As I wrote some weeks ago, they sully everyone and everything they touch. Both FBI Director James Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch were heretofore admired for their reputations as prudent pillars of judgment and integrity. Thanks to the Clintons, neither will complete their terms with their reputations intact.

Donna Brazile, a major Democratic Party establishment figure for decades and noted CNN pundit, has since lost her CNN post given the fact we now know she provided details of a debate question to the Clinton campaign in advance of a party event. In other words, the Democratic establishment was in the Clintons pocket during the primary fight with Bernie Sanders.

The previous Democratic National Committee chair resigned from her position when emails arose underscoring fears of the primaries being stacked against Sanders. Again, with all of their financial and logistical advantages, couldnt Hillary and company run a clean race?

In a time in which voters crave authenticity, is it any wonder people are so disconnected with politicians?

This, of course, comes on the news of the renewed FBI investigation into Hillarys private email server issue. Hillarys closest associate, Huma Abedin, was married to former Democratic congressman (and serial sexter) Anthony Weiner. During the FBI investigation into his sexually charged email exchanges with a minor, on a laptop co-owned by Weiner and his wife, apparently emails from Abedin were found.

What was found on these emails? Were they related to the Clintons? Did they contain confidential government secrets? We dont know now and might not know before the election. The FBI has sophisticated software that will scrub through some 650,000 emails seeking evidence in the Clinton email investigation. Is there anything incriminating? No one knows.

However, to paraphrase House Speaker Paul Ryan, this is exactly the type of thing the Clinton administration put us through for almost a decade, and I find Ryan to be as superfluous a national figure as I can recall in decades.

These idiotic and slimy scandals combined with the reflex to lie first and only be honest when the lies failed  thats classic Clinton, and yet were I an American, I would vote for her.

If theres a common opinion Ive heard this election cycle, it is simply in a nation as large as the U.S., these are the best two candidates they could come up with?

Truer words were never spoken.

Clinton, whom I believe will most likely be a fine president, has so many personal foibles as to make her all but unelectable in almost every election barring her opponent happening to be the monumentally flawed Donald Trump.

One of the truly sad realities of this cycle is that we are bidding a fond farewell to the Obama administration. In addition to running an incredibly scandal-free administration, I personally view the Obamas as living embodiments of the American dream. They have personified class and integrity. I am saddened at the thought that, by comparison, either Clinton or Trump will be the next inhabitant of the White House.

There have been aspects of the Obama policies I have differed with, most notably mistaken approaches toward both Syria and Libya. From a domestic perspective, I have often expressed my belief that his lack of meaningful action on guns is arguably Obamas greatest failing as president.

Sadly, a failing strategy in the Middle East and no substantive movement on guns is now par for the course in a U.S. rife with partisanship and stuck in neutral gridlock. If there is a redeeming factor, it is that the election will be over in a few short days. After that, of course, only two short years until the next presidential cycle begins anew.
 Flash

French police on Friday evacuated thousands of migrants from where they were camped outside Stalingrad Metro Station, north Paris, according to Ile-de-France prefecture.

Regional authorities cleared the migrant camp in the French capital where flows of refugees had increased in the past week after officials had removed the Calais "jungle" in northern France last week.

Earlier on Friday, 3,852 people were transferred to 78 shelters across Paris and its suburbs, the regional prefecture said in a statement.

According to Paris police, 600 police officers were deployed to remove tents and makeshift shelters where migrants, mainly from from Sudan, Libya, Syria and Somalia, had been sleeping for months.

"We have places to receive everyone...It's going well," housing minister Emmanuelle Cosse was quoted as saying in Le Point magazine.

"There are a lot of newcomers. It is essential that we shelter them. The aim is that these people are relocated in reception centers as quickly as possible," she added.

In September, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo pledged to open two centers for refugees by year-end as part of a plan to tackle camping in the capital's streets and better receive thousands of asylum seekers who had fled war and poverty in their native countries.

The French government pledged that 9,000 places would be made available at 460 reception and orientation centers for refugees. They are to be dispersed into groups of 40 to 50 people for a limited period between three and four months.

Migrants who fit the asylum criteria will stay in France while those who do not will be repatriated.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 05/11/2016 (2187 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Freeze the fees. That was on a button I wore for most of 1993. I was the president of the University College of Cape Breton Students Union and in conjunction with students from across Nova Scotia, we had boiled our message for government down to these three little words: Freeze. The. Fees.

It was a misguided policy relative to our goal of improving access to higher education, but its simplicity and appeal to folks from all walks of life made it easy to communicate.

Admittedly, I feel some affinity for students from across the country who took to the streets on Wednesday to promote the elimination of tuition fees. Their ultimate goal, as expressed in a paper released by the Canadian Federation of Students titled Its Time to Think Big: The Case for Free Tuition in Canada, is to have the country value college and university education the same way it does our kindergarten to Grade 12 system. They believe universality, as expressed through free tuition for everyone, best represents this goal. In fairness, this is probably as good an argument for free tuition as Ive heard.

Like almost everything in public policy, Canada is not a green field site. That is to say, we are rarely starting from scratch, so most of our policy adaptations are incremental changes rather than massive fundamental changes.

While I respect the Canadian Federation of Students desire to have post-secondary education embraced by society in a similar way to our secondary cousins, I think the path there might be very different from eliminating tuition if we want to improve access, maintain quality and promote social equity along the way.

As a first step, it requires acknowledging the situation we have, including that conditions across the country vary considerably from province to province. In 1993, when I was sporting my button, Nova Scotia had the highest tuition fees in the country. In Manitoba today, we have among the lowest fees in the nation. In fact, a business administration program at my alma mater had a higher tuition fee in 1993 than Assiniboine Community College has today, 23 years later, for business administration programs. This difference has an impact on the number and quality of programs an institution can offer.

For me, the key issue in this debate is accessibility. How do you make it possible for students to go to college or university regardless of personal or financial circumstance? Right now in Manitoba, tuition fees are far from the biggest impediments for many would-be post-secondary students. Program availability, living costs and geography are more likely bigger impediments than the sticker price.

Governments across the country have made concerted efforts to increase non-repayable financial assistance to students from low-income backgrounds. To me, this direction has been the kind of progressive policy direction that should be supported. This helps get money to those who need it the most. Suppressing or reducing tuition fees currently provides a disproportionate benefit to high-income families and those best-positioned to pay the costs associated with college and university.

From my perspective, Manitoba needs to improve access to higher education. The governments most improved province mantra should prove helpful as we currently rank last in post-secondary participation. Consequently, it is important for the province to turn its attention to policy levers and investments that might help move Manitoba up the ladder.

In my view, the current tuition subsidization approach has a detrimental effect on access and quality. It redirects scarce public resources to subsidizing higher-income families. At that same time, those resources could be available to expand program access or a host of other more progressive options.

Meanwhile, Manitoba has the lowest percentage of college seats in the country. Colleges have traditionally provided more equitable access for students from families from all income levels and have been successful in welcoming first-generation post-secondary attendees to our programs.

Expanding program availability is much more likely to have a more significant positive effect on accessibility. This is particularly true if these investments include the ability to place these programs close to where potential students live. Despite the proliferation of distance delivery technologies, geographic proximity to an institution or program remains a significant barrier. Living costs, social supports and a supported learning environment can have big influences on access to and success in higher education. So, putting programs close to home that are connected to tangible labour market opportunities can enhance access for learners while serving provincial economic interests.

While eliminating, freezing or limiting tuition fees may have broad political appeal, its a policy choice that will produce suboptimal results for providing higher-quality program and more equitable access to college and university. By contrast, Manitobans, particularly those from lower-income backgrounds, would be better served with investments in expanding program availability.

Assiniboine Community College has wait lists of learners looking to transform their lives by enrolling in high demand labour market-focused programs. At the same time, we have employers whose growth is limited or competitiveness is compromised by not having access to people with the required skills. It just makes sense to target investments in this direction.

Who knows, we may even become Canadas most improved province for access to post-secondary education while we are at it.

 Mark Frison is president of Assiniboine Community College.
Non-consultant hospital doctors could be set for strike action should they fail to reach an agreement with the Government over the 'living-out allowance'.

The council of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) - which represents 3,000 non-consultant hospital doctors - voiced their unanimous support for non-consultant hospital doctors (NCHD) today.

The allowance - abolished in 2012 - entitled junior doctors to a weekly stipend of 61 per week if a hospital did not provide its own free accommodation.

Negotiations with the government are due to begin on Tuesday following High Court action by the IMO last month.

In a statement this afternoon the IMO said they would fully support their colleagues in taking industrial action, up to and including strike action, to resolve matters should the negotiations not yield an adequate response from Government.

It said government pay policy is leading to insufficient numbers of doctors to adequately treat patients and warned that, patients will suffer in the long run with increasing waiting lists, more overcrowding in Emergency Departments and not enough services provided by GPs.

IMO president, Dr John Duddy said government pay policy has led directly to the inability of our health services to retain or recruit doctors.

If you breach contracts and deliberately create a policy that disrespects and devalues doctors they will simply choose to work for countries that value them and allow them to do the work for which they have trained, he said.

Doctors, like other members of the public services, were prepared to take cuts in the recession however the cuts applied to members of the medical profession and the consistent breaches of contracts were over and above those suffered by other public service employees he said.

With policies like this in place our health services will continue to roll from crisis to crisis and patients will suffer."

He said doctors do not want to take industrial action but will be forced to do so if the government refuses to acknowledge or deal with the problem.
A 10-hour ceasefire in Syria to allow people to leave the besieged districts of Aleppo has ended.

Russia proposed the pause in fighting, saying it was the rebels last chance to leave.
A man has been arrested after a young girl was carried off by a stranger at a supermarket in England.

The three-year-old was plucked from the moving walkway in a "distressing" incident at a Morrisons store on Railway Road in Blackburn on Thursday, Lancashire Police said.
An Irish Jihadist has allegedly died in a suicide bomb attack in Iraq.

The Islamic State has claimed that Abu Usama Al-Irlandi was killed during fighting in Mosul, Iraq's second largest city.

ISIS twitter accounts have posted a picture of the man holding the device allegedly used in the attack.

IS fan site claims (unconfirmed) this is the moment Khalid Kelly killed himself and several Iraqi militia.

I last saw him in Dublin in 2011 pic.twitter.com/CqlY3emQwT  Philip Boucher-Hayes (@boucherhayes) November 5, 2016

The Department of Foreign Affairs says its working to clarify the IS claims that an Irish citizen has been killed in Iraq.

Media reports suggest the man was more commonly known as Khalid Kelly and was known to gardai.
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China on Friday urged Britain to live up to its commitments with China on Tibet.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying made the remarks when asked to comment on a meeting between Lobsang Sangay, the "prime minister" of the "Tibetan government in exile," and John Bercow, speaker of Britain's House of Commons, on Tuesday.

China voices strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to the Bercow-Sangay meeting, for it severely damages China's core interests, Hua told a daily press briefing.

Lobsang Sangay is a secessionist and the ringleader of the self-proclaimed "Tibetan government in exile," which has no legitimacy at all, she said.

On March 10, 1959, after a failed armed insurgency, the Dalai Lama fled abroad.

The so-called "Tibetan government in exile" is an illegal organization, and not recognized by any established government in the world, said Hua.

The Chinese government resolutely opposes secessionist activities by the ringleaders of the Dalai Lama clique in any country, in any capacity and under any name, she said.

China is also firmly against any contacts between any foreign officials and the leaders of the clique, she added.

She urged the British side to fulfill its commitments on Tibet and refrain from interference that damages China-Britain relations.
The uncertainty on the economic front is growing. The date of the IMF review (expected by the end of October) is yet...
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The governor of the U.S. state of Texas on Friday warned of a possible terrorist threat against the state, urging the public to be vigilant and report anything suspicious over the coming days.

Greg Abbott's warning came following a statement of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in which the agency said that they had received a possible al-Qaida terror threat against the United States on the eve of Election Day on Nov. 8.

Texas, along with New York and Virginia, was listed as a possible target of the attack.

In a statement, Abbott said that his office was monitoring the situation and working closely with the Texas Department of Public Safety.

"Texans should go about their daily lives as usual, but remain vigilant over the next several days and report any suspicious activity to state or local law enforcement," Abbott said, vowing the state will continue "to do everything it can to ensure the safety and security of its citizens."

The FBI is working to assess relative intelligence so as to disrupt any potential threats.

Shauna Dunlap, spokeswoman for the FBI's Houston Division, said that "the counter-terrorism and homeland security communities remain vigilant and well-postured to defend against attacks here in the United States."

Meanwhile, Jodi Silva, spokeswoman for the Houston police, said that anti-terror efforts are ongoing.

"We don't confirm any specific threats, however we are always monitoring and assessing the environment and take actions accordingly," she said.

Last month in Texas's largest city of Houston, a 24-year-old man who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) and plotted to detonate home-made bombs in local shopping malls pleaded guilty on a terrorism-related charge.

Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan stockpiled circuitry components, wireless remotes and other bomb-making implements in his west Houston apartment, according to court documents. He faces up to 20 years in prison.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has given his strongest indication yet Labor will oppose a lifetime visa ban on former refugees and asylum seekers, describing the move as "ludicrous" and unfair.

A week after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said immigration detainees held on Manus Island and Nauru would be banned on entering Australia for life, Mr Shorten said Labor received the draft legislation on Friday.

Caucus will consider the plan as Parliament resumes this week but Mr Shorten said it was a bid by Mr Turnbull to placate right wing Coalition MPs and Senate crossbenchers.

"We certainly agree that people who come here by people smugglers shouldn't be allowed to settle here permanently but this latest proposal from Mr Turnbull is just ludicrous on face value," he told ABC TV's Insiders.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's war with doctors is set to intensify as GPs unite to kill off a government deal with pathologists they claim will force bulk-billing practices to start charging or even shut down.

Doctors say patients will be charged an average of $15 to $20 more to visit a GP if the government proceeds with plans to regulate the rents they can charge pathology companies that co-locate in their practices.

But pathologists say they are being charged obscene rents that are jeopardising their ability to keep bulk billing for their services.

The issue is heating up as Health Minister Sussan Ley prepares to unveil her final plans in the coming weeks, with GP practice owners uniting under a new group  the Australian GP Alliance  to force a government rethink.
Thousands of protesters across Australia, including doctors, have marched in protest against inhumane treatment of asylum seekers and refugees.

Up to 5000 people took part in a march from Hyde Park to Circular Quay in Sydney, while thousands more joined rallies in Melbourne, Newcastle, Cairns, Hobart and Darwin on Saturday.

Marchers at the protest in support of refugees at Circular Quay. Credit:George Georgopoulos

Doctor and author Munjed Al Muderis took part in the Sydney protest as a medical representative and former immigration detainee.

"It was heartwarming for us to find that what we believe is shared by so many of the medical establishment," Dr Barri Phatarfod said.
Fire crews have spent another day battling dozens of blazes across NSW with rising temperatures set to elevate fires risks for the Sydney and Hunter regions on Monday.

Major highways were severed and a number of small towns placed in lockdown on Sunday, with a fire near the Hunter town of Cessnock causing concerns for a second day.

Firefighters will work through the night to contain 60 blazes across the state, 18 of which are burning out of control.

On Sunday evening, the Rural Fire Service downgraded the Cessnock fire from an emergency warning to a watch and act advice level.
Wrapping up the live blog for today.

Warm and windy weather stoked fires across the state, with 65 bush and grass fires at last count, 35 not contained.

Sydney:

The Revesby fire had the most visible impact in Sydney, turning hundreds of cars into ash at a wrecking yard. One man suffered minor burns and remains in hospital, while three men treated for smoke inhalation were all discharged.

Cessnock:

The fire impacted on streets and homes but firefighters have been gaining the upper hand. Crews will remain on scene throughout the night.
A horror eight-hour period on south-east Queensland roads on Saturday has left one dead and several others injured in separate incidents.

Police confirmed a fatality at Placid Hills near Toowoomba on Saturday afternoon, after a car hit two guardrails before rolling onto its side and hitting a tree just before 4pm.

A 23-year-old Gatton man died on Saturday afternoon after his vehicle rolled onto its side before hitting a tree at Placid Hills. Credit:7 News Toowoomba

The incident involved a vehicle travelling east on Old Toowoomba Road and the 23-year-old male driver from Gatton died at the scene.

Just 30 minutes earlier, a motorbike rider was travelling south on Gap Road at Cedar Pocket, near Gympie, when he left the road and hit a barbed wire fence.
A skateboarder is recovering in hospital after a collision with a ute at Surfers Paradise on Friday night.

Police said just before 8pm on Friday the 33-year-old man was crossing the intersection of Elkorn and Ferny Avenue when the incident occurred.

A 35-year-old male skateboarder was taken to hospital in a serious condition on Friday night, but is now recovering.

He was taken to hospital in a serious condition, but upon arrival was conscious and breathing well. He is now recovering with non-life threatening injuries.

The driver of the ute was breath tested at the scene and was below the limit. A police spokesman said he did not expect charges to be laid against the driver.
One teenager is dead and three others are seriously injured after a stolen car crashed and rolled in Melbourne's south-east on Saturday night.

Emergency services rushed to Narre Warren-Cranbourne Road, in Narre Warren South, about 7.30pm after reports of the car accident.

One teenager is dead and three others are seriously injured after a car with stolen number plates crashed and rolled in Melbourne's south-east on Saturday night. Photo: Grant Lynch Credit: Grant Lynch

Police believe the stolen Kia carrying six people sped through a red light and collided with a Holden sedan before rolling and landing on its roof.

Alcohol was discovered at the scene of the crash, and police are investigating whether there are any links to the notorious Apex gang or the theft of alcohol from a store earlier in the evening.
Lagos: One of more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by jihadist group Boko Haram from their school in northeast Nigeria's Chibok in 2014 has been found by soldiers, a Nigerian army spokesman said on Saturday, weeks after the militants released 21 of the girls.

Around 270 girls were kidnapped in April 2014 by the Islamist militant group, which has killed 15,000 people and displaced more than two million during a seven-year insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic caliphate in the north-east.

Dozens escaped in the initial melee, but more than 200 remained missing for more than two years.

Sani Usman said the girl, Maryam Ali Maiyanga, was discovered by troops who were screening escapees from Boko Haram's base in the Sambisa forest on Saturday morning in Pulka, Gwoza Local Government Area, in Borno State.
Bangkok: A journalist has been sacked from a key Myanmar newspaper after writing about security forces allegedly mass raping villagers, as press freedom comes under increasing attack across south-east Asia.

The English-language Myanmar Times dismissed Scottish-born Fiona MacGregor, the paper's special investigations editor, after public condemnation of her reporting on Myanmar's western Rakhine State by the President's Office and a complaint from the Ministry of Information.

The state is under military lock-down following deadly attacks last month on police border posts which have been blamed on Muslim Rohingya insurgents.

Journalists have been banned from going to the restive region where Ms MacGregor reported on October 27 there had been "dozens of rapes," citing Chris Lewa, the head of a Rohingya rights organisation.
Q: Are you worried about the undercurrent of violence employed in the rhetoric of the Trump camp?

A: I don't think there will be violence, but if we get to a situation where there is less clarity about the result for a while, who knows? Trump has been out there saying the election is rigged. I think when he says this he is talking to his fundamental base, the white working class view that America has been taken away from them and taken away permanently. It feeds that consciousness in that community that their kids will be worse off than they are  more than 55 per cent of them say that. And they are very, very angry that they have become a minority. When Bill Clinton first won the presidency, 87 per cent of the voters were white. The figure for this election is 68 and its going down 2 or 3 per cent every election. Again when he was elected, 50 per cent of Americans identified as white Protestants. That figure now is 30 per cent. And so among these men, in particular, Trump's pitch to fairness resonates. It's not so much that the electoral process is unfair, it's that to them, America is unfair, it's not the America they expected. And among those folk there are a lot of people with a degree of violent disposition, hence the worry.

Q: What about the hack of the Democratic National Committee emails, seemingly by Russian state interests?

A: When 17 intelligence agencies declare that to be the case, you can bet your bottom dollar it is. The outfit that has done it has connections with the Kremlin, so one has to assume that it is Putin-directed. It is an appalling development and it's particularly appalling if it's rewarded.

Q: You mean if Trump becomes president?
Want to ski all year? Check out Doylestown's newest virtual experience

4SeasonAlpine, a new indoor ski and snowboard school, opened in Doylestown, offering a virtual snow sports experience any time of year.
Why do people keep leaving their cars unlocked in NJ? We asked
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Four BITS Pilani students have come up with an SMS-based biometric authentication system, which can be used in rural areas where internet connectivity is usually patchy. We have developed an app-based user registration and authentication system which will serve as on-the-go, always-ready, highly secure method of user authentication for microfinance institutions which work in rural areas.
Industrialist will now head the UK-India CEO Forum, replacing former Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry, it is learnt. The forum, which will meet during UK Prime Minister Theresa May's visit from November 6 to 8, was earlier led by Mistry. The change in leadership follows Mistry's ouster as the Tata Sons chairman in a boardroom coup of sorts on October 24.
To complete its presence in the entire diamond value chain, global mining giant has entered into online sale of polished diamond on its auction platform which currently undertakes selling of rough diamonds.


NDTV India, the news channel asked by the government to go off air for 24 hours for its coverage of a terrorist attack, is expected to move court over the temporary blackout.
Former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda on Saturday made a fervent pitch for opposition unity and said that time had come for all like-minded parties to come together and ensure the defeat of communal forces in the poll bound Uttar Pradesh state.

Speaking at the silver jubilee function of the Samajwadi Party (SP) in Lucknow, the former Prime Minister said all secular forces should rally behind SP chief .

Referring to his tenure as Prime Minister when Mulayam was the Union Defence Minister, Deve Gowda said not a single incident was reported at the Indo-Pak border during those days. Even Jammu and Kashmir was peaceful and not once was section 144 clamped down there, noted Gowda.

Exhorting SP leaders and supporters to work for their party, the senior socialist leader said the opposition unity will get a boost from the regional party's enhanced strength in the state.

Taking a dig at the BJP government at the Centre, he said that a party which is enjoying power at the Centre by taking the name of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was actually working contrary to the great leader's character.

"Patel merged all states into one united country, while the BJP was out to divide states and its people," he said. Seeking unity among opposition parties under the leadership of Mulayam Singh, he said the opposition should come together at the platform to catch the train they missed in 1997.

He was apparently referring to the time when differences within the Janata Dal family led to their downfall and fragmentation.
IRF Educational Trust, promoted by controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, has been put under prior permission category, thus preventing it from receiving foreign funds without getting nod from the Central government.
(Pictured from left) Nirvikar Singh, professor of economics, University of California, Santa Cruz; Devesh Kapur, director, Centre for Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania; and Sanjoy Chakravorty, professor of geography and urban studies at Temple University, the authors of The Other One Percent: Indians in America, tell Aditi Phadnis the story of the growth and evolution of the in the United States.
The idol of Hindu Goddess Lakshmi, stolen from a vandalised temple, was found in a mosque in Bangladesh's Nasirnagar, six days after communal violence rocked Brahmanbaria district, even as a Muslim youth was caught torching a Kali temple in another area on Saturday, media reports said.

Police arrested Sumon Islam, after he torched the Satpai Kali Temple in Netrokona area on Saturday morning. Locals rushed to the spot, doused the fire and nabbed Sumon, who was later handed over to the police.

police recovered the Lakshmi idol from a mosque in Bitui village, in Nasirnagar sub district of Brahmanbaria, acting on a tip-off by the imam of the mosque.

The idol is suspected to have been stolen during the October 30 communal attacks in Brahmanbaria, when a dozen temples were vandalised and around 100 Hindu homes ransacked.

Politicising the attacks, opposition Nationalist Party (BNP) Vice-Chairman Hafizuddin Ahmed said the expulsion of three local Awami League leaders for their alleged involvement in the October 30 communal attacks proved the ruling party's involvement in the attacks.

Ahmed demanded that the government set up a judicial inquiry to identify the real perpetrators and bring them to book, The Daily Star reported.

In another development, residents of Rishipara  a Hindu dominated locality  in Nasirnagar foiled an attempted attack on their homes on Saturday.

Witnesses described the attackers as youths aged around 20 years, who fled on a boat on facing resistance from the locals, Dhaka Tribune reported.

This comes a day after several Hindu homes were torched in Brahmanbaria district on Friday, raising fears over growing communal tensions.

On October 30, a mob of around 3,000 armed Muslims attacked nearly 100 Hindu houses and at least 10 temples, vandalising and looting valuables.

The attacks were reportedly in response to a Facebook post that satirised the Masjid al-Haram  a holy site for Muslims.

Police have so far detained 43 people over the attacks.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is scheduled to visit Japan on November 11 and 12, is expected to hold a discussion on taking forward the $1.65-billion US-2i amphibious search and rescue aircraft deal.
The governments decision to ask NDTV India to stay off air for a day, on November 9, was not based on any newly invented rule and principle, said Venkaiah Naidu, Union Minister for Information & Broadcasting, on Saturday. He was in Chennai to take part in the platinum jubilee celebrations of the Builders Association of India.
Rashtriya Janata Dal chief on Saturday hit out at the BJP-led central government for the one-day ban handed over to NDTV India, terming it an attack on democracy and said there was an "Emergency-like situation" in the country.

"Today you have seen what has happened to NDTV, they (government) said that you (channel) showed the Pathankot terror attack," Lalu said, addressing the silver jubilee celebrations of the Samajwadi Party in Lucknow.

"Ban on NDTV is an attack on democracy. This country is heading towards dictatorship," he said, adding "There is an Emergency-like situation in the country."

Lalu said that since NDTV channel "exposes certain people", it has been targeted by the government.

His remarks came after the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting directed the Hindi news channel to go off air for a day.

The 24-hour ban on NDTV India will be effective from November 8 midnight for allegedly breaching cable television norms in its coverage of the terror attack at the Pathankot Air Force base on January 2 .

The RJD chief also asserted that there is no rift in the Samajwadi Party.

"There is no rift in the Samajwadi Party, and we gave proof by bringing Akhilesh Babu (Yadav) and Shivpal Babu (Singh Yadav) together on stage," he said.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal Yadav, the SP state unit chief, have been at loggerheads since September.

He also said that people were feeling betrayed for voting the BJP to power. Lalu said that once again the BJP was trying to fan communal passions, and was starting to rake up the Ram temple issue as state assembly polls were in the offing.

Reminding the BJP of having stopped its Rath Yatra in Bihar in 1990, Lalu said, "We have stopped their rath in Patna, Samastipur and we will unitedly stop them again."

The former Bihar Chief Minister said that time had come for all secular parties to come together and oppose the BJP.

Lalu said his presence at the Samajwadi Party celebrations was aimed to "chase away" the BJP from Uttar Pradesh.

"We have come here to strengthen the Samajwadi Party. We have chased away BJP from Bihar. We will chase it away from Uttar Pradesh too," he remarked.
Following a circular from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), airlines have banned on board flights the use of all vaping devices, including e-cigarettes, e-cigars, e-hookah, for the safety of passengers from the aerosolised nicotine mixture emitted by the smoke.
Stating that the NDA Government was inspired by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Union Law Minister and senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad today said the country's first home minister got the Bharat Ratna only in 1991, when someone from outside the Gandhi family was the Prime Minister.

"Our dream to make India a big power comes from Sardar Patel's thinking. He had a vision to make India a strong nation in the world," Prasad said, delivering a talk on 'Sardar Patel: Intricacies and Imperatives of Nation Building', organised by BJP.

Had Patel handled the Kashmir issue, "the story would have been different", Prasad said.

Patel was given Bharat Ratna in 1991 by the Narasimha Rao government, 41 years after his death, the Union Law Minister said.

"Which were those forces which were stopping Bharat Ratna from being given to He got Bharat Ratna in 1991 only because the then PM was from outside the (Gandhi) family," he said.

Patel should have been India's first Prime Minister, Prasad added.

Patel had written to Jawaharlal Nehru early on cautioning him about China's policy, but Nehru was then impressed by China and spoke of friendship. However, when the Kashmir matter went to the UN, there was not much support from China, Prasad said, quoting from Patel's letter, and added that it showed Patel's far sightedness.

Thanks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's robust diplomacy, even countries like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Muscat, Iran, Qatar, Dubai and Abu Dhabi now stand with India on issues related to Pakistan, he said.

"Rahul Gandhi used to say Narendra Modi goes on foreign trips. Narendra Modi did not go to foreign countries for vacations, but to strengthen country's security and to weaken Pakistan's (security)," he said.
With an increasing number of automakers opting for waterways to transport vehicles over costlier and conventional methods such as road and railway, this environment-friendly means of transportation is here to stay despite faring low on the timing front.
Union Minister of Electronics and IT and Law and Justice on Saturday said building a safe internet has to be the countrys top priority, towards which all stakeholders must work closely in the coming days.
Delegation of All Jammu and Kashmir Panchayat Conference calls on PM

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A 30 member delegation of the All Jammu and Kashmir Panchayat Conference called on the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, at 7 Lok Kalyan Marg today. .

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The All Jammu and Kashmir Panchayat Conference is an apex body of Panchayat leaders of the State of Jammu and Kashmir. The organization represents 4000 village Panchayats of Jammu and Kashmir, with 4000 Sarpanches and 29000 Panches. The delegation was led by the Chairman of the All Jammu and Kashmir Panchayat Conference, Shri Shafiq Mir. .

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Members of the delegation briefed the Prime Minister on development issues concerning the State, and said that benefits of central assistance to the State have not reached the villages due to non-empowerment of the Panchayats, in line with the rest of the country. They also submitted a memorandum. They urged the Prime Minister to consider extension of the 73rd and 74th Amendments of the Constitution of India which pertain to local bodies to the State of J&K. They also demanded that elections to Panchayats and Urban Local Bodies in the State be held at the earliest. They said that elections held in 2011 had witnessed enthusiastic turnout of voters. .

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Extension of these Constitutional Provisions to the State would empower the Panchayats to undertake basic development activities in the rural areas, they said. Members expressed hope that this would accelerate the development process in the State, and enable the people of the State to take benefit from various Central Government schemes. .

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The delegation apprised the Prime Minister of the prevailing situation in the State. They strongly condemned the burning of schools by anti-national elements. .

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The body, which represents people at the grassroot level in Jammu and Kashmir, reiterated its faith in the democratic institutions and processes in the country. Shri Shafiq Mir said that a vast majority of the people of the State wanted a life of peace and dignity. He said vested interests have exploited youngsters and are playing with their future. He urged the Prime Minister to take personal initiative to restore peace in Jammu and Kashmir. .

.

The Prime Minister assured the delegation that the Union Government will look into their demands. He stressed that growth and development of Jammu and Kashmir is high on his agenda. He added that development of the villages where a majority of people live, is vital to the overall economic development of the State. He reiterated stress on a humanitarian approach, and said that Vikas and Vishwas will remain the cornerstones of the Union Governments development initiatives for the State of Jammu and Kashmir. .

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Progress Panchayat" is a Draft of Development": Shri Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi Shri Naqvi Inaugurates Various Development Projects and Progress Panchayat" in Uddham Singh Nagar (Uttarakhand)

The Minister of State for Minority Affairs (Independent Charge) & Parliamentary Affairs Shri Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said that clean, honest and transparent system has been resulted into socio-economic-educational empowerment of poor, weaker sections, Minorities on the ground level. Shri Naqvi emphasized that only preparing policies and schemes on paper is not sufficient. It is to be ensured that these schemes, aimed at welfare of the needy, are producing results on the ground. The Ministry should go to the people, listen to their problems and resolve them. Then only, the fruits of development will reach even to the last person of the society. This was said by the Minister of State while addressing Progress Panchayat" today at village Jagatpur Patti, Shyamnagar and Government Girls Inter College, Jaspur in Uddham Singh Nagar (Uttarakhand).

The Minister informed that after assuming charge of the Ministry of Minority Affairs, in the very first meeting with officials, It was made clear that results of schemes and programmes should be visible at grass root level. The welfare schemes should not remain on paper but they should be converted into a reality. The officials should visit villages to ensure benefits of welfare schemes are reaching to every needy person.

Shri Naqvi said that there is no dearth of schemes and funds for development of Muslim and other Minority communities. We only need to inform the people about these welfare measures and we have already launched a campaign on war-footing. Progress Panchayat" will proved to be an effective mission for this purpose.

Informing the people about schemes of the Minority Affairs Ministry, Shri Naqvi said that schemes such as Seekho aur Kamao", Nai Manzil", Nai Raushni", Ustaad", Nai Udaan" are guarantee of empowerment of poor belonging to Minority communities. Besides, Pradhanmantri Jan Vikas Karykram" (MsDP) has been providing basic amenities such as school, hospitals, roads and other infrastructure in Minority concentrated areas.

Employment oriented schemes are our priority. Employment to every hand" is our commitment.

Shri Naqvi said that Minority Affairs Ministry has been working on different strategies for welfare of Muslim community which include protection and development of waqf properties; efforts to free the waqf properties from the clutches of "waqf mafias" across the country and establishing a one-man Board of Adjudication" at the Centre level to deal with complaints regarding waqf properties.

The Board will be headed by a retired Supreme Court Justice. Three-member tribunals are being established in the states. About 15-16 states have established these tribunals. Other states should also do this soon.

Shri Naqvi said that the Minority Affairs Ministry, in cooperation with the state governments, will construct schools, colleges, malls, hospitals, skill development centres etc and revenue generated will be utilized for educational and other developmental activities for the Muslim community. Multi-purpose community centres "Sadbhav Mandap" will also be constructed on waqf land which will be utilized for marriage ceremonies, exhibitions and also relief centres during a calamity.

Shri Naqvi said that for Uttrakhand, under MsDP, various projects had been approved during 2014-15 including 3 Degree Colleges, 5 School Buildings, 2 Hostels, 5 ITIs and 6 Health Centres. Crores of rupees have been released for various development projects under MsDP in the state during 2015-16. Under Seekho Aur Kamao" (Learn and Earn) schemes, about 2200 people had been provided training from 2014. Under Nai Raushni" scheme, 3300 people had been provided job-oriented training.

Shri Naqvi said that the Ministry of Minority Affairs has also taken initiative to preserve, protect and promote ancient art, culture of the Minority communities under Usttad" scheme. Artisans belonging to Minority Communities from across the countrys far-flung corners will display their traditional arts and skills at India International Trade Fair (IITF), to be organised from 14th November, 2016 at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi. This will provide an excellent platform to thousands of artisans belonging to Minority communities from across the nation to display their arts and skills before the domestic and international visitors.

Shri Naqvi said that the exhibition Hunar Haat" (Skill Haat), will be an amazing gathering of artisans from every corner of the country. It will be for the first time that these talented artisans/craftsmen from far-flung areas of the country are being provided an opportunity to showcase their skills at national-international level under one roof.

During his Jaspur visit, Shri Naqvi inspected/laid foundation stone of Government Girls Degree College, laid foundation stone of 50 bed hostel at Rudrapur and inaugurated JIT Skill Training Centre.
Underlining that diversity is the "strength and uniqueness" of the US, Senator Bernie Sanders has said that Americans should be proud of it and not allow Donald Trump who is running a campaign of bigotry to divide the country.

"I disagree with Donald Trump on virtually all of his policy positions. But what upsets me the most is we have struggled for so many years to overcome discrimination, and he is running his campaign, the cornerstone of which is bigotry," Sanders, said on Friday at an election rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, which has now emerged as a top battleground state.

"Now, as Americans, we can disagree on many issues. But we have come too far. Too many people have gone to jail and too many have died in the struggle for equal rights. We are not going back to a bigoted society," said Sanders who was joined by his primary rival at the election rally.

Clinton is now the Democratic party's presidential nominee after she defeated Sanders in the primaries this summer.

Sanders has been campaigning for her and urging people not to vote for Trump.

Making a strong pitch for Clinton, Sanders who is highly popular among youths, said diversity is the strength and uniqueness of America.

"We should be proud of it, and we are not going to allow Trump or anyone else to divide us up," he said.

In the rally, Clinton criticised Trump for his repeated statements casting African-American life as one of crime, poverty and despair. She had also asked as to how a person who has behaved as Trump could be trusted with appointing justices and controlling the Justice Department.

In her remarks, Clinton offered her vision for an inclusive America that lifts up all communities.
Big-money corporate lobbying has reached into one of the most obscure corners of state government: the offices of secretaries of state, the people charged with running elections impartially.
After startling revelation by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the Clinton Foundation on Saturday confirmed that it had accepted a $1-million gift from Qatar  when was the US Secretary of State  without informing the State Department.
Days before the US Presidential election on November 8, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has claimed that the wealthy people from Qatar and Saudi Arabia who donated money to Hillary Clintons charitable foundation also provided financial support to Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
German prosecutors are investigating Mark Zuckerberg and other executives, a spokesman for the Munich prosecutor's office said on Friday, following a complaint alleging the company broke national laws against hate speech and sedition by failing to remove racist postings.
When President leaves office on January 20 after eight years, several of his major initiatives will still hang in the legal balance, meaning the US courts and his successor will play a major role in shaping his legacy.
A German deputy economy minister said the country isn't drifting toward protectionism, responding to Chinese government calls for Germany to be open to foreign investment. Germany remains "one of the most open economies in the world," even as it scrutinizes Chinese takeovers in some technology sectors, Matthias Machnig said in a Bloomberg Television interview from Hong Kong on Friday. He rejected the notion that Chancellor Angela Merkel's government is engaging in "a kind of new protectionism". "This is not true," said Machnig, whose ministry reviews ...
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has a "casual disregard" of the US Constitution and does not believe in the rule of law, his Democratic rival has alleged, underlining the need to take on discrimination and bigotry.

"He (Trump) has casual disregard of our Constitution. He doesn't seem to understand the rule of law, that we really are a nation of laws, not men," Clinton said addressing an election rally in Detroit, Michigan.

"We can't trust him with our Constitution. We can't trust him to obey the rule of law. He has shown us who he is. Now we have to decide who we are," she added.

Clinton said if Trump wins the election, the country would have a President who wants to ban every Muslim in the world from coming to the United States.

"We are a country founded on religious freedom. That runs contrary to our Constitution," she said.

"We would have a president who has said repeatedly that he thinks the lives of black people are all about crime and poverty and despair. He has no idea about the strength of the black church and the vibrancy of black-owned businesses and the excellence of historically black colleges and universities," Clinton said.

"He seems to know nothing about the rise of a new generation of black activists and the success of black leaders in every field," she said.

Clinton painted a different picture if she wins the November general elections.

"Here is what we're going to do together if we win this election on Tuesday night. We have three big challenges. Number one, we got to get the economy working for everyone, not just those at the top," she said.

"Number two, we've got to keep our country safe, and we have to work with our allies to lead the world with strength and intelligence towards peace and prosperity. Number three, we've got to bring our country together," Clinton said.

"We have got to overcome these divides. We have to heal our nation. And I hope that you will help me meet all three of those challenges," she said.

"I have said repeatedly that we're going to take on discrimination and bigotry because any time we hold somebody back, it can lead to holding other people back. We can't accept as normal what we're seeing across our country because of his campaign. A church in Mississippi was burned this week. Someone painted 'Vote Trump' on the side and then set it on fire. We can't let that happen," she added.

As Secretary of State she said she went to 112 countries, negotiated ceasefires, reduced the threat of nuclear weapons, stood up for human rights, inlclduing those of women, workers and the LGBT community.

"I'm telling you this because I want you to know that I will do everything I can. If I am honored to be your president, I will get up every day in that White House, and I will go to work for you and your families to make it possible for you to get the chances and the opportunities you deserve to have," Clinton said.
Saudi Arabia didn't threaten to increase its oil production if other OPEC members wouldn't agree to make cuts, said the group's top official. "Their contributions as usual were constructive" at talks with other members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries in Vienna last week, Mohammed Barkindo said. OPEC held technical talks at its Vienna headquarters on October 28 aimed at finalising the details of the Algiers agreement to curb output to a range between 32.5 million and 33 million barrels a day. The meeting ended without reaching a deal on quotas for ...
Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Friday his space launch company is aiming to return its rockets to flight in mid-December following a launch pad accident two months ago.
More than half of Americans are experiencing election-related stress comparable to that often attributed to work, money, or the economy, the American Psychological Association has said. And while the good news is the presidential contest will end next week, the bad news is that because of the ferocity of the campaign, the mental damage may linger. And for some groups, it may get even worse - depending on who wins. There's always disillusionment and anger when a presidential candidate loses. George W Bush's narrow victory over John Kerry in 2004 inflamed Democrats still angry over ...
The US has confirmed the death of a top al-Qaeda leader in an air strike in northeastern Afghanistan in October, in a major blow to the terror group in the war-torn country.
Warren Buffett is sitting on more cash than ever. His Berkshire Hathaway had almost $85 billion on its books as of September 30, according to a regulatory filing late Friday. That's up from the previous record of $72.7 billion on June 30. "He's got a lot of ammo" for investments, said Bill Smead, who oversees about $2.1 billion including Berkshire shares at Smead Capital Management. "Eighty-five billion dollars is a lot of money." The cash balance is likely to spark a fresh round of speculation about what the 86-year-old Berkshire chairman and chief executive ...
Late on a hot August night in 2014, Syracuse, New York, police tried to pull over a car driving without headlights. The driver and passenger fled into a darkened park. As the officers chased them on foot, they said they heard a gunshot. The cops never caught the suspects, but recovered a loaded handgun.
At least 11 civilians have been killed and 12 others injured in an explosion in Afghanistan's northern Faryab province.

The Khaama Press quoted officials, as saying that the incident occurred when a vehicle in which the civilians were travelling hit an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) planted by militants on a roadside.

The governor's spokesman Jawid Didar, was quoted as saying that several women and children were among those wounded.

No group has claimed responsibility for the incident so far.

Taliban group is, however, being blamed for the incident.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bollywood actor Aditya Pancholi on Saturday was convicted in the 2005 assault case to one year imprisonment and was also ordered to pay a fine of Rs. 20,000 by an Andheri Metropolitan Court.

However, the sentence is not to be executed till one month and Pancholi also received a month's time to appeal in higher court.

The actor had allegedly assaulted and threatened his neighbour three years ago during a heated argument over parking space.

According to reports, Pancholi's lawyers have termed the sentence very harsh and will appeal for bail.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At least four accused have been sent to judicial custody till November 10th in connection with the Buldhana rape case, where a 13-year old student was raped at an ashram school

Earlier today, four more people were held in connection with the same rape case, bringing up the total of people arrested in the matter to 15.

The Maharashtra Government on Friday formed a Special Investigation Team ( SIT) to probe the matter.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday has assured of a proper investigation under the supervision of a female IPS officer and further asserted that strict action would be taken against the accused.

As per reports, the untoward incident took place on Thursday night.

The accused include president, secretary and joint secretary of the private boarding school, which is 450 kilometers from Mumbai.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a shocking incident, police on Saturday arrested the father of a new born and a priest for stopping his wife from breast feeding it until the five calls for prayer were heard from a nearby mosque.

Aboobackar, the father of the baby, did not allow his wife Hafsath, 24, to breast feed the baby due to some religious beliefs.

The baby was born on November 2 at around 2 a.m. at Calicut's EMS Cooperative Hospital in Mukkam.

The hospital authorities filed a complaint, after which the police arrested the father and the priest.

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The ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) on Saturday expressed hope that the ministerial level talks between India and Sri Lanka to be held later in the day will bring in positive results for the long standing issues pertaining to fishermen after talks between fishermen associations of the two countries failed to yield any results.

AIADMK leader C. R. Saraswathi told ANI, "We are hopeful that today's meeting will bring in good results. Our Minister Jayakumar has also said very clearly that we have given a requisition that both the countries should walk together in this and we have also requested the Ceylon (Sri Lankan) Government to return the boats of our fishermen that have been its siege for a long time."

"Our Chief Minister is taking a lot of care of fishermen in Tamil Nadu. Already we have held a meeting in Delhi, lot of meeting have been held and our CM has also written many letters to the President saying that fishermen's problem should be solved for once and for all and not only for us but also the fishermen of Ceylon," she added.

Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samarweera is expected to hold talks with Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj today in New Delhi. .

Earlier, the talks on Wednesday took place between a 15-member delegation of fishermen association from Tamil Nadu and 10-member delegation from northern Sri Lanka.

The bone of contention between the two sides is the Palk bay, the 137 kilometers long and its breadth varies between 64 to 137 kilometers. An International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) separates five Indian (262,562 fishermen) and three Sri Lankan districts (119,000 fishermen).

Fishing is the economic mainstay of northern Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan fishermen has been demanding their Indian counterparts to stop bottom-trawling that they content has been damaging the marine ecosystem.

Since 2014 Sri Lanka Navy has seized more than 100 fishing trawlers; while they have released the Indian fishermen, they refuse to release the trawlers.

During the inconclusive talks among the fishermen representatives, the Indian fishermen have reportedly asked a three years phase out period for them.

The Indian fishermen demanded that they should be allowed fishing for 83 days annually for next three years and then the fishermen will be withdrawn completely.

The demand was rejected by the Sri Lankan fishermen who sought "compensation for the losses incurred" owing to the fishing by Tamil Nadu fishermen in "their waters".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
After holding ministerial level talks on Saturday, the governments of India and Sri Lanka have agreed to set up a hotline between the coast guards and a Joint Working Group (JWG) on fisheries to meet every three months in a bid to address the long pending fishermen issue.

Both countries also agreed to hold a meeting between the Ministers for Fisheries every six months, according to a statement released by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Radha Mohan Singh met with the Sri Lankan Minister for Foreign Affairs Mangala Samaraweera and Minister for Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Development Mahinda Amaraweera.

The ministers exchanged views on possible mechanisms to help find a permanent solution to the fishermen issues after which they agreed on the setting up of a JWG.

The delegations for the group would include representatives from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, the Coast Guards and Navies of both countries.

The first ministerial meeting would be held on January 2, 2017 in Colombo.

The Terms of Reference for the Joint Working Group (JWG) would include expediting the transition towards ending the practice of bottom trawling at the earliest, working out the modalities for the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for handing over of apprehended fishermen and ascertaining possibilities for cooperation on patrolling.

The issue of the release of detained fishing vessels will be discussed at the first JWG meeting.

Both governments also agreed to the request by the Fishermen Associations that there should be no violence and no loss of life in the handling of fishermen by the Navies and Coast Guards of the two countries.

They agreed to encourage fishermen associations of the two countries to meet every six months to take further their dialogue from the inconclusive meeting held on November 2 in New Delhi.

The ministers noted that the process is underway for the release of fishermen presently in custody on either side.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will hold a high-level meeting with her Sri Lankan counterpart Mangala Samarweera in New Delhi today to sort out the fishermen issue.

The meeting comes days after the fishermen associations of both the countries failed to reach a common ground to resolve the issue.

Fishermen based in Sri Lankan north have been claiming that their livelihood is affected due to the bottom trawling practised by Indian fishermen and their poaching into Sri Lankan territory.

The fishermen from Tamil Nadu and Puducherry are opposed to Sri Lankan Navy arresting them and seizing their boats.

Though the fishermen are released on humanitarian grounds, their vessels are not returned by the Sri Lankan Government.

Nine Indian fishermen in Sri Lankan custody were released this week ahead of today's meeting.

The issue was raised by President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister of Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremesinghe during their meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month and both sides had agreed for a high-level meeting.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Four more persons were held on Saturday in connection with the Buldhana rape case, where a 13-year old student was raped at an ashram school here.

A total of 15 people have been arrested so far in this matter.

The Maharashtra Government yesterday formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the incident.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis yesterday said the Buldhana rape incident will be probed under the supervision of a female IPS officer and assured that strict action will be taken against the accused.

As per reports, the untoward incident took place on Thursday night.

The accused include president, secretary and joint secretary of the private boarding school, which is 450 kilometers from Mumbai.

Meanwhile, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Nawab Malik has demanded the ouster of Tribal Minister Vishnu Sawra and Women and Child Development Minister Pankaja Munde for alleged negligence towards tribals.

He has also demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis for the alleged apathy towards tribals.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A horse show organised at the Bah Bateshwar animal fair in Agra saw numerous horses with a few of them taking part in a race.

The show was inaugurated by Agra commissioner Chandrakant.

Bateshwar, which forms an important part of the Hindu pilgrimage circuit, is referred to as the 'son of the Dhams' has been reduced to just hosting an annual 'cattle fair'.

The fair attracts large numbers of camels, horses, oxen, elephants, goats, and other cattle, as well as a multitude of tradesmen selling everything from traditional cooking utensils and spices to locally made furniture, handicrafts and cosmetics.

The fair provides a colourful, vibrant and entirely authentic glimpse of rural Indian life.

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The Jammu and Kashmir Government has taken an initiative to boost the age old traditional sericulture industry.

Kashmiri cocoons are very famous due to its purity and people from across the world prefer to purchase silk products made in the Kashmir Valley and the sector helps a lot to boost the economy.

But unfortunately, from the last two decades due to some circumstances the industry lost its glory and importance which enforced the government to takes some positive steps to revive this industry for the benefit of the people of the valley.

"There was a time when Kashmir was known for silk. I just want to develop the sector once again and promote the sector in between people. Being our traditional sector I just want to promote it. I am happy that now even good amount is being paid for this silk in the market," said Jammu and Kashmir Agriculture Minister Gulam Nabi Hanjura.

The government has already announced some small schemes including free plant material and distributing of free raring kits that growers are using during raring process of cocoons which have helped them a lot.

"This is as very old industry, Number of people was employed in this industry form the very beginning. Now the government has introduced new technology and we take use of high quality of silkworm to generate more silk. Now we even get Rs. 1000 for 1 Kilogram of Cocoon," said a Cocoon Grower.

Sericulture authorities also organized cocoon auction market where the growers of valley sold their cocoons to local merchants from neighbouring countries and states including West Bengal, Karnataka and Bhopal.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 30 member delegation of the All Jammu and Kashmir Panchayat Conference called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi today, where they conveyed their strong condemnation of the burning of schools in the Valley by anti- elements and called for his personal initiative to restore peace in the state.

The All Jammu and Kashmir Panchayat Conference is an apex body of Panchayat leaders of the State of Jammu and Kashmir, which represents 4000 village Panchayats of the state, with 4000 Sarpanches and 29000 Panches.

The delegation was led by the Chairman of the All Jammu and Kashmir Panchayat Conference Shafiq Mir.

Members of the delegation briefed the Prime Minister on development issues concerning the State, and said that benefits of central assistance to the State have not reached the villages due to non-empowerment of the Panchayats, in line with the rest of the country.

They also submitted a memorandum and urged the Prime Minister to consider extension of the 73rd and 74th Amendments of the Constitution of India - which pertain to local bodies - to the State of Jammu and Kashmir.

They also demanded that elections to Panchayats and Urban Local Bodies in the State be held at the earliest, adding that elections held in 2011 had witnessed enthusiastic turnout of voters.

Extension of these Constitutional Provisions to the State would empower the Panchayats to undertake basic development activities in the rural areas, the delegation observed.

Members expressed hope that this would accelerate the development process in the State, and enable the people of the State to take benefit from various Central Government schemes.

The delegation apprised the Prime Minister of the prevailing situation in the State and strongly condemned the burning of schools by anti- elements.

The body, which represents people at the grassroot level in Jammu and Kashmir, reiterated its faith in the democratic institutions and processes in the country.

Shafiq Mir said that a vast majority of the people of the State wanted a life of peace and dignity, adding that vested interests have exploited youngsters and are playing with their future.

The Prime Minister assured the delegation that the Union Government will look into their demands and further stressed that growth and development of the state is high on his agenda.

He added that development of the villages where a majority of people live, is vital to the overall economic development of the State and also reiterated his stress on a humanitarian approach, and said that 'Vikas' and 'Vishwas' will remain the cornerstones of the Union Government's development initiatives for the State of Jammu and Kashmir.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Condemning the burning of schools in the Kashmir Valley, former finance minister Yashwant Sinha on Saturday said these institutions should be repaired and re-opened without further delay.

"In all our meetings in Srinagar when we visited it for three days, we raised with the interlocutors the issue of the re-opening of schools, because nobody has the right to play with the future of the children of the Kashmir Valley. Therefore, our emphasis was that the schools should re-open and the government and whoever is on the other side should to decide on how the schools can be re-opened and do it immediately without loss of time," Sinha said.

He further added that it is very tragic that schools in Jammu and Kashmir are being burnt down. Whoever is responsible for such dastardly act should be apprehended and punished most severely, he said.

"This is an act against humanity. Some people have been arrested, I understand. Investigation must be done to find out who these people are, why they are doing what they did and also to find out if there are any other forces behind their action," Sinha said.

Speaking to ANI about the role of state government in tackling such incidents, Sinha said, "The state government has to energize the Mahala committees, the village communities in order to ensure that they are alert and the schools are not allowed to be burnt and if the miscreants attempt any such thing, they should be apprehended. This is something that has to be done immediately, so that such incidents don't repeat themselves."

Two more schools were torched by unknown masked men in south Kashmir.

In all, 27 schools have been gutted, 15 of them partially, in the past three months in the strife-torn Valley. No group has claimed responsibility for these acts and police have not been able to establish the identity of the arsonists yet.

With increasing number of schools being burnt in the Valley triggering an outrage, the J&K high court on Monday stepped in, directing the police and civil administration to ensure their protection besides unmasking the "mysterious enemies of education" and deal with them with an "iron hand".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
With the government miffed with wide ranging protest against the One Rank, One Pension (OROP) scheme, former chief of Army staff Ved Prakash Malik has said there has been "erosion" of soldiers' status within the government and in the society while adding that the military is no longer becoming a "prime choice" among the youth.

Speaking at the India Ideas conclave, Malik said that honour, status and emoluments have sustained the armed forces and enabled them for the right kind of leadership that is required in wars.

"By taking away its pride and status and making the career unattractive, the military is no longer a prime choice today which I believe is neither good for military or nation. I am not only talking about what the government sometimes gives, but the manner in which it's given," Malik said.

"There has been a steady denigration and erosion of soldier's status within the government and in society which is also reflected in the qualitative and quantitative delusion of the military rank and file," he added.

He called upon the government and urged them to "look after" the soldiers' needs.

Malik also highlighted that despite the recommendations in 2002, the government has failed to deliver a chief of defence staff and has failed to address many organizational problems in the defence forces.

"Questions are being raised on high defence control organisation which tends to keep the defence forces outside the decision making loop, the lack of single point military advice and desired level of coordination, planning and implementation force modernization and deterrence," Malik said.

Malik's comments comes in the backdrop of government issuing a new order lowering the status of military officers with respect to their civilian counterparts in the Armed Forces Head Quarters (AFHQ).

However the Ministry of Defence clarified their stand claiming that there had been no down-gradation or any change in the existing equivalence of the service ranks or their civilian counterparts.

"It's clarified that there has been no down-gradation or change in existing equivalence of Service ranks of Military officers whatsoever. The existing functional equivalence as clarified in 1991 and further reiterated in 1992, 2000, 2004 and 2005 has only been re-affirmed," said the Ministry of Defence in a statement.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government has also been feeling the heat over the issues related to implementation of OROP scheme where the situation further aggravated by the death of an ex-servicemen earlier on Wednesday who was protesting at Jantar Mantar.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Amid the ongoing debate over the implementation of One Rank One Pension (OROP), former Chief of Army Staff General (Retired) Ved Prakash Malik said the military is no longer the prime career choice today.

Elaborating, he said that throughout his years of service in the army, he always believed that the man behind the gun is more important and that the government should look after him.

He added that he was talking about what the government sometimes gives, but also about what hurts him, which is the manner in which it is given to the nation's soldiers.

He was referring to the debate over the One Rank One Pension (OROP), or "same pension, for same rank, for same length of service, irrespective of the date of retirement", which has been a longstanding demand of the Indian armed forces and its veterans.

The demand for pay-pension equity, which underlies the OROP concept, was provoked by the ex-parte decision by the Indira Gandhi-led Congress government, in 1973, two years after the historic victory in the 1971 Bangladesh war, and shortly after Field Marshal S H F J Manekshaw retired, to decrease armed forces pensions by 20-40 percent, and increase civilian pensions by 20 percent, without consultation with armed forces headquarters.

In 1986, the sense of unease and distrust prompted by the Third Central Pay Commission (CPC) was exacerbated by the Rajiv Gandhi government's decision to implements Rank Pay, which reduced the basic pay of captains, majors, Lt. Colonel, Colonels, and Brigadiers, and their equivalent in the air-force, and the navy, relative to basic pay scales of civilian and police officers.

The decision to reduce the basic pay of these ranks, implemented without consulting the armed forces, created radically asymmetries between police-military ranks, affected the pay, and pension of ten of thousands of officers and veterans, spawned two decades of contentious litigation by veterans.

It has become a lingering cause of distrust between the armed forces veterans and the defence ministry.

In 2008, the UPA government discarded the concept of rank-pay. Instead it introduced grade pay, and pay bands, which instead of addressing the rank, pay, and pension asymmetries caused by 'rank pay' dispensation, reinforced existing asymmetries.

The debasing of armed forces ranks was accompanied by decision in 2008 to create hundreds of new posts of secretaries, special Secretaries, director general of police (DGP) at the apex grade pay level to ensure that all civilian and police officers, including defence civilian officers, retire at the highest pay grade with the apex pay grade pensions with OROP.

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Expressing dissent over the alleged rape a 10-year-old student in Buldhana area of Maharashtra amid suspicions that the accused might have sexually abused 10 other girls for weeks, the Shiv Sena on Friday said there is a need to have committees for vigilance where women representative should get authority.

Shiv Sena leader Neelam Ghore told ANI that the lackluster approach gives opportunity for the anti-social elements to exploit the situation.

"This issue is related to overall human rights of all deprived people. Such residential schools may be under the tribal welfare or may be women and child department whichever school that is for mentally retarded or for tribal children there is a need to have committees for vigilance where women representative should get authority to at least have dialogue with the children so that they will come to know what is exact situation of these children," she said.

"District level officers are suppose to know whether granted school are having women superintendent or not. Schools belong to NCP ex MLA and there is no women superintendent present and these situation is exploited by anti social elements. There is a need to transform all the children to safe and better place and they need to assure specially the parents," she added.

11 persons have been arrested from Buldhana area of Maharashtra late on Thursday night in connection with the rape of a tribal minor student of Ninadhi Ashram school.

Shockingly, out of those arrested seven are said to be teachers and the remaining four are the staffers of the school.

The girls informed their families about the assault on returning home for Diwali holidays.

A special investigation team has been formed under senior IPS officer to probe the matter.

A case has been registered against the main accused under IPC 376 (rape) and POCSO (Protection of children from sexual offences act) whereas, remaining ones have been charged under sections of POCSO.

To take the probe further, the victim has been sent for a medical examination.

Meanwhile, Buldhana police said that it is yet to be medically verified if the victim is pregnant or not.

Earlier, the police was accused of trying to suppress the issue and a case was registered only after pressure was build up on the officials.

However, till now, the state has not interfered or reacted to the matter.

A victim, in her statement, has claimed that there are many other girls who have been raped.

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The Norwegian Seafood Council continues to expand its reach in India. This time it teamed up with the Sweden & Norwegian missions to cater to a bigger group of Nordic consumers of Salmon.

The Consulate General of Sweden, Swedish Chamber of Commerce in India (SCCI) & Royal Norwegian Consulate-General, Mumbai recently hosted a Nobel memorial dinner to celebrate the annual Nobel Prize announcements in Stockholm, Sweden and also create awareness about the rich and diverse culinary heritage of the region.

Therefore, it was not just restricted to the traditional Swedish cuisines but the event introduced flavors served by the Norwegian Seafood Council officially to the business community.

The Guests enjoyed an exquisite banquet featuring seafood from Norway for the occasion with the likes of Salmon and pickled herring to give the diners a delicious touch of Norwegian flavor. More than 85 invitees of the Nordic business community gathered to enjoy the seafood buffet that was prepared by the Swedish chefs.

Yogi Shergil, Director, Norwegian Seafood council drew a lot of attention and awareness towards the presence of NSC in Mumbai and their inclination to collaborate with the Nordic companies to cater seafood at their events and nurture the consumer base in India.

The surprise element was when the guest were charmed with an Indian version of Norwegian Salmon recipe booklets distributed amongst them, to help suit flavors of every Indian household and further explore Norwegian delicacies.

The initiative from the Norwegian Seafood Council aimed to capture the attention of exclusive consumers of Norwegian Seafood in Indo-Nordic Community, and is assessed to be on an upswing.

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Opener Dean Elgar and middle-order batsman JP Duminy struck scorching centuries as South Africa stretched their lead to 388 runs at stumps on Day three of the opening Test against Australia at the WACA Ground here on Saturday.

Resuming at their overnight score of 104-2, Elgar (127) and Duminy (141) forged a magnificent third-wicket partnership of 250 runs to propel the visitors to the second innings score of 390-6.

At the end of day's play, Quinton de Kock and Vernon Philander were batting at their respective score of 16 and 23.

For Australia, Peter Siddle and Josh Hazlewood,who both ended their day two with a wicket each, added one more wicket into their account by the end of the third day's play.

Meanwhile, Mitchell Marsh and Mitchell Starc also chipped in with a wicket each.

Earlier, in reply to the Proteas' first innings score of 242 runs, the Steve Smith-led side were bundled out for 244 despite some resilient efforts by openers David Warner (97) and Shaun Marsh (63).

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Deepika Padukone is all geared up to attend the prestigious MTV European Music Awards in Rotterdam, which she described as "a step forward in my global career".

The 30-year old actress shares that she was puzzled when she received the invite.

She said, "I was pleasantly surprised when I got the invite. It is very gracious of them to invite me. I have grown up watching the MTV awards and I didn't think that one day, I would be walking down the red carpet and presenting an award at this global music event. It's a step forward in my global career."

"This is my first time at such an event so I don't know what to expect. I am going there just to have fun. I understand the platform and what it is all about; it is a music award and I love music. I listen to a lot of music of the people, who are playing there, so right now, everything seems surreal in that sense," added the 'Tamasha' actress.

The pretty lady has been sensationally achieving all goals one by one and has been applauded by the audience for her performances.

After becoming a part of 'xXx : Return of Xander Cage' with Vin Diesel, for which Miss Padukone garnered tremendous response from her fans and the audience for the teaser, trailer & individual posters for the film, the actress will now be attending the renowned MTV European Music Awards.

Besides being at the award show, the actress also will be presenting an award on November 6.

Deepika will be amidst other Hollywood celebrities like Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Coldplay, Beyonce and Ariana Grande and others.

On a related note, the Mastani of Bollywood will next be seen in her Vin Diesel starrer Hollywood debut 'XXX: Return of Xander Cage' that is slated to release early next year.

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United States presidential nominee Donald Trump's son Eric on Saturday took part in a traditional Indian 'aarti' ahead of the crucial Election Day on November 8th to pray for his father's victory.

This is not the first that the Trump campaign has tried to woo the Hindu and the Indian-American community as his daughter-in-law Lara Trump had visited a Hindu temple last month in Virginia.

Taking the campaign further, the Republican nominee even appeared speaking Hindi for a presidential campaign ad ahead of Diwali.

Trump was seen uttering "Ab Ki Baar Trump Sarkaar (This time Trump government)"  adapting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 2014 vote-winning catchphrase as his.

The video opened with the message "Happy Diwali" and borrowed footage of Trump speaking at a Hindu gathering in New Jersey this month, lighting an oil lamp and promising close US-Indian relations.

"The Indian and Hindu community will have a true friend in the White House. We love the Hindus, we love India," he says in the ad.

Last month Trump also attended a charity event last month hosted by members of the Hindu community in Edison, where he praised India for helping to combat terrorism.

In another statement, he also praised the Hindu community's 'fantastic' contributions to world civilisation and American culture.

His efforts to woo Hindus have not proved futile as Hindu Sena, a right-wing organisation in India held a havan (a sacred ritual) for the victory of the presumptive Republican nominee and even celebrated his birthday with a cake, balloons and posters.
Washington D.C (United States), Nov. 5 (ANI): Author and a strategic affairs expert, Gregory Copley has said that the United States will introduce and follow pragmatic policies towards India and Pakistan should Donald Trump become the President of the United States.

In an exclusive interview given to ANI here, Copley said that a Trump presidency would break the mould of a currently declining U.S. influence in South East Asia, South Asia-India Pacific region.

Copley further said that it might take a few months, or even years for the Trump presidency to find its feet.

"We will see it in the form of pragmatic policies by the U.S. towards India and Pakistan which will be mutually beneficial to all the states of India, Pakistan and the United States," he said.

Copley said economically the United States needed to start focusing on the Indo Pacific region, particularly the Indian Ocean Region.

"This has not been done under the previous administration, and it's time to focus on the Indo-Pacific, and certainly the message is getting into the Trump camp about how important that is," he said.

When asked about the Hillary Clinton presidency, and whether it will be a continuation of the Obama administration or, will there be change in the way America looks at South Asia, Copley said the Obama administration's policies towards South Asia were established by Hillary Clinton and she did not do a very good job there.

"We are seeing the result the declining U.S. ability to influence events in East Asia and the Indian Ocean. Yes, it will make a continuation of Obama administration policies, which will be detrimental to the allies in the region who have not been able to count on the consistent US capabilities in the region," he said.

Asked about China's role in the decision making process in America with regard to South Asia, he said, "There has been nothing creative and no attempt in a meaningful way for the U.S. to recognize the change in the strategic architecture in Euro-Asia and in the Indo-Pacific."

"It (the U.S.) needs to understand that whatever it does now, it has to be entirely different from what it's being doing for the past 10 or 20 years, because China has broken out of its policy of containment, India itself is rising as a strategic power and is the only counter balance really to China apart from Japan. The South East Asian network which had included The Philippines and the Republican of China is now broken up, and the U.S. has failed to acknowledge the Republic of China and Taiwan, whereas, India has been paying attention to Taiwan and trying to build a regional consensus," Copley said.

He said that United States has to pay much greater attention to India, ASEAN, Taiwan, Japan, and for that matter, Australia, which is a pivotal player in that region as well, and added that under the Trump presidency, it would all change.

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The Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution has proposed exclusive zone for street vendors in each city. The Ministry has decided to pursue the State Governments to allocate a place and to provide sanitation facility to ensure clean and hygienic food to consumers. This was announced by Shri Ram Vilas Paswan, Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution while addressing a press conference here today after the conclusion of Swachhta Pakhwada organized by his ministry during 16-31 Oct 2016. The Minister said that that one of the objectives of the Swachh Bharat Mission is to create a permanent mechanism through new and innovative schemes. Shri Paswan mentioned, in pursuance of this, the Department of Consumer Affairs has decided to launch two new schemes related to Swachh Bharat Mission i.e. (i) Clean Consumer Fora and (ii) Clean Market.

The Union Minster said that under the scheme 'Clean Consumer Fora financial assistance will be provided to Consumer Fora for sanitation facility while under the Clean Market Scheme the VCOs will be associated and asked to adopt a market place where they can carry out awareness activities on Swachhta and also cleanliness of the market place in association with the market association/local authorities including provision of sanitation facilities for consumers and with exclusive sanitation facilities in each market place for street vendor. Financial assistance will be provided to VCOs

During the Swachhta Pakhwada (16-31October 2016) some of the significant activities carried out by the Department of Consumer Affairs as follows.

The Union Minister of Consumer Affairs inaugurated a Consumer Mela on 20th October, 2016, during the Swachhta Pakhwada, at Central Park, Connaught Place, New Delhi with the main objective of bringing the consumers and the companies face to face so as to resolve the grievances to the extent possible and also to make the consumers aware about their responsibility towards Swachhta. During the Consumer Mela, the Minister administered Swachhta Oath to over 2000 visitors and participants and appealed to the people to keep their surroundings clean.

Nukkad Nataks on consumer awareness and Swachhta and Poster making competition by School children were also organized during the event.

Consumer Awareness Week was also launched during the Consumer Mela and observed during 20-27 October, 2016, which not only focused on the rights of the consumers but also on their responsibilities, including towards cleanliness. All State Governments and stakeholders requested to observe the Consumer Awareness Week in their respective states. Activities related to Swachhta were also carried out by the field offices/organisations of the Department.

During the Pakhwada the activities carried out by Department of Food and Public Distribution are as under:

The pakhwada was started with oath of swachhta being administered in all the offices of the department and its organizations.

The Minister of State, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Shri C. R. Chaudhary participated in the cleanliness drive organized at Ghewara Depot of FCI. Message of Swacchta was delivered by the Minister of State.

During the pakhwada awareness processions were carried out and cleanliness drives in public spaces were carried out.

Banners & Stickers advocating swachhta were used by all the organizations of the department to create awareness in the public

Running trophy/awards instituted during the last pakhwada were continued. Cleanest sections were awarded in the department as well as FCI.

Weeding out and recording of old records were carried out including review of recorded files in the record room.

Other Action Taken

Rs. 200 lakhs contributed towards Swachh Bharat Kosh during 2015-16 by CWC.

Rs. 133.25 lakhs contributed towards Namami Ganga by CWC.

50 Rain Water Harvesting Systems have been completed at a cost of Rs. 85.60 lakhs during 2015-16 by CWC .

Letters have been issued to various sugar factory and distilleries to undertake cleanliness drive in the factory & surrounding areas.

Further Action

Sanitation and water supply facilities in 51 FCI Depots will be upgraded/provided.

An amount of Rs. 178 lakhs has been provisioned for Swachh Bharat Kosh during 2016-17

100 Rain Water Harvesting Systems have been planned for construction by CWC in the next two years.

CWC has also planned to construct toilets blocks in ten schools.

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Total Operating Income decline 4.17% to Rs 11830.36 crore

Net profit of Punjab National Bank declined 11.54% to Rs 549.36 crore in the quarter ended September 2016 as against Rs 621.03 crore during the previous quarter ended September 2015. Total Operating Income declined 4.17% to Rs 11830.36 crore in the quarter ended September 2016 as against Rs 12345.03 crore during the previous quarter ended September 2015.11830.3612345.0353.6062.56778.281056.44778.281056.44549.36621.03

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By step down subsidiary - Spice VAS Africa

Spice Mobility announced that Spice VAS Africa, a step down subsidiary of the Company, has acquired 100% stake in SVA (Mauritius). Consequent to the said acquisition, SVA (Mauritius) become a wholly owned step down subsidiary of the Company.

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At least 14 persons were killed and three injured when a pick-up van they were travelling in collided with a truck on the Dholka-Bagodara highway in Ahmedabad district, police said on Saturday.

The injured persons in the late Friday accident are critical and admitted to a hospital in Ahmedabad, the police official said.

The victims belong to five families from Sokhda village of Rajkot district.

They were returning from Pavagadh in Panchmahal when the accident took place. Nine of those killed are from one Jinjariya family.

Pavagadh is a popular pilgrimage hill station in central Gujarat.

Senior cabinet Minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasma, who is an MLA from Dholka, rushed to the area following the accident.

--IANS

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Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav on Saturday hit out at the BJP-led central government for the one-day ban handed over to NDTV India, terming it an attack on democracy and said the country is "heading towards dictatorship".

"Today you have seen what has happened to NDTV, they (government) said that you (channel) showed the Pathankot terror attack," Lalu said, addressing the Silver Jubilee celebrations of the Samajwadi Party here.

"Ban on NDTV is an attack on democracy. This country is heading towards dictatorship," he stressed.

Lalu also said that since the NDTV channel "exposes certain people", it has been targeted by the government.

The RJD leader's remarks came after the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting directed the Hindi news channel to go off air from the midnight of November 8 to midnight of November 9 for allegedly breaching broadcast norms in its coverage of the January 2 terror attack on the IAF base in Pathankot.

The RJD chief also asserted that there is no rift in the Samajwadi Party.

"There is no rift in the Samajwadi Party, and we gave proof by bringing Akhilesh Babu (Yadav) and Shivpal Babu (Singh Yadav) together on stage," he said. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal, the SP state unit chief, are not on amicable terms.

Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Lalu said, "We have seen the condition of Jammu and Kashmir for the last 100 days."

"Someone had told us about their '56-inch chest', but look what is happening at the (India-Pakistan) border now?" he said.

He also said that cross-border surgical strikes were first carried by the Indian Armed forces when Mulayam Singh Yadav was the Defence Minister.

"They are claiming that they had carried out surgical strikes across the border, but they must know that the surgical strikes were first carried out by the forces when Mulayamji was the Defence Minister," Lalu said.

He also said that people were feeling betrayed for voting the BJP to power. Lalu said that once again the BJP was trying to fan communal passions, and was starting to rake up the Ram temple issue as state assembly polls had neared.

"Whenever elections come in Uttar Pradesh they remember Ram Mandir. And as elections are again due in the state, they are remembering Ram Temple to do politics over it," he added.

Reminding the BJP of having stopped its Rath Yatra in Bihar in 1990, Lalu said, "We have stopped their rath in Patna, Samastipur. And again we will unitedly stop them."

Lalu Prasad had stopped BJP leader L.K. Advani's "Rath Yatra" in Samastipur in Bihar when he was traversing across India to gather momentum to construct a temple in Ayodhya.

The former Bihar Chief Minister said that time had come for all secular parties to come together and oppose the BJP.

Lalu Prasad later called Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav near him and asked him to take his 'Rath Yatra' forward and ensure victory for his party. He also asked him to respect his elders and take their blessings.

--IANS

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Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday said that Delhi Police is being sensitised to the security needs of people from the northeastern states living in the national capital.

"We are making Delhi Police more and more sensitive to the security needs of our friends from the northeast. Delhi Police has recruited over 450 smart young boys and girls from the northeast in the last one year," the minister said while addressing the 53rd Annual Meet of the Naga Students' Union Delhi (NSUD) here.

He said that the government is committed to ensure that the Naga people have their rightful honour, dignity and pride of place in the country.

"I know that India cannot be happy if our Naga brothers and sisters are unhappy, and India cannot be great unless our Naga brothers and sisters share this sense of greatness," he said.

He also asked the Naga students to bring to his notice any suggestion that may strengthen their sense of security.

"Feel free to bring it to my notice. I will do my best," the minister said, adding that the Home Ministry has a minister from the northeast - Kiren Rijiju "who can understand your problems and relate with you better".

The Home Minister also appreciated the role of Naga Students' Union in Delhi, saying it provides care of a family to the Naga students.

--IANS

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A few days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised the Haryana government for improving the girl sex ratio in the state, a nearly five-month-old girl was found dead near here, police said on Saturday.

The body of the child was found in a field in Sancholi village near Millenium City.

"The body of the child was found under crop stubble and it seems to have been dumped at least 3 days back," police officer Nasir told IANS.

The body has been sent for an autopsy.

Police have registered an FIR on the complaint of Sancholi resident Shyam Sunder, who spotted the body and informed the police.

On Thursday, a newborn girl was found abandoned in an upscale Ardee City society of Gurgaon.

Prime Minister Modi had recently hailed the people of Haryana for supporting 'Beti Bachao Beti Padhao' mission in the state.

--IANS

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French police arrested Mikel Irastorza, the leader of the Basque separatist group ETA, in the town of Ascain in the south of France, the Spanish Interior Ministry confirmed on Saturday.

Irastorza is the seventh ETA leader being arrested since the band announced a definitive ceasefire in November 2011. A 59-year-old Spanish man and a 56-year-old French woman, whose name are yet to be announced, were also arrested during Saturday's operation, Xinhua news agency reported.

Irastorza was considered to be the most important member of the ETA, whose 40-year armed campaign for the independence of the Basque Region in the north of Spain claimed over 820 lives.

--IANS

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Using prominent, graphic pictures on cigarette packs like warning against smoking can significantly reduce death rate in the US, finds a study.

According to the study, warnings can avert more than 652,000 deaths, up to 92,000 low birth weight infants, up to 145,000 preterm births, and about 1,000 cases of sudden infant deaths in the US over the next 50 years.

"The bottom line is that requiring large pictorial warnings would help protect the public health of people in the US," said Ronald Levy, Professor at the Stanford University, US.

"There is a direct association between these warnings and increased smoking cessation and reduced smoking initiation and prevalence. That would lead to significant reduction of death and morbidity, as well as medical cost," Levy added.

The study published in the journal Tobacco Control used SimSmoke -- a tobacco control policy model -- which looks at the effects of past smoking policies as well as future policies.

The researchers estimated that implementing pictorial warning labels (PWLs) in the US would directly reduce smoking prevalence in relative terms by five per cent in the near term, increasing to 10 per cent over the long-term.

If implemented in 2016, PWLs are estimated to reduce the number of smoking attributable deaths (heart disease, lung cancer and COPD) by an estimated 652,800 by 2065 and to prevent more than 46,600 cases of low-birth weights, 73,600 cases of preterm birth, and 1,000 SIDS deaths, the study suggested.

--IANS

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Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Saturday condemned the violence in Friday's protest by Islamist groups against the governor of Jakarta, who has been accused of blasphemy.

Around 50,000 people took part in the protests, organised by the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), to demand the prosecution of Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, a Chinese Christian widely known as Ahok, Efe news reported.

The police, who deployed 18,000 officers, used tear gas to disperse the crowd of demonstrators, who threw stones and bottles at the authorities in front of the presidential palace after a peaceful march.

Groups of protesters tried unsuccessfully to enter the grounds of the presidential palace and clashed with the police until early Saturday.

The violence spread to several parts of northern Jakarta, where the country's ethnic Chinese community lives, as protesters set fire to vehicles and garbage bins and looted some shops, according to The Jakarta Globe newspaper.

President Widodo lamented the chaos and violence following the march caused by protesters who refused to disperse after 6 pm on Friday.

"And we see this was steered by political actors who were exploiting the situation," he said after a meeting with the army and police chiefs and cabinet members.

The Indonesian President, who met religious leaders this week in a bid to reduce tensions, ordered the demonstrators to disperse and said the investigation into blasphemy charges against Ahok will be carried out in a "firm, quick and transparent" manner.

Issues with Ahok reportedly stem from a verse in the Koran, which the hardline groups have used to argue that Muslims should not allow themselves to be led by a Christian or a Jew.

Ahok has been accused of blasphemy since a recent speech in which he quoted the Koran and claimed that the verse was being used to manipulate voters ahead of the regional elections.

Before the protest, Ahok denied that he had any intention to insult Islam and apologized to all Muslims who had been offended by his remarks but added that the video in which he was seen making the controversial remarks had been manipulated.

Meanwhile, Widodo cancelled his official trip to Australia, scheduled to start Sunday, following the protests, officials announced Saturday.

Widodo was scheduled to travel to Sydney and Canberra on a three-day visit, which included an address to the Australian federal parliament on Monday.

--IANS

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Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday called for the need to identify dangerous buildings in the national capital, which are on the verge of collapsing.

"There is a need to identify the dangerous buildings in the national capital. Unfortunately the MCD (Municipal Corporation of Delhi) whose work it ir, is not doing it. We want MCD to quickly look into the issue so that other buildings don't collapse," he said after visiting a woman critically injured when a three-storey building collapsed in the Azad Market on Friday.

Coming out of Hindu Rao Hospital, he said that separate reports have been sought from the divisional commissioner and the civic body on the incident.

"I asked them to give fair a report. A FIR should be registered and guilty should be punished. As per the law, Rs 2 lakh has to be given to family of deceased and Rs 50,000 to injured person. We have sanctioned this amount. But their house has completely collapsed. The family is poor, we will see if more is required. More money can be given to them," said Kejriwal.

Police had said a woman, identified as Jimla, 47, was killed and her daughter, Komal, 23, critically injured when the century-old decrepit building in the Azad market in north Delhi collapsed. Two families were residing the building which had three flats.

"One of the families had gone to their hometown in Bihar for Chhath Puja celebrations. The other family, of which Jimla and Komal were members, stayed back," a police officer had said.

--IANS

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National Award-winning actor Girish Kulkarni believes that the Indian education system lacks the training of appreciation of art due to which it gets diversified, making it tough for artists to showcase their talent.

Girish along with Marathi filmmaker Umesh Kulkarni, Himachal Pradesh filmmaker Sanjeev Kumar, Bengali filmmaker Bauddhayan Mukherji and actor Chittaranjan Giri took part in a panel discussion, titled "Cinema India" at the fifth edition of Dharamshala International Film Festival here on Saturday.

While talking about Marathi cinema, which is currently considered to be having a gala time, Girish said: "In Maharashtra, we lack the cinema culture. People love going to theatres and they themselves make efforts to watch films. We must credit the mainstream Hindi cinema, which has created that kind of culture."

"It's a unique film culture, which we can witness across India. That thing is less for regional films though," he added.

Girish, who has appeared in Marathi films like "Valu", "Bihir", "Deool" and "Gabhricha Paus", said that Maharashtra lacks "cinema infrastructure", but things are slowly changing now.

"Now the scene is changing as multiplexes are coming in. But with the ticket pricing films are beyond the reach of masses," he said.

"Another important aspect is that in our education system as a whole, there is no training whatsoever about appreciation of art. That's completely missing," Girish said.

"It's a very difficult process which has been simplified to a great extent by Hindi filmmakers. They just had their own grammar, which is a very simplified one. It connects to a bigger mass that regional cinema lacks," he added.

Talking about the Marathi film industry, Girish said that there is no support from independent producers.

"In Marathi cinema, there are no producers. They all are one film producers. They come in with some odd hopes and money, and later go away. They never had any interest in looking forward to any integrities of this field. That responsibility also comes on the creative people, who are not good at business," he said.

Girish feels that to compete with Bollywood and Hollywood, regional filmmakers should try to produce compelling content.

"There have been talks like Marathi cinema is doing really well and wanting to produce big names. But I think you have the same audience, which is getting scattered into the variety of content," he said.

"It's not only mainstream Bollywood, but also includes the big Hollywood banners, which are now here to compete. Now you have to produce compelling content, which will completely fit with the audiences' mood. It's a very tough and challenging task," Girish added.

Girish says "government could not do anything" in helping independent filmmakers by providing funds to them.

"Maharashtra government just gives subsidy to Marathi films. The only place where government can help is by approaching National Award winners to motivate and help the younger ones. We can only improve when we will stop relying on the government," he said.

(The writer's trip to Dharamsala is at the invitation of the Dharamshala International Film Festival organisers. Sandeep Sharma can be contacted at sandeep.s@ians.in)

--IANS

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The West Bengal government has so far handed over physical possession of 508 acres of land to farmers of Singur in Hooghly district after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee kicked off the process on October 20, an official said on Saturday.

Of the 997.11 acres acquired for the Nano project by the erstwhile Left Front government, Banerjee had claimed that 932 acres of land was made cultivable, while work was going on to develop the remaining 65 acres.

"The process of giving physical possession of land has been going at a satisfactory pace. So far, we have handed over physical possession of 508 acres of land to farmers," Hooghly's Additional District Magistrate (LR) Purnendu Maji told IANS.

Banerjee, who had spearheaded the anti-land acquisition protests from 2006-2008 as the supremo of Trinamool Congress, commenced cultivation in a symbolic gesture by sowing a mustard seed in October.

"Ongoing process of giving physical possession to farmers is expected to be completed by November 10. Sheds and materials of car factory have already been removed. The state government will hold an auction to sell these materials," Rabindranath Bhattacharya, a lawmaker from Singur, told IANS.

A division bench of Justices Arun Mishra and V. Gopala Gowda of the Supreme Court on August 31, directed that the land be returned to the farmers of Singur within 12 weeks. The court-stipulated time-frame will expire by November-end.

The government gave land documents to majority of farmers, he said.

--IANS

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Software robots masquerading as human beings are influencing the political discourse on social media as never before and could threaten the very integrity of the 2016 US presidential election, researchers have warned.

In the study, the researchers analysed 20 million election-related tweets created between September 16 and October 21, this year.

They found that a high percentage of the political discussion taking place on Twitter was created by pro-Donald Trump -- Republican Party nominee for President of the US in the 2016 election -- and pro-Hillary Clinton -- Democratic Party nominee for President of the US in the 2016 election -- software robots, or social bots, with the express purpose of distorting the online discussion regarding the elections.

Robots, rather than people, produced 3.8 million tweets, or 19 per cent.

Further, social bots also accounted for 4,00,000 of the 2.8 million individual users, or nearly 15 per cent users on the microblogging website, the study said.

The presence of these bots can affect the dynamics of the political discussion in three tangible ways, the researchers observed.

First, influence can be redistributed across suspicious accounts that may be operated with malicious purposes. Second, the political conversation can become further polarised.

Third, spreading of misinformation and unverified information can be enhanced.

"As a result, the integrity of the 2016 US presidential election could be possibly endangered," said Emilio Ferrara, Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California.

In addition, the researchers found that Trump's robot-produced tweets were almost uniformly positive, boosting the candidate popularity.

By contrast only half of Clinton's were, with the other half criticising the nominee.

The sophistication of these social bots' makes it often impossible to determine who created them, although political parties, local, national and foreign governments and "even single individuals with adequate resources could obtain the operational capabilities and technical tools to deploy armies of social bots and affect the directions of online political conversation," the study noted.

The "master puppeteers" behind influence bots, often create fake Twitter and Facebook profiles, Ferrara added.

They do so by stealing online pictures, giving them fictitious names, and cloning biographical information from existing accounts.

These bots have become so sophisticated that they can tweet, retweet, share content, comment on posts, "like" candidates, grow their social influence by following legitimate human accounts and even engage in human-like conversations, Ferrara said, in the study appearing in the journal First Monday.

--IANS

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Amid an uproar over the proposed "Beach Love" festival being planned in this coastal city, the Andhra Pradesh government on Saturday clarified that it will not allow any programme "inimical to Telugu culture and traditions".

The authorities termed as "rumours" some media reports that the programme proposed to be held at one of the beaches during February 12-14 (Valentine's Day) would hurt the cultural sensibilities of people.

Andhra Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation and the Municipal Corporation of Visakhapatnam condemned what they called the misinformation campaign.

"It is speculated that over nine thousand couples from across the world would descend upon Visakhapatnam to indulge in a no-holds barred beach love and that preparations are on to organise the private event sanctioned by the government," an official statement said.

It clarified that the government had received a proposal by a private agency about organising a mega event during February 2017 in Visakhapatnam to attract foreign tourists. Accordingly the government formed a committee to liaise with the event managers.

"As of now the private agency did not put forth any blueprint of the proposed event before the said committee, and as and when it is done the same would be examined as per standard procedure," it added.

A Mumbai based agency, which holds similar events in Goa, has submitted the proposal to the government.

Women's organisations have come out strongly against the proposed programme.

Even political parties including the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is sharing power with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), have condemned the proposal. They said such an event which goes against the state's culture can't be allowed.

BJP leader and local legislator P. Vishnukumar Raju said there was no question of allowing such a programme.

"Come what may, we will not allow this event," said R. K. Roja, a leader of opposition YSR Congress Party.

--IANS

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Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena is arriving here on Sunday for a two-day India visit during which he will also attend an international conference on tobacco control.

After his arrival on Sunday evening, Sirisena will have a meeting with President Pranab Mukherjee at Rashtrapati Bhawan, an official statement said.

On Monday, he will attend the seventh session of the global tobacco-control conference at the Indian Exposition Mart in Greater Noida, on the outskirts of the national capital. The Sri Lankan President is expected to return on Monday evening.

India is hosting the biennial conference of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). It is the only international treaty to deter tobacco consumption.

Delegates from 180 countries are expected to attend the conference. Pakistan has decided to skip the conference in the wake of the deteriorating ties with India.

--IANS

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At least 14 people were today killed and over two dozen injured when a private bus plunged into the Beas river near Vindravani in Mandi district, about 155 km from here.

The ill-fated bus with over 40 passengers on board was travelling to Kullu from Manali when it veered off the road while trying to avoid a motorcyclist and fell into the turbulent Beas, police officers said.

The incident, in which 14 people were killed, took place hardly 3 km from Mandi, police said.

Unconfirmed reports, however, put the toll at 16. The victims are yet to be identified.

The injured people, over two dozen of them, were rushed to the zonal hospital at Mandi. The condition of two of them is stated to be critical.

The bus was close to the banks of the river which made rescue operations easier, police said.

Mandi Deputy Commissioner Sandeep Kadam and IGAjay Yadav immediately reached the spot along with rescue teams



Though there was only a remote possibilityof passengers getting washed away in the river, divers have been called in as a precautionary measure to locate missing persons, if any.

The Mandi DC said rescue operations were in progress and all possible help is being provided to the victims.

Transport minister G S Bali expressed deep shook over the accident and said an inquiry would be launched to ascertain its cause.

Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, who is in Delhi, has been informed about the accident, he said.

Most of the people travelling in the bus were from Mandi and Kullu and other places on the Mandi-Kullu National Highway 21.

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Two women teachers of a premier Patna school were arrested today in a case of alleged sexual assault of a kindergarten student.

The two teachers have been arrested on the basis of a medical report which confirmed sexual assault of the five-year-old girl student of a reputed English medium school in Patna, City Superintendent of Police Chandan Kushwaha told PTI.

The two have been forwarded to Beur jail to 14 days judicial custody after production before Additional District Judge I Parvez Alam.

A case was registered at the woman police station by parents of the victim LKG student against the two teachers teaching at primary level of the school under POSCO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offence) Act.

The medical test of the minor conducted at PMCH confirmed sexual assault and on the basis of which the police arrested the two teachers, the SP said.

The incident came to light when the five-year-old girl student narrated her woes to her mother about the two teachers sexually assaulting her for quiet some time by taking her to a secluded room near bathroom.

The family in the complaint registered in the woman police station alleged that the school Principal did not act on their complaint which forced them to approach the police.

The City SP said that the police has recorded statement of the Principal and investigation is continuing in the case.

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With withdrawal of nominations by Independent candidate Konteso Kri on the last day of withdrawal of papers today, only two women are left in the fray for November 19 bye-election to Hayuliang assembly constituency in remote Anjaw district of Arunachal Pradesh.

North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) candidate Dasanglu Pul who is contesting on BJP ticket will lock horns with Independent candidate Yompi Kri.

All necessary arrangements were made by the district administration for smooth conduct of the poll.

The Election Commission has deployed two poll observers - Suparna Das Ahamad as General Observer and Vinayak Azad as Expenditure Observer.

The Model Code of Conduct has been enforced strictly in entire district, the chief electoral office said in a release.

Since the district has areas located along international border necessary steps have been taken to deploy sufficient security forces.

The constituency with a total electorate of 11,003 including 5,508 female voters has 81 polling stations of which three - Kibitho, Aphumna and Taflagam - are situated near the international border with China.

The highest numbers of electors are in Hayuliang polling station with 955 voters while Malogam polling station has only two voters.

The seat fall vacant after former Chief Minister Kalikho Pul committed suicide on August 9 this year.

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Three persons have been arrested for robbing a property dealer of Rs 45 lakh, after holding him captive at his own house in south Delhi's Chhatarpur area, police said today.

Pawan Sharma, a property dealer, told police that a person, who identified himself as S K Sawaria, approached him saying that he wants to purchase a property in Delhi, Additional DCP-I Nupur Prasad said.

Sharma showed him two to three properties including his own house in Chhatarpur. Sawaria showed interest in buying Sharma's house and arrived there on October 21 with two other persons, she said.

Sawaria also called another person there on the pretext of showing the house. While being shown the property documents, they sprayed something on Sharma and his wife which caused coughing and irritation, the officer said.

"They tied Sharma and his wife and looted Rs 45 lakh, jewellery and property documents. They threatened him of destroying the property documents if he calls police. Else, they would courier the documents," Prasad said.

Acting on a specific input, one of the accused, Bijender Singh, was arrested from Najafgarh and Rs 1,85,000 was recovered from him," the officer said.

During interrogation, he disclosed the name of the gang leader, Ravi, who had hatched the plan along with Sameer Chugh, Kaku and Dinesh, she claimed.

"Chugh is a property dealer who gave the accused information about the money kept in Sharma's house. Chugh was arrested and Rs 50,000 of the robbed cash was recovered from him," the officer said.

On Thursday, Dinesh Kumar was arrested from Noida and Rs eight lakh, a gold chain looted from the house and the car used in committing the crime was recovered, Prasad said.

Ravi and his accomplice Kaku are still absconding and a hunt is on to nab them, the officer said.

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The 6th edition of the Indian Languages Festival (ILF) Samanvay, focusing on the themes of 'Language as Public action' commenced here today with the noted Gandhian Ela Bhat leading-off the programme with her inaugural speech.

Held at the India Habitat Centre, the three-day annual event "seeks to create a middle-ground of conversations" while also focusing on different languages like Urdu, Telugu, Gujarati, Santhali and Khasi.

"ILF Samanvay depicts exploration of languages beyond the verbal and the literal way. It seeks to create a middle-ground of conversations, an exciting intersection of the creativities.

"Yes, this festival is a call for the democracy of languages. But, moreover it's also a reminder of the same river of creativity that flows in the artist and the scientist, the administrator and the student that's inside all of us," says Rizio Yohannan Raj, Creative Director of the festival.

With participation of over 40 artists, thinkers and actors, the festival will be seen hosting discussions touching upon different elements and components of language.

'Law as language: All but the truth?', 'Speaking of Women: The Language of Control', 'Santhali: Spaeaking from Multiple Locations' among others mark the diverse range of issues undertaken in the festival's discourse on language.

Supporting the festival since its very inception, Ashok Vajpaeyi of Raza Foundation says talks on and about language are important and should take place; otherwise the term "matrabasha" (mother-language) would soon change into "Dadi maa basha" (Grand-mother language).

"This english chattering middle-class is not making use of their mother-language much. I am worried because a very few number of mothers are seen using their language now.

"Busy dreaming their American dream, they are just not worried about it. This festival is important because it reminds people of power, energy and creativity that comes with language," he added.

With a battery of speakers being part of the festival, the list includes transgender activist Abhina Aher, renowned puppeteer Anurupa Roy, film actor Swara Bhaskar, human rights and women's rights activist Vrinda Grover, Telugu poet and writer Volga, social researcher Bela Bhatia, social activist and lawyer Jignesh Mevani and TV anchor, writer and journalist Ravish Kumar, among others.

The festival also involves 'Art Articulations'. The art show curated by Deeksha Nath will feature seminal artists at the intersections of various artistic and critical sites.

Enriching the festival further is the thematic food counter called 'Artist as Gourmet'.

Providing delicacies other than that of different languages, it offers an experience of linguistic and cultural combination, by recreating the recommended recipes by authors, artists and other custodians of language.

The open and free to all festival will come to an end on November 7.

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As many as 7,000 firms from India and abroad are expected to participate in the forthcoming India International Trade Fair (IITF) at Pragati Maidan, which is beginning from November 14.

"The theme of this year's IITF is 'Digital India'. All pavilions including state and central ministries will project this theme in their stalls," India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO) General Manager Guna Sekaran told PTI.

He said 150 companies of from about 24 countries would showcase their products.

Tickets for the 14-day fair will be available online as well as at Delhi metro stations.

South Korea is the partner country, while Belarus is the focus country this time.

Among states, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand are partner states and Haryana is the focus state.

First five days of IITF will be for business people.

There will be free entry for senior citizens and differently-abled persons.

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An Aam Aadmi Party MLA today claimed that he was detained for trying to conduct puja at a heritage site along the Yamuna river bank, even as the police said the legislator was only called for a "discussion".

According to Kirari MLA Rituraj Govind, he was trying to build a ghat at Nithari talaab near the expressway on the occasion of Chhat puja along the river bank in his constituency.

His move was objected to by the local villagers even as he said that the construction of the ghat was funded by the Delhi government.

However, the police said CrPC section 144 (prohibiting assembly of more than four people) was imposed in the ghat area, which is a heritage property, since this morning in view of the Chhat puja and the MLA had allegedly violated the order.

The prohibitory order will remain in place till November 7, they said.

The MLA alleged that there was minor stone-pelting by a group of villagers, which was led by a local BJP activist.

"I have been detained for over three hours now," the MLA said from Aman Vihar police station.

The police insisted it was a discussion and neither was the MLA detained nor arrested.

"He was trying to build a ghat at a heritage property which is not permitted by law. The locals are also against using the heritage property for Chhath Puja.

"He arrived there today and there was tension in the area. We were present at the site and eased the situation. The MLA is there in the Aman Vihar police station because we are trying to explain to him that it is against the provision of law to use the heritage property for Chhath puja," said a senior police officer.

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Eleven persons arrested in connection with alleged rape of a minor girl at an ashram school in Maharashtra's Buldhana district have been remanded in police custody for a week by a local court.

While the case was registered against 13 persons yesterday, two are absconding. Those arrested include staff members of the school who allegedly did not report the incident to the police.

Ashram shalas are government-run or government-aided residential schools, mainly for tribal children.

Eleven persons, including the main accused Ittusingh Pawar (23) who worked as a sweeper in the school, the headmaster, staff and members of the school management were arrested on Thursday night.

They were produced in the court late yesterday evening, which remanded them in police custody for a week.

Pawar has been charged under section 376 (rape) of the Indian Penal Code while others were booked under various other relevant sections.

The incident came to light after former Maharashtra minister Eknath Khadse was approached by the family of the victim who hails from his Assembly constituency Muktainagar.

According to police, the girl, a std IV student at Nanji Kokare Adivasi Ashramshala at Lokanda Pala in Khamgaon taluka of Buldhana district, told her parents about the rape when she went home for Diwali vacations.

Police are looking for Bharat Vishwasrao Lahudkar, headmaster of primary section, and the clerk Vijay Kokare.

Those who were remanded in police custody include president of the institute which runs the school, Gajanan Kokare, secretary Sanjay Kokare, joint Secretary Purushottam Kokare and the main accused Pawar.

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West Bengal state Congress president Adhir Chowdhury today mocked Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee's statement on the ban on NDTV India alleging that assault on journalists by goons of her party were a regular affair in West Bengal.

"We all have protested against the ban on NDTV. But the West Bengal government has started this practice long back such as stopping of government advertisements if newspapers and channels don't sing paeans of the government. Along with this goes assault on the journalists. So when our Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee protests against it, we feel surprised," Chowdhury said.

The Chief Minister yesterday criticised the central government for putting a one day ban on Hindi channel NDTV India and said it showed that an "emergency-like situation" prevailed in the country.

"NDTV ban is shocking. If Government had issues with Pathankot coverage, there are provisions available. But ban shows an Emergency-like attitude," Banerjee had said in a statement.

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A local court today convicted Bollywood actor Aditya Pancholi and sentenced him to one-year imprisonment for assaulting his neighbour.

"The local magistrate's court at suburban Andheri has convicted Pancholi for assaulting and criminal intimidation", a senior police official said.

The Magistrate Amitabh Panchbhai after convicting Pancholi released him on the bail of Rs 12,000.

According to police, Pancholi hit his neighbour Pratik Pasrani and reportedly fractured his nose at their building in 2005.

The police had said that Pancholi's guest had parked his vehicle at the space earmarked for Pasrani at 'Magnum Opus' Apartments in suburban Versova.

Pasrani objected to it and asked the security staff to clear the vehicle following which an altercation broke between the duo and the actor assaulted Pasrani, they had said.

The police initially registered a non-cognizable case but the medical examination revealed that Pasrani's nose was broken, so the police registered a case of grievous hurt and criminal intimidation.

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A 21-year-old student of Amity University here allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself at his hostel room, police said today.

G Sai Krishna, a native of Telangana, was a first year student of post graduate diploma in facilities management and had joined the course recently, a senior police officer said.

He allegedly hanged himself last evening. He has left a note written in Telugu, addressed to his parents. The hostel was empty at that time as other students had gone for Diwali holidays, SHO of Sector 39 Police Station, Amarnath Yadav, said.

Krishna was rushed to a hospital, where he was declared brought dead, the SHO said.

A few days back, Krishna was scolded by his father regarding his studies and also for borrowing money from someone and not being able to pay it back, he said.

Krishna's father is an advocate. In his note, Krishna wrote that committing suicide is not easy and told his parents that they have done a lot for him, Yadav said.

The body has been handed over to his family after post-mortem, police said.

In August, a student of BA-LLB course in the university, had allegedly committed suicide at his residence in Delhi.

The deceased, who was the son of a joint secretary-level official in the Rajya Sabha Secretariat, was debarred from appearing in the sixth semester exams in May due to "shortage of attendance".

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Amity University spokesperson Savita Mehta said, "We are cooperating with police in investigation. We have set up a counselling centre for students who need help."



"Psychologist is also available to help the students to come out of depression," the spokesperson said.
Egyptian Army today killed 11 terrorists in the North Sinai cities of Al-Arish and Sheikh Zwayed and destroyed four tunnels used by militants, officials said.

Eight militants were killed in exchange of fire with army in Shiekh Zwayed city, while three others were killed in Al-Arish city, military spokesperson Brigadier General Mohamed Samir said in a statement.

He said that four tunnels used by militants to hide from the army were also discovered and destroyed.

The army operations are part of the retaliation campaign launched by the army to avenge the last month attack that killed 12 soldiers in North Sinai.

Today's operation came a day after a terrorist attack targeted a senior army officer and killed him in the restive city of Al-Arish.

Senior officer Hisham Mohamed Mahmoud was killed yesterday after three gunmen opened fire on him in front of his house after the Friday prayer, Samir said.

Last month, unknown gunmen assassinated another senior army officer; Brigadier General Abdel Raga'e; near his house in Obour City, about 35 kilometers north-east of Cairo.

Egypt has witnessed a series of terrorist attacks which targeted policemen, judges and military personnel in different parts of the country.

Since the 2011 revolution that topped ex-president Hosni Mubarak, North Sinai, which is the base of a number of extremist outlaw groups, has witnessed a number of terror attacks.

The attacks increased after the ouster of Islamist ex-president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 following massive protests against his rule.

Over 700 security personnel have been reported killed since then.

The military has launched security campaigns in the area, arrested suspects and demolished houses that belong to terrorists, including those facilitating tunnels leading to the Gaza Strip.

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Assam Public Service Commission Chairman Rakesh Kumar Paul, who was arrested on charges of corruption in the organisation, was today remanded in 14 days police custody by a special court.

Police had sought 14-day custody of Paul.

The special judge also directed that Paul be provided food, medical care and medicines.

Slogan shouting members of Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS), which has been agitating against the alleged corruption in APSC along with many civil society organisations, demonstrated in front of the court.

The Lawyers Association here and KMSS also submitted petitions to the court that Paul should not be granted bail under any circumstances.

The APSC has been embroiled in controversies for quite some time over alleged corruption in the selection and appointment process in various services including Assam Police Service and Assam Civil Service.

(Reopens LGC1)



The Lawyers association and KMSS leaders claimed



before waiting journalists that enquiry should be made as to how Paul, a Notary, was appointed to the high post of the APSC's Chairman.

According to Investigating Officer - Dibrugarh district Additional Superintendent of Police Surjit Singh Paneshar - on October 27 Dibrugarh Town Planning engineer Naba Kanta Patir was arrested based on a complaint filed by a dental surgeon he had promised to be given a job through the APSC for a bribe of Rs ten lakh.

Based on Patir's statement during interrogation, personal security officer Mabud Ali Choudhury of APSC Member Samedur Rehman was arrested the next day, Paneshar said.

Interrogation of Patir and Rehman and phone conversations about money transactions between Patir and the APSC Chairman allegedly indicated evidences about a big racket, the police official said.

Paul was picked up from his office around 5 pm yesterday and taken to the 4th Assam Police Battalion (APBN) at Kahilipara here for interrogation prior to his arrest, the Additional SP said.

Paul was arrested under various sections of IPC for APSC related corruption issues, Paneshar said.

APSC has been mired in controversies with allegations of corruption in selection and appointment of Assam Civil Service (ACS), Assam Police Sercive (APS), Education Service, allied services and all gazetted posts for exchange of hefty amounts of money.

Various organisations, including Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti and the influencial All Assam Students' Union, have been attacking Paul.

Under pressure of the opposition and a section of Congress colleagues, former Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi in July last year had set up of an inquiry commission headed by a retired judge to probe the alleged irregularities in state civil services examinations and recruitment.

A month before that, the Assam government had ordered a probe by an Additional Chief Secretary into the alleged irregularities in results of civil services examinations after receiving five specific complaints from examinees.

The opposition-turned-ruling alliance, comprising BJP, AGP and BPF, has been under pressure to take strict action against Paul and clean up the APSC since it assumed office in May this year.
Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu today called on Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in New Delhi and had a detailed discussion on all issues of the state.

Discussing on various issues confronting the state, Khandu submitted a detailed memorandum inviting attention to various development aspects of the state and the coordinated support required from the central government.

The memorandum included development issues, pay commission, infrastructure development apart from financial liabilities, an official communique informed.

Khandu informed Jaitley that the present government has inherited huge liabilities of previous several years.

He said the situation has been further aggravated by the fact that several schemes of the Government of India now stood delinked, the burden of implementation of which has fallen upon the state government.

Giving a patient hearing for half an hour, the Finance Minister was considerate about the issues of Arunachal and assured full support.

While extending his gratitude to Jaitley for sanctioning National Film Institute for the state, Khandu invited him to lay the foundation stone of the prestigious institution.

Jaitley is likely to visit for the same after the Parliament session, the release added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A thick shroud of menacing grey haze blanketed the national capital today as pollution level breached the safe limit by over 17 times at places, prompting Chief Minister Arvind Kerjriwal to describe Delhi as a "gas chamber" and seek the Centre's intervention.

Kejriwal appealed to people to minimise the use of private vehicles in view of the situation and switch to public transportation facilities.

The extent of pollution surpassed even the post-Diwali levels, while smog brought down visibility to around 200 metres across the city. Monitoring agencies recorded 'severe' quality air and advised people to avoid going outdoors.

Kejriwal told a press conference that the smog was mainly a product of raging farm fires in neighbouring Punjab and Haryana. Later, he raised the issue with Union Environment Minister Anil Dave in a meeting at the latter's residence.

While the 24-hour average of respirable pollutants PM 2.5 and PM 10 was 355 and 482 micrograms per cubic metre respectively, real-time figures were alarmingly high.

Anand Vihar, for instance, recorded PM 10 level at 1,711 micrograms per cubic metre at 2 PM -- around 17 times above the safe limit.

The safe limits of these ultrafine particles are 60 and 100 respectively. Even the level of gaseous pollutants like NO2 violated the prescribed standards for human inhalation as per real-time readings.

Lt Governor Najeeb Jung has also called for a high-level meeting on Monday to take stock of the immediate, short-term and long term measures, in which he invited Kejriwal, health minister Satyendar Jain, environment minister Imran Hussain, the Delhi Chief Secretary, and representatives of Police and the civic bodies.

Kejriwal said vehicle restriction measures like 'odd-even' scheme will not be able to bring down the smog as initial studies suggest that the "large-scale" influx of pollutant-laden smoke from Punjab and Haryana has aggravated the situation.

He said the Delhi government has very few methods at its disposal and the Centre needs to intervene.

"Pollution has increased to an extent that outdoors in Delhi are resembling a gas chamber. Prima facie the biggest reason seems to be burning of stubble in agricultural fields in Haryana and Punjab in huge quantity," Kejriwal told a press conference.

Shutting down of schools for a long time was not a feasible solution, he said, when asked about the decision of the civic bodies to keep schools run by it closed for a day in view of pollution.

Air Quality Index (AQI) of all the eight monitoring



stations of Centre's SAFAR blinked red, indicating severe levels of pollution. CPCB stations had severe AQI as well.

The Delhi High Court had last year observed that living in Delhi was akin to living in a "gas chamber" as it directed the Centre and the city government to present comprehensive action plans to combat it.

Meanwhile, Kejriwal pitched for providing alternatives and incentives to farmers so that they discard the traditional practice.

"The Centre can sit with the Chief Minister of these states and chalk out a solution. Few reports have put the volume of stubble being burned at around 16-20 million tonnes.

"Fireworks during Diwali marginally added to the pollution. But other things inside Delhi did not drastically change. So the smog is mainly due to smoke from farm fires," he observed.

Kejriwal identified the main sources of pollution inside Delhi as vehicles, dust and waste burning, which he said could not be responsible for the pall of smog across the city.

"I saw smoke across Punjab, Haryana during my visits. We need Centre's help. We are hiring an agency in a week or two to study the sources of pollution in Delhi afresh," he said.
A senior RSS leader today said the alleged violence against its swayamsevaks in Kerala and Karnataka has risen out of ideological differences and intolerance.

Noting that Sangh ideology is something which is reflecting in the central government's performance, Hosabale said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a RSS background and is implementing thesame principles which RSS stands for.

"The violence that you see in Karnataka and Kerala against RSS workers is because of differences in ideology. The violence which is there is a part of public struggle and public life," RSS Joint General Secretary Dattatreya Hosabale told a gathering during ongoing the 'India Ideas Conclave 2016' organized by India Foundation in Goa today.

"They (violence) may remain for some more time as I said intolerance in some cases has led to this situation," he said.

"Every time Sangh has tried to have dialogue, unfortunately others have not responded properly," he felt.

Several swayamsevaks in Kerala and Karnataka have complained of the attacks against them.

Responding to a question, Hosabale said Sangh does not differentiate between men and women.

"Sangh always feels that besides the difference made by nature, there is no difference between men and women."



He said RSS has equal number of men and women.

"Sangh's view towards women is similar to that of Swami Vivekanand," Hosabale added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Mysterious banners appeared on Saturday in Pakistan appealing army chief General who is set to retire this month to contest elections.

The banners, put up on electricity poles in Rawalpindi, urged Sharif to contest the elections in 2018.

Since government officials cannot enter for at least two years after leaving service, the banners also urged that the mandatory period should be reduced in case of Sharif.

They claimed that the election of Sharif will end tensions between the military and the government.

It is not for the first time that banners have appeared in favour of the army chief. Previously also banners addressing him had urged him to "stay on" and asked the government to extend his tenure.

In July, posters were seen in Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi and several other major cities, urging the general to impose martial law instead of retiring.

The army has so far not commented on the banners.
Beijing plans to intervene in a Hong Kong political dispute over two young, newly elected separatist lawmakers in a rare move that is stoking fears the Chinese-ruled city's considerable autonomy and independent judiciary are under threat.

Hong Kong's government said yesterday that it was informed by China's central government that members of the country's top legislative panel, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, will discuss interpreting an article in Hong Kong's constitution covering oaths taken by lawmakers.

The move follows a provocative display of anti-China sentiment by the two lawmakers, Sixtus Leung and Yau Wai-ching, at their swearing-in ceremony last month.

Beijing's heavy-handed response could lead to the democratically elected Leung and Yau being disqualified from taking office.

Such an outcome would be favorable to China's Communist leaders, who are alarmed by the former British colony's burgeoning independence movement, but is also likely to plunge their troubled relationship into fresh turmoil.

Beijing has stepped in with its interpretation of the Basic Law the city's constitution on only four occasions, most recently in 2005.

The National People's Congress did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment.

China's official Xinhua Agency said senior lawmakers Friday heard a report on a draft "explanation" of the article on oath-taking and indicated it would be tabled for review during the current session that ends Monday.

Hong Kong's leader Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying told reporters he wouldn't comment until Beijing issued its ruling. Leung and Yau of the radical Youngspiration party altered their oaths to insert a disparaging Japanese term for China.

Displaying a flag reading "Hong Kong is not China," they vowed to defend the "Hong Kong nation." Leung crossed his fingers while Yau used the F-word in her pledge.

Their oaths were ruled invalid but attempts at a do-over have resulted in mayhem in the legislature's weekly sessions, as the duo and fellow pro-democracy lawmakers sparred verbally with pro-Beijing rivals and brawled with security guards trying to keep them out of the chamber.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Launching BJP's poll campaign for Uttar Pradesh, its chief Amit Shah today played up the surgical strikes and attacked Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi over OROP, questioning why none of the previous governments led by his family members had implemented it for decades.

Sending out a message to Pakistan, he said, "Yeh Manmohan Singh sarkar nahi hai. Yeh Narendra Modi ki sarkar hai. Hum eent ka jawab pathar se denge. Goli ka jawab gole se denge. (This is not Manmohan Singh government. This is Narendra Modi government. We will give a befitting reply to any aggression (by Pakistan)."



His comments came against the backdrop of surgical strikes carried out by Indian army against terror launch pads across the LoC in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir on September 29.

Shah criticised Rahul Gandhi for his comments after surgical strikes that the Prime Minister was doing 'khoon ki dalali' (using blood of soldiers for political gains).

He also attacked Rahul for his activism on 'One Rank, One Pension' (OROP), saying, "he seems to have forgotten that the issue is very old. There were governments headed by Indira Gandhi, there was government headed by your father (Rajiv Gandhi) and for 10 years there was government of UPA with Sonia Gandhi at the helm. Where were you then? Why was OROP not implemented then?



Referring to protests by Rahul recently, Shah said, "It is very shameful that vote politics is being done on the suicide of an ex-serviceman to mislead the people."



He added that the people will not get influenced as they know the reality and servicemen know that it is the Modi government which has given them OROP.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bodies of two men, missing for over 10 hours, have been found in a mango grove at Dhubulia in Nadia district triggering mob protest in the area.

Bodies of Islam Shaikh (50) and his son-in-law Nekchhaddi (39) were found lying in the wooded spot yesterday triggering agitation by locals who prevented the police from recovering the bodies , police said.

The duo had been reported missing for about 10 hours, the kith and kins obstructed police to recover the bodies demanding sniffer dog be brought to the place.

Police brought the dog at around 10.30 am and the bodies were taken for post-mortem.

One of the deceased Islam had murder case pending against him, a police source said.

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Canadian Immigration Minister John McCallum today visited low-cost handset maker DataWind Innovations' manufacturing facility here.

McCallum, who visited the DataWind facility, said ,"My mission to India is an ideal opportunity for us to share knowledge and expertise in key areas, including technology and education.

"We are proud that Canada-based company DataWind has become India's largest tablet player and is contributing immensely in the field of education by offering rich content to the Indian student community."



"Their reach and focus on creating access to education and quality content will help in lifting the education sector in India. I am happy to visit DataWind's facility in Amritsar, the divine city of Golden Temple," the Minister said.

Speaking on the occasion, Suneet Singh Tuli, President and CEO, DataWind Inc said, "..I am sure this visit of the Minister would strengthen ties between India and Canada. We would come closer to meeting the objective of bridging the digital divide.."



On the occasion, DataWind signed two MoUs -- one with A K Education Pvt. Ltd and the other with Carleton University -- in the presence of the Canadian Minister.

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Pune police today registered a case against two researchers for allegedly siphoning off a grant of about Rs 9 lakh given by the Union Ministry of Agriculture.

The two were identified as Anita Deshmukh and Anand Karandikar, who were directors and research scientists of 'Institute of Relevant Research'. They have not been arrested.

A case was registered under sections 409 (criminal breach of trust) and 34 (common intention) of IPC.

The complaint was lodged by Purushottam Rajani, an official from Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India, at Chatushringi police station here.

Between 1996 and 1999, Deshmukh and Karandikar had received a grant of Rs 8.95 lakh.

"The purpose of the grant was to do research on technology and invention of new varieties of mango and grapes so that farmers can benefit, however, as per the complaint, both the suspects breached the agreement and embezzled Rs 8.95 lakh given to them," said a police officer.

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The Centre will soon come up with a single window clearance facility to accord speedy approval for construction of buildings with a maximum time limit of 60 days, Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu said here today.

He said seven of the Cabinet ministers, including himself, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan and Environment Minister Anil Dave, had met eight times on this subject.

"We will be having a final meeting with the Prime Minister shortly that will ensure ease of approval for construction of buildings," he told reporters on the sidelines of a conference by the Builders Association of India here.

He said the plan is to speed up the process to ensure transparency, avoid delay and corruption.

The government has fixed a timeframe of completing the entire process by 60 days so that approvals are given speedily and middlemen are avoided.

"By the end of this year, we will be coming out with an ease of approval (framework) and fix the timeframe. That is the major issue for builders and even for individual citizens also. We are working on that. It is at an advanced stage," he said.

Earlier, for example, if one were to construct a building in Virudhu Nagar municipality (in Sivakasi), one had to go to Delhi for approvals. "Now, we are trying to see whether the powers can be given to the state government. The state has to take steps... I cannot watch everything from Delhi. Delay, corruption and harassment will be avoided," he said.

To a query on real estate rules and regulations, the minister said the notification was issued for Union Territories and urged state governments to implement the same.

"Only last month, real estate rules and regulations were notified for the Union Territories. I urge state governments to notify the rules," he said.

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China has cancelled a top-level bilateral meeting with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, the government in Bratislava said, in a move seen as a snub after the EU country's president met the Dalai Lama.

Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang met 16 counterparts from across central and eastern Europe in Lativa's capital Riga yesterday for talks focused mainly on developing trade.

The Chinese leader had been scheduled to hold a bilateral meeting with Fico yesterday, who is also steering Slovakia's six-month rotating presidency of the European Union until the end of December.

"The Chinese side cancelled the bilateral meeting with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, scheduled ahead of today's summit," the Slovak government was quoted as saying by the local SITA newswire.

Leftist Fico moved quickly to mend fences with Beijing, telling reporters in Riga he had invited the Chinese Prime Minister to visit Slovakia.

"I regret that instead of adding energy to further projects with China, we must repair the damage that has been inflicted," said Fico, quoted by SITA.

He told reporters in October that President Andrej Kiska's move to meet the Dalai Lama had "clearly damaged Slovak-Chinese relations".

Kiska, a millionaire businessman and philanthropist turned liberal politician, met privately with the Tibetan spiritual leader on October 16 in Bratislava.

Beijing accuses the Dalai Lama of supporting separatism and violence in Tibet, a region it has ruled since 1951.

The Dalai Lama fled to India after a failed uprising in 1959, but is still revered by many Tibetans in China and beyond.

The Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry vowed that Beijing would react against Slovakia for the meeting, criticising Kiska for ignoring China's "strong opposition" to the move, which it insisted undermined Slovakia's promise to support the "one-China" policy.

Bilateral trade relations between eurozone member Slovakia and China tallied at more than six billion euros ($6.7 billion) in annual turnover last year, according to the Slovak Economy Ministry.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
on Saturday alleged that Hillary Clinton is the "most corrupt person ever" to contest for US presidency and said her election to the White House would trigger an unmatched constitutional crisis in the US.

At his maiden stint at the Republican Party's weekly address to the nation, Trump said the time has come "to close the history books on the Clintons, and open a bright new chapter focussed on the great citizens of our country."

The controversial real-estate tycoon was referring to Hillary and her husband and former US president Bill Clinton.

"Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency of the United States, and if she were to win it would create a constitutional crisis like no other. She's under multiple federal investigations, has committed many crimes, including perjury, and she's now facing the prospect of a federal indictment," Trump said.

He addressed his plans to steer the US in a new direction from what he alleged was a failed leadership of the last eight years of Barack Obama, in the first term of whose presidency the Democratic nominee served as the secretary of state.

He asked the American people to elect Republicans "up and down the ticket" to make that "new direction" possible.

"I'm asking for your vote and your help in electing a Republican majority in Congress, so that we can finally change this broken system and make America great again," he said.

"It's a once in a lifetime chance to take our government back from the donors and the special interests, and return the power to you, the American people," he said.

Trump said 15 days ago, he proposed a a 100-day action plan with the American voter to bring change.

"We need change so badly. If we win on November 8, and elect a Republican House and Senate, we can finally deliver the change the American people deserve," he said.

"My Contract includes a plan to create 25 million new jobs. We will cut taxes on the middle class Americans by 35 percent, and we will repeal and replace the total disaster known as ObamaCare - it doesn't work," he said.

A Trump administration will immediately fix the "terrible trade deals" and stop the jobs from leaving the country.

"My Contract includes a pledge to end illegal immigration, and end it rapidly, cancel federal funding for sanctuary cities, and suspend the admission of Syrian refugees into our country. They're coming in by the thousands, and Hillary Clinton wants to increase that by 600 per cent," he said.

"We will rebuild our badly depleted military, and take care of our great, great veterans," Trump said.

"We will undertake a national effort to reduce crime and poverty, and bring jobs and safety to our inner cities - finally, at last," he said.
Congress today restructured its North-East coordination committee with Meghalaya chief minister Mukul Sangma as convener as part of attempts to retain hold in the region, which, the party alleged, is being "actively destabilised" by BJP.

Announcing the Committee, Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said the committee has been set up to protect the inclusive character of the north-east region as BJP and RSS have made "insidious attempts" to communally polarise it.

"In order to protect the very inclusive character of North Eastern India, in order to preserve its unity and diversity, the Congress President and Congress Vice President have reconstituted the North East Co-ordination Committee," he told reporters.

He was flanked by Sangma, former Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Nabam Tuki and AICC Secretary incharge Jai Kumar.

The North East Congress Coordination Committee will have Lal Thawala, chief minister of Mizoram, Okram Ibobi Singh, chief minister of Manipur, D D Lapung, Meghalaya PCC chief, besides state Congress chiefs of Assam, Manipur, Tripura, Nagaland, Arunachal and Sikkim as its members.

Former Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi and former chief ministers of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Manipur are permanent invitees to the committee.

Tewari said "in the past 28 months, one thing has become very evident that both the BJP and the Central Government have been working overtime to destabilize North Eastern India.

"Their inability to manage the larger geo-strategic environment, has resulted in repeated intrusions by Chinese into Arunachal Pradesh," he said, adding that there was a major intrusion in June 2016, another intrusion in Sept 2016 and two days ago in Demchok in Ladakh where there is stand-off between PLA and Indian Army over construction of an Irrigation Canal under MNREGA Scheme.

"In addition to that, there is the whole spectre of internal subversion, the repeated destabilization of elected Congress Government notwithstanding, very severe strictures which were passed by none other than the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India.

"Coupled with that, you have this very insidious attempt by the RSS and the BJP to try and communally polarize the North Eastern part of India. The statement by one of the Assam Ministers, who is part of the purported North East Democratic Alliance, is reprehensible, is shameful and deserves to be condemned in the strongest possible terms," he said.

Sangma said the platform will look at issues in North East, bring leaders onto one platform and "ensure that we protect the region from agendas which are detrimental".

"We look forward to serving the people, because our mandate is to carry forwardagendas which are in sync with the aspirations of the people," he said.

BJP recently formed a North-East Democratic Alliance headed by Himanta Biswa Sarma, a former Congressman who is seen as number two in the new BJP government in Assam.

Tuki said there are various issues with the present



government, like non-release of funds as per the Finance Commission to the states and curtailment of many of the major infrastructural development funds.

"Instead of strengthening the Look East Policy, Central government has been withdrawing all powers and development policies," he alleged, adding that the Forum would raise all these issues with the Centre.

Sangma said North East India has its own inherent complexities and it is important for leaders who are familiar with them to deal with the issues there.

"There is no other party apart from the Congress whose leaders have been able to create great change in NE India," he said. It is their responsibility to look at issues of the North East and to address them in the right perspective by bringing in leaders on to one platform, he added.

"The focus will be to also insulate the region from the various other agendas which is going to be the in interest of the Region and the country as a whole," he said.

Referring to Tewari's statements, the Meghalaya chief minister said it will be the endeavour of Congress leaders to come together and address these concerns in the North-East.

"Coming together of all these leaders under this platform definitely will benefit our region as a whole. We look towards the people because the mandate for any political party is to carry forward the agenda which is aligned with the aspirations and the expectations of the people," he said.

Former Arunachal chief minister Nabam Tuki said the restructured body will unite the North East as one family and strengthen the Congress at the grassroots besides bringing co-ordination among all states in the region.

"This will bring together all the other organisations on common platform to resolve the issues," he said.

"We have various issues with present government including the non-release of our rightful grants-in-aid as well as Finance Commission's money to the states. They have curtailed all the important projects and have also withdrawn our North East Industrial Investment Policy which was granted by the UPA-I Government," Tuki said.

While CLP leaders in Assam and Tripura, Debabrata Saikia and Gopal Rao are its members, former Arunachal chief ministers P Khandu Thungan, Mukut Mithi, former Meghalaya CM S C Marak, former Assam CMs Tarun Gogoi and Bhumidhar Barman, former Manipur CM Rishang Keishing and former Nagaland CM K L Tishi are permanent invitees to the committee.
Former Himachal Pradesh chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal today alleged that Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and his party leaders were shedding "crocodile tears" on the OROP issue.

"The Congress party did not do anything in its 40-year rule to resolve the issue and was now trying to mislead people. It is politicising the sensitive issue to get political mileage," he alleged in a statement.

Dhumal claimed the OROP issue was first raised by him in the Lok Sabha in 1990.

"Congress leaders misled ex-servicemen on this issue by making false promises. But when the demand started gaining momentum in 2013, the then UPA government made a provision of only Rs 500 crore and played with the sentiments of ex-soldiers," he alleged.

"It was Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi who called the shots and then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh failed to do anything for ex-servicemen during UPA's 10-year rule," Dhumal said.

He asked ex-servicemen to remain "vigilant against the sinister designs of the Congress".

"Ex-servicemen should not forget that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government had already released Rs 5,500 crore for implementing OROP and more funds would be released to ensure that every ex-soldier benefits," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Opposition Congress today said it will table a breach of privilege motion against the BJP-led Maharashtra Government during the Winter Session of the state legislature which will begin in Nagpur from December 5.

Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil said during the Budget session in March this year, the then Revenue Minister Eknath Khadse had announced that the financial compensation for the kin of farmers who committed suicide will be increased from Rs one lakh to Rs five lakh.

"He had said the decision will be taken and implemented soon," Patil said.

However, as per a response to an RTI query, such a proposal was never under consideration of the government, the Congress leader claimed.

"The government is insensitive towards the farmers and only makes tall promises," Patil said, adding that his party would table a breach of privilege notice on the issue in the coming session.

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Though the Centre is open for discussion to end Left Wing Extremism, there is no consensus among Maoist leaders for talks under the framework of the Constitution, Senior Security Adviser in Ministry of Home Affairs K Vijay Kumar said.

Kumar said this after meeting Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik here, in the aftermath of the October 24 Malkangiri encounter where 28 rebels were gunned down by security personnel.

Kumar, however, said his meeting with the Odisha Chief Minister was not part of an exercise to take stock of the situation in the wake of threat issued by the Maoist groups to take revenge for the October 24 encounter.

"It has been a long time since a courtesy visit was pending to meet Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. Since I was busy with Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand this meeting got delayed," he said.

Kumar said the Home Ministry has always asked them (Maoists) to shun violence, lay down arms and come for discussion to resolve the issue.

"Some top leaders have also agreed for discussion. But they could never come to consensus for the talks. We are still open to talks on LWE issues," Kumar said adding that innocent people are killed by Maoists after being branded as betrayers or police informers.

"Whenever we are successful in any operation, they term it stage managed or fake encounter. But what about our people being killed by them and the innocent public they kill terming as betrayers or police informers," Kumar asked.

Replying a question on the recent Malkangiri encounter incident, Kumar said, "The number of Maoists have been reduced in Malkangiri area. Therefore they are working along with Vishakhapatnam camps.

He said the recent operations by Odisha police and Andhrap Pradesh Greyhounds was a result of great co-ordination.

As the Maoists continue violence in Kalahandi district and some other places, Kumar said anti-Maoist operations is the mission and duty of the security personnel.

(Reopens CAL3)



He said, "We have been legally provided with arms to tackle them which we won't use recklessly. But they do not have legal, moral or ethical rights to use arms. Their revengeful doctrine is condemnable.

"But our approach is different. We are doing anti-Maoist operation for safety and security of the people. We are constitutionally doing it. Sometimes mistakes can happen from our side. But is it up to you to decide which side is correct," he said.

Replying to the construction of the Gurupriya bridge in the cut-off area of Chitrakonda block in Malkangiri district which has been inordinately delayed, Kumar said the project has been going on for quite some time.

As there has been a cost escalation, the state government is having regular correspondence with the Centre demanding more financial assistance for timely completion of the bridge. "Since you have raised this point, I will take up the matter with the Home ministry," he said.

Kumar had last visited Odisha on 23 July, 2014 after Red Rebel Sabyasachi panda was arrested by Odisha Police.

Police sources said Kumar is scheduled to have a meeting with the senior officers of CRPF and Odisha Police to review the Maoist activities and anti-Maoist operations in the state.

Meanwhile, Director General, CRPF, K Durga Prasad is scheduled to arrive in the state later in the day.
Rubbishing opposition's charge that the Modi government is interfering in Shariat matters, Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi today welcomed the ongoing debate on triple talaq and Uniform Civil Code, saying discussion is a sign of healthy democracy.

"The Modi government has not been interfering in religious or Shariat matters. Some people are spreading this misconception for their narrow political gains. They are trying to divert the attention from the government's agenda of development for all, including minorities," he said.

Noting that there is nothing wrong with the ongoing debate, the Union MoS for Minority Affairs said, "There should be a positive discussion on triple talaq and Uniform Civil Code. Debate and discussion are important part of any democracy. National consensus should be achieved through national debate."



Addressing a "Progress Panchayat" at Jagatpur Patti village near Jaspur in Uttarakhand's Udham Singh Nagar district, he claimed many political parties are accusing the Narendra Modi government of interfering in religious and Shariat matters as part of a "negative propaganda" against the Centre.

"Development agenda alone can defeat people and parties with such negative agendas," the Union Minister said and claimed that "masters of corruption" are unable to digest a "corruption-free, development oriented governance" provided by the Prime Minister.

Modi had succeeded in providing clean, honest and transparent governance which has resulted in socio-economic empowerment of the poor, weaker sections and the minorities at the ground level, Naqvi claimed.

He said 'Progress Panchayat' has nothing to do with votes, but it is a "draft of development".

The Union minister said the objective of 'Progress Panchayat', launched on September 29 from Mewat in Haryana, is to ensure that the benefits of Centre's schemes reach the targeted beneficiaries and get to a feedback on the hurdles in implementation of the schemes at the ground level.

Observing that preparing policies and schemes on paper is not enough, Naqvi said, "We have to make sure that these schemes, aimed at welfare of the needy, are producing results on the ground."



"The ministry should go to people, listen to their problems and resolve those. Then only we will be able to provide the fruits of development to the last person of the society," he said.

Naqvi also said the minority affairs ministry has been working on different strategies for the welfare of Muslim community.

These include protection and development of waqf properties, free those from the clutches of 'waqf mafias' and establishing a one-man Board of Adjudication at Central-level to deal with complaints regarding waqf properties, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Lake Hallies referendum on Tuesday offers voters a unique choice. They will be asked to approve money to add a specific position with the village police department.

If approved, the referendum allows the village to increase the village tax levy by $85,000 each year to pay for a full-time detectives position. The money goes toward wages, benefits, uniforms and equipment for the position.

We could have used a person who was earmarked for investigation years and years ago, Police Chief Cal Smokowicz said. We need it as far as Im concerned.

Village Board President Wayne Walkoviak agreed.

Its about time we start thinking of a detective, he said, noting the village is growing.

The department currently has eight full-time and eight part-time officers. Right now, they do investigations as needed.

Smokowicz said a detective positions would free up department patrol officers to do patrol work and keep department squad cars in the village limits.

A detective would also allow the village to have someone who could work with neighboring municipalities on investigations, something that hasnt happened a lot because of time constraints.

For years, neighboring departments helped Lake Hallie with investigations. That practice has ended.

We have borrowed from our neighbors a lot, Smokowicz said.

Under the current system, an officer goes out on a call, makes a report and often is called elsewhere.

The detective would do legwork on cases with the goal of shortening the time it takes to resolve them.

Its possible the detective could spend a significant amount of time behind a computer, Smokowicz said, going through and examining data.

He thinks specialists are needed in most fields, including law enforcement.

You dont hire one guy and he builds your entire home, he said.
Defence and security relations will be an important part of bilateral talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his British counterpart Theresa May in New Delhi on Monday as the two leaders will cover the "breadth" of ties during their dialogue, including economic and trade relations and counter-terrorism issues.

The two leaders will discuss the breadth of India-UK relations during their working lunch at Hyderabad House on Monday afternoon, May's official spokesperson told reporters at Downing Street here.

"It will not be about how many deals are signed or that kind of transactional visit but more about the depth of the ties and working towards creating more jobs and growth in both countries. Defence and security will be an important part of the bilateral discussions. We are keen to develop that partnership and see how we can put in more energy and enthusiasm into that," she said.

"Why the Prime Minister is going to India for her first bilateral visit outside Europe, and her first trade delegation, is because India matters to us - now more than ever. In the context of Britain leaving the European Union (EU), the aim is two-fold - to build on the groundwork already done to bring down trade barriers and deepen the UK's relationships outside the EU," she noted.

In reference to discussions on a potential India-UK free trade agreement (FTA), the spokesperson stressed that the UK would not be pursuing a bilateral trade deal with India while it remains a member of the EU.

"We will continue to support the India-EU FTA, respecting our rights and obligations within the EU," she said.

While there has been wide speculation over a potential India-UK FTA, Britain remains inhibited from openly pursuing bilateral trade negotiations until Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty triggers the official process of Brexit.

May lands in New Delhi tomorrow evening and will begin her visit by opening the India-UK Tech Summit on Monday morning alongside Modi.

Following her bilateral talks with Modi, both leaders will issue a joint statement.

While in New Delhi, she is also expected to visit the Gandhi Smriti and War Memorial at India Gate.

On Tuesday, she will leave for Bengaluru, where she has a series of business engagements as well as an address to a tech summit.

The British premier will be accompanied by 40 small and medium enterprise (SME) representatives from across the UK, many of whom are on the lookout for a foothold in India.

The recent tightening of the Tier 2 intra-company transfer (ICT) visas, expected to hit Indian IT companies the hardest, is expected to be on the agenda from the Indian side.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Questioning the dubbing of those demanding a probe into the jailbreak by eight SIMI activists and their killing in Madhya Pradesh as anti-national, former Union Minister P Chidambaram today said they only wanted to clear some doubts and none supported the escaped prisoners.

"The incident has led to some doubts and to clear such doubts if a demand was made for a probe, and if you dub the plea for a probe as anti-national, what does it mean? " he asked.

If police had arrested them alive, it would have led to unravelling of how they escaped and with whose support, the former Union Home Minister told reporters.

"No one is speaking in support of the escaped prisoners. Had they arrested the escapees alive, it would have been known how they made good their escape and with whose support," he said.

The eight SIMI activists were killed in an alleged encounter with police on the outskirts of Bhopal on October 31, hours after they escaped from the high-security Bhopal Central Jail killing a security guard.

Chidambaram pointed out that over the past four days, the Madhya Pradesh government had announced "five different inquiries" on the incident and had now finally said a retired judge would probe it.

"A probe has been announced at last. Why could not the government have done it on day one?"



He said only after much persuasion had the government government come forward for a judicial probe.

"No one can deny that those who had escaped were undertrial prisoners who faced serious charges and that they murdered a head constable. But is it possible or not to arrest those who had escaped?



"Is it a true or fake encounter? This is a controversial issue. Some videos have surfaced, some villagers who witnessed it have spoken. What is the truth and what is not should be known ... Is it not?," he asked.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a shocking incident, a 60-year-old Endosulfan victim from a panchayat in Kerala's northernmost Kasaragod district ended her life by hanging as she was allegedly unable to meet her growing medical expenses.

Endosulfan, a pesticide, had been sprayed on cashew plantations of Kasaragod several years ago, contaminatingsoil and water and causing health hazards to people in the district.

The incident happened yesterday when Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan was in the district attending a function.

Rajeevi, a housewife, was living in the abject poverty in Bellur panchayat and needed about Rs 2,000 every week for medical expenses, which the family found difficult to raise.

One of her son's said their mother had various complications due to Endosulfan and was also a heart patient.

Both her sons, who do odd jobs for a living, have their own families to take care of.

One of the woman's neighbours Shashidar said "we are in a state of shock. She had said she needed about Rs 2000 every week for medicines and was finding it difficult."



Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala said the government should immediately release Rs 10 lakh as compensation to the family.

"A woman victim of endosulfan, who was finding it difficult to raise money for her treatment,has ended her life. The Chief minister, despite being in Kasaragod, did not visit the family. This was a serious lapse," he said.

KPCC President V M Sudheeran demanded that the CM call a high level meeting to discuss issues relating toEndosulfan victims.

Ambalthara Kunhikrishnan,who works for Endosulfan victims in the district, said the woman was not getting medicines and she had taken the extreme step due to financial constraints.

"There are five MLAs from Kasaragod. They have a responsibility towards those suffering from the after effects of the poisonous pesticide to get them aid", he said.

Local MLA M A Nellikunnu said Rajeevi ended her life yesterday at 3 PM when the ChiefMinister was in the district. However, he did not visit the heartbroken family to console them, he said.

Kasaragod District Collector Jeevan Babu said the woman was getting a monthly pension of Rs 1,200 and was entitled to free medical treatment. The reason for extreme step was yet to be ascertained. There are about 5,700 people in the endosulfan victims' list, he told PTI.

The National Human Rights commission had also earlier this year issued notice to the state government over reported denial of relief to victims of Endosulfan.

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Actor Matt Smith, who was cast in "Doctor Who" lead role, says he was not the most popular pick when he first won the role and people "hated" him.

The actor was just just 26 when he joined the show and became the youngest person ever to play the part, reported Digital Spy.

"When I first got the job all people would do was shout at me, 'Don't break Doctor Who!' I was too young and everyone hated me," Smith said.

However, his stint as 'The Doctor' ended up being a very successful one.

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A 41-year-old ex-serviceman was today arrested for allegedly repeatedly raping his teenage daughter, police said today.

The ex-serviceman currently works as a security guard with a bank. His second wife was also arrested for allegedly abetting the crime, Thane Police spokesperson Sukhada Narkar said in an official release.

The 17-year-old victim resided with her brother in Darbhanga district of Bihar. After death of their mother and as their elder sister got married, their father married another woman, the release said.

He along with second wife shifted to Thane. The victim on September 11 came to Thane and started living with the couple.

On October 1 at about 11.00 PM, her step-mother forced the girl to go to the room where her father was consuming alcohol. He forced her to drink alcohol and raped her in presence of his wife, said the release.

As per the release, after this, the ex-serviceman repeatedly raped his daughter on several occasions.

The mother asked the victim not to reveal her ordeal. The couple also locked the girl in the house and did not allow her to go out and even snatched her cell phone, it said.

The ex-serviceman also showed the victim "objectionable pictures" in his mobile and laptop and sexually abused her, the PRO added.

This morning at around 7.30, when her father had left for work and mother asleep, the victim managed to sneak out of the house and raised an alarm about the ordeal. She begged the neighbours to rescue her. However, her mother woke up and once again locked her in the house, said the release.

The victim once again raised an alarm by shouting from the balcony of the house when her mother had gone for a bath. Upon which, this time the neighbours rescued the girl and informed police.

Following a complaint, the duo were arrested by the Naupada police. A case under relevant sections of IPC and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act of 2012 was registered, it said, adding the girl was lodged at the rescue home.

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If upcoming Vatican-backed talks between Venezuela's bitterly antagonistic government and opposition fail, the result could well be "bloodshed," a papal envoy warned on Saturday.

"If one delegation or the other ends the dialogue, it's not the pope but the Venezuelan people who will lose, because the path then could truly be one of blood," Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli told the Argentine daily La Nacion in Rome, after visiting Caracas.

Both sides are due to start talks next Friday aimed at finding some way to resolve Venezuela's deepening political and economic crisis.

The stakes are high for their oil-dependent nation, which is suffering a scarcity of food and basic goods, and which its unpopular President Nicolas Maduro has increasingly put under the control of his loyal military.

The agreement to hold talks, jointly brokered by the Vatican and the Union of South American Nations, and backed by the United States, ushered in a short-lived truce between the government and the opposition.

The government released a few opposition members from prison. And the opposition called off a symbolic "trial" in congress against Maduro and a street protest.

But the prospects look less than promising, with the opposition demanding the release of more "political prisoners" that the talks will lead to early elections, and Maduro shooting back: "There can be no ultimatums."

There are fears a breakdown in the talks could see a return of street confrontations between anti-Maduro protesters and security forces, and possibly an escalation into outright violence.

"There are people who aren't afraid to see bloodshed. This is what worries me," Celli told the newspaper.

He said Pope Francis was playing a "strong role" in the talks.

"We are running a risk," he admitted. "We will see. May God help us."

Celli, who represented the Vatican in bringing about the talks, said he told the opposition he was afraid "there might be deaths" in a Caracas demonstration they had planned for last Thursday. "And if there are deaths, what sort of dialogue could there be?" he asked them.

The opposition eventually called off the protest.

Celli said that when he met Maduro, the leader said he would make good on a promise made to the pope to hold talks.
A French soldier deployed to an anti-Islamist force in Mali died overnight from injuries sustained in a mine blast, the presidency said today.

The man, a non-commissioned officer who was not identified by name, was wounded on Friday when his armoured vehicle struck a mine, it said.

French President Francois Hollande "hailed the sacrifice" of the man killed, the statement said.

French soldiers deployed to Mali in early 2013 to help drive back Islamist jihadists who had overrun parts of the west African country, a former French colony.

France's Operation Serval in Mali was later replaced by Operation Barkhane, a broader offensive against Islamist groups with some 3,000 French soldiers deployed in five African countries.

Eighteen French soldiers have been killed since the start of French operations in Mali, including three killed in April when their vehicle also struck a mine in the north.

Last month six French troops were wounded in a similar explosion.

Jihadists were driven back from Mali's main cities in the French-led operations but vast swathes of the country remain out of the control of Malian and foreign forces.

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The Indian consulate has agreed to a proposal for setting up a cultural centre here showcasing the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi.

Anurag Bhushan, India's Consul-General in Dubai, also expressed willingness to extend whatever help possible in this matter.

"The Centre will disseminate literature, artifact and khadi attire so that the younger generations get inspired by the Father of the Nation," Bhushan said.

"I am very happy to announce that we are going to work together to create a Gandhi Centre. This is a small step but I hope it becomes big as this is the first such initiative," he said.

Bhushan was addressing a gathering of the Indian community after installing a statue of Gandhi at the consulate premises to mark the 141stbirth anniversary of Sardar Patel.

"We first thought whether just a bust of Gandhi can inspire us. Then we agreed that we should have a Gandhi Centre here so that Gandhiji's values could be propagated," Bhushan said.

Speaking on the relevance of Gandhi today, Bhushan said that we celebrate peace in India as Gandhi decided on peace as a means to wage war.

"Gandhiji realised that political emancipation is meaningless unless it brought about economic transformation. This is where his greatness lies. It was not just the fact that he gave us a path for political independence, it was a path that was chosen afterward by great people like Ho Chi Min, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Aung Sang Su Kyi," said Bhushan.

"He also showed us a way of liberating ourselves from the tyranny of modern consumerism. He left us as better people, those who can truly appreciate the liberating power of peace. This is why every year and every place in the world we should celebrate Gandhiji," he said adding that by celebrating Gandhi we do not worship the man but the virtues inherent in him.

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Eight people, including two teachers, were robbed of gold ornaments and cash worth lakhs of rupees in two separate incidents here, police said today.

In Jajampatti village, bandits looted Rs 90,000, two gold chains and cell-phones at gunpoint from six pilgrims coming from Kota in Rajasthan, DSP (Goverdhan) Ajai Kumar said.

The incident took place near the Gopalpur curve under Magorra police station last night, police said, adding a FIR was lodged by one Krishna Mohan Bansal.

"The bandits, who were in a car, stopped the victims' vehicle near the curve by overtaking it. They were on their way to attend a discourse on Bhagwatam in Vrindavan," he said.

In a separate incident, two motorcycle-borne men looted a gold chain and cell-phones from two women teachers this morning in Dabdaba village, police said.

The incident took place near Anandvan Colony when the teachers were going to school on a scooty. The victims have lodged a case at the Highway police station, they said.

No arrests have been made in any of the incidents, police added.

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The war of words over the one-day ban on Hindi channel NDTV India by the Centre escalated today with I and B minister Venkaiah Naidu saying it was in the interest of "country's security" and the opposition asserting the action will lead to "second Emergency".

Naidu while denouncing references to the Emergency in the context of the order for blackout of the channel on November 9 over its coverage of Pathankot attack slammed the opposition parties for "politicisation" of such issues, noting that the Modi government has the highest regard for freedom of media.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and fellow JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav, DMK chief M Karunanidhi, BSP supremo Mayawati and RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav hit out at the Centre, calling the ban an "insult to freedom of expression" and demanded its withdrawal. The CPI(M) politburo said it showed the "authoritarian" attitude of the Modi government.

Justifying the government's decision, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said NDTV India appeared to have violated the guidelines issued by the Centre over live coverage of an anti-terror operation.

Addressing a press conference in Chennai, Naidu also slammed Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi for "talking about the dark days of Emergency".

"I was surprised, aghast. Some people talked of Emergency-like situation. The action was taken in the interest of the country's safety and security", he said, adding, "Politicisation of such issues will affect the safety and security of the country."



Listing out the names of some of the channels that were banned in the past, he said, "AXN was banned for two months. FTV was banned for two months. Enter10 for one day. ABN AndhraJyoti seven days. Al Jazeera was banned for five days for showing wrong map of India.

"These are all done earlier. Now they are saying it is done for the first time, murder of democracy, Emergency reminiscent and all," the Information and Broadcasting Minister noted.

Official sources gave details of "warnings" issued by the previous UPA regime against the NDTV group over telecast of some of its programmes.

"The Central government's decision to ban NDTV India is condemnable. The decision tantamounts to controlling the freedom of media. It is quite necessary to have a free and impartial media in a country like India," Nitish Kumar said in a statement in Patna.

At a conference in Lucknow, Mayawati accused the Modi government of throttling Freedom of Press.

"If the Central government continues with such activities, it will lead to a second Emergency and those black days will be etched in the minds of people," Karunanidhi said, adding the action reminded him of the Emergency days when his articles in party mouthpiece 'Murasoli' were 'banned' then.

Lalu Prasad said the government action is an attack on democracy. "Narendra Modi, BJP and RSS is taking country toward emergency and dictatorship", Lalu said while addressing Samajwadi Party(SP) celebrations in Lucknow.

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After NDTV India, the Government has ordered that an Assam-based channel be taken off air for a day for allegedly violating programming guidelines multiple times and another TV channel be taken off air for a week for alleged objectionable content.

An I&B ministry order dated November 2, has sought that the channel ' Time Assam', be taken off air on November 9, for a day.

The Ministry has also directed that another TV channel 'Care World TV channel' be taken off air for seven days from November 9 for alleged objectionable content.

The allegations against Time Assam is that the channel telecasted a programme which revealed the identity of a minor who had been brutally tortured while working as a domestic servant.

Observing that the visuals telecast by the channel appeared to compromise the privacy and dignity of the child while also exposing him to harm and stigma, a showcause notice was issued to the channel in October 2013.

Having listened to the channel's version, the Inter Ministerial Committee which looked into the matter felt that the channel may be taken off air for a day.

The order also lists two other cases of alleged violations by News Time Assam which were considered by the IMC. One of them related to telecast of gory visuals of dead bodies for which a recommendation was made to take off the channel for a day.

In another case the channel telecast a programme which allegedly appeared to defamatory towards to women and in bad taste. The IMC had asked the channel to run an apology scroll but since it did not comply, in this regard, taking it off air for a day was recommended.

The I&B ministry order, dated November 2, mentions all the three cases and says that the "IMC clarified that the TV channel can be allowed to carry out the three awards of one day off air concurrently."



Quoting rules under the Cable TV Networks (Regulation) Act, the ministry order said that the government "orders to prohibit the transmission or retransmission of News Time Assam TV channel for one day on any platform throughout India with effect from 00:01 hours on 9th November, 2016 till 00:01 hours on 10th November, 2016."



The Information and Broadcasting Ministry has also directed another TV channel 'Care World TV channel' be taken off air for seven days for alleged objectionable content.

It was alleged that the channel had put out indecent content after which IMC looked into the matter.

Based on its recommendations the Ministry issued the order. The Ministry in its order said the channel 'Care World TV channel' should be taken off air for a week from November 9.

NDTV India has also been ordered to be taken off air for a day on November 9 over its coverage of the Pathankot attack, which has resulted in a massive controversy.

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IRF Educational Trust, promoted by controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, has been put under prior permission category, thus preventing it from receiving foreign funds without getting nod from the central government.

In a gazette notification, the Home Ministry said that on the basis of records available and reports received from intelligence agencies, it found that the IRF Education Trust has violated various provisions of the Foreign Contribution Regulations Act (FCRA) 2010.

"Now, therefore, the central government in exercise of powers conferred by sub-section (3) of section 11 of the FCRA 2010, hereby specifies that the IRF Education Trust shall obtain prior permission of the central government on each occasion before accepting any foreign contribution in accordance with the provisions of section 12 of the Act and rules made thereunder," the notification said.

The move came after different investigations found Naik to be "involved" in utilising funds meant for his NGOs for alleged radicalisation of youths and "inspiring" them into terror activities, official sources said.

Government is also in the process of cancellation of the FCRA registration of Islamic Research Foundation, another NGO promoted Zakir Naik, and a final show cause notice to the organisation has already been issued.

Interestingly, the IRF's registration under the FCRA was renewed in September inadvertently despite multiple probes against Naik, leading to suspension of a Joint Secretary and four other officials in the Home Ministry.

Government is also planning to declare IRF as an unlawful association under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and a nod from the Union Cabinet is awaited for it.

According to a draft note, which is based on the inputs from Maharashtra Police, Naik, who heads the IRF and IRF Educational Trust, has allegedly made many provocative speeches and engaged in terror propaganda.

Maharashtra Police has also registered criminal cases against Naik for his alleged involvement in radicalisation of youths and luring them into terror activities, a source said.

Naik also transferred IRF's foreign funds to Peace TV for making "objectionable" programmes. Most of the programmes, which were made in India, contained alleged hate speeches of Naik, who had reportedly "urged all Muslims to be terrorists" through Peace TV, sources have claimed.

Naik came under the scanner of the security agencies after Bangladeshi newspaper 'Daily Star' reported that one of the perpetrators of the July 1 terror attack in Dhaka, Rohan Imtiaz, ran propaganda on Facebook last year quoting Naik.

The Islamic orator is banned in the UK and Canada for his hate speech aimed against other religions. He is among 16 banned Islamic scholars in Malaysia.

He had been popular in Bangladesh through his Peace TV, although his preachings often allegedly demean other religions and even other Muslim sects. The Mumbai-based preacher is currently abroad and has not returned to India ever since the controversy erupted.

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The proposed GST structure with "higher rates" has left "a lot to be desired" and there is a room for improvement in the multi-tier tax framework, former Finance Minister P Chidambaram said here today.

The senior Congress leader further said the government should announce "GST slab that will be acceptable in Parliament".

Fielding questions from students after a lecture on economic reforms at IIT Madras, he said, "It is too early for me to form an opinion. I want to see the fine-prints of the decision."



Quoting media reports, he said the government has decided on slabs like nil rate, 5, 12, 18 and 28 per cent and then a 'sin tax' of 60 per cent plus cesses.

"I think there is a room for improvement, I think there is a lot to be desired in that higher rates. I agree that initially we will have more than one rate. In fact, I said in Parliament that you must have a standard, standard minus and standard plus," he said, adding there will also be zero rate.

"...I can understand four rates, but I cannot understand six rates plus cesses...I think there is still a scope for improvement. But I have not come to a final view in the matter. I will take a final view after I study the matter more carefully," Chidambaram said.

Speaking to reporters later, he said in general the government was going on the path "we (Congress) had indicated in our Parliament debates, but my opinion is some corrections need to be made in this regard".

He said a five (slab) rate structure itself was high as the world over GST was one tax.

"Since GST is being introduced in India, I had said that there could be standard, standard minus and standard plus. If you include 0, that will make it (slab) four. Now four has become five and it looks it might go up to seven or eight. All these things should be reconsidered," the former Finance Minister said.

He further said the government does not appear to have taken a final decision.

"The next meeting is on November 24 and I feel they will reconsider these things in that meeting. The government should announce GST slab that will be acceptable in Parliament.

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American iconic bike maker today said it will roll out its financial services in India within next two months to offer easy loans to its customers.

The company's wholly-owned Indian subsidiary is in final stages of negotiations with bankers to launch the services in coming days.

"By this calendar year, we will be launching our financial services. It will be known as Harley Davidson Financial Services," India Managing Director Vikram Pawah told PTI.

The company is working with its "business partners" at the moment to offer the financial solutions in India, he added.

"Of our total sales, 50-60 per cent of bikes go out through finances. So, it is a huge number. We want to offer customised loans to people so that they can buy our products at their convenience," Pawah said.

At present, customers can avail loans from different banks and the company has association with HDFC and Yes Bank.

Talking about sales, Pawah said: "The market was little slow in the last couple of months due to overall macroeconomic issues. However, after GST comes into effect, it will improve again.

When asked about the company's sales performance, he said Harley-Davidson is expecting a "positive year" in 2016.

"Although in the last few months, sales were marginally down, we will close the year on a positive note. We hope to achieve high single-digit growth in India," he added.

Pawah said leisure biking in India is at nascent stage and the company will continue to invest in the country to build the market.

Harley-Davidson India today inaugurated its 23rd dealership in Guwahati, the first in north east, with an aim to have good growth in the region.

"The future is in Tier-II towns and the next phase of growth will happen in such smaller places. We will be rapidly expanding in other Tier-II cities as well in coming months," Pawah said.

Stating that north east will substantially contribute to its growth, he informed that the region already has around 100 owners of Harley-Davidson bikes, half of which are in and around Guwahati.

"The growth in north east will be at much higher pace than the national average. One reason for this is low base, but this place has a conducive atmosphere to have wonderful Harley riding experience," Pawah said.

Good road network, scenic natural beauty and "kind-hearted" people are some of the advantages of north east, he added.

Apart from big cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Kolkata, the company has now showrooms in smaller towns such as Lucknow, Nagpur, Surat, Indore, Coimbatore, Ludhiana and Calicut, among others.
: The Madras High Court has directed the Tamil Nadu government to transfer the land earmarked for the construction of a combined court complex in Thiruvottiyur, to the judiciary, within 15 days.

The Court gave the direction to the State Home Department on Thursday, on a PIL by Thiruvottiyur Advocates Association.

After perusing the affidavit filed by the Secretary, Home Department, the Court said, "It is stated that they are awaiting the proposal from the Registry of High Court, which can be sent only when actual transfer of land takes place."



But on when the transfer will take place, there is complete silence, it observed.

"Hence, we are left with no option but to issue a direction that all steps for actual transfer of land should be completed within 15 days to facilitate the Registry to send the requisite proposal," it said and posted the matter for further hearing on November 28.

The petitioners had submitted that the jurisdiction of Thiruvottiyur court includes several localities, including Wimco Nagar, Manali, Ennore, Puzhul, Redhills, Madavaram Taluk and various other villages.

Advocates and litigants have to travel 50 km to attend sub-court cases in Ponneri, which causes a lot of inconvenience, they said.

A representation was made for constitution of a sub-court at Thiruvottiyur in 2009 by the Association as the place is connected to other places by bus and train.

In the meantime, the existing Court building in Thiruvottiyur had become dilapidated, following which another representation was sent in 2013, seeking a combined court complex, they petition said.

Another representation was made on August 4 last to the Registrar General of Madras High Court in this regard, but nothing fruitful was done by the authorities concerned, it added.

The association prayed for a direction from the court to the Registrar General to consider their representation.

After recording the submissions, the court also issued orders to accommodate the present Court in Thiruvottiyur to an alternative place on Kanakkar street and directed the Registry of Madras High Court and Public Works Department to work out the feasibility of the proposal within 15 days.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Himachal Pradesh government today said it would utilize the global experience of Korea and World Bank for solution of problems in areas like solid waste management, public transport, urban management, road constructions and maintenances etc.

The state's Urban Development Minister Sudhir Sharma said,the government would follow the analogy of Korean model for developing Shimla and Dharamshala as "smart cities" and solving the traffic problems ofShimla city which had also been included under Centre's AMRUT Mission.

He was presiding over the experience sharing workshop on green growth initiatives, organised here today by the state government in collaboration with Korea Green Growth Trust Fund (KGGTF) and the World Bank.

The Korean specialists in various areas were invited by the state government for exchange of ideas and seeking their support in these areas.

The visit was a part of the World Bank's long term support for the state government in its move towards green and inclusive development.

The Minister said the Himachal government had a long partnership with the World Bank and the Development Policy Loan of the World Bank to promote inclusive green growth and sustainable development had helped the state in implementing critical structural and administrative reforms necessary to achieve rapid inclusive economic growth and development.

He said Himachal Pradesh had left behind various other states of the country in many sectors because of good co-ordination and commitment of the administrative machinery and the state leadership and emerged as one of the states with the best human development outcomes, which had also been documented in the World Bank report.

Sharma said the towns and urban areas were going to be instrumental in economical and social progress of the state and government was according top priority to check haphazard and unplanned growth of these areas and to provide best infrastructural and public services like housing, sanitation, disposal of solid wastes, transport, water, health and education etc.

He said that in its initiative towards green growth, the state government had imposed complete ban on green felling, use of polythene, plastic bags, cups and plates besides smoking in public places.

Sharma, also the Housing, Town and Country Planning Minister, added that Himachal was the first state in the country to initiate green forest accounting.

Himachal Chief Secretary V C Pharka said that exchange of



knowledge through this workshop would help in the state in finding effective solutions in various issues and also help the departments concerned to learn about green technologies and make appropriate adjustments in the development policies.

The Chief Secretary said that the state was also looking forward to use of green construction technology in road sector, use of ICT applications to achieve green growth and the concept of green smart city development with the participation of citizens.

He expressed hope that the experience of Korea and Work Bank team would help the state to come up with appropriate solutions.

Programme Manager of the KGGTF, Eun Joo Yi said the fund was a single Donor World Bank Group. The 88 million dollar programme was established in 2011 in partnership with the Korea.

It finances the uptake of operational green growth technical know-how to influence investment project design of the clients of the World Bank.

She thanked the state government for inviting a team of Korean expertsand the World Bank for sharing experiences on green growth initiatives.

Appreciating the efforts of the state government, the Senior Environment Specialist of the World Bank Shri Pyush Dogra said the Bank was very much satisfied over the green growth initiative of the state.

He said that state government had also played a very proactive role in implementing World Bank's Development Policy Loans.

Additional Chief Secretary (Finance), Shrikant Baldi, said Himachal had done remarkable job in green growth initiative and by the end of year 2020, the state was going to achieve the target of carbon neutrality.
Himachal Pradesh government on Sunday announced that it will submit a proposal for a Rs 1,200 crore road shelf project to the Centre.

The proposal will be submitted to the National Rural Road Development Agency and the Union Ministry of Rural Development for approval, Chief Secretary V C Pharka said after presiding a meeting of the State Level Standing Committee (SLSC) on here.

"This shelf comprises 318 road projects, including 16 bridges, of a total length of 1,874 km. The cost of the project will be shared by the Centre and state in a 90:10 ratio," he said.

The Chief Secretary also laid stress on ensuring quality of construction of roads, particularly in tribal and hill areas.

He directed the Finance Department to release the share of the state as per new funding patterns.

"In the ongoing fiscal year against a total allocation of Rs 180 crore, the state has received Rs 97 crore from the Centre. Against it an expenditure of Rs 143 crore has been made and the department expects to spend over Rs 350 crore by the end of this fiscal," Parkha said.

He informed that the union ministry had taken a decision to complete the connectivity of remaining habitats under the PMGSY by March 2019 against an earlier target year of 2022.

"The state government is committed to provide connectivity to all eligible habitations, provided land is donated by people," Parkha added.

"In the last 15 years the Ministry of Rural Development has sanctioned 14,651 km of roads to connect 3,734 habitats with population of more than 250 people," Additional Chief Secretary (Public Works) Narendra Chauhan said.

Out of the sanctioned, the state has completed 11,732 km of roads and has provided connectivity to 3,415 habitations, he added.

"Thus we have achieved 81 per cent physical and 69 per cent financial targets," Chauhan said.
Criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the one-day ban on news channel India, the Himachal Pradesh Congress Committee (HPCC) said it was "undemocratic, unconstitutional and seemed dictatorial."

The Congress party would stage one-hour protests (from 11.30 AM to 12.30 PM) across the state on November 7 against the government's decision, a party release said.

Party leaders and workers will tie black bands on their mouths. The protest in Shimla will be led by HPCC chief Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, it said.

The protests at the district headquarters would be led by senior party leaders and MLAs, the release said.

"The Modi government's order to impose a one-day ban on Hindi news channel India showed that an Emergency-like environment prevailed in the country," Sukhu alleged.

He termed the action as "a blow to the fourth pillar of democracy" and demanded the ban be withdrawn immediately.

"The decision to take the channel off the air for a day is in direct violation of the freedom of media, the citizens of India and amounts to censorship imposed by the government, a reminiscent of the Emergency," he said.

"Was detaining Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi the 'achhe din' (good days) Modi had promised?" he asked.

"Rahul Gandhi had gone to meet family members of a 70-year-old ex-serviceman who allegedly committed suicide over the OROP (One Rank, One Pension) issue. His detention seems to bear the imprint of a gag order and it also suggests Modi is implementing a Gujarat Model in the country," he alleged.
October 15, 2022, Saturday

US President Joe Biden has said Pakistan is one of the most dangerous nations in the world as it has nuclear weapons without ...
A 45-year-old Indian man was sentenced to eight years in prison and nine strokes of cane for slashing throat of his estranged Singaporean wife, a media report said today.

Krishnan Karunakaran had slashed throat of his 38-year-old wife Boomichelvi Ramasamy in October 2013 after she rebuffed his demands to help him stay in Singapore by getting his visa extended and not let him see their one-year-old daughter.

In his mitigation, Krishnan claimed that they separated after his wife had an affair, reported The Straits Times.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Mohamed Faizal took issue with the "false narrative" and rejected the assertion that the separation was victim's fault.

He argued that the attempt to pin the blame on the victim highlighted that Krishnan "absolutely shows no remorse".

In sentencing Krishnan, Justice Chan Seng Onn said-- "There's no reason for you to resort to such violence, even if you desperately wanted to see your daughter. You should have resorted to the legal process and not take matters into your own hands.

"You are lucky that she survived, or you would be facing a far more serious charge," Justice Chan told Krishnan.

On the morning of Oct 27, 2013, Krishnan waited for his wife at the lift lobby of her apartment block in the Hougang housing estate.

Krishnan, who had a knife tucked under his singlet, barged inside the lift when he saw her.

He then made her walk towards her flat before slashing her throat in front of her nine-year-old daughter from a previous marriage and her maid.

The domestic helper opened the gate to help her bleeding employer while her daughter called the police.

Krishnan had pleaded guilty on Tuesday (on November 1) to one charge of attempted culpable homicide and one charge of criminal intimidation. Two other charges - for trying to stab Boomichelvi's abdomen and for threatening her domestic worker - were taken into consideration.

Krishnan's lawyer Eugene Thuraisingam said his client was frustrated and desperate because his wife refused to help him extend his visa and blocked him from seeing his baby daughter.

He said that Krishnan had bought the knife to threaten, not kill, his wife and that only one cut was inflicted.

Yesterday, the prosecutor told the court that Krishnan's actions were premeditated and that he had no qualms about carrying out the assault in front of the victim's young child.

The couple had married in a temple ceremony in India in 2011 and Krishnan, who ran a herbal medicine business, came to Singapore in July 2012.

They separated less than a year later, according to The Straits Times report.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In some elections, voters have to hold their noses while casting ballots for the lesser of two evils in a particular race. Sadly, this year many Americans have that reaction to the presidential race.

Chippewa County voters are fortunate in that each of the candidates seeking seats in the 67th and 68th Assembly districts are well qualified, and we believe each would be a fine representative for this area.

However, the Herald is giving a slight nod to Democrat Dennis Hunt in the 67th District and Republican Kathy Bernier in the 68th. The Herald is also asking voters to support incumbent U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy in the 7th Congressional District.

67th District

Hunt is ready to step into the job on his first day in the Assembly. He understands finances, owning Chippewa Valley Financial Services and being a former finance director for Chippewa County. That financial knowledge will help him in Madison, where he could fight against state budgets being formulated in the wee hours of the morning and jammed through by the party in power.

Hunts lawsuit against Chippewa County and some of its current and former officials over his firing as finance director could give voters pause. However, he says he doesnt hold a grudge and would be able to work with the county when that time arises.

His election opponent, Republican Rob Summerfield, operates small businesses in Bloomer and would be a strong advocate for the agricultural sector of the 67th. He says you have to run government like a business. Considering the immense pressure placed by special interests and the hold they have on Madison politics, that will not work.

68th District

Having a representative able to work with the other party is a plus in the 68th District. Otherwise, the mainly rural district could get lost in the shuffle in Madison.

Over her past term, Republican incumbent Kathy Bernier has occasionally signaled her independence. Yes, she does vote the party line on many issues. But she is also reaching out to Democrats in crafting some bills, and voted against Republican Gov. Scott Walkers last budget bill.

Voters should also be encouraged by Berniers desire to seek changes in school funding that would put schools on the short end of the revenue stick on more equal footing with the others.

Her Democratic opponent, attorney Howard White, is qualified to be a representative and is impressive. He vows to work for education in rural schools and to expand broadband access in the district, and has previous elected experience.

7th District

Republican Sean Duffy brings the ideas and the experience to continue representing the sprawling 7th Congressional District, which includes the northern two-thirds of Chippewa County.

Duffy says the U.S. tax code isnt working for American businesses, causing them to move overseas. Just as important to the residents of the district, he says local banks are getting hammered with regulations designed for larger banks.

Duffy is a realist in the fight against the Islamic State, saying it will take air and ground attacks along with better intelligence to get rid of ISIS.

Democratic challenger Mary Hoeft says she wants to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour over a three-year period, with small businesses getting a federal subsidy to help pay part of the difference. But she says some of those subsidies will not go away, meaning some of that extra money that would go toward workers will wind up going back to the government to dish out in subsidies.
An Islamic forum today raised questions over the recent encounter killing of eight SIMI activists hours after they fled from a jail in Bhopal and demanded that stern action be taken against those involved in the operation.

"Media reports and videos showing the Bhopal encounter make it appear extremely suspicious and raise some serious questions that need to be answered by the government and police," General Secretary of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, Muhammad Salim Engineer, said at a press conference.

"According to the lawyer of the undertrials, the case against his clients was very weak and there was a distinct possibility that they would have been acquitted soon.

"The whole incident bears a deep resemblance to the Batla House encounter and custodial deaths of Khalid Mujahid, Qateel Siddiqui and Mohammed Waqas. Jamaat feels that it is incorrect to state that we must not question the authenticity of the encounter as it would lower the morale of the police force," he said.

The forum demanded a high-level judicial inquiry to find out "the real culprits of the encounter and award strict punishment to the guilty".

On the disappearance on Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Najeeb Ahmed, Salim said Delhi Police has been "reluctant" to question those who assaulted the student and that the varsity administration has displayed "lackadaisical attitude in dealing with the issue".

The forum also condemned the decision of an inter-ministerial panel to take a leading Hindi channel off air for one day over its coverage of the anti-terror operation in Pathankot.

"This is a direct violation of the freedom of the press and is reminiscent of the dark days of the Emergency when there were arbitrary and punitive curbs on the media," Salim said.

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Indian IT industry will have to step up on innovation amid challenges like need for new products, digital disruption and shrinking manpower requirements triggered by software automation, Vice President Hamid Ansari said today.

"...Challenges will come in the short and intermediate term from the industry's shift such as cloud computing, evolution in software as a service model, need to develop new products, digital disruption and shrinking manpower needs because of software automation," Ansari said while inaugurating the new headquarters of software association Nasscom.

Asking the Indian IT industry to be "more innovative", Ansari said that clients will increasingly look for "innovation partners rather than software partners".

"Even with the growth trajectory so well charted, Nasscom President himself has admitted that below the calm waters, there is a lot of churn happening, and companies will have to do a lot of things to address the challenges as well," he said.

Lauding the role of IT sector, he said that it has been a major contributor to India's growth story in the last 25 years by way of an improved brand image, creating employment, contributing to GDP growth, creating avenues in technology education and contributing to egovernance.

"...The IT industry pioneers in india had a tough beginning having to battle against ignorance, inadequate infrastructure, lack of skilled manpower, the general public fear of losing jobs because of computers and almost no government support," he said.

Alluding to IT doyen N R Narayana Murthy's earlier observation that there had been no earth-shaking innovation from India in the last 60 years, Ansari said the matter called for a "serious soul searching" on why India lagged behind many others.

Citing the Global Innovation Index 2016 - where India was ranked 66 out of 128 countries, behind China, Russia and South Africa, Ansari said that one of the reasons for this is an education system seeped in training implementors and not thinkers.

Other factors included significant lack of appetite for taking risks as families and educational institues have a 'play safe' attitude, lack of start up funding environment, and slow pace and inefficiencies of legal systems that act a deterrent to innovative spirit.

Ansari said that Professor Tarun Khanna (who headed the



expert committee on innovation and entrepreneurship under the Atal Innovation Mission) had recommended a three-tier approach and dovetailing it with National Skills Development Programme.

This included short-term incentive-based approach to redress some of the issues, intermediate approach to correct imbalances in education, skilling initiative, infrastructure and business environment and a long-term approach to create culture and attitude needed to foster innovation and entrepreneurship.

"The task for Nasscom is cut out. It must continue helping IT to innovate, foster next-generation of startups that will create the next TCS, Infosys and Wipro, help empower billions of Indians who stand at the edge of digital revolution and continue its work with Government to design norms that are responsive and adaptive," Ansari added.

Nasscom's new campus has been designed to accommodate all verticals including Data Security Council of India (DSCI), Sector Skill Council (SSC) and Nasscom Foundation.

The premises will also house a Nasscom 10,000 start-ups warehouse to provide budding entrepreneurs a micro-ecosystem to work together as well as share knowledge and best practices with each other.

In 2013, Nasscom had announced plans to shift its headquarters to Noida, post which the construction had commenced.
Two Italians and a Canadian citizen who were kidnapped in southern Libya by armed and masked men in September were freed overnight and brought safely to Italy in the early hours today, Italy's Foreign Ministry said.

The release of the three men, who work for an Italian construction company, was due to "the efficient collaboration of local Libyan authorities," the ministry said, without giving details.

They were brought to Italy on a special flight.

They were kidnapped on September 19 by a group of armed and masked men who blocked their vehicle in Ghat, a city in the Sahara desert near the border with Algeria.

The ministry identified the Italians as Danilo Calonego and Bruno Cacace and the Canadian citizen of Italian origin, Frank Poccia.

ANSA agency said they are all technicians employed by an Italian company, Conicos, which is doing construction work at an airport in Libya.

Italian media reports said the men would be speaking with prosecutors before being reunited with their familes.

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Former President A P J Abdul Kalam's elder brother, APJ Mohammed Muthumeeran Maraickaiyar turned 100 today, with people from various walks of life greeting him on the occasion.

Scientist-colleagues of late Kalam, celebrities and politicians, including Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) leader G K Vasan, took part in the birthday celebrations of the centenarian in this island town, native of Kalam's family.

Scientists Rajan, businessman VGP Santosham, film actor Vivek were among those who greeted Maraickaiyar, the eldest member of Kalam's family.

Speaking to reporters, Vasan said his party would contest the coming local body elections in the state alone.

He also said "a like-minded party" would merge with TMC on November 10.

However, he declined to name the party, saying it would be known on Nov 10.

On the contentious issue of fishing in Palk Strait and recurring arrests of Tamil Nadu fishermen by Sri Lankan Navy, Vasan charged the state and central governments with not taking interest in resolving the long-pending problem.

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Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) will increase its drinking water supply capacity to 210 million gallon per day in the next two years from 180 million gallons now.

"When we took over the capacity was 37 million gallons a day. But now it has gone up to 180 million gallon, which it will be increased to 210 million gallons a day in next two years," KMC Mayor and Fire Services Minister Sovon Chatterjee said here today on the sidelines of CII organised Climate Conclave 2016.

He said KMC was working towards providing 24-hour water supply at Joka and Behalareas a and for that an approval of around Rs 400 crore assistance was received from Asian Development Bank.

The project was undertaken in sync with the civic body's plan to make Kolkata a tube-well free city in two-three years and remove the spectre of arsenic contamination.

The Department of Environment in West Bengal, which has set up a Climate Change Cell, is taking a range of initiatives to promote environment-friendly initiatives across the state, he said.

"We plan to incorporate further training programmes on GHG foot printing, sustainable water and waste management, energy efficiency and green logistics, Chatterjee said.

The other green initiatives taken by the state environment department include a comprehensive policy on co-generation and generation of electricity from renewable energy and establishment of a National Green Tribunal (NGT) bench.

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Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena will arrive here tomorrow to take part in a global conference on tobacco control which is being hosted by India for the first time.

Sirisena will take part in the Seventh Session of the Conference of Parties (COP7) to World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) to be held from November 7 to 12.

The COP7, which will lead into a Delhi Declaration for supporting measures for tobacco control, will be inaugurated by Union Health Minister J P Nadda.

"President of Sri Lanka, Maithripala Sirisena, is a special invited speaker at the conference," the Health Ministry had said recently.

Sirisena was Minister of Health of Sri Lanka until November, 2014 when he announced his candidature for the 2015 presidential election.

Sirisena will arrive tomorrow evening after which he will meet President Pranab Mukherjee. He will attend the CoP7 on November 7 and depart in the evening.

It is the first occasion that a COP meeting is being held in India and signals a strong commitment of the government to increase international co-operation and awareness of the WHO FCTC globally and especially in the WHO South-East Asia Region, the Ministry said.

Around 1,500 delegates are expected to participate in the conference from around 180 countries along with other observers in official relations with the WHO FCTC Secretariat in Geneva.

The WHO FCTC is the first global evidence-based public health treaty that recognises the right of all people to the highest standard of health.

The treaty was developed by countries in response to the globalisation of the tobacco epidemic. There are at present 180 Parties to the Convention.

India has been the forerunner in ratification of this public health treaty and was the seventh country to ratify the Convention in 2004.

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The lawyers today boycotted proceedings at the CJM court in Burdwan district after arguments over bail plea at fifth judicial magistrate's room.

Bar Association General Secretary Sadhan Tah said the agitation will continue till Monday and alleged some judicial magistrates were having rapport with police affecting the system and hence should be shunted.

District judge K K Kumai sat with association members for resolving the impasse but there was little headway though the fifth judicial magistrate Binod Mahato was shifted and second judicial magistrate brought in his place in deference to the lawyers' demand.

Some of the association members also demonstrated before the fifth judicial magistrate's chamber and shouted slogans.

Earlier arguments broke out between the government prosecutor and defence counsel at fifth judicial magistrate's court over rejection of bail plea to four accused in a criminal case in Ausgram. Soon other lawyers supported the defehce lawyer and they alleged nexus between some judicial magistrates and police.

This resulted in boycott by the Bar Association.

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A local market in Pakistan's militancy infected tribal region of South Waziristan has been dynamited by the authorities as a collective punishment to avenge the killing of an army officer, officials said.

Rustam Bazaar in South Waziristan's headquarters Wana was demolished under local laws, political agent Zafarul Islam Khattak said.

The action was taken yesterday under the collective and territorial responsibility clauses of the Frontier Crime Regulation (FCR), he said.

The FCR was devised by the British colonists, building upon already existing local laws and traditions, as an instrument of subjugating and disciplining the local Pakhtoon population.

A senior military official Major Imran was killed and 10 others injured in an explosion in the market during a search operation on Tuesday.

Following the incident, the local authorities had imposed a curfew on the Wana Bazaar, forcing more than 6,000 shops to close down.

The market owner, Ali Wazir has condemned the demolition of the market, saying blasts occur everywhere in Pakistan but there community was specifically targeted using a law devised during the colonial times.

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The Madras High Court has ruled that a private cement factory at a village in Thiruvallur district was not entitled to carry out any construction across an irrigation canal lying adjacent to it, and also directed the government to look into the issue.

The court gave the direction yesterday on a PIL by Athipattu Village General Welfare Association, which sought a direction to remove blockage or construction on the irrigation canal close to Zuari Cements Limited factory in the village.

The court said, "This would be a matter for the authorities concerned to look into. It is suffice for us to say that there should be no blockage of water flowing through the culvert nor any construction on the canal, so that as and when water flows, the culvert facilitates it beyond the walls of the cement factory."



The petitioners alleged that the factory had encroached on the government land, including the irrigation canal, leading to inundation in the village.

The petitioners said several representations were made to the authorities, but to no avail.

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Former Union finance minister P Chidambaram today said the Centre's ambitious 'Make in India' initiative cannot succeed if 'Skill India' does not succeed.

'Skill India' will, in turn, triumph only when several other parameters, including those related to education and research, were developed "on par with world standards", he added.

Asked if India was jumping into a service sector-led economy, Chidambaram said that was "inevitable".

"That is inevitable. If China can make firecrackers which are cheaper and safer than your crackers, Chinese crackers will come to India...That is inevitable," he said.

Answering questions from IIT-Madras students after delivering a lecture on economic reforms in India, the Congress leader said, "Unless you develop a competitive edge in production, you cannot outcompete the other producers."



"Why are we becoming a service economy more than an industrial economy? It is because we have acquired a competitive edge in providing services. Therefore, Make in India will succeed only if Skill India succeeds and Skill India will succeed only when your educational standards meet the world's standards.

"So, if you want to become an industrial economy, you cannot say this is what I produce and therefore, you consume it. Nobody will consume it today," he added.

Chidambaram said the country has to produce goods which are "equal to the world's goods".

"Because we produce services which are equal to or better than the world's services...Our economy is fast becoming a service economy," he said, adding that this can be reversed "only when you invest in education, especially technical education, research, development, skills in Indian workers and then making in India and for the world".

"We seem to be going the wrong way. You start with 'Make in India'. What can you make in India? Unless you are able to compete with what is made in China, Korea, Finland or wherever. You have to make in India what is equal to or better than what is made in the rest of the world," Chidambaram said.

In August, the former Union finance minister had described 'Make in India' as an "event management initiative" while speaking to students in Bengaluru.

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BSP chief Mayawati today ridiculed attempt by Samajwadi Party to form a grand alliance in poll- bound Uttar Pradesh and virtually ruled out any alliance with Mulayam Singh's party, days after JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar made such a suggestion.

Hours after Samajwadi Party brought members of the erstwhile Janata Parivar on one platform as part of attempt to form a 'mahagathbandhan', Mayawati addressed a press conference, warned that any alliance with the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh will directly benefit BJP.

"There is not a single concrete reason for any secular party to align with Samajwadi Party, specially after the bad experience of (SP) breaking the 'mahagathbandhan' in Bihar because of its understanding with BJP," she said.

"SP is today standing alone because of its understanding with BJP. So, any move to align with SP means directly helping BJP...Other parties should remain alert on this count as it would be good for them," the former Chief Minister said.

Mayawati, while attacking the ruling party, said, "All know that because of its selfish motives, Samajwadi Party today stands divided. (In these circumstances) supporting SP clearly means strengthening BJP and forming an anti-Dalit, anti-backward and anti-Muslim BJP government in the state."



Her comments against any alliance with SP came days after Kumar, JD(U) leader and Bihar Chief Minister, said, "Any grand alliance in UP will only take shape when the SP and the BSP are together."



Mayawati said, "SP is trying to form an alliance with mostly those parties who have a very limited influence in UP. Moreover, this effort to form a grand alliance only proved that the ruling Samajwadi Party has accepted its defeat, even before the Assembly elections."



Contending that "There is no concrete example on which SP can seek votes and come back to power in the state", she said, "At all levels, casteism, communalims, corruption and jungleraj has prevailed...Should other secular parties support the sinking SP ship because various incidents like Muzaffarnagar, Dadri among others took place in the state because of their understanding with BJP.

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Delhi Police today told a court here that it needs more time to complete its probe in a case involving a teenager who allegedly ran over a 32-year-old marketing executive while driving his father's Mercedes here in April.

Additional Sessions Judge Vimal Kumar Yadav listed the matter for further proceedings on December 15.

Special Public Prosecutor Atul Shrivastava told the court that police is probing some facts in the case. Further investigation is still going on and they need time to complete it.

The police had earlier sought the court's permission to further probe the case saying some new facts have emerged in matter and it has come to their knowledge that before this hit-and-run case, the boy was also challaned for over-speeding in which he had shown a "false and forged driving licence" to the traffic police. The court had allowed police's plea.

The accused had turned major four days after the April 4 incident.

The plea by police was opposed by advocate Rajiv Mohan, who had appeared for the boy, on the ground that he was a juvenile and the police knew about the licence before and there was no fresh evidence.

Police had said in its charge sheet that the boy had fatally run over victim Siddharth Sharma with his father's Mercedes when the victim was trying to cross a road near Ludlow Castle School in north Delhi on April 4.

The Juvenile Justice Board had on June 4 ordered that the boy would face trial as an adult while observing that the offence allegedly committed by him was "heinous".

It is the first of its kind case since the amendment in the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2015 which allowed the Board to transfer cases of heinous offences by children to the sessions court.

The police had on May 26 chargesheeted the boy in JJB for culpable homicide not amounting to murder which entails a maximum of 10 years jail.

The charge sheet was filed for alleged offences under IPC sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 279 (driving on a public way so rashly or negligently as to endanger human life) and 337 (causing hurt by an act which endangers human life) against him.

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Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), which is struggling to stay politically relevant in the state, is planning to tweak its election symbol ahead of the BMC election.

The direction of Raj Thackeray-led party's symbol - a railway engine - is likely to be reversed from right to left.

The change, however, will be accepted by the Election Commission only after submitting necessary documents, a senior party leader said.

The strength of the party, which sprung up a surprise by winning 13 assembly seats in 2009, shrunk to one in the 2014 polls.

Now, with BMC elections round the corner the party seems to have decided to change its symbol in a bid to find its lost glory.

Though the exact reasons behind the change is not clear, the proposed move has been welcomed by its leaders and workers.

"We will decide about the exact symbol once the elections are announced," Shishir Shinde, MNS leader said.

On being asked about party's plans to submit the change in symbol to the ECI, another leader said, "Once we are ready with all the documents, we will proceed and ensure that we get the symbol we want.

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As part of its initiative 'Udayer Pathey', Narayana Health today awarded with scholarships to eight economically challanged meritorious students from rural West Bengal to help them pursue medical education.

Giving away the scholarships at a function at Narayana Superspeciality Hospital here, Dr. Devi Shetty, Chairman, Narayana Health, said, "While India has a population of 1.2 billion, there are only 6 lakh doctors, out of which approximately 4 lakh are active.

"India needs 30 lakh doctors and 60 lakh nurses because status of healthcare delivery is poor."



"Currently only 25 million surgeries are taking place in the country every year whereas the annual requirement target is 65 million surgeries," he said adding "We have seen outstanding doctors coming from deprived background."



Even as the children from rural India have the desire and zeal to become outstanding medical professionals, their economic background pulls them back from achieving it, Shetty regretted.

"That is why our initiative 'Udayer Pathey' came in. 2016 marks the ninth year of this initiative, through which we aim to continue supporting deserving rural children in West Bengal to pursue medical education and thereby motivate them to render medical services in their villages and small towns," Shetty said.

This programme caters to students who have passed class X and class XII and require financial assistance for the two-year scholarship to prepare for JEE (Joint Entrance Examination) in the field of Medicine.

It also caters to students who have ranked in the WBJEE of medicine and require financial assistance to accomplish their dream of becoming a doctor.

These students who are currently being supported by 'Udayer Pathey' are children of daily wage workers, auto rickshaw drivers or others who are from economically weaker sections of society, Shetty added.

Narayana Health also felicitated 12 doctors, who have benefitted from this initiative in the last few years.

Dr. Ashutosh Raghuvanshi, Vice-Chairman, MD & Group CEO, Narayana Health, said, "Without quality healthcare professionals across the country, the Indian healthcare ecosystem will remain incomplete, as majority of Indian population resides in rural India."



"Our initiative has made a difference in the lives of around 365 students as well as various rural communities over the last nine years and helped produce quality medical professionals in rural India," he added.

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Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Japan next week, the two countries today agreed on the need for the global community to make concerted efforts to meet the "pressing regional and global challenges".

This was agreed upon during a meeting between National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and his Japanese counterpart Shotaro Yachi, who is visiting India, apart from reviewing the preparations for PM Modi's forthcoming visit to Japan for Annual Summit meeting.

"They agreed that the visit of PM to Japan is the most significant event in the bilateral relations this year. The visit will further underscore the strong bonds of friendship that India and Japan share," an official statement said today.

During the discussions, two sides expressed satisfaction at the implementation of important understandings reached during the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to India in December 2015.

The two sides shared a view that the Special Strategic and Global Partnership between India and Japan, that was agreed to during the visit of Prime Minister Modi to Japan in August-September 2014, is a key partnership for promoting peace, prosperity and development in the region and the world.

"Yachi conveyed Japan's continued commitment to enhance Japan's engagement with India on regional and global issues. They agreed on the need for the global community to make concerted efforts to meet the pressing regional and global challenges," the statement added.

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The Nigerian military said today it had rescued another of the missing Chibok schoolgirls near the border with Cameroon.

"Nigerian army troops rescued another Chibok schoolgirl at Pulka" last evening, army spokesman Sani Usman told AFP, adding he would give details of the rescue operation later.

Pulka is outside the town of Gwoza in Borno state near the Mandara mountains separating Nigeria from Cameroon.

The came barely one month after 21 other Chibok girls were released by Boko Haram.

They were freed following negotiations between the Nigerian government and Boko Haram brokered by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Swiss government.

The government said it was hoping to secure the release of 83 other girls believed to be from Chibok being held by a different factions of the extremist group.

More than 200 schoolgirls were seized by the Islamist group from their hostels in the remote town of Chibok in April 2014.

The mass abduction drew global anger and attracted unprecedented attention to the seven-year Boko Haram insurgency.

The insurgency in Nigeria's mainly-Muslim north has killed at least 20,000 people and made more than 2.6 million homeless since 2009.

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Nigerian troops rescued one of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram extremists more than two years ago in a pre-dawn raid today on a forest hideout.

She had a 10-month-old baby boy born to a Boko Haram fighter, said a statement from army spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman.

It was the first army rescue of a Chibok girl. Last month, Nigeria's government secured the freedom of 21 of the Chibok schoolgirls in the first such release negotiated with Boko Haram. Another girl escaped in May on her own.

Thousands of other Boko Haram captives have been freed this year as the military has forced the extremists out of towns and villages in northeastern Nigeria, where they had declared an Islamic caliphate. But until Saturday, none proved to be among the 276 schoolgirls seized from northeastern Chibok town in April 2014. Dozens of them escaped within hours.

President Muhammadu Buhari has vowed to secure the release of the nearly 200 schoolgirls who remain captive.

The failures of successive governments and security forces to free the girls brought international condemnation and the creation of a movement called Bring Back Our Girls. U.S. First lady Michelle Obama posted a picture of herself under that hashtag and vowed her husband would do everything in his power to help bring the girls home.

Former President Goodluck Jonathan's initial refusal even to admit the girls had been taken hostage, losing precious days after their capture, contributed to his loss at 2015 elections.

Meanwhile, activists and relatives have objected to the government's prolonged holding of Amina Ali Nkeki, the girl who escaped in May. She says she wants to be reunited with her mother and the father of her child, a detained Boko Haram extremist whom she says also was a victim of kidnapping and helped her escape.

The government says she is receiving trauma counseling and other care at a military hospital in Abuja, where she has been joined by the girls released last month.

Human rights activists have protested against the prolonged military screening of escapees from Boko Haram that has kept thousands held in detention, where Amnesty International has reported babies are among those dying from inhumane conditions.

Some 20,000 people have been killed in Boko Haram's seven-year Islamic uprising that has spread across borders and forced 2.6 million refugees from their homes.

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Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today flayed the NDA government's decision to ban NDTV India for a day terming it as an "insult to freedom of expression."



"The central government's decision to ban NDTV India is condemnable. The decision is tantamount to controlling the freedom of media. It is quite necessary to have a free and impartial media in a country like India," Kumar said in a statement here.

The decision of Information and Broadcasting Ministry to ban NDTV India for 24 hours on November 9 must be treated with strong contempt, Kumar, who is also JD(U) President, said.

"The present central government's decision to control media's freedom is a complete disregard to the right to freedom of expression," he said adding that media, which is considered as fourth estate in a democracy, also plays a very important role in raising people's voice and concerns.

Just as legislature enacts laws, the executive implements them and the judiciary interprets them apart from punishing those who violates the law, the same way media, being the fourth estate in a democracy, has a very big role to play by creating awareness among the masses through debates and discussions on various contemporary issues, he added.

The I and B ministry while invoking the powers under the Cable TV Networks (Regulation) Act said it "orders to prohibit the transmission or re-transmission of NDTV India channel for one day on any platform throughout India with effect from 00:01 hrs on 9th November,2016 till 00:01 hrs of 10th November, 2016".

The inter-ministerial panel constituted by the I and B ministry had concluded that the channel 'NDTV India' had revealed crucial and "strategically sensitive" information when the terror attack on Pathankot IAF base was being carried out in January.

The decision to put off the prominent TV channel for a day has attracted strong criticism from Congress, Trinamool Congress, RJD and now JD(U).

The channel had maintained the said information was already in public domain.

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Pakistan-born Canadian writer Tarek Fatah today said India should snap all ties with Pakistan, and claimed that no artistes from the neighbouring country come here without clearance from ISI.

"India has no business to have any relations with the country (Pakistan) that has chopped off its limbs," the 66-year-old writer told the gathering during ongoing 'India Ideas Conclave 2016' here.

"The day you develop dignity to say we don't want to talk to you, we don't want trade with you, we don't want cement and we don't want to have 'aman ki asha', that's the day they will learn a lesson," he said.

"No relation means no Indus water to you. Let them go to international court and India should say we are at the war with a criminal," he said.

Amid demands by various political outfits in India to ban Pakistani artistes, Fatah said nobody comes here (from Pakistan) without the ISI clearance.

"Nobody comes here without ISI clearance. Where are the people defending the artistes? Whom are they fooling?"



He also criticised Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, who has upped his ante against the Narendra Modi government over the 'One Rank One Pension' issue, saying he should first go to the war-front and then talk.

"Let him go and fight the war before giving any speech," Fatah said.

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President Barack Obama appeared to be critical of the FBI over disclosure of its investigations regarding the private email server used by Democratic presidential nominee .

"When you are investigating a case, then, unless you have unearthed something, you need to just do your job. If there are things that you think are worth presenting, then you present them to a prosecutor," Obama told MSNBC in an interview.

Obama, however, gave a clean chit to the FBI Director Jim Comey.

"Jim Comey is a good man. I do not believe he was trying to influence election one way or the other. I think, he is a serious public servant. He wants to do right thing. I think, the overwhelming majority of FBI feel the sake. The overwhelming majority of people in the Justice Department feel the same way," he said.

Last week, Comey sent a vague letter to Congress notifying lawmakers that the bureau had unearthed emails that appear "pertinent" to its investigation into Clinton's server. The news has shaken her campaign, with rival Donald Trump saying its evidence of serious wrongdoing.

"What, I have said that all of us think about maintaining these norms. If there are things that you think are worth presenting, then you present them to a prosecutor. The prosecutor then makes a judgment. The prosecutor can make a decision either to file a charge or not to file a charge," he said.

"But we give enormous power to our law enforcement officials to keep us safe; to do a great job; to protect us. But we also put these norms and rules in place, some of them written, some of them unwritten, to make sure that any of us are not suddenly affected by innuendo or rumors. That's true for an ordinary citizen and is true for somebody who is running for president of the US," Obama said.

He also alleged that Trump lacks "basic standard" of decency and reiterated that he is unfit to be president of the country.

"If you think that I've done a good job, if you believe that Michelle has done a good job, everything that we've done over the last eight years will be reversed with a Trump presidency. And everything will be sustained and built on with a presidency," Obama warned in the interview.

Obama on Friday addressed two rallies in North Carolina, a key battle ground State.

"I think a lot of people still can't believe that Donald Trump would be elected president. There may be a complacency setting in," he said.
President Barack Obama struck back at Republican US Senator Pat Toomey for using footage of the Democrat praising Toomey's courage in a TV campaign ad in his life-or-death re-election bid in Pennsylvania.

In a statement to The Associated Press, Obama yesterday said Toomey needed to do more to show courage than taking one right vote on legislation to expand background checks all firearms purchases online and at gun shows.

"Courage is telling Pennsylvania voters where you stand on the tough issues, not just the easy ones like background checks," Obama said in the statement.

"Pat Toomey won't tell Pennsylvania voters where he stands on Donald Trump, trying instead to have it both ways by telling different people what he thinks they want to hear. That's not courage. Voting to shut down the government and against bills to close the terrorist gun loophole isn't courage. And playing politics with the Supreme Court isn't courage," he said.

Obama has endorsed Toomey's opponent, Democrat Katie McGinty, who served in Bill Clinton's White House and was recruited by national Democrats to run against Toomey.

Toomey, who compiled one of Congress' most conservative voting records, is among the Senate's most vulnerable incumbents in a state where Democrats have a 4 to 3 registration advantage over Republicans. The race could help tip control of the Senate to Democrats.

Toomey has been a tough critic of Obama, and opposed practically all of Obama's major policy initiatives, from health care to immigration. He routinely delivers a stump speech that labels Obama's economic and foreign policies as complete failures.

At a campaign event yesterday, he lambasted the handling of economic policy in Washington, without naming Obama. Yesterday, Toomey told reporters after the event in West Chester, 25 miles west of Philadelphia, that he was not worried that his use of Obama in a TV ad would hurt him with Pennsylvania's Republican voters.

"President Obama stood up publicly and praised my work of reaching across the aisle and trying to get something done on an important issue, which is background checks," Toomey said.

"And of course the other side has tried to discredit and deny the work that I did. I think President Obama said it well, so we used his clip, it's his quote, him, it's what he said, in context."



In the 30-second ad, Obama is speaking outside the White House in 2013 and thanks Toomey for his courage, despite the bill's failure.

"That was not easy," Obama said of the work by Toomey and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. It is the latest, and perhaps the most eye-opening, way in which Toomey is working to appeal to moderate voters whose support he will need to beat McGinty. The ad is running on cable in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh markets.

The effort on the background checks bill cost Toomey endorsements from gun rights groups, including the National Rifle Association, even though Toomey voted more often than not with the NRA. But that vote by Toomey also helped him pick up the endorsements of two prominent gun-control activists, billionaire Michael Bloomberg and former Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

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The number of software technology centres in Odisha is set to increase to eight with the state government today signing an MoU with Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) for setting up facilities at four more places.

The agreement was signed to set up STPI centres at Angul, Jajpur, Jeypore in Koraput and Sambalpur, an official release said.

"The proposed STPI centres would act as resource centres for IT, ITES and ESDM sector by offering general infrastructural facilities like ready to use Incubation Hi-Speed Data connectivity and other amenities required export of software and services," Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said.

The incubation facility will be available for entrepreneurs, specially catering to the need of start-ups, MSMEs, SMEs to kick start their business without any hassles, Patnaik said adding the construction works for the proposed STPI centres will commence soon.

According to the provision of the agreement, the state government would provide three acres of developed land and minimum 20,000 sq ft built-up space for each centre.

The state presently has four STPI centres at Rourkela, Bhubaneswar, Berhampur and Balasore.

Following the setting up of the four new centres, Odisha would have the highest number of them in the country.

The STPI centre here has exported software products of Rs 2900 crore in the 2015-16 fiscal.

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Youth Congress activists today showed black flags to Union Minister Giriraj Singh in the state capital here today, police said.

The Congress workers staged a demonstration before the minister when he was returning after visiting the Central Tool Room & Training Centre (CTTC).

The activists also attempted to intercept the minister's vehicle but were stopped by policemen, sources said.

"We will protest visit of any Union Minister to Odisha," Youth Congress state President, Lokanath Maharathy said.

The incident took place a day after the Union Minister of State for Micro Small and Medium Enterprises blamed the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru's education policy.

"It is unfortunate that policy makers of this country have not been able to create skilled manpower. I don't want to name Nehruji. But due to Nehruji's faulty policy, the country has only 2.5 per cent of its population as skilled hands while 96 per cent people are skilled in developed nations," the Union Minister had said yesterday.

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Cracking the whip on farmers who continue to defy orders on burning paddy stubble, authorities in Haryana have initiated action against 1406 violators, and recovered a fine of Rs 13.75 lakh so far, a senior official said today.

Many farmers in Haryana and the neighbouring Punjab have continued with the practice, leading to health risks, and adversely affecting the soil's health.

"We are taking action as stubble burning is a serious issue. Till yesterday, we have initiated action in 1406 cases against those found burning the stubble," Principal Secretary, Environment Department-cum-Chairman, Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB), Shrikant Walgad told PTI today.

He said fines were imposed on violators and an amount of Rs 13.75 lakh has been recovered so far.

Cases under the Environment Pollution Act were tried by environment courts at Kurukshetra and Faridabad, he said.

Both the Haryana and Punjab governments have imposed a ban on burning of paddy residue and the erring farmers can also be prosecuted by the authorities.

However, during the past three weeks, reports from various areas in Haryana and Punjab, suggest that farmers have continued to burn paddy straw despite being asked to shun the practice by the state pollution control boards and the agriculture departments.

Farmers are also being provided subsidy on farm implements like happy seeder, rotavators, straw reapers for managing straw in a sustainable manner.

In the last few years it has been noted that when stubble is burned in the two leading agrarian states, the pollutants enter Delhi, adversely affecting the air quality in the national capital.

With smog enveloping Delhi and its surrounding areas in Haryana during the past few days, many private schools in Gurugram have declared holidays for few days in the wake of health hazard it poses to the children.

Yesterday, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar had informed the Assembly here that Government was serious to tackle the problems arising out of stubble burning.

"We are serious on the issue to check stubble burning which causes pollution and other problems," he said.

Asked in which areas of Haryana the problem was more prevalent, Walgad said, "Generally it is in Kurukshetra, Karnal, Fatehabad and Jind".

Burning of paddy residue causes air pollution, smog and also poses a serious threat as it leads to medical problems such as breathing issues, allergies and asthma attacks.

It causes emission of smoke and toxic gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane and nitrous oxide. It also leads to poor soil health by eliminating essential nutrients, agri experts said.

Training workshops and awareness programmes for farmers are conducted from time to time in both states where peasants are informed about the harmful affects of stubble burning, officials said.

The Haryana government had recently directed district level committees, which have been constituted for this purpose, to monitor the incidences of crop residue burning through satellite images and submit a daily report to headquarters, Walgad said.

Besides, the committees have been directed to ensure strict compliance with the provisions of the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981, and register cases against violators of this Act in special environment courts along with photographic and videographic evidence.

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Delhi Police's Crime Branch today questioned three persons in connection with the suicide of an ex-serviceman, allegedly over One Rank One Pension issue.

The 70-year-old ex-serviceman, Ram Kishan Grewal, had consumed poison in the lawns behind Jawahar Bhavan, which houses the Ministry of External Affairs, on November 1. He was rushed to RML Hospital where he died during treatment.

Grewal, along with three of his companions, had come to the city apparently to submit a memorandum to the Defence Ministry over the issue of OROP.

"One of the persons accompanying him, Rajkumar is a social activist. Prithvi and Jagdish are ex-servicemen. They were called for questioning at Crime Branch office," said a senior crime branch officer.

We have questioned them to ascertain the exact sequence of events, added the officer.

All of them were let go after questioning.

They all hail from a village in Haryana's Bhiwani district and were in regular touch with Grewal for the past several months, police said.

Meanwhile, teams are verifying the authenticity of the suicide note left by Grewal and are examining the toxicology report.

The Crime Branch team led by DCP(Crime) Bhisham Singh is conducting inquest proceedings in the matter.

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Preparations are in full swing for the international 'Gita Mahotsav' to be celebrated in Kurukshetra from December 6 to 10.

President Pranab Mukherjee, would be the chief guest at the Mahotsav and would inaugurate and lay foundation stones of various programmes and schemes, an official release said.

About 18,000 people would participate in the mega event and chant 18 shlokas of Gita "which would be telecast live via YouTube during the celebrations which are being elevated to global level this year".

'Shobha Yatra' would be organised on this occasion. The Mahotsav would also be celebrated with jail inmates and 'yajnas' would be performed in all jails.

The Mahotsav would be celebrated with the slogan 'Desh Ke Sainikon-Veer Jawanon-Haar Na Mano'.

"Last year, Gita Jayanti was celebrated all over the state. Prior to that, the celebrations were confined to Kurukshetra," this was informed at a meeting on the International Gita Mahotsav held under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, here today.

The Haryana Government would invite such researchers, bloggers and persons who may be working in different fields but have contributed towards the promotion of Gita one way or the other. Besides, scholars from various countries would also be invited to speak on Gita.

As many as 574 participants from different parts of the country would reach Kurukshetra on December 6 wearing traditional dresses with Gita shalokas printed on them. Later, they would donate their dresses which would be kept in a museum or mobile museum for visitors, it further said.

The Chief Minister said website of the International Gita Mahotsav www.Internationalgitamahotsav2016.Com was ready and so far more than 20,000 people had visited it.

Ambassadors and other prominent personalities of various countries would also be invited for the Mahotsav. Besides, Union Ministers, Governors, Chief Ministers and minister of other states and heads of various social and religious institutions would also be invited.

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A city-based rights group today strongly condemned the one-day ban on Hindi channel 'NDTV India' by the Centre, saying it is "reminiscent of the Emergency period" when the voice of the press was muzzled.

People's Union for Civil Liberties alleged it is "chilling reminder that the present BJP-led NDA government will not hesitate to crush freedom of the media, and with it the right to freedom of speech and expression of the people, if it suits their political interest to prevent dissent and democratic criticism of its policies."



The war of words over the ban, meanwhile, escalated today with Information and Broadcasting minister Venkaiah Naidu saying it was in the interest of "country's security" and the opposition asserting the action will lead to "second Emergency".

"The decision is reminiscent of the Emergency period when the media was muzzled," PUCL said in a statement.

"The PUCL strongly condemns the decision of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to punish Hindi channel, NDTV India," it said.

The leaders of the non-BJP parties and several media bodies had yesterday demanded immediate withdrawal of the order imposing the blackout on November 9.

The inter-ministerial committee constituted by the I and B ministry had concluded that the channel had revealed crucial and "strategically sensitive" information when the terror attack on Pathankot IAF base was being carried out in January, according to official sources.

"NDTV, in its defence, had pointed out with facts and evidence that the allegation was unsustainable and unjustified as the information had already been made public and published by print media and electronic media before its telecast," the statement said.

The Committee however not only rejected this as a "mitigating factor" but also recommended that NDTV India needed to be punished, it said.

"On the face of it, the decision of the Inter-ministerial Committee and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting is legally untenable, ethically unacceptable and factually fallacious," the PUCL claimed.

"The punitive action against NDTV India smacks of arbitrariness, discrimination and clearly exhibits the true intent of the NDA government to crush anyone from critically questioning the government's policies, programmes and actions.

"The vindictive action against NDTV India is thus a warning to other media agencies of the fate that awaits them if they challenged the government's line," it claimed.

The PUCL therefore calls upon all democratic sections of society to immediately raise their voices "demanding a revocation" of the ban order.

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Commenting upon Haryana Assembly's unanimous resolution condemning Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal for his recent remarks on the Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) canal issue, Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal on Saturday asserted that irrespective of any resolution, Punjab will not spare "even a drop" of its water for any other state.

Sukhbir, who is also the president of the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in Punjab, said his party stood committed "to save the state's waters and safeguard the interests of its people".

"Even if Haryana adopts any kind of a resolution, we will not allow a drop of our water to flow into other states," he said, endorsing his father's stand on the issue.

"Punjab's economy is agri-based and it cannot afford to compromise on its waters which constitute the lifeline of agriculture," the deputy chief minister told reporters.

He brushed aside the suggestion that a stiff Akali stance on the issue could affect its alliance with the BJP as Haryana was ruled by the saffron party.

"Our alliance with the BJP is rock solid. We will contest and win the upcoming Punjab polls together and form the government for a record third consecutive time," Sukhbir said.

He claimed that the SAD-BJP alliance will "sweep" the Punjab polls, while the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party will "lick the dust at the hustings".

Addressing the gathering at a free eye and cancer check up camp organised by a UK-based non-resident Indian (NRI), Sukhbir lauded the contribution of NRIs, especially those who hailed from Doaba, in developing their native villages.

The Haryana Assembly had on Friday unanimously passed a resolution, condemning Prakash Singh Badal's recent statement that neither Punjab, nor its people will accept any verdict against the interest of the state regarding river waters and were ever ready to make any sacrifice to safeguard their legitimate share.
Union IT and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad today visited T-Hub along with Telangana IT Minister KT Rama Rao.

The visit was an initiative as a run up to the first anniversary that T-Hub will be celebrating on November 12, an official release said.

"T- Hub clearly embodies what we believe India's startup ecosystem should stand for. What T-Hub has done for India, is impressive and we hope we can take this example to many states across the country. I will surely use this as an example of progress and innovation wherever I travel in theworld," the release quoted Prasad as saying.

KTR said the Telangana government is happy with the progress that the T-Hub had made.

The Union Minister also witnessed several innovations by startups such as PayMatrix - payment of monthly rent and rent advance on credit card, Ambercare - on demand ambulance aggregation platform to connect hospitals owners and users, it added.

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Spiritual guru and Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar said today he is ready to mediate on the Ram temple issue to facilitate its resolution.

"Definitely, I am always ready to do any mediation anywhere", he responded when asked if he is ready to mediate between the two sides to resolve the long-pending Ram temple issue, at a media interaction here.

On escalating India-Pakistan tension, Ravi Shankar offered to promote people-to-people contacts between the two countries but saw no other role for him.

"People-to-people, we have got very good contacts", he said, noting that Art of Living has four centres in different cities of Pakistan, where 10,000 people practise its programme benefiting greatly.

Art of Living distributed food to people during flood in Pakistan, Ravi Shankar said.

"People-to-people contact is a different thing but politics is a different thing. So, I don't know how I can do anything in the political area, that's not my cup of tea. But people-to-people contact..Yes.. Quite a bit. Every year 300 to 400 people from Pakistan visit our Ashram (in Bengaluru) for training", he said.

The spiritual leader visited Pakistan thrice during which he received "overwhelming response and warm welcome".

"On this level (people-to-people contact), of course we can do a lot...Bring sense to people but I don't know what I can do with ISI, Army and Government there (in Pakistan). That only government can connect", Ravi Shankar said.

Asked if Uniform Civil Code is needed in the country, he said he would like people to think very pragmatically and in a "progressive manner".

"Opinion of social scientists also should be taken on board. One cannot have any dogmatic mindset of any sort. We should be progressive in our approach", he added.

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A high percentage of the political discussion on Twitter was created by software robots or social bots, which may be influencing public opinion and threatening the integrity of the upcoming US presidential elections, a new study has warned.

The researchers from the University of Southern California's (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering in the US, worry that robot-generated tweets distort political online discussion and may impact election outcomes.

"Software robots masquerading as humans are influencing the political discourse on social media as never before and could threaten the very integrity of the 2016 US presidential election," said Emilio Ferrara, research leader at the USC.

By leveraging state-of-the art bot detection algorithms, Ferrara and Alessandro Bessi, visiting research assistant at USC, analysed 20 million election-related tweets created between September 16 and October 21.

They found that robots, rather than people, produced 3.8 million tweets, or 19 per cent. Social bots also accounted for 400,000 of the 2.8 million individual users, or nearly 15 per cent of the population under study.

Researchers found that Republican candidate Donald Trump's robot-produced tweets were almost uniformly positive, boosting the candidate's popularity.

By contrast, only half of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's bot tweets were positive, with the other half criticising the nominee.

Due to the social bots' sophistication, it is often impossible to determine who creates them.

Political parties, local, national and foreign governments and even single individuals with adequate resources could obtain the operational capabilities and technical tools to deploy armies of social bots and affect the directions of online political conversation, researchers said.

The "master puppeteers" behind influence bots, often create fake Twitter and Facebook profiles, they said.

"They do so by stealing online pictures, giving them fictitious names, and cloning biographical information from existing accounts," they added.

"These bots have become so sophisticated that they can tweet, retweet, share content, comment on posts, 'like' candidates, grow their social influence by following legit human accounts and even engage in human-like conversations," researchers said.

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A gang of dacoits looted around Rs one lakh in cash and valuables from a house rented to Afghan fruit traders in Chandni Chowk area of central Kolkata, the police said today.

The gang of four raided the house last night and looted Rs 80,000 in cash and valuables worth around Rs 20,000.

A case has been filed in Bowbazaar police station and investigation has started. The police were also looking into the CCTV footage of the area.

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Six members of a family, including two children, were today killed and three others injured as their speeding vehicle hit the railing at Wadi Bunder on the Eastern Freeway, police said.

The accident took place around 9.15 AM, when nine members of the Gujarat-based family were headed to Mumbadevi temple in south Mumbai in a taxi.

The deceased were identified as Harkesh Verma (45), Rajshree Verma (35), Anara Verma (35), Ragini Verma (20), Asha Verma (12) and Rajkumar Verma (8), police said.

"Harkesh Verma, his wife Rajshri and three children- Ragini, Ravi (14) and Vinay (21), who reside in Surat, had come to Mumbai to stay with Harkesh's brother-in-law Mangru Verma's family for Diwali vacation," a senior official of Dongri police station said.

Mangru (35), who is a taxi driver, stays at a chawl in Wadala with his wife Anara and their two children -- Rajkumar and Asha.

"Harkesh and Mangru's family members left for Mumbadevi temple around 8.50 AM. All of them had squeezed themselves into the taxi, which was being driven by Mangru," he said.

Harkesh and Ravi were sitting on the front seats, while six others had squeezed themselves on the back seat.

"The cab had reached the south-bound arm of the Freeway at Wadi Bunder when the driver lost control over the vehicle and hit the roadside railing and a pole," the police official said.

"The impact was so severe that Rajshri and Anara were thrown out of the cab and died on the spot due to grievous head injuries," he said.

Rest all were later pulled out of the vehicle by police. The accident severely hit the morning peak hour traffic on the Freeway. Police later removed the mangled taxi from the spot.

While Vinay and Ravi suffered minor fractures in the accident, Mangru is said to be critical condition, according to the police.

The police official said the taxi will be examined by the RTO and a case was being registered.

The data compiled by traffic police says that as many as 374 people have died, while 1,871 people were seriously injured in road accidents registered in the megapolis till September this year.

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A 15-year-old student today allegedly shot at his school director at Jaora town here leaving him seriously injured, police said.

"The student of class IX fired and injured Milestone Academy School director Amit Jain, who has been rushed to Indore in a critical state," Jaora area City Superintendent of Police (CSP) Dipak Shukla said.

After committing the crime, the boy fled from the school.

The student came to school wearing plain clothes. His teacher asked him to go home and put on the uniform and return, the CSP said.

When the minor was wearing the uniform, a phone call from the school informed his parents about his behaviour. His family was also told that the boy was absent on Thursday and Friday, after which he was chided, Shukla added.

Enraged, the minor returned to school with a pistol and shot Jain in the stomach in his chamber, the CSP added.

Jain was taken to a civic hospital from where he has been rushed to Indore in a critical condition.

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External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj today asked the Indian mission in Dubai to help a Pakistani woman, married to an Indian man, get a visa to travel to Mumbai for treatment of her son.

"I am asking our mission in Dubai to help your wife who is a Pakistani national with Indian visa for your son's treatment in Mumbai," she tweeted.

Yesterday, the woman's husband Yasin had requested Swaraj to intervene and help his wife get a visa.

Yasin had tweeted, "I am struggling to get medical attendant visa for my wife who is pakistani, to get treatment for my child in Mumbai."



In another tweet, Swaraj said she has sought details from the Indian mission in Uganda, following reports of death of an Indian man, allegedly in an accident.

The response came after one Sandhya had tweeted that one India man, Ashish Mishra, lost his life in an accident in Uganda and the post-mortem suggested that he died of "neurological shock".

"My condolences to the bereaved family. I am asking for a report from our mission in Uganda," Swaraj tweeted.

Sandhya in a series of tweets said, "Respected Madam My known Ashish Mishra, UP, worked with Fabrication systems Uganda, Kampala Ltd as welding inspector."



"He died as informed by his roommate in an accident on 30/10/2016. Upon requesting company sent the body, that reached today.

"The post mortem report cites neurological shock as cause of death which is caused due to injury to spinal cord.

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Telangana government advisor on culture KV Ramanachary today urged British MP Veerendra Sharma to help in economic development of the state by strengthening relations between UK and Telangana.

Noting that Telangana recently topped in 'Ease of Doing Business' rankings among all states, Ramanachary urged Sharma to help in improving economic and cultural relations between the two sides, a state government release said.

Sharma met Ramanachary today.

Telangana, along with Andhra Pradesh, topped the Ease of Doing Business rankings among all states recently.

The release quoted Sharma as saying that they have special interest towards India, particularly Telangana, and that he would work for strengthening the relations.

He is also expected to meet the Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and other leaders during his visit, the release added.

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Ten bodies were recovered today from a rubber dinghy off the Libyan coast, the Italian coastguard said, adding that 2,100 other migrants had been rescued during the day.

Fifteen rescue operations were conducted Saturday -- almost twice as many as on Friday when 1,200 people were rescued.

An AFP correspondent aboard the Topaz Responder, a search and rescue ship chartered by Maltese NGO MOAS and the Italian Red Cross, saw several hundred people, including children, being rescued yesterday and today.

Migrants shrouded in foil survival blankets crowded onto the deck of the vessel following the rescue efforts in which at least one baby was saved during the early hours of Saturday.

The Red Cross tweeted that 707 people were on board the vessel today.

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The concluding day of BRICS Conference on 'Participatory Local Budgeting' ended on a high note with Union Minister Narendra Singh Tomar today underscoring the need for public utility of implemented projects. "We are ready to allocate funds for projects but there is no point if people don't utilise it. That is the biggest hurdle faced for such projects and the utility of public should be ensured,"the Minister for Rural Development, Panchayati Raj, Sanitation and Drinking Water, said while addressing the valedictory function of the three-day conference here.

The Minister also lauded Kerala as a model for three-tier Local Self Governance (LSG).

"Kerala started local budgeting and decentralisation decades ago. Though the state is known for the same nationwide, the world has also started hailing the LSG model of the state," Thomar said.

In his speech, Kerala Finance Minister Thomas Issac shared the vision of Agenda 2030.

"Though being the Finance Minister, my heart is with the activities at grass-root level. We need to ensure gender equality and women safety. Minimum 10 per cent of total budget should be managed and implemented by women for their programmes.

"And of course care should be made to put in place measures to protect the environment to avoid future catastrophe," he said.

The concluding day also had sessions on 'Participatory Local Budgeting and Social Development' and 'Innovations and Best Practices in Participatory Local Budgeting'.

Russian representative and World Bank Task Team Leader Ivan Shulga explained the development outcomes in rural Russia with 'Local Initiative Support Programme' (LISP).

"Across the Russian Federation, local communities and rural territories often lag behind large urban areas with respect to economic growth and continue to face development challenges caused by inadequate social services, insufficient infrastructure, and poor living conditions," Shulga said.

The programme became a platform for large civic engagements and interestingly the projects under LISP are co-funded by the local population itself.

South African representative and UNDP Country Director Jaco Cilliers and other delegates also shared his experience during the sessions.

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With a fortnight left for by-polls for two Assembly seats in Tripura, major political parties are roping in prominent political personalities to reach out to voters for the November 19 voting.

Union Minister of State for Urban Development Babul Supriyo and BJP MP from West Bengal Roopa Ganguly would campaign for the by-polls in Tripura, a BJP spokesperson said today.

"Both the leaders have confirmed their participation for campaigning for the by-polls for Barjala and Khowai Assembly seats. However, the date is yet to be confirmed. They would be reaching from Kolkata within a day or two," BJP spokesperson, Mrinal Kanti Deb told reporters.

Besides the two leaders, Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sharma, who is also the Convener of the North-East Democratic Alliance, would participate in the campaign.

Major political parties like the ruling Left Front, opposition Congress, opposition Trinamool Congress (TMC) and BJP have fielded their candidates for the by-polls.

The last date of withdrawal of nominations would expire today.

Deb said, besides campaigning, Sharma would also hold talks with two tribal based political parties - Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT) and Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT) for formation of an alliance with BJP for the state Assembly elections due in March 2018.

Trinamool Congress spokesman and former leader of the opposition, Sudip Roy Burman said, TMC leader Mukul Roy and two MLAs of TMC in West Bengal, Shilabhadra Datta and Manas Majumder have arrived in the state today to take part in the campaign.

TPCC President Birajit Sinha said, C P Joshi, a former minister and AICC in-charge of north-east would soon visit the state and participate in the campaign.

Chief Minister Manik Sarkar of ruling CPI(M) is also electioneering for the by-polls.

The Khowai seat fell vacant after the death of the CPI-M MLA Samir Deb Sarkar on August 28 last and the Barjala (SC reserved) seat fell vacant due to resignation of Congress MLA, Jitendra Sarkar a few months ago due to internal feud.

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Melania Trump was paid for 10 modeling jobs in the United States worth USD 20,056 that occurred in the seven weeks before she had legal permission to work in the country, according to detailed accounting ledgers, contracts and related documents from 20 years ago.

The details of Mrs Trump's early paid modeling work in the US emerged in the final days of a bitter presidential campaign in which her husband, Donald Trump, has taken a hard line on immigration laws and those who violate them.

Trump has proposed broader use of the government's E-verify system allowing employers to check whether job applicants are authorized to work.

Mrs Trump, who received a green card in March 2001 and became a US citizen in 2006, has always maintained that she arrived in the country legally and never violated the terms of her immigration status.

The wife of the GOP presidential nominee has said through an attorney that she first came to the US from Slovenia on August 27, 1996, on a B1/B2 visitor visa and then obtained an H-1B work visa on October 18, 1996.

The documents obtained by the AP show she was paid for 10 modeling assignments between September 10 and October 15, during a time when her visa allowed her generally to be in the US and look for work but not perform paid work in the country.

It is highly unlikely the discovery will affect the citizenship status of Mrs Trump. The government can seek to revoke the US citizenship of immigrants after the fact in cases when it determines a person willfully misrepresented or concealed facts relevant to his naturalization.

But it effectively does this in only the most egregious cases, such as instances involving terrorism or war crimes.

The disclosures about the payments come as Mrs. Trump takes on a more substantial role advocating for her husband's candidacy. She made her first speech in months Thursday, in which she spoke of her time working as a model in Europe and her decision to come to the US.

The documents obtained by the AP included ledgers, other accounting documents and a management agreement signed by Mrs Trump from Metropolitan International Management that covered parts of 1996 and 1997.

The AP obtained the files this week after seeking copies since August from employees of the now-defunct modeling firm, after Mrs Trump made comments earlier this summer that appeared inconsistent with US immigration rules.

A New York immigration lawyer whom Mrs Trump asked to review her immigration documents, Michael J Wildes, reviewed some of the ledgers at AP's request. Wildes said in a brief statement that "these documents, which have not been verified, do not reflect our records including corresponding passport stamps.

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An Istanbul court today ordered the imprisonment of nine staff from the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper, in an intensifying crackdown a day after the leaders of the country's main pro-Kurdish party were also jailed.

The arrests added to growing international alarm over the use of a state of emergency implemented in the wake of the failed July 15 coup against critics of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The Cumhuriyet staff detained earlier this week, including some of the most prominent names in Turkish journalism, will now be held behind bars ahead of a trial, a date for which had yet to be set.

Nine MPs from the opposition pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP), including its co-leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, were also jailed ahead of trial by the courts Friday on terror charges.

At total of 13 staff from Cumhuriyet (Republic) had been detained in raids on Monday in a swoop that amplified concerns about press freedoms in Turkey.

Among the nine ordered held ahead of trial were Cumhuriyet's editor-in-chief Murat Sabuncu, celebrated cartoonist Musa Kart and influential anti-Erdogan columnist Kadri Gursel.

However, columnists Hikmet Cetinkaya and Aydin Engin were released on judicial control due to age and on the grounds of health, the reports said, while wo other suspects from the accounts department were released without charge.

The suspects are charged with links to the Kurdish militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the movement of US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen, blamed for the failed coup bid. Gulen denies the accusations.

Cumhuriyet has for months been in the crosshairs of the Turkish authorities. Earlier this year former editor-in-chief Can Dundar was given a five years and 10 months jail sentence for revealing state secrets in a front-page story.

An arrest warrant has also been issued for Dundar in the current case but he has quit Turkey for Germany.

"Our 'crime' is our writing, our headlines, our . We will write again. We will write even more," Dundar wrote on Twitter.

Demirtas and Yuksekdag, meanwhile, spent a first night behind bars after their arrest on Friday.

Although their hearings took place in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, both were flown to prisons in the west of Turkey well away from their strongholds in the east.

Demirtas is now in prison in Edirne province close to the Greek and Bulgarian borders while Yuksekdag was taken to Kocaeli just east of Istanbul, reports said.

After his arrest, Demirtas said in a written statement read by his lawyer that he was the victim of a "civilian coup by the government and the palace".

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Two persons have been arrested in connection with the attack on photojournalists by private security-men before the Tata group headquarters Bombay House here, police said today.

The arrested have been sent to judicial custody till November 11, Mumbai police spokesperson Ashok Dudhe said.

The attack occurred yesterday following a scuffle when ousted chairman Cyrus Mistry had arrived to chair the board meeting of Indian Hotels, that runs the group's Taj brand of hotels, to approve the second quarter earnings.

The scuffle had started as soon as Mistry, who is the chairman of IHCL, arrived at the Tata group headquarters to chair the board meeting, and standing photographers went beyond the cordoned off area to click his pictures.

Three photojournalists from Times of India, Mid-Day and the Hindustan Times were allegedly beaten by the guards.

Mumbai Press Club had condemned the attack and had demanded arrest of the guards involved in the scuffle.

"We strongly condemn the brutal attack on photographers at the Bombay House," Press Club secretary Dharmendra Jore had said in a statement.

A Tata Group spokesperson had apologised for the incident saying, "Whatever happened, should not have happened.

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Two Pakistani nationals have been sentenced by a US court for operating Internet sites that illegally shipped pharmaceuticals from Pakistan and the UK to customers in America.

Sheikh Waseem Ul Haq, 43, and Tahir Saeed, 54, who operated the internet sites from 2005 to 2012, were arrested in London in October 2012.

They were extradited to the US in 2013. Under federal custody since then, the two Pakistani nationals had earlier pleaded guilty.

Both sentenced to the time served, now are in the process of being deported to Pakistan, the Department of Justice said.

In addition to their prison terms, each defendant agreed to forfeit USD 388,265.11.

As part of the guilty pleas, they admitted that they owned and operated two businesses -- Waseem Enterprises and Harry's Enterprises.

Both businesses were used to conduct wholesale pharmaceutical sales, as well as to unlawfully distribute a wide variety of controlled substances and prescription drugs through Internet sites.

They directed US customers to submit payments via Western Union to numerous individuals in Karachi in order to conceal the fact that the funds were going to Ul Haq and Saeed.

In e-mails, the defendants admitted that they paid bribes to Pakistani customs officials to facilitate shipment of the drugs out of Pakistan.

They then packaged the drug shipments in ways that reduced the likelihood of interdiction by customs inspectors.

The drugs they shipped into the US included methylphenidate (sold as Ritalin); various anabolic steroids; alprazolam (sold as Xanax); diazepam (sold as Valium), lorazepam (sold as Ativan); clonazepam (sold as Klonapin) and other controlled and non-controlled substances.

"These defendants operated their Internet marketing scheme from Pakistan and were able to ship drugs illegally and directly to US citizens," said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Benjamin C Mizer, head of the Justice Department's Civil Division.

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British Justice Minister Liz Truss offered her belated support for the independence of the judiciary today after the High Court faced a string of political attacks over its controversial ruling on Brexit.

Truss had been criticised for staying silent over the backlash against Thursday's landmark judgment that the government cannot start the process of leaving the European Union without parliament's approval.

One newspaper denounced the three judges as "enemies of the people" while members of Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative party accused them of "judicial activism" and of seeking to undermine the June referendum vote for Brexit.

"The independence of the judiciary is the foundation upon which our rule of law is built and our judiciary is rightly respected the world over for its independence and impartiality," Truss said in a brief statement.

"In relation to the case heard in the High Court, the government has made it clear it will appeal to the Supreme Court. Legal process must be followed."



Just a few hours earlier, the Bar Council, which represents barristers in England and Wales, had issued a statement of regret at the minister's silence over "serious and unjustified attacks on the judiciary".

As justice minister and Lord Chancellor, Truss took an oath to defend the independence of the judiciary.

"A strong independent judiciary is essential to a functioning democracy and to upholding the rule of law," the council said in a statement.

The High Court ruled that the government did not have the power to trigger Article 50 of the EU's Lisbon Treaty, which sets off a two-year countdown to leaving the bloc, without prior approval of parliament.

The ruling prompted outrage among supporters of Brexit, sparking fears that it could delay the process that May had promised to start by the end of March.

Before the ruling, the prime minister had condemned those who brought the legal challenge, saying they were trying to "subvert" democracy.

The court decision has fuelled speculation that May might call an early election to strengthen her support in the House of Commons before the EU vote.

Her slim majority was reduced further yesterday when pro-Brexit MP Stephen Phillips resigned, accusing the government of becoming too right-wing.

The next election is not due until 2020, but The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that ministers were now discussing the option of bringing the date forward.

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One woman cadre of the proscribed United National Liberation Front (UNLF) was apprehended by a team of Manipur police commandos today.

Police said the cadre, identified as 26-year-old Heisnam Shangoi Devi at Moirang Leima was nabbed from her residence at Moirang Siribon Leikai in Bishnupur district of the state.

On investigation it was learnt that she was trained at Sajik Tampak in the state's Chandel district bordering Myanmar and belonged to the 20th batch of the militant group.

One Chinese-made hand grenade was also recovered from the possession of Shangoi Devi.

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US forces conceded today that its air strikes "very likely" resulted in civilian casualties in Afghanistan's volatile Kunduz province, pledging a full investigation into the incident which triggered angry protests.

The strikes early Thursday killed at least 30 people, many of them children, after a Taliban assault left two American soldiers and three Afghan special forces soldiers dead in the Boz-e-Kandahari area near the provincial capital.

"The president of Afghanistan has sent a special delegation to Kunduz to investigate the incident. Any negligence by anyone will be punished," presidential spokesman Haroon Chakhansuri told reporters.

US military spokesman Charles Cleveland said an initial robe showed the attack "very likely resulted in civilian casualties".

The carnage triggered impassioned protests in Kunduz city, with the victims' relatives parading mutilated bodies of dead children piled into open trucks through the streets.

"Look around me -- everyone is in deep pain," Sultan Mohammad said, carrying the body of a victim for the mass funeral ceremony on Friday.

"What was their crime? Why were they killed like this?"



He joined a growing chorus of people calling to bring the perpetrators to justice.

The carnage underscores worsening insecurity after the Taliban last month overran the city for the second time in a year, as NATO-backed Afghan forces struggle to rein in the insurgents.

US-backed Afghan special operations forces were conducting an operation against the Taliban on the outskirts of Kunduz city when they came under insurgent fire, prompting calls for air support.

"I deeply regret the loss of innocent lives, regardless of the circumstances. The loss of innocent life is a tragedy and our thoughts are with the families," said John Nicholson, the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan.

"We will work with our Afghan partners to investigate and determine the facts."



The strikes also killed some top Taliban commanders, defence ministry spokesman Daulat Waziri said.

"Some civilians killed were members of their families," he added.

Civilian casualties caused by NATO forces have been one of the most contentious issues in the 15-year campaign against the insurgents, prompting strong public and government criticism.

Errant air strikes contributed to a 42 percent jump this year in casualties caused by pro-government forces compared to last year, according to the UN.

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Denouncing references to the Emergency in the context of the one-day ban on NDTV India channel, Information and Broadcasting minister Venkaiah Naidu today said the action against the Hindi channel was taken in the interest of the "country's safety and security".

Addressing a press conference, he said the NDA government has the highest regard for freedom of media and politicisation of such issues will only affect the safety and security of the country.

He also slammed Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi for "talking about the dark days of Emergency".

"I was surprised, aghast. Some people talked of Emergency-like situation. The action was taken in the interest of the country's safety and security", he said.

"I do not know how they are saying this is the first time. I read in a newspaper today that it is first time (that Government has issued a ban on a television channel). Shall I give the list of how many times channels were ordered to go off air?", he asked.

Listing out the names of some of the channels that were banned in the past, he said, "AXN was banned for two months. FTV was banned for two months. Enter10 for one day. ABN AndhraJyoti seven days. Al Jazeera was banned for five days for showing wrong map of India.

"These are all done earlier. Now they are saying it is done for the first time, murder of democracy, Emergency reminiscent and all", he noted.

"People know what is good and what is bad and people understand what is required in the larger interest of the country. That is why I saw that people on social media supported the Government's stand except some people who are not well informed", he said.

"Politicisation of such issues will affect the safety and security of the country", Naidu, who is here to attend a conference organised by Builders Association of India, said.

Maintaining that the Government was duty bound to act on such issues and does not require to approach the courts, he said, "I have to answer tomorrow in Parliament. I have to answer people tomorrow."



"Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi is talking about dark days of Emergency. Do you know what is Emergency? Some people who were in the Congress at that time and now in different political parties also joined the chorus now because it has become a fashion. They just want to use each and every occasion to criticise the government and take the name of the Prime Minister for each and everything", he said.

Naidu said the BJP-led NDA government has the highest



regard for the freedom of media and would never allow any infringement of it.

"I will never allow any infringement of the freedom of the press. In this case, we have nothing against any particular channel...The government does it in the best interest of the country", he said.

"Freedom of press is very important security and unity of the country is most important. That is how this government has taken this decision. Otherwise there is no reason", he said.

The Minister said the reactions suggest a motivated design to create a controversy where none existed.

He asserted that people of the country should know that the UPA Governments, during 2005-14, ordered several TV channels to go off air in 21 instances, for a period ranging from one day to two months for showing obscene visuals including 13 cases of telecasting 'Adult' rated certified films.

One channel was taken off air for 30 days for telecasting a sting operation, he said.

"People of the country are also wise enough to appreciate which of the two violations - showing obscene visuals at the stroke of midnight and risking the lives of defence personnel and civilians through a live telecast of anti-terrorist operations in broad daylight- is a serious threat to the interests of the nation including its sovereignty, integrity and security," Naidu said.

The Minister said the decision against NDTV India was not based on any newly invented rule and principle.

"The ground on which action has been proposed against NDTV India was only a logical conclusion of concerns clearly articulated by the UPA Government in various advisories issued after 26/11 terror attacks on multiple targets in Mumbai in 2008," he said.

Rejecting criticism that compared the present case to Emergency, Naidu said many BJP leaders and a large number of activists were at the "worst receiving end of Emergency and would shudder to even think of doing the same to others and particularly, in respect of freedom of media.

Responding to criticism by Editors Guild of India, Naidu



said, "The Editors Guild of India, a responsible organisation that took a full day to come out with its response should realise that under Sub-section (2) of Section 20 of the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995, Central Government is required to regulate or prohibit the transmission of any channel or programme in the interest of sovereignty, integrity and security of India and as per Para 8.1 of Uplinking Guidelines, is empowered to take action for transmitting any objectionable content inconsistent with public interest.

Therefore, the Government is not required to approach the Courts in such cases, as suggested by the Guild, he added.

"I leave it to the wisdom of the Editors Guild to ponder if the decision against NDTV India for the reasons explained, is really reminiscent of the dark days of Emergency," he said.

Naidu said that very recently in an interaction, he had stressed that effective self-regulation by media is the best way of protecting its freedom and we are committed to it.

"I also said that freedom is best upheld when its value is fully appreciated. In this case, that much valued freedom was not put to best use by NDTV India. I am happy to note that the people of the country are broadly with the decision in the matter of NDTV India," he said.

Always, there will be a minority who are critical of whatever the Government does in the best interest of the country, Naidu added.

The minister also said that in several advisories issued by the previous UPA Government, all and current affairs TV channels were clearly asked to exercise restraint, maturity and sensitivity while reporting on anti-terrorist operations in the larger interest of safety and security of security forces involved in such operations and civilians.

Expressing concern over continued violations, the then UPA Government concluded that any coverage violating such norms amount to coverage against the interests of the nation, he added.

(REOPENS DEL15)



Asked why only one TV channel has been penalised, Naidu said the action was taken as per the recommendation of an inter-ministerial committee.

"First of all, action is taken by a committee. There is a system (which) earlier prescribed in consultation with the Broadcasters Association of India and as per the system only we are going ahead," he said.

The government had issued a gazette notification in March this year requiring TV channels to limit coverage of anti-terror operations to briefings of designated officers in the larger interest of security involved.

The Inter-Ministerial Committee recommended action against the channel and it was did duly acknowledging the instant reach and power of television unlike other media, he said.

"There will not be any discrimination. I hope everybody will understand their responsibility towards the country. It is a duty of everyone. You are a journalist and also a citizen. Every citizen has a responsibility," he said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi today laid stress on a humanitarian approach to address problems concerning Jammu and Kashmir and said 'Vikas' and 'Vishwas' will be the cornerstones of the central government's development initiatives for the state hit by the unrest.

He said growth and development of Jammu and Kashmir are high on his agenda, particularly the development of villages where a majority of people live.

The Prime Minister was interacting with a 30-member delegation of the All Jammu and Kashmir Panchayat Conference, an apex body of Panchayat leaders representing 4000 village Panchayats of the state. The delegation was led by Chairman of the organisation Shafiq Mir.

During the interaction, Modi "reiterated stress on a humanitarian approach and said that 'Vikas' (development) and 'Vishwas' (trust) will remain the cornerstones of the Union Government's development initiatives for the state of Jammu and Kashmir," a PMO statement said.

Modi "stressed that growth and development of Jammu and Kashmir is high on his agenda," it said.

He added that development of the villages, where a majority of people live, is vital to the overall economic development of the state, the statement said.

The delegation apprised the Prime Minister of the prevailing situation in the state while strongly condemning the burning of schools by anti-national elements, it added.

The body, which represents people at the grassroot level in Jammu and Kashmir, reiterated its faith in the democratic institutions and processes in the country, the statement said.

Mir said a vast majority of the people of the state want a life of peace and dignity and that "vested interests have exploited youngsters and are playing with their future", the PMO said.

He urged the Prime Minister to take personal initiative to restore peace in Jammu and Kashmir.

Members of the delegation briefed Modi on development issues concerning the state, and said that benefits of central assistance have not reached the villages due to non- empowerment of the Panchayats, in line with the rest of the country.

They also submitted a memorandum which they urged the Prime Minister to consider extension of the 73rd and 74th Amendments of the Constitution of India - which pertain to local bodies - to the State of J&K, the statement said.

Extension of these Constitutional provisions to the state would empower the Panchayats to undertake basic development activities in the rural areas, they said.

The members expressed hope that this would accelerate the development process in the state, and enable the people of there to take benefits from various central government schemes, the statement said.

They also demanded that elections to Panchayats and Urban Local Bodies in the state be held at the earliest. They said that elections held in 2011 had witnessed enthusiastic turnout of voters.

The Prime Minister assured the delegation that the Union Government will look into their demands.

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A woman and her male friend were allegedly shot at by a man, who was allegedly stalking the woman, near Siri Fort in south Delhi.

After injuring the woman and her friend, the accused also shot himself, police said.

The incident took place around 9.45 PM and all the three were rushed to AIIMS, they said.

Kajal and Jatin Sarkar, who work together at a call centre in Noida, were talking outside a park when the accused walked up to them and allegedly got into an argument with them and later fired at them, police said.

The accused is the son of a CISF constable and had used his father's licensed pistol to shoot the two.

Police said that Jatin had gone to meet the woman along with his friend Alok who managed to escape and informed police.

A case has been registered and further investigation is underway.

Jatin and Kajal have sustained bullet injuries on their abdomen and chest respectively, while the accused fired at his forehead.

The accused had been stalking the woman for some time now and suspected her of being in a relationship with Jatin.

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If you listen to music often, youre likely in the market for a set of wireless headphones  not least because Apple took away the audio jack in the iPhone 7.


US-based online retailer Amazon has been ranked as the most attractive Internet brand in the country ahead of rivals Flipkart and Snapdeal as well as search engine giant Google, according to India's Most Attractive Brands Study 2016.

"For the first time in three years, Amazon has been declared as the most attractive Internet brand (96th rank overall)...," said the study carried out by Trust Research Advisory (TRA).

Google emerged as the second-most attractive Internet brand in the country while its overall ranking was 102.

The study was based on primary research conducted on close to 3,000 consumers across 16 cities.

Flipkart grabbed the third position in the Internet category, jumping 221 slots to 125th rank across India, while Snapdeal saw an improvement of 63 ranks to 302nd on the list.

Social networking giant Facebook rose 202 ranks in the national rankings to 157th position in 2016, and was placed fourth in the category, the study said.

"The Internet category has seen a surprising shift in the top ranks, with Amazon ranking higher than Google, implying a serious improvement in the appeal of conducting transactions online," TRA Chief Executive Officer N Chandramouli said.

This is apparent from the fact that out of the 29 brands listed in the Internet category in 2016, 11 brands were online retailers, he added.

"Expected brands like Shopclues (461 rank) and Uber (483) were listed in the Internet category along with some surprising entrants like Koovs (477), Voonik (937) and Oyo Rooms (948)," he said.

The list was topped by Korean electronics giant LG while the Tata conglomerate slipped in ranking to the seventh spot this year (from 5 in 2014 and 4 in 2015).

Other Internet brands in the tally included WhatsApp (339), Paytm (341), Myntra (397), Youtube (500), Twitter (506), Ola (605) and JustDial (786).
President Pranab Mukherjee has given his approval to payment of a 2 per cent dearness allowance (DA) to central government employees.

The move will benefit about 50.68 lakh employees and 54.24 lakh pensioners.

The decision to provide 2 per cent DA on basic pay was earlier approved by the Union Cabinet and will be applicable from July 1.

The DA will result in an annual burden of Rs 5,622.10 crore.

"Consequent upon the decision taken by the government on recommendations of the 7th Central Pay Commission relating to DA, the President is pleased to decide that the DA to all categories of the central government employees shall be admissible at the rate of 2 per cent of basic pay per month, w.e.f 1.7.2016," the Finance Ministry said.

The revised pay structure, effective January 1, 2016, includes the DA of 125 per cent sanctioned from that date in the pre-revised pay structure.

Thus, DA in the revised pay structure is zero from January 1, 2016.

The ministry further said till a final decision on allowances is taken based on recommendations of the committee constituted under the chairmanship of the finance secretary and the expenditure secretary, "all allowances will continue to be paid at existing rates".

"The DA will continue to be a distinct element of remuneration...," it added.

The ministry further said the orders will also apply to the civilian employees paid from the Defence Services Estimates.

"In respect of armed forces personnel and railway employees, separate orders will be issued by the Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Railways, respectively," it said.
PROVO, Utah (AP)  David Delbar is used to people asking why hes still at Brigham Young University.

For BYU students who belong to the LGBT community, its an easy question to answer.

BYU is our home, too, Delbar said.

Things have changed at BYU since Delbar, a graduate student, arrived in 2009 and there were frequent editorials in the school newspaper and bathroom graffiti speaking out against the LGBT community. But that doesnt mean those opinions and voices have vanished in 2016, either.

Every once in a while, youll get someone who is insensitive and ignorant, he said. For the most part, its improving.

BYUs honor code, which students agree to live by as part of their admission and attendance requirements, prohibits homosexual behavior, reported the Daily Herald (http://bit.ly/2eAEoq1).

Ones stated same-gender attraction is not an Honor Code issue, the policy reads. However, the Honor Code requires all members of the university community to manifest a strict commitment to the law of chastity. Homosexual behavior is inappropriate and violates the Honor Code. Homosexual behavior includes not only sexual relations between members of the same sex, but all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings.

At BYU, members of Understanding Same-Gender Attraction, an unofficial group of BYU students and faculty who aim to create discussion on same-gender attraction and LGBT issues, are commonly asked why they remain, or initially chose to be, students.

BYUs low tuition rate was a selling point for K.C. Clark, a freshman, but attending was also a spiritual decision.

I fasted every Sunday before sending in my application and getting accepted, Clark said.

It was a similar experience for Dillon Harker, a senior, who fully comprehended he was gay while a student in 2012.

I feel like my heavenly parents wanted me to go to BYU, he said.

While Arenui Anderson, a sophomore, hasnt served a two-year religious mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he feels like hes where he needs to be.

I truly feel like my mission, in a sense, is being here and being in USGA and being friendly and making it better for everyone, Anderson said.

Their friends, the programs they chose and their support systems are at BYU as well.

But even if they wanted to leave, its not that easy.

If I were to transfer, it is a big process, it is hard, said Liza Holdaway, a junior. It is a lot easier to stay. Not that I only stay here because its easy. I want to be here. BYU is where I want to be.

The decision by LGBT students to attend or stay at BYU comes with the price of being unable to participate in the universitys dating culture. It oftentimes means staying home while roommates go on dates or watching as they get engaged. Its knowing that two straight friends can hug, or go on a friend date, but that two LGBT students who are the same gender cant do the same.

Its also dealing with the constant questions about why they are at the church-owned university, or dealing with people on social media asking why they dont give up their spot at BYU for a straight student who would be thrilled to live by an honor code, no matter how the LGBT student feels about it.

I dont hold hands, I dont kiss people, I dont do any of those things because the honor code says that is against their standards and regulations, said Aubree Lyman, a senior. I try to avoid having a whole lot of contact with women in general because I dont want to have to deal with the dirty looks and the potential reporting of I am being inappropriate with someone because I tap on their shoulder to say hi.

In one instance, Lyman was in Clarks room watching a movie when a roommate walked in and asked them to leave, stating it was inappropriate for them to be in Clarks room together.

Another time, a roommate asked Clark to not talk about being LGBT. Clark said that if she wasnt allowed to talk about her identity, then she didnt want to hear her roommates talk about being straight or hear about the guys they dated. That didnt last long.

Anderson has heard members of the BYU community say theres no difference between gay and straight couples, and that if a straight couple was kissing in front of the Marriott Center, theyd be asked to leave, as well.

If they do that, they have to leave campus, Anderson said. If we do that, well be asked to leave school.

The LGBT students arent the only ones who struggle with the honor code, Lyman said, pointing to those who disagree with other parts of it, like men who want to grow beards, people who walk around campus barefoot or couples who struggle with chastity.

Ive rarely met a student who at some point hasnt broken the honor code in some way, Lyman said.

But the constant questioning of why theyre there, the students say, shows that some have trouble understanding a student can be LDS and LGBT, that LGBT students are allowed to attend BYU or to understand that life is different for the LGBT students than for the straight ones.

I dont know why its so hard for people to believe that God wants gay people here, said Adena Moulton, a senior.

For students who arent out, leaving BYU would be the equivalent of outing themselves with their parents, or might be seen as leaving the LDS Church.

If I had known what I know about BYU now, I might have chosen to go to a different school, Lyman said. But at the time, when I was a freshman, I believed the things they had promised me. I had been taught to trust the people who say that BYU is a Christ-like place.

Theres a vocal part of the BYU community that expresses dislike of LGBT students, but for the most part, the LGBT students say, everyone is friendly and accommodating. But when things go south, they get bad, quickly.

Theyve seen backlash from people who blame the LGBT community for the Big 12 Conferences decision not to expand and add BYU. Theyve heard professors make jokes at the expense of the LGBT community, and have had students personally blame them for anything someone in the LGBT community says.

And a lot of comments also come from the LGBT community outside of BYU, from those who dont know why the students still attend or remain in the LDS Church.

It is supposed to be the two more welcoming communities, Clark said. It just makes sense that they would be together.

But in order for them to see continual change at BYU and help shape the discussion around LGBT members of the LDS Church, students and issues, the students say they need to work from the inside, which requires staying.

We are doing important work here, Moulton said. In many ways, we are the pioneers of making the campus safe for LGBT people.

I feel very strongly that I want to leave this school a safer place for the people who come after me.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP)  Utah State University will soon officially allow dorm residents to have overnight guests of the opposite sex  if they get written permission.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports (http://bit.ly/2fmEbZa) that a recent policy update removes the restrictions with permission from roommates and housing staff.

USU student journalist Alyssa Roberts first reported on the new policy. She says other students havent really noticed the change because most people who wanted to host overnight guests were already doing it.

Steve Jenson with USUs Housing and Residence Life says the update is intending to clarify the guest process while preventing disturbances to roommates, but his office only gets involved if someone complains.

Among other public schools in Utah, some have no gender sleepover restrictions while others also bar opposite-sex overnight guests.
Friday, November 4, 2016 at 9:39PM

Since issuing the recall of all Samsung Galaxy Note7 devices, a spokesperson for the company in the US says almost 85 percent of recalled Note7 units have been replaced through the Note7 Refund and Exchange Program there and that most of them opted to get another Samsung device. But there are still some users holding on to their Note7 units. What Samsung plans to do is to release a software update that will limit the phones ability to charge beyond 60 percent. This update is expected to drop in the next few days. Alongside that, a pop-up reminder to return the device will show up every time the screen is turned on or the device is powered on or charged. In New Zealand, Samsung has cut off the cellular service to the phone.

Source: TechCrunch
Connelly was tested early in his career by incest and sexual abuse cases, which he describes as "very, very challenging". "What makes them even harder is that you see the damage to the victims. The victims, really, their lives are almost irrevocably hurt. It's terrible to watch and it's terrible to know the harm that's been done to them."
The cases, some dating as far back as 2012, come as Bega Valley resident Rod Camilleri is taking United Petroleum to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal for more than $12,000 in damages after purchasing 70 litres of contaminated diesel from United's service station at Michelago in January this year.
The sense of drift and lack of higher direction has been accentuated by uncertainties about the new Senate's mood and, now, about whether two senators expected to be Coalition-friendly were properly allowed to be candidates at the election, let alone eligible to sit now. With each of senators Bob Day and Rod Culleton, the High Court will need to consider, first, whether, under section 44 of the constitution, either was disqualified from standing, whether because of criminal charges or having a disqualifying direct or indirect interest in a financial agreement with the government. The treatment of the votes they received if there is such a finding will be different from what would follow if the court finds they were eligible to stand but later became disqualified under section 45  say, by being convicted or becoming insolvent.
Detention Center

The inmate count at the Platte County Detention Facility Friday was 84, with 54 from Platte County and 30 from out of county.

Police

Oct. 12

2:22 p.m.  At the intersection of 48th Avenue and Howard Boulevard, Shayra Lopez, 27, Columbus, was cited for failure to yield right of way.

Oct. 22

4:22 p.m.  At 818 E. 23rd St., Amy Lloyd, 38, 1158 34th Ave., No. 3, was cited for theft by shoplifting. Jacob Herrmann, 30, 1158 34th Ave., No. 3, was cited for aiding and abetting theft.

Oct. 29

2:24 a.m.  In the 2900 block of 18th Avenue, an unknown vehicle struck parked vehicles owned by Roy and Amy Kranz, 2973 18th Ave., and Nicole and Ryan Lickteig, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and left the scene.

Nov. 1

10:09 a.m.  At the intersection of 12th Avenue and Eighth Street, Michael Albin, 23, 858 33rd Ave., A-6, was cited for a stop sign violation.

Nov. 2

7:33 a.m.  At the intersection of Howard Boulevard and 19th Street, traffic accident. Drivers were Heather Northey, 30, 4503 19th St., B-3, and Hillary Rasmussen, 28, 21907 Rock River Road.

12:05 p.m.  In the 1300 block of 13th Street, traffic accident. Drivers were Jodi Kielian, 55, Platte Center, and Denise Ingalls, 46, 14094 Q Road.

8:06 p.m.  In the 3000 block of 23rd Street, traffic accident. Drivers were Karina Garcia, 18, 3052 48th Ave., No. 13, and Mario Guillen, 41, Dodge.

Nov. 3

6:53 a.m.  Burglary at 2169 44th Ave., No. 4, under investigation.

Sheriff

Nov. 3

11:24 a.m.  Domestic dispute at 3192 E. 25th St., Cordero Morris of Columbus jailed for a protection order violation and criminal mischief.

1:22 p.m.  Traffic violation at the intersection of 43rd Avenue and 23rd Street, Justin Rohloff of Columbus cited for an expired registration.

8:39 p.m.  At 2565 29th Ave., No. 6, Jordan Colson cited for leaving the scene of a property damage accident and no proof of insurance.

Fire

Nov. 3

9:12 p.m.  In the 4500 block of 38th Street, medical.

10:57 p.m.  In the 2400 block of 39th Avenue, medical.

Nov. 4

4:21 a.m.  Accident in the 2300 block of 23rd Street.

6:14 a.m.  In the 41 block of Kramer Drive, medical.
The Spanish operators Business Solutions arm said the deployment of Nokias VSR in a Provider Edge application for fixed networks was a significant step forward in the evolution of telecoms infrastructure.

It means Telefonica can now deploy and configure vPEs, expanding their VPN offerings o new locations more rapidly. It will also allow the operator to deploy on-net points of presence in areas with lower customer density.

Telefonica said it will also use the technology to deploy new PoPs in both Spain and other countries, although locations were not revealed.

Javier Gavilan, Telefonica's global CTO planning and technology director, said: "We have been working together with Nokia in our NFV Reference Implementation Lab for some time in order to advance the availability of virtualized solutions and, in fact, the Virtualized Service Router was successfully tested in 2015 and the current deployment is UNICA-ready as part of the overall strategy of the company."

The news comes just weeks after Nokia helped Telefonica achieve 4G download speeds of up to 800Mbps in network tests carried out with Qualcomm. It has also been involved in the process of upgrading the Spanish firms 4G network across its home market.

General manager for Nokia's IP routing business, said: "When multinational companies want to extend their VPNs - or add capacity to those already deployed - speed, performance and reliability are all essential.

Telefonica has taken a leadership role in virtualization, and with the certification and deployment of the Nokia VSR, they are well positioned to expand the range and reach of their VPN services and address their customers' evolving needs."
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COLUMBUS  Eighty-year-old Antonia Castillos daughter Dolores carefully pinned a corsage with red, white and blue ribbons on her mothers peach-colored blouse before her naturalization ceremony Friday in the social room at Morys Haven.

Antonias husband Epigmenio, who was naturalized two months ago, was there to see his wife also become a citizen.

Dolores was the only one of Antonias eight children and 18 grandchildren who could make it to the ceremony because of school and work, but they will gather to celebrate another day.

Friday's ceremony was a moment that may not have happened without the help of Catholic Charities and immigration officials.

Antonia came to Nebraska from Michoacan, Mexico, in 1994, six years after Epigmenio arrived here. The couple immigrated to join their children, who already lived in the Columbus and Norfolk areas. Epigmenio worked on a farm and Antonia worked briefly in a meatpacking plant, but mostly spent her time as a housewife.

Now that they are older, the couple decided to become naturalized to save the hassle of renewing their residency cards and receive benefits.

Claudia Lanuza, Bureau of Immigration Appeal liaison with Catholic Charities' El Puente (The Bridge) Immigration Legal Services in Schuyler, said the naturalization process normally costs $500 to $700 and takes about five months to complete. But Antonia faced some issues that caused delays.

She did not pass her exam the first time around. After consulting with her doctor, she was diagnosed with a memory problem. Lanuza advocated on Antonias behalf and, with the doctors recommendation, she was exempt from taking the exam.

Before Antonia could go to her interview, her health declined  she is confined to a wheelchair and unable to travel, even to Omaha. Again, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field office in Omaha made an exception to accommodate her health condition.

For the final step, Omaha field office supervisor and immigration officer Ken Zarybnicky drove to Morys Haven in Columbus to administer the oath of allegiance to the United States. Lanuza was at the ceremony to translate and make sure all the Ts were crossed and Is dotted.

U.S. C.I.S. was very gracious to make an exception in this case, said Lanuza. Theres a lot of people that dont know these services are available so they dont go forward with the process.

Zarybnicky said on average 3,000 citizenship applications are completed each year through the Omaha office, about 300 or so a month. Antonias case has proved to be an exception.

Its a pretty neat opportunity to come out to a facility, he said.

Lanuza said the number of people she helped become citizens increased this year because more people want to participate in the presidential election.

Antonias citizenship came too late for her to register to vote, but she didnt seem to mind. She likes to spend time with her children and grandchildren when they visit and watch television. Speaking through a translator, she said shes happy to become a citizen and doesnt regret anything.

We just want happiness and for God to give us many more years together, Epigmenio said through a translator. We just ask for health.

Antonia raised her right hand and swore to uphold the Constitution and Zarybnicky officially declared her a citizen of the United States.

She and her family celebrated by eating cupcakes with red, white and blue frosting.
Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact.

Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here.

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I had the chance to ride some in the combine this fall as soybeans were being harvested. I did pay attention to yield monitor as it went through the field.

Yield fluctuations were interesting to look at, and in some cases you could tell why from soil conditions or lack of stand. In other cases, you could not tell.

The farmer commented: This seems to be a lower yielding area of the field, and Im not sure why. It occurred to me that the field had probably not been checked for soybean cyst nematodes (SCN). And that the SCN is the reason that the yields were lower.

SCN is a microscopic roundworm that attacks the soybean root and can have a devastating effect on yields.

SCN is the state's leading nemesis to achieving top soybean yields. It has been identified in 56 counties that produce over 90 percent of Nebraska's soybeans. If you totaled the yield losses of all other soybean diseases in Nebraska, the number would be much less than the damage from SCN alone.

What makes SCN such a problem is yields can be reduced 20 to 30 percent with no visual signs on the plant. Plants can appear normal and healthy, but suffer significant yield losses. In fact, often the first indication of an SCN infestation is a soybean yield that seems to hit a plateau or even start decreasing while corn yield in the field continues to increase.

The best way to determine if you have a problem with SCN is to take a soil test.

If you discover SCN in your field, switch to a resistant variety the next time you plant soybean.

Unlike other nematodes, you can test for SCN year-round; however, most samples are taken after harvest for several good reasons: This is generally a time of year when other farm activities are not as demanding. This is typically when soil samples are taken for the following year's fertilizer recommendations. You can take a few more soil probe cores from a field, mix them together, then split the sample and send in half for your fertilizer recommendations and half for an SCN analysis.

Poor yielding soybean fields, or even areas within a field, are fresh in your mind and can help you identify fields or areas you want to sample. Yield maps can be very helpful. If sampling a soybean field, pull your samples a couple inches to the side of the old soybean row. This way you are sampling through the root system and you are more likely to detect SCN if it is there.

If you are sampling a corn field or other crop residues that will be going to soybeans next year, just take random samples. The advantage of doing this is, if you detect SCN in your fields, you can select varieties resistant to SCN.

The Nebraska Soybean Board has provided funding for SCN soil analyses since 2005 for Nebraska farmers, field scouts and others. This is a great way to get a return on your checkoff dollars for your farm. Contact your local UNL Extension office for the bags for your free soil analysis, a service that would usually cost about $25.

John Wilson, UNL Extension educator in Burt County, provided some of the information used in this weeks column.
With its unique time capsule condition and fully documented history, this 1971 Cuda is in search of a new home.



Listed in the Dallas auction from November 2 to 5 by Mecum, the classic muscle car remains virtually untouched despite seeing the light of day back in 1971, except for a few professional tunes meant to keep it up and running.

Delivered new on March 11 of the same year, its first owner was a woman who cherished it until 1995, when it was sold to a Portland resident, who kept it until early 2009. This is when Mopar collector Bill Weiman welcomed it into his garage, enjoying its original look for a short period, until selling it to yet another collector, Randy Wilson, of Arizona. The Cuda changed hands once again the following year, when it ended up in the possession of another high-end car collector, only to arrive at its current owner in April of 2013.

Four and a half decades might have passed over it, but the Barracuda still retains its original sheet metal and (most) paint, along with the factory seat covers, carpet, seatbelts, dashboard, door panels, glass and headliner. It also has the original space-saver spare wheel in the trunk, with the inflator canister that was never used.

Some numbers that will interest a serious bidder are the miles covered and the estimated selling price: 46,000 miles (~74,000 km) and $60-$80k, respectively.

PHOTO GALLERY

VIDEO
Although Mazda has yet to officially confirm a new RX-badged model, the firm says that if it comes to fruition, it will only arrive with a rotary engine.



While speaking with Wards Auto during a Q&A in Las Vegas, Russell Wager, vice president-marketing at Mazda North American Operations, said any potential new RX model will rely on rotary power, despite these engines being notoriously hungry on fuel.

That concept car [RX Vision] shows RX in the title. Every time weve used that in the past, it means rotary engine. I hope thats the case this time. That car wouldnt come to market unless it has a rotary engine. Thats what they are working on.

A few months ago, Mazda revealed that an engineering team has been working on an improved rotary engine for the past eight years in an attempt to find a breakthrough.

While its not yet known if such a breakthrough has been made, the latest reports indicate that the new model, potentially dubbed the RX-9, will arrive in 2020.

PHOTO GALLERY
A pilot program by a Canadian company is aiming to provide 18,000 families in B.C. with something many take for granted  the Internet.

Telus kicked off a pilot program on Monday that will offer low-cost Internet service to low-income, single-parent families across the province on income or disability assistance.

Approximately 18,000 single-parent families currently receiving assistance from the province will receive a coupon code in the mail, for Internet service at $9.95 a month.

Darren Entwistle, president and CEO of Telus, explains the program will be called Internet for Good and will offer participating families opportunities that can be taken for granted.

From applying for a job, to accessing online learning, to connecting with distant loved ones, to virtually experiencing vibrant art and music, Internet connectivity will ensure these families are empowered to reach their full potential in our increasingly digital society.

Program participants will also have access to Telus Wise, an innovative program dedicated to educating Canadians about Internet safety and equipping families with the tools they need to have conversations with their children about online and smartphone safety.

Participants will have access to up to 25 Mbps download speeds and 300GB of data per month.

According to Michelle Stilwell, Minister of Social Development and Social Innovation, improving connectivity for low-income single parents in B.C. opens more doors to success for them and their families.

This pilot project also complements our governments Single Parent Employment Initiative, which is removing barriers to employment for single parents on income and disability assistance.

Through the BC Technology for Learning Society, families that can not afford a computer will have the opportunity to purchase a refurbished desktop computer or laptop at a greatly reduced rate, while Decoda Literacy will help interested program participants enhance their digital literacy skills.

Telus plans to extend this program beyond B.C. as the organization is currently working with the provincial government of Alberta to bring Internet for Good to Albertans before the end of the year.
Photo: Derek Cain

For those looking to have pictures of some heroic four-legged friends on their wall, the 2017 Vancouver Police Department's dog calendar is now on sale.

The calendar features the furry members of the VPD canine unit, the oldest municipal police dog unit in Canada.

Proceeds from the sale of the $15 calendar benefits the BC Cancer Foundation and the BC Children's Hospital Foundation.

Last year, sales of the calendar raised $30,000, bringing the total raised to $160,000.

The calendar can be ordered online, or bought several locations in Vancouver.
Photo: Kate Bouey

There has been another collision at the intersection of 48th Avenue and 27 Street.

Traffic heading north on 27th Street was rerouted toward Pleasant Valley Road while traffic heading west on 48th was blocked following the crash just before 2 p.m.

A Dodge Ram pickup and a Ford van collided in the intersection bringing police, fire and ambulance to the scene.

"The police are investigating," said Vernon Fire Rescue captain Reinhard Mann. "There are no serious injuries but both drivers are being transported to hospital to be checked out."

A police officer at the scene said it was not a criminal matter.
Photo: Contributed

The 20th annual Okanagan Makers Christmas Craft Fair and sustainable living show is returning with more than 160 vendors to the Penticton Trade and Convention Centre this weekend.

The fair, originally called Santa Presents and organized by Marge Noble, unites loyal crafters and vendors from the first shows in the 1990s and new crafters.

Crafters and producers of jewellery, skin care products, soap and candles, home decor, clothing and accessories, paper and stationery, baking, cheese and edible items will be vending.

Santa Claus will make a guest appearance. A number of community based non-profit organizations are participating in the show and will be recipients of financial support, including: South Okanagan Women in Need, OSNS, Discovery House and Peach City Radio.

Admission is $4 at the door. Kids 12 and under are free.

The event is from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday at the trade and convention centre.
Photo: Contributed

BC Liberals kicked off their final convention before the 2017 election in Vancouver on Friday.

The convention began with the partys traditional Free Enterprise Friday programming, where the BC Liberals showcase a variety of viewpoints represented by several of its 2017 candidates.

Fort St. John teacher, construction worker, and city councillor Dan Davies, innovation champion Paris Gaudet of Nanaimo, and former Haisla Nation chief councillor Ellis Ross were featured on opening day.

There are 1,300 delegates and more than 60 candidates at the event hosted by Vancouver-Point Grey candidate James Lombardi and Karen Wang of Burnaby-Deer Lake.

Saturdays agenda includes keynote speakers Jim Messina, who led U.S. President Barack Obamas 2012 re-election campaign and advised on U.K. Prime Minister David Camerons 2015 win as an incumbent, and Kirstine Stewart, a former CBC and Twitter senior executive.

Puneet Sandhar, co-chair of the convention, says the BC Liberals know they have a challenging campaign ahead.

Were taking nothing for granted, he said. Convention 2016 will show that our party has room for everyone who understands that a strong economy and good paying jobs are the best way to support the people we love and pay for the services British Columbians rely on.

The convention will conclude Sunday with an address from Premier Christy Clark, in which she is expected to lay out the partys message to British Columbians for the 2017 campaign.

Party president Sharon White says at 186 days out, the Liberals are better prepared to fight than ever before.

With over 60 candidates nominated and three-quarters of our nomination meetings called, 150 campaign managers trained, and 21 platform roundtables held throughout the province, we have laid a strong foundation to ask British Columbians for another mandate.

The provincial election is set for May 9, 2017.
Photo: Contributed

UPDATED: 11:32 a.m.

The victim in Friday night's fatal hit-and-run was actually 16, not 15 as originally reported by police.

While police initially said they were looking for a pickup truck, they have now said they are unsure of the type of vehicle, only that it will have damage to the front passenger side.

ORIGINAL: Nov. 4

RCMP in Kamloops are on the scene of a fatal hit-and-run in Kamloops.

A 15-year-old girl was struck by a vehicle just before 7 p.m. on Pacific Way, Friday evening.

According to police the vehicle did not remain at the scene and there is no description of the vehicle.

However, officers believe the vehicle may have been a pick-up truck. Police are currently canvassing the area looking for a vehicle that has damage to the front passenger side.

If you have any information regarding this hit and run or the suspect vehicle please contact the Kamloops RCMP at 250-828- 3000 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800- 222-8477.
Photo: Contributed

Big changes are proposed for a downtown Vancouver landmark.

The plan would see three highrise towers constructed on top of the former Canada Post building on West Georgia Street.

Developer Bengal Kennedy says the project would include 427 rental apartments and 327 condos, more than 25,000 square metres of retail plus another 47,000 square metres of office space.

President Tony Astles said it would inject much-needed housing into the city.

"One of the key factors in making residential affordable in this city is increasing the number of units available to rent," he told CTV.

A rezoning application is before the city for consideration.

The sprawling building was sold by the federal government in 2013.

It was built in 1953 and was the largest welded steel structure in the world at the time. It's been a Vancouver landmark ever since.

The developers hope to complete the project by 2022.

 with files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: Twitter - The One Project

More than 20,000 B.C. students, including many from the Okanagan, filled Rogers Arena in Vancouver Thursday for the annual We Day event, a celebration of youth who have contributed to their community.

We Day began eight years ago as a single event, but is now held in 14 locations across Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.

To gain access to the event, young people earn a ticket by taking one local and one global action through the We Movement's yearlong educational volunteer program. Examples of these actions include collecting food for homeless shelters and raising money for classrooms overseas.

In addition to the thousands of young people, musicians, actors and politicians took to the stage to congratulate those gathered and to inspire others.

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and Premier Christy Clark spoke about homelessness Thursday, while Margaret Trudeau shared her own experience with mental health issues.

Paula Abdul and George Takei were also in attendance, talking about their own experiences making a difference in the world.

Additionally, the crowd also held a moment of silence to for the victims of the recent stabbing at an Abbotsford high school.

The B.C. government donated $200,000 Thursday to support events like We Day and the organization's We Schools education program, bringing the province's total donation to $1 million since 2010.

We Day was started by two brothers, Craig and Marc Kielburger, to help foster young volunteers.

"In just the last year, students from 920 schools across B.C. have made truly remarkable impacts on their communities, volunteering over 750,000 hours and raising $2 million in support of causes like the Fort McMurray wildfire relief, welcoming of Syrian refugees, hunger, bullying and poverty," said Craig Kielburger.
Photo: Google Street View

A man walked into a Cranbrook Shell station Friday morning, prepaid for gas, went back to the pumps and poured gas over his head. He then lit himself on fire.

The Shell's owner, Mark Kim, was in the store's office when it happened, but he heard the screaming.

He ran out of the office to find the man had run back inside the store, with his head engulfed in flames.

Kim ran to grab the store's fire extinguisher, but a customer in the store acted quickly, throwing his jacket over the man's head and extinguishing the flames.

He saved the man's life, Kim said.

Emergency crews rushed to the scene to find the man with burns covering his head and face.

He was reportedly air lifted to a nearby hospital.

Kim doesn't know what might have prompted the man to hurt himself, but the incident has left him very shaken.

The condition of the man is unknown at this time.
Data Collection and Retention: Minimization is the goal. Data Use: Keep it educational. Data Disclosure: Make protections stick. Individual Control: Respect users rights. Data Security: Implement reasonable and appropriate safeguards. Transparency: Provide a meaningful privacy policy

As data collection on technology platforms continues to increase in K-12 schools, California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris is doing what she can to help ed tech providers understand how to protect student data privacy. In this vein, she issued six recommendations in a 36-page November guide  but she can't create legally binding guidance based on California's privacy laws.These laws include the 2014 Student Online Personal Information Protection Act (SOPIPA), which has become a model for 16 other states and prohibits ed tech providers from marketing to students or selling their information, among other things. The Legislature extended those protections to preschool and pre-kindergarten students in a bill passed this year.To come up with the recommendations, Harris consulted with industry leaders including the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) and education organizations including the National Association of State Boards of Education, along with parents, academics and privacy experts."Most of our feedback was focused on ensuring that the report was cognizant of how technology actually works so we wouldn't have unintended consequences of misinterpretation of this report," said Brendan Desetti, director of education policy at the SIIA.In, Harris' office identifies these best practices:The guide covers a lot of the same ground as SOPIPA and the Student Privacy Pledge that more than 300 ed tech industry organizations have signed. It just uses more words and provides more context, Desetti said. And in reality, much of what the laws protect against hasn't actually happened much and has been prohibited for years in federal law, whether it's actually targeting ads to students or selling student information.Representatives from both the SIIA and the National Association of State Boards of Education said the guide provides high-quality recommendations, but they would like to see a more nuanced approach in general to metadata, which can include personally identifiable information or not identify anyone. Those two different types of metadata should be treated differently.The report lists examples of metadata such as a student's location, how many times a student tried to answer a question or which type of device a student uses. It also recognizes that metadata can be used well for personalizing learning and improving education products, but that companies could also use it for marketing purposes."The line between personalized learning and marketing is one that must be clearly drawn in the use of ed tech," according to the report.This line hasn't really been drawn, and because California's law was passed early on in the student data privacy legislation wave, it didn't include definitions of targeted advertising as other states including Hawaii have done, said Amelia Vance, director of education data and technology at the National Association of State Boards of Education. That means it's unclear whether a company is crossing the line if it suggests a math game that would help a student who struggled in a specific area in another math game.With no regulatory power to issue binding legal interpretations of the law, Harris can't define targeted advertising or provide other nuances in this guidance as other states can through their boards or education departments. But her office does have the authority to enforce California's privacy laws, which means that a lot of these definitions will be decided in court based on lawsuits rather than pre-emptively. And other states maybe able to use the guidance if their legislatures have given them regulatory authority, Vance said."I really wish the Legislature had provided the AG's office with the authority to make this official."
ENLARGE An aerial view of a protest Friday called by hard-line Muslim groups against Jakarta's incumbent governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, an ethnic Chinese Christian running in the upcoming election. PHOTO: REUTERS

JAKARTA, IndonesiaThe biggest street protest in years shook this sprawling capital on Friday in a stark display of the more conservative, militant strain of Islam taking hold in the worlds largest Muslim country.

Police said an estimated 100,000 people turned out for a rally called by hard-line Muslim groups against the capitals Christian governor, whom they accuse of having committed blasphemy.

The protest was peaceful during the day but scuffles broke out after nightfall. Younger protesters threw plastic bottles and rocks at police and struck their riot shields with sticks. Police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse them. A local news portal said that two police trucks were set afire near the presidential palace.

Turnout was lower than some organizers had predicted, after the nations largest Muslim organizations this week discouraged their members from attending.

President Joko Widodo had met with other political leaders amid calls for calm, but critics say he has been too slow since taking office in 2014 to respond to worsening tension for fear of being labeled anti-Muslim.

In a recent interview , Mr. Widodo said religious and political leaders had a responsibility to cool temperatures down, and he vowed to protect minorities.

We are one of the most tolerant countries in the world, Mr. Widodo told The Wall Street Journal. My government won't tolerate any discrimination.

The Jakarta governors election in February is building into a test.

Religiosity is rising, especially among the middle class, said Yon Machmudi, an Islamic politics expert at the University of Indonesia. A sense of identification is increasing.

ENLARGE Indonesian Muslim demonstrators, holding banners that read put Ahok in jail march towards the presidential palace in Jakarta Friday during a protest against Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, also known as Ahok, over an alleged blasphemy. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Protesters were taking aim at Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, known as Ahok, who is the most prominent politician among the countrys often-persecuted, ethnic Chinese minority. He was elected deputy governor in 2012 and elevated to the top job in 2014 after his boss, Mr. Widodo, was elected president.

Some hard-liners had tried to block his ascent then, saying Muslims shouldnt be ruled by a kafir, or nonbeliever.

The blunt-spoken Mr. Purnama, 50 years old, also has irritated many with a brash, get-things-done manner that conflicts with Javanese traditions of polite compromise.

Mr. Purnama, now running for re-election amid high approval ratings, angered the groups again by citing a verse of the Quran in a public address in late September. He has apologized and said he would cooperate with a police investigation, but has since been the target of protests.

Vice President Jusuf Kalla met a group of protest leaders and said afterward that police would pursue a blasphemy case against Mr. Purnama. Local media cited Mr. Purnama as saying he would meet with investigators Monday. The maximum penalty for blasphemy is five years imprisonment.

Scattered outbreaks of violence were reported as small groups dispersed into neighborhoods, including in North Jakarta, where they looted a minimart. About a hundred police officers guarded the complex where Mr. Purnama resides.

Shortly after midnight, Mr. Widodo appeared on television, saying that legal action concerning Mr. Purnama would be swift and transparent, and asked protesters to return home. He also said he deplored the violence that took place after the rally and that political actors had taken advantage of the situation. He didnt elaborate.

Nearly 90% of Indonesias 250 million people are Muslim.

The Southeast Asian nationsome 18,000 islands straddling the Pacific and Indian oceanshas a long tradition of moderate Islam in a culture influenced earlier by Hinduism and Buddhism.

But the tenor has changed in recent years. Head scarves for women, once rare, are now widely worn and Islamic schools are expanding.

An effort to outlaw cohabitation and sex between unmarried people fizzled in 2013 but has returned this year, with proponents asking the Supreme Court for a constitutional prohibition.

Religious hard-liners staged antigay rallies early this year, and the government threatened to block websites it says promote lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender lifestyles. Netflix ran into trouble with Indonesias state-owned telecom provider in part because of complaints over some content.

A movement to ban alcohol is gaining steam and sales have been banned from convenience stores. Travel to Mecca for the minor pilgrimage of umrah, once a relatively uncommon undertaking for middle-class Indonesians, is newly popular.

Security experts say the rising conservatism paves the way for potential violence , pointing to some religious hard-liners who have rebranded themselves as cells of Islamic State.

In January, Indonesia suffered its first Islamic State-linked attack , with militants receiving funding from the terrorist group via a Syria-based Indonesian who once studied with a hard-line group in central Java. There have been sporadic attacks since then , including one last month where an Islamic State sympathizer stabbed three police officers.

What weve seen in the last 18 months to two years is increasing crossover from organizations that started out nonviolent but hard-line to organizations which are now committed to using violence, said Sidney Jones, director of the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict.

Still, Islamic parties have done poorly in elections since the downfall of longtime dictator Suharto in 1998. Indonesia has been one of the most stable democracies in the region after overcoming a wave of terrorism and sectarianism in the early 2000s.

Many of those at Fridays protest had ridden for hours on trains and buses from other parts of Java island. They gathered at the Istiqlal mosque, the countrys largest, before marching toward the presidential palace.

A 27-year-old from Pemalang in central Java said that while Mr. Purnama isnt his governor, he was seeking justice for Islam. Asked about comments from extremists about killing Mr. Purnama, he said: It is an expression of how upset we are.

Security forces took up positions behind barbed wire around nearby government offices. Authorities said around 20,000 police and military personnel were on duty. There were no immediate reports of violence.

Streets in the famously congested city of 10 million people were relatively devoid of traffic as many workers stayed home. Many shops and offices closed.

Joko Hariyanto contributed to this article




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If youre stuck in your office and staring down into your cup of coffee, paperwork, and computer screen, then its likely youve been dreaming of the perfect getaway for your next vacation. While some fantastic beach resorts look absolutely perfect, you know that staying on an island for a week would run your bank account to zero, and those all-inclusive deals usually come with some sort of catch that makes them not as great as you originally would think. If a tropical paradise vacation complete with rolling waves and warm sand sounds like your idea of heaven, then theres good news for you  you dont have to break the bank to experience the island bliss youve been dreaming of. You may have to go a little off the beaten path to find an affordable paradise vacation, but its still doable on any budget. Check out these five budget-friendly islands that wont rob you of all of your savings.

1. Curacao, the Caribbean

If youre looking to do a Caribbean vacation without breaking the bank, theres no better place than Curacao for a budget-friendly island stay. This island is a bit more industrialized than others, and it isnt as popular as its neighbors, Aruba and Bonaire. Curacao comes with all of the features you want out of an island  the beach is a huge draw for tourists, as are the reefs that have tons of marine life and the weather that hovers around 80 degrees year-round. Willemstad, Curacaos main port, has bright Dutch colonial buildings that look exactly like what you would find in an old European city, explains U.S. News, so youll experience a very diverse culture on Curacao as well.

The New York Times explains that Willemstad is expensive, so when youre on a budget, its best to get out of this main area. Try visiting the Lagun Blou Dive & Beach Resort, which is about 25 miles outside of Willemstad and offers very low prices for rooms. And, as far as food is concerned, always go local, as thats how youll get the best deals. If the beach is what youre after, youll be happy to know that many of the beaches are free, too.



2. Lucia, Eastern Caribbean

St. Lucia is an island with everything you could ever want  and you wont be breaking the bank to stay here, either. This island is for the adventurous outdoorsy types, as youre sure to get more than just white beaches and turquoise water when youre here. St. Lucia is home to miles of rainforest, and youll have the Piton Mountains as a backdrop for you during your stay. If you go for a hike or ride via horseback, youre sure to find natural waterfalls, lush scenery, and natural beauty, and this is all part of why a fun and exciting trip to St. Lucia wont run you dry of money. Many of the activities here are free, as they involve nature and experiencing the elements.

About Travel explains that while other places in the Eastern Caribbean are more about the nightlife and party scene, St. Lucia is a peaceful spot away from this, where youll experience a place where you can rest and relax. The island has a huge selection of affordable resorts, and if you go in the off-season between May and October, youll find even better deals. If you stay in the Castries harbor area, expect to only pay around $50 a night for a hotel room, and if youre looking for more of an upscale resort feel, you can visit the Coco Palm Resort for under $150 a night.



3. Dominica, the Caribbean

This mountainous, beautiful island is another one that should be on your list when youre looking for financially feasible island vacations. According to Planet Ware, Dominica is known for being The Nature Island of the Caribbean, and its the perfect place for outdoor adventurers to go scuba diving, hiking, and exploring the natural landscapes. Youll see a mix of mountainous volcanoes and rainforests if you choose to stay here, and the fusion of British, French, and West Indian cultures also creates a unique atmosphere that youll be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. There are only two small airports that are located on the island, so its tough to find big tourism packages that will take you here, but you can still travel to this island with money in your pocket to spare.

Whether youre taking a day trip cruise here from another island or you plan on spending your whole vacation in Dominica, you can find food here for cheap when youre going with local vendors. When looking for accommodations, you wont find huge mega-resorts, but you will find simple inns and cottages that suit your needs for half the price of pricey hotels. Brooke Morton for Islands says that staying at Tias Bamboo Cottages will cost you about $65 a night, and the Hibiscus Valley Inn that comes complete with an open-air dining room starts at $45 a night.



4. Cancun, Mexico

Though not technically an island, there are few better places to stay (and easier places to get to if youre in the U.S.) than Cancun, which feels a lot like an island because of its location on Mexicos Yucatan Peninsula. If traveling to the Caribbean is out of the question because of the cost of airfare, then treat yourself to a vacation in Cancun, where youll still get the sun, beautiful beaches, and cultural experience that you would get if you were traveling halfway across the world. If you do visit Cancun, then you can experience a wide range of cultural experiences like the Chichen Itza, a Mayan archaeological site thats now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Youll also have to check out the various beaches that are both near your hotel and a little further away. Just remember: The further you get from the crowded resorts, the less people will be at the beaches that you visit. And, in terms of budget, the beach is the most budget-friendly activity here.

The Yucatan Times explains that as far as lodging goes, you can get a hotel room for as little as $20 if you do your research and avoid some of the pricier areas. And, if you take the time to learn a bit of their public transit, youll be able to get to many historic sites by bus instead of taxi, which will save you a lot of money. As for food, ask your hotel for authentic Mexican cuisine to get the most bang for your buck  the further you stray from the resort areas, the more money youll save.



5. Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic

This province in the Dominican Republic is known for its big, beautiful beaches and tropical paradise that youre looking for in an island vacation. Though many people typically think of Punta Cana as being the go-to spot for vacationers in the Dominican, Puerto Plata offers more affordable all-inclusive packages that can include snorkeling, ziplining through the forests, or horseback riding. You can enjoy the sunshine and visit the waterfalls for very little money here, and though some of the activities arent necessarily the best that money can buy, you will be paying a greatly reduced price for what youre getting, making this piece of paradise perfect for budget vacationers.

Frugal Traveler, a New York Times blog, recommends traveling anywhere in the Dominican Republic during the winter, as prices will be lowest during this time. Lodging is also cheap here  Hotel La Catalina, which is right next to beautiful beaches on the coast, has rooms for under $80 a night, and if you go with an all-inclusive deal, its likely you can find a package for under $100 a night, and thats including food and drinks, too. You wont find better deals in the Caribbean, so jump on this while you have the chance.
Lincolnwood is considering applying for grants to help improve two of the town's most heavily-trafficked intersections  the corners of Touhy and Lincoln and Touhy and Cicero avenues.

Village of Lincolnwood trustees met with public works officials earlier this week during a committee of the whole meeting for an informal discussion where trustees were asked to weigh in on three potential roadway improvement projects that could be eligible for the federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement grant program.

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The meeting was held to gauge interest in whether the village should pursue applications for the grants.

Known as CMAQ funding, the village has received four such grants in recent years. The money is helping to pay for two bike trails that were constructed this year and a pedestrian overpass bridge planned for construction across Touhy Avenue in 2017, according Andrew Letson, assistant to the public works director.

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The grant program funds 80 percent of eligible projects. In 2017, the federal government is making $2.36 billion in CMAQ funds available, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration.

Village officials supported the two least-expensive projects of the three options Letson presented: $3.25 million in improvements at the Lincoln and Touhy intersection and another project for the same cost to widen the Touhy Avenue Edens expressway ramp for traffic exiting northbound to allow for an additional stacking lane to reduce traffic from backing up onto the highway.

A second part of that project would widen Cicero Avenue between the northbound Edens exit ramp and Touhy Avenue to allow for a dedicated right turn lane for traffic heading east on Touhy Avenue. A modernized traffic control system and new light poles would also be installed, according to concept plans provided by the public works department.

At Lincoln and Touhy, an intersection Lincolnwood Mayor Jerry Turry described as "dangerous," plans call for a second left turn lane to be installed on northbound Lincoln Avenue for traffic to turn west onto Touhy Avenue and dedicates the current shared turn/straight lane for northbound traffic only.

In addition, those improvements would include the installation of a left turn lane on westbound Touhy Avenue for traffic to turn south onto Lincoln Avenue.

If this scenario were to move forward, the Kostner and Touhy intersection would be closed. The closure would eliminate the wait time for vehicles turning southbound onto Lincoln Avenue.

Describing the plans as "extremely conceptual," Letson said the project could help improve traffic flow at the Touhy, Kostner, Lincoln three-way intersection, which is the only place in the village that has a red light camera and commonly backs up during peak traffic times.

"Traffic (heading east on Touhy) stacks up when that light turns red," Village Manager Tim Wiberg said. "Cars are typically going about 30 to 40 miles per hour and have to slam on their brakes."

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A third project, to install an underpass or an overpass that would connect the Union Pacific bike path across Lincoln Avenue for an estimated $5.2 million, was turned down by trustees who said it was too expensive.

The village can apply for funding for both intersection improvement projects, but would have to foot the bill for engineering design costs before any applications are submitted. In order to be eligible for funding, CMAQ requires projects to have the preliminary engineering phases completed.

Trustees Barry Bass, Ron Cope and Larry Elster said they favored the option to upgrade Cicero and Touhy, while Trustee Craig Klatzco said he didn't support any of the options.

"I don't like using our money to fix what should be IDOT's problem," Klatzco said.

The village plans to approach the Illinois Department of Transportation to discuss a potential cost-share option, Wiberg said.

With the 20 percent local cost share outlined in the CMAQ grant program, the village would pay $600,000 for each of the projects plus $250,000 in engineering planning costs, while the grant would cover $2.4 million, according to village officials.

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It could be several years before any construction begins. Letson said the village would wait two years to apply for the grants so that the engineering costs could be worked into future budgets. Construction would take another five to six years, he said.

Natalie Hayes is a freelancer.
Ever play Jenga? If you have, you know it challenges players to pull a wood block from a tall stack of such blocks, then shift the removed block to the top of the stack without causing a collapse.

I mention Jenga because skyscrapers shaped like a tower of Jenga blocks are all rage these days. The prime example is a 60-story Manhattan condo tower by the Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. Its top has as many recesses and extensions as a Jenga tower in mid-game.

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Now Chicago is joining the Jenga trend with the Vue53 apartment tower in Hyde Park by Chicago architects Valerio Dewalt Train Associates. At 13 stories, it is considerably shorter than its East Coast counterpart. It is also much more modest, offering tiny rental apartments and no multimillion-dollar penthouses. Nonetheless, this low-budget building makes a compelling case that Jenga architecture might amount to something more than an aesthetic fad.

Located at 1330 E. 53rd St., a few blocks north of the University of Chicago, the $75 million, 267-unit building is essentially a cross between a dormitory and an apartment building. Toronto-based Avison Young, a large commercial real estate firm, and Atlanta-based Peak Campus, which builds and manages student housing, developed it for the U. of C. The units (studios, one- and two-bedrooms) are chiefly aimed at graduate students and young faculty members. The floors and ceilings are exposed concrete, which may be OK with non-materialistic millennials but is sure to put off the crown molding crowd.

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"If you want to build a building that appeals to everyone, you build oatmeal," said architect Joe Valerio, who worked on the job with project manager Sheri Andrews.

Like a lot of high-rise projects going up in Chicago's outlying neighborhoods, Vue53 sparked controversy about changing scale and character. Nearby property owners sued to stop construction but lost their case in court. Now that the tower is complete, it offers tangible evidence that fears about overdevelopment were baseless.

Vue53 mounts upward from, and adds vitality to, the lively shopping street from it takes the second part of its name. The ground floor includes a just-opened, compact Target store that will complement the restaurants, shops and other attractions that give 53rd Street its pedestrian buzz. If and when the tower fills up, it will add built-in customers, enhancing the street's already-impressive revitalization.

But the key to Vue53's appeal is the Jenga look, which Valerio achieved with deep cuts in the glass and aluminum facade and boldly-cantilevered extensions. Both lighten the tower's mass and make its upper reaches appear to float over the base. A "contextual" building that attempted to fit in by aping the masonry of nearby storefronts would have looked leaden by comparison.

This one has an appealingly dynamic mix of verticals and horizontals.

Valerio also did well by splitting Vue53 into two long but connected high-rises  one abutting the street, the other set back and placed to the northwest of its near twin. This offset arrangement has broader benefits than ensuring that one tower doesn't block the other's views.

The exterior of Vue53, located at 1330 East 53rd Street in Chicago. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)

Instead of walling off Nichols Park across 53rd with a looming, monolithic structure, the offset and the Jenga look combine to make the high-rise appear porous, as though the park's open space could flow right through it. This relationship is more than conceptual.

A grassy outdoor terrace on Vue53's fourth floor overlooks the park. So does an open-air stair, framed by one of the recesses, that links the terrace and an amenity floor. The recesses and extensions effectively frame views of the park, turning its greenery into borrowed scenery.

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Still, there are grating faults  most notably, patches of blotchy exposed concrete that spoil the exterior's round columns and waferlike end walls. Valerio can talk all he wants about the Japanese concept of "wabi-sabi" and its acceptance of imperfection, but there's a simple term for such construction: Poorly done.

Sadly, the botched concrete also mars the lobby, an aspirational space that's three stories tall and bathed in natural light. Much-needed refinement may be delivered by a still-to-be-completed steel mesh screen that will veil the main entrance.

The rest of the interior is Spartan but deftly handled, squeezing as much architectural interest as possible out of a very tight budget.

In the communal spaces, which include a club room, brightly-colored furniture and warm, diagonally-raked wood walls provide relief from the dull gray of concrete. Two-storystudy rooms with expansive city views are interspersed throughout the high-rises  a nice nod to the target tenants and a chance for them to get to know each other.

Floor-to-ceiling windows deliver light, views and a sense of space to the smaller-than-average apartments. It will be interesting to see how they fare in the marketplace.

Whatever the outcome, Vue53 marks the latest example of Hyde Park's high-rise renaissance, joining two fine recent projects by Chicago architect Jeanne Gang  the City Hyde Park apartments at 51st Street and Lake Park Avenue, and the U. of C.'s Campus North Residential Commons at 55th Street and University Avenue. Each of these city-friendly buildings has a distinctive sculptural look. But only Vue53 plays the Jenga game and it does so, for the most part, with aplomb.

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bkamin@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @BlairKamin
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Board of Education CEO Forrest Claypool discuss the possible Chicago Teachers Union negotiations after visiting Skinner North Classical School Thursday September 29, 2016 to acknowledge the school winning a National Blue Ribbon. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune)

The city's charter schools would be able to add thousands of students in the coming years despite a cap on enrollment that was included as part of the new Chicago Teachers Union contract.

CTU leaders promoted the charter cap as a significant concession extracted from Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration, given the union's opposition to the privately run schools that compete for a dwindling pool of students and the resources that follow them.

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Chicago Public Schools committed to limit the number of students enrolled in CPS charters from increasing much beyond the total capacity for all buildings at the end of last school year. The district also agreed to a "net zero increase" in the number of charter schools it approves.

But there is considerable leeway in the deal on enrollment. According to CPS, charters could enroll up to about 77,000 students through June 2019. As of this year, there were only about 58,000 students enrolled at district-funded charter schools.

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In addition, CPS CEO Forrest Claypool said the district could add up to nine charter schools under the terms of the contract.

"There's not a charter moratorium," Claypool said this week. "There's plenty of room for high-quality charter operators to apply, and to go through our process."

Claypool's comments came as a surprise to the union.

"I thought our agreement was that the district was going to put a hold on headlong charter expansion," CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey said. "Now I have questions about the commitment to that.

"I'm dismayed about what Forrest is implying with this. He's now saying, 'You thought you had a charter cap, but really this allows us to continue to expand.'"

Andrew Broy of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools said the contract's charter caps carry more symbolic importance than practical impact.

"The main impact is that it is a signal from the administration that charter growth is no longer core to their strategy," Broy said. "It clearly was from 2003 to 2012. I think that has shifted now."

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis announces that teachers will not strike tomorrow and a tentative agreement with CPS has been made at the SEIU Healthcare headquarters Monday, Oct. 10, 2016, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune) (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)

The Chicago Board of Education is set next month to vote on the CTU contract, as well as proposals to open as many as five new charter campuses by 2018.

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CPS moved to close or consolidate several charters in recent months, though a state commission overrode the district by allowing some of those schools to continue to operate independently. The CTU and CPS have agreed to work together to press Springfield to curtail the state's authority on charters.

Despite the potential for a battle between the union and district over the deal on charter expansion, one labor expert said the CTU has been able to use contract negotiations to play a larger role in district policy decisions.

"Obviously, things like a cap on the net increase in charter schools, that has big implications for how the school district is going to organize itself and whether or not it's going to continue to embrace or expand on the charter model," said Robert Bruno, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's School of Labor and Employment Relations.

"Does this slow that down?" Bruno said. "Does it signify a disenchantment with the charter school model?"

Under state law, contract talks between the CTU and CPS can cover class sizes, outsourcing, staffing, layoffs and the length of the school year. But the law grants CPS broad authority to implement its own policies on those issues, and bars the teachers union from striking over them.

The union's influence on district decisions began to grow in 2012, when it staged the city's first teachers strike in a quarter-century and shut down schools for seven days, Bruno said.

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"This contract is actually kind of the completion of the contract four years ago," Bruno said. "It doesn't happen without the strike four years ago. It doesn't happen without the teachers demanding they have a voice in educational policy."

In the contract, achieved as negotiations extended within minutes of a strike deadline in October, the district agreed to obtain outside funding to pay for as many as 55 "community schools" at an annual cost of at least $500,000 per school. The district also agreed to create a task force to select those buildings and determine how they could include community health care, after-school activities and support for homeless or chronically truant students as part of their programming.

CTU President Karen Lewis has cast that agreement as a victory, in an environment in which slim budgets keep some struggling schools from offering little more than a basic education.

The district also agreed to form a new district budget committee that will include two union members.

"CPS really, as far as I'm concerned, is looking at how to be more inclusive in the process of decision-making with us," Lewis said this past week during a City Club of Chicago luncheon. "That can only go well, or they'll just blame us for anything."

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Also under the contract, kindergarten through second-grade teachers with 32 or more students in their classrooms would be eligible to receive an assistant to help with instruction. Schools can't be closed because of under-enrollment until the final two years of the contract.

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Both sides agreed to hash out class schedules that would allow full-time elementary teachers a minimum 15-minute prep period for at least part of the school year. Teachers also will get more of a say in district testing and grading practices.

"The fact that the school district and the teachers agreed to language that had some impact on the quality-of-life work issues, the educational governance issues, the language in this contract that addresses the sort of bigger structural issues, I think that does represent an evolution in this relationship between the parties," Bruno said.

That can carry bigger implications, he said, setting up future negotiating over a new contract that continues to include policy-related issues instead of focusing solely on "the granular nuts and bolts" of wages and hours.

"We'll see how the contract's enforced, we'll see if the resources are there, we'll see what happens in Springfield. We'll all learn a little bit about what was done and what wasn't, but clearly they're now bargaining over more issues that are unconventional to collective bargaining in Chicago," Bruno said. "It's more expansive, regardless of the limitations of state law, than has ever been the case."

jjperez@tribpub.com

Twitter @PerezJr
Residents of the West Calumet Housing Complex in East Chicago finally got some relief Friday.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development settled a housing complaint filed by residents, agreeing to reimburse rent, waive rent owed, bolster relocation efforts and extend the amount of time they have to move.

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"Today was finally some kind of victory," said Latasha Marshall, a resident of West Calumet who signed on to the housing complaint.

The agreement with HUD is giving the residents of West Calumet some breathing room as they continue to search for housing outside the lead- and arsenic-contaminated East Chicago complex. Marshall said residents can continue looking for a place that's suitable for them and not worry about running out of time to relocate.

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"It's a big relief for these people," said Sherry Hunter, of Calumet Lives Matter, which worked with the Shriver Center to file the complaint.

HUD agreed to ensure all eligible residents of the West Calumet Housing Complex have access to relocation benefits, including housing vouchers; waiving any rent owed by residents from July 22 to March 31, or until their tenancy ends; and reimbursing rent paid for November 2016.

"We're very happy that the residents will now have the time and support they need in order to move," said Emily Coffey, of the Shriver Center.

Additionally, HUD will extend the time families have to find new housing, the agreement said. The agreement will give residents until July 1 to use their housing vouchers at a new location.

Coffey said the vouchers will expire in 240 days. HUD said that's approximately July 1.

If people haven't moved out by March, they can transfer to another housing authority property while continuing their housing search.

Aside from the residents who received their housing vouchers, Coffey said, relocation assistance is available to residents who previously left the complex because of health concerns.

After the mayor's letter went out, some residents panicked and moved their families out of the complex, Coffey said, and they are now eligible for relocation benefits.

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Even residents who moved out of West Calumet up to a year before the mayor's letter could receive assistance if they had a child younger than 6 or have documented health concerns, Coffey said.

"We think that it's going to do a lot for residents," Coffey said.

Residents can take a breather, take the time they need to find a new place to live and enjoy their last days at West Calumet, Hunter said.

"They are really elated," Hunter said.

The agreement came after the Shriver Center filed a discrimination complaint with HUD that argued the announcement to vacate the housing complex because of high levels of lead and arsenic contamination in the soil failed to give residents enough time or resources for them to make proper housing choices.

The complaint stated that the East Chicago Housing Authority engaged in "discriminatory housing practices" as residents would be forced to move into poor, segregated communities that, in some cases, had similar environmental concerns to those at West Calumet.

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"Residents in the West Calumet Housing Complex are dealing with many decisions on the health and future well-being of their families, and this agreement will help ensure they have the necessary time and resources to make the best decision possible under these unprecedented circumstances," Gustavo Velasquez, HUD assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity, said in a statement.

East Chicago Mayor Anthony Copeland ordered residents to vacate the housing complex in July after the EPA disclosed soil sampling results from the complex that far exceeded levels considered safe for people. Since the housing vouchers issued to residents became active Sept. 1, the relocation process has moved slowly.

Only 33 of the 342 families in West Calumet have relocated, according to HUD.

Marshall managed to find a new place in Markham, Ill., after taking her voucher to Cook County, and could start moving next week. The relocation process has been trying and scary, Marshall said, and she started to worry she wouldn't find a place before her voucher expired.

"It was really terrible," Marshall said. "God finally put something in my hand."

Marshall said the relocation was chaotic and the residents had to deal with a lot of information while struggling to find a new home.

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"We are confident this new and revamped relocation program will provide residents the help they need to find new safe and decent housing. We care about our residents and want them to be safe," said Tia Cauley, executive director of the East Chicago Housing Authority, in a statement.

The extended vouchers and financial help isn't all that the agreement gives West Calumet residents.

"There's more help coming," Coffey said.

The agreement calls for added relocation support and new mobility counselors who will provide individual case management services to residents who want to find quality housing in "communities of opportunity," Coffey said.

When residents find a new place, they can ask for a risk assessment, conducted by the Indiana State Board of Health, to look for any lead concerns, Coffey said. That risk assessment is more thorough than the normal inspection done for apartments and houses, she said.

Hunter said the Shriver Center pushed for the residents of West Calumet to help get them the time they need to relocate.

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"That's all they asked for," Hunter said.

clyons@post-trib.com

Twitter @craigalyons
Zachary Crandall, a government and politics teacher at Buffalo Grove High School, talks about the importance of teaching about elections in an unbiased way on Oct. 25, 2016. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)

Every year, Zack Crandall asks his students at Buffalo Grove High School if they can guess his political leanings. The results, he said, are typically an even split between Democrat and Republican.

"That's my goal," he said. "They don't know where I come from."

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Crandall, who teaches mostly seniors in advanced placement history and government classes, said he has a strict policy of keeping his political beliefs out of the classroom, focusing solely on providing balanced, impartial lessons.

"I don't want (them) to feel any information I'm presenting is in a biased way," he said.

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In a nod to that kind of neutrality, some teachers won't wear political buttons or hang posters endorsing a candidate; others will respectfully share their views when asked. To teach effectively about the political process and guide students toward civic engagement  particularly during this year's polarizing election  many experts say good educators don't try to sway their students' views but try to address all sides of an argument or issue. Some school districts have policies to that effect.

"Students want to figure out the problems of the world and not be told what to think," said Paula McAvoy, program director of the Center for Ethics & Education at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

McAvoy and colleague Diana Hess, dean of the university's School of Education, surveyed 35 high school teachers and 1,001 students in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin between 2005 and 2009 for their book, "The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic Education."

While almost 80 percent of students surveyed thought it was OK for teachers to share political opinions, McAvoy said that's only appropriate when it's delivered within a well-rounded lesson. In the same survey, 90 percent of the students disagreed with the statement: "My teacher wants students to have the same opinions on issues that he/she has."

Some teachers in the study reported having strict policies against giving any hint of their own opinion on a political issue. Others said that, as long as they present all sides and don't try to persuade, it's OK to share their views with students.

"It's not always such a clear-cut case. If a student asks (the teacher's) opinion, should (he or she) tell them? Ultimately, it comes down to issues of professional judgment, and how to set up a classroom discussion so it's fair and balanced," McAvoy said.

But, she added, "teachers should not use the classroom for their political soapbox. That seems like a clear violation."

One suburban teacher seemingly received his own lesson recently in how those boundaries are defined.

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William Walker, social science teacher at Prairie Ridge High School in Crystal Lake, said he was placed on leave last month, a day after telling his students he would vote for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and showing them a video critical of Republican Donald Trump. He asked his students, underclassmen who are too young to vote, to pass it along to their parents.

"I felt I did what I needed to do," said Walker, who started teaching in the district in 1993.

Still, Walker said he "understands why (the district) did what they did," and acknowledged he should have also presented pro-Trump materials to be balanced.

A spokeswoman for Community High School District 155, which includes Prairie Ridge, confirmed Walker was placed on indefinite leave but declined further comment.

A policy posted on the district's website titled "Teaching About Controversial Issues" calls for lessons to be informative and "present a balanced view" but does not specifically address teachers' handling of political topics.

In Crandall's district, Township High School District 214, teachers are allowed to discuss political beliefs, "but they are not to steer students in any specific direction," said spokeswoman Jennifer Delgado.

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St. Charles Community Unit School District 303 has a policy limiting employees' political activities at work. It doesn't specifically address the issue off teachers sharing their opinions but does prohibit the distribution of campaign literature.

"I don't really think (a teacher's political view) has a place," said Gerald Powers, a St. Charles East High School government teacher. "Of the classes I have, I have four to five students ... who are actual voters. I completely respect they are voters. Let them make their own decisions."

Even if a district doesn't spell out what a teacher should do, many take their own pledges. At West Chicago Community High School, the government teachers have "taken a nondisclosure stand," said teacher Mary Ellen Daneels, who is also a board member for the National Council for the Social Studies.

"I really feel like it creates a safe environment," Daneels said. "It's OK to disclose as long as you present both sides ... but I sort of feel like the easiest and cleanest thing to do is to be above reproach."

Government students at Community High participate in a legislative simulation every year where they pick current issues, write proposed laws and play the role of lawmakers to try to pass those proposals. To get students to form their own opinions on the issues, Daneels said it's most effective to keep hers out of it.

"(If) I insert myself, in a way, I'm inserting myself in a conversation where it should be between them," said Daneels, who also refrains from placing political signs in her yard or otherwise advertising her leanings.

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Sometimes her level of secrecy about her political opinions "drives the kids crazy," Daneels said. Students will say to her, "Just whisper and tell me ... what do you really think of Donald Trump" or other political figures.

"When I retire, I'll put it on Facebook," she said she tells them.

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Teachers keeping the focus off themselves, and instead on critical thinking, is especially important during this political season, said Hess at UW at Madison.

"Any time you've got an election that is particularly contentious ... the quality of political talk declines," she said. "It's really important for schools to get students to engage" in quality political discussions."

While students might not get a good example of quality political discourse from this year's presidential debates, they can learn it from their teachers, Hess said.

And, even though Hess has heard this year from some social studies teachers who say that they don't want to discuss the presidential election because of how controversial it has been, she said it's not the time to "take a pass."

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"Schools are by far the best places to teach kids how to be politically engaged and how to be good participants in democracy," she said.

kthayer@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @knthayer
A Chicago firefighter was among six people who were injured Saturday morning in a fire on the Northwest Side in the city's Logan Square neighborhood.

About 7:55 a.m., firefighters were alerted to a fire at a 2 1/2-story building at 2629 W. Homer St., according to Chicago Fire Department information.

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The fire spread to two adjacent buildings, and at least five ambulances were deployed, officials said.

Five people were injured in the fire. Two people suffered burns, and were taken to Stroger Hospital. Two people suffered smoke inhalation and were taken to St. Mary Medical Center. A fifth person was being treated at Norwegian American Hospital, officials said.

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A firefighter also was taken to St. Mary in fair-to-serious condition for an exhaustion-related injury, officials said.

Firefighters remained on the scene searching for hot spots, but the fire was struck out.
Firefighters work to put out hot spots Nov. 5, 2016, after an overnight 5-11 alarm fire engulfed a vacant warehouse in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago. (Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune)

Firefighters were working early Saturday to put out a 5-11 alarm fire at a vacant warehouse in the Little Village neighborhood on the West Side.

Jeff Lyle, deputy district chief for the Chicago Fire Department, said the first call for the fire came in at 1:56 a.m., and firefighters arrived on scene within three minutes. It escalated to a 5-11 alarm fire just before 3 a.m.

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There were more than 200 firefighters and emergency workers on the scene in the 2500 block of South Kostner Avenue, Lyle said. There were no reported injuries.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation, though Lyle said there was heavy fire in the rear of the large brick building. The building partially collapsed from the fire damage.

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He said the building, which has been vacant for about 20 years, appears at one time to have been used as a warehouse. Neighbors told officials there were squatters who sometimes went into the building.

Residents from surrounding streets watched as heavy smoke continued to pour from the brick industrial structure.

Pablo Velasquez watched from the corner of 25th Place and Kostner, which is down the street from his home. He said he heard an ambulance early Saturday, which he thought was for a neighbor who sometimes has medical problems.

"I looked out the window and it looked like daytime," Velasquez said in Spanish.

He said the wind appeared to be blowing the flames toward his street, with ashes falling on the sidewalk. He woke up his family, and he managed to move his car, which had been parked next to the building.

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Velasquez and other neighbors said the structure has been vacant for years. He said homeless people used to occasionally sleep inside, but he hasn't seen anyone go inside for years.

He once ventured into the building with his dog.

"It was ugly, ugly," he said in Spanish.

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Melecio and Sandra Raygoza stood outside their home as firefighters worked to battle the blaze early Saturday.

Melecio Raygoza said he was woken up by firefighters alerting residents about the fire. He woke up his family, though he was still confused about where the flames were coming from.

Sandra Raygoza said she was scared when her husband woke her. She said her husband told her there was a fire next to their home, but she didn't know exactly where the fire was until she went outside.

Check back for updates.
Warning: Graphic content, strong language. A man was fatally shot by a Chicago police sergeant after a road-rage incident and fight involving an off-duty firefighter and another police officer in the 11100 block of South Troy Street on Nov. 5, 2016, in Mount Greenwood. (Submitted by Britnie Nelson) (Chicago Tribune)

A man who was part of a funeral party was fatally shot by a Chicago police sergeant Saturday after a road rage incident escalated into a fight involving an off-duty Chicago firefighter and another police officer on the Far Southwest Side, authorities said.

The shooting happened about 3 p.m. Saturday in the 11100 block of South Troy Street in the city's Mount Greenwood neighborhood, according to Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.

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The Cook County medical examiner's office identified the slain man as Joshua Beal, 25, of Indianapolis. Relatives said he was in the Chicago area serving as a pallbearer at his cousin's funeral.

Police said Beal was shot to death after failing to drop a gun when confronted by the sergeant. They said they did not know whether Beal had fired his weapon but were investigating.

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Relatives of Beal, who blamed police for the incident, said Beal legally owned the gun and did not fire it.

Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, who lives nearby, gave a short statement at the scene saying a road rage incident turned into a physical confrontation that "involved a Fire Department member and multiple subjects.''

Beal and others had just left a funeral in several cars and were driving to their next destination when the incident occurred, Beal's relatives said. According to Guglielmi, they were stopped in traffic near a firehouse when an off-duty Chicago firefighter saw one of the vehicles and notified the driver that it was illegally blocking the fire lane and causing delays.

The firefighter then began arguing with three people who got out of their cars, said Guglielmi. While this was going on, a woman inside a nearby business saw the argument, called police and then became involved in the fight, the police spokesman said.

At this point, an off-duty Chicago police officer in a barbershop nearby also spotted the fight, approached the scene, identified himself as an officer and became involved in the brawl, Guglielmi said.

A sergeant in full uniform who was driving to work at the Morgan Park Police District then stopped when he saw the melee, the spokesman said.

"There's a sergeant on his way to work. He now sees a man with a gun in his hand. He gets out, announces his office in full uniform,'' Guglielmi said.

The sergeant displayed his weapon, Guglielmi said. As the incident escalated and the man with the gun did not drop his weapon, shots were fired, and the man was hit multiple times, the police spokesman said.

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Paramedics took Beal to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in critical condition, said Chicago Fire Department Cmdr. Jeff Lyle. He was pronounced dead there at 3:44 p.m.

His weapon was found at the scene, Guglielmi said.

Several other people suffered non-life-threatening injuries, including the off-duty firefighter and off-duty police officer, Guglielmi said. They were taken to an area hospital. The sergeant was not injured and was interviewed at Area South headquarters.

The version of events provided by Beal's relatives differed from the police account in a number of ways.

Cordney Boxley, 23, who identified herself as Beal's sister, said she was driving west on 111th Street behind her 17-year-old sister, who was behind the wheel of another car. Their female cousin was a front-seat passenger in the 17-year-old's car.

The relatives along with others in the caravan were headed to Southwest Memorial Chapel after burying their cousin Marcus Washington, she said.

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Suddenly, Boxley said, a car cut her off and then tried to run her 17-year-old sister off the road. She said her family as well as the motorist who had cut her off  who she believed was a Chicago police officer  stopped and got out of their cars.

At some point the man pushed her female cousin to the ground and pulled a gun on her, pointing it at her face, according to Boxley.

Boxley said many of the men in the family began walking toward the man, confronting him.

She said the man got inside his car but exited again and "he just started shooting,'' hitting the windshield of a car containing Beal, who had pulled his gun when he saw the man holding a gun on their cousin. Boxley said Beal legally owned the gun and did not fire it.

Boxley said the man pulled Beal out of his front passenger seat and began shooting him.

"I was hoping my brother wasn't dead,'' said Boxley.

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After the shooting, some of Beal's family stood at the northeast corner of 111th Street, clinging to one another with tears in their eyes.

Tiffaney Boxley, Beal's mother, said he was the father of two children, a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old, and that his fiancee was a stay-at-home mother. Beal, who was a pallbearer for Washington, lived in Indianapolis and was in town for the services.

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"Chicago police gunned my baby down like a vicious animal," Tiffaney Boxley said through tears.

Family members said they would consult a lawyer. "The police are going to pay for this," said Miranda Macklin, a family member. "Justice will be served."

As night fell and neighbors walked by, some of them began yelling at a witness who was showing video of the incident and speaking to reporters. The neighbors said the area was "very pro-police" and that the shooting was justified.

"It's always like 'The police did this, the police did that, oh my God, they shot him for no reason at all,'" one woman said. "Really? You really think it was unprovoked?"

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The Independent Police Review Authority is investigating.

rsobol@chicagotribune.com

gwong@chicagotribune.com
Brad Nelson Winters, artistic director of Terrapin Theatre, who was found murdered in his home Aug. 20, 2003. (Handout)

After a 2003 night out drinking in the Boystown area, theater director Brad Nelson Winters kissed a friend good night, put her in a cab and stopped at a convenience store near his apartment to buy cigarettes, friends say.

No one ever heard from the up-and-coming theater director again.

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After he didn't show up at his job at Northwestern University, Winters was found dead in his bloodied apartment two days later with stab wounds to his naked, decomposing body. The 38-year-old had also been strangled.

On Friday, more than 13 years later, authorities alleged Winters was killed by Ramon Smith, a laborer now living in Dallas who has an extensive criminal history with convictions for aggravated robbery, assault, prostitution and theft.

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Smith, 48, was linked to the killing by DNA after he was required to submit a sample of his genetic material to authorities after being convicted of a drug offense in Texas, prosecutors said. The DNA matched blood found on Winters' living room floor and bathtub, and his DNA was found underneath Winters' fingernails, said Assistant State's Attorney Jullian Brevard.

A Cook County judge ordered Smith held on $1 million bail. He used a wooden cane during his appearance at the Leighton Criminal Court Building.

At the hearing prosecutors offered no motive for Winters' slaying but said police did not find any signs of forced entry at his apartment.

Prosecutors gave no indication that Smith made any admissions to investigators.

Winters' family still lives in Ohio, where he grew up on a dairy farm, raising cows before discovering theater. Reached by the Tribune on Friday, his brother, Brian, said the family had long wondered if his slaying would ever be solved.

Seeing the packed Wrigleyville bars on TV during the World Series had made him think of how much Winters  a huge Cubs fan  would have loved seeing the team's drought end, his brother said.

Then a day after the team won, the family heard Chicago police had made an arrest in his killing. It came more than a year after Winters' mother died.

"There's still a big hole there," Winters said of his brother's loss. "We're in a whole nother generation now, and he is a picture on the mantel  that's it."

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Five years before his death, Winters, a smart, witty man who started in Second City, had been named artistic director of the Terrapin Theatre, a low-budget but long-established troupe with a reputation for carefully crafted productions of progressive new works. A play he directed that spring had been nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Awards prize, and the theater had plans for two more plays that season, including a dark comedy in which Winters was set to act.

"He was doing exactly what he was put on this earth to do, to steer a theatrical company," said James Freund, who just had been named the company's managing director at the time.

Terrapin decided to forge ahead after an emotional meeting after Winters' death and a memorial service at Steppenwolf Theater that drew more than 150 people. The troupe staged his final two plays at the Athenaeum Theatre but didn't survive long.

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"At the end of that season, we were pretty much emotionally spent," said Scott Letscher, who directed the final play.

"We just couldn't go on without him  he was that powerful of a figure," said Carrie Chantler, a close friend now living in upstate New York.

His death had a dramatic impact on friends, altering their career paths. Chantler left theater and earned a journalism degree, while Freund opted for a more behind-the-scenes role and now works as Steppenwolf's social media director.

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"It was sort of a reckoning if you will for many of us," Chantler said. "From his death forward, life did change for all of us."

"Brad was an up-and-comer and a shining light," she said. "It just feels so good to know this case may finally have some justice come to it."

sschmadeke@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @SteveSchmadeke
The final weekend of a unique election season closes with candidates making pleas for votes across the state amid extensive television advertising, their closing pitches fueled by unprecedented amounts of campaign cash.

The stakes are high Tuesday in Illinois. The successor to a hometown president will be chosen. The outcome of the state's U.S. Senate race will help decide whether Democrats take over the chamber. And Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan will see who gains ground and who loses it in the proxy wars they're waging in contests for state comptroller and the General Assembly.

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Voting will unfold in what's been a topsy-turvy year in politics, reflecting the controversial nature of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in his battle with Democratic contender Hillary Clinton, as well as the contentious fight for power between the two titans at the State Capitol. The effects can be seen up and down the ballot.

Take Republican U.S. Rep. Bob Dold's re-election bid in the North Shore 10th Congressional District against former Democratic congressman Brad Schneider. The National Republican Congressional Committee ran a TV ad featuring the Republican congressman (Dold) saying that the Republican White House hopeful (Trump) "has disqualified himself" for the presidency.

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Then there's the deep southern Illinois contest where Democratic state Sen. Gary Forby faces Republican challenger Dale Fowler in a district that's culturally and geographically much closer to Kentucky than Chicago. Fowler's GOP campaign put out an anti-Forby mailer that says "organized labor can't trust" the Democrat and accuses him of siding with the Republican governor on state labor board appointees.

That wouldn't be all that remarkable, except for the fact that 95 percent of the more than $1.5 million Fowler has raised through October came from the various campaign financial arms of the Illinois Republican Party, which has received nearly $21 million from Rauner's campaign fund this year. Rauner, in effect, paid for ads that are critical of himself, all the in the name of picking up a state Senate seat.

On Saturday, candidates began to shift their focus to the nitty gritty of get-out-the-vote efforts as early voting continues prior to Election Day.

With the national battle for control of the U.S. Senate running through Illinois, first-term Republican Sen. Mark Kirk and Democratic challenger Tammy Duckworth each focused on working friendly territory to urge a big turnout.

Duckworth, a two-term congresswoman from Hoffman Estates, traveled the Chicago area from south to north, including getting a hair cut, shampoo and blow dry at a hair salon in the Avalon Park neighborhood on the South Side.

"I'm confident that we're on a path to victory Tuesday, but we're not taking anything for granted," she said from the stylist's chair. "Hopefully it all comes together and we celebrate Tuesday night."

Later, she ventured to Gurnee and the headquarters of the Lake County Federation of Teachers Local 504.

"You are my legs, walking the doors for me, which is something I literally cannot do," Duckworth said, a reference to the loss of her legs after her U.S. Army helicopter was shot down in the Iraq.

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Duckworth's campaign also released a video of First Lady Michelle Obama saying voters should recapture for Democrats the former Senate seat of President Barack Obama that Kirk won in 2010.

"I want to urge you to vote for Tammy Duckworth to fill my husband's old seat in the U.S. Senate," says Michelle Obama, who adds, "I'm voting for Tammy Duckworth for Senate and I hope that you will too."

Kirk visited a GOP campaign office in the suburban swing territory of Des Plaines, speaking briefly to a crowd of campaign workers before leading the group in a rendition of "Go Cubs Go."

"If the Cubs can win the World Series, then the Republicans can definitely sweep this year in Illinois," Kirk said.

The Republican acknowledged the long odds his campaign faces where Democrats up and down the ticket are looking to benefit from higher turnout among their ranks in a presidential year. But he said his past successful campaigns are proof he has always "defied expectations."

"All Illinois races are also decided in the Cook County suburbs, which is why we're finishing up the campaign right here in Des Plaines," Kirk said.

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Further reflecting the strange nature of this campaign season, Kirk was introduced to the crowd by Maine Township Republican Committeewoman Charlene Foss-Eggemann, who wore a button depicting Rosie the Riveter with the message, "Trump Can Do It!"

Kirk has worked to distance himself from the controversial Republican nominee, un-endorsing Trump after saying he would back the GOP's choice for the White House.

"We're really excited about this cycle. We've never seen Illinois voters so engaged in selecting their elected officials to move forward our state and our country," Foss-Eggemann said. "There's been a lot of talk about the marquee race, but we've also been working really hard to hold the Senate, hold the House and also clean up Springfield."

Rauner, the self-styled leader of the state GOP, also has sought to distance himself from the top of the ticket, repeatedly refusing to discuss Trump with reporters. The governor also has said he was not interested in individual campaigns despite his significant financial investment.

But during the post-March primary state Republican convention in Peoria, Rauner was more emphatic about seeking GOP victories up and down the ticket.

"No way Hillary's getting in the White House," Rauner said. "This is the year we take back the White House, we control Congress and we're going to restore the prosperity and the pride of the great nation of America. This is our year for Republicans to come back into power."

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Rauner's name isn't on the ballot, but there's a lot at stake for the private equity investor turned first-term Republican governor who pledged to use his wealth to erode Democratic legislative supermajorities under Madigan in the House and President John Cullerton in the Senate.

The animosity between Rauner and Madigan has been playing out daily on thousands of TV ads across the state on behalf of dozens of million-dollar-plus legislative campaigns costing an unprecedented amount of money. Republicans are getting it from Rauner and his wealthy allies and Democrats are relying on traditional allies in labor unions and civil trial attorneys opposed to elements of the governor's agenda that would scale back union bargaining rights and curb workers' compensation claims.

The governor's agenda, which also includes term limits and more independence in the drawing of political maps, has been at center stage for nearly two years as Rauner has made it a pre-condition for supporting a comprehensive state budget and the combination of tax hikes and cuts that would help bring it into balance.

For Rauner and Republicans, the face of Democrats has been Madigan, the nation's longest-serving state House speaker who has headed Democratic majorities for 31 of the past 33 years. Madigan has been featured in almost every attack ad aired by GOP legislative candidates.

At the same time, Democrats have sought to make Rauner  and to some extend Trump  the face of the GOP. A federal super political action committee, led by state Sen. Daniel Biss, D-Evanston, has run millions of dollars in ads linking Rauner to Trump, with the governor's silence on his party's presidential candidate used against him.

At Democrat Day at the State Fair in August, Madigan, who also holds the post of state Democratic chairman, said Trump and Rauner "are two peas in a pod. They are joined at the hip."

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"No. 1, we can come together in opposition of the extremism of Donald Trump," Madigan told reporters. "No. 2, I think we can all come together in opposition to the extremism of Bruce Rauner."

The attempt to tie candidates to Rauner and Madigan extends to the race for state comptroller, a little-heralded statewide office that keeps state government's checkbook.

Rauner appointed Leslie Geissler Munger to the post following the December 2014 death of Judy Baar Topinka shortly before her inauguration into the office. Democrats created the special election for the remaining two years of the term and fielded Chicago City Clerk Susana Mendoza. The former state representative is getting the Madigan connection treatment from Munger. In turn, Munger, whose campaign was powered by millions from Rauner and two wealthy allies, is being linked to the governor.

More than 1.2 million voters already have cast their ballots as the time period for early voting was expanded in Illinois this year. Through Thursday, 267,990 had voted by mail and another 967,632 ballots were cast at early voting polling places, according to the State Board of Elections.

Of that total, 261,519 early and mail votes were cast in Chicago and another 277,751 in suburban Cook County, officials said. The suburban Cook figures already exceed those in the previous two presidential elections, and they're on pace to do so in Chicago as well with early voting available until Monday, election officials said.

But they also cautioned that sizable early voting figures aren't necessarily an indication of overall turnout. More than 5.2 million ballots were cast in Illinois during the 2012 presidential election.

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This time around, more than 8 million people have registered to vote in the state and can continue to register through Election Day.

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kskiba@chicagotribune.com
Mayor Rahm Emanuel has used personal email accounts to communicate with top government and political figures, including through his own custom email domain that's similar to the one Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton used on a private email server as secretary of state.

Emanuel registered his personal email domain, rahmemail.com, on May 16, 2011  the same day he was sworn into office as Chicago's mayor, records show.

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That personal account surfaced among thousands of hacked emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta posted by WikiLeaks late last month. A subsequent search for the mayor's email domain in 30,000 emails released by the State Department earlier this year found that Emanuel used the same account to communicate with Clinton when she was secretary of state.

The mayor also received an email from Podesta on a separate personal Gmail account that was included in the hacked emails posted by WikiLeaks.

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The messages mark the first direct evidence that Emanuel has used personal email accounts as mayor beyond official government accounts he has at City Hall.

Emanuel spokesman Adam Collins said Friday that the mayor's use of a customized email domain is quite common. Collins said that while the mayor has his own personal email accounts, Emanuel has not had and does not use a private email server.

In Illinois, government business conducted via email by a public official is subject to the state's open records law. Several Chicago Tribune Freedom of Information Act requests since Emanuel took office have turned up little to no email communications from the mayor on his government email accounts.

The Tribune sued Emanuel in September 2015, alleging that the mayor violated state open records laws by refusing to release communications about city business conducted through personal emails and text messages. In late May, a Cook County judge denied Emanuel's motion to dismiss the lawsuit, declaring that the mayor's emails, texts and other communications are not exempt from disclosure simply because they are transmitted over personal devices. The case is still pending.

Asked why Emanuel set up the personal rahmemail.com account on the day he was sworn in, Collins responded, "After the mayor's election in 2011, the campaign fund set up a new email to ensure the mayor was not using government email for private or political use, which could violate city ordinance or state law. A dedicated Gmail domain allowed for better security given the growing threat of cyberattacks."

Collins did not say whether Emanuel has used either of the personal email accounts to conduct government business.

Since taking office, Emanuel used his custom email domain to send at least seven messages on two different strings to Clinton while she was secretary of state, federal records show.

Clinton has come under fire for her use of a private email system because doing so potentially jeopardized classified information. A federal investigation found no wrongdoing by the secretary of state, but FBI Director James Comey concluded that Clinton was "extremely careless" in using a private server.

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The emails Clinton sent from that server featured a custom domain name similar to Emanuel's  clintonemail.com.

Clinton emails

In one State Department email string, under the subject "Ideas Week," Emanuel invited Clinton to participate in the 2012 Chicago Ideas Week  a series of events he regularly appears at in his official capacity as mayor.

"Hillary  the founder of Groupon started Ideas Week in Chicago and it has been an amazing success for two years now. Last year I did a panel with Mayor Bloomberg," Emanuel wrote Clinton on July 31, 2012. "This year they would love for you and I to appear on opening night and talk about the state of the union. Great opportunity on many levels. Would be October 8. I'd love for you to join. Let me know what you think."

"Checking to see whether I can do  supposed to be traveling. Will let you know asap. Thx," Clinton replied a day later.

Less than one minute later, Emanuel thanked her for a response in an email from his AT&T BlackBerry. Clinton quickly wrote him again to say she couldn't make it.

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"Sorry, but I'm scheduled to be in the Balkans so would love a rain check for next time. All the best, Mayor," Clinton wrote.

"Thanks for the quick response," Emanuel again replied from his cellphone. "Good luck in the balkans."

The mayor's office advised his participation in "a panel discussion at Chicago Ideas Week" on Oct. 8, 2012, as an official event. Emanuel's official calendar also listed the two-hour on-stage discussion with then-NBC anchor Brian Williams.

In June 2014, Clinton made good on her rain check. In a special Ideas Week interview, she and Emanuel traded friendly banter before an audience at the Harris Theater in Millennium Park. That event, too, was advised by Emanuel's office as an official event and listed on his official calendar.

Asked why Emanuel used his personal email to invite Clinton to an official event, Collins responded, "The Mayor and the Secretary have known each other outside these two roles for more than 20 years. That's a ridiculous line of thinking."

A second email exchange centered on Emanuel giving Clinton a positive review of her January 2013 appearance on "60 Minutes."

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Open records suit

In the 2012 and 2013 email strings, Emanuel used a BlackBerry to communicate with Clinton.

The exchanges came after the Chicago Tribune had filed Freedom of Information Act requests seeking Emanuel's phone and email records on issues of public interest, including the installation of a speed camera system and a revamp of the city's aging water infrastructure. The requests turned up no official emails from Emanuel.

The Tribune's 2015 lawsuit against Emanuel alleges that the mayor violated the state's open records laws by refusing to release communications about city business conducted through personal emails and text messages.

The Tribune asked a judge to order the mayor's office to comply with a state open records request and produce documents. The suit also seeks to have Emanuel declared in violation of the Illinois Local Records Act if he failed to preserve emails and texts he sent or received related to city business.

The Emanuel administration asked the judge to dismiss the suit, arguing that the requests constituted an "unprecedented and unreasonable invasion of personal privacy" and that the "alleged emails are not public records."

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The mayor's office had argued that the law allows plaintiffs "to enjoin a public body from improperly withholding public records. But a public body cannot 'withhold' a record that it does not possess. Indeed, Plaintiff does not identify, nor does the Act provide, any means by which a public body such as the City could force its officers and employees to grant it access to their privately owned accounts and devices."

But Cook County Circuit Court Judge Kathleen Pantle disagreed. She ruled that the FOIA law does not distinguish between records kept on publicly funded devices and personal ones.

The judge said it should be up to the court to decide whether the communications are "public record" and wrote that communication on personal devices or within personal accounts "does not ipso facto mean that the communication is personal in nature."

The city appealed the ruling.

Podesta emails

The hacked emails WikiLeaks released also showed Emanuel using his rahmemail.com domain to contact Podesta, the chairman of Clinton's presidential campaign. Emanuel and Podesta served together at the White House in former President Bill Clinton's administration.

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The day after Emanuel was forced into a runoff in his re-election bid, Podesta used a Gmail address for Emanuel instead of the rahmemail.com account.

"I got my Stan briefing so I'm feeling slightly better," Podesta wrote to Emanuel, a possible reference to pollster Stan Greenberg. "Still sucks to have to go back into battle. Let me know if there is anything we can do to help. Mary sends love. John."

Less than a week after winning re-election in April 2015, Emanuel sent Podesta an email with the subject line "good word," recommending his speechwriter Brian DeSplinter for the Clinton campaign. In that email, Emanuel used the rahmemail.com account and not the Gmail address.

"Brian has been speech-writing for me for the past four years and has done a great job," Emanuel continued. "He's a highly skilled speech writer and I know he'd be a very valuable addition to the team. Let me know if you have any questions and I hope you can find a good position for him. resume attached."

DeSplinter's LinkedIn page doesn't show that he landed a job with the Clinton campaign. It lists him as a communications executive at United Airlines.

bruthhart@chicagotribune.com

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Twitter @BillRuthhart
Robert Durst in March 2015 after his arraignment in a federal weapons case in New Orleans. (Gerald Herbert / Associated Press)

New York real estate heir Robert Durst arrived in Los Angeles on Friday and will be arraigned next week on a murder charge in the 2000 slaying of his friend Susan Berman, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said.

The arrival of Durst, who is scheduled to appear at the Airport Courthouse Monday afternoon, marks the latest chapter in a legal saga that was reinvigorated last year when the New York aristocrat was featured in the HBO documentary series "The Jinx."

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Durst, 73, had been due to be transferred to Southern California by Aug. 18 from a federal prison in Louisiana, where he had pleaded guilty to a weapons charge.

"We have been ready for some time. I'm glad we're going to start proceedings," Durst's attorney, Dick DeGuerin, told The Times on Friday. "He's going to get his day in court."

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DeGuerin said he expected a preliminary hearing in the case to take place in the spring and for the trial later in 2017. Durst was booking into the Los Angeles Police Department jail Friday at 1:20 p.m.

Durst has insisted he had nothing to do with Berman's fatal shooting.

The six-part HBO series explored the disappearance of Durst's first wife, Kathie, who went missing in New York in 1982, and the slaying of Berman, a writer who was found dead in her Benedict Canyon home in 2000. Police believe Durst killed Berman because she planned to speak to New York prosecutors about Kathie's disappearance.

In 2003, a Texas jury acquitted Durst even after he admitted killing his neighbor, chopping the body into pieces and then dumping them into Galveston Bay.

Durst at the time was living in Galveston under an assumed identity as a mute woman in a threadbare apartment that cost $300 a month. At the sensational trial, Durst's legal team, spearheaded by DeGuerin, laid out an elaborate argument of self-defense. "Morris Black died as a result of a life-and-death violent struggle over a gun that Morris Black had threatened Bob Durst with," DeGuerin told jurors and they would believe him.

Before the series finale of "The Jinx," Durst disappeared from his Houston condo, prompting a manhunt that ended in New Orleans. Federal prosecutors filed a weapons case against him after FBI agents found a loaded revolver in his hotel room there.

Durst pleaded guilty to a weapons charge and was sentenced in April to seven years and one month in federal prison

In a letter to a Times reporter, Durst wrote that he is eager to come to Los Angeles to defend himself.

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"I'd rather be going to California on my own, but I'm anxious to get to trial to prove I didn't kill Susan Berman," Durst wrote. "You couldn't print what I think about 'The Jinx.' I didn't kill Susan Berman, and I don't know who did."

richard.winton@latimes.com

Follow @lacrimes on Twitter

Times staff writer James Queally contributed to this report.
Rudy Giuliani told Fox News's Martha MacCallum on Oct. 26 that Donald Trump had "a surprise or two that you're going to hear about in the next two days."

"I'm talking about some pretty big surprise," he said.

Two days later, FBI Director James Comey revealed to Congress that his agents had resumed their investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, after agents in an unrelated case discovered emails that could potentially be relevant to the server case.

Giuliani is a former U.S. attorney and New York mayor whose former law firm represents the FBI Agents Association, as the Daily Beast points out. But does he have inside sources at the bureau who might have given him a heads-up about what was to come?

In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Giuliani said no, and that he in particular had no heads-up on Comey's big reveal. He said his cryptic prediction of a surprise was about a Donald Trump advertising blitz in the final days of the campaign, and he had not talked to current FBI agents in the last eight to ten months.

"In that particular situation, I was actually talking about the advertising campaign that you were referencing earlier, that I knew was going to come as a big surprise," Giuliani said of his comments to Martha MacCallum.

Giuliani also addressed the question in an interview with "Fox & Friends" on Friday morning, though his answers were so vague that it is difficult to assess even what exactly he claimed to have known about.

Giuliani said he was "real careful not to talk to any on-duty, active FBI agents," but he had "a lot of friends who are retired FBI agents, close, personal friends." He then opined about how his retired agent friends disagreed with Comey's decision not to charge Clinton in the email case, and they felt the Justice Department was "obstructing" agents' separate efforts to look into the Clinton Foundation.

That is all roughly true - though it was career public integrity prosecutors, rather than politically appointed Justice Department officials, who were skeptical of the agents' foundation evidence and denied their request to go forward. But it was also all recently made public, and Giuliani wouldn't have needed insider or even retired sources to talk about it.

Giuliani was then asked about his comments to MacCallum. What exactly did he know, and what of the suggestion that he might have been "part of that"?

"I'm not part of it at all," Giuliani said. "All I heard were former FBI agents telling me that there's revolution going on inside the FBI and it's now at a boiling point, and -"

"So you had a general idea that something was coming," host Brian Kilmeade interrupted.

"I, I had expected this for the last, honestly to tell you the truth, I thought it was going to be about three or four weeks ago, because back, way back in July this started, they kept getting stymied looking for subpoenas, looking for records," Giuliani said.

The answer suggests Giuliani is claiming to have known not of the development in the Clinton email case, but of frustration over the Clinton Foundation matter. Agents wanting to look into the foundation made a pitch to career public integrity prosecutors in February and were told they did not have enough evidence to move forward. The development in the Clinton email case was far more recent. Agents investigating former congressman Anthony Weiner, D-New York, recovered the computer now at issue in the email case in early October.

Giuliani denied he was a part of any effort to leak details of any investigations. "I did nothing to get it out, and I had no role in it," he said. But in the next breath, he said: "Did I hear about it? You're darn right I heard about it, and I can't even repeat the language that I heard from the former FBI agents."

Blitzer asked Giuliani what, precisely, he was referring to. Giuliani said he was referring to the "consternation within the FBI." He again repeated that he had no information about the Clinton email case, though he then suggested that he was perhaps less surprised by the latest development because of what he had heard previously about the FBI tensions.

"I had no information about that at all," Giuliani said, referring to the email case. "That came as a complete surprise to me, except to the extent that maybe it wasn't as much of a surprise to me because I had been hearing for quite some time that there was a lot of -- I don't know how you would describe it, maybe revolution is too strong a word -- but a lot of debate and anger within the FBI about the way they were being treated by the Justice Department."

Agents talking about ongoing cases, even to those retired from the bureau, is potentially problematic, though it does happen. Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon, retweeting a transcript of Giuliani's "Fox & Friends" appearance, wrote, "This sure seems like adequate grounds for an Inspector General review."

In a letter, Congressmen Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, and John Conyers Jr., D-Michigan, also called on the Inspector General to investigate leaks and referenced Giuliani's comments.

"These unauthorized and inaccurate leaks from within the FBI, particularly so close to a presidential election, are unprecedented," the legislators wrote.

Giuliani said he would cooperate with such an investigation, though he himself was not the recipient of any leaks.

A spokesman for the Justice Department inspector general has declined previously to say whether the office is investigating anything related to the Clinton investigation. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also has called for the inspector general to look into potential conflicts of interest of some of the FBI and Justice Department officials involved in the matter.

Giuliani did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment for this story. During his interview with Blitzer, Giuliani also vaguely suggested he was holding back more, potentially surprising information about Trump's plan for the final four days, adding quickly, "it has nothing to do with the emails."
A married couple who lived in this house in the 2000 block of Kate Court in Montgomery were found stabbed to death Friday night, police said. (Linda Girardi / The Beacon-News)

A married couple was found stabbed to death Friday night in their Montgomery home, the village police chief said Saturday.

Police were called to a residence in the 2000 block of Kate Court about 9:30 p.m. about a "possible death investigation" and found a 48-year-old man and a 55-year-old woman with multiple stab wounds, Chief Daniel Meyers said in a news release.

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The victims, whose names have not been released, were pronounced dead at the scene by the Kendall County coroner's office. The Illinois State Police have been called in to process the crime scene, Meyers said.

Neighbors said Saturday the deaths of the couple, who moved into their home in the Orchard Prairie North subdivision earlier this year, is frightening because police have not disclosed any details about the case or if there are any suspects.

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"I am scared," said Dalia Garcia, who lives three houses away. "We don't know if something happened between them or if we should be afraid."

Garcia said she believes the couple had three children and that one of them may have found their parents' bodies.

"We were not home, but my father was here when (the couple's) son's wife asked if she could use our restroom," she said. "Apparently they were supposed to have dinner together."

Garcia said she didn't know the couple. She knew they were employed, possibly by a grocery store, and that they had two dogs, she said.

"We spoke occasionally to the husband. We never spoke with his wife," Garcia said. "We would have a friendly exchange between neighbors but nothing more than that."

Another neighbor, Kellie Turyna, said she learned about the couple's deaths when she heard the commotion when about two dozen police squad cars descended on the area, which is located off of U.S. 30 and Griffin Drive.

"It's a nice, quiet neighborhood," Turyna said. "I would see the husband walk the dog. I said hello to him when they first moved in."

Not knowing what happened has her worried, she said.

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"We would like to know either way so we don't have to panic," Turyna said. "The officer (on Friday night) told me that I had nothing to worry about. Obviously we do need to be concerned. There was crime scene tape around the house, and at least 20 police cars were here."

Turyna said she is also concerned that at least one of the couple's dogs was left unattended in the house.

"I can hear the dog barking," she said. If it continues, she said, she may call animal control to check on the welfare of the pet.

Linda Girardi is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
The East Aurora Marching Band makes its way down Downer Place during the Veterans Day Parade in Aurora last year. This year's parade is set for Friday in downtown Aurora. (Mike Mantucca / The Beacon-News)

The city of Aurora and the Aurora Veterans Advisory Council will host the annual Veterans Day Parade and Ceremony Friday.

The parade will step off at 10:15 a.m. from Broadway and Benton Street, and will travel north on Broadway, then west on Downer Place to the Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Hall, 23 E. Downer Place, where the "Honoring All Who Served" ceremony will take place.

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During the ceremony, Aurora Mayor Robert O'Connor and other dignitaries will pay tribute to all who served and are serving, according to a press release about the event. The 2017 Keynote Speaker is Bob Buman, an Illinoisan who has been portraying Gen. Ulysses S. Grant for more than 40 years.

For this ceremony, he will address Aurora from the steps of the Grand Army of the Republic Hall in celebration of its reopening this year.

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The ceremony will conclude with a military rifle salute at 11 a.m.

The parade line-up includes active and retired military personnel, local and regional veterans' organizations, public safety personnel, a community chorus, high school marching bands and ROTC units and guests, according to the release.

Immediately following the parade and ceremony, the historic G.A.R. Memorial Hall will be open for tours.

The parade, ceremony, and tours are all free and open to public.
SciTech Executive Director Arlene Hawks stands with husband Dick after he came out of triple-bypass surgery in September. (Arlene Hawks )

It was supposed to be a routine visit.

It's not like Dick Hawks was feeling all that poorly, but something made him decide he should probably see his doctor and get a few basic tests done, just for peace of mind.

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Good idea. The EKG the Aurora man's regular physician gave him in August led to a cautionary follow-up with a cardiologist at Rush-Copley Medical Center's Heart Institute, which in turn led to an echogram  which led to a nuclear stress test  which led to a stunning diagnosis.

"This is where you had another heart attack," the specialist said, pointing to the test results.

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At first wife Arlene thought the doctor had mistakenly grabbed someone else's info, until the doctor explained her husband had, at some time that could not be determined, been the victim of a silent heart attack and the main artery to his heart was 80 percent blocked.

"He is not going home," the surgeon said.

Unfortunately, surgery could not be scheduled for a couple more weeks. And until she got word her husband had survived triple bypass surgery that very scary day in mid-September, Arlene Hawks remained in a "state of shock." Had it not been for family, friends and co-workers, she added, "I'm not sure how I would have gotten through it."

But that experience was a "life-changer."

Hawks not only developed a deep appreciation for the doctors at Rush-Copley Medical Group who "gave my husband back to me," she realized the importance of "listening to your body much more closely."

As the executive director of SciTech Hands On Museum in Aurora, she admitted to routinely walking by the Heart Health Exhibit donated by Rush-Copley several years ago "without paying much attention to it."

Not any more. Hawks has quickly become an expert on the workings of our human tickers. And her passion runs so deeply, she's made heart health the focus of the upcoming SciTech annual fundraiser.

"The Beat Goes On" dinner and dance that will be held from 3 to 6 p.m. Nov. 13 at Two Brothers Roundhouse in Aurora will not only celebrate Rush-Copley Medical Group and heart specialists everywhere, the goal is to raise as much money as possible for SciTech Scholarships, which promotes education in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics for our young people.

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Cost for the event is $75, with $40 tax deductible, and it's not too late to sign up for sponsorship by going to http://scitechmuseum.org/2016-fundraiser/

Her husband's health scare was certainly a wake-up call, and Arlene Hawks hopes by sharing her story in this very public way, others will understand the importance of cardio testing. One critical lesson she learned through all of this, she told me, is that there are many people "walking around who have been victims of these silent heart attacks."

Symptoms, which can include fatigue, shortness of breath or heartburn, are often mild and mistaken for other issues. And when a person doesn't realize he or she needs help, treatment is delayed, which leads to more damage, according to the American Heart Association.

Dick Hawks had no idea when or where he suffered this attack. The 77-year-old retired stock broker who has sat on many artistic, educational and literary boards in the Fox Valley, had noticed he tired more easily but, as we all tend to do, attributed it to getting older.

His wife says Dick is now in cardio rehab, with friends telling him he's looking better than he has in a long time.

"This changed everything," Arlene Hawks said. "I want others to know how important it is we pay attention to those everyday feelings."

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Dcrosby@tribpub.com
The superintendent of Flossmoor School District 161 remains on leave more than two weeks since parents voiced concerns about the district's "downward trend of academic performance" during a public meeting and called for his immediate ouster, a district official confirmed.

Craig Doster, who has run the five-school, pre-K-8 district since 2011, did not attend Tuesday's Board of Education committee meeting and has been on leave since Oct. 18, the day after parents requested his dismissal and presented the board president with a letter of no confidence purported to have the signatures of more than 400 dissatisfied parents and residents.

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Frances LaBella, the district's assistant superintendent of business operations, this week confirmed Doster's leave of absence and said she was coordinating the effort to handle his responsibilities while he was out of the office. She declined to comment on the reason for his leave and said she did not know if or when he might return to work.

Board of Education members declined comment on Doster's absence when questioned at Tuesday's meeting, and board president Stephen Paredes did not immediately return a subsequent request for comment. Doster couldn't be reached for comment.

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It is unclear whether the parents' concerns were tied to his leave.

Discontent over Doster's handling of the district, which has been building for years, came to a head at the board's Oct. 17 meeting when Reginald Williams Jr., speaking on behalf of a group of concerned parents, read a letter calling for Doster's removal as many meeting attendees stood in solidarity.

"We, collectively as community members across the district, have no confidence in the superintendent's ability to lead our school," Williams said. "He has failed to improve test scores, failed to serve low-income students, failed to introduce a curriculum that adequately reduces the high achievement gap for subgroups and failed to serve high learners who positively impact test scores."

Before the district hired Doster, he was superintendent at Ottawa School District 141, a position he held since 2006. Before his appointment in Ottawa, he was the principal of Summit Hill Junior High School in Frankfort from 2003 to 2006. Doster was an assistant principal in Pontiac from 2000 to 2003 and an elementary and middle-grade teacher for six years.

Then-board president David Dreyfuss said Doster had extensive knowledge in curriculum, finance, negotiations, grants and all other aspects of public school administrative responsibilities.

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

District 161, which has 82 percent minority and 41 percent low-income student enrollment, scored slightly above the state average on this year's Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, released on Monday.

The district's 35.4 percent passing rate on the PARCC is up slightly from its 33.2 percent passing rate on last year's exam, which measures both English language arts/literacy and math.

Scores on the Northwest Evaluation Association's Measures of Academic Progress, or NWEA MAP, as provided on the district's website, show Flossmoor right around the national norms on reading and math for all grades over the past four years.

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District parents, however, want more than mediocrity, Williams said at the Oct. 17 meeting. Rather, they demand a return to "the academic standard of excellence for which this community has been known for over decades," he said.

The board's next regular public meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. at its Normandy Villa District Office, 41 E. Elmwood Drive in Chicago Heights.

zkoeske@tribpub.com

Twitter @ZakKoeske
Shoppers at the Mariano's in Frankfort had the chance to talk with members of the village's police department Friday in a program Police Chief John Burica says is a key part of "21st Century policing."

Burica told one visitor the 9 a.m. "Coffee With a Cop" event is intended to build relationships with residents.

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The three year-old program, patterned after a similar one by police in Hawthorne, Calif., is coordinated by Patrol Officer Leanne Bender, who schedules it at local gathering places several times a year. Bender has headed the department's crime prevention efforts for the past 10 years.

Deputy Chief Robert Krause said citizen-oriented programs "give us a way to communicate with the public outside of formal channels." "Most people," he added, "don't call the police when things are going well."

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As shoppers wheeled their carts around the assembled law enforcement officers, Krause said the Coffee With a Cop program gives residents the chance to "talk about anything. There are no agendas."

For example, Frankfort Square resident Vicky Gress talked with Bender about car burglaries in her area, while New Lenox resident Wayne Mason chatted with Detective Kevin Johnson about fishing in Michigan and the chances of the Detroit Red Wings ever winning the Stanley Cup again.

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

Frankfort resident Ralph Eisenbrandt, a 22-year veteran of Frankfort Fire Protection District, took advantage of the one-on-one get-together to chat with Burica, as well as former Fire Protection District Chief Larry Nice.

Burica said residents who feel more comfortable with the police are more likely to pick up the phone when they see something a little out of the ordinary.

"We want the resident to think, 'They won't mind if I call about that stranger.' So often it's nothing, but we want to know," Burica said. "Our police are out on the street all the time."

Mayor Jim Holland, who appeared at the event, said elected officials understand and support the department reaching out to residents.

"We still run a D.A.R.E. program; most communities have stopped it," he noted.

Burica credits Holland and village trustees with seeing "the importance of proactiveness."

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Dennis Sullivan is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
Entrance to the Lincoln-Way Community High School District 210 office at Lincoln-Way Central High School in New Lenox on April 14, 2016. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)

If Lincoln-Way High School District 210's spending and revenues match its budgeted amounts this year, the district will post its first operating surplus in at least a decade.

But that achievement alone won't spell an end to the district's financial woes. In September, Lincoln-Way authorized borrowing $20 million in short-term loans to help fund operations this fiscal year, and the cash-strapped district will need to borrow millions more in the coming months.

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Before landing on the state's financial watch list in spring 2015, Lincoln-Way was seen by many as a model of strong fiscal management. Now, however, the district's precipitous financial decline offers a cautionary tale for taxpayers in Illinois, a state with limited oversight of school district finances. Roughly 60 percent of Illinois' more than 800 school districts reported deficit spending, the state reported in March.

Though it appeared sudden, Lincoln-Way's financial decline had been building quietly for years. The district's problems can be traced back to 2006, when Lincoln-Way's leaders pushed a $225 million referendum question to build two new schools and renovate two older buildings.

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The projected population growth never materialized, and the district's leaders voted in August 2015 to shutter North, which opened in 2009. Superintendent Scott Tingley has said the district should have closed a school "sooner," though the decision has been met with heated public opposition.

Experts contacted by the Daily Southtown said the Illinois State Board of Education can offer struggling districts help if asked, but ISBE does not have the authority or resources to intervene before a district's small problems become bigger issues.

Robert Grossi, a financial consultant who worked with the Illinois State Board of Education and Hazel Crest School District 152 1/2 through the district's financial troubles, said ISBE "is very good when a school district is having problems and they're contacted. They're good at assistance."

"But as far as being proactive, I just don't think they have the resources to effectively do that," Grossi said.

James Popernik, a former controller for Downers Grove School District 58 who also served as chairman of a financial oversight panel for Proviso Township High School District 209 earlier this decade, said the state has "a decentralized system where school boards call the shots and ISBE doesn't."

"The individual boards make those decisions that get them in good shape or bad shape," Popernik said.

Lincoln-Way community members have been critical of the local school board and administration's decisions that led to continued overspending, and some have questioned the district's transparency and honesty about its finances. Many critics have said ISBE doesn't do enough to prevent districts from falling into financial pitfalls as Lincoln-Way did.

"A lot of people thought the state was keeping an eye on things and therefore we can sit back and accept whatever they say," said Steven Wahlert, a New Lenox Township resident who has studied the district's finances. "We found that's a definite lesson learned."

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In an interview this week, state House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago, said the situation at Lincoln-Way raises questions about school district financial information collected by the state each year. ISBE is currently looking into whether the state asks "the right questions," Currie said.

"They're exploring the question, 'How did the financial information they got from the district not alert somebody to the impending major debacle?' " Currie said.

Limited authority

Through spokeswoman Jaclyn Matthews, ISBE officials declined an interview request. But ISBE acknowledged that "statute limits the authority the state has with regards to overseeing school districts' finances."

The first step for ISBE to intervene in a district's finances is requiring a deficit reduction plan, Matthews said.

Local school districts are able to deficit spend without the state requiring them to present a deficit reduction plan as long as the amount of money they have in operating reserves is more than three times its deficit.

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That threshold kept ISBE from becoming involved with Lincoln-Way's deficit for years, during a time when the district steadily drained its coffers.

A Daily Southtown review of Lincoln-Way's operating budgets and annual financial reports from fiscal years 2007 to 2015 found the district overspent each year it presented a balanced operating budget, typically by millions.

Some in the community have questioned whether ISBE should flag school districts whose budgets don't match reality.

After the deficit reduction plan, a district would need to be certified in "financial difficulty" to merit further intervention.

Only if a district has been certified in financial difficulty and does not follow its state-approved financial plan can ISBE consider appointing a financial oversight panel to review it, Matthews said.

Each year, ISBE collects mounds of data from districts each year, including financial information such as budgets and financial reports.

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That data goes into a financial profile categorizing the relative financial health of different districts. Lincoln-Way is one of only 32 districts that landed on the watch list this year.

"The creation of the annual financial profile in 2004 has had a positive impact on district financial behavior," Matthews said. "ISBE currently is examining the annual financial profile to evaluate if any changes are needed to align more closely with the criteria for financial difficulty laid out in statute."

'Local control'

Politically, the idea of expanded oversight is controversial. Illinois officials generally emphasize the concept of "local control"  a powerful notion in a state with more local units of government than any other.

State Rep. Anthony DeLuca, D-Chicago Heights, who represents parts of Lincoln-Way's communities, said he'd have to examine ISBE's oversight role closer before saying whether the agency should do more or less.

But he said he's "not a big advocate for the state coming in and creating new task forces, creating new committees, new oversight."

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The decline of Lincoln-Way "puts a microscope on the importance of people being involved and staying involved with what's happening," DeLuca said.

"Everybody seems to be focused on this presidential election, but in reality, these local races impact our life," he said.

State Rep. Al Riley, D-Olympia Fields, who also represents parts of Lincoln-Way's communities, said he doesn't want school districts "run by Springfield."

Questions about oversight go to the broader issue of local control, Riley said.

"Where is the line between having local control and having that local scrutiny and then giving it up to ISBE being able to make decisions?" Riley said.

Currie, the House majority leader, said she shares her colleagues' belief in local control. Nevertheless, Currie also said there are situations where school boards are "failing to educate the kids" or where the district's finances "have gone to hell in a handbasket."

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"There are times (where), for whatever reason, there is a huge problem at the local level that can't be resolved at the local level," Currie said.

Since landing on the state's watch list, Lincoln-Way officials have blamed external factors for their problems.

In response to questions, district spokeswoman Taryn Atwell released a statement last month saying, "The three largest factors of the district's financial decline were the economy, fewer students (meaning less revenue) and state funding."

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

Asked whether the state should lower the threshold for landing on the watch list, Atwell said, "It is always a good idea for the state to review policies and procedures regarding the financial condition of schools throughout the state of Illinois. ISBE could create a task force to examine the threshold and any other safeguards that may need to be in place."

Whether the state should make legal and administration changes to make it easier for ISBE to intervene sooner in a district's finances is "something that could be reviewed by a bipartisan task force," Atwell said.

Atwell also suggested Illinois should "address the critical issue of school funding that has been plaguing state schools for decades."

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Riley acknowledged there are problems with school funding but said that didn't cause Lincoln-Way's issues.

"Own up to the mistakes but don't try to compound them by blaming those local decisions made on something else," Riley said. "You built two schools. You spent a lot of money. You had to shut a school down. What did that have to do (with state funding)?"

gpratt@tribpub.com

Twitter @royalpratt
The Hines VA Mobile Medical Unit will be in Elburn to provide enrollment, immunizations, and other health care resources for area veterans. (Veterans Assistance Commission / HANDOUT)

Kane County sponsors Veterans Benefits Seminar

The Veterans Assistance Commission of Kane County will host a Veteran Benefits Seminar at 2 p.m. Thursday at the Legion, 112 N. Main St. (Route 47) in downtown Elburn.

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The commission is holding the seminar in partnership with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Hines Hospital, and Elburn American Legion Post 630. A veteran benefits overview presentation will begin at 6 p.m. A Veteran Service Officer will be available to help with applications. The seminar will end at 8 p.m.

The goal is providing services to veterans living in the Elburn, Maple Park and Kaneville areas, according to a news release.

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"We are putting a greater emphasis on outreach over the next year to make sure veterans across the county know what benefits they're eligible for," said Jake Zimmerman, Superintendent of the Veterans Assistance Commission of Kane County.

The Hines VA Mobile Medical Unit will be onsite to provide enrollment, immunizations and other health care resources for area veterans. Veterans Service Officers from the Veterans Assistance Commission of Kane County will also be on hand providing application assistance in applying for veterans benefits such as service connected disability compensation, non-service connected pension, as well as helping veterans obtain their DD-214 if they don't have a copy.

Kane County is the seventh largest county in Illinois by veteran population with 24,084 veterans, according to the release. Of those veterans residing in Kane County, 10 percent have a service-connected disability and 19 percent use the VA for health care, according to the Commission.

For information, call the Veterans Assistance Commission of Kane County at 630-232-3550.

Elgin fire station assists winter clothing collection

Elgin Fire Department is helping local nonprofits collect new and lightly used winter coats, gloves, mittens, hats, boots and snow pants and scarves for men, women and children.

Donations will be accepted through Dec. 31 at all seven of Elgin's fire stations. Addresses and contact information for each fire station can be found at cityofelgin.org/firestations.

As part of the effort, Fire Station 5 is collecting items to help the Elgin Community Crisis Center through its annual Winter Wear Collection Drive.

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Lillian Lozano, facility manager at the Community Crisis Center, said the organization need men's coats that can withstand the extreme winter conditions of the area. The Community Crisis Center requests that no lightweight or spring items, sweatshirts, sweaters or wool dress coats, be donated at this time.

Fire Station 5 has worked with the Community Crisis Center for the past three years, assisting in the winter clothing collection drive. About half of Community Crisis Center's collections come through the fire stations each year, Lozano said. The collections are delivered via ambulance on a weekly basis, typically carrying at least 10 bags of coats, she said.

The Community Crisis Center is a nonprofit organization that provides emergency temporary safe shelter to women and children who are homeless due to domestic violence, sexual assault, or financial crisis. The organization also offers a 24-hour crisis hotline, counseling, education and other assistance programs.

Elgin's fire stations are helping local organizations, including Advocate Sherman Pediatric Unit, Kane County Triad, Boys & Girls Club of Elgin, Food for Greater Elgin and School District U46 reading programs. "Each station finds a niche in their district that will help benefit the community," said Bryan McMahon, assistant fire chief.

For information, contact Captain Dick Cummings at 847-931-6194 or cummings_r@cityofelgin.org.

U46, Elgin honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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School District U46 is partnering with the city of Elgin's Human Relations Commission to recognize fourth through 12th grade student writers in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The contest, organized through the Commission's 2017 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Weekend Celebration Committee, aims to engage the students in the history of the January celebration of the Civil Rights leader, according to a U46 news release.

"This program honors Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s legacy and encourages students to research and reflect on the ways we resolve conflict today," said School District U46 CEO Tony Sanders. "Students who participate in the weekend celebration will learn how we might best apply Dr. King's values and vision to contemporary social and political issues."

Students can participate through the essay contest and Socratic seminar around this year's theme "Nonviolence is the way and its method is love." A Socratic seminar is a collaborative, intellectual dialogue facilitated with open-ended questions about a text or topic.

Fourth through 12th graders will be asked to research the theme's central question: "Is nonviolence the answer?" and then write an essay that must include research and not exceed 1,200 words. Interested students must include their name, school and grade with submissions. Entries must attach a bibliography or works-cited page.

Candidates of the essay contest can apply to participate in the Socratic seminar. The seminar will take place at 10 a.m. Jan. 15 at Larkin High School, 1475 Larkin Ave, Elgin. Applications to the Socratic seminar are separate entries.

The completed essay and Socratic seminar applications must be submitted electronically by Dec. 4 to u46mlk@u-46.org.

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Kane County's Nature Book Group

The Forest Preserve District of Kane County's monthly Nature Book Group will to discuss books about the environment, nature or related topics, and cover a broad range of environmental issues. Participants should read the book and join the discussion.

"Nature Book Group" programs take place at Creek Bend Nature Center, within LeRoy Oakes Forest Preserve, at 37W700 Dean St., Saint Charles.

Upcoming books include:

"In Control of Nature" by John McPhee, Nov. 16, 7-8:30 p.m.

"The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols, Dec. 14, 7-8:30 p.m.

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"The Art of Seeing Things: Essays by John Burrough" edited by Charlotte Walker, Jan. 18, 7-8:30 p.m.

"Lab Girl" by Hope Jahren, Feb. 15, 7-8:30 p.m.

Advance registration is required. Call 630-444-3190 or e-mail programs@kaneforest.com. To view a full roster of Forest Preserve District nature programs, go to www.kaneforest.com.
An Elgin man faces prison for possessing large amounts of synthetic narcotics at his home, as well as for selling synthetic narcotics at his Algonquin business, according to a news release from the Kane County state's attorney's office.

John G. Monteleone, 48, of the 100 block of Brookside Drive in Elgin, was convicted Friday of unlawful possession of more than 200 grams of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, a class X felony; unlawful possession of more than 200 grams of a controlled substance, a class 1 felony; unlawful delivery of less than 50 grams of a controlled substance, a class 2 felony; and unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia, a class A misdemeanor.

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Monteleone waived his right to a jury trial, the release said.

Kane County prosecutors presented evidence that on Sept. 25, 2013, John Monteleone and his wife, co-defendant Tracy Monteleone, 46, of the same address, were knowingly in possession of, with the intent to sell, more than 200 grams of a controlled chemical substance that is commonly known and distributed as synthetic marijuana. In addition, John Monteleone was in possession of between 2.5 grams and 10 grams of marijuana and drug paraphernalia, according to the release.

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The North Central Narcotics Task Force and the Algonquin Police Department conducted the three-month investigation, the release said. About noon Sept. 25, 2013, the agencies executed a search warrant at John Monteleone's business in the 1400 block of Commerce Drive in Algonquin, in McHenry County. Authorities seized nearly 200 grams of an analog of a controlled substance, commonly known as "spice," a synthetic cannabinoid, the release said.

Authorities then went to the Monteleones' home in Elgin and found in Tracy Monteleone's vehicle approximately 3,200 grams of the same analog synthetic cannabinoid, the release said.

On Sept. 25, 2014, Tracy Monteleone pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of more than 200 grams of a controlled substance, a class 1 felony, and was sentenced to four years' probation.

Associate Judge Linda Abrahamson set John Monteleone's next court appearance for motions and sentencing on Dec. 21. He faces a sentence of between six and 30 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Monteleone had been free on $2,500 bond. Bond was revoked upon conviction, and he was taken into custody, the release said.

"Synthetic marijuana in its many forms is dangerous and causes harm and even death to people who ingest it. As it began to gain popularity, the Illinois General Assembly passed laws to ban it. Our office will continue to prosecute the drug dealers who sell this product," Kane County State's Attorney Joe McMahon said.

"Thanks to (Illinois) Attorney General Lisa Madigan and her staff for working with us on this joint prosecution. This is an example of the success we can achieve through collaboration," McMahon said.

"As synthetic drug use began to rise in Illinois, particularly among teenagers and young adults, my office worked quickly to craft the new law that outlaws the sale of these often deadly substances," Madigan said.
Dr. James Griffin, who practices in Elgin, was one of the doctors who testified on the hospitals behalf at a public hearing the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board held Friday in Elgin. (Gloria Casas / The Courier-News)

Advocate Sherman Hospital officials, Elgin leaders and residents voiced their support for the hospital's application to build an ambulatory surgery center on its west side campus during an Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board public hearing Friday.

"We are very happy to say that at Advocate Sherman we continue to have growth, especially in our surgical world," said Linda Deering, president of Advocate Sherman.

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The hospital operates at 90 percent utilization, and "there is no question we will need additional surgical capacity," she said. The question is "what's the right approach to meet the need."

Advocate Sherman filed an application in September with the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board seeking permission to build a $12.7 million ambulatory surgical center on its Randall Road campus. The 15,000-square-foot center would have three surgical operating rooms, 12 recovering stations, six pre-op stations and additional space for nonclinical areas like administration, visitor-staff, medical records and storage, the application states.

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The surgical center would be a joint venture between Advocate Sherman, Surgical Care Affiliates and 13 physician investors, according to a hospital news release.

If the review board approves the application, the center would be completed by March 2019.

Deering was one of the speakers, along with Elgin City Manager Rick Kozal and businessman Rick Jakle, at the public hearing the review board held at Gail Borden Public Library, 270 N. Grove Ave., Elgin. She said she knows some people may question why the hospital would build a new center rather than build an addition.

A surgical center is a way to keep costs down for patients, Deering said. Patients like an outpatient setting, and the costs are much lower than having surgery at a hospital, she said.

Advocate Sherman's surgical center would be used by its patients, so there would be no impact on any other hospitals within its geographical area, Deering said.

The hospital provides outpatient services to people within its geographic service area defined within a 45-minute drive, the application stated. Advocate Sherman has enough need to support its existing 16 operating rooms and will take three operating rooms out of service when the surgical center opens, it stated.

Robert Vavrik, Centegra Health System's strategic planning manager, said there are 28 surgical centers within Advocate Sherman's geographic area, and a 2014 study showed those centers are underused. Advocate Sherman's proposed surgical center would provide duplicate services and compete with the nearby Algonquin Road Surgery Center, which is about 15 minutes away, Vavrik said.

The project's $12.7 million could be used for other things and is a "misuse of dollars," Vavrik said.

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Eric Zornow, Centegra's vice president for finance and treasury, said Advocate Sherman is part-owner of the Algonquin Road Surgical Center with Centegra Health System. Its new surgical center would negatively impact the Algonquin facility, he said. Patients would end up shifting cases from Algonquin, he said.

Connie Secor, director of surgery for Centegra Health System, said Advocate Sherman did not include Centegra's new Huntley Hospital on its application as one of the nearby facilities offering surgery. Advocate Sherman is aware of the new hospital since it opposed its construction and filed a lawsuit to stop it, Secor said.

Eight operating rooms at Huntley Hospital would be affected, Secor said. The review board should consider the omission when making its decision, she said.

Dr. James Griffin, an urologist who has practiced in Elgin for 20 years, said he supports the surgical center and does not feel it would be a duplication of services.

Performing procedures in a surgical center near a hospital provides reassurance and saves time and resources, he said. The fact the surgical center will be co-owned by Advocate Sherman and managed by a nationally known company adds to that reassurance, he said.

Dr. Evelyn Ackermann, of Ophthalmology Associates in Elgin, said the importance of surgical centers is becoming more evident as insurance companies push doctors to be affiliated with the centers. Ackermann supports the idea of a surgical center at Advocate Sherman.

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The review board will continue taking comments on the project until Jan. 4. A hearing before review board members will be held in late January.

Gloria Casas is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
A 17-year-old girl who went missing for the second time in a month has been found and she is in good health, Evanston police said Saturday.

Alishianna Harris was found Saturday morning in south suburban Harvey, police said.

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Harvey police officers found her after a concerned citizen contacted them, police said.

Harris reportedly left her residence overnight on Thursday. Described as developmentally and intellectually delayed, Harris has no money, credit cards or a cellphone, police said, though she does know how to use public transportation, especially the Chicago Transit Authority "L" train system.

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This is the second time in roughly a month that Harris has been reported missing. After she was reported missing Oct. 4, Harris was found Oct. 10 in Midlothian after a concerned citizen contacted police.

Harris is described as a black 17-year-old girl, who is 5-foot-5, 200 pounds, with black hair, medium complexion and a half-inch scar above her left eye.

At the time she was reported missing, she was wearing a hooded white sweatshirt with rhinestone lettering and a gray King Lab shirt with "Alishianna" on the front in blue lettering.
Mikyla Wren, a freshman at Mundelein High School, committed suicide in October 2015. Her mother and grandparents are suing the district for failing to comply with a 2015 state law that required them to update their protocols on what school officials should do when they think a student is contemplating suicide. (Provided by Wren family)

After a rash of suicides about a decade ago, Waukegan School District 60 began a new yearly ritual.

Every student in grades six through 12 in Waukegan sits down with a counselor each year to talk about how they're feeling and how their friends are doing, district spokesman Nick Alajakis said. Called a signs-of-suicide assessment, the meeting gives students a chance to talk about their worries without feeling like they're calling anyone out.

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The assessments have "helped tremendously," Alajakis said. "It's allowed us to be proactive instead of reactive."

But while Alajakis said the district has been focused on the middle schools and high school, more needs to be done for the district's youngest students, especially in light of a 2015 law named for an Orland Park fifth-grader named AnnMarie Blaha that requires school boards to create policies ensuring that students receive age-appropriate lessons about youth suicide and prevention.

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The statute is also at the center of a lawsuit filed last month by the family of Mikyla Wren, a 14-year-old Mundelein High School student who committed suicide in October 2015.

The family contends that if the district had set up the protocols laid out in the law, her death might have been prevented, according to the complaint filed last month that seeks only attorney reimbursements and a ruling requiring the district to implement those protocols. A status hearing is scheduled for January.

Like Waukegan District 60, Lake Villa-based Community High School District 117 has also been taking another look at its approach to suicide prevention in light of the new law, passing updated policies last year and investigating how to address these issues more regularly in its curriculum, said Brie Cederna, the district's assistant superintendent for student services.

While the district has not seen a string of tragedies like Waukegan did in 2006 or like Lake Forest did more recently in 2012, District 117 has been focused on creating a "very strong procedure" for assessing students in crisis and creating a referral process, she said.

At least 20 teenagers, the youngest being 14, have committed suicide in Lake County over the past four years, according to the Lake County coroner's office. The number has fallen since nine teenagers, ranging in age from 14 to 18 years old, died in 2012.

District 117 has made sure its staff is good about having follow-up meetings with families after a referral for services occurs, Cederna said. When students return to school, they make sure that conversation continues, so "it's not a one-and-done deal."

A team of staff members is assigned to each case, so that one person isn't making decisions in isolation, she said. The student service staff also puts on Lunch and Learn meetings where they present some of the school's data and talk about how to recognize when a student is in need.

The conversation around juvenile suicide has changed over the years, especially since the deaths of three Lake Forest High School students in 2012, said Michele Esser, the director of the Lake County Health Department's child and adolescence behavioral services program. According to Esser, it's more socially acceptable to talk about these issues, and adults are less afraid to ask kids questions about how they're feeling.

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"There was such a reaction to that," Esser said. "The (Lake County) Suicide Prevention Task Force was formed. There's much more community awareness. I think a lot of the efforts are helping."

Her office has seen an increase in crisis calls, which is good, because the staff is able to provide services more immediately, she said.

Lake Forest-based Linking Efforts Against Drugs, a drug prevention organization that also runs the county's Text-A-Tip hotline, has also been expanding its reach, Executive Director Andy Duran said. The hotline gives middle school and high school students the ability to reach out anonymously to a team of licensed mental health counselors.

The Lake County Board provided funding to roll out the program countywide, he said. While the hotline number works everywhere in Lake County, the nonprofit has teamed up with about 80 percent of the districts in the county to market the service to students.

The majority of districts Duran works with take behavioral health issues in general seriously, he said. He added that he's not sure how much of the change is due to "AnnMarie's Law," but he's definitely seen a difference over the last two years in how schools approach the topic.

"As it relates to behavioral health, anything you can do to integrate it into the life of the school is best," he said. "Bringing in a one-time speaker is great, but it isn't going to curb the problem. It's about keeping programs going, getting to know students, putting together a full-environmental strategy around prevention."

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emcoleman@tribpub.com

Twitter @mekcoleman
Waukegan High School students hosted 10th Congressional District candidates Robert Dold and Brad Schneider at a public forum at the school Thursday.

Dipping their toes for the first time in the arena of politics, the students in John Franco's advanced placement government class developed the questions asked at the event and moderated the time that each candidate had for their answer.

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Education, student debt, immigration reform and the environment were some of the issues the Republican and Democrat were asked to discuss.

The event was an example of what a civics class that's currently being developed in the district will teach staring next year.

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The class will be a requirement for graduation, per a civics law signed by Gov. Bruce Rauner that states at least one semester of civics is offered.

Thursday's public forum gave the candidates a venue to share their messages with a younger audience. But more importantly, it helped give students experience in the political process, said Jill Bass of the Mikva Challenge.

With offices in Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington D.C., the Mikva Challenge organization empowers youth by engaging them in action civics.

Bass said she worked closely with the seniors in organizing Thursday's public forum, guiding them through all aspects of running a political event.

"This proves that when you give students opportunity to be leaders, they step up and be leaders," Bass said.

The civics curriculum will focus on current and controversial issues and the government institutions that work to make laws. It will be presented to 1,000 junior students in the 2017-18 school year.

Thomas Stonis, academic chair of social studies at Waukegan High, said he hopes others in the community will see the candidate forum as a show of what the teens can accomplish with the help of their community.

He's looking to build partnerships that can help build on the civics curriculum.

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"We really want to bring the community into the high school. We have an open invitation to Lake County organizations, businesses and individuals who would like to be a part of this new education," Stonis said.

Senior Victoria Vargas, who dressed in business attire for her role as media representative at the forum, answered questions and made sure everything was running smoothly with her partner Janette Munos on Thursday.

The two said being in the media committee was more challenging than they expected, but they learned a lot about making connections with the public.

The experience made the 18-year-old want to be more involved in how decisions are made in her community.

"I wasn't really into politics, but now I am, because I know that it matters," Vargas said, "and if I want to a see change, I have to get involved to make that happen."

Yadira Sanchez Olson is a freelance reporter for the News-Sun.
A former computer technician for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, already awaiting trial on a possession of child pornography charge in Naperville , was indicted Thursday on the same charge in U.S. District Court.

Floyd C. O'Hara, 62, of the first block of River Road Court, was also indicted on obstruction of justice and conversion of government property charges, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago.

O'Hara is accused of having child pornography on a laptop computer and a flash drive that belonged to the EPA, according to the indictment. He allegedly obstructed justice "by altering, destroying and concealing two hard drives in an effort to prevent their use in a prosecution against him," the indictment said.

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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 100 Charge: drug induced homicide; Read more (DuPage County State's Attorney: Arrest does not imply guilt, and criminal charges are merely accusations. A defendant is presumed innocent unless proven guilty and convicted.)

The indictment also contends O'Hara "converted for his own use eight devices owned by the EPA, without the EPA's authorization."

O'Hara already faces trial in Will County Circuit Court on four felony counts of possession of child pornography.

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Investigators with the Naperville Police Department's Computer Crimes Unit said O'Hara was downloading child pornography based on his online activities, which they were monitoring.

Detectives obtained a search warrant to go into O'Hara's home and seized what police said were pornographic images of children from his computer.

O'Hara will be arraigned on the federal charge Thursday. He is scheduled to be in Will County court Monday.

O'Hara could not be reached for comment.

wbird@tribpub.com
A group will gather Sunday to celebrate and reminisce about the old Hobson Road Oak tree, a landmark in the area of unincorporated Naperville near the borders of Lisle and Woodridge, which has started to decay and will be taken down by DuPage County. (DuPage County)

For more than 250 years, the Hobson Road Oak has served as a prominent landmark for the part of unincorporated Naperville that borders Lisle and Woodridge. It has served as a playground of sorts for area farm children and a place for residents to meet. It was the site of at least one marriage proposal.

For Naperville attorney Dick Kuhn and many others in the area, the old oak is more than just a tree. It's representative of the deep roots that Naperville farm families have in this area.

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"It's our ancestors. It's our heritage, our lineage," he said.

But memories will soon have to suffice because old age has caught up with the majestic milepost. It's starting to decay, and the possibility that it could lose a limb or fall over poses a danger, DuPage County officials said.

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Before the tree meets its fate, however, there will be a goodbye. From 1 to 2 p.m. Sunday, neighbors and area residents will gather to reminisce and to share stories about the tree and its significance.

One story likely to be mentioned is that of area farmer Charlie Miller. The tree is sometimes referred to as the Charlie Miller Tree because, according to local farm family legend, Miller sat beneath it with a shotgun to prevent road crews from taking it down when they were paving the gravel lane that is now Hobson Road.

Whether or not that tale is legitimate or an old yarn won't really matter; it's part of the tree's legend  a reminder of how significant it is to area residents.

Another story has special meaning for Kuhn. It was under the boughs of that tree that Kuhn's father, Walt, proposed marriage to his mother, Shirley Ferneding, in 1946 after Walt Kuhn had returned from World War II.

"For most people it's just a tree, but to us, it's very, very special," Kuhn said. "We will sorely miss the tree. ... It was special to my family and to all the farm families in the area."

And so it will get a send off that most humans never receive.

"We want to celebrate the tree and not just put it in the wood chipper," said Mary Lou Wehrli, a commissioner on the DuPage County Forest Preserve District Board.

The tree has been part of the fabric of Naperville since before there was a Naperville. The burr oak is estimated to be about 250 years old, which means it was here at the time settlers were moving into lands long occupied by Native Americans. Burr oaks have an average life span of between 200 and 400 years, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

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Jim Healy, president of the Naperville Parks Foundation and chairman of the DuPage County Board's public works committee, said they are confident the Hobson Oak sprouted before the American Revolution started in 1776.

"This is a legacy oak, we're certain of that," Healy said.

Disease and decay are forcing the county to bring the tree down but that does not mean the end of the iconic oak. Its wood will be turned into lumber and used to make furniture or decorative items, which will be sold in auctions to raise money for the parks foundation and other local charities. The cost of transporting the wood and putting it through the milling process will be covered by Realtor John Greene and the Wehrli Furniture Co.

"This will give people a chance to still have a bit of the tree in their lives," Wehrli said.

The oak's last batch of acorns have been harvested and will be sent to the Morton Arboretum. There, they will be germinated and the saplings later be sold, with the funds again going to fund charities and the Naperville Parks Foundation, Wehrli said.

At least one sapling will be planted near the site of the existing Hobson Oak, but set back much farther from the road than the current tree, Healy said.

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Growing up in the area, Kuhn said the tree was a part of the fabric of that part of Naperville's landscape. Although he understands the tree has to come down, he had hoped there was a way to save it, he said.

"It's one of those trees that everyone knows," Healy said. "We did everything we could to save the tree, but it's time has come to an end."

"(It will be) a sad day. It's a special tree," Kuhn said.

Alex Keown is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.
The city of Naperville is asking the community to weigh in on how large they think temporary signs in residential and nonresidential areas should be. Community members can fill out the survey on the city's website or in person in the municipal center lobby. (Naperville Sun / Erin Hegarty)

As Naperville works to update its sign code, the city is giving residents the opportunity to weigh in on how large temporary signs  yard signs, political signs, special event signs  should be.

Proposed new regulations on temporary sign sizes in Naperville come on the heels of a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Reed v. Gilbert that said temporary sign regulations must be the same for all signs, regardless of content.

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"Now, we are asking the community to tell us what they think about temporary signs," said Amy Emery, supervisor of strategic projects for Naperville.

Residents and business owners are asked to choose what they think is a suitable size for signs in residential and nonresidential areas. The survey includes three options for both areas: 24 inches by 24 inches, 24 inches by 36 inches or 24 inches by 48 inches in residential areas, and 24 inches by 48 inches, 36 inches by 48 inches or 48 inches by 48 inches in nonresidential areas.

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Naperville has been seeking public input on the proposed code since the end of September, and the city reached out to the Naperville Area Homeowners Confederation and the Naperville area Chamber of Commerce to get residents and business owners to weigh in. Residents and business owners can fill out a short paper survey at the municipal center or online until Nov. 9.

The city will tabulate the survey results and present them to the plan commission Nov. 16.

Another goal the city has in updating the code is to ensure the sign code is easy to understand.

"It seems the way they are looking at it is to try and clean up a lot of the issues with the code and make it user-friendly and easier to interact with," said Colin Dalough, the Naperville chamber's director of government affairs and business development.

A big part of the code rewrite for the business community has to do with commercial window and wall signs. The proposed code rewrite, if approved, would mean more open regulations for businesses using canopies, awnings and window signs as part of their sign strategy, Dalough said.

"One of the stated goals is more freedom for dynamic displays in windows in the central business district," he said.

The chamber is appreciative for the city's efforts to be open with the proposed rewrite, and while the chamber has not yet taken an official stance on the proposed rewrite, Dalough said the updates are "laudable."

The online survey and additional information on the sign code can be found at http://www.naperville.il.us/projects-in-naperville/sign-code/.

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ehegarty@tribpub.com
Indiana state Sen. Earline Rogers speaks on recently during Democratic rally in front of the Genesis Convention Center. (Kyle Telechan / Post-Tribune)

Several school corporations in Northwest Indiana could find themselves in uncharted territory if Gary residents turn down a referendum question on Tuesday's ballot.

With a $75 million debt, the Gary Community School Corp. is asking residents to approve a tax increase of 47.5 cents per each $100 of assessed valuation.

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That amount could yield $8.7 million a year with 75 percent collection rates, allowing the corporation to pay its debt and eventually become solvent, according to state Sen. Earline Rogers, of Gary.

If the referendum fails, the school corporation could be dissolved or merged into another district, and its approximately 5,000 students could be sent to several school corporations, Rogers said.

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It would be the first school corporation of its size in the state to be dissolved.

"I do think it could happen," Rogers said.

She said the corporation's finances are a going concern, and Jack Martin, the district's state-appointed financial manager, told the Indiana Distressed Unit Board in September that consolidation or dissolution would have to be looked at if the referendum doesn't pass.

"I took him at his word," Rogers said.

She said passing the referendum would not only make the district solvent but also show the state that the residents support the school corporation. She said that could make a difference in whether the state will forgive the debt.

"If it doesn't pass, it will send a message to the state, and I don't know how the state would respond," she said.

What is not known, according to Rogers and two area school superintendents, is how the mechanics of either action would work.

"This is unchartered territory. I don' t know if there are any answers," said Tom Cripliver, superintendent of the Lake Station School Corp., one of several surrounding districts that could end up taking in some Gary students.

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He said Lake Station is an open school corporation, meaning it takes in some students from outside the district at a cost of $400 per child per year, and it could take in a couple of hundred more.

"If you're talking 1,000, that's a different scenario," Cripliver said.

Dr. Sharon Johnson Shirley, superintendent of Lake Ridge School Corp., called the possibility a what-if scenario.

"This is just speculation, and it's not fair to us or Gary," she said. "We just can't accept kids without space or money."

Also unknown is where the Gary school tax money would go if the corporation is dissolved  to the various school districts or to pay off the Gary Community School Corp.'s debt first.

The Indiana State Board of Education did not respond to several email and phone requests made over one week for comment.

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Cripliver said school funding from the state is based on the number of students attending school so an influx of students from Gary would bring in more state money for education purposes. Taxes pay for additional costs like transportation and school improvements.

"If we don't get additional money, it would put a strain on an already strained budget," Cripliver said.

In addition to neighboring school districts including Lake Station, Lake Ridge, Merrillville and Hobart, Rogers said, Gary's growing number of charter schools also could enroll the city's students.

"Now that the state has passed a state charter board, it's very easy to shorten the process for charter schools," she said.

Karen Caffarini is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
State Education Superintendent Glenda Ritz receives a lot of positive feedback on the campaign trail, but it's the rare occasion when she has someone cry tears of joy at her presence.

But Brooke Vance, a third-grade teacher from Schererville, wasn't expecting to see her idol, either, when she and her husband, Brian, brought their kids to Wicker Memorial Park in Highland Saturday morning. The couple, however, made it just in time for the last Northwest Indiana stop of the "Moving Indiana Forward" bus tour and got to personally meet Ritz and, of course, take a picture with her, tears and all.

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Several of the Democratic ticket's biggest names were on the tour, including U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky; former Indiana governor and U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh, who is running for Sen. Dan Coats' seat; state Rep. Scott Pelath; Ritz; and gubernatorial candidate John Gregg. Other candidates were on hand for rally stops in Gary and Hammond's Robertsdale section earlier in the morning before stopping in Highland and then heading toward Lafayette.

A crowd gathered at Wicker Park in Highland Saturday to listen to gubernatorial candidate John Gregg and other Democratic candidates speak in their last bus tour day before the Tuesday election. (Jim Karczewski / Post-Tribune)

While GOP candidates didn't make it as far north as Highland Saturday, a last-minute push for votes arrived after the Gregg entourage had departed for Lafayette.

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Republican gubernatorial candidate Eric Holcomb's campaign first rallied voters at the Porter County GOP headquarters before holding a get-out-the-vote rally in Lowell. U.S. Rep. Todd Young, who is running against Bayh for GOP Sen. Dan Coats' seat, and attorney general candidate Curtis Hill, the Elkhart County prosecutor, joined Holcomb at the rally.

At Wicker Park, Gregg said that while he's feeling "pretty enthused" about how the campaign is going, he and the group feel there are too many moderate Republican and Independent votes still on the table, and they want as many as they can get. And Northwest Indiana is a good place to find them.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Gregg greets supporters at a bus tour stop in Highland's Wicker Park. (Jim Karczewski / Post-Tribune)

"Northwest Indiana is the second-largest metropolitan area in the state, plus we see huge economic potential here" Gregg said. "I think our biggest appeal is that we've actually thought about governing and have a written plan for it."

Pelath, who's been in the General Assembly for 18 years, appealed to the crowd to "send him some friends" to the Statehouse because it'll be hard to have a Democratic governor with the "same GOP trying to undo everything."

"Send me Tom O'Donnell, who's running, and send me back Mara Candelaria-Reardon and Shelli (VanDenburgh)," Pelath said. "And send me Jim Metro in Lowell."

North Township Trustee Frank J. Mrvan told voters in the audience to "be selfish" and "vote their interests."

Senate candidate Evan Bayh discusses his plans for Indiana if he's elected to the Senate during a rally for Democratic candidates held Saturday at Wicker Park in Highland. (Jim Karczewski / Post-Tribune)

"It's easy to feel discouraged with all the discourse, but our message to you is, 'Vote for your self-interests,'" he said. "If you're a teacher or union worker who feels like they've been beaten down, vote for your self-interest. If you feel you've been ignored, vote for your self-interest."

Brett Voorhies, president of the Indiana AFL-CIO, admitted that in 2012, when Gregg lost the governor's spot by 75,000 votes, 250,000 union voters stayed home. But after Right-to-Work and Common Construction wage laws got "rammed down our throats" and the beating teachers have taken, he promised that wasn't going to happen again.

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Lake County Deputy Chief Dan Murchek, who emceed the rally, pointed out a young man working as a Republican "tracker," who follows politicians of the opposite party and reports back to its party if the opponents have remained on point. He asked him to, "Come over to the good side."

Meanwhile, lieutenant governor candidate Christina Hale had a private moment with two young girls. Instead of just taking a picture with the girls  Mia and Simona Terek, both of Munster  she gave them something better: An invitation to be General Assembly pages.

Indiana Superintendent of Schools Glenda Ritz discusses her school reform plans for the future during an event held Saturday at Wicker Park in Highland. She was one of several Democratic candidates to make their cases to the crowd who gathered to hear them. (Jim Karczewski / Post-Tribune)

"One in five legislators are women, and we need more women in the government. We need more of you," Hale told the girls. "I think women don't run for office unless we're asked to, so this is the universe tapping you both on the shoulder."

Mia Terek, 13, couldn't stop smiling.

"That was really cool," she said. "It was really inspirational of her to talk to us."

Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.

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Staff reporter Craig A. Lyons contributed
Voter turnout at the 11 early voting sites in Lake County continues to remain strong. Voters fill the booths Thursday morning at the Lake County Government Center in Crown Point. (Carrie Napoleon / Post-Tribune)

Lake County officials say they do not expect any problems with voter intimidation at local polling places Tuesday, but they are prepared to respond if illegal activity were to occur.

Party leaders say only certified poll watchers  those approved either by the Lake County Democratic or Republican Party chairs  will be granted access inside precincts on Election Day.

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Poll watchers must be 18 or older and residents of Lake County, said Patrick Gabrione, assistant director of the election board. Poll watchers must be certified by the county party chairman, and only then can they enter the polling place to observe. Poll watchers are barred from interacting with voters or getting near the voting machines. They generally sit near the election clerks.

Gabrione said over the years few credentials have been issued for poll watchers. This year will be different. He referred additional questions to county Republican Party Chair Dan Dernulc and Sheriff John Buncich, the Lake County Democratic Central Committee chair.

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Dernulc said the party has issued credentials for poll watchers this election, and many are precinct committeemen for the precinct they will be observing.

"I will be going around also," Dernulc said of his plans to visit different polling sites throughout the county on Election Day. He said he did not have the total number of credentials issued readily available.

Dernulc said election officials have taken steps to prevent voter fraud, but there are always concerns, especially with absentee ballots.

"Am I concerned? Of course I am. We want the election to be fair. Although some items have been put in place, it is always a concern it might happen," Dernulc said, adding he will be watching things closely as the results come in.

Concern over voter intimidation is widespread throughout the country in the wake of calls by GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump to his supporters to act as "election observers" in parts of the country to prevent fraud. On Friday, an Ohio judge issued a temporary restraining order against Trump's campaign and Roger Stone, an informal adviser, barring them from harassing or intimidating Ohio voters Tuesday.

Similar cases are being heard around the country in New Jersey, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Buncich said the state of Indiana has strict rules for poll watchers and that the county will follow them.

"We are not just going to open the floodgates," Buncich said.

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There will be 12 election commission members on call, scattered geographically around the county. Most of the individuals are attorneys; all are experienced in election law. The commissioners will be tapped to address concerns and complaints that may apply to the polling place, access and potential intimidation, he said.

"If they are called upon, they will be dispatched," Buncich said. Each commissioner will be accompanied by a sheriff's deputy.

"They are under strict orders to not interfere," Buncich said, adding the officers are there to maintain the peace. In the last couple of elections for which he was party chair, there have been only minor issues, he said.

Buncich said individuals are allowed to stand outside the polling places and must be at least 100 feet from the roped entrance for voters.

"It is clear what the law is. So long as they do not interfere with individuals who want to get in and vote, they can be outside," Buncich said.

The election office also has taken precautionary steps to ensure voters who placed an absentee ballot do not try and vote a second time in person, a move that has been encouraged by Trump in speeches. It is illegal in Indiana to cast an absentee ballot and then vote in person on Election Day. The office has been working to ensure precincts are correct as they process absentee ballots to help prevent any problems.

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"One person, one vote," Buncich said.

Carrie Napoleon is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune. The Associated Press contributed.
As early voting totals climb toward what could be record highs, Porter County officials said an assortment of measures would be taken on Election Day to make sure that polling places remain orderly and ballots are secure.

"I think we have a responsibility to make sure everyone has an opportunity to vote and has an opportunity to vote without any outside influence," said Sheriff Dave Reynolds, whose department will have 24 deputies stationed at the Voter Registration Office throughout the day to handle any election-related calls, whether it's delivering ballots, equipment or other needs, and more officers will be available if necessary.

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By the close of voting Friday afternoon, 13.8 percent of Porter County's voters had cast their ballots early either by mail or in person, said Sundae Schoon, Republican director in the Voter Registration Office.

That was a total of 17,622 votes, she said, with 15,023 of them cast in person. That's veering toward the historic highs of 2008, when 17,000 people cast early ballots and another 3,000 mailed them in.

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Valparaiso leads with early turnout, said Kathy Kozuszek, Democratic director in the office, followed by Portage and Chesterton, and on two days, more than 1,000 people hit the polls.

That doesn't mean voters won't turn out en masse Tuesday to select the next president and a wide array of county, state and federal candidates.

"Even if we have 25,000 before the election, we have 100,000 roaming the streets," Kozuszek said.

While the Valparaiso schools will not be in session, other school corporations that offer their buildings as polling places are asking for extra patrols because of the expected high turnout, Reynolds said.

"We will be visible," he said, adding that high turnout in itself is not a problem and he has no reason to believe anything untoward will happen locally. "I don't anticipate any problems from the voters' standpoint but we need to be available."

Regardless of whether people vote in person or on Election Day, those votes are secure, Kozuszek and Schoon said.

"We don't use electronic voting equipment here. Certainly a computer reads our ballots but it's not connected to any outside power source and it's not connected to the Internet," Kozuszek said.

Porter County also uses paper ballots that leave a paper trail, something that's come into play when there have been recounts, she said, adding the number of ballots cast and the number of signatures by voters in poll books is reconciled at the end of the night.

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"Porter County has a lot of checks and balances," she said.

Anyone who voted early and is having buyer's remorse will have to live with it. Under Indiana law, voters can't change their ballots once they've been cast, Kozuszek said. "Once you cast your ballot, that's it. You cannot go back and do it again because you've changed your mind," she said.

As far as polling places, no one will be allowed at those unless they are there to vote, are poll workers or have pre-approved credentials to be there, such as members of the media, Kozuszek said.

Anyone who's concerned about what's going on at a polling place on Election Day can call the Voter Registration Office, 219-465-3485, or a line set up by the Secretary of State's Office, 866-461-8683.

While the county ran short on ballots in 2008 and sheriff's deputies had to deliver them to polling places, Kozuszek said that shouldn't be a problem this year because she and Schoon ordered enough ballots to serve 95 percent of the voters in each of the county's precincts.

"Porter County has never had 100 percent turnout but Sundae and I ordered high," she said.

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Early voting in Porter County continues through noon Monday in Suite 102A of the County Administration Building, 155 Indiana Ave., Valparaiso; Chesterton Town Hall, 1490 Broadway, Chesterton; and the North County Government Complex, 3560 Willowcreek Road, Portage.

Voters can find polling places and sample ballots at indianavoters.com.

Amy Lavalley is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
A suburban real estate broker who allegedly stole jewelry from two homes that were for sale has been charged with residential burglary, according to DuPage County prosecutors.

Jamie Detwiler, 38, of Bloomingdale, appeared Friday in court, where Judge Liam Brennan set bail at $10,000.

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Detwiler is alleged to have taken a diamond necklace pendant from a house listed for sale in Wheaton. The resident contacted police Oct. 1 to report the necklace stolen, two days after Detwiler had conducted a showing of the house, prosecutors said.

Police undertook surveillance of Detwiler and on Oct. 7 they allegedly saw her enter a home for sale in Palatine and leave about five minutes later. Police say she had 10 pieces of gold jewelry in her possession and was charged with residential burglary.

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According to records from the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, which has temporarily suspended her real estate broker's license, "(Detwiler) proceeded to pull several pieces of jewelry from her bra and handed them to detectives" outside the Palatine home.

Detwiler was charged with residential burglary for the alleged incidents in Wheaton and Palatine, and also with theft in Wheaton, officials said. Detwiler had been out on bond for the Palatine arrest, officials said.

Detwiler's license was temporarily suspended Oct. 28 pending a hearing before an administrative law judge, according to a written order from the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, which began investigating her in February after receiving complaints.

The temporary suspension came after licensing officials then learned about Detwiler's arrest in Palatine and that she had been under investigation by Wheaton police.

Detwiler was "engaging in dishonorable, unethical or unprofessional conduct of a character likely to deceive, defraud, or harm the public, and misrepresentation," the department's petition for temporary license suspension said.

The petition continued, "(Detwiler's) modus operandi indicates that (she) uses her real estate license to misrepresent to listing agents that she is interested in scheduling showings of real estate properties in order to gain lockbox codes to properties. Once (she) has gained the lockbox codes to particular properties, (she) enters the properties with the intention of stealing belongings from the property."

Clifford Ward is a freelance reporter.
China will reduce carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 18 percent compared with that in 2015 by the end of 2020, the cabinet announced Friday.

The government will restrict other greenhouse gas emission and start a carbon trading market in the next five years to help meet the commitment to peaking carbon dioxide emission around 2030, according to the 13th Five-Year work plan for greenhouse gas emission control by the State Council.

Total energy consumption will be kept within five billion tonnes of standard coal by the end of 2020, with more use of non-fossil fuels including hydropower, nuclear power, wind power and solar power, whose installed capacity would reach 340 million, 58 million, 200 million and 100 million kilowatts respectively.

Total coal consumption will be kept at about 4.2 billion tonnes, while smoggy regions should aim for negative coal use growth after 2017. The share of natural gas consumption in total energy consumption should be lifted to about ten percent by 2020.

China will also speed up industrial upgrades to support low-carbon industries while promoting green technologies in industrial production.

The government will also promote a green lifestyle, encouraging low-carbon consumption such as buying new-energy cars.
Xie Zhenhua, China's chief climate change negotiator and vice minister of the National Development and Reform Commission, attends a climate change press conference on Nov. 1 in Beijing. [Photo/China.org.cn]

As the landmark Paris Agreement enters into force on Nov. 4 and this year's U.N. climate change conference begins on Nov. 7 in Marrakesh, Morocco, Chinese climate change negotiators and experts are setting their sights on the implementation of the Paris Agreement.

The Paris Agreement signed at last year's climate change meeting required countries to limit the rise in average global temperature to 2 degree Celsius while pursuing a target rise of only 1.5 degree Celsius compared to preindustrial levels. Countries need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which is the greatest source of the changing and vulnerable climate.

Xie Zhenhua, China's chief climate change negotiator, said during a press conference on Tuesday that this year's conference will be "a conference of implementation."

Xie said the Marrakesh conference will make detailed plans to implement what was achieved in last year's conference. "It will also urge countries to meet their commitments in tackling climate change before 2020, especially the commitment of developed countries to provide US$100 billion per year to developing countries as well as implementing the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions of each country in action." added Xie, who is also the vice minister of China's National Development and Reform Commission.

Zou Ji, who is an expert in climate change and has attended the U.N. climate change conferences for the past 19 years in a row, broke down this year's mission into six parts: mitigation, adaptation, funding, technology, transparency and capacity building.

"It's just as difficult to implement as to reach the agreements," he said during an interview with China.org.cn on Thursday.
A Chinese consumer has filed a lawsuit against Samsung and a Chinese online shopping platform, after a Note 7 smartphone caught fire.

The plaintiff, Yao, claimed to have fallen in love with the Galaxy Note 7 after it debuted in August, but cases of the phones catching fire or overheating on the mainland left Yao undecided.

Yao said that in September, Samsung China made a statement that the Note 7 smartphones on the mainland were manufactured with different battery cells from those in the global market and would not be recalled, which led to the purchase of a Note 7 on JD.com.

On Sept. 18, the phone caught fire while Yao was playing games and burnt holes in the mat, bedsheet and cushion on Yao's bed.

The plaintiff accused the two defendants of fraud and causing economic losses, demanding the return of money for the phone, as well as a compensation of 19,964 yuan (2,956 U.S. dollars).

A local court has accepted the case.

Samsung filed a plan with China's consumer quality watchdog in October to recall 190,984 Galaxy Note 7 smartphones sold on the Chinese mainland, due to an overheating problem.
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Ukraine and Albania on Friday adopted a mutual visa-free policy to boost their economic cooperation and tourism, Ukrainian authorities said.

The agreement on lifting the visa requirements was signed by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin and his Albanian counterpart Ditmir Bushati in Tirana, said the press service of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.

The visa waiver deal allows for multiple visits, permitting a visa-free stay for up to 90 days within a 180-day period.

According to the Ukrainian government, the new visa policy is aimed at promoting the development of the Ukrainian-Albanian partnership, boosting economic ties and intensifying people-to-people contacts and tourism.

Kiev hopes that the agreement would help Ukraine obtain a visa-free regime with the European Union.

As the situation in Ukraine is improving, Kiev is trying to revive its tourism sector, which plunged by 15-fold in the last two years due to the crisis, with an eased visa policy.

Last year, only 478 Albanian citizens visited Ukraine.
By Hu Yongqi in Riga and Wang Qingyun in Beijing | China Daily | Updated: 2016-11-05 07:14

Latvia became on Friday the first country in the Baltic Sea area to sign a memorandum of understanding to link up with China's Belt and Road Initiative, during the visit by Premier Li Keqiang to the country.

The initiative, which comprises the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21 Century Maritime Silk Road, aims to boost connectivity and trade across Asia, Africa and Europe. The initiative was proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013.

The memorandum was signed after Li's meeting with his Latvian counterpart Maris Kucinskis in the country's capital, Riga, on his first visit to the European Union country.

Li and Kucinskis also witnessed the signing of five agreements on cooperation in such areas as small and medium-sized enterprises, transportation and logistics.

"This year marks the 25th anniversary of China-Latvia diplomatic relations. I am looking forward to working with Latvia's leaders to bring bilateral ties to a new stage," Li said upon arrival in Riga.

Baltic Sea countries, including Latvia, hope to join the Belt and Road Initiative because the region is an important logistics hub, said Wang Yiwei, an expert of European studies at Renmin University of China in Beijing.

Su Xiaohui, a researcher of international strategies at the China Institute of International Studies, said Li's visit will help the Baltic country better understand China.

Premier Li is also scheduled to attend the fifth Meeting of Heads of Government of China and Central and Eastern European countries, which starts on Saturday in Riga.
Xianda (Tianjin) Seawater Resources Development Co Ltd, a water treatment technology provider, signed an agreement for the construction of the first zero-liquid discharge seawater desalination project in China on Wednesday.

The desalination project, based in Nangang Industrial Zone in Tianjin, was launched in 2014 with a total investment of 15 billion yuan ($2.2 billion). It received a first phase investment of 5.5 billion yuan in 2014 and is expected to become operational in 2019.

Xianda (Tianjin) is a wholly-owned subsidiary formed by Xianda Resources (Hong Kong) Co Ltd.

The construction agreement, signed between Xianda and the Nangang authority, is a build, own, operate public-private partnership, in which Xianda builds, owns and operates the project for a period of 50 years, with government support.

The project has strong backing from Malaysia. Prime Minister Najib Razak, who was at the signing of the construction agreement, lauded it as "an iconic project that makes Malaysians proud."

Xianda leads in designing and implementing "zero liquid discharge" facilities, which desalinate seawater into various usages for industrial consumption and also produce salts and various chemicals from concentrated brine water, thus preventing them from polluting the local marine ecological environment in Bohai Bay.

Mah Sau Cheong, chairman and CEO of Xianda Resources, said that his company will expand its engagement in the Chinese mainland by enhancing investment, increasing technology transfer, strengthening the responsibility of environment protection and engaging in corporate social responsibility.

"Nangang is a world-class petrochemical industrial zone in the collaborative development plan of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. We have the equipment and capability to design, build and operate the project and are capable of ensuring quality," said Mah.

The seawater desalination project provides various types of industrial water and basic raw materials for petroleum and heavy chemical projects in Nangang Industrial Zone.

Meanwhile, the salt production project that goes along with it will open up approximately 300 square kilometers of salt farms. The project is expected to ease Tianjin's long-standing shortage of freshwater.
A visitor walks past a flat panel display at China Import and Export Fair in Guangzhou. [Photo / Agenices]

China's foreign trade will be challenged by the uncertain global economic environment in the near future, despite increases both in the number of overseas buyers and transactions in a just-concluded flagship trade event, according to an industrial insider.

Xu Bing, spokesman of the China Import and Export Fair, also widely known as the Canton Fair, said on Friday the slow growth of the global economy would have large impacts on the country's trade.

"Chinese export-oriented companies need to develop more innovative and competitive products to ensure overseas deals," said Xu, during a news conference after the 120th Canton Fair concluded on Friday in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province.

The event, which is held twice a year, is widely regarded as the barometer of China's foreign trade.

According to Xu, both the number of overseas buyers and transactions increased significantly year-on-year during the fair.

More than 185,000 overseas buyers from 213 countries and regions attended the fair, an increase of 4.6 percent year-on-year.

Meanwhile, export deals worth 187.3 billion yuan ($27.8 billion) were reached during the event, an increase of 3.2 percent compared with last year, according to the organizers.

"Much of the increase was from buyers from the emerging economies, as well as those from the United States and Europe," said Xu.

The number of buyers from Europe and the US increased by 6.53 percent and 10.91 percent year-on-year, respectively.

"Chinese exporters are interested in reaching deals with overseas buyers by introducing more self-innovated and competitive products," said Xu.

However, Xu warned that the boosted sales are not a positive signal for future trade, given that the global economy is still uncertain.

"The outbound demand for Chinese goods remains relatively low. Only through technology and innovation can Chinese products become competitive in global trade," Xu said.

China's foreign trade volume shrank by 1.9 percent year-on-year to 17.53 trillion yuan in the first three quarters of the year, while exports declined to 10.06 trillion yuan, down 1.6 percent from that of last year.

Chinese companies, like Guangzhou Bosma Technology Co, have pinned high hopes on innovative products to gain a global market share.

"We have seen a steady increase in overseas orders recently, thanks to launching several new innovative and cutting-edge products," said Zeng Dexiang, president of Guangzhou Bosma Technology Co.
An investor checks stock information on his mobile phone in front of an electronic board showing stock information at a brokerage house in Beijing, February 16, 2016.[Photo/Agencies]

BEIJING - China's stock market regulator raised the alarm about overseas market manipulation on Friday, as mainland and Hong Kong markets become increasingly connected.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) held a joint training session on market manipulation with the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong .

Cross-border manipulation has become major worry for both mainland and Hong Kong authorities recently, the CSRC said in a statement. Markets are threatened by highly-leveraged funds, multiple domestic and overseas accounts in Hong Kong, and by overseas servers that offer unfair technological advantages.

There is been growing demand for coordination between the mainland and Hong Kong regulators in law enforcement since the Shanghai-Hong Kong stock link program were launched in 2014, according to the CSRC.

The Shanghai-Hong Kong stock connect allows investors to trade selected stocks on each other's exchanges within a fixed daily quota. A similar arrangement between the Shenzhen and Hong Kong bourses is expected to start this month.

These programs give foreign capital easier access to the mainland market, facilitate cross-border flow of the yuan funds and help the Chinese currency go global.
BISHKEK - The just-concluded prime ministers' meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) greatly boosted economic and security cooperation among SCO member states, providing fresh impetus to a new type of international relations marked by win-win cooperation.

Over the 15 years since its inception, the organization has played an indispensable role in promoting regional stability and prosperity and also contributed to world peace and development.

Upholding the "Shanghai Spirit" of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality and consultation, the SCO is about to embrace a brighter future by continuing to deepen pragmatic cooperation on economy and security among its member states.

During the meeting in Kyrgyzstan's capital Bishkek, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang put forward a six-pronged proposal on the organization's future development and cooperation.

Li's proposal, covering a wide range of fields including industrial cooperation, innovation, a regional financing mechanism and people-to-people exchanges, reflected the strong willingness of the SCO members to deepen practical cooperation.

The proposal, which is in line with the overall interests of the whole region, will also help improve people's livelihood and well-being in the region.

Security cooperation and economic cooperation have been two major driving forces behind the rapid development of the regional cooperation mechanism.

Safeguarding regional security is an important mission of the SCO, and one of the top priorities in cooperation among its member states. As a major multilateral mechanism in safeguarding regional security, the organization has dedicated itself to improving its risk resistance capacity and creating a harmonious environment conducive to regional stability.

On security cooperation, Li urged all members during the meeting to observe a concept of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security, suggesting more information exchange and cooperation in law-enforcement so as to ensure the safety of peoples, institutions, enterprises and personnel of SCO members.

He also asked SCO members to further strengthen their cooperation and coordination on security and boost the construction of regional anti-terrorism institutions and mechanisms.

It is expected that the SCO will continue to play a pivotal role in safeguarding security in the Eurasian region.

Economic cooperation is another major force driving the development of the organization. Amid a sluggish world economy, accelerating industrial upgrading and carrying out multilateral cooperation are the common aspirations of SCO member states.

During the meeting, leaders of the SCO member states vowed to make joint efforts to drive forward regional economic cooperation and integration and signed a joint communique on deepening cooperation within the SCO.

In the communique, the six leaders agreed that expanding and deepening cooperation among SCO members are in line with the overall interests of the sustainable development of the regional economy.

They reaffirmed that promoting people's welfare and living standard while further enhancing cooperation in fields that accord with common interests are the SCO's top priorities.

According to the communique, initiatives proposed for regional economic cooperation, including China's Silk Road Economic Belt Initiative, are conducive to seeking new models for international cooperation and cementing ties among member states.

They also ratified a list of measures to further promote cooperative projects within the SCO from 2017 to 2021.

Premier Li said that China stands ready to make joint efforts with other SCO members to boost regional trade and facilitate investment, adding that China is open to the initiative of establishing a SCO free trade zone.

As to enhancing production capacity cooperation, Li said China is ready to make joint efforts with other member states to make production capacity cooperation a pillar of regional trade cooperation. Major cooperation projects, including a power plant in Uzbekistan, an oil refinery in Kyrgyzstan, a cement plant in Tajikistan and a China-Uzbekistan industrial park are underway.
Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group, presents the new Huawei Mate 9 high-end phablet during the Huawei Global Product Launch in Munich, Germany, on Nov 3, 2016. [Photo / Agencies]

With markets nearly saturated, companies need to lure customers with new designs

Huawei Technologies Co Ltd's new flagship smartphone will help expand its presence in the premium segment, as the Chinese tech firm ramps up efforts to compete with Apple Inc in the international smartphone arena, analysts said on Friday.

At a product release on Thursday in Munich, Germany, the Shenzhen-based firm unveiled the high-end Mate 9, which targets business customers, as part of its broad efforts to become the world's biggest smartphone seller within five years.

The handset, priced at $776 in Germany, comes with a dual rear camera developed with the German optics company Leica. It also released a limited version designed by luxury-car maker Porsche AG, which will cost more than $1,500.

Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business, said Europe is one of the firm's fastest-growing markets, with a growth rate of 105 percent this year.

Started as a telecom equipment maker, Huawei has recently emerged as the world's third-largest smartphone manufacturer. It is launching more expensive handsets to grab a bigger piece of the premium segment, which is suddenly full of opportunity in the wake of Samsung Electronics Co's smartphone recall crisis.

Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group, presents the new Huawei Mate 9 high-end-phablet during the Huawei Global Product Launch in Munich, Germany, Nov 3, 2016. [Photo / Agencies]

Xiang Ligang, CEO of the telecom industry website cctime.com, said the Mate 9 has an external design very similar to its predecessor, the Mate 8.

"But its performance has been boosted significantly, especially the photo-taking and fast-charging abilities," Xiang said. "The partnership with Leica and Porsche, two renowned brands in Europe, will increase its appeal and share in the above-3,000 yuan ($447) market."

In April, Huawei launched the P9, its first handset equipped with a Leica camera. So far, its sales volume has exceeded 9 million units.

Roger Sheng, research director at Gartner Inc, said the Mate 9 will motivate consumers to upgrade their devices and give Huawei more voice in the high-end segment.

In the third quarter of this year, Huawei saw 23 percent year-on-year growth in its global shipments, while Samsung and Apple declined 13.5 percent and 5.3 percent respectively.

The new device also comes amid intensified competition in China where growth is slowing down. The phone market there is now chiefly driven by replacement users.

Huawei's rival Lenovo Group Ltd also said on Thursday it would intensify efforts to crack the premium market, as it works hard to revive faltering sales.

"We will continue streamlining our product lineup. In the future, Lenovo's smartphones will all fall under the Moto brand," said Lenovo chairman Yang Yuanqing.

According to Yang, the company has sold over 1 million units of the Moto Z, the firm's first modular handset, within three months.
BEIJING -- The top legislature on Saturday deliberated a draft interpretation to Article 104 of the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR).

The draft interpretation was submitted to legislators for deliberation at the third plenary meeting of the bimonthly session of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, which concludes Monday.

Entrusted by the chairpersons' meeting of the NPC Standing Committee, Zhang Rongshun, vice chairperson of the Legislative Affairs Commission of the top legislature, delivered an explanation of the draft interpretation, introducing the implication of the legislation and its legal principles.

Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, was also present at the meeting.

Article 104 of the Basic Law of the Hong Kong SAR stipulates: "When assuming office, the chief executive, principal officials, members of the executive council and of the legislative Council, judges of courts at all levels and other members of the judiciary in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region must, in accordance with law, swear to uphold the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China and swear allegiance to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China."
Premier Li Keqiang's visit to Kazakhstan, which concluded on Friday, will boost relations as well as the coordination between the Belt and Road Initiative and the Eurasian Economic Union, experts said.

Yang Cheng, deputy director of the Center for Russian Studies at East China Normal University in Shanghai, said Kazakhstan is an important country on the Silk Road Economic Belt - indeed, President Xi Jinping first announced the initiative in its capital, Astana, in 2013. The Central Asian country is looking forward to further cooperation with China.

Shakhrat Nuryshev, Kazakhstan's ambassador to China, said that China was the first country to recognize the independence of Kazakhstan and established diplomatic relations with the former Soviet republic in 1992.
The following is the full text of the speech delivered by Premier Li Keqiang at the 15th Meeting of the Council of Heads of Government of the Member States of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on Thursday.

It is a great pleasure for me to join you at the 15th Meeting of the Council of Heads of Government of the Member States of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. I'm glad to come to Bishkek, a shining pearl on the ancient Silk Road, which has borne witness to many well-known episodes of friendly exchanges between the peoples of our region. Today, it provides a fitting venue for our discussions about the future development of the SCO, as here we can feel for ourselves how the Silk Road Spirit inspired the Shanghai Spirit and the great potential that could be engendered by the coming-together of the two. On behalf of the Chinese government, I wish to thank the government of Kyrgyzstan for its careful preparation and thoughtful arrangements for our meeting.

In the past 15 years, the SCO has maintained solid growth and evolved into an important platform for regional cooperation, which is not only indispensable for promoting regional stability and prosperity, but is also an active contributor to world peace and development. At the Tashkent Summit last June, President Xi Jinping, together with other leaders, put forward initiatives and measures for furthering regional cooperation within the SCO framework, making new strides for this organization.

The world around us has been undergoing profound changes, marked by the lackluster global recovery, flare-ups of regional hotspots, and rising challenges of traditional and nontraditional security threats. In our region, SCO members are confronting common challenges of downward pressure on the economic front and multiple challenges in the area of security. Only by sticking together will we stand a chance to tide over this difficult time and achieve common development and lasting peace. We need to be fully aware of both the risks and opportunities and devote greater resources and engage in closer coordination to further tap into the huge potential of the SCO. Through our efforts, we will create for ourselves broader space for development and forge a community of converging interests and shared future. To this end, I would suggest that efforts be made in the following areas.

First, we need to foster a secure and stable environment.

Security and stability provide the very foundation for our pursuit of development and prosperity and are the fundamental safeguard for enhanced cooperation among us. However, the recent terror attacks that have hit this region, not least the outrageous attack against the Chinese Embassy here in Bishkek, have driven home the fact that the "three evil forces" remain the biggest security threat to this region. It is time for SCO members to embrace common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security, step up coordination and cooperation in the field of security, and expedite consultations for the signing of a convention on combating extremism. We need to strengthen the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure, hold regular joint anti-terrorism drills, enhance cooperation on cyberterrorism and drug-trafficking, step up intelligence sharing and law-enforcement collaboration, and take concrete steps to make our people safe and ensure the security of our institutions, companies and staff based in each other's countries.

The evolving situation in Afghanistan bears on the security and stability of the entire region. China is ready to work with other SCO members in supporting the reconciliation and reconstruction process in Afghanistan and working for the early restoration of peace, stability and development there.

Second, we need to pursue interconnected development. Despite its recent setbacks, globalization remains an irreversible trend of our times. The interests of all SCO members will be served by continued openness to cooperation, upgraded trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, the fostering of regionwide markets, the building of cross-border transport arteries and greater integration of our economies. We should tap into the complementarity of our development strategies to strengthen synergy. An example of this would be our ongoing efforts to enhance synergy between China's Belt and Road Initiative and the Eurasian Economic Union. China is ready to work with all parties to advance trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, and bolster cooperation on customs, inspection and quarantine, and certification and accreditation. We are open to the setting-up of an SCO free trade area, and would like to see an FTA feasibility study among SCO members. Together we can explore the building of a more comprehensive, interconnected and efficient regional economic cooperation architecture that takes into account the interests and concerns of all parties and regional conditions.

The SCO Intergovernmental Agreement on Creating Beneficial Conditions for International Road Transportation, which has been approved by all parties, will soon enter into force. We suggest a joint committee meeting be convened as soon as possible to address specific issues concerning customs, border control, inspection and quarantine and others to ensure the scheduled opening of the routes by 2020. We should also speed up efforts to draw up a plan for coordinated development of roads among SCO countries to improve road networks, and facilitate cross-border transport and trade flows in the region. Thanks to our joint efforts, this meeting will adopt the List of Events for Further Development of Project Activities in the Framework of the SCO 2017-2021. The list, which comprises 38 measures in seven areas ranging from trade and investment to customs and agriculture, will provide guidance for the SCO's practical cooperation in the next five years.

Third, we need to advance production capacity cooperation. China's proposal for international production capacity cooperation meets the needs of regional countries for accelerated industrialization and serves as a pathway toward economic integration and win-win outcomes in our region. Last year in Zhengzhou, China's proposal for an SCO cooperation platform on production capacity received warm response from the other members. Let me list a few examples of good progress in such cooperation. They include: early-harvest projects between China and Kazakhstan; large projects undertaken by Chinese companies in SCO member states such as a power plant in Uzbekistan, an oil refinery in Kyrgyzstan, a cement factory in Tajikistan; joint industrial parks under construction by China and Uzbekistan. I am glad to say that during my visit China signed an MOU on production-capacity and investment cooperation with Kyrgyzstan yesterday, following the signing of similar documents with Russia and Kazakhstan. China is ready to work with all parties to bring our complementarity into full play and make production capacity cooperation a pillar in regional economic cooperation and a new driving force for development that benefits all participating countries.

Fourth, we need to explore cooperation on innovation. Innovation is the key to strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth and a powerhouse for the development of the SCO members. Against the backdrop of a burgeoning technological revolution and industrial upgrading worldwide, the Chinese economy has moved into a new normal, a crucial stage where old growth drivers are giving way to new ones. Back home, we are vigorously pursuing innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development by implementing a strategy of innovation-driven development, encouraging mass entrepreneurship and innovation, and fostering new growth drivers while invigorating traditional ones. Similarly, many other SCO members have their own policies and plans for innovation. There is a great deal of commonality in our innovation policies and hence broad room for cooperation. China is ready to increase policy convergence and the sharing of experience with other countries, actively implement the SCO partnership on science and technology, and enhance cooperation on satellite navigation and mobile communications. We suggest that an SCO e-commerce alliance be established as early as possible to facilitate customs clearance of cross-border e-commerce and improve logistics capacity. We may make use of the SCO Environmental Information Sharing Platform to promote successful experience in ecological rehabilitation and clean energy development. China supports Kazakhstan in hosting the 2017 Expo under the theme of "Future Energy" next year in Astana, to take forward cooperation on environmental technology innovation and the green economy.

Fifth, we need to improve regional financing mechanisms. Finance provides the lifeblood for the economy. The establishment of effective financial support mechanisms is crucial for successful business cooperation. We need to bring into full play the role of existing investment and financing platforms such as the SCO Inter-Bank Consortium, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Silk Road Fund, the China-Eurasia Economic Cooperation Fund and the BRICS New Development Bank, to provide financial support for the development of SCO economies and regional cooperation projects. Let us instruct competent departments to continue negotiations on establishing an SCO development bank, with a view to reaching agreement on a detailed cooperation modality. The total volume of effective bilateral currency swap agreements between China and other SCO members has reached 160 billion yuan ($23.7 billion). The renminbi's inclusion in the currency basket of the Special Drawing Rights of the IMF will be a good opportunity to strengthen currency swap and settlement cooperation.

Sixth, we need to solidify the foundation of our ties by promoting cultural and people-to-people exchanges. These exchanges are most natural means for nurturing friendship among the people, and should be pursued from generation to generation. In recent years, robust progress has been made in the exchanges and cooperation in such areas as education, culture, health, sports, tourism, youth and media among the SCO members. China supports the signing of an agreement for the establishment and operation of an SCO university, which will help cultivate more high-caliber talents well-versed in regional affairs. China has increased the number of SCO-specific scholarships and this school-year's government scholarships, and we are happy to continue to hold summer camps for elementary and middle school students from the SCO members. Beijing is now making active efforts to set up an SCO activity center, which will serve as a good platform for exchanges under the SCO framework. China will establish an international medical service center in Xinjiang to share accessible and high-quality medical resources with neighboring countries. We will encourage the SCO Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation Committee to carry out people-to-people exchange activities and host such events as the youth exchange camps and Eurasian young leaders symposiums in China, to train more envoys of friendship within the SCO.

The SCO has endeavored to promote external relations under the principle of openness. China has completed internal approval procedures for the MOU of SCO membership obligations of India and Pakistan. We suggest that the process of accession by India and Pakistan be advanced in a steady and orderly manner, and that cooperation with observers and dialogue partners be enhanced for win-win and all-win outcomes. At the same time, we need to continue to expand the communication and dialogue between the SCO and the United Nations and other regional and international organizations. There should be greater mutual support and collaboration among them, which will contribute to enduring peace and common prosperity of the world.

Colleagues,

The past 15 years have proved the SCO to be a visionary enterprise. As a Chinese saying goes, "Those who keep trying will accomplish, and those who keep walking will arrive." Similarly, a line in Manas, the national epic of Kyrgyzstan, reads, "He who makes efforts will succeed." Guided by the Shanghai Spirit, let us stay true to our mission, join hands in striving for solid progress of SCO cooperation in all areas and bring greater benefits to the people of our region.

Thank you.

Your Excellency Prime Minister Jeenbekov,

Colleagues,

Premier Li Keqiang speaks at the 15th Meeting of the Council of Heads of Government of the Member States of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization on Thursday in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Liu Zhen / China News Service

(China Daily 11/05/2016 page9)
Editor's note: The Shanghai Airport Authority said last week that all indoor smoking rooms will be closed. The authority has set up outdoor smoking areas and smokers will be guided to these designated areas. What do you think of this regulation? Is it an act to ban smoking? China Daily readers share their opinions.

Cdogg (Australia)

Of course it should be. It should also enforce the ban, with more than just a warning to not do it again. Smoking in airports, train terminals, restaurants, pubs and all public places, such as shopping centers and so on, should be banned.
Publish or perish? Now it seems that if you publish, you will sooner or later perish.

The New York Times reformed its international edition recently, giving more space to commentaries, and exclusive and in-depth reports. Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said in an open letter to readers that the NYT will continue to add reporters and editors to its bureaus around the world, because he believes "readers still crave the depth and breadth of a newspaper".

The contrast between the old and new NYT editions is a testimony to Sulzberger Jr.'s judgment.

Lagging in terms of display and cost-cutting in distribution, newspapers have to either follow in the footsteps of new media or provide exclusive and in-depth reports to sustain the life of their products.

The rise of new media will eliminate weak newspapers, but not real newspapers. Just like the advent of radio and television facilitated the progress of the newspaper industry, the advancement of technology will change the media landscape, not bring down the curtain on newspapers, because the competition between traditional media and new media is more than a zero-sum game.

Yet some worrisome phenomena are evident in the way newspapers have adapted to the era of new media. Some have unfortunately sacrificed their strengthseditorial stands and the readerships they catered toto keep pace with the development of new media. In fact, the changes within new media have been faster than those within newspapers, so there is no reason for newspapers to be more populist, fragmented and capricious.

The competitiveness of a newspaper lies in the originality, objectivity, professionalism and judgment of its editors and reporters when it comes to selecting a subject, interview or the perspective they employ, which can differ from person to person and cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence.

Human consciousness-based creativity and cognitive ability, which can be understood and followed through language, are the foundation of newspapers' survival.

The other worrisome trend is some newspapers asking their journalists to become "omni reporters", who can shoot videos, take photographs as well as plan new media publicity campaigns. But very few journalists are born geniuses when it comes to writing and taking interviews. The overall division of labor is becoming more layered thanks to the advancement of technology, but the division of labor in the media industry seems to be going the other way.

In such times, real journalists need to become more independent and maintain their distance from the negative elements of new media, or else they will end up feeding readers unverified, spicy and meaningless information.

Misled by the lure of sensational effects and "wider" readership, reporters will be doing a disservice to journalism by blindly following new media. It's time journalists realized that well-researched, well-written objective stories are more conducive to social progress than new media's battery of unending information.

A newspaper is a public tool. To some extent, newspapers published in Chinese cities grew robustly in the late 1990s. And the changes brought about by technological advancement in the early 21st century will ensure the newspaper industry reaches a new and higher level. Only the fittest will survive, though.

Newspapers could become a symbol of quality news providers, and reading a particular newspaper will reflect a person's taste and attitude.

Therefore, there is no reason why editors and reporters should not allow their conscience and public responsibility to guide them.

The author is a writer with China Daily. liyang@chinadaily.com.cn
ZHANG YONGWEN/CHINA DAILY

Would-be Chinese investors in Europe are encountering a growing mood of protectionism among politicians and officials there who have raised barriers against many major deals. This is generating pressure to tighten the rules on Chinese takeovers, particularly where issues of fair competition and national security are said to be involved, and is twinned with demands for greater European access to investment opportunities in China.

The trend has been particularly apparent in Germany, whose Vice-Chancellor and Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy Sigmar Gabriel upped the rhetoric ahead of a visit to China this past week by claiming it was strategically buying up German companies while protecting its own companies against foreign takeovers.

"Nobody can expect Europe to accept such foul play by trade partners," he wrote in a signed article in Germany's Die Welt newspaper. It was an unusual tone for an official to adopt before an overseas economic mission whose agenda included opening Germany's biggest business conference outside its own borders.

However, it received a conciliatory response from Beijing. "We have noticed relevant reports from German media," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said, adding: "China is willing to cultivate a fair and transparent investment environment for investors both at home and abroad, including those from Germany." Perhaps more significant than Gabriel's somewhat undiplomatic language are some of his recent actions. He recently blocked a $735 million (671 million) buyout by Chinese investors of the German semiconductor maker Aixtron.

The protectionist mood is not confined to Germany. The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, last month delayed the planned acquisition of Swiss agribusiness Syngenta by China's ChemChina by announcing an in-depth inquiry into the deal. The probe is ostensibly aimed at deciding whether the deal would reduce competition in the pesticides market and raise prices for farmers.

To try to salvage the deal, State-owned ChemChina has extended its $43 billion cash offer until Jan 5 in the hope of gaining European regulatory approval.

By putting obstacles in the way of these and other major deals, European officials may be responding to a public mood in their electorates, fueled by headlines that accuse China of dumping steel, solar panels and other products on the European market and stealing European jobs.

The mood of protectionism comes at a time when the EU has been rattled by the consequences of Britain's vote to exit the economic bloc. British politicians who advocate a clean break with EU institutions such as the European single market have been the most vociferous in promoting the benefits of closer economic relations with China.

It also comes at a time when the EU is pondering tightening its so-called trade defense instruments to introduce more robust anti-dumping measures that would impact Chinese exporters. New proposals on how to calculate anti-dumping tariffs on Chinese goods are expected by the end of the year.

Other moves include an attempt by the German government to increase its powers to block takeovers. The current law allows the government to block takeovers only if they threaten energy security, defense or financial stability. Gabriel is pressing for EU safeguards to stop foreign takeovers of technology companies seen as strategic to Europe's future economic success.

Such protectionist moves have not generally been welcomed by the business community. "For many German companies, China is now the single most important market," Thomas Heck, head of the China business group at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Germany was quoted as telling Reuters.

"It may not be wise to pick a battle and tell China 'If you don't open up your markets like we have, then we will shut down our economy for you'."

One signal of a tougher line on Chinese deals came earlier this year when British Prime Minister Theresa May delayed approval of a nuclear plant at Hinkley Point in which State-owned China General Nuclear would have a one-third stake.

She announced the delay as soon as she took office in July so that she could familiarize herself with the terms of the deal. In a more positive signal to Chinese investors, by September it was approved.

The writer is a senior media consultant for China Daily UK.
This December marks the 15th anniversary of China's accession to the World Trade Organization. In the past 15 years, China could have played a bigger role in promoting global governance had the world's institutional structures allowed it optimum participation in the global rule-making process. That will be China's main objective in the future.

Fifteen years ago, some people in China questioned the rationality of "wearing the chains" of the WTO. The opponents gradually realized that China could not win the trust of foreign corporations and governments if it did not become a WTO member, and trust is quite important in international economy and trade.

By pledging to abide by WTO rules, China has increased its foreign trade on average by 22 percent a year during these years, while becoming a major destination for foreign investment. China has also benefited by abiding by international rules, and it will continue to participate in making global rules, as well as executing them. Therefore, contrary to what some people assume, there is no reason for China to reject the current rules and world order.

But global rules are always changing in response to the changing circumstances. For example, recent years have seen the emergence of a series of new rules in the relatively new fields of e-commerce, internet and global climate change.

China is willing to do such "additions" without "subtracting" the existing rules, because it cannot pick which rules to follow and which to ignore to suit its own interests and development stage.

In practice, however, many global economic organizations have only conventions and cases, not rules. At the G20 Leaders Summit in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang province, in early September, China advocated that guiding principles for investment be worked out, and its efforts were recognized by the international community.

Only the collective effort of the world can transform conventions into detailed rules. China will play a leading role in this process, as it is the world's largest investor and a major investment destination.

Some international organizations still do not have rules in some emerging fields of trade. But the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement is a constructive oneregrettably the US Congress did not pass itand shows many other countries are doing the "addition". China supports such efforts and holds an open attitude toward them, hoping other countries also have the same attitude toward China's efforts in this regard.

International institutional structures such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank cannot meet all the countries' demands for infrastructure construction funds. So China took the lead to establish the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the BRICS New Development Bank, but to supplement their functions, not to replace them.

Besides, China opposes the politicization of economic and trade conflicts. Anti-dumping cases in global trade are not bad things, because they can expose the problems and help to find the solutions within a framework of rules. Hence, countries should not politicize them.

China will cooperate with the United Statesas well as oppose it when neededin making new global rules and improving global governance. The largest developing country and the largest developed country represent the interests of countries in different development stages. It is natural for them to play key roles on existing as well as new fronts such as internet governance and the fight against climate change.

No matter who is elected the next US president, the fundamentals of Sino-US relations will have to continue. China and the US have many common interests, so they need to cooperate in making new rules and fostering global governance.

The author is chairman of Center of China & Globalization, a think tank in Beijing.
Premier Li Keqiang advocates the establishment of a free-trade zone at the 15th Meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Council of Heads of Governments in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on Nov 3, 2016. LIU ZHEN / CHINA NEWS SERVICE

In the 15 years since its inception, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has developed a new type of international relations, featuring mutual benefit and common development among its member states which have greatly contributed to regional economic development and stability. Upholding the "Shanghai Spirit" of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for cultural diversity and pursuit of common development, Thursday's SCO Prime Ministers' Meeting in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, has further deepened pragmatic cooperation in economic and security matters among the member states.

During the meeting, Premier Li Keqiang and other top officials reviewed the cooperation and developments in various fields, and discussed ways to implement the Belt and Road Initiative and other regional cooperation mechanisms.

The premier also proposed concrete initiatives to further deepen SCO cooperation in such areas as finance, trade, science and innovation.

The other SCO members showed interest in measures to boost cooperation in areas such as transport, science and technology, infrastructure construction and environmental protection.

All SCO members are also neighbors. This special geopolitical reality allows a favorable environment to be created for the joint development of countries in the region. The Tashkent Declaration of the 15th Anniversary of the SCO signed at the SCO summit in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in June reiterated that the member states were committed to further developing good neighborliness, and friendly relations in areas of mutual interest.

Facing complicated security challenges, the SCO has forged a series of mechanisms that have played a very important role in safeguarding regional stability and security. The mechanisms include the 2009 SCO Counter-Terrorism Convention, meetings of chiefs of general staff of the armed forces of the SCO members, and the "Peace Mission 2016" joint anti-terrorism drills.

These efforts will not only strengthen the fight against terrorism, extremism and separatismto prevent the aforementioned "three evils" from making inroads into the SCO member statesbut also reinvigorate Afghanistan, which has applied to become the bloc's member, and prevent the unrest in western Asia to spread to eastern Asia.

As economies of the SCO member states are highly complementary, more efforts are needed to promote major joint projects and create financial platforms of mutual assistance as well as research centers of innovation and high technology, which will help transform the region into a geo-economic plateau with high vitality.

At the meeting of the economic affairs ministers of the SCO member states held in Bishkek earlier last month, China proposed to set up special institutions to facilitate trade and investment in fields such as e-commerce, logistics and financing.

Furthermore, the integration of each member's development strategies will broaden the path of the SCO and promote the overall development of the region. At the Tashkent summit, China promised to facilitate the alignment of its Belt and Road Initiative with the development strategies of other SCO members, and hoped the SCO would play a positive role in this process by creating more cooperation opportunities, which the other SCO members have expressed interest in.

With the appeal for dovetailing each other's development strategies growing among a number of countries in southern and western Asia, the SCO, under the Shanghai Spirit, is expected to develop into a multilateral platform and become an important driving force for a new and balanced world order.
Belgian author Lize Spit poseswhile wearing her hair in a trademark messy bunis the author of the hit novel The Melting.[Photo/Agencies]

She's a literary sensation whose debut novel has sold over 100,000 copies, yet unless you speak Dutch you've probably never heard of writer Lize Spit.

But all that's about to change as publishers line up to translate her dark tale of friendship and betrayal.

Why would a traumatized young woman return to her hometown with a block of ice in her car?

It is this question at the heart of The Melting that has gripped readers and caused a stir unlike any other Dutch-language debut in recent years.

Reviewers in Belgium and the Netherlands have hailed Spit as the voice of her generation, while international publishers have jostled to snap up the translation rights to the haunting coming-of-age story.

The 27-year-old author attributes her success partly to the book's universal themes of small-town life and growing up in a dysfunctional family, but says the Flemish literary world "was also waiting for someone new, a young new voice".

"I'm a bit stunned by it all," she said in a phone interview ahead of last week's Frankfurt Book Fair, where Flanders and the Netherlands are the guests of honor and where The Melting will get its first big outing on the international stage.

The story opens with the main character, twenty-something Eva, driving back to her home village, determined to settle the score over childhood wrongs.

Weaving between the past and the present, Spit takes the reader back to the sweltering summer of 2002, when Eva's only two friendsboth teenage boysembark on a chilling game of sexual exploration.

A sense of creeping dread fills the pages until the shocking climax.

'Unprecedented'

Since it was first published in January, the book has sold over 100,000 copiesa remarkable achievement for any debut author.

But it's an astronomical figure in a country where most novels have a print run of 2,000 and any book that sells over 10,000 copies is considered a hit.

"After more than nine months it's still the bestselling novel in Flanders," said Spit's publisher Daniel van der Meer of the Dutch publishing house Das Mag.

The film rights were sold three days after The Melting appeared in stores, and nine countries have since bought the translation rightsincluding France, Spain and England.

In Germany, interest was so strong that the book went to auction.

"The extremely fast foreign sales, including to the very difficult English-language market, are unprecedented for a Flemish debut," said Michiel Scharpe of the Flemish Literature Fund, which will be showcasing Dutch-language works in Frankfurt.

Van der Meer expects to add more countries to the list at the fair, where Spit will appear in a documentary that takes her back to her hometown to visit some of the locations that inspired the book.

The Melting tourists

Critics have been unanimous in their praise for Spit's vivid prose and keen observations, drawing comparisons with Ian McEwan and the late Hugo Claus who wrote the Flemish classic The Sorrow of Belgium.

Wary of being written off as hype, Spit stresses the hard work that went into The Melting, noting that she read the entire book out loud three times before settling on a final version.

Much has been made in local media about the graphic nature of some of the scenes, and Spit herself admits parts of the book are "quite intense".

"But you need something like that, at the end, where everything goes horribly wrong."

Questions have inevitably been raised about how much of the story is based on true events, but Spit has resisted talking about her own past.

"I think it's very important to keep that distance," she said, expressing disbelief at fans of the book who tour her childhood village of Viersel in northern Belgium expecting to see all the same places as on the page.

With her frequent media appearances and a weekly newspaper column, Spitwho is invariably pictured wearing her hair in a messy bunhas become a celebrity at home, but says she tries to keep "a cool head" about fame.

"I know that it won't last. People forget quickly."

She is already planning her second novel.

"The idea is already bubbling. This time it won't be about a small village, but about something else completely. I think I have said everything there is to be said about that village."
Ambassador Ben Ogutu gives a speech at the ceremony. [Photo by Liu Hongjie/China Daily]

Kenya has stepped up efforts to deepen diplomatic relations with China by launching a Chinese language class for diplomats at the Confucius Institute of University of Nairobi. Thirty students from various departments at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will commence their courses next week for four months.

This is a strong move towards breaking cultural and language barriers that have long been cited as a challenge in China-Kenya bilateral relations.

Students will attend classes two times weekly and learn basic Chinese language to support trade and cultural relations between the two countries.

While launching the class, in line with an agreement between the Foreign Service Academy and University of Nairobi, Ambassador Ben Ogutu, Director General of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) VI Secretariat, said the classes will go a long way to increase the ministry's pool of versatile diplomats.

Speaking on behalf of the cabinet minister of the foreign affairs ministry, Ogutu said emerging nations, particularly those in the BRICS group of nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), have shifted world power and attention, giving a new impetus to the south-south cooperation.

"It is therefore prudent for us to conform to the times and be strategically placed to enhance and expand relations with China," he said.
NEW DELHI - At least 14 people were killed and three others injured after a truck collided head-on with a mini-bus carrying Hindu pilgrims in India's western state of Gujarat, officials said Saturday.

The accident took place on Friday night near Valthera Patiya village of Ahmedabad district, about 26 km south of Gandhinagar city, the capital of Gujarat.

"Last night a mini-bus carrying pilgrims collided head-on with a speeding truck here resulting in killing of 14 people and injuring three others," an official posted in Ahmedabad said. "The passengers were inside the mini-bus."

Officials said the deceased were identified as Hindu pilgrims returning from Pavagadh, a pilgrimage site in Panchmahals district of Gujarat.

"The mini-bus carrying pilgrims was on its way back to Sokhda in Rajkot district," the official said. "The injured were immediately removed to hospital and bodies of deceased were taken out from the mangled vehicle."

Police officials said the driver of the truck escaped along with his vehicle after the accident.

A manhunt has been launched to trace the driver, police said.

Deadly road accidents are common in India often caused by overloading, bad condition of roads and reckless driving.

Last year 146,133 people were killed and 500,279 others injured in 501,423 road accidents across India, a latest report released by India's ministry of road transport said.

Global Road Safety Report - 2015 released by WHO last year however said India accounts for more than 200,000 deaths annually due to road accidents.
Premier Li Keqiang meets with Latvian Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis on Friday local time in the country's capital Riga. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Premier Li Keqiang vowed on Friday to strengthen cooperation with Latvia in infrastructure and production capacity and showed willingness to participate in railway and port projects in the Baltic Sea area.

Latvia is a crucial partner for China in Central and Eastern Europe and under the framework of European Union, Premier Li said when meeting with Latvian Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis in the country's capital Riga.

Li is on his first visit to Latvia, where he is also scheduled to attend the 5th Meeting of Heads of Government of China and Central and Eastern European countries, which kicks off on Saturday.

For the past 25 years since the establishment of diplomatic ties, both countries have consolidated political trust, deepened pragmatic cooperation in various fields, and nursed increasing people-to-people exchanges, Li said.

China has cost-effective equipment and rich experience in building railways and ports, and is willing to participate in Europe's infrastructure projects such as Rail Baltica, a trans-European railway linking Riga and Berlin, and the construction of ports and a logistics park under the framework of a three-sea harbor district cooperation initiative, Li added.

The initiative refers to cooperation programs concerning the Adristic Sea, the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea. It was proposed by Premier Li in last year's China-CEE countries meeting in Suzhou, Jiangsu province.

Li said China is willing to strengthen other pragmatic cooperation with Latvia, which will be taken as an important transit point for China-EU trade.

Kucinskis said Latvia will cultivate a stable environment for Chinese enterprises and strive to become a portal for Chinese enterprises to enter the market of Central and Eastern European countries.
(Photo : Getty Images) A security expert claimed that cybercriminals using the ransomware tactic have amassed a collective bounty of about $1 billion in 2016.

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The United States has the most advanced cyberwar capabilities in the world and is prepared to use them against Russia should this nation try to influence the results of the Nov. 8 presidential election in favor of the Republican Party candidate Donald Trump.



The admission the U.S. is really better at cyberwarfare than Russia is surprising considering the many times the U.S. has been attacked with seeming impunity by Russian state-sponsored hacking groups such as Guccifer 2.0.



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U.S. media reports the U.S. government is prepared to counter the threat Russia will use its cybercriminal gangs to either disrupt or undermine the U.S. presidential election in a manner that is unprecedented in a presidential election.



For the first time, there are confirmed reports the U.S. military is prepared to use its "secret cyber weapons" if the U.S. elections were to be attacked in a "significant way," said a senior intelligence official.



This same official said that if Russia launched a significant cyber attack against critical U.S. infrastructure, the U.S. will shut down some Russian systems in retaliation.



U.S. military officials point out the U.S. has the world's most advanced cyber capabilities but wouldn't discuss details of highly classified cyber weapons.



Experts confirm the U.S. has been hacking into the computer infrastructure of adversary nations such as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea for many years and has compromised these systems.



Media reports said U.S. military hackers have penetrated Russia's electric grid, telecommunications networks and the Russian military's command systems, rendering them vulnerable to attack by secret American cyber weapons should the U.S. find it necessary to use these weapons.



U.S. intelligence officials, however, don't expect Russia to launch cyberattacks on key U.S. infrastructure -- which is an act of war -- but they do expect Russia to create "cyber mischief," including the release of fake documents and the posting bogus social media comments designed to spread misinformation.



Obama administration officials were said to have sent a back channel warning to Russia and its president Vladimir Putin against any attempt to influence the Nov. 8 election. There is no guarantee Russia will heed this warning.



There are already fears that after the Nov. 8 election, Moscow might attempt to spread doubts about the legitimacy of the electoral process using its cyber criminal gangs.



The U.S. counter-cyber attacks operation is being coordinated by the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, and includes the CIA, the National Security Agency and other elements of the Department of Defense.



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TagsUnited States, cyberwar, Russia, donald trump, secret cyber weapons, Vladimir Putin
(Photo : YouTube Screenshot) China's Air Force chief said it will accelerate the development of the J-20 fighter jet.

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Chief of China's Air Force said it will speed up development of the J-20 fighter jet, an apparent bid to dismiss speculations that the aircraft's production was running behind schedule.



According to the South China Morning Post, spectators expressed disappointment over the jet's development following a brief public debut at the Airshow China in Zhuhai on Tuesday. The pilots did not reportedly open the weapon bay doors like what they did during a rehearsal several days prior to the launch.



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"It's a very good thing that our J-20 made an appearance here. We're speeding up development," General Ma Xiaotian told Shenzhen Satellite Television during the short fly-past said.



He also added that the J-20 fighter jets are not open for exports, saying "We are not considering putting [the J-20] on the global market."



According to a military insider, Ma's remarks could be a way to put pressure on the Chengdu Aerospace Corporation, J-20 jets' manufacturer, to deliver sooner, the SCMP noted.



Meanwhile, talking about Ma's satisfaction on the demonstration flight at the Airshow, he said: "Of course I'm satisfied. "







The beefy details of the J-20 fighter jets were not disclosed. To everyone else, the aircraft appeared to be designed to equal the stealth capacities of fifth-generation fighter aircrafts including the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and Russia's Sukhoi PAK FA, according to the Sputnik News.



"In my opinion, the machine is based on the Russian MiG 1.44," Dmitry Drozdenko, a deputy editor of Arsenal of the Fatherland, a Russian military magazine, told Sputnik. "Although it hasn't been announced officially, the J-20 uses our AL-31F engine, developed by Salut, which the Chinese bought for half a billion dollars."



Other than the J-20, China is also developing the Shenyang J-31, another fifth generation jet fighter, to attract interested overseas buyers.



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TagsJ-20 stealth fighter jet, Airshow China 2016, Shenyang J-31 jets, Fighter Jets, stealth fighter, Chengdu Aerospace Corporation
(Photo : CAS) The China Small Telescope Array at Dome A.

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China is expected to complete the upgrade of its existing automated astronomical observation platform in Antarctica into a manned astronomical observatory by 2020.



The observatory -- the Kunlun Dark Universe Survey Telescope (KDUST) -- is being built on Dome A, the existing site of China's Antarctic Kunlun Station. Dome A is the highest location in Antarctica and stands 4,093 meters above sea level.



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KDUST is a 2.5 meter infrared optical telescope designed to detect and observe Earth-like planets in the Milky Way using infrared light. It will be the third telescope system installed at Kunlun, which is one of the coldest places on Earth.



The other two telescope systems are the Chinese Small Telescope Array (CSTAR), an automated array of four Schmidt telescope with an aperture of 14.5 cm, each equipped with 1K x 1K CCD, and the Antarctica Schmidt Telescopes (AST3), a joint project between Texas A&M University and the Beijing Astronomical Observatory. AST3 consists of three 50 cm aperture wide-field telescopes.



In addition to these three systems, the largest observatory at Kunlun is expected to come online in 2020. This will be the Dome A Terahertz Explorer-5 (DATE5), a 5 meter telescope whose capability to detect light with longer wavelengths will allow astronomers to detect and observe nascent stars.



China has sent its astronomers to Dome A every year since 2007 to make preparations to build KDUST. The 33rd Chinese expedition to Antarctica left China Nov. 2 aboard the the research icebreaker Xuelong (Snow Dragon).



Among the crew are four Chinese astronomers who will spend the next six months working on some 100 projects. This team, however, will only have 20 days to work at Kunlun.



The team includes an astronomer from the National Astronomical Observatories and three from the Nanjing Institute of Astronomical Optics and Technology.



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Tagschina, Antarctica, Kunlun Dark Universe Survey Telescope, KDUST, Dome A, Chinese Small Telescope Array, Antarctica Schmidt Telescopes
(Photo : YouTube Screenshot) A China Southern Airlines passenger jet made an emergency landing at Auckland International Airport shortly after it took off on Saturday.

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A China Southern Airlines passenger jet made an emergency landing at Auckland International Airport shortly after it took off on Saturday.



The China Southern Airlines flight CZ336, a Boeing 787-8, was forced to return after one of its engines was reported to have shut down, according to the Stuff.nz.



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The flight, carrying 212 passengers, left Auckland for Guangzhou, in southern China, at 10:40 a.m., 40 minutes later than scheduled, the ECNS reported citing Radio New Zealand. The plane landed safely at 11:40 a.m.



Gabriel Thompson, Auckland Airport Emergency Operation Center's shift manager, said the plane has been taxied to a remote hardstand where aircraft engineers are carrying out necessary inspections.



He also confirmed that there were no injuries reported and a full emergency was declared at the Auckland Airport following the report. At least 13 fire crew members, airport emergency responders, and several St John Ambulances were called to the scene but were later stood down.



All passengers and crew members had reportedly disembarked an hour after the plane successfully landed, Xinhua reported citing an airport spokesperson. All inquiries should be directed to China Southern Airlines as the airline is yet to update what to do next.



Meanwhile, flight tracking website flightaware.com showed that the China Southern Airlines plane had flown a small circle shortly after takeoff before it did a wide loop to return in to land. The plane flew 186 km in a loop around greater Auckland before returning to the airport because of engine issues, the NZ Herald reported.



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TagsChina Southern Airlines, China Southern Airlines flight, emergency landing, Auckland International Airport, flightaware.com
(Photo : Xinhua) EAST

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Chinese scientists claim to have successfully obtained high-confinement plasma for a record of over one minute using the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) in Hefei.



EAST (internal designation HT-7U) is an experimental superconducting tokamak magnetic fusion energy reactor that replicates the energy-generating (or fusion) process of the sun.



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The Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, which operates HT-7U, describes the device as a non-circular advanced steady-state plasma experimental device. HT-7U is the first tokamak to employ superconducting toroidal and poloidal magnets.



Chinese media did not reveal the exact record length of time other than by using the phrase "over one minute."



If it is a new record, this means it would have broken the old record set in February 2016 of 102 seconds at 50 million Kelvin. The plasma current reached 400 kA and a density of about 2.4 x 1019/m3 with slowly increasing temperature.



During this experiment, sensors recorded the plasma's temperature at 50 million degrees Celsius (90 million degrees Fahrenheit). That's over three times hotter than the core of the sun, which is some 15 million degrees Celsius (27 million degrees Fahrenheit).



This plasma burn is a major step forward in fusion research, but Chinese scientists hope EAST will eventually be able to sustain plasma for 1,000 seconds at twice the current temperature.



Chinese media claim the new record will be key to the success of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the largest international program dedicated to thermonuclear fusion experiments. It also marks a major step forward for fusion studies.



EAST attained it first record in 2012 when plasma in a similar environment was maintained for 32 seconds, breaking the world record at the time.



Since then, EAST has had its tungsten diverters and auxiliary heating system upgraded, allowing the device to create long-pulse, high-confinement plasma.



A tokamak such as EAST uses a powerful magnetic field to confine plasma in the shape of a torus. Achieving a stable plasma equilibrium requires magnetic field lines that move around the torus in a helical shape.



Such a helical field can be generated by adding a toroidal field (traveling around the torus in circles) and a poloidal field (traveling in circles orthogonal to the toroidal field).



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TagsExperimental Advanced Superconducting Tokama, East, Hefei, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, HT-7U, plasma, fusion research
(Photo : Getty Images) China is set to intervene in a case in Hong Kong involving two elected officials.

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China's top parliamentary panel will initiate a discussion over Hong Kong's mini-constitution and the need to re-interpret it, the Hong Kong government confirmed on Friday. The discussion over the constitution will be started over the weekend.



The autonomous city government issued a brief statement on Friday saying that "the question of interpreting Article 104 of the Basic Law has been included in the agenda" of the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC).



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The unprecedented move for the judicial review comes after two pro-independent lawmakers' oath was declared as "invalid" on October 12. The Hong Kong government subsequently filed a case in the court to disqualify both newly elected legislators.



The two politicians Yau Wai-ching, 25, and Sixtus Leung, 30, were elected to the city's Legislative Council in September. Both legislators allegedly botched up their oath-taking ceremony by using the term "Chee-na" instead of China.



The use of the controversial term, which the Chinese consider as highly derogatory, propelled the officials to rule the oath as completely "illegal." The term was used during World War 2 by Japanese forces as a reference to Chinese citizens.



The two young rebel lawmakers reportedly pledged their allegiance to the "Hong Kong Nation" and unfurled banners that read "Hong Kong Is Not China" during an oath-taking ceremony.



Hong Kong has seen several pro-independence movements since 1997, the year when it became an autonomous part of Republic of China. While the autonomous city has seen visibly less protest in the past year, the latest row may rekindle the independence movements again.



Meanwhile, experts fear that the Chinese government's decision to go for a judicial review may damage the creditability of Hong Kong's judiciary system.



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TagsHong Kong, Hong Kong Oath Taking, Hong Kong Pro Independence, Hong Kong China, china
(Photo : Getty Images) Indonesia has vowed not to compromise on its territorial claims in the South China Sea.

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Ahead of his state-level visit to Australia, Indonesian President Joko Widodo has vowed that his country would not make any compromise on its territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea.



"In regards to Indonesia's sovereignty, I don't compromise. I don't compromise," Widodo told Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Saturday.



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The statement comes just days after Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop announced that the two countries are planning to conduct joint naval patrols in the disputed South China Sea.



It must be noted that Jakarta conducted a large-scale aerial operation around the Natuna Islands last month. The operation came amid growing tensions with China, following a series of face-offs between Indonesian navy officials and Chinese fishing boats.



The face-off led to Indonesia summoning the Chinese ambassador in March after Jakarta remained adamant that it will prosecute eight Chinese trawlers for illegally fishing in its controlled territory in the South China Sea.



Indonesia is laying claim over the entire Natuna Islands, which is located in the larger Tudjuh Archipelago, off the northwest coast of Borneo. China has never refuted Indonesia's claim over the island and maintains that both countries have "overlapping claims" over certain territorial parts.



Widodo will hold a meeting with several important officials including Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull during his state-level visit. He is expected to push for a bilateral trade agreement that is expected to be finalized next year.



The Indonesian president's critical visit to Australia is underscored by the fact that latter is a staunch ally of the U.S. and supporter of its "freedom of navigation" operation. The U.S.-led operation is aimed at countering China's growing dominance in the disputed South China Sea.



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TagsSouth China Sea Dispute, Indonesia, Natuna Islands, Indonesian President, Joko Widodo, Indonesia and Australia
(Photo : Armed Forces of the Russian Federation ) Iskander multiple launch.

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Russian military commentators are reacting with a mixture of amusement and derision at Norway's upcoming decision to allow United States Marine Corps units to rotate out of a base some 1,000 km from Norway's border with Russia.



Norway, which has close military ties with the United States, is expected to approve the latter's request it deploy a force of up to 300 U.S. Marines to be rotated out of Norway's Vaernes Air Station near the port city of Trondheim in central Norway. The U.S. plan doesn't call for a permanent basing of U.S. troops in Norway, however.



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The Marines already store tanks, artillery and other armored vehicles in climate-controlled caves in Norway as part of a prepositioning program dating back to the Cold War. The United States European Command sees building-up weapons stockpiles as a key part of its strategy to establish a more combat-ready force.



United States Army Europe (USAREUR) is also pre-positioning tanks, artillery and other fighting vehicles at locations throughout Europe and along Russia's borders with NATO.



Russian military experts and media seem convinced this latest deployment plan is part of the United States' strategy to encircle and choke Russia by deploying troops and equipment along Russia's borders with the west.



One Russian political scientist said the US has sent it men to Norway "with the purpose of boosting the activity of Western states on the border with Russia in the Arctic, to be able then to squeeze Russia out of that region."



Other analysts dismissed the idea deploying the Marines is meant to scare Vladimir Putin.



An online Russian newspaper claimed there are no units in the US Marines drilled for combat in the wilds of Norway and in mountainous terrain.



"As the result, it does not have any units ready and does not even know how its equipment is going to function in such a climate, even though the climate conditions of central and northern Norway are far milder than those of Russia's Far North."



The same newspaper claims the Vaernes military base that will house the Marines "is nothing more than a large target which is shouting for (Russian mobile ballistic missile systems) Iskander to hit it."



Iskander, or more correctly the 9K720 Iskander, is a mobile short-range ballistic missile system with a range of 500 km. Its missile carries a 700 kg high explosive fragmentation warhead.



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TagsUnited States Marine Corps, Norway, Vaernes Air Station, Trondheim, United States Army Europe, NATO, United States
(Photo : Xinhua) Where's the water at Poyang Lake?

(Photo : Xinhua) The tall structure is a lighthouse. Note the cows grazing.

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Poyang Lake in Jiangxi Province, once the largest freshwater lake in China, is fast drying-up and might soon become a prairie or a desert like the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan due mostly to human ignorance.



Chinese scientists are reporting with alarm that more parts of Poyang Lake have dried up leaving huge swathes of grassland in areas once inundated by up to 25 meters of water. That depth has been reduced on average to only eight meters and even this level is in danger since water levels have fallen continuously since September.



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The lake's water level in eastern Jiangxi as measured by the Xingzi hydrological station plunged dropped to 10.6 meters on Nov. 3. The lake entered its low-water period of less than 12 meters on September 19, 54 days earlier than usual.



The early low-water period can partly be blamed on decreasing water levels in the Yangtze River, reduced rainfall and human activities, said Zhu Lilai, deputy director of the water resources department of Jiangxi.



The lake is fed by the Gan, Xin and Xiu rivers that connect to the Yangtze through a channel. Historically, the lake is known for its abundance in freshwater fish and shrimps and supplied water for nearby rice fields.



The area of Poyang Lake fluctuates dramatically between the wet and dry seasons. In recent years, however, the size of the lake has been decreasing overall. In a normal year the area of the lake averages 3,500 square kilometers. In early 2012, the size of the lake reached a low of 200 square kilometers.



Scientists report tourists can now walk on the former lakebed in Duchang county as if they were wandering through fields. The lakebed is covered by flowering aubergine plants. Cattle are grazing on the exposed bed at Lushan.



Poyang Lake might soon share the fate of the Aral Sea, once the world's fourth largest lake, whose shrinking has been described as "one of the planet's worst environmental disasters."



Once with an area of 68,000 km2, the Aral Sea has been steadily shrinking since the 1960s.



By 2007, it had declined to 10% of its original size, splitting into four lakes. By 2009, the southeastern lake had disappeared and the southwestern lake had retreated to a thin strip at the western edge of the former southern sea.



Satellite images taken by NASA in August 2014 revealed that for the first time in modern history, the eastern basin of the Aral Sea had completely dried up. The eastern basin is now called the Aralkum Desert.



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TagsPoyang Lake, drying-up, Aral Sea, Jiangxi Province, china
(Photo : Getty Images) Advertisements letting customers know of the ability to use UnionPay debit cards at Harrods are shown on February 3, 2011 in London, England.

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Russia wants to make its new Mir payment system compatible with China's UnionPay to prevent Western financial sanctions, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview published on Friday.



"We are currently considering ways of harmonizing our national payments systems; both the card that we are going to issue, the Mir card, on the one hand, and the UnionPay system, on the other hand. We believe that this would enhance the reliability of financial settlements," Medvedev told China Central Television as quoted by Reuters.



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Medvedev said that this proposal would cut the Russia's dependence on Western-dominated payment systems including the SWIFT, which is one of the world's largest financial messaging systems.



"I believe that the use of the yuan in mutual settlements, the use of positions opened in yuan and rubles, mutual financial transaction technologies, and the use of co-branding cards - all of this is very useful for our countries," Medvedev said, adding that such cooperation is deemed useful as no one can block the development of financial traffic.



Earlier this year, Russia launched its Mir national payments card after Western systems such as MasterCard and Visa cut off their services to several Russian banks including private lender Bank Rossiya the Fine Extra reported.



The services were reportedly halted as part of the United States and European Union sanctions for Russia's illegal Crimea annexation from Ukraine and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, according to Reuters. Other than that, the US and EU also implemented visa bans and asset freeze, which will allegedly affect the country's entire economic sectors once the country decides to escalate the crisis.



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TagsMir Payment system, Russia's Mir Payment system, China UnionPay, UnionPay, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, payment system
(Photo : PLAAF) J-20 at the Zhuhai Air Show. Not truly stealth?

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The Indian Air Force (IAF) is unimpressed by China's Chengdu J-20 "stealth" fighter jet, echoing a growing opinion the J-20 isn't a true stealth jet in the same mold as the Northrop Grumman F-35 Lightning II.



It also points out its new Dassault Rafale multi-role fighters have stealth capabilities that remain secret, but do exist in this French-made jet. India has ordered 36 Rafales from the plane's maker, Dassault Aviation.



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IAF realizes full well the importance of acquiring a fighter aircraft with stealth features and that's why Rafale, which has "special stealth features," was acquired from France, said Air Marshal SB Deo, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Air Command (WAC).



WAC is the largest and most important Air Command of the IAF. It consists of 16 Air Force Bases, and is responsible for the aerial defense of north India. It controls 21 squadrons, of which 13 are jet fighter squadrons.



The Air Marshal believes the J-20, which had its first public reveal at the Zhuhai Air Show last Nov. 1, is no cause for concern since Rafale also has stealth features.



"The radial cross section of the aircraft (Rafale) is significantly smaller for an aircraft of that size," he said.



"There are many other features, too, which I would not like to disclose at this stage."



Air Marshal Deo pointed out the J-20 has stealth features only at the front and not in the rear. This means the J-20 is not a true stealth fighter in the same class as the F-35.



"It is important to maintain stealth while using your radar equipment, while opening your bomb bay doors to fire and ensuring how a weapon can quickly come out of the rails and go out. I do not know how far this aircraft is stealth," he said.



He also said it will be some time before the J-20 is operationally fielded but the IAF is prepared for its arrival.



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TagsIndian Air Force, Chengdu J-20, Northrop Grumman F-35 Lightning II, Dassault Rafale multi-role fighter, Air Marshal SB Deo, Western Air Command
home World Christians continue to spread the Gospel in Russia despite anti-evangelism law

The anti-terrorism law that affects evangelism began implementation in Russia last July and several Christians have already been arrested. But despite the challenges, Christians have not refrained from preaching the Gospel.

Sergey Rakhuba, president of Mission Eurasia, said that Christian pastors have been targeted by the law in an attempt to silence Christians.

Forum 18 reported that a Baptist children's camp was raided on July 20, the day the law came into force. The church's pastor, Aleksei Telius, was fined 5,000 rubles. Several other Christian pastors have been arrested and fined since then.

"We will not abandon our Christian brothers and sisters in Russia during this time, especially as there are still incredible opportunities for ministry and evangelism in Russia," Rakhuba told Assist Service.

"In the midst of fines, raids and arrests, I am seeing more clearly than ever how God is at work in Russia -- transforming the country according to His purpose through the witness of faithful Christians," he added.

He noted that the relationship between the West and Russia is growing more tense because of Syria. The Russian government is becoming hostile to outsiders as a result.

On Oct. 1, over 350 young Christian leaders gathered together for the Next Generation Professional Leaders (NGPLI) conference in Perm, Russia. Rakhuba said that the region was previously known for its gulags where thousands Christians were sent to work and die in labor camps.

"How miraculous that, today, this very region is the location of a growing movement of young Christian leaders!" he exclaimed.

On Oct. 15, around 500 young Christian leaders attended a conference in Krasnodar, Russia.

"The young Christian professionals mobilized and equipped by Mission Eurasia represent the fields of business, education, social work, law, healthcare, infrastructure, the arts, and more," Rakhuba noted.

He pointed out that Christians were previously excluded from such vocations but they are now working in very influential professions and they are using their influence to share the Christian worldview.

He said that the new law presents a challenge to young Christians but they are responding with courage, faith and renewed passion for evangelism and ministry.
home World Displaced Muslim families in Aleppo surprised by Christians' hospitality

Muslims who have been displaced by the war in Aleppo have taken refuge in churches and they are startled by the hospitality displayed by Christians.

A 28-year-old Syrian Christian mother named Kristina said that more and more Christians are leaving Aleppo. She herself fled to Lebanon with her husband and daughter for safety and they are waiting for the violence to die down before they return to Syria.

Kristina heard from her friends that only 10 percent of the regular churchgoers are left in Aleppo but the church is still surprisingly full.

"The church is still full; displaced people take their place. Especially Muslims are coming to the church now," she told World Watch Monitor.

Kristina noted that the fighting is mostly concentrated in Muslim areas and many Syrians have fled to Christian areas for refuge. For many Muslims, it is their first time to interact with Christians.

"Many Muslims were genuinely surprised when they met Christian women in our churches willing to serve them. Their image was that all Christian women spend most of their days dancing in night clubs and drinking alcohol! Meeting each other was a shock, both for them and for us," she said.

Muslims were surprised by the support and programs offered by the churches for all Syrians not just Christians.

"Their mosques don't do that. Many are re-thinking the faith they grew up in and have dropped their hostility towards Christians," she remarked.

Kristina said that the Christian children's activities attract the most attention from the Syrians. More Muslim children are now attending the activities where the Bible is being taught daily. She said that mothers are fine with it but the husbands are usually more strict.

She noted that Muslim families are gradually attending the church services and activities which never happened during the war. She said that some are still afraid to enter the church buildings but they come in anyway.

"For the first time in history, Muslims are coming to us. The only thing we have to do is tell them the good news; they are waiting for it," she said.

Meanwhile, a Syrian pastor of a Presbyterian Church in Aleppo told the BBC that about 75 percent of Christians have already left the war-torn city. The attendance in his church dropped from 500 families down to 140 members but he still continues to hold services every Sunday.
Child Born Without Eyes, But This Allows His Parents to See God's Glory and Value of Life

Their son was born without eyes, but the Christian parents believe this was God's way of opening their eyes to His glory and the value of life.

In her book "Through the Eyes of Hope" (from Charisma House Publishers), which is set for a Jan. 10, 2017 release, Lacey Buchanan recounts the story of her baby boy Christian whom she gave birth to without eyes and with a severe cleft palatea rare condition suffered by only 50 people in the world, according to the Christian Examiner.

Two years after she married her high school sweetheart Chris at the age of 21, Lacey found out she was pregnant, just about the time she was beginning her first year in law school in Nashville, Tennessee.

The couple received bad news after Lacey had her ultrasound check-up. Her doctor said she was carrying a boy but that he would be born with severe facial deformities.

Despite this dire finding, the couple decided to let the child live, naming the child Christian after he was born. As was seen in the ultrasound, he was missing his eyes and also had cleft lip and palate.

Christian's birth tested the couple's faith to the hilt. Some of their friends even questioned their decision to let the boy live.

One woman told the couple on social media: "You are selfish for letting him live just so you could have a baby. You are a pathetic excuse for a mother. He will have a miserable life."

Lacey simply shrugged off the hurtful comments, seeing them as the world's way of viewing things, not God's way, which is the one they're following.

"When we choose to love others despite their differences, we glorify God in His creation," Lacey said. "Instead of hearing people say, 'I'm sorry,' as if Christian had died, I want to hear, 'Congratulations! Christian is learning to survive and thrive in this world.'"

She said when Christian is old enough to understand, she will tell him, "I loved you too much to give up on you. I love you too much now to give up on you. You are an amazing person who God chose to be my son, and I am thankful."

Lacey said people should understand that "God doesn't guarantee a trouble-free life or a stress-free marriage."

"But our experience has taught us that when life takes a dramatic turn, He is unchanging, even in the worst of circumstances," she said.
Iraqi Troops Battle For Last Town Before Mosul

Iraqi troops advancing towards Mosul battled on Saturday for the last town left between them and the Islamic State stronghold to the north, which is already under assault from special forces fighting inside the city's eastern districts.

Saturday's attack on Hammam al-Alil, about 15 km (10 miles) south of Mosul, targeted a force of at least 70 Islamic State fighters in the Tigris river town, commander of the Mosul operations Major-General Najm al-Jabouri said.

Jabouri said the assault began around 10am (0700 GMT). Some militants had already tried to escape across the river, but others put up heavy resistance and the troops had thwarted three attempted suicide car bombings.

"(The battle) is very important - it's the last town for us before Mosul," Jabouri told reporters. Iraqi helicopters were supporting the army, he said, backed also by jets from a US-led air coalition which had been hitting Islamic State targets in the town for several days.

A military statement said security forces had raised the Iraqi flag over a government building in the town, but did not say whether it was fully under their control.

The army and accompanying security forces aim to push the southern front up to Mosul to join troops and special forces that broke into the city's east this week, taking six districts and carving out a foothold in the militants' Iraq bastion.

Recapturing Mosul would effectively crush the Iraqi half of a self-proclaimed caliphate declared by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque two years ago. His Islamist group also controls large parts of east Syria.

A Reuters correspondent in the village of Ali Rash, about 7 km (4 miles) southeast of Mosul, saw smoke rising from eastern districts of the city on Saturday. Air strikes, artillery and gunfire could be heard.

In Hammam al-Alil, the jihadists had taken hundreds of people as human shields, although Jabouri said it was not clear how many people were left in the town. Before Islamic State swept in more than two years ago, Hammam al-Alil and outlying villages had a population of 65,000.

As well as forcing residents to remain as they came under attack in Hammam al-Alil, Islamic State fighters retreating north in the last two weeks have forced thousands to march with them as cover from air strikes, villagers have told Reuters.

The United Nations said the militants transported 1,600 abducted civilians from Hammam al-Alil to the town of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, on Tuesday and took another 150 families from the town to Mosul the next day.

They told residents to hand over children, especially boys aged over nine, in an apparent recruitment drive for child soldiers, UN human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said.

Jabouri said a man he described as a senior Islamic State figure, Ammar Salih Ahmed Abu Bakr, was killed by federal police - who are fighting with the army in Hammam al-Alil - as he tried to escape from Hammam al-Khalil by car.

Many of the remaining militants were non-Iraqis, he said. "There are at least 70 Daesh (Islamic State) fighters in the town. The majority are foreign fighters, so they don't know where to go. They are just moving from place to place."
Kickass Torrents shutdown updates: Polish court rejects website owner's request for bail

Some new developments in the case against the alleged owner of Kickass Torrents have now surfaced, and it does not seem to be good news for the larger Torrenting community.

In a court decision, Artem Vaulin was denied his requests for a supervised release with the case's judge stating that the accusations against him put up by the United States government is sufficient enough to keep him in custody.

The alleged owner of one of the largest Torrenting websites in the world was arrested back in July as Polish law enforcement raided his residence and seized his belongings. The 30-year old Ukranian was captured in Warsaw, Poland and has been held in custody inside a local prison ever since.

United States Federal courts had demanded that the accused be extradited immediately. The case itself has now reached the Court of Appeals in Warsaw, Poland.

Artem's defense attorney have since refuted all claims by the United States government and has asked the United States Federal court to dismiss the case entirely. His attorneys have also asked for their client to be released from prison on bail.

On top of this, the defense team also requested that Artem be allowed to transfer to a medical facility in order to get surgery for his spinal hernia. The Court of Appeals, however, denied all of the requests and explained that there is a valid reason for the extended detention seeing as the evidence that has been provided by the United States government was "sufficient."

The court decision also revealed that, upon further investigation, Artem's medical condition was not severe and that he could still get all the medical attention he needs while still being in custody. Artem's counsel had expressed their disappointment with the decision and claimed that it was a clear violation of the rights of their client.

Artem's extradition hearing is set to be held later this month.
Mike Pence Tells Christians A Vote For Donald Trump Will 'Free Up The Voices Of Faith'

Republican vice presidential nominee and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence is providing Christians with a number of reasons why they should vote for his running mate, Donald Trump.

Before American voters head to their polling precincts this Tuesday, a video showing Pence backing Trump will be aired in thousands of congregations across America. The video shows Pence encouraging Christians to "free up the voices of faith" by casting their votes for him and Trump.

A source, who refused to be named, directed The Christian Post to the video that is already available for viewing online.

"President Donald Trump will appoint justices to the Supreme Court who will uphold our Constitution and the rights of the unborn," said Pence. "Donald Trump will also, sign into law legislation that will free up the voices of faith all across this country by repealing what's come to be known as the Johnson Amendment."

Trump has promised to repeal the Johnson Amendment, which has been around since the 1950s. The said the law "essentially threatens tax exempt organizations and churches with losing their tax status if they speak out on important issues facing the nation."

Trump has made a commitment to work with Republicans in Congress regarding the Johnson Amendment, saying that the strength of America comes "from our communities of faith."

"It was the pulpits around the American founding that thundered against the tyranny of King George. It was the pulpits around America that spoke of the evils of slavery," he continued. "And it was voices of faith and communities of faith that transformed our nation through the civil rights movement in our own lifetime."

The source who shared the video said a large number of churches have agreed to air the video because they want to open congregants' eyes to what is really "happening at the grassroots."
What Your Pastor Should Preach On This Sunday

Ahead of the last Sunday before election day, pastor and activist Jim Wallis has called on church leaders to preach the gospel: personally, prophetically and politically.

Wallis, who has made his views on the Republican Presidential nominee quite clear, did not make an emphatic call to endorse one candidate over another. Instead, he called readers to pay attention to "gospel issues", which for him means addressing the deep racial division that currently cuts not only across America, but across the church.

"The big question I am asking is this: Do you believe that racism is an issue that cuts to the heart of the gospel? Are we, as Christians, called to be "ambassadors" for Christ's reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:20) and does that include racial reconciliation, equity, and healing?

"If your answer to those questions is yes, do you believe that racial bigotry has been spoken, used, fueled, and manipulated in this election? If so, are you willing to speak to that on this last Sunday before this election?"

Racial tensions have been heightened in the last year particularly through highly controversial police shootings, with movements like #BlackLivesMatter highlighting the prevalent injustice and discrimination in America. Such tensions have arguably been stoked further by the rhetoric of Republican nominee Donald Trump, who has repeatedly made inflammatory remarks about ethnic minorities  including derisive comments about Mexicans and a plan to ban all Muslims from the US.

Wallis is clear in his indictment of what the Republican House Speaker called Trump's "textbook racism". So he asks, "Isn't it time for pastors across the political spectrum to say that racism is a gospel issue and oppose that racial bigotry in the public square?"

He goes on to condemn Trump's misogyny, highlighted in a recently revealed Hollywood Access video, in which Trump openly boasts about groping women and trying to seduce a married woman. Wallis asks, "What is your responsibility as pastor when a potential leader of this nation brags about sexually assaulting women, retraumatizing the very women sitting in your pews? These are often taboo subjects in churches  that needs to change."

He goes on to highlight the danger of elevating the issue of abortion and Supreme Court Justices above all others, voting for Trump on the basis of his apparent pro-life stance whilst ignoring every other aspect of his platform. He quotes Russell Moore: "The life issue cannot flourish in a culture of misogyny and sexual degradation. The life issue cannot flourish when you have people calling for the torture and murder of innocent non-combatants. The life issue cannot flourish when you have people who have given up on the idea that character matters. If you lose an election you can live to fight another day and move on, but if you lose an election while giving up your very soul then you have really lost it all..."

Wallis recgnises the reasons that pastors may tend to distance themselves from politics, but insists that "pastors can and should say what we must be 'against' and what we are 'for' for gospel reasons, not political ones."

He calls pastors to highlight Christian values and principles if not naming particular individuals. He urges them to condemn the pervasive racism and bigotry as anathema to gospel truth, and to speak personally about what they themselves will be voting for and against on November 8.

Wallis insists that this is a pastoral duty: "Pastors can speak publicly, act personally, and say what they will do to all the people they influence and need to hear their voice."

A prophetic voice

Wallis's voice on this issue is an important one. It has been said that "When you mix church and politics, you get politics" and there is certainly some truth to that warning. There are many examples of how the tying of religion to a particular party or position has actually been seriously unhelpful and damaging to the witness of the Church. Christians may want to highlight how Christian truth transcends the fierce divides that define much political commotion, and focusses on what is ultimately important.

But firstly, it should be noted that clearly the Church does not transcend human-political arguments and divisions, rather in this election more than ever, it directly conforms to them.

White evangelicals overwhelmingly support Donald Trump, while as Wallis highlights, "in dramatic contrast, based on continuous polling, an overwhelming majority of African-American, Hispanic, and Asian-American Christians will vote against him." Such allegiances highlight how difficult it is for the Church to eschew cultural trends. They also highlight why it is so necessary for pastors to actively speak against those tendencies and promote a different, gospel-centred way of thinking.

Secondly, the divide between Church and State, between politics and the pulpit, is a well meaning but often deeply misleading one. There is wisdom in not turning a church service into a Town Hall debate, and it is possible to disagree on many political issues and still be profoundly united in Jesus. But racism, bigotry and misogyny are not casual 'secondary' issues on which pastors can simply say nothing. These are issues of peace, justice, and true unity, both in the Church and in society at large. God cares about these things, and so should we. The elected President determines decisions on all kind of national issues that will affect real people. He or she also guides the nation as a whole, by their character, their relationships, and their leadership. These things are all essential to the world we live in, and God cares about the world.

There isn't always a clear Christian stance on every issue, but there is definitely a Christian way of thinking, speaking and living together in society. As Wallis says, pastors should speak up not to be partisan, but becasue they care about the people they're called to look after.

We have been granted a "ministry of reconciliation", we should live up to that.
On Oct. 30, Hunter Jobbins tweeted a hilarious apology note left by someone who broke into his car just to steal his Kit Kat.

The initial tweet got retweeted over 180.000 time and has nearly half a million favorites along with thousands of replies, including one from the official Kit Kat Twitter promising a replacement for the tragic loss.
A Houston ISD first-grade teacher is under investigation after being accused of inappropriate conduct with a student, according to reports.

School officials sent a letter home to parents on Friday, saying the teacher at Looscan Elementary was removed from the classroom, according to KTRK. HISD police are investigating, KHOU said.
The body of a Fort Hood soldier who had been missing since Oct. 10 has been discovered in a heavily wooded area on post, Army officials said on Friday.

On Thursday, soldiers spotted the remains of Pvt. Dakota Lee Stump, 19, while they were on a land navigation exercise in a heavily wooded area at Fort Hood.
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As the final minutes ticked away for early voters in Harris County, Cecilia Mangum was the last person in a long line that snaked outside Alief ISD's administration building and around Crump Stadium, where the hometown team from Alief Taylor High was playing the varsity squad from George Ranch.

Mangum said she would wait as long as it took to cast her ballot in the 2016 presidential election.

"You need to vote if you want your voice to be heard," Mangum said. "We need somebody in the office who is going to help everybody."

About 600 people remained in line as the 7 p.m. Friday early voting cut-off period approached. Several people said it took about two hours before they finally got inside the cramped classroom filled with voting machines.

RELATED: Reports warn of possible terror attack in Texas on election eve

Mangum did not hesitate when asked her choice to be the next president.

"Hillary Clinton, I'm a Democrat," she said. "He (Donald Trump) doesn't talk about anything that would help America."

After Friday's early voting concludes, the polls won't reopen until Election Day on Tuesday. Harris County residents will be allowed to vote only in their designated precinct rather than at any polling location in the county.

Harris County officials said the early voting turnout was particularly strong for the 2016 presidential election. In the first four days of early voting, residents cast more ballots than five states did in the entire 2012 presidential election.

According to Hector DeLeon, a spokesman from the Harris County Clerk's office, the last Friday of early voting in the last two presidential elections saw the highest turnout days.

As of Thursday, 869,392 people in Harris County had cast their vote out of 2.2 million registered to vote in the county.

READ MORE: Beyonce, Jay Z rally fans for Clinton at free concert

On Friday evening, Tammy Rodriguez was excited as she got tantalizingly close to the administration building. She had been there for about 90 minutes and was willing to wait as long as it took.

"It's a very important election. If you don't vote, you don't get to complain," Rodriguez said.

While she tends not to vote the straight party line, Rodriguez said GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump shouldn't expect any electoral help from her. She criticized the harsh rhetoric of some of his supporters.

"In my opinion, he's just egging them on," she said.

Sobia Javed said she didn't expect the line to be so long for Friday's last minute early voters.

"But I'm ready. A vote is a vote - especially in this election which is so crucial," she said.

Casie Imhoff said she didn't mind her wait, also about two hours.

"I'm a regular voter and I'm happy to do it," Imhoff said. "I'm going to vote so I can complain for the next four years."

Brooke Lewis contributed to this report
The summers final Live on the Waterfront concert was held Wednesday evening at Prince Arthurs Landing. The popular series in Thunder Bay has completed nine weekly shows that began on July 13. Wednesdays concert was unique as it was held one hour later in the evening to mesh with the 10 p.
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The general public hates modern art. In an online poll, The Escapist magazine asked if modern art even qualifies as art in the first place. Only one person in five said that it does. At Debate.org, when asked if modern art is real art, 70 percent said no, its not. The collapse in artistic standards has been obvious for a while. In 2005, ABC News ran an experiment showing that even most artists and art critics cant tell the difference between modern art and finger paintings by four-year-olds. Worse, howeverand the general public has been dismissing modern art for so long now that most people arent even aware of thisthe contemporary art world is crippling itself with axe-grinding identity politics.

This is the subject of Sohrab Ahmaris short, barn-burning polemic, The New Philistines (just published in the U.K. and available now in the U.S. on Kindle, and in April 2017 in hardcover). Ahmari, a London-based Wall Street Journal editorial writer, takes the reader on a tour through Londons dismal art scene, where beauty is out and racial, gender, and sexual identitarianism are in; where form and aesthetics are pitched over the side and replaced with trashy attempts to shock the audience out of some imagined complacency. Universalist, legible art still brings throngs of reverent, beauty-starved people to the museums, galleries, theaters and cinemas, he writes. It is why museum retrospectives of the great mastersfrom Greek sculpture to high modernismusually sell out. Meanwhile, the contemporary art world of the identitarians is a desert scattered with tumbleweeds.

Ahmari was inspired to write The New Philistines after attending a spectacularly unpleasant performance of A Midsummer Nights Dream at William Shakespeares Globe Theater in London. The theaters new director, Emma Rice, detests the original Shakespeare. The Bards plays, she says, are tedious and inaccessible. Perhaps, with such a dim view of the source material and its creator, she should have taken a different job, but instead she chose to make Shakespeare more relevant. Relevance meant rewriting the play, Ahmari writes, and not just rewriting, but bad rewriting. For instance, Away, you Ethiope, was changed to, Get away from me, you ugly bitch. Rice knew that plenty of Shakespeare purists would find her coarse edits appalling, so she had an actor walk on stage in a spacesuit and say, Why this obsession with text? She also placed identity politics front and center. She mandated, for instance, that 50 percent of the cast be female regardless of the gender of the characters. Its the next step for feminism, she said, and its the next stage for society to smash down the last pillars that are against us.

Ahmari was aghast, and he wasnt alone. The Globe announced last week that Rice would depart after just one season at the helm.

Ahmari decided to investigate the London art world to find out how pervasive this sort of thing actually is and found that the entire scene has become obsessed with identity politics at the expense of everything else, especially beauty and form. The hostile takeover of a beloved institution was by no means a one-off event, he writes. It was an expression of one of the deepest cultural trends of our time. Identity politics now pervade every medium and mode of art, from architecture to dance to film to painting to theater to video, from the highest avant-garde to the lowest schlock. His first stop was a multimedia installation at Gasworks by London-based Sidsel Meineche Hansen. She created an exhibition that, in her words, foregrounds the body and its industrial complex in a technological variant of institutional critique, whatever thats supposed to mean. On a screen looped animated images of a female humanoid named EVA 3.0 stroking a strap-on penis made out of lasers and flames on a wooden bondage and sadomasochism rack.

Ahmari moved on to a film festival at the Institute of Contemporary Arts near Trafalgar Square. One of the selected films, YOU ARE BORING, is about what its like to be looked at within queer representational politics. Another, Party for Freedom, is about the supposed increasingly phobic natures of Western societies (homo-, islamo-, xeno-, to name a few), ignoring the fact that with legal same-sex marriage sweeping both Europe and North America, one can safely say the West has never been less homophobic. The institute also hosted an exhibit by American artist Martine Syms that explored photography as a colonial tool.

During a panel discussion, Ahmari asked two filmmakers if they ever thought about creating projects with nonpolitical content or considered aesthetics. They looked at him like hed wandered in from another dimension and told him, in so many words, no. He wanted to pull his hair out. It is almost inconceivable, he writes, that so many filmmakers could think of nothingnothing, nothing, nothingbut the politics of representation, performativity, gender, race, queer theory, etc. There must be other subjects, in the world outside or in their inner lives, which belong on the silver (or digital) screen.

Next, Ahmari visited the South London Gallery and saw an exhibit called Perform Gender: A Multidisciplinary Event Celebrating Art, Theater, Queer Culture and Gender Equality that showcased plaster casts of womens breasts on the floor and menstrual pads on the walls. In small doses, this is nothing to get bent out of shape about. Its axe-grinding and low brow, for sure, but not even in Leonardo da Vincis time was every artist Leonardo da Vinci. The trouble is that Ahmari had a hard time finding anything in Londons art scene created by anyone who wasnt obsessed with identity politics or who cared a whit for aesthetics and beauty. Since social power dynamics and collective identity are all that such art knows and cares about, he writes, its practitioners cant grapple with individuality, with things of the soul, with the inner lifethe very things that draw most of us to art in the first place.

By obsessing over politics above all else, identitarian artists of the twenty-first century resemble the Socialist Realists from the Soviet Union in the early- to mid-twentieth century. One could charitably call Socialist Realism an artistic style, one that glorified peasants, factory workers, and Communist values, but it was nurtured by a totalitarian police state and was the only style allowed by the government lest hapless artists wished to live out the remaining days of their lives in a Siberian slave labor camp. Like Socialist Realism, Ahmari writes, identitarian art claims to be revolutionary, but in fact rigidly adheres to a set of political dictates. Master its political grammar, and you can easily decode any piece of identitarian art. For all its claims to transgressiveness, identity art is drearily conformist.

At least the Russian Socialist Realists were talented artists. They produced totalitarian propaganda, yes, but they did it competently. Their paintings are interesting and engaging, and not just because theyre curious historical artifacts. Not so with todays identitarian critics, Ahmari writes, who care little for art history and aesthetics. It is thistheir ignorance and even contemptuous dismissal of what attracts people to art in the first placethat inspired Ahmari to label them Philistines. Ahmari is not, by the way, accusing these people of holding beauty and form in contempt. He is simply describing their work and what many of them think and say openly. He quotes British artist Grayson Perry, for instance, who says, To judge a work on its aesthetic merit is to buy into some discredited, fusty hierarchy, tainted with sexism, racism, colonialism and class privilege.

The New Philistines is no tirade written by a grumpy Grandpa Simpson. It reads more like the marvels of a stranger in a strange land. Ahmari is a young Millenial immigrant from Iran. He grew up in a tyrannical theocracy; fell in love with the West, its freedoms, and its political liberalism; and was fortunate enough to move here as a teenager. And now, as a sophisticated young adult, hes startled by what he is seeing.

Ahmari certainly doesnt think theres anything wrong with having women, racial minorities, religious minorities, and sexual minorities as the subjects of art. The visibility of such people, he cogently argues, is at the heart of a decent culture. If Western art were devoid of anything non-white, non-male, non-Christian, and non-heterosexual, wed be living in an artistic, cultural, and political wasteland. The history of liberal democracy has been the story of rights extended to ever more people, he writes. The arts played a decisive role, by making visible the despised and hitherto-invisible other. He cites examples as old as the novel Uncle Toms Cabin by Harriet Beacher Stowe and as recent as the film Philadelphia, starring Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, about a gay man dying of AIDS. He could have added HBOs spectacular eight-episode series, The Night Of, about an innocent Pakistani-American Muslim accused of a brutal crime he didnt commit. This kind of art requires sharpening of the moral senses to detect the others pain, which in turn helps expand societys conception of who belongs.

You might think todays identitarians champion this sort of thing, but they dont. On the contrary, they hate it. Identitarians are deeply suspicious of liberal visibility and representation . . . . Todays identitarians arent out to rectify the Wests shortcomings . . . . The art-world identitarians are committed, at least on paper, to overthrowing the liberal order.

Why should anyone outside the art world care about this? Why not ignore these people and leave them to fester in their own irrelevance? The problem isnt just with the degradation of art, though thats bad enough. The real trouble is with identitarianism itself and the society-wide tribalism thats breaking out across the entire Western world, from San Diego to Budapest. Identity politics isnt new, nor is the politicization of art, but the shots fired in the battle of group identities by the avant-garde Left is being answered by the identitarians of the so-called alt-Right.

Is it any wonder, Ahmari writes, that Americans and Europeans are increasingly embracing nationalist parties and illiberal movementsor why Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orban and the like are making significant gains at the ballot box? The Balkanization of Western culture into opposing identitarian camps was never going to stop with the plastic vaginas, bastardized Shakespeare, brown versus white dance spaces, and so on.

Political liberalism only works when citizens see and treat each other as individuals with equal value and rights regardless of their gender, religion, sexual orientation or skin color. The famous dream of Martin Luther King seems almost painfully antiquated these days. Classically liberal bourgeois ideas about individual rights, limited government and free enterprise are attuned to human nature, Ahmari writes, whereas every effort to reorganize society along collectivist, revolutionary and identitarian lines has yielded blood and fire. Indeed. The identitarians on the so-called alt-Right are just as committed to overthrowing the liberal order as those on the far-Left. Whats happening in the art world is merely a symptom.

Photo by Ian Gavan/Getty Images
Dear Media Movers and Shakers,

In the great tradition of American journalism, I thought that I would try, as pretentious as this sounds, and if you will forgive the cliche, to speak truth to power. That used to mean telling it like it is to the politicians, financiers and business people who dominate society. Now, more and more, it means telling the truth to the people who own, control, and run American journalism.

At the height of a unique American madness, when the nominee of a major political party has proven himself to be not just unfit for any public office, but corrupt in every known aspect of his life; at this moment, when Youre Fired! is the reality TV buzz phrase that launched Trump into national politics and toward the White Houseat this critical moment of American democracy, the establishment media is in the process of firing thousands of people.

In my lifetime, the media has never been in such disarray. I am writing to ask if such devastations are necessary. I am also writing to ask you to consider what the consequences have been, and will be, of this ravaging.

In midtown Manhattan, around the corner from where a lot of this upheaval is happening, the Broadway revival of Ben Hechts legendary play about newspaper journalists, The Front Page, is getting raves. The New Yorker exulted, The best of Broadway. An outstanding Front Page, with a surfeit of fantastic actors who give the production everything theyve got. Ill bet they do. This Broadway sentimentalizing of the legendary heyday of print journalism sends chills down my spine. It is like the sentimentalizing, in the 19th century, of Native Americans as noble savages at the very moment they were being exterminated.

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A few years ago, I told an editor at a certain newspaper how ecstatic I was that an essay I had written was appearing on the cover of his section. He chuckled. If anyone even knows where the cover is any more, he said. Two and a half cheers for all the new platforms, devices, and modes of news delivery, but imagine the publication of the Pentagon papers being splashed, or rather, dabbed, across all three inches of your smartphone, even as you are texting, Instagramming, updating your Facebook page, and scrolling through email. I worry that as you flirt dangerously with the newspaper as an occasion for diversion by filling its virtual pages with videos and countless lifestyle-convenience articles, you are on the path to saving your newspapers by destroying what makes them newspapers.

I can see certain editors rolling their eyes as they read this bleating prole who doesnt seem to know what they are up against. But I think I know. Harried beyond belief, you have one foot on the galloping horse of your institutions as you try to retain high standards of truthfulness and integrity, the other foot on the tearing horse of commerce, as you try and keep your institutions alive. I understand that, in your eyes, moral objections and glances into the past as lessons for the future are nostalgic and naive.

But of course a great newspaper is not just any institution. The rise of newspapers occurred in tandem with the rise of modern democracy. There was no Daily Carolingian in the year 758. No one was dashing in horse-drawn carts to the newsstands to read about the latest battle in the Hundred Years War. As the Enlightenment unfolded and royal dynasties fell, as mercantile economies gave way to industrial economies, as monarchy became replaced by participatory democracy, modern journalism evolved into the powerful check on all the social, political, and economic forces democracy had unleashed that posed a threat to democracy.

What has happened in America while all this change in the media has been going on? The war in Iraq, crippling Bush tax cuts that made the war as much an economic catastrophe as a human one, the institutionalizing of right-wing extremism, a concentration of stupendous wealth among a small number of people the likes of which this country has never seen, the slow decimation of public spaces, a growing racial divide, the subsuming of just about every aspect of life into the marketplace, a coarsening of the culture that normalizes predatory behaviorcommercial, financial, even sexualeven as we see it exposed and condemned.

Like all journalists, I am attuned to bullshit. If you are yielding in panic to a new age, you are not adapting to it. If you think you are going to accumulate enough readers among young people who are used to going from one news source to another rather than sticking with one distinguished brand, you are deluding yourselves. If you think you are going to save your institution by cutting loose all the people who made it different from competing institutions, you are actually providing readers with one less reason to read your own less and less distinctive publication.

The idea that only journalists who came of age in the digital era can thrive in it, so popular among middle-aged and late middle-aged media executives who live in terror of the digital age, is an insult to the intelligence and ambition of young journalists, who hunger to use the techniques of digital journalism to practice the traditional values of journalism that inspired them to enter the profession in the first place. These are people inspired by the reach and power and immediacy of digital techniques to want to expand the parameters of medias traditional values. They are not people so intimidated or threatened by digital culture that they want to shrink journalism itself.

Instead the youngerand more affordablejournalists who come on in the wake of the waves of buyouts and layoffsand abandoned retirement plansfind themselves in a short-changed environment, bereft of older allies and mentors, confronted with the imperative to act young and cutting edge when what they want is to be fearless, impassioned journalists. And if they dont meet the expectations of their middle-aged overlords, they also become expendable, which is all the worse for them since they are usually in far more precarious economic circumstances than the older journalists who have been discarded.

You cannot change the nature of journalism with the same ease and lack of significant consequences with which you can change the nature of retail. Ask Jeff Bezos. Amazon has nearly extinguished the culture of small bookstores and pulled the rug out from under traditional book publishing, But people still read, thousands of books are published a year, and book publishers still go about their business. Yet when Bezos bought the Washington Post, the justifiable fear was that one of the countrys pillars of journalism would falter, and with it, another underpinning structure of democracy.

On the contrary. Rather than commence massive layoffs, Bezos expanded the newsroom and hired dozens more editors and reporters. And though hes used advanced technology to the hilt in order to transform the newsroom, hes put all the new techniques in the service of traditional journalism. In this election cycle, The Washington Post has been in the forefront of the press when it comes to criticizing and exposing Trump. No newspaper has enraged the celebrity demagogue more. No wonder the Posts editor, Mary Baron, has paintings of typewriters adorning the fancy new walls of his high-tech office.

Bezos made The Washington Post a private company, and perhaps its time for the prestigious news organizations that have been lopping off their limbs in order to stay in the race to consider some type of restructuring, or even to think about the last resort of selling themselves off to a benevolent multi-billionaire committed to the practice of old-fashioned journalism in the most advanced digital way. Maybe the only future for what you might call the legacy news organizations, the only ones with the authority and prestige to serve as a democratic check on undemocratic forces, is to avoid business failure by getting out of the realm of business altogether.

Because, with all due respect, you dont seem to be practicing business strategy with any great success. I cant make heads or tails of whether you are economic successes or not. Your quarterly reports make no sense. Digital ads are up; print ads are down; operating revenue is up; general revenue is down because of severance payments for buyouts and layoffs that will, so the reasoning goes, save money in the future.

In the meantime, like so many Rasputins, the marketing people continue the mystical patter about mobile platforms, and video, and streaming, and algorithms, all of these concepts and terminology that strike terror into the hearts of newspaper people who grew up in the previous era, and who accede to whatever they hear because they find themselves in an alien realm without familiar guideposts to navigate by. As a result, the fear of being left behind disguises itself as the resolve to advance boldly into the future.

Real flesh and blood human beings are being sacrificed to innovations that have yet to pay off; they are being sacrificed because these innovations are not paying off.

I depend so much on The New York Times that if, heaven forbid, a subscription started to cost a thousand dollars a year, I would take out another student loan to pay it. The New York Times, to pick on my most cherished publication, is so distinguished, so prestigious, so good at what it does, that it could sell that beautiful overpriced testament to its own vanity on Eighth Avenue, move into a three-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side, save its employees, and remain one of the elemental supports and protections of our democracy.

But Im a dreamer, a dispensable freelancer with the appearance of an ant as you look down on me standing on the sidewalk many stories below your lairs, shaking my puny fist at the way you are frantically diminishing your authority and prestige. Nothing is going to stop the ax from falling, I know that. And maybe it will all work out, and you will stride successfully into the rapidly changing future. But at what price? My fear is the headline proclaiming your victory: MEDIA SURVIVES! GOOD NEWS FOR THE VENAL, ABUSIVE AND DISHONEST POWERS THAT BE. BAD NEWS FOR EVERYONE ELSE.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Lee Siegel , a widely published writer on culture and politics, is the author of six books and the recipient of a National Magazine Award for Reviews and Criticism.
Trump and Pence rally at I-X Center

Lawyers for Donald Trump's campaign are asking an appeals court to overturn a Cleveland federal judge's restraining order in a voter-intimidation case.

(Thomas Ondrey/The Plain Dealer)

CINCINNATI, Ohio -- Donald Trump's campaign has asked an appeals court to immediately suspend a Cleveland federal judge's restraining order in a voter-intimidation case, saying it would be harmed as Nov. 8 Election Day nears.

The Republican presidential candidate's campaign, in two briefs filed Saturday, says U.S. District Judge James Gwin's order is not based on any actual voter intimidation or likely intimidating actions, but rather the mere possibility.

It says the Ohio Democratic Party, which filed the lawsuit and pushed for the order, did not provide any examples in its lawsuit or during a hearing on Friday.

The campaign asks the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati to immediately halt Gwin's order and to have the full court hold an immediate hearing.

"... The order tramples upon core First Amendment freedoms. It imposes vague prohibitions against poorly defined categories of core political activity -- talking to voters, giving information to voters, etc.--that guarantee hundreds (if not thousands) of Ohioans will be chilled from participating in our democratic process," Trump campaign attorney Chad Readler wrote in a brief.

(You can read the Trump campaign's briefs and the Democrats' response at the bottom of this story.)

The lawsuit was filed Oct. 30 against state Republicans, Trump's campaign and longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone. State Democrats said that they fear an aggressive presence from Trump supporters could discourage voters from the black community and other groups. The Ohio Democratic Party used statements Trump and his surrogates have made at campaign stops as evidence of a conspiracy to suppress minority voting turnout.

Democrats filed similar lawsuits in other states. The Trump campaign's brief points out that federal judges in Nevada and Arizona refused to grant restraining orders.

Gwin issued his order following a hearing on Friday. The order restricts certain activities such as loitering at or near polling places without any intention of voting and a handing out literature that says voter fraud is a crime.

Generally, the order says those to whom it applies must follow established Ohio laws on electioneering outside of polling places.

Gwin wrote in his order that his intervention was necessary because "there is a legitimate possibility that particular laws may be imminently violated."

He wrote that his order applies to "Trump, Stone, and [Stone's organization] Stop the Steal -- as well as their officers, agents, servants, and employees -- and other individuals or groups, including groups associated with the Clinton for Presidency campaign."

The broad swath this covers has caused some confusion as to exactly who is restricted from carrying out the actions he has forbidden. Readler notes this in his briefs.

"If the court's Order appears puzzling to this Court, think of how it must appear to everyday Ohioans, none of whom were parties to the case, but all of whom are covered by the Order," the brief says.

The Ohio Democratic Party filed a response late Saturday that says the 6th Circuit should not have all its judges hold a hearing on Gwin's order. The Democrats say Trump's campaign will not be harmed by the order.

"The integrity of the electoral process -- and Americans' trust in the judiciary's ability to safeguard their most precious rights -- is at stake," the Democrats' response says. "The District Court's order safeguards the constitutional imperative to protect the franchise, which does and should take priority over the Campaign's untenable invocation of the First Amendment as a justification for intimidating Ohio voters."

Updated with the Democrats' response.
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SHEFFIELD LAKE, Ohio -- Officials from the Lorain County coroner's office were called Friday afternoon to the scene of a possible murder-suicide in Sheffield Lake.

The coroner's office was unable to confirm that two people were dead inside the home located on Edgewater Drive, a private street off Lake Road.

A man and woman were discovered dead inside the home in an apparent murder-suicide, the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram reports.

A man who identified himself as a friend of a man involved in the incident said he believed it was a murder-suicide as well.

A police car and an Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation truck were parked outside the residence at about 5:40 p.m.

Sheffield Lake police Chief Tony Campo told the Chronicle-Telegram he did not have the names of the couple and was waiting to notify their families.

A police dispatcher was unable to provide a timeframe as to when more information would be provided by the police department.

A woman outside the house said she could not discuss what happened because she was upset and had just lost a long-time friend, who was a roommate of hers.

Police officers were on-scene at and around the home this afternoon, but a man mowing grass nearby said most of the officers left the area about 4 p.m.

Campo was not at the police station, nor was he immediately available for comment.
Opioid overdoses spiking across region, overwhelming treatment resources

Naloxone can reverse a potentially fatal opioid overdose if administered correctly and in time. Ohio is one of more than a dozen states that now has widespread access to the lifesaving drug in pharmacies across the state without a prescription in an effort to decrease overdose deaths. (Gus Chan / The Plain Dealer)

(Gus Chan, The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Hundreds of Northeast Ohio pharmacies now offer the opioid overdose-reversing medication, naloxone, without a prescription, part of a statewide effort that's made the potentially lifesaving drug available in most pharmacies in 84 of Ohio's 88 counties.

The drug, if used properly, can rapidly reverse an overdose of opioids, including heroin, fentanyl and other prescription painkillers in the same drug family.

More than 385 Cuyahoga County residents this year already have fatally overdosed on heroin, fentanyl or carfentanil, a drug used by veterinarians to sedate large animals that is 10,000 times more potent than morphine. Opioid drug overdoses killed a record 2,590 Ohioans last year, accounting for 85 percent of all overdose deaths.

"Opioid Use Disorder is a disease, and life-saving medications such as naloxone need to be available for those who have opioid use disorder and community members who could potentially witness an opioid overdose," said Emily Metz, program coordinator of Project DAWN, a regional opioid overdose education and naloxone distribution program.

Project DAWN provides free naloxone kits in 40 Ohio counties to opioid users, those in recovery for opioid use disorder and those who may witness an overdose. More than 660 people have been rescued with kits the group has distributed since 2013, Metz said.

Use of naloxone kits nationwide resulted in almost 27,000 drug overdose reversals between 1996 and 2014, according to research published by the Centers for Disease Control. As of 2013, though, 20 states had no organizations providing the kits to laypeople, and nine states had very low distribution rates -- less than one layperson per 100,000 population with a naloxone kit.

To make naloxone easier to access, Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed an emergency executive order last year that permits pharmacies statewide to dispense the drug without a prescription.

More than a dozen other states have also made naloxone available without a prescription in an effort to prevent overdose deaths, including Alabama, Arkansas, California, Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin.

Just about any Ohioan can request the drug. The bill allows for its distribution to anyone who is at risk of experiencing an opioid-related overdose, family members, friends, peace officers or others in a position to assist those at risk of experiencing an overdose.

Pharmacies can offer any of the four versions of the drug -- a syringe injected in the muscle, both generic and the Narcan brand nasal spray varieties, and the auto-injector Evzio, which works like an Epi-Pen.

(The atomizer for the generic naloxone nasal spray was recalled last week.)

Which version you get, how many doses, and how much it costs, though, likely will vary based on your insurance plan.

While the price of naloxone has been steadily climbing since the opioid use epidemic began, most insurers -- including Medicare and Medicaid -- will cover part or all of the cost of the generic drug.

All Ohio Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield members can receive a single dose of generic, injectable naloxone for about 30 to 60 cents with benefits. Medical Mutual also covers doses of generic naloxone for its members, for an average $10 copay.

All of Ohio's Medicaid plans pay for all formulations of naloxone for plan members, though the auto-injector requires prior authorization. Buckeye Health Plan covers the intranasal formulation.

If you have no insurance, though, the drug can be costly. List prices vary from $15 for the generic, injectable version to more than $2,000 for Evzio.

Most of the five pharmaceutical companies that produce naloxone (including Kaleo, the maker of Evzio) have patient assistance programs to make the drug available at a lower or no cost to patients with or without insurance.

All of the naloxone varieties are usually dispensed with two doses. Many community groups, including Ohio's Project DAWN, hand out three doses in their kits though because overdose victims often need multiple doses to be revived, especially if the more potent fentanyl or carfentanil are involved.

Cleveland EMS Commissioner Nicole Carlton said emergency workers use on average three to four doses on patients. Joseph Natko, Akron's District fire chief, said the city's emergency workers have "seen a drastic increase in the amount of [naloxone] we're using, both overall and per patient."

For that reason, among others, Natko and Carlton say it's imperative that anyone administering naloxone quickly call 9-1-1 for help. Ohio EMS workers are likely to have a hefty supply of naloxone on hand, including intravenous versions of the drug.

Still, Metz of Project DAWN said getting the drug out to more people via pharmacies -- in any number of doses -- is a vital public health intervention, especially in counties where there's limited or no free access to the drug.

The Ohio Board of Pharmacy maintains a list of more than 1,300 pharmacies in most of the state's 88 counties that now offer the medication without a prescription. About two-thirds of the state's retail pharmacies now offer naloxone. You can find a list of participating pharmacies at pharmacy.ohio.gov/Licensing/NaloxonePharmacy.aspx.
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The Lyndhurst Fire Department won the 'People's Choice' Award trophy at Saturday's Community Partnership on Aging Chili Cook-Off. In front are Chief Michael Carroll (holding ladle) and Mayor Patrick Ward.

(Jeff Piorkowski/special to cleveland.com)

The Mayfield Heights Fire Department received the $500 check as the judges' winner at Saturday's Chili Cook-Off. Shown are MHFD Capt. Dennis Linsky and Community Partnership on Aging Program Coordinator Therese Grida.

LYNDHURST, Ohio -- And the winner is . . . the Mayfield Heights Fire Department. And, also, the Lyndhurst Fire Department.

In fact, both departments took home prizes for the top chili Saturday at the Fourth Annual 5-City 5-Alarm Chili Cook-Off to benefit the Community Partnership on Aging's Safe-At-Home Program.

About 200 people filled the Lyndhurst Community Center during the afternoon to sample chili made by five area fire departments -- representing each of the communities CPA serves. In addition, attendees ate cornbread and cookies, and vied for raffle prizes.

Those who tasted the chili samples pretty much showed hometown loyalty.

"I think Lyndhurst's is the best," said Lyndhurst resident Marge Cirillo, attending her first CPA Chili Cook-Off with husband, Larry. "It had just the right amount of spice for me."

"It wasn't too spicy," said Mayfield Heights resident Lisa Kalifon in choosing her city's fire department's chili as the best.

As for Marilyn Puhalla, the Mayfield Heights department's chili was "not as spicy as the others and was the most tasty." Puhalla, naturally, resides in Mayfield Heights.

In the end, Mayfield Heights' chili took the judges' award of $500. Speaking about the spice, MHFD's Capt. Dennis Linsky said, "We take out some of the spice when we come to these (chili cook-offs). It's about one-sixth as spicy as we eat it at the station. We know most people like it less spicy."

In each of the last three years, Mayfield Heights won the Cook-Off's "People's Choice Award," making it four years in a row that it has taken home honors.

"It's the same recipe we've used at the station for the past 30 years," Linsky said. "I don't know who originated it."

Cooking the chili for Saturday's contest was Nick Lanzara, with some help from his kids and other firefighters.

Lansky said the $500 will be split, with the firefighters union giving half to charity, and keeping the other half to buy ingredients for next year's contest.

Judges at the Cook-Off included one from each CPA member city. They were South Euclid Police Chief Kevin Nietert and Lyndhurst Police Chief Rick Porrello, Mayfield Heights Councilwoman Susan Sabetta, Highland Heights Councilwoman Ann D'Amico, and Mayfield Village Councilman Steven Jerome.

As the judges sampled the chili, they did not know which fire department's offerings they were eating.

The Lyndhurst Fire Department won the trophy for the People's Choice Award, it's first ever win in any category.

Firefighters Todd Drum and Andy Grantham made Lyndhurst's chili.

"We mix up the recipe every year trying to get the advantage," Lyndhurst Fire Chief Mike Carroll said.

A happy Mayor Patrick Ward, who along with wife, Judy, chopped peppers and onions in helping LFD firefighters prepare their chili, said with a laugh, "I'm so proud of our guys. They brought every aspect of culinary expertise they could muster and put it all out on the table."

Those who attended paid $15 per person, or $25 for a couple.

"It's a nice event to come out and see people from your city and other communities," said Mayfield Heights' Kalifon, who took home a raffled gift basket.

In addition to gift baskets and gift cards from local restaurants, perhaps the most sought-after prize was a pair of box seat tickets to a 2017 Cleveland Indians game, donated by DeJohn Funeral Home.

The event's main sponsors included Governor's Village in Mayfield Village, Gateway Insurance of Cuyahoga County, and University Hospitals.

CPA Program Coordinator Therese Grida, who organizes the Chili Cook-Off, said proceeds will benefit the Safe-At-Home Program, which aids local eligible seniors.

The program allows for safety checks at seniors' homes, in which tripping hazards are eliminated. Also, seniors benefit from other items that ensure better safety, such as handrails for steps and grab bars for showers.
Mike DeWine

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine has released a series of recommendations made by his advisory group on law enforcement pursuits.

(AP Photo/John Minchillo)

COLUMBUS, Ohio - The Attorney General's Advisory Group on Law Enforcement Vehicular Pursuits has released a series of recommendations designed to keep law enforcement officers, drivers and others safe during police chases.

The 13-member advisory group is recommending that each of the more than 900 law enforcement agencies in Ohio review their current pursuit policies and report chase data to a state database. The group is also recommending that officers and troopers receive periodic training in pursuit best practices and safe-driving techniques, it said in an 18-page report released Thursday.

Chases have long been a hot-button issue in Northeast Ohio and across the U.S. While proponents argue they allow officers to pursue and arrest dangerous criminals, critics counter by saying some -- such as the Cleveland chase that ended Nov. 29, 2012 in the shooting deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams -- show a need for reform.

"The group talked about the dangers inherent in vehicle pursuits and the fact that officers and supervisors must weigh the immediate risk to the public created by a pursuit against the potential danger to the public should the suspect remain at large," Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said in the advisory group's report.

DeWine cited the safety of other drivers and pedestrians as a primary reason he formed the advisory group in May. In Ohio, at least 352 people -- including one law enforcement officer and 147 bystanders -- died in chases from 1982 to 2014, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data.

The advisory group is recommending that, at a minimum, agencies review their current chase policies to determine if those policies should be updated. The state cannot force agencies to adopt the recommendations, DeWine told cleveland.com in June.

The group is recommending that agencies report chases to a state database; the data could be used to further develop best practices. It's also recommending that a portion of officers' state-mandated training focus on pursuit best practices and safe driving techniques.

Northeast Ohio pursuit policies reviewed earlier this year by cleveland.com already include most of the best practices included in the report.

The report recommends that officers consider the seriousness of the offense before chasing a car. But it does not recommend that chases be limited to drivers who are suspected of violent crimes or drivers who are suspected of being intoxicated. Cleveland, Lorain, Mentor and Shaker Heights all include such language in their pursuit policies.

The group recommends that an officer receive a supervisor's permission to continue the chase, and that chases be limited to two or three police cruisers.

The group recommends that officers be prohibited from firing a gun during a pursuit. Bedford, Parma and Westlake all forbid their officers from firing guns during pursuits.

Some pursuit techniques -- such as forming roadblocks -- could be considered deadly force, the advisory group notes. All policies reviewed by cleveland.com say that deadly force tactics such as ramming should be used only as a last resort. Parma's policy also prohibit the use of complete roadblocks; instead, officers are instructed to form a path for a suspect car to travel through at slow speed.

Each chase should be documented through written reports and relevant dashboard camera videos, body camera videos, radio communications and 911 calls, the report recommends.

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Saturday's crime and courts comments section.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The man accused of killing three people at a barbershop to settle a gang score and then conspiring to kill a witness has been convicted.

Douglas Shine Jr. now faces the possibility of execution after jurors on Friday convicted him in a spree of violence that culminated Feb. 5, 2015, when he walked into Chalk Linez Barbershop and executed one man, killed two others and wounded three more.

Jurors found Shine guilty of 44 out of 49 counts in a string of shootings that prosecutors said started that January when Shine, a Heartless Felon, stole a handgun from a member of the Loyal Always gang.

Walter Barfield, William Gonzalez and Brandon White were killed inside the barbershop. Four months later White's brother, Aaron "Pudge" Ladson, was slain in his driveway as he prepared for a court hearing in an unrelated case.

Ladson named Shine as the barbershop gunman days after the shooting and would have likely testified at Shine's trial. But jurors found Shine conspired from jail to have Ladson killed before he could.

Ladson's videotaped statement to Warrensville heights police was played during the trial.

Shine's brother, Kevin McKinney, is slated to go to trial next week on conspiracy and aggravated murder charges, but that trial will likely be delayed.

Cuyahoga County sheriff's deputies handcuffed Shine after Common Pleas Judge Joan Synenberg read the first guilty verdict.

Shine kept stoic throughout much of the hearing, but joked with sheriff's deputies during a brief recess to fix a typo in one count on the indictment.

The death penalty phase of the trial will start Nov. 16, and will likely last several days before jurors reach their recommendation. Even then, Synenberg has the final say whether Shine will be put to death.

Shine faces the death penalty after jurors found that he carried out the barbershop massacre while committing aggravated burglary. They also found that the killings were part of a course of conduct that showed a pattern of violence.

The jury also found Shine carried out the shootings while he was a member of the Heartless Felons gang. Shine has the words "Heartless" and "Longwood Gun Gang" tattooed on his torso.

The case epitomized what prosecutors and police described as a "gangland mentality" among a relatively small group of people with guns who are quick to seek retribution for a perceived slight, willing to violate unwritten rules and open fire in front of women and children, and will brazenly enforce the "no-snitch" code by intimidating -- or even killing -- witnesses, prosecutors argued.

But that mentality has "no place in our society," Assistant Prosecutor Mahmoud Awadallah said during trial.

Shine's conviction is perhaps a final major victory for Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty in what is likely the final time he will sit at the prosecution table. McGinty was defeated in his re-election bid this year by former assistant prosecutor and Parma Safety Director Michael O'Malley.

Shine was just the second person to go to trial facing the death penalty under McGinty.

Angela Ladson, the mother of White and Aaron Ladson, said she had been holding her breath since the White's shooting. Friday's verdict, she said, finally allowed her to breath.

"I am finally able to really cry to know that my sons got justice," Angela Ladson said.

"My heart can beat a little bit."

To comment on this post, please visit our crime and courts comments section.
Donald Trump

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally, Friday, Nov. 4, 2016, in Wilmington, Ohio.

(AP Photo/John Minchillo)

WILMINGTON, Ohio--During what could be Donald Trump's final visit to Ohio before Election Day, the Republican presidential nominee continued to attack Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and promised more money for Ohio highway projects.

Speaking at a Friday rally in this southwestern Ohio city devastated by the 2008 financial crisis, Trump vowed, if elected, to reroute money from combating global warming to transportation projects. He also called Clinton "unstable" and "guilty" of crimes, predicting an "unprecedented constitutional crisis" if she wins the White House.

Here are four takeaways from his speech:

Trump proposed improving Ohio's highway system using 'global warming payments'

Trump said, if elected, he would "cancel billions of dollars in global warming payments to the United Nations" - an apparent reference to the U.S.' $3 billion pledge to the UN's Green Climate Fund - and use the money to improve Interstate 71 and replace Cincinnati's Brent Spence Bridge.

The crowd voiced more enthusiasm about fixing the bridge than the highway, leading Trump to propose having "a big rally" before launching a transportation project to gauge public enthusiasm.

Trump spent much of his speech attacking Clinton

Trump repeatedly returned to a favorite campaign theme: laying into Hillary Clinton's controversy over her private email server.

Trump referenced 650,000 emails found on disgraced ex-New York congressman Anthony Weiner's computer, though he made it sound like the emails were Clinton's (it's still unclear how many of the emails on Weiner's laptop involve Clinton).

"I would bet anything, some of those emails are so bad. They're so classified, they're beyond classified," Trump said, offering no evidence to back up that claim.

Trump continued, again without details or evidence, that "Hillary is now facing major problems with perjury. The FBI agents say their investigation is likely to yield - perhaps - an indictment."

"If she were to win, it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis," he said at another point in the speech. "She is likely to be under investigation for a long time, concluding - probably -- in a criminal trial."

While Trump praised the FBI, he accused the "political leadership" at the U.S. Department of Justice of "trying as hard as they can to protect their angel, Hillary."

Trump said 'unstable' Clinton could start 'World War III'

Trump said Clinton "wants to start a shooting war in the Syrian conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia that could easily lead to World War III."

He added: "I know my people -- she's an unstable person."

Trump pledged to suspend the United States' Syrian refugee program and "keep radical Islamic terrorists the hell out of our country."

He also promised, if elected, to capture the leaders of ISIS.

Clinton, he said, has a "zero chance of getting rid of ISIS. I have a 100 percent chance."

Trump critics shot back at him

Speaking with reporters before Trump's speech, Democratic Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther said that unlike Clinton, Trump has "no plans" for investing in infrastructure, research, or manufacturing.

"He does not have the best interests of Ohioans in mind," Ginther said during a conference call. "He has his own interests and wealth in mind."

Retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Deborah Loewer, who led the White House Situation Room under then-President George W. Bush, questioned whether Trump was the more unstable candidate.

"Donald Trump has demonstrated to us all that he does not have the patience, the experience, the emotional fortitude, and yes, the temperament to be our president," said Loewer, who lives in Springfield, Ohio. "Frankly, I don't trust him to pull it together and be calm under pressure and to be able to unemotionally respond to the myriad crises that our president faces every single day."
hassan.jpg

This picture released Oct. 26 by Human Rights Watch shows Zakia Hassan holding a photo of her son, Ibrahim Hammud, 35, who detonated an explosive device when he stepped on a mattress as he returned to his house in Manbij, Syria. Homemade landmines planted by the Islamic State group have killed and injured hundreds of civilians, including dozens of children, in the town of Manbij in northern Syria, Human Rights Watch says. Tony George, a Northeast Ohio businessman with Syrian roots, writes that the best way to stabilize Syria and end the violence is to push for a peace deal involving Syrian leader Bashar Assad that will allow a joint offensive to clear out the terrorists and let Syrians return to their homes.

(Ole Solvang, Human Rights Watch via AP)

Tony George is a Northeast Ohio businessman with Syrian roots.

As a Syrian-American, I agonize over the controversy of whether to allow more war refugees into the United States.

My heart screams "yes," especially after reading the recent Plain Dealer series about how well Syrian refugees fare in Cleveland.

As Christians, my loved ones are prime Islamic State targets for crucifixion, beheading and kidnapping.

However, my mind screams "no" when it comes to admitting a large number of refugees without error-free screening.

I agree with FBI Director James Comey, who told Congress last year, "I can't sit here and offer anybody an absolute assurance that there's no risk associated with this."

Stabilizing Syria would be the surest way to end the refugee problem.

The first step toward stabilization is for the United States to realize that, to quote Vice President Joe Biden, "our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria."

Biden said that in answer to a question after an Oct. 3, 2014 address at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

Biden told the Harvard forum that Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and others were using "a proxy Sunni-Shia war" to try to depose Syrian leader Bashar Assad. To accomplish that, he said they'd funneled "hundreds of million of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad" -- except, he added, that "the people who were being supplied" were part of two terrorist organizations.

Biden quickly apologized for those comments, but others agree, including global risk experts Daniel Wagner and Giorgio Cafiero. In June 2013, they wrote in the Huffington Post that, "by providing vast financial aid and weapons to anti-Assad militants, it [the Saudi government] has sided with forces promoting regime change."

A lot of people, including me, are suspicious of the Saudis. I suspect that the 9/11 attacks had Saudi ties, as 15 of the 19 hijackers who killed nearly 3,000 people were Saudis.

A recently declassified section of a congressional report stated that a senior al-Qaida operative, Abu Zubaida, had in his telephone book a number, or numbers, that could be linked "at least indirectly" to the unlisted number of an Aspen, Colorado firm that managed the Colorado residence of Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the Saudi ambassador.

The report stated there were no direct links and no evidence the Saudi royal family was involved in the attacks, but CNN said in an online Aug. 5 article that the revelation "raises new questions about Saudi Arabia's involvement."

The Saudis meddle in U.S. affairs by donating fortunes to charitable foundations linked to powerful U.S. political figures.

Yet while they freely spend their petrodollars here, I wonder how much the Saudis aid their suffering Sunni brothers and sisters displaced by the civil war?

Amnesty International reported in September 2015 that: "Gulf countries including Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain have offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees."

The Saudis disagree. Its press agency said that same month that nearly 2.5 million Syrians have received shelter in Saudi Arabia, but are not officially labeled refugees.

Politically, for the United States, the Syrian refugee issue is a no-brainer.

Hillary Clinton wants to increase the number of Syrian refugees admitted to the United States to 65,000. She that would have to involve "rigorous vetting" but didn't say how the process could be made error-free.

Donald Trump says we should halt the flow of refugees from wartorn Syria and other nations suffering from terrorism until vetting problems are resolved. Trump says it is difficult for the United States to receive reliable background on Syrian refugees given the instability in Syria.

Trump also favors "extreme vetting" of refugee applicants to make sure they are not Islamic State supporters or want to supplant U.S. law with Sharia law.

Trump's stance makes more sense.

What doesn't make sense to me is that the United States has accepted only 68 Syrian Christian refugees out of some 12,000 admitted here.

It is immoral for a civilized world to allow the deadly Syrian rebellion to continue.

The strife has morphed into a dangerous international confrontation between the United States and Russia.

A diplomatic solution is possible.

A ceasefire could end internal strife in Syria. Let the United States, Russia, and Syrians train their guns on the Islamic State.

Allies could use political muscle to compel Assad to resurrect his one-time reform overtures, accept a transitional government and mandate free elections.

Safe from genocide, 4.5 million Syrians could return to their homes, where Muslims, Christians and even Jews had lived in relative peace under the Assad family.

Tony George is a Northeastern Ohio businessman with Syrian roots. In March 2000, then-President Bill Clinton met with George in Cleveland regarding U.S. efforts to involve the Syrians in a new Middle East peace initiative, and Clinton later invited him to the White House. In 2008, George raised money for Hillary Clinton's presidential run. However, George has opposed recent U.S. policy on the Syrian war.

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Donald Trump

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump departs on his plane following a campaign rally Friday in Wilmington, Ohio. Thomas Suddes writes that it's looking increasingly likely that Trump will join the exclusive club of Republican candidates who won Ohio but lost the nation.

(John Minchillo, Associated Press)

Two certain things about Tuesday: All 16 Ohioans with seats in the U.S. House will be re-elected thanks to rigged congressional districts. And U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, a suburban Cincinnati Republican, will win a second term by routing his Democratic challenger, former Gov. Ted Strickland.

As for the Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump slugfest, it appears, at this writing, that Trump may join the Richard M. Nixon Club: As noted before, the Nixon Club is composed of GOP nominees, like Nixon in 1960 and Thomas Dewey in 1944, who carry Ohio but don't win the presidency.

(Among Ohio Republicans refusing to vote for Trump: Gov. John Kasich, who wrote in the name of Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who was 2008's GOP presidential nominee.)

In Washington today, 12 Ohio Republicans and four Ohio Democrats enjoy virtually permanent U.S. House seats, at least until the 2020 Census.

You can thank then-U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, a suburban Cincinnati Republican, for ... guiding ... General Assembly Republicans when they drew the state's current congressional districts.

Given how safe Ohio's congressional seats are, you have to wonder why anyone donates to 16 fool-proof Ohio congressional campaigns.

Maybe it's because nothing says, "Take my calls - please," like a big check sent to the campaign fund of a safe-seat legislator.

In some parts of the world, agreed, that might be considered little better than paying-for-access. That's why Ohioans are so fortunate that their members of Congress, like General Assembly members, display such lofty ethical standards and unfailing rectitude.

Still, if Trump carries Ohio next week, that, and Portman's all-but-certain win should prompt Ohio Democrats to reappraise how they do business. Democrats have held Ohio's governorship for only four of the last 26 years (Strickland's 2007-10 governorship, which ended when Kasich unseated him). Democrats haven't run the state Senate since December 1984, or the Ohio House since December 1994, except in 2009 and 2010.

And time was, beginning in the mid-1970s, that organized labor mobilized to make sure Ohio's Supreme Court had a Democratic majority. It's been 30 years since the state Supreme Court had one.

On that front, a brush-up on Ohio's no-party-name judicial ballot:

This year, competing for one Supreme Court seat are 1st Ohio District Court of Appeals Judge Patrick (Pat) Fischer, a Cincinnati Republican, and Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge John P. O'Donnell, a Lakewood Democrat. (The 1st appellate district encompasses Hamilton County.)

Competing for the other contested Supreme Court seat are 1st Ohio District Court of Appeals Judge R. Patrick (Pat) DeWine, a Cincinnati Republican who's the son of Attorney General Mike DeWine, and 11th Ohio District Court of Appeals Judge Cynthia Rice, a Democrat from Trumbull County's Brookfield. (That appellate district encompasses Geauga, Lake, Portage, Trumbull and Ashtabula counties.)

True, as to Ohio's Democratic strength, the state repeatedly re-elected Democratic Sens. John Glenn and Howard Metzenbaum, and elected (2006) and re-elected (2012) Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. Brown is expected to seek a third term in 2018. But that'd be in the middle of a presidential term. And Senate re-election campaigns in the middle of presidential terms can be dicey.

If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency on Tuesday, Brown would be seeking re-election in 2018, midway through Clinton's (first) term. At mid-term elections, voters can consider a senator of the president's party a proxy for restlessness with that president. In counterpoint, if Republican Trump manages to talk his way into the White House, that might boost Democrat Brown's 2018 Senate re-election prospects - assuming a President Trump hadn't by then gotten himself impeached and removed from office.

Thomas Suddes, a member of the editorial board, writes from Athens.

To reach Thomas Suddes: tsuddes@cleveland.com, 216-999-4689

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Social Security COLA

The Social Security Administration's main campus in Woodlawn, Maryland, as pictured in 2013. A recent "Citizen Cabinet" voter survey sponsored by Voice of the People found a majority of Ohioans ready to compromise to achieve Social Security reform, writes Stephen Kull of Voice of the People.

(Patrick Semansky, Associated Press, File, 2013)

Steven Kull is president of the nonprofit Voice of the People.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton may well have been thinking about swing states like Ohio when, in the last debate, they avoided taking clear, detailed positions on Social Security. The conventional wisdom is that Republicans and Democrats are deeply divided on the subject, especially in Ohio and other states that appear to be presidential tossups right now.

But in fact, in a major new survey on Social Security, Ohioans show broad bipartisan majorities for steps for solvency that would cut the program's projected shortfall by two-thirds. There also appears to be mostly harmony of views between Ohio's northern and southern regions. Note: If no action is taken, by 2033, Social Security benefits will have to be cut 23 percent.

The in-depth survey included a representative sample of 434 Ohio registered voters, as well as more than 8,600 registered voters nationwide. Participants were informed about the Social Security shortfall and were given options for addressing it, along with pro and con arguments for each proposal.

After considering all the options, a strong majority of voters from both major parties agree on four steps that would resolve at least two-thirds of the projected shortfall -- through a combination of revenue increases and benefit cuts.

Ohioans' favorite option is raising the cap on income subject to the payroll tax to $215,000, with 84 percent approval (nationally, 88 percent). This includes 79 percent of Ohio Republicans and 90 percent of Ohio Democrats.

At the same time, Ohio voters also are willing to cut benefits in the service of future solvency for Social Security. Reducing benefits for at least the top 25 percent of lifetime earners received 79 percent support in the Buckeye State - slightly more than the 76 percent who support it nationally.

Interestingly, the idea of reducing benefits was stronger among Ohio Democrats (87 percent) than Republicans (74 percent). In a rare difference between the north and south of the state, the north (Toledo through Cleveland and Youngstown) had many willing to extend the cuts to the top 40 percent of lifetime earners, while most in the south of the Columbus area would not go so far.

Gradually raising the retirement age to 68 years old -- effectively a benefit cut -- garnered 83 percent approval in Ohio (86 percent of both Republicans and Democrats, with independents slightly lower).

Seventy-six percent also approved of raising the payroll tax from 6.2 to 6.6 percent (67 percent of Republicans, 86 percent of Democrats).

These four steps would eliminate 66 percent of the shortfall. In addition, 57 percent went even further, eliminating the cap on taxable earnings entirely, which, together with these other steps, would completely resolve the shortfall.

The survey also included seven other statewide samples and found essentially the same results in California, Florida, Maryland, New York, Oklahoma, Texas and Virginia. The survey was conducted by the University of Maryland's Program for Public Consultation and fielded with Nielsen-Scarborough's probability-based online panel. The findings are featured in a new video produced by Voice Of the People, which sponsored the survey.

Unlike standard polls, Citizen Cabinet surveys take respondents through an in-depth online process called a "policymaking simulation" that puts them in the shoes of a policymaker, giving them a briefing and presenting key arguments on both sides of the issue. The content of the simulation was vetted, in advance, for accuracy and balance by Republican and Democratic congressional staffers, as well as by experts from the National Academy of Social Insurance and the American Enterprise Institute.

A public version of the policymaking simulation is posted at vop.org for anyone to try. Citizens are encouraged to go through the simulation and then share their recommendations with their congressional representatives at: http://research.cfrinc.net/vop16159pub/

The fact that voters in both parties are more willing to make hard choices, find common ground, and preserve Social Security for generations to come should give our presidential candidates and leaders on both sides of the aisle cause to reconsider.

Steven Kull is director of the University of Maryland's Program for Public Consultation and president of Voice Of the People, a nonpartisan group using new methods and technology to give citizens a greater voice in government.

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Clinton and Trump

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in 2016 photos.

(The Associated Press)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - There was something strange about the campaign trail Saturday in Ohio.

It was empty.

Three days before an election that will determine the next president of the United States, there was no trace of Democrat Hillary Clinton, Republican Donald Trump or their running mates.

As of Saturday evening, only Clinton had scheduled a Sunday event in the state. And it was unknown if or when Trump, who held a rally Friday in Wilmington, would return.

Contrast that with the weekend before Election Day four years ago. The final Saturday saw President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, second lady Jill Biden and Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan all visit the state. Sunday brought appearances from President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and Ryan.

Is this the new normal? Are the Buckeye State's days as the preeminent battleground numbered? Maybe, maybe not. But Ohio is not poised to be the tipping point it was in 2008 and 2012. Swing states such as Nevada and North Carolina are more important to this year's electoral math, while Arizona, Michigan and New Hampshire might be more competitive than once thought.

Regardless, Ohio will be closely watched Tuesday night. No Republican has won the White House without it. No Democrat has since John F. Kennedy in 1960. As we head into the final hours of a presidential race unlike any other, here's where things stand in the state.

Polling

Never before have horserace polls received so much attention and driven so much day-to-day news coverage. And never before has it been so terrifying to hazard a guess based on them. Each one employs a unique methodology, ends with a different sample size, and offers dozens of ways to parse the findings and argue why the candidate in the lead might not be in the lead.

All of that handwringing aside, when you look at these polls in the aggregate, Ohio is trending Trump. Clinton had an advantage in early October, after the first two debates and around the time Trump's treatment of women became a focal point. But Trump has reclaimed the lead.

The most recent Quinnipiac University poll found Trump up 5 percentage points in a four-way race including third-party candidates - a result that likely reflected fallout from the resumed FBI investigation into Clinton's private email server. On Saturday, the RealClearPolitics.com average of polls put Trump ahead by 3.3 points. FiveThirtyEight.com, which aggregates and analyzes data from various pollsters, gave Trump a 68.5 percent chance of winning Ohio.

Demographics

Clinton might lose Ohio. But she remains favored - with a 64.7 percent chance, according to FiveThirtyEight - to win the presidency. Why is Trump performing better here than he is in battlegrounds such as Colorado, Florida, Nevada and North Carolina? Ohio's higher concentration of white working-class voters and comparatively low Hispanic population.

Trump has tailored his pitch to the former by railing against foreign trade deals and special interests. And he has huge problems with the latter after launching his campaign with a false assertion that most Mexican immigrants are dangerous criminals, questioning the impartiality of a Mexican-American judge, and offering hard-line positions on deportation.

Put a simpler way, Ohio is friendlier territory for Trump. The battle for the presidency is more likely to be won or lost in states where the electorates are more diverse.

Early voting

There's a reason why Clinton spent Friday evening in Cleveland at a free concert headlined by Jay Z and Beyonce and why she will return Sunday afternoon for a rally with Cavaliers superstar LeBron James. Democrats need strong turnout from Ohio's urban centers.

Early absentee balloting by mail or in person at local boards of elections is crucial to the party's get-out-the-vote operation. But this year's early voting window in Ohio is one week narrower than it was in 2012. This makes apples-to-apples comparisons with 2016 difficult. But the numbers so far indicate Clinton is in danger of underperforming Obama in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County - an overwhelmingly Democratic area that should be her firewall.

Through Saturday, 201,578 ballots had been cast in Cuyahoga County, down 12 percent from 2012. In Cleveland, the number of votes cast was down 22 percent from four years earlier.

Another challenge in assessing which side is ahead is that voter registration does not tell the whole tale in Ohio. Republican voting rolls swelled in some counties this year because of a competitive primary featuring Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Data show new voter registration lagged in Trump's strongest primary counties, suggesting that there could be plenty of crossover Democrats and independents in play for the general election.

The spin

Republicans are certain the early numbers prove there is a lack of enthusiasm for Clinton. Democrats have emphasized higher in-person voting volume in the final days of the race. They also are confident - rightly so - about reports that such voting in Franklin County, a key Democratic county that includes Columbus, is on a record-breaking pace.

"I think frankly we are, in a lot of respects, where we thought we'd be in the final few days," Chris Wyant, the Clinton campaign's Ohio director, said Saturday. "Despite the fact that we had one less week to get folks out, what we've seen across the state is that the turnout on a day-to-day-basis is increasing - much higher on a day-to-day basis than it has been the past."

Wyant also believes Clinton will outperform Obama's 2012 totals in areas such as Delaware County. It's overwhelmingly Republican territory that takes in Columbus' northern suburbs and has a high concentration of college-educated voters - a bloc that poses problems for Trump.

But enthusiasm, especially among minority voters, could be an issue for Clinton. It was clear by the dozens of attendees who began streaming out after Jay Z and Beyonce performed Friday and before Clinton spoke that the free concert was of more interest. On Saturday, her team tried a new gimmick: free food from taco trucks parked near several early voting sites.

"Hillary Clinton's legions of paid staff can't match Mr. Trump's grassroots movement," the Trump campaign's Ohio director, Bob Paduchik, wrote Saturday in an emailed statement.

"The massive enthusiasm gap is reflected in early voting," Paduchik added. "Her low energy campaign isn't motivating regular Ohioans to actually get out and vote."

The ground game

Here's where a Trump lead could vanish quickly. His campaign is not nearly as organized as Clinton's is. Perhaps nowhere has this been a bigger problem for Trump than in Ohio.

Kasich refused to endorse or vote for Trump. Many of the state's most talented Republican operatives kept their distance, too. And Paduchik has warred with state GOP Chairman Matt Borges, a Kasich ally who has raised concerns about Trump's character and rhetoric.

Officials with the Republican National Committee, which is carrying much of the load for Trump's ground game, hope early investments in Ohio and other key states will help.

"We've moved away from strictly brick-and-mortar," RNC political director Chris Carr, explaining the Democrats' advantage in field offices, said Friday on a conference call with reporters. "We thought our investment should be heavier in boots on the ground."

But Democrats have been working more harmoniously in Ohio.

"I've had emails and texts and calls with David Pepper, the chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, 15 times today," Wyant, a veteran Ohio operative, said Saturday.

These relationships matter, especially in the final weekend. Campaigns are scrambling to identify which of their likely voters hasn't yet cast a ballot and where extra efforts can make a difference. And they need a strong, organized and motivated mix of volunteers to accomplish this.

The campaign trail

The Trump team likes to measure enthusiasm in crowd size. And there's no denying that he consistently draws more people to his rallies than Clinton draws to hers. But it is not a reliable gauge for who is winning. Just ask any Romney backer who thought an audience of 30,000 in a Cincinnati suburb on the Friday night before Election Day foreshadowed an Ohio victory.

Romney lost to Obama by 3 percentage points.

Trump and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, have spent more time than Clinton and her No. 2, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, have campaigning in the Buckeye State. The Clinton team, meanwhile, has relied more on high-profile surrogates to pick up the slack.

Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who gave Clinton a tough race in the Democratic primary, campaigned for her Thursday in Cincinnati and Youngstown. Obama has stumped for her in Cleveland and Columbus. Actors and other athletes and musicians also have headlined events for Clinton in in Ohio. The thinking is these celebrity events draw coverage from local newspapers and TV stations while attracting people who might not otherwise vote or volunteer.

But a candidate's time often is a campaign's most precious resource.

And in this home stretch, Clinton and Trump are spending little of theirs in Ohio.

Cleveland.com reporter Andrew J. Tobias contributed to this story.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The crowd danced to the beat and threw their hands up in the air. Screamed song lyrics. Stood in line to buy beer. The Jay Z get-out-the-vote concert felt less like a political rally for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and more like a party.

Jay Z began the concert with "Made in America." He performed behind a screen that manipulated his face to look like an American flag. A-list artists, including Beyonce, Big Sean, Chance the Rapper, and J. Cole surprised a pumped up crowd.

Clinton emerged near the end of the set, and asked Ohioans to vote.

"Here in Cuyahoga County every day is Election Day," Clinton said. "We can have the biggest turnout in history."

Read more takeaways below:

The show

Jay Z performed behind a black and white photograph of the White House. He repeated Clinton's campaign slogan: "Stronger Together."

Each special performer emerged, one after another, thrilling the crowd of about 10,000. Politics overlaid performance. Words flashed behind the musicians on a large screen:

"Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote"

"And on that day I did nothing"

"Shape Tomorrow, Vote Today"

"Your voice, your vote"

The crowd erupted in screams as Beyonce took the stage. Queen B delivered a heartfelt speech about what seeing a woman in the White House means to her.

"There was a time when a woman's opinion did not matter if you were black, if you were white, Mexican, Asian, Muslim, educated, poor or rich. If you were a woman, it did not matter. Less than 100 years ago, women did not have the right to vote. Look how far we've come from having no voice to being on the brink of making history, again, by electing the first woman president. But we have to vote. The world looks to us as a progressive country that leads change," Beyonce said. "I want my daughter to grow up seeing a woman lead our country."

She transitioned into an appropriately patriotic song: Freedom. And followed it up with a medley of female empowerment songs: "Independent Women," and "Run the World (Girls)."

The screen behind her flashed: "I'm with her."

Get out the vote

The campaign handed out the free tickets near the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, where Clevelanders could vote early, and offered priority access to anyone who agreed to volunteer. The campaign hoped the concert would get out the vote for Clinton in Cleveland.

So did the ploy work?

Yes and no.

Many concertgoers supported Clinton, but also wanted to see the rapper.

Charniese Griffin, 45, voted early for Clinton at the Board of Elections just before picking up tickets to the Jay Z show, right across the street. The Maple Heights resident volunteered for the campaign and received priority access to the concert.

Why Clinton?

"She's a strong woman, she really is," Griffin said.

Clinton's strategy to get out the vote made sense to 20-year-old Bowling Green University student Alex Green. She supports Clinton, and voted early. But she also wanted to see the concert.

"She did this to get people to go out and vote for her," Green said. "And it's Jay Z."

But at least once concertgoer didn't agree with Clinton's politics.

Tamika Giddens supports Republican Donald Trump and just came to see Jay Z. The 30-year-old likes Trump's blunt approach.

"I like the fact that he's outspoken," Giddens said. "What he feels, he says it. I'm behind that."
Special Anchored by CNBC's Carl Quintanilla and Kelly Evans with Michelle Caruso-Cabrera and John Harwood Live from CNBC's Global Headquarters

Election Coverage Throughout CNBC's Business Day Programming and on CNBC Digital

ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J., November 4, 2016With the most tumultuous election in history coming to a climax, CNBC plans to provide viewers with maximum access to the stories that are shaping election night in real time. Whether it's the race for the White House or for the balance of power in Congress, CNBC will be monitoring and presenting dozens of local and national news sources throughout the night, giving viewers a complete and comprehensive look at how the election is unfolding. With a careful eye on video feeds coming in from around the country, be it a concession speech from a Senate race with national implications, coverage of voting issues being broadcast by a local station or a LIVE interview with an important newsmaker, CNBC will continuously aggregate network and affiliate coverage as it happens, giving viewers a sense of the big picture as well as granular developments.

On Tuesday, November 8th, beginning at 7PM ET, CNBC will broadcast a live special, "Your Money, Your Vote," anchored by CNBC's Carl Quintanilla and Kelly Evans with Michelle Caruso-Cabrera and John Harwood. Along with CNBC's accomplished journalists deployed around the country in key states and trusted analysts and contributors, the network will utilize the power of the entire NBC News portfolio to provide a unique perspective and up-to-the-minute election results and reaction from voters and experts across the nation. And, as the leader in business news, CNBC will offer context and color from respected voices in the business and financial field who will discuss how the results will impact your money.

CNBC will also cover the election throughout Business Day programming. The network will broadcast a special election night edition of "Mad Money w/Jim Cramer" at 6PM ET. CNBC's early morning programs "Worldwide Exchange" (5AM ET) and "Squawk Box" (6AM ET) will provide the morning-after results and analysis before the markets open.

CNBC journalists contributing to election coverage include:

Steve Liesman  exit polling

 exit polling Eamon Javers  Clinton headquarters

 Clinton headquarters Scott Wapner  Trump headquarters

 Trump headquarters Phil LeBeau  Indiana

 Indiana Kayla Tausche  Colorado

 Colorado Scott Cohn  North Carolina

 North Carolina Brian Sullivan  Ohio

 Ohio Diana Olick  Florida

 Florida Aditi Roy - Pennsylvania

- Pennsylvania Contessa Brewer  Arizona

 Arizona Jane Wells  Nevada

 Nevada Meg Tirrell  Wellesley College

 Wellesley College Seema Mody  Social media reaction

CNBC's coverage will also include commentary from Larry Kudlow, CNBC senior contributor; Sara Fagen, Former White House Political Director for President George W. Bush and CNBC contributor; Keith Boykin, Former Clinton White House Aide and Democratic strategist; Ed Rogers, Chairman of BGR Group; Marc Morial, CEO of the National Urban League; and Christy Setzer, President of New Heights Communication and former spokesperson for three presidential campaigns.

CNBC Digital will cover the election in real time from all angles with breaking news, up-to-the-minute results and analysis. The site will offer in-depth stories, data and video before, during and after the election on topics including the battle to capture the White House and key Congressional seats, swing-state surprises, the world's reaction to our new president, and breaking commentary from business and finance leaders. Stay with CNBC Digital in the days after the election to learn more about what our new president faces in the first 100 days in office, how global markets will fare and what changes in Washington could mean for your wallet.

CNBC will engage across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat to share election results and breaking news updates in real time. CNBC will bring back the "Twicker," streaming Twitter reaction from viewers, users and influencers across the network's stock ticker throughout the night. Users can tweet @CNBC to participate in the live coverage and see their posts live on air.

About CNBC:

With CNBC in the U.S., CNBCin Asia Pacific, CNBC in Europe, Middle East and Africa, and CNBC World, CNBCis the recognized world leader in business news and provides real-timefinancial market coverage and business information to approximately 381 millionhomes worldwide, including more than 94 million households in the United Statesand Canada. CNBC also provides daily business updates to 400 million householdsacross China. The network's 15 live hours a day of business programming inNorth America (weekdays from 4:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. ET) is produced at CNBC'sglobal headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and includes reports from CNBCNews bureaus worldwide. CNBC at night features a mix of new realityprogramming, CNBC's highly successful series produced exclusively for CNBC anda number of distinctive in-house documentaries.

CNBC also has a vastportfolio of digital products which deliver real-time financial market news andinformation across a variety of platforms including: CNBC.com; CNBC PRO, thepremium, integrated desktop/mobile service that provides live access to CNBCprogramming, exclusive video content and global market data and analysis; asuite of CNBC mobile products including the CNBC Apps for iOS, Android andWindows devices; and additional products such as the CNBC App for the AppleWatch and Apple TV.

Members of the media canreceive more information about CNBC and its programming on the NBCUniversalMedia Village Web site at http://www.nbcumv.com/programming/cnbc.

For more information aboutNBCUniversal, please visit http://www.NBCUniversal.com.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump listens as Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton speaks during their third and final 2016 presidential campaign debate at UNLV in Las Vegas, October 19, 2016. Mark Ralston | Reuters

On Tuesday, the contentious race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump comes to what many beleaguered voters would call a merciful conclusion. When it does, the many loaded catchphrases the election inspired on social media may (hopefully) come to an end as well. The current election cycle inspired many political buzzwords that have gotten thrown around more than others, including gems like "rigged," "baggage" and "deplorable." Mark Grabowski, a journalism professor at Adelphi University, told CNBC that when the smoke clears, he never wants to hear the word "disqualifying" againan insult Clinton's camp has lobbed at Trump frequently. "I've covered presidential elections for 20 years and I don't remember ever seeing an election where 'disqualification' was bandied about so frequently as a political strategy," he told CNBC. "Unless you're foreign born, have resided in the U.S. less than 14 years, are under 35, or have already been elected president twice, you're not disqualified." CNBC asked voters what words they never want to hear again after Tuesday, and came up with the following list.



'Destroy' this

Bill Webber, a nuclear medicine technologist, said he hopes to never again hear, or read, the word "destroy," as in "'Pundit A' destroys 'Pundit B' in one tweet!" "It insults the intelligence of the reader," he said. "No one has faced utter ruin over a tweet, nor is anyone likely to be."



Cut the 'grassroots'

Hillary Clinton, Democratic presidential candidate Brian Snyder | Reuters

Allison Medich loathes the word "grassroots," primarily because of the frequency with which it's used and abused by people across the political spectrum. "If I were to start a drinking game, where you would need to drink every time this word was said while watching any news channel, livers everywhere would be destroyed," the Tampa resident joked to CNBC.



I don't 'believe' you

Wendy L. Patrick, a deputy district attorney in San Diego, cited the phrase "believe me" as particularly overused by the GOP nominee. "As a 20-year-plus trial attorney I can argue both sides of voting for both candidates," she said. "But in terms of overused phrases most people do not want to hear again, almost every important statement he makes is immediately followed by the phrase, 'believe me.'"

'Disaster' area

Donald Trump mimics a chocking gesture. Carlo Allegri | Reuters

Gretel Going, co-founder of the Channel V Media public relations firm in New York City, said that she has had it with the word "disaster." The word is used frequently by Trump. "It's lazy and empty," she said, noting that those attributes don't necessarily detract from its effectiveness. "When delivered with repetition, I'm sure it's resonating with undiscerning audiences."

Put out that fire

Teri Christoph, a 46-year-old fundraiser from Leesburg, Virginia, says the first time she heard the term "Dumpster fire" to describe how unpopular both candidates are to the electorate it was funny. Today, its expiration date has come and gone. "All the Dumpsters have been burned," she said. "Time to move on."

The meteor cometh

Harvey Lloyd | Getty Images

It was also amusing when, given the choice between Clinton or Trump, 13 percent of respondents to a Public Policy Polling survey said they would vote for an extinction-level event known as the "sweet meteor of death." Five months later, Christoph said that the term has long since overstayed its welcome, despite the fact that it has its own lively Twitter account. SMOD Tweet "If 'Dumpster fire' could please take 'sweet meteor of death' to the great inferno beyond, that'd be great," she told CNBC.





'Divisive' and conquer

Joel Kolley said that he objects to the term "divisive," because it's come to signify anything said by two parties holding opposing viewpoints. "It's used in every instance of a disagreement or debate on anything," the New Hampshire native told CNBC. "It's okay to debate and have opinions."



How 'qualified' are you?
"Distinctions of intent frequently determine, as a matter of law, the difference between going to prison and going free," Rakoff wrote in The New York Review of Books in his examination of neuroscience and the law.

On the bench in the 14th-floor Manhattan courtroom sat U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, a renowned legal independent and author of a recent essay that almost seemed to foreshadow the proceeding.

The defense said Caspersen never intended to steal and betray. Asking for leniency, his attorney, Paul Shechtman presented evidence to show the 40-year-old father of two had been gripped by a pathological gambling addiction.

The prosecution said Andrew Caspersen, a scion of a wealthy business family, should get as much as a 15-year-plus prison sentence for executing a Ponzi-like scam that collectively bilked about a dozen of his clients, family members, and his investment company out of roughly $46 million.

It was an emotional federal court sentencing, with the future of an Ivy League-educated former private equity executive hanging in the scales of justice.

Shechtman submitted dozens of support letters to the court, including pleas for leniency from Caspersen's wife, friends, and even the doorman of his Manhattan co-op. The defense also turned to scientific and financial trading experts.

"Caspersen does not  and, in fact, he cannot  claim that his criminal conduct was the result of an irresistible impulse. Rather, it was a product of his own volition, a choice that was complicated by his addiction to gambling," she wrote in a sentencing memo.

Magdo added that Caspersen used much of the scam proceeds to pay the mortgage and two home equity credit lines on a Manhattan apartment, as well as a $3 million home in Bronxville, a wealthy suburb of New York City.

The victims lost millions. Some, investment professionals themselves, declined to present victim statements by name, fearing the reputational loss of being fooled.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Christine Magdo argued that 2014-2016 scam run by the Princeton University and Harvard Law School graduate had been carefully calculated. In a sentencing memo to the court, she noted that Caspersen fooled his roughly dozen victims by incorporating sham entities with names similar to real private equity firms.

The prosecution attacked the gambling addiction defense from the start.

By the end, Caspersen and his wife, Christina, wept as they held one another in the courtroom. Shechtman brushed away tears of his own. And Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara issued a statement that noted Caspersen had been sentenced  but made no comment on the punishment.

What ensued was a nearly three-hour debate over whether and how much gambling addiction should factor in the sentence  complete with references to "The Gambler," a short novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Dr. Marc Potenza, a Yale University School of Medicine psychiatry professor and mental health expert on addiction, examined Caspersen and reviewed his health records in preparation for testifying at the sentencing hearing.

"Mr. Caspersen suffered from a severe gambling disorder, a mental illness, and there is little doubt that it contributed substantially to him losing his own money and seek money by fraud from others to continue on the same destructive path," Potenza wrote in a letter to the court.

"I think he still meets the criteria for a severe gambling disorder," Potenza testified.

The defense also recruited Bruce Rosen, a stock options trading expert, to examine the options transactions Caspersen executed with millions of dollars generated by the scam. Caspersen worked at the Park Hill Group, a spinoff from private equity giant Blackstone that's now owned by investment bank PJT Partners. He knew the financial world.

But Rosen, in a letter to the court, said Caspersen's options trading pattern "lacked rationality."

"Buying options in the way that he did may have satisfied some psychological need, but he was certain to lose all of his money," wrote Rosen.

Citing the experts' conclusions, Shechtman urged Rakoff to weigh the "tragic dimension" of Caspersen's gambling addiction.

Offering proof of the depth of that addiction, Shechtman recounted Caspersen's conduct while attending the hit Broadway show Hamilton with his wife  continually checking his cell phone for changes in the Standard & Poor's 500 index that would affect his options bets.

"Mr. Caspersen's criminal conduct cannot be excused," wrote Shechtman in a sentencing memo. "But it should not result in a life-destructive sentence at a time he is finding his way back to health."

Caspersen fought back tears as he addressed the court before being sentenced.

"I have committed serious crimes of fraud, and have no one to blame but myself," he said. "I stand before you asking for mercy."

Dr. Marc Potenza, a Yale University School of Medicine psychiatry professor and mental health expert on addiction, examined Caspersen and reviewed his health records in preparation for testifying at the sentencing hearing.

"Mr. Caspersen suffered from a severe gambling disorder, a mental illness, and there is little doubt that it contributed substantially to him losing his own money and seek money by fraud from others to continue on the same destructive path," Potenza wrote in a letter to the court.

"I think he still meets the criteria for a severe gambling disorder," Potenza testified.

The defense also recruited Bruce Rosen, a stock options trading expert, to examine the options transactions Caspersen executed with millions of dollars generated by the scam. Caspersen worked at the Park Hill Group, a spinoff from private equity giant Blackstone that's now owned by investment bank PJT Partners. He knew the financial world.

But Rosen, in a letter to the court, said Caspersen's options trading pattern "lacked rationality."

"Buying options in the way that he did may have satisfied some psychological need, but he was certain to lose all of his money," wrote Rosen.

Citing the experts' conclusions, Shechtman urged Rakoff to weigh the "tragic dimension" of Caspersen's gambling addiction.

Offering proof of the depth of that addiction, Shechtman recounted Caspersen's conduct while attending the hit Broadway show Hamilton with his wife  continually checking his cell phone for changes in the Standard & Poor's 500 index that would affect his options bets.

"Mr. Caspersen's criminal conduct cannot be excused," wrote Shechtman in a sentencing memo. "But it should not result in a life-destructive sentence at a time he is finding his way back to health."

Caspersen fought back tears as he addressed the court before being sentenced.

"I have committed serious crimes of fraud, and have no one to blame but myself," he said. "I stand before you asking for mercy."

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Rakoff's essay signaled he might consider a scientific explanation that might help explain the crimes. "Cognitive neuroscience ... holds out the promise of helping us to perceive, decide, and explain how intentions are arrived at and carried out," the judge wrote.



After more than an hour of testimony and questioning of Potenza, Rakoff said he deemed it "more likely than not" that gambling addiction existed and could be a mitigating factor. Still, he stressed it must be weighed with other factors in the case.

"It was a substantial fraud," said the judge. "It was a fraud that involved the deception of people who had a lot of faith in the defendant."

Ultimately, Rakoff sentenced Caspersen to four years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and nearly $28 million in restitution.

"No purpose would be served by having him rot in prison for years on end," said the judge. He characterized federal sentencing guidelines that would allow the far longer sentence sought by prosecutors as "absurd." And, referring to the likelihood that some might question the leniency, Rakoff said outsiders didn't know all the facts of the case.

All Caspersen could hope for was a judge who would seriously consider all of the arguments, Shechtman told reporters afterward.

"And we got that today," he said.
HTML < input id =" rdo1" type =" radio" name =" rdoTest" value =" Hello" / > < input id =" rdo2" type =" radio" name =" rdoTest" value =" World" / > < var id =" test1" onchange =" alert('2');" > Test Value < /var >



JavaScript $( document ).ready( function () { $( ' [name=rdoTest]' ).change( function () { $( ' #test1' ).text($( ' [name=rdoTest]:checked' ).val()); }); $( ' #test1' ).change( function () { alert($( ' #test1' ).text()); }); });





My code here but nothing happened





<script> $(document).ready(function () { $( ' [name=rdoTest]' ).change(function () { $( ' #test1' ).text($( ' [name=rdoTest]:checked' ).val()); $( " #test1" ).trigger( " change" ); }); $( ' #test1' ).change(function () { alert($( ' #test1' ).text()); }); }); </script>

Peter Leow

https://www.amazon.com/author/peterleow



Hello, I am modifying a web page with a lot of CSS code. There are many div tags. Mid-way on the page are div tags that enable a button to appear. I wish for this particular button to automatically click when the page loads. I have tried many combinations of JavaScript and JQuery but nothing so far works.



The button is defined by div tags comparable to this:

<div class="Btn-info">

<div class="Btn-btn active">

<strong>THE BUTTON</strong> <span></span>

</div>

...

</div>





I haven't yet figured out if the second div name is "Btn-btn active", or whether it is named "Btn-btn" and active is an attribute.



My efforts at coding either a JavaScript or JQuery way to automatically click the button I see on the page have not worked. I have tried these variations:



<script type="text/javascript">

jQuery(function () {

jQuery('.div.Btn-btn').click();

})

</script>



OR





<script type="text/javascript">

jQuery(function () {

jQuery('.Btn-btn').click();

});

</script>



OR



<script type="text/javascript">

jQuery(function () {

jQuery('.Btn-info.Btn-btn').click();

});

</script>



OR



<script type="text/javascript">

jQuery(function () {

jQuery('.Btn-btn active').click();

});

</script>



So far nothing works. Does anyone out there have an idea about how to make this work? Many thanks if you do.





$("div.Btn-btn active").click();

});







Keep in mind - hopefully there is a onclick defined for that "button" somewhere (click handler)





div.Btn-btn.active").click()



...And it works! Thanks so much for the help!!!



Hi all

i am creating gps tracking system

i have to do two things with the marker

1- create context menu with some functions on the marker

2- add car number as label on the marker

the first thing is finished

Map With Context Menu



when i tried to do the second issue a conflict (i think) happened

i included a JS library

Map Label Library

both are working alone but when combined no thin work

code after combine

Map With Labels and Context Menu



some details

both depend on overlay

errors

TypeError: a.lng is not a function

...b=b||new _.G(0,0);var c=this.b;b.x=c.x+a.lng()*this.j;a=_.Za(Math.sin(_.Sb(a.lat...



InvalidValueError: not a LatLng or LatLngLiteral: in property lat: not a number



TypeError: c.lat is not a function

...,c=d.b.search(_.vi)):(c=a.ca,c=new _.G(c.lat(),c.lng()),a.da=c,_.uJ(d.j,{da:c,ye...



InvalidValueError: not a LatLng or LatLngLiteral: in property lat: not a number



Thank You



Hey guys, I know the title is simple but I'm new to javascript and would appreciate if you could help me out



here's the deal,

I ve got some records that i read from database, and I want to add the to top of my table this is run every 20 seconds



JavaScript var interval = setInterval( function () { loadTableData(selectedOption); }, 20000 );



here's what's happening inside loadTableData function



JavaScript function loadTableData(dataType) { $.get( " /JsonResultlink" , null , function (result) { var itemAdd; $.each(result, function (i, item) { loadRecordTimeOut = setTimeout( function () { if (result[i].VEHICLEPLATE !== undefined ) { itemToAdd = generateRow(result[i], dataType); $( ' .tto-violation-tablebody' ).prepend(itemToAdd); checkRowCount(); } }, 1000 * i); }); clearTimeout(loadRecordTimeOut); }); }



loadTableData is called in document ready and then every 2 seconds



Now I got 3 buttons that when each is clicked i call loadTableData with new dataType and show the result



now the problem is that in the middle of data being added to table i click one button I want the table to clear and the new data be displayed but what i get is that data loading becomes faster and i get both data from previous load and this load,



Please help me out and I'd like to learn clean coding so if you have any suggestions please let me know, appreciate it.



modified 5-Nov-16 6:59am.



here[^]

Cheers,

Peter

Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012



I am new to the JavaScript ,I know how to pass data from one html page to another html page but i don't know how to pass data from one html page to multiple pages.. Can anyone help me









"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."

- Homer









I had passed the values from one page to another page.But i don't know how to pass the values from one page to multiple pages.







What you haven't told us is what you mean by passing to multiple pages.



It obviously means something to you, but the rest of us have no idea what you're talking about.





"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."

- Homer









Below is my first page pass1.html

<html>

<head>

<script type="text/javascript">

function getParams()

{

var idx = document.URL.indexOf('?');

var params = new Array();

if (idx !=-1)

{

var pairs = document.URL.substring(idx+1, document.URL.length).split('&');

for (var i=0; i<pairs.length; i++)

="" {

="" console.log(pairs.length);

="" nameval="pairs[i].split('=');

" params[nameval[0]]="nameVal[1];

" }

="" return="" params;

="" }

params="getParams();

firstname" =="" unescape(params["firstname"]);

lastname="unescape(params["lastname"]);

age" unescape(params["age"]);

document.write("firstname=" + firstname + " <br="">");

document.write("lastname = " + lastname + "

");

document.write("age = " + age + "

");

</script>

</head>

</html>



Below is my second page pass.html

<html>

<form type=get action="pass1.html">



First Name: <input type=text name=firstname size=10> Last Name: <input type=text name=lastname size=10> Age: <input type=number name=age> <input type=submit value="Submit">



</form>

</html>







If you don't tell us what you want to do, we can't help you.





"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."

- Homer









There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.



C# I am trying to add theme on my web pages on button click, but i am unable to do it. Would you please tell me how to do it?



If I am using an image of a paint brush with a clear background as my cursor image, is it possible to use Javascript to change its background color?



I would like to be able to select the background color of the cursor using a color picker.



I've been searching all over the web but haven't had much luck, please help.





There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.


There have been 11 fatal motor vehicle crashes in Columbia so far this year. There were five motor vehicle fatalities in 2012; six in 2013; and seven in 2014, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol.
The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form
Pitzer says trash fix a goal by end of tenure

Pitzer still has a goal he would like to accomplish by April: finding a solution to the city's trash collection system.
5 hours ago

Its Still Not Too Late To Get Into Energy Stocks

If you are wondering if it's too late to get into energy stocks the best answer is no. Energy prices are down from their peak and there is a potential slowdown in demand on the way but, for now, the underlying fundamentals are highly in favor of higher share prices.

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Samsung is known to bring the greatest flagship, quality smartphones. However, after the Galaxy Note 7 debacle, Samsung is working enthusiastically towards the next release of Galaxy S8 series to win back its trust.

The First Handset

Both the handsets shall do away with the bezel area by removing the home button and the ultrasonic fingerprint sensor from there. The giant plans to embed the sensor under the display screen making it the first ever phone featuring an optical fingerprint sensor. The sensor can, therefore, work well even under glass. Moreover, it would lead to a 20 percent increase in the screen to body ratio.

VR Oriented

Samsung is opting out for full-screen AMOLED display.The Galaxy 8 and eight Plus will feature a 5.1-5.2 inch and 5.5-inch displays with 4K resolution (3840x2160). It comes with Exynos 8995 processor and 16 nm Mali-G71 GPU. So the Galaxy S8 series will be the fastest devices in 2017. All this features clearly indicate that the company is looking forward to working with Google Day Dream and its VR headset.

Special Features

The sets are provided with Android and Samsung Pay which will help the users to pay for online transactions quickly. However, this feature questions the existence of the much awaited Optical Finger Print sensor because it is easy to fool around. Therefore, speculations of a rear panel mounted scanner and an onscreen UI navigator instead of an optical fingerprint scanner may be possible.

It can also mean that if Samsung Pay and Optical Fingerprint Sensor are both available, then the security is enhanced with a powerful iris scanner.

5G Enabled

These are the handsets supporting the 5G. Though most of the countries are not going to the 5G soon, the United States and South Korea are launching the 5G service. So these handsets will be particularly more useful to them.

Other Features

Every release of Galaxy series smartphone comes with advancement in the camera specifications. Samsung Galaxy S8 series with a 30 mp rear and nine mp front cameras will feature a dual camera sensor.

The Android Auto app will enable the users to access different apps from the car displays directly. It will include a whopping 6 GB RAM and Snapdragon Qualcomm Octa-core 3, 2 GHz Processor.

With 64 and 128 GB internal memory, these sets have come up with two expandable micro SD card slots. There will be no flat screen variants of Galaxy S8 series with both the handsets featuring a curved edge display.

The body will be covered with Corning Gorilla glass (both front and back outer bodies) making it most durable. Rumors of these glass bodies to be water resistant may or may not be true.

The Take Home

The Galaxy Note7 fiasco may have turned down the trust on this giant a bit. The Galaxy S8 is all set to win it back with the company promising a 50% reduction in the S8 sets in exchange of the updated Galaxy Note7. Therefore both Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus give us a reason to await their release eagerly around Feb-Mar 2017.

See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare
Close

Samsung has got a blend of response this year with the success of Galaxy S7 and the holocaust of Galaxy Note 7. Due to the explosion of Note 7, Samsung has stopped production of those mobiles.

The company also announced to switch off the mobiles and send them to the store where they have purchased it in a fire proof packing. Therefore, Samsung lovers are eagerly awaiting the next Smartphone from this tech giant.

Apparently, Samsung may release the next variant in Galaxy series i.e. S8 in 2017. Rumors suggest that S8 will have powerful specifications like artificial intelligence assistant, optical fingerprint scanner, etc.

S8 is expected to have AI of Bixby. Bixby will be deployed as software for managing personal information, for hands-free use of phone using voice recognition, etc.

Samsung had acquired an AI startup called Viv Labs, a California-based firm. Viv had been in the news for its most popular virtual assistant 'SIRI' in iPhones a voice assistant feature.

Viv software is so flexible that it can fit with any third party services and apps. With Viv, Samsung is hoping to offer brand new services to its customers.

Features and Specs of Galaxy S8

Rumors are rife that S8 will be the first in smartphones to support 5G network connectivity. Now 5G services are unavailable in the world, but in coming years it will launch its services. So it will be an advantage for those who have S8.

Design and Display

Samsung Galaxy S8 is rumored to feature some design changes compared to the Galaxy S7, including the home button removal. Reports reveal that Samsung wants to dispose the home button and also including fingerprint scan feature inside the display.

It makes the front of the screen dedicated to only display purpose. Even it is planning for an edgeless display. Display manufacturing wing of Samsung is hoping for OLED screens for S8.

Processor

Galaxy S8 is sure to use a 10nm chip, and it's not clear whether it will have Qualcomm's Snapdragon 830, or Exynos 8895 chip (Samsung brand), or both depending on the region. 10nm technology chips are more efficient and consume less power. It employs an Octa processor and may have 3GHz clock speed with 60-70% increase in performance compared to its predecessors.

Memory and Storage

S8 comes with microSD card with support up to 256GB. Internal memory will be either 64GB or 128GB. RAM capacity of S8 is 6GB. It means execution speed of instructions is very high thus improving the performance.

Camera

The primary camera is of dual 12MP with autofocus phase detection. The secondary camera is of 8MP. Smile detection, 4K video, geo-tagging, panorama are some of the different features.

Battery

Expected battery capacity is 4200mAh with non-removable Li-Ion battery. As it employs 10nm processor, we can expect long lasting battery life. This time, more care is taken in case of the battery as Note 7 faced many issues because of battery explosion.

Miscellaneous features

It runs on Android 7.0 operating system. S8 will be waterproof, dust proof and with IP68 certification. Besides fingerprint sensor, proximity, accelerometer, it does contain Iris scanner providing an advanced security mechanism. The price of the S8 variant is around 639 and is worth for the things it is offering.

The Gist

Galaxy S8 may take the considerable amount of time to launch. As for now, it may be unwise to await it as many other mobiles are present in the market competing for one another with captivating specs and jaw dropping features.

See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare
Cloud News

NetSuite Partners Feel 'Pain' From Oracle, T. Rowe Price Brinksmanship

Joseph Tsidulko

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Oracle's coming up against a self-imposed deadline Friday night to proceed with its acquisition of NetSuite, but opposition from a large investment firm has left NetSuite partners anxiously waiting to learn if a deal with major repercussions on their businesses will go through.

T. Rowe Price, NetSuite's largest investor behind Oracle founder and chairman Larry Ellison, has been holding out for a higher valuation, looking for $133 a share from the enterprise software giantin total about $2 billion more than the original price of $9.3 billion the companies agreed to in July.

The investment house has raised concerns about the process by which a price was established for the San Mateo, Calif. cloud software company, given Ellison's involvement with both software companies.

[Related: Partners" Oracle's Acquisition Of NetSuite Expected-Now Come The Questions Of Product Positioning]

For NetSuite partners, like Houston, Tex.-based Epiphany, the brinksmanship has major implications for their businesses.

"I've talked to a couple of different partners so far. This has become almost a crisis. It feels like everything has stopped cold," Brenda Brinkley, Epiphany's founder and CEO, told CRN. "For a partner, between this and watching the election, it's totally and completely painful."

With the acquisition in limbo, end-of-the-year deals aren't closing at the pace that they have in years past, and partners are in the lurch, she said.

"I've talked to two or three other partners. We're certainly not seeing that normal end-of-year push. It's usually hot and heavy at this time of year, but right now it's cold," Brinkley said.

Ellison provided much of the funding to get NetSuite off the ground almost two decades ago. Oracle's founder and current CTO maintained ownership of more than 47 percent of NetSuite's stock and often mentored the company's leaders.

T. Rowe said in a letter last week that it was exercising a fiduciary responsibility by refusing to tender its shares at the agreed upon price, which a committee within the firm disputed as a fair valuation after scrutinizing the negotiations with Oracle.

Friday's deadline is an extension from the original date set to withdraw the offer, prompted by T. Rowe's opposition.

Stockholders must tender more than half of NetSuite's unaffiliated sharesthose that aren't owned by insiders like Ellisonfor the acquisition to close at the price on the table.

John Hughes, co-founder of Chicago-based ManageForce, said the team at the Oracle and NetSuite partner are "eagerly waiting for a successful close."

ManageForce continues to see strong demand in the market for NetSuite products from current and prospective customers, Hughes said.

"But the investors seem to be playing games solely for the purpose of their own enrichment, which only seems to benefit them," Hughes told CRN.

And any delay in closing the deal is significant for partners, given the pace at which the cloud applications market moves, he said.

"So for every month the transaction gets delayed, it impacts customers' decisions, product strategy and innovation plans," Hughes said, as well as the go-to-market plans of Oracle, NetSuite and their partners.

ManageForce believes the unification of the companies is worth more than the sum of their parts, Hughes said, "so were very eager to learn the outcome, as I would suspect the customers and employees of each organization are as well."

Brinkley, of Epiphany, said she has seen an impact on buyers, and it appears rooted in NetSuite having stopped pushing deals.

With T. Rowe the only investor that's holding out, that could be a move by NetSuite to drive down business, putting pressure on the share value and with it, T. Rowe's proposed valuation and negotiating position.

NetSuite executives don't appear to be pouring energy into closing deals of late, Brinkley told CRN.

"Theoretically, it shouldn't matter. NetSuite is going to be NetSuite," Brinkley said. "But it seems to matter to the buyer. I feel like [NetSuite sales leaders] are holding back."

"This just smells and feels like politics and posturing," Brinkley said. "It's like game-face on, and who's going to flinch first."
For Big Frank Dreger, Ridgefield started out being just one stop on a long road of crime. However, his heist here helped prove his undoing, and with the aid of a corned beef dinner and a bottle or two of homebrew beer, he wound up spending the rest of his life in prison.

The story began on Thursday, February 23, 1933, when Upagenstit, the palatial mansion of Mrs. Frederick E. Lewis on West Lane, was broken into and silver worth more than $10,000 ($180,000 in todays money) was stolen.

What adds mystery to the case is the fact that there were three dogs in the house at the time, and the servants quarters were occupied, reported the following weeks Ridgefield Press. Mrs. Lewis herself was at her New York City residence.

It was a big case, a terrifying case for the people of Ridgefield and particularly the Lewis family, Leo F. Carroll recalled in a 1975 interview. Carroll had been a lieutenant with the Connecticut State Police, assigned to the Ridgefield barracks, and had headed the investigation.

The silver-thieving spree continued down-county, with homes of the rich in Greenwich and Darien being hit. Finally, on the night of June 11, 1933, Darien police picked up two men carrying pillowcases filled with silver taken from a nearby mansion.

One suspect was Frank Dreger, clearly the leader of the operation. Despite being caught red-headed and undergoing hours of grilling Dreger refused to cooperate with Darien police. Carroll told the story this way forty years later:

More Information A Connecticut native and Holy Cross College graduate, Jack Sanders retired in 2014 after more than 45 years as an editor of the Ridgefield Press. He and his wife, Sally, also a newspaper editor, live in a 250-year-old farmhouse in Ridgefield, enjoy bicycling and have two sons and a granddaughter. See More Collapse

One morning, a police officer over in Darien by the name of Amos Anderson phoned me and told me he had a silver thief he caught in his custody but couldnt get anything out of him. He knew I had this silver robbery, so he loaned him to me. I brought him to the Ridgefield barracks, and it just so happened that particular day we were having corned beef for dinner. This suspect smelled that corned beef cooking, and he asked me if it was corned beef. I said it was, and I said youre going to have some for dinner. But before you eat, you ought to cooperate with me and tell me something.

Well, replied Dreger, what do you want to know?

Carrol described the Lewis estate burglary and asked whether Dreger was involved. Well, let me think it over  I dont want to talk too much, Dreger replied. Are you going to take my fingerprints? Carroll said yes.

Well, youll find that I have a record, and youll find that Ive been a silver thief. But I want to think it over before I talk  but you say youre going to have me for a corned beef dinner?

I certainly am, replied Carroll.

You know, I love corned beef, and if I could only have a bottle of beer, I might be able to help you, Dreger said.

Prohibition had not yet been repealed, and alcohol was, of course, never served at the state police barracks. However, said Carroll, I went to a home brewery down the street and got a bottle of beer. (Some accounts say more than one bottle was acquired.)

Well, that suspect after dinner took me for a ride up to a mountain in North Salem, and there, under a tree, were the empty silver sacks from the Upagenstit heist.

A native of Hamburg, Germany, Frank Xavier Dreger was born in 1872, dropped out of high school after his first year and came to this country in 1894. He settled in New York City, worked as a cook and became a citizen in 1901. He married Emily Hubner in 1902. By 1905, he was in prison at Auburn, New York, for an unspecified crime and was also there in 1925, according to home census records. By 1920, his wife had died. The sixty-one-year-old had also done time in Sing Sing.

Dreger had spent most of his years outside prison as a burglar, specializing in silver. According to the Press account, no doubt based on information fed to it by Lieutenant Carroll, Dreger had the appearance of a tramp and is known as the smartest silver thief in the United States. ... The fact that Lt. Carroll and those who assisted him obtained his confession makes one of the biggest accomplishments of the State Police in years.

He was good at what he did. All told, between February and June, Dreger had stolen silver in Ridgefield, Greenwich and Darien worth $150,000  thats about $2.7 million today.

Dreger told Carroll he broke into Upagenstit. He had left New York with the intention of scouting out Ridgefield, having heard a great deal about its wealth, the Press reported.

Coming into town, he passed by the Lewis estate  a one-hundred-acre spread so elaborate it once had a staff of one hundred workers, including the familys own private physician; it seemed a likely candidate.

He continued his journey to Danbury, returning here after dark and making arrangements with his partner, twenty-year-old Joseph Guarino, who remained in the car during the heist.

What happened to the loot? A few pieces were recovered from Dregers New York City apartment, but most of it had been melted down for sale  to the United States government for use in making coins!

Copyright The History Press

A Connecticut native, Jack Sanders retired in 2014 after more than 45 years as an editor of the Ridgefield Press. He and his wife, Sally, live in a 250-year-old farmhouse in Ridgefield.
ANSONIA  City residents have some questions about the reconstruction of Wakelee Avenue.

There was little room to move Wednesday night during a meeting about the project at the ARMS building. The project to rejuvenate the road which leads to Griffin Hospital and connects Ansonia to Derby and Shelton was once estimated to cost $3.5 million and now has a price tag of $4.8 million. The city of Ansonia is responsible for $450,000 of the total cost.

Ansonia has secured an additional $1.2 million with help from the Transportation Technical Advisory Committee to cover the cost of draining, lighting, and using granite curbing instead of concrete.

Concrete erodes and decays through time. Granite lasts forever, plus with the historical nature of the area, granite is the way to go, Mayor David Cassetti said.

Joan Radin, an alderwoman and the owner of Lears Pharmacy, a 100-year-old business on Wakelee Avenue, said the granite sidewalk in front of her business is fine and looked as it does now 54 years ago.

I have curbing that isnt chipped, Radin said. I replaced the curbing four times and never took the granite out.

However, she said she does feel lighting is very important.

Its very dark and we have a lot of trees; in the summer its practically pitch black, Radin said. There are so many things that need to be readdressed. I need to know when theres going to be another meeting, and if it will address the questions we asked.

When Cassetti and Bill Anderson, the project manager, said the sidewalks along Wakelee Avenue would be a 5 feet wide with grass behind them, some said this could cause the street to become more narrow and effect some of their front yards, were they have hedges.

Cassetti and Anderson said that would not be the case, because engineers intended to follow the existing curb line.

We will shift the road just enough to still maintain 12-foot-wide lanes, Anderson said.

Other residents asked why part of their driveways had been torn up by the Feeney Brothers, the Massachusetts-based contractors hired by utility company Eversource, in the first stages of construction, which included laying new plastic gas pipeline.

Some at the meeting said they had been unable to reach the company, although Feeny Brothers placed notices with contact information on the doors of many of the homes along Wakelee Avenue.

Cassetti said residents should be able to communicate with the people who are working on their street, and that he asked Eversource to use a Connecticut contractor. But, according to Cassetti, the utility company said the Massachusetts won the job based on competitive bidding.

Ansonia Superintendent of Public Works Mike DAlessio said he would make Eversource aware of residents complaints.

This is why we have these meetings, to hear from the people, good or bad, Anderson said. It informs us to go back and take a look at it.
The future is coming to Milford, Stratford and other towns up and down the New Haven line, where cars  and the space needed for them  are becoming less of a factor in deciding where to live.

Often people say that they dont want change, but the reality is, your downtown can create a huge economic engine and tax revenue for your community if youre smart about it, said Pete Smith, who lives in downtown Milford.

Planners are catching up to the idea that the automobile, which has transformed America into a land of parking lots and shopping malls, has lost its luster in the minds of younger citizens. More than one survey has millennials coveting their cellphones more than cars.

Cities and towns are taking a hard look at this attitude because it will mean homes with lawns, garages and driveways will be getting the cold shoulder in favor of so-called transit-oriented developments, or TODs.

These have relaxed parking requirements, leaving more space for shops and restaurants as opposed to parking lots and garages.

These days, TOD is the buzzword in municipal governments up and down Metro-Norths New Haven Line. In Milfords downtown last week, Mayor Benjamin Blake hosted planners from BL Cos., who have been hired to come up with ideas for several sites near the Metro-North station for high-density mixed-use development and other amenities that will make the center more vibrant while generating more tax revenue.

The BL staffers went on a tour of Milfords downtown last week, accompanied by about 40 residents and shop owners, all of whom seemed to embrace TOD concepts.

More Information What's a TOD? Transit-oriented development, or TOD, is an approach to development that focuses land uses around a transit station or within a transit corridor. Typically, it is characterized by: A mix of uses Moderate to high density Pedestrian orientation/connectivity Transportation choices Reduced parking High quality design Most TOD are within one-quarter mile, or a five to seven minute walk, of a transit station. Source: National League of Cities / Sustainable Cities Institute See More Collapse

The city received a $150,000 state grant last year to pay for the work BL, of Meriden, will be doing.

Stratford has a TOD already up and running at 1111 Stratford Ave., a complex on the corner of Stratford Avenue and Main Street with 128 apartments that opened in mid-2013.

But this development, town officials say, lacks shops and restaurants  the so-called mixed-use component  theyll be pushing for moving forward, according to Stephanie Philips, a member of the Zoning Commission.

Its still something thats very new, and well be looking at these applications on a case-by-case basis, Philips said. And so far, were not seeing many children coming out of these high-density apartment buildings, so the fear some have of TODs adding to the student population  I just dont see it.

Pushback in Stratford

In one of Stratfords prime downtown sites, the TOD idea is finding itself on an uphill path. Members of the Town Council have voiced distress over a high-density plan that Mayor John Harkins has for a former downtown schoolyard.

A centerpiece in Mayor Harkins vision of downtown Stratford is his plan to raze the former, shuttered Center School and turn the schoolyard into a mixed use development along with a parking garage.

To say the mayors idea has crashed into a Jersey barrier would be an understatement. Members of the Town Council not only want the plan halted, but have stated the school should be reopened. Theres even a Save Center School Facebook page.

Center School should not be torn down, said Dist. 3 Councilman Wali Kadeem to applause during the councils July meeting. That school should stay there and be used!

Stratford received a $1.2 million grant from the state to tear down Center School and an exasperated Harkins said the town will lose that money if it doesnt act quickly.

Lets look at that facts  there are no more neighborhood schools  the era of Leave it to Beaver is over and we have to follow desegregation laws, Harkins said. And the Board of Ed doesnt want it and wont accept it.

Harkins said the Councils posture doesnt make sense, noting that getting the building re-certified as a school would cost untold millions of dollars.

What were suggesting is a plan thatll energize Stratford center, he said. And whats their idea? To keep things the same forever?

Stratfords Dist. 10 Councilwomen Tina Manus, a frequent critic of Harkins, said TODs need a more thoughtful approach.

I think the TOD is a great idea, but were only thinking of it in terms of apartments, she said. That parking garage he wants looks like a box  and the reason why youre seeing a pushback in Stratford is because its not being done thoughtfully.

Market is there

Stanley Gniazdowski, part of the Milford consultant team, said that if the new developments meet the target rents that people want, TODs has a much better chance to succeed.

What youre really developing here is a new development, and the Milford downtown certainly meets the definition for a transit-oriented district and a walkable community, Gniazdowski said.

Milford Mayor Benjamin Blake said the 500 apartments that appeared in that citys downtown since 2000 are showing the direction to the future.

Those units are so popular, theres actually a waiting list, he said.

Planners said the TOD model will give suburban towns that have Metro-North stations a chance to make their central business districts more vibrant, with more things to see and do by creating attractions that are made possible with a greater population density.

TODs make central business districts more walkable and bikeable, and they create more taxable property, their advocates said. In a TOD, and multi-lane intersections are avoided because theyre difficult to negotiate on foot and parking lots are shunned, too, because theyre seen as an ugly waste of valuable real estate.

Parking good, bad, ugly

To a city planner, the car is a headache. A car needs a space while its owner is at home, another space while its owner works and more spaces in the places where its owner visits.

Then there are the streets that become clogged when there are too many cars. If they are too wide, theyre difficult or even impossible for pedestrians to cross.

And dont forget the parking lots and garages, both of which dont offer a very inviting scenes to people arriving by train. Another challenge to TOD planners is the fact that people living there will need some parking, too, separate and apart from those who drive to the Metro-North platforms.

You might have seen cities where a parking garage dominates the streetscape, and we dont want to do that here, said Geoffrey Fitzgerald, who is heading the BL planning team.

Downtown parking is a coveted asset, so much so that bouncers are hired to keep interlopers out of some parking lots, the planners noted during a tour of downtown. Still, downtown business advocates say that theres plenty of parking if you dont mind walking s little bit.

Planners say a lot of American town and cities have lost their character since the 1970s, filled with parking lots and overly wide streets that make walking difficult and with fewer places to go.
Cuba has approved more than 80 foreign investment projects since 2014

Submitted by: Juana

Havana

Business and Economy

11 / 03 / 2016



Cuban Foreign Trade and Investment Minister Rodrigo Malmierca said that, since the passing of the Law 118 for Foreign Investment in March 2014, 83 projects were approved under it.

Minister Malmierca explained that, out of that number, 14 were reinvestments, 15 within the Mariel Special Development Zone, and the rest throughout the country.

He added that the total volume of direct investment was of some 1.3 billion dollars in two years, far from the "expectations and needs" of Cuba, which requires some 2 billion a year to meet its development quota.

The Cuban Minister ratified the willingness of the country to continue working to make of direct foreign investment (DFI) an essential element for its socio-economic development.

He noted that Cuba is giving priority to the training of negotiating and sponsor groups to expedite the approval processes, along creating a favorable environment for investors.

National savings are not enough to face the challenges of Cuban economy, therefore DFI is much needed, Malmierca said.
04 Kasm 2016 Cuma, 19:32

- How do you assess the 15 July coup attempt?

The Turkish army is a NATO army. And, if one of its affiliated armies strays from the straight and narrow, NATO doesnt treat this like a tiff between in-laws. It knows about it at once.

- You mean?

What I mean is that this attempt was a NATO operation from start to finish. The Gulenist structure within the army  its nature, magnitude and reflexes, their entry into and progression up the military ranks and their attempted coup  all came about with NATOs knowledge and within the parameters that it set. Anything else flies in the face of NATOs nature. Any conclusion that does not set out from this and gets bogged down in concepts such as masterminds, assisting minds, global this, international that does not bear contemplation. The Gulenists were the prime vehicle that was available for bringing this coup off. A significant portion of the chain of command has responsibility, knowledge, complicity or conscious negligence that has or has not revealed itself. This set-up within the military became possible with the elimination of genuinely patriotic, left-leaning officers following 12 March 1971. The infiltration of the military by the Gulenists was one of the finishing touches of this plan. Given that there remains not even a single left-winger in the echelons of the military, only one party fits the bill, i.e. the Gulenists. Even then, the coup is still approached in a who dunnit? manner. In short, neither the Presidents, nor the chain of commands, public prosecutors or Resat Peteks current viewpoint suffices to make sense of or explain this coup attempt.

- You have said that 15 July amounts to what Ocalan referred to as the coup mechanism.

This hits the nail on the head. To be more specific, we can trace the coup mechanisms first move in the direction of causing mayhem back to Davutoglu establishing a cabinet and declaring war in the run up to the big-stick election. At the time, we judged this to be a coup attempt. Even Ocalans reference, not to a coup, but a coup mechanism is crucial in accounting for the current situation. Look, there was an attempted coup and it was repelled thanks both to the governments advance preparations and also the peoples heroic sacrifice and courage. But this has simply been followed by another attempted coup perpetrated at the hands of the AKP. Speculation as to the threat of a second coup provides further so-called legitimacy for this ongoing coup. Ocalan also pointed to the solution. Democratisation, and also at its most radical. There is no other way that this mechanism can be eliminated.

THE GOVERNMENT MAY HAVE TIPPED DEVELOPMENTS IN A PARTICULAR DIRECTION

- Selahattin Demirtas has stated his position to be, The coup was real but the measures taken were staged. As a director and script writer, do you see things as having been scripted or staged?

Mr Ertugrul Kurkcu was given a very hard time when he first came out with this analysis. What our co-chair is making is actually a serious analysis that everybody has in mind but lacks the courage to come out with. If we take this in conjunction with the NATO reality of which I spoke at the beginning, it is now clear that Russia gave crucial advance information and a warning. So, Russia was there before the brother-in-law. I dont think the coup attempt was staged by the government, but a staged reception was prepared. As they lacked the strength to nip it in the bud, they may have tipped developments in a particular direction. Looking at points that currently remain in the dark, it would appear that various negotiations were conducted with a portion of the chain of command that today does not appear to have been on the side of the coup. This is the scenario to suggest itself when we contemplate the effrontery of those coupists who boarded and wished to board the Chief of the General Staffs helicopters and the pliant attitude of the Chief of the General Staff. Leaked statements only serve to this bolster this view. Then, there is a wealth transfer dimension to both the 15 July and more recent coup that has yet to be delved into adequately and they cannot be understood independently of this. The calculations by means of which the scholar Yalcn Kucuk made sense of the 12 March and 12 September coups through economic indicators  and this was virtually the sole study made along these lines - need to be applied to this period, too. I hope the scholars health and time are conducive to this.

- The allegations of an alliance between the Fetullah Gulen Terrorist Organisation (FETO) and the Kurdish movement. Is such a thing possible?

This is a psychological war argument of ridiculous proportions. When all of these events are analysed in a wider regional context, this is political Islams civil war. Put in these terms, Kurds are also involved in the affair in that it has ingredients that are divisive for the religious community. It is working, unfortunately. Who at the palace now objects when the words, Come on, lets strike out at the Kurds are spoken?

- Your name was also included among the politicians wished a speedy recovery in the announcement that Gulen published. Were you also taken in over Gulen?

I am ashamed to say this. I have engaged in a number of discussions with leading lights of the Gulen movement. These were discussions with the full knowledge of our co-chair and the colleagues involved and in connection with the negotiating process. It was the governments incompetence that made them approach us.

PARALLEL NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE GULENISTS WHO WERE PRESSING ON THE BRAKE

- What kind of discussions were these?

Let me give you the following example. At the first Imral meeting, the soldiers held hostage by the PKK were to be freed, and, at the same time, those KCK detainees who had health problems and had official documents to prove this were to be released (and this was their legal right and not an additional procedure). The soldier hostages were freed. We the Imral delegation sat down with four ministers each week to assess where the process had come to. For months, the sick detainees occupied prime place on our agenda. The obstacles the Gulenists placed in both the judicial processes and police reports as well as on the forensic medicine side somehow proved insurmountable. It was said, Such-and-such department head is a Gulenist and he is blocking it  well change him. In the end, a leading minister summed things up by saying, Their worn out ones go and their fresh ones come. We waged a major diplomatic campaign under these conditions not only with the Gulenists but with all of the power centres in this country. The Gulenists were just one of these. We obtained partial results from this diplomacy but they never stopped trying to put a brake on the process. That announcement wishing a speedy recovery had its roots in the human relations that developed over this process. From our party, thanks were given to me and Ahmet Turk. Ahmet is also one of our colleagues who undertook major initiatives in such matters with Mr Ocalans approval.

- Which Gulenists did you speak to and about what?

We spoke to their representatives in the media and civil society. For the most part, we dwelled on the negative attitudes towards the solution process of Gulenist provincial and sub-provincial governors, policemen and prosecutors and their attempts to thwart it. We also drew attention to the malignant effects and unacceptable nature of the series on their television stations that were promoting a discourse of hatred. For their part, they complained about the violence and obstructions directed at their teaching centres in the region. We didnt manage to reach any concrete result.

- So, we can say that there were parallel negotiations with the Gulenists as well as with the government in the solution process.

Taking stock of the process as a whole, we can say that these were very much secondary negotiations. The only fruit they bore was in getting them to mind their tongues a bit.

OCALANS VIEW OF GULEN

- In the minutes of meetings, Abdullah Ocalan appeared to describe the Gulenists as being a counterguerilla organisation under the USAs influence. But, not long after these words had been picked up by the press, you commented that Ocalan had said, I second Fethullah Gulens sentiment that Peace is worth it. We can work together for democratic politics and peace in the entire Middle East. Pass on my regards to the honorouble Fethullah Gulen. Nobody understands him better than me. Which of these expresses what Ocalan really thinks?

Both of them. Ocalan has proved to be one of the best analysts of the Gulen Organisation and has characterised it aptly through the notion of a parallel state. He frequently said with reference to the solution process that provocative and obstructive acts might be staged by certain of the Gulenists deep structures. However, when he heard Gulens Peace is worth it pronouncement, he said, Then send my regards to him and if they are prepared to make a contribution towards peace we can work together for peace, not just in Turkey, but in the Middle East, and he sent that message to Gulen. His prime concern here was to put a stop to the Gulenist interference in the solution process. He didnt mince his words about this, either. He didnt regard the Gulenists as being simply a religious organisation, but took them very seriously on account of their international connections. His message was not to Gulen alone, but at the same time to those who were sheltering and controlling Gulen.

He sent the message, Do not obstruct the solution  Lets work together for peace to all influential international actors. He thought that Gulen was being held as a kind of hostage in the USA. Those who had kidnapped him and handed him over to Turkey in 1999 had also handed Gulen over to the USA. He thought that these were all part of operations being waged against Turkey to force it to capitulate and he constantly channelled his efforts into developing new practices to upset these plans. There is a side to him that, once he has identified the meerest of opportunities, will spare no effort in the interests of exploiting it. He also wanted to exploit the Peace is worth it message emanating from Gulen in this way, but, sadly, no result was forthcoming.

- Following 15 July, we once more hear the accusation of being an attempted coup levelled against the Gezi protests. You played a particularly important role in Gezis inception and you stood by Gezi until the end, standing up against certain dessenting voices within your party at the time, the BDP. With the benefit of hindsight, do you see a mastermind or Gulenist influence behind Gezi?

Let me set out by challenging the important role comment. I performed some commonplace functions. Looking back from the present, I just see Ali Ismail, Abdocan, Ethem, Berkin, Medeni and all of my brothers who lost blood or their lives for the sake of this dissent. The most important role: Well, this is an accolade that belongs to them, and them alone. And of course I see the tyrrany in which everybody from the Gulenists to the government acted in concert. The positive and good aspects of Gezi, the place that it has taken in our history, will be better understood as time progresses.

- We are in an environment in which the President speaks of the solution process having been placed in the deep freeze for good and the Prime-Minister says there is No solution; no nothing. There was an initiative at the time of the previous Prime-Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to broker an end to the fighting in Yuksekova with the HDP, but opposition by the President and military to this initiative appeared to put an end to it. Since then, the KCK have pointed to certain mediation attempts and there is Abdullah Ocalans message passed on through his brother ...

Unfortunately, the government and President adopt a position that rejects peace and prioritises war. At first, they tried to create imitation negotiating parties. It became clear that this was not going to work. Two basic obstacles stand in the way of the new initiative. The first is that they do not want to hear Ocalan asking, Where did we leave off? when they go to Imral. They have neither the political courage nor the power to implement earlier agreements. Forget their semblance of having almighty power. The truth is that they are powerless. And more so than ever. The aggression and annihilatory wishes they harbour towards intellectuals, the media, public-sector workers and the HDP bear witness to this weakness of theirs. The second is the irrational nature of the position they have adopted vis-a-vis the rise of a de-facto Kurdish reality in the region. This position has taken them to the pit of Hell in terms of sustainability and cost. A further weakness related to the above is their lack of adequate and competent staff. Virtually all of the people they are drawing on as recruits are either under suspicion of being crypto-Gulenists or are from the old guard that harbours the potential to stage a coup against them. Against this background, they are clinging to basic concepts that accompany times of coup such as national unity and indigenousness. It must be realised that these concepts are not just coupist jargon, but are also mandated by the new alliances they have entered. The government is essentially hankering after isolationism with its Eurasianist discourse. This is the portrayal of the class struggle conceptualised in a manner that aims to degrade notions such as human rights and international solidarity. If they would but be bold, abandon their yearning for absolute power and embark on a new beginning under the slogan of democratic unity, things would come about far more smoothly and legitimately, and informed by the notions of the common good and rightousness.

- We gather from the KCKs announcement that certain fractions have launched initiatives relating to the solution process. What is the state of play with these? Is there a fresh initiative? Or, do you believe such a thing to be likely in the near future?

I dont want to sow hope for the sake of it, but I would like to maintain my optimistic outlook. In one sense, it all depends on regional factors, too. But its impossible for the status quo to be maintained without incurring massive social costs.

- On 7 June, the HDP took 80 seats in parliament with 13% of the vote. On top of this, it was a party about which half of the electorate did not say: I will certainly not vote for them, that is, might potentially vote for. How far have we reached in the process of weakening that became visible on 1 November? Is the HDP today a party that continues to aspire towards embracing the whole of Turkey?

We stand by all of our principled positions and claims without the slightest deviation. What has changed is not the HDP, but the countrys entire political atmosphere. We pulled it off once. We will assess our shortcomings and errors and once more surpass ourselves. If you look not just at Turkey but at the region, theres nobody apart from us who is capable of comprehending the era and has a story anchored in its ability to organise. Many political formations, far from comprehending the era and its paradigm, lack even the motivation and need to do so.

- Do you feel that its possible to maintain the HDPs line in an enviroment in which there is no solution process or even a cease fire?

It may be more tricky, but its possible. No public opinion survey conducted since 1 November has put us below the November results.

- Do you think that the PKK has comprehended the success the HDP has acheived and the significance of this in the process leading to peace? How do you react to comments that the HDP has been derailed by the PKK?

I dont agree. Or, I dont think they specifically acted with that end in mind but war by its very nature narrows the scope for democratic politics. Thats the way it is in objective terms. This narrowing is something that affects all political formations, not just the HDP.

THE PKK SHOULD HAVE LET POLITICS DEAL WITH FEARS OF DESTRUCTION

- In that case, how do you react to comments that the PKK is also itching to take up arms as the state scraps the solution process?

There was a major lack of trust from the outset, in mutual terms. This proved to be insurmountable. Davutoglus clumsy, crackpot policies towards Rojava and Syria thoroughly escalated this crisis. The resort to arms is not made or undertaken with glee. Its an act that is driven by multifarious reasons. The decisive factor, I suspect, was the perception that the governernment was preparing for destruction and not peace. My own inclination is towards placing such concerns in the hands of civil politics and democratic forces. There is no way of knowing what the result will be, but the worst peace is always better than the war.

- You once said, We can call on the trenches to be filled in but the people wont respond. But there is a clearly visible fallout among the people of the region from the massive disaster Qandils trench policy has lead them into and anger at the HDPs failure to play the role expected of it in this affair. Do you find yourself saying, If only we had told them to fill in the trenches?

The Imral delegation solved the earlier trench crisis. Remember how the Diyarbakr-Bingol main road was closed to traffic, scarred with dozens of trenches, and soldiers were taken hostage. People took great exception to the frenetic construction of fortress-like police stations in a region in which even homes destroyed by earthquake go unbuilt for years. The National Security Council was set to convene two days later and the military contingent, most of whom are now in detention on suspicion of involvement in the coup, was calling for a firm intervention. We responded to a proposal from the government and got involved. We spoke to the people of the region. We sounded out the situation on the ground. We immediately passed on our insights to the government. In the end, construction of fortress-like police stations was halted and we got the soldier hostages back. The trenches were filled in by the very people who had dug them in the space of one day. The road was safely reopened to traffic and we sorted things out without as much as a nosebleed and through dialogue free from coercion. At the same time as the ministerial component of the National Security Council was attending the NSC meeting, they were coordinating with us. I mean, you dont just get a response by calling for something. If this had not been accompanied by gestures in return that prioritised peace, we would simply have been asked to add our signatures to these young peoples death warrants. We could not have signed such a thing. With there already being enough butchers in the guise of doves around, this would have been an inhuman step to take. Thats what Im driving at. I would like to pass on another important piece of information: At the outset in Silopi we stepped in and brokered another solution without anybody suffering harm. But, it then appeared to us that the Interior Ministry lost control. Deeper Gladio formations took charge. When we tried to activate these channels in Sur and Cizre, too, we ran into these Gladio walls.

- What kind of negotiations were these? Did you intermediate between the PKK and the government?

It was not direct intermediation. It was an initiative that we ourselves nurtured. It resulted in the halting of the problematic operations, and the trenches began to be filled in. But the warmongering fraction within the state quickly stirred things up.

- When you speak of Gladio, are you referring to the Gulenists or another fraction?

No, what Im referring to are actual special war operatives riding around in jeeps. The second trench affair erupted thanks to the involvement of these special war operatives and an intense and massive wave of arrests and detentions staged in these regions by members of the police force who are now also mostly in detention. It didnt just happen spontaneously. And it was furthered by elements within the government and the Gulen movement. In spite of this, we held meetings in ten trench and barricade-filled sub-provinces pioneered by our co-chair Mr Demirtas in September 2015. At these meetings, we called for a democratic political solution whereby the trenches and barricades would be dismantled and the government would also put a stop to the wave of detentions. Unfortunately, the government and the media close to it paid no heed to these efforts of ours and waded in with great force and brutality against these young people. We have pushed very hard to keep war out of both the mountains and the cities and will continue to push for this. But nobody can hold the HDP responsible for the use of the trenches and barricades as an excuse to burn and destroy Kurdish cities until they are wiped from the map. There is no excuse for this crime against humanity. In spite of everything, we are alive to our responsibility to the people as dictated by our political morality. We are also sufficiently imbued with conscience to see our own deficiencies and inadequacies.

- You have said in another of your interviews that, It is not correct for the PKK to attach more importance than is necessary to the international situation. In fact, you added Rojava and other developments in the region to this equation. From where we now stand, is there an aspect to the destruction that has been wrought in the Kurdish provinces by urban warfare  what one might call trench politics - that is attributable to the excessive importance attached by the PKK to the Wests support? Does the Kurdish movement attach greater importance to gaining status in Rojava than to peace in Turkey?

There are no indications that the PKK has placed issues under a heirarchy of this nature. Their most recent public declaration concerning peace in Turkey augurs well as far as peace is concerned. We as the delegation also made an attention-grabbing announcement about this, but unfortunately it was stifled by the controlled media. That particular assessment of mine was made with reference to the way things stack up in regional terms.

- You said, in assessing the message forwarded by Abdullah Ocalans brother Mehmet Ocalan, that A delegation and approach that embraces a solution needs to move in. What were you referring to by this?

When the process hit the ropes, I looked at the tone and content of comments by government representatives. I know enough about conflict and solution processes in the world. If you crave peace, this becomes apparent from the language you use. Looking at the language in use, I saw that it was far removed from this. Thats what I was referring to.

- In the visit by HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtas and the delegation accompanying him to the Kurdish Regional Government, was Barzanis intermediation discussed? Did this visit make a contribution to the quest for peace?

This visit was entirely for the purpose of repairing the communications breakdown between the Kurdish parties there, alleviating tension and strengthening the basis for alliance among Kurds. This will certainly make a contribution to our countrys internal peace, not directly but indirectly.

- Will you have contacts with the Kurdish Regional Government? Do you trust Barzanis intermediation?

We feel nothing but joy at the support of anybody who is capable of making a genuine contribution to peace. Mr Barzani is an experienced and important leader. He is not one to balk at any potential contribution he might make. Precisely the same applies to Mr Talabani and his party, the YNK. We have had countless meetings. Quite a few of these have led to very productive results. We will meet again if conditions are conducive to this.

- In Columbia, the peace agreement between FARC and the government was rejected  even with a low turnout and a small majority  in a referendum. Have you ever asked yourself what would happen in Turkey if there were to be such a referendum?

Peace cannot be subjected to referendum. Neither in Turkey nor in Columbia. FARCs pronouncement that it will continue to work towards peace is most encouraging. Percentage-wise, popular support for the solution process is in the nineties in the region and in the sixties in the West.

- The people of the region complain of not having seen their members of parliament at their sides when Cizre and Sur were being destroyed. Do you have any self-criticism about this?

No such complaint was addressed to us, actually. Speaking for myself, I was the one who was able to attend the least. I had undergone two major medical operations and my mobility was seriously impaired. Nevertheless, I will exercise self-criticism for everything I was unable to do, but all of our members of parliament, not least the members for the region, have hardly ever seen Ankara since they were elected. For months they have stood under fire alongside the people on a 24-hour basis in these areas. They have diced with death on many occasions. Our MP Faysal, Ferhan Encu and all of our women MPs have worked their hearts out. Mr Demirtas has faced assassination attempts on two occasions. Large delegations of ours including Mr Kurkcu and Ms Yuksekdag have been directly targeted by these Gladio forces that defy indentification. I know that this attempt was frustrated by a last minute intervention on the part of the official military. Mithat Sancar and Ahmet Turk have been hospitalised many times.

- In January, you said, They will lift our immunity and detain us in a more sophisticated way than in the nineties. Immunity has been lifted and there has yet to be a detention. Do you still think you will be detained?

What do you imagine lay behind those media operations and those brutal moves against the intellectuals, artists and scientists who were supporting us? I hope they dont follow up on them but one after another they have started to obtain orders for us to be forced to appear in court. The struggle continues on all fronts for us. We will see what happens.

- The orders to be forced to appear involve being brought to hearings. Leaving that to one side, do you still think you will be detained and put in jail?

This project was never shelved. They are weighing up the costs for them.

- You said not long ago, If Tayyip Erdogans paradigm succeeds, I think that everybody in the Dolmabahce photograph will be liquidated. Including Efkan Ala. Erdogans paradigm and your prediction appear to have come off.

If only neither of them had. If the desire and aspiration to democratise does not gain social acceptance, chaos is the best we can expect for our country. If we are not to abandon hope, there is still a way back. And this is possible if all of the forces of democracy adopt the goal of a palpable peace purged of conceptual confusion. The Erdogan paradigm is not an approach that is eponymous with him. The fate of the Ottoman Empire was precisely this approach as it played out in history. And our approach is the updated version of the consciousness that has created a homeland out of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire. If we dont unite and pay mutual heed to our law, were done for.

- Those in power speak of a new War of Salvation Are you claiming to be the ones waging the new War of Salvation?

We are waging a fight for the construction of a new democratic republic. A free, equal and just republic in which everybody can exist as themselves. If the government is to engage in a war of salvation, it must start by halting the devastation at Cerattepe and at hundreds of such corners of the country. The way things are going therell be nothing left worth having of the country.

- You could have carried on in greater freedom being a director and writing screenplays, able to speak your mind and, on top of that, with the peace of mind that comes from being uninvolved in politics. Are there times you regret being an MP?

What concerns me is the state of the nation. It would be contemptible to make personal calculations when lives are at stake. Even at times when I feel regret, I prefer to keep this to myself. If we have hardly sacrificed a single one of our sons in war over the past three years, then I deserve a drop of credit, like the proverbial ant carrying a drop of water to extinguish the fire of Nimrod. I can devote the rest of my life to the second drop.

- We learn from the minutes of meetings that when you told Ocalan you wanted to leave politics you met with objection and he secured a promise from you that you wouldnt do this. Will you keep your promise to Ocalan?

Ive kept that promise, anyhow. What I wanted to leave was not politics. It was being an active MP. I have disliked it from the very outset. I struggle to live up to the impositions it makes on me. Despite this, Ive always remained true to the description of being an MP that I gave to the people. But there is more to politics than being an MP. Im getting old. My health isnt at all good. My mind isnt as sharp as it once was. I sometimes find that Im repeating myself. I look at young colleagues with admiration. Making way for them will be one of the best things we can do for ourselves and our country. I have assembled a pile of notes. I want to tell in an epic novel the history over the centuries of the region stretching from the birthplace of the Euphrates to the Shatt al Arab and known to maps of yore as the Land of Floods. Having made the acquaintance of Mr Ocalan and having worked with him for three years, this story has also gained a significant ecological dimension. The revolutionary poet Enver Gokce also had such a yearning while resident at the Seyranbaglar old peoples home. His lifetime and health did not suffice. The time has now come to set down what I have amassed and observed.

- I take it from this that you are preparing to give up being an MP.

I have put in three stints already. I have to hand on the baton under our rule book.
Democrats saw a surge in new voters in Pennsylvania as midterms near
What a piece of work is Nick Clegg. Without any discernible great talent or intellect (though he has a beautiful wife!), this is the man whose chief legacy to our country is the annihilation of his party, after he swapped its few remaining principles for a ministerial car and the grandiose title of deputy prime minister.

Indeed, as Lib Dem leader, he tore up one manifesto pledge after another and whittled down the 67 MPs he inherited to a pathetic rump of just eight.

Yet with supreme arrogance, this eurofanatical ex-MEP threatens to mobilise the partys 100-odd peers to overturn the will of 17.4million voters, emphatically expressed in the referendum on June 23.

He indicates that Lib Dems will vote to block withdrawal unless the Government opts for soft Brexit

Seizing on Thursdays anti-democratic ruling by three High Court judges, who said the vote gave ministers no authority to leave the EU without Parliamentary consent, he indicates that Lib Dems will vote to block withdrawal unless the Government opts for soft Brexit.

Leave aside that, even by the standards of the House of Cronies and Dodgy Donors, there is no creature more puffed-up and absurd  or less qualified to speak and act for the British people  than a We Know Best Lib Dem peer.

Nobody should be under any illusion about what the likes of Mr Clegg mean when they talk of soft Brexit. Put bluntly, they mean no Brexit.

Specifically, they mean we should retain our EU membership in all but name, continuing to pay hefty subscriptions to Brussels, staying in the customs union, obeying every suffocating regulation laid down by the unelected European Commission and remaining committed to the free movement of people.

As Mr Clegg knows full well, this is not what the British people voted for.

During his time as leader, this self-important pipsqueak all but wiped out public support for his party. Is he now determined to finish the job?

Nothing to hide?

Commonwealth Secretary-General Baroness Scotland claims she is guilty of no extravagance at all

Hotly denying allegations of profligacy, Commonwealth Secretary-General Baroness Scotland claims she is guilty of no extravagance at all in refurbishing her taxpayer-funded mansion  though the estimated cost rose from 250,000 to 430,000 after she lodged new demands.

She also shrugs off charges of cronyism, saying the 30,000-a-month contract she granted her friend Lord Patel was worth it for his excellence and experience.

So will Baroness Shameless explain why, if she has nothing to hide, her deputy has threatened to sack and/or prosecute any whistleblower who alerts the public to her spending habits? Its only our money, after all.

It emerges that Sir Craig has waltzed from Downing Street into a six-figure job for a lobbying company, advising firms on how to influence Government policy on Brexit

Sickening, Sir Craig

Theresa Mays jibe at the expense of Sir Craig Oliver, the No 10 spin doctor who led David Camerons Remain campaign, was perhaps less than prime ministerial. It was amusing all the same.

In his book, she told guests at an awards ceremony, he said when he heard the result of the referendum, he walked out of the office and as he walked into Whitehall, he started to retch violently.

We all understand that feeling. Most of us experienced it when we saw his name on the resignation honours list!

Indeed, some may suffer that same reaction today, as it emerges that Sir Craig has waltzed from Downing Street into a six-figure job for a lobbying company, advising firms on how to influence Government policy on Brexit.

Thus, he becomes the latest to exploit contacts and inside knowledge gleaned in public service for private gain.
Last week, Sir John Chilcot appeared in Parliament for the first time since his report into the Iraq War was published last summer.

Hed been invited to address the Liaison Committee, which comprises chairmen of the various Commons select committees and which is normally convened to question the prime minister.

Rightly, MPs congratulated Sir John on his work. In contrast to the report published by Lord Hutton in the immediate aftermath of the invasion (which was sloppily researched and its findings both complacent and questionable), Sir John has shown great integrity and fortitude.

However, there remains one serious failing concerning his report, which is mainly the fault of politicians and not Sir John. This is a lack of any serious government response to his devastating findings.

Sir John Chilcot appeared in Parliament for the first time since his report into the Iraq War was published last summer

No changes have been made to government policy, even though the report was specifically set up so that we should learn lessons from the Iraq fiasco.

Of course, many years have passed since then and key figures have moved on, but no heads have rolled, even though Chilcot exposed incompetence and duplicity at the highest level of government.

Equally distressing, none of those brave souls who warned that the war could have terrible consequences have been given their just recognition.

No, overall, its as though Sir John had been deliberately ignored.

Although there remains anger and bitterness that none of the senior bankers responsible for the 2008 financial crash were sent to jail, at least Fred Goodwin (the disgraced head of the Royal Bank of Scotland) was stripped of his knighthood, sacked from his job and obliged to sacrifice part of his pension.

By contrast, Sir John Scarlett, the spy chief whose dossier on Saddam Husseins supposed weapons of mass destruction was later exposed as a travesty, retains his honours and emoluments.

Among other posts, he is a senior adviser at financial services giant Morgan Stanley and chairman of the Bletchley Park Trust.

Sir Richard Dearlove, head of the Secret Intelligence Service, which did such a calamitous job under his leadership in the run-up to the Iraq war, has escaped scot-free.

There remains one serious failing concerning his report, which is mainly the fault of politicians and not Sir John. This is a lack of any serious government response to his devastating findings

Hes Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, has several financial appointments and is a well-paid speaker on global security.

As for politicians excoriated by Chilcot, apart from Blair  who has made millions hawking his advice around the world in the guise of a global statesman  Jack Straw, his Foreign Secretary during the Iraq invasion, who later misled MPs about British involvement in torture of prisoners, is still a Privy Councillor.

Lord Goldsmith, Blairs Attorney General, whose flawed legal advice was the basis for the Labour government taking us to war, remains a well-heeled QC.

Most egregiously, Alastair Campbell, Blairs propaganda chief and composer of the dodgy dossier, is a wealthy man whose views are often sought by the BBC.

All these men have escaped official censure despite the damning Chilcot report, which highlighted how our governmental system was ruthlessly abused by Blair & Co in the lead-up to the war.

SUCH UTTER ARROGANCE! MPs celebrating the High Court ruling that Brexit cannot be triggered without a Westminster vote are implying the British people were too stupid and racist to have been entrusted with a vote in the EU referendum. By implication, they arrogantly think the decision should be left to wise, mature and enlightened MPs  such as those fools who voted Keith Vaz (a man caught offering to buy cocaine for rent boys) onto the Commons Justice Committee. Advertisement

This failure had terrible consequences in the Arab world, with the loss of countless lives and the constant threat of terrorism with which we all have to live today. That the individuals concerned have paid no price for this is morally wrong.

On the other hand, the heroes of the Iraq war are being punished. Several hundred British soldiers are shamefully subject to criminal investigation  at taxpayers expense no less  following allegations of abuse by Iraqi civilians.

Of course, I accept it is right that anyone who might have committed war crimes should be investigated, but a very troubling double standard is at work here.

While soldiers who risked their lives on the front line face possible prosecution, the politicians, generals and mandarins who dispatched them to war continue to lead charmed lives. I think I know the reason for this  and it sheds a revealing light on the attitudes of our ruling class.

Politicians from all main parties have joined together to orchestrate a cover-up. They have done this cynically to protect their own.

I am afraid Sir John Chilcot must bear some of the blame for this. Though his report was very thorough, he held back from making damning personal judgments.

David Cameron and Theresa May voted for war while Sir Jeremy Heywood, who is still Cabinet Secretary, was one of those on Blairs sofa when he launched the illegal war against Iraq

For example, he set out the evidence proving that Blair and his associates lied to the British people in order to make a false case for war  but then stopped well short of accusing Blair of being a liar.

Even in Parliament this week, Sir John did no more than state that Blair went beyond the facts in making the case for war.

Other very senior civil servants  for instance, Sir Robin Butler (who led an earlier review of intelligence failings in the run-up to the 2003 invasion)  have used similar, euphemistic phrases.

Allies of Blair have exploited this official cowardice to claim he acted in good faith by taking us to war.

As a result, several of Blairs most disgraceful lies, for instance about the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, remain on the official parliamentary record  in defiance of the ministerial code that states ministers must correct errors at the first opportunity.

Of more urgent and practical significance, there is no evidence that the lessons of the Iraq war have been applied to government.

To give one example, Philip Hammond (now Chancellor, but Foreign Secretary at the time the Chilcot report was published) said similar mistakes to those made in the run-up to the Iraq invasion would never be made again because then PM, David Cameron, had created a National Security Council.

This meets weekly and is meant to ensure ministers consider national security in a strategic way.

This was nonsense. I believe this body is deeply flawed and, in any case, did nothing to prevent the British intervention in Libya in 2011 turning into a disaster.

The publication of Sir John Chilcots report should have been the trigger for a national debate on all the huge issues raised by the Iraq, Afghan and Libyan disasters.

For example, is Britain too keen to kow-tow to the U.S.? What has gone wrong with MI6? Should Blair be prosecuted for leading Britain into an illegal war?

Philip Hammond (Foreign Secretary at the time the Chilcot report was published) said similar mistakes to those made in the run-up to the Iraq invasion would never be made again

However, like ostriches with their heads in the sand, members of the British establishment refuse to apportion blame  or, more importantly, to learn the lessons of Iraq.

Perhaps that is no surprise. As Opposition MPs, David Cameron and Theresa May voted for war while Sir Jeremy Heywood, who is still Cabinet Secretary, was one of those on Blairs sofa when he launched the illegal war against Iraq.

Tragically, this is the real lesson of the Chilcot Inquiry: no British politician or public official will ever have to pay the price of failure for their part in this debacle, which, most worryingly, leaves them free to fail over and over again.

Shamefully, there have been no charges over torture

One of our Governments most under-reported scandals concerns the use of torture.

More than a decade after it became apparent we were part of the foul U.S. practice of extraordinary rendition (the apprehension and transfer of detainees to foreign countries for interrogation), no one has been held to account and no criminal charges have been brought.

Whats worse, as PM, David Cameron cancelled an official investigation set up under lawyer Sir Peter Gibson. Then the Crown Prosecution Service mysteriously decided not to press charges in connection with the case of Abdul Hakim Belhadj, a member of the Libyan opposition to Gaddafi, who was abducted with his wife by Americans in Thailand, from where they were planning to come to Britain and seek political asylum.

So it looked like good news when Dominic Grieve, the former Attorney General, was appointed to chair the Commons intelligence committee and he promptly announced an inquiry into extraordinary rendition. But since then, evidence is emerging that the inquiry has been inert and sluggish.

In July, the all-party group on extraordinary rendition sent Mr Grieve a letter demanding assurances about its handling of the Belhadj case. More than three months has passed and there has been no response.
On a trip to central Australia Marion Halliday ducked in to use the loo in a public carpark.

As she walked out, she was faced with the most incredible view of the ancient rock formations Kata Tjuta, or The Olgas.

It was just mind-blowing, I took a photo and my partner said its the most scenic loo in Australia, she said.

Loo with a view: Marion Halliday has taken photos of Australia's most scenic public toilets, including this view at Kata Tjuta, or The Olgas (pictured)

Outback adventures: Ms Halliday runs the travel blog RedzAustralia. Pictured is a toilet on Birdsville Rd in western Queensland

Outhouse: This photo was taken of a loo at White Cliffs Opal Fields in western New South Wales

While the photo was a bit of a novelty, it was something she showed family and friends when they asked about her trip.

Ever since, the travel blogger has been on a quest to find the most scenic loo in Australia, even publishing her findings in a book: Aussie Loos With Views.

Ms Halliday, 53, from the Adelaide Foothills, has been travelling the country since she was a child.

Explorer: Ms Halliday (pictured) has been travelling Australia since she was a child

Barren waste land: Pictured is a toilet at the Quobba Blow Holes in Western Australia

Spectacular: Her favourite loo with a view in New South Wales is on Lord Howe Island (pictured)

She started her blog, RedzAustralia, as a place to share her travel stories.

The other reason is a lot of people say theres nowhere to go and nothing much to do in Australia, so theyre going overseas, she told Daily Mail Australia.

Her blog is filled with incredible photos from around the country, from her time spent in the red centre to the tropical Queensland coast and Tasmanias rugged landscape.

She said while many people travel to Australias hot spots  such as the capital cities  she wanted to share parts of rural Australia with her followers.

Sunburnt country: Ms Halliday hopes to shed light on Australia's regional communities. This photo was taken in the Kimberley, Western Australia

Simply stunning: One of her tips for travellers is to treat every state in Australia like a different country. Pictured is the view from a loo in Rainbow Valley, Northern Territory

My advice is to treat each state like a different country, she said about travelling Australia.

A lot of people think Australia is all surf and sand, and yeah thats one part of it, but if you go inland youve got the outback, if you go up north youve got tropical rainforest and youve got the coasts.

Aussie Loos With Views takes readers on a tour of the country from the bathroom.

The book has been well received, with many adding their suggestions should Ms Halliday write a sequel.

Expansive: Pictured is Signal Peak and Serra Range in the Grampians, Victoria

Vibrant: A public toilet at Wycliffe Well in the Northern Territory is covered in paintings

Red centre: Pictured are the Rock Formations on Bunkers at Wilkawillina Gorge, Flinders Ranges, South Australia

As for her favourite? Ms Halliday has one in each state.

Lord Howe Island in New South Wales has the most absolutely spectacular loo with a view, she said.

If you go to Western Australia, probably my all-time favourite is at the well-known Five Rivers Lookout in the Kimberly.

Get started: 'It's amazing how much you can see in a weekend, or a week or a month,' she said. Ms Halliday is pictured at Yourambulla Caves in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia

Picturesque: The sun rises over Lake Moogerah at Scenic Rim in Queensland

Red sky at night: The red sunset at Lord Howe Island off the coast of New South Wales

Her favourite state overall for scenic loos was South Australia, with some spectacular loos over the York Peninsula.

Ms Halliday said she had three main tips for people looking to travel Australia.

Make a bucket list and plan to tick off at least two or three every year, she said.

Hot topic: She wrote a book - Aussie Loos With Views - and has since been contacted from others with suggestions for more scenic toilets

Looking down: Pictured is the view from the highest loo in Australia at Rawson Pass at the top of Mount Kosciuszko

Treat each state like a different country.

And lastly, get started.

It's amazing how much you can see in a weekend, or a week or a month. Just do it.
Sitting in the police holding cell mother-of-two Kerry Tucker remembers hearing the sound of lashing rain. It was a sound, she says, that literally made her want to die.

Kerry's two young children Sarah and Shannyn liked to snuggle up to her when it was raining.

But that day they couldn't come to her - because their mother was behind bars.

Kerry Tucker had been arrested for stealing almost $2 million from an employer. Although to the outside world, she seemed to have a picture perfect life - with a nice home and good job - in fact it was spiralling out of control.

Kerry Tucker (left) has opened up about the toll her imprisonment took on her young daughters Sarah (standing) and Shannyn (front)

She said she was desperately unhappy when she stole the money to 'keep up appearances' and in 2004 she was jailed for seven years for theft and fraud.

Now, in an interview with Daily Mail Australia, Kerry reveals the shocking toll her imprisonment in a maximum security jail took on her relationship with her daughters, now aged 19 and 21, and how she's spent her life since prison trying to make it up to them.

'I was your typical mother,' Kerry said of their relationship prior to her jail term - of which she served just under five years.

Sarah, now 19, (pictured) told Daily Mail Australia that her number one wish at Christmas was to have her mum home

Kerry Tucker has revealed how it was hard for her to re-establish a relationship with Sarah and Shannyn (pictured) but said the three of them now have a 'very unique and close' bond

'I gave birth to them. I put them to bed every night. I'd walk them to school; I was still holding their little hands when they crossed the road. So to not be there for a night and wonder what they were thinking, how they were feeling, who's tucking them in, who's bathing them - it's such a disconnection.

'I remember sitting in the police holding cell and it was just the worst place on earth. I could hear the rain and I remember it was the first time I thought I was literally going to die.'

Kerry described that moment as a feeling of 'overwhelming hopelessness' as she could do nothing to comfort her daughters who hated the rain.

Shannyn and Sarah are pictured not long before Kerry went to prison

'I couldn't go there for an hour and make sure they were ok. I couldn't ring them. I could do nothing but sit in a concrete cell and wonder what was happening.

'Someone once said to me that you can never break a mother's love and I understand that and I believe that, but the bond definitely can be broken.'

You can never break a mother's love, but the bond can definitely be broken

After being kept in holding cells for a month, Kerry had the opportunity to see the girls who were then aged five and seven and a half.

'Seeing them come to the visitor centre at the prison was totally overwhelming,' she said. 'The three of us just cried and I cried more because they were saying "come on let's go, we've come to get you".

'Seeing them walk out the door without you was something I never want to do ever again.'

Kerry said she is extremely proud of her daughters. Here, Sarah is pictured at her graduation

Knowing her children didn't fully understand the situation, Kerry said she vowed then never to cry in front of them again.

'They knew that mummy had done something wrong,' she said, but admitted she couldn't bring herself to tell them how long she would be gone for.

WHAT DOES KERRY TUCKER'S DAUGHTER SAY? Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, Kerry Tucker's daughter Sarah, 19, remembers her number one Christmas wish being for her mum to come home. 'When she was actually coming home, it was like my wishes came true,' she said. 'But I was also nervous because we hadn't 'lived' with mum for five years.' She remembered their first reunion as 'awkward' but said that things had now changed. 'We went shopping and Shan and I kept arguing and fighting. I could tell mum felt a bit uncomfortable because she didn't know how to stop us from bickering,' she said 'Things have changed so much. We've all become much closer and have such a strong bond now.' Advertisement

'I was awarded 24 hours a year to see the children,' Kerry said. 'I was also allowed only two 12-minute phone calls a week.

'So I had six minutes with each child. I basically heard them grow up. I would press the phone up against my ear and try and listen.. was [my daughter] trying not to cry, is she angry, does she want to talk, is she disinterested, is someone there?

'That was how I had to try and work it with the girls. Mostly they were very angry and they were very sad that Mum just wasn't there.'

Revealing that she and her daughters are still working on rebuilding their bond, Kerry said that being separated was almost harder for the kids than if she had died.

'They don't have that opportunity to grieve and move on,' she said. 'It's very difficult for them to understand. It's such a complex situation.'

Kerry wrote many journals during her time in prison, often transcribing conversations she'd had with her girls on the prison telephone.

'I'm reading back through them now and it's heartbreaking,' she said. 'I have to get up and walk away. I was writing it in the moment and I was writing it in tears.

Kerry Tucker pictured with her daughter Shannyn when she was around four months old.

'I've written things like "Sarah said to me today I guess then the next time I see you will be in heaven".'

To try and maintain their bond, Kerry said she would go to the canteen and buy a card for each of them with pretty pictures on the front. Each girl would get a different card.

'I'd write to each of them,' she said. 'The girls have still got them. Boxes and boxes.'

But in spite of that, Kerry openly admitted she lost her parenting skills in prison.

'I remember the first day I was home. I saw the girls and we were at a shopping centre and standing there everything had changed so much.

Shannyn, then two, and Sarah, then six months, are pictured on the back deck of Kerry's home

EXTRACT FROM KERRY TUCKER'S PRISON JOURNAL In her prison journal Kerry often wrote of her daughters. I miss my little girls. I can hear them laughing and giggling in the back recesses of my mind,' she wrote in one. 'I can hear them playing back there. It makes me sad for a minute before I crawl on top of it but also happy that I still have these moving pictures in my mind. They are becoming more and more frequent as I get closer to home, closer to them.' Advertisement

'The girls started to fight and I had no idea what to do. I was not an authority figure. They felt sorry for me. These little girls that I'd help cross the road hand in hand and now I'm sitting here on a bench watching them fight, not knowing who they were or how to deal with it. The disconnection couldn't have been bigger.'

Kerry said she realised the kids had settled into a routine without her, and she didn't want to unsettle them.

'They loved their dad. They didn't want to be unsettled and I wasn't the mum they knew,' she said. 'It was really hard. I was used to not seeing them. They were used to not seeing me.'

After prison, Kerry moved around a lot and it took time to re-establish the bond.

'By the time you do, it's a totally different relationship because they are young adults. They've always been very supportive but I came back to two very different children - they were almost like step-children.'

Kerry said she stole the money because she was deeply unhappy and wanted to 'keep up appearances' (pictured is Kerry at seven months pregnant with Shannyn)

But she said the three of them now have a very unique and very close bond and said her girls are her 'greatest achievement'

'Im very proud of them and all they have overcome too,' she said. 'We now enjoy a fantastic relationship  after overcoming many obstacles and years of patience and persistence on both sides.'

Kerry, who became a university lecturer following her release and holds numerous advocacy roles, is a supporter of home detention as an option for those who have committed minor non-violent crimes - in order to preserve the family bond as much as possible and prevent 'fracturing' the relationship between a parent and child.

'I've spent every moment since I've been released trying to make it up to my girls, trying to make them proud of me,' she said. 'But that doesn't happen with everyone who has been in prison. I'm very aware that things could be a lot different.'
Posing for selfies on the red carpet this week, Theresa May, 60, looked every inch the A-lister. The PMs 595 blue Amanda Wakeley dress was cut daringly above the knee and she wore Swarovski crystal-studded stilettos by Dolce & Gabbana.

What a contrast to her first TV appearance in 1997, for which she wore a raincoat and trilby hat. Privately, she has always cared about style  but from her first pair of leopard print heels to that cleavage-baring dress, shes had ups and downs.

Of late, though, her fashion choices have been hitting the mark. From sleeker hair to racy underwear, SARAH RAINEY reveals the secrets of Theresas transformation.

Nordic walking to help her lose weight

Those early briefings leave no time for a personal trainer, though Mrs May goes to the gym several times a week.

Shes attributed much of her 2 st weight loss (she dropped from a size 14 to a size 10/12 between 2009 and 2012) to a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes, which means she has to watch her sugar intake.

However, one of the other secrets behind those lithe legs and toned upper arms is one of her favourite hobbies: Nordic walking.

Miss May, pictured left in 2009 and right in 2015, lost two stone and went down form a size 14 to a 10-12 between 2009 and 2012

Pictured with matching rucksacks and 100 poles as she and her husband Philip enjoyed a rambling holiday in the Swiss Alps this summer, Mrs May described the scenic activity as heaven on Earth. But Nordic walking is also rigorous exercise and has helped tone her physique.

Dr Catherine Hughes, of British Nordic Walking, says the activity burns 46 per cent more calories than ordinary walking because you apply force to the poles, so the exercise requires more muscle power. It tones up the core and arm muscles, she says.

And the effects arent purely physical. Driving the pole into the ground in rhythm with your feet and opening and closing your hand on the pole can give a wonderful release of stress, Dr Hughes says.

Just the ticket for a pressured PM.

Learning to stand taller

Her early days in the spotlight were notable for her hunched shoulders.

As shes risen to power, she has started standing up straighter, holding her shoulders back and her head higher.

Postural alignment expert Nicole Parsons suspects she could have had training with a physiotherapist.

Its obvious to see the attitudinal change that comes purely from increased confidence, she says. The thing that gave away her years of desk work [she worked in the City before entering politics] is her hand position.

In photographs from 2009 and even 2012, the back of her hand is facing forward. This is an indication of her shoulder joint rolling forward.

Now, by contrast, she stands straighter and appears unafraid to show off her 5ft 8in frame.

All that remains is a slight stoop. Posture expert Roger Golten says this may be an attempt to appear shorter when standing next to her husband, who is 5ft 7in, or a side-effect of wearing kitten heels.

When you wear heels, everything tilts forward, he says. To compensate, you thrust your hips forward and lean back from the waist, which makes your neck jut forward and your head go back.

Dowdy mullet to power bob

The vicars daughter has never been one for pricey London salons.

Since moving to the Berkshire village of Sonning  also home to the Clooneys  shes been a loyal client of The Hair Company, a High Street hairdresser in nearby Wargrave.

Owner Alan Williamson has been cutting her hair for almost 20 years. She has no colour put in, and a standard cut and blow-dry costs just 28. Her style, however, has changed dramatically over the years.

In the early Noughties, she sported a masculine crop.

In the early Noughties, she sported a masculine crop (left) but by 2005, she had moved her parting to the left and grown out the cut, which later evolved into 2010s power bob (right)

It was quite mullet-like  lots of layers in the wrong place, explains former royal hairdresser Richard Ward.

By 2005, she had moved her parting to the left and grown out the cut, softening her look. This later evolved into 2010s power bob.

Now, says Ward, shes found the style that suits her best: a layered bob with a side-sweeping fringe.

This has lots of movement and makes her appear more groomed, he adds. It gives her real femininity.

For public appearances, Mrs May styles her hair herself, using a large, round brush to give her naturally wispy locks volume.

Skirts that get shorter

She raised eyebrows for flashing a lot of leg this week  but its not the first time she has surprised in a short skirt recently, including for a meeting with President Putin.

Indeed, during her years in the public eye, her average hem length has risen by around 15 in, with far more above-the-knee skirts in her wardrobe than ever before.

In the Noughties, she tended to wear trousers and below-the-knee, mid-calf-length dresses, while her only knee-length skirt  an eye-catching artificial leather number  appeared just twice in public.

But over time shes found courage to go higher. From a 350 Aztec-pattered Amanda Wakeley dress to a 655 purple asymmetric design by Escada, almost all her recent favourite outfits have a skirt length of 20 in or less.

She likes to shock, a Downing Street source says. Her mindset is very much: People think Im a staid, middle-aged woman, but theres more to me than meets the eye. 

She raised eyebrows for flashing a lot of leg this week (left)  but its not the first time she has surprised in a short skirt recently, including for a meeting with President Putin (right)

Secret underwear shopping spree

Shes been criticised in the past for her lack of supportive underwear.

A sheer pink vest, worn to the party conference in 2003, drew attention for her poorly chosen bra, while her penchant for trendy low-cut dresses has been let down by unsupportive underwear.

But shes put paid to that, with a secret shopping spree in upmarket lingerie shop Rigby & Peller, just off Londons Bond Street.

Sources say she had the shop shut to the public while she  and a specialist underwear fitter  chose a selection of new bras and briefs.

Lingerie sets start around 100, with a bespoke, made-to-measure service costing 305 for a bra and 865 for a racy lace basque.

Ditching her crazy patterns

She doesnt have a personal stylist, though she has tested the service.

She tried a stylist once or twice, but didnt like it, reveals a Downing Street insider.

Her early preference for bold patterns has now been replaced by a professional wardrobe of black, navy and pastel shades  with an occasional flash of colour.

Her go-to brands are Amanda Wakeley, Hobbs, Vivienne Westwood and Roland Mouret (she owns at least two of his dresses, including the 1,395 Bitzer design).

At her favourite boutique, Fluidity in Henley-on-Thames, staff keep an eye out for products that would suit her.

Her early preference for bold patterns (left in 2004) has now been replaced by a professional wardrobe of black, navy and pastel shades  with an occasional flash of colour (right last year)

They know the sort of thing that I like to wear, so they will sometimes ring me up and say: Theres something really nice in, she once revealed.

She recently picked up a 600 black tunic with attached yellow belt from French brand Paule Ka. Shes bemused that people are shocked she does her own shopping, a No 10 source says. She likes to look at whats on the rails.

For those trademark shoes, she has loyalty cards at L. K. Bennett and Russell & Bromley.

She recently had one floor of the New Bond Street branch of Russell & Bromley shut to the public so she could browse. She just adores their shoes, a source explains.

But one thing shell never wear is a slingback, no matter how many staff show her.

For special occasions, Mrs May turns to Henley hatter Liz Felix, from whom she has bought two hats  both times visiting the shop with her husband, Philip.

Shes always casually dressed, in jeans and a jacket, and is decisive about what she wants, says Liz.

She loves the colour red and likes to hear Philips opinion before deciding.

Shes recently sported a 245 Amanda Wakeley chain-link choker

Necklaces that say I'm the boss

The PM has replaced her subtle silver pendants with an impressive collection of bold beads  dubbed by fashion commentators her power necklaces.

Shes recently sported a 245 Amanda Wakeley chain-link choker, a 103 blue necklace by Kenneth Jay Lane and a 90 white chunky chain from Pebble London.

The effect, says style and brand expert Nick Ede, is to divert the eye away from her waist and to balance out her broad shoulders.

Its a psychological thing  it makes her stand out, he says. Oversized necklaces immediately show her bold personality.

20 caffeine cream to banish bags

Long hours on the political treadmill can make even youthful-looking politicians develop eye bags bigger than a ministerial box.

But not so for Mrs May  at least not of late.

While her previous appearances revealed dark shadows under her eyes, since becoming Prime Minister, her complexion has been remarkably bag-free.

While her previous appearances revealed dark shadows under her eyes (left in 2015), since becoming Prime Minister, her complexion has been remarkably bag-free (right this week)

Experts suspect the Prime Ministers secret is a lotion such as 19.99 LOreal Revitalift Laser Renew Eye Cream, which you can buy in many High Street shops such as Boots.

It is enriched with caffeine to perk up the skin and hyaluronic acid to smooth out wrinkles.

She also sticks to a strict five or six hours sleep a night, ensuring she always looks refreshed.

No more Debenhams handbags

Before becoming Home Secretary, Mrs May owned few handbags. A red mock-croc design from Russell & Bromley and a pink shopper from Debenhams were her staples.

Since 2010, however, shes built up a hoard of designer bags, including a 595 Aspinal holdall in calf leather, a 224 L. K. Bennett powder blue tote and several 1,000-plus designs by Anya Hindmarch.

A Downing Street source says: She picks up pieces she likes whenever she finds them. Some cost more, but she never apologises for spending money on her appearance.

A pink shopper from Debenhams (left) from before she was Home Secretary and one of several 1,000-plus designs by Anya Hindmarch she owns now (right)

Since entering No 10, however, her bag habits have changed  in fact, shes barely ever seen with one.

Insiders insist she hasnt lost interest  far from it. Nowadays, she simply has someone to carry her bags for her.

DIY make-up

Aside from TV appearances  when she allows herself to be subjected to thick foundation  Mrs May does all her own make-up.

In the early days, she wore tinted moisturiser, blue-grey eye shadow and red or plum lipstick. The effect, says make-up artist Lina Cameron, was ageing. She favoured black liner along the lower lashes, which highlighted her under-eye circles.

Gradually, however, Mrs May has switched to subtler, more sophisticated shades. From around 2010, she started wearing matte foundation. Contouring  probably with highlighter and cream blusher  gives the illusion of a thinner face and erases any hint of jowls.

Her nails are always impeccable  but there are no manicure appointments in her No 10 diary; she still finds time to paint them herself.
The Liz Earle Cleanse & Polish Hot Cloth Cleanser has won more than 100 awards

One of the UKs bestselling beauty products has been urgently recalled after tests revealed dangerous levels of bacteria.

The Liz Earle Cleanse & Polish Hot Cloth Cleanser has won more than 100 awards  and is a make-up staple for millions of British women.

But 15,000 tubes of the 26 facial cleanser, whose fans include TV presenter Holly Willoughby, have been recalled after being contaminated by an antibiotic-resistant microbe.

The brands bestselling product  which boasts it will leave the skin feeling exceptionally clean  was revealed in tests to contain high counts of Enterobacter gergoviae, a bacteria found in the bowel as well as in the environment.

The European Commissions Rapid Alert System  a network set up to share health and safety information between countries  last night warned that the Hot Cloth Cleanser could cause skin and eye infections, particularly in consumers with a weakened immune system.

Microbiologist Professor Hugh Pennington said it was the right decision to recall the product, warning the bacteria can be quite resistant to antibiotics.

He said: The bug wouldnt do much damage to ordinary folk, but the big worry are high-risk people. If you had leukaemia and the bug got into the bloodstream, then it could be really serious.

Uses the product: Fans of the 26 facial cleanser include presenter Holly Willoughby

He added: If you cant make a cleansing product that isnt bacteria-free, you shouldnt be selling it  its as simple as that.

Liz Earle Naturally Active Skincare was set up more than a decade ago by entrepreneur Liz Earle and her friend Kim Buckland. The company preaches that quality and safe ingredients are our priority  and says it uses only the finest naturally active ingredients.

The owner of the high street chemist Boots bought the UK skincare brand for 140 million last year. Priced at 26 for a 200ml tube, the Cleanse & Polish Hot Cloth Cleanser claims to lift away dead skin cells to reveal smoother, clearer, and brighter-looking skin.

Last night, a Liz Earle spokesman said the products affected were sold only via their website, and that buyers had all been offered a refund.

The spokesman said the recall was a precautionary measure and that the vast majority of consumers who had ordered from the batch of 15,000 would not have received contaminated products.
Britain is being asked by the worlds leading health watchdogs to consider banning electronic cigarettes from public places.

Countries could ban e-cigarettes from all public places where smoking is not allowed, a World Health Organisation report says.

Such a ban would outlaw the increasingly popular vaping devices from schools, hospitals and public transport in the same way as tobacco.

The WHO is calling on countries to look at this because of the dangers of passive vaping, which growing evidence has linked to lung damage, heart complications and stillbirth in pregnant women.

Countries could soon ban e-cigarettes from all public places where smoking is not allowed including in schools, hospitals and public transport

The move echoes calls from the BMA, which says e-cigarettes should be banned from pubs and restaurants because of just such dangers. The WHO is also supporting potential cigarette-style health warnings about the chemicals e-cigarettes include and information on the danger of addiction.

Its advice, issued before a major meeting on tobacco control in India next week, is expected to stoke a row between health experts.

There is some evidence linking e-cigarettes to cancer and fears they act as a gateway to smoking tobacco.

But British doctors are already using e-cigarettes to help people quit tobacco, with support from Public Health England, if the devices are licensed, to prescribe them on the NHS.

The WHOs report sums up the latest scientific evidence ahead of next weeks meeting of 180 countries signed up to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Dr Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva, head of the WHO convention secretariat, said: So far there is a clear understanding that e-cigarettes should be regulated. They should not be promoted among young people and pregnant women and other specific groups. They should not be promoted widely  there should be restrictions and regulations.

The WHOs stance will be controversial among those - including British medics  who see e-cigarettes as helpful in getting smokers to quit.

A recent study found around 18,000 people in England last year may have given up cigarettes by vaping, which provides nicotine without the tobacco linked to lung cancer.

The WHO is calling on countries to look into a ban because of the dangers of passive vaping, which growing evidence has linked to lung damage, heart complications and stillbirths

But the WHO says this is undermined by the number of young people being recruited into nicotine dependency by taking up e-cigarettes. It suggests countries consider banning the flavouring of e-cigarettes whose bubblegum and fruit varieties have raised concerns they may be appealing to children. It also says they should not be sold or advertised to young people.

The WHO also highlights health fears over liquid nicotine vapour. It says metals, including lead, chromium and nickel, have been found in e-cigarettes at higher levels than ordinary cigarettes, while nicotine itself may act as a tumour promoter in people with cancer, or cause heart disease.

But Professor Kevin Fenton, national director of health and wellbeing at Public Health England, said it will continue to monitor the evidence.

He added: The evidence remains clear, with PHEs most recent review and the Royal College of Physicians both finding that while not completely risk-free, vaping carries a fraction of the risk of smoking - around 95% less harmful.
Seasonal affective disorder is a recognised clinical depression which follows a seasonal pattern (stock image)

1. You need sunlight

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a recognised clinical depression which follows a seasonal pattern, with symptoms often tied to autumn and winter months. The cause of SAD is not clear, but it is believed to be linked to reduced exposure to sunlight during the shorter autumn and winter days. Symptoms include feelings of despair, lethargy and a craving for carbohydrates which can cause weight gain. Nearly three in ten adults experience symptoms and for eight per cent the symptoms are acute.

2. Blame your brain

The hypothalamus is the part of the brain responsible for controlling body temperature, hunger, thirst, fatigue and sleep. It responds to light and when it doesnt receive this stimulus, it doesnt work properly. This in turn affects the production of serotonin, the bodys happy hormone.

3. Your clock's wrong

The human body uses daylight to time important functions such as when you wake up and when you feel tired. Lower light levels during the winter may disrupt the internal body clock, known as the circadian rhythm, and affect your sleeping pattern.

4. You're used to a sunnier climate

People who have lived near the Equator for part of their lives and then move to the UK are particularly vulnerable to developing SAD because of the change in the amount of daylight hours, leading to a reduction of Vitamin D.

5. It runs in the family

Sad may be linked to a genetic mutation in the eye that makes a sufferer less sensitive to light, according to US scientists. A study at the University of Virginia of the genetics of the bodys biological clock discovered melanopsin, a photo pigment gene in the eye that may help explain why some cases of SAD appear to run in families.

6. More women suffer... but men feel worse

Women are four times more likely to suffer from the condition than men, though male sufferers tend to have more severe symptoms. It may be linked to anxiety and stress of a busy working life.

7. Too much blanket time

Lower temperatures, adverse weather and shorter days can make even the most dedicated outdoors-lover want to spend all day snuggled up on the sofa with a cuppa. However, regular exercise boosts serotonin, endorphins and other feelgood brain chemicals, and can be as effective as anti-depressants in treating cases of mild to moderate depression. Exercise can also boost your self-esteem and improve sleep  as well as relieving stress and anxiety, both of which are symptoms of the condition.

8. Get a room with a view

While its a good idea to spend as much time as you can in daylight during the reduced hours available during winter, many jobs dont allow this luxury. Spending the day in an environment with no windows can have a serious effect on daylight exposure, and more than 57 per cent of adults say their overall mood is worse in the winter.

9. You need fish

Low levels of omega-3 fatty acids found in foods such as fish, flaxseed and walnuts have been linked to depression. A 2002 Israeli study saw patients with depression fed fish-oil capsules, and one month later 60 per cent of the participants showed reduced symptoms.

10. You don't have enough greenery
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As an exhibition of his vast collection of rare photographs opens in London, Elton John reveals the extraordinary story of how  fresh out of rehab  he developed the addiction thats kept him sober to this day

Sir Elton John has one of the worlds greatest private collections of photography, comprising more than 8,000 images acquired over a quarter of a century.

Now, 190 vintage prints from his extraordinary collection of modernist images  those taken between the Twenties and Fifties, a key period in the history of photography  are to go on display at Londons Tate Modern.

Glass Tears Man Ray, 1932. Ray took this photograph of can-can dancer Lydia in Paris soon after his break-up with his assistant and lover. Many historians have attributed the glass tears as a metaphor for love and loss. Estimated value 400,000

The exhibition will feature images by more than 60 photographers. Here Jane Jackson, a curator who helped Elton John to build his collection, talks to him about the role photography has played in his life

Jane Jackson: When did you first discover photography as fine art?

Sir Elton John: After rehab in 1990 I went to France to spend time with friends who owned a chateau in Cahors. They had helped to organise a photography festival there.

Id never really noticed photography as an art form before. I had had my picture taken by lots of wonderful photographers through the years, including Norman Parkinson, Terry ONeill and David Bailey, but seeing this artistic side of the medium was very different. I saw photographs by Ritts, Horst P Horst and Irving Penn, they were all in black and white, and mostly of fashion subjects. They were so beautiful  I bought about 12 on the spot. I suddenly became intensely interested in photography.

JJ: At the time, photography as a collectable art form was still really young.

EJ: Yes, the timing for me couldnt have been better. Photographs were very undervalued then. If I had started collecting 20 years later, most of the vintage works would no longer have been available and the prices would have been drastically different. I wouldnt have been able to amass the collection Ive got now.

Underwater Swimmer Andre Kertesz, 1917. Kertesz served in the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War and was badly wounded. He spent nine months recovering in a military hospital in Esztergom, Hungary. It was there that he took this photograph capturing the reflections in the water, distorting the body of the swimmer. This rare contact print is inscribed with the date June 30 1917 and is thought to be the first print ever made of the work. Estimated value 400, 000

JJ: Would you say that becoming sober opened your eyes to photography?

EJ: Its funny but after rehab I wasnt interested in anything that Id collected before. As a child, my parents argued a lot, so I found comfort in objects and my collections were always pristine  my records, my toys, they were all beautifully kept. Then as I started making money, I got interested in art deco and art nouveau. Before I went into rehab, I sold it all in a big one-week auction at Sothebys [it went for 4.8 million in 1988].

JJ: Do you think your alcohol addiction changed into another type of addiction?

EJ: Absolutely. Its a much healthier addiction to buy photographs, so I just switched. I felt as if my eyes were opened by photography. It was the most beautiful thing because I was getting sober, and feeling great about myself, and entering a new phase of my life. Photography became this incredible companion. It went hand in hand with my sobriety. I was like a kid in a candy store.

JJ: When you first started collecting photographs, you bought fashion, flowers and portraits. Later, you became interested in the experimental work of the Twenties, Thirties and Forties.

Salvador Dali in one of a series of shots of the surrealist artist taken by Dutch-born, California-based photographer Johan Hagemeyer in 1944. Dali claimed to have carried his cane since being a schoolchild. Estimated value 7,000

EJ: Yes, as I learned more about photography, I saw that these artists were able to do things that I thought only a painter could do. When I first saw [Andre] Kerteszs distortions or Man Rays rayographs or Edward Quigleys light abstractions I couldnt believe people were able to do that with photography. I thought that was the realm of painters. I was just astonished. The Kertesz Underwater Swimmer done in 1917 blew me away.

JJ: And what do you think of the importance of buying a vintage print over a modern print?

EJ: Im not a snob when it comes to that, but I would rather have the vintage print because of the story thats attached to it. But if I like an image, and I cant get a vintage print, then Ill have a signed modern print. When I was a kid I used to buy Man Ray posters. There was a shop in Oxford called Athena Reproductions and theyd have all these beautiful paintings, but they used to have reproductions, too, and I bought a poster of the Man Ray Lips because that was all I could afford. Im lucky enough to be able to have the original.

JJ: When was the moment when you realised you were becoming a serious collector?

Gypsy Rose Lee, Irving Penn, 1948. Penn took photographs of many of the most important social and cultural figures of the time. A well-known burlesque performer, Gypsy Rose Lee was famous for her glamorous striptease act and quick-witted comments. The 1959 musical Gypsy: A Musical Fable was based on her memoirs. Estimated value 7,000

EJ: One of the biggest moments I had was when I bought Man Rays Glass Tears [for $193,000]. I thought I had gone stark raving mad but I had to have it. I think I bought it in 1993 and it set a world-record price for a single photograph sold at auction  but when you think of it now it was a steal. That image stayed with me from the time I first saw it and I just could not resist it. I thought Id lost my mind. Friends thought Id lost my mind. I remember telling Gianni Versace and he said, You have the negative? I said No, no, you dont get the negative  he could never understand that if you bought a photograph you didnt get the negative.

JJ: Youve always bought things that really spoke to you. Its not about impressing people and trying to say, Well, Ive got a such and such on the wall over here

EJ: I hate trophy art. I buy what I like and if its not fashionable I dont care. I never collected anything to make a profit. The more you collect, the more sophisticated your eye becomes. I can go straight to the piece that I know will work perfectly in the collection. I cant think of anything else, other than music, thats given me so much pleasure in an artistic way. For example, in Atlanta I wake up with Man Rays Noire Et Blanche above my head. It seeps into your skin. I love creativity. Everything visual around me has an impact on me and helps my wellbeing. The photographs make me feel happy, and sad, and wondrous. They make me realise there is so much more for me to do creatively.

Duke Ellington, Irving Penn, 1948. This was the year Penn began making portraits of celebrities in a small corner space made of two studio flats pushed together in New York. The confinement seemed to comfort people, soothing them, he said. Estimated value 10,000

Noel Coward Irving Penn, 1948. This photo of the celebrated British playwright was part of the same series as Duke Ellington, above. Estimated value 7,000

JJ: What do you want people to get out of the Tate Modern exhibition?

EJ: A sense of awe. I want them to think, Ive never seen anything like that before, never knew it existed  just as I did when I first saw these photographs.

Extracted from The Radical Eye: Modernist Photography From The Sir Elton John Collection, published by Tate Publishing, 30, Offer price 22.49 with free p&p until Nov 13.
Sipping tea in a cafe in Los Angeles, actress Phoebe Fox is describing the time she spat in Benedict Cumberbatchs face. They were filming one of the most famous scenes from Richard III for TV drama The Hollow Crown, in which an apoplectic Lady Anne confronts Richard for killing her husband, Prince Edward.

I was being very ladylike about it but the director was saying, No, you really have to spit, says Fox. So I did, and afterwards Benedict was like, Oh God, what was that? I mean, poor guy!

Fox cringes at the memory, but getting so intimate with one of the worlds biggest film stars was a clear sign that she had arrived. Leading roles in last years sexy BBC drama Life In Squares opposite James Norton and the horror film The Woman In Black 2 with Helen McCrory, a Broadway run in Arthur Millers A View From The Bridge, as well as parts alongside Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman (Eye In The Sky), have made Fox one of our most sought-after actresses.

Fox says even today with the double standards applied to men and women at work: The goalposts are still very different. As an actress, you have to earn peoples respect', she says

Fox and Cumberbatch may have shared a visceral dislike for one another on screen but shes a huge fan of the actor and the very public stance he took recently on the migrant crisis in Calais (he urged theatregoers during his stint as Hamlet last year to f*** the politicians).

I dont see what was wrong, says Fox. If youre going to be in this privileged position, then you should absolutely use it for the greater good and he was just trying to raise awareness.

Its the same with Emma Watson speaking at the UN about womens rights [two years ago]. People gave her grief for it and I thought, really? If she was out boozing and falling out of cars, shed get flak for that too. You cant win. At least theyre trying to make a difference.

She has been in LA the past month, along with her American husband, actor Kyle Soller, who played Rosss cousin Francis in Poldark. I saw the Gogglebox episode with people watching him die, says Fox. It tickled me, seeing these random people reacting to the death of my husband.

But if her husband will be missed on our screens, then Foxs presence over the coming weeks should make up for it. NW is an adaptation of the Zadie Smith novel about childhood friends from a north-west London housing estate.

Fox spat in Benedict Cumberbatch's face while filming a scene for The Hollow Crown. Fox, above right, starring alongside Keeley Hawes and Judi Dench in the show

Fox plays a welfare officer, Leah, who doesnt want children. Its refreshing to tell a story from a womans point of view which says its normal not to want kids. After Kyle and I got married [when Fox was 23], we were asked incessantly when, not if, we were having kids.

Foxs other project, Close To The Enemy, is a compelling mini-series by Stephen Poliakoff in which she plays a worker for the War Crimes Unit, looking to bring Nazis to justice at the end of WWII. Kathy is a great character because whats driving her isnt the love of a man, its intellectual fulfilment.

Fox says there are parallels even today with the double standards applied to men and women at work: The goalposts are still very different. As an actress, you have to earn peoples respect, be professional, turn up on time. Whereas guys can get away with a lot and pass off bad behaviour as, Oh, hes so method! Being in America this past month its been depressing seeing all the misogyny that the elections have stirred up.

Fox plays a welfare officer in NW, Leah, who doesnt want children. After Kyle (above) and I got married, we were asked incessantly when, not if, we were having kids, she says

With Trump facing accusations of sexual harassment and assault from a string of women, it brought up a load of memories that Id buried when I had been touched inappropriately by men, admits Fox.

I was on the Tube about five years ago and some man came and sat next to me and put his arm around my shoulders for a good ten stops. I completely froze. I was too afraid to say: What are you doing? because people can be unpredictable and I didnt know how hed respond.

'I simply pushed it to the back of my mind because youre brainwashed into thinking that this is so normal, its unimportant. You tell yourself that youre being silly [complaining about it] when really, youre not. That someone running for president is saying theres nothing really wrong with that kind of behaviour is disgusting.

Fox grew up in west London with older sister Trilby and her parents, actors Stuart Fox and Prue Clarke. Her own acting hopes were initially dashed when it took three attempts to get into Rada. But Im glad I was older because it was easier to take the criticism, she admits. They told me I sounded like a child and that Id never be a film star. It was harsh but beneficial  I actively lowered my voice.

It was also at Rada that Fox met her husband-to-be. She admits that when both were nominated for the Evening Standard Theatre Awards for Outstanding Newcomer five years ago, it was horrible. Were both competitive but Im competitive in a more damaging way.

Fox has had leading roles in last years sexy BBC drama Life In Squares and the horror film The Woman In Black 2 along with a run in Arthur Millers A View From The Bridge (pictured above)

And then Kyle won it. I know deep down that hes a better actor than I am but I didnt want it enshrined in a trophy that we have to have in our house! Its ended up being pushed behind the chair a few times.

Foxs career so far has been marked by strong female characters who tend to be quite asexual. The one exception was last years drama Life In Squares about the promiscuous Bloomsbury set of Virginia Woolf et al, where she had her first on-screen sex scenes. Luckily I got to do them with James Norton, whos a friend, she says. Its much easier asking a friend before a scene, So, are you going to use tongue, or not?

She has no immediate plans to move to Hollywood. I love England. I dont want to move away from the place I grew up in. Hollywoods loss is definitely our gain.
Photographer Michael Zagaris has always been close to the action  sometimes terrifyingly so.

On June 5, 1968, he stood just feet from US Senator Robert F Kennedy (brother of assassinated President JFK) as Bobby was gunned down in the kitchens of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. People were screaming. Even now it seems like a terrible dream.

Zagaris is speaking from his home in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, recalling his unorthodox route to becoming a rock n roll photographer.

He had developed a keen interest in the young British blues-inspired artists visiting the West Coast of America in the late Sixties for the first time. And it was Eric Clapton who suggested that Zagaris pursue photography as a career.

He was looking at a contact sheet of pictures Id taken of him and said, These are good. We could use them and Ill pay you.

Access was much easier in those days, Zagaris says. Youd turn up backstage, sweet-talk a couple of people, make up some story and you were in the dressing room.

His intimate images of rock royalty have now been collected in Total Excess, a coffee table book chronicling the degenerate exploits of superstars from the Stones to the Sex Pistols.

Its billed as the last untouched rock archive  many of these raw and revealing pictures have never been seen publicly before.

I met some incredibly talented people and had a hell of a lot of fun, he muses, before concluding triumphantly. But I got the shots too.

Pictures from Total Excess: Photographs by Michael Zagaris, published by Reel Art Press, priced at 40. Visit reelartpress.com

Blonde perfection I photographed Blondie in 1977 at the Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco. We were trying all sorts of set-ups but they had ideas of their own. So I winged it. They were a band where it was almost impossible to take a bad picture. Debbie was very beautiful, still is, and she was channelling that Monroe glamour, even though they were staying in some cheap hotel. Debbie was kind of short and had a very big head. Looks a little strange in person but photographs great.

Never a dull moment I loved The Faces; they were like the guys you went to college with and partied with. When I met them they were drinking a lot so when they went on stage [Rod Stewart, above, at Oakland Coliseum, California, in 1972] they were diabolically bad, but so bad it was good. It was like this ongoing party  and they could party. Youd be in the hotel afterwards just about to pass out and theyd still be bouncing on the bed singing.

Sparks from Slowhand Eric Clapton was staying at the Sausalito Inn [California in 1975 and performing at the Stanford Frost Amphitheatre]. He loved it because there were no TVs and no phones. I took a hash pipe and we smoked a little. We had one of those philosophical conversations you only have when youre very stoned. Erics thoughtful but forthright, and it was the same when he played guitar  it looked effortless but there would be sparks flying.

Sympathy for the devil Jagger had a certain energy that Im sure even he couldnt explain. The Stones had this really dark mystique at the time: the yin to the Beatles yang. Before they came on stage there would be a long wait, really dark music playing, so by the time they walked on [here at the Cow Palace in Daly City, California, in 1975] the anticipation and the tension were almost unbearable. That drama and theatre is why theyre still one of the biggest bands in the world.
Dali Katch 329, dali-speakers.com

Rating:

Bookshelf hi-fi systems used to be aimed squarely at teenagers  and were, accordingly, cheap and awful, like most treats one buys for children.

The main consideration has always been that the speakers shouldnt be loud enough for the youngsters to really enjoy themselves.

But over the past year, theres been a sudden surge in tiny, posh speakers that should never be bought for children under any circumstances.

Dalis Katch is a suave Bluetooth speaker styled like a handbag for robots which offers a 24-hour battery so that you can travel around boring your friends about how good it sounds

Dalis Katch is one of these  a suave Bluetooth speaker styled like a handbag for robots, which offers an alarming number of built-in speakers, and a 24-hour battery so that you can travel around boring your friends about how good it sounds.

Hi-fi bores usually look down on Bluetooth speakers with the sort of shuddering disdain Bob Dylan fans felt when he went electric, but the Katch has already won a What Hi-Fi award (the Oscars of hi-fi snobbery).

Danish brand Dalis floor-standing speakers are a good yardstick for high disposable income if seen in any home.

Like fellow posh speaker brand KEFs little Muo, this is Dali dipping a cautious toe into the world of normal people  and it offers premium sound quality at a (relatively) affordable price.

The Katch sounds appropriately splendid: its got two 21mm drivers and two woofers (double the average portable), plus two 25w amps.

It sounds ridiculously big for something one could plausibly fit in a pocket, with the aid of a shoehorn.

Its splendidly easy to use  even for technophobes  with the ability to pair mobiles by tapping them on the side of the speaker, and adjust everything simply with buttons on the top.

You can alter the sound with an equaliser button, which lets you flip between normal and warm instantly  although, frankly, both seem to sound perfectly nice.

Theres no app, but as a man whose phone is clutttered with needless apps for everything from my kettle to the thermostat, Im actually quite grateful for this.

I do occasionally wonder what these posh little speakers are actually for, though. I didnt seem to need a portable, high-end hi-fi two years ago.

Are people having a lot of impromptu outdoor discos to which Im not invited?
Resto-bars in New Delhi's prime location Connaught Place are counting their losses as an NDMC crackdown on illegal commercial use of terraces is driving away party animals from their favourite watering holes.

The civic body has made the breezy rooftop facilities inaccessible to guests - mostly the citys youngsters and foreign tourists - who enjoyed barbecue, drinks and the sparkling view of CPs buzzing traffic from the balconies on pleasant evenings.

At least half-a-dozen resto-bars Mail Today visited in the shopping arcade rued the New Delhi Municipal Councils month-old order to lock down the terraces.

NDMC Ban terrass bar in Canaught Place Warehouse Cafe at Canaught Place in New Delhi

Some others, whose terraces were functioning, admitted to receiving a circular from the municipal agency asking the illegal spaces to be closed, but said they were discussing the issue with the NDMC.

Ajit Ajmani, co-owner of My Bar Headquarters, said: We are already losing 10-15 per cent revenue. If this continues into December and January, we will lose 30-40 per cent of our evening revenue daily.

Authorities should consider re-framing laws to allow the use of terraces and most restaurateurs would agree to an additional charge, he said.

Bars and restaurants catering to the young spring up almost every week in Connaught Places grand colonnaded buildings.

Mail Today had reported on September 28 that the New Delhi Traders Association (NDTA), a group of ground floor shop owners in CP, had written to NDMC chairman Naresh Kumar, complaining about excess load on the heritage structure due to wild mushrooming of restaurants.

NMDC claims the terraces should be kept untouched, their facade unspoilt and to be used only as emergency and fire exit (picture for representation)

Kumar had then said that the agency was in the process of closing the terraces at the least.

The law cited to do this was Delhi Building Bye-laws, 1983. Also, as a senior NDMC official explained: All the terraces being used as extensions of restaurants and bars violate the NDMC Act, Section 252 (Misuse of premises beyond sanction) beyond sanction).

Further, the Delhi Urban Arts Commission (DUAC) had approved a certain design and usage plan for the terraces during CP Redevelopment Project at Commonwealth Games time in 2010.

It had clearly asked the terraces to be kept untouched, their facade unspoilt and to be used only as emergency and fire exit, he added.

However, CP restaurateurs are clearly upset. The world over, the flavour is open-air and terrace restaurants, said Ujjwal Ashiwal, general manager of Warehouse Cafe.

If you go to Bali, there are several such beautiful restaurants from the roof of which you can enjoy a spectacular view of the Kuta and Denpasar markets while dining.

In Dubai, there are several high-rise tower terrace restaurants, which offer a great view of the sail-shaped luxury hotel, Burj Al Arab. Why cant we emulate that?

NDMC officials, though, pointed to the safety and security concerns raised by the misuse.

In August, fire broke out at the night life hub, in Hauz Khas Village, killing a young businessman and injuring a French woman.

Khyati Pathak, PR manager of Open House Cafe, said: There is nothing like the view of the Central Park in Connaught Place, the huge national flag, and the golden lights of the traffic passing by during winter evenings.

We have two terrace seating spaces  one is a romantic spot preferred by couples and the other by groups of friends and professionals to drink and enjoy.

We feel really bad when we have to turn them down saying that the terrace is closed.
In a startling revelation, it has now emerged that as many as 80 police personnel, posted for security of Bhopal central jail, were deputed on VVIP duty.

They were in attendance for the senior officials of the Bhopal jail. India Today is in possession of documents, which shows serious lapses in the security in the Bhopal jail.

The Bhopal jail has a sanctioned strength of 250 security personnel, of which according to the jail department, 50 posts still lie vacant.

Indian police gather alongside the bodies of SIMI activists, who escaped from Central Jail in Bhopal and were killed by Special Task Force police

Of the remaining 200 security personnel, 70 jawans were attending various training programmes.

Only, 130 security personnel were effectively available for the security of the Bhopal central jail, where about 30 SIMI operatives were lodged.

Of these 130 policemen, 80 personnel were deployed on VVIP duty on the day the eight SIMI men escaped from the jail, killing one constable inside the prison premises.

Congress party workers protest demanding judicial enquiry into the encounter of eight SIMI terrorists who escaped from jail, in Allahabad

The government documents show that when jailbreak incident took place, there were about 3,000 inmates in the Bhopal jail apart from 29 SIMI operatives, only 30-35 police personnel were on duty.

India Today has learnt that jail administration had warned the senior officials, including the DGP, about a possible jailbreak earlier in October.

The jail administration had demanded more security personnel to guard the prison.
As Theresa May packs her bags for India and prepares for the trooping of Britains business colours before a gallery of Indian politicians, trade leaders and, most importantly, members of the global media, shed do well to consider what exactly India wants from a relationship with Britain in the 21st Century.

Thanks to Britains new prime-time political soap opera, Brexit, the conversation about a bilateral trade agreement has so far been remarkably one-sided.

Although it is all rather academic until the big-red-Article-50-button is pressed sometime around 2019, May arrives in India hoping to plot the path for some big deals - arms, IT, perhaps even textiles.

Scroll down for video...

The problem is that Theresa May (pictured) has absolutely no leverage, and absolutely no real ability to dictate the terms of any such agreement to India, whose economy is growing at around 7%

Big deals for big money that might, at the very least, reassure people that leaving the EU wasn't such a terrible idea.

Indias future, however, is not at all dependent on a trade deal with the UK.

Although a good deal is a good deal, and India should be keen to capitalise on any opportunity, the current trade relationship was described recently on Twitter as a bit, well, meh.

Britain is ranked as Indias 17th most significant trade partner.

Meh, indeed. And in short, Germany, the US and China are all credited as being significant trading partners with India while Britain, with its Indian ex-pat community of 1.2 million, its historical and cultural connections, has a rather pathetic trade relationship with India.

India simply doesn't need a trade relationship with the UK. It will take one if offered but what it really wants is better terms for its people

The problem is that Theresa May has absolutely no leverage, and absolutely no real ability to dictate the terms of any such agreement to a country whose economy, although limited and certainly not yet ready to be compared to China, is growing at around 7%.

And with this complete lack of leverage Britain does what it does best - prattle on about the Empire.

And with exquisite comic timing, cue Boris Johnson, once Britains most visible Brexit campaigner, now Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (and the man who recently claimed that Britain was going to make a Titanic success of Brexit!) saying, We used to run the biggest empire the world has ever seen and with a much smaller domestic population and a relatively tiny civil service. Are we really unable to do trade deals?

This constant comparison between Britains Imperial past and its current Brexit predicament is frustrating and ultimately pointless.

Boris Johnson, once Britains most visible Brexit campaigner, now Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs recently said: We used to run the biggest empire the world has ever seen and with a much smaller domestic population and a relatively tiny civil service'.

But it is most frustrating and most pointless to the good people of India, who as one of the worlds emerging economies, dont look back particularly fondly at colonialism.

And as Nikita Sud, Associate Professor of Development Studies at the University of Oxford, says: 'Colonialism is by definition an exploitative process and the UK-India version is no different.

Its a good point. Would Germany ever pop along to France and say, Hey, remember the Nazis? Well here are some Volkswagens.

Nein, nein, nein they would not. So why cant British politicians just shut up about the Empire?

Sud says that although English is the common tongue, Britain is just not talking Indias language right now.

According to Sud the coverage of this event in India and the UK is very different.

She says: The UK is talking about trade partnerships and a renewed relationship with the Commonwealth.

India on the other hand is saying - What's in this for us? Is the Common Market shutting down, should we be moving our capital elsewhere?

Sud adds: India does not owe a friendly relationship to the UK because of colonialism.

India wants the human terms of their relationship with Britain to improve

There is an assumption in UK diplomacy that they can count on the Commonwealth, but why should that be so?

There might be some cultural affinity but we're living in the 21st century. India trades with the UK because its profitable and because of the Euro gateway, not because the UK is a former colonial master.

According to Sud, what matters most to India is firstly whether or not Britain is a good place in which to invest, but perhaps more importantly, are Indian people welcome? What about students?

The word that keeps on coming up during our conversation - Visas.

One thing that has barely been mentioned on the UK side of the issue, but is regularly mentioned in India, is migration and visas.

Trade deals happen in a context of soft diplomacy and confidence building.

For India to have a post-Brexit relationship with Britain there would need to be much better treatment of Indians seeking to work in the UK.

Visas are too expensive. It is cheaper and easier for the Chinese to come to the UK than Indians, and that is reflected in student figures. Indian students coming to the UK have fallen over the last 5-7 years.

India wants the human terms of their relationship with Britain to improve. And they've got every right to make these demands.

But by trying to forge a relationship with India, Theresa May is risking being accused of the old adage - robbing Peter, to pay Paul.

India simply doesn't need a trade relationship with the UK. It will take one if offered but what it really wants is better terms for its people.

Those terms include cheaper and easier access for students, a significantly lower salary bar set for skilled workers (at present its 35k), and greater ease for those already working here to bring their families back and forth.

It looks like there will be no talk about trade deals without another conversation about the movement of people.

If, as Ruchir Sharma Head of Emerging Markets at Morgan Stanley suggests, economic growth is built almost entirely on population increase, then this might not be a bad thing.
Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd will have to pay $ 1.55 billion, according to government notice

The government has raised a $ 1.55 billion demand on Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd and its partners BP and Niko for 'unfairly enriching' themselves by producing natural gas from an adjoining ONGC-owned field in the eastern offshore Krishna- Godavari (KG) basin.

A senior Petroleum Ministry official confirmed that a notice to the three partners had been issued on November 3, asking the consortium to pay up $1.47 billion for producing 338.332 million British thermal unit in seven years ended March 2016.

After deducting USD 71.71 million royalty paid on the gas produced and adding an interest at the rate of Libor plus 2 per cent totalling $149.86 million, a total demand of $ 1.55 billion has been made on RIL, BP and Niko.

ONGC had initially moved court against RIL to get compensation for the gas that had migrated from its blocks KGDWN- 98/2 (KG-D5) and Godavari PML in the KG basin in the Bay of Bengal to neighbouring KG-DWN-98/3 (KG-D6) block of RIL from which private company was producing gas.

The government had appointed a one-man committee under retired Justice A P Shah to investigate the case.

The committee in its report on August 29 concluded that the government and not ONGC is entitled to the compensation.

The ministry then asked its upstream regulator Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) to calculate the amount of compensation that was required for the gas tapped by the RIL-led consortium.

Based on this estimate, the demand notice has now been served.

The committee has concluded that the contractor's (RILBP- Niko) production of migrated gas and retention of ensuing benefits amounts to unjust enrichment, since the Production Sharing Contract (PSC) does not permit a contractor to produce and sell migrated gas, the demand note said.

Reliance Industries Ltd and its partners used natural gas from ONGC-owned field in the eastern offshore Krishna- Godavari (KG) basin. (Picture for representation only)

The ministry said it had accepted the Shah committee report and consequently it has been decided by the government to claim restitution from the contractor of the block KG-DWN- 98/3 for the unjust benefit received and unfairly retained by them.

The notice also sought $ 177 million in profit petroleum from the partners after the government disallowed certain costs previously for KG-D6 output not matching targets.

Since both the ministry as well as the Shah committee had cited provisions of the Production Sharing Contract (PSC) signed between the partners and the government, the issue may be headed for arbitration.

RILs contention is that it has not knowingly produced any gas belonging to ONGC as all the wells it drilled were within the boundary walls of KG-D6 block and with explicit permission of the government.

While RIL and partners are likely to contest the compensation claim, arbitration is likely to be resorted to as that is the dispute resolution mechanism set out under PSC for settling any differences between the government and a private contractor.

RIL has already moved for arbitration on the issue of the government not allowing it full cost recovery.

RIL did not offer any immediate comments, but a BP spokesperson said: We have received a letter from the government on the issue of migration of gas from the neighbouring block.
Dynastic privileges still count big in the Congress as the partys Delhi unit seems to be relying on second-generation leaders of loyal lineages to pick up the pieces after drawing a blank in last years Assembly polls that were swept by AAP.

Despite party vice-president Rahul Gandhis repeated claims that his party does not believe in dynastic politics and every hard worker can rise to the top, the appointments in Delhi Congress clearly show kinship systems rule the roost.

Observers say Indian politics is still very much a family business and resembles a privileged club whose entry is determined by birth.

Appointment of Pooja Bahri as MPCC spokes person has confirmed that Congress believes in dynasty politics

The fragmentation of the political system has also led to a sharp rise in parties led by regional dynasts.

The recent appointment of Pooja Bahri, daughter of former Delhi Assembly Speaker and four-time MLA Subhash Chopra, as Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee (DPCC) spokesperson on Thursday is an example.

Pooja is the daughter of four-time Congress MLA Subhash Chopra

Pooja, 42, is an English Literature (Hons) graduate from Lady Shri Ram College and a visual artist.

She also runs an NGO called 'Art for All' that provides a platform to young artists.

Other second generation leaders of Congress who are enjoying their positions in the party due to family ties include- Vinay Mishra (son of former MP Mahabal Mishra), Jag Parvesh (son of Congress heavyweight Sajjan Kumar) and Vipin Sharma (son of late Ram Babu Sharma, former DPCC president).

The list also includes Sandeep Dikshit (son of former Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit), Alan Hasan Iqbal (son of former MLA Shoiab Iqbal) and Sharmistha Mukherjee (daughter of President Pranab Mukherjee, a former Congress leader).

According to analysts, political dynasties offer ready made kinship networks that substitute for party organisations.

However, Congress leaders deny that the party actively promotes dynastic politics.

Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee chief spokesperson Sharmistha Mukherjee (pictured) said hard working members have been appointed

Sharmistha is the daughter of President Pranab Mukherjee, ex Congress men

Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee chief spokesperson Sharmistha Mukherjee told Mail Today: DPCC president Ajay Maken has appointed 14 district presidents- all block presidents. Most of them are young party workers, who have made their place on the basis of their hard work.

"A few may have come from Congress families, but as they have been brought up in such an environment, they strictly follow the Congress ideology.

Even if they got a platform, they have more pressures to prove themselves and excel.

With this fresh appointment, DPCC now has 10 young spokespersons, including a chief spokesperson.
Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi stepped up his attack against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and accused him of lying about implementation of the One Rank-One Pension (OROP) scheme alleging that the Centre was disrespecting soldiers by not fulfilling their long pending demand.

The Congress vice-president asserted that OROP was the right of military personnel and the government will have to give it.

What PM says is One Rank-One Pension is actually pension enhancement and not OROP. PM should stop lying on the issue. OROP is the right of armed forces personnel and government will have to give it, said Gandhi who met the ex-servicemen protesting at the Jantar Mantar against the governments lackadaisical approach on the OROP scheme.

Rahul Gandhi acussed PM Modi of lying about implementation of the OROP scheme

Accusing the government of waiving loans of a staggering Rs 1.10 lakh crore of 15 big industrialists, Gandhi said: It has nothing to give to soldiers and farmers. The government has not given respect and the right which is due to soldiers.

If it had, why these ex-servicemen been protesting for the last 509 days at Jantar-Mantar.

Gandhi said he met experienced ex-servicemen from across the country and had a good discussion with them.

The Congress leader said former soldiers staging protests for implementation of OROP have also said they will not press their demand if government tells them it does not have money.

I want to tell the government that our jawans and ex-servicemen have given away their lives and years for the country.

You should respect them and implement OROP in its true sense. It is their right and the government will have to do it, he said.

According to a report in Indian Express, Rahul demanded the government to apologise to the family members of the late ex-servicemen.

Rahul blames PM Modi for delaying OROP

The family members of the late ex-serviceman were beaten and dragged, this is not right. The government must apologise.

Countering Gandhis charge, and accusing the Congress for playing politics over an ex-soldiers suicide, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley on Friday blamed administrative lapse on the part of bank for not remitting the entitled pension after Ram Kishan Grewal was granted OROP.

Congress didnt have sympathy for retired defence personnel during its 10-yr rule, said Jaitley.

Government sympathises with defence personnel who committed suicide; not a lapse that OROP was not granted. It seems there was some communication gap with banks.
Arvind Kejriwal wants mohalla clinic to be a success

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) governments ambitious mohalla clinic project is now under the scanner of Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung who has sent back the file pertaining to the proposal to open such clinics inside school premises citing legal complications.

According to senior officials in L-Gs office, the proposal of the aam aadmi mohalla clinic in schools was turned down and sent back to the government for re-assessment.

The Delhi government has sent a file regarding their proposal to open mohalla clinic within the premises of the schools.

L-G has returned the file after making certain observations asking the government to send comprehensive note and asked it to rework on the proposal.

The Aam Aadmi Party started the ambitious mohalla clinic to provide medical facilities to all

After corrections are made, the government can send the file back to the L-Gs office, said the senior official.

The official added that the Delhi School Education Act doesn't allow establishing anything else in the school premises.

Setting up anything else within the school premises could be detrimental to the security of the students.

The law doesn't allow any other activity within the school premises. If such clinics have to be opened, the amendment in the law will be made.

Every school enters into lease agreement with land-owning agency and one of the clauses is that a school is opened strictly for education. So these rules will have to be changed to implement the proposal, the officer said.

The AAP government had recently announced that it is considering opening mohalla clinics in as many as 300 government schools which shall be open to general public.

The government had earlier announced 1,000 mohalla clinics would be established by this year-end, but the deadline has been pushed to next year.

Mohalla clinics are run by the Delhi government that aim to provide free primary healthcare to all.

Currently, 106 mohalla clinics are operating in the national Capital, treating almost 2,500 patients every day.

The official at the L-GS office added that tweaking the existing education policy to make way for the mohalla clinics would also prompt private schools to replicate the move.

If we allow mohalla clinics in government schools then we wont be able to stop private schools from establishing private clinics within their schools premises. This would further lead to problems, the official said.

L -G Najeeb Jung has shot down the idea of clinics inside the schools which could be a security hazard for the students

A section of Parents Association had also objected to the Delhi governments move and had written a letter to chief minister Arvind Kejriwal.

In 2002, the Delhi High Court had directed a MCD school in Bawana area to remove the dispensary from its premises as it led to the entry of outsiders in the school, and disturbed the students.

Meanwhile, sources confirmed that the original files seeking permission to establish the mohalla clinics in Delhi were never sent to the L-Gs office.

A couple of Cabinet decisions were taken on mohalla clinics but only the file pertaining to opening clinics in schools was sent to the L-Gs office.

The L-Gs office has not received files of all the Cabinet decision. The Cabinet decision is taken after seeking comments and suggestions from other departments but in this case the decision was taken earlier and comments were invited later, officer said.

The decision to open mohalla clinics in government buildings was taken to bypass the municipal corporations.

Recently, the BJP-led civic bodies created a roadblock as it had issued notices alleging that some of these clinics had encroached or obstructed the way of traffic.

Punjab polls: Kejriwal won't open his cards

By Ankit Tyagi

Kejriwal unleashed a scathing assault on the BJP and the Modi government as he projected himself as a victim

Barely three-months ahead of Assembly elections in Punjab, AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal has left his options open to become his partys chief ministerial candidate for the Sikh-majority state.

No non-Sikh has ever been the CM of Punjab since 1966, when Hindi-speaking Haryana and Pahari-speaking Himachal Pradesh were carved out of it.

Both the ruling Akalis and the Congress led by Capt. Amarinder Singh have mounted a fierce attack on Kejriwal for his non-Punjabi descent as AAP emerged as the potential political force in the state due for elections early next year.

In an exclusive interview to India Today, the Delhi CM refused to identify any member of his local team in Punjab as his partys face for the top job.

Its the public that decides its chief minister. We live in a democracy, Kejriwal told India Today, when asked whether he could be the states CM in the event of an AAP victory.

Probed whether any of his elected MLAs - in the event of a majority - can be tipped to lead the border state, the 48-year-old maverick AAP leader stayed non-committal.

Just wait. Youll get your answers at appropriate time, he said.

Kejriwal unleashed a scathing assault on the BJP and the Modi government as he projected himself as a victim to what he called was the high-handedness of his political opponents.

Deftly, he also cited regulation of power and water tariffs as key accomplishments of his administration in Delhi.

When I took over as Delhis chief minister, electricity charges in the city were the most expensive in India. Now, they are the cheapest, barring one or two exceptions, Kejriwal noted.

He attributed the regulation of bills to what he described as his governments concerted fight with the BJP and the utilities.

The AAP convener alleged that he and his party colleagues have been unfairly subject to police and income-tax crackdowns.

He accused the ruling BJP and its affiliates of creating an atmosphere of fear in the nation.

In order to support his accusation, he referred to the alleged beating of missing JNU student Najeeb Ahmed by ABVP activists, cow vigilantism, protests over Karan Johars Ae Dil Hai Mushkil and the alleged police manhandling of the son of the late army veteran, Ram Kishan Grewal.

Kejriwal charged the BJP with thuggery in the name of nationalism. They hold a stick and threaten you to say Bharat Mata Ki Jai. Is this patriotism? Its goondagardi (hooliganism), the AAP leader said.

Controlled by the BJP-led centre, police in Delhi, Kejriwal alleged, had refused to question ABVP activists accused of beating up JNU student Ahmed a day before he went missing.

He also sought to justify Rs 1 crore compensation which he promised to the family of Grewal, who allegedly committed suicide over underpaid pension.

Let no one joke about his suicide. He gave his life for a cause and to raise an issue, argued Kejriwal.
City hospitals are facing increased cases of breathlessness, asthma and other respiratory diseases

Heres an advisory for one and all in the Capital: early morning walk can lead to severe health hazards, with the citys toxic air touching the danger mark.

At Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, 62-year-old Delhi resident Ajeet Singh is now battling for his life after he complained of severe breathlessness, while returning from morning walk.

And he is not alone. Several Delhi residents have been dealing with the poison in the air, even as they think that morning walks are beneficial.

Early morning walks is no longer beneficial for Delhiites as the severe smog has made it a health hazard.

In reality, it could turn fatal. According to a doctor treating Ajeet, he was suffering from asthma for the last five years.

His condition has worsened due to toxic air of Delhi that he inhaled during the morning walk and Ajeet has now been put on non-invasive ventilation.

With smog hanging heavy on Delhis air, doctors are now advising that the walks should be scheduled during the noon when the pollution level is slightly lower.

Health experts also say that face masks that are available at the medical shops are not enough to help those with respiratory diseases.

According to experts, the masks have small pores which forces the user to exert more pressure while breathing.

Anyone with a respiratory condition will be in a difficult situation and the mask will not be helpful.

However, those without any condition can use these masks as a preventive measure. Dr Arup Basu, senior pulmonologist at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, told Mail Today: Right now people are facing two types of respiratory issues. One is the upper respiratory tract infection, which includes irritation in the eyes and throat, dry cough, fever and mental irritation.

The other one is lower respiratory tract infection that leads to bronchitis, weakness and breathlessness due to his exposure to polluted air.

Delhi residents have been dealing with the poison in the air

He said one of his patients, a 12-year-old student, who also suffers from asthma since his birth.

For the past few months, my patient was not using inhalers, but now he is using it again. His condition became so severe that we had to admit him for medication. He is now recovering, the doctor said.

Citing a similar example of how severe smog in the morning is affecting people in Delhi, Dr Vikas Maurya, director of internal respiratory medicine at BLK Super Speciality Hospital said: One of my patients used to take her child to school bus stop every morning. She suffers from asthma. Now her condition has become so bad that she cannot leave her hose in the morning.

According to Dr Raj Kumar, head of respiratory medicine at Patel Chest Institute, this is a bad time for all those with respiratory condition.

Diseases get exacerbated during these times of smog and pollution. Elderly people and young children must be extra careful and should avoid moving out in the morning, Kumar said.

Prolonged exposure to severely polluted air may also affect healthy people and seriously impact those with existing diseases, while very poor category of air may cause respiratory illness, experts say.

Dr Atul Kumar, senior eye surgeon at AIIMS, said that due to severe pollution, people also suffer from redness, irritation and itching of eyes.

He said the outpatient department of the hospital is trying to best to deal with the rush of patients after Diwali. Its the same at other hospitals as well where large number of patients affected due to pollution are visiting the OPDs.

Delhi is witnessing hazardous smog, worst in 17 years. A senior IMD official said the pollutants are barely dispersing due to calm wind movement and foggy conditions.
A couple who sold their house are nearly 100,000 out of pocket after their solicitor was tricked into sending their money to a fraudster in a new terrifying scam hitting both buyers and sellers.

The scam involves fraudsters intercepting e-mail threads between home movers and their solicitors and convincing one of them to move money into the fraudster's account.

Max and Davinder Deluca received an e-mail on 25 July which appeared to come from their solicitor, Powell & Co of Sutton Coldfield. The e-mail told them the good news that their house sale had been completed and funds would be moved into their account.

Big target: One bank insider says solicitors are a prime target for fraudsters, thanks to the huge sums involved in transactions

However, it transpired that the e-mail was spoofed and did not come from Powell & Co at all.

They soon found out the fraudster had been at work on the solicitors as well.

They had sent an email to Powell & Co convincing them to transfer 98,000 proceeds of the sale straight into their account.

It was only a week later when Mr and Mrs Deluca queried where the money was that the truth emerged.

They discovered the money had been transferred to an RBS account, rather than their own Barclays account.

The scammers had cleverly bought themselves time by reassuring the Delucas that the transaction had been successful.

Complicated: The Delucas bank with Barclays and the solicitor with HSBC - while the fraudster had an account with RBS

To make matters more complicated, the solicitor banks with HSBC, meaning three high street giants are involved.

Mr Deluca told This is Money that 41,000 has been recovered and was paid back to the solicitor on 2 September  but despite this, the pair have yet to receive any of it back from the solicitor or banks involved.

In fact, Mr Deluca says that Powell & Co only advised them that the money was recouped some three weeks after it arrived back in the solicitor account.

The case is being investigated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority which doesn't wish to comment on the story.

SIMILAR SCAM? Have you fallen victim to this scam, or any other? Get in touch: lee.boyce@thisismoney.co.uk

It says missing cash from client accounts should be replaced with 'extreme urgency'.

Mr Deluca says they sold their house to move to a better location so their 4 year-old daughter could go to a better primary school.

He also says the SRA have gone silent on him and that the stress has had health implications on he and his wife.

Powell & Co declined to comment and says the matter is with its insurers.

An RBS spokesman said: 'We sympathise with the victim of this scam. We are pleased we have been able to recoup some of the funds in this situation.

'We take these matters very seriously and respond quickly when a fraud is reported to us.'

HSBC has been contacted for comment.

One bank fraud expert told This is Money that in the region he serves, solicitors are under attack from fraudsters because of the high amount of correspondence between them and clients, number of people who have access to finance systems and the fact huge sums of money are often involved.

The same expert also showed This is Money just how easy it is to access both e-mail and phone spoofing websites in seconds via popular search engines, which can dupe a whole range of businesses and customers.

The SRA stated earlier in the year that around four companies a month are being targeted by fraudsters. This figure is now likely to be higher.

If you receive a suspicious email, the SRA says to contact the law firm to check it is genuine by popping in to its offices or telephoning.

The SRA told This is Money that it has been told of cases where a member of the public's e-mail account was hacked more than a year before they decided to sell their house  the criminals were just sat there waiting for an opportunity.

Earlier in the year, sister title Money Mail revealed the story of newlyweds Sarah and Ritchie Tough who lost their 45,000 deposit to a similar scam.

The couple, who had hoped to buy a home in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, were victims to computer hackers who monitor e-mails sent by a solicitor and homebuyer.
More than 76bn was wiped off the value of Britains largest companies this week in the biggest stock market rout since the start of the year.

The FTSE 100 index fell another 97.25 points to a seven-week low of 6693.26 yesterday  taking losses since Monday to 4.3 per cent.

The five-day sell-off, which came as investors fretted about the outcome of the presidential election in the United States, reduced the value of blue-chip firms by 76.4bn.

Downward spiral: The index fell another 97.25 points to a seven-week low of 6693.26 - taking losses since Monday to 4.3 per cent

The last time London suffered such a heavy weekly loss was at the start of 2016 when the Footsie fell 5.3 per cent in its worst ever opening to the year.

On Wall Street, the flagship S&P 500 fell for a ninth day in a row, its longest losing streak since 1980.

Investors eyeing Tuesdays election see Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton as a safer pair of hands than Republican nominee Donald Trump, who has promised to pursue protectionist policies and build a wall along the Mexican border.

A Trump win would likely deliver the greatest market impact, warned Lars Kreckel, a global equity strategist at Legal & General Investment Management.

David Cheetham, a market analyst at trading firm XTB, added: The uncertainty surrounding the US election has turned global sentiment sour as Trumps recent rise in the polls has raised the possibility that the next person in the White House could be viewed from the markets perspective as significantly more volatile and unpredictable than the incumbent.

This weeks High Court ruling on Brexit, which could see Parliament frustrate plans for the UK to leave the European Union, has also caused alarm among investors. Chris Iggo, chief investment officer at Axa Investment Managers, warned that investors face an uncertain future. 

The political turmoil over Brexit continues, the US presidential election race is as tight as can be and the European Union is living an existential nightmare, he said.

European and Asian benchmarks were also on the slide yesterday with the stock market in Japan down 1.3 per cent while Paris and Frankfurt fell nearly 1 per cent.

With the race for the White House going to the wire, investors appeared unmoved by figures showing another 161,000 jobs were created in the US last month.

The unemployment rate fell to 4.9 per cent in the last major piece of economic data in the US before the election.

While the upbeat figures pave the way for the Federal Reserve to raise rates in the US next month, economists said they would have little bearing on the election following such a bitter and divisive campaign.

There is so much noise out there right now, everyone is screaming from the roof tops. I just dont know that any particular data point is going to have a great bearing on the election, said Sam Bullard, senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities in North Carolina.

Analysts warned the Fed could yet be forced to abandon plans to raise rates next month, having lifted them for the first time in nearly a decade in December last year.

Neil Wilson, a market analyst at City trading firm ETX, said: With Donald Trump having closed the gap on Hillary Clinton, the election result is too close to call and markets are on a knife-edge.

There is a definite sense were heading for a Brexit-like event.
He is a flamboyant figure who has made stellar returns over the past 25 years.

But it seems investors think super-rich hedge fund trader Crispin Odey may have lost his touch.

Assets under management at the City stalwarts flagship fund plunged 60 per cent in the first nine months of the year as he struggled to make sense of turbulent markets. Odey European Inc held about 981m at the start of the year  but this had plummeted to 376m by the end of September.

Hard times: Assets under management at Crispin Odey's flagship fund plunged 60 per cent in the first nine months of the year

Around 48bn has been pulled from hedge funds this year due to angst over poor performance and sky-high, hard-to-understand fees. Odey, 57, has long had a bleak view of Britains prospects and takes aggressive short positions against UK stocks, betting their share prices will fall.

Earlier this week he made headlines by warning that a brutal recession was around the corner and that the stock market was set to plunge 80 per cent.

But where this might once have been gratefully received by awestruck shareholders, it was instead greeted with scepticism.

His slump continued on Thursday after a successful court challenge to Brexit. It saw most of his 18 short bets rise in value. Bloomberg data shows that Odeys fourth-largest short position, Lancashire Holdings, gained the most value in eight years after posting surprisingly high profits. And Tullow Oil, his biggest bet in which he has shorted a 4.36 per cent stake worth 103.5m, has risen 60 per cent since he bought it.

The falls hes predicting suggests a pretty seismic collapse in capitalism, said Laith Khalaf of trader Hargreaves Lansdown. In that scenario, Im not sure youd want to be invested in anything apart from baked beans and bottled water.
The luxury goods firm behind Cartier and Dunhill is in crisis after most of its senior management announced their departures on the same day.

Richemont chief executive Richard Lepeu retires in March. Finance director Gary Saage steps down four months later. Seven other directors will also leave the board.

Losing time: The Swiss-based firm is struggling to cope with sinking demand for luxury watches

The exits could not come at a worse time for the Swiss-based firm which is struggling to cope with sinking demand for luxury watches. Richemont posted a 43 per cent fall in half-year operating profit to 707m and will no longer provide monthly updates due to the volatile markets.

Johann Rupert, 66, who with his family controls the firm, has scrapped the role of chief executive. Instead Richemont, which also owns Mont Blanc, will be led by a group of executives from various divisions.

South African Rupert, a father of three, said as executive chairman he would become an air traffic controller of egos.

Almost all of the board members are men aged 50 or more  there is just one woman.
The body of a missing teenager has been found on a college campus in California.

The remains were found on the campus of Sonoma State University in northern California on Wednesday night, and it has now been confirmed they are that of missing 18-year-old Kirk Kimberly.

The body was not badly decomposed, leading investigators to suspect it was buried recently. Most of the body was covered, with just the head sticking out above the ground.

Scroll down for video

The body of missing teenager Kirk Kimberly (pictured) has been found on a college campus in California

Video courtesy of KRON4

Kimberly was reported missing on October 17, after last being seen leaving his home on a bike to go visit a friend. The death is being investigation as a homicide, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reports.

Authorities say Kimberly was last seen leaving the Sonoma County city of Cotati on his bicycle to meet a friend in nearby Rohnert Park.

A landscaper discovered the body Wednesday in an area filled with rugged brush near two university music halls. Authorities removed it Thursday after cordoning off a three-acre zone and scouring it for evidence.

Students at the school said they were shocked by the grisly discovery.

Kirk Kimberly's (left and right) remains were found on the campus of Sonoma State University in northern California on Wednesday night

Kimberly (left, pictured with his grandparents) had been missing for more than two weeks

A landscaper working at the college discovered Kimberly's body in an area filled with rugged brush near two university music halls

'It took a minute to settle in then I'm like, oh my gosh, there's actually someone dead on campus. So, it's just weird to comprehend that actually happened. You hear it on the news all the time, but you don't really hear it 200 feet away from us,' Matthew Parkinson told ABC7.

About 9,000 students attend Sonoma State University.

Kimberly's family has been notified of his death.
The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies are examining faked documents aimed at discrediting the Hillary Clinton campaign as part of a broader investigation into what U.S. officials believe has been an attempt by Russia to disrupt the presidential election, people with knowledge of the matter said.

U.S. Senator Tom Carper, a Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, has referred one of the documents to the FBI for investigation on the grounds that his name and stationery were forged to appear authentic.

In a document forged to appear as though Carper was writing a letter to Clinton, Carper is quoted as saying the Department of Homeland Security had advised him of a risk that a 'massive' cyber attack 'could change the election results in favor of a specific candidate.'

The document dated October 3 was reviewed by Reuters and it concludes, 'Any suspicious incident will be immediately reported to your assistants so that a recount of votes could be timely organized.

Scroll down for video

The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies are examining faked documents aimed at discrediting the Hillary Clinton (above) campaign

U.S. Senator Tom Carper (above) has referred one of the documents to the FBI for investigation on the grounds that his name and stationery were forged to appear authentic

In a document (above) forged to appear as though Carper was writing a letter to Clinton, Carper is quoted as saying the DHS had advised him of a risk that a 'massive' cyber attack 'could change the election results in favor of a specific candidate'

'You will not lose the election because of some compromised electronic voting systems.'

The fake Carper letter is one of several documents presented to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Justice for review in recent weeks, the sources said.

Carper spokeswoman Meghan Pennington confirmed on Friday that the senator had sent a copy of the letter to the FBI and the Senate's chief law enforcement officer.

'Our office became aware of a fake letter on Senator Carper's official letterhead and immediately referred it to federal law enforcement to investigate its genesis,' Pennington said.

As part of an investigation into suspected Russian hacking, FBI investigators have also asked Democratic Party officials to provide copies of other suspected faked documents that have been circulating along with emails and other legitimate documents taken in the hack, people involved in those conversations said.

A spokesman for the FBI confirmed the agency was 'in receipt of a complaint about an alleged fake letter' related to the election but declined further comment.

A spokesman for the FBI confirmed the agency was 'in receipt of a complaint about an alleged fake letter' related to the election but declined further comment. File photo of the FBI building in Washington, D.C.

Others with knowledge of the matter said the FBI was also examining other fake documents that recently surfaced.

U.S. intelligence officials have warned privately that a campaign they believe is backed by the Russian government to undermine the credibility of the U.S. presidential election could move beyond the hacking of Democratic Party email systems.

That could include posting fictional evidence of voter fraud or other disinformation in the run-up to voting on November 8, U.S. officials have said.

Russian officials deny any such effort.

In addition to the Carper letter, the FBI has also reviewed a seven-page electronic document that carries the logos of Democratic pollster Joel Benenson's firm, the Benenson Strategy Group, and the Clinton Foundation, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

The document, identified as a fake by the Clinton campaign, claims poll ratings had plunged for Clinton and called for 'severe strategy changes for November' that could include 'staged civil unrest' and 'radiological attack' with dirty bombs to disrupt the vote.

Like the Carper letter, it was not immediately clear where the fraudulent document had originated or how it had begun to circulate.

FBI Director James Comey (left) touched off an outcry from Democrats last week when he alerted Congress that agents had found other emails that could be linked to an inquiry into Clinton's (right) use of a private email server

On October 20, Roger Stone, a former Trump aide and Republican operative, linked to a copy of the document on Twitter with the tag, 'If this is real: OMG!!'

Benenson's firm had no immediate comment. Craig Minassian, a spokesman for the Clinton Foundation, said the document was 'fake.' He said he did not know if the FBI had examined it.

Stone did not respond to emails requesting comment.

A spokesman for the Clinton campaign, Glen Caplin, said the document was a fake and part of a 'desperate stunt' to capitalize on the leak of Democratic emails by Wikileaks.

The developments highlight the unusually prominent role U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies have played in a contentious election and an ongoing debate about how public they can or should be about their inquiries.
She was Bradley Manning an the time of her arrest in 2010

Was sentenced to 35 years in prison 2013 for leaking 700,00 secret military and State Department files to WikiLeaks

Claim her time behind bars is an 'assault on her health and humanity'

Her attorneys say her

Chelsea Manning attempted suicide for the second time in recent months, her attorneys have revealed.

The transgender soldier, who is serving a 35-year jail sentence for leaking confidential military documents, tried to kill herself at Fort Leavenworth prison in Kansas last month.

According to The New York Times, she was beginning a week of solitary confinement.

Attorneys Vincent Ward and Chase Strangio declined to divulge details of Manning's suicide attempt last month at a military prison at Kansas' Fort Leavenworth.

Wayne Hall, an Army spokesman, said medical privacy laws barred him from discussing the matter.

Chelsea Manning attempted suicide for the second time in recent months, her attorneys have revealed. The transgender soldier (pictured), tried to kill herself at Fort Leavenworth prison in Kansas last month

But Manning's attorneys cited her prison conditions  including the solitary confinement that her legal team says she received as punishment for her July suicide attempt  as contributing to their client's fragile mental state.

Strangio, in an email to The Associated Press, called her treatment since her 2010 arrest and subsequent time serving a 35-year sentence 'demoralizing and destabilizing assaults on her health and humanity.'

'After her July suicide attempt, I watched her begin to piece her life and spirit back together only to have that shattered by the disciplinary proceedings brought against her and then the unannounced initiation of her term of punishment last month,' Strangio wrote. 'She has repeatedly been punished for trying to survive and now is being repeatedly punished for trying to die.'

Strangio added he worries about Manning's 'ability to keep fighting under these relentless abuses.'

Manning, arrested in 2010 as Bradley Manning, was convicted in 2013 in military court of leaking more than 700,000 secret military and State Department documents to WikiLeaks.

Manning, arrested in 2010 as Bradley Manning, was convicted in 2013 (pictured) in military court of leaking more than 700,000 secret military and State Department documents to WikiLeaks. Now Chelsea, she is at the beginning of a 35-year prison sentence

Manning was an intelligence analyst in Iraq at the time.

In 2014, the ACLU sued the U.S. Department of Defense over its refusal to treat Manning's gender dysphoria.
New York real estate heir Robert Durst has made his long-awaited arrival in California to face charges of killing a friend 16 years ago, authorities said.

Durst arrived at the Los Angeles County jail Friday and is being held without bail ahead of his scheduled arraignment on Monday afternoon, district attorney's spokeswoman Jane Robison said.

He's expected to plead not guilty, TMZ reports.

Local prosecutors have been eager to bring Durst to California and try him in the killing of his friend Susan Berman in 2000.

His case rose to prominence last year after HBO's documentary series, The Jinx, which looked into the deaths of Durst's ex-wife, his neighbor Morris Black, and Berman.

He was arrested after the final episode aired in March 2015.

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New York real estate heir Robert Durst has made his long-awaited arrival in California to face charges of killing a friend 16 years ago (March 2015 photo)

The millionaire is accused of killing female friend Susan Berman (left) in 2000 to keep her from talking to prosecutors about the disappearance of Durst's first wife Kathie in 1982

He was being held in New Orleans on federal weapons charges until he pleaded guilty in April. He had already waived extradition to California.

Durst is accused in California of killing Berman in 2000 to keep her from talking to prosecutors about the disappearance of Durst's first wife, Kathleen Durst, in 1982.

Durst's attorney, Dick DeGuerin, has said Durst is just as eager to come to Los Angeles County and prove his innocence.

'We've been begging to get to California since two days after he was arrested,' DeGuerin said in September.

Durst, already well-known in New York, became far more famous when HBO aired The Jinx.

The series cast serious suspicion on him for several alleged crimes, including the Berman killing.

Durst was acquitted of killing his neighbor Morris Black in Texas, saying it was self-defense.

Durst was arrested on the eve of the finale of the documentary series, The Jinx, which described the disappearance of Kathleen Durst (pictured), the death and dismemberment of a neighbor in Galveston, Texas, and Berman's death

Durst was being held in a Los Angeles County jail Friday and is scheduled to be arraigned in the case on Monday afternoon, district attorney's spokeswoman Jane Robison said (August 2014 photo)

Berman was shot in the back of the head at her home in Beverly Hills, a day before she was due to be questioned by police who had reopened an investigation into the 1982 disappearance of the tycoon's wife, Kathleen Durst, in New York.

Durst appeared to make an unwitting confession to a number of killings during filming of the acclaimed six-part HBO documentary The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.

In the final episode Durst was heard muttering to himself, 'What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course,' apparently unaware that a wireless microphone remained switched on while he used the bathroom.

Durst appeared to make an unwitting confession to a number of killings during filming of the acclaimed six-part HBO documentary The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst

Pictured is a view of the former home where Robert Durst allegedly murdered long time friend Susan Berman in 2000 (March 2015 photo)

It was not clear if Durst was sincerely confessing, but authorities in Los Angeles have said the documentary had played a role in their decision to seek the multimillionaire's arrest for Berman's murder.

Durst was arrested the morning the last of the documentary's six parts was aired in March 2015.

Durst was sentenced to seven years and one month in prison after pleading guilty to the New Orleans weapons charge.
Baroness Scotland pitched up on Radio 4s Today programme to claim there had been no extravagance during her tenure

Baroness Scotland yesterday insisted the taxpayer-funded makeover of her Mayfair mansion was not extravagant  but had no idea how much it cost.

In an astonishing defence of her lavish demands  detailed in documents leaked to the Daily Mail  she said it was absolute nonsense that she had misused public money.

The Labour peer is at the centre of a diplomatic row after questions were raised about her spending since she took over as secretary-general of the Commonwealth in April.

Documents have revealed how the former cabinet minister asked for dozens of lavish additions, drawn up by a celebrity interior designer, at her six-storey grace and favour home.

The lengthy wish-list included the installation of a marble-topped window sill, Farrow & Ball paint costing 33,000 and a chandelier.

But speaking for the first time about the allegations yesterday, the peer insisted her requests for designer additions to the house were absolutely untrue and that the redecoration was simply carried out to fulfil a lease agreement to look after the building. She put the total bill at maybe 330,000.

She insisted the taxpayer-funded makeover of her Mayfair mansion was not extravagant

I can say there are no chandeliers, there are no marble fireplaces, none of those things which are alleged has been spent at all, she added. I said, and I was very clear about this, that there had to be no extravagance whatsoever.

However, a tranche of documents including emails between her aides and Commonwealth staff, appear to contradict her denial.

Officials said some of the additions were extremely expensive and that the Commonwealth  which is said to have dire finances  could not afford her expensive tastes.

Worried staff also discussed how the estimated cost of the refurbishment had risen from 250,000 to 430,000.

In one email, an aide wrote: The SGs [Secretary-General] priorities are: the paint, wallpaper and carpets and the extended reception area. Next is the bathroom.

They also show how she appears to have enlisted the services of interior designer to the stars Nicky Haslam before requesting top of the range paint and expensive carpets.

She appears to have enlisted the services of interior designer Nicky Haslam (pictured) before requesting top of the range paint

Pressed for details of the final bill yesterday, Baroness Scotland would only say it was still being finalised. We are just getting the final figure now, she told Radio 4s Today programme.

I think it is going to come around to just over 300,000, maybe 330,000. I have not myself seen the figure. Baroness Scotland has faced numerous claims of cronyism since taking up the role.

She hired a company controlled by her close friend Lord Patel of Bradford, a Labour peer, for consultancy work  saying he was chosen for his excellence and experience.

But Tory MP James Cleverly said last night: She has allowed a situation to develop whereby her credibility is being questioned.

No 10 appeared to cut Baroness Scotland adrift this week, with a spokesman for the PM repeatedly refusing to say she had confidence in her.

But yesterday  after the emergence of a letter in which Theresa May said she supports the peers efforts to modernise the secretariat  she was given formal backing.

Reports yesterday also claimed that Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, told colleagues she had brought shame to the role.
Meanwhile Abedin could face jail time if found to have lied to the FBI

Huma Abedin had just returned from a fundraiser with Anna Wintour in DC

Huma Abedin went back to her daily routine Friday after a star-studded night in Washington, DC.

Hillary Clinton's aide dropped her four-year-old son Jordan off at to school in New York City - while his father, Abedin's estranged husband Anthony Weiner, carried on his treatment in sex addiction rehab center.

Abedin helped Jordan out of their car on Friday. The little boy held on to her while clutching a toy car.

She seemed ready to head to the office afterwards, holding her cellphone and listening to something through her headphones.

Huma Abedin dropped her son Jordan to school Friday in New York City (pictured), the day after co-hosting a glamorous fundraiser for Hillary Clinton in Washington, DC

Four-year-old Jordan held on to his mother as he stepped out of their car while clutching a toy car (pictured left and right). She helped him reach the ground safely and walked alongside him

Abedin has made time for repeated school runs and outings with Jordan despite her busy schedule these past few months.

She returned from a star-studded fundraiser in Washington, DC just in time for Friday's morning routine.

Abedin spent the evening alongside Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour and designer Diane von Furstenberg, who co-hosted the event with her.

She left the bash, which was held at the private residence of lawyer and philanthropist Constance Milstein and her husband, Count Jean-Christophe de La Haye Saint Hilaire, in a black car en route to New York City.

Abedin has made time for repeated school runs and outings with Jordan despite her busy schedule these past few months - and Friday was no exception

Friday's school run came just hours after Abedin, who has shied away from the campaign trail, co-hosted a fundraiser for Clinton in Washington, DC

Abedin then seemed ready to go to work as she carried on with her day, holding her cellphone with one hand and listening to something through her headphones

But Abedin's career could soon take a less glittery turn as several of Clinton's friends and allies suggested she should distance herself from Abedin, according to the New York Times.

Investigators found thousands of emails potentially related to the FBI's probe into Clinton's private email server while looking into Weiner's laptop.

Weiner, Abedin's estranged husband, was placed under investigation after a 15-year-old girl to the DailyMail.com the disgraced congressman had sent her explicit texts and messages.

She had previously left him after it emerged he had sent another woman a photo of his crotch with young Jordan next to him.

Thursday's fundraiser (pictured) was held at the private residence of lawyer and philanthropist Constance Milstein and her husband, Count Jean-Christophe de La Haye Saint Hilaire

Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour (left) and designer Diane von Furstenberg (right) co-hosted Thursday's fundraiser with Abedin

Abedin, who has said she didn't know that her emails were on Weiner's laptop, was supposed to have turned over all devices containing emails relevant to the FBI's probe of Clinton. She could face up to five years in jail if she is found to have lied.

Weiner has since sought treatment for sex addiction, the DailyMail.com has learned exclusively.

He checked himself into The Ranch, a 2,000-acre facility near Nashville, Tennessee, in early October.

Stays at the facility cost up to $30,000 a month.

There, Weiner cannot use any electronic device, including a laptop or a computer.

Anthony Weiner (pictured), Abedin's estranged husband, has sought treatment for sex addiction, the DailyMail.com has learned exclusively
There is no longer any electricity to light what is left of one the worlds oldest cities. And so the late-evening sky above Aleppo is as clear, star-filled and beautiful as it might have been two millennia ago.

This is but a small comfort amid the drumbeat of artillery. Night or day, what lies beneath the heavens here is an affront to humanity.

Fifteen-year-old Mohammed Sangari is resting on a trolley in a corridor of Al-Razi hospitals emergency department. His head, arms and legs are swathed in bandages, while a much smaller boy, probably his little brother, is holding Mohammeds feet and weeping.

A search and rescue member carries a child from rumble after a barrel bomb attack staged by Syrian army in the opposition-controlled Mashhad district of Aleppo

A boy rescues a child from the a destroyed building after another barrel bomb attack in Aleppo

The conflict in Syria has claimed as many as 400,000 lives and displaced millions more

The rocket had struck around 10.30am that morning. Mohammed and his two younger cousins were helping to load furniture onto a van ahead of their families flight from the district of New Aleppo and the latest bombardment there.

Now, one cousin, a four-year-old boy, is dead and a second, a girl aged six, fights for her life with head wounds. Mohammed was lucky, you could say.

Another stretcher is squeezed past, carrying a bare-chested young man with a round and bloody hole in his solar plexus. To me, it looks like a gunshot wound, but someone says it was caused by a piece of rocket.

The important detail is that it was enough to kill him. Seconds later his hysterical mother appears through the doorway.

My childs dead! she screams, clutching her head. God help us! Please God, help us. The dead man was an off-duty doctor. His mother is noisily inconsolable and finally collapses with grief.

This is a madhouse. Truly terrible.

War reporter RICHARD PENDLEBURY (pictured) described Aleppo as a 'madhouse' and 'truly terrible'

Outside, the ambulances are wailing to a halt every couple of minutes. The regular background thuds of outgoing and incoming artillery and heavy mortar-fire grow more urgent in what is the centre of a major city of two million people.

Several of the casualties are men in camouflage uniform, fresh from the outer frontlines. But most are civilians.

In a side street at the back of the hospital, the mortuary entrance is to be found. Here, weeping relatives gather and those obviously beyond medical help are delivered.

A car is parked at the kerb and the rear door is wide open. A stout middle-aged woman is sprawled across the back seat as if asleep, arms thrown above her head.

Everything about her is a strange concrete grey. No one pays her much attention because she has no more life in her than the building under which she was buried. She and the car are moved.

Almost at once a pick-up truck takes their place. A handsome old man with a large moustache and covered in rubble dust is lying in the back. His eyes are open and seemingly returning my stare, but he, too, is dead.

And nearby there is the grotesque scene of two stretcher bearers trying to fit the corpse of a woman into the back of a tiny yellow taxi while her sobbing teenage son strokes the bloodied sheet that covers her.

News was also coming through of two massive car bombs. The mortuary will be busier than ever.

This was government-held western Aleppo on Thursday afternoon.

The tragic city of Syrias most-uncivil of civil wars is split in two.

A short distance away from the hospital, across a bitterly contested frontline, the eastern side of the city remains under siege by the forces of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

The besieged area has largely been reduced to ruins, although there was no means of reaching it this week to verify conditions.

Most of the residents have fled. But since July, as many as 250,000 have been trapped and are reportedly living in squalor under the constant threat of death. President Assads autocratic and oppressive regime had been subject to international sanctions long before the current crisis.

A Syrian pro-government soldier stands over a body in the '1070' apartment block area, south of al-Hamdaniyah, in eastern Aleppo on November 4

In the face of international pressure, Russian aircraft have not hit eastern Aleppo for two weeks, the country says, in order to allow civilians to escape and the rebels to withdraw. An infantry fighting vehicle is pictured covered in a street in eastern Aleppo

Since the conflict broke out in 2011, it has been accused of using indiscriminate force against civilian areas, including improvised barrel bombs full of shrapnel dropped by helicopters.

Hospitals in rebel areas have been targeted, say his opponents. There have been reports of chemical weapons attacks.

N ot long ago, Assads power seemed to be slipping away as rebel factions spearheaded by hard-line Islamist groups such as the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front united to roll back the exhausted government forces.

But the tide has turned, it seems. The key to Assads resurgence has been the intervention of Vladimir Putins Russia and its modern airpower.

The scent  or rather, stench  of a once unlikely victory is in the air. That is why I was among a small group of Western journalists who had been allowed in by a previously closed and hostile regime.

Presumably we were there to share the good tidings. After five years of grinding catastrophe, President Assad could be on the verge of retaking the whole of Aleppo, Syrias biggest city and one-time economic hub.

The fight is seen by many as the key battle in this whole bloody conflict, which has so far claimed as many as 400,000 lives and displaced millions.

A conflict that began following the 2011 Arab Spring with anti-government protests which were brutally put down, before escalating into a full-scale civil war, pitching rebel groups from Syrias Sunni Muslim majority against Assads Shia Muslim sect, called the Alawites.

Rebel fighters stand with their weapons inside a building in western Aleppo. The authorities here say 11,000 civilians have been killed in western Aleppo since the war began

For the past fortnight, regime-held western Aleppo has been peppered by mortar and rockets

The rebel groups range from moderates to hardline Islamic terrorists, and the carnage has not only allowed the barbaric Islamic State to flourish, but sucked in a U.S.-led coalition and, of course, Assad-supporting Russia.

In the face of international pressure, Russian aircraft have not hit eastern Aleppo for two weeks, the country says, in order to allow civilians to escape and the rebels to withdraw.

The regime claims that, on a previous occasion where a ceasefire afforded a similar opportunity, jihadist fighters fired on designated humanitarian corridors to prevent civilians from escaping.

There is to be another chance, however. Syria and Russia announced that six humanitarian corridors were to be opened yesterday morning for civilians to leave eastern Aleppo.

Another two corridors would allow the rebels to leave the city for other opposition-controlled parts of the country. Syrian jets were over the city on Thursday afternoon, dropping leaflets carrying messages to that effect.

But when the deadline for this evacuation ended at 7pm local time last night, there would be, as one local politician put it euphemistically, an escalation. Regime troops are already massing for the assault.

The rebels know what is coming. So they have redoubled their own efforts against Assads forces.

Smoke billows at a government-held entrance to Aleppo, in the southwestern frontline

For the past fortnight, regime-held western Aleppo has been peppered by mortar and rockets, mainly fired by opposition fighters massed in the countryside to the west.

They are trying, once again, to break the encirclement of the siege from the outside. Around 100 civilians have died as a result, with many times that number wounded.

The authorities here say 11,000 civilians have been killed in western Aleppo since the war began  a third of them children.

United Nations special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said he was appalled and shocked by the high number of rockets indiscriminately launched on civilian suburbs of government-held Aleppo.

Those who argue that this is meant to relieve the siege of eastern Aleppo should be reminded that nothing justifies the use of disproportionate and indiscriminate weapons, including heavy ones, on civilian areas and it could amount to war crimes, de Mistura said.

The Aleppo I saw this week is no longer about whose side you are on. As a local priest said, it has simply become the most dangerous city in the world.

My long journey to Aleppo from the capital Damascus was via a precarious route through government-held central Syria.

The highway often goes close to rebel opposition territory, including that held by Islamic State. It still comes under attack and is sometimes cut.

The desolation we saw en route in the city of Homs, from which armed opposition groups withdrew under a ceasefire in May 2014, was as nothing compared with what awaited at the journeys end.

W hen we neared Aleppo the signs of ongoing war increased. We had heard the steady boom of a Syrian army howitzer battery firing heavy shells at some target far into the desert long before we came across the gun itself.

Most of the roadside villages were abandoned and destroyed.

On the wall of one ruined house someone had painted God is protecting Syria. A joke  or a sign of misplaced optimism?

Convoys of lorries carrying supplies to the government-held part of the city slowed our progress. As the shadows lengthened, the suburbs came into sight, smoke rising on the skyline.

The thump of artillery was again noticeable as we were passing close to where the rebels to the west of the city are attempting to break through the siege.

Bitter fighting had taken place here and little more was needed to make the devastation complete.

Syrian pro-government men stand over a body in the '1070' apartment block area, south of al-Hamdaniyah, in eastern Aleppo. The eastern side of the city remains under siege by the forces of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad

No wall was unmarked by weaponry. A line of buses had been turned on their sides atop an earth bank to make ramparts. Tall residential blocks had folded like partially collapsed decks of cards. Poster after poster of President Assad lined the route. He at least was smiling.

That night we were taken to the Christian quarter of west Aleppo.

Much of it borders the redline with the rebel-held east, causing a number of churches including the Maronite cathedral to be abandoned. The majority of the faithful  who had numbered 200,000, or 7 per cent of the citys population before the crisis  have fled.

Mortars and rockets have fallen on their areas  though causing nothing like the destruction and death of the regime airstrikes or barrel bombs on the other side.

The Catholic cathedral of Our Lady of Assumption still has a large hole punched high through its wall by the choir loft. It marks where a rocket entered during Mass, injuring ten. The cultural mosaic that existed in Syria, of many different faiths living side by side, has been fractured if not destroyed by this dreadful war. Now religious minorities such as these embattled Christians look more than ever to the Assad regime for protection.

Casualties were reported after Syrian rebels fired rockets at one of the evacuation corridors opened from opposition-held east Aleppo during a Russian-declared ceasefire

Dont ever say they are rebels, one local Presbyterian priest told me, after posing for pictures with two moderate Sunni clerics on the altar of his church. These terrorists killed our children and destroyed our homes and tried to kill our existence and history.

The next morning I met two little girls, 12-year-old Nour and Hala, eight, carrying bread back to their home in a ruined apartment block in a devastated street on the edge of the Shihan neighbourhood. They had only moved there three weeks earlier because the fighting meant their real homes were not safe.

Then around the corner came Ahmed and Bilal, both ten, lugging two plastic jerry-cans and on the hunt for water. They, too, are refugees from another part of Aleppo. There were too many bombs and too many people died, said Bilal. It is safer here.

Later, we are led through the ruins of the Old City, once a Unesco World Heritage Site, but now destroyed.

The elegant Khan Al-Wazir gate has been mauled by gun and rocket fire, the ancient souk burned out.

To cross in the open to the walls of the Citadel would invite instant death. The frontline is here and the deserted streets are barricaded to block snipers. Only one shop is still open and it is where Mahmoud Mehmi sells falafel to passing soldiers. Perhaps 30 customers a day.

Aside from Mr Mehmis token presence, 2,000 years of trade and human interaction in a once charming warren of alleyways has come to end.

Do not ask about culpability. Foreign Minister Walid Muallem is 75 years old; short, very fat and sometimes even quite jolly looking.

But he is also as tough as teak and was not about to pussyfoot with Western journalists. Indeed, the first question was fired by him: Who can tell me why this hysteria in the West about Aleppo? he demanded.

The Syrian citizens in the [rebel-held] east of Aleppo are very dear to us. We care about their well-being. We want to liberate them.

Syrian pro-government soldiers run for cover in a former residential area south of al-Hamdaniyah, in eastern Aleppo

A Syrian pro-government soldier stants next to a tank. It is alleged many war crimes have been committed by the regime during the conflict

Since July, as many as 250,000 Syrians have been trapped in the city and are reportedly living in squalor

If we win Aleppo  and I am sure we will  it is up to the West to rethink their policies.

Pressed on accountability for the regimes alleged war crimes  not to mention its blame for creating the conditions which sparked the initial revolt  Mr Muallem was evasive.

Aleppo hospitals had not been targeted by Russian or Syria airstrikes, he said gruffly: Your information is mistaken. Mistakes may have been made, but this is war.

The biggest errors were being committed by the U.S., whom he described as the godfather of a mafia of countries including Britain that have set themselves against Syria.

President Assad was not a leader who will run away, he promised. The people chose him.

The Foreign Minister lit up a cigarette and joked that there was no smoking ban on Syrian territory, as there is under the Islamic State.

What freedom.

And what an unexpected victory almost within his masters grasp.
Police paid out 6.5million in compensation last year to settle claims from their own officers and staff.

Chief constables signed cheques at the rate of more than five a week in payments for stress, tripping on stairs, being bitten by police dogs and injuries on self-defence courses.

Research by the Daily Mail using Freedom of Information laws revealed that forces across the country spent 6,528,242 last year settling a total of 280 personal injury cases.

Forces across the country spent 6,528,242 last year settling a total of 280 personal injury cases

Lancashire police paid out 402,000 last year, including 230,000 to an officer whose hand was injured on a van in an incident with a prisoner. It paid 92,000 and 18,000 respectively to two officers hurt while doing self-defence courses. It also paid more than 8,000 to a staff member who was hospitalised after being bitten by a bug.

Staffordshire paid 160,000 to an officer injured on a training course, while West Yorkshire handed a member of police staff 30,000 for work stress.

John OConnell, chief executive of the TaxPayers Alliance campaign group, said: Police bosses must ensure they live up to the highest standards required by law as the most serious accidents can ruin lives.

Lancashire police paid out 402,000, including 230,000 to an officer whose hand was injured in an incident with a prisoner

Sometimes accidents are going to happen and in those cases it will be entirely appropriate for payments to be made.

But at the same time it is important to root out anyone who is playing the system with spurious demands for taxpayers cash as every penny paid out in compensation is taken away from front-line policing.

A spokesman for the Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, said they can suffer severe consequences from injuries suffered while on duty.

He said the union wants to see the number of claims fall by improving health and safety practices. It can affect their ability to perform their required role, their personal life and in extreme cases it can even end their policing career, he added.
Ministers are preparing for an early general election after three High Court judges ruled that Brexit cannot be triggered without a vote in Parliament, according to reports.

Thursday's ruling prompted hardcore Remainers such as former Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg to vow to use Parliamentary votes demanded by the High Court to try to derail Britain's exit from the EU.

Some pro-Brexit ministers have responded to this threat by suggesting that Mrs May call a general election in order to increase her Parliamentary majority to reduce the voting power of the so-called 'Remoaners'.

Ministers are preparing for an early general election after three High Court judges ruled that Brexit cannot be triggered without a vote in parliament. Pictured: Theresa May

Addressing the 'problem' of the Remain majority in Parliament, a member of the Government told the Telegraph that Mrs May 'must now go to the country' to increase her majority and stop Brexit from being delayed.

'I had believed until this week, that we would be able to avoid an early election,' they said.

'Given this court judgement and the likelihood that we won't win the appeal and given the intransigence in the Lords particularly, I am now open-minded to an early election as many colleagues are.'

Another member of the Government added: 'If I were the Prime Minister I would go for it but I don't think her natural caution is going to allow her to do that. There is definitely a strong argument.'

Another source said the PM is 'not minded' to call an early election.

Polls predict that if Mrs May did call an early election, then her party would win comfortably, and increase its slim majority of 12 by around 30 seats.

Thursday's ruling prompted hardcore Remainers such as Nick Clegg to vow to use parliamentary votes demanded by the High Court to try and derail Britain's exit from the EU

The news comes after Conservative MP Stephen Phillips quit in protest at Theresa May's handling of Brexit.

In his letter of resignation, Mr Phillips wrote: 'Some will label me a quitter, or, no doubt, worse. Those are labels with which I can live. The label Conservative no longer is.'

Senior political figures say the pro-Brexit Tory MP may have quit to return to his high-flying legal career 'where he was very successful before'.

Speaking on Friday, Nick Clegg said the British people should get a 'say' on the final deal on leaving the EU whenever it is finally completed.

Stephen Phillips has announced he is standing down from the House of Commons

Mr Clegg told the Today programme: 'We will seek... to amend the legislation such that Parliament would say to Government that it should pursue a soft Brexit not a hard Brexit.

'There should be some means by which the British people can have a say on the final deal when the negotiations with the EU are finally completed in the years ahead.'

Mr Clegg added: 'If were to be able to marshal opinion behind that approach then people will vote in favour of Article 50 triggered on that basis.

'If the Government, on the other hand, digs its heels in and says 'we are going to go for a more self-harming, hard Brexit and not give anyone a say on the final package' then of course I think people will say 'hang on a minute, we are not sure we are going to give you the consent to proceed on that basis'.

The Government warned it would face down 'anti democratic' attempts to exploit Thursday's landmark court ruling.

It means Parliament is poised to legislate on exactly when Britain starts the formal process of leaving the EU after senior judges shocked Westminster by ruling Theresa May could not act without specific authorisation from MPs.

Theresa May spoke to EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker by telephone on Friday to tell him she still intended to trigger Article 50 by the end of March

Mrs May on Friday made a frantic round of calls to senior EU leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Council President Donald Tusk, assuring them her timetable was unchanged.

And speaking on a visit to Germany Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson played down the drama, urging EU allies to ignore the 'sturm und drang' (storm and stress) in Parliament.
Patients are being charged five times more for a routine check-up at a private dentist compared with other clinics, an investigation has found.

The average cost of a routine visit has soared by 40 per cent in three years, from 37 in November 2013 to 52 now.

But there is also a huge variation in prices between private dentists for a check-up or other routine procedures.

The average cost of a routine visit has soared by 40 per cent in three years, from 37 in November 2013 to 52 now.

One clinic in Harley Street, Central London, is charging 95 for a check-up, rising to 185 if patients want to be seen by a more specialist dentist.

This compares to a cost of 20 at a clinic in South Harrow, West London, only 12 miles away.

And there is even more variation between the prices for routine treatment including root canal work and teeth whitening.

Experts say there is no regulation so dental clinics are allowed to set their own prices for private work and raise them when they want.

But campaigners say patients are often obliged to pay out because they are in a lot of pain. Joyce Robins, of Patient Concern, said: Patients are being ripped off. They really are at the mercy of these clinics.

They are dreading going to the dentist as they have to dig deep into their wallets every time.

Patients wont necessarily be able to pop down the street and find another  they wont have the choice.

HOW MUCH DOES YOUR APPOINTMENT COST? Lowest Price Highest Price Check up (adults) : 20, South Harrow, W London 95, Harley Street, Central London Teeth whitening: 75, Rotherham 550, Cobham, Surrey Veeers (per tooth) 126, SW London 850, Reading Root canal (per tooth) 70, Oldham 499, Wandsworth, SW London Dental Implant (per tooth) 799, West London 2,200 to 2,800, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire Advertisement

Around half of Britons have a private dentist and the rest are on the NHS. Many clinics treat both NHS and private patients  but will not accept new NHS patients if their lists are full.

The Mail investigated the variation in costs by commissioning the price comparison website Whatclinic to carry out an analysis of the 14,200 private dentists on its register.

Prices of root canal work vary more than seven fold, from 70 per tooth at a clinic in Oldham to 499 in Wandsworth, South West London. This is vital treatment to clear the inside of the tooth which has become infected, causing constant pain.

There is an almost seven-fold variation in the prices of veneers  caps that sit on jagged teeth to make them smooth. The lowest price was per tooth 126 at a clinic in South West London rising to 850 in Reading.

And teeth whitening prices vary seven fold, from 75 in Rotherham to 550 at ABC Dental in Cobham, Surrey.

One clinic in Harley Street, Central London, is charging 95 for a check-up, rising to 185 if patients want to be seen by a more specialist dentist. This compares to a cost of 20 at a clinic in South Harrow, West London, only 12 miles away

Dr Suman Rai, of ABC Dental, said he had just raised his prices by 10 per cent from 499 because of the demand. He said: Ive never had an issue with the price. I do about three a week and people are happy to pay that price for the result theyre getting.

Meanwhile, the cost of dental implants can vary more than three fold. They cost 799 at several clinics in West London but between 2,200 and 2,800 at a dentist in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.

The figures also show there is huge variation in the typical cost for a check-up between areas of the country.

This is not right and it's not fair

In Birmingham, the cheapest area, patients typically pay 31 a check-up. But this rises to 67 in Cambridge and 77 in Liverpool.

The highest price for a check-up is charged by Bandlish and Auplish Dentistry, in Harley Street, Central London.

It is run by Dr Bobby Bandlish  who does dental makeovers on ITV1s This Morning show. The clinics website promises high street prices. Other high charging dentists said their prices reflected a level of excellence and extensive experience

In September the countrys top dentist said Britons did not need to see a dentist every six months  raising concerns that they were being asked in by clinics unnecessarily.

The Mail investigated the variation in costs by commissioning the price comparison website Whatclinic to carry out an analysis of the 14,200 private dentists on its register

Dr Sara Hurley, the chief dental officer for England, said the twice yearly check-up was a misconception. She said visiting every year or two would free up space for those who needed treatment for decay or gum problems.

Commenting on the price variations, Katherine Murphy, chief executive of The Patients Association, said: This is not right and its not fair.

There are massive barriers to getting the right dental care because of the charges attached to treatment and this means that there is a huge gulf between the haves and the have-nots.

We oppose the idea that there are charges for oral care, as it is just as important as health care. The added complexity and inequality of a postcode lottery is just another kick in the teeth.

Dr Sandeep Senghera, head of dental health at Whatclinic, said: Theres been little to no standardising of the fee structure.

He also said he was concerned that clinics are allowed to choose whether or not they display prices of treatment on websites or in waiting rooms. In some cases patients may not realise how much they have to pay until after they have had the procedure and do not have a choice.

Dr Nigel Carter, chief executive of the Oral Health Foundation, a charity to improve dental care, urged patients to shop around.

He said: It is a lot of variation  but to an extent you get what you pay for. The dentist is basically selling you his time and hopefully, if you go for the Rolls-Royce end of the market youll get a better service.
Brad Pitt has filed for joint custody of his children.

Documents obtained by DailyMail.com show 52-year-old Pitt has asked for joint physical and legal custody of the six children he shares with Angelina Jolie.

It is the first time Pitt has sent in legal papers after his wife of two years asked for a divorce in September.

Jolie has applied for sole custody of the kids, meaning the legal battle between the two is heating up.

Neither have mentioned in their court filings whether they are seeking spousal or child support - but reports suggest they are still trying to come to an agreement after the acrimonious split.

Brad Pitt has filed for joint custody of the six children he shares with Angelina Jolie. He is seen with them in 2014

Papers seen by DailyMail.com were filed in the Superior Court of California, Los Angeles, on Friday.

Pitt states on the document that he is ending his marriage with Jolie over 'irreconcilable differences'.

He also lists the same separation date, September 15.

He then mentions his children - Maddox, 15, Pax, 12, Zahara, 11, Shiloh, 10, and eight-year-old twins Knox, and Vivienne - and puts down that he is seeking joint custody.

Jolie filed for divorce in a Los Angeles court September 19.

In the filing, she said she separated from her husband on September 15  a day after the couple and son Maddox were involved in an alleged altercation on their private plane.

The actor was accused of physically attacking Maddox while drunk.

Child services in Los Angeles have launched an investigation into what happened.

Documents obtained by DailyMail.com show Pitt has asked for joint physical and legal custody. Pictured at LAX on June 6, 2105, left to right, is Vivienne, Shiloh, Maddox (back), Knox and Zahara

The FBI has said it is gathering information before deciding whether to launch a federal probe into the allegations.

They interviewed Jolie for four hours after the alleged altercation, according to reports.

The actor has denied the claims.

Reports initially suggested that Pitt was seeking joint custody, and wanted to avoid a court battle.

A source recently told People that the pair were still trying to iron out differences during their acrimonious split.

'They are still working on issues that they can't agree on. It seems their issues still involve the kids,' the insider close to the family said.

'Brad and Angie haven't had any contact, and it's all being worked out via their teams,' said the family source recently. 'It's just a sad situation.'

Pitt and Jolie were together for 12 years after becoming close while filming 2005's 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith.'

When they weren't acting, the couple were seen as devoted parents and global philanthropists, creating a joint foundation in 2006.

Court documents filed by Pitt show he wants joint custody for both the children. However, like Jolie, he has not specified child support

Pitt have the same date of separation as Jolie in the papers filed on Friday

The 52-year-old actor listed 'irreconcilable differences', the same as Jolie, as the reason he wanted to end the marriage.

Pitt is seen with (left to right) Pax, Shiloh and Maddox at the premiere of 'Unbroken' in 2014
rent bill in capital would be increased by 363 a month

George Osbornes clampdown on buy-to-let investors will send the cost of rent soaring for tenants, according to a report released yesterday.

With many families and young workers struggling to get on the housing ladder due to rising prices, the shortage of available homes to rent has already pushed up rental prices at a time of booming demand.

Tenants in London face a 25 per cent increase in rents over the next five years while the average rise across the rest of the country is expected to be 19 per cent.

Tenants in London face a 25 per cent increase in rents over the next five years while the average rise across the rest of the country is expected to be 19 per cent.

That would push the average rent in the capital up from 1,452 a month now to 1,815 in 2021  adding 363 a month to the bill.

The average rent nationwide would rise by 123.50 to 773.50 a month, estate agents Savills revealed.

The company suggested rents are being pushed up by an attack on landlords from the former chancellor, who was sacked by Theresa May after the EU referendum.

Mr Osborne introduced a three percentage point increase in stamp duty for landlords and second home owners in April this year.

The changes pushed the tax bill on a 200,000 home up from 1,500 to 7,500  a five-fold increase.

They also added an extra 45,000 in tax to buy a 1.5million home, pushing up the stamp duty bill from 93,750 to 138,750.

The stamp duty surcharge triggered a stampede of sales in March this year as buy-to-let landlords rushed to complete their purchases before the new taxes came in.

That would push the average rent in the capital up from 1,452 a month now to 1,815 in 2021  adding 363 a month to the bill. The average rent nationwide would rise by 123.50 to 773.50 a month, estate agents Savills revealed

Landlords will be hit again next year as high earners are stripped of a tax break that lets them deduct the cost of their mortgage interest from what they owe HM Revenue and Customs each year.

The changes will be phased in between 2017 and 2021. David Cox, managing director of the Association of Residential Letting Agents, has described the tax raid as an outright assault on Britains buy-to-let landlords.

Lucian Cook, director of residential research at Savills, said the changes have put off many buy-to-let investors, leading to a shortage of rental properties on the market.

It is also feared that landlords are pushing on the higher cost of doing business to their tenants in the form of higher rents.

Figures last month from the Bank of England showed demand for buy-to-let mortgages had decreased significantly in recent months.
A mother-of-three who had been missing since September in Georgia was found dead on Thursday.

Heather McDonald, 27, was last seen alive in Cartersville on September 18 when her car was found with the doors open and her belongings inside at the Courtesy Inn on Highway 411, WGCL reported.

Her remains were found on Sunday night in Haralson County and an autopsy will be performed to determine her cause of death by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) Medical Examiner's Office.

A person of interest in her disappearance is already in custody on another charge, authorities said Wednesday.

Tragic: Heather McDonald, a mother-of-three who had been missing since September in Georgia, was found dead on Thursday. She is pictured above with her husband, Stefan

Her remains were found on Sunday night in Haralson County and an autopsy will be performed to determine her cause of death. Her husband said the family is heartbroken over her death. They are pictured above together

Richard Dale Harden was arrested on October 7 in Carroll County on a warrant for sex-offender registry violation, U.S. Marshals Service spokesman Jim Joyner said, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Authorities shot Harden during the arrest process and he was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital for treatment.

He was eventually released into the custody of Cartersville police and is currently being held in the Bartow County jail.

At the time of McDonald's disappearance, her husband, Stefan, said she had been under some stress and displayed erratic behavior.

A missing person alert, seen above, was issued for Heather along with a $10,000 reward for information

Richard Dale Harden (left), a person of interest in her disappearance, is already in custody on another charge, authorities said Wednesday. McDonald's (right) family hoped she would have been found alive

'(But) nothing that would indicate that she was just going to disappear  she wouldn't go this long without reaching out to her kids,' he said.

After news of her death spread, the family issued a statement saying they were heartbroken.

'Our world is rocked. We have had nothing but the highest hopes of seeing Heather again since she disappeared over six weeks ago,' the statement reads.

According to records, Harden was released from prison in 2010 after he was convicted in 1989 on a count of enticing a child for indecent purposes.

Anyone with information is asked to call Cartersville Police at 770-607-6227.
A man in his 20s has been killed after a falling gum tree landed on him as he stopped to fix his four-wheel-drive during a camping trip with friends.

The incident occurred in the Conondale National Park, on the Sunshine Coast, in Queensland at about 7pm on Friday.

The man, from north Brisbane, and his friends had stopped to fix their vehicle when the large tree fell, the ABC reported.

A man in his 20s has been killed after a falling gum tree landed on him as he stopped to fix his four-wheel drive (pictured)

The incredible force of the falling tree in the Conondale National Park (pictured), Queensland, is clear to see

The intense power and damage caused by the falling tree was evident after first light on Saturday.

Police said his friends could only watch in horror as the tree struck the man as it fell, before landing on the vehicle.

The man died at the scene, with police to deliver a report to the coroner.
With temperatures dropping and the nights drawing in, it can be hard to find the motivation to head out for a run.

But now is actually the best time of year to go jogging  because the cold makes it easier on your body.

A study by St Marys University in London has found that cold conditions bring a runners heart rate down by 6 per cent, as less blood is pumped out to the skin to dissipate heat.

A study by St Marys University in London has found that cold conditions bring a runners heart rate down by 6 per cent, as less blood is pumped out to the skin to dissipate heat

A 40-minute jog during the average British summer sees someone sweat 1.3 litres on average, making the body work harder to combat dehydration. But a run in cooler weather requires less energy, making it easier to get round quicker.

It means now could actually be the perfect time to sign up to a 10K, with the better conditions potentially shaving two minutes off your personal best time.

The research, conducted as runners sign up for the London Winter Run in February, put six male athletes through 40-minute runs at 22C (72F) and 8C (46F).

A 40-minute jog during the average British summer sees someone sweat 1.3 litres on average, making the body work harder to combat dehydration. But a run in cooler weather requires less energy, making it easier to get round quicker

At the hotter temperature, they were under greater cardiovascular strain, leading to impaired performance This supports previous evidence that the skin needs increased blood flow when it is warm.
JD Wetherspoon boss Tim Martin, 61, is concerned that many 16-year-olds binge-drink cheap supermarket alcohol

Teenagers should be allowed to enjoy a beer in their local pub so they can learn social drinking, the founder of one of the countrys largest pub chains has said.

JD Wetherspoon boss Tim Martin, 61, is concerned that many 16-year-olds binge-drink cheap supermarket alcohol and do not learn how to drink sensibly.

Mr Martin believes that many young people would be safer drinking in pubs rather than drinking heavily at home before venturing out with friends.

Discussing his concerns over the dangerous binge-drinking culture that exists among young people, he told the Guardian that pubs had more or less become ghettos now for adults.

Mr Martin, whose pub chain now has nearly 1,000 pubs across Britain and Ireland, said: Some sort of system that allowed 16-year-olds to have a beer or two in a pub would be good.

Children over the age of 16 are currently allowed a beer, wine or cider with a meal in a pub if they are accompanied by an adult, but it is illegal for any 16-year-old to approach a bar and order themselves an alcoholic drink.

Wetherspoons currently employs 35,000 staff and turns over 1.5billion a year and is seen by many as the saving grace of the struggling pub industry.

The number of pubs across Britain has been steadily closing for years, with nearly 30 pubs going out of business every week.

Children over the age of 16 are currently allowed a beer, wine or cider with a meal in a pub if they are accompanied by an adult, but it is illegal for any 16-year-old to approach a bar and order themselves an alcoholic drink

The pub boss, whose shares in the business are thought to be worth around 250million, has featured heavily in the news over the past year due to his outspoken support of Britains exit of the EU.

Just earlier this week Mr Martin threatened to stop selling European beers if bullying EU leaders imposed tariffs on Britain.

During a first-quarter trading statement, he said that French wine, Champagne and spirits, German beer and Swedish cider, for example, are all at extreme risk if the industry was hit by tariffs.

Mr Martin, who donated 200,000 to the Leave campaign, said: If we, and companies like ours, are unable to agree on tariff-free transactions, it will inevitably result in a loss of business for European companies which have done nothing to deserve this outcome.

The ultimate sanction will be in the hands of UK consumers, should they take offence at the hectoring and bullying approach of Juncker and co.

Mr Martin first displayed his disapproval over Europe in 2002, when he distributed 500,000 beer mats throughout his pubs persuading people not vote to join the euro.
The man was found naked in a

A naked man allegedly punched a female police officer in the face in the NSW Riverina region.

Police responded to reports of a man running around and acting irrationally at Junee about 7pm on Friday.

The 18-year-old man was found in a paddock and he allegedly rushed at them when they attempted to speak to him.

A female officer was allegedly punched in the face by a naked 18-year-old man on Friday night

He punched the female senior constable in the face before being subdued, police say.

The officer suffered a fractured hard roof palate to her mouth and was taken to Wagga Rural Referral Hospital then to Canberra Hospital for surgery.

The man has been charged with causing grievous bodily harm to a police officer on duty, assaulting an officer in execution of duty, and resisting arrest.

He was refused bail to appear at Wagga Wagga Bail Court on Saturday.
Melania Trump was paid for 10 modeling jobs in the U.S. worth $20,056 in the seven weeks before she had legal permission to work in the country, according to detailed documents from 20 years ago provided to The Associated Press.

The details of Melania's early paid modeling work in the U.S. emerged in the final days of a bitter presidential campaign in which her husband, Donald Trump, has taken a hard line on immigration laws and those who violate them.

Melania - who received a green card in March 2001 and became a U.S. citizen in 2006 - has always maintained that she arrived in the country legally and never violated the terms of her immigration status.

During the presidential campaign, she has cited her story to defend her husband's hard line on immigration.

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Melania Trump was paid for 10 modeling jobs in the U.S. worth $20,056 in the seven weeks before she had legal permission to work in the country, it has been claimed. She is pictured here while delivering a speech in Pennsylvania on Thursday

Melania pictured on a red carpet in New York in 1999. The details of Melania's early paid modeling work in the U.S. emerged in the final days of a bitter presidential campaign in which her husband has taken a hard line on immigration laws and those who violate them

Trump has proposed broader use of the government's E-verify system allowing employers to check whether job applicants are authorized to work.

He has noted that federal law prohibits illegally paying immigrants.

The wife of the GOP presidential nominee, who sometimes worked as a model under just her first name, has said through an attorney that she first came to the U.S. from Slovenia on August 27, 1996 - on a B1/B2 visitor visa and then obtained an H-1B work visa on October 18, 1996.

The documents obtained by the AP from 20 years ago show she was paid for 10 modeling assignments between September 10 and October 15, during a time when her visa allowed her generally to be in the U.S. and look for work but not perform paid work in the country.

The documents examined by the AP indicate that the modeling assignments would have been outside the bounds of her visa.

It is highly unlikely that the discovery will affect the citizenship status of Melania.

FAST FACTS: MELANIA MODELED IN THE US PRIOR TO GETTING A WORK VISA August 27, 1996: Melania has said through her lawyer that this is when she first came to the US from Slovenia on a B1/B2 visitor visa. September 10 to October 15, 1996: Documents obtained by the AP show Melania was paid for 10 modeling assignments between September 10 and October 15, during a time when her visa allowed her generally to be in the U.S. and look for work but not perform paid work in the country. The documents examined by the AP indicate that the modeling assignments would have been outside the bounds of her visa. October 18, 1996: Melania has said this is when she obtained an H-1B work visa. March 19, 2001: Melania received a green card. January 22, 2005: Melania marries Donald Trump. July 2006: Melania became a U.S. citizen. Advertisement

The government can seek to revoke the U.S. citizenship of immigrants after the fact in cases when it determines a person willfully misrepresented or concealed facts relevant to his naturalization.

But the government effectively does this in only the most egregious cases, such as instances involving terrorism or war crimes.

The disclosures about the payments come as Melania takes on a more substantial role advocating for her husband's candidacy.

She made her first speech in months on Thursday, in which she spoke of her time working as a model in Europe and her decision to come to the U.S.

'As a young entrepreneur, I wanted to follow my dream to a place where freedom and opportunity were in abundance. So of course, I came here,' she said.

'Living and working in America was a true blessing, but I wanted something more. I wanted to be an American.'

The detailed documents obtained by the AP included ledgers, other accounting documents and a management agreement signed by Melania from Metropolitan International Management that covered parts of 1996 and 1997.

The AP obtained the files this week after seeking copies since August from employees of the now-defunct modeling firm, after Melania made comments earlier this summer that appeared inconsistent with U.S. immigration rules.

A New York immigration lawyer whom Melania asked to review her immigration documents, Michael J. Wildes, also reviewed some of the ledgers at AP's request.

Wildes said in a brief statement that 'these documents, which have not been verified, do not reflect our records including corresponding passport stamps.'

He did not elaborate or answer additional questions asking for clarification.

Wilde appeared to be referring to Melania's arrival in the United States on August 27, 1996, one day after the ledgers list a charge for car service to pick her up from the airport.

Melania and her husband, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, pictured together in September 1998 at the Lincoln Center in New York City

Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks also did not answer additional written questions from the AP.

Trump's campaign also did not immediately respond to Dailymail.com's request for comment.

Since questions arose earlier this year, Melania has declined to publicly release her immigration records.

Wildes, the immigration lawyer, released a letter in September that laid out the details of what he said Melania's immigration records show, including a seven-week window in which Melania was in the U.S. before her work visa was issued.

During that seven-week period, the ledgers list modeling work for clients that included Fitness magazine and Bergdorf Goodman department store.

The management agreement, which said it was not an employment agreement, included a handwritten date of August 27, 1996.

Melania and Donald Trump pictured together last month. During the presidential campaign, Melania has cited her story to defend her husband's hard line on immigration

The top of the document said it was 'made and entered into as of this 4th day of September 1996.'

Many of the documents were part of a legal dispute related to the dissolution of the firm in the late 1990s and found recently in storage.

The accounting ledgers for the firm's models were listed on hundreds of pages of continuously fed paper that appeared yellowed with age.

They were authenticated by a former employee who worked at the firm at the time.

The employee spoke on condition of anonymity because this person feared retaliation and threats from Trump's presidential campaign.

Exhibit markings with the records were also consistent with documents filed in New York state court, including a deposition of one former partner that referred to the same exhibit number.

The sworn testimony describing the exhibit's content matches the documents obtained by the AP.

Melania made her first speech in months on Thursday (pictured), in which she spoke of her time working as a model in Europe and her decision to come to the U.S.

A former partner, Paolo Zampolli, who previously told the AP that he recruited Melania to come to the U.S. as a model, confirmed that the contract language was used by his firm and his signature appeared on the document.

Melania's signature on the contract resembled her signature on her marriage license recorded in 2005.

Asked about the two dates on the document, Zampolli said he usually vacationed in Europe each August and likely arranged for the contract to be formally executed when he returned to New York after Labor Day, even though Melania had signed it eight days earlier.

Zampolli previously told the AP that Melania obtained a work visa before she modeled professionally in the United States.

He said the ledgers for Melania were consistent with printouts used by his firm at the time.

However, but he would not personally vouch for them because he said money matters were handled by the company's chief financial officer, who has since died.

Zampolli said he did not recall Melania working without legal permission.

'Honestly, I don't know. It's like 20 years ago,' he said.

'The contract looks (like) a real one and the standard one.'

Foreigners are not allowed to use a visitor visa to work for pay in the U.S. for American companies.

Doing so would violate the terms of that visa and could prohibit a foreigner from later changing his or her immigration status in the U.S. or bar the foreigner from the United States again without special permission to come back.

The E-verify system started in 1997  after Melania came to the country  and was dramatically expanded after 2007.

Some ledgers obtained by the AP identify Melania by her professional name and detail her involvement with the modeling agency from July 18, 1996, through September 26, 1997.

Other documents from the same accounting ledgers identify Melania as Melanija Knaus and list $20,526 in gross earnings for the period before she was granted her work visa on October 18, 1996.

Donald Trump has proposed broader use of the government's E-verify system allowing employers to check whether job applicants are authorized to work

The documents also show the modeling company paid for her rent, lent her money and paid for her pager.

Some ledgers were first made available to True.Ink, an online lifestyle publication, and then independently obtained and verified by the AP.

Metropolitan International Management managed the careers of about 65 women in 1996 and 1997, according to court records.

It paid the women as independent contractors, collecting a 20 per cent commission and deducting expenses.
A team of pigeon racers is under investigation after allegedly feeding birds cocaine to make them fly faster.

Staffordshire racers Ricky McGraw, 37, Kierren Clegg, 36, and Malcolm Preece, 56, were suspended by the Royal Pigeon Racing Association this week after a series of victories.

Their birds' excrement tested positive for the Class A drug but the they strenuously denied the doping allegations and have appealed the decision to ban them.

Under investigation: Staffordshire racers Ricky McGraw (right), 37, Kierren Clegg (left), 36, and Malcolm Preece, 56, were suspended by the Royal Pigeon Racing Association this week

They claim their pigeons' samples were contaminated because they were taken in a pub where the races start and finish.

Kierren Clegg told the Sun: 'I didn't even know cocaine helped birds.

'They tested it in a pub. You are talking about cross-contamination. They should have tested in the loft which we share.

Malcolm's son Craig, 30, added: 'My dad's got nothing to do with this. The pigeon races normally start and finish at a pub. They test the bird's poo but it shouldn't be done in a pub.'

But the RPRA president Les Blacklock rejected the claims that the sample was contaminated adding that this one the only one out of 80 to come back positive.

Kierren Clegg denied the allegations, claiming the pigeons' samples were contaminated because it was taken in a pub.

In a 2010 study, it was found that pigeons fly faster when cocaine is inserted into their grain.

If found guilty of feeding the birds with the Class A drug, racers could be handed a three-year ban.

This is the latest scandal to rock the pigeon racing world after Britain's top pigeon fancier admitted cheating in July.

Eamon Kelly, 52, was defending champion of the Tarbes National, hailed as being the most sought-after title in pigeon racing.

But he may now have to quit the sport in disgrace after his trickery was exposed.

Disgraced: Britain's top pigeon fancier Eamon Kelly faces a lifetime ban from the sport after he was exposed as having cheated to claim the coveted first place in the Tarbes National

He claimed his pigeon made it back to Britain first from Tarbes in the South of France by registering a made-up time using the electronic tag system.

But in reality, his bird had never left his loft in Didcot.

HOW DID PIGEON-RACING CHEAT EAMON KELLY DO IT? Eamon Kelly registered 14 birds in the highly contested Tarbes National

He sent a second team of birds to the South of France in a lorry with 2,200 other contestants

As the second team were making the 580mile journey home, the first team were happy in his loft in Didcot, Oxfordshire

He estimated a likely winning time, and registered one of his birds as having returned home using the electronic tag system

His winning bird would have flown the journey at an average of 40mph

But race organisers became suspicious when they realised other birds, flying at an average of 39mph, were nowhere near home Advertisement

The pigeon fancier had registered 14 birds in the race and kept them in his loft while sending a different set out to France with the other competitors.

While the second set started their journey across the Channel, Mr Kelly calculated a likely winning time.

He then took a bird from his loft and registered it as having returned using a microchipped tag on its body.

In a statement, he said: 'I, Eamon Kelly, sincerely apologise to all my friends and fanciers over my stupid actions relating to the recent Tarbes race.
Fears are growing that the death knell is sounding for the traditional village primary school amid a funding squeeze.

Headteachers have warned that thousands of smaller primaries in England are under real threat as they become financially unviable.

They could be forced to cut curriculums, share resources and teaching staff such as heads, join multi academy trusts or even close due to gaps in their budgets.

Headteachers have warned that thousands of smaller primaries in England are under real threat as they become financially unviable (file photo)

The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) has claimed that one-form entry primaries and secondaries with 600 pupils or fewer will fall off a cliff unless new funds are found.

This comes amid delays to the publication of the governments long-awaited new national funding formula, which is now due to be introduced in 2018-2019.

The overhaul in school funding is expected to distribute funds more fairly across the country  but many rural primaries will struggle next year.

All schools face real-term cuts of eight per cent to cover rises in pension, pay and national insurance contributions, according to independent experts.

This is likely to impact most on smaller schools which already face high costs amid lower pupil numbers.

Malcolm Trobe, interim general secretary of the ASCL, told the BBC: At some smaller schools, the funding will become such that they would not be able to support their teaching infrastructure.

They will not be financially viable.

One-form entry primary schools and three to four-form entry secondary schools, are going to find it extremely difficult, especially in low-funded education authorities.

This size of school is quite common and they are under real threat.

They are going to find it extremely difficult to provide a full curriculum and maintain the support staff infrastructure needed to run the school.

Its all down to the cost pressures that have come home to roost  the unfunded pay rises, national insurance costs and pension contributions.

Schools could be forced to cut curriculums, share resources and teaching staff such as heads, join multi academy trusts or even close due to gaps in their budgets (file photo)

He urged the Department for Education to help schools which are going to fall off a cliff financially or run into a wall in 2017.

Mr Trobe suggested schools could find solutions to their funding issues by sharing specialist staff or even a headteacher with a group of schools.

They could also attempt to reduce their overheads by joining clusters of federations or multi-academy trusts.

Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, agreed just not enough money is coming into the system for schools.

Cash is also not fairly distributed which means it doesnt always reach the schools that need it the most.

He said: I think small rural schools are increasingly at risk due to shortfalls in funding.

Early on, it will be about redundancies and cutting back on the curriculum and on staff.

Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, agreed just not enough money is coming into the system for schools

But at a certain point, in the very small ones, theres only a couple of staff in there and I think closure will be a possibility for some.

Parents are already fighting the planned closure of Horton-in-Ribblesdale primary school in North Yorkshire, which is rated outstanding by Ofsted.

In a letter to parents, North Yorkshire county council, said the school was no longer viable.

It has just 18 pupils, a shared headteacher only until Christmas and no new children this year.

Mervyn Benford, information officer at the National Association for Small Schools, which advises parents over proposed closures, said local authorities are really squeezed for funds.

He said: Whatever the case arguing closure you can bet your bottom dollar, as far as the local authoritys concerned and maybe governing bodies, its sheer pressure of finance.

Thats the biggest threat.

Thats why were hoping that the funding formula will do what it promised to do and recognise the particular circumstances of schools.

Referring to funding, Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said: The government keeps saying its going to be fairer.

But in the mean time schools are stuck with the current arrangements and some small schools are getting so impoverished they may not be able to survive.

While the government is reviewing funding to make it fairer, as things stand it could mean the death of the village school.

Some 20 per cent of primaries (3,478) in England have fewer than 200 pupils and 30 per cent (5,037) have fewer than 300 pupils.

A one-form entry primary has about 210 pupils - 65 fewer than the average-sized primary school.

The government says it has been protecting school budgets.

A Department for Education spokesman said: The schools budget has been protected and in 2016-17 totals over 40billion, the highest ever on record.
A woman says she was shot by police while covering the Dakota Access Pipeline demonstration in Standing Rock, North Dakota.

In a video posted on Thursday to Erin Schrode's Facebook profile, she is seen falling to the ground after a loud bang.

She was interviewing one of her fellow campaigners when she claims she was shot by the Cantapeta Creek on Wednesday.

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I was shot by militarized police WHILE interviewing a man on camera at #StandingRockand here's the footage. #NoDAPL https://t.co/FfWiSCbiKf pic.twitter.com/4DRwNPkfZ9  Erin Schrode (@ErinSchrode) November 3, 2016

Her back was struck by a rubber bullet, ABC News reported.

Erin Schrode wrote on Facebook: 'I was shot by militarized police WHILE interviewing a peaceful man at Standing Rock live on camera.' A man is seen speaking to the camera

In a video posted on Thursday to Erin Schrode's Facebook profile, a noise is heard. Schrode apparently fell to the ground and others asked if she was okay

She wrote on Facebook in the Thursday post: 'Speechless. I was shot by militarized police WHILE interviewing a peaceful man at Standing Rock live on camera.

'I woke up this morning with the thought that I may have that very footage  and broke down in reliving the 40-second horror before my own eyes.'

Schrode's intro on her profile describes her as a 'Citizen activist. Journalist. Social entrepreneur. Eco policy wonk. Explorer.'

Schrode wrote in the post: 'I was standing innocently onshore, not making any aggressive gestures, never exchanging a single word with the police who fired at my lower back from their boat.

'Peaceful souls were seeking to cross the river to hold a prayer circle on Army Corps public land, but halted by over one hundred hostile military police armed with and deploying tear gas, pepper spray, batons, and rubber bullets, as well as assault weapons and the threat of jail, only one week after 141 individuals were brutally arrested.

'I was shot at pointblank range, dozens were maced and pepper sprayed in the face, hundreds faced freezing waters.

Schrode apparently fell to the ground and others asked if she was okay

She said: 'I was standing innocently onshore, not making any aggressive gestures, never exchanging a single word with the police who fired at my lower back from their boat'

'There were no arrests or deaths and I will be okay physically, but the safety and wellbeing of many peoples and lands remain in danger, for present and future generations.'

The 1,172-mile, $3.8 billion pipeline being built by Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners would carry oil from North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa to a shipping point at Patoka, Illinois.

It will skirt the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation that straddles the North Dakota-South Dakota border.

Last month, actress Shailene Woodley was arrested during a protest of the four-state Dakota Access pipeline in southern North Dakota

The Standing Rock Sioux object to the project, saying it could threaten drinking water and destroy sacred sites.

Last month, actress Shailene Woodley was arrested during a protest of the four-state Dakota Access pipeline in southern North Dakota.

Morton County Sheriff's Department spokesman Rob Keller said the Divergent star was arrested October 10 for criminal trespass and engaging in a riot during a protest at a construction site that involved about 300 people.

On Wednesday, the Morton County Sheriff's Department said on Facebook: 'Law enforcement is currently engaged in a standoff on the shoreline of the Cantapeta Creek north of the main camp area.

'Protesters built a man-made, wooden pedestrian bridge this morning which was pulled apart by law enforcement.

'The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has given Morton County orders to remove the bridge and arrest any individuals who cross the river for criminal trespass.'

Schrode wrote on Facebook: 'There were no arrests or deaths and I will be okay physically, but the safety and wellbeing of many peoples and lands remain in danger, for present and future generations'

The sheriff's department said in a statement: 'Authorities used less-than-lethal ammunition to control the situation.

'In one incident a male was at a boat and was throwing bottles at officers on the police line.

'A second incident occurred when a man wearing a gas mask, refused to show his hands, refused to disperse and charged the police line.

'Officers also deployed pepper spray and tear gas to disperse the group of protesters who came across the water and camp at officers. No lethal shots were fired from law enforcement.'

Morton County spokeswoman Donnell Preskell didn't know if Schrode was hit, she told the Huffington Post.
In the tribute Mia-Sky Pfingst, 13, said they '

A friend has written a touching tribute to murdered schoolgirl Tiahleigh Palmer on the one-year anniversary of the 12-year-old's death.

The body of Tiahleigh Palmer was found on the banks of the Pimpama River on the Gold Coast in Queensland on November 5 last year after she disappeared on October 30.

In the heartbreaking tribute Ms Palmer's 13-year-old friend, Mia-Sky Pfingst, said she 'could never replace her with someone else'.

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The body of Tiahleigh Palmer (pictured) was found on the banks of the Pimpama River on the Gold Coast in Queensland on November 5 last year- She was just 12-years-old

A friend has written a touching tribute to Tiahleigh on the one year anniversary of the slain schoolgirl's death

Mia-Sky described the pair's close bond and said they 'became friends easily.'

'She made me laugh when I was down. She also made a world full with joy and happiness,' she wrote.

'Growing up with Tiah was amazing, we did everything together like, get in trouble together, messed around a lot, played games.

'Those years with her where amazingly fantastic, our adventures I could never forget.

'But when we got into grade six and we had to graduate at the end of the year was special, we were nearly in high school and we were very excited and nervous.

'After we graduated the next day Tiah and I were talking about high school and I promised her one thing, that I would go to the same high school with her and be there 24/7 with her no matter what happened.

Tiahleigh was reported missing after she didn't show up at Marsden State High School, south of Brisbane

'But that promise never happened and I'll never forget her and the amount of fun we had together she will be loved by me and all others and I could never replace her with someone else.

'I love and miss her so much and the amount of love I have for her is not explainable because I love her to [sic] much to explain.'

Tiahleigh was reported missing after she didn't show up at Marsden State High School, south of Brisbane.

In September Tiahleigh's foster father Rick Thorburn was charged with her murder.

Her foster mother and foster brother Julene and Joshua Thorburn were charged with one count each of attempting to pervert the course of justice in the murder investigation.

Tiahleigh's foster brother, Trent Jordan Thorburn, 19, was charged with two counts of perjury and one count of incest.

In September Tiahleigh's foster father Rick Thorburn was charged with her murder




A 25-year-old man has been jailed for eight weeks after having sex with a 14-year-old girl in a car.

The Calliope man, who was sentenced in Rockhampton District Court in Queensland, made several approaches towards a 14-year-old at a party in October 2014.

They ended up in a caravan where he kissed and tickled her back, the court heard.

A 25-year-old man has been jailed for eight weeks after having sex with a 14-year-old girl in a car (Stock Image)

Six months later, with a different 14-year-old girl, he picked up the teenager after they both sent text messages to each other and had met on two previous occasions.

The man had sex with the teenager in the car and told her not to tell anyone or he would go to jail, according to The Observer.

When police interviewed the man, the 25-year-old did not admit to the incident, but claimed he had been set up.

The defendant had a blurry recollection of the events at the time due to his use of methamphetamine, which he has since stopped, according to his defence barrister Jordan Ahlstrand.

The Calliope man pleaded guilty to the first count of indecent treatment of a child under 16, procuring a young person for the purpose of carnal knowledge and carnal knowledge of a child under 16.
The National Enquirer's publishing company paid a Playboy model $150,000 for her story about having an affair with Donald Trump - but never ran it, sources have said.

Karen McDougal, the 1998 Playmate of the year, claimed she had a consensual relationship with Trump over several months beginning in 2006, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

But the National Enquirer didn't publish anything about McDougal's allegations, despite paying six figures for the information, according to people familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

Trump married Melania, his third wife, in January 2005.

Playboy model Karen McDougal (pictured) claimed she had a consensual relationship with Donald Trump over several months beginning in 2006, sources told the Wall Street Journal

McDougal and American Media Inc., which owns the National Enquirer, agreed to the transaction in early August, the Wall Street Journal reported.

American Media Inc. said in a statement the $150,000 was payment for exclusive life rights to any story related to a relationship McDougal may have had with a married man - and for fitness columns written by her.

The contract, according to the Wall Street Journal, kept McDougal from disclosing her story on other outlets and established damages of at least $150,000 if she shared her account elsewhere.

But American Media Inc. didn't plan on publishing the story, even though McDougal expected it to run, people familiar with the situation told the Wall Street Journal.

The National Enquirer's publishing company paid McDougal $150,000 for her story about having an affair with Trump (left) while he was married to his wife Melania (right) - but never ran it, sources told the Wall Street Journal.

'AMI has not paid people to kill damaging stories about Mr Trump,' the company said in the statement.

The National Enquirer has supported Trump throughout the presidential campaign.

American Media Inc CEO David Pecker told the Wall Street Journal in a statement it was known that he and Trump are friends.

But he used the National Enquirer's coverage of Trump's affair with Marla Maples when he was married to his first wife Ivana was a proof of the publication's independence.

McDougal told several friends that she had a relationship with Trump lasting about 10 months, people familiar with her account said.
Up to 53 bush and grass fires reported across NSW on a windy afternoon

A ferocious industrial fire has ripped through a car yard and threatened to set a nearby petrol station alight as more than 100 firefighters battled to contain the blaze.

Firefighters at a car yard on Mavis Street in Revesby, in Sydney's west, battled to put out a large blaze in windy conditions on Saturday afternoon with two buildings have been burned down, according to Nine News.

The fire threatened homes in surrounding areas as windy and hot weather in Sydney made it difficult for rural firefighters to contain the blaze.

The fire, billowing thick plumes of smoke, was described as 'well alight' by NSW Fire and Rescue and reports one person suffered burns and two people smoke inhalation.

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The aftermath of the ferocious fire that ripped through a car yard in Revesby, Sydney, can be seen from an overhead view

The car yard was destroyed when a fire ripped through the lot in Revesby

The red hot flames can be seen roaring from over the top of the fence at the car yard

Smoke billows out into the sky from the car yard as emergency crews battle to contain the blaze on Saturday

Smoke fills the sky as the Revesby car yard goes up in smoke on Saturday

Police block off the entrance to make sure residents have cleared the area in Revesby

More than 100 firefighters and 20 trucks battled the fire in Revesby on Saturday

More than 100 firefighters and 20 fire trucks prevented the fire ripping through nearby areas, with the car yard pictured covered in ash, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

Winds exacerbated the danger for locals in Jellicoe Street and Gallipoli Street, as residents were evacuated - with Bankstown-Lidcome Hospital on standby for most of the afternoon in case the blaze got out of control.

The weather caused trouble with fires across NSW with an Emergency Warning issued in the Hunter Valley at Cessnock Racecourse Road.

Firefighters work tirelessly for hours to control the fire yard blaze on Saturday afternoon

More than 20 fire trucks attended the fire yard scene to contain the out-of-control blaze

The Newcastle Herald reported 50km/h winds were fuelling the fire, fanning it towards properties in Abedare.

Firefighters and aircraft were on the scene in an attempt to protect homes in the area, according to the NSW Rural Fire Service.
Victim: Chris Leavitt said he was returning to his hotel with people he thought were friends of friends when one asked to try the watch on

Million Dollar Listing Miami star Chris Leavitt has been robbed in Los Angeles  and says he has been left devastated by the theft .

The reality star, 39, was relieved of his $60,000 Patek Phillipe watch by a gang of confidence tricksters in West Hollywood on Friday evening.

Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com shortly after the heist, he said he had been in touch with the police and issued a plea for the watchs return.

Bring back the watch, its a very sentimental thing, he said. This is not some Swatch watch. This is a Patek Philippe Nautilus watch that was given to me as a gift. Im devastated. Im so upset.

Im not great  Im a little shaken up. I mean, its crazy. I come to LA for two days and I lose a $60,000 watch.

Leavitt, who is from Boston but lives in Palm Beach, Florida, had been returning to his hotel with a group of people he believed were friends of friends when one asked to try on his watch.

He explained: Basically, I was with a bunch of friends. Some of their friends said lets take a taxi back to the hotel they were staying at and I was staying at the same place, so I was like, OK.

One of the guys says Hey, I love your Patek Philippe [watch]  is that the Nautilis?, so I said yes and the guy knows watches, knows the finer things in life so I thought, fine, hes not going to steal it.

So I let him try it on and stupid, naive me, Im in the car with him, letting him try it on and I needed the bathroom, so, so badly.

I asked the driver to pull over and I went into the gas station to use the bathroom and I come out and I come out and theyre gone.

He added: Its just unreal.

Unreal: Leavitt praised the police for going after the thieves, taking CCTV from the street and calling the taxi company; he had been in town for the Vanderpump party

The reality star realtor says he has now reported the theft to the West Hollywood Police Department and was full of praise for the cops handling of the case.

Well the West Hollywood police are incredible, he said. Theyre going crazy with this. Theyre trying to take video from the street, theyre calling the taxi company to get video from the taxi.

My friends claim now they dont even know who these people [the thieves] were so if theyre out there, theyre screwed and theyre going to be arrested obviously.

Appeal: Leavitt naively let someone try the watch on (model is pictured) before leaving him alone with it - he was gone when he came back

I feel like I was raped, basically. It sort of sucks that I have to leave here on a bad note. Ive been just having an amazing time.

Last night with the Vanderpump party, filming a great show But hopefully, it [the watch] will get retrieved and I will get it back.

Leavitt has spent the past two days in Los Angeles and last night, attended Lisa Vanderpumps first ever Dog Foundation Gala, which was held at the Taglyan Cultural Complex in Hollywood.

That was awesome, he told DailyMail.com. That was really, really great. You know, I always come to LA and think everything is plastic and fake and not that real but that was a really amazing event about dog abuse and how dogs are treated in China.

Its like theyre, you know, burned and eaten alive basically. It was a really moving event. Really, really moving. It was really nice to see something out here that I had feeling for.

Leavitt, who was speaking to this website outside celebrity hotspot Catch LA in West Hollywood, was joined at the event by Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Kyle Richards, 47, guests included Extra host Mario Lopez, 43, and former NSync star Lance Bass, 37.

Select guest list: Leavitt had been at Lisa Vanderpumps first ever Dog Foundation Gala, along with guests Kyle Richards (left) and Mario Lopez (right with Courtney Laine Mazza)

Also there was Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles stars James Harris and David Parnes, the latter with whom Leavitt is working on a new show for YouTube Red.

So I was having an amazing time, filming with David Parnes on our new show thats going to be on YouTube Red, I was having a great night and then this sort of tragic theft happened basically.

He added: Im not supposed to talk about [the show] yet but YouTube Red is going to be this huge platform and its coming out in January but I cant really talk about it yet.

Asked if the show is real estate related, Leavitt said that it isnt but promised a glimpse of his and Parnes real personalities.
form part of an $85 million lawsuit against The Appco Group

Charity workers were forced to 'shove cigarettes up their bottoms' if they failed to meet sales targets, a lawyer suing one of the world's biggest fundraising agencies alleges.

The claim, among others, are part of an $85 million lawsuit against The Appco Group that raises money on behalf of some of Australia's biggest charities.

More than 500 former workers, occasionally known as 'charity muggers' or 'chuggers', have come forward since the class action was filed in October.

The CEO of Appco Australia, Mr Martin Gaffney, says the organisation 'has nothing to hide.'

Appco Group charity workers were allegedly made to 'shove cigarettes up their bottoms' if they failed to meet sales targets

Tasmanian worker Tyrone Corbett worked for QMG Marketing, an Appco subsidiary.

His job often involved working long, gruelling hours selling raffle tickets and pins.

The Hobart local earned 10 percent commission on what he sold, meaning even 'if we sold $500 worth of pins, which would have been a good day, we'd only come away with about 50 bucks,' Mr Corbett told the ABC.

Mr Corbett described a road-trip from Hobart to Launceston taken with the organisation as 'a scary experience', where leaders discussed punishments for people who didn't hit their daily target.

One evening during the trip he saw a group of people who did not hit their targets huddling around one of the leaders.

'As it turned out, the punishment for not hitting their target was to shove a cigarette up your bottom, pull it out and then smoke it,' Mr Corbett told the ABC.

He added that he tried not to be a part of the rituals, but felt it was unacceptable of himself not to have intervened.

Tasmanian worker Tyrone Corbett worked long, gruelling hours selling raffle tickets and pins. He described a road-trip taken with the organisation as 'a scary experience'

In a statement the CEO of Appco Australia, Mr Martin Gaffney, said the organisation will not tolerate, condone or turn a blind eye to the type of behaviour alleged,'

Lawyer Rory Markham filed the lawsuit against the Appco Group last month.

On top of other reported punishments, Mr Markham said some workers claimed they were made cross dress, take part in 'cockfights' and lick underwear.

'In Sydney we've had reported instances of individuals having to dress in female clothes and having to dance in front of 60 to 80 people at a time,' he told the ABC.

Alleged bullying, humiliation and intimidation has been reported in offices in Brisbane, Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide.

In a statement the CEO of Appco Australia, Mr Martin Gaffney, said the organisation will not tolerate, condone or turn a blind eye to the type of behaviour alleged'.

Alleged bullying, humiliation and intimidation has been reported in offices in Brisbane, Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide

Mr Gaffney said while he did not believe improper practices were widespread or systemic, Appco Australia was taking the allegations seriously with two separate investigations into the allegations.

'We have nothing to hide. There is no way we will tolerate bullying or harassment or any behaviour that breaches employment law.

'These specific allegations relate to two marketing companies that have closed in the past two years,' Appco said.
Shadi Jheir, 33, was granted bail after attacking his girlfriend's brother

A Sydney man accused of using a nail-studded piece of wood to attack his girlfriend's brother has been freed on bail.

Shadi Jheir, 33, successfully launched a bid for release at Parramatta Local Court after being charged with assaulting the 42-year-old man on Friday afternoon.

It's alleged he struck the older man in the face with a piece of wood with nails protruding from it at a Peakhurst Heights property in Sydney's south, causing a deep laceration.

Shadi Jheir, 33, was granted strict conditional bail at the Parramatta Local Court after he attacked his girlfriend's brother

Police were called to the scene and the victim was rushed to St George Hospital for treatment.

Jheir's legal aid lawyer told the court self defence was 'quite clearly' a live issue in the case.

Jheir thanked the magistrate via videolink on Saturday after being granted strict conditional bail.

He has been barred from contacting the victim or coming near the property where the attack took place, and he must forfeit a surety, the court heard.

Jheir is due to front Sutherland Local Court on Monday charged with wounding with intend to cause grievous bodily harm.
CCTV shows the man brazenly leaning over to take the tablet from counter

The food vendor is also entering everyone who shares CCTV into raffle

Malaysian eatery Ho Jiak is offering free meals for a year to catch him

caught on CCTV appearing to swipe an iPad from a Sydney restaurant

A Sydney restaurant has put a price on the head of an alleged thief seen on CCTV appearing to brazenly steal an iPad from a counter.

Malaysian eatery Ho Jiak is offering a free meal every day for a year to anyone who provides information leading to the bald bandit being arrested and charged by police.

The Hawker-style street food vendor is also entering anyone who shares the CCTV footage on social media into a raffle to win one of four $50 vouchers.

A Sydney restaurant has put a price on the head of an alleged thief caught on CCTV appearing to brazenly steal an iPad from its ordering counter

Malaysian eatery Ho Jiak (pictured) is offering a free meal every day for a year to anyone who provides information leading to the bald bandit being arrested and charged by police

'First its the iPad next itll be your noodles, lets work together to teach this wrongdoer a lesson,' the Strathfield restaurant wrote on its Facebook.

The alleged thief is on October 22 seen having an animated conversation on his mobile phone while leaning across the ordering counter.

He gradually slides his left arm closer and closer to the iPad next to the cash register, then when he thinks no one is looking he smoothly picks it up, slides it across the counter

He appears to hide it between his leg and the counter before walking away

He gradually slides his left arm closer and closer to the iPad next to the cash register until he is almost touching it.

When he thinks no one is looking he smoothly picks it up, slides it across the counter and appears to hide it between his leg and the counter before walking away.

The man is of Asian appearance and bald, and was wearing sunglasses on his domed head with a light shirt and dark suit jacket and carrying a backpack.

Do you know this man? Email Ho Jiak at whereisyeemei@gmail.com
An SAS soldier has claimed that nine Iraqi police officers who won an 800,000 payout from the Ministry of Defence attacked his squad before they were forced to fight their way out of a building.

The fee was paid by the MoD after the SAS squad - on a mission to find the killers of six British Red Caps - was accused of assaulting Iraqis.

The six men were executed by ringleaders of a mob in Majar al-Kabir, near Basra, southern Iraq in June 2003 - weeks after Saddam Hussein was toppled.

Some of their bodies were riddled with bullets while others had marks suggesting they had been dragged, tied up, or beaten with rifles.

A British army patrol drives through the streets near Basra in 2003. Six British Red Caps were shot dead the day before

An Iraqi police officer in civilian dress walks past the police station of the Shiite Muslim town of Al-Maja in 2003. Police personnel were allegedly beaten by British troops

The six murdered men were Sgt Simon Hamilton-Jewell, 41; Cpl Russell Aston, 30; Cpl Paul Long, 24; Cpl Simon Miller, 21; L/Cpl Benjamin McGowan Hyde, 23; and L/Cpl Tom Keys, 20.

And just six days after their deaths, a team of SAS soldiers went to hunt their killers as part of a top secret mission.

During their hunt, the troops tried to obtain information by visiting an Iraqi police station in disguise.

But they were forced to fight their way out of a crowd of 200 people after the operation went wrong and their cover was blown, reports The Times.

It was during this operation that Iraqi policemen claimed they were beaten with rifles, punched and had their heads banged against walls.

And an SAS soldier - who was at the police station that day - has revealed the team's account of what happened in 2003 for the first time.

He told Deborah Haynes at The Times that on the day in question the Iraqi officers joined what became a riot.

And when matters escalated, the soldier claims that his squad was forced to fight their way out of the building.

Two of the SAS soldiers had to save an Iraqi reconnaissance expert who was part of their team after he was attacked by policemen.

The soldier said: 'We fought back to defend ourselves.'

He said it was 'disgusting' that military personnel are being hounded over abuse claim and said the squad only became violent because they wanted to get 'safely away from the police station' and they were 'fighting for their lives'.

It has also been claimed that Iraqi policemen were paid the huge sum of money in civil damages by the MoD without a full investigation of the facts, reports the newspaper.

One of the ambushed men is brought home with military honours after being killed in Iraq

Sergeant Simon Hamilton-Jewell, Corporal Russell Aston, Corporal Paul Long, Corporal Simon Miller, Lance-Corporal Benjamin John McGowan Hyde and Lance-Corporal Tom Keys were the six British Red Caps who were killed

The allegations are now subject to a criminal investigation by the Ministry of Defence police force.

As many as 40 elite troops, including a former SAS commander, could face charges of actual bodily harm or grievous bodily harm. If found guilty, they could be jailed.

Johnny Mercer, a Conservative MP and former army officer, told the paper: 'It is outrageous. We are in danger of breaking the bond between the military and their political masters when you see this sort of behaviour going on.'

Conservative MP and ex-member of 21 SAS added: 'I am deeply concerned to hear that this large payment was made without a full investigation.'
Stephen Phillips has announced he is standing down from the House of Commons

A Conservative MP who quit 'over Brexit' was left furious when he missed out on promotion to Attorney General, his colleagues have revealed.

Stephen Phillips quit Parliament on Friday saying he could not call himself a Conservative anymore, expressing fury at Theresa May's refusal to give parliament a say on cutting ties with Brussels.

But his former colleagues have been quick to cast doubts on his true reasons for leaving his post, saying the barrister was 'incandescent' when he did not get the role of Attorney General in the new cabinet.

According to the Telegraph, one minister said: 'Stephen Phillips was incandescent after the reshuffle. He is a QC, an eminent barrister. He was absolutely livid that [Jeremy Wright] was made Attorney General. Here we have thwarted ambition.'

Another aide said: 'He is 45, 46. He is making a lot of money in another career. He has not had the preferment he might have anticipated.'

A friend of the barrister is said to have denied the claim.

Mr Phillips (pictured right), said he 'could no longer live with being labelled a Conservative'

High-flying barrister Mr Phillips, who in 2009 was appointed one of the youngest QCs in the country at the age of 39, tops up his salary with some 750,000-a-year with his highly lucrative legal work.

In his letter of resignation, Mr Phillips wrote: 'Some will label me a quitter, or, no doubt, worse. Those are labels with which I can live. The label Conservative no longer is.'

In his letter to George Clark, chairman of the Sleaford and North Hykeham Conservative Association, Mr Phillips said he could no longer live with being labelled a Conservative.

He attacked the Government for 'shirking' responsibility for unaccompanied child refugees and changes in the way international aid is spent.

'SOME WILL LABEL ME A QUITTER...THOSE ARE LABELS WITH WHICH I CAN LIVE. THE LABEL CONSERVATIVE NO LONGER IS' Stephen Phillips said he felt 'growing policy differences' with the government meant he could no longer serve constituents in Sleaford and North Hykeham. In his resignation letter, printed by Guido Fawkes, he wrote: 'Dear George, Following our telephone conversation earlier, I am writing to inform you of my decision to quit as an MP with immediate effect. 'You and others who know me well have been aware over the past months of my growing and very significant policy differences with the current Conservative Government. 'To identify three areas in particular: its failure to appreciate the constitutional necessity of properly consulting Parliament with regard to leaving the European Union; the continued shirking of our responsibility for unaccompanied child refugees who have been forced to flee war and conflict; and the way in which international aid is now apparently to be used other than to assist some of the world's poorest and most vulnerable people. 'These policy differences are irreconcilable. They mean that I am unable properly and adequately to represent the people who elected me. I take the view that it would be wrong simply to resign the whip and remain an MP. The majority of the people in the constituency voted to be represented by a Conservative. That choice should be respected. 'It has been a great honour to represent the people of Sleaford and North Hykeham for the last six years. Some will label me a quitter, or, no doubt, worse. Those are labels with which I can live. 'The label Conservative no longer is. 'With my very best regards, Stephen Phillips QC MP.' Advertisement

Former colleagues of Mr Phillips pointed out that he had been passed over for promotion under both David Cameron and Theresa May

The 46-year-old was a backer of both Brexit and Theresa May's ultimately successful bid to become Tory leader and Prime Minister.

The Oxford-educated QC, seen as being on the liberal wing of the Conservative Party, backed gay marriage and recently called on the Government to do more to help child refugees.

His appointment in 2009 as one of the youngest QCs in the country followed a stratospheric rise in the legal system - which saw him continue to pocket hundreds of thousands of pounds from his work as a barrister and part-time judge after becoming an MP.

On his MPs' website - now deleted - Mr Phillips defended continuing his work as a QC and recorder.

He said: 'I still work as a lawyer and judge, largely when the House of Commons is not sitting.

'My own view is that makes for a better MP - the House of Commons is, after all, making law.'

Mr Phillips is said to have complained to friends that the party had 'lurched to the right' and become 'Ukip lite'.

Stephen Phillips has announced he is standing down from the House of Commons

It appears that the final straw was Mrs May's response to the controversial High Court ruling yesterday - which insisted she must get permission from MPs and peers before triggering Article 50 and starting the formal two-year process for leaving.

Mr Phillips recently warned against the 'tyranny' of denying MPs a say on the Government's stance in forthcoming Brexit negotiations.

On Friday, insiders rubbished the idea that further resignations could follow. One said: Its not like theres a group of them plotting. He wanted to resign and has done it in this way in order to make trouble and look principled.

Christine Talbot, a member of the executive at his constituency association, said: Constituents are really angry with him. He owes us all an explanation  Its almost like a tantrum. Its as though this is just because he didnt get his own way.

But colleagues raised doubts about his motivation for resigning. He was not appointed to a frontbench post under David Cameron, and snubbed again by Mrs May when she took over in Downing Street.

Iain Duncan Smith said it was 'ironic' that Mr Phillips had gone after judges had sided with arguments that parliament had to authorise Mrs May to invoke Article 50.
This stunning replica of Princess Elizabeth's wedding dress cost Netflix a huge 30,000 to make and took seven weeks to create.

The dress steals the show in new 100million Netflix drama The Crown, one of the most extravagant television programmes ever made.

The Crown charts the life on Queen Elizabeth from childhood to the present day, and follows the early partnership of Elizabeth and Philip as they are thrust into the limelight as a young couple when George VI dies and Elizabeth inherits the throne.

The 10-part first series was released on the online streaming service yesterday, and follows The Queen from her early years up until the 1950s.

A second seaon of the show, covering the 1960s, is already being produced, and The Crown has received rave reviews from critics.

The stunning replica of Princess Elizabeth's wedding dress worn by Claire Foy cost Netflix a huge 30,000 to make, and took seven weeks to create

It was written by Peter Morgan, the man behind the 2006 Oscar-winning film The Queen, as well as the 2013 play The Audience.

The ornate gown lead actress Claire Foy wears is a carbon copy of the stunning wedding dress that the Queen wore for the 1947 wedding, as Matt Smith stars alongside her as Prince Philip.

In an age of post-war austerity, 21-year-old Princess Elizabeth had to save up her ration coupons to buy the fabric, although she was given an extra 200 coupons by the government.

The original ivory silk satin gown was designed by Norman Hartnell, the royal couturier, and took his seamstresses six months to create

The original ivory silk satin gown was designed by Norman Hartnell, the royal couturier, and took his seamstresses six months to create, with silkworms imported from China to produce the material.

The lavish dress featured a full skirt, a tailored bodice, and a star-patterned train, embroidered with flowers and ears of wheat. It was adorned with 10,000 seed pearls that were imported from America, and studded with glittering crystals.

How much the dress cost to produce was never disclosed, but politicians at the time voice objections about its extravagance.

Matt Smith stars alongside Claire Foy as Prince Philip in The Crown, which follows the early partnership of Elizabeth and Philip as they are thrust into the limelight

The wedding scene took five days to shoot, Foy told the Telegraph, adding that the stepping into Princess Elizabeth's shoes gave her a level of admiration for the monarch.

It took five days to shoot that scene, and the dress, an exact replica, weighed a ton,' she said.

'All the fiddling to get it right, and needing the loo and youve got a crown on your head.

The Crown charts the life on Queen Elizabeth from childhood to the present day, and the show has received rave reviews from critics

'For this young woman to be wearing all that and then have the composure to walk through the Abbey full of dignitaries and heads of state, and then having to be anointed It must have taken huge gumption.

'You think, who else could have done this? Who else could have taken that responsibility on, and who else could have done the job so well for such a long time, and never answered back or complained? Its really amazing.

The no-expenses-spared show also features a television first, of real doctors performing surgery in a TV drama.
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Prince Charles brandished a sword and took part in a traditional dance on Saturday on his trip to Oman with his wife Camilla, the first full day of the couple's three-nation royal tour of the Gulf.

The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall arrived in the Middle East on Friday on an official tour on behalf of the British Government, to promote the UK's partnership in the region.

Prince Charles and Camilla will undertake 50 engagements in seven days during their visits to the Sultanate of Oman, the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Bahrain.

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Charles wielded the sword used in folkloric dancing in Oman as he and Camilla attended one of their first engagements. The Prince made a rather animated facial expression when presented with the gift after the dance

Careful Your Highness: Charles is given an expert lesson on sword dancing by a group of Omani dancers who demonstrated the country's folkloric dance

Left: Charles laughs as Camilla watches her husband get to grips with the ancient art. Right: The pair have a chinwag in the after Charles puts down the sword

During the trip, the couple will take on separate engagements, with Charles travelling to the Ras Al Shajar nature reserve to view wild animals, birds and other creatures

While her husband is at the reserve, Camilla will be attending a dinner to recognise successful Omani women in business and the public sector. Above, Charles gives traditional dancing his best shot

After their day of separate engagements, Charles and Camilla were then to reunite for a dinner with His Majesty the Sultan

Their visit, at the request of the British Government, is to promote the UK's partnership in the region in areas including wildlife conservation and supporting women in leadership.

Prince Charles was greeted by a guard of honour when he arrived at Muscat International Airport at 9.15pm local time on Friday. His wife had arrived privately earlier.

Today, Prince Charles and Camilla will begin the tour as guests of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said.

Their day began with a cultural welcome at the Ceremonial Boulevard in Muscat, where folkloric dancing will be performed to mark the start of their visit.

Camilla wore a bright turquoise loose fitting tunic and made good use of a parasol to keep off the sun as they were greeted to the Middle East

Although there was plenty of tradition on show, this image shows the modern world colliding with the ancient, as a man tucks his iPhone into his belt

Charles and Camilla were shown a traditional welcome on arrival to Oman. They will have a packed diary during their stay in the region and will tour three countries

An Omani man takes a picture of the royal couple on his iPhone as they begin their tour of the region, which will last seven days

In Oman, women often wear a traditional headscarf and their dress varies from region to region, but is usually brightly coloured

The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall attended a cultural welcome at the Ceremonial Boulevard to mark the Royal visit to Oman

The ceremony consisted of two dances from different regions of Oman, and Charles and Camilla then met the dancers briefly.

Following their welcome, Charles will tour Muscat's new National Museum, which showcases the history of the nation from its first human settlement two million years ago through to the present day.

He viewed demonstrations of traditional handicraft-making at the museum, which opened in July, before being guided through the galleries.

These include the splendours of Islam, Oman and the world, with items such as three Royal Rasulid tombstones on long-term loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The museum houses more than 5,500 objects and offers 43 digital immersive experiences for visitors.

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall attend a service at the Bait Al Noor church in Muscat, the capital of Oman, before going to their separate engagements through the city

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, receives a gift from a girl at the Oman Cancer Association's Dar Al Hanan Hostel on one of her engagements in the region

The Duchess of Cornwall meets patients at the Dar Al Hannan hostel for children suffering with cancer during her visit

Camilla visited the Oman Cancer Association's Dar Al Hanan Hostel, where she met children and parents before attending a reception with supporters and sponsors.

The association, which became active in 2002, was established by prominent Omani woman and four-times cancer survivor Yuthar Al Rawai.

Charles and Camilla then attended a service of celebration at Bait Al Noor Church, which was led by the Bishop of Cyprus and the Gulf.

The service marked the 125th anniversary of the final visit to the country by the First Bishop of Lahore, Bishop Thomas Valpy French, who travelled to Oman in 1895 to establish an Anglican Church in Arabia. He was in poor health and died a few months later but his work was continued by others.

The Duchess met with Omani women who are working in business or the public sector in the region in an event to honour their successes

Camilla, tries Omani Perfume as she attends a 'Woman in Business' event at the British Ambassador's Residence

The woman of Oman went to great lengths to make sure the Duchess felt at home, with a cake decorated with British symbolism. Here, she visits Etab Al-Zadjali's cake business stand, the cake gallery

Camilla attended a women in business event on Saturday, where she sampled Omani perfumes and cakes in a celebration of successful female enterprise.

One cake featured plenty of British symbols, and was sure to make the Duchess feel welcome and at home in Oman.

The event was held at the British Ambassador's residence in Muscat.

Prince Charles is greeted by an group of children on a walking tour of the Misfat Abriyeen village British royal visit to Oman

He was shown through Misdar Abriyeen by foot while his wife Camilla attended separate events including the Women in Business event

Charles is given an expert talk on Misfat Abriyeen on the second day of the royals visit to Oman, Bahrain and the UAE

Charles takes in the sights of Misfat Abriyeen, a unique mountainous village 1,000m above sea level in Oman

Prince Charles was given a walking guided tour of Misfat Al Abriyeen on Saturday, during the second day of their tour.

He was taken by helicopter to the 200-year-old village, which is divided into old and new settlements.

It is a traditional Omani village, with agricultural terraces along the mountain slopes and traditional mud houses with carved wooden doors.

The prince was shown an intricate falaj system - the traditional irrigation method - and a restored building which has been turned into a hostel.

Over the past 20 years, the old village has been abandoned in favour of more modern settlements.

Charles stopped at a viewpoint and looked at large rocks on the hill above, which were used by villagers to read the stars and determine how the water was shared among them.

Local children waved Omani and British flags as Charles left the area.

The village is unique and mountainous, standing 1,000m above sea level.

It boasts beautiful alleys, houses built on rocks and has become a tourist destination in recent years.

On the agricultural terraces, villagers grow bananas, pomegranates, papayas, mangoes, citrus trees and Charles took in his surroundings with expert guides.

Charles is presented with a gift during a visit to the Ras Al Shajar nature reserve in south east Oman on the afternoon of his second day

The reserve was founded in 1985 and is a diverse area, which contains several mammals including the Arabian Gazelle

Charles speaks with some of the women as he visits the Ras Al Shajar sanctuary and nature reserve, near to Muscat

Charles speaks to a local trader as part of his visit to Ras Al Shajar. He and Camilla have been on separate engagements today but will reunite for a banquet

The Prince watches as women in Ras Al Shajar decorate one another's hands with henna. Above right, the final result of the intricate practice

An Omani woman explains about the handicrafts as the Britain's Prince Charles visits a heritage village at the Ras Al Shajar Nature Reserve

Charles appears surprised as he chats to a man selling fruits and herbs at the heritage village in Muscat, where he is visiting with his wife

Charles makes a joke with an Omani man as he toured a nature reserve with a heritage village in Ras Al Shajar after enjoying a walking tour earlier today

Charles has also visited the Ras Al Shajar nature reserve as part of his second day engagements to view wild animals, birds and other creatures, taking in gazelles and wild desert beehives.

The sanctuary, famous for its biodiversity, animals, plants and geological elements, is one of the longest-established protected areas.

It is home to many rare mammals, including the Arabian gazelle, which lives in the coastal part of the sanctuary.

A wide range of wild plants, some of which are used by local villagers for medicinal purposes, grow there.

He spoke with local traders as he went to the reserve, an incredibly diverse area in south east Oman and was presented with a gift when he arrived.

The traders were selling their wares in a heritage village located at the reserve.

Charles and Camilla finished their first day in Oman with a private dinner.

Charles and Camilla are on a Royal tour of the Middle East starting with Oman, then the UAE and finally Bahrain. Above, Charles chats with the Minister of Heritage and Culture of the Sultanate of Oman Sayyid Haitham bin Tarik Al Said

The visit to the region is at the request of the British government, and it is hoped to promote partnership in the region, including women in leadership

Prince Charles' first engagement was to tour the National Museum in Muscat, which showcases the history of the nation from its first settlement to present day

Rolling out the red carpet: Prince Charles walks with the Minister of Heritage and Culture of the Sultanate of Oman Sayyid Haitham bin Tarik Al Said at Muscat VIP airport on the first day of a Royal tour of Oman

Prince Charles was greeted by a guard of honour when he arrived at Muscat airport on Friday evening. Camilla arrived privately beforehand
Most men hate going on stag parties but go along with the rituals of drinking and debauchery so they'll have a story to tell later.

For many friends and family members the prospect of a loved ones' stag do is something to look forward to with barely contained excitement.

Groups of men band together and stagger around holiday destinations at home or abroad, making sure their stag is left in a disheveled state that he will never forget.

However, while they will profess to enjoy their last night of freedom, a new study has actually revealed that for most men it is the complete opposite.

Most men hate going on stag parties but go along with the debauchery so they'll have a story to tell later. Pictured, a British stag party pose with a sex doll at the 9/11 memorial in New York

The essay, The Last Night of Freedom: Consumerism, Deviance and the Stag Party. by Dr Anthony Ellis and Daniel Briggs, claims that the majority of men go along with the tradition due to societal pressures, reports the Telegraph.

Researchers from the University of Salford and University of Madrid followed groups around popular stag destinations including, London, Ibiza and Bournemouth and studied their behaviour.

One man admitted visiting a lap dancing club even when he didn't want to and another explained how he was left scared of attack after friends tied him up half naked to lamppost and covered in offensive messages.

Another stag said that he was forced to drink so much alcohol that he soiled himself.

Dr Ellis told the Telegraph: 'We found this palpable feeling that people felt they had to enjoy themselves and if they didn't enjoy themselves they were missing out, even if what they were actually experiencing was quite frightening.

'People told us that they had had quite troubling experiences and the general atmosphere is one of intense pressure to over-consume.'

The antics of British stag parties has often infuriated the authorities abroad.

Many groups will head to clubbing destinations such as Ibiza, Magaluf, Zante or even further afield to enjoy cheap alcohol and hot weather as they give their stag a send off.

Pictured, a British stag party group walk around the streets of Magaluf wearing just g-strings

Using the opportunity to blow off steam - parties often find their getaways cost them more than just a hangover.

Last month a group of Brits upset New Yorkers after posing with a sex doll outside the 9/11 terror attacks memorial.

The group of men - who said they were from London - were eventually confronted by a police officer and asked to leave the area.

Rosanne Hughes, 61, from the New Jersey 9/11 Memorial Foundation said she was appalled to hear about the stag party celebrating on Ground Zero.

She said: 'I'm speechless. I don't even have any words for that - that's a disgrace.'

During another incident in March, a Ryanair flight to Bratislava was forced to land early in Berlin when two stag do-Brits brawled in the aisle.

The friends threw punches at each other over a woman they had both dated, after trading insults from their seats.

The fight came at a price, with the pair liable to pay an estimated 20,000 fine for the disturbance.

In July, another stag group raised eyebrows and tempers in Magaluf when they hit the streets wearing only g-strings.
A 'mega-database' storing personal data of France's 60 million inhabitants has been widely slammed across the country since it was agreed last week.

The Titres electroniques securises (TES), agreed last Sunday, will file the same information held on a French ID card or passport, such as pictures, height, eye colour, as well as the fingerprints of the entire population aged over 12.

It has been met with condemnation and cited as the biggest collection of data since the Nazi occupation, but is aimed at cutting down on identity theft.

High-ranking socialist figures such as Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and Justice Minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas have defended the plan, despite it drawing similarities with a similar one made by former president Nicolas Sarkozy in 2012 that was slammed by their party before being thrown out by the Constitutional Court.

The Titres electroniques securises (TES), agreed last Sunday, will file the same information held on a French ID card or passport (file image)

High-ranking socialist figures such as Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve (pictured) and Justice Minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas have defended the plan

Lawyer Antonie Cheron told France 24: 'The two [databases] are relatively similar in the sense that the one proposed by Nicolas Sarkozy, which was known as the 'honest people's file', also sought to regroup all personal information linked to passports and identity cards, including digital photographs and fingerprints.'

'One could think that the government is trying to circumvent the Constitutional Court by issuing a decree, because the only way to contest it now is to go to the State Council [France's highest administrative court].'

The move has also been slammed by national newspapers and magazines such as Liberation and L'Observateur.

Mr Cheron also outlined fears that the database could be hacked, leading to a national security disaster, and also that it could be cross-linked with security cameras to keep track of all citizen at any time.

A doomed 15billion scheme for ID cards to be compulsory was championed by Tony Blair's Labour Government in 2006

A doomed 15billion scheme for ID cards to be compulsory was championed by Tony Blair's Labour Government in 2006.

Mr Blair hailed the cards as a necessary device to combat terrorism, illegal immigration and crime.
A Thai model who crashed her BMW into eight cars was allowed to go to hospital without any charges or drugs tests despite witness accounts of her erratic behaviour, according to reports.

Kritrada Tabtimphol was said to have been dancing and praying while she was being questioned over the incident.

Police said on Wednesday that no charges were pressed against Ms Tabtimphol, 28, for the incident in Bangkok on Tuesday because she was in shock.

Kritrada Tabtimphol (left and right) caused a traffic mayhem at about 5pm Tuesday when she rear-ended eight other cars with her BMW

Three people were injured during the crash, according to the police. Pictured above, the scene of the crash

Ms Tabtimphol (pictured) is an online entrepreneur and also works as a promotional model

Ms Tabtimphol, who sells beauty products online under the name 'Zomy,' caused a traffic mayhem at about 5pm Tuesday when she rear-ended eight other cars with her BMW in front of Esplanade shopping mall on Ratchadapisek Road.

Three people were injured during the crash, according to the police.

Eyewitnesses said Ms Tabtimphol, who appeared to be unhurt, stepped out of her vehicle after the crash and shouted there was a bomb in her car.

The motorist also prayed and danced when policemen tried to question her about the incident.

She later fainted at the police station and was taken to Paolo Memorial Hospital by her family.

Despite her apparently outlandish behavior, Ms Tabtimphol was not tested for alcohol or drugs.

Suphachai Harnkhamla, deputy chief of Huai Khwang Police Station, said that no charges were filed against Ms Tabtimphol because she was too shocked to talk to them.

Eyewitnesses said Ms Tabtimphol, who appeared to be unhurt, stepped out of her vehicle after the crash and shouted there was a bomb in her car

Witnesses also said she had prayed and danced when policemen tried to question her about the incident

He said: 'We cannot yet press any charge against her because she's in a state of shock.

'She's not ready to give any testimony. At this moment, we're questioning all the witnesses involved.'

Col. Suphachai added that the hospital is supposed to be performing the drugs test, but he had no idea when the results would be available.

He added that Ms Tabtimphol will be diagnosed to see if she has any mental disorder.

Ms Tabtimphol owns an online business selling beauty products. She also works as a promotional model and was known as Millionaire Pretty according to Khaosod English.
James Bowen, 37, wrote the story about his time as a homeless busker who adopted Bob the cat (pictured together) in London

The mother of the author of the hit book A Street Cat Named Bob has revealed that his paedophile stepfather cheated on her - and ran off with her son's girlfriend.

James Bowen, 37, wrote the story about his time as a homeless busker who adopted a stray moggy on the streets of London.

His book spent more than 76 weeks at the top of the Sunday Times' bestseller chart and sold more than one million copies in the UK - before being turned into a Hollywood film.

The film, released in cinemas across Britain on Friday, stars Luke Treadaway and Ruta Gedmintas - and even Bob the ginger cat as himself.

In his popular book series, Mr Bowen, who was born in Surrey, pays tribute to his girlfriend Belle by saying that he would be 'lost' without her.

But his mother Penelope Hartford-Davis, 64, told The Sun's Mike Ridley that his Belle - whose real name is Kirsty Shirley - ran off with his stepfather Mark Ludemann in Australia.

James Bowen, 37, and Bob the cat attended the UK Premiere of 'A Street Cat Named Bob' in London on Thursday

Mr Bowen, a busker, performs with Bob the cat in Covent Garden, London, in March 2012

According to the paper, Ludemann, 58, is waiting to be sentenced in Sydney on December 2 after he admitted four sex assaults on an eight-year-old girl.

Miss Hartford-Davis said she ended her relationship with Ludemann after she caught him in bed with Kirsty, 33, at their home in Hobart, Tasmania.

She told The Sun: 'It was Mark's affair with Kirsty that was his downfall.'

Miss Hartford-Davis, who was married to Ludemann - an IT specialist - for seven years, moved to Australia with her son when he was five years old.

He met the Duchess of Cambridge (pictured) at the film premiere in London on Thursday night

She claims that her son blames her for his ex-girlfriend cheating on him and said the affair has ruined their relationship.

Miss Hartford-Davis, who worked as a saleswoman for photocopier giant Xerox, added that her son hasn't contacted her to see if she was OK after she went to hospital because he believes she was responsible, reports the paper.

His book (pictured) sold 1million copies in the UK

But a spokesman for the author told The Sun: 'It is not true that James has cut her off. She has been demanding money off him.'

His mother, remembering the day she caught her husband in bed with Mr Bowen's girlfriend, added: 'I went in to her bedroom and I just stood there and said, "Don't you two look pretty together".

'When I look back on it now, I wish I'd got a knife or a pot of boiling water.'

The book tells the story about Mr Bowen living in London in 1997 after leaving Australia aged 18.

He began taking heroin while sleeping on the street - and found the stray ginger tom.

In 2010 he was offered a book deal after local newspaper the Islington Tribune wrote a story about the pair.
A cancer-stricken former beauty queen took to the catwalk to raise money for the treatment of another person battling the deadly disease.

Model Diana Milojkovic, 28, and former Miss Earth Serbia, made the runway appearance to raise money for 29-year-old cameraman Mario Jurisic.

Mr Jurisic has been diagnosed with skin cancer and urgently needs an operation.

Ms Milojkovic stunned the audience with her appearance and received a lot praise online for selflessly helping others despite having her own battle to fight.

Model Diana Milojkovic, 28, (left) was diagnosed with cancer and took to the catwalk (right) to raise money for cameraman Mario Jurisic who desperately needs an operation

A video of her appearance was posted on social media by her husband Stefan, who has been very supportive of her and shaved his head last month to raise awareness.

Fans of the video posted online, and Sava commented: 'Respect!', while Zlatka wrote: 'Well done woman!'

Meanwhile, Natasha: 'You are too beautiful, I wish you all the best' and Radam wrote: 'You just keep that smile on your face and continue to walk bravely.'

Miss Milojkovic has decided to talk publicly about her cancer. She started a blog where she shares her experience and talks about the treatment she is receiving.

Dijana Milojkovic posed for a selfie with her husband Stefan who shaved his head to support his wife

A video of the catwalk appearance (pictured) was posted on social media by her husband

The model has started wearing a wig because she lost a lot of her own hair during her chemotherapy treatment.

She said: 'My first life I lived for 27 years, before I discovered that I had cancer.
Sean Smyrichinsky found the object while diving and initially thought he'd spotted some kind of UFO

The Royal Canadian Navy is to send investigators to examine a 'mystery object' found by a diver which could be a nuclear bomb lost in the early days of the Cold War.

Sean Smyrichinsky found the object while diving near Banks Island, a site close to the location of the US bomber crash of 1950, after which the Mark IV bomb was lost.

The bomb was lost on February 14 when a Convair B-36 crashed in northern British Colombia on its way to Texas from Alaska.

Mr Smyrichinsky told CBC news: 'I got a little far from my boat and I found something that I'd never ever seen before.

'It resembled, like, a bagel cut in half, and then around the bagel these bolts molded into it.

'I came out from the dive and I came up and I started telling my crew, "My god, I found a UFO. I found the strangest thing I'd ever seen!"'

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Sean Smyrichinsky found a mystery object while diving in northern Canada and believes it could be the missing Mark IV bomber, one of which is pictured above

Mr Smyrichinsky said he asked around and was told the story of the lost bomb, and when he looked at pictures of the Mark IV, he realised it was very similar to the object he had seen.

The plane crashed after three of its six engines began shooting flames and the other three were unable to power the plane with its heavy load.

The pilot flew over Princess Royal Island so the crew would not have to bail out over the North Pacific, and set the plane on a path towards the ocean.

The Canadian Royal Navy will send investigators down in the next few weeks to look at the object. Above, Mr Smyrichinsky who found the object

He was diving near to the area where the plane's crew were forced to bail out and send the plane to crash in February 1950. The bomb had not been found since

In a book published this year, Dirk Septer tells the story of the lost bomb.

He wrote: 'Just before midnight on February 13, 1950, three engines of a US Air Force B-36 intercontinental bomber caught fire over Canadas northwest coast.

'The crew jumped, and the plane ditched somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

'Almost four years later, the wreck of the bomber was found accidentally in a remote location in the coastal mountains of British Columbia, three hours flying time in the opposite direction of where it was supposed to have crashed.

'After years of silence, the United States finally admitted to losing its very first nuclear bomb; the incident was its first Broken Arrow, the code name for accidents involving nuclear weapons.'

Five crew members died but 12 were rescued after they bailed out.

Major Steve Neta confirmed to CBC News that the site corresponds with the crash site and the Navy would be investigating.
Police have arrested a man after threats to burn mosques on Bonfire Night were posted on Facebook.

The social media profile was set up in the name of 'Shuff Mohammad' and included dozens of hate-filled pictures, videos and comments.

The Islamophobic remarks included: '5th of November, remember, remember it's national burn a mosque night' as well as posts about the Prophet Muhammad.

The Shuff Mohammad profile appeared to target mosques in the Stoke-on-Trent area, including City Central Mosque (pictured)

Pictures posted on the profile showed that targets were based in the Stoke-on-Trent area of Staffordshire.

They included a selfie of a masked man outside City Central Mosque, in Hanley, photos of Normacot Mosque, an Islamic centre in Cobridge, and the nearby former North Road School which has been converted into a community centre with prayer rooms.

Concerned members of the public alerted the police after reading the offensive and worrying posts on social media.

A young mother, of Pakistani heritage, contacted Crimestoppers and Facebook to report her concerns.

She believes the man behind the profile has children at the school her son attends in the city.

The woman, who asked to remain anonymous, said: 'It's the talk of the Muslim community. His posts are deeply offensive but I just thought he was looking for attention.

'I didn't really take it very seriously. But now it seems he is taking it further by making threats to burn down mosques on Bonfire Night.

Pictured: The Normacot Mosque in Stoke was also targeted by the Shuff Mohammad profile

'I've heard the police are telling people to be extra cautious and to look for anyone acting suspiciously on November 5.

'My sister was panicking about going to pray at the mosque in case something happens. It's really worrying but we just have to hope he's not serious.

'I'm surprised Facebook hasn't shut the profile down.'

Staffordshire Police confirmed they are taking the matter 'very seriously' and are asking anyone with information on the identity of the person behind the Facebook profile to get in touch.

They are also stepping up patrols in Muslim communities such as Normacot, Cobridge, Shelton, Hanley and Tunstall over Bonfire weekend.

Pictured: A post by the Shuff Mohammad profile where he seemingly encourages people to target Muslim prayer centres and mosques

Inspector Paul Johnson said: 'A man has been arrested this afternoon in connection with inciting racial hatred through social media.

'The man, in his 30s from the Stoke-on-Trent area, remains in police custody.

'We've received reports from concerned members of the public about comments made on social media. We are taking this matter very seriously.'

Conservative councillor Sadaqat Maqsoom, who represents Normacot and Lightwood North on Stoke-on-Trent City Council, said: 'I was informed about it today and I know the police will be visible in the area tomorrow.

'You never know with things like this so public safety is paramount. We have seen things like this online before so let's hope nothing happens.'
A discount online retailer has infuriated customers by selling a 'completely inappropriate' t-shirt that appears to promote rape culture.

The garment is currently on sale for 5 on bargain website everything5.com and bears the slogan 'NO MEANS NO - Well maybe if I'm drunk'.

The top is aimed at women and is available in two colours and a variety of sizes.

Since the t-shirt appeared on the site it has attracted a flurry of complaints from angry customers who are demanding that it is immediately withdrawn from sale.

The t-shirt is currently on sale for 5 on bargain website everything5.com and bears the slogan 'NO MEANS NO - Well maybe if I'm drunk'

'I couldn't believe it when I saw it, I thought it must be a mistake,' Elysia Munday, 25, said.

'Whether or not you've suffered sexual abuse it's completely inappropriate. The issue of sexual assault and rape has really come to light recently, with so many people coming forward.

Elysia Munday, 25, has said she will no longer shop on the website after seeing the 'completely inappropriate' t-shirt on sale

'This t-shirt is saying it's fine and doesn't mean no if you're drunk, it's a huge back step from all the progress that's been made.

'It may be just a t-shirt to some, but it can have such an impact. Someone could wear it out and about and it could potentially be a trigger to someone who has post-traumatic stress from sexual assault.

'It's almost unbelievable that this could be a product on sale.'

Miss Munday, mum to three-year-old Dexter, is one of several women who have contacted the website demanding the garment be removed from the site.

She said the website appeals particularly to youngsters and those on low incomes, due to the cheap price of the goods on offer.

'Because everything is just 5 it would be aimed towards younger people, who don't necessarily have a lot of money,' she said. 'It does make you wonder what kind of message that would send out.

'It seems trivial, but that message is detrimental. Males might see that and think if women are wearing a t-shirt like that then [sexual assault] is alright, and girls may think they don't have the power to make a conscious decision when drunk.

'I don't know how anyone would think something like that was appropriate. It's not funny, it's not banter, it's not relatable, it's just completely inappropriate.'

Miss Munday, who has a three-year-old son, said the website appeals particularly to youngsters and those on low incomes

The events manager, from Weymouth in Dorset, has said that she will be unlikely to buy clothes from the website again.

'I have no plans to shop there in the future unless they take it down and issue and apology,' she told MailOnline.

'Even if they do it makes me wonder what kind of company they are. As the website grows they need to understand that they are influential, and I don't get what kind of person could have decided that it was a good idea to sell that.'

The Dorset-based company has been growing in popularity due to its knock-down prices on clothing.

Rachel Krys from campaign group End Violence Against Women branded the t-shirt 'disgusting' and supported the calls to have it removed from sale.

'It's just disgusting,' she told MailOnline. 'I'm all for free speech, but I can see why lots of women have complained about it.

'Women, particularly young women, see things like this and hear things around recent rape cases and think they're in some way to blame or that it's not as serious as it feels to them.

'It's part of a really unhelpful dialogue around sexual assault and consent in general. It's really offensive, particularly to people who have experienced sexual assault and rape.

'We're living in an environment where they are not believed, and it adds to the message that it's a joke or won't be believed.'

Several angry customers have contacted the website to demand the 'offensive' t-shirt is immediately withdrawn from sale

Heather Keane from campaign group Hollaback London added: 'I'm extremely disappointed to see somebody profiting from a cheap and vile joke about rape culture.

'It trivialises the demands made by our patriarchal society that women always be sexually available to men, and spreads the idea that, ultimately, a lack of consent is not something that needs to be respected or heeded by men.

'Women are already barraged with confusing, harmful and dangerous misogynist messages about whether their body actually belongs to them, and whether they have a choice when it comes to sexual interaction.

'That a company would think this deeply saddening aspect of our society should be made fashionable is deplorable.'

The company told us many other websites were selling similar T-shirts.

A spokesman added: 'How come many people are buying those t-shirts, specially women?

'I think it is to do with what you think in your mind.
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Police brought an accused kidnapper back to his South Carolina farmland Saturday, as they feared they could have a serial killer on their hands.

Todd Christopher Kohlhepp, 45, was pictured in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs on his 100-acre farmland in Woofruff, South Carolina.

Investigators brought him back late Saturday afternoon as part of a massive search of his property - which they say won't stop until they've looked through every corner.

Kohlhepp, who is of kidnapping 30-year-old Kala Brown and her boyfriend Charlie Carver, 32, has not been charged with any murders.

One body was found in a shallow grave on his property Friday. Authorities announced Saturday night the remains belonged to Carver.

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Kohlhepp (circled in red) returned to his property in Woodruff, South Carolina Saturday afternoon as investigators launched a massive search of the farmland

Detectives told DailyMail.com they have begun sifting through missing persons records as they continue the search for three more bodies in farmland where Brown was held captive.

Police say they fear Todd Christopher Kohlhepp (pictured), 45, the man accused of kidnapping 30-year-old Kala Brown and her boyfriend Charlie Carver, 32, could potentially be a serial killer

Police said they were 'taking seriously' information given to them by Brown that Kohlhepp had killed four people including Carver.

Kohlhepp was once described by a judge as 'impulsive, explosive, and preoccupied with sexual content' from the age of nine.

It wasn't immediately clear why investigators brought Kohlhepp back to his farmland Saturday, or whether he had decided to cooperate with authorities.

Cops were determined to work through the night to find every shred of evidence they could on Kohlhepp's property.

They had lights delivered so that investigators could keep working after sunset, Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright said Saturday.

Carver was shot several times before being buried in a shallow grave, Greenville News reporter Anna Lee said on Twitter Saturday evening.

'It's all so gruesome that it's a little hard for anyone to imagine the magnitude of what we're dealing with,' the coroner said according to Lee.

Carver was a father, an uncle and a cousin, Wright told reporters Saturday night.

He declined to comment on other parts of the investigation so as not to distract from the news of Carver's death.

'I do think this helps with a little bit of closure,' a visibly shaken Wright said. 'But I don't think this make everything better. We certainly wanted a different outcome.'

Authorities were still trying to determine how long Carver had been buried. They didn't find any i.d. on Carver's body and they said it wasn't immediately possible to identify him based on his appearance.

His mother Joanne Shiflet had told the Greenville News earlier Saturday: 'Until I see a body, I can't give up. For this to be over, I have to see him.'

Carver's family hadn't seen the body as of Saturday night, authorities said after identifying Carver's body.

Brown said her alleged captor had shot dead her boyfriend and told her there were four victims in all.

Scores of officers are searching the farmland, which sits back from the main road and where Brown was held captive in a container.

Wright told DailyMail.com: 'I'm going to be honest with you. I don't chain my dogs up and I wouldn't treat my dogs the way this lady was treated.'

Brown (left), 30, was found chained up in a metal container on Kohlhepp's property after going missing in August. Authorities announced Saturday that a body found on the property was that of Charlie Carver (right), 32, her boyfriend

Scores of officers are searching the farmland, which sits back from the main road and where Brown was held captive in a container. Investigators are pictured excavating one part of the property on Friday

'It's possible that it is the work of a serial killer. It's a deceased person. There could be more,' Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright (pictured) said

Police search for evidence on property owned by registered sex offender Todd Kohlhepp today. Officers have marked off areas for searching in a grid pattern and special lights were brought in today to provide for night searches

He said Brown was fully clothed when she was found by police but the container had no air conditioning light.

She said her captor had fed her while keeping her in chains around her neck and ankles.

Asked about the enormity of the task in searching the land for more bodies, he said officers were well prepared.

'It doesn't make any difference if it was 500 acres because we think we have evidence out here.

'The men are resolved not to give up until we find everything that we need to find, period.

'It doesn't matter how long it takes. It is not an issue.

'This is one of the biggest crime scenes that I have ever been involved in.

'We are trying to make certain that nobody walks through anything and overlooks anything.'

Investigators relied on cadaver dogs, other means of investigation and 'God's grace' to find Carver's body, Wright told the Greenville News.

A home owned by registered sex offender Todd Kohlhepp, in Moore, South Carolina, is pictured on November 5

The backyard of a home owned by Kohlhepp, in Moore, South Carolina, is pictured on November 5

Officers have marked off areas for searching in a grid pattern.

Brown is said to be doing well and texting friends who supported the hunt for her after she and her boyfriend disappeared on August 30.

Seventh Circuit Solicitor Barry Barnette told Greenville Online at least one murder charge against Kohlhepp is likely.

'We're trying to get all this sorted out and figure out what were going to charge him with. One of the charges will be kidnapping, it could be murder. It could be a number of things,' Wright told WYFF.

'It's possible that it is the work of a serial killer. It's a deceased person. There could be more,' Wright added.

On April 19, four months before the kidnapping, Kohlhepp replied to a post that reads: '(People need) to start appreciating the effort I put in to not be a serial killer.' Kohlhepp chillingly responded to the post: 'Why? Serial killers need love, too' (pictured)

On April 19, four months before the kidnapping, Kohlhepp replied to a post that reads: '(People need) to start appreciating the effort I put in to not be a serial killer.'

Kohlhepp chillingly responded to the post: 'Why? Serial killers need love, too.'

Spartenburg coroner Rusty Clavenger confirmed a corpse had been unearthed by police, less than 24 hours into the investigation of the sprawling property in Woodruff, South Carolina.

About two weeks after Brown went missing, Kohlhepp posted on his Facebook about 'filling ravines' on his property. It is unclear if this was in the area where the deceased body was found.

It emerged Friday that Kohlhepp had been convicted of raping a 14-year-old at gunpoint when he was 15.

Flowers on a fence surrounding property owned by registered sex offender Todd Kohlhepp, in Moore, SC, on November 5

Brown has told investigators that there may be other victims and speculated that there were as many as four bodies buried on the property, according to WSPA

A corpse had been unearthed by police, less than 24 hours into the investigation of the sprawling property in Woodruff, South Carolina and Brown has told investigators that there may be other victims (pictured, police search a field on property owned by Kohlhepp on Thursday)

'We're trying to get all this sorted out and figure out what were going to charge him with. One of the charges will be kidnapping, it could be murder. It could be a number of things, Wright told WYFF

Brown was discovered on Thursday by deputies acting on a tip-off they received. She and Carver had last been seen on August 30. His car was found on the property on Thursday night.

Late Friday evening, Brown's family released a statement saying the brave survivor needed privacy to cope with what had happened.

'While Kala is doing well physically, emotionally she's having good moments and bad moments,' the family said.

'She's requesting privacy at this time and will make an official statement as soon as the authorities give her permission to do so. Right now Kala needs time to process and begin to cope with the events that have occurred.

'She thanks everyone for their love and support.'

Todd Kohlhepp (pictured in blue shirt) appeared at a bond hearing at the Spartanburg County Detention Center Friday. He is likely to face at least one murder charge, and is being held without bond. His first court appearance is set for January 19

Solicitor Barry Barnette said Kohlhepp was 'a very, very dangerous individual' who kept chains in his bedroom, along with silenced handguns, assault weapons and an 'unbelievable' amount of ammunition

Earlier, on Friday afternoon, Kohlhepp appeared before court for a bond hearing in the Spartanburg County Detention Center.

There, lawyers for the Woodruff Solicitor's Office said that Brown told deputies she saw the 45-year-old murder her boyfriend.

Solicitor Barry Barnette said Brown saw her captor shoot her boyfriend dead, and described him as 'a very, very dangerous individual'. She added: 'She told us this individual did kill him in her presence.'

Kohlhepp had a public defender during his appearance. He was not handcuffed, but sat with his hands behind his back.

Barnette then went on to tell the hearing Brown was found with chains around her neck and ankles, and that addition chains were found in Kohlhepp's bedroom, along with an 'unbelievable' amount of ammunition.

Investigators also found silenced 9mm handguns and assault weapons, he said.

He is to remain in jail without bond until his first court hearing on January 19, the judge ruled.

Investigators went to Kohlhepp's Moore, South Carolina, home and impounded his vehicles after he was arrested on Thursday

A county sherriff helicopter lands at a property owned by Todd Kohlhepp, where Carver's body was found Friday afternoon

Police are seen standing around a hole in the ground that had been dug as part of the search for bodies on the property Friday

A look at Kohlhepp's Facebook page suggests that the man became considerably more active online after Carver and Brown's disappearance on August 30.

Chilling: In a chilling Facebook post 16 days after Brown and Carver went missing, Kohlhepp posted about how most people who vanish turn up again

Between the start of July and the end of August, he only posted nine times, mostly showing properties that Kohlhepp - a realtor - was selling.

But in September he posted more than 40 times - sometimes multiple times a day, and more frequently about his feelings and thoughts on life.

The first post in this more active phase is on August 31, the day after the couple disappeared, in which he appears to have been focusing on the news.

'Its wednesday, the trash people picked up my trash at 5:30 this morning,' he wrote. 'this post is still way more interesting than whats on the news.. carry on.'

A more chilling post came on September 15, when he wrote: 'Reading the news.. this person missing, that person missing, another person missing.. oh wait.. that person just went to beach with friend, other person found with her parole violation boyfriend...

'In the event I become missing, please note no one would take me. I eat too much and I am crabby, they would just bring me back or give me 20 bucks for a cab ride.

Abuse: Kohlhepp also said that his family would hit him for as little as setting down a cup too hard at the table. His Facebook usage increased dramatically after the couple disappeared

'Most likely if I am missing, its because my dumb ass did something on that tractor again and I am too stubborn to go to the doctor... I got 9 lives.. I aint done yet..'

And in a post from September 26, he talks about how he was beaten by several members of his family.

'In my family you got backhanded for talking back or being disrespectful... actually acting up ended up a spanking that was epic.. you do NOT want to make the same mistake in my family again,' he said, going on to complain about rioters he'd seen on the news.

'My family believed raising me was a group effort,' he added in the comments. 'That means when I messed up, mom beat my a**, step father beat my a** when he got home.. next time I went to grandparents I got my a** beat... they made a believer out of you..'

He continued: 'you stood up for anthem, you shut up with adults spoke.. you sure as hell never set that cup down hard on the table.. noooooooooooo... and cop an attitude over anything... well.. you lost tv, bike.. friends that month..

'After the spanking.. you just didnt act up... these kids ( and adults ) just dont know.... damn shame too.. they might learn to appreciate if they did.'

Carver's family have said that some of the Facebook posts that he apparently made after his disappearance were out of character, and they believe that his account was hacked by someone who made fake updates.

Police stand guard outside a building on the property owned by registered sex offender Todd Kohlhepp, who was arrested after a woman was found chained up in a metal container

Police use a backhoe on the massive property in South Carolina as part of the ongoing search for as many as four bodies investigators believe may be buried on the land

Helicopters were seen at the property on Friday morning, along with a backhoe and police dogs that were being used in nearby woods as part of the search.

A Greenville News reporter who flew over the property noted on Twitter that there was what appeared to be a camouflaged metal storage shed on the land.

Kohlhepp was also arrested for the kidnapping and sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl in 1986, when he was 15. He was jailed from 1987 to 2001 over the incident.

Court documents, obtained by WFXG, detail how Kohlhepp pointed a 'small blue steel handgun at (the victim's) head' and led her into his house. Inside, he 'placed gray duct tape over her mouth' and 'tied her hands together with a rope', before removing her clothes and 'forcing the victim to have sexual intercourse with him'.

The judge who ruled on the case described Kohlhepp as 'impulsive, explosive, and preoccupied with sexual content' from the age of nine.

'He has not changed. He has been unabatedly aggressive to others and destructive of property since nursery school.

'He destroys his own clothing, personal possessions and pets apparently on whim,' court papers state. The documents also cite a psychiatrist's report that says the 45-year-old has 'emotional difficulties and poor impulse control'.

Kohlhepp got his realtor's license in 2006, before background checks for applicants were made compulsory.

A mugshot of Kohlhepp after his arrest shows him with a cruel smirk.

TODD KOHLHEPP'S SHOCKING PAST AS A 'MONSTER' WHO WAS JAILED FOR RAPING A 14-YEAR-OLD GIRL Court documents from an incident in 1986 that saw Todd Kohlhepp jailed for 14 years have shed light on his shocking past. Kohlhepp, who owns the property where Kala Brown was found chained up like a dog in a metal container on Thursday, kidnapping and sexual assault of a girl when he was 15 years old. A sentencing report, obtained by WFXG, claims Kohlhepp lured the girl outside by telling her an ex-boyfriend wanted to talk to her. Kohlhepp raped a 14-year-old girl at gunpoint in 1986, when he was 15, and openly admitted to the crime when police arrived to question him. This mugshot from that arrest shows him with a cruel smirk. He was jailed from 1987-2001 When the two were outside, he then pointed a 'small blue steel handgun at her head' and 'told her to walk down the alley towards his house.' Once they got into Kohlhepp's bedroom, according to the documents, he duct taped her mouth, tied her hands together, and, 'removed her clothes, then his clothes and forced the victim to have sexual intercourse with him.' The victim allegedly told police Kohlhepp had threatened to kill her and her siblings if she told anyone about the incident, however she still called police when she got home. The document continues: 'When contacted by police, the defendant was holding a .22 caliber rifle which was pointed at the ceiling. When questioned regarding this incident, the defendant fully admitted his guilty and indicated he used the victim's ex-boyfriend as a ploy.' The judge who ruled on the case described Kohlhepp as 'impulsive, explosive, and preoccupied with sexual content' from the age of nine. 'He has not changed. He has been unabatedly aggressive to others and destructive of property since nursery school. He destroys his own clothing, personal possessions and pets apparently on whim,' court papers state. The documents also cite a psychiatrist's report that says the 45-year-old has 'emotional difficulties and poor impulse control'. It described him 'destroying his bedroom with a hammer; destroying other children's projects; hitting other children; cloroxing a goldfish; shooting a dog with a BB gun; being dismissed from the Boy Scouts because he was too disruptive; shredding his own clothes'. The judge's report said: 'He is extremely self-centered with high levels of anti-social personality functioning, and likely continuing aggressive behaviors toward others in the future.' Advertisement

Carver's family released a statement on Friday afternoon, shortly before Kohlhepp's bond hearing got underway and before authorities identified the deceased body as Carver's.

'We, Charlie David Carver's family, would like to begin by saying how wonderful it is Kala has been found and that she is receiving care and is back with family and friends,' it read.

'The outpouring of concern and affection from the community has been overwhelming and we are very thankful.

'At this time we know that no more than what has been reported within the media or statements made by law enforcement.

'We ask that you continue to pray for Kala's healing and for David's safe return as well. In the meantime, we ask for some time to ourselves as we process events as they unfold.

'Thank you for your understanding and expect updates as they become available.'

Brown's close friend, Leah Miller, said the 30-year-old started working for Kohlhepp only weeks before she vanished.

She said Brown helped Kohlhepp clear and clean properties before he put them on the market, according to Greenville Online.

'I was supposed to be helping Kala, but I recently had neck surgery,' Miller said.

A private property sign on a fence surrounding registered sex offender Todd Kohlhepp's property, in Woodruff, South Carolina

A police staging area is seen being set up on the property where Kala Brown was found in a metal container on Thursday

A county sherriff helicopter flies over the South Carolina property, where police are conducting a massive investigation after the discovery of a missing woman on Thursday

A shed for animals is seen surrounded by a wire fence on the property owned by Todd Kohlhepp

'I'm just in shock, wondering if she tried to reach me to help her before she disappeared.'

Another friend, Lindsey Mayson, told WSPA the suspected kidnapper did not seem like a bad person when she met him.

'We went by his house to get a key before we went by his house to clean. Didn't seem like a person who would do anything to anybody. He seemed down to earth,' Mayson said.

Earlier, Wright said Brown was 'chained inside the container like a dog' when police found her.

He said she told deputies she had been kept in the container - which measured 30 feet by 15 feet by 10 or 12 feet - for two months and had been fed regularly.

'It's all by God's grace that we found that little girl alive,' Wright told NBC News.

A massive investigation is now underway on the 100-acre property owned by Kohlhepp. Authorities search a field on the property above

A deputy is seen leaving out of Kohlhepp's home carrying a computer on Thursday

Brown has since been taken to local hospital for treatment and Wright said she was 'obviously traumatized' but 'alive and well,' according to The State.

Anderson Police Chief Jim Stewart said his department's investigation into the disappearance of Brown and Carver led authorities to the property near Woodruff, 80 miles northwest of the state capital of Columbia, where the woman was found.

Stewart said more than a dozen search warrants were issued.

'We got computer and cellphone records that ultimately led us to the area in Woodruff,' Stewart said.

'We knew that was the last place that a cellphone tied to this case pinged.'

Kohlhepp was added to the sex offender registry in 1987 when he was convicted and sentenced to prison for kidnapping and raping a 14-year-old girl in Arizona in 1986.

Records indicate Kohlhepp, orginally from Arizona, is a licensed real estate agent as well as a licensed pilot.

Another deputy is seen leaving the home carrying a brown paper bag filled with evidence form Kohlhepp's home

Authorities said Brown (pictured left and right) had a chain around her neck when she was found on Thursday. She told deputies she had been kept in the container for two months and had been fed regularly

Kohlhepp, pictured in a Facebook photo (left) and in a mugshot in March (right) was added to the sex offender registry in 1987 when he was convicted and sentenced to prison for kidnapping and dangerous crimes against children in Arizona

Kohlhepp (pictured left flying and right in a photo for his real estate work ) is a licensed real estate agent as well as a licensed pilot

Authorities removed the cars from Kohlhepp's garage include his BMW

Brown (left) and Carver (right) had been dating for a few months before they vanished on August 30

He is listed as a self-employed and as the owner/broker in charge at Todd Kohlhepp and Associates LLC located in Greenville on his Facebook page.

Carver and Brown were last seen together leaving a friend's home on August 30.

The next day, surveillance footage caught Carver leaving his work. That day marked the last the couple's friends or family heard from them.

Carver and Brown had been dating just a few months, and had moved in together over the summer as Carver was going through a divorce.

After failing to answer calls or messages from their loved ones, the couple's parents searched their apartment a few days later and found Brown's Pomeranian inside without any food or water.

As the search for the missing couple started, Carver's Facebook - which he does not typically use - started becoming more and more active. Above shows an exchange on his Facebook page on September 6

Medications and Brown's glasses were also left behind in the abandoned apartment.

Neighbor Nicholas Arocho told Greenville Online that Carver's family took Pomeranian and paid the couple's rent for a couple of months after they disappeared.

Relatives believe that the account has been hacked. Above, a message that someone received from Carver saying he was 'fine'

The family later packed up the couple's belongings, he said.

As the search for the missing couple started, Carver's Facebook - which he does not typically use - started becoming more active.

On September 1, the account posted an update that the two had gotten married and then on September 6 his profile picture was changed.

Other posts include links to stories and GoFundMe fundraisers for the missing couple.

There are also several bizarre posts unrelated to the couple's disappearance, such as memes and comic book illustrations.

The most recent post from October 2 reads: 'What color ribbon supports the cure for people who can't keep their nose out of other people's business?'

When one concerned family member reached out to Carver on the account, they received a private message saying 'yes I'm fine'.

But family members believe the account was hacked since the posts are not in Carver's style.

Meanwhile, Brown's Facebook - which she used more than her boyfriend - has been completely silent.

A friend of Brown and Carver's mother told police that someone the couple knows has 'given them problems before'.

Brown's car was found in her apartment complex and her cellphone had not been used in the 48 hours before she vanished.

Pictures of the couple and 'MISSING' posters were shared on Facebook after their disappearance in August
A Sydney man accused of robbing another man after threatening him with a crowbar at a meeting arranged through online dating app Plenty of Fish has been refused bail.

Andrew Rhodes-Lightfoot, 27, pleaded his innocence while appearing via audiovisual link in Parramatta Bail Court on Saturday after he was arrested with his girlfriend in Liverpool, south west of Sydney, on Friday.

While his bail status was discussed, Rhodes-Lightfoot interjected, saying he had 'pleaded guilty to every single one' of his previous charges because he was guilty.

Rhodes-Lightfoot was refused bail despite him begging he needed to care of his mentally-ill mother who was just released from hospital. Marini was granted bail and will appear in court on November 9

'But this time I want to take it to trial because I'm not guilty,' he said.

Rhodes-Lightfoot was arrested with Syndan Leah Marini, 21, after they allegedly lured a man to a Liverpool unit block for a pre-arranged meeting made through dating app Plenty of Fish.

Police say the victim met Marini, who led him into the unit block where he was confronted by Rhodes-Lightfoot, armed with the crowbar.

The pair allegedly robbed the man of his Samsung Galaxy mobile phone, leaving him unharmed.

In court, Rhodes-Lightfoot begged for bail to prepare his case and to care for his mentally-ill mother, just released from Liverpool Hospital.

Andrew Rhodes-Lightfoot, 27, and his girlfriend Syndan Leah Marini, 21, met a man through dating app Plenty of Fish. The pair allegedly robbed the man of his Samsung Galaxy mobile phone after Rhodes-Lightfoot confronted him with a crowbar

'I'm the only person in her life at the moment,' Rhodes-Lightfoot told the court.

'I've done jail, I've done plenty of it, I don't need another reality check.'

Despite his plea, he was refused bail until his next court appearance at Campbelltown on November 9.
An Irish jihadi has blown himself up in a suicide attack in Mosul.

Khalid Kelly, known as Terry Taliban in Dublin, killed himself on Friday night as fighting continued in Mosul.

Kelly, who was calling himself Abu Osama Al-Irlandi, was a former altar boy who was born in the Liberties in Dublin and trained to be a nurse after leaving school.

According to Jihadi Threat Monitor, the 49-year-old was confirmed by ISIS as carrying out an attack against Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq.

An image said to be released by ISIS of Khalid Kelly who the group confirmed had killed himself in a suicide attack in Mosul

The 42-year-old father-of-one, travelled to Saudi Arabia to work tax free but was caught with a crate load of Johnnie Walker scotch and was jailed.

While in prison he converted to Islam and was soon radicalised, glorifying the 9/11 attackers and the London suicide bombers of 7/7.

Kelly was born Terence Kelly and is said to have become a friend of Anjem Choudary.

Khalid Kelly in 2009 with his son, who he called Osama. He has now killed himself in a suicide mission in Mosul

Khalid Kelly was born as Terence Kelly in Dublin and had also become known as Abu Osama Al-Irlandi

In 2009, Kelly was living in the Swat Valley in Pakistan, just 60 miles from the Afghan border.

He believed that it was up to Allah whether he fights and dies for Islam, but claimed that he has no concerns as to his fate.

Speaking in 2009, Kelly said: 'I am from Dublin but I am no longer a Westerner. I am a Muslim. I am living 60 miles from the Afghan border. I may travel there and if I came across a Dubliner in a British Army uniform I would not have any problem in fighting, bombing or killing him as I would anyone who is harming Muslims.

'The people here in Pakistan and Afghanistan are now my people. If my own brother was harming Muslims I would have no hesitation in killing him.'

Men are held by Iraqi national security agents, to be interrogated at a checkpoint, as oil fields burn in Qayara, south of Mosul

An Iraqi army captain rides past burning oil fields in Qayara, south of Mosul as the battle rages on

Kelly appeared on the Late Late Show in October 2003 as part of his mission to raise awareness of his radical group Al Mahajiroun, which was later banned by British authorities.

In a lengthy interview he talked about how he was never able to accept Christianity from his Catholic upbringing and was converted to Islam because he believed the Qu'ran was written to correct mistakes about God and Allah.

Not only did he give up drinking when he left prison, but he sold his house because interest is forbidden in Islam and as he had a mortgage, he had to give up his property ownership.

Speaking about the 9/11 attacks in New York City and Washington D.C., he said: 'I believe Allah gives life and takes life.

'They [the 3000 who died] would have died wherever they were in the world, it is just a condition of their death.'

Iraqi special forces today attacked Islamic State militants in Mosul from a new entry point, to the city's northeast

The suicide attack comes as Iraqi special forces cleared buildings on Saturday in neighborhoods they entered in eastern Mosul a day earlier, after pushing out Islamic State militants in their drive to take back the city.

Fighting continued in the morning, with both sides firing mortars and automatic weapons on each other's positions, while the Iraqi troops also responded with artillery. Clashes were most intense in the al-Bakr neighborhood. Sniper duels played out from rooftops in the mostly residential areas, where the majority of buildings are two stories high.

Maj. Gen. Sami al-Aridi of the Iraqi special forces said: 'Daesh [ISIS] is in the city center and we must be very careful as our forces advance,'

With more densely packed neighborhoods ahead, his forces will be challenged to avoid both higher military and civilian casualties.

The special forces launched a two-pronged assault deeper into Mosul's urban centre on Friday, unleashing the most intense street battles against IS militants since the offensive to retake the city began nearly three weeks ago. At least seven special forces troops have been killed in the fighting.

More than 3,000 Iraqi troops took part in the assault under heavy U.S.-led coalition air support, but the pace of the fight also slowed as Iraqi forces moved from fighting in more rural areas with few civilians to the tight, narrow streets of Mosul proper. At least seven suicide attackers in explosives-laden vehicles attacked troops on Friday, five of whom were killed before nearing their targets.

A tank of Iraqi security forces is seen during a battle with Islamic State militants in Ali Rash, southeast of Mosul

In the town of Salhyia, members of the Iraqi Army and Iraqi police detain and question suspects who were coming from the direction of Mosul

MOSUL RESIDENTS TELL OF HORROR AS THEY DODGE BOMBS TO FLEE ISIS When he saw Iraqi forces approaching Mosul from afar, Abu Fahad yanked the white headscarf off his father's head, turned it into makeshift flag and decided to sneak out. The Iraqi managed to herd around 40 members of his extended family out of the neighbourhood of Samah 'by advancing quietly, hiding under stairs, sidling along walls'. On Saturday, he and his relatives were receiving assistance at a camp in Khazir, a Kurdish-controlled area further east, where displaced civilians are arriving in growing numbers. Most are from Mosul's outskirts, but Abu Fahad and a few others were able to find a gap in the tight seal the Islamic State group had imposed on the city. An Iraqi woman embraces relative who was displaced from Mosul as she visits her at a refugee camp in the Khazir region between Arbil and Mosul Two weeks after Iraq launched its largest military operation in years to retake Mosul, the last major Iraqi hub in the jihadists' shrinking 'caliphate', forces reached the edge of the city. Now the million-plus people believed to be trapped inside have to survive fire from both sides to flee the brutality of the jihadists who have ruled them for more than two years. Abu Sara fled the same neighbourhood, dodging gunfire, bombs, mortar rounds and strikes from the US-led coalition, such was his desperation to leave what many civilians who escaped IS rule describe as an open-air prison. 'There were snipers shooting, mortars crashing down, it was hell,' said the 34-year-old, wearing a brown fake leather jacket. 'We walked several miles, taking with us only the clothes we were wearing and white flags we waved the entire way.' Sitting next to him and stroking her belly, his pregnant cousin Umm Mustafa said she could hardly believe she had finally escaped her life spent 'hiding under niqab' face veils. Despite the cold filling the tent that is their new home in Khazir, she was all smiles and wore a teal-coloured dress with matching scarf. 'We're coming back to life,' said Umm Mustafa, keeping a watchful eye on some of her seven children as they played in the gravel at her feet. Abu Ahmed also said that 'life had stopped' for many of the million-plus people who remained in Mosul after IS proclaimed its 'caliphate' in June 2014. 'All the factories stopped working, there was no work and no money,' said the 60-year-old man, who worked in the oil sector before the jihadists took over. Sitting next to water taps at the intersection of four of the camp's alleys, Abu Ahmed said he hadn't initially planned to flee Mosul and his neighbourhood of Al-Khadra. He recounted the night that he and his wife were having dinner at their children's place in the Samah neighbourhood. 'We stayed in their home because the bombing was just too intense to go out, but then we escaped and I found myself here,' he said. 'We left everything behind, we have only God.' Abu Fahad, his wife and six children also fled with none of their belongings but they are safe, unlike some of their relatives who remained trapped in Mosul. 'I still have two sisters in the Al-Karama neighbourhood... and I have absolutely no news,' she said. Al-Karama is one of the first districts that the elite Counter-Terrorism Service entered on Friday. The force's commanders said they encountered fierce resistance there and intense fighting was still ongoing on Saturday. 'There's no phone network there, the only place where you might get a signal is on roofs but there are snipers up there,' said Abu Fahad. He said he had heard from neighbours who escaped after him that five residents of the area were killed trying to flee. Advertisement

The operation to retake Mosul is expected to take weeks if not months. Moving from neighborhood to neighborhood in house-to-house battles through warrens of booby-trapped buildings is time consuming and Iraq's military has repeatedly opted for slower operations in an effort to minimize casualties.

Some one million civilians still remain in the city, complicating the advance.

IS militants have driven thousands of residents deeper into the city's built-up areas to be used as human shields, while hundreds of others have fled toward government-controlled territory and thousands have headed west into Syria.

Mosul is the last major IS stronghold in Iraq, and expelling the militant group from the city would be a major blow to the survival of its self-styled 'caliphate' that stretches into Syria.

Iraqi forces have made uneven progress in closing in on the city since the operation began on Oct. 17. Advances have been slower from the south, with government troops still some 20 miles (35 kilometres) away. Kurdish fighters and Iraqi army units are deployed to the north, while government-sanctioned Shiite militias are sweeping in from the west to try to cut off any IS escape route.

A displaced Iraqi woman, who fled the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, makes bread in Khazer refugee camp

Displaced Iraqi people, who fled the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, eat in Khazer refugee camp

Displaced Iraqi people, who fled the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, have an emotional reunion as they meet their relatives in Khazer refugee camp

Those who have been displaced in the bombings and air strikes have fled to a refugee camp in Khazer.

Aid workers have warned of a major humanitarian crisis when fighting begins in earnest for Mosul, which is home to more than a million people, but thousands have already been fleeing surrounding areas.

Islamic State fighters launched counterattacks in the thin strip of territory Iraqi special forces have recaptured in eastern Mosul, highlighting the challenges ahead as the battle moves into more densely populated neighborhoods where coalition air power must be used more selectively.

A displaced Iraqi father plays with his child as the family prepares to live in the Khazer refugee camp while Mosul is a war zone

Iraqi boys play football together in the camp after fleeing because of the Islamic State violence

Iraqi boys wait to receive food at a refugee camp. Aid workers have warned of a humanitarian crisis as thousands fled the city

Iraqis greet their families through the fencing around the camp as relatives are reunited at the refugee camp

Some advances are being made in the south, however. On Saturday, Iraqi forces assaulted IS positions in the town of Hamam al-Alil, which lies along the Tigris river about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the southernmost parts of Mosul.

Kurdish television channel Rudaw broadcast live footage of Iraqi troops and armored vehicles amassing outside the city as an attack helicopter fired rockets into the city.

Truckloads full of as many as 1,600 civilians may have been forcibly moved from Hamam al-Alil to Tal Afar earlier this week and could be transferred onward into Syria for likely use as human shields, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned Friday. Another 150 families from the town were moved to Mosul itself, the U.N. said.
North Korean families are pressuring their elderly relatives to commit suicide because they can't afford to look after them.

Pensioners in the country are not entitled to state benefits and are struggling to cope with the rising costs of medicine.

Elderly residents' children are said to hanging notices on their parents' doors urging them to kill themselves for putting a financial strain on the family.

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North Korean families are pressuring their elderly relatives to commit suicide because they can't afford to look after them

Pensioners in the country are not entitled to state benefits and are struggling to cope with the rising costs of medicine

Old people are reportedly driven out of their homes, which they share with their families, in a bid to avoid arguments with their children, according to UPI.

Elderly North Koreans are regularly seen gathered together in parks and train stations, a source told Radio Free Asia.

Among those struggling to make ends meet are Korean War veterans.

They are said to gather outdoors during the daytime before returning to their families, who are also struggling financially, in the evening.

A second source said children in North Hamgyoung Province are asking their ageing parents to commit suicide.

The main complaint among adult children is the cost of medicine.

With their parents unemployable, they are unable to bring home any money themselves and are seen as a burden.
Once he was unearthed, he was promptly taken into custody

Morrow told officers he was losing feeling in his arms during the ordeal

He was tracked down after a dog ran into a large badger hole and wouldn't come out

Morrow had became stuck about 8ft underground after running away from police for

A man from Oregon who was on the run from police ended up getting stuck inside a badger hole.

Gregory Morrow, 22, of Ontario, ended up inside the hole on Bureau of Land Management land in Malheur County on Thursday after police tried to pull over the stolen car he was driving.

Morrow, along with another man, 35-year-old Jerry Boatman gave cops a reason to chase after officer tried to stop the pair in the parking lot of a Jack in the Box.

Gregory Morrow, 22, left, had to be rescued from a badger hole. Jerry Boatman, 35, right, was a passenger in the stolen car. Boatman, who was on foot, was also arrested

Morrow told officers he was losing feeling in his arms after climbing into the badger hole to hide from police. It took police 90 minutes to reach Morrow and get him out

Boatman and Morrow chose not to comply with officers and jumped the curb in a 2001 Chevrolet Tahoe, leading the Ontario police officers on a short chase.

Police caught up with them a few hours later when Boatman was found walking across Bureau of Land Management land. He was arrested.

Hours later, police aircraft found the Chevy Tahoe in a ravine and so officers decided to follow the tracks that lead away from the SUV for over a mile.

A dog helped to lead the search on foot before disappearing into a badger hole and refusing to come back out.

Shortly afterwards they heard a man 'screaming for help from within the hole.'

Morrow had become trapped in the hole, around eight feet underground.

Morrow had climbed into the hole feet-first and become stuck in the narrow passage

It then took officers a further 90 minutes to dig him out.

The man was quickly identified as the driver of the stolen vehicle.

Morrow was arrested and also taken to a hospital where he was treated for minor injuries. Police say further charges are pending.
A childcare worker has been fined $6500 after failing to adequately supervise a two-year-old boy who drowned in the family day care centre pool.

Lachlan was two-years-old when he was found face down in the backyard pool of his Carramar Day care centre in Western Australia on November 9 last year.

His carer, Karla Zablah, had left Lachlan alone in her backyard when she walked inside to comfort a 10-month-old baby also in her care.

Lachlan was two-years-old when he was found face down in the backyard pool of his Carramar Day care centre in Western Australia on November 9 last year

Ms Zablah was fined $6500 after neglecting to perform necessary instructions on a checklist proceeding Lachlan's drowning

The little boy's parents, Melanie and Luke Mitchell, have called for tougher monitoring of the day care sector in the state.

'There's so many people involved (in the system) with the carer and the provider and the local government, that make it easier for people to keep pointing at each other without actually making anyone accountable for something like this,' Mrs Mitchell told The Weekend West.

At Joondalup Magistrate's Court on Friday Ms Zablah was fined $6500 after neglecting to perform necessary instructions on a checklist before Lachlan's drowning.

Ms Zablah, who had 17 years' experience looking after children, had pre-ticked items on her list, a lawyer for the Department of Local Government and Communities told the court.

One of the checks included making sure the pool fence was secure.

She gave the toddler CPR after discovering in the pool then carried him inside and sought help from her neighbours.

The little boy's parents, Melanie (pictured) and Luke Mitchell, have called for tougher monitoring of the day care sector in WA

On a tribute page for Lachlan, Lachlan's Legacy , Melanie wrote that the outcome for Karlah's prosecution had given their family mixed emotions

Zablah's lawyer Chris Rimmer, said the carer had wrongly assumed Lachlan was behind her when she went inside.

'All of us make mistakes in life, regrettably the mistake that my client made had some very tragic consequences,' he said.

On a tribute page for Lachlan, Lachlan's Legacy, Melanie wrote that the outcome for Karlah's prosecution had given their family mixed emotions.

'Relief and sadness seem to be the dominant conflicting feelings,' she wrote.

'Relief in that this part is over and was a favourable result which goes some way to establishing accountability, sadness that it came to this given the beautiful relationship Lachlan had with Karla and how much he loved her.'

Lachlan's mother added that they are now looking to the coronial inquest for closure.




An ex-policeman has started a 2,000 mile swim across the Atlantic today in a bid to become the first ever person to conquer an ocean.

Dad-of-one Ben Hooper, 38, set off from Dakar in Senegal, Africa, shortly after sunrise and hopes to reach Natal, Brazil by March 2017.

The Brit will burn up to 12,000 calories per day as he swims freestyle for up to ten hours a day - all the while battling up to seven-knot currents and 30ft-high waves.

An ex-policeman has started a 2,000 mile swim across the Atlantic today in a bid to become the first ever person to conquer an ocean

Dad-of-one Ben Hooper, 38, set off from Dakar in Senegal, Africa, shortly after sunrise and hopes to reach Natal, Brazil by March 2017

The former police officer, who also served in the British Army, will face extreme water temperatures, deadly box jellyfish and the harsh equatorial sun.

But perhaps the deadliest obstacle blocking his dream of getting a world record is deadly sharks- because the Atlantic Ocean is infested with them.

Ben, of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, will don a wetsuit that makes him invisible to the animals in a bid to keep them away - and he said he's sure 'everything will be fine'.

The endurance athlete said: 'I know for a fact that I will see sharks during my swim, especially as their numbers have been increasing.

'As an environmentalist, I am obviously over the moon that shark populations are on the rise.

The former police officer, who also served in the British Army, will face extreme water temperatures, deadly box jellyfish and the harsh equatorial sun

'It is fantastic that marine life is recovering and more should be done to improve populations of sharks and other species alike.

'But as a person who will be swimming in shark territory, it is also something that bothers me.'

Ben, who will sleep on one of two boats travelling by his side in between swims, added: 'Ultimately, I have two boats alongside me with a team of experts onboard.

'They will be on the lookout for danger and make the call as to when I stay in the water or get out.

'I trust them implicitly so I'm sure everything will be fine.'

Experts have warned that the chance of Ben completing his 'Swim the Big Blue' expedition without encountering a great white, tiger or bull shark is near impossible.

Populations have swelled over the past two decades thanks to international conversation efforts and hunting bans.

Off the Senegal coast alone, the region has suffered 66 attacks between 1990 and 2006 and fatalities have been recorded even in very shallow waters.

To protect himself, Ben will don a wetsuit designed to make him invisible to the deadly animals and use 'shark shields', which emit high frequencies to deter them.

He'll also be equipped with a 'shark defence' chemical repellent made of synthesised rotting shark cartilage.

But experts warned that swimming in a metal cage - which is too impractical - would be Ben's only real help of staving off a shark's jaws.

Experts have warned that the chance of Ben completing his 'Swim the Big Blue' expedition without encountering a great white, tiger or bull shark is near impossible

To protect himself, Ben will don a wetsuit designed to make him invisible to the deadly animals and use 'shark shields', which emit high frequencies to deter them

Dr Patrick Rice, Dean of Marine Sciences at Florida Keys Community College in Key West, USA, said the number of great whites has reached 'unprecedented' levels.

Dr Rice, who is working on a new type of shark repellent, Incortrix SuperPolyShark, said: 'It's good news for the ecology but a serious risk to Ben.

'However, Ben is very aware of the dangers and is as prepared as someone can be to handle the situation if it does arise.'

Ben decided to take on the Atlantic challenge after a terrifying childhood incident - in which he 'DIED' after drowning in a swimming lesson.

The then five-year-old sunk to the bottom of a busy pool 'without trace' while other kids played overhead, and had to be dragged out and resuscitated.

Despite having turned blue and not breathing for minutes, Ben went on to make a miraculous full recovery.

In a remarkable twist, the incident - which Ben confined to the 'darkest recesses' of his mind for more than 30 years - led him to become an open water swimmer.

Swimming the Atlantic - described by explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes as one of the last-remaining extreme feats of endurance - is his chance to 'lay the demons of my childhood to rest once and for all'.

Swimming the Atlantic - described by explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes as one of the last-remaining extreme feats of endurance - is his chance to 'lay the demons of my childhood to rest once and for all'

Ben will be joined in his attempt by a sailing crew, medical staff and an observer to verify his accomplishment.

His body will be monitored as he performs and his journey filmed for a TV documentary.

French swimmer, Benoit Lecomte is the only other person to have tried to swim across the Atlantic.
A woman who claims to have had anonline relationship with Weiner said he told her he liked that she looked like a 'little girl'

Anthony Weiner's recent sexting relationship with a 15-year-old wasn't the first time he allegedly expressed interest in underage girls.

A woman who claims to have had an eight-month online relationship with Weiner, 51, that began in 2015 said he often told her he loved that she looked so young.

'I told him I was 30 to 31 years old, but he didn't want to hear that - he said I looked like a little girl and that turned him on,' the woman told the New York Post.

The woman, whose name was not released, said that during one sexting session she sent the former New York congressman a video of her masturbating.

'You've got a little girl p***y,' she said he told her. 'Tight as f**k. Punish you.'

The woman, who is from the Midwest, said she first reached out to Weiner through Facebook before they talked online for nearly a year.

One night, she claims, Weiner was describing a fantasy in which he would throw her over his knees and spank her and told he had a 'hard-on you keep giving me'.

But then he was interrupted by his four-year-old son, according to screengrabs of the texts that the woman gave to the Post.

'Sorry baby. My son wanted to cuddle,' he wrote. 'Had to put my phone down.'

The woman's revelations come just two months after it was revealed Weiner had exchanged numerous sexts with a 15-year-old girl (left). Pictured right is a shirtless selfie he sent her

In the messages, which were obtained by the Dailymail.com, Weiner repeatedly complimented the girl's body, told her that she made him 'hard'. He also sent the girl a selfie from a hot tub

Weiner and the girl used several anonymous messaging apps, like the one pictured above, where every line of text - and the sender's name - disappear after the message is opened. In one message he told he would 'bust that tight p***y so hard'

The screengrabs show that the alleged messages were exchanged around the same time Weiner was communicating with the 15-year-old high school girl.

Just a month after Huma Abedin left him, Weiner's world came tumbling down once and for all when DailyMail.com revealed in September that he had been sexting the teenager.

The 15-year-old, whose name is being withheld because she is a minor, said the online relationship began last January while she was a high school sophomore.

Weiner carried on a months-long online sexual relationship with the teen during which, she said, he asked her to dress up in 'school-girl' outfits for him on a video messaging application and pressed her to engage in 'rape fantasies'.

He was aware that the girl was underage, according to DailyMail.com interviews with the girl and her father, as well as a cache of online messages.

In the messages, Weiner sent bare-chested photos of himself to the underage girl, repeatedly called her 'baby' and complimented her body, and told her that he woke up 'hard' after thinking about her, according to copies of the conversations.

In one particularly lewd message, he told the teen: 'I would bust that tight p***y so hard and so often that you would leak and limp for a week.'

Weiner also complained to the girl about his physical relationship with Abedin, Hillary Clinton's closest aide, and told the teen they hadn't had sex in a year.

When confronted with the claims, Weiner did not deny exchanging 'flirtatious' messages with the teen.

He declined to comment on the specifics of the allegations on the record, but provided copies of two emails the girl sent him that he contends raised questions about her claims.

Weiner is now getting help for his sex addiction and Huma Abedin, above with their son Jordan, is keeping a low profile with Hillary's campaign as the election is only days away

Weiner also gave a statement to DailyMail.com in which he said, in part: ' I have repeatedly demonstrated terrible judgement about the people I have communicated with online and the things I have sent.'

'I am filled with regret and heartbroken for those I have hurt.'

Weiner checked into a rehab facility for sex treatment in early October.

He is currently being treated at The Ranch, a 2,000 acre facility deep in the heart of the Tennessee countryside.

It is recognized as one of the nation's top treatment centers for sex addiction.

All electronic devices, including cellphones and computers, are banned at The Ranch, where stays cost up to $30,000 a month.

He and other male sex addicts are kept far away from women sufferers who are housed in separate buildings.

Weiner is in the middle of a weeks-long sex-addiction rehab course at The Ranch, a 2,000-acre facility an hour west of Nashville, Tennessee

The Ranch is recognized as one of the nation's top treatment centers for sex addiction

Huma and Hillary spoke on board Clinton's campaign plane just hours before news broke on Friday that the FBI was re-opening its investigation into the presidential nominee's emails after new emails came to light during the separate investigation into Weiner

Fishing on the picturesque Piney River, long hikes through the undulating countryside and horseback riding along trails in the leafy woods are among the activities offered.

Men in The Ranch's sex addiction program are expected to take part in daily group therapy sessions as well as a weekly trauma group led by a trauma specialist.

Patients, who may suffer from a range of sex addiction problems including multiple affairs, anonymous sex, use of prostitutes, chronic masturbation, compulsive porn watching and 'mistaking sex for love', also take part in adventure therapies that are designed to 'encourage feelings of accomplishment, trust and "natural highs" without drugs, alcohol or self-defeating patterns'.

'From climbing a 30-foot tall pamper pole and zip lining to canoeing, hiking, ropes courses and high jumps, our adventure therapies provide hands-on experiences that help clients be present in their bodies and the moment, and discover metaphors for challenges while gaining new perspectives,' the website boasts.

The Ranch also has a Native American sweat lodge to 'provide opportunities for physical detoxification, spiritual connection and emotional processing'. Patients build a fire and sweat their way through a group therapy session.

Weiner's relationship with the 15-year-old girl is currently being investigated by the FBI, which discovered emails on a laptop he shared with Abedin that may be relevant to their investigation into Clinton's private server.
Mikel Irastorza (pictured) was described by Spanish authorities as being the 'current' leader of the terror group, ETA

French police have today arrested the leader of the debilitated Basque militant group ETA after he spent the last eight years in hiding.

Mikel Irastorza was described by Spanish authorities as 'currently the maximum leader' of the terror group.

In a statement, they said Irastorza and two more people were arrested Saturday morning by French police.

The officers had been working in tandem with Spanish agents in the French town of Ascain - three miles from the border.

Spanish police said Irastorza, who had been in hiding since 2008, became ETA's leading member a year ago.

A Spanish man and a French woman were arrested on suspicion that they had given shelter to Irastorza in a house they owned.

In 2011, ETA announced it was renouncing violence in its campaign for independence for the Basque regions of northern Spain and southwest France.

It has yet to disarm or disband.

ETA leader Mikel Irastorza is arrested by French police anti-terror judiciary police in the French Basque country town of Ascain, near the Spanish border, where he was housted by a couple which was also taken into custody

Denise Arin is arrested by French police anti-terror judiciary police accused of giving Irastorza shelter. A statement said the raid, led by French security forces working with Spanish civil guards, was aimed at the 'leadership structure of ETA'

French police arrived at a villa during a search operation in Ascain, southwest France on Saturday

Officers blocked access to the home where Irastorza was found - after being in hiding for eight years

Spain's Interior Ministry said Irastorza's capture 'represents a big blow to ETA's infrastructure because it means the loss of its leadership - and the removal of its head of management of its arsenal of weapons and explosives.'

ETA, founded in 1959 during the Spanish dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, is blamed for more than 800 deaths since its first killing in 1968.

Its last deadly attack in Spain was a July 2009 car bomb that killed two policemen on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca.

In France, ETA members shot and killed a French police officer near Paris in March 2010.

Police say their investigations are continuing.

Former Spanish Basques refugee Xabi Arin Baztaric tries to cover his face during his arrest

French security officials search a house where ETA's last commander, Mikel Irastorza, was detained in Serres district at Ascain

One of the French servicemen stands guard near the house where the most senior leader of the Basque terror group ETA was found

Spanish police said Irastorza (left), who had been in hiding since 2008, became ETA's leading member a year ago, and Denise Arin (left in grey coat) is one of those accused of giving him shelter

A man looks over the fence of the house where Irastorza was detained in Ascain, France

A French serviceman stands guard near a house were the arrests were made
Billy Brownless has offered an olive branch to former best mate Garry Lyon, saying the pair could work together again if they talked out their differences.

The once-dynamic duo on the AFL Footy Show have not spoken since their dramatic bust-up in February that saw Lyon leave the show and their friendship end.

It was sparked by revealations that Lyon was having an affair with Nikki Brownless, the ex-wife of the Geelong legend, just months after the couple separated.

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Former AFL Footy Show hosts Garry Lyon R) and Billy Brownless (L) have not spoken since news broke of Lyon's affair with Nikki Brownless (C), Brownless' ex-wife

Brownless admitted he was open to to a reunion with Lyon on The Footy Show once the two could talk it out and bury the hatchet

Lyon had split with his own wife, and has continued his relationship with Ms Brownless during his months of keeping a low profile and battling 'serious mental health issues'.

But time appeared to be healing the wounds as Brownless admitted he was open to to a reunion on The Footy Show once the two buried the hatchet.

'Once we have that chat and go through it all, we will be able go from there,' Brownless told the Herald Sun.

'We will obviously sit down and talk about all that.'

Brownless (pictured with Nicky) said the pair still had not spoken but probably would catch up before Christmas

Lyon had split with his own wife, and has continued his relationship with Ms Brownless during his months of keeping a low profile and battling 'serious mental health issues'

Brownless said the pair still had not spoken but probably would catch up before Christmas.

It was last month confirmed Lyon would return to TV to host Footy Classified on Channel Nine in 2017, a show he previously co-hosted, with Brownless offering congratulations.

'That is good. That will be great for the show and it will be good for him too, I think,' he said.

Lyon and Brownless had been friends for 15 years and worked together on the popular AFL Footy Show between 2009 and 2015 before their falling out.

Lyon (right), James Brayshaw (middle) and Brownless (left) were three regulars on the popular AFL Footy Show

'I couldn't believe it. I found out three or four months ago,' Brownless said on the Footy Show in March.

'I asked Garry and Nicky earlier on what is going on and they said they were just good friends. That's what hurts the most.

'By law it's legal. Morally it's wrong. We all know our rights and wrong. You don't touch a man's wallet, you don't touch his wife.'

Lyon and Brownless had been friends for 15 years and worked together on the popular AFL Footy Show between 2009 and 2015 before their falling out
The BBC has responded to calls from a member of parliament to play the national anthem at the end of each day - but not in the way that he intended.

Conservative MP for Romford Andrew Rosindell tabled an early day motion calling on BBC One to restore the tradition of playing God Save The Queen at the end of each day's programming.

He said the BBC should be 'unashamedly British' and that the practice would 'send out a message that Britain is back' after Brexit.

The tradition was scrapped by the corporation in 1997, but Mr Rosindell wants it brought back to mark the vote to leave the EU and the Queen's 90th birthday.

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Presenter Kirsty Wark kept a completely straight face as she played the Sex Pistols version of God Save the Queen on BBC Newsnight

Pro-Brexit campaigner Mr Rosindell told the Telegraph: 'The British Broadcasting Corporation should be unashamedly British and playing our British National Anthem once a day on BBC1 is not much to ask.

'They used to do it and it's time it was restored, to send out a message that Britain is back, following Brexit in tribute to Her Majesty in this, her 90th year.'

Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark took it upon herself to respond to Mr Rosidell's request at the end of Thursday evening's programme, but it was not in the way that the MP had envisioned.

Presenter Kirsty Wark said: 'We're not on BBC1 and it's not quite the end of the day but we are incredibly happy to oblige. Good night.'

The presenter was responding to calls from Conservative MP for Romford Andrew Rosindell to restore the tradition of playing God Save The Queen at the end of each day's programming

A video of the Sex Pistols 1977 hit God Save the Queen then started playing on the large screen behind her, as the presenter kept a completely straight face.

The stunt received mixed reactions for viewers with some branding it 'gratuitously cheap' and 'childish'.

However, others applauded Newsnight, saying the sign-off was 'brilliant', and 'perfect'.

On Twitter Maz Connor said: 'Childish. Was oh so provocative in the 70s but just makes Newsnight look so silly now.'

While another Twitter user said: 'Congratulations on being so gratuitously cheap @BBCNewsnight'

And a user called Jay tweeted: 'State funded media is a joke.'

But David Atkins said: 'I voted leave and thought this was brilliant.'

Helen Bernard also liked the stunt, tweeting: 'Perfect and extra kudos for the straight faces!'
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An adorable dog that was lucky to survive the brutal treatment it received has showed off her amazing recovery alongside a hunky firefighter in a charity calendar.

Caitlyn, a brown and white Staffordshire-bull terrier mix, was rescued in June last year after she was found with her mouth taped shut in South Carolina.

The then-15-month-old pup was treated at a nearby veterinary clinic, before being sent off to a medical foster home to heal up over several months.

Now fully recovered, the two-year-old pooch has posed in the Charleston Animal Society's 2017 Firefighter Calendar alongside a shirtless first responder.

The horrific wounds to her snout were fully healed - although some who picked up the calendar might not have noticed, on account of being distracted by the handsome North Charleston Fire Department Captain, Dustin Ford, who starred in the shot with Caitlyn.

William Dobson, a 41-year-old Charleston man, was accused of animal cruelty last year for how he treated the brave dog.

Caitlyn was found in late May 2015 on a doorstep in Charleston with a length of black electrical taped bound tightly around her mouth cutting off her circulation.

Her snout and tongue were swollen, and she had massive scars across her face.

Caitlyn made a cameo appearance in the same calendar last year, however she was still visibly suffering from her injuries.

The calendar is sold for $20 online, with the money raised going to the Charleston Animal Societys medical fund that is used to save thousands of abused, neglected and abandoned animals every year.

For an extra $5, you can even have your copy 'signed' by Caitlyn.

Caitlyn the dog has fully recovered from the horrific wounds she suffered last year and posed for a photo with a hunky firefighter

Caitlyn, a brown and white Staffordshire-bull terrier mix, was rescued in June last year after she was found with her mouth taped shut in South Carolina. She is seen posing in the charity calendar

Caitlyn was one of the animal stars of the Charleston Animal Society's 2017 Firefighter Calendar. Pictured is the calendar's front cover

The horrific wounds to her snout were fully healed - and only a small scar could be seen, as she posted with North Charleston Fire Department Captain Dustin Ford

Caitlyn's nose and mouth was no longer damaged, but it took several months for her to get back to full health

Caitlyn (pictured) was injured by her previous owner, 41-year-old Charleston man William Dobson

The dog was seen last year with shocking swelling to her snout and tongue, after her mouth was taped closed by her abusive owner

Once the tape was removed, the adorable young dog had a massive pink scar across the bridge of her snout
There are vintage jeans. And then there are jeans from the American Wild West that are up for auction.

A Maine auction house is putting up for bid a bona fide pair of Levi's blue jeans bought in 1893.

Daniel Buck Auctions & Appraisals says the jeans were ordered for Solomon Warner, who participated in the creation of the Arizona Territory.

Warner wore them only a few times before they ended up in a trunk.

The auction house said they could fetch between $60,000 and $80,000 at auction.

A Maine auction house is putting up for bid a bona fide pair of Levi's blue jeans bought in 1893

They were supposed to go under the hammer, but the auction was delayed by a technical glitch.

The 123-year-old pants go up for auction Saturday in Lisbon Falls, Maine, and are expected to bring in tens of thousands of dollars due to their pristine condition.

Warner was a big fella. The cotton jeans with button fly feature a size 44 waist and 36-inch inseam.

'They're brand-new Levis. They just happen to be 123 years old,' said auctioneer Daniel Buck Soules, who worked for 11 year on public television's 'Antiques Roadshow.'

Unlike modern Levi's, the jeans in those days had only a single back pocket. There were no belt loops; folks back then used suspenders. The denim was produced at a mill in New Hampshire, and the jeans were produced by Levi's in San Francisco.

Warner's jeans, which were stored for decades in a trunk, will be sold in the near future, Soules said Saturday evening.

Such jeans are valuable. A pair of 501 jeans manufactured in the 1880s sold for $60,000 to a Japanese collector in 2005, Soules said, and another pair, from 1888, sold six months ago for six figures.

Daniel Buck Auctions & Appraisals says the jeans were ordered for Solomon Warner, who participated in the creation of the Arizona Territory
A young father has died after he was shot in the head in an execution-style attack, just minutes after saying goodbye to his girlfriend.

Michael Blake was taken away in a van by men who had called at his Greater Manchester home on Thursday night.

He told his girlfriend: 'I'm just going out, I'll be a minute,' but 10 minutes later she heard frantic banging at the door.

Michael Blake, 28, was killed in an execution-style attack in Bolton, Greater Manchester

She raced outside and found the 28-year-old slumped on the ground - with gunshot wounds to his leg and the back of his head.

The dad-of-one was rushed to Salford Royal Hospital, but he died less than 12 hours later.

Police said a motive has not yet come to light.

The incident happened near his terraced home in Bolton, where Mr Blake lived with his partner of four years.

He had a seven-year-old daughter from a previous relationship.

Nicknamed Blakey, he worked delivering HGVs for a friend's company and his violent death has rocked his friends and former schoolmates.

Mr Blake was taken away in a van by men who had called at his home on Thursday night

Police held a press conference yesterday to reach out to the public for assistance.

Chief Superintendent Jonathan Chadwick, who is leading the high profile investigation, said: 'Michael was at home last night with his partner. She went upstairs to bed around 10pm.

'There's a knock at the door and he answered that door.

'She shouts down to ask who it is and he says something like: "I'm just going out, I'll be a minute" and he goes out with the person that knocked on the door.

'There is no struggle and no raised voices or argument at that time.

'He's seen to walk up the road a short distance with the man that knocked on the door and get into a light-coloured van. It drives off.

'That is shortly before 11pm, although we can't be precisely accurate about the time.'

His girlfriend then found the 28-year-old slumped on the ground - with gunshot wounds to his leg and the back of his head

Police confirmed Mr Blake was known to them, but not for anything major and said there was no obvious gang or drugs related link to the murder

Chf Supt Chadwick added: 'His partner is concerned and tries to contact him by phone.

'We're pretty certain at just before 11.10pm there's some fairly frantic banging at the front door of Michael's address.

'His partner answered and a male says: 'You need to come outside'.

'She does come outside and in the ginnel close to number 152 Manchester Road is Michael lying injured. He is fully clothed.

'There is a small group of people, in the middle of which is Michael.'

One resident of Manchester Road, Bolton, said before the 11pm drama unfolded a caller was 'really banging hard' on a neighbour's door close to the victim's home and was asking for a man whose name began with M.

When it became clear to the caller he was at the wrong address, he returned to a white van with blacked out windows and left.

The resident added: 'The whole street is very shocked at what's happened.'

Police held a press conference yesterday to reach out to the public for assistance, and have found no trace of the light-coloured van driven by the men

Mr Blake lived with his partner of four years, and had a seven-year-old daughter from a previous relationship

A post-mortem examination of Mr Blake's body was due to be conducted by a Home Office pathologist yesterday evening.

Police confirmed Mr Blake was known to them, but not for anything major and Chf Supt Chadwick said there was no obvious gang or drugs related link to the murder.

There has been no trace of the light-coloured van, and a white van found abandoned in Wigan yesterday was eliminated from the investigation.

Chf Supt Chadwick said: 'Michael's family are obviously devastated by his death and I'm determined to get them the answers they deserve. My thoughts are with them at this tragic time.'

Paying tribute, friend Tommy Gunn said: 'He was the funny guy who always cheers you up, someone you could always count on, somebody who did not deserve this.

'He will be missed and always talked about, and never forgotten.

'I want to say to him: Blakey, I love you brother. Watch down on your loved ones and your little girl is not alone, we will be there for her.'
Elite special forces are terrifying ISIS soldiers in Iraq by wearing skull masks as they fight to take back Mosul.

The Golden Division is a US-trained group of special forces soldiers fighting on the front line as the operation to take back the ISIS controlled city continues.

Elite special forces are wearing skulls masks as they fight to recapture Mosul, the last ISIS stronghold in Iraq

A member of the Iraqi government forces flashes the sign for victory as they enter the village of al-Khuwayn

According to the Sun, they took back six districts in Mosul, ISIS's largest stronghold, on Saturday morning, breaking through the militant defence lines and fighting them in the streets.

The elite fighters are part of Iraq's 1st Commando Battalion and have the same training as a US Army Ranger.

Commanders of the brigade have boasted that each of the soldiers is worth 1,000 ISIS fighters.

A member of Iraqi forces, wearing a skull mask, waits at a checkpoint for people fleeing the main hub city of Mosul

Members of the Popular Mobilisation Units supporting the government forces stand on the outskirts of the holy Iraqi city of Najaf in September this year

The group is said to have two million followers on Facebook and have become local heroes.

It is not the first time the skull masks have been used by American soldiers, as one was pictured in Kuwait using one to shield himself from the sandstorms in 2003.

Iraqi special forces threw themselves back into battle Saturday after a first foray into Mosul was blunted by stiffer than expected resistance from jihadists defending the birthplace of their 'caliphate'.

While the elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) fought the Islamic State group in the streets of Mosul, the army and federal police attacked one of the last sizeable towns on the more distant southern front.

The skull masks are said to be terrifying the ISIS fighters. The forces are said to have taken six districts in Mosul on Saturday

The mass exodus feared by aid groups of some of the million-plus civilians still trapped in Mosul has yet to materialise, but the number of people displaced by the battle has grown sharply in recent days.

'Our forces are now engaged in fierce fighting inside the neighbourhoods of east Mosul,' CTS spokesman Sabah al-Noman said, adding that the 'fighting is house to house'.

In Bartalla, a town to the east that Iraqi forces have used as a base since retaking it in the early days of the nearly three-week-old offensive, ambulances returning from the front with wounded CTS fighters rushed by on a regular basis.

MOSUL RESIDENTS TELL OF HORROR AS THEY DODGE BOMBS TO FLEE ISIS When he saw Iraqi forces approaching Mosul from afar, Abu Fahad yanked the white headscarf off his father's head, turned it into makeshift flag and decided to sneak out. The Iraqi managed to herd around 40 members of his extended family out of the neighbourhood of Samah 'by advancing quietly, hiding under stairs, sidling along walls'. On Saturday, he and his relatives were receiving assistance at a camp in Khazir, a Kurdish-controlled area further east, where displaced civilians are arriving in growing numbers. Most are from Mosul's outskirts, but Abu Fahad and a few others were able to find a gap in the tight seal the Islamic State group had imposed on the city. An Iraqi woman embraces relative who was displaced from Mosul as she visits her at a refugee camp in the Khazir region between Arbil and Mosul Two weeks after Iraq launched its largest military operation in years to retake Mosul, the last major Iraqi hub in the jihadists' shrinking 'caliphate', forces reached the edge of the city. Now the million-plus people believed to be trapped inside have to survive fire from both sides to flee the brutality of the jihadists who have ruled them for more than two years. Abu Sara fled the same neighbourhood, dodging gunfire, bombs, mortar rounds and strikes from the US-led coalition, such was his desperation to leave what many civilians who escaped IS rule describe as an open-air prison. 'There were snipers shooting, mortars crashing down, it was hell,' said the 34-year-old, wearing a brown fake leather jacket. 'We walked several miles, taking with us only the clothes we were wearing and white flags we waved the entire way.' Sitting next to him and stroking her belly, his pregnant cousin Umm Mustafa said she could hardly believe she had finally escaped her life spent 'hiding under niqab' face veils. Despite the cold filling the tent that is their new home in Khazir, she was all smiles and wore a teal-coloured dress with matching scarf. 'We're coming back to life,' said Umm Mustafa, keeping a watchful eye on some of her seven children as they played in the gravel at her feet. Abu Ahmed also said that 'life had stopped' for many of the million-plus people who remained in Mosul after IS proclaimed its 'caliphate' in June 2014. 'All the factories stopped working, there was no work and no money,' said the 60-year-old man, who worked in the oil sector before the jihadists took over. Sitting next to water taps at the intersection of four of the camp's alleys, Abu Ahmed said he hadn't initially planned to flee Mosul and his neighbourhood of Al-Khadra. An Iraqi man kisses a relative who was displaced from Mosul as he visits him at a refugee camp in the Khazir region between Arbil and Mosul He recounted the night that he and his wife were having dinner at their children's place in the Samah neighbourhood. 'We stayed in their home because the bombing was just too intense to go out, but then we escaped and I found myself here,' he said. 'We left everything behind, we have only God.' Abu Fahad, his wife and six children also fled with none of their belongings but they are safe, unlike some of their relatives who remained trapped in Mosul. 'I still have two sisters in the Al-Karama neighbourhood... and I have absolutely no news,' she said. Al-Karama is one of the first districts that the elite Counter-Terrorism Service entered on Friday. The force's commanders said they encountered fierce resistance there and intense fighting was still ongoing on Saturday. 'There's no phone network there, the only place where you might get a signal is on roofs but there are snipers up there,' said Abu Fahad. He said he had heard from neighbours who escaped after him that five residents of the area were killed trying to flee. Advertisement

CTS forces made their first real push into the streets of Mosul on Friday but were met by a deluge of bombs and gunfire, and eventually forced into a partial pullback after a few hours.

'We weren't expecting such resistance. They had blocked all the roads,' said one officer. 'There are large numbers of jihadists... It was preferable to pull back and devise a new plan.'

It's not the first time these masks have been spotted on American soldiers. Above, a Battalion captain from Idaho uses the skull mask to protect himself from a sandstorm in Kuwait in 2003

The hitch in the CTS advance appeared to contradict reports that IS had moved its resources away from the east of Mosul to the west bank of the River Tigris.

Last night, an Irish jihadi nicknamed Terry Taliban by those in his hometown in Dublin, killed himself in Mosul in a suicide attack as the forces make steps to reclaim the ISIS stronghold.

Fighting continued in the morning, with both sides firing mortars and automatic weapons on each other's positions, while the Iraqi troops also responded with artillery.

Clashes were most intense in the al-Bakr neighborhood. Sniper duels played out from rooftops in the mostly residential areas, where the majority of buildings are two stories high.

Men are held by Iraqi national security agents, to be interrogated at a checkpoint, as oil fields burn in Qayara, south of Mosul

A displaced Iraqi woman, who fled the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, makes bread in Khazer refugee camp

Displaced Iraqi people, who fled the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, eat in Khazer refugee camp

Maj. Gen. Sami al-Aridi of the Iraqi special forces said: 'Daesh [ISIS] is in the city center and we must be very careful as our forces advance.'

With more densely packed neighborhoods ahead, his forces will be challenged to avoid both higher military and civilian casualties.

The special forces launched a two-pronged assault deeper into Mosul's urban centre on Friday, unleashing the most intense street battles against IS militants since the offensive to retake the city began nearly three weeks ago. At least seven special forces troops have been killed in the fighting.

More than 3,000 Iraqi troops took part in the assault under heavy U.S.-led coalition air support, but the pace of the fight also slowed as Iraqi forces moved from fighting in more rural areas with few civilians to the tight, narrow streets of Mosul proper.

At least seven suicide attackers in explosives-laden vehicles attacked troops on Friday, five of whom were killed before nearing their targets.

Thousands of Iraqis have fled Mosul and are living in a refugee camp in Khazer.

Aid workers have warned of a major humanitarian crisis when fighting begins in earnest for Mosul, which is home to more than a million people, but thousands have already been fleeing surrounding areas.

Displaced Iraqi people, who fled the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, have an emotional reunion as they meet their relatives in Khazer refugee camp

A displaced Iraqi father plays with his child as the family prepares to live in the Khazer refugee camp while Mosul is a war zone

Iraqi boys play football together in the camp after fleeing because of the Islamic State violence

In a camp east of Mosul, displaced Iraqis are living a spartan existence.

'They gave us blankets but it's not enough and the weather is very cold. We are 19 inside this tent,' said Yunes Hassan, 53.

Another man said services were lacking and the food insufficient.

'When I bring a plate of food, all my kids are fighting to eat it,' 30-year-old Ahmed said.

But they are still free of IS: 'Here, we and our kids can sleep until the morning; it's not like back home where we couldn't sleep. We were always scared,' 51-year-old Abu Osama said.

Ahmed, one of the refugees, said his children were fighting over food in the makeshift camp, but they were at least free of ISIS

Despite complaints from Iraqi forces on the ground that the number of air strikes has been insufficient, the US-led coalition insists it is providing more intense and sustained air support than ever before in its two-year campaign against IS.

Brett McGurk, US President Barack Obama's envoy to the coalition, hailed the latest military developments in a message on social media.

'New advances on all axes. Ways to go, but ahead of schedule,' he said.

US and other commanders have warned that the offensive could take weeks or months.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who has visited the front lines several times since the offensive started, has vowed to rid the country of IS by the end of the year.

Retaking Mosul could effectively end the IS group's days as a land-holding force in Iraq and deal a death blow to the 'caliphate' Baghdadi proclaimed in the city in June 2014.

Islamic State fighters launched counterattacks in the thin strip of territory Iraqi special forces have recaptured in eastern Mosul, highlighting the challenges ahead as the battle moves into more densely populated neighborhoods where coalition air power must be used more selectively.

Dramatic pictures have also emerged of oil fields burning in Quruya, south of Mosul, where men are being round up top be interrogated.

Iraqi boys wait to receive food at a refugee camp. Aid workers have warned of a humanitarian crisis as thousands fled the city
A bar has unveiled Britain's first ever free champagne dispenser which allows customers to get their hands on a complimentary bottle of bubbly.

All Bar One in Leicester Square, London, has installed the revolutionary machine and is inviting revellers to press the red button on the front.

After being pressed, a robotic arm is quickly called into action and selects one of the miniature Moet bottles.

The machine (pictured) is the first free champagne dispenser to be unveiled at a UK bar

Those inside the bar are then chosen at random by staff members and customers can pick up the bottle from the illuminated slot before taking it home - without paying.

Strictly Come Dancing star and television presenter Laura Whitmore hosted the relaunch party on Thursday night and played a DJ set in front of 400 guests, reports the Mirror.

Video footage taken during the party - where the machine was unveiled - shows drinkers pushing button on the front.

A random bottle of Moet - which has a poppy on the front - is then selected and moved to the right side of the machine.

A customer at the All One Bar in Leicester Square seemed delighted after she pressed the button

Thrilled customers can then be seen happily removing the free bottle of bubbly and taking it away.
A 16-year-old boy has been charged with attempted murder after his mother was found with multiple stab wounds to her back, neck and shoulder.

The 42-year-old woman managed to stagger from her home to a house three doors away where she raised the alarm following Friday's knife attack in Woking, Surrey.

Police said the stabbing happened at breakfast-time and the teenager was arrested at the scene. The woman remains in hospital following the incident, officers said.

The woman, in her 40s, was stabbed in her home in Barrens Close in Woking, Surrey

An air ambulance, paramedics and police rushed to leafy Barrens Close in the town, after a woman called 999 to say that her neighbour had been stabbed.

The victim, who neighbours said was the mother of the arrested boy, was rushed to St. George's Hospital in Tooting, London, where surgeons had been put on standby.

The boy appeared at Redhill Magistrates' Court yesterday and was remanded in custody to appear at Guildford Youth Court on November 9.

A Surrey Police spokesman said: 'A 16-year-old boy from Wallington, Sutton has been charged with attempted murder following an attack on a woman in her 40s on Friday at a property in Woking.

'The woman, who sustained multiple stab wounds, remains in a stable condition in hospital.'

South East Coast Ambulance Service sent two rapid response cars, an ambulance, and the air ambulance to the scene.
Hillary Clinton's lead over opponent Donald Trump has begun to stabilize as the Republican nominee's numbers hit their lowest point in ten days, according to the latest polls.

Still, the race is tight between the two candidates, according to the ABC News/Washington Post poll, and in key battleground states the two candidates are in a dead heat.

Colorado, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire are all considers toss ups with the candidates neck-in-neck in those crucial states.

ABC News reports 47 per cent of likely voters will back Clinton while 43 per cent support Trump, the poll taken over four nights revealed.

The shift remains within the margin of error, but Trump's support is the lowest its been in the polls since October 25.

Hillary Clinton has regained her lead in the polls over Donald Trump, but Colorado, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire are all considers toss ups with the candidates neck-in-neck in those crucial states

ABC News reports 47 per cent of likely voters will back Clinton while 43 per cent support Trump, the poll taken over four nights revealed

FOX News has reported Clinton up against Trump by two points with just three days to go until the election.

In a four way race with Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, FOX reported Clinton's lead as 45 per cent to 43 per cent for Trump. Johnson has five per cent while Stein has two.

Four per cent are undecided. And when the race is brought down to the two major party candidates, Clinton's lead shrinks to one per cent.

Clinton has been able to regain her slight lead using strong enthusiasm, according to ABC News. She regained six points in two days and is even with Trump for the first time since FBI director James Comey said he would be reviewing more of her emails.

In September, only 36 per cent of Clinton supporters considered themselves 'vert enthusiastic' about their choice but that number advanced to 52 per cent following Trump's remarks about grabbing women by their genitals.

Since Comey's letter, it has dropped by seven points.

The Democratic nominee has also gained in the polls in terms of honesty and trustworthiness, although she still falls below Trump.

The shift back to Clinton remains within the margin of error, but Trump's support is the lowest its been in the polls since October 25

Clinton was behind Trump by eight points but now only lags by four points, which ABC called 'non-significant'.

Still, the race will be anything but an easy win for Clinton, who has dropped below the threshold of 270 electoral college votes needed to win the presidency, according to CNN's forecasts on Friday, as formerly battleground states shift towards Donald Trump.

A shift to Trump in Ohio, Utah and the second congressional district of Maine has undercut the number of electoral college votes which the Democrat can count on, the broadcaster said.

Utah only became a 'battleground' in late October as Clinton gained ground on Trump.

CNN said that New Hampshire has now inched away from leaning Democrat and is now classified as a battleground.

Clinton can now count on 268 electoral college votes - still significantly ahead of Trump at 204. Either candidate needs 270 - the majority of the 538 votes available -to win.

Clinton has dropped below the threshold of 270 electoral college votes needed to win the presidency, according to CNN's forecasts, as formerly battleground states shift towards Donald Trump. Clinton, right, is shown disembarking her campaign plane in Moon, Pennsylvania on Friday

With just four days to go, the presidential race has tightened as Clinton wrestles with the aftermath of the FBI's shock revelation that it would be investigating emails belonging to Huma Abedin in relation to its probe of Clinton's use of a private email server.

The emails were found on devices belonging to Abedin's estranged husband Anthony Weiner.

HOW DOES THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE WORK? The electoral college is made up of 538 voters - 435 Representatives and 100 Senators, plus three electors for the District of Colombia. A candidate needs to win a majority of 270 electoral college votes to become President. This voters' college make their pick based on which candidate receives a majority of votes in their corresponding states. That candidate receives all that state's electoral college votes. An exception is made in Nebraska and Maine, where votes are assigned by proportional representation - meaning either candidate could receive votes from different congressional districts. It is possible to win the electoral college vote and lose the popular vote - as with George W Bush in 2000. He eventually won the presidency over Al Gore following a Supreme Court ruling which had the ultimate effect of awarding Florida's votes to Bush. The creators of the Constitution set up the system as a limit on direct democracy - or in Alexander Hamilton's words, as a way of preserving 'the sense of the people' - in other words to avoid a malicious majority forming. It also tries to ensure the rights of smaller states. The electors cast their votes on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December and are counted in Congress on January 6. The new President is then sworn in on January 20. Advertisement

Despite Clinton's weaker showing she is still in a better position than Trump. There are six battleground states to play for, accounting for 66 electoral votes between them: Arizona, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and North Carolina, plus a second congressional district in and around Omaha, Nebraska.

Clinton would only need to win one of those states for victory, whereas Trump needs to sweep all of them in order to claim the presidency.

Maine and Nebraska allot electoral votes by a system of proportional representation rather than the winner-takes-all approach based on simple majority which is favored by the other states. That means both candidates could get college votes from within those two states.

CNN's forecast takes into account current polls, reporting and campaign advertisement decisions among other factors.

More than 30 million votes have already been cast across 38 states.

Electoral college vote predictions vary by forecaster. 270ToWin calculates Clinton has 272 votes to Trump's 173, leaving 93 votes to fight over.

ABC News says Clinton could nab 278 votes, leaving Trump with just 198 - meaning even if the Republican took all 62 battleground votes remaining he would still be 10 votes short of the presidency.

And the UVA Center for Politics' calculations on Thursday were similarly bleak for Trump, forecasting he will win 214 states to Clinton's 293, with 31 toss-up votes.

Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight blog predicts Clinton will win 298 votes to Trump's 240, when assumptions are made about which way the battlegrounds will swing.

The site estimates that Florida will carry the most heft in terms of tipping the election, followed by Pennsylvania and Michigan, then North Carolina and Virginia rounding out the top five.

Clinton and Trump are currently tied in the Sunshine State, at 46.1 per cent in a four-way split, according to RealClearPolitics' polling average.

In Pennsylvania, Clinton leads by three points; in Michigan she leads by 4.6 points.

In North Carolina she has a two-point advantage, and in Virginia she leads by 5.2 points.

Clinton is blitzing Pennsylvania and Michigan today, while her running mate Tim Kaine is in Florida, as the Democrat races to win over the crucial states in the final days of the race.

She also has her surrogates out in force: President Obama will pitch to North Carolina and Senator Bernie Sanders to Nebraska and Iowa. Bill Clinton is in Colorado.

Trump is in New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania, before he heads to Florida on Saturday.

New Hampshire tops Silver's 'voter power' index - the likelihood that an individual electoral college voter will determine the winner. Nevada and New Mexico take second and third place.

A week after the FBI's email bombshell, Clinton now seems to have edged back in the polls.

The daily survey had the Democrat with a three-point lead over Donald Trump at 47 points to 44, it showed Friday - although her advantage is still within the poll's three-point margin of error. Earlier this week Clinton had slipped behind Trump for the first time, trailing the Republican by one point.
Police have released a CCTV image of a man they want to speak to after a 22-year-old woman was allegedly raped in Manchester

Police have released a CCTV image of a man they want to speak to after a 22-year-old woman was allegedly raped when she got separated from her friend during a night out.

The alleged victim walked beneath a railway arch in Manchester city centre and was attacked, police have said.

Detectives have now launched an investigation and have released an image taken on Piccadilly Place, off Aytourn Street, in the city.

It shows a man in a black short-sleeved shirt that they are trying to track down in with the incident which took place in the early hours of Sunday, October 2.

Detective Inspector Dave Moores, of Greater Manchester Police's Serious Sexual Offences Unit said: 'People will be understandably concerned and I assure you that we have dedicated detectives working to catch the offender.

'If you recognise the man in the CCTV image, please get in touch with police as a matter of urgency.

'We are offering the woman specialist support at this difficult time.

Detectives have now released an image taken on Piccadilly Place, off Aytourn Street (pictured)

'Help and support will always be there for people who come forward and report sexual offences.'
Rudy Giuliani is walking back on claims he knew about the newly discovered emails potentially related to Hillary Clinton's private server before it was revealed to the public last week.

The former New York City Mayor first suggested during an appearance on Fox and Friends that he had been told about the review by former FBI agents.

'This has been boiling up in the FBI. I did nothing to get it out. I had no role in it. Did I hear about it? Darn right I heard about it,' Giuliani said on Friday.

Rudy Giuliani is walking back on claims he knew about the newly discovered emails potentially related to Hillary Clinton's private server before it was revealed to the public last Friday

Giuliani suggested during an appearance on Fox and Friends (pictured) that he had been told about the review by former FBI agents - saying 'Darn right I heard about it'

'I can't even repeat the language I heard from the former FBI agents.'

Last Tuesday, the Donald Trump adviser told Fox News that a 'pretty big surprise' was coming.

'Does Donald Trump plan anything except a series of inspiring rallies?' host Brian Kilmeade had asked him.

'We got a couple of surprises left...and I think it'll be enormously effective,' Giuliani replied.

'I think Trump's got a surprise or two that you're going to hear about in the next few days. I'm talking about some pretty big surprises.'

Just three days later, FBI Director James Comey made the unprecedented move of informing Congress that the bureau was investigating new emails related to the investigation into Clinton's private server.

On that very same day, Giuliani suddenly claimed that Comey's announcement had come as a 'complete surprise' to him

'I've talked to no FBI agent,' he told Wolf Blitzer. 'I've talked to no Justice Department official. I have no idea about who's leaking information'

On Friday Giuliani even went so far as to say that he expected an announcement from the FBI to come weeks earlier.

'To tell you the truth, I thought it was going to be three or four weeks ago,' he said.

Brian Fallon, Clinton's press secretary, immediately picked up on the comments.

'This sure seems like adequate grounds for an Inspector General review,' he tweeted on Friday morning, linking to a transcript of Giuliani's interview.

But on that very same day, Giuliani suddenly claimed that Comey's announcement had come as a 'complete surprise' to him.

Giuliani asserted on CNN that he had not been leaked information from someone currently in the FBI, and was merely discussing talk he had heard from former agents.

'I've talked to no FBI agent,' he told Wolf Blitzer. 'I've talked to no Justice Department official. I have no idea about who's leaking information.'

Brian Fallon, Clinton's press secretary, immediately picked up on Giuliani's comments

Congressmen Elijah Cummings (right) and John Conyers Jr (left) have since called on the Inspector General to review a slew of 'unauthorized and inaccurate' leaks from within the FBI 'to benefit the presidential campaign of Donald Trump

Blitzer then brought up claims Giuliani made just last week on The Lars Larson Show, in which he said he was in contact both with former agents and 'a few active agents, who obviously don't want to identify themselves'.

'Well, the information I've been getting is from former FBI agents,' Giuliani shot back. 'If I did say that, that was wrong.'

But Giuliani's denials were too little too late.

Congressmen Elijah Cummings and John Conyers Jr have since called on the Inspector General to review a slew of 'unauthorized and inaccurate' leaks from within the FBI 'to benefit the presidential campaign of Donald Trump'.

Cummings and Conyers Jr, the ranking members of the House Oversight and Judiciary committees, cited Giuliani's comments in their letter to the Department of Justice on Friday.

'This morning, Rudy Giuliani appeared on national television and confirmed that he had obtained leaked information about the FBIs review of Clinton-related emails,' the letter read.

The congressmen cited Fox News anchor Bret Baier's (pictured) claims on Wednesday that the FBI was 'actively and aggressively' investigating the Clinton Foundation - only to admit three days later his report was a 'mistake' and inaccurate

'It is absolutely unacceptable for the FBI to leak unsubstantiatedand in some cases falseinformation about one presidential candidate to benefit the other candidate.'

The congressmen then cited, as another example, Fox News anchor Bret Baier's claims on Wednesday that the FBI was 'actively and aggressively' investigating the Clinton Foundation.

Baier, who said his claims were based on multiple leaks, reported that the charity would 'likely' face an indictment.

But, on Friday, Baier admitted that his report was a 'mistake' and incorrect.

'These unauthorized and inaccurate leaks from within the FBI, particularly so close to a presidential election, are unprecedented,' Cummings and Conyers Jr wrote in their letter.

'For these reasons, we are calling on your office to conduct a thorough investigation to identify the sources of these and other leaks from the FBI and to recommend appropriate action.'
There was a time when diplomatic protocols involved an exchange of formal letters and telephone calls - but WhatsApp has changed all that.

Nowadays, those in ambassadorial circles use emojis - the smiley face characters that litter social media - to further enhance their messages when using the app: the shaking of hands symbol, for example, to represent a successful deal.

As for Vladimir Putin, he's sometimes represented as a grey-faced alien emoji - an interesting choice given that aliens, if they exist, may one day come in peace... or have more sinister plans for mankind.

Perfect for the ambassador's reception? Emojis are used in high-level circles to enhance messages sent via Whatsapp during meetings - and Vladimir Putin is said to be referenced by an alien

Such usage in international diplomacy is a sign of the times in this digital age, and it is an issue which fascinates author Tom Fletcher, who has written a book on the subject, Naked Diplomacy.

'The smartphone is now as essential a part of the modern diplomat's armoury... But it is also a threat to the diplomat  heaven forbid that leaders should start WhatsApping each other direct, without needing to go through their diplomatic envoys,' he told The Guardian.

'When you are sitting around a table, negotiating a document, you are not necessarily going to be sitting next to like-minded countries. This is a way to communicate while the negotiations are under way,' a senior diplomat told the paper.

Fletcher, a former British ambassador to Lebanon, said that he had used WhatsApp for much of his daily communication with Lebanese officials - adding that it was the preferred way to quickly contact key ministers.

Nowadays, those in ambassadorial circles use emojis - the smiley face characters that litter social media - to further enhance their messages when using the app: the shaking of hands symbol, for example, to represent a successful deal. Whether or not they use the ones above remains to be seen

WhatsApp is used in Brussels for organising some EU meetings.

An internal report at the UK's Foreign Office this year found that British diplomats occasionally use the app to discuss sensitive issues.

Renowned for its end-to-end encryption, the instant messaging service is well suited for those who move in high-powered circles.

Also, it works effectively over wi-fi in areas of buildings which may not be conducive to normal text messaging.
An Italian priest has blamed the country's earthquakes, which have killed hundreds and left thousands homeless, on gay civil partnerships.

Father Giovanni Cavalcoli said the seismic shocks were 'divine punishment' for same-sex civil unions 'offending the family' and the 'dignity of marriage'.

He made the comments on the day central Italy was struck by a 6.6-magnitude quake - the most powerful to hit the country in 36 years.

Father Giovanni Cavalcoli (pictured) said the seismic shocks were 'divine punishment' for same-sex civil unions 'offending the family' and the 'dignity of marriage'

The radio station he aired the controversial views on last week, Radio Maria, distanced itself from the comments

The comments were made on the day central Italy was struck by a 6.6-magnitude quake - the most powerful to hit the country in 36 years

It was the third major quake in the same region in just over two months.

The radio station he aired the controversial views on last week, Radio Maria, distanced itself from the comments.

The Vatican has hit out at the views, saying the idea of a vengeful God was 'a pagan vision' dating from 'the pre-Christian era'.

Archbishop Angelo Becciu, number two in the Vatican's powerful Secretariat of State, said Cavalcoli's comments were 'offensive to believers and disgraceful for non-believers'.

The Vatican has hit out at the comments, saying the idea of a vengeful God was 'a pagan vision' dating from 'the pre-Christian era' (Pope Francis pictured in Amatrice last month)

Becciu asked for forgiveness from quake victims and reminded them they had the 'solidarity and support' of Pope Francis.

But Cavalcoli hasn't backed down. He insisted on another radio station that earthquakes were indeed caused by 'the sins of man' and told the Vatican to 'read their catechism'.
Billy Bush and his wife Sydney Davis aren't letting rumors get in the way of date night.

The couple were spotted out for dinner together at Larsen's in Encino, California on Friday.

It was the first time Bush and Davis were seen out on the town together since he was fired from the Today Show and moved back to Los Angeles with his family.

Their date came just a week after sources told Page Six that the couple were having 'marriage problems' after his now-infamous 2005 Access Hollywood interview with Donald Trump was leaked last month.

Billy Bush and his wife Sydney Davis were spotted out for dinner together (pictured) at Larsen's in Encino, California on Friday

It is the first time the couple has been seen out on the town together after Bush was fired from the Today Show last month

Bush is pictured here talking to an unidentified man clutching a glass of wine on the night out

The source said Davis, Bush's wife of 18 years, was 'furious' about the tape and less than happy to have her husband back at home with their three daughters.

In the tape, Bush can be heard calling actress Arianne Zucker 'hot as s***,' and also saying nothing while Trump made lewd comments about his co-host Nancy O'Dell.

But the moment that really angered Davis, a source claims, was when Bush, after gawking at Zucker's legs, asked her if she would give him and the Donald 'a little hug'.

'It wasn't just the vile talk,' the source said. 'It's because he insisted the woman hug him and Trump. It was creepy.'

Bush, 45, later released an apology for the interview and said he was 'embarrassed and ashamed', but did not make any mention of Davis.

'I was younger, less mature, and acted foolishly in playing along,' he said in the statement. 'I'm very sorry.'

The source said Davis is enraged that Bush 'was stupid enough to put himself in that position' and has now lost what could have been a life-changing gig.

Rumors recently swirled that the couple (pictured here on a hike last week) were having marriage problems after Bush's now infamous 2005 interview with Donald Trump

Bush, 45, later released an apology for the interview and said he was 'embarrassed and ashamed', but did not make any mention of Davis (pictured together in August)

'Billy has brought him on himself,' they said. 'He's blown his big chance at Today and he doesn't have his old job at Access [Hollywood] to fall back on.'

'He fears his career is over. His wife is angered that he has embarrassed her and their daughters.'

Bush refused to comment on the article to Page Six, telling the site: 'I cannot take this call.'

Davis has also never released a statement about the incident, but last week she did reappear on her husband's Instagram.

Bush returned to social media nearly two weeks after first confirming he was leaving The Today Show, posting a picture of him and Davis in the great outdoors.

'Hiking with lady long legs,' he wrote in the caption. 'Nice to get out.'

It was the first photo Bush, 45, had shared on Instagram in three weeks.

Davis features prominently in Bush's Instagram, most recently visiting him in New York with their daughters just before the hot mic scandal broke.

'Teaching the squad about the NYC Subway ONLY way to go,' Bush wrote in one caption, adding that his daughters hated when he said the word 'squad'.

A source said Davis is enraged at the embarrassment Bush has brought upon her and their three daughters (all pictured together in New York just before the scandal broke)

The couple just recently celebrated their 18 year anniversary in April, and Bush created this collage to celebrate on Instagram

In another photo him and Davis posed with their daughter on her 18th birthday as she received her first tattoo.

Bush, who worked at Access Hollywood for 15 years, had only held his new job at Today for two months when he was given the boot following the Trump scandal.

Matt Lauer confirmed Bush's contract had been terminated 'effective immediately' on an episode of the Today Show last week.

Bush said in a statement following the announcement that he was 'deeply grateful' for the conversations he'd had with his three teenage daughters.

'I look forward to what lies ahead,' he added.

Although speculation has swirled regarding where Bush might go next - including to the rumored future Trump TV - he has not yet confirmed his next step.

Instead it seems Bush has been busy trying to return to life in Los Angeles, even putting up his luxury Manhattan townhouse on the market for $8.2million.

Bush had purchased the building for $8.8million just last December.

Bush, who worked at Access Hollywood for 15 years, had only held his new job at Today for two months when he was given the boot following the Trump scandal

It seems Bush has been busy trying to return to life in Los Angeles, even putting up his luxury Manhattan townhouse on the market for $8.2million

It was initially reported that Bush walked away from NBC with $10million, but both his lawyer and additional sources said the figure was inaccurate.

Instead it is believed NBC would only pay some of the remainder of Bush's $3million-a-year contract, according to CNN Money.

Exact details of the settlement are not known at this time but sources said the contract does not include a non-compete clause, meaning Bush can look for jobs at rivals stations.

Bush's attorney Marshall Grossman spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about the interview with Trump, saying that Bush would have been risking his job if he had not laughed at Trump's statements and made lewd comments of his own.

'If Billy had been passive or responded "Shut the f*** up" to Trump, Billy would have been out of a job the next day,' said Grossman.

But one source told the Daily Mail Online that Bush had bragged about the tape while covering the Olympics this summer in Rio.

'What is stunning is how self-important Billy is,' the source said.

'Many people believe Access Hollywood management knew about this for much longer than they are saying and they were protecting Billy while not doing the right thing and informing NBC News.'
A young bride-to-be and her tech entrepreneur boss were killed when the Tesla they were driving slammed into a tree and burst into flames.

Casey Speckman, 27, was behind the wheel of the 2015 S-Model electric car, with her boss, 44-year-old Kevin McCarthy, when the accident took place about 1am on Thursday in Indianapolis.

The Tesla was McCarthy's car. Police said it was traveling at a high speed.

Scroll down for the video

Casey Speckman (left), 27, and 44-year-old Kevin McCarthy (right) died when the Tesla they were driving slammed into a tree and burst into flames

Speckman was pronounced dead at the scene, while McCarthy was rushed to the nearby Eskenazi Hospital but could not be saved, according to the Indianapolis Star.

Witnesses said the car 'bounced around' after crashing into the tree before it exploded.

Al Finnell, who was driving near the Tesla, said he had to speed up to avoid debris and flames.

'It hit that tree and it bounced around and all of a sudden it just exploded,' Finnell told WTHR.

'I had to accelerate my vehicle, because all the car parts went up in the air and I had to accelerate just to get away from it.'

He went on to say the car exploded into a 'big ball of fire'.

The car hit the tree with such force its wheels where ripped from the chassis. The electronic batteries were also damaged, which police say caused the fire.

Speckman (right, with a friend) was behind the wheel of the S-Model electric car crashed about 1am on Thursday in Indianapolis

Police say the car was traveling at a high speed, and that Speckman was pronounced dead at the scene

Speckman was due to marry her fiance, Brandon Seniff, next year.

Friends of the young couple said they were shocked by the devastating news.

'It's all very, very sad,' Cody Rivers said. 'My heart breaks for Brandon; I can only imagine what he's going through.'

The 27-year-old graduated from Indiana University in 2011. She met her fiance while studying at the college, and the two had spoken about how they planned to spend their future together in a letter on their wedding website.

'We have experienced and supported each other through all the great times, traumatic and sad times. We have graduated college, graduated law school, obtained first and second jobs ... living together and living apart, got a sweet puppy, bought a condominium in Indianapolis ... and did it all together!' the letter reads.

Speckman was due to marry her fiance, Brandon Seniff, next year. The couple is pictured together

A picture from the scene of the crash shows the car after it burst into flames on Thursday morning

'We have been through nearly a decade of our lives together and are so excited to see what the future decades hold!'

McCarthy was the president of Express Software & Services, and a former FBI special agent.

In a statement issued late Thursday, the electric car maker said it's cooperating with Indianapolis police's investigation into the crash.

Tesla added it appears as though the car's semi-autonomous Autopilot system was not engaged when the crash occurred.

The car sustained so much damage that it didn't transmit data to the company's servers. That data would show if the driver had the car in Autopilot mode.

The car that was being driven in the deadly crash was a 2015 S-Model Tesla (stock image)

Damage from the car crash is seen strewn across the road after the accident took place on Thursday

Firefighters arrived on the scene shortly after the accident took place in Indianapolis

But the company said the system likely wasn't engaged, because Autopilot would have limited the vehicle's speed to less than 35 miles per hour on the street where the accident occurred.

'We are deeply saddened to hear that this accident involved fatalities,' the Palo Alto, California-based company said.

Police spokesman Maj. Richard Riddle said earlier Thursday that investigators were looking at whether Autopilot played a role in the accident.
Councillor accused Mr Coltrane of 'hypocrisy' but joked 'fair play to him'

But organiser Chris Coltrane rudely rants about Tory politicians and voters

Jokes cannot be 'sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, disabilist etc'

Lolitics Comedy Club, which is run by Chris Coltrane, (pictured) makes acts abide by a set of rules to create an enforced niceness

A London comedy club has banned ironic comments and banter with the audience to create a safe space for stand-up.

But just make sure you are not a Conservative, as then you risk being called a racist bigot a f****** monster or even a f****** c***bag of a t***.

Lolitics Comedy Club, which takes place around once a month at the Black Heart pub in Camden, makes acts abide by a set of rules to create an enforced niceness.

Performers are told to preserve the safe space by not asking people in the audience questions one-on-one, while spectators must in turn not heckle the comedians.

The rules also outlaw jokes that are considered sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, disabilist, and comments like I hate the French.

Organiser Chris Coltrane adds on the Lolitics website: If Ive missed any -ism out it doesnt mean its allowed!

Mr Coltrane also tells acts to consider not using the word rape as it may be triggering to people who have suffered sexual assault.

Personal comments about peoples appearances, such as laughing at a politician for being overweight are also discouraged, as is any form of d***headish nastiness.

But the rules seem flexible depending on the target, as Mr Coltrane joked last month that calling Theresa May too left wing was as silly as calling Michael Gove too handsome.

He also called Theresa May a bigoted racist and said of her government, F*** them, f*** the lot of them, man.

Performers are told to preserve the safe space by not asking people in the audience questions one-on-one, while spectators must in turn not heckle the comedians

Other comedians who have appeared at Lolitics - which takes place at the Black Heart in Camden, include Bridget Christie, Stewart Lee, Josie Long and Grace Petrie

In a segment in which he called for fully open borders he noted that no one is illegal apart from Nigel Farage because f*** that p***.

If Ive missed any -ism out it doesnt mean its allowed! Chris Coltrane on the 'Lolitics' rules

A local councillor claimed it was itself ironic that Mr Coltrane wanted to create a safe space for everyone apart from his political opponents, but commended his audacity nonetheless.

Oliver Cooper, of Camden Conservatives, told MailOnline: Fair play to him.

You have to applaud the audacity of an organiser that creates a safe space for everyone but Conservatives, or prohibits 'd***headish nastiness' to anyone unless you disagree with their politics.

Theresa May, who Chris Coltrane calls a 'bigoted racist' pictured here at a service to commemorate William Wilberforce, who helped abolish the slave trade

It smacks of a deep hypocrisy, but the Left's claim to moral superiority always has done. If he wants to be a hypocrite, that is absolutely his right.

To channel Voltaire, I disagree with his d***headish nastiness, but I will defend to the death his right to spout it.

Cllr Cooper, who represents Hampstead Town, said he was proud of the breadth and diversity of the comedy scene in the borough of Camden.

If Mr Coltrane wants to have a lefty rant about the Conservatives, he's free to do so, although he may find that part of the comedy market a bit crowded, especially on the BBC.

The gig rules, listed on the Lolitics website, also state no ironic racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia.

A selection of Chris Coltrane's 'Tory-bashing' tweets

Explaining the dangers of irony on Radio 4, Lolitics performer Rob Newman argued that it is not possible to be ironically sexist or racist when sexism and racism still exist.

It is not as if irony... inoculates things and stops them being what they are. Comedian Rob Newman, who has performed at Lolitics

He added: It is not as if irony is some sort of strange thing that inoculates things and stops them being what they are.

Other comedians who have appeared at Lolitics include Bridget Christie, Stewart Lee, Josie Long and Grace Petrie.
Manuel Rosales (pictured), 35, died after being shot multiple times during a gun battle with the NYPD after he fatally wounded a sergeant and injured another

The ex-con, who broke into his estranged wife's home, died in a hail of bullets after executing an officer at point blank range and injuring his partner during gun battle on Friday.

Manuel Rosales, 35, shot Sgt Paul Tuozzolo, 41, in the head before wounding his partner Sgt Emmanuel Kwo, 30, according to the New York Daily News.

The two officers were shot while responding to a domestic disturbance in the Bronx around 3pm on Friday.

Tuozzolo, a 19-year veteran on the force, later died at a local hospital.

He left behind his wife, Lisa, and their two young children.

Kwo was hit in the leg during the gunfire exchange with Rosales.

After the cops were hit, back-up arrived and returned fire at the gunman. Rosales was killed in the exchange.

The shooting between the officers and the suspect occurred near Noble Avenue while they were pursuing the gunman after a home invasion.

Rosales shot Sgt Paul Tuozzolo (left), 41, in the head before shooting his partner Sgt Emmanuel Kwo (right), 30, in the leg

Tuozzolo (left) leaves behind his wife, Lisa, and their two young children

Rosales was reportedly carrying multiple guns before he was gunned down inside his red Jeep Cherokee by police. In an attempt to escape, Rosales tried to make a U-turn, but the cops blocked his vehicle before the gun fight erupted

An official said Rosales broke into his estranged wife's home, where he held her hostage and threatened to kill her. He was violating an order of protection that was taken out on him in July.

Another relative in the residence was able to call 911 after Rosales fled the home.

A lawyer who previously represented Rosales says his client wasn't violent. But records revealed he has 17 prior arrests.

Rosales was reportedly carrying multiple guns before he was gunned down inside his red Jeep Cherokee by police.

The NYPD's spokesman Stephen Davis said the suspect's jeep was pulled over by police who had received a description of someone who had just committed a home invasion.

Officers spotted the vehicle outside a storage facility on Bronx River Avenue, the Daily News reported.

In an attempt to escape, Rosales tried to make a U-turn, but the cops blocked his vehicle.

Tuozzolo and Kwo were unable to see the semiautomatic handgun Rosales had before he opened fire on them. Two other officers who were with Kwo and Tuozzolo, including a NYPD recruit on field training, returned fire

The bloodied .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun (pictured) was found by officers after Rosales was shot dead

The two officers then approached the SUV with their weapons drawn and demanded the suspect step out of the car, according to the Daily News.

Tuozzolo and Kwo were unable to see the semiautomatic handgun Rosales had before he opened fire on them.

Two other officers who were with Kwo and Tuozzolo, including a NYPD recruit on field training, returned fire, sources told the newspaper.

Rosales' body was seen hanging outside the driver's window of his vehicle.

Gov Andrew Cuomo released a statement on Friday expressing his 'deepest sympathies' for the officers' families.

'Every day, the brave men and women of law enforcement selflessly serve our communities to keep the rest of us safe.

'Today, a sergeant in the New York City Police Department has made the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty, and another officer is undergoing treatment.

Gov Andrew Cuomo released a statement on Friday expressing his 'deepest sympathies' for the officers' families

Police say Kwo, left the hospital Friday night after medics treated him for his leg wound. The NYPD's forensic team is pictured at the scene following the gun fight on Friday

'My deepest sympathies are with the families of the officers involved in today's tragedy in the Bronx, and with Commissioner O'Neill and the NYPD as they cope with the loss of one of their own.'

Tuozzolo's family was still on their way to the hospital when he died.

A source at the Jacobi Medical Center told the Daily News that Tuozzolo's 'wife, mother and father were all huddled together crying trying to console each other'.

Police say Kwo, left the hospital Friday night after medics treated him for his leg wound.

Emotional officers are pictured as they arrived at the hospital following the shooting
Five elite ISIS leaders have gone rogue and stolen millions of dollars from the terror group's treasury.

The traitors are making a desperate dash for Syria with their booty, with furious ISIS forces hot on their trail.

The plotters, including Treasury official Abu al-Bara al-Qahtani, are senior terrorists who hold Arab and foreign nationalities.

Five elite ISIS leaders have gone rogue and stolen millions of dollars from the terror group's treasury. Pictured: Iraqi security forces take part in an operation near Mosul

The rogue terrorists are on the run for Syria via the Tel Afar District in Iraq

If caught, they will be arrested and executed, Al Sumaria News reported.

The robbery in Mosul comes as Iraqi government forces continue their offensive to push Islamic State out of the city, their last major stronghold in the country.

In a major victory on Saturday, Iraqi security forces stormed into the center of Hamam al-Alil, a strategically important village south of Mosul, and raised the Iraqi flag.

General Abdel Amir Yar, commander of the 'We are coming, Nineveh' operation, said: 'Troops of Federal Police, armys 9th Armored Brigade and 15th brigade stormed into Hamam al-Alil area and raised the Iraqi flag over its buildings.'

'Security forces inflicted heavy losses on the enemy.'

Satellite images emerged showing that the extremists have set up formidable defences, including concrete barricades, designed to bog down advancing forces.

Kurdish television channel Rudaw broadcast live footage of Iraqi troops and armoured vehicles amassing outside the city as an attack helicopter fired rockets.

The traitors are making a desperate dash for Syria with their booty. Pictured: Iraqi police detain ISIS suspects fleeing Mosul

The robbery in Nineveh, northern Iraq, comes as Iraqi government forces continue their offensive to push Islamic State out of Mosul. Pictured: Troops outside Mosul

Al Sumaria news also reported that 32 ISIS fighters were killed or wounded in an explosion when they were preparing a booby-trapped vehicle near the northern town of Kirkuk.

Meanwhile, an aerial strike destroyed three ISIS vehicles carrying heavy weapons.

Heavy vehicles have rarely been seen on the roads because ISIS knows they will likely be destroyed and the group's gamble on Saturday did not pay off.

While the elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) fought the Islamic State group in the streets of Mosul, the army and federal police attacked one of the last sizeable towns on the more distant southern front.

If they are caught the plotters will be arrested and executed immediately. Pictured: An operation in Hammam Al-Alil town, south of Mosul

Iraqi army soldiers walk by the river near a bridge destroyed by an airstrike in Qayara, south of Mosul

Men are held by Iraqi national security agents, to be interrogated at a checkpoint, as oil fields burn in Qayara, south of Mosul

An Iraqi army captain rides past burning oil fields in Qayara, south of Mosul

The mass exodus feared by aid groups of some of the million-plus civilians still trapped in Mosul has yet to materialise, but the number of people displaced by the battle has grown sharply in recent days.

'Our forces are now engaged in fierce fighting inside the neighbourhoods of east Mosul,' CTS spokesman Sabah al-Noman said, adding that the 'fighting is house to house'.

In Bartalla, a town to the east that Iraqi forces have used as a base since retaking it in the early days of the nearly three-week-old offensive, ambulances returning from the front with wounded CTS fighters rushed by on a regular basis.

CTS forces made their first real push into the streets of Mosul on Friday but were met by a deluge of bombs and gunfire, and eventually forced into a partial pullback after a few hours.

'We weren't expecting such resistance. They had blocked all the roads,' said one officer. 'There are large numbers of jihadists... It was preferable to pull back and devise a new plan.'

The skull masks are said to be terrifying the ISIS fighters. The forces are said to have taken six districts in Mosul on Saturday

A member of the Iraqi government forces flashes the sign for victory as they enter the village of al-Khuwayn

Members of the Popular Mobilisation Units supporting the government forces stand on the outskirts of the holy Iraqi city of Najaf in September this year

Elite special forces are wearing skulls masks as they fight to recapture Mosul, the last ISIS stronghold in Iraq

The hitch in the CTS advance appeared to contradict reports that IS had moved its resources away from the east of Mosul to the west bank of the River Tigris.

Last night, an Irish jihadi nicknamed Terry Taliban by those in his hometown in Dublin, killed himself in Mosul in a suicide attack as the forces make steps to reclaim the ISIS stronghold.

Fighting continued in the morning, with both sides firing mortars and automatic weapons on each other's positions, while the Iraqi troops also responded with artillery.

Clashes were most intense in the al-Bakr neighborhood. Sniper duels played out from rooftops in the mostly residential areas, where the majority of buildings are two stories high.

Maj. Gen. Sami al-Aridi of the Iraqi special forces said: 'Daesh [ISIS] is in the city center and we must be very careful as our forces advance.'

With more densely packed neighborhoods ahead, his forces will be challenged to avoid both higher military and civilian casualties.

A displaced Iraqi father plays with his child as the family prepares to live in the Khazer refugee camp while Mosul is a war zone

Iraqi boys wait to receive food at a refugee camp. Aid workers have warned of a humanitarian crisis as thousands fled the city

Ahmed, one of the refugees, said his children were fighting over food in the makeshift camp, but they were at least free of ISIS

The special forces launched a two-pronged assault deeper into Mosul's urban centre on Friday, unleashing the most intense street battles against IS militants since the offensive to retake the city began nearly three weeks ago. At least seven special forces troops have been killed in the fighting.

More than 3,000 Iraqi troops took part in the assault under heavy U.S.-led coalition air support, but the pace of the fight also slowed as Iraqi forces moved from fighting in more rural areas with few civilians to the tight, narrow streets of Mosul proper.

At least seven suicide attackers in explosives-laden vehicles attacked troops on Friday, five of whom were killed before nearing their targets.

Thousands of Iraqis have fled Mosul and are living in a refugee camp in Khazer.

Iraqi boys play football together in the camp after fleeing because of the Islamic State violence

Displaced Iraqi people, who fled the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, have an emotional reunion as they meet their relatives in Khazer refugee camp

Aid workers have warned of a major humanitarian crisis when fighting begins in earnest for Mosul, which is home to more than a million people, but thousands have already been fleeing surrounding areas.

In a camp east of Mosul, displaced Iraqis are living a spartan existence.

'They gave us blankets but it's not enough and the weather is very cold. We are 19 inside this tent,' said Yunes Hassan, 53.

Another man said services were lacking and the food insufficient.

'When I bring a plate of food, all my kids are fighting to eat it,' 30-year-old Ahmed said.

But they are still free of IS: 'Here, we and our kids can sleep until the morning; it's not like back home where we couldn't sleep. We were always scared,' 51-year-old Abu Osama said.

Iraqis greet their families through the fencing around the camp as relatives are reunited at the refugee camp

Displaced Iraqi people, who fled the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, eat in Khazer refugee camp

A displaced Iraqi woman, who fled the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, makes bread in Khazer refugee camp

Despite complaints from Iraqi forces on the ground that the number of air strikes has been insufficient, the US-led coalition insists it is providing more intense and sustained air support than ever before in its two-year campaign against IS.

Brett McGurk, US President Barack Obama's envoy to the coalition, hailed the latest military developments in a message on social media.

'New advances on all axes. Ways to go, but ahead of schedule,' he said.

US and other commanders have warned that the offensive could take weeks or months.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who has visited the front lines several times since the offensive started, has vowed to rid the country of IS by the end of the year.

Retaking Mosul could effectively end the IS group's days as a land-holding force in Iraq and deal a death blow to the 'caliphate' Baghdadi proclaimed in the city in June 2014.

Islamic State fighters launched counterattacks in the thin strip of territory Iraqi special forces have recaptured in eastern Mosul, highlighting the challenges ahead as the battle moves into more densely populated neighborhoods where coalition air power must be used more selectively.

Dramatic pictures have also emerged of oil fields burning in Quruya, south of Mosul, where men are being round up top be interrogated.
Melania Trump appears to have been caught out again plagiarizing material in a campaign speech - this time lifting a line from Donald Trump's ex-wife, Marla Maples.

Melania made a rare speech as part of her husband's campaign on Thursday, addressing supporters at an event in Pennsylvania.

As part of the speech, the potential First Lady spoke about growing up in her native Slovenia.

Melania Trump appears to have been caught out plagiarizing material in a campaign speech

'I grew up in a small town in Slovenia... America meant, if you could dream it, you could become it,' she told the throng of Trump supporters in attendance.

Unfortunately for Melania, it appears she may have picked up that line - which is a slight misquote of a famous comment made by American writer William Arthur Ward - from Marla Maples.

Ward's original quote was: 'If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it.'

The only other place Melania's version seemingly appeared was in an interview Maples gave in 2011.

During a rare speech, Melania spoke about growing up in her native Slovenia. 'I grew up in a small town in Slovenia ... America meant, if you could dream it, you could become it,' she said

It appears as though Melania took the line from Marla Maples (left in 1994 and right in 2011), who said in 2011: 'I believed if you could dream it, you could become it'

'I believed if you could dream it, you could become it, so I didn't see life as having any limitations,' she told Maximum Ink magazine at the time.

The potential plagiarism was pointed out by Twitter user Yoni Brander, who posted a series of comments explaining why he thinks the line was lifted from Marla.

'Just to nerd out for a second the fact that Mapless interview and Melanias speech are the ONLY sources share the same misquote of the original which is either Disneys "If you can dream it, you can do it" or more likely "If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it," by William A. Ward,' he tweeted.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump kisses his wife Melania Trump at a campaign rally in North Carolina as she is speaking to the crowd

Twitter user Yoni Brander pointed out Melania Trump's potential plagiarism in a series of tweets

'But the form used by Melania which cuts the beginning of the quote and changes the tense to "if you dream it, you could become it" - a variant that appears in only in one other place - Marla Maples interview from 2011.

'Thus likelihood therefore is either they both heard this misquote from DJT or that Melania took this form from the Maples. Or perhaps DJT took it from the Maples interview...the only other place with this variance.'

Melania created controversy earlier this year when she appeared to steal a line from First Lady Michelle Obama, when she delivered a speech supporting her husband at the Republican National Convention.
Salim Mehajer's parents owe almost $10 million in unpaid taxes and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is moving towards declaring them bankrupt.

Mohamad Mehajer, 60, and Amal Mehajer, 56, who are involved in their son's property development business, owe the ATO $9,966,817 in unpaid taxes and interest, reported the Daily Telegraph.

Court documents reveal Mr Mehajer senior owes $6.8million and Mrs Mehajer owes more than $3million.

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The parents of controversial property developer and former Auburn mayor Salim Mehajer owe almost $10 million in unpaid taxes and the Australian Taxation office is moving towards declaring them bankrupt. Pictured is Salim Mehajer (right) with his mother Amal Mehajer (left)

Mohamad Mehajer, 60 (left), and Amal Mehajer, 56, who are involved in their son's (right) property development business, owe the ATO $9,966,817 in unpaid taxes and interest

The pair are said to own multiple properties in Sydney's west.

Mrs Mehajer is also a director of one of the businesses owned by her son, who is a controversial property developer and the former deputy mayor of Auburn council in Sydney.

The ATO successfully sued the pair in the NSW Supreme Court for the enormous tax bill on May 20 after they failed to turn up to defend the case.

Court documents show the tax bill was still unpaid by July 17 and owed $124,754 in interest.

Mohamad Mehajer owns a 10 per cent share in Zenah Project Development, while Salim Mehajer owns the remaining 90 per cent, according to company records.

In 2013, Mohamad Mehajer was sentenced to almost four years in jail for fraud.

Salim Mehajer (pictured on holiday in Venice recently) is no stranger to controversy. His extravagant wedding in 2015 to estranged wife Aysha Learmonth featured a motorcade of luxury cars and helicopters and shut down a Sydney street

While on holiday in Europe for the past few months Mr Mehajer (pictured) has been posing for shots in various cities, captioned with inspirational quotes

He was accused of trying to bribe a bank employee to approve a loan and overestimate the earnings of the family's company SM Project Developments.

Salim Mehajer is no stranger to controversy. His extravagant wedding in 2015 to estranged wife Aysha Learmonth featured a motorcade of luxury cars and helicopters and shut down a Sydney street.

Ms Learmonth took out an AVO against Mr Mehajer in July, after a confrontation at her sister's home in Wollongong.

In August, Mr Mehajer (pictured) threatened to sexually assault Ms Learmonth's parents in a bizarre expletive-ridden video which was later handed to NSW Police

In September Mr Mehajer (pictured) was also banned from managing corporations for three years

In August, Salim Mehajer threatened to sexually assault Ms Learmonth's parents in a bizarre expletive-ridden video which was later handed to NSW Police.

In September Mr Mehajer was also banned from managing corporations for three years.

He is now rumoured to be dating Kim Kardashian lookalike Constance Siaflas.
Legal injunction: The man, who can now be identified only by the fake initials ERY, was questioned by police under caution

A very wealthy businessman has won a legal injunction to stop The Mail on Sunday from revealing that he is under investigation for possible involvement in serious financial crime.

The man, who can now be identified only by the fake initials ERY, was questioned by police under caution.

The company he works for, which was said in court to offer services to the public, was in business with a second firm that was raided by a large force of police who made a number of arrests.

Both company offices were raided and the police operations reported in both local and national press. But ERY has been able to convince a judge his rights to privacy outweigh this newspapers rights to report on a matter of significant public interest.

The suppression of reporting was ordered originally in an interim injunction made by a judge on the telephone just minutes before the newspaper went to press three weeks ago.

It was upheld in the High Court on Friday by Mr Justice Nicol.

ERY was represented in court by barrister David Sherborne, whose celebrity client list includes Hugh Grant, Kate Moss and both Cherie and Tony Blair.

Mr Sherborne has been known to claim fees of up to 10,000 for just a few hours work to obtain a temporary injunction. ERYs total claimed costs in this case are estimated at up to 80,000.

Mr Sherborne told the court his client had rights to privacy under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

He said ERYs nursery school-aged child might be damaged by bad publicity about their father and that ERY himself had health issues that could be made worse if the story was printed.

HOW THE RICH PLAY SYSTEM It has been said that justice, like the Ritz Hotel, is open to all. But it is those with deep pockets who have constantly used injuctions to silence a free press THE BANKER Fred Goodwin, disgraced ex- head of RBS, obtained a draconian secret super-injunction in March 2011 to hide details of an alleged affair with a senior colleague. It was only revealed when Lib Dem peer Lord Oakeshott asked questions in the Lords two months later. THE CONGLOMERATE Commodities giant Trafigura notoriously used the first super-injunction  one so secret that the public must not know it exists. In 2009, Labour MP Paul Farrelly, right, asked in Parliament about Trafiguras dumping of toxic waste in Ivory Coast. The media attempted to report on this and Trafigura silenced them.

THE FOOTBALLER Chelsea's John Terry sought a gagging order preventing exposure of an affair with lingerie model Vanessa Perroncel. The injunction lasted a week. The judge said freedom of speech took precedence over privacy in a case designed to protect Terrys reputation. THE CELEBRITIES A married celebrity, who indulged in threesome, is currently protected by a strict injunction upheld by the Supreme Court. Judges have kept order in place, despite the celebrity being named elsewhere in the world. An A-list actor is also hiding extra-marital relations from fans after paying thousands for a gagging order. The star allegedly paid a prostitute for sex. Advertisement

The full text of the anonymised judgment is published on the website of Mr Sherbornes legal chambers, 5RB, which also promoted the result on social media.

This newspapers lawyer, Andrew Caldecott QC, said the newspaper had offered not to mention the interview under caution but argued more generally there was a public interest in knowing the police were investigating financial crime in the industry in which the company trades.

Mr Caldecott also argued that ERYs application was concerned to protect his reputation rather than his privacy. But the judge ruled that the law did not support the newspapers arguments. His judgment noted that officers from a police force outside London had searched the premises of both companies. The raids were reported locally.

A further article said the arrests had been on suspicion of financial crime and the investigation was supported by the National Crime Agency.

ERYs public relations representative provided a statement for the press. The Times newspaper and Mailonline published further articles.

Then a Mail on Sunday reporter learned that ERY had been invited to a police station for interview under caution.

The businessman had attended with his lawyer David McCluskey, a partner at solicitors Taylor Wessing. They were taken to a waiting room out of public sight and then to the interview room, where the voluntary interview took place.

ERY was told he was not under arrest, could leave at any time and that his attendance would be kept confidential.

On October 15 the paper contacted ERYs public relations man to check facts and invite comment. ERY immediately instructed another firm of lawyers, Lee and Thompson.

A hearing by telephone conference call was arranged that evening and Mr Justice Dove granted the temporary injunction just minutes before the paper went to press.

The case has damaging repercussions for investigative journalism. It places protection of the rich and powerful over a long-held British tradition that the public has a right to know about people being investigated or questioned over serious crimes.

There have been scores of cases in the past, including probes into historic sex offences, in which similar reports published in the press have aided police inquiries by encouraging more witnesses to come forward.

The judgment was questioned last night by Richard Drax, Tory MP and former television journalist.

He said: I am very uneasy at what appears to be increasing use of courts to curb the press. Im concerned at use of the law to stop the press from reporting what is accurate and fair.

Clearly the better off are better able to defend themselves in this way.

This latest alarming restriction on press freedom follows a series of cases in which rich, famous and powerful figures have used privacy arguments to avoid stories from harming their reputations.

It comes just days after many MPs backed a controversial attempt supported by lobbyists to force newspapers to accept imposition of a new state-approved regulator with potentially ruinous powers.

The case illustrates the tightening of restrictions on media rights to inform the public about serious police investigations and to expose misdemeanours, and shows the courts current approach to privacy rights. Sherborne, who specialises in privacy cases, also helped Max Mosley in his action against the News Of The World after the now-defunct paper revealed that he took part in sado-masochist orgies.

Mosley has become a ferocious anti-press campaigner who seeks to muzzle newspapers.

His family trust has given millions of pounds to help fund a new press watchdog called Impress, which has just been sanctioned by a government quango called the Press Recognition Panel. Many politicians, of course, have reason to dislike the press, from the revelations over their appalling abuse of expenses to more personal run-ins with newspapers.

So it was unsurprising to see many Labour and Tory MPs back the idea of imposing tough penalties on papers refusing to join this politically-motivated body during a debate last week in parliament.

A ten-week consultation period has just begun over these alarming new proposals that threaten to shackle British newspaper journalism. Under possible legislation, even newspapers not agreeing to join the regime would have to pay costs of both sides following a complaint, regardless of whether the objection is rejected or not.

Tim Crook, professor in media and communications at Goldsmiths University of London, said publishers faced being bullied under threat of punitive damages to submit to state sponsored regulation that is effectively bankrolled by Max Mosley.

Supporters of a free press, unshackled by politicians, argue that its core principles are far too precious to be jettisoned over a few bruised egos and red- faced stars.

Tom Tugendhat, Tory MP for Tonbridge and Malling, said: Freedom of the press is essential for a functioning democracy because it holds the powerful to account.

Yet once again we see the law restricting the right of newspapers  in this case The Mail on Sunday  to publish something clearly in the public interest.
US officials are working to determine whether a second strike on the same date killed its target, Bilal al-Utabi, another al-

top leader and was also known as Farouq al-Qahtani

An airstrike in Afghanistan last month killed al-Qaeda's top leader in the eastern part of the country.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook issued a written statement on Friday about the 'precision strike' which was conducted by the US military on October 23 in Kunar, Afghanistan.

The statement says Nayef Salam Muhammad Ujaym al-Hababi, also known as Farouq al-Qahtani, was killed during the attack.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook issued a written statement on Friday about the 'precision strike' (file photo) that killed Nayef Salam Muhammad Ujaym al-Hababi

Cook says al-Hababi was one of al-Qaeda's 'senior plotters of attacks against the United States'.

He added that US officials are still working to determine whether a second strike on the same date killed its target, Bilal al-Utabi, another al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan.

'This successful strike is another example of US operations to degrade international terrorist networks and target terrorist leaders who seek to attack the US homeland, our interests and our allies abroad,' Cook said in the statement.

Al-Hababi is believed to have been between the ages of 34 and 36, NBC News reported.

He was the group's military commander in eastern Afghanistan and one of the organization's fundraisers in the Persian Gulf, according to the station.

Officials believed that both al-Hababi and al-Utabi were involved in plots to strike targets in Europe and the US.

Last month's attack was 'the most significant al-Qaeda strike in Afghanistan in several years', officials told NBC.

The attack involved Hellfire air-to-surface missiles hitting a compound.
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With their palatial rooms, astonishing art collections and breathtaking views, they are dream destinations for tourists visiting Britain.

And now visitors can spend a week as a private guest of the aristocratic owners of three of the nations most magnificent stately homes  if they can pay the eye-watering bill of more than 500,000.

The opportunity to sample life as a member of the nobility is being offered as a Christmas fantasy gift by the brash American department store chain Neiman Marcus.

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Blenheim Palace: The Oxfordshire ancestral home of the Dukes of Marlborough was also the birthplace of Winston Churchill

Lavish interior: Guests will be greeted by Jamie Spencer-Churchill, the 12th Duke, who inherited the 11,500-acre estate

Beautiful Blenheim: Guests will be whisked from one historic estate to another by helicopter, enjoy sumptuous banquets prepared by leading chefs, and sleep in private quarters.

According to the company, those who pay $700,000 (560,000) will find themselves and up to seven friends dining in style with the Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim, driving fast cars with the Earl of Pembroke at Wilton House, and shooting at the Duke of Northumberlands Alnwick Castle estate.

Promising a week of luxe living, the Texas-based firm says the recipient of the Christmas gift and their entourage will experience life like a duke or duchess.

Neiman Marcus, dubbed Needless Markups by critics, adds: Memories will be made all week long, with stories  and perhaps adopted British accents  to last a lifetime.

Guests will be whisked from one historic estate to another by helicopter, enjoy sumptuous banquets prepared by leading chefs, and sleep in private quarters.

Historic: The party will first be flown to the 900-year-old Alnwick Castle in Northumberland and driven to the stately pile in a fleet of SUVs where a Michelin-starred chef will prepare sumptuous feasts, taken in the grand dining room

Alnwick Castle: Now occupied by Ralph Percy, the 12th Duke, whose family have lived in the castle for more than 700 years, the building has starred in several episodes of Downton Abbey and as Hogwarts school in two of the Harry Potter movies

Prince Charles presents The Queen's Own Yeomanry Regiment with its first Regimental Guidon at Alnwick Castle in 2007

They will also be attended by butlers, be given exclusive tours of the houses stunning collections of Old Masters and other treasures, and wander in the extensive grounds.

After arriving in London  the deal does not include flights from abroad  the party will first be flown to the 900-year-old Alnwick Castle in Northumberland and driven to the stately pile in a fleet of SUVs where a Michelin-starred chef will prepare sumptuous feasts, taken in the grand dining room.

Now occupied by Ralph Percy, the 12th Duke, whose family have lived in the castle for more than 700 years, the building has starred in several episodes of Downton Abbey and as Hogwarts school in two of the Harry Potter movies.

After a couple of nights, the next stop is the quintessentially English Wilton House, which dates from the 1540s and is set in 14,000 acres of the Wiltshire countryside.

The quintessentially English Wilton House dates from the 1540s and is set in 14,000 acres of the Wiltshire countryside

Wilton House, which has appeared in numerous films including Mrs Brown, is graced by art and furniture by Old Masters such as Van Dyck and Rembrandt and cabinet-maker Chippendale

One of the main attractions at Wilton House the classic car collection built up by motor-racing fan William Herbert, the 18th Earl

The building, which has appeared in numerous films including Mrs Brown, is graced by art and furniture by Old Masters such as Van Dyck and Rembrandt and cabinet-maker Chippendale. But one of the main attractions is the classic car collection built up by motor-racing fan William Herbert, the 18th Earl.

Another helicopter ride will take the guests to Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, the ancestral home of the Dukes of Marlborough. The house was also the birthplace of Winston Churchill.

They will be greeted by Jamie Spencer-Churchill, the 12th Duke, who overcame a lengthy struggle with drug addiction before he inherited the 11,500-acre estate.
A woman has been arrested after her two young children called police on their 'drunk mom'.

Shaun Marie Orlos, 41, was arrested in Melbourne, Florida, shortly before 10:30pm on Monday.

Melbourne Police said Orlos' 12-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter called to report their mom was drunk and sitting in the passenger seat of her car.

Shaun Marie Orlos (pictured), 41, arrested after her two young children called police on their 'drunk mom'

The vehicle was in a parking lot at 1080 North Wickham Road, however the engine was still running.

'(Orlos) smelled of an alcoholic beverage, had slurred speech and blood-shot eyes,' a police statement read.

'When she exited her vehicle she could not stand without leaning on it. She refused to do field sobriety tests and submit to a breath test and was subsequently arrested.'

Police also said Orlos was driving on a suspended license, after two previous DUI incidents - the most recent of which came in September 2014.

The 41-year-old mother was charged with two counts of Child Neglect, felony Driving Under the Influence, and Driving on a Suspended License with Knowledge.

Her bond was set at $7,500, and she was booked into Brevard County Jail.

The 'drunk mom' was arrested in a parking lot at 1080 North Wickham Road (pictured) in Melbourne, Florida
Jeremy Corbyn has been forced into an embarrassing climbdown after appearing to set out 'red lines' for letting Theresa May trigger Brexit.

The Labour leader made a series of demands about future ties to Brussels and suggested his MPs would not support invoking Article 50 if they were not met.

They included single market access, 'no watering down of EU workplace rights', 'guarantees on safeguarding consumers and the environment' and a promise for the UK government to fund any EU capital investments lost by Brexit.

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Jeremy Corbyn has threatened an attempt to force a spring election if Theresa May does not meet his Brexit demands, including continued access to the single market

But within hours Mr Corbyn's deputy Tom Watson was making clear that there is no prospect of Labour MPs blocking Article 50 - the formal mechanism for leaving the EU.

'We're not going to hold this up. The British people have spoken and Article 50 will be triggered when it comes to Westminster,' he told BBC Radio 5 Live's Pienaar's Politics.

'I think it's important the country needs to hear this because most people think that that court judgment meant that the referendum result has fallen.

'It hasn't, it will go through. We have a lot to say on the way ... we want Theresa May to be accountable to parliament, but the people have spoken and we will respect their decision.'

He added: 'We want to protect workers' rights, we want to protect companies' right to trade in the single market, tariff-free, we want to support jobs, we want to make sure people don't lose out, but we're certainly not going to hold up Article 50 if we don't get the deal.

'We think the referendum was very clear and Article 50 will be triggered when it's brought to parliament. We've got a lot to say, but ultimately when the vote comes Labour will support Theresa May to trigger Article 50.

Mr Watson said he believed the country is heading for an early general election, and said Labour would be ready when it happens.

'We can't force a general election, but I do think we are heading for a general election,' he said.

'We've been saying this for some months now. I think Theresa May's difficulty is, when she finally gets a deal I'm not sure she's got a majority among her backbenchers to deliver it.'

Shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon told the Sunday Politics programme: 'Labour won't be blocking the triggering of Article 50.'

Mr Corbyn tweeted after the interviews clarifying that he would not order MPs to block Article 50.

But earlier he toldThe Sunday Mirror that he would not budge on his demands.

'These must be the basis of the negotiations. And it doesn't necessarily cause a delay,' he said.

Tom Watson (pictured right with Mr Corbyn) insisted Labour MPs will not be blocking the triggering of Article 50 - the formal mechanism for Brexit

Mr Corbyn tweeted later accepting that Labour MPs will not seek to block Article 50

'We are not challenging the referendum. We are not calling for a second referendum. We're calling for market access for British industry to Europe.'

Mrs May's government has a majority of just 12, so she could be forced to call an election to vote through Article 50 if Mr Corbyn joined with Remain-supporting Conservatives and MPs from other parties to block it.

The Prime Minister wanted to enact the legislation, which starts a two-year negotiating period for leaving the EU, without the consent of Parliament.

But, on Thursday, the High Court ruled she does not the authority to do this without a vote of MPs and peers.

The Government will appeal the ruling at the Supreme Court next month.

On Saturday, Jeremy Corbyn had ducked questions over whether he would welcome an early election as he accused the media of harassing him.

In a speech to a left wing think tank, the Labour leader said Theresa May must set out her Brexit negotiating terms to Parliament 'without delay' in the wake of the High Court ruling.

The Labour leader said he would only tell his MPs to support a government vote to enact Article 50 if the Prime Minister met his four 'bottom lines'

He claimed the Government opposes democratic scrutiny of its plans because 'there aren't any'.

The surprise legal ruling followed by the resignation of Tory MP Stephen Phillips has fuelled speculation that Mrs May will end up going to the polls before 2020.

Mr Corbyn refused to say whether he would be happy if there was an early election when asked by ITV.

The single question pitched at the Labour leader after his address in central London left him clearly irked.

As aides intervened to stop him being quizzed by the media, he walked away saying: 'Can we go outside because we are being harassed here?'

Mr Corbyn told the conference organised by the Centre for Labour and Social Studies that the Prime Minister was leading a 'mean minded, backward looking' government stuck in a Thatcherite time warp.

Labour would go after tax dodgers and put an end to 'shabby' sweetheart deals with big business, he said.

'There is nothing more unpatriotic than not paying your taxes,' he said.

Calling for greater transparency about the Government's plans for EU withdrawal, Mr Corbyn said all UK businesses should be given 'assurances' over the impact of Brexit to match those made to Japanese car-maker Nissan before its announcement of new investment in Sunderland.

Mrs May's government has a majority of just 12, so she could be forced to call an election to vote through Article 50 if Mr Corbyn joined with Remain-supporting Conservatives and MPs from other parties to block it

He said: 'All our businesses need the kind of assurances that apparently Nissan has had about the shape of the Government's Brexit plans to make the right investment decisions.

'Thursday's High Court decision underlines the necessity that the Prime Minister brings the Government's negotiating terms for Brexit to Parliament without delay.

'We accept and respect the decision to leave the European Union. But there must be transparency and accountability to Parliament about the Government's plans.
The former model who blocked Theresa Mays Brexit plans was embroiled in an extraordinary row last night, claiming she was inspired to take on the Government after defying her abusive anti-EU ex-husband.

Gina Miller said she was given legal protection after being physically attacked by Jon Maguire, who stood on an anti-Brussels platform at the 2010 General Election.

Mrs Miller said businessman Mr Maguire abused her before their marriage broke up 13 years ago. It gave her the strength to defy the online rape and death threats she received as a result of her historic Brexit court challenge, she told The Mail on Sunday.

Gina Miller speaks to Mail On Sunday Political Editor Simon Walters in exclusive interview

Last night, Mr Maguire, 55, accused Mrs Miller of lying. He vehemently denied attacking her and claimed she had had a drink problem since she was a teenager.

In a counter attack, Mrs Miller, 51, said the drink allegation was totally false, adding: That is funny because that [drink] is his problem. Speak to anybody in the City who knows him.

She stood by her claim that Mr Maguire had abused her, saying: He threatened me on many occasions. She alleged that Mr Maguire was given a police caution after she accused him of attacking her, and had been ordered by a court not to contact her.

The war of words came after a candid interview with this newspaper in the wake of the High Court ruling that Parliament must have a vote on leaving the EU, throwing Mrs Mays Brexit timetable into disarray.

Mrs Miller claims she was given legal protection after being physically attacked by Jon Maguire, who stood on an anti-Brussels platform at the 2010 General Election

A barrister, former model, philanthropist, and financier, Mrs Miller took on the media, a hostile establishment and Downing Street  and won. Sitting in her office near fashionable Sloane Square in Chelsea, West London, on Friday, she told how, as the lead claimant in the case, she survived a ferocious online hate campaign by Brexit supporters.

She calmly reeled off the insults: Gang-rape her, shes a witch, stay in the kitchen scrubbing floors, black women shouldnt show their face in public, throw acid in her face.

Fellow claimants withdrew through sheer terror, but not Mrs Miller. She believed it was her destiny. I am fairly fearless because of horrific experiences in the past. Im a victim of domestic violence, she said. She claimed that someone was second husband Mr Maguire, whom she met in the late-1990s after breaking up with her childhood sweetheart, with whom she had a daughter Lucy Ann, now 28.

Mrs Miller said businessman Mr Maguire abused her before their marriage broke up 13 years ago

Having survived that it makes you fearless I survived for a reason  to be who I am now and to speak up when I dont think things are right.

Mrs Miller, who has two children aged 11 and nine by her third husband, multi-millionaire hedge fund manager Alan Miller, said that Mr Maguire was cautioned by police in Wiltshire, where the couple lived.

He was called in [by police] on quite a few occasions. Once when I ran away from the house and went to the police station [after] he had attacked me.

She said a Family Court in Wandsworth, South London, issued an order preventing Mr Maguire having contact with her or her daughter Lucy Ann. He used my daughter to get in contact with me and they ruled he couldnt have contact with either of us.

The court claim was denied by Mr Maguire. Mrs Miller scoffed at Mr Maguires claim that she had a drink problem after being sent to England from her native Guyana, a former British colony in South America, by her parents when she was 11. That is quite funny because that is his [Mr Maguires] problem. Mrs Miller said friends would confirm her account of her abuse at the hands of Mr Maguire.

Shortly afterwards, two individuals  a man and a woman  contacted The Mail on Sunday. A man, who gave his name but agreed to be quoted in return for anonymity, said he worked with Mrs Miller and Mr Maguire when they were married.

He said: Jon was a charmer at first, but over time it was clear he was a heavy drinker. Gina would sit there in tears telling me what a hard time he was giving her. I saw him belittle her in front of people.

The man added he had not seen Mr Maguire be physically abusive to Mrs Miller, although Mrs Miller had told her he was.

A woman, who declined to give her name, said she had seen bruises on Mrs Millers arms that Mrs Miller claimed had been inflicted by Mr Maguire. Mr Maguire strongly rejected both individuals claims.

As the Government prepares to attempt to overturn the Brexit ruling by appealing to the Supreme Court, Mrs Miller denounced critics who said she had no right to meddle in the matter because she was not even born here. She was born in Guyana, formerly British Guyana. Her father, Doodnauth Singh, was Guyanas Attorney General.

She said: Britain is my home, my children are British. Theres a lot of hypocrites out there. Some of the partners and parents of MPs who have criticised me arent British. Ive been here longer than some of them. My parents had an incredible reverence for Britain. We had pictures of the Queen in the house and held up Britain as the greatest country on Earth.

Investment manager Gina Miller speaks after the High Court decides that the Prime Minister cannot trigger Brexit without the approval of the MP's at The Royal Courts Of Justice on Thursday

She says her parents sent her and her elder brother Gary, now a GP in East London, to the UK when they were children because Guyana was a dictatorship and they wanted them to grow up in safety. It led to them living unsupervised in a flat in Eastbourne, East Sussex, while Gina went to a local private girls school, Moira House.

We couldnt get any money out of Guyana so my parents bought a flat and said, You have to be grown up. I was 13 and my brother was 15.

I had to work part-time in Eastbourne  the school didnt know about it.

I tell my children, Mummy used to come home from school, go to a charity shop and buy the highest shoes I could find to pretend I was 16 and get a job as a chambermaid to earn money to buy food. It makes you tough. 

She said her 11-year-old son prompted her to launch her legal action when he burst into tears at the familys 7 million Chelsea home on discovering the referendum result. Committed Remainer Mrs Miller said she rapidly worked out that the Government could not leave the EU without a vote by MPs.

She is adamant the Government will lose its appeal to the Supreme Court, to be heard next month. I dont understand why MPs are so frightened of a debate in Parliament. If they dont believe in representative democracy, they should all give up their jobs and go home.

As the Government prepares to attempt to overturn the Brexit ruling by appealing to the Supreme Court, Mrs Miller denounced critics who said she had no right to meddle in the matter because she was not even born here

No, I left her because she had cheated and had a drink problem

Gina Millers former husband last night hit back at her claims that he abused her during their marriage.

Financier Jon Maguire, 55, said: It is a total lie.

He conceded that she had called police on one occasion, claiming he had hit her. But he insisted that her allegation was untrue.

He said that his eldest son by a previous marriage was present at the time and told police his father had not attacked Mrs Miller.

We had an argument, she left the house, sat in the car and called police. Women do sometimes try to win arguments with these stunts.

Jon Maguire, CEO Cru investments in Edinburgh Monday, has hit back at her claims that he abused Gina Miller during their marriage

He claimed Mrs Miller, with whom he used to run a company, had a drink problem dating back to when her parents sent her to England.

They put her in this big house  she was about 14 and she was running a house with maybe ten tenants.

She was drinking because she was unable to cope with the pressure. She told me she would drink her way out of it. Once she has a bit to drink she gets moody and aggressive. It is the legacy of her childhood.

Mrs Miller rejects those claims.

Mr Maguire said the reason they broke up 13 years ago was because of his ex-wifes drinking  that and [her third husband] Alan Millers money. Im not a millionaire. She was very driven by that.

He claimed she left him for the hedge fund boss after meeting him through work. He started taking her out to lunches and dinners that I knew nothing about. She left me for him.

It was rubbish to say their marriage broke down because he abused her.

She is trying to put a brave face on it because she does not want to be seen as someone who left me for Miller. Mrs Miller maintains her relationship with Mr Miller did not start until her marriage to Mr Maguire was over.

Mr Maguire said it was he who took legal action to seek access to Mrs Millers daughter by her first marriage, Lucy Ann.

Mr Maguire stood for the Right-wing English Democrat Party in Chippenham at the 2010 Election. He stood on an anti-immigration and anti-EU platform but won barely 300 votes and lost his deposit. He has reportedly said that homosexuality is a cul-de-sac for the human race.

He said his ex-wife had no right to challenge Brexit in the courts. She has always wanted the limelight. When the British people have voted that should put an end to it.

Mr Maguire said Mrs Miller could never have launched her legal case without her husbands fortune. She is on a ticket but it will bite her hard because she is messing round with half this country  and she is not from this country.
Thousands of tourists flock to Freshwater West Beach in Wales each year to leave tributes, including socks, to the mischievous but loyal character (pictured inset left). The mock grave (pictured left and right) sits above the Pembrokeshire beach where Dobby's death was filmed (pictured inset right: Dobby being buried by Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, played by Rupert Grint and Emma Watson), but concerns about high visitor numbers and pollution led to a survey on its possible relocation. Some locals had branded the attraction an 'eyesore' and compared it to a landfill site, while fans of the show said it 'brings happiness to so many children', labelling 'haters' of the memorial as 'killjoys'. The National Trust had considered removing the tribute, which is constructed from hundreds of painted pebbles, stones and socks, but ultimately ruled it can remain in place on the protected beach for the time being. Dobby was a key character in the Harry Potter films in the struggle against he-who-must-not-be-named, aka Lord Voldemort, and died at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange after rescuing Harry and friends from Malfoy Manor in the Deathly Hallows film. A sculpture was engraved with the words 'Dobby is a free elf in Pembrokeshire' at the spot, however it became the subject of a consultation due to the high number of visitors flocking to Freshwater West Beach to see the 'grave'.
Assaad was gunned down on driveway in front of his 12-year-old nephew

Executed hitman Hamad Assaad's gangland murder was captured on video by police as they prepared to raid his home.

The 29-year-old underworld figure was repeatedly shot in front of his 12-year-old nephew in Sydney's south-west on Tuesday.

Two gunmen ambushed him on his driveway, at Georges Hall, as the Middle Eastern Organised Crime Squad conducted surveillance on his house, The Sunday Telegraph reports.

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Etched in ink around Hamad Assaad's (pictured) neck was the word 'executioner'

The execution-style murder on October 25 was over in 10 seconds.

Detectives outside his Sturt Avenue house tried in vain to save Assaad, who died at the scene.

Only one detective conducting surveillance saw the murder, about 9.20am, as the other officers waited around the house for Assaad to emerge, the News Corp story said.

That officer captured 23 seconds on a handheld video camera of the gunmen driving from the scene.

Assaad's home was already the subject of a Firearms Prohibition Order, which meant it could be raided at any time without a warrant.

Closed-circuit TV cameras around his house are understood to have captured better vision of the killing.

The murdered contract killer had the word word 'executioner' tattooed around his neck and below that an even more distressing tribute to himself and the lives he had allegedly taken.

'The souls I have taken will never haunt me only the ones I haven't will,' the tattoo said.

The suspected underworld killer was the key suspect in the shooting of gangland boss Walid 'Wally' Ahmad who was executed in broad daylight at Bankstown in April.

'The souls I have taken will never haunt me only the ones I haven't will,' Hamad Assaad's tattoo read

Assaad is believed to have boasted about the attack on Ahmad, who was known as a 'Mr Big' in Sydney's criminal underworld.

He was also believed to have been involved in numerous other shootings in Sydney in recent years.

In 2010 Assaad was charged with murder stemming from another drive-by shooting which killed Mohamad Alahmad, 37, but was found not guilty.

Assaad, 29, was gunned down and killed in his driveway in Georges Hall Western Sydney in front of his 12-year-old son on Tuesday

He is also believed to have shot and wounded convicted murderer Michael Ibrahim, underworld figure Pasquale Barbaro, and the mother and aunt of Bassam Hamzy who founded the Brothers 4 Life gang.

Assaad had also allegedly stole about $350,000 worth of methamphetamines from an Asian drug syndicate in the weeks leading up to his murder.

Assaad was well known to New South Wales police and detectives from the State Crime Commision and the Middle Eastern Organised Crime Squad.

Assaad was farewelled on Friday at Sydney's Lakemba Mosque, his mother was seen sobbing as the coffin was carried out of the mosque

Assaad did not hide his disdain for authority figures and anyone who cooperated with the police, actively complaining about 'snitches'  police informants  online.

The suspected hitman also complained about his friends letting him down on his social media accounts.

'I used to have a team every weekend ready to go drinking at the local pub and enjoying ourselves, these days all the men of Sydney seem to be too busy waxing their eyebrows and copping a**l beads,' he said.

Hundreds gathered to farewell the suspected gangland figure at his memorial service held in south-west Sydney on Friday

'Madness I'm going to have to go to the pub alone for the first time in 29 years. Lucky the beers are always loyal and waiting for you at the pub.'

Although officers believe the shooting which killed Assaad outside his home was targeted, police are yet to identify any suspects.

Assaad's funeral was held at Sydney's Lakemba Mosque on Friday, where hundreds of mourners showed up to farewell the suspected gangland figure.
Had lymphoblastic leukemia aged 5, was cured aged 7 and again aged 10

Powers could spent the day in in-school suspension or change his T-shirt

Ridgewood High School forbids logos that are larger than a quarter

But he said a teacher pulled him out and said it didn't follow the dress code

Tyler Powers, 16, wore the shirt to high school in New Port Richey, Florida

A teenager who beat cancer twice as a child had to remove his survivor T-shirt after being told it violated his high school dress code.

Tyler Powers, 16, wore a purple American Cancer Society T-shirt to Ridgewood High School in New Port Richey, Florida this week.

The T-shirt has a logo on the front and the word 'survivor' printed on the back.

Powers said he was pulled out of class and told he couldn't wear the T-shirt because the school's dress code forbids logos that take up more than a quarter of the design.

Cancer survivor Tyler Powers (left and right), 16, wore an American Cancer Society shirt to his high school in New Port Richey, Florida this week - but was told it violated the dress code

'I was doing my work; I was causing no disruption whatsoever,' Powers told Today.

He had a choice between spending the day in in-school suspension or changing into a new T-shirt.

Powers picked the last option and wore a blue Ridgewood High School T-shirt instead.

Powers, who according to his father is the junior class president and has no discipline record, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a type of cancer that begins in the bone marrow, when he was 5 years old.

He beat the disease once aged 7, then relapsed. Powers survived cancer a second time and was cured by age 10.

His father, Tim Powers, told Today it was 'disturbing' that his son wouldn't be allowed to wear his survivor T-shirt.

'There's nothing about the shirt that was demeaning or hateful. It's a positive message,' the father said.

Powers said he was disappointed by the school's reaction.

'They are saying they want to send a positive message through the dress code but having a good at spirit school and being able to wear what you want, that helps you in school,' the teen told Inside Edition.

The dress code at Ridgewood High School (pictured) forbids logos that are larger than a quarter. The rule is part of a program aimed at improving discipline and academics

The school district said the teacher who told Powers he couldn't wear the shirt didn't see what was on it and didn't know he had previously had cancer.

'She never noticed what was on his shirt and he ever mentioned anything about being a cancer survivor,' Pasco County Schools spokesperson Linda Cobbe told Today.

'If he had said something, she would have listened empathetically and explained to him how the logo size limit applies to all shirts and that they can't discriminate by allowing one student to wear a special shirt.'

The rule against large logos, Cobbe said, is part of a larger program that aims to improve discipline and academics.
Hillary Clintons campaign strategists are sending the candidate to Grand Rapids, Michigan to steady her campaign in the state after a late polling surge by Donald Trump  and sending President Obama there for insurance.

The rush to Michigan was a surprise move on the chess game that takes place over the final days of the campaign  and an implicit acknowledgement about potential weaknesses in Clinton's 'firewall,' even as she got a boost from Hispanic voters in other battlegrounds.

President Obama will travel to Ann Arbor Michigan, home to the University of Michigans 40,000-plus students, on the same day his would-be successor will be there, Clintons campaign team told reporters traveling with the candidate to Philadelphia  another heavily Democratic enclave that Clinton hopes will help deliver Pennsylvania's states 20 electoral votes.

Only Friday, Clinton held a rally in Detroits Eastern Market, hoping to drive up her support among African American, female, and younger voters.

Shoring up the defenses: Hillary Clinton speaking in the pouring ran in Pembroke Pines, Florida, before she was set to head off to Michigan

Breathless campaign: Clinton arrives at Philadelphia Airport on Saturday, The rush to Michigan on Monday was a surprise move over the final days of the campaign

Every vote counts: Hillary Clinton meets with supporters at Reed's Coffee and Tea House on Saturday in Philadelphia

The moves are an acknowledgement that Trump's constant overtures to working class whites and and anti-trade appeal has taken hold in parts of the industrial Midwest that are the basis for Clinton's wide lead over Trump in the electoral college.

On Friday, the Detroit Free Press released a poll showing Clinton leading Trump by just 4 points in a state that has been considered part of her blue firewall. It was a four-point gain for Trump compared to a few weeks before.

It showed Trump making inroads in the states Macomb County, home to many Reagan Democrats that helped hand the Gipper his victory in 1980. Democrats were also underperforming in vote-rich Oakland County.

Hillary Clinton is focused on five battleground states in the run-up to Election Day

Asked whether he considered Michigan a battleground, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook responded: We do. But he said the assessment wasnt new. Weve actually had staff throughout the map on the entire cycle, he said.

Mook noted that almost all voting happens on election day in Michigan.

Our schedule is calibrated around that. Trump just looks like hes trying to go everywhere all at once, Mook said.

Clinton's had to cut short her event in Florida Saturday due to a downpour, and it appears to be her final visit to the state before Election Day

Clinton held a concert with Jay Z and Beyonce in Cleveland on Friday night. Her campaign is trying to drive up turnout in Democratic-leaning states in the final run-up to Election Day

Former president Bill Clinton is joining the effort with a trip to Lansing, Michigan on Sunday, his wife's campaign announced.

Grand Rapids is in a Republican leaning part of the state  Donald Trump campaigned there recently and visited the Gerald Ford museum  although the city itself provides Democratic votes.

The schedule outlined by Team Clinton for her final days includes a rally Saturday night with pop star Katy Perry. On Sunday, Clinton campaigns with LeBron James in Cleveland and then heads to New Hampshire, where Gold Star parent Khizr Khan will speak at a rally with her. Musician James Taylor will perform.

On Monday, Clinton's first stop is at a state to be determined. She heads to Grand Rapids, then heads to Philadelphia, where her final election night rally will include President Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, and Bill and Chelsea Clinton. The candidate finishes with a midnight rally in Raleigh.

Even as she worked to shore up Midwest battlegrounds, Clinton saw a surge of voting by Hispanics in early voting states, including thousands who stood in line for hours in Clark County, Nevada.

Mook said that the early vote was so strong for Democrats that Trump would have to win on Election Day by 10 percentage points to carry the state.

In Florida, one analysis claims 200,000 more Hispanics had voted than during early voting four years ago, the New York Times reported.

Clinton campaigned in heavily Democratic Detroit in a bid to boost voter turnout as a new poll showed Donald Trump closing on her in a state he has talked about carrying in for months.

'People are just frustrated and angry. I get that,' Clinton told cheering supporters who crammed into Detroit's Eastern Market, in a reference to her opponent's campaign.

'I understand that. We had the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression in '08 and '09,' she said, referencing the economic crisis that lead to foreclosures and job loss throughout the nation and hit Motor City hard.

'Millions of people lost their jobs, millions lost their homes, family wealth was wiped out. That is a trauma and people are still suffering and still climbing back from that. I get it. But I learned a long time ago from my late mother, anger is not a plan,' Clinton said.

She credited President Obama with saving the auto industry, which has rebounded since 2009.

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A new Epic/MRA/Detroit Free Press poll has Clinton holding steady at 42 per cent - but Trump climbing four points from two weeks ago to 38 per cent.

'It all comes down to you, my friends,' Clinton told the Detroit crowd. 'You have to vote. Our progress is on the line. Everything that has happened up until this point is on the line. I'm ready to defend and build on the progress that we've made.'

Clinton revealed a new technique to practice for the presidential debates. 'I just had my friends and family just spend hours saying terrible things to me,' she quipped.

Then it was off to Cleveland, where Jay Z would appear to endorse Clinton to residents of battleground Ohio, where Trump has led Clinton in polling.

She boarded her campaign with two contest winners, De'Juan Stevens, who brought his mom, Tanya Wofford, and Jean Voege, who brought a friend, Susan Mulvihill. They had entered the contest on her campaign web site.

Earlier, in Pittsburgh, Clinton was introduced by billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban - who said Trump could be bribed by Vladimir Putin if he got elected president.

'There's gonna come a time where Donald Trump, God help, if he's president where [Vladimir] Putin or [Bashar] Assad would say to him, 'Donald if you do this, I'll give you $20 billion,' Cuban said.

'What's $20 billion to them?,' Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks owner and 'Shark Tank' cohost continued. 'What's $30 billion? To them it's nothing.'

'If Donald Trump - who rips off people for thousands, gets offered by some dictator somewhere, some despot somewhere, $20 billion, you think he's gonna do what's best for the country or do you think he's gonna take the money?'

'Do you think he's got the temperament to do the right thing?' Cuban asked - prompting the crowd to yell out 'No!'
Lord Chancellor Liz Truss says the independence of the judiciary was the foundation upon which our rule of law is built.

Lord Chancellor Liz Truss bowed to mounting pressure last night to defend judges after an astonishing attack on her by David Mellor in the wake of the Brexit ruling.

Ms Truss broke her silence to say the independence of the judiciary was the foundation upon which our rule of law is built.

Earlier Mr Mellor  a pro-Brexit former Cabinet Minister  said she was unfit to be Lord Chancellor. He said on LBC radio: In my day as a Minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, we were strictly forbidden to criticise the courts.

As for Liz Truss, I have to tell you something. Im a QC. When I was practising the law, the Lord Chancellor was a hugely respected legal figure like Lord Hailsham.

I am sure she is a delightful girl, kind to animals, helps old ladies across the road, but she shouldnt be anywhere near being Lord Chancellor. She has no qualifications for the job, she is not legally trained. Its a big job. You have got a 40-year-old whos never done anything legal, has no real knowledge of the law.

Anti-Brexit ex-Tory Minister Anna Soubry also tore into Ms Truss, accusing her of putting out a sanitised, No 10 statement which did not defend the judges.

That was despite the fact Ms Truss swore an oath to defend the judiciary when she took office, Ms Soubry said. As a former barrister, Im embarrassed and appalled, she added.

Ms Truss, 41, had faced growing anger from MPs and law experts at her failure to defend the three senior judges who delivered last weeks ruling that Parliament must have a vote on triggering the UKs exit from the EU. The judges came in for a barrage of attacks from pro-Brexit MPs, newspapers and social media for defying the referendum result.

David Mellor, a pro-Brexit former Cabinet Minister  said Ms Tuss was unfit to be Lord Chancellor

Ms Truss, who is also Justice Secretary, said: The independence of the judiciary is the foundation upon which our rule of law is built and rightly respected the world over for its independence and impartiality. In relation to the case heard in the High Court, the Government has made it clear it will appeal to the Supreme Court. Legal process must be followed.

Former Attorney General Dominic Grieve compared some UK press coverage of the verdict to Robert Mugabes Zimbabwe.
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Construction workers are turning back time as they peel away the modern facade of an office building in Michigan to reveal the historic architecture underneath.

Three buildings, dating more than a century old, were merged in the 1980s and covered with aluminum, reflective glass and gray panels to create a bland office space at 50 Monroe Avenue in Grand Rapids.

The original stonework in one corner of the building is now seeing the light for the first time in decades, revealing an extraordinary juxtaposition in style.

Construction workers are peel away the facade of an office building in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Pictured left, work that began this week showing the century-old brick and stone work underneath, and right: a TGI Friday's as part of the 1980s build

The original architecture in one corner of the building is now seeing the light for the first time in decades, revealing an extraordinary juxtaposition in style

Archival photos show what's underneath. Three buildings, dating more than a century old, were merged in the 1980s and covered with aluminum, reflective glass and gray panels as a cost-effective way to modernize the structure

CWD Commercial Real Estate Investments purchased the 160,000-square-foot building in 2012, which once housed banks, financial companies, several radio stations and a TGI Friday's at the street level.

But the majority of the space was unoccupied, and Sam Cummings, managing partner at the largest property owner in Grand Rapids, told mlive.com: ' Over the last 20 years, it hasnt lived up to the potential of the site.

CWD has already restored several other buildings in Grand Rapids and Cummings said: 'It has the potential to be one of the coolest things we've done downtown yet.'

But he was not ready to make any promises yet, saying the construction work that began in the past week was merely a preliminary investigation.

The unveiling has started off in one corner, showing arched windows that had long been boarded up, stonework dating between 1890 and 1911, and painted signs that had chipped away.

CWD Commercial Real Estate Investments purchased the 160,000-square-foot building in 2012 with an interest in restoring the original buildings (pictured)

The modern office space was home to Huntington Bank, Wells Fargo Advisors, Ameriprise Financial, Veolia Energy, Hilco Industrial and several radio stations, but about 60per cent remained empty

CWD, the largest property owner in the city, has already restored several buildings downtown. It's still too early for the company to make any promises for 50 Monroe (pictured, the arched molding above the windows still intact)

Archival photos of the seven-story Helmer Building - one of the three that were covered up- show the building in its original grandeur, and the idea of a restoration has garnered the enthusiastic support of residents.

Historian Gordon Olson, who encouraged architects to consider the history of a neighborhood rather than adding a jarring addition, seemed to welcome the idea.

Acknowledging the urban renewal that took over the city after the 1960s, Olson told WOODTV: 'This is a classic example of the two cities.'

While the fate of 50 Monroe still hangs in the balance, the building offers an unusual look behind the curtain by embodying both the distant past and an outdated vision of modernity.

Archival photos show company names painted along the side of one building (left). Right, the University of Cosmetology has remained largely intact (right)

Sam Cummings of CWD said: 'It has the potential to be one of the coolest things we've done downtown yet'
Albanian migrants who illegally sneak into Britain posing as child refugees are putting school pupils and foster families at risk, shock official reports reveal.

Documents uncovered by The Mail on Sunday show that head teachers have been forced to take 'disciplinary measures' against asylum seekers feared to be adults.

One report said some schools had 'rejected children' over suspicions they were older than they claimed.

Albanian migrants who illegally sneak into Britain posing as child refugees are putting school pupils and foster families at risk, shock official reports reveal. (Above, migrants arriving at a British asylum centre)

Another study revealed Albanian youths have been removed from foster families because of 'their behaviour towards female carers', with social workers blaming it on 'the gender assumptions of Albanian males'.

The shocking developments come weeks after controversy over the age of some of the 300 migrants arriving in Britain from the demolished Jungle camp in Calais last month, with widespread calls for them to undergo dental X-rays to establish how old they really are.

But an investigation by this newspaper shows this is the tip of the iceberg.

Almost 500 Albanians arrived in Britain last year claiming to be lone children  entitling them to a school place, a foster family and support until they are 25  but close to half had their applications rejected.

We can also reveal how the abuse of the system is so great that the Home Office set up a secret operation to check the real ages and family backgrounds of hundreds of rejected claimants with the authorities in their Balkan home country.

Last night Chris Philp  MP for Croydon where the asylum claims are processed  said: 'I am aware of problems with people who end up getting put into foster homes and placed in schools when they're clearly not under 18. It puts strain on resources, causing disruption and there are also safety issues.

'We do need more rigorous checks and I think dental checks are a reasonable thing to do to make sure we are not being taken for a ride or putting other children at risk.'

HOW CROYDON COUNCIL KNEW OF PROBLEM July 2015: A report to Croydon Council highlights concerns about attitudes of Albanian children towards women carers January 2016: Officials warn about the age of refugees placed in schools Advertisement

The problems caused by Albanian Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASC) are exposed in detail by a number of Croydon Council reports and meetings over the past two years.

There are currently 433 child refugee claimants in the South London borough  214 Albanians but just 11 Syrians. Almost all are adolescent males, which leads to problems in classrooms and at home.

A committee report from January this year warned: 'There also continues to be concerns around the age of some of this cohort as evidenced by their behaviours and attitudes which are resulting in schools following disciplinary processes.'

In March, councillors were told: 'Some of the schools have rejected some of the children as they needed to be age-assessed.'

Another report from July 2015 admitted: 'The fostering service has experienced breakdowns of placements for this particular group because of their behaviours towards female carers The Albanian social workers explained the gender assumptions of Albanian males from the country districts.'

In September this year councillors were told foster placements have to be found in two hours although age assessments can take 28 days, and 'this can present a safeguarding issue in foster homes or school environments when the applicant is significantly older than he claims'.

Another report said Albanians 'were the largest ethnic group in the Youth Offending System' and they 'tended to offend on each other'.

Officials said they had been involved in 'a variety of offences' including affray and theft. Overall the number of people coming to England illegally and registering as UASC has doubled in two years to reach 3,253 in 2015.

If they are accepted it means they are treated as 'children in need' by local authorities and quickly put in a foster home, given a school place and cared for until they are 25  a better level of treatment than that given to adults seeking sanctuary.

But councils have to make sure they are not lying about their real age, in order to protect other children.

A report last week revealed there is also a 'recent rising trend of individuals presenting as UASC but appear to be an adult'. A total of 789 'complex' age disputes were carried out in 2015, the Association of Directors of Children's Services said, and 'around two-thirds were considered to be over the age of 18'.

In 2010 this newspaper revealed that two Guinean asylum seekers spent a year at a secondary school in Middlesbrough before it was discovered they were in their 20s.

Latest figures show far more would-be child refugees come from Albania, which is on its way to joining the European Union and where there is no current conflict, than war-torn countries, such as Syria.

Last year, officials made 583 decisions on young Albanians' asylum claims, accepting 299 but rejecting the other 284.

Over the past five years, 115 out of 218 Albanians who had age assessments have had their asylum claims rejected specifically because they were deemed to be older than 18.

Many more are suspected of being older than they claim, but are rejected simply because their stories of persecution and 'blood feuds' are dismissed.
Theresa May was last night told to let more Indians into Britain  or miss out on trade deals with the Delhi government

Theresa May was last night told to let more Indians into Britain  or miss out on trade deals with the Delhi government.

In provocative remarks likely to deepen the row over immigration controls, India's High Commissioner warned the Prime Minister: 'Post-Brexit, you need Indians.'

The intervention by Dinesh Patnaik, India's most senior diplomat in London, comes as Mrs May flies out to his country today to try to drum up new trade deals to cushion the impact of leaving the EU.

Top of the Indian government's list of demands will be the reversal of tough immigration measures Mrs May imposed on their citizens when she was Home Secretary.

But she will also face calls to take a harder line on neighbouring Pakistan's alleged link to global terror  and even to allow more Indian mangos into Britain.

Mr Patnaik said his government objected to the restrictions faced by tourists and Indian students hoping to study in Britain, adding: 'Students, tourists and short-term visitors are not migrants under any definition.

'Post-Brexit, you need Indians. Our tourists don't come to Britain due to difficult visa conditions.'

The number of Indian students at UK universities has fallen from 39,090 in 2011 to under 20,000 since Mrs May, then in the Home Office, abolished visas that allowed all non-EU students to seek jobs here for up to two years after the end of their studies.

During her three-day visit, the Prime Minister will also be lobbied to allow tariff-free and regulation-free access to our market for produce, such as mangos. Last year, the UK was forced to comply with a recently lifted Brussels ban on the fruit over fears they might be infested with flies.

The row over Indian visas mirrors the battle within Government over the level of migration controls Britain should introduce after leaving the EU.

During her three-day visit to India, the PM will be lobbied to allow tariff-free and regulation-free access to our market for produce, such as mangos. Last year, the UK was forced to comply with a recently lifted Brussels ban on the fruit over fears they might be infested with flies. File picture

Brexit 'doves' such as Philip Hammond have been arguing for fewer restrictions on the free movement of labour from EU countries in return for access to the Single Market.

Mrs May has chosen India for her first trade mission as Prime Minister because officials believe the historic business links between the two will help British businesses to ride out the turbulence caused by leaving the EU.

India is the third-largest investor in the UK, and British Government officials argue leaving the EU will allow us to 'unlock the potential' and forge a 'more ambitious trading relationship'. Defence deals are top of the agenda.

Mrs May, who will take 33 business representatives with her, last night said the trip demonstrated she was forging ahead with delivering Brexit  despite the calls by Remain-supporting MPs and peers for Parliament to debate her negotiating terms.

'While others seek to tie our negotiating hands, the Government will get on with the job of delivering the decision of the British people,' she said.

The Prime Minister added: 'The UK and India are natural partners  the world's oldest democracy and the world's largest democracy  and together I believe we can achieve great things.'
A 29-year-old was arressted and charged with intentionally trying to injure

An argument broke out outside a fast food restaurant in Melbourne's CBD

A 19-year-old male has been stabbed in the face following an argument with another male outside a fast food restaurant.

An argument broke out in the early morning on Sunday between a Sebastopol man, 19, and a 29-year-old at a fast food restaurant on Swanston Street, in Melbourne's CBD, a police statement said.

The 19-year-old was slashed in the face during the altercation and was taken to hospital.

The injured 19-year-old was slashed in the face on Swanston Street in Melbourne CBD and was taken to hospital

A 19-year-old male has been stabbed in the face following an argument with another male outside a fast food restaurant

Shortly after the incident, the 29-year-old male was arrested near Yarra River and charged with intentionally causing serious injury and will face court on Sunday.

Police are calling for anyone that witnessed or may have filmed the event to please come forward.

Anyone with information about the incident is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or they can file a confidential report at www.crimestoppersvic.com.au
For months hes survived gaffes and allegations that would surely have destroyed the chances of any other candidate.

And now, even as his campaign is rocked by reports of his adulterous affair with a Playboy model, Donald Trump continues to defy political gravity. His supporters at an impassioned Republican rally in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania simply shrugged off any suggestion of scandal.

I dont care about his sex life, said one committed Trumpette at an the event in Hershey. Pennsylvanias 20 electoral college votes will be vital in reaching the crucial number of 270 needed to win the presidency.

Of the 10,000 supporters crammed into Hersheys Giant Center, women seemed to make up roughly half the numbers

Trump, pictured with wife Melania, continues to defy political gravity, after surviving gaffes and allegations that would surely have destroyed the chances of any other candidate

Playboy model Karen McDougal (pictured) claimed she had a consensual relationship with Donald Trump over several months beginning in 2006, sources told the Wall Street Journal

Housewife Shirley Wentzel added: Nothing about Mr Trump and who he has or hasnt slept with is going to change my mind about him.

'Hes the only one who promises revolution in Washington. Hillary Clinton represents corrupt politics as usual.

Hershey is famed for its chocolate and is called The Sweetest Place on Earth.

And as Trump took to the stage there on Friday night, the cheers of his supporters echoed across the hall, holding out the prospect of a sweet victory for the Republican candidate.

A cocksure Trump was treated like a rock star by fans who, at the mention of Clintons name, chanted: Lock her up! Lock her up!

Two young Trump fans share a laugh before his rally in Pennsylvania on Friday

The silent majority have risen up, said housewife and mother of one Janie Jones. Were tired of politics as usual

Perhaps you would expect Trump to attract fervent support in a state where white blue-collar workers in industry and farming have been hit hard by globalisation.

But what was surprising was the mix of the crowd cheering him.

Of the 10,000 supporters crammed into Hersheys Giant Center (another 7,000 were left out in the autumn cold when the doors were closed), women seemed to make up roughly half the numbers  utterly confounding the notion that Trump had lost all female voters after he was branded a misogynist when tapes emerged of his sexist banter.

In fact Trumps last-minute surge is now drawing support from a far broader cross-section of society than the traditional Republican white, male, middle-class base.

Leslie Brown, 42, a black mother of two said: I voted for Obama last time but I dont trust Hillary. Shes corrupt and lines her own pockets. Someone needs to shake things up and that person is Trump.

While three-times married Trump has been condemned for bragging about being rich and for making lewd sexist comments, his believers are unfazed

And while three-times married Trump has been condemned for bragging about being rich and for making lewd sexist comments, his believers are unfazed.

Teacher Tracy Delfieth, who voted Democrat last time, said: Im not looking to date him  Im looking for the best person to lead this country out of the mess were in.

Hes going to shake things up. All guys say dumb stuff. I like his stance on immigration.

One of the loudest roars of the night came when Trump told the crowd: I will end illegal immigration once and for all. What am I going to do?

Build that wall! the crowd shouted back in unison.

Trump poked fun at Clintons rock star friends saying: I didnt have to bring Beyonce or Jay Z. This is just me folks, no guitar, no piano just great ideas for our country.

Ex-marine Michael Fay, 63, said: Im a lifelong Democrat. I dont like many things about Trump but I dislike Hillary even more. Its time for a change in Washington.

As Trump vowed to Make America Great Again, the crowd stomped its feet and chanted: USA! USA!
Theresa May is braced for criticism of her welfare policy after a controversial United Nations task force concluded that disabled people in Britain are unfairly bearing the brunt of austerity cuts

Theresa May is braced for criticism of her welfare policy after a controversial United Nations task force concluded that disabled people in Britain are unfairly bearing the brunt of austerity cuts.

The UN report, due to be published in the next fortnight, is expected to be highly critical of the UKs support for people with disabilities or serious health conditions.

Ministers are planning to fight back by arguing that the findings are out of date, and by questioning the credibility of the authors, one of whom has called for state funding for disabled people to visit prostitutes.

A leaked draft of the report by the newly formed UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities says Britain should spend more money on welfare payments to cover the extra costs associated with living with a disability.

The report, seen by The Mail on Sunday, also calls for the Government to ensure that appropriate mitigation measures are put in place for persons with disabilities affected by austerity measures.

A senior Whitehall source said they intended to push back hard by pointing out that the UK spends more on disability welfare than the average among developed countries.

The source added: This committee has chosen the UK for its first report and we fear they are trying to make a name for themselves.

Their evidence period runs up until the end of 2015, so it is already out of date. We intend to point out that the UK spends around 50 billion a year on benefits to support disabled people and people with health conditions, which is over 6 billion more than in 2010.

Work and Pensions Secretary Damian Green

One of the authors, Stig Langvad, has argued that the Danish government should pay for disabled people to visit prostitutes, saying: Sexual frustration can be a major problem for the disabled, and in some cases the last solution is to visit a prostitute.

Politicians can debate whether prostitution in general should be allowed, but if it is, why should the disabled be the only ones prevented from having access to it?

Work and Pensions Secretary Damian Green set out plans last week to confront the prejudices and misunderstandings which prevent those with physical and mental health difficulties from finding employment.

He said he wanted to raise awareness of the health benefits of being employed and to make clear that the idea that sitting at home living on benefits is in any way good for people  particularly people with a mental health condition  is completely wrong.
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A postbox is an unexpected find in a cemetery.

Painted gold, the metal box displays a portrait of the 19th Century poet Arthur Rimbaud, who is buried here at Charleville.

The postbox was installed because people write to him. Even now. The French Ardennes, close to the Belgian border, celebrate the young poet, who died 125 years ago this month.

The delightfully elegant Charleville, founded in 1606 by Charles, Duke of Mantua - the hometown of 19th Century poet Arthur Rimbaud, who is buried here

Although Rimbauds writing career lasted only five years, his influence stretches across the arts, from Picasso to Bob Dylan, who, when introduced to his writing, said that the bells went off.

Mr Tambourine Man alludes to Le Bateau Ivre (Drunken Boat), often considered Rimbauds best work.

Rimbaud stopped writing at 21, eventually becoming a trader in Ethiopia, but still people come to pay homage. We were, in a way, also doing that.

Half the appeal was the landscape of the Ardennes  the thickly wooded region just a three-hour drive from Calais  but I also wanted to know more about this charismatic poet.

In the house where Rimbaud spent his adolescent years, now La Maison dAilleurs (the House of Elsewhere), the curator produced two boxes crammed with recent post, including stapled sheets of poems, photos, and a T-shirt.

These items are not on show but the more beautiful letters are read during poetry events.

Painted gold, the metal box displays a portrait of the poet and was installed because people still write to him to this day

Perhaps his adventurous spirit is the attraction: Rimbaud ran away three times as a teenager from the town he hated. Its hard to reconcile this dislike with todays elegant Charleville, founded in 1606 by Charles, Duke of Mantua.

Its centrepiece is the magnificent Place Ducale, edged by arcades and fine townhouses. Its well used  this month it is given over to stalls of local products including pate and embroidery.

When we were there, a family play day was in full swing, with over-sized games of Scrabble and chess clustered around a great carousel.

Our guide, Elisabeth, took us to Rimbauds homes, telling us about the repressive mother he dubbed the mouth of darkness, but also to the Place Winston Churchill, which is the home of the Puppetry Institute  20 students a year enlist for the diploma course. And the biennial World Puppet Theatre Festival is held in Charleville.

The presence of the young poet is everywhere, from the hairdresser bearing his name to Le Table dArthur, the restaurant opposite his birthplace.

Rimbaud, pictured, stopped writing at 21, eventually becoming a trader in Ethiopia

The glass facade of the hotel Le Dormeur du Val, named after his poem, is covered with handwritten lines of poetry, as are the walls inside this quirky former printing factory.

The one memorial to him is a humble bust in the mean little lawns, as he described the station square, facing the Cafe de lUnivers, where, on return visits, Rimbaud would meet friends.

By the river, on Quai Arthur Rimbaud, there are 18 silver chairs in groups, each engraved with a line from his writing  I believe I am in hell, and so I am there; Life is the farce conducted by all  each echoed by lines from current poets.

One thing Id known about Rimbaud was that he lived briefly in Camden Town, North London, with fellow poet Paul Verlaine. Their stormy relationship ended in Brussels with Verlaine shooting Rimbaud in the hand.

Despite this, they are forever linked  there is, of course, a Rimbaud-Verlaine route in the Ardennes.

This route took us along quiet, sun-dappled roads between hillsides blanketed with an autumn tapestry of rust-reds and golden-browns and past orchards to Roche, where Rimbaud would stay at his mothers farmhouse, now long gone.

We also went to nearby Voncq to see the station from which he often started his journeys. The old tracks, smothered in weeds, are still there, and so is a weathered copper sculpture mounted on a trunk, displaying names of places that Rimbaud visited.

Our journey ended at the Musee Verlaine at Juniville, in what was Le Lion dOr, Verlaines favoured drinking place. Invitingly, the door stood open, leading into a time capsule  the fireplace, table and grandfather clock as they were in Verlaines day.

Although Rimbauds writing career lasted only five years, his influence stretches across the arts, from Picasso to Bob Dylan

But the Ardennes can boast of more than poets, including the largest fortress in Europe at Sedan, where we stayed at the Hotel Le Chateau Fort.

On another day, we climbed to the viewpoint at Montherme to see Le Boucle de Meuse, the U-shaped loop of the river, visited fortified churches and the star-shaped town of Rocroi.

And this region is famous for its food. Wed eaten well but the best came last, at Signy-lAbbaye, an unassuming village with an outstanding restaurant and an equally memorable guesthouse, the 18th Century La Petite Abbaye.

One day we headed across the road to Auberge de lAbbaye, which has been in the same family for seven generations. The husband of the current owner has an organic farm, which accounted for the succulence of the lamb. An excellent finale.
Limerick finds it hard to catch a break. Even its nickname, the Treaty City, is a reminder of a raw deal. Then Galway beat it to become 2020 European City of Culture.

The upside of all this is that its a bargain  and charming too. Just over three hours west of Dublin and 20 minutes from Shannon Airport, it offers an intimate experience of contemporary Irish life.

Local rugby legends such as Paul OConnell hang out in the citys pubs and cafes  in fact, rugby has displaced church as the major weekend draw.

On the water: King Johns Castle has dominated Limericks riverfront for 800 years

The citys ridged Georgian grid cascades towards the River Shannon and into its medieval centre.

Forget transport, you can walk to Englishtown, launch pad for the flight of Irelands Wild Geese, a Catholic army of James II loyalists led by local hero Patrick Sarsfield in 1691.

Stroll down narrow lanes to King Johns Castle, which has dominated Limericks riverfront for 800 years. Its had a multi-million-euro facelift.

The late, great Terry Wogan, born and raised here, once said: Limerick never left me; whatever it is, my identity is Limerick.

Gone, but not forgotten: The late Terry Wogan was born and raised in Limerick

Thomond Park Stadium, Limericks version of Sydneys opera house, is an integral part of that identity.

Its a giant concrete commitment to Munster Rugby, the team that unites the city.

Another Limerick staple is the pub: head to Willie Sextons on Henry Street, whose patrons have Guinness flowing through their veins.

Tom Collins on Cecil Street is the definitive old mans pub, with the accompanying political banter.

Frank McCourts Angelas Ashes is set here, and the city also boasts a statue of its export to Hollywood, Richard Harris.

He poses with crown and sword  and looks proud to be here.
The Bachelorette's Georgia Love was comforted by her boyfriend Lee Elliott as the bereaved reality star bid a final farewell to her late mother Belinda at her funeral on Friday.

The couple was joined by Georgia's family and friends as they attended the memorial, which took place in Melbourne.

With their eyes hidden behind sunglasses, Georgia and Lee were seen tightly holding hands alongside several other mourners.

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Final farewell: The Bachelorette's Georgia Love was comforted by her new boyfriend Lee Elliott as the bereaved TV star bid a final farewell to her late mother Belinda at her funeral on Friday

Pursing her lips slightly, Georgia put on a brave face as she walked towards a white car parked outside.

Rather than wearing traditional all-black, Georgia chose a mini-dress in white lace and a pair of electric blue heels.

With her mother having passed away from pancreatic cancer, Georgia chose to show her support for charities that raise funds and awareness for the illness by pinning a purple ribbon to her chest.

Family: The couple were joined by Georgia's family and friends as they attended the memorial, which took place in Melbourne

Lee also embellished his navy suit with a purple ribbon, completing his look with a light blue shirt and brown dress shoes.

Outside the funeral, Georgia and Lee appeared to have a brief conversation with several family members and friends.

Following a discussion with other guests, Lee escorted Georgia with his hand firmly clenched in hers.

Rather than wearing traditional all-black, Georgia chose a white lace frock

Touching: With her mother having passed away from pancreatic cancer, Georgia chose to show her support for charities that raise funds and awareness for the illness by pinning a purple ribbon to her chest

Smart: Lee also embellished his navy suit with a purple ribbon, completing his look with a light blue shirt and brown dress shoes

Embrace: Lee was later seen hugging a funeral attendee next to a vehicle

Solemn: Georgia's father Dr Christopher Love after the ceremony

Lee was spotted with other funeral attendees outside

Support: Lee escorted Georgia to a car with his hand clenched in hers

Belinda died from pancreatic cancer last Saturday.

On Thursday, Georgia took to Instagram to thank her fans for their overwhelming support in the wake of her family's heartbreak.

'I am so overwhelmed by the huge outpouring of love, support and condolences from all over the world since announcing the devastating news of my beautiful mum's passing,' she wrote.

Tragic news: It was announced last week that Belinda had died from pancreatic cancer

Supportive: Lee bid farewell to Georgia as the family drove away

'I am so overwhelmed': Georgia recently took to Instagram to thank her fans for their support in the wake of her family's heartbreak

Describing the loss of her 60-year-old mother as 'gut wrenching,' Georgia said she hopes to raise awareness of the disease.

'One thing my mum taught me was to believe in paying it forward and that from every negative can come even the slightest positive.

'So I hope my family's gut wrenching loss can create some awareness of the brutal disease that is pancreatic cancer and hopefully do some good in helping to find a cure,' Georgia said.

'One thing my mum taught me was to believe in paying it forward': Georgia has described the loss of her 60-year-old mother as 'gut wrenching'

'How is it possible youre no longer here? Georgia revealed on social media that her 'heart is utterly broken' after Belinda passed away

Noting that November is pancreatic cancer awareness month, the TV personality urged people to donate towards finding a cure.

'Let's hope the sobering statistic of a 7 per cent survival rate for this awful cancer can be changed,' she wrote.

Sharing photos of the pair together in happier times, Georgia added: 7 weeks ago we were sipping cocktails in Italy. 7 months ago you werent even sick. How is it possible youre no longer here?

'I have no idea how to even begin to say goodbye': She told her 91,000 social media followers the former nurse has supported and backed 'every single thing' she did

The former journalist, who often spoke fondly of her mother on The Bachelorette, described Belinda as: 'My first friend and my best friend, my rock, the one who knew me better than anyone in the world.'

She told her 91,000 Instagram followers her mother supported and backed 'every single thing' she did.

'There is so much more I need and want to share with you,' she wrote. 'I have no idea how to even begin to say goodbye.'

Tragic: Georgia, who often spoke fondly of her mother on the show, described her as: 'my first friend and my best friend, my rock, the one who knew me better than anyone in the world'

Speaking to TV Week, Georgia spoke about the moment she introduced her Bachelorette winner boyfriend Lee to her mother.

'It was amazing to see how much he perked her up,' she said, adding: 'She was sitting up talking and laughing with him, which she hadn't been able to do all day.

'It was obviously an awful place and reason to be meeting.'

'It was amazing to see how much he perked her up': Speaking to TV Week, Georgia revealed the moment she introduced her Bachelorette winner boyfriend Lee to her mother

Georgia fell for mechanical plumber Lee after they met on Network Ten's The Bachelorette earlier this year.

The finale saw Georgia fly to Singapore with her top two contestants - Lee and runner-up Matty Johnson - as well as Georgia's father and sister.

Belinda was too unwell to travel, and instead sent her best wishes ahead of the final rose ceremony via a video.
She may travel all over the world with her modelling and business careers, but Bambi Northwood-Blyth still finds time to show off her bikini body.

Bambi shared an Instagram snap on Friday of herself in a black two-piece as she took some time out of a work trip to soak up the Gold Coast sun.

Relaxing poolside at the luxury Palazzo Versace hotel, the fashion model knelt on a lounger as she flashed a smile at the camera.

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Model behaviour! Bambi Northwood-Blyth uploaded a photo to Instagram on Friday showing off her bikini body

The brunette grabbed her hair and tilted her head to the side as she displayed her slender frame for the camera.

She captioned the snap: 'BUSINESS AND PLEASURE ... ALL ROLLED INTO ONE.'

On Thursday, the beauty treated her fans to another scantily-clad picture.

A vision in white: Bambi looks stunning as she takes a swim during her time at the Palazzo Versace hotel on the Gold Coast

Beach babe: The 25-year-old is seemingly on a business trip for her wine business

Standing in a swimming pool, Bambi's white bikini clung to her slim frame as she strolled out of the water.

The model is believed to be on a business trip in regards to the company she runs with husband Dan Single.

The couple have their own line of luxury rose called Pour Les Amour.

Cases of the wine go for between $180 and $240 on its official website, which also sells a number of other interesting items.

Dream team: Bambi and her husband Dan Single also have a joint venture selling a trendy range of pyjamas

Trend setter: The Melbourne native has been married to Dan for over two years after they tied the knot in Byron Bay

The Pour Les Amour online store sells a pink Jane Austen book set for $228, a pink Dan & Bambi mixtape on cassette for $818, a pink diamond for $450,000, and a pink Dan & Bambi jet for $250 million.

At the Bondi launch for their second bottle, Bambi told the Daily Telegraph the couple weren't finished with the brand yet.

'We're going to fulfil the family. It's creating our ultimate flavour  this is our ultimate sparkling, that was our ultimate rose. Next is an ultimate white and an ultimate red,' she said.

Th savvy couple also have their own line of trendy pyjamas called P.Jame, which are available online.
She struts around on the Vegas stage in a series of skimpy outfits as she entertains fans during her lucrative show.

But Britney Spears let someone else do the work for once, as she enjoyed a night off from her Planet Hollywood gig.

And this time it was the boys who were on show - as Britney and her mom Lynne caught a male strip show.

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'Just a night off in Vegas!' Britney Spears recoils in delighted horror as she enjoys the male strip show with her mom

'Just a night off in Vegas,' wrote Britney, alongside the cheeky snap of herself recoiling in mock horror at the spectacle.

Despite her pretense at shyness, it was clear the pop-star was having fun, as she laughed at the hunks disrobing in front of her as part of the Thunder From Down Under show at Excalibur.

She also shared a photo of herself and her mother posing on the red carpet with the men, captioned: 'Girls night out with the boys from down under.'

'Girls night out with the boys from down under': She also shared a photo of herself and her mother posing on the red carpet with the men

Perhaps Britney - who has sons Sean, 11, and Jayden, 10, with ex-husband Kevin Federline - was checking out the local talent.

The 34-year-old has been single since separating from film and TV producer Charlie Ebersol in June 2015 but she isn't worried about being single and is sure love will come into her life when the time is right.

She said: 'I'm in a really good place right now so I think, I'm just, I'm loving [myself] and learning about myself every day and learning [about] who I am so it's just, it's awakening, it's cool. It's OK to be single, yeah, it totally is.'

Britney, 34, remains very close to her mother Lynne Spears. They're pictured going shopping together in July near the pop star's Thousand Oaks, California, home

Meanwhile, Britney released her ninth album 'Glory' in August and said it was 'everything I wanted it to be'.

She explained: 'Honestly, this is the first project where I've really been hands-on. I was really specific about who I worked with, and I've been learning to say no.

'I'm a people pleaser, so that's hard for me. Even if I don't like something, I'll do it just to make a person happy. I made sure this album was everything I wanted it to be. I was really selfish with it.'
She's a sister for their two-year-old son, Fordham Rhys.

And Bachelorette star Ashley Hebert Rosenbaum and husband J.P. Rosenbaum looked over the moon as they introduced their little girl to the world in Miami, Florida, on Friday.

Essex Reese was born via Caesarean section at 10.38am and weighed in at a healthy 7lbs 11oz, measuring 19ins long, according to People.

Still waiting: Bachelorette star Ashley Hebert Rosenbaum posted this snap of her baby bump in early October. On Friday she and husband J.P. welcomed their little girl, Essex Reese

The couple shared a snap of themselves with the magazine, showing them still in hospital scrubs with their newborn swaddled up and wearing a white headband with a pink bow.

'Both mommy and beautiful baby Essie are doing great!' J.P., 39, gushed.

The 32 -year-old former reality star married J.P. after giving him the final rose in the seventh season of ABC's The Bachelorette in 2011.

Her choice: The couple met on the seventh season of The Bachelorette when the 32-year-old gave J.P the red rose in 2011

They tied the knot in a televised ceremony in December 2012.

The Rosenbaums announced they were expecting a little girl in an Instagram they posted in May.

'I cant hold it in any longer  My heart is bursting with love now that were #ClearblueConfirmed!' Ashley captioned the photo of a blackboard with the inscription 'Ashley + JP + Ford + Baby Girl = [Heart].'

No. 2 on the way: They announced they were expecting their second child, a baby girl, with this cute Instagram, posted in May

Proud parents: Ashley and J.P. already share Fordham Rhys, who turned two on September 30

She has shared a slew of snaps since then, including plenty of her growing baby bump and her little boy.

Just before announcing that she was expecting, Ashley told People that they were trying for baby number two.

'Theres talk, and theres action of more babies. Were talking  and were rockin!' Ashley joked.
King Lear, by William Shakespeare (Old Vic)

Rating:

Glenda Jackson, 80, makes a memorable return to the London stage  as King Lear  after her long, self-banishment to Parliament.

The sometime Oscar-winner, one of the actresses of her generation, became a Labour MP in 1992.

For 23 years she forsook her art for a humdrum career in politics (MP for Hampstead and briefly junior minister for transport).

Glenda Jackson, pictured, 80, has made a memorable return to the stage in London

Oscar-winner Jackson, right, is tackling the title role in King Lear at the Old Vic, with more star power in the form of Rhys Ifans as the Fool

It was an exile, you could say, of Shakespearean proportions. Now she has returned in his epic about senseless suffering caused by political impetuousness.

Miss Jacksons casting, like much else in Deborah Warners Brechtian production, could be seen as a cheap stunt.

Ah, alienation technique. Director shouts look at me, not at the playwright or the human story.

There is plenty in this show that irritates: baring of chaps bottoms, a Fool (Rhys Ifans) dressed in a Superman outfit and singing a Bob Dylan tune, a French kings accent possibly borrowed from Allo Allo.

The eye-gouging scene is so feeble that some people laughed, particularly when one of the eyes was thrown to the stalls like a toffee at a Christmas panto.

There was further unintended comedy when an actor skidded on some stage blood and nearly took a wonderful purler.

There is plenty in the show - featuring Harry Melling (left) as Edgar and Karl Johnson (right) as Gloucester, that irritates, writes QUENTIN LETTS

But in its 'magnetic star' Jackson, pictured with Ifans, forces the audience to take notice

Alack, I have no eyes, moans Gloucester. Should we not feel pity? The audience giggled!

And when Oswald died with the words oh, untimely death there were snorts of mirth.

Yet thanks to its magnetic star this show is undeniably theatrical. Lear played by a woman? Daft, but you are forced to take notice. This is show-business, after all.

She makes for a shrivelled Lear, lined as a walnut, scuttling, hobbling, flicking her unisex fringe and waving two distractingly large, washerwomanish hands as though in semaphore.

Her performance tastes oddly over-rehearsed, almost every sentence seemingly with its designated gesticulations and vocal inflections.

Jackson, pictured in Parliament, returns to the theatre after serving as MP for Hampstead and Kilburn for 23 years

This is also true of Harry Mellings Edgar, who at the finale, when talking of Lears death, keeps whacking his own heart. He should let the verse speak for itself.

Miss Jacksons changes in tone frequently feel pre-designated rather than organic.

The cigarettey voice is deep, often as deep as many a male Lear, and at times assumes a strangulated, fishtank-ish quality.

She is tiny, short, skinny, gums and teeth prominent. Albert Steptoe? Rosa Klebb? Dot Cotton?

The opening scene, when Lear tests his three daughters love, lacks any palatial grandeur.

It becomes a family row in a front room. Miss Jackson skilfully suggests that Lear is delighted to be retiring from the daily toil of rule.

Before the start, cast members lounge about while stagehands  hammering, drilling, vacuuming  apparently prepare for the evenings spectacle.

The set makes use of large white panels on which we see characters elongated shadows.

In the storm scene these panels carry projected images of sleet and scudding night clouds.

That moment  a sparrow-like Lear lit by the Fools close-held hand-light  is one of the few when emotion creeps into proceedings.

Pictured campaigning with then-prime minister Gordon Brown, her 2010 election victory margin of just 42 votes was one of the closest of the year

In her political career she has also met the Queen, pictured, and served as junior Transport Minister between 1997 and 1999

Another is the final speech after the death of Cordelia, she and Lear having been dragged on stage on a carpet.

A patchy cast includes Celia Imrie and Jane Horrocks as a slightly silly Goneril and Regan, Karl Johnson as a decent Gloucester, Simon Manyondas underpowered Edmund, and William Chubb and Danny Webb rather good as Albany and Cornwall.

This Lear places spectacle above emotional truth. All the depth of fatherhood and mens relationship with their daughters is sacrificed for the newsworthiness of casting a great actress as the king.

All the same, its good to have Glenda back on stage.
She never fails to look stylish, favouring a relaxed tomboy look.

And Dakota Johnson looked effortlessly cool when she touched down at LAX on Friday, sporting a relaxing ensemble for her flight.

The 27-year-old Fifty Shades Darker star was clad in a chic grey coat, worn over a loose fitting polka dot blouse.

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Chic yet casual: Dakota Johnson looked effortlessly cool as ever when she touched down at LAX on Friday, sporting a relaxing ensemble for her flight

Dakota completed her attire with ankle-grazing distressed denim and some buckle embellished loafers.

She wore her brunette locks hanging loose, hiding behind her long fringe and shades as she made her way through the airport.

The star's outing comes after her handsome co-star Jamie Dornan laughed off rumours he was set to be replaced in the kinky big screen adaptations of the racy novel trilogy.

Tomboy vibes: The 27-year-old Fifty Shades Darker star was clad in a chic grey coat, worn over a loose fitting polka dot blouse

Bedhead: She wore her brunette locks hanging loose, hiding behind her long fringe as she made her way through the airport

Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Thursday night, he dismissed allegations he was getting the axe in favour of The Vampire Diaries hunk Ian Somerhalder.

'That would be really hard for them to do, considering we shot both of the movies,' Jamie said.

'Thats an expensive mistake, Ill put it that way. But good luck to him  hell be great.'

Denim delight: Dakota completed her attire with ankle-grazing distressed denim and some buckle embellished loafers

Shady lady: Dakota was sporting a pair of large sunglasses for her outing

Dismissing the claims: The star's outing comes after her handsome co-star Jamie Dornan laughed off rumours he was set to be replaced in the film franchise

Dakota and Jamie have spent much of this year shooting that film's forthcoming sequels, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed.

All three are based on EL James' novels of the same name, published from 2011 to 2012.

Johnson stars as Anastasia Steele, who begins a steamy and turbulent relationship with a billionaire called Christian Grey, played by Jamie.

The first sequel is slated for release in the US and UK next February 10. Its successor will open in both countries the following February 9.

Laughing it off: Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Thursday night, he dismissed allegations he was getting the axe in favour of The Vampire Diaries hunk Ian Somerhalder
Their relationship has faced a lot of backlash for the wide age gap.

But Mel Gibson, 60, has vehemently defended his romance with former equestrian vaulter Rosalind Ross, 26, who is expecting his ninth child.

The Lethal Weapon star told The Mirror: 'Regarding age and relationships, it's just a number. We dig each other.'

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Controversial: Mel Gibson, 60, has vehemently defended his romance with former equestrian vaulter Rosalind Ross, 26, (pictured together in May) who is expecting his ninth child

Speaking about Rosalind, who he has been dating for two years, he added: 'She is an adult and we dig each other.

'It might cause a problem and one has a trepidation about these things, but it's working out great. She is a really special person.'

The former vaulting champ was first spotted with Gibson, in July and has since become a regular fixture at his side.

However, close friend and former vaulting partner Devon Maitozo says the 'private' Rosalind has found dealing with the 'negative attention' that has accompanied her new relationship difficult and now just wants to 'get on with her life'.

Adamant: The Lethal Weapon star told The Mirror: 'Regarding age and relationships, it's just a number. We dig each other.'

New romance: Speaking about Rosalind, who he has been dating for two years, he said: 'She is an adult and we dig each other'

Speaking exclusively to Daily Mail Online, Maitozo, 33, added: 'There's been a lot of very not very nice media that's been written about her. Sifting through it has not been very pleasant at all.

'Sensationalizing her because of her relationships is not what she's looking for.

Ross and Gibson are believed to have met last spring when she applied for a job at his production company Icon.

According to Radar Online, love then blossomed during a visit to the 60-year-old's 500-acre Costa Rica ranch.

'They started their romantic getaway in Costa Rica, hiding out in Playa Barrigona, where he owns a 500-acre tropical sanctuary in the middle of the jungle, before heading to Panama. It's clear the two of them are really happy together,' a source told the website.

Past loves: The Passion Of The Christ star has already fathered a daughter with Oksana Grigorieva, who was 14 years his junior

Since then, the two have been virtually inseparable, with Ross joining the actor on vacation in Sydney last August and visiting him on the set of Hacksaw Ridge  a World War II drama  last November.

The Passion Of The Christ star has already fathered a daughter with Oksana Grigorieva, who was 14 years his junior.

He began an affair with her while still married to his wife of almost 30 years Robyn Moore - who he divorced in 2009 after a three-year separation.

Mel has seven children with ex-wife Robyn - Hannah, 36, twin boys Christian and Edward, 34, William, 31, Louis, 28, Milo, 26, and Thomas, 17.

Former flames: He began an affair with Oksana while still married to his wife of almost 30 years Robyn Moore - who he divorced in 2009 after a three-year separation

He also has a six-year-old daughter, Lucia, with Oksana.

Mel hit the headlines after unleashing a rage-filled outburst at Oksana, the mother of his youngest child, blasting her with racist and misogynistic slurs.

After the media outcry following his outburst, which he called 'the worst moment' of his life, he retreated to his Catholic church.

He also spent time praying, going to therapy twice a week and getting counselling.

After a ten-year exile from the industry, he is back in Hollywood with his combat saga Hacksaw Ridge - which was well-received at the Venice Film Festival.

The story follows a pacifist who is caught up in World War Two - the first film Mel has directed since Apocalypto ten years ago.
Stylish celebrities and well-clad punters descended upon Flemington in celebration of Stakes Day this Saturday.

But it was pregnant Rachael Finch who stole the show as she showcased her baby bump in a crisp floral frock by Australian label Cue.

The expectant mother showcased her enviable legs in the mini-dress, which featured pleated skirt detailing and structured short sleeves.

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Feminine florals: Pregnant Rachael Finch who stole the show at Flemington as she attended Stakes Day 2016 in a crisp floral frock by Australian label Cue on Saturday

She added understated accessories to complete the look, including a clutch bag by Mon Purse, a pair of nude heels by Tony Bianco and a quirky silver headpiece by Anne Shoebridge.

Meanwhile, Olympia Valance looked sweet in an off-shoulder midi dress and pink hair bow fascinator by Anne Shoebridge.

Myer Ambassador Lauren Phillips highlighted her hourglass frame in a 1950's-inspired wrap dress by Morrison.

LEgging it! The expectant mother showcased her enviable legs in the mini dress, which featured pleated skirt detailing and structured short sleeves

White hot! Meanwhile, Olympia Valance looked sweet in an off-shoulder midi dress and pink hair bow fascinator by Anne Shoebridge

Retro styling: Myer Ambassador Lauren Phillips highlighted her hourglass frame in a 1950's-inspired wrap dress by Morrison

Check, sir! She was joined by fellow Myer ambassador Kris Smith, who looked handsome in a checked navy blue suit and brown dress shoes

Popping a bright red shade on her lips,the model wore her chestnut hair in loose curls while topping off her look with a retro headscarf by Eugenia Kimnyc and hoop earrings.

She was joined by fellow Myer ambassador Kris Smith, who looked handsome in a checked navy blue suit and brown dress shoes.

The male model put on a friendly display with Lauren as they hugged in front of the camera.

Cuddling up: The male model put on a friendly display with Lauren as they hugged in front of the camera

Spot on! Jack Viney of the Melbourne Demons and Charlotte Ennels also posed together at the Myer marquee, with Jack flaunting his quirky style in a polka-dot tie

Jack Viney of the Melbourne Demons and Charlotte Ennels also posed together at the Myer marquee, with Jack flaunting his quirky style in a polka-dot tie.

Elsewhere, Bold And The Beautiful actress Ashleigh Brewer looked typically stylish in a navy pencil dress with a thigh split.

Her eyes were obscured behind a black birdcage veil, while her outfit was enhanced with the addition of a circular black clutch bag.

Legging it! Elsewhere, Bold And The Beautiful actress Ashleigh Brewer looked typically stylish in a navy pencil dress with a thigh split

Glamorous: Fiona Hamilton also looked chic as she posed in a black-and-white midi frock with knee-high leather boots

Fiona Hamilton also looked chic as she posed in a black-and-white midi frock with knee-high leather boots.

She completed her look with a large floral headpiece and matching clutch bag.

Brendan Fevola, Alex Fevola and their children Mia Fevola, Leni Fevola and Lulu Fevola all arrived together at the high-profile event.

Blooming wonderful! She completed her look with a large floral headpiece and matching clutch bag

The whole gang's here! Brendan Fevola, Alex Fevola and their children Mia Fevola, Leni Fevola and Lulu Fevola all arrived together at the high-profile event

The Real Housewives of Melbourne's Lydia Schiavello looked regal as she arrived in an emerald frock and gold crown.

She enhanced her bold outfit with a gold clutch bag and match platform heels.

Elsewhere, Tully Smyth looked elegant in a slinky silver mini dress and leather floral headpiece.

Fit for a queen! The Real Housewives of Melbourne's Lydia Schiavello looked regal as she arrived in an emerald frock and gold crown
He found himself embroiled in a dramatic Instagram war last month after hoards of trolls took aim at a photo of himself with a trio of photoshopped puppies.

And the war is far from over for The Bachelorette's breakout star Rhys Chilton, 29, who on Saturday blasted his critics for being 'idiots.'

Taking to Instagram, the hunky entrepreneur uploaded a black-and-white photo of his face alongside the message: 'Me after a busy night scratching my head over how stupid people can be.'

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'Me after a busy night scratching my head over how stupid people can be': The Bachelorette's breakout star Rhys Chilton, 29, who on Saturday blasted trolls for mocking a clearly photoshopped snap of himself posing with puppies in bed

'If you want an example of lower intelligence, scroll down to my fake puppies photo and read the comments,' he grumbled.

Amid the onslaught, Rhys also amended the puppy photo's caption to read: 'PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT - in the first ten comments... i clearly state it's fake.'

'Therefore... I happily call most of the below commenters... absolute f****** idiots. Sorry... just cant sugar coat it anymore enjoy being captain obvious #idiotseverywhere.'

Biting back: Amid the onslaught, Rhys also amended the puppy photo's caption to read: 'PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT - in the first ten comments... i clearly state it's fake'

The photo that started it all: Speaking to Daily Mail Australia on Tuesday, Rhys explained: 'I posted a bed photo (from a test shoot) and a girl commented straight away saying it would be so cute if there was a kitten in it'

Meanwhile, eagle-eyed fans have picked up that Rhys' penchant for posting photoshopped animal-themed photos is part of a running joke.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, Rhys explained the origin of the joke, saying: 'I posted a bed photo (from a test shoot) and a girl commented straight away saying it would be so cute if there was a kitten in it'.

'So I quickly deleted it, edited in a kitten and re-uploaded it. So many people were fooled I just had to have some fun with it,' he explained.

Poking fun: Meanwhile, eagle-eyed fans have picked up that Rhys' penchant for posting photoshopped animal-themed photos is part of a running joke

Trolling the trolls! Rather than relenting to trolls by deleting the photo, Rhys has been updating his Instagram profile with even more photoshopped fodder as a way to poke fun at those that take him too seriously

'I'm sitting back laughing': Rather than relenting to trolls by deleting the photoshopped animal photos, Rhys has been updating his Instagram profile with even more photoshopped fodder as a way to poke fun at those that take him too seriously

Rather than relenting to trolls by deleting the photoshopped animal photos, Rhys has been updating his Instagram profile with even more photoshopped fodder as a way to poke fun at those that take him too seriously.

'I'm sitting back laughing at the people who really cant see the humour. I feel good humour is linked to high intelligence, do i need to say more?' he told Daily Mail Australia.

Posting a series of increasingly fantastical images, the reality TV star is seen posing with the likes of a tiger cub as well as a mammoth crocodile.
She earned herself a role in one of America's longest-running soaps, The Bold And The Beautiful.

And Ashleigh Brewer made her own bold arrival on Saturday, attending Melbourne's Stakes Day 2016 in a racy frock with a daring thigh split.

The deep blue ensemble drew attention to the 25-year-old's lithe frame while the low-cut neckline offered a glimpse of her cleavage.

All tied up! Soap star Ashleigh Brewer, 25, made a BOLD arrival in a racy frock with a daring thigh split as she arrived at Melbourne's Stakes Day 2016 on Saturday

Ashleigh took to the Lavazza media wall in a deep blue frock that accentuated her svelte physique.

A generous split and tie-up detailing from the waist down drew attention to the star's trim pins, while a ribbon running across her bust focused in on her delicate decolletage and toned shoulders.

Elongating her frame with a pair of nude strappy heels, she carried her belongings in a gold-chained bag and opted for a simple black veil placed over half of her face.

Revealing: A generous split and tie-up detailing from the waist down drew attention to the star's trim pins, while a ribbon running across her bust focused in on her delicate decolletage and toned shoulders

Sweeping her brunette tresses into an effortless updo, Ashleigh complemented the overall look with a flawless complexion, defined brows, subtle kohl-rimmed eyes and a glossy nude lip.

The former Neighbours star has been keeping up on the social circuit of late.

Just last Thursday saw Ashleigh make another bold arrival at Melbourne's Derby Day 2016.

The starlet opted for a white pantsuit that featured a daringly-low neckline.

Statement: Just last Thursday saw Ashleigh make another bold arrival at Melbourne's Derby Day 2016 in a white pantsuit that featured a plunging neckline

Cleverly placed stitching just under the bust drew attention to Ashleigh's slender waist while the remaining fabric skimmed over her lean legs.

Sweeping her brunette tresses underneath a green turban, Ashleigh complemented the bold look with a pair of statement drop earrings.

Accessorising further with a pair of open-toed nude heels, the Channel Ten personality held onto a two-toned statement fringed bag.

Highlighting a blemish-free visage, Ashleigh enhanced her striking facial features with defined brows, subtle kohl-rimmed eyes, a false set of lashes and a bold red lip over her plump pout.

Familiar faces: Ashleigh earned herself a role in one of America's longest-running soaps the Bold And The Beautiful
She is an It Girl of her generation.

And those credentials alone have made trendsetter Sofia Richie a perfect star for Michael Kors' The Walk campaign, which sees the blossoming model take New York City by storm with her posse of popular girls by her side.

In the campaign, the 18-year-old strolls through the Big Apple with her trusty companion by her side - a Michael Kors bag.

It Girl! Sofia Richie is one of several stars of Michael Kors' The Walk campaign

Sofia is one of four stars appearing in the campaign, which also features sister DJs Sama and Haya Khadra and model Ming Xi.

'Four It girls. Four chic bags. One night out,' reads the caption for a video starring all four ladies on the designer's Instagram account.

Jean-ius: Richie hit the nightlife wearing a denim jacket and a designer bag

Sharing the spotlight: Sofia is one of four stars appearing in the campaign, which also features sister DJs Sama and Haya Khadra and model Ming Xi

The video Sofia shared herself featured the starlet heading out for a night on the town in various different outfits, including a pair of ruby red trousers with a black crop top.

Sofia played inside an apartment as she very playfully modeled various different coats, including a plush blue and a grey one.

The video ends with the daughter of Lionel Richie returning back upstairs into her deluxe abode.

Playing dress-up! Sofia played inside an apartment as she very playfully modeled various different coats, including a plush blue and a grey one

Hello petal: The daughter of singer Lionel Richie dramatically posed beside a window in her floral print frock

The new Michael Kors campaign follows various trendsetters, including Solange Knowles, as they rock the designer's purse around town.

At just 18, Sofia's promising modelling career continues to soar.

The star was recently featured on the cover and inside pages of sweets! magazine.

She also models a new party range for PrettyLittleThing.com, of which she raved to FEMAIL about.

'I'm so excited to be involved and fronting their campaign,' she said. 'It feels awesome that they chose me to be the face.'

Home sweet home: The video ends with the daughter of Lionel Richie returning back upstairs into her deluxe abode
Fittings are in full swing in New York for the upcoming Victoria's Secret Fashion Show in Paris.

British model Lily Donaldson was seen arriving for her session on Friday in a tummy-baring ensemble that showed just why she's perfect for a lingerie-filled runway.

The 29-year-old, who's been in every VS Fashion Show since 2010, showed off her lean fibure in a cropped long-sleeved top and matching leggings.

Angel alert: British model Lily Donaldson was seen arriving for a Victoria's Secret fitting in a tummy-baring ensemble on Friday in New York City

She tucked her skinny pants into over-the-knee matching boots.

Lily donned a pair of large sunglasses and carried a backpack over one shoulder.

And the statuesque beauty literally sashayed across the sidewalk into the building with her long blonde hair flowing out behind her.

Fashion Show veteran: The 29-year-old blonde beauty wore a cropped long-sleeved crop with matching leggings that showed off her taut midriff

Sidewalk sashay: Lily, who has been in every annual VS Fashion Show since 2010, stepped out in over-the-knee boots and left her log hair flowing loose

Another Angel Kelly Gale was also called to Friday's fittings to make sure she'd look perfect in the famous brand's skimpy underwear.

The 21-year-old arrived in ripped blue jeans tucked into thigh-high taupe suede boots.

She wore a peasant blouse under a two-tone jacket and carried a large tote.

Leggy look: Swedish model Kelly Gale poured skinny blue jeans into thigh-high taupe suede boots that showed off her enviable legs and added a peasant blouse under a two-tone jacket

Back again: Kelly, 21, showed just why she's a natural as she turned the city sidewalk into her personal runway in her stunningly stylish ensemble

Kelly, who was born in Sweden to an Indian mother and Australian father, first walked in the high profile runway show back in 2013 when she was just a teen.

Brazilian beauty Daniela Braga, 24, is also a Victoria's Secret vet having walked in 2014 and 2015.

Back this year, she showed up for fittings wearing a stylish ensemble of flared gray mini skirt and black blouse with white collar.

She draped a black coat over her shoulders and went bare-legged in gray sandal heels.

The annual Victoria's Secret fashion show is set to shoot in Paris for the first time ever and will be broadcast on television in December.
It's been a difficult few weeks for The Bachelorette's Lee Elliott as he supports girlfriend Georgia Love following the tragic death of her mother.

The 35-year-old mechanical plumber was spotted at Belinda Love's funeral in Melbourne on Friday, standing loyally by the grieving family.

And earlier that morning, he was photographed running errands for the Loves before the funeral as he picked up coffee and snacks from Baker's Delight.

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A helping hand: The Bachelorette's Lee Elliott picked up coffee for his girlfriend Georgia Love's family on Friday, just hours before attending her mother Belinda's funeral in Melbourne

The handsome reality TV star was seen in Melbourne holding a bag of food and several take-away coffees for the family.

As he waited for his order, Lee appeared quite solemn while periodically checking his mobile phone.

Georgia's mother Belinda sadly lost her battle with pancreatic cancer last Saturday, shortly after being admitted to palliative care.

Support: Shortly after the coffee run, the 35-year-old mechanical plumber was spotted at Belinda Love's funeral, standing loyally by the grieving family

A difficult time: As he waited for his order, Lee appeared quite solemn while periodically checking his mobile phone

The dedicated nurse and mother-of-two was diagnosed around the time Georgia was approached for The Bachelorette.

Unfortunately, she was too unwell to film the series finale in Singapore in August.

But she was introduced to Lee in in hospital straight after the last episode was broadcast last month.

Bittersweet: Belinda lost her battle with pancreatic cancer last Saturday, after being admitted to palliative care. Fortunately, she was able to meet Lee in hospital before her passing

Former journalist Georgia, 27, recently told TV Week: 'It was amazing to see how much he perked her up.

'She was sitting up talking and laughing with him, which she hadn't been able to do all day,' she explained.

'It was obviously an awful place and reason to be meeting.'

'It was obviously an awful place and reason to be meeting': Former TV journalist Georgia confirmed that Belinda spoke to Lee after the season finale aired last month

'It was amazing to see how much he perked her up': Belinda's meeting with her daughter's boyfriend was a positive one and she clearly approved of Georgia's decision

Before Belinda's death was announced, Lee expressed his sadness for their family's struggle in an emotional Instagram post.

'I could not be any more saddened by what you and your family are going through right now,' he wrote.

'It most certainly puts everything else into perspective and has only reiterated just how much I absolutely want to be there for you & be your rock as you have been mine today and always!

'I feel truly blessed to have finally been able to meet the absolutely extraordinary woman who is your mother.

'I can certainly now see where your strength, love for life, sense of humour and beauty both inside & out come from!'
Kris Smith showed no sign of his recent break-up with Maddy King as he stepped out at Stakes Day in Melbourne on Saturday.

The 38-year-old model looked to have put his heartbreak behind him as he fulfilled his duties as a Myer ambassador at Flemington Racecourse.

The handsome Brit looked dapper as always in a Wolf Kanat suit paired with a crisp white shirt and slim polka dot tie.

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Moving on! Model Kris Smith showed no sign of his recent break-up with Maddy King as he stepped out at Stakes Day in Melbourne on Saturday

Accessorising with brown buckle dress shoes, he finished off the look with a vibrant blue pocket square.

The TV presenter also posed for a picture with another of the fashion retailer's ambassadors, Channel Nine's Lauren Phillips.

Sporting a bold red lipstick, the brunette highlighted her slim figure in a patterned green frock by Morrison.

She accessorised further with a trendy black headscarf and pair of stiletto heels.

Good friends: The TV presenter also posed for a picture with another of the fashion retailer's ambassadors, Channel Nine's Lauren Phillips

Fashion stakes: The pair looked the part as Lauren caught the eye with a bright red lipstick

Leading lady: The brunette wore a green Morrison frock, pairing the outfit with black stilettos

A plunging neckline drew attention her decolletage, while the hemline accentuated her svelte legs.

The pair certainly looked the part as they posed in a friendly embrace in front of the Myer media wall.

Kris later shared a photo of them on Instagram, with the caption: 'Stakes day with the lovely @lfizzlphillips.'

'On the rocks': Kris confirmed to Daily Mail Australia last month he had broken up with model Maddy King and their relationship had been over for some time

Still good friend! Despite their split, Kris praised Maddy (pictured) as an 'amazing' woman

Meanwhile, Kris told Daily Mail Australia he is still on good terms with ex-girlfriend Maddy despite their recent split.

Speaking at Derby Day last Saturday, he said: 'She's an amazing girl, but we've gone in different directions. She's going to follow her dreams.'

In August, Kris posted several Instagram photos from the Burning Man festival in Nevada which the pair attended together - but was not once pictured with Maddy.

'We've gone in different directions': Back in August, Kris notably shared several Instagram photos from a music festival in Nevada - but was not once pictured with Maddy

Trouble in paradise? It wasn't until they announced their split earlier this month that Maddy's absence from the Burning Man holiday snaps was made clear

It wasn't until they announced their split earlier this month that Maddy's absence from the holiday snaps became clear.

Kris revealed the end of their relationship took some 'adjusting' to and that accepting they are no longer together has been 'a bit of a process'.

Contrary to some reports, Kris revealed there are no women in his life at the moment and that he is, 'very, very single'.
She's usually known for her endless sartorial displays as a Victoria's Secret model.

Yet VS Angel Romee Strijd flaunted her unique style as she stepped out in a racy black corset on Friday in West Hollywood eatery Catch.

The 21-year-old beauty slipped into the daring sweet-heart neckline bustier which teased at her ample cleavage and model curves as she exited the famed restaurant.

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Setting pulses racing: Romee Strijd flaunted her unique style as she stepped out in a racy black corset on Friday in West Hollywood eatery Catch

Only teasing at her statuesque frame, the Dutch stunner teamed her sultry shapewear with a cropped grey ribbed turtle neck knit that framed her bust.

Bringing her own brand of unique sex appeal, Romee teamed her pulse-racing body with a pair of light washed denims that hugged her pert posterior.

The high-waisted mom-fit jeans accentuated her tiny figure and slender ankles as she swamped her usual glam heels for a pair of white converse.

Keeping her accessories to a minimum, the blonde worked a long gold necklace that rested in the midst of her bust and a classic quilted Chanel bag.

Flaunt it! The 21-year-old beauty slipped into the daring sweet-heart neckline bustier which teased at her ample cleavage and model curves as she exited the famed restaurant

Girls night out! Not alone at the restaurant, Romee was joined by fellow VS Angel Taylor Hill, who sizzled in a thigh-skimming black mini

Romee's golden glossy locks cascaded down her shoulder to her waist as she plumped her pout with a swipe of pink lipgloss.

Not alone at the restaurant, Romee was joined by fellow VS Angel Taylor Hill, who sizzled in a thigh-skimming black mini.

Flaunting her enviable hourglass figure, the American beauty wrapped a thick waist belt with a gold buckle around her waist as she displayed her never-ending toned pins.

Style star: Flaunting her enviable hourglass figure, the American beauty wrapped a thick waist belt with a gold buckle around her waist as she displayed her never-ending toned pins

The 20-year-old completed her skin-flashing ensemble with a plunging purple velvet vest with spaghetti straps, which she teamed with a tan choker.

Displaying her stellar cheekbones, Taylor opted to sweep her chocolate brown locks into a chic top knot.

The runway stars are currently in the midst of preparing for the annual Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, which will air on December 5.

Taking the plunge: The 20-year-old completed her skin-flashing ensemble with a plunging purple velvet vest with spaghetti straps, which she teamed with a tan choker

This year's show will take place in Paris, France with models Adriana Lima, Alessandra Ambrosio, Stella Maxwell, Lily Aldridge and Martha Hunt taking to the VS runway.

Other newcomers for this year's show include Bella Hadid, Dilone and Georgia Fowler.

Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner will be walking the show for the second year in a row.

Jasmine Tookes was chosen to wear this year's coveted Fantasy Bra, which is worth $3 million.

Getting runway ready: The runway stars are currently in the midst of preparing for the annual Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, which will air on December 5

Also dining at Catch on Friday night was singer Chris Brown and reality star Scott Disick.

The pair looked at ease in each other's company as they were spotted arriving together at the hotspot.

Meanwhile, Rich Kids star EJ Johnson made quite an entrance to the restaurant in a sheer lace body and knee high boots.

Boys night out: Chris Brown and Scott Disick also were spotted at the eatery

Place to be: Rapper Wiz Khalifa also dined at Catch on Friday night
She raised eyebrows just last week when she stepped out revealing her incredibly slim frame in a minuscule Santa outfit for Halloween.

But Tara Reid went for a much more demure look as she covered up for a night out on Friday.

The American Pie actress, 40, hid her slight frame under an oversized black poncho as she headed to Catch, LA for dinner.

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Stylish: American Pie beauty Tara Reid, 40, hid her tiny frame under a chic black poncho as she headed out to dinner at Catch in LA

The actress teamed her smart poncho with a pair of leather pants as she enjoyed a girl's night out on Friday.

Her poncho was had a wintry vibe with its furry texture as she wrapped up on the night at the popular eaterie.

She made a rather memorable entrance by wearing a pair of electric blue high heeled boots, adding a modern twist to time-old blue suede shoes.

These boots are made for walking! She made a rather memorable entrance by wearing a pair of electric blue high heeled boots, adding a modern twist to time-old blue suede shoes

Hot pink: The American Pie star opted a generous layer of hot pink lipstick and heavily applied eye-liner

The pretty star added a splash of colour to brighten up her dark ensemble when it came to her make-up.

The American Pie star opted a generous layer of hot pink lipstick and heavily applied eye-liner.

She wore her locks sleek and straight as she tucked her hair behind her ears.

The pretty star added a splash of colour to brighten up her dark ensemble when it came to her make-up.

Just last week Tara hit headlines when she opted for a Christmas themed bralet and micro-skirt  an outfit that once again drew attention to her worryingly slight frame during an appearance at the annual Trick or Treats magazine bash.

Revealing a pair of slender legs and super slim waistline, Tara inevitably caught the eye as she climbed from the rear of her car and made her way inside.

A jaunty Santa Claus hat completed her look, while wedge heels with distinctive transparent straps rounded things off.

Happy Halloween! Tara Reid opted for a Christmas themed bralet and micro-skirt for an appearance at the annual Trick or Treats magazine bash in Los Angeles last Saturday evening

In 2014 Reid hit back after social media commentators slammed her for being 'too skinny'.

'I'm just a small-boned girl. I eat, I eat, I eat,' she told TMZ at the time.

'Some people that eat too much, you yell at them that they're fat. You want to get mad at me because I'm skinny? Great, get mad at me. I am what I am.'
She recently celebrated her birthday with a star-studded seventies inspired soiree.

And although looking every inch the disco diva on the night, Nicole Richie has gone back to her stylish ways as she stepped out in Los Angeles on Friday night.

The 35-year-old sported a pair loose-fitting light wash denims as she hosted the fashionable Pearl x Change VIP Pre Party with Levi's Customization.

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Style queen: Nicole Richie looked stylish as she stepped out in Los Angeles on Friday night

The House of Harlow designer worked the baggy ripped knee jeans which she cuffed to flaunt her art deco inspired Mary Jane heels.

Injecting height into her 5ft1 frame, the Simple Life star - who is mum to Sparrow, 7, and daughter Harlow, 8 - displayed her slender pins in the relax fit jeans as she enjoyed the event.

The busy mum-of-two teamed her chic ensemble with a sleeveless black polo neck knit which hide her slight physique.

Adding vibrancy to her laid back look, Nicole - who is Lionel Richie's eldest daughter - plumped up her put with a bold blood orange lip which offset her statement drop earrings perfectly.

Fashion forward: The 35-year-old sported a pair loose-fitting light wash denims as she attended the fashionable Pearl x Change VIP Pre Party with Levi's Customization

Nicole - who has been married to Good Charlotte's Joel Madden for nearly six years - offset her flawless complexion by sweeping her caramel hued tresses into a slicked back bun.

The fashion designer's understated appearance comes after she's had a whirlwind few weeks, enjoying her 35th birthday with a disco-themed bash at The Standard Hollywood.

On the night dazzled in a $260 'Ali Sequin' halter dress from her label's collaboration with Revolve as she partied with her close friends.

Spotted at the invite-only, 100-person capacity club Giorgio's was Mechanic: Resurrection star Jessica Alba, designer Rachel Zoe and Deep Horizon actress Kate Hudson.

In her jeans: The busy mum-of-two teamed her chic ensemble with a sleeveless black polo neck knit which hide her slight physique - pictured with Karyn Hillman

Chic: Adding vibrancy to her laid back look, Nicole plumped up her put with a bold blood orange lip which offset her statement drop earrings perfectly

Continuing to celebrate her milestone, Nicole wrote an essay for Lena Dunham's site Lenny - admitting she's not ashamed of her wild past that includes partying with Paris Hilton and getting a DUI.

Nicole insisted she doesn't care about the names she's been called because of her past.

She wrote: 'I've been given many titles: Wild child. Reality star. White-washed black girl. Skinny. Rich. (I guess the last two aren't so bad).'

'Now, at 35, the only titles I am taking on are the ones I give myself.'
They are one of the favourite acts tipped to win this year's X Factor.

And boyband 5AM - known as Five After Midnight - got a taste of what their future could hold on Friday, as they mingled with some of the country's top sporting stars at the WWE Live VIP party.

The group, formed by Jordan Lee, Nathan Lewis and Kieran Alleyne, relaxed with Olympic gold medallist Jade Jones at the exclusive bash, ahead of their nerve-wracking live show at ITV studios.

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Perks of the job! X Factor group 5 After Midnight got a taste of what their future could hold on Saturday, as they mingled with top sporting stars at the WWE Live VIP party at Wembley Arena

The lads looked every inch the modern boy band in their co-ordinating outfits of grey, black and red as they happily chatted to their fellow guests at the event.

Jordan and Kieran somewhat matched in their looks by both sporting funky vibrant red jackets on top of all-black ensembles and accessorising with gold chains.

The former opted for high-shine bomber while his pal decided on a slick leather biker number, showing off their trendy senses of style.

VIP status: The group, formed by Jordan Lee, Nathan Lewis and Kieran Alleyne, relaxed with Olympic gold medallist Jade Jones at the exclusive bash, ahead of their next live show

They've got the look: The lads looked every inch the modern boy band in their co-ordinating outfits of grey, black and red as they happily took selfies with fellow guests

Meanwhile bandmate Nathan kept things simple in a plain grey T-shirt, hoody and skinny jeans - but jazzed the look up with a quirky grey fedora.

The cheeky boys took plenty of selfies at the event and even appeared to sign autographs as they sipped on a few beers - perhaps to ease their pre-X Factor live show nerves.

The grooving group returned to their usual impeccable form last Saturday with a spooky rendition of Michael Jackson's Thriller - after Simon called their previous performance 'terrible'.

Made it: The cheeky boys even appeared to sign autographs as they sipped on a few beers - perhaps to ease their pre-X Factor live show nerves

However the boys are still third favourites to win the show, after Matt Terry and Emily Middlemas, and will be battling to maintain their odds on Saturday night with a performance of Say You'll Be There by the Spice Girls.

Mixing with sporting elite, 5AM then got the opportunity to meet and greet Taekwondo expert Jade Jones, who bagged an Olympic gold medal for the sport at both the London 2012 and Rio 2016 games.

The Welsh athlete proudly clad herself in the famous Team GB kit as she smiled for the cameras, with her prized medals hanging around her neck.

Jade picked up her first gold in London 2012 at the age of just 19 - marking Great Britain's first ever medal for the Korean martial art.

Woman of the hour: Mixing with sporting elite, 5AM then met Taekwondo expert Jade Jones, who bagged an Olympic gold medal for the sport at both the London 2012 and Rio 2016 games

High-profile guest list: Other attendees also included TV presenter Ben Shephard
She's been busy performing her latest theatre show Stepping Out around the country.

But Amanda Holden enjoyed a breakaway from the stage as she celebrated her co-star and pal, Tamzin Outhwaite's 46th birthday in style, punting on the River Cam in Cambridge on Saturday.

The Britain's Got Talent judge looked in her element as she enjoyed a selfie with the birthday girl as they passed King's College wrapped up in a number of blankets.

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Selfie sisters! Amanda Holden enjoyed a breakaway from the stage as she celebrated her co-star and pal, Tamzin Outhwaite's 46th birthday in style, punting on the River Cam in Cambridge on Saturday

Braving the freezing temperatures, the 45-year-old TV star appeared in high spirits as she donned a quilted navy SuperDry jacket with fur trim that was sure to ease the November chill while out on the water.

The mum-of-two - who is married to sported a beige polo neck under her duvet-esque coat as she slipped on a pair of khaki denim jeans and knee-high boots for the outing.

Leaving her golden locks loose, Amanda hid her facial features with a pair of simple gold Ray-Ban aviators as she was spotted with an occasion appropriate birthday cake.

Cutting the bake, Amanda couldn't help but giggle as they attempted to steadily separate the luxury chocolate Patisserie Valerie cake evenly.

Cutting the chill: The 45-year-old TV star appeared in high spirits as she donned a quilted navy SuperDry jacket with fur trim that was sure to ease the November chill, while out on the water

Golden gal: Leaving her golden locks loose, Amanda hid her facial features with a pair of simple gold aviators as she was spotted an occasion appropriate birthday cake

Relaxed: Amanda worked a pair of knee-high boots for the water activities

Birthday girl: Amanda took a number of hilarious selfies of pal Tamzin with her cake

Cake time! At one point Amanda looked to do the honours of cutting the cake

Not alone in the celebrations, Amanda was joined by a number of friends, including Angela Griffin and her two kids on the water.

Amanda was seen at one point feeding a fellow passenger a slices of cake as they were chauffeured in two punts down the river.

Wrapping up for her special day, Tamzin - who is mother to Florence, 8, and Marnie, 4 - donned a beige check duffle coat around her as she worked a fluffy trapper hat.

Warmed up! Wrapping up for her special day, Tamzin - who is mother to Florence, 8, and Marnie, 4 - donned a beige check duffle coat around her as she worked a fluffy trapper hat

Hitting the spot: The mum-of-two seemed to enjoyed the Patisserie Valerie cake

Helping hand: Amanda was seen at one point feeding a fellow passenger as slices of cake

In stitches: Amanda couldn't help but giggle while with her friends

Catching up: Amanda and Tamzin caught up with fellow passengers on the punt

Feeling calm: The pals posed for a quick pic as they took in the sights and sounds of the River Cam

Following Amanda's lead, the former Hotel Babylon actress covered her face with a pair of oversized shades as she sported a fur stole around her neck.

Enjoying their 45-minute trip along the water, the group posed for a number of selfies and appeared joyful throughout their outing.

Their boat trip comes as the group have been performing Stepping Out at the Cambridge Arts Theatre since Monday, with Saturday being their final night at the venue.

Tea time! Enjoying their 45-minute trip along the water, the group appeared joyful throughout their outing as they shared plates of cake

Sweet treat: Amanda passed on a healthy portion of cake to fellow punters

Celebrations: Not alone in the celebrations, Amanda was joined by a number of friends, including Angela Griffin and her two kids on the water

The comedy charts the lives of seven women and one man attempting to tap dance.

The cast includes Angela Griffin, former EastEnders star Tracy-Ann Oberman and Emmerdale's Nicola Stephenson.

Amanda plays Vera in the theatre show while Tamzin has been on tour for nearly a month with the play, which is hitting the West End next year.

Boat trip! The group have been performing Stepping Out at the Cambridge Arts Theatre since Monday, with Saturday being their final night at the venue
It's already well past summer, but many stars seem to still be making the white choice.

On Friday Ariana Madix showed off her killer curves on the pink carpet at the party for season five of Vanderpump Rules thrown at Hyde in Los Angeles.

Also with the Florida native was Tom Sandoval who looked dapper in a fitted maroon blazer.

White out: Ariana Madix showed off her killer curves on the pink carpet at the party for season five of Vanderpump Rules thrown at Hyde in Los Angeles

Teamed up: Also with the Florida native was Tom Sandoval who looked dapper in a fitted maroon blazer

The show may revolve around the staff and customers at Lisa Vanderpump's Los Angeles restaurant, but employee LaLa Kent managed to steal the spotlight from her boss on Friday.

The 26-year-old arrived at the premiere party dressed in a risque sheer lace thong body and matching sheer skirt with lace trim.

Teamed with a pair of thigh high black boots, Lala posed and pouted while showing off her pert derriere.

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Daring look: Lala Kent sported a daring sheer skirt over high heeled boots teamed with a lace thong body at the bash

Not shy in flaunting her incredible figure, the blonde beauty coyly posed looking over her shoulder whilst carrying her black clutch in her hand.

The stunner went all out glam with her beauty look to offset her overtly sultry ensemble.

Styling her dirty blonde locks loose, Lala teased her tresses into a beachy wave which cascaded down her back, highlighted her form-fitting shapewear.

Lala completed her beauty look by dusting her surgically enhanced features with a sweep of highlighter and slick of clear gloss across her full pout.

Bottoms up! Teamed with a pair of thigh high black boots, Lala posed and pouted while showing off her pert derriere

Rock bottom: The reality star wasn't shy displaying her perky posterior

The cheek of her! James Kennedy and Lala Kent smoldered as they posed up a storm at the bash

Meanwhile, star of the show Lisa showed off her ample cleavage in a tight fitting black dress.

Putting on an eye-catching display, the brunette beauty was sure to make heads turn in the figure-hugging number that featured a plunging neckline.

The 56-year-old reality star added a quirky edge to her eye-popping attire with a furry black jacket, which she stylishly draped over her shoulders.

Busty: Lisa Vanderpump showed off her stunning cleavage in a black dress

Pink carpet perfect: Lisa posed alongside Tom Schwartz, Jax Taylor, and Tom Sandoval (L-R) on the pink carpet

Here come the boys! Stars of the reality - Tom Schwartz, Jax Taylor and Tom Sandoval (L-R) - smiled for waiting cameras at the event

Going back to her classic style rules, the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills favourite accessorised her look with a elegant pearl choker.

She held a quirky red fluffy clutch with an intricate clasp as she clad her wrist with a thick black cuff with gold accents.

The British stunner was perfectly turned out as she neatly blow dried her brown locks into a straight style which cascaded down her chest to frame her impressive cleavage.

Glam: The British stunner was perfectly turned out as she neatly blow dried her brown locks into a straight style

Family affair: The restaurateur wasn't alone at the bash as her daughter Pandora posed for pics at the premiere in a coordinating black ensemble

Adding a pop of colour to her look, Lisa plumped her pout with a swipe of hot pink lipgloss as she applied lashings of mascara to accentuate her blue peepers.

The restaurateur - who owns Pump, SUR and Villa Blanca - wasn't alone at the bash as her daughter Pandora posed for pics at the premiere in a coordinating black ensemble.

Unlike her mother, the 30-year-old opted to cover her petite frame and skin in a long velvet coat.

Black velvet: Unlike her mother, the 30-year-old opted to cover her petite frame and skin in a long velvet coat

Taking the plunge: Scheana Shay - who married fellow Bravo star Michael Shay in 2014 - flaunted her curves in a black plunging full-length gown

Vanderpump Rules follows the lives of several servers at SUR under the watchful eye of boss Lisa.

The new season of the hit show - which kicks off on November 7 - will see Katie Maloney and Tom Schwartz tie the knot after getting engaged during series four.

Jax Taylor's girlfriend Brittany Cartwright will be starting work at the restaurant after moving from Kentucky to live with the reformed ladies man.

Picture perfect: Reality stars Katie Maloney, Kristen Doute, Scheana Shay and Stassi Schroeder (L-R) coordinated their looks

Monochrome madness: Stassi Schroeder wore basic black with sexy heels

Going for gold: Star of the show Katie Maloney wowed in a rock chick inspired ensemble with metallic accents alongside Stephanie Corneliussen

What a pair! Jeremy Madix and James Kennedy brooded on the carpet for picture
She recently admitted that the Strictly Come Dancing had left her feeling 'vulnerable' and 'emotional'.

And Laura Whitmore struggled to fight back tears after an awkward timing issue during her samba to the Gipsy Kings' Bamboleo with partner Giovanni Pernice.

Squinting her eyes and sighing 'sorry' to her partner, the Irish presenter looked crestfallen as she listened to the judges comments.

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Strictly emotional: Laura Whitmore allowed the audience to see a softer side of her as she struggled to fight back tears after an awkward timing issue during her samba

Luckily, the starlet had no need to be worried, as her passionate performance earned her a respectable 32 points from the judges.

Attempting to console her, Len Goodman exclaimed: 'She is a star,' but added: 'I'd have liked [to see] a little more Laura than Giovanni!'

He also disagreed with the pace in music as he explained: 'You sacrificed technique to give us impact.'

Bruno Tonioli was full of praise, as he shouted: 'It really sizzled, you gave everything, got everyone going.'

Fancy footwork: Luckily, the starlet had no need to be worried, as her passionate performance earned her a respectable 32 points from the judges

Onwards and upwards: Whilst the judges comments were positive and praised her hip action and 'star quality' Laura still seemed upset

Fantastic four: The judges (L-R) Craig Revel Horwood, Darcey Bussell, Len Goodman and Bruno Tonioli were full of praise for the performances on the night

Meanwhile, Craig Revel Horwood admitted: 'It looked a bit awkward but I thought you did a very good job.'

Darcey Bussell sympathised, sighing: 'It's a shame you lost sync,' but praised her as she explained: 'You worked those hips!'

Whilst the comments were positive, Laura still seemed upset as she explained to Claudia Winkleman: 'Sorry, I feel really bad that I messed that bit up.'

Great work: Danny Mac impressed with his first 10 of the series scoring an impressive 38 with his jive to Long Tall Sally by Little Richard

Down he goes! Danny impressed by dropping into the splits twice during his routine

Quickstepping: The pair were perfectly in sync throughout the performance

Elsewhere in the show, Danny Mac impressed with his first 10 of the series scoring an impressive 38 with his jive to Long Tall Sally by Little Richard.

Following on from his disastrous performance last week, Len remarked: 'Danny Mac, you're back!' Adding: 'That was fast foot Danny!'

Daisy Lowe and Aljaz scored an impressive 34 with their Viennese Waltz to Daisy Bell, with Bruno remarking: 'You was floating around like a weightless petal caught in a soft breeze.'

Impressive: Daisy Lowe and Aljaz scored an impressive 34 with their Viennese Waltz to Daisy Bell

Angelic: Bruno described their dance as: 'You was floating around like a weightless petal caught in a soft breeze'

Cheeky! Ore and Joanne performed the Salsa to Turn The Beat Around, with Len hilariously remarking: 'I had a blimming good look at your bum!'

Shake it! The star impressed with his hip shaking action

Ore and Joanne performed the Salsa to Turn The Beat Around, with Len hilariously remarking: 'I had a blimming good look at your bum!' following the energetic hip shaking dance.

Another surprise came in the form of Ed Balls and Katya Jones, who danced a fantastic Quickstep to Help! by The Beatles.

In a shock move, Craig confessed: 'I can't believe I'm actually saying this - you are actually improving and that's brilliant to see.'

'You're actually improving!' Another surprise came in the form of Ed Balls and Katya Jones, who performed a fantastic Quickstep to Help! by The Beatles and earned praise from Craig

Feel good fun: Another act who is famous for polarising the judges united them this week, as Judge Rinder wowed with his Quickstep

Overboard: Whilst his footwork may have impressed, his signature sassiness proved to be a bit too much for even the flamboyant Bruno to handle

Another act who is famous for polarising the judges united them this week, as Judge Rinder wowed with his Quickstep.

However, whilst his footwork may have impressed, his signature sassiness proved to be a bit too much for even the flamboyant Bruno to handle, as he scoffed: 'You don't need that trout pout!'

Yet Len was impressed, remarking: 'I was expecting Fred and Cringe, but I definitely got Fred and Ginge!'

Fantastic: All judges were in agreement, however, with the skill displayed by Louise Redknapp and and Kevin Clifton as they wowed with the first Argentine Tango on the series

Top score: Louise also bagged herself some tens on the night

Stylish but not a showstopper: Greg Rutherford and Natalie Lowe attempted to catch up, but couldn't rival Louise with a score of just 32 for their Viennese Waltz

All judges were in agreement, however, with the skill displayed by Louise Redknapp and and Kevin Clifton as they wowed with the first Argentine Tango on the series.

Whilst Craig may have scored nine to the audience's chagrin, the pair's impressive moves received a set of straight 10's from the other judges, rounding up their score to 39 and ensuring they topped the leaderboard.

Greg Rutherford and Natalie Lowe attempted to catch up, but couldn't rival Louise with a score of just 32 for their Viennese Waltz.

Claudia Fragapane and AJ Pritchard finished off the show with a passionate Paso Doble that earned them a respectable 33 points.
He admitted in 2014 he wouldn't be leaving his AUD$293 million fortune to his six children.

Now, former Police frontman Sting has revealed the real reason behind his decision.

During an interview with Australian magazine Stellar, the 65-year-old explained he wanted to teach his young adult kids to work hard to make a future of their own.

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Decisions: Former Police frontman Sting has revealed the real reason behind his decision not to leave his six children his AUD$293 million fortune

'I wouldn't want to rob them of the pleasure and satisfaction of making it on their own,' he told the publication.

'Obviously if they got into trouble I would help them, but I don't feel like they are waiting for me to pop off so they can inherit whatever is left'.

The international hitmaker said he's proud of all of his children and described each of them as 'fiercely independent, hardworking and well-educated'.

Lessons: During an interview with an Australian magazine, the 65-year-old explained he wanted to teach his young adult kids to work hard to make a future of their own

Proud: He told the publication: 'I wouldn't want to rob them of the pleasure and satisfaction of making it on their own'

Sting first revealed his children wouldn't receive a large portion of his 180 million earnings in an interview with Mail on Sunday Event magazine in 2014.

At the time, he explained: 'I told them there wont be much money left because we are spending it. We have a lot of commitments. What comes in, we spend, and there isnt much left.'

Sting added: 'I certainly dont want to leave them trust funds that are albatrosses round their necks.

Helping hand: He added: 'Obviously if they got into trouble I would help them, but I don't feel like they are waiting for me to pop off so they can inherit whatever is left'

Sticking to his guns: Sting first revealed his children wouldn't receive a large portion of his 180 million earnings in an interview with Mail on Sunday Event magazine in 2014

'They have to work. All my kids know that and they rarely ask me for anything, which I really respect and appreciate.

'Obviously, if they were in trouble I would help them, but Ive never really had to do that. They have the work ethic that makes them want to succeed on their own merit.'

Sting has four children with wife Trudie Styler; Mickey, 32, Jake, 33, Eliot, 26, and Giacomo, 21.

He also has two children from first marriage to Frances Tomelty; Joseph, 40 and Kate, 34.
Body found where woman was held hostage in US South

Police in South Carolina found a body Friday buried on a property where a woman "chained like a dog" has been rescued.

Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright said at a news conference "we did find a body on a shallow grave on this piece of property at around 10 this morning."

Wright said it was not immediately known how the person died or whether the remains were of a man or a woman.

Police dogs found a body on the 95-acre property in South Carolina where a woman "chained like a dog" was rescued Bryan R. Smith (AFP/File)

Asked whether the body could be the work of a serial killer, the sheriff said it was possible.

The owner of the property in the town of Woodruff, northeast of the state capital Columbia, is Todd Kohlhepp, 45, a real-estate agent and registered sex offender.

He was arrested Thursday and charged with kidnapping after the female hostage was rescued from his property.

He has not been accused of killing the person whose body was found.

Kala Brown, 30, was discovered Thursday inside a padlocked shipping container after police heard a banging sound when they arrived at Kohlhepp's property with a search warrant.

Wright had described Brown as being "chained like a dog."

Brown told officers she had been in the container for two months.

Brown and her boyfriend, Charles Carver, had been missing since August. Carver's whereabouts are unknown.

Wright said that cadaver-sniffing dogs found the body Friday on the 95-acre (38-hectare) property. Authorities are investigating whether Kohlhepp owns other properties, he said.

According to WSPA, a local affiliate of the CBS television network, Brown's friends said that she worked for her alleged kidnapper cleaning houses.

"We went by his house to get a key before we went by his house to clean. Didn't seem like a person who would do anything to anybody," Brown's friend Lindsey Mayson told WSPA.
Man who filmed US police shooting agonized over releasing footage

A man who filmed a white South Carolina police officer shooting an unarmed black man five times in the back testified Friday that he agonized for days over what to do with the potentially incriminating footage.

Feidin Santana was walking to work on April 4, 2015, in North Charleston, South Carolina, when he stumbled into the middle of a police foot chase.

Santana filmed the encounter between 50-year-old Walter Scott and North Charleston policeman Michael Slager, which ended with the fatal shooting of Scott and Slager claiming self defense.

Footage taken and released by Feidin Santana led to the firing and arrest of Michael Slager and protests across the US Richard Ellis (GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File)

Days later, Santana released the video to media outlets, leading to Slager being swiftly fired from his job and arrested on charges of murder.

Santana, a 23 year old barber, instantly became a minor celebrity, visiting New York for prominent media interviews about his footage and being praised for providing a new perspective of the police encounter.

The footage of the shooting reverberated within the United States as it occurred during much public scrutiny of lethal police force against black men.

During testimony Friday, Santana said his decision to release the video was a tortured one.

He said he hesitated to release it for days because he feared for his safety.

Only when he learned that Scott had died, and the police were claiming the shooting was justified, did the immigrant from the Dominican Republic share the video to challenge the record of what was said to have occurred.

Santana, who did not witness the entire interaction between Scott and Slager, insisted he never saw Scott attack Slager or grab the policemans Taser, as Slager had claimed.

Instead, he testified, Scott was trying to elude Slager, shaking free from his grip and "determined to get up and get away from that Taser."

When Slager shot eight bullets toward Scotts back, killing the suspect, Santana was shocked.

"That's something I will never forget," said Santana, who filmed the incident from behind a fence. "It's something I didn't expect."

Over the next few days Santana scoured the Internet for online commenters who expressed doubt about the police version of events.

After finding a sympathetic local Black Lives Matter leader, Santana eventually showed the video to relatives of Scott, obtained a lawyer, and then shared the footage with the media.

The murder trial resumes Monday.
Maori All Blacks rout US Eagles in N. America and Europe tour opener

New Zealand's Maori All Blacks cruised past the United States Eagles 54-7 to open their three-match tour of North America and Europe with a comfortable victory.

Japan-born loose forward Akira Ioane on Friday scored twice as the New Zealanders outclassed their American hosts by eight tries to one at Chicago's Toyota Park.

Wing James Lowe dotted down in the corner after 11 minutes to put the Maori 5-0 ahead with Ihaia West adding the conversion.

Akira Ioane of the Maori All Blacks goes for a try during their rugby union match against the US Eagles, at Toyota Park in Chicago, Illinois, on November 4, 2016 Phil Walter (Getty/AFP)

Ioane's first try from a peel at the front of the lineout put the tourists 12-0 ahead, with West again adding the conversion.

Lowe grabbed his second of the night in the 34th minute, touching down under the posts for a converted try after a clever chip from West split the US midfield.

The New Zealanders then took full advantage of the sin-binning of US Eagles hooker James Hilterbrand, stretching their lead when captain Ash Dixon barreled over from close range to make it 26-0. West added the conversion to give the Maori a 28-0 lead at half-time.

Ioane punished poor Eagles marking at a maul early in the second half to put the New Zealanders 33-0 up before West once again converted.

USA captain Todd Clever drew the biggest cheer of the night when he was driven over for a try converted by William Holder for 35-7.

But the Maori All Blacks were soon back on the charge again, with prop Kane Hames, replacement scrum half Brad Weber and prop Joe Royal all crossing for late scores.

The Maori All Blacks now head to Ireland to play Munster on November 12 before wrapping up their short tour against Harlequins on November 17.
Kerry to be first US top diplomat to visit Antarctica

John Kerry, an ardent champion of the fight against climate change, will become the first top US diplomat to visit Antarctica, where the world's largest protected marine reserve was just created.

The State Department announced Friday the itinerary for Kerry in what will be one of his last trips as secretary of state before President Barack Obama's administration ends on January 20.

During his November 10-18 world tour, Kerry will visit Antarctica, New Zealand, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco -- for the COP22 climate talks -- and Peru for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, which Obama will also attend.

After years of negotiations, a deal was reached by the 25 members of the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) to protect marine fauna and flora in a massive area of the Ross Sea John Weller (Antarctic Ocean Alliance/AFP/File)

From November 10 to 12, Kerry will make history as the most senior US official to travel to Antarctica.

He will visit McMurdo Station, the largest US research station in the region, as well as surrounding areas on Ross Island and the government's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.

His visit comes about two weeks after the October 28 international agreement that created the world's largest marine protected area aimed at preserving the pristine wilderness of Antarctica.

After years of negotiations, a deal was reached by the 25 members of the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) to protect marine fauna and flora in a massive area of the Ross Sea.

Proposed by the United States and New Zealand, the reserve covers more than 598,000 square miles (1.55 million square kilometers) -- roughly the size of Britain, Germany and France combined -- of which 1.12 million square kilometers is a no-fishing zone.

Kerry is a longtime advocate in the fight against global warming: he was a key force in the Paris global climate agreement struck late last year that took effect Friday, and also sponsored an international conference on oceans.

He will be in Marrakesh on November 15-16 at the COP22 meeting, where he will deliver a speech "that highlights the urgency of addressing climate change and the importance of continued ambitious climate action around the world," the State Department said.

The US diplomat will stop in Wellington on November 12 and 13 in his first visit to New Zealand. In Oman on November 14, he will discuss the war in Yemen. The next day, he will travel to Abu Dhabi for talks on regional conflicts, such as Syria.

Kerry will wrap up his journey in Peru, where he is due to attend ministerial meetings of the 21-nation APEC on November 15 and 16 in Lima.
Philippine mayor accused over drugs killed in jail: police

A Philippine mayor President Rodrigo Duterte named as being involved in the illegal drug trade was shot dead in jail on Saturday, police said, the second local official implicated in narcotics to be killed in two weeks.

Duterte, 71, won May elections in a landslide on a promise to kill tens of thousands of criminals to prevent the Philippines from becoming a narco-state, and has launched an unprecedented war on drugs that has left more than 4,000 people dead.

He had named several local officials, policemen and judges as being involved in the narcotics trade and urged them to surrender.

Leyte Albuera Mayor Rolando Espinosa (L) talks to Philippine National Police chief Ronald dela Rosa, at Camp Crame in Manila, in August 2016 - (AFP/File)

In August, he accused Rolando Espinosa, the mayor of Albuera town in the central island of Leyte, and his son of drug trafficking and demanded they turn themselves in, giving police a "shoot on sight" order if the two resisted arrest.

Mayor Espinosa then surrendered to the national police chief, saying he feared for his life, and was arrested last month.

But early Saturday morning, police said Espinosa was killed in his cell in the provincial jail after he shot at officers during a search for illegal firearms.

"He fired on the raiding team. The raiding team fired back and this led to the mayor's death," chief inspector Leo Laraga of the regional police told AFP.

He added that another inmate accused of drug trafficking was also killed, after he too fired at the officers.

The national police said it was investigating the circumstances surrounding Espinosa's death as well as possible collusion between guards and inmates to get guns and drugs into the jail.

Police chief Ronald dela Rosa previously said Espinosa had been listed in official records as a "drug protector", whose son Kerwin controlled the narcotics trade in the Albuera region.

Kerwin was arrested in the United Arab Emirates last month and is set to return to the Philippines to face drug trafficking charges.

In August, six of the Espinosas' supporters died in a gunfight with police outside the mayor's property in Albuera where officers said they recovered guns and several grenades.

Another mayor accused of drug trafficking was killed in the southern Philippines in late October.

Police said Samsudin Dimaukom and his security personnel opened fire after anti-narcotics police stopped their vehicles at a checkpoint on suspicion they were transporting illegal drugs.
Indonesia leader postpones Australia trip after protests

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has postponed a trip to Australia due to start Sunday after violence broke out at a mass rally against a Christian governor accused of insulting Islam, the government said.

Around 50,000 people marched in Jakarta on Friday to protest comments made by governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, with clashes erupting between police and demonstrators -- one of whom reportedly died of an asthma attack.

"Current development has required the President to stay in Indonesia," a statement released on Saturday by the foreign ministry said.

A policeman fires a tear gas canister to disperse Muslim protesters near the presidential palace during clashes after a rally against governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, a Christian accused of insulting Islam, in Jakarta, on November 4, 2016 Gianrigo Marletta (AFP)

Widodo visited Australia in 2014 for the G20 shortly after being elected as president, but this month's trip would have marked his first official bilateral visit.

The statement added that Widodo had called Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to inform him that the trip, scheduled for 6-8 November, would be delayed.

Turnbull responded in a statement: We were sorry we would not be able to welcome him to Australia tomorrow but entirely understood the need for him to remain in Indonesia at this time.

The protest in Indonesia's capital was triggered by accusations that Purnama, better known by his nickname Ahok, insulted Islam by criticising opponents who used Koranic references to attack him ahead of an election in February.

Purnama apologised for the remarks, but his opponents have built a groundswell of support calling for his arrest and incarceration under Indonesia's tough blasphemy laws.

Demonstrations were initially peaceful but turned ugly in the evening when protesters refused to go home, resulting in thousands of hardliners clashing with police, setting vehicles ablaze and hurling bottles and rocks at officers.

Police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar said one man died of an asthma attack during the protest, although some local media sites suggested it could have been brought on by tear gas.

About 160 people had to be treated for the effects of tear gas and eight police officers were also injured in the protest, he said.

Ten people thought to have instigated the violence have been arrested.

Police said they would be questioning the governor on Monday over the allegations which would be handled "quickly and transparently".
Raqa assault to likely take longer than Pentagon chief predicts

After Iraqi security forces eventually recapture Mosul, the Islamic State group will be left with only Raqa in neighboring Syria as a bastion, and the jihadists' self-proclaimed "caliphate" will be largely gone.

The US-led coalition has been striking IS across both countries for more than two years, and has long held Raqa in its sights -- an IS defeat there would be a defining endpoint of the campaign.

But Pentagon chief Ashton Carter surprised commanders last week when he declared the actual assault on Raqa could start "in the next few weeks," after British Defense Minister Michael Fallon made a similar prediction.

A M1 Abrams tank of the Iraqi counter-terrorism forces leaves the village of Gogjali for the front line on the eastern entrance of Mosul Andrea Bernardi (AFP)

Privately, many high-ranking Pentagon officials were caught off-guard, and expressed skepticism the Raqa push could start so soon, given the Gordian knot of unpredictability in the chaos of Syria.

Carter's timeline is "a little more ahead of what I have been hearing so far," one US defense official told AFP on condition of anonymity, choosing his words carefully.

Another US defense official said the military's expectations for Raqa -- a city with a pre-war population of about 220,000 -- didn't match Carter's timeline.

And a third military official said that while the assault could theoretically start in weeks, it may take "single-digit months," pushing the possible timeline out to "nine months or less."

That official added the assault may yet start before 2017, "but it could drag on further for other reasons we can't control."

"It's up to" the local forces, he added. "We are ready if they are ready."

Even before the start of a ground offensive, likely to be fought along similar lines to the one happening in Mosul, coalition planes must complete the "isolation," "shaping" and "envelopment" of Raqa.

This entails non-stop strikes on IS fighting positions and the slicing of supply lines into and out of the northern Syrian city.

Coalition spokesman Colonel John Dorrian said those operations had already partially succeeded, and had helped cut routes from Raqa to and from Europe.

"What we're talking about is a higher level of isolation that greatly reduces the freedom of movement of Daesh to go into and come out of that city," he said.

- Unknown factors -

Military officials are grappling with a slew of unknowns that have not been at play in the Mosul fight.

Whereas Iraqi security forces are a mostly cohesive fighting force under centralized control, the US-led coalition is relying on a more nebulous fighting crew in Syria.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) number around 30,000 fighters, two thirds of whom are Kurds fighting under the banner of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG,) with Syrian Arabs broadly making up the rest.

Some among the SDF's ranks are hardcore fighters, while others are newcomers to the conflict.

The coalition has spent months instructing SDF members, including on how to call in air strikes, but the Pentagon admits some Arab fighters still haven't completed the weekslong training.

The murkiness about who will conduct the Raqa offensive -- US special forces will only be watching from behind the frontlines -- was hardly addressed this week by Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook, who said the number of US-backed Syrian fighters would "snowball" as operations advance.

"There are going to be more people who want to join the effort to dislodge" IS, he said without going into details.

Further complicating matters is Turkey.

While the United States views the YPG as its best proxy fighting force in Syria, Turkey considers it a terrorist offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK,) which has been waging an insurgency inside Turkey since 1984.

NATO member Turkey supports the recapture of Raqa, but wants to limit Kurdish influence and prevent Kurdish cantons on either side of Raqa from forming a contiguous bloc, as Ankara vehemently opposes the creation of a Kurdish state.

The YPG are expected to push toward Raqa but not enter the mostly Arab city, clearing the way for Arab SDF to do so.

Another question is the role Turkish troops will play -- YPG advances toward Raqa could be slowed if the fighters are looking behind their backs at the Turks.

And then there's Russia.

While Moscow is currently focusing on Aleppo and other regions in support of President Bashar al-Assad, Russian jets are using the same air space as the coalition, prompting fears of a midair collision that could fundamentally alter the calculus.

Pentagon chief Ashton Carter surprised commanders last week when he declared the actual assault on Raqa could start "in the next few weeks" Brendan Smialowski (AFP/File)

While the US views the Kurdish People's Protection Units(YPG), pictured, as its best proxy fighting force in Syria, Turkey considers it a terrorist offshoot of the PKK Delil Souleiman (AFP/File)
Kuwait launches foreign bond sale to finance deficit

Kuwait will issue billions of dollars worth of bonds in international markets to finance a budget deficit resulting from low oil prices, a report said Saturday.

Finance Minister Anas al-Saleh said Kuwait will issue US dollar-denominated sovereign bonds of up to $9.6 billion during the 2016/2017 fiscal year which ends March 31, Al-Qabas newspaper reported.

This comes on top of a $6.6 billion domestic debt programme which is already underway.

Kuwaiti Oil and Finance Minister Anas al-Saleh announced a $9.6 billion bond issue to offset low oil prices Yasser Al-Zayyat (AFP/File)

Kuwait, like other energy-rich Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, has already taken on tens of billions of dollars in foreign debt to finance budget shortfalls.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and United Arab Emirates have sold bonds or took syndicated loans to plug their deficits.

The minister's decree did not specify the share of Islamic sukuk bonds in the planned issue.

It will be the country's first foreign debt in around two decades.

Kuwait recorded a budget deficit of $15 billion last fiscal year, breaking a 16-year run of surpluses.

Oil income contributed around 95 percent of public revenues in those years. During the past two years, oil has lost around 60 percent of its value.

The emirate, home to 1.3 million Kuwaitis and 3 million foreigners, is also projecting a budget shortfall of $29 billion this fiscal year.

During surplus years, Kuwait piled up around $600 billion in its sovereign wealth fund in holdings mostly in the United States, Europe and Asia.

Like its Gulf peers, Kuwait has taken some austerity measures that include liberalising prices of diesel and kerosene and hiking petrol prices.

A dispute over petrol prices led parliament being dissolved and snap polls set for November 26.
Iraqi forces in new Mosul push as displacement rises

Iraqi special forces threw themselves back into battle Saturday after a first foray into Mosul was blunted by stiffer than expected resistance from jihadists defending the birthplace of their "caliphate".

While the elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) fought the Islamic State group in the streets of Mosul, the army and federal police attacked one of the last sizeable towns on the more distant southern front.

The mass exodus feared by aid groups of some of the million-plus civilians still trapped in Mosul has yet to materialise, but the number of people displaced by the battle has grown sharply in recent days.

Iraqi forces launched the offensive to retake Mosul on October 17 Bulent Kilic (AFP/File)

"Our forces are now engaged in fierce fighting inside the neighbourhoods of east Mosul," CTS spokesman Sabah al-Noman said, adding that the "fighting is house to house".

In Bartalla, a town to the east that Iraqi forces have used as a base since retaking it in the early days of the nearly three-week-old offensive, ambulances returning from the front with wounded CTS fighters rushed by on a regular basis.

CTS forces made their first real push into the streets of Mosul on Friday but were met by a deluge of bombs and gunfire, and eventually forced into a partial pullback after a few hours.

- Rising displacement -

"We weren't expecting such resistance. They had blocked all the roads," said one officer. "There are large numbers of jihadists... It was preferable to pull back and devise a new plan."

The hitch in the CTS advance appeared to contradict reports that IS had moved its resources away from the east of Mosul to the west bank of the River Tigris.

The jihadist group had looked increasingly pragmatic when vastly outnumbered and outgunned in recent months, sometimes giving up emblematic bastions almost without a fight.

But some of the 3,000 to 5,000 jihadists estimated to be inside the city may have been galvanised by a rare message from their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Thursday.

The jihadist supremo released an audio recording for the first time in almost a year, urging his fighters not to retreat.

Federal forces on the southern front attacked Hamam al-Alil, one of the main towns between their staging base in Qayyarah and Mosul.

"Army and federal police forces are attacking the Hamam al-Alil (area) from three sides with the support of army aviation," Staff Lieutenant General Abdulamir Yarallah said in a statement released by Joint Operations Command.

Forces working their way up the Tigris Valley have had more distance to cover than those on other fronts since Iraq launched the operation to retake Mosul on October 17.

- 'We were always scared' -

While the corridors called for by aid groups to allow the safe passage of civilians have yet to materialise, the number of arrivals in the displacement camps dotting the area has increased markedly.

The ministry of displacement and migration said it had taken in 9,000 displaced people during the past two days.

It put the total number of Iraqis displaced into camps since the start of the operation at 29,539.

Relief organisations were fighting the clock to build up their shelter capacity ahead of the feared mass exodus from Mosul.

In a camp east of Mosul, displaced Iraqis are living a spartan existence.

"They gave us blankets but it's not enough and the weather is very cold. We are 19 inside this tent," said Yunes Hassan, 53.

Another man said services were lacking and the food insufficient.

"When I bring a plate of food, all my kids are fighting to eat it," 30-year-old Ahmed said.

But they are still free of IS: "Here, we and our kids can sleep until the morning; it's not like back home where we couldn't sleep. We were always scared," 51-year-old Abu Osama said.

Despite complaints from Iraqi forces on the ground that the number of air strikes has been insufficient, the US-led coalition insists it is providing more intense and sustained air support than ever before in its two-year campaign against IS.

Brett McGurk, US President Barack Obama's envoy to the coalition, hailed the latest military developments in a message on social media.

"New advances on all axes. Ways to go, but ahead of schedule," he said.

US and other commanders have warned that the offensive could take weeks or months.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who has visited the front lines several times since the offensive started, has vowed to rid the country of IS by the end of the year.

Retaking Mosul could effectively end the IS group's days as a land-holding force in Iraq and deal a death blow to the "caliphate" Baghdadi proclaimed in the city in June 2014.

The battle for Mosul Sabrina BLANCHARD, Thomas SAINT-CRICQ (AFP)

Smoke rises from burning oil wells in Qayyarah, on the outskirts of Mosul, on November 4, 2016 Ahmad Mousa (AFP)

Iraqi families -- displaced by the ongoing operation by special forces to retake Mosul from Islamic State group jihadists -- wait to board a truck before heading to camps near Gogjali, on November 4, 2016 Bulent Kilic (AFP)
Nigeria rescues Chibok schoolgirl near Cameroon border

Nigerian troops on Saturday rescued another of the missing Chibok schoolgirls seized by Boko Haram Islamists, in an operation near the border with Cameroon, a spokesman said.

The girl, found along with her baby son, was one of the more than 200 schoolgirls taken by the Islamist group from their hostels in the remote town of Chibok in April 2014.

Dozens of the girls escaped in the hours after the kidnapping but more than 200 are still unaccounted for.

Over 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped from Chibok in 2014, and some of those who were later freed from their Boko Haram captors met the Nigerian Vice President during a visit to Abuja, on October 13, 2016 Philip Ojisua (AFP/File)

The mass abduction drew global anger and attracted unprecedented attention to the seven-year Boko Haram insurgency.

News of the latest rescue came barely a month after 21 other Chibok girls were released by Boko Haram.

Army spokesman Sani Usman told AFP that "Nigerian army troops rescued another Chibok schoolgirl at Pulka," in Borno state near the Mandara mountains separating Nigeria from Cameroon.

Usman later said in an official statement the girl was rescued "at about 6:00am while (the army was) screening some escapees from Boko Haram terrorists hideout in Sambisa forest."

He identified her as Maryam Ali Maiyanga, adding that she was carrying a 10-month-old son.

"She has been taken to the unit's (army's) medical facility for proper medical check up," he said.

The Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) lobby group confirmed the release.

"We are happy with the news... We have confirmed the name of the freed girl to be among those on our database," BBOG campaigner Aisha Yesufu told AFP.

"Our hope is that the government will work towards an early release of the remaining girls so that we can bring this sad episode to a close," she added.

BBOG later said in a statement on Saturday that "preliminary investigations on our part, show that Maryam Ali (Number 198 on our list), a school prefect, is from Askira Uba and was abducted along with her twin, Halima Ali (Number 197), who is yet to return."

The group, which has been at the vanguard of local campaigns to free the girls, commended "the federal government under President Muhammadu Buhari, the military and other security formations working day and night to rout the terrorists and rescue all Nigerians in captivity."

The 21 Chibok girls released last month were freed following negotiations between the Nigerian government and Boko Haram, brokered by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Swiss government.

Local residents in the town of Barki where the 21 were freed said they were exchanged with four Boko Haram prisoners, but the government denied this.

The government said at the time it had received a commitment from Boko Haram to secure the release of 83 other girls believed to be from Chibok being held by a different faction of the extremist group.

Usman said Saturday "it is imperative to state that troops have been working round the clock to clear remnants of Boko Haram terrorists wherever they might be hibernating and also rescue all persons held hostages by terrorists".

Boko Haram's insurgency in Nigeria's mainly-Muslim north has killed at least 20,000 people and made more than 2.6 million homeless since 2009.
UN envoy urges focus on 'real' Gaza issues

UN Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov said Saturday that residents of the Gaza strip need jobs and hope more than a harbour and airport, a reference to recent comments by Israel's defence minister.

In an October interview with Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds, Israel's hardline defence minister Avigdor Lieberman said that another war with Palestinian militants in Gaza would lead to their complete destruction.

He suggested however that if Gaza's Hamas rulers ceased hostilities "we will be the first to invest in a port, an airport and industrial areas."

A Palestinian fishermen collects his net off the coast of the Gaza Strip Mohammed Abed (AFP)

In remarks broadcast Saturday by Israeli public radio, Mladenov said Gaza, where thousands of homes were destroyed or damaged in a 2014 war with Israel, said residents in the enclave had more pressing concerns.

"Let's resolve the real problems that we have today. People live in desperate conditions in Gaza," he said.

"Yes, it's important to have an airport and a seaport in Gaza but I don't want us to be distracted by that from resolving the real issues that we face today."

The World Bank said in a September report that just 10.7 percent of the 11,000 houses that were totally destroyed in 2014 had so far been rebuilt and about 50 percent of partially and severely damaged houses are still awaiting repair.

The unemployment rate in the coastal territory is over 40 percent, with close to two thirds of young people out of work.

"People have lost hope," Mladenov said. "Life is gone and this is what makes Gaza more dangerous and more explosive."

But Mladenov added that he did not see Gaza and Israel heading for another war -- for now.
S. Africa's Zuma: 'I am not scared of jail'

South Africa's embattled President Jacob Zuma put on a brave face Saturday at his first public appearance since the release of fresh evidence of alleged corruption at the top of the ANC government.

"I have spent a lot of time in jail. I am not scared of jail, I have been there," said Zuma, who under apartheid was jailed for 10 years on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela.

During a speech to hundreds of Africa National Congress supporters in Dumbe, a small town in his Kwazulu-Natal province, Zuma accused the opposition of "using the courts to scare the ANC.

South African President Jacob Zuma addresses lawmakers during a parliamentary session in September 2016 Rodger Bosch (AFP/File)

"We are not going to be intimidated," he said.

On Wednesday, South Africa's anti-corruption watchdog called for prosecutors to investigate alleged criminal activity as it released a report on Zuma that fuelled further calls, some from within the ANC, for the president to resign.

The watchdog's investigations focussed on accusations that Zuma had allowed the Guptas, a wealthy Indian business family, to have undue influence over government, including letting them choose some cabinet ministers.

The report prompted the opposition to schedule a no-confidence vote in parliament on November 10. Zuma has survived two such votes already this year.

Zuma, 74, has weathered a series of major scandals since coming to power in 2009, but rapidly declining support for the ANC has threatened his presidency.
Gambia's first female presidential candidate bows out

The Gambia's first ever female presidential candidate has withdrawn from the race and will endorse the single opposition candidate challenging President Yahya Jammeh, she said Saturday.

In a statement sent to AFP, Isatou Touray said she was dropping out of the contest "so as to offer my unflinching support and cooperation to the coalition" of opposition parties which last month picked businessman Adama Barrow to represent them in the December 1 election.

Touray, a development expert and campaigner against female genital mutilation, said the choice of a single opposition flagbearer was "an unprecedented achievement in our nation's history" and one she felt compelled to support.

Gambia's first-ever female presidential candidate Issatou Touray, seen in September 2016, said ehw ants to offer her "unflinching support and cooperation" to the coalition of opposition parties in the country's December 1 election

She added that "Team Isatou" would now focus on supporting the "formidable force" fighting to remove Jammeh, who has been in power since 1994.

Touray had said she would stand as an independent candidate in the polls, focusing on welcoming back the Gambian diaspora and creating jobs.

Now in her sixties, Touray has had a colourful career, winning a US State Department award for empowering Gambian communities in 2008 but arrested in 2010 over corruption allegations when she was deputy director of the Gambia's development institute.

She was acquitted of all charges.

Touray is currently executive director of leading women's group the Gambia Committee against Harmful Traditional Practices, which fights to stop female genital mutilation.

Barrow is a member of the United Democratic Party (UDP) -- the country's principal opposition movement -- whose leader and several top officials are serving three-year jail sentences for holding public protests.

Campaigning for the election begins on November 16.
Kidnapped Italians, Canadian freed in Libya

Two Italians and a Canadian who were kidnapped in the south of conflict-torn Libya in September have been released and flown to Italy "in good health", the Italian government announced Saturday.

The Italians, Danilo Calonego, 66, and Bruno Cacace, 56, and Canadian Frank Poccia were freed during the night "due to the effective cooperation with local Libyan authorities," it said in a statement.

The three men were kidnapped on September 19 in Ghat, close to the Algerian border, where they worked for an Italian company that carried out maintenance at the airport. An armed group blocked their vehicle and took them hostage.

The two Italians and one Canadian who were freed after being kidnapped in Libya in September 2016 worked for the Italian oil giant ENI, whose joint gas terminal with Libya's national Oil Company can been seen in the Mellitah region in January 2015 Mahmud Turkia (AFP/File)

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi praised Libyan security forces and expressed his "sincere gratitude for the solidarity" shown by several mayors in the south of Libya.

Italy's foreign ministry said the three arrived in Italy at around 3am (0200 GMT).

In Rome, where prosecutors had opened an investigation into a suspected terrorist kidnapping, a magistrate debriefed the three men for seven hours, according to the Italian AGI news agency.

They said they had been well-treated and that their captors were most likely common criminals with no religious or terrorist affiliations, the agency reported.

Several Italian companies are present in Libya, a former colony, and their expatriate staff have often fallen prey to kidnappers in recent years.

In July 2015, four Italians working for a construction company were kidnapped near an oil field operated by Italian oil giant ENI in the region of Mellitah, west of Tripoli.

Two of the hostages were killed more than six months into their ordeal, likely in clashes between jihadists and local militiamen.

The other two were freed in March this year, in a raid on Islamic State group hideouts near the capital.
Ten bodies found in dinghy off Libyan coast

Ten bodies were recovered on Saturday from a rubber dinghy off the Libyan coast, the Italian coastguard said, adding that 2,200 other migrants were rescued during the day.

Sixteen rescue operations were conducted Saturday -- almost twice as many as on Friday when 1,200 people were rescued.

An AFP correspondent aboard the Topaz Responder, a search and rescue ship chartered by Maltese NGO MOAS and the Italian Red Cross, saw several hundred people, including children, being rescued on Friday and Saturday.

An AFP correspondent aboard the Topaz Responder, a search and rescue ship chartered by Maltese NGO MOAS and the Italian Red Cross, saw several hundred people, including children, being rescued off the Libyan coast November 4 and 5, 2016 Andreas Solaro (AFP)

Migrants shrouded in foil survival blankets crowded onto the deck of the vessel following the rescue efforts in which at least one baby was saved during the early hours of Saturday.

The Red Cross tweeted that 707 people were on board the vessel on Saturday.

Meanwhile, the Libyan Red Crescent said it recovered the bodies of another six migrants on a beach west of Tripoli on Saturday, taking to 40 the number of drowned migrants found along the North African country's coast since Sunday.

People smugglers have exploited the chaos gripping Libya since the 2011 uprising that overthrew dictator Moamer Kadhafi to traffic migrants across the Mediterranean to Europe.

As many as 4,220 migrants have died trying to cross the Mediterranean so far this year, a higher number than the full-year totals for 2014, 2015 or any other year on record, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Pope Francis on Saturday called the situation of migrants "shameful" and "a bankrupcy of humanity".
Queen's Trust wins Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf

Queen's Trust, with Frankie Dettori aboard, delivered a stirring stretch run to snatch victory at the wire in the $2 million Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf at Santa Anita Park on Saturday.

Trained by Michael Stoute, Queen's Trust gave Europe a first victory in this year's edition of the Breeders' Cup, the $28 million extravaganza that concludes later Saturday in the $6 million Classic.

"The pace was a bit slow for her and the straights are a bit short, but when I got to Lady Eli's back wheels, I was confident I would catch her," Dettori said. "She dug very deep today and it's great for the team."

Jockey Lanfranco Dettori celebrates after riding Queen's Trust to win the Filly and Mare Turf race during day two of the 2016 Breeders' Cup World Championships at the Santa Anita racetrack in Arcadia, California on November 5, 2016 Mark Ralston (AFP)

The victory was the seventh for Stoute in the Breeders' Cup and his third in the 1 1/4-mile Filly & Mare Turf.

He won the same race with Islington in 2003 and Dank in 2013.

For Queen's Trust, it was a second career victory.

"She has been unlucky in running a few times this year, but it all came right today," said Cheveley Park Racing Manager Chris Richardson. "Frankie gave her a superb ride."

Queen's Trust denied favorite Lady Eli a fairytale finish. The Chad Brown-trained filly, winner of the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf two years ago, was idle for more than a year after suffering tendinitis and a life-threatening bout of laminitis.

"I was thrilled the way she ran today," Brown said. "Frankie rode a fabulous race and it was just two great horses down to the finish line. Naturally, I'm disappointed, but still very proud of her."

Avenge, trained by Richard Mandella and ridden by Flavien Prat was third, holding off Aidan O'Brien's Irish and Yorkshire Oaks winner Seventh Heaven by three-quarters of a length.

Following the race, Dettori gave a shout-out to German jockey Frederik Tylicki, who has been left paralyzed below the waist after a four-horse pile-up at Kempton Park southwest of London on Monday.
Tunisian soldier killed in his home: report

A Tunisian soldier has been killed in his home near central Mount Mghilla, an area where jihadist fighters operate, public television reported late Saturday.

Citing defence ministry spokesman Belhassen Oueslati, the television channel said that army and national guard units had launched a search for the unknown attackers.

Tunisian authorities gave no comment when asked for further details by AFP.

According to local media, Tunisian defence ministry spokesman Belhassen Oueslati, seen in 2015, said army and national guard units were looking for unknown attackers who killed a soldier in his home November 5, 2016 Fethi Belaid (AFP/File)

Tunisian forces have, since 2012, been trying to flush out groups of extremists holed up in the country's mountainous regions, notably Mghilla and Chaambi, in the central Kasserine region.

Since a revolution in 2011, Tunisia has seen the rise of a jihadist movement responsible for the deaths of dozens of soldiers and police officers as well as civilians.

A total of 59 tourists have also been killed.
California looks to single drug for carrying out executions

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)  California's death row inmates could be executed using one of four different drugs or choose the gas chamber under regulations submitted for final approval Friday, just days before state voters consider whether to do away with the death penalty or reform it.

The plan by corrections officials responds to court pressure and amid a nationwide shortage of execution drugs.

The Office of Administrative Law now has 30 working days to review the regulations for technical problems. If approved, the rules could go into effect early next year, barring court challenges.

FILE - This Sept. 21, 2010 file photo, shows the interior of the lethal injection facility at San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, Calif. California corrections officials announced Friday, Nov. 4, 2016, they have met a legal deadline to switch to a new method of executing condemned inmates, just days before voters decide whether to do away with the death penalty. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)

California has 750 condemned inmates on the nation's largest death row. However, the state hasn't executed anyone since 2006 and frustration over the law and the endless appeals that go with it spawned competing initiatives on Tuesday's ballot.

Proposition 62 would end the death penalty and keep condemned inmates in prison for life. Proposition 66 would speed up appeals and let officials begin single-drug executions.

The regulations submitted Friday would let corrections officials choose between four powerful barbiturates  amobarbital, pentobarbital, secobarbital or thiopental  for each execution, depending on which one is available. Inmates also could continue to choose the gas chamber for their execution.

Eight states have used a one-drug method, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes executions and tracks the issue. Five states in addition to California have announced plans to use a single drug but have not done so.

Executions in California stalled amid legal challenges after 76-year-old Clarence Ray Allen was put to death with three drugs in 2006 for ordering a triple murder.

Federal and state judges suggested the state could resume the punishment if it began using a single drug, prompting Gov. Jerry Brown to say in 2012 that California would consider a one-drug lethal injection.

But there was little progress on the change until a judge forced the state's hand with a ruling last year.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California said two of the four drugs identified in the state proposal have never been used in executions.

It also questioned whether the drugs will be safe and effective, since the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation plans to have the one used for each execution specially made.

The department "is engaging in nothing less than human experimentation," Ana Zamora, the ACLU's criminal justice policy director, said in an email.

About 36,000 people submitted about 167,000 individual comments on the new regulations, department spokeswoman Terry Thornton said.

The department tried to adopt regulations for a three-drug method in 2009 and 2010, but the attempts were blocked by a judge in 2012.

Matt Cherry, director of the campaign to eliminate the death penalty, said the "arduous legal battle over California's broken death penalty system" is another reason for voters to eliminate it.

Michael Rushford, president of the Sacramento-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, also expects more bureaucratic and legal challenges to stall executions. The foundation sued to force corrections officials to adopt the new rules.

Proposition 66 would speed things up by eliminating the need for the department to continue the usual administrative process, he said, speaking for the pro-death penalty campaigns.

Opponents already have signaled they are likely to challenge the regulations in court, meaning more delays are likely before anyone is executed if voters keep the death penalty.

This undated handout photo provided by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation shows Clarence Ray Allen, who was the last person executed in California when he was put to death at San Quentin State Prison in January 2006. California corrections officials announced Friday, Nov. 4, 2016, they have met a legal deadline to switch to a new method of executing condemned inmates, just days before voters decide whether to do away with the death penalty. (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation via AP)
US says airstrike killed al-Qaida leader in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON (AP)  The Defense Department says an airstrike in Afghanistan last month killed al-Qaida's top leader in the eastern part of the country.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook has issued a written statement saying a precision strike conducted by the U.S. military on Oct. 23 in Kunar, Afghanistan, killed Faruq al-Qatani.

Cook says al-Qatani was one of al-Qaida's "senior plotters of attacks against the United States."
'Bridgegate' again interrupts Christie's political plans

TRENTON, N.J. (AP)  New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie planned to make his return to the campaign trail for Donald Trump, appearing in public for the Republican presidential nominee for the first time in months to rally voters in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania on the final weekend before Election Day.

Then Bridgegate interrupted his plans  again.

Two of Christie's former allies were convicted Friday in a plot to close the George Washington Bridge in 2013 to punish a Democratic mayor for not backing Christie's re-election. Christie was not charged in the case, but the trial made the last seven weeks a gauntlet of negative headlines for the governor.

Bridget Anne Kelly, former Deputy Chief of Staff for Christie, broke down in tears as she was found guilty on all counts in the George Washington Bridge traffic trial

While Trump's campaign had announced before the verdict that Christie would stump for him on Saturday, they said later Friday that he would not be on the trail Saturday.

The plot that led to the convictions Friday of Bridget Kelly, Christie's former deputy chief of staff, and Bill Baroni, an executive at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, stemmed from Christie's political team's efforts to build bipartisan support they hoped would eventually help him in this year's presidential election.

Instead, the scandal and criminal case that came from the plot has dragged Christie down, helping to keep his own presidential campaign from going anywhere and featuring testimony reinforcing Christie's reputation among his critics as a bully.

Christie said after he was passed over as Trump's vice presidential pick that the bridge scandal likely factored into Trump's decision.

The trial also included allegations that he knew more about the lane closings than he's previously claimed. Christie said again Friday that he had no knowledge of the plot and said he would "set the record straight" soon about "the lies told by the media and in the courtroom."

"I had no knowledge prior to or during these lane realignments and had no role in authorizing them," Christie said. "No believable evidence was presented to contradict that fact. Anything said to the contrary over the past six weeks in court is simply untrue."

Beyond the Trump presidential campaign, the fallout from Friday's verdict included Democrats calling for a new investigation in to the governor's role and calls for impeachment from liberal groups in New Jersey.

Montclair State University political science professor Brigid Callahan Harrison said Christie was damaged by "the narcissistic way" he was portrayed at the trial.

"These convictions will be an essential defining feature of Christie's legacy in office," she said, "and will forever taint how his administration is perceived and will be remembered."

What comes next for Christie isn't clear, but a Trump win on Tuesday over Democrat Hillary Clinton could give him an exit hatch from the political morass he faces at home, taking the two-term governor to Washington as a Cabinet pick or top aide. Although the fallout from the convictions and questions about what Christie knew could also complicate that.

Even though Trump said last year that he thought Christie "totally knew" about the lane closing plot, he appointed him to lead his transition team. Christie has assembled a team led by two close advisers responsible for filling thousands of government jobs if Trump wins.

John Podesta, Clinton's campaign chairman, on Friday called for Trump to ask Christie to resign after the verdict.

Podesta said that "rather than just ... talking about cleaning up the swamp (Trump) might start by draining his own swamp and asking Mr. Christie to resign as the head of his transition."
For Rolling Stone, 'worst nightmare' continues

RICHMOND, Va. (AP)  Days after Rolling Stone magazine published a shocking 9,000-word story about a brutal gang rape at the University of Virginia in November 2014, the magazine's editors received an email just before 2 a.m. with "Our worst nightmare" in the subject line. They needed to run a retraction, the reporter said.

Instead, Rolling Stone kept the article on its website for four months before finally pulling it down that April and officially retracting the story.

That decision was enough to convince a federal jury in Charlottesville on Friday that the magazine defamed a university administrator, who claimed she was cast as the "chief villain" in the now-discredited story "A Rape on Campus."

University of Virginia administrator Nicole Eramo, left, listens to attorney Libby Locke, right, speak with the media outside the federal courthouse in Charlottesville, Va., on Friday, Nov. 4, 2016. A federal jury on Friday found Rolling Stone magazine, its publisher and a reporter defamed Eramo in a discredited story about gang rape at a fraternity house of the university. (Ryan M. Kelly /The Daily Progress via AP)

The 10-person jury found also found that journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely and the magazine's publisher were responsible for libel, with actual malice.

Nicole Eramo claimed the article falsely said she discouraged the woman identified only as "Jackie" from reporting the incident to police. A police investigation found no evidence to back up Jackie's claims about being raped.

Eramo was seeking $7.5 million from her lawsuit. Jurors are expected to return to court next week to decide how much to award her.

The decision comes at a time when the public's distrust of the press runs deep and is the latest in a year that brought large judgments against other media outlets.

In March, former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan won a $140 million invasion-of-privacy verdict against Gawker for posting a sex tape of him. Gawker settled with Hogan for $31 million this month.

Last month, The News & Observer of Raleigh was ordered to pay about $6 million in a State Bureau of Investigation agent's libel lawsuit.

Samantha Barbas, a law professor at the University of Buffalo, said it appears that media outlets are being threatened with and hit with more lawsuits than ever, and juries seem more willing to side with people who claim they've been injured by the press.

"The climate seems to be one where people, especially public figures, don't fear taking on the press as they might have in the past," said Barbas, who studies the intersection of the First Amendment, culture, media and privacy.

The magazine also faces a $25 million defamation lawsuit from the University of Virginia's Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, where Jackie claimed her sexual assault took place.

Because the judge determined that Eramo was a public figure, she had to prove Rolling Stone made statements with "actual malice," meaning it knew that what it was writing about her was false or entertained serious doubts about whether it might be true.

Jurors found that the magazine and its publisher, Wenner Media, acted with actual malice because they republished the article on Dec. 5 after they knew about the problems with Jackie's story. The magazine put an editor's note on top of the story that day acknowledging its reporting mistakes, but did not use the word retraction and kept the story online.

Rolling Stone's attorneys argued that the editor's note was effectively a retraction, but jurors rejected that idea. The magazine did not say it was officially retracting the article until the following April.

The jury also found that Erdely acted with actual malice on six claims: two statements in the article and four statements to media outlets after the story was published. In one instance, Erdely wrote in the story that Eramo had a "nonreaction" when she heard from Jackie that two other women were also gang-raped at the same Virginia fraternity.

Libby Locke, an attorney for Eramo, said she and her client are pleased with the decision.

"The jury's verdict is a complete vindication of Nicole Eramo, and a complete repudiation of Rolling Stone's and Ms. Erdely's false and defamatory article," Locke said in an email.

In a statement Friday, Rolling Stone apologized to Eramo and others impacted by the article. A spokeswoman for the magazine said she couldn't say whether it plans to appeal the decision.

"It is our deep hope that our failings do not deflect from the pervasive issues discussed in the piece, and that reporting on sexual assault cases ultimately results in campus policies that better protect our students," the magazine said.

David S. Ardia, an assistant professor of law and co-director of the Center for Media Law and Policy at the UNC School of Law, said the magazine's statement Friday suggests it is likely to ultimately settle rather than appeal the verdict.

"Most defendants issue a statement saying they plan to fight at every level of appeal possible," but that's not what Rolling Stone said on Friday, he said.

Defendants contest the jury's ruling because they often win on appeal even when they lose in front of the jury, Ardia said. But in this case, there is a great deal of evidence that seems to point to significant doubt about the story  not in the reporter's mind but in editors' minds  at the time the story was published, he said.

___

Associated Press reporter Jessica Gresko in Washington contributed to this report.

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Follow Alanna Durkin Richer on Twitter at twitter.com/aedurkinricher. Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/journalist/alanna-durkin-richer

University of Virginia administrator Nicole Eramo, left, leaves the federal courthouse in Charlottesville, Va., with attorney Libby Locke, right, on Friday, Nov. 4, 2016. A federal jury on Friday found Rolling Stone magazine, its publisher and a reporter defamed Eramo in a discredited story about gang rape at a fraternity house of the university. (Ryan M. Kelly /The Daily Progress via AP)
Shanshan Feng shoots 64 to take LPGA Tour lead in Japan

IBARAKI, Japan (AP)  Shanshan Feng shot an 8-under 64 on Saturday to take the TOTO Japan Classic lead, putting the Chinese star in position to close the Asian swing with consecutive victories.

Feng birdied the final two holes for a one-stroke advantage over Ariya Jutanugarn, the 20-year-old Thai player who leads the LPGA Tour with five victories and would wrap up the player of the year award with a victory.

"I still missed a few shots, but I think right now my confidence level is really high, so I know how to score," Feng said. "I think that the reason that I struggled in the first half of the year, I was actually hitting the ball really well, but I just didn't know how to score. Now my putting is working and even if I leave myself a 15-footer, I feel comfortable to make it. I feel a lot more comfortable and confident on the course."

Jutanugarn had a 68 on another chilly day at Taiheiyo Club in the tour's first tournament in the Tokyo area since 1991.

"I'm just going to try to have fun and enjoy tomorrow," Jutanugarn said.

Feng won last week in steamy conditions in Malaysia. She has finished no worse than a tie for fourth in her last six events. She started the run with the Olympic bronze medal in Rio, tied for fourth at Evian in France, opened the Asia trip at home in China with a fourth-place tie, was second in Taiwan and tied for third in South Korea before winning. After winning Sunday, she took off Monday and Tuesday.

"I went to Tokyo," Feng said. "I love Japanese food, so I went to my favorite restaurant and went shopping. I spent some money on Monday, so I think that's why I have to try hard on the weekend to make my money back."

The five-time LPGA Tour winner two-putted for birdie on the par-5 17th, then capped the bogey-free round with a 10-footer on the par-4 18th that caught the left edge, circled the cup and fell in to get her to 11-under 133. She birdied three of the first six and had three in a row on Nos. 12-14.

"I'm happy about the score, but there's still one day to go," Feng said. "I'm not going to do anything different. I'm going to stick to the game plan and, hopefully, it's another good day."

She lost a playoff to Momoko Ueda in 2011 at Kintetsu Kashikojima, the tournament venue from 2006 to last year.

The second-ranked Jutanugarn had six birdies and two bogeys. She has a 13-point lead over Lydia Ko in the player of the year standings, with each playing one more event.

"I played good today," Jutanugarn said. "Front nine was really good and on the back nine I just missed some tee shots. Front nine, I made a lot of putts, but back nine putting was not that good. But overall the day was pretty good."

She praised the Japanese fans who have packed the course.

"They're very very nice," Jutanugarn said. "I never have all the spectators be nice like this."

The top-ranked Ko was tied for 52nd at 1 over after a 71.

"I putted better today, but it wasn't overly great," Ko said. "I was able to get back from the two bogeys that I had in my first two holes."

Norway's Suzann Pettersen (66) and South Korea's Soo-Yun Kang (69) were 9 under on the pine tree-lined Minori Course.

"Good setup today. Some fun holes," said Pettersen, second in Malaysia.

The 15-time LPGA Tour winner got the last spot in the final group to complete a major champion threesome.

"I'm playing some good golf these days," Pettersen said. "I felt really comfortable on the greens and gave myself a lot of good chances. I just tried to keep the card clean and I managed to do so. Six birdies and playing well, so I'm excited to have a chance tomorrow."

Defending champion Sun-Ju Ahn (65) was 8 under with Ha Na Jang (68), Jiyai Shin (67), and Jenny Shin (69). Jang won last month in Taiwan for her third victory of the year. Jiyai Shin won the tournament in 2008 and 2010, and is coming off a Japan LPGA victory last week.

Stacy Lewis followed her opening 67 with a 73 to fall into a tie for 21st at 4 under. The 2012 champion, she's winless in 61 starts since June 2014.
2 former aides of Park arrested as S. Korea scandal widens

SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  South Korean prosecutors on Sunday formally arrested two former presidential aides as they bring their investigation over a bizarre political scandal that has engulfed the nation a step closer to President Park Geun-hye.

Park has issued consecutive apologies following suspicion that she allowed her longtime friend and daughter of a late cult leader to manipulate power from the shadows. But the apologies did little to assuage simmering public anger, which culminated in the largest anti-government rally in the capital in nearly a year on Saturday when tens of thousands of people demanded that Park step down.

The Seoul Central District Court granted prosecutors' request for the arrest of Ahn Jong-beom, Park's former senior secretary for policy coordination who is suspected of pressuring companies into making large donations to nonprofit organizations controlled by Park's friend, court spokesman Shin Jae-hwan said.

South Korean protesters stage a rally calling for South Korean President Park Geun-hye to step down in downtown Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. Tens of thousands of South Koreans poured into the streets of downtown Seoul on Saturday, using words including "treason" and "criminal" to demand that Park step down amid an explosive political scandal. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

The court also issued an arrest warrant for Jung Ho-sung, another former presidential aide accused of passing on classified presidential documents to Choi Soon-sil, whose close relationship with Park triggered the scandal.

Prosecutors on Sunday also summoned for questioning Woo Byung-woo, former senior presidential secretary for civil affairs who has been blamed for failing to prevent Choi from influencing state affairs and is embroiled in separate corruption allegations surrounding his family.

Park has admitted that she sent drafts of her speeches to Choi for editing. However, she avoided more damning allegations raised by the media that Choi perhaps meddled in important government decisions on policy and personnel. Choi was arrested earlier in the week on charges of abuse of authority and attempted fraud.

Tens of thousands of people rallied in Seoul on Saturday calling for the resignation of Park. But opposition parties, demanding that Park to step away from domestic affairs and transfer the duties to a prime minister picked by the parliament, have yet to make a serious push for Park's resignation or impeachment over concerns of negatively impacting next year's presidential race.

Holding banners, candles and colorful signs that read "Park Geun-hye out" and "Treason by a secret government," a sea of demonstrators filled a large square in front of an old palace gate and nearby streets, singing and thunderously applauding speeches calling for the ouster of the increasingly unpopular conservative president.

They shifted into a slow march in streets around City Hall, shouting "Arrest Park Geun-hye," "'Step down, criminal" and "We can't take this any longer," before moving back to the square and cheering on more speeches that continued into the night.

"Park should squarely face the prosecution's investigation and step down herself. If she doesn't, politicians should move to impeach her," said Kim Seo-yeon, one of the many college students who participated in the protest. "She absolutely lost all authority as president over the past few weeks."

Choi Kyung-ha, a mother of three, said her children asked her who Choi was "and whether she's the real president, and I couldn't provide an answer."

Police estimated the crowd at 45,000, although protest organizers said about 200,000 people turned out.

Park has tried to stabilize the situation by firing eight aides and nominating three new top Cabinet officials, including the prime minister, but opposition parties have described her personnel reshuffles as a diversionary tactic.

One national poll released Friday had Park's approval rating at 5 percent, the lowest for any president in South Korea since the country achieved democracy in the late 1980s following decades of military dictatorship.

Opposition parties, sensing weakness, immediately threatened to push for her ouster if she doesn't distance herself from domestic affairs and transfer the duties to a prime minister chosen by parliament. The parties have also called for a separate investigation into the scandal led by a special prosecutor.

Park has 15 months left in her term. If she resigns, an election must be held within 60 days.

South Korean protesters shout slogans as they march after a rally calling for South Korean President Park Geun-hye to step down in downtown Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. Tens of thousands of South Koreans poured into the streets of downtown Seoul on Saturday, using words including "treason" and "criminal" to demand that Park step down amid an explosive political scandal. The signs read "Park Geun-hye should step down." (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

South Korean protesters stage a rally calling for South Korean President Park Geun-hye to step down in downtown Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. Tens of thousands of South Koreans poured into the streets of downtown Seoul on Saturday, using words including "treason" and "criminal" to demand that Park step down amid an explosive political scandal. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

South Korean protesters shout slogans during a rally calling for South Korean President Park Geun-hye to step down in downtown Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. Tens of thousands of South Koreans poured into the streets of downtown Seoul on Saturday, using words including "treason" and "criminal" to demand that Park step down amid an explosive political scandal. The signs read "Park Geun-hye should step down." (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

South Korean protesters stage a rally calling for South Korean President Park Geun-hye to step down in downtown Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. Tens of thousands of South Koreans poured into the streets of downtown Seoul on Saturday, using words including "treason" and "criminal" to demand that President Park Geun-hye step down amid an explosive political scandal. The signs read "Park Geun-hye should step down." (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

South Korean protesters stage a rally calling for South Korean President Park Geun-hye to step down in downtown Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. Tens of thousands of South Koreans poured into the streets of downtown Seoul on Saturday, using words including "treason" and "criminal" to demand that President Park Geun-hye step down amid an explosive political scandal. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

South Korean protesters stage a rally calling for South Korean President Park Geun-hye to step down in downtown Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. Police had anticipated that about 40,000 people would turn out Saturday for the largest anti-government protest in the capital in nearly a year. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A South Korean protester holds a flag during a rally calling for South Korean President Park Geun-hye to step down in downtown Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. Tens of thousands of South Koreans are expected to march in Seoul to demand Park's resignation on Saturday, a day after she took blame for a "heartbreaking" scandal and rising suspicion that she allowed a mysterious confidante to manipulate power from the shadows. The signs read "Park Geun-hye should step down." (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

South Korean protesters stage a rally calling for South Korean President Park Geun-hye to step down in downtown Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. Tens of thousands of South Koreans are expected to march in Seoul to demand Park's resignation on Saturday, a day after she took blame for a "heartbreaking" scandal and rising suspicion that she allowed a mysterious confidante to manipulate power from the shadows. The signs read "Park Geun-hye should step down." (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

South Korean protesters stage a rally calling for South Korean President Park Geun-hye to step down in downtown Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. Tens of thousands of South Koreans are expected to march in Seoul to demand Park's resignation on Saturday, a day after she took blame for a "heartbreaking" scandal and rising suspicion that she allowed a mysterious confidante to manipulate power from the shadows. The signs read "Park Geun-hye should step down." (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

South Korean high school students are blocked by police officers as they march toward the presidential house after a rally calling for South Korean President Park Geun-hye to step down in downtown Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. Tens of thousands of South Koreans are expected to march in Seoul to demand Park's resignation on Saturday, a day after she took blame for a "heartbreaking" scandal and rising suspicion that she allowed a mysterious confidante to manipulate power from the shadows. The signs read "Park Geun-hye should step down." (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

South Korean high school students march toward the presidential house after a rally calling for South Korean President Park Geun-hye to step down in downtown Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. Tens of thousands of South Koreans are expected to march in Seoul to demand Park's resignation on Saturday, a day after she took blame for a "heartbreaking" scandal and rising suspicion that she allowed a mysterious confidante to manipulate power from the shadows. The signs read "Park Geun-hye should step down." (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

South Korean high school students hold up their cards during a rally calling for South Korean President Park Geun-hye to step down in downtown Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. Tens of thousands of South Koreans are expected to march in Seoul to demand President Park's resignation on Saturday, a day after she took blame for a "heartbreaking" scandal and rising suspicion that she allowed a mysterious confidante to manipulate power from the shadows. The letters read "Park Geun-hye should step down." (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

South Korean high school students stage a rally calling for South Korean President Park Geun-hye to step down in downtown Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. Tens of thousands of South Koreans are expected to march in Seoul to demand President Park Geun-hye's resignation on Saturday, a day after she took blame for a "heartbreaking" scandal and rising suspicion that she allowed a mysterious confidante to manipulate power from the shadows. The letters read "Park Geun-hye should step down." (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Head of Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition taken to prison

ISTANBUL (AP)  Turkey's state-run news agency says the leader of the pro-Kurdish opposition party has been taken to a maximum security prison in the northwestern city of Edirne.

The Anadolou agency said Saturday that Selahattin Demirtas, co-chair of the People's Democratic Party or HDP, was among the 12 party legislators detained overnight for refusal to testify on terror-related charges.

Demirtas, along with fellow co-chair Figen Yuksekdag and seven other lawmakers were formally put under arrest pending trial. The courts released three others on condition they report regularly to authorities.

The private Dogan News Agency said Yuksekdag was taken to a maximum security prison in the northwestern city of Kocaeli.
Spain says leading ETA member arrested in France

MADRID (AP)  French police arrested the leader of the debilitated Basque militant group ETA, Spain's Interior Ministry said Saturday.

Spanish authorities identified Mikel Irastorza as "currently the maximum leader" of ETA. In a statement, they said Irastorza and two more people were arrested Saturday morning by French police, working in tandem with Spanish agents, in the French town of Ascain near the Spanish border.

Spanish police said Irastorza, who had been in hiding since 2008, became ETA's leading member a year ago.

A Spanish man and a French woman were arrested on suspicion that they had given shelter to Irastorza in a house they owned.

In 2011 ETA announced it was renouncing violence in its campaign for independence for the Basque regions of northern Spain and southwest France. It has yet to disarm or disband.

Spain's Interior Ministry said Irastorza's capture "represents a big blow to ETA's infrastructure because it means the loss of its leadership ... and the removal of its head of management of its arsenal of weapons and explosives."

ETA, founded in 1959 during the Spanish dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, is blamed for over 800 deaths since its first killing in 1968. Its last deadly attack in Spain was a July 2009 car bomb that killed two policemen on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. In France, ETA members shot and killed a French police officer near Paris in March 2010.
Nigerian troops find kidnapped Chibok schoolgirl with baby

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AP)  Nigerian troops rescued one of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram extremists more than two years ago in a pre-dawn raid Saturday on a forest hideout. She had a 10-month-old baby boy born to a Boko Haram fighter, said a statement from army spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman.

It was the first army rescue of a Chibok girl.

Last month, Nigeria's government secured the freedom of 21 of the Chibok schoolgirls in the first such release negotiated with Boko Haram. Another girl escaped in May on her own.

A recently rescued Nigerian Chibok girl with her child at a local Nigerian government council house in Maiduguri, Nigeria, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. Nigerian troops rescued one of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram extremists more than two years ago in a pre-dawn raid Saturday on a forest hideout. She had a 10-month-old baby boy born to a Boko Haram fighter, said a statement from army spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman. (AP Photo/Jossy Ola)

Thousands of other Boko Haram captives have been freed this year as the military has forced the extremists out of towns and villages in northeastern Nigeria, where they had declared an Islamic caliphate. But until Saturday, none proved to be among the 276 schoolgirls seized from northeastern Chibok town in April 2014. Dozens of them escaped within hours.

President Muhammadu Buhari has vowed to secure the release of the nearly 200 schoolgirls who remain captive.

The failures of successive governments and security forces to free the girls brought international condemnation and the creation of a movement called Bring Back Our Girls. U.S. first lady Michelle Obama posted a picture of herself under that hashtag and vowed her husband would do everything in his power to help bring the girls home.

Former President Goodluck Jonathan's initial refusal even to admit the girls had been taken hostage, losing precious days after their capture, contributed to his loss at 2015 elections.

Meanwhile, activists and relatives have objected to the government's prolonged holding of Amina Ali Nkeki, the girl who escaped in May. She says she wants to be reunited with her mother and the father of her child, a detained Boko Haram extremist whom she says also was a victim of kidnapping and helped her escape.

The government says she is receiving trauma counseling and other care at a military hospital in Abuja, where she has been joined by the girls released last month.

Human rights activists have protested against the prolonged military screening of escapees from Boko Haram that has kept thousands held in detention, where Amnesty International has reported babies are among those dying from inhumane conditions.

Some 20,000 people have been killed in Boko Haram's seven-year Islamic uprising that has spread across borders and forced 2.6 million refugees from their homes.

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Faul reported from Lagos.
Insurgent offensive in Aleppo kills dozens of civilians

BEIRUT (AP)  An offensive by Syrian insurgents aimed at the government-held part of the northern city of Aleppo has killed at least 74 civilians, including 25 children, an opposition monitoring group said Saturday.

The insurgents launched the assault eight days ago, hoping to break a months-long government siege on the rebel-held eastern part of the city, which has been subjected to months of devastating Syrian and Russian airstrikes. The insurgents have seized a district on Aleppo's edge and a nearby village.

The Syrian military said the first three days of the rebel offensive killed more than 80 people. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the different figures.

In this image taken from video provided by the activist-run Thiqa News Agency, consistent with independent AP reporting, a plume of smoke rises after a missile falls on the town of Darat Izza, Aleppo, Syria, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. Syrian activists are reporting Russian and government airstrikes have kept up on western rural Aleppo province against rebel positions despite a halt to airstrikes in the besieged eastern part of Aleppo city. (Thiqa News Agency, via AP)

Rights groups and the U.N. have sharply criticized the rebels over the shelling of western Aleppo districts, which has killed a number of civilians. Such criticism had mainly been focused on the government and its allies, accusing them of indiscriminate shelling and airstrikes on rebel-held areas.

Moscow declared a halt to airstrikes on eastern Aleppo on Oct. 18, but Syrian and Russian warplanes have continued to strike around the city's edges and in the surrounding province. The strikes, which have hit a school and several medical facilities, have killed more than 400 civilians in less than a month and wounded more than 2,000 people. The Observatory recorded three civilian deaths in rebel-held Aleppo districts in the past week.

On Friday, a renewed 10-hour Russian offer of a moratorium on airstrikes expired. None of the estimated 275,000 residents of eastern Aleppo departed during the unilateral cease-fire, as they had been urged to do by Russia and the Syrian government.

Russian officials had not said what would happen when the deadline expired. But the arrival of a Russian aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, into the Mediterranean and its heading to the Syrian coast suggested Moscow may intend to escalate its operations.

The chairman of the Russian parliament's defense committee, Vladimir Shamanov, told state TV Rossiya 1 earlier this week that the carrier's arrival in Syria is part of a rotation schedule and also "a show of the flag."

On Saturday, Syria's pro-government Sama TV said another Russian ship, the frigate Admiral Grigorovich, has arrived in the Mediterranean to "reinforce the other military ships already present at the Syrian coast." Admiral Grigorovich is one of the most advanced classes of frigates in the Russian navy and can fire cruise missiles. There was no immediate word from the Russian Defense Ministry.

By late afternoon Saturday, there were no reports of airstrikes in the city of Aleppo, but Syrian activists reported air raids in the surrounding province.

Footage from the activist-run Thiqa News Agency appeared to show missiles targeting the town of Darat Izza in northwestern Aleppo province. A team of first responders known as the Syrian Civil Defense, or White Helmets, said at least three people were killed in the airstrikes and 15 others were wounded.

There has been an intense aerial bombing campaign in the western Aleppo countryside and nearby Idlib province in recent days. Rebels said it appeared to be an attempt to sever their supply lines.

An insurgent alliance known as the Army of Conquest, which includes the al-Qaida-linked Fatah al-Sham Front, has led the attack on western Aleppo. It is the second time insurgents have tried to break the siege imposed on the territory since July. An earlier offensive that breached the siege in August for a few weeks was repelled.

Abu Saeed al-Halabi, a Dutch member of Fatah al-Sham based in Aleppo, said Russia has intensified its airstrikes during the insurgent-led offensive on Aleppo's western countryside, "the proposed end destination" for the potential evacuees from eastern Aleppo. He said that the aerial campaign has not curtailed the rebel offensive.

"This offensive will take longer than previous ones because the attacks take place in urban areas and the regime militias have a lot to lose if this siege is broken," he told The Associated Press in a text message from Aleppo.

Also on Saturday, a Lebanese soccer team paid condolences to Qassim Shamkha, a 20-year old former player, who was killed fighting alongside Hezbollah in Syria. The Lebanese Shiite group has sent thousands of fighters to aid the Syrian government in Aleppo and other parts of the country. Other Iraqi Shiite militias and Iranian fighters also fight on the side of the Syrian government.

The Observatory said at least 21 Hezbollah fighters were killed in the rebel offensive against western Aleppo. A total of 93 pro-government fighters have been killed since the offensive began, compared to at least 86 insurgents killed in the same period.

This photo provided by the Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows Civil Defense workers and Syrian citizens inspecting damaged buildings after airstrikes hit in Darat Izza town, in rural western Aleppo province, Syria, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. Despite a halt in airstrikes in eastern Aleppo city, there has been an intense aerial bombing campaign in the western Aleppo countryside and nearby Idlib province. Rebels say the strikes are an attempt to sever the supply lines of the rebels, waging an offensive on government-held western Aleppo. (Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets via AP)
What if? A look at the Electoral College, rogue electors

WASHINGTON (AP)  If all goes smoothly, the American people will choose a new president on Tuesday, the Electoral College will affirm the election next month and either Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump will take the oath of office on Jan. 20.

But why assume everything will go smoothly in an election year that already has seen more than its share of surprises. What, for example, if some electors refuse to vote for the candidate who won their state? What if the winner is sitting in a courtroom instead of parading in Washington?

The FBI is investigating newly discovered emails that might be related to the dormant probe into Clinton's use of a private email server. The future of that investigation is uncertain, and there could be developments after the election.

In this Nov. 1, 2016, photo, a voter is reflected in the glass frame of a poster while leaving a polling site in Atlanta, during early voting ahead of the Nov. 8 election day. If all goes smoothly, the American people will choose a new president on Tuesday, the Electoral College will affirm the election and either Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump will take the oath of office Jan. 20. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

On the Republican side, Trump faces unresolved cases in New York and California related to Trump University, as well as numerous other civil suits. He also has threatened to sue The New York Times over its publication of details regarding his taxes.

Electors who go rogue  called faithless electors  are rare and have never changed the result of an election.

A look at the process:

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FAITHLESS ELECTORS

In the presidential contest, Election Day voters are casting ballots for their state's electors, who are in turn expected to cast votes for the presidential candidate who wins the most votes in their state. According to the National Archives, 99 percent of electors through U.S. history have voted for the candidate who won their state.

Electors are chosen by each party, and typically are party insiders who can be trusted to vote for their candidate. But in many states, they aren't legally required to support that person.

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STATE LAWS VARY

Twenty-one states don't require their electors to go along with the popular vote, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The 29 states that require faithfulness from their electors can impose a variety of punishments, including fines.

One elector has already said he won't vote for Clinton, despite a fine. Robert Satiacum, a member of Washington's Puyallup Tribe, says he believes Clinton is a "criminal" who doesn't care enough about American Indians and "she's done nothing but flip back and forth."

Satiacum faces a $1,000 fine in Washington if he doesn't vote for Clinton, but he said he doesn't care.

"She will not get my vote, period," he told The Associated Press.

Oklahoma also imposes a fine, according to NCSL. In South Carolina, a faithless elector is subject to criminal penalties.

"Apart from the state laws that attempt to corral electors, the theory is that the electors can vote for anyone who is qualified to be president of the United States," says constitutional law scholar Robert Bennett, an emeritus professor at Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law.

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KICKING IT TO CONGRESS

There are 538 electors, and the winner must receive half of that plus one, or 270 electoral votes. If electors split votes for some reason and no candidate received 270, the decision is kicked to the House of Representatives.

Each state's House delegation has one vote, and must pick from the top three candidates who received the most electoral votes. The Senate decides the vice presidential contest.

Congress' role makes it less likely that Democrats, in particular, would split the electoral vote, says John Hudak, a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. That's because there are more Republican states than Democratic states, so a House vote would almost certainly produce a Republican president.

"There is no incentive for any Democratic elector to vote for anyone else but Hillary Clinton," Hudak says.

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DISQUALIFYING EVENTS

Even if there were any damaging developments in the review of the newly discovered emails, the content of which is still unknown, Clinton would still be able to assume the presidency if she wins and the Electoral College affirms the results.

If either Trump or Clinton were to die after the election and before the Electoral College votes, their electors would be free to vote for someone else. This happened in 1872, when Horace Greeley died after losing the election to Ulysses S. Grant and before the electors met. But it didn't matter because Grant had swept the election.

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IT'S A LONG SHOT

Faithless electors are extremely rare, and the system has generally held up as intended. On four occasions, a candidate has won the popular vote and lost the electoral vote, including the 2000 race that Republican George W. Bush eventually won over Vice President Al Gore. Never has a faithless elector changed an election result, and there have only been a handful of them in the past 50 years. There hasn't been an electoral tie in more than 150 years.

"We have not had to face some of these unusual contingencies," like a mass of electors defecting, says Thomas Neale, an Electoral College expert who is also an elections analyst for the Library of Congress. "There's a very high percentage of success."

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Immigrants in US illegally see this election as crucial

NEW YORK (AP)  There was never any doubt Juana Alvarez's 18- and 20-year-old American-born daughters would be taking part in the election this year. Alvarez did her best to see to that.

"I had two people I wanted to get registered and I registered them," Alvarez, a 39-year-old housekeeper in Brooklyn who came to the U.S. from Mexico as a teenager, said through a translator.

For Alvarez and the estimated 11 million other immigrants living illegally in the U.S., this is a potentially crucial election, with Republican Donald Trump talking about mass deportations and a border wall and Democrat Hillary Clinton pledging to support immigration reform and protect President Barack Obama's executive actions on behalf of immigrants.

In this Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2016 photo, Juana Alvarez, 39, an undocumented Mexican housekeeper and immigrant rights community activist, talks about the upcoming presidential election at the Make the Road New York's Brooklyn offices in New York. Guatemalan immigrant Mauricio Pelaez-Alvarez, 33, (no relation), a day laborer and construction worker, listens, right rear. The estimated 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally are watching this potentially crucial election mostly from the sidelines. They cant vote, so their future in this country depends on the choices other people make.(AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Come Election Day, these immigrants will be watching from the sidelines, their future in the hands of others. Under the U.S. Constitution, only full citizens can vote; legal immigrants who are green card holders also are not allowed to cast a ballot.

Trump has spoken of fears of election fraud or that immigrants living illegally in the country might vote. More broadly, he has said all immigrants should play by the legal rules.

Alvarez and others like her say although they can't vote, they have been taking part in get-out-the-vote efforts among citizens.

In places like New York, California, Arizona and Virginia, they have been knocking on doors and making telephone calls, registering people, urging them to go to the polls, and telling their stories in hopes of persuading voters to keep the interests of immigrants in mind when they go into the booth.

"For me, it's important that those who can vote come out of the shadows and make their voices heard," Alvarez said.

Isabel Medina, a 43-year-old from Los Angeles who has been in the country illegally for 20 years and has three sons, two born in the U.S., has worked phone banks and taken part in voter registration drives for U.S. citizens, making sure that "even though they're frustrated, they are disappointed, they still realize it is really important, that they know the power that they have in their hands."

She says she emphasized the need to vote for all the races, not just the presidency, and the importance of taking part in referendums and propositions.

Even though these immigrants can't vote, their pre-Election Day efforts make a difference, said Karina Ruiz, 32, of Phoenix, who came to the U.S. illegally from Mexico when she was 15 and is acting executive director of the Arizona Dream Act Coalition, an immigrant-advocacy group that has been doing get-out-the-vote work.

"It is making an impact because those people who wouldn't vote otherwise, when they listen to my story and hear their vote does count and make a difference, they're encouraged to participate and be my voice," said Ruiz, who has a work permit and an exemption from deportation under Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy. That policy was created by executive order, one that could be undone by any president in the future.

"I think to myself: I could just vote once, if I had the power to," she said. But "if I can influence 50 to 60 people to go ahead and vote, that's my voice multiplied by a whole lot."

As for what will happen after Election Day, "the uncertainty, it is there, I don't know what's going to happen," said Medina, who avoids talking about the election with her U.S.-born sons because she doesn't want them to get scared that their parents might be deported. "I am worried, yes."

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Follow Deepti Hajela at www.twitter.com/dhajela. Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/deepti-hajela .

In this Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2016, photo, undocumented Guatemalan immigrant day-laborer and construction worker Mauricio Pelaez-Alvarez, 33, reacts to a reporter's questions during an Associated Press interview at Make The Road New York offices in New York. Pelaez-Alvarez, who has been in the United States for ten years, can't vote, but he still has opinions about who should be president in the upcoming election. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

In this Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2016 photo, Mexican and immigrant rights activist Juana Alvarez, 39, talks to friend Anan Maria Archila in New York. Although Alvarez has lived in the United States since arriving at 16, because of her legal status, she can't vote in the November election. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)
The Latest: Trump criticizes Clinton reliance on celebrities

WASHINGTON (AP)  The Latest on the 2016 presidential race (all times EDT):

12:50 p.m.

Donald Trump says it's "demeaning to the political process" for rival Hillary Clinton to be campaigning with celebrities like Jay Z.

Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, speaks during a campaign rally late Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

The GOP nominee was complaining at a rally in Denver, Colorado that the language at a get-out-the-vote concert headlined by Jay Z and Beyonce was "filthy" by "any standard."

He's been saying all day that, unlike Clinton, he doesn't need star-studded backup to draw crowds.

Trump is also bragging about putting Clinton on defense in states like Michigan and Minnesota, where he'll be campaigning Sunday in a last-minute effort to win over traditionally Democratic stronghold.

He says: "I know Hillary all of a sudden, she's making all of these trips, she's going all over the place... She was supposed to be home sleeping."

Trump's Denver rally was his last in a busy day of campaigning that included rallies in Florida, North Carolina and Nevada. He's set to hit five states Sunday.

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12:40 p.m.

Vice Presidential candidate Tim Kaine played harmonica alongside rock singer Jon Bon Jovi Saturday night in Florida, ending a whirlwind day of campaigning along Florida's battleground Gulf Coast.

The song: Bon Jovi's iconic, 1986 tune, "You Give Love a Bad Name."

The crowd at The State Theater in St. Petersburg  a mix of Generation X, millennials, gays, lesbians and even Senate candidate Patrick Murphy went wild.

Bon Jovi played a few songs, including "Living on a Prayer," and Kaine came onstage and spoke before the final tune. He spoke of art and spirituality and faith.

The rocker said he's been a longtime supporter of Hillary Clinton.

"These are trying times. Anyone who tells you this election is over, it's not," Bon Jovi said, urging people to get out to vote if they haven't already.

Bon Jovi joked that he would start a band called "TK and the Faithful."

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10:45 p.m.

The Secret Service says there was no weapon involved in the commotion that briefly disrupted Donald Trump's rally in Reno, Nevada, and caused agents to hustle Trump from the stage.

The Republican nominee had been speaking to supporters for a while when a disturbance broke out in the crowd close to the podium. Two Secret Service agents quickly surrounded Trump, then hustled him off the stage.

In a statement, the Secret Service said a person in front of the stage had shouted "Gun!" but that no weapon was found after a search of the person and the immediate area. The person was apprehended, but officials did not identify the person or disclose whether he had been charged with a crime.

The Secret Service said an investigation into the incident was ongoing.

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9:20 p.m.

Donald Trump was rushed off stage by the Secret Service during a rally in Nevada but returned within minutes.

The Republican nominee had been speaking to supporters in Reno for a while when a disturbance broke out in the crowd close to the podium.

Two Secret Service agents quickly surrounded Trump, then hustled him off stage.

The nature of the disturbance was unclear. But several security officials escorted a man out of the venue soon afterward.

Upon his return, Trump thanked the Secret Service.

He told the crowd: "Nobody said it was going to be easy for us. But we will never be stopped. Never ever be stopped."

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9 p.m.

Donald Trump is accusing officials of wrongly keeping polling sites open late in Nevada's Clark Country in order to boost Democratic early-voting turnout.

There appears to be no evidence that is the case.

Trump is making a last-minute visit to the battleground state, drawing thousands of supporters to a rally at a Reno convention center.

Trump is also sounding confident about his chances in the state, despite a surge in early-voting by Democrats and Latinos that has Democrats feeling optimistic.

Trump says, "They didn't get the kind of vote that they needed to stop us on Tuesday."

Trump is also going after Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, calling him "Crazy Harry."

And he's continuing to mock his rival Hillary Clinton's star-studded get-out-the-vote events, saying that she needs to appear alongside celebrities or else nobody will attend her events.

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8:45 p.m.

Hillary Clinton is wooing Pennsylvania voters with a free performance by pop star Katy Perry.

Clinton is telling a crowd gathered at Philadelphia's Mann Center that it's "all on the line" on Election Day.

She says, "I want you to say I voted for a better, fairer stronger America."

Perry took the stage to the song "Nasty." She has been a big supporter of Clinton throughout the presidential race and opened with her song "Roar," which has become an anthem for Clinton's campaign.

Perry says, "Tuesday's going to be fun, but Wednesday is going to be better."

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5 p.m.

Tim Kaine says some employees at the FBI are "actively working" to support Republican Donald Trump and the agency has suffered a "massive blow" to its reputation.

The Democratic vice presidential nominee says in an interview with Fusion that the FBI had become a "leaky sieve" and some of its employees have improperly worked to leak information harmful to running mate Hillary Clinton.

FBI Director James Comey told Congress last week that the bureau is looking into newly uncovered Clinton emails. Comey's letter to lawmakers didn't say whether investigators are likely to turn up anything of note.

Kaine criticized Comey's decision, but said he does not think Comey is trying to influence the election. Instead, Kaine said some of Comey's politically motivated subordinates may have forced his hand.

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3:30 p.m.

President Barack Obama is pushing back against Republican Sen. Pat Toomey's use of the Democrat's words in a campaign ad for his Senate race.

Obama responded Saturday to a Toomey campaign TV ad that shows Obama speaking outside the White House in 2013 and thanking Toomey for his courage in backing a gun control bill, despite its failure. The ad is running in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

In a statement to The Associated Press, Obama says courage is telling voters "where you stand on the tough issues." Obama also criticized Toomey for refusing to say whether he'll vote for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Toomey is working to win over moderate voters in his too-close-to-call race against Democrat Katie McGinty in Democratic-leaning Pennsylvania.

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2:30 p.m.

Hillary Clinton is telling young people in a conference call with primary rival Bernie Sanders that it's "all hands on deck now."

She says millennials "will decide this election" and is urging them to vote. She's asking them to do phone banking in their dorm rooms and canvass neighborhoods in the final days.

Sanders said on the call that Clinton will bring the country together and the stakes are high for policy issues like climate change. He says "the future of the planet is at stake."

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2 p.m.

Hillary Clinton is going prime-time on the eve of the election.

Her campaign says she'll do a two-minute national TV commercial Monday night, running during the NBC program "The Voice" and "Kevin Can Wait" on CBS.

Altogether, her campaign expects the ad to be seen by a combined audience of 20 million.

Earlier Saturday, her campaign debuted a battleground-state ad to run through Election Day in nearly a dozen states. It's set to the Katy Perry song, "Roar."

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1:50 p.m.

Hillary Clinton is cutting a speech in South Florida short, after a sudden downpour. She told the soaked crowd, "You're a hardy bunch" and asked them to "vote for the future."

Clinton left the stage after speaking for seven minutes. The event is expected to be her last in Florida, where her campaign has been encouraged by high levels of early voting among Latinos. About 60 percent of the state is expected to cast ballots before the election Tuesday.

She's heading to Philadelphia, where she's hosting an event with pop star Katy Perry.

Also in Florida, her running mate, Tim Kaine, urged supporters to take advantage of the last day of early voting in the state.

He told a rally in Fort Myers that early voting helps Clinton decide where to spend time and money in the final days.

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Melania Trump is back campaigning for her husband.

She joined him Saturday in Wilmington, North Carolina, telling supporters the country needs a president who will keep the nation safe, lower taxes and bring back jobs.

Earlier this week, in Philadelphia, she delivered her first speech since the Republican National Convention.

She says she had so much fun she "decided to do it again."

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1:15 p.m.

House Speaker Paul Ryan and Donald Trump's running mate, Mike Pence, have joined together in a sign of Republican unity.

They appeared at a rally Saturday in Wisconsin's most conservative county  a month after Ryan said he would no longer defend or campaign with Trump.

Both Pence and Ryan said it's time for Republicans to "come home" and vote for Trump. Pence heaped praise on Ryan, calling him a friend and great conservative leader.

Just days earlier, Pence refused to say whether he thought Ryan should be re-elected as speaker.

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1 p.m.

Hillary Clinton is courting voters in a Haitian-American neighborhood of Miami.

She told cheering supporters holding Creole campaign signs that Haiti has been close to her heart for a long time. She urged them to get to the polls to vote.

Her husband helped raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the country as a United Nations special envoy after the 2010 earthquake. Hillary Clinton visited multiple times as secretary of state and her family foundation has been involved with aid programs in the country.

Some Haitian-Americans question the success of the Clintons' relief efforts and blame them for some of Haiti's corruption.

___

Noon

Donald Trump is scheduling a last-minute stop in Minnesota as he tries to make inroads into traditional Democratic strongholds during the final frenzied days of the race.

Trump is also expected to campaign in Pennsylvania and Michigan, two other traditionally Democratic states.

Trump says, "We're going into what they used to call Democrat strongholds where we're now either tied or leading."

Minnesota hasn't cast its electoral votes for a Republican since 1972.

A Republican hasn't won Michigan or Pennsylvania since 1988.

___

11:50 a.m.

Hillary Clinton is stopping by an early voting location in Miami to encourage her supporters to cast their ballots as soon as possible.

The Democratic nominee visited the West Miami community center where Florida Sen. Marco Rubio voted earlier this week for himself and, he implied, Donald Trump.

Clinton was accompanied by singer and actor Jencarlos Canela, and Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin.

Columbian dancers were among the supporters who turned out to cheer Clinton.

She is making a final swing through Florida before Tuesday's election. A majority of voters in the state are expected to cast their ballots before Election Day.

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10:40 a.m.

Donald Trump is bragging that he doesn't need celebrities like Jay Z to fill up arenas.

Trump tells a Tampa, Florida, rally that when it comes to drawing crowds, he does it the old-fashioned way, by appealing to supporters drawn to his message. He's contrasting his events with the star-studded rallies of Hillary Clinton in the final weekend before the election Tuesday.

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10:30 a.m.

Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence says Hillary Clinton "personifies" the failed status quo.

The Indiana governor told a crowd of hundreds in Holland, Michigan, on Saturday morning that Donald Trump would push "commonsense conservative principles" if elected president. It is Pence's third consecutive day of campaigning in Michigan, which has not backed a Republican nominee in 28 years. Trump is hoping to change that Tuesday.

Pence is urging Republicans in conservative-leaning western Michigan to "come home" to the Republican candidate to keep Clinton from shaping the Supreme Court.

Pence is set to also campaign in Wisconsin and Virginia on Saturday.

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Democratic vice presidential candidate, Tim Kaine, plays harmonica alongside rocker Jon Bon Jovi at a Get Out The Vote rally at The State Theater in St. Petersburg, Fla., Saturday night, Nov. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Tamara Lush)

Members of the Secret Service rush Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump off the stage at a campaign rally in Reno, Nev., on Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Florida State Fairgrounds, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)

Katy Perry, left, holds the hand of Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, right, during a concert at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump kisses his wife Melania as she introduces him at a campaign rally Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016, in Wilmington, N.C. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gestures as she speaks during a downpour at a rally, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016, in Pembroke Pines, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

FILE - In this Oct. 11, 2016, file photo, Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., campaigns in Villanova, Pa. Sen. Toomey is turning to the target of some of his toughest criticism to help him in his life-or-death re-election bid in Democratic-leaning Pennsylvania: President Barack Obama. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

A young girl stands next to a large Dominican Republic flag as Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton greets people outside an early voting center in West Miami, Fla.,Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump pumps his fists as he takes the stage during a campaign rally Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

In this Nov. 1, 2016, photo, a voter is reflected in the glass frame of a poster while leaving a polling site in Atlanta, during early voting ahead of the Nov. 8 election day. If all goes smoothly, the American people will choose a new president on Tuesday, the Electoral College will affirm the election and either Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump will take the oath of office Jan. 20. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton greets actor Jencarlos Canela, left, outside an early voting center in West Miami, Fla.,Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Jim Lovel of St. Petersburg, Fla., gets his service dog "Henry the Dog" to bark before a speech by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump holds up 6-month-old Catalina Larkin, of Largo, Fla., during a campaign rally Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton greets people at her Little Haiti campaign field office in Miami, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, center, accompanied by actor Jencarlos Canela, right, greets people outside an early voting center in West Miami, Fla., Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Merkel's Bavarian allies tilt right ahead of national vote

BERLIN (AP)  The Bavarian sister-party of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats is positioning itself firmly against the chancellor's open-door policy toward refugees in a bid to win voters angered by the influx of migrants.

The Christian Social Union has always been more conservative than Merkel's party, which is active in the rest of Germany outside Bavaria. The so-called Union bloc comprising the two parties is expected to lose ground to the surging nationalist party Alternative for Germany in next year's national election.

At a meeting Saturday in Munich, CSU party delegates unanimously passed a new program that rejects multiculturalism and demands nation-wide referendums of the kind seen in Switzerland.

Bavarian State Governor and Chairman of German Christian Social Union party, CSU, Horst Seehofer, waves after his speech at a party convention of the German Christian Social Union, CSU, in Munich, Germany, Friday, Nov. 4, 2016. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

The program also reinforces the CSU's demand for an annual cap on the number of refugees Germany takes in. Some 890,000 people applied for asylum in Germany in 2015, with another 213,000 applying in the first nine months of 2016. Many were fleeing hardship and wars in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Manfred Weber, the CSU's deputy leader, told the Passauer Neue Presse daily that his party won't join another coalition government unless there's a cap on asylum-seekers. The party has previously said that cap should be 200,000 a year.

Party leader Horst Seehofer told news channel n-tv that he expects the CSU to close ranks with Merkel's Christian Democrats ahead of next year's vote, but acknowledged that it may not be possible to agree on all points, including immigration.

Merkel has rejected a fixed cap on asylum-seekers as legally and practically impossible.
Election Day near, Americans weigh divide, look for healing

The idea had never occurred to the Rev. Adam Hamilton at the conclusion of past presidential campaigns. But this Election Day, the megachurch he leads in the Kansas City suburbs will invite congregants, and anyone else who chooses, to stop in and pray for the nation to heal itself.

"There's plenty of division in our country every year, but this year's election is different," said Hamilton, founding pastor of the 20,000-member United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, where two of four campuses will serve as polling stations. "Our families are divided. We're divided sometimes from our friends. Even when we're in church here our politics are different. And I think we have to be reminded that there's a bigger picture here."

As Hamilton's congregants and millions of other Americans weather the final days of a campaign cycle filled with insults and anger, the nation indeed finds itself at a troubling crossroads.

This combination of photos shows supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in Tempe, Ariz., on Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2016, and supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Baton Rouge, La., on Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016. Voters' intense negative feelings about Trump and Clinton may say as much about the times as the candidates, says David Greenberg, a professor of history at Rutgers University and author of "Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency." "Theres something about the polarized climate that were in that leads us to feel these things more strongly, to regard the opposition with such hostility, to talk in terms of threats to the Republic, to say 'Lock her up,' in ways we wouldn't have 30 years ago." (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, Gerald Herbert)

Americans are split over immigration, the changes wrought by globalization, the treatment of minorities and the threat of terrorism. But partisanship, long rising, has veered beyond policy disagreement. Now, roughly half of Democrats and Republicans tell pollsters they fear those in the other party.

With people increasingly ensconced in media silos and social networks that surround them with like-minded views, many cannot even agree on what constitutes basic facts.

The economy, by almost any empirical measure, is healthy and gaining traction. Yet as Americans head to the polls, many talk about being left behind not just by the recovery, but the political system.

"The unemployment rate right now, regardless of what the numbers say, is horrendous.... I can look here and nobody's working," said Alan Halsey, who has a sign for Republican nominee Donald Trump in the window of the general store he runs in Campton, Kentucky. "If we continue on this road, this place is going to look like Iraq or Afghanistan. There's going to be nothing here."

Halsey's viewpoint contrasts with figures showing that unemployment nationwide is down to 4.9 percent. Median household income jumped last year to $56,500, the highest it has been since before the bottom fell out of the economy in 2008. The share of Americans living in poverty declined sharply last year to 13.5 percent. Home prices are rising again, and millions more people have health insurance.

But the rebound has been slow to reach some Americans, particularly in manufacturing and mining communities that have lost many jobs, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics.

"We dug ourselves into such a deep hole early on in 2008, 2009 that we've spent the last eight years really digging out of it," Zandi said. "But if you've been struggling for more than a couple or three years, you begin to expect that that's your world forever. You're doomed and not only doomed, but your kids are doomed ... and a lot of people are still stuck in that negative psychology."

The divide was spotlighted in a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, asking voters to compare their lives with those of people like them 50 years ago. When Trump supporters were asked that question, 4 in 5 said life in the U.S. today is worse for people like them. A nearly equal number of voters backing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said life today is just as good or better.

"This is one of the core questions that speak to the current political environment," said Jocelyn Kiley, associate director of research for Pew. "Political divisions are about more than just political issues, but about perceptions of the state of the country."

Those disagreements don't always fit old political pigeonholes. But people on both sides share a similar estrangement from traditional parties and politics.

Take Jerome Nichols, 68, a semi-retired accountant from Webster Groves, Missouri, who voted early for Clinton.

"I am a lifelong Republican, but I am sick to death of what has happened to my party," Nichols said. "They're just a bunch of haters."

Meanwhile Terry Wright, 59, a disabled union painter in Louisville and a registered Democrat backing Trump, says he has given up on his old party. Democrats backed immigration policies that have filled limited jobs with foreigners, and pushed for welfare programs that have knocked the ambition out of younger workers, he said.

Clinton "will be the damnation of America," he said.

With modern U.S. presidential campaigns now stretching over two years, it's hardly surprising that Americans are tired of the candidates and their commercials.

"I'm ready for the election to be over because I'm sick of hearing about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and all the rhetoric," said Natalie Blair Pounds, 52, an auto mechanic in Denver, whose state is a battleground. "But just to be on the record, I'm voting for Hillary because I don't like the things Donald has said. I don't like the things Donald has done."

Voters' intense negative feelings about Trump and Clinton may say as much about the times as the candidates, said David Greenberg, a professor of history at Rutgers University and author of "Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency."

"There's something about the polarized climate that we're in that leads us to feel these things more strongly, to regard the opposition with such hostility, to talk in terms of threats to the Republic, to say 'Lock her up,' in ways we wouldn't have 30 years ago."

It's a far cry from Ronald Reagan's 1984 message that it was "morning in America." Or Barack Obama's 2008 call for "Change We Can Believe In." Still, many voters continue to express faith that their voices can make a difference.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, Jaquelinne Murillo, a law student who entered the U.S. from Mexico with her mother when she was 10 and became a U.S. citizen in May, said she looked forward to rejecting Trump's "very hurtful" portrayal of fellow immigrants as rapists and drug dealers.

"It really makes me really happy that this is going to be the first election that I can actually vote in. And I'm going to vote. There's no way I won't," she said.

Others, though, are decidedly conflicted.

"This is really the only time that I can ever remember, in any voting that I've ever done, where I was at a loss as to who I was going to vote for," said Diane Kekoolani Barrett, a self-declared Republican in Honolulu, Hawaii. As she exited the city hall last week after casting an early ballot, she couldn't bring herself to name her choice for president. "I kept thinking about that and, well, I hate to say it, I went with the lesser of two evils."

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Associated Press writers Allen G. Breed in Raleigh, North Carolina, Claire Galofaro in Louisville and Campton, Kentucky, Jennifer Kelleher in Honolulu, Jim Salter in Maplewood, Missouri, and Kristen Wyatt in Denver contributed to this story. Adam Geller reported from New York.

Terry Wright, a 59-year-old retired union painter, adjusts the U.S. flag on his porch in Portland, a white, working class neighborhood in Louisville, Ky., on Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2016. Wright, a registered Democrat backing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, says he has given up on his old party. Democrats backed immigration policies that have filled limited jobs with foreigners, and pushed for welfare programs that have knocked the ambition out of younger workers, he says. Clinton "will be the damnation of America," he says. (AP Photo/Claire Galofaro)

Alan Halsey, who owns the Halsey Country Store in Campton, Ky., holds a copy of the Swift Creek Courier, a community newspaper he recently started, on Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2016. He said he works seven days a week to try to provide for his family, but still struggles. He said he's tired of government regulation and red tape and is supporting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Claire Galofaro)

In this Thursday, Nov. 3, 2016 image made from video, Natalie Blair Pounds, 52, of Denver, talks about the upcoming presidential election in her battleground state. "I'm ready for the election to be over because I'm sick of hearing about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and all the rhetoric... But just to be on the record, I'm voting for Hillary because I don't like the things Donald has said. I dont like the things Donald has done." (AP Photo/Kristen Wyatt)

Jerome Nichols stands for a photo outside St. Louis County's absentee voting site in Maplewood, Mo., on Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2016. Nichols, 68, a semi-retired accountant, voted early for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. "I am a lifelong Republican, but I am sick to death of what has happened to my party," he says. "Theyre just a bunch of haters." (AP Photo/Jim Salter)
Raonic doubtful for ATP Finals with torn right quad

PARIS (AP)  Milos Raonic could miss the ATP Finals because of the leg injury that forced him to withdraw from the Paris Masters on Saturday.

Raonic was scheduled to play Andy Murray in the semifinals but had to withdraw because of a tear in his right thigh from his quarterfinal win over Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

Raonic said he will need five to 10 days to recover, a delay putting his participation at the ATP Finals in jeopardy. The elite eight-man tournament starts in eight days in London.

Canada's Milos Raonic returns the ball to France's Jo-Wilfried Tsonga during the quarterfinal match of the Paris Masters tennis tournament at the Bercy Arena, in Paris, Friday, Nov. 4, 2016. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Gunman kills 3, wounds 1 during dominos game at Jamaica pub

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP)  Authorities say a gunman opened fire on four people playing dominos at a pub in Jamaica, killing three and leaving one seriously injured.

Police say two males and one female were mortally wounded in the Friday night shooting in St. Catherine Parish, in southeast Jamaica. One male survived and on Saturday remained hospitalized in serious but stable condition.
Panel to consider renaming Interior river with Gwich'in name

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP)  The Alaska Historical Commission has been asked to consider renaming a 344-mile river in Alaska's Interior from Birch Creek to its Gwich'in name.

The commission also is expected to take up whether to rename one of the river's side channels when it meets Nov. 16.

The Fairbanks Daily News reports (http://bit.ly/2eFtqQ9) that Birch Creek flows from near Central to the Yukon River, with 110 miles in its upper section designated as a federal wild and scenic river.

Under the proposals, the main body of Birch Creek would be renamed the Ikheenjik (Ih-hey-n-jik) River. Another section, known as Lower Mouth Birch Creek, would be renamed K'iidoontinjik (ey-dough-tin-jik) River.
Police investigate kidnap, torture of 3 women in Rio

SAO PAULO (AP)  Police are investigating the apparent kidnapping and torture of three women in a slum near Rio de Janeiro's upscale Copacabana neighborhood.

Officers said in a statement Saturday that the women's heads were shaved by local drug dealers who believed they were police informants. The women have been freed, and one suspect is in police custody.

Police began investigating Friday after finding images of the attack posted on social media. They did not respond to requests for more details.
Federal judge rejects voter intimidation arguments

NEWARK, N.J. (AP)  A federal judge in New Jersey on Saturday denied a motion by the Democratic National Committee to sanction the Republican National Committee before Election Day.

Judge John Michael Vazquez's ruling came one day after lawyers for the Democrats had argued that Republicans were coordinating with GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump to intimidate voters in violation of an agreement that the RNC has been forced to follow since 1982.

Republican Party lawyers denied those claims.

Vazquez wrote that the documents provided to the court by the RNC showed no indication it was working in concert with the Trump campaign on activities that might constitute voter intimidation. But the judge said he would allow for additional arguments after the election to decide whether the consent decree slated to expire next year should be extended.

The legal challenge is one of several around the country filed by Democrats. The case in New Jersey sought to link some of poll watchers and state parties with the Republican National Committee, arguing that any collaboration on voter intimidation or ballot security efforts would violate the agreement.

The consent decree was created after Democrats alleged that the RNC helped intimidate black voters during New Jersey's 1981 gubernatorial election. The RNC and New Jersey's Republican party allegedly had off-duty law enforcement officers stand at polling places in urban areas wearing "National Ballot Security Task Force" armbands. Some had guns visible.

The RNC admitted no wrongdoing, but agreed to the decree to settle the case. The decree only regulates work done by the RNC and is scheduled to end next year. The Democratic National Committee wants it extended another eight years, but needs to convince a judge that the RNC has violated the 34-year-old rules.

"The court clearly reached the right conclusion," RNC spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said Saturday. "The DNC offered the court nothing but politically charged allegations with no credible evidence whatsoever. There is no credible evidence because the RNC remains fully compliant with the consent decree."
Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino still hurt after finishing below Arsenal

Mauricio Pochettino admits it still hurts to think about Arsenal finishing above Tottenham last season.

Spurs were five points clear of the Gunners with three games left and needed only a draw on the final day to finish above their rivals for the first time since 1995.

Pochettino's men crumbled, however, slipping to a 5-1 defeat at the hands of already-relegated Newcastle, while Arsenal hammered Aston Villa to snatch second place.

Tottenham have not finished above Arsenal in the Premier League since 1995

The two foes go head to head again at the Emirates Stadium on Sunday and Pochettino admits last season's collapse still rankles.

"I still feel bad about last season," Pochettino said.

"It was so easy to be above Arsenal in that moment.

"It's true that we felt very disappointed after the Chelsea game but with two games ahead and only one point (needed) to be above them, that was very frustrating and disappointing.

"It was difficult to not think about that situation. But we have another opportunity now and we will see what happens."

Despite their disappointing finish, Tottenham certainly pushed Leicester closest in the title race last season but it is Arsenal who start as favourites this weekend.

While Spurs have struggled for form and fluency in recent weeks - they are winless in six games since beating Manchester City so impressively last month - Arsene Wenger's men have hit their stride with 10 victories out of 11.

Harry Kane is rated at 50-50 to start the match after recovering from an ankle injury but Pochettino insists his first-choice striker alone cannot solve the team's scoring problems.

"After City we were the best and now we are the worst - it's always about balance," Pochettino said.

"Yes, we have some problems to create chances or be clinical in front of goal or to show more consistency.

"But maybe the problem is not in front. Maybe it's because we are not building in a very good way from the back and the ball arrives in the last third in different condition."

Toby Alderweireld (leg), Erik Lamela (hip) and Ben Davies (ankle) are all out this weekend while a late decision will be made on Mousa Dembele after he came off against Bayer Leverkusen in midweek with a foot problem.

If Dembele is not passed fit, it could pave the way for 21-year-old academy graduate Harry Winks to come in.

Pochettino made a similarly bold move in this fixture two years ago, when Dembele was also injured, as he handed Ryan Mason his first Premier League start at the Emirates Stadium.

"Maybe, maybe yes," Pochettino said about Winks' chances of playing.

"We need to assess Dembele first of all to decide but Harry is doing very well, not only against Leverkusen but Liverpool in the EFL Cup and before.
Charles kicks off Middle East tour with a sword dance

The Prince of Wales started his official tour of the Middle East by taking part in a ceremonial sword dance with local performers.

Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall will undertake 50 engagements in seven days during their visits to the Sultanate of Oman, the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Bahrain.

Their visit, at the request of the British Government, is to promote the UK's partnership in the region in areas including wildlife conservation and supporting women in leadership.

The Prince of Wales started his official tour of the Middle East by taking part in a ceremonial sword dance with local performers

Charles and Camilla received a cultural welcome at the Ceremonial Boulevard in Muscat, with five groups of performers showcasing dances from different regions of Oman.

The prince was given a sword and joined in with a group performing an Al Razha dance.

His wife was then presented with a bouquet of flowers.

Charles and Camilla are in Oman as guests of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said.

Following their welcome, Charles toured Muscat's new National Museum which showcases the history of the nation from its first human settlement two million years ago through to the present day.

He viewed demonstrations of traditional handicraft-making, including Kuma hats and brightly coloured threads.

Charles was shown around the exhibits by Jamal Al Musawi, acting director of the museum, which opened in July.

The museum houses items including a Magan boat, Islamic gates and three Royal Rasulid tombstones on long term loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum.

It has more than 5,500 objects and offers 43 digital immersive experiences for visitors.

Camilla visited the Oman Cancer Association's Dar Al Hanan Hostel, where she met children and parents before attending a reception with supporters and sponsors.

The association, which became active in 2002, was established by prominent Omani woman and four-times cancer survivor Yuthar Al Rawai.

Charles and Camilla then attended a service of celebration at Bait Al Noor Church, which was led by the Bishop of Cyprus and the Gulf.

The service marked the 125th anniversary of the final visit to the country by the First Bishop of Lahore, Bishop Thomas Valpy French, who travelled to Oman in 1895 to establish an Anglican Church in Arabia. He was in poor health and died a few months later but his work was continued by others

A group of traditional musicians and dancers wait to welcome the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall to Muscat, the capital of Oman, at the start of their official tour of the Middle East.

The Duchess of Cornwall watches performers during a cultural welcome to Muscat, the capital of Oman, at the start of the royal tour of the Middle East.

A group of traditional musicians and dancers wait to welcome the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall to Muscat, the capital of Oman, at the start of their official tour of the Middle East.

The Prince of Wales takes part in a ceremonial sword dance with local performers during a cultural welcome to Muscat, the capital of Oman, at the start of his official tour of the Middle East.

The Duchess of Cornwall watches performers during a cultural welcome to Muscat, the capital of Oman, at the start of the royal tour of the Middle East.

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall watch a man playing the bagpipes during a cultural welcome to Muscat, the capital of Oman, at the start of their official tour of the Middle East.

A group of traditional musicians and dancers wait to welcome the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall to Muscat, the capital of Oman, at the start of their official tour of the Middle East.

The Duchess of Cornwall meets patients at the Dar Al Hannan hostel for children suffering with cancer during her visit to Muscat, the capital of Oman, at the start of the royal tour of the Middle East.

The Duchess of Cornwall meets patients at the Dar Al Hannan hostel for children suffering with cancer during her visit to Muscat, the capital of Oman, at the start of the royal tour of the Middle East.

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall attend a service at the Bait Al Noor church in Muscat, the capital of Oman, at the start of their official tour of the Middle East.

The Duchess of Cornwall meets Etab Al Zadjali at a women in business reception in Muscat
Vince Cable: MoD misled me over Saudi missiles deal

Former Cabinet minister Sir Vince Cable has accused the Ministry of Defence of "seriously misleading" him when he signed off a Saudi arms deal.

The Liberal Democrat said he was given specific assurances about the checks that would be made on the use of British-made missiles when he was responsible for authorising export licences.

Sir Vince insists that the MoD told him there would be oversight of targeting, which is why he agreed to sign the documents for a consignment of laser-guided Paveway IV missiles.

Sir Vince Cable said the MoD told him there would be oversight of targeting when he agreed to sign off on the delivery of laser-guided Paveway IV missiles

The former business secretary said he deemed the promises vital to minimising the risk of civilian casualties in Saudi Arabia's controversial Yemen bombing campaign.

According to the Guardian, the MoD has no military personnel in the "targeting chain" and has denied ever offering the assurances to Sir Vince.

But the former Cabinet minister said: "That is categorically contrary to what I was told was going to happen. If what they are now saying (is) I was not offered oversight on an equivalent level to the Americans, and that this would involve oversight of targeting, then I was seriously misled. That is total fabrication because that was very specifically stated. That is not something that I would have made up."

He added: " My very clear understanding was that the equipment would be supplied to Saudi Arabia on the very clear basis that British personnel would have oversight of what the Saudi air force was doing, on the same basis as the Americans."

Sources told the newspaper that the MoD was "desperate" to get the licences signed off because the Saudis were putting "enormous pressure" on the Government.

The MoD told the Guardian while it had agreed to "increase oversight of the targeting process" last year, that did not involve oversight of targeting at any stage.

"British personnel are not involved in carrying out strikes, directing or conducting operations in Yemen or selecting targets and are not involved in the Saudi targeting decision-making process," a spokesman said.

Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry said: " It is extremely disturbing to discover that the sale of arms for use in Yemen was approved by Vince Cable on the basis of a lie, and provides yet more evidence that limiting civilian casualties in this conflict has been the least of the Government's concerns.
Jeremy Corbyn ducks early election question and attacks media harassment

Jeremy Corbyn ducked questions over whether he would welcome an early election as he accused the media of harassing him.

In a speech to a left wing think tank, the Labour leader said Theresa May must set out her Brexit negotiating terms to Parliament "without delay" in the wake of the High Court ruling that MPs should be allowed to vote on the triggering of Article 50.

He claimed the Government opposes democratic scrutiny of its plans because "there aren't any".

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn arrives at the TUC Congress Centre

The surprise legal ruling followed by the resignation of Tory MP Stephen Phillips has fuelled speculation that Mrs May will end up going to the polls before 2020.

Mr Corbyn refused to say whether he would be happy if there was an early election when asked by ITV.

The single question pitched at the Labour leader after his address in central London left him clearly irked.

As aides intervened to stop him being quizzed by the media, he walked away saying: "Can we go outside because we are being harassed here?"

Mr Corbyn told the conference organised by Class (Centre for Labour and Social Studies) that the Prime Minister was leading a "mean minded, backward looking" government that is stuck in a Thatcherite time warp.

Labour would go after tax dodgers and put an end to "shabby" sweetheart deals with big business, he said.

"There is nothing more unpatriotic than not paying your taxes," he said.

Calling for greater transparency about the Government's plans for EU withdrawal, Mr Corbyn said all UK businesses should be given "assurances" over the impact of Brexit to match those made to Japanese car-maker Nissan before its announcement of new investment in Sunderland.

He said: "All our businesses need the kind of assurances that apparently Nissan has had about the shape of the Government's Brexit plans to make the right investment decisions.

"Thursday's High Court decision underlines the necessity that the Prime Minister brings the Government's negotiating terms for Brexit to Parliament without delay.

"We accept and respect the decision to leave the European Union. But there must be transparency and accountability to Parliament about the Government's plans.

"I suspect the Government opposes democratic scrutiny of its plans because - frankly - there aren't any plans, beyond the hollow rhetoric of 'Brexit means Brexit'."
took the site down

Anonymous claims it hacked into the

were in London for the Million Mask March

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Riot police have confronted armed anti-establishment protesters shouting 'f*** the police' and throwing fireworks as thousands take part in the Million Mask March.

Supporters of Anonymous, the anarchic hacking group, massed underneath Nelson's Column, clad in Guy Fawkes masks, inspired by the V for Vendetta film.

The annual protest is one of several held worldwide on November 5 against government cuts, corruption, surveillance and a flurry of other causes.

There were angry scenes as the procession moved through London, with police forming a ring of steel outside Parliament

A masked protester in a crowd holds up a flare on Whitehall during the Million Mask March which falls on Guy Fawkes Night

Masked protesters confront riot police on The Strand, London, during the Million Mask March bonfire night demonstration

Police take down a protester wearing a V for Vendetta-style mask during the Million Mask March in Central London

A protester breathes fire as masked demonstrators gather in Trafalgar Square, Central London during the march

This protester was watched closely by several police officers in Parliament Square, London, during the Million Mask March

A firework is let off as anti-capitalist activists wearing masks hold their demonstration against government cuts and austerity

The march carried the protesters through Westminster and included Trafalgar Square and Whitehall areas of Central London

Thousands of masked protesters, watched closely by police, were in the capital for the anti-capitalist Anonymous march

Smoke filled Trafalgar Square as masked anti-establishment protesters lit flares and waved flags and banners

Anonymous claimed it had hacked into the Metropolitan Police's website and taken it temporarily down during the protest

ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT GROUP 'TAKES DOWN MET POLICE WEBSITE' Anonymous claimed it hacked into the Metropolitan Police's website during the London march. The anti-establishment group posted on Twitter that it had 'attacked' the website causing it to temporarily come down. A spokesman for the Me tropolitan Police confirmed there had been a problem with the website but insisted it wasn't clear yet whether the domain had been hacked. Advertisement

More than 2,000 police, the vast majority dressed in riot gear, were in the area marked a tight perimeter around the protesters who they feared may turn to rioting and looting.

There were angry scenes as the procession continued through London, with police forming a ring of steel outside Parliament.

Glass bottles and fireworks rained down on police who escorted a protester away in Trafalgar Square.

Police made more than 50 arrests including: 11 non-removal of a face mask; at least three for possession of knives or weapons; and 14 for drugs offences.

Several masked supporters argued they should be free to pass on public roads.

While most opted for a Guy Fawkes mask, the crowd was also dotted with people dressed in Darth Vader helmets.

One protester blared NWA's anti-authority anthem F*** Tha Police into the procession.

Plumes of smoke wafted into the cold night air as the protesters moved past Big Ben, with police marching behind.

The range of subject the protesters demonstrated about included anti-American sentiment over alleged war crimes

Riot police protect Buckingham Palace as the protest, which is one of several held around the world, continues in the capital

At least 2,000 riot police were on the streets protecting key government buildings and areas of national significance

Dozens of protesters held aloft Socialist Worker placards during the march which said 'There's one solution: Revolution'

Police grapple with a protester during the demonstration. Concerns about the event were raised after the organisers said the police 'are not your friends'

A protesters dons a V for Vendetta-inspired Guy Fawkes mask and skeleton gloves during the Million Mask March

This family of protesters, who took part in the Million Mask March, included children. Their banners advocated peace

Police (pictured by Admiralty Arch) made more than 50 arrests for offences including carrying drugs and non-removal of masks

Anonymous, an anarchic network of 'hacktivists', has been linked with cyber-attacks on a varied list of organisations and states, including the US government, ISIS, Paypal, the Church of Scientology

Riot police contain protesters as they march along Whitehall. The march is one of hundreds taking place around the world

Protesters underneath Trafalgar's Square demonstrating against the government and MPs light a flare into the night sky

Police have warned 'masked criminals seeking to run amok' that they will be arrested if the protest turns violent

Masked protesters hold placards and flares as they stand on Nelson's Column during the Million Mask March

Later, some participants paused to read a message projected in green letters onto a building lining Parliament Square.

It read: 'Please observe Public Order Act restrictions. Failure to comply may result in arrest and prosecution. Officers may require you to remove facial covering. Failure to comply is an offence.'

It came after members of the crowd ignited fireworks and flares in front of Westminster Abbey.

The protest in Parliament Square dwindled by several hundred people at around 7.30pm as one man was seen being led away by officers.

Splinter groups roamed the length of the route between Trafalgar Square and Whitehall.

One man climbed atop the memorial to Field Marshal Haig and shouted 'this is for all of us' to onlookers and passing motorists.

Shortly before 9pm, as the end of the march approached, there were chaotic scenes as riot police moved in to make an arrest.

A group of protesters surrounded and charged the officers, with shouts of 'f*** the police' and 'police brutality'.

Commander BJ Harrington said: 'I would like to commend my officers policing this challenging event for their professionalism and faultless co-ordination.

'We facilitate hundreds of peaceful protests every year in London usually with the co-operation of the organisers. On this occasion although the organisers did not engage with police, the majority of protesters did adhere to the conditions imposed. Only a small minority chose to breach the conditions and engage in criminality.'

This protester holds a placard in apparent reference to the autistic hacker Lauri Love who is due to be extradited to the US accused of hacking government computers

Last year four officers and six police horses were injured after masked protesters targeted them with fireworks

Scores of police were in the area marking a tight perimeter around the protesters who marched in Westminster

Protesters gather at the base of Nelson's Column holding placards and flags including the Russian national flag

Protesters dressed in combat clothing and masks on the steps of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square

Metropolitan police chiefs' concerns were raised earlier in the week when the protest organisers, Million Mask March London, said on Facebook that 'the police are not your friends'.

Officers had surrounded obvious potential targets in the capital, including Downing Street, Buckingham Palace and Tory headquarters.

Anonymous, an anarchic network of 'hacktivists', has been linked with cyber-attacks on a varied list of organisations and states, including the US government, ISIS, Paypal, the Church of Scientology.

ANTI-CAPITALIST MARCHES AROUND THE WORLD HELD ON BONFIRE NIGHT London's Million Mask March was just one of hundreds being held in city centres around the world. Similar anti-establishment marches took place across the US and Europe as well as in the Philippines, Malaysia, India, South Africa, Nigeria, Australia, Chile and Brazil. The annual global protest, on Bonfire Night, November 5, is against Government cuts, corruption, surveillance and a flurry of other causes. Advertisement

One woman on a loudspeaker warned 'there may be kettling' as the procession along Whitehall began.

Last year, some of the protesters were branded 'despicable' after deliberating targeting police horses during a rampage.

Six horses were injured as they were bombarded with fireworks by black-clad hooligans who attempted to blind them with laser pointers.

Witnesses described how bangers were rolled underneath the animals and rockets fired in their faces as hundreds of rioters clashed with police lines.

More than 50 people were arrested during four hours of clashes as the anti-establishment march quickly descended into chaos.

One small group were caught carrying knives, smoke and paint grenades, gas canisters and lock picks.

Metropolitan commander Harrington said it was apparent that some only went along 'intent on criminality'.

He added: 'Last year we saw participants causing criminal damage to public property, smashing the windows of businesses and attacking police officers all whilst harassing and intimidating families as they visited theatres, dined out or shopped in the West End.

'The public found this completely unacceptable. This was not peaceful protest by any measure.

'Those who chose to behave like this are not protesters, they are criminals, and they undermine the thousands of people who protest responsibly and safely in London every year.

'As we look ahead to this weekend, my message is simple: if you want to protest peacefully, that is your right and we want to work with you.

'If you commit criminal acts - that is not peaceful protest - and you are liable to be arrested.'

The hacking group Anonymous posted a message on Twitter which said 'people shouldn't be afraid of their government'

Police warned the public to be aware of the march taking place in Central London after concerns it would turn nasty

Thousands of supporters of Anonymous, the anarchic hacking group, were at the protest clad in Guy Fawkes masks

An activist with an anti-Tory placard stands on the steps of the National Gallery as tourists and fellow supporters walk past

Protesters with plastic trumpets and wearing face paint were in Trafalgar Square this evening watched by police officers

In a press release, Million Mask March London called on 'the Metropolitan Police to restrain from violence and their usual mob mentality'.

Almost 20,000 people have said on Facebook that they will attend the event.

Police have imposed conditions on the march, limiting it to a three-hour period between 6pm and 9pm on a prescribed route between Trafalgar Square and Whitehall.

Any static protest must only take place in Trafalgar Square, Richmond Terrace and Parliament Square and the Met warned anyone breaching the conditions could be arrested for public order offences.

Chief Superintendent Pippa Mills said: 'We will always facilitate peaceful protest and have a strong history of doing so. However we have strong reason to believe that peaceful protest is the last thing on the minds of many of the people who will come along this year.

'Criminality at the event has increased year-on-year. Last year hundreds of Londoners on their way home from work, or out enjoying an evening in the capital, were harassed and intimidated by people causing them huge concern.
Campaigners set to march over library cuts

Campaigners will stage a march today to protest against cuts to libraries, museums and galleries.

Unite, Unison and the Public and Commercial Services union warn of a "national crisis", saying more than 340 libraries have been closed since 2010 - with the loss of a quarter of staff.

Unite officer Fiona Farmer said ahead of the London demonstration: "Tory Government cuts to local government funding have wrought havoc to our public libraries with hundreds closing.

Campaigners are to march through London in protest against library cuts

"What we are seeing community by community is an act of cultural and educational vandalism.

"Libraries are the gateway to knowledge, learning and enjoyment for all ages of people from all walks of life.

"Yet more and more communities are seeing their library disappear or service diminish because of librarian cuts or failed privatisation."

As well as cutting jobs and pay, many museum and gallery visitor services are being privatised - as organisations look to short-term measures to cut costs, said the unions.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: "Given the clear benefits arts and culture bring to our society and our economy, cuts to libraries, museums and galleries represent everything wrong with the Tories' approach to public spending.
Andy Murray one win away from topping world rankings

Andy Murray must summon a repeat of his Wimbledon final heroics if he is to claim the world number one ranking for the first time on Saturday.

Murray will meet Milos Raonic - the man he beat to claim his second All England Club title in July - in the semi-finals of the BNP Paribas Masters in Paris.

After Novak Djokovic's quarter-final defeat to Marin Cilic on Friday, Murray knows victory will be enough to lift him to the top for the first time in his career.

Andy Murray is one win away from becoming world number one (AP)

It will cap a remarkable rise for the Scot but after dispatching Czech Tomas Berdych in straight sets he insisted on playing down the possibility.

Murray told Sky Sports: " My goal isn't to get to number one this year - I was looking at the beginning of next year as the chance to do it.

"If it happens this week, great. I'm happy with the way I'm playing just now. It's been a great few months for me. I'll try to finish this week as best I can."

Murray saved seven set points in an extraordinary first-set tie-break before eventually going on to overcome Berdych 7-6 (11/9) 7-5 and book his place in the last four.

Earlier, Djokovic had handed the Scot the initiative in the race for the summit after going down 6-4 7-6 (7/2) to feisty Croatian Marin Cilic.

Djokovic's hold on the world number one position had looked increasingly precarious after he had required treatment on a knee injury on his way to an unconvincing last-16 win over Grigor Dimitrov on Thursday.

And tackling Cilic proved a match too far, with the man who had lost all 14 of his previous matches against Djokovic never relinquishing the advantage he gained when dispatching his second set-point chance in the opener.

Djokovic said on atptour.com: "He (Cilic) definitely played better today and he deserved to win - I wasn't on the level I could have been on.

"I was in the good position to take the match into a third set, and then two double faults. In the important moments I wasn't able to deliver."

American John Isner completed the last four line-up after beating compatriot Jack Sock 7-6 (7/6) 4-6 6-4.
Jungle Britons endure five-day survival battle after wrong canoe turn

Three Britons have spent five days stranded in a Mexican jungle, surviving on a pack of peanuts and scavenged fish, after taking a wrong turn on a boat trip.

The trio and a Mexican companion were exploring in the Yucatan Peninsula when they flipped one of their canoes, containing their food, and stranded the other in a narrow stream.

Rachel Bradley, from Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, was one of those eventually rescued from the Mexican jungle by a stranger named Juan de Dios - "John of God".

Rachel Bradley, one of three Britons who spent five days stranded in a Mexican jungle

Ms Bradley, 31, told how they became lost in a combination of unexpected rapids and a "labyrinth" of swamps and waterfalls created by heavy rainfall.

The team then ambled, swam and climbed through the vast jungle before finding a mangrove they decided to stay in.

Ms Bradley said: "For the next two days and two nights we stayed in this tree and explored a few different exit routes, walking to the other side of the palm field and swimming up and down stream.

"However, the best thing was to stay put. We had a safe place to sleep and a clear area if anything came overhead.

"We had a bag of M&M's which we shared on the first evening and then we rationed a bag of caramelised peanuts I had - five each per sitting.

"By day three, my colleagues had started testing a local fruit they recognised and had caught some small fish using my mosquito net.

"They cut the heads off and swallowed them whole."

After the rescue on October 23 the team rejoined their colleagues from Ninth Wave Global, an environmental consultancy operating in remote areas.

But the experience has not put Ms Bradley off her intrepid life.

She said: "At the time I thought it would do, but in the morning I start two weeks on the Usumacinta River so I guess not.

"I think it's a really great thing to do to get out there, explore and to learn how to live in the outdoors.
Hamstring injury rules Jonathan Davies out of Wales' game against Australia

Wales suffered a late injury blow ahead of their autumn Test series opener against Australia at the Principality Stadium on Saturday.

British and Irish Lions Test centre Jonathan Davies, who has won 56 caps, was ruled out of the Wallabies clash due to a tight hamstring.

The Welsh Rugby Union confirmed Davies' absence, with his fellow Scarlets centre Scott Williams replacing him.

Wales centre Jonathan Davies (right) has been ruled out of the autumn Test series opener against Australia due to injury

The 39 times-capped Williams last started for Wales against England at Twickenham in May.

There are no changes to the Welsh replacements' bench, with selected trio Gareth Davies, Sam Davies and Hallam Amos providing back division cover.
Thousands take part in London's Million Mask March

Thousands of masked protesters descended on central London for the Million Mask March, the annual global anti-capitalism and pro-civil liberties demonstration.

Wearing characteristic Guy Fawkes masks, supporters of the mysterious hacking collective Anonymous crowded into Trafalgar Square with scores of police on hand to keep order.

The protest passed without major incident, though by 10.45pm police had made 47 arrests, the majority for drug offences and obstruction of officers.

Protesters follow police down Whitehall, London, during the Million Mask March

Ugly scenes marred last year's march, which saw four officers injured after missiles and fireworks were thrown at them.

Scotland Yard imposed restrictions on this year's event amid concerns over any repeat of the disorder, limiting the march to a three-hour period between 6pm and 9pm on a prescribed route between Trafalgar Square and Whitehall.

Nearly 20,000 people had indicated they would attend on the event's Facebook page, which warned "the police are not your friends".

The protest began peacefully, with several participants climbing the base of Nelson's column and chanting the slogan "one solution, revolution".

The procession began along Whitehall and there were angry scenes as police formed a ring of steel outside Parliament.

Officers stood firm, telling the protesters to stay within the boundaries. Several supporters, masked and otherwise, argued they should be free to pass on public roads.

The crowds also ignited fireworks and flares in front of Westminster Abbey.

Among the protesters was Angela Windsor, an unemployed 40-year-old, who said she travelled from Wales to take part in the event.

She said: "Nobody is protecting people - nobody cares. I think everyone here cares enough about people to make the effort to come down and try and do something, because the officials aren't doing it."

She said anyone who tried to incite a repeat last year's violent displays would be missing the point, saying: "Nobody wants a fight, we just want change."

But she was forced to defend the wording of a sign she was brandishing - including the words "death to the monarchy" - when questioned about it by passers-by.

Another protester, a London-based mental health worker who gave his name as Jay, stood out from the crowd dressed as Santa and bearing a sign pledging "free hugs".

The 30-year-old said he chose to dress as Father Christmas to show "not all of us are down here for violence".

He said: "I'm the only Santa who doesn't give out presents, because it is all capitalism. I give out free hugs, which I think is much better than a 300 present."

The protest in Parliament Square dwindled by several hundred people at around 7.30pm as one man was seen being led away by officers.

One man climbed atop the memorial to Field Marshal Haig and shouted "this is for all of us" to onlookers and passing motorists.

Shortly before 9pm, as the end of the march approached, there were chaotic scenes are riot police moved in to make an arrest.

A group of protesters surrounded and charged the officers, with shouts of "f*** the police" and "police brutality".

Several glass bottles were thrown as police escorted another protester away as pockets of aggression flared sporadically throughout Trafalgar Square.

The Bonfire Night protest is organised by activist group Anonymous

The group also demonstrated in Parliament Square

As well as London's Trafalgar Square

Plumes of smoke wafted into the cold night air as the protesters moved near Big Ben

Scores of police officers maintained a tight perimeter

The Metropolitan Police imposed restrictions on this year's event
Colombian president hails post-Brexit trade chances

Trade between the UK and Colombia could be even stronger after Brexit, the country's president has said.

Juan Manuel Santos suggested negotiating outside of the European Union may strengthen arrangements because striking a deal that was acceptable to all members of the bloc meant making compromises.

After meeting Theresa May for talks in No 10 earlier this week, the Colombian premier said the country, along with Chile, Peru and Mexico - the Pacific Alliance free trade bloc - represented ''a huge opportunity for British business'' and they " stand ready" to pursue new opportunities.

Colombia's president Juan Manuel Santos talked about trade opportunities

Quitting the bloc could lead to greater trade with the emerging markets, he told BBC One's The Andrew Marr Show.

He said: "Well, we have a free trade agreement with Europe and therefore at this moment with the UK. And what I said to Prime Minister May is, 'Listen, we are ready to simply have a free trade agreement with the UK and have the same conditions or even improved', because many times in free trade agreements with a group of countries some countries object to some issues and maybe we can even go further."

Asked if that meant trading arrangements could be better outside the EU, he said: "It could be, yes."
Turkish academics, students protest against post-coup purges

By Humeyra Pamuk and Ayla Jean Yackley

ISTANBUL, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Hundreds of academics, students and union members staged a protest on Thursday against a purge of thousands of educational staff since Turkey's attempted military coup in July.

Turkey accuses U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen of orchestrating the July 15 putsch and has dismissed or suspended more than 110,000 civil servants, academics, judges, police and others over suspected links to the preacher.

The crowd chanted "We will win by resisting" in front of Istanbul University as dozens of riot police wearing gas masks looked on. Teachers who had lost their jobs wept and hugged students.

Among those suspended or removed in the purges since July are nearly 50,000 educational staff. Under the coup probe, some 37,000 people have been jailed pending trial.

"We are facing a period worse than the coup," said Tahsin Yesildere, head of a university teaching staff group.

"In our country, which is being turned into a one-man regime through the state of emergency (declared after the coup), all those in opposition resisting this trend have become targets," he told Reuters, referring to President Tayyip Erdogan.

The scale of the crackdown has alarmed Turkey's Western allies and foreign investors. Human rights groups and opposition parties say Erdogan, who traces his political roots to a banned Islamist party, is using the coup as a pretext to muzzle all dissent in the European Union-candidate nation.

The interior ministry said on Thursday it had suspended 1,218 gendarmerie personnel on suspicion of links to Gulen.

Officials say such measures are justified by the threat to democracy posed by Gulen's followers, once strong supporters of Erdogan. More than 240 people were killed in the coup, when rogue soldiers commandeered tanks and fighter jets.

"TYRANNY"

"We won't surrender," said a banner held by protesters, echoing a headline in the opposition daily Cumhuriyet, whose editor and senior staff were detained this week on accusations their coverage had helped precipitate the coup.

"Our dismissal comes as part of the tyranny that is being built," Levent Dolek, a research assistant in economics at Istanbul University until last week. "Our removal is just a detail considering the darkness Turkey is drifting into."

Can Dundar, Cumhuriyet's editor until July and now overseas to avoid an arrest warrant, said Erdogan's campaign was aimed at the secular values of the Turkish state.

"The real war here is with the Turkish Republic," Dundar told Reuters in a phone interview. "This is not a fight for a newspaper, it is the fight for a country."

Dundar was sentenced in May to six years in prison for revealing state secrets in the newspaper and left Turkey before the coup while free on appeal. He described the charges that the secularist daily backed the Gulen network as "comical".

"We spent our entire careers, especially the last 10 years, explaining how dangerous the Gulen movement was," he said.

In a sign of how confused the crackdown has become, a prosecutor appointed to handle the case against the paper, Murat Inam, is himself a defendant in a case against suspected Gulenists.

"It is unfortunate such an appointment was made. I wish it hadn't been done," Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said in parliament.

Turkish media showed video footage of what they said were the two putsch ringleaders arriving at Istanbul's main airport two days before the coup.

The reports said the men had been returning from one of several visits to the United States where they allegedly met Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999. He denies involvement.

Kemal Batmaz, who had headed a paper company, is in detention after being arrested in the coup's immediate aftermath, state-run Anadolu news agency said. Police are still searching for Adil Oksuz, a teacher.
China internet authority formalises regulations for live-streaming industry

By Catherine Cadell

BEIJING, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Chinese internet authorities have formalised controversial rules regulating the country's fast-growing live-streaming video industry, in a move that strips out smaller competitors and places hard-line surveillance measures on leading firms.

In an announcement posted on their website on Friday, the Cyberspace Administration of China grouped a handful of earlier restrictions under a final 24-point regulation that will come into effect on Dec. 1.

The rules require streaming services to log user data and content for 60 days, and work with regulators to provide information on users who stream content that the government deems threatening to national security or social order. Both users and providers are punishable under the regulations.

The law also codifies rules that ban online news broadcasting services from original reporting, requiring them to identify sources and non-selectively reproduce state-sanctioned information.

China's live video streaming industry has experienced booming growth in the past two years as dozens of video and social media sites scrambled to add the updated capabilities to their existing services.

Credit Suisse Group analysts estimate the industry could top $5 billion by the end of 2017, driven by cheap bandwidth and a growing population of young mobile users.

The industry's exponential growth attracted increased scrutiny from government authorities in 2016. In April, Chinese authorities called on 20 of the country's top firms to join a self-criticism coalition, saying the industry was damaging China's youth by proliferating content including pornography, fraud and terrorism.

On June 1 companies including Baidu Inc, Sina Corp , Sohu.com Inc and Youku Tudou, acknowledged new rules as part of the group, including requirements for real-name authentication.

While the latest move places wide-reaching restrictions on the sites, it also signals an official sanctioning of the industry and its top players by Chinese officials.

Much like China's earlier online video and music industries, the regulations put pressure on smaller competitors and bring larger firms into line with regulators, offering more growth opportunities for a smaller number of controllable companies.

"One of the things the government always wants to do is narrow the playing field to a smaller number of higher profile known entities, ideally ones that have a better track record of cooperating with the government," says Mark Natkin, Managing Director at Marbridge Consulting.

"In the long run it's actually relatively beneficial to the large companies."
Richemont to scrap CEO role for wider structure

By Astrid Wendlandt and Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi

PARIS/ZURICH, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Luxury goods group Richemont will no longer have a chief executive and be run by a group of senior figures once Richard Lepeu retires in March, Chairman Johann Rupert said on Friday as the group battles a severe watch industry downturn.

Shares in Richemont rose more than 8 percent after the group said October sales were "modestly positive," beating forecasts of a continued decline and echoing similar positive comments from luxury rivals.

It said trends improved in mainland China and Hong Kong but the owner of the Cartier brand and watch-makers Vacheron Constantin and IWC said it would not give further monthly trading updates in light of the market's increased volatility.

As Richemont needed to react quickly to challenges, the heads of Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels would no longer have a direct boss and the group would be led by various executives with combined responsibilities.

"It is impossible to replace Richard (Lepeu) and appoint a new person who will take care of 35 direct reports," South African billionaire Rupert said in an analyst conference call.

"The board is really there to allocate capital and human resources, this is a more sensible and fairer structure."

Rupert, Richemont's controlling shareholder who has served in the past as CEO, said he would not become more involved in the day-to-day management of the group and preserve his role as "an air traffic controller of egos."

DIVERSITY CHALLENGE

The group appointed Georges Kern, currently CEO of IWC Schaffhausen, as head of watchmaking, marketing and digital. Jerome Lambert, currently CEO of Montblanc, becomes head of operations responsible for central and regional services and all sections other than jewellery and watchmaking.

Chief Financial Officer Gary Saage would also retire in July, replaced by deputy Burkhart Grund, while around a third of board members would step down and join a newly created International Advisory Council.

Rupert pointed to a generational change. Nearly all of Richemont's board members are over 50 and there is only one woman.

"I want to see less gray haired men and less gray haired Frenchmen, we have too few women and not enough diversity, not enough Asians or Americans," Rupert said, adding the possibility of his son joining the board "had not yet been discussed."

After more than two years of declining sales, Richemont has been buying back stock from retailers, particularly in hard-hit cities such as Hong Kong. The process was by now largely complete and Rupert said he was surprised rivals were not doing the same as "there was excess inventory for all watch products."

Richemont declined to give details about job cuts. It would tackle excess capacity and reduce headcount through natural attrition. It would also close underperforming shops, in second and third tier cities in China for example.

Saage said 25 shops were shut by the end of Sept. and another 25 would be closed by Dec.31.

"We have to slim down not only in production but throughout the group to make sure we don't have excess fat," Rupert said.

The shop closures and buyback led to a one-off charge of 249 million euros ($27 million).

Six-month sales fell 12 percent at constant exchange rates to 5.1 billion euros ($5.66 billion), while net profit dropped 51 percent to 540 million euros.

Excluding the charge, the profit decline would have been 25 percent. The company issued a profit warning in September.
Egypt arrests militants, links them to Muslim Brotherhood

By Ahmed Aboulenein

CAIRO, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Egyptian authorities said on Friday they had arrested members of two recently emerged militant groups, along with weapons, explosives and evidence that the organisations had been set up by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Police detained five leaders and other members of the Hasam Movement and Louwaa al-Thawra, the Interior Ministry said - both groups that have claimed responsibility for assassination attempts on judges, policemen and military officers.

There was no immediate comment from either organisation or from the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, which says it is a peaceful movement and accuses the government of abuses.

The Brotherhood won Egypt's first free elections after the 2011 uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule.

But the Brotherhood leader who became president, Mohamed Mursi, was himself deposed after mass protests against his rule and replaced by the army's Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in 2013.

Sisi has since overseen a crackdown on opposition in which hundreds of Brotherhood supporters were killed and thousands, including Mursi, jailed or sentenced to death.

Both Hasam - an acronym in Arabic for the Forearms of Egypt Movement which doubles as the word for decisiveness - and Louwaa al-Thawra, or the Revolution Brigade, have claimed responsibility for attacks, saying they are taking revenge for the government crackdown.

Earlier on Friday, a judge who tried Mursi survived an assassination attempt when a parked car exploded as his vehicle drove by. Hasam claimed responsibility for the attack and threatened other judges.

Public Prosecutor Hisham Barakat, who referred many Brotherhood leaders to trial, was killed in June 2015 by a car bomb. The Interior Ministry said on Friday it found letters from Brotherhood leaders admitting it carried out the assassination.

Also on Friday, a senior Egyptian general was shot dead by militants on Friday near his home in North Sinai where an Islamic State insurgency is raging, the second such incident in as many weeks.

Louwaa al-Thawra had claimed responsibility for a similar attack on Oct. 22.
Brazil railway concession renewal to require private investment - source

BRASILIA, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Brazil's program to modernize its infrastructure will include an extension of current railway concessions but require that private investors match public investment in the railroads, a source with knowledge of the government's plans told Reuters on Friday.
Mexico's Slim says Trump's plans would 'destroy' U.S. economy

By Natalie Schachar

MEXICO CITY, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim said on Friday that Donald Trump's plans would "destroy" the United States economy and joked that the Republican presidential candidate's proposed wall at the border would be undermined by smuggling tunnels.

Slim made his first public comments since Trump accused him of trying to help the candidate's Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, in the U.S. election at an event in Mexico City.

Slim said that he thought it was unlikely Trump would win the election on Tuesday, and dismissed the New York businessman's economic proposals.

"If they slap on a 35 percent (tariff) it would destroy the American economy," he said at an event in Mexico City, referring to Trump's threat to put a 35 percent tax on many goods manufactured in Mexico and shipped to the United States.

The comments appeared to pit Slim, who for several years was the richest man in the world, against Trump, who has said his business acumen and experience as a real-estate developer make him the best candidate for the White House.

In an October speech, Trump accused Slim, the top shareholder in The New York Times Co, of trying to help Clinton through his stake.

The Sulzberger family controls the company's voting shares; Slim's shares have limited voting rights.

Slim, asked about Trump's comments on the sidelines of the Mexico City event, said, "I don't even know Trump, the U.S. elections have to be decided by the population, the people of the United States and, to be honest, the personal life of Trump doesn't interest me."

Trump has said he would renegotiate or tear up a key trade deal with Mexico and Canada and build a massive border wall, and has attacked U.S. companies investing there, battering Mexico's peso.
Arizona 'jihadist' gets eight years in prison for terror bomb plot

By David Schwartz

PHOENIX, Nov 4 (Reuters) - An Arizona teenager who the FBI has said professed to be an "American jihadist" was sentenced on Friday to eight years in prison, to be followed by a lifetime on probation, for plotting to bomb a state motor vehicle office.

Mahin Khan, 18, described by his parents as developmentally disabled, received one more year than the minimum prison term he faced during an emotional court hearing in Phoenix for his guilty plea to crimes committed while he was still a minor.

The Tucson resident pleaded guilty last month to all three felony charges against him: terrorism, conspiracy to commit terrorism and conspiracy to commit misconduct involving weapons.

Under terms of Khan's plea deal, Maricopa County prosecutors had agreed to seek a sentence ranging from seven to 14 years. If tried and convicted, he could have received a life term.

Khan, shackled and wearing prison stripes, declined to address the court during the proceedings.

His parents, along with more than a dozen family and supporters, asked Judge Dean Fink for leniency, characterizing the defendant as a misguided, troubled youth with a history of mental health problems. They argued that his words were empty threats.

"I hope, sir, that you are able to see that in reality, he is a lost and confused child who needs help," said Atif Khan, the defendant's father, adding that his son had shown significant remorse for his actions.

Khan, whose parents have said he suffers from autism and developmental delays that have left him with the mental age of a 12-year-old, was arrested in July after having been on the FBI's radar screen for several years.

But the situation grew more serious after Khan expressed to an FBI undercover operative his desire to kill hundreds of people in Arizona through "lone jihadist" attacks, according to court testimony.

In an affidavit filed in court, the FBI said Khan described himself as an "American jihadist" loyal to Islamic State, the militant group that seized parts of Syria and Iraq and claimed responsibility for deadly bomb and gun attacks in other countries.

Khan ultimately was charged with a plotting to obtain bombs to attack a state Motor Vehicle Division office in the Phoenix area.
Arizona ballot-collection law put on hold until after election

By Dan Levine

Nov 4 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Friday put a restrictive Republican-backed Arizona ballot-collection law on hold until after Tuesday's election, handing Democrats a victory in an intensifying state-by-state legal battle over access to the polls.

Arizona's legislature earlier this year passed the law prohibiting advocacy groups from collecting completed early ballots from voters and delivering them to election offices as part of get-out-the-vote efforts.

Plaintiffs in the case, including the Democratic National Committee, argued the law is unconstitutional because it unfairly impacted the ability of minorities to vote.

Polls have shown Republican Donald Trump with a small lead in Arizona over Democrat Hillary Clinton in the presidential race.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this week agreed to revisit a ruling that had refused to block the law and hear the case before an 11-judge panel. That panel voted 6-5 on Friday to prohibit Arizona from enforcing the law now, court records showed.

Arizona filed an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court later on Friday, asking it to reverse the 9th Circuit's order.

Democrats have accused Republicans of enacting state laws intended to make it harder for minorities and others who tend to back Democratic candidates to cast ballots. Republicans have called these laws necessary to guard against voting fraud.

Judge Sidney Thomas, the 9th Circuit's chief judge, wrote that the court's action would not disrupt Arizona's ability to conduct the U.S. presidential election.

"It simply would enjoin enforcement of a legislative act that would criminalize the collection, by persons other than the voter, of legitimately cast ballots," Thomas wrote.

He was joined by five other judges appointed by Democratic presidents. Five dissenting 9th Circuit judges, all Republican appointees, argued that the court should not have interfered with Arizona law so close to Election Day, while early voting is already underway.

The 9th Circuit covers nine Western states, including Arizona.

"We are disappointed in this decision as it will confuse voters and depress turnout," Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan said in a statement.

A representative for the Democratic National Committee could not immediately be reached for comment.

Acting in another voting case on Friday, a U.S. judge in Ohio ordered Trump's campaign not to verbally harass voters near polling places or take pictures of them in the key battleground state.
Body found on South Carolina property after kidnap victim rescued

By Gina Cherelus

Nov 4 (Reuters) - Authorities on Friday discovered a body on a South Carolina property where they were investigating claims by a woman who was found chained in a storage container there that there were four bodies buried on the site, authorities said on Friday.

At least one body was found shortly after noon on a 100-acre property in the town of Woodruff, northeast of Greenville, Spartanburg County Coroner Rusty Clevenger said.

"In (the) beginning stages of investigation of one body," Clevenger said by email. "No other information available I can release right now."

Investigators with cadaver dogs began searching the property on Thursday after police found Kala Brown, 30, inside the locked container, Sheriff Chuck Wright of the Spartanburg County police department told a news conference on Friday morning.

Brown and her boyfriend, Charles Carver, went missing on Aug. 31. A tip related to the disappearance of the couple, who live in Anderson, about 55 miles (89 km) southwest of Greenville, led police to the Woodruff property.

Carver, 32, was still missing, and police were looking for him and evidence related to the kidnapping, Wright said.

The identity of the body discovered on Friday has not been determined, prosecutor Barry Barnette said on Friday at a hearing for the suspect in Brown's kidnapping.

Barnette said that Brown witnessed the suspect, Todd Kohlepp, shoot Carver, according to a video broadcast of the hearing.

"There are indications that there may be more than one body on the property, we don't know for sure yet," Barnette added.

Wright said that Brown told investigators "that there's four people buried on this property.

"I don't know if that's true or not," he said, "but we're willing to stay here as long as it takes to make sure what she said is either true or not true."

Police on Thursday arrested Kohlhepp, 45, a registered sex offender who works as a realtor, on suspicion of kidnapping.

Wright said Brown and Kohlhepp knew each other and that her abduction was "not a random act." He did not specify how they were acquainted.

Brown, who is being treated at a local hospital, shared information with police during a brief interview, Wright said without elaborating.

"We're gonna' let her heal and make sure she's physically and mentally fine," Wright said.
Indonesia's Widodo skips Australia trip as unrest simmers at home

By Fergus Jensen and Agustinus Beo Da Costa

JAKARTA, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Indonesia's President Joko Widodo postponed a visit to Australia on Saturday after a mass protest in Jakarta that briefly turned violent as Muslim extremists pressed for the resignation of the capital's governor, a Christian they say insulted the Koran.

Widodo has faced criticism for failing to rein in hardline groups that had promised for weeks to bring tens of thousands onto the streets of the capital, and during Friday's protest his office said he was inspecting a rail project at the airport.

At a news conference after midnight on Friday, he blamed "political actors" for fanning popular anger over city Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, who is standing for re-election in February, competing with two Muslims for the job.

The governorship of the capital is a powerful position and one held by Widodo before he became president two years ago.

Widodo had planned to use his Nov. 6-8 visit to Australia to cement improving ties, with a focus on economic and maritime cooperation and efforts to counter Islamist militancy.

"Looking at the latest situation and condition in Indonesia that require the presence of the president, President Joko Widodo decided to postpone his scheduled state visit to Australia," a statement from his office said.

The protest against Purnama, the first ethnic Chinese to hold the position of Jakarta governor, was largely peaceful but in the evening the crowd grew restive and police restrained them with tear gas and water cannon fire.

One person died and more than 100 were injured in the violence, many of them police officers. Three vehicles were torched and 18 were damaged, national police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar told a news conference on Saturday.

Clashes broke out in a north Jakarta area where there are large communities of non-Muslims and about 15 people were arrested there for looting a minimart, Amar said.

Some Chinese-owned shops and restaurants were shuttered in northern Jakarta on Saturday, while security officers guarded a temple and a school, according to a resident.

A spokesman for the Islamic Defenders Front, a group that led the protest, denied responsibility for the violence and said the "provocateurs" were the police who fired tear gas.

The group may organise another protest if the legal process against Purnama for his Koran comments is not allowed to run its course, said Munarman, who goes by one name. "If the law is ignored ... then we will call for similar action."

WIDODO BLAMES 'POLITICAL ACTORS'

Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim population, but most follow a moderate form of Islam and protests on such a large scale are rare.

Ethnic Chinese make up just over 1 percent of Indonesia's 250 million people, and they typically do not enter politics.

Indonesian Chinese have faced persecution and violence in the past, especially during the turmoil that gripped Jakarta when former strongman Suharto was toppled in the late 1990s.

About a dozen Muslim groups have accused Purnama of insulting Islam after he jokingly said his opponents had used a verse from the Koran to deceive voters. The verse implies that Muslims should not choose non-Muslims as leaders.

Police are investigating the case against Purnama, who has apologised for his remarks, insisting he was not criticising the Koranic verse but those who used it to attack him.

Purnama, popularly known as 'Ahok', is a no-nonsense reformer with little patience for the corruption widely blamed for the chaos and dilapidated infrastructure of an overcrowded city of 10 million.

He remains popular despite efforts by Muslim groups to vilify him and is seen as the frontrunner in the election, though many voters are angry with him for evicting thousands from slums to modernise Jakarta.

Widodo, a Muslim, has vowed not to interfere in any legal proceedings against Purnama, who is an ally of the president. But he told the news conference that any legal process involving Purnama would be executed "swiftly, firmly and transparently".

He criticised politicians - whom he didn't name - for inciting die-hard protesters after most had already gone home.

" ... we deplore the incident after the Isha prayers, when should have already disbanded but became violent. And, we see this was steered by political actors who were exploiting the situation," he said.

A former furniture salesman who became the first president of Indonesia from outside the military or political elite, Widodo struggled in his first year to assert himself but since then he has built alliances across the political spectrum.

Analysts say that by openly supporting Purnama he could weaken his support base.

"From his perspective this visit to Australia just doesn't seem to match the urgency of this happening in Jakarta: although it's not conceivable that he might be overthrown ... it is conceivable that he could be greatly reduced in power to support the re-election of Ahok," said political analyst Wimar Witoelar.
Hong Kong lawmakers-elect who called for independence threatened China's security -state TV

SHANGHAI, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Leading members of China's parliament said on Saturday two Hong Kong lawmakers-elect who called for the city's independence from China had damaged the territory's rule of law and posed a grave threat to China's sovereignty and security.

The comments, carried on state TV, come ahead of what is expected to effectively be a ruling by Beijing on the fate of Yau Wai-ching, 25, and Baggio Leung, 30, who set off fierce debate when they pledged allegiance to the "Hong Kong nation" and displayed a "Hong Kong is not China" banner during a swearing-in ceremony for the city's legislative council in October.

Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese control in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" formula that gave the territory wide-ranging autonomy, including judicial freedom guided by a mini-constitution called the Basic Law.

China's parliament, the National People's Congress, has a right to weigh in on the Basic Law, and on Saturday senior members of the NPC discussed a draft interpretation of the Law's article that requires Legislative Council members and other officials to pledge loyalty to Hong Kong as a part of China when taking office.

The Chinese lawmakers agreed that the legislators-elect from Hong Kong had "humiliated the nation and the people", according to China Central Television (CCTV).

They "brazenly challenged the Basic Law, impeded the normal operations of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region political organs, damaged Hong Kong's rule of law, assaulted the baseline principles of 'one country, two systems', and created a serious threat to the nation's sovereignty and security", it said.

"If this kind of situation continues it will harm the immediate interests of the people of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the interests of national development. The central government cannot sit by indifferently," they were quoted as saying.

As such, an NPC interpretation was "very timely and extremely necessary".

The oath-taking incident made waves in the former colony, where the topic of independence from China was once regarded as taboo but has come to the fore since months of pro-democracy protests in 2014 failed to secure any concessions from Beijing.

The parliamentary meeting in Beijing ends on Monday, the state news agency Xinhua said.

Earlier in the day, the Communist Party's top newspaper, the People's Daily, ran an editorial that said anyone "who splits the nation or promotes 'Hong Kong independence' is ... unqualified to stand for election or hold public office provided for in the Basic Law".

The NPC Standing Committee has interpreted the Basic Law four times since 1997, including once when neither the city government nor its courts requested it.

After the abortive swearing-in of Yau and Leung, Hong Kong's chief executive filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction to prevent another ceremony for them taking place.

Hong Kong's High Court struck down that request but approved a judicial review of the pair's membership of the legislature.
A mayor on Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's list of top drugs suspects was killed during a shootout at a prison on Saturday, police said, in the latest high-profile killing in his bloody war on narcotics.

Rolando Espinosa, mayor of Albuera town in central Leyte province, turned himself in to the national police chief in August after Duterte asked him and his son, Kerwin, to surrender over their involvement in the drug trade.

Espinosa was later allowed to go home but on October 5 was arrested on charges of illegal possession of drugs and firearms.

He is the second local government executive on Duterte's so-called 'narco-list' killed during police operations.

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Filipino Rolando Espinosa, mayor of Albuera Township, is seen in this October 5 photo being escorted by officers following his arrest in Albuera, Leyte Island, Philippines. He was shot dead in his cell on November 5 during a 'firefight' in the Sub-Provincial Jail in Baybay, Leyte Province

The shootout took place after Espinosa and inmate Raul Yap fired at a team from the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group who was on a mission to serve a search warrant against the detainees for firearms and illegal drugs, police said.

'As a matter of procedure, this incident will undergo investigation to establish the facts and circumstances surrounding the incident,' Eastern Visayas Regional Police Chief Superintendent Elmer Beltejar said.

Some lawmakers expressed alarm over the killing of Espinosa inside his detention cell, with the chairman of the Senate committee on justice and human rights, Senator Richard Gordon, describing it as a 'slap in the face' of the country's criminal justice system.

Gordon said he may file a resolution to look into such drug-related killings, while Senator Panfilo Lacson was quoted by local media as saying that Espinosa's death was 'a clear case of EJK (extrajudicial killing).'

'There's got to be a lot of questions that must be answered,' Gordon said in an interview with news channel ANC.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is seen in this October 26 photo delivering a speech at the Philippine Economic Forum in Tokyo. More than 2,300 people have been killed in police operations or by suspected vigilantes in connection with the anti-narcotics campaign since Duterte took office on June 30

Police said they recovered a .45 caliber pistol and a .38 Super pistol from the cells of Yap and Espinosa. A small sachet containing suspected methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia were also found inside Espinosa's cell, police said.

The presidential palace described Espinosa's death as 'unfortunate' and said an investigation was ongoing.

Espinosa had publicly denied any part in the drug trade but said his son was peddling 'shabu' (methamphetamine), which he gets from a jailed Chinese drug trader.

Espinosa's son, Kerwin, was arrested by Abu Dhabi police last month, according to Philippine National Police chief Director General Ronald dela Rosa.

In October, Samsudin Dimaukom, a powerful mayor in Duterte's troubled home province of Mindanao, was also killed along with nine of his guards in a shootout, according to police.

More than 2,300 people have been killed in police operations or by suspected vigilantes in connection with the anti-narcotics campaign since Duterte took office on June 30.
A 42-year-old naval rating attached to the Panama Sastrawala navy camp was killed after he was attacked by a wild elephant last evening, Police said.

They said he was attacked while he was returning to the camp after attending exercises with another naval rating. His body is lying at Potuvil Hospital.
Sri Lanka and India today agreed on the setting up of a Joint Working Group on Fisheries to meet every three months and a meeting between the Ministers for Fisheries every six months.

"The Terms of Reference for the Joint Working Group (JWG) would include (i) expediting the transition towards ending the practice of bottom trawling at the earliest, (ii) working out the modalities for the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for handing over of apprehended fishermen, and (iii) ascertaining possibilities for cooperation on patrolling," Indian External Affairs Ministry said in a statement.

External Affairs Minister Mrs. Sushma Swaraj and Minister of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare Radha Mohan Singh met with the Sri Lankan Minister for Foreign Affairs Mangala Samaraweera and Minister for Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Development Mahinda Amaraweera of Sri Lanka.

Minister of State for Road Transport, Highways & Shipping Pon Radhakrishnan and Sri Lankan Member of Parliament M.A. Sumanthiran were part of the two delegations.

The statement also stated;

The Ministers exchanged views on possible mechanisms to help find a permanent solution to the fishermen issues.

They agreed on the setting up of a Joint Working Group on Fisheries to meet every three months and a meeting between the Ministers for Fisheries every six months. The delegations would include representatives from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, the Coast Guards and Navies of both countries. The 1st Ministerial Meeting would be held on January 02, 2017 in Colombo.

The Terms of Reference for the Joint Working Group (JWG) would include (i) expediting the transition towards ending the practice of bottom trawling at the earliest, (ii) working out the modalities for the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for handing over of apprehended fishermen, and (iii) ascertaining possibilities for cooperation on patrolling. The issue of the release of detained fishing vessels will be discussed at the first JWG meeting.

Both Governments agreed on the setting up a hotline between the two Coast Guards.

There was support for expediting the provision of communication tracking sets to the fishermen.

Both Governments agreed to the request by the Fishermen Associations that there should be no violence and no loss of life in the handling of fishermen by the Navies and Coast Guards of the two countries.

They agreed to encourage the Fishermen Associations of the two countries to meet every six months to take further their dialogue from the meeting held on November 2, 2016 in New Delhi.

The Ministers noted that the process is underway for the release of fishermen presently in custody on either side.
India has two prime ministers, one is the highly misunderstood BJP leader and assumed face of Hindutva politics, Shri Narendra Modiji, and the other is the "tweet" Prime Minister @narendramodi.

While one keeps quiet not knowing what to say in difficult moments, the other speaks volumes in 140 characters. While the first one goes around the country and the world belligerently speaking his heart out, the other clandestinely speaks his mind.

It is devious how the country has been led to believe that the two prime ministers of India are one and the same. They are not - because while the former, more visible prime minister, can be seen and heard but never questioned, the "tweet" prime minister can remain silent, whether questioned or not.

Now there has been a recent occurrence on which both the prime ministers are silent. The former cannot be questioned because the matter is too far below his gaze of benevolence and the latter will tweet if and when the moment or mood is of relevance.

I speak of the impending day ban on NDTV India.

The news broke, significantly, a day after the prime minister was seen at a journalism award ceremony explaining to the fourth estate the good and bad of Emergency - the stupid decision by a former prime minister to promulgate a declaration signed by the President of the country telling the people of India that their liberties stand curtailed and that individual freedom as free speech stands suspended.

From the current prime minister's speech, it became abundantly clear that he is of the firm belief that no such stupid state of Emergency is in force in India at the moment.

If media needs to be gagged, it must be because Narendra Modi wants it to be so. (Photo: NDTV/Screengrab)

Everyone knows that post the massive mandate of 2014, all good that happens in India happens in the name of the prime minister himself. So it should be safe to believe, without being aggressively trolled, that the few hiccups of bad must also be attributed to the honourable gentleman. For instance, if media needs to be gagged, it must be because Narendra Modi wants it to be so.

If we take our minds back to the gory days, or glory days depending on the views of the readership, post Godhra  Star News run by NDTV had been blacked out in the state of Gujarat. Chief minister Narendra Modi justified the ban saying: "I blacked out one channel because of the provocative reporting methods used. Traditionally, the print media has used its own methods of self-censorship not to mention the names of communities while reporting riots. If every half an hour names of communities are going to be mentioned, without any substantiation or any attribution, it inflames the situation instead of allaying it. It is not difficult to see what impact it will have."

Did anyone doubt the chief minister's noble action then?

Some did, but they are who we now call the pseudo-intellectual leftist liberalist and we know these dodgy people are all anti-nationals, disruptive to the process of nation building. Anyway, so why should anyone doubt the intentions of the responsible Modi government, now that he is in the Centre.

If it was otherwise, I am sure the "tweet" prime minister would have let us know in his 140 eloquent characters.

If it was otherwise, I think the free media of India would have responded that if NDTV India goes silent for 24 hours, so will every other TV and print media in the country.

If people and journalists and big-shot media house editors felt that this ban is inherently wrong, then they would certainly ensure that for 24 hours in the history of journalism, every TV news station in India would stop broadcast from 00:01 hours November 9 to 00:01 hours November 10, and no newspaper would hit the stands on November 10.

If the ban on NDTV India is unjust, then for one whole day India should be devoid of news because the government dared impose a ban.

But we all know that that will not happen because media in India is free and the government in the land is fair and people everywhere are happy and peace reigns across the country.

News will not intentionally black out, in support of one of its own, because at the end of the day, it is business.

It will not happen because every Indian knows that the President has not signed a decree stating a state of Emergency exists in the country.

If it were otherwise, we can be rest assured, that one of the prime minister's of India would have told us so.... either through his loveable hand-wielding theatrics with dramatic pauses or else tweetly.
An unfortunate suicide of a veteran plunged the capital into a political soap opera on Wednesday. One Rank One Pension (OROP), an emotive issue that has been in the thick of controversy since the last four decades, showed it wont fade away anytime soon.

With elections slated in the coming year in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand, among others, expect politicians to dramatise what frankly needs some quiet, hard sorting.

To be sure, the Narendra Modi government has walked some distance when it comes to OROP.

Last November, they operationalised the scheme. Money, in the form of enhanced pension, has begun flowing into the bank accounts of a majority of 20,68,292 ex-servicemen and widows. The scheme will cost the exchequer about Rs 10,000 crore in arrears and nearly Rs 8,000 crore in annual outflows.

Now compare this to what the Congress-led UPA did. After an entire decade, it announced OROP in its final budget and allocated only Rs 500 crore for the scheme. It never issued a letter operationalising the scheme, perhaps aware that it could hardly achieve anything with a budget as paltry.

What is also a fact is that OROP, in its original form, ironically suggested by BJPs BS Koshiari who headed a parliamentary panel on the matter, has not been achieved.

The single biggest cause (among many others) for resentment is the governments condition that pension revision will happen once in five years. This many veterans believe "kills the essence".

OROP, the veterans hold, is nothing if not automatic updation of pension every time a hike sets in, so that two retired veterans with the same rank and identical years of service do not get separate pension.

OROP, sadly, has found more space in publicity campaigns of the ruling party and not elsewhere. (Photo credit: India Today)

In November last year, when the scheme was operationalised, protesting veterans declared it a "langdee OROP" (handicapped OROP).

Perhaps aware of the minefield it was stepping into, the defence ministry, the very next month, appointed a single-member committee to examine the anomalies of OROP. While the committee submitted its report recently, the ministry has not gone public with the content.

Seeking resolution, a section of the veterans have again begun protesting at Jantar Mantar. In the Supreme Court, where the veterans have challenged the government on the issue, November 6 is the next date of hearing.

OROP, sadly, has found more space in publicity campaigns of the ruling party and not elsewhere.

To make matters worse, issues like reduction in the pension of armed forces' personnel disabled on duty, the functional equivalence of armed forces' personnel being brought down vis-a-vis civilians, various anomalies of the Seventh Pay Commission, unresolved anomalies of previous pay commissions, lack of clarity on the aspect of allowances (this holds for all government servants) have been left unaddressed.

While the issue of disability pension has somewhat been addressed, the cumulative aftertaste is bitter and across the board. While all former points are in the realm of policymaking, at the level of implementation too there is discord.

Based out of Pune, for years Commander RW Pathak (retd) has been helping veterans and widows get their correct pension.

Earlier, we were issued Pension Payment Orders (PPOs) with the defence ministry working out all calculations. The banks would refer to these PPOs and pay. Ever since the calculations were outsourced to the banks, who have neither the staff nor skills to understand defence pensions, people are struggling to get their dues, he said.

Pathaks views, echoed by veterans, also found support within the system. Our soldiers are suffering hugely. Banks earn a commission when they disburse pension but are doing this job too casually, said a defence ministry auditor.

By ending his life, Ram Kishan Grewal brought the spotlight on to the indifference that we subject our soldiers to. The reality is that millions among our veterans and war widows face treatment similar to, if not worse than, what Grewal had to.
ALLETE, Inc. operates as an energy company. The company operates through Regulated Operations, ALLETE Clean Energy, and Corporate and Other segments. It generates electricity from coal-fired, biomass co-fired / natural gas, hydroelectric, wind, and solar. The company provides regulated utility electric services in northwestern Wisconsin to approximately 15,000 electric customers, 13,000 natural gas customers, and 10,000 water customers, as well as regulated utility electric services in northeastern Minnesota to approximately 145,000 retail customers and 15 non-affiliated municipal customers. It also owns and maintains electric transmission assets in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and Illinois. In addition, the company focuses on developing, acquiring, and operating clean and renewable energy projects; and owns and operates approximately 1,000 megawatts of wind energy generation facility. Further, it is involved in the coal mining operations in North Dakota; and real estate investment activities in Florida. The company owns and operates 158 substations with a total capacity of 10,066 megavolt amperes. It serves taconite mining, paper, pulp and secondary wood products, pipeline, and other industries. The company was formerly known as Minnesota Power, Inc. and changed its name to ALLETE, Inc. in May 2001. ALLETE, Inc. was incorporated in 1906 and is headquartered in Duluth, Minnesota.
This is a current list of the top 250 companies by market capitalization on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). Learn more .

Many investors understand the reasons for having a diversified portfolio. One way to accomplish this is to diversify within an asset class. For equity investors in the United States this can mean investing in both growth and value stocks.

It can also mean investing in international stocks. And when investors want to do this, they need look no further than our neighbor to the north. Canada has a range of stocks for investors to consider. This article will focus on strategies that investors can use when looking to invest in Canadian stocks.

Why Buy Canadian Stocks?

There are a few reasons for investors to consider Canadian stocks as part of their diversification strategy:

A Large Natural Resources Sector  The sheer size of the country and its location lets investors know that it is an area rich in natural resources. This also means that the country has a source of current and future wealth.

An Advanced Skills-Based Economy  In this regard, Canada is similar to other western nations. The difference is that it is not as common to find these skill-based professions in a country with so many natural resources.

Stability  Canada is not exempt from any problems that impact the global economy. However, the country is known for stable financial and business policies that have kept the economy relatively stable. This Goldilocks economy has meant that many Canadian stocks havent enjoyed the outsized growth of some U.S. equities. However, it also comes with a bit of protection against downside risk.

How Have Canadian Stocks Performed?

According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, there was a time when U.S. stocks and Canadian stocks performed nearly identically. Heres a graph that shows the performance of the S&P 500 Index vs. the TSX Index



Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence

You can see that with a couple of exceptions, the two indexes performed remarkably similar. That all changed around 2012 and Canadian stocks became less attractive.

Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence

This disparity is widely due to one sector, technology. However, Canadian technology stocks have been on the rise. And in 2022, the country is benefiting from renewed interest in materials stocks as well as a spike in commodity prices.

What Are the Best Sectors of Canadian Stocks?

For different reasons finance, materials, and energy stocks are among the best performing stocks as of September 2022. Heres a brief overview of each sector and some of the top names for investors to consider.

Financial  Similar to the United States, Canada has a strong banking industry. Many Canadian banks have a track record of solid performance that can provide long-term value to a portfolio. And several of these stocks pay dividends with attractive yields for investors.

This sector makes up the largest percentage of the TSX at roughly 30%. And the Royal Bank of Canada (NYSE:RY)is the top-weighted constituent in the TSX. Beyond the Royal Bank of Canada some of the other top-performing Canadian financial stocks include:

Materials and Mining  Canadian stocks can be an ideal choice for investors looking to diversify into gold and precious metals without owning the physical metal. Canada has a large natural resources sector. So, its not surprising that there are a number of gold mining companies with Canadian origins. This sector also gives investors exposure to other components in the mining and agriculture sectors. This sector makes up approximately 11.5% of the TSX. Some of the top Canadian materials and mining stocks include:

Energy  Canadian stocks offer both traditional fossil fuel-based energy stocks as well as some renewable energy stocks. This sector makes up approximately 18.5% of the TSX. Some of the top Canadian energy stocks include:

Technology  As mentioned earlier, technology stocks have largely been the domain of the United States. As evidence of this, information technology stocks make up only about 5.5% of the TSX. However, there are a few Canadian companies that have become stars in the new economy being created. Some of the more popular names include:

What Are the Risks of Investing in Canadian Stocks?

One concern about investing in Canadian stocks is that they can be heavily weighted towards cyclical industries. For example, as of February 2022 financials (33.5%), energy (14.8%) and industrials (11.7%) made up nearly 60% of the index. That may be too much for some investors particularly because those sectors all tend to correlate roughly the same way as the economic cycle. But as a long-term play, Canadian stocks are worth considering with a small part of your portfolio.

How to Buy Canadian Stocks

Buy Individual Stocks on a Stock Exchange

Hundreds of Canadian stocks have dual listings on either the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or the NASDAQ. This is the most convenient way to get exposure to Canadian stocks because there are no barriers to stock ownership. These shares can be purchased in U.S. dollars directly from the exchange just like purchasing a U.S. stock.

However, for a full list of the best Canadian stocks, investors should look at the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). The TSX is one of the oldest stock exchanges having been founded in 1852. Its also the third largest stock exchange in North America in terms of market capitalization.

The Toronto Stock Exchange includes approximately 1,500 companies. It allows investors to trade stocks, investment trusts, exchange-traded products, bonds, commodities, futures, options, and other derivative products. All transactions on the TSX are executed in Canadian dollars.

Invest in a Mutual Fund or ETF

There are many mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that supply exposure to Canadian stocks. Some funds supply exposure to both U.S. and Canadian stocks. Other funds hold just Canadian stocks. Some examples of those include:

BMO S&P/TSX Capped Composite Index ETF

Horizons S&P/TSX 60 Index ETF

Vanguard FTSE Canada All Cap ETF

As with investing in any asset class, investors need to consider their investment objective, time horizon and risk tolerance before choosing a fund that fits their needs. Investors will also want to pay attention to the funds fee structure to ensure youre making the most efficient use of your capital.

The Final Word on Investing in Canadian Stocks

Investing in Canadian stocks is one way for investors to add diversification to their portfolio. MarketBeat provides a list of the top Canadian stocks that trade on the TSX. This is Canadas version of the NYSE or NASDAQ in the United States and includes many of the same stocks.

Thats one advantage of investing in Canadian stocks is that many have a dual listing which removes many of the obstacles that can come with investing in international stocks.

However, investors should be aware that many of the best Canadian stocks are in highly cyclical industries which can lead to underperformance when those sectors are out of favor. Still, due to their relative stability and in some cases an impressive dividend, Canadian stocks may have a place in an investors portfolio.
The following companies are subsidiares of MetLife: 10700 WILSHIRE LLC, 1201 TAB MANAGER LLC, 1350 EYE STREET MANAGER LLC, 1350 EYE STREET OWNER LLC, 150 NORTH RIVERSIDE PE MEMBER LLC, 1925 WJC OWNER LLC, 23RD STREET INVESTMENTS INC., 500 GRANT STREET ASSOCIATES LIMITED PARTNERSHIP, 500 GRANT STREET GP LLC, 6104 HOLLYWOOD LLC, AFP GENESIS ADMINISTRADORA DE FONDOS Y FIDECOMISOS S.A., AGENVITA S.R.L., ALICO HELLAS SINGLE MEMBER LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY, ALICO OPERATIONS LLC, American Life Insurance Company, BEST MARKET S.A., BLOCK VISION HOLDINGS CORPORATION, BLOCK VISION OF TEXAS INC., BORDERLAND INVESTMENTS LIMITED, BOULEVARD RESIDENTIAL LLC, BUFORD LOGISTICS CENTER LLC, CC HOLDCO MANAGER LLC, CHESTNUT FLATS WIND LLC, CLOSED JOINT-STOCK COMPANY MASTER-D, COMPANIA INVERSORA METLIFE S.A., CORPORATE REAL ESTATE HOLDINGS LLC, COVA LIFE MANAGEMENT COMPANY, DAVIS VISION INC., DAVISVISION IPA INC., DELAWARE AMERICAN LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, EURO CL INVESTMENTS LLC, EXCELENCIA OPERATIVA Y TECNOLOGICA S.A de C.V., FORTISSIMO CO. LTD, FUNDACION METLIFE MEXICO A.C., GLOBAL PROPERTIES INC., General American Life Insurance Company, Grand Bank N.A., HASKELL EAST VILLAGE LLC, HOUSING FUND MANAGER LLC, INTERNATIONAL TECHNICAL AND ADVISORY SERVICES LIMITED, INVERSIONES METLIFE HOLDCO DOS LIMITADA, INVERSIONES METLIFE HOLDCO TRES LIMITADA, LHC HOLDINGS LLC, LHCW HOLDINGS LLC, LHCW HOTEL HOLDING 2002 LLC, LHCW HOTEL HOLDING LLC, LHCW HOTEL OPERATING COMPANY 2002 LLC, LUMENLAB MALAYSIA SDN. BHD., Logan Circle Partners, MARKETPLACE RESIDENCES LLC, MC PORTFOLIO JV MEMBER LLC, MCJV LLC, MCPP OWNERS LLC, MCRE BLOCK 40 LP, MEC HEALTH CARE INC., MET 1065 HOTEL LLC, MET CANADA SOLAR ULC, METLIFE 1007 STEWART LLC, METLIFE 1201 TAB MEMBER LLC, METLIFE 425 MKT MANAGER LLC, METLIFE 425 MKT MEMBER LLC, METLIFE 555 12TH MEMBER LLC, METLIFE 8280 MEMBER LLC, METLIFE ACOMA OWNER LLC, METLIFE ADMINISTRADORA DE FUNDOS MULTIPATROCINADOS LTDA., METLIFE ALTERNATIVES GP LLC, METLIFE ASHTON AUSTIN OWNER LLC, METLIFE ASIA HOLDING COMPANY PTE. 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DE C.V., METLIFE MEXICO HOLDINGS S. DE R.L. DE C.V., METLIFE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., METLIFE MEXICO SERVICIOS S.A. DE C.V., METLIFE MIDDLE MARKET PRIVATE DEBT FUND II LP, METLIFE MIDDLE MARKET PRIVATE DEBT GP II LLC, METLIFE MIDDLE MARKET PRIVATE DEBT GP LLC, METLIFE MIDDLE MARKET PRIVATE DEBT II RATED FUND LP, METLIFE MIDDLE MARKET PRIVATE DEBT PARALLEL FUND LP, METLIFE MIDDLE MARKET PRIVATE DEBT PARALLEL GP LLC, METLIFE MMPD II SPECIAL LLC, METLIFE MULTI-FAMILY PARTNERS III LLC, METLIFE OBS MEMBER LLC, METLIFE OFC MEMBER LLC, METLIFE ONTARIO STREET MEMBR LLC, METLIFE PARK TOWER MEMBER LLC, METLIFE PENSION TRUSTEES LIMITED, METLIFE PENSIONES MEXICO S.A., METLIFE PET INSURANCE SOLUTIONS LLC, METLIFE PLANOS ODONTOLOGICOS LTDA., METLIFE POWSZECHNE TOWARTZYSTWO EMERYTALNE S.A., METLIFE PRIVATE EQUITY HOLDINGS LLC, METLIFE PROPERTIES VENTURES LLC, METLIFE RC SF MEMBER LLC, METLIFE REAL ESTATE LENDING LLC, METLIFE REINSURANCE COMPANY OF BERMUDA LTD., METLIFE REINSURANCE COMPANY OF CHARLESTON, METLIFE REINSURANCE COMPANY OF VERMONT, METLIFE RETIREMENT SERVICES LLC, METLIFE SECURITIZATION DEPOSITOR LLC, METLIFE SEGUROS S.A., METLIFE SENIOR DIRECT LENDING FINCO LLC, METLIFE SENIOR DIRECT LENDING FUND LP, METLIFE SENIOR DIRECT LENDING GP LLC, METLIFE SENIOR DIRECT LENDING HOLDINGS LP, METLIFE SERVICES AND SOLUTIONS LLC, METLIFE SERVICES CYPRUS LTD., METLIFE SERVICES EAST PRIVATE LIMITED, METLIFE SERVICES EEIG, METLIFE SERVICES EOOD, METLIFE SERVICES SOCIEDAD LIMITADA, METLIFE SERVICES SP Z.O.O, METLIFE SERVICIOS S.A., METLIFE SINGLE FAMILY RENTAL FUND GP LLC, METLIFE SINGLE FAMILY RENTAL FUND LP, METLIFE SOLUTIONS PTE. LTD., METLIFE SOLUTIONS S.A.S., METLIFE SP HOLDINGS LLC, METLIFE STRATEGIC HOTEL DEBT FUND GP LLC, METLIFE SYNDICATED BANK LOAN LUX GP S.A.R.L., METLIFE THR INVESTOR LLC, METLIFE TOWARZYSTWO FUNDUSZY INWESTYCYJNYCH S.A., METLIFE TOWARZYSTWO UBEZPIECZEN NA ZYCIE I REASEKURACJI S.A., METLIFE TOWER RESOURCES GROUP INC., METLIFE TREAT TOWERS MEMBER LLC, METLIFE WORLDWIDE HOLDINGS LLC, METROPOLITAN GENERAL INSURANCE COMPANY, METROPOLITAN GLOBAL MANAGEMENT LLC, METROPOLITAN LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, METROPOLITAN LIFE SEGUROS E PREVIDENCIA PRIVADA S.A., METROPOLITAN LIFE SOCIETATE de ADMINISTRARE a UNUI FOND de PENSII ADMINISTRAT PRIVAT S.A., METROPOLITAN TOWER LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, METROPOLITAN TOWER REALTY COMPANY INC., MEX DF PROPERTIES LLC, MFA FINANCING VEHICLE CTR1 LLC, MIDTOWN HEIGHTS LLC, MIM CAMPUS AT SGV MANAGER LLC, MIM CLAL GENERAL PARTNER LLC, MIM CM SYNDICATOR LLC, MIM EMD GP LLC, MIM I LLC, MIM LS GP LLC, MIM METWEST INTERNATIONAL MANAGER LLC, MIM ML-AI VENTURE 5 MANAGER LLC, MIM OMD MANAGER LLC, MIM PROPERTY MANAGEMENT LLC, MIM PROPERTY MANAGEMENT OF GEORGIA 1 LLC, MIM SPOKANE INDUSTRIAL MANAGER LLC, MIM THIRD ARMY INDUSTRIAL MANAGER LLC, MISSOURI REINSURANCE INC., ML 300 THIRD MEMBER LLC, ML ARMATURE MEMBER LLC, ML BELLEVUE MANAGER LLC, ML BELLEVUE MEMBER LLC, ML CAPACITACION COMERCIAL S.A. DE C.V., ML CERRITOS TC MEMBER LLC, ML CLAL MEMBER LLC, ML CORNER 63 MEMBER LLC, ML DOLPHIN GP LLC, ML DOLPHIN MEZZ LLC, ML HUDSON MEMBER LLC, ML MATSON MILLS MEMBER LLC, ML MILILANI MEMBER LLC, ML OMD MEMBER LLC, ML ONE BEDMINSTER LLC, ML PORT CHESTER SC MEMBER LLC, ML SENTINEL SQUARE MEMBER LLC, ML SLOANS LAKE MEMEBR LLC, ML SOUTHLANDS MEMBER LLC, ML SOUTHMORE LLC, ML SPOKANE INDUSTRIAL MEMBER LLC, ML SWAN GP LLC, ML SWAN MEZZ LLC, ML TERRACES LLC, ML THIRD ARMY INDUSTRIAL MEMBER LLC, ML VENTURE 1 MANAGER S. DE R. L. DE C.V., ML VENTURE 1 SERVICER LLC, ML-AI METLIFE MEMBER 1 LLC, ML-AI METLIFE MEMBER 2 LLC, ML-AI METLIFE MEMBER 3 LLC, ML-AI METLIFE MEMBER 4 LLC, ML-AI METLIFE MEMBER 5 LLC, ML-URS PORT CHESTER SC MANAGER LLC, MLIA MANAGER I LLC, MLIA PARK TOWER MANAGER LLC, MLIA SBAF COLONY MANAGER LLC, MLIA SBAF MANAGER LLC, MLIC ASSET HOLDINGS II LLC, MLIC ASSET HOLDINGS LLC, MLIC CB HOLDINGS LLC, MLJ US FEEDER LLC, MM GLOBAL OPERATIONS SUPPORT CENTER S.A. DE C.V., MMP CEDAR STREET OWNER LLC, MMP CEDAR STREET REIT LLC, MMP HOLDINGS III LLC, MMP OLIVIAN OWNER LLC, MMP OLIVIAN REIT LLC, MMP OWNERS III LLC, MMP OWNERS LLC, MMP SOUTH PARK OWNER LLC, MMP SOUTH PARK REIT LLC, MNQM TRUST 2020, MREF 425 MKT LLC, MSHDF HOLDCO I LLC, MSV IRVINE PROPERTY LLC, MTL LEASING LLC, MTU HOTEL OWNER LLC, NATILOPORTEM HOLDINGS LLC, NEWBURY INSURANCE COMPANY LIMITED, OCONEE GOLF COMPANY LLC, OCONEE HOTEL COMPANY LLC, OCONEE LAND COMPANY LLC, OCONEE LAND DEVELOPMENT COMPANY LLC, OCONEE MARINA COMPANY LLC, OMI MLIC INVESTMENTS LIMITED, PACIFIC LOGISTICS INDUSTRIAL NORTH LLC, PACIFIC LOGISTICS INDUSTRIAL SOUTH LLC, PARK TOWER JV MEMBER LLC, PARK TOWER REIT INC., PJSC METLIFE, PLAZA DRIVE PROPERTIES LLC, PREFCO FOURTEEN LLC, PREFCO XIV HOLDINGS LLC, PROVIDA INTERNACIONAL S.A., SAFEGUARD HEALTH ENTERPRISES INC., SAFEGUARD HEALTH PLANS INC., SAFEHEALTH LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, SOUTHCREEK INDUSTRIAL HOLDINGS LLC, ST. JAMES FLEET INVESTMENTS TWO LIMITED, SUPERIOR PROCUREMENT INC., SUPERIOR VISION BENEFIT MANAGEMENT INC., SUPERIOR VISION HOLDINGS INC., SUPERIOR VISION INSURANCE INC., SUPERIOR VISION INSURANCE PLAN OF WISCONSIN INC., SUPERIOR VISION OF NEW JERSEY INC., SUPERIOR VISION SERVICES INC., Safeguard Health Enterprises, Security First Group Inc., THE BUILDING AT 575 FIFTH AVENUE MEZZANINE LLC, THE BUILDING AT 575 FIFTH RETAIL HOLDING LLC, THE BUILDING AT 575 FIFTH RETAIL OWNER, THE DIRECT CALL CENTRE PTY LIMITED, TRANSMOUNTAIN LAND & LIVESTOCK COMPANY, UVC INDEPENDENT PRACTICE ASSOCIATION INC., VERSANT HEALTH CONSOLIDATIONS CORP., VERSANT HEALTH HOLDCO INC., VERSANT HEALTH INC., VERSANT HEALTH LAB LLC, VIRIDIAN MIRACLE MILE LLC, VISION 21 MANAGED EYE CARE OF TAMPA BAY INC., VISION 21 PHYSICIAN PRACTICE MANAGEMENT COMPANY, VISION TWENTY-ONE MANAGED EYE CARE IPA INC., Versant Health, WDV ACQUISITION CORP., WFP 1000 HOLDING COMPANY GP LLC, WHITE OAK ROYALTY COMPANY, WHITE TRACT II LLC, and Willing.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Clean Harbors: Ace/Allwaste Environmental Services of Indiana LLC, Altair Disposal Services LLC, Aquilex Finance LLC, Aquilex Intermediate Corporate Holdings LLC, Aquilex Intermediate Holdings LLC, Aquilex LLC, Baton Rouge Disposal LLC, Bridgeport Disposal LLC, CARBER Holdings Inc., CB Canada Acquisition Inc., CB Canada Holdings Inc., CB US Holdings Inc., CH International Holdings LLC, Car-Ber Investments Inc., Clean Harbors Andover LLC, Clean Harbors Aragonite LLC, Clean Harbors Arizona LLC, Clean Harbors BDT LLC, Clean Harbors Baton Rouge LLC, Clean Harbors Buttonwillow LLC, Clean Harbors Canada Inc., Clean Harbors Caribe Inc., Clean Harbors Chattanooga LLC, Clean Harbors Clive LLC, Clean Harbors Coffeyville LLC, Clean Harbors Colfax LLC, Clean Harbors Deer Park LLC, Clean Harbors Deer Trail LLC, Clean Harbors Development LLC, Clean Harbors Disposal Services Inc., Clean Harbors El Dorado LLC, Clean Harbors Energy Services ULC, Clean Harbors Energy and Industrial Services Corp., Clean Harbors Energy and Industrial Services LP, Clean Harbors Energy and Industrial Western Ltd., Clean Harbors Environmental Services Inc., Clean Harbors Exploration Services Inc., Clean Harbors Exploration Services LP, Clean Harbors Exploration Services ULC, Clean Harbors Florida LLC, Clean Harbors Grassy Mountain LLC, Clean Harbors India LLP, Clean Harbors Industrial Services Canada Inc., Clean Harbors Industrial Services Inc., Clean Harbors Innu Environmental Services Inc., Clean Harbors Kansas LLC, Clean Harbors Kingston Facility Corporation, Clean Harbors LaPorte LLC, Clean Harbors Laurel LLC, Clean Harbors Lodging Services LP, Clean Harbors Lodging Services ULC, Clean Harbors Lone Mountain LLC, Clean Harbors Mercier Inc., Clean Harbors Pecatonica LLC, Clean Harbors Production Services ULC, Clean Harbors Quebec Inc., Clean Harbors Recycling Services of Chicago LLC, Clean Harbors Recycling Services of Ohio LLC, Clean Harbors Reidsville LLC, Clean Harbors San Jose LLC, Clean Harbors San Leon Inc., Clean Harbors Services Inc., Clean Harbors Surface Rentals Partnership, Clean Harbors Surface Rentals ULC, Clean Harbors Surface Rentals USA Inc., Clean Harbors Tennessee LLC, Clean Harbors Westmorland LLC, Clean Harbors White Castle LLC, Clean Harbors Wichita LLC, Clean Harbors Wilmington LLC, Clean Harbors of Baltimore Inc. (DE Corp.), Clean Harbors of Braintree Inc., Clean Harbors of Connecticut Inc. (DE), Confined Space Services L.L.C., Cousins Waste Control LLC, Crowley Disposal LLC, Cyn Oil Corporation, Debusk Industrial Services Company LLC, Disposal Properties LLC, Emerald Services Inc., EnviroSORT Inc., EnviroSORT Inc., Eveready, Evergreen Holdings, GSX Disposal LLC, Global Vapor Control Inc., Green View Technologies Inc., HPC PetroServ Inc., Hilliard Disposal LLC, HydroChem Canada ULC, HydroChem Industrial Cleaning LLC, HydroChem LLC, HydroChemPSC, IISG Central Region LLC, IISG Gulf Coast LLC, IISG Real Estate LLC, Industrial Service Oil Company Inc., Inland Industrial Services Group LLC, Inland Waters Pollution Control Services LLC, Inland Waters of Ohio LLC, Jesco Industrial Service LLC, LJ Energy Services Holdings LLC, LJ Energy Services Intermediate Holding Corp., Lonestar Sylvan Inc., Lonestar Vacuum Inc., Lonestar West, Lonestar West Enterprises LLC, Lonestar West Inc., Lonestar West Services LLC, Murphy's Waste Oil Service Inc., Northeast Casualty Insurance Company, Omnichem LLC, PMS Industrial Services LLC, PSC Industrial Holdings Corp., PSC Industrial Inc., PSC Industrial Outsourcing LP, PSC Industrial Outsourcing of Michigan LLC, PSC LDAR Services LLC, Peak Energy Services, Philip Services/North Central LLC, Plaquemine Remediation Services LLC, Power Vac Construction L.L.C., RMF Aquilex Corp., Roebuck Disposal LLC, Romic Environmental Technologies, Rosemead Oil Products Inc., SK D'Incineration Inc., Safety-Kleen, Safety-Kleen Canada Inc., Safety-Kleen Envirosystems Company, Safety-Kleen Envirosystems Company of Puerto Rico Inc., Safety-Kleen Inc., Safety-Kleen International Inc., Safety-Kleen Systems Inc., Safety-Kleen of California Inc., Sawyer Disposal Services LLC, Seaport Environmental LLC, Service Chemical LLC, Speed Industrial Corporate LLC, Speed Industrial Service Catalyst LLC, Speed Industrial Service LLC, Speed Industrial Service of Beaumont LLC, Speed Industrial Services of Lake Charles LLC, Speed Industrial Services of Louisiana LLC, Speed Industrial Services of Texas LLC, Spring Grove Resource Recovery Inc., The Solvents Recovery Service of New Jersey Inc., Thermo Fluids, Thermo Fluids Inc., Tri-vax Enterprises Ltd., Tulsa Disposal LLC, Universal Environmental, Veolia North Americas U.S. Industrial Cleaning Services Division, Versant Energy Services Inc., Versant Energy Services LP, and Vulsay Industries Ltd..

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Mizuho Financial Group, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in banking, trust, securities, and other businesses related to financial services in Japan, the Americas, Europe, Asia/Oceania, and internationally. It operates through five segments: Retail & Business Banking Company, Corporate & Institutional Company, Global Corporate Company, Global Markets Company, and Asset Management Company. The company provides deposit products; syndicated, housing, and card loans; business matching services; and advisory services related to overseas expansions, and mergers and acquisitions-related services. It also offers consulting services, including asset management and asset succession; payroll services; and sells lottery tickets issued by prefectures and ordinance-designated cities. In addition, it offers financial solutions, such as bonds, mergers and acquisitions advisory, risk hedging products, etc. for corporate customers to meet their needs in fund-raising, investment management, and financial strategies; solutions based on their capital management, business strategy, and financial strategy; real estate agency services; advisory services and solutions, such as advice on proposals on various investment products to financial institutions; and financial services that include funding support and public bonds underwriting. Further, the company offers sales and trading services to meet needs for customers; investment products for individual customers; and consulting services for institutional investors. Additionally, the company provides products and services related to trust, securitization and structured finance, pension, and stock transfers; securities services; and research, private banking, and information technology-related services. Mizuho Financial Group, Inc. was incorporated in 2003 and is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.
Provident Financial Services, Inc. operates as the bank holding company for Provident Bank that provides various banking products and services to individuals, families, and businesses in the United States. The company's deposit products include savings, checking, interest-bearing checking, money market deposit, and certificate of deposit accounts, as well as IRA products. Its loan portfolio comprises commercial real estate loans that are secured by properties, such as multi-family apartment buildings, office buildings, and retail and industrial properties; commercial business loans; fixed-rate and adjustable-rate mortgage loans collateralized by one- to four-family residential real estate properties; commercial construction loans; and consumer loans consisting of home equity loans, home equity lines of credit, marine loans, personal loans and unsecured lines of credit, and auto and recreational vehicle loans. The company also offers cash management, remote deposit capture, payroll origination, escrow account management, and online and mobile banking services; and business credit cards. In addition, it provides wealth management services comprising investment management, trust and estate administration, financial planning, tax compliance and planning, and private banking. Further, the company sells insurance and investment products, including annuities; operates as a real estate investment trust for acquiring mortgage loans and other real estate related assets; and manages and sells real estate properties acquired through foreclosure. As of December 31, 2021, it operated 96 full-service branch offices in northern and central New Jersey, as well as in Pennsylvania and New York counties. The company was founded in 1839 and is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.
MarineMax, Inc. operates as a recreational boat and yacht retailer and superyacht services company in the United States. It operates through two segments, Retail Operations and Product Manufacturing. The company sells new and used recreational boats, including pleasure and fishing boats, mega-yachts, yachts, sport cruisers, motor yachts, pontoon boats, ski boats, jet boats, and other recreational boats. It also offers marine parts and accessories comprising marine electronics; dock and anchoring products that include boat fenders, lines, and anchors; boat covers; trailer parts; water sport accessories, which comprise tubes, lines, wakeboards, and skis; engine parts; oils; lubricants; steering and control systems; corrosion control products and service products; high-performance accessories, including propellers and instruments; and a line of boating accessories, such as life jackets, inflatables, and water sports equipment. In addition, the company provides novelty items, such as shirts, caps, and license plates; marine engines and equipment; maintenance, repair, and slip and storage accommodation services; and boat or yacht brokerage services, as well as charters yachts and power catamarans. Further, it offers new or used boat finance services; arranges insurance coverage, including boat property, disability, undercoating, gel sealant, fabric protection, and casualty insurance coverage; and manufactures and sells sport yachts and yachts. Additionally, the company operates vacations in Tortola, British Virgin Islands. It also markets and sells its products through offsite locations and print catalog. The company has 79 retail locations in Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. MarineMax, Inc. was incorporated in 1998 and is based in Clearwater, Florida.
The following companies are subsidiares of Ingersoll Rand: 13125882 Canada Inc., 211 E. Russell Road LLC, 4458664 Canada Inc., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES ASIA PTE. LTD., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES BORROWER S.C.A., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES LLC, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES MIDDLE EAST FZE, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES SERVICES LIMITED, ASTRUM IT GmbH, Accudyne Industries Acquisition S.A r.l, Accudyne Industries Canada Inc., Accudyne Industries S.A r.l., Air Dimensions, Air Dimensions Inc., Albin Pump SAS, BOC Edwards Global Low pressure Air business, CISA S.p.A., Cameron-Centrifugal Compression, Comercial Ingersoll-Rand (Chile) Limitada, Comingersoll-Comercio E Industria De Equipamentos S.A., CompAir, CompAir (Hankook) Korea Co. Ltd., CompAir Acquisition (No. 2) Ltd., CompAir Acquisition Ltd., CompAir BroomWade Ltd., CompAir Finance Ltd., CompAir GmbH, CompAir Holdings Limited, CompAir International Trading (Shanghai) Co Ltd, CompAir Korea Ltd, CompAir South Africa (SA) (Pty) Ltd., Consolidated Distribution Holdings Ltd., DV Systems Inc., Dosatron International SAS, Emco Wheaton Gmbh, Emco Wheaton USA Inc, Enza Air Proprietary Limited, FlexEnergy Holdings LLC, Frigoblock Grosskopf Gmbh, GD Aria Holdings Limited, GD Aria Holdings Limited, GD Aria Investments Limited, GD First (UK) Ltd, GD German Holdings GmbH, GD German Holdings I Gmbh, GD German Holdings II GmbH, GD German Investments GmbH, GD Global Holdings II Inc., GD Global Holdings Inc., GD Global Holdings UK II Ltd., GD Global Ventures I B.V., GD Global Ventures II B.V., GD Global Ventures III B.V., GD Industrial Products Malaysia SDN. BHD., GD Investment KY, GD UK Finance Ltd., GPS Industries, Gardner Denver (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Austria GmbH, Gardner Denver Bad Neustadt Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Belgium NV, Gardner Denver Brasil Industria E Comercio de Maquinas Ltda., Gardner Denver CZ + SK sro, Gardner Denver Canada Corp (Canada), Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments II Limited, Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments Limited, Gardner Denver Deutschland GmbH, Gardner Denver Engineered Products India Private Limited, Gardner Denver FZE, Gardner Denver Finance II LLC, Gardner Denver Finance Inc & Co KG, Gardner Denver France SAS, Gardner Denver Group Svcs Ltd, Gardner Denver Holdings Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Investments Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Ltd, Gardner Denver Iberica SL, Gardner Denver Inc., Gardner Denver Industries Ltd., Gardner Denver Industries Pty Ltd., Gardner Denver International Inc., Gardner Denver International Ltd., Gardner Denver Investments Inc., Gardner Denver Italy Holdings S.r.L., Gardner Denver Japan Ltd., Gardner Denver Kirchhain Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Korea Ltd., Gardner Denver Ltd., Gardner Denver Machinery (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Nash Brasil Industria E Comercio De Bombas Ltda, Gardner Denver Nash LLC, Gardner Denver Nash Machinery Ltd., Gardner Denver Nederland BV, Gardner Denver Nederland Investments B.V., Gardner Denver Oy, Gardner Denver Polska Sp z.o.o., Gardner Denver Pte. Ltd., Gardner Denver S.r.l., Gardner Denver Schopfheim GmbH, Gardner Denver Schopfheim Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Schweiz AG, Gardner Denver Slovakia s.r.o., Gardner Denver Sweden AB, Gardner Denver Taiwan Ltd., Gardner Denver Thomas GmbH (f/k/a ILMVAC GmbH), Gardner Denver Thomas Inc., Gardner Denver Thomas Pneumatic Systems (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Thomas Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Garo Dott. Ing. Roberto Gabbioneta S.r.l., Ghh-Rand Schraubenkompressoren Gmbh, HASKEL EUROPE LTD., HASKEL HOLDINGS UK LIMITED, HASKEL INTERNATIONAL LLC, Hamworthy Belliss & Morcom, Haskel France SAS, Haskel Sistemas de Fluidos Espana S.R.L., Hibon Inc., Highspeed Newco LLC, Hingerose Limited, ILMVAC (UK) Ltd., ILS Innovative Labor Systeme, ILS Inovative Laborsysteme GmbH, INGERSOLL RAND ITS JAPAN LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND (CHANG ZHOU) TOOLS CO. LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND (CHINA) INDUSTRIAL EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURING CO. LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND CHINA LLC, INGERSOLL-RAND COMERCIO E SERVICOS DE MAQUINAS E EQUIPAMENTOS INDUSTRIAIS LTDA., INGERSOLL-RAND DE PUERTO RICO INC., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL COMPANY B.V., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL SP. Z O.O., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL U.S. INC., INGERSOLL-RAND PHILIPPINES INC., INGERSOLL-RAND SPAIN S.A., INGERSOLL-RAND U.S. HOLDCO INC., IR HPS Holdco. Inc., ITO Emniyet, Ingersoll Rand Cyprus Investments Ltd., Ingersoll Rand Finance LLC, Ingersoll Rand Global Investments LLC, Ingersoll Rand Global Ventures LLC, Ingersoll Rand Hong Kong Investments Limited, Ingersoll Rand Inc., Ingersoll Rand Investments (SG) Pte. Ltd., Ingersoll Rand Investments B.V., Ingersoll Rand Schweiz Investments Gmbh, Ingersoll Rand Technology R&D (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand (Australia) Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand (China) Investment Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (Guilin) Tools Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (Hong Kong) Holding Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (India) Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Ab, Ingersoll-Rand Air Solutions Hibon Sarl, Ingersoll-Rand Beteiligungs Und Grundstucksverwaltungs Gmbh, Ingersoll-Rand Colombia S.A.S., Ingersoll-Rand Company Limited (Uk), Ingersoll-Rand Company South Africa (Pty) Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Cz S.R.O., Ingersoll-Rand De Mexico S.A. De C.V., Ingersoll-Rand Equipements De Production S.A.S., Ingersoll-Rand Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Industrial Ireland Limited, Ingersoll-Rand International (India) Private Limited, Ingersoll-Rand International Holding Llc, Ingersoll-Rand Italia S.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Italiana Manufacturing S.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Korea Holding Llc, Ingersoll-Rand Korea Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Lux Investments II S.A R.I., Ingersoll-Rand Lux Investments S.A R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Luxembourg Industrial Company S.A R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Machinery (Shanghai) Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Malaysia Co. Sdn. Bhd., Ingersoll-Rand S.A. De C.V., Ingersoll-Rand Services And Trading Limited Liability Company, Ingersoll-Rand Services Company, Ingersoll-Rand Services Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Singapore Enterprises Pte. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand South East Asia (Pte.) Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand Superay Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Technical And Services S.A.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Technologies And Services Private Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Technology R&D (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand Tool Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Trading Gmbh, Ingersoll-Rand Vietnam Company Limited, Instrum Rand JSC, Interflex Datensysteme, Ir Canada Holdings Ulc, Ir Canada Sales & Service Ulc, Ir France Sas, Kryptonite corp, Lawrence Factor Inc., LeROI, LeRoi International Inc, MILTON ROY (HONG KONG) LIMITED, MILTON ROY (UK) LIMITED, MILTON ROY EUROPA B.V., MILTON ROY EUROPE SAS, MILTON ROY INDUSTRIAL (SHANGHAI) CO. LTD., MILTON ROY LLC, MILTON ROY US PURCHASER INC., MP Pumps Inc., Maximum AG Technologies Inc., Maximus Solutions, Mb Air Systems Limited, Nash Elmo, Officina Meccaniche Industriali Srl, Oina VV, Oina VV Aktiebolag, Plurifilter D.O.O., Pt Ingersoll-Rand Indonesia, Robuschi, Runtech Systems, Runtech Systems (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Runtech Systems Inc., Runtech Systems OY, SEEPEX, Seepex (M) SDN, Seepex Australia Pty Ltd, Seepex Beteiligungs-Gesellschaft mit Beschrankter Haftung, Seepex France S.a.r.l., Seepex GmbH, Seepex Inc., Seepex India Private Ltd., Seepex Italia SRL, Seepex Japan Co. Ltd., Seepex Nordic A/S, Seepex OOO, Seepex Pumps (Shanghia) Co. Ltd., Seepex UK Ltd., Shanghai CompAir Compressors Co Ltd, Shanghai Compressors & Blowers Ltd., Shanghai Ingersoll-Rand Compressor Limited, Shenzhen Bocom System Engineering Co., Superay, Syltone, TIWR Real Estate GmbH & Co. KG, Tamrotor Marine Comp AS Norway, Tecno Matic Europe s.r.o., Thomas Industries Inc., Trane Technologies, Tri-Continent Scientific Inc., Vacuum and Blower Systems division, Welch Vacuum Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zaxe Technologies Inc., Zeks Compressed Air Solutions Llc, Zinsser Analytic, Zinsser Analytik GmbH, Zinsser NA Inc., and crayon interface.

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EnerSys provides various stored energy solutions for industrial applications worldwide. It operates in three segments: Energy Systems, Motive Power, and Specialty. The company offers uninterruptible power systems applications for computer and computer-controlled systems, as well as telecommunications systems; switchgear and electrical control systems used in industrial facilities and electric utilities, large-scale energy storage, and energy pipelines; integrated power solutions and services to broadband, telecom, renewable, and industrial customers; and thermally managed cabinets and enclosures for electronic equipment and batteries. It also provides motive power products that are used to provide power for electric industrial forklifts used in manufacturing, warehousing, and other material handling applications. In addition, the company offers mining equipment, diesel locomotive starting, and other rail equipment. Further, it provides specialty batteries for starting, lighting, and ignition applications in transportation; and energy solutions for satellites, military aircraft, submarines, ships, and other tactical vehicles, as well as medical and security systems. Additionally, the company offers battery chargers, power equipment, battery accessories, and outdoor cabinet enclosures, as well as related after-market and customer-support services for industrial batteries. The company sells its products through a network of distributors, independent representatives, and internal sales forces. The company was formerly known as Yuasa, Inc. and changed its name to EnerSys in January 2001. EnerSys was incorporated in 2000 and is headquartered in Reading, Pennsylvania.
Everest Re Group, Ltd., through its subsidiaries, provides reinsurance and insurance products in the United States, Bermuda, and internationally. The company operates through Reinsurance Operations and Insurance Operations segments. The Reinsurance Operations segment writes property and casualty reinsurance; and specialty lines of business through reinsurance brokers, as well as directly with ceding companies in the United States, Bermuda, Ireland, Canada, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The Insurance Operations segment writes property and casualty insurance directly, as well as through brokers, surplus lines brokers, and general agents in Bermuda, Canada, Europe, South America, Canada, Chile, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the Netherlands. The company also provides treaty and facultative reinsurance products; admitted and non-admitted insurance products; and property and casualty reinsurance and insurance coverages, including marine, aviation, surety, errors and omissions liability, directors' and officers' liability, medical malpractice, mortgage reinsurance, other specialty lines, accident and health, and workers' compensation products. In addition, it offers commercial property and casualty insurance products through wholesale and retail brokers, surplus lines brokers, and program administrators. Everest Re Group, Ltd. was founded in 1973 and is headquartered in Hamilton, Bermuda.
B&G Foods, Inc. manufactures, sells, and distributes a portfolio of shelf-stable and frozen foods, and household products in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. The company's products include frozen and canned vegetables, vegetables, canola and other cooking oils, vegetable shortening, cooking sprays, oatmeal and other hot cereals, fruit spreads, canned meats and beans, bagel chips, spices, seasonings, hot sauces, wine vinegar, maple syrups, molasses, salad dressings, pizza crusts, Mexican-style sauces, dry soups, taco shells and kits, salsas, pickles, peppers, tomato-based products, baking powder and soda, corn starch, cookies and crackers, nut clusters, and other specialty products. It markets its products under various brands, including Ac'cent, B&G, B&M, Back to Nature, Baker's Joy, Bear Creek Country Kitchens, Brer Rabbit, Canoleo, Cary's, Clabber Girl, Cream of Rice, Cream of Wheat, Crisco, Dash, Davis, Devonsheer, Don Pepino, Durkee, Emeril's, Grandma's Molasses, Green Giant, Joan of Arc, Las Palmas, Le Sueur, MacDonald's, Mama Mary's, Maple Grove Farms of Vermont, McCann's, Molly McButter, New York Flatbreads, New York Style, Old London, Ortega, Polaner, Red Devil, Regina, Rumford, Sa-son, Sclafani, Spice Islands, Spring Tree, Sugar Twin, Tone's, Trappey's, TrueNorth, Underwood, Vermont Maid, Victoria, and Weber and Wright's. The company also sells, markets, and distributes household products under the Static Guard brand. It sells and distributes its products directly, as well as through a network of independent brokers and distributors to supermarket chains, foodservice outlets, mass merchants, warehouse clubs, non-food outlets, and specialty distributors. The company was formerly known as B&G Foods Holdings Corp. and changed its name to B&G Foods, Inc. in October 2004. B&G Foods, Inc. was founded in 1822 and is headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey.
RICHMOND  A Bon Air Democrat who has never run for Congress seeks to unseat the Republican incumbent for a seat that has been held by the GOP for the past 45 years.

Virginias congressional election in the reliably Republican 7th District features a Democrat lawyer from Bon Air in her first run for office and a Republican former college professor who made history two years ago by marshaling tea party supporters to score a primary upset of House Majority Leader Eric I. Cantor.

Rep. Dave Brat, the Randolph-Macon College economics professor who beat Cantor in June 2014, went on to defeat another Randolph-Macon professor, Democrat Jack Trammell, in the November general election.

The freshman faces Eileen Bedell, 44, a civil-litigation attorney who practices in Richmond and has positioned herself as a centrist Democrat.

The 7th District was modified this year as a three-judge panel redrew the boundaries of the 3rd District and tweaked adjacent districts in the process. The redrawn 7th District no longer includes New Kent or Hanover counties  two GOP strongholds  but has gained Powhatan, Nottoway and Amelia counties. It still includes the West End of Richmond and Henrico, as well as portions of Chesterfield County, and extends north and west to Orange, Louisa and Culpeper counties.

The 7th is roughly three-quarters white, with a median income in excess of $64,000, according to U.S. Census figures.

Bedell sees an opportunity, given recent demographic shifts and the current political climate, to upset Brat  a free-market conservative member of the anti-establishment Freedom Caucus in Congress who supports the GOP presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

Were tired of extremism and were ready to get back to work, Bedell said in a previous interview with the Richmond Times-Dispatch. She said she believes there is an aversion to Trump in the general electorate and a willingness among voters to listen to a different message. They just want people to get back to the middle and be able to compromise.

Bedell said Brat has embraced Trump. She said she offers an alternative.

I think there are a lot of Republicans in the 7th that would agree with me, she said, noting that U.S. Sen. Timothy M. Kaine  now the Democratic nominee for vice president  won Henrico in his 2005 race for governor and in his 2012 run for Senate.

In a previous interview with the Times-Dispatch, Brat said he did not endorse any presidential candidate in the primary but was holding to his promise of backing the party nominee.

He said Trump may have tapped into the wave of disaffection with Washington establishment politicians that first crested in his historic primary win over Cantor.

I think hes going to win, Brat said.

Asked what he thinks of Bedell, Brat said, I love all people.

On the issues, Bedell, a married mother of two, noted that there are more seniors in the 7th District than in all but one other district in Virginia and said she would work to protect and sustain Social Security and Medicare benefits. But she acknowledged that the programs face a financial problem both sides cant ignore.

I dont think there is a disagreement  its how do we get there, she said.

Bedell said America needs to engage in the global economy but protect its workforce, and she advocated for more job training and certification programs and a focus on rebuilding Americas infrastructure, from transportation needs to broadband access.

Brat, a 52-year-old married father of two who lives in western Henrico, has spent much of his first term sounding the alarm that the nations debt and deficit are driving it toward a fiscal cliff.

In 10 years, at current rates of spending and without reforms, all revenues would go toward financing roughly $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities to entitlement programs, he said.

We will be deficit-financing the entire government, said Brat, who holds a doctorate in economics and sits on the Budget Committee.

Brat is one of several dozen House lawmakers who form the Freedom Caucus, a conservative group of anti-establishment GOP members pledged to support open, accountable and limited government, the Constitution and the rule of law. They have flexed muscle on House leader-ship, immigration policy and budget issues.

During his term, Brat fought to have regular order restored to the federal budgeting process, in which the House and Senate have to follow the rules established for the budgeting process. Among them is a requirement that federal programs not approved by the Budget Committee do not get funded in appropriations and that more members participate in the process.

But about six months ago, congressional leadership abandoned the promise won by the Freedom Caucus. Brat said he will work to return fairness to budgeting. He also said there is a need for more job training and business certification in the American workforce and that he would make it easier for small businesses to grow unencumbered by the regulatory burdens of programs such as the Affordable Care Act.
Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) James Wesley MoseleyLieutenant Colonel (Retired) James Wesley Moseley, 71, recently of Dothan, Alabama, was born on July 21, 1945, to Samuel and Lucille Moseley in Pawhuska, Oklahoma and passed awayonJuly 30, 2016, with his wife and daughters at his side.He was a 1963 graduate of Cleveland High School, Cleveland, Oklahoma. In 1976 he earned a Bachelor of Science in Business with a Major in Management from Oklahoma City University. He went on to earn a Masters in Business Management from Golden Gate University.He served our country honorably for 26 years and retired in 1992. In 1966, PVT Moseley completed Basic Training at Fort Campbell, Ky. In 1967, he completed Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Army Artillery and Missile School at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.He completed a tour in 1970 Vietnam as a Battery Commander and Battalion Aerial Liaison Observer coordinating artillery fire for the 1st Battalion, 14th Artillery. In 1976, he was selected for duty at The United Nations Truce Supervision Organization in Cairo and Jerusalem aiding in maintaining cease-fire agreements. In 1980, he served as Assistant Professor of Military Science, James Madison University. In 1986, he served in Turkey assigned to the Joint United States Military Aid to Turkey assisting the Turkish government.James was highly decorated during his military career, receiving multiple awards for service and heroism. His awards include the Silver Star, Bronze Star (one oak leaf cluster), Purple Heart, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Meritorious Service Medal, Air Medal (10), Joint Service Commendation Medal, Army Commendation Medal (four oak leaf clusters), Vietnam Service Medal (three), United Nations Medal, and Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal.After his retirement from the U.S. Army, James worked several years for various defense contracting firms including Applied Research, Coleman Research, and SAIC. He focused on plans and research in Arlington, Virginia and Crystal City, Virginia. After retirement, he spent his time tinkering around the house with his trusty sidekick Twinkle, his Jack Russell Terrier. He was a master vacation planner and avid traveler and loved going new places. One year he, Nancy and Samantha took a whole year traveling across the United States. He also enjoyed deer hunting on his property with his son-in-law, Jeff. James was a member of Family Community Church in Culpepper, Virginia.Hewas preceded in death by his parents, Samuel and Lucille Moseley; and his sister, Kathryn Easley. He is survived by his wife, Nancy; and children, Samantha Moseley, Rebecca Moseley, and Elizabeth Miller and husband Jeff. He was grandfather to Gideon Haynes, Kylie Hicks, Wesley Hicks, and Matthew Miller. He was nephew to Ed Easley; and uncle to Ed Easley, Jr., Sam Easley, Lynn Hendrickson, and Carol Wade. He was loved and admired by so many. His loss is deeply felt.Funeral services will be held at 2:30 p.m.Tuesday, December 20, 2016, at Fort Myers Chapel adjacent to Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. Burial will follow in Arlington National Cemetery with military honors.
Elections have consequences. Our futures and those of our children and grandchildren are at stake this week. Picking our leaders is serious business. If you want to live in the kind of fear-based world that Donald Trump, Dave Brat and their ilk obviously relish, then dont bother to vote on Nov. 8youll get your wish.

This will be a world in which the president of the United States has a higher opinion of Vladimir Putin than he does of our own American generals and admirals. He has no respect for our veterans, their sacrifices or their families. In the words of a retired Foreign Service officer writing in the American Foreign Service Association Open Forum, He relies on affect and emotion of a crypto-fascist kind  especially on encouragement of white racial backlash, misogyny, nativism, and a neo-isolationist attitude toward United States involvement in the world.

Here is someone with no experience, who tweets at three oclock in the morning, who has no patience, no sophistication and no background on the issues or the processes. And you see this man, with his deep narcissism and his erratic and impulsive character, as fit for the presidency of the greatest democracy in the world? Need an education? Sign up for Trump University  hes the expert  New York State will undoubtedly indict him for fraud immediately after the election.

He has promised to jail his challenger, just like any third world dictator would do. Trump says, trust me, I can close the deal, I know all the angles, Im the only one who can fix everything. Really? This past Thursdays Washington Post editorial stated unequivocally that Trump is a danger to the Republic. Only by forgetting or ignoring what he has told us could Americans decide otherwise.

This will be a world in which our roads and bridges continue to crumble, alarming increases in global warming will endanger the planet, and adventurist wars will continue unabated.

With Trumps finger on the button, the threat of a nuclear holocaust will be the highest in our lifetimes. The futures of generations to follow will be very dark indeed. Republicans have proved during the past eight years that they care nothing about these issues. A President Trump would only exacerbate these problems. Is this the future you want?

This will be a world where women continue to be second-class citizens, along with every other kind of ethnic, social and religious minority, because the Republican presidential candidate is a vile, racist, bigoted misogynist, by his own words and actions. Hes being sued for raping a 13-year-old. Women head many households, but Republicans oppose equal pay for equal work. More importantly, they have taken womens most important personal health decisions and politicized them. Republican activists have gone to jail for faked videos critical of Planned Parenthood. Republican state legislatures have voted to defund it or legislate its facilities out of existence.

Trump himself has said a woman should be punished for having an abortion. States have turned a womans most intimate medical issues into a three-ring circus where doctors are legislated to perform unnecessary vaginal ultrasounds, or to read medically inaccurate and scary scripts to patients. Republicans bray about government overreach, yet they are eager to legislate themselves into womens wombs. A man, unless hes a womans doctor, should have nothing to say about her health decisions except in the privacy of loving relationships  period.

There is an alternative. Whatever one thinks of email mismanagement, Trumps opponent has 30 years of domestic and foreign policy experience, traveling all over the nation and the world talking and negotiating with other leaders at every level. Do you want a president who knows what she is doing or one who is inexperienced and clueless about the workings of the world around him? Do your own fact-checking of what you see and hear in the news. The truth is not hard to find. Heres one good place to start: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/perspective-on-the-flaws-of-hillary-clinton-and-donald-trump/506042/?utm_source=atlfb

The down-ballot contest here in Virginias 7th Congressional District is enormously important because it could help flip the House and break the gridlock in Washington by ending the Republican obstructionist stranglehold on the Congress. The race pits challenger Eileen Bedell against incumbent Dave Brat.

There are significant differences between these two candidates, as well.

Eileen, born and raised in Virginia, is an enthusiastic campaigner who has crisscrossed the district talking about issues and solutions. Eileen is a successful attorney who concerns herself with peoples problems every day. She is a small business person who has helped many other small businesses tackle regulatory and other problems. She knows what the world looks like from where it is being lived. She has met a payroll. Brat has none of these qualifications. Her website includes extensive discussion of the problems and issues and her approach to solving them. Check it out: www.bedellforvirginia.com.

Brat is in hiding. He refuses to debate, just like his predecessor, Eric Cantor, whom he excoriated for not debating. Hes been on salary all his life. You wont find anything of substance on his websitejust empty promises about how hes workingwhatever that means. If you read his self-serving book, American Underdog, perhaps a signed copy obtained on one of his recent book tours, you quickly see he is not a genuine economisthes preaching his own weird theoretical economic nonsense.

He is a tea party celebrity because he is a pain to the Republican establishment but he has no credibility with his peers and no clout. He is part of a shrinking minority because voters in other states have realized that the Freedom Caucus is not representing constituent interests, but only its extreme right wing ideology. He is anti-business. He misstates cause and effect in the economic world. He writes that companies use regulations to reduce competition and destroy the free market. He labels lobbyists as socialists but sees no need to regulate monopolies for the benefit of the community. He has accomplished exactly nothing during his two years in Congress except the renaming of an arboretum in Richmond.

We look for the best qualities in our political leaders, and elections give us the opportunity to select them. Eileen Bedell and Hillary Clinton will be calm and analytical, patient and deliberate. They have the experience, poise and leadership that will inspire confidence, not inflame cynicism or promote conspiracy theories. They will uphold the ideals of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution and work hard to uplift every single one of We the People. Donald Trump and Dave Brat will do none of those things because they are nothing but liars and con artists who have little interest in Americas democratic heritage.

Voters in Culpeper and the 7th Congressional District finally have a chance to vote for their own best self-interests by putting well-qualified women in charge of governmentand its about damn time. Dont stay home because youre angry, complacent or discouraged. Get out and vote for Eileen Bedell and Hillary Clinton.
LONDON - England - The High Court decision to quash Brexit is proof that there are clandestine operatives within the system who only hold allegiance to Brussels and not to the United Kingdom.

Only a purge of the political, judicial, and defence sectors can save Britain from the mass infiltration of EU operatives working within the British governmental institutions.

These people have been identified during the EU referendum and must be purged from the system otherwise these treasonous operatives of the EU could cause further harm to the British constitution and Britains national security.

We have seen the damage already committed within the judicial system when EU operative judges were allowed to preside over the Brexit ruling and attempted to thwart the vote of the electorate on the EU referendum.

The blatantly biased decision by these EU judges, one of which is Lord Carnwath, 71, who was one of four co-founders of the EU Forum of Judges for the Environment and served as the forums secretary general from 2004-05. The body exists to promote the enforcement of national, European and international environmental law.

Lord Reed, began his career as an adviser to the Scottish education department, served as a judge in the European Court of Human Rights, who also acted as an expert adviser to the European Union Initiative with Turkey on Democratisation and Human Rights between 2002 and 2004, and the following year he became chairman of the Franco-British Judicial Co-operation Committee.

The other EU judge is Lord Kerr, 68, who also sat as a judge in the European Court of Human Rights, ruling on a case in 2001 involving aircraft noise from Heathrow.

Additionally we have Lord Mance, 73, who began his career working for a law firm in Hamburg, before qualifying as a barrister in 1965. His time in Germany gave him a taste for international legal affairs, and he has represented the UK on the Council of Europes Consultative Council of European Judges, which was set up in 2000 to advise the Council of Europe on the independence, impartiality and competence of judges. He has also served as a member of a seven-person EU panel that helps select judges and advocates-general of the European Court of Justice and General Court.

These elements within the panel were clearly not impartial in their decision purely on their heavily entrenched links with the EU.

Impartiality within law regarding key national security decisions like Brexit should be paramount to the judicial system within Britain therefore in justice terms, their decision to thwart Brexit, and the EU referendum result, voted for by 52% of the electorate, is wholly unjust and biased, bordering on corruption at the highest levels.

The question of corruption should be implemented with a full public inquiry into how these judges were selected and how they were allowed to come to their obviously biased non impartial decision. We must as a democracy look into any form of clandestine payments given to the judges prior to their decision, and if any discrepancy is found it must be put right.

A strong independent judiciary is essential to a functioning democracy and to upholding the rule of law, and these EU centric judges have proven that is not the case in Britain today, it is in fact entrenched in cronyism, corruption and bias.

Britains national sovereignty is at stake, and treachery, corruption at the highest judicial levels must be eradicated to conserve our constitution. To purge the institutions of EU collaborators and clandestine operatives should be of paramount import in order to solidify Britains national security and overall sovereign status.
The President and CEO of Culture Works, Martine Meredith Collier, will step down at the end of December after spearheading a community cultural planning process that resulted in Culture Connects 20/20a cultural roadmap for the Dayton Region to be implemented over the next decade.



Collier has accepted the position of Executive Director of the Arts Council of Hillsborough County in Tampa, Florida, and will begin work there in January. Collier will remain at Culture Works through November and December of this year to assist in both finding her replacement and completing the Culture Works Strategic Plan which is currently underway.



Martine has achieved a great deal in her five-and-a-half-year tenure, said Steve Petitjean, Culture Works Board Chair. In addition to the completion of Culture Connects 20/20, Martine provided oversight for the development of an outcome-based grant process and relocated the Culture Works offices to a more accessible location in the Premier Health building at the corner of Main and Second streets.



Collier joined Culture Works in March 2011 and relocated to Dayton from Seattle, where she worked for Grantmakers in the Arts, the national association of arts funders.



The Culture Works Board will develop a transition strategy to be fully in place by the time Martine leaves at year-end, said Petitjean. We are in the final phase of a Strategic Planning process that will help to guide this effort. Collier will stay involved in the process for the remainder of her time in Dayton, which, Petitjean added, speaks to the fact that Culture Works is still very much a part of who she is.



The Cultural Plan that we developed through community input is robust and probably one of the best such plans in the country, Collier said. The Strategic Plan currently under development will lay out a five-year strategy for the implementation of Culture Connects 20/20.



She added, The current staff of Culture Works is one of the best that I have ever worked with, and the Board has shown incredible vision. I am confident that the futures of Culture Works and the arts community in the Dayton Region are bright.
Gurugram: Content with robust foreign capital flows and increasing public investment, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on November 5 exhorted banks to support corporates to help spur private investment, a must for the economy to take off in a big way.

"Indian private sector needs to expand in a big way. It needs to invest and that's when all engines of the economy start firing," Jaitley said at a seminar on debt recovery organised by the finance ministry.

"To support that, you need banks to ensure flow of credit and support the private sector in order to expand their (private sector) investments. Therefore, the role of the banks in supporting growth, particularly as far as the domestic private sector is concerned, is extremely significant," he said.

The minister further said bank credit has to pick up which has slowed over the last few years due to rising bad loans and a slow recovery process.

Pitching for expeditious adjudication of debt recovery cases, Jaitley made the point that the doctrine of natural justice of giving opportunity to defaulters to defend themselves need not be carried to an "unnatural extent".

"It is not a usual judicial or quasi-judicial procedure when endless opportunities have to be granted to people to defend cases because if natural justice is carried on to unnatural extents, litigation will become unending. Therefore, efficiency has to be introduced into the recovery procedure as far as the defaulting parties are concerned," he said.

Close to 95,000 cases involving more than Rs 5 lakh crore are pending before debt recovery tribunals across the country.

"So, every case that the litigant manages to delay hurts the larger investment environment of the country because if money of banks are blocked with some defaulters, it prevents the bank from funding others who otherwise could have utilised this investment for fruitful purposes and benefit of the country," he added.

The minister also spoke of liberalisation of FDI policies because of which India has emerged as a preferred destination of foreign investment.
CHENNAI: Schemes of free night calling and cheaper broadband deals have helped Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) regain about 13,000 Chennai landline customers and earn dues to the tune of Rs 2.5 crores. A reconnection mela organised by BSNL from September 14 to the October-end offered deals like instant reconnection for landline owners and making available payment to be done in six instalments in order to regain the customers.

Customers left the network after non-payment of dues accrued over the past months. We have given them options to pay off their dues in six instalments. After the payment of the first instalment, the connection was restored for almost all the defaulters, SM Kalavathi, the Chief General Manager (CGM), BSNL-Chennai told Deccan Chronicle. Also, as the state is set to receive heavy rainfall over the coming weeks, the telecom provider is also aiming to strengthen its infrastructure.

Speaking about the plans ahead of heavy rains striking the city, the CGM said that strengthening the infrastructure was going on. Last year during the floods, the network was disrupted for many days due to power cuts. This time we are working towards power retention in backup gensets of our mobile towers for about three days so that they can continue transmitting signals even without electricity, she said.

After the success of the reconnection mela that ended on October 31, the homegrown telecom provider, which accounts for a tenth of the mobile connection owners in the state, plans to roll out the same plan for mobile users. Free night calling, retention of old telephone numbers, and lack of reconnection fees were helpful in retaining old customers, officials said.
Aditya Pancholi had featured in numerous films over the years.

Mumbai: Aditya Pancholi was on Saturday sentenced by an Andheri Metropolitan Court to a one-year imprisonment in an assault case that took place in 2005. The court also fined Pancholi Rs. 20,000.

The actor had allegedly assaulted and threatened one of his neighbours during an argument over parking space.

His lawyer, however, immediately swung into action and he was granted an immediate bail of Rs. 12000.

Previously Pancholis name has also cropped up in other assault cases. His ex girlfriend Pooja Bedi had also accused him of raping her maid and his alleged affair with Kangana Ranaut had also created headlines previously.

His son Sooraj Pancholi had also landed in a controversy in the death of his girlfriend Jiah Khan and was booked for abetment to suicide, but is out on bail.
Mumbai: After a purported transcript of the actress Pratyusha Banerjees last telephonic conversation with her boyfriend came out, the lawyer of her parents said they would seek re-investigation as police had overlooked several aspects of the case related to her alleged suicide.

Police have registered a case of abatement of suicide against Rahul Raj Singh, her boyfriend, who has secured pre-arrest bail. Transcription of Pratyushas purported conversation with him before the suicide was reported by a section of a media.

Advocate Neeraj Gupta, representing her parents, told PTI that police seemed to have overlooked many aspects and they wanted the case to be re-investigated.

Police didnt investigate the case properly. They ignored many important aspects. As of now, we dont have entire charge sheet. Once we get it, we will study the documents and file a fresh application on Monday, Gupta said.

When asked about specific aspects which the police has missed its probe, he said Name of a third person has come up in the telephonic conversation where Pratyusha is saying he was giving her life threats. Who is this person and why is he giving threats to Pratyusha, why police ignored this fact?

The police also didnt look properly into Pratyushas blood and viscera reports, he said. Pratyusha, who shot to fame with her role of Anandi in the TV serial Balika Vadhu, was found dead at her house on April 1 in what appeared to be a suicide.
Mumbai: Kareena Kapoor Khan, who is 8 months into her pregnancy, will welcome her first child with husband Saif Ali Khan in December. The mommy-to-be, Kareena showed us how to rock pregnancy like a boss with her bold statements and admirable work ethics.

The actress shut everyone who quizzed her if she was going to take a break during and after her pregnancy by keeping up the appearance and doing projects after projects. Recently, Kareena was spotted having a gala time with her girl squad at a restaurant in Mumbai.

On November 4, Kareena was snapped stepping out of a posh restaurant on a sunny day in Mumbai along with her sister Karisma Kapoor and BFF Amrita Arora.

Dressed in a navy blue floral gown, the actress looked lovely as ever as she flaunted her cute baby bump. With a natural glow on her face, Kareena smiled cheerful for the shutterbugs and also posed for quick selfies with her fans.

On work front, the actress will soon start shooting for Sonam Kapoors Veere Di Wedding.
Nura Afia will soon be featured in commercials and billboards of the leading U.S. cosmetics brand CoverGirl. (Credit: YouTube)

A popular hijab-wearing beauty vlogger has been named the newest spokeswoman for CoverGirl cosmetics. Nura Afia will also be featured in commercials and billboards of the leading U.S. cosmetics brand.

 #Nuralailalov #babylailalov #blue #iceblue #ice #Denvermua #denvermakeupartist #bluemakeup A photo posted by Nura Afia (@nuralailalov) on Oct 14, 2016 at 4:41pm PDT

Afia has achieved worldwide recognition for her make-up tutorial videos that draw thousands of views. She not only has 200,000 subscribers on YouTube but also 300,000 followers on Instagram. "I hope [this campaign] will show Muslim women that brands care about us as consumers and we're important, especially hijabis," she told Refinery29. "[We] can be featured on TV, [we] can be featured on billboards in Times Square. [We] can be represented."

 Hijab: @hautehijab Makeup Deets Coming soon! A photo posted by Nura Afia (@nuralailalov) on Jun 26, 2016 at 11:48pm PDT

The social media star is not the first unconventional brand ambassador choice for CoverGirl though. The company recently also appointed its first male ambassador  James Charles  who is a 17-year-old make-up artist.
Samples with more of tumour cells were more likely to come from patients, whose prostate cancer had spread or were more aggressive. (Photo: Pixabay)

Washington D.C.: A new study says that researchers have found a group of circulating tumour cells in prostate cancer patient blood samples which are linked to the spread of the disease.

This is the first time these cell types have been shown to be a promising marker for prostate cancer spread.

In a study, presented at the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference in Liverpool, of around 80 samples from men with prostate cancer, scientists at the Barts Cancer Institute at Queen Mary University looked for cells that were gaining the ability to migrate and invade through the body.

Samples with more of these cells were more likely to come from patients, whose cancer had spread or were more aggressive.

This means that, in the future, these particular cells could potentially be used as a marker to monitor prostate cancer patients and predict if the disease is going to spread - alongside other monitoring techniques.

There are around 46,500 new cases of prostate cancer each year in the UK, and around 11,000 people die from the disease each year.

Dr Yong-Jie Lu, lead author from QMUL's Barts Cancer Institute, said, "Our research shows that the number of these specific cells in a patient's sample is a good indicator of prostate cancer spreading. By identifying these cells, which have gained the ability to move through the body, we have found a potential new way to monitor the disease."

"If we're able to replicate these studies in larger groups of people, we may be able to one day predict the risk of someone's cancer spreading so they can make more informed treatment decisions," Lu added.

Dr Chris Parker, Chair of the NCRI's Prostate Cancer Clinical Studies Group, said: "There's a need to develop better tests to identify and monitor men with aggressive prostate cancer. This research has found a promising new marker that could one day make it to the clinic to guide treatment decisions."

This research was funded by Orchid Cancer Appeal, ANGLE plc and Chinese Scholarship Council. The scientists used a highly innovative cell separation technology Parsortixa, developed by UK company ANGLE plc that is able to capture the circulating tumour cells.
A Nigerian man may be sentenced to capital punishment for allegedly causing his partner to bleed after a session of intense lovemaking. Fatai Busari, 50, has been held for the death of his partner, Sadiat Adejuwon, 48, which happened on 10th of October.

According to media reports, Busari had drunk a herbal aphrodisiac called Man Power before indulging in intercourse to increase the size of his penis. An online distributor of the drug claimed that it offers safe and natural penis enlargement. Some of the other benefits of the product that the website claimed were:

1) Strengthen and harden your erections.

2) Achieve rock hard erections any time you want.

3) Form a fully muscular looking penis.

4) Intensify your orgasm.

5) Increase sexual stamina.

6) Achieve more powerful thrusting ability.

7) Last as long as you want without drug.

Busari is currently held in Agodi prison in Ibadan, Nigeria and is due to appear in court on November 30, reports Nigeria Today.
The joy and happiness that tourism provides for tourists is at risk. When we examined the risk of climate change to tourism, last week, I gave the example of the bleaching of the Great Barrier reef because of acidification of the oceans due to global warming. In this second article, I will talk about the detrimental effects of unplanned unsustainable mass tourism.

Tourism accounts for 10% of the global GDP valued at US$7.6 trillion, employing 277 million jobs in 2014. Tourism is a rapidly growing source of income across India, producing 6.3% of the country's GDP in 2015 and with a predicted annual growth rate of 7.5%, with the sector currently supporting 37 million jobs across the country.

The factor that puts tourism at risk, that is the subject of this article, is unplanned unsustainable mass tourism, which is beginning to have negative effects on destinations.

A classic example of this is Venice - a tourist's paradise. Venice is really small. It covers a mere three square miles, but it's composed of clusters of old buildings separated by 182 canals on 126 tiny islands connected by 435 bridges and a large number of tiny, winding streets. Much like the demise of the Great Barrier Reef, the impending demise of Venice is now being talked about.

One expert who is talking about it is Salvatore Settis in a book titled 'If Venice dies'. This is a must read for anyone who is interested in how a destination can be killed by tourism. Settis is an archaeologist, art historian and former director of the Getty Research Institute of Los Angeles and the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. He is chairman of the Louvre Museum's Scientific Council, and is often considered the conscience of Italy for his role in highlighting the neglect of national heritage.

In this book, Settis details how tourism will destroy Venice. Excessive tourism is beginning to affect the lives of the Venetians, as living has become increasingly expensive and the city unliveable.

As a result, Venetians are increasingly abandoning their hometown-there's now only one resident for every 140 visitors. Approximately 2.6 citizens abandon the city every day. Venice now has 54,000 inhabitants, which represents a loss of 120,000 people in the last 50 years. What will be of Venice without its Venetians?

Erla Zwingle, writing for National Geographic describes how Venice is being pounded to rubble by the waves from motorboats that ferry 25 million tourists every year. Venetians call it motondoso, and they also call it the 'cancer of Venice.'

She goes on to write, "If you wind through the canals at low tide, you can see palaces with empty echoing caverns in their foundations caused by the rushing in and out of the waves that has sucked the soil out from under the building. The same dynamic causes sidewalks to become detached from their adjoining buildings and begin to slope away, heading toward disintegration".

In the past 20 years, motor-powered boat traffic has doubled, and is at 30,000 trips in the city every day with more than 8,000 barges carrying tourists and all sorts of goods for hotels and tourists.

Settis says, 'looking around and surrendering ourselves to the beauty of our cities and landscapes will not suffice. It has never sufficed for us to expect a miraculous salvation from beauty that will absolve us of all responsibility. No, on the contrary we the living should nurture beauty on a daily basis if we want some of it to survive, so that we may enjoy it and ensure its survival after our death.'

Venice is crying out loud to stop its exploitation by tourism. If this cry is not heard by the stakeholders of tourism, Venice will soon die. Unplanned unsustainable mass tourism will have to take the blame. Which is the next destination? Will the rest of the world learn from Venice?
Patna: Two women teachers of a premier Patna school were arrested on Saturday in a case of alleged sexual assault of a kindergarten student.

The two teachers have been arrested on the basis of a medical report which confirmed sexual assault of the five-year-old girl student of a reputed English medium school in Patna, City Superintendent of Police Chandan Kushwaha told PTI.

The two have been forwarded to Beur jail to 14 days judicial custody after production before Additional District Judge I Parvez Alam.

A case was registered at the woman police station by parents of the victim LKG student against the two teachers teaching at primary level of the school under POSCO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offence) Act.

The medical test of the minor conducted at PMCH confirmed sexual assault and on the basis of which the police arrested the two teachers, the SP said.

The incident came to light when the five-year-old girl student narrated her woes to her mother about the two teachers sexually assaulting her for quiet some time by taking her to a secluded room near bathroom.

The family in the complaint registered in the woman police station alleged that the school Principal did not act on their complaint which forced them to approach the police.

The City SP said that the police have recorded statement of the Principal and investigation is continuing in the case.
Chennai: Six hospital staff in Karnataka have been charged with stealing babies and young children and selling them to childless couples in an illegal adoption racket, police in Karnataka state said on Friday.

The three men and three women, who worked as nurses and lab technicians at five private hospitals and a government-run hospital in Mysuru city, were part of a bigger, organised gang involved in trafficking children, investigating officer Ravi Channannavar said.

"The gang targeted poor couples coming to the hospitals to deliver or get an abortion, in which case they convinced them to deliver the child. They would then steal the babies," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In other cases, the gang would steal children from beggars on the streets and sell them for 200,000 rupees in cities like Bengaluru.

"Our investigations have revealed that the group had sold at least 15 children to different childless couples," Channannavar said.

"We have rescued three children so far and are looking for the others. There may be many more."

Statements by the arrested gang members indicate the involvement of a doctor as well, police said.

The six were arrested on Tuesday following a lengthy investigation triggered in April when police received a complaint from a woman who said her two-year-old son had been snatched off the street.

Crime data released by the Indian government in August showed more than 40 percent of human trafficking cases in 2015 involved children being bought, sold and exploited as modern day slaves.

"This case is one of the few that has come to light, but there are many more unreported cases," said Paul Sundar Singh of non-profit Karunalaya, which runs a centre for street children in Chennai.

"Stealing children is a big organised crime that police are still struggling to clamp down on across the country. Cases of young children stolen from the pavements of Chennai city earlier this year are still unsolved."
One of the 12 tribal girl students allegedly raped by school staff in Buldhana district of Maharashtra was raped at knifepoint for six months. (Representational image)

Mumbai: One of the 12 tribal girl students who were allegedly raped by teachers, headmasters and peons of a boarding school in Buldhana district of Maharashtra was raped at knifepoint for six months.

According to a report in dna, the mother of one of the victims said that an assistant named Etusingh Pawar repeatedly raped her daughter for six months. On the day Pawar sexually assaulted the girl for the first time, he had told her to keep the door of her room open at night, the mother said.

"When my daughter questioned him, he threatened to kill her if she did not do so. My daughter got scared and kept the door open. Etusingh came at midnight and forcefully pulled her into the next room. He was carrying a knife. This became routine for him and he raped the girl for six months at knifepoint. One by one, other school staffers also started exploiting the girls, she said.

The girls, aged between 12 and 14, were students of Ninadhi Ashran School in Hivarkheda of Buldhana. The alleged abuse came to light when three of the 12 girls returned home to Halkheda village in Muktainagar taluka in Jalgaon district.

The Deputy Sarpanch of the village said that the girls who returned home had complained of stomach pain and feeling something heavy in the stomach. When they were taken to the doctor, it was revealed that they were pregnant.

All the 12 girls were later identified and sent to a hospital in Akola district for medical examination, while their relatives and parents lodged complaint in Khamgaon police station in Buldhana district.

Police have so far arrested eight people and are on the lookout for two absconding men. The accused have been booked section 376 (rape) of the Indian Penal Code and under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO).

The accused are Etusingh Pawar (Assistant), BV Lahudkar (Headmaster for primary school), DR Kharat (Headmaster for secondary school), SB Lakhe (Assistant), ND Ambhare (Superintendent), Deepak Kokare (Kitchen Staffer), Ms MG Vajire (Superintendent), Vijay Kokare (Clerk), Mrs Manta Kokare (Kitchen Staffer) and Mrs Raut (Assistant). Lahudkar and Kokare are absconding.

A Special Investigation Team (SIT), in-charge of the case, said the number of victims may increase.
A 15-year-old student on Saturday allegedly shot at his school director at Jaora town in Madhya Pradesh (Representational image)

Ratlam: A 15-year-old student on Saturday allegedly shot at his school director at Jaora town in Madhya Pradesh leaving him seriously injured, police said.

"The student of class IX fired and injured Milestone Academy School director Amit Jain, who has been rushed to Indore in a critical state," Jaora area City Superintendent of Police (CSP) Dipak Shukla said.

After committing the crime, the boy fled from the school.

The student came to school wearing plain clothes. His teacher asked him to go home and put on the uniform and return, the CSP said.

When the minor was wearing the uniform, a phone call from the school informed his parents about his behaviour. His family was also told that the boy was absent on Thursday and Friday, after which he was chided, Shukla added.

Enraged, the minor returned to school with a pistol and shot Jain in the stomach in his chamber, the CSP added.

Jain was taken to a civic hospital from where he has been rushed to Indore in a critical condition.
UK's Migration Advisory Committee had found earlier this year that Indian IT workers accounted for nearly 90 per cent of visas issued under this route. (Photo: AFP/Representational Image)

New Delhi: Dismayed at UK's proposed changes in visa system that will impact skilled IT migration, software body Nasscom on Friday called for a high skilled worker mobility pact between the two countries to safeguard the economic interests of both nations.

Nasscom said that the movement of tech workers should be treated as a trade priority rather than an immigration issue.

"Indian IT companies play a key role in driving the UK's growth and prosperity by significantly enhancing productivity and global competitiveness of British businesses, contributing to overall growth and job creation of the UK economy," Nasscom said.

Nasscom said it intends to focus on opportunities that UK Prime Minister Theresa May's forthcoming visit offers, for a fresh approach to skilled IT migration as part of a possibly new India-UK trade agreement.

It said that the fast growing and high value tech sectors rely on an effective immigration policy.

Such a policy should attract high skilled workers and minimise barriers to the flow of talented people between the two countries, it added.

"A system that restricts the UK's ability to access talent is also likely to restrict the growth and productivity of the UK economy," the association said.

The UK needs to have the "right" policies in place to encourage valuable temporary immigration, and minimise barriers to the flow of talented people, it added.

"Our key ask to both Governments is for a high skilled worker mobility agreement, along with an agreement on the free movement of data. The movement of skilled tech workers from India should be seen as a trade priority rather than an immigration issue," it said.

Under the new visa rules announced last evening by the UK Home Office, anyone applying after November 24 under the Tier 2 intra-company transfer (ICT) category would be required to meet a higher salary threshold requirement of 30,000 pounds from the earlier 20,800 pounds.

The ICT route is largely used by Indian IT companies in Britain, and the UK's Migration Advisory Committee had found earlier this year that Indian IT workers accounted for nearly 90 per cent of visas issued under this route.

The proposed changes in the UK visa policy come just days before British PM Theresa May lands in India on November 6 for a three-day visit.

Nasscom said that India and UK have been natural business allies, and enjoy a continued association, where free movement of skilled talent is the cornerstone of growth.

"Temporary placement of highly-skilled individuals into the UK provides a significant economic boost yet has a negligible impact on net migration," it added.

The relationship between the UK and the Indian ICT sector has seen a step change in recent years and the shared goal of being global centres for innovation makes the UK and India natural partners in technology, it said.

"We will continue to urge the UK government to realise that both countries stand to benefit massively from a fresh trade-based approach," it added.
Thane: A Bangladeshi national, who was allegedly involved in terror activities, including bomb blasts, in his home country, was arrested from Thane on Friday, police said.

Bashirmulla Sukurmulla Shaikh, who was illegally staying in India, was nabbed by Crime Branch officials from Kalwa in connection with an offence registered in the city under IPC Sections related to theft and house trespass, the police said in a release on Friday.

The 40-year-old was produced before a court which remanded him in police custody till November 7, it said.

He had been arrested by Special Branch of Mumbai Police in March 2016 for staying in India without valid documents, including passport. Shaikh was booked under Indian Passport Act and Foreigners Act and was currently out on bail.

Further interrogation of Shaikh revealed that while in Bangladesh, he had taken training in bomb-making from terror outfits. Shaikh assembled bombs at his residence in Narail district, south-western Bangladesh, and also carried out a few explosions in which people were killed, the release said.

Offences were lodged against him and his associates in 2014 at Kalia Police Station in Narail district in connection with these blasts, the police said.

During the interrogation, the Bangladeshi national disclosed he had killed his wife Sultana in one such explosion, they said.

All information provided by Shaikh was confirmed by Bangladesh Police, the release said, adding police were trying to find out which militant outfit he was associated with.

Crime Branch, which is interrogating Shaikh, is ascertaining if the foreign national had any intention to carry out subversive activities in India, police added.
New Delhi: The Indian Medical Association (IMA) will stage protests nationwide against the proposed National Medical Commission (NMC) Bill which seeks to replace the Medical Council of India, on November 16.

IMA has strongly opposed the proposed National Medical Commission Bill 2016, citing concern that the NMC will have non-elected members nominated by the government.

As a part of the protest, all the 30 state branches and 1,765 local branches of IMA will stage a 2-hour dharna in every district in India from 11 AM to 1 PM on November 16.

Thousands of doctors across the country will participate in the dharna - 'Stop National Medical Commission IMA Satyagraha', press meet and will hand over a memorandum addressed to the Prime Minister to the respective district magistrates.

"The dharna is organised as a reminder to the government to intervene and sort out the major problems faced by the medical professionals," Dr K K Aggarwal, National President Elect and Secretary General of IMA, said.

"Not only the interministerial committee slept over the issues, the Centre has gone ahead with scrapping of MCI and is replacing it with a totally nominated body called National Medical Commission. The bill is anti people in character," said Dr A Marthanda Pillai, Immediate Past National President, IMA.

Dr Rakesh Gupta, President of DMA, and Dr Ashwani Goyal, Secretary of DMA, in a joint statement said Ayurvedics, Homoeopaths and others will get registration in modern medicine through Schedule IV of NMC.

"This will affect the patient care and patient safety. We will give six weeks to the government to meet our demands or will be forced to take further course of action," it said.

"If this anti-people legislation is allowed to become a law, it will not only be injustice to future generation of doctors it will also be a treason against the people.

"The ulterior motive of this bill is to bring in indigenous medicine in an inappropriate way by diluting and controlling modern medicine: All by back door and deceit. It becomes a bounden duty on IMA to stop National Medical Commission Bill," said Dr Aggarwal.
New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will hold a high-level meeting with her Sri Lankan counterpart Mangala Samarweera in New Delhi today to sort out the fishermen issue.

The meeting comes days after the fishermen associations of both the countries failed to reach a common ground to resolve the issue.

Fishermen based in Sri Lankan north have been claiming that their livelihood is affected due to the bottom trawling practiced by Indian fishermen and their poaching into Sri Lankan territory.

The fishermen from Tamil Nadu and Puducherry are opposed to Sri Lankan Navy arresting them and seizing their boats.

Though the fishermen are released on humanitarian grounds, their vessels are not returned by the Sri Lankan Government.

Nine Indian fishermen in Sri Lankan custody were released this week ahead of today's meeting.

The issue was raised by President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister of Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremesinghe during their meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month and both sides had agreed for a high-level meeting.
New Delhi: An extraordinary provision of the Constitution can now be invoked to appoint retired judges with proven integrity and track record as judges of high courts to tackle rising pendency, the government and the judiciary have agreed.

As per the minutes of the meeting of the Chief Ministers-Chief Justices Conference held in April, approved after a gap of nearly six months, it has been resolved that "subject to integrity, suitability and performance of a person who has held the office as a judge of the high court, the provisions of Article 224 A can be invoked to deal with the extraordinary situation involving the large pendency of civil and criminal cases in the high courts..."

As per the provision, the chief justice of a high court, with the previous consent of the President (Centre), can request any person who has held the office of a judge of that court or any other high court to sit and act as a judge of the high court for that state.

The minutes were prepared by the Supreme Court. But the Law Ministry said some of the points drafted by the apex court were "definitive" in nature, whereas talks on those issues remained inconclusive in the meeting.

When the conference was held in April, D V Sadananda Gowda was the Law Minister and he kept the matter pending due to disagreement over certain points. The issue was brought to the knowledge of present incumbent Ravi Shankar Prasad who took over in July. The ministry has now cleared the minutes a few days ago.

The agreement on the minutes comes at a time when the executive and the judiciary are trying to find a common ground on memorandum of procedure - a document to guide future appointment of judges to the Supreme Court and the 24 high courts.

The document is being redrafted on the orders of an top court bench to bring more transparency in judges' appointment. But the government and the Judiciary have so far not agreed to the various provisions.

According to the minutes of the meeting, appointment of retired judges in high courts can also help achieve the goal 'five plus zero' pendency. 'Five plus zero' is an initiative to ensure that cases pending for more than five years are taken up on priority basis and pendency of such cases is brought down to zero level.

The other resolutions adopted by the conference, according to the minutes, are asking the states to fill up vacancies of jail staff on a "mission mode" basis.

Also the state governments will be urged to increase the cadre strength of district judiciary at the rate of 10 per cent per annum.

As on June 30 while the total sanctioned strength was 21,303, the subordinate courts were functioning with 16,192 judicial officers - a shortage of 5,111.

The 24 high courts face a shortage of nearly 450 judges. Nearly three crore cases are pending in courts across India.
New Delhi: India and China have agreed to maintain the pace of their high-level exchanges in counter-terrorism and other fields after "friendly and open" discussions between their National Security Advisors.

NSA Ajit Doval and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi, State Councillor, concluded their discussions in Hyderabad yesterday in a "friendly, open and cordial environment", it was officially stated here today.

Ministry of External Affairs said their discussions covered a wide agenda spanning bilateral, regional and international issues of mutual interest. It was Yang's third visit to India in the last two months.

"The two sides agreed to maintain the pace of high-level exchanges in political, economic, defence and counter-terrorism fields.

"They also agreed that the forthcoming high-level engagement in counter-terrorism is yet another manifestation of growing convergence of views of two countries on this pressing challenge facing international community", it said.

However, there was no official confirmation on whether the two sides discussed contentious issues such as China blocking Indian's entry into Nuclear Suppliers Group as also stopping Indian efforts to get JeM chief and Pathankot mastermind Masood Azhar getting banned by the UN.

NSA Doval and State Councillor Yang, who are also the Special Representatives on the Boundary Question of India and China respectively, agreed to hold the 20th Round of Special Representatives Talks on the Boundary Question in India next year.

Doval and Yang also agreed that their consultations during which they exchanged views on various important and pressing bilateral issues have helped to enhance mutual understanding and will contribute to greater mutual trust. They agreed to continue such consultations in future.

The two sides also appreciated that 2016 is an important year for bilateral engagement with President Xi Jinping's visit to India for BRICS Summit and PM Narendra Modi's visit to China for G-20 Summit being the major highlights of high level exchanges.

Meanwhile, Chinese state-run Xinhua news agency termed the talks between Doval and Yang as an "informal meeting".

During the meeting, both sides agreed to push forward their talks on boundary issues so as to jointly safeguard peace and tranquillity in their border areas, it said.

The report quoted Yang as saying that China is willing to maintain communication and dialogue at various levels, promote pragmatic cooperation of mutual benefit and properly handle sensitive issues with India.

While congratulating India on its successful hosting of the BRICS summit in Goa, Yang said China is ready to join hands with India to defend the interests of developing countries and boost international exchanges and cooperation in various fields.

Doval expressed India's willingness to maintain high-level exchanges of visits and strategic communication with China, and deepen their trade and cultural exchanges and cooperation, the report said.

He said New Delhi is also willing to properly manage and address differences with Beijing in order to promote mutual benefit and win-win, as well as common development of the two countries, the report added.

India supports China in hosting the BRICS summit next year and is ready to make joint efforts with China to contribute to the regional and world peace, stability and development, the report quoted Doval as saying.
Hafsaths husband Aboobacker claimed that he lived by the principles of Koya Thangal, a Muslim religious leader, who had advised that a baby should not be fed until five prayers were called after its birth. (Photo: Video grab)

Kozhikode: The Kerala police on Saturday arrested the father of a newborn, for denying the baby breast milk for 24 hours, after registering a case under juvenile justice act against him.

The 24-year-old mother from Omassery in Keralas Kozhikode district had defied the doctors requests to breastfeed her new born baby, after her husband forbid her to do so citing religious reasons.

According to reports, Hafsath, who delivered her second child at EMS Co-operative Hospital, Kozhikode, feared that her husband would divorce her if she refused to follow her order.

Hafsaths husband Aboobacker claimed that he lived by the principles of Koya Thangal, a Muslim religious leader, who had advised that a baby should not be fed until five prayers were called after its birth. The police also arrested the cleric for his advice to the parents.

Aboobacker even went on to claim that, in a similar way, he had prevented his wife from his breastfeeding his first child, and that nothing had happened.

I had not allowed my wife to breastfeed our first child also for 24 hours. That hospital made me give an undertaking that I would be responsible if my child died. Nothing happened to my child. The preacher had told us to give the infant honey and some water from Mecca, he was quoted as saying.

The hospital authorities, pleaded, coaxed and threatened him, but to no avail, eventually forcing them to approach the police.

The police officer said that Aboobacker stood by his ground, and prevented the mother from breastfeeding the child, and added that the preacher had told him about a cord from the belly button of the child that will provide nutrition to the baby.

The family eventually left the hospital after Aboobacker forcefully sought discharge.

The hospital authorities decided to file a complaint against Aboobacker for preventing them from discharging their duties, and also for endangering the childs life.
Chennai: Information and Broadcasting Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Saturday defended the one day ban imposed on NDTV India over its Pathankot coverage and said the decision is for the safety and security of the country.

"This action of asking a TV channel to take off for one day is in the interest of the country's safety and security. NDTV India ban is a logical conclusion of concerns voiced by the UPA government over coverage of anti-terror operations since 26/11, Naidu told media.

He claimed that the decision against NDTV India was not based on 'any newly invented rule and principle'. He added that the belated criticism is clearly ill informed and politically inspired to create a controversy.

The I&B Ministry had issued an order saying that NDTV India should be taken off air for a day on November 9 after an inter-ministerial panel constituted by the ministry recommended this action over the broadcaster's coverage of the Pathankot terror attack in January.

The channel had maintained the said information was already in public domain.

Earlier on Saturday, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar stressed that the ban was a security-related issue and the channel appeared to have violated guidelines for coverage of terror attacks.

"It is not a ban. They have been asked to put off the channel temporarily for a day," Parrikar told reporters in Panaji in response to a query.

"When you show the anti-terror operation live, the handlers of terrorists get the information.... It appears that these guidelines were violated by the channel during the Pathakot attack coverage. It appears like that," he said.

The minister added, "The guidelines on airing the live anti-terrorist operations were issued by the UPA government after the (26/11) 2008 Mumbai attack. In last five years, there were 21 such incidents wherein different channels violated the guidelines."

Parrikar said the instructions issued to the channel by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry is a security-related issue.

However, the ban on the leading Hindi TV channel has drawn sharp condemnation from opposition parties and media bodies which called it "shocking and authoritarian" and reminiscent of Emergency days.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had earlier on Saturday flayed the NDA government's decision to ban NDTV India for a day terming it as an "insult to freedom of expression."

"The central government's decision to ban NDTV India is condemnable. The decision is tantamount to controlling the freedom of media. It is quite necessary to have a free and impartial media in a country like India," Kumar said in a statement in Patna.

The decision of Information and Broadcasting Ministry to ban NDTV India for 24 hours on November 9 must be treated with strong contempt, Kumar, who is also JD(U) President, said.

"The present central government's decision to control media's freedom is a complete disregard to the right to freedom of expression," he said adding that media, which is considered as fourth estate in a democracy, also plays a very important role in raising people's voice and concerns.

Just as legislature enacts laws, the executive implements them and the judiciary interprets them apart from punishing those who violates the law, the same way media, being the fourth estate in a democracy, has a very big role to play by creating awareness among the masses through debates and discussions on various contemporary issues, he added.

Meanwhile, RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav also condemned the government action and said it is an "attack on democracy" and a step towards "emergency and dictatorship" in the country.

"A popular channel has reported an incident. Banning it for a day is an attack on democracy. Narendra Modi, BJP and RSS are taking the country toward emergency and dictatorship", Lalu said while addressing Samajwadi Party's silver juibilee celebrations in Lucknow.

Senior JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav also drew parallels to the emergency, saying such measures had been seen during the period when media was gagged.

"I want to advise all BJP men to remain alert. You have attacked media and this will be taken seriously," he said.

The decision to put off the prominent TV channel for a day has attracted strong criticism from Congress, Trinamool Congress, RJD and now JD(U).
A primary school teacher in Shivpuri district of Madhya Pradesh committed suicide after being made to lick shoes policemen in custody. (Representational image)

Shivpuri: A primary school teacher in Shivpuri district of Madhya Pradesh committed suicide after being subjected to humiliation in police custody.

Apart from being thrashed and stripped, Manoj Purohit was also allegedly made to lick shoes of the policemen.

According to officials, Purohit, an assistant teacher with the Sajapur Primary School, was arrested by police on charges of gambling. Purohit, who also runs private bus service, reportedly had an argument with the police earlier too.

Purohit, 30, consumed poison on October 30 and died at the Jhansi Hospital on Thursday. In his suicide note, he blamed five policemen and a self-acclaimed journalist for his suicide.

Police have registered case against the six accused.

The Madhya Pradesh Human Rights Commission has issued notices to the Inspector General of Police (Gwalior Range) and the Superintendent of Police of Shivpuri, seeking reports on the incident by November 29.
New Delhi: The ongoing Naga peace talks have made good progress and the decade-long insurgency issue will be resolved to the greatest satisfaction of all, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said on Saturday.

Addressing the annual event of the Naga Students Union, Delhi (NSUD) here, Singh said the central government was confident that enduring peace in Naga areas is not far away.

"The initiative to resolve the Naga issue, for once and all, to the greatest satisfaction of Naga people has made good progress in the last two years," he said.

A 'Framework Agreement' was signed on August 3, 2015 by NSCN-IM general secretary T Muivah and the Centre's interlocutor for Naga talks R N Ravi in the presence of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Home Minister.

The pact settled the political parameters of the final solution.

The signing of the agreement came after over 80 rounds of negotiations that spanned 18 years with the first breakthrough in 1997 when the ceasefire agreement was sealed.

The Home Minister said the government is committed to ensure that Naga people have their rightful honour, dignity and pride of place, while blaming the colonial legacy for many of the problems faced by people of the Northeast.

"My dear friends, this city is yours. And it is the duty of the government to help you feel the ownership," he said.

"In order to make you and other friends from the Northeast feel safe and secure in Delhi, I have created a Special Cell in Delhi Police headed by a Joint Police Commissioner from the Northeast to address your day-to-day security concerns.

"I have a Minister from North-East in the Home Ministry, Kiren Rijiju ji, who can understand your problems and relate with you better," Singh said.

The Home Minister said many of the problems that the Northeast region faces today is rooted in the legacy of the colonial rule.

"The British rulers, for their commercial and political interests, created a divide between the hills and the plains people. They occupied all the lands along the foothills that connected the two people for tea, oil and coal industries. They broke the several thousand years of civilisational continuum of co-existence," he said.

He said the British rulers also created "emotional distance" between the two by "fabricating and giving currency to mischievous myths" about each others.

"The government of India is committed to ensure that the Naga people have their rightful honour, dignity and pride of place. I know that India cannot be happy if our Naga brothers and sisters are unhappy. India cannot be great unless our Naga brothers and sisters share this sense of greatness," he asserted.

The Home Minister said the government is making Delhi Police increasingly sensitive toward the security needs of the people from the Northeast.

"Delhi Police has recruited over 450 smart young boys and girls from the Northeast in the last one year. We want to further increase the number. In the current recruitment drive of Delhi Police, over 6,000 young women and over 28,000 young men from the Northeast have applied," he noted.

"If you have any suggestion that may strengthen your sense of security, feel free to bring it to my notice. I will do my best," he assured the community.

Singh rued that Naga freedom fighters were not remembered often after Independence, while also lauding the contribution of the community in building of a modern nation.

"It is indeed unfortunate that after Independence, for long, we did not adequately appreciate and remember the countless Naga freedom fighters like Jadonang and Rani Gaidinliu who gave up their lives for freedom fighting the British," he said.

"Naga freedom fighters, veteran parliamentarians, outstanding administrators and intellectuals have made and are making remarkable contributions to building a modern India," he said.

Appreciating the "rich and vibrant" Naga culture, he described NSUD as a glorious example of community support to the people from the region.
Kolkata: China on Friday sought to dispel the view that it was against Indias entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

The notion that China is against Indias entry into NSG is not right. India and China are working together in this regard, consul-general of China in Kolkata, Zhanwu Ma, said. This came on the day when Indias National Security Advisor Ajit Doval met his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, in Hyderabad

Entry of any country into the Nuclear Suppliers Group needs certain procedures which are to be followed. It is not that simple, Zhanwu told reporters here.

Asked about Chinas stand on Indo-Pak relations, he said his country was neutral.

China is very friendly towards India. Some people do not seem to believe so. Of course, we have differences. But the shared interests outweigh the differences, the Chinese co-nsul-general said, adding that business relations between the two countries were mutually beneficial.

India and Pakistan should settle the impasse via negotiations only, he added.

National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Friday met his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi here to discuss measures to improve bilateral ties strained by differences over a host of issues, including Beijing blocking India's NSG bid and a UN ban on JeM chief Masood Azhar.

Doval and Yang who are the designated Special Representatives of the India-China boundary talks, also periodically meet to discuss the whole gamut of the Sino-Indian relations.

Besides blocking India's admission into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), China had put a second technical hold on India's move to bring about a UN ban on Jaish-e-Mohmmed chief Azhar. Also India has been protesting over the USD 46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which is being laid through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

While India is concerned over the Pakistan factor creeping into India-China relations making the bilateral ties more complex, China too is airing its apprehensions over the movement to boycott Chinese goods in India as well the visit of US Ambassador to New Delhi, Richard Verma, to Arunachal Pradesh, which it considers as Southern Tibet and India's permission to the Dalai Lama to visit the area.

Chinese officials say Beijing is apprehensive about India moving closer to US and Japan broadening its strategic and defence ties with both the countries.
New Delhi: Schools running under the three municipal corporations of Delhi will be closed on Saturday in view of the heavy smog that is choking the national capital.

About 10 lakh students who are enrolled in the schools administered by the all three municipal corporations will be affected by the decision.

What a "terrible" future we are giving to our children, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) said on Friday as it castigated the Centre and AAP government for "shifting blame" and not taking steps to tackle the alarming air pollution level in Delhi, dubbed as the worst in 17 years.

"For you (authorities), the people of Delhi do not matter but for us, they matter. We will do whatever we can," a bench headed by NGT Chairperson Swatanter Kumar said, adding "just look at what we are giving to our children for future. This is terrible".

Terming the situation akin to that of an "emergency", the tribunal observed that the Centre, Delhi government and other authorities were "not bothered" about the rising air pollution level and its consequences on the health of citizens of Delhi but instead "shifting the blame on each other".

On Thursday, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) pressed alarm buttons to highlight one of the worst cases of smog in the national capital.

Analysing the available data, the CSE report states that the post-Diwali peak of pollution is higher than the Diwali peak, as the levels of PM2.5 have increased by 62.7 per cent on November 2 as compared to that on Diwali. On November 2, the levels were 9.4 times the standard.

The Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi recorded the worst levels of smog in 17 years on November 2, with visibility as low as 300-400 metres.

The period between 11 am and 2:30 pm was the worst in the day with respect to airport visibility.

Delhi government told the NGT bench that rise in air pollution was due to burning of crop residues in the neighbouring states of Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan.

However, the bench said, "It's not just the crop burning. There is no crop burning in Delhi. According to you, crop burning is in Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan but nowadays there is no wind, so the smoke can't come here from these states."

It also issued notices to the Secretaries of Environment and Urban Development of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan and directed them to remain present before it on the next date of hearing on November 8.
Visakhapatnam: An innovation park on the lines of Swiss Innovation Park will come up in Vizag. In a boost to medical devices manufacturing park coming up at Vizag, Switzerland-based venture capital firm Med Tech Innovation Partners (MTIP) has agreed to set up the innovation park in the city.

The MoU in this regard will be signed by Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu with the MTIP representatives during the upcoming World Economic Forum Summit in Davos.

MTIP has been instrumental in building the renowned Swiss Innova-tion Park, an independent catalyst for innovation in biotech and biomedical engineering, sciences, and technologies.

Foundation stone for a medical devices manufacturing park in a sprawling 200 acres near Anakapalle had already been laid. MTIPs innovation park helps design new generation medical and health care devices.

Mr Naidu set foundation stone for South Asias first dedicated medical devices manufacturing park at Nadupuru village in the district in August. Vizags manufacturing park is called AP Med Tech Zone (AMTZ).

Over 50 companies have already shown interest and 38 have submitted Expression of Interest (EOI) letters. AMTZ, a company under Government of Andhra Pradesh, which has also received approval for funding on June 1, 2016 from the state Cabinet will implement the project of setting up the park.

There will be in-house high capital-intensive common scientific facilities helping medical device manufacturers to reduce the cost of manufacturing in the country. AMTZ will provide modern state-of-art common facilities such as specialised laboratories, warehousing, testing centre apart from 100 to 150 independent manufacturing units, each in a built-in ready to use area of 0.5 to 1 acre each.

MTIP will create required eco system for innovation in medical devices manufacturing which will aid the prospects of AMTZ. This is a big boost to the medical manufacturing industry in Vizag, said a senior district official.

Andhra Pradesh Economic Development Board (APEDB) CEO, J Krishna Kishore recently met key players of MTIP and discussed possibilities for creating a global ecosystem for Medtech innovations in Andhra Pradesh. MTIP has been instrumental in building the renowned Swiss innovation Park.
Mumbai: Shiv Sena on Saturday asked the Centre if there will be a similar action against China, like the Indian Army's surgical strikes on terror launch pads at the LoC in September.

"The time has come to look at Chinese incursions (in Indian territory) seriously. Surgical strikes against China, similar to the ones carried out against Pakistan, will be the befitting answer," the Sena said.

"Will there be such an attack (against China)," an editorial in Sena mouthpiece Saamana asked.

"When one speaks against Pakistan in public rallies, one gets claps as a response. There is a need to get out of this mindset of clapping and look at the Chinese incursions seriously," the Sena said.

"From Ladakh to Arunachal and Sikkim, the Chinese actions have been going on unabated since several years. The real question is who will stop China," the editorial said.

The Sena referred to reports that Indian and Chinese troops were engaged in a stand-off since Wednesday in Ladakh's Demchok area as the People's Liberation Army (PLA) troops entered an area near the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and stopped the construction work on an irrigation canal under the MNREGA scheme.

"Around 60 Chinese soldiers intrude in our territory and stop developmental work. What inference should one draw from this," it said.

"Our loudmouth Defence Minister should clarify what action did our soldiers take against these Chinese troops," the editorial said.

"Warning Pakistan is not enough. The Defence Minister's job is also to protect the borders with China," the Sena said.
New Delhi: After NDTV India, the Government has also ordered that an Assam-based news channel be taken off air for a day, following the recommendations of a high level panel which felt it had violated programming guidelines on more than one occasion.

An I&B ministry order dated November 2, has sought that the channel News Time Assam, be taken off air on November 9, for a day. One of the allegations against the channel relates to telecasting a programme which revealed the identity of a minor who had been brutally tortured while working as a domestic servant.

Observing that the visuals telecast by the channel appeared to compromise the privacy and dignity of the child while also exposing him to harm and stigma, a showcause notice was issued to the channel in 2013. Having listened to the channels version, the Inter-Ministerial Committee which looked into the matter felt that the channel may be taken off air for a day.

According to the order, the matter was reconsidered as some other channels had also shown similar content for which they had been issued warnings, but the IMC looked at all the circumstances and again recommended taking it off air for a day.

The same order also lists two other cases of alleged violations by the channel which were considered by the IMC. One of them related to telecast of gory visuals of dead bodies for which a recommendation was made to take off the channel for a day. In another case the channel telecast a programme which allegedly appeared to defamatory towards to women and in bad taste.

The IMC had asked the channel to run an apology scroll but since it did not comply, in this regard, taking it off air for a day was recommended. The order, dated November 2, mentions all the three cases and says that the IMC clarified that the TV channel can be allowed to carry out the three awards of one day off air concurrently. NDTV India has also been ordered off air for the same date over its coverage of the Pathankot attack.
Vijayawada: The Government of Andhra Pradesh has decided to relax upper age limit from 34 to 42 years for recruitment through Public Service Commission and other government recruiting agencies. Accordingly, a Government Order was issued by the general administration department on Saturday.

After the Telugu Desam came into power it had released a GO in September 2014 relaxing the upper age limit from 34 to 40 years. As there has been no recruitment after state bifurcation, the government has taken the decision of extending the age limit.

In the order, it is clearly specified that this increase in age limit is applicable for notifications to be released till September 30, 2017. State government authorities said that the bifurcation of the state had resulted in reduced employment opportunities in the state.

The enhancement of age limit is by two years for general category candidates; for reserved categories the relaxation will extend beyond as per their categories.

The decision is said to be aimed at garnering the support of youth who are waiting for government jobs.
Hyderabad: The All India Muslim Personal Law Board is planning to start an internal awareness campaign against oral triple talaq. Talking to media persons at a madrasa here on Saturday, AIMPLB assistant general secretary Sajjad Nomani said, Oral triple talaq is a crime. However, it is valid in Shariah. We are planning to start an internal awareness campaign against it.

Mr Nomani said that if the Centre tried to enforce the Uniform Civil Code on the country, it will face strong resentment not only from Muslims but also from several other minority communities, including Dalits, across the nation. He said the Centre may not be in a position to tackle such resentment.

Mr Nomani said that some adivasis have already moved the Supreme Court against the UCC and several other communities were also raising their voices against it.

Maintaining that it was impossible in a country like India to implement UCC where people of different cultures, communities and religions live together, he said when where a small population of 1.50 lakh in Nagaland enjoys special status for its law, why was the Centre trying to force UCC on a huge chunk of the population.

Mr Nomani said that instead of creating confusion, the Centre has to ease ways to implement the personal laws of various communities in the country that are guaranteed by the Constitution. He said that it was a fact the Muslims ease the burden on the already overburdened judiciary by implementing Shariah.

The AIMPLB representative told the Centre not to city the name of any country as an example where triple talaq system was abolished. Replying to a question, he said that it was the general impression among many that the Centre was raking the UC and triple talaq issues in view of the forthcoming UP election and was systematically using the issues to divert attention from its failures in all sectors like rising prices of essential commodities and development and welfare activities.
Lucknow: Senior members of the Janata Parivar, who came together on one platform here on Saturday to celebrate the silver jubilee of the Samajwadi Party, did three significant things.

First, all the leaders vowed to defeat the BJP under the leadership of Samajwadi president Mulayam Singh Yadav. Secondly, they made an effort to bring together the warring factions of the Samajwadi Party and, thirdly, endorsed Mr Akhilesh Yadav as the Chief Ministerial candidate.

The shadow of the infighting in the party, however, loomed large over the event.

Former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda made SP state president Shivpal Yadav and Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav raise their hands together in a show of unity while RJD leader Lalu Yadav made Akhilesh touch the feet of his uncle Shivpal and father Mulayam on the dais.

The truce was symbolic since Akhilesh carried a sword in one hand while he touched his uncles feet with another. Uncle Shivpal was also seen carrying a sword while he blessed the Chief Minister.

In his speech, Mr Shivpal Yadav laid bare his feelings. While he lauded the Chief Minister for the excellent work done in his leadership, he said that he was certainly not an aspirant for the Chief Ministers post.

I have made a lot of sacrifice for the party under the guidance of Netaji (Mulayam). I am ready to make more sacrifices. You can sack me, humiliate me and I will work for the party till the last drop of my blood. I will tolerate my humiliation but not the humiliation of Netaji. There are some trespassers who are vitiating the atmosphere in the party, he said. He said that some people inherit power without doing anything while others get nothing despite making sacrifices.

Mr Akhilesh Yadav returned the fire when he said, You have given me a sword but I am not allowed to use it. Dr Lohia said that the world will listen to me but only after I am gone. Today, I can say that some people will listen to me but only after things go awry in the Samajwadi Party. I do not want to reply to certain things but I am ready to take any test for the party.

Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav, in his speech, said, I have brought Shivpal and Akhilesh together to show that there is no difference in the family.. Terming the BJP as a ranga siyar (painted jackal), he said, Under the leadership of Mulayam Singh Yadav, we will defeat BJP in UP just as we did in Bihar.
Hyderabad: Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Saturday that there is a compelling case for a voluntary organisation to regulate the internet. He said the BJP government was committed to ensuring freedom of expression but there was a need for the world to work together on regulating the internet, as some people abuse it to spread hatred and terrorism or to carry out cyber-attacks.

Mr Prasad said regulation of the internet was necessary so that the right to freedom of expression does not get compromised. The minister was speaking at the 57th meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) being held in India for the second time, in Hyderabad.

ICANN is a non-profit entity which manages Domain Name System that helps in organising the internet into domains such as .in, .com or .org. Localisation of domain names in 22 Indian languages will form important part of discussions at the meeting. India leads the world with seven internationalised country code domains and passed evaluations for eight more domains.

Why do we need ICANN?

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers helps organise the Domain Name System (DNS), or the phone book of the Internet. Humans need words and computers know only numbers. ICANN bridges this divide by giving each address a unique number.

Why is the Hyderabad meet important?

This will be the first ICANN meet since the US has given up its stewardship role. This puts ICANN under the care of the global multi-stakeholder community.
21-year-old G Sai Krishna, a native of Telangana, was a first year student of post graduate diploma in facilities management. (Photo: video grab)

Noida: A 21-year-old student of Amity University here allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself at his hostel room, police said on Saturday.

G Sai Krishna, a native of Telangana, was a first year student of post graduate diploma in facilities management and had joined the course recently, a senior police officer said.

He allegedly hanged himself last evening. He has left a note written in Telugu, addressed to his parents. The hostel was empty at that time as other students had gone for Diwali holidays, SHO of Sector 39 Police Station, Amarnath Yadav, said.

Krishna was rushed to a hospital, where he was declared brought dead, the SHO said.

A few days back, Krishna was scolded by his father regarding his studies and also for borrowing money from someone and not being able to pay it back, he said.

Krishna's father is an advocate. In his note, Krishna wrote that committing suicide is not easy and told his parents that they have done a lot for him, Yadav said.

The body has been handed over to his family after post-mortem, police said.

In August, a student of BA-LLB course in the university, had allegedly committed suicide at his residence in Delhi. The deceased, who was the son of a joint secretary-level official in the Rajya Sabha Secretariat, was debarred from appearing in the sixth semester exams in May due to "shortage of attendance".

Amity University spokesperson Savita Mehta said, "We are cooperating with police in investigation. We have set up a counselling centre for students who need help."

"Psychologist is also available to help the students to come out of depression," the spokesperson said.
Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court has allowed examination on Skype for recording evidence in a divorce petition. Justice B. Siva Sankara Rao granted this order in a civil revision petition by a woman seeking to review the legality and correctness of an order passed by Principal Senior Civil Judge, Kothagudem, Khammam, allowing examination of her husband on Skype in a divorce petition.

While upholding the order of the lower court, the judge observed that there is a need to avail of technological innovations with necessary safeguards and precautions in the justice delivery system for speedy and effective disposal of cases.

The petitioner contended that the trial court committed an error in allowing the plea of her husband, permitting his examination including marking of documents, on Skype on the ground that he was unable to attend court due to his urgent work in the US.

Counsel for the husband contended that none of the provisions of law, much less Sections 65A and B of the Indian Evidence Act prohibited such e-recording of evidence and that the law was fairly settled for availing technological advancements.

Attendance need not be physical: HC

Delivering the order Justice B. Siva Sankara Rao held that examination of witnesses contemplated by Order XVIII Rule 4 CrPC and the words witness in attendance must be understood as person being present and it need not be physical presence.

Recording of evidence through audio, video link or through Skype is permissible.

The judge pointed out that recording of evidence via video conferencing could be ordered in cases where attendance of the witness could not be ensured without delay and inconvenience. He reminded that in the US video recording is common in most courts.

The judge relied on a recent judgement by the Delhi HC in International Planned Parenthood Federation vs Madhu Bala Nath in which it was observed that courts must be pragmatic in allowing witnesses to depose via video conferencing.

The judge observed, There is only a thin line between access to justice and effective access to justice. No one can dispute the fact that information technology has paved a new line of thinking in modernising the Indian judicial system for effective access to justice.

He said, The task is early disposal without sacrificing the quality of decision-making and for that the courts can use technological innovations. Our objective should be accessible and affordable justice for all.

The Judge ordered that the e-audio and visual should be recorded at both ends through the Skype facility available at the Khammam Collectorate and at New Jersey at a venue to be fixed by an officer nominated by the Indian envoy in the US.

NTRUOH told to review valuation

The Hyderabad HC has found loopholes in the digital online evaluation system introduced by the NTR University of Health Sciences to evaluate the answer sheets of PG medical students. The court ordered the university to re-look and change the manner of evaluation.

Justice S.V. Bhatt, while disposing writ petitions by Dr P. Kishore Kumar and others, ordered the varsity to take a holistic view on the evaluation of answer sheets within three weeks from the date of receipt of his order and thereafter declare the results.

The petitioners urged the court to declare the varsity move to digitally evaluate answer sheets as bad in law. The judge observed that the expertise of the examiners has to be re-examined by the university.

Grievances not atrocity: HC

The HC has ruled that the grievances of a government servant against his superiors cannot be considered an atrocity as per the definition of the term in Sec. 2(1) (a) of the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.

Justice M.S. Ramachandra Rao was dismissing a petition by Vijay Singh, an employee of National Seeds Corporation Limited seeking speedy disposal of a case pending in Malkajgiri police station of the city, referred by a lower court based on his private complaint against his superior under the 1989 Act and also not to transfer the case to the Telibanda police station in Chhattisgarh.

The petitioner who belongs to an SC contended that during his seven years of service, he had been transferred five times without any reason, and that this amounts to harassment and that his superiors officers were obstructing his promotional avenues.

He told the court that when he approached the HC in 2013 challenging the action of the authorities withholding two increments with cumulative effect, the High Court had granted stay. He alleged that his superiors made adverse remarks in his Annual Confidential Report (ACR) in 2011-12.

The judge observed, This is not to say that the grievance of the petitioner regarding his transfers, imposition of penalty or ACRs is not a grievance. The remedy is a review under Article 226 of the Constitution in the HC and not filing a complaint under the Act. The judge dismissed the petition granting liberty to the petitioner to air his grievances through a judicial review.
Lucknow: Hours after SP brought members of the erstwhile Janata Parivar on one platform, BSP supremo Mayawati today warned that any alliance with the ruling party in the state will directly benefit BJP.

"There is not a single concrete reason for any secular party to align with Samajwadi Party, specially after the bad experience of (SP) breaking the 'mahagathbandhan' in Bihar because of its understanding with BJP," Mayawati said at a press conference.

"SP is today standing alone because of its understanding with BJP. So, any move to align with SP means directly helping BJP...other parties should remain alert on this count as it would be good for them.

"All know that because of its selfish motives, Samajwadi Party today stands divided," she said.

"(In these circumstances) supporting SP clearly means strengthening BJP and forming an anti-Dalit, anti-backward and anti-Muslim BJP government in the state," she said.

"SP is trying to form an alliance with mostly those parties who have a very limited influence in UP. Moreover, this effort to form a grand alliance only proved that the ruling Samajwadi Party has accepted its defeat, even before the Assembly elections," she said.

"There is no concrete example on which SP can seek votes and come back to power in the state...At all levels, casteism, communalism, corruption and jungleraj has prevailed...should other secular parties support the sinking SP ship because various incidents like Muzaffarnagar, Dadri among others took place in the state because of their understanding with BJP," she asked.

Stressing that SP is mired in family feud and supporters of the Chief Minister and his uncle will harm each other in the electoral battle, Mayawati cautioned Muslim voters not to waste their votes by backing the ruling party.

"Secular people should also not waste their votes on SP or else they will help BJP," she said, adding that had the SP government worked for the entire society, the Chief Minister would not have been forced to take out his 'vikas rath yatra' with his rowdy supporters.

"Also, the SP chief would not have called leaders of other parties in Lucknow on the occasion of party's silver jubilee to enact the drama of projecting himself a secular leader...and mislead the people," she said.

Attacking BJP, which started the Parivartan yatra from Saharanpur today, Mayawati said people have now started believing that democratic values are being undermined and the country is turning into a kind of unbridled autocracy under the BJP government which could have very dangerous results.

"Had the Modi government fulfilled even one third of its poll promises, the party would not have needed Parivartan yatra or projected RSS workers as its workers to show huge turnouts," she said, adding that not only the state, but the country has also to be saved from such designs in the 2019 polls.

To a question, Mayawati ruled out BSP's alliance with any other party in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls and also condemned the one day ban on NDTV, terming it as an attack on democracy.

"Prime Minister's Modi' government is trying to gag the media for hiding its shortcomings and shielding the corrupt...people of the country will not tolerate this," she said.
BJP National President Amit Shah with his supporters during an election rally for UP elections in Saharanpur. (Photo: PTI)

Saharanpur: Kicking off UP poll campaign, BJP president Amit Shah today took a dig at infighting in the Mulayam Singh Yadav family and targeted ruling Samajwadi Party as well as BSP, saying neither party is bothered about development of the state.

Addressing 'Parivartan rally' (rally for change) here in western UP, he said the state has lagged behind in development because of SP and BSP rule and that only a BJP government with full majority can bring it back on track.

"While on one hand, it is the nephew (Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav) who is abusing the uncle (SP state unit president Shivpal Yadav), on the other Behenji (BSP supreme Mayawati) is abusing both of them...No one is concerned about the development of the state," Shah said.

"The state has lagged behind a lot...SP and BSP cannot improve the situation here and it will be only the BJP government with full majority which can bring the state back on tracks," he said.

Attacking 'goonda' elements in the ruling SP, he alleged that the party is mired in illegal mining among other ills like corruption.

Shah said while Akhilesh wants to project himself as 'vikas purush' (development man), people like mafia don Mukhtar Ansari are in his party despite the Chief Minister claiming they would not be allowed in.

"The entire SP is filled with such people," he added.

Targeting Mayawati, the BJP chief said, "behanji says she will improve the situation but she has Naseemuddin Siddiqui".

He contended that, "it is between devil and deep sea for the people of the state in the context of these two parties."

Shah also took veiled dig at Samajwadi Party's efforts to form a 'mahagathbandhan' ahead of the upcoming Assembly polls by hosting senior leaders of the erstwhile Janata Parivar in the state capital today, saying "they are happy shaking hands with each otherbut what would happen by your shaking hands? In a democracy, government is formed only when the people shake hands with you".

Attacking Mayawati, he said though she claims to make the state "goonda free" (criminal free), she needs to recall the number of scams which took place during her previous government."

Citing the different scams worth thousands of crores, Shah alleged that all the funds meant for development were used in setting up memorials and statues. "If she returns to power, she will set up 200 to 300 more of her statues instead of doing any good for the state," he said.

Alleging that SP, BSP and Congress have spoiled UP, Amit Shah said only BJP can provide a "goonda-free" UP.

Attacking Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi for his stand on 'One Rank, One Pension' (OROP), the BJP chief said, "he seems to have forgotten that the issue is very old and despite Congress being in government led by his relatives all this while, nothing was done to redress this demand."

"It is very shameful that vote politics is being done on the suicide of an ex-serviceman to mislead the people...But they will not get influenced as they know the reality and servicemen know that it is the Modi government which has given them OROP," he stressed.

He also criticised Rahul Gandhi for his comments after surgical strikes that Prime Minister was doing 'khoon ki dalali' (using blood of soldiers for political gains).

"During your (Congress governments), there were firings on the borders regularly but it is the Modi government which is at the helm now and it knows well how to give a befitting reply," Amit Shah said.

Attacking BSP, SP and Congress for raising a lot of hue and cry over the Modi government's stand on triple talaq, Shah asked, "Should the rights of Muslim women not be safeguarded? Should the triple talaq like arrangement not be done away with...What is this mockery you are playing with the rights of women for vote bank politics?"
Lucknow: The Akhilesh-Shivpal acrimony and efforts at a patch-up were well on display, and not just in semantics, as the two leaders shared the dais with SP supreme Mulayam Singh Yadav and other leaders of the Janata Parivar at the party's silver jubilee celebrations here.

Whether it was an agitated Shivpal Yadav shoving party leader Javed Abidi away from the microphone as he was praising Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, or the CM touching his uncle Shivpal's feet after being prodded by RJD chief Lalu Prasad, the Yadav family saga was virtually being played out in presence of thousands of party activists at the Janeshwar Mishra park here.

When the event started, Akhilesh and Shivpal were given swords which they accepted smilingly. While the scene left many chuckling, Lalu stepped in and held hands of both Akhilesh and Shivpal as they posed for lensmen with the props.

Egged on by Prasad, Akhilesh touched Shivpal feet to seek his blessing who kept his hand on the CM's head.

Former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda too held the hands of the warring uncle and nephew.

While Shivpal, who was sacked by Akhilesh from cabinet vented out his unhappiness in his speech, the Chief Minister gave a subtle response.

Pointing at Shivpal's confidant Gayatrai Prasad Prajapati, who was sacked by him earlier, Akhilesh said, "You give me a sword but you don't want me to use it."

Earlier, Abidi, who is close to Akhilesh took hold of the mike and started addressing the gathering in favour of Akhilesh terming him as "future of the party".

"While you (Mulayam) are the soul of the party, Akhilesh is its vigour," he said.

However, Shivpal soon got up and went to Mulayam and soon came near Abidi and shoved him away from the mike. "Everyone should maintain discipline. Indiscipline will not be tolerated," Shivpal said amid slogan shouting in the audience.

The SP has been mired in a power tussle between Akhilesh and Shivpal ever since Mulayam removed his son as state party chief and appointed his brother Shivpal.

The party tried to send a message of unity with Shivpal attending the flagging off Akhilesh's rath yatra on Thursday for assembly elections and giving his "blessings".
Patna: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said that he would not attend the Samajwadi Party's 25th anniversary revelry in Lucknow on Saturday due to chhat puja celebrations in his state.

"I have personally told Shivpal (Yadav) about this as right now chhat puja is being observed here. When Mulayam Singh Yadav ji called me yesterday, I explained him the reason behind me skipping the event. I would have definitely joined the celebration had the date not clashed with chhat puja," he said.

"I thank the Samajwadi Party for inviting the Janata Dal(United) on the 25th anniversary on Saturday. Our party's senior leader Sharad Yadav will attend the event," he added.

The Bihar Chief Minister's attendance in Lucknow was closely watched by the opposition parties amid speculations that there would be a pre-poll alliance ahead of next year's assembly polls.

Nitish, however, stated that there would not be any pre-poll alliance in Uttar Pradesh and expressed hope that the infighting within the Samajwadi Party fold would end soon.

Addressing the media here, Nitish said that Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav would end the ongoing tussle in the party with his rich experience.

Kumar stressed that the meeting between the Samajwadi Party and JD (U) leaders should not be seen as a pre-poll alliance ahead of the polls.

"We also want the Samajwadi Party family tussle should not escalate," he said.

Last week, Samajwadi Party's Uttar Pradesh Party chief Shivpal Yadav had met JD (U) leaders Sharad Yadav and K. C. Tyagi to invite them for his party's anniversary bash.
Bengaluru: Leaders of BJP, the principal Opposition party in the state, appealed to experts sent by the Union government, to recommend a special drought-relief package for the state, as more than 2000 farmers in distress had committed suicide since 2013.

The delegation, headed by leader of Opposition in the Legislative Assembly, Jagadish Shettar, met Union agriculture secretary, Neeraja Adidam, and other experts, and explained how farmers were in deep distress because of successive droughts.

Their memorandum spoke of how important crops, including millet, rice, groundnut, corn, soy, nut, banana, peanuts, onions, sugar cane, tobacco, oil seeds crops, had withered due to failure of the monsoon. As on September 30, as against a total live storage of 825.35 TMC feet in reservoirs, only 494.14 TMC feet of water was available, which constitutes only 60 per cent of the total capacity of all the 13 major reservoirs. The water in these reservoirs is the major source for drinking, irrigation, and power generation in the state, states the memorandum.

Mr Shettar later told the media: If the Union government announces a special package, it will help farmers overcome the distress situation. Till then, the state government should tackle the drought. We request the state government to release funds for drought relief works.
Police personnel in action against the protestors in Shaivajinagar area where an RSS worker was murdered, in Bengaluru. (Photo: PTI)

Mysore: Just days after the brutal murder of RSS worker Rudresh in Bengaluru, the vice-president of BJP Yuva Morcha in Periyapatna taluk, Magali Ravi, was found dead under mysterious circumstances in Periyapatna police station limits on Friday night. Ravis body was found 200 metres away from the town.

He was returning home on his two-wheeler after attending a peace committee meeting on the Tipu Jayanthi celebrations at the Periyapatna town police station. He suffered a fracture of his arm and an injury on his forehead. Passersby told the police that it was a case of accident, but when his parents suspected it to be a case of murder, the police registered a case under Section 302 of the IPC.

Superintendent of Police Ravi Channannanavar said that four teams have been formed and the case will be investigated from all angles.

Magali Ravi, vice-president of BJP Yuva Morcha of Periyapatna taluk, was reportedly found dead under mysterious circumstances in Periyapatna police station limits on Friday night.

The 31-year-old leaders body was found 200 metres away from the town. He was returning home on his two- wheeler, after attending a peace committee in Periyapatna town police station, regarding Tipu Jayanti celebrations. He sustained a fracture of his arm, and injury on his forehead. While information reached the police station within 15 minutes of the incident, initial information provided by passersby, said it was a case of accident but when his parents suspected it to be a case of murder, a case was registered under section 302 of IPC.

When asked whether Ravis death and RSS worker Rudreshs recent murder in Bengaluru were connected, SP Ravi Channannanavar said the latest case was under investigation from all angles by four teams formed by the district police. Officers of RTO have been asked to provide information on the nature of accident, whether he lost balance and fell on his own or if a vehicle had rammed into his two-wheeler with the intention to kill him.

Tension gripped Periyapatna with scores of BJP leaders staging a protest as the local police denied them permission to take his body in a procession before the last rites. The situation, however, was under control in the town.
Personnel from the Special Task Force gunned down eight Simi activists who allegedly escaped from Bhopal Central Jail after killing a security guard on Monday. (Photo: Solaris Images)

Extra-judicial killings have become a common phenomenon in the countrys criminal justice system. The need for an independent probe becomes even more imperative when the chief minister seeks ex post facto endorsement of killings from a frenzied crowd as if it were a kangaroo court. When the government has no explanation for what transpired, fanning public anxiety is not going to help. What the chief minister is doing is like selling the constitutional soul to buy momentary respite. Guilt or innocence can neither be decided by a kangaroo court nor by T.V. studios or social media trials. It is the first duty of the state to uphold the rule of law and punish the guilty. Instead of discharging its primary obligation, the chief minister seems to be destroying the Constitutional Structure on which the republic is founded.

Encounter philosophy is a criminal philosophy and all policemen must know that, out of the total of 513 deaths of human species in police custody between 2011-15, not one policeman has been convicted.

It does not matter whether a victim was a common person, militant or a terrorist. Nor does it matter whether the aggressor was a common person or the State. The law is equally applicable to both. This is the requirement of a democracy.

Killings in police encounters require independent investigation, the SC held in the PUCL case, which related to 99 encounters by Mumbai police between 1995 and 1997.

The audio clip for nine minutes suggests that the policemen had orders to kill them from before and that there was neither any intention nor any effort to arrest them. The walkie-talkie recording also seem to support the footage and strengthens the suspicion that the escapees were unarmed and so there is no question of their having opened fire on the policemen.

The new audio leaks carry a statement Finish Them All; if this were true, it would make a case of brutal murder. Moreover, the first eyewitness Naresh Pal has made a statement the he did not see any firearms with the escapees. Arif Mohammed, State President of All India Milli Council, claims that there is evidence in the form of visuals of the video clips submitted to the MP high court, that the prisoners who were killed wanted to surrender. The PIL was filed by Masood & Ors. in the MP high court. It is only after the high court issued notice to the state government that a judicial enquiry was ordered by the latter. The CM and the state government realised that they could not stem the tide of uncomfortable revelations every hour. Once the HC also asked for a detailed report from the Anti-Terror Squad about the encounter, the government realised that it was safer to constitute a judicial inquiry.

The jail authorities complain that the security personnel to prisoner ratio was only 1:10 whereas the recommended ratio in the jail manual is 1:6, but what is shocking proof of bad governance is that more than 80 jail officials were posted at the residence of ministers, ex-ministers, senior police officers and former senior police officers, reducing the security personnel to prisoner ratio to dangerously low levels. The number of security personnel posted in prison was so low that the personnel were scared of going into the prison areas alone.

Committee after committee is being constituted with suggestions of electrified fences, but who is going to ensure that they will remain operational? In the case of instant jailbreak, the security towers around the high prison wall maintain a deafening silence. In fact, it is still a mystery as to how, without the help of some of the prison staff, the prisoners could have scaled a 35-foot-high wall, with the help of bed sheets and towels.

Vyapam and the jailbreak encounter have revealed the rot in MP administration. We hope that the Commission of Inquiry will not become a convenient excuse for inaction against those who are prima facie involved in the murder. Quite independent of the Commission of Inquiry, the HC needs to crack the whip and direct the government to register murder cases against those who fired at and killed persons in cold blood. Immediate registration of FIRs followed by the normal process of investigation and arrest of the suspects alone can infuse confidence in citizens that the rule of law governs them.

Read: Cops live on the edge all the time

The significance of independent probes is now being felt once again in the case of a suspicious escape from Bhopal Prison and mindless gunning down of escapees. Thus, legitimate tools have to be crafted for dealing with the menace of terror. Fake encounters and encounter specialists is not one of them. Let the police stop killing people out of frustration and let the rule of law be enforced in letter and spirit.

Friends carry photographs of an unidentified Maoist rebel killed in a police encounter during the funeral procession of Maoist leader Prabhakar at Yapral village, Hyderabad on Oct. 27.

Supreme Court guidelines

Whenever police receive any intelligence regarding criminal activities pertaining to the commission of grave criminal offence, it shall be reduced into writing (case diary) or in some electronic form.

If an encounter takes place and a firearm is used by the police and a death occurs, then an FIR needs to be registered and same shall be forwarded to court.

A magisterial inquiry must be invariably held in all cases of death.

An independent investigation into the encounter shall be conducted by the CID or police team of another police station under the supervision of a senior officer.

The National or State Human Rights Commission should be informed of the incident without any delay if there is serious doubt about independent and impartial investigation.

The injured criminal/victim should be provided medical aid and his/her statement recorded by the magistrate or medical officer with certificate of fitness.

Ensure no delay in sending FIR, diary entries, panchnamas, sketch, among others, to the court concerned.

After full investigation into the incident, the report should be sent to the competent court. Expeditious and proper trial must be ensured.

In the event of death, the next of kin of the alleged criminal/victim must be informed.

Six monthly statements of all cases where deaths have occurred in police firing must be sent to the National Human Rights Commission by DGPs in set date and format.

Disciplinary action should be initiated against the police officers found guilty of wrongful encounter and they should be placed under suspension.

Dependents of the victim who died in the police encounter should be given compensation under the compensation scheme of Code of Criminal Procedure

The police officers concerned must surrender their weapons for forensic and ballistic analysis immediately.

An intimation about the incident must also be sent to the police officers family and services of a lawyer/counselling must be offered.

No out-of-turn promotion or instant gallantry rewards be bestowed upon the officers concerned till the probe is on.

Past Encounters

Khwaja Yunus (2002):

Sayyed Khwaja Yunus, a software engineer working in a Dubai firm, was picked from Parbhani, Marathwada, in December 2002 in connection with a bomb blast in a BEST bus near Ghatkopar station. The police claimed he escaped from the police vehicle near Aurangabad in January 2003. However, co-accused Abdul Mateen and the prosecution claimed Yunus died in custody.

Ishrat Jehan (2004):

On June 15, 2004, the Ahmedabad Crime Branch killed four suspected terrorists on the outskirts of the Gujarat capital. They were believed to be linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba terror group. The deceased were identified as Zeeshan Johar, Amjad Ali Rana, Javed Shaikh and Ishrat Jehan.

Batla House Encounter (2008):

On Sept. 18, 2008, a Delhi Police team headed by Mohan Chand Sharma raided Batla House where a firefight ensued between the police and terrorists. Two terrorists were killed and two others were arrested while one managed to escaped from the scene. Inspector Sharma and two others were injured. Sharma died on his way to the hospital.
OOTY: Even as the recent publication of the findings of the Cosmic Ray Laboratory (CRL) in Ooty on solar storm and its impact on the earths magnetic shield in 2015 has created ripples, here is a recapitulation of the extra terrestrial event that has rocked the scientific world. The CRL of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) here recorded a geomagnetic storm, otherwise known as solar storm, which weakened the earths magnetic field, the shield which protects the planet from the invasion of the cosmic rays. When most parts of world was asleep on June 2, 2015, the ever vigilant team of scientists at the CRL witnessed showers of cosmic rays hitting the earth through the muon tracking telescope. Muons are sub-atomic particles that are produced when the cosmic rays travel through the atmosphere. The CRL recorded a sudden burst of muons indicating increase in cosmic ray intensity.

With its state-of-the-art high performance detectors, the Grapes-3 (Gamma Ray Astronomy at PeV Energies Phase-3), experiment at CRL could observe this rare activity. Dr Sunil K. Gupta, head of the CRL stated that the earths magnetic field (EMF) is aligned along north-south direction, and exerts its influence up to 50,000-km above the surface of the earth. The EMF acts as a shield by preventing the entry of most of the low energy cosmic rays into the atmosphere.

Though the cosmic rays continuously travel down to the earth, the low energy cosmic ray particles are bent by the EMF, and are sent back into space. But, the high energy cosmic ray particles which are small in number enter the earths atmosphere and get detected by the cosmic ray observatories across the world, he noted. At the CRL in Ooty the scientists observed a sudden burst of cosmic ray activity on June 22, indicating that something had changed in the EMF above. Further studies showed that the burst of magnetized plasma from the sun, otherwise known as coronal mass ejection, which contains particles traveling with a high speed of thousand kilometers in a second, and having a low strength magnetic field in it, had affected the EMF. It is known that when the two magnets with their magnetic poles in opposite directions are brought close together, the magnetic field around it becomes weak.

A very similar thing happened on June 22, 2015, causing a geomagnetic storm by opening up weak spots in the EMF. This weakening of the EMF was about two per cent for two hours, as per the calculations of the CRL scientists, which paved the way for the invasion of cosmic ray particles during those two hours. They also found the margin of error to be below 0.1 per cent making it a very accurate study, Dr Gupta explained.

However, as the solar storm moved past the earth, the EMF got restored back to its normal value after the said two hours. Only in the high altitude places on earth, nearer to the north and south poles, the disturbance to power lines and radio communication was noticed. As the coronal mass ejection from the sun takes nearly two days to reach the earth, the real ejection on sun had happened two days prior to the recording of cosmic ray muons in CRL, Ooty, he pointed out.

However, in case of a bigger solar storm in future the weakening of EMF could be much more, which would then adversely affect the functioning of the satellites, and other electrical and electronic devices on ground which can cause a major disruption. The GRAPES-3 due its location near the equator is relatively immune from such disruptions. The Grapes-3 offers the possibility to do ground-based studies of the same phenomenon from the safety of its location in South India, Dr. Gupta said and added that it took little more than a year to completely analyze and verify the data to publish a report on the said event.

CRL: A shining example of indigenous R&D

The Cosmic Ray Laboratory (CRL) of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Ooty is the numero uno in its respective field in the world as its indigenous technology and related facilities along with large study area make it the best standing example for make in India concept too, said Atul Jain, scientist-in-charge of the CRL Ooty. He said that the Grapes-3 experiment was done in a world class lab designed to study cosmic rays. Grapes-3 is equipped with an array of 400 plastic scintillator detectors in a large area to detect the cosmic ray showers. Its muon tracking telescope is the worlds largest such telescope which is known for its accuracy and superiority.

The cosmic ray detection process starts with plastic scintillator detectors, which receives the signals of cosmic ray showers. They are then processed at the modern cutting edge technologies and further simulated at the computing cluster. Finally, at the control room the signals are further analyzed to prepare the data, he explained. Mr Jain said that instrumentation, equipment and the electronics involved in the Grapes-3 experiment, wherein Japan is a collaboration partner, has been designed, developed and fabricated with indigenous in-house technology that has made CRL self-reliant and keeps it flag flying high in this field of fundamental research.

B.Srinivasa Rao, chief engineer and scientific officer at CRL said that to detect muon, the CRL designed near six meters hallow steel tubes, which are filled with inert gas and tungsten wires to receive muonsignals. As of now 3,200 such tubes have been placed in clusters in the CRL, which is protected by concrete slabs that filters cosmic rays but allows muons enter the tube, he explained.

Stating that all the signals received from detectors placed across the CRL premises in Ooty is finally analyzed and studied at the control room, P.Jagadeesan, scientific officer at CRL said that the lab was functioning round the year without any break to record the cosmic ray and muon signals from the outer space and to prepare data and to arrive at the inference.

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Snapchat allows users to send smartphones photos and video which automatically disappear after few seconds.

Alphabet Inc's venture capital arm CapitalG, earlier known as Google Capital, disclosed an investment in Snapchat by adding the social networking firm's logo to a page on its investment portfolio website.

CapitalG has not made a formal announcement and it was not clear when Google made the investment. The company was not immediately available to comment.

Snap Inc, which operates the popular messaging app Snapchat, has hired Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc as lead underwriters for an initial public offering.

The banks were notified last month that they had been awarded one of most coveted and potentially lucrative IPO mandates in recent years, as the Venice, California-based company vies for a $25 billion valuation in the stock market.

Snapchat, which allow users send smartphone photos which automatically disappear after a few seconds, has proven popular among teenage users.

The company had reportedly rejected an acquisition offer from Facebook that would have valued the company at $3 billion or more in 2013.

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Nokia is reportedly preparing to roll out two new smartphone in 2017.

Nokia is all set to make a come back in the smartphone market by next year as the Finland-based company is reportedly preparing to launch two new smartphones in 2017.

HMD Global who bought the rights to launch Nokia phones will reportedly manufacture, sell and advertise the upcoming devices. The company has selected Mother as its lead global agency.

Nokia is a truly iconic, globally recognised and trusted brand. As the exclusive licensee of the Nokia brand for mobile phones and tablets, our ambition was to find a like-minded agency who grasped both the opportunity and responsibility in bringing a new product range to market, HMD Global CMO Pekka Rantala said in a statement to adweek.com.

The reports revealed that Mothers first work for the brand will be a global launch campaign for the next generation of Nokia smartphones, indicating the launch of new Nokia phones in 2017.

Nokia is a brand that is known and loved all over the world, said Mother founding partner Robert Saville. We are thrilled to be working with HMD Global as it begins this exciting new chapter for Nokia branded mobile phones, Saville added.

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Everyone knows about the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 disaster, and everyone also knows about Samsung recalling the devices back with regards to public safety. However, there are a few too many people out there who are adamant to keep using their Note 7 devices and not hand them over to Samsung. With safety concerns in mind, Samsung has finally found a new initiative, which will force people to return their devices back to the manufacturer.

Samsung announced that from November 18, they will restrict all Galaxy Note 7 devices from connecting to mobile network services, barring them from using data, making calls or sending SMS messages. The move has presently been planned for New Zealand and Samsung released a statement yesterday announcing and pleading to customers to return the faulty smartphones between November 4 and November 18. Post November 18, the devices will be deactivated and users would not be able to use the phones on mobile networks.

As part of our commitment to ongoing safety, Samsung would like to make our customers aware of plans to discontinue network service for Note7 devices. From the 18 November, customers still using the Note7 will no longer be able to connect to any New Zealand mobile network services to make calls, use data or send SMS messages. We strongly urge any customers still using their Note7 to return their device to the place of purchase for a refund or replacement. Between November 4th - 18th, we will contact our customers on at least two separate occasions with information about this network discontinuation event to ensure they have received adequate notice. We would like to thank our Note7 customers for their patience and understanding, said Samsung on their New Zealand website.

Presently the ban has been announced for New Zealand, and the same could be applied for other countries soon.

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But until Saturday, none proved to be among the 276 schoolgirls seized from northeastern Chibok town in April 2014. Dozens of them escaped within hours. (Photo: AP)

Maiduguri: Nigerian troops rescued one of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram extremists more than two years ago in a pre-dawn raid on Saturday on a forest hideout.

She had a 10-month-old baby boy born to a Boko Haram fighter, said a statement from army spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman.

It was the first army rescue of a Chibok girl. Last month, Nigeria's government secured the freedom of 21 of the Chibok schoolgirls in the first such release negotiated with Boko Haram. Another girl escaped in May on her own.

Thousands of other Boko Haram captives have been freed this year as the military has forced the extremists out of towns and villages in northeastern Nigeria, where they had declared an Islamic caliphate.

But until Saturday, none proved to be among the 276 schoolgirls seized from northeastern Chibok town in April 2014. Dozens of them escaped within hours.

President Muhammadu Buhari has vowed to secure the release of the nearly 200 schoolgirls who remain captive.

The failures of successive governments and security forces to free the girls brought international condemnation and the creation of a movement called Bring Back Our Girls. U.S. first lady Michelle Obama posted a picture of herself under that hashtag and vowed her husband would do everything in his power to help bring the girls home.

Former President Goodluck Jonathan's initial refusal even to admit the girls had been taken hostage, losing precious days after their capture, contributed to his loss at 2015 elections.

Meanwhile, activists and relatives have objected to the government's prolonged holding of Amina Ali Nkeki, the girl who escaped in May. She says she wants to be reunited with her mother and the father of her child, a detained Boko Haram extremist whom she says also was a victim of kidnapping and helped her escape.

The government says she is receiving trauma counseling and other care at a military hospital in Abuja, where she has been joined by the girls released last month.

Human rights activists have protested against the prolonged military screening of escapees from Boko Haram that has kept thousands held in detention, where Amnesty International has reported babies are among those dying from inhumane conditions.

Some 20,000 people have been killed in Boko Haram's seven-year Islamic uprising that has spread across borders and forced 2.6 million refugees from their homes.
The Taliban have been fighting to overthrow the Kabul government since their own regime was ousted in a US invasion in 2001. (Photo: Representational Image/AP)

United Nations: Fighters loyal to al-Qaeda have taken on a more active supporting role for the Taliban during the current offensive in Afghanistan while the position of the Islamic State extremist group in the country "has distinctly weakened," UN experts said in a report circulated Friday.

The experts said the Afghan government and several other countries estimate that there are about 45,000 opposition fighters in Afghanistan and between 20 percent and 25 percent are foreigners.

These "bad actors mutually reinforced each other and presented a significant and rising terrorist challenge not only for the country but also for the international community," the experts quoted several unnamed senior officials as saying.

The Taliban have been fighting to overthrow the Kabul government since their own regime was ousted in a US invasion in 2001 and in recent months, they have stepped up attacks across Afghanistan. The Islamic State group, on the other hand, is a more recent addition to Afghanistan's security woes.

The experts said several countries highlighted that relations between the Taliban and al-Qaeda strengthened during the time Akhtar Mansour led the Taliban and the improved ties have continued under his successor, Haibatullah Akhundzada.

Several countries told the experts that al-Qaea fighters "acted as specialised instructors for Taliban groups, in particular as far as the design of improvised explosive devices was concerned," the report said.

The experts, who monitor sanctions against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, said in the report to the UN Security Council that the Islamic State group has lost territory and fighters. "However, it remains a serious challenge," they said.

At the high point of its influence in 2015, IS fighters controlled nine districts in Nangarhar Province but currently their influence has been reduced, at most, to 3 1/2 districts, the experts said. They said the number of fighters fell as a result of Afghan military action and international air strikes.

"The group's ability to take and hold territory was also affected by clashes with Taliban fighters competing for local influence and particularly for resources, funding and manpower," they said.

The experts said several countries reported to the team that the number of Islamic State fighters in eastern Afghanistan had dropped from an estimate of fewer than 3,500 to about 1,600, of whom 700 are foreigners.

Nonetheless, it said, the Islamic State group has maintained "an active propaganda campaign inside Afghanistan," with a key tool being a mobile radio station that remains in operation despite Afghan and international efforts to target it.

As for foreign fighters, the report said the largest proportion - approximately 7,500 to 7,600 - fled Pakistan as a result of military operations and were fighting alongside the Afghan Taliban.

A second group reportedly comprises fighters from China, Russia and Central Asia fighting with Islamic groups including the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, while the third group comprises Islamic State fighters and the fourth al-Qaida and its affiliates, the report said.
In an affidavit filed in court, the FBI said Mahin Khan described himself as an American jihadist loyal to Islamic State. (Photo: Videograb)

Phoenix: An Arizona teenager who the FBI has said professed to be an "American jihadist" was sentenced on Friday to eight years in prison, to be followed by a lifetime on probation, for plotting to bomb a state motor vehicle office.

Mahin Khan, 18, described by his parents as developmentally disabled, received one more year than the minimum prison term he faced during an emotional court hearing in Phoenix for his guilty plea to crimes committed while he was still a minor.

The Tucson resident pleaded guilty last month to all three felony charges against him: terrorism, conspiracy to commit terrorism and conspiracy to commit misconduct involving weapons.

Under terms of Khan's plea deal, Maricopa County prosecutors had agreed to seek a sentence ranging from seven to 14 years. If tried and convicted, he could have received a life term.

Khan, shackled and wearing prison stripes, declined to address the court during the proceedings.

His parents, along with more than a dozen family and supporters, asked Judge Dean Fink for leniency, characterizing the defendant as a misguided, troubled youth with a history of mental health problems. They argued that his words were empty threats.

I hope, sir, that you are able to see that in reality, he is a lost and confused child who needs help, said Atif Khan, the defendant's father, adding that his son had shown significant remorse for his actions.

Khan, whose parents have said he suffers from autism and developmental delays that have left him with the mental age of a 12-year-old, was arrested in July after having been on the FBIs radar screen for several years.

But the situation grew more serious after Khan expressed to an FBI undercover operative his desire to kill hundreds of people in Arizona through lone jihadist attacks, according to court testimony.

In an affidavit filed in court, the FBI said Khan described himself as an "American jihadist" loyal to Islamic State, the militant group that seized parts of Syria and Iraq and claimed responsibility for deadly bomb and gun attacks in other countries.

Khan ultimately was charged with a plotting to obtain bombs to attack a state Motor Vehicle Division office in the Phoenix area.

Everyone in Arizona deserves to feel safe, and anybody that threatens our safety deserves to be in prison, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich told Reuters outside the courthouse. I think justice has been done.
Fayetteville: President Barack Obama appeared to be critical of FBI over disclosure about the bureau's investigation into the private email server used by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

"When you are investigating a case, then, unless you have unearthed something, you need to just do your job. If there are things that you think are worth presenting, then you present them to a prosecutor," Obama told MSNBC in an interview.

Obama, however, gave a clean chit to the FBI Director Jim Comey.

"Jim Comey is a good man. I do not believe he was trying to influence election one way or the other. I think, he is a serious public servant. He wants to do right thing. I think, the overwhelming majority of FBI feel the sake. The overwhelming majority of people in the Justice Department feel the same way," he said.

Last week, Comey sent a vague letter to Congress notifying lawmakers that the bureau had unearthed emails that appear "pertinent" to its investigation into Clinton's server.

The news has shaken her campaign, with rival Donald Trump saying its evidence of serious wrongdoing.

"What, I have said that all of us think about maintaining these norms. If there are things that you think are worth presenting, then you present them to a prosecutor. The prosecutor then makes a judgment. The prosecutor can make a decision either to file a charge or not to file a charge," he said.

"But we give enormous power to our law enforcement officials to keep us safe, to do a great job, to protect us.

But we also put these norms and rules in place, some of them written, some of them unwritten, to make sure that any of us are not suddenly affected by innuendo or rumors. Thats true for an ordinary citizen and is true for somebody who is running for president of the US," Obama said.

He also alleged that Trump lacks "basic standard" of decency and reiterated that he is unfit to be president of the country.

"If you think that I've done a good job, if you believe that Michelle has done a good job, everything that we've done over the last eight years will be reversed with a Trump presidency. And everything will be sustained and built on with a Hillary Clinton presidency," Obama warned in the interview.

Obama on Friday addressed two rallies in North Carolina, a key battle ground State.

"I think a lot of people still can't believe that Donald Trump would be elected president. There may be a complacency setting in," he said.
Manning, 28, who is held at the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, military prison, is a transgender Army private who was born male and revealed after being convicted of espionage that she identifies as a woman. (Photo: AFP)

Washington: US Army soldier Chelsea Manning, who is serving 35 years in prison for passing classified files to WikiLeaks, attempted suicide last month for the second time, her attorney said on Friday.

Manning attempted suicide on Oct. 4, at the start of her stay in solitary confinement for attempting suicide the first time in July, said lawyer Chase Strangio, from the American Civil Liberties Union. An Army spokeswoman declined to immediately comment.

Manning, 28, who is held at the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, military prison, is a transgender Army private who was born male and revealed after being convicted of espionage that she identifies as a woman.

She tried to take her own life in July after what her lawyers said was the Army's denial of appropriate healthcare.

Strangio in a statement on Friday said authorities have refused to "adequately treat her gender dysphoria" and criticized the sentence of several days in solitary confinement that was imposed on Manning.

"She has repeatedly been punished for trying to survive and now is being repeatedly punished for trying to die," Strangio said.

She has been returned to the general population section of the prison, Strangio said.

Manning has been a focus of a worldwide debate on government secrecy since she provided more than 700,000 documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

Among the files Manning leaked in 2010 was a gunsight video of a US Apache helicopter firing on suspected Iraqi insurgents in 2007, an attack that killed a dozen people, including two Reuters news staffers.
Washington: Donald Trump on Saturday alleged that Hillary Clinton is the "most corrupt person ever" to contest for US presidency and said her election to the White House would trigger an unmatched constitutional crisis in the US.

At his maiden stint at the Republican Party's weekly address to the nation, Trump said the time has come "to close the history books on the Clintons, and open a bright new chapter focussed on the great citizens of our country."

The controversial real-estate tycoon was referring to Hillary and her husband and former US president Bill Clinton.

"Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency of the United States, and if she were to win it would create a constitutional crisis like no other. She's under multiple federal investigations, has committed many crimes, including perjury, and she's now facing the prospect of a federal indictment," Trump said.

He addressed his plans to steer the US in a new direction from what he alleged was a failed leadership of the last eight years of Barack Obama, in the first term of whose presidency the Democratic nominee served as the secretary of state.

He asked the American people to elect Republicans "up and down the ticket" to make that "new direction" possible.

"I'm asking for your vote and your help in electing a Republican majority in Congress, so that we can finally change this broken system and Make America Great Again," he said.

"It's a once in a lifetime chance to take our government back from the donors and the special interests, and return the power to you, the American people," he said.

Trump said 15 days ago, he proposed a contract with the American voter a 100-day action plan to bring change.

"We need change so badly. If we win on November 8, and elect a Republican House and Senate, we can finally deliver the change the American people deserve," he said.

"My Contract includes a plan to create 25 million new jobs. We will cut taxes on the middle class Americans by 35 per cent, and we will repeal and replace the total disaster known as ObamaCare it doesn't work," he said.

A Trump administration will immediately fix the "terrible trade deals" and stop the jobs from leaving the country.

"My Contract includes a pledge to end illegal immigration, and end it rapidly, cancel federal funding for sanctuary cities, and suspend the admission of Syrian refugees into our country. They're coming in by the thousands, and Hillary Clinton wants to increase that by 600 per cent," he said.

"We will rebuild our badly depleted military, and take care of our great, great veterans," Trump said.

"We will undertake a national effort to reduce crime and poverty, and bring jobs and safety to our inner cities finally, at last," he said.
In a campaign first, Trump delivered the Republican Party's weekly radio address on Saturday, urging listeners to vote Republican down the ballot to elect a Republican-majority Congress. (Photo: AFP)

Miami: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump embark on Saturday on fierce campaigning in the battleground state of Florida, a must-win if he is to have any hope of preventing her from becoming the first woman to win the White House.

There are just three days to go in America's ugliest, most divisive presidential election campaign in living memory. Tightening polls have seen both candidates pull out all the stops in a desperate attempt to win.

The 69-year-old former secretary of state, looking to make history as the first US female commander-in-chief, is commanding A-list superpower in that quest, pulling in Beyonce and Jay-Z at a concert in Cleveland on Friday, with performances from Jon Bon Jovi, Katy Perry and Stevie Wonder scheduled Saturday.

In contrast, the maverick billionaire who has inflamed the political establishment and liberals with his insult-dishing campaign is isolated, leaning on his family and a clutch of Republican politicians as surrogates.

Polls have tightened in the last week, coinciding with the FBI's announcement that it has renewed scrutiny of Clinton's emails while secretary of state, but forecasts still give the 69-year-old Democrat the edge.

Saturday's RealClearPolitics poll average gives Clinton a 2.3 percent lead on 45 percent to 42.7 percent for Trump in donala four-way race. The same poll average gives her just a 1.2 percent lead over Trump in Florida.

Trump is kicking off the weekend at a rally in Tampa on the state's Gulf Coast, while Clinton is due to address a rally in Pembroke Pines, a city just north of Miami in heavily populated southeastern Florida, where she is polling well.

The two candidates offer starkly different visions of America, Clinton celebrating hope and Trump bashing a corrupt and venal establishment.

In the last stretch, the former first lady is looking to hold onto her slender lead, while the New York real estate tycoon is desperate to close the gap in key swing states that could decide who secures an electoral college win.

'A movement'

In a campaign first, Trump delivered the Republican Party's weekly radio address on Saturday, urging listeners to vote Republican down the ballot to elect a Republican-majority Congress.

"This is not just a campaign, it's a movement. It's a once in a lifetime chance to take our government back from the donors and the special interests, and return the power to you, the American people," he said.

Trump has had troubled relations with Republican leaders, many of whom withdrew their public endorsement of his candidacy after an "Access Hollywood" tape emerged in which he boasted in vulgar language about groping women.

Clinton and Trump spent Friday in the Rust Belt, a section of the US Northeast and Midwest that has been crushed by the decline in manufacturing, and where blue-collar Democrats are being swayed by Trump's promise to bring back jobs from China and Mexico.

Clinton spoke late Friday in Cleveland, Ohio, a state that Obama won in 2012 but where she trails Trump by around five percentage points in the polls.

She was introduced with a show-stopping set by rapper Jay-Z and his even more famous wife Beyonce, wearing a version of Clinton's trademark pantsuit, in an event designed to motivate African American voters in particular.

"The world looks to us as a progressive country that leads change," Beyonce declared. "I want my daughter to grow up to see a woman lead our country. That is why I'm with her."

Clinton portrayed her campaign to become the first female US president as the next step in the civil rights struggle.

'Glass ceiling'

"We have unfinished work to do, more barriers to break, and with your help, a glass ceiling to crack once and for all," she declared, to loud cheers.

Clinton earlier visited Detroit, Michigan, where supporters booed when she attacked Trump's "dark vision" of an America mired in poverty and failure.

Trump campaigned in Hershey, Pennsylvania, hoping to shatter the "firewall" pollsters once thought Clinton enjoyed in Democrat-leaning states.

"I want the entire corrupt Washington establishment to hear the words we're about to say. When we win on November 8 we're going to 'drain the swamp'," he said, as the 13,000-strong crowd took up the chant.

Trump said Clinton would be prosecuted after an FBI inquiry into her inappropriate use of private email when she was secretary of state and sought to make light of his lack of star surrogates.

"We're gonna win Pennsylvania big," he said. "And by the way, I didn't have to bring J-Lo or Jay-Z. I'm here all by myself," he added, mocking Hillary's celebrity event.

Friday brought a fresh crop of press scandals, which may or may not affect the race.

The Associated Press reported that Trump's Slovenia-born wife Melania took paid modeling work in the 1990s before obtaining a legal US work permit.

And the Wall Street Journal alleged that the National Inquirer tabloid paid for exclusive rights to an ex-Playboy model's account of a 2006 affair with Trump, then quashed the story.
Clinton's lead has varied from 4 to 7 percentage points every day over the past week. (Photo: AP)

New York: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton leads Republican Donald Trump by 5 percentage points, according to a Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll released on Friday, keeping her advantage in a national survey while races tighten in several swing states.

The Oct. 30-Nov. 3 opinion poll showed that 44 percent of likely voters in Tuesday's election support Clinton while 39 percent support Trump.

Clinton's lead has varied from 4 to 7 percentage points every day over the past week in the Reuters/Ipsos poll, while other opinion polls have shown the race becoming increasingly competitive. Real Clear Politics, which averages together most national polls, estimates that Clinton's lead has dropped from 5 points at the end of last week to less than 2 points on Friday.

This is similar to 2012, when the Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll showed President Barack Obama with a 3 to 7 point advantage over Republican challenger Mitt Romney in the final days of the campaign while Real Clear Politics showed Obama's lead nearly vanishing ahead of the election. Obama was re-elected with a 4-point advantage in the popular vote.

Clinton, despite her national lead, appears to have lost ground in a number of states, according to a separate polling effort that takes a more granular look at the race.

The Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation project shows races in Florida, North Carolina and Michigan have tilted away from Clinton over the past week and are now considered too close to call. These swing states are hotly contested because their voters can swing either to Republicans or Democrats and can be decisive in presidential elections.

The project estimates that Clinton still has a 90 percent chance of winning the election, however.

With four days before Election Day, Republicans are increasingly optimistic about Trump winning.

Some of this appears to be tied to Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey telling U.S. lawmakers on Oct. 28 that his agency was investigating a new trove of emails as part of a probe into Clinton's handling of classified information while serving as U.S. secretary of state.

While Comey said the emails might not be significant to the investigation, Trump and Republican leaders have seized on the news, calling it evidence that Clinton is unfit for the White House.

Since the FBI announcement, the Reuters/Ipsos poll has seen a surge in Republican expectations. More than half of Republicans now say they think Trump will win the election - up from a low point last week when Republicans were more likely to think Clinton would win.

The Reuters/Ipsos national tracking poll was conducted online in English in all 50 states. It includes 2,021 people who were considered to be likely voters from their voting history, registration status and stated intention to participate in the election. It has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 3 percentage points.
California's Attorney General, Kamala Harris on the cusp of becoming first Indian-American US Senator (Photo: AP)

Los Angeles: Kamala Harris, California's Attorney General, is on the cusp of becoming the first Indian-American Senator in the US Congress with latest polls placing her "far ahead" of her rival days before the November 8 general elections.

Harris, 51, has already got the backing of US President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to be the state's next Senator, brightening her chances to become the first from the community ever to be a member of the Upper House.

She heads into the US Senate election with a considerable lead over fellow Democrat Loretta Sanchez, whose plan to coalesce Republicans and Latinos behind her has not materialised, according to a new poll.

Harris is far ahead of Sanchez for US Senate, The Sacramento Bee reported yesterday.

Harris is leading Sanchez, a 10-term congresswoman from Orange, 47 to 23 per cent, among likely voters.

Some 17 per cent remain undecided, and another 13 per cent volunteered that they plan to sit out the contest between two members of the same party. Among those who have already voted, 55 per cent chose Harris, 26 per cent backed Sanchez and 14 per cent said neither, the report said.

While Sanchez has touted herself as the business-friendly choice for disaffected voters, about one-third of Republicans and 12 per cent of unaligned voters told pollsters they will not cast a ballot for either Sanchez or Harris, it said.

That means more Republicans are choosing not to vote at all than to support Sanchez (26 per cent). The survey, released four days before voters head to the polls, also found

Republicans do not see much ideological difference between them, the report said.

Harris has never trailed since launching her bid in January last year, with her share of the vote increasing seven percentage points since a May poll. She continues to hold advantages in all major regions of the state, and with voters in all age ranges and educational backgrounds, it said.

Harris, who was born in Oakland, California, is the daughter of an Indian mother who emigrated from Chennai in 1960 and a Jamaican American father.

California Democrats have overwhelmingly endorsed Harris for US Senate, solidifying her front-runner status in the race to become California's next Senator.

Harris and Loretta Sanchez were vying for their party's seal of approval to replace Senator Barbara Boxer, who is retiring.

If she wins, Harris will make history by becoming the first ever US Senator of Indian-origin.

There have been several Indian-American Congressmen in the House of Representatives, including current member Ami Bera and retired member Dalip Singh Saund, both from California too.

The government had earlier ordered investigations into Sunday's attack.

Police had said they enforced extra security vigil in the area but the reports of fresh attacks in the neighbourhood sparked massive protests in the capital and several other cities.

The attacks on several Hindu temples in Bangladesh were carried out under a well orchestrated plan aimed at grabbing lands of the minority community, National Human Rights

Commission (NHRC) had said.

The statutory NHRC said their initial investigation into the attacks on several Hindu temples and households in the central Brahmanbarhia district's Nasirnagar indicated that they were pre-planned.

"Our investigation is still underway but our initial findings suggest that an organised quarter carried out the attacks in a pre-planned manner," Enamul Haque Chowdhury, NHRC member and chief of a three-member fact-finding committee of the rights panel, had said.

Several groups have accused the police of inefficiency but Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal defended the law enforcement agency saying they intervened at the scene in quickest possible time.

Authorities, however, withdrew the officer in charge of the Nasirnagar police station immediately after Sunday's attack.

Bangladesh police has also suspended a senior officer for negligence of duty in the Bramhanbaria incident.
The study found that robots, rather than people, produced 3.8 million tweets, or 19 per cent. Social bots also accounted for 400,000 of the 2.8 million individual users, or nearly 15 per cent of the population under study. (Photo: Representational Image/AP)

Washington: A high percentage of the political discussion on Twitter was created by software robots or social bots, which may be influencing public opinion and threatening the integrity of the upcoming US presidential elections, a new study has warned.

The researchers from the University of Southern California's (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering in the US, worry that robot-generated tweets distort political online discussion and may impact election outcomes.

"Software robots masquerading as humans are influencing the political discourse on social media as never before and could threaten the very integrity of the 2016 US presidential election," said Emilio Ferrara, research leader at the USC.

By leveraging state-of-the art bot detection algorithms, Ferrara and Alessandro Bessi, visiting research assistant at USC, analysed 20 million election-related tweets created between September 16 and October 21.

They found that robots, rather than people, produced 3.8 million tweets, or 19 per cent. Social bots also accounted for 400,000 of the 2.8 million individual users, or nearly 15 per cent of the population under study.

Researchers found that Republican candidate Donald Trump's robot-produced tweets were almost uniformly positive, boosting the candidate's popularity.

By contrast, only half of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's bot tweets were positive, with the other half criticising the nominee. Due to the social bots' sophistication, it is often impossible to determine who creates them.

Political parties, local, national and foreign governments and even single individuals with adequate resources could obtain the operational capabilities and technical tools to deploy armies of social bots and affect the directions of online political conversation, researchers said.

The "master puppeteers" behind influence bots, often create fake Twitter and Facebook profiles, they said.

"They do so by stealing online pictures, giving them fictitious names, and cloning biographical information from existing accounts," they added.

"These bots have become so sophisticated that they can tweet, retweet, share content, comment on posts, 'like' candidates, grow their social influence by following legit human accounts and even engage in human-like conversations," researchers said.
San Diego: A Roman Catholic church in San Diego told its parishioners the devil works through politicians like Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and warned that voting for Democrats is a "mortal sin," according to local media and the church's website.

The Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in the neighbourhood of Old Town made the statements in a weekly leaflet given to churchgoers, a copy of which remains on the church's website. The letter rails against abortion and constraints on tax-exempt organizations from certain political activity, and blames elected officials for allowing U.S. society to be "enslaved" to sin.

"Satan has deceived many Christians to convert to worldly values from Christian ones," the Oct. 30 bulletin reads. "The devil does this through the tactics outlined by Saul Alinsky with the outcome as Hillary Clinton has stated, 'And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed,' to draw us away from Gods teachings." (ic-sandiego.org/bulletin/)

Alinsky was a pioneer in community organising in Chicago known for confrontational, though nonviolent, tactics to achieve social change.

Local broadcaster NBC 7 said a one-page insert in a separate bulletin called voting for Democrats a "mortal sin."

The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego could not be reached for comment on Friday.

But according to NBC 7, Roman Catholic Bishop of San Diego, Robert McElroy, said in a statement: "While we have a moral role to play in explaining how Catholic teaching relates to certain public policy issues, we must not and will not endorse specific candidates or engage in partisan political activity of any kind."

Richard Schmalbeck, a professor at Duke University School of Law with expertise in non-profits, said the statements appear to violate requirements for tax-exempt organizations around political activity.

"Anything that clearly disparages a candidate is intervention in opposition to a candidate, and I think saying the devil operates through a person would count as disparagement," he said.

Schmalbeck said it seems unlikely, however, that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service would aggressively pursue revoking the church's tax-exempt status given its recent history of not going after churches that have made similar comments.

The race for the White House has tightened significantly ahead of Election Day on Tuesday, as several swing states that Republican Donald Trump must win have shifted from favouring Clinton to being toss-ups.

Several of the church's bulletins contain incendiary columns about the election and politics. One piece, titled "Decision 2016 - Will America Die As a Fool Dies," attacked President Barack Obama.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, center, appears on stage with artists Jay Z, right, and Beyonce, left, during a free concert at at the Wolstein Center in Cleveland, on Saturday. (Photo: AP)

Cleveland: Hillary Clinton campaigned on Saturday in the company of friends and celebrities, first flanked by billionaire businessman Mark Cuban in Pittsburgh and Detroit, and then at a concert in Cleveland with Jay Z and Beyonce.

High-wattage political leaders fanned out for her around the country: Her husband, Bill, stumped in Colorado, as President Barack Obama rallied voters in North Carolina.

By comparison, Donald Trump was a lonely figure. In the final days of the presidential race, Mr Trumps political isolation has made for an unusual spectacle on the campaign trail  and perhaps a limiting factor in his dogged comeback bid.

CNNs latest snapshot of the Electoral College map is a little more favorable to Donald Trump, but Hillary Clinton is still leading.

When it comes to bolstering Mr Trump, the Republican Party is not sending its best: As party leaders have disavowed him or declined to back his candidacy, Mr Trump has been left instead with an eclectic group of backup players to aid him in his last dash for votes. Though polls show Mr Trump drawing closer to Ms Clinton, the most prominent Republicans in key swing states still fear that his unpopularity may taint them by association.

Mr Trump acknowledged the relative bareness of his events: In defiant language, Mr Trump hailed the size of the crowd packed into an arena in Pennsylvania.

By the way, I didnt have to bring J. Lo or Jay Z  the only way she gets anybody, he said. I am here all by myself. Just me  no guitar, no piano, no nothing.

Meanwhile, Ms Clinton had Vice-President Joe Biden campaigning in Wisconsin and Mr Sanders in Iowa. She was due in Philadelphia for a concert with Katy Perry and Stevie Wonder. Her schedule culminates Monday in what may be the biggest event of her campaign since the convention: an election-eve rally in the city with Bill, Mr Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.

 By arrangement with The New York Times
Krishnan, who had a knife tucked under his singlet, barged inside the lift when he saw her and then slashed her throat in front of her nine-year-old daughter from a previous marriage and her maid. (Photo: Representational Image)

Singapore: A 45-year-old Indian man was sentenced to eight years in prison and nine strokes of cane for slashing throat of his estranged Singaporean wife, a media report said.

Krishnan Karunakaran had slashed throat of his 38-year-old wife Boomichelvi Ramasamy in October 2013 after she rebuffed his demands to help him stay in Singapore by getting his visa extended and not let him see their one-year-old daughter.

In his mitigation, Krishnan claimed that they separated after his wife had an affair, reported The Straits Times.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Mohamed Faizal took issue with the "false narrative" and rejected the assertion that the separation was victim's fault.

He argued that the attempt to pin the blame on the victim highlighted that Krishnan "absolutely shows no remorse".

In sentencing Krishnan, Justice Chan Seng Onn said, "There's no reason for you to resort to such violence, even if you desperately wanted to see your daughter. You should have resorted to the legal process and not take matters into your own hands.

"You are lucky that she survived, or you would be facing a far more serious charge," Justice Chan told Krishnan.

On the morning of Oct 27, 2013, Krishnan waited for his wife at the lift lobby of her apartment block in the Hougang housing estate.

Krishnan, who had a knife tucked under his singlet, barged inside the lift when he saw her. He then made her walk towards her flat before slashing her throat in front of her nine-year-old daughter from a previous marriage and her maid.

The domestic helper opened the gate to help her bleeding employer while her daughter called the police.

Krishnan had pleaded guilty on Tuesday (on November 1) to one charge of attempted culpable homicide and one charge of criminal intimidation. Two other charges - for trying to stab Boomichelvi's abdomen and for threatening her domestic worker were taken into consideration.

Krishnan's lawyer Eugene Thuraisingam said his client was frustrated and desperate because his wife refused to help him extend his visa and blocked him from seeing his baby daughter.

He said that Krishnan had bought the knife to threaten, not kill, his wife and that only one cut was inflicted.

On Friday, the prosecutor told the court that Krishnan's actions were premeditated and that he had no qualms about carrying out the assault in front of the victim's young child.

The couple had married in a temple ceremony in India in 2011 and Krishnan, who ran a herbal medicine business, came to Singapore in July 2012. They separated less than a year later, according to The Straits Times report.
Nicole P. Eramo, a former associate dean of students at the University of Virginia who said a Rolling Stone article depicted her as the chief villain of the story, leaving the courthouse in Charlottesville. (Photo: AP)

Charlottesville: A federal jury on Friday found Rolling Stone magazine, its publisher and a reporter defamed a University of Virginia administrator in a discredited story about gang rape at a fraternity house.

The 10-member jury found journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely was responsible for libel, with actual malice. Jurors also said Rolling Stone and its publisher were responsible for defaming University of Virginia administrator Nicole Eramo.

Word of the jury decision came Friday afternoon in multiple news outlets.

Eramo claimed the 2014 article portrayed her as a villain who discouraged the woman identified only as Jackie from reporting the incident to police. A police investigation found no evidence to back up Jackie's claims.

Rolling Stone's attorneys said there was no evidence that the reporter knew what she was writing about Eramo was false or had serious doubts about whether it was true.

In a statement Friday, the magazine apologized to Eramo and anyone else impacted by the story.

"It is our deep hope that our failings do not deflect from the pervasive issues discussed in the piece, and that reporting on sexual assault cases ultimately results in campus policies that better protect our students. We will continue to publish stories that shine a light on the defining social, political and cultural issues of our times, and we will continue to seek the truth in every story we publish."

Eramo was seeking $7.5 million from the lawsuit. Jurors will decide at a later date how much to award her in damages.

Rolling Stone has agreed to cover all of Erdely's legal cost and any damages levied against her.

Jurors heard closing arguments Tuesday after listening to more than two weeks' worth of evidence.

The story about Jackie's rape set off a firestorm at the university and in schools nationwide. Eramo received hundreds of angry letters and emails calling her the "dean of rape," among other things, and faced protesters outside her office. The story crumbled after other news outlets began asking questions and police found no evidence to back it up. The article was officially retracted in April 2015.

Over the course of the more than two-week trial, the jury of eight women and two men watched 11 hours of video testimony, heard from a dozen live witnesses and examined nearly 300 exhibits.

At issue were three statements made about Eramo in the article and several comments Erdely made about the "university" and "administration" in media interviews before the article was retracted.

Among the statements in the article that Eramo claimed were defamatory was one in which she is quoted - through Jackie - as saying that the university doesn't publish all of its statistics about sexual assault because "nobody wants to send their daughter to the rape school." Eramo says that was fabricated by Jackie.

The judge earlier this week dismissed Eramo's claim that the story, when taken as a whole, implied that Eramo was a "false friend" to Jackie. Rolling Stone had called that a "critical element" of her case.

Because the judge determined that Eramo was a public figure, she had to prove that Rolling Stone made statements with "actual malice," meaning it knew that what it was writing about her was false or entertained serious doubts as to whether it might be true.

Eramo's attorneys argued that Erdely came into the story with a preconceived storyline about institutional indifference to sexual assault and intentionally disregarded statements and facts about Eramo that didn't fit that narrative.

They claimed Erdely also ignored red flags about Jackie's credibility, including the changing account of Jackie's rape and her refusal to let Erdely talk to people who could corroborate her story.

Attorneys for Rolling Stone acknowledged that Erdely and her editors made serious reporting mistakes, but argued that there was no evidence they acted with actual malice.

The magazine's attorneys said that Erdely and her editors had full faith in Jackie until they realized she was no longer credible in early December after the story was published.
The Russian media is pushing Trump's candidacy "very, very aggressively". (Photo: AP)

Moscow: Russian state-owned media does little to hide its preferences in the US presidential election.

News reports about the race for the White House on Russian television devote most of their time to elaborating on Donald Trump's allegations that Hillary Clinton is corrupt and the election is rigged.

"Clinton has a choice. Either she gets the presidency or she goes behind bars," pro-Kremlin journalist Dmitry Kiselyov said during his flagship Sunday program on the state-controlled Vesti channel.

Unlike the anti-establishment Trump, he told viewers, Clinton has the full backing of the US security services, "oligarchic" corporations and the media.

Other reports on the Kremlin-controlled TV channels that are the primary source of news for most Russians have highlighted concerns about Clinton's health, linked her to sex scandals and suggested the Democratic Party is "panicking" over recent polls.

"My colleagues at these channels completely back Trump and show all the bad things about Clinton," said Aleksei Venediktov, the editor of liberal Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly rejected claims that the Kremlin would like to see Trump win the White House. Experts, however, point to strong similarities between their positions on major foreign policy issues, including Syria and Ukraine.

The Russian media is pushing Trump's candidacy "very, very aggressively," according to a European Union official who monitors the Russian media and spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

The presidential battle has been widely covered, though it usually appears in news bulletins after domestic news and stories about Russia's military action in Syria.

Much of the focus has been on Clinton, who is portrayed as a Russophobe, a warmonger and responsible for bloodshed in the Middle East.

The latest leak of emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta inspired a report titled "what's with Clinton's head?" on the state-controlled NTV television channel.

It showed footage of Clinton coughing heavily and tripping when entering a plane, along with excerpts from a Soviet cartoon comparing her to a sick grandmother.

Vladimir Solovyov, a prominent presenter on NTV, said it's not that Russian media backs Trump, but rather that they dislike Clinton.
Manila: A Philippine mayor who was named as being involved in the illegal drug trade by President Rodrigo Duterte was shot dead in jail on Saturday, police said, the second local official implicated in narcotics to be killed in two weeks.

Duterte won May elections in a landslide on a promise to kill criminals to prevent the Philippines from becoming a narco-state, and has launched an unprecedented war on drugs that has left more than 4,000 people dead.

He had named several local officials, policemen and judges as being involved in the narcotics trade and urged them to surrender. In August, he accused Rolando Espinosa, the mayor of Albuera town, and his son of drug trafficking and demanded they turn themselves in, giving police a shoot on sight order if the two resisted arrest. Mayor Espinosa had then surrendered to the police.
"I lived through hellish days but now it's all over," Maria Margherita Forneris, Cacace's mother, said, according to ANSA. (Photo: AFP/Representational image)

Rome: Two Italians and a Canadian citizen kidnapped in southern Libya in September were freed unharmed and brought to Italy early Saturday, authorities said.

Italian authorities said the intelligence services of Libya, Italy and Canada cooperated in securing the release of the three men after nearly seven weeks of captivity. The men, technicians working on a construction project at an airport, were seized Sept. 19 by armed, masked men who blocked their vehicle in Ghat, a Sahara Desert city in southwestern Libya near the border with Algeria.

A number of criminal and extremist groups operate in the area, but it wasn't immediately clear which group was involved or what their motive was. There was also no information if any ransom was involved in the men's release.

"Today is a moment of relief and joy that I would like to share with the families of our technicians," Italian Premier Matteo Renzi said, expressing special thanks to Libyan authorities and their security forces.

Italy identified the Italians as Danilo Calonego and Bruno Cacace and the Canadian citizen as Frank Poccia. Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said the two Italians had not been mistreated during their captivity and were in good health. He did not comment on Poccia's situation but said Canadian authorities were also involved in securing the men's release.

Authorities said they were freed overnight and brought to Rome on a special flight early Saturday.

The ANSA news agency said the Italians were employed by an Italian construction company. It was not immediately clear whether Poccia worked for the same company.

Italian prosecutors were questioning the three men Saturday in an attempt to gain more information about possible terrorist involvement in the case. Their relatives, waiting to be reunited, told Italian media of their huge relief at the news.

"I lived through hellish days but now it's all over," Maria Margherita Forneris, Cacace's mother, said, according to ANSA.

Libya was once an Italian colony and Italy continues to have a strong commercial presence in the North African nation. Libya has fallen into chaos since former dictator Moammar Gadhafi was toppled in 2011 and killed by Libyan rebels.051434 GMT Nov 16
London: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange claims that Hillary Clintons foundation has received generous donations from the same wealthy officials of Qatar who have also provided financial assistance to the dreaded Islamic State.

In an interview to documentary maker John Pilger for RT at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Assange said the Clinton Foundation, which was started by former US President Bill Clinton, has been receiving the money from those who also support the Islamic State.

Pilger asked Assange if this notorious jihadist group, called Isil or Isis, is created largely with money from people who are giving money to the Clinton Foundation, to which Assange said Yes.

Assange explained that although the US has never officially acknowledged in public the alleged support given to Islamic State by middle-east countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the e-mail exchange between Hillary Clinton and her campaign manager John Podesta, shows that they were aware of it.

In the email which was leaked last month, Clinton talks of putting pressure on the two countries over the alleged financial assistance to ISIS.

We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to Isil and other radical Sunni groups in the region, Clinton wrote in the mail.

The Clinton Foundation just recently confirmed it accepted a $1 million gift from Qatar while Hillary Clinton was US secretary of state without informing the State Department, even though she had promised to let the agency review new or significantly increased support from foreign governments.

Qatari officials pledged the money in 2011 to mark the 65th birthday of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton's husband, and sought to meet the former US president in person the following year to present him the check, according to an email from a foundation official to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta. The email, among thousands hacked from Podesta's account, was published last month by WikiLeaks.
London: ISIS's reclusive chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has escaped from the terrorist group's stronghold of Mosul as the Iraqi Army advanced for a final assault, British foreign secretary Boris Johnson said today. He said western intelligence sources believe Baghdadi is no longer in Mosul, The Guardian reported.

Baghdadi on Thursday broke his year-long silence and issued an audio recording, urging his jihadists to continue their fight to the end in Mosul, where he was believed to be hiding.

Johnson, in an unusual reference to intelligence, said Baghdadi's audio recording was "cruelly ironic since some of the intelligence we have suggests he had himself vacated the scene and is yet using internet media to encourage others to take part in violence."

The battle for Mosul was expected to end in a decisive defeat for the terrorist group, but Baghdadi's escape is likely to complicate matters for Iraqi and coalition forces.

Johnson said the recapture of Mosul, in the face of ISIS's "scorched earth campaign", would take time and represented "the coalition's greatest challenge", according to the report.

If Baghdadi, who surprised the world by establishing the caliphate after capturing Mosul in June 2014, were to be killed, ISIS would have to choose a new caliph, but no successor would have the authority and prestige of the reclusive leader.

There is widespread concern that, despite a year of planning, there is little agreement among the many ethnic groups in the region on the future political structure of Mosul or the surrounding Nineveh province.

Giving an update to British parliament on the fight against IS, Johnson also said efforts were under way to prevent sectarian violence being unleashed as the group was ousted from Mosul and surrounding towns such as Tal Afar.

He said 30,000 civilians had fled the city and the UN had plans in place for as many as 90,000 refugees. But he accepted there were also reports that citizens would be used as human shields to raise the human cost of Iraqi Army incursions deeper into the city.

Mosul is a multi-ethnic city, but the large Sunni population is fearful that liberation will lead to massacres by Shia militias determined to take reprisals against those who collaborated with ISIS.

The anti-ISIS offensive is dependent on US-led air strikes and the presence of US special forces.
Cavalcoli said on Radio Maria that the seismic shocks were "divine punishment" for "the offence to the family and the dignity of marriage, in particular through civil unions". (Photo: AP)

Rome: An Italian priest has said the recent earthquakes that have shaken the country, killing hundreds and leaving tens of thousands homeless, were "divine punishment" for gay civil unions, earning the Vatican's wrath.

Father Giovanni Cavalcoli, a theologian known for his hardline views, made the comments on October 30, the day central Italy was struck by a 6.6-magnitude quake -- the most powerful to hit the country in 36 years -- according to Italian media.

It was the third major quake in the same region in just over two months.

Cavalcoli said on Radio Maria that the seismic shocks were "divine punishment" for "the offence to the family and the dignity of marriage, in particular through civil unions".

The radio station distanced itself from his views and late Friday the Vatican issued a stinging rebuke, saying the idea of a vengeful God was "a pagan vision" dating from "the pre-Christian era".

Archbishop Angelo Becciu, number two in the Vatican's powerful Secretariat of State, said Cavalcoli's comments were "offensive to believers and disgraceful for non-believers", in remarks reported by Italian media.

Becciu asked for forgiveness from quake victims and reminded them they had the "solidarity and support" of Pope Francis.

But Cavalcoli has refused to back down, insisting to another radio station that earthquakes are indeed caused by "the sins of man" and telling the Vatican to "read their catechism".

Legislation allowing gay civil unions in Italy only took effect last month, making it the last country in Western Europe to legally recognise same-sex relationships.
A man hunt for the suspects is underway. (Reprsentational image)

Manchester: A 36-year-old man was raped by two men in Manchester park on Tuesday in a ruthless attack, said the police.

According to a report in The Independent, two Asian men were involved in the assault, with one holding the victim down while the other carried out the attack according to a report in The Indepe

A man hunt for the suspects is underway.

Authorities said that the victim was sitting on a bench in Broadfield Park in Rochdale when the two attackers approached him.

A couple spotted the attack and shouted at the two men, upon which they fled from the scene.

Detective Inspector Damian Simpson said, This was a ruthless attack which terrified the victim and caused him lasting emotional distress.
Moscow: Russian state-owned media does little to hide its preferences in the US presidential election.

News reports about the race for the White House on Russian television devote most of their time to elaborating on Donald Trump's allegations that Hillary Clinton is corrupt and the election is rigged.

"Clinton has a choice. Either she gets the presidency or she goes behind bars," pro-Kremlin journalist Dmitry Kiselyov said during his flagship Sunday program on the state-controlled Vesti channel. Unlike the anti-establishment Trump, he told viewers, Clinton has the full backing of the U.S. security services, "oligarchic" corporations and the media.

Other reports on the Kremlin-controlled TV channels that are the primary source of news for most Russians have highlighted concerns about Clinton's health, linked her to sex scandals and suggested the Democratic Party is "panicking" over recent polls.

"My colleagues at these channels completely back Trump and show all the bad things about Clinton," said Aleksei Venediktov, the editor of liberal Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly rejected claims that the Kremlin would like to see Trump win the White House. Experts, however, point to strong similarities between their positions on major foreign policy issues, including Syria and Ukraine.

The Russian media is pushing Trump's candidacy "very, very aggressively," according to a European Union official who monitors the Russian media and spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

The presidential battle has been widely covered, though it usually appears in news bulletins after domestic news and stories about Russia's military action in Syria.

Much of the focus has been on Clinton, who is portrayed as a Russophobe, a warmonger and responsible for bloodshed in the Middle East.

The latest leak of emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta inspired a report titled "what's with Clinton's head?" on the state-controlled NTV television channel. It showed footage of Clinton coughing heavily and tripping when entering a plane, along with excerpts from a Soviet cartoon comparing her to a sick grandmother.

Vladimir Solovyov, a prominent presenter on NTV, said it's not that Russian media backs Trump, but rather that they dislike Clinton.

"It's rather hard to feel sympathy for a person who raises hell on your country and everyone in it," he said in an interview.

In contrast, negative stories about Trump often get lighthearted coverage. Reporting fresh allegations of sexual abuse against Trump on Oct. 15, the Vesti channel aired a segment called "Too many p------" set to jaunty music that took viewers through allegations of sexual misconduct by former president Bill Clinton and some of the claims against Trump himself.

In recent weeks, Russian media attention has concentrated on apparent flaws in the U.S. election process, echoing Trump's claims that the election is rigged against him.

In his Sunday program, Kiselyov highlighted what he said were problems with the electoral system, which he described as "an inter-tribal mess" that had not changed since the 18th century. Some U.S. states still used voting machines from the 1980s, he said, which he compared to soda vending machines in the Soviet Union.

Also repeated frequently are claims by Trump that the U.S. has 1.8 million dead people registered to vote. They're called "dead souls," a reference to a famous 19th century Russian novel by Nikolai Gogol.

Russian television channels say what Kremlin officials cannot afford to while the outcome of the election is still unknown, according to Venediktov.

"The Russian media is always one step ahead," he said.
UK opposition claimed that the Foreign Office had intentionally removed files referring to the possibility of the Special Air Services unit of the British Army being involved in Operation Blue Star. (Photo: PTI/AP)

London: The UK's Opposition Labour party has called on British Prime Minister Theresa May to "come clean" about the role played by Britain in Operation Blue Star before her three-day visit to India starting on Sunday.

Labour party Deputy Leader, Tom Watson, said on Friday that Britain's Sikh community deserves to know the truth in the wake of allegations by Sikh Federation UK that the UK Foreign Office had removed files with "new evidence" of British involvement in the military operation on Golden Temple in June 1984.

"Before her visit to India, Theresa May must come clean about the role played by the UK in the attack on the Golden Temple in 1984 and subsequent events. There is increasing evidence that Margaret Thatchers administration worked more closely with the Indian government than was known at the time," Watson said in a statement.

Read: UK admits to 'borrowing' files linked to Operation Blue Star

His statement followed claims that the Foreign Office had intentionally removed files referring to the possibility of the Special Air Services (SAS) unit of the British Army being involved after "an Indian request for military assistance in the setting up of a National Guard for internal security duties" during Operation Blue Star.

While the Foreign Office said it had merely "borrowed" the files, the Labour party said the fact the files exist raise important questions.

Watson added, "David Cameron's previous inquiry failed to reveal the full facts and we now learn that vital new documents relating to the massacre have been removed from the National Archives by ministers. The revelation that these new documents exist suggest that Parliament may have been inadvertently misled by a former Foreign Secretary.

"After over 30 years of demanding answers, Britain's Sikh community deserves to know the truth, no matter how embarrassing it is for the current government. After the failure of the Cabinet Secretarys internal inquiry, there should be a full independent investigation into these matters."

The Cabinet Secretary's inquiry refers to an official UK government inquiry in 2014 into the exact nature of British involvement in the Indian Army operation at the Golden Temple.

The inquiry had been ordered by then British Prime Minister David Cameron after documents released previously under the 30-year declassification rule had implied British SAS commanders had advised the Indian government as it drew up plans for the removal of militants from Golden Temple.

"The report concludes that the nature of the UKs assistance was purely advisory, limited and provided to the Indian government at an early stage in their planning,"

William Hague, then UK foreign secretary, had told the House of Commons in February 2014.

Sikh Federation UK claims the latest note it found, marked confidential, was written on July 3, 1984, a month after the operation, which points to a more prominent British role.

The note was written by a civil servant in the Foreign Offices South Asia department and copied to Ministry of Defence officials and the high commissioner in Delhi.

Earlier on Friday, their lawyers wrote to UK home secretary Amber Rudd demanding an "independent investigation".

"The FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) borrowed some of their files from 1984 that were released to the National Archives so they could read the content following concerns raised by the Sikh Federation. They will return all the files in full shortly," a UK government spokesperson said.
Muscat: A 31-year-old woman who worked at a hotel in Muscat, was allegedly murdered by an Indian man for spurning his sexual advances.

According to report in Gulf News, Pinky Pamittan, who was a Filipina waitress, was beaten and strangled to death by her Indian colleague when she refused to have sex with him. Police said that the suspect threw her body behind a Mosque after the murder.

Investigation into the case revealed that Pinky had several disputes with the murderer and even owed him money and allegedly refused to pay up. The two of them worked for the Qurum Hotel in Muscat.

Pamittans mother told the media that she was going to turn 32 on November and had moved to Oman to work many years ago. She has a husband and son who stay in Philippines and she used to send them money.

Her friends are demanding justice and are using the hashtag #JusticeforPinky on social media sites to bring attention to her case.

It is truly devastating. I know the reason why you were working abroad was to help your child and family. You dont deserve this barbaric treatment. We will seek for justice for your death, said Mariah, a user on social media.
Beirut: The opposition monitoring Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says at least 74 civilians, including 25 children, have been killed in the 8-day-old rebel offensive on the government-held part of Aleppo city.

Opposition fighters launched a protracted attack on the western edge of government-held Aleppo, aiming to break a months-long government-imposed siege on the eastern part of the city they control.

The opposition groups have come under increasing criticism for indiscriminate shelling of western Aleppo resulting in civilian deaths. The Observatory said on Saturday in the same period it recorded three civilian deaths in rebel-held Aleppo districts.

Meanwhile, a temporary Russian moratorium on airstrikes on rebel-held parts of Aleppo expired. None of the area's estimated 275,000 residents evacuated the territory, as was urged by Russian and Syrian officials.
The U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan, Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, said the strike was "an effort to defend troops." (Photo: AP)

Kabul: A bomb targeting a district leader in eastern Afghanistan killed his driver and wounded the official and another person on Saturday, while a similar attack on a police vehicle in the capital, Kabul, wounded four people.

The sticky bomb in the eastern Bati Kot district was attached to the vehicle of district chief Ghalib Mujahid, according to Attaullah Khogyani, spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar province. The Kabul bombing was confirmed by the office of the city's police chief.

No one claimed the attacks, but the Taliban frequently target government officials and security forces.

U.S. and Afghan officials meanwhile said a U.S. airstrike that killed 26 civilians on Thursday was intended to help Afghan forces who were battling insurgents in the north of the country. The strike was called in after two U.S. and three Afghan troops were killed in a fierce battle in Kunduz province.

The U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan, Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, said the strike was "an effort to defend troops."

"Every indication that we have right now is that the Taliban were firing on these friendly forces and every part of this was to defend those friendly forces and ... protect the people of Kunduz," he told reporters.

Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri said insurgents had been gathering in the area ahead of a planned attack on Kunduz city. Afghan troops had called in the air support, which he said had also killed at least 30 Taliban fighters. Gen. Qasim Jangalbagh, the provincial police chief, said the 26 civilians who were killed included members of insurgents' families.

The Taliban have launched repeated assaults on the provincial capital, also called Kunduz. They briefly overran the city last September, holding it for three days before a three-week counterattack drove them out.
Islamabad: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chief Bilawal Bhutto has said that he received many marriage proposals but had rejected all of them.

He said he will marry a girl of his sisters choice, And the girl my sisters choose will be lucky. I have received many marriage proposals but I have rejected all of them, he added.

Talking to reporters in Obaro, Mr Bhutto said that any girl who wishes to marry him will face difficulties. Reacting to his remarks about marriage, MQM Pakistan leader Rauf Siddiqui advised Mr Bhutto to marry a girl of his choice. Bilawal should marry the one he loves or else he is destined to face a lot of issues in life.
According to officials of Research and Development division of Pakistan Metrological Department (PMD), smog in Pakistan was a trans-boundary phenomenon.

Islamabad: Pollution in India is the main cause of smog in Pakistans Punjab province, experts here said. According to officials of Research and Development division of Pakistan Metrological Department (PMD), smog in Pakistan was a trans-boundary phenomenon.

In India, hundreds of thousands of farmers set fire on rice fields. If you see air quality map recently released by NASA, a vast area of India alongside Pakistans border can be seen all covered in red dots. This pollution is causing smog in Pakistan, an official said.

He said that due to fewer rains in autumn season, temperatures fall at night but rise in the morning. He said that due to heat the wind direction moves from east to west.

According to NASA, the triangle between Indian states Amritsar, Jalandhar and Bhatinda is all covered in red indicating bad air quality or high level of pollution. This area is adjacent to Lahore.
Alarmed by the dangers posed by drones to planes, Dubai airport has decided to deploy a 'drone hunter' to fix the problem that has resulted in losses running into millions of dollars.





The airport, the third busiest in the world, has already been forced to shut three times this year because of unauthorised drone activity, creating a headache for airlines and their passengers.



During the most recent closure, which lasted for 90 minutes on October 29, a total of 22 flights had to be diverted to other airports.



Each shutdown costs the airport about USD 1 million a minute.



Dubai's Civil Aviation Authority has responded by testing a 'drone hunter' -- a remote-controlled aircraft that uses thermal and infrared imaging to detect drones that are in danger of straying into the airport's space, CNN reported.



If the trial deployments prove successful, if could be in use routinely by the end of the year.



"It's a few people that engage in this kind of activity. People want to explore how far their drone can go without realising they are violating the airspace," said Salim Al Mansouri, senior aerodrome inspector at the civil aviation authority.



"It's a safety issue and people are losing money because of one person's irresponsible behaviour," he said.



Once the drone hunter is locked onto a rogue drone, the aircraft follows it back to its owner and sends the coordinates to Dubai police, who then take over.



In the Netherlands, authorities have taken a lower-tech approach to tracking drones. Bald eagles have been trained to swoop in and neatly dispose of any electronic interlopers.



Experts say as more and more drones take to the skies, they are causing ever greater concern for airline safety.



In April, a suspected drone slammed into a plane as it approached London's Heathrow airport.



The Airbus A320 landed safely but authorities worry that careless drone use will eventually lead to a catastrophe.



The US Federal Aviation Administration says reports of near misses with drones and airplanes have increased dramatically since 2014.



In the five months ending January 31, there were 583 such incidents. They have since introduced new rules for drone users to bring that number down.


An Indian housing society faced a social media backlash on Friday for moral policing after barring an unmarried male tenant from hosting a female guest at an upscale apartment complex near New Delhi.





Mohit Agarwal had been due to host a Spanish friend at his home in Gurgaon before the complex's housing association said its rulebook forbade single residents from entertaining guests of the opposite sex.



There was no basis from stopping her to enter my house, except that these guys took it upon themselves to morally police us, Agarwal wrote in a Facebook post which has gone viral.



And it was humiliating. With all the shameful insinuations flying around, he wrote.



The unnamed Spanish woman, who arrived in India last month to work as an intern for a human rights group, had been intending to stay with Agarwal in The Palm Grove Heights complex in Gurgaon, a business district which is home to several multi-national firms.



The complex is run by the US-based Colliers International real estate management which said the "exclusion" rules were framed by the residents' society.



We have no role in forming the rules. The residents had previously faced some issue leading to introduction of this rule, estate manager Sanjay Chaudhary told AFP.



Single men and women in India often face scrutiny from landlords who regularly turn down potential tenants because of their unmarried status in what is a largely conservative society.



Some residents claim their children are likely to be led astray by the bachelors' lifestyles but it is rare for a residential society to go as far as determining who can come and go from a complex.



In one of the hundreds of Facebook posts written in response to Agarwal's tale, Maria Maciel wrote that the society had acted "outrageously". "What kind of society (do) we live in? I'm totally shocked with such occurrence. Shame on those people!" Maciel wrote.
Students from the Northeast studying in Delhi University are starting a signature campaign to protest against making Hindi as a compulsory subject in order to get a degree.





North-East Forum for International Solidarity (NEFIS) activists will organise a signature campaign across various places like Delhi, Chandigarh, Manipur and Assam.



It has also received support from activist Irom Sharmila, said Chinglen Khumukcham of NEFIS.



As per the notification issued by Delhi University on August 23, it would become compulsory for every student who has not studied Hindi till class 8 to pass a paper called Compulsory Test in Hindi (CTH), in order to gain his or her undergraduate degree.



Earlier, the students from northeastern states and foreign students were exempted from taking the test. But this year, resolution passed at the academic council meeting of July 19 makes it mandatory for all to take the test, said Khumukcham.



But Hari Mohan Sharma, head of department of Hindi and part of academic council of DU told Deccan Herald that there are certain clauses for northeastern students which will help them pass. But he was unable to elaborate.



Dr Ramananda Singh Mayanglambam, Kirori Mal College professor who is nodal officer of northeastern cell who attended the academic council meeting, said, In the previous years also this plan was passed but never implemented because there are many students in DU who dont even know the ABCD of Hindi. How will they attempt an exam?"



He said the plan to make the Hindi test compulsory was not passed last year at the executive meeting which is held after academic council meeting. But this year it has been implemented and if students fail in Hindi, they will also not be given their degree, said Mayanglambam.



He said, I was there in the academic council meeting on July 19 and I rejected the idea and many supported me. But when the minutes of the meeting were out I saw that my argument was missing.



No executive meeting has been held after the academic council meeting so far this time, but the plan has already been implemented. He said that he wrote a letter to the Dean of Students Welfare requesting him to look into the matter. But there has been no reply yet, he said.



NEFIS had earlier submitted a memorandum to the DU vice-chancellor Yogesh Tyagi demanding the exemption of this programme.
An infant stolen from northwest Delhis Babu Jagjivan Ram hospital on Friday morning has been reunited with his parents by the Delhi Police within five hours.





Police have arrested a woman, identified as Ruby, who had whisked away the infant from the hospital premises. A resident of Paragpur village in Outer Delhis Bawana, Ruby has three daughters and wanted to have a male child, said police.



Several police teams comprising 50-60 personnel fanned all over the city to search the missing child.



We were informed about the incident after which we reached the hospital. We questioned the hospital staff and also procured the CCTV footage from the hospital. We saw a woman taking infant from the ward. The CCTV footage was also given to many police officers who then started tracking the women, said a senior police officer.



The child was stolen at 5.45 am and was found at 10.30 am, the police officer added.



According to police, the father of the infant, Sunil Pandey lives with his family in D black, Jahangirpuri. On 22 October, his wife, Soni gave birth to a son at Babu Jagjivan Ram hospital. He was named as Kartik. The couple had twin daughters and wanted a son.



After his birth, Kartik suffered an infection because of which he was admitted to the hospital. He was shifted to ward number 1 for treatment. Sunil Pandey had alleged that he and his wife were never allowed by the guard posted outside the block to enter the ward.



On Friday, when Sunil inquired about his son, he found that Kartik was missing. His mother had gone to the bathroom. This infuriated Sunil who called his relatives to the hospital. Police were also informed about the incident through a PCR call.
Confrontation between the Arvind Kejriwal government and Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung touched a new high on Friday with the Cabinet rejecting Raj Niwas decision to revoke the appointment of 15 Supreme Court lawyers.





Cabinet rejects LGs decision to revoke the appointment of panel of Delhi Governments SC lawyers, said a statement issued after by the Cabinet meeting chaired by Kejriwal in the evening.



The Cabinet resolves that law is a transferred subject and as per August 4, 2016 Delhi High Court judgment the power to appoint lawyers lies with the elected government, said the statement.



Raj Niwas sources refused to comment. The picture will clear up soon, said an official in LGs secretariat. There have been instances where the Raj Niwas stopped payment of remuneration to Kejriwal-hired lawyers. Sources said similar measures could be taken in the case of 15 lawyers now.



The Cabinet also resolved to give its nod to the proposal to provide Rs 1 Crore compensation to the family of OROP veteran Late Ram Kishan Grewal who allegedly committed suicide in the city on Tuesday. The Cabinet also decided to declare him a martyr.



The appointment of lawyers has become the latest bone of contention between Jung and Kejriwal as the Raj Niwas has raised questions over the process of empanelment of the lawyers and fixation of their fees without the approval of LG.The 15 lawyers were removed from the Delhi government panel on Thursday.



After the August 4 decision of the Delhi High Court upholding, Jung as the administrative head of the Union Territory, the Raj Niwas has been rectifying several wrong decisions taken by the elected government, said an official.



Sources in the Raj Niwas said apart from the reversal of the empanelment of lawyers the LG has taken an adverse view of some Delhi government officials bypassing him while picking the advocates to fight government cases. Sources said responsibility of officials will be fixed for the unconstitutional decisions.
The Union environment ministry on Friday blamed Punjab for doing practically nothing to curb the practice of burning the crop residue, which contributes significantly to the national capitals pollution load.





Large-scale crop burning is being reported from Punjab, which assured that it would make efforts to check it, environment secretary A N Jha said after discussing Delhis air pollution with officials from Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi.



As Delhi continues to be engulfed in a thick and toxic layer of haze since the last five days, the meeting was hurriedly convened to find out an action plan to improve the air quality. The issue of stubble burning, however, remained a bone of contention.



This is not the first assurance from Punjab. The agrarian state made similar promises last year too when similar reviews were carried out by the environment.Punjab government had agreed to buy balers, a type of farm machinery, which would take out the stubble from the field to make a roll, and gave it to villagers for use to remove the stubble.



The plans, sources said, remained stuck on papers because of the differences between the central and state governments on who would bear the cost of purchase and training the farmers. Meanwhile, stubble burning continued as farmers found this practice as the most effective one.



Last November, the ministry wrote to Punjab government presenting them with satellite images showing hundreds of fire spots across Punjab and parts of Haryana triggering smog all over northern India. The images proved that measures taken by the states were ineffective.



Last December Central Pollution Control Board had instructed states on 42 points (to tackle air pollution). There are many areas where much more needs to be done. Special focus needs to be given on enforcement, which is still weak. States have been asked to make enforcement stricter, Jha told reporters.



The CPCB will inspect 17 critically polluting industries in the NCR region besides monitoring whether diesel generator set guidelines are being followed or not.



To minimise dust pollution from construction and demolition activities, the authorities would check whether materials are being moved in appropriate covers and water is being sprinkled to arrest dust flow. All road construction agencies have been asked to ensure that bitumen burning and use of earth material are done in such a way to minimize pollution.



Delhi government has been asked to regulate and check the fly ash, coming out of the Badarpur plant. Delhi government has also assured that it will come out with a plan of action to utilise the money available with it from the collection of green tax to improve the environment, he said.
An atonement or an apology by the British Prime Minister or the Queen will "wash away a lot" of the atrocities committed by Britain on India during its colonial rule, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor today said.





"I would prefer instead an active atonement. An apology would go a long way. I am not expecting it today, tomorrow or anytime soon and certainly not during the visit of the new (Britain) Prime Minister (Theresa May)," Tharoor said, referring to May's visit to India next week.



He said an immediate step towards it would be to teach the realities of colonialism to British school children.



The Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram was speaking at a book launch 'An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India', which was launched by Vice President Hamid Ansari here.



Tharoor said, in the past German Chancellor and leader of the Social Democratic Party Willy Brandt visited the Warsaw ghetto and apologised to the Jews for the acts of the Nazis.



He also referred to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who in May this year, apologised for the Komagata Maru, a Japanese steamship, that arrived in Vancouver after leaving Hong Kong in early April. On board were 376 passengers, most of whom were Sikh migrants from what was then British India. The ship was not allowed to dock.



"It shows how required it is for a British leader of some significance either a Queen or the PM to simply say sorry. It will wash away a lot. You can't count value the loss of lives during the famine, of the massacres, the rapes, the loot that took place.



"Another thing that could happen would be if the British can make up by teaching their young generation about what happened in the past. After all the beauties of London were built from the resources extracted from the Common Wealth," the Congress leader said.



Speaking about the colonial legacy in Indian laws related to aspects like Freedom of Press and a one-day ban on a leading Hindi channel 'NTDV India', Tharoor said he was not happy about the "unusual punishment" meted out to the channel for its reporting of Pathankot terror attack.



He said all these are "troubling issues for the Indian democracy". Tharoor also hit out at the government for not repealing Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. He had introduced a legislation in Lok Sabha, seeking repealing of the section.



"I find it somewhat ironic that a party of Hindutva, actually claiming to speak for a religion that has 2000 years of recorded tolerance for various kinds of sexual practises...



A religion where there is no recorded instances of persecution or prosecution of such practices, but people speaking for such a party have instead abandoned the option of being true to their own cultural traditions and instead accepted and embraced a Victorian moral code written by T B Macaulay in 1837, enacted in 1861 and abandoned by the British in late 1960s," he said.



Ansari said economic deprivation was one aspect of the colonial rule, but more serious was its impact on the minds of the subjugated and on the totality of their existence.



"The encroachment by the East India Company was piecemeal, and resentment or resistance was per force local. "It often took the shape of peasant uprisings motivated by economic deprivation of severe character often inflicted through physical brutality or ethnic prosecution. It was at times led by local landlords.



"Some of these conflicts involved large numbers but organized military confrontations, of the type with Tipu Sultan of Mysore, were the exception. Nevertheless, these popular resistance movements continued for almost a century," the Vice-President said.
Shiv Sena today asked the Centre if there will be a similar action against China, like the Indian Army's surgical strikes on terror launch pads at the LoC in September.





"The time has come to look at Chinese incursions (in Indian territory) seriously. Surgical strikes against China, similar to the ones carried out against Pakistan, will be the befitting answer," the Sena said.



"Will there be such an attack (against China)," an editorial in Sena mouthpiece Saamana asked.



"When one speaks against Pakistan in public rallies, one gets claps as a response. There is a need to get out of this mindset of clapping and look at the Chinese incursions seriously," the Sena said.



"From Ladakh to Arunachal and Sikkim, the Chinese actions have been going on unabated since several years. The real question is who will stop China," the editorial said.



The Sena referred to reports that Indian and Chinese troops were engaged in a stand-off since Wednesday in Ladakh's Demchok area as the People's Liberation Army (PLA) troops entered an area near the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and stopped the construction work on an irrigation canal under the MNREGA scheme.



"Around 60 Chinese soldiers intrude in our territory and stop developmental work. What inference should one draw from this," it said.



"Our loudmouth Defence Minister should clarify what action did our soldiers take against these Chinese troops," the editorial said.



"Warning Pakistan is not enough. The Defence Minister's job is also to protect the borders with China," the Sena said.
Festering antagonism in Samajwadi Party's first family was on public display again today as the warring party satraps Akhilesh Yadav and Shivpal shot barbs at each other at an event called to celebrate SP's silver jubilee, barely two days after putting up a united show.



Uttar Pradesh's ruling party has been witnessing a fierce fight between Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal, state SP chief, despite repeated attempts by party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav to broker peace.



With top leaders of socialist-leaning parties present at the event, a move seen as an attempt by Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav to forge an alliance ahead of the assembly polls hardly a few months away, the two exchanged cutting remarks that exposed the deep divisions within.



Shivpal fired the first salvo when he, in not so subtle manner, hinted at Akhilesh having got the chief minister's chair as he was Mulayam's son. "Some people get things because of fate, some through hard work and some as part of inheritance. But some keep doing hard work through their lives and don't get anything," he said.



Asserting that he had done good work and cooperated with Akhilesh in the last four years, an emotional Shivpal said," I want to tell popular CM Akhilesh that whatever sacrifice you want from me, I will make. I never want to become Chief Minister. You can insult me, sack me as many time (as minister) as you want, but I am prepared to give even my blood for the party."



With swords out at the event literally, Akhilesh hit back when his turn came. Pointing towards Gayatri Prasad Prajapati, a minister in his government who he had sacked over graft allegations but later reinducted on Mulayam's insistence, Akhilesh said," Prajapati has presented me the sword. You give me sword and don't want me to use it." The Chief Minister was apparently hinting at opposition from Shivpal's camp over sacking of ministers facing corruption charges.



He had also sacked Shivpal Yadav from the ministry in a tit-for-tat action after Mulayam expelled cousin Ram Gopal Yadav. Ram Gopal, a Rajya Sabha MP, has been backing the Chief Minister in his fight against his uncle.



Apparently rejecting criticism over his lack of political and administrative experience, Akhilesh said,"If you want to put me to test I am ready for that. Our target is to defeat BJP and BSP in 2017 elections. This UP election will decide future of the country".



With the party he founded facing tough times ahead of the crucial assembly polls a few months from now, Mulayam, who had brought son Akhilesh and brother Shivpal together for the flagging off the Chief Minister's 'Vikas Se Vijay Ki Ore' rath yatra on Thursday, chose to keep silent on the internecine strife.



However, RJD supremo Lalu Prasad, whose youngest daughter is married to Mulayam's grand nephew, made an attempt to paper over the divide in the SP's first family when he declared everything was all right within the party.



"They stand together...there is no rift or fighting. I ask Akhilesh babu to respect his seniors and hoist the flag of victory in Uttar Pradesh once again," he said before making the feuding uncle-nephew duo stand beside him, holding aloft their hands that held the swords.



The sharp exchanges between the two came barely two days after Shivpal extended his "best wishes" to Akhilesh at the event to flag off his rath. Mulayam, who till a few days ago, was seen siding with Shivpal and friend Amar Singh, had surprised many when he flagged off the rath, in a bid to show all was well within the party. Amar Singh, who has been accused by Akhilesh of conspiring against him and the party, was conspicuous by his absence at today's event despite it being a Mulayam's show, an so was SP's Muslim face and minister Azam Khan. Singh and Khan have been at daggers drawn for years now.



The deep set acrimony between the rival camps was on display once again when Javed Abidi, an Akhilesh loyalist, started addressing the gathering, reportedly despite his name not figuring on the list of speakers. As Abidi began praising the Chief Minister's works, calling him the "future of the party", Shivpal was seen pushing him away from the lectern. "Everyone should maintain discipline. Indiscipline will not be tolerated," Shivpal said.



Shivpal had snatched away the microphone from Akhilesh's hands at a party event recently and called him a "liar" when the Chief Minister accused Amar Singh of hatching conspiracy against him.



With his party a divided house, Mulayam sought to address the large Muslim constituency in the state, saying they suffered most injustice. "Muslims have suffered most injustice in the country and they still stand with Samajwadi Party," he said.



A Majority of Muslims have been backing Mulayam since the Babri Masjid demolition, but a section of the party feels that they may shift to Mayawati's BSP due to the infighting in the Samajwadi Party.



Though the veteran socialist warhorse spoke about the sacrifices made by the socialists, ranging from Ram Manohar Lohia, Jayaprakash Narayan, Raj Narain and Karpoori Thakur, he made no protestation of the unity in the party which he was seen doing in the recent weeks.



Leaders of the erstwhile 'Janata Parivar' underscored the need for unity to prevent the "communal" BJP from coming to power and spoke about the need for forging a coalition.



Lalu declared his party will not contest the UP elections to prevent a split of secular votes. "RJD is not going to fight (here) and cut votes. We will put our force behind SP and will hold hundreds of meetings in its favour".





Asking the gathering to unite to stall BJP's march to power, Lalu said, "I stopped Ram rath at Samastipur (of L K Advani) and recently in Bihar polls. Now, with UP elections round the corner, BJP is again remembering Ram. We will stop them." On talks of forging a grand alliance, Lalu said,"How a coalition is formed? It is formed by sitting like this."



JD(U)'s Sharad Yadav hinted at his party's readiness to form a coalition of socialist parties. "Mulayam has the strength. He will unite everyone," he said. JD(U) president and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had expressed his inability to attend today's event on account of 'chhath' festival. RLD's Ajit Singh, whose party wields influence in western UP, also highlighted the need for unity.



"UP elections will not only be deciding the fate of the state but of the entire country. Forging an alliance or a coalition is not an easy job. A lot of fights do happen. This is not the time to think what we will get (by forging a coalition) but what people of the state will get," he said.



Former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, whose party hardly has any stakes in UP or the Hindi heartland, urged the 'Janata Parivar' leaders to "come together and unite" against the "communal" forces.



"Samajwadi Party is a landmark party to face communal forces. Senior leaders Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad, Sharad Yadav.....should come together in the fight against communal forces," Deve Gowda said.



"I strongly believe the secular forces will come together under the leadership of Mulayam. There is some friction within SP. I ask SP to stay united and lead the charge against communal forces," he said.


IRF Educational Trust, promoted by controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, has been put under prior permission category, thus preventing it from receiving foreign funds without getting nod from the central government.





In a gazette notification, the Home Ministry said that on the basis of records available and reports received from intelligence agencies, it found that the IRF Education Trust has violated various provisions of the Foreign Contribution Regulations Act (FCRA) 2010.



"Now, therefore, the central government in exercise of powers conferred by sub-section (3) of section 11 of the FCRA 2010, hereby specifies that the IRF Education Trust shall obtain prior permission of the central government on each occasion before accepting any foreign contribution in accordance with the provisions of section 12 of the Act and rules made thereunder," the notification said.



The move came after different investigations found Naik to be "involved" in utilising funds meant for his NGOs for alleged radicalisation of youths and "inspiring" them into terror activities, official sources said.



Government is also in the process of cancellation of the FCRA registration of Islamic Research Foundation, another NGO promoted Zakir Naik, and a final show cause notice to the organisation has already been issued.



Interestingly, the IRF's registration under the FCRA was renewed in September inadvertently despite multiple probes against Naik, leading to suspension of a Joint Secretary and four other officials in the Home Ministry.



Government is also planning to declare IRF as an unlawful association under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and a nod from the Union Cabinet is awaited for it.



According to a draft note, which is based on the inputs from Maharashtra Police, Naik, who heads the IRF and IRF Educational Trust, has allegedly made many provocative speeches and engaged in terror propaganda.



Maharashtra Police has also registered criminal cases against Naik for his alleged involvement in radicalisation of youths and luring them into terror activities, a source said.



Naik also transferred IRF's foreign funds to Peace TV for making "objectionable" programmes. Most of the programmes, which were made in India, contained alleged hate speeches of Naik, who had reportedly "urged all Muslims to be terrorists" through Peace TV, sources have claimed.



Naik came under the scanner of the security agencies after Bangladeshi newspaper 'Daily Star' reported that one of the perpetrators of the July 1 terror attack in Dhaka, Rohan Imtiaz, ran propaganda on Facebook last year quoting Naik.



The Islamic orator is banned in the UK and Canada for his hate speech aimed against other religions. He is among 16 banned Islamic scholars in Malaysia.



He had been popular in Bangladesh through his Peace TV, although his preachings often allegedly demean other religions and even other Muslim sects. The Mumbai-based preacher is currently abroad and has not returned to India ever since the controversy erupted.
A 21-year-old student of Amity University here allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself at his hostel room, police said today.





G Sai Krishna, a native of Telangana, was a first year student of post graduate diploma in facilities management and had joined the course recently, a senior police officer said.



He allegedly hanged himself last evening. He has left a note written in Telugu, addressed to his parents. The hostel was empty at that time as other students had gone for Diwali holidays, SHO of Sector 39 Police Station, Amarnath Yadav, said.



Krishna was rushed to a hospital, where he was declared brought dead, the SHO said.

A few days back, Krishna was scolded by his father regarding his studies and also for borrowing money from someone and not being able to pay it back, he said.



Krishna's father is an advocate. In his note, Krishna wrote that committing suicide is not easy and told his parents that they have done a lot for him, Yadav said.



The body has been handed over to his family after post-mortem, police said. In August, a student of BA-LLB course in the university, had allegedly committed suicide at his residence in Delhi.



The deceased, who was the son of a joint secretary-level official in the Rajya Sabha Secretariat, was debarred from appearing in the sixth semester exams in May due to "shortage of attendance".
District BJP vice president C H Lokesh on Saturday condemned the decision of the state government to go ahead with Tipu Sultan Jayanti celebration on November 10.





He told reporters that the chief minister is adamant to observe Tipu Jayanti just to safeguard the vote bank and also nurture his political ambitions.



He expressed fear of the state government falling on its own in the coming days and is focused on wooing a particular community. By observing Tipu Jayanti, the chief minister will also be hurting the conscience of Kannadigas as Tipu Sultan is considered anti-Hindu, he claimed.



Ulterior motive

Tipu was communal and always harboured ulterior motives. Yet, the government is going ahead with its plans. Although aware of the historical evidences with regard to Tipus tyrannical rule, Health and Family Welfare Minister K R Ramesh Kumar is silent on the issue and is trying to save his chair, Lokesh criticised.



Reminding that the maiden Tipu Jayanti programme last year had cost the life of VHP functionary Kuttappa in Madikeri, Lokesh said, There are clues that the workers of Popular Front of India (PFI) having links with terrorist organisations, behind similar incidents. The police investigation has already proven the role of PFI in the recent murder of RSS worker Rudresh in Bengaluru. The arrest of PFI Bengaluru unit president Asmin Sharief corroborates the fact, he claimed.



Lokesh demanded the government and the district administration to take suitable measures to prevent untoward incidents if any, during the proposed Dattamala procession in the district.



The state is reeling under worst-ever drought and the government has no development works to its credit that can be called as best. The honest police officers and also farmers are ending their lives, he criticised.




A 34-year-old police constable collapsed and died while participating in a 400 metre run as part of the physical test for recruiting police sub-inspectors (PSIs). The incident took place on the Karnataka State Reserve Police grounds in Madiwala here on Saturday morning.



Suresh Kumar K N, a native of Kitanduru in Kolar district, was working as a constable at the Gauribidanur town police station in Chikkaballapur district. He had applied for the post of police sub-inspector under the in-service recruitment process.



A couple of days ago, Kumar received a communication that he has to appear for the physical endurance test in Bengaluru.



Along with other applicants from Kolar and Chikkaballapur districts, he appeared for the physical test on Saturday. Kumar collapsed as he was running the 400-metre run.



The police personnel alerted doctors who were present on the grounds. They checked his pulse rate, which was low, and shifted him to St Johns hospital where the doctors declared him brought dead.



The Madiwala police registered a case and sent the body for post-mortem.

Initially, it was suspected that Suresh Kumar had died of cardiac arrest. But, the doctors said that he might have even died due to respiratory-related problems.



The post-mortem report is awaited. Several senior police officers visited the grounds and enquired how the constable collapsed. They also visited the hospital and spoke to the doctors, said the police.



Was physically fit

A senior officer from Gauribidanur Town police station said Kumar did not have any health issues.



Suresh Kumar was physically fit and had even earned a name for himself for his fitness activities. He always wanted to be an inspector. As soon as he learnt that the government had notified the in-house recruitment process for the posts of sub-inspectors, he applied and started preparing for the written test. He was a hard worker, the police officer added. Kumar had joined the service in 2008.



He is survived by wife and two children aged four and two years.


The efforts to shift the head office of the prestigious 110-year-old Corporation Bank from Mangaluru to Bengaluru will be strongly opposed by every person in the coastal region, MLA J R Lobo said.





Addressing reporters here on Saturday, he said the banks Board of Directors has already taken a decision in this regard and the cost of shifting has been estimated to be Rs 1,000 crore. Stating that the bank head office is coming up on eight acres of land at Yelahanka in Bengaluru, Lobo said the board has approved McGann Constructions as the executive agency and M/s S S Infrastructure (Hyderabad) as their architect.



Quite interestingly, nowhere in the board decision (dated August 24, 2016), the word shifting has been used.



He said the Corporation Bank is one of the prestigious banks in the country and one among five nationalised banks started in the erstwhile Dakshina Kannada district.

The bank, which has 2,300 branches, 3,040 ATMs and 240 e-lobbies, recorded loss (Rs 506 crore in 2015-16) for the first time in its history of 110 years. At a time when the bank has registered Rs 506 crore loss, what is purpose of shifting the bank at an estimated cost of Rs 1,000 crore? he said and urged the bank authorities to explain the purpose of their move as it is the public money which they are using.



Responses

Kanara Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) President Jeevan Saldanha said the bank was considered as our bank by many people in the coastal region.

With the shifting of the head office, a large number of people would lose their jobs, he said and questioned the purpose of shifting the bank to already congested city, when the government is trying to promote tier-II cities.



Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Associations of India (CREDAI) district president D B Mehta said the move would hit the real estate very hard as a number of employees have either purchased apartments or staying in flats.



Mayor Harinath said efforts would be made to stop shifting of the banks head office by all parties. The Union Ministry of Commerce as well as RBI authorities would be approached through MPs Oscar Fernandes, M Veerappa Moily and Union Law Minister D V Sadananda Gowda.



Hotel Owners Association President Kudpi Jagadish Shenoy said that by the time the coastal region people realised that Canara Bank and Vijaya Bank are shifting, it was too late. Though Syndicate Bank head office is in the coastal region, the real head

office is in Bengaluru, Shenoy added.



With Corporation Bank shifting its head office, the Mangalureans would lose the only remaining nationalised bank in its place of birth, he regretted.




While most people had come to the Janasamparka Sabhe of Food and Civil Supplies Minister U T Khader on Saturday with grievances, a woman came up with a suggestion for the government to ensure education for all.



Khader, who represents Mangaluru constituency (formerly Ullal) in the Legislative Assembly, had organised the meeting of villages under B hobli of his constituency, to hear and redress grievances of the people, at Barkathulla Convention Centre, Derlakatte, on the outskirts of the city.



Fathima, a 53-year-old woman from Ambedkar Nagar, Kanakur in Dakshina Kannada, presented a copy of the certificate issued for successfully practising Karavali Kalike (learning), part-I (Tulu) as part of the Sampoorna Saksharatha Andolana (total literacy campaign), Dakshina Kannada Zilla Parishat (now Zilla Panchayat) in 1990-91. Khader, who glanced at the certificate, sought the attention of the gathering and informed them about the generosity of the woman. Fathima, who had become a literate through the literacy campaign, wanted the government to conduct similar classes for the benefit of the people.



Fathima told DH, I was born and raised in a poor family, my parents could not afford to send me to school. I could, however, learn to read and write Tulu and Kannada after joining the classes conducted by Chandraiah Meshtru (teacher) at Derlakatte School as part of the campaign. We were around 25 women then, and were given two Tulu books and one Kannada, besides free stationery materials.



Interestingly, Fathima was a 28-year-old married woman, when she developed a zeal to become literate. She had to spend two hours every day, from 4.30 pm, to learn the nuances of the languages, she adds.



Fathima quickly recalls the Tulu and Kannada poems she learnt during her evening class, besides lines like Mahatma Gandhiji Kappu Janara Naduve Upanyasa Maadidaru (Mahatma Gandhi delivered a lecture among blacks), Bhoota Kolada Duggappana Kombu... (The headgear of Duggappa in Bhoota Kola). She also remembers one of her best pals name in the class as Girija.



She even learnt to sign her name, which she recalls with a tinge of pride.

Ironically, while Fathima became literate, her son Ibrahim did not show interest in studies. As a result, he became a professional painter, while Fathima rolls beedis, which she finds not much rewarding nowadays, owing to the dwindling market for tobacco products.


The All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board (AIMWPLB) on Saturday opposed triple talaq saying it made the lives of Muslim women hell.



It sought enactment of a Muslim marriage law in accordance with the Shariat (Islamic law).



Speaking to reporters here, AIMWPLB chairperson Shaista Amber called for enactment of laws that made divorces tougher while making marriages easier.



We find instances of triple talaq every now and then...it has made the lives of Muslim women hell...we must find a way to deal with it, Shaista said. She also said that the Muslim women often hesitated in getting cases of violence against them registered with the authorities as they feared that the men would divorce them if they did so.



She also demanded a law to prevent the Muslim men from getting married more than once.



Shaista said that triple talaq (giving divorce by uttering the word talaq thrice in one go) should not be allowed.



A Muslim marriage act should be passed by Parliament, she said.



She also said that the darul kaza (Shariat court) should include a woman in office so that the women victims could narrate to them their plight without any hesitation.

Shaista also demanded establishment of madrasas (Islamic seminary) exclusively for Muslim women so that they could clearly know their rights in the light of the Shariat. She, however, opposed the move for a Uniform Civil Code.



The All India Muslim Personal Law Board has strongly opposed any move to tamper with the personal laws concerning the Muslims. It has launched a signature campaign to garner support for its stand and apprise the Centre about the feelings of the Muslims in the country on the issue.
India and China on Friday noted growing convergence of views on terror, notwithstanding differences between the two over imposing United Nations sanctions on terrorists based in Pakistan.



A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modis National Security Advisor Ajit Doval met Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi in Hyderabad, New Delhi said that the meeting noted that the forthcoming high-level engagement in counter-terrorism field was yet another manifestation of growing convergence of views of two countries on this pressing challenge facing international community.



New Delhi apparently referred to the proposed meeting between Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Meng Jianzhu, who heads the Central Public Security Comprehensive Management Commission in China. The meeting is likely to take place in New Delhi soon and intended to explore ways to step up bilateral counterterrorism cooperation.



Doval and Yang agreed that their consultations during which they exchanged views on various important and pressing bilateral issues helped enhance mutual understanding and will contribute to greater mutual trust, the Ministry of External Affairs said in a press release. They agreed to continue such consultations in future.



They discussed several issues that troubled relations between New Delhi and Beijing in the recent months, including Chinas policy of blocking Indias attempts to get United Nations impose sanctions on terrorist leaders based in Pakistan.



Doval and Yang are at present Special Representatives of India and China for negotiations on boundary dispute and strategic consultations.




Food products major MTR Foods, owned by Norwegian company Orkla, plans to enter the African market in a bid to expand its geographical presence.





Talking to DH, MTR Foods Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Sharma said, During the annual Gulf Food fair which happens every February in Dubai, we get lots of enquiries from Africans. Once we get some suitable distributors, MTR will herald its presence in the region, and later solidify it with a larger presence and investment.



When asked why Africa, Sharma said, It is a developing continent and the next big market after India. I firmly believe that after India and China, Africa will be the next big untapped economy of the world. The added advantage is that Africa has always attracted a lot of migrant Indians.



For us, we have dominantly built our name on migrant Indians. Besides Kenya and South Africa, other African countries do have a fair number of Indians so thats where therell be growing business opportunities, Sharma said.



Currently, the food major exports to 31 countries which contribute to 10% revenues of its business. Close to 40% of our export business comes out of the US; the next is Australia, New Zealand, Canada and then the Middle East. The Middle East has become very big for us where we are exporting badam drink. If you see new cans, we have an Arabic writing on it. We are still developing Europe, Sharma said.



Orkla acquired MTR Foods in 2007, among the first large foreign investments in the Indian food business. The company has over 1,100 employees.



For MTR Foods, Karnataka is the biggest market which contributes about 45-46% of the total business, followed by Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and then the rest of the country. MTR Foods is expecting revenues of Rs 800 crore for this financial year, compared with Rs 700 crore last year.


BSH Home Appliances has set itself on a robust growth course in India, buoyed by demand for market-specific products, banking on a strong network expansion strategy.





Bosch company BSH Home Appliances has been growing at 50% year-on-year in the last two years in India, way above the market growth of 10%.



Talking to DH, BSH Home Appliances Manufacturing Managing Director Gunjan Srivastava said, We are almost six-years-old in India. Our ambition is to become leader in India, just as we are in Europe. We have two really strong German brands present in India  Siemens and Bosch, and people appreciate their engineering quality. We want to match that to a very strong understanding of the Indian consumer, and create products for India, leveraging the design and engineering capabilities that we have.



In order to achieve its share of the market, the company is eyeing a wider product portfolio. While we still have the two brands, we have a differentiated brand strategy, and sell both brands products in India, he said. But Bosch, being a mass-premium brand, is the one to see expansion.



BSH retails front-load washing machines, and would be expanding that range. In terms of its cooling/refrigerator range, the company is present in higher-end capacities today. We would be expanding our presence in the lower-end as well, in the coming years. We did launch something in the range of 290-350 litres this year, which is a product designed for Indian conditions, Srivastava said.



Under cooking, BSH sells built-in appliances in India, which is also getting expanded. Besides, it has introduced a few small appliances (likely to include vacuum cleaner, sandwich-maker, toaster, mixer-grinder, juicer-blenders, etc), while a significant set of products are under preparation for the India market, and will be launched in the coming months. It is also keen on selling dishwashers.



In terms of sales network, it plans to reach about 300 cities, from the current 200. We are present in more than 1,500 stores today. Our strategy is to reach out to consumers in terms of the way our products can be experienced, through exclusive brand stores. We have almost 70 brand stores today, and our intention is to take it to 200 in the next two to three years, Srivastava said.


A Hizb-ul-Mujahideen militant was killed, while a soldier was injured in an encounter in south Kashmirs Shopian district on Saturday.





Sources said the gunfight broke out after security forces cordoned off the Drobjan area in Shopian, 58 km from here, early morning following information about the presence of a group of militants there.



As security forces moved towards the target house, the trapped militants fired on the search party which was retaliated. In the gun battle, one militant was killed while two to three of his accomplices managed to escape from the encounter site, they said and added a soldier was also injured in the encounter.



The police identified the slain militant as Waseem Khanday, who had joined Hizbul over a month ago after snatching a rifle from the residence of a Communist party leader.



Khanday was a resident of Zarkan Kellar village of Shopian and the weapon he had snatched from the police last month was recovered from his possession, a police official said.



He said this was the first encounter in south Kashmir after the killing of Hizbul commander Burhan Wani on July 8.



As south Kashmir became the epicentre of street protests after July 8, security forces had to suspend anti-militancy operations. However, as the situation improved, the security forces have again launched a manhunt to neutralise the ultras, the official revealed.



Several local youths in south Kashmir have gone missing since July 9 and are believed to have joined Hizbul.



Four districts in particular  Pulwama, Kulgam, Shopian and Anantnagare believed to have accounted for the disappearance of more than 100 youths in the last four months, sources said.



These youths have mainly joined Hizbul militant group with a few attracted to Lashker-e-Taiba, they said.



Out of the 90 youths who joined the militant groups in 2015, 80% belonged to south Kashmir.



A bastion of the ruling PDP that runs the government in alliance with the BJP, south Kashmir has become a breeding ground for militancy with many youths joining their ranks or becoming their sympathisers.
The chances of a Bihar-like Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) against the BJP in Uttar Pradesh appeared dim as members of the former Janata Parivaar, who attended the Samajwadi Partys (SP) silver jubilee function here on Saturday, almost rejected such a possibility.





While the Congress, a partner in the Bihar coalition, kept away from the SP function, JD (U) leader Sharad Yadav and RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav made it clear that there were no talks on the grand alliance.



SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav also made no mention of the Mahagathbandhan in his speech during the programme.



Lalu Yadav said the situation in Uttar Pradesh was different as the SP was the biggest party in the state. He indicated that his party would not contest Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls as it did not want division of secular votes.



Sharad Yadav said any decision on the issue of grand alliance in Uttar Pradesh would be taken only by Mulayam.



Former prime minister H D Deve Gowda heaped praise on Mulayam and said the latter had the capability to bring everyone on one platform. RLD chief Ajit Singh, however, batted for an alliance in Uttar Pradesh and said it was necessary to check communal forces. Mulayam, however, chose to keep mum on the issue and made no mention of it in his speech.



Uttar Pradesh Congress leaders, including the state unit president Raj Babbar, had already dismissed talks of a grand alliance in the state.



Poll strategist Prashant Kishore had a meeting with Mulayam here on Friday triggering speculations about such an alliance. Kishore had also met Mulayam in Delhi a few days back and reportedly discussed the possibility of an alliance between the Congress and the SP. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav was said to be opposed to any kind of alliance in the Assembly polls and wanted his party to go it alone.


A 26-year-old woman, who is said to have conned at least 150 people in various parts of the country and has had several run-ins with the police, is now cooling her heels behind bars for cheating a city advocate.





Kushbu Sharma, a native of Jaipur in Rajasthan and a school dropout, used to pose as a Supreme Court lawyer, an IAS officer, CEO of a well-known software firm, a top celebrity and at times as daughter of a politician to cheat her victims.



On Friday, the Pulakeshi Nagar police arrested her for cheating advocate Sanketh Yenagi. Kushbu met Sanketh and introduced herself as a lawyer practising in the Supreme Court and expressed her wish to join his firm, the police said. After learning that Sanketh was looking for a bigger office space, Kushbu offered to help him get an office on rent in UB City.



She had also told Sanketh that her father was a retired IAS officer and owned a share in UB City. Sanketh entered into an agreement with her and fixed the rent based on the percentage of profit he would earn from his work. On October 28, they completed the formalities and Sanketh paid her Rs 1.35 lakh, said the police.



A few days ago, Sanketh went to meet his associate in the court and asked Kushbu who accompanied him to wait in his car. When he returned after sometime, he found her missing with his coat which had a wallet containing Rs 25,000, an iPhone and a suitcase with documents. He tried calling her but her mobile was switched off. He went home and while surfing the internet, he checked on her and discovered that she was a career con woman.





He later lodged a complaint and informed the police about her past record.

Meanwhile, the police who were tracking her mobile phone found that she was travelling near Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh. But they lost the signal as she switched off the mobile phone. While Sanketh received a call from Kushbu from another phone number, she told him she wanted more money to refurbish the office and asked him to meet her. She had not realised that Sanketh by now knew her past, a senior police officer said.



Sanketh asked her to meet him near his office in Pulakeshinagar.

On Friday evening, when she came to meet him, plainclothes men arrested her. She kicked up a ruckus claiming that she was from a well-known family and that they would land in the soup if they troubled her, added the officer.



The police have recovered Rs 1.2 lakh from her.



Kushbu claimed that she lost her right hand in a train accident.



She was residing in a paying guest accommodation in Indiranagar and had told the PG owner she was a lawyer.



She had obtained a fake degree certificate and spoke fluent English.

She used her attractive personality to cheat people in Mumbai, Pune, Rajasthan and other places, police said.



Recently, she was arrested by the Mumbai Police for cheating a man.



She was arrested by several state police, but she came out on bail and continued cheating people, said the police.




With Corporation Bank all set to move its major operations from their head office in Mangaluru to Bengaluru, the coastal city is close to losing its status as the cradle of banking.



Though the bank may retain Mangaluru as its headquarters, it would be by name only, like Manipal-based Syndicate Bank that moved bulk of its operations to Bengaluru. Its board of directors agreed to the conceptualisation and layout plans at its 8-acre land at Yelahanka in Bengaluru. It would have every facility, including the staff training college.



The approved facilities include administrative units and other offices, executive block, board room with all infrastructural facilities, Corp Bank training academy (in about three acres), IT units such as FTS, web centre / financial inclusion division, core centre, merchandize acquisition centre, e-lobby and currency chest (in about two acres) and accommodation for the staff. While Mecon Limited, Ranchi, has been chosen as the executing agency, it has appointed SS Infrastructure Development Consultants Pvt Ltd (Hyderabad) as the architect consultant for development of bank properties.



The seven-storey administrative building will have seating capacity of 850, besides cabins for chairman and officials. The facility will also have a 700-seater multi-purpose hall, three 100-seater meeting halls, 25-seater meeting rooms in each floor, six-seater discussion rooms in each floor.



While the ground floor in the facility will have security division, the first floor will have financial management and treasury, second will house personnel management/marketing and third credit division. inspection and audit and IT will occupy floors four and five.



The move has caused resentment among public figures in the city. Addressing a press conference on Saturday, MLA J R Lobo questioned the boards wisdom in approving the Rs 1,000 crore transfer plan at a time when the bank registered Rs 506 crore loss in 2015-16 for the first time in its 110 year history. Mangaluru Mayor Harinath said efforts will be made by leaders across party lines to stop the process of shifting the bank to Bengaluru. The Commerce Ministry and the RBI will be approached through MPs Oscar Fernandes, Veerappa Moily and Union minister D V Sadananda Gowda. 
The government has approved a proposal for hiring services of retired judges in the high courts in view of a large number of vacancies and rising pendency.





The proposal mooted in the joint meeting of the chief ministers and chief justices in April was approved after a gap of nearly six months, sources said.



It has been resolved that subject to integrity, suitability and performance of a person who has held the office as a judge of the high court, the provisions of Article 224 A can be invoked to deal with the extraordinary situation involving the large pendency of civil and criminal cases in the high courts..., a source said.



According to the provision, the chief justice of a high court, with the previous consent of the President (Centre), can request any person who has held the office of a judge of that court or any other high court to sit and act as a judge of the high court for that state.



The law ministry has given green signal to the minutes after the issue was brought to the notice of Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.



According to the minutes of the meeting, appointment of retired judges in high courts can also help achieve the goal five plus zero pendency. Five plus zero is an initiative to ensure that cases pending for more than five years are taken up on priority basis and pendency of such cases is brought down to zero level.



As per the resolution, the state governments would also be urged to increase the cadre strength of district judiciary at the rate of 10% per annum.



As on June 30, while the total sanctioned strength was 21,303, the subordinate courts were functioning with 16,192 judicial officers  a shortage of 5,111. The 24 high courts face a shortage of nearly 450 judges.


The Karnataka Knowledge Commission (KKC) has recommended that the government adopt a multi-lingual language policy with mother tongue or Kannada as the medium of instruction in state-run and private schools for classes 1 to 4.





The Commission has recommended that students should be allowed to decide whether to continue with the same medium of instruction or switch over to English medium at the class 5.



English should be a compulsory subject from class 1 and a third language could be introduced from class 5 onwards.



The state language policy adopted in 1994 had made it mandatory that Kannada should be the medium of instruction for classes 1 to 7 in all schools. The policy has been struck down by the Supreme Court. The state is yet to come out with a new policy.



The recommendation on medium of instruction is a part of the draft Karnataka State Education Policy prepared by the KKC for the consideration of the government. It was submitted to the government on Saturday. The document which has over 100 recommendations in the sectors of school and university education besides governance was handed over by KKC Chairman and space scientist K Kasturirangan to Primary and Secondary Minister Tanveer Sait and Higher Education Minister Basavaraj Rayareddy in Bengaluru.



Education for all

Briefing reporters, Kasturirangan said the KKC has recommended that the government should take steps to ensure 12 years of uniformised and high-quality, standardised education for every child.



No child must be deprived of quality education because of birth or geographical reasons. For the girl child, the government should ensure 12+3 years of guaranteed education.



Single-discipline varsities

The panel has also suggested phasing out of single-discipline universities. The state has a host of single-discipline universities including one for technical education, medical sciences, agriculture, horticulture, veterinary sciences, Sanskrit among others.



Universities must be allowed to offer education in all disciplines, including engineering, medicine, law, architecture, skill development, Kasturirangan said.

The KKC has recommended that at least 1% of teachers should be trained in top institutions abroad every year.



Rayareddy and Sait said the government will study the draft policy of the KKC and decide on its implementation by placing it before state Cabinet within the next three months.



The recommendations of KKC are not binding on the government. Several recommendations made by the KKC earlier have not been implemented.



Rs 107 cr for economics school

The state government has earmarked Rs 107 crore for the proposed school of economics in Bengaluru, Higher Education Minister Basavaraj Rayareddy said.

Addressing a press conference here on Saturday, Rayareddy said the school of economics will be named after the architect of Indian Constitution B R Ambedkar and will come up on the Bengaluru Universitys Jnana Bharathi campus. We have identified a 50-acre plot for the school right opposite to the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), the minister said.

A committee headed by former chief secretary S V Ranganath will work out the modalities and framework for the institute, which will be modelled on the prestigious London School of Economics, he said. We will make efforts to open the school from the next academic year, he said.





Recommendations

*Adopt uniform and standardised education system which applies to both government and private schools across the state

*State schools should adopt CBSEs curriculum from classes 1 to 10 and at the same time emphasis should be on state topics in history, culture, geography among

others.

*There should be no detention of any child at the school level from classes 1 to 10.

*All students must have access to any state university of their choice in Karnataka.

*Expert panel be constituted to advise the government on educational matters.




Revenue Minister Kagodu Thimmappa on Saturday said the interministerial central team that visited drought-hit districts had taken a sympathetic view of the plight of farmers in the state.





Speaking to reporters after a debriefing session held for the team in Bengaluru, Kagodu said the 10-member panel had made an assessment of the ground realities with regard to the drought situation in the state by touring 16 districts during the last three days.



Team leader Neeraja Adidam, joint secretary, Union Agriculture department, said the team will submit its report along with recommendations to the Centre within the next 15 days. Agriculture Minister Krishna Byre Gowda said that the government had sought compensation of Rs 3,375 crore for drought-related crop losses and Rs 386 crore for flood-related crop losses from the Centre.



While the agriculture and horticulture losses (drought) had been pegged at Rs 12,145 crore, the state is said to have incurred crop losses worth Rs 2,485 crore owing to floods.



In its report to the Centre, the state had earlier mentioned that 110 taluks had been declared drought hit, but after further assessment, the number of taluks affected by drought had gone up to 139 taluks, he added.



Gowda, after attending the Cabinet sub-committee meeting on drought, said that priority was being given to supply drinking water and fodder for livestock. Presently, 400 villages were being supplied drinking water through tankers and the government had set aside Rs 314 crore for this purpose.



Expecting the drought conditions to worsen in the coming days, the government was taking all precautionary measures, he said.



Earlier, a delegation of BJP leaders led by Jagadish Shettar met the team and submitted a memorandum seeking a special package to Karnataka to mitigate the drought situation.


The Vishwa Hindu Parishat (VHP) on Saturday said that it would ensure that Tipu Jayanti celebrations are not observed by the government on November 10.





Addressing the media in Bengaluru, VHP Joint National Secretary Surendra Kumar Jain said that his organisation would go to any extent to ensure that the government does not celebrate the Jayanti. Even if the event is held in the Vidhana Soudha, we will stop it, he added.



Stating that the VHP would be staging statewide agitations, Jain said that the organisation could not guarantee peaceful protests. He said that it was the governments responsibility to ensure peace. If untoward incidents occur during our protests, then the onus is on the government. We cannot be held responsible for it. It is the government, which is disturbing peace by holding this event, he said.



Despite historical accounts, public opposition and last years violence, the government has been adamant on hosting the Jayanti. The governments only agenda is to appease the Muslim community, he added.



Attacking Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, Jain said that the Congress government would go to any extent to indulge in vote bank politics, even if it threatened to disrupt peace and harmony. How many more people should die for Siddaramaiah to establish Tipu Sultan as the role model of Karnataka? he said.


His life was about building bridges long before a bridge was named after him.

Friends, family and veterans gathered Friday morning in Upper Allen Township to salute the legacy of Marine Cpl. Jonathan Dean Faircloth.

They came together to witness the unveiling of a sign designating the span on U.S. Rt. 15 over state Rt. 114 a memorial bridge in honor of Faircloth, who died March 29, 2011.

A 2006 Mechanicsburg Area High School graduate, Faircloth was killed in a helicopter crash off the coast of Hawaii. The 22-year-old aerial observer is survived by his wife Alicia, his parents Dean and Beverly Faircloth, and two siblings.

State Rep. Sheryl Delozier hosted the dedication ceremony. She authored the legislation to officially name the bridge that was signed into law earlier this year.

Dean Faircloth first approached Delozier over a year ago with a request to memorialize his son. He had seen how other bridges and roads were being named for young people.

He grew up around here, Faircloth said of Jonathan. I didnt want him to be forgotten. We are very appreciative of the state to take time out of their schedule to honor our son for his sacrifice.

Jonathan was raised in the township and attended Mechanicsburg area schools. His family routinely uses routes 15 and 114 to get around.

Celebration of life

The gathering Friday was as much a celebration of life as it was a ceremony to rename a bridge. Guest speakers remembered a young man with a knack for reaching out to make a connection.

When he was a little baby, he was extremely strong-willed, Beverly Faircloth said of her youngest son. His stubbornness was so intense she sought expert advice on child-rearing.

I know now why he was strong, she told the audience Friday. The Lord knew there was a purpose in his life. There was a calling.

Dean Faircloth remembered a young boy so rugged in disposition he flat-out refused to cry when he got a pat on the behind for being bad. And yet his son had the moral courage to declare his faith in God at a young age, which was a source of inspiration and encouragement for his family.

We have a long tradition, Dean Faircloth said. We trust God in all things.

As strong as his will was, there was great compassion in his heart, Beverly Faircloth added. Jonathan was always looking out for the underdog.  Anybody who was down and out.

This tendency drove her son to want to reach out and help fellow students in trouble, even if it meant that Jonathan himself would get into trouble for helping.

As high school principal, I knew Jonathan a little differently, David Harris said. I was relatively new and felt somehow that he was testing me out to see if I could handle it. There was a confidence in him  a glimmer in the eye.

Jonathan Faircloth knew he wanted to be a Marine long before his senior year at Mechanicsburg Area Senior High School. Father and son talked it over and the family rallied behind the choice and fully supported his decision.

Jonathan knew the costs. ... He measured those costs, Dean Faircloth said.

Support

The Marines are fantastic, the mother added. They did not just come and snatch our boy away. They came to our home and talked to us. They spent hours with us preparing us for the possibilities  for what could happen. The family knew going on the risks of service.

But with the risks came rewards that carry on to this day. Jonathan loved his Marine Corps brothers and sisters, Dean Faircloth said. They were his family away from family. It was very touching to know they felt the same way about him. He brought to us an extended family.

It has often been said Marine Corps basic training breaks down the person before building that person back up. Beverly Faircloth saw it happen in her son. He went from being a boy seeking an identity to a man confident in a direction.

Faircloth joined the Marines in 2006 and deployed to Iraq in 2008 and Afghanistan in 2010. He earned four Air Medals, two Navy-Marine Corps Achievement Medals, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the National Defense Service Medal and the two campaign medals for his combat deployments overseas.

But there was something else that Jonathan Faircloth brought to the service  a knack for building up the morale of his brother Marines.

When they were over in the Middle East, he was the one who brought the joy and laughter and helped them to not focus on the things that were going on at the time, Beverly Faircloth said in an interview prior to the dedication ceremony.

Marine Lt. Col. Haynesly Blake spoke on behalf of the Corps. He is director of Amphibious and Expeditionary Operations at the Naval Support Activity in Hampden Township.

As a combat Marine deployed overseas, Jonathan Faircloth knew danger, Blake said. He also knew risk, but every day he woke up, brushed aside those worries, donned his Marine uniform and served his country.

Though Blake never knew Faircloth, he had a talk with Maj. Clinton J. Collins, the helicopter pilot and Jonathans commanding officer at the time of the March 2011 crash. Collins was critically injured in the accident.

Collins described Faircloth as a man with vibrant energy and relentless dedication who went about everything with a steadfast determination to accomplish the mission.

Cpl. Faircloth was a man of flesh and blood, but his soul was made of stone and steel  much like the structure that bears his name, Blake told the audience.

Army veteran Mike Stewart of Upper Allen Township attended the ceremony Friday to support a fellow veteran.

I did not know the Marine personally, but Im always excited to see veterans being recognized for their duties, said Stewart who has family in Dillsburg. I travel that bridge quietly frequently. I will be thinking of the young corporal every time I go across it.
Delaware boy gets year of free fries for McDonald's Halloween costume

The Halloween costume of Blake Mompher, 9, who has spina bifida, caught the attention of McDonald's.
For six weeks the Hampden Township Citizens Police Academy showed students some of the ins and outs of being an officer.

From crash reconstruction and finger printing to use of force and crime scene investigation, the class looked at the polices role in the criminal justice.

In week seven, however, the focus shifted to what happens after a suspect is arrested with a field trip to the Cumberland County Courthouse.

How does the system play out from arrest to disposition?

A typical case begins with a preliminary arraignment and preliminary hearing at a magisterial district judges office, according to Cumberland County First Assistant District Attorney Jaime Keating.

Keating explained that a preliminary hearing is when the magisterial district judge decides that there is enough evidence to send a case to the Court of Common Pleas in Carlisle.

Once a case is sent to the Common Pleas level, the defendant generally undergoes a formal arraignment followed by a pretrial conference and then a trial, if the case is not disposed of with a plea arrangement before.

The vast majority of cases end in some form of plea arrangement, according to Keating.

During the process, the victim receives assistance from the county that helps guide the victim through the court process.

I am not a counselor, James Snavely, a Cumberland County victim advocate, said. I dont counsel people one on one. I dont meet with them and talk about their problems. I meet with them to talk about how the criminal justice system is going to affect them.

Snavely said his job generally begins by meeting with the victim at the preliminary hearing and he will remain in contact with that victim through the court process that can take several years from arrest to trial.

Recently, this year, I became a victim, Chief Steven Junkin said. I was burglarized twice. ... Its the stuff that as an investigator and a cop that I knew was going on, but somewhat took for granted. As a victim, I really appreciated it. It makes you feel that youre not just hanging out there.
British Prime Minister Theresa May has been urged to calm the backlash against the high court ruling on the process of leaving the European Union. The prime minister has been asked by some senior MPs to "make clear" that the independence of the judiciary is a part of British democracy. Conservative MP Dominic Grieve said the criticisms over the high court judges' decision were "horrifying" and reminded him of "Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe". On Thursday, the court ruled Parliament should vote on triggering Article 50. Three judges found that the government could not start the formal process - the triggering of Article 50 - of leaving the EU by using the royal prerogative alone, and would need the backing of parliament. That would require publishing legislation to be debated by the Commons and the Lords. Labour said the decision underlined the need for May to spell out her plans for Brexit to Parliament "without delay". Leader Jeremy Corbyn is expected say in a speech to trade unionists and activists later that there needs to be more "transparency" around the UK's withdrawal from the EU. The High Court judges behind the decision have been heavily criticised by some Conservative MPs and parts of the media. The Daily Mail claimed they were "Enemies of the people" and the Daily Express said the ruling had marked "the day democracy died". Former attorney general Dominic Grieve said he was "horrified" at the criticism of the high court ruling. Grieve told the BBC, "I was horrified at the newspaper coverage, which reminded me of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe this morning. "The judges did exactly what was asked of them. They highlighted that our constitution does not allow you to overturn statute law by decree, which is so well established in this country." Daily Mail columnist Stephen Glover defended the newspaper's stance, saying he did not believe the judges would "feel frightened or worried" about the criticism. He said, "You know, they've made a really decisive intervention in the political process, and they must expect some comeback - and that's what they got." But Bob Neill, the Conservative chairman of the justice select committee, said the criticisms of the high court ruling by some politicians were "utterly disgraceful". He told The Times newspaper, "All ministers from the prime minister down must now make clear that the independence of the judiciary is fundamental to our democracy. You have to respect that even if you think they have got a decision wrong. "Some members of parliament do not appear to understand that this judgement had nothing do with subverting the will of the people." Chantal Doerries, who chairs the Bar Council, said attacks on the integrity of the judges could lead to the "undermining of the respect of judgements". She added, "The reason we're able to live in a civilised manner together, despite individual differences, personal differences, business disputes, is because of the justice system that we have and our respect for it." Shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon said the government must intervene to curb the level of criticism. He added, "The first duty of the Lord Chancellor, Liz Truss, is to protect the independence of the judiciary, and to be frank. Her silence on this is embarrassing, and she's letting down the British judiciary and the British legal system. "Giving judges a roasting isn't part and parcel of any healthy democracy." Meanwhile, Gina Miller, the investment manager and philanthropist who led the legal campaign, has faced a torrent of online abuse, including racist comments and rape and death threats. One troll on Facebook said they hoped she would be killed, and others wrote that the Guyana-born woman who lives in London should be deported for being a "traitor to the UK". On Friday, Conservative MP Stephen Phillips quit his post over "irreconcilable policy differences" with the government. The pro-Brexit campaigner, who has held the Lincolnshire seat of Sleaford and North Hykeham since 2010, accused ministers of ignoring parliament since the Brexit vote. He said he was "unable properly to represent the people who elected me". The government is appealing against Thursday's ruling on triggering Brexit talks to the Supreme Court, with a hearing expected in early-December. Theresa May has said she is "confident" that the government will win its appeal and she remained committed to triggering Article 50 by March 2017.








Not against India's NSG entry, working together for it: China

China on Friday sought to dispel the view that it was not against India's entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

''The notion that China is against India's entry into NSG is not right. India and China are working together in this regard,'' consul-general of China in Kolkata, Zhanwu Ma, said.

This came on the day when India's National Security Advisor Ajit Doval met his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, in Hyderabad

''Entry of any country into the Nuclear Suppliers Group needs certain procedures which are to be followed. It is not that simple,'' Zhanwu told reporters here.

Asked about China's stand on India-Pakistan relations, he said his country was neutral.

''China is very friendly towards India. Some people do not seem to believe so. Of course, we have differences. But the shared interests outweigh the differences,'' the Chinese consul-general said, adding that business relations between the two countries were mutually beneficial.

''India and Pakistan should settle their impasse via negotiations only,'' he added.

National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Friday met his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi in Hyderabad to discuss measures to improve bilateral ties strained by differences over a host of issues, including Beijing blocking India's NSG bid and a UN ban on JeM chief Masood Azhar.

Doval and Yang who are the designated Special Representatives of the India-China boundary talks, have also periodically meet to discuss the whole gamut of the Sino-Indian relations.

Besides blocking India's admission into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), China had put a second technical hold on India's move to bring about a UN ban on Jaish-e-Mohmmed chief Azhar. Also India has been protesting the $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which is being laid through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

While India is concerned over the Pakistan factor creeping into India-China relations making the bilateral ties more complex, China too is airing its apprehensions over the movement to boycott Chinese goods in India (See: Retailers scared to sell Chinese goods, stocks pile up) as well the visit of US Ambassador to New Delhi, Richard Verma, to Arunachal Pradesh, which it considers as Southern Tibet and India's permission to the Dalai Lama to visit the area. Chinese officials say Beijing is apprehensive about India moving closer to US and Japan broadening its strategic and defence ties with both the countries.
Small houses, alcoves and shelters: tiny places where the only big thing is the ambition. Temporary and multifunctional urban rooms, dreamy children refuges, mountain huts, and so on. When walls shrink, architects and designers take the challenge seriously, offering spaces that are more cozy and thrilling each time. Here a selection of ten projects that make a virtue of necessity.



 The Norvegian studio KOKO architects designed Skapet Mountain Lodges in Soddatjrn, featuring contemporary, easy to maintain and use ready-made factory modules.



 Introduced over ten years ago in Korea, the glamping concept fuses nature, ecological values, comfort and glamourous design. ArchiWorkshop reinterprets the formula in the pinewoods near Seoul.



 PHTAA studio designed a tiny tailor shop downtown Bangkok inspired by weaving textures, full of strategic openings to catch the attention of the passersby.



 The temporary meeting point, designed by Eriksen Skajaa Architects together with a group of local youths is the first of a series of temporary installations in Ski, Norway.



 Following their passion for kids, Mode:lina Architekci designed a cafe entirely dedicated to children and their parents, with hidden niches and strong acustic panels.



 In the London zone of Old Street, Shoreditch, Asif Khan has created what he, translating directly from the Japanese shinrin yoku, calls forest bathing.



 Architect Silvia Allori renewed a Seventies apartment in Florence, playing with rythms created by white volumes, niches and steps filled with decoration elements.



 Position Collective designed a tiny apartment in Budapest, aiming to create a light and highly customizable space, with maximum comfort for a short stay.



 Hidden in a forest near Bergen, Tubakuba is a wooden pavilion, a room with a view built by Bergen School of Architecture students lead by Espen Folger.



 OFIS architects and AKT II with thirteen students faced the challenges of designing an innovative yet practical shelter to meet the needs of the extreme alpine climate, also investigating the symbolic aspect of the bivouac.
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Apparently being a bad boy at Dickinson College did not qualify as an election year scandal for Democrat James Buchanan.

In the week before the Nov. 4 election, local newspapers did not mention how the 1856 candidate for president and eventual winner had been expelled from the Carlisle institution for disorderly conduct.

But the run for office was far removed from his days of attending Dickinson out of an obligation to family with the goal of graduating with honors. The hope was for James to take an apprenticeship at a law office before going into real estate to support his family near Mercersburg.

A young boy of 16, Buchanan had no problem keeping up with his studies, but was teased by classmates for being too stuffy. Determined to prove his worth, he succumbed to peer pressure by drinking to excess and smoking cigars in open defiance of college regulations.

Worst of all, Buchanan was arrogant to his professors, so he was expelled in fall 1808, even though he had ended his first year with an excellent academic record. It took the intervention of John King, president of the college board of trustees, to readmit the future commander-in chief and that was only if Buchanan made the pledge to behave himself.

It probably helped that King just happened to be the Buchanan family pastor who had urged the parents to enroll James in Dickinson in part to help the college revive its sagging enrollment.

A dime a day

Fast forward 47 years and Buchanan was tested in the same crucible of public opinion as every candidate for U.S. president. He had experience as a lawmaker in the Pennsylvania General Assembly, U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and served as prime minister to Russia under the Jackson administration.

While today there are allegations of media bias, the partisanship was blatantly obvious in the rival newspapers that served Carlisle during the 1856 campaign. The Carlisle American lobbied readers to vote against Buchanan and in support of a coalition ticket of Republican candidate John Fremont and Know Nothing candidate Millard Fillmore.

Though in 2016 politicians debate the need for a minimum wage hike, opponents of Buchanan mentioned how he once advocated a reduction in the daily wage of U.S. laborers to what serfs in the Old Country were being paid.

Ten cents a day, The American reported on Oct. 29, 1856. Think of that men of toil ... as you would then be too poor to school your children  too poor to take a holiday  unable to even raise a condition of comfort and comparative wealth as thousands on thousands of our mechanics, by industry and economy are now able to do.

A lower wage was only one part of Buchanans past railed on by the American. The newspaper mentioned that the candidate, while Secretary of State under Polk, once wrote a letter to the Lancaster County assessor denying that he was a citizen of Pennsylvania for the shabby sake of avoiding the payment of taxes to the state.

In a litany of other accusations, the American advised readers to Keep it before the people that James Buchanan opposed the War of 1812 ... vilified and slandered Henry Clay ... (and) is in favor of wresting Cuba from Spain as it is fully proven by the Ostend Manifesto.

Union and Confederacy

Just as The Carlisle American trash-talked Buchanan, The American Volunteer showed its favoritism for Democrats by spelling out reasons to support the party and its candidate from Pennsylvania. In hindsight, one item in particular had a touch of irony considering what developed after the Buchanan presidency with the Civil War.

The Democratic Party knows no North  no South  no East  no West but regards the whole American Union as one common family, that should partake alike of the joys and blessings that belong to our glorious confederacy.

Another platform position from 1856 sounds very similar to a present-day campaign promise of Hillary Clinton:

The Democratic Party is in favor of equality in taxation  believes the rich banker should bear the same burdens as the farmer and mechanic, and not be made the recipient of special favors and privileges.

Then as now, there were accusations of voter fraud, but in 1856 critics had actual data on which to fall back. Pennsylvania held a separate election in mid-October for state and Congressional offices during which the Democrats scored key victories. Naturally The Carlisle American brought this out in its editorials.

It is believed that 8,000 fraudulent votes were received in Philadelphia ... given by foreigners and non-residents, colonized for that purpose by the shamocratic cheating Democracy, the newspaper reported on Oct. 29. It is certain that large sums of money were successfully used in our county to buy votes.

The American implied the Union state ticket was denied victory by these schemes of villainy and that the outcome would have been different if only enough honest and legal votes would have been received.

Get out and vote

The newspaper through its columns attempted to rally supporters of the Union Electoral College by pointing out the consequences of low voter turnout in mid-October.

If our organization had been near as thorough as that of our opponents ... the Union State Ticket would have received over a 10,000 majority, The American reported. In our county our majority would have been 600 if our entire vote had been brought out ... The vote was not near a full one and in some (county districts) one-half of them remained at home while the sham democracy had every vote they could muster brought to the polls.

Meanwhile The American Volunteer was just as determined to rouse Democrats to the polls to elect Buchanan. One column titled Dont Mind the Rain! put forth an interesting theory as to why Democrats were not as successful in past elections:

The Democratic Party always loses votes in rainy weather, because its opponents are generally the rich, who have umbrellas and overcoats in abundance, and covered carriages if need be to protect them against the most inclement weather; whereas many a poor Democratic voter has nothing but a single coat to cover him.

The same column shamed Democrats who let cloudy skies deter them from the polls. The freemans right of speaking through the ballot box is too sacred to be lost by any effeminate fears of getting wet, or perhaps spoiling the appearance of a coat. At the election, the poor man is as great a king as the purse-proud aristocrat, who attempts, in the insolence of wealth, to lord it over him, and his vote counts just as much.

Another column titled DEMOCRATS! took on a military tone:

Stand by your guns! The enemy driven to desperation by their recent reverses, where they expected brilliant victories, will make a last convulsive effort to save their rotten cause from entire annihilation, and we must be prepared to meet them at every point and repel every onslaught.
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They were the epitome of the American soldier in action  support troops with limited combat training and experience pressed into service to man the perimeter defenses.

Their mission that day in Vietnam was to hold the line and save the base camp by letting loose enough firepower to confuse and unnerve the enemy.

The situation had looked grim only a short time before as Col. John Hoefling peered down from his command helicopter at the hostile force closing in on the ground.

It was spring 1969 and the Milwaukee native was in command of the second brigade of the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam. Hoefling was tasked with leading an assault up the A Shau Valley, the main route for enemy troops to move supplies into the South.

I went back to check on the base camp ... We left people behind, recalled Hoefling, 91, now a retired major general living in Monroe Township.

On landing, Hoefling entered the compound and announced, I want to see the senior man on this base.

That would be me, colonel, answered an officer who was shaving. Hoefling alerted the man to the approaching threat and ordered every available soldier to man the defenses.

Cooks in white hats and aprons emerged from the mess hall while company clerks, more skilled at desk jobs than firing a rifle, also answered the call. But the most stirring memory for Hoefling was the medics who carried the wounded on their backs to the foxholes

This show of strength by those least skilled or able to fight offered just enough resistance to turn the enemy away. It created a false impression the base camp was heavily defended.

Guerrillas in the plains

A West Point graduate and decorated Korean War veteran, Hoefling arrived in Vietnam in June 1968 and would spend the next year in heavy combat. The early months of his tour saw the use of combat battalions in daily air assaults against targets on the plains around the city of Hue and LZ Sally.

Typically Hoefling was in a helicopter flying above the operation where he could direct his field commanders and help them call in airstrikes and artillery support. The main enemy on the plains was Viet Cong guerrillas who Hoefling called terrorists comparable to ISIS.

One day a guerrilla fighter got off a lucky burst with his AK-47 and shredded the tail rotor off the command helicopter. Though this forced a crash landing, Hoefling and his crew were rescued by another helicopter. Later he was on a helicopter that crashed after losing power.

Hoefling was lucky neither craft caught fire, even though the design had a reputation for going up in flames. Ours never burned, he said. I think it was divine intervention.

NVA in the valley

While Viet Cong fought from ambush under the cover of darkness, North Vietnamese Army regulars would dig in and fight to the last man. The NVA had tunnels so deep in the A Shau Valley they could survive numerous strikes by B-52 bombers, which hit the supply route almost constantly.

A deeply cratered dirt road ran down the middle of the valley that was flanked by jungle on the hillsides. The second brigade went in with the 101st Airborne Division to cut the supply route, destroy enemy base camps and uncover buried weapon caches.

The operation started with the establishment of fire bases on the hillsides to provide artillery support to friendly forces advancing in the valley. The first step was for aircraft to release daisy cutter bombs designed to clear away swaths of jungle growth.

Large flying crane helicopters were then brought in to haul bulldozers to further clear the debris field, allowing combat engineers to build the fire bases. The main brigade was airlifted by helicopter in one day  an awesome event, Hoefling said. Once in the valley the second brigade engaged in numerous battles.

As with operations in the plains, Hoefling directed each battle from a command helicopter. There he made good use of Army heavy artillery and Air Force timed delay fused bombs that would go underground before exploding, killing the enemy in their bunkers. Once he even called in support from a battleship offshore that hauled a shell the weight of a car onto a NVA position in the valley.

Attached to his command was a platoon of military dogs trained to sniff out underground caches of weapons and equipment. While hovering over the valley one day in April 1969, Hoefling received a radio message White Owl, youve got to see this. Named for a brand of cigars, White Owl was his call sign as the brigade commander.

By the time his helicopter landed, the dog platoon and combat engineers had unearthed a massive find that included 832 new rifles. It was the largest cache found in the valley during that campaign.

The Battle of Vinh Loc

Hoefling is best known for the battle at Vinh Loc in Oct. 1968, which he planned and executed. Reported in detail in the March 1968 issue of Army Magazine, this battle used a classic soft cordon, in which the enemy were taken by surprise and surrounded on all sides before ground troops closed in to sweep the battlefield.

In a soft cordon, little or no artillery and aerial bombs are used to avoid hitting civilians in the surrounded area, said L. James Binder, who wrote the magazine article. Binder added the plans used troops for the 101st Airborne Division along with soldiers from a South Vietnamese division along with Popular and Regional Forces companies.

Navy Swift boats and South Vietnamese patrol craft blockaded Vinh Loc island, which is located off the coast of Hue and was being used by the Viet Cong as a recuperation and training base. In effect, the cordon was to consist of two long lines of troops facing each other since the island is only three miles across at its widest point, Binder said.

Operation Vinh Loc was highly successful in one sense because of the speed, surprise and thoroughness with which it was carried out, Binder wrote. Hit hard on all sides before they knew what was happening and denied escape by the tight cordon, the enemy quickly became disorganized and unable to commit himself to any one course of action.

It was during the Battle of Vinh Loc that Hoefling earned a Silver Star for valor. As the command helicopter was flying overhead, the crew spotted a group of Viet Cong guerrillas. The helicopter landed and a firefight ensued during which Hoefling made good use of a revolver.

After a year in combat, Hoefling was rotated to the United States in June 1969. He retired from the Army in 1976 and went to work as a consultant in Saudi Arabia to train its national guard.

Married 70 years, Hoefling has three children and five grandchildren.
In December 2005, at Disneyworld in Orlando, I ambushed Congressman John Lewis. I knew he was headed to a particular stage to give a speech. When I saw him crossing a parking lot with a single aid, I pounced.

Lewis graciously signed my copy of his memoir Walking with the Wind and addressed a question I posed: Do you think you have been able to do more good as a congressman or as a private citizen?

As ambushes go, this was one of the gentler Lewis has experienced. As a young man, he led protests in his home state of Alabama, across the South and in Washington, D.C. During the freedom rides, he was beaten by white southerners. Crossing the bridge at Selma he was beaten by state troopers. A picture of a trooper looming over Lewis is an iconic image of the Civil Rights Movement.

Lewis survived to represent Georgias 5th district. Others were not so lucky. The path to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act claimed many lives. These people fought for their rights as Americans and for their lives against prejudice and discrimination.

A couple years ago, I convinced a young couple to move from Arlington, Virginia, to Carlisle. I knew that while institutional discrimination was largely removed, some prejudice remains here. The Southern Poverty Law Center notes that Pennsylvania has 40 active hate groups, some headquartered just east of Carlisle. And this couple, being from Pennsylvania, knew what to expect. I suggested that Carlisle was a more evolved, open-minded oasis.

Recently, my friend reluctantly told me that he and his fiancee would be moving out of the area when their lease expires. The reason? They are tired of the racism and ignorance they encounter in town and cannot imagine raising a family in such an environment. The couple is white. I could not be more embarrassed. I hope you are embarrassed.

Carlisle does not have the sort of racism that wears uniforms and waves signs and flags at the objects of its hate. We are not burdened with West Yorks mayor. We have the cowardly prejudice that carefully surveys its audience before opening its mouth and spewing filth. We have the prejudice that hates sunlight. We have the prejudice that perhaps only white people can fix.

Carlisles YWCA works to eliminate racism. Sonya Browne, the YWCAs Mission Impact Director, shared with me, As individuals, we must examine our own biases and work to overcome them. As a community we must look for opportunities to share our commonalities and celebrate our differences.

Those differences add to our community. They do not detract from it. Prejudice and discrimination detract from it.

In the end, the Congressman was unable to answer my question. He has done exemplary things in both roles. Take that to mean that you do not have to be in a position of authority to make things better. You can help fix this as a private citizen. Perhaps only you can.
Latvia becomes first Baltic Sea country to link with Chinas OBOR

Published: November 5, 2016

Latvia has become the first country in the Baltic Sea area to sign a Memorandum of Understanding to link up with Chinas One Belt and One Road (OBOR) Initiative.

The MoU was signed after Chinese Premier Li Keqiangs meeting with his Latvian counterpart Maris Kucinskis in Riga (capital of Latvia). It was Chinese Premiers first visit to the European Union country.

Besides, Latvia and China also singed five agreements on cooperation in such areas as small and medium-sized enterprises, transportation and logistics.

What is Chinas One Belt and One Road (OBOR) Initiative?

OBOR initiative is Chinas ambitious development strategy and framework that aims to boost its connectivity and trade across Asia, Africa and Europe.

It comprises two components viz. the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. It was proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013.

OBOR initiative is part of Chinas revived 21st century Silk Road diplomacy that seeks to push it to take a bigger role in global affairs as a major global power.

Month: Current Affairs - November, 2016

Topics: China  International  International Relations  Latvia  OBOR

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November 5: World Tsunami Awareness Day

Published: November 5, 2016

The First World Tsunami Awareness Day was observed across the world on 5 November 2016 to spread awareness among people across the world about Tsunami.

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) had constituted the day by adopting a resolution in December 2015. The proposal was first mooted by Japan after the 3rd UN Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction held in Sendai (Japan) in March 2015.

2016 Theme: Effective Education and Evacuation Drills.

Significance of the Day

Spread awareness among people across the world in matters related to the dangers of tsunami.

Stress on the importance of early warning systems in order to mitigate damage from the devastating natural calamity.

Background

November 5 was designated as World Tsunami Awareness Day by UNGA to coincide with the annual anniversary of the 1854 Inamura-no-hi (Fire of Inamura) event. On this day in 1854, a villager in Wakayama Prefecture in Japan through his quick action had saved countless lives after he had set fire to sheaves of rice on the top of a hill, thus warning people of the imminent danger of a tsunami. This was the first documented instance of a tsunami early warning.

Month: Current Affairs - November, 2016

Topics: Days and Events  Disaster Management  Japan  National  Tsunami  United Nations  World Tsunami Awareness Day

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Evidence recently uncovered by the nonprofit International Marine Mammal Project (IMMP) reveals two secret captures of more than 30 Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins in the Solomon Islands. According to IMMP, the dolphins were driven to shore in the Western Provinces of the country in an inhumane capture process similar to the dolphin drives in Taiji, Japan. They were then transported by boat to shallow net pens on Bungana Island off the coast of Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands.

More than 30 Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins were secretly captured in the Solomon Islands before being released back into the ocean by government officials. Mike Prince / Flickr

IMMP, an Earth Island Institute project that works to protect dolphins and whales, believes those behind the illegal scheme intended to export the dolphins to China or other far-flung countries for miserable lives in captivity. The nonprofit provided its investigative findings to the Solomon Islands government.

Fortunately, the Solomon Islands Fisheries Ministry, led by acting fisheries secretary Ferral Lasi, has taken the matter very seriously. Earlier this week, the ministry reported that the captures are in clear violation of Solomon Islands law and that the dolphins captured both in the Western Provinces and in the Bungana Island net pens have been released back into the ocean. Lasi suggested that legal action might be taken against those involved in the captures.

The Solomon Islands Fisheries Ministry deserves great credit for upholding the ban on dolphin capture and export, David Phillips, director of the IMMP, said upon hearing of the releases. The government has cracked down on this secret and illegal capture and export scheme.

The captivity industry in wealthy nations such as Singapore and Japan is booming, creating lucrative markets for wild-caught dolphins and whales. China has made big news recently with attempts to import hundreds of marine mammals from the coastal waters of Namibia, including orcas and bottlenose dolphins, for captive display.

Without the Solomon Islands governments raid and intervention, more than 30 dolphins might have been loaded aboard cargo jets and flown off, likely bound for China, Phillips said. The journey is harrowing enough, as is the trauma of being torn from their families and ocean home. Dolphin capture and transport is cruel and, results in stress, disease and premature death.

Dolphins Shipped From Hawaii to Arizona Desert for New Tourist Attraction https://t.co/LFFrU9QhM5 @anon99percenter @peta  EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) October 24, 2016

The Solomon Islands used to be at the center of the worlds deadly trade in live dolphins. However, strong international pressure convinced the government to institute a full ban on issuing permits for dolphin captures and export, making these two recent captures violations of Solomon Islands law. The International Marine Mammal Project, which has been active in the Solomon Islands for more than 15 years, believes that the dolphin capture ban is critical to the survival of local dolphin populations.

The release of these captive dolphins back into the ocean is very welcome news and we commend the Fisheries Ministry, Solomon Police Force and other parts of the Solomon Islands government for standing firm against the inhumane and horrific trade in live dolphins, Phillips added. The International Marine Mammal Project will also remain vigilant to spotlight any attempts at dolphin capture and illegal trade.

Reposted with permission from our media associate Earth Island Journal.
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To build the largest and most complete Amateur Radio community site on the Internet - a "portal" that hams think of as the first place to go for information, to exchange ideas, and be part of whats happening with ham radio on the Internet. eHam.net provides recognition and enjoyment to the people who use, contribute, and build the site. This project involves a management team of volunteers who each take a topic of interest and manage it with passion. The site will stand above all other ham radio sites by employing the latest technology and professional design/programming standards, developed by a team of community programmers who contribute their skills to the effort. The site will be something of which everyone involved can be proud to say they were a part. We welcome your comments. The eHam.net Team, Revision 07/2020.
Looking for deals at annual Pittsburgh airport auction

More than 800 appeared and about 700 participated in annual event last month.
A three-vehicle accident on Thursday afternoon in Ste. Genevieve County left one woman dead and three others injured.

According to the Missouri State Highway Patrol, the accident occurred at 2:45 p.m. on Missouri Hwy 32 westbound at Interstate 55. The report stated a 2013 Chevrolet Equinox driven by Julia Blackstone, 76, of Memphis, Tennessee, was traveling south on the exit ramp from Interstate 55 to Missouri Hwy. 32.

Meanwhile, a 2006 Peterbilt Tractor driven by Theodore L. Northcutt, 36, of Caledonia, was traveling westbound on Missouri 32. A 2014 Hyundai Elantra, driven by Mary R. Straub, 64, of St. Louis, was traveling eastbound on 32.

The crash happened when Blackstone failed to yield to cross traffic and traveled into the path of the Peterbilt. The trucks front end struck the left side of Blackstones Chevy, which continued into the eastbound lane of 32 and struck the front of the Elantra.

The Elantra continued off the south side of the roadway and up a slight embankment.

Blackstone was pronounced dead by Dr. M. Gibfried at 3:40 p.m. at Ste. Genevieve County Memorial Hospital. The report indicated she was wearing a seatbelt at the time of the crash.

Blackstones passenger, Edward Jean, 48, of Memphis, Tennessee, reportedly received serious injuries and was transported by Ste. Genevieve County Ambulance to Mercy Hospital Jefferson for treatment. The patrol report indicated he was wearing a seat belt at the time of the accident.

Straub reportedly received moderate injuries and was taken by Ste. Genevieve County Ambulance to Ste. Genevieve County Memorial Hospital for treatment. The patrol report indicated he was also wearing a seatbelt at the time of the crash.

Straubs passenger was also injured. Judith A. Straub, 63, of St. Louis, reportedly received moderate injuries and was taken by Ste. Genevieve County Ambulance to Ste. Genevieve County Memorial Hospital for treatment. The patrol report indicated it was unknown whether she wearing a seatbelt at the time of the wreck.
Police warn of controlled explosions at schools

A number of controlled explosions will be carried out on the Island this weekend.

The Island's police are working with the Military Explosives and Ordnance Disposal Team to remove a chemical from several of the Island's schools.

New guidance on safely storing 2,4 Dinitrophenyl - which is used in some school chemistry lessons - has resulted in the substance being disposed of at schools in the UK.

The Isle of Man Constabulary is advising the public not to be concerned if they see police and military vehicles at school sites in the next couple of days.

A small number of controlled explosions are expected, but officers say there will be no risk to the public or property.
Two area men were charged in connection with the body of Farmington businessman Michael VanStavern being found in the back of an SUV on Thursday morning following a police pursuit which ended in a crash.

Anthony Caruthers, 28, of Bonne Terre, is charged with a class A felony of murder in the first degree, felony armed criminal action, a class C felony of burglary in the second degree, a class C felony of tampering with a motor vehicle in the first degree, a class D felony of tampering with physical evidence in a felony prosecution, and a class D felony of resisting arrest/detention/stop by fleeing, creating a substantial risk of serious injury or death to any person.

Jeremy Reed, 37, of Farmington, is being charged with a class C felony of burglary in the second degree and a class D felony of tampering with physical evidence in a felony prosecution.

According to a probable cause statement, during a recorded interview Reed explained that Caruthers killed VanStavern, of Farmington, at the Red Cedar Lodge in Bonne Terre on Nov. 2.

Reed stated that Caruthers contacted him by phone and picked him up at his house in Park Hills.

Reed told investigators that Caruthers was driving VanStaverns Porshe SUV and Caruthers asked for Reeds help with something but didnt initially give any details. Reed stated Caruthers, while driving him to Red Cedar Lodge, explained to him how he had killed VanStavern.

Reed told investigators they went into room 14 and Caruthers told Reed that VanStavern's body was under the bed. Reed said he lifted up the mattress and found VanStavern.

Reed told investigators he assisted Caruthers in removing VanStavern from the hotel room. Reed said they purchased items from a local business to assist them in concealing the body while they removed it from the hotel room and placed it into the back of Porsche.

Reed told investigators he had some items at his residence that belonged to VanStavern. He said he and Caruthers took the items there after leaving the Red Cedar Lodge.

During a subsequent questioning of Caruthers he confessed to killing VanStavern by strangling him with a belt. Caruthers told investigators he called Reed and then they both went to VanStaverns apartment in Farmington.

Caruthers said they used VanStaverns key to get in the apartment, the key which he had taken off the body. He added he and Reed removed several items including, but not limited to, clothing and watches from the apartment.

Caruthers said he attempted to pawn the items taken from VanStaverns apartment at multiple pawn shops in the Jefferson County area, but was unsuccessful. Caruthers and Reed also reportedly further conspired to dispose of VanStaverns body. They purchased items to conceal the murder and clean the crime scene.

Then on Thursday morning a Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper saw the driver of a Porsche SUV commit a traffic violation on U.S. 67 at approximately 10:30 a.m. He activated his lights and siren in an attempt to stop the vehicle.

The driver, later identified as Caruthers, failed to stop and instead exited the highway at Desloge, went toward Cedar Falls Road, ran through a fence, across a yard, through another fence, crashed into a tree line in the back of the house, jumped out of the SUV and fled on foot.

At the time the pursuing officer was unsure if there had been more than one person in the SUV at the time. The trooper spotted Reed running from the wreck and gave chase, catching him a short distance away.

When the officer returned to the SUV with Reed he discovered the body wrapped inside a sleeping bag and another item, and the incident turned into a homicide investigation.

Several law enforcement agencies converged on the scene, including the Division of Drug and Crime Control, additional Missouri State Highway Patrol officers, the St. Francois County Sheriffs Department and the Desloge Police Department.

Reed was taken to the Desloge Police Department for questioning and it was determined that a second male had been in the SUV and had fled on foot. A stop and hold was put out on Caruthers after Reed gave a description.

Authorities searched the area of the crash site as well as an area at College Road and Penny Lane in Leadington for over several hours before Caruthers was located at about 3 p.m. not far from the crash scene outside Desloge.

An autopsy was performed Friday morning, during which time it was confirmed that VanStavern had died as a result of strangulation.

Caruthers is being held in the St. Francois County jail without a bond. Reed is also being held in the jail on a $250,000 cash only bond and GPS monitoring is required on release.
Come elections, the issues related to 1984 return to the fore in Punjab. The political discourse during every election now invariably includes the sharing of river waters with Haryana, making Chandigarh the capital of Punjab, merging the Punjabi-speaking areas given to Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, Operation Blue Star, and the anti-Sikh violence of 1984. The last two are the most significant, resonating with Sikhs even after three decades.

Traditionally, Punjab has been dominated by the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the Congress. There have also been smaller parties such as the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Bahujan Samaj Party. Both the dominant parties earlier formed alliances with the smaller parties to come to power. But in the last few decades, most of the small parties have been routed, leaving the SAD and the Congress the major players. In this situation, the SAD has had an advantage over the Congress, which cannot deny it had a role in Operation Blue Star and the anti-Sikh violence of 1984. This may not hold in the 2017 election with the entry of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which has turned the fight into a triangular one, and is proactive on the issues of 1984it released 10 crore to renovate the houses of widows of the 1984 violence in Delhi.
In the freezing winter of 2009, a few communities of the Baiga tribe in Mungeli and Bilaspur districts of Chhattisgarh were evicted from their homes inside the forest and forced into an open area some distance away. One person among them died due to lack of access to food and shelter. The state forest departments idea of relocation was makeshift shelters; the cement row houses would come later.

The Baiga are a primitive tribe who live close to nature and their box-like new homes without light or water felt alien. They were vulnerable to disease and could not get used to the food they got from the public distribution shops. They did not have a choice however, for their homes, deep in the forests, needed to be cleared to ensure that a perfect habitat for the tiger would be created. They lived inside the Achanakmar tiger reserve where it has been hard to spot the striped cat but the authorities were determined to clear the core area of the forest of its inhabitants.
The continuing violence by lawyers against journalists covering court proceedings in Kerala is a damning indictment of not just the legal profession, but also Keralas higher judiciary and the state government. The forcible removal of journalists from the courts for simply attempting to do their job cannot even be called a ban, given that the word denotes at least some element of authority being exercised. What we are seeing is a naked display of thuggery in the service of solely the personal interests of a section of the Kerala bar.

The immediate provocation for the sorry state of affairs is simply the reportage of the fact that a government pleader was arrested for molesting a woman in a public place. However, it has gone beyond that and has become an excuse for brute assertion of power by sections of the Kerala bar.
The BPL has been forced to restart on November 8 after the first four games were washed out in Mirpur without a ball bowled

The BPL has been forced to restart on November 8 with rain having played havoc with the tournament's opening fixtures - the first four games have been washed out in Mirpur without a ball bowled. The matches from the new start date will take place according to the existing schedule, while four of the first six matches, earlier scheduled from November 4 to 6, will be played later in the tournament.

But there is confusion over whether the opening day's games will be replayed or the teams will share points. Rangpur Riders and Khulna Titans have agreed to a rematch, according to BPL's member secretary Ismail Haider Mallick, but Comilla Victorians and Rajshahi Kings are still undecided. BCB vice-president Mahbubul Anam however said that the board cannot legally reassign the November 4 matches unless all the participating teams are unanimous on the decision whether to replay the two games or not.

Mallick made the announcement of starting the tournament on a later date on Saturday evening, adding that both matches on Saturday - Chittagong Kings v Barisal Bulls, and Dhaka Dynamites v Comilla - had been postponed earlier in the day. He said that the decision to restart the tournament from November 8 was decided in meeting on Saturday afternoon. The meeting involved the BPL governing council and representatives from the seven franchises, while broadcasters and ticketing partners were also taken into account.

"We have a weather report which has a forecast for more rain for another two days," Mallick said. "So far not a single ball has been bowled in the tournament due to the rain. We have decided to postpone the November 5 and 6 matches. We now want to hold our first match on November 8 as per the existing schedule. We will reschedule the November 5 and 6 matches in the rest days within our fixtures list."

On the issue of the opening day's matches, Mallick said: "According to the bylaws, we can make the November 4 matches into rematches only if the franchises agree to it. Rangpur and Khulna have agreed for the rematch but we don't have a decision from Comilla and Rajshahi, who were the teams in the tournament's first match.

"We will try to reassign the five or six matches on November 10 and 14 and, if need be, we will hold three matches in a day. November 20 is also an option for the rescheduled matches."
"Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he." - Proverbs 29:18.

I have often heard the first half of the above verse used by motivational speakers. They use the word "vision" to mean things like goals, ambition, and purpose. Although I agree if a person has no goal, objective, or purpose, their life will end up one of existence instead of meaning. Side note here - a noble goal need not be one that acquires fame or fortune. The noblest of goals are to serve God and raise godly children.

However, using Proverbs 29:18 solely to motivate people to get up off the couch and make something of their lives is missing the target.

What does vision mean here? We will look for the answer elsewhere in scripture.

When Samuel was a young boy God described the nation of Israel this way - "And the child Samuel ministered unto the LORD before Eli. And the word of the LORD was precious in those days; there was no open vision" (1 Samuel 3:1).

By telling us, "there was no open vision" God was explaining that He had not talked to Israel in quite some time. There were no prophets receiving revelations; no angels were coming down telling people what to do. The word of God was precious because it was rare; God had not given anyone any "vision" for a long, long time. Therefore, we can conclude that the "vision" of 1 Samuel 3:1 and Proverbs 29:18 is a direct reference to the Words of God.

More than just goals and purpose, if people do not have the Word of God they perish. In fact, there will be millions of people who accomplish what they wanted in life, but in the end, will perish because the Word of God was absent from their lives.

It takes the Word of God to have faith in God (Romans 10:17) and it takes faith in God to please God (Hebrews 11:6). Many lives filled with noble causes receiving the applause of men will end never spending a day pleasing their Creator.

Whether it be a nation, church, family, or individual when the Word of God is absent, the result is misery and destruction (Romans 3:16-18). The tragic news is that this absence of God's Word will pass from one generation to another. Hosea 4:6, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children."

The general opinion of my parent's generation of God was that He was someone holy, someone, to be revered. My generation saw God as good, but we only gave Him time when we had time. My children's generation have the attitude that if people want to worship God, that is fine; if not, that's okay too, and any god you want to worship is fine. My grandkids generation seem to have the attitude that if God is out there; He never really enters my mind. The next step in the progression would be for a generation to believe that there is no God.

During the transition of my parent's generation to mine, we kicked the Bible out of schools - rejecting the knowledge of God - and a few generations later our children have forgotten God. What will be the end result? "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

God has sent a famine of the Word to our land; Amos 8:11-12, "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD: And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it."

The good news is that there are people seeking the Word. As in Samuel's day, the Word is precious because it is rare.

It is imperative that we start reading and studying the Word as individuals. Then it can grow from us to our families, then to our churches, then on to the nation as a whole.

If you doubt the necessity for people to study the word on an individual basis, all I can do is leave you with the words I started with - Proverbs 29:18, "Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he."

Preacher Tim Johnson is Pastor of Countryside Baptist Church in Parke County Indiana. Email: preacherspoint@gmail.com. Website: www.preacherjohnson.com. Preacher Johnson is available for revivals, prophecy conferences, and other speaking. All Scripture KJV.
Evolutionary apologetics is the defense of Darwinian theory against all challenges  scientific and otherwise. That Darwinism has not coincidentally been put to evil ends, while not in itself evidence of invalid science, would seem indisputable.

Its role in shaping Nazi ideology would also seem clear enough to anyone who has read a little about the subject. Because Hitlers Germany cant be topped for evil, the defense of Darwinism must have a refutation of the Darwin-Hitler connection.

Over at the website This View of Life, promising Anything and everything from an evolutionary perspective, SUNY Binghamton biologist David Sloan Wilson wraps up a series of essays by various scholars seeking A New Social Darwinism. Wilson writes:

Truth and reconciliation for Social Darwinism involves acknowledging the misuse of evolutionary theory, but it also involves acknowledging false accusations and the omission of benign uses of evolutionary theory.

From an apologetic perspective, those false accusations to be dealt with must include the stain of Hitler, an invented history. Invented? To show as much the series features an essay  Was Hitler a Darwinian? No! No! No!  by University of Chicago historian of science Robert Richards that takes shots at our colleagues Richard Weikart and David Berlinski, the film Expelled, and the gossamer logic of the Intelligent Design crowd.

Plenty of other scholars have recognized Hitlers Darwinism, however crude and derivative. Richards mentions Hannah Arendt, John Gray, and the otherwise astute historian Peter Bowler, notably absent from the ranks of the Intelligent Design crowd.

In any event, Professor Weikart has already dealt with Dr. Richards in a series of posts here:

Why all the clamor to erase the Darwin-Hitler link? Weikart is characteristically astute:

[W]hy do they care about this at all? If they believe, as many do, that morality is simply an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes, as evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson and philosopher Michael Ruse famously put it, then what makes the illusions of some people superior to Hitlers illusions? Why do everything possible  even denying obvious historical facts  to obscure the historical linkages between Darwin and Hitler? I have a hunch that at some level they recognize that their evolutionary account of morality is inconsistent with reality.

As to the facts, Richards misquotes and/or ignores the context of quotations, ignores mountains of evidence, caricatures the positions of those he disagrees with, conflates certain key concepts,  totally ignores many of the most salient points I set forth in my books, even creates a new historical fact.'

Quite simply, evolutionary apologetics must have its own historical alternative reality. The defense of Darwin demands it, and so the dish is served.

Photo: Holocaust Memorial, Berlin, by Howardhudson via Wikipedia.
Sorry, but I've seen this movie before and I know how it ends. There will never be a criminal prosecution of Hillary Clinton for two basic reasons: First, she's a cautious, intelligent politician who doesn't take reckless chances. How many failed "investigations" before Republicans get that?

Second, bogus charges against prominent individuals with first-rate attorneys endanger the prosecution more than the defense. You think the formerly eminent Kenneth Starr fled to Waco, Texas because he was insufficiently partisan? His ace prosecutors lost every Whitewater trial except the one where they convicted his own star witness, poor, sick Jim McDougal.

But let's go back to the starting place, October 1992, because what happened then has a direct bearing on today's headlines.

Based upon some inept, not particularly honest articles in the New York Times, an unqualified partisan in the Treasury Department -- she later admitted selling "Presidential Bitch" coffee mugs from her government office -- cobbled together criminal referrals naming just about every prominent Democrat in Arkansas as a suspect in McDougal's financial shenanigans.

They included Bill and Hillary Clinton, who the evidence would show -- and Kenneth Starr's prosecutors eventually argued in open court -- had been swindled and lied to in McDougal's vain attempt to keep his foundering savings and loan, Madison Guaranty, from going under.

As the 1992 presidential election grew closer, the partisan L. Jean Lewis began to pressure the Little Rock FBI office and U.S. Attorney Charles "Chuck" Banks to investigate the Clintons. Banks was a lifelong Republican who'd been nominated to a federal judgeship by President Bush. Unless the president was re-elected, Banks would lose two good jobs.

Having previously prosecuted McDougal, Banks and his staff found Lewis' work both factually deficient and politically motivated. Soon, pressure began to come from FBI headquarters in Washington. Bush administration Attorney General William Barr demanded action.

So the Republican prosecutor wrote a letter to the Department of Justice dated Oct. 16, 1992. Here is what it said:

"(T)he insistence of urgency in this case appears to suggest an intentional or unintentional attempt to intervene into the political process of the upcoming presidential election. You and I know in investigations of this type, the first steps such as issuance of grand jury subpoenas for records will lead to media and public inquiries about matters that are subject to absolute privacy. Even media questions ... all too often publicly purport to 'legitimize what can't be proven.'

"For me personally to participate in (such an) investigation ... amounts to prosecutorial misconduct and violates the most basic fundamental rule of Department of Justice policy. I cannot be a party to such actions."

He promised to direct any press inquiries to the attorney general, which would have been politically devastating in that innocent era before the United States' current flirtation with fascism.

Banks understood that whoever won the 1992 election, his political career was over. He preferred to keep his honor.

History records that he was also right on the merits.

"Legitimize what can't be proven." Remember that phrase as you watch cable TV hucksters hyperventilate about FBI Director James Comey's ill-advised and arguably illegal "October surprise."

Meanwhile, don't tell me what a terrific lawyer and standup guy Comey used to be. That guy no longer exists. What we have instead is a spineless partisan who planted an IED in the middle of the 2016 presidential election -- apparently because he feared criticism from GOP congressmen who drink from "Presidential Bitch" coffee mugs.

And who tried to explain away his original weasel-worded letter to Congress with an even more craven apology to his FBI colleagues.

"Given that we don't know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails," Comey whined, "I don't want to create a misleading impression."

Oh no, anything but that!

He also admitted, "There is significant risk of being misunderstood."

Well I'm sorry, but there's just no chance that a Washington insider as experienced and ambitious as Comey could possibly not anticipate the feverish speculation his letter was certain to set off.

My goodness, does the man not own a TV set? Has he never seen Wolf Blitzer in action? Breaking News! Bombshell!

Has Comey been unaware of Donald J. Trump barnstorming around the country promising to put "Crooked Hillary" in prison while his supporters chant "Lock her up"?

Psychologists call it projection: The only way to rationalize supporting a moral cripple like Trump is to convince yourself his opponent is worse.

Such antics risk a descent into the kind of society where the only real police are the Secret Police, and the judiciary exists to rationalize brutality. A society like Vladimir Putin's Russia, for example, where the bureaucracy is filled with useful drones who have bartered their honor for comfortable positions.

Comey could undo some of the terrible harm he's done to American democracy if he'd simply admit error and resign.

Alas, I just don't think it's in him.
From: Ad Council For Immediate Release: Dateline: New York , NY Friday, November 4, 2016







This article on

What is Social Media ROI? Social media return on investment (ROI) is the benefit that your organization receives from the time and resources that you put into social media. Put simply, its the answer to that all-too-common question: is social media really worth it?

Why does it matter? Understanding your organizations social media ROI is necessary to ensure that social media is worth the time and resources that youre contributing to it. Knowing the return will also help you understand what is (and isnt) working. You can understand what platforms are better options for you, what content works well, the value of getting social users onto your site, and where you can improve or expand. Its also helpful when youre trying to prove to supervisors or donors that all your tweeting is really worth it.

In order to get an accurate idea of the ROI of your organizations social media, youll need to:

Set goals Measure goals Compare to benchmarks Draw conclusions Set Goals Its hard to understand the value that social media has without having measurable goals to prove some sort of reward from your efforts. Setting goals that indicate forward movement for your organizations mission will help you measure how youre doing. Heres how to set your goals:

Create a BHAG Chart (Big, Huge, Ambitious Goal Chart). A

This article on the ROI of social media was originally published on Whole Whale Social media return on investment (ROI) is the benefit that your organization receives from the time and resources that you put into social media. Put simply, its the answer to that all-too-common question: is social media really worth it?Understanding your organizations social media ROI is necessary to ensure that social media is worth the time and resources that youre contributing to it. Knowing the return will also help you understand what is (and isnt) working. You can understand what platforms are better options for you, what content works well, the value of getting social users onto your site, and where you can improve or expand. Its also helpful when youre trying to prove to supervisors or donors that all your tweeting is really worth it.In order to get an accurate idea of the ROI of your organizations social media, youll need to:Its hard to understand the value that social media has without having measurable goals to prove some sort of reward from your efforts. Setting goals that indicate forward movement for your organizations mission will help you measure how youre doing. Heres how to set your goals: BHAG Chart outlines your organizations mission and its major, long-term goal. That goal (which will be similar to your orgs mission or vision statement) is divided into more specific programmatic goals, which are broken down into more manageable digital goals, and then even further into measurable metrics. Itd be nearly impossible for Power Poetry to measure whether or not they were able to create a generation empowered by creative expression, but they can certainly measure how many teens are writing and responding to poems- a measurable metric that supports their end goal.

Create a BHAG chart for your nonprofit and focus on those digital goals and measurable metrics- these will guide you in setting social media goals.

Choose Digital Goals Do you care about users engaging with you on-platform (i.e. within Facebooks walls)? Or off-platform (i.e. getting them from Facebook to your website)?

On-Platform Goals On-platform goals are set to be reached on the social media platform (whether that be Twitter, Facebook, etc). These are goals like number of impressions, engagement rate, and other vanity metrics like total number of followers. These goals are helpful for brand awareness, social proofing, and can help drive traffic to your site. You can dig into Twitter Analytics,

Off-Platform Goals Off-platform goals are set to be reached off of the social media platform. Email signups, donations, resource downloads, time spent on page, and volunteer signups are all off-platform goals. Often, they are are also more closely tied to the true impact of your organization than on-platform goals. These goals are probably going to be more indicative of your true social media ROI.

Setting and Tracking Off-Platform Goals If you dont have Google Analytics set up already,

Refer to your BHAG chart- what are your digital goals? Say youre Power Poetry (whose BHAG chart is shown above). 3 of your off-platform social media goals are:

Get teens to become members Produce engaging action guides Become the Wikipedia of literary terms Cool, those are great goals that support their mission. But how do you measure those? This is the part where you turn your digital goals into measurable metrics, which can be tracked in Google Analytics. So for the 3 goals above, those metrics would probably be:

Number of new members Time spent on action guides pages Time spent on glossary pages Once you set those measurable metric goals up in Google Analytics (we walk you through how to do that

Measure Goals So you set your goals up in Google Analytics and youre tracking how many users that come to your site from social are converting and completing goals. Great start, but we cant just leave it at that, because that probably wouldnt give your social media platforms enough credit.

Consider this example. A teen sees a Power Poetry Tweet that includes a link to Power Poetrys site, so they click through to see what its all about, and spend a couple minutes on the site. The next night they remember Power Poetry and decide they want to sign up. They search Power Poetry in Google, get to the site, and become a member (convert). In Google Analytics, Organic Search will get the credit for that goal completion, even though Twitter played a huge role in getting that user to convert. And if this happens hundreds of times, your Twitter account is going to be cheated out of a whole lot of credit.

Thats where

Benchmarks This is a question we get all the time: What are industry standards and benchmarks for this metric? Weve researched and dug through industry reports and have come with some (varying) numbers, but the reality of it is that the best benchmarks to refer to are your own. Look at your data, compare performance to past performance, and use that as an indication of success.

For example, if your average CTR is 11% and your most recent ads have only 5%, youd know that something is probably wrong and you can improve somewhere. But if you refer to industry standards that tell you the average CTR for a nonprofit of your size is 3%, then your ads will appear to be over-performing. If youre just starting out, go ahead and reference those industry reports for perspective, but dont let them be the marker of your success. Looking at your own data will always give you the best insights.

Draw Conclusions Once youre measuring your data and comparing it to benchmarks, its time to take action. You can bring this data to the table whenever someone at your company questions the amount of time and effort spent on social media. Or, what if you notice that a new social media platform isnt actually helping you move toward your mission? If social media becomes a timesuck, the data can help you ditch it despite pressure to have a presence there.

Finding the ROI of your social media efforts doesnt happen overnight. Once you identify the specific role you hope social media will play, youll be able to use the data to prove its value.

The post

Do you care about users engaging with you on-platform (i.e. within Facebooks walls)? Or off-platform (i.e. getting them from Facebook to your website)?On-platform goals are set to be reached on the social media platform (whether that be Twitter, Facebook, etc). These are goals like number of impressions, engagement rate, and other vanity metrics like total number of followers. These goals are helpful for brand awareness, social proofing, and can help drive traffic to your site. You can dig into Facebook Insights YouTube Analytics , and soon Instagram Analytics to understand your past performance, set attainable goals, and then track progress.Off-platform goals are set to be reached off of the social media platform. Email signups, donations, resource downloads, time spent on page, and volunteer signups are all off-platform goals. Often, they are are also more closely tied to the true impact of your organization than on-platform goals. These goals are probably going to be more indicative of your true social media ROI.If you dont have Google Analytics set up already, do that now  youre going to need it to track off-platform goals and understand the behavior of users that come to your site from social.Refer to your BHAG chart- what are your digital goals? Say youre Power Poetry (whose BHAG chart is shown above). 3 of your off-platform social media goals are:Cool, those are great goals that support their mission. But how do you measure those? This is the part where you turn your digital goals into measurable metrics, which can be tracked in Google Analytics. So for the 3 goals above, those metrics would probably be:Once you set those measurable metric goals up in Google Analytics (we walk you through how to do that here ), you can start measuring.So you set your goals up in Google Analytics and youre tracking how many users that come to your site from social are converting and completing goals. Great start, but we cant just leave it at that, because that probably wouldnt give your social media platforms enough credit.Consider this example. A teen sees a Power Poetry Tweet that includes a link to Power Poetrys site, so they click through to see what its all about, and spend a couple minutes on the site. The next night they remember Power Poetry and decide they want to sign up. They search Power Poetry in Google, get to the site, and become a member (convert). In Google Analytics, Organic Search will get the credit for that goal completion, even though Twitter played a huge role in getting that user to convert. And if this happens hundreds of times, your Twitter account is going to be cheated out of a whole lot of credit.Thats where assisted conversions come in. Google Analytics assisted conversions track user behavior over time so that you can understand all of a users interactions with your site leading up to their conversion. This helps distribute credit to platforms and channels more accurately. We break down how to use assisted conversions for you here This is a question we get all the time: What are industry standards and benchmarks for this metric? Weve researched and dug through industry reports and have come with some (varying) numbers, but the reality of it is that the best benchmarks to refer to are your own. Look at your data, compare performance to past performance, and use that as an indication of success.For example, if your average CTR is 11% and your most recent ads have only 5%, youd know that something is probably wrong and you can improve somewhere. But if you refer to industry standards that tell you the average CTR for a nonprofit of your size is 3%, then your ads will appear to be over-performing. If youre just starting out, go ahead and reference those industry reports for perspective, but dont let them be the marker of your success. Looking at your own data will always give you the best insights.Once youre measuring your data and comparing it to benchmarks, its time to take action. You can bring this data to the table whenever someone at your company questions the amount of time and effort spent on social media. Or, what if you notice that a new social media platform isnt actually helping you move toward your mission? If social media becomes a timesuck, the data can help you ditch it despite pressure to have a presence there.Finding the ROI of your social media efforts doesnt happen overnight. Once you identify the specific role you hope social media will play, youll be able to use the data to prove its value.The post Is it worth it? Finding the ROI of Social Media appeared first on AdLibbing.org


From: Shannon Skinner For Immediate Release: Dateline: Toronto , Ontario Friday, November 4, 2016



The more languages we know, the more people we can communicate with. Knowing several languages enables us to have understanding and tolerance of different cultures, and can sometimes prevent feelings of isolation and loneliness. It adds depth to our creativity. Best of all, it helps build overall self-confidence.

At least this has been my experience as I attempt, yet again, to learn French to expand my vocabulary beyond au revoir and vin rouge. Regrettably, I do not speak much French, even though I was raised in Canada. And I am not alone.

Growing up in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, which at the time was home to a large number of Ukrainians, the option for learning a second language in school was limited to French or Ukrainian. Considering my mothers side is Ukrainian-Canadian, I thought it would be cool to be able to speak to my maternal grandmother and great-grandmother in their native tongue. Besides, the Ukrainian language seemed exotic. So I chose Ukrainian.

My father, whose roots are primarily Scottish, challenged my decision because where would it take me in life? After all, he does not speak Ukrainian. My mother supported the idea, which was, wink wink, code for we can talk in secret.

Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going. ? Rita Mae Brown

I struggled learning a second language, either out boredom or lack of confidence, or both. But I learned enough to be able to communicate with my grandmothers in their native tongue (they could also speak English), and also appreciate my Eastern European roots. But years later, I would discover time and again that not being able to speak French would be career-limiting.

And so, after taking French classes in fits and starts over the years, I find myself back in the classroom out of a desire to learn more, and also stretch my brain and expand my opportunities in life.

The two most beautiful words in the English language are cheque enclosed. ~ Dorothy Parker

Its never too late to learn a new language. Here are some ways you can fit it into your life and do it without losing your mind:

1. Listen to language lessons on audio recordings while at the gym, doing housework, cooking, walking, jogging or driving to work.

2. Watch YouTube videos or movies in your new language.

3. Begin your morning or end your day by memorizing a new phrase in the language you are learning.

4. Seek out social settings where you can use your new language, such as Meet-Up groups.

5. At work, take small breaks to practice on a colleague who is open and willing to help.

6. Sign-up for a night course at a local community college, cultural centre or on-line program.

7. Take a vacation in the country where the language is spoken. This way, you can rejuvenate your spirit and learn at the same time.

8. Practice on your partner, friends, children or even pet. They can learn, too.

Are you learning a new language? What are you doing to stay motivated? Id love to hear from you. Tweet to me at @Shannon_Skinner.

Shannon Skinner is a Toronto-based, award-winning television and radio talk show host, inspirational speaker, writer and author of The Whispering Heart: Your Inner Guide to Creativity. For information on her speaking engagements and interviews, visit:

This article is, in part, an excerpt from Shannons book The Whispering Heart and also published at ShannonSkinner.com.

Media contact:



Shannon Skinner

416-576-8809

www.ExtraordinaryWomenTV.com

www.ShannonSkinner.com

info@extraordinarywomentv.com



Learning a new language can be inspiring, frustrating, infuriating and sometimes downright embarrassing. But there are many good reasons to learn a new language.The more languages we know, the more people we can communicate with. Knowing several languages enables us to have understanding and tolerance of different cultures, and can sometimes prevent feelings of isolation and loneliness. It adds depth to our creativity. Best of all, it helps build overall self-confidence.At least this has been my experience as I attempt, yet again, to learn French to expand my vocabulary beyond au revoir and vin rouge. Regrettably, I do not speak much French, even though I was raised in Canada. And I am not alone.Growing up in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, which at the time was home to a large number of Ukrainians, the option for learning a second language in school was limited to French or Ukrainian. Considering my mothers side is Ukrainian-Canadian, I thought it would be cool to be able to speak to my maternal grandmother and great-grandmother in their native tongue. Besides, the Ukrainian language seemed exotic. So I chose Ukrainian.My father, whose roots are primarily Scottish, challenged my decision because where would it take me in life? After all, he does not speak Ukrainian. My mother supported the idea, which was, wink wink, code for we can talk in secret.I struggled learning a second language, either out boredom or lack of confidence, or both. But I learned enough to be able to communicate with my grandmothers in their native tongue (they could also speak English), and also appreciate my Eastern European roots. But years later, I would discover time and again that not being able to speak French would be career-limiting.And so, after taking French classes in fits and starts over the years, I find myself back in the classroom out of a desire to learn more, and also stretch my brain and expand my opportunities in life.Its never too late to learn a new language. Here are some ways you can fit it into your life and do it without losing your mind:Listen to language lessons on audio recordings while at the gym, doing housework, cooking, walking, jogging or driving to work.Watch YouTube videos or movies in your new language.Begin your morning or end your day by memorizing a new phrase in the language you are learning.Seek out social settings where you can use your new language, such as Meet-Up groups.At work, take small breaks to practice on a colleague who is open and willing to help.Sign-up for a night course at a local community college, cultural centre or on-line program.Take a vacation in the country where the language is spoken. This way, you can rejuvenate your spirit and learn at the same time.Practice on your partner, friends, children or even pet. They can learn, too.Are you learning a new language? What are you doing to stay motivated? Id love to hear from you. Tweet to me at @Shannon_Skinner.Shannon Skinner is a Toronto-based, award-winning television and radio talk show host, inspirational speaker, writer and author of The Whispering Heart: Your Inner Guide to Creativity. For information on her speaking engagements and interviews, visit: ShannonSkinner.com and ExtrarodinaryWomenTV.com This article is, in part, an excerpt from Shannons book The Whispering Heart and also published at ShannonSkinner.com.


When federal banking regulator FDIC released its National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households in late October, the headline was that more people were using banks for checking and savings accounts nationally, a sign of a healthier U.S. economy.

Anyone who looks deeper into the numbers, however, can see a different story for Texas and San Antonio.

Although the percentage of Texans who were unbanked improved in the 2013-15 period, Texas is still among the 10 worst states in the percentage of residents who do not have bank accounts  9.4 percent. The national average is 7 percent.

The San Antonio area not only had a higher percentage than Texas as a whole, 11.3 percent unbanked in 2015, the trend is going the wrong way. In 2013, 8.1 percent of the citys residents were unbanked. This should concern area employers.

Unbanked people are those who hold no checking or savings accounts with a financial institution, using mainly cash and money orders.

Some people are underbanked, which means they have a checking or savings account with a bank or credit union, but they also borrow from predatory lenders, such payday lenders, and take out pawn shop loans, income-tax refund anticipation loans and auto title loans, and participate in rent-to-own financings.

The percentage of underbanked people in the San Antonio area last year also increased, to 31.3 percent from 27.6 percent in 2013, according to surveys by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Statewide, the percentage of underbanked Texans was 23.7 percent for 2015, down from 27.4 percent in 2013. The national underbanked percentage in 2015 was 19.9 percent, basically unchanged from 20 percent in 2013.

People are unbanked for various reasons, according to the survey of 36,000 people.

They dont trust banks. They believe they do not have enough money to keep in accounts. Cash is more private. Account fees are too high or unpredictable. Or there just isnt a financial institution close enough to be convenient.

People who are unbanked tend to have lost jobs recently or suffered a significant income decline. They also are workers who are paid widely different amounts from paycheck to paycheck.

But the FDIC also found other categories that tend to be unbanked and underbanked: lower-income households, less-educated households, younger households, black and Hispanic households, and households with working-age people with disabilities.

San Antonios ethnic, education and income profiles account for its higher-than-average percentage of unbanked.

Why is this a problem?

Financial stability is one reason. People without checking and savings accounts tend not to have money set aside for emergencies. People dealing mainly in cash lose time and money by using costly cash-checking services.

Safety and security are a concern, too. If you use cash and are robbed, that money is gone. You cant get it back, said Nichole Francis Reynolds, MasterCard director of U.S. government relations and liaison to the companys Master Your Card program.

If people use prepaid debit cards or payroll cards, theft can be prevented, Reynolds said. If there is fraud with the cards, the losses, in many cases, can be recovered by the card companies and merchants, depending on the card issuer.

Payroll cards are reloadable debit cards that are being used by more employers instead of paychecks to help their workers save time and money.

Technology has advanced to the point that nearly everything can be paid for nearly everywhere with debit, prepaid, payroll cards and smartphones, Reynolds said.

That is the point of MasterCards Master Your Card Program: educating the public through community groups that unbanked people can use card alternatives if they do not or cannot use financial institutions. When cash is necessary, cards can withdraw it from automated teller machines.

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Were living in a digital economy now, Reynolds said. With cards and with smartphones, people can pay rent, and utility and cable bills online or at grocery-store bill-paying counters instead of carrying cash.

The FDIC report makes it clear that financial institutions do not have much of a role in helping the public understand options when it comes to handling income and money.

This is an area employers should address. Banks dont hold financial counseling sessions on the basics of checking, credit and savings accounts, and the need to avoid predatory lending. But employers can do so at worksites. This can stave off financial hardships among workers  hardships that lead to absenteeism and high job turnover rates.

Some companies do this. H-E-B, Rackspace Hosting Inc. and Broadway Bank are among companies that have helped employees with financial literacy sessions.

But not enough employers do. Chambers of commerce can help persuade more of their members to conduct on-site financial counseling by guiding them to programs and nonprofit and government organizations that can help.

In addition to the Master Your Card program, businesses can tap the FDIC, United Way, the Federal Reserve, the Texas Department of Banking and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They also can check on services their banks provide, such as payroll cards.

dhendricks@express-news.net
Donna Ryan is a retired director of finance who describes herself as a political moderate and whose political hero is Ronald Reagan. She worries about the national debt, the threat from the Islamic State, and a decline in public morality hastened by social media. She doesn't believe the United States is particularly great now -- she rates it at a six when asked to place the country's present condition on a one-to-ten greatness scale -- and she would like to see an America that is "free and truly leading the world in everything, including morals."

Donna wanted to vote for Donald Trump. For much of the campaign, up until the summer's party conventions, she was drawn to the appeal of a businessman, and especially a non-politician, running for president. (She still has warm feelings for Ben Carson, whose candidacy she admired.) But she can no longer support Trump and has "pretty closely decided" to vote for Hillary Clinton.

"I so much wanted Trump," Donna told a focus group held Tuesday night in the Charlotte area by the Democratic pollster Peter Hart. "I so much wanted a non-politician. But I don't trust him, and I've become afraid of him."

Why afraid? asked Hart.

"Because I just don't think he knows when to shut up," Donna answered. "If he would just say, I'm a businessman, I'm not a politician, I'm going to make America great again -- and stop right there -- then I would vote for him."

When did Trump lose you? Hart asked.

"Around the summertime, so it guess it was around the conventions," Donna answered. "I started getting nervous. He just went off and his face gets all red."

Another Hart question: When his face gets red, what does that say to you?

"I see a temper, a temper tantrum, like a little boy," Donna said. "I had five brothers, and I remember that face. And that's when I got scared of him."

"So I started to listen more to Clinton. I don't like Clinton, let me tell you, and I don't trust her, but I think she's the lesser of two evils."

There were a dozen people in Hart's group, six men and six women. They were all what Hart called "late deciders" -- they had made their choice in the last couple of months -- or were still undecided. Of the men, three appeared to support Trump, with some reservations, while two appeared to less reluctantly support Clinton. One was difficult to read. The ones who supported Trump worried a lot about the Supreme Court and on that basis chose to back the Republican. (Indeed, for most of the Trump leaners, the future of the Court was nearly the only reason cited to explain their support.)

But it was the women who told the story of the group -- and perhaps the election.

Another woman, Jennifer, began by saying she is still undecided. "I'm kind of like Donna," she said. "I wanted to like Trump. But I don't know that I can, because it's embarrassing the way he acts, his temper tantrums. I think he's just an embarrassment to our country. I don't embrace Clinton, but I'd vote for her. It's probably going to be a vote against Trump."

By the end of her remarks, Jennifer didn't seem so undecided anymore.

Still another woman, Denise, said she too is undecided, but leaned a little the other way. "I'm leaning slightly towards Trump based on Supreme Court decisions, national security, pro-life," Denise said. "Mainly for what the party stands for, not as much the candidate."

Hart asked Denise if she had anything to say to Donna -- that is, perhaps to persuade her it's OK to support Trump.

"No," said Denise, adding that it's a personal decision. She appeared to completely understand her fellow group members' choice not to support Trump.

As the talk went on, it became obvious that Trump could have had the support of Donna and Jennifer, and could have had the undivided support of Denise. Trump did have their support when the summer began -- and remember that was after a crazy and contentious primary season, when Trump started a zillion controversies, from dissing John McCain to calling for a ban on foreign Muslims entering the U.S. to allegedly mocking a disabled reporter to declining to disavow David Duke to going after a judge of Mexican descent. Even after all that, Trump still had a real chance to win Donna's, and Jennifer's and Denise's strong support.

But Trump let it all get away. And it didn't happen with the leak of the "Access Hollywood" tape, or with the accounts of women who said Trump tried to grope them. No, it appears Trump blew it with many women beginning with the conventions, when he formally entered a one-on-one contest with Hillary Clinton. Under the heightened scrutiny of a general election race, with press coverage turning sharply negative, Trump's fight with Khizr Khan, his remarks about "Second Amendment people," his extended fight over the 1996 Miss Universe -- those new controversies, piled on top of the pre-existing controversies from the GOP primary season, finally took Trump down. Everything after that was just extra.

To watch the session was to see the great big, beautiful opportunity Trump -- even the most imperfect Trump -- had to win the loyalty of voters who wanted something new. He had a golden chance and didn't do it.

Byron York is chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner.
Investment partnership losses led Biglari Holdings Inc., the San Antonio parent company of Steak n Shake restaurant chain and Maxim mens magazine, to post a $60 million third-quarter loss.

Biglari Holdings on Friday reported losing $60.1 million, or $49.48 a share, on $216.7 million in revenue for the three months ended Sept. 30. That compares with earnings of $9.3 million, or $7.35 a share, on $218.4 million in revenue for the same period last year.

The investment partnership losses were $108.6 million in the latest quarter, versus a gain of $5.3 million a year ago.

No explanation was given for the drop, but the company stated it does not regard fluctuations in the investment partnerships carrying values to be meaningful. The companys investment in the Lion Fund and Lion Fund II, private funds managed by Biglari himself that pay a management fee to Biglari Holding, was $837.9 million as of Sept. 30.

Chairman and CEO Sardar Biglari, who controls 51.3 percent of the companys stock, did not respond to a request for comment. He generally does not speak to the media.

Maxims revenue, meanwhile, continues to slide as Biglari  who added the title of editor-in-chief this year  tries to transform the publication.

Maxims revenue was $1.4 million in the latest quarter, down from $5.7 million a year ago. Its the third straight quarterly decline in revenue.

On the upside, Maxims losses continue to shrink as expenses decline. The publication lost about $1.8 million in the quarter, versus $2.8 million a year ago. Management expects the magazine will break into the black sometime before the end of this quarter.

We have taken the risk on the belief that the profitability for gain in value more than justifies the risk of loss, Biglari Holdings said of Maxim in the quarterly financial report filed Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Biglari Holdings restaurant operations, comprised of Steak n Shake and Western Sizzlin, earned $7.8 million on $209.4 million in revenue in the third quarter. The operations earned $7.2 million on $208.3 million in revenue a year ago.

Steak n Shake, with 417 company-operated stores and 166 franchised locations, reported a 0.2 percent increase in same-store sales but a 0.2 percent decrease in customer traffic in the third quarter. Consumers have been closely watching their discretionary spending.

Biglari Holdings other operating business, First Guard Insurance Co., an underwriter of commercial trucking insurance, reported slightly lower earnings on higher revenue. The company earned $753,000 on $5.7 million in revenue in the third quarter, versus earnings of $857,000 on $4.3 million a year ago. The latest results were affected by higher insurance losses and underwriting expenses.

During the third quarter, Biglari Holdings received a comment letter from the SEC that contained three comments relating to the companys latest annual financial report and a March proxy statement.

The SEC directed the company to provide a detailed legal analysis of why it doesnt consider itself an investment company.

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In an Aug. 29 reply, which came from the Washington, D.C., law office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, the company was described as an ongoing enterprise with nearly 24,000 employees.

The letter added that the company uses its investment holdings to support and expand its operations.

The SEC also directed the company to disclose in future filings potential payments to Biglari if his role at the company comes to an end. Biglari would have been entitled to $17 million in severance if one of those events occurred as of last Dec. 31.

Biglari also would have received five annual royalty payments of about $20.5 million under a trademark license agreement if he had been terminated without cause or resigned due to an Involuntary Termination Event, or if the company had a change in control.

Finally, the SEC instructed the company to disclose that Biglari is the sole owner of Biglari Capital Corp., which is the general partner of the Lion Fund partnerships.

pdanner@express-news.net

Twitter: @AlamoPD
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A Fort Hood soldier missing for more than three weeks was found dead near his truck Thursday in an apparent rollover, according to Fort Hood officials.

Soldiers on a training mission discovered the remains of Army Pvt. Dakota Lee Stump, 19, next to a flipped-over vehicle at Fort Hood on Thursday around noon, according to a release.

His mother, Patrice Wise, said she was told Thursday night that her son died in a serious car crash.

Stump had been missing since Oct. 10.

A Ford Mustang, registered to Stump rested 100 yards from the roadway, hidden from the road by terrain and heavy vegetation, Army officials said.

Based on the extensive damage to the car and surrounding trees and foliage, early indications are the vehicle left the road, entered the wooded area and rolled over multiple times, according to law enforcement officials.

Stump had wanted to join the Army since he was 7 years old, in Indiana, Wise said.

Stump enjoyed tae kwon do and playing the guitar, and wanted to protect his country by fighting ISIS, Wise said.

He had become my hero, she said.

Stump, whose home of record is listed as Avon, Indiana, entered active-duty service in March as an indirect-fire infantryman.

He was assigned to 4th Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, since July.

Stump's awards and decorations include the National Defense Service Medal and Army Service Ribbon.

The incident is under investigation and an autopsy will be performed at Dover Air Base, Fort Hood public affairs said.
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Using torches, a conch, a jug of water and husks of corn to represent Earths four elements, a small group of indigenous people from across Texas performed a traditional dance Friday morning to open up a sacred space at the University of Texas at San Antonio Downtown Campus.

We ask permission of the heart of the sky, said Laura Yohualtlahuiz Ameyaltonal, an indigenous dancer in the group, lifting a torch toward the clouds. She said the grassy area was a space for thoughts, prayers and emotion, and she encouraged attendees to open their hearts.

This is an open vessel, said Rosa Typina Yaotonalcuauntli, a fellow indigenous dancer who is in the kalpulli teokalli teoyolotl group, based in Austin. This is the space where all the entities are coming together so things can be in harmony.

The ceremony marked the opening of Mundo Zurdo 2016, an international conference honoring the work of the late Chicana writer and scholar Gloria Anzaldua, who grew up in the Rio Grande Valley. Anzaldua was 61 when she died of complications of diabetes in 2004.

The conference brought in scholars from across the world to speak to the theories brought forth in Anzalduas work, and it will continue today. Its hosted by the Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldua and UTSAs Womens Studies Institute.

It was wonderful, said Lisa Cruces, a librarian at the University of Houston, as the smell of incense from the torches still lingered. I think it set a wonderful opening to the whole conference. It really connected with the spiritual aspect of our culture. It added heritage and history that many of us can connect with, as Latinos and as humans.

The conference alternates between scholarly panels and speakers and more community-minded events such as the Noche de Cultura on Friday evening, which included poetry readings and an art exhibit.

One of the keynote speakers was Maria Lugones, an Argentine philosopher and professor at Binghamton University in New York state. She spoke about Anzalduas theory of duality, often interpreted through napantla, an Aztec word for inbetween-ness. Its described as a state of being that occurs for those who straddle two cultures, like Anzaldua did as a Mexican-American living on the U.S. side of the borderlands.

Lugones also spoke of the contemporary issues of race.

This reality is culturally white, when we look at how power runs through it, she said, suggesting the imbalance between races in society today.

About 50 people  students, professors and community members  listened to Lugones speak.

The conference strengthens our identity, especially when were challenged and we feel like no one understands where were coming from, Cruces said.

The sacred space in the heart of the downtown campus will close tonight, the dancers said, as the conference comes to an end.

sfosterfrau@express-news.net
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With a single-day record turnout of 46,651, Bexar Countys historically high early voting concluded Friday amid a flurry of election and campaign activity, including a crossfire of last-minute ethics charges in the hotly contested District 23 congressional race.

On a day with European election observers in San Antonio to scrutinize the voting process, Bexar County officials were rejoicing in the high voting totals and shifting their focus to Tuesdays Election Day polling.

Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen called the turnout phenomenal and praised the election workers who have handled the historic turnout.

This is invigorating and we can only wish that Election Day will bring out a record number, Callanen said late Friday. Our goal is to surpass our 2012 high Election Day turnout of 144,000.

Callanen contends the total vote could exceed the 56 percent turnout in the last presidential election in 2012. Tuesdays turnout could range from 165,000 to 185,000, which would be another record, she said.

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In the 12 days of early voting that ended Friday, 436,731 ballots were cast in Bexar County, including Fridays 46,651. The previous single-day record for early voting of 45,375 was set on the last day of early voting in 2012.

The previous 12-day record was 375,784 set in 2008, when President Barack Obama first was elected.

In addition to the in-person early votes, more than 33,000 mail ballots await processing.

Thats going to keep everybody busy through Tuesday, Callanen said. We will accept mail ballots up to 7 p.m. Tuesday.

For us, the real go day is Saturday, Callanen said. Well see 600 of our election officials, maybe 650 of them, theyll come by and pick up their supplies for Election Day. Theres last-minute training. They get to commiserate with each other.

Most of the countys 2,100 electronic voting devices have been delivered to the 303 places where they will be used Tuesday  the libraries, schools and other voting locations. A few dozen devices, destined for churches, community centers and other locations where security could be an issue over the weekend, wont be delivered until Monday.

The devices all have undergone state-mandated accuracy tests to insure that no votes were already recorded on them, Callanen said.

We make sure that every unit has zero votes and the programming is correct, she said.

Candidates for federal, state and local offices continued their get-out-the-vote efforts Friday, while the race for District 23 was marked by a war of words over ethics charges.

Texas GOP Chairman Tom Mechler was in San Antonio on Friday to announce his filing of a complaint with the Texas Ethics Commission saying Democrat Pete Gallego violated state law by failing to register as a lobbyist who was paid $45,000 by the city of Del Rio.

But Gallego rejects the charge, saying he was hired to provide legal advice, not to lobby. The Hurd campaigns previous claim that Gallego lobbied for the city of Austin was deemed false by PolitiFact.

He doesnt want to be labeled as a lobbyist but he is conducting lobbyist activities, Mechler said. Its very clear that the law requires that lobbyists have to register.

This is not an election ploy.  We just now received the documentation that we had asked for with respect to these contracts with the city of Del Rio, Mechler said. Setting up meetings with elected officials and their staff is a lobbying activity.

The accusation dovetails with anti-Gallego commercials being aired in the district, with messages that assail Gallego as a lobbyist and Washington insider.

This takes it to the next level, Mechler said. Its one thing for us to say hey, this guys a lobbyist. Now what were saying is were going to go to the Texas Ethics Commission and file a complaint and ask them to investigate, Mechler said.

Meanwhile, Gallego released a new web ad featuring the endorsement of Vice President Joe Biden.

Leveling a charge of his own, Gallego on Friday said a supporter had filed another federal ethics complaint against Hurd, alleging one of his ads improperly used video from a congressional hearing and violated disclaimer rules.

Will Hurd clearly believes that rules do not apply to him if they dont serve his own self interest, Gallego said in a statement, which claimed Hurd has aired four ads that violated copyright, city ethics and House ethics rules.

Hurds campaign has denied any wrongdoing and rejected demands to pull the ads.

jgonzalez@express-news.net

Twitter: @johnwgonzalez
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One of the smooth talkers who police say is behind a local roofing scam was convicted in a murder-for-hire plot in the 1990s along with his brother, who later became one of the notorious Texas Seven who escaped from prison in 2000.

Mark Rodriguez, 42, and Michael Anthony Rodriguez pleaded guilty in 1995 to paying a couple of hit men to kill Michael Rodriguezs wife in 1992 in order to collect insurance money. Michael Rodriguez would later gain notoriety as one of seven inmates who escaped from the John B. Connally Unit near Kenedy and committed a rash of crimes that included killing an Irving police officer before they were caught or killed a month later.
A 21-year-old Texas State University senior accused of killing a man and his unborn child while driving drunk after a river trip in August was indicted in Hays County last week, records show.

An indictment against Shana Elliott was filed Oct. 26, county records show. She was formally charged with two counts of intoxication manslaughter with a vehicle, a second-degree felony, and intoxication assault with a vehicle, a third-degree felony, the records show.

If convicted of the intoxication manslaughter charges, Elliott faces up to 20 years in jail and a $10,000 fine for each count. If convicted of intoxication assault, Elliott faces 10 years in jail and a $10,000 fine.

Her arraignment is scheduled for Monday, according to county records. Her attorney was not listed.

Elliott was driving home after floating the river in San Marcos on Aug. 2 when her car veered across the center line on Texas 21 and collided with a vehicle carrying Kristian Guerrero, 24, and her husband, Fabian Guerrero-Moreno, according to an affidavit.

Guerrero-Moreno was killed in the crash, and his wife was hospitalized with a head injury. Two days later, doctors induced labor and Guerrero gave birth to her 19-week-old fetus. She named the baby Fabian James after his father.

A joint funeral for Guerrero-Moreno and his son was held Aug. 12 in Bryan.

County records show Elliott had been arrested twice before, once in March and again in May, on felony drug charges. On March 22, she was arrested and charged with possession of controlled substances and marijuana. On May 2, she was arrested on a charge of possession of controlled substances, according to county records.
An officer from the San Antonio Police Department effectively has been fired for allegedly attempting to feed a dog-excrement sandwich to a homeless man.

In May, Officer Matthew Luckhurst, a five-year SAPD veteran who had been assigned to the departments bike-patrol unit, allegedly sandwiched dog feces in bread and left it next to a homeless man. The cop told other bike officers, who immediately told him to throw away the sandwich, according to a police source.

Luckhurst boasted of the incident to other officers, who reported it to the departments Internal Affairs division, prompting an investigation.

This was a vile and disgusting act that violates our guiding principles of treating all with integrity, compassion, fairness and respect, Chief William McManus said in a prepared statement.

McManus said that the fact that his fellow officers were so disgusted with his actions that they reported him to Internal Affairs demonstrates that this type of behavior will never be tolerated. The action of this one former officer in no way reflects the actions of all the other good men and women who respectfully serve this community.

This is not the first incident involving poor judgment by San Antonio police officers.

Last month, 23 uniformed police officers, including six supervisors, were disciplined for being photographed at the San Antonio International Airport wearing red caps with the slogan Make America Great Again, the calling card of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trumps campaign.

City employees are prohibited from donning political gear while on duty or representing the city. McManus was forced to apologized for that incident.

On Thursday, the City Council was briefed on the feces sandwich matter during a private session.

The citys report on what happened was released to media Friday in a news release from McManus office. It notes that the incident occurred in May, when Luckhurst bragged to a fellow officer that he had picked up some feces, placed it in a slice of bread, and put it in a Styrofoam container next to the unknown homeless male, and that the officer reported that he told Luckhurst to go back and throw it away.

The incident was reported to Internal Affairs in July. Police Department officials have been unable to locate the homeless man.

Firing this officer was the right thing to do, Mayor Ivy Taylor said in a statement to the San Antonio Express-News. His actions were a betrayal of every value we have in our community, and he is not representative of our great police force.

McManus and two boards comprising citizens and police officers have all agreed on indefinite suspension for the officer, who plans to appeal the decision. Indefinite suspension is tantamount to firing.

The Police Department did not recommend charges be filed against the officer, though a public integrity unit under Bexar County District Attorney Nico Lahood examined the facts of the case.

LaHood said assault changes require that force be present. The officer is not alleged to have force-fed the sandwich to the homeless man. Rather, he allegedly left it next to the man and then retrieved it before the sandwich could be consumed.

LaHood also said there needs to be an identifiable victim, even if he doesnt testify. McManus and others have said that after an exhaustive search, the victim could not be located.

For the past year or so, Luckhurst had been on SAPDs downtown bike-patrol unit.

Luckhursts parents have for years run a food pantry at the church they attend, helping the citys vulnerable population. Reached by telephone, Luckhurst declined to comment, saying that his lawyer advised him not to speak to reporters.

Ben Sifuentes, Luckhursts attorney, said his client joked about giving an excrement sandwich to a homeless person but never actually did so. The joke spiraled out of control, he said, and has turned his client into the subject of unfair persecution, Sifuentes said.

It didnt happen, Sifuentes said. There are no eyewitnesses or video recordings and no statement from the homeless person, the lawyer said.

Im confident that in arbitration, we will prevail, said Sifuentes, who has represented other SAPD officers facing discipline and termination.

The council was apparently briefed Thursday on the issue because of speculation that the San Antonio Express-News was working on a story about the incident. The newspaper earlier sought records on the incident.

Several council members reacted Friday with outrage over the incident, standing behind McManus decision to terminate the office.

Councilman Joe Krier called the act reprehensible.

We have very few bad apples in a barrel full of outstanding police and fire, Krier said. But its our job to get the bad apples out of the barrel as quickly as possible when they do bad things.

Councilwoman Shirley Gonzales, who represents the area around Haven for Hope  a center that provides services for the citys homeless community  said the officers action was horrible.

I think its horrible that people would prey on very vulnerable populations, she said. It really is just so disappointing that one of our officers would prey on vulnerable populations. We are always working on behalf of those homeless people, and Haven for Hope is still a place to go for any homeless person who needs resources.

Councilman Cris Medina said the actions were simply appalling.

That is not the way we treat human beings, and I was really disappointed, Medina said. I know the officer recognizes he made a terrible mistake and I know hes got to atone for his mistake.

U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, a frequent critic of improper actions taken by local officers, said Luckhurst showed a lack of judgment that should prevent him from policing.

Its obviously a disgusting act from a very disturbed person. He shouldnt carry a badge, Castro said. If you show such poor judgment, going around bragging about something like that as a peace officer, then you probably shouldnt be on the police force.

Mike Helle, president of the San Antonio Police Officers Association, said the officer does not receive union representation after being terminated.

Hes on his own right now, Helle said of Luckhurst. Its his conduct and behavior he had to answer for. The chief took the necessary action he thought he had to take.

Staff Writer Brian Chasnoff contributed to this report.

jbaugh@express-news.net

Twitter: @jbaugh
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AUSTIN - On a television ad airing ahead of Election Day, Texas Secretary of State Carlos Cascos declares: "It's voting season in Texas."

The 30-second spot tailored by international public relations giant Burson-Marsteller is supposed to serve as a quick explainer to educate Texans on new voter ID requirements ordered by a federal court.

Yet, Cascos and state officials say they cannot reveal where the secretary of state's office is spending taxpayer money to broadcast those ads and the names of an estimated 1,800 community groups partnering with Texas to circulate voter ID information at the local level.

Texas is using the lion's share of a $2.5 million voter education effort on paid media and outreach to community organizations, but has refused over the course of months to provide details of how and where it's spending public money for the public education campaign.

The secrecy has irked several lawmakers representing areas of the state with heavy minority populations affected by the voter ID law, as confusion over photo identification requirements has been reported around Texas during early voting.

State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, called it "disturbing" and "unacceptable."

"The lack of transparency from the Secretary of State is disturbing," Ellis said in an email, noting that a federal judge has already scolded Texas for distributing misleading information during its current outreach effort. "Now, they're shrouding the voter education campaign in secrecy and using millions of taxpayer dollars to do it. That is simply unacceptable."

Cascos, who was appointed secretary of state by Gov. Greg Abbott, said Texas is trying to educate voters to the best of its ability, but he pointed to ongoing litigation when asked about the ad buys and community groups.

'Pending litigation'

Texas' main argument to withhold the information boils down to this: Burson-Marsteller drew up the plans and provided them to the state under contract as "proprietary" information.

A federal judge in August sealed records related to ad buy markets and community groups targeted to receive "digital tool kits" with updated voter ID information. The secretary of state's office has since used the court seal as one of its reasons to deny media inquiries for the information.

Along with documents related to the current outreach program, the secretary of state's office has refused to disclose information related to ad buys and market placement for a voter education campaign in 2014, the first statewide election cycle in which the voter ID law was used. The agency also will not release the name of a state lawmaker it wrote a letter addressing details of the 2014 education effort.

The 2014 documents are not under federal seal, but the secretary of state's office has asked Attorney General Ken Paxton to allow the agency to withhold their release, arguing they are part of "pending litigation." The secretary of state's office has made the same argument with Paxton's office to withhold documents about ad buys related to the current education campaign.

Alicia Pierce, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state's office, said the agency's is seeking to "protect the propriety interests of the state related to information purchased through a vendor."

"The public information act protects not only information sealed by court order but also information that is a subject of pending litigation," she said.

Paul Watler, a Dallas-based attorney who represents newspapers and broadcasters in public information and First Amendment cases, said the pending litigation exception in the Texas open records law is very effective for state agencies because it so broad.

"There are no real limits to that test," he said. "If it relates to pending litigation in anyway the information can be withheld."

'Proprietary and confidential information'

The secretary of state's office has said its ads are running statewide and that 30-second spots started airing on television and radio in mid-October but hasn't provided a breakdown for market-by-market spending. It also has not identified a single community group that received a digital tool kit.

Without more details, experts say, the public will be left in the dark about levels of ad spending in markets with large minority populations and which groups Texas is distributing education materials to.

A softened version of what was once considered the strictest voter ID law in the country is being implemented in Texas for the current election. In August, a federal judge in Corpus Christi ordered that people lacking one of seven state-mandated forms of photo identification will be allowed to cast a ballot by showing an alternate ID and signing an affidavit.

Texas was also ordered to conduct a robust education campaign about the changes as a court fight over the law continues to play out.

The only detailed information released so far has been in a court document in which the state says it planned to spend $1.3 million on paid media, another $256,000 for ad production and strategy and around $179,000 on "community engagement" with some 1,800 unnamed organizations. The total for those expenditures comes to nearly 70 percent of the $2.5 million that the state is spending.

Texas argued in court filings that documents related to the ad buys and community groups include "proprietary" and "confidential" information provided by Burson-Marsteller, which designed the state's voter education campaign. State lawyers also cited a 1978 case involving President Richard Nixon, in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that media outlets could not have access to tapes from a Watergate obstruction trial.

Asked about the issue, Cascos earlier this week deferred to the court's sealing of the records.

"You'd have to take up that with the federal court," he said.

When pressed on the state's argument about the need to guard information provided by Burson-Marsteller over the public's access, Cascos said: "I was not involved."

'High burden'

However, that explanation falls short for some lawmakers.

State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, a San Antonio Democrat, said the public has a right to know how its dollars to educate voters are being used.

"While the state may believe there's an interest in wanting to protect this information, it's a very high burden and I don't think they've met it," said Martinez Fischer, who also chairs one of the civil rights groups suing Texas over its voter ID law.

State Rep. Poncho Nevarez, D-Eagle Pass, said cloaking important components of the voter ID education campaign in secrecy hurts the public's trust in how the state is using taxpayer money. Nevarez said he wants an explanation from the secretary of state's office about why the information is being kept secret.

"There's no reason why they shouldn't be transparent," he said. "Let's take the argument in good faith that their might be proprietary information regarding the ads. But when it comes to the community groups, there's no reason the public shouldn't know that."

'1,800 community groups'

According to a court document, Texas planned to send "digital tool kits" to 1,800 community groups with updated voter ID information as part of a strategy that "capitalizes on the connections community groups and organizations have to share information."

Elaine Wiant, president of the League of Women Voters of Texas, said her organization was never contacted by the secretary of state's office or Burson-Marsteller, despite being one of the largest active groups doing voter outreach.

"We've had many communications with the secretary of state's office on this," she said, "and it is a bit surprising they're engaging with community organizations and not including us."

On Friday, the secretary of state's office said it had sent out more than 1,800 digital tool kits to date and that the agency has been in regular contact with the League of Women Voters of Texas, including sharing information about its education efforts and having Cascos speak at events with local chapters.

drauf@express-news.net
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Law enforcement officials said they are staying vigilant in the wake of a report that Texas is a possible target for a pre-election terror attack by al-Qaida on Monday. But they would neither confirm nor deny the specifics of the report.

Gov. Greg Abbott said Friday that his office was monitoring the situation and was in close coordination with the Department of Public Safety. Texans should go about their daily lives as usual but report suspicious activity to law enforcement, he said.

The FBI said it was working on a daily basis to assess intelligence and to disrupt any potential threats.

CBS News said Friday that U.S. intelligence had alerted joint terrorism task forces that al-Qaida could be planning attacks in three states for Monday. It is believed that New York, Texas and Virginia are all possible targets, though no specific locations are mentioned, it added.

Fred Burton, a terrorism expert for Stratfor, an Austin-based global intelligence company, said the latest buzzwords are an overabundance of caution, meaning it has to be assumed that groups are planning attacks. But it is all but impossible to prevent all types of attacks, and the key unknown for counterterrorism agencies is the source of the threat, he said.

When isnt al-Qaida trying to kill us? asked Burton, who previously worked in counterterrorism for the State Department. I have no confirmation of the credibility of this information, but having said that, how difficult is it to pick up a machete or drive a truck into a crowd?

A Houston man and a 24-year-old father, Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan, pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State and plotted to detonate homemade bombs in local shopping malls. He pleaded guilty last month to a terrorism-related charge and faces up to 20 years in federal prison at a January sentencing.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said people should follow the see something-say something rule.

Fridays reported threat is obviously cause for vigilance, and the fact of the matter is the FBI director has said there are open home-grown terrorist investigations in every FBI field office in America, Cornyn said in Austin.

He said he was confident that FBI agents are doing the best they can, but the threat is proliferating, and obviously the ability (terrorists) might have to disrupt the election and make a big impact, theyre going to take advantage of that.

dane.schiller@chron.com

Twitter.com/daneschiller

Staff Writer Peggy Fikac contributed to this report.
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By now, its clear that Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller is a proud member of the alt-right  a group described in a recent New Yorker profile as a loose affiliation of white nationalists, neo-monarchists, masculinists, conspiracists, belligerent nihilists, and social-media trolls.

This is troubling but not surprising.

Along with Donald Trump, for whom he enthusiastically stumps, Miller is a manifestation of the alt-right mentality: openly disdainful of women, presumptuous on the right of free speech, enamored of racist invective, and often offensive just for the puerile joy of it.

Consider the ct tweet.

On Tuesday, Miller copied and slightly edited a tweet calling Hillary Clinton the c-word that was posted earlier by Ricky Vaughn. Thats a psuedonym for an anonymous, anti-Semitic and racist alt-right presence on the Internet.

In January, Vaughn spoke to the white nationalist journal Radix about his belief in the Jewish role in subversion, homosexuality, et cetera and desire for all-White communities and shunning mixed-marriages  because we need racial separatism in order to maintain our unique culture and racial heritage.

As Jonathan Tilove reported in the Austin American-Statesman, Miller loves Vaughn; hes constantly giving him shout-outs on Twitter.

Miller is also a fan of Mike Cernovich, another alt-right icon and aggrieved male whose bone-deep wounds are salved only by grinding women to submissive dust.

A typical post on his blog, Danger & Play, purports to tell us what women want: There are tens of millions of good  which is to say, neutered  guys in America, and yet the best women consistently end up with dominant, strong, violent men.

The question isnt whether women want to be dominated, Cernovich continued. The question is whether you are man enough to dominate them.  Women want to feel real desire. They want a man who grabs them and makes them feel small, vulnerable, and feminine.

Is it any wonder the alt-right worships Trump, the most infamous woman-grabber in politics?

Supremacists such as Cernovich and Vaughn (and Miller and Trump) feed off the outrage they elicit. Yet they are outraged themselves at this outrage, decrying their own Twitter bans and denunciations by pundits as assaults on free speech.

This is an arrogant misreading of the First Amendment, as Andrew Marantz pointed out in a New Yorker profile of Cernovich.

Censure is not censorship, Marantz wrote. The Constitution guarantees that the government wont restrict what you can say; it does not guarantee that you can shout obscenities on CNN, or that you can harass co-workers, or that you can make racist arguments without being made to feel like a racist.

And then theres the question  for those of us in the maligned mainstream media  of whether to report the musings of the alt-right at all.

In June, I interviewed Steven Billingsley, a resident who brought a sign that read God Hates Fags to a vigil for victims of a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Reached later on Facebook, he offered a rant that echoed Millers pals on Twitter.

We must preserve the purity of our race, oppose the intrusion of foreign religions and do away with homosexuality for good, Billingsley told me. Heil Hitler!

The San Antonio Current swiftly took my column to task: Perhaps Billingsley doesn't deserve the megaphone, an audience, or our fear, Michael Barajas wrote, arguing that I shouldve ignored the local white supremacist.

The open embrace by Republican leaders of the alt-right suggests the risks of that posture.

There are some things, the more people know, the less comfortable they are, said Cal Jillson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University. To the extent that someone like Trump can rally people to a broad and indistinct version of (alt-right) views, its certainly helpful to have them speak for themselves and to show how narrow and vile and unacceptable their views are.

Lets hope Millers tweet has that effect.

bchasnoff@express-news.net
Some things are impossible to wrap your mind around.

Thats the case with the story of Matthew Luckhurst, a San Antonio bike-patrol police officer fired for allegedly attempting to feed a feces sandwich to a downtown homeless man.

Its an act that doesnt fit within the parameters of police misconduct, as weve come to understand that hotly debated term.

If a stressed-out police officer loses his temper in the middle of a verbally contentious arrest and throws a punch, thats an unacceptable act. But on a human level, if were honest about it, we can understand how such a thing would happen.

If a cop mistakenly assumes that someone is reaching for a gun and then fires his weapon, its a tragedy that demands serious investigation. But it also falls within our range of comprehension: a heat-of-the-moment act in a highly pressurized situation where the self-preservation instinct distorted someones perception.

But think about what it takes to scoop up some dog excrement, wrap two slices of bread around it, place it in a Styrofoam container and bring it to someone so down on their luck that their next meal is an iffy proposition; to present this offering as a show of kindness; to find hilarity in the thought of exploiting someones misery and desperation.

Thats not police misconduct. Its a premeditated act of such blithe cruelty that it sends tremors through your faith in humanity. It also makes you wonder how someone who gets their scatalogical kicks at the expense of a vulnerable stranger was ever entrusted with serving and protecting us.

Joan Cheever, founder of the nonprofit mobile food truck known as the Chow Train, has devoted the past 11 years to feeding this citys homeless population. She expressed deep sadness when asked about the Luckhurst story on Friday.

Its the most cruel thing someone can do to another person, Cheever said. Especially someone in authority.

Luckhursts alleged feces-sandwich offering is an aberrant act that in no way reflects the spirit of this city. But it occurred against a backdrop of municipal insensitivity to the homeless and indigent population over the past several years. And thats what concerns Cheever.

This mindset manifested itself in 2014 when SAPD Chief William McManus suggested an ordinance that would criminalize the act of giving to panhandlers. In the face of community criticism, McManus later dropped the proposal.

That same year, the city bumped Calvary Chapel of San Antonios annual gathering in Travis Park to benefit the homeless, an event the church had held there for 17 years. Then-Councilman Diego Bernal stepped in to save the gathering.

In September 2014, the city removed 13 downtown benches on Houston Street to rid the area of panhandlers and loiterers.

In April 2015, Cheever was ticketed by bike-patrol officers while feeding the homeless in Maverick Park, something she had been doing, without incident, for years.

The overriding municipal message from all these stories was that the homeless were a nuisance and an eyesore, and they needed to be diverted out of the downtown area, to the citys Haven for Hope facility.

The controversy over Cheevers citation (for not using a permitted food-delivery vehicle to deliver meals that she had cooked in a permitted food truck) prompted the city to improve its homeless feeding policy. Before it got there, however, city staffers defended her citation by saying they were only trying to protect the homeless from the dangers of unsafe food.

Vincent Nathan, then the assistant director (and currently the director) of the citys Metropolitan Health District, put it this way: Homeless people in our humble opinion, deserve the same safe food (as everyone else).

No one could have foreseen at the time that the biggest food-safety threat to our homeless population would come, not from a homeless feeder, but from a bike-patrol officer.

While we were working on the charitable feeding ordinance, Chief McManus told the compassion community how he wanted to build this bridge of trust between us and the homeless and the SAPD, Cheever said Friday. I said then that you have to earn trust, and this is going to set this relationship way, way back.

Thats how trust works. It takes sustained dedication to build, but only one cruel act to damage.

ggarcia@express-news.net

Twitter: @gilgamesh470
Farm support payments worth 246million have been deposited in the bank accounts of 12,000 Scottish farmers.

The first 2016 direct loan payments will be deposited in farmers bank accounts today, Rural Economy Secretary Fergus Ewing has confirmed.

Almost 12,000 farmers and crofters have today had their payments authorised under the National Basic Payment Support Scheme (NBPSS), which will see just under 246 million go into the rural economy.

Mr Ewing said: I can confirm the first direct loan payments for 2016 will arrive in farmers bank accounts today, which is injecting nearly a quarter of a billion pounds into the rural economy.

Cabinet Secretary for the Rural Economy Fergus Ewing

The funding will give our rural communities the security and certainty they need to plan for the year ahead while driving forward the rural economy.

We have had a great response from farmers to the 2016 scheme and will be writing to each recipient confirming their individual loan shortly. In the meantime, we continue to progress the remaining applications received after the 19 October deadline and further offer letters will be issued as eligibility is clarified.

We would encourage the 5,000 farmers who received a loan offer but havent yet replied to decide if they want to apply and return the application slip as soon as possible.

NFU Scotland director of policy Jonnie Hall welcomed the announcement and said the funds were a hugely welcome and sizeable boost to our rural economy as we head into winter.

He added: Given ongoing concerns over the IT payment system, we were very supportive of the Cabinet Secretary opting for the loan scheme approach and he is now delivering on his commitment to put precious funds into accounts in early November.

That delivers stability and certainty to farmers and crofters but will also very quickly filter out to all those businesses who provide them with goods and services.
The agricultural industry must embrace the opportunities and rise to the challenges for a vibrant future, NFU Scotlands President Allan Bowie told the Unions Autumn Conference.

The Conference focused on the most pressing issues on the political agenda, which in turn heavily influences agricultural policies.

The morning session welcomed the convenors of the two Scottish Parliamentary committees dedicated to scrutinising legislation relevant to the agricultural sector  Edward Mountain MSP, of the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee, and Graeme Dey MSP of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee.

Over 120 delegates heard about the key legislation going through the Scottish Parliament in the coming months and how the agricultural industry can work with MSPs to inform and influence the process.

In the afternoon session, the Secretary of State, David Mundell, discussed the UK governments negotiating position towards the UKs exit from the EU, focusing on how the interests of Scottish farming and crofting will be best represented.

Allan Bowie said that by embracing innovation, the whole agricultural industry can grow and thrive

Mr Mundell said: "Scottish farming is already leading the way... Just ask Highland Wagyu who are aiming to become the biggest producer of Wagyu cattle in Europe

"Or Mackies who have sold their ice cream as far afield as South Korea, or Ogilvie Potato Vodka who are growing, harvesting, brewing and distilling potatoes for the international vodka market.

"There is no doubt we have a worldwide reputation for quality."

Mr Mundell spoke alongside AHDBs Chief Strategy Officer, Tom Hind, who addressed the key concerns on future trade agreements, agricultural policy and labour requirements in a panel session dedicated to informing members about the latest Brexit developments.

'Shape and influence a new policy'

Opening the conference, President Allan Bowie said 'it is an exciting time for Scottish agriculture'.

"We have an opportunity through Brexit that weve never had before - to shape and influence a new agricultural policy, which works for Scotland, and the rest of the UK," Mr Bowie said.

We need a policy which is designed to suit our farming and crofting practices. It is now our responsibility to get things right for future generations.

The system weve had for the last 40 years, which has been driven by Europe, isnt working for Scotland or the UK.

Every single person in this room has the opportunity to input into what would work for this country, for our farmers and crofters, for those working the land who know what would be best and practically possible. Research, innovation and education must also be integral to this new policy.

We know the markets are in a difficult place, however there is a glimmer of light for certain sectors as prices being paid to farmers start to increase, and margins narrow. We continue to work with retailers and those across the supply chain to fight for better margins for our food producers and better returns.

As an industry we must embrace the opportunities and rise to the challenges, Mr Bowie concluded.
Muller Milk & Ingredients is proposing to invest 60m to upgrade capabilities and efficiencies, in a move to secure a 'sustainable and vibrant future'.

The investment, to be pumped into the dairy organisation's processing facilities at Severnside and Foston, with further enhancements to dairies at Droitwich, Manchester and Bridgwater, will create up to 180 new jobs.

The investment is part of a total of more than 100m which will be spent by Muller in the UK in the next 18 months to improve operational, innovation and marketing capabilities.

MMI has already confirmed a major investment at its dairy at Bellshill in Scotland and reversed the decision taken by Dairy Crest prior to the sale of its dairies to Muller to close a dairy at Hanworth in South West London, securing 170 jobs at the site.

Chadwell Heath dairy closure

"It is clear that the dairy at Chadwell Heath is no longer economically viable," Andrew McInnes, Managing Director of Muller Milk & Ingredients said

However, the business is now proposing to commence a phased wind down of the Chadwell Heath dairy in North East London over an 18 month period with the potential loss of 389 permanent posts.

MMIs distribution network in the South East is unaffected by this proposal and will be maintained and developed to meet current and future customer requirements.

MMI will begin a 45 day consultation on 10 November 2016 and will work with affected employees and their representatives to look at all options including offering alternative roles within the business.

In the event that a decision is taken to wind down processing operations at Chadwell Heath, Muller will work with dairy farmers who supply the site to review their options with the intention that wherever possible, they will not be disadvantaged.

Andrew McInnes, Managing Director of Muller Milk & Ingredients said: We are pleased to confirm proposals to invest in the capabilities of our dairies at Severnside, Foston, Droitwich, Manchester and Bridgwater having already confirmed plans to upgrade our dairy at Bellshill.

Regrettably, it is clear that the dairy at Chadwell Heath is no longer economically viable. It requires complete overhaul and modernisation and in an industry which has struggled for many years with excess and inefficient processing capacity, we cannot justify committing the level of investment which would be required to bring this site to an acceptable and sustainable level of performance.

Our proposal is to maintain and develop our distribution footprint in the South East of England, but to wind down processing operations at Chadwell Heath over an 18 month period. We will enter the consultation with an open mind and a determination to listen to our colleagues and rigorously assess the situation in Chadwell Heath before arriving at a decision.
An outbreak of Asian hornets has been successfully contained by bee inspectors who promptly tracked down and destroyed their nest in Gloucestershire.

Asian hornets were first discovered in the Tetbury area in September, but the National Bee Unit moved swiftly to find the nest and remove it.

No further live Asian hornets have been seen since the nest was treated with pesticide and removed in early October.

Two dead Asian hornets were discovered in separate locations close by in north Somerset, but no nests or live hornets have been located by inspectors and there have been no further sightings.

Asian hornets pose no greater risk to human health than a bee, though they are a threat to honey bee colonies. The species arrived in France in 2004 and is now common across large areas of Europe. It was discovered for the first time in the British Isles in Jersey and Alderney this summer.

It is possible Asian hornets could reappear in England next year and members of the public are urged to report any suspected sightings in the spring.

NFU acting chief horticulture adviser Chris Hartfield said the first finding of this "new serious" pest of honeybees represents a "worrying time" for bee farmers and beekeepers.

"Robust control measures are already in place, so lets hope its a limited outbreak that can be quickly contained and controlled," said Mr Hartfield.
By Darrel Good

Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics

University of Illinois

We have extensively analyzed the history of U.S. corn and soybean yields and deviations from trend yield as a basis for evaluating annual yield risk in the U.S. Examples include the farmdoc daily articles of February 26, 2015 and March 19, 2015, which examine the history of yield deviations from trend values not adjusted for growing season weather, and March 2, 2016 and March 9, 2016, which examine the history of yield deviations in years of El Nino episodes. Here, we start a series of articles that evaluate the history of corn and soybean yields and deviations from trend yield in Brazil and Argentina. Yield and production in those two countries have become increasingly important in determining the price of corn and soybeans as production and exports have expanded rapidly.

Background

Corn production in Brazil, for example, increased by 120 percent during the 20 years ending in 2016, while Argentine production increased by 80 percent. At the same time, soybean production increased by 260 percent in Brazil and by 450 percent in Argentina. For the 2014-15 marketing year, Brazil accounted for eight percent of world corn production and 24 percent of world exports and Argentina accounted for three percent of production and 13 percent of exports. Brazil accounted for 30 percent of world soybean production and 40 percent of world exports and Argentina accounted for 19 percent of production and eight percent of exports. The two countries also accounted for 67 percent of world soybean meal exports and 60 percent of world soybean oil exports. Each year, then, the size of the corn and soybean crops in Brazil and Argentina has a strong influence on the price of those two crops. There is special interest in 2017 yield and production prospects in those two countries for at least three reasons. First, yield and production in Brazil and Argentina were reduced in 2016 due to adverse weather conditions. The largest impacts were on corn in Brazil and soybeans in Argentina. Second, a weak to moderate La Nina episode is underway which may have some influence on growing season weather in those two countries. Third, Argentina is expected to sharply increase corn acreage due to reductions in corn export taxes.

Yield Data

Identifying and evaluating corn and soybean yield data for Brazil and Argentina is more complicated than for the U.S. In the U.S., one USDA agency, the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), has the responsibility for estimating yields. Those estimates are based on extensive data collection and statistical analysis as detailed in the publication The Yield Forecasting Program of NASS. We have written extensively about U.S. corn and soybean yield forecasts issued by NASS (Good and Irwin, 2006; Good and Irwin, 2011; Irwin, Sanders and Good, 2014; farmdoc daily, August 28, 2013; August 29, 2014; August 18, 2016; August 26, 2016). In contrast, yield estimates for Brazil and Argentina are provided by at least three agencies. For both Brazil and Argentina, these include the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS). In addition, in-country estimates for Brazil are provided by CONAB , The National Food and Supply Company, which is a public company allied with the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Supply for evaluating crop data. In-country estimates for Argentina are provided by the Argentina Ministry of Agribusiness. The yield estimating methodology used by these organizations is very different than used by NASS to make yield estimates for the U.S. To the best of our knowledge, these organizations use satellite data, information from field operators, and various statistical methodologies to derive area and yield estimates. The FAO calculates area and crop production data on the calendar year using figures supplied by member countries. Most of the data is accumulated via annual FAO questionnaires. The FAS makes production, supply, and distribution estimates from a variety of information sources on a marketing year basis for corn and soybeans. These sources include official country statistics, foreign agricultural attache reports, and a variety of other information sources available to the organization.

Yield estimates provided by FAO are readily available for both countries for the period 1961 through 2014 for corn and soybeans. FAS yield estimates are readily available for corn for both countries from 1961 through 2016 and for soybeans from 1978 through 2016. In-country yield estimates are readily available for Argentina from 1970 through 2016 and for Brazil from 1977 through 2016. These yield estimates are shown in Tables 1 and 2. The yield estimates have been converted from metric units and reported as bushels per acre. Brazilian corn yield estimates are weighted averages of the first and second crops by using production and planted acreage for each crop during the year to calculate corn yield.

In general, the FAO corn and soybean yield estimates tend to be very consistent with in-country estimates for Argentina in the years that overlap. That is, FAO tends to accept and report in-country estimates. The one exception is the nearly four bushel difference in 2014. There have been frequent, but generally small differences between FAO and in-country corn and soybean estimates for Brazil. Yield estimates provided by FAS have frequently deviated by small amounts from both FAO and in-county estimates. However, some differences are large. Most notable are the 2006 Argentine corn yield estimates and the 1998 Brazilian soybean estimates.

While corn and soybean yield estimates from various sources tend to track fairly closely over time for both countries, frequent small differences and occasional large differences have occurred. To accurately assess future yield risks based on historical yields, it is best to use the "correct" historical yield series. Since FAO and in-country estimates are nearly identical, the choice is between FAO and FAS yield estimates. Based on our understanding of the methodology used by the agencies, we believe that FAS estimates likely reflect the most rigorous reconciliation of area, production, and yield estimates. We will use FAS yield estimates in future articles to evaluate yield risks for both crops for both countries, even though that choice results in fewer observations for soybean yields.

Figures 1 and 2 present the FAS yield estimates for corn from 1961 through 2016 and for soybeans from 1978 through 2016. Average yields for both crops in both countries have trended higher with frequent deviations above and below trend. Argentina corn yields have historically been higher than in Brazil, but rapid growth in Brazilian yields in the last decade has reduced the gap. Soybean yields in Argentina exceeded yields in Brazil through the 1980s, but yields have generally been in the same range since that time.

Implications

There are at least three sources of corn and soybean yield estimates for Brazil and Argentina, including those provided by the FAS of the USDA, FAO of the UN, and in-country agencies. FAO and in-country estimates are nearly identical for most years, while FAS estimates have deviated somewhat from the other two sources. We will use historical yield estimates provided by FAS in future articles to evaluate corn and soybean yield risk for 2017 in both countries based on historical deviations from trend yields not adjusted for growing season weather and adjusted for years La Nina conditions existed.
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Revival of factories like Tanzania-China Friendship Textile Company (FTC) is essential for Tanzania's economic development, said Dr. Adelhelm Meru, permanent secretary in the Tanzania Ministry of Industries and Trade . He was speaking during the 50th anniversary exhibition of 'Urafiki' Friendship Textile Mill and 20th anniversary of FTC held in Dar es Salaam.

Revival of factories like Tanzania-China Friendship Textile Company (FTC) is essential for Tanzania's economic development, said Dr. Adelhelm Meru, permanent secretary in the Tanzania Ministry of Industries and Trade. He was speaking during the 50th anniversary exhibition of 'Urafiki' Friendship Textile Mill and 20th anniversary of FTC held in Dar es Salaam.#

FTC is a China-sponsored project in Tanzania. It is a joint venture company between Changzhou state owned Textile Assets Operation Company of China and the government of Tanzania.

Revival of factories like Tanzania-China Friendship Textile Company (FTC) is essential for Tanzania's economic development, said Dr. Adelhelm Meru, permanent secretary in the Tanzania Ministry of Industries and Trade. He was speaking during the 50th anniversary exhibition of 'Urafiki' Friendship Textile Mill and 20th anniversary of FTC held in Dar es Salaam.#

Welcoming Yan Li, China's party secretary of Changzhou Municipal Committee, Dr Meru appreciated the Changzhou initiative to visit the textile company as Tanzania is entering a new phase of industrialization, Tanzanian media reported.

Revival of factories like Tanzania-China Friendship Textile Company (FTC) is essential for Tanzania's economic development, said Dr. Adelhelm Meru, permanent secretary in the Tanzania Ministry of Industries and Trade. He was speaking during the 50th anniversary exhibition of 'Urafiki' Friendship Textile Mill and 20th anniversary of FTC held in Dar es Salaam.#

Dr. Meru also commended the textile craftsmen from Changzhou for their dedicated service for a period of 20 years to both nations whilst facing all odds. Changzhou craftsmen have helped in the development of Tanzania by improving the situation in the textile industry and by creating employment opportunities for its citizens, said Dr. Meru.

Revival of factories like Tanzania-China Friendship Textile Company (FTC) is essential for Tanzania's economic development, said Dr. Adelhelm Meru, permanent secretary in the Tanzania Ministry of Industries and Trade. He was speaking during the 50th anniversary exhibition of 'Urafiki' Friendship Textile Mill and 20th anniversary of FTC held in Dar es Salaam.#

Textile experts are regarded as role models of the friendship and cooperation between China and Tanzania, said Dr. Meru adding that this project has far-reaching political, diplomatic and economic significance against the backdrop of booming bilateral ties between China and Tanzania. (RR)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
A strengthening dollar and higher supplies into the market sent Australian wool prices into a negative zone, following consolidation of wool prices in the last few weeks. Although the wool market was not affected much, the higher supply of wool however, released the pressure valve on buyers, both local and overseas, as prices fell by around Au 25-30 cents.The Eastern Market Indicator (EMI) closed at 1,303 cents per clean kg, a weekly reduction of 28 cents per clean kg.

A strengthening dollar and higher supplies into the market sent Australian wool prices into a negative zone, following consolidation of wool prices in the last few weeks. Although the wool market was not affected much, the higher supply of wool however, released the pressure valve on buyers, both local and overseas, as prices fell by around Au 25-30 cents. #

According to the AWI report , the extra quantities on offer allowed a controlled reversing trend to be applied, as sellers showed no desire to hold onto their wool stocks and also not accept the price.Players in the market however believe that the market is on the drift just for a short period as the volume available in the market is being absorbed prior to a consolidation, leading into the three week Christmas recess. (AR)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/05/16 -- HAWKEYE Gold & Diamond Inc. (the "Company" or "HAWKEYE") (TSX VENTURE: HGO)(FRANKFURT: HGT) (ISIN: CA42016R3027) (WKN: A12A61) is pleased to announce it has entered into a Letter of Intent (LOI) with a third party independent vendor (the "Vendor") to purchase a fifty per cent (50% ) interest in the La Cobriza Project (the "Project") for US$4,500,000. The Property is a Gold and Silver project located 125 kilometers Northeast of Mazatlan and 150 km West Northwest of Durango City, Durango Mexico, and is next to the Tayoltita mine of Primero Mining Corp. The Temehuaya claim which forms part of the La Cobriza group is located approximately 25 kilometers East of Cobriza.

La Cobriza Project Highlights

- The project lies in the center of the famous San Dimas mining district where high-grade Gold-Silver veins were discovered around the year of 1757 (Dahlgren, 1882). The district has produced an estimation of 9.5 million ounces of Gold and 750 million ounces of Silver, according to the Qualifying Report written by Dr. Megaw (January 2004) to NI43-101 standards, however, the report was not a NI43-101 compliant document.

- There are 5 concessions totaling approximately 854 hectares, and to date there are 4 known structures in the "Cobriza Group" and 5 known structures in "Temehuaya"

- There is a 40 tonne per day floatation mill that can be operational, located 1000 meters from the mine. With a moderate amount of upgrades to the ball mill and water supply, the plant can achieve an estimated capacity of 120 tonnes in a relatively short period of time.

- The flotation plant is located on privately owned land totaling one hectare. In 2018 an option may be exercised to purchase a total of 280 hectares including the aforementioned one hectare. The plant site was chosen due to the fact that beneficiation activities have always existed on site since early last century. Therefore, this plant was "pre-existing" to the change in the mining law that occurred in 1985 and it is classified as an "old plant" (Grandfathered). It's regulations are different and therefore the final permit is easily achieved. Production can restart before the final permitting process has concluded.

- Historically, in Cobriza, the high grade pockets have sampled between 4,000-6,000 gr/tonne of Ag and 5-11 gr/tonne of Au at the heart / center of the vein. High grade pockets as high as 38,000 gr/tonne Ag and 270 gr/tonne Au per ton have previously been encountered. According to the previous owner, consistent grades of between 600 and 700 gr/tonne of Ag and 1.5 to 3 grams Au have been sustained throughout the previous production period.

- The Temehuaya Area consists of tilted Lower Volcanic Complex Andesites cut by several roughly parallel N35-50E (60NE) trending quartz veins and quartz veinlet stringer zones. At least two are 3-5m wide, and one reportedly runs to 8m in places. Samples reported by Legerman (1976) yielded up to 2.6 g/T Au, 323 g/T Ag, 0.76% Zn, and 2% Cu. These are comparable with Tayoltita, and San Dimas District style veins and would be the exploration targets. Temehuaya is a very high quality undeveloped vein target area where potential is high, but infrastructure is poor (as it was at Tayoltita before Luismin (Goldcorp) became active in the area).

Cobriza is an old Spanish mine that has had extensive work done on it since the early 1800's and the 20th century. More recently, it has been explored, but has also seen occasional production since 2006. The properties have not been explored systematically with modern methods such as Diamond Drilling. In 2006, the Mexican Government financed ($40,000 U.S) for a small study to show the value of Cobriza's reserves, which confirmed 12,000 tons with grades of Au 1.5 and Ag 622 g/tonne.

The first modern studies conducted on the mine were undertaken by Olagaray and Madero, who calculated the potential at over 3,750,000 tonnes. Multiple studies have been conducted, including Buen Paso 1996, FIFOMI, COREMI, and a Qualifying Report (Megaw 2004) and a Technical Report (Sookochoff 2007) written to NI43-101 standards, however, these reports are not NI43-101 compliant documents. The first report was issued in 2004 by Dr. Peter Megaw; the second study was issued in 2007 by Dr. Lawrence Sookchoff, which confirmed the merits of the Cobriza Project. Management believes the information provided herein, and in confidence, to be true and factual and will undertake to verify this information through due diligence culminating in a NI43-101 compliant report.

High-grade Au-Ag Low Sulfidation epithermal veins with high-grade ore clavos have been intermittently mined on the Cobriza property and will be a primary exploration focus.

Terms of Deal

HAWKEYE Gold & Diamond Inc. may earn a fifty (50%) interest in the La Cobriza Project by paying $4,500,000 to the Vendor. The LOI provides for a forty-five day due diligence period (DDP) allowing HGO time to complete a site visit and evaluation of the Property. As part of the due diligence exercise, Hawkeye intends to conduct a detailed mapping and sampling exercise as well as a review of the processing plant and a detailed analysis of the cost of rehabilitating the existing plant. This work is expected to take 3 months. Upon HAWKEYE electing to move forward with the Property after the DDP, the terms and conditions of the LOI will be incorporated into a definitive option purchase agreement (DOPA) and forwarded to the TSX Venture Exchange for acceptance. The LOI provides that upon HGO expending a total of $600,000, the Company secures the right to earn 50% of the projects net cash flow. At the time HGO earns its 50% interest, the DOPA will transition into a standard mining JV Agreement between the parties.

The payment schedule, in U.S. dollars, is as follows;

a. $75,000 paid on signing of the LOI (November 4, 2016); b. $50,000 no later than November 11, 2016; c. $125,000 payment 30 days from signing the LOI; d. $350,000 payment 45 days from signing the LOI (end of due diligence period); e. $350,000 after TSX acceptance for the DOPA, but no later than 75 days from signing of the LOI; f. $350,000 after TSX acceptance for the DOPA, but no later than 105 days from signing of the LOI; g. $250,000 after TSX acceptance for the DOPA, but no later than 135 days from signing of the LOI; h. $500,000 after TSX acceptance for the DOPA, but no later than 180 days from signing of the LOI; i. $450,000 after TSX acceptance for the DOPA, but no later than 270 days from signing of the LOI; j. $1,000,000 after TSX acceptance for the DOPA, but no later than 1 year and 2 months from signing of the LOI; k. $500,000 after TSX acceptance for the DOPA, but no later than 1 year and 6 months from signing of the LOI; and l. $500,000 after TSX acceptance for the DOPA, but no later than 2 years from signing of the LOI.

NOTE: Use of Proceeds

1. The amounts in sections a), b), c) and i) totaling $700,000 will be paid to the Vendor. 2. The amounts in sections d), e), f), g), h), j), k), and l) totaling $3,800,000 is designated for Capital Expenditures (CAPEX) for work programs, upgrading and/or purchase of new mining equipment to advance the project.

Greg Neeld, Hawkeye's President and CEO commented, "While the La Cobriza project is early stage, the project has been a past producer. We are attracted by the reported grades, widths, and strikes of the known mineralized structures, its proximity to a known high grade Au-Ag deposit, and the presence of an existing Mill. Near-term Gold and Silver production for HAWKEYE is consistent with HAWKEYE's new Corporate model for acquiring projects with cash flowing opportunities and Blue Sky Discovery upside. Cash flow positive projects will provide HAWKEYE with the ability to self-finance its projects, reduce dilution, resulting in increased shareholder value".

NI 43-101 Compliant

Information relating to the La Cobriza Project provided within this news release is based upon historical figures that has been extracted from public sources and a Qualifying Report (Megaw 2004), a Technical Report (Sookochoff 2007), written to NI43-101 standards. However, these reports are not NI43-101 compliant documents. During HAWKEYE's due diligence period, the Company will have a Qualified Person (QP), as defined under NI43-101, and a professional Mining Engineer visit the property to evaluate the property and milling facilities, verifying the information within this news release, reports referred to herein, which management believe to be true. Upon completion of the due diligence period management will file a NI43-101 compliant report.

REX Property

With regret, the Company announces the return of the REX Property to the Vendor and no longer owns an interest in the claims.

HAWKEYE's Website

HAWKEYE Gold & Diamond Inc. is currently updating its website to inform the investment community of our new Business Model. We will be uploading information relating to the La Cobriza Project in due course. For further information regarding HAWKEYE and the La Cobriza Project, please frequently visit our website at www.hawkeyegold.com for updates or contact us through any of the methods provided below.

Further news relating to the La Cobriza Project will be forthcoming.

About the Company

HAWKEYE Gold & Diamond Inc. is a junior mineral exploration and development company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and is publicly traded on the TSX Venture Exchange under the trading symbol HGO and the Frankfurt Exchange under the ticker HGT; ISIN# CA42016R3027 and WKN# A12A61. HAWKEYE's Corporate mandate is to build strong asset value through acquisition of low-cost high potential cash flowing Mining production opportunities with Blue Sky Discovery upside, manage our business activities in an environmentally responsible manner while contributing to the well-being of the local Community and Economy. Our goal is significant growth through Revenue and Cash flowing Projects, ultimate production through Discovery on our Blue Sky properties, to provide early return on investment and significant growth to maximize shareholder value.

HAWKEYE GOLD & DIAMOND INC.

Greg Neeld, President & CEO

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.

Cautionary Notes Regarding Forward Looking Statements

This News Release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that relate to future events. These statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our or our industry's actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. While these forward-looking statements, and any assumptions upon which they are based, are made in good faith and reflect our current judgment regarding the direction of our industry, actual results will almost always vary, sometimes materially, from any estimates, predictions, projections, assumptions or other future performance suggested herein. Except as required by applicable law, the Company does not intend to update any of the forward-looking statements to conform these statements to actual results.

Contacts:

HAWKEYE Gold & Diamond Inc.

Vancouver: (778) 379-5393 x3314 (Investor Relations)

hgo@hawkeyegold.com

www.hawkeyegold.com




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From the New York Times



"Lorraine Dusky, a writer who relinquished a daughter as a young single mother in New York State in 1966, supports opening the records. She reported in her 2015 memoir that in the handful of states that offered women the opportunity to remove their names from original birth certificates, only a small fraction of women  fewer than 1 percent  chose to do so." -- Dont Keep Adopted People in the Dark by Gabrielle Glaser, June 19, 2018

From the New York Times "On FirstMotherForum.com, a blog that discusses issues among women who had given children up for adoption, Lorraine Dusky, one of the sites authors, praised the series (ABC's 10-episode Find My Family): 'Maybe this will be heard by people who think it is unloyal somehow for a person to search out his or her roots, parents, family, when it is a most natural desire of consciousness.' --Two Reality Shows Stir Publicity and Anger"--Dec. 6, 2009.

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Rakhi Sawants repeated pleas of not wasting time by creating controversies on her dress have gone unheard.

A local advocate from Rajasthan has lodged an FIR against her for wearing an attire emblazoned with Prime Minister Narendra Modis pictures. According to the Press Trust of India, the FIR has been lodged against her at the Kankroli police station for allegedly indulging in obscenity and defaming the Prime Minister.

Station Head Officer (SHO) Laxman Ram confirmed the news adding, The complainant, Prajeet Tiwari, has alleged that Sawant insulted the Prime Minister by wearing a dress with pictures of him in August. The matter is being investigated.

The FIR was registered under several sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and relevant sections of Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act.

Sawant was seen wearing a black dress emblazoned with Modis pictures in August at a function in the US. Tiny head shots of the Prime Minister were peppered all over her attire, along with a strategically placed picture of a waving Modi whose hand lands right on Sawants bust. It is reported that she had another picture of the Prime Minister placed on her butt. She appeared in this attire in a pre-Independence Day party in Chicago, USA.

A petition was filed in a Meerut court against the actress at the time.

In an exclusive telephonic interview with Firstpost from Chicago at the time, Sawant had clarified that she got her attire approved by Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) and wore it out of her love and admiration for Modi.

"I have got this dress made from all my heart and love for our dear prime minister. He is the best PM and I am representing him in the US, said Sawant.

I wore this dress so that I can impress BJP, especially Narendra Modi ji and Amit Shah. I love them both. Rajnath [Singh] called me, he considers me as his daughter. I met him in Delhi and I will meet him again. I am already BJPs daughter. I made this dress so that I can impress Modi ji. Modi ji is my dream man. I am most happy that he is our PM and he will remain one for next 15 years. Wherever I go I will wear this dress, and I will also make one sari with his image on it, she added.

Sawant went on to say that she does not fear controversies over this issue as she got a prior approval from the ruling party.

I had first sent this costume for approval and if Modi ji says that he never approved my dress, then he can put me behind bars, only he has the right to do so. Nobody else. I'm accountable only to Modi ji. I got it approved from him and his team and only then wore the dress. I respect Modi ji, I respect Amit Shah and all the BJP members. In the future, I want to join BJP and do lot of work. If they want me in their party, I will be with them," she said.

Sawant also asked the people to focus on more important issues like farmer suicides and rape of little girls. She urged them to not blow the incident out of proportion and focus on taking care of their families and duties instead.

It seems like Sawants voice has not been heard in certain quarters of Rajasthan, considering Tiwaris FIR has landed her in fresh trouble.
BJP member of parliament Subramanian Swamy has written to the Enforcement Directorate seeking a probe into one of the allegations raised by Cyrus Mistry in his tell-all letter to Tata Sons board.

In a tweet late Friday, Swamy said he has started the process of initiating prosecution into the Rs 22 crore payment made to Air Asia by Tata Sons. According to the letter, tweeted out by Swamy, the fund transfer has to be probed for money laundering under the provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

Process of initiating prosecution starts pic.twitter.com/Nl1SDC88vw  Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) November 5, 2016

In the letter Mistry sent to the Tata Sons board after his sacking on 24 October, he had said there are "ethical concerns" about certain transaction in case of Air Asia.

"A recent forensic investigation revealed fraudulent transactions of Rs 22 crore involving non-existent parties in India and Singapore. Executive Trustee, Mr. Venkataraman, who is on the board of Air Asia and also a shareholder in the company, considered these transactions as non-material and did not encourage further study. It was only at the insistence of the independent directors, one of whom immediately submitted his resignation, that the board decided to belatedly file a first information report," the letter says.

Swamy is referring to this part in the letter.

"The Rs. 22 crore payment represent money laundering because it was sent to Singapore, according to my information by the hawala route ans was a bribe for unkown reasons in the transations to set up the illegal Air Asia (India) aviation company," Swamy's letter to ED says.

Swamy had in May moved the Delhi high court seeking immediate suspension of flying licence granted to AirAsia India, alleging that it had obtained the licence through fraud.

The application challenged the grant of flying licence to AirAsia India by the regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

In the plea, Swamy contended that one of the Air Asia officials made a false statement in his counter affidavit filed in the court while the other two had acted with the alleged intention of misleading the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB), the civil aviation ministry and the DGCA into grant of approvals, permits and permissions.

According to Swamy, the next hearing in the matter is on 11 November.

He has sought a reply from the ED in the alleged money laundering issue before that.

After the ugly spat broke out between Tatas and Mystrys, Swamy has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi in ltter that a special investigation team comprising officials from CBI, ED and Sebi should probe the "fraudulent transactions" in Air Asia India.

The Rajya Sabha MP recalled that he had in an earlier letter to Modi questioned Ratan Tata's role as Indian partner in Air Asia and Vistara Airlines "in complete violation" of the laws of the country.

Swamy had later in an interview alleged that Ratan Tata is the most corrupt chairman in the Tata history.

Hot on the heels of Mistry's ouster alleging fraudulent transactions at AirAsia India, the Aviation Ministry had said all issues would be looked into and "law of the land will have to be followed" in case of any violation.

With PTI inputs
Political prisoner, activist, journalist, hymn-writer, emerging think tanker, aspiring novelist, "tribal elder", parliamentary candidate for North West Durham, Shadow Leader of the Opposition, Speedboat, proudly banned from Twitter so officially more dangerous than the Taliban, eagerly awaiting the second (or possibly third) attempt to murder me.
By Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Lisa Baertlein

| BOSTON/LOS ANGELES

BOSTON/LOS ANGELESBillionaire investor William Ackman and Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG.N) have signed an agreement to engage in confidential discussions, a source familiar with the matter said, in a sign that the activist may be able to force change at the burrito chain without a costly and drawn-out proxy contest.Ackman, who took a nearly 10 percent stake in the beleaguered fast casual food chain two months ago and has not disclosed his strategy, wants multiple board seats with the aim of beefing up food safety and marketing, three people familiar with the matter said this week. Chipotle declined to comment on discussions with specific shareholders, but said it was committed to dialogue with investors including its largest shareholders and that it has been "actively working on board refreshment." A spokesman for Ackman's firm, Pershing Square Capital Management, declined to comment.The signing of the confidentiality agreement does not guarantee that a deal can be reached or is near, but it is a sign of a potential negotiated settlement between a board that has defended its founder-led management and an activist known for public, acrimonious fights. Chipotle shares have dropped 40 percent since a series of food borne illness outbreaks were linked to the chain in late 2015 and led to temporary restaurant closures across the United States. Sales have yet to recover to levels seen before the food safety incidents jolted confidence in the formerly top-performing restaurant operator.

Chipotle recently hired a top Wall Street law firm, investment banks and a public relations shop to help defend itself against the hedge fund billionaire, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.The company's board has long been under fire from pension funds and other shareholders for being too insular, for the level of executive compensation, and for a handful of members having served more than 15 years. This week investors Amalgamated Bank and CtW urged shareholders to name an independent chairman, replacing founder and co-Chief Executive Steve Ells as leader of the board. They hope to take up the issue the next annual meeting and are beginning to lobby large institutional investors like Fidelity and Vanguard, both big holders of Chipotle shares.

Ackman is known for loud campaigns, including an expensive but successful fight at Canadian Pacific (CP.TO) where he won seven board seats, but more recent plays have been less noisy.Last year, a member of Ackman's investment team joined the board at animal health company Zoetis (ZTS.N) and in 2013 his firm negotiated for seats at Air Products & Chemicals (APD.N). Both happened relatively quickly and quietly. Investors in a Pershing Square investment vehicle that invested in Air Products saw a return of 45 percent after fees over three years, according to a letter seen by Reuters.Pershing Square said Zoetis was one of three winners in its portfolio last year, adding 1.2 percent, and the stock has risen 4.2 percent so far this year.

Turning around Chipotle is a critical mission for Ackman, whose Pershing Square International fund has lost roughly 17 percent this year after dropping 16 percent last year. Chipotle added Stephen Gillett, a senior executive at Google X, to its board in March 2015. That move came two months before investors approved a non-binding proposal that gives investors more power to shake up the company's board by nominating new directors."We have been committed to shareholder engagement for a number of years, and maintain ongoing dialogue with numerous investors, including our largest shareholders," the company said in a statement on Friday. "We will continue to take whatever actions are necessary to deliver on our recovery and enhance shareholder value." (Editing by Peter Henderson and Mary Milliken)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Gernot Heller and Andrea Shalal

| BERLIN

BERLIN German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel called for a resumption of long-stalled efforts to negotiate a global free trade accord on Saturday, warning that a proliferation of bilateral trade deals could lead to varying standards and rules."The best thing would be an agreement under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation (WTO)," Gabriel said during a business conference in Hong Kong. "We should restart discussions in the WTO even as we are negotiating comprehensive bilateral agreements," he said, before heading back to Germany.In the absence of a global trade agreement, Gabriel said it was important that bilateral trade deals also include social, climate and consumer standards, beyond simply reducing tariffs.

Gabriel welcomed an offer made by China during his visit to begin intensive discussions with Germany and the European Union about its steel exports to Europe."Of course we will accept the Chinese offer and negotiate at all levels to reach a solution," he told the Funke media group."But it's too soon to talk about an 'all-clear' signal since this is a really big dispute. We must protect our steelworkers from unfair competition and subsidised steel exports from China that could crowd out the competitive and ecologically sound European steel industry."

The European Union last month imposed provisional import duties on two types of Chinese steel, the latest in a series of trade defences set up to curb subsidised steel exports that EU officials say have resulted in job losses and plant closures.The German minister said resistance to free trade agreements such as the one signed last week by the European Union and Canada was largely due to insufficient communication by governments about the benefits of such accords and the failure to include citizens and societal groups.

Activists in the Netherlands have gathered almost two thirds of the signatures needed to lay the groundwork for a referendum on the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), which they say overly favours the interests of multinational companies.A referendum defeat would throw up a further obstacle to the ratification of CETA, which was almost scuttled last month by a regional assembly in neighbouring Belgium. (Writing by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Alexander Smith)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Perhaps the words are meant to be reassuring. But the actions of those verbalising these assurances are clearly not. Time and again, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has cautioned stakeholders in the Indian Republic to maintain a strict vigil against a possible re-enactment of the dark days of Emergency, ushered in by then Congress Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. We recently heard Modi restating this familiar theme at the Ramnath Goenka Awards. "Aaj nishpaksh bhaav se us ki mimansa har peedhi me hoti rahni chahiye, taki is desh me aisa koi rajpurush paida no ho jisko is tarah ke paap karne ki ichcha tak paida ho [Every generation must keep reflecting on the Emergency period in an unbiased manner so that no future political leader can even wish to commit the same sin]," the Prime Minister told the gathering at the ceremony (The Indian Express, 3 November).

Yet, less than 72 hours later, we heard that the central government is planning to clampdown on the popular Hindi news channel NDTV India, which has been served a notice for its coverage of the anti-terror operation in Pathankot. An interministerial committee under the Information and Broadcasting Ministry probing the allegation has recommend that the channel be taken off air for 24 hours on 9 November. The channel has been accused of revealing 'strategically sensitive information'. "The first-of-its-kind order has imposed a blackout prohibiting 'the transmission or re-transmission of NDTV India channel for one day on any platform throughout India with effect from 00:01 hrs on 9th November to 00:01 hrs of 10th November," said a report in The Indian Express.

This is not just an isolated threat, and media organisations are not the only entities being dragged under the government scanner. The recent police clampdown on Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi for protesting the suicide of a 70-year-old former serviceman, too, seems to bear the imprint of a gag order. We may well ask since when it has become the duty of the central government to micro-manage popular protests, particularly protests led by opposition leaders.

Lets sort out some basics. The semantics and technicalities of the Emergency are one thing. The spirit of authoritarianism driving such dictatorial measure, is another. We would be fooling ourselves to consider the Emergency to be the only weapon in the armoury of a repressive government. Declaring a state of Emergency is just one of the many sinister forms of functioning a government with an authoritarian instinct can resort to.

In fact, it may be argued that a repeat of the 1975 Emergency, which officially suspended all democratic rights and civil liberties across the country, is a near impossibility in contemporary India. What however is still not beyond the realm of the impossible  and, is in fact, happening right now under our watch  is the continued attrition of democratic norms pertaining to politics, religion, culture or the sensitive subject of national security.

A pattern has become distinctly comprehensible since the Narendra Modi government came to power in 2014 with a thumping majority; a pattern that is making democratically-minded people increasingly anxious about the future direction of this dispensation. A low-intensity war against dissidents, critics, opposition leaders and governments, seems to be under way; a Machiavellian plot that has already bred an atmosphere of anxiety and paranoia. Why would any government push for the total suspension of democratic rights when it can achieve the same result through informal means of control? The normalisation of low-intensity warfare is the biggest threat to democracy  not a repeat of Emergency itself.

We are witnessing a spate of self-censorship measures by individuals and media organisations. Nationalism and national security have become mined territories that one fears to tread, that are off-limits to dissidents and critics. Modis repeated cautioning against Emergency seems to be more of a barb at the Congress than a serious commitment that the Prime Minister is making to preserve democratic rights.
Bhopal: After ordering a judicial probe into the Bhopal jailbreak and alleged encounter of eight SIMI activists, the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh has put on hold the cash rewards it had announced for the policemen who took part in the operation, throwing up questions about its veracity.

"After the announcement of judicial probe into the incident, the government cannot give cash rewards to anyone till the completion of the inquiry," a highly-placed official told PTI.

"The cash rewards were announced prior to the announcement of the judicial probe and therefore, it is logical that it can not be given till the inquiry gets over," the official said. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had announced a reward of Rs 2 lakh each for policemen involved in the shootout, a day after the alleged encounter took place on 31 October.

However, the rights activists had demanded that the cash reward be withheld till the probe unearthed the details of the encounter.

"The government should at least wait till the completion of several inquiries it has instituted to probe the encounter to justify the reward," Abdul Jabbar, a social activist, had said.

"It (the reward) cannot be justified till the probe is complete and all questions raised on the issue are properly addressed," he said.

Transparency International's Ajay Dube also questioned the "rationale" of announcing the reward when the state is under the scanner over the veracity of the encounter. "The government should have waited for the outcome of the judicial inquiry it has instituted into the encounter. Announcing (rewards for policemen) before it amounts to giving them a clean chit and to influence those involved in it (the probe)," he said.

Eight activists of the banned outfit, SIMI, were killed in the encounter on the city outskirts hours after they killed a head constable and pulled off an audacious escape from the high-security central jail.

A PIL was filed two days back in the Madhya Pradesh High Court by a journalist and social worker seeking a judicial probe into the alleged encounter.

The undertrial activists of the outlawed outfit escaped from the central jail here on the intervening night of 30 and 31 October. They were subsequently killed in an encounter on the outskirts of the city early on 31 October.

After the encounter, conflicting versions from police and state Home Minister have surfaced, leading to allegations that it might be fake.

TV channels have also shown footage purportedly from the encounter site, in which a policeman is seen pumping bullets into a man from close range after some unidentified person takes out what appears to be a knife in a plastic cover and places it back.

Later, an audio tape also emerged purportedly containing conversation related to the encounter, which states that the policemen on job were getting instructions from control room to "bump them off" and "khel khatam ho gaya" (game is over now).

Raising questions about the encounter, Congress and other opposition parties had pressed for a judicial probe into the entire episode. The judicial probe will be conducted by retired High

Court Judge Justice S K Pandey.
Noida: A 21-year-old student of Amity University in Noida allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself at his hostel room, police said on Saturday.

G Sai Krishna, a native of Telangana, was a first year student of post graduate diploma in facilities management and had joined the course recently, a senior police officer said.

He allegedly hanged himself last evening. He has left a note written in Telugu, addressed to his parents. The hostel was empty at that time as other students had gone for Diwali holidays, SHO of Sector 39 Police Station, Amarnath Yadav, said.

Krishna was rushed to a hospital, where he was declared brought dead, the SHO said.

A few days back, Krishna was scolded by his father regarding his studies and also for borrowing money from someone and not being able to pay it back, he said.

Krishna's father is an advocate. In his note, Krishna wrote that committing suicide is not easy and told his parents that they have done a lot for him, Yadav said.

The body has been handed over to his family after post-mortem, police said.

Postmortem underway; boy (who committed suicide at Amity University) was allegedly under debt taken frm fellow students:SP City Dinesh Yadav pic.twitter.com/foaN0QEDU5  ANI (@ANI_news) November 5, 2016

In August, a student of BA-LLB course in the university, had allegedly committed suicide at his residence in Delhi.

The deceased, who was the son of a joint secretary-level official in the Rajya Sabha Secretariat, was debarred from appearing in the sixth semester exams in May due to "shortage of attendance".
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By Ila Ananya

In Assam, two women, both related, were pushed into a well and buried alive on the night of 31 October. They were murdered after being branded as witches. According to one of the three men accused of the crime, their actions were justified because the women had "used black magic to infest with insects the well from which we drink water".

This news made us all do a double take: are women still being murdered because someone thought she was a witch, or decided to call her a witch? Depressingly, this isnt a stray crime  according to these completely horrifying statistics, a 'witchcraft'-related death is reported almost every third day in India. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data shows that 2,290 people  mostly women  were killed in India between 2001 and 2014 for witchcraft, and we can guess what these numbers have become in 2016.

But the lack of conversations around witch-hunting is also telling. We don't talk about this form of violence against women in the way we have finally come to heatedly discussing sexual violence in India. The Assam murders on Monday remains just a news report that people chanced upon Tuesday morning. It isnt any different in other parts of the country that report a high rate of violence against women branded and persecuted as witches.

Earlier this year, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) had to issue a notice to the Rajasthan Chief Secretary and the Director General of Police, demanding a report on the action taken on cases where women have been victims of witch-hunts. This came after it took suo motu cognisance of the issue, suddenly realising that women like Mangi Devi in Bhilwara district of Rajasthan had not seen any justice after she was called a witch and attacked with red-hot iron rods in 2014.

But a witch-hunt goes far beyond hunting for so-called witches. Often, branding women as witches and using this compelling superstition to target them is a sinisterly easy way to get hold of their property, or money, or simply for revenge. In Bhilwara, where the family of a woman, stoned to death on this pretext in 2010, still hasnt seen justice. Her son, explaining the hidden agenda, says his mother was killed by the 'upper' caste people she worked for when she asked for payment. He also says that this 'upper' caste family had been pressuring her to give up her land. Now, after her tarring and murder as a witch, they have usurped her property, he alleges.

A friend from Bihar tells me that when he was a teenager, he grew up seeing witch-hunts in areas like Madhuban, Bariarpur and Kharagpur. He remembers stories of women raped in the fields, and if they protested, they would sometimes be branded as witches to cover up the possibility of a police complaint. Sometimes, they would be murdered. Other times they were compelled into taking a kind of shame walk, where they were forced to admit to being witches; or the shuddhikaran, where they were coerced into drinking cow piss and eating human shit.

The matter-of-factness with which he tells these stories  stories that he says often make the front pages of local newspapers  is alarming. It is as though this threat of being branded a witch has become so normal for women in parts of India that no law seems to make a difference. Unbelievably, the Assam Witch Hunting (Prohibition, Prevention and Protection) Bill 2015 was passed as recently as in August last year, and in Rajasthan it was passed four months before that. Reports of women attacked after being branded witches, like the five killed in two weeks in Bhubaneshwar this September, or the one in Jharkhand who was stripped, beaten, and then gang-raped in June, or the woman who was publicly tortured in a Malda bazaar this February, seem to have come and gone with none of us responding.

So why is there this strange silence around violence against women in the form of witch-hunting? There is the unsettling sense that our way of looking at this sort of lynching is as though it is something exotic and unreal, perhaps as something that we once read about in history textbooks and forgot. Or is it that we just dont want to think about it because it happens in places that we only occasionally talk about in our conversations on violence against women?

Every year, data about the huge number of reported cases of women killed in witch-hunts are released by the NCRB, and every year there are reports comparing these statistics among various States. In the midst of all this number crunching, we dont seem to have even begun to talk about this horrendous crime in the way we have finally started to talk about other kinds of violence against women. There is an urgent need to open up these conversations, because without them there is no way of addressing it, and we cannot keep ignoring these women.

The Ladies Finger (TLF) is an online womens magazine
A spate of missing trekkers  mostly from Europe and the United States  in the upper reaches of Himachal Pradesh has become a matter of acute embarrassment for the External Affairs Ministry.

Highly placed MEA sources said the ministry receives, every year, a number of complaints of such missing trekkers. As many as 20 have gone officially gone missing during 2010-16, raising doubts on Himachal Pradesh as an ideal venue for trekking and the state governments ability to handle such crisis. There are many cases which  routinely  go unreported.

External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj has already sought a report on such cases from Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, the latest being that of Justin Alexander Shetler, an American trekker, who went missing in Parvati Valley in Kullu this September. "I will ask for a report from Chief Minister Himachal Pradesh regarding Justin Alexander Shetler," Ms Swaraj tweeted.

The sources said the MEA was concerned whether these cases of missing trekkers were purely because of accidents or rough weather or whether these were cases of murders involving impostors posing as Godmen. Spiritual men and women meditating in the Himalayas are an instant attraction for all foreigners. Newspaper reports in Kullu and Shimla, the state capital, often carry images of Western trekkers posing with these fake Godmen.

Mom, I am fine. You take care, Shetler last messaged his mother in September 2016. Shelter, 35, an avid adventurer, social worker and travel writer who undertook tours in India, Nepal and Bangkok, was in the company of a sadhu when he last messaged his mother. He even posted his photograph on Instagram.

A worried C Susanne Reeb, Shetlers mother, eventually flew down to India, met with officials of the US embassy in Delhi and drove all the way to the twin cities of Kullu and Manali. She met up with the Himachal Pradesh chief minister Veerbhadra Singh and sought his help to locate her missing son. Singh, who spent an hour with the distressed woman, even tweeted: Have met the relatives of Justin Alexander Shetler, a US national and trekker who had gone missing from Parvati Valley since last one month.

In Delhi, Alexander McLaren, deputy spokesman for the US embassy, confirmed Reebs meeting with the embassy officials. The US Embassy in New Delhis highest priority is the safety of our citizens overseas. For privacy reasons we cannot comment on specific cases, we do however work closely with Indian authorities to assist Americans in distress, said McLaren.

I got worried when I did not hear from him, he always calls me every week, informing me of his travel plans, said Reeb.

Reeb said she even did a reconnaissance in a private chopper for a little over an hour over the Parvati valleys Mantalai lake and Khir Ganga tracks where Shetler was seen last in September. She was assisted by Shelters London-based friend, Jonathan Skeels but unfortunately, they did not find any traces of Shetler. What worries me is that I found many trekkers but not my son. I spent hours interacting with people who knew my son but no one could offer me any leads.

In the FIR she lodged with the Kullu police, Reeb said she was told her son was last seen with a sadhu of the Naga sect, synonymous with their naked attire and high-altitude mediation. Her son, she said, was keen to practice meditation and was guided by the sadhu.

Ashok Singh, a cop in Kullu said Shetlers porters  strangely  were followers of the sadhu. The porters, who were grilled for two days by the cops, said Shelter had told them that he would return after his meditation classes in Manitalai Lake and pick up his luggage and motorcycle from the base camp in Parvati Valley. Shetler was last seen on 3 September 3 by porters in Parvati Valley.

What is intriguing is that the sadhu returned to the base camp and told the porters that Shetler left him uninformed. The cops have detained the sadhu, and one of the porters, identified as Anil, a resident of Nepal. "The sadhu did not say why he left Shetler behind and returned to the base camp," said Singh.

In her FIR, Reeb said she suspects that the baba and his men may have kidnapped Justin and soon demand a heavy ransom.

Worried Shetler could be missing forever, distress messages are flooding his Facebook page and other social media platforms. I didn't really know you but I watched your adventures and was very inspired by it all. My heart goes out to you and I wanted you and your family to know that you are someone who has left magic behind on this planet. Wherever you happen to be at the moment. I'm sending my love out to you in hopes that it will reach you somehow, wrote his friend Melissa McGarth.

SP (Kullu) Padam Chand the case of missing trekkers was a matter of concern. This is becoming a routine affair and we are routinely issuing warnings to foreign travellers not to undertake trekking with unknown people. The search for Shelter is very much on.

Chand said he was not aware of any sinister move behind such mysterious disappearance of the trekkers. We continue our search till the time we can but cannot continue such search forever.

He said eight trekkers, students of a Punjab college, who had gone missing this March in the higher reaches of Kullu, were traced and rescued by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) troopers, nearly 70 hours from Chanderkheni Pass at an altitude of 12,000 feet.

But the authorities have no information on missing Polish national Bruno Muschalik who had lost his way with his porter in August, 2015. The previous year, two French trekkers, Valentin Marcel Gorges, 20, and Francois Xavier Camille 21, went missing in the Dhauladhar ranges and the authorities suspended their search operations early this year.

The cops had resumed the search following a request from the French embassy in Delhi Police had started looking for the bodies after some local trekkers found bags, books, camera, binoculars, handsets and earphones of the French trekkers near Moon peak, the highest trekking point in the Dhauladhar range.

In some cases, we trace stranded trekkers, but when they go missing without their luggage, it becomes a concern, said Chand.

Locals say the case of missing trekkers is slowly becoming an insurmountable problem for those in the trekking business. We can always claim these as accidents, and bodies buried under the glacier. But when the bodies go missing after the glacier melts, it raises some serious questions which no one can answer, said Bimal Negi, a local trekking agent.

The Himachal Pradesh government, meanwhile, continues to grapple with the curious case of missing trekkers (including Shelter), a definite stain on the state's tourism business.
The weather app had forecast a sprightly sun hiding behind a cloud leaking four pinstripes of rain, for Munnar. It defiantly stuck to its point of view despite the sky blazing an uncomfortably hot shade of blue a couple of hours into our journey from Erunakulam, the closest railway station to our hilltop destination.

The air began to cool as the bus rattled into the winding roads of the Idukki terrain. Munnar was still a few cloud encrusted mountains away. Our rollercoaster ride for most parts had us praying in their direction, as vehicles missed us by the breadth of an elephants hair, while the driver lustily swayed to the soundtrack of a Yesudas mixtape. Welcome to Kerala, said a co-passenger sitting to my left, making an easy presumption from my appearance that I wasn't from around there. He popped a peanut down the same route from which his next words popped at me: Whats your salary? Peanuts, I replied. He didn't like me. Nor my joke. I could tell.

And in that way Kerala and Malayalees are simple. It is all very, very obvious here. The land is green, the people frank, the politics red, the women beautiful and the rain falls in pinstripes.

***

Munnar announces itself to visitors from a few kilometres away with overexuberant tourists congregating at bridges and waterfalls and pools of mountain water, catcalling and howling and littering with abandon. The constellation of lights that the hills are smeared with, have their nucleus in the town bus station. Around here, rooms with a mountainside view come at a premium. We make do with less while aiming to do better the next day. Cheap wine and exhaustion puts us to sleep while a toothless boar keeps me company in dreams.

***

October sunshine in Munnar has the invigorating power of an early morning shower. Now, for the first time we could see Munnar properly, and although the view was still of a town catering to tourists through even the gaps between its toenails, foreboding patches of black from the night were all revealed to be green; the sky, the envy of sapphires. On our way to Rochas (a restaurant with a chessboard for a drive in), an auto veered out of a curve with one wheel in the air, and screeched to a halt right next to me. This was our first meeting with Robin. With very little need for invitation he got out and began to plan our visit to Munnar for us before all three wheels of his rickshaw had touched land. Sir, he said with an outstretched palm and a nod of the head. Four roads. Ok? One. Mattupetty. Two. Coimbatore. Three. Cochin. And Four. Thekkady. After which he pulled out a laminated pamphlet with a list of sights to visit in each of these four roads. We merely wanted breakfast. Breakfast, we told him. He nodded confidently and started Four roads. Ok? One. Mattupetty. Two. Coimbatore...

We politely declined Robin, while promising to call him in case we changed our minds. Robin, like most rickshaw drivers around the place, offers a comprehensive sightseeing tour of all the places worth visiting in these parts. Jeep and cars offer the same tour, but fall on the higher side of the price spectrum. Locals and broke travel writers use the more economical, less functional, but no less glamorous option of the bus service. Our destination was en route to Mattupetty, the famed Top Station, the pride de jure of the Munnar sightseeing roster.

***

The Munnar landscape is the most vibrant along the road to Mattupetty. Along this road, the tale of this enchanted mountain province begins to unwind. The road unspools with leisure, winding knots around tea estates that are more than a hundred years old, and jungle lands to whom hundred-year-olds are like adolescents. The mountain streams of Muthirapuzha, Nallathanni and Kundala flow older still, nourishing Munnar and thus staking control over her name: three rivers, 'Mun-nadi'. Their cold green waters fall like the drapes of a silk sari on Munnars supple green landscape, gurgling their will to control more of her. But Munnar is as willful as she is gorgeous. And she loves to show skin.

***

It was the British who first noticed that among the many crops that they had experimented with along these slopes, the acidic soil of the rainswept mountains showered a special tenderness towards bushes of evergreen tea. Our journey to the Top Station was an ode to this love affair. On the way we cross Mattupetty lake created by the embankment of the Mattupetty hydroelectric dam. Picnickers flock to these parts and the air around here is of revelry. Boats and their speedier counterparts course the lake and although we saw none of them, elephants often get together in these parts, at the end of a long day for a quiet drink.

The Top Station affords a view unlike any other of the valleys below. It was from here that ancient ropeways carried batches of tea down into the markets. And while vestiges of those days still persist, the overwhelming chatter around here is of tourists and groups of pedlars selling wares and trekking programmes that culminate under the stars. Most of the resident population are Tamil, owing to the proximity of the place to the Tamil Nadu border. And I spotted more than the odd local, sporting an unusual redness in their eyes. You could presume it has something to do with the elevation at which they stay. Or you could presume that it has something to do with the Idukki district in which Munnar is located. My calculated guess is that its a little bit of both.

At the Top Station, we resign to a homestay which you won't find advertised anywhere in Munnar. The scouts of this place sell tea at the entrance of Top Station. They appraise and inform only those they deem fit, about Manos homestay. Luckily we were hip enough for their liking. After a visit to the famed Echo Point at the base of the Top Station, we retired to the homestay, which is a small cluster of three shacks located inside a tea plantations territory. The stay is rustic, clean, and just the sort of cosmic diversion that the senses crave when someone plans a vacation.

The owner Manos (short for Manohar) is quite the character as well. He is an old man, unnaturally fit and ebullient for his age, missing a few essential teeth that do little to undermine the beam of his smile, and is magnificent at using no more than a single word to communicate entire pages worth of dialogue. There are several treks that one can embark on from the Top Station, and Manos is, if not the best, then definitely the most trustworthy of all those with whom you can scale the surrounding hills. And if you are particularly adventurous, with the right amount of time and money, he can guide you all the way to Kodaikanal through the forests. We had neither, so we politely declined.

***

That evening it rained in Munnar. The same pinstripe rain that we were growing all too familiar with. We walked along the road for hours to discover that between all the popular tourist stops, Munnar is still as wild and verdant and solitary as it was half a century ago. And it is by walking these stretches with no particular destination or purpose in mind that you truly understand what it is to be a part of this place. The air feels like lungfuls of balm for pain that you didn't even know you've been carrying. Sunsets that make the sky feel proud of its artistry. And the omnipresence of tea, that magical elixir that paints the hills a ripe green unlike any you will have seen. You hear the roar of vehicles from a mile away, and even if you spot one below or above, you will never guess whether it is coming or going until it passes right by you. And once they pass, the silence that returns like a self-correcting bubble in which if you listen real hard, you can hear your heartbeat, or a stream gurgle. Or the swift release of steam from a kettle letting you know that a hot cup of tea (served with milk in the day, and served only black in the evenings) is always nearby.

***

At night, Manos organises a campfire for his guests and tells us stories from his treks. Of the people he has met and the places he has been. Once," he says, pointing at his chest, I, Mumbai. You like? I ask. He replies with a wince and a dismissive wave of his hands. Suddenly he sparks his flashlight to life and paints it across the hills. Sometimes animals. Deer? Bison? Elephants? we ask. He nods, agreeing to all three, as his pet dog quietly steals the banana bread from inside our room and takes it back to its kennel. Sometimes leopard. Bear. One time tiger.

With fear pulling at our insides, we ask, Should we be afraid? He grins his toothless smile and gets up to leave, No. No. Just no toilet at night. Ok? Ok, he says and walks off.

At 2 am, the grunt of an animal pawing at our doorstep woke us up. A few seconds later Manos shouts at something. The sound of something scampering away was followed by a stick smacking against the ground several times. It could have been the dog coming for seconds on the banana bread. Thats what we told ourselves. But most definitely, no toilet at night.

***

Early next morning we head back into town. Munnars gastronomical delights do not stray too far beyond her flushes of tea, and a simple array of local food. There is a Saravana Bhavan here that is more Tamil Vadiyar than Malayalee Namboodri. More filter coffee than tea. There are also a bunch of restaurants advertising North Indian cuisine but we weren't brave enough to set foot in them.

We called Robin up that morning to take us to Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary, the extreme end of his Road No. 2 to Coimbatore tour. We had ventured a mere three kilometres from town and already the transformation in our surroundings were making their subtle nuances known. We were in the rain shadow territory of the ghats, which meant lesser rainfall, and a much more oppressive sun. The land was green here as well, but not the thriving, lush kind, but of a more resilient, a more gritty variety. Like the not-so-talented younger sibling that grew a tougher hide and a stronger spine to keep up.

Robin shares Manos communicative trademark in his one-word breakdowns. But he lacks the toothless trekkers finesse.

On the way we spot Anaimudi, the tallest peak of the western ghats, that epitomises the strength of the place, in its formidable stature, towering over the valley like some primordial titan, that has seen his fair share of battles and now chooses to sit back and delegate. We make a pitstop at the Nyamakad waterfalls, which is too crowded with tourists and primates, to make for a peaceful retreat. As we go deeper into the Coimbatore bound road, the traffic grows so sparse that one could fancy a nap in the middle of the road. The wildlife sanctuary of Chinnar is a ride through the very same road, and by the end of the trip, we are spent.

As Robin points at the sandalwood trees, that have made the forests of Marayoor famous, we offer our attention to them through half open eyelids. At the apex of this trip lies Chinnars Wildlife Sanctuary office. To get through its gates we would need to set forth on foot, and opt for paid treks, that included jungle trails that led to a small shack next to a rarely visited waterfall, and a visit to Dolmens which are archaeological remnants of a prehistoric race that lived in these woods. We chose to head back, depleted in energy and daunted by a sun that had bruised even the Nilgiri Tahr, the most prolific fauna of the land, into hiding. Our journey back felt anti climactic.

Somewhere along the three-hour journey, Robin picked up on our vibes. And just as the 10-kilometre milestone to Munnar passed us by, he stopped the auto, and asked us to accompany him into an obscure jungle path. And with the suddenness of a Munnar rainshower, the foliage just parted to reveal the most private and pristine of waterfalls, that Robin unveiled to us with a wide grin and a magicians flourish. My waterfall. He then immediately stoppered his lips with his finger which had us looking furtively for a Bengal tiger around us, when what Robin really meant was that nobody knows about it. And that he would like to keep it that way. We bathed in the waters and bounced around the laterite of the waterfall for the next few hours. When Robin asked what we thought of it, we didn't reply with words. We hugged hithree-hourim into the waters and dived in after. Like the people, the land, the politics, and the rain in Kerala for those unforgettable few moments, at the place we baptised Robins Waterfall, we were soaked and were dripping obvious.

***

Our next stop was Thekkady, where we met the kings of cool, watched the living crap being beaten out of people in an arena and walked around with a trumpet that gives you powers of mind control.

But that's a story for another time. Read the second part of the Kerala Travellogue here

The author is a freelance writer and contributes to several lifestyle and travel magazines. Follow the author @jokesapaat
At Koovagam, in the Villupuram district of Tamil Nadu, in April 2016, Jaya, a young transwoman reminisces about Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) member, Tiruchi Sivas attempt to move a private members bill  the Rights of Transgender Persons Bill, 2014  was successful as the Rajya Sabha unanimously passed it by voice vote. His was the first private member Bill to be passed in 45 years. Jaya calls it the Tiruchi Siva Bill, and notes that while she came out to her parents and friends in 2005 when she was 14, it took another ten years for her community to come out. Data from the Avahan III programme (Swasti Health Resource Centre) indicates that, on an average, individuals identify themselves as transgenders at the age of 14 years while being able to come out to their circle only at the average age of 18 years.

In August 2016, the Central government introduced the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016 in Lok Sabha. However, this was a much more diluted version of the 2014 bill. If passed, it would reverse all the gains for dignity and equal rights that the community has collectively championed for in the past several decades.

The bill imperils several of the rights guaranteed by the Supreme Courts verdict in 2014 in the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) vs Union of India case. In the NALSA judgment, the bench, consisting of justices KS Radhakrishnan and AK Sikri, broke down the heteronormative, binary gender constructs of man and woman that is deeply ingrained in Indian law, and affirmed that the constitutional rights and freedoms of the transgender community are absolute. The path-breaking verdict recognised a spectrum of different gender identities, as well as provided very sound rationale for upholding the rights of the community. It stated that "[...]the gender to which a person belongs is to be determined by the person concerned", thus, recognising the right to personal identity, autonomy, and self-determination under Article 21 (the right to life) of the Indian Constitution. Irrespective of medical, legal or surgical intervention, the court also secured the rights of gender expression by every transgender person, under Article 19 (1) (a)  the freedom of speech and expression. Lastly, the court stated that all transgender persons shall have the right to equality and equal protection under Articles 14, 15 and 16 by prohibiting discrimination on the ground of gender identity.

By giving equal legal status to transgender persons established on fundamental legal principles of international human rights, the NALSA judgment secured for the third gender to enjoy full moral citizenship and the right to dignity, while at the same time, opening the doors for the legislature to codify these substantial legal principles into law. The Tiruchi Siva Bill of 2014 did this immensely well. It proposed two percent horizontal reservation for transgenders in education and employment and sought affirmative actions in the present system due to their historical struggle with violation of rights and social entitlements. A survey conducted by Swasti Health Resource Centre for Avahan III programme shows that on an average 27 percent of the transgenders have reported facing at least one form of violence in six months.

The bill also suggested special statutory commissions on the lines of an OBC, SC (Scheduled Caste) or women commissions for a more comprehensive protection of the communitys interests. Along with this, the bill upheld the requirement of legal aid, medical help and special fast-track courts for them. None of these provisions have a found a way in the Transgender Bill of 2016.

Most importantly, however, is the issue of self-identification of transgender persons. The Tiruchi Siva Bill was based on the NALSA judgment that upheld the right of any person to identify as female, male or a third gender irrespective of medical intervention, including gender change surgery. The 2016 bill, however, conflates gender and biological sex, thereby, blurring the distinct difference between a social construct and an inherent anatomical characteristic, and is in contravention to the guiding definition of transgender in the NALSA verdict - "Transgender [TG] is generally described as an umbrella term for persons whose gender identity, gender expression or behaviour does not conform to their biological sex. TG may also take in persons who do not identify with their sex assigned at birth, which include hijras/eunuchs who, in this writ petition, describe themselves as third gender, and they do not identify as either male or female [...] Resultantly, the term transgender, in contemporary usage, has become an umbrella term that is used to describe a wide range of identities and experiences, including but not limited to pre-operative, post-operative and non-operative transsexual people, who strongly identify with the gender opposite to their biological sex; male and female."

The definition in the 2016 Bill is also based on a binary and heteronormative exposition of gender. Section 4 of the Bill reads - "Neither wholly female nor wholly male; or a combination of female or male; or neither female nor male; and whose sense of gender does not match with the gender assigned to that person at the time of birth, and includes transmen and transwomen, persons with [themselves] inter-sex variations and gender-queers." This definition is limiting and exclusionary - again, a blatant contravention of the NALSA judgment.

In addition to this, while the 2016 Bill provides for the right to perceived gender identity, it also makes it mandatory for every such transgender person to apply to a District Screening Committee, comprising the Chief Medical Officer (CMO), the District Social Welfare Officer, a psychologist or psychiatrist, a representative of the transgender community and an officer of the relevant government. This Committee would conduct an inquiry and certify transgender identities for applicants. This is a gross violation of human rights and constitutional principles that a supra-constitutional body would determine the identity of transgender people. Involving a CMO for screening also means that the members of the third gender would be subject to arbitrary medical examinations and allied humiliation and that this would be sanctioned by the state.

The bill seeks to bring under its purview illegal acts of trafficking of gender nonconforming children and begging. However, it does not do so on sound logic. It operates in a void when proposing these clauses. Section 19 states that "Whoever, (a) compels or entices a transgender person to indulge in the act of begging or other similar forms of forced or bonded labour other than any compulsory service for public purposes imposed by Government [...] shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than six months but which may extend to two years and with fine." The bill attempts to dismantle the age-old tradition of begging that hijras engage in for livelihood, by criminalising the person who coerces young transgender persons to take up begging. But it does so without determining other feasible livelihood options or reservations for transgenders. Today only 25 percent transgenders have found formal employment in mainstream society, 32 percent meet their survival needs through begging and an astonishing 67 percent through sex work. At least 20 percent are involved in both.

It must be understood that begging is an activity that has resulted from structural inequalities, due to a disbalance of education and employment opportunities. This may be used by the agencies of the State, like law enforcement and the police to criminalise transgender people, and subject them to further violence and stigma. This is a dangerous proposition as transgenders are often driven away from home, and find refuge in fictional families or Jamats - having a spurious legal provision like this can take away entire support systems of gender nonconforming youths who have nowhere to go. A whopping 74 percent of the transgender persons have had to leave home and their birth families because of being transgender and having faced violence and abuse, often leading to having little or no contact with them nor receiving any kind of support  financial nor emotional.

Section 13 states  "No transgender person shall be separated from parents or immediate family on the ground of being a transgender, except on an order of a competent court, in the interest of such person [...] (3) Where any parent or a member of his immediate family is unable to take care of a transgender, the competent court shall by an order direct such person to be placed in rehabilitation centre." This provision completely takes away the right of fictional families of transgender youth, many of whom run away from home or are driven out when they come out to their immediate families; and subjects gender nonconforming youth to the arbitrariness of courts and judges. It also coerces upon the youth the option of a rehabilitation centre by way of legal procedure, without explaining the need for such a provision in the first place.

A case study  from Social Action and Rehabilitation Association (SARA), Theni (Tamil Nadu), a community organisation for and managed by transwomen  where a 14-year-old gender nonconforming child ran away from home and came to the house of a transgender member to seek refuge. His parents informed the police, who in turn beat up all the members in the house and took the child away to his parents. When the child was produced before the district magistrate, he upheld the best interests of the child doctrine and stated that he may reside with whoever he chooses. The child chose the transgender gharana, and now lives with them. This was an unusual case from the field, where the judiciary ruled in favour of the transgenders and defended them from police and structural abuse. Another case from a community organisation called Salem Thirunangaigal Nala Sangam (STNS) in Salem (Tamil Nadu) faced charges of kidnapping when a child came to them for psychological support, and his parents found out. Members of STNS have also faced widespread police abuse since this incident occurred in December 2015.

Lastly, it does not provide an adequate definition of discrimination towards transgenders, which is necessary when public spaces  jobs, education, and the aspect of having families  is being opened out for them. It also does not align other laws that are based on binary gender identities to the transgender community  the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence (PWDVA), 2005, Sexual Harassment (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) at Workplace, 2013, the clauses on rape and sexual assault in the Indian Penal Code, 1860, the relaxing of gender barriers in laws that determine marriage  none of these have been brought at par with the NALSA judgment that expounds these rights under the right to life under the Constitution. At least 12 percent of TGs have reported sexual assault or facing violence due to their gender.

Most importantly, the bill of 2016 does not provide specific provisions for transgender health care  the Tiruchi Siva Bill mentioned free SRS surgery and allied medical treatment for transgenders. Findings have reflected that while on an average 79 percent transgenders have undergone SRS of which only 23 percent were able to undergo it in a formal medical facility, while the rest underwent the informal process called Nirvaan which is both unhygienic and dangerous. Their hurdles varied across availability of services, its affordability, and accessibility to the individuals. Societal stigma and dynamics within the community also played a major role.

For transgender persons like Jaya, who are trapped between the aspect of acceptance, justice and politics, this tug of war between the two bills marks another struggle  perhaps a longer and more grueling one over legalese and legality. One can only hope that the communitys interests are understood and the principles of human rights are respected.

All data sourced from Avahan III programme [Swasti Health Resource Centre]. (2016, June). Bangalore, Karnataka.
When it was invented in the 19th century, the camera was seen as a miraculous device that could capture exactly, a moment in reality. A century and a half after its first use, thanks to technological advancements, the camera is being used to construct multiple realities, freezing moments from the past, visualising the future, superimposing and mixing conflicting imagery.

What is pure photography now? asks Sohail Akbar, a practising photographer and an associate professor of Still Photography at the Jamia Millia Islamia. The rhetorical question is occasioned by the mounting of a photography exhibition, Staging the Past , showcasing the works of two young Iranian photographers, Azadeh Akhlaghi and Babek Kazemi, by Art Heritage at Shridharani Gallery, Triveni Kala Sangam, New Delhi.

Azadeh Akhlaghi, a filmmaker, turned to conceptual photography around 2009. She was 31 years old then and was stirred by the events of the Arab Spring. The world was changing ... she stated. She became more conscious of death... Throughout the history of Iran people have given up their lives for a better tomorrow.

In a suite of 17 panoramic photographs called By an Eyewitness, made in 2012, Akhlaghi shot a series of political assassinations that punctuated Irans 20th century political history. Akhlaghis work, a departure from a photographers recording of a moment instantly, elaborately reconstructs a moment in history to acquaint her viewers of a time past by bringing it back to life in an image.

The idea sparked off in Akhlaghis mind by the death of a philosophy student, Neha Agha-Soltan who had been shot by the security forces in 2009 during a protest against Iranian elections. An innocent bystander, Nehas death was caught in the mobile cameras of many who were witness to the shootout. Akhlaghi thought of the many tragic deaths of Iranians which have gone unrecorded because the camera was not omnipresent.

The political history of Iran during the 20th century was roiled by depositions, revolutions and coups. In 1906, Iran became a constitutional monarchy. The same year, the British discovered oil reserves in Iran which catapulted the country into a geopolitical hotspot. The big powers of the west became engaged in the great game where each nation wanted to control Iran and stake its claim on its share of the oil wealth. Through it all, there was a rising current of resistance which was cold-bloodedly put down by the ruling governments security forces.

Akhlaghi selected several such assassinations of writers, filmmakers, activists, intellectuals, a champion wrestler and students. She conducted extensive research, reading published material such as books, journals, newspapers and other archives, looking at locations, interviewing surviving eyewitnesses and relatives of the victims.

She then put together a production team, hired actors, blocked the scenes, paid meticulous attention to details so that the right atmosphere is evoked. There is nothing instant about the making of the image. The resulting shots are astounding. Although the gritty immediacy of instant reality is lacking in these, the emotional charge of a reinvented reality is unmistakable.

Being a filmmaker, Akhlaghi brings to the shots a cinematic range in terms of a great number of people included in her frame, the large spread of space, the gestural drama, the careful use of colours to heighten the mood of the scene. Consider the image of the shootout at the Faculty of Engineering in Tehran University on 7th December, 1953 when Zar Shariat Razavi, Mostafa Bozorgnia and Ahmad Ghandehi were killed. Another cinematic device that Akhlaghi often uses is to include herself in the scene to underscore her role as eyewitness.

One of the deaths relate not to an assassination but to that of the forgotten nationalist hero, erstwhile Prime Minister Mossadegh who was exiled from Tehran in 1953 and thereafter died in Ahmad-abad in Iran in 1967. It was said that the Americans had a hand in ousting him once again because of the control of oil reserves. Mossadegh had a lonely death and a quiet burial.

Most of these images evoke the pain, horror, savagery of these brutal killings. Seen through the filter of a distance in time, the photographs accentuate the cruelty of the act.

Babek Kazemi is not so overtly political in his imagery. However, his series of photographs Bodies focusing on homoeroticism signals its own brand of politics. Kazemi shows naked male bodies in intimate poses superimposed with maps, boundary lines and the like. The skin, the images seem to say, has its own memories of victimhood, of exile.

These images provoke one to think of the changing practice of photography. Sohail Akbar feels that greater interventions are being made on the image. There is greater fusion with cinema, theatre and even art. And indeed it is so. In India, artist N Pushpamala experimented with art, performance and photography several years ago. Of late, Kashmiri artist Mir Suhels images of superstars like Salman Khan and iconic images in art like Vermeers Girl with a Pearl Earring scarred by pellet wounds went viral in the social media. So the camera is also becoming an instrument of political comment. So it is not just technology, but response to our times that is motivating photographers to innovate with practice.
Lucknow: Hours after SP brought members of the erstwhile Janata Parivar on one platform, on Saturday BSP supremo Mayawati warned that any alliance with the ruling party in the state will directly benefit BJP.

"There is not a single concrete reason for any secular party to align with Samajwadi Party, specially after the bad experience of (SP) breaking the 'mahagathbandhan' in Bihar because of its understanding with BJP," Mayawati said at a press conference.

"SP is today standing alone because of its understanding with BJP. So, any move to align with SP means directly helping BJP...other parties should remain alert on this count as it would be good for them.

"All know that because of its selfish motives, Samajwadi Party today stands divided," she said.

"(In these circumstances) supporting SP clearly means strengthening BJP and forming an anti-Dalit, anti-backward and anti-Muslim BJP government in the state," she said.

"SP is trying to form an alliance with mostly those parties who have a very limited influence in UP. Moreover, this effort to form a grand alliance only proved that the ruling Samajwadi Party has accepted its defeat, even before the Assembly elections," she said.

"There is no concrete example on which SP can seek votes and come back to power in the state...At all levels, casteism, communalims, corruption and jungleraj has prevailed...should other secular parties support the sinking SP ship because various incidents like Muzaffarnagar, Dadri among others took place in the state because of their understanding with BJP," she asked.

Stressing that SP is mired in family feud and supporters of the Chief Minister and his uncle will harm each other in the electoral battle, Mayawati cautioned Muslim voters not to waste their votes by backing the ruling party.

"Secular people should also not waste their votes on SP or else they will help BJP," she said, adding that had the SP government worked for the entire society, the Chief Minister would not have been forced to take out his 'vikas rath yatra' with his rowdy supporters.

"Also, the SP chief would not have called leaders of other parties in Lucknow on the occasion of party's silver jubilee to enact the drama of projecting himself a secular leader... and mislead the people," she said.

Attacking BJP, which started the Parivartan yatra from Saharanpur on Saturday, Mayawati said people have now started believing that democratic values are being undermined and the country is turning into a kind of unbridled autocracy under the BJP government which could have very dangerous results.

"Had the Modi government fulfilled even one third of its poll promises, the party would not have needed Parivartan yatra or projected RSS workers as its workers to show huge turnouts," she said, adding that not only the state, but the country has also to be saved from such designs in the 2019 polls.

To a question, Mayawati ruled out BSP's alliance with any other party in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls and also condemned the one day ban on NDTV, terming it as an attack on democracy.

"Prime Minister's Modi' government is trying to gag the media for hiding its shortcomings and shielding the corrupt... people of the country will not tolerate this," she said.
Lucknow: Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav on Saturday hit out at the BJP-led central government for the one-day ban handed over to NDTV India, terming it an attack on democracy and said there was an "emergency-like situation" in the country.

"Today you have seen what has happened to NDTV, they (government) said that you (channel) showed the Pathankot terror attack," Lalu said, addressing the Silver Jubilee celebrations of the Samajwadi Party.

"Ban on NDTV is an attack on democracy. This country is heading towards dictatorship," he said, adding "There is an emergency-like situation in the country."

Lalu said that since NDTV channel "exposes certain people", it has been targeted by the government.

His remarks came after the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting directed the Hindi news channel to go off air for a day.

The ban will be effective from the midnight of 8 November to midnight of 9 November on NDTV India for allegedly breaching cable TV norms in its coverage of the 2 January terror attack on the Pathankot Air Force base.

The RJD chief also asserted that there is no rift in the Samajwadi Party.

"There is no rift in the Samajwadi Party, and we gave proof by bringing Akhilesh Babu (Yadav) and Shivpal Babu (Singh Yadav) together on stage," he said.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal Yadav, the SP state unit chief, have been at loggerheads since September.

Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Lalu said, "We have seen the condition of Jammu and Kashmir for the last 100 days."

"Someone had told us about their '56-inch chest', but look what is happening at the (India-Pakistan) border now?" he said.

He also said that cross-border surgical strikes were first carried by the Indian Armed forces when Mulayam Singh Yadav was the Defence Minister.

"They are claiming that they had carried out surgical strikes across the border, but they must know that the surgical strikes were first carried out by the forces when Mulayamji was the Defence Minister," Lalu said.

He also said that people were feeling betrayed for voting the BJP to power. Lalu said that once again the BJP was trying to fan communal passions, and was starting to rake up the Ram temple issue as state assembly polls had neared.

"Whenever elections come in Uttar Pradesh they remember Ram Mandir. And as elections are again due in the state, they are remembering Ram Temple to do politics over it," he added.

Reminding the BJP of having stopped its Rath Yatra in Bihar in 1990, Lalu said, "We have stopped their rath in Patna, Samastipur. And again we will unitedly stop them."

Lalu Prasad had stopped BJP leader L.K. Advani's "Rath Yatra" in Samastipur in Bihar when he was traversing across India to gather momentum to construct a temple in Ayodhya.

The former Bihar Chief Minister said that time had come for all secular parties to come together and oppose the BJP.

Lalu said his presence at the Samajwadi Party celebrations was aimed to "chase away" the BJP from Uttar Pradesh.

"We have come here to strengthen the Samajwadi Party. We have chased away BJP from Bihar... we will chase away BJP from Uttar Pradesh too," he remarked.

Lalu Prasad later called Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav near him and asked him to take his 'Rath Yatra' forward and ensure SP's victory. He also asked him to respect his elders and take their blessings.
By David Schwartz

| PHOENIX

PHOENIX An Arizona teenager who the FBI has said professed to be an "American jihadist" was sentenced on Friday to eight years in prison, to be followed by a lifetime on probation, for plotting to bomb a state motor vehicle office.Mahin Khan, 18, described by his parents as developmentally disabled, received one more year than the minimum prison term he faced during an emotional court hearing in Phoenix for his guilty plea to crimes committed while he was still a minor.The Tucson resident pleaded guilty last month to all three felony charges against him: terrorism, conspiracy to commit terrorism and conspiracy to commit misconduct involving weapons.Under terms of Khan's plea deal, Maricopa County prosecutors had agreed to seek a sentence ranging from seven to 14 years. If tried and convicted, he could have received a life term.Khan, shackled and wearing prison stripes, declined to address the court during the proceedings.

His parents, along with more than a dozen family and supporters, asked Judge Dean Fink for leniency, characterizing the defendant as a misguided, troubled youth with a history of mental health problems. They argued that his words were empty threats.I hope, sir, that you are able to see that in reality, he is a lost and confused child who needs help, said Atif Khan, the defendant's father, adding that his son had shown significant remorse for his actions.

Khan, whose parents have said he suffers from autism and developmental delays that have left him with the mental age of a 12-year-old, was arrested in July after having been on the FBIs radar screen for several years.But the situation grew more serious after Khan expressed to an FBI undercover operative his desire to kill hundreds of people in Arizona through lone jihadist attacks, according to court testimony. In an affidavit filed in court, the FBI said Khan described himself as an "American jihadist" loyal to Islamic State, the militant group that seized parts of Syria and Iraq and claimed responsibility for deadly bomb and gun attacks in other countries.

Khan ultimately was charged with a plotting to obtain bombs to attack a state Motor Vehicle Division office in the Phoenix area.Everyone in Arizona deserves to feel safe, and anybody that threatens our safety deserves to be in prison, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich told Reuters outside the courthouse. I think justice has been done. (Editing by Steve Gorman and James Dalgleish)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Lawrence Hurley

| WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON When President Barack Obama leaves office on Jan. 20 after eight years, several of his major initiatives will still hang in the legal balance, meaning the U.S. courts and his successor will play a major role in shaping his legacy.Ongoing legal challenges by Republican-governed states and business groups are targeting Obama's signature healthcare law, his plan to combat climate change, a key immigration initiative, his transgender rights policy, his "net neutrality" internet rules, overtime pay for workers and other matters.Most of the cases are awaiting rulings by trial judges or regional federal appeals courts and could be bound for the U.S. Supreme Court, but are unlikely to get there until after the winner of Tuesday's election, pitting Democrat Hillary Clinton against Republican Donald Trump, is sworn in. Unless the U.S. Senate changes course and confirms Obama's nominee, appellate court judge Merrick Garland, to fill the vacant ninth seat on the ideologically split Supreme Court, the next president would be responsible for selecting a new justice who could cast the deciding vote in these cases. The Supreme Court has already agreed to decide a major transgender rights case. Obama's administration is backing a female-born transgender high school student named Gavin Grimm, who identifies as male and sued in 2015 to win the right to use the school's boys' bathroom. A ruling, which also could resolve similar litigation around the country, is not due until the end of June.In another transgender rights case, a number of states challenged the Obama administration's May guidance to public schools nationwide to let transgender students use bathrooms of their choice. A federal judge blocked the policy in August while the litigation continues.Because Obama during much of his presidency has faced a Republican-controlled Congress hostile to his legislative initiatives, he has often bypassed lawmakers and used executive power to advance policy goals."Despite having majorities in both houses of Congress, Republicans have refused to govern. Instead, this litigious Republican Party has rushed to the courts with partisan lawsuits," White House spokesman Eric Schultz said.Those challenging Obama have vowed to fight on unless his successor changes course.

"Should a new administration rescind those policies and respect the bounds placed before it, we will happily direct our energies elsewhere," added Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has helped spearhead various legal challenges to Obama.Clinton, backed by Obama in her White House bid, could be expected to leave in place or even expand on his initiatives and to defend them in court. Trump, if elected, could quickly reverse Obama executive orders as promised. But undoing large-scale regulations like power plant emissions rules could be more complicated. "It's not at the stroke of a pen," said Sean Donahue, a lawyer representing environmental groups that backed Obama administration climate rules known as the Clean Power Plan.Trump would have to undergo a new, lengthy rule-making process, according to legal experts.

CLEAN POWER PLAN

The case with the biggest potential long-term impact is the challenge by states and industry groups to Obama's Clean Power Plan, which would curb greenhouse emissions mainly from coal-fired power plants. The rules are an important legacy issue for Obama. They also are vital to U.S. obligations under last year's international climate change treaty.A federal appeals court heard oral arguments in September. A ruling is not due for months. The case is likely to go to the Supreme Court on appeal.The Supreme Court put the regulations on hold in February while the litigation continues.

Republicans and conservative groups have launched numerous challenges to the 2010 Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. The Supreme Court in 2012 and 2015 issued rulings preserving Obama's top legislative achievement. Now, another Republican-led legal challenge is making its way through the courts. The administration has appealed a district court judge's May decision that the federal government cannot spend billions of dollars to provide subsidies under Obamacare to help individuals buy policies from private insurers without congressional approval.Separately, the administration is seeking in federal court in Texas to revive Obama's 2014 executive action to protect millions of immigrants in the country illegally from deportation and give them work permits. The plan, challenged by Texas and other states, has been barred by the courts. The Supreme Court, split 4-4, in June left in place lower court orders blocking the plan, and in October declined to revisit that ruling. Other Obama regulations have been targeted by business groups. A federal appeals court in June upheld Obama's landmark "net neutrality" rules barring internet service providers from obstructing or slowing down consumer access to web content. The case remains under appeal.In September, states and business groups filed a legal challenge to an administration rule to extend mandatory overtime pay to millions of workers. A ruling is not due until after Obama leaves office. (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Amy Stevens and Will Dunham)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Babak Dehghanpisheh

| NEAR HAMMAM AL-ALIL, Iraq

NEAR HAMMAM AL-ALIL, Iraq Iraqi troops advancing towards Mosul battled on Saturday for the last town left between them and the Islamic State stronghold to the north, which is already under assault from special forces fighting inside the city's eastern districts.Saturday's attack on Hammam al-Alil, about 15 km (10 miles) south of Mosul, targeted a force of at least 70 Islamic State fighters in the Tigris river town, commander of the Mosul operations Major-General Najm al-Jabouri said.Jabouri said the assault began around 10 a.m. (0700 GMT). Some militants had already tried to escape across the river, but others put up heavy resistance and the troops had thwarted three attempted suicide car bombings."(The battle) is very important - it's the last town for us before Mosul," Jabouri told reporters. Iraqi helicopters were supporting the army, he said, backed also by jets from a U.S.-led air coalition which had been hitting Islamic State targets in the town for several days. A military statement said security forces had raised the Iraqi flag over a government building in the town, but did not say whether it was fully under their control.

The army and accompanying security forces aim to push the southern front up to Mosul to join troops and special forces that broke into the city's east this week, taking six districts and carving out a foothold in the militants' Iraq bastion. Recapturing Mosul would effectively crush the Iraqi half of a self-proclaimed caliphate declared by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque two years ago. His Islamist group also controls large parts of east Syria.A Reuters correspondent in the village of Ali Rash, about 7 km (4 miles) southeast of Mosul, saw smoke rising from eastern districts of the city on Saturday. Air strikes, artillery and gunfire could be heard.

In Hammam al-Alil, the jihadists had taken hundreds of people as human shields, although Jabouri said it was not clear how many people were left in the town. Before Islamic State swept in more than two years ago, Hammam al-Alil and outlying villages had a population of 65,000.As well as forcing residents to remain as they came under attack in Hammam al-Alil, Islamic State fighters retreating north in the last two weeks have forced thousands to march with them as cover from air strikes, villagers have told Reuters.The United Nations said the militants transported 1,600 abducted civilians from Hammam al-Alil to the town of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, on Tuesday and took another 150 families from the town to Mosul the next day.

They told residents to hand over children, especially boys aged over nine, in an apparent recruitment drive for child soldiers, U.N. human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said.Jabouri said a man he described as a senior Islamic State figure, Ammar Salih Ahmed Abu Bakr, was killed by federal police - who are fighting with the army in Hammam al-Alil - as he tried to escape from Hammam al-Khalil by car.Many of the remaining militants were non-Iraqis, he said. "There are at least 70 Daesh (Islamic State) fighters in the town. The majority are foreign fighters, so they don't know where to go. They are just moving from place to place." (Additional reporting by Stephen Kalin in Ali Rash; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Catherine Evans)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Oscar-winning actor and comedian Robin Williams was found dead at age 63 on Monday from an apparent suicide at his home in Northern California, authorities said.

Hollywood celebrities and many others who knew him paid tribute to Williams:

His wife Susan Schneider said in a statement: "This morning, I lost my husband and my best friend, while the world lost one of its most beloved artists and beautiful human beings. I am utterly heartbroken."

President Barack Obama, in a statement making reference to the actor's many roles said: "Robin Williams was an airman, a doctor, a genie, a nanny, a president, a professor, a bangarang Peter Pan and everything in between. But he was one of a kind... The Obama family offers our condolences to Robin's family, his friends and everyone who found their voice and their verse thanks to Robin Williams."

Director Steven Spielberg said in a statement: "Robin was a lightning storm of comic genius and our laughter was the thunder that sustained him. He was a pal, and I can't believe he's gone."

Officials from Twentieth Century Fox Television, the studio that produced Williams's show "The Crazy Ones," said in a statement: "Robin Williams was a comedy giant, and although we only knew him personally for a season, he was warm, funny and a true professional."

Actor Steve Martin said on Twitter: "I could not be more stunned by the loss of Robin Williams, mensch, great talent, acting partner, genuine soul."

Actor John Cryer said on Twitter: "We will try to carry on, but it won't be any fun without you."

Musician John Mayer said on Twitter: "The first thing I ever wanted to be when I grew up was Robin Williams' inhabiting of Popeye."

Actor Neil Patrick Harris said on Twitter: "I am stunned and just reeling from the news of Robin Williams' death. He brought so much joy and heart to millions ... Just, wow."

Actress Minnie Driver said on Twitter: "My Heart's broken. Robin was a beautiful, kind soul. Can't bear that he's gone. So incredibly sorry for his family."

Comedian Margaret Cho said on Twitter: "I AM BEYOND DEVASTATED."

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel said on Twitter: "Robin was as sweet a man as he was funny. If you're sad, please tell someone."

John Travolta said in a statement: "I've never known a sweeter, brighter, more considerate person than Robin. Robin's commitment as an artist to lifting our mood and making us happy is compared to none. He loved us all and we loved him back."

Hollywood star John Cusack tweeted saying: "A big tenacious overflowing hyperkinetic eruption of compassion would be (the) best tribute to Williams."

Reuters
If you think the Big Mac burger at McDonald's (MCD -0.15%) is too much or just not enough, the world's largest burger chain is about to roll out new options. McDonald's will introduce Mac Jr. and Grand Mac at restaurants in Florida and Pittsburgh later this month. They are slated to go nationwide by early next year.

Mac Jr. takes out a layer of the original Big Mac, eliminating one of the two hamburger beef patties and the bread slice in the middle. It's essentially a dolled up version of its cheeseburger, only dressed up with shredded lettuce, minced onions, pickles, and the signature Big Mac sauce served on a sesame seed bun. Grand Mac doesn't add a third layer, as you might initially expect. It just uses larger beef patties, and naturally goes with a larger sesame seed bun.

It's all of the same ingredients in the three options. Customers just need to size up how much Mac they are actually craving.

Some of the market's initial reactions aren't very flattering.

"McDonald's Should Be Embarrassed by the Biggest Changes Ever to the Iconic Big Mac," reads Friday's headline out of TheStreet.com's Brian Sozzi.

I don't agree. It's not enough, sure, but it's certainly better than standing still. The Big Mac is no longer relevant. A memo sent by a top franchisee this summer that was intercepted by The Wall Street Journal claimed that just one of every five millennials has ever had a Big Mac. We live in a world of growing burger choices, and if this little novelty gets younger consumers to finally try a unique sandwich it could go a long way in getting millennials to embrace the Golden Arches.

Life after breakfast

McDonald's seemed to be turning things around last year after a couple of rough years of sluggish stateside comps. It has gone on to rattle off five consecutive quarters of positive comps, but that growth slowed to just 1.5% in its latest quarter.

A big contributor to the chain's rebound was last fall's decision to offer select breakfast items all day. That menu was recently expanded, but comparisons will obviously get more challenging now that we'll be comparing results on an apples to apples -- or McMuffins to McMuffins -- basis.

The stock has been vulnerable despite the rebound. It has shed more than 5% of its value year to date. It actually held up better as an investment when its comps were going the wrong way. The market's fretting the chain's future. The stock's now juicy yield of 3.4% -- and income-chasing pedigree after boosting its payout for the past 39 years -- will keep investors close. However, McDonald's needs to do something to keep diners coming back beyond all-day breakfast. Shaking up the sizes for its flagship Big Mac sandwich -- even if it's for a limited time -- could be the special sauce that Mickey D's needs.
American Water Works Co. (AWK -2.38%) released solid third-quarter 2016 earnings on Wednesday, Nov. 2. The solid showing, however, excludes the impact of a settlement arising from the Freedom Industries' chemical spill in West Virginia in 2014.

The largest publicly traded water and wastewater utility in the United States grew revenue nearly 4% to $930 million -- somewhat short of the $945.05 million analysts were looking for -- while adjusted earnings rose more than 9% to $1.05 per share, beating Wall Street's expectations of $1.01 per share. Results were driven by continued growth in the regulated business.

American Water Works stock has returned a total of nearly 28% over the one-year period through Thursday, far exceeding the S&P 500's 1.2% return. The stocks of the industry's second- and third-largest companies by market cap, Aqua America and American States Water, returned 5.5% and negative 1.5%, respectively, over this period.

Key quarterly numbers

Metric Q3 2016 Q3 2015 YOY Change Revenue $930 million $896 million 3.8% Operating Income $319 million $361 million (11.6%) Net Income $149 million $174 million (14.4%) GAAP Earnings Per Share (EPS) $0.83 $0.96 (13.5%) Adjusted EPS $1.05 $0.96 9.4%

American Water's results were negatively impacted by a $65 million binding settlement -- net of insurance money that kicked in -- for all consolidated claims arising from the Freedom Industries' chemical spill in January, 2014. Adjusted EPS excludes this expense, which equates to $0.22 per share after taxes.

American Water maintains that the settlement is not an admission of any liability or fault on its part, and that it's settling so as to eliminate any distractions to its management and employees, and risks associated with ongoing legal fights.

Freedom Industries chemical spill and water supply contamination

The crux of the class action lawsuit against American Water is that it breached its duty to provide clean water to its customers. Briefly, here's what happened, per the U.S. Justice Department:

On January 9, 2014, a major chemical leak was discovered in Charleston at the above-ground storage tank area owned and operated by Freedom Industries (Freedom) on the Elk River. Freedom used these storage tanks to keep and process chemicals, and the leak consisted primarily of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (MCHM), a chemical used in the coal mining industry as a cleansing agent. A significant amount of MCHM leaked into the Elk River, flowed into a water treatment plant [American Water's subsidiary, West Virginia American Water] and contaminated the water supply of Charleston and the surrounding areas for several days.

Soon after the leak was discovered and reported to American Water, the company made the decision to halt providing water to about 300, 000 people for several days because it didn't believe its filtration system could handle the large influx of MCHM. Some people who ingested or otherwise came into contact with the tainted water reported nausea, vomiting, and other symptoms. Moreover, some businesses, schools, and other entities either curtailed operations or entirely shut down once they had no water supply. The spill prompted the governor to declare a state of emergency for nine counties.

It appears to me that American Water is paying out largely because it has deep pockets: Freedom Industries filed for bankruptcy soon after the incident. Eastman Chemical, the company that supplied the MCHM to Freedom, was also named in the class action suit and, like American Water, is also settling.

Performance by segment

American Water Work's regulated business continues to be the primary driver of its earnings, as shown below.

Segment Q3 2016 Q3 2015 YOY Change Regulated Business $1.07 $0.97 10.3% Market-Based Business $0.04 $0.07 (42.9%) Parent ($0.06) ($0.08) 25% Total Adjusted EPS $1.05 $0.96 9.4% Freedom Industries Settlement (per share) ($0.22) -- -- Total GAAP EPS $0.83 $0.96 (7.3%)

Net income in the regulated business was $152 million, down from $174 million in the year-ago period. However, excluding the impact of the Freedom settlement, net income increased about 10% to $191 million. The increase was due to additional authorized revenue and surcharges to support infrastructure investments, acquisitions, and organic growth.

The market-based business reported net income of $7 million, down from $12 million in the year-ago period. The decline was due to decreases in military base infrastructure budgets, as well as the completion earlier this year of a very large multi-year capital upgrade project at one base.

While the military services group has experienced headwinds this year, things appear to be looking brighter. As CEO Susan Story said on the analyst conference call, "[W]hile we are seeing a year-over-year decrease in military capital upgrade projects, the pipeline of new bases looking to privatize remains strong." Of course, American Water needs to bid on these projects, so it's not guaranteed to get these contracts even if they become more plentiful.

American Water's management continues to expect that Keystone Clearwater Solutions, which supplies water and related services to natural gas exploration and production companies in the Appalachian Basin, will have a neutral affect on 2016 earnings, though it's been free-cash-flow-positive. The company remains optimistic about Keystone's prospects once the natural gas market makes further strides in its recovery.

Acquisitions keep on flowing

In 2016, through the date of the earnings release, American Water has added about 10,700 new customers just from acquisitions, and has signed agreements representing another 67,800 new customers pending regulatory approvals, Chief Operating Officer Walter Lynch said on the earnings call. (The company also added about 10,000 new customers via organic growth.)

Efficiency continues to improve

The adjusted regulated operation and maintenance (O&M) efficiency ratio is a key non-GAAP metric for company-owned facilities that reflects how well it's controlling costs; the lower the better.

American Water's O&M ratio for the 12-month period through the end of Q3 improved year over year from 35.8% to 34.9%. It also improved sequentially, down from 35.2% at the end of Q2. The company's been steadily lowering this ratio for the past few years, with a goal of achieving 34% by 2020.

Full-year 2016 adjusted EPS guidance edged up

Due to stronger-than-expected third-quarter results (excluding the Freedom settlement), American Water revised its full-year 2016 guidance to the upper end of its prior range, plus a penny.

Metric Current 2016 Guidance 2015 Actual Results YOY Growth Previous 2016 Guidance Adjusted Earnings Per Share $2.81 to $2.86 $2.64 6.4% to 8.3% $2.75 to $2.85 GAAP Earnings Per Share $2.59 to $2.64 $2.64 (1.9%) to 0% $2.75 to $2.85

In short, American Water's EPS growth of 9.4%, excluding the expense from the Freedom Industries settlement, demonstrates why it has been the best performer among the larger water utility stocks over both the short and long terms.
The industrial economy has been generally sluggish, and Moog (NYSE: MOG-A) (NYSE: MOG-B) has been exposed to adverse trends because it sells its components to industrial customers. Coming into Friday's fiscal fourth-quarter financial report, Moog investors were expecting minimal growth in both earnings and sales, so the company's actual results surprised them in both directions. Let's take a closer look at what Moog said and how its future looks.

Moog makes components for key military systems. Image source: Moog.

Moog sees sales slump, earnings climb

Moog's fiscal fourth-quarter results were mixed. Revenue slid 1%, to $619 million, which was worse than the modest gain that most investors had expected to see. However, net income jumped 17%, to $33.1 million, and that produced earnings of $0.92 per share, well in excess of the $0.80 per-share consensus forecast among those following the stock.

Looking more closely at the numbers, Moog suffered a reversal from what investors have seen for quite awhile. The aircraft controls segment has tended to benefit from the strength in the aerospace industry, but its sales actually fell almost 4% from the year-ago period. The components division also saw a slight 1% decline, but industrial systems experienced growth in excess of 2%. Space and defense controls led the way with a gain of close to 5%.

On the bottom line, things moved in nearly the opposite direction. Aircraft controls saw a better than 10% rise in operating profit despite the sales decline, and components segment profit jumped almost 40%. Industrial systems saw its bottom line soar by two-thirds. Only the space and defense controls segment saw its operating profit decline, falling by more than half.

Moog gave good details explaining the performance. For aircraft controls, the military side of the business suffered even as commercial aircraft sales climbed. Satellite propulsion system sales powered the space segment higher, while higher energy industry sales offset lower industrial automation sales in the industrial systems segment. Yet components suffered from weakness related to energy, showing the crosscurrents that Moog has to navigate in driving its business forward.

CEO John Scannell put Moog's performance in perspective. "Like many companies, we're faced with a slow-growth environment," Scannell said, "and we responded with restructuring activities, ongoing portfolio adjustments, and continued investment for the long term." Moreover, the CEO thinks that Moog did well operationally despite the industry challenges, and he's confident in the company's long-term success.

What's next for Moog?

Yet Moog is also being fairly conservative in its outlook for fiscal 2017. As Scannell explained, "We're assuming most markets will be fairly stable, with the only real growth coming from the A350 program." The company is also preparing for a negative shift in program mix within both the military and commercial areas of the aerospace sector, and higher taxes will hold back the company.

As a result, Moog's guidance wasn't as strong as most investors were hoping to see. For the full year, Moog expects sales to rise just 1%, to $2.44 billion, which compares unfavorably with the consensus forecast for nearly $2.5 billion. Similarly, earnings guidance for roughly $3.50 per share is well below the $3.80 per share that most investors expect, even when you incorporate the implicit range of plus or minus $0.20 per share in the company's forecast.

It's likely because of that somewhat downbeat guidance that Moog stock reacted negatively to the news, falling 2% in the day's session following the announcement. Nevertheless, for long-term investors, the more important question is whether the company can overcome cyclical pressures and keep making progress in its strategic efforts. If it can, then Moog should see its fundamental strength rise over time, even if it oscillates upward and downward in response to business cycles.

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.

Dan Caplinger has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Moog (A shares). 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.
Image source: McDonald's.

If you think the Big Mac burger atMcDonald's (NYSE: MCD)is too much or just not enough, the world's largest burger chain is about to roll out new options. McDonald's will introduce Mac Jr. and Grand Mac at restaurants in Florida and Pittsburgh later this month. They are slated to go nationwide by early next year.

Mac Jr. takes out a layer of the original Big Mac, eliminating one of the two hamburger beef patties and the bread slice in the middle. It's essentially a dolled up version of its cheeseburger, only dressed up with shredded lettuce, minced onions, pickles, and the signature Big Mac sauce served on a sesame seed bun. Grand Mac doesn't add a third layer, as you might initially expect. It just uses larger beef patties, and naturally goes with a larger sesame seed bun.

It's all of the same ingredients in the three options. Customers just need to size up how much Mac they are actually craving.

Some of the market's initial reactions aren't very flattering.

"McDonald's Should Be Embarrassed by the Biggest Changes Ever to the Iconic Big Mac," readsFriday's headlineout of TheStreet.com's Brian Sozzi.

I don't agree. It's not enough, sure, but it's certainly better than standing still. The Big Mac is no longer relevant. A memo sent by a top franchisee this summer that was intercepted by The Wall Street Journal claimed that just one of every five millennials has ever had a Big Mac. We live in a world of growing burger choices, and if this little novelty gets younger consumers to finally try a unique sandwich it could go a long way in getting millennials to embrace the Golden Arches.

Life after breakfast

McDonald's seemed to be turning things around last year after a couple of rough years of sluggish stateside comps. It has gone on to rattle off five consecutive quarters of positive comps, but that growth slowed to just 1.5% in its latest quarter.

A big contributor to the chain's rebound was last fall's decision to offer select breakfast items all day. That menu was recently expanded, but comparisons will obviously get more challenging now that we'll be comparing results on an apples to apples -- or McMuffins to McMuffins -- basis.

The stock has been vulnerable despite the rebound. It has shed more than 5% of its value year to date. It actually held up better as an investment when its comps were going the wrong way. The market's fretting the chain's future. The stock's now juicy yield of 3.4% -- and income-chasing pedigree after boosting its payout for the past 39 years -- will keep investors close. However, McDonald's needs to do something to keep diners coming back beyond all-day breakfast. Shaking up the sizes for its flagship Big Mac sandwich -- even if it's for a limited time -- could be the special sauce that Mickey D's needs.

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.

Rick Munarriz 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.
Hillary Clinton has a 2-point edge over Donald Trump with less than a week before the election.

Thats according to a new national Fox News Poll of likely voters conducted Tuesday-Thursday.

In the four way race, Clinton tops Trump by a 45-43 percent margin. She was up by three points a week ago (44-41 percent) and by six in mid-October (45-39 percent). Gary Johnson gets 5 percent and Jill Stein two percent. Only four percent are undecided.

Without third-party candidates in the mix, Clinton is ahead by just one point: 46-45 percent. She was up five points in the two-way last week (49-44 percent, October 22-25).

Her lead is within the polls margin of sampling error in both the two-way and four-way races.

Trump is favored by men (+11 points), whites (+19), and whites without a college degree (+33).

Clinton leads among women (+13 points), blacks (+74), and voters under age 30 (+17). Shes also ahead by 11 points among the one-in-five who have already voted (50-39 percent).

They split the support of whites with a college degree: Trump gets 45 percent to Clintons 42 percent. In 2012, GOP nominee Mitt Romney won this group by 14 points (56-42 percent).

Both candidates are consolidating their bases, but Clinton outperforms Trump: she gets 90 percent among Democrats and he gets 85 percent of Republicans.

Trump has an 8-point edge over Clinton among independents (41-33 percent). Thats down from his 13-point advantage last week (41-28 percent). Johnson takes 11 percent.

Trump has a six-point strength-of-support advantage, as more of his backers (71 percent) say they strongly support their candidate than Clinton supporters (65 percent). In addition, his folks (63 percent) are more likely than hers (54 percent) to be extremely interested in the race.

That enthusiasm gap may be one consequence of the renewed FBI investigation into Clintons use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. How much damage has the scandal really done to her campaign?

Some 74 percent of voters say the FBI investigation wont make a difference to their vote, and four percent actually say it makes them more likely to support her. Yet 21 percent say it makes them less likely to vote for her, including 37 percent of Republicans and 21 percent of independents. Among Democrats, 5 percent say it makes them less likely to support Clinton, while 7 percent say it makes them more likely.

The FBI action forced Clinton to play defense in the closing week, says Democratic pollster Chris Anderson. But the number of voters who will move out of her column to someone else will likely be minimal. If the election really comes down to the wire, perhaps it makes a difference in a battleground. Anderson conducts the Fox News Poll with Republican counterpart Daron Shaw.

Then again, the 59 percent who are bothered by Clintons use of a private email server is actually down a touch from 60 percent who felt that way at the end of September. For 39 percent its no big deal. The emails bother almost all Republicans (92 percent), most independents (69 percent), but just one in five Democrats (22 percent).

While over half of voters, 51 percent, doubt the FBI will find anything that will lead to criminal charges against Clinton, some 47 percent think it will -- including 42 percent of independents and 16 percent of Democrats.

So its not surprising that by a 16-point margin, more voters are concerned scandals would have a serious effect on a Clinton administration (70 percent) than a Trump administration (54 percent). Moreover, nearly half (46 percent) are very worried about scandals if Clinton were elected, up from 37 percent three weeks ago.

Then theres Clintons honesty rating. It ticked up one point to 31 percent. It was a record-low 30 percent among likely voters last week. For Trump, 38 percent say hes honest and trustworthy. Honesty is one of the only personal traits where he bests her.

Much of the recent commentary misses the big picture here, says Shaw. The specific charges matter less than the fact that they reinforce the broad sense that Clintons dishonest. If late-breaking voters decide to make a leap of faith with Trump, it will be because of this feeling.

Fifty-eight percent say Clinton has the temperament to serve effectively as president, compared to just 40 percent for Trump.

While both candidates remain unpopular, Clintons lost her advantage here. Her net negative rating is 13 points (43 favorable vs. 56 unfavorable). Last week she was underwater by 8. At the same time, Trumps net negative 12 points (43 favorable vs. 55 unfavorable) improved a bit from negative 14 a week ago.

Roughly 15 percent of likely voters dislike both Clinton and Trump. Who are they backing? Clinton and Johnson garner 25 percent each from this group, and 23 percent go for Trump.

The number who think Clinton will win the election is down, yet a majority still thinks shell be the next president: 56 percent, down from a high of 66 percent three weeks ago (October 10-12). Still, only 35 percent expect a Trump victory.

Most of her supporters remain confident in their candidate, as 90 percent think it will be Madame President, down slightly from 93 percent in mid-October. At the same time, Trumps supporters are feeling more confident: 69 percent think hell win, up from 56 percent.

Meanwhile, 80 percent of Clinton supporters say theyll accept the election outcome if Trump wins. Thats down from 88 percent last week. That number holds steady among Trump supporters, as 58 percent say theyll accept the outcome if Clinton wins.

Nearly three-out-of-four will go to the voting booth unhappy with Uncle Sam: 46 percent are dissatisfied with the way the federal government is working and another 27 percent are angry. Trump backers are four times as likely as those supporting Clinton to say theyre angry (44 vs. 11 percent).

Clintons lost ground on the issues. For example, the new poll finds likely voters trust her over Trump on making decisions about using nuclear weapons by 16 points. Thats down from a 25-point lead in mid-October.

The two candidates tie on nominating the next Supreme Court justice and handling terrorism. Clinton has consistently been preferred on the court, and in five of the six previous polls she had the edge on terrorism.

And Trumps current 8-point advantage over Clinton on handling the economy is his largest yet.

The Fox News Poll is based on landline and cellphone interviews with 1,211 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from November 1-3, 2016. The survey includes results among 1,107 likely voters. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points for results among registered voters and plus or minus 3 points among likely voters.
Brad Pitt is asking a judge to grant him joint custody of his six children in his split from Angelina Jolie Pitt, according to a divorce filing Friday.

The actor's request was included in his response to Jolie Pitt's Sept. 20 petition to end their two-year marriage. The actress sought sole physical custody of their six children, who range in age from 8 to 15.

Custody has been the major issue in the breakup so far, with authorities investigating Pitt over what happened during a dispute on a private flight with his family in mid-September. The couple reached a temporary custody agreement that allowed the actor to visit his children while the investigation by a child welfare agency in Los Angeles is ongoing.

The outcome of the investigation could impact how a judge determines custody arrangements, although courts in California generally favor awarding joint custody. The actors could also reach a private agreement that would not involve a public custody fight in court.

Pitt's filing does not include any new details about the couple's breakup. Pitt cited irreconcilable differences and makes no mention of a prenuptial agreement that will govern how the pair divides their assets. He also cites Sept. 15 as the day of their separation, one day after the alleged plane altercation between Pitt and his 15-year-old son, Maddox.

Pitt was accused of being abusive toward the teenager, sources told The Associated Press, but authorities were not notified when the plane landed in Minnesota. Several sources said the incident was being investigated by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, but the agency said it could not confirm whether it was involved.

The actors were together for 12 years after becoming close while filming 2005's "Mr. & Mrs. Smith."

As one of Hollywood's elite power couples, the actors transformed the flurry of headlines into a force for good.

They adopted children from Cambodia, Vietnam and Ethiopia. In 2006, they formed the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, to which they funneled many of the millions they made selling personal pictures to celebrity magazines.

Jolie Pitt, who became special envoy for the United Nations in 2012, became an outspoken voice for refugees, as well as for breast cancer treatment after undergoing a double mastectomy herself. Pitt built homes in New Orleans for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The pair recently sold a home they purchased in New Orleans' French Quarter for $4.9 million.

Their only other on-screen role together is in 2015's "By the Sea," about a troubled American couple vacationing in France.

Pitt skipped the Sept. 28 premiere of the Terrence Malick's new documentary "Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience," which he narrated. In a statement, Pitt said he was skipping the premiere because he was currently focused on my family situation and don't want to distract attention away from this extraordinary film."

Pitt stars with Marion Cotillard in Robert Zemeckis' upcoming spy thriller "Allied."

Jolie Pitt earlier this year finished shooting her fourth feature as director, "First They Killed My Father." The film, about the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime, was shot in Cambodia.
Looks like Tori Spelling's credit card drama isn't over yet.

After the pregnant 43-year-old actress was sued in January by American Express for an unpaid $38,000 bill and ordered to pay her entire past due balance plus $855 in court fees in September, she was hit by another lawsuit from the credit card company on Oct. 31.

According to court papers obtained by ET, Spelling has a balance of $87,595.55 on one of her American Express credit cards, and is now being sued for payment. A copy of the card statement shows the account is now canceled.

NEWS: Tori Spelling Ordered to Pay $38K in American Express Lawsuit

"No part of said sum has been paid, although demand for payment has been made," the documents read about Spelling's credit card balance.

This isn't the first time Spelling and her husband, 49-year-old Dean McDermott, have dealt with financial issues. According to court papers obtained by ET in July, the state of California placed a tax lien for $259,108.23 on the couple's property stemming from state taxes that allegedly went unpaid in 2014.

In 2013, Spelling admitted to The Insider that she and her husband struggled with their bills.

"Just because I'm on TV doesn't mean that I don't make financial choices that aren't good," she explained. "They were really bad ones."

WATCH: Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott Get Matching Tattoos for 10th Wedding Anniversary

Meanwhile, Spelling is also going through a lot in her personal life. Last month, the mother of four announced she was pregnant with her fifth child, admitting to People that it was a "total surprise." ET spoke with the former "Beverly Hills 90210" star last Sunday, when she shared that thankfully, everything in her pregnancy is going well so far.

"My pregnancy with [son] Finn was really difficult and there was a health condition, but the baby and I got checked out," she revealed. "That problem doesn't exist, and it can't exist during this pregnancy so we're OK."
Kim Kardashian has fired bodyguard Pascal Duvier, who was charged with protecting her when she was robbed at gunpoint in Paris last month  but the New Post has been told its not personal.

He was let go because they are bringing on an entirely new team, a source told the paper.

As the paper originally reported, Kardashian didnt blame Duvier for the robbery, and still doesnt.

It is reported to be part of a major overhaul of the family's security arrangements."

Kim 100 percent does not blame Pascal, a friend said after the heist.

Kim put Pascal with [sister] Kourtney that night.

The friend added at the time, When shes home [in Paris], she doesnt feel the need to have a security guard outside her door at all times.

The thieves stole millions of dollars worth of of jewelry. They have not been caught.

Click here for more in the New York Post.
This election has two distinctly different directions for America. My heart is heavy! I, like so many Americans, am concerned for the future of this land that I love.

We are at a crossroads. Every vote matters. Never, in my lifetime has there been so much division, so much hostility, so much frustration, so much blatant bias and so much lingering confusion.

As a college educated woman, I represent the demographic that is supposedly the swing vote in this election. As a pro-life Christian conservative, the choice for me is very clear but I realize the choice is not as clear to those who remain undecided. So it is to the undecided, particularly women and people of faith, I offer the following as guideposts to better discern how to make a wise and thoughtful decision.

There is no perfect candidate, and the media magnifies their flaws. For some, the choice is for the lesser of two evils, because of their personalities instead of their vision.

Supporting Mr. Trump for president does not mean I have ignored his past or indefensible comments, but I do accept his apologies. I completely understand why some women would still be undecided.

Each candidate has a distinctly different philosophy of the role of government and the issues we face. Secretary Clinton is a liberal- leaning Democrat and a refined career politician representing the political establishment. Mr. Trump is a successful business man, an outsider who speaks his mind and who often wears his emotions on his sleeve.

Supporting Mr. Trump for president does not mean I have ignored his past or indefensible comments, but I do accept his apologies. I completely understand why some women would still be undecided.

These issues are personal to me. I survived childhood sexual abuse and a date rape at age 22. As President of Enough Is Enough for the last 23 years, I have been on the frontlines fighting to prevent the sexual exploitation of children and women, fighting to stop the pornification of our culture, and fighting to curb sexual predation.

However when I met Mr. Trump two years ago at CPAC, he was a kind and gracious gentlemen. He applauded me in front of a crowd of people for taking the high road during the 1987 presidential scandal. He had not yet announced his presidency, but he told me that he had to run.

I immediately saw his passion for America, the conviction in his eyes, and a fire in his belly that was driving him to run in spite of the cost.

God is in the business of using flawed people who He humbled and molded into great leaders.

Our country is framed by our Constitution as one nation, under God. I believe the philosophy of Mr. Trump and Governor Pence most closely mirrors a government for the people and by the people. President Reagan said it best over 50 years ago, 'The issue of this election is whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them for ourselves. Our parties themselves represent two distinctive worldviews.

We as Christians must closely examine each party platform to discover which position best line up with our Judeo-Christian worldview and the Word of God.

One of the most important and unavoidable issues is the issue of life. Abortion on demand is one of the great scourges on our nation.

I strongly believe that our Founders intent when writing the Declaration of Independence that all of humankind are endowed by their Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, meant from womb to tomb.

The Trump/Pence ticket stands strong on so many of these issues that truly matter, from Israel to a prosperous thriving economy. I believe that they will lead America forward, and best solve the challenges of a failed economy, inexcusable unemployment, a broken immigration system, an unfair tax system, corruption in politics, unfavorable trade deals, shaky foreign policy, failed Obamacare, out of control national debt and a diminished military which must be strengthened in order to defend against radical Islamists terrorists and terrorist nations who have declared war on America and our ally Israel.

As CEO of Enough Is Enough (EIE), I also view Internet safety as a key issue since its the 4th ranked health concern for U.S. children. This summer, as the law and order candidate, Donald Trump signed The Childrens Internet Safety Presidential Pledge, developed by EIE. The Pledge was sent to all Presidential Candidates, calling upon them, if elected President to make a pledge to defend the innocence and dignity of Americas children by enforcing the existing federal laws and advancing public policies designed to prevent the sexual exploitation of children online and to make the Internet safer for all. In all fairness to Secretary Clinton, she sent a letter supporting the goals of the Pledge which is encouraging.

In addition, I am encouraged that Mr. Trump has chosen a solid group of conservative, principled and talented leaders to serve by his side during his campaign. He has assembled an evangelical advisory council of top Christian leaders who are advising him on key issues; and, he is listening. Most of these people are not part of the political elite. We are not only voting for President and VP but we are in effect voting for over 7000 political appointees and individuals who will serve in his administration. In a recent article, Mariam Bell wrote: We vote FOR the 4,000+ political appointees who will run all the agencies, departments and programs. We vote FOR the 3,000+ appointments to boards and commissions the next president will make. We FOR all those 300+ who will be appointed to the judiciary, including the Supreme Court  whose rulings will impact our country for the next fifty years, not just four. The next president will appoint a cabinet and has already selected a vice president.

Finally it is perhaps the most crucial of all considerations for the voter. The President serves for only 4-8 years, a Supreme Court Justice serves for life with the average term being 30 years. Our next President will likely appoint at least 3 justices, who will determine the trajectory of our Nation for generations to come. Mr. Trump has committed to appoint pro-life constitutionalist judges like Antonin Scalia. Secretary Clinton on the other hand said she would appoint pro-abortion judges, claiming, I will defend Planned Parenthood. I will defend Roe v. Wade, and I will defend women's rights to make their own health care decisions. Code for I will not defend the sanctity of life for unborn Americans.

Former Attorney General Ed Meese said in a speech to the Federalist Society that An activist jurisprudence, one which anchors the Constitution only in the consciences of jurists. is a chameleon jurisprudence, changing color and form in each era. He also said that a true approach must respect the Constitution in all its parts and be faithful to the Constitution in its entirety. Trump and Pence agree, and so do I.

Responsible citizens must vote. Every vote matters. It cannot be wasted. In the famous words of John F. Kennedy, ask not, what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. Start by voting!
Editor's note: The authors of the following column are all supporting Donald Trump for president.



We are concerned about the egregious damage that has been inflicted on two revered government agencies: the Department of Justice and Department of State. The primary missions of both have been derailed for political purposes.

The Department of Justice has been thwarted by its top officials refusal to conduct a proper investigation of former Secretary Clintons unsecured email server and the Pay for Play accusations based on millions of dollars paid to President Clinton personally and the Clinton Foundation by entities having issues before the State Department, all while she was Secretary.

Attorney General Lynch and former President Clinton met on the Phoenix, Arizona tarmac days before Secretary Clinton was to be interviewed by the FBI for possible criminal activity. It has been reported that her staff ordered witnesses not to take pictures and no one was present during their 39-minute conversation. General Lynch never recused herself from decisions on the Clinton investigation after her self-admitted mistake, as it has also been reported that she continues to deny the FBI the authority to convene a Grand Jury, which is necessary for any meaningful investigation.

Secretary Clintons conduct at the Department of State corrupted our foreign policy.

It has also been reported that General Lynch opposed Director Comey from fulfilling his obligation to Congress by informing members of the discovery of 650,000 emails on Anthony Weiners and Huma Abedins computer, the existence of which had been concealed from government authorities.

Recusal is a formal process. It is a written document specifically describing the scope of the recusal and designating the official in charge of the recused matter. If General Lynch went through the proper procedure for recusal, she has not publicly shared it.

Secretary Clintons conduct at the Department of State corrupted our foreign policy. She and President Clinton turned the agency into a Pay for Play adjunct of the Clinton Foundation and their personal bank account, the latter via his personal speaking fees. UBS, Switzerlands largest bank, contributed over $600,000 to the Foundation and loaned it over $30,000,000. UBS was grateful that Secretary Clinton had intervened in the IRS demand to UBS to provide identities of 52,000 depositors. Secretary Clinton announced the settlement of only 4,450 identities in an unusual intervention by a top U.S. diplomat, according to the Wall Street Journal. UBS additionally paid President Clinton personally $1,500,000 for a series of questions and answers with top management.

President Clinton reaped $6,200,000 personally from foreign governments and businesses for speeches while she was Secretary of State. For example, Ericsson, a Swedish corporation, had sanction issues pending before the State Department regarding telecom sales in certain countries. Ericsson paid President Clinton $750,000 for one speech. Days later the State Department announced the sanction list and Ericsson was not affected.

Why should any spouse of a Secretary of State be permitted ever to receive one cent from a foreign entity?



Because of our grave concern for integrity in government we ask for a Special Counsel. When a high public official is accused of serious wrongdoing and there is a sufficient factual predicate to investigate, it is imperative the investigation be thorough, with dispatch and without partisanship.

Secretary Clinton is the subject of two spheres of criminal conduct: her deliberate, systematic mishandling of official and classified emails and her abuse of a family-controlled, tax-exempt Foundation, and corporate and foreign donations for her own economic and political benefit.

These allegations arose well before this election year.

Clintons mishandling of emails became public in March 2015, and allegations over abuse of the Foundation arose well before that. There has long been sufficient factual predicate to require these matters be fully investigated.

The appropriate response when the subject matter is public and it arises in a highly-charged political atmosphere is for the Attorney General to appoint a Special Counsel of great public stature and indisputable independence to assure the public the matter will be handled without partisanship.



In 1991-1992, a Special Counsel was appointed for three separate matters: House Bank, Iraqgate, and Inslaw. It was also done in 2003 in the Valerie Plame matter.

Instead of moving with dispatch to ensure a vigorous investigation of Secretary Clinton, it appears that the Justice Department, along with State, have enabled the Clinton campaign to slow roll the inquiry.

General Lynch continues to exert control of a matter that she should have assigned to another official.

We are distressed by widespread and credible reports that FBI agents have been hindered by the Justice Departments withholding of basic investigative tools, such as grand jury subpoenas, which are fundamental in a complex investigation.

It is time to do what should have been done long ago  appoint a Special Counsel.

Rudolph W. Giuliani -- Former Associate Attorney General and U.S. Attorney in Southern District of New York

Senator Jeff Sessions -- former U. S. Attorney for Alabama's Southern District

Frank Keating -- Former Associate Attorney General, U.S. in District of Kansas and Special Agent FBI



Victoria Toensing -- former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Justice Department

Henry McMaster -- former U.S. Attorney, District of South Carolina
Earlier this year Ahmad Rahami, a naturalized American from Afghanistan, allegedly detonated several bombs in New York and New Jersey. Luckily, these attacks only wounded 31 people. This is but one example of the reality that America is fighting for its life, but most do not understand the gravity of the challenges we face. In fact, the United States is fighting for its existence on three fronts: economic, cultural and physical.

Heres a snapshot of the situation:

 Economic: GDP growth is stagnant at about 1 percent. It should be 3-4 percent.

 Cultural: The American Constitution and way of life are under constant attack from enemies determined to destroy our liberties and our lives.

 Physical: On national security, countless state and non-state actors are working to disrupt our day-to-day existence.

We are exposed on all three fronts because political, business and cultural leaders are either naive, willfully blind or corrupt and complicit in flatlining the economy, allowing our traditions to be trampled over and making our citizens vulnerable to attack.

The people who have created this dire situation believe in one or more of these four false narratives: globalism, socialism, isolationism and Political Islam. The first three narratives have been in the American mainstream for decades, but political Islam is different. Under the guise of a religion, political Islam has penetrated our culture, politics and media.

Political Islam refers to the politicization of Islam. It preaches hate. It demands that non-Muslims must be killed or submit to Islamic law. It calls for global rule and it uses physical, intellectual, financial, legal and demographic means to attain it. To save America and Western civilization, we must defeat Political Islam. We must commit ourselves to destroying the forces that attack us every minute of every day.

Here are several policies that would return America to leadership in the world:

On the economic front: The government must get out of the way. We must reduce the tax burden on every American citizen and business. All wages should be taxed together under three brackets of 10, 20 and 30 percent. The corporate tax rate should be 20 percent, not 35 percent, which is the highest rate in the developed world. ObamaCare must be repealed and replaced with a plan that increases choice, keeps the government out of the physician-patient relationship and doesnt crush small businesses. We must stop the governments intergenerational theft, or our children and grandchildren will never be able to repay the current level of overspending. Lastly, all states must enact energy and right-to-work policies to allow for innovation and investment.

On the cultural front: Adherence to core values made America strong. The U.S. must re-instill the values of the Founding Fathers: liberty and opportunity on top of a strong Judeo-Christian base. We must return to the constitutionally dictated balance of power shared by the three branches of government. To revive American exceptionalism, we must defend our freedom of speech against the false narrative of political correctness. Voter fraud must be eliminated. To ensure the integrity of our elections, Americans must be required to have photo identification when going to the ballot box.

On the physical front: We must defeat the four leading Political Islamic terror organizations: Shiite Iran, ISIS/al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and Wahhabism/Salafism. These entities indiscriminately terrorize and kill Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus and all others. In fact, Muslims are the No. 1 victims of Political Islam, as evidenced in Syria, Iraq and Iran. The ideology that feeds these entities must be debunked, and their leaders must be removed. Defeating them must begin by stopping Irans radicalism and nuclear agenda, eliminating ISIS/al-Qaeda by any means necessary, rooting out the Muslim Brotherhood in any country where it operates and pressuring Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Pakistan to reform the jihadist Wahhabism/Salafism ideology. To protect the homeland, we must screen all refugees and immigrants, seal our borders and secure our critical infrastructure by protecting the electric grid from natural disasters, cyber/GPS hacking and electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) attack.

The American voter should keep these core issues in mind as we vote on November 8!
Cyber security experts say the threat to Tuesday's election by some malign state actor or rogue hacker changing the actual vote count is probably slim, given that the U.S. voting system is fragmented and decentralized. The state by state, district by district and polling place by polling place network provides an inherent safeguard  one that is augmented by the fact that widely used electronic voting machines are not connected to the internet.

In a backround briefing Friday, DHS officials did acknowledge, however, that private sector vendors that help manage state voter database systems have fallen victim to cyberintrusions, although they would not speak to the exact number. Those hacks would not pave the way for any skewing of the vote count, but would give the cyber actors access to personally identifiable information on voters.

Rumors that Democratic Party money man George Soros owns Smartmatic, a voting machine company that supplies several states, have been debunked. "George Soros has zero ownership or involvement in our company. Smartmatic has no ties to political parties or groups in any country and it abides by a strict code of ethics that forbids the company from donating to any political campaigns of any kind, " company CEO Antonio Mugica and chairman Lord Mark Malloch-Brown told the Washington Post.

Anecdotal reports of touchscreen machines casting the wrong ballot have largely been attributed to occasional calibration problems that are few and easily fixed.

That said, there is little doubt among security experts that Russia under President Putin has been trying to disrupt the U.S. election process. Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, made that clear in remarks in October. "The U.S. intelligence community is confident the Russian government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations," he said.

Such denial of service attacks are potentially very harmful, given the huge mistrust between U.S. political parties, and the general divisiveness marking this long election season. It is potentially more harmful still, if the election is close, says cybersecurity expert Morgan Wright. "If they attack the place that is supposed to report out the results, if they attack the media sites, too, that are collecting this information, what we have is chaos," he says.

The Department of Homeland Security is now working with 48 states that have requested cyber security help  offering risk assessment and scanning for malware which can be done remotely.

Some have speculated that President Putin's personal animus for Hillary Clinton - stemming from demonstrations that followed Russia's 2011 parliamentary elections - may have contributed to the Russian hacking of only Democratic Party emails.

Yet, Wikileaks Founder, Julian Assange, recently said Russia in not behind the ongoing Podesta email leaks - all adding to intrigue about who's doing the hacking, and who may threaten more.

Fox News' Matthew Dean contributed to this report
Hillary Clinton, on the final Saturday of the 2016 presidential race, relied on a legion of surrogates and A-list entertainers to help make closing arguments, while Republican rival Donald Trump reveled again in the status of his outsider, go-it-alone campaign.

We don't need Jay-Z to fill up arenas, Trump said in Tampa, Florida, the first of his four rallies Saturday, three days before Election Day. We do it the old-fashioned way, folks. We fill them up because you love what we're saying and you want to make America great again.

Trump -- estranged from much of the Washington establishment that hes vowed to dismantle if elected -- was on the campaign trail alone Saturday with the exception of vice-presidential nominee Mike Pence.

The Indiana GOP governor and former congressman has been a steady, reliable running mate for the unpredictable Trump, holding together the Republicans conservative base, even on the worst days of Trumps 18-month campaign.

Pence, in fact, campaigned Saturday in Wisconsin with House Speaker Paul Ryan, who vowed in early October that he would no longer campaign for Trump, after the release of a 2005 audiotape in which Trump is heard bragging about kissing and fondling women without their consent.

When Donald Trump says hes going to repeal ObamaCare, we are ready. We are willing, and we are able, the Wisconsin congressman and leader of the Republican-controlled House said at rally with Pence in Mukwonago, Wis.

I voted for Donald Trump and every Republican I saw on the ballot, offered Ryan, among the Republicans who appear to have put party unity above their differences with Trump, as the race tightens and appears potentially winnable for the GOP.

Fox News confirmed Saturday that Ryan told reporters earlier in the day that he would have campaigned with Trump in the state this weekend, but the event was cancellled.

A Fox News poll released Friday shows Trump now trailing Clinton 43-to-45 percent, while the nominees remain within a few percentage points of each other in Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and a few other battleground states that will decide the race.

Early-voting results from some of the those states show Clinton appearing to have a slight lead in Florida and with Hispanic voters, including those in Nevada.

However, early voting among African-Americans, who have in recent decades voted consistently for Democrats, appears down compared to their record numbers when they helped elect President Obama, the countrys first black president, in 2008 and 2012.

Early, in-person voting in North Carolina ended Saturday.

Clinton headlined two battleground-state rallies Saturday and again relied on star power to help her with younger voters.

She began with an outdoor rally in South Florida to appeal to the regions large black and immigrant population -- including Cubans, Columbians and other Latinos. And she will close with a rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with recording artist Katy Perry.

In case you didnt notice last night, I got to say I was with Jay Z and Beyonce, Clinton said at the Florida rally, which was ended by rain after about five minutes. It was the most extraordinary show. When a famous entertainer tells you I want to support you and do a show, its such a gift.

Clinton is expected to be joined Sunday by NBA star LeBron James in Cleveland, Ohio, where Jay Z and Beyonce performed.

Meanwhile, Obama will return to Florida to help his former secretary of state, who if elected would be the countrys first female president.

Trump on Saturday slammed the Clinton campaign for letting Jay Z rap a profanity-laced song at the Friday night rally.

He used every word in the book. Can you imagine if I said that? Trump, whom the Clinton campaign and others have criticized for using racially and otherwise insensitive language, said in Tampa.

That shows you the phoniness of politicians, the whole system.  In three days, we are going to win Florida. We are going to win the White House.

Clinton has been the front-runner from the start of the race against first-time candidate Trump.

The race, like others in recent presidential election cycles, will be decided by the handful of so-called battleground states, in which voters could go for the Democratic or Republican nominee, with the remaining 50 or so states solidly Democratic or Republican.

Trump on Saturday was also in battleground North Carolina before heading to Nevada and Colorado. He announced in Tampa that he would visit liberal-leaning Minnesota before the polls close Tuesday.

Vice President Joe Biden held two rallies for Clinton in Pennsylvania on Saturday.

Clinton running-mate Virginia Gov. Tim Kane hosts three events in Florida, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders will rally for Clinton in Iowa.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders narrowly finished second this winter in the states Democratic caucuses, then left Iowa in a February snowstorm as a contender. He returned Saturday on a warm autumn day to Iowa State University as a surrogate, offering his young, fervent supporters a more difficult pitch -- vote for Hillary Clinton.

Some of his devotees remain unconvinced, even those the Clinton campaign selected to speak at this Clinton campaign event.

She doesn't care about us. Voting for a lesser of two evils, there's no point, Kaleb Van Fosson, a sophomore and Sanders supporter, said to the small crowd.

After drawing light applause, Clinton campaign staff quickly escorted Van Fosson from the stage, as he criticized Clinton for her ties to financial institutions.

I got a call the other day asking me if I wanted to speak for Hillary, basically they wanted to use me like a puppet, Van Fosson told Fox News. Trumps not any better, but Hillary Clinton is still terrible.

Others in attendance agreed with Van Fosson, though most in the crowd appeared supportive of the Democratic nominee.

"He's made it evidently clear that Hillary Clinton is the right choice and over the summer, said Devon Graham, a local Sanders supporter. I went fully behind Hillary and I'm really excited for her as a candidate but also excited that Bernie is supporting her as well.

Sanders used much of his speech to bring attention to his signature issues -- corporate oversight, climate change and income inequality. In endorsing Clinton, he acknowledged those who dislike both nominees.

Get beyond personality, he told the crowd. Alright, you dont like Hillary Clinton, you dont like Donald Trump fine. You like yourselves. I hope so, if that means taking a hard look at the issues the candidates stand for. Were not running here for class president of the local high school. This is not a popularity contest. We are electing the most powerful individual in the world.

Yet many still see Clintons positions as too centrist and her remarks to Wall Street firms, provided by WikiLeaks, too deferential to financial firms interests.

This is home of rural populism and it manifests in very different ways on theft and the right, said Rachel Caufield, an associate professor of political science at Drake University in Des Moines.

On the left if manifests as a distrust of corporations and economic power. And Hillary Clintons message isnt resonating with those folks in the same way that say Barack Obamas did. You still have a lot of those folks who were diehard Bernie supporters who will continue to be Bernie supporters and theyre not sure that Hillary Clinton embraces some of the ideological positions that they want to see in their Democratic Party.

Clinton trails Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, in Iowa by less than 3percentage points, according to an average of polls provided by Real Clear Politics.

The latest state-provided returns show Iowa Democrats and Republicans have submitted fewer absentee ballots than they did by the same point in 2012. Thus far, Republicans have returned a larger share of ballots, and Democrats a smaller percentage than they did in the last presidential election year.

As of Friday, 238,029 Democrats and 196,611 Republicans had submitted ballots, according to the Iowa secretary of state.

While the Clinton campaign relies on surrogates such as Sanders and the Obamas to coax their supporters to the polls, Clinton herself maintains a stead attack on her opponent.

Among most Democrats, the strongest case shes making right now is that shes not Donald Trump, Caufield said.

Nor is she Sanders.

Ive been to eight of his last 12 events, and the Bernie merchandise sells a lot better than the Hillary, said Daniel Richards, a campaign merchandise salesman from Springfield Illinois, as he unloaded a stack of Sanders T-shirts from his van.

This was the number one seller at the Democratic convention, Richards also said as he presented a green Its always Bernie in Philadelphia shirt.
The presidential battle isnt the only 2016 contest pundits are reluctant to call: The races expected to decide which party controls the Senate remain dramatically close in the final hours before Election Day.

Its amazing how many of these races remain close, Steve Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said. I cannot predict wholl win the Senate. The slightest shift in the electorate [or] polling errors could move any of these races from one candidate to the other.

Republicans began fretting immediately after the 2014 congressional races that the party in the next go-round risked losing its Senate majority -- with the decisive, marquee matchups in New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania likely a fight to the end.

Two years later, on the weekend before the election Tuesday, all five of those races are within 7 percentage points and appear too close to call.

The early predictions largely were based on the fact Republicans are having to defend 24 Senate seats, spreading the party thin on money and resources, with Democrats needing to win no more than five seats to retake control of the chamber.

Democrats also had early targets on Ohio and Wisconsin. But they might have to settle for a split.

Democratic challenger Russ Feingold, a former U.S. senator, poses a serious threat to unseat incumbent Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson, in a very close race with millions of outside dollars pouring in late.

But in Ohio, GOP Sen. Rob Portman is now leading by double-digits on his way to a second term against Democratic challenger Ted Strickland.

Not all of the early predictions have come true, with a few wild card races emerging.

In Florida, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio launched an unexpected re-election bid after a failed White House run, which is spoiling Democrats hopes of competing for a Senate seat without having to face a GOP incumbent.

Rubio now leads challenger Democratic Rep. Tim Murphy, whom Republicans tagged as a privileged young man with an inflated resume, as Washington Democrats move their money to more competitive races.

And Republican Sen. Roy Blunt is facing the fight of his political life from an upstart Democrat with military experience who can assemble an AR-15 blindfolded.

Blunt is being forced to defend his political insider status, having been elected to Congress in 1996. His race with Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander is deadlocked, despite Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump now leading Missouri by double digits.

Murray, whose group on Wednesday showed the race tied at 45 percent, said Blunts tepid, anybody-but-Hillary Clinton support for Trump just isnt good enough for the true believers.

A Blunt loss would be a double-barreled blow to the GOP, considering he is a member of Senate leadership.

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Democrats liked their odds against GOP incumbent Kelly Ayotte, considering she is a first-term senator trying to appeal to the states notoriously independent electorate while staying loyal to her Washington Republican base and supporters like the National Rifle Association and the billionaire, libertarian-minded Koch Brothers.

Trump has arguably been the X-factor in essentially every congressional race -- with the Senate race in New Hampshire perhaps the most glaring example.

Ayotte, in her race with also-popular challenger Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan, first said shed support Trump but did not endorse him.

She then called Trump a role model, only to retract the statement after another offensive Trump comment, then totally withdrew her support.

Ayotte and Hassan remain deadlocked at about 46 percent, with Trump trailing Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, in the state by about 5 percentage points.

NEVADA

With Sen. Harry Reid, the top Senate Democrat, retiring after five terms, Republicans considered a bid for his open seat perhaps their best 2016 opportunity to add to their now 54-seat majority.

Republicans have a top-tier competitor in Rep. Joe Heck. But all the resources theyve put into the race for a parting shot at Reid cannot change the fact that Nevada is liberal-leaning and anchored by the Las Vegas area, home to a large Hispanic population, which overwhelmingly supports Democratic candidates. The Democratic nominee is Catherine Cortez Masto.

INDIANA

Republicans also thought theyd keep the seat of retiring GOP Sen. Dan Coats, with a solid candidate in three-term Rep. Todd Young.

But former Democratic Sen. Evan Bayhs surprise decision in July to enter the race -- with a $10 million war chest -- dampened GOP hopes.

Still the race remains surprisingly close, within a couple of percentage points, amid disclosures about Bayhs profitable connections to K Street and Wall Street.

NORTH CAROLINA

As is Missouri, Republicans didnt expect such a hyper-competitive race in North Carolina. Incumbent Sen. Richard Burrs challenger, Deborah Ross, is a former American Civil Liberties Union lawyer and state representative, which gives her little state-wide name recognition.

However, the national backlash from a Republican-backed bill that essentially requires transgender people to use the bathroom that matches their birth gender has unexpectedly put Burr on the defensive.

The two-term senator is also running amid a federal appeals court ruling in July that struck down state voter ID laws that, according to the decision, suppressed voting among minorities.

Such controversies have also turned North Carolina into an unexpected potential pickup for Clinton, though the state has voted for the Republican nominee in 10 of the past 12 presidential elections. Clinton and Trump have made dozens of campaigns stops in the battleground state in the closing weeks of the race.

Meanwhile, Burr has created his own problems of late, having been recorded joking Saturday about a gun magazine not having a bullseye over a picture of Clintons face. Burr promptly gave an apology in a race that remains a statistical tie in its final days.

WISCONSIN

Feingold is back for a rematch, after losing his Senate seat in 2010 to Johnson.

Both candidates are running against historical odds: Not since 1934 has a U.S. senator won a rematch against the candidate who defeated him six year earlier. And the state has not elected a Republican senator in a presidential election cycle since 1980.

Republicans quietly had low expectations about keeping the seat, with Johnson among those after the 2014 midterms to publicly express concern about 2016.

There's no doubt about it, it's going to be a bigger challenge,'' he said in December 2014, a few weeks after the GOP won control of the Senate.

Trump has also loomed large in this race, in which Feingold leads by about 6 percentage points. In the 2016 GOP primaries, Trump dashed the presidential aspirations of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, popular within the states conservative base. And Trumps controversial remarks eventually led House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., last month to stop campaigning for the nominee, though Ryan still plans to vote for Trump.

Last week, the Democrats Senate Majority PAC put $2 million into the race, which didnt seem to shock political analysts. But they appeared to take notice Wednesday when Republican super PAC Senate Leadership Fund announced it would match the Democrats' investment and launched a new television ad attacking Feingold.

This is a game changer because it means that Republicans see a path to victory for Johnson, said Jennifer Duffy, who analyzes Senate races for the Cook Political Report.

PENNSYLVANIA

Republican Sen. Pat Toomey was another early, prime target for Democrats.

Hes a first-term Republican senator seeking reelection in a presidential year in Pennsylvania, which has voted for the Democratic nominee in the past six elections, despite its battleground status.

Washington Democrats handpicked candidate is Katie McGinty, a former Clinton administration adviser and chief of staff for Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf. But after a hard-fought primary that included former Rep. Joe Sestak, McGinty has run what some political analysts have called an uninspiring race.

Hillary Clinton is leading in Pennsylvania in some polls by double digits, political analyst Erin McPike recently told Fox News. But its looking like voters are willing to split the ticket. It looks like Hillary Clinton is not going to be able to pull Katie McGinty over the finish line.

Said Murray: Neither Clinton nor Trump have good coattails.

Toomey, a Republican who has backed Capitol Hill legislation on reforming firearms laws, has been endorsed by gun-control advocate former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Americans for Responsible Solutions, a political action committee founded by former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords.

The race between the two Ivy League-educated candidates has already set a spending record -- more than $117 million from their committees and independent groups.
Donald Trump and GOP running-mate Mike Pence this weekend made final-hour pitches in Florida to critical Cuban-American voters, vowing if elected to repeal Democratic President Obamas executive order that removed Cuba from the federal governments list of state sponsor terrorism.

Cubans who fled Cuba for southern Florida and other parts of the United States in the 1980s to escape the communist Castro regime have been solid Republican supporters since the era of President Reagan and his fight to end communism around the world.

But in the past several decades, the children and grandchildren of that first wave of Cuban exiles, known as Cuban-Americans, have settled in many U.S. cities. And like their fellow urban residents, they have voted more for Democrats.

Big story, Cubans endorsed me, Trump said Saturday in Tampa, referring to an endorsement recently in Miami from the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association, a group of retired U.S. military members that in 1961 launched a failed attack on the Cuban bay.

Trump also stopped the rally to hold up a sign that read: Cuban Women for Trump and said, I love all of these signs.

Trump, the 2016 GOP presidential nominee, and Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, are in a tight race in Florida and in the handful of other battleground states that on Tuesday will decide their White House contest.

Clinton and other Democrats have for decades held the minority vote, largely black and Hispanic residents. But Trump, a first-time candidate, like other Republican presidential nominees before him, has tried desperately to appeal to both voting blocs in an effort to upset Clinton, who has led from the start of the race.

A new Fox News national poll shows Clinton leading Trump by 2 percentage points, 45-to-43 percent.

Obama this spring used his Executive Office powers to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism in an attempt to normalize relations with Cuba, which means opening up more trade and tourism between the countries to put an end to their Cold War-era standoff.

However, Republican leaders largely disagreed with the presidents move, particularly over continuing human rights violations, but failed to block it.

Early voting so far in the Clinton-Trump race among Hispanics, a voting bloc in which Cuban-Americans are typically included, suggests strong support for Clinton. However, early voting among blacks appears significantly lower for Clinton, compared to the historical levels for Obama, the countys first African-American president.

Clinton, in her effort to win over the Hispanic vote in Florida, Nevada and even Republican-leaning Arizona, has tried to portray Trump as opposed to almost all immigrants.

If you are Latino, you know what life would be like because wed have a president who doesnt see you as American, Clinton said Thursday in Las Vegas.

On Friday, Pence said Miami that Obama -- with Clintons support -- re-opened the U.S. embassy in Havana and suggested that the president, if possible, would have lifted the entire trade embargo on Cuba.

Well let me make you a promise: When Donald Trump is president of the United States, we will repeal Obamas executive orders on Cuba, Pence said.

We will support continuing the embargo until real political and religious freedoms are a reality for all the people of Cuba. Donald Trump will stand with freedom-loving Cubans in the fight against Communist oppression.
A Democratic elector in Washington state said Friday that he would not cast his Electoral College vote for Hillary Clinton if, as is likely, she wins the state in Tuesday's election.

Robert Satiacum, a member of the Puyallup Tribe, supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary, which the Vermont senator won by approximately a 3-to-1 margin. He said he believes Clinton is a "criminal" who doesn't care enough about American Indians and "she's done nothing but flip back and forth."

He said he has wrestled with what to do, but feels that neither Clinton nor Republican Donald Trump can lead the country.

"She will not get my vote, period," he said in a phone interview with The Associated Press.

Satiacum said he believes Sanders did a better job of reaching out to Native Americans. "She doesn't care about my land or my air or my fire or my water," he said of Clinton.

Americans vote for the president on Election Day, but they're really casting votes for each state's electors, who will decide the next president on Dec. 19.

In all but two states (Maine and Nebraska), the winner of the state's popular vote gets all of the state's electors. There's nothing in the Constitution that says the electors are required to vote for a particular candidate, but some states have penalties for so-called "faithless electors." Satiacum faces a $1,000 fine in Washington if he doesn't vote for Clinton, but he said he doesn't care.

"I hope it comes down to a swing vote and its me, he told The Seattle Times. "Good. She aint getting it. Maybe itll wake this country up."



Satiacum is one of 12 Democratic electors in Washington, which has 12 electoral votes and has not gone for a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Satiacum said he has gotten a lot of criticism since he told media outlets last month that he might not vote for Clinton. But he said he has also heard from electors in other states who thanked him for speaking out. He said he hopes some of those electors follow his lead.

At the time of of Satiacum's initial statements, the Puyallup Tribal Council issued a statement saying that he had pledged to support the winner of the state's popular vote Nov. 8 and "risks dishonoring himself" if he does not do so.

According to the National Archives, 99 percent of electors through U.S. history have voted for their party's candidate, and none of the dissenters has ever changed the result of an election.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from The Seattle Times.
The U.S. military has ended its bombing campaign against ISIS in the Libyan coastal city of Sirte after three months of round-the-clock airstrikes beginning on Aug. 1, multiple U.S. defense officials tell Fox News. When the strikes were first announced, the Pentagon said they would last for weeks.

Multiple officials said ISIS has been decimated inside Sirte, another reason to pause the strikes, as one official put it, while consultations with the Libyan government take place. The officials did not rule out strikes in the future.

The reality is there are fewer targets to hit right now without risk of civilian casualties, said a senior defense official.

The U.S. military conducted a total of 367 airstrikes since August 1, according to the last press release issued by the U.S. Africa Command, tasked with running the air campaign. No American airstrikes have taken place since Oct. 31 when the current authorization expired, according to officials.

President Obama approved two month-long extensions to the bombing campaign, but has not reauthorized strikes for this month yet, according to one official.

New orders were issued from U.S. Africa Command to units on Nov. 1 which ends offensive and collective self-defense strikes, against ISIS in Sirte, located halfway between Tripoli and Benghazi.

NEARLY 100 REFUGEES FEARED DEAD IN RICKETY BOAT OFF LIBYA



A U.S. official with knowledge of the order says only President Obama can authorize additional strikes in Libya, which the U.S. military says it reserves the right to do going forward against targets of interest.

The U.S. military has conducted the ISIS bombing campaign unilaterally, but at the request of the UN-backed Libyan government known as the GNA, or Government of National Accord.

Beginning in August, USS Wasp, an amphibious assault ship, conducted flight operations using Marine Harrier jets and Cobra attack helicopters. But a majority of the strikes were carried out by drones from bases in the region.

But Wasp departed the area recently and was replaced by USS San Antonio, which does not have the capability to launch Harrier jets. USS Carney, Wasps escort ship, had been firing illumination rounds over Sirte as part of the effort to disrupt ISIS movements in the city. Carney has since sailed to the Black Sea and returned to the Mediterranean, but is no longer taking part in the Libya operation.

POLITICAL ACTIVIST KILLED IN CAR EXPLOSION IN EASTERN LIBYA



A senior defense official said the U.S. military would continue to provide military support to the GNAISIL-held territory in Sirte is down to a few hundred square meters. We'll continue to discuss with the GNA leadership what additional support they may need moving forward including air strikes.

The Pentagon has acknowledged in the past that U.S. special operations forces have been going in and out of Libya to support the GNA.

Before the air campaign against ISIS kicked off in early August, the U.S. military had conducted two separate airstrikes in Libya since November 2015.

In March 2011, the U.S. took part in an international military coalition to destroy government forces loyal to Muammar Qaddafi and implement a no-fly zone to protect anti-Qaddafi forces and civilians near Benghazi.

The U.S. military has conducted airstrikes in seven countries in 2016.

In April, President Obama told Fox Newss Chris Wallace the biggest mistake of his presidency was probably failing to plan for the day after, what I think was the right thing to do, in intervening in Libya.
Wichita police are trying to piece together the how and why behind stabbings Friday that left one girl dead and her younger sister and mother critically injured.

Police responding to an accident call before 7 a.m. found the 6-year-old girl and her 24-year-old mother inside a Jeep that had crashed into an unoccupied van in the parking lot of a strip mall in Wichita.

Both had multiple stab wounds, and the girl was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Her bleeding 4-year-old sister was found shortly after 8 a.m. several miles away by employees of a sand company who saw her wandering in a field near Valley Center. She too had been stabbed multiple times.

The mother and the younger girl were critically injured and their conditions are stable after both underwent surgery, said Lt. Todd Ojile. The names of the victims have not been released.

"We haven't been able to figure out how or why this occurred," Ojile said.

The injured mother was able to identify a suspect before being transported to the hospital, he said.

The mother's 47-year-old uncle was arrested at a home in Haysville and booked on suspicion of first-degree murder, aggravated kidnapping and attempted first-degree murder.

Police have not been able yet to interview the injured mother. They found a knife believed to be the weapon at the crime scene.

Ojile said late Friday that police made a mistake when they earlier identified a 27-year-old man as a person of interest, noting that person was out of state at the time and is not a suspect.
Police say at least eight people were injured during a shooting outside an Oakland nightclub.

None of the injuries was considered life-threatening.

Acting Lt. Rachael Van Sloten says the shooting happened just after midnight Saturday outside Vinyl nightclub.

No motive has been determined, and no one was in custody early Saturday.
Hundreds of volunteers joined the FBI Saturday to search for a 10-year-old who may have been abducted from an East Texas church.

The Tyler Morning Telegraph reported that volunteers included retirees and college students.

Kayla Gomez-Orozco of Tyler has been missing since Tuesday evening. She was with her mother at Bullard First Assembly Church in Bullard when she vanished.

Fox 4 Dallas reported Friday that a local crime stoppers posted a reward for information that leads to her discovery. The $60,000 reward includes $40,000 from a private donor.

The station reported that the small town of Tyler has embraced the missing girls family in a show of support.

It's very nurturing, definitely. The support makes us feel a little bit better, Kaylas older brother Kenneth Gomez said. But at the same time, it makes us realize that this is really happening. And it's not just a nightmare, it's reality.

The FBI asked search volunteers to show up at Bullard High School at 7 a.m. Saturday.

FBI agent Thomas Class said Wednesday that Kayla is considered a missing person but that officials have not ruled out a possible abduction, KHOU-TV reported.

Kayla is also the subject of an Amber Alert that describes her as being 4-feet-tall and 90 pounds with black hair and brown eyes.

The Morning Telegraph reported Friday that a police report shows Kaylas disappearance was reported to police shortly after 8 p.m.

The report says a deputy found out a taco restaurant next door to the church had surveillance cameras but they were not working.

Click for more from Fox 4 Dallas.
A messy controversy over the $2.8 million top prize in the worlds largest billfish tournament has turned into a federal case, according to a report Saturday.

The Baltimore Sun reports the dispute arose after a Florida angler caught the winning 76.5-pound white marlin in the White Marlin Open in August. Organizers said Phil Heasley lied about the big catch and then flunked two lie-detector tests.

The Sun reports that organizers now want a federal judge to disqualify Heasley so they can redistribute the $2.8 million to the also-rans. Heasley hasnt seen a dime yet and wants the judge to rule in his favor.

Big fishing tournaments like the White Marlin Open, which is held off Ocean City, Maryland, use polygraphs to prevent cheating.

"There's no policeman out in the ocean," White Marlin Open president Jim Motsko told the Sun. To keep it from being a "free-for-all, we learned real quick, you got to have rules and stick with them."

The complaint against Heasley says he altered the time he caught the fish on paperwork from 8:15 a.m. to 9:05 a.m.

The tournament has a rule that doesn't allow fish to be caught before 8:30 a.m.

The Sun reported that Heasley has denied breaking any rules and questions the validity of the lie detector tests.

His lawyer wrote that the time the fish was caught was changed to reflect the correct time.

Motsko has been holding the White Marlin Open since 1974.
A New York City police officer injured during a gunfight with a suspect has been released from the hospital.

Police say Sgt. Emmanuel Kwo, left the hospital Friday night after treatment for a leg wound.

His partner Sgt. Paul Tuozzolo, was fatally shot in the head in the exchange of fire Friday with an armed man on a Bronx street. The encounter unfolded after the gunman, Manuel Rosales, had broken into this estranged wife's home.

Rosales, of Brentwood, Long Island, stayed for hours before fleeing. He also was killed in the gunfire.

Authorities say Rosales had a history of 17 arrests, some related to domestic disputes. He had served time in state prison for possession of stolen property.

Tuozzolo lived on Long Island with his wife and two young children.
Authorities have confirmed that the body found on a rural South Carolina property is the boyfriend of a woman found chained inside a storage container.

A woman who was found chained "like a dog" in a rural South Carolina shed told authorities she watched her alleged kidnapper shoot her boyfriend who vanished with her in late August, investigators said Friday.

Search teams digging on the property owned by 45-year-old Todd Christopher Kohlhepp found one body and fear there may be more.

The remains have not been identified, but prosecutor Barry Barnette said the woman, 30-year-old Kala Brown, saw her captor shoot and kill her boyfriend, 32-year-old Charles Carver, who went with her for a cleaning job on the suspect's property.

ABC NEWS INVESTIGATES PRODUCER OVER DOCTORED 'CRIME SCENE' LIVE SHOT

"This is a very, very dangerous individual," Barnette said.

Kohlhepp, a registered sex offender with a previous kidnapping conviction in Arizona appeared Friday at a bond hearing in Spartanburg on a kidnapping charge. More charges are expected.



The judge did not set bond and instead referred the matter to circuit court. The suspect didn't appear to have an attorney.

SEX OFFENDER IN CUSTODY AFTER WOMAN FOUND IN METAL CONTAINER

Kohlhepp was convicted of kidnapping and raping a 14-year-old Arizona girl in 1986. Online prison records show he served about 14 years for the felony. He was released in 2001.



Records from the case obtained by Fox Carolina show that a judge decided in 1987 to transfer the case to adult court partly because of Kohlhepp's aggressive nature.



"At less than the age of 9 this juvenile was impulsive, explosive and preoccupied with sexual content. He has not changed. He has been unabatedly aggressive to others and destructive of property since nursery school," the judge wrote.



Brown and Carver disappeared about Aug. 31 when they went to do the work on the suspect's nearly 100-acre property near Woodruff, said Daniel Herren, a friend who sat with the woman in her hospital room after she was rescued Thursday.



"They were going to do some work, help cleaning up the property. And he pulled out a gun and took them hostage," Herren said, adding that the abduction happened quickly.

Herren said Brown described to him the details of her captivity, telling him she was in the container nearly the entire time except for when she was taken out for occasional walks.



"He never took the chain off of her, but he was taking her around, let her get, not so much exercise, but let her walk around some," Herren said. "It didn't sound like it was every day. It was kind of sporadic."



She left the hospital late Thursday and is staying with family, Herren said.



The property includes grassy areas, some covered in waist-high weeds, as well as stands of trees. Most or all of it is surrounded by a chain-link fence 6 to 7 feet tall.



In the middle was the cargo container, which measured about 30 feet by 15 feet. It was next to a two-car garage that had a living space on top, Barnette said.



Guns and a large amount of ammunition were seized from Kohlhepp, the prosecutor said.



"It's unbelievable how much he had," he said, adding that Kohlhepp frequently took target practice in an area near the storage container.



Records show Kohlhepp received his South Carolina real-estate license in 2006 before a state law went into effect requiring background checks.



A real estate agent who worked at the firm run by Kohlhepp said she had known him for 10 years after they met at a university in the Spartanburg area and were study partners. She said she was in disbelief.



"He's not the kind of person to do something like this," Cherry Laurens said by phone. "Working with him, he was an excellent boss. He stood up for us whenever we needed him."



She said it was widely known that he was registered as a sex offender, but he told people that it was based on trumped-up charges after he "had gone joyriding with a girl" and upset her father.



Kohlhepp made frequent online posts about moving around rocks and trimming trees at the rural property, according to the Facebook page that Laurens confirmed was his.



About two weeks after the couple disappeared, he wrote a post about news reports on missing people: "reading the news.. this person missing, that person missing, another person missing.. oh wait.. that person just went to beach with friend, other person found with her parole violation boyfriend... in the event I become missing, please note no one would take me. I eat too much and I am crabby..."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from FoxCarolina.com.
Albanian police say they have arrested four people for reportedly recruiting members for the Islamic State group and for funding rebel groups in Syria.

A statement Saturday said the four were arrested Friday after five Albanians and 11 foreigners were questioned and released as part of a regional operation that involved neighboring Kosovo and Macedonia.

The suspects are accused of recruiting people to go to Syria to join IS extremists, supporting the group financially and inciting hatred, charges that may get them up to life in prison if proven.

About two-thirds of Albania's 3.2 million people are Muslims. Despite calls from mainstream religious leaders not to join rebel groups in Syria, scores of Albanians are believed to have joined Islamic extremist groups in Syria and Iraq.
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We've been here before. Whether it was Geneva, Switzerland, Troutbeck in New York, or Greentree, Pennsylvania, the leaders of Cyprus' rival Greek- and Turkish-speaking communities have in the past locked horns in plush foreign resorts to thrash out a deal that would end this tiny, east Mediterranean island's ethnic division. And they have failed.

But maybe  just maybe  this time, Greek Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Mustafa Akinci, the leader of the breakaway Turkish Cypriots, may boldly go in five days of talks where their predecessors have not gone before.

The idea is to get the leaders focused in a secluded locale, insulated from pressure or other distractions from back home. Officials insist these talks in the Swiss resort of Mont Pelerin won't be the end of the road. But if all goes well, this could be the precursor to one last summit to sort out the final details.

DIVISION AND 42 YEARS OF (FAILED) TALKS

A Turkish invasion in the summer of 1974, a few days after a coup aimed at union with Greece, sliced the island along ethnic lines: a breakaway, Turkish-speaking north and a Greek-speaking south that retained international recognition as the Republic of Cyprus. The minority Turkish Cypriots declared independence almost a decade later, but won recognition only from Turkey. Turkey still maintains more than 35,000 troops in the north.

Numerous rounds of United Nations-brokered talks aimed at reunifying the island of roughly 1.1 million people as a federation have gone nowhere. The closest the two sides got to a deal was in 2004 when the Annan plan  named after then U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan  was put to a vote to both communities. Two-thirds of Turkish Cypriots approved, but Greek Cypriots rejected it by a landslide. It didn't help, as U.N. envoy Espen Barth Eide said recently, that the Annan plan was written by U.N. staff and presented to Cypriots for a vote.

The U.N. and others actively supporting a peace deal have since resolved that any accord must be negotiated by Cypriots.

WHAT'S AT STAKE

What's the big deal with reunifying this tiny island where relative calm has reigned for 42 years? For starters, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said last week that a peace deal would be a "game changer" for the European Union and a conflict-wracked region. If Greek Cypriot Orthodox Christians and Turkish Cypriot Sunni Muslims could run a country together it would be a pretty positive signal. Second, it would unlock cooperation between not-so-friendly neighbors on pumping out huge gas deposits from beneath the eastern Mediterranean seabed.

WHAT DO THE TWO SIDES WANT?

Turkish Cypriots see their future hinging on being the masters of their own domain, having an administrative zone of their own to run without being dominated by the majority Greek Cypriots  or Turkey for that matter. Greek Cypriots want a government that works and for as many of their people who lost homes and property during the war reclaiming to be able to reclaim their property or be properly compensated. They also want to make sure that Turkey no longer has any troops on the island. Turkish Cypriots see Turkey's military might as their sole protection. Greek Cypriots argue that no EU country in this day and age needs third-country security guarantees, especially from a country they see as a threat. Turkey's increasingly authoritarian ways and aggressive rhetoric does little to inspire confidence among Greek Cypriots.

PREPARING FOR THE ENDGAME

Anastasiades and Akinci have said repeatedly that if all goes well, a deal by year's end is possible. Eide has said Mont Pelerin wasn't designed as the final push. If things work out, it would pave the way for a multiparty meeting also bringing in Turkey, Britain and Greece to sort out the security quandary. But officials warn that if there's failure this time, things in Cyprus won't remain static. Turkey has already hinted that it would move to further absorb the north and make it some kind of offshore province.
Nigeria's army says it has rescued one of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram Islamic extremists more than two years ago in a raid on a forest hideout.

Spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman said Saturday the schoolgirl was found with a baby boy born to an extremist.

It was the first army rescue of a Chibok girl.

Nigeria's government last month secured the freedom of 21 of the Chibok schoolgirls in the first such release negotiated with Boko Haram. Another girl escaped from captivity in May.

Some 276 girls were seized from a school in northeastern Chibok town in April 2014. Dozens quickly escaped.

Officials have vowed to secure the release of nearly 200 who remain captive.
We drove into the town of Hamdaniya some 10 miles outside of Mosul, and it looked like a deserted wreck. The once bustling place of 60,000 was seized and run by ISIS militants for two years. And then won back by Iraqi forces some ten days ago.

The town, like several in the area, was 90% Christian. The vast church in the town lay in ruins. The church steeple destroyed, the nave trashed, the head of the Virgin Mary on one statue lopped off.

And, perhaps most harrowing, the courtyard of the church was transformed from a place of meditation to a makeshift target practice/shooting gallery. The militants had set up a dressing mannequin and shot it up along with the churchyard wall.

All around the town there were signs of the recent epic battle against the terrorists. While most of the residents of the town had fled before the fight, the toll among the liberators of the region was high: 20 Iraqi security forces were killed at the hands of the terrorists.

All of that makes getting rid of ISIS, still holding out in Mosul, a top priority. The town is a staging area now for Iraqi security forces actively engaging the terrorists. It is also a recruitment center and training ground for local militias being formed which will also be sent into the Mosul fray.

The chief of police for the Mosul region, 57-year-old Wathea al-Hamdany, formerly based in the city, is now based in Hamdaniya. He told us he is confident that ISIS will be defeated. The story of Daesh (as the group is also called) in Iraq is finished, he said.

He said it would take two to three months to defeat ISIS in Mosul due to the one million-plus residents still there. Among them, the chiefs mother and three sisters.

All of this makes the Arabic graffiti on one Hamdaniya wall all the more haunting. Scrawled by militant fighters some time ago it declares, Islamic State will stay forever. The group is no longer in Hamdaniya. Nearly all here hope it will soon be gone, forever, everywhere.
Seattle magazine tabs Dr. Larry Corey for Seattle Hall of Fame

Dr. Larry Corey, president and director emeritus of Fred Hutch, founder and head of the worlds largest HIV vaccine clinical trials network and a pioneering infectious disease researcher, was named by Seattle magazine to its Hall of Fame honoring innovators and trailblazers who put Seattle on the map.

To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the magazines editors asked an advisory panel to nominate living legends who have made a major contribution during the past five decades in five broad categories. Corey was selected for his contributions to research, medicine, and science.

Also honored in this category were Dr. Mary-Claire King, a University of Washington geneticist who identified the breast cancer genes BRCA1 and BRCA2; Dr. Patricia Kuhl, the co-director of the UW Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences who showed how early language exposure alters the brain; Dr. Leroy Hood, founder of the Institute for System Biology, who was instrumental in mapping the human genome; and Lucy Berliner, director of the Harborview Center for Sexual Assault and Traumatic Stress and a leader in working with young sexual assault victims.

Corey made a name for hismself early in his career working with biochemist Trudy Elion at Burroughs Wellcome (now GlaxoSmithKline) to show that acyclovir, a new type of drug invented by Elion and directed for the first time at an enzyme specific for a virus, could control and suppress a viral infection. Today, acyclovir and its successors have reduced mortality rates for babies born with herpes from 80 to 10 percent. Corey also studied the daily use of the antiviral to prevent transmission, an approach that would later be used for HIV. These early studies paved the way for antiviral therapies for HIV, as well as for the viral infections hepatitis B and C.

Beginning in the late 1980s, he headed the AIDS Clinical Trials Group, or ACTG, a network overseeing tests of HIV therapies. The ACTG developed and tested combination drug therapies that by 1996 extended the life expectancy of people with HIV from between six and nine months to 20 years.

In 1998, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a part of National Institutes of Health, asked if he would develop and lead a second large network, this one to test HIV vaccines. Corey assembled a global team to run the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, or HVTN, which is based at Fred Hutch. Known for its commitment to community involvement, the HVTN is currently overseeing two major HIV vaccine and vaccine-related clinical trials in the Americas and southern Africa.

Corey also helped found Juno Therapeutics, a biotechnology company focused on novel immunotherapies for cancer using reprogrammed T cells that directly attack the malignancy while avoiding healthy tissue. Most recently, he has begun working with the Fred Hutch-based defeatHIV group on whether targeted T cells could play a role in bringing about a cure or long-term remission for HIV.

 Mary Engel / Fred Hutch News Service
Lombard Il. Organization Desperately Trying to Save 30 Impoverished Children in Guinea, West Africa

( November 04, 2016 ) Lombard Illinois -- Connecting With Love provides food, shelter, education, medical attention and guidance to 30 orphaned children in a rural area 40 miles outside Conakry, Guinea. Unfortunately, this area has a very high population of homeless children so human trafficking is at its highest in this region. To compound the dangers that already exist, local factories are dumping their effluent waste into the surrounding environment at night time. This practice has caused the children to experience many illnesses. To top this off, they must vacate their present building and shelter within days.

Fatima Kollie, the founder of Connecting With Love and who is also from Guinea, immigrated to the USA several years ago to make a better life for herself. She did not forget her roots and started this orphanage on her own to help save children in Guinea. Ms. Kollie states, "In Guinea, many children are so poor, they are subjected to a variety of terrible circumstances including starvation, poverty, physical and mental abuse, forced prostitution and sex slavery. Most of these children have lost hope for a decent future and many of them take their lives. These are the children the organization at Connecting With Love are trying to save."

Maureen O'Conner who is a pastor and a candidate for the Episcopal Priesthood in the Diocese of Chicago is the co-founder of Connecting With Love. Ms. O'Conner adds, "We have found suitable housing for our 30 orphaned children inside Conakry, the capital of Guinea. If we can get our children into Conakry we have also secured free education for them through the Anglican Diocese of Guinea, which is an incredible gift! The challenge is we need to move our children much closer to the area where the Anglican school is located. The issue is we are financially only half way there and still need about $3000 in order to sign a year lease for suitable housing. Time is of the essence and we are desperately trying to raise the funds necessary to make the move to a more safer and healthier environment. We do not have much time."

Fatima Kollie concludes, "I was accepted into the USA as a refugee many years ago. I am so grateful to this country for the opportunities it has provided me. I now operate my own business and I am looking to help out the children of Guinea who have lost all hope." Ms. Kollie owns and operates a hair salon in the Lombard area. Much of her financial earnings from her business are directed to the orphanage and its needs. The more money they can raise, the more children they can save from the dangers orphans encounter within Guinea.

Connecting With Love is looking to increase public awareness for this orphanage and raise the necessary funds to help these children in Guinea. People can donate to the cause by visiting the website at http://ConnectingWithLove.com or by calling Maureen O'Conner at 630-290-8691 for more information. Connecting With Love is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in Lombard Illinois near Chicago.

About Connecting With Love:

Connecting with Love was founded when a former refugee, Fatima Kollie, met Maureen O'Connor, a pastor and a candidate for the Episcopal Priesthood in the Diocese of Chicago. Fatima has been operating an orphanage in her home town in Guinea, West Africa. Solely supporting 20 children began to take its toll financially and was faced at the possibility of having to shut down the orphanage or, minimally, to let some of the children go. When Fatima met Maureen Connecting with Love was formed.

Connecting With Love is a non-for-profit organization that believes EVERY life matters. The organization is committed to providing housing, food, clothing, formal education, medical assistance, and entrepreneurial mentorship to EVERY child in Guinea, West Africa, regardless of religion, race, or ethnicity.

Connecting with Love not only supports the immediate basic needs of children in Guinea, West Africa, but the organization is devoted to mentoring and walking alongside each child as they grow into their talents and abilities.

The group of volunteers from the Chicago area are working to raise awareness for the orphanage and raise the necessary funds to providing housing, food, clothing, formal education and medical assistance.

Donations can be mailed to

Connecting With Love

P.O. Box 283, Lombard, IL 60148

Donations can also be accepted online on the website http://ConnectingWithLove.com

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Geographic Information System (GIS) Segment Estimated to Lead the Geospatial Imagery Analytics Market in 2016

GIS has given a significant boost to the geospatial imagery analytics market due to increase in the amount of geospatial information gathered through smart phones, GPS devices, and social media, among others.

--

The report "Geospatial Imagery Analytics Market by Type (Image and Video), Collection Medium (GIS, Satellite, UAV), Vertical (Defense & Security, Insurance, Agriculture, Healthcare & Life Sciences), and Region - Global Forecast to 2021", The global geospatial imagery analytics market is estimated to grow from USD 2.77 Billion in 2016 to USD 10.21 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 29.8% between 2016 and 2021. The market is primarily driven by convergence and integration of geospatial technology with mainstream technologies, need for security and safety, and commoditization of geospatial information.

Browse 66 market data tables and 40 figures spread through 114 pages and in-depth TOC on "Geospatial Imagery Analytics Market"

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"Among types, the image segment is expected to dominate the market during the forecast period"

The global geospatial imagery analytics market, by type, has been segmented into image and video. The image segment is expected to hold the largest market share during forecast period, from 2016 to 2021. Existing use of earth imagery in applications across industry verticals, increasing demand of high resolution imagery, and availability of low cost earth imagery sources are expected to help the image analytics segment hold the largest market share during the forecast period.

"Among verticals, the healthcare & life sciences segment is projected to grow at the highest CAGR between 2016 and 2021"

Geospatial imagery analytics provides ways to tackle public health related issues by delivering intelligent analysis of images and maps. Geospatial imagery analytics also helps the healthcare & life science industry in delivering public healthcare services by monitoring and analyzing the changing environmental conditions. The increased application of geospatial imagery analytics in healthcare & life sciences is expected to significantly drive this segment's market during the forecast period.

"North America is expected to hold the largest share of the global geospatial imagery analytics market during the forecast period"

On the basis of region, the global geospatial imagery analytics market has been segmented into North America, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Europe, the Middle East & Africa (MEA), and Latin America. The European region is estimated to lead the global geospatial imagery analytics market in 2016, having accounted for the largest market share. However, North America is expected to dominate the market from 2017 onwards. Presence of key market players, such as UrtheCast Corporation, DigitalGlobe, Inc., Trimble Inc., Harris Corporation, and Satellite Imaging Corporation, among others will drive the adoption of geospatial imagery analytics in this region.

The report also encompasses different strategies, such as mergers & acquisitions, partnerships & collaborations, and new product launches adopted by various key players to increase their shares in the global geospatial imagery analytics market. Some of the major vendors of geospatial imagery analytics solutions are Hexagon AB (Sweden), DigitalGlobe, Inc. (U.S.), UrtheCast Corporation (Canada), Trimble Inc. (U.S.), and Harris Corporation (U.S.), among others.

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M&M's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers.

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Vincent Iannaco Retired NYPD Instructor, Fin Adviser,Mgr,Consultant,RE Investor

Vincent Iannaco has today been recognized for 20 years service in the NYPD,retiring as a Law Instructor in the Academy, 23 Years in Financial Services as an Adviser and Branch Manager, Business Consultant Amazon Selling, and Real Estate Investor.Further information can be found at http://www.vincentiannaco.com

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http://vincentiannaco.com

Vincent Iannaco has today been recognized for 20 years service in the NYPD,retired as a Law Instructor in the Police Academy, 23 Years in Financial Services as an Adviser and Branch Manager, Business Consultant Amazon Selling, and Real Estate Investor. This recognition is, in part, a result of Iannaco's work within public service, Financial Planning/Investing/Amazon Consulting/Real Estate Investing arena, specifically his work helped people enter law enforcement, retire successfully/have Amazon Products reach page one/ help people learn about the most efficient Real Estate Strategies.

Iannaco, a native of New York, has been involved with the Financial Planning/Investing/Amazon Consulting/Real Estate Investing world for 20 years, 20 years in the NYPD/23 years in Financial Service/40 years in Business, getting his start when he worked as a young man in his father's business/ started a Police Career in the elite Tactical Patrol Force/and in Financial Services after retiring from the NYPD. In response to a question on the driving force behind his success, Iannaco has explained that it has been determination/a drive to always do better/an innate desire to help people/ and a desire to be the best at his work.

Reflecting on the recognition Iannaco is quoted as saying: "I have always wanted to be the best at what I do."

In a recent one-to-one interview, Iannaco reminisced on other past achievements, which helped build momentum towards the present day. Notably, the proudest was winning several awards as an adviser and then being promoted to Branch Manager in Financial Services.

In the same interview, Iannaco stated his intentions for the future. The primary goal for the next 12 months, Iannaco states, will be to invest in real estate properties, a passion he has always had. Looking farther ahead, the ultimate goal is to continue to be a valued consultant and to have several successful businesses.

When asked more personally about how he wants to be perceived and remembered, Iannaco said: "I want to be remembered as both a successful and reputable business person who has helped many individuals"

Iannaco closed the interview by sharing his recommendation for anybody who wanted to follow in his footsteps in some fashion, perhaps taking the achievements even further. According to Vincent Iannaco, the key is to be determined to succeed in anything one does, in life's journey, and to always help others.

Further information can be found at http://www.vincentiannaco.com

For more information, please visit http://www.vincentiannaco.com

Contact Info:

Name: Iann Creations

Email: iannlimited@gmail.com

Organization: Iann Creations

Address: 22 Sherwood Drive Huntington New York

Phone: (917) 370-0493

Release ID: 143102

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Asia-Pacific & the Middle East to be the opportunistic markets for directed energy weapons

The directed energy weapons market is estimated to reach USD 24.45 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 28.90% from 2016 to 2021.

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The directed energy weapons market is projected to grow from USD 6.87 Billion in 2016 to USD 24.45 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 28.90% during the forecast period. In recent years, the range of advanced offensive and defensive capabilities offered by smart weapons has made them an indispensable component of any military force. This has created an increased demand for directed energy weapons from various regions, such as North America, Asia- Pacific, and the Middle East. This has consequently resulted in increased R&D expenditure for the development of directed energy weapons.

Download Sample pages of the Report @ http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestsample.asp?id=19132295

Defense segment to dominate the directed energy weapons market in 2016

The directed energy weapons market is estimated to be dominated by the defense application segment, in 2016. A number of factors, such as increasing terrorism and unconventional warfare across the globe have led to an increase in the demand for high quality, integrated, precise, and cost-effective energy weapons by defense forces. The high growth in defense application ensures the disruptive change of warfare with an alteration to how militaries fight and the metrics that make weapons useful.

High energy laser market projected to witness highest growth during the forecast period

High energy laser is projected to be the fastest-growing segment of the directed energy weapons market during the forecast period, due to the development of advanced technologies, such as Active Denial Systems (ADS) and pain ray. In addition to being used in the defense sector, the demand for laser equipped weapons has increased in the homeland security segment to control riots and cross border trespassing.

Asia-Pacific & the Middle East to be the opportunistic markets for directed energy weapons

The directed energy weapons market was dominated by North America in 2015, owing to technological advancements and rising incidences of terrorism and civil unrest in the region. The Asia-Pacific directed energy weapons market is expected to witness highest growth, due to the increasing research and development activities undertaken in the region for the development of advanced technology-based directed energy weapons for tactical operations, increasing military expenditures, implementation of military modernization programs in major economies of the region, and rising demand for autonomous weapons for tactical operations, primarily owing to rising threats of cross-border terrorism in several countries.

Key players in the directed energy weapons market include Lockheed Martin (U.S.), Boeing (U.S), Northrop Grumman (U.S.), Raytheon Company (U.S.), BAE systems (U.K.)

About MarketsandMarkets

MarketsandMarkets is the largest market research firm worldwide in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to a multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors.

Browse 140 market data tables and 92 figures spread through 215 pages and in-depth TOC on "Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) Market - Global Forecast to 2021"

Download Free Sample pages of the Report @ http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestsample.asp?id=19132295

M&M's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers.

We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository.

For more information, please visit http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/directed-energy-weapon-market-19132295.html

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Phone: 1-888-600-6441

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/asia-pacific-the-middle-east-to-be-the-opportunistic-markets-for-directed-energy-weapons/143571

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Smart Meters Market worth $18.2 Billion USD by 2019

Factors driving the smart meters market include stringent government policies, rise in smart grid deployment, growing demand for energy, increasing investments in power sector and utilities urge in enhancing their distribution efficiency.

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According to a new market research report "Smart Meters Market by Type (Smart Electric Meters, Smart Water Meters, Smart Gas Meters), by End User (Industrial & Commercial and Residential), & Region (Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe & RoW) - Trends and Forecast to 2019", defines and segments the global smart meters market with an analysis and forecast of the market size. The smart meters market is estimated to grow from an expected $11.1 billion in 2014 to $18.2 billion by 2019, at a CAGR of 10.2% from 2014 to 2019.

Browse 66 market data tables and 53 figures spread through 151 pages and in-depth TOC on "Smart Meters Market - Trends and Forecast to 2019"

Download Free PDF Brochure: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownload.asp?id=366

The implementation of smart meters will be advantageous for governments trying to achieve the objectives of emission reductions, security of energy supply, reducing carbon footprint of the country, and providing quality service to the end-user. Governments wants to accentuate the installation of smart meters as they foresee better management and efficient usage of energy, which will subsequently foster competition. For instance, some countries in Europe such as Italy, Sweden, and France have opted for rapid deployment of the technology, owing to the European Union directives for energy end-use efficiency by 2020.

Furthermore, growth in smart grid technologies will give rise to smart meters. Smart meters alone are not useful and need to be installed in conjunction with some type of a communication infrastructure to get the data back to the utility. Smart grid technologies include communication networks, advanced sensors, and monitoring devices, which form the foundation for utilities to generate and deliver power, and for consumers to understand and control their electricity consumption.

The report forecasts the market size of the global smart meters, which includes smart electric meters, smart water meters, and smart gas meters with respect to main regions such as Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and RoW. The smart meters market has also been analyzed on the basis of residential, commercial, & industrial end-users. The smart meters market includes players such as Itron Inc. (U.S.), Elster Group (Germany), Landis+Gyr (Switzerland), Siemens AG (Germany), Schneider Electric SA (France), Badger Meter (U.S.), Circuator SA (Spain), EDMI (Singapore), Holley Metering Limited (China), Honeywell International Inc. (U.S.), ICSA India Limited (India), Neptune Technology Group Inc. (U.S.), and Sensus (U.S.).

Americas: Leading market for smart meters

The Americas dominated the smart meters market in 2013, followed by Asia-Pacific. Increasing demand for smart meters in North America is mainly due to government initiatives which comprise allocating funds and making the units mandatory in a number of states. AEP, PG&E, Southern California Edison, Southern Company, Florida Power & Light, and Oncor are some of the largest utility groups having committed to full-scale rollouts of smart meters to all customers. Europe stood third in terms of market size in total smart meters market, followed by RoW.

Smart electric meters: Largest type market

With technological advancements, the smart meters market is majorly dominated by smart electric meters, as these help to monitor energy usage efficiently and reduce dependence on depleting fossil fuels. Government and other legislative bodies are promoting the installation of smart electricity meters around the world.

Residential: Largest end-user market

Smart meters are mostly seen in residential applications; its installation in residential places helps to reduce CO2 emissions globally, as consumer's inclination towards peak time energy saving would increase and the need to supplement extra energy supply at peak time by switching on fossil fuel plants (which are high CO2 emitters) reduce.

After arriving at the overall market size the total market has been split into several segments and sub-segments. The figure below shows the break-down of the primaries on the basis of company, designation, and region, conducted during the research study.

The report caters to smart meter manufacturers, dealers, and suppliers, raw material providers, consulting companies in the energy and power sector, government and research organizations, government utility providers, private utility providers, private customers, network operators, metering companies, smart grid players, venture capital firms, and investment banks.

Market share analysis, by revenue, of the top companies is also included in the report. The scope accordingly aids market participants to identify high growth markets and help managing key investment decisions. For this report, major players in the smart meters market have been identified via various primary and secondary sources, which include annual reports of top market players, interviews with key opinion leaders such as CEOs, directors, and marketing people.

Free Sample Pages: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestsample.asp?id=366

Available Customizations:

With the given market data, MarketsandMarkets offers customizations as per the Company's specific needs. The following customization options are available for the report:

Regional Analysis

Further breakdown of smart meters market into countries by end-users

Company Information

Detailed analysis and profiling of additional market players (Up-to 5)

Speak to Analyst (Ask for Customized Report Matching Your Exact Requirement): http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/speaktoanalyst.asp?id=366

About MarketsandMarkets

MarketsandMarkets is the largest market research firm worldwide in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to a multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors.

M&M's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers.

We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository

For more information, please visit http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/smart-meter-366.html

Contact Info:

Name: Rohan

Organization: MarketsandMarkets



Source: http://marketersmedia.com/smart-meters-market-worth-18-2-billion-usd-by-2019/143536

Release ID: 143536

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Cyber Security Market Players Analysis - Fortinet Inc., Fireeye Inc, Cisco, Mcafee, Trend Micro, Computer Science Corporation, Symantec

Market Research Future Published a Cooked Research Report on Global Cyber Security Market. Cyber Security market is expected to grow with the CAGR of ~8%-11%% from 2016 to 2021, and due to this it is predictable to cross USD $150 billion by 2021.

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For the Global Cyber Security Market drivers are evolving cyber threats, lack of focus in security systems, dependency on information technology, strict government rules and policies.

Market Segmentation

By Solutions

o Network Security

o Endpoint Security

o Content Security

o Application Security

o Industrial Control System Security

o Cloud Security

By Services

o Risk Assessment services

o Consulting Services

o Design Services Training Service

By Application Verticals

o BFSI

o Manufacturing

o Telecommunications

o Aerospace & Defense

o Healthcare & Others

"Ask for your specific company profile and country level customization on reports."

Key players

o Cisco Corporation (U.S.)

o Mcafee Corporation (U.S.)

o Fortinet Inc. (U.S.)

o Trend Micro Inc. (Japan)

o Cassidian Cybersecurity Company (France)

o Computer Science Corporation (U.S.)

o Booz Allen Hamilton Corporation (U.S.)

o Kaspersky Lab (Russia)

o Fireeye Inc. (U.S.)

o Symantec Corporation (U.S.)

Get a Sample Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample-request/global-cyber-security-market-information-from-2011-to-2021

BFSI, Manufacturing and Healthcare are the one of largest consumer of Cyber Security Market

BFSI (Banking, Financial services and Insurance) is the main target of attackers as this industry deals with various products which can be traded for cash. Credit Card, Internet Banking are some major products and services on which the attackers are targeting. Manufacturing and Healthcare industry suffers crucial and confidential data loss whenever any cyber-attack took occurs. These data's are sold in black market for billions of dollars.

Market Scenario

Cyber security is one of the most important concerns for all the countries around the globe. As the technology is growing and new applications are coming into picture, hackers are finding the new loopholes and by that they are stealing the important and confidential data's from the servers and selling it to the other countries or in black market. The report on Global Cyber Security Market shows that total market size for the cyber security has been increase to billions and currently growing with the CAGR rate of ~8-11%.

Taste the market data and market information presented through more than 70 market data tables and figures spread in 145 numbers of pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content TOC & market synopsis on "Global Cyber Security Market Information from 2011 to 2021"

Key Findings

o Asia-Pacific is expected to dominate cyber security market surpassing the revenues of North America during the forecast period.

o The growing online banking malware to obtain financial information of debit/credit card and bank account passwords has given rise to cyber security market in BFSI sector.

o The need for cyber security in aerospace and defense sector is expected to grow at high CAGR in the forecast period

Regional Analysis

North America is leading in the market of Cyber Security. Countries like the US and Canada are well developed in the field of technology and also some of the major players who provide cyber security options are located in the North America. Europe is accounted for the second largest market share in the Cyber Security Market. The main reason behind this is some countries of Europe have good command over the technology and most of the company in Europe region update their cyber security model periodically. Asia Pacific and MEA are fastest growing market for the cyber security.

Browse Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/global-cyber-security-market-information-from-2011-to-2021

Brief TOC:

1. Introduction

1.1 Definition

1.2 Scope of the Study

1.2.1 Research Objective

1.2.2 Assumptions

1.2.3 Limitations

1.3 Market Structure

2. Research Methodology

2.1 Research Process

2.2 Primary Research

2.3 Secondary Research

2.4 Market Size Estimation

2.5 Forecast Model

3. Global Cyber Security Market: Overview

3.1 Introduction

3.1.1 Definition

3.1.2 Market Segmentation

3.1.2.1 Market Segmentation On The Basis Of Solutions

3.1.2.2 Market Segmentation On The Basis Of Services

3.1.2.3 Market Segmentation On The Basis Of Application Verticals

4. Market Dynamics

4.1 Drivers

4.1.1 Proliferation of Cyber Attacks

4.2 Restraints

4.2.1 under Skilled Workforce

4.3 Opportunities

4.3.1 New Technological Advancements like Big Data and Internet of Things (IOT)

4.4 Mega Trends

4.5 Macroeconomic Indicators

4.6 Important Pointers by Industry Experts

4.6.1 Asia-Pacific as Fastest Growing Market

4.6.2 Growth Prospects

Continue..........

Get List of Tables & Figures with Sample Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample-request/global-cyber-security-market-information-from-2011-to-2021

This research report has provides the insights, on various levels of analyses such industry analysis, market share analysis leading market players and their profiles. This report also helps in studying the target segments by providing views on emerging & high-growth segments and market conclusion. Together the market data comprise and discuss with the basic assessments on the competitive sceneries & strategies, of the global cyber security market, including the high-growth regions, countries and their political, economic and technological environments. Furthermore the project report also provides the views over the historical market values as well as, pricing and cost analysis of the same.

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About Market Research Future:

At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.

For more information, please visit https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample-request/global-cyber-security-market-information-from-2011-to-2021

Contact Info:

Name: Akash Anand

Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com

Organization: Market Research Future

Address: Office No. 524/528, Amanora Chambers, Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar Pune

Phone: +1 646 845 9312

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/cyber-security-market-players-analysis-fortinet-inc-fireeye-inc-cisco-mcafee-trend-micro-computer-science-corporation-symantec/143511

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ICMediaDirect - Joins ASE 2016 Conference Attendees

Reputation management experts at ICMediaDirect spoke on the importance of building an unparalleled online brand for businesses as well as individuals.

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One of the world's most renowned leaders in online reputation management and a PR powerhouse, ICMediaDirect experts were among the attendees at this year's Affiliate Summit East (ASE) 2016 conference, where they shared invaluable market insights and heard views of other participants on most trending issues nationwide and internationally. Taking place July 31 through August 2 at the New York Marriott Marquis in New York, the annual tradeshow brought together over 5,000 marketers, vendors, networks, and media outlets. Reputation management experts at ICMediaDirect spoke on the importance of building an unparalleled online brand for businesses as well as individuals, and tackled some of the forward-thinking strategies they utilize for successful content marketing.

Founded in 2003, Affiliate Summit Inc. has a proven track record in managing highly successful marketing projects and delivering numerous insightful events, educational sessions, and tradeshows. With combined experience of more than 30 years in affiliate marketing, founders of the company Shawn Collins and Missy Ward believe in the power of interpersonal networking and information exchange in today's fast-paced digital world. Their landmark events create an invaluable learning and sharing environment for thought leaders, start-ups, merchants, and vendors to discuss new opportunities for effective business development and digital innovations. With an established expertise in providing state-of-the art solutions to customers who aim to showcase their brand online in the best light, ICMediaDirect was delighted to bring first-class advice and tips on effective reputation management to affiliates and merchants at the conference. Experts at ICMediaDirect reinforce confidence in search engine optimization (SEO) techniques and emphasize the need for every brand to regularly put out content and use technological advancements to develop and maintain captivating online presence.

This year's edition of Affiliate Summit featured a collection of keynotes from most influential and thought-provoking public figures in the field of digital platforms and marketing. Speaker Scott Stratten, a social media and relationship marketing expert, President of Un-Marketing and the author of four best-selling business books, is one of "America's 10 Marketing Gurus", according to Business Review USA. The final and concluding day of Affiliate Summit East 2016 saw an SEO keynote panel, featuring Bruce Clay (President of Bruce Clay, Inc.), Duane Forrester (VP at Bruce Clay, Inc.), and Stephan Spencer (Co-Author of The Art of SEO).

Established in 1996, ICMediaDirect is an award-winning PR and online reputation management company, dedicated to brand repair for companies and individuals across the globe. Its cutting-edge technological solutions and highly competitive and unmatched online reputation packages have vastly improved the Internet presence of numerous businesses, professional athletes, politicians, fortune top 500 CEOs, celebrities, among many others. Major marketing conferences and events frequently benefit from ICMediaDirect's participation and sponsorships, including Affiliate Summit, Leadscon, SES, and ad:tech conferences.

IC Media Direct - PR and Marketing News: http://icmediadirectnews.com

IC Media Direct (@ICMediaDirectCo) - Twitter: https://twitter.com/icmediadirectco

ICMediaDirect.com - Google Reputation Management - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/icmediadirect

For more information, please visit http://www.ICMediaDirect.com

Contact Info:

Name: ICMD

Email: pr@icmediadirect.com

Organization: ICMediaDirect.com

Phone: (800) 595-0821

Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3QHOeY8qAM

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/icmediadirect-joins-ase-2016-conference-attendees/143687

Release ID: 143687

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California Plastic Bag Ban Proponents Up in Arms over Deceptive Ads

Proponents of Proposition 67 want consumers to know that, unless they know the facts, they could inadvertently vote for the wrong bill.

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The race is heating up in California as the competing plastic bag propositions on the ballet are in sharp contrast with each other. In fact, many people, including the California Grocers Association are speaking out against plastic bag manufacturers because they say that they're trying to confuse voters on the issue.

And the issue is important because Californians use approximately 400 plastic bags a year per person, which means a family of four throws away 1,600 disposable bags a year. And according to officials, all those bags cost local California residents $400 million a year in cleanup costs. That works out to about $10 per resident a year.

The fight began in 2014 when Governor Jerry Brown signed a law that banned plastic bags across the state. But the manufacturers that produce the bags began collecting signatures to put the ban on hold, and they succeeded. Now there are two plastic bag propositions, Proposition 67 and 65.

And here's where it gets interesting. Plastic bag manufacturers, the people who are pushing Proposition 65, collect about $1 million a month from California residents who use disposable bags instead of reusable shopping bags. Those manufacturers obviously don't want to lose that money, and seem to have come up with an ingenious way to accomplish it.

Proposition 65, which is supported by the plastic bag manufacturers, takes the .10 cent fee given to grocers to help them recoup their costs for paper bags when customers request them, and gives it to a Wildlife fund. The result would likely mean that there would be no decrease in the amount of plastic bag waste in California local areas.

"It's would be a shame," says a spokesman from MJH Innovations, a company that sells environmentally conscience products such as reusable shopping bags, "If the plastic bag manufacturers confused the issue so that consumers who believe they're doing something good for environment end up voting for a proposition that would actually harm it."

Plastic bag proponents want consumes to know that it's Proposition 67 that will reduce the amount of plastic bags in the environment. Proposition 65 would not.

About: MJH Innovations is seller of quality products that make people's lives easier. It is their company philosophy that good products shouldn't cost a fortune, and they work hard to provide quality products to consumers for reasonable prices. Shoppers can find many of their products listed on Amazon Prime.

For more information, please visit http://www.amazon.com/Pop-Expandable-Eco-Friendly-Lightweight-Convenient/dp/B00UHAMMDG/

Contact Info:

Name: Matthew Hesser

Email: mjh2800@gmail.com

Organization: LA Pop Expandable Shopping Bags

Address: P.O. Box 880, Arroyo Grande, CA

Phone: (805) 534-9800

Release ID: 143672

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New York Lawyers Express Concern Over Issues With NY Workers' Comp Website

More than seven months after the I-Team first reported that there were several issues with the referrals made by the Workers' Compensation Board and no changes have been made.

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Nearly seven months ago, the I-Team, an investigative team for NBC New York, reported that they had discovered a serious issue with referrals made by the state Workers' Compensation Board. Today, they've found that the same issue is still providing bad information to injured workers via the website.

In March of 2015, the I-Team found that when asked to provide an injured worker with a damaged eye with a referral to a doctor who would accept workers' compensation, the majority of the doctors on the referral list did not actually take the insurance as a form of payment and would refuse to treat the worker. In one case, a supermarket worker who injured his eye at work found it so difficult to find a doctor who would treat him, that it took four years for him to get the surgery he needed. He lived in pain for those four years and described it as "a pain like somebody is drilling a hole in my head."

Despite the outcry generated by this report, the I-Team has found that when you search the state websites list of providers, the results have not been updated. Of more than 60 doctors called, more than 65% indicated that they do not accept workers' compensation cases. The New York Compensation Board has not indicated that they have any plans to update the list with correct information.

This is shocking given the fact that workers' compensation was created to help workers, not make it more difficult for them to get the care they need. In addition to this problem, denials from the insurance company are frequent and in many cases, an incorrect payout amount is calculated. While the worker has the right to appeal any decision, appeals can take nearly a year due to a backlog. This can be too much for a worker who is dealing with the physical and emotional pain of their injury and many seek help from an experienced attorney.

Contact Info:

Name: Brian Mittman

Email: info@thedisabilityguys.com

Phone: 866-205-2415

Organization: The Disability Guys

Source: http://www.prreach.com/pr/26619

Release ID: 143686

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Rare Brain Cancer Sumner Malik DIPG Treatment & Research Campaign Launched

A crowdfunding campaign has been launched to raise money to combat a rare form of brain cancer suffered by Sumner Malik, a boy from a loving family in the UK. Pioneering research and treatments are expensive and the campaign seeks to hit 80,000.

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A campaign has been launched to help raise 80,000 for 10 year old boy Sumner Malik, the youngest triplet in the UK based Malik family, who has been diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer. Called Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma, or DIPG, it is a disease where highly aggressive and difficult to treat brain tumours are found at the base of the brain, and there is no confirmed cure.

More information can be found on the Just Giving page at: https://justgiving.com/crowdfunding/sunshine4sumner?utm_id=108&utm_term=xnXZvQ6Rx.

The page explains that there are roughly 40 cases of DIPG diagnosed in the UK every year, but each one of those is its own tragedy, because there is a completely non-existent survival rate. However, it goes on to say that there is hope out there for children like Sumner, and the Malik family are asking for help from around the world to bring sunshine to his life.

Numerous doctors and hospitals are carrying out pioneering research into ways of treating the disease, with a few providing cutting edge treatments on compassionate grounds. The problem is that these treatments are highly expensive, and Sumner's family need help to meet those costs and help give Sumner every chance of fighting the disease.

The DIPG tumours arise from the brain's glial tissue, which is made up of cells that help support and protect the brain's neurons. The tumours are found in an area of the brainstem that controls many of the body's most vital functions, such as the act of breathing, the body's blood pressure, and its heart rate.

The family said: "Please help us to give hope and sunshine to Sumner, our youngest member of our family, who is also a triplet who has two identical brothers and two older ones, along with a 12 year old sister."

They added: "We as a family just couldn't ever imagine our family life without him. Please help us to help save him from this cruel brain cancer that only takes 30 to 40 children a year here in the UK."

For more information, please visit http://justgiving.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Camron Malik

Organization: JustGiving

Address: 110 Southwark Street - Blue Fin Building 2nd Floor



Release ID: 143645

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Calgary Business Advisory Accounting Physician Dentist Lower Tax Site Launch

A Calgary based chartered professional accountant company has launched a new site advertising its tailored services for physicians, dentists, small businesses and self employed workers. It offers high quality solutions to help lower tax and improve accuracy.

--

A new updated site has launched for a Calgary based chartered professional accountant offering accounting, business advisory and taxation services for both corporations and specialty services for physicians, dentists, small businesses and self-employed contractors. Called MMT Chartered Professional Accountants, they help clients with preparation of corporate income tax returns, financial statement preparation and a wide range of other services.

More information can be found on the company website at: https://www.mmtcpa.ca

MMT Chartered Professional Accountants prides itself on embracing change, and aims to work towards securing a better position for their clients' futures. It is this philosophy that has driven the company for 35 years, seeking to provide the best accounting solutions for both short and long term goals.

The site explains that the company works with its clients to provide the best tools and resources to build financially strong, well-managed companies. MMT can observe financial trends and use this information to directly impact the success of their clients' business. Using their knowledge of accounting errors that they have seen in the past, they can help to ensure that operations run smoothly.

MMT goes on to say that by helping their clients to implement and maintain the best financial and accounting practices, the company can build and improve on the efficiency of their clients' business.

Because every client is unique, MMT caters to each client on an individual basis, offering a personal approach to accounting, taxation and achieving financial goals. This can help to reduce taxation, simplify disclosure processes, and ensure accuracy across all financial statements.

MMT works with a wide range of clients, and offers specialized services for physicians and dentists, and those in the oilfield services.

Tailored accounting services for physicians include medical professional practice incorporation and advisory services on opening, purchasing and selling a practice. Performance measurement and improvement is available across all of their tailored packages, and personal tax services include planning to minimize tax.

Full details of all the company's services are available on the business website, where interested parties can get in touch using the contact form provided.

For more information, please visit https://www.mmtcpa.ca/

Contact Info:

Name: Mushtaq Thobani

Organization: MMT Chartered Professional Accountants LLP

Address: Suite B - 5799 3rd Street SE



Release ID: 143651

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Thermalabs to Introduce a Fancy Beach Bed

Cosmetics brand Thermalabs is in the final stages of launching its new beach bed.

November 5, 2016 (FPRC) -- Thermalabs, an innovative firm that makes self tanners and beach-related products, has said that its in the final stages of launching its fancy new beach bed. This is an interesting development for fans of the companys products worldwide. In recent times, Thermalabs has launched one beach-related product after the other. Although Thermalabs is one of the most reputable firms in the global self-tanning niche, the company is apparently looking to diversify and expand its influence to other areas.



Thermalabs is a burgeoning cosmetics firm that opened its doors in 2013. The company has furnished the global cosmetics products with an extensive range of over 30 products. The majority of these are self-tanning lotions, self-tanning accessories, general skincare products, and beach-related accessories. Thermalabs says that its fully committed to a skin cancer-free world. Towards that objective, it manufactures all its products from organic and natural ingredients.



Thermalabs has in the recent times introduced three distinct sub-brands that are widely seen as a strategic expansion scheme. In 2015, the company introduced Supremasea, its first semi-autonomous sub-brand that would be responsible for all skincare products formulated using Dead Sea salt and other ingredients. The company earlier this year introduced Tent World, the sub-brand that will market and distribute all its beach and sporting tents. Also, the firm announced Thermalabs Organic Healthcare early 2016. This is its new division that will focus on producing and marketing health products based on natural ingredients acquired from the mountains of Galilee in Israel.



According to Thermalabs, the upcoming beach bed will be designed from a top-quality material. The bed will have a stable base that will stand firmly when placed on a sandy, beach surface. The company has also said that its upcoming beach bed will be easy to open for use and fold for packing. The bed will have the capacity to hold one adult of average size and height. Once available in the market, this will mark at least the sixth beach-related that the firm has introduced in 2016 alone. In the last few weeks, Thermalabs has introduced its new lineup of fancy, beach T-Shirts. These are 100% cotton, lightweight and snugly fitting articles of clothing that are designed to meet the clothing needs of beach goers.



Mr. Alex Howard, the marketing coordinator in charge at Thermalabs, said, We are glad to announce that we are in the final stages of announcing one of our most awaited products thus far  the Thermalabs Beach Bed. After the successful debut of our beach tent, and our recent beach T-Shirts, we want to make sure that beachgoers have every accessory they need for a perfect time. This bed is designed from long-lasting, quality materials. It is easy to open for use and fold for storage. Each beach bed will come with its own carry bag, and an easy guide. Stay tuned to Thermalabs to learn more about this product once it hits the global market





Send an email to Alex Howard of r

(877) 266-6257

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Thermalabs Complete Airbrush System to Launch in the European Market

Thermalabs has said that its comprehensive airbrush system will soon hit the European market.

November 5, 2016 (FPRC) -- Thermalabs, a lead cosmetics manufacturer, has said that its comprehensive airbrush system will soon be available in the European market. The product launched last week in the U.S. Following intensive popularization and marketing campaigns that the company is conducting online, the firm has revealed that its arranged distribution to its market partners in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain.



The company is a reputable player in the self-tanning niche. Thermalabs has produced a wide range of self-tanners based on organic and natural ingredients. Its Original Self Tanner was a major hit in the market. Based on reviews published online, the product delivered a sexy tan within 4 hours, while most other tanners took up to 6 hours. Some other highly popular skincare products from the company include Glow2Go and the Ultimitt. Glow2Go is a special pack of 20 disposable tan wipes that has been a perennial bestseller on Amazon.com. The Ultimitt is the companys recommended tanning mitt that works with lotions and tanners from any brand. Currently, the product has been limited as an Amazons Choice.



Thermalabs complete airbrush makeup and cosmetics system is a comprehensive machine designed for all the needs of a beauty enthusiast or professional. The system works with a variety of makeup types, and can also be used to spray body paint, temporary tattoos, and nail art, among many other things. Based on information extracted from the products listing on Amazon.com, this system is packed with high precision components that make sure that makeup is dispensed appropriately. It also has an automatic stop function, with adjustable working pressure to facilitate flawless coverage.



This is not the first airbrush system that the company has made in recent times. Theres also the Samana Art Professional Airbrush set thats much cheaper, and the Samana Mini Spray Tanning Portable machine. The company is probably looking to position itself as a top provider for the ever-growing spray tanning niche. More and more beauty enthusiasts are turning to spray tanning, which is much more effective and delivers the desired results within just 15 minutes. With conventional tanning (that involves applying a lotion tanner), a user would need to wait for at least 4 hours before they can see the desired results.



After the successful launch of our complete airbrush system in the U.S, the company is now looking to make this product available in Europe. We have received a lot of communication from our loyal customers requesting that this product is made available to them. Our marketing department has already made elaborate plans to distribute this product to the UK, Germany, France, Italy and many other European centers using pre-established distribution channels. This airbrush system is designed to be all-purpose, which means users can use it to apply makeup, temporary tattoos, tanners, nail art, body art and more. Our Europe market will focus on highlighting the key benefits of this particular system over the competition.





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Ehud Segev Launches First Childrens Book

Mentalist Ehud Segev has launched his first ever childrens book.

November 5, 2016 (FPRC) -- Mentalist Ehud Segevs company, Mentalizer Education, has launched its first ever children book. This comes at a time when the company had promised to introduce a new book for kids in the course of the week. The book series will be going by the brand name Ponzey, and will be starring Professor Ponzey (a brilliant scientist who conducts ingenious experiments to solve common problems in childrens lives).



Ehud Segev is a popular mentalist. He uses his keen understanding of mind reading, body language, and mysticism to entertain and educate guests at special events around the world. Ehud has traveled to multiple cities across the world. His latest performance was made a few weeks ago at the Leela Kempinski in Gurgaon, India. Ehuds work has been highly recognized by both fans and critics alike. He has appeared on numerous international TV stations, as well as started on a number of popular shows. He was featured on NBCs Phenomenon show, a competition judged by illusionist Criss Angel and mystifier Uri Geller. Phenomenon brought together a total of 10 contestants, each one of which was competing to be the next great mentalist.



In recent times, Ehuds Mentalizer Education kickstarted a free education drive for his fans around the world. By simply subscribing on the Mentalizer official website, users will be able to get interesting learning materials on mind reading, body language, and more.



The new childrens book is titled Professor Ponzey and the Truth Potion. In this story, Professor Ponzey will be using illustrations to address the issue of dishonesty. The point is to teach children the value of truth, as well as how to detect dishonesty in others. The Professor plays as an honest person who doesnt know how to lie. He is determined to make everyone else honest and true. Thus, he devises a set of experiments to measure whether people are either lying, or telling the truth.



The book has already been launched on Amazons Kindle bookstore, where itll be selling at an introductory rate of $2.99. From the cover right to the last page, suggestive illustrations are used to make sure that kids understand the message loud and clear.



This is only the first book in the Ponzey series. According to Mentalizer Education, more books are in the pipeline, addressing various childrens problems one at a time. The firm has also established a Ponzey Facebook group where its publishing weekly parenting tips. The website domain ponzey.com will serve as the internet base for the book series. Itll be interesting to see how the new book fairs in the market, and what the mentalist has in mind regarding upcoming publications.





Send an email to Hannah Tiram of r

(866-732-3696)

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Sage Beagle Children's Book Halloween Thanksgiving Christmas Kidlit Launched

May B Little, an author and farmer, has released a new book inspired by her beagle, called Sage Beagle and the Shadowy Figure. It is the first in a new series, which will be followed by another series, called Grow It, Eat It.

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A new book has been launched by children's author May B Little, offering valuable lessons for children and helping them to develop their problem solving and decision making through following the adventures of a cute dog called Sage Beagle. The Sage Beagle series provides a number of exciting stories for children to enjoy, following along with the illustrations as Sage Beagle and her friends work their way out of sticky situations.

More information can be found on the Amazon book page at: https://amazon.com/Sage-Beagle-Shadowy-Figure-1/dp/1539800040/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478080221&sr=8-1&keywords=sage+beagle.

Author May B Little is a farmer and a mother to two girls, as well as the owner of a real life beagle that inspired her stories. She enjoys farming, fitness, cooking, and spending time with her family.

The first in the series, called Sage Beagle and the Shadowy Figure, is based on a real life beagle, and is illustrated by Bailey Beougher. The colored illustrations perfectly capture the expression of Sage Beagle as she follows her nose towards trouble and works her way out of it with bravery and a full heart.

Written for children aged 3 - 5 years old, it is available in both paperback and Kindle format, so children can read the physical copy or enjoy the first Sage Beagle story on an electronic device like a Kindle or ebook reader.

In the book, Sage Beagle is following her nose when she hears a scream that lures her towards a mysterious shadowy figure with a terrifying appearance. What is this mysterious figure? How did it get there? And is it a monster to be feared, or is there a different explanation?

Coming soon, Sage Beagle will meet a turkey and Santa Paws in two new adventures written by May B Little

In addition to this, May B Little is publishing a series for 6 - 10 year old children called Grow It, Eat It, which includes stories about growing and cooking food, with a recipe included.

For more information, please visit http://www.farmfitliving.com

Contact Info:

Name: Mindy Young

Email: mindymatt@myoungfarms.com

Organization: Farm Fit Living

Address: 21480 US Hwy 73

Phone: 913-370-1050

Release ID: 143743

For more information visit r



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Indonesias president Joko Widodo

Ahead of three-day visit to Australia, Jokowi says Indonesians are very open to changing their minds on execution laws





Indonesias president Joko Widodo has indicated his country wants to move towards abolishing the death penalty.





Speaking ahead of a three-day visit to Australia, Widodo told the ABC he thinks Indonesians will change their minds on execution laws as citizens in Europe had done in the past.





We are very open to options, he said.





I dont know when but we want to move towards that direction.





The execution in Indonesia last year of Australian drug traffickers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran strained relations between the two countries. Widodos trip to Australia will be his first bilateral visit since Canberra withdrew its ambassador to Indonesia in protest against the executions.





Indonesia has regulations, Indonesia has its own law, which still allows execution. Thats what I complied to, the president told the ABC.





We also listened to what other countries had to say. But again, I have to follow the provisions of the law applicable in Indonesia.





But Widodo, whos also known as Jokowi, also stressed the importance of rebuilding trust between Australia and Indonesia.





The most important thing is definitely to have trust in between the country leaders, and then the relationship between the citizens, he said.





Widodo also stressed the importance of the two nations working together to address the thousands of asylum seekers believed to be stranded in Indonesia.





If we could sit down and talk through this, find the solution together I think in the future well have a much better relationship, he said.





Widodo arrives in Sydney on Sunday and is scheduled to address parliament in Canberra on Monday.





Source: The Guardian , Australian Associated Press, November 5, 2016

Indonesian President cancels Australia visit after violent blasphemy protest in Jakarta

Islamic demonstrators march in Central Jakarta, Nov. 2016.

The protest was triggered by accusations that Jakartas Christian governor had insulted Islam





The Indonesian President has cancelled a visit to Australia after violence broke out at a mass protest in Jakarta against a Christian governor accused of insulting Islam.





Around 50,000 people descended on the Indonesian capital on Friday to protest against comments made by governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama - known by his nickname Ahok.





The protest was initially peaceful but deadly clashes erupted after demonstrators broke through police barricades and security barriers in an attempt to enter the presidential palace before they were stopped by officers firing tear gas, police said.





President Joko Widodo was scheduled to travel to Australia on Saturday, visiting the country from 6 to 8 November, but the trip was postponed as a "current development has required the president to stay in Indonesia, the Foreign Affairs Ministry said.





The protest was triggered after a video posted online allegedly filmed Mr Purnama criticising opponents who used references from the Quran to attack him.





Mr Purnama is ethnic Chinese and minority Christian. It is estimated that ethnic Chinese make up around one per cent of Indonesia's Muslim majority population of 250 million people.

Muslim Mob of 150,000 Demands Death of Christian Governor in Jakarta

A mob of 150,000 Muslim protesters took to the streets on Friday in Jakarta, Indonesia, calling for the death penalty for the capital's Christian governor.





Clashes following the protest resulted in one death and another 12 people injured, according to Indonesian police.





Islamist groups denounced Gov. Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama for "insulting Islam," after the governor suggested that a Qur'an verse allegedly prohibiting Muslims from voting for non-Muslim leaders is a lie. During the march, demonstrators carried signs demanding that the official be put to death for blasphemy.





"Our message is clear: if he is not declared a suspect today, we won't stop until this happens," organizers said. "We have already planned a 3-day movement. We urge all Muslims across Indonesia to rise up in their own region."





The route of the march was secured by some 20,000 police and military personnel for fears it erupts into violence. Police stopped a mob from entering the housing complex where Gov. Purnama lives in northern Jakarta by firing tear gas into the crowd.





As a Christian and an ethnic Chinese, Mr. Purnama has 2 strikes against him in the world's most Muslim country and hardline Islamic groups have protested his rule ever since he was elected in 2014.





Friday's rally was echoed by similar large demonstrations in multiple other cities, instigated by the radical Islam Defenders Front (FPI), a Muslim group that wishes to impose sharia law on Jakarta.





The larger Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) agreed that the governor's statement constitutes blasphemy and should be investigated by law enforcement officials, yet claimed they were not involved in organizing the protest.





Following the protest, Indonesian President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo canceled a visit to Australia, scheduled from Sunday to Tuesday. The Foreign Affairs Ministry said the trip will be rescheduled because "current development has required the president to stay in Indonesia."

Indonesian University launches programme to normalise LGBT people

Indonesia: No country for gay men

The head of an Indonesian university has initiated a program to normalise gay students.





The State University of Gorontalo (UNG) in northern Indonesia issued the new policies which target members of the LGBT community.





Syamsu Qamar Badu, the rector of the university, announced that a special team will be employed to look out for and offer counselling to students who they suspect may be within the community.





This identification process will not be easy, but we cant just let it happen if there are male students wearing lipstick on campus, Badu said.





Badu hopes the programme will create a college of civilisation, and that the new guidance will help bring LGBT people back to normalcy.





LGBT advocacy groups have protested the plan. One activist said: UNG must guarantee non-discriminatory education for people of whatever sexual orientation.





Wahiyudin Mamonto, head of the Institute for Research and Human Resources Development of Nahdlatul Ulama, told the Jakarta Post: The policy is based on mere hatred.





Homosexuality has never been illegal in the Islamic country, but attitudes towards LGBT people have become steadily more extreme in recent years despite a growing gay population. The Indonesian Psychiatric Association (PDSKJI) still classifies homosexuality as an illness.





The country has agreed to block dozens of gay websites and apps in a crackdown on so-called gay propaganda.





The only transgender boarding school has been forced to close after being branded immoral.





A gay couple have been arrested in Indonesia for a photo showing them kissing that appeared on Facebook.





The 22 year old university student and his 24 year old boyfriend were arrested on the island of Sulawesi after other Facebook users complained to police about the photo.





However, the President of Indonesia has broken his silence on the countrys rising political culture of homophobia, finally insisting that LGBT people must be protected.

 | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; send a submission; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com



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Source: The Independent , November 5, 2016Source: breitbart.com, November 5, 2016Source: Pink News, November 6, 2016
Google Assistant News & Updates: Clarity, Precision Key For Perfect Google Assistant Answers

Although Google exerted its utmost effort to provide to the consumers the best artificial intelligence app feature, several performance glitches and limitations of Google Assistant have rendered its users confused and exasperated.

Google brought the universal helper to the tech market with its new Google Home tabletop gadget, its A.I.-enhanced Google Allo chat app, and its new Pixel flagship phone. Minor yet maddening setbacks from the performance of Google Assistant, however, lead the consumers and the tech community alike to call for a better quality of service from Google Assistant through a clearer and more precise software design.

According to Computer World, the problem with Google Assistant is its multiple personalities. Designed to respond to the needs of its varied users, this similar feature also set Google Assistant into a disadvantaged position as it apparently experiences confusion over what it can actually do and how it can specifically help its users.

The media outlet further pointed out that Google Assistant does not perform similar services across all its varied examples. There are some features that work on one platform that do not work on another.

An example of which, as further reported, is when users command Google Assistant to open an specific app. Using Pixel and telling the Assistant to "Open Chrome," the Chrome browser will immediately open. Through Allo, however, the universal helper would be confused over the command and would provide user with Google search results instead of opening the said app.

This is just one example of the several glitches in the performance of Google Assistant. As per Skift, the universal helper also possessess limitations and, thus, users should not expect much from the services provided by Google Assistant especially on consumer travel. While it can provide flight schedules and answer hotel queries, Google Assistant cannot access users' Gmail account to aid in a more precise booking activity.

Whereas the tech giant pits Google Assistant against Apple's Siri as a smarter and a more useful A.I service provider, it still has some lapses to fix. Stay tuned!
Portugal's foreign minister Augusto Santos Silva

Portugal's foreign minister has said that Equatorial Guinea must abolish the death penalty immediately or its membership of the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (CPLP) will be illegitimate.





"From Portugal's point of view, [the abolition of the death penalty] has to be immediate", Augusto Santos Silva said on Tuesday on the sidelines of the 11th CPLP head of states' conference that ended in Brasilia on Tuesday.





For Portugal, there are 3 essential conditions that Equatorial Guinea has to meet to be a member of the CPLP: the ratification of the organisation's articles, the abolition of the death penalty and the generalisation of teaching Portuguese in the country. Hardly anybody speaks Portuguese in this 'Portuguese-speaking country'.





"We understand that the third demand may take longer, but the other 2 just depend on the authorities", Santos Silva said.





In the final declaration signed at the Brasilia summit, Equatorial Guinea dragged its heels again by asking for 'technical support' to abolish the death penalty, which the other countries responded to "with satisfaction".





Equatorial Guinea became a full member of the CPLP at the Dili summit in July 2014 at the insistence of Angola, on the condition that it abolish the death penalty and start teaching Portuguese in the former Spanish colony that no other reputable organisations want as a member.

 | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; send a submission; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com



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Source: theportugalnews.com, November 4, 2016
GeForce GTX 1070 News, Specs, Features & Update: Zotac VR GO backpack PC Includes GTX 1070, GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Release Details

The international computer hardware maker from Macau, Zotac, has recently announced that its new backpack PC, the VR GO, will be released anytime soon. According to the report, the new PC is manufactured for serious gamers and fans who are dedicated VR users. The powerful device is expected to become an instant hit with its quad-core processor and high /O capabilities; however, its development has just gotten interesting. The report says that apart from its powerful CPU the VR GO back PC will carry the mighty GeForce GTX 1070 from NVidia.

The inclusion of GeForce GTX 1070 GPU is an indication that Zotac is definitely trying to build the best gaming PC in the market today. The GeForce GTX 1070 is said to be the best GPU to take on today's most challenging, graphics-intensive games out there. According to reports, the graphics card from NVidia has the capabilities on providing better gaming experience than the previous GPUs that were released by the company.

According to Tech Report, the new Zotac VR GO backpack PC will also carry a swappable battery and has the ability to become a desktop computer, which is perfect for gamers who use the same PC for non-gaming activities. The publication stated that the new PC with GTX 1070 GPU is different from the early PC designs that have the same wearable VR system. Apart from GeForce GTX 1070 GPU, the Zotac VR GO backpack PC will also have several other features such as more USB 3.0 ports, an integrated SD card reader, dual Gigabit Ethernet, two 3.5mm headphone ports and a couple of HDMI outputs.

Meanwhile, according to Digital Trends, NVidia will release the new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GPU to compete with AMD Radeon RX 490 in January 2017. The latest entry to its Pascal-based design is said to be more powerful than NVidia Titan X.

As of the moment, the company has yet to provide the official details of the new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti but many fans believe that it is only a matter of time before it decides to make a statement. Stay tuned for more news and updates about NVidia's GeForce GTX 1070, GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and the Zotac VR GO back PC.
Nokia News & Update: New Android Phones Getting Ready For Release! Specs, Features & Other Details Find Out Here!

Nokia is undeniably one of the saddest stories in the tech and mobile phone sector in recent history. A true gadget powerhouse in the late '90s up until the late 2000s, the Nokia brand dominated the cellphone market, until it refused to get with the smartphone program. Microsoft ended up taking over Nokia in 2014 and the company also didn't go very far with the Windows Phone-enabled Lumia series.

2016 is a different story, however, for Nokia. Android Authority reports that HMD Global, one of Nokia's new parent companys that bought it from Microsoft last May, is preparing to make waves next year. HMD Global has teamed up with Mother, a marketing firm that's managed campaigns for brands such as IKEA and Coca-Cola. Nokia Power User also adds reports that HMD Global plans to put out two new smartphones in late 2016 and early 2017; with these rumors, it's very likely that new Nokia phones are on the way.

What will these new Nokia smartphones be? Instead of the failed Symbian and Windows Phone platforms that they tried carrying, this time, rumors state that the new phones will be running on Android 7.0 Nougat. These rumored Nokia phones will have 5.2-inch and 5.5-inch screens and running on a Snapdragon 820 chip, with a 22.6-MP camera. These aren't slouches for sure; if these rumored specs are true, it means Nokia is coming back in a big way with flagship models.

What Nokia needs to do now is to really stand out among the pack. Google's Pixel is a solid entry from the first-party hardware manufacturer, but it's a generic-looking flagship smartphone that's only riding on its brand name. If Nokia's new smartphones could recapture some of its creative magic that drove the brand in the early and mid-2000s, the resurgence could really be complete. This could be great.
Naruto Shippuden Episodes 482, 483 Spoilers, News & Update: Boyhood Arc Ends With Jiraiya, Kakashi Story; Series To Continue Naruto, Sasuke Adventures

"Naruto Shippuden" continued its "Boyhood Arc" with episode 482 that gave viewers a glimpse at Gaara and Shikamaru's backstories. The final chapter to the said story arc will soon feature Jiraiya and Kakashi's past, while upcoming episodes are expected to unveil Naruto and Sasuke's lives after their battle.

The first part of "Naruto Shippuden" episode 482 featured Gaara's difficult and lonely childhood while growing up in the Village of the Hidden Sand. Despite his siblings Kankuro and Temari's attempts to spend time with him, their father prevented the bonding moments since he considered Gaara as a dangerous child.

Moreover, Gaara's growing powers have also alienated him from other people. His only respite is the warm meals prepared by his uncle Yashamaru, as well as their cozy dinner times and conversations together.

Aired on Nov. 3, Thursday, episode 482 also gave viewers a chance to see Shikamaru's student days with Naruto and Choji. When Naruto defended Hinata from school bullies, Shikamaru described the said action as unnecessary and a waste of Naruto's skills. However, Choji defended Naruto and asked Shikamaru to stop calling their friend stupid.

Meanwhile, the upcoming "Naruto Shippuden" episode 483 will focus on Jiraiya and Kakashi's lives during their younger years. Viewers will be given a glimpse of Kakashi's training days at the ninja academy, while Jiraiya's "Boyhood Arc" will feature his time with other members of the Sannin.

With the impending end of the anime's "Boyhood Arc," the upcoming episodes of "Naruto Shippuden" will show the events after Naruto and Sasuke's battle. The show will cover the events detailed in three "Naruto" book series, according to Saiyan Island. Fans can expect to see the books "Naruto: Shikamaru's Story," "Naruto - Konoha Hiden: Shugen Biyori" and "Naruto: Sasuke's Story - Sunrise" in the anime's upcoming episodes.

The first book details Shikamaru's life two years after Naruto and Sasuke's fight, while the second will tell the story of beloved characters several months after the said battle. As for the Sasuke-centered book, it will show his adventures after leaving the Village.

"Naruto Shippuden" episode 483 will be released in Japan on Nov. 10. Watch the preview below:
Sleepy Hollow Season 4 Air Date, Spoilers, News & Update: Fox Reveals Release Date! Check Out Whos Returning Next Season!

"Sleepy Hollow" season 4 is set to air early next year as Fox announced on Thursday. Ichabod Crane and his gang of apocalypse fighters are all set for January 6, 2017, premiere date, airing at a new time slot next year. The upcoming season will introduce a new villain, a new female lead and new allies!

'Sleepy Hollow' Season 4 Airs Early January

"Sleepy Hollow" season 4 will return to Fox on January 6 at 9 p.m. per TV Line. The supernatural drama was included in Fox's midseason schedule, which was announced on Thursday. Aside from "Sleepy Hollow" season 4, the network also announced the air dates for "The Mick and Star" and "Bones." "New Girl," "Hell's Kitchen" and "Rosewood" were announced to have new time slots as well.

'Sleepy Hollow' Season 4 Spoilers

"Sleepy Hollow" season 4 will reportedly bring back Kamar de los Reyes in a recurring role of Jobe. He also appeared as Antonio Vega in "Life to Live."

Kamar de los Reyes also appeared in other shows like "Blue Bloods," "Pretty Little Liars" and "Castle." Aside from Kamar de Los Reyes, a whole lot of new faces will appear in "Sleepy Hollow" season 4, per Cinema Blend. "Sleepy Hollow" season 5 made the biggest move in terms of casting as of date.

Season 1 Memories Sleepy Hallow

The Sheriff and The Fry Thief

pic.twitter.com/qAqOMZZUHo  Barbara Ruffin (@AMPixieWarrior) May 26, 2016

Fans will see a resurrected character: John Noble a.k.a. Henry Parish or Jeremy Crane. The Headless Horseman (Neil Jackson) will also drop by in season 5. The new villain, eccentric billionaire Malcolm Dreyfuss (Jeremy Davies) will try to manipulate the Headless Horseman.

"Sleepy Hollow" season 4 will pick up from the tragic death of Abbie Mill (Nicole Beharie) with Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) moving to Washington D.C. He will continue to fight the evil supernatural with the help of Abbie's sister Jenny (Lyndie Greenwood). GameNGuide also reported that Ichabod Crane will have a new partner in the name of Diana (Janina Gavankar).

The series will premiere with an episode titled "Columbia. Currently, the team is filming in Atlanta. Catch "Sleepy Hollow" season 4 on January 6, 9 p.m. EDT on Fox.
Google Pixel XL Reviews, Latest News & Update: Newest Google Smartphone Exceeds Nexus Profits? Rose Gold Limited Edition Units Released?

If there was a perfect time for Google to launch an attempt to penetrate the world of high-end smart phones, it would be now. Apple Inc. is reportedly struggling with the status quo of their profits, despite of the recent release of the iPhone 7.

Samsung, on the other hand, is trying to survive as the company is bombarded with trust issues because of the exploding Note 7 cases. With this in mind, Google Pixel XL might be a strong contender in the smartphone competition.

Google Pixel XL: Newbie But Goodie?

As with any new smartphone released in the market, Google Pixel XL has been receiving a lot of apprehension from skeptics and critics. Some even taunt Google and say that it should stay within the lines of creating innovative features to the internet.

However, Google Pixel XL pushed through and is now Google's latest offering targeted to compete in the category of high-end smartphones. With the clean track record of Google in all its subsidiary companies and products, the public is excited for what Google Pixel XL has to offer.

Google Pixel XL: Goodbye Nexus?

Google Nexus units have been well-received by the consumers, although it has admittedly failed to usurp Apple or Samsung from the leading spot. Will Google Pixel XL bring home the bacon this time?

Google has reportedly collaborated with HTC to create the Google Pixel XL. For consumers who are looking for savvy or sleek-looking units, expect to feel a slight tinge of disappointment as Google Pixel XL does not have head-turning features. However, Google has reportedly compensated for the lack of aesthetic design by raising the software of the smartphone.

Google Pixel XL, unlike its counterparts with regards to launching, is unfortunately not water resistant. However, Google Pixel XL might be seen in a positive light when its AMOLED display is mentioned. The bright, impressive screen of Google Pixel XL gives users an enticing interface that might make them overlook the gadget's lackluster appearance.

Google Pixel XL price starts at $649. Do you think Google Pixel XL might be the next big thing in the smartphone industry? Sound off in the comments section below!
Kate Middleton, Prince William Divorce: Duchess Tired Being Royal? Queen Elizabeth Banned George, Charlotte From Seeing Their Mom? Couple Announcing Split Soon?

Kate Middleton and Prince William are reportedly facing countless troubles on their marriage lately. Now, new reports are claiming that the mother of Prince George and Princess Charlotte is not interested to become the next queen of the British monarchy.

Kate Middleton, Prince William Divorce: Pippa Middleton's Sister Tired of Being A Duchess? Queen Elizabeth Slammed Prince Harry's Sister-in-law For Using Prince George and Princess Charlotte?

Rumors are rife that Kate Middleton is not happy being the wife of Prince William, Celeb Dirty Laundry suggested. Sources have claimed that the Duchess of Cambridge does not think that inheriting the crown and the throne is not a good idea.

According to reports, Kate Middleton has been complaining about her extremely tiring working schedule. Insiders have claimed that the wife of Prince William does not want doing charity works and other Royal responsibilities.

As a matter of fact. Queen Elizabeth was reportedly furious after learning that Kate Middleton has been using Prince George and Princess Charlotte to escape from her Royal commitments. The Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William were even proclaimed as the laziest Royal couple in the history of British monarchy.

Though these reports could possibly be true, neither Kate Middleton nor Prince William has confirmed anything as of yet. So, fans of Prince George and Princess Charlotte's parents should take everything with a grain of salt until it has been proven true and correct.

Kate Middleton, Prince William Divorce: Queen Elizabeth Criticized Duchess of Cambridge For Idolizing Angelina Jolie? Her Majesty Badly Wants Royal Couple To Split?

Meanwhile, GamenGuide has previously reported Queen Elizabeth has criticized Kate Middleton's lavish lifestyle. According to rumors, the grandmother of Prince William is not happy with the fact that the Duchess of Cambridge is acting more like a celebrity than a Royal.

Queen Elizabeth has reportedly slammed Kate Middleton for imitating Angelina Jolie and her lifestyle. Her Majesty has also been reportedly keeping Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince William away from the Duchess to teach her a lesson.

Both Kate Middleton and Prince William are yet to comment on these reports. Stay tuned to GamenGuide for the latest news and updates about the alleged Kate Middleton and Prince William divorce.
Rotary got started in Long Beach in 1917 when seven local businessmen met with a New York Rotarian who talked about his club there.
Public beheading in Saudi Arabia

Munir al-Adam says he signed a confession only after being beaten so badly he lost hearing in one ear









A specialised criminal court in Riyadh, the Arab kingdom's capital, sentenced Munir al-Adam, to death for "attacks on police" and other offences they said took place during protests in the Shia-dominated east in late 2011.





The 23-year-old is partially blind and was already partially deaf at the time of arrest; he alleges he is now completely deaf in one ear as a result of being severely beaten by police.





His family issued a statement rejecting the verdict and claiming that Mr Adam was tortured into confessing, The Times reported.





The steel cable worker said he had only signed a document admitting the offences after being repeatedly beaten. He said he had been accused of "sending texts" when he was too poor to own a mobile phone.





47 protesters and alleged supporters of al-Qaeda were executed in a single day in January. In July, the number of beheadings in Saudi Arabia reached 108 this year, putting the country, which has a population of nearly 29 million people, on track to exceed its 2015 execution total.





Saudi Arabia is one of the world's most prolific executioners. Research last year by human rights organisation Reprieve found that, of those identified as facing execution in Saudi Arabia, some 72 per cent were sentenced to death for non-violent alleged crimes, while torture and forced confessions were common.





"Munir Adam's appalling case illustrates how the Saudi authorities are all too happy to subject the most vulnerable people to the swordsman's blade," said Maya Foa, of Reprieve. "Saudi Arabia's close allies, including the UK, must urge the kingdom to release Munir, along with juveniles and others who were sentenced to death for protesting."





The traditionally close relationship between Saudi Arabia and Britain has become strained in the past year as people in the West have protested against the use of the death penalty, including against minors. Protests also erupted across the Middle East in January.





Sara Hashah, Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa spokesperson, said Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran were responsible for 90 % of all recorded executions globally and were out of step with the rest of the world.





"In Saudi Arabia, where people are routinely sentenced to death after grossly unfair trials, we have seen a dramatic surge in the number of executions in the past 2 years which has shown no sign of abating in 2016," she told The Independent in July.





"This clearly demonstrates that Saudi Arabia's authorities are increasingly out of step with a global trend of states moving away from the death penalty.





"Saudi Arabia's authorities must end their reliance on this cruel, inhuman and degrading form of punishment immediately."





Mr Adam was reportedly detained in February 2012 for taking part in protests in his home town of Qatif the previous year, when he was 18 years old.





The Qatif region of Saudi Arabia is majority Shia. There are regular protests in the area against the Saudi government.





Mr Adam's family said he was a kind, simple young man who loves fishing. They said he was involved in an accident when he was six in which his skull was fractured, leaving his sight and hearing impaired. He was told by his doctor that trauma could worsen the injuries, but police allegedly ignored medical evidence and beat him anyway.





He is currently appealing his sentence.





Reprieve said: "Munir's bogus 'confession' was the sole piece of evidence presented against him at his trial. He has never been allowed to speak to a lawyer."





The organisation added that concerns for Mr Adam's fate come shortly after the re-election of Saudi Arabia to the UN Human Rights Council.





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Source: Belfast Telegraph, November 4, 2016
National Weather Service forecasters are expecting a period of heavy rain Saturday for the Willamette Valley, the Interstate 5 corridor and the greater Portland and Vancouver metro area.

In a weather statement issued Saturday morning, forecasters said localized urban or stream stream flooding is possible.

A very moist and slow-moving frontal system is moving onshore Saturday morning, forecasters said, bringing with it the potential of heavy rain as it moves across the inland valleys of northwest Oregon and southwest Washington.

Rainfall rates on the order of one-third to a half-inch of rain per hour are possible near the front, forecasters said, noting even two to three hours of this type of rain can cause problems with urban or small-stream flooding.

The heaviest rainfall could come in the midday to afternoon hours, forecasters said.

Here are your updated local forecasts:

Albany

Saturday: Patchy fog before 9 a.m. Rain, possibly heavy at times. High near 58. South wind 6 to 9 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100 percent. New precipitation amounts between a half and three quarters of an inch possible. Saturday night: Rain before midnight, then showers likely after midnight. The rain could be heavy at times. Low around 49. South wind 5 to 8 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100 percent. New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible. Sunday: A 30 percent chance of showers before noon. Partly sunny, with a high near 60. South southeast wind 5 to 7 mph.

Corvallis

Saturday: Rain, possibly heavy at times. High near 58. South wind around 8 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100 percent. New precipitation amounts between a half and three quarters of an inch possible. Saturday night: Rain before 11 p.m., then a chance of showers. The rain could be heavy at times. Low around 49. South wind 5 to 8 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100 percent. New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible. Sunday: A 30 percent chance of showers before 11 a.m. Partly sunny, with a high near 60. South southeast wind 5 to 7 mph.

Lebanon

Saturday: Rain, possibly heavy at times. High near 59. South wind around 8 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100 percent. New precipitation amounts between a half and three quarters of an inch possible. Saturday night: Rain before 11 p.m., then showers likely. The rain could be heavy at times. Low around 49. South wind 5 to 7 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100 percent. New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible. Sunday: A 30 percent chance of showers before 11 a.m. Partly sunny, with a high near 61. South southeast wind 5 to 7 mph.
Charles and Camilla to Make Official Trip to Bahrain

The Government must ensure that the UK Royal Family raise the issue of torture and the death penalty when they visit Bahrain in the coming week, human rights organization Reprieve has said.





Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall are due to visit Bahrain this coming week (7-11th). The Government has said the trip will strengthen the UKs warm bilateral relations with the country, among others in the region.





The visit comes amid growing concerns for an innocent man who faces execution in Bahrain, after he was tortured into a forced confession. Mohammed Ramadan, a policeman and a father of three, was arrested in 2014 after he attended a protest. He was forced to give statements that he later recanted.





His 'confession' was subsequently used as the basis for his conviction and death sentence.





The UK Government provides an estimated 2.1m in reform assistance to Bahrains security sector, including for policing and prisons.





Reprieve has asked the Government to press the Bahraini authorities to release Mr Ramadan, and to ensure that his case is on the agenda for the Royal trip.





Torture is illegal under Bahraini and international law.





Commenting, Maya Foa, a director at Reprieve, said:





The Royal Family are visiting Bahrain as the life of an innocent man, Mohammed Ramadan, hangs in the balance. This is a crucial opportunity for Britain to push for his release  and to bring an end to the appalling use of torture in Bahrain. If the UK wants its reform spending in Bahrain to be worth it, then it must use all the levers it can  including the royal visit  to help Mohammed and others like him.





More information on Mohammed Ramadan's is available at Reprieve's website, here

 | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; send a submission; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com



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Source: Reprieve, November 5, 2016
Protest in Bonn : Kurds demonstrate in the city

Bonn Kurdish protestors made their way through Bonns inner city today, carrying banners and flags. The march was peaceful, with demonstrators calling for a democratic line to be established.

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Around 70 pro-Kurdish demonstrators marched through the inner city of Bonn on Saturday. Following the march, they gathered at Bertha-von-Suttner-Platz in front of the regional representation of the European Commission.

They were protesting against Germany providing weapons and funds in support of Turkish President Erdogan. It was also a response to the arrest of leading party members of the Kurdish HDP on Friday. Yannis Korte, organizer of the demonstration, criticized Chancellor Merkels work with the Turkish president on the refugee agreement.
Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa

Zimbabwe last week pardoned 10 inmates who were on death row after they requested for Presidential clemency while the remaining 80 will also survive the gallows if Government resolves to completely abolish capital punishment for all crimes, Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa has said.





He said this during Zimbabwe's presentation of its Human Rights National Report under the auspices of the Universal Periodic Review on Wednesday at the United Nations Centre in Geneva, Switzerland.





VP Mnangagwa who is in charge of the Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs was responding to several calls from various countries who implored Zimbabwe to completely abolish the death penalty.





But VP Mnangagwa said while the country accepted the recommendation to abolish the death penalty at the last UPR in 2012, the majority of Zimbabweans who participated during the Constitution-making process said they wanted it retained.





He said Government was, however, undertaking nationwide public awareness campaigns to conscientise Zimbabweans on the effects of the death penalty.





VP Mnangagwa also dismissed claims by some countries that Zimbabwe had political prisoners and detainees.





"On the issue of the death penalty, may I share with you that for over a decade now, we have had no executions in Zimbabwe," said VP Mnangagwa.





"Currently, we have 90 inmates under death penalty and last week in our Cabinet, we received 10 petitions for clemency from the President and all the 10 were granted.





"We then decided that I, as Vice President responsible for the administration of justice, should put a paper on the question of the abolition of the death penalty, which we have to debate."





The Vice President said the new Constitution only imposed the death penalty on males aged between 21 and 70 years who are convicted of aggravated murder compared to the previous one that had a wider range of offences under, which one could be sentenced to death regardless of gender.





But representatives from several countries said it was critical that the country completely abolish capital punishment.





"We recommend that Zimbabwe completely abolishes the death penalty for all crimes and establish a moratorium on executions and to commute expeditiously death penalties by prison sentences," said a representative of Uruguay.





Portugal's representative said: "Portugal recommends Zimbabwe to establish a moratorium on the death penalty with a view to fully abolish it both in practice and in law in all cases and under all circumstances."





Representatives of Belgium and Slovenia said notwithstanding the Government of Zimbabwe's campaigns to conscientise citizens about the effects of the death penalty, it was important that capital punishment is immediately suspended.





Switzerland said it was concerned with the overcrowding and poor conditions in prisons and asked how Government intended to address the issue.





VP Mnangagwa said whenever the prison population exceeded holding capacity, Government came up with various interventions including the transfer of inmates from closed prisons to spacious farm prisons while others were released through Presidential clemency.

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Source: allafrica.com, November 4, 2016
Here Are the Promises By Reliance Jio That You Shouldn't Believe News oi -Sneha Reliance Jio had made several promises to deliver to its customers, however, after nearly 2 months of its service, the telecom operator fails to live up to its customer's expectations. Know why?

The key reason that Reliance Jio had gained popularity is because of the unlimited internet offer, free voice calls, and many more attractive tariff plans that it brought to its users.

Soon after it was launched, Reliance Jio had transformed the telecom sector completely. Headed by Ambani, the company during the Jio launch even claimed to offer the best internet speed in India.

SEE ALSO: 5 Reasons Why Airtel is Better Than Reliance Jio

Even though Jio did deliver a great speed in its initial days, however, with time, the speed has slowed down at a tremendous rate. There are many more things that Jio claimed, but is supposedly failing to achieve them.

SEE ALSO: Reliance Jio Effect: 5 Notable Benefits of Vodafone Flex Plans for Prepaid Users

Here are a few things that Reliance Jio promised to its users, but is simply failing to offer the same.

Disastrous Internet Speed Reliance Jio has been mainly popularized due to the extraordinary speed that it offered. However, although starting with a bang, Reliance Jio is no longer able to deliver a good internet speed, and there have been several complaints regarding the speed dropping after the usage of some GB's. Although there are ways to speed up Jio's internet speed, but that's not what Jio promised. "Unlimited" Internet is Just Another Hype Reliance Jio had attracted most customers with the promise to deliver "Unlimited" internet, which is just another hype. Yes, not be very straight Jio doesn't offer unlimited internet. Yes, the there is a limit of 4GB/day for the internet usage. Additionally, after using 4GB, the internet speed drops down tremendously, hence there is nothing extraordinary about Jio internet. Poor Network Coverage in Several Areas Jio promised to build a digital life. However, it seems that the company can build a digital life only for people living in particular regions. Unlike the other telecom giants like Airtel, Vodafone, and others, Reliance Jio, claiming to be the "Best and Smartest" choice fails to work in remote, and delivers a poor network connection is congested areas as compared. Porting From Your Existing Operator to Jio is a Bad Option Claiming to deliver a wide range of exciting services to its users, Reliance Jio had more of cons than pros. Whether it's about the customer service, or activation of SIM card or more, as days are passing by, Jio's network quality is declining, which is surely a matter of concern for the company. So before you believe any claims that Reliance Jio makes, do cross verify the fact, or simply don't believe them. Click Here for New Smartphones Best Online Deals

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Military Strikes Target ISIL in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, Nov. 4, 2016  U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Iraq yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

Attack and remotely piloted aircraft conducted five strikes in Syria:

-- Near Kamal, a strike engaged an ISIL supply route.

-- Near Ayn Isa, a strike engaged an ISIL tactical unit.

-- Near Mara, three strikes engaged three ISIL tactical units and destroyed two mortar systems and two fighting positions.

Strikes in Iraq

Attack, bomber, fighter, remotely piloted aircraft and rocket artillery conducted 13 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government:

-- Near Beiji, a strike destroyed an ISIL vehicle.

-- Near Haditha, a strike destroyed an ISIL mortar system.

-- Near Kisik, a strike destroyed an ISIL mortar system.

-- Near Mosul, five strikes engaged three ISIL tactical units; destroyed five mortar systems, four vehicles, three ISIL-held buildings, two vehicle bombs, two fighting positions and an ISIL headquarters building; and damaged two fighting positions and a front-end loader.

-- Near Rawah, a strike destroyed an ISIL vehicle.

-- Near Sinjar, two strikes engaged an ISIL vehicle bomb factory.

-- Near Tal Afar, two strikes engaged an ISIL headquarters building and a weapons cache.

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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U.S. Marines, Honduran engineers work together during construction projects

US Marine Corps News

By Cpl. Karen Cruz | November 4, 2016

U.S. Marines with Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force - Southern Command and Honduran engineers spent the last several months working together on several construction projects in Leimus and at Mocoron Air Base, Honduras.

From June to September, Marines and Honduran soldiers from the 1st Honduran Army Engineer Battalion renovated a water tower and constructed a lodging facility which will be utilized by Hondurans conducting operations along the border of Honduras and Nicaragua.

"We have three structures that we are building," said Cpl. Tyler Simons, combat engineer with SPMAGTF-SC, referring to the engineering projects in Leimus. "(One is) a 16-by-64 foot building that's billeting for the 10 Honduran soldiers that protect this port here. The second is a bathroom facility for them, and the third is a kitchen."

Prior to the Marines' arrival, the Honduran facilities were in need of repair and renovations. By working together, Honduran and U.S. Marine engineers worked to provide an improved base of operations for the Honduran soldiers to work from.

"These guys are living here 24/7 protecting the port, keeping contraband from coming in and out and keeping the people safe," said Simons. "The billeting that they had prior to this building was not very nice."

In addition to building new living quarters, the Marine and Honduran engineers worked together to complete the restoration of a concrete water tower at Mocoron Air Base, which has not been operational for 15 years.

"The water tower project, here in the battalion, is very important," said Honduran Army Col. Rigoberto Sandoval, commander of the Fifth Infantry Battalion. "It will take water to all the barracks, and allow for better hygiene of the soldiers."

The restoration of the water tower is important for the comfort of the Honduran soldiers stationed on the base. It also gives confidence to the surrounding community with the knowledge that the infrastructure to provide clean water is available.

"With water flowing into the structure for the first time in many years, it shows that these structures can be a viable source of water, which is definitely one of the challenges in this area," said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Calvin Gatch, the officer in charge of the construction sites with SPMAGTF-SC.

During their time spent at both project sites, the Marines had opportunities to immerse themselves in the local culture, further strengthening bonds with their Honduran counterparts and the locals. The Marines ate local food and were even able to utilize local resources such as fresh cut lumber in Leimus.

"We eat at the local restaurant, we buy snacks from the local store, and I think everyone is benefiting from us being here," said Simons. "We are trying to help the local economy by sourcing our lumber locally. It's actually cut ten minutes up the road from here and it's a group of guys in the woods with a chainsaw that are free handing our lumber for us."

One of the challenges for the Marines and Honduran engineers was the climate, and working during the rainy season.

"There hardly was a day that it didn't rain, and it usually rains pretty heavy," explained Gatch. "That made it difficult to operate our heavy equipment."

Despite the difficulties, the Marines and Honduran engineers overcame and continued to stay on schedule with the projects.

The Marines and the Hondurans working alongside each other has been the least challenging part of the mission, and according to some, the most rewarding. The language barrier was not an obstacle for the mission accomplishment, proving that hard work and dedication can overcome cultural barriers.

"You don't need a translator for teamwork, enthusiasm, and basic engineering skills" said Gatch. "Our Marines are enjoying this unique opportunity and new friendships; lasting relationships have been created very quickly."

Despite the language barrier, the engineers have been seamlessly working together for roughly four months, and in that time they've developed great working relationships as well as lasting friendships.

"We have been working with the American military for a long time," said Sandoval. "They're our military brothers and they have supported us and are still supporting us. We support them as well, in any way we can. We're at the position to help."

It's been a very positive experience for the Marines, working alongside the Honduran engineers and the communities they've been operating in.

"We've enjoyed sharing stories about our lives back home, sharing pictures, telling about our families," said Gatch. "As some of these projects start to wind down and come to an end, I can tell it's going to be very difficult to say goodbye to our counterparts and these communities that we've grown to enjoy working in so much."

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Foreign media outlets respond to Malaysia's purchase of patrol vessel from China

People's Daily Online

(People's Daily Online) 17:19, November 04, 2016

Malaysia admitted to buying four coastal patrolling vessels from China, marking the first significant defense business deal between the two countries.

On Oct. 31, Najib Razak began his third visit to China since becoming prime minister. Mainstream Malaysian media outlets emphasized not only the militarily agreement, but also the unique role of Malaysia in the Belt and Road Initiative.

On Nov. 2, the BBC reported that Malaysia is willing to solve the South China Sea dispute peacefully, through bilateral conversations. The BBC also examined how the U.S. has come across new obstacles in its competition with China for regional influence. Bloomberg News called the purchase a milestone.

Meanwhile, Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun described how Malaysia's purchase of the vessels is an extension of the improving diplomatic relations between China and the Philippines. Manila Bulletin reported that Najib's visit indicates that Malaysia is also pivoting toward China.

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Bill Clinton cheats on his wife. Impeach him. Trump proudly brags about sexual assault (and has cheated on his wives). Elect him. Hillary oversaw the department of state while 4 people died in an embassy attack. Put her in jail. 2 Republicans were in office while over 200 people died in embassy attacks. No problem. Immigrants don't pay taxes. Round them up and kick them out. Trump doesn't pay taxes. He's a business genius. Hillary's foundation only spent 87% of their donations helping people. She's a crook. Trumps foundation paid off his debts, bought sculptures of him, and made political donations to avoid investigations while using less than 5% of funds for charity (and he got shut down by NY State). So savvy... Put him in the white house.

Trump made 4 billion dollars in 40 years, when an index fund started at the same time with the same "small loans" he received would be worth $12 billion today... without a trail of bankruptcies, thousands of lawsuits and burned small business owners. He's a real business whiz. Hillary took a loss of $700k. She's a criminal. Trump is the first candidate in the modern era not to release his tax returns, and took a billion dollar loss in 1 year. Genius. Hillary takes responsibility for private email servers and apologizes. Not credible. Trump denies saying things (on the record) he actually said (on the record), he's just telling it like it is.

Your arguments are thin. Your ignorance of reality is shocking. Your double-standards are offensive, and your willingness to blindly support him and recycle the rhetoric is absurd. Your opinion is not fact. Your memes are not news articles. And your hypocrisy is not a platform.

Alex Schiller
Al-Shabab represents most immediate threat to Somalia: UN report

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 4, 2016 7:11PM

A UN report has warned that the Somalia-based al-Shabab Takfiri militant group is still capable of conducting large-scale attacks despite the "prevailing" rhetoric of successful counter-terrorism efforts.

The al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group carried out six sophisticated assaults on hotels in the Somali capital Mogadishu between November 2015 and June 2016, the report by UN sanctions monitors said on Friday.

"Contrary to prevailing narratives of successful counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism efforts, the monitoring group assesses that the security situation has not improved in Somalia," the report stated.

The Takfiri militant group "represents the most immediate threat to peace and security in Somalia and continues to be a destabilizing force in the broader East and Horn of Africa region," said the report, which was submitted to the United Nations Security Council earlier this week.

Al-Shabab is fighting to topple the government in Mogadishu. The battle between Somali government forces and the militants has continued since 2006.

In 2011, al-Shabab was driven out of Mogadishu and other major cities by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), but the militants keep carrying out attacks against civilians and troops in the country.

The group has a long record of attacks in Kenya in revenge for the country's contribution to the African Union mission in Somalia.

Referring to the 2015 attack at the Garissa University College campus in Kenya, where nearly 150 people were killed, the UN report said the group "retains both the capability to carry out another such attack and a self-proclaimed motive with regard to targeting countries contributing troops to AMISOM."

AMISOM force is largely made up of troops from Ethiopia, Uganda, Burundi, Djibouti, Sierra Leone, and Kenya.

The report said that after the February blast on a Somali plane of an explosive device planted on a laptop, the terrorists resorted to more sophisticated tactics targeting aircraft.

Al-Shabab is "likely to have had external assistance in the construction of the device," the report said.

The UN report said the killing of at least three senior al-Shabab leaders in a series of drone strikes and raids may have failed to seriously weaken the group.

"Al-Shabab possesses a robust and ideologically committed 'middle management' capable of seamlessly stepping into positions vacated by assassinated senior leaders," the report said.

The UN sanctions monitors censured the Somali government for its failure to pay soldiers' salaries, which has prompted withdrawals from areas in the south and center of the country, allowing the militants to return to those areas.

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Bahrainis once again express solidarity with Sheikh Qassim

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 4, 2016 5:3PM

Bahraini demonstrators have once again expressed solidarity with senior Shia cleric Sheikh Isa Qassim, who has been stripped of his citizenship by the Manama.

A mass demonstration was held in the northwestern village of Diraz, Sheikh Qassim's hometown, on Friday.

The demonstrators condemned the Al Khalifah regime's continued ban on holding Friday prayers in the village for the 16th consecutive week.

Similar demonstrations were held in the villages of Karrana, Barbar, Shakhoura and Abu Saiba as well as the town of A'ali.

On June 20, Bahraini authorities stripped the 79-year-old cleric of his citizenship, less than a week after suspending the al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, the country's main opposition bloc, and dissolving the Islamic Enlightenment Institution, founded by Qassim, and the opposition al-Risala Islamic Association.

The demonstrators in Diraz carried Bahraini flags and photos of Isa Qassim and Sheikh Ali Salman, another cleric who was arrested late in 2014.

Bahraini regime forces arrested Salman, al-Wefaq's secretary general, in December 2014 over charges of attempting to overthrow the regime and collaborating with foreign powers. The allegations, however, were rejected by the cleric, saying he had pursued reforms in the country through peaceful means.

In May, a court increased from four to nine years the prison term for Salman, but on October 17, Bahrain's Court of Cassation overturned his prison term and ordered a retrial.

Scores of people have been killed and hundreds of others injured or arrested in Manama's crackdown on anti-regime activists since February 2011.

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Official confirms three US troops killed in Jordan shooting

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 4, 2016 3:10PM

Three US troops have been killed in a shooting at the gate of a military base in southern Lebanon, says a US official.

"A total of three US service members died today (Friday) in the incident in Jordan," said the official, whose name was not mentioned in news reports.

"Initial reports were that one was killed, two injured. The two injured service members were transported to a hospital in Amman, where they died," the official added.

A Jordanian military source said the incident took place as a vehicle transporting the troops, who the source said were instructors, failed to stop at the gate of the al-Jafr base.

"There was an exchange of fire at the entrance to the base after an attempt by the trainers' vehicle to enter the gate without heeding orders of the guards to stop," the source said.

The incident also left a Jordanian army officer wounded.

The US embassy in Jordan confirmed the shooting.

"We have reports of a security incident involving American personnel and we are in contact with Jordanian officials who are giving us all the support," the embassy said in a statement.

The incident comes about a year after a Jordanian police officer shot dead two US government contractors, a South African trainer and two Jordanians at a US-funded police training facility near Amman, the capital of Jordan, before being killed in a shootout.

A US official said at the time that the two Americans killed on November 9, 2015, were working with the US Department of State's International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Bureau and were responsible for training Palestinian forces.

Jordan is a key ally of the United States in the Middle East as well as an active part of the so-called US-led coalition against the Daesh Takfiri terror group. The US uses Jordanian airfields to station warplanes for its campaign in Syria.

The United States and its allies have been conducting airstrikes against purported positions of Daesh inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate since September 2014.

Since the beginning of the crisis in Syria in 2011, hundreds of Jordanians have reportedly joined terrorist groups operating against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Jordan also hosts hundreds of American military personnel as part of a program to allegedly reinforce the kingdom's defense.

The United States has also trained militants in Jordan for operations in Syria.

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Nasrallah welcomes election of Michel Aoun as Lebanon president

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 4, 2016 2:29PM

Secretary General of Hezbollah resistance movement Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has welcomed the election of the new president of Lebanon, Michel Aoun, arguing that the movement had been unjustly accused of obstructing the election over the past two and a half years.

Addressing through a televised speech a gathering in Beirut on the martyrdom anniversary of Hezbollah commander Hajj Mustafa Shahadah in Syria back in October 2014, Nasrallah stated that some parties and factions in Lebanon sought to link the presidential elections in Lebanon with the Iranian nuclear talks and the Syrian crisis irrespective of the fact that both Tehran and Damascus had reiterated that the election was a Lebanese issue.

"We were honest since the very beginning in our endorsement of Michel Aoun as president, and we spared no effort for the election to achieve its goals," the Hezbollah chief pointed out.

He underscored that nothing lies between the Hezbollah resistance movement and President Aoun other than "trust," strongly dismissing allegations that his groups is looking for presidential favors and bargains.

Nasrallah further praised Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri as the guardian of the country in times of difficulty.

The Hezbollah secretary general then called upon all Lebanese political parties to cooperate with Aoun for the sake of Lebanon's well-being at a time when conflicts and crises are plaguing in the Middle East region.

Nasrallah further stated that Hezbollah did not name Saad al-Hariri to form a new government as prime minister, stressing that the resistance movement solely offered all "possible facilities for his nomination."

He emphasized that Hezbollah supports the formation of an all-inclusive government, saying, "We are not the negotiating side. Only Speaker Berri is entitled to negotiate about forming the new government on our behalf."

Elsewhere in his remarks, Nasrallah rejected allegations that the recent Yemeni missile attack against Saudi Arabia was aimed at Islam's holiest and most revered site.

"The propaganda claiming that the Yemenis fired a Ballistic rocket at Mecca is a big sarcastic lie," he stated.

Late on October 27, Yemeni soldiers and their allies fired an indigenous Borkan-1 (Volcano-1) missile towards King Abdulaziz International Airport, located 19 kilometers north of the western Saudi port city of Jeddah.

A Yemeni military source, speaking on condition of anonymity, later told the official Saba news agency that the 12.5-meter-long missile had hit its target accurately and left massive destruction at the airport.

Saudi media outlets, however, reported that the kingdom's missile systems intercepted and destroyed the solid propellant and Scud-type missile before it could cause any damage.

The Saudi military claimed that the Yemeni missile was fired toward the holy city of Mecca.

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Venezuela pres. rejects opposition 'ultimatums'

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 4, 2016 8:18AM

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has rejected a deadline set by the opposition to possibly quit talks and return to street protests if its conditions are not met.

A coalition of opposition groups had been drawing people into the street for protests after authorities quashed its drive for a recall referendum against Maduro last month.

But it suspended street action when Vatican-backed talks began on Sunday. The opposition coalition has warned, however, that on November 11, it would quit the talks with the government if Maduro failed to meet its demands by then.

Speaking on Thursday, the Venezuelan president criticized the deadline, saying "one cannot try to give the talks, peace, an ultimatum."

"They are creating false expectations," Maduro said. "Nobody should leave the table, nor set an ultimatum."

The opposition has demanded the revival of the referendum and early presidential elections. It has also demanded the release of political prisoners in the country.

"We have put these points on the table, not so that they can be addressed in months but rather in the coming days and weeks," said opposition legislative leader Julio Borges on Tuesday.

"Otherwise, we will walk away from the negotiating table and continue with our struggle," he added, referring to the street protests.

Borges said that the opposition would also reopen an impeachment process against Maduro, which was suspended on Wednesday, if the deadline is not met.

The National Assembly, which is in control of the opposition, had voted last week to impeach Maduro over abandoning his "responsibilities."

Maduro has described the trial as a "parliamentary coup" attempt against him.

On Thursday, thousands of people took to the streets in the capital to support the president in the capital, Caracas.

The pro-government rallies also saw hundreds of others marching in the capital and elsewhere against the president. Such rallies have been a recurrent scene on Venezuelan streets for several months now.

The country faces an acute economic crisis. Shortages of basic goods have been so intense that people walk across the border into neighboring Colombia to buy their commodities from time to time.

The president has accused the opposition of having launched a US-backed "economic war" against the oil-reach country in an attempt to trigger a coup d'etat.

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Saudi soldiers killed in Yemen retaliatory attack on Najran

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 4, 2016 12:2AM

Yemen's army and Popular Committees have killed several Saudi troops in the kingdom's southern province of Najran, in retaliation for Riyadh's aggression against its impoverished neighboring country.

According to Yemen's Arabic-language al-Masirah news channel, the Yemeni forces launched a rocket attack on the Saudi al-Sadis military camp, inflicting fatal injuries on a number of Saudi soldiers and heavily damaging the base on Thursday.

In another rocket attack, the Yemeni troops also managed to destroy at least three Hummer military vehicles used by the Saudis in the province's Nahouqa and Hamr districts, killing their crew.

The Yemeni forces also managed to destroy two other Saudi military vehicles in the Sirwah district of Yemen's central province of Ma'rib, kill all of their occupants.

Yemen says its army launches such attacks in retaliation for Riyadh's relentless airstrikes on its nation.

Meanwhile, Saudi warplanes killed at least three Yemenis and wounded nine others after they pounded a residential area in the Mukha district of the southwestern province of Ta'izz.

The Saudi war machine also conducted at least 20 airstrikes on different areas across Asilan district of the southern province of Shabwah, inflicting heavy damage on residential buildings.

Saudi Arabia has been engaged in the deadly campaign against Yemen since March 2015 in an attempt to bring back the former Yemeni government to power and undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement.

The United Nations puts the death toll from the military aggression at about 10,000.

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Mortar fire kills 12 in wedding ceremony in northern Afghanistan

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 4, 2016 1:29AM

At least 12 people have lost their lives and 30 others sustained injuries after a mortar shell landed in a wedding ceremony in Afghanistan's northern province of Faryab, officials say.

The deadly assault, believed to have been carried out by the Taliban militant group, took place in Kosa Qala village in Khwaja Sabz Posh district on Thursday afternoon, Afghanistan's Tolo News TV channel reported, citing local security officials.

It added that five children and six women were among the dead.

Javed Dedar, a spokesman for the provincial governor, however, gave another account of the incident, saying the civilians were traveling to the ceremony when either a roadside bomb explosion or a mortar fire targeted them. He added that the bride was among the injured.

The blast took place in a remote village, making it hard to verify the details. The attack also occurred amid heavy clashes between security forces and the Taliban in the area.

Earlier in the day, at least 30 Afghan civilians, including women and children, were killed in an airstrike carried out by the so-called US-led military alliance in the country's volatile northern province of Kunduz. The aerial assault also injured at least 25 others.

Afghanistan has been gripped by insecurity since the US and its allies invaded the country as part of Washington's so-called war on terror in 2001. Many parts of the country still remain plagued by militancy despite the presence of foreign troops.



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China Criticizes UN Report on Peacekeepers' Activities Amid S Sudan Attack

Sputnik News

14:47 04.11.2016(updated 15:05 04.11.2016)

Chinese Foreign Ministry subjected a UN report on peacekeepers to criticism on Friday.

BEIJING (Sputnik)  Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying on Friday criticized a report issued by the United Nations about the activities of the organization's peacekeepers during the July outbreak of violence in the country.

On Tuesday, the United Nations reported about the Special Investigation of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) during the attack on the Hotel Terrain by the South Sudan troops in Juba on July 11. According to the international organization, the mission failed to respond to the attack properly.

"We have paid attention to the fact that in the published UN report on the peacekeepers' activities in South Sudan there are accusations without any evidences. We express regret because of the negative impact of the report on the peacekeeping mission I also would like to underline that many facts included in the report do not reflect the reality," Hua told reporters.

The spokeswoman added that the United Nations should enhance cooperation between the peacekeepers and the countries of their deployment.

This summer, a period of relative stability in the crisis-torn South Sudan deteriorated, culminating in July's clashes between government and opposition forces, during which the hotel located in the vicinity of the UNMISS headquarters, was attacked. In August, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon decided to launch an independent special investigation into the July attack in order to assess an overall response by the UN mission there.

 Sputnik

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India Says Ceasefire With Pakistan Violated 500 Times This Year

Sputnik News

07:51 04.11.2016

In 2016 a total of 500 ceasefire violations have been registered along India's border with Pakistan, a large number of them following the September strikes, local media report.

NEW DELHI (Sputnik)  Two-thirds of the violations were registered in the last five weeks, The Times of India said on Friday citing government officials.

Two hundred of the total 500 violations were recorded in the northern Jammu and Kashmir state, most of them following the September incident.

Tensions have been simmering between India and Pakistan after a deadly attack on the Uri military base in the India-administered Kashmir in September. New Delhi has accused Islamabad of backing terrorism in the disputed region, but Pakistan denied any role in insurgency.

 Sputnik

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Some 3,500 people fleeing South Sudan each day due to ongoing conflict - UN refugee agency

4 November 2016  The ongoing conflict in South Sudan has led to immense suffering and displacement, with an average of 3,500 people fleeing the country each day to neighbouring countries, prompting the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), national authorities, and other humanitarian actors to race to create safe and humane conditions for arrivals  90 per cent of whom are women and children.

People are fleeing South Sudan to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Sudan, and Uganda, which has seen the greatest number of outflow, with 2,400 arrivals every day since early October and a quarter million new refugees since the re-eruption of violence in Juba that began on 7 July 2016.

UNHCR reports that most refugees are fleeing the Equatoria regions of South Sudan, which borders Uganda and is home to Juba. People leaving the region are reporting harassment by armed groups, killings and torture of people suspected of supporting opposing factions, villages set on fire, sexual assault of women and girls, and forced recruitment of young men and boys.

As armed groups have prevented people from using main roads, refugees in recent weeks are increasingly using informal border crossing points. Many have walked through the bush for days without food or water.

The Bidibidi refugee settlement in Uganda, opened only in August of this year, is now one of the largest refugee-hosting areas in the world and home to 170,000 South Sudanese refugees.

"Providing immediate, life-saving assistance, including food, water and shelter remains UNHCR's key priority," said Cecile Pouilly, UNHCR spokesperson at the regular press briefing in Geneva. "But severe underfunding is hampering our efforts on the ground."

She also cited challenges with water supply efforts in Bidibidi, as needs are quickly outpacing resources. UNHCR is working to identify water sources for the camp, as water is currently being provided via trucks from a treatment plant 50 kilometres away  an extremely costly option.

In Ethiopia, Nguenyyiel, a new refugee camp that was opened on 20 October after existing camps became full, has the capacity to host 50,000 people. Shelter, water, and basic sanitation services are in place and 6,200 refugees have already been relocated to the new camp. 36,000 arrivals have been registered since the start of September and some 630 people continue to arrive each day.

Those arriving in Ethiopia are typically from the Upper Nile region of South Sudan, where conflict and fear of renewed fighting have led them to flee their homes. Others from the Jonglei state, which is north of the capital, Juba, cited food shortages as their reason for leaving.

Some 85 per cent of refugees leaving South Sudan are women and 65 per cent are children under the age of 18. More than 1,300 unaccompanied children and 6,200 separated children have been registered in various camps throughout neighbouring countries. Interviewers have found that most unaccompanied children are alone because their parents are dead or because they were either abandoned or separated from their families during the flight.

In Sudan, there are now more than 250,000 refugees from South Sudan, most of whom arrive in the White Nile state at a rate of 2,000 per month. Sporadic flows into South and West Kordofan states and East Darfur have also been recorded. More than 47,000 refugees since mid-June are in East Darfur, but the majority are spread across the country, not living in organized camps or settlements.

Those arriving in Sudan, especially women, children, and the elderly, arrive in poor conditions. They have fled areas that are facing emergency levels of acute malnutrition and they have been weakened by difficult journeys during the rainy season.

In the DRC, some 60,000 people have arrived since July 2016 and have settled along the border with South Sudan, where armed groups remain active in some areas. Teams on the ground report that most refugees are arriving without any belongings from Yei, a city in the Central Equatoria state.

The Ituri Province of the DRC is currently facing the largest influx of refugees. Earlier this week, the UNHCR began to transfer an estimated 40,000 people from remote border areas. For now, refugees will be sent to Biringi, a site near the city of Aru in the northeastern province of Ituri. Two other sites have been identified, although the operation is facing major logistical challenges given the poor condition of roads.

An additional 4,000 refugees who moved on their own from the border to Meri in Haut-Uele Province have been provided with drinking water and basic services, and the World Food Programme began making distributions this week.

The goal for refugees in all sites is to supply them with plots of land, construction materials, household goods, and agricultural tools to help them become self-sufficient.

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Don't bother with them. These are people who think they're strong because they served. They'll never realize that it's opposite, that they've deffered all moral authority to someone else. They let themselves become lemmings, just tools. And anyone who gets emboldened outside of the paradigm of that sklavenmorale is a evil, is a murder in their eyes. They don't think of themselves this way precisely because they didn't take moral responsibility for their own actions. They were just following orders.



You could put a gun in someone like Hollywood's hands, point it at yourself and say "if I'm such a threat, pull the trigger right now". They wouldn't do it. They couldn't do it. No matter what they say on here they wouldn't be able to do it. Because that would for the first time make them take moral responsibility for themselves and that's the last thing they'd want.
One month after Hurricane Matthew, needs in Haiti remain 'vast,' UN reports

4 November 2016  As Haiti struggles to recover from the massive destruction wrought by Hurricane Matthew, which pummelled the tiny island one month ago today, the United Nations warned that while its seems as if "the world has moved on," Haiti's needs are vast, exemplified by the nearly 600,000 children being stalked by disease, hunger and malnutrition and in need of assistance.

"One month after the hurricane, life for more than half a million children in Haiti is still far from back to normal," said Marc Vincent, Haiti Representative for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), in a news release. "Too many children are still homeless, hungry, out of school and in danger. We are scaling up our response and are determined to help as many of them as possible as fast as we can."

UNICEF said there have been at least 1,000 suspected cholera cases among children in the past month. Out of 219 cholera treatment centres in the country, 18 have been damaged in the worst-hit departments of Grand'Anse and South, further complicating efforts to contain the disease.

The total destruction the Category 4 storm inflicted on crops, food stock and livestock in some of the worst affected areas have left over 800,000 people in need of immediate food assistance and more than 112,000 children at risk of acute malnutrition.

An estimated 50,000 children have been left homeless and are staying in temporary shelters. Another 3,500 children living in institutions need help accessing nutrition, water and sanitation services.

Up to 80 per cent of hospitals and health centres in Grand'Anse have lost their roofs. An additional seven health centres in Grand'Anse, four in South and three in Nippes are no longer operational.

More than 700 schools have been affected and about 86 schools have been used as temporary shelters, causing school disruption for at least 150,000 children.

UNICEF is working with national and other partners to provide basic assistance to the most vulnerable children. They are providing 100,000 people a day with safe water, organizing a cholera vaccination campaign that will be launched next week to immunize up to 900,000 people, and providing cholera prevention kits that contain water purification tablets, soap and oral rehydration salts. Between 100 and 200 kits are distributed every day.

In addition, they are delivering an integrated package of services to prevent and treat malnutrition among children under five as well as pregnant and breastfeeding mothers living in the hurricane affected areas, replenishing vaccines and restoring the cold chain so that routine immunization can resume in the health centres that are still operational and in mobile clinics, and distributing emergency medical supplies to 18 health centres.

Joint actions also include setting up mobile child friendly spaces where vulnerable children and families can receive psychosocial support, and training 60 volunteers to staff them, and repairing 22 schools and distributing school-in-a-box and early childhood development kits so that children can resume their learning as soon as possible.

UNICEF requires over $23 million through the end of the year to meet children's humanitarian needs following the hurricane, including for the cholera response. So far, it has received a mere $6 million.

Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told reporters in Geneva that, according to the latest figures from the authorities in Haiti, Matthew has so far caused 546 deaths and left 438 people injured.

He said that needs are vast, especially in the areas of quality water, education, shelter, child protection, health and nutrition. A total of 1.4 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, and an estimated 40 per cent of them are children. The UN emergency humanitarian appeal for $120 million is far only 33 per cent funded.

Haiti needs support to restore, rebuild health services

Haiti needs support to restore and rebuild its health services at various levels, ranging from cholera treatment centers to community health centers to major hospitals, according to Dr. Jean-Luc Poncelet, the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) representative in Haiti.

In the country's South, "the government faces challenges in restoring health facilities in affected areas and urgent repairs to restore functionality have been identified," he said.

In Sud Department, 28 per cent of health facilities sustained severe damage and eight per cent are closed, while in Grand'Anse, 43 per cent of health facilities were severely damaged and seven per cent are closed. Of the 74 cholera and acute diarrhea treatment facilities in Haiti, 34 are fully functional, while 40 sustained various levels of damage.

Restoring health services to a functional level requires not only fixing structures, but providing electricity and water and sanitation, as well as helping many health workers who themselves have been severely affected by the hurricane's destruction, according to the Haiti Ministry of Public Health.

"The major needs are to renovate existing health structures with durable repairs, to increase humanitarian assistance to rural areas, and to improve water quality and sanitation," Mr. Poncelet said.

The latest figures from the Haitian government show that 175,509 Haitians are still living in shelters, while more than 1.4 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

PAHO/WHO teams identified five priority areas of action for the health sector, estimating that $9 million in emergency funding is needed to carry out essential activities.

These priorities are: restoration of health care delivery capacity and access to health services in the most affected areas; increased epidemiological surveillance to support early detection and timely management of disease outbreaks; intensification of vector-control and protective environmental health measures in impacted areas; rapid and effective response to cholera outbreaks in affected communities; and support for efficient coordination of humanitarian assistance and management of information to effectively address the most urgent humanitarian needs.

A vaccination campaign is planned to start Nov. 8, targeting 820,000 people in 16 communes affected by Hurricane Matthew and that have reported cholera cases or deaths. To prevent additional cholera cases, which are likely to increase in the rainy season from now until December, it is also important to advance on water purification, health promotion, and sanitation at the same time.

Bettina Luescher, spokesperson for the World Food Programme (WFP), said that the agency has delivered food to 400,000 people, as part of its work to support the Government in its work. The situation is dire on the ground, with huge logistical challenges, but together with its partners WFP has reached people by truck, helicopter and boat.

Some 140,000 people are still displaced and living in temporary shelters. The food situation is worrisome: in areas hit by the hurricane crops have been destroyed, along with livestock and seeds, local markets are running out of food and the prices of imported goods are rising.

The planting season is supposed to happen this month and will be affected, which meant in turn that the next harvest, in the early months of 2017 will be affected. WFP aims to reach 800,000 people. In order to do that, it has appealed for $58 million overall and still needs $40 million urgently.

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S. Sudan Humanitarian Crisis Worsening as Famine Looms

By Lisa Schlein November 04, 2016

U.N. aid agencies warn the humanitarian crisis in South Sudan, already one of the biggest in the world, is getting worse as famine looms and growing numbers of refugees flee to neighboring countries.

The World Food Program reports a 38-truck convoy, carrying food for about one month, arrived in the South Sudanese town of Yei on Friday. The agency says the food and other relief supplies will be a life-saver for thousands of families who have been trapped in the area for four months because of fighting and insecurity.

WFP spokeswoman Bettina Luescher says thousands of people in Yei and throughout South Sudan are fleeing intensified violence that stems from the country's nearly three-year conflict. She says they have been forced to leave their crops to rot in the field, adding to a growing problem of hunger.

"Up to four million people, a third of the population in South Sudan are severely food insecuremeaning a third of the country does not know where the next meal is coming from," said Luescher. "The malnutrition is above emergency levels in seven of the 10 states, nearly twice of the emergency threshold in two states. We are very concerned that the threat of famine is very real, that it could happen."

Luescher says humanitarian agencies have helped to stave off catastrophe so far. But, she says funds to carry out life-saving operations are running out. She says WFP urgently needs $113 million for operations through January.

In the meantime, the United Nations refugee agency reports the number of people fleeing South Sudan continues to grow. Last month, it says, an average of 3,500 people fled to neighboring countries each day.

UNHCR spokeswoman Cecile Pouilly says nine out of 10 refugees are women and children, with most of the outflow, around 2,400 per day, arriving in Uganda.

"Most of the arrivals are from Equatoria regions and they report armed groups harassing civilians, killings, torturing people suspected of supporting opposition factions, burning villages and sexually abusing women and girls," said Poully.

In recent weeks, says Pouilly, refugees have increasingly used informal border crossing points, reportedly because armed groups are preventing them from using main roads. She says many have been forced to walk through the bush for days without food or water.

The UNHCR says it is scaling up its operations in Uganda and in the other countries of asylum - Ethiopia, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo - to keep pace with the growing refugee exodus from South Sudan.

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Hard-line Muslim Protest Against Christian Jakarta Governor Ends in Violence

By VOA News November 04, 2016

A massive demonstration in Jakarta against the governor turned violent Friday night when protesters burned police cars and officers responded with tear gas and water cannons. Police say at least one person was killed and seven wounded in the violence.

The scenes capped off a dramatic day that brought more than 50,000 hard-line Muslim protesters onto the streets to voice their ire at the city's Chinese-Christian governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, who has been accused of blasphemy.

Tensions were high across the capital throughout the day, exacerbated by reports that Islamic State members in Syria had posted messages on social media calling for their followers to carry out attacks during the protest.

The marchers  led by the radical Islamic Defender's Front (FPI)  arrived from across the archipelago to voice their opposition to Basuki, known as "Ahok", who is seeking re-election as Jakarta's governor, in February.

Some chanted "death to Ahok" while others stamped on placards of his image, but violence was averted during the day.

Tensions rose as night fell and tear gas was fired after demonstrators began throwing plastic bottles at their officers early in the evening.

The saga began in October, when Ahok dismissed his political opponents who had cited a Quranic verse that warns against Muslims supporting non-believers.

The embattled governor said that Jakartans had "been lied to" by the verse in question and remarked, "If you feel you can't vote for me because you fear you'll go to hell  no worries. That's your personal right."

Ahok has since apologized and said he never intended to cause offense, but it has done little to placate members of the FPI, who have frequently rallied against him during his tenure as governor. Many among their numbers are enraged that a majority Muslim city is administered by a Christian.

While the outrage of Indonesia's hard Islamic right has dominated Indonesia's headlines in the run up to today's much-hyped protest, voices from the moderate majority have sought to calm tensions.

Both of Indonesia's largest moderate organizations: Muhammadiyah, and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU)  whose memberships number in the tens of millions  told their supporters not to attend the rally, although they did not prohibit it.

Speaking to VOA, Asbit Panatagara, an NU activist, stressed that his organization is "committed to pluralism" and that the reaction to Ahok was overblown. Other moderate leaders have sought to underscore the ideal of a moderate, multicultural Indonesia.

Those who share this vision will be heartened by Ahok's enduring popularity. The governor's public intolerance for time-wasting bureaucrats has won him widespread support. His successes in improving public transport and flood defenses have also helped to boost his approval ratings to 69%, according to some local polls.

"I think for everyday Jakartans religious background is not really a big issue [in picking a governor]," Rendi Witular, editor of the Jakarta Post.

"What they believe is in the performance of the candidate himself, their credentials, and their vision, instead of religious sentiment.

"But there are several fringe radical groups who want to force this issue."

Critics say that the central government, led by President Joko Widodo, has not done enough to face down these radical groups and that hatred and bigotry is being allowed to grow.

Sidney Jones, a longtime analyst of Islamic radicalism and terrorism in Southeast Asia, earlier this month blamed "spineless political leaders" for allowing extremism to foment.

"No one dares draw a line and recognize religiously-inspired incitement for what it is, let alone condemn it or take measures to stop it," she said.

Jones also fears that growing conservatism in Indonesia's political discourse is creating the conditions for resurgent Islamic terror.

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Britain Invests Billions in Cybersecurity in Face of Russian Threat

By Henry Ridgwell November 04, 2016

Britain says it will spend more than $2 billion on cybersecurity and recruit 1,000 more intelligence officers as the country's intelligence services warn of increasingly aggressive espionage tactics by Moscow, a charge the Kremlin denies.

The $2.3 billion investment is aimed at countering emerging threats to national security. British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, said this week that key infrastructure, such as air traffic control systems and electricity grids, could be targeted by what he called "hostile foreign actors".

"It is our duty to demonstrate that they cannot act with impunity," Hammond said. "So we will not only defend ourselves in cyberspace, we will strike back in kind when we are attacked."

Hammond did not mention Russia by name. But writing in the Guardian newspaper the same day, the head of Britain's domestic intelligence service known as MI5 accused Moscow of increasingly aggressive cyberattacks, espionage, propaganda and subversion, charges the Kremlin has denied.

"I think that in MI5 for a very long time they were consumed with counterterrorism," said The Economist newspaper's Russia expert Edward Lucas. "This has been the absolute No. 1 priority. And it's taking them a bit of time to get tooled up again to deal with the threat from Russia."

Defend vs deter

Those tools can defend but can also deter, argues John Lough of policy institute Chatham House.

"The challenge for Western countries is to show, if you like, a degree of resolve for dealing with Russia, show the instruments they have available, showing in fact how those can be sharpened if needed if things were to get worse in Ukraine or elsewhere on the periphery," Lough said.

Britain and the West lack a cohesive policy to counter the Russian threat, added Lucas.

"We need a joined-up response to Putin's joined-up threat which links money, propaganda, espionage, the use of energy, subversion, military saber-rattling, all these things," he said. "But certainly one of the weakest links is the bankers, lawyers and accountants in the West who help the Russian elite dispose of their money. They should be facing prosecution and extradition to the United States."

Much of that Russian money passes through banks in London. Lucas argues this trade must be tackled simultaneously as Britain fends off cyberattacks.

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MUOS-5 Secure Communications Satellite Reaches Orbit, Begins Pre-Operational Testing

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Nov. 4, 2016 -- The fifth Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) satellite built by Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) for the U.S. Navy has reached orbit, successfully deployed its solar arrays and antennas, and is beginning pre-operational, on-orbit testing.

Originally launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on June 24, MUOS-5 experienced an anomaly with its orbit raising propulsion system on its way to geosynchronous orbit on June 29. Out of caution, the Navy and Lockheed Martin engineering team immediately placed the satellite in a safe mode in transfer orbit as they investigated and examined their options.

"In the end, the Navy and Lockheed Martin engineering team were able to isolate the issue and develop a work-around using alternative propulsion," said Mark Woempner, director of Narrowband Communications Systems at Lockheed Martin. "Once we had a plan together, in early October we carefully re-started orbit raising maneuvers."

MUOS-5 completed orbit raising on Oct. 22, and successfully deployed its solar arrays for power generation and its antennas for mission operations on Oct. 30. The satellite will begin on-orbit testing before being turned over to the Navy for further testing and eventual commissioning into service.

For the Navy, MUOS-5 completes a network of orbiting satellites and relay ground stations that is revolutionizing secure communications for mobile military forces. Users with MUOS-capable terminals will be able to seamlessly connect beyond line-of-sight around the world and into the Global Information Grid, as well as into the Defense Switched Network. MUOS' capabilities include simultaneous, crystal-clear voice, video and mission data over a secure high-speed Internet Protocol-based system.

The MUOS network provides near-global coverage, including communications reach deep into polar regions. Once fully operational, the network will provide users with 16 times more communications capacity than the legacy system it will eventually replace.

The Navy's Program Executive Office for Space Systems and its Communications Satellite Program Office responsible for the MUOS program are based in San Diego. Lockheed Martin assembled and tested all five now-on-orbit MUOS satellites at its Sunnyvale, California, facility.

For additional MUOS information, photos and video visit: www.lockheedmartin.com/muos.

About Lockheed Martin

Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 98,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services.

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New heavy-lift carrier rocket boosts China's space dream

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 08:20, November 04, 2016

WENCHANG, Hainan, Nov. 3 -- China on Thursday launched its new heavy-lift carrier rocket Long March-5.

The rocket, which looked much "fatter" than other rockets of Long March series, blasted off at 8:43 p.m. Beijing Time from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in south China's Hainan Province. The payload was sent into the preset orbit about 30 minutes later.

The State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND) later announced the complete success of the launch.

The launch was delayed for less than two hours from the previously scheduled time. Tian Yulong, chief engineer of the SASTIND, told Xinhua that as it was the first launch of Long March-5 in a new launch site, many parameters needed to be debugged and various systems needed to be matched with each other.

"It was normal preparation work to ensure a successful first launch," Tian said, adding that it caught up with the launch window.

The major targets of the mission are to verify the design and performance of the new rocket and test the rocket's flight program, according to China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the developer of Long March-5.

A congratulatory letter sent late Thursday night by the Communist Party of China Central Committee, the State Council and the Central Military Commission hailed the new rocket as the pinnacle of innovation in carrier rocket science and technology.

Its successful launch has propelled China to the forefront of the world in terms of rocket carrying capacity, and marks a milestone in China's transition from a major player in space to a major power in space, the letter said.

The Long March-5 is a large, two-stage rocket with a payload capacity of 25 tonnes to low-Earth orbit and 14 tonnes to geostationary transfer orbit, the largest of China's carrier rockets. Its carrying capacity is about 2.5 times that of the current main model Long March carrier rockets.

According to the CASC, the rocket uses two kinds of fuel, kerosene/liquid oxygen as well as liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen, rather than highly toxic propellant, making it more environmental friendly and less expensive.

The rocket is about 57 meters long, with a takeoff weight of 870 tonnes and a thrust of 1,060 tonnes. It is equipped with eight liquid oxygen/kerosene rocket engines in four strap-on boosters, two liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen engines in the first stage and two relatively small liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen engines in the second stage.

Li Dong, designer-in-chief, said the rocket was the most complicated of the Long March series with over 100,000 components instead of tens of thousands of components in other Long March rockets. Scientists conducted over 7,000 tests during its 10 years of development.

With a 5-meter diameter core stage, Long March-5 is much thicker than China's previous carrier rockets with 3.35-meter diameter core stages.

Other launch sites in China are located in inland areas. Accordingly, transportation of rockets rely on railways, so that rockets cannot be too wide.

The heavy-lift rocket launched Thursday was taken to coastal Wenchang from the northern port city of Tianjin by ship in early September.

"It is not just a simple enlargement of the diameter, it raised new requirements of materials, manufacturing and equipment," said Lou Luliang, deputy designer-in-chief.

Lou said the new technology in Long March-5 would be used in other Long March series rockets in a bid to upgrade all rockets.

The heavy-lift rocket is a milestone for China to become a real space power in the world, said Li Dong.

Experts said the Long March-5 will also lay the foundation for future rockets with heavier payload capabilities.

The new rocket is of great significance as China's space program relies on the carrying capabilities of launch vehicle systems.

With the heavy-lift carrier rocket, China can build a permanent manned space station and explore the moon and Mars.

In 2017, China will launch the Chang'e-5 probe to the moon, which will bring lunar samples back to Earth aborad the Long March-5. The 20-tonne core module of its first space station will also be delivered by the rocket in 2018.

The rocket will launch the Mars probe around 2021.

It is the second launch from the coastal Wenchang center. On June 25, China's new generation medium-sized Long March-7 made its debut at the site.

On Sept. 15 China sent Tiangong-2 space lab into orbit, making a step closer to the dream of building the country's permanent space station.

On Oct. 17, the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft carried two Chinese astronauts to space. Two days later it docked with Tiangong-2.

The two astronauts will spend a month in the space lab and return to Earth, making it the longest-ever manned space mission of China.

Tian Yulong said at a press conference after the launch on Thursday that China is now developing a mega rocket with the capacity of sending up to 100 tonnes of payload to low-Earth orbit.

The mega rocket will probably make its maiden flight before 2030, Tian added.

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US to deploy THAAD missiles to South Korea in 10 months

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 4, 2016 3:20AM

The US military says it will deploy its Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to South Korea within eight to 10 months.

Vincent Brooks, the commander of US forces in South Korea, made the remarks in an interview with the Yonhap news agency on Friday.

Brooks said the missile deployment on the Korean Peninsula would have a deterrent effect against what he called North Korean provocations, according to the agency.

He also said the THAAD anti-missile system battery would be bigger than one deployed in Guam, an American territory in the western Pacific Ocean.

US and South Korean governments are also reportedly discussing for the deployment of rotating strategic weapons onto the Korean Peninsula as deterrence.

The United States and South Korea have agreed to deploy the THAAD system in the Southeast Asian country to protect it against North Korean threats.

China, North Korea's main ally, is strongly opposed to the plan, but has expressed its anger over North Korea's repeated missile and nuclear tests in the region.

Pyongyang says the tests aim to protect itself from the US military, which occasionally deploys nuclear-powered warships and aircraft capable of carrying atomic weapons in the region.

North Korea has been at odds with the South since the end of the Korean War of the early 1950s. An armistice ended all military hostilities between the two Koreas back then, but no peace deal ever ensued, meaning that, while the two countries are not at war, they are not at peace, either.

Although the US has a record of sending advanced weaponry to the Korean Peninsula amid heightened tensions between the two neighbors, such flights near the world's most heavily fortified border are unusual.

In September, two US B-1B strategic bombers flew over South Korea and then approached North Korea's border, according to US officials.

South Korean media reported that both bombers flew over a front-line US firing range located about 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the border.

One of the nuclear-capable supersonic bombers landed at Osan Air Base, near Seoul, the capital of South Korea -- a first in two decades. The four-engine bomber will stay at the base for an unspecified period of time.

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China Rules Out Selling its J-20 Fifth Generation Jet on Global Market

Sputnik News

17:11 04.11.2016

China is not considering putting its newest J-20 fifth-generation jet fighter on the international market, Air Force Commander General Ma Xiaotian told local television.

On Tuesday, China unveiled two Chengdu J-20 stealth fighters at the Airshow China-2016 in Zhuhai. The aircraft was developed by Chengdu Aircraft Industry Corporation. The J-20 conducted its first test flight in early 2011.

"We are not considering putting [the J-20] on the global market," Ma was quoted as saying by South China Morning Post.

At the same time, the commander said it was satisfied by the demonstration flight at the Zhuhai airshow.

"Of course I'm satisfied. It's a very good thing that our J-20 made an appearance here. We're speeding up its development," he added.

While the detailed specifications of the new jet have been kept secret, to all appearances the jets have been designed to match the stealth capabilities of fifth-generation fighter aircraft such as the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and Russia's Sukhoi PAK FA.

The deputy editor of Russian military magazine "Arsenal of the Fatherland" Dmitry Drozdenko told Sputnik that J-20 bears similarities to an experimental prototype for a fifth-generation fighter jet produced by Russia's MiG aircraft corporation, which was finally displayed last year.

"In my opinion, the machine is based on the Russian MiG 1.44. That plane was created to compete with the PAK FA at the preliminary design stage, and made its maiden flight in 2000. The Chinese plane is very similar. Although it hasn't been announced officially, the J-20 uses our AL-31F engine, developed by Salut, which the Chinese bought for half a billion dollars," he told Sputnik.

In addition to the J-20, China is also developing another fifth-generation jet fighter, the Shenyang J-31, but with a plan to attract foreign buyers.

Earlier, Russian Air Force official Sergei Kornev told RIA Novosti that the J-31 will be equipped with the Russian-made RD-93 engine. The J-31 conducted its maiden flight on October 31, 2012. Currently, the aircraft is still in development.

 Sputnik

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Iraqi troops push deeper into Mosul urban areas

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 4, 2016 6:44AM

Iraqi special forces have begun an assault into more urban neighborhoods of Mosul from its easternmost district in their latest push to drive Daesh terrorists from the city.

Troops recaptured six districts of eastern Mosul on Friday, expanding the army's foothold in the Daesh stronghold, a military statement said.

They took over the neighborhoods of Malayeen, Samah, Khadra, Karkukli, Quds and Karama, inflicting heavy losses on the Takfiri militants and raising the Iraqi flag over buildings, it added.

The advance began near the recently-recaptured Gogjali and Karama neighborhoods, with the commander of the special forces saying they had gained a foothold in the city quicker than expected.

"Instead of the days we had set aside for these battles, they ended in just a few hours," Lieutenant-General Abdul Ghani al-Assadi said.

A UN human rights spokeswoman said Daesh had transported 1,600 people from the town of Hammam al-Alil to Tal Afar near Mosul and reportedly told them they may be taken to Syria.

Daesh terrorists also launched one of their diversionary strikes, taking over a mosque and several houses in the town of Shirqat south of Mosul and killing seven soldiers and volunteer fighters.

Police said the Takfiri terrorists crossed from the eastern side of the Tigris river into the town at 3 a.m., taking over al-Ba'aja mosque and spreading out into alleyways.

Security forces declared a curfew in the town and said reinforcements from the Hashd al-Sha'abi forces were being sent to Shirqat.

Special forces breached the eastern boundary of Mosul earlier this week but since then they have not made significant headway deeper into the city.

The western side of the city remains largely open to a vast desert leading to Syria, which Daesh terrorists are still able to access in small numbers.

On Thursday, the commander of Iraq's largest volunteer force said his fighters were about to cut off the western supply route used by Daesh out of Mosul.

"Today, God willing, is the completion of the first stage of the Hashd operations - that is cutting the supply route of the enemy between Tal Afar and the Muhalabiya district, reaching to Mosul," Hadi al-Ameri said.

Iraqi troops managed to enter Mosul's limits on Tuesday for the first time since 2014, when Daesh began its terror campaign in northern and western Iraq.

Other Iraqi forces are also advancing on the city from multiple directions, but the eastern front has seen the quickest gains in an offensive launched less than three weeks ago.

Advances have been slower to the south, with government troops still 35 kilometers away, although they seized a handful of villages late last week.

Troops are now gearing up for urban warfare expected to take weeks, if not months, as they work their way neighborhood by neighborhood, going through a warren of dense buildings prone to booby traps and ambushes.

"The city is well defended and the fight is brutal. We were expecting this and that's what happened," said Mustafa Mudhfar from Iraqi Special Operations Forces.

Daesh ringleader Ibrahim al-Samarrai, who goes by his nom de guerre as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, urged his terrorists to fight on.

"Do not retreat  Holding your ground with honor is a thousand times easier than retreating in shame," he said in an unverified audio recording released on the Internet by his supporters on Thursday.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the militants had to choose between surrender and death as he vowed that Mosul would return to Iraqi control by year-end.

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Iraqi Army Regains Control Over Six Districts in Daesh-Held Mosul

Sputnik News

13:25 04.11.2016(updated 13:26 04.11.2016)

The Iraqi army has liberated six districts in the eastern part of the city of Mosul, occupied by Daesh terrorist group, the commander of the operation said on Friday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  According to media reports, Iraqi troops entered Mosul through the Karama district on Monday, just two weeks after the operation to liberate the city was launched.

"Anti-terrorist units liberated today the districts of Malayeen, Samah, Khadra, Karkukli, Quds and Karama in the east of the city of Mosul," Lt. Gen. Abdul Amir Yarallah said in a statement, as quoted by Alsumaria broadcaster.

According to the statement, the forces raised the Iraqi flag over buildings in the liberated districts.

On October 17, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi announced the start of a military operation to recapture Mosul from Daesh with the help of airstrikes by the US-led international coalition. According to media reports, about 30,000 Iraqi soldiers and 4,000 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters were initially taking part in the operation.

 Sputnik

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Welcome to the American leftist revolution  Crooked Clinton style



Article from stephen50right



The Democratic Party has morphed over the past 8 years into a hard core socialist party. The agenda of the Democratic Party is a leftist revolution, with them in control of all of us. Today's Democratic Party is democratic in name only. There is nothing democratic any longer about the Democratic Party.



First of all, let's dismiss the notion that Hillary Clinton is running alone for president. It is a Hillary and Bill Clinton ticket, and we all know it. It would be an extension of a Bill Clinton third term. Technically that is in violation of our Twenty Second Amendment. Leftists though couldn't care less about our constitution, except for the parts which benefit them.



Most of us are already aware of the massive corruption of the Clintons. Despite that, with less than 30 days until the election, Hillary Clinton retains a sizable lead in the polls. Sadly, it seems that the majority of voters either do not understand how horribly corrupt the Clintons are, or they simply don't mind the corruption because they believe that they benefit from it. These Clinton supporters such as Black Lives Matter, actually want the Clintons to be corrupt, to rob from others and then give some of it to them.



The Clintons are leftist con artists the likes of which may have never been seen before in world history, considering the magnitude of it all. They cleverly pull off their shenanigans under the guise of good intentions. The more corruption the Clintons display, the more support they get from many of their followers. This ploy is what many Republicans and Independents, and conservatives and moderates, aren't quite comprehending yet.



Think about what happens whenever there is a leftist revolution in a country. Those who support the leftists, don't care if the leftist leader is corrupt and living a life of ostentatious luxury, just as long as the supporters get their fair share of the revolutionary spoils.



For example, let's say the Clintons grab a 1% share of everything they take from hard working people and business owners. Clinton supporters are mainly comprised of those who either never work or never work hard. Not all Clinton supporters are incorrigible and lazy. Given the right incentives, they might start working or work harder. But for now, they like the Clinton corruption, figuring that they are dividing up the other 99% which is free money for them. They don't mind letting the Clintons keep a 1% commission for initiating and leading their leftist revolution in America.



The American leftist revolution, which has attempted to change America into a socialist society, actually began in earnest back in 2008 with the election of Barack Obama. Fortunately, Obama wasn't strong enough to fully implement it. However the leftists fooled a significant number of people into believing that their socialist ideas were successful, by rampantly borrowing and spending money. Doing this covered up their economic failures.



Over the past 8 years of Obama, the American economy has stagnated or declined in almost every measurable category. All this failure while accumulating a monstrous 20 trillion dollar national debt, which is a catastrophe waiting to happen. Like an unstable geological fault, a Hillary and Bill Clinton administration with their proposed massive borrow and spend policies, could trigger an earthquake in our economy of San Andreas type proportions.



The Clintons are all for expanding the failed socialist ideas of the Obama administration. If the Clintons were to gain enough power, they would continue their leftist quest to rob from hard workers and job creators, for larger handouts to their voting block. This would eventually mean the disintegration of everyone who lives here, and the collapse of our American way of life. It would be the end of our freedom and liberty as we now know it.



The Trump campaign continues to bash the Clintons for their numerous scandals. Which is well deserved considering the enormous scale of corruption that is involved. However this might not be enough to dissuade those intending to vote for the Clintons, which unfortunately right now appears to be the majority of the electorate.



What must happen for a Trump victory is to present the case that the Clinton ruling style of corruption and socialism, only works well until they run out of other people's money. With a 20 trillion dollar debt, that point of running out of other people's money is already here and getting worse.



A percentage of these misguided Clinton supporters must be convinced that they are far better off, in so many different ways, by voting for Donald Trump. They need to believe that our constitution is infinitely superior over a couple of corrupt leftists running for president. Otherwise, say hello to Queen Hillary, King William, Princess Chelsea, and others from the new royal family. Don't forget to bow or curtsy when in their presence, or they will get very angry with you.
IS Militants Ramp Up Killings, Abductions in Battle for Mosul

By Lisa Schlein November 04, 2016

The U.N. human rights office said Islamic State militants are increasing mass killings and abductions of civilians to use as human shields as the battle for Mosul in Iraq intensifies.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said Islamic State militants are continuing to forcibly transfer civilians to the city of Mosul and its outskirts to shield themselves from air strikes.

Over the past few days, it said s about 2,500 civilians were abducted from the town of Hamam al-Alil, with some people were being told they would be transported to Syria. The agency said it also continues to receive reports of mass killings.

Human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said last Monday IS, also known as ISIL, reportedly killed 50 of its own militants in the Ghazlani military base in Mosul for alleged desertion.

She said there also are credible reports of 380 people being killed on Wednesday in Mosul and the nearby town of Kokjali. "We have reports that ISIL militants are holding captive nearly 400 women from Kurdish, Yazidi or Shi'a Muslim communities in Tal Afar."

"We do not know how many of them belong to which of these minority groups ," added Shamdasani. "But, we are obviously very, very concerned because these are particularly vulnerable populations. They are women, they are minorities, and we are very worried about what might transpire."

Shamdasani said IS reportedly also has been forcibly recruiting very young children to fight in Mosul since the Iraqi government operation to retake the city began October 17.

"We do not have the exact numbers," said Shamdasani. "But, what we do know is that ISIL has been ordering the residents of Hamam al-Alil city, for example, to hand in, to surrender all children who are aged at least nine or 10 to the group. And, apparently, they have also been using loud speakers mounted at the back of pick-up trucks or the back of vehicles and threatening severe punishment for families that do not comply with their order."

The U.N. agency said it has received reports of civilians killed by airstrikes, including one on Wednesday that reportedly killed four women and wounded 17 other civilians in a neighborhood in eastern Mosul.

The agency is calling on the Iraqi government and its allies to conduct military operations in accordance with international humanitarian law and to take precautions to avoid and minimize loss of civilian life.

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S. Korean president says to accept investigation over scandal if necessary

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 10:34, November 04, 2016

SEOUL, Nov. 4 -- South Korean President Park Geun-hye said on Friday that she will accept an investigation into herself, if necessary, by prosecutors over a scandal surrounding Choi Soon-sil, the president's longtime confidante suspected of intervening into state affairs.

Park addressed the nation over the political scandal that sparked calls for her resignation, expressing her sincere apology once again after making her first public apology for it last week.

The embattled president said she will also accept a probe by an independent counsel into the case involving her close friend accused of peddling undue influence and meddling in government decisions behind the scenes.

If realized, Park would become the first South Korean leader who is investigated by prosecutors as incumbent president.

Under the country's constitution, a president is free from being criminally indicted by prosecutors during his or her presidency except for treason and insurrection charges.

Some legal experts, however, claimed that the president can face criminal investigation on condition that the criminal indictment is suspended until the end of presidency.

Park's acceptance of criminal investigation, though she added a precondition of "if necessary," came amid a snowballing public furor over Choi and former close advisors to President Park.

A Seoul court approved an arrest warrant last night for Choi on charges of fraud and abuse of power. The 60-year-old woman has been placed into emergency detention since Monday. She came back to Seoul on Sunday after staying abroad for about two months.

Prosecutors allegedly plan to seek an arrest warrant on Friday for Ahn Jong-beom, former senior presidential secretary on policy coordination suspected of helping Choi pressure conglomerates into donating tens of millions of U.S. dollars to two nonprofit foundations that Choi actually controls.

Chung Ho-seong, former presidential secretary, was urgently arrested by prosecutors on Thursday night as he is accused of having brought confidential documents for the president to Choi, including reports on defense, diplomatic and economic affairs.

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Scandal is all my fault: South Korea president

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 4, 2016 6:19AM

South Korean President Park Geun-hye says she is solely to blame for an ongoing crisis involving an old friend of hers who allegedly meddled in state affairs despite having no formal position.

Speaking in an emotionally-charged, televised address to the nation on Friday, President Park said the scandal was "all my fault," and apologized for "causing this disappointment and distress."

A political crisis gripped South Korea when media first alleged that Park's long-time friend and confidante, Choi Soon-sil, had had access to potentially confidential government data and was exerting undue influence on the president through shamanism and cult rituals.

"I blame myself for everything," she said on the brink of tears. "This is all my fault, and I take full responsibility."

She also said she was ready to be questioned by prosecutors investigating the case in a personal deviation from the South Korean constitution, which does not allow a sitting president to be prosecuted.

"If necessary, I am willing to sincerely respond to prosecutors' investigations," she said.

"I trusted my personal relationship, but was careless and not tough enough with my acquaintances," she said.

Park, nevertheless, rejected the allegations of witchery.

"There have been claims that I fell for a religious cult or had (shamanist rituals) performed in the Blue House, but I would like to clarify that those are absolutely not true," Park said.

Choi, 60, is being held in custody, and prosecutors have demanded charges of abuse of power and attempted fraud against her.

Opposition parties also accuse Choi of abusing her relationship with the president to coerce companies into donating millions of dollars to foundations run by her.

Park's relationship with Choi and her late father, Choi Tae-min, has long been a source of controversy but never before had the allegations of Choi's influence-peddling had the current impact.

Their relationship dates back to an era when Park served as acting first lady. The elder Choi, a shadowy religious figure, gradually became a mentor to Park after her mother was killed in an assassination in 1974 while her father, Park Chung-hee, was president.

Five years later, in 1979, Park's father was also murdered, by his spy chief, who later cited the younger Choi's relationship with Geun-hye as one of the reasons for the then-president's assassination.

The recent allegations involving Choi have sparked massive protests across the country, with protesters calling for Park's resignation.

Park has made several attempts aimed at quelling public fury over the controversy. She has sacked her prime minister and has replaced a number of key cabinet members and presidential aides.

The political scandal has sent her approval rating to an all-time low of just 5 percent, the lowest ever recorded for any South Korean president, according to a Friday survey by Gallup.

As many as 70 percent of the respondents to the poll said they wanted Park to step down.

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South Korean President Says Ready to Testify in Shadow Adviser Case if Necessary

Sputnik News

04:49 04.11.2016(updated 05:48 04.11.2016)

South Korean President Park Geun-hye has announced that she is ready to give testimony with regard to the scandal involving her friend and "shadow adviser" Choi Soon-sil, if necessary.

TOKYO (Sputnik)  In a state address aired on South Korean television on Friday, Park said she was "sincerely apologizing" and said she will take part in the investigation if need be. The South Korean leader admitted that the current difficult situation is her "mistake."

On Thursday, a South Korean court issued a warrant to arrest Choi Soon-sil who is suspected of using her friendship with the president to influence state affairs as well as embezzling funds from non-profit organizations.

On Wednesday, South Korean prosecutors asked a local court to issue an arrest warrant for Choi after placing her into detention earlier in the week.

On October 24, the JTBC television network reported that Choi allegedly received drafts of Park's speeches before they were publicly delivered, though she had never held a public post. The following day, Park officially admitted asking Choi for advice on speeches and public relations issues, and apologized for causing public concern.

The South Korean leader said on Friday that she has given orders to her administration and secretariat to actively cooperate with the investigation.

The scandal has already caused massive protests in the country. In order to calm the public discontent Park has appointed a new senior adviser for political affairs and a new chief of staff.

 Sputnik

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Over 500 IFV Crews Will Join Russian Eastern Military District

Sputnik News

20:54 04.11.2016(updated 20:55 04.11.2016)

Russia will send more than 500 trained crews of infantry fighting vehicles (IFV) to the units of the country's Eastern Military District later in November, the district's spokesman said on Friday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  All the servicemen had mastered their weapons skills and military medical training among other disciplines.

"More than 500 crews of infantry fighting vehicles will be sent to motor rifle units of Eastern Military District this November," Alexander Gordeev said.

He added that the crews had been prepared in training centers in Russia's eastern Zabaikalsky and Khabarovsk Territories.

 Sputnik

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Russo-Syrian humanitarian pause starts in Aleppo

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 4, 2016 9:28AM

Russia and Syria have started observing a unilateral humanitarian pause in Aleppo to give civilians and militants another chance to leave the city.

The 10-hour-long truce took effect at 0700 GMT (0900 local time) on Friday, the second such temporary truce announced in the city by Russia and Syria.

Drones filmed roadways and crossing points designated for the withdrawal of militants. Two corridors will remain open for the militants to leave eastern Aleppo and six others are reserved for civilians there.

A similar, three-day humanitarian pause ended last month. Moscow said Thursday Russia and Syria were giving the ceasefire another try in an attempt to "prevent senseless casualties."

Foreign-backed militants, however, have ignored the gesture and used the pause to launch one of their most ferocious offensives last week in order to break an army siege in eastern Aleppo.

Rocket fire on government-held districts killed at least 15 people on Thursday, bringing civilian toll in the area in recent days to 70, according to the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations special envoy for Syria, has said the militants had intentionally killed scores of civilians in the west of the city.

Meanwhile, Daesh news agency Amaq uploaded a video purportedly showing a rocket attack on a Russian helicopter near Homs.

Russia's Defense Ministry said a Russian helicopter made an emergency landing near the Palmyra city on Thursday and was shot at after it touched down, but the crew returned safely to the Hmeimim airbase.

A ministry official said the helicopter was delivering humanitarian aid some 40 km northwest of Palmyra, also known as Tadmur.

A mix of Takfiri militants, including the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as al-Nusra Front, and the extremist Ahrar al-Sham outfit, control the eastern flanks of Aleppo.

The Syrian army launched operations to reunite the government-held western part and the eastern section of Aleppo on September 22.

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Syrian Army Kills Senior Military Commander of Jaish Al-Fatah Coalition

Sputnik News

16:14 04.11.2016(updated 16:23 04.11.2016)

The Syrian army killed one of the military commanders of the Jaish al-Fatah militant coalition, which also includes fighters from al-Nusra Front, media reported Friday.

DAMASCUS (Sputnik)  According to the Lebanese Al Manar television channel, the Syrian government forces along with their allies killed Abu Salih Mekki in clashes with the Jaish al-Fatah fighters.

The broadcaster added that the militant leader was killed in the vicinity of the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor, controlled by the government forces and besieged by militants.

The so-called Arab Spring protests in Syria that took place in 2011 resulted in clashes between the government forces and opposition. Since then, the Middle Eastern country has been mired in a war between authorities in Damascus, numerous opposition factions, as well as terrorist groups.

Deir ez-Zor, a major Syrian eastern city, has been besieged by al-Nusra Front and Daesh, extremist groups outlawed in many countries, including Russia, since March 2014.

 Sputnik

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Syrian Army Repels al-Nusra Front Attack Near Damascus

Sputnik News

15:18 04.11.2016

Syrian government forces repelled an attack of by Jabhat Fatah al Sham terrorist group, previously known as al-Nusra Front, near Damascus, Al Mayadeen reported on Friday.

DAMASCUS (Sputnik)  According to the broadcaster, the attack took place in the town of Khan al-Shih, one of the militants' strongholds.

Militants are retreating from the area amid the Syrian army's advance, the broadcaster reported. The attack was reportedly an attempt to regain control of the town.

The attack took place amid the 10-hour Russia-backed humanitarian pause in the Syrian city of Aleppo. The pause was announced by Chief of Russian General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov and came into force on Friday.

The previous humanitarian pause was announced by Russia from October 20-22 to ensure the safe evacuation of civilians and unarmed militants from eastern part of the embattled city via eight corridors. During the humanitarian pause, al-Nusra Front terrorist group prevented civilians from fleeing the city, attacking them.

 Sputnik

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EU criticism of Kurdish MP detentions unacceptable: Turkey FM

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 4, 2016 6:14PM

Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has dismissed as "unacceptable" the European Union's criticism of the arrests of pro-Kurdish opposition lawmakers, saying the bloc is strongly supporting the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militant group.

"Most EU countries give very strong support to the PKK. We will not accept lessons from them on the rule of law," Cavusoglu told reporters in comments broadcast live on television on Friday.

Turkish security forces detained two co-leaders of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) along with a number of other lawmakers from the second-biggest opposition bloc in parliament early on Friday.

Selahattin Demirtas was arrested at his home in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir and Figen Yuksekdag at her residence in the capital, Ankara, as "part of an ongoing counter-terrorism investigation."

The EU on Friday voiced deep concern over the recent arrests of the two HDP co-leaders and at least 12 of its lawmakers.

"Extremely worried for arrest of HDP Demirtas and other HDP MPs," EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini wrote on her Twitter page.

She added that she is in contract with authorities and had called a meeting of EU ambassadors to be held in Ankara.

Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier also said the Turkish charge d'affaires should be summoned to discuss the arrests.

"The overnight arrests of politicians and lawmakers from the Kurdish represent a further drastic intensification of the situation in the eyes of the foreign minister," the German Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

It added that the failed coup attempt in Turkey in July "can't be a justification for silencing or even imprisoning the political opposition."

French Foreign Ministry spokesman Romain Nadal also slammed Turkish security forces for arresting the Kurdish politicians and said, "France calls on Turkey to respect the rule of law and fundamental rights" including democracy and freedom of the press.

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, meanwhile, said the arrests were "extremely worrying" and warned that the move can fuel the "already existing tensions" in Turkey.

"Turkish government should return to dialogue with the opposition. Peace process with the PKK is necessary for the country's further democratization and stability," she said in a statement.

Spokespeople for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Ravina Shamdasani also said the detention of pro-Kurdish lawmakers may go "beyond what is permissible."

"There needs to be a presumption of innocence when you're going to suspend somebody from their job. When you're going to detain somebody, you need to do this in line with due process," she said.

Tensions have been running high in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast since a ceasefire declared by the PKK collapsed in 2015 in the wake of Ankara's military operations against the Kurdish group's positions both inside the country as well as in northern Iraq.

In response to the military raids, PKK militants have stepped up their attacks against Turkish security forces over the past 18 months.

Turkey has also been under a state of emergency since the failed military coup against the government in mid-July. Ankara has launched a heavy-handed crackdown against those suspected of having links with the coup plotters.

Critics say the Turkish government is using the abortive coup as a pretext to suppress the opposition.

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Germany summons Turkish envoy to protest arrest of pro-Kurdish MPs

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 4, 2016 3:0PM

Germany has summoned Turkey's envoy in Berlin to protest the arrest of about a dozen pro-Kurdish lawmakers, amid domestic and international pressure against Ankara over its harsh crackdown.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned the Turkish government on Friday against using the fight against terrorism as a pretext to silence the opposition.

"The fight against terrorism must not be a justification for politically silencing the opposition, or even bringing them behind bars," Steinmeier said.

He also stated that Ankara's unjustified crackdown could have a detrimental impact on Turkey's relations with the European Union.

"I think now it is up to the ones responsible in Turkey to be clear about what direction it wants to go and what this will mean for relations of Turkey with the EU," he said.

The remarks came after Turkish police arrested Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, the co-leaders of the Peoples' Democratic Party, also known as the HDP, and nine lawmakers of the party earlier on Friday.

Ankara has accused the HDP lawmakers of spreading terrorism propaganda in support of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has even gone further and repeatedly described the HDP as the political wing of the PKK.

In reaction to the recent arrests, the PKK threatened to intensify its attacks in Turkey. Murat Karayilan, one of the PKK's senior commanders, said in a video message on Friday that it was "very important" for the Kurdish people to react against the detentions of the HDP lawmakers.

The Turkish government continues its crackdown on pro-Kurdish elements and individuals suspected of involvement in the July 15 coup attempt.

In the capital Ankara, police clashed with demonstrators protesting against the detention of the HDP lawmakers.

The police used pepper spray and rubber pellets to disperse the demonstrators.

There was tight security in the Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir, where pro-Kurdish demonstrators had gathered.

The pro-Kurdish protests are being held in defiance of a state of emergency in the country that bans demonstrations.

Ravina Shamdasani, the spokeswoman for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said on Friday, "We are concerned that, while they have declared a state of emergency and they have declared derogation of certain principles of the ICCPR, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, that the steps that the authorities are taking go beyond what is permissible, in these cases."

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini also said she was "extremely worried" about the recent crackdown in Turkey. She has called a meeting of the ambassadors of the European Union member countries in Ankara to review the situation.

Kati Piri, the European Parliament's rapporteur for Turkey, has criticized Ankara's crackdown, calling it a "very bad news from Turkey."

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FOCUS ON DEFENSE CAPABILITY DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA AND OCEANIA
Eight killed, 100 wounded as blast hits Kurdish-majority city in Turkey

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 4, 2016 5:20AM

At least eight people have been killed after a blast hit the center of Turkey's southeastern city of Diyarbakir, which has witnessed tensions between Ankara's forces and Kurdish militants.

Turkish media reported that ambulances were dispatched to the site of the blast in the city's Baglar district on Friday morning.

The blast took place near a police station, where pro-Kurdish lawmakers arrested hours earlier were taken, said a security source on condition of anonymity.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim announced the death toll and said some 100 others have also been wounded.

He blamed militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) for the attack, adding that a suspected militant was also killed in the incident.

In an earlier statement following the incident, the office of Diyarbakir's provincial governor said the explosion was caused by a car bomb, adding that PKK militants are believed to have been behind the attack.

In the early hours of the day, Turkish security forces detained two co-leaders of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) along with a number of other lawmakers from the second-biggest opposition bloc in parliament.

Selahattin Demirtas was arrest at his home in Diyarbakir and Figen Yuksekdag at her residence in the capital, Ankara, as "part of an ongoing counter-terrorism investigation."

Following the overnight arrests of the opposition figures, reports emerged of restrictions on nationwide access to online social media and messaging services, including WhatsApp.

The Turkish Justice Ministry on Friday defended the arrests and said they are in line with the law.

Yildirim also said a dozen HDP lawmakers were detained on Friday because they refused to give testimony in criminal proceedings.

He added that those officials who encourage "terrorism" must face legal proceedings.

Tensions have been running high in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast since a ceasefire declared by the PKK collapsed in 2015 in the wake of Ankara's military operations against the Kurdish group's positions both inside the country as well as in northern Iraq.

In response to the military raids, PKK militants have stepped up their attacks against Turkish security forces over the past 18 months.

This is while Turkey has so been under a state of emergency since the failed military coup against the government in mid-July. Ankara has launched a heavy-handed crackdown against those suspected of having links with the coup plotters.

Critics say the Turkish government is using the abortive coup as a pretext to suppress the opposition.

Ankara-Berlin tensions

In another development on Friday, Germany called in Ankara's ambassador in protest at the Turkish government's campaign of arrest against pro-Kurdish lawmakers.

Ankara "has the right to counter the threat of terrorism ... that should not serve as a justification to muzzle the opposition or to put them behind bars," said a source at the German Foreign Ministry.

On Thursday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out at Germany, saying the European country has turned into a safe haven for "terrorists," referring to opposition supporters.

Ankara blames US-based opposition cleric Fethullah Gulen and his wide-ranging support-base for the military coup attempt in July.

He said Germany has given asylum to both PKK militants, who have waged a three-decade insurgency for autonomy, and members of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (Devrimci Halk Kurtulus Partisi-Cephesi or DHKP-C), who have carried out armed attacks in Turkey.

Also on Friday, the Turkish justice minister also hit out at Berlin, accusing Chancellor Angela Merkel and her ministers of interfering in Turkey's justice system.

"Both Merkel and the government spokesperson thought they have right to opine on all ongoing cases," Bozdag said during a visit to a court in Ankara.

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PKK Leader Promises to Respond to Detention of Pro-Kurdish Politicians in Turkey

Sputnik News

21:58 04.11.2016(updated 22:01 04.11.2016)

Leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) Murat Karayilan on Friday promised to respond to recent detention of politicians from the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) by Turkish authorities.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Over the past 24 hours, co-chairs of the HDP  Figen Yuksekdag and Selahattin Demirtas  as well as over a dozen parliament members have been detained in raids that were conducted in a number of Turkish cities.

"We can give the necessary response on all fronts, and we will," Karayilan said, commenting on the recent detentions, as quoted by the Turkish Minute newspaper.

He added that this "attack" against the Kurdish people conducted by the ruling Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) would deepen the tensions between Ankara and the PKK.

Tensions between Ankara and the PKK escalated in July 2015 when a ceasefire between the sides collapsed over a series of attacks allegedly committed by the members of the group, which is outlawed in Turkey as a terrorist organization.

 Sputnik

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US Concerned Over Turkey Detaining Opposition, Imposing Internet Restrictions

Sputnik News

21:53 04.11.2016(updated 22:01 04.11.2016)

According to the US Department of State spokesperson, the US is concerned over Turkey's arrests of the country's opposition members and restrictions on the use of the Internet, however, the US is not reconsidering Turkey's membership in NATO.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The United States is concerned over the arrests of members of Turkey's parliamentary opposition, including lawmakers of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), and the government imposing restrictions on the use of the Internet, US Department of State spokesperson John Kirby said in a briefing on Friday.

"The United States is deeply concerned by the Turkish government detentions of opposition members of parliament, including the co-chairs of HDP, and by government restrictions on Internet today," Kirby stated.

According to Kirby, US Deputy Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has raised concerns with Turkey's Under Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs over Ankara detaining opposition members of parliament and imposing internet restrictions.

"He [Blinken] made clear that when democracies pursue legal action against elected representatives, they must do so in a manner that reinforces the public's confidence in a rule of law, and that restricting the internet undermines confidence in Turkey's democracy and economic prosperity." Kirby said.

However, the US is not reconsidering Turkey's membership in NATO despite concerns over the arrests of opposition politicians and restrictions on press freedom, Kirby added.

"We don't judge this just based on the fact that they're a NATO ally," Kirby told reporters. "Obviously, we care about the health of Turkey's democracy but we're not pinning this to their membership in the alliance."

 Sputnik

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Turkey Arrests 8 Lawmakers From Pro-Kurdish HDP Party Over Alleged PKK Ties

Sputnik News

21:27 04.11.2016(updated 21:46 04.11.2016)

A court in Turkey ordered on Friday to arrest eight lawmakers from the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) over alleged links to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), outlawed by Ankara, local media reported.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Earlier on Friday, 12 Turkish members of parliament from HDP were detained in Turkey. Initially, reports stated that the court ordered the arrest of five of them.

According to the Hurriyet newspaper, three of those 12 were released on bail, while the fate of one lawmaker was yet unclear.

In May, the Turkish parliament voted to strip lawmakers of parliamentary immunity. Pro-Kurdish members of parliament said the law specifically targeted them because of their political views and would lead to deprivation of immunity and prosecution on alleged links to PKK outlawed in Turkey.

Tensions between Ankara and Turkish Kurds escalated in July 2015 when a ceasefire between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) collapsed over a series of terrorist attacks, allegedly committed by PKK members.

 Sputnik

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Detention of Pro-Kurdish MPs 'Calls Into Question' Turkey-EU Ties  EU Parl't

Sputnik News

17:34 04.11.2016(updated 17:35 04.11.2016)

The detention of members of parliament from Turkey's pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) "calls into question" the future of relations between Brussels and Ankara, European Parliament President Martin Schulz said Friday.

BRUSSELS (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, dozens of the HDP members, including its co-chairs Figen Yuksekdag and Selahattin Demirtas, were arrested in raids carried out across the country.

"The course of action by the [Turkish] Government calls into question the basis for the sustainable relationship between EU and Turkey and the commitment of the Turkish Government to democratic values and to its European aspirations," Schulz said in a statement.

He also added that detentions send "a chilling signal about the state of political pluralism in Turkey."

In May, the Turkish parliament voted to strip lawmakers of parliamentary immunity. Pro-Kurdish members of parliament said the law specifically targeted them because of their political views and would lead to deprivation of immunity and prosecution on alleged links to Kurdistan Workers' Party's (PKK), outlawed in Turkey.

Tensions between Ankara and the Turkish Kurds escalated in July 2015 when a ceasefire between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) collapsed over a series of terrorist attacks, allegedly committed by PKK members.

 Sputnik

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Turkey Blocking German Construction Projects at Incirlik Air Base

Sputnik News

13:49 04.11.2016(updated 13:54 04.11.2016)

Turkish authorities have so far refused to permit construction of German infrastructure at Turkey's southern Incirlik Air Base, German media reported Friday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Berlin plans to spend some $64 million on reconstruction of its facilities at the Turkish military base, where German troops have been deployed.

According to Die Welt newspaper, Germany expected to start the construction activities earlier in the year. However, Turkey has not signed the documents necessary for the beginning of the process yet.

The permission has not been signed yet, as the Turkish side was involved in the "procedures necessary for the final approval," the German government said in response to a parliamentary request on the issue, as quoted by the media outlet.

German-Turkish relations deteriorated after the German parliament's decision in June to label the 1915 massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as genocide. Following this decision, Ankara restricted a delegation of German lawmakers' access to the air base. Nonetheless, in October, Turkey allowed the delegation to visit the German servicemen at the base.

The Incirlik Air Base hosts six German Tornado reconnaissance jets aircraft, as well as jets from the United States, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and Qatar participating in the US-led coalition against the Islamic State jihadist group, which is outlawed in many countries including Russia and the United States.

 Sputnik

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Turkey Targets Kurds More Than It Does Daesh in Syria - Kurdish Politician

Sputnik News

13:06 04.11.2016(updated 13:13 04.11.2016)

In an interview with Sputnik Turkey, Ahmed Seho, the co-chairman of the Movement for a Democratic Society of Kobani (TEVDEM), spoke about the situation in Kurdish-populated Rojava, the proposed federative makeup of northern Syria, the operation in Raqqa and TEVDEM's diplomatic ties with the international community.

"Ever since the start of the 2011 crisis in Syria, the Kurds have been trying to secure their rights as an important element of Syrian society. However, Turkey and its allies have been making every effort to prevent this from happening with all kinds of provocations and armed attacks. Just as the Kurds in Kobani fought to beat back the terrorists' attacks, Turkey helped train the jihadists in an attempt to crush the Kurdish resistance in Rojava," Ahmed Seho told Sputnik Turkey.

He added that after the city was freed from terrorists and many Kurds had returned there, Turkey and its allies went on to besiege the Afrin Canton and parts of the Jazira Canton.

When asked about the military situation in Rojava and regions under Kurdish control, he said that they were now working on a project to establish a federation of Northern Syria and Rojava.

"Our forces now control some 50 square kilometers of territory between al-Hasakah and northern Raqqa. Simultaneously, they are advancing from Manbij towards al-Bab. The Turks tried to check our advance by launching Operation Euphrates Shield. The Kurdish forces also control parts of Afrin and Sahba."

"We want all people living in this territory, regardless of their differences, to have a chance to decide their future as part of a federation and to keep living together just like they did for thousands of years, and enjoy equal rights," Ahmed Seho emphasized, adding that Kurdish children, just like everybody else, should be able to study in their mother tongue and feel free to speak it.

"We want a federative system that would guarantee these rights. The system we propose is a means of checking and balancing the system of a single state and a single flag," he said, adding that this project enjoyed the support of both Russia and the United States and that many European countries also believe this federative project could help end the war in Rojava and elsewhere in Syria," he continued.

Speaking about the operation now being prepared to retake Raqqa from jihadists, Ahmed Seho said that preparations were now complete and that the Syrian Democratic Forces had been supplied with advanced weapons to join the operation.

"We don't think Turkey should be allowed to take part in this operation on its conditions because it is up to the Syrian Democratic Forces to win this war. However, even if the Turks want to fight together with the SDF, there is still a chance they might want to stab us in the back, so neither side is willing to fight as part of a joint operation," he noted.

Ahmed Seho emphasized that Turkey doesn't really want to fight Daesh as the two had been in close contact with each other and never attack each other.

"By joining the operation to liberate Raqqa Turkey wants to resume its attacks on the Kurds, not Daesh and its sustained strikes on Afrin only prove that what Ankara really wants is to dash the Kurds' hopes, rather than destroy Daesh," Ahmed Seho said in conclusion.

The operation to free Raqqa, the Syrian city that has been Daesh's de facto capital since January 2014, is largely viewed as key to defeating the terrorist group, which still controls large areas in Syria and neighboring Iraq.

 Sputnik

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Turkey's Pro-Kurdish Party Deputies Arrested

By Dorian Jones, VOA News November 04, 2016

In Turkey, 12 HDP pro-Kurdish parliamentary deputies have been detained, including its co-leaders. The deputies are held as part of anti-terror probes into the Kurdish rebel group the PKK. The arrests have provoked national and international condemnation.

Turkish police detained the 12 parliamentary deputies of the pro-Kurdish HDP early Friday. Those in custody include the party's co-leaders, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag.

All were detained for failing to testify in terrorist propaganda investigations into their activities. Demirtas, appearing in court, refused to answer questions, saying he "would not be a puppet in this trumped up judicial theater." He was arrested following his statement.

The HDP is the third-largest party in parliament and in last year's general election secured more than 10 percent of the vote.

Condemnation

The detentions have drawn swift condemnation from Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the main opposition Republican People's Party, who warned it was taking the country in a dangerous direction. Ankara has faced strong criticism from the European Union and European countries. Human Rights Watch's Sinclair Webb warns history is now in danger of repeating itself.

"We saw this in 1994, with the detention of 4 members of the Kurdish party back then," said Webb. "They then spent the next 10, nine years in jail. That set back the trajectory of parliamentary democracy very fundamentally and now we seem to have gone back to that approach. It's a recipe for disaster."

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu promptly responded, calling EU leaders' reactions to the detentions "unacceptable" and accusing most EU countries of strongly backing the PKK.

"Most EU countries give very strong support to the PKK," he told reporters. "We will not accept lessons from them on the rule of law."

Many Western countries have been increasingly critical of Turkey's use of power since a state of emergency was declared after the failed coup in July. Turkey has arrested some 110,000 officials in the months that followed.

Selahattin Demitras and Figen Yiksekdag, co-leaders of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), were among the 12 members of parliament jailed Friday. Some of the lawmakers were later released.

Far-reaching consequences

Emma Sinclair Webb, chief Turkey researcher for the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, says the detentions could have far-reaching consequences.

"Detaining democratically-elected members of parliament without clear evidence of serious wrongdoing is a very fundamental assault on the right to political representation," said Webb. "The human rights consequences is very serious, we've already seen a major bomb attack in Diyarbakir, killing 8. Removing the possibility of representation and participation in political life for millions of voters has serious consequences for democracy and human rights."

Car bombs

Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast, was hit by a large car bomb hours after the detentions.

Officials blamed the bombing on the Kurdish rebel group the PKK, which is fighting the Turkish State. The government accuses the HDP of being linked to the PKK, a charge the party denies.

Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag defended the detentions saying they were in conformity with the law. There has been a series of small protests against the detentions in several cities. But those protests have been hindered by much of social media, including Twitter and Facebook being closed or severely curtained. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said the controls would remain in force until what he called "the terror threat" had passed.

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Blast Near Police Headquarters in Turkey Leaves 20 Wounded

By VOA News November 04, 2016

Local Turkish media report at least 20 people were wounded after a large blast rocked Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast region Friday.

The explosion took place outside the police headquarters in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir after authorities detained two co-leaders of the country's main pro-Kurdish party, along with 11 legislators in a major crackdown on leading Kurds.

The cause of the explosion was not immediately known. Local media reported that a car bomb could have caused the blast.

The state-run Anadolu Agency said several ambulances were sent to the scene.

A series of deadly bomb attacks has taken place in Turkey in the past 18 months. Reports say these attacks were carried out by Kurdish militants or members of the Islamic State group. No group has claimed responsibility for Friday's blast.

The two co-leaders of the country's main pro-Kurdish party, Selahattin Demirtas of the Peoples' Democratic Party and his co-chairperson Figen Yuksekdag, are accused of sharing propaganda for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), NTV television reported.

The arrests and special operations come as Turkey remains under a state of emergency after a failed coup in July.

Since the coup attempt, some 100,000 military, police, judiciary and education employees have been fired. Some 30,000 have been arrested for alleged links to the plot to overthrow the current government.

Thousands of judges have been detained under emergency rule, including two members of the Constitutional Court.

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UK government vows to challenge Article 50 court ruling

Iran Press TV

Fri Nov 4, 2016 12:57AM

The government of UK Prime Minister Theresa May says it will challenge a High Court ruling that has stipulated that the country cannot leave the European Union without the permission of the British Parliament.

Three senior judges ruled on Thursday that Parliament, not the government alone, can trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the formal process for beginning Brexit.

The ruling means May would not be able to trigger Article 50 without parliamentary approval. She had planned to start the process by March 2017 and bring it to completion in two years.

British Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Brexit Minister) David Davis said on Thursday 17.4 million Leave voters had given the government "the biggest mandate in history" during a referendum in June to leave the 28-nation bloc.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear the government's appeal in December.

"The judges have laid out what we can't do, and not exactly what we can do, but we're presuming that it requires an act of parliament and therefore both Commons and Lords," he said.

Parliamentarians are not likely to block Brexit outright, given that nearly 52 percent of Britons voted on 23 June to leave the EU.

Prime Minister May's spokesman said the government was "determined to continue with our plans," and had "no intention of letting" the ruling "derail Article 50 or the timetable we have set out."

Investment manager Gina Miller, who brought the case to the High Court, said the premier should make the "wise decision of not appealing" against the High Court ruling.

"The result today is about all of us. It's not about me or my team. It's about our United Kingdom and all our futures," she said.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said Britain should keep its "options open" on whether or not to leave the EU until after Brexit talks with the bloc are completed.

During an interview last week with BBC radio, Blair described the EU referendum as "a catastrophe," and said UK voters should be given the option of a second EU referendum.

May dismisses talk of early election

May's ruling Conservative Party holds a slim majority of 329 seats in the 650-seat Parliament. The results of a referendum are not binding, but overturning the decision would severely damage the government's public image.

The prime minister's official spokesperson on Thursday also dismissed talk of an early general election despite the ruling.

Asked about the possibility of an early election in order to increase the Conservatives' majority in Parliament, the spokesperson said, "No. Our position has been clear that there shouldn't be an election until 2020  and that remains the Prime Minister's view."

This is while current polls suggest May's party would return to Parliament with a significantly increased majority as the Labour Party popularity is quite low.

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UK Paying $125Mln to Bring New Air Defense Weapon to Navy in 2017  Ministry

Sputnik News

16:28 04.11.2016

A $125-million contract to deliver a new air defense system that will protect the UK Navy's ships and submarines has been awarded to several local firms, the UK Defense Ministry said Friday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Sea Ceptor is a key air defense missile system designed and built by UK-based arms manufacturer MBDA. It is an improvement on the previous types, such as Sea Wolf, and can engage targets more effectively at a longer range.

"Sea Ceptor will ensure the Royal Navy's Type 26 Global Combat Ships are protected as they, in turn, protect the UK and her interests," Defence Procurement Minister Harriett Baldwin said in a statement.

Tony Douglas, Defense Ministry's CEO in charge of defense equipment, described Sea Ceptor as the future of air defense.

The technology is planned for use on board the Navy's two new Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers during their overseas missions, as well as on nuclear deterrent Trident submarines.

Next year, Sea Ceptor will be installed on Type 23 frigates and will enter service on their replacement warships, called Type 26, in the mid-2020s.

 Sputnik

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Defence Secretary confirms summer start for Type 26 frigates

4 November 2016

The Defence Secretary has announced the steel cut for new Type 26 frigates will be in summer 2017, subject to final contract negotiations.

Michael Fallon made the announcement about the Royal Navy's next generation Type 26 Global Combat Ship during a visit to Govan in Scotland today.

The 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR15) set out the UK Government's commitment to build eight Anti-Submarine Type 26 Global Combat Ships. Today's announcement of a date for cutting-steel on the Type 26 is an important step towards securing billions of pounds worth of investment in British shipbuilding on the Clyde and securing hundreds of skilled jobs through until 2035.

During his visit to Govan, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said:

"Backed by Britain's rising Defence budget, the Type 26 Programme will deliver a new generation of cutting-edge warships for our Royal Navy at best value for taxpayers."

"The UK government's commitment today will secure hundreds of high-skilled shipbuilding jobs on the Clyde for at least two decades and hundreds more in the supply chain across Britain."

Showing further commitment to the Type 26 programme, the Defence Secretary also announced a 100 million contract with MBDA to deliver the Sea Ceptor self-defence missile system for the ship. The contract will support design work, allow equipment to be manufactured to equip the entire Type 26 fleet, and install the system on the first three ships. This follows a 183 million investment in the Maritime Indirect Fire System, the Type 26's 5-inch calibre gun earlier in the summer, bringing our total investment in the programme to 1.9 billion.

Secretary of State for Scotland, David Mundell, said:

"This is a momentous commitment for Scotland that will strengthen and secure our shipbuilding industry on the Clyde for the future."

"The UK government is backing jobs on the Clyde and in its shipyards  and this investment is only possible because of the broad shoulders of our strong UK defence budget."

The Defence Secretary also announced that the MOD plans to sign a contract shortly to start building of the two additional Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPVs) pledged to in the SDSR, both of which will be delivered in 2019, protecting jobs on the Clyde before the start of the Type 26 programme gets fully under way.

The MOD has been working with industry to ensure that they are able to deliver to time, cost and performance and secure the skills necessary to meet the challenge of delivering a world class anti-submarine warfare capability for the Royal Navy at value for money for the taxpayer. Detailed negotiations will now begin to finalise the contract.

This demonstrates the Government's continuing commitment to shipbuilding on the Clyde and real progress in delivering the Type 26 programme to meet the modern needs of Britain's Royal Navy.

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As we do every two years, the Danville Regional Foundations staff and board members recently went on a trip to see the possible in another community. We plan these visits so we can see community transformation first hand, meet their leadership, ask questions and bring back ideas that often lead to future initiatives and projects.

We choose locales that have a similar story to ours in the Dan River Region. They are cities and regions that were once prosperous with industries rooted in manufacturing and have thought critically about what they want to be in the future.

In the past weve visited Greenville, South Carolina, Lewiston/Auburn, Maine and Dubuque, Iowa. This year, we explored Owensboro, Kentucky. Demographically, Owensboro, which includes three adjoining counties, has a population of 109,875 and a median household income of $34,467, compared to Danville, which includes Danville and Pittsylvania County, that has a population of 106,651 and a median household income of $31,027. Adding to this, the Dan River Region also includes Caswell County, North Carolina with a population of 23,719 and a median household income of $38,318.

Geographically, there are similarities in that Owensboro is isolated from major economic centers.

For so long we were kind of isolated, Owensboro Mayor Ron Payne has been quoted as saying. We were kind of on a cul-de-sac. You had to be going here to get here. If anything was going to happen in this community, we were going to have to do it ourselves. We decided to reinvent this community, and thats what were doing.

Sounds familiar, doesnt it?

As part of the Western Kentucky Coal Fields Region, Owensboro was home to numerous coal mines and large supplies of tobacco and corn crops lead to the production of chewing tobaccos and distilled spirits.

General Electric operated a facility in Owensboro for 65 years, employment peaking at 6,600 in 1996. The facility closed in 2010.

During our time in Owensboro, we visited with public school leaders, listened to members of their robust young professional network talk about their community involvement and learned from their city and county leadership why in 2010 it was named by BusinessWeek as the Best Place to Raise Kids; in 2012, placing fourth on Area Developments Top 20 Southern Cities; and in 2013 being named an All-America City.

How did they do it?

Starting more than 25 years ago, they began to focus on being excellent and distinct, rather than cheap and bland.

In addition to important economic development projects, one key part of the answer can be found in their downtown area within a development called Smothers Park and Promenade, a definite wow space.

Smothers Park and Promenade is a nearly six-acre open public space that fronts the Ohio River and includes a sprawling playground, a veterans memorial, promenades, three fountains with water shows every 15 minutes, a cascading waterfall, and seating where residents and visitors can enjoy the overlooks and views.

A highlight of the space is Lazy Dayz Childrens Playground and Spray Park  a completely handicap-accessible facility that in 2015 was named the Best Playground in the World by Landscape Architects Network.

Thats the best not just in Kentucky, but the world!

During the summer, there is an annual Friday after 5 series with free outdoor concerts held every Friday night. This is a 16-week signature festival that brings in more than 50,000 visitors each season.

Owensboro has a clear vision of what progress looks like to them: To be a family-friendly place and attract more heads in beds. This is their unified vision for their future and it is critical to how they make public investments.

They have clearly linked business recruitment, business retention and tourism development together to make the most impact in their downtown. Each of these complements each other rather than competes.

Owensboro understands that being a cool place to live is a key recruiting strategy, but it is not enough. A cool place to live must focus on families, rather than just millennials.

Right now, led by Danville, this community has an opportunity to re-imagine our riverfront downtown just like Owensboro did. This past week, a public meeting was held to hear from the public about what they want developed at the new River Front Park located between the former White Mill and the King Memorial Bridge.

As Ive said many times before, other than our people, our river is our best and most distinct asset. Historically, rivers were economic drivers as goods were moved from one port to another. In the present, rivers, as part of well developed parks planning and outdoor tourism strategies, can drive a piece of our economy again.

This region is well on our way to building an infrastructure of park assets. We have the Riverwalk Trail, Anglers Park, Ballou Park, new parks in Pittsylvania County and a master plan being developed for parks and recreation in Caswell County, as well as an assortment of neighborhood gathering places throughout the region. But aside from the Riverwalk Trail, none of these spaces reside downtown.

This is an opportunity to build an open air, public space alongside the Dan River in our downtown that we cannot afford to waste. Its not time to think small; we must dream big.

So what does a wow place look like here?

Lets start by thinking differently about outdoor recreation on our river. Instead of simply a required part of government infrastructure, it can be part of a larger strategic plan providing spaces for our community to convene, to celebrate and to enjoy the unique assets that make the Dan River Region, the Dan River Region.

We need more spaces to put in canoes and kayaks for water sports. We need spaces for fishing and for learning from the eco-system of the Dan River. We need overlooks and art.

We need a world-class park that serves a magnet for this region, building on the success of the new YMCA as a model.

What do we want to be? What is our vision? Ill start by saying I want to see a world-class park where children can play safely, families have fun together, tourists want to visit and members of our community regularly meet and have conversations.

This is our opportunity to dream big and articulate a unified vision. What can you imagine along the Dan River?

Lets make it happen.
Voters in the 5th District will replace retiring congressman Robert Hurt, of Chatham. We can think of no better candidate to replace Hurt in Congress than Republican Tom Garrett.

Even if Democrats win the White House and the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives probably will remain in Republican hands. Someone who recognizes the role of compromise and cooperation in the political process will be able to navigate the partisan divide that has slowed the pace of governing to a crawl in Washington.

On just about everything on the political spectrum there is wiggle room, Garrett said at the candidate debate last month in Danville. Garrett was speaking about his record in the Virginia Senate as a patron of bipartisan legislation against student restraint and changing the Standards of Learning tests.

Compromise is strength in politics. Its the way things get done in a republic whose citizens have sharply different views about the issues.

Were endorsing Garrett for Congress in part because he understands the importance of getting things done.

No party has a monopoly on good ideas, he said in a recent interview. Throwing out the baby with the bath water is never a good idea.

If elected, Garrett promises to be who I am. Today he is a state Senator from a rural district, a lawyer, a former Commonwealths Attorney, a veteran of the U.S. Army  and as a self-described constitutional conservative.

Hes also a Republican. Like many Republicans this year, though, Garrett has had to deal with some of the controversial things presidential candidate Donald Trump has said. While Garrett supports Trump, he publicly criticized him after comments Trump said about women in a 2005 recording surfaced.

In a move that may surprise some, I join my opponent in condemning the words of Donald Trump in the strongest possible manner, Garrett said in a statement, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. We need to join together to protect our daughters so that they are respected in both word and deed.  There is no place for rhetoric such as this in the national discourse.

That sounds like a man who wont be twisted off course by the partisan winds that blow through Washington. We endorse Tom Garrett for Congress, and we urge the voters to send him to the House of Representatives Nov. 8 to work for the 5th District.
To the editor:

I am a Catholic. I have always tried to be a good and faithful one. It always has puzzled me why most of Catholic priests and bishops, for that matter, refuse to be involved in the politics of elections from their pulpits.

They are protected by the First Amendment to say what faithful Catholics should do to perform their civic duty to vote and vote for the party or candidates that closely are in line with Catholic teachings. I know that they do this because of the Johnson amendment to the tax laws means that they could lose their tax-exempt status if they engage in partisan politics.

There are two very basic issues that I strongly believe in and that is why I am voting for Donald Trump on Tuesday. These are the issue of the Supreme Court justices and the issue of abortion.

The Supreme Court issue is lifetime! Whoever wins this 2016 election can appoint either conservative or liberal justices. Hillary Clinton surely will appoint liberal justices. If that should happen, our First Amendment right of free speech and our Second Amendment right to own and bear arms will be in jeopardy. If the liberal justices gain the majority in our highest court they will surely ensure that liberal issues will win in all cases brought before them. That would be the end of the USA that we know and love.

The issue of abortion makes me sick! The act of killing an innocent unborn human being in the womb of a woman abhors me! It is against the 5th Commandment that God gave that says: Thou shall not kill. What really gets me is this late-term abortions that Democrats believe in.

I dont pretend to know a lot of Catholic tenets, but Catholics can disagree with one another or even with their priests in certain issues but still remain in good standing with the Catholic Church (prudential judgment), but there are those included in the so-called Intrinsic Evil deeds that should never be committed, promoted and enabled by Catholics. They do so by voting for candidates that believe in these intrinsic evil deeds.

Father John Lankeit of the Saint Simon and Saint Jude Cathedral in Phoenix, Arizona, said in his homily on Oct. 2 that if Catholics still vote for a candidate that you know full well promotes and believes in abortion and says that it should be available anytime, your soul is in great danger and you should not receive Holy Communion.

By voting for this candidate you are enabling the killing of innocent boys and girls! Father John Lankeits homily was very powerful. I urge all Catholics to watch his video before Nov. 8 and vote for Donald Trump.

RODOLFO V. BABIERA

Danville
City Lawsuit Costs Data

in the corner of Union Square Park in New York City. Kids love to scramble up the six-foot-high stainless steel structure, called the Mountain, and then slide back down. The only problem is, the thing gets hot in the sun. Really hot. One afternoon in 2012, the metal surface was so warm that a young girl climbing on it suffered severe burns to her hand from the scorching hot steel. Her father filed a claim against the city, which was later settled for $24,500. (The city has since added a shade structure to shield the dome from the sun.) But that wasnt the only injury in Union Square Park that year. City records show three other families also filed claims in 2012 holding the government liable for injuries on the playground -- one of the highest tallies in the citys parks system.The next year, a falling tree struck a man in the park, resulting in a $15,000 payout from the city. A few months after that, a police tow truck allegedly hit a teenage boy crossing an intersection near the north end of the park, prompting another filing.Claims and lawsuits are an everyday occurrence in the Big Apple, where about 9,500 cases were filed against the city last fiscal year. In all, New York paid out $720 million in judgments and claims in fiscal 2016, which amounts to about $84 per resident. Thats only about 1 percent of the citys total expenditures, but it represents much-needed funding that could be directed elsewhere. For instance, its more than the combined budgets of the Parks and Recreation Department and the Department of Buildings.Steep legal bills arent just an issue in New York. In large cities across the country, court challenges can be a drain on municipal coffers. To gauge the fiscal impact of claims and lawsuits,requested financial data from the two dozen largest cities in the U.S., the first such national review of comprehensive legal costs. Twenty cities responded, and their combined financial information paints a picture of just how significant these claims costs can be. All totaled, the cities paid out more than $1.2 billion in their last fiscal year.Its a big problem, and its not getting any better. These days, local governments face a whole host of potential liabilities. Heightened tensions around accusations of police misconduct have led to multimillion-dollar settlements. Outdated infrastructure, from crumbling sidewalks to antiquated water and sewer systems, may result in injuries or property damage. Some cities have taken on new responsibilities in recent years or expanded existing efforts, such as offering additional health services. Those added public services inevitably bring extra risks. Moreover, cities say, plaintiffs attorneys are constantly coming up with new theories of litigation and new ways to sue. On top of all that is a culture that many people say has shifted away from taking personal responsibility, leading to a litigious -- and costly -- reality for cities. The acceptance of personal responsibility seems to be dying out somewhat, says Terri Evans, president of the Public Risk Management Association. Somebody has to pay for [lawsuits], and that somebody is everyone.While lawsuits and their associated expenses can be costly, they also represent a vital opportunity for cities to fix problems and improve public services. A few jurisdictions are starting to analyze their claims data or strengthen risk management practices aimed at reducing the types of incidents likely to cost cities money down the road. But in cities that do nothing, the costs associated with lawsuits could eat up a bigger and bigger share of the budgetary pie in the years to come.on lawsuits against cities has centered on high-profile cases alleging police misconduct. This summer, for example, Chicagos inspector general found that the city paid $146.3 million for police misconduct and other public safety claims in 2013 and 2014. Even some cities unscathed by police controversies report theyre paying more for reinsurance premiums as a result of payouts elsewhere. Police department cases are costly: In New York, they account for about one-third of the total tort claim payouts and judgments in recent years. But theyre only one part of a much larger cost calculation for cities.Another area of growing concern is aging infrastructure. Injuries sustained on New York City sidewalks or roadways, for example, two of the more frequent claims filed against the city, amounted to $55 million in judgments and settlements in fiscal 2015. Water infrastructure can be a problem too. Some cities are frequently hit with claims from sewer overflows. A few, like Chicago and Philadelphia, have been the subject of class action lawsuits alleging lead contamination in drinking water.Ass analysis shows, cities legal bills vary widely. While average annual payouts over the past three years exceeded $35 million in seven cities, nine others averaged less than $5 million. The lowest total spenders were Fort Worth and Columbus, Ohio, whose total yearly costs were less than $3 million.A number of factors can drive up cities costs, some of which are out of their control.Local governments that operate public hospitals, housing authorities, airports, utilities and other higher-risk entities can expect to face bigger payouts. Cities vulnerable to natural disasters also incur greater risks. Hosting large-scale events -- festivals, concerts, conventions -- can add to the bottom line. Densely populated urban centers tend to face much higher liability costs simply because they maintain services or infrastructure that are more fraught with risks: Things like subway accidents are not an issue for smaller towns. When smaller jurisdictions do get hit with a big lawsuit, however, it can be devastating. The town of Hillview, Ky., filed for bankruptcy last year after it was slammed with a judgment over a property deal that amounted to $15 million with interest.Costs can fluctuate a lot from one year to the next, as even a single major settlement can spike expenses significantly. San Jose, Calif., is currently appealing an $11 million police excessive force verdict that, if upheld, would roughly equal the citys payouts for the three most recent years combined.Payout amounts depend a great deal on state law. States maintain different tort laws around whats known as sovereign immunity, prohibiting all or certain types of lawsuits from being levied against governments. The type of trial venue also matters: Citizen juries tend to award higher damages than judges do. States also may set a cap on damages. In one Philadelphia suburb, for instance, a jury in 2011 awarded $14 million to a high school student who had lost her leg after being run over by a school bus. But the award was later reduced to $500,000, the maximum permitted under a Pennsylvania law that hadnt been revised in over three decades. As of 2015, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 34 states limit the total damages recoverable from judgments against states, with many of those laws also applying to local governments.Paying out claims is expensive, but so is fighting them in court. Los Angeles, for instance, spent $40 million on litigation costs last fiscal year, while much smaller San Jose spent $7.5 million. New Yorks current budget includes $7 million for hiring expert consultants for major cases set to go to trial.Then there are insurance costs. Large cities typically dont purchase liability insurance, with the exception of excess insurance or limited policies for select public authorities. Most cities reviewed reported no more than a few million dollars in annual insurance costs. Of course, those that do purchase more comprehensive policies wont pay as much in payouts. San Diego spends the most of any city reviewed, averaging $8.4 million a year.The vast majority of localities nationwide participate in government risk pools, viewed as a more cost-effective alternative to private insurance companies. Costs per individual risk generally havent increased, but total costs of insuring localities have climbed over the longer term, says Ann Gergen, executive director of the Association of Governmental Risk Pools. That might be, in some cases, because governments expanded services, or tort caps were increased or lifted.are an issue for many cities across the country, but New York is the epicenter. Its payouts topped $720 million in fiscal 2015, more than all the other 19 cities combined. Its law department employs an army of more than 700 attorneys, and the city currently faces more than 21,000 pending cases. There are several reasons why New York attracts so many lawsuits. Obviously, its a dense urban environment with a population that dwarfs other cities. But the city also happens to be in a state with several laws that can drive up cities legal costs. For one thing, theres the issue of trial venue: Injury and property damage cases brought against the state are held in claims courts where judges render verdicts, but cases brought against New Yorks cities are typically held before citizen juries, generally a less favorable venue for government. Then there are things like the scaffold law, which holds contractors and property owners 100 percent liable when workers fall from ladders or scaffolds at construction sites. New York is the lone remaining state with such a law on the books, and it can significantly raise costs. Consider bridge projects that span from New York to New Jersey: According to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, total claim amounts between 2002 and 2012 were more than twice as high on the New York side.We have the most permissive courts in the nation, and its not even close, says Tom Stebbins, executive director of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York. The state, home to the most lawyers per capita, has resisted legislative proposals to modify its tort laws. Many people attribute that to the influence of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association, a group that Gov. Andrew Cuomo once called the single most powerful political force in Albany. (The association did not comment for this story.)Being the nations payout capital isnt a distinction that New York City relishes. Thats why, over the past few years, it has launched an aggressive approach to cut those costs.Part of that means pushing back against what the city sees as meritless lawsuits. In past years, New York often agreed to pay out small settlements just to make cases go away. Elizabeth Daitz, who heads the police departments legal unit, says it got to the point to where protesters would taunt police officers at rallies, telling them about settlements theyd received and threatening to sue again. One settlement in early 2015 drew particular ire from officials. A man wielding a machete had threatened police officers and was shot in the leg during an altercation; the man then accused the police of wrongdoing. The city agreed to a $5,000 settlement, even though the man had plead guilty to menacing an officer. Mayor Bill de Blasio vowed to make changes. Unfortunately, the reality is, if we stand and fight, we will be spending a lot of time in court, using up a lot of lawyers, and it will cost a lot of money, he told reporters after the settlement was announced. But its worth it to end the madness of these frivolous lawsuits, which are not fair to the city, and not fair to the officers involved.Indeed, New York has devoted new resources to fighting these types of suits. The tort division of the citys law department budgeted for nearly 200 additional positions this year. The police department similarly created a new unit in early 2015 of roughly 40 attorneys and investigators to respond to claims.But its not just about fighting penny-ante payouts. New York has engaged in a major effort to get smarter about the kinds of risks that lead to lawsuits in the first place. In 2014, City Comptroller Scott Stringer launched ClaimStat , a data-driven initiative intended to serve as an early warning system for city agencies by detecting patterns in claim filings. By mapping sewer overflow claims, for example, Stringers team found several blocks in Queens prone to flooding. The office has now issued a series of alerts drawing attention to problems such as potholes, playground injuries and traffic accidents involving pedestrians.ClaimStat staff are also working with the police department to better respond to and address claims. Now, when a new claim is filed, police investigators immediately start working to assess its merits, searching for witnesses and surveillance video. They analyze claims data in real time, attempting to pinpoint recurring issues in precincts throughout the city. Early results of the new initiative are encouraging: Police misconduct filings dipped 13 percent in fiscal 2015, the first year-over-year decline in at least a decade. Local advocacy groups are supportive, but say the city could still do more to address underlying concerns. The city should be focused less on lawyering, says the New York Civil Liberties Unions Christopher Dunn, and more on trying to focus on the [police] misconduct that produces lawsuits.It will take years for New York to realize the full effects of the changes. Cases may linger for decades; three of the citys top settlements in fiscal 2015 were from cases dating back to the 1980s. But the initiatives are expected to cut costs. Accordingly, the citys latest budget cut the law departments allotment for claims and judgments by 11 percent over the next five years. On the whole, says Daitz, New York will no longer be known as a place to file a claim and make a quick buck. The attorneys on the plaintiffs side are getting the message that this is not a lottery ticket. The days of an easy payday are long gone.may prove effective, not every city is in a position to hire a phalanx of new attorneys and build a whole new data-analysis system. But there are a number of other things a city can do to bring down its claims costs. For one, its important to establish a hardline reputation for taking on frivolous lawsuits, says Darren McKinney, communications director for the American Tort Reform Association. The plaintiffs lawyers will file meritless lawsuits in cities where there will be little resistance, he says. The impulse is to settle early on. Chicago and Los Angeles, he says, are viewed as easier targets relative to other cities.Cities could also incentivize individual departments to help cut down on risks. Comptroller Stringer has suggested New York consider holding individual departments more responsible for the claims filed against them. Departmental budgets would have to share in paying for settlements, but theyd also get a share of any savings attained from implementing better risk management practices. One of the few jurisdictions where claim and judgment payouts come directly out of individual departments budgets is Los Angeles County. It certainly makes them pay attention to it, says Steven Robles, the countys risk manager. In most cities, settlements and judgments come out of the general fund. The lone exception in New York is NYC Health and Hospitals, the agency that operates the citys public hospitals. It saw a noticeable decline in medical malpractice filings when it began shouldering some of the costs of medical malpractice liabilities in 2001, followed by another drop once it took over management of its cases in 2006.Still, cities will never be able to tame costs if they dont address the underlying problems that prompt lawsuits, says Joanne Doroshow, who heads the New York-based Center for Justice and Democracy. Cities will pay out money but will ignore the root cause in some cases.Even well-meaning actions can have unintended consequences down the road. Evans of the Public Risk Management Association cites how, years ago, cities started planting more trees as part of Tree City USA campaigns. Now that those trees have matured, their roots have in some cases damaged sewer lines or destroyed sidewalks. Shifts in budget allocations may also produce dramatic effects: With limited funding for tree pruning, New York saw a steady rise in the number of tree-related claims starting around 2006. The city then roughly doubled its tree pruning budget starting in 2013; claims since then have dropped to near historic lows.In general, says Evans, cities must focus more on considering risk when launching new initiatives, and they should involve risk management personnel early in the planning stages of any new projects. Were trying to communicate more to upper-level management how important it is to involve risk management on the front end rather than the back end, Evans says. Its much more difficult to know something is happening until after theres been a tragedy.Thats a direction cities seem to be moving toward. In Chicago, the inspector general this year called for the city to adopt a comprehensive risk management program to mitigate its claim costs. And in one 2013 study by the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the State University of New York at Albany, municipal officials said they were devoting more resources to risk management activities and protections than they had in the past.If cities really want to get serious about chipping away at that $1.2 billion number, it likely will require an all-of-the-above approach. Theyll need to fight lawsuits rather than just settle out of court -- and they must telegraph that to would-be claimants. Cities will need to focus on the underlying causes of lawsuits, not just the suits themselves. And experts also say they may need to think about better incorporating risk management practices across their departments. If they dont take steps like those, cities will almost certainly face an ever-rising tide of claims.Read the full report or select a city below to view its data for the three most recent fiscal years:
Photo courtesy of Ford.

State and local governments have joined the White House in a broad-based agreement to boost adoption of electrified vehicles by committing to purchase more plug-in electric vehicles for their fleets.

The 24 state and local governments said they will add 2,500 electric vehicles as part of the national effort to combat climate change and reduce dependence on foreign oil, according to the White House. The Obama administration is establishing electric-vehicle charging networks on about 25,000 miles of highways in 35 states, the White House announced on Nov. 11.

This announcement comes after the federal government committed to purchasing 500 plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) in fiscal-year 2017 and invited state and local governments to join its efforts. The Department of Transportation (DOT) and Department of Energy (DOE) will also work to increase EV charging infrastructure across the country.

Six states are participating in this initiative, including California, Minnesota, Montana, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. Among them, Washington made the largest commitment to purchase 250 plug-in electric vehicles. Montana's State Energy Office will swap out two hybrid vehicles for plug-in hybrids, the state's first-ever PHEVs.

Several other local governments have committed to procuring EVs and installing charging infrastructure:

The City of Atlanta will add 300 charging stations at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport by the end of 2017, spend $3,000 per vehicle for charging infrastructure installation through December 2018, and educate city employees about EVs and charging stations.

The City of Columbus, Ohio, which won the DOT's Smart Cities Challenge grant, will procure 200 PHEVs for its fleet with the appropriate charging infrastructure over the next three years. It will install 1,600 Level 1 charging stations and 300 Level 2 charging stations around the region, and add 448 PHEVs to its private fleets.

The City of Los Angeles will purchase 352 zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs), with 200 going to its police department. It will spend $22.5 million on charging stations by 2019, including an additional 500 new charging stations for the public.

New York City will invest in at least 30 solar-powered charging carports for the city fleet with some public access. It will also implement 200 alternative power units and batteries in city ambulances to reduce idling and enable the units to charge up through land-based chargers.

The City of Seattle will purchase 100 EVs through 2017, with a target of 400 electrified vehicles by 2023, for a fully electric light-duty fleet. It will also install 200 charging stations for fleet vehicles in 2017 and 2018, so the city can reach 400 charging stations by 2023.

Additional local governments participating in this initiative include:

The City of Fort Collins, Colo.

The City of Denver

The City of Detroit

The City of Pittsburgh

The City of Portland, Ore.

The City and County of San Francisco

Arlington County, Va.

Boulder County, Colo.

Monterey County, Calif.

Sacramento County Municipal Utility District, Calif.

San Mateo County, Calif.

Sonoma County, Calif.

Ulster County, N.Y.

To coincide with this announcement, the DOT is establishing 48 national EV charging corridors along highways. The DOE will publish two studies to evaluate national EV deployment scenarios. One will identify the optimal number of charging stations to meet demand, and the second will provide best practices for fast-charging installation, including power availability and capital and maintenance cost considerations.
(TNS) -- LOS ANGELES  Henrik Fisker is returning to the electric vehicle market with a high-cost, high-mileage, battery-powered supercar.The acclaimed designer said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that he will team with a major manufacturer to produce a mainstream, affordable electric car too  possibly by selling the manufacturer his new battery technology, and possibly by using one of the manufacturers existing car platforms.The EMotion, whose name Fisker said reflects the emotional connection with the consumer, will be produced at the Michigan plant that is currently building the Fisker-designed Force 1, a $268,000 gasoline-powered car that the Los Angeles-trained auto builder is selling through his VLF Automotive. (The first of a limited run of 50 Force 1s is just now being delivered to its first customer, in Texas, Fisker said.)The new vehicle, which could be shown as early as mid-2017 and begin production not long after, will be sporty and spacious, Fisker said.The vehicle will include a large curved front windscreen pushed forward, diving into a low bonnet. The rear features an integrated spoiler and aggressive functional diffusor to aid aerodynamics, which will help the car achieve a 161 mph top speed and a 400-mile electric range, he said.It will also recharge faster than any electric car currently on the market  and have longer battery life, he said.That will be possible, Fisker claimed, because he and a group of engineers have hit on radical new battery technology that reduces weight and size while increasing power density. The EMotion will use a new battery technology using graphene, with battery packs produced by Fisker Nanotech, a joint venture between Fisker Inc. and Nanotech Energy Inc.At the same time, he said, they have reconfigured the layout of the electric power train, and found a new way to integrate the battery into the vehicle.More power per size allows for more usable space in the car, which Fisker said would offer more legroom than many of the best European luxury cars.The EMotion will be equipped with hardware that will allow fully autonomous driving when approved and released by a soon-to-be-announced partnered supplier, he said.Fisker said the car will be a low-volume production  a few thousand a year  but would be followed by a second, more affordable vehicle that could be manufactured in the hundred thousand a year range.This approach is different from Fiskers previous production plan, which fizzled after problems with the Fisker Karma hybrid led in time to a bankruptcy and sale of assets.A Chinese company ended up owning the Karma name, which has resulted in a new Karma Automotive, currently building electric Revero sedans in a plant in Californias Moreno Valley.Fisker said he took several lessons away from the previous iteration.The two learnings Ive taken from starting Fisker are that you have to be in charge of your own battery and testing and all that, the designer said. And the other is with manufacturing. Its very tough to do high-volume manufacturing, for a startup company. The Fisker Karma was a low-volume vehicle with expensive tooling. This time we want to deploy most of our capital on the high-volume vehicle.Fisker declined to say whose capital hell be spending.The new vehicle will feature dihedral butterfly front and rear doors  somewhat akin to the doors on a McLaren, and a cousin to the troublesome falcon wing doors on the Tesla Model X.Fisker said his engineers have been working in stealth mode for a long time on the doors, and that they should not present the same difficulties the falcon wing doors did for Tesla and its co-founder, Elon Musk.Indeed, Fisker had words of admiration for his luxury EV competitor.You can go the safe way, or you can innovate and do something new, he said. Elon decided to do that, and I think thats great. Someone has to take the first risk.Fisker was more tight-lipped about the specifics of his new battery technology, except to praise its potential. Saying more, he said, would tip off his rivals.There are a lot of new startups here in California, so we have to keep it confidential, Fisker said.But they exist, right?We have a secret battery plant, somewhere in California, that is already producing the new cells, Fisker said. No one knows where it is. Very few people on my team are allowed to visit it.
California Government Operations Agency Secretary Marybel Batjer took the main stage at the Code for America Summit in Oakland on Wednesday, Nov. 3, and shared the story of how the state decided to shift to agile for procurement and development of the California's child welfare system.Batjer reiterated, as she has often done during the past 12 months, that the state had been working on the RFP for a traditional waterfall IT procurement process for a period of three years, and that the document was on its seventh version. There were deep reservations that if it were to proceed, the project would be over budget and unsuccessful.Batjer credited Department of Social Services Director Will Lightbourne for going to Code for America experts to get a second opinion, which quickly led to California instead choosing agile for the child welfare project."We needed an environment where it was OK, if not good, to step out on a limb, to take a calculated risk to make government more valuable to the end users  the people of California. Maybe that sounds simple, but in the world of government, that's difficult," Batjer said.Batjer noted that change has been slow to come, as California had committed in the 1990s to modernize its child welfare system, and the state was fined $30 million about 14 years for not meeting standards."The [current] IT system we have for child welfare is functional  just barely  and not at a level the federal government requires. And it hasn't been since 1993," Batjer said.Changing longstanding processes isn't easy, Batjer said, and there's naturally an instinct in government to hold on to the status quo."Government is so averse to change that the risk of the status quo is seen as better than taking the new ways of doing things," she said. "When projects have failed, government  whether the Legislature or the executive branch  have added rules in place to try to stop the failure. Unfortunately these rules often just bring more restrictions that can lead to more failure."The decision to switch to agile for the child welfare system came together in a matter of weeks, with backing from GovOps, the Department of Technology, Department of Finance, Legislature, county welfare directors, and the Governor's Office."It was a clear this was an opportunity we could not pass up," Batjer said. "The right project, the right people were willing to take the risk because we knew that the status quo would possibly provide a costly, unsatisfactory project that failed everyone. The stakes were just too high. Frankly, our children needed better."She said that the early parts of the agile work have been "very successful," and she's been told that a product will be hands of users within a one-year time frame.GovOps is taking its lessons  such as user-centric design and delivering "minimally viable products" upfront  and applying them to other projects, whether they're waterfall or agile. She specifically mentioned the upcoming design and development of a "track and trace" IT system for California's medical cannabis industry."No more 'one and done.' Instead the product will evolve based on user needs," she said.
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ABC News(WASHINGTON) -- Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump delivered this week's Republican response and asked voters to head to the polls on Election Day.



"Im asking for your vote and your help in electing a Republican majority in Congress, so that we can finally change this broken system and Make America Great Again," he said.



Trump also discussed his contract with voters and what he plans to do if he is elected president.



Read the Republican's full address:



For the past seventeen months Ive travelled across this nation and met the amazing people of our country. Their hopes have become my hopes and their dreams have become my dreams.



This is not just a campaign, its a movement. Its a once in a lifetime chance to take our government back from the donors and the special interests, and return the power to you, the American people.



Fifteen days ago, I proposed my Contract with the American Votera 100 day action plan to bring real change to Washington. We need change so badly. If we win on November 8, and elect a Republican House and Senate, we can finally deliver the change the American people deserve.



My Contract includes a plan to create 25 million new jobs. We will cut taxes on the middle class Americans by 35 percent, and we will repeal and replace the total disaster known as ObamaCare  it doesnt work.



We will also immediately fix our terrible trade deals and stop the jobs from leaving our country. My Contract includes a pledge to end illegal immigration, and end it rapidly, cancel federal funding for sanctuary cities, and suspend the admission of Syrian refugees into our country. Theyre coming in by the thousands, and Hillary Clinton wants to increase that by 600 percent.



We will rebuild our badly depleted military, and take care of our great, great veterans.



We will give every parent in America the right to send their kids to the school of their choice, including millions of low-income African American and Hispanic children who have been failed, so longfor generations in factby the Democratic politicians like Hillary Clinton. They just havent been able to do the job. Theyve treated African Americans and Hispanics horribly in so many ways.



We will undertake a national effort to reduce crime and poverty, and bring jobs and safety to our inner citiesfinally, at last.



We will restore the Constitution and nominate Supreme Court Justices who will do the same.



At the center of my Contract is my plan to end government corruption. Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency of the United States, and if she were to win it would create a constitutional crisis like no other. Shes under multiple federal investigations, has committed many crimes, including perjury, and shes now facing the prospect of a federal indictment.



Its time to close the history books on the Clintons, and to open a bright new chapter focused on the great citizens of our country.



Im asking for your vote and your help in electing a Republican majority in Congress, so that we can finally change this broken system and Make America Great Again. And when I say great, I mean great for everyone. Thank you very much.



Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Samsung is notoriously known for one of the slowest OEMs to release major firmware updates since the company has so many phones, and the phones have so many software modifications. The Korean phone maker is soon launching a beta program (at least for users in the US and UK) with the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (presumably the S7 as well) where selected users will be able to install the Android Nougat update for beta testing.

With a beta program, customers (willing) can try out the latest software, complete with bugs and glitches to in exchange for reporting any inconsistencies in the software. The XDA Thread explains that the APK posted on the thread is to sign up for the Samsung Beta Program in the UK.

Granted, the beta program has not yet been officially announced by Samsung yet, however XDA-Developer member mariolcela started a thread where you can download the Galaxy Beta Program app which was visible on the Galaxy Apps store from our US-carrier branded Galaxy S7 edge. It installed fine but the app kept showing us server errors. Users in the UK are reporting they are able to successfully register at this time.

XDA Thread | Via 1 | Via 2
Unreturned Samsung Galaxy Note7 units in New Zealand will soon be disconnected from mobile networks

If you are a Samsung Galaxy Note7 owner in New Zealand who is yet to exchange/return their unit, you are strongly advised to do so withing the next couple of weeks. Reason being, starting November 18, your unit will not be able to access any cellular network in the country.

"As part of our commitment to ongoing safety, Samsung would like to make our customers aware of plans to discontinue network service for Note7 devices," the company said in a statement.

"From the 18 November, customers still using the Note7 will no longer be able to connect to any New Zealand mobile network services to make calls, use data or send SMS messages."

According to the country's Telecommunications Forum chief executive Geoff Thorn, most of the Galaxy Note7 units sold in the country have been returned or exchanged, but "a few hundred" units are still in use.

Source | Via




Haiti - FLASH : Haitian killed a Dominican military officer





Friday in Los Rieles Copey, municipality of Manzanillo (province of Monte Cristi), a group of Haitians illegally entered Dominican territory across the border, after having refusing to obey a Dominican military patrol, attacked the patrol, fatally wounding of several stab wounds, Captain Manuel Belliard Felipe, 49, and wounding his colleague Sergeant Major, Jeremias Mateo Espinal, 34, stealing a gun and other property.



Rushed to a clinic in Monte Cristi, the Captain Felipe did not survive his injuries.



In the evening, the Ministry of Defense Dominican reported that CESFRONT (Cuerpo Especializado de Seguridad Fronteriza y Transporte) had arrested three of the five undocumented Haitians, the authorities identified as the perpetrators of the assassination of Captain Felipe. The alleged perpetrators were handed over to the prosecutor of Monte Cristi for legal suites.



SL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Politic : A Haitian delegation in Ivory Coast





In the framework of South-South cooperation, from 5 to 13 November 2016, a large Haitian delegation, composed of members of several ministries, the legislative power and members of civil society, accompanied by technical assistants of the European Union will be in Abidjan (Ivory Coast) for an one-week study mission.



Part of the budget support program for the consolidation of the State (SBC) of the European Union, this trip aims to equip the responsible of the administration of preparation tools and evaluation and monitoring of the different budget support programs financed by the European Union.



This mission is an example of "South-South cooperation" between the Caribbean and Africa - supported by the "North" - since it creates spaces for exchange of practice in the conduct of national cooperation programs on State reforms.



A preparatory meeting was held on Friday, November 4, 2016 during which the program manager of the Delegation of the European Union, Maarten Vergauwen, and the Coordinator of the Office of the National Authorising Officer (BON), Edouard Excellent, met with members of the Haitian delegation.



In his speech, Maarten Vergauwen, who represented the Ambassador of the European Union, Vincent Degert, stressed the importance of mutual exchange that should guide participants "both countries are quite similar and each can learn from the experience of the other. Haitian participants have been encouraged to share their own experiences and to imbibe the Ivorian experience so that they can share to their return to their respective structures," he also stressed the need to acquire "a broad knowledge of the mechanisms of budget support to reach a fruitful structured dialogue between the executive, legislature and civil society on the ongoing reforms in the Haitian State."



Composition of the Haitian delegation :

The Haitian delegation is composed of representatives of the Office of National (BON), the Ministry of Economy and Finance, of Ministry of Planning and External Cooperation; of Ministry of National Education; the Office of Management and Human Resources; of the National Commission of the Reform of Finance Public-Governance economic to the Executive; of Senate and the Chamber of Deputies; of Group Croissance for the Civil Society and technical assistants of the European Union.



HL/ HaitiLibre


























Haiti - News : Zapping politics...





NOTICE: Scholarships for disabled young people

You are young, you have a disability, you have completed your secondary education and wish to study to the Alliance informatique, Skynet or to the Ecole de commerce Julien Craan, then come immediately to fill your scholarship application form to the Office of the Secretary of State for the Integration of Persons with Disabilities (BSEIPH) located at # 13 Bis Rue Senghor, Nazon. Note that the number of scholarships is limited !



J-B Aristide in Gonaives

For the reopening of the electoral campaign, Maryse Narcisse, the presidential candidate under the banner of the Fanmi Lavalas party, went to in Gonaives Lakou Souvenance, accompanied by former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Later, she went to a ceremony at Pont Rouge.



The Elections threatened in the Central Department

In the Central Plateau, for almost a month an important claim movement of teachers and principals who claim their letters of appointment and salary arrears, threat the holding of elections at the department level. Abel Descollines, Senate candidate in the Centre fears that if this situation continues, the Central Plateau may know a Sunday, November 20 without elections or severely disrupted, especially as the protesters intend to amplify their movement and forcing the closure of private schools in the department.



Moise Jean-Charles campaigning

Thursday, Moise Jean-Charles, presidential candidate under the banner of "Pitit Dessalin" platform has resumed his campaign in Grand-Goave. Then he will continue its campaign in the coming days in the Nippes and West before ending in the North.



Expansion of the PAP International Airport

Friday at the National Palace, the de facto President Privert, accompanied by the Prime Minister, Jean-Charles, met with State authorities and representatives of international institutional partners around the rehabilitation and expansion of the International Airport Toussaint Louverture (AITL), the second meeting in the same week https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19108-haiti-news-zapping-politics.html



Privert speaks again of the PIDIH

The de facto President Jocelerme Privert, met representatives of several institutions around the "Identification and Documentation Program of Haitian Immigrants" (PIDIH). Took part in the meeting, Pierrot Delienne the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wilfrid Bertrand, Director General of the National Archives of Haiti (ANH), representatives of the Ministry of Interior, DGI, and of Office of Immigration and Emigration. This meeting curiously coincides with the claims of Haitian sugar cane cutters of the neighboring Republic exasperated to wait for of documents paid for almost 2 years but never received... https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19107-haiti-dr-the-caneros-sent-4-608-copies-of-document-requests-to-privert.html



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-18265-haiti-politic-the-chancellor-promised-passports-to-haitians-in-the-dr.html



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Kat Jamieson is an author and tastemaker who has been sharing her passion for lifestyle topics such as fashion, decor, travel, and cooking since 2011 on her blog: With Love From Kat. Her first book, Blended, was recently released in October. In this book, Kat shares a seasonally inspired and holistic approach to cooking, as well as her take on entertaining and living well. She shares more than 125 recipes that have helped her to feel energized, vibrant, and balanced. Aside from these nourishing recipes, Kat also discusses how she has obtained a truly balanced and...
Born in 1962. Studied at Seoul Univ., Free Univ. Berlin, then Chung-Ang Univ. Being received favorable criticism from various film festivals through his short films "A Day" (1999), he made his debut to feature film with "The Twins" (2005). His second feature "The Railroad" (2006) and the third one "Twenty Again - Movie" (2015) were invited to Busan. Park Heung-shik is the husband of Park Kok-ji.
Published on 2016/11/04 | Source

Added episode 12 captures for the Korean drama "Shopping King Louis" (2016)

Advertisement

Directed by Lee Sang-yeob-I

Written by Oh Ji-yeong-I

Network : MBC

With Seo In-guk, Nam Ji-hyun, Yoon Sang-hyun, Lim Se-mi, Kim Young-ok, Kim Sun-young,...

16 episodes - Wed, Thu 22:00

Also known as "Shopping King Louie"

Synopsis

"Shopping King Louis" is a romantic comedy drama about shopping King Louis and Ko Bok-sil. Louis was a man who would buy anything and everything with money until he met Ko Bok-il, an angel with no wings and experiences love he can't buy with money.

Broadcast starting date in Korea : 2016/09/21

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New Hospital Safety Grades Released, Revealing How Prioritizing Safety Can Save Lives

From Leapfrog Group, October 31, 2016

Washington, D.C., October 31, 2016  Hospital safety breakdowns, including patient injuries, accidents and infections, kill over 200,000 Americans each year, making these errors the third leading cause of death in the U.S. But not all hospitals are alike. The Leapfrog Group today announced its Fall 2016 release of the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade, a program which assigns A, B, C, D and F letter grades to more than 2,600 U.S. hospitals bi-annually and is the gold standard measure of patient safety in the United States. Of the 2,633 hospitals evaluated, 844 earned an A, 658 earned a B, 954 earned a C, 157 earned a D and 20 earned an F.

When ranked by percentage of hospitals earning an A, several states stood out for significant improvements over time. North Carolina has climbed from number 19 in the country in the Spring 2013 Safety Grade to number five in the Fall 2016 Safety Grade. Idaho has also made continuous strides, moving from number 45 in Spring 2013 to number two in Fall 2016.

Other states with notable improvements include Utah, ranked number six in the Fall 2016 Safety Grade, and Vermont, ranked number eight. For the first time, the top ranked state is Hawaii, while the bottom-ranked states, each with no A hospitals, are Alaska, Delaware and North Dakota, along with Washington, D.C.

According to Leapfrog President and CEO Leah Binder, In the fast-changing health care landscape, patients should be aware that hospitals are not all equally competent at protecting them from injuries and infections. We believe everyone has the right to know which hospitals are the safest and encourage community members to call on their local hospitals to change, and on their elected officials to spur them to action. States that put a priority on safety have shown remarkable improvements.

The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is calculated by top patient safety experts, peer reviewed, fully transparent and free to the public. A full description of the data and methodology used in determining grades is available online at www.hospitalsafetygrade.org. Visitors to the website can also find videos, tips for patients and a Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade mobile app for IOS and Android devices.

For more information about the Safety Grade, as well as individual hospital grades and state rankings, please visit www.hospitalsafetygrade.org.

Read more at the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade website >

LINK: Hawaii Hospital Rankings

#1. Hawaii, 66.70 percent

8 A-Rated Hospitals

4 C-Rated Hospitals

A-GRADE HOSPITALS

Castle Medical Center

640 Ulukahiki Street

Kailua, HI 96734-4498

View the full Score

* * * * *

Hilo Medical Center

1190 Waianuenue Avenue

Hilo, HI 96720-2095

View the full Score

* * * * *

Kaiser Foundation Hospital - Moanalua Medical Center

3288 Moanalua Rd

Honolulu, HI 96819-1469

View the full Score

* * * * *

Pali Momi Medical Center

98-1079 Moanalua Road

Aiea, HI 96701-4713

View the full Score

* * * * *

Straub Clinic & Hospital

888 South King Street

Honolulu, HI 96813

View the full Score

* * * * *

The Queen's Medical Center

1301 Punchbowl St

Honolulu, HI 96813-2499

View the full Score

* * * * *

The Queens Medical Center West Oahu

91-2141 Fort Weaver Road

Ewa Beach, HI 96706

View the full Score

* * * * *

Wilcox Memorial Hospital

3-3420 Kuhio Highway

Lihue, HI 96766-1099

View the full Score

* * * * *

C-GRADE HOSPITALS

Kona Community Hospital

79-1019 Haukapila Street

Kealakekua, HI 96750-7920

View the full Score

* * * * *

Kuakini Medical Center

347 North Kuakini Street

Honolulu, HI 96817-2381

View the full Score

* * * * *

Maui Memorial Medical Center

221 Mahalani Street

Wailuku, HI 96793-2581

View the full Score

* * * * *

Wahiawa General Hospital

128 Lehua Street

Wahiawa, HI 96786-2036

View the full Score
Compiled by Jesse Wood

High Country Press asked the Watauga County GOP, Watauga County Democratic Party, Western NC Greens and the Libertarian Party of NC why voters should vote for their partys respective presidential candidate: Republican Donald Trump, Democrat Hillary Clinton, the Green Partys Jill Stein and Libertarian Gary Johnson.

Below are unedited responses, starting off with some of the lesser-known candidates.

A Pitch for Green Party Presidential Candidate Jill Stein

WNC Greens Co-Chair Tracy Mann, co-chair at Western NC Greens

Editors Note: Although Stein is on the ballot in 45 other states in the United States, she is not on the ballot in North Carolina. She is, however, a valid write-in candidate in N.C.

Dr. Jill Stein is the presidential candidate for the US Green Party in the 2016 General Election. She is a Harvard-trained medical doctor who turned to environmental activism, and then to politics, when she directly linked how pollution negatively affects peoples health. Dr. Steins platform slogan is People, Planet & Peace Over Profit, which is a unique statement, especially in this current election season.

The Green Party has Four Pillars which guides all Green Party actions: Peace, Ecology, Social Justice, and Democracy. These are common sense things that most people agree with and want in their lives.

We all want to be safe from war and terrorism. We all want to have clean drinking water. We all want our families to be safe and valued. We all want our voices to be heard in our government and electoral systems. Each of these things affect every American, making Dr. Stein the candidate of the 99%.

Dr. Steins platform actively endorses these Four Pillars and offers solutions to the problems we face in our communities and nation. In regards to peace, Dr. Stein does not want to escalate war and will address terrorism by ending the sale of bombs and weapons to other nations. She would establish a foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law, and human rights. The Green New Deal that Dr. Stein proposes addresses both Ecology and Social Justice by ending a dependence on fossil fuels through building a clean and renewable energy system which will also create new jobs for Americans who are looking for work. Dr. Stein sees jobs as a right for citizens. Dr. Steins commitment to these matters has already shown in her participation with protesters at Standing Rock against the North Dakota Access Pipeline. She recognizes the dangers that the pipeline poses to the drinking water and agriculture. She also recognizes that the indigenous peoples there are suffering human rights violations through the brutal treatment by those working to protect the builders of the pipeline. Regarding Democracy, Dr. Stein wants to ensure that people who want to vote can vote, ensure that people know who they can vote for by opening the debates, and create a truly representative democracy by utilizing ranked-choice voting so that people will not be afraid to vote their conscience any longer. Additional detailed information on these positions, as well as other issues, can be found at jill2016.com.

The Western NC Green Party would like to thank High Country Press for reaching out to the Green Party for information about our candidate Dr. Jill Stein, especially since the Green Party has been blocked from the debates and not covered regularly by the mainstream media outlets, despite the fact that Americans can cast a vote for her in 48 states (including DC). In North Carolina, the Green Party obtained enough signatures to ensure that Dr. Stein is a valid write-in candidate and that a write-in for her will count. Right now the Green Party does not have ballot access in North Carolina, but 2% of the vote will give the Green Party ballt access so that Green Party candidates can run in down-ballot races and get engaged with locally. Also, 5% of the national vote will mean the Federal Election Commission must classify the Green Party as an official minor party, which will result in federal funding for the Green Party candidate in 2020.

A Pitch for Libertarian Presidential Candidate Gary Johnson

Brian Irving, Vice Chair of Libertarian Party of NC

Libertarians Say Vote Your Hopes, Not Your Fears

In 2016, its becoming increasingly clear to most Americans, especially young voters, that they no longer must choose between the lesser of two evils. In fact, they cannot choose a lesser evil. Neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton is fit for the office of President of the Untied States.

Americans are frustrated and angry. As they should be. Theyre ready to end business-as-usual in government.

Libertarians offer something different. We ask you to vote your hopes, and not your fears.

Despite being largely ignored by the old mainstream media, and shut out of the debates, more and more voters see Libertarian Gary Johnson as a viable alternative to voting for evil.

Gary Johnson was elected governor as a Republican twice in a state controlled by Democrats. He vetoed wasteful spending 250 times, cut taxes 14 times, reduced the size of government without firing anyone, and left the state with new highways, bridges, schools, hospitals and a billion dollar spending without raising taxes.

He and his running mate Bill Weld, a two-term Massachusetts governor, have more experience governing than Trump and Clinton combined.

The establishment parties are calcified, cancerous husks, as Teddy Roosevelt described them, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day.

In Washington and in Raleigh, a small group of political operatives and leaders in both parties have colluded in the systematic dismantling of the freedoms guaranteed under our Constitution. Theyve kept our nation in a perpetual state of war and increasing unsustainable debt. They are the ones we should be fighting, not each other.

We the people will never agree on all of the small things, but lets agree on the big thing: our leaders have failed us. Worse, they have betrayed us. If we want a different America we have to start with new leadership.

Lets put our parties and differences aside while we solve our problems together. Together we can stop out of control spending and end the wars. Together we can restore our industrial might. Together well rebuild our own roads, bridges, schools, and hospitals, instead of building them for countries half a world away.

Be libertarian with us on Nov. 8 and lets try something different. And in four years, if we the people decide we dont like peace, prosperity, and freedom, we can always vote tyranny back into office again.

For more information about Gary Johnson, go to JohnsonWeld.com. For info on Libertarian candidates in North Carolina, go to LPNC.org/2016_candidates.

A Pitch for Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump

Watauga County GOP Chair Anne-Marie Yates

The American voter can trust Donald Trump to make hard choices and act in the best interests of America.

Hillary Clinton is out for Hillary Clinton. From the massive amounts of money received by foreign citizens to the Clinton Foundation to her attacks on the FBI Director for investigating her hidden emails, Hillary Clinton puts Hillary Clinton first. She has proven she will say or do anything to obtain the power of the Presidency.

Donald Trump isnt a career politician. He is not a smooth talker, and isnt part of the Washington politicians. He is a businessman and a problem solver. Donald Trump knows how to think big and can make hard choices. He has a proven track record of surrounding himself with the best and the brightest, and has an incredible eye for talent in selecting those who work for him. If they dont get the job done, he has the toughness to fire them.

Donald Trump also has the toughness to stand up to foreign leaders and dictators. Does anyone think President Trump would have paid the Iranians tax dollars for hostages? Would he let them continue to develop a nuclear weapon unchecked? Of course not. The same cannot be said of Hillary Clinton.

If you want a problem-solving, successful individual who is ready to lead America to greatness, you should vote for Donald Trump. If you want someone who doesnt believe in the greatness of America and wants to continue the failed policies of the past, theres unfortunately a candidate for that.

While Donald Trump isnt perfect, he is a leader who will restore American exceptionalism.

A Pitch for Democrat Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton

Watauga County Democratic Party, Chair Diane Tilson

When asked why I and many Watauga County Democrats support Senator Clinton, I immediately thought of all the sound policies she supports. A womans right to make decisions regarding her body, tuition free access to public colleges and universities and universal access to Pre-K, a pathway to United States citizenship, expanded Medicare, Medicaid, and affordable prices for lifesaving drugs, investing in infrastructure to create jobs, and asking the very wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share of taxes.

But I dont think you can consider what she supports without also thinking about what she doesnt support. Making fun of a man with disabilities, attacking parents of a fallen American hero, belittling POWS, denigrating Mexican Americans and immigrants, encouraging religious bigotry, and throwing in with countries who would like nothing better than having influence over the President of the United States.

A lack of respect for our citizens, the laws that govern our elections, and our right to vote, without interference from those in power, has been in evidence throughout the national election, and is especially noticable in our local election. Electing a President is an enormous responsibility, but the decisions we make about those who serve us locally and in our state affect us on a daily basis.

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It is a business and should not have any kind of tax support nor exemption



Think about the 7 million euros yearly which will be the running price paid by taxes from Helsinki. This means that every one of us who pays taxes in the capital will be paying a membership fee for this museum without having been asked for it. A membership fee of over 30 euros for each one of us every year. On top of that, the museum will charge entrance fees for us, as well as the tourists. By comparison, we have the Amos Anderson [2] museum, which is privately funding its new museum in the city center.



On top of that comes the construction of the building, which is another 80 million from our taxes (some 200 euros from each one of us for that) and handed over a top land piece just in the heart of Helsinki.



If approved, I suggest we then have a new optional tax clause for the citizens of Helsinki as we have for religious taxes; we should call it THE STATUS TAX. Whoever wishes to pay for the Guggenheim Museum from their taxes can click on it. If this goes ahead without these providences, I can see the start of a new business model where everyone asks for such a helping hand on the pretext of tourism and prestige! I know I will.

I suggest that universities apply for such a business model to compensate for the recent budget cuts. For example, the Aalto University with its Alvar Aalto designed buildings, which attracts many tourists to Helsinki, should apply for an equal sum on terms of a fair opportunity clause.

If Guggenheim wants to open a museum in Helsinki or anywhere else, they should do so at their own costs.





It creates social injustices

Within their own foundation (I prefer calling it a company), they have wage gaps of 450 fold. For example, the director of the foundation, Mr. Armstrong, receives a salary of over 650,000 dollars/year, in comparison with the migrant workers of the Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dahbi who receive 1500.



And ask yourself how is it possible that a so-called museum affords to pay such a fat salary? What is the role of a museum and how is a private institution able to pay such fortunes to its board?

It sells status, rather than promoting critical thinking

Museums are now absorbing the capital surplus, as David Harvey puts it, and its function is becoming that of status, promoting the brand of the cities. The example of Bilbao is a clear one, and one that the Salomon Foundation often uses as selling argument. The political choice of building it there was many-folded; one of such reasons was to dramatically change the image of Bilbao from that of a Basque terrorism hub into a modern, cultural city. It worked, partially. But do not be fooled by the numbers of the so-called Bilbao effect: the city is in full debt and the promised benefits of this museum are far from real. The economy of the city remains as equally troubled as it was before the Guggenheim.[3] The forgotten point here is that around the museum there was a full urbanization plan of the city, which enhanced the area (one might say, gentrified it) and the same benefits would have been reached with the promotion of a local museum or local artists instead of importing the Guggenheim brand, which relies on its network of art dealers and art speculation.



My favorite definition of art is inspired by the writings of Oscar Wilde: "An artist does not search for recognition of its work, but an artisan does." The Jeff Koons or Richard Serras of our time, and others that Guggenheim supports, are artisans. Their workshops are fabrics employing artisans who produce objects of status, not of art nor of critical thinking. The industry around these objects is immense and it increases the gap between rich and poor. The Guggenheim is a rich man's playground. The Guggenheim Museum should be called a private gallery as there are many cases of the business link between their exhibitions and sales. [4]





It foments competition, not collaboration

The Guggenheim Foundation has been bullying cities all over the world for years to build their franchises, enforcing competition and not collaboration (collaboration is a fundamental cornerstone of the Finnish society):

"Despite all its frantic activity, the Guggenheim could not generate enough revenue to stabilize its budget. It has been forced into a constant search for new sources of cash. They have no endowment to speak of  its been spent to meet the running costs, which has left it very fragile. Its a vulnerable institution." [5]



Certainly not collaborative is the workers exploitation in Abu Dhabis construction site! A clear example of a competition-based enterprise. The polemic has been massive on allegations of safety regulations, unpaid workers, and low wages to migrant workers. [6]





To conclude:

The Guggenheim Foundation bullies our government for enormous financial subventions, enhancing corruption. We need to be asking the question, why on earth would Guggenheim want to build a museum in Helsinki, a city with 83 museums and St. Petersburg just next door with the Hermitage? They have tried it in so many other cities, and in all of them, failed due to corruption allegations.



All but Abu Dhabi, which we all know stands for far different values than those of Finland, and Bilbao, which was desperate to change the status of the city from one of Basque Terrorism to cultural hub as stated above.

Helsinki is now sadly one more on that shameful list and we should ban the Guggenheim Foundation from here and other places from its parasitic behavior with these attempts. It uses its network of influence of business men and politicians to force this agenda with the false and shallow pretext of status. (Remember that the city of Vilnius refused and banned Guggenheim a few years ago. A case that involved much corruption: "As reported by the newspaper Lietuvos Rytas (Lithuanian Morning) on 5 February , Helsinki and the Guggenheim Museum have signed a feasibility study agreement, so the possibility of renewing the project in Vilnius will not occur again because two similar museums in the region are not needed." [7])

We must fight for a meaningful allocation of our limited resources and for social welfare, not for rich man marketplaces. Finland stands for a fair and open society. These status symbols, with their secretive agendas and competitive history, have no place in the land of open source Linux.



--

Supporters unveil new funding plan for Guggenheim Helsinki [1] Based on the article of Helsinki Sanomat:  by Aleksi Teivainen

The Thing about Museums: Objects and Experience, Representation and Contestation [3] In  by Sandra Dudle et. al.

Is this the end of the Guggenheim dream? [4] Cf. by Deyan Sudjic

Why No Guggenheim Museums? [5]Cf.  by Pedro Aibeo in Dissident Voice:

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A man who took part in a violent assault on a Luas passenger has been jailed for four years with the final two years suspended.

Aaron Collins (24) hit the victim in the eye with a bottle of beer, and later smashed the bottle downwards on the head of the dazed man, who had earlier been assaulted by his two co-accused.

Collins, of Elmdale Park, Ballyfermot, Dublin, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to violent disorder, assault causing harm and producing a bottle of Budweiser in the course of a fight on an outbound Luas red line between the Smithfield and Museum stops on December 11, 2014.

Two co-accused, Aoife Molloy (24) and Martin O'Connor (25), were given partially suspended four-year sentences from Judge James O'Donohue in January last.

Molloy had the final 18 months suspended and O'Connor had the final two years suspended.

Molloy's sentence was later reduced to four years with the final two suspended on appeal, the court heard yesterday.

Snapped

The victim, Noel O'Rourke (46), had fallen to the ground when the Luas jolted and was kicked by Molloy as he tried to get up. Molloy and O'Connor claimed they "snapped" when their victim then "retaliated".

The court heard Collins believed his two friends were being assaulted and became involved in the violence in a "misguided act of chivalry".

Mr O'Rourke suffered a fractured eye socket as well as wounds to his scalp and lip. He was in court for the sentence.

Judge Patricia Ryan said the victim still suffered an "enormous amount of pain".

The court heard Collins had 36 previous convictions, but none for violence. He is currently serving an 18-month prison sentence for a drug offence.

The defence said it was Collins' view that his friends had been assaulted. She said that he had been drinking and the decision-making process was blurred.

She said he did not arm himself, but already had the bottle in his hand.

Counsel said she had been instructed to apologise to the victim and that Collins had written a letter of apology. She said Collins did not realise the extent of the assault when he left the Luas.
An 18-year-old has been charged with murder in connection with a fatal stabbing at a halting site in north Dublin.

Wesley Mooney (33), from Abbottstown Drive in Dublin, was fatally injured during an incident at St Joseph's Park, Dunsink Lane, in Finglas, on June 5.

Emergency services rushed to the scene but Mr Mooney was pronounced dead a short time later. A teenager was arrested shortly after the incident took place.

Martin Keenan, a married youth with an address at St Joseph's Park, was charged on June 7 with assaulting Mr Mooney.

Following a court hearing, he was then granted bail pending directions from the DPP.

The bail was set in his own bond of 1,500 cash and as part of the conditions he was ordered to sign on daily at Finglas Garda Station, surrender his passport and not apply for any new travel documentation, and have no contact with a named witness.

Custody

Keenan was arrested again early yesterday and brought to Finglas Garda Station, where he was charged with the murder of Mr Mooney.

It is alleged the fatal stabbing took place at the defendant's home.

Keenan was then brought by gardai to appear before Judge Grainne O'Neill at Blanchardstown District Court.

During the brief hearing, Detective Garda Sergeant Alan Brady told the court the defendant made no reply when he was charged with the offence.

Det Sergeant Brady applied for a remand in custody.

The defendant, who has not yet indicated how he will plead, did not address the court.

However, his solicitor said there was consent to his client being remanded in custody to appear at Cloverhill District Court on Tuesday.

The judge made the order and also acceded to a request from Mr Keenan's solicitor for free legal aid to the accused.

In murder cases, bail cannot be considered by the district court and the 18-year-old will have to make an application to the High Court to get released pending trial.

A book of evidence has yet to be completed and served on him.
Susan Coleman, packs shoeboxs in her home for the Team Hope Shoebox Appeal. Picture: Damien Eagers

A south Dublin mum has turned her home into a 'mini-warehouse' holding Christmas shoeboxes for children in need.

Susan Coleman (49), from Rathgar, has volunteered with the Team Hope Shoebox Appeal for 15 years, managing the collection of donations in the area.

The shoeboxes are then sent to 13 countries across Africa and Eastern Europe, where many families live on less than 1 a day.

Susan collects many shoeboxes before taking them to a main warehouse.

"There should be around 600 there at the moment, but we haven't made an official count yet," she told the Herald.

The stockpiles of shoeboxes filled with gifts for children are not limited to industrial estates. Susan's home holds hundreds of boxes each year.

"My home becomes a mini- warehouse," she said.

The feat of holding so many shoeboxes has become a family affair, with three generations of her family helping out.

"My mum and I do a lot. I have to give a lot of credit to my mum," she said.

Meanwhile, Susan's children and family members are lending a hand, packing hundreds of their own personal boxes before the November 11 deadline.

"I think they've filled about 160 boxes so far. It's staggering," she said.

"I have four children and they have grown up with it. My 22-year-old has grown up with it and he and his girlfriend are volunteering in the warehouse."

Drop-off

Susan and her family aren't alone in their good deeds either, as some 50 volunteers help out each year.

Those who fill a shoebox for Team Hope should attach 4 and take it to a local drop-off point before Friday next week.

There are 400 drop-off points nationwide, including all Axa, FastFit/FirstStop branches and Toymaster stores.

To find your nearest drop-off point visit teamhope.ie.
The "paranoid" Kinahan cartel is turning on once-trusted lieutenants as it searches for a mole in its ranks. Sources have revealed that the drugs mob has become increasingly suspicious of gardai turning former allies into touts.

Gangsters are determined to root out any rats they believe have been turning over information to gardai, with one jailed criminal currently under the spotlight, according to insiders.

The Herald can reveal that the international crime cartel - led by Daniel Kinahan - is demanding that the man, awaiting trial for serious charges, hand over his book of evidence for inspection.

They suspect that the north inner city man may have provided crucial information on several feud-related murders to gardai while being questioned before he was charged.

"They are basically saying 'we want that book of evidence' and it is expected that he will have to hand it over," a source said.

Arrested

"The cartel thinks that the book might show that he was co-operating with gardai after he was arrested earlier this year.

"That has certainly been the talk among the criminals."

A book of evidence is given to a defendant before a criminal trial and outlines the State's case against the accused person, as well as other information about the upcoming case.

The Herald cannot reveal the identity of the under-pressure jailed suspect.

It has emerged the jailed man has been "kept apart" from another north inner city criminal who is suspected of being a hitman for the Kinahan cartel because of fears over his safety.

Should the crime outfit suspect he is giving up information to gardai, retribution could be swift against the man, even inside jail while awaiting his trial.

Criminal outfits are well known for double-checking whether their gang members have provided information to gardai. Before, when being questioned under caution in garda stations, the recorded video interview was provided to a solicitor for the arrested individual.

This in turn was provided to their crime overlords to view and ensure they had not cracked under questioning.

Previously, when a criminal was openly abusing and swearing at gardai during questioning, the video was played in pubs for the amusement of crime gang members.

Sources have also revealed that the under-threat criminal was "goaded" a prison officer while involved in a verbal altercation.

He was previously closely linked to the so-called New INLA who aligned themselves to the Kinahan faction in their feud with the Hutch mob which has so far claimed 10 lives.

A Ballymun man, who is a key member of this faction, was arrested in June for the feud murder of Gareth Hutch (35) last May, but was released. An adjourned inquest heard recently that Hutch died from multiple gunshot wounds.

The Ballymun man is a close pal of Christopher Maguire (38), who survived an attempted murder in July in Lusk in north Dublin which has left the gangster "rattled".

Killed

Another close associate of the Ballymun man from the capital's north inner city is also wanted for questioning about the Gareth Hutch murder. Both Hutch suspects are close associates of the under-pressure jailed man.

The ongoing gangland feud was sparked when Gary Hutch, who had been working for the Kinahan cartel, was killed by the gang in Spain in September last year.

One of the last major incidents in the feud was the attempted murder of Gareth Hutch's father John Hutch Snr at his home. Following the attempt, John Hutch Snr then fled the country, like his brother Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch, and he was not present at an inquest hearing into his son's death.
Transcription

1 Page 1 of 5 TOPIC: PREPARED BY: RECOMMEND APPROVAL OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN INTERMEDIA ART WRITING PERFORMANCE AT UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDER IAN MACGILLIVRAY, DIRECTOR OF ACADEMIC AFFAIRS I. SUMMARY This item recommends approval for University of Colorado Boulder (UCB) to offer a Doctor of Philosophy in Intermedia Art Writing Performance. II. BACKGROUND COMMISSION AUTHORITY The Colorado Commission on Higher Education s role and responsibility in the review and approval of new academic programs at institutions operating under a performance contract is defined in (6)(b), which states that new and modified program proposals shall be reviewed and approved only on the basis of fit with the institution s statutory role and mission. III. STAFF ANALYSIS OVERVIEW OF PROPOSED PROGRAM The following is summarized from UCB s proposal: The Intermedia Art Writing Performance (IAWP) unit is an interdisciplinary digital arts and humanities research unit with a practice-based PhD in Intermedia Art, Writing and Performance. Core faculty collaboratively investigate past and present forms of digital art, writing, and performance and offer graduate students a hands-on, experiential-based learning environment in which to explore emerging forms of creativity triggered by practice-based research methodologies. The research conducted in the program reflects the rapidly transforming knowledge systems and digital media economies emerging from the substantial technological shifts currently taking place in our society. Digital creative work and critical media literacy play a defining role in our information society and are transforming all aspects of contemporary life, including the way many professional visual artists, multimedia performers, writers, publishers, digital humanists and archivists pursue their practice. Traditional scholarly and creative work outputs such as the single-authored print book or conventional gallery exhibitions have already been challenged by the emergence of multiauthored and/or hybridized forms of transmission such as Internet art sites, multi-platform storytelling or transmedia narratives, software art, interactive installations for public spaces,

2 Page 2 of 5 social media game art, networked media activism, telematic performance art, and innovative art applications for mobile devices and tablets. IAWP provides the university and the larger Colorado community a research and teaching unit that functions as an incubator for transdisciplinary studies tied to the advanced digital arts and humanities. By offering a unique, practice-based PhD program in intermedia art, writing and performance, IAWP enables an interdisciplinary group of already established practice-based arts and humanities researchers at CU to work with other faculty in CMCI, faculty across the campus particularly with ATLAS, the projected School of the Arts, the College of Music and CU Libraries and with individuals and organizations outside of the campus, including the thriving tech and startup communities who are also invested in practice-based forms of research and creativity. Additional information on this proposed degree, unrelated to fit with statutory role and mission, is in Appendix A. ROLE AND MISSION SUPPORT This degree supports UCB s statutory role and mission, which states: (a) The Boulder campus of the university of Colorado shall be a comprehensive graduate research university with selective admission standards. The Boulder campus of the university of Colorado shall offer a comprehensive array of undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degree programs. The Boulder campus of the university of Colorado has exclusive authority to offer graduate programs in law. The Colorado commission on higher education, in consultation with the board of regents, shall designate those graduate level programs that are the primary responsibility of the Boulder campus of the university of Colorado. The university has the responsibility to provide on a statewide basis, utilizing when possible and appropriate the faculty and facilities of other educational institutions, those graduate level programs. The commission shall include in its funding recommendations a level of general fund support for these programs. [ , C.R.S.] Pursuant to Colorado Revised Statutes (6)(b), department staff finds that UCB s proposed degree is consistent with the institution s statutory role and mission. University of Colorado s Board of Regents approved the program at its September 11, 2014 meeting. IV. STAFF RECOMMENDATION Staff recommends that the Commission approve University of Colorado Boulder s proposal to offer a Doctor of Philosophy in Art Writing Performance. STATUTORY AUTHORITY

3 Page 3 of 5 C.R.S Governing boards - performance contract - authorization operations (6) While operating pursuant to a performance contract negotiated pursuant to this section, the governing board of a state institution of higher education: (b) Need not consult with nor obtain approval from the Colorado commission on higher education to create, modify, or eliminate academic and vocational programs offered by the institution, so long as such creations, modifications, and eliminations are consistent with the institution's statutory role and mission. Institutions shall submit information to the department demonstrating that the creation or modification of an academic or career and technical education program is consistent with the institution's statutory role and mission. The Colorado commission on higher education shall have the authority to override the creation or modification of an academic or vocational program if the change made by the governing board is inconsistent with the institution's statutory role and mission. APPENDIX: Appendix A: Supplemental Information

4 Page 4 of 5 APPENDIX A: SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION This supplemental information is unrelated to the proposed degrees fit with the institution s statutory role and mission. The following is summarized from the institution s proposal: EVIDENCE OF NEED Employer Demand: The PhD in Intermedia Art Writing Performance (IAWP) in the College of Media, Communication and Information believes it will produce graduates who are uniquely qualified for a wide range of attractive careers and are prepared to both successfully compete in an ever-expanding job market and, perhaps more importantly, adapt as the fields themselves change and expand. Given the exponential growth in practice-based intermedia research, the career possibilities are many and various. This degree will be unique among doctorates granted at CU in that it will certify expertise in both creative and scholarly endeavors. While individual students will of course choose to emphasize one or the other, all will graduate as both researchers and creative artists with knowledge of how each side of their preparation can fertilize the other. Student Demand: Art programs have traditionally focused their terminal degree programs at the master s level in order to train students in the fine arts. In most programs, these MFA degrees are offered to students working in a specific traditional medium such as painting, ceramics, dance, poetry writing, or darkroom photography. These terminal MFA degrees are intended to provide students with the necessary training to enter the commercial art market as professional artists who sell their work through a traditional gallery system or to perform their work in public venues. Likewise, creative writing MFA programs traditionally train students to publish their work with small, literary or mainstream publishers while MA programs in the humanities identify themselves as training students for critical, not creative, research. However, there is now a movement to develop practice-based PhD programs in interdisciplinary and collaborative research environments that can expand both the depth and breadth of students creative and critical capacities as well as their future job prospects. These emerging practice-based PhD programs are very attractive to artists and researchers who have developed their technical mastery of a particular creative practice but are now ready to further advance their education so that their technical skill sets can expand into the new media economies that drive the arts and culture sector. One of the attractions of the program is that not only will it be one of the firstof its kind in Colorado, but an early and reputable entrant into a growing arena of higher educational activity beginning to take place on national scale. We believe that there are numerous emerging markets for creative professionals in the new media economy and that this unique program will attract students from all over the country, many of whom will stay in the state after graduation and contribute significantly to the Colorado economy.

5 Page 5 of 5 DUPLICATION The College of Media, Communication and Information believes this proposed PhD in Intermedia Art Writing Performance (IAWP) is unique in Colorado. Many Colorado universities offer an MFA degree in specific disciplines such as studio-based fine arts, dance and theater, or creative writing. These programs peripherally address some of the topics of the PhD, but none provide an advanced interdisciplinary PhD curriculum that specifically intersects with the new media economy, networked and mobile communication systems and information studies. In fact, in the Rocky Mountain region, the most similar program to the PhD in Intermedia Art Writing Performance is the University of Denver s PhD in Creative Writing. While DU s program provides an example of a highly successful PhD program in the arts, the curriculum differs considerably from the PhD in Intermedia Art / Writing / Performance in that it does not have an intermedia focus or intent, nor does it emphasize practice-based outcomes at the interface of art, communication, and information aesthetics. Instead, it concentrates entirely on traditional forms of creative and critical writing and publishing.
Transcription

1 AST 2011 Workshop on Aviation System Technology RAPID CREATION OF CFD-CAPABLE CAD-MODELS FOR CABIN AIR VENTILATION SIMULATION Jorg Fuchte 1, Sergej Rajkowski 2, Andreas Wick 3 1 Air Transportation Systems, German Aerospace Center Blohmstrae 18, Hamburg, Germany 2 Airbus Operations on behalf of Aerotec Engineering Kreetslag 10, Hamburg, Germany 3 Airbus Operations Kreetslag 10, Hamburg, Germany Abstract The objective of this paper is to describe a method for rapid creation of cabin CAD (Computer Aided Design) models for usage in CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations of cabin air ventilation. The intention is to automate the process of model creation in order to speed up the process and reduce the workload both in CAD modeling and mesh creation. The described method is part of a larger process intended to facilitate the usage of CFD cabin air ventilation simulations for passenger comfort. Thus it serves the long-term objective of increased cabin comfort. The complete simulation process including flow calculation and post-processing will be detailed in future publications. 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Motivation Increased passenger comfort is one objective of the stated ACARE-goals. Passenger comfort is affected by the climate inside the cabin. Many factors such as temperature, humidity and intensity of airflow do influence the perceived comfort. The individual perception of the climate comfort has become a research subject (see [5] for further details). The cabin represents a confined space with many heat sources like passengers, electronic equipment, windows and monuments. Especially in dense economy class AST 2011, March 31 - April 1, Hamburg, Germany

2 Jorg Fuchte, Sergej Rajkowski, Andreas Wick seating the air has to be circulated constantly. As result the climate inside the cabin depends on factors like seat position and passengers may experience different levels of comfort according to their position inside the cabin. For future cabins both in long and short range operations, passengers will demand higher levels of climate comfort for different operational environments. An experimental simulation of these conditions is nearly impossible. In recent years CFD-simulations of cabin airflow have become more feasible due to more powerful computers and advances in code (see [1], [2] and [3]). Although the required computer resources still limit such simulations to a small number, in future such simulations will become more affordable. However, the modeling cannot be sped up by simply adding computer resources and might become the bottleneck in increasing the number of scenarios or design iterations. For that purpose Airbus Operations and the German Aerospace Center launched a project to enhance the modeling process both in required resources and ease of adaption. The presented method is considered a compromise between quick generation and model complexity. 1.2 State of the Art Any CFD simulation requires a mesh. Usually this mesh is generated from CADmodels using a commercial software. The CAD models can be generated with any established tool. In this case CATIA V5 is the used CAD-software. A CAD-model for mesh generation has to adhere to a number of specific requirements. This makes already existing CAD models intended for different purposes impractical or impossible to use. If these requirements are disregarded a very time-consuming repair process needs to be performed on the generated mesh. Therefore the CAD-models for CFD-simulations need to be specifically created and require specific experience of the subject. CATIA like most other CAD-tools supports parametric design features. That is, defined dependencies inside the model are connected to user-defined parameters. If the parameter is changed the entire model changes accordingly. This feature allows quick adaption of models with little effort. This has limitations as changed architecture of the cabin or different overhead bin layout may exceed the parametric capability of the CAD-software. The requirements for problem-free meshing also reduce the options of the designer for usage of parametric relationships. 1.3 Overview The basic cabin layout is calculated external from the CAD-software. This allows usage of more powerful analytical software like Matlab. The resulting geometry is saved as a number of ASCII files that contain raw data and parameters. A number of 2

3 AST 2011, March 31 - April 1, Hamburg, Germany functions written in the CATIA-internal script language CATIA Visual Basic Script create the model. The entire CAD-model generation does not require additional user input and can be performed in the background. Pre-designed adaptable parts (Powercopy) are used to represent objects with complex geometry like seats and passengers. The model complexity is adapted to the capability of the CFD simulation. 2 TOOL CHAIN DESCRIPTION The tool chain consists of three different softwares, each responsible of one step in the process. Figure 1 illustrates the dependencies, input and outputs. 1. Cabin layout generation program implemented in Matlab 2. CAD-Model creation using CATIA based on the results of the previous step. 3. Meshing of the CAD-Model using ANSA software The usage of a third program besides CAD software and meshing tool might not seem rational initially as CATIA already offers far-reaching options for parametric design and scripting. The idea to use a more capable software like Matlab is motivated by the complex dependencies of cabin design. Some basic differences between cabin (like number of classes or placement of monuments) can already exhaust the parametric capability of the software or make modeling very time consuming. Coding the program in CATIA is unattractive due to the limited capabilities of the CATIA programming language. Figure 1: Process Description 3

4 Jorg Fuchte, Sergej Rajkowski, Andreas Wick 2.1 LOPA Generation The Layout of Passenger Accommodation (LOPA) describes the location of all objects inside the cabin, including seats, galleys and lavatories. Even for the considered single aisle aircraft they can vary considerably between different operators. A Matlab-based tool creates a LOPA depending on user-defined options like comfort standards or seat choice. The layout is adapted to the physical characteristics of the cabin such as the diameter and door position. Figure 2: LOPA generated by Matlab Program The LOPA generator was developed separately by the German Aerospace Center and is also used for other applications. The monument and seat placement is largely based on knowledge-based dependencies, which orient on current state-of-the-art in cabin layout. The generated LOPA is the basis for the model creation. Besides seat positions the tool also generates 3-dimensional coordinates for the overhead stowage bins and lining of the cabin. These items basically adhere to the limitations of the surrounding structure but are also the result of industrial design considerations. The geometry is consequently difficult to describe with analytical means. To match the actual shape of the cabin lining the geometry is directly imported. Figure 3 illustrates how the lining geometry is calculated as function of the cabin dimensions. 2.2 CAD-Software Interface and Model Creation The creation of the CAD-model is the heart of the entire process. The program consists of a number of scripts using the CATIA internal programming language CATIA Visual Basic Script (commonly referred to as CATvbs). CATvbs is very similar to the other commonly used CATIA languages. It is based on Visual Basic and uses object oriented programming features. The language allows to perform most of the actions that can be done manually in CATIA, while some limitations exist. It is very powerful when using a large amount of pre-generated data such as the input from the Layout Generator. In the legacy process the CAD user does usually not decide on cabin features such as seat number, lining shape or monument placement. He receives it as input (usually as 4

5 AST 2011, March 31 - April 1, Hamburg, Germany Figure 3: Geometry of Cabin Section print generated by a specific cabin design software) and translates it manually into a CAD model. Therefore an automated process starting with exactly these parameters does not reduce the autonomy of the responsible engineer. The CAD-geometry has to adhere to a set of requirements in order to be suitable for mesh generation. The most commonly known requirement is watertight design of the geometry. That is, the surfaces of the models are not allowed to have any gaps that can be misinterpreted by the meshing tool. For simple objects the requirement is rather easy to meet, but for more complex models that require a large number of surfaces to be used, the requirement can be tough. Surface joints are the biggest issue. Although usage of surface split offer a remedy, their potential has limitations and the processing time is substantial. A number of different approaches have been tested. In the end, a direct surface creation is used and watertightness is provided by careful coordination of neighboring surfaces. Different surface characteristics can be generated by cutting a piece out of a surface but keeping the cut. Figure 4 shows the result in CATIA for the data displayed in figure 3. In that model all surfaces are created as lofts from contours, while the windows are generated using surface splits. While lining and cabin layout can be efficiently created from scratch using a script-based design, some cabin objects are too complex for this approach. Most importantly the seat rows with the passengers. As the flow characteristics close to the passengers are of primary interest, these objects require more detailed modeling. These items are introduced as pre-designed parts known as Powercopy in CATIA. Powercopy is a method in CATIA in which parts can be imported so that they adapt to the master part file. The method is most efficient when the master part and the included shape only share a limited number of interfaces. That is clearly the case for the seat rows. Different seat types are available and unoccupied seats can be included wherever necessary. A typical single aisle aircraft features mainly 3-seat rows (rarely 2-seat rows), so that all possible layouts and load factors can be generated using a set of about a dozen seat row models. An example is shown in figure 5. A 5

6 Jorg Fuchte, Sergej Rajkowski, Andreas Wick Figure 4: CATIA generated Lining Section from Matlab Input similar approach was tested for other objects like overhead bin sections but proved uneconomical and unreliable. Powercopy is usually time consuming, but it can also be automized using script. Figure 5: Seat Row with Passengers as Powercopy Monuments are only of limited importance and do not have to be modeled in great detail. They are important as object as they act as barrier for airflow in aisle direction. Galleys may also be an emitter of heat. Monuments are usually placed in the front and aft end of the aircraft, or at the exit rows. The presented approach especially allows to test different monument options with regard to their influence on cabin air ventilation. For successful further processing of the CAD-model a consistent naming of all surfaces is important. Otherwise the meshing tool cannot associate the boundary conditions to the surfaces. This process can be very time-consuming when the model is created manually, especially when several hundred surfaces need to be re-named. 6

7 AST 2011, March 31 - April 1, Hamburg, Germany 2.3 Transfer to Meshing Software The CAD-model can be directly read by the meshing software. No usage of common CAD formats such as IGES or STEP is necessary. The software ANSA is used specifically as it provides that feature for models created in CATIA V5 (see [6]). However, growing compatibility between softwares will allow to use other meshing tools if their usage is considered of advantage for the whole process. A well designed CAD model complies with most meshing tools and hence increases flexibility and independence from specific software solutions. 3 RESULTS For demonstration purposes a set of different monument options in a single aisle cabin is demonstrated. The presented options are typical for different operators. The layout is also shown in figure 2. The shown examples represent possible monument options for the first exit lane. 1. No monuments at all, only class dividers and seats. 2. Single galley and lavatory behind the aisle 3. Full galley installation at right hand side, single lavatory at left hand side. 4. Full galley installation at right hand side, two lavatories at left hand side. The Layout Generator adapts the seats to the monument positions, which are either determined automatically or can be defined as input in order to create a particular layout. If limited to the shown number of seat rows the creation takes about 20 minutes each. More seat rows increase the required time. The integration of the Powercopies takes longest, also due to their complexity. Monuments are represented by their outer walls. The subsequent meshing requires a translation of the model using first a model converter and the then the main meshing program ANSA. The meshing in ANSA requires about 2 hours, all on standard desktop computers. The duration depends strongly on the desired grid characteristics, which depend on the intended result of the simulation. A full CFD-simulation requires a lot of additional information apart from the mesh itself. A good example of a full CFD-simulation can be found in [4]. 4 DISCUSSION The described process is intended to facilitate cabin air ventilation simulations. Successful CFD-simulations requires careful attention to many different subjects with 7

8 Jorg Fuchte, Sergej Rajkowski, Andreas Wick (a) Option 1 (b) Option 2 (c) Option 3 (d) Option 4 Figure 6: Second Exit Lane - Monument Options modeling being only one of it. However, as soon as a working CFD-simulation process with boundary conditions has been established, the modeling may present a major bottleneck. Compared to manual creation the described method yields a number of advantages. The main advantage of the tool chain is increased speed of model creation and a reduction in direct man hour expenditure. Large parts of the process do not require direct attention of the designer. The method still yields various opportunities for visual check of the created model. Manual adaption of the geometry model is possible before starting the meshing process, so that the method partly retains the flexibility of the manual creation process. The tool introduces flexibility in the chosen cabin layout and load factor. That allows to simulate different layouts for various operators and may broaden the spectrum of the CFD-based climate comfort simulations. The automation features exceed capabilities that can be provided by usage of the CAD software internal parametric capability. The motivation was to reduce the amount of low value design tasks while retaining the ability of the design engineer to check and change the model if required. The quality of the mesh cancels any requirement for repair work, which has added considerable 8

9 AST 2011, March 31 - April 1, Hamburg, Germany (a) Rendered View I (b) Rendered View II (c) Rendered View II (d) Finished CATpart Figure 7: Different Views of Finished CATparts (a) Surface Mesh at PAX Model (b) Volume Mesh around Seat Row Figure 8: Resulting Mesh for CFD man hour expenditure in the past. The usage of an automated process like the presented also introduces limitations. The initial effort to model a fully new cabin design is higher. The overhead bin design needs to be included into the Matlab environment. However, if more than one model is supposed to be created the additional effort is quickly regained. 9

10 Jorg Fuchte, Sergej Rajkowski, Andreas Wick The model complexity has been limited to ease automated creation. If some details like modeling of the lining in close proximity of the window prove to be of critical importance the geometry creation may be enhanced. Finally, the different software modules are still in a stage of development and require an experienced user as operator. 5 CONCLUSION The paper presented an approach to speed up the creation of CAD-models for CFD simulations for cabin air ventilation. The presented method allows a significant reduction in expended time, especially if several different versions of a similar aircraft are required. While the method represents an enhancement for the current process, it may offer growth potential for future projects. More affordable CFD-simulation resources may allow a verification of different cabin layouts in terms of passenger climate comfort. The complete simulation process including flow calculation and post-processing will be detailed in future publications. References [1] M. Konstantinov, M. Rutten, M. Lambert, C. Wagner, Strahlung als wesentlicher Faktor der numerischen Simulation von Flugzeugkabineninnenstrmungen fr Komfortvorhersagen. (Deutscher Luft- und Raumfahrtkongress 2009) [2] M. Rutten, M. Konstantinov, C. Wagner, Analysis of Cabin Air Ventilation in the Do728 Test Facility Based on High Resolution Thermography. (Deutscher Luftund Raumfahrtkongress 2008) [3] J. Bosbach, M. Kuhn, M. Rutten, C. Wagner, Mixed Convection in a Full Scale Cabin Mock-Up. (25th International Conference on the Aeronautical Sciences, Germany, 2006) [4] O. Webel, M. Rutten, M. Lambert, C. Wagner, Numerical Simulation of a Mixed Ventilation Setup in an Aircraft Cabin. (Deutscher Luft- und Raumfahrtkongress 2010) [5] C. Marggraf-Micheel, J. Winzen, Ansatzpunkte zur Steigerung des thermischen Komforts in der Flugzeugkabine - Ergebnisse aus dem Do728 Mock-Up. (Deutscher Luft- und Raumfahrtkongress 2010) [6] CAE Systems SA, ANSA for demanding CFD pre-processing. Marketing Brochure
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1 MINUTES MONTANA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 57th LEGISLATURE - REGULAR SESSION COMMITTEE ON HUMAN SERVICES Call to Order: By CHAIRMAN BILL THOMAS, on at 3:00 P.M., in Room 172 Capitol. ROLL CALL Members Present: Rep. Bill Thomas, Chairman (R) Rep. Roy Brown, Vice Chairman (R) Rep. Trudi Schmidt, Vice Chairman (D) Rep. Tom Dell (D) Rep. John Esp (R) Rep. Tom Facey (D) Rep. Dennis Himmelberger (R) Rep. Larry Jent (D) Rep. Brad Newman (D) Rep. Mark Noennig (R) Rep. Holly Raser (D) Rep. Diane Rice (R) Rep. Rick Ripley (R) Rep. Clarice Schrumpf (R) Rep. Jim Shockley (R) Rep. James Whitaker (R) Members Excused: Rep. Daniel Fuchs (R) Members Absent: Rep. Michelle Lee (D) Staff Present: David Niss, Legislative Branch Pati O'Reilly, Committee Secretary Please Note: These are summary minutes. Testimony and discussion are paraphrased and condensed. Committee Business Summary: Hearing(s) & Date(s) Posted: HB 395; 1/30/01 Executive Action: HJ 9 HEARING ON HB 395 Sponsor: REP. BILL THOMAS, HD 93, Hobson Proponents: Sen. Chris Christiaens, SD 23, Great Falls Dick Crofts, Commissioner of Higher Education

2 Opponents: None HOUSE COMMITTEE ON HUMAN SERVICES PAGE 2 of 11 Mary McCue, Ex. Dir., Montana Dental Assn. Will Weaver, Dean, College of Technology, Great Falls Dustin Stewart, Assoc. Students of MSU, Bozeman & Great Falls, & the Assoc. Students of Montana Tech Mike Labriola, Ex. V.P., G.F. Chamber of Commerce Connie Jacques, Mt. Dental Hygienists Assn. Gayle Roset, D.D.S., Billings; Pres., Mt. Dental Assn. Jon Metropoulos, Mt. Dental Hygienists Assn. Steve Yeakel, Mt. Council for Maternal & Child Health April Keefe, dental assistant student & V.P. of Assoc. Students, G.F. College of Technology Joe Mazurek, City of Great Falls Vadine Rispens, dental assistant, Helena Deb Kottel, Cascade County Commissioners Janet Thomas, dental hygienist Mary Sheehy-Moe, MSU-GF College of Technology Jeanie Gabrean, dental hygienist, Helena Janet Lieberg, dental hygienist, Helena Opening Statement by Sponsor: REP. BILL THOMAS, HD 93, Hobson, said that Montana, like the rest of the nation, will face a dental manpower shortage that will continue to worsen drastically in the next ten years. Montana, however, is different from the rest of the United States in that there is something we can do about it. We're the only state in the nation without a school of dental hygiene. Proponents who will testify today will address the services provided by dental hygienists, the meaning of the term "worsening dental manpower shortage," and the fiscal considerations of a school of dental hygiene. EXHIBIT(huh27a01) EXHIBIT(huh27a02) EXHIBIT(huh27a03) EXHIBIT(huh27a04) {Tape : 1; Side : A; Approx. Time Counter : } Proponents' Testimony: Sen. Chris Christiaens, SD 23, Great Falls, said that since 1994 he has worked with a group of states who are interested in health care reform. One of the biggest hopes in health care of states across the nation is that of good dental care. Oral health care is an area that has left great needs, particularly among low and moderate income folks, because they tend not to have good dental care and end up with problems that take them to emergency rooms, the highest cost places for persons to receive health care. Dental care in a sparsely-populated state like Montana becomes more critical as our

3 PAGE 3 of 11 state's dentists age. Over half of Montana's dentists are age 45 or older. As they retire, we face a critical shortage. It is difficult to get someone to set up a dental practice in small eastern Montana communities. This bill and the occupation of dental hygiene is critical to the people of Montana and will get more critical as time goes on. We've been working for some time to get the money to put this program forward, and working with our Congressional delegation, have received the $625,000 it will take to get the program set up and running through the accreditation period. There is no money needed from the legislature for the first year of this program. This program gives young people an opportunity to start at a good, decent-paying job. Dental hygienists start at between $42,000 to $50,000. If Montana has a good dental hygienist program, we will be able to assure that Montanans across the state will get the kind of dental care that they need. Dick Crofts, Commissioner of Higher Education, supports the bill and said that the Montana University System has had plans for a dental hygiene program on hold for a decade due to the cost. Even with a sharp pencil approach to the program budget, when the program is fully implemented in the next biennium, about $360,000 of general fund money will be needed to keep it going. He wants to be sure to be on record that this is an expensive program and will require some ongoing commitment from the state, beyond the normal funding for students. About $1,900 for each full-time equivalent student will be received from the state, and tuition is about $2,900 per student. Across the country, annual expenditures per student in these programs are around $11,000 to $12,000. As our population ages, the amount of needed dental care will increase, and it is wasteful and inefficient for some of that to be done by dentists as opposed to hygienists. Mary McCue, Ex. Dir., Montana Dental Assn.,said that the association has been working on this ever since the hygiene school at Carroll College closed in In November of 1999, the Dept. of Public Health and Human Services convened a dental access summit in Montana. Its purpose was to improve rural health and access to dental care in Montana, and it involved dentists, hygienists, dental assistants, government officials, higher education, and other advocates. From this the Montana Dental Access Coalition was organized, and they produced the Montana Dental Action Plan and a legislative agenda. This bill is at the top of that agenda. Onefourth of the dentists in Montana are over age 55. A significant number of dentists will be retiring within the next decade and will have to be replaced. She often gets phone calls from dental students or dentists who are interested in coming to Montana to practice. One of their first questions is to ask about Montana's dental hygiene situation, because there is a shortage nationally, and she has to tell them that we have a shortage in Montana, particularly in the rural parts of the state, and we are the only

4 PAGE 4 of 11 state with no hygiene school. We have to have a school in Montana to educate hygienists so dentists who are already practicing will be freed up to perform the work that only dentists can perform and to help attract new dentists to Montana. EXHIBIT(huh27a05) EXHIBIT(huh27a06) Will Weaver, Dean, College of Technology, Great Falls, said that the MSU-Great Falls College of Technology has a long history of providing allied health programs, including a dental assisting program which they've offered for 32 years. In 1992, the Board of Regents had approved a dental hygiene program for the College of Technology, but they were unable to get funding. The $625,000 that has already been secured from Congress to implement the program would be used to purchase and install the necessary equipment, curriculum development, hiring of a program coordinator, and the development of a self-study. It usually takes about a year to put together the self-study and have the evaluation team look at the facility and the curriculum. In addition to the school, the site could be used for continuing education activities for dental hygienists and dentists. In 1997, one-third of the Montana dentists surveyed reported that they were unable to fill the vacancy of a dental hygienist. Dental hygiene is in the top 30 of the fastestgrowing occupations in the nation. In Montana, the pay for a hygienist is around $25 an hour, and these people would be contributing back to our economy. The dental hygiene curriculum also incorporates tobacco education and prevention strategies. This is a clean industry that can improve the overall health care for Montana. Dustin Stewart, Associated Students of Mt. State University, Bozeman, Great Falls, and the Associated Students of Montana Tech, said the students are in strong support of this bill. Mike Labriola, Exec. V.P., Great Falls Area Chamber of Commerce, said that they support the bill because it is an important economic development measure, not only for Great Falls but also for the rest of Montana. EXHIBIT(huh27a07) Connie Jacques, Mt. Dental Hygienists' Assn., said that the association is in support of the program proposed in the bill, as is she personally. Dental hygiene is a profession of helping people, in addition to cleaning teeth and assisting dentists. Gayle Roset, D.D.S., Billings; Pres., Mt. Dental Assn., said the dentists of Montana are asking for the support and passage of this bill. It would have a far-reaching, positive impact on the oral health and the economy of our state. {Tape : 1; Side : A; Approx. Time Counter : }

5 PAGE 5 of 11 Jon Metropoulos, Mt. Dental Hygienists Assn. Lobbyist, said he would be happy to gather any information needed by the committee in order to pass the bill. Steve Yeakel, Mt. Council for Maternal and Child Health, said there are no turf battle involved here, but the coming together of several disciplines. There is no corner of the state in which dental access is not an issue. This is a top issue of the Dental Access Coalition and one of the top three issues for his council, and they urge support. Kay Unger, MEA-MFT, said they strongly support the bill because it increases access of Montana students to a skilled and high-paying profession, and it enhances the efficiency with which existing resources will be able to provide enhanced dental care to the people of Montana. April Keefe, dental assistant student and V.P. of Assoc. Students, G.F. College of Technology, said that the students support the dental hygiene program. At this time, they have over 150 persons on their mailing list who are interested in the program. Joe Mazurek, City of Great Falls, urges support of the bill. As attorney general, he was involved in the tobacco litigation where there was a focus on the need for good prevention and public education programs. Montana is the second highest state in per capita usage of smokeless tobacco, and dental hygienists are instrumental in convincing people to stop using it. As a legislator, he carried legislation for the hygienists over the years, and he thinks it is good that the dental hygienists and the dentists are together on this bill, which speaks to the importance of the legislation. Montana used to have a program at Carroll College, and the result of that program's closure is evident here today in that dentists, hygienists and prevention advocates are saying that we really need this program back to serve the people of the state. Vadine Rispens, dental assistant, Helena, said she would like to further her career, and it would be difficult to leave the state for the education since she is married and has children. She asks for support for those who would like to be hygienists. Deb Kottel, Cascade County Commissioners, asked where else the committee could find one bill that is a great education bill, a needed health care bill, a bill that provides necessary economic development in the state, and a wonderful social policy bill. This bill allows families to support their homes on one income rather than having three part-time jobs.

6 PAGE 6 of 11 Janet Thomas, dental hygienist, said that the profession of dental hygiene is a family-friendly profession, and is not only a woman's profession, but men are also hygienists. This is a two-year program, and she thinks that where we kind of lost with Carroll College was that they had a four-year program. Mary Sheehy-Moe, Assoc. Dean, MSU-Great Falls College of Technology, said it is her job to develop the curriculum and the program, in this case for dental hygiene. Basic information about the program is on their web site at The mission of the College of Technology is to a prepare high-skilled work force for high-demand careers and to provide transferable course work throughout the Montana university system. This program is perhaps the best example of what a two-year college of technology can do in both areas. Jeanie Gabrean, dental hygienist, Helena, supports the bill. Janet Lieberg, dental hygienist, Helena, said that she has worked as a hygienist for 25 years, and it is a wonderful career. {Tape : 1; Side : B; Approx. Time Counter : 0-9.5} Opponents' Testimony: None Informational Testimony: None Questions from Committee Members and Responses: Rep. Himmelberger said he had the information indicating that Montana's average pay for hygienists is $25 per hour, and he asked the sponsor what the average national pay is. Rep. Thomas said he didn't know the exact figures, but he had a chart that said Montana th is 15 from the top in average income. Alaska is the top with $72,100, and Montana is $52,100. Rep. Himmelberger asked if the sponsor was comfortable with Montana not getting into the situation we are experiencing with teachers, where we educate them and then they leave the state for better wages. Rep. Thomas said with onefourth of Montana dentists actively seeking hygienists, that equates to 155 job openings. He doesn't think there would be any financial reason why they would want to leave Montana. Rep. Dell asked Mary McCue why the Carroll College program had failed and if there was a concern about similar things happening with this proposed program. Ms. McCue said that happened before she was involved with the Dental Assn., but she understood that because it was a four-year program that was expensive to operate, they decided not to continue it. Dental hygiene programs are typically two to three-year programs. 75 percent of the programs in the

7 PAGE 7 of 11 country are two-year degree programs. There is no need for a fouryear degree to enter this profession. Rep. Noennig asked Commissioner Dick Crofts about the budgetary aspects and whether the proposal had been included in the university budget plan and in the governor's plan, and if not, why not. Mr. Croft said the proposal was not in the university system's request and is not in the executive budget. Because of the cost of dental hygiene programs, they had decided to incorporate a dental hygiene opportunity in an out-of-state location using WICHE-WAMI Minnesota dentistry programs as a model, and had included money in their request for student assistance, which was funded by the executive. The money secured through the federal government for program start-up costs occurred after they had completed their budget decisions. This presented a different picture, so they decided it made more sense to pursue a program in the state. Rep. Noennig asked if there was money available that had been budgeted for the student assistance that could be used for this program. Mr. Crofts said the executive budget includes $2 million for about half a dozen professional program needs and student financial aid programs. He tentatively had identified $45,000 as money for student assistance for out-of-state dental hygiene programs. Rep. Noennig asked if this $45,000 would be available for this program. Mr. Croft said he thought that was correct and that it probably could be transferred, but he isn't certain as it depends on what happens with HB 2. Rep. Schmidt asked Will Weaver to briefly describe the program. He said the program is two years in length. There are approximately credits of pre-requisites, including science and general education courses, which makes sure that students admitted to the program are academically prepared for it. These courses would not have to be taken at the College of Great Falls, but could be taken closer to a student's home or over the internet. There are 12 slots in the program, so it would be highly competitive. {Tape : 1; Side : B; Approx. Time Counter : } Closing by Sponsor: Rep. Thomas said that Montana faces a serious shortage of dentists as more dentists retire, and we are going into a catastrophic situation. This bill is one of the first things we can do to help. {Tape : 1; Side : B; Approx. Time Counter : } EXECUTIVE SESSION ON COMMITTEE BILL Rep. Thomas said this was the second phase of action on a proposed committee bill, and the committee would be hearing from Paul Meyer,

8 PAGE 8 of 11 who requested the bill, and Denzel Davis, who is with Quality Assurance Division. Paul Meyer, Exec. Dir., Western Montana Mental Health Center, referred to the letter previously sent to Rep. Shockley outlining the problem and proposing a committee bill. The Center, through its counsel, is suggesting three amendments to the section of statute dealing with recoupments by the Dept. of Public Health and Human Services. They result from the Center's experience in dealing with a prolonged audit situation over a seven-year period. These amendments would (1) eliminate a pre-hearing seizure of health care provider funds when the basis for that seizure is a statistical sampling audit by DPHHS; (2) require that all phases of a statistical sample audit be under the direct responsibility of a certified public accountant; and (3) that if a provider succeeds in its appeal through administrative processes with the department through their fair hearing process, that there be reciprocal rights for the provider as there are for the department, meaning that it could impose whatever penalties, including the statutory 10 percent interest on any money that the department held wrongfully for the period defined. Mr. Meyer believes this is an important public policy matter and hopes that the committee will consider a committee bill. {Tape : 1; Side : B; Approx. Time Counter : } Denzel Davis, Administrator, Quality Assurance Division, DPHHS, said that the seven-year delay in Mr. Meyer's case was not the department's delay but was caused by legal posturing during those years. He explained the background of the case, which began when the division was doing a targeted review of community mental health centers for overpayment issues. This was prior to the shift to mental health managed care. After that shift, they had no ability, if there were overpayments made to any of the providers, to go back and collect. In the case of Western Montana Mental Health Center, there was some money in the pipeline. The term "seized" is used, but under the provisions of the statute, the department is allowed to offset the money against what they think is their overpayment. These cases get fairly complicated. They can't use a statistical sampling unless they have over 500 lines of claims. In some of these large cases, they look at 50,000 to 150,000 records. In cases that big, they go to statistical sampling. If the provider doesn't like the sampling, they can go back to the department and request that they go line by line, and Western Mental Health had that option. If there is not a 10 percent variance, the provider has to pay for the sampling. In the past 10 years, the department has used the statistical sampling 15 times, so it isn't something they use every day. He feels very comfortable with the way it operates. Regarding the withholding of the offsetting, he said the department feels that it is incumbent upon them when they see large

9 PAGE 9 of 11 overpayments that they go into the system and tap into the money that's being paid, because they're drawing down money every month. When they find an overpayment, the facility is notified, and they have 30 days to look at it. An administrative hearing is held to share information. The facility then has an opportunity to decide what to do, and if the department doesn't hear from them, they start tapping the money. Mr. Davis believes that the playing field is pretty level right now, and if there is any disadvantage in the system, it is for the department because they don't have enough staff. They are putting into effect a new automated system to help track provider overpayments, which amount to $3 to $5 million a year and could even be more. Regarding the credibility of their staff, which had been questioned, he said that they do have CPAs who work in their audit unit and help with these cases. The staff is not incompetent. Regarding the final item, if the department had withheld money and can't prevail, they have to deal with the issue in a lawsuit and the courts will determine interest payments. The question is when the interest payments start. From the department's perspective, they would oppose these amendments to present statute if they come up in a bill. Current language was put in by previous legislation based on the fact that the federal statutes drive us to have this type of program in place, including the offsets and interest. {Tape : 2; Side : A; Approx. Time Counter : } Questions from Committee Members and Responses: Rep. Noennig discussed with Mr. Meyer and Mr. Davis the January 10 letter from Mr. James Haynes to Rep. Shockley regarding this case. Rep. Facey asked Mr. Meyer for examples of specific claims where there were disagreements, and Mr. Meyer responded with some examples. Rep. Facey asked Mr. Davis for specific examples and Mr. Davis responded. Rep. Schmidt asked Mr. Davis why overpayments are made to providers. Mr. Davis said they do not make the payments, they review the payments for accuracy. Rep. Schmidt asked Mr. Meyer why there had been an overpayment in his case, and he responded that there was not an overpayment although there were a few minor error they had made that might have resulted in a couple hundred dollars out of several million dollars in billing. Rep. Raser asked if this was an isolated case for his clinic, or have others experienced the same problems, and Mr. Meyer said there weren't many people who would put up with this hearing process for so many years. Mr. Davis said he thinks this process drives people away from the medicaid program and keeps the medicare provider on track with regard to the amount of money he bills. {Tape : 2; Side : A; Approx. Time Counter : } Further discussion was held on pending audit cases, cash flow problems that result for centers when money is "seized," and "leveling the playing field" by requiring that the state pay the

10 PAGE 10 of 11 statutory 10 percent interest to the mental health centers on money that is due to them just as the centers are required to pay the interest on the money if they owe it. Rep. Rice expressed concern about the attorney fees, and Mr. Meyer said they are expensive. Discussion was held on the involvement of CPA's in audit cases, and the differences between a center having a "clean" audit or an audit that revealed documentation problems. Chairman Thomas asked if the committee wanted to vote to request a committee bill at this time. The committee agreed to defer action until Monday.{Tape : 2; Side : B; Approx. Time Counter : } EXECUTIVE ACTION ON HJ 9 Motion/Vote: REP. DELL moved that HJ 9 DO PASS. Motion/Vote: REP. NOENNIG moved that HJ 9 BE AMENDED by inserting "be requested to" after the word "Congress." Motion carried unanimously. Motion/Vote: REP. NOENNIG moved that HJ 9 BE AMENDED by changing the word "equal" to "equitable." Motion carried unanimously. Motion/Vote: REP. SHOCKLEY moved that HJ 9 DO PASS AS AMENDED. Motion carried 17-1 with Jent voting no. {Tape : 2; Side : B; Approx. Time Counter : }

11 PAGE 11 of 11 ADJOURNMENT Adjournment: 5:20 P.M. REP. BILL THOMAS, Chairman PATI O'REILLY, Secretary BT/PO/JB Jan Brown transcribed these minutes EXHIBIT(huh27aad)
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1 E 4 ALBERT EMBANKMENT LONDON SE1 7SR Telephone: +44 (0) Fax: +44 (0) Circular Letter No January 2015 To: Subject: All IMO Members United Nations and Specialized Agencies Intergovernmental Organizations Non-Governmental Organizations in Consultative Status Second session of the Sub-Committee on Carriage of Cargoes and Containers (14 to 18 September 2015) 1 The Secretary-General has the honour to invite representation at the second session of the Sub-Committee on Carriage of Cargoes and Containers (CCC), which has been scheduled to take place from 9.30 a.m. on Monday, 14 to Friday, 18 September 2015, at IMO Headquarters, 4 Albert Embankment, London SE1 7SR. 2 The provisional agenda for the second session of the Sub-Committee (CCC 2/1) is attached hereto. Other relevant documentation will be distributed as and when received by the Secretariat. 3 It is expected that the following working and/or drafting groups * will be established during this session:.1 amendments to the IGF Code and development of guidelines for low-flashpoint fuels; and.2 revision of DSC/Circ The Secretary-General would appreciate being informed, in due course, of the names of representatives, delegates and observers, as appropriate, intending to participate in the forthcoming second session of the Sub-Committee. Submission of documents 5 In accordance with the Guidelines on the organization and method of work of the MSC and the MEPC and their subsidiary bodies (MSC MEPC.1/Circ.4/Rev.3), the deadlines for submission of documents to the session and the method of submitting documents are specified in paragraph 1 of the notes to the provisional agenda in document CCC 2/1. *** * The Chairman, in consultation with the Secretariat, taking into account the submissions received on the respective subjects, will advise the Sub-Committee well in time before the session on the final selection of such groups.

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3 Circular Letter No.3512 Annex, page 1 ANNEX REGISTRATION AT IMO MEETINGS AND PROCEDURE GOVERNING IMO SUPPORT FOR VISA APPLICATIONS Registration at IMO meetings Member Governments, IGOs and NGOs are required to provide, prior to the meeting date, the names of their representatives, including Permanent Representatives, heads of delegations, alternates, advisers or observers, via the Online Meeting Registration System (OMRS) as advised in Circular Letter No.3463 of 14 July This facilitates both their entry into the building and production of the list of participants by the Secretariat. Once they have completed the registration procedure, delegates will be issued at IMO with an electronic access card to pass through the security barrier in the IMO building. Issue of the access card will require photographic proof of identity, e.g. passport, identity card or driving licence. Delegates may also be required to show proof of identity at any time while they are in the Headquarters building, if requested by IMO Security. In view of the significant costs incurred in producing access cards, delegates who have previously been issued with one are kindly requested to bring it with them for reactivation. Any matters relating to the use of the OMRS should be communicated to: Registration Unit Meeting Services and Interpretation Section No representative will be registered to attend the meeting without authorization from their OMRS Delegation Coordinator. New delegates whose names appear in the OMRS will be issued with the above-mentioned access card. Delegates whose names are not on the OMRS list will be requested to contact their OMRS Delegation Coordinator in order to process their authorization to attend the meeting. Delegates are advised that the Registration Desk will be open from 7.30 a.m. on Monday, 14 September 2015, when early arrival would be appreciated. General information on administrative and housekeeping issues relating to meetings at IMO may be found in an information leaflet for delegates, which can be downloaded from IMODOCS and is also available at the Documents and Meeting Services counters on the ground floor and second floor, respectively. Delegates are kindly requested to familiarize themselves with the contents of the information leaflet. Procedure governing IMO support for visa applications Delegates invited by the Organization who require United Kingdom entry visas should, in the first instance, apply for a visa at the nearest British Consulate or Embassy and obtain reference numbers. The necessary documentation (such as a copy of the IMO programme of meetings usually issued during December/January each year; the original and relevant IMO official letter of invitation usually issued some six months prior to the time the meeting is to convene at IMO; or the nomination letter together with a note verbale from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) must accompany such visa applications.

4 Circular Letter No.3512 Annex, page 2 Delegates must be nominated by the Ministry of Transport (or any other competent ministry) or by the National Maritime Administration. The nomination letter should be taken to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for preparation of a note verbale addressed to the British Embassy/High Commission. If, after following the above-mentioned procedure, delegates still encounter visa problems, either the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Transport or the National Maritime Administration should communicate in writing on paper bearing the official letterhead the following details to the Deputy Director/Head, Human Resources Services of IMO, requesting visa assistance and stating the reasons given by the British Embassy/High Commission as to why visas have been or may be refused. i ii iii First name: Family name: Profession: Date of birth: Place of birth: Type of passport: Passport No: Place of issue: Date of issue: Valid until: Visa reference number: Date and place of visa application: Purpose of visit: Duration of anticipated stay in the United Kingdom: This exercise must be undertaken at least six weeks before the date on which the session begins, to enable the Organization to support the visa application accordingly and the visa to be issued in good time *. * Requests for visa assistance should be sent to IMO by fax (+44(0) ) or by

5 E SUB-COMMITTEE ON CARRIAGE OF CARGOES AND CONTAINERS 2nd session Agenda item 1 CCC 2/1 20 January 2015 Original: ENGLISH PROVISIONAL AGENDA for the second session of the Sub-Committee to be held at IMO Headquarters, 4 Albert Embankment, London, SE1 7SR, from Monday, 14 to Friday, 18 September 2015 (Session commences at 9.30 a.m. on Monday, 14 September 2015) Opening of the session 1 Adoption of the agenda 2 Decisions of other IMO bodies 3 Amendments to the IGF Code and development of guidelines for low-flashpoint fuels ( ) 4 Safety requirements for carriage of liquefied hydrogen in bulk ( ) 5 Amendments to the IMSBC Code and supplements ( ) 6 Amendments to the IMDG Code and supplements ( ) 7 Amendments to CSC 1972 and associated circulars ( ) 8 Revised Guidelines for packing of cargo transport units ( ) 9 Unified interpretation to provisions of IMO safety, security and environment related Conventions ( ) 10 Consideration of reports of incidents involving dangerous goods or marine pollutants in packaged form on board ships or in port areas ( ) 11 Biennial agenda and provisional agenda for CCC 3 12 Election of Chairman and Vice-Chairman for Any other business 14 Report to the Committees

6 CCC 2/1 Page 2 Notes: 1 In accordance with the Guidelines on the organization and method of work of the Maritime Safety Committee and the Marine Environment Protection Committee and their subsidiary bodies (MSC-MEPC.1/Circ.4/Rev.3):.1 documents should be received by the Secretariat as follows 1 :.1 bulky documents 2 (those containing more than six pages) by Friday, 12 June 2015;.2 non-bulky documents (those containing six pages or fewer) and also bulky information documents by Friday, 10 July 2015; and.3 documents commenting on those referred to in subparagraphs.1 and.2 above and containing four pages or fewer, by Friday, 24 July 2015 (see also paragraph of the guidelines);.2 for reasons of economy, documents should be submitted in single spacing and be as concise as possible, and:.1 all documents should include a brief summary prepared in accordance with section 6 of the above-mentioned guidelines;.2 substantive documents should conclude with a summary of the action that the Sub-Committee is invited to take;.3 information documents should conclude with a summary of the information they contain; and.3 the following word-processing format should be observed in order to standardize presentation: - font: Arial; - font size: 11; - justification: full; - margins: 2 cm top, 2.5 cm bottom, left and right. A template is available on the IMODOCS website for use in the preparation of documents. To facilitate processing, documents should be submitted in Microsoft Word, preferably by to 2 The MSC has recommended that the sub-committees should strictly observe the provisions of the above-mentioned Guidelines which, inter alia, provide that the Secretariat should strictly apply the rules concerning the submission of documents and not accept late submissions from Governments or delegations. 1 2 Documents other than information documents and reports from sub-committees, working, drafting, correspondence and other working groups and the Secretariat, which contain more than 20 pages, in line with paragraph 6.11 of the above-mentioned guidelines will not be translated in their entirety. Such documents should include, for translation purposes, a summary not longer than four pages, with the technical content submitted as an annex in the language needed by working groups (i.e. English). In the case of documents containing more than 50 pages, the provisions of paragraph of the Committees' Guidelines are to be applied.
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When President Pranab Mukherjee met his Nepal counterpart Bidya Bhandari at Shital Niwas soon after his arrival in the Himalayan country on Wednesday afternoon, he decided to share a lesson from Indian history.

Mukherjee remarked that when Indias constitution-drafting process was taking place in the late 1940s, the Congress had a majority in the Constituent Assembly. Yet, the partys leadership made it a point to listen to all views, take on board all sections of political opinion. And that is why, today, every Indian feels that this is his constitution.

The President refrained from offering any prescription. Neither did Bhandari offer a response. But the message was hard to miss. It was not an abstract history lesson.

Read | Mukherjee feted in Janakpur, given key to the city

Nepal remains embroiled in a political contest over the constitution. The major parties pushed it through last year, overriding the concerns of substantial section of the population in the Terai plains and disregarding Indian advice. A movement broke out. Both Kathmandu-Terai and Kathmandu-Delhi ties dipped. An amendment was passed, but it did not address the contentious issue of federal demarcation of states. The new Nepal government, led by Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, has promised to move ahead on the constitutional amendment.

Balancing act

Mukherjees visit happened in this backdrop, with two broad objectives: restoring bilateral trust and nudging Kathmandu in the direction of constitutional accommodation.

To achieve the first aim, his public messaging in Kathmandu was centred around how India is committed to a united, stable, peaceful Nepal. Each word here is carefully picked. There are sections of Nepali nationalists who have constructed a narrative that India wants to fragment Nepal; that it wants continued instability in Nepal; and it wants conflict to continue its control. In fact, sections in social media driving a campaign against the visit were driven by precisely these impulses. The President was going out of his way to reiterate a commitment  from the highest level of the Indian state  that these apprehensions were misplaced and false.

Mukherjee  always the proper, seasoned statesman  was also careful, and paid adequate deference to both Nepali institutions and Nepali sovereignty, a touchy issue for political class. Given his old association with Nepal, he was able to use old relationships to send out a message laced with warmth. He also had a 20-minute one-on-one meeting with Prachanda, who is understood to be enormously pleased with the meeting.

Read | Nepal should involve all stakeholders in nation building: Pranab Mukherjee

Besides listing out the ongoing bilateral projects, to reach out to the aspirational Nepali youth, Mukherjee declared they could now study in the IITs, which would open up their entrance exams, and even hold them in Kathmandu. He also invited Nepal to be a part of the Indian growth story.

At the same time, India remained consistent on its message on the constitution. Yet, in keeping with the dignity of the Presidential office and to provide space to the Nepali political elite that has been saying it is committed to taking everyone along, this was framed more positively than in the past.

Noble endeavour

For instance, during his State Banquet speech, instead of adopting a prescriptive tone, Mukherjee lauded the enterprise and achievement of the Nepali people. He added, They seek to achieve their objectives within a federal and democratic framework, taking on board all sections of society. They seek to accomplish a Constitution that responds to the needs of their diverse social fabric. We wish you all success in this noble endeavour.

But it was important that the message not get lost in translation. And that is why, along with other leaders, Mukherjee met the entire spectrum of Madhesi leaders of the Terai, heard their grievances and assured them that India had been steadfast in its stance that the constitution should be more broad-based in its ownership. He also visited Janakpur in a highly symbolic move. Conventional interpretation would restrict the visit to a natural consequence of shared religious and civilisational heritage, since Janakpur is where mythological Lord Ram and Sita wed. But the town is also the heart of the Madhes andolan. It was a recognition of Terai in Nepal, and in Nepal-India ties, and the people responded with a warm welcome.

The power of the Indian president in the political order is limited. But at times, the Indian state is able to use the institution and the person occupying the office effectively to serve its foreign policy objectives. The Nepal visit would be one such feather in President Mukherjees cap, as he winds down in Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Read | My visit to Nepal was mission of friendship: Prez Pranab Mukherjee

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So lets do a little crystal ball gazing. What will happen if the Hildebeest becomes Queen? I still think that at this point in time, the most likely outcome is that the Lady of the Flies will win, if that is the word. (The premature release from NBC of the Sea Hag's 42% "victory" this week confirms that. Basically, the fix is in. - HAC)





My main rationale for that conviction is that I simply cannot see a genuine outsider like Donald Trump being allowed into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The existing power elite is comprised of a worldwide billionaires club which is mostly White and male and devoid of soul, but which also contains immensely powerful Jews like George Soros and non-Whites like Carlos Slim. These are connected billionaires, part of the establishment, the Bohemian Grove set. I very much doubt Donald Trump has ever been invited to Bohemian Grove.





They cant allow Trump to happen. They have reached a consensus that the world will be globalized and mongrelized (except for their own tiny elite, of course) and they will do something to stop Trump-unless their own grasp on power and the mechanisms of the Deep State has slipped to such a degree that they can no longer rig an election or arrange for an assassination, which will be an interesting development, if true.





I think the Hildebeest will win through the infamous Five Fs of the Democratic party-Foreigners, Feminists, Faggots, Felons and Fraud. She will win by relying on the Democrats massive teeming numbers of blacks and illegals in the six or seven battleground states of the electoral college.





It is an open secret that illegal aliens are unlawfully voting already in large numbers in certain key states such as California, New York, Illinois, etc. I might add that this is the last election where Texas is expected to show up as a red state, due to the influx across the now-open southern border. With the other top four states in the hands of Democrats as the White retirees of Florida die out, this effectively means a one-party regime, at least on the federal level, and no White heterosexual male will ever sit in the Oval Office again.





In coming elections the system will be so rigged and the White vote so outnumbered and attenuated everywhere it counts, that any hope of any recovery of government by any kind of outsider, Trump-ish or not, will be over. You all need to wrap your minds around something: Hillary on November 8th is forever.





If the Hildebeest wins then several things will almost certainly happen, and happen quickly. The left-loons, I believe, will immediately take action to silence the alt.right and all opposition on the internet and in electronic media.





I know that even as powerful as they are, it will be impossible for even them ever to drive all dissent completely off the internet. The objective will be to re-establish their level of control of more or less all public electronic media as it existed in 2008, when Barry was first immaculated, and before it got so badly out of hand due to Donald Trump charging all over the political landscape like a bull in a china shop.





In other words, back to the bad old days of cyber-shaming and the massive pretense that White dissent doesnt exist, a major attempt to cut us off from access to the mass audiences that we have very briefly glimpsed thanks to Trump. The Hillarian regime will seek to confine us once again to a few small and obscure spaces on the internet with audiences that can be counted on the fingers, mostly just talking to each other like we have been for the past 70 years, where no one will hear us as they have during the Trump episode.





This campaign against dissent will include:





*The resumption of the publicity blackout on our content, our leading personalities, and our very existence. Richard Spencer, Jared Taylor, Andrew Anglin and others will disappear down the Memory Hole, until they are arrested at some later date on charges based on perjury and fabricated evidence from the FBI.





*Some effort will be made to arrest and imprison Trump himself, to punish him for frightening the establishment so badly.





*We will see the cancellation of hundreds if not thousands of pro-Trump and anti-Hillary Twitter and Facebook accounts, and the banning from social media of a number of people, possibly including myself if they think Im important enough;





*It will include a full-court press offensive against dissident websites that have obtained a mass viewership, such as Infowars and Breitbart and Daily Stormer, combining both legal and regulatory assaults by the FCC, IRS, etc. with a view toward shutting those sites down;





*This will be accompanied by a major attack by the FCC to silence the Matt Drudge Report by forcing Drudge to pay royalties to the sites he links to. This avenue of attack on Drudge has been attempted in the past. They are definitely going to try to sink Drudge any way they can; they have come to hate him even worse than Rush Limbaugh.





*There will be a reinstatement of the so-called Fairness Doctrine, probably by executive order, a stroke of the dictators pen. Prior to 1987 this policy prevented talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, the neo-con Jews Michael Medved and Michael Savage, and the lunatic Glenn Beck from syndicating and breaking out of local markets at WHIX in Hawg Waller, Tennessee, etc. Whatever you may think of Drudge and Limbaugh and Alex Jones and Breitbart-and I am aware of their problematic qualities; please remember there is no perfection to be found anywhere in the modern Movementanyway, in spite of their flaws they have their uses, and the loss of this genuine mass media will be a serious setback.





*One of the e-mails the Beest sent to her aide John Podesta, and which was released to the media by Wikileaks this week, indicates that the she is quote-unquote considering an executive order on guns in order to do an end run around the Second Amendment. Its not clear from the leaked e-mail exactly what this end run would consist of; my guess is she would at least attempt to set up a nationwide database of who owns what guns, by make and serial number, which would include some kind of mandatory address on the physical location of each weapon.





No kind of effective gun seizure program could be instituted unless the dictatorship first knows who has what guns, and where. This is why the establishment of universal registration has always been the first step and the one most fiercely opposed by the NRA.





*Another horror I think we can expect from the empowered Hildebeest is the enforced establishment of a single-payer health care system to replace the hideous shambles of Obamacare, again by executive order. Since we allowed Barry to abolish the national borders with a stroke of his pen, were not really in a position to object to any imperial decrees his successors want to promulgate.





This edict from the throne may simply consist of putting everybody on Medicare, or they may erect a British NHS-style edifice from the ground up. Either way, all of you guys will come to know the joy I have been experiencing for the past several years of getting my healthcare from a massive federal bureaucracy.





This will entail the seizure of roughly one-sixth of the American national economy by the federal government, the largest transfer of wealth in human history. It will lead to the creation of an intrusive bureaucratic, administrative and economic juggernaut which will devour the land and force its way into all our lives in one way or the other.





Just as the National Health Service in the U.K. has always been the staunchest and most powerful support of Labour governments, the more left-wing the better, here in the U.S. the new socialized medical establishment will become the not-so-thin thin edge of the wedge which will allow the dictatorship to enter every home and workplace, make policy and give orders as to how we must all live our lives.



For example, we will not be allowed to smoke. At all, anywhere, although excep tions will be made for the elite and their fine cigars. We will not be allowed to eat meat; a nice thick steak will become the prerogative of the super-wealthy elite in their exclusive private clubs and enclaves. It is astounding all the angles that can be drummed up to make anything, anything at all an issue of public health.





First on the Hillary/Soros agenda: all those nasty fossil fuels and right-wing oil companies who support Republicans will have to go, of coursecant have all those nasty fumes poisoning the air and causing global warming. Thats a health risk!





The new Democratic national healthcare colossus will work hand in glove with the monstrous, fraudulent behemoth of climate change in order to create the Great Nanny State which controls everything for everybody from cradle to grave, an abomination which will make socialist Britain and Sweden look benign by comparison. But we must be saved from ourselves, nest-ce pas?





And that in turn means all these private automobiles will have to gotheir emissions cause climate change, and besides, private cars are racist. White people use them to escape from diversity to the suburbs and exurbs, and to avoid riding public transportation where they will be forced into personal, physical contact with all the wonderful minorities in enclosed spaces with no escape if the animal becomes aggressive. (This is in fact true, of course.)





*Guns will have to go, of course, although this project will take a while and probably outlast Hillarys time. But thanks to Ammon and Ryan Bundy, the dictators servants know that well wave guns in the air and talk shit, but none of us will actually point a weapon and pull the trigger and fire a single shot in our defense-and so they know for certain theyre safe and the process can begin. I dont think they were quite sure before the Oregon clown show. Probably this process will be kicked off with that national gun database I mentioned above, instituted with the stroke of a dictators pen.





*The last vestige of the southern border of the United States will be dismantled, and the Border Patrol will either be disbanded or assigned to other duties, like running shelters and welcome centers for the invaders along the old border and giving them lifts into the interior. What Obama did unofficially, the Hildebeest will formalize. America will follow Germany, Sweden, and Great Britain as a nation without borders existing as anything other than a geographic description of longitude and latitude.





*Finally, I believe the first Hillary Clinton administration will see a full-court press begin on something else that Barry Soetoro started, but which for some years has gotten surprisingly little coverage in our media, and none at all in the MSM: open housing so that no childs future will be limited by his zip code. (Their own slogan.) Basically, the end of White suburbs and neighborhoods, not only to bring the joys of diversity to us all but to break up Republican voting districts.





Back during the summer it leaked to the media that the central government was threatening to withhold federal money, to which state and local governments are addicted like crack cocaine, from about 1200 metropolitan suburb and larger towns around the country. This threat was directed against zoning ordinances prohibiting the construction of multi-unit housing in neighborhoods zoned for single-family dwellings, i.e. what used to be White peoples houses.





In other words, the regime intends to begin erecting affordable housing units, i.e. projects, for niggaz and beanerz and other Third World New Democrats, smack dab in the Whitest suburbs and towns they can find. The final stage of integration will begin under Hillary Clinton, the forced insertion of niggaz into every neighborhood so us honkies cant get into any mischief without some brothuhs around to keep us frightened and cowed. Theyve already begun this process in certain major city suburbs, rolling in and block-busting with low-income apartment blocks assigned to blacks and immigrants, but this process still accomplishes not integration and di-voice-i-tay but only more White flight. White people still will not voluntarily live around blacks and browns. The program will need major expansion to destroy safe spaces that White people can flee to.





* * *





I still think its going to be the Beest in November-but I could be wrong. It could well be that the empowered elite really has slipped to the point where they can no longer rig an election, at least not on a national scale, or arrange for some strange little man at the right time and place to do the old Arthur Bremer trick and step out of the crowd with a pistol in his hand. Or something could come out about the Sea Hag in the next batch of Wiki-leaked e-mails that is so horrific that it makes even the present power structure realize that a Hillary Clinton presidency simply wont wash. Or aliens might land on the White House lawn and proclaim Trump president. Or whatever.





Anyway, lets assume for the sake of argument that on the morning of November 9th we wake up to a miracle. Donald Trump has won and been elected President of the United States. What then?





If that epochal event, the overthrow of this system by an outsider-any outsider-really does take place, then I will have a lot to say. I promise you I will unlimber my rhetorical A game for that, and sure a right pleasure it will be.





But what are the practical implications of a November Miracle? What will actually happen if Trump wins? I mean, really. I have always said The trouble with Donald Trump for president is that we dont know what were getting. The trouble with Hillary Clinton is that we do. Once the Hildebeest is gone, were stuck with The Donald.





The first thing I think I can assert without too much fear of contradiction is that the Democrats and civil rights industry and the Salonistas and all the putrid panopoly of political correctness will not take it lying down. I will give liberal left-loons one thing: they are as persistent as leeches. Unlike us, liberals never give up.





When we win one, we congratulate ourselves on a job well done, kick off our shoes and flop down on the sofa, crack the top on a cold one, and pick up the remote to see whats on the Toob. When left-loons lose one, they immediately begin circling around like sharks, looking to attack, re-visit and revive the issue again from another angle, and then another until they get what they want. Gun control is a great example of this. In this case what they will want is no Donald Trump in the White House, and they wont give up until they get it.





The power structure may attempt some kind of immediate impeachment proceeding, and with all the Republicans in Congress who hate Trumps guts, it is likely they could get bipartisan support for such a move, possibly even under the present Congress before Trump takes office in January. What charges they would bring, or how that would work, I wont speculate. Youd think theyd at least wait a couple of years to try and catch Trump doing something really illegal or unconstitutional, and given his 13-year-old personality in a 70-year-old body they might could do that, but I dont think the inside elite wants to risk letting Trump have so much as a day behind that desk in the White House.





It is in my view entirely possible that the Deep State will arrange for Trumps assassination after the election, as a last resort when all else has failed, in order to pass the presidency on to this cuckservative nerd Mike Pence and that way they will at least have a more-or-less connected insider in the Oval Office. Not the one they wantedI think the Israel-first cuck faction really wanted the Slimy Ted Cruz in therebut at least someone they can work with who wont trash the place.





And maybe that wouldnt be a bad thing. There is a distinct risk of White America jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire here. Maybe if the power structure can in fact find some way to see off Trump after (let me repeat dat!) only after he has seen off Hillary and removed the threat she poses to all humanityif the power structure does pull off some quasi-legal removal from office or an assassination, then maybe we shouldnt be too exercised over it.





Look, this Trump guy is an extraordinary man and he may give us the gift of our freedom and survival, but if he does it will be only inadvertently. Trump is not a historic atavism and logos like Adolf Hitler was, not by a long shot. He is more of an unconscious and unwitting tool of the cosmic forces of history. Hes not doing this for us, hes doing it for his own gargantuan ego.





This guy may see himself as a modern-day Teddy Roosevelt, but when he gets in that Oval Office hes going to be more like a kid on a sugar rush. Remember, if and when Trump can dispose of the threat of a Hillary Clinton presidency and break the two-party system for good, he will have served his turn in history. All praise be to him for that, for eternity. No argument. But that will still leave him at least four years in office to play with all his new toys.





Those will include a lot of lovely GI Joes and action figures with real guns and a lot of nifty stuff that goes bang and boom and KA-BLOOEY! And Im worried the Donald will want to play with his new toys the minute he gets into office, like leaping into a war with China, or at least some ill-considered third (or fourth, or fifth) return to Iraq, this time to clean up the ISIS mess Hillary and Barry and Jug-Ears before them created.





Look, this we just dont need right now. We need to bring the troops home and let them rest and recuperate. This society is falling apart at the seams and Mad Max fantasies aside, nobody in his right mind wants a massive social collapse to happen. Not for real. No, you dont. Life with no beer and no internet and no toilet paper would get very old, very quickly, I assure you.





What we need, frankly. is at least a few more years of stability so we, our wee little Movement, the alt.right, whatever you want to call us can finally get our act together and begin implementing actual systemic change. Because right now, no way in hell is the NF or anybody else in any shape to take advantage of a for-real window of opportunity.





Yes, I am familiar with history and I know about how revolution springs from war, but I confess that I have just enough residual patriotism, and unlike most I have experienced just enough of the real thing, so that what I want to see is change, not Mad Max-style catastrophe. When your home has rats and termites and bedbugs and ants and rattlesnakes nesting in the basement, you bring in an exterminator. You dont burn the whole house to the ground.








Saturday morning in New Delhi felt like a day from the dark and smoggy winter of 1998. But even that year, which prompted the Supreme Court to introduce CNG engines for public transport and phase out old commercial vehicles, the conditions had been much better than they are now. Though the nitrogen oxide that hurts the eyes is almost at the same level, average particulate matter is more than double of what it had been then.

Delhi has reached this sorry state due to a lack of political will and the unwillingness of its residents to change their lifestyle. The per capita registration of high-emission vehicles in the city is the highest in India, according to data from the road transport ministry. Transport officials say that more than half of Delhis middle-class homes have two or more cars -- a sign of their growing affluence.

This has led to the vehicle population to treble since 2007 -- when the first signs of the re-emergence of pollution rise had became visible  and average traffic speeds on congested stretches have dropped to 50 per cent of what they were in 2000.

One can no longer look at Delhi and its adjacent towns as separate units since the green corridors that divided them have vanished. As per the Census Commissioners estimate for 2015, the population in the new concrete conglomerate of Delhi, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Sonepat, Noida and Ghaziabad has almost doubled to 28 million in the last 15 years. The majority of this population growth has happened in the areas that surround Delhi.

On Friday, two days into the worst smog the city has witnessed in 17 years, the particulate matter in Faridabad was even higher than in south Delhi, while Gurgaon and Noida were at par with the Capital, showing that pollution is not just a Delhi problem any longer.

But even today, politicians are abdicating their responsibility by blaming stubble burning alone for the ongoing crisis. This is not just counter-productive, it is also an over-simplification. Had the stubble burning in Punjab been the only cause for Delhis bad air, pollution in other cities falling between Delhi and Punjab would have been alarmingly high as well.

Rohtak, north-west of Delhi in Haryana, serves as an interesting case study. Winds bringing smoke from Punjab farms should spike Rohtaks pollution levels. On Saturday, the particulate matter in the fast-growing township, which has an IIM and an AIIMS, was less than 100 micrograms per cubic metre. About 50 kms away, the PM10 level in Delhis Punjab Bagh locality on Rohtak Road was nearly 1,200.

Here is how the air deteriorates between the two places. Three big industrial zones, Nangloi, Bawana and Mundka, release huge pollutants. Delhis inner and outer rings roads add heavy vehicular traffic to the mix. And cramped colonies around the industrial zones not only lead to traffic congestion but also stop the foul air from escaping.

The wind speed in the last few days has dropped and there has been a dip in temperature. All this has contributed to pollutants getting trapped at a breathing level, says Gufrain Beg of the Indian Institute of Tropical Metrology.

While stubble burning may be a big contributor, source appropriation studies by the Central Pollution Control Board and IIT Kanpur in 2015 showed that over 80 per cent of air pollution in Delhi was because of sources within the city and its immediate neighbourhood.

Blaming stubble burning alone for the rise in Delhis air pollution serves as a convenient tool because it shifts the blame on people not accountable to the residents of Delhi. It helps Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and the citys administrative head Najeeb Jung evade questions about their failure to take adequate measures. While they shrug their shoulders, Delhis pollution map is all red and the lungs of millions of Delhites are turning black.

Read more - Air so dirty you can smell, taste: Delhi grapples with toxic pollution

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Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhans changing stance has taken the minority community by surprise but they feel it is not in Chouhans inherent nature and he is working under tremendous pressure from the RSS which does not want to spare Madhya Pradesh and use it as its laboratory.

Killing of eight 8 SIMI members, who allegedly escaped from the Bhopal Central Jail in the wee hours on October 31, by the police has raised several questions against Chouhans leadership which had earlier instilled a sense of confidence in Muslims.

Chouhan has been the chief minister for the past 11 years. He never indulged in any politics to marginalise the Muslims in the society. His stand on the issues related to cows, love jihad, etc has always been a balanced one. He never discriminated between Hindus and Muslims while doling out the benefits of his govts schemes, said Mohd Mahir, convener of MP Muslim Vikas Parishad.

However, he added, the CMs stance had been changing for the past three months or so which was much obvious given his stand on the Balaghat episode in which members of the minority community were implicated under false charges under the pressure of RSS.

Now, a similar thing  rather a horrible thing  like the encounter establishes it beyond doubt that Chouhan is blindly following the RSS line, he said.

However, Muslims still believe that despite the Balaghat incident and the Bhopal encounter, they will not completely lose faith in Chouhan.

In the encounter, several were innocent beyond doubt. But still we will keep a watch on Chouhans further steps to decide our future course of action, said Mohd Mahir.

Mufti Irfan said, We are surprised to see how Chouhan, who has been nice to the minority community since he assumed office, has changed his position. We wondered what had gone wrong with him when he asked the people at the Lal Parade ground to raise hands in support of the encounter.

The minority community feels that the objective behind the anti-Muslim stance is not to bolster the partys prospects in the assembly or Lok Sabha elections but something else.

According to Muslim leaders, the central government and the RSS have made their intentions clear by taking stand on the triple talaq issue and other aspects of Muslims personal laws. Now, Chouhan has been made to follow the RSS agenda.

State BJP vice-president Vijesh Lunawat, however, said the state government under the leadership of chief minister Chouhan was committed towards the development of all the sections of the society without any discrimination.
People in Khijradev village in Bhopal, where eight SIMI men were gunned down by police on Monday, are fearing a possible retaliatory attack after chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced Rs 40 lakh reward for some villagers for tip-off about movement of the Islamists.

Chouhan, during a speech on Madhya Pradesh Foundation Day on November 1, announced that Rs 40 lakh reward on the eight terrorists would be distributed among villagers who informed and helped police to locate Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) members.

The whole village is struck by fear and possibility of an untoward incident. We are afraid of going to our fields to water them before sowing crop, 38-year-old villager Maninal told HT.

He said security of villagers has become the most important thing now.

We are just thinking about our crops. If we continue to live in fear due to lack of proper security arrangements, we cannot water our fields which is the lone source of our bread and butter, he said.

Notably, the eight members of the outlawed SIMI were shot dead by Madhya Pradesh police in the village on the outskirts of Bhopal under controversial circumstances on Monday, hours after they fled from the high-security Bhopal Central Jail.

Another villager Gitacharan said earlier they used to gather after the dinner for gossip but now they had stopped doing so because of fear.

Our children have stopped going to schools. We are not able to water our fields during the night. Our ladies are stopping us from going out. It is no fault of ours as we just did our job as citizen of the nation by informing police about them (Islamists), said Gitacharan.

Besides, he said anyone getting reward money should spend a portion of it for development of the village.

Village sarpanch Mohan Singh Meena said he had asked for police protection for villagers. At present, I am not at all bothered about the reward money. I am bothered about the security of the village. I have urged police to set up a police outpost at the village for the next three months.
A new CCTV footage showing that SIMI men were freely roaming in the Bhopal jail emerged on Friday evening, a day after an audio clip allegedly featuring conversations among police officials involved in the encounter had surfaced.

In the audio clip, whose authenticity is yet to be confirmed, cops could he heard telling each other to shoot SIMI men raising suspicion over authenticity over the encounter. The men, who were said to have jumped Bhopal Central Jail on Diwali night, were killed near Malikheda on the outskirts of Bhopal.

But, Friday footage believed to be of a CCTV camera installed near the cells of the SIMI cadres showed eight killed SIMI men roaming freely at the B block during the day time. Aired by a local television channel, the SIMI men in the CCTV footage could not be identified. HT had earlier reported that the SIMI cadres had VIP lifestyle in the jail, and used to move around freely during the day and even had set up a gym.

The audio clip, featuring walkie-talkie conversations of cops, fuelled further suspicion that they were keen to kill  not capture alive  the eight men. The senior police official asks on the walkie-talkie whether all the five (of the eight) men were fleeing together.

To this, one of the police officials at the encounter site responds in the positive.

The senior police official then says, Bilkul piche nahi hatna hai. Gherke poora kardo kaam tamaam (Dont back off...Surround them and finish them).

One of the police officials then says the SIMI men were firing at them. To this, the senior official commands to do retaliatory firing after taking a proper position.

Judicial probe ordered

The Madhya Pradesh government has decided against the NIA inquiry following decision to hold judicial probe by retired High Court judge SK Pandey.

The judge will inquire everything right from escape to encounter and also they will give recommendation on how to enhance security of the jail, Home Minister Bhupendra Singh told HT.

This comes two days after Singh had said that NIA will investigate only the jail break and not the encounter.

The minister also said that the government is yet to decide on when to give award to police personnel involved in the encounter and the villagers who gave information about SIMI men to the police. This may mean that the villagers and the policemen may not get the award money immediately.

However, Congress leader Digvijaya Singh welcomed the decision to hold a judicial inquiry but wanted it to be under the supervision of Madhya Pradesh high court.

On the authenticity of the audio clip, IG Bhopal Yogesh Choudhary said the whole incident was under investigation. It is a matter of investigation. CID is already probing the incident, I cannot comment on that, Choudhary said.

According to sources, the audio conversation involves a senior police official, the personnel at police control room (PCR) and the police officials present at the encounter site at Khijradev village under Gunga police station.
Actor Varun Sharma of Dilwale (2015) and Fukrey (2013) fame is going places. After appearing in a travel series on television, the 26-year-old actor has donned another hat  he has directed a short film.

The actor made the most of his spare time while shooting for his next film in Europe and shot a short film based on the lines of Mr. Beans Holiday.

The film is in post production stage. It was made in Budapest with one camera. I recorded and filmed everything taking place around me, informs Varun, who has compiled moments of real people and of his own self in this short film that will be out soon.

Actor Varun Sharma shot to fame with films such as Fukrey (2013) and Dilwale (2015).

Ask him if direction was always in his game plan and the actor confesses he never thought he could direct anything till date. Even this journey of a short film started off in a fun manner. Once I had shot, it was only after a week when things started to look good, the idea came that we can have a story driven thing and compile sequences into a short film, adds Varun, stating that direction needs a lot of practice, hands-on training, experience and guidance.

Talking more about his short film, he adds, Its basically slice of life of different people and the cultural differences between us as Indians. It also has perspective of us when we travel abroad and fascinating things we see, along with encountering new cultures.

This was Varuns first attempt at direction and if given a chance, he would love to direct in future too, however he maintains he cannot take that up as a full-fledged profession as of now. I am very happy acting right now. I want to just go ahead mastering that act only. Direction will also happen but not soon. I will keep doing little things to hone my direction skills.

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There is something to be said about multiculturalism. For one thing, it allows me to celebrate New Year thrice every year. Theres the regular New Year on the 1st of January, when I party along with the rest of the world. Theres the Baisakhi New Year in April that I get to enjoy because I was born into a Punjabi family. And now, theres also Diwali, which is celebrated as New Year by Gujaratis, a community I belong to by marriage.

This Diwali, though, as I did my puja, praying to Ma Lakshmi for prosperity, I realised with a start that I have more New Years behind me than I have New Years to look forward to. Without even realising it, I have tipped beyond the halfway point in my life. And from now on, Im going to be counting down rather than adding up.

Yes, like Bill Clinton said so memorably at the Democratic National Convention, I too have more yesterdays than tomorrows.

But while I am not in the throes of a mid-life crisis quite yet (well, I think so; my friends and family may well disagree), I have come to the realisation that time is not on my side. In fact, it is the enemy, racing past even as I struggle to play catch up.

So, from this year on, my motto is that immortal line that has stayed with me since my days as a student of English literature: Carpe diem. Seize the day. Make the most of every moment because it will be over before you know it.

As is my wont at such times, I began by making a list of all the things I should and should not do to get the most out of the days, weeks, months and New Years I have left. Here is a small sampling:

* No more revisiting of favourite destinations. Ive been there and done that. There is an entire world out there to explore. And I should do it while I can still explore  as in walk on my own two feet without the aid of a Zimmer frame. London and New York will still be there when I am old and decrepit. But I may not be able to do justice to the mountains of Switzerland and the beaches of Croatia when I need to stop and catch my breath every 10 minutes.

* Sit right down on my desk and write that book. No more procrastinating. No more endless revision of chapters that I have written already. No more displacement activity masquerading as research. No more endless trawling of the Internet. No more excuses about lack of time or mind-space. It is time to sprint to the finish line. And when Im done with the book Im currently working on, it will be time to pick right up where I left off the novel I abandoned three quarters of the way through.

* Prune that reading list. Reluctantly, I have come to the conclusion that I no longer have the time to waste on airport bestsellers and other junk reads. From now on, I will only invest time in authors whom I love and books that show potential. And no more feeling like a failure because I cant finish a book  if that is a failing, then it is the authors, not mine. (Also, if I intend to re-read the classics that I last studied in college  just to see if they speak differently to me  then I need to get on with it. Middlemarch awaits)

* No to endless socialising with people I dont even particularly care for. No to large parties where no conversation is possible (mostly because you have nothing to say to fellow guests). Yes to small dinner parties with friends and prospective friends, where we can actually hear ourselves talk and listen to those speaking to us.

* Declutter my life  not just of things that no longer bring me joy but also of people who only bring me down. A ruthless cull is in order, so that I can both simplify and sanitise my life. By the end, I hope to be left with a pared-down existence that allows me to appreciate what I have rather than bemoan what I dont.

* No more taking health and fitness for granted. From now on, sadly, it will be a slippery slope downhill. And the only way to make a controlled glide down is to invest time and energy in eating well and exercising right.

* Ah no, you misunderstand. That doesnt mean I am going to survive on salads and soups and turn away from dessert. Life is too short to eat rabbit food. Or to drink water rather than wine. But it will get shorter if I forget that magic word: moderation. So, Im going to keep repeating it to myself in the hope that it sticks even when that pesky memory loss kicks in.

So, that is my magic formula for getting through the rest of my days. Read, write, travel, play. And yes, eat, drink and be merryWell, you know how that one goes.

And a belated (or early) Happy New Year to you all, whichever one you choose to celebrate.

From HT Brunch, November 6, 2016

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Most of us know Ranveer Brar from TV; from the shows he did on Khaana Khazana (now Living Foodz) and most significantly, from the one season of Masterchef India which he judged. Because he is good-looking and personable, I suspect that many people regard him as a mere TV chef, the sort of Punjabi hunk who looks good on TV but doesnt really bother too much with cooking. It doesnt help that he has never had a signature restaurant of his own in India where we can go to and try his food.

I know Ranveer only slightly. We have met briefly at events and we were both at Noma Australia in Sydney earlier this year on the same night. But I was always intrigued by the respect that other chefs had for him. Most working chefs  lets be honest  scoff at TV chefs. It may be envy. But restaurant chefs think of TV chefs as pretty boys with camera skills and not much more.

Of course, this is unfair. The great Sanjeev Kapoor is a walking encyclopaedia of cuisine; a true master. Ive eaten Kunal Kapoors food and it is outstanding. Vikas Khanna is chef at the Michelin-starred Junoon in New York. And some of the other Indian chefs who have made it to TV are highly talented (though I am not so sure about TV chefs elsewhere in the world).

The two celebrated kababs to originate from Lucknow are the galouti and the kakori, which is cylindrical in shape

Last week, I bumped into Ranveer in Bombay and we agreed to meet the next day to chat about food. When we sat and talked, I was struck by how different he is in real life from his TV persona. Off-camera, he is shy, a little introverted and so cerebral that he may well over-think everything. The Brar in his name marks his ancestry  Punjabi landowners  but is also little misleading. He was brought up in Lucknow and his background and training are in Avadhi food. At a young age, he ran away from home, he says, and apprenticed himself to Ustad Munir Ahmed, one of Lucknows oldest kabab vendors. (He had a small shack behind Odeon cinema.)

While Ranveer would go on to join the IHM, Lucknow and was one of the few chefs selected in 1999 to join the Taj Management Training Programme through a campus placement, I reckon that his real training came during that stint with the Ustad.

Ranveer has a new book out (Come Into My Kitchen  HarperCollins) which is marketed in the usual way with a cover photo of him gazing wistfully into the distance.

I reckon the photo will help sell the book. But it may do a disservice to the seriousness of the contents. There is an autobiographical introduction and an explanation of how tastes, textures and flavours are combined, followed by a string of recipes, some of which are imaginative (Watermelon dosas; honestly!) while others include his own interpretations of classic dishes.

It was while talking about the classics that we discussed the secrets of Avadhi cuisine. As you probably know, the great chefs of Avadh never part with their secret recipes. (Almost every single recipe you have read for a traditional kabab, korma or a biryani is a lie; the chef has left out a key ingredient or an important step in the cooking process.)

In his book, Ranveer writes about being put in charge of cooking the nehari when he apprenticed with Ustad Munir Ahmed: Of course I never knew what went into the pot. I would only be summoned after everything had gone into the pot. Even when he had to grind the masalas for packing into potlis, the Ustad kept his secrets from Ranveer: When it was mixing time I was sent away on some pretext or another.

Avadhi chefs will tell you that they like keema because it is a good medium for conveying the delicacy of their spicing. But all the great keema kababs of India depend not just on the mixture of spices but on proportion. How much fat do you mix with the lean keema? (And what kind of fat, from which part of the animal?) What is the proportion of masala to meat?

When the Ustad marinated the kababs or the keema was mixed, Ranveer writes, I was sent out because the proportion of masalas to meat was a closely-guarded secret.

I asked Ranveer about the famous keema kababs of Lucknow. The two most famous ones are the galouti (which means melt-in-the-mouth) and the kakori.

Outside of Lucknow, the two kababs are often confused and people believe that it is the same kabab, differentiated only by the shape: the galouti is shaped like a shami or a patty while the kakori is shaped like a seek kabab or a torpedo. Even the stories about their origin are often confused. Both kababs are said to have been invented for toothless old nawabs who asked for kababs that did not require chewing.

The galouti-kakori confusion gets people from Lucknow (where the galouti is more easily found and possibly more popular) very agitated. In fact, there are huge difference. First of all, the texture: a kakori requires the meat to be very finely ground, like a pate while the galouti has a coarser structure.

The spicing is also different: the kakori has more clove, nutmeg etc.  the so-called heady spices. And both are difficult to cook. A kakori mixture will not stay on its skewer unless the chef knows his craft. And the trick to cooking a perfect galouti is not to cook one at a time but to cook a whole batch together so that they keep the heat on the tawa/pan constant. Ideally, the kababs should touch each other while cooking so that each kabab keeps the others warm!

Ranveers own favourite is a third kabab, the dorra of Rampur. This looks a little like a kakori because it is cylindrical in shape. But its flavour comes from the smoking of the meat mixture and khus and sandalwood. In the book, Ranveer writes that a dorra often beats a kakori in flavour.

Now, Ranveer wants to go a little further than most chefs have. When we talk about a deconstructed kakori, many chefs just take it apart and put a little sheermal here, and a bit of keema there. But why cant we, asks Ranveer, re-imagine the kakori Kabab rather than deconstruct it?

Because he has worked with old style kabab Ustads, he knows that one of the trickiest parts of a kakori is the thin crust or membrane that forms outside. How do you get that? Some chefs use kaju paste. ITC will not part with their recipes but I guess they use egg.

Ranveer wants to research ways of finding the thinnest membrane. Then, he wants to see if some of the smoke and sandalwood flavours of a dorra can be transferred to a kakori.

Chef Ranveer wants to research ways of finding the thinnest membrane. Then, he wants to see if some of the smoke and sandalwood flavours of a dorra can be transferred to a kakori

This is all complicated stuff, way beyond the competence of most chefs who just struggle to get the basic kabab right. And besides, I asked Ranveer, what about the problems he encountered while working with the Ustad? How do we figure out the right masalas?

His response was interesting. He believes that the masala is only a small (if overhyped) part of the story. The trick to a perfect kakori, he thinks, is an understanding of technique. How do you know when the mixture is ready? What is the perfect distance between the heat and the skewer? How much heat is right? When is the kabab ready to take off the skewer?And so on.

The secret of the great Ustads is not just that they dont part with their masala formulations. It is that a lifetime of practice has allowed them to master the technique. You cant teach that at hotel school. A chef must observe a master at work and then practise the technique again and again himself till he gets it right.

I asked my own guru, Manjit Gill, if he agreed. Absolutely, he said. You cant teach the cooking of complex classics in a textbook but any gifted chef, with a catering qualification, who practises till he masters the dish, can learn to do it.

Manjit is a master; he has been at this for a long time. Ranveer is still young. He has already run a restaurant in Boston, is opening outlets in Canada and a vegetarian restaurant should open in Bombay next month. His imagination and depth of knowledge are truly impressive.

I hope he continues to reimagine Indias classic dishes.

*

From HT Brunch, November 6, 2016

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If James Bond could fold himself into this, I can, I tell myself, as the car draws up and the driver steps out to open the door for us.

It is the sweetest, dinkiest car I have seen in a long while. I have a choice of colours, and promptly opt for red. And we are off, three to a car. But let me begin at the beginning.

This is my umpteenth visit to Paris. Dont get me wrong, I love the city, its architecture, its bridges, its fashion haunts and museums. But I had begun to think I had been there and done that.

And then this car rolls up  as I wait in the heart of Paris  ready to take me on a special tour. And I am to see Paris through its window.

Ah, the window! The Citroen 2CVs window does not roll down as in the cars I am acquainted with. It flaps open, breaking in half. And the roof opens too, to let those in the back seat stand and look out. (Why did I choose to sit in front?) But then, Paris through a flapped-open window looks quite, quite better than through the car roof.

Since I love cars, permit me the indulgence of a historical aside. My little red cars great-great-grandfather (or grand-pere, if you prefer) was created in the 1940s with completely philanthropic and altruistic motives. It was designed as a means to help the farmer get his produce to the market quickly and cheaply, without having to spoil his Sunday boots trudging on muddy roads. The car could carry 50 kg (110 lb) of farm goods or eggs (without risk of their breaking en route) to the market, if driven at about 50 km. And to accommodate the fact that money was scant, the expedition would consume only three litres of petrol per 100 km. Naturally, it was an instant hit, with a waiting list that the Birkin bag would be proud of.

The Citroen 2CV was designed in the 1940s to help farmers ferry farm goods to the market (Getty Images)

Over the decades, the Citroen evolved as much as it could, without sacrificing its ideal of being light, cheap and eco-friendly. By 1981, the car had built up enough muscle to rush through a movie car chase, driving across an olive farm, taking steep hairpin bends, jumping off road edges, and even taking flying leaps down slopes to evade armed villains driving sedans that threatened, in Mr Bonds words, to out-horsepower the little car.

Perhaps nothing in that exciting car chase made the car more loveable than the fact that, when it was bumped off the road and turned turtle in the middle of a busy road, bystanders helpfully nudged it upright again, as easy as turning a mattress on a bed.

So its little wonder that the demand for the Citroen 2CV grew into a worldwide phenomenon soon after the release of For Your Eyes Only (1981), especially when the Citroen company helpfully launched a special edition 2CV 007 painted yellow with 007 on the front doors, and stickers that looked like bullet holes.

These nuggets from the cars history add the right dash of spice to our ride. And our driver adds the humour and the background as we drive, taking in Paris from quite a different viewpoint.

Alexander III Bridge, which spans the Seine, connects the Champs-Elysees quarter with those of the Invalides and Eiffel Tower (Getty Images)

As we drive through the Avenue des Champs Elysees past the Arc de Triomphe and take in the Petit et Grand Palais, our driver fills us in on well-known and little-known stories on each of the places. We stop for photographs, but I prefer to shoot from inside the car, which incidentally, right now, is the most photogenic thing on the streets, or so the smartphones aimed at us have us believe.

Other landmark buildings come into view and more stories, but I am loving the breeze in my face, and the purr of the engine.

We have booked the one-hour tour, and as the sun creates spectacular colours, we shoot the sky, and the car against the sky, and ourselves with the car... You got it. The 2CV is quite the star!

For those with more time on their hands, there are day-long rides, with lunch or dinner included, or a bottle of champagne to toast the sunset. Escapes to Versailles and other out-of-Paris excursions are also available.

As we are dropped off at the hotel, I am half hoping we can see the 2CV on Indian roads. In fact, in 1985, an understanding had been inked with the Escorts Group in India to manufacture the car for the benefit of the rural populace, in an attempt to repeat the original reason the car was created in France. But red tape bound it out of sight. Maybe it would be great to unwind the tape now.

Now its another evening, and another sightseeing trip.

Le Bistro Parisien lies at the foot of the Eiffel Tower and alongside River Seine (Sathya Saran)

This time we are in view of the Eiffel, which threatens to occupy our time in such a way as to endanger our chances of catching our boat on time. But dinner cannot be missed, nor the visual feast that the cruise promises, and the River Seine beckons. So we take the last pictures of the iconic tower, and board the boat.

As the boat starts down the river, it is like watching a film. Notre Dame floats past, tall and majestic, its towers reminding me of Victor Hugos novel, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831). But Quasimodo no longer walks the corridors and for now the bells are silent. On the riverbank opposite, families walk in groups, lovers sit engrossed in each other and the sounds of a game come floating across the water. The ride has added spice to the scenes, giving us a picture of Paris in the early evening; Paris at leisure. Other monumental and iconic buildings come into view, the Conciergerie, the Musee dOrsay, and then the meal unfolds.

It is a light and wholesome repast, as we are on the early-bird boat that set out in the early evening. We take quick tours to check out the sights between the leisurely courses. The eyes are being feasted indeed, even as the palate warms to the flavours of the meal.

As the boat starts back, a new set of views, of the bank that was behind us, unravels.

Then, as we approach the Eiffel again, it is time for more selfies and group shots. We watch the waves smoothing out as the boat slows, and the engine dies. And the moveable feast comes to an end.

The next dinner group will board soon, and this time there will also be music and perhaps dancing.

But, wait... excitement mounts, there is a ripple of whispers that runs through our group. Reports have it that the river is being cordoned off and Ranveer Singh, hot from the success of Bajirao Mastani, will be shooting on the boat. He will be there tonight. No, he comes tomorrow. Is it true? Tonight! Can we stay and watch? But our questions get no answers. The information is classified! Later, back in India, I read that the actor was indeed in Paris, shooting in the city for weeks.

The two-hour long trips taught me something. I know now that Paris, or any city, can never be fully discovered. There are always ways to look at it with new eyes, from new perspectives.

As I have done, not once, but twice!

*

From HT Brunch, November 6, 2016

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Nirmalya Kumar, who almost opted to become a professional disc jockey, says his song of the year is Love and Hate by Michael Kiwanuka. This is how its lyrics go:

Calling all the people here to see the show

Calling for my demons now to let me go

I need something, give me something wonderful

The choice of song may have something to do with what happened on October 24.

That day Kumar, a globally respected professor of marketing, was on a panel in front of more than 100 young students and managers who were participating in a competition sponsored by the Tata Group. Kumar had led this initiative, having joined the group three years ago as a strategy thought leader and a member of its group executive council (GEC).

The participants were quizzing Kumar on the potential of data analytics when a colleague came up to him and whispered in his ear that Cyrus Mistry had been sacked as the chairman of the group holding company, Tata Sons.

My head jerks--what? recounts Kumar in a post on his website on Saturday. But I am on a panel, so keep answering the questions but signal to the facilitator that we need to wrap this up early. I let the organisers know that I will skip the dinner that follows.

He could have stayed on for the dinner. Back in his apartment, he had little success getting more information from the company. At nine in the evening, he got a call from a colleague who said: It is my unpleasant duty to say your services are no longer required. And that was that.

Independent directors of Indian Hotels express confidence in Mistry

Cyrus Mistry speaks to shareholders during the Tata Consultancy Services annual general meeting in Mumbai on June 28, 2013.

Kumar asked this colleague if that meant he need not show up at work the next morning. The colleague said he need not.

Its all over in a minute, writes Kumar.

Journalists assaulted by Bombay House security staff, Tata Sons apologises

This, he says, happens all the time. There are reality television shows built around the theme, You are fired.

Still, nothing had prepared Kumar for it. I realise that I am unemployed for the first time since the age of 18.

He thought about the more than 70 people he had accumulated in the Big Data team over the past year. They had joined on Kumars word that data was going to be a core capability of the group. Quickly, he shot off a text message to a colleague with a plea to take charge of this venture.

The following morning, Kumar, a bit lost, headed for his morning Starbucks coffee  incidentally, the coffee chain is in India in a joint venture with the Tata Group. For the first time, Kumar realises that Starbucks is also a place for unemployed managers, all dressed in suits, with nowhere to go.

Kumars blog post presents an interesting picture of the way colleagues treat you once you lose your job. The people at the bottom of the pyramid treated me with the same respect and affection as always... Those in the middle, like my team, were sincerely sad to see me go... The reaction at the top of the pyramid was interesting. With three exceptions, the many CEOs and top executives I worked with closely for three years went silent.

Still, Kumar says he has nothing negative to say about the Tata Group. He remains in awe of the the kind of person that Tata attracts  unpretentious and dedicated. Yes, they really drink, as we would say in America, the koolaid of Tata. But I observed how hard they work, and how committed they are to the group and its values. They deserve a great chairman.

The final thoughts in the blog post are about how much Kumar loved his job.

It gave him, an academic, a ringside seat to a group worth more than $100 billion. He ends with saying that only three persons in his career of three decades inspired him. The first was his PhD advisor at Northwestern University in the United States, the second his dean at the London Business School, and the third the ousted Tata Sons chairman.

Thank you, Cyrus, says Kumar, and ends with the lines from Bruce Springsteen that were plastered on his walls as a teenager:

Someday girl I dont know when

Were gonna get to that place

Where we really wanna go

And well walk in the sun

But till then tramps like us

Baby we were born to run

Kumar says he is done running.

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A young woman who had been relentlessly stalked was killed in broad daylight in a crowded metro station on Gurgaon. In another case a teacher was stabbed with a pair of scissors in full public view by her stalker. It was not as though she did not act when the stalking assumed threatening proportions, her family had caught hold of the stalker and even complained to the police. No one did anything, and the family concluded that the man was after harmless, that he would stop. In the metro station killing the victim had complained about the stalker. He backed off for a while only to come back with renewed vengeance and killed the woman, stabbing her over 30 times until someone hit him over the head. It was too late by then.

Read: Faster response by public could have saved Gurgaon stabbing victim

In Madhya Pradesh, a man pulled a tribal girl off a bus, doused her in petrol and then stabbed her to death as passengers watched, unable or unwilling to help. These are just incidents that have taken place recently. Stalking, as I mentioned last week, is a crime which is not taken seriously by the police even though the Indian Penal Code has been amended to include stalking in crimes against women. The fact that it is taken as a harmless male pastime is seen from the remark made by JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav in the Lok Sabha in 2013 during a debate on the anti-rape bill. He said, We have all stalked women. You have to take the first step when you want to speak to a woman. A woman will never approach you. Men have to try on our own and have to talk to her with love. This is the story of the entire country. We have experienced it ourselves. We all have gone through that age, dont forgetRomance will die out now. If a boy doesnt look at a girl or follow her, how can romance happen?

Read: Low police patrol around metro stations in Gurgaon worry commuters

Popular culture, mainly Hindi cinema, romanticises stalking. The premise in such sequences is that no means yes. And this is validated when the heroine after valiantly fending off the heros attentions which may include songs, pulling at her clothes, embarrassing her in public places and macho talk on the phone, gives in and falls in love with the offender. Regional cinema is no better, the hero often following the heroine, peeping into aspects of her life like a voyeur. Some of the most vulgar language and creepy stalking passing off as romance I have ever seen have been in southern films.

It is passing strange that the censors are loath to show any intimacy but seem quite content with such practices been seen as legitimate pursuit of a women even though there is a strong element of coercion and violence in it.

Stalking should never be mistaken as a sign of flattery, it is a serious crime and the offender cannot be taken lightly. Most often, the stalker does not back off, instead he is offended by any rejection by the woman and he extracts revenge. In the Gurgaon murder, the killer was offended that the woman in question did not leave her husband and marry him. Cyber stalking is also becoming a problem with men who feel thwarted trying to publicly shame the victim or threaten her in various ways. There have been instances of women committing suicide over cyber stalkers putting out information or pictures of them on the Net.

Read: The laws against harassment are there, if only all women knew about them

The problem is that as long as the stalker is making a nuisance of himself but not actually committing any violent act, the police tend to dismiss this as a case of unrequited love or just the usual boys will be boys. While the punishment can go up to 10 years for stalking, look at what a former home minister, the irrepressible Sushil Kumar Shinde, said about stalking. Mistakes can happen. We will forgive you the first time, but we will punish you the second time. What is the message the stalker gets? That he is not committing a terrible crime. He will be given a second chance.

But the good news is that now there are helplines to counsel stalked women and also to collaborate with the police to trace numbers from which offenders call. But there only a small number of women in urban areas who either know about these or can access them. The cases of stalking are going up. In 2015 there were 1,124 reported cases of stalking in Delhi, topped only by Maharashtra with 1,399. Poor law enforcement is to blame but so is public apathy. A stalked woman is often seen as somehow responsible for her plight and in the case of those who lost their lives in public attacks, people chose not to intervene until it was too late.

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A jury has found two former top employees of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie guilty on all counts for shutting down access lanes to the George Washington Bridge to punish a Christie foe.



Former Port Authority deputy executive director Bill Baroni and former Christie deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly were found guilty of conspiracy, misapplication of public resources, and fraud.



The two face sentences of up to 86 years in prison. The sentencing has been scheduled for Feb. 21, 2017.



In effect they were found guilty of trying too hard to boost Christies political fortunes in preparation for his presidential campaign. Christie allies sought endorsements from Democratic mayors in his 2013 re-election. When Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich balked on that request, his town was gridlocked with four mornings in a row of traffic that delayed ambulances, stranded kids on school buses and left untold numbers late for work and medical appointments.



The damning testimony of the schemes architect, David Wildstein and reams of documentary evidence, particularly the incriminating, infamous email from Kelly -- time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee -- were too great for the defense to surmount.



The evidence in this case has shown that you when the spotlight wasn't burning on them, when they weren't under investigation, when they thought no one else was watching, the defendants engaged in a scheme to punish Mayor Sokolich, Assistant U.S. Attorney Vikas Khanna said in his summations. The evidence has shown that not only did they execute this scheme, but delighted in it.



The jury of seven women and five men agreed. Their verdict comes at a time when Christies popularity among New Jersey residents is at 21 percent, a historic low. He is planning to campaign for Donald Trump this weekend in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.



Though Christie himself was not on trial, the convictions tarnish the reputation of a man who was once the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, before becoming Governor and a GOP candidate for President, At the Republican National Convention in July, Christie, who is the Transition Chairman for Trump, thundered -- Guilty or not guilty? -- in reference to Hillary Clinton.



But now the verdict guilty has been rendered four times for aides Christie once named to some of the most sensitive positions in his administration: Kelly, Baroni, and Wildstein, for their role in the Bridgegate scandal, and David Samson, the former chairman of the Port Authority and one of Christies closest friends, for demanding a special flight route from United Airline in exchange for special treatment from the Port Authority.



A fifth Christie aide, former transportation commissioner Jamie Fox, still faces charges in the bribery scandal. . . .

Two great visionaries and lotsa flags -- what more

could we hope for to Make America Great Again?

#

Though the Big Rat Bastard Gummer of NJ has done his best to treat the Bridgegate scandal as an unwelcome inconvenience -- a made-up conspiracy of which he is the principal victim -- I think we can take it as demonstrated that it cost him his shot at the 2016 GOP presidential nomination.Of course We the People have notoriously short memories, and the BRBGNJ was so forceful and shameless in his thumping leap onto the Billion-Dollar Loser's presidential bandwagon that it seems he may actually have been the BDL's first choice for running mate, and speculation persists as to what his potential reward in the Trump administration might be, like maybe U.S. attorney general? So the BRBGNJ's political future is one obvious question raised by today's developments, as reported early this afternoon by Nancy Solomon , managing editor of New Jersey Public Radio and director of NYC public-radio station WNYC's 2016 election coverage, part of the public-radio team that has been keeping watch on Bridgegate developments.Of course the KrispyKronies will appeal, and I suspect I'm not the only one who thinks that, if nothing else, there will be enough to overturn the verdict(s) in the trial judge's advice to the jury that they didn't have to be persuaded of the defendants' knowing participation in a political retribution scheme. So we've merely completed Phase 1 of their legal ordeal. Meanwhile the higher-ups, the chain gang of political thugs leading all the way up to the Big Rat Bastard Gummer himself, are all sitting pretty.So there are two possible answers to the obvious question, how today's development affects the BRBGNJ himself, just as we knew there would be going into the KrispyKronies' trial:(1) Whether they were convicted or not, the BRBGNJ couldn't lose, because despite his former stooges' testimony that, contrary to his public insistences, they kept him apprised of all developments in the Bridgegate traffic disaster, there is still no provable link to his involvement in the scheme, and so once again the stooges are trapped in the punishment system while the big boys stand above it all.(2) Whether they were convicted or not, the BRBGNJ couldn't win, because the KrispyKronies' trial had -- notably via the testimony of the defendants themselves, left dangling by their onetime protector -- exposed so much about the punitive, power-mongering, personally driven modus operandi of Gummer Krispy's reign of terror in NJ that he's permanently damaged goods, as reflected in his already-plummeted poll-approval numbers.As developments were developing earlier today, WNYC's Matt Katz, who was inside the courthouse where the surprisingly quick and decisive verdicts were announced, inclined to (2). But I wonder whether Matt is perhaps too close to the story. After all, is there anything in that story that's unfamiliar to America's Biggest Loser? Not the insatiable self-aggrandizement, surely? Or the casual corruption at every level? Or, the personal animosities that animate all-consuming, insatiable vendettas? And certainly not the thirst for unchecked authoritarian power?Aren't these, in fact, the very tools the Billion-Dollar Loser brings to his heroic quest to Make America Great Again? (In which connection, I heartily recommend John Cassidy's terrific newyorker.com post " Two Americas: Why Donald Trump Still Has a Lot of Support ," which Howie reported on earlier today . And, while we're at it, Paul Waldman's WaPo "Plum Line" post yesterday, " Republicans are now vowing Total War. And the consequences could be immense ," and for that matter Paul's post today, taking off from the latest jobs report, " The economy is better under Democratic presidents ," about which he tweeted, "Maybe it's time for Republicans to admit that Obama is an economic genius.")

Labels: authoritarianism, Chris Christie, George Washington Bridge, New Jersey, Trump
A 21 year old Amity University student, G Saikrishna, allegedly committed suicide in his hostel room on Friday afternoon when he was alone during the Diwali vacation.

Saikrishna, a first year post graduate diploma student of facilities management committed suicide at 2.30pm on Friday by hanging himself from the ceiling fan of his hostel room. He used his bed sheet for the purpose.

He was rushed to Kailash hospital by the university authorities, where he was declared brought dead by the doctors. The body was then sent to the police for post-mortem and later given to the parents of Saikrishna, who arrived from Telangana on Saturday.

According to the police, Saikrishna, a native of Telangana, left a suicide note in Telugu, in which he thanked his parents for the support they gave him.

He said that despite suicide being an extremely harsh step, he is taking this decision but he did not blame anybody for the act. Rather he thanked his parents for the support they have given him over the years. He also asked them to take care of his younger sister, said Amarnath Yadav, station house officer, sector 39.

According to Amity management, Saikrishna was alone in his room for the week as his roommates had left for the long Diwali vacation. The suicide sent shockwaves in the first year batch of facilities management and his friends remembered him as cheerful and jovial person.

The college was supposed to resume from Monday and Saikrishna was alone in his room. He was a bright student with good academic records. We are shocked and saddened by this loss and at this moment, we are with the family of Saikrishna, said Savita Mehta.

After the post-mortem of body, Saikrishnas parents cremated him in Delhi. Amity University will hold a condolence meet on Monday.

Shy, jovial and studious : Friends and Family recall Sai

Till 2o clock, Sai was chit chatting with his hostel friends in their room. As his friends decided to head towards the mess for lunch, Sai told them that he needs to go to his room for ten minutes and he will join them in the mess.

Post twenty minutes, when Sai did not turn up at the mess, his friends went to check on him and found him hanging from the ceiling fan. Gandra Sai Krishna had used his bed-sheet to turn it into a rope and hanged himself.

In a note written in Telugu for his parents, Sai said, They say suicide is an act of cowardice. Yet I am taking this step. Please take care of my younger sister.

He used to live in a non AC hostel room with two roommates who had gone for the week long Diwali vacation. Since last Friday, Sai was alone in his room.

His suicide sent shockwaves across the University especially after a 3rd year Law student of Amity Law School Delhi Sushant Rohilla committed suicide in August this year after allegedly being harassed by his faculty.

A native of Khammam district in Telangana, Sais father G Deendayal Reddy is an advocate and the family hails from a middle class background.

Sai had shifted to Noida four months back when he decided to pursue diploma in facilities management from Amity University. This was the first time Sai had moved out of his state to pursue higher education.

It had hardly been four months since Sai shifted to Noida. His teachers were impressed by his performance in class, said Savita Mehta, spokesperson, Amity University.

A graduate in B.Tech Mechanical Engineering from Sai Spurthi Institute of Technology, Sai had pursued the course in Khammam itself.

Described as a shy, introvert yet jovial person, Sai was one among 40 odd students in the non AC hostel of Amity University.

His hostel friends say that Sai did not give them any hint even ten minutes before his death.

Everything happened so quickly that we were left stunned. Ten minutes ago, he was chit chatting with us and then he suddenly left for his room. He gave no hints, says a friend of Sai on condition of anonymity.

However, Sai did drop a hint. On Thursday night, he called up each and every member of his family and spoke to them at great length. His cousin Sudhakar recalls that night.

It was unusual for us. It was like Sai was holding a directory in hand and calling up all his near and dear ones. He spoke to all of us in a jovial manner, inquiring about our lives. He did not seem depressed from his tone but yes, he was preparing himself, said Sudhakar.

His suicide has left his parents shell shocked as they have no idea why their son took this extreme step.

Whenever his parents were called for a meeting with school or college authorities, the teachers always had high praises for him. We received excellent feedback every time. We dont even know why he took this step said Sudhakar.

Sais parents reached Delhi on Saturday morning and they will be heading towards Kammam for cremation.

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Next time you are at a metro station, make sure not to get visibly angry while speaking on the mobile phone. Do not miss trains intentionally. And if you plan to catch a breath in a quiet corner, get done quickly. And if you miss these simple tricks, you will most likely end up facing uncomfortable questions from the metro security staff.

And this is not a new anti-terror security drill. But an attempt by the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) to spot people who betray signs of suicidal tendencies and stop them from taking the fatal jump in front of an oncoming metro train, a top security official said.

This year, 12 people committed suicide at one of Delhis 156 metro stations, CISF data showed. While 21 people were saved by security personnel and other passengers, more than 20 had to be hospitalised after suffering varying degrees of injuries in their suicide attempts.

In most of the cases, people committing suicide spend few hours on the station before jumping on the rail track, CISF spokesperson Manjeet Singh told HT.

In every station, two-three CISF personnel are stationed to keep an eye on CCTV footage at the platformsThey have to spot people with unusual behaviour.

And this is no easy task. An estimated 30 lakh people take the metro in the city daily. Around 5000 CISF personnel, besides metro security staff, are on duty at the stations.

Over the years hundreds of people have killed themselves at the metro stations. Last year, 18 out of 89 people who had attempted suicide were killed on metro tracks.

Besides loss of lives, such incidents also lead to long delays as trains are stopped till the tracks are cleared, metro officials said.

A week ago, an elderly man who jumped in front of a metro train and was killed at the Civil Lines Metro station, was noticed by a CISF personnel in an agitated state in another station, security officials said.

He was held by the CISF and handed over to staff of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC). After being let off half-an-hour later, the man took a train to the next station and jumped in front of a train.

In a recent case, another elderly man was saved by an alert CISF jawan at the Uttam Nagar metro Station.

CISF officials said people with signs of suicidal tendencies such as depression will be handed over to their families or, if a suicide note is recovered from them, to the Delhi Metro Rail Police. Attempt to suicide is a criminal offence under Indian laws.

CISF officials said the maximum numbers of suicide attempts were made on the Blue Line (Dwarka Sector 21 to Noida City Centre) where 17 people ended their lives.

The DMRC recently reduced the time a person can spend in the paid area of metro, in an attempt to deter people from loitering in the already crowded metro stations.

Also read: 2 Delhi Metro trains collide during commissioning at Kalindi Kunj depot

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The Centre needs to intervene to mitigate the alarming level of smog, which has virtually turned Delhi into a gas chamber, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Saturday.

He said vehicle restriction measures like odd-even will not be able to bring down smog, as initial studies suggested that the large scale influx of pollutant-laden smoke from farm fires in neighbouring Punjab and Haryana has aggravated the situation.

Pollution has increased to an extent that outdoors in Delhi are resembling a gas chamber. Prima facie the biggest reason seems to be burning of stubble in agricultural fields in Haryana and Punjab in huge quantity, Kejriwal told a press conference.

Read: Delhi pollution: Smog and dust in air, but little action on the ground

The shutting down of schools for a long time was not a feasible solution, he said, when asked about the decision of the civic bodies to keep schools run by it closed for a day in view of pollution.

Kejriwal pitched for providing alternatives and incentives to farmers so that they discard the traditional practice.

He said the Delhi government has very few methods at its disposal and the Centre needs to intervene.

The Centre can sit with the chief minister of these states and chalk out a solution. Few reports have put the volume of stubble being burned at around 16-20 million tonnes.

Read: How to use pollution masks, air purifiers to survive Delhis worst smog in 17yrs

Fireworks during Diwali marginally added to the pollution. But other things inside Delhi did not drastically change. So the smog is mainly due to smoke from farm fires, he observed.

Kejriwal identified the main sources of pollution inside Delhi as vehicles, dust and waste burning, which he said could not be responsible for the pall of smog across the city.

I saw smoke across Punjab, Haryana during my visits. We need Centres help. We are hiring an agency in a week or two to study the sources of pollution in Delhi afresh. The Centre needs to intervene, he said.
When the rest of Delhi is choking for air, some have taken matters into their own hands to try and make the best of the situation. These residents have opted for makeshift masks made of handkerchiefs to air purifiers to even leaving town, to deal with the situation.

The System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR) recorded that the AQI of Delhi at 381 on Friday, which is expected to drop to 360 on Saturday; a reading still considered very poor. On Saturday, the Regional Weather Forecasting Centre (RWFC) has predicted clear skies with moderate to shallow fog and maximum temperature is expected to be 31C and the minimum is expected to be 14C. With no winds predicted until Monday, the smog and low visibility days will persist over the weekend.

BS Vohra of the East Delhi Residents Welfare Association spoke about how he no longer uses his two-wheeler out, unless he has no other choice. If we take our bikes out, we use a handkerchief to cover our mouths and noses, he said.

Vikram Karunakaram has invested in masks and air purifiers to ensure that his kids are safe. My 7-year-old child was diagnosed with upper respiratory tract congestion, after coughing and wheezing for over 3 weeks. I have now ensured that my kids use a mask, if they are going out, he said.

Vanita Varma of Gurgaon claimed that she or her family no longer leave their house if they can avoid it. Once my kids come home (from school), they are confined to their rooms. They are not allowed to go out or play. It may not be the best solution, but it is necessary. I have air purifiers at home.

Ananya Vajpeyi, left town and went to Dharamshala on Friday to avoid the drastic levels of pollution in the national capital. I had initially come for the weekend, but I have now decided to stay the week, the Nizamuddin resident said. She said that she had been fine during the summer. She has been battling respiratory issues for sometime now, but it was exacerbated after Diwali.

People buying masks at Khan Market in New Delhi on Thursday. (Raj K Raj/Hindustan Times)

This years Diwali was just out of control, said the associate fellow at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS).

Raunak Singhi has started a website called myshelli.com that suggests appropriate indoor plants for your house, so that it can help clean up the air. Empirical results show that eye irritation, headaches, lung impairment, asthma and cough are all reduced if you have indoor plants, said Singhi.

Experts, however, doubt if it can help much. I cant say if green plants will make much of a difference. It will add some oxygen but may not play a big role in clearing pollutants, said Rachana Kucheria, a doctor from Gulmohar Park.

Leonie Broekstra, a citizen of Netherlands who has found home in Chanakyapuri for the last year, however, said that a lot of available measures to combat air pollution is available only to the privileged.

We spend close to R5,000 on a filter for our air purifier. I worry about the many people who cannot afford this. It is the governments task to protect the vulnerable; the ones who cannot afford drastic measures and also those who may not be aware, she said.

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A day after the appointment of Krishna Saini as Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) chairperson was revoked on the lieutenant governors orders, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal cancelled the same order issued by his own power department.

A furious Kejriwal on Saturday claimed the order was issued without keeping power minister Satyendar Jain in the loop . He slapped a show-cause notice on Sudhir Sharma, deputy secretary (power), for clearing the order.

Just when it was assumed that the three-month tussle over the DERC chief had come to an end, Kejriwals move is set to ignite a fresh face-off with the L-G.

Earlier, after many rounds of communication between the L-G office and the Delhi government over the appointment of the DERC chief, Najeeb Jung had for the third and final time rejected Sainis appointment and asked the government to initiate a fresh process.

The file remained with the CM for nearly two weeks. Seeing no response, the L-G sent a separate note to the principal secretary (power), asking him to relieve Saini at the earliest.

Kejriwal said, While I was going through the file, I got to know that on Thursday the power secretary got a call from the L-G office to cancel the appointment of Saini. When we got to know, power minister Satyendar Jain asked the secretary not to issue any order without his knowledge, he added.

But the deputy secretary (power) issued the order on Friday. Soon after, another order was issued to remove power secretary Sukesh Jain, a close aide of Kejriwal. Varsha Joshi replaced him.

Kejriwal said a conspiracy was on to increase power tariff in Delhi. He said power companies are scared of the DERC chairperson appointed by the AAP government eight months ago.

Krishna Saini had issued many orders which scared power companies. They did not like it and put pressure to remove Saini. We formed a selection committee in January and sent the information to the L-G. After shortlisting the names, the list was shared with the Delhi High Court. After selecting Saini, the L-G was informed but he did not say anything. After eight months, there is a conspiracy to cancel his appointment, said Kejriwal.

The CM said that the BJP is trying to create a situation that will affect citizens of Delhi. We have issued another order saying Saini will continue as DERC chief.
The special investigative team probing the disappearance of JNU student Najeeb Ahmad questioned four student leaders of the Akhil Bhartiya Vdyarthi Parishad (abvp) on Saturday.

Till late Saturday night, the four JNU students were yet to be released by the SIT.

A day after Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung met the SIT and ordered the team to increase efforts to trace Ahmad, the police summoned two students.

Sources said during their probe, officers realised that two other students knew more about Najeeb. The four students who were summoned are Arnab, Pushpesh, Sunil and Ankit.

A notice has been sent to five other students. The SIT has got a tip off about Ahmad and are likely to crack this case within the next 48 hours, an office said.

Read: Kejriwal assures family help in tracing missing JNU student Najeeb Ahmad

Till late Saturday night, the four were at the Vasant Kunj police station. Police on Friday increased reward to Rs 2 lakh on information about Najeeb.

A student of biotechnology, Ahmad had allegedly gone missing on October, following a brawl in the campus with some ABVP student leaders. Ahmad had allegedly slapped a leader of the ABVP before he went missing.

Jung has on Friday held a meeting with the special investigative team. The Delhi police had also increased the reward from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2 lakh for giving information about Ahmad.

Four police officers met the L-G in the evening and told him about police probe so far, to find the student. Sources said the SIT has printed over 20,000 posters, which are being pasted all across south Delhi.

Police said they would print more posters. Apart from this, over 300 auto-rickshaw drivers who usually ply around JNU and parts of south Delhi have been questioned.
More than 1,700 schools under three municipal corporations in Delhi were closed on Saturday due to heavy smog, the worst the national capital has witnessed in 17 years. Authorities called emergency meetings, as the air quality continued to remain alarming in Delhi-NCR because of calm winds.

The hazardous blanket of haze and smog loomed over the Capital, giving no respite to residents of one of worlds most polluted cities that has been reeling due to pollution since the festival of Diwali.

Read: Delhi pollution: Smog and dust in air, but little action on the ground

1) Breathing poison: The average level of particulate matter 2.5 (PM 2.5) was above 400 micrograms per cubic metre, or in the severe category, at all the pollution measuring centres, including east Delhis Anand Vihar; Punjabi Bagh and Dwarka in the west; RK Puram in the south; and central Delhis Mandir Marg.

Particulate matters (PM) are tiny particles in the air that cause visibility problems and health hazards. The permissible level of PM 2.5 is 60g/m while PM10 is 100 g/m. Levels beyond that can cause harm to the respiratory system as the ultra fine particulates can embed themselves deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream.

2) Kejriwals appeal: Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said the central government needed to intervene to mitigate the alarming level of smog. He said vehicle restriction measures such as the odd-even programme will not be able to bring down smog, as initial studies suggested that the large scale influx of pollutant-laden smoke from farm fires in neighbouring Punjab and Haryana has aggravated the situation.

3) Into a huddle: Union environment minister Anil Dave called an emergency meeting of authorities in NCR states. Delhi lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung too called a meeting with CM Kejriwal on Monday to discuss measures to curb pollution.

The L-G has also requested public works department minister Satyendara Jain, Delhi environment and forest minister Imran Hussain, Union ministry of environment and forest secretary Ajay Narayan Jha, Delhi Police commissioner Alok Kumar Verma, the chairman of New Delhi Municipal Corporation and all three municipal corporations of Delhi to be present in the meeting.

Smog engulfs the capital as Delhi chokes on pollution. (Saumya Khandelwal/HT PHOTO)

4) BJP slams Kejriwal: The Delhi unit of the BJP criticised Kejriwal for allegedly indulging in a war of words with L-G Jung and the Centre instead of trying to find a solution to the pollution problem.

It is a matter of concern that today, when Delhi is facing its worst ever environment crisis, the Kejriwal government instead of putting forward a solution to it is locked in a battle of words with the lieutenant governor and central government over appointment of officers in the power department, Delhi BJP unit chief Satish Upadhyay said.

His remarks came a day after Kejriwal, also the Aam Aadmi Party convenor, alleged a conspiracy by the BJP-led central government to increase power tariff in the national capital and assured that he would not let this happen.

5) Ranji match called off: The smog cover caused the cancellation of the first days play in two Ranji Trophy games in Delhi, with players complaining of irritation in eyes and breathing problems.

The matches cancelled were group A league encounter between Bengal and Gujarat at the Feroz Shah Kotla and group C match at Karnail Singh Stadium between Tripura and Hyderabad.
When a group of boys indulge in catcalling, the victim can be a girl from any section of society  economically backward or affluent. The problems of gender and justice, are therefore the same for different strata of society. We therefore wanted to create a space where the school becomes an experiential program, says Bijayalaxmi Nanda, associate professor, Miranda House, while mentoring a group of youngsters in a movable tent as part of the campaign School of Life.

While roaming around in Delhi University colleges, one can spot this tent at some college or the other. Nanda says, We set it up thinking that people from different backgrounds should be able to mentor youngsters from different backgrounds. The idea was to allow them to come and learn at the same platform, so that what the college students learn theoretically can be confronted by what the community children experience practically.

A young girl from Kalyanputi explains gender roles to Miranda House Principal Pratibha Jolly.

Miranda House college has associated with the NGO Centre for Advocacy and Research (CFAR), to enable young minds to discuss about societal issues together. As part of this, the campaign has travelled to different colleges in DU and enabled youngsters to come up with a graphic novel, community newspaper and even films.

Jayam Singh Chauhan, a final year student of BA Program, Miranda House says, Basic things such as our rights and gender are topics that we have read about in our books. But when we spoke to the community children, we realised that they arent aware of them yet their knowledge of practical life is immense. So, it is important for us to share the bookish knowledge with them, and through School of Life, we can understand how to deal with real-life situations better.

Artworks prepared by the youngsters as part of the campaign.

This collaborative exchange also includes survivors of violence. Chauhan adds, Concepts of gender and patriarchy are things that we have been hearing since quite a few years now. But when we start interacting with youngsters from other social backgrounds, we realise how deeply rooted these concepts are in our lives.

Recollecting a recent survivor story, Akhila Sivadas, executive director, CFAR says, A young woman who is a divorcee and faced a lot of discrimination at home, participated in this campaign and is now working as a salaried employee to support her family.

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Brad Pitt is asking a judge to grant him joint custody of his six children in his split from Angelina Jolie Pitt, according to a divorce filing Friday.

The actors request was included in his response to Jolie Pitts Sept. 20 petition to end their two-year marriage. The actress sought sole physical custody of their six children, who range in age from 8 to 15.

Custody has been the major issue in the breakup so far, with authorities investigating Pitt over what happened during a dispute on a private flight with his family in mid-September. The couple reached a temporary custody agreement that allowed the actor to visit his children while the investigation by a child welfare agency in Los Angeles is ongoing.

The outcome of the investigation could impact how a judge determines custody arrangements, although courts in California generally favor awarding joint custody. The actors could also reach a private agreement that would not involve a public custody fight in court.

Pitts filing does not include any new details about the couples breakup. Pitt cited irreconcilable differences and makes no mention of a prenuptial agreement that will govern how the pair divides their assets. He also cites Sept. 15 as the day of their separation, one day after the alleged plane altercation between Pitt and his 15-year-old son, Maddox.

Pitt was accused of being abusive toward the teenager, sources told The Associated Press, but authorities were not notified when the plane landed in Minnesota. Several sources said the incident was being investigated by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, but the agency said it could not confirm whether it was involved.

The actors were together for 12 years after becoming close while filming 2005s Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

In this November 12, 2006 file photo, Angelina Jolie, left, with her daughter Zahara, and Brad Pitt, right, with Jolie's son Maddox, walk near the Gateway of India in Mumbai, India. (AP)

As one of Hollywoods elite power couples, the actors transformed the flurry of headlines into a force for good.

They adopted children from Cambodia, Vietnam and Ethiopia. In 2006, they formed the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, to which they funneled many of the millions they made selling personal pictures to celebrity magazines.

Jolie Pitt, who became special envoy for the United Nations in 2012, became an outspoken voice for refugees, as well as for breast cancer treatment after undergoing a double mastectomy herself. Pitt built homes in New Orleans for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The pair recently sold a home they purchased in New Orleans French Quarter for $4.9 million.

Their only other on-screen role together is in 2015s By the Sea, about a troubled American couple vacationing in France.

Pitt skipped the Sept. 28 premiere of the Terrence Malicks new documentary Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience, which he narrated. In a statement, Pitt said he was skipping the premiere because he was currently focused on my family situation and dont want to distract attention away from this extraordinary film.

Pitt stars with Marion Cotillard in Robert Zemeckis upcoming spy thriller Allied.

Jolie Pitt earlier this year finished shooting her fourth feature as director, First They Killed My Father. The film, about the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime, was shot in Cambodia.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
The 16-year-old boy who was found unconscious in a drain near his home in Kashmirs summer capital eight days ago died at a hospital here on Saturday.

Qaisar Sofi, a resident of Srinagars Shalimar area, had gone missing from near his home on October 27 and was found in a drain in the area the next day. He was admitted in Kashmirs tertiary care hospital, Sheri Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences.

The boy has succumbed (to his injuries). He had a history of assault, affecting his brain and kidneys; we were treating that, said medical superintendent of SKIMS, Dr SA Tabish.

When brought to hospital, the attendants said he has been poisoned so we washed his stomach and sent the samples to forensic laboratory for examination. The report is still awaited, he added.

Moderate separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq accused the security forces for the incident.

QaiserSofi, a 16-year-old student of Mirak Shah School, was beaten, tortured and forcibly fed a germicide called Neva by armed forces battling for his life at SKIMS, Soura where he is on a ventilator. Such cruelty and barbarity find few parallels in todays age, Mirwaiz had tweeted before the boys death.

Read | Injured in Pak shelling, infant Pari battles against the odds to stay alive

Sofis family members also believe he was assaulted and poisoned.

He went missing on Thursday when he had stepped out to see a Muharram procession. After extensive search, we found him in a drain on Friday. There are torture marks on his chest, his mother, Mehmooda Begum, was quoted as saying by in a news report on October 31.

We demand an impartial probe into the incident and the arrest of the accused at the earliest, Mehmooda added.

Police, however, deny there were any signs of assault and suspect the victim might have consumed poison himself. When we found him, there was a scratch on his arm. He had consumed poison, said station house officer Anzar Khan. The family has shifted to the area recently. So neighbours dont have much information. The family also was not in a position to be questioned. The boy does not have too many friends in the area.

Read | Amid J-K crisis, board exams to be held twice, students can choose Nov or Mar
The Hindu Sena on Friday celebrated the victory of US presidential contender Donald Trump, hailing his friendship with diaspora Indians and backing his call to ban immigration by Muslims from countries hit by Islamic militancy.

With drums banging and speakers blaring, the Hindu Sena, or Hindu Army, gathered at Jantar Mantar to proclaim to a knot of TV crews that Trump had already won the November 8 vote.

Trumps victory is confirmed early, due to his thoughts against Islamic terrorism and love for India and Hindus, said Vishnu Gupta, the Hindu Senas self-styled national president.

Trump uttered the memorable phrase I love Hindu at a cultural event in New Jersey last month organised by supporters of his candidacy from the Indian diaspora.

That sentiment has not played so well with many diaspora Indians who are secular or belong to other faiths and, as a group, lean more towards supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton.

But as far as the Hindu Sena is concerned, the feeling is mutual.

Its celebration at a roadside stall featured posters bearing the slogans, India Loves Trump and Trump Our Only Hope. One supporter held up a portrait of Trump with a tilak, or religious mark, on his forehead and held a sweet to his mouth.

India has not officially endorsed either Trump or Democratic contender Hillary Clinton but has seen a warming in bilateral ties between outgoing President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Read | Only he can save humanity: Hindu Sena performs hawan for Trumps US win
Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah attacked Uttar Pradeshs ruling Samajwadi Party on Saturday over an ongoing feud in the Yadav family, saying those responsible for governing the state were busy fighting among themselves.

The ones, who were given power to bring development in the state, are today busy insulting each other, Shah said before flagging off a Parivartan Yatra to open the BJPs election campaign in the state.

Strains in the Samajwadi Partys first family were evident again on Saturday as Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal Yadav took digs at each other at an event organised to celebrate partys silver jubilee.

Uncle (Shivpal) is busy in abusing his nephew (Akhilesh) and nephew is busy in abusing his uncle, the BJP president.

The UP ruling party has witnessed a power tussle between Akhilesh and his uncle despite repeated attempts by party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav to broker peace.

The BJPs Parivartan Yatra will cover largely rural parts of the state to help the party connect primarily with the poor, Dalit and OBC population that accounts for over 70% of UPs electorate.

Shah also targeted Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati, saying: Remember your rule Behenji, when most attacks on Dalits took place in Uttar Pradesh. Citing scams worth thousands of crores, Shah alleged that all the funds meant for development of UP were used in setting up memorials and statues.

The state has lagged behind... SP and BSP cannot improve the situation here and it will be only the BJP government with full majority which can bring the state back on tracks, he said.

Shah also took a veiled dig at the SPs efforts to form a grand alliance ahead of the upcoming assembly elections by hosting senior leaders of the erstwhile Janata Parivar. they are happy shaking hands with each other but what will it achieve? In a democracy, government is formed only when the people shake hands with you.

The BJPs yatra will conclude in Lucknow on December 24, with a rally likely to be addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the state capital that day. The BJP was expected to declare its first list of candidates after the yatra concludes, ostensibly to keep ticket seekers and their supporters engaged in the roadshow, a source said.

Shah also attacked the Congress for allegedly carrying out politics over the death of an ex-serviceman. A soldier commits suicide and they are doing politics for vote bank. This is disgusting.

Rahul Gandhi talks about OROP (One Rank, One Pension), but it is the BJP government that implemented the policy while the Congress dragged for decades.

With inputs from agencies
The nation wants to know, but celebrated TV anchor Arnab Goswami isnt revealing much!

Of the few things he said at a conclave by a right-wing think tank was his desire to be a dissenter who wants to shift the centre of journalism out of Delhi.

Even if I dont succeed in what I want to do, it is a risk worth taking, Goswami said.

We are on the brink of biggest dissent. Accept it with open arms...we will redefine global TV. Our dissent will not be limited to India.

The TV personality, who headed Times Now and anchored a prime time news show, has put in his papers and left everybody guessing about his next move.

The occasion --- India Ideas Conclave at a resort on the banks of the Arabian Sea in Goa --- he chose to speak of his future plans was interesting.

The conclave was organised by India Foundation, headed by BJP general secretary Ram Madhav and national security advisor Ajit Dovals son, Shaurya Doval.

Read: Times then and now: Seven Arnab Goswami moments that will leave you speechless

Goswami, though, assured the audience that his future plans has nothing to do with the right wing and he will continue to question them on issues such as Love Jihad.

Hinting at his digital plans, Goswami said there are 462 million internet users in India and the new wave of dissent will give power to fingertips.

In the process of dissent, he said, the monopoly of money power will be broken. Money can buy you assets,but not journalistic instincts and the power to put news.

He admitted to having strong views on issues relating to India and Pakistan, the controversy at Delhis Jawaharlal Nehru University and gender justice. Interestingly, he shares views similar to the establishment on these matters.

He went on to narrate anecdote from January 2011 when then prime minister (Manmohan Singh) decided to speak in the aftermath of several news breaks that his erstwhile channel had done to expose scams.

There were several other editors, he said, but none asked tough questions to the prime minister.

When I asked them to PM, his media advisor Harish Khare interrupted saying it was not an interrogation of the PM. The PM then pulled out a written response and gave it to me, he said.

Goswami said he was so upset with the state of affairs in journalism that he wanted to quit the profession in 2003.

Often accused of shouting at the guest on the popular prime time show - The Newshour, Goswami said every dissent has to be loud and an eight column front page news.

He questioned his fraternity for not showing dissent - louder - when celebrated writer Taslima Nasreen was attacked in Hyderabad.

Goswami described himself as restless who can keep doing the same thing for long. Playing someone elses game is not in my character, he said, adding that he cannot take commands.

We will disrupt the image that we have an independent media. I am going to dissent against the way journalism is being done in this county.

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Two female teachers of an English medium school in Patna were arrested on Saturday on charges of sexually assaulting a kindergarten girl student.

They were later sent to judicial custody.

The arrests were made after police carried out an investigation on the basis of a complaint filed by the parents of the victim, who had narrated her woes to her mother a few days back.

The victim, student of prestigious St Xaviers School, in her statement to the police, had said that she was sexually molested by one of her teachers- whom she referred as  Choti Miss- many times in past one month. Her parents, however, claimed their daughter had been subjected to the ordeal by two female teachers inside the school premises.

Police said, the victim had talked about being sexually assaulted inside her classroom and an adjoining room.

A case has been registered in this regard at the women police station at Gandhi Maidan under various sections of POCSO (protection of children from sexual offenses).

Police have also taken samples of clothes of the victim for FSL tests even as a few senior faculty members of the school were contacted to ascertain whether there was any complicity of other teachers in the heinous act.

Senior SP Manu Maharaaj and city SP (central) Chandan Kumar Kushwaha told HT that the two teachers arrested in the case were identified as Nutan Joseph and Indu. They said, both the teachers during their interrogation denied having molested the five-year-old student and dubbed the charges baseless.

We are trying to find out whether there was any involvement of a male teacher in the incident. The investigations are still on, said, a senior police officer, involved in the investigations.

Kushwaha added that the medical examination of the minor had confirmed sexual assault and an old rupture was found in her private parts. The medical tests, police said, also indicated that the victim could have been repeatedly assaulted.

We have recorded the statement of the victim and her parents, who have given vivid details of how their ward was tormented by two female teachers for long, said a senior police officer. He added the victim had identified two female teachers, arrested on Friday, through pictures shown to her by her parents after the matter came to light.

However, sources said the five-year old had not identified the female teachers during her interaction with women cops who had tried to cull information from the kid about her alleged tormentors, after the complaint was filed.

It appears, the five-year old is under mental stress and apparently not able to identify the culprits in the presence of the police. At the moment, we have carried investigations on the basis of the statement of the victims parents. But, if we find new facts, further action would be taken, said an IG rank officer.

Senior cops admit they are baffled by the latest incident of sexual assault on the minor, terming it as an act of perversion and lesbianism in some ways.

The perpetrators could be termed mentally sick and also pervert in nature. Or else, how could a five-year old be treated in such a shabby way, said a woman police officer, posted at the state headquarter.

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Beijing managed to remove 3.4 lakh ageing vehicles  that are over 10-year-old  from its road this year by providing monetary incentives to their owners to replace them with new ones. The move resulted in cutting down 40,000 tonnes of pollutants from the atmosphere that otherwise would have been released in the atmosphere.

But as the national capital continues to fight an unprecedented high-level of pollution, a similar scheme drafted by Indias Union road transport and highways ministry in May, has failed to get the Centres approval so far. If implemented, the policy would have taken 28 million old polluting vehicles off the countrys roads.

According to a concept note prepared by the road ministry, the Voluntary Vehicle Fleet Modernisation policy proposed a reduction in excise duty of upto 50 % reduction to owners of vehicles, bought on or before March 31, 2005, that are over 11-year-old, when they go to buy new car after scrapping their old one.

The excise cut will help reduce the vehicle cost by upto 12 % or upto a maximum of Rs 50,000. The idea is to incentivise the owners to come forward and replace their ageing fleet, a senior road ministry official said.

Read | Car-free zones to curb pollution a great idea, but will not work in Delhi

The proposal was presented before the finance ministry, which has now referred it to the committee of secretaries (CoS) for taking a final call.

There was a concern that excise duty will be subsumed in GST, the new tax reform that the government plans to roll out. So, we need to come up with an alternative, another official added.

Road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari told HT that once the CoS clears the proposal it will be taken to the cabinet. We are pushing the proposal, he said.

According to officials those opting for the voluntary vehicle fleet modernisation policy will get a certificate that he or she can present to the automobile dealer while purchasing the new car and avail of the discount. The discount will be to the tune of Rs 50,000 per vehicle, said an official.

In Beijing, the local government provides subsidy to the tune of US$1,183 to owners of 10-year-old vehicle for replacing it with a new one.

Read | Delhi sees worst smog in 17 years as risk of asthma, heart disease looms

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A militant who had snatched a rifle from the residence of a politicain in September was killed in an encounter in south Kashmirs Shopian district on Saturday, police said.

An Indian Army soldier was injured in the encounter that started on Saturday morning in the Dubjan area. He is stable, an army official said.

The Hizbul Mujahedeen militant, a resident of Kellar village, has been identified as Waseem Ahmad Khanday.

A senior police officer told HT that Khanday had joined the militant ranks after snatching a rifle a month ago from the personal security officer of a former member of the legislative council (MLC), Abdul Rehman Tukroo.

Sources said Khanday had taken away the rifle and 30 rounds from the officer around 5am on September 28.

Over 60 weapons had been snatched from policemen ever since unrest began in the Valley following the death of Hizbul commander Burhan Wani in July. Police sources say many of the weapons have been recovered.

In a video released in October, Wanis purported successor Zakir Rashid Bhat had asked Kashmiri youth to snatch weapons from government forces and join the militant outfit.

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Controversial TV evangelist Zakir Naiks NGO, IRF Educational Trust, will not be able to avail foreign funds unless approved by the home ministry.

Sources said the step is precursor to altogether ban the trust from receiving foreign funds.

Before putting conditions on the foreign funding of the trust, the government is also in the process of totally banning Naiks another NGO, the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF), from receiving funds from abroad and has issued a show cause notice in this regard.

IRF spokesperson Aarif Malik told HT that the NGO is in the process of sending a reply to the home ministry on the notice. However, he refused to comment anything further on the governments move against the trust.

With regard to the education trust, the home ministry said in a gazette notification that intelligence reports and records available with it show that the trust has violated various provisions of the Foreign Contribution Regulations Act (FCRA) 2010, which governs foreign funding of all NGOs. To get foreign funding, all NGOs need to get themselves registered under the FCRA.

Therefore, the central government in exercise of powers conferred by sub-section (3) of section 11 of the FCRA 2010, hereby specifies that the IRF Education Trust shall obtain prior permission of the central government on each occasion before accepting any foreign contribution in accordance with the provisions of section 12 of the Act and rules made thereunder, the notification said.

The ministry has sent the notice to the Reserve Bank of India asking it convey to all the banks that before they transfer money from abroad to the trust, the government will approve it. Naik has been under government scanner ever since reports emerged that a few of the attackers who targeted a bakery in the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka were influenced by his sermons on Peace TV, a channel owned by the preacher.

The government is also planning to declare the IRF illegal under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Soon, the ministry will move the cabinet for its nod.
Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief and Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed has criticised the Nawaz Sharif government for its cool response to India over alleged atrocities in Kashmir, saying people in the Valley need Pakistans full practical support.

The Pakistani governments response to India over atrocities in Kashmir is cool and by doing so it is not pleading the case of oppressed Kashmiris, Saeed at the JuD headquarters.

He said there is no value of one or two statements in favour of Kashmiris by the Prime Minister and other members of his government rather they need full practical support.

Saeed, according to a Dawn report, had earlier urged ruling and opposition parties to resolve all their issues through talks and avoid becoming tools of international forces who want both to ignite a crisis in Pakistan.

Just a few days after the Quetta attack, which has left our scores of policemen dead, the country has plunged into a political crisis, he was quoted as saying.

Saeed alleged that India is behind this political crisis in Pakistan to prevent Islamabad from raising the Kashmir issue.

He lamented that as far as Pakistan is concerned the Kashmir, issue has disappeared from the national scene.

The Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief made these comments while addressing a press conference at the Markaz-i-Taqwa, the Karachi headquarters of the JuD.
Employees of the National Health Mission (NHM) in Haryana, who have been on a strike for the past ten days, decided to resume work from Sunday after a meeting with health minister Anil Vij at his residence in Ambala late Saturday night.

NHM Employees Association president Surinder Gautam told HT that a delegation led by him met Vij, who gave them an assurance to consider their demands.

Gautam said Vij assured the delegation that their demands pertaining to regularisation and equal pay for equal work would be considered by a panel within a fortnight and all terminated NHM employees would be reinstated.

In view if the ministers assurance, we have decided to withdraw our strike and join duty from Sunday onwards, he added.
Habeco now valued at $1.14bln as stock nearly triples after listing debut

Vietnam's third largest brewer has become one of the most sought-after companies.

Eight years after its initial public offering, Habeco finally had its market debut late last month and quickly became one of the most sought-after listed companies.

The third largest brewer in Vietnam has seen its stock soar 2.8 times since its debut at the Hanoi Stock Exchange's Unlisted Public Company Market. The rally has left the company valued at VND25.3 trillion or $1.14 billion.

Habeco, which controls 20 percent of the local market and a leader in the north, debuted on October 28 at VND39,000 and closed at VND109,500 on Friday.

Its listing came amid the Vietnamese government's renewed push for privatization of state-owned companies.

Foreign investors always have eyes on the brewer as they are attracted by the strong growth of Vietnams beer market, one of the biggest in Asia with an estimated annual output increase of 25 percent by 2020.

While the government owns 81.79 percent of Habeco, Danish brewer Carlsberg holds 17.23 percent and is looking to further increase its stake.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade, which manages the public stake in Habeco, is negotiating with Carlsberg on the deal.

When Carlsberg became the only strategic shareholder in Habeco in 2009, it reached an agreement to have priority rights to acquire any stake in the local brewer on offer. This even allows the Danish company to intervene in major decisions, including any selection of another strategic shareholder.

Earlier this week, Carlsberg said it wants to acquire an additional 61.79 percent through negotiations with the trade ministry. The remaining 20 percent would be offered to the public with Carlsberg itself having the right to place a bid, the Danish brewer suggested.

The government's plan to divest from Habeco has been on and off for several years as it is among the few state-owned companies that perform extremely well.

Related news:

> Carlsberg gets a thirst for Vietnam's state-owned brewer Habeco

> Beer, big bucks and babes: tapping into Vietnam's thirst
A consultative committee meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) next week is expected to improve Indias prospect of admission to the 48-nation club founded four decades ago.

At the November 11 conclave at Vienna, India is looking forward to unanimity on a feasible process that can make it an NSG member despite not being a party to the non-proliferation treaty (NPT), sources said.

The 1970-effected NPT has its 190 countries aiming to check the spread of nuclear weapons and technology, which is also the mission of the NSG whose members trade in nuclear technology and missile materials. The NSG was formed in 1975 in response to Indias first nuclear bomb test the previous year in Rajasthans Pokhran range.

India has been striving to bring onboard NSG countries such as China, Ireland, Turkey, Austria and Switzerland to get into the exclusive group. The NSG admission principle is such that one countrys disagreement can block a prospective entrant.

Members such as Brazil, New Zealand and South Africa, too, have reservations on admitting new countries to the club, but they would not come in the way of Indias NSG membership.

Argentine Rafael Grossi, a facilitator to the chairperson of the group, has been in touch with member-countries regarding Indias moves to get into the NSG, a source said.

It is expected that he would make recommendation based on his inputs, the source told HT. We believe Indias membership will strengthen the NSG, and all members would eventually agree to this. We are ready to address concerns of any country from our side.

India is hopeful of its membership bid move on to the next step: setting in motion a process that will permit new members to the group.

New Delhi hopes it can address the proliferation concerns of member countries, but sticks to the position that India will not be part of discriminatory regimes such as the NPT.

India has been engaged in conversation with countries that have reservation about the NSG opening up for new members. It held two rounds of talks with China, a country it had singled out when its membership bid failed in June.

New Delhi is yet to get outright support from countries such as Brazil and New Zealand, though it took up the NSG entry matter with them at the highest level. These two countries, however, said they would work with other NSG members for Indias membership.

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Noted Bangladeshi writer Tasleema Nasreen today said India is her home and she has no alternative but to live in exile for rest of her life.

I have been living in exile since 1994. I know I have no other alternative but to live in exile for rest of my life. I feel I have nowhere to go or country to return to. I say now India is my country, India is my home, the 54-year-old writer told the gathering at the India Ideas Conclave 2016, currently underway in Goa.

The Conclave is organised by India Foundation.

How much more we have to suffer at the hands of fundamentalists and their political allies for daring to articulate the truth. Even after all that has happened, I still believe, that sincere honest truly secular part of the continent, India is the safe refuge, only refuge, said the writer.

They must understand that Islam must go through enlightenment process similar to that other religion that has gone through by questioning the inhuman, unequal, unscientific and irrational aspects of the religion, she said referring to the fundamentalists.

The narrow minded and the political (people) will forever throw society into the darkness, quiet a handful others will always strive for betterment of society and good sense prevail.

It is only few special people who seek to dream about change, that is how it has always been, Nasreen, the writer of much acclaimed book Lajja said.

Talking about Bangladesh, she said, I truly hope that the secular movement in my country will begin and turn into positive political movement for true democracy and secular state. The state which will govern on equality and educational system that is secular, scientific.

People must know that Islam must not be exempted from the critical scrutiny that applies all other religions as well, said the writer.
Amid an uproar over the proposed Beach Love festival being planned in the coastal city, the Andhra Pradesh government on Saturday clarified that it will not allow any programme inimical to Telugu culture and traditions.

The authorities termed as rumours some media reports that the programme proposed to be held at one of the beaches during February 12-14 (Valentines Day) would hurt the cultural sensibilities of people.

Andhra Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation and the Municipal Corporation of Visakhapatnam condemned, what they called, a misinformation campaign.

It is speculated that over nine thousand couples from across the world would descend upon Visakhapatnam to indulge in a no-holds barred beach love and that preparations are on to organise the private event sanctioned by the government, an official statement said.

It clarified that the government had received a proposal by a private agency about organising a mega event during February 2017 in Visakhapatnam to attract foreign tourists. Accordingly, the government formed a committee to liaise with the event managers.

As of now the private agency did not put forth any blueprint of the proposed event before the said committee, and as and when it is done the same would be examined as per standard procedure, it added.

A Mumbai based agency, which holds similar events in Goa, has submitted the proposal to the government.

Womens organisations have come out strongly against the proposed programme.

Even political parties including the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is sharing power with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), have condemned the proposal. They said such an event which goes against the states culture cant be allowed.

BJP leader and local legislator P. Vishnukumar Raju said there was no question of allowing such a programme.

Come what may, we will not allow this event, said R. K. Roja, a leader of opposition YSR Congress Party.
Kerala police arrested a Muslim religious preacher on Saturday for advising against feeding a newborn breast milk until five prayers were offered. This comes a day after Kozhikode district collector N Prasanth directed the police to register a case against the childs father.

The mother Hafsath (22) refused to feed her infant citing religious reasons, despite hospital staff pleading with her saying it would endanger the life of the newborn.

Abubacker, the father of the newborn was taken into custody on Friday and after questioning him, police arrested Hydrose Thangal, the preacher accused of advising the infants father that he should not be fed until he listens to all five prayers of the day.

The police has registered a case against the parents under the Juvenile Justice Act for denying the infant his right.
Samajwadi Partys silver jubilee function witnessed grand attendance of the Janata family with RJD leader Lalu Prasad Yadav, former prime minister and JDS leader HD Deve Gowda and JD (U) leader Sharad Yadav attending the event on Saturday.

UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal Yaday took swipes at each other at the event.

How many times will you humiliate me? You removed me twice but I have also struggled, said Shivpal at party celebrations that began at the sprawling Janeshwar Mishra Park in Lucknow.

Akhilesh hit back by saying: Some people are not willing to understand. When everything (Samajwadi Party) will get destroyed, then they will understand.

Speaking at the event, Sharad Yadav said Janata Dal has always taken part in Samajwadi movements, we have been invited to attend the Silver Jubilee function. We used to belong to one party, so we have had old ties, that is why we came here.

RJD leader Mulayam Singh Yadav said the bJP government was stifling democracy and there was an urgent need to oust it.

The ruling Samajwadi Party is celebrating 25th anniversary of its founding day in Lucknow .

The event is being seen as yet another show of strength in SPs first family.

Below are the highlights :

2:40pm: Samajwadi Prty will not allow anyone to do injustice: Mulayam Singh Yadav

2:35pm: UP govt has done a lot of good work but a lot more needs to be done, says Mulayam

2:25pm: Samajwadi Party will empower women: Mulayam

2:19pm: We will remain united to beat communal forces, says Mulayam Singh Yadav

2:10pm: SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav addresses crowds, says Samajwadi Party is for the poor

2:00pm: Sharad Yadav calls for removal of BJP govt from Centre in 2019, says ban on NDTV reminds of emergency days

1:55pm: Challenges are overcome by unity, says JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav while addressing the gathering

1:47pm: There is no rift in Samajwadi Party: Lalu Prasad

1:45pm: BJP govt is stifling democracy: Lalu Prasad Yadav

1:41pm: Lalu hits out at PM, asks what is the use of a 56 inch chest when you cant control the situation in Jammu and Kashmir

1:38pm: RJD leader Lalu Prasad Yadav arrives on stage, calls Akhilesh Yadav the next chief minister of UP

1:36pm: UP chief minister takes dig at Shivpal, says you gave me word, dont want me to use it

1:35pm: : Akhilesh says is ready for any test to prove loyalty

1:31pm: BJP govt is dividing people. Our aim is to defeat BJP, BSP: Akhilesh

1:30pm:Next years elections will decide the fate of the country: Akhilesh Yadav

1:25pm: I congratulate Netaji for raising this party and making it sturdy through struggle and hard work, says UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav

12:50pm: Section 144 (CRPC) was not imposed in Jammu and Kashmir even for a single day (during our rule). But look at what is happening in Jammu and Kashmir since the past five months: Deve Gowda

(Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) of 1973 empowers a magistrate to prohibit an assembly of more than four people in an area.)

12:42pm: During ten and a half months of my tenure as Prime Minister and Mulayam Singh as defence minister, Jammu and Kashmir was completely peaceful: Deve Gowda

12:40pm: INLD leader Abhay Chautala says Samajwadi Party will form the next government in UP

12:35pm: I never want to become CM. You can insult me, sack me many times (as minister) but I can even give my blood for the party: Shivpal Yadav

12:30pm: Shivpal Yadav plunges into the controversy and says: I will make whatever sacrifice you want me to. I will bear humiliation too but I wont let anyone humiliate Netaji (Mulayam Singh).

... How many times will you humiliate me? Shivpal questions Akhilesh Yadav.

Shivpal Yadav speaks at Samajwadi Partys silver jubilee event in Lucknow. (ANI Photo)

12:02pm: SP government has done great work, says Shivpal Yadav

12pm: Shivpal Yadav says it is because of Netajis struggle and the risks he took that SP was able to form a government in UP thrice, reports ANI.

(ANI Photo)

11:50am: The family feud has calmed for the time being as Uttar Pradesh CM Akhilesh Yadav shares the stage with Shivpal Yadav, accompanied by SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav.

#WATCH: Samajwadi Party Rajat Jayanti program underway in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. pic.twitter.com/Jp5drdrRYj  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 5, 2016

Mulayam Singh ji ki party or unki sarkar ka ye vidaayi utsav hai: Uma Bharti on SP Silver Jubilee function pic.twitter.com/WuS4gjBrwH  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 5, 2016

11:10am: We have come for SP silver jubilee function, no talk of alliance as of now: ANI quotes HD Deve Gowda

11:05am

UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav with senior JDU leader Sharad Yadav. (ANI Photo)

11am: RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav said the BJP will be defeated in Uttar Pradesh just like the Grand Alliance had won in Bihar assembly election, ANI reports.

Lalu Yadav arrives for Samajwadi Party Rajat Jayanti program in Lucknow pic.twitter.com/Oo0ozRecUt  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 5, 2016

10:30am: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav arrives at the ground to a standing ovation by the crowd.

9:25am: People have gathered at the venue as Samajwadi Party celebrates its silver jubilee where the party will kick off its 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly election campaign.

Lucknow: Samajwadi Party Rajat Jayanti Programme to be held today, party workers gather at the venue pic.twitter.com/kQw8gQoFPh  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 5, 2016
Three sisters sustained severe burns on their faces and eyes after two motorcycle-borne assailants allegedly threw acid on them when the girls were returning from the fields. The incident took place in Ramgarh Kothari village in trans-Ganga area near Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh on Saturday evening.

As per reports, Radha, 22 and Shreya, 16, and their cousin Rekha, 23, were returning after relieving themselves when the youths threw acid on them. Villagers rushed to the scene on hearing the girls cries but the suspects managed to flee.

Police took the girls to a nearby hospital. They were later shifted to SRN hospital, informed SP trans-Ganga Rajesh Srivastava.

The girls family alleged that their neighbour was involved in the incident.

Primary investigation revealed that neighbour had been harassing one of the victims, Srivastava added.
The Madhya Pradesh government has decided against a probe by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) into the jailbreak by 8 SIMI men and their death in an alleged encounter later with the police on Monday.

The government also put on hold any immediate monetary award to the villagers who informed the police about the fugitives and the police personnel involved in the encounter.

After a flip flop on an investigation by the NIA, the state government finally decided against it following a decision to order a judicial probe by retired High Court judge SK Pandey.

The judge will inquire everything right from escape to encounter and also they will give recommendation on how to enhance security of the jail, Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Bhupendra Singh told HT.

Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhans changing stance on encounter worries Muslims

Earlier this week, Singh had said that NIA would investigate only the jail break and not the encounter. On Friday, a senior union home ministry official had said that the MP government had requested the ministry to let the NIA probe the jailbreak and the death of the SIMI men.

The minister also said that the government is yet to decide on when to give award to police personnel involved in the encounter and the villagers who informed the police about the SIMI men. This may mean that the villagers and the policemen may not get the award money immediately.

Congress leader Digvijaya Singh welcomed the decision to hold a judicial inquiry but wanted it to be under the supervision of Madhya Pradesh high court.

Meanwhile, new CCTV footage, believed to be of a camera installed near the cells of the SIMI operatives emerged on Friday evening, showing the eight prisoners roaming freely in the B block during the day. Aired by a local television channel, the SIMI men in the CCTV footage could not be identified. HT had earlier reported that the SIMI cadres had VIP lifestyle in the jail, and used to move around freely during the day and even had set up a gym.

The CCTV footage came a day after an audio clip allegedly featuring conversations among police officials involved in the encounter had surfaced.

In the audio clip, whose authenticity is yet to be confirmed, an officer could be heard telling other policemen on walkie talkie to shoot the SIMI men raising suspicion over the authenticity of the encounter. The undertrial prisoners who were said to have jumped Bhopal central jail on Diwali night, were killed near Manikhedi on the outskirts of the state capital on Monday morning.

The series of video and audio clips circulated on social media after have raised suspicion over the police claim that SIMI men were killed by police in an exchange of fire.

Speaking to HT about the authenticity of the audio clip, inspector general of police (IGP) Bhopal, Yogesh Choudhary said that the whole incident is under investigation.

It is a matter of investigation. The CID is already probing the incident, I cannot comment on that, Choudhary said.

According to sources, the audio conversation involves a senior police official, the personnel at police control room (PCR) and the police officials present at the encounter site at Khijradev village under Parwalia police station.
With the Opposition and media criticising the government action against NDTV India, defence minister Manohar Parrikar said on Saturday it was a security-related issue and the channel appeared to have violated guidelines for coverage of terror attacks.

It is not a ban. They have been asked to put off the channel temporarily for a day, Parrikar said. When you show the anti-terror operation live, the handlers of terrorists get the information.... It appears that these guidelines were violated by the channel during the Pathakot attack coverage. It appears like that, he added.

The minister added, The guidelines on airing the live anti-terrorist operations were issued by the UPA government after the (26/11) 2008 Mumbai attack. In last five years, there were 21 such incidents wherein different channels violated the guidelines.

The I&B Ministry had issued an order saying that NDTV India should be taken off air for a day on November 9 after an inter-ministerial panel constituted by the ministry recommended this action over the broadcasters coverage of the Pathankot terror attack in January.

However, the ban on the leading Hindi TV channel has drawn sharp condemnation from opposition parties and media bodies which called it shocking and authoritarian and reminiscent of Emergency days.

Rallying behind the news channel, the Editors Guild of India, the Broadcast Editors Association (BEA), the News Broadcasters Association (NBA), the Indian Journalists Union (IJU) and the All India Newspaper Editors Conference (AINEC) all condemned the government decision.

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar flayed the governments decision, terming it as an insult to freedom of expression.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) asked for an immediate withdrawal of the ban.
Pakistan high commissioner Abdul Basit attended a Diwali gathering hosted by Indian foreign secretary S Jaishankar on Saturday.

US envoy Richard Verma, army chief Dalbir Singh, national security advisor Ajit Doval and former NSA Shivshankar Menon, among others, were present at the event.

Ties between India and Pakistan have hit a low in the aftermath of an attack on an army base in northern Kashmirs Uri that killed 19 soldiers in September. New Delhi blamed the brazen assault on Pakistan-based militants, a charge Islamabad promptly denied.

The Indian Army also said it carried out surgical strikes on militant bases across the Line of Control, the de-facto border with Pakistan, in response to the Uri attack. Since then, repeated ceasefire violations at the border and civilian deaths on both sides have added to the tension.

India recently accused a Pakistan high commission staffer of spying, and in a tit-for-tat move a media leak in Pakistan accused eight officials of the Indian mission of being involved in subversive activities.

Almost all engagements between the neighbours have been put on hold amid reports that the two countries will scale down diplomatic presence in each others capitals, though Pakistan has confirmed it will attend a conference in Amritsar in December.
Assam finance minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has suggested that the Centre prepare a roadmap to withdraw armed forces for civilian conflict management in the Northeast and replace them with a trained local police.

The removal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act -- a law that gives unbridled powers to the military to shoot, arrest or search -- has been a longstanding demand of rights activists but summarily rejected by the Centre on security grounds.

Sarma, the BJPs pointsman for the Northeast, told Hindustan Times that army personnel have made sacrifices in their line of duty in the region but keeping them engaged in civilian issues for a long period of time was not advisable.

They main job is to guard borders. They were sent to Northeast under a particular situation and it is time that a roadmap be drawn to gradually withdraw them from the job over the next five years, he told HT on the sidelines of the India Ideas Conclave in Goa.

Also the head of the North East Democratic Alliance, a BJP-spearheaded alliance of local parties, Sarma said armed forces can help train local people. Local police should be reformed, trained and equipped to deal with the situation in place of army. The armed forces can help them, he added.

His remarks come ahead of the assembly elections in Manipur, where the AFSPA is in force.

In July this year, the Supreme Court also expressed its reservation over indefinite deployment of armed forces in the name of restoring normalcy under the AFSPA, saying it symbolized the failure of the civil administration and the armed forces.

Rights activists have alleged 1,528 cases of extra-judicial killings in Manipur between 2000 and 2012 by the army.

Manipur-based activist Irom Sharmila ended her 16-year-old hunger strike against the AFSPA in August this year and vowed to fight the next years assembly election. The BJP, too, is making a strong pitch to win Manipur, a state neighbouring Assam.

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As Vietnam probes yet another loss-making state firm, former exec disappears

Vu Dinh Duy stopped showing up at his office soon after inspectors detected violations at a fiber plant that he once managed.

A former executive of a nearly bankrupt fiber plant has been questionably absent for days, soon after government inspectors detected violations at the $325 million project.

Vu Dinh Duy served as general director at PVTex, a textile unit of state-owned oil group PetroVietnam, between 2009 and 2014. His company built and run Dinh Vu polyester synthetic fiber plant in the northern city of Hai Phong, which has incurred hugh losses and is on the verge of bankruptcy.

Duy, 41, is now a board member of state-owned chemical giant Vinachem.

The Government Inspectorate said in a report on October 20 that it had detected several violations in the construction and operation of the PVTex plant. It proposed police investigate the case.

Only four days after that, Duy stopped showing up at his current office at Vinachem. He had been seeking a leave for medical treatment overseas, but the request was not approved by the company.

Failing to contact Duy for days, Vinachem's management reported his absence to their supervisors at the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The ministry has dispatched a team to track him down.

Dinh Vu, the fiber plant, was meant to supply about 30-40 percent of Vietnam's annual polyester synthetic fiber demand and help reduce the country's reliance on imported raw materials.

The actual operation, however, went uneasy. The plant began running in May 2014 but suspended production three times, with the latest in September last year.

PVTex planned to resume production in the first quarter of 2016, but the plant has not been reopened since.

According to a PetroVietnam report, PVTex incurred losses of VND1.255 trillion ($55.5 million) in 2015, up from VND1.085 trillion the previous year.

In their report last month, the central governments inspectors said PVTex, as the investor of the project, and the contractors did not comply with regulations in purchasing equipment. For example, some equipment, which was supposed to be made in Germany, was replaced by equipment made in China. The poor-quality equipment led to the prolonged trial runs of the plant.

Hyundai Engineering Co. Ltd, LG International Corp, and PetroVietnam Construction JSC were the engineering, procurement and construction contractors of the project, according to a statement on PVTex's website.

Following his poor performance at PVTex, Duy was somehow appointed deputy director at Hai Phong Department of Industry and Trade in 2014.

He was later transferred to an industrial and environmental safety agency under the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

One day before leaving office in April this year, the former industry and trade minister Vu Huy Hoang sent Duy over to Vinachem.

Hoang is facing punishment for promoting his son and the now-infamous Trinh Xuan Thanh, who has also fled the country amid an investigation.

Thanh is accused of mismanagement and causing losses of around VND3.2 trillion ($147 million) at PetroVietnam Construction under his watch between 2011 and 2013.

Related news:

> PetroVietnam appoints top official to save $325-million fiber plant

> Runaway bigwig will be hunted down: Vietnamese general

> Vietnams former trade minister faces penalty for promoting son
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday promised to address Kashmirs problems with a humanitarian approach, adding that development and trust were the twin goals of his government in the troubled state.

PM Modi was meeting with a 30-member delegation of the All Jammu and Kashmir Panchayat Conference, a body of panchayat leaders representing 4,000 villages of the state, where he made the comments. The delegation was led by Shafiq Mir, chairman of the organisation.

A statement from the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) said Modi stressed a humanitarian approach and said that vikas (development) and vishwas (trust) will remain the cornerstones of the Union governments development initiatives for the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The delegation briefed the Prime Minister on the current political situation in the state. The body, which represents people at the grassroots-level in Jammu and Kashmir, reiterated its faith in the democratic institutions and processes in the country, the statement said.

Mir said a vast majority of the people of the state wanted a life of peace and dignity and that vested interests have exploited youngsters and are playing with their future, the PMO stated.
Former Kerala assembly speaker and CPI(M) Thrissur district secretary K Radhakrishnan on Saturday landed in trouble when he revealed the name of the woman who was allegedly raped by a gang of four including Thrissur municipal councillor PN Jayanthan.

Revealing the identity of a sexual assault victim is an offence and the person can be jailed for two years along with a fine.

Asked about his revelation, Radhakrishnan told newsmen that now everyone knew about the woman.

The opposition Congress and BJP have sought strict action against Radhakrishnan, while the National Commission for Women said it will send a notice to him soon. The Thrissur police commissioner has asked a senior officer to examine the video tape of his press meet.

The 32-year-old victim had held a press conference in Thiruvananthapuram on Thursday alleging that she was gang-raped and the act video-graphed by four persons two years ago. She also alleged that when she approached police, an officer reportedly asked her which of the four gave her maximum pleasure.

Radhakrishnan took the name of the victim while announcing the suspension of the CPI (M) leader allegedly involved in the rape.

It is really shocking. It seems he took the victims name deliberately to add to her insult. He should be booked, said opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala.

But state health minister KK Shailaja came to Radhakrishnans rescue, saying the statement was not intended to portray the woman in bad light and the government would take strict action against perpetrators of the crime after proper investigation.

The CPI, a partner in the ruling coalition, criticised the leaders statement.

Action should taken against as per the law against whoever has said this, it doesnt matter whether the person is a former speaker or minister, said CPI state secretary Kanam Rajendran.

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A 45-year-old Indian man was sentenced to eight years in prison and nine strokes of cane for slashing the throat of his estranged Singaporean wife, a media report said on Saturday.

Krishnan Karunakaran slashed the throat of his 38-year-old wife Boomichelvi Ramasamy in October 2013 after she rebuffed his demands to help him stay in Singapore by getting his visa extended and not let him see their one-year-old daughter.

In his mitigation, Krishnan claimed that they separated after his wife had an affair, The Straits Times reported.

Deputy public prosecutor Mohamed Faizal took issue with the false narrative and rejected the assertion that the separation was the victims fault.

He argued that the attempt to pin the blame on the victim highlighted that Krishnan absolutely shows no remorse.

In sentencing Krishnan, Justice Chan Seng Onn said -- Theres no reason for you to resort to such violence, even if you desperately wanted to see your daughter. You should have resorted to the legal process and not take matters into your own hands.

You are lucky that she survived, or you would be facing a far more serious charge, Justice Chan told Krishnan.

On the morning of Oct 27, 2013, Krishnan waited for his wife at the lift lobby of her apartment block in the Hougang housing estate.

Krishnan, who had a knife tucked under his singlet, barged inside the lift when he saw her.

He then made her walk towards her flat before slashing her throat in front of her nine-year-old daughter from a previous marriage and the housekeeper.

The domestic helper opened the gate to help her bleeding employer while her daughter called the police.

Krishnan had pleaded guilty on Tuesday (on November 1) to the charges of attempted culpable homicide and criminal intimidation. Two other charges - for trying to stab Boomichelvi and for threatening her domestic worker - were taken into consideration.

Krishnans lawyer, Eugene Thuraisingam, said his client was frustrated and desperate because his wife refused to help him extend his visa and blocked him from seeing his daughter.

He said that Krishnan had bought the knife to threaten, not kill, his wife and that only one cut was inflicted.

On Friday, the prosecutor told the court that Krishnans actions were premeditated and that he had no qualms about carrying out the assault in front of the victims young child.

The couple had married in a temple ceremony in India in 2011 and Krishnan, who ran a herbal medicine business, came to Singapore in July 2012.

They separated less than a year later, according to The Straits Times report.
Union information and broadcasting minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Saturday said the Opposition needs to stop dragging Prime Minister Narendra Modi into every issue for the sake of publicity.

Now Modi jis name is dragged into issues only for publicity, and it has become a sort of fashion. Earlier, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) was pulled up for everything. If there is no rain or somebody doesnt have a child, the RSS was blamed, Naidu said, addressing the platinum jubilee event of the builders association.

Appreciating Prime Minister Modis efforts to deal with China and Pakistan, Naidu said, but people in India criticize the government.

There should be a behavioural change in the people and Prime Minister Modi has initiated to bring out hidden talents in the country, he added.

Naidus response came a day after Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi alleged that the Centre was disrespecting soldiers by not fulfilling their long pending demand for one rank one pension.

Gandhi, who met the ex-servicemen protesting at the Jantar Mantar against the governments lackadaisical approach on the Orop scheme, said the issue at this point of time was not just about the implementation of the scheme but giving justice to the soldiers.

The Congress vice-president also pointed out that the ex-servicemen have also been demanding for implementation of the 7th Pay Commission and disability pension.

Gandhi claimed that the demand for OROP was not just about money but about the soldiers pride and justice.

Read | Rahul says PM lying on OROP, Jaitley targets politically motivated sympathy
Voters will chase the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) out of Uttar Pradesh like they did in Bihar, Rashtriya Janta Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad said at the Samajwadi Partys silver jubilee event in Lucknow on Saturday.

We are here to strengthen the SP. We have chased the BJP out of Bihar. We will chase the BJP out of UP too, Lalu said, pitching incumbent Akhilesh Yadav as the states next chief minister.

The RJD chief sought to ease tensions within the ruling family in the UP government, urging Akhilesh to keep infighting at bay to win the assembly polls.

Since no one can fight us, we fight with each other, the former Bihar chief minister said, in an apparent reference to the ongoing Yadav family feud.

Read | At Samajwadi Partys show of unity, Akhilesh and Shivpal lock horns

He also trained his guns on Prime Minister Narendra Modi over a range of issues, including black money, the surgical strikes and intolerance.

Secular forces must unite to keep the BJP away, Lalu said.

Questioning the BJPs claim that it was the first time the Indian Army had carried out surgical strikes, he said: Mulayam Singh Yadav ji will tell you how many times surgical strikes have been carried out (by the army).

Mulayam served as the countrys defence minister in the United Front government between 1996 and 1998.

The RJD chief also raised the issue of the one-day ban imposed by the government on Hindi news channel NDTV India over its coverage of the Pathankot attack, terming it an attack on freedom and democracy.
The central governments decision to ban Hindi news channel NDTV India for a day has been sharply criticised by observers, journalists and opposition parties alike.

This is the first time ever that a news channel has been barred from broadcasting for breaching national security laws in the country. While the government has defended the ban in the interest of national security, the Editors Guild of India has condemned it a violation of the freedom of media.

Amid all the outrage, there is still confusion over why the ban was imposed and under which law. Here is an explanation of some important aspects of the ban:

What does the ban entail?

The Information & Broadcasting ministry has passed an order to prohibit the transmission or re-transmission of NDTV India channel for one day on any platform throughout India with effect from 00:01 hrs on 9th November,2016 till 00:01 hrs of 10th November, 2016.

Why was NDTV India banned?

Sources in the Information &Broadcasting ministry say action was taken against the channel because it had revealed sensitive details, such as the location of the ammunition depot, school and residential areas in its coverage of the Pathankot attack. It also appeared to disclose the location of the attackers.

This crucial information could have been readily picked up by the terrorists handlers and jeopardised national security as well as the lives of civilians and defence personnel.

What does the law say?

Under Rule 6(1)(p) of the Cable TV Network (Regulation) Act, no programme should be carried in the cable service which contains live coverage of any anti-terrorist operation by security forces, wherein media coverage shall be restricted to periodic briefing by an officer designated by the appropriate government, till such operation concludes.

What was the process followed?

January 29: Showcause notice was issued to NDTV India for violation of Cable Act; they were asked to reply within 15 days.

February 5: The channel responded, submitting that the coverage was balanced and responsible.

July 25: Channels representatives were given a personal hearing before an Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC).

November 2: The order announcing the ban was made public.

NDTV India can take legal recourse and appeal the ban.

What were the observations of the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC)?

The IMC, which includes joint secretaries home, defence, I&B, health and family welfare, consumer affairs, law and justice, external affairs, women and child development and representative of the Advertising Standards Council of India recommended that NDTV India be taken off-air for one day.

In its report to the Information & Broadcasting ministry, the IMC observed that disclosure of sensitive information has several ramifications such as causing alarm and de-moralisation of citizens and security forces, collateral damage to critical assets, apprehension among families of those serving in combat.
Haylo, all you itching-for-calmness souls. There was just no need to barsao so many e-gaalis on me because I rehashed the column last week. Everyone is allowed a chhutti once in a while yaar, and now toh were reeling under the festive spirit, so brain anyway ceases to function normally under the heavy influence of sweets. Basically, Im giving an excuse for not having anything sensible to talk about this week too. And in absence of serious thoughts, my mind always veers to my favourite frivolity  wondering why we say, what we say. Am sure every culture and language in the world has its own charming oddities but nothing beats the way we in India beat logic. But before you pick up the patriotic stick to bash me, let me declare that Im awfully proud of the unabashed way Indians, including myself, use certain phrases all our lives without even knowing the meaning, let alone the origin.

Ive written about such phrases in the past too, but this week, my chain of thoughts started with a recent tweet by popular stand-up comic Tanmay Bhat, in which he questioned the logic behind a popular Hindi phrase Izzat ka falooda. Well, we use it when someone or something has insulted us... but why compare an awful situation like that with a perfectly awesome sweet beverage such as falooda? Did it never occur to the Halwais and falooda specialists in the country to protest? I spent some ten minutes of my  as you can see  highly productive time to think about the logic but finally gave it up and said, bhaad mein jaaye falooda. And then it struck me. Where will the poor falooda go? Where exactly is bhaad? We use bhaad mein jao as an expression to basically tell someone to go to hell... but then hell is nark in hindi and jahannum in Urdu. Yeh bhaad kis chidiya ka naam hai? And why do we only say chidiya ka naam...why not a crow or some other bird?

Seeking Sri Sri Google Babas intervention to find out the origin or meaning of bhaad also turned out to be futile initially, and its only after spending almost all of my highly productive time that day, I managed to find one definition of bhaad as the traditional wood-fired tandoor used in ancient Indian villages to roast peanuts. So basically, when you wish for someone to go to bhaad, you are sending the nut to...umm...other nuts, and hell come out nicely cooked and tastier in the process. After all this hard work, mere dimaag ka dahi ho gaya. Dahi? That highly nutritious, pro biotic milk product? Why compare a fed up, frustrated brain with the delicious yogurt? The quest for answers to these earth shatteringly important questions led me to discover samosapedia, a hilarious database of such phrases on the net. Here are some of the finest gems, this time in English, on the site and my take on each of them.

Please do the needful: Anyone who uses this phrase in a letter is basically telling the recipient that I want you to do something, but I dont have the vaguest idea what that should be. Dear Sir, I observed that there were a lot of dogs pissing in the garbage at the blocked traffic light. Kindly do the needful. (source: samosapedia). The word needful that perhaps doesnt even exist as a noun in the dictionary is happily used in our official communication, passing the entire burden of decoding, interpreting and acting on what that needful is, to the one who receives it. Badiya hai.

Shame shame puppy shame: Uttered all over India, without any discrimination of caste, creed, colour or race, to tell a child that his or her pants are down. Chalo woh toh theek hai but what has the poor puppy done to deserve a mention in this phrase reinforcing national integration? Maneka ji.. are you listening? I saw a mother once even threatening her toddler: tumhaara puppy shame kar doongi. Am sure their puppy wouldve been more scared. Now, toh people even make puppies wear clothes. Shame kyun?

New pinch: Refers to the act of painfully pinching a person who has made the unpardonable mistake of wearing new clothes in front of a highly excitable breed like us Indians. Exhibited more by the female gender, regardless of the age, and mostly accompanied by an audible squeal of sheer delight. And oh, we also do something called same pinch. Understandably perhaps, since all women secretly want to kill the other one whos turned up wearing the same dress or colour, but have to make do with just pinching. Im pretty sure this new/same varieties of pinches are not delivered by human beings to each other in other parts of the world. We are so lovingly unique, I tell you.

Yours faithfully: Almost the entire country commits faithfulness or sincerity towards the others as we sign off all our letters with this phrase at the end. Its another thing the content of the letter may border on a threat to murder. Dear Sir, you have not paid the monthly EMI on your loan and we are now forced to send goons dressed as executives to take your car away. Yours faithfully. How the hell are you faithfully mine under these tough circumstances, my dear bank? I will sue you in consumer court, get exemplary judgments passed and malign your name in dirt. Yours sincerely. Anyway, as you can see, these linguistic quirks are as many in English as in Hindi. And they are fultoo timepass, arent they? Chalo then, see you next week after having thought of a sensible topic. Is baar izzat ka falooda hi kha lo.

Sonal Kalra just told an American friend that bhaad is a must-visit in India. The friend is searching for it on the Google map. Yours Sincerely.

Mail your feedback at

sonal.kalra@hindustantimes.com or facebook.com/sonal.kalra. Follow on Twitter

@sonalkalra.

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The railway mobile court, Andheri sentenced Bollywood actor Aditya Pancholi to one year imprisonment on Saturday for assaulting his neighbour in 2005.

The magistrate Amitabh Panchbhai also imposed a fine of Rs20,000 on the actor. The court has ordered Pancholi to pay the complainant Prateek Pashni, the neighbour who he assaulted.

The court refused to grant any leniency to Pancholi while sentencing him. The court observed that, It would be a class prejudice if a famous film star is sorted out. The pronouncement of the sentence must be fair and free from any the prejudice whatsoever.

The court also observed that as Pancholi does not have a criminal history, he can be awarded a minimum sentence with fine.

The actor later moved a bail application and sought a suspension of the sentence till he moves an appeal before the sessions court. He was released on bail on the condition that he pays the fine.

A decade earlier, Pancholi picked a fight with his neighbour over a parking issue. Pashni said that on August 21, he had gone to the market. When he returned in the evening, he saw a car parked at the spot allocated to him. He then parked his car behind the other one.

Pashni said his watchman called him at 8pm and asked him to move his car. The two argued over the intercom before he agreed. When he came downstairs intending to take the car out, Pancholi came and started assaulting him, said Pashni.

He said Pancholi also assaulted his father when he tried to intervene. The next day, Pashni registered a complaint with Versova police station. Pancholi was booked under section 323 (Punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), 325(Punishment for voluntarily causing grievous hurt), 504 (Intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and 501 (2) (defamation) of the Indian Penal Code.

The court convicted the actor for causing grievous hurt to the complainant. However, Pancholi was acquitted in regard to the other charges.

Public prosecutor A H Nandgiri, while arguing on the quantum of sentence pleaded that the actor should be sentenced to prison, to send a message to society. Pancholis advocate, Mangesh Rangnekar said the actor should be let off and a lenient view be taken. He said imposing a fine on Pancholi was sufficient.

The court however, accepted the prosecutions plea.
The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, currently at its lowest ebb, has reportedly changed the direction of its party symbol  the Railway Engine.

It is seen as an attempt to revive its dipping fortunes before the upcoming civic elections, with some sources calling it the Vaastu effect. Experts, said sources, suggested a railway engine running from right to left will benefit the party.

We initially had the symbol running right to left and we also had good success in the 2009 polls and the 2012 civic polls. But after that, when we changed the direction, we really suffered. Some vaastu experts suggested we should change the direction, and hence we did, said a party leader, not wishing to be named.

Party leader Shirish Sawant, however, was evasive. There may be some party leaders who must have changed the direction, but there is nothing official about it, Sawant said.

The changed logo has been spotted at Pune, where the MNS will hold a massive public meeting next week that will be addressed by its chief Raj Thackeray. While Thackeray has been posturing against superstitious beliefs, he is said to have agreed to the change.

After a spectacular performance in the 2009 polls  where the party could not open an account, but polled a significant number of votes  the election commission gave it the symbol of a railway engine that ran from right to left. The same year, it won 13 seats in the Maharashtra Assembly elections. Three years later, in the 2012 civic polls, the MNS was able to get 28 corporators elected to the Mumbai civic body.

And then, it started falling. The symbol was changed on the grounds that it was a little misleading and less visible. It looked like a road roller upon closer inspection, was what some party leaders had said. The party fared poorly in the 2014 elections, its tally fell to 1. Now, some party leaders have advocated suggested changing the direction again.

The party is now facing a do-or-die situation in the 2017 BMC polls slated within the next three months. Both ruling parties, the Shiv Sena and the BJP, planning to fight the polls separately, have already started their campaigns unofficially. And the MNS, facing a spate of desertions by corpoartors and low morale, is yet to make their presence felt.

The question is: Will changing the direction of its railway engine revive Rajs fortunes?

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The Congress and NCP are set for a bitter fight as the former allies on Saturday, the last day to withdraw nominations, decided to contest legislative council polls on four out of six seats against each other.

There are 30 candidates in the fray for the six seats, elections of which will be held on November 19.

Surprisingly, candidates from all major political parties, including the Congress, the NCP and the Shiv Sena, withdrew their nominations for Jalgaon in favour of BJP candidate Chandu Patel.

Gurumukh Jagwani, sitting MLC and a close confidante of senior BJP leader and former revenue minister Eknath Khadse, also pulled out of the race.

Talks between the allies fell through after the Congress had announced candidates for all six seats. The NCP has fielded five candidates and for Nanded, it may support Independent candidate Shyamsunder Shinde, retired IAS officer contesting against Congress Amar Rajurkar. Only one candidate each from both the parties withdrew their nominations on Friday.

The term of six members of the Legislative Council will end on December 5. Of them, four are from the NCP and one from the Congress and the BJP each.

Sources said the parties failed to thrash out a seat-sharing arrangement as the Congress was firm on its demand for three seats and the NCP had offered only two.

This has resulted in a face-off between the Congress and the NCP for Sangli-Satara, Yavatmal, Bhandara-Gondia and Pune seats. In Nanded, the NCP may support the Independent candidate Shinde to ensure Congress defeat as all political parties have decided to back him, said a senior NCP leader.

Meanwhile, all opposition parties, including the Shiv Sena, withdrew their candidates from Jalgaon. The move has been seen as kind of pact with the BJP for the polls.

Lata Chhajed from Congress, Gulabrao Deokar from NCP and Suresh Chaudhary from Sena withdrew their nominations on Friday.

NCP spokesperson Nawab Malik clarified that they are contesting on their own on four seats and had offered the Congress the same 4-2 formula.

We have maintained our position by withdrawing our candidate from Jalgaon, Malik told HT. Ashok Chavan, state Congress president, said that they had less than 50 votes in Jalgaon and the party was ready to support the NCP who was having more than 100 votes.

The NCP pulled out its candidate from the race at the eleventh hour and there was no point for the Congress to contest polls with no strength, Chavan said

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It took nearly two hours for firefighters to contain the midnight blaze.

Fire ripped through the centuries-old Tinh Lau pagoda in Hanoi on Friday night, burning down the main chamber. No casualty has been reported.

The fire reportedly erupted at around 11:20 p.m from the wooden chamber, before spreading to other areas.

Residents in Tay Ho District tried to help put out the blaze but could not. Many reportedly rushed in to bring out whatever they could to the street.

Firefighters and police arrived at the scene, pumping water from the nearby West Lake to control the flames. Strong winds made such a task difficult.

At around 1:00 a.m, the fire was extinguished, but the whole chamber and almost everything inside had been burned down.

Local authorities are investigating the incident.

Tinh Lau Pagoda is recognized as an important cultural and historical site. It is generally believed to be at least 600 years old.

But according to some historians, the temple could have been built during the Ly Dynasty (1010-1225). Formerly known as Thanh Lau, the temple was later renamed to Tinh Lau during the Nguyen Dynasty.

Massive fire tears through centuries-old pagoda in Hanoi Massive fire tears through centuries-old pagoda in Hanoi

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Three minor students of an ashramshala (residential school for tribal students) in Buldhana district who said they were raped repeatedly by teachers and other school staff are suspected to be pregnant. The controversy erupted on Thursday with the revelation that a 10-year-old girl studying at Nimbaji Kokre Ashramshala near Khamgaon in Buldhana district had become pregnant.

District police superintendent Sanjiv Baviskar said there are 13 suspects in the case, of which 11 were arrested late on Thursday night and two are absconding. The police said the accused include headmaster Bharat Lakudkar, teachers, peons and other staff. All 11 were produced before a judicial magistrate at Khamgaon on Friday and remanded in police custody for a week.

A source said three of the girls, aged between 10 and 14, who have come forward are suspected to be pregnant. The police said all the girls were sent to a hospital in Akola and that their relatives lodged complaints at Khamgaon police station.

Baviskar said that an SIT led by IPS officer Shweta Khedekar will probe the matter. There are seven to eight officers in the probe team, he added.

He said the incident came to light just before Diwali. We have sent women police officials to talk to the victims and record their statements. So far, 13 teachers and staff have been named as accused and 11 have been arrested, Baviskar added.

He said, The main accused (a peon) has been charged with Section 376 (rape) of the Indian Penal Code and various sections of POCSO (the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act). The rest have been charged under various sections of POCSO. To take the probe further, the victims have been sent for a medical examination. However, Baviskar said it is yet to be medically verified if the three girls are indeed pregnant.

The 10-year old, a Class 4 student, narrated her ordeal to her mother while on vacation. She said she had been raped repeatedly by Ittusingh Pawar, a peon at the boarding school, over two months. Her mother approached senior BJP leader and former minister Eknath Khadse, who asked Maharashtra agriculture minister and local BJP leader Pandurang Phundkar to inquire into the matter. Phundkar contacted the Khamgaon police, upon which, they registered the parents complaints against the teachers and staff.

Chitra Wagh, NCPs womens wing president, travelled to Khamgaon on Friday afternoon and visited the school. She demanded action against child welfare minister Pankaja Munde and tribal welfare minister Vishnu Sawra. NCP workers also blocked Sawras vehicle when he tried to visit the ashramshala on Friday evening.

Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday directed women officers of the concerned departments to visit all tribal boarding school in the state and meet with girl students to find out if they have suffered sexual abuse or have any other issues with school staff.
Visibility in various areas of Noida and Ghaziabad stayed low on Saturday morning, slowing traffic at various intersections. According to officials of the India Meteorological Department (IMD), visibility remained between 200 and 300 metres throughout the day across Delhi and NCR, including Noida and Ghaziabad.

The visibility at 6am was about 100 metres, which increased to 200-300 metres after 8.30am. The wind speed is around nine to 10 kilometres per hour from the northwest, which is very less, said an IMD official at the IGI Airport in Delhi.

Minimum temperatures in Noida and Ghaziabad have dropped significantly compared to last year. In 2015, the first week of November had recorded minimum temperature of around 20 degrees Celsius whereas this week it has stayed put at 16 degree Celsius, the official added.

Traffic officials in Ghaziabad reported minor accidents early in the morning due to the low visibility.

Visibility was very low between 7.30am and 8.30 am, leading to some minor accidents. Although no one was injured, it did slow down traffic. One incident was reported on GT Road near Mohan Nagar where two collided with each other. Another was reported near Hindon Air Force base when a bike hit a car, said Anil Kumar, traffic inspector, Ghaziabad.

Data from the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board (UPPCB) showed that particulate matter (PM) 10 levels have remained above 900 micrograms per cubic metre (g/m3) for the past four days as against the permissible limit of 100 g/m3. PM10 levels are 17 times above the permissible limit at Kaushambi, nine times at Vasundhara and seven times at Model Town.

PM10 levels signify the dust in the air. The air has remained stagnant for the past week, which has led to dust particles staying put in the atmosphere rather than being blown away, said Paras Nath, regional manager, UPPCB, Ghaziabad.

Meanwhile, the commissioner of the Meerut division, Alok Sinha, held a meeting at the Gautam Budh Nagar district magistrate office in Greater Noida on Saturday morning regarding the rising air pollution. District magistrate NP Singh and other district officers attended the meeting. Sinha told district officers to exhort farmers not to burn crop residue and form of a committee to oversee this. The committee has been asked to submit its report in 15 days.

Additional district magistrate, Bulandshahr, will chair this committee that will comprise of regional officers of pollution control boards of the districts falling under the Meerut division. The committee will organise awareness camps in villages and brief farmers about the ill effects of crop burning. It will also inform them about latest agriculture technologies that do not require burning of crop residue to increase yield. (With PTI inputs)
Beginning April next year, direct flight will connect the holy city of Amritsar with London thrice a week.

With the aim to serve Sikh community globally and promote tourism, UK-based People Over Profit (POP) -- a new low-cost, long-haul airline -- will be launching its operations in April 2017. At present, there is no direct flight between the two cities.

We thought of exploring this market as there is a huge demand (for travel to Amritsar)... due to high Sikh population in (UK). We only have the economy class to begin with, and the prices are very cheap, said POP chairman Navdip Singh Judge.

The airline will run flights with seating capacity of up to 400 between Amritsar and the UK capital thrice a week. While a one-way ticket will cost 176 (around `15,000), including taxes, the round trip will cost 350 (`30,000).

The flight will take off from London at 7pm every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday and reach Sri Guru Ram Dass Jee International Airport, Amritsar, at 6am the next day. It will return to UK the same day at noon.
Punjab deputy chief minister and Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal on Saturday accused the Gandhi family of unveiling its anti-Sikh stance once again by catapulting guilty men of 1984 anti-Sikh riots Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar to the political centre stage.

The two Congress leaders, who are accused of involvement in the 1984 riots, were recently seen accompanying party vice-president Rahul Gandhi to a police station after the suicide of a retired soldier in Delhi.

(Allowing) himself to be flanked by Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar on his right and left suggests that the Congress vice-president endorses what they had done 32 years ago, Sukhbir said in a press statement.

Anti-Sikhism is in the DNA of the Congress, especially Gandhi family. The Congress indeed regretted 1984, yet the party continues to adore and admire those who carried out the carnage, said the deputy CM.

Accusing Rahul of flaunting the killers of Sikhs as trophies, Sukhbir said it was bound to trigger hate and anger among the community.

Sukhbir said the party was still threatening Sikhs through these goons who are thriving under Congress patronage by circumventing the judicial process.

If Rahul cant keep these elements at a distance, then he should bring Sajjan and Tytler to Punjab to campaign for his party. Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh would welcome the move as he has already given clean chit to Tytler, said Sukhbir.

The SAD chief also accused Amarinder of trying to prove his loyalty to Gandhi family by coming to the rescue of their blue-eyed boys Tytler and Sajjan Kumar.
A day after District Congress Committee (urban) stage protest, women wing workers of the party came on streets against Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday, over the issue of detention of AICC vice-president Rahul Gandhi in Delhi at Hall Gate.

Led by District Mahila Congress president Jatinder Sonia, the female activists organised a procession in Hall Bazaar carrying an effigy of Modi. They called it a funeral procession of the PM.

Amid sloganeering against BJP, they reached Hall Gate where they burnt the effigy.

The agitators condemned the act of denying Rahul Gandhi from meeting family of the ex-serviceman who committed suicide over the pending issue of one rank one pension (OROP).

Sonia exhorted the public to defeat BJP in elections considering that the government is not paying honour to ex-soldiers.

CONG RURAL UNIT BURNS PMS EFFIGY

Continuing with their protests against the detention of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, the rural unit of Amritsar District Congress Committee burnt an effigy of PM Modi outside the railway station here on Friday.

Shouting slogans against Modi, party leaders and workers marched from rural unit office to Traffic Lights Chowk outside the railway station, and burnt the effigy. The protesters were led by rural unit chief Gurjeet Singh Aujla and former minister Sardool Singh. The detention was unethical. Our leader was protesting for a noble cause, said Aujla.

MASSIVE PROTEST IN PATHANKOT PATHANKOT

Congress staged a massive protest in Pathankot and burnt an effigy of PM Modi, for his failure to protect the interests of retired army personnel, compelling them to commit suicide. District Congress workers and leaders assembled before the office of Pathankot deputy commissioner and raised slogans against central government.

DHARNA AT RAM TALAI Punjab Congress Committee secretary Dinesh Bassi too, along with party workers, staged a protest at Ram Talai and burnt an effigy of Modi.

As many as 350 Congress party workers participated in the protest and called the detention an undemocratic step.

They said that Rahul was there for a humanitarian cause. Modi government is behaving like a dictatorship instead of a democracy, they added.
Hindustan Times talked to new SGPC president Kirpal Singh Badungar to know about the challenges he faces and his action plan to deal with them. Excerpts:

What are main challenges you face in your new role?

The biggest challenge is to restore gurmat maryada and Sikh traditions in all Sikh shrines.

Whats your plan of action?

I will get in touch with all sections of the Sikh panth and try to bring them on a common platform. I have an elaborate plan to reach out to the Sikh masses and to cover up the gaps that have cropped up due to different reasons. I will make use of social media to convey our message to increase the reach.

Assembly polls are approaching and your party (Akali Dal) is a key contender. What role do you see for yourself?

Being the SGPC president, my main focus is dharam parchar. Though I will support my party in the polls. My entire team will get engaged in campaigning for the Akali Dal.

Incidents of sacrilege are on the rise. What steps you want to take to check this?

No doubt, Sikhs are hurt because of the be-adbi of Guru Granth Sahib. I will first find out the reasons behind the spate of such crimes and then draw out a plan to ensure that such incidents dont happen.

Gurmat parchar has taken a back seat and number of learned preachers is limited. Your views.

Its my dream project to run special institutions of learning for the Sikh preachers at a bigger scale. In my previous term, I had opened a school of gurmat teachings at Sultanpur Lodhi. Such schools will come up in other parts of the state.

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Amid making two futile attempts to climb atop a water tank in the chief ministers Badal village in Muktsar, unemployed teachers have been sitting on a dharna at the neighbouring Jaisingh Wala village, occupying the water tank there, for the past five months.

The protesters, who have cleared the teacher eligibility test, have been demanding jobs against more than 7,000 vacant posts in primary schools across the state. Many of these protesters had even attended counselling during the recruitments to fill 2,000 posts in September.

They have now resolved to intensify their agitation with the state elections around the corner.

We have faced police lathis both in Badal village and Bathinda, but we will not budge. Two of our fellow protesters on Thursday climbed atop a mobile tower near Punjab Bhawan in Chandigarh, said Pawan Kumar, addressing other jobless teachers at the protest site in Jaisinghwala on Friday.

Pawan, who has cleared the TET twice, had also climbed atop the Punjab mini civil secretariat building in Chandigarh last week. Besides, he along the protesters with three other protesters has warned the government of committing self-immolation if their demand is not met.

Talking to HT, the protesters accused the state government of scuttling their chances of employment after clearing the TET, with many of them being allegedly dropped after counselling.

They said the government has conducted the exam five times since 2011, with the last one conducted in December 2015.

Resolving to intensify the agitation, Pawan said: We will reach the venue and protest at every event that chief minister Parkash Singh Badal attends.

Earlier, too, the jobless teachers have made failed bids to gatecrash such events.

The protesters have been rounded up many times during Badals public meetings, mainly in Muktsar and Bathinda districts, and events like the Maghi Mela at Muktsar, in the past three years.

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Amid making two futile attempts to climb atop a water tank in the chief ministers Badal village in Muktsar, unemployed teachers have been sitting on a dharna at the neighbouring Jaisingwala village, occupying the water tank there, for the past five months.

The protesters, who have cleared the teacher eligibility test, have been demanding jobs against more than 7,000 vacant posts in primary schools across the state. Many of these protesters had even attended counselling during the recruitments to fill 2,000 posts in September.

They have now resolved to intensify their agitation with the state elections round the corner.

We have faced police lathis both in Badal village and Bathinda, but we will not budge. Two of our fellow protesters on Thursday climbed atop a mobile tower near Punjab Bhawan in Chandigarh, said Pawan Kumar, addressing other jobless teachers at the protest site in Jaisinghwala on Friday.

Talking to HT, the protesters accused the state government of scuttling their chances of employment after clearing the TET, with many of them being allegedly dropped after counselling.

They said the Badal government has conducted the exam five times since 2011, with the last exercise conducted in December 2015, when 4,500 more people were added to the army of about 26,000 unemployed teachers amid thousands of vacancies.

Resolving to intensify the agitation, Pawan said: We will reach the venue and protest at every event that chief minister Parkash Singh Badal attends, be it the World Kabaddi Cup, a sangat darshan or any other public meeting.

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Private taxi drivers on Friday blocked the LudhianaFerozepur road at Bhai Bala Chowk for over an hour, following an alleged road rage incident, in which a taxi driver was thrashed by a commuter.

Due to the protest, the flow of traffic on the Ferozepur road was badly hit.

To control the protesters, the police resorted to lathicharge and also arrested 13 taxi drivers and lodged a case for blocking road and various sections of National Highway act.

Inspector Beant Juneja, SHO at police division number 5, who has an additional charge of police division number 8, said that a taxi driver who works with Uber taxi service, was crossing from Bhai Bala Chowk when a Swift car hit his taxi from the back.

The occupant of the car, identified as Harminder Singh of Lehra, entered into a scuffle with the taxi driver and thrashed him. In the incident, the drivers turban was tossed.

Meanwhile, Gurpinder Singh called his fellow taxi drivers. Seeing taxi drivers gathering at the spot Harminder Singh fled from the scene.

The SHO added that after the incident, the taxi drivers staged a protest and blocked the Ludhiana-Ferozepur road. The police tried to pacify the protestors and asked them to file a complaint against the accused, he said.

The taxi drivers were reluctant to bring the accused on the spot. The senior officers also tried pacifying the protestors, but to no avail, said the SHO.

Protestors were demanding to arrest the car occupant who thrashed one of the taxi drivers.

The SHO, however, denied the cane charging incident. He said the police used mild force to disperse the protestors, as the traffic was disturbed.

The division number 8 police have registered a case under Section 295A (hurting religious sentiments) and 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) against Harminder Singh of Lehra village, following the complaint of Gurpinder Singh.

The police also booked Gurpinder and others under Section 283 (danger or obstruction in public way or line of navigation), 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant) of the IPC and various sections of the National Highway act..
Filmmaker Raam Reddy, who received several international honours for his directorial venture Thithi, says his next film will be based on magical realism -- a genre which has not been explored much in filmmaking.

In Thithi, the starting point was the place. For my next film, the starting point is its genre. I want to make a magic realism film. Its a very realistic film with magic. It will be treated in a realistic way, said Reddy on the sidelines of the fifth Dharamshala International Film Festival, where Thithi was the opening film.

Talking about his next directorial venture, he said: There are a lot of authors from Latin America, who used magical realism as a staple in literature. But it is not well explored in cinema. Eastern or European cinema has explored it, but not so much. So I am keen on doing that.

Reddy notes that the film will be a fictional one.

It will be from my own ideas and imagination. I am going to write the film myself. Thithi producers are ready to work with me again. So, I have a very big base now to work on a bigger professional project, he added.

Thithi, which won honours at 68th Locarno International Film Festival, Marrakech International Film Festival, 19th Shanghai International Film Festival and 63rd National Film Awards, is a dramatic comedy about how three generations of sons react to the death of the oldest in their clan, a man named Century Gowda -- a locally renowned, highly cantankerous 101-year-old man.

The film, which has been extensively shot in the Nodekoppalu village in the Mandya district of Karnataka, features non-actors in the lead.

Before coming up with the story of Thithi, the idea was to make an authentic film with non-actors. I was keen to work with multiple generations. I have done a lot of documentaries with non-actors. I wanted to explore making a film that had a very rooted soul, Reddy said.

Thithi is a dramatic comedy about how three generations of sons react to the death of the oldest in their clan, a man named Century Gowda.

To keep the idea of authenticity as key, we decided to shoot with non-actors... We wanted them to understand the story really well. So, if you will try to do it with actors, then it would look as an imitation of something that already exists, he added.

However, Reddy said for his next project he is looking forward to work with actors.

I am keen on working with actors too. I dont think Thithi would have worked with actual actors at all. However, I am right now working on a script for which I will look forward to work with actors. It depends on what your intentions are. It all depends on the story of the film, he said.

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The site aims to become one of the top 10 tourism websites in the world, with 10 million unique users a year.

The new website vietnamtourism.vn

The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) on Friday announced the launch of its new official tourism website www.vietnamtourism.vn.

The new website, a joint project by tourism authorities and the private sector, will feature articles by top travel writers and bloggers as well as photos of favorite destinations.

"The goal is to make this one of the top 10 tourism sites in the world," said Nguyen Van Tuan, the general director of VNAT.

The site is aims to have 10 million unique users per year.

Tourism is expected to be a key pillar of Vietnam's economy, contributing $32 billion or 10 percent of the gross domestic product and employing 3.5 million people in 2020.

The website is currently available in English only, but more languages will be introduced.

The project marks a new stage in the collaboration between the state and private sectors as investment came from companies operating in the tourism and hospitality industry.

A total of 61 million tourists, both foreign and domestic, traveled in the country in the first 10 months of 2016, spending VND331.5 trillion ($14.8 billion), up 19.1 percent year-on-year.

Vietnam is expected to have 9.7 million foreign tourists and 62 million domestic tourists with a total revenue of VND400 trillion ($17.9 billion) this year.

The country is planning to waive visitor visa requirements for more countries or at least simplify visa procedures.

Related news:

> Visa waivers lift Vietnam's foreign tourist arrivals

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Hillary Clinton sped across battleground states Friday trying to seal a historic presidential victory powered by minorities and women, while Donald Trump traveled to small-town America to fire up the white, working-class voters he insists will bring the crown to his outsider campaign.

Clinton and Democratic allies used star power and stark warnings as they addressed her base of African-American, Hispanic and female voters. She was campaigning in urban centers of Detroit, Pittsburgh and Cleveland while President Barack Obama made her case in Charlotte, North Carolina  all cities where minority voters are crucial.

In Pittsburgh, a city where one in three people is not white, Clinton hammered Trump as someone who demeans women, mocks people with disabilities, insults African-Americans and Latinos and demonizes immigrants and Muslims.

If he doesnt respect all Americans now, how can we trust him to serve all Americans in the future? she asked later in Detroit, where minorities make up 90 percent of the population. She is hoping to be elected next Tuesday as the nations first female president.

Trump, meanwhile, was on a tour of rural areas, hoping to boost turnout among the voters drawn to his promise to bring back a lost America. He started his day in Atkinson, New Hampshire, population 6,800 and almost 98 percent white, according to the US Census Bureau. From there, he was bound for Wilmington, Ohio, another overwhelmingly white town where just 13 percent of residents have a college degree.

Speaking more than 2,000 miles from the Mexican border, Trump drew loud cheers in Atkinson when he vowed to build a massive wall between the U.S. and Mexico. The crowd booed when he contended that Clinton supports open borders.

Her plans would mean generations of terrorism, extremism and radicalism spreading into your schools and through your communities, Trump declared.

In spite of a close race in national polling, Trumps path to victory remains narrow. His campaign is increasingly looking to make up for losses among suburban voters, particularly women, by wrestling up new voters in out-of-the-way places.

The candidates divergent paths highlighted the yawning gaps between race, place and economics that drive presidential policies.

Trump told his largely white audience in Atkinson that we have to rebuild our country.

Theyve shipped our jobs and theyve shipped our wealth to other countries, he said. To all Americans, I say it is time for new leadership.

Trumps dark views on the economy clashed with a new jobs report showing the unemployment rate declined to 4.9 percent while wages went up in October. The report marks 73 straight months of job growth.

But the Republican said the numbers werent good enough, and he cast doubt on whether they were accurate.

These numbers are an absolute disaster, Trump said, reviving his argument that the unemployment numbers released every month by the Labor Department are skewed because they dont accurately account for those whove dropped out of the workforce.

Nobody believes the numbers theyre reporting anyway, he said.

As he spoke, Clinton campaigned in Pittsburgh, delivering a nearly opposite message. She celebrated what she described as the Rust Belt citys rebirth of confidence and economic renewal. She asked voters to imagine two different Americas  one with Trump in charge, and one with her in the White House.

Think about what it will be to trust the nuclear codes to someone with a very thin skin, she said, adding Trump could start a real war, not just a Twitter war at 3 in the morning.

Clinton called the jobs report good news.

I believe that our economy is poised to really take off and thrive, she said. When the middle class thrives, America thrives.

Clintons campaign has announced two more stops in Philadelphia before Tuesday. Pennsylvania is a state where Clinton has long had a solid lead; it has not voted for a Republican in six presidential elections.

But with polls tightening across battleground states, Democrats are taking little for granted. Former President Bill Clinton worked to drive up turnout in Colorado on Friday, while Vice President Joe Biden was due in Wisconsin, both states Clinton was believed to have locked up weeks ago.

Clinton herself was to wrap her day in Cleveland at a get-out-the-vote rally with hip-hop artist Jay-Z.

Meanwhile, Obama halted an afternoon speech in Fayetteville, North Carolina, to defend a pro-Trump protester who was chanting the Republican nominees name.

The Democratic president told the crowd to sit down and be quiet. He defended the mans right to free speech. The protester was eventually escorted out of the venue.

If we lose focus, we could have problems, Obama said.

(Associated Press writers Steve Peoples in Washington, Lisa Lerer in Pittsburgh and Josh Lederman in Fayetteville, North Carolina contributed to this report.)

Read| Factbox: What happens if the US presidential election is close?

For full coverage on US presidential election, click here
A woman who was chained up like a dog for weeks in a dark storage container was lured to her captors South Carolina property for a cleaning job, a family friend said Friday as search teams digging up the area found one body and looked for more.

Authorities were trying to make sure that we dont have a serial killer on our hands, the sheriff said. Investigators were told the property could hold as many as three other corpses.

Prosecutor Barry Barnette said the woman saw her captor shoot and kill her boyfriend, who went with her to the job. The body discovered Friday was not immediately identified.

The couple disappeared around August 31 when they went to do the work on the suspects nearly 100-acre property in a rural area near the community of Woodruff, said Daniel Herren, a friend who sat with her in her hospital room after she was rescued Thursday.

They were going to do some work, help cleaning up the property. And he pulled out a gun and took them hostage, Herren said, adding that the abduction happened quickly.

Todd Christopher Kohlhepp, a 45-year-old registered sex offender with a previous kidnapping conviction as a teenager in Arizona, appeared at a bond hearing Friday in Spartanburg on a kidnapping charge. More charges will be filed later, the prosecutor told the court.

The judge did not set bond and instead referred the matter to circuit court. The suspect did not appear to have an attorney, and the judge urged him to get one.

The search of his property was unfolding as more details of the suspects violent past emerged, including an Arizona judge noting in 1987 that he had displayed aggressive behaviour and sexual preoccupation since he was a child  behaviour the judge expected to continue.

The Associated Press is not naming the woman because the suspect is a sex offender, though authorities have not said whether she was sexually assaulted. Her boyfriend was identified as 32-year-old Charles Carver.

Herren, who visited her in the hospital and had dinner with her Thursday, said he did not ask the woman if she was sexually assaulted.

But she did describe to him the details of her captivity, telling him she was in the container nearly the entire time except for when she was taken out for occasional walks.

He never took the chain off of her, but he was taking her around, let her get, not so much exercise, but let her walk around some, Herren said. It didnt sound like it was every day. It was kind of sporadic.

She was fed once a day about 6 pm. She didnt tell us exactly what she was eating. But from what I gathered, it could have been fast food. ... It wasnt like he was keeping her alive on bread and water. He was in a weird, sick kind of way being, I guess, kind of humane, as far as feeding her, Herren said.

She left the hospital late Thursday and is staying with family, Herren said.

Read | US woman found chained up like a dog inside container

The property includes grassy areas, some covered in waist-high weeds, as well as stands of trees. Most or all of it is surrounded by a chain-link fence 6 to 7 feet tall.

In the middle was the cargo container, which measured about 30 feet by 15 feet. It was next to a two-car garage that had a living space on top, Barnette said.

During Fridays search efforts, officers using all-terrain vehicles and a backhoe came and went while a law enforcement helicopter circled overhead.

Investigators began excavating after cadaver dogs signalled the possible presence of remains.

Acting on a tip, deputies found the woman after hearing her banging inside the container, Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright said.

Anderson Police Chief Jim Stewart said computer and cellphone records led authorities to the property near Woodruff, 80 miles northwest of the state capital of Columbia, because it was the last place that a cellphone pinged.

Guns and a large amount of ammunition were seized from Kohlhepp, the prosecutor said.

Its unbelievable how much he had, he said.

Records indicate Kohlhepp is a licensed real estate agent and licensed pilot. As a teenager, he was convicted and sentenced to prison in Arizona for kidnapping and crimes against children, according to South Carolinas sex offender registry.

Online prison records from Arizona show that Kohlhepp served about 14 years for the 1986 felony. He was released in 2001.

In court Friday, Barnette said the Arizona case occurred when Kohlhepp kidnapped a 14-year-old girl, bound her and raped her.

Court records from the Arizona case obtained by WHNS-TV in South Carolina show that a judge decided in January of 1987 to transfer the case to adult court partly because of concerns about Kohlhepps aggressive nature.

At less than the age of 9 this juvenile was impulsive, explosive and preoccupied with sexual content. He has not changed. He has been unabatedly aggressive to others and destructive of property since nursery school, the judge wrote, adding that his aggressive behavior was likely to continue into the future.

A real estate agent who worked at a firm run by Kohlhepp said she had known him for 10 years after they met at a university in the Spartanburg area and were study partners in a statistics class. She said she was in disbelief.

Hes not the kind of person to do something like this, Cherry Laurens said by phone. Working with him, he was an excellent boss. He stood up for us whenever we needed him.

She said it was widely known that he was registered as a sex offender, but he told people that it was based on trumped-up charges after he had gone joyriding with a girl and upset her father, who was a prominent local official.

Kohlhepp also had a house in Moore, on the outskirts of Spartanburg, about 15 minutes from the rural property where the woman was chained.

His neighbor there, 76-year-old Ron Owen, said Kohlhepp was private but pleasant.

Todd was in my opinion a likable guy, Owen said.
A bomb blast on Friday killed 12 civilians, among them women and children, who had fled the jihadist-held Hawijah area in northern Iraq, officials said.

The deaths highlight the extreme danger faced by civilians trying to flee areas held by the Islamic State group, who may be targeted by the jihadists as they seek to escape and then have to navigate bombs the militants have planted.

Hawijah is a town in Iraqs Kirkuk province that was seized by IS along with swathes of other territory in the summer of 2014.

Police Colonel Fatah Hassan said the displaced Iraqis had left the Hawijah area on foot but were picked up by police who were transporting them to the west when the bomb ripped through the vehicle.

Hassan, a police lieutenant colonel and Iraqi lawmaker Mohammed Tamim all confirmed that 12 displaced Iraqis were killed.

Hassan said one of the policemen trying to help them was also killed, while both police and displaced civilians were wounded.

An image obtained from police of the aftermath of the blast showed a pile of ashes along with one badly burned body in the back of the twisted remains of a white pickup truck.

The charred remains of a woman and at least one other victim lie on the dirt road behind the truck.

The lieutenant colonel said that the truck had apparently run over a bomb, an account that was initially confirmed by Hassan as well.

But Hassan later said that the blast appeared to have originated inside the vehicle, and may have been caused by explosives potentially placed by IS inside bags the women were carrying.

Lamia Haji Bashar, one of two Yazidi activists who won the European Parliaments prestigious Sakharov human rights prize, previously lost an eye and suffered burns to her face when one of her friends stepped on a bomb while they were fleeing Hawijah.

Bashar and Nadia Murad, the other activist, were both enslaved and raped by IS which has carried out a campaign of massacres and kidnappings targeting members of the Yazidi minority.

Farther west, Iraqi forces are fighting to retake the IS-held city of Mosul, where a million-plus civilians still live.

Fighting has been limited to the citys outskirts for now, but aid workers fear that the battle may result in mass displacement of civilians as it progresses.

Those fleeing Mosul will also be exposed to bombs planted by IS, as well as the extreme danger of being caught up in the fighting between security forces and jihadists.
A New York City police sergeant was fatally shot and another was wounded on Friday in a shootout on the streets of the Bronx that also resulted in the death of the suspect, a man who had just broken into the apartment of his estranged wife.

The officers were responding to a call about the break-in and encountered the suspects vehicle about half a mile (1km) away where the man opened fire with a .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun, police commissioner James ONeill told a news conference.

An exchange of gunfire resulted with the suspect being pronounced dead at the scene while the officers were taken to the hospital, he said.

This undated booking photo provided by the Suffolk County Police Department shows Manuel Rosales, who killed a New York police officer in a shootout on Friday. (AP )

Sergeant Paul Tuozzolo, a 19-year veteran of the force and father of two young children, was pronounced dead at the hospital. The wounded officer, 9-year veteran Emmanuel Kwo, was shot in the leg and was in stable condition, ONeill said.

The city is in mourning and the family of the NYPD is in mourning, mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters about an hour after informing the officers wife and parents of his death.

The dead suspect, identified as Manuel Rosales, had a record of at least 17 prior arrests, ONeill said. He had forced his way into the home of his 29-year-old estranged wife while their 3-year-old son was present, ONeill said.

A 13-year-old child and a 50-year-old woman were also at the home, he said.

Tuozzolo became the first New York City police officer killed while on duty since October 2015. Kwo was taken to the same hospital, where he was informed his colleague had died.

Hes devastated, as we all are, ONeill said.

Upon encountering the suspects red Jeep, police rammed the vehicle with their patrol car, the New York Daily News and other media reported, citing unnamed police sources. ONeill declined to describe the events because the investigation was ongoing.

One officer approached the vehicle and was shot in the face by the suspect, The New York Times reported. The other officer returned fire and killed the suspect, The Times said.

New York Police officers arrive at the Jacobi Medical Center after a police officer was fatally shot and another wounded. (Reuters Photo)

The last NYPD officer killed in the line of duty was Detective Randolph Holder, who was shot while pursuing an armed suspect in the Harlem section of Manhattan in October 2015, according to Officer Down Memorial Page.
One evening recently, a group of yoga enthusiasts met at a studio in downtown Toronto for a session that married the tradition to the backbeat of tracks like Kolaveri Di and Jai Ho.

If yoga and Bollywood are the two most successful cultural exports from India, Indo-Canadian Ashima Suri has harmonised them into a form that she calls Bolly Yoga and this particular class was devoted to that.

Suri described this still-evolving form of yoga as an interactive workshop that combines Indian dance and yoga therapy. Bolly Yoga is all about connection and community. In this dance yoga form, we create a safe and healing space where participants can tune in and let go of what is no longer needed.

It brings together her passions - she is a formally trained Bharat Natyam dancer and a certified yoga teacher who also enjoys bhangra.

Watch | Ashima Suris Bolly Yoga, which combines Indian dance and yoga therapy.

Suri, who was born in Britain and has roots in Delhi and Kanpur, originally got the idea from her yoga teacher Emerson Lim of Karma Teachers, who told her last year he could see her doing Bolly Yoga. Her initial response was: Really?

Soon, though, it was a concept that appealed to her: It started to take off very fast, I got a lot of event opportunities to present this to big crowds and in yoga studios. As we continue to develop on it, it evolves more. It can be festive or it can be like a healing circle, she said.

While still recent, Bolly Yoga has already featured at events in the Toronto area, including the Festival of South Asia at Gerrard Street, also known as Little India; and another organised by the Mississauga Arts Council.

We really wanted to bring in the fun of Bollywood, just light, let loose, express yourself without it being so serious and choreographed, she said.

Ashima Suri (left) at a Bolly Yoga demo in Toronto. (Courtesy Ashima Suri)

So, over-the-top emoting as in Bollywood films is used, for instance, to work the facial muscles, and mudras from classical dance and a touch of bhangra can be brought in for upbeat exercises.

The music she selects includes her favourites from Amitabh Bachchan films of the 1980s and the Sri Devis Lamhe, while also featuring numbers like Kala Chashma to appeal to a younger crowd. More contemplative songs go with lessons that are about mindfulness. Live drumming too has been incorporated into the routine.

About a decade ago, Suri, 39, founded her own company Limitless Productions, which blends Indian classical dance with contemporary ballet, and extended that to another venture, I Am Limitless, focussed more on the holistic end of healing and workshopping.

She also teaches yoga for diabetes prevention and mental health and has worked as a pre-natal and post-natal yoga instructor.

Suri in a promotional poster for Bolly Yoga. (Courtesy Ashima Suri)

Suri began her yoga journey almost a quarter century back, as she said: Yogas always been my go-to whenever theres been a period of my life with any type of transition. I actually started yoga in Abu Dhabi when I was 15 years old and it was a period when I just moved from Toronto and it was a bit of a rocky period. Yoga allowed me to go within and find a spot that felt grounded.

But in this latest period of her life, she has created a form of it that adds a dash of celebration to the holistic discipline.

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In fresh attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh, unidentified miscreants set ablaze some of their houses and damaged two temples in central Brahmanbarhia district where several places of worship of the minority community were vandalised earlier this week, police said.

Also read: Bangladesh: Hindu temples vandalised, houses attacked by mob over Facebook post

Miscreants set fire at least six Hindu houses in a predawn attack yesterday in central Brahmanbarhia districts Nasirnagar, the place where at least fifteen temples and more than 20 houses were vandalised after a Facebook post deemed offensive to Islam sparked outrage in the country.

They (miscreants) fled the scene immediately after torching the houses and two small temples were also damaged, a police officer told PTI.

Many Hindu families have deserted their houses after the attacks on temples and have taken refuge in other areas.

Tensions have escalated in the neighbourhood after the fresh assault yesterday.

Police in overnight drives detained 33 persons for their alleged involvement in the synchronised attacks on Hindus in Brahmanbaria on October 30.

With this, police has detained a total of 44 people in connection with the attack, Mizanur Rahman, superintendent of Brahmanbaria police, told The Daily Star.

Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters yesterday rallied in the capital demanding stern action against perpetrators of attacks on Hindus.

Several hundred Hindu youths joined by Muslims staged a street protest at central Dhakas Shahbagh Square.

Several political and rights groups also held another rally in front of the National Press Club demanding immediate and stern actions against the culprits.

The protesters at Shahbagh area enforced a blockade on the busy streets around the area for more than half an hour and forced ruling Awami Leagues joint general secretary Mahbul Alam Hanif to get out of his car, stuck in barricade, and express solidarity with them.

The protesters also demanded resignation of a minister who had earlier accused journalists of exaggerating the Nasirnagar attacks.

(Livestock) Minister Sayedul Haque was in the area just few days after the (Sunday) attacks while a fresh attack took place after he visited the scene, general secretary of Bangladesh Puja Celebrations Committee said.

The protests yesterday prompted newly elected Awami League general secretary and Road Transport Minister Obaidul Quader to reiterate the governments tougher stance against the culprits promising to bring them to justice quickly.

Stern punitive actions await the attackers as (Prime Minister) Sheikh Hasina-led government has taken a tough position to this end, he said at a function of ethnic minority community in Dhaka.

He urged the Hindus not to consider themselves as a minority group and said the government is with you
The UKs Opposition Labour party has called on British Prime Minister Theresa May to come clean about the role played by Britain in Operation Blue Star before her three-day visit to India starting on Sunday.

Labour party deputy leader, Tom Watson, said on Friday that Britains Sikh community deserves to know the truth in the wake of allegations by Sikh Federation UK that the UK Foreign Office had removed files with new evidence of British involvement in the military operation on Golden Temple in June 1984.

Before her visit to India, Theresa May must come clean about the role played by the UK in the attack on the Golden Temple in 1984 and subsequent events. There is increasing evidence that Margaret Thatchers administration worked more closely with the Indian government than was known at the time, Watson said in a statement.

His statement followed claims that the Foreign Office had intentionally removed files referring to the possibility of the Special Air Services (SAS) unit of the British Army being involved after an Indian request for military assistance in the setting up of a National Guard for internal security duties during Operation Blue Star.

Read | RAW facilitated Britains SAS officers India visit

While the Foreign Office said it had merely borrowed the files, the Labour party said the fact the files exist raise important questions.

Watson added: David Camerons previous inquiry failed to reveal the full facts and we now learn that vital new documents relating to the massacre have been removed from the National Archives by ministers. The revelation that these new documents exist suggest that Parliament may have been inadvertently misled by a former foreign secretary.

After over 30 years of demanding answers, Britains Sikh community deserves to know the truth, no matter how embarrassing it is for the current government. After the failure of the cabinet secretarys internal inquiry, there should be a full independent investigation into these matters.

The cabinet secretarys inquiry refers to an official UK government inquiry in 2014 into the exact nature of British involvement in the Indian Army operation at the Golden Temple.

The inquiry had been ordered by then British Prime Minister David Cameron after documents released previously under the 30-year declassification rule had implied British SAS commanders had advised the Indian government as it drew up plans for the removal of militants from Golden Temple.

The report concludes that the nature of the UKs assistance was purely advisory, limited and provided to the Indian government at an early stage in their planning, William Hague, then UK foreign secretary, had told the House of Commons in February 2014.

Read | From the archives: Operation Bluestar on 32nd anniversary

Sikh Federation UK claims the latest note it found, marked confidential, was written on July 3, 1984, a month after the operation, which points to a more prominent British role.

The note was written by a civil servant in the Foreign Offices South Asia department and copied to ministry of defence officials and the high commissioner in Delhi.

Earlier on Friday, their lawyers wrote to UK home secretary Amber Rudd demanding an independent investigation.

The FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) borrowed some of their files from 1984 that were released to the National Archives so they could read the content following concerns raised by the Sikh Federation. They will return all the files in full shortly, a UK government spokesperson said.

Read | After BJPs Swamy, Harsimrat too wants Operation Bluestar files made public

Read | Pranab, I know of the consequences: Indira on storming Golden Temple
An Egyptian general was killed by militants on Friday near his home in North Sinai, the military said, the second soldier of his rank to be shot dead in as many weeks.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, in which gunmen opened fire on Brigadier General Hesham Mahmoud Abualazm, 47, from a moving car in Arish city, North Sinais provincial capital.

Abualazm died instantly. He was on a visit to Arish, where he owned a house, and does not serve in Sinai, security sources said.

Islamic State claimed responsibility via its news agency Amaq.

Hundreds of soldiers and police have been killed in an Islamist insurgency led by the jihadist group in the rugged and thinly populated Sinai Peninsula.

Attacks have been stepped up since the military overthrew President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypts oldest Islamist movement, in mid-2013 following mass protests against his rule.

A new group calling itself Louwaa al-Thawra, or the Revolution Brigade, claimed responsibility for an attack on Oct. 22 in which another general was killed in the same way as Abualazm.

Another senior military officer and a soldier were killed on Saturday in North Sinai in a roadside explosion.

Egyptian authorities said earlier on Friday they had arrested leaders and members of Louwaa al-Thawra and another recently emerged militant group, the Hasam Movement, along with weapons and explosives.

Authorities also said they had proof the organisations had been set up by the Brotherhood, which says it is a non-violent movement.

Judges, policemen and senior officials have increasingly been targeted by radical Islamists angered by hefty prison sentences imposed on members of the now-outlawed Brotherhood.
South African President Jacob Zuma says he is not afraid of going to jail, in a defiant response to critics who say he should resign because of scandals involving alleged corruption.

Zuma said Saturday in his political stronghold of KwaZulu-Natal province that he has already spent time in prison, referring to the decade he spent behind bars as an anti-apartheid activist during South Africas white minority rule, which ended in 1994.

South African media organization EWN is reporting Zumas remarks.

Last week, the state watchdog agency released a report indicating possible government corruption linked to Zuma and some associates, and recommended that a judicial commission investigate.

Zuma has criticized the report, saying he wasnt given a chance to provide meaningful input in the investigation.
Tens of thousands of South Koreans are expected to march in Seoul to demand President Park Geun-hyes resignation on Saturday, a day after she took the blame for a heartbreaking scandal and rising suspicion that she allowed a mysterious confidante to manipulate power from the shadows.

Police expect around 40,000 people in what could be the largest anti-government rally in nearly a year while organizers say as many as 100,000 will turn out.

Dozens of police buses were parked in streets around City Hall and also a square in front of an old palace gate, which the police plan to close off to prevent protesters from marching toward the Blue House, the presidential office and residence.

Smaller protests have taken place daily in past weeks amid growing calls for Park to step down, although opposition parties have yet to make a serious push for her resignation or impeachment for fears of negatively impacting next years presidential elections.

Read | Abnormal, deformed, stupid: North Korea comments on Souths govt scandal

In Fridays televised apology, Park vowed to accept a direct investigation into her actions, but the opposition, sensing weakness, immediately threatened to push for her ouster if she doesnt distance herself from domestic affairs and focus on diplomacy, and accept a prime minster chosen by the parliament.

I feel a huge responsibility (for the scandal) deep in my heart, Park said, her voice shaking. It is all my fault and mistake.

Parks comments were rife with astonishing moments, and included a frank assessment of her relationship with the woman at the heart of the scandal, Choi Soon-sil, the daughter of a late cult leader and a longtime friend of Parks.

I put too much faith in a personal relationship and didnt look carefully at what was happening, Park said. Sad thoughts trouble my sleep at night. I realize that whatever I do, it will be difficult to mend the hearts of the people, and then I feel a sense of shame and ask myself, Is this the reason I became president?

A South Korean college student holds a placard depicting South Korea's President Park Geun-hye, right bottom, as a marionette and Choi Soon-sil, who is at the center of a political scandal, as a puppeteer calling for Park to step down on the street in Seoul, South Korea. (AP)

In another exceptional moment, Park denied media speculation that she had fallen into worshipping cult religions or that shamanistic rituals were held at the presidential Blue House.

Her comments come at what may well prove to be the crucial moment of her presidency. Park is attempting to show the contrition and sense of responsibility that South Koreans demand while also trying to re-establish her tarnished credibility. She is in the fourth year of a single five-year term and faced criticism even before this scandal, particularly for the governments response to a 2014 ferry sinking that killed more than 300 people.

One national poll released earlier Friday had her approval rating at 5%, the lowest for any president in South Korea since the country achieved a democracy in the late 1980s following decades-long dictatorships.

Anyone found by the current investigation to have done something wrong must be held responsible for what they have done, and I am also ready to face any responsibility, Park said. If necessary, Im determined to let prosecutors investigate me and accept an investigation by an independent counsel too.

Last week Park surprised many when she acknowledged that she had relied on Choi for help editing presidential speeches and other undefined public relations issues.

Choi Soon-sil, center wearing a hat, a cult leader's daughter with a decades-long connection to President Park Geun-hye, is questioned by media upon her arrival at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Oct. 31, 2016. (AP)

Anger has exploded in the days since, with media reports claiming that the influence Choi went much deeper. There are reports that Choi reviewed and made recommendations on government policy papers and pushed businesses to donate millions of dollars to two foundations that she controlled. Other reports speculate Choi also helped choose presidential aides and even picked out Parks wardrobe.

Park has fired eight presidential secretaries and nominated three new Cabinet members, including the prime minister, but opposition parties described Parks personnel reshuffles as a diversionary tactic.

Soon after Parks speech, the main opposition Democratic Party said her apology lacks sincerity and issued a set of demands that it says Park must immediately accept if she doesnt want see rallies calling for the end of her government. The demands include Park withdrawing her prime minister nomination in favor of a new person recommended by the National Assembly for the countrys No. 2 job; and accepting separate investigations by lawmakers and an independent counsel.

The president now comes right into a dead end, party chief Choo Mi-ae said. Park must comply with what the people want.

Employees watch TV sets broadcasting a news report on South Korean President Park Geun-hye releasing a statement to the public in Seoul, South Korea, November 4, 2016. (REUTERS)

Park may survive what has become the worst patch of an already rocky term. But if she is forced to name a prime minister chosen by the opposition, it will hamstring her authority and may end her ability to govern.

Only Choi has been formally arrested in connection with the scandal. Prosecutors on Friday requested an arrest warrant for ex-Park aide, Ahn Jong-beom, for his alleged involvement in extracting $70 million in donations. On Wednesday night, prosecutors detained another ex-presidential aide, Jeong Ho-seong, for allegedly leaking confidential documents to Choi, and are reviewing whether to seek an arrest warrant for him, too.

Park said she couldnt talk about many specifics because of the investigation, but she was frank in her comments about Choi, who has been the subject of widespread rage.

Choi was a person who stood with me during the hardest moment in my life, Park said in her speech, apparently referring to the assassinations of Parks mother and later her father, the dictator Park Chung-hee. Its true that I lowered my guard and my sense of wariness of Choi.
Anti-riot policemen stand guard as Muslim hardline protesters attend a protest against Jakarta's incumbent governor Basuki (Ahok) Tjahaja Purnama, an ethnic Chinese Christian running in the upcoming election, in Jakarta, Indonesia, November 4, 2016. Photo by Antara Foto via Reuters

Protesters demand resignation of Jakarta governor

Indonesian President Joko Widodo lashed out at politicians for stoking a huge protest by Muslims that briefly turned violent on Friday night as a hardcore group pressed for the resignation of Jakarta's governor, a Christian they say insulted the Koran.

The first ethnic Chinese politician to lead this sprawling city of 10 million, Basuki Tjahja Purnama is standing for re-election in February, competing with two Muslims for the job.

Members of hardline Muslim groups hold a big national flag as they attend a protest against Jakarta's incumbent governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, an ethnic Chinese Christian running in the upcoming election, in Jakarta, Indonesia, November 4, 2016. Photo by Reuters/Beawiharta

The governorship of the capital is a powerful position and it was a stepping stone for Joko Widodo to the presidency of the country two years ago.

At a news conference held in the early hours of Saturday, Widodo called for calm and took a swipe at politicians - whom he didn't name - for whipping up die-hard demonstrators after most had already gone home.

" ... we deplore the incident after the Isha prayers, when should have already disbanded but became violent. And, we see this was steered by political actors who were exploiting the situation," Widodo said.

Police fired tear gas and water cannon to subdue a restive crowd that police said swelled to about 150,000 after Friday prayers as they congregated around the presidential palace.

Some protesters threw rocks at the police, two vehicles were torched and a fire broke out near the city's National Monument, but by the evening the demonstration was fizzling out.

However, in a northern neighborhood of the city there was a late-night clash between police and a few dozen protesters, and social media reports showed a convenience store being looted.

And hundreds camped out until around 4 a.m. beside the parliament building to demand Purnama be charged for blasphemy.

A police spokesman said one person died and 12 were hurt. Local media said about 23 people were arrested, most of them in the north, where overnight police guarded shopping and residential areas that are home to predominantly non-Muslims.

About a dozen Muslim groups have accused Purnama of insulting Islam after he jokingly said his opponents had used a verse from the Koran to deceive voters. The verse implies that Muslims should not choose non-Muslims as leaders.

Chanting "God is greatest", many in Friday's protest waved placards calling for Purnama, popularly known as Ahok, to be jailed for blasphemy. A white banner hung at an overpass was painted with red letters that read "Hang Ahok here".

Police are investigating the case against Purnama, who has apologized for his remarks, insisting he was not criticizing the Koranic verse but those who used it to attack him.

Purnama has a reputation as a no-nonsense reformer with little patience for the corruption widely blamed for the chaos and dilapidated infrastructure of an overcrowded city.

He remains popular despite efforts by Muslim groups to vilify him and is seen as the frontrunner in the election, though many voters are angry with him for evicting large numbers from slums to modernize Jakarta.

Indonesia's president blames 'political actors' for stirring Muslim protest Dozens injured in Jakartas mass protest over blasphemy issue Widodo, a Muslim, has vowed not to interfere in any legal proceedings against Purnama, according to media reports. But he said at his news conference that any legal process involving Purnama would be executed "swiftly, firmly and transparently".

Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country, but most follow a moderate form of Islam and protests on such a large scale are rare.

Ethnic Chinese make up just over 1 percent of Indonesia's 250 million people, and they typically do not enter politics.

Indonesian Chinese have faced persecution and violence in the past, especially during the political and social turmoil that gripped Jakarta when former strongman Suharto was toppled.

Critics say Widodo's government failed to quell tensions in the run-up to Friday's protest.

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Turkey on Friday jailed the two leaders of the countrys main pro-Kurdish party and several other MPs, in an unprecedented crackdown as a bombing killed nine in the Kurdish-dominated southeast.

A court in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir remanded in custody Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) co-leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag after they were detained along with 10 of its MPs, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.

Including Demirtas and Yuksekdag, nine of the 12 HDP MPs were placed under arrest by the courts pending trial in hearings that lasted throughout the day.

The United States and European Union both raised alarm over the arrests, which marked a new escalation of the clampdown under the state of emergency imposed in the wake of the July 15 coup attempt.

Hours after Demirtas and Yuksekdag were detained, a blast blamed on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) struck outside a police station in Diyarbakir, Turkeys main majority-Kurdish city.

Nine people were killed, including two police, and over 100 were wounded, Anadolu said. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said the PKK had again showed its ugly face with the attack.

However, the Amaq news agency, which is linked to the Islamic State jihadist group, said that its fighters were behind the bombing, the SITE Intelligence Group said.

In an audio message released earlier this week, reclusive IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi broke a nearly year-old silence to call for attacks against Turkey.

With tensions again escalating nearly four months after Julys failed coup, authorities slapped restrictions on social media and messaging services like WhatsApp.

Users were also reporting severe problems accessing Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other sites, AFP correspondents and internet users said.

Yildirim confirmed the move, saying such measures were imposed from time to time as a precaution and would be lifted once the danger had passed.

We will win!

The arrest of the HDP leaders marked a new stage in the crackdown on leading pro-Kurdish politicians as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wages a remorseless battle to destroy the PKK.

Demirtas has been charged with membership of an armed group -- a reference to the PKK -- while Yuksekdag is charged with making terror propaganda for the group, Anadolu said.

The HDP said in a statement that the goal of the measures was to shut down the party, but it vowed not to surrender to these dictatorial policies.

It means the end of democracy in Turkey, the party said.

In a handwritten statement read by his lawyers, Demirtas said he was the victim of a civilian coup by the government and the palace.

After his jailing he managed to shout, We will definitely win!. The phrase immediately became a top-trending hashtag in Turkish posts.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said she was extremely worried over the detentions and would call a meeting of EU ambassadors in Ankara.

US Assistant Secretary of State Tom Malinowski said that Washington was deeply troubled by the detentions and blocking of internet access.

As as well as Demirtas and Yuksekdag, seven others were also placed under arrest including the head of the HDPs parliamentary faction Idris Baluken.

However three lawmakers were bailed.

Under heavy security, Demirtas and Yuksekdag were flown late evening from Diyarbakir to separate prisons in western Turkey, the Dogan news agency said.

Onslaught on dissent

The arrests came as Turkey remains under a state of emergency imposed in the wake of the failed coup, which critics say has gone well beyond targeting the coup plotters.

Thirteen staff from the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper, including the editor-in-chief, were detained on Monday. The two co-mayors of Diyarbakir were also detained last month.

Amnesty International said that the arrests of the MPs marks the latest escalation in the onslaught on dissent amid Turkeys state of emergency.

Tensions have surged in the Kurdish-dominated southeast since a fragile ceasefire declared by the PKK collapsed in 2015, leading to a resumption of deadly attacks on the security forces.

The HDP, the third largest party in parliament, seeks to defend the rights of Kurds as well as those of women, gays and workers.

The charisma in particular of Demirtas -- dubbed the Kurdish Obama by some admirers after the US president -- earned the party success at the ballot box but also made him an arch rival of Erdogan.

Authorities accuse the party of being a PKK front and failing to distance itself from terror, claims it has always vehemently denied.
Turkeys military hit 71 Islamic State targets in Syria over the last 24 hours, the army said on Saturday, intensifying strikes against the militant group, which has claimed responsibility for the latest bomb attack in southeast Turkey.

Five Islamic State fighters were killed in the strikes, as were five Turkey-backed rebels and one Turkish soldier, the army said in its statement. It said coalition forces conducted five air strikes, killing another eight Islamic State militants.

Turkey is backing a group of Syrian Arabs and Turkmen in northern Syria in its Euphrates Shield operation, which has swept Islamic State from its southern border.

The Sunni hardline group has claimed responsibility for a car bomb in the south-eastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir on Friday that killed nine people and wounded more than 100.
The US Defense Department says an airstrike in Afghanistan last month killed al Qaedas top leader in the eastern part of the country.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook has issued a written statement saying a precision strike conducted by the US military on October 23 in Kunar, Afghanistan, killed Faruq al-Qatani.

Cook says al-Qatani was one of al Qaedas senior plotters of attacks against the United States.

Cook says US officials are still working to determine whether a second strike on the same date killed its target, Bilal al-Utabi, another al Qaeda leader in Afghanistan.
NASA has just released a strange picture taken from Mars, which has made strong the possibility of lives on the Mars. Though research regarding this is going on from a long time, still nobody can reach to the conclusion yet.

However, this recent picture is going to be considered as a strong evidence of life as the picture looks like exactly a fossilized grizzly bear or sloth creature.

After getting this snap, the excitement of all extra-terrestrial-enthusiasts has increased to the highest extent, so that they are hoping to get some more pictures like this one. This is not the first time that NASA got something look like creature on Mars.

They have got so many clues of lives such as lost shoes, water, bigfoot skull and recently a creature look like a bear got added.

"Even without processing the image, you can clearly see that it looks artificial. Resembles a bear or sloth-like creature to me, possibly with a shell, but to be honest, it could be anything," said Taiwan's alien hunter Scott Waring.

He also mentioned that this picture is quite unusual and very interesting. Space scientist described the picture as a bear, which has significantly less hair on the face.

There are so many scientists and researchers who are not convinced with this picture. They described the picture as a simple rock. According to them, the structure is created using lighting and illumination by a human being.

Although some are not considering it as an evidence of life, still it is being considered as a progress of research about life on the red planet.

Hunt for life on the red planet was started with the Viking program. At that time some important information was gathered though the information did not support the thought that there is life on Mars.

Later in1996, Dr, David and his colleagues presented an evidence of life on Mars, which was disputed. Research is still going on to discover something new and unique.

Though still it is not possible to make any conclusion even after the discovery of the latest picture, which is considered as a big step.
"Vikings" Season 5 on History channel will take a long time to return but the shooting is in full swing and now actress Katheryn Winnick has shared an interesting photo on Instagram. It is quite intriguing and hints at some serious shift in power in the show.

Winnick has shared a new photo of her character Lagertha on Instagram that shows her with a tattoo on her shoulder and upper arm. In the video, the costume designer is seen saying that the skin art is supposed to look like chain mail. Ever since the photo came out, speculations have started about its meaning and what importance it holds in terms of her role.

The tattoo has aroused the curiosity of fans and it is being said that the skin art might be an indication of her rise in power in "Vikings" Season 5. She might enter into an alliance with King Harald Finehair but she would not stop at that as she has bigger plans.

Notably, it was previously speculated that Lagertha would avenge the death of Ragnar Lothbrok in the next season. As for Ragnar, many have the belief that King Harald might betray him and the betrayal would lead to his death in the second half of Season 4, reports GameNGuide. However, Legartha would wait and usurp Norway only after gaining the trust of King Harald.

Speaking of Ragnar, the possibility of his death is building slowly with the first part of 'Vikings' Season 4. According to previous reports, most of the first segment of Season 4 was about him experiencing serious difficulties in life. With his wife and children already against him, his brother has also betrayed him now and the drug addiction has left him in a state of decadence.

The plot is inching towards his demise and therefore, it would not be wrong to conjecture about Lagertha's rise in power. There are very bright chances of her taking revenge for Ragnar's death in "Vikings" Season 5.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Lil Yachty continues to stay out here winning. After being featured in the latest Sprite commercial & topping the charts with DRAM for Brocollo, the internet sensation is now getting some guap from Nautica, whos called him for their upcoming holiday season collection with Urban Outfitters. On Thursday, Nautica announced that they were launching a new limited edition 90s inspired line and Lil Yachty is going to be the model & face of it.

Ranging from $35-$99, the collection will include everything from long and short sleeve tees, track pants, jackets, sweatpants, hoodies and a hat that are all decorated with Nauticas signature logo.

Look for Lil Yachty to laos be included in the digital ad campaign for the collaboration as well, which will be available online on Nov. 14. Check out some of the collection on Yachty in the gallery above.

[Via]

Lil Yachty
The North Korea regime continues to refuse to give up its autocratic and repressive ways, said U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a speech in Seoul, South Korea.

This is a regime, he said, that operates enormous political prison camps at home, denies its citizens nearly all basic rights, and imposes a system of surveillance and censorship so repressive it has no comparison in the modern age.

This is a regime that prioritizes nuclear weapons and missiles over the well-being of the North Korean people, and is the only regime in the world to test a nuclear weapon in the 21st century.

Against this threat, said Deputy Secretary Blinken, the United States is committed to protecting ourselves, defending our allies, meeting our treaty obligations, and providing extended deterrence, guaranteed by the full spectrum of U.S. defense capabilities.

The U.S. and its partners will not accept North Korea as a nuclear state. Through diplomacy, deterrence, and pressure, the international community will build a comprehensive and sustained campaign that increases the costs on North Korea until it returns to serious talks on denuclearization and complies with its international obligations and commitments.

After this years North Korean nuclear and missile tests, the U.S. and South Korea decided to deploy the THAAD missile defense system to South Korea.

The U.S. has also modernized its alliance with Japan, another frequent target of North Koreas threats, updating guidelines that hadnt been revised in over 17 years.North Koreas diplomatic position will continue to weaken, as its behavior invites growing isolation and condemnation around the world.

Earlier this year, the United States sanctioned Kim Jong-un and 14 other senior officials associated with the regimes grave human rights abuses.

Moreover, China and Russia - North Koreas traditional guarantors - are growing tired of defending the increasingly erratic and outlying regime.

The objective is simple and straightforward, said Deputy Secretary Blinken. It is not to bring Kim Jong-un to his knees. It is to him back to the table for meaningful, credible talks on denuclearization ... Until then, we will continue to sharpen the choice for the DPRK, so that it understands, as much as it does not want to denuclearize, the alternative for the DPRK will be worse.
Chevron Corp.'s sprawling portfolio includes massive deep-water platforms, multibillion-dollar gas facilities and footholds in dozens of countries.

But Chevron's future has become closely tied to a single region: the prolific Permian Basin, where the company spends $1.5 billion annually and expects to increase investments in coming years.

"We're not looking to take all activity down to the Permian," chief financial officer Patricia Yarrington recently told analysts. But "Permian will get the first call."

Chevron's focus on the Permian Basin, which Yarrington described as "an abundance of riches," marks a strategy shift for a company that for years has developed much bigger projects, putting billions of dollars into large-scale liquefied natural gas projects in Australia and giant deep-water facilities in the Gulf of Mexico. It also adds to the recent drilling boom in the West Texas oil field, considered among the most productive and efficient in North America.

The rush to the Permian has followed the rise in oil prices, which recently topped $50 a barrel, after plunging to a low about $26 in February. Crude last week slid to about $45 a barrel.

While drilling activity has languished in many U.S. shale plays such as the Eagle Ford in South Texas, where oil is more expensive to extract, producers have rushed into the Permian, where they say they can make money at prices between $40 and $50 a barrel. Since the U.S. rig count bottomed in May, about 80 oil rigs have started up again, accounting for about two-thirds of all rigs that have returned to operations in the U.S.

Chevron executives said the company has essentially built a "well factory" across 2 million acres in West Texas and New Mexico, which means it is drilling wells with the same design features over and over again. This approach could lift oil production in the Permian as much as 200,000 barrels a day by the end of the decade, said Bruce Niemeyer, vice president of Chevron's mid-continent business unit.

The company deployed five rigs to the Permian in the first half of this year, but it reduced its development costs there 30 percent, Niemeyer said. Chevron earned an overall profit of $1.3 billion in the three months from July to September, its first quarterly profit in a year.

David Hunn contributed.
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Jeffrey Offutt, after serving two stints in prison for burglary and robbery, faced the same bleak prospects as most ex-cons. His chances of returning to prison were great in large part because his criminal record made the likelihood of him getting a job small.

But instead of just finding a job, Offutt took it one step further, launching his own printing business in Houston. Seven years later, his company, Jita Printing, generates $1.2 million in sales and employs five people.

Offutt, 47, is a graduate of a unique program that helps ex-offenders secure employment and even start new businesses, with the goal of keeping them from going back to prison. The program, called the Prison Entrepreneurship Program, or PEP, has helped more than 200 ex-offenders start businesses, collaborating with a nonprofit called Silver Fox Advisors, a group of retired CEO's who mentor small-business owners.

"PEP was very instrumental in what I was able to do here," Offutt said, referring to his business.

PEP was founded 12 years ago to help address one of the biggest challenges to the correctional system, the high rate at which people commit new crimes after their release and return to prison, known as recidivism. A 2014 Bureau of Justice Statistics study, which tracked more than 400,000 prisoners in 30 states after their releases in 2005, found that within three years of release, about 67.8 percent of released prisoners were rearrested.

Analysts in part blame the high rate of recidivism on the difficulties ex-offenders have finding jobs because of the reluctance of employers to hire them. Men with criminal records make up 34 percent of all nonworking men ages 25-54, according to a 2015 poll by the New York Times, CBS News and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

"It's really difficult for returning citizens to re-establish themselves in life," said Bert Smith, PEP's chief executive.

PEP works with the Cleveland Correctional Center just outside of Houston and the Sanders Estes Unit near Dallas to provide a nine-month business boot camp for inmates within three years of release and without any sex offenses. With workshops on building character and courses reviewing business school case studies, the program culminates with a "Shark Tank"-style business plan competition where inmates pitch their ideas to their peers and visiting CEOs.

The program boasts a 100 percent employment rate for graduates within 90 days of release, Smith said. He added that even after finding jobs, many like Offutt go on to start their own businesses.

Offutt had worked in printing for 14 years, developing hand-made graphics, preparing photos for advertisements and making plates for printing presses. But in the early 2000s, he said, he began dabbling in drugs while working at a busy printing company.

"I was burning the candle at both ends," he said.

In 2003, he was convicted of burglary of a building, theft and evading arrest, and sentenced to a year in prison. Six months after his release, he was arrested again on similar charges.

During his second time behind bars, Offutt tried to secure early parole, which was denied. About three months later, he found out he had been accepted into PEP and would be transferred to the Cleveland prison as part of the program.

"Not getting early parole was one of the best things that could ever happen to me," Offutt said, "When I got the letter, I knew why I was still there."

He said the program not only gave him invaluable business advice, but also helped him change his outlook. Instructors helped him realize that drinking and drugs wouldn't solve his problems. They also helped him recognize the value of his work experience before things fell apart.

It was through PEP that Offutt met the owner of a printing company who, one week before his release in 2008, gave him a job that offered him management experience.

PEP mentors and friends later encouraged him to run his own printing company, which started around 2010 in the hallway of PEP's Houston office in Directors Row. The group leased him a $120,000 printer, and Offutt went door-to-door at nearby businesses to find clients needing business cards, pamphlets and other materials. Offutt named his company Jita, for "Jesus is the answer."

After about 18 months, he was generating enough income to buy the printer; he later rented an office in the building, adding new equipment to print booklets, posters, invitations and envelopes.

But he felt he needed more help to keep growing and turned again to PEP. The group introduced him to William "Bill" Spitz, one of the founders of Silver Fox Advisors, which counsels small businesses at various stages of development.

"If you look at the history of business, you find out that most businesspeople who have achieved something important had a mentor," Spitz said.

Offutt paid a monthly fee of $300, which supports Silver Fox, and met every Tuesday with Spitz, a retired CEO of a pest control company. Spitz, who is 90, said watching entrepreneurs like Offutt learn and succeed is incredibly rewarding and has kept him going all these years.

Spitz helped Offutt get a line of credit for emergencies and taught him to cut through red tape to get things done. In one instance, Offutt had been promised a rebate by a company that sold him a printer, but it was slow in coming. Spitz encouraged him to speak to the head of the company, rather than lower-level managers. The rebate check arrived within 30 days.

"He had to learn how to get past the secretary to see the big boss," Spitz said.

Offutt, whose clients include nonprofits, oil and gas companies, and health care providers, said he is planning to expand again and is looking to lease a bigger office. But he still seeks Spitz's advice.

"It's worth its weight in gold," he said.
Skip the "thank you for your service." Let's talk about what veterans really need.

Veterans Day is Friday, and strangers who learn that I served seven years on active duty in the U.S. Army will inevitably thank me for my service. While some people believe that veterans deserve lifelong gratitude for their role protecting our country, more than a few of us find it annoying; an empty platitude that civilians use to absolve themselves from asking what exactly we sacrificed, or what we truly need now.

What post-9/11 veterans need are good jobs, with good benefits. They need employers who don't thoughtlessly cut-and-paste job prerequisites that favor someone who spent four years partying at a state university over a vet who was waking up at 6 a.m. and wearing a uniform during 60-hour workweeks, except for when they were in combat.

That's what vets said they need in a poll by iCIMS Hiring Insights, a labor market research firm.

More than 3.6 million Americans have completed military service since 2001, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These men and women have an unemployment rate of 5.8 percent, about a point higher than the rest of the country.

Most Americans may hail them as heroes, but nearly three-quarters of post-9/11 vets believe their military experience hurts them because hiring managers don't understand or appreciate what they did in the military. Another 37 percent believe hiring managers devalue their military experience, and 36 percent believe job postings often require more specialized experience than they have for jobs they know they can do.

"The entry into the workforce following military service is really not a great experience for these vets," said Susan Vitale, chief marketing officer and workplace expert at iCIMS. "There is a disconnect, and veterans are not feeling necessarily valued after their service when it comes to employment."

Consider for a moment how many jobs require a bachelor's degree as a minimum requirement. In many cases, employers will accept almost any degree if the job they are filling does not require a specific certification. Employers think the bachelor's degree will give them candidates with critical thinking skills.

That's bad news for the 25-year-old veteran, who joined the service when he or she was 18 and doesn't have a degree. That employer's focus on a bachelor's degree means it will miss the fact that the vet managed a $1 million program budget and supervised 15 troops as a noncommissioned officer, probably in a high-stress situation that required sound judgment.

Isn't that better than a college degree and two years of experience in an entry-level management job? I think so, but the veteran I just described was me in 1990. I've since earned a degree, and I can attest that what I learned in the military is far more valuable than what I learned in college.

"Many employers, when they are crafting a job description, and describing who would be perfect in whatever role it might be, don't necessarily place enough stock in the right things," Vitale confirmed. "Other things that might really make a difference, they don't place enough value on."

The military and the vets themselves share some of the blame. There are few corporations that will invest that much authority in a young person, but the military does it because most troops retire in their early 40s.

Vets also acknowledge they are not very good at explaining how their skills apply to a civilian business. Twenty-eight percent say they don't know how to sell themselves to a civilian hiring manager, and 47 percent say they understate or leave out their military experience for fear it might hurt their chances.

While I was with the Associated Press, I routinely embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq and spent about two years on the front lines with truly remarkable young people. I am still friends with many of the soldiers I wrote about between 2003 and 2008, and adjusting to civilian life has not been easy for them.

Many of them went to work for defense contractors or government, both of which are very good with vets. Others have found success with major corporations with paramilitary, hierarchical structures. Others became teachers and police officers, and one became a sommelier.

All of us have lost too many comrades to suicide, though, and there are some who still painfully struggle to find their place in civil society.

A good job with a supportive employer makes all of the difference. And there are state and federal programs that provide tax credits to employers willing to make the extra effort to employ vets who are disabled or have suffered from chronic unemployment.

All employers should know the military trains people to focus on a mission, solve problems, adapt to change and work as a team, to include stepping up as a leader when needed. These are also the qualities that employers say they need.

The next time your company advertises an opening, make sure the job posting lists the skills that are truly desired and drop the pro-forma prerequisites that could screen out a capable veteran.

Then take the time to understand what a veteran can offer. Talk through what they did and how they did it.

There is an enormous amount of untapped potential out there. Don't let it go to waste.
Oil capped the biggest weekly loss in almost 10 months Friday as hopes faded that OPEC will be able to implement a promised deal to cut production and ease global oversupplies.

Futures dropped 1.3 percent in New York, bringing the six-session decline to 11 percent. Prices closed Thursday at the lowest level since OPEC reached a preliminary accord in Algiers for the cuts and extended losses Friday after Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia threatened to raise output if other members didn't agree to cuts. Losses eased after OPEC Secretary-General Mohammed Barkindo said the kingdom didn't make the threat.
Jesse Lott's own hands are large and strong, on the slender side, with long fingers and nails that reflect years of an artist's tedious work with metal and wood.

The hands he creates - the ones that are a significant element of his sculptures and drawings - are almost always spread wide, expressing an indomitable human spirit.

The colorful characters he summons forth in his sculptures have highly expressive faces, arms and legs - you sense history, hardship and dignity coursing through their veins. But the hands, which are never the same, make your heart sing.

"Farmer," an especially good paper sculpture, depicts an African-American figure who dances with the elegance of Fred Astaire, although his denim overalls place him far from any ballroom. Extending gracefully into the surrounding space, his hands could just as easily belong to a prima ballerina.

"You very rarely find that in sculpture - you don't find hands that express what hands do," Lott said. "It's so hard to make them stay (in place). It presents some extra difficulty. It gives you a chance to explore what a hand is all about."

One of Houston's most beloved artists - the sage of the Fifth Ward and one of the founders of Project Row Houses in the Third Ward - Lott, who is 73, recently received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Art League Houston.

More Information 'Jesse Lott: Artist in Action' When: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, noon-5 p.m. Saturdays, through Nov. 19 Where: Art League Houston, 1953 Montrose Info: Free; 713-523-9530, artleaguehouston.org Also: Group shows "Friendly Fire," Station Museum of Contemporary Art, 1502 Alabama, through Feb. 5; "From Space to Field," at SITE Gallery, 1502 Sawyer, through Nov. 19; and Mystic Lyon (window installation), 5017 Lyons. See More Collapse

His inspired, retrospective show in the league's front gallery highlights Lott's facility with pretty much every material he touches - from graphite drawings to colorful sculptures made with his El Pinatero paper process to terrifying metal figures that seemingly contain miles of knitted wire.

He also has works up in three other venues, most prominently in the "Friendly Fire" show that opened Saturday at the Station Museum of Contemporary Art.

"It's a difficult task, being everywhere," he said one afternoon this week, sauntering down the sidewalk outside Project Row Houses in the heat, using a cane for balance. "But it's alright. Better than being nowhere."

Lott, who was born in Louisiana, has made art from wire, paper, wood scraps and other discarded stuff since he was a youngster in Houston's Fifth Ward in the 1950s. He took his first art class at Kashmere High School, then had the good fortune of studying with a great mentor, the social realist Charles White, in California in the late 1960s.

Back in Houston, where John Biggers was also celebrating the African-American experience, Lott found another mentor - and ample encouragement for using his art as an "action" to improve communities. He developed his El Pinatero method while working with young mothers in the Fifth Ward, he said.

"We had a working group that used paper sculpture as an initial methodology," he explained. "Part of the theory was, if you feed your baby cereal and milk, after you finish the cereal you can take the box and make a piece of sculpture that's worth more than the cereal and the milk.  It helps you get beyond whatever limitation it is that keeps you from being productive. So it allows you to go to here, instead of stopping - pow - I gotta go to the store, I gotta go back to work, I gotta dip into the piggy bank, I gotta do such and such, before I can get into the pure enjoyment of creative expression. 'Cause that's what it is."

Conversations with Lott tend to become philosophical - and musical. While we spoke, he started to sing, in a rich bass, the opening lines of Curtis Mayfield's "Gypsy Woman."

"From nowhere, to a caravan  that's where the concept comes from," he said. "You're going to start from nowhere - absolutely nowhere, and you can go anywhere you want to go with your caravan."

Lott said he began to make his wire figures as "research into drawing."

"It's a drawing in space. Most of the time you have a drawing, it presents the illusion of space. This particular methodology evolved as a way of drawing in real space because somebody made the statement once that that was an impossibility - that space for drawing had to always be illusionary because you could not leave the page," he explained.

"So it became a part of my task  to develop a technique in which you could take a line, follow it through real space and allow it to present the illusion that you would get from a drawing and the reality that comes with a piece of sculpture. You see what I mean?"

Lott often punctuates his ruminations with that line - "You see what I mean?" He has a lot to share, but he's patient.

In the catalog for the Art League show, Lott's friend Mel Chin (the Fifth Ward's other great artist) calls him a "Zen Master."

"Jesse Lott is the real deal," Chin writes, " a rare, great artist in the world, applying meaning and worth to all the people he encourages and all the works he makes."

We'll lift a hand to that thought, too.
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Are we there yet? America whines like a petulant child in a back seat. Are we there yet?

As this rough beast of an election season slouches toward Nov. 8, at least the electorate has shared some amazing pop-culture moments in the approximately 57 years this campaign has lasted.

Let's scroll back to Jan. 21, when the Bernie Sanders ad called "America," scored by Simon and Garfunkel, first appeared on YouTube. No matter the politics, American hearts swelled. CNN called the ad "downright goose-bump inducing."

Cue the sound of a needle screeching across a record, because we aren't there anymore.

The Oracle at Delphi couldn't have predicted an election cycle studded with "basket of deplorables" and "grab her by the [you-know-what]." It has gotten, to use one of the year's unlikely words, nasty.

In just shy of a year the culture has gone from Birdie Sanders to Pepe the Frog.

"Both sides of the aisle know how to meme now," says Brad Kim, the editor-in-chief of KnowYourMeme. "It's a fair and ugly game now."

Four years ago, says Kim, who studies election memes both for his job and his own interest, the Obama supporters were savvy on social media and the Internet, but the Republican side was flat-footed. That's changed.

"Not only is meming playing on the same field but also the politicians and campaigns themselves are using it in ways they didn't before," he says.

Garth Jowett says timing contributes to the sense of disruption. "It's a whole new information flow," says Jowett, a professor of communications at the University of Houston. "It's instantaneous."

And it's instantly spun, as well. "Framing can influence the perception of what just happened," Jowett says. There's what you saw, and then there's what the pundits tell you you saw.

Kim says this is the first election cycle in which memes that have little or nothing to do with the election got sucked into the vortex. He's been following Pepe the Frog for about seven years, and he says the green guy used to be "a kind of mascot for beta-male singledom."

Then Pepe got hijacked by the alt right. And now, the Anti-Defamation League, which has added the frog to its database of hate symbols, and Pepe's creator, Matt Furie, are trying to reclaim him with #SavePepe.

Even Skittles and Tic Tacs have been unfairly maligned.

"The potential to use [the internet] for good is there," says Stef Woods, who teaches American studies at American University in Washington, D.C., "but it has become a tool to entertain, deflect and distract."Rather than being a place where fact-checking and reliable sourcing take place, she says, social media have become a "culture of likes and positivity" where getting a thumbs-up is more important than getting it right. "Ideally it would be a place for debate and conversation," Woods says.

When memes and funny videos are coin of the realm, acting responsibly becomes less important. "Serial killer Ted Cruz isn't funny on several levels," Woods says.

But it's devilishly hard to control and not all negative. She cites the "such a nasty woman" moment from the third debate, which went from an insult to a rallying cry.

One of Kim's favorite bits of election pop culture is the Facebook page called Bernie Sanders' Dank Meme Stash, which has almost a half-million members and has long outlived the Sanders campaign to become its own quasi-community.

"I'm seeing that as far as Millennial voters are concerned, irreverence is becoming a big factor in the shaping of public opinion," Kim says. "Elections used to require sobriety, but for Millennials that became boring. Pop culture has infiltrated areas that used to be humor-free."

Brace for more. Any cyclical events, such as elections or Olympics, "will get memier and memier," he says.

Woods holds out hope for the civic-minded. "I think we have to hope we will only get better as a nation from here," she says.

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The political ad begins with a forest lit by slices of sunlight. Then dark clouds roll over the tall pines of The Woodlands, and a narrator, in an ominous tone, warns of "something scary" looming.

That something is a soaring property tax rate if the unincorporated master-planned community becomes a full-fledged city, asserts the commercial by a nonprofit group, The Woodlands Concerned Taxpayers.

The hard-hitting spot landed on cable television and social media in the middle of October, a few days before early voting began for four of the seven seats on the township's governing board. A second ad targets Gordy Bunch, accusing the tea party-backed incumbent of pushing a "whirlwind tax increase" by supporting incorporation.

Together, they are the brash centerpieces of an unparalleled campaign in this usually peaceful enclave. The Woodlands Concerned Taxpayers has bankrolled at least $244,000 on ads and voter outreach to influence the election, records show. The amount is more than double what all nine candidates have spent, combined.

While the organization has put its name on every ad, billboard and mailing, it's not clear who is paying for its efforts. That's because the organization, which was created two months ago as a social welfare nonprofit, isn't required to disclose its donors while raising and spending unlimited sums of money.

These so-called "dark money" groups have emerged as the favored vehicle for corporations, unions and wealthy individuals to set the political agenda since the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling, which struck down limits on independent spending in election campaigns. And as the use of a non-disclosing group in The Woodlands shows, secret spending isn't only for presidential and high-profile Senate and House races.

'Social welfare' group

"There's an explosion of these dark-money groups at the state and local level when before it was seen as a federal phenomenon," said Chisun Lee, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Lee, who has analyzed outside spending, said dark money is flowing down the ballot because companies and others can shape the outcomes of local races in which they have a direct stake at a relatively low cost.

Hidden interests in the San Francisco Bay area, for example, pumped roughly $90,000 through a nonprofit group called the Neighborhood Empowerment Coalition into a 2014 city council election that was focused on housing policy. Only after they cast ballots did voters learn the money's source: a group of landlords opposed to rent control.

"It's especially harmful at the local level because political advertising is more influential," Lee said. "Voters deserve to know who is trying to win their vote and why."

The Woodlands group was formed in September by Bruce Tough, a lawyer who spent 15 years on the township board, including five as chairman. He lost his seat a year ago to an ally of Bunch after he supported a Montgomery County bond proposal that included a hotly debated extension of Woodlands Parkway.

The Concerned Taxpayersgroup is backing a slate that includes one of Bunch's challengers while using the specter of higher property taxes because of future incorporation as a wedge. Bunch and his supporters, meanwhile, are reminding voters at every turn that immediate incorporation isn't on Tuesday's ballot. He says he only wants the community, which has some 110,000 residents, to start meaningful planning for cityhood.

The Woodlands operates with a unique "township" form of government, which is a hybrid between a private corporation and elected municipal government. If it becomes a real city, responsible for law enforcement and roads, among other services, the local property tax rate could rise by 70 percent, Tough said. The tax rate is now 23 cents per $100 of valuation.

But township officials said that they haven't conducted an official tax rate study to determine how incorporation would affect taxes.

Tough defended the move to keep donors' names private, saying the group is for educational purposes that go beyond the election.

"This entity is to inform and educate the residents," Tough said. "I see a rush to incorporate, and that would be a huge mistake."

Tough organized The Woodlands Concerned Taxpayers under the tax code as a "social welfare" group, not unlike civic leagues or volunteer fire departments. Known to the IRS as 501(c)(4)s, the groups are exempt from revealing donors so long as politics don't become their primary focus. That means less than half of their money can be used to sway elections.

Although the interest groups don't pay taxes, their donors aren't allowed to claim a deduction.

Developers suspected

Since September, The Woodlands Concerned Taxpayers has spent $83,287 to print and mail brochures, $72,220 to produce videos and buy time on cable TV, $30,000 to canvass voters and $18,810 to put up outdoor signs, according to campaign finance reports filed with the state.

Most of the money went to the Austin-based Iron Group, whose president is Chris Keffer, son of state Rep. Jim Keffer, an Eastland Republican. The group also spent $33,000 for online strategy from The Prosper Group, an Indiana-based firm that has worked on campaigns for Republican governors and senators.

The big spending has fueled speculation that the money was provided by developers, like The Woodlands Development Co., which owns all of the undeveloped land in the nearly built-out master-planned community.

Company representatives declined to answer questions about whether it's involved with the group. In a statement, the developer said, "We are concerned about our community. Like many other businesses in The Woodlands, we oppose an increase in taxes."

Bunch, meanwhile, has spent $27,832 to hold onto his seat. Records show more than $20,000 came from his own pocket - a move he said he made to combat spending by a group funded by unknown donors.

"You expect to see it in a congressional race, but you don't expect it in a race for a volunteer position," said Bunch, president and CEO of a financial services company. "We're going to spend one-10th of what they will and depend on the grassroots to win the election."

Real estate agent Amy Lampman, who received the endorsement of The Woodlands Concerned Taxpayers for Bunch's seat, has spent $6,484 on her campaign. The group's help has included a mobile billboard with Lampman's picture that has rolled through the township over the past week.

The group also has endorsed incumbent Mike Bass, Chris Grice and Stuart Schroeder.

'Hardball politics'

Bunch has received help from the Texas Patriots, the Woodlands-based tea party group, which has spent $7,591 to print and mail slate cards to voters. It also backs Brian Boniface, John Anthony Brown and Bruce Rieser.

Unlike The Woodlands Concerned Taxpayers, the Texas Patriots PAC is required to reveal its donors. Records show the group has raised about $12,000 since March, mostly from people giving no more than $250.

Outgoing Woodlands board chairman Ed Robb said the rise of political groups, starting with the Texas Patriots, has turned running for local office into "hardball politics" that require significant money to compete.

"What I've come to realize is, it's not about policy," said Robb, a local pastor who has been on the board since 2010. "It's about power."

Bridget Balch contributed to this report.
Two and a half years ago, the violent extremist group ISIL, also known as DAESH, controlled about one third of the territory of Iraq. Supremely confident after their rapid conquest of these territories, ISIL trumpeted to the world its conviction that its fighters were unstoppable. On June 10, 2014, these terrorists grabbed their greatest prizeIraqs second largest city, Mosul, and began to march on Baghdad itself. Standing in the citys Grand Mosque back then, ISILs leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the establishment of a world-wide Islamic Caliphate, or Islamic State.

But thanks to strong efforts by the Iraqi armed forces, the Kurdish Peshmerga and round-the-clock air support from the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, the tide has turned against these terrorists. For nearly 18 months, ISIL has been on the run as they have been upended by loss after loss on the battlefield. In March 2015, the city of Tikrit was liberated. That was followed by Sinjar, Ramadi, Bayji, Hit, Rutbah, Fallujah, Qayyarah, Sharqat, Qaraqosh, and now the sights are set on Mosul.

During the last two weeks of October, Iraqi army and Peshmerga fighters worked to eliminate insurgent opposition. Then, on October 31st, elite units of the Iraqi army, in co-operation with the Peshmerga, and supported by the Global Coalition, entered the outskirts of Mosul, the last city still under ISIL control.

The anti-ISIL forces are making progress, slowly retaking the city. But this promises to be a long, arduous battle. With the liberation of Mosul, ISIL will have lost well over half the territory it once held, but will likely continue to fight as it tries to hold what is left. Still, they are slowly retreating. And as they do, they sow destruction in their wake, laying land-mines and booby-trapping the city.

Nonetheless, they will inevitably be defeated, said Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, Brent McGurk.

Daesh is a very brutal, horrific enemy. They are truly suicidal, with suicide bombers, booby traps, snipers, human shields, he said. We recognize that this will be difficult. Daesh is trying to launch spoiler attacks. They launched one in Kirkuk. The terrorists who launched that attack are either dead or have been captured.

We are proud to stand with the Government of Iraq, with your security forces, the people of Iraq, as you take on this enemy, really, on behalf of the entire world.
DENVER (AP)  Police are investigating who painted graffiti all over the Donald Trump campaign office in Denver.

The co-chair of the Denver campaign, Steve Barlock, said he arrived at the office near downtown Denver on Friday morning to discover large white "L's" painted on the windows as well "Trump=Thief" and other insults painted on the brick walls of the historic building.
AUSTIN - On a television ad airing ahead of Election Day, Texas Secretary of State Carlos Cascos declares: "It's voting season in Texas."

The 30-second spot tailored by international public relations giant Burson-Marsteller is supposed to serve as a quick explainer to educate Texans on new voter ID requirements ordered by a federal court.

Yet, Cascos and state officials say they cannot reveal where the secretary of state's office is spending taxpayer money to broadcast those ads and the names of an estimated 1,800 community groups partnering with Texas to circulate voter ID information at the local level.

Texas is using the lion's share of a $2.5 million voter education effort on paid media and outreach to community organizations, but has refused over the course of months to provide details of how and where it's spending public money for the public education campaign.

The secrecy has irked several lawmakers representing areas of the state with heavy minority populations affected by the voter ID law, as confusion over photo identification requirements has been reported around Texas during early voting.

State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, called it "disturbing" and "unacceptable."

"The lack of transparency from the Secretary of State is disturbing," Ellis said in an email, noting that a federal judge has already scolded Texas for distributing misleading information during its current outreach effort. "Now, they're shrouding the voter education campaign in secrecy and using millions of taxpayer dollars to do it. That is simply unacceptable."

Cascos, who was appointed secretary of state by Gov. Greg Abbott, said Texas is trying to educate voters to the best of its ability, but he pointed to ongoing litigation when asked about the ad buys and community groups.

'Pending litigation'



Texas' main argument to withhold the information boils down to this: Burson-Marsteller drew up the plans and provided them to the state under contract as "proprietary" information.

A federal judge in August sealed records related to ad buy markets and community groups targeted to receive "digital tool kits" with updated voter ID information. The secretary of state's office has since used the court seal as one of its reasons to deny media inquiries for the information.

Along with documents related to the current outreach program, the secretary of state's office has refused to disclose information related to ad buys and market placement for a voter education campaign in 2014, the first statewide election cycle in which the voter ID law was used. The agency also will not release the name of a state lawmaker it wrote a letter addressing details of the 2014 education effort.

The 2014 documents are not under federal seal, but the secretary of state's office has asked Attorney General Ken Paxton to allow the agency to withhold their release, arguing they are part of "pending litigation." The secretary of state's office has made the same argument with Paxton's office to withhold documents about ad buys related to the current education campaign.

Alicia Pierce, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state's office, said the agency's is seeking to "protect the propriety interests of the state related to information purchased through a vendor."

"The public information act protects not only information sealed by court order but also information that is a subject of pending litigation," she said.

Paul Watler, a Dallas-based attorney who represents newspapers and broadcasters in public information and First Amendment cases, said the pending litigation exception in the Texas open records law is very effective for state agencies because it so broad.

"There are no real limits to that test," he said. "If it relates to pending litigation in anyway the information can be withheld."

'Proprietary and confidential information'

The secretary of state's office has said its ads are running statewide and that 30-second spots started airing on television and radio in mid-October but hasn't provided a breakdown for market-by-market spending. It also has not identified a single community group that received a digital tool kit.

Without more details, experts say, the public will be left in the dark about levels of ad spending in markets with large minority populations and which groups Texas is distributing education materials to.

A softened version of what was once considered the strictest voter ID law in the country is being implemented in Texas for the current election. In August, a federal judge in Corpus Christi ordered that people lacking one of seven state-mandated forms of photo identification will be allowed to cast a ballot by showing an alternate ID and signing an affidavit.

Texas was also ordered to conduct a robust education campaign about the changes as a court fight over the law continues to play out.

The only detailed information released so far has been in a court document in which the state says it planned to spend $1.3 million on paid media, another $256,000 for ad production and strategy and around $179,000 on "community engagement" with some 1,800 unnamed organizations. The total for those expenditures comes to nearly 70 percent of the $2.5 million that the state is spending.

Texas argued in court filings that documents related to the ad buys and community groups include "proprietary" and "confidential" information provided by Burson-Marsteller, which designed the state's voter education campaign. State lawyers also cited a 1978 case involving President Richard Nixon, in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that media outlets could not have access to tapes from a Watergate obstruction trial.

Asked about the issue, Cascos earlier this week deferred to the court's sealing of the records.

"You'd have to take up that with the federal court," he said.

When pressed on the state's argument about the need to guard information provided by Burson-Marsteller over the public's access, Cascos said: "I was not involved."

'High burden'

However, that explanation falls short for some lawmakers.

State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, a San Antonio Democrat, said the public has a right to know how its dollars to educate voters are being used.

"While the state may believe there's an interest in wanting to protect this information, it's a very high burden and I don't think they've met it," said Martinez Fischer, who also chairs one of the civil rights groups suing Texas over its voter ID law.

State Rep. Poncho Nevarez, D-Eagle Pass, said cloaking important components of the voter ID education campaign in secrecy hurts the public's trust in how the state is using taxpayer money. Nevarez said he wants an explanation from the secretary of state's office about why the information is being kept secret.

"There's no reason why they shouldn't be transparent," he said. "Let's take the argument in good faith that their might be proprietary information regarding the ads. But when it comes to the community groups, there's no reason the public shouldn't know that."

'1,800 community groups'

According to a court document, Texas planned to send "digital tool kits" to 1,800 community groups with updated voter ID information as part of a strategy that "capitalizes on the connections community groups and organizations have to share information."

Elaine Wiant, president of the League of Women Voters of Texas, said her organization was never contacted by the secretary of state's office or Burson-Marsteller, despite being one of the largest active groups doing voter outreach.

"We've had many communications with the secretary of state's office on this," she said, "and it is a bit surprising they're engaging with community organizations and not including us."

On Friday, the secretary of state's office said it had sent out more than 1,800 digital tool kits to date and that the agency has been in regular contact with the League of Women Voters of Texas, including sharing information about its education efforts and having Cascos speak at events with local chapters.
MOSUL, Iraq - Iraqi special forces launched a two-pronged assault deeper into Mosul's urban center on Friday, unleashing the most intense street battles against Islamic State militants since the offensive began nearly three weeks ago.

Smoke rose across eastern neighborhoods of Iraq's second-largest city as heavy fighting continued after sundown, with explosions and machine gun fire echoing in the streets as mosques called for evening prayer.

More than 3,000 Iraqi troops took part in the assault under heavy U.S.-led coalition air support, but the pace of the fight also slowed as Iraqi forces moved from fighting in more rural areas with few civilians to the tight, narrow streets of Mosul proper. Sniper fire repeatedly stalled the advance, as commanders called in airstrikes or artillery support after coming under fire.

As the operation got underway, columns of armored vehicles wound through the desert, pushing through dirt berms and drawing heavy fire as they closed in on the middle-class Tahrir and Zahara districts. The area was once named after former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Seven suicide attackers in explosives-laden vehicles barreled toward the troops, with two getting through and detonating their charges, Lt. Col. Muhanad al-Timimi said. The others were destroyed, including a bulldozer that was hit by an airstrike from the U.S.-led coalition supporting the offensive.

At least seven special forces troops were killed and an officer and three soldiers were wounded, said an Iraqi military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to brief reporters.

"The operation is going well, but it's slow. These kinds of advances are always slow," said Iraqi special forces Capt. Malik Hameed, as ISIS fighters could be seen running in the distance to reposition themselves. "If we tried to go any faster we would take even more injuries."

The operation to retake Mosul is expected to take weeks if not months. Moving from neighborhood to neighborhood in house-to-house battles through dense warrens of booby-trapped buildings is time consuming and Iraq's military has repeatedly opted for slower operations to minimize casualties.

Some 1 million civilians still remain in the city, complicating the advance. ISIS militants have driven thousands of residents deeper into the city's built-up areas to be used as human shields, while thousands have fled west into Syria.
As the final minutes ticked away for early voters in Harris County, Cecilia Mangum was the last person in a long line that snaked outside Alief ISD's administration building and around Crump Stadium, where the hometown team from Alief Taylor High was playing the varsity squad from George Ranch.

Mangum said she would wait as long as it took to cast her ballot in the 2016 presidential election.

"You need to vote if you want your voice to be heard," Mangum said. "We need somebody in the office who is going to help everybody."

About 600 people remained in line as the 7 p.m. Friday early voting cut-off period approached. Several people said it took about two hours before they finally got inside the cramped classroom filled with voting machines.

RELATED: Reports warn of possible terror attack in Texas on election eve

Mangum did not hesitate when asked her choice to be the next president.

"Hillary Clinton, I'm a Democrat," she said. "He (Donald Trump) doesn't talk about anything that would help America."

After Friday's early voting concludes, the polls won't reopen until Election Day on Tuesday. Harris County residents will be allowed to vote only in their designated precinct rather than at any polling location in the county.

Harris County officials said the early voting turnout was particularly strong for the 2016 presidential election. In the first four days of early voting, residents cast more ballots than five states did in the entire 2012 presidential election.

According to Hector DeLeon, a spokesman from the Harris County Clerk's office, the last Friday of early voting in the last two presidential elections saw the highest turnout days.

As of Thursday, 869,392 people in Harris County had cast their vote out of 2.2 million registered to vote in the county.

READ MORE: Beyonce, Jay Z rally fans for Clinton at free concert

On Friday evening, Tammy Rodriguez was excited as she got tantalizingly close to the administration building. She had been there for about 90 minutes and was willing to wait as long as it took.

"It's a very important election. If you don't vote, you don't get to complain," Rodriguez said.

While she tends not to vote the straight party line, Rodriguez said GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump shouldn't expect any electoral help from her. She criticized the harsh rhetoric of some of his supporters.

"In my opinion, he's just egging them on," she said.

Sobia Javed said she didn't expect the line to be so long for Friday's last minute early voters.

"But I'm ready. A vote is a vote - especially in this election which is so crucial," she said.

Casie Imhoff said she didn't mind her wait, also about two hours.

"I'm a regular voter and I'm happy to do it," Imhoff said. "I'm going to vote so I can complain for the next four years."

Brooke Lewis contributed to this report
AUSTIN - A pair of court-appointed special masters on Friday recommended sweeping changes to Texas' foster care system, including a ban on housing children in state offices, new limits on group homes and cutting the number of children assigned to each caseworker in half.

In 56 recommendations filed at the request of U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack, who last December declared the scandal-plagued program unconstitutional because of continuing reports of abuse and neglect, special masters Kevin Ryan and Francis McGovern proposed a series of operational changes be imposed on the state Department of Family and Protective Services, changes state officials said could cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and lead to court supervision of Texas's child protective services program for several years.

"The State of Texas has made improving foster care a priority and will continue to do so," said Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for DFPS, the agency that oversees foster care. "(The) report highlights many of the issues we are working on day and night: building more capacity for high-needs children in foster care, constantly seeking ways to improve health care for our children, and making sure our caseworkers spend more time with children and families."

While top state officials offered no immediate comment on the recommended changes, some suggested privately that the state likely will object when the report comes up for approval in court next year.

Texas officials balked at Jack's original ruling, saying it was too broad and unfairly condemned the entire foster care system. A state appeal of Jack's ruling was unsuccessful.

The masters' report includes no cost estimates for implementing the recommendations, which cover only foster care children in so-called "permanent managing conservatorship," a term for those who remain in state custody for 12 to 18 months. Officials have said more than 12,000 Texas children are in those foster care programs.

Stricter limits, rules

Judging from a two-year budget request by DFPS Commissioner Henry "Hank" Whitman Jr. for an additional $100 million to increase pay and staffing, legislative analysts who reviewed the report Friday said the recommendations easily could cost several times that amount.

The report calls for cutting caseworkers' workload almost in half, from an average of nearly 30 cases - almost 40 in some areas - to 14 to 17It also said caseworkers should spend more "quality" time with children to ensure they are doing well. Those changes could require the agency to hire hundreds of additional caseworkers, officials said.

In addition, the report recommends new limits on the number of children placed in foster group homes, after reports of children being abused in such facilities. That change along with others to place children at housing sites only near their place of birth, to limit the use of shelters, to stop allowing younger children to be housed with older youths and to mandate that younger children be placed in "family-like settings," could strain a system now plagued by a chronic shortage of housing.

As a result, dozens of foster children have been forced to sleep in state offices and in other temporary housing.

The report calls for a prohibition on having foster children stay in state offices. State officials have said hundreds were kept there for just a few days because they had no place else to house them.

Criticizing the agency's record-keeping, the report proposes stringent new rules for reporting and investigating sexual abuse involving foster children - including access to a 24-hour abuse hotline. It also calls for the agency to digitize more records to make them more immediately accessible to caseworkers and agency officials. Beefed-up licensing and enforcement standards should be imposed on all facilities housing foster children to stop poor conditions that can lead to neglect and abuse, the masters wrote.

Plagued by problems

Additionally, the recommendations include a call for new programs to help foster children succeed in life after they "age out" of the system at 18, along with better health care plans, and improved tracking of youths' progress while in the program. Foster care providers also should be paid based on their performance, the report states.

The masters' report calls on the state to fully evaluate within 12 months an experimental "foster care redesign" program in which a private vendor oversees the placement of foster children in Fort Worth and six nearby counties.

In her December 2015 order declaring the state's foster care system unconstitutional, Jack said children were continuing to suffer physical, sexual and psychological abuse after entering state custody. "Plaintiffs have a ... right (to) be free from an unreasonable risk of harm caused by the state. Texas currently violates that right," Jack wrote.

Children's advocacy groups applauded the masters' recommendations, saying that major changes are needed in a system that has been plagued by many of the same staffing and abuse problems for more than two decades. Several attempts by the Legislature to fund successful reforms, more than doubling the budget in the past decade, have flopped.

"The blueprint is aimed at ending the trauma caused by the foster care homes where the state sends kids that are removed from their families," said Kate Murphy, a child-protection policy associate at Texans Care for Children. "State leaders will have to do more to make sure that kids in foster care heal from the trauma they've already experienced and grow up healthy. As the state implements the steps outlined by the Special Masters to fulfill our legal obligation, there will be much more work to do to fulfill our moral obligation."

Added Madeline McClure, founding CEO of the Texas Association for the Protection of Children, "We now have an additional road map supplementing our long-standing recommendations to fixing foster care, and these changes will have to be implemented, regardless of whether it's under state or federal authority - so let's do it immediately. Texas children cannot wait for court decisions to play out, they need life-saving changes now."

Child-protection funds

For their part, senators working on a plan to provide an estimated $88 million in additional funding immediately to hire additional caseworkers and investigators to ease a backlog in child-protection programs - not the foster care addressed in the court recommendations - said they intend to move ahead with state improvements. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, said an initial decision on the additional funding could come next week.

Senate Health and Human Services Chairman Charles Schwertner, a Georgetown Republican whose committee has been working on a fix for the problems for more than a year, said panel members "appreciate many of the recommendations ... We all acknowledge the need to make improvements in how DFPS operates, but ultimately the responsibility for solving this problem lies with the Texas Legislature, not the courts."
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Mindy Finn imagines rallying the discouraged legions of the Republican Party into a new political force when this election is over. For now, the Kingwood native is the vice presidential candidate on the independent ticket of Evan McMullin, a former CIA agent and investment banker offering himself as an alternative for president to the two major party candidates and doing quite well in his home state of Utah.

"We believe we are building a new conservative movement," Finn said from the campaign trail in Utah, where McMullin, 40, a former Republican, ranks a surprising second in an aggregation of statewide polls.

Their campaign is not as much about winning the presidency as keeping conservatism on the scene of a presidential election in which, as Finn sees it, the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, has bucked the ideals of the party that is dear to her. Right after Trump launched his presidential campaign, she publicly opposed him, viewing him as a New York liberal at heart who could damage her mainstream conservative party.

Before she ran an insurgency against the GOP, she climbed her way up in the Republican party, working on two presidential campaigns, several private ventures and on the Republican National Committee. In spite of the long hours in Washington, she still comes home to see the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo almost every year.

At 36, Finn has spent the last 15 years on the forefront of politics in the Digital Age, helping modernize the Republican Party.

"I would call her one of the leading voices and innovators in digital politics," said Julie Germany, former director of George Washington University's Institute of Politics, Democracy and the Internet,where Finn was named a fellow in 2007.

Now, a question looms over Finn's future: inside or outside of the Republican party? The answer hangs on the broader uncertainty of how the GOP will emerge from Tuesday's election.

"This is going to be pretty messy," said Matt Mackowiak, an Austin GOP strategist who voted for the McMullin and Finn. "There are going to be some that believe we need to start a new party. That is apparently what McMullin (and Finn) wants to do.

"My hope is they will come back into the party," he added, noting the duo may not be warmly welcomed by all after opposing the Republican presidential ticket.

Finn grew up in Kingwood in the 1980s, before the West Lake Houston Bridge spanned the San Jacinto River, before the town had a big-name grocery store and before it was annexed by the city of Houston. Her parents divorced when she was 2, and she lived with her mother, Karen.

Inspired by mother

Childhood friends said she was driven by a sense of competition in whatever she did, from neighborhood bike races and games of Tetris to piano lessons, the swim team, academics and the high school dance team.

"She excelled at everything," said Rebecca Griffin, who grew up next door to Finn and considers her family.

"A lot of it had to do with making her mom proud," said Sarah Redmond, Griffin's younger sister. "Mindy and her mom were each other's best friends."

Morgan family

Finn attributes her early career ambitions and her political convictions to her mother, a New York City transplant whom she saw as a source of advice and wisdom for people in the tight-knit Kingwood community.

Karen Finnran an accounting business out of the garage, and daughter Mindy filed papers as a teenaged employee. From her mother, Finn said she inherited a "philosophy that empowerment comes from self-reliance," reverence for free markets and her lifelong Republican leaning.

Finn graduated in the top 5 percent of her Kingwood High School class and, despite her mother's protests, flew cross country to study journalism at Boston University, where she hoped to meet a diverse crowd, including a robust Jewish community she had lacked in Kingwood, a master-planned community straddling Harris and Montgomery counties. She became secretary of the college Republicans club.

In the fall of 2001, Finn's senior year, she worked an internship in Washington D.C., covering Congress for the Waterbury Republican American, a small newspaper in Connecticut. Her first day on the job, Sept. 11, 2001, planes crashed into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York.

"I was thrown into the deep end," she said. "I felt this intense pressure to report the biggest story we'd had in decades as a 20-year-old inexperienced intern reporter."

She wrote a series of front-page stories that semester, and her fascination with life inside the beltway began to bud, so much so that she returned there after college. Despite her early success, she decided journalism was not for her, longing instead for conservative activism.

So, Finn and a friend rented a one-bedroom apartment and she began knocking on doors in Congress, looking for a job.

Pivoting to politics

Then, in September 2002, her mother died of cancer. Finn called it her worst fear come true. Nothing in Washington, seemed that scary by comparison.

Finn said she threw herself into her work, both for the distraction and because she realized she was alone. Her career as a digital strategist was beginning.

She helped build an interactive website for U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, in 2003, a year when few Congressional offices had webpages, a job that led to a call the next year from the Bush-Cheney reelection team.

She wound up joining the team's seven-person "eCampaign" team, where she drafted emails that eventually would bear the president's signature and helped hone a micro-targeting scheme that divided the campaign's email list of seven million names into 32 categories for tailored outreach, now a mainstay of political campaigns.

When that campaign ended, its director, Michael Turk, went to head up digital efforts at the Republican National Committee, and he brought Finn, who he called a "tireless worker and incredibly dedicated."

"We saw the opportunity to really make the RNC think different about what it was doing online," Turk said.

Included in that was an online video series intended to humanize Republican political celebrities and foster party loyalty. The then-24-year-old Finn was picked as co-host, bantering with party big shots in a makeshift studio in the RNC basement. When the show garnered an audience, party leaders decided to ditch the basement in exchange for a professional studio and scripts. The new version flopped.

"People wanted authenticity," Finn said. "That was part of the point."

In 2007, Finn ran Mitt Romney's digital campaign as a senior staffer with her own team.

In 2009, she married Jewish investment analyst David Feinberg. It was important to her, she said, to find someone of her own faith, which she says is now a big part of her life. The couple has two sons.

Anti-Trump sentiment

In the meantime, she went on to co-found a digital consulting firm, with clients ranging from U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan to Google. She later sold her stake to join Twitter's Washington staff.

As an "advocate at heart," however, corporate work did not satisfy her. She returned to independent consulting and started a nonprofit called Empowered Women. The nonprofit's mission was to foster leadership aspirations in young women.

When Trump, the swashbuckling New York real estate magnate, kicked off his Republican campaign in 2015, Finn grew concerned.

She knew Trump as a "typical liberal New Yorker for all his adult life," and believed she had seen him make political pivots in recent years "pretty transparently aimed at a run as a Republican."

From Trump's first campaign speech, Finn feared what his candidacy could do to the party for which she had labored so long and hard.

So, she resolved that Trump must not carry the conservative banner.

She appeared in TV interviews as an outspoken Republican voice against Trump and became a founding figure in the Never Trump movement, which hoped to block the mogul's chance at the nomination. When that failed, movement leaders recruited McMullin to run against Trump as an independent conservative. McMullin tapped Finn, citing her background in technology and business, her like-mindedness and her courage.

"As lifelong conservatives, Mindy and I both realized full-well the risks we'd be taking in this race; we'd be called traitors and we were jeopardizing our future professional opportunities," McMullin said in an emailed statement. "However, our belief in this fight made all the risks worth it."

Their independent campaign ticket will appear on 11 state ballots and has write-in status on 30 others.

Finn said she will rejoin the Republican ranks after this election only if the party leadership "categorically repudiates the racists, sexists and religiously bigoted rhetoric that Donald Trump has normalized."

From the ashes

Otherwise, she sees a place for herself in a new organization "that is unequivocally for the equality of all men and women," made up of the conservatives who fled the GOP.

Trump has "toxified" the GOP brand, said Avik Roy, a Republican strategist who advised the presidential campaigns of former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

"A younger generation of conservatives want a more inclusive conservative movement," Roy said. "I think the only way a center-right party is successful at the national level is if a new party emerges from the ashes. I think Evan McMullin and Mindy Finn are trying to do that."

He estimated it would take 20 years for a new party to establish itself. Still, it is hard to imagine a formidable alternative in the near future to the Republican Party, which currently has 31 governors, 54 U.S. senators, 248 U.S. representatives and majorities in at least one state house in most states.

"We cannot give up on the Republican Party," Mackowiak, the Austin GOP strategist, said. "I just don't see how that would work."
A clear choice

Regarding "In the final days, we face a terrible choice," (Page A19, Friday), though Charles Krauthammer's column paints a hopeless picture for the election, he may have given us the answer. He states that our world today requires "wisdom and delicacy" of which Donald Trump has neither. Of the two choices Hillary Clinton does, at least, have some.

I was 10 years old when we watched the newsreels of the terrible devastation from our atomic bomb on Hiroshima. I had a beautiful little girl and a pregnant wife during the Cuban missile crisis.

I prefer wisdom and delicacy to a man who says we should not take atomic bombs off the table.

Dick Kendall, Pearland

Misplaced priorities

Regarding "TEA suspends special ed cap," (Page A1, Thursday,) I am not surprised but very sad that the Texas Education Agency refuses to admit that it had placed a "cap" on the number of students who could be classified as Special Education students in order to save money for the state education system. Even though all evidence points to that fact, they continue to deny it.

Our students are our future and yet Texas legislators refuse to invest in that future.

At a time when the state Legislature has invested $800 million in the current state budget for expansion of the Department of Public Safety for Texas/Mexico security, and DPS is seeking $295 million more in the next two years for the same purpose, we are shortchanging our special needs children by having a "cap" on the number of students who can seek help for their disabilities.

In 2000, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended approximately 1.6 million illegal immigrants attempting to cross the Texas/Mexico border. Since 2012, the number of apprehensions has dropped to between 300,000 to 400,000 per year. Far fewer people are attempting to cross illegally, and yet our Legislature would rather invest in increasing the DPS budget than our children. Has our hate for the illegal immigrant overcome our love for our children?

Jose Rodriquez, Huntsville

Wisdom beckons

Regarding "Foster care fix is close" (Page A3, Friday), we keep hearing how much it's going to cost to "fix" the Child Protection Services system. Has anyone calculated the cost of not fixing?

What about the cost of foster kids not graduating from high school, not going to college or a trade school?

How about the cost of increased risk of drug and alcohol dependence and of entering the criminal justice system? How about the cost of producing kids whom they cannot care for financially, so they end up in the welfare system?

How about the cost of those kids being abused or neglected, so that they, too, become a part of the CPS system?

Perhaps it's time to look at the wisdom of penny wise, pound foolish.

Glennda Hardin, Liberty
On March 5, 1770, on the eve of the American Revolution, British soldiers killed five Americans in the so-called "Boston Massacre." They were arrested the next day, and the public called for immediate hanging. Who would defend such scoundrels? Prominent lawyer John Adams stepped up to take their case. He said the prisoners should be judged by evidence and not prejudice, by the law of self-defense and not the color of their uniforms. As a result, Adams risked his career and faced intense personal attacks.

On the campaign trail recently, Donald Trump aimed similar attacks against Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine for their work as lawyers. Before entering politics, they took on criminal cases, sometimes on a court-appointed basis with low pay for indigent defendants. Some of their clients were guilty. Some not. Trump specifically attacked Clinton for winning a rape case - which is ironic given the abuse claims that he is now denying. And an official GOP ad blasted Kaine for "defending the wrong people ... the worst kinds of people."

If Mr. Trump or a loved one were to be charged with tax dodging or draft dodging or rape, or bribery or insider trading or computer hacking, or fraud on Trump University students, you know he would race to the best "criminal defense" lawyer he could find. In the great tradition of our profession, we would defend him. And Trump would be very grateful to find that he lives in a country where we defend "the wrong people."

In many countries today, the only defense if accused of a crime is to flee; a citizen accused has no right or ability to defend himself. In contrast, the right to counsel in this country has evolved as we have grown to appreciate its precious value in a free society.

And the GOP should celebrate this right. The party's national platform complains about the expansion of criminal laws into ordinary business activities and even about excessive prosecutions by the U.S. Department of Justice. Many of these concerns have merit, but we must defend the "wrong people" as well as the "right people," because in our system legal precedents for the one apply to the other.

In the Shakespeare play, "King Henry the Sixth Part 2," Dick the Butcher famously said: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." Contrary to popular belief, that wasn't meant as a lawyers' joke. Rather, Dick was plotting how the rebel Jack Cade could overthrow the government and become king. Cade's rebellion failed, but the next year, Shakespeare wrote King Richard III, about a rebel who succeeded. Paranoid, ruthless and ambitious, Richard came to power by a combination of intimidation, deception and bribes. Those who could stop him were intimidated or apathetic or opportunistic. He metaphorically "killed all the lawyers," and then killed (or "locked up") his opponents, real or perceived, including his brother.

Which brings us back to John Adams. In the Boston Massacre trial, principle triumphed over prejudice. The prisoners were acquitted. And Adams went on to become our second president - but not before he won another acquittal for a client named Samuel Quinn, who, of all things, was charged with rape.

Criminal defense lawyers are at the forefront of challenging government overreaching and even abuse. That's why they don't exist in dictatorships, and why they are so important in a democracy - for Democrats and Republicans alike.

Gerger is a criminal defense lawyer in Houston.
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Canada's military sent a plane this week to check out a mysterious "pinging" sound near a remote Nunavut community, after reports from boaters and hunters.

People from the small northern hamlet of Igloolik claimed they heard odd sounds in Fury and Hecla Strait during the summer.

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Many in the community were worried the sound was scaring away wildlife in what is usually a plentiful area for hunting.

The sound was even confirmed by a sailboater who verified it with his onboard sonar equipment, Nunatsiaq Online reported.

Fury and Hecla Strait is around 120 kilometres northwest of Igloolik, Nunavut. (Photo: DeAgostini/Getty)

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But, the military's investigation came up empty.

The Department of National Defence said in a statement to Global News that they performed multiple searches in the area but didn't detect any strange sounds.

The department added that it did, however, observe two pods of whales and some walruses in the strait.

The community's MLA thanked the military for investigating the strange noises.

"I know that they will keep investigating this and they will be kept informed by the hunters as well," Paul Quassa said in Inukituk at the Nunavut legislature on Thursday, according to CBC News.

"I encourage hunters to keep telling the Department of National Defence what they hear."

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Ontarians are slowly seeing a clearer picture of what a basic income would look like in their province.

The province should pay $1,320 per month to individuals as part of a Basic Income Pilot Project that could be applied in a number of communities around Ontario, said a discussion paper released Thursday by ex-senator Hugh Segal, who is working with the province to design the project.

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The government is holding public consultations on the project from November 2016 to January 2017.

The basic income project would replace social assistance payments administered by Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), Segal's paper said.

Payments would work like a "negative income tax," topping up the incomes of individuals who make less than the province's Low Income Measure (LIM), which is set at around $22,000 in after-tax income for individuals and approximately $44,000 for families of four, the Toronto Star reported.

Low-income individuals would receive income top-ups to at least 75 per cent of the LIM, no matter what their status is in the labour market; people who obtain social assistance through Ontario Works receive about 45 per cent of the LIM, Segal noted.

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Overall, Ontario would give low-income residents a minimum of $1,320, and they would also be able to keep some of the money they make from working.

People with disabilities would receive additional payments of at least $500, Segal said.

A basic income should be tested in three sites, the report argues: one in southern Ontario, one in northern Ontario, and one in an indigenous community.

Sites should be representative of each of these region's populations, and could be chosen based on traits such as a high level of food insecurity (ie. lack of access to nutritious food).

Segal also recommended that basic income payments be handed out for three years at minimum, and that participation be voluntary; participants could leave at any time.

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The Ontario government announced that it would carry out a Basic Income Pilot Project in the March budget.

The aim of the program is to "test a growing view at home and abroad that a basic income could build on the success of minimum wage policies and increases in child benefits by providing more consistent and predictable support" amid a changing labour market.

It is not intended to test what the report called a "Big Bang" approach, in which a monthly cheque would replace all social supports.

A similar project, known as a "minimum income," was tested in Dauphin, Man. from 1974 to 1979.

It helped 1,000 families earn a livable income after they had fallen below the poverty line.

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Canadian Homes You Can Buy With A Median Income (September 2016) See Gallery
One of my favorite characters in Nevada History is John C. Fremont, leader of the first and most significant exploratory expeditions through the Great Basin. He and his party were the first non-Indians to lay eyes upon such wonders as Pyramid Lake, Lake Tahoe and the fertile valleys that we now know as Nevada. It will take more than one article to tell about Fremont and the many things he has done. The series will conclude with the amazing story of the discovery of the elusive cannon abandoned by Fremont during his 1844 crossing of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

John Charles Fremont (January 21, 1813July 13, 1890) was an American military officer, explorer and the first candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party for President of the United States. In 1841, Fremont married Jessie Benton, daughter of Missouri Senator Thomas Benton, champion of the expansionist movement. The expansionists believed that the entire North American continent, including Mexico and Canada, should belong to the citizens of the United States.

Having considerable political clout, Benton pushed Congress to perform national surveys of the Oregon Trail, Oregon Territory, the Great Basin and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This cause became known as Manifest Destiny. Through his power and influence, Benton was able to obtain for his son-in-law, John C. Fremont, the position of leading each exploratory expedition.

In his early years, Fremont attended the College of Charleston from 1829 to 1831. He was appointed a mathematics teacher aboard a navy vessel and became a lieutenant in the Corps of Topographical Engineers. Fremont led many surveying expeditions throughout the western territories in the 1830s. He first met frontiersman Kit Carson on a Missouri River steamboat in St. Louis during the summer of 1842. Fremont was preparing to lead his first expedition and was looking for a guide to take him to South Pass. Carson offered his services and guided Fremont along with 25 men on a successful five-month journey.

From 1842 to 1846, Fremont and Kit Carson led expedition parties on the Oregon Trail and into the unexplored regions of the Sierra Nevada Mountains where Fremont was the first American to see Lake Tahoe and to map what we now know as the Great Basin. It was during these expeditions he searched for the legendary Buenaventura River, believed to cross through the Sierras to the Pacific Ocean. After finding there was no river crossing the Sierras, Fremont determined that the Great Basin had no outlet or river flowing to the sea and that the region was indeed a Great Basin.

As you may have noticed, there are many place names throughout the western states that have the name of Fremont. He is remembered by having cities, counties, schools and mountains named after him. In addition, he gave many geographic places the names we know today. He named the Carson River after his guide Kit Carson. Later Nevadas Capital was named Carson City. When Fremont saw the 600-foot high rock formation at Pyramid Lake, it reminded him of the Egyptian Pyramids, so he called the place Pyramid Lake.

Fremont was a prolific report writer who accurately described the areas he explored and published the reports to guide future travelers.

His writings from one of his expeditions inspired the Mormons to consider Utah for their permanent settlement. Fremonts Report and Map, published by Congress, led to the publication of Joseph Wares Emigrants Guide to California. This became the travelers guide for the forty-niners through time of the California Gold Rush.

After Fremonts remarkable explorations of the American West, he attempted to advance his military career and to dabble in politics. As it turned out, he was much better at being an explorer and pathfinder than he was at politics.
People used to harass her because of her dark skin colour. Now the self-proclaimed "Melaniin Goddess" and her striking beauty is getting nothing but love.

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She's turning heads for her remarkable looks, but it wasn't always the case.

A photo posted by Khoudia diop (@melaniin.goddess) on Sep 17, 2016 at 12:12pm PDT

"People would come up to me and say, 'You're so dark.' I'd always fight back by calling out one of their insecurities, like, 'Well, you have a big nose,'" Diop told Seventeen.

"Today, I'd tell them that I really love them. I'd thank them because they made me realize how unique I am."

The Daily Mail reports the name-calling included being called "darky" and "daughter of the night."

As the darkest person in her family, she used to be embarrassed to be black. Diop's cousins would ask her to use lightening creams.

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She tells Seventeen that encouragement from her sister helped change her views. Walking the streets of Paris with her sister made her realize that looking differently from the crowd was a sign of beauty.

On those same streets, she was scouted by enchanted photographers. These meetings helped launch her modelling career in New York.

Actress Lupita Nyong'o in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

In the interview with Seventeen, Diop calls "The Jungle Book" actress a role model whose career she hopes to emulate.

"She loves the skin she's in and the body she's in. I respect that a lot," Diop says.

Nyong'o's been an ardent supporter of dark skin positivity. In her appearance on "Sesame Street" with Elmo, Nyong'o tells kids that she loves her skin colour.

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With over 300,000 Instagram followers, Diop already has plenty of fans online.

It wasn't until she appeared alongside supermodel Diandra Forrest that she stepped into the international fashion scene. Standing with other black women, Diop was part of "The Coloured Girl: Rebirth" project in June.

A photo posted by Khoudia diop (@melaniin.goddess) on Aug 30, 2016 at 6:38pm PDT

A photo posted by Khoudia diop (@melaniin.goddess) on Aug 24, 2016 at 9:23pm PDT

Because of the lack of face shades for skin tones as dark as hers, Diop tends to skip cover-up.

"I just highlight my natural features using, eye, lip, and cheek makeup instead," she told Refinery29. "I would like to see more colors of makeup for darker-skinned women to play with, though."

A photo posted by Khoudia diop (@melaniin.goddess) on Sep 26, 2016 at 8:03am PDT

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But she tells Seventeen she's been thinking about changing her major to astronomy.

"I don't know why. I'm fascinated with stars and space. I just love them," she says.

If she makes the switch, we get the feeling she'll do just fine.

Thank you @pierre_artista i love this!! #darkskin #stars #melanin #goddess #melaninpoppin #beauty #blackgirlsrock #blackgirlmagic A photo posted by Khoudia diop (@melaniin.goddess) on Oct 9, 2016 at 5:20pm PDT

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ANDREAS SOLARO via Getty Images

I'm finally free of TweetDeck and on board the Bourbon Argos, MSF's largest search and rescue boat in the Central Mediterranean. I've got a megaphone and I'm doing the French translation of our welcome speech for the 500 people we've just rescued. I'm making mistakes but our new guests clap and cheer as I say "Libya is over" and a big fat tear rolls down my cheek. This deadly sea is their lifeline and this bloody megaphone is making me cry.

On our trip to Italy over the next few days, I meet some of the most motivated and resilient people I've ever come across. Two in particular stay with me. The first is Mamadou*. He tells me that in Libya they hung him upside down and beat the bottom of his feet, put something electric on his testicles and beat him with sticks. I ask him if he would have gone to Libya if he'd known what it would be like. "Of course", he replies. The second is Joy*. Like me, she's 29 but unlike me she's lived a very hard life. She's got chunky tattoos on her neck from her pimp at home and scars all over her body from an accident in Libya. She's hardened but I like her sass and she confides in me over the coming days. Her stories of repeated rape give me nightmares. In Italy I hug her goodbye and she thanks me. "You hugged me when I was dirty and you didn't care. You are like my sister." Then she tries to convince me to give her my sunglasses. They're my favourites so I resist. I wish her luck in Europe, get a taxi to the airport, take out my shiny blue passport and my European residency card and fly back home. "God, you're definitely the lucky sister" says my partner as I tell him the story later that night.

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************************************

Weeks later, I'm back in Brussels working my day job as Migration Campaign Manager for MSF, and community manager for @MSF_Sea and six small words, unexpectedly throw me into a rage.

"You should probably chuck him back". The tweet refers to a baby boy born on board on one of our boats; just hours after his mama had fled Libya. He's named Newman and despite the odds, he's fat and perfect. His mother, having delivered safely with proper medical assistance is simultaneously the luckiest and unluckiest woman alive. After 18 months experience running this account almost 24/7 and years more addressing migration trolls in my everyday life (I'm Australian), I barely hesitate before sharing a public reply. Supporters and colleagues alike respond and ask me not to feed the trolls but I persevere.

Here's why:

We started @MSF_Sea as we launched search and rescue activities in May 2015, planning to share live updates from the boats as well as the myriad stories of the human faces behind the headlines. We thought it would be a good tool for media but also give us some space to build empathy and compassion for our patients. Since then, the so-called migration crisis has made daily headlines (sometimes thanks to our tweets!). But, where in 2015 Europe swelled with compassion as Aylan Kurdi's lifeless body washed up on the shores of Turkey, November 2016, is flooded with little but politically convenient xenophobia and fear, and our little twitter account has become all the more emotional and important.

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Tonight, at dinner parties all over Europe, those who mourned the death of Aylan are uttering the same sentences as @MSF_Sea's many trolls.

"They're military aged Muslim males - Let them drown!"

"She's not a real refugee she's just an economic migrant, send her back to Libya"

"Rescuing these people is only encouraging others to come. Let them drown so their brothers stay away."

"He's just a dirty asylum shopper if he was really in danger he'd stay in the first SAFE country."

Their silent friends and family seated across the table have no idea how to respond; this rhetoric is so common that it's often not countered at all and instead, in some countries at least, put on the front page of the newspaper and repeated by politicians. It is only a drop in the ocean of a very rough sea but If MSF with over 40 years' experience working with refugees and migrants can't respond to the populist anti-migrant bile that is sweeping across Europe, who can? So we continue to try.
Dan Kitwood via Getty Images

We are in a phoney row about Parliament, the Judges and Article 50. And it is getting dangerous. Everyone needs to calm down.

Theresa May must not get caught up in this manufactured hysteria. The Prime Minister has an opportunity to show some leadership and start trying to build a consensus. She must seize it, not make matters worse.

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To read some newspaper headlines, you'd think the Judges had just blocked Brexit. They've done nothing of the sort.

To hear some Government Ministers talk, you'd think Parliament was about to vote to overturn the referendum result. It won't.

Most MPs will not vote against Article 50. Nor is there any serious chance that the House of Lords will block Article 50 - as Labour in the Lords has already made clear.

We've had a referendum, people voted in good faith. In the interests of democracy, that result has to be respected. I voted Remain in June, but I am among very many MPs in Parliament who believe that we have a responsibility to try to make Brexit work in everyone's interest now.

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Parliament won't block Brexit, but it does have to execute it. The courts have concluded that because Parliament passed the law to join the EU in 1972, Parliament has to pass the law for us to leave. So this is a court judgement about process not outcome because the outcome (triggering Article 50) won't change. And given that Theresa May would probably have been forced into some kind of Parliamentary vote by political pressure in the end, the Judges' decision makes less difference to events than people think.

Then why all the fuss?

The reason some Government Ministers are complaining so loudly about a vote on Article 50 is not because they fear they would lose it but because they want to keep Parliament out of the picture altogether. They want to hide the fact they don't know what they are doing. And they want to make complex decisions behind closed doors keeping power in the hands of a small group with no scope for debate, scrutiny or amendment. That's not democratic or sustainable.

The reason that some Ukippers are making such a fuss is worse. They want to sustain a sense of grievance. That's how they get support. For years they have demonised the EU for supposedly frustrating the will of the British people. Now we are leaving the EU, they need a new enemy. So they are targeting Judges and Parliament instead.

Far from trying to strengthen British democracy as we leave the EU, they are trying to undermine it. So the two most important democratic institutions we have - democratically elected lawmakers and the independent judges charged with upholding the rule of law - are caricatured as "enemies of the people". Instead of treating democracy as the peaceful way to express and implement the popular will, the far right are starting to treat democracy as the subversion of it.

And here's where the real danger lies. People are being encouraged to think that the popular will can only be executed through the unfettered power of the executive. Or that if they don't like any decision made by judges or MPs then they can denounce them as enemies. Or that it is OK to target someone like Gina Miller, because they disagree with her, with appalling racist and violent threats.

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It's all getting very Trumpian. We are appalled from this side of the pond at the sight of a Republican Presidential contender suggesting he won't respect the result of the election if he loses, that he will lock up his opponent if he wins. But his core assault on democratic institutions and the rule of law is being echoed here too.

As for those parts of the media that are shamefully whipping up populist anger, they should reflect because they will be undermined next. That other vital pillar of democracy - a free press - is already being attacked and discredited by both far right and far left.

Brexit was always going to be bumpy. There were always going to be rows about single market access, the detail of new immigration controls and so on. But we have to start being grown-ups about it, and find a way to resolve these differences through democratic institutions rather than by destroying them. We should not allow Parliament and "the people" to be pitted against each other in this way when Parliament has to be the legitimate voice for people across the country and for the diverse views they hold.

But most of all that means Theresa May has to handle this right. She must stop her Ministers pandering to Farage and the anti-democrats as Sajid Javid did on Thursday night. She should avoid demonising Parliament or judges or whichever half of the population she disagrees with. Instead she should set out a process to build consent in Parliament and the country. She should be open rather than defensive about the options, inclusive rather than secretive. The country divided in June. The Prime Minister's job should be to pull us all together. For the sake of our democracy, Theresa, please don't screw this up.
Swedish Prime Minister, Stefan Lofven met Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Nizar bin Obaid Madani in Riyadh, Saudi. October 2016. Photo courtesy: Aftonbladet.

*Swedish media tends to criticize the Swedish-Saudi relation denouncing Sweden's desire to be an ally to Saudi and pointing out that it is a dictatorship that lacks any free political life and a country that commits massive human rights violations. But it is time to update that perspective: Saudis' record in human rights violations have exceeded its borders.

Swedes must also condemn Saudi's war crimes record in Yemen; this most importantly entails Swedes questioning Sweden-made weapon sold to Saudi used in possible war crimes.

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Top Swedish arms dealer Marcus Wallenberg "accompanies" Swedish PM Lofven to Saudi this weekend despite revelations that Saudi armed ISIS.  WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 21, 2016

Ahead Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven's visit to Saudi at the end of last month, Wikileaks tweeted that top Swedish arms dealer Marcus Wallenberg "accompanied" Swedish PM Lofven to Saudi. This is plausible as Saudi is one of the top clients of Sweden's weaponry industry. In its 2016 report, Control Arms Coalition named Sweden as one of the countries having reported licenses and sales to Saudi Arabia in 2015. Saudi won't obtain all these weaponry unless there is a flourishing market. Saudi is the world's third-largest spender in military expenditure index. Despite that Sweden has announced last year its military cooperation with Saudi was not renewed, Saab remains able to continue selling arms to Gulf countries - which are active actors in the ongoing conflict in Yemen.

In parallel, calls for countries to stop selling weapons to Saudi are raised. The calls include Sweden who had little or nothing to state in condemning the atrocities in Yemen. I became well-aware of Sweden's indifference when Sana'a funeral attack happened in which 140 people were killed and over 500 were injured by a double-tap airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition earlier this month. Sweden's foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom showed no condemnation statement, whatsoever, while she usually rushes to condemn terrorist attacks elsewhere. Seemingly, Sweden's silence over the Saudis' war in Yemen is relevant to Sweden's arms sales to the kingdom.

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Last year, Sweden had a strong stance against Saudi over its terrible human rights violations record, then why the silence today? What has changed now? Why the silence over Saudi's role in the suffering in Yemen? Sweden's revival of the Saudi-Swedish ties comes as a step into Swedish preparation for its seat on the UN Security Council in the beginning of next year and with that Sweden seems to be willing to compromise & ally itself with the Saudis. Sweden had to re-establish its good relation to the Saudis and gain Saudis' support in the council.

In that seat, Sweden actually is becoming increasingly relevant to peace in Yemen - it must honor the international laws and exert efforts to ensure peace; which both Saudi is violating in the war in Yemen. However, Sweden's indifference over the potential use of its weapons in causing the suffering in Yemen undermines Sweden's future role in ensuring peace. If Sweden doesn't condemn Saudi war crimes now, then when will it do so?

It is time to refresh our view on the problem with Sweden allying Saudi considering Saudi's war crimes record in Yemen war and therefore call upon that Sweden suspend any of its arms sales to Saudi- unless, Sweden would like to be on the wrong side of history.
Sam: It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it's only a passing thing, this shadow; even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it'll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand, I know now folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding on to, Sam?

Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.

A conversation between Sam and Frodo in J.R.R. Tolkein's The Two Towers

This coming Tuesday, November 8, 2016, we will hold an election that has revealed a deep polarity. For some it is a choice between good and evil, for others a choice between the lesser of two evils. The future feels perilous, and the outcome of the election is not known. Like Frodo, many are simply weary and at the edge of feeling defeated. Like poor Gollum, who witnessed the conversation between Sam and Frodo with sad confusion, many are torn by the good they once felt inside but are now doubting its existence. And like Sam, others wonder why we would be willing to turn back to the way it was when so much bad happened.

I think the filmmaker Michael Moore had it right when he described Donald Trump as a human Molotov cocktail. Can we separate the person of Trump, who is an opportunist, egomaniac, narcissist, con artist, demagogue, sociopath, and psychopath, from the Trump phenomenon, which is some form of general rejection of the status quo? The metaphor of a human Molotov cocktail covers a lot of territory, but ultimately it is about something feeling deeply amiss at the collective level.

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A few weeks ago in Santa Clara, California, I had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Larry Brilliant, an epidemiologist who is board-certified in preventive medicine and public health. In the mid-1970s, he was part of a World Health Organization (WHO) team that successfully eradicated smallpox. Yes, smallpox, a disease that killed half a billion people in the preceding century. His story, like so many, started with the obstacles he faced--a parent's death, depression, aimlessness. He felt something deeply amiss but had no language or mentors to support him. He recalled how in 1962, the period of his depression, "the world teetered on the brink of nuclear madness, federal troops were on patrol after the first black student was admitted to Ole Miss, and Bob Dylan was singin' "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall."

Brilliant spoke about the upcoming election. He had just listened to the third presidential debate on the way down to our group's meeting. For someone whose life work has been about nonattachment, he was failing miserably. "I am attached," he said, with some nodding and chuckles from the audience. And then he said that what he hoped for was the possibility that we had reached a nadir, a low point in our national discourse, from which we could rise.

Our host prompted him to recall a chance meeting he had had with Dr. Martin Luther King. I say "chance" because King was not yet widely known, and King's speaking engagement was hindered by a fierce rain that kept most of his potential audience indoors. But not Brilliant. He showed up and for his effort was ushered by King into the front seats of the auditorium, a space that felt more intimate. And what he remembered was not simply the now famous line about the arc of the moral universe being long but bending toward justice, but rather King's imploring the audience to understand that this would not happen by itself.

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Precisely 51 years later, Brilliant recalled this lesson in a commencement address to the Harvard School of Public Health.

"The arc of the universe needs your help to bend toward justice. It will not happen on its own. The arc of history will not bend toward justice without you bending it. ... I want you to leap up, to jump up and grab that arc of history with both hands, and yank it down, twist it, and bend it. Bend it toward fairness, bend it toward better health for all, bend it toward justice!"

Reflecting on his words at the commencement address, he told us that it might have been more in the cadence of rock 'n' roll than theology, but I think it was in the same cadence as Sam talking to Frodo. It is the mythic cadence of all great stories, rising above despair, facing obstacles with personal agency and not turning back.

Whatever the outcome this Tuesday--and I am attached--let us not turn back. Let us join together with ever-greater intensity to hold out for a world that still has good in it. It will not happen by itself.
I am skeptical of what Israel's Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman says as I have judged him only by his actions. For the Palestinians, however, to immediately dismiss what he said in an interview with the Palestinian daily al-Quds--that he supports a two-state solution and would lift Israel's blockade of Gaza if Hamas relinquishes its military stance--is shortsighted and self-destructive at best. And by rejecting Lieberman's offer, Hamas is doing nothing but further worsening the plight of the Palestinians living under its rule, forfeiting yet another opportunity to end a conflict that they cannot ever win on their terms. The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, who perhaps for good reason do not trust Lieberman, should at a minimum call his bluff, if he is indeed bluffing.

Instead of putting Lieberman to the test, the Palestinian Authority chose to denounce what he is offering as if it were a forgone conclusion that Lieberman and his government are simply engaged in public posturing. But even if this was the case, why reject off-hand any offer which only plays into the hands of the extreme right-of-center political parties in Israel? As they see it, the Palestinians are simply unwilling to accept Israel's right to exist, and anything else they publicly state to the contrary is only for international consumption.

Given that both sides have been engaged for decades in public acrimony against one another, they have created an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and distrust. As a result, they have systematically alienated successive Israeli and Palestinian governments and the general public from one another, thus dooming any overture by either side, however well-intentioned and sincere it may be.

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In response to Lieberman's statement, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry accused him of spreading lies, stating "Lieberman declares himself to be in favor of a two-state solution, while taking pride in being a settler and legitimizing the continued building of settlements and the Judaization of the West Bank and East Jerusalem."

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry further blames Lieberman for trying to create a schism between the Palestinian people (i.e. Hamas vs. PA), when in fact no outsider can rival the Palestinians' propensity to create and perpetuate their own internal schisms.

Whereas I take what Lieberman stated with a large grain of salt, I believe that the Palestinian Authority should challenge him to offer some practical steps to demonstrate his true intentions. Instead, they opted to attack the newspaper al-Quds for publishing the interview, determined to stifle any public discussion on such critical issues, even when there is a desperate need to change the acrimonious public narrative.

Lieberman, like most Israelis, has long since concluded that the status quo is not sustainable. When he talks about a two-state solution, he is not promoting that for the sake of the Palestinians, but for the preservation of Israel as a secure Jewish state.

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Yes, the Palestinians have every right to disagree with his vision about the final contours of a future Palestinian state and its demographic composition, as he (like Prime Minister Netanyahu) envisions that any future Palestinian state will end up with a significant Jewish minority.

But whether or not the Palestinians accept such an eventuality, any peace proposal put on the table should be entertained if for no other reason than to prevent the appearance of being rejectionist and uncompromising.

Thus, any effort made by either side to change the public narrative and promote a process of reconciliation between the two sides that could foster trust and mitigate the prevailing sense of insecurity must not be rejected--especially since both sides claim to seek a peace agreement based on a two-state solution.

In connection with Gaza, Lieberman's offer must be taken at face value. Anyone who understands Israel's position regarding Gaza knows that it has no interest in engaging in another futile war against Hamas, or reoccupying the territory and assuming the burden of caring for nearly two million Palestinians.

This is precisely why late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided to unilaterally withdraw Israelis forces from the Strip, as well as evacuate the settlers. As the newly-appointed Defense Minister, Lieberman studied carefully the pitfalls of another war against Hamas and decided to take a different approach from a position of strength.

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The lessons that Lieberman has learned from the last three wars between Hamas and Israel were instructive enough to tell him that even if he decapitates Hamas' leadership, there will be no end to Palestinian resistance emanating from Gaza, and that the blockade is not and will never provide the answer.

What Lieberman is offering Hamas is practical from the Israeli perspective and even more practical from Hamas' standpoint. While Hamas wants Israel to lift the blockade, it still wants to be in a position to threaten Israel's very existence.

The illusion that still possesses Hamas' leadership is that someday, somehow, they will manage to destroy Israel, even though they know only too well that they cannot now or at any time in the future hope to pose an existential threat to Israel and live to see the day.

The vast majority of the two million Palestinians in Gaza live in poverty, the young have no future, the old are despondent and despairing, and all are being held hostage by Hamas to serve its delusional design.

Meanwhile, Hamas is squandering hundreds of millions of dollars to buy more rockets, build tunnels, and prepare for the next war that promises to invite devastation, the likes of which Hamas has not yet seen. Hamas would be wise to take Lieberman's warning seriously--that "If they [Hamas] impose the next war on Israel, it will be their last."

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"If Hamas," as Lieberman stated, "stops digging tunnels, rearming and firing rockets, we will lift the blockade and build the airport by ourselves." This is not a rhetorical gesture on Lieberman's part. He is focusing on a process of reconciliation--government-to-government--which is sine qua non to reaching a durable peace agreement at a later date.

I fully subscribe to the notion that the conditions on the ground today are not conducive to solving all conflicting issues between the two sides. A process of reconciliation should first take place, and Lieberman's offer must be viewed in that context, which is the only way the Palestinians could potentially realize their aspiration to establish a state in the West Bank and Gaza.

Given Lieberman's past record and public statements against the Palestinians, they have good reason to be extremely suspicious of whatever he says or does. The onus now falls on Lieberman to demonstrate that he is sincere about his offer.

For Lieberman to lend credibility to his plans and the concessions he is preparing to make, he should share it with Turkey and Qatar and urge them to use their influence on Hamas to persuade it not to be dismissive of Lieberman's opening.

The same can be said about the involvement of a few European countries, especially France and Britain, in playing a constructive role between the two sides. This approach will put Israel in a better standing, as it is regularly criticized by the EU as being the intransigent party in the conflict.

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Moreover, should Hamas accept Lieberman's offer, it would open the door to removing Hamas from the list of terrorist organizations that would encourage many countries, specifically in the European Union, to invest in Gaza, which could over a few years turn the Strip from an impoverished land into a thriving entity.
Man holding up I voted button

For decades, our collective confidence in the strength of our democracy has enabled us to shrug off our consistently dismal voter turnout, among the lowest in the developed world. We have remained certain that the Greatest Generation of Americans who died in WWII - enough men to form a line from Washington, DC to New York City - did not die in vain to preserve our democracy. But the stark realities of today demand that we act. We can no longer sit back idly with this same confidence in the assured existence of our democracy and freedom.

Today, over one in three well-to-do young Americans consider it a good thing for the army to run our country. That is an astounding increase from one out of 16 in 1995. Seventy percent of young Americans indicate that they do not think it is "very important" to live in a democracy. And their thoughts are becoming actions. In the 2014 election, 80 percent of eligible young Americans decided not to vote and the participation of all eligible voters fell to a 72-year low.

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Freedom House concluded that, "Democracy as the world's dominant form of government is under greater threat than at any point in the last 25 years." Stanford professor Larry Diamond wrote, "Around 2006, the expansion of freedom and democracy in the world came to a prolonged halt." Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker recently warned, "Democracy, freedom and civilization - it all hangs by a thread."

Perhaps most compelling, Oxford professor Stein Ringen's observes that, "Democracy is not the default...it will disintegrate unless nurtured." It behooves us all to recall that Greece's ancient democracy and its gifts of freedom and prosperity lasted only 250 years. We cannot turn a blind eye to the signs that nearly 250 years in to America's democratic experiment, apparent fissures have begun to form.

The American public does not appear to appreciate the profundity of our vote and the staggering fact that in 36 percent of modern presidential elections, the candidates who won (either the electoral and/or popular vote) would have lost if only a very small number of voters switched. The shifts are as few as one out of 23,000 votes in Florida in 2000. And even in 2004, the election among the 36 percent with the most switches needed to change the result; it required only eight switched votes out of all the votes cast in a polling place.

We no longer internalize that before America's experiment with Greece's concept of democracy and its replication in other countries, human beings lived bleak lives of oppression. We are unaware that an annual income of $34,000, which is commonplace in democracies, is achieved by less than one percent in non-democracies.

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We have, as Scottish writer John Buchan says, "overestimated the membrane separating the graces of civilization from the rawness of barbarism." And we seem to have forgotten Winston Churchill's observation that "Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried."

The longest serving US Supreme Court Justice, William O. Douglas, warned, "As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." Is this our twilight?
In the islands of Bocas del Toro, Panama, there is a beach famous for its white sand and the thousands of sea stars that once gathered there. Visitors and locals call the place Starfish Beach. "The whole bottom," according to Dr. Peter Lahanas, "used to be covered. The seabed looked orange."

The cushion sea star - reddish-orange with five leather-like arms - inhabits what we call a picture-perfect beach. Fine-grained sand and crystal clear seas silhouetted by a palm tree shore. Here in this edge habitat, where the land meets the ocean, sea stars behave gregariously, gathering in huge numbers to feed and breed.

In 1996, when Dr. Lahanas and his colleagues opened the Institute for Tropical Ecology and Conservation (ITEC), there were no tourists, no restaurants, no souvenir shops at the beach. It was, Lahanas explained, an "empty little beach that nobody [from the outside] really knew about." It was an ideal site for biologists to study marine ecology, and likewise, for local fishermen to find fish and lobster.

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Around 2003 and 2004, though, the tourism industry also began to discover the beach. One restaurant opened along the waterfront, and then another and another, and soon enough, the area was full of business and visitors. The sand and water, which attracted starfish for countless years, now attracted another gregarious species.

When the tourists arrived, the cushion sea stars started to disappear. Today fewer than two-dozen starfish can be found in the area.

It took millions of years for the Archipelago of Bocas del Toro to form its diverse ecosystem of sand, seagrass, mangroves, and reef; but it has taken less than twenty years of development to seriously threaten that complex environment.

The starfish's decline is not an isolated case. A decade ago, as one researcher remembers, "you could order large, medium, or small fish for dinner in Bocas. But not any more - its just one size - small!" In a brief period of ecological time, from the early-1990s to the mid-2000s, the fishing industry collapsed. A parallel decline has also occurred with the Caribbean Spiny Lobster. The bulk of seafood now served in restaurants lining Bocas' picturesque coastline actually comes from across the mountains, from the Pacific Ocean.

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Driving these developments in Bocas are an estimated 120,000 tourists that annually visit the islands desiring seafood, service, and fun. The growth of tourism has created much-needed employment for a struggling community. As one hotel owner explained, "When I was young, there was no work in Bocas. You either had to go to Panama City, or the mainland to work on the banana plantations." Because of tourism, Bocas' millennial generation has found work at home, as tour guides and service workers.

But is it really necessary to trade work for ecological health? Conservation has not kept apace with the influx of foreign interest and investment. Untreated sewage, runoff, and sediment pour into the sea, suffocating reefs and other organisms dependent on clean water and light. Algal blooms flourish in the bay. Coral bleaching, already spurred by global warming, increases with local actions (and inaction.) The combination of overfishing, pollution, and climate change has turned Bocas into another tale of environmental declension. Meanwhile, tour companies, developers, and the Panamanian government promote Bocas as an untouched "paradise," waiting to be discovered.

Visitors, it seems, are unaware of the consequences below the surface of their visit. They arrive to the beautiful islands, and quietly, the sea stars, the fish, and the lobster disappear. What type of paradise is that?

In Bocas, a small yet committed community of activists are working to combat environmental problems accompanying tourism development. They have pushed forward a progressive platform of regulations - for marine protected areas, turtle nesting grounds, and a seasonal lobster moratorium. But many of these policies remain unenforced. Why?

"The root of the disease," in the words of the ecological thinker William Ophlus, "is not defective public policies but a defective public philosophy." If both locals and tourists do not respect or understand the meaning behind the law, the law or policy is irrelevant.

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According to ITEC researchers, the cushion sea star abandoned its namesake beach because of increasing human disturbance. Sea stars are extremely sensitive to vibrations in the water. The crowd of new visitors kicked up sand (creating turbidity); curious beachcombers would touch the animal and lift them out of the water (causing air to enter the marine invertebrates body and later float to the surface); and party-going visitors produced a cacophony of music, motors, and noise (which reverberated in the marine environment). Starfish interpreted these actions as a threat and crawled downhill into deeper water, withdrawing from their traditional breeding ground. The herd of tourists, from the perspective of the sea star, was an invasive species.

What happened at this particular tourist beach in Panama is perhaps an allegory of modern ecological folly. Contrary to carefree looking brochures and cruise ship advertisements, there is no such thing as a vacation "escape." To sit on that beach, to swim on that reef, is to be part of nature.
ELKO  Barrick Gold Corp. donated $74,528 to help Great Basin College begin its Operation Bravo, which is an internship program for student veterans.

GBC Veterans Resource Coordinator Jacob Park said the program will kick off in January.

Operation Bravo is a student veteran internship program that is going to help them succeed while theyre attending school here at Great Basin College, he said. They can intern with various different locations throughout the community.

The program is dedicated in honor of Elko native, Marine Lance Cpl. Raul Bravo who was killed in actionin 2007 in Iraq, Park said.

Bravos mother, Joy Marisco of Henderson, gave permission for her sons name to be used in connection with the program.

We were very honored to do so, Park said. Its the least we can do to honor him with our program thats going to only help transition new veterans.

The student veteran receives on-the-job training as well as school work through the program. The money Barrick donated will sponsor five student veterans. Park said the program wouldnt be possible without the funds from the gold mining company.

The donation was a by-product of the relationship and the partnership with GBC and the Veterans Resource Center, said Jorge Esteva, Barrick Gold of North America communications director. Certainly the main goal here is to take advantage of that expertise in the workforce that is well trained and certainly willing to go different places.

From our perspective were close to Veterans Day now and its a great opportunity to share the pride our staff has and the opportunity for these veterans to be present in the workforce.

Sheldon Mudd, mining industry specialist with the Governors Office of Economic Development, attended the check presentation.

Ultimately we came here today because in the past theres been a lot of companies that have identified as veteran friendly, but Barrick Gold Corp. came to the plate and they have really shown what it means to be a veteran-friendly company, he said.

Other companies that want to sponsor the program should contact Mudd at 738-6075 or email him at smudd@diversifynevada.com.
Right now I'm really focused on this election. I'm really focused on the ways which electing a Democratic president and taking back the Congress, the ways in which that is extremely important on so many levels for the LGBT community, for broader progressive values, for the communities with whom we stand in solidarity. There are so many important aspects to this election up and down the ballot, but certainly as an attorney and activist in the LGBT legal community, I'm extremely focused on our Supreme Court. The statistics show that the next president is likely to appoint up to three Supreme Court Justices just sort of based on the math. Certainly we know we have one vacancy and it's likely that there will be another two in the next four or eight years. So I say to folks who aren't sure, or who may not be in love with Hillary, or who think she's got it on lock and are not worried, or they were Bernie people or they are just not so sure, I say to please just think about the Supreme Court because that is so incredibly important. So yes, four years or eight years are going to go by in a heartbeat but of course the Supreme Court, they're appointed for life and that's a long, long time.
U.S. presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton attend campaign rallies in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, October 10, 2016 and Manchester, New Hampshire U.S., October 24, 2016 in a combination of file photos. REUTERS/Mike Segar/Carlos Barria/Files

Welcome back to Friday Talking Points. We went on our annual hiatus last Friday, to bring everyone two chilling Hallowe'en nightmares, but we found that it was actually quite hard this year to come up with anything more terrifying than "the other candidate wins" -- for either side of the aisle. Such has been the 2016 election season.

However, regular readers of this column are going to have to wait yet another week for a standard Friday Talking Points offering. This week we are throwing out our format entirely, and instead providing an explanation of who we're voting for, followed by a call for reform in an effort to inject a possible silver lining to what promises to be a very contentious Election Day (no matter who wins). Yes, there will be optimism at the end of this column, specifically provided for people who are tired of the apocalyptic tone of the final pre-election week. So there's that to look forward to.

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As we sat down today to write our usual talking points, we realized that it would be an almost pointless exercise. By this point, Democrats already know what to say about Donald Trump -- and they've been loudly saying so to anyone who will listen. Our attempts to add to this cacophony would be virtually meaningless now. So too would rehashing the past two weeks, since America has been breathlessly following this storyline on an almost hourly basis.

Instead, we're going to first explain who we're personally voting for, and then we're going to attempt to interject a little optimism for the near future at the end. We promise that next week we'll return to our usual format (either in triumph or in sorrow), after the election is over. And we didn't want to disappoint regular readers, so we have managed to fill roughly the same amount of pages as we normally do on Fridays (translation: get ready for an insanely long column, as always).

Why I'm voting for Hillary Clinton

This column has always had a rather obvious partisan bias. It's not actually in the title, but it has always been understood that these are weekly Democratic talking points, to put it another way. So it should come to no surprise to anyone that I'm voting for Hillary Clinton next Tuesday.

[Editor's note: we are eschewing our traditional use (abuse?) of the editorial "we" for the rest of this particular section, because it solely concerns one man's vote, and is not an editorial endorsement or anything.]

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The choice seems pretty obvious, and can be summed up as: Hillary Clinton is not Donald Trump. No matter what you think of Hillary, she is not a dangerously unstable individual with a propensity for obsessing about her enemies and wreaking vengeance. That right there is all I really needed to contemplate in order to make my choice.

Hillary Clinton might disappoint, but she probably won't launch nuclear weapons if some other country's leader personally insults her. The same cannot be said with any degree of confidence about her opponent.

Eight years ago, I voted for Barack Obama knowing full well he was going to disappoint me on at least a few issues. His craven vote on government surveillance during the 2008 campaign was an omen for how he'd govern, I thought at the time. Since then, the Obama administration has brought more criminal cases using the Espionage Act (passed during World War I) than all other presidents combined, so it looks like that was a fair assumption.

Obama has disappointed me in plenty of other ways as well, some of them quite shocking. Who would have ever expected that Obama's biggest weakness would have been his inability to communicate well -- with either the public or with members of Congress (including those from his own party)? And yet, that's exactly what happened. Obama hasn't played the Washington game very well when it comes to relations with Capitol Hill, and he has never used the "bully pulpit" anywhere near as well as some people expected him to (me included). His negotiating skills with Republicans in Congress were also atrocious, and consisted of giving away half the store before the bargaining even began. Thankfully, the radical Right shot down his most egregious giveaways to the GOP, because they wanted 100 percent of their agenda and were perfectly content to hold out on any compromise the GOP leadership came up with which fell short of their absolutist goal. This saved Social Security from drastic cuts, so it is no small thing. Obama's close ties to Wall Street were also evident from the moment he announced his economic team, and his disdain for the Left was vocally expressed by Rahm Emanuel for years. However, having said all of that, I'm pretty satisfied overall with what he's managed to accomplish. On a scale of ten, I'd give his presidency an eight or nine, personally.

My eyes are even wider open with Hillary Clinton. I know she's going to disappoint me in a number of ways. I can pretty much guarantee that her foreign policy will lead to a big disappointment, although I couldn't say where this will take place. I could easily see Clinton marching America off to a new war somewhere, just to prove she's as tough as Maggie Thatcher, for instance.

I think Hillary Clinton will be even more disappointing than Barack Obama in two big areas. I think she'll also be way too close to Wall Street -- even more so than Obama. So if she's elected, I am already prepared to cringe when I hear who her economic team will consist of. To put this another way, I don't expect Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren to have a whole lot of influence on Clinton's economic agenda. The other area I fully expect Hillary to disappoint me on is bargaining with Congress. Bill Clinton had the same problem, which is where we got "end welfare as we know it" and all the rest of his dealmaking with Newt Gingrich and company. Hillary even campaigned on being "pragmatic," which I read as: "willing to give Republicans a whole lot more than they deserve when negotiating on the budget," for example.

All of that I fully expect. I suspect I am not alone in these concerns, either. Ask any Bernie Sanders primary voter, and they'll probably echo the same worries. But what may be more surprising (to a whole lot of folks) is that I also fully expect Clinton to pretty much ignore (or just give the most minimal lip service) to a long list of her campaign promises -- specifically the ones where Bernie forced her to a more progressive position.

Hillary bills herself as a politician who can "get things done," but I just don't see her fighting very hard for (to name just one) free college for all. Or doing anything more than slapping a Band-Aid on the problem of income inequality. I'd be willing to bet that at the end of her term, Warren Buffett's secretary will still pay a higher income tax rate than he does, to put this another way.

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In short, I expect Hillary Clinton to become very good at explaining why the progressive agenda just isn't possible at the moment, and that she fought as hard as she knew how but it just isn't going to happen. She will toss some breadcrumbs to the Left, but they will likely be very small and miserly indeed. I also fully expect Hillary Clinton to do not much of anything that improves the lives of the millions of average Joes who voted for her. She'll become an expert at explaining why their needs are impossible to fill at the present time, because she will get so much practice at doing so.

I just re-read all of that, and it sounds a heck of a lot more like a list of reasons why not to vote for Clinton. Except, you know, for that whole "President Trump" nightmare scenario. I should really attempt to be more positive, so the following are the real reasons I am voting for Clinton (and not throwing my vote away on a write-in candidate).

The Supreme Court is first and foremost on this list. The next president (unless the Senate confirms Merrick Garland in the lame-duck session) will get to nominate a Supreme Court justice on their first day in office. I fully trust Hillary Clinton to make a much better choice than Donald Trump ever would. I even trust her to make a better choice than Obama's Merrick Garland nomination. I trust she'll nominate someone a lot younger, for one, which will bode well for the next few decades. It has already been decades since liberals had a clear majority on the Supreme Court, and I for one am ready for that to change for the better. Of course, in order to do this, Democrats also will need to win control of the Senate, otherwise Republicans will block any Clinton nominee for the next four years. But assuming Democrats do take back control, Hillary could shift the court to a 5-4 or even a 6-3 liberal majority. The older I get, the more I see the importance of the Supreme Court in actually bringing about concrete change to average Americans' lives. The power of Congress and the president actually pales in comparison to what the court can accomplish, with just one test case. Look no further than marriage equality, if you need proof of this. How long would it have realistically taken to get to where we are now, if gay marriage had been left up to the states? Twenty more years? Thirty?

So that's the biggest reason I will have to cast my vote for Hillary Clinton. In a normal election cycle, it's always sort of a background issue, but not a pressing one -- because nobody knows when Supreme Court justices are going to either die or retire. This time around it is different, because not only is there an open seat, but the open seat will change the balance of power on the court -- for the first time in a very long time. I want a future with a liberal Supreme Court, and I would vote for just about any Democrat to make it a reality.

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The second big reason I'm willingly voting for Hillary Clinton is that she will preserve, protect, and improve upon Barack Obama's legacy. Clinton is not going to stand for repealing Obamacare, just to state the most obvious. Clinton will not roll back any of Obama's major achievements, and she will actively seek to build upon Obama's legacy in multiple ways. In fact, I could even see Clinton being more forceful on her use of the power of the pen to reform the executive branch than Obama was. Also, I don't think Clinton will have the unrealistic expectations for bipartisanship which so hobbled Obama for his entire first term in office. Clinton knows what she can expect, and I think she'll act more decisively as a direct result.

I also trust Hillary Clinton will do the right thing in all sorts of policy areas, for the most part. Obama disappointed me, but at the same time I knew that in general he was genuinely on the right side of history (with a few very notable exceptions). I also trust Hillary in the same limited way. I think she will be an absolute champion on issues she has cared deeply about for her whole adult life (women's rights, to name the most obvious), and I think she'll be persuadable on a number of issues she has only recently gotten behind, as well. I expect incremental progress, at best (a minimum wage hike far short of $15 an hour, for instance), but progress in the right direction, at least.

Part of this is trusting that Progressives will not make the same mistake they made with Obama. The Left is not going to give Hillary Clinton any sort of benefit of the doubt. They're going to bring all the pressure they are able to bear to keep her campaign promises -- even the ones Bernie forced her to make. They won't always be successful at doing so, but the Left is not just going to take a big vacation after the election's over (the way they kind of did with Obama).

While both Clintons have been living with a sort of "bunker mentality" for decades, I truly think the whole email episode has taught Hillary a lesson. I sincerely hope she's learned from her mistake. I think if the email scandal hadn't happened she would have been a lot less transparent in the White House than she will now be forced to be. All in all, I think that's a good thing.

Do I think Hillary Clinton will make mistakes as president? Yes, I do. But then I'd say that about anyone, really. Nobody's perfect. Will Hillary be hounded from her first day in office by Republicans in Congress? Yes, she will. But perhaps if both she and her husband work hard to open better lines of communication with Congress, in the end she'll be able to accomplish some things. Nowhere near what she is now promising, but a lot more than total and absolute gridlock.

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If Obama's presidency rated an eight or nine from me, I think I'd be happy if Hillary Clinton left office only scoring a six or a seven. If she does the right thing more times than not, then I will not wind up regretting my vote, to put it another way. Actually, to be honest, I don't foresee anything (short of World War III breaking out over Ukraine) that could cause me to have second thoughts about voting for Clinton over the alternative. So I end where I began -- Hillary Clinton is a sane and intelligent individual. She is, in fact, the only sane and intelligent choice for president. And that's enough reason right there to vote for her. Say what you will about Hillary Clinton, at the end of the day she is not Donald Trump. Case closed.

A bit of optimism

As promised, today we'd like to end on a somewhat positive note. It's a wonky idea, but no matter how the election comes out, we fully believe it is a possibility. So if you're tired of all the steaming piles of negativity from this election cycle, here's something to (possibly) look forward to.

Without a doubt, 2016 will go down in American history as one of the ugliest election years we've ever had. After eight years of Barack Obama, most people will be voting this time against a candidate, rather than wholeheartedly for their candidate of choice. It's impossible to even count how many traditions and norms have been tossed out the window in the wake of Donald Trump's candidacy. Will America revert back to these norms the next time around, or will the Trumpian campaign truly become he new normal? It's impossible to predict.

No matter who wins on Tuesday night, roughly half the country is going to be enraged (or just terrified) by the result. The normal feelings of defeat will be amplified beyond anything the country's seen, at least since Bush v. Gore. The invective directed towards both candidates has been downright apocalyptic, and nobody has any idea how the endgame is going to play out. Will there be violence at the polls? It's a real possibility, this time around. Will the loser graciously concede? Hard to tell. The most frightening nightmare scenario yet is that several states (enough to flip the race in the Electoral College) are so close that recounts are demanded, court cases are filed, and two such cases both make it to the Supreme Court -- which is divided 4-4, meaning they cannot issue a ruling which is binding on the entire country. It'll depend on what the appellate courts have ruled -- even if there are two rulings which contradict each other. If even the Supreme Court is powerless to step in and adjudicate the election (as they did in 2000), what happens next? Pitchforks and torches in the streets? "Nightmare scenario" doesn't adequately describe what could happen.

It's incredibly hard to paint a more optimistic outcome, but we're going to make the attempt. Because we can see a possible silver lining to how the 2016 election plays out. And this scenario could even happen no matter who wins -- which is why it's even a possibility to begin with.

This election could -- in much the same way as happened in 2000 -- put a spotlight on how antediluvian some of our election process has become. This has been exacerbated by the Supreme Court's decision a few years ago which nullified large sections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It's an astonishing fact, but while many rights are given an iron-clad guarantee by the United States Constitution, the right to vote is not actually among them. This is the foundation upon which a new voting rights act can be built, in a bipartisan way. Whichever party wins the White House and whichever party wins control of the houses of Congress should join together in a call to modernize and update our voting process, in every state. First and foremost among the reforms would be a clear statement in federal law that each citizen has the right to vote in federal elections. Period.

Upon this foundation, both parties could address their concerns with the voting process. Minimum federal elections standards should be clearly spelled out, forcing every state to come into compliance before the 2020 election (at the very least). The first and foremost of these should be a requirement that a paper trail be generated for each and every vote. Currently, there are still several states who cannot perform any sort of accurate recount because there simply is no paper trail for each vote. Pennsylvania is one of these. The entire election could come down to who wins in Pennsylvania. If this is the case, and if the vote is very close, there is sure to be a good deal of outrage when everyone realizes that a "recount" just means reading the totals off all the voting machines, and trusting that they're right. This is, in a word, unacceptable.

Start with a requirement that every vote be recorded on paper in some fashion, and build from there. We are halfway through the second decade of the twenty-first century, and technology exists which can solve all sorts of problems, both real and perceived. So mandate the use of such technology! Republicans have only themselves to blame for Trump's insistence that the vote will be "rigged," because they've been chasing the phantom fear of "voter fraud" for a long time now. They've instituted "voter ID" laws to counter this supposed rampant cheating, and it is sure to be a big item on the Republicans' wish list, if a new federal voting rights act is drawn up. So go one step further -- mandate some sort of biological record for registration. When you register, a thumbprint should be provided (using an electronic thumbprint reader -- this is the twenty-first century, after all), and then require thumbprints at the polls or a thumbprint on an absentee ballot. This not only removes all question of voting multiple times, it also means non-citizens will not even attempt to vote (thumbprints are already on file for all legal immigrants -- and any undocumented immigrant would be told that they would never be allowed to apply for legal residence if they ever attempt to vote illegally).

All voters should be registered automatically every time they interact with their state's motor vehicles department, unless they specifically state they don't want to be registered to vote. A few states have already passed such laws, and they have been working wonderfully. Registration rolls are up, and people's information is updated automatically (when most people move house, they'll usually update their drivers' license or vehicle registration but many forget to update their voter registration too). Tie in the voter registration rolls to death records as well -- so that anyone who dies is automatically removed from the voter rolls. This stuff ain't rocket science, it just involves modernizing each state's computer networks.

Speaking of computers, federal law should dictate that no voting machine anywhere be plugged into the internet at any time. None. Ever. Votes from each machine should be recorded locally, and then phoned in to the state capitol. This precludes any and all attempts to hack voting machines via the internet, permanently. It's a pathetically easy fix to make, in fact.

A new federal voting right act should also mandate that absentee ballots are each citizen's right, if they choose to vote this way -- for any reason under the sun. All they should have to do is request a mail-in ballot, and they should be automatically provided with one. It's a little-known fact (outside of such states) that many states tightly restrict who may use an absentee or mail-in ballot. In some states, the voter must actually prove they will be physically absent from their precinct on Election Day in order to qualify for an absentee ballot. This is ridiculous. It should be each and every citizen's right to make their own mind up about how they want to cast their ballot -- in person on Election Day, or sitting at home in their pajamas, a week earlier. The state should have no say in this decision whatsoever. Period.

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Likewise, there should be federal standards for provisional ballots. If you show up to vote and your name (for some reason) isn't on the voter rolls, you should be able to cast a provisional ballot and then prove later on that you have indeed registered to vote. Such rules should be uniform, across all states.

Election Day needs to become Election Days. The reason we vote on Tuesdays is a historical hangover we have long since outgrown. Back in the eighteenth century, when the date was set in stone, America was rural and the fastest transportation available was the horse. Instant communications did not exist. Time have changed. The workweek has changed. There simply is no problem with farmers getting to market anymore (one big reason Tuesday was chosen). All states should be required to open polling sites on both the Saturday and the Sunday immediately preceding the traditional Tuesday. There is no reason not to expand the election in such a fashion except to make it harder for many citizens to vote. States could continue to have early voting on other days before the election, but the weekend before the traditional date would also be set in stone -- everyone should be able to vote on Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday.

Polling sites should be convenient, as well. Federal minimum standards should be set which dictate the number of polling stations for all population densities. If there are X many people per square mile, then there need to be Y polling sites in that precinct. This requirement should even dictate how many polling booths are available at each site, based on population density. Take the decision for where to locate polling stations out of the hands of partisan election officials, and we will never again see 4-hour lines in precincts full of the opposite party's voters.

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The right to vote should be absolute. States should be forbidden from permanently barring anyone from voting unless that person is currently in prison or on parole -- in other words, still serving out a sentence for a crime. Once the sentence is over, they should automatically be allowed to vote once again. When their debt to society has been paid, it should be paid in full. The only people who deserve to have their voting rights taken away from them forever should be people serving life sentences. Period. When a felon's time is served, they should become a full member of society again, with a vested interest in who represents them in government, and not relegated to some permanent non-represented underclass for the rest of their lives.

Some of these ideas (that last one, in particular) will generate some partisan opposition. But most of them shouldn't. Voting should be every citizen's right, and that should be guaranteed in an iron-clad federal law. State-level hanky-panky with polling sites or absentee ballots or early voting should be done away with forever. Every citizen should also be fully confident that their vote will be accurately counted, and documented on paper. They should also be confident that nobody who isn't a citizen in good standing will be able to vote, and that each citizen will only have one vote counted.

These are basic guarantees that really should already exist. For the most part, building confidence in the election process and the election's result should be wholeheartedly supported by both parties. The voting process should be easy and convenient, with as few hoops to jump through as possible. Everyone should be confident that the process is in no way "rigged" at all.

This is probably too optimistic to hope for. Partisanship will undoubtedly rear its ugly head. But it really shouldn't. If half the country is outraged over the result of an election, the obvious answer is to reform the election process so that in the future everyone will at least be confident the process is fair and transparent. The impetus for proposing legislation to guarantee this will probably come from whichever party loses next Tuesday. But even the winning party should have valid concerns over how creaky and outdated our election process as been allowed to become. If both parties come together with a list of problems they want to see fixed forever, then perhaps compromise legislation could actually be possible.

No matter which half of America is outraged at the result next Tuesday, Congress should immediately begin work on reforming the election system so that, in the future, the only outrage even possible will be over who won and who lost. There simply should not be any concerns over the voting process at all. No candidate should ever again be able to plausibly warn of a "rigged" election, period.

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Ironically, the messier the results next Tuesday, the easier it might be to pass such legislation. If there are recounts and court challenges, it will only serve to expose how outdated and insufficient federal election laws have become. Government is always the last to adopt technology (because it's expensive, and often easier to use older machines), but in this case reform should be mandated by Washington no matter what the cost (the federal government should help defray such costs, it almost goes without saying). We went through a spate of such reforms after the 2000 election, and many states got rid of voting systems that didn't work very well. Unfortunately, many of them turned to paperless electronic voting as a result -- and some of these haven't changed since.

Having another close election -- one guaranteed to outrage millions -- would open the door for enacting a new voting rights act for the twenty-first century. It would be the silver lining on a very contentious race, and it would allow the losers to at least be convinced that any problems -- real or perceived -- are being addressed and dealt with before the next presidential election happens. Such an outcome would at the very least provide even the losers with some optimism for the future. No matter who wins, bipartisan legislation is going to be very tough to put together on all sorts of pressing issues. Passions are still going to run very high in Congress. But fixing the flaws in our voting system should be an opportunity for Congress to actually do some good. If both parties' concerns are addressed, it could be the biggest bipartisan reform effort undertaken in a very long time. After such a vicious election, it could indeed be the only thing that the parties could possibly agree upon. Which is why we're cautiously optimistic that some good could actually come out of the 2016 election.

Chris Weigant blogs at:

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 25: Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) (C) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) talk after an adress to a joint meeting of Congress by Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani (L) in the House Chamber at the U.S. Capitol March 25, 2015 in Washington, DC. Ghani and Afghanistan Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah have been in Washington all week for meetings with President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Ash Carter and other administration officials. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Co-Authored by Maclen Zilber, Democratic Strategist and Campaign Consultant based in Hollywood, CA

Despite the recent scandal swirling around FBI Director James Comey stemming from his controversial and unprecedented engagement in the 2016 race for the White House, most public opinion polls continue to show that Hillary Clinton has a firm structural electoral college advantage in the race to become America's 45th President.

If Clinton prevails, her win could bode well for a number of California's Democratic heavy-hitters. In fact, given the draw and prestige of cabinet positions, and the state's deep bench of rising stars on the blue team, if Clinton wanted to, she could fill nearly her entire cabinet with Golden State occupants.

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Atop the list of blue-chip California candidates for possible cabinet posts could be one or both of our state's distinguished Senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. Both are longtime Clinton allies, and both have a pragmatic, get-things-done approach that is very similar to Secretary Clinton's.

It's no secret. The state's two Senators, both ushered into office during 1992's "year of the woman" wave, have long been confidants and proponents of Clinton. The question is, with Boxer retiring this year, and Feinstein closing in on the end of her latest term, do either of them have the interest or inclination in serving in a cabinet position?

Simultaneously elected in 1992, both Feinstein and Boxer rode a Democratic wave to Congress' upper house on the coattails of then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton's bid for the Presidency. Ever since, the pair's relationship with the Clintons has blossomed into a strong friendship and partnership.

In 2008, Feinstein presided over the much-discussed "kumbaya" meeting between then-Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton after their bitter, drawn-out primary battle. The meeting sowed the seeds of Clinton's endorsement of Obama, and ultimately put her on a trajectory toward becoming Secretary of State. Both Senators were early, outspoken advocates for Clinton's 2016 Presidential bid, and played key roles in helping deliver her a resounding victory in California's June primary election.

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Given the depth of their experience, Feinstein and Boxer could fill a range of cabinet positions, particularly when it comes to foreign relations. The duo have expansive backgrounds in foreign policy and either could be tapped for the coveted job of Secretary of State, or perhaps the civilian oversight position of the Department of Defense as its next Secretary.

Feinstein is currently the ranking Democrat on the Senate's Intelligence committee, and previously served as Chair. She's also a member of the Senate's subcommittees on Defense, as well as Crime and Terrorism. Boxer serves on the Foreign Relations committee, and subcommittees on East Asian and Pacific Affairs; on Near Eastern and South Central Asian Affairs; and on the Western Hemisphere, Peace Corps, and Narcotics Affairs.

While Secretary of State or Defense Administration positions seem well suited for either one of California's Senators, the fact is that both could easily do the job of myriad other cabinet posts.

If elected President, Clinton has pledged that women will make up more than half of her cabinet. Here's the kicker: all but a handful of the Democratic women in the U.S. Senate represent states that are either swing states or that have Republican Governors who could fill a Senate vacancy, making California's Senators among the few women in the Senate who could be elevated without hurting the Democrats' chance at a Senate majority.

This will be extra important, and likely a key element of Clinton's political calculus as she considers who to appoint in her Administration, since the Democrats may well have a slim majority in the next Senate.

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The U.S. Supreme Court stands in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, June 22, 2015. The high court will decide by the end of the month whether the Constitution gives gays the right to marry. The court's actions until now have suggested that a majority of the nine justices will vote to legalize same-sex weddings nationwide. Photographer: Drew Angerer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

With luck the U.S. presidential election results will be decisive on November 8. There will be a clear winner and no election disputes will emerge. Yet as the polls tighten nationally and in critical swing states there are possibilities of a contested election. Were that to happen, one cannot count on either Congress or the Supreme Court to resolve the matter. It is entirely possible that the political polarization that has divided the United States might set the country up for a post-election battle that might make Florida 2000 and Bush v Gore pale by comparison.

The November 8, elections could fail to be conclusive in many ways. It could be a split in the electoral versus the popular vote winner. Or no one receiving a majority of the electoral vote because of a 269-269 tie. Or maybe a third party candidate wins some electoral votes. Or there is a faithless elector who fails to cast a vote for Trump or Clinton. Or simply there are disputes over the actual popular vote in a specific state or legal questions about voter fraud, intimidation or suppression. Or maybe there is dispute in ballot counting in Florida, Ohio, or another close state. In a highly partisan and closely divided election as we have seen where even the most basic facts about voter fraud or global warming are disputed, a less than conclusive result might portend a contentious post-election legal or political battle to resolve the presidency. This might be the case whether it is Trump or Clinton who is the loser. The stakes for the presidency are so high that one could see either challenging the result.

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It is not the specter of violence or tanks in the street on November 9, as fantasized by so many postings in social media, fed by heated pre-election rhetoric. It is not as extreme as Trump saying he might not accept the validity of the election. Instead, there are legitimate reasons why there could be post-election disputes. In many states, automatic recounts are required when the margin of victory is small, such as a half of percent or less. Recounting of ballots, finding errors, or even finding uncounted ballots often adjusts final totals. In the case of Minnesota where I am, back in 2008 Al Franken emerged as the winner for the U.S. Senate race nearly eight months after the election, reversing what appeared to be a 215 vote win for his opponent by eking out a 225 vote victory. Franken's victory was a result of a legitimate legal battle that culminated in a Minnesota Supreme Court decision in his favor. Close races in some states might trigger court fights.

Sixteen years ago in Florida questions about election procedures and ascertaining voter intent in three Florida counties led Al Gore initially legally to protest and then contest the election results, correctly demanding a recount because the Bush margin of victory was so close. Eventually, the US Supreme Court had to resolve the dispute, ending the election in favor of Bush by halting the recount. To this day its decision Bush v Gore remains one of the most contentious decisions ever, with Democrats decrying that it was a partisan court that stole the election from Gore who had won the national popular vote. But this year with a Supreme Court short one Justice and divided 4-4 with an equal number of Democratic and Republican Justices, if a case were to reach to resolve the presidential election it might be unable to do so.

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Consider also what might happen if neither Clinton nor Trump gets a majority of the electoral vote. The Constitution and the federal law dictate that the Congress that is elected this November will resolve the issue in January. The House is tasked the responsibility to select the president, the Senate picks the vice-president. Assume Republicans retain control of the House, the Democrats take the Senate. We could wind up with President Trump and Vice-President Kaine.

Even worse, the law that dictates how Congress counts the electoral votes -- The Electoral Count Act of 1887-passed a decade after the disputed 1876 presidential election, might well be unconstitutional because it forces the House and Senate to act in ways which makes each chamber the ultimate judge of their own internal procedural rules. Or a divided Congress might just refuse to cooperate. Yet without a Supreme Court able to resolve any disagreements here, who knows what could happen and the fight to select the next president could languish for months in Congress or in the lower courts.
For 10 years, a weather satellite named GOES-East has been flying 22,300 miles above Earth staring at the eastern half of the United States down to South America at snow storms and hurricanes, sending information to the ground for meteorologists to build their forecasts.

In satellite years, that's a long time to stare without blinking.

It's watched big storms like Hurricane Sandy shut down the mid-Atlantic region and Washington, D.C.'s, "Snowzilla" shut down the federal government. It also watched Hurricane Matthew recently threaten its new sibling, the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R (GOES-R), in a Florida storage facility.

Matthew looked like it would directly hit the Kennedy Space Center along Florida's East Coast as a Category 4 storm. Instead, it was downgraded to a Category 3 with the eye staying 30-to-40 miles off shore. It spared GOES-R but there was millions of dollars-worth of damage at Kennedy that has delayed GOES-R's launch.

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Some journalists noted the irony of one weather satellite watching a massive storm heading toward another, more advanced weather satellite that has been touted as a game changer in the weather community. Mashable noted: "Lying directly in the path of fearsome Hurricane Matthew ... is America's next-generation, $1.2 billion weather satellite." The Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang: "GOES-R, our next-gen weather satellite, is delayed by a hurricane. Of course."

The new weather satellite is such big news that NBC's Al Roker filmed a segment for Today touting its benefits.

The presence of GOES-R in the Cape Canaveral, Fla., clean room might have gone unnoticed except that a new weather satellite is a big deal for two reasons. First, it has been more than 20 years since new technology has been invested in our weather satellites. Second, it is part of the formula to help the country save lives and billions of dollars in economic impact over the course of a decade.

GOES-East and GOES-West, which stares at the West Coast, are using technology developed in the 1990s. Imagine still using a pager versus today's smart phones. The difference will be stark. The same will be true when GOES-R is operational.

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The pixelated, jerky video you see now of storms like Hurricane Matthew will be smooth and movie-quality because imagery will be captured every 30 seconds, five times more frequently, and in more detail.

Storm imagery will be more enhanced because the resolution will be four times better than today, enabling meteorologists to know more about cloud structures and a hurricane's eye.

The on-board digital camera will also see what the naked eye can't with three times the number of filters to tell us more about moisture, sea surface temperatures and other factors influencing severe weather.

Updates will come five times faster than today because of the camera's speed and ground system's processing capabilities that will deliver data into the hands of the National Weather Service in 30 seconds.

All of these upgrades will help meteorologists better understand storms and their paths, how they develop and how they change over time. Communities will know earlier about tornado activity so residents can take shelter faster. They will know more about potential flooding and whether to evacuate.

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Yet, that Americans talk about tacos instead of Caribbean platanos or Salvadoran pupusas, is not only about simplifying matters. The Latino community is extremely diverse, but those of Mexican origin are clearly the majority: 65% of 56 million people. And the Mexican prominence goes beyond numbers. It is also about their greater weight on American memory and deeper roots in the physical landscape. The fact that tortillas were eaten in North America long before the arrival of the British with their sour bread, and that the nation's southwest was Mexican territory until a bit over a century and a half ago, means that Mexicans are just as (if not more) part of this land than the Pilgrims. It likewise implies that since much of the United States was once Mexican territory, some day, it could be Mexican again.



Moreover, the culinary metaphor entails a rhetorical continuity: since the nineteenth century, the integration of immigrants to the United States has been fundamentally considered a problem of (in) digestion and absorption of foreign and inferior bodies. Accordingly, its discursive solution has been a culinary trope: the melting pot, or the fusion of distinct groups into a new and harmonious national stew where all cultural differences (if not racial ones) would dissolve. The ease with which the national is linked to food is such that even when Black and Latino social movements could no longer swallow the melting pot theory during the 1970s, the metaphor was revised, but not its fundamental referent. The nation went from being a boneless broth to a salad bowl where all ethnic and racial groups could co-exist side by side but not blend.



This is why politics cannot escape the food metaphor and is constantly marinating in it. A classic example comes from East Haven, Connecticut, a town of 29,000 inhabitants, 10% of whom are Latino. In 2012, the FBI arrested four officers for systematically intimidating, harassing, and using excessive force against Latino residents over the course of three years. Then, the inevitable happened: When the press asked the mayor, the honorable Joseph Maturo Jr., how he planned to help the community given the police's abusive behavior, he reportedly said: "I might have tacos when I go home."



Even though a large number of Latinos living in East Haven are not Mexican but Ecuadorian, they understand that for national purposes, all Latinos are considered tacos. So, they responded in kind and without delay. The next day, an activist group created a cell phone number allowing anyone to send a taco to the mayor. The result: two days after his comment, dozens of delivery drivers dropped off more than 500 tacos at the doorstep of the mayor's office. The message: eat it!



To eat or to be eaten, that is the question plaguing many Anglos as they contemplate the inevitable: in less than forty years they will no longer be the national majority. The idea, however, is hard to stomach, and with good reason: for several centuries, the Anglo aspiration had been to fly the star spangled banner from north to south in a Pax Americana, where Central America supplied bananas, Cuba and Puerto Rico sugarcane, and Mexico arms to pick tomatoes. But the goose is crooked: Today not a few whites feel that it is the Mexican flag that waves high and low on their territory, including on taco trucks, those roving food establishments whose arrival clearly announces that any given neighborhood's palate has crossed over to the other side.



In other words, the fear unleashed by greater visibility and political influence is that Latinos will demand what most whites have always taken for granted: the whole enchilada, la cosa completa, that is to say, everything. This is the root of anti-Latino measures that have been cooked in Alabama, Georgia, and Arizona in recent years, from empowering the police to pull over anyone who "looks" Mexican, to banning Chicano studies in colleges and universities. The anti-immigrant political scientist, Samuel Huntington once called the hallucination of Latino domination reconquista, the re-conquest. That is, a slow but steady push in which the United States would dissolve into a catholic, corrupt, and chaotic sauce, prepared to New England's distaste. This tacophobia, however, is groundless.



The Latino community is one that eats and let's others eat as they please, literally. For instance, when Latinos settle in towns and cities in the south, where the Hispanic population has grown the most in the last decade, small business owners buy restaurants on the verge of bankruptcy that were once called "Joe's," "Carmine's," or "Mamma Jennies." Contrary to expectations, many Latino owners often keep not only the original name, but also part of the old establishment's menu. Next to the guacamole and quesadillas, they offer hamburgers, French fries, and why not, even ketchup. And it must be said that Latino cooks are truly ecumenical. Meaning, they can cook anything. Just look at the back of any restaurant and you'll find that a good number of those boiling pasta, frying falafels, or seasoning tikka masala, are Latinos.



In addition, they are open to being eaten. Latinos have among the highest rates of intermarriage with other ethnic and racial groups despite the country's entrenched and enduring segregation. In this way, Latinidad both adds and accepts substitutes. You can wrap a tamal in foil, or serve Chinese rice with fried plantains. You can speak English, Spanglish, and/or, Quechua. You can listen to bachata and rap. You can go by Bill Richardson, Jennifer Lopez, or Pitbull.



In the end, the notion of a crushing corn mass, which expands and blankets everything, exists only in the mind of nativists. Most Latinos neither want the whole enchilada, nor that everyone only eat enchiladas -- even if for now they are seen by some as a fatal reiteration of Moctezuma's revenge.
Two weeks ago, the Prime Ministers of Serbia and Albania met in Belgrade to talk about issues that threaten the stability of Southeastern Europe. The fragile relations among the former Yugoslav members, rise of nationalism, and migration were identified as some of the most important challenges that could destabilize the region. However, the prospects of future crises stemming from global warming and consequent regional climate changes were not included in their agenda. With the most recent climate change reports warning about the adverse impacts of global warming on regional water sources, these leaders, together with their regional counterparts, may want to reevaluate and direct their policies to understand, mitigate, and adapt to the predicted environmental risks. Failure to respond to the growing climate related crisis will lead to a shortage of clean water for the region, and render futile any of the international or domestic stability efforts in the region.

Decade of wars in former Yugoslavia, which engulfed Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo, and Macedonia, left the region in ruin. Postwar development concentrated its efforts on a "return to normalcy." This meant rebuilding destroyed homes, roads, electric grids, and similar destroyed infrastructure; attracting much needed foreign investment; and establishing governing institutions rooted in the rule of law. The newly established governments and international development efforts gave very little, if any, consideration to water and sanitation infrastructure, and related issues. These two issues, together with agriculture, are the most vulnerable elements of a national socio-economic system in light of predicted climate change trends. Consequently, this left the former regions of Yugoslavia with outdated information, decaying infrastructure, and no national and regional water, sanitation, and agriculture strategies. Due to the recent global warming and climate changes, these countries will experience a "threat multiplier," exacerbating these climate related threats in already unstable regions.

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Dr. Kiril D. Hristovski, Arizona State University professor and a leading authority on water and sanitation in these former Yugoslav republics, has been studying the long term impacts of climate change on water and sanitation trends in the region for more than twenty years. "In the next few decades, the region will encounter serious water, agriculture, and sanitation crises that necessitate an urgent response. There are three factors that impede the government from developing any immediate and sustainable solutions: lack of national or regional water plans, lack of data, and the lack of political will." Simply speaking, the region does not have any reliable data to develop management plans for issues related to their surface or groundwater balances, water quality, and pollution generation. Kosovo was left out of the study for lack of data. Dr. Hristovski warns that governments need to adequately characterize their available water potential and begin to better monitor the fluctuations in existing water resources and their quality if they want to create appropriate strategies to prevent an economic and social crisis in the near future.

The situation is most dire when it comes to water quality. The region's water supply is seriously polluted, especially in the downstream river segments with exceedingly high fecal matter or nutrient concentrations, which often results in mass destruction of aquatic life. For example, only about 5% of the sewage is adequately treated before being discharged into the surface waters; and this often represents an overestimate. To minimize aquatic pollution, Dr. Hristovski warns the region needs to update and expand its water quality regulations. "Existing regulations that ensure water quality are antiquated or mix from former Yugoslavia and EU regulations. These are full of inconsistencies and do not provide clear protocols, personnel, or funding that ensure proper water quality monitoring and protection."

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Beyond regulations, the deteriorating water infrastructure, which was built more than 30 years ago during Yugoslavia's industrial heyday, is the primary cause for potable water losses. It is estimated that over 50% of treated potable water is lost during transport from the water treatment plants to the end-users due to deteriorating infrastructure. These losses are an order of magnitude higher than ones reported for Germany, for example. Assuming a realistic price for treated water of $0.3/m3, Hristovski estimates that the annual dollar value for this loss of potable water in Montenegro is about $19 million, in Macedonia is about $43 million, in Bosnia is about $53 million and in Serbia is about $62 million. "The water loss problem could not be easily resolved by simply fixing the leaking pipes because there is an absence of accurate underground cadaster that describes the exact locations of the buried pipes." says Dr. Hristovski.

Dr. Richard Rushforth, a researcher who studies the global food-energy-water system, warns that with such high levels of potable water losses, and with the vast majority of non-potable water devoted to power generation, the former Yugoslav republics need to work in together to prevent a regional crises. Failure to do so can lead to crop failures, power outages, further deterioration of water quality thereby increasing tensions, not only between the countries for water access, but also intersectoral tensions between power generators, farmers, and cities that need water for its residents within each respective country. In addition to developing national water resource plans, Dr. Rushforth recommends the region, "develop transboundary river basin plans, that promote regional coordination, prevent high amounts of water loss, and account for climate change scenarios, could prevent the loss of millions of dollars to the economies of Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia, and Serbia."

But as Rushforth notes, " they [the former Yugoslav Republics] also need to focus on building hydro-economic security by rehabbing or rebuilding failing infrastructure, establishing robust hydrological monitoring networks, and moving toward more water efficient forms of power generation, which are cleaner and less polluting" Dr. Rushforth believes the former Yugoslav members can then utilize the water savings to improve public health, restore and conserve threatened ecosystems, increase agricultural production, and ultimately develop new sectors of the economy that produce greater value to society per liter of water.

To successfully implement these changes, the former Yugoslav republics may need to reconsider their old motto "brotherhood and unity" and address water security as the current regional threat it is rather than relegating water planning to future generations.
This election is coming down to the wire. Pundits are predicting a tightening race with Donald Trump now having a better than one-in-three shot at becoming the next president of the United States.

Plainly stated, this election is a choice between freedom and fascism. And I do not use those words lightly.

Hillary Clinton advances a positive, inclusive vision for our country. An America where we respect the dignity of one another, the dignity of work, the freedom of religion, and the common good we share as Americans. An America where our diversity is our greatest strength. An America where we acknowledge truths about ourselves, the injustices we still must overcome, and the better country we should always wish to be.

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Donald Trump -- from the first day of his campaign to this day -- has sought to turn us against one another. He preys on economic fears and old hates. Tells us ethnic and religious minority groups are trying to steal our greatness. Questions the legitimacy of our elections. Encourages his supporters to resort to violence. Promises to jail his opponent if he wins. Fans the coals of a militant white nationalism. Promises to use our military to torture and commit other war crimes in our name. Encourages Russian cyber thieves to break into the Democratic National Committee's email system.

As president, Hillary Clinton will work to address climate change, to pass comprehensive immigration reform, to reform our criminal justice system, to protect LGBT rights, to make college affordable for all. She will work to build an economy that works for all of us again.

As president, Donald Trump would lock up millions of our neighbors in for-profit immigrant internment camps, and issue religious ID cards to our Muslim American neighbors. He would make income inequality worse with tax cuts for the super-wealthy at the expense of our children's stronger country. He would make a complex world more dangerous and more unstable.

That is why I am working to elect Hillary Clinton - the only responsible choice. And that is why I've gone all in to help elect her as our next president. Before Election Day, I will have spoken at more than 80 events in 19 states and the District of Columbia. I have keynoted Democratic Party dinners in seven states. And in between campaign stops for Hillary and Democrats up and down the ballot, I have, so far, called into 26 radio shows and appeared on 17 cable TV segments -- eight of which were on Fox News. (That's true commitment!)

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If you agree that we must repudiate the hate-filled candidacy of Donald Trump and keep him far away from the White House, then I hope you will join me these last few days in going all out for Hillary Clinton.

If you live in Maryland or another state that already heavily favors Secretary Clinton, take a day trip (or more!) to the nearest battleground state to knock on the doors of your fellow Americans. If you can't travel, join your neighbors at a local Democratic office to make calls on behalf of the campaign to swing states. Most importantly, make sure that each and every one of your friends and family members votes.

It's now or never. The next four years will determine the next forty. Make each day count.
FBI Director James Comey's brief letter to eight Congressional committee chairpersons updating them that the FBI would investigate further emails from Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton found on the computer of her aide's husband, Anthony Weiner, has shifted the Presidential polls. FBI director James Comey feared "being misunderstood," but surely he knew that Mr. Trump and partisan media would swing into full conspiracy theory combat. From a short note that the FBI would look at more emails, Mr. Trump declared this was an event "bigger than Watergate" and Republican politicians warned of a "constitutional crisis." Let's put her use of a private email server in perspective amidst the spin.

I. Normalcy of Personal/Unclassified Server Use by Government Officials

Government workers routinely use private email regarding their personal communications, including the Republican-designated Director of the CIA. Government officials, even when using government servers for work, have been commonly found to send classified information over unclassified servers. Many agencies routinely fail to retain email records, which is often due to lack of sufficient funding to construct adequate networks and servers.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell not only used a personal email server similarly to Secretary Clinton, but he even advised her to do the same. Powell "told Clinton his use of personal email 'vastly improved' communications within the department, which at the time did not have an equivalent internal system." Condoleezza Rice's aides appear to have received classified information through a private server. A 2016 Office of Inspector General Evaluation of Email Records Management and Cybersecurity Requirements concluded: "Longstanding, systemic weaknesses related to electronic records and communications have existed within the Office of the Secretary that go well beyond the tenure of any one Secretary of State." Hillary Clinton inherited this situation as Secretary of State. She did not cause it. It appears, in fact, that "John F. Kerry is the first secretary of state to rely on a government e-mail account."

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II. Hypocrisy regarding Bush Administration Email Practices

Although Trump's surrogates howl of a constitutional crisis because Hillary used a private server for 30 thousand lost emails that were allegedly private, they remain silent about the 22 million emails lost during the Bush Administration, including over clearly illegal actions, such as the authorization of torture, black sites for holding prisoners, and manipulating evidence to go to war, following which the Bush administration refused to cooperate and hand over emails while in power. Republican operator Karl Rove used a private, Republican National Committee-hosted server for official business while he was in the White House. Evidence from an investigation connected to a subpoena suggested that Rove fired U.S. Attorney David Iglesias for refusing to pursue cases against Democrats. One can only imagine what would happen if Donald Trump were President. Yet conservative media attack Hillary Clinton merely for using private emails with no evidence regarding abuse of power.

The alleged crime of Hillary Clinton is that an officer knowingly removes documents or materials containing classified information with the intent to retain such information at an unauthorized location (18 U.S.C.  1924). But there is no evidence that such occurred and extremely unlikely that it will emerge.

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III. Retaining Perspective

The Trump campaign's strategy has been to create public doubt regarding illegality, hoping that if they repeat "email scandal" stridently enough, the scandal will become real in Americans' minds. They can then draw attention from candidate Trump's actual behavior, from his taped recordings of grabbing women by the "p*ssy," to fifteen women going on record that he sexually assaulted them, to his calling on a foreign power (Russia) to hack into a former Secretary of State's email (which seems treasonous), to his refusal to release his tax returns which could show illegality, to his threats of violence and thin-veiled calls for assassinating his opponent, to his threats against media freedom, to his threat not to concede if he loses the election.
The combination Trump's "misogyny," last year's murders at a Colorado Springs clinic, and the popularity of Planned Parenthood is translating into votes for pro-choice candidates in Colorado, according to Planned Parenthood Votes Colorado (PPVC) Director Sarah Taylor-Nanista.

"Violent rhetoric across the country angers women, but there is a specific connection in Colorado, where we just saw how violent anti-choice language actually ended up hurting people," said Taylor-Nanista. "And I think it's hitting home among women voters in a profound way."

Trying to take advantage of this election climate, PPVC is executing a multi-prong strategy to push pro-choice voters, particularly women, to the polls.

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Under a $250,000 state-wide program, PPVC staff has knocked on over 6,000 doors, called over 13,000 voters, launched 10 mail pieces, and pushed earned and digital communications efforts focusing on reproductive health messages, including abortion access, according to Taylor-Nanista.

Taylor-Nanista said internal polling shows Planned Parenthood's approval rating in Colorado to be over 65 percent.

"Beyond just the state of Colorado, we're seeing nationally that defunding Planned Parenthood is one of the biggest incentives for people to get out and vote this year," said Taylor-Nanista. "It's a message that's resonating over and over."

Asked for a response to the alleged good will that voters feel toward Planned Parenthood, Leslie Hanks, a Denver-based spokeswoman for American Right to Life, said via email that Planned Parenthood staff should be put on trial for murder.

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"Nothing generates 'good will' like parsing out baby body parts to increase Planned Murderhood's bottom line!" wrote Hanks. "America needs another round of Nuremberg Trials."

There's no evidence Planned Parenthood profits from the sale fetal tissue, and exhaustive investigations have concluded that Planned Parenthood has broken no laws.

"In this election, where there is so much emphasis on misogyny and violence against women, Planned Parenthood is a perfect messenger," said Taylor-Nanista. "We're seeing that. Our partners see that. We are in a place to make an incredible impact this year."

"Folks are coming to us and saying, 'Can we use your messaging to further our own program?'"

In Colorado, PPVC is focusing on three key suburban state-senate districts and one state-house district, where women are widely seen as a swing voter bloc, and are responding favorably to the positions of candidates on women's health issues, including abortion access, according to Taylor-Nanista.

In an Arvada state-senate race that's pivotal to Democrats' hopes of taking control of Colorado government, incumbent Republican State Sen. Laura Woods has called for defunding Planned Parenthood and favors a total abortion ban, while her opponent for the Senate District 19 seat, Democrat Rachel Zenzinger, is pro-choice.

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If Planned Parenthood lost federal funding, the organization would be forced to turn away about 1,000 low-income patients, whose care is provided by federal funding, at its Arvada clinic, in Woods' district, according to Planned Parenthood.

PPVC canvassers in the Arvada/Westminster district have visited and called hundreds of voters, mailed multiple ads, and pushed pro-choice messages out on multiple digital platforms.
ELKO  Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is planning to make a campaign appearance in Elko on behalf of presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to local Republicans.

Giuliani will fly here Saturday evening after Trump holds a 5 p.m. rally in Reno, said Lee Hoffman, Elko County Republican Party chairman.

Mayor Chris Johnson said the event will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the main Elko airport terminal, with Giuliani speaking at around 7:30.

Earlier plans by Trump and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, to visit Elko did not pan out.

It would have been good to see him in person, Johnson said of Trump, but he is very excited that Giuliani will be campaigning here for him.

Johnson has been a Trump supporter since the primaries.

Hes definitely gaining momentum, Johnson said, pointing out problems with Hillary Clintons campaign and an improvement in Trumps mannerisms.

Giuliani has been appearing across the country in recent weeks with members of Trumps family on the home stretch into Tuesdays election.

He was mayor of New York from 1994 to 2001, including at the time of the 9/11 attacks.
If Hillary Clinton loses a very tight election her ace-in-the-hole could be Russia.

Corporate media reacted harshly when Donald Trump said in the last debate that he would wait and see what happens before accepting the election results. "I will keep you in suspense," he said. Trump has alleged that the vote will be rigged.

If Trump loses by a razor thin margin we can expect a demand for recounts and possible legal challenges. Some of his more violent supporters have also threatened trouble.

But what if Clinton loses a close election? In the wake of Wikileaks and FBI revelations Clinton's sizable lead has evaporated and a tight result is looking more and more possible.

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On her campaign plane a few hours after the last debate Clinton was asked if she would pledge to accept the results. She ignored the question and instead launched into an attack on what Trump had said.

If Clinton should lose a squeaker, she has two options to try to overturn the election and make herself president--and both involve blaming Russia. She can try to influence America's bizarre electoral college system, or get at least two allies in Congress to challenge its certification of the election.

America's Indirect Suffrage

Unknown to most people outside the United States, and to many within, the U.S. president is not chosen by a national popular vote. Instead the U.S. presidential election is really 50 separate state elections. The candidate that wins a state's popular vote is awarded a number of electors based on population size.

These are actual persons who vote for president on behalf of the people. Slates of electors are chosen by both major political parties before the election. Whichever party wins a state's popular vote gets the votes of that state's electors. There are 538 electors and a candidate can must get 270 electoral votes to be elected president. *

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This system ignores the national poplar vote so that a candidate may win more votes nationwide but still lose the election. It has happened four times, the last being in 2000 when Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the election to George W. Bush.

Several states, such as New York and California, usually vote Democratic, while others, such as many in the West and South, are normally in the Republican column. But there are states that could go either way, so-called swing states, and that's where the most intense campaigning takes place.

According to one scenario, the four electoral votes in Maine could decide this election.

That's why Trump campaigned there last week. Maine and Nebraska are the only two states that proportion some of their electors. One candidate could get one of the four electoral votes if he or she wins a congressional district.

Influencing the College by Blaming Russia

The Clinton camp's accusation after the first Wikileaks revelations, just before the Democratic Convention, that Russian intelligence was behind the leak was later amplified in early October by James Clapper, director of national intelligence, who blamed "Russia's senior-most officials" for intending to "interfere with the U.S. election process" by authorizing the hack of the Democratic National Committee.

Clapper went significantly further, however, claiming that a Russian company was behind attempted hacks of electoral computer systems in various states.

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The Obama administration's claim was widely accepted by the news media even though no evidence of Russian tampering was publicly given. With just days to go to the election the story has been revived by the pro-Clinton media. CNN Anchor Jake Tapper on Friday incorrectly said the U.S. was accusing the Russian government, not a company, of threatening election computers.

In the last debate, Clinton said the hack "has come from the highest levels of the Russian government. Clearly from Putin himself in an effort, as 17 of our intelligence agencies have confirmed, to influence our election." The 17 agencies were represented by Clapper. Clinton also offered no evidence.



If Clinton loses by a few electoral votes she could challenge the results by claiming that Russia tampered with the election. The public has been prepared with unproven allegations that are widely disseminated by corporate media and widely believed. With the media not previously demanding evidence of such a claim and if the intelligence agencies back her up, her only challenge might be to convince the needed number of Republican electors to change their votes to put her over the top.

There are only 26 states that require electors by law to vote for the candidate who won the state's popular vote. Virginia has issued only an advisory to do so. The other 24 states have no such laws, freeing electors to vote their conscience and against their own party.

The swing state with the most electoral votes that doesn't bind its electors by law is Pennsylvania, with 20 electoral votes. Other states in play such as Arizona, Utah, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and New Hampshire also have no laws to keep an elector from changing his or her vote. Ohio and Florida, the two biggest swing states, do bind the electors by law.

Clinton's camp would be faced with turning a number of electors around to vote against the Republican candidate and switch their vote to her. Clinton has to convince them that a changed vote would uphold American democracy against the interference of a supposedly hostile state that threw the election for Trump.

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Clinton has to convince such so-called "Faithless Electors" to vote against their state's popular will. This has happened in seven previous elections. In each of them only one elector changed his or her vote. This occurred in 1948, 1956, 1960, 1968, 1972, 1976, and 1988. But no Faithless Elector has ever decided a presidential election before.

The 2016 Election, one of the strangest in memory, could add to the craziness by becoming the first.

The Second Option

If she fails to convince enough electors to change their votes there is one last chance for Clinton. At 1 p.m. on January 6, both houses of Congress meet to certify the election. However, an 1887 law allows any member of Congress to formally object to the result.

An objection must be put in writing and signed by at least one Senator and one Representative. The Joint Session is recessed and both Houses have two hours to separately consider the objection. Then each House votes on it. If both agree, the electoral votes are not counted.

There have only been two objections and both times, in 1969 and 2005, they were rejected.

If Clinton succeeds and the objections are accepted, vacating Trump's electoral votes because of alleged Russian interference in certain states, it could bring him below the required 270 electoral votes. But it would not give Clinton that number either.

If neither candidate reaches 270 electoral votes the Constitution says the election is decided by a vote in the House of Representatives. Each state delegation gets one vote and a simple majority is required. The House is currently controlled by the Republicans. But many Republicans do not support Trump.

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The House has decided a presidential election only two times before. In 1800 Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied with 73 electoral votes each. After 36 ballots over six days, the House chose Jefferson as the third president. In the 1824 election Andrew Jackson received 99 electoral votes, 32 short of a majority, to John Quincy Adam's 85, but the House chose Adams.

It would certainly be a long shot for Clinton to try either of these tactics to overturn a close loss to Trump. But given everything else that has happened in this election campaign, would anyone really be surprised?
We are on the eve of an election, I can safely say, that is unlike any we have seen before. Regardless of which way it turns out, the country could use something to bring people together, something to rally around.



For this tall task, I humbly suggest the bison.



Today, November 5th, is National Bison Day - a day to celebrate everything wonderful about this magnificent animal that is uniquely American. The bison is the steward of our grasslands and the keystone upon which ecosystems depend. It is an economic driver, bringing tourism to wildlife reserves, national parks and zoos, as well as sustaining a multi-million dollar meat production industry. And it is a cultural touchstone, especially for the Native Americans who looks to the bison, or buffalo, as the centerpiece of their spiritual identity.



In 2016, the American bison became the United States' national mammal. Credit: Julie Larsen Maher WCS.

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These are all great contributions to our society, one might think, but how does the shaggy behemoth have anything to do with the electoral politics that currently divide the country?



The answer is that the bison have already brought the two parties together this year. In April, thanks to bipartisan relationships, Senators and Representatives agreed to pass a bill that would adopt bison as the National Mammal of the United States. The leaders and supporters of that legislation, called the National Bison Legacy Act, came from all parts of the country and a wide range of political beliefs. But all had very good reasons for bison to be our National Mammal, whether as a tribute to Native American tribes, as a representation of western culture, as recognition of its conservation history, or simply because they are so uniquely American.

In the end, during a year in which Congress had difficulty finding common ground, the bill passed both houses of Congress by unanimous consent, and it was signed into law by President Obama on May 9th.



WCS Exec VP for Public Affairs John Calvelli announces passage of the National Bison Legacy Act with Congressional supporters, L-R: Rep. Kristi Noem (R-SD), Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE), Rep. Lacy Clay (D-MO), Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), and Jose Serrano (D-NY). Credit: Chip Weiskotten WCS.

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Bison have been bringing people together for a century, and even longer. At the turn of the 20th century, bison had been wiped out to near extinction. When a survey by William Hornaday, who would go on to be director of the Bronx Zoo, showed that bison were down to about 1,000 animals, an unprecedented effort to bring them back was launched by a partnership of ranchers, conservationists, American Indian Nations and politicians.



In 1907, President Teddy Roosevelt and the American Bison Society began this effort by sending 15 animals by train from the Bronx Zoo to Oklahoma's Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. Thus was born the first American conservation success story.





William Hornaday, left, watches as bison are prepared for shipment west from the Bronx Zoo in 1907. Credit: Wildlife Conservation Society.
There has been a recent and burgeoning trend towards materialism in Chinese cultures, perhaps coinciding with recent economic booms. I witness this anecdotally whenever I walk down 5th Avenue in Manhattan and see a disproportionate number of Chinese people outside luxury retail stores. After perusing through some studies, I confirmed my intuitions and discovered that 68 percent of people from Chinese feel a lot of pressure to be successful and make money and that 71 percent of people from China are most likely to measure their success by what they own. Both of these numbers are the highest among all countries surveyed. Chinese consumers have now overtaken Americans to become the world's largest buyers of personal luxury items.

From what I understand, Asian cultures, and especially Chinese cultures, tend to buy into the 'saving face' and 'upholding honor' mentality, wherein upholding one's reputation is of utmost importance, maybe even the primary source of one's motivation. The consumption of luxury items then, if we continue to follow this mode of logic, is the most tangible way of demonstrating one's value and one's belonging in a community.

When I speak to many Chinese-American Republicans, lower taxes is the number one reason why said Chinese Americans support Republican policies. Even when these aforementioned Chinese Americans would fall outside the income brackets that would allow them to enjoy the most generous of Republican tax codes, the idea of one day making that much untaxed income is too tantalizing to ignore present day reality. To be clear, there is no real economic hardship here, just the prospect of one day being 'successful and having more money.' By definition consumerism falls outside the realm of a necessity.

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The idea, then, with lower taxes, would be more personal spending money to seek approval and acceptance by others. Lower taxes are a means to purchasing material items which are a means to seeking approval and acceptance by others.

We currently live in a Democracy in which all citizens can participate and have a voice in shaping their vision of this country. The Republicans cling to a Xenophonic platform in which White is Right and every other group a threat, whether it be Hispanics, Blacks, Muslims, and yes, even Asians. The Democratic platform, championed by Hilary Clinton, embraces diversity and acceptance, favoring pro-immigration policies, anti-discrimination policies, and seeks to appoint minorities in leadership roles within the public sector.

You can have a Prada bag or even a Porsche, but to hardcore Trump supporters, you are still just an Asian, a foreigner, someone who isn't American and will never be, someone who will never belong. What good is all of that hard work, that financial success, those fancy material items, if you still fall so short of your ultimate goal of finding belonging and acceptance in America? What if I told you there was an easier path towards finding belonging and acceptance? What if it just meant voting for candidates who recognize you as American no matter what you look like, no matter where your ancestors come from? What if it meant voting for a candidate who sees you and values you the same you want to be seen and valued?

Civic engagement requires effort, maybe even less effort than that required through private enterprise, but it symbolizes more than anything else who belongs and whose voices matter in our society. Historically, Asian Americans, despite their economic success, have been powerless against political exclusionary acts like the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act or the Internment of Japanese Americans in the 1940s. Should Trump win this election and anti-Asian sentiments rise, just as they did earlier in our history when the white working class resented the rise of Asian Americans, economic success and material wealth will not protect us from not just the off-hand discrimination many of us face in our day-to-day lives, but the systemic legal discrimination that our forebearers faced.

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This election like none ever before might decide the future -- whether humans have one or not. Our survival might depend on electing Hillary Clinton. It is clearly endangered by the conduct and character of Donald Trump.

I write this as a fellow citizen and not in my capacity as President of the Global Security Institute. My concerns run far deeper than my professional expertise.

A matter of the utmost importance is being given inadequate attention in the public debate regarding our next President. The very survival of humanity rests on responsible stewardship of nuclear weapons, stopping their spread, making sure they are not used, and working to obtain their universal elimination. Why? Because if less than 1% of the over 15,000 nuclear weapons were to explode over five tons of debris would rise into the stratosphere dropping the earth's temperature sufficiently to disrupt agriculture. This means humans will starve and civilization will end. That is why President Reagan said simply: "A nuclear war cannot be won and therefor must never be fought."

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The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has been fully ratified by the US Senate and all but four nations in the world are participants, effectively ensuring that over 180 nations will not obtain nuclear weapons. The Treaty entered into force under the leadership of President Nixon and it works admirably in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons to dozens of nuclear capable nations. Donald Trump suggested that Japan and South Korea should have nuclear weapons. This violates the Treaty and would stimulate many nations to similarly get nuclear weapons. Nothing could be more irresponsible than the US advocating the proliferation of nuclear weapons to more states. Also, his suggestion violates a treaty which is an affront to the US Constitution.

Our Constitution makes treaties, fully ratified by the Senate, the "supreme law of the land." Trump either does not understand or doesn't respect the Constitution. Trump either does not understand or care about the dangers nuclear weapons pose to human survival.

History has shown us that crises have and will happen again. The Cuban Missile Crisis is an example where character was important. President Kennedy used patience and the humility to listen to many different points of view in addressing the crisis. Our military leaders wanted to invade Cuba, not realizing, as we know now, that nuclear weapons were already operational and had they had their way, we would not be here today. Kennedy paused, reflected, bought time, listened, and guided us to safety.

Trump has made clear his lack of humility and patience. These characteristics are necessary in crisis.



Treaties are law and not mere deals to be renegotiated frivolously and crises demand a coolness of character and a sense of humility to listen to different viewpoints. Donald Trump must not be trusted with the ultimate weapon. Hillary Clinton is vastly preferred on this one issue upon which our survival depends.


Surprisingly, Iran's moderates, who use "softer" tone, have joined other Iranian leaders including the hardliners to criticize US elections and both the Republican and Democratic candidates: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

If the US did similar thing during Iran's presidential elections, Iranian leaders and Ayatollah Khamenei would most likely call the action interference in their domestic affairs by the "Great Satan".

But the question is why Rouhani is lashing out at Clinton who was the Secretary of State under Obama administration and contributed in Iran's nuclear agreement which led to the lifting of economic sanctions?

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Iran's moderates are looking for an American president who significantly pivots towards Iran, distance Washington from Iran's rivals, and preferably ignores Iran's geopolitical and strategic ambitions.

Mr Obama significantly shifted Washington's Middle East policy by pivoting towards Iran and moving away from Washington's long-standing regional allies.

The underlying reason behind tensions with Tehran is not the nuclear agreement but their opposition on several key regional issues.

The Obama administration did not completely position itself on the opposite spectrum of Iran when it came to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Syria. This caused relationships between Iran and the US to improve.

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What had made Mr Obama and Hassan Rouhani's increasing diplomatic ties possible in the first place was the relative convergence of policies on the three points: one, Mr Obama's lenient position on the nuclear agreement, which led to the lifting of four rounds of sanctions against Iran. Two, his administration increasing tensions with Iran's regional rivals. Three, his soft tone on Iran's proxies.

By criticizing Clinton and Trump, Iranian leaders are sending a signal to the next US president that he/she needs to follow the footsteps of President Obama, that he/she should favor appeasement policies towards Iran, significantly pivot towards Tehran, and take a softer stance on Iran's regional objectives. For Iranian leaders across the political spectrum (moderates, reformists and hardliners), it would be ideal if the character and policies of the next US President resemble that of President Obama.

______________________

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a businessman, political scientist, philanthropist, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. Harvard-educated, Rafizadeh serves on the advisory board of Harvard International Review. He is regularly quoted and invited to speak on national and international outlets including CNN, BBC World TV and Radio, ABC, Aljazeera English, Fox News, CTV, RT, CCTV America, Skynews, CTV, and France 24 International, to name a few. Dr. Rafizadeh is frequently invited to brief governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as speak, as a featured speaker, at security, business, diplomatic, and social events. He has been recipient of several fellowships and scholarships including from Oxford University, Annenberg, University of California Santa Barbara, Fulbright program, to name few. He analyses have appeared on academic and non-academic publications including New York Times International, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Farred zakaria GPS, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The Nation, The National. Aljazeera, The Daily Beast, The Nation, Jerusalem Post, The Economic Times, USA Today Yale Journal of International Affairs, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, and Harvard International Review. He is a board member of several significant and influential international and governmental institutions, and he is native speaker of couple of languages including Persian, English, and Arabic. He also speaks Dari, and can converse in French, Hebrew. More at Harvard.

You can sign up for Dr. Rafizadeh's newsletter for the latest news and analyses on HERE. You can also order his books on HERE.

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You can learn more about Dr. Rafizadeh on HERE.
Here's a riddle: I'm a 26-year-old college graduate. I binge-watch The Big Bang Theory and have streamed Inception on Netflix, like, 10 times. I listen to R&B and hip-hop using Spotify. I do everything online. I text more than I talk. I'm on YouTube and Instagram every day -- okay, several times a day. If it's made by Nike or Apple, I'll buy it. Who am I?

If you answered "Millennial" or "Gen Y-er," you'd be right. Born between 1982 and 2000, millennials, also called the millennial generation or Generation Y (Gen Y), represent over 25 percent, or 83.1 million, of the nation's population, making them the largest living generation in the United States. Add to this the fact that they're the most ethnically and racially diverse generation. Let's learn more about this cohort.

Generation Me

Millennials have been called "spoiled," "lazy," "entitled," and "self-centered," mainly by non-millennials. It seems unfair and even harsh to generalize about a whole generation. Still, there may be some degree of truth in these stereotypes.

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In a Time article titled "Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation," columnist Joel Stein describes millennials' characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors, including the rise in narcissism among young adults. Stein cites: "The incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that's now 65 or older, according to the National Institutes of Health; 58% more college students scored higher on a narcissism scale in 2009 than in 1982."

Many millennials are driven by extrinsic goals, like money, status, and fame. For example, young people are enthralled with celebrity culture, and many want a piece of fame -- and think they can get it. This self-assurance could be linked to an overexposure to reality television and video-sharing websites, where instant stardom has been achieved by the likes of the Kardashian/Jenner clan and young YouTubers, such as KSI, PewDiePie, and Zoella.

The Digital Sixth Sense

Called "digital natives," the millennial generation grew up with the Internet of Things (IoT). On the whole, they spend significantly more time texting and using social media than previous generations.

Take texting. On average, young adults ages 18 to 24 send or receive 109.5 text messages each day, clocking in over 3,200 messages each month, according to a Pew survey.

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Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are to millennials today what online chatrooms and IM'ing were to baby boomers in the '90s. A majority of millennials (71 percent) use social media sites at least once a day, as compared with watching TV (60 percent) or emailing, texting, and chatting (49 percent).

Probably no other group has embraced selfies more than millennials. A study estimates that the average millennial will devote about an hour a week to snap up to 25,700 selfie shots during his or her lifetime, reports Teen Vogue.

The Boomerang Kids

If you were an empty nester and now have a grown child who has returned to the nest, you're not alone. A Pew Research Center analysis found that, in 2014, for the first time in over 130 years, young adults ages 18 to 34 were slightly more likely to have taken up residence in their parents' home than they were to be living with a spouse or partner in their own household.

What's fueling this trend? One explanation is the Great Recession of 2007-2009. During it, college enrollments spiked, which led to an attendant increase in the number of young adults living with their parents.

Still, recessions come and go, yet many young adults are staying put in the family home. So there's got to be more to this pattern than meets the eye, and indeed there is. A generational shift in attitudes toward marriage has occurred. Many millennials are putting off marriage and also homeownership. What's more, 25 percent of today's young adults may never get hitched.

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"Feeling the Bern," Party of Nones

We've heard or read reports that most millennials are big fans of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Scratching your head and wondering what a grandfatherly politician would have in common with young voters? Apparently, a lot. Sanders' liberal views on a wide range of political and social issues, such as favoring same-sex marriage, ending federal marijuana prohibition, and passing comprehensive universal health care, match those of many millennials.

Millennials are known to distrust traditional institutions; they've grown skeptical of political institutions and organized religion. A Pew survey found that half of this generation call themselves independents, while over a quarter say they have no religious affiliation. These findings are "at or near the highest levels of political and religious disaffiliation recorded for any generation in the quarter-century that the Pew Research Center has been polling on these topics," says Pew.

Overeducated, Underemployed

As more baby boomers are heading for retirement, more millennials are taking over the workplace. Millennials are now the most dominant generation in the U.S. workforce. In 2015, more than one in three American workers were adults ages 18 to 34. An impressive number of millennial students have thrown their graduation caps in the air, making them the most educated generation so far. Fully a third (34 percent) have earned at least a bachelor's degree.

In spite of their superior numbers and educational preparedness, millennials have struggled in the job market. Young adults represent about 40 percent of the nation's unemployed, reports MarketWatch.

Incurable Optimists, Rational Realists

For better or for worse, millennials are Pollyannaish about their current and future well-being. An overwhelming majority of them (more than 80 percent) say that they either currently have enough money to lead the kind of life they want (32 percent) or expect to have the funds to do so in the future (53 percent).

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At the same time, millennials are realistic about economic challenges that they could face down the road. For instance, young people are concerned over the financial status of the Social Security program. About 25 percent of them don't expect to get retirement benefits, says a CNBC article.

So what do you make of the millennial generation? Will they become the next "Greatest Generation" or the next "Lost Generation"?

Earlier on Huff/Post50:
I swear if I give you this script right now, you would be like, "Oh yes, this is definitely not the script for the stage." I make my living writing plays and I've been doing so for a long happy time with my good friend Andre Holland here. So seeing my plays on the page, you can tell they are about what we hear, about what's said, about was not said. I even write in the rests, when you don't speak.

The play ["In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue"] was an early piece, written at the same time when I wrote "The Brothers Size." It definitely came to me in a different way; it was about feeling, it was about seeing things. I don't know what Broadway producer would be like, "Yes let's do a play where we swiftly go from the drug hold up in Liberty City into the Miami Beach ocean." That kind of fluidity doesn't exist on stage in that way, unless we tell it to you and then you still wouldn't feel what Barry so aptly does and what these actors embody which is the collisions that happen, the beauty that is Miami and the kind of turmoil/awkwardness/hope that they have in each other. Those things had to happen simultaneously for the piece to work. So when Barry was like, "Yes we're going to split up the three pieces," I said, "Let's do it. Let's see what it looks like." It felt right because he was speaking visual language to the piece.
The Saturday morning soul of the city usually belongs to Eastern Market, but Motown's epicenter of energy moved a few blocks up Mack this Saturday, thanks to a little known program called College Decision Day 2017. 1200 area high school students registered to give up a Saturday morning of sleeping in to head to the immaculately maintained Detroit Edison Public School Academy, where the floors sparkled and a arc of balloons spanned half of the gym.

Two dozen ebullient student hosts welcomed guests from the parking lot and guided them to the gymnasium, where college admissions representatives from all 15 of Michigan's public four-year universities and two Michigan private universities welcomed high school seniors and their college applications. High schools planned ahead and bussed in groups of students, and when one school's bussing plan went awry, the principal became the bus, and drove the students to the event herself.



The real attraction to this event was the turnaround time. If a student submitted a completed college application by 10 AM, they could come back and get an admissions decision from most of the participating colleges by 2 that afternoon. In the meantime, there was a table with information on how families could use the wait time to apply for federal financial aid, along with a map directing participants to a site where they could get free help completing the sometimes lengthy form. This event left nothing to chance.

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The atmosphere was simply electric. Students waited to submit 2281 applications, with some students talking excitedly with their peers, and others just calmly waiting for their chance to leave their application and test scores with a college admission officer. Noticeably absent from the scene was the presence of cell phones. There was no passive screen viewing to be found at Decision Day. Students were taking in all of the moment, because they knew this was their moment .

There were almost as many parents as students in the gym, and while teens often view Mom and Dad tagging along with an eye roll and lots of sighing, Decision Day brought them together like a holiday or a family reunion. Parent-student couples recognized friends and neighbors with shouts of glee and laughter that filled the room, and some students greeted the college admissions officers they knew with hugs of gratitude. Not a lot of hugging goes on in college admissions, but today was a day to think outside the box. Apply by 10, get an answer by 2, and get hugged along the way.

The amount of planning it takes to pull something this creative off is staggering. A many as 15 admissions officers from each college arrived at the event by 7:30 and stayed until about 4, on a Saturday during the height of application season--but it was clear that today was a labor of love for them, with way more love than labor felt in the room.

This requires even more organization from the students, who have to complete the application, request a transcript from their high school, and present test scores to the college. Since most of this work is usually done online, and some of it is done by the student's counselor, this requires a high level of communication and organization between student and counselor, where the student has to take the lead. It may look like students are only applying to college, but the planning skills Decision Day instills in students will come in handy once they're attending college, where the bulk of learning--and living--is up to the student to initiate.

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More than a few Decision Day students also gave up their Saturday nights for this event, thrilled with the news they were going to college, but tapped out from the excitement of the day. In an era where high school students are too often depicted as self-absorbed screen zombies, Decision Day reminds us of all that is right and good with Detroit students, Detroit families, and the Michigan college admission officers who support their efforts. Those of us who were at the event have seen the future, and it is very bright indeed.
How would I -- or you -- look to the world if subjected to 30 years of relentless, organized and fully-funded lies, calumny, distortions, faux outrage, hypocrisy, fabrications, attempted bullying and flagrant misogyny? Battered? Yes. Unbowed? If you're Hillary Clinton, Yes! Amazingly.



No male in the public arena has been subjected to -- or most likely would have had the courage and strength to endure -- the unrelenting attacks unleashed on Hillary Clinton over decades. And Secretary Clinton -- the real person, not the malicious caricature created by Republicans -- is a lot more than just "still standing". You want tough? Contrast Ms. Clinton to her naive, bombastic, dishonest short-panted schoolboy opponent.

If you or yours are even tempted to vote for a third party candidate, please consult with your mirror. Before denying Hillary Clinton your vote, rehearse what you will say to your pals, kids and grandkids if Americans destroy their future at the same time our nation humiliates itself before the rest of world. Do not forget how The 2000 Election Unleashed Disaster on the World.

If Hillary Clinton were "just" a former First Lady, we would look like any third world nation going for reflexive continuity. But pitting a former Senator of the nation's second most populous state and a former Secretary of State against what Bruce Springsteen so aptly summed up as "a con man"? That would seem a lot more than merely unbalanced...if she were a he.



The good news: The New Yorker's genuine journalism shows how Secretary Clinton has consistently been ahead of the Republicans in the real polls with Trump never having in fact gained that lead. Yes, really!

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One need not love a candidate -- any candidate -- to vote for that person. Even if one is not Hillary Clinton's most enthusiastic supporter, acknowledge her strengths. Is she the perfect candidate? No. Would I be? You? Her opponent is so deeply flawed, so out of his depth that, without the complicity of greedy media and the willful madness of the Republican party, he would have been, quite properly, laughed off the public stage.
The United States has a significant military and economic presence in the UAE and also in the other five oil-endowed nations that constitute the Gulf Cooperation Council - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Little wonder that interest in the election campaign for 45th President of the United States is high, as is anxiety about the outcome.

What Gulf challenges would the new president face? Anecdotal evidence and what's reported in the surprisingly liberal Dubai media suggest that the Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton comes far ahead of her Republican opponent, Donald John Trump, as what YouGov terms "the preferred candidate."

The United States continues to be the Gulf's guardian angel, not only maintaining bases here but also selling vast amounts of arms. (Arms sales to Gulf countries totalled $33 billion in 2015.) The economies of the Gulf states are contracting on account of fluctuating oil prices -- from $115 per barrel in 2014 to $27 in January 2016 to around $48 now - resulting in a severe drop in job prospects for outsiders from the West and developing countries. Outsiders have traditionally been recruited for management positions as well as unskilled labor. With the exception of Saudi Arabia, locals in the Gulf countries constitute a minority in their own nations. Meanwhile, the other 16 members of the Arab League are also experiencing growing unemployment and restiveness among their increasingly youthful populations.

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Irrespective of who wins the American election, the new president must pay close attention to critical issues in the Middle East, home to some 350 million, of whom 200 million are under the age of 30, according to Sunil John, founder and CEO of the giant communications company, Asda'a Burson-Marsteller, who produces an acclaimed annual report on Arab youth.

During his trip to Egypt in June 2009, barely six months after his inauguration, President Obama made a major speech at Cairo University declaring that there would be "A New Beginning" for relations between the United States and the Muslim world.

"There is disappointment that followed the euphoria of Barack Obama's election as president," says Patrick Michael, the former executive editor of the Dubai-based Khaleej Times. "The average citizen is bitter about the lost opportunities to redefine US-Middle East relations. Decisiveness is what the Arab region, and the Gulf in particular, expects from the next president. The perception of America having meddled in the affairs of the Middle East for its own gains has only deepened in recent years.

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"The inward-looking policies of both candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and the rising level of intolerance against Muslims in the US, have compounded the feeling that America is not sincere about the region. Addressing this crisis of confidence is what the people expect from the new president. It will not be easy and will call for tough decisions that will not appeal to right wingers. And there must be a greater focus on working with the region in driving inward investments and knowledge sharing."

Regardless of who succeeds Mr. Obama in the White House, the new president might want to dust off his Cairo speech, tweak it a bit to allow for events since then - such as the bitter conflict in Iraq and Syria with ISIS - and re-articulate America's commitment to spur sustainable economic development in the Middle East, which has its share of poor countries.

Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton will face worrying problems in the Middle East. Here are some issues for the new American president to cogitate and act on:

1.The extremist groupings of ISIS and Al Qaeda have expanded their operations beyond the region. They don't believe in negotiations, so the new president will have to figure out how to destroy them by force, if necessary. That would mean assembling a new coalition of Western nations and possibly other countries vulnerable to Islamic fundamentalism such as India, Pakistan and even China. The conflict in Syria between the government of President Bashar Al Assad and ISIS has already resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people.

2. Joblessness among the region's already restive youth is increasing. The new president will need to persuade American investors to establish manufacturing plants that would create jobs. An estimate by the United Nations says that at least 15 million jobs would need to be created in the next four to five years.

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3.Although oil-producing countries such as the United Arab Emirates have aggressively backed the reduction of carbon emissions, the new president will have to coax other Arab countries to join the movement of addressing global warming through a major initiative of environmental protection.

4.Broadening educational and employment opportunities for girls and women should be another priority for the region. The employment rate for women is barely 23 percent, while women account for slightly more than 50 percent of the overall population.

5.Working with enterprises such as the New York based Institute of International Education - which administers the Fulbright Program - should be expanded so that more scholars from the Middle East get opportunities to spend time at American colleges and universities.

6.Affordable healthcare at primary as well as tertiary levels is also another must-do for the new president. Non-communicable heart disease, cancer and diabetes are spreading alarmingly in the Middle East. Healthcare development must include more social awareness of how best to tackle and treat these diseases.

7.In an increasingly "wired" world, many countries in the Middle East lag in offering unfettered access to digital technology. The new president can surely get American technology companies to raise their profile in the region by developing better connectivity. No citizen should be left behind as the world outside the Middle East gallops toward a wired global community that embraces all 200 countries and territories.

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8.While many - if not most - Middle East countries may not be ready to embrace democracy, the new president should encourage grassroots-level representatives to strengthen local municipal councils that listen to citizens' travails and then work at resolving problems such as deteriorating infrastructure.

9.The new President must assist in the strengthening of institutions such as the judiciary to ensure that local disputes are adjudicated with fairness.

10.With more than 75 percent of the Middle East's population of 355 million being under 30, the new President must help develop programs to identify and train tomorrow's local and national leaders.

11.And then the new President needs to persuade Arabs and Jews to return to the negotiating table and work out a two-state solution for Palestinians and Israelis.
Disagreement is part of human nature, especially in any society that values people as unique individuals.

Geoff was reminded of that recently when he and his sainted wife Jenna watched a reenactment of the Jefferson-Adams debates. Bill Barker and Steven Holloway, two scholars from the Colonial Williamsburg living history museum, played Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, respectively.

Their masterful performances reignited many of the most vibrant and intellectual debates of the early United States while also relating to our own time. Few presidential elections have rivaled the races of 1796 and 1800 in significance or controversy, and almost none have matched the depth of substance and thought mutually wrought by Adams and Jefferson, our two smartest presidents.

We are told every four years that we face the most important election of our lifetime. However, perhaps all presidential races pale in significance compared to those two.

Prior to 1800, there had never been a peaceful transition of power from one party to another, and many observers everywhere believed it was impossible. When it happened, the world began to believe that the American Experiment might actually succeed.

Jefferson lost to Adams in 1796, thus becoming vice president. Prior to passage of the Twelfth Amendment, electors voted only for president and the second-place candidate became vice president. The result was a divided administration whose differences only proliferated over the ensuing four years.

The campaign of 1800 was among the nastiest in history. Although Jefferson and Adams studiously refrained from slandering each other directly, their proxies in the highly partisan media printed outrageous allegations.

A Connecticut newspaper aligned with Adams editorialized that if Jefferson won, murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will be openly taught and practiced. Likewise, a Jefferson-allied journalist named James Callender wrote that Adams behaved neither like a man nor like a woman but instead possessed a hideous hermaphroditical character.

These attacks were not anomalies; they were the norm throughout the American press at the time.

A cascade of controversies during the Adams administration fueled this fire. Jeffersons Democrat-Republicans had accused Adams in 1796 of favoring Britain over France and aristocracy over democracy. By 1798, Adams and his Federalist Congress had launched an undeclared war against France, raised taxes to finance this war, and passed the Alien and Sedition Acts.

The Alien Act gave Adams administration the power to deport or imprison any alien considered dangerous or suspect of treason. No trial or conviction was necessary, giving wide latitude to the government that Jefferson believed contravened the principles of a constitutional republic. Holloways portrayal of Adams cleverly claimed that this authority was never intended to be widely used, but was only targeted against immigrants from one country that he considered particularly dangerous to his presidency.

The Sedition Act allowed Adams to imprison anyone who distributed false, scandalous, and malicious writings against government officials that would bring them into contempt or disrepute. Portraying Jefferson, Barker pointed out that this authority was entirely intended to silence political dissent and that every newspaper editor Adams jailed under this statute was Republican, including James Callender.

While these were highly contentious issues, Geoff was struck by the broad scope of agreement between the two men over other matters that headline todays debates.

Both men agreed that if the electorate is to be entrusted with self-government, then people must receive a foundation in classical education to inform this responsibility. Therefore, public education was to be a fundamental responsibility of government. We doubt either envisioned the great public institutions devolving their curricula from the classics to todays politicized indoctrination.

Both also agreed it would be preposterous to allow the federal government to enact systems of transfer payments, which are ubiquitous today. The strength of the republic, they agreed, would begin to crumble as soon as the majority realized they could use government as their agent to confiscate the production of the minority.

Adams lamented the rise of factions. But Jefferson responded that factions are simply an expression of the independent thought of the human mind that the First Amendment is designed to protect; so, we shouldnt apologize for our political disagreements.

Fortunately, vigorous disagreement on policy still characterizes the American Experiment, still going strong after 240 years.
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during a veterans roundtable discussion with the Truman National Security Project at the VFW Hall in Derry, New Hampshire November 10, 2015. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Eleven years ago this August I was deployed in Iraq with the Lima Company combat unit, and recently, I reunited with my fellow Marines to commemorate the anniversary. Looking around, I was taken by how many of them are still serving -- in the military, as police offers, or helping others as doctors and lawyers. I shouldn't be surprised. Service to our country is an honor and one we carry for the rest of our lives.

I served alongside Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Muslim Americans, and whites. But on the battlefield, that didn't matter. We weren't concerned about about our race or religion because we knew we were stronger together.

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I never imagined we could have a presidential candidate who so blatantly insults our military, servicemen and veterans. But Donald Trump's transgressions are vast, and his relentless attempts to disparage a Gold Star family is one of the most disgraceful.

Trump thought Senator John McCain wasn't a war hero because he was captured. He also juxtaposed the experiences of Vietnam War veterans with his sex life. He claims to know more about ISIS than our generals, who he says have been "reduced to rubble." And he praises dictators and insults our allies.

So, in the four days we have left in this election--we must set down a marker for what's acceptable behavior, especially from our president, our next Commander-in-Chief.

There's only one candidate who will mark the service of our troops, respect our sacrifice when we come home, and honor the families of those who serve and those servicemen who have fallen. That's why I support Hillary Clinton.

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Hillary fought for the post-9/11 GI Bill to make sure veterans could go to college and sat on the Committee on Armed Services during her time in the Senate. She helped extend health insurance to America's reservists to make sure anyone who volunteers to serve their country is taken care of. And she has plans to support our troops and our veterans as president.

Trump is too hateful and divisive to be our next president and Commander-in-Chief. Find your voting location here so you can join your family and friends and vote on Election Day (this Tuesday, November 8) in what will be the most important election of our generation.

Vote to honor the best friends of those who have served in the military. Vote so their sacrifice is not forgotten. Vote for the future of our country, because together we can and we will defeat Donald Trump. Vote for Hillary Clinton who will honor and serve the veterans.
Electing the country's first female president is going to be a ground-breaking accomplishment. What it will mean for us here in America, and to people around the world, to see a woman serving as Commander-in-Chief will be powerful. Electing Hillary will change the way women are viewed as leaders and pave the way for other women to serve in elected office. When we heard Hillary Clinton passionately explain the terrible circumstances of many late-term abortions in the final presidential debate, it was clear that women's leadership, perspectives and life experience are simply different than men's, and it will be transformational to have that perspective at the most powerful decision-making table in the world.

No matter how unlikely a Trump presidency has seemed at times, we can't afford to take anything for granted. First and foremost, we all must stay motivated and sprint through the finish line, so we don't wake up on November 9th and realize our worst fears have come true. That means knocking on doors, making calls, talking with our friends and neighbors, and getting out to vote on Election Day.

But we're not just voting for our next president on Election Day. Who we elect to the U.S. Senate will determine the make-up of our Supreme Court for a generation. Who we elect to the U.S. House will determine if Congress will work with our next president to pass legislation, or if we are in for more obstructionism. Who we elect to our state houses and state senates will determine if states continue to pass hostile anti-LGBT legislation, ignore climate change, pass anti-choice laws, or fail to raise the minimum wage. There are propositions on the ballot that will determine everything from expanding transportation options to banning the death penalty. These things matter so much more than implied by the small amount of coverage and attention they receive, which is why we recently saw President Obama not just endorse in U.S. Senate and Congressional races around the country, but in some state legislative races too (he even endorsed in several legislative races in California).

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While demographic shifts have made it easier for Democrats to win national races, conservatives have strategically focused on taking over state legislatures and running up the scoreboard in local races. This has resulted in local and state elected officials who are not representative of the true diversity of the country, and often have values that don't align with the needs of the communities they were elected to represent. We have an opportunity this year, with demographics shifting in favor of a more diverse country and a motivated base that is horrified by Donald Trump, to gain some of the ground we lost in 2010 and 2014. But the only way we can do that is if everyone stays motivated and focused through Election Day, and puts some of their time and energy into electing some of these down-ballot candidates as well.

Working hard to elect Hillary Clinton is critical and we all must continue that work, but I guarantee that even if you live in the safest of blue states, there is more to be done. If like me you live in Southern California, Doug Applegate is trying to unseat Darrell Issa in the 49th Congressional District (San Diego and Orange Counties) and Bryan Caforio is trying to unseat Steve Knight in the 25th Congressional District (Northern Los Angeles County and Ventura County), two opportunities to replace right-wing extremists with Democrats who will fight for our progressive values. There are close races like these across the country, where we have the opportunity to elect people who will make pay equity, climate change, LGBT rights and reproductive justice top priorities. Please take time to help some down-ballot candidates in your backyard!

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Here in California, there are many down-ballot candidates and causes that would greatly benefit from your time and energy in the remaining days until Election Day. There are a lot of other great candidates and propositions I support, but the following are those that I know would most benefit from your help right now:

Congressional Candidates

Nanette Barragan, Congressional District 44 (South Los Angeles and Los Angeles Harbor Region)

Doug Applegate, Congressional District 49 (San Diego and Orange Counties)

Bryan Caforio Congressional District 25 (Northern Los Angeles County and Ventura County)

Michael Eggman, Congressional District 10 (Stanislaus and San Joaquin Counties)

Emilio Huerta, Congressional District 21 (Fresno, Kern, Kings and Tulare Counties)

Salud Carbajal, Congressional District 24 (Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties)

State Legislative Candidates

Ballot Initiatives

Yes on 62 & No on 66: Voting Yes on 62 and No on 66 (both statewide propositions) are the two votes necessary to repeal the death penalty in California.

Yes on 67 & No on 65: Vote yes on 67 and No on 65 (both statewide propositions) to uphold the ban on plastic bags in California.

Yes on M: To reduce traffic by 15 percent, create 465,690 new jobs and repair local roads, vote Yes on Measure M (Los Angeles County proposition).

Yes on HHH: Help end homelessness by voting Yes on HHH (Los Angeles City proposition), which will fund the 10,000 units of supportive housing for people who currently live on the street.
In a season of disturbingly ill-informed political dialogue, no topic has left the public with a more distorted understanding of the facts than the one which has taken center stage in the final days of the campaign: the handling of sensitive information by Secretary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State. There are five basic questions that need to be addressed to place Secretary Clinton's mistakes in context and determine how to weigh those mistakes in the larger decision of who to support for president.

1.When the word classified material is used, what are we talking about?

2.What are the procedures for those who must deal with classified information to communicate with one another about its meaning for the policies they are responsible for shaping?

3.How often do officials violate the best practices for handling classified material?

4.How significant were the Clinton violations?

5.How has the government responded to significant mistakes in the handling of classified material in recent history?

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The federal government generates a stupendous amount of information each day that could be sensitive to our country's interest in one way or another. This information is collected in order to help those working on a wide array of government programs to be more effect in performing their assigned responsibilities. The collection of information that never reaches those who need it to better perform their duties is a complete waste of money. On the other hand information that is shared too broadly can often be an embarrassment and at times may compromise the safety of citizenry.

But almost every analysis that has been done of the government classification system has found that a large portion of the information that has been classified should not have been and a large portion of the information that should have initially been classified should have been declassified after time.

Security classification experts such as Thomas Blanton who directs the National Security Archive at George Washington University has testified before Congress that "50% to 90% of our national security secrets could be public with little or no damage to real security." His testimony is corroborated by the testimony of numerous officials who have access to the subject area such as former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean, who co-chaired the 9/11 commission. Kean has stated that "three-quarters of what I read that was classified shouldn't have been." Rodney McDaniel who was Secretary of the National Security Council under President Reagan estimated some years ago that only 10% of classification was for "legitimate protection of secrets."

Striking a proper balance between facilitating the needed dissemination of information and insuring its security is a continual struggle for those who must deal with it. Officials working to resolve pending policy choices frequently must decide whether to terminate a telephone conversation on an insecure phone line, deferring the conversation until it can take place over an encrypted phone or face to face in a secure location. When time period for decision making is short and the information which the parties need to discuss is of dubious sensitivity from a security perspective or has already appeared with some frequency in newspapers, best practices are often not adhered to.

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That is not to say that best practices are not important or that there are not secrets that could do grave damage to our national interests if they were inappropriately handled. But the amount of potentially sensitive information that our government generates each day is so massive that it would require a huge bureaucracy rivaling the size of the current federal government to sift through it and make well considered determinations as to whether a particular piece of information should be classified and if so at what level. No one wants to pay for that and so we hobble along with a system that errs on the side of caution and consistently over classifies.

By the latest count there are 4.5 million people with federal security clearances but only a tiny fraction have access to a significant range of government information that is classified or information that is truly sensitive or would be significantly damaging if released. Those who do, live with significant burdens that those outside of the system do not generally appreciate. These include the careful cataloguing and safe storage of materials and the constant issue of what pieces of information can be discussed with which people and in what environment or over what type of communication system.

In the real world, the answers to those questions are rarely straight forward or easy to determine. If best practices were used in all instances with all pieces of classified information, government decision making and policy implementation would screech to an almost total standstill.

So given the system we have for defining what our secrets are and taking the necessary steps to protect them, how serious was the breach that occurred as a result of the decision by Secretary Clinton and her staff to use a private server intended to handle non classified official emails but which inevitably ended up including a number that were classified?

We cannot fully answer that question because ultimately none of the emails containing classified information leaked and so we don't know their content or the sensitivity of their subject matter. We also have no information indicating that they were intercepted by unfriendly parties so in real sense there was probably no real damage to American interests.

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But it is none the less important to insure that people with access to sensitive information do the best job that they can in protecting that information whether bad practices result in the compromising of secrets or not. Secretary Clinton has admitted that she did not but how serious was her transgression and what would be the appropriate remedy for that transgression.

The answer to that question depends in part again on the sensitivity of the information. Although we do not know the content to the information in the emails, we do know what portion was classified and at what level. Of the 30,000 emails on the server, 110 had some type of classification associated with them but only 8 email chains contain information classified as "Top Secret". That means that 99.6 percent of the emails had no classified material and of the 0.4 percent with some form of classification only a fraction might have had real import. This is not to argue that there is no justification for classifying information as "Secret" or "Confidential" but rarely would the disclosure of such information have significant or lasting consequence to our national interests.

An example would be a diplomatic cable that I recently found on WikiLeaks which was classified "Secret". It was from more than a decade ago and indicated that a diplomat from a friendly Middle Eastern country had met with a delegation from neighboring country. That delegation did not believe that they had received the courtesy the deserved in a visit to a third country in the region. This kind of gossip can often be useful in the day to day world of diplomacy. The Foreign Service officer who picked up and reported this gossip was probably providing a useful tip to his colleagues and it was worthy inclusion in a cable and it was also appropriate that it be classified so as to protect the Foreign Service Officer and his source from being viewed as indiscrete. It is highly unlikely however that this message would result in measurable damage to our long term national interests if Russian or other foreign intelligence had intercepted it.

Further it is probable, based on the statistics cited above, that a number of the emails classified as "Top Secret" may not have contained sensitive information. Also important in determining the appropriate response to the mistakes made in the use of the case of the Clinton server is the fact that such a tiny portion of the emails contained information classified at any level. That clearly indicates that those using the system were making a serious effort to exclude such information from such communications. Historically, significant penalties have been applied only in instances when not only the information in question would have posed a significant threat to American interests but also when the information was deliberately and knowingly provided to individuals who were not supposed to see it.

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One example of how security protocol violation has been handled in the past is a case I remember involving a former Congressional staffer who left his office without returning a number of very highly classified materials to the safe where they were they were required to be stored. He was unfortunate to have done that at when a security audit was performed on his office and as a result his clearance was suspended for an extended period forcing his superiors to reassign him to work on unclassified programs.

In a separate case, a State Department official provided a member of Congress with extremely sensitive information which the Member was not cleared to possess. Shortly after that, the Congressman used the information in a press conference which resulted in exposing a CIA foreign agent and completely compromising an ongoing intelligence operation. Again the government revoked the official's security clearance and he was forced to find employment elsewhere.

If the individual who compromises sensitive information or violates security protocols is a Member of Congress or a high ranking executive branch official, the formal suspension of a clearance for a stated period of time is often seen as impractical.

One of the nation's most famous and most damaging disclosures of classified information occurred in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Senator Orrin Hatch who at the time was the Ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee with jurisdiction over the FBI and U.S. counter intelligence programs, told reporters hours after the attacks how the U.S. government had identified the perpetrators. "They have an intercept of some information that includes people associated with [Osama] bin Laden who acknowledged a couple of targets were hit"

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He later told other reporters that the information had come from officials at the CIA and FBI. Following those disclosures, al Qaeda discontinued its use of the satellite phone that had allowed U.S. intelligence to track their activities for several years. In the following Congress which began in January of 2003, Hatch was selected by his Republican Colleagues to serve as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

In another instance, Richard Armitage, (one of the few people in the Bush 43 foreign policy team that I truly looked up to) made another serious blunder in discussing sensitive matters with reporters. Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State under Collin Powell, revealed to columnist Robert Novak in a July, 2003 interview the identity of an undercover CIA officer named Valerie Plame. The revelation of her identity as an agent clearly compromised her ability to function as part of a sensitive on going operation and in all probability compromised the operation itself. Armitage also shared this information with Washington Post correspondent Bob Woodward. An investigation by the Justice Department determined that Armitage's mistake was inadvertent and no action was taken.

It should also be noted that Presidents and senior administration officials seem at times to follow their own judgment in whether to abide by government classification policy. In his book Plan of Attack, Bob Woodward describes a meeting between Vice President Richard Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan who later became the head of Saudi intelligence services. During the meeting the Cheney and Rumsfeld show Bandar a map of the plan of attack--a map so secret that even the Speaker of the House would not be cleared to view it and a map that was explicitly labeled "No Foreign".

In another extraordinary transgression of rules governing the sharing of classified information during the Bush 43 Administration involved a foreign national named Ahmed Chalabi. Chalabi had been placed on the CIA payroll at the direction of Congressional Republicans. After only one year CIA rebelled saying that Chalabi was unreliable refused to continue his contract. Congressional Republicans then pressured the State Department to finance Chalabi but they soon rebelled and when the Bush 43 administration came to power in January of 2001, Chalabi was placed on the Defense Intelligence Agency's payroll.

At some point around the time of the invasion of Iraq, Chalabi was given extraordinarily sensitive information which seems likely to have come from one his strong supporters with in the Bush-Cheney inner circle. Chalabi, who was being openly promoted with in the Bush Administration the successor to Saddam Hussein was told that the U.S. had deciphered the Iranian diplomatic code. Later, U.S. intelligence intercepted a telephone conversation between Chalabi and senior Iranian officials in which Chalabi told them their encryption had been compromised.

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There is no publically available information concerning any investigation as to who was responsible for giving Chalabi this information and there was no Congressional investigation into the matter. Following the Chalabi telephone conversation, Iran ceased using the compromised encryption. To date there is no publicly available assessment of the damage that this leak caused to American interests but it must have been massive. The leak clearly compromised U.S. efforts to counter Iran's persistent attempts to destabilize the new U.S. back government in Baghdad as well as U.S. efforts to negotiate limitations on Iran's nuclear program and the possible sale of equipment materials and technology to third countries or political entities. Clearly the leak resulted in a loss in our ability to monitor Iran's curb political, military and economic support to Hezbollah as well as the Assad regime in Syria.

As stated previously, there is a significant distinction between the way in which the U.S. Government has historically dealt with security breaches that occur as the result of carelessness or bad judgment and those in which officials deliberately decide to break rules of which they are obviously quite aware. One example is the case of former CIA Director, General George Petraeus.

In 2014 Petraeus confessed that he had over a period of time shared highly classified information from eight personal notebooks with his biographer and former girlfriend, Paula Broadwell--information that would have caused "exceptionally grave damage" to the United States if it had fallen into unfriendly hands according to the Department of Justice. The Washington Post reported that, "the notebooks contained code words for secret intelligence programs, the identities of covert officers, and information about war strategy and deliberative discussions with the National Security Council."

Petraeus and Broadwell concealed their communication by using a clever arrangement in which they shared a single email and would leave draft emails for each other to read without ever actually sending an email. While this helped them avoid detection, it left little doubt as to whether they were in deliberate violation of the law. Petraeus plead guilty to a misdemeanor as part of a plea bargain arraignment.

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Another instance in which the knowing and willful violation of security procedures resulted in a criminal conviction involved former national security advisor Sandy Berger. In 2003, after he had departed his job at the White House, Berger smuggled from the national archives several copies of a classified report on the Clinton Administration's handling of the failed terrorist plots to attack U.S. targets during the millennium celebrations. Subsequently, he lied to investigators when questioned about the removal of the documents. Berger was sentenced to two years' probation, fined $50,000, required to serve 100 hours of community service and stripped of his security clearance for 3 years.

How do the mistakes made by Secretary Clinton in sending and receiving official emails stack up against these previous instances of mishandling classified information?

First of all, there was no evidence that the plan to utilize a privately maintained server was in anyway connected to providing classified information to any one not cleared to receive it. Secondly, as Director Comey pointed out in his July 5th news conference, all cases previously prosecuted involved "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.

To the contrary, out of more than 30,000 emails examined, only 8 email chains contain information that was classified as "Top Secret" so clearly, as Secretary Clinton had earlier stated, significant effort was exercised to avoid sensitive topics in the email correspondence. It would not be dissimilar from the occasional mention of classified maters in telephone conversations on insecure lines, a bad practice but one which a large portion of those with regular access to classified material have at times been guilty.

Finally, unlike the unfortunate mistake of Richard Armitage, the disastrous revelations by Senator Spector or the horrific conveyance of information about the Iranian diplomatic code to Ahmed Chalabi, there is no evidence that the mishandling of the Clinton emails did any damage to anyone but her. Senator Hatch and Secretary Armitage were never rebuked or formerly punished for their lapses. Each suffered significant damage to their reputation and public standing but far less than the damage that has already been inflicted on Secretary Clinton.

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So what will the FBI likely find among the emails recently discovered on the Abedin computer? No one knows. Director Comey himself stated in a communication with FBI staff, "We don't know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails." In all likelihood it will be more of the same. Will these emails contain evidence of the "willful mishandling of classified information," that the tens of thousands of emails already examined did not? That would seem highly unlikely.

The choice now facing the American people seems to be between someone who used poor judgment in establishing a secure and reliable means of communicating with her staff, a lapse of judgment that ultimately caused no known damage or someone who has exercised poor judgment on an extraordinary range of national security issues from the proliferation of nuclear weapons, to the diminishing of our core international alliances and the encouragement of foreign adversaries to covertly inject themselves into our electoral process. That does not appear to be a difficult choice.
If the philosopher and diplomat Joseph de Maistre was right and every nation gets the government it deserves, one has to ask, in the light of the 2016 election, what America has done to deserve this.

Mrs. Clinton has been around long enough for Americans to know her. She is the wife of a two-term president, has served as senator from New York and has been America's chief diplomat, the Secretary of State. Anyone who has been in the public eye that long can't help but provide opponents with ammunition, but Mrs. Clinton has given them weapons of mass destruction.

The list of Mrs. Clinton's questionable conduct goes back decades: Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, and continues into the present with the Clinton Foundation's pay for play controversy and the email server/email deletion debacle the FBI is currently investigating.

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Then there's the other candidate, Mr. Trump. If I had a daughter, I would not want her to be alone in the same room with him. His deplorable conduct toward women has been documented and broadcast in his own words. But that is only the start. He has repeatedly used lewd and offensive language to talk about women. In a televised presidential debate the man actually boasted about the size of his sexual organ.

Over the course of the campaign, Mr. Trump has questioned a judge's integrity on the basis of his ethnic background; suggested that the Mexican government is dumping rapists on America in the form of illegal immigrants; mocked Senator John McCain's experience as a POW in Vietnam; urged people to watch a sex tape featuring a woman who has accused him of harassment; mocked a reporter's physical disability; and the list goes on and on.

Donald Trump has an overweening pride. He told the press that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and wouldn't lose any voters. On Twitter he wrote, "Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest -- and you all know it! Please don't feel so stupid or insecure, it's not your fault." At the Republican Convention he claimed that he, and only he, can fix the system.

It is hard to believe that Americans will place one of these two people in the Oval Office. Most people I know are justifying their choice as a vote against a candidate rather than for one. A friend said to me recently, "We aren't presented with the lesser of two evils. We're presented with the evil of two lessers."

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When I see Donald Trump in action, I know I can't vote for this guy. If God opposes the proud, as Bible repeatedly states, where will that leave us if Donald Trump is our leader? It will leave us in a mess. We just can't have Donald Trump as our next president.

And then I think of Hillary Clinton. If she does what she says she will do, religious freedom will be restricted in unprecedented ways, protections for the unborn will be rescinded, and Supreme Court justices will be appointed not to uphold the Constitution but to advocate liberal views on abortion and LGBT rights. We just can't have Hillary Clinton as our next president.

But either Clinton or Trump will be our president, banning some inconceivable occurrence. What has America done to deserve a self-righteous, deceitful, greedy, arrogant, or sexually obsessed leader? I suspect that de Maistre would say that America will choose the leader who looks most like her. And that brings us to a painful realization: our candidates are projections of ourselves. In the final analysis, they are not the problem. We are. It's our deceit and greed and arrogance and sexual obsession that has brought us to this place.
Sometime in July I lost hope in humanity. I disappeared from social media and fell into a funk. I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness. As it turns out, I wasn't alone. One poll said 80% of people backing Donald Trump were scared of Hillary Clinton and 62% of people backing Hillary Clinton were afraid of Donald Trump. CBS News Political Director John Dickerson said, "That's why this election feels so depressing to people, because it's a referendum on the other person - how bad they are."

Like most liberals, I was horrified at the crass, racist, and dehumanizing statements from the Republican nominee. While I've done enough research at this point to understand why people follow him, and I don't believe a majority of his supporters are as prejudiced as Donald Trump, there is still an underbelly of white supremacy and vitriolic hatred of "others" embodied in his candidacy.

Humanity has a long history of creating an "other" class of people. As much as I would like to believe we've moved forward, the rise of nationalism across the globe proves we haven't. The Brexit vote, most agree, had less to do with economics and more to do with "a protest by those who are inherently uncomfortable with the social changes in Britain in recent decades, particularly with immigration..."

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Social changes have come fast and furious in the United States in recent years. The Supreme Court's approval of same-sex marriage against the will of nearly half the country rubbed people the wrong way. Most states still have laws allowing for discrimination against LGBT people in housing and employment. "Religious Freedom" laws allowing for discrimination showed up all across the country. And then there's Fox News stoking the fire on a non-existent war on Christians. (Over 70% of Americans identify as Christians, including over 90% of congress and the president himself.)

David Livington Smith, author of Less Than Human, told NPR, "We all know...that it's very difficult, psychologically, to kill another human being up close and in cold blood, or to inflict atrocities on them." To get to that place we need to first dehumanize people. We create an 'us vs. them' mentality, which removes emotions, making people something besides human beings. We stop thinking of our ideological nemeses as people with families, hopes, dreams, thoughts, ideas and experiences similar to ours. Instead, we think of them as animals, incapable of human emotions.

Whether it's whites against blacks, Christians against gays, or nationalists against immigrants, the first step is always dehumanizing, devaluing, and disenfranchising "those" people. We assign attributes that clearly portray them, in our minds, to be something besides people, which mentally justifies our actions, attitudes, behaviors, and discriminatory laws against them.

Thomas Jefferson, who publically opposed slavery, yet had hundreds of his own, said in his book, Notes on the State of Virginia, that there is an "innate incompetence of blacks" and they "are inferior to the white in the endowment of both body and mind." As long as Jefferson could make himself believe his slaves were intellectually and emotionally subordinate, he could justify the horrific abuse they received from him and his plantation managers.

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The United States is changing. While we have always been a country of immigrants, some are increasingly uncomfortable with the changing look and feel of the new demographic. It was predicted by the U.S. Census Bureau that Caucasians will become the minority by 2044. Pew Research says 18% of the U.S. population will be immigrants by 2065, and immigrants and their children will then represent 36% of the population.

Unfortunately, research also shows that with the increase of non-whites in the population, a perceived anti-white bias has been created for some. The Washington Post noted, "Indeed, research points to people's pervasive fear that they will end up on the bottom of the status pile -- a fear called 'last place aversion.'" The unfounded belief is that improvement in the quality of life for others means a loss of something to everyone else. This was a reason many religious groups opposed marriage equality leading up to the Supreme Court's ruling in 2015.

Anti-LGBT group, Family Research Council, lists 10 reasons on its website why gay marriage is wrong. One of those is that it "would undercut the norm of sexual fidelity within marriage." In reality, same-sex marriage has no bearing on the behavior of heterosexual couples. The perceived notion that husbands and wives would suddenly cheat on each other because same-sex couples were allowed to marry is based in irrational fear. Again, "last place aversion" implies that if one social group gets equal treatment, another social group will pay the consequences.

There is nothing wrong with nationalism, per se, which is merely a patriotic feeling towards ones country. To use psychologist Jonathan Haidt's metaphor, "you love your spouse because she or he is yours, not because you think your spouse is superior to all others." The problem is when someone crosses the line from nationalist to supremacist, but that's not a huge leap.

In September 2015, Hungarian camerawoman, Petra Laszlo, famously tripped an asylum seeker and his young son who were fleeing from the police. Though she claimed not to see the man was carrying the boy, she said she was "trying to help police." Laszlo was certainly aware of the crisis these refugees faced, yet without empathy or compassion for their plight, the man and his son became criminals to be stopped.

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For better or worse, the 2016 election has uncovered the fact that we are a scared nation. We want to run and hide in our corners, or come out shooting at anyone not like us. Tolerance - putting up with someone you disagree with - has not worked. If anything, it's made us less tolerant, angrier and hopeless. An "us vs. them" mentality is really nothing more than the abject failure to recognize someone as a fellow human being. Can we do better? I truly don't know.
Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta finally threw in the towel and conceded that there was nothing he could do to fight corruption in his Jubilee government and Kenya writ large.

During the "State House Summit On Governance And Accountability", the man whose extensive familial wealth supposedly inoculated him from the scourge that has bedeviled Kenya since his father Jomo opened the government for (personal) business deflected responsibility and accountability for the corruption that is rife in his government to everyone else but himself.

Mr. Kenyatta slammed the Legislature, Judiciary and the Constitution. He even took a shot at an absent John Githongo (Kenya's first anti-corruption czar) and some hapless panelist whose name he, President Kenyatta, allegedly couldn't remember, for asking pointed questions.

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Conspicuously missing from the summit was President Kenyatta's former crimes-against-humanity comrade-in-arms and self-proclaimed "hustler" Deputy President William Ruto. I will leave it up to the pundits to discuss why he did not attend the meeting.

Kenyatta, at whose office the buck supposedly stops, whined that he had "done his part" and asked "people (implicated in corruption scandals) to step aside", supposedly at "great political risk" to himself.

Overlooked in the president's self-congratulatory contortion is that his deputy Mr. William Ruto, who has been implicated in more than one scandal DURING his deputy presidency, is still safely ensconced in office.

Also overlooked by the so-called "good man" who is unfortunately surrounded by "bad people" is that it took him a lifetime (in political terms) to acquiesce to his Secretary of Planning and Devolution Ms. Anne Waiguru's request for "lighter duties" after yet another round of millions went missing from the department.

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The latest episode of gross malfeasance under Mr. Kenyatta's presidency involves the alleged misappropriation of KSh.5Billion (~$50Million) intended for free maternity care in hospitals across the country; a cause near and dear to the First Lady Margaret Kenyatta.

The electronic payment system at the Ministry of Health was manipulated to make double payments to vendors and divert funds to individuals and private companies.

And the clincher?

The individuals and private companies implicated in the scandal are respectively members of the president's immediate and extended family and companies associated with them.

This latest in a long and odious string of scandals since Jubilee took office now has the party faithful crying foul. To paraphrase a good friend, the family dog has finally created a hole big enough for the hyena to enter the compound and devour the family livestock! If ever there was an apt metaphor for Uhuru Kenyatta's stewardship of Kenya over the last 3+ years, this is it.

This article, yet another one detailing corruption and gross malfeasance during President Uhuru Kenyatta tenure, was prompted by a colleague who wanted to know if I was one of those "band of brothers" who thought Opposition Leader Raila Odinga is the answer to corruption in Kenya.

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Without waiting for my response, the colleague went on to "forewarn" (his very word) me that if my answer was "Yes", then "all (my) credibility and passion for a corruption-free Kenya simply vanishes. Poof!!!!"

It was a sad but telling exchange on corruption in Kenya between two ostensibly intelligent, rational and concerned citizens: It was also an exchange akin to one I had before the ill-fated 2007 Presidential Elections that birthed the post-election violence. In that exchange with a different colleague, I was asked how the-then foreboding Raila win "would benefit me".

In responding to the question re: whether I was one of those who thought RAO was the solution to corruption in Kenya, I offered that were he in office and corruption was at its current level, my criticism of Raila would be even more relentless and biting given his self-proclaimed brand. I added that the fact that I had to point out what should have been elemental was a sad commentary on Kenya's political discourse; only made worse by the fact that I had to point that out to someone who usually waxed eloquently about ethics and spirituality.

Given his already-implied position re: Raila's ability to fight corruption, my colleague proceeded to offer a rather Chinua Achebe-esque response by congratulating President Kenyatta - for doing his job i.e. organizing a summit to confront corruption!

On how the illusory and non-existent Raila win of 2007 was going to benefit me, someone else bitingly asked the questioner to tell those gathered how Jomo's and Kibaki's presidency benefitted HIM. The questioner quietly slinked away sans any response.

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The foregoing sequence of exchanges offer a window into the cognitive dissonance that is Kenya's fight against corruption. The scourge, just like tribalism, is fully embedded in the country's DNA. Not surprisingly, President Uhuru Kenyatta has followed in his predecessors' "nyayos" or footsteps and allowed family and friends to partake in "matunda ya uhuru"; an inevitable outcome given the non-existent firewall between political office and personal business interests in Kenya.

Given the amount of money at stake and the inability of Kenya's nascent, weak and malleable institutions (legislature, judiciary, law enforcement etc.) to act as honest brokers, the reaction of Kenyans to the struggle for the presidency offers a textbook definition of projection as well-intentioned people reveal their true raison d'etre for pursuing and fighting to retain political office and power.

With Kenya's elections fast-approaching, Uhuru Kenyatta's war on corruption that Mr. Githongo calls the "theatre of the absurd" and his myriad other failures have not compelled a tipping point of Kenyans to look for leadership outside their respective ethnic cocoon and away from a government led by scion of a dynasty whose patriarch first created the hole in the fence for his cronies to devour the family livestock.

Why?
What would be more damaging for the United States? Electing a president in the wake of an 11th hour revelation about his opponent? Or electing a president who's subsequently hit with a revelation that would have cost her the election had it arrived sooner?

As readers know, I think that Donald Trump, who has squandered inherent advantages over Hillary Clinton through his own erratic, self-indulgently self-destructive behavior, needs another revelatory domino to fall over in order to end up in the White House. Probably. Assuming that most of the polls are not under-counting his strength due to his latter-day pariah status in the mainstream media, a pariah status far greater than the act of supporting Brexit.

That dog of revelation hasn't barked yet. What might such a bark herald?

Well, the discovery of deleted classified e-mails on ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner's laptop, giving the lie to Hillary's line of defense, could well do it.

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So could a smoking gun about pay-for-play and the Clinton Foundation. (Some of the already leaked e-mails have been more than suggestive.)

Or maybe something else entirely, since Team Clinton was so cavalierly inept in securing her precious e-mail archives as United States secretary of state that they may as well have Fed-exed the Hillary SOS archive to the Kremlin.

Today at least, however, that front was marked by the blessed sound of silence.

So that is good for Democrats, and those few of us who have warned of Trump's ascendance for more than a year, especially as more and more votes come in by mail.

But what if I'm wrong, what if another baying hound of Clinton scandal isn't really necessary?

What if recent revelations are still percolating and a stable-for-once-for-a-week Trump is somehow reassuring?

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The latest national polls have Trump within the polling margin of error. The actual moves of the nation's leading Democrats indicate very serious concern about the race. Clearly they don't buy these trendy media statistical models promising near certain victory for Hillary in a race which -- putting aside its closeness and questions about polling accuracy -- can turn in a flash on a single move either from the U.S. Justice Department or the Kremlin.

Michigan had long seemed safe for Hillary. But with her lead there collapsing in the last few days, she rushed back to the Wolverine State on Friday to try to reassert her edge.

She was also in Ohio, pushing to turn out the base vote in a tough race with Trump. And she was in Pennsylvania, a state also long thought a lock for Hillary, suddenly pushing in the Pittsburgh area, where I'm told Trump has recently surged dramatically into the lead.

And President Barack Obama, who just three days ago was scheduled to campaign in North Carolina, which he carried in both 2008 and 2012, only on Wednesday, likewise suddenly returned to the Tar Heel State on Friday. The usually imperturbable president looked more ruffled than usual, actually losing his temper when some of the audience wouldn't stop heckling an older veteran protesting for Trump.

Obviously, tensions remain high.

It was only Wednesday when Obama, during his scheduled stint of campaigning in North Carolina, portentously declared: "The fate of the world is teetering and you, North Carolina, are going to have to make sure that we push it in the right direction."

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Guess it needed another big push.

So the Wikileaks watch continues. Julian Assange stated in September that he would release material which would result in the indictment of Hillary Clinton. But I think his hands are not entirely his own. There is probably a bigger and much more long-term agenda at play than Assange's resentment at what he sees as Clinton's persecution of him for the embarrassing release of State Department cables several years back.

And furious bureaucratic maneuvering is undoubtedly underway amidst angry FBI agents, their compromised and compromising managers, and the defensive Justice Department appointees who oversee them all.

Is there something truly lethal there, and might it see the light of day in time to turn the election?

The good thing for Democrats, and those of us who have long been deeply alarmed by the prospect of a President Trump, is that the later it gets now, the harder it will be to influence the largest number of voters.

Of course, the flip side of that is the later it gets, the more difficult it is to mount a successful counter.
Hillary Clinton is the most qualified candidate running for President. One of the reasons why is her experience with a critical issue that impacts every nation: hunger and malnutrition.

As Secretary of State Clinton showed leadership in fighting hunger, which is a major foreign policy objective of the United States. She helped start the Feed the Future initiative, which supports small farmers globally.



As Clinton said, "We know very well that hunger is a drain on economic development. It is a threat to the stability of governments and it certainly it deprives us of the talents and energy of nearly a billion people worldwide."

The International Food Policy Research Institute said Clinton, as Secretary, showed an "unwavering commitment to raising the profile of hunger and poverty in the developing world as well as in the United States."

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Hillary Clinton has demonstrated great leadership in fighting hunger, and can further this effort as the next president. (photo courtesy of hillaryclinton.com)



The World Food Program USA awarded Clinton the George McGovern Leadership prize in 2010 "for her commitment and visionary approach to ending global hunger." Clinton will surely continue to follow McGovern's example of feeding the hungry at home and abroad.

It is critical for our commander in chief to lead in fighting hunger, especially with more refugees than anytime since World War II.



There are millions of war victims in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, South Sudan, Yemen and other countries who need food to survive and to rebuild their communities.



As former Army Chief and Secretary of State George Marshall said, "Hunger and insecurity are the worst enemies of peace." We need a president who understands this and implements policies that will fight hunger across the globe.



As we learned from our experiences in World War I and II, food aid is vital to winning the peace. After World War II ended a famine almost claimed hundreds of millions of lives in Europe and Asia. American leadership prevented that tragedy because we were focused on fighting hunger.



Today, we cannot secure peace if people are starving or cannot grow food. Hungry people become desperate and vulnerable to recruitment by terrorist groups like ISIS or Boko Haram.

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Clinton understands this and can work with Republicans on implementing food for peace strategies that feed refugees. Food can help build long term stability for regions in distress.
Local officials discussed, rejected law enforcement consolidation in past

Voters are being asked to consider a constitutional amendment on the Nov. 8 ballot that would enshrine the election of sheriffs into constitution .
SpaceCom, an Israeli communications satellite company, is to receive a US$196 million insurance payout from a firm insured by the Lloyds of London syndicate following a rocket explosion which destroyed a satellite it owned.Spacecom Satellite Communciations will be compensated after its Amos 6 communications satellite  built by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI)  was destroyed onboard Elon Musks SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Globes reports.The Falcon 9 rocket exploded on the launch pad in September during a routine refuelling exercise at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.The destroyed Amos 6 satellite was planned to be used by Facebook to provide internet access to people in sub-Saharan Africa, Wall Street Journal reports.Manufacturer IAIs payment will be deposited directly into the account set up under lien to Spacecom's bondholders, reports say, and will not compensate for lost revenue of some US$200 million for contracts signed with communications providers.As well as the insurance payout, IAI is also due to pay Spacecom US$10 million for late delivery of the ill-fated satellite, according to reports.Meanwhile, Spacecom is still in talks with Beijing Xinwei Technology Group, which said in August that it had agreed to acquire the Israeli firm for US$285 million, Reuters reported.The deal was dealt a blow after the Amos 6 was destroyed, and Spacecom reported on Sunday that negotiations for the sale had been extended to 15 November.
Lanesborough-Williamstown School Committees to Discuss Complaint Against Superintendent

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.  The public school committees of Williamstown and Lanesborough will hold a joint meeting Monday evening to discuss the competence of the superintendent of the Tri-District.

The committees late this week posted the agendas for their respective sessions, which have two topics of discussion: As determined by the School Committee to discuss the professional competence of the Superintendent and complaints or charges against the Superintendent of Schools," and " to conduct negotiations with non-union personnel."

The agendas indicate that the committees may vote to immediately proceed to an executive session to discuss the matter, in compliance with Massachusetts General Law.

The agendas cite MGL Ch. 30A, Section 21 (a), which reads, in part, A public body may meet in executive session  [to] discuss the reputation, character, physical condition or mental health, rather than professional competence, of an individual, or to discuss the discipline or dismissal of, or complaints or charges brought against, a public officer, employee, staff member or individual.

The agendas do not specify who is bringing the charges against Dias or the nature of the contract issues to be negotiated.

In all, four bodies will be involved in Mondays meeting: the Mount Greylock Regional School Committee, Williamstown Elementary School Committee, Lanesborough Elementary School Committee and Supervisory Union 71, a body comprised of members of the elementary schools committees.

Attempts to reach Dias and Mount Greylock Regional School Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Greene on Friday were unsuccessful. Both are attending a joint conference of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees and Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents in Hyannis.

Williamstown Elementary School Committee Chairman Dan Caplinger, who also attended the conference on Cape Cod, replied to an email inquiry that he was not at liberty to share anything about the nature of the complaints against Dias.

Lanesborough School Committee Chairwoman Regina DiLego also said she could not share any details and said the discussion during the open session will determine if an executive session is needed.

Dias, who was hired in Spring 2015 , had a tumultuous first year as the leader of Williamstowns K-6 elementary school.

The fiscal year 2017 budget discussions at WES kicked off when Dias announced his plan to trim the budget in order to stop relying on the districts School Choice reserve account, which was depleted after years of use to balance the budget.

Although the town ultimately agreed to increase the schools assessment in order to restore many of the items on the chopping block, one element remained unfunded: the full-day preschool program.

The preschool change originally was framed as part of the overall austerity package, but Dias later explained that he had concerns about the schools Side-by-Side preschool that went beyond cost.

As I have stated publicly, I have several historical, procedural and supervisory questions about the [Side-by-Side] program that require answers, and it will take time to fully explore them so that we are able to establish a process that remains equitable, properly licensed and well-managed for the future, Dias wrote in March in an email to one of his critics

The School Committees decision not to pass a budget that did not include funding for a full-day preschool led to a contentious town election season and a protest vote on the floor of Mays annual town meeting.

The Side-by-Side question continued to be raised by members of the public at School Committee meetings into the fall.

Dias serves WES as part of SU-71, a joint agreement of the Williamstown and Lanesborough elementary school districts.

SU-71, in turn, shares central administration services with Mount Greylock under what is referred to as the Tri-District.

Dias tenure as superintendent at Mount Greylock, while less acrimonious than his time at WES, has not been free of controversy.

This summer, two members of the school committee at the regional junior-senior high school voted against a satisfactory evaluation given to Dias by the seven-member panel.

In his written evaluation of Dias, one Mount Greylock School Committee member wrote that the first-year superintendent had given the committee "incomplete and misleading" information.

Since Mondays meeting involves of the hiring authorities to whom Dias answers, it is unclear whether the complaints or charges arise from the junior-senior high school or one of the elementaries.

It also is unknown how much of the discussion on Monday at 5 p.m. in Mount Greylocks library will be open to the public.

There may be discussion among committee members at Monday's meeting about whether the committees will vote to have all or part of their discussion under the open session portion of the agenda, Caplinger wrote in his email. In addition, the superintendent as the person being charged has the right to have charges and complaints heard in open session even if the committees vote to go into executive session.
ABC News and NPR political commentator Cokie Roberts.

Cokie Roberts Shares Election Thoughts At MCLA

NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  In all her years covering politics, Cokie Roberts said she has never seen an election like this one.

"Its bad," ABC News and NPR political commentator Cokie Roberts said Thursday at a press conference. "We have seen divisions in American society before but nothing like this."

Roberts, who has won numerous awards throughout her over 40 years in the business, spoke at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts Thursday night as the featured speaker for the sixth annual Michael S. and Kitty Dukakis Public Policy Lecture.

When asked why Republican nominee Donald Trump has made it so far, Roberts said it comes down to changes in society causing disruptions for people. She cited North Adams as a city born from the industrial revolution. A revolution that forced people off the farm and into cities, totally changing the way people lived and earned a living.

Roberts said today many feel left behind by the technological revolution.

"For the people who are educated it is a boom and for the people who are not it is a disaster," Robert said. "It is easy to try to blame somebody, to blame immigration, blame globalization and all that but the truth is it is technology."

She said cultural changes that also disrupt those unwilling to accept change.

Roberts said this kind of discomfort and unease can open the gates for a candidate like Trump.

"When someone comes along and says they can make it the way it used to be and that person also happens to be a TV star who has had a show that millions of people have watched and when you combine all of those things you get Donald Trump," she said.

She said she felt the coverage of Trump was unique but added that Trumps run at the presidency and popularity is nothing to dismiss.

"If people are attracted to that person it is not nothing," Roberts said. "The fact that he has crowds of 30 and 50 thousand people showing up is not nothing. Its not dispositive by any stretch of the imaginationbut he did run against 12 Republicans some of who, like Jeb Bush, spent $150 million in TV ads and got nowhere so you cant just say its a media phenom."

Roberts added that there have been many heated elections, such as this one, but none as openly crude amplified by a 24-hour news cycle.

"The worst of it comes from a major party candidate and you have to cover it. You have to bleep him all of the time but it would be wrong to say we have never heard this kind of language before," she said. "The difference is this is much more pervasive. In the olden days, it was out there in little newspapers now it is out there in the entire atmosphere and it is not pleasant."

As for the polls, Roberts said you must take them with a grain of salt and they only offer a snapshot of the race.

"Horse race polls mean nothing and pollers will tell you that they are not predictive but they are a snapshot of the race at that moment in time," Roberts said. "They scare you to death or give you great comfort and they certainly show movement and they show candidates where they have to shore up support."

She said she had a similar opinion on the debates, however, felt they were useful because people pay attention to them.

"People only pay attention really as a nation a few times in the course of the campaigns: the convention and the debates," she said. "As much as they are all kind of staged that is when everybody is watching."

She said she has moderated many debates in her life and said "they are horrible and just make you want to die" but felt the last of the three debates moderated by Chris Wallace was the most successful.

Roberts was asked if she thought this election sparked a wave of feminism with many women coming out with firsthand accounts of abuse by Trump.

She said she recognized three main feminism focus points during the campaign: the democratic convention, the release of the recording with Trumps sexual abuse comments and when Trump called Hilary Clinton a nasty woman.

She added that she felt the campaigns events have brought an enhanced conscience to feminism.

As for third party candidates, Roberts said this election is ripe for one to rise because of the negativity among the main party candidates. She added that the third-party candidates in this election do not have the numbers to win and recommended voting for someone who can actually become the president.

Roberts said the election is worrisome especially with divisions it is creating throughout the country. She said she was especially disturbed by Trump's remarks about not accepting the results of the election.

"Trump could easily win this election and I think his statement about keeping us in suspense was very disturbing," Roberts said. "John Adamshated the fact that Thomas Jefferson beat him but he accepted it. He snuck out of town and didnt go to the inauguration but still it was a remarkable moment in world history."

"This funny little country on the banks of the Atlantic that had decided to play with this experiment of the consent of the governed and actually meant it replaced a sitting government," Roberts said.

"It was phenomenal and the world could not believe that it happened. It is a tremendous strength of our country and to call that into question is very damaging."
Imperial Valley News Center

Secretary Kerry Travels to Antarctica, New Zealand, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Peru

Washington, DC - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Antarctica, New Zealand, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Peru from November 10 - November 18.

From November 10-12, Secretary Kerry will travel to Antarctica, where he will visit McMurdo Station, the largest research station of the U.S. Antarctic Program, as well as surrounding areas on Ross Island, and the U.S. Governments Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. He will be the first Secretary of State and the most senior U.S. government official to ever travel to Antarctica.

At McMurdo Station he will meet with scientists and researchers studying a wide range of subjects in the extreme south of the planet, including climate change. He will also see firsthand part of the recently established Ross Sea Region Marine Protected Area, the worlds largest marine protected area (1.55 million square kilometers or 598,000 square miles). The Secretary will be hosted by the U.S. National Science Foundation, which manages the U.S. Antarctic program.

Secretary Kerry will then travel to Wellington, New Zealand, from November 12-13, where he will meet with Prime Minister John Key and Foreign Minister Murray McCully for consultations on a range of bilateral and global issues. He will also participate in the dedication of the site of the United States Memorial and a wreath laying ceremony at New Zealands National War Memorial Park.

On November 14, the Secretary will travel to Muscat, Oman, where he will meet with His Royal Highness Sultan Qaboos and Foreign Minister Yusuf bin Alawi to discuss Yemen and efforts to reach a peaceful settlement to the conflict there. The Secretary will then travel to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on November 15 to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed to discuss challenges facing the region.

From November 15-16, Secretary Kerry will travel to Marrakech, Morocco, where he will participate in the 22nd Conference of the Parties (COP22) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. While at COP22, Secretary Kerry will deliver a speech that highlights the urgency of addressing climate change and the importance of continued ambitious climate action around the world.

On November 16, Secretary Kerry will travel to Lima, Peru, to lead the Department of State delegation to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Ministerial Meeting. The Secretary will discuss with officials from other member economies APECs work to expand trade and investment, promote small and medium enterprise participation in the global economy, foster regional food systems, and invest in human capital development. The Secretary will also deliver remarks at an event to celebrate APECs achievements on empowering women for economic growth and to urge APEC partners to recommit to further progress on advancing womens economic empowerment.
National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice on the Executive Order on Advancing the Global Health Security Agenda

Washington, DC - American leadership is essential for advancing global health security and for ensuring that all countries are prepared to prevent, detect, and respond to threats posed by infectious diseases. But America cant do it alone, and the time for action is now. Its up to all countries to do their part and help their neighbors. Thats why we launched the Global Health Security Agenda in 2014  to empower the global community to step up, bolstered by American leadership, and secure a world that is safe from epidemic threats. Today, President Obama signed an Executive Order to further advance the Global Health Security Agenda.

Already, weve seen historic success: Working with partners in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and from around the world, we led the way in ending the Ebola epidemic in West Africa  and we are leading the way on the Zika response here at home. Fifty-five countries, as well as stakeholders from across nongovernmental and private sectors and next generation leaders in global health security have signed on to the Agenda. The effort has resulted in commitments from G-7, Nordic, and key G-20 partners to assist at least 76 countries and regions that will make a real difference in communities around the world. The Global Health Security Agenda has also led to the creation of a new way to identify gaps through external evaluation, which 22 countries  including the United States  have now undergone. As part of our own commitment to this Agenda, the United States is partnering with 31 countries and the Caribbean Community to provide assistance to create, for the first time, a step-by-step plan to get prepared.

The Executive Order signed today builds on this progress by establishing long-term policy objectives and memorializing a comprehensive framework for the United States to continue, strengthen, and institutionalize our achievements and use common targets to measure progress. The Executive Order will save lives by further leveraging the full power and leadership of the United States Government and is an important step toward a safer, more resilient future.
Governor Brown Issues Statement on Paris Climate Agreement Milestone

Sacramento, California - Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. issued the following statement as the Paris Climate Agreement comes into force today, less than a year after the global pact was reached at the United Nations' 2015 Climate Conference (COP21):

Today on climate, the world moves from commitment to action. Now its up to cities, states and provinces to drastically cut toxic carbon pollution and get us to our goal. The clock is ticking.

Last year, Governor Brown attended COP21 at the invitation of UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres and France's Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Development Laurent Fabius. Over the course of the conference, the Governor met with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, China's Special Envoy on Climate Change Xie Zhenhua, France's Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy Segolene Royal, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and former Vice President Al Gore, and participated in a number of events with world leaders.

California's Leadership on Climate Change

California is playing a world-leading role in setting aggressive climate goals, broadening collaboration among subnational leaders and taking action to reduce climate pollutants.

In September, Governor Brown signed legislation that establishes the most ambitious greenhouse gas emission reduction targets in North America and the nations toughest restrictions on destructive super pollutants. The Governor also signed legislation that directs cap-and-trade funds to greenhouse gas reducing programs which benefit disadvantaged communities, support clean transportation and protect natural ecosystems.

This action builds on landmark legislation the Governor signed in October 2015 to generate half of the state's electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and double the rate of energy efficiency savings in California buildings. Governor Brown has also committed to reducing todays petroleum use in cars and trucks by up to 50 percent within the next 15 years; make heating fuels cleaner; and manage farm and rangelands, forests and wetlands so they can store carbon.

>

Last year, California and Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany formed the Under 2 Coalition  an international pact among cities, states and countries to limit the increase in global average temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius, the level of potentially catastrophic consequences. Today, a total of 136 jurisdictions representing 32 countries and six continents have joined the coalition, representing more than 832 million people and $22 trillion in GDP, which is nearly a third of the global economy.

Over the past year and a half, in addition to participating in the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, France, the Governor traveled to the United Nations headquarters in New York, the Vatican in Italy and the Climate Summit of the Americas in Toronto, Canada to call on other leaders to join California in the fight against climate change. Governor Brown also joined an unprecedented alliance of heads of state, city and state leaders  convened by the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund  to urge countries and companies around the globe to put a price on carbon.



These efforts build on a number of other international climate change agreements with leaders from the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Mexico, China, North America, Japan, Israel, Peru and Chile and Governor Brown's efforts to gather hundreds of world-renowned researchers and scientists around a groundbreaking call to action  called the consensus statement  which translates key scientific climate findings from disparate fields into one unified document.



The impacts of climate change are already being felt in California and will disproportionately impact the state's most vulnerable populations.
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As he arrives in London fresh from his triumphant peace accord with the Farc guerrillas, Nobel-winning but torpedoed by subsequent public referendum, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos may be mulling ruefully over General de Gaulles famous dictum on the difficulty of governing a country with more than a thousand cheeses.

In Colombian terms, that means a similar problem as France but with 700 varieties of passion fruit. Colombia may be known mainly for cocaine export and guerrilla insurrection, but the country is a powerhouse of Latin culture, its magic realist literary heritage attracting the Hay Festival over from Wales, its popular music among the most electrifying on the planet. And its food scene, issuing from a tremendous geographic diversity, may be about to attract some of the global attention that has focussed recently on Peru, Mexico and Brazil.

This is being encouraged by the Colombian government, with top chefs touring the world at the behest of the Foreign Ministry  and, an open secret in Bogota restaurant circles, a deal just signed to bring the Latin worlds most lavish and media-dominating event, the Latin Top 50 Restaurant Awards, to Bogota next year.

Typical seafood dish from Colombia (Getty)

Im in Colombia as part of this process, brought over on behalf of the glossy monthly Food and Travel by Procolombia, an offshoot of the Colombian Ministry of Commerce. I've been given the opportunity (rare nowadays) of working with a living photographer rather than an iPhone to survey the gastronomic riches of the nation  more specifically, the riches of the cool, misty tower-block capital Bogota and its steamy Caribbean colonial alter ego Cartagena.

The latter is where President Santos, John Kerry, Raul Castro, Farc leader Rodrigo Londono Echeverri (also known as Timoleon Jimenez) and a cast of hundreds have just celebrated the signature of the peace treaty, and tucked into a lunch of sea bass with costeno cheese puree cooked by top local chef Alejandro Ramirez, an alumnus incidentally of the Grove Hotel Watford. The paved 17th-century streets and palm shaded plazas of Cartagena abound with good restaurants. So do the wooded hills and broad avenues of Bogota, where an entire district, composed surprisingly of 1930s mock Tudor redbrick , is named Zona G, the g standing for gastronomica.

Recommended Read more Why the Nobel Peace Prize committe chose the Colombian President

Leo Cocina y Cava, the flagship restaurant of Leo Espinosa, is currently one of the top addresses in the capital, colonial townhouse outside and sleek black and white elegance within. Suited waiters offer lengthy explanations of the menu: useful aids would include an encyclopedia of the flora and fauna of South America and a magnifying glass, but Leos weighty tome Leo, El Sabor, Ancestral y Moderno, available from a stack on the bar, comes in almost as handy.

Leo Espinosas thing, in common with majority of the new Latin American wave, is painstaking research of arcane traditional ingredients and their incorporation into little jewel like dishes in which purple Andean tubers, tree tomatoes, Pacific mangrove snails, and resonantly named items such as pipilongo and chontaduro sport adornments of microscopic forest blooms.

As the then head of Procolombia, Claudia Lacouture, points out in her introduction to the book, reviving the countrys gastronomy, with all the societal advantages that will bring, is founded on rediscovering the riches of tradition. So when not cooking or touring the world, Leo Espinosa spends months investigating indigenous communities, particularly in the far-flung underdeveloped regions of the Pacific coast.

I want to show Colombian food isnt just ajiaco and arepa de huevo she says, referring to the classic popular staples of thick chicken corn and potato stew and sizzling egg-stuffed fried corn pasty. Not that Leo spurns such lowly stuff, thank goodness: I subsequently consume delicious versions of both in Misia, her Bogota economy cafe-diner.

Prince Charles tastes some traditional Colombian food on a visit to Colombia (Rex)

If half the political bigwigs of the Southern hemisphere are in Colombia during my visit, half the top toques of Bogota, including Leo Espinosa, are not. Theyre in Mexico City, where another summit is taking place. This is the awards ceremony for the Latin Worlds 50 Best Restaurants 2016, an event which in recent years has assumed major importance among the star chefs and food media. This September, the Awards have been notable not just for the number of listed Colombian restaurants, five including Leos in 33rd place, but also for the news, still not officially announced, that Colombia will succeed Mexico in hosting the Awards in 2017 and 2018.

Depending on your viewpoint, this may or may not be a big deal. Its certainly going to mean a big party if last years bash was anything to go by. In the great stone columned halls and cloisters of Mexico Citys historic Colegio de San Ildefonso, surrounded by some of the finest murals of Diego Rivera, hundreds of slinkily draped representatives of gastro-showbiz and chefs in gold Award sashes quaffed champagne, mezcal cocktails and exquisite morsels.

According to insiders, a couple of suitably grand Bogota venues are currently under consideration, one in the historic centre, the other near to gastro-epicentre, Zona G.

The bill for such extravaganzas, and the accompanying series of press tours and dinners is much speculated on. What has Colombia committed to spending for its hoped-for 24 months in the international spotlight? No one is saying.

Leo Cocina y Cava in Bogota

So what are the chances for Colombia, rumoured to have outbid Argentina for the 2017 Awards? According to Diego Salazar, its less of an obvious foodie destination than predecessors Peru or Mexico. Both those nations have rich food scenes, well recognised and avidly patronised by locals. People make fun of Peruvians, always talking about the latest obscure new places theyre going to have dinner while theyre still eating lunch at somewhere equally choice. Colombia on the other hand has never taken its own gastronomy seriously. Until now.

Colombian woman in traditional dress (Rex)

In all the current regional interest, there is one intriguing subject unexplored: the political elite and food. What are the Latin equivalents of Tony Blairs Islington tapas bar or Camerons Cotswold gastro-pub? Some South American leaders are presumably epicureans, with circumstances to suit. Ms Lacouture, a close associate of President Santos, apparently has a culinary background, though requests for more details generate no response.

But in the nation of magic realist gastronomy everyone, from to kitchen porter to President, is a potentially fascinating character, and if the publicity campaign goes well were going to be hearing a lot more of them over the next two years.
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Business leaders have urged the Government to take immediate action amid fears that Brexit was in danger of spinning out of control, paralysing British industry and dealing a devastating blow to the economy.

They also demanded ministers protect thousands of valued European employees fearing for their futures in a Britain outside Europe.

The alarm was raised as the Governments strategy for Brexit sat in tatters after the High Court ruling that Theresa May cannot trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, starting the process of leaving the European Union, without first consulting Parliament. Businesses said they were putting investment decisions on hold, delaying expansion plans and holding off on hiring new staff in response to the decision.

Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive and founder of advertising giant WPP, said the court ruling could be the prelude to yet more uncertainty amid a deepening crisis. The High Court ruling is just one example of how much we underestimate the complexity of Brexit, and the barriers to it happening swiftly or in an orderly fashion, he told The Independent.

In one respect a welcome Brexit check, parliamentary scrutiny also means delay and adds to the climate of uncertainty that is causing businesses to postpone or cancel investment decisions. It all makes life more difficult.

Sir Martin, named the second best performing CEO in the world by the Harvard Business Review, warned earlier this week that his company had seen the first signs of Brexit anxiety in the UK.

Meanwhile, the Co-operative Group said it was gravely concerned about the impact of Brexit on staff, particularly its European employees. Chief executive Richard Pennycook said their rights must be protected.

Uncertainty will be felt most by those EU citizens living in the UK, and indeed ours living elsewhere in the EU, he said. In the Co-op, we have many thousands of valued colleagues who find themselves in this position. The free movement of people remains a key area of focus between our Government and other member states, and we would urge, despite the ruling, that the negotiators draw a distinction, rapidly, between those already here and those who may wish to come in the future.

Patric Johnson, managing director of City broker Panmure Gordon, said he was worried about the impact on smaller businesses, which make up a large proportion of his client base: The judgment by the Law Lords from a business and growth perspective was most unwelcome, as it could delay the decision for triggering Article 50 by the end of March, 2017.

 High court rules Brexit needs Parliamentary approval

Many of Panmure Gordon's clients are small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). These companies probably contribute more to growth than other sector in the UK. Consequently I urge the PM to be mindful of the need to push on with her plans as quickly as possible.

Mr Johnson said he believed an immediate general election might be required to deliver a speedy answer to this thorny problem.

Business groups said ministers had to start listening to their concerns. Privately there is frustration that lines of communication have been interrupted or severed by the turmoil created by the result of the EU referendum.

One MP told The Independent: You can understand the frustration. At the moment theyre talking to everyone but no ones really sure where the real power lies.

Terry Scuoler, chief executive of consultancy group EEF, the manifacturers organisation, said: Whatever the constitutional position as advised by the courts, the Government must do all it can to manage a stable process in the meantime and ensure businesses can be confident about the rigour of the preparations for Brexit negotiations.

That involves listening to industry and continuing to gather evidence about the detailed implications of each set of options before attempting to firm-up decisions such as membership of the customs union and our relationship with the single market.

Ministers will also need to move quickly to reassure investors who are watching every move very closely. The Government cannot afford to let the whole issue appear to spin out of control.

Chris Southworth, secretary general of the International Chamber of Commerce UK said: The global economy is facing serious challenges, with under 3 per cent growth for the fifth consecutive year and protectionism up 40 per cent in 2015. Brexit has added more complexity and uncertainty which is a major concern for businesses both in the UK and overseas.

There is a lot at stake in the negotiations with the EU. It is an excellent opportunity for business leaders to bring a more pragmatic approach to the table and highlight that free trade really matters, especially for SMEs and jobs in the regions. UK policymakers must listen to what businesses need. Government can and should give assurances on transitional arrangements being put in place in the event of overshooting the two year EU exit timeframe. This would significantly help to settle nerves.

Brexit Concerns Show all 26 1 /26 Brexit Concerns Brexit Concerns Brexit will put British patients at 'back of the queue' for new drugs Brexit will put British patients at the back of the queue for vital new drugs, the Government has been warned  forcing them to wait up to two years longer A medicines regulator has raised the alarm over a likely decision to pull out of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), as well as the EU itself. ealth Secretary Jeremy Hunt dropped the bombshell , when he said he expected the UK would quit the EMA  because it is subject to rulings by the European Court of Justice. Getty Images Brexit Concerns London to lose status as 'gateway to Europe' for banks One of Germanys top banking regulators has warned that London could lose its status as gateway to Europe for the banking sector after Britain quits the European trading bloc. Andreas Dombret, who is an executive board member for the BundesbankGermanys central banktold a private meeting of German businesses and banks earlier this week in Frankfurt that even if banking rules were equivalent between the UK and the rest of the EU, that was still miles away from [Britain having] access to the single market, the BBC reports. Jason Hawkes Brexit Concerns Exodus The number of financial sector professionals in Britain and continental Europe looking for jobs in Ireland rocketed in the months after the UK voted to leave the European Union Shutterstock Brexit Concerns Brexit is making FTSE 100 executives richer Pay packages of many FTSE 100 chief executive officers are partly tied to how well share prices are doing rather than the CEOs performance -- and some stocks are soaring. ritish equities got a boost since the June vote because the likes of Rio Tinto, Smiths Group and WPP generate most sales abroad and earn a fortune when they convert these revenues back into the weakened pound. Sterlings fall also made UK stocks more affordable for overseas investors. Rex Brexit Concerns Theresa May: UK to leave single market Theresa May has said the UK "cannot possibly" remain within the European single market, as staying in it would mean "not leaving the EU at all". Getty Brexit Concerns Lead campaigner Gina Miller and her team outside the High Court Getty Brexit Concerns Raymond McCord holds up his newly issued Irish passport alongside his British passport outside the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns SDLP leader Colum Eastwood leaving the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns Migrants with luggage walk past a graffiti on a wall as they leave the 'Jungle' migrant camp, as part of a major three-day operation planned to clear the camp in Calais Getty Brexit Concerns Migrants leave messages on their tents in the Jungle migrant camp Getty Brexit Concerns The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (Adra) which distributes approximately 700 meals daily in the northern Paris camp states that it is noticing a spike in new migrant arrivals this week, potentially linked the the Calais 'jungle' camp closure - with around 1000 meals distributed today EPA Brexit Concerns Migrant workers pick apples at Stocks Farm in Suckley, Britain Reuters Brexit Concerns Many farmers across the country are voicing concerns that Brexit could be a dangerous step into the unknown for the farming industry Getty Brexit Concerns Bank of England governor Mark Carney who said the long-term outlook for the UK economy is positive, but growth was slowing in the wake of the Brexit vote PA Brexit Concerns The Dow Jones industrial average closed down over 600 points on the news with markets around the globe pluninging Getty Brexit Concerns Immigration officers deal with each member of the public seeking entry into the United Kingdom but on average, 10 a day are refused entry at this London airport and between 2008 and 2009, 33,100 people were detained at the airport for mainly passport irregularities Getty Brexit Concerns A number of global investment giants have threatened to move their European operations out of London if Brexit proves to have a negative impact on their businesses Getty Brexit Concerns Following the possibility of a Brexit the UK would be released from its renewable energy targets under the EU Renewable Energy Directive and from EU state aid restrictions, potentially giving the government more freedom both in the design and phasing out of renewable energy support regimes Getty Brexit Concerns A woman looking at a chart showing the drop in the pound (Sterling) against the US Dollar in London after Britain voted to leave the EU Getty Brexit Concerns Young protesters outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, to protest against the United Kingdom's decision to leave the EU following the referendum Getty Brexit Concerns Applications from Northern Ireland citizens for Irish Passports has soared to a record high after the UK Voted in favour of Leaving the EU Getty Brexit Concerns NFU Vice President Minette Batters with Secretary of State, Andrea Leadsome at the National Farmers Union (NFU) took machinery, produce, farmers and staff to Westminster to encourage Members of Parliament to back British farming, post Brexit Getty Brexit Concerns The latest reports released by the UK Cabinet Office warn that expats would lose a range of specific rights to live, to work and to access pensions, healthcare and public services. The same reports added that UK citizens abroad would not be able to assume that these rights will be guaranteed in the future Getty Brexit Concerns A British resident living in Spain asks questions during an informative Brexit talk by the "Brexpats in Spain" group, about Spanish legal issues to become Spanish citizens, at the town hall in Benalmadena, Spain Reuters Brexit Concerns The collapse of Great Britain appears to have been greatly exaggerated given the late summer crowds visiting city museums, hotels, and other important tourist attractions Getty Brexit Concerns The U.K. should maintain European Union regulations covering everything from working hours to chemicals until after the government sets out its plans for Brexit, said British manufacturers anxious to avoid a policy vacuum and safeguard access to their biggest export market Getty

Rain Newton-Smith, chief economist of the Confederation of British Industry, said: The process for triggering Article 50 is a constitutional matter for the courts, Government and the UK parliament. Business will want clarity on the Governments negotiating position before the process begins and will work in close partnership to help ensure an outcome which delivers prosperity for the UK.

Union leaders, meanwhile, continued to demand reassurances on the issue of workers rights.

Trades Union Congress general secretary Frances OGrady said: Working people need to know that the Prime Ministers promise to protect their rights will be delivered in the Brexit agreement.

A commitment to comply with existing and future EU workers rights must be at the heart of any transitional agreement, and of any future UK-EU trade treaty.

This will be good for both workers and business. By committing to match EU workers rights, we will have a stronger negotiating position for British businesses keeping access to the single market.
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A headteacher has been banned after she stole hundreds of pounds from her pupils Christmas card collection.

Helen Hopkins, a 48-year-old teacher at Ysgol Bro Sion Cwilt school in Wales, replaced the cash with IOU notes, a disciplinary tribunal heard.

She had also been caught using money from an EU teacher exchange fund to take her two children on holiday to Dublin, it was reported.

Ms Hopkins, who earns 50,000 per year at the Welsh speaking school in Llandysul, denied using nearly 1,000 for personal gain and repaid some of it to the school but could not provide receipts for the remaining sum spent.

She was found guilty of professional misconduct by the Education Workforce Council in Cardiff and barred indefinitely from the classroom.

School secretary Meriel Williams noticed 100 was missing from the collection of cash given by parents to buy the children books and Christmas cards, the hearing was told.

Ms Hopkins claimed she had taken the cash to buy a school chair, but the chair never appeared and the money was never returned, Wales Online reported.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters 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. 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The panel heard that another 250 had disappeared later on, with 423 missing in total.

It is believed she took the cash over a five year period, having starting working at the school when it opened six years ago.

Ms Hopkins was never reported to the police over the incidents.

Presenting the case against her, barrister Cadi Dewi said: Hopkins in large admits the allegations against her but she denies acting dishonestly or improperly.

In taking money from a Christmas card fund and Scholastic book fund, it shows she was acting dishonestly.'

Asked by the Education Workforce panel why she had claimed back money spent on her children, she said it was simply an error" and she "hadn't been asked to".

Mrs Hopkins told the panel: I havent got an easy answer for why I included the receipts, other than that they were all in one bundle."

Patrick Llewellyn, defending her, said: She is an extremely experienced head teacher. She had an enviable record at an enviable school.

She admits failing to employ and adhere to procedures. But she says there was a lack of support.

She wholly denies dishonesty and impropriety. She always had the best interest of her school at heart  sometimes to her detriment.


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The celebrity chef Jean-Christophe Novelli has said his eight-week-old son has cancer.

Valentino Novelli is now undergoing treatment after he was diagnosed Neuroblastoma cancer, a cancer of specialised nerve cells, after a lump was detected in his neck.

A spokesman for the chef said: Jean-Christophes priority at this time is supporting his family as they deal with this devastating news, it is still very early days but they remain positive and believe the NHS experts are doing everything possible.

People news in pictures Show all 18 1 /18 People news in pictures People news in pictures 7 October 2015 Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in an ice hockey match between former NHL stars and officials at the Shayba Arena in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Vladimir Putin spent his 63rd birthday on the ice, playing hockey with NHL stars against Russian officials and tycoons EPA People news in pictures 6 October 2015 German designer Karl Lagerfeld (R) and model Cara Delevingne (C) appear at the end of his Spring/Summer 2016 women's ready-to-wear collection for fashion house Chanel at the Grand Palais which is transformed into a Chanel airport during the Fashion Week in Paris, France Reuters People news in pictures 5 October 2015 Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne addresses the Conservative party conference in Manchester. The Chancellor argued that reducing the payments to people in low paid jobs would give them economic security by reducing the Governments spending deficit Getty Images People news in pictures 4 October 2015 Cowboys captain Johnathan Thurston takes a moment in the centre of the field with his daughter Frankie Thurston, holding dark-skinned doll, after winning the 2015 NRL Grand Final match between the Brisbane Broncos and the North Queensland Cowboys at ANZ Stadium in Sydney. The image quickly became the talking point of Australias National Rugby League Final and provoked a strong reaction on social media, with many praising Thurston for giving his child a toy that promotes inclusiveness and diversity Getty Images People news in pictures 3 October 2015 Pope Francis gives a thumbs-up as he greets people at the end of an audience to the participants of a meeting organized by the "Food Bank" at the Paul VI audience hall in Vatican Getty Images People news in pictures 2 October 2015 Britain's Finance Minister George Osborne (L) throws an American football as he meets with former American football players Dan Marino (2nd R) and Curtis Martin (not pictured) at 11 Downing Street in London, ahead of the New York Jets playing against the Miami Dolphins at London's Wembley Stadium on 4 October Getty Images People news in pictures 1 October 2015 An honor guard opens the door as Russian President Vladimir Putin enters a hall to attend a meeting with members of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia People news in pictures 30 September 2015 Former Mrs America Lisa Christie, who alleges misconduct by Bill Cosby, holds up photos of her younger self during a news conference at the law office of attorney Gloria Allred in Los Angeles People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Matt Damon has defended himself against claims that he instructed gay actors to remain in the closet. He had said I think youre a better actor the less people know about you and sexuality is a huge part of that. Whether youre straight or gay, people shouldnt know anything about your sexuality but an appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres show said, I was just trying to say actors are more effective when theyre a mystery. Right? Getty People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Actor Marion Cotillard has said that there is no place for feminism in Hollywood. Speaking to Porter magazine, she saidFilm-making is not about gender/ You cannot ask a president in a festival like Cannes to have, like, five movies directed by women and five by men. For me it doesnt create equality, it creates separation. I mean, I dont qualify myself as a feminist." Getty People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Actor Paul Walkers daughter, Meadow, is suing Porsche over her fathers death in a lawsuit that claims he was trapped in the burning car because of design flaws and the seat belt. The Fast and Furious star was killed when the Porsche Carrera GT he was a passenger in hit a pole in California in 2013. The driver, his friend Roger Rodas, also died when the vehicle burst into flames. AP People news in pictures 28 September 2015 Robert Mugabe waits to address the United Nations General Assembly. The leader of Zimbabwe reportedly exclaimed 'We are not gay!' as he criticised Western nation's "double standards and attempts to prescribe new rights that are contrary to our values, norms, traditions and beliefs. In 2013 he described homosexuals as worse than pigs, goats and birds. Reuters People news in pictures 28 September 2015 South African comedian Trevor Noah hosts the first 'Daily Show' since taking over from Jon Stewart as host. Stewart had presented the US satirical news show since 1999 and was described by Noah during the show as a 'Political father' 2015 Getty Images People news in pictures 25 September 2015 Sir Elton John may have received a phone call from the real Vladimir Putin. Mr Putin's spokesman announced he had made contact weeks after the singer was duped by pranksters pretending to be the Russian President. Getty People news in pictures 25 September 2015 Actor Leonardo DiCaprio was mistakenly declared as the artist who produced the Mona Lisa by Fox News anchor Shepard Smith. It was in fact Leonardo da Vinci. People news in pictures 24 September 2015 A new biography claims Donald Trump expected to be dead by 40 and never marry. The Guardian says the a new book also claims that in 1980, Mr Trump manufactured a fake vice-president of his real estate conglomerate, whom he called John Baron. People news in pictures 24 September 2015 The Dalai Lama has said that Britain's policy towards China is just about 'Money, money, money.' And asked 'Where is morality?' People news in pictures 24 September 2015 Puff Daddy secured the number-one spot on the Forbes Hip Hop Cash Kings list, with the publication calculating he made an estimated $60million (39m) between June 2014 and June 2015.

Jean has had to postpone all his immediate work over the next two weeks to be with his baby and support his family but is grateful for the understanding and support during this very difficult time.

Neuroblastoma cancer is the second most common form of tumour in children and affects around 100 children, most of them under five-years-old, in the UK every year.

Novelli and his fiancee Michelle welcomed Valentino in September and featured in a magazine spread with him last month where the chef spoke of his joy at becoming a father for the fourth time.

The 55-year-old is best known for being a Head Chef, along with Gary Rhodes, on Hells Kitchen in 2005. He also runs his own cooking academy in Hertfordshire and has opened numerous restaurants throughout his career.

The news of Valentinos illness came on the same day it was announced Michael Bubles three-year-old Son Noah has been diagnosed with cancer.
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Melania Trump was reportedly paid for modeling jobs before obtaining the proper documentation to work legally in the United States in 1996  contradicting her earlier claims that she went through appropriate channels upon her arrival to the country.

The report came during the final days of a heated presidential election where her husband, Republican nominee Donald Trump, has campaigned on a hardline stance against undocumented immigrants. Ms Trump herself delivered her second high-profile speech about her immigration to the US on Thursday night.

Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Show all 15 1 /15 Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Who are famous people voting for in the US election? George Clooney HILLARY CLINTON Getty Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Leonardo DiCaprio HILLARY CLINTON Getty Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Mike Tyson DONALD TRUMP Getty Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Beyonce HILLARY CLINTON Rex Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Chloe Grace Moretz HILLARY CLINTON Vivien Killilea/Getty Images Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Sarah Jessica Parker HILLARY CLINTON Getty Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Jon Voight DONALD TRUMP Getty Images Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Katy Perry HILLARY CLINTON Getty Images Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Jennifer Lopez HILLARY CLINTON Angela Weiss/Getty Images Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Denis Rodman DONALD TRUMP TIMOTHY CLARY/AFP/Getty Images Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Salma Hayek HILLARY CLINTON Getty Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Le Bron James HILLARY CLINTON Justin Carissimo Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Hulk Hogan DONALD TRUMP Reuters Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Kid Rock DONALD TRUMP Theo Wargo/Getty Images Who are famous people voting for in the US election? Stacey Dash DONALD TRUMP Kevin Winter/Getty Images

The Associated Press based its findings on accounting ledgers, contracts, and other related documents from two decades ago.

Ms Trump arrived in the US on 16 August, 1996 on a B1/B2 visitor visa, as she has disclosed through a lawyer, and received her H1-B work visa on 18 October 1996. However, between that time, the AP says she earned $20,056 for 10 modeling jobs.

The payments would have fallen outside of what her initial visa would have authorised.

The AP obtained a management from the now-defunct Metropolitan International Management included a handwritten date of 27 August 1996. Another line on the document said it was made and entered into as of this 4th day of September 1996.

 The glaring irony of Melania Trump's social media bullying speech

Paolo Zampolli, a former partner of the modeling firm, had previously told the AP that he was involved in the recruitment of Ms Trump from Slovenia, but believed she had a proper work visa.

Still, he confirmed that the language on the documents was consistent with the language used by his firm at the time. He maintained that he was not specifically aware of Ms Trumps legal status at the time.

Honestly, I dont know. Its like 20 years ago, he said. The contract looks [like] a real one and the standard one.

The report appears to contradict the assertion that Ms Trump was at all times in compliance with the immigration laws of this country made by Mr Trump, after receiving questions about his wifes immigration narrative.

With only five days left until the election, Ms Trump had taken a more visible role in advocating for her husband on the campaign trail. During her Thursday speech she reiterated her immigration story, the time she spent as a model Europe, and her ultimate move to the US.

As a young entrepreneur, I wanted to follow my dream to a place where freedom and opportunity were in abundance. So, of course, I came here, she recalled. Living and working in America was a true blessing, but I wanted something more. I wanted to be an American.

Ms Trump received her green card in March 2001. She did not become a US citizen until 2006, after five years of permanent residence, and a year after she married Mr Trump.
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A leading doctor who physically assaulted his daughter with a cane has been suspended from practice for one year.

Dr Gohar Rahman, 57, repeatedly punched his daughter and called her a prostitute after she went to a Halloween party and stayed over at a male friends home.

His daughter, who was then 17, had gone to the party after falsely telling her father she would be home by 9.30pm, the tribunal heard.

After he picked her up from the party the following morning, Rahman dragged her by the hair, hit her with his walking stick and punched her in the head, accusing her of bringing shame upon the family.

Rahman, a consultant cardiologist at Wigan Infirmary, assaulted his daughter at home before ordering her to change into more traditional clothing and ordering her to pray.

Police were called after the daughter sent a plea for help on social media.

Doctors found she had received bruising to her forehead, lower back, left shoulder and left side, as well as three marks where she had been hit by the stick.

A clump of her hair also fell out, doctors reported.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters 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

The unnamed girl, who is now 18, later described her father as looking like a monster and described the assault as awful, leaving her with lasting psychological damage.

She said her studies had been disrupted and is has been receiving counselling since the ordeal.

In February this year, Rahman - who formerly worked with the United Nations - was given a suspended jail term after he admitted to assault occasioning actual bodily harm to his daughter.

He was sentenced to 10 months in prison, suspended fo two years, and ordered to complete 100 hours unpaid work.

A tribunal panel decided on Monday that he would not be struck off the medical register, because he had shown significant remorse.

He was ordered to serve a 12-month suspension.

The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service hearing had previously heard evidence that the incident occurred after Rahman's daughter - who was referred to only as A - left the family home on October 31 last year to go out for the evening with a college friend.

She knew her parents wouldn't allow her to attend the Halloween party so she told them she would be at a friend's house and return at 9:30pm, although she intended to stay out all night.

Her parents called her after she failed to return and her father told her to come home so he could teach her a lesson.

Noel Casey, lawyer for the GMC, described the attack to the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service: She was saying say sorry to her dad to make it stop. As father threw her on the floor and kicked her while she was on the floor.

He told her to get up, so she did but he dragged her up from the floor by her hair. He was slapping and kicking her back and arms so she fell to the floor again. She remembers being hit with a shoe and was assaulted to her arms back and bottom.

During this he was saying to her that he did not recognise her as a daughter, she was bringing shame on the family and again that she was a prostitute.

Rahman then demanded the passcode for her mobile phone and hit her with a walking stick after she refused to give it to him.

He is currently suspended by the Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Foundation NHS Trust but remains on the payroll.
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The Lord Chancellor Liz Truss has broken her silence following a High Court decision over Brexit, saying the independence of the judiciary is the foundation upon which our rule of law is built.

The Bar Council had called upon Ms Truss to condemn the serious and unjustified attacks on the judiciary in the wake of ruling, a response that was part of widespread critcism over the way some Conservative MPs and sections of the media had reacted to the High Court Court decision on Thursday.

However, while saying that our judiciary is rightly respected the world over for its independence and impartiality, the statement from Ms Truss on Saturday did not specifically address the backlash against the ruling.

It follows personal attacks on three High Court judges after they ruled that Article 50 must be debated by MPs in Parliament.

The statement from Ms Truss added: In relation to the case heard in the High Court, the Government has made it clear it will appeal to the Supreme Court. Legal process must be followed.

Earlier on Saturday, the Bar Council, who represent barristers, said: The Bar Council of England and Wales condemns the serious and unjustified attacks on the judiciary arising out of the Article 50 litigation.

It regrets the lack of public statement by the Lord Chancellor condemning these attacks and calls upon the Lord Chancellor to do so as a matter of urgency.

A strong independent judiciary is essential to a functioning democracy and to upholding the rule of law.

As Lord Chancellor, Ms Truss is in charge of oversight of the courts and holds responsibility for their independence and performance.

Chantal-Aimee Doerries QC, chairwoman of the Bar Council, emphasised that the High Court judgment was not about the merits of leaving the EU, but rather the constitutional process of triggering Article 50.

She said: It is the judiciarys role to ensure the rule of law underpins our democratic system. Without it fulfilling this vital role, the people would have very limited scope to hold the Government in power to account.

Publicly criticising individual members of the judiciary over a particular judgment or suggesting that they are motivated by their individual views, political or otherwise, is wrong, and serves only to undermine their vital role in the administration of justice. It also does no favours to our global reputation.

None of the parties suggested that the court did not have jurisdiction to decide the point at issue. They are simply doing their job  impartially ruling on a dispute between parties, one of whom happens to be the Government in this instance.

Brexit Concerns Show all 26 1 /26 Brexit Concerns Brexit Concerns Brexit will put British patients at 'back of the queue' for new drugs Brexit will put British patients at the back of the queue for vital new drugs, the Government has been warned  forcing them to wait up to two years longer A medicines regulator has raised the alarm over a likely decision to pull out of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), as well as the EU itself. ealth Secretary Jeremy Hunt dropped the bombshell , when he said he expected the UK would quit the EMA  because it is subject to rulings by the European Court of Justice. Getty Images Brexit Concerns London to lose status as 'gateway to Europe' for banks One of Germanys top banking regulators has warned that London could lose its status as gateway to Europe for the banking sector after Britain quits the European trading bloc. Andreas Dombret, who is an executive board member for the BundesbankGermanys central banktold a private meeting of German businesses and banks earlier this week in Frankfurt that even if banking rules were equivalent between the UK and the rest of the EU, that was still miles away from [Britain having] access to the single market, the BBC reports. Jason Hawkes Brexit Concerns Exodus The number of financial sector professionals in Britain and continental Europe looking for jobs in Ireland rocketed in the months after the UK voted to leave the European Union Shutterstock Brexit Concerns Brexit is making FTSE 100 executives richer Pay packages of many FTSE 100 chief executive officers are partly tied to how well share prices are doing rather than the CEOs performance -- and some stocks are soaring. ritish equities got a boost since the June vote because the likes of Rio Tinto, Smiths Group and WPP generate most sales abroad and earn a fortune when they convert these revenues back into the weakened pound. Sterlings fall also made UK stocks more affordable for overseas investors. Rex Brexit Concerns Theresa May: UK to leave single market Theresa May has said the UK "cannot possibly" remain within the European single market, as staying in it would mean "not leaving the EU at all". Getty Brexit Concerns Lead campaigner Gina Miller and her team outside the High Court Getty Brexit Concerns Raymond McCord holds up his newly issued Irish passport alongside his British passport outside the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns SDLP leader Colum Eastwood leaving the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns Migrants with luggage walk past a graffiti on a wall as they leave the 'Jungle' migrant camp, as part of a major three-day operation planned to clear the camp in Calais Getty Brexit Concerns Migrants leave messages on their tents in the Jungle migrant camp Getty Brexit Concerns The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (Adra) which distributes approximately 700 meals daily in the northern Paris camp states that it is noticing a spike in new migrant arrivals this week, potentially linked the the Calais 'jungle' camp closure - with around 1000 meals distributed today EPA Brexit Concerns Migrant workers pick apples at Stocks Farm in Suckley, Britain Reuters Brexit Concerns Many farmers across the country are voicing concerns that Brexit could be a dangerous step into the unknown for the farming industry Getty Brexit Concerns Bank of England governor Mark Carney who said the long-term outlook for the UK economy is positive, but growth was slowing in the wake of the Brexit vote PA Brexit Concerns The Dow Jones industrial average closed down over 600 points on the news with markets around the globe pluninging Getty Brexit Concerns Immigration officers deal with each member of the public seeking entry into the United Kingdom but on average, 10 a day are refused entry at this London airport and between 2008 and 2009, 33,100 people were detained at the airport for mainly passport irregularities Getty Brexit Concerns A number of global investment giants have threatened to move their European operations out of London if Brexit proves to have a negative impact on their businesses Getty Brexit Concerns Following the possibility of a Brexit the UK would be released from its renewable energy targets under the EU Renewable Energy Directive and from EU state aid restrictions, potentially giving the government more freedom both in the design and phasing out of renewable energy support regimes Getty Brexit Concerns A woman looking at a chart showing the drop in the pound (Sterling) against the US Dollar in London after Britain voted to leave the EU Getty Brexit Concerns Young protesters outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, to protest against the United Kingdom's decision to leave the EU following the referendum Getty Brexit Concerns Applications from Northern Ireland citizens for Irish Passports has soared to a record high after the UK Voted in favour of Leaving the EU Getty Brexit Concerns NFU Vice President Minette Batters with Secretary of State, Andrea Leadsome at the National Farmers Union (NFU) took machinery, produce, farmers and staff to Westminster to encourage Members of Parliament to back British farming, post Brexit Getty Brexit Concerns The latest reports released by the UK Cabinet Office warn that expats would lose a range of specific rights to live, to work and to access pensions, healthcare and public services. The same reports added that UK citizens abroad would not be able to assume that these rights will be guaranteed in the future Getty Brexit Concerns A British resident living in Spain asks questions during an informative Brexit talk by the "Brexpats in Spain" group, about Spanish legal issues to become Spanish citizens, at the town hall in Benalmadena, Spain Reuters Brexit Concerns The collapse of Great Britain appears to have been greatly exaggerated given the late summer crowds visiting city museums, hotels, and other important tourist attractions Getty Brexit Concerns The U.K. should maintain European Union regulations covering everything from working hours to chemicals until after the government sets out its plans for Brexit, said British manufacturers anxious to avoid a policy vacuum and safeguard access to their biggest export market Getty

The right to appeal is there to challenge the court's decision if a party feels they have grounds to do so. Whilst acknowledging that this question is one of potentially significant constitutional importance, the independent role of the court should be respected, particularly by those who disagree with the outcome.

The treatment of the judges was criticised by politicians from across the political spectrum. Former attorney general Dominic Grieve, a Conservative, called the attacks chilling and outrageous and smacking of the fascist state.

Labour MP Hilary Benn, chairman of the Commons Brexit select committee, said the Daily Mails front page branding the High Court judges enemies of the people was not helpful.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the media and politicians had a responsibility not to attack those who had made the decision.

Ministers should be reminding their fellow ministers that even if you dont like the judgment, you have to respect it, he said.

Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, speaking on Saturday at a conference, welcomed the High Courts ruling, saying it underlined the necessity that the Prime Minister brings the Government's negotiating terms for Brexit to Parliament without delay.

He continued: We accept and respect the decision to leave the European Union. But there must be transparency and accountability to Parliament about the Governments plans.

I suspect the Government opposes democratic scrutiny of its plans because  frankly  there arent any plans, beyond the hollow rhetoric of Brexit means Brexit.

Additional reporting by PA
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Leading authors have joined activists marching in protest against wide-ranging cuts to cultural services including, libraries, museums and galleries.

Children's authors Alan Gibbons and Michael Rosen and the childrens laureate Chris Riddell were among thousands of people who gathered outside the British Library before marching on to Trafalgar Square in central London on Saturday.

More than 340 libraries have been closed since 2010, with the loss of almost a quarter of staff in what several unions, including Unite, Unison and the Public and Commercial Services have called a national crisis.

Around 2,500 people joined the protest, according to Unite's head of media and campaigns Alex Flynn.

It's been very good natured but people have been clear in the message that libraries are vital to our communities, they are vital for education and empowering people and that libraries should not be cut, he said.

"I think it's exceeded expectations - the level of support and the reception we have got as we've marched from the British Library. We would hope that the Government take note."

Ahead of the demonstration, Unite officer Fiona Farmer said: "Tory Government cuts to local government funding have wrought havoc to our public libraries with hundreds closing.

"What we are seeing community by community is an act of cultural and educational vandalism.

"Libraries are the gateway to knowledge, learning and enjoyment for all ages of people from all walks of life.

"Yet more and more communities are seeing their library disappear or service diminish because of librarian cuts or failed privatisation."

The unions warned that as well as job and pay cuts, many museums and galleries are being privatised as organisations took short-term measures to cut costs.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: "Given the clear benefits arts and culture bring to our society and our economy, cuts to libraries, museums and galleries represent everything wrong with the Tories' approach to public spending.

"While institutions are closing, privatising services or charging for access, the staff who guard our nation's cultural treasures are languishing on low pay and insecure contracts."

A spokesperson for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said: "Libraries are important to communities, not only as places to borrow books but as spaces where people can access a wide variety of information and services.

"That's why local authorities will have almost 200 billion to spend on local services, including libraries, over the lifetime of this parliament. Local authorities have a statutory duty to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service and we have powers to ensure they comply."

Additional reporting by Press Association
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Men do not enjoy the debauchery or the extreme rituals and humiliation associated with most modern stag dos, according to a new study.

A traditional pre-wedding stag do now often involves excessive drinking and ritual humiliation. The report, written by Daniel Briggs from Madrid University and Anthony Ellis of Salford University, found that men bow down to peer pressure despite feeling scared and degraded.

After looking at a series of stag dos across Eastern Europe, England and a Spanish Island, the researchers concluded men would often go along with the plans just to keep up with others in the group.

The study, which was published in the journal Deviant Behaviour, claims men on the stag do are performing a role rather than actually enjoying the event.

Dr Ellis, one of the authors of the study, said many feel as though they would be missing out if they didnt join in.

"We found this palpable feeling that people felt they had to enjoy themselves and if they didn't enjoy themselves they were missing out, even if what they were actually experiencing was quite frightening, Dr Ellis told The Telegraph.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters 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

"People told us that they had had quite troubling experiences and the general atmosphere is one of intense pressure to over-consume."

The report suggests that men reproduce exaggerated aspects of their behaviour that is expected of them in an attempt to have a story to tell in later life.
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Thousands of protesters have descend on central London for the Million Masked March, despite Scotland Yard imposing strict restrictions on the event.

Supporters of the hacking collective Anonymous began marching on Trafalgar Square on Saturday with scores of police officers maintaining a tight perimeter.

The group's agenda is broadly anti-capitalist and pro-civil liberty, with many of the demonstrators wearing Guy Fawkes masks in an effort to recreate the final scene of cult film V For Vendetta. It is one of many similar marches held worldwide on 5 November.

A masked protester holds up a flare on Whitehall (Getty Images ) (Getty)

A masked protester waves an 'Anarchy' flag in front of a line of police (Getty Images ) (Getty Images)

The march began peacefully, with several demonstrators climbing the base of Nelson's column and chanting "one solution, revolution".

A small number of fireworks were reportedly set off in the crowd and some demonstrators marched off the pre-organised route, according to reports on Twitter.

By 7pm the Metropolitan Police said they had made 10 arrests and as of 9pm 33 had been made.

Eleven were made for obstruction after they refused to remove their masks for police, three for possession of an offensive weapon, 14 for possession of drugs, two for public order offences, one for criminal damage and two others were also made.

By 10:45pm, 47 arrests had been made in total - the majority of which were for drug offences and obstruction.

A firework is fired at a line of police by protesters during the Million Mask March (Getty Images ) (Getty Images)

Masked protesters hold placards and wave flags as they stand on and around Nelson's Column (Getty Images ) (Getty Images)

Metropolitan Police issued a warning before the event that masked criminals seeking to run amok will be arrested if the protest turns violent after last years march saw ugly scenes with missiles and fireworks thrown at police.

Protester Angela Windsor, 40, who travelled from Wales to the march said: "Nobody is protecting people - nobody cares. I think everyone here cares enough about people to make the effort to come down and try and do something, because the officials aren't doing it."

She said anyone who tried to repeat last year's violent displays would be off the mark: "Nobody wants a fight, we just want change."

Another protester, a London-based mental health worker who gave his name as Jay and was dressed as Father Christmas, said he had chosen the costume to show "not all of us are down here for violence".

There were chaotic scenes shortly before 9pm, with riot police moving in to make arrests.

A group of protesters surrounded and charged at the officers, shouting "f*** the police" and "police brutality". Several glass bottles were thrown as police escorted another protester away.

Police have imposed conditions on this year's march, limiting it to a three-hour period between 6pm and 9pm on a prescribed route between Trafalgar Square and Whitehall.

Police said last year protesters abandoned an agreed route and timetable for the demonstration and thousands of riot police and mounted officers were deployed to contain crowds after the largely peaceful protest at Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square dispersed across the centre of the capital.

Four officers and six police horses were injured and some protesters attempted to set a police car on fire.

More than 1,000 people are believed to have attended the march in 2015 and there were more than 50 arrests.

Million Mask march in London 2015 Show all 10 1 /10 Million Mask march in London 2015 Million Mask march in London 2015 Protesters demonstrate near the Houses of Parliament in London PA Million Mask march in London 2015 Protesters clash with police during the 'Million Mask' demonstration in Central London EPA Million Mask march in London 2015 Marchers wear the Guy Fawkes masks during anti-government and anti-establishment protest in London Rex Million Mask march in London 2015 A police car is attacked and set on fire near Scotland Yard during the annual Million Mask March bonfire night protest started in Trafalgar Square and headed to Westminster where it splintered Rex Million Mask march in London 2015 A man puts on a pig mask during the Million Mask March, London Rex Million Mask march in London 2015 A man is detained by police in Trafalgar Square, London during the Million Mask March bonfire night protest organised by activist group Anonymous PA Million Mask march in London 2015 Police arrest a protester at the 'Million Mask' demonstration in central London EPA Million Mask march in London 2015 A protester comes out with a bloodied head as crowds surge forward on Great George Street in central London, during the Million Mask March bonfire night protest organised by activist group Anonymous PA Million Mask march in London 2015 Protesters take part in the 'Million Mask' demonstration in Trafalgar Square EPA Million Mask march in London 2015 Protesters hold an anti-capitalist banner during the protest in Westminster Rex

Any static protest must only take place in Trafalgar Square, Richmond Terrace and Parliament Square, and the Met has warned that anyone breaching the conditions could be arrested for public order offences.

Nearly 20,000 people had indicated they would attend on the event's Facebook page, which defended the action saying "the police are not your friends".

Additional reporting by Press Association
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The UKs trade with India will suffer a double hit because of the Brexit vote and the decline in value of the pound, the head of Indias largest business association warned, as Theresa May prepares for a visit to the country.

Ms May will visit the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi during her visit to discuss strengthening UK-India ties and stimulating more inward investment in the UK.

But the cautionary tone struck by the leader of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) casts doubt on the success of talks between the nations, which are a key test of the UKs trading power in a post-Brexit landscape.

Ficcis secretary general, Alwyn Didar Singh, said the Brexit vote would obviously have negative consequences for the hundreds of Indian businesses that currently operate in the country.

India, one of the largest and fastest growing economies, already has established trade links with the UK, yet Mr Singh said the trade relationship was chilling.

He told The Guardian: The EU is Indias largest trading partner [] but exports from the UK to India have been declining."

He added: Now, exports from India to the UK will also decline because youve lost 18 per cent of your pounds value. So if Im sending something to the UK and getting a lower return on it, Im going to have a think about that. Its a double hit.

The business chief also stressed the problem posed by a lack of clarity over what the UK's trade relationships would look like. In uncertainty, nobody takes an investment decision, he said.

Brexiteers had argued that leaving the EU would encourage the UKs trade relationship with rising powers that lay outside the bloc, in particular the Commonwealth counties.

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

But without easy access to the EU, Indian car makers and pharmaceutical companies in the UK could struggle in a post-Brexit landscape, meaning the multi-billion pound industries could choose to go elsewhere.

India is also expected to demand an increase in immigration to the UK as part of any post-Brexit trade deal, putting a further stumbling bloc in the way of the prime minister.

Visas proved an insurmountable barrier in EU-India negotiations for almost a decade as Delhi is reported to have asked for 50,000 working visas a year from the bloc.

Announcing her visit to India, Ms May said: We have the chance to forge a new global role for the UK  to look beyond our continent and towards the economic and diplomatic opportunities in the wider world."
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Theresa May has vowed to continue Brexit plans, following a High Court ruling which saw judges side with anti-Brexit campaigners against the Government.

Breaking her silence since the judgment which was announced on Thursday, the Prime Minister insisted the Government must get on with the job of withdrawing the UK from the European Union.

She issued the plea in a column for The Sunday Telegraph, writing: Parliament voted to put the decision about our membership of the EU in the hands of the British people. The people made their choice, and did so decisively. It is the responsibility of the government to get on with the job and to carry out their instruction in full.

Ms May added :MPs and peers who regret the referendum result need to accept what the people decided.

A coalition of anti-Brexit campaigners took a case against the Government, arguing Ms May cannot trigger Article 50 without consulting parliament. Their lawyers told the court, that constitutional law establishes that only parliament can take away rights of British citizens, and some rights would be lost upon losing EU citizenship, MPs must vote on whether to trigger Article 50 in order to begin Brexit's formal processes. The High Court backed the challengers and sided against the Government.

Conservative MP Stephen Phillips announced he is standing down over how he feels Ms May has handled the issue, saying he has irreconcilable differences with the Prime Minister.

The Government has stated it will appeal the decision. It is expected the Supreme Court will hear the case on 7-8 December.
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Lord Chancellor Liz Truss has broken her silence around the treatment of three High Court judges who were lambasted for ruling that Parliament must debate the invocation of Article 50.

MPs from across the party divide had strongly criticised the attacks on the judges following their decision, saying they went against the principle of the rule of law.

However, Ms Truss made no comment for over 24 hours on the issue.

But on Saturday, she said: "The independence of the judiciary is the foundation upon which our rule of law is built and our judiciary is rightly respected the world over for its independence and impartiality.

"In relation to the case heard in the High Court, the Government has made it clear it will appeal to the Supreme Court. Legal process must be followed."

However, Ms Truss was criticsed for her slow response and for not defending the judges.

"No mention or condemnation of the attacks on the judges," said Twitter user PJM QC. "Hardly adequate in my opinion...It is, in short, the statement of a politician, and not of a LC [Lord Chancellor] who took an oath to uphold and protect the independence of the judiciary."

This view was echoed among numerous laywers on social media.

In the political sphere, too, the statement recieved flack.

Shadow Justice Minister Richard Burgon said: "Pressure from the legal profession, professional bodies, politicians and the public has paid off in that Lord Chancellor Liz Truss has finally made at least some progress on this issue.

"But let's be clear - all Liz Truss has done is recite the well-known principle of the independence of the judiciary.

"Liz Truss has still failed to condemn these attacks on the British judiciary as being 'Enemies of the People' and talk in the press of the sexuality of a judge.

"I'm afraid that it's far too little, far too late from Liz Truss. The last few days mean that much of the legal community now has no confidence in the Lord Chancellor to fulfil her statutory duty to protect the independence of the British judiciary."

Brexit Concerns Show all 26 1 /26 Brexit Concerns Brexit Concerns Brexit will put British patients at 'back of the queue' for new drugs Brexit will put British patients at the back of the queue for vital new drugs, the Government has been warned  forcing them to wait up to two years longer A medicines regulator has raised the alarm over a likely decision to pull out of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), as well as the EU itself. ealth Secretary Jeremy Hunt dropped the bombshell , when he said he expected the UK would quit the EMA  because it is subject to rulings by the European Court of Justice. Getty Images Brexit Concerns London to lose status as 'gateway to Europe' for banks One of Germanys top banking regulators has warned that London could lose its status as gateway to Europe for the banking sector after Britain quits the European trading bloc. Andreas Dombret, who is an executive board member for the BundesbankGermanys central banktold a private meeting of German businesses and banks earlier this week in Frankfurt that even if banking rules were equivalent between the UK and the rest of the EU, that was still miles away from [Britain having] access to the single market, the BBC reports. Jason Hawkes Brexit Concerns Exodus The number of financial sector professionals in Britain and continental Europe looking for jobs in Ireland rocketed in the months after the UK voted to leave the European Union Shutterstock Brexit Concerns Brexit is making FTSE 100 executives richer Pay packages of many FTSE 100 chief executive officers are partly tied to how well share prices are doing rather than the CEOs performance -- and some stocks are soaring. ritish equities got a boost since the June vote because the likes of Rio Tinto, Smiths Group and WPP generate most sales abroad and earn a fortune when they convert these revenues back into the weakened pound. Sterlings fall also made UK stocks more affordable for overseas investors. Rex Brexit Concerns Theresa May: UK to leave single market Theresa May has said the UK "cannot possibly" remain within the European single market, as staying in it would mean "not leaving the EU at all". Getty Brexit Concerns Lead campaigner Gina Miller and her team outside the High Court Getty Brexit Concerns Raymond McCord holds up his newly issued Irish passport alongside his British passport outside the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns SDLP leader Colum Eastwood leaving the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns Migrants with luggage walk past a graffiti on a wall as they leave the 'Jungle' migrant camp, as part of a major three-day operation planned to clear the camp in Calais Getty Brexit Concerns Migrants leave messages on their tents in the Jungle migrant camp Getty Brexit Concerns The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (Adra) which distributes approximately 700 meals daily in the northern Paris camp states that it is noticing a spike in new migrant arrivals this week, potentially linked the the Calais 'jungle' camp closure - with around 1000 meals distributed today EPA Brexit Concerns Migrant workers pick apples at Stocks Farm in Suckley, Britain Reuters Brexit Concerns Many farmers across the country are voicing concerns that Brexit could be a dangerous step into the unknown for the farming industry Getty Brexit Concerns Bank of England governor Mark Carney who said the long-term outlook for the UK economy is positive, but growth was slowing in the wake of the Brexit vote PA Brexit Concerns The Dow Jones industrial average closed down over 600 points on the news with markets around the globe pluninging Getty Brexit Concerns Immigration officers deal with each member of the public seeking entry into the United Kingdom but on average, 10 a day are refused entry at this London airport and between 2008 and 2009, 33,100 people were detained at the airport for mainly passport irregularities Getty Brexit Concerns A number of global investment giants have threatened to move their European operations out of London if Brexit proves to have a negative impact on their businesses Getty Brexit Concerns Following the possibility of a Brexit the UK would be released from its renewable energy targets under the EU Renewable Energy Directive and from EU state aid restrictions, potentially giving the government more freedom both in the design and phasing out of renewable energy support regimes Getty Brexit Concerns A woman looking at a chart showing the drop in the pound (Sterling) against the US Dollar in London after Britain voted to leave the EU Getty Brexit Concerns Young protesters outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, to protest against the United Kingdom's decision to leave the EU following the referendum Getty Brexit Concerns Applications from Northern Ireland citizens for Irish Passports has soared to a record high after the UK Voted in favour of Leaving the EU Getty Brexit Concerns NFU Vice President Minette Batters with Secretary of State, Andrea Leadsome at the National Farmers Union (NFU) took machinery, produce, farmers and staff to Westminster to encourage Members of Parliament to back British farming, post Brexit Getty Brexit Concerns The latest reports released by the UK Cabinet Office warn that expats would lose a range of specific rights to live, to work and to access pensions, healthcare and public services. The same reports added that UK citizens abroad would not be able to assume that these rights will be guaranteed in the future Getty Brexit Concerns A British resident living in Spain asks questions during an informative Brexit talk by the "Brexpats in Spain" group, about Spanish legal issues to become Spanish citizens, at the town hall in Benalmadena, Spain Reuters Brexit Concerns The collapse of Great Britain appears to have been greatly exaggerated given the late summer crowds visiting city museums, hotels, and other important tourist attractions Getty Brexit Concerns The U.K. should maintain European Union regulations covering everything from working hours to chemicals until after the government sets out its plans for Brexit, said British manufacturers anxious to avoid a policy vacuum and safeguard access to their biggest export market Getty

Green Party councillor Douglas Johnson said: "Lord Chancellor Liz Truss has finally spoken. And NOT condemned the Daily Mail for [it's] attack on Judges."

As Lord Chancellor, Ms Truss is in charge of oversight of the courts and holds responsibility for their independence and performance.

Earlier on Saturday, the Bar Council had criticised her silence after the High Court judges were at the receiving end of personal attacks from some parts of the media and pro-Leave public figures.
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Conservative MPs have called on the Prime Minister to take action in order to calm the backlash sparked by the controversial High Court ruling on the process for leaving the European Union.

A number of politicians have said Theresa May must make clear that the independence of the judiciary was fundamental to democracy, describing the media tirade against the court decision as chilling and outrageous and "inciting hatred.

Three High Court Justices were subject to what one MP called a number of hysterical headlines from newspapers on Friday after they ruled that the Government would be acting unlawfully if it tried to start EU negotiations without a parliamentary vote.

Bob Neill, the Conservative chairman of the justice select committee, said the attacks were threatening the independence of our judiciary and had no place in a civilised land.

Mr Neill said: Some of the things which have been said about the court's judgment by politicians have been utterly disgraceful.

"All ministers from the Prime Minister down must now make clear that the independence of the judiciary is fundamental to our democracy. You have to respect that even if you think they have got a decision wrong."

Former attorney general Dominic Grieve called the attacks chilling and outrageous" and smacking of the fascist state, while Anna Soubry, former minister and Remain campaigner, said some media reports were inciting hatred.

Ms Soubry told the Guardian: I think we have to call this out and say 'not in my name'. It needs somebody like Boris Johnson to step up and speak out. He's our Foreign Secretary and he knows what the reaction of the rest of the world is as they look at our great country and are horrified.

What message are we sending out to the rest of the world? Probably that this nation is in grave danger of losing the plot - and I think we might have done.

The Justice Secretary Liz Truss has also come under fire for failing to defend the integrity of the judiciary after judges were branded enemies of the people by Brexiteers.

Richard Burgon, Labours shadow justice minister, said it was Ms Trusss job to defend the integrity of the judiciary. Respecting the EU Referendum result is the right and democratic thing to do. Strong views were expressed by both sides, he said.

Judges in the High Court are there to interpret the law regardless of their personal views and that it what they have done.

Brexit Concerns Show all 26 1 /26 Brexit Concerns Brexit Concerns Brexit will put British patients at 'back of the queue' for new drugs Brexit will put British patients at the back of the queue for vital new drugs, the Government has been warned  forcing them to wait up to two years longer A medicines regulator has raised the alarm over a likely decision to pull out of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), as well as the EU itself. ealth Secretary Jeremy Hunt dropped the bombshell , when he said he expected the UK would quit the EMA  because it is subject to rulings by the European Court of Justice. Getty Images Brexit Concerns London to lose status as 'gateway to Europe' for banks One of Germanys top banking regulators has warned that London could lose its status as gateway to Europe for the banking sector after Britain quits the European trading bloc. Andreas Dombret, who is an executive board member for the BundesbankGermanys central banktold a private meeting of German businesses and banks earlier this week in Frankfurt that even if banking rules were equivalent between the UK and the rest of the EU, that was still miles away from [Britain having] access to the single market, the BBC reports. Jason Hawkes Brexit Concerns Exodus The number of financial sector professionals in Britain and continental Europe looking for jobs in Ireland rocketed in the months after the UK voted to leave the European Union Shutterstock Brexit Concerns Brexit is making FTSE 100 executives richer Pay packages of many FTSE 100 chief executive officers are partly tied to how well share prices are doing rather than the CEOs performance -- and some stocks are soaring. ritish equities got a boost since the June vote because the likes of Rio Tinto, Smiths Group and WPP generate most sales abroad and earn a fortune when they convert these revenues back into the weakened pound. Sterlings fall also made UK stocks more affordable for overseas investors. Rex Brexit Concerns Theresa May: UK to leave single market Theresa May has said the UK "cannot possibly" remain within the European single market, as staying in it would mean "not leaving the EU at all". Getty Brexit Concerns Lead campaigner Gina Miller and her team outside the High Court Getty Brexit Concerns Raymond McCord holds up his newly issued Irish passport alongside his British passport outside the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns SDLP leader Colum Eastwood leaving the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns Migrants with luggage walk past a graffiti on a wall as they leave the 'Jungle' migrant camp, as part of a major three-day operation planned to clear the camp in Calais Getty Brexit Concerns Migrants leave messages on their tents in the Jungle migrant camp Getty Brexit Concerns The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (Adra) which distributes approximately 700 meals daily in the northern Paris camp states that it is noticing a spike in new migrant arrivals this week, potentially linked the the Calais 'jungle' camp closure - with around 1000 meals distributed today EPA Brexit Concerns Migrant workers pick apples at Stocks Farm in Suckley, Britain Reuters Brexit Concerns Many farmers across the country are voicing concerns that Brexit could be a dangerous step into the unknown for the farming industry Getty Brexit Concerns Bank of England governor Mark Carney who said the long-term outlook for the UK economy is positive, but growth was slowing in the wake of the Brexit vote PA Brexit Concerns The Dow Jones industrial average closed down over 600 points on the news with markets around the globe pluninging Getty Brexit Concerns Immigration officers deal with each member of the public seeking entry into the United Kingdom but on average, 10 a day are refused entry at this London airport and between 2008 and 2009, 33,100 people were detained at the airport for mainly passport irregularities Getty Brexit Concerns A number of global investment giants have threatened to move their European operations out of London if Brexit proves to have a negative impact on their businesses Getty Brexit Concerns Following the possibility of a Brexit the UK would be released from its renewable energy targets under the EU Renewable Energy Directive and from EU state aid restrictions, potentially giving the government more freedom both in the design and phasing out of renewable energy support regimes Getty Brexit Concerns A woman looking at a chart showing the drop in the pound (Sterling) against the US Dollar in London after Britain voted to leave the EU Getty Brexit Concerns Young protesters outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, to protest against the United Kingdom's decision to leave the EU following the referendum Getty Brexit Concerns Applications from Northern Ireland citizens for Irish Passports has soared to a record high after the UK Voted in favour of Leaving the EU Getty Brexit Concerns NFU Vice President Minette Batters with Secretary of State, Andrea Leadsome at the National Farmers Union (NFU) took machinery, produce, farmers and staff to Westminster to encourage Members of Parliament to back British farming, post Brexit Getty Brexit Concerns The latest reports released by the UK Cabinet Office warn that expats would lose a range of specific rights to live, to work and to access pensions, healthcare and public services. The same reports added that UK citizens abroad would not be able to assume that these rights will be guaranteed in the future Getty Brexit Concerns A British resident living in Spain asks questions during an informative Brexit talk by the "Brexpats in Spain" group, about Spanish legal issues to become Spanish citizens, at the town hall in Benalmadena, Spain Reuters Brexit Concerns The collapse of Great Britain appears to have been greatly exaggerated given the late summer crowds visiting city museums, hotels, and other important tourist attractions Getty Brexit Concerns The U.K. should maintain European Union regulations covering everything from working hours to chemicals until after the government sets out its plans for Brexit, said British manufacturers anxious to avoid a policy vacuum and safeguard access to their biggest export market Getty

Since the backlash after the court ruling a Conservative MP and supporter of the Leave campaign has resigned with immediate effect, citing irreconcilable policy differences with the Prime Minister.

Stephen Phillips QC, the MP for Sleaford and North Hykeham, said he could no longer represent his constituents because of Ms Mays policy direction since she came to office, reportedly telling friends his party had become Ukip-lite.
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Two Italians and a Canadian hostage have been released from captivity in Libya, after being held by an armed group for nearly two months.

Danilo Calonego, 66, and Bruno Cacace, 56, and Canadian Frank Poccia were in good health when they returned to Italy in the early hours of Saturday and had not been mistreated in captivity, government officials said.

Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi said: Today is a moment of relief and joy that I would like to share with the families of our technicians.

He also thanked Libyan authorities and their security forces.

The men were freed due to the effective cooperation with local Libyan authorities, according to a statement by the Italian government.

The technicians were working on a construction project at the airport of Ghat, a southern town close to the border with Algeria, when on 19 September, gunmen blocked their vehicle and took them hostage. It is not yet known which group they were aligned with, if any, though numerous armed outfits operate in the area.

Italys foreign ministry said the three arrived in Italy at around 3am local time (2am GMT) on Saturday. It was not clear when Mr Poccia might return to Canada. It was also unclear if any ransom had been paid to the kidnappers.

In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte Isis fighters parade through in Sirte in 2015 In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte Islamic State (IS) group jihadists on the outskirts of Libya's western city of Sirte AFP/Getty In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte A photo of a billboard in Sirte, Libya, listing seven rules for women's clothing, saying they must be loose-fitting and undecorated HRW/social media In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte Isis militants process down a street in the coastal city of Sirte in Libya this week; the group has heralded Libya as its strategic gateway to attack Europe AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte An Isis lecture on Sharia at the Ouagadougou complex in Sirte, Libya, in 2016. HRW/social media In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte A sign reading "The city of Sirte, under the shadow of Sharia" as smoke rises in the background while forces aligned with Libya's new unity government advance on the eastern and southern outskirts of the Islamic State stronghold of Sirte on 9 June. Reuters In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte Fighters loyal to Libya's GNA prepare to launch attacks against Isis as they continue their resistance on the outskirts of the western city of Sirte Getty In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte Forces loyal to Libya's UN-backed unity government are seen during clashes with jihadists of the Islamic State (IS) on the western outskirts of Sirte on June 2, 2016. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Sirte Forces loyal to Libya's UN-backed unity government fire during clashes with Isis around 14 miles west of Sirte on June 2, 2016. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Isis' Libyan stronghold of Sirte Isis in Libya

The intelligence services of all three countries involved took part in the recovery effort, according to Italian officials.

Libya has been wracked by lawlessness ever since the civil war began in 2011.

However, a number of Italian companies have maintained a presence in Libya, a former colony.

In July 2015, four Italians working for a construction company were kidnapped near an oil field operated by Italian fossil fuel giant ENI in the region of Mellitah, west of Tripoli.

Two of the hostages were killed more than six months into their ordeal, likely in clashes between Jihadis and local militiamen.

The other two were freed in March this year, in a raid on Isis hideouts near the capital Tripoli.
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One of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2014 has been rescued along with a 10-month old baby said to be her son, according to the Nigerian army.

Troops discovered the girl, named Maryam Ali Maiyanga, while screening escapees from Boko Haram's base on Saturday morning in Gwoza, a local government area of Borno State, according to Nigerian army spokesman Sani Usman.

Mr Usman said the girl was found carrying her baby son, named Ali - reportedly born to a Boko Haram commander - and that she was now undergoing medical tests.

According to Reuters, Mr Usman said: She was discovered to be carrying a 10-month-old son, named Ali. She has been taken to the unit's medical facility for proper medical check up.

The baby is thought to be fathered by a fighter from the Boko Haram, the islamist group that has killed 15,000 people and displaced more than two million over seven years, with the aim of creating an Islamic caliphate in north-east Nigeria.

In October, Boko Haram freed 21 Chibok schoolgirls after a deal was reportedly brokered between the group and the International Red Cross and Swiss government, which is said to have involved a "handsome ransom" of some millions of dollars being paid to the islamist group.

But President Muhammadu said he was not aware that any ransom had been paid and denied reports the government had swapped imprisoned Boko Haram fighters for the girls' release.

An estimated 270 schoolgirls were kidnapped from the northern Nigerian town of Chibok by the extremist group in April 2014. Dozens have since escaped but around 200 girls remain missing, causing global outrage.

The first returned Chibok girl, who was rescued in May when she was found pregnant in the forest where the girls had initially been taken, is reportedly still being held by the government to receive trauma counselling, at the reported dismay of her relatives.

The girl, named Amina Ali Nkeki, has said she still misses the man she was forced to marry during her captivity, who is suspected of being an Islamist militant, but who she says was also a victim of kidnapping and helped her escape.

The extremist group published a video in August apparently showing recent footage of dozens of the kidnapped girls, and said some had been killed in air strikes.

Beyond Chibok: Report shows alarming trends in countries affected by Boko Haram Show all 16 1 /16 Beyond Chibok: Report shows alarming trends in countries affected by Boko Haram Beyond Chibok: Report shows alarming trends in countries affected by Boko Haram Fifteen year old Nigerian refugee Fati, hugs her mother Mariam while carrying her sister, at the Minawao refugee camp in Northern Cameroon UNICEF Beyond Chibok: Report shows alarming trends in countries affected by Boko Haram Fifteen year old Nigerian refugee Fati, carry her eight month old sister, who she last seen when she was 3 months old, at the Minawao refugee camp in Northern Cameroon. She was abducted by Boko Haram and spend four months in captivity. She was given to a man and forced to be his wife. She was eventually freed by Cameroonian soldiers and have been reunited with her family in a refugee camp in Cameroon UNICEF Beyond Chibok: Report shows alarming trends in countries affected by Boko Haram Nigerian refugee's at the Minawao refugee camp in Northern Cameroon. The conflict in North-East Nigeria prompted by Boko Haram has led to widespread displacement, violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, protection risks and a severe humanitarian crisis. This is one of the fastest growing displacement crisis in Africa  one of the worlds most forgotten emergencies, with little attention from the donor community UNICEF Beyond Chibok: Report shows alarming trends in countries affected by Boko Haram Nigerian refugee children at the Minawao refugee camp in Northern Cameroon UNICEF Beyond Chibok: Report shows alarming trends in countries affected by Boko Haram Nigerian refugees line up to receive food aid at the Minawao refugee camp in Northern Cameroon UNICEF Beyond Chibok: Report shows alarming trends in countries affected by Boko Haram Didja Damna (26) with her daughter, 17 month old Ngarvounsia, as she gets treatment at the Maroua hospital in Northern Cameroon UNICEF Beyond Chibok: Report shows alarming trends in countries affected by Boko Haram Didja Damna (26) with her daughter , 17 month old Ngarvounsia, as she gets treatment at the Maroua hospital in Northern Cameroon. Didja have four other children and had her first child when she was sixteen. Ngarvounsia lost weight and have been treated for three day's in hospital and is recovering UNICEF Beyond Chibok: Report shows alarming trends in countries affected by Boko Haram Fadi ,the wife of internally displaced Alagi Dubji feed her daughter, Ina Petal( 13 months) a peanut butter supplement, at their home in Maroua in Northern Cameroon. Ina received treatment for malnourishment and is doing well after she was discharged from the hospital. Alagi and his family had to flee from his village near Maroua after Boko Haram fighters burned down his house.Alagi had 40 children with 26 still alive UNICEF Beyond Chibok: Report shows alarming trends in countries affected by Boko Haram A malnourished girl gets treatment at the Maroua hospital in Northern Cameroon UNICEF Beyond Chibok: Report shows alarming trends in countries affected by Boko Haram More than 135 displacement sites have been noted along the border with Nigeria UNICEF Beyond Chibok: Report shows alarming trends in countries affected by Boko Haram Temporary schools in the refugee camp of Kabelewa, counts eight classrooms for 549 pupils. Out of those 549 children, only 12 had already been to school before UNICEF Beyond Chibok: Report shows alarming trends in countries affected by Boko Haram As the river continues to dry up in April and May, we expect to see an increase in violence in the Diffa region. Both refugees and internally displaced people are affected by the insecurity, fleeing attacks and also fleeing to safer locations ahead of attacks. Generally noticed is a movement from locations near the border towards the inland area along the main road where spontaneous new sites are being created and host villages' population increasing UNICEF Beyond Chibok: Report shows alarming trends in countries affected by Boko Haram Forced displacement in the region of Diffa is becoming regular and is linked to the volatile security situation in the region. Diffa, the Niger's poorest region, has been affected by the consequences of the increased acts of violence in Nigeria, conducted by the armed group Boko Haram, increasingly expanding and targeting the civilian population in Niger - and Diffa region in particular. With water levels starting to fall, the Nigeria-based armed group is seizing the opportunity to cross over the Komadougou River, into Niger from Nigeria UNICEF Beyond Chibok: Report shows alarming trends in countries affected by Boko Haram Fatima Abubakar, 13, in Dar Es Salam refugee camp, Lake region of Chad. Fatima lost five family members during the attack of her small village in Nigeria, in the shores of the lake Chad. She now lives in Dar Es Salam refugee camp, in Chad, with her father, mother and 3 siblings, "The table was all set and we were just about to have our breakfast together when the gunshots started outside. We immediately left in panic. I escaped with my mother. We left in two pirogues. My mothers pirogue had a whole and they put a cloth to stop the water from entering. But they had to come back to shore. I thought I would be forever alone and that my parents were dead. I cried for days. When I met them both days later in Ngouboua (an island in Chad) I couldnt be happier. I sometimes think about our table, where the breakfast was served, and how the house would be now" UNICEF Beyond Chibok: Report shows alarming trends in countries affected by Boko Haram Hafsa Mohammed sews in the UNICEF-supported child friendly space in Dar Es Salam refugee camp, Lake region of Chad. Every childs future starts with a dream and Hafsa Mohammed, 16, has a very clear idea of what she wants to become. She wants to be a successful businesswoman and own a notions store. She now lives in Daresalam refugee camp, Lake region of Chad. I have started again to sew. I used to do it back in Nigeria. My parents encouraged me to do it. It will be useful for me to start my own business and I would be happy to teach others as well, explains Hafsa UNICEF Beyond Chibok: Report shows alarming trends in countries affected by Boko Haram Salta Bintou Hassan is 11. She lost her arm after an suicide attack on Bagasola market in October 2015. After spending two months in the hospital of N'Djamena, she is back with her family. Yet, her life will never be the same UNICEF

President Buhari has vowed to secure the release of the nearly 200 schoolgirls who remain captive, but it has been reported that many of the girls are said to not want to leave their jihadist captors, either because they have been radicalised or because they are ashamed of their experience.

Nigeria's military has been carrying out a large-scale offensive in the vast woodland area and other parts of Borno state in the last few weeks, according to Reuters.

Since the beginning of 2015 Nigeria's army, aided by troops from neighbouring countries, has recaptured most of Boko Harams territory, which was once equivalent to the size of Belgium.
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There is nothing in the UK Foreign Offices advice for travelling to Rwanda that warns against contacting the countrys authoritarian leader to ask if he is a dictator.

In a small African state where critics of the government have reportedly been made to disappear, the need for a little caution might seem self-evident. Yet one British tourist and her family decided to throw caution to the wind, and found themselves at the centre of a Twitter storm, visited by two government officials, and firmly on the radar of the President himself.

President Paul Kagame entered Rwanda at the head of an army to end its genocide 22 years ago, and has been the dominant force in its politics ever since. His critics say he has stifled political plurality and personal freedoms, shut down opposition media and stage-managed constitutional reforms to ensure he remains in power until, potentially, the year 2034.

But Mr Kagame has also won praise from the likes of Ban Ki-moon, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, and under his governance Rwanda has become one of the greatest success stories of socio-economic development on the continent.

Recommended Read more President Kagame to run for third term in Rwanda

Its a dichotomy that most of the countrys tourists ignore, perhaps including only a cursory visit to a genocide memorial site before heading out to see the gorillas in the northern Virunga Mountains.

Yet the great apes held no interest for 56-year-old Wendy Murphy and her family, who visited at the end of last month after daughter Ellie, 18, studied the genocide at school.

 A Twitter Bot is Watching All of Your Mistakes

Speaking to The Independent, Ms Murphy described how they became hooked on the story of Rwanda, from its colonisation by Belgium to the events of 1994, in which around 800,000 mainly ethnic Tutsis were killed in just 100 days, to its extraordinary development afterwards.

At some point over the summer we just thought, wouldnt be it wonderful to actually go there and see the country for ourselves? she said.

They had only spent a couple of days in the capital Kigali, with its pristinely clean streets, gleaming new international conference centre and idyllic setting among green hills, when Ms Murphy decided  half-jokingly  to tweet President Kagames personal account with a question, inspired by all her reading.

We are very impressed with your country, she wrote. What do you say to those who think your methods are dictatorial?

For some hours, there was no response, and the family thought nothing more of the matter. But then, the President replied.

We were absolutely flabbergasted, and within minutes I started getting tweets from other Rwandans. It is still going on now, Ms Murphy said.

Almost all of the follow-up tweets were positive about Rwandas development  to the point of being almost defensive, she said. And when an MP with the ruling RPF party started asking for a meeting to discuss the tweet, Ms Murphy said she and her husband Tim, 66, started feeling a slight trepidation  knowing some of the criticism of Kagame.

The family met with two officials, including the MP JMV Gatabazi, for more than two hours, and after a slightly interrogatory start the meeting became a very jolly, very positive visit, in which Ms Murphy and her family heard about the development projects going on under President Kagame  much of which we knew already.

With the officials blessing  and the assurance that the President was fully aware of the family and their visit  the Murphys went ahead with their visits to memorial sites around the country and did as President Kagame had asked.

A good strong hand

During the 10 days we spoke to Rwandans from all walks of life, and they were all eager to talk to us," Ms Murphy said. "Some would mention how the country is going and what the President is doing with clear pride, and all the people we met in different places around the country were just looking so well.

A critic might say they are scared, they are brainwashed, they wouldnt say anything else, but we didnt see that. We are outsiders, and obviously there might be some areas we are not aware of that are a bit suspect. But our overall impression was that this is just a truly remarkable success story of the 21st century.

So what of President Kagame himself? After everything, Ms Murphy said she could not shake the idea that there was very much some sort of dictatorial element there.

She cited the capitals exceptional cleanliness as an example. Unlike many major African cities, it is free from the blight of plastic bags accumulating in every gutter: thats because Kagame outlawed plastic bags entirely in 2008, to the point where they are confiscated from tourists entering the country.

It is very clean, Ms Murphy said. Kagame is apparently really particular about cleanliness  he even passed a law saying peasants are not allowed to wear dirty clothes or share straws.

Wendy Murphy and her husband Tim (far left) meet with JMV Gatabazi MP (far right) and another Rwandan official in Kigali (Supplied)

From right to left: JMV Gatabazi MP, Tim Murphy, Wendy Murphy, Ellie Murphy, and a Rwandan official (Supplied)

There are odd quirks, but in the sense that he is a very strong man, we are very much admirers of his.

When you look at what Kagame was up against, 22 years is such a short space of time. There are certain extreme situations where you need a strong hand, preferably a good strong hand, and thats what Paul Kagame is. He might not make things perfect, but has got the country together.

Persuading the international community that Rwanda is a stable, safe country to visit and do business in has perhaps been Mr Kagames greatest achievement. But tourism numbers are still behind those of its east African neighbours, and while rising look set to fall short of a target of two million visitors a year by 2017.

It seems that in a bid to make that goal, the government  even at the highest level  is putting its faith in a personal approach.

Is Kagame a dictator?

President Kagame is the first to admit that his methods are not in keeping with those of a developed, Western democracy, but he rejects the suggestion that he is at the head of a regime straight from George Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four.

You cannot build democracy on sand, he said in a 2012 interview with the news magazine Jeune Afrique, suggesting Rwanda was not yet ready for democracy in the Western model after the trauma of the past few decades. But at the same time, he added: I am not a doctor issuing mandatory orders to the people on what to do or not do by holding them by the throat.

That justification for his authoritarian leadership style  that it is overwhelmingly popular  is the same reasoning he uses to explain why he has accepted a constitutional amendment that will allow him to seek a third term in office from 2017.

A referendum on the change saw 98 per cent of Rwandans vote in favour, according to the government. But because it applies only to Kagame, it has been criticised by the EU as undermining democratic principles, and last year Barack Obama called it a first step down a perilous path.

The Independent tried to contact President Kagame for an interview but, unlike with Ms Murphy, he has yet to respond to a tweet.

But speaking to this newspaper, JMV Gatabazi  the MP who met with Ms Murphy  said Mr Kagame had never been a dictator.

Kagame's leadership is very inclusive and based on the needs of the citizens, he said, adding that security and fighting against genocide ideology [are] key.

He is tight on discipline and he is consistent when it comes to the fight against corruption and malpractice, he added.

In its World Report 2016, Human Rights Watch described opportunities for genuine political opposition in the country as very limited, and found that tight restrictions on freedom of speech and political space remained in place. The murders of two prominent journalists who had been critical of the government, Jean-Leonard Rugambage and Charles Ingabire, made headlines around the world in 2010 and 2011 respectively.



Amnesty International has previously called on the Rwandan government to investigate credible reports of the unlawful detention and torture of scores of civilians in military prisons.

And in its most recent country report for Rwanda, the US State Department said: The most important human rights problems in the country were government harassment, arrest, and abuse of political opponents, human rights advocates, and individuals perceived to pose a threat to government control and social order; security forces disregard for the rule of law; and restrictions on civil liberties.

Due to restrictions on the registration and operation of opposition parties, citizens did not have the ability to change their government through free and fair elections.

Asked about the specific international criticisms of the Kagame regime, Mr Gatabazi said: It is up to Rwandans to appreciate [the President] based on the progress and socio-economic transformation we have all benefited [from].

The rest of the world, with good will, should admire Kagame's achievements, he said, adding that they talk [for] themselves.

As for Ms Murphy and her family, they are now safely back in Poland, where she is the co-founder of two British International Schools.

Mr Gatabazi described their meeting as a very positive and interesting discussion. He has invited them to return to Rwanda again someday and, according to Ms Murphy, intimated that they may even be able to meet the President in person. Just as long as they schedule their visit before 2034.
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Officers in riot gear clashed again Wednesday with protesters near the Dakota Access pipeline, hitting dozens with pepper spray as they waded through waist-deep water in an attempt to reach property owned by the pipelines developer.

The confrontation came hours after North Dakota regulators criticised the pipeline company for not immediately reporting the discovery of American Indian artefacts and a day after President Barack Obama raised the possibility of future reroutes to alleviate tribal concerns.

Public Service Commission Chairwoman Julie Fedorchak said she was extremely disappointed that Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners waited 10 days before reporting last month's discovery of stone cairns and other artefacts. The panel could decide to levy fines of up to $200,000, Fedorchak said, though she said such a high amount would be unlikely.

Protesters waded through the water trying to reach property owned by the pipelines developer (Reuters)

People yell at police officers standing on the opposite shore of a river during a protest against the building of a pipeline on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation (Reuters)

Police officers waited for protesters on the other side and dozens were pepper sprayed (Reuters)

After an inspection, company consultants decided to divert the construction by about 50 feet, even though they determined there was a low likelihood any additional artefacts were buried nearby. The State Historic Preservation Office did concur with the companys plan on how to proceed after the artefacts were found.

Although that change was relatively minor, Obama said it was possible the Army Corps of Engineers could eventually examine much larger ones that would reroute the pipeline in southern North Dakota to alleviate tribal concerns. He made the remarks during an interview Tuesday with the online news outlet NowThis.

On Wednesday afternoon, protesters tried to build a wooden pedestrian bridge across a creek to enter the property, then attempted to swim or boat across when officers dismantled the bridge, Morton County Sheriffs spokeswoman Donnell Hushka said. Two arrests were reported.

A person pours a pepper spray antidote into a protester's eyes during a protest (Reuters)

A man holds up a ceremonial object while police officers look down from a hill (Reuters)

Police use pepper spray against protesters in a boat during a protest against the building of a pipeline (Reuters)

Volunteer medics treated some of the protesters for hypothermia during the confrontation near the mouth of the Cannonball River.

About 140 people were arrested on the property last week in a law enforcement operation that cleared the encampment.

The potential for damage to American Indian sites and artefacts has been a flashpoint in a months-long protest over the pipeline, which is intended to carry crude from western North Dakota almost 1,200 miles to a shipping point in Patoka, Illinois. The Standing Rock Sioux, whose reservation lies near the pipeline route, have led a protest over that issue and the pipeline's potential hazard to drinking water.

Tribal officials said in September they had identified cultural artefacts on private land along the route. After that finding, North Dakotas chief archaeologist, Paul Picha, inspected the area and said no sign of artefacts or human remains had been found.

Picha said he was notified in a timely manner of the most recent discovery in a new area but didn't report it to the commission because he thought the pipeline company would. Both Picha and Fedorchak said the site itself was properly handled, with Energy Transfer Partners moving the pipeline route to avoid the artefacts.

We reviewed the information, wrote a letter of correspondence ... saying we agreed with the avoidance plan, Picha said.

Protesters say the project poses a threat to sacred native lands and could contaminate their water supply (Reuters)

Police use pepper spray against people standing in the water (Reuters)

As (Reuters)

He also noted that the rerouting isnt unusual. During development of the project, there were multiple reroutes of the pipeline corridor for various reasons  cultural, environmental, landowner concerns  140, 150 reroutes, he said.

Company spokeswoman Vicki Granado didnt immediately respond to a request for comment about the potential for fines over the lag in reporting about the artefacts. The company would have an opportunity for a hearing to dispute any allegations. A company attorney said in a 27 October letter to the PSC that the company didnt intentionally delay notifying the agency.

Although theres no set time frame for reporting such a discovery, PSC Commissioner Brian Kalk said that typically the intent is immediately.

A person pours a pepper spray antidote into a protester's eyes during a protest (Reuters)

(Reuters)

The pipeline is already mostly complete outside of North Dakota (Reuters)

Fedorchak said the company could potentially be fined either for the reporting delay or for moving on with construction without getting PSC clearance. Both will be investigated, she said.

The Standing Rock Sioux tribe has not weighed in on the find. Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault and tribal Historic Preservation Officer Jon Eagle Sr. did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The 1,172-mile pipeline is largely complete outside of North Dakota. The federal government in September ordered a temporary halt to construction on corps land around and underneath Lake Oahe, a Missouri River reservoir in the Dakotas. The corps is reviewing its permitting of the project but has given no timetable for a decision.
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The US Supreme Court has upheld a ban on collecting and delivering ballots on other people's behalf in Arizona, angering Democrats who argue that thousands will be disenfranchised.

The move overturns a one-day-old appeals court ruling and is expected to hit minority communities hardest, where many voters rely on neighbours and activists to collect and deliver their ballot.

This includes those living near the border with Mexico and in Native American reservations in the state.

Anyone who acts as a third party could now face up to a year in jail and a fine of $150,000.

Recommended Ohio judge warns Donald Trump campaign not to intimidate voters

The ban came into effect earlier this year, with Republicans in Arizona arguing that no voter would be restricted in their right to vote  a claim Democrats dispute.

In Arizona, voters can ask for an early ballot to be sent to their home before the election. Voters then mail it back or drop it off by 7pm on election night.

It is no secret that ballot collection and delivery has been particularly beneficial for Arizonas minority voters, and legislators who have not traditionally enjoyed broad support in those communities have repeatedly tried to restrict it, Democratic lawyer Marc Elias argued in his filing with the Supreme Court.

But Arizona secretary of state Michele Reagan said the decision to pass the commonsense law was simply to ensure ballot security.

Lawyers in support of the ruling argued it would not have a discriminatory impact and would only bring a minimal burden on the right to vote.

The ruling is a blow to Democrats, who had previously been cheered by two other key court rulings on Friday. In North Carolina a judge ordered thousands of names that had been removed from voting rolls to be restored, while in Ohio the Trump campaign was ordered to make sure not to intimidate voters.

Agenices have contributed to this report.
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Chelsea Manning attempted suicide for the second time in recent months while the transgender soldier remains imprisoned in Kansas for leaking classified information, two of her attorneys said on Friday.

Attorneys Vincent Ward and Chase Strangio declined to divulge details of Manning's suicide attempt last month at a military prison at Kansas' Fort Leavenworth. Wayne Hall, an Army spokesman, said medical privacy laws barred him from discussing the matter.

But Manning's attorneys cited her prison conditions - including the solitary confinement that her legal team says she received as punishment for her July suicide attempt - as contributing to their client's fragile mental state.

Strangio, in an email to The Associated Press, called her treatment since her 2010 arrest and subsequent time serving a 35-year sentence demoralising and destabilising assaults on her health and humanity.

After her July suicide attempt, I watched her begin to piece her life and spirit back together only to have that shattered by the disciplinary proceedings brought against her and then the unannounced initiation of her term of punishment last month, Mr Strangio wrote. She has repeatedly been punished for trying to survive and now is being repeatedly punished for trying to die.

Mr Strangio added he worries about Manning's ability to keep fighting under these relentless abuses.

How Wikileaks shone light on world's darkest secrets Show all 4 1 /4 How Wikileaks shone light on world's darkest secrets How Wikileaks shone light on world's darkest secrets 348711.bin PA How Wikileaks shone light on world's darkest secrets 348709.bin PA How Wikileaks shone light on world's darkest secrets 348710.bin GETTY IMAGES How Wikileaks shone light on world's darkest secrets 348708.bin AP

Manning, arrested in 2010 as Bradley Manning, was convicted in 2013 in a military court of leaking more than 700,000 secret military and State Department documents to WikiLeaks. Manning was an intelligence analyst in Iraq at the time.

In 2014, the ACLU sued the US Department of Defense over its refusal to treat Manning's gender dysphoria.

Manning staged a several-day hunger strike in September until the Army agreed to get her treatment for her gender dysphoria, including surgery recommended in April by her psychologist, the ACLU said.

Associated Press
Policemen put out torches of participants of Anonymous demonstration (video)

19:40 March participants reached Liberty Square. Shahen Harutyunyan explained why they had released torches into the sky, Freedom, equality, brotherhood, love, respect, homeland; these are heavenly values and we put each of them in every torch and sent into the sky. Rally-marched ended at Liberty Square with the vociferations free, independent Armenia. 19:00 Reaching Republic Square, the march participants organized an action. They released torches into the sky. The will explain symbolism of those torches at the end of the march. 18:40 The march has reached the NSS building. Here Davit Sanasaryan made a statement, In this rotten building there are people, who are happy that they serve special Russian services. But it cannot be that way. This building will soon become either museum of human rights or will be destroyed and other building will be built, which will serve the people. 17:55 Policemen, at the agreement of march participants, put out the torches. During the march Shahen Harutyunyan reminded that the march is peaceful, There is information that one of the participants has electroshock weapon with him, if someone tries to use it, it means that that person is sent by the police. 17:50 Shahen Harutyunyan, Shant Harutyunyans son, started the rally. After him, the sons of Alek Poghosyan, who is imprisoned with Shant Harutyunyan, read the letter of their father from the prison. Before starting Anonymous march Shahen Harutyunyan urged to be careful of instigators, I can already see policemen in civilian clothing. March participants are vociferating Free, independent Armenia. 17:00 Shant Harutyunyans son Shahen Harutyunyan and sons of other political prisoners in Guy Fawkes masks are holding rally-march at Liberty Square. To remind, Chairman of Tseghakron party Shant Harutyunyan was imprisoned for his political views. After the imprisonment of his father Shahen Harutyun has been organizing Anonymous march, demanding release of political prisoners.
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The Royal Canadian Navy is to investigate an object found by a diver, which could be a lost nuke missing off the coast of Canada since 1950.

Sean Smyrichinsky discovered it while he was out looking for fish near Haida Gwaii, British Columbia.

It is believed it could be a dummy nuclear weapon  but potentially still loaded with TNT  lost after a training flight crashed in the area, ditching its deadly cargo into the sea.

Recommended UN votes for global nuclear weapons ban negotiations in 2017

I found something that Id never ever seen before, Mr Smyrichinsky told the CBC. It resembled, like, a bagel cut in half, and then around the bagel these balls all cut into it, moulded into it It was the strangest thing that I had ever seen.

Mr Smyrichinsky was baffled by his find, which he sketched on a napkin, and initially speculated it could have been a UFO. However, when he mentioned it to an old fisherman from the area, he said it could be a bomb missing for over half a century.

On 13 February 1950, three of the engines of a US Air Force B-36 bomber aircraft caught fire while travelling from Alaska to Texas. The plane was on a training mission, with the intention of carrying out a simulated nuclear attack on San Francisco.

Its payload was a Mark IV nuclear bomb, weighing nearly five tonnes. While it had a lead core instead of plutonium, and was therefore unable to cause a nuclear explosion, it was still a real device loaded with explosives.

A Day That Shook The World: First nuclear submarine launched Show all 5 1 /5 A Day That Shook The World: First nuclear submarine launched A Day That Shook The World: First nuclear submarine launched 538201.bin Getty Images A Day That Shook The World: First nuclear submarine launched 538205.bin Getty Images A Day That Shook The World: First nuclear submarine launched 538204.bin Getty Images A Day That Shook The World: First nuclear submarine launched 538203.bin Getty Images A Day That Shook The World: First nuclear submarine launched 538202.bin Getty Images

A 1998 interview with the co-pilot of the flight explained why this was done: Without a real bomb the support systems could not be tested. There were some dummy bombs made of concrete that were used for load testing, but we weren't carrying one of those.

This mission was to be as real as it gets short of war...The large amount of TNT in the bomb could have caused major damage where it would have impacted.

The decision was made by the crew to drop the bomb into the Pacific Ocean before bailing out as they were unsure of how close they were to populated areas.

On Mr Smyrichinskys return to land, he researched the story of the downed B-36 and nuclear weapons of the time. In particular, he saw one photo of the Fat Man bomb, a similar blimp type weapon, in several pieces before being assembled.

"It was a piece that looked very much like what I saw," he told the broadcaster. "The plane that was carrying the bomb, it crashed 50 miles south of where I found that object."

Mr Smyrichinsky contacted the Department of National Defence, who said the discovery had their collective attention.

Defence officials confirmed they wanted to investigate the object and would be sending a ship carrying a specialist team to the area in November.
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The woman who accused Donald Trump of child rape is planning to drop her lawsuit.

The news comes just two days after she cancelled a last-minute press conference to reveal her identity and give a public statement, the Daily Mail reported.

The woman, known only under the pseudonym of Katie Johnson and now in her mid-30s, alleged that the Republican nominee raped her when she was 13 years old at the Manhattan townhouse of billionaire and convicted felon Jeffrey Epstein.

Mr Trumps lawyer, Alan Garten, called the allegations a hoax and disgusting at the highest level.

Recommended Woman who accused Donald Trump of child rape reschedules appearance

Ms Johnson filed her lawsuit on 26 April in California in federal court and then filed an amended complaint in New York federal court in October.

The amendment also included two witness statements from Tiffany Doe and Joan Doe, one of whom claimed she worked as a recruiterof young women for Epsteins parties - Epstein was convicted in 2008 of soliciting an underage prostitute - and the other witness claimed that Ms Johnson informed her of the alleged assault months after it took place in 1994.

On Wednesday, the accuser failed to show up to a press conference in Los Angeles.

Her lawyer, Lisa Bloom, said her client was in great fear and had received some terrible threats.

Speculation over the credibility of the accusers claims arose due to the story being heavily pushed by Trump opponents, including anti-abortion conservative donor Steve Baer and a man who calls himself Al Taylor, an ex-producer of The Jerry Springer Show.

Ms Bloom could not be immediately contacted for comment.
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A US judge in Ohio ordered Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign on Friday not to intimidate voters as voting-rights advocates scored a string of last-minute victories in several politically competitive states.

The ruling by US District Court Judge James Gwin creates the possibility of fines or jail time for Trump allies who harass voters, a significant victory for Democrats who had worried the real-estate mogul was encouraging supporters to cause mayhem at the polls on Nov. 8.

The ruling also deals a blow to a Trump-aligned exit poll that seeks to mobilize thousands of supporters.

Recommended Judge says NC counties must restore voters removed from rolls

The Trump campaign appealed the decision.

On the campaign trail, Trump has warned that the election may be rigged and has called on supporters to keep an eye on voting activity for possible signs of fraud in large cities.

Democrats have launched a legal blitz in Ohio and five other battleground states to prevent that from happening. They are also trying to stop a paramilitary group, the Oath Keepers, from conducting its own monitoring operation.

Numerous studies have found that U.S. voter fraud is exceedingly rare.

Voting-rights advocates also won legal victories in three other states on Friday, building on a string of decisions that have rolled back election restrictions across the country.

In Arizona, a federal judge suspended a state law that prohibits advocates' ability to collect absentee ballots.

Having more options to turn in your ballot ensures that more people take part in the democratic process, said Spencer Scharff, voter protection director of the Arizona Democratic Party.

 What Ohio thought of the final presidential debate

In North Carolina, a judge ordered election officials to restore the voting rights of thousands who had been removed from registration lists in recent weeks.

And in Kansas, a state court blocked a dual-registration system that would have prevented 20,000 registered voters from casting ballots for local offices because they were unable to prove U.S. citizenship.

The Ohio ruling does not prevent the state Republican Party from sending trained volunteers into polling places to make sure election laws are being followed.

However, it does impose restrictions on Trump supporters who take it on themselves to monitor voting activity, saying they may not interrogate voters within 100 feet of a polling place, block them from entering, or photograph them as they come and go.

Many of those activities are already illegal, but the judge's order means that anybody who engages in them could be held in contempt of court, exposing them to additional civil or criminal penalties.

It backs the law with the power of contempt, said Rick Hasen, an election-law expert at the University of California at Irvine.

The order also deals a blow to a Trump-allied exit poll that aims to mobilize supporters to canvass voters in an effort to sniff out instances of voter manipulation.

 Trump kicks out black protester at rally

The organiser of that effort, Republican operative Roger Stone, told Reuters he would fight the ruling regardless of the outcome of the election.

The Democrats' lawyers have perjured themselves and perpetrated a fraud before the court, he wrote in a text message.

The order also applies to Democrats, who have focused their efforts on making sure their supporters can vote.

With this decision, Ohioans can feel confident that they will be able to make their voices heard in this election, Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper said in a prepared statement.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

(Additional reporting by Daniel Levine, editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Andrew Hay and Bernard Orr)

Reuters
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A survey from the Princeton Election Consortium has found that Hillary Clinton has a 99 per cent chance of winning the election over Donald Trump.

Three days before the election, Ms Clinton has a projected 312 electoral votes, compared to 226 for Mr Trump. A total of 270 electoral votes are needed to win.

The probability statistic was found by the universitys statistical Bayesian model.

 US election night: Everything you need to know

Recommended Polls swing as Trump and Clinton enter final days of election race

The developer of the model, neuro and data scientist Princeton professor Sam Wang, correctly predicted 49 out of 50 states in 2012.

Other polls were less bullish on a Clinton victory. FiveThirtyEight said the likelihood Ms Clinton would win was 65 per cent, while the New York Times upshot said there was a 85 per cent chance.

As for Democrats taking back control of a Republican-led senate, the Princeton Election Consortium projected a 78 per cent likelihood, while FiverThirtyEight and the New York Times both estimated a 55 per cent chance.

FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver wrote on Friday that Ms Clinton had been on a downward trajectory this week, but in the last few days the polls have become "more equivocal".

National polls tend to suggest that Donald Trumps momentum has halted, and that Clinton may even be regaining ground, he wrote.

But state-wide polls have less good news for Ms Clinton. Data shows the candidates are tied in New Hampshire, while her lead in Pennsylvania is down to just three percentage points. The numbers in Michigan have been tightening, Mr Silver said, while New Mexico has become a state to watch.

As of Friday, more than 33 million voters have already cast their ballot in the election.

Also on Friday, two key court rulings aimed to fight voter suppression.

In North Carolina, the federal court ruled in favour of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and ordered thousands of recently removed names from the election rolls to be restored.

In Ohio, a judge ordered the Trump campaign to not intimidate voters or carry out exit polls at voting booths, giving some relief to Democrats who were concerned their opponents would cause mayhem on Tuesday.
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A Texas police officer has been fired after he allegedly bragged to a colleague about making a fecal sandwich and giving it to a homeless person.

San Antonio officer Matthew Luckhurst was on bike patrol in May when he put feces between two pieces of bread in a styrofoam container and placed it beside a homeless man who was asleep, as reported by MySanAntonio.com

The five-year police veteran told his colleague, who reported him in July. Police said they tried and failed to find the man in question and launched an internal investigation.

His department fired the officer last week and rushed to say his action did not reflect the 2,300-member department.

"This was a vile and disgusting act that violates our guiding principles of treating all with integrity, compassion, fairness and respect, " police chief William McManus said in a statement.

"The fact that his fellow officers were so disgusted with his actions that they reported him to internal affairs demonstrates that this type of behavior will never be tolerated."

Mayor Ivy Taylor added: "Firing this officer was the right thing to do. His actions were a betrayal of every value we have in our community, and he is not representative of our great police force."

Luckhursts lawyer, Ben Sifuentes, told The Washington Post that his client had only joked about the incident and had not actually placed the item beside the homeless man.

"Just because [chief] William McManus says something happened doesnt mean its true," he said.

According to a city report on homelessness, the number of homeless people has increased by 26 per cent in the year to December 2015.
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In the final weekend of the most tumultuous presidential election in generations, the Hillary Clinton campaign is working flat out to boost voter participation in Florida gambling that victory in the state on Tuesday will stymie any path Donald Trump may have to the White House.

Nowhere is the effort more intense than in the Democrat bastions of Miami-Dade and Broward counties in southeastern Florida where maximum turnout is vital to offset the heavy advantage the Republican nominee is sure to see in more conservative northern parts of the state.

Anxiety levels are high at the Clinton campaigns cavernous Miami headquarters in the hip and buzzing Wynwood design district, with polling showing that once again Florida is on a knife-edge with the latest RealClearPolitics poll giving Ms Clinton the merest edge of just 1.2 per cent.

But it is at this and other Clinton outposts in Florida where what is possibly the campaigns biggest asset is on display  the sheer scale and sophistication of its ground-game compared to Mr Trumps far more meager operation.

Florida is always going to be a very close state, it is always going to be within the one percent margin, Juan Cuba, executive director of Miami-Dade Democratic Party, told The Independent. We need to win Miami-Dade big to offset losses that will happen in North Florida. We are fighting for every single vote.

But he evinces guarded optimism that the Wynwood get-out-the-vote drive will make the crucial difference.

Our ground team is much much larger than what the Republicans have and all of that builds up to election day. I am very confident in our ability to turn out voters.

Deployed between now and Tuesday across both these counties will be a veritable army of volunteers knocking on doors, many here from other parts of the country and even the world.

This is a very, very crucial battle ground area, Alice Grierson, 21, a University of Edinburgh student volunteering at the Wynwood nerve-centre, said. While she recognised Mr Trumps power to pull votes, she is hopeful for Ms Clinton. Really, everything is being done to ensure victory in Florida, which hopefully will lead to victory across the country.

Beth Gray, 21, from the University of Birmingham, is also throwing herself into the race for Clinton, making phone calls and canvassing on the streets of Miami. Inevitably, some of the voters she meets express surprise that she is doing it even if this isn't her election. She too expressed the belief that Ms Clinton would pull it out in Florida when the moment comes.

We have experienced Brexit, she conceded, so we can see the risks that are out there in terms of the Trump campaign, but I think being here in this office, it gives you an idea of the fact of how well Hillary Clinton is doing. As you talk to voters there is a sense that she will win.

Joanne Goodwin, the volunteer director at the Pompano Beach Clinton HQ in Broward County north of Miami, expressed near-wonderment at the numbers of volunteers coming from distant parts to south Florida in the knowledge that the outcome of the entire election could be determined by the state as it was in 2000 in George W Bush won it by just 537 votes thus securing the White House.

This week a group of 21 Danish citizens anxious to help out showed up at her office, which is squeezed into a vacant space in a nondescript strip of shops. She has also had volunteers showing up in recent days from California, Texas, Washington DC and New York. Ms Goodwin, who signed up to help Ms Clinton the day she declared last year, struggled to articulate what a Trump victory would mean to her.

I cannot tell you how I would react, she offered. Its like asking somebody how they are going to react to a tragedy that hasnt happened. You dont know.

Cataclysmic, was the adjective that Maggie Osdoby Katz reached for when asked the same question. A veteran of both Obama campaigns, she left her home in Tiblisi, Georgia, this week just so she could join old friends in South Florida helping to make the final push for Ms Clinton.

I flew all this way to help turn Florida blue, Ms Osdoby Katz, a Jewish American, explained, saying her priority is to chivvy Hispanics, who now make up 16 per cent of Floridas population.

Hispanics may now constitute the most crucial element of Ms Clintons coalition in Florida. Early voting data suggests that she has already reached the same 60 per cent mark of support among Florida Hispanics that Mr Obama achieved four years ago. She may need to push that even higher amid signs that turnout among African Americans has slipped compared to 2012.

Early voting in Florida began ten days ago and ends on Sunday, a day on which African-American participation should jump significantly, says Ms Goowin, because of so-called Souls to Polls programmes involving transporting black congregations to early polling stations after church. Its a notorious day for African Americans to vote, she noted.

What the folks in Wynwood have not yet done is make arrangements for any kind of victory party on Tuesday night should their candidate win, because we are flat out trying to win this thing, as one campaign official here put it.

Its a battle to the end that is fraying a few nerves as election day finally comes into view. I cant wait, Ms Grierson noted. I just think I will be so nervous, I will be so stressed on that day. All I can say is I wish I could vote.
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Rain in the Sunshine State was not the best omen for Hillary Clinton as she appeared in Pembroke Pines in north Miami on Saturday to make one last urgent appeal to her supporters to show up at the polls and help her win crucial Florida and, she hopes, the White House.

That Ms Clinton cut her scheduled speech down to just a few minutes might, however, have had less to do with the poor weather and more with her increasingly strained vocal chords.

Donald, you dont want to go there, Ms Clinton virtually croaked, referring to his repeated queries about what she has achieved in 30 years of public service. With it, she listed a short resume of accomplishments including guaranteeing healthcare for children, helping rebuild lower Manhattan after 9/11 when she was a senator from New York, and defending basic rights.

I've stood up for human rights, womens rights, worker rights, and LGBT rights, she declared, rain drops dampening her light-green jacket, before turning to the most pressing priority at hand, ensuring the highest possible turnout, particularly in southern Florida, a Democrat stronghold.

We are seeing tremendous momentum with people coming out to vote and breaking records in places, Ms Clinton averred, alluding to new data showing that some 40 million Americans have already taken advantage of early voting, 18 million of them in battleground states.

You are a hardy bunch standing out in the rain, I dont think I need to tell you all the things that are wrong with Donald Trump, she went on. I want to tell you I want to be the president for all the people, a jab at Mr Trumps divisive rhetoric during this campaign.

In Florida, nearly half of all registered voters have already cast their ballots, with the numbers evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. That is potentially a good sign for Ms Clinton, as it is Republicans who traditionally tend to cast their votes early in the state, not Democrats.

Earlier Ms Clinton dropped in her campaigns grassroots office in Little Haiti in Miami to try to gin up enthusiasm in the Haitian community. Her campaign has become concerned that hidden in the early voter data is evidence that African American voting appears depressed. This weekend, it is deploying a small army of volunteers in south Florida to try drive up early voting numbers in part to offset what is sure to be lopsided support for Mr Trump in more conservative northern reaches of the state.

I know we have work to do today, she told volunteers crowded into the office. There has never been a more important election when you stop to think about who we are as a country. I think we are stronger together and that the diversity of America is a great gift and blessing. I will fight every single day to provide greater opportunities here and throughout Florida.

New polls on Saturday suggested that after several days of a tightening race, Ms Clinton continues to preserve a slight edge over Donald Trump nationally and in most of the battleground states. A YouGov poll released on Saturday gave her a three-point lead and estimated she would win 293 electoral college votes, more than the 270 needed to win the White House.

Ms Clinton has the chance to deliver a potential knock-out blow to Mr Trump if she can win Florida, but even her staunchest supporters acknowledge that the margin of victory for either candidate in the state is unlikely to be more than 1 per cent. They have been encouraged, however, by robust early voting among Hispanic, who overwhelmingly back her over Mr Trump.

His campaign equally focused on Florida, Mr Trump made an early morning stop in Tampa to push back against a wave of support for his opponent from Puerto Ricans, whose numbers have quickly grown in the centre of the state. He accused Ms Clinton of lacking stamina.

Look, I'm here I'm doing five or six of these a day, and Hillary goes home, she goes to sleep. If she wanted to do it, which she doesn't, she doesn't have the energy to do it, believe me, Mr Trump said in Tampa, on a day that would also see him campaigning in places as far afield as North Carolina, Nevada and Colorado.

That Mr Trump is spreading himself all over the map in the waning days of the race is a sign of a campaign uncertain of how it will be able to muster the 270 electoral college votes to win and concluding it may as well try and find at least one state, somewhere and anywhere, where the Clinton fortifications might possibly be breached.

Mr Trump told the Tampa crowd that he would also be dropping in to Minnesota before the weekend was out, although there was nothing on his official schedule to confirm it. Minnesota has not voted for a Republican for president since 1984.

For her part, Ms Clinton was flying from Florida to Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, another important swing state but one where her lead appears to be staying solid.
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Donald Trump said voting for him is a "once-in-a-lifetime chance to take the government back" from powerful campaign donors and return power to the American people.

During his first Republican party response to the president's weekly radio address, Mr Trump claimed that he and the Republican candidates for congress would bring badly needed change to government.

He promised to create 25 million jobs and cut taxes for the middle class by 35 per cent.

Recommended Polls swing as Trump and Clinton enter final days of election race

"Im asking for your vote and your help in electing a Republican majority in congress, so that we can finally change this broken system and make America great again," he said. "And when I say great, I mean great for everyone."

Mr Trump was sticking to familiar campaign themes by pledging to fix what he calls "terrible trade deals", end illegal immigration and suspend the admission of Syrian refugees to the country.

Without offering specifics, Mr Trump said he would rebuild the military and "take care of our great, great veterans."

The Republican nominee is spending the final days of the election charging across the country in the hope of winning over undecided voters.

Starting from a rally in Florida at 10am on Saturday, Mr Trump will fly to events in North Carolina and Nevada before ending his day at a rally in Colorado at 9.30pm.

Opinion polls have grown increasingly close in the final week of the election, after the FBI announced it was once again investigating emails relating to Hillary Clinton's misuse of her personal email server when she was secretary of state.

Since the fresh investigation into the Democratic nominee was announced last Friday, her lead shrank dramatically to within most polls' margin of error.

With only a few days to go until 8 November, Ms Clinton has only a single point lead in the latest head-to-head Fox News poll, although her lead extends to two points when third party candidates are included.

In state polls, which can be more accurate in the closing days of an election, she is also shown to be neck-and-neck with the property tycoon.

The rivals are tied in New Hampshire and Ms Clinton's lead has dropped to three points in Pennsylvania, which are both states that the Democrat needs to win.

Yet Ms Clinton leads Mr Trump nationally by five percentage points, according to a Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll released on Friday, maintaining her advantage in the national survey even as the race tightens in several crucial swing states.

And, FiveThirtyEight still shows Ms Clinton to be way out ahead, with a 54.6 per cent chance of winning the White House, compared to Mr Trump's 35.5 per cent.

Donald Trump's most controversial quotes Show all 14 1 /14 Donald Trump's most controversial quotes Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Isis: "Some of the candidates, they went in and didnt know the air conditioner didnt work and sweated like dogs, and they didnt know the room was too big because they didnt have anybody there. How are they going to beat ISIS?" Getty Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On immigration: "I will build a great wall  and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me and Ill build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words." Reuters Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Free Trade: "Free trade is terrible. Free trade can be wonderful if you have smart people. But we have stupid people." PAUL J. RICHARDS | AFP | Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Mexicans: "When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best. Theyre sending people that have lots of problems. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists." Getty Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On China: "I just sold an apartment for $15 million to somebody from China. Am I supposed to dislike them?... I love China. The biggest bank in the world is from China. You know where their United States headquarters is located? In this building, in Trump Tower." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On work: "If you're interested in 'balancing' work and pleasure, stop trying to balance them. Instead make your work more pleasurable." AP Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On success: "What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate." Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On life: "Everything in life is luck." AFP Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On ambition: "You have to think anyway, so why not think big?" Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On his opponents: "Bush is totally in favour of Common Core. I don't see how he can possibly get the nomination. He's weak on immigration. He's in favour of Common Core. How the hell can you vote for this guy? You just can't do it." Reuters Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Obamacare: "You have to be hit by a tractor, literally, a tractor, to use it, because the deductibles are so high. It's virtually useless. And remember the $5 billion web site?... I have so many web sites, I have them all over the place. I hire people, they do a web site. It costs me $3." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Barack Obama: "Obama is going to be out playing golf. He might be on one of my courses. I would invite him. I have the best courses in the world. I have one right next to the White House." PA Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On himself: "Love him or hate him, Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred. Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On America: "The American Dream is dead. But if I get elected president I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before and we will make America great again." GETTY

Nevertheless, how people actually vote on the day could still change.

Concerns have been raised that Democrats could be put off voting after a huge rise in the numbers of Republicans who have signed up to monitor the polls. Two key court rulings on Friday forced North Carolina to restore thousands of names on the rolls after they had been removed close to election day, while a judge in Ohio warned the Trump campaign not to "intimidate" voters with harassment and carrying out so-called "exit polls" at the voting booths.

While Ms Clinton has been surrounded by high-profile allies and celebrities like Beyonce and Jay Z, Mr Trump has cut a rather lonely figure at recent events, only gathering an eclectic group of ex-politicians like Rudy Giuliani and former New Hampshire governor John Sununu who cracked a lewd joke at a rally about Ms Clinton's sex life.

At a rally on Friday night, Mr Trump pointed out the size of the crowds but spoke defiantly of the rather bare speaker line-up.

"By the way, I didnt have to bring J Lo or Jay Z  the only way she gets anybody," he said. "I am here all by myself. Just me  no guitar, no piano, no nothing."

Trump advisers are still confident their candidate can win the three states of Nevada, New Mexico and Michigan, even if the most well-known Republicans in those states have shunned him.

House speaker Paul Ryan told a Wisconsin radio host that it was essential for Republican voters to "come home", although he barely mentioned Mr Trump.

Since the 2005 video showing Mr Trump bragging about sexual assault was leaked, Mr Ryan said he would no longer defend the nominee.
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The US government has reportedly penetrated Russias telecommunications networks and electric grid to be ready to hit back in case Russian intelligence agencies carry out a cyberattack on election day.

An anonymous senior intelligence official told NBC news that the US would only deploy its own cyber attack if necessary.

It has been an open secret for years that the US has infiltrated critical online infrastructure of other nations like Russia and China, while the US has accused them of doing the same.

Days before the 2016 presidential election, US officials are concerned that adversaries could cause mayhem on Tuesday by releasing fake documents, creating bogus social media profiles to spread misinformation online such as rigged counting and tampering with state voting registration systems.

The news comes the same day that the hacker Guccifer 2.0 - a front for Russian intelligence - tweeted that it would monitor the US elections from inside the system.

The Department of Homeland Security briefed reporters on Friday that they were very concerned about confusion on election day, but were confident that no breach would influence the result of the election.

 Russia's Foreign Minister says 'there are so many pussies around both presidential campaigns'

Representative Adam Schiff of the House Select Committee on Intelligence told CNN: They are capable of doing damage, they are capable of sowing further disarray.

Will they end up doing it? We don't know, and I think we are taking all the precautions that we can.

 Donald Trump denies he's ever met Putin despite someone called Donald Trump once saying he had

The DHS has offered cyberhygiene scans to all 50 states, but not all of them have accepted the help. The government has also readied incident response teams to be deployed wherever there might be a cybersecurity incident on Tuesday.

A spokesman from the US Secret Service told The Independent: "The Secret Service does not disclose information related to our means and methods of protective operations."

Voter registration system databases in Illinois and Arizona were tampered with earlier this year. The US government has also officially accused Russia of hacking the emails of the Democratic National Committee in June.

Two senior officials from the DNC told Mother Jones that a security sweep in late October found evidence - a radio signal near the chairmans office - to suggest that their headquarters in Washington DC had been bugged, and they had submitted evidence to the FBI. No devices or culprits have been found.

The alert that foreign adversaries were hacking the US to gain information and potential control of everything from chemical facilities to water treatment plants was first brought up to US congress in 2014 by National Security Agency chief Mike Rogers.

The US has been laying its own military cyber ground for years. NBC reported that the US penetrated Iraqi networks during the Iraq invasion of 2003, urging generals to surrender and temporarily cutting electricity in Baghdad.

 Trump campaign chief resigns amid pro-Russia scandal

The US also reportedly worked with Israel in 2009 and 2010 to deploy a cyber weapon to destroy Iranian nuclear centrifuges.

The country currently infiltrates cyber space across the Middle East to penetrate networks of Isis, which uses social media to recruit fighters.
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A woman who was found chained up in a metal container after disappearing for two months told police she watched her alleged kidnapper kill her partner.

Kala Brown, from South Carolina, said she watched Todd Kohlhepp, 45, shoot her boyfriend, Charlie Carver, 32, dead.

Ms Brown was located after police received a tip off and, officers said she was found "chained like a dog" around her neck and ankles.

Spartanburg coroner Rusty Clavenger confirmed a body had been found on Kohlhepps property but the sex had not been revealed. Police confirmed they were still searching for three more.

Daniel Herren, a friend who sat with the Ms Brown in her hospital room after she was rescued, said Kohlhepp allegedly took the couple at gunpoint.

"They were going to do some work, help cleaning up the property. And he pulled out a gun and took them hostage," Mr Herren said, adding the abduction happened quickly.

Kohlhepp was convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl aged 15 in 1986 and is a registered sex offender.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters 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 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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. 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He appeared before a court in the Spartanburg County Detention Centre where he was not handcuffed but did have his hands behind his back. He will be charged with kidnapping and there is the possibility of more charges to come.

Police also found a large number of guns and ammunition after searching Kohlhepps property.
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The Indonesian President has cancelled a visit to Australia after violence broke out at a mass protest in Jakarta against a Christian governor accused of insulting Islam.

Around 50,000 people descended on the Indonesian capital on Friday to protest against comments made by governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama - known by his nickname Ahok.

The protest was initially peaceful but deadly clashes erupted after demonstrators broke through police barricades and security barriers in an attempt to enter the presidential palace before they were stopped by officers firing tear gas, police said.

Islamic demonstrators march in Central Jakarta (Getty Images ) (Getty)

Indonesian police face off against Muslim protesters near the presidential palace (AFP)

Vehicles were set alight and bottles and rocks were hurled at officers, police added.

Police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar said one elderly man died of an asthma attack during the protest, although some local media suggested it may have been brought on by tear gas.

More than 160 protesters were hurt, including four who were hospitalised - reportedly from the impact of tear gas - and more than 90 police and soldiers were injured, Mr Amar added.

President Joko Widodo was scheduled to travel to Australia on Saturday, visiting the country from 6 to 8 November, but the trip was postponed as a "current development has required the president to stay in Indonesia, the Foreign Affairs Ministry said.

Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull responded in a statement: "We were sorry we would not be able to welcome him to Australia tomorrow but entirely understood the need for him to remain in Indonesia at this time." The trip would have marked Mr Widodo's first official bilateral visit to Australia.

The protest was triggered after a video posted online allegedly filmed Mr Purnama criticising opponents who used references from the Quran to attack him.

Mr Purnama is ethnic Chinese and minority Christian. It is estimated that ethnic Chinese make up around one per cent of Indonesia's Muslim majority population of 250 million people.

The verse of the Quran he purportedly attacked is interpreted by some as a prohibition against Muslims living under the leadership of a non-Muslim.

Protesters march to the Merdeka Palace (Getty Images ) (Getty Images)

Protesters challenge the police who shoot tear gas to them (Getty Images ) (Getty Images)

Mr Purnama apologised for the remarks, but his opponents, particularly The Islamic Defenders Front - a vigilante group wanting to impose Sharia Law - have bolstered support calling for his arrest and incarceration under Indonesia's blasphemy laws.

Addressing the nation on Friday evening, Mr Widodo blamed political actors for taking advantage of the rally, saying his predecessor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had backed plans for the protest.

Police said they are still investigating who was behind the violence and whether any political elements were involved in the unrest.

They added that ten people were arrested for allegedly provoking riots near the presidential palace and 15 others for vandalism in northern Jakarta.

Additional reporting by agencies
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An Irish Isis fighter, has killed himself in a suicide bombing near the Iraqi city of Mosul, according to reports.

The SITE Intelligence Group, a US company that monitors Islamist websites, said Isis issued a statement stating that Abu Usama al-Irelandi had detonated an explosive-laden vehicle, killing and wounding dozens.

Abu Usama is understood to be the pseudonym used by Irish Islamic State sympathiser Terence Kelly, who is allegedly the man featured in photographs posted on Twitter with a machine gun in front of an armoured car.

Kelly, who has also used the pseudonym Khalid Kelly, was brought up Catholic in central Dublin and converted to Islam in his early thirties in Saudi Arabia, where he worked as a nurse for three years before converting in prison after he was arrested for illegally brewing alcohol, according to Reuters.

The Irishman is said to have repeatedly praised al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden in interviews with the Irish media and was arrested in 2011 for making threats against US President Barack Obama ahead of his visit to Ireland.

Kelly reportedly travelled to Pakistan and later told interviewers that he had trained with militants there.

Ireland's Foreign Ministry said it was looking into reports of an Irish citizen's death, but declined to comment on his identity.

An Irish Foreign Ministry spokesman said: The department is aware of media reports concerning an Irish citizen in Iraq and is seeking to clarify the situation.

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. 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It comes amid reports that, as Iraqi forces advance in on Mosul, it is largely foreign-born jihadis who are choosing to stay and fight.

A former Jihadi recently told The Independent foreign fighters for Isis were choosing to stand and fight the Iraqi army in east Mosul, while the groups local militants are crossing the Tigris river with their families to the more defensible western side of the city.
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A mayor who was detained as part of the anti-drugs crackdown in the Philippines has been shot dead in his jail cell.

Rolando Espinosa, mayor of Albuera town, Leyte municipality, was involved in a fire fight with officers trying to search his cell for weapons and drugs, police alleged.

He is the second official to be slain in President Rodrigo Dutertes anti-drugs drive, which has seen at least 3,000 people killed by police or vigilante groups since he took office in June. Most have been low level drug dealers and users, but police said high-value targets, including mayors and drug lords, would be their next target in a new phase of the crackdown that was launched in late October.

Recommended Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte says God told him to stop swearing

Espinosa handed himself into the authorities after he was implicated by Mr Duterte as being involved in narcotics. The president had listed the names of around 150 officials in August, including police officers and members of local government and judiciary, who he said,  without providing evidence  were involved in the illegal drugs trade.

He was briefly released but was jailed at Baybay, Leyte Sub-Provincial Jail, on 5 October on drug possession charges.

Acting on a warrant on Saturday, a police effort to search his cell for weapons and drugs was met with gunfire from the former mayor and another inmate, police said.

He fired on the raiding team. The raiding team fired back and this led to the mayors death, Chief Inspector Leo Laraga of the regional police told AFP news agency.

The Criminal Investigation and Detection Group claimed they recovered a loaded pistol, suspected methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia from Espinosas cell. Yaps cell was also found to contain a loaded pistol, methamphetamine and cannabis.

The most controversial quotes from Rodrigo Duterte Show all 9 1 /9 The most controversial quotes from Rodrigo Duterte The most controversial quotes from Rodrigo Duterte On killing drug addicts These sons of whores are destroying our children. I warn you, dont go into that, even if youre a policeman, because I will really kill you. If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself as getting their parents to do it would be too painful The most controversial quotes from Rodrigo Duterte Message to China I will go there on my own with a Jet Ski, bringing along with me a [Phillipino] flag and a pole, and once I disembark, I will plant the flag on the runway and tell the Chinese authorities, Kill me  AP The most controversial quotes from Rodrigo Duterte Christmas message to law-breakers If you do not want to stop, and just continue committing crimes, then this would be your last Merry Christmas AP The most controversial quotes from Rodrigo Duterte On sex life I was separated from my wife. Im not impotent. What am I supposed to do? Let this hang forever? When I take Viagra, it stands up AFP/Getty Images The most controversial quotes from Rodrigo Duterte On the drugs trade None of my children are into illegal drugs. But my order is, even if it is a member of my family, kill him'" AP The most controversial quotes from Rodrigo Duterte Insulting the Pope We were affected by the traffic. It took us five hours. I asked why, they said it was closed. I asked who is coming. They answered, the pope. I wanted to call him: Pope, son of a wh**e, go home. Do not visit us again AFP/Getty Images The most controversial quotes from Rodrigo Duterte Joke about rape I saw her face and I thought, 'What a pity... they raped her, they all lined up. I was mad she was raped but she was so beautiful. I thought, the mayor should have been first AFP/Getty The most controversial quotes from Rodrigo Duterte Insulting Barack Obama "Mr Obama should be respectful and refrain from throwing questions at me about the killings, or son of a bitch, I will swear at you in that forum" REUTERS The most controversial quotes from Rodrigo Duterte On Abu Sayyaf Islamic militants "If I have to face them, you know I can eat humans. I will really open up your body. Just give me vinegar and salt, and I will eat you. If you annoy me to the fullest... I will eat you alive. Raw" EPA

Edre Olalia, president of the National Union of Peoples Lawyers, criticised the polices version of events and, saying they were too contrived.

A search warrant in a government prison facility is unnecessary and appears to be a flaccid attempt to make the apparent rubout legal," Mr Olalia told local broadcaster TV5. Such acts... insult ordinary common sense.There is going to be a lot of explaining to do.

Recommended Photos of Filipino jail show prisoners packed like sardines

In addition, an anti-crime watchdog has called for an investigation of the circumstances of the killings, wondering how the mayor and the other inmate got hold of guns and what prompted them to clash with police while in detention.

Eastern Visayas Regional Police Chief Superintendent Elmer Beltejar said: As a matter of procedure, this incident will undergo investigation to establish the facts and circumstances surrounding the incident.

The mayor was the father of Kerwin Espinosa who Philippines officilas have alleged to be a drug lord. Kerwin was arrested by police in Abu Dhabi in October and the Philippine authorities are seeking his return.

Also in October, police killed another town mayor, Samsudin Dimaukom, and nine of his men allegedly in a gun battle in the southern Philippines.
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Tens of thousands of South Koreans have protested in Seoul against their countrys president, calling on her to resign amid claims she allowed an unelected companion to become extensively involved in government affairs.

The scandal which has engulfed President Park Geun-hye over last few weeks has already seen numerous opposition politicians call for her to step down and her approval ratings slump to just five per cent.

The state prosecutor has launched an investigation into allegations of corruption and Ms Park has pledged to cooperate.

South Koreans staged the countrys biggest protest in years on Saturday, packing out the streets in the centre of the capital city as 17,600 police officers watched over them, some in full riot gear. However, the event passed off without significant incident.

Chants of Arrest Park Geun-hye and We can't take this any longer were heard as demonstrators marched around City Hall.

Park should squarely face the prosecution's investigation and step down herself. If she doesn't, politicians should move to impeach her, said Kim Seo-yeon, one of the many college students who participated in the protest.

She absolutely lost all authority as President over the past few weeks, he said.

Earlier in the week, prosecutors arrested Choi Soon-sil, the daughter of a late cult leader and a longtime friend of Ms Park, and detained two former presidential aides over allegations that they pressured businesses into giving $70 million (55m) to two foundations Ms Choi controlled.

There are also allegations that Ms Choi, despite having no government job, regularly received classified information and meddled in various state affairs, including the appointment of ministers and policy decisions.

Another demonstrator, Choi Kyung-ha, said: I came out today because this is not the country I want to pass on to my children. My kids have asked me who Choi Soon-sil was and whether she's the real president, and I couldn't provide an answer.

Choi Soon-Sil (L) is escorted from the Central District Court in Seoul following her arrest (AFP/Getty) (KOREA POOL/AFP/Getty Images)

The accusations levelled against Ms Choi  who was arrested earlier in the week  include controlling government budgets, having access to secret documents, appointing ministers, editing presidential speeches and making policy decisions.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye bows in apology as she delivers an address to the nation about the scandal (EPA/Yonjap South Korea) (EPA)

Ms Park has apologised on national television, commenting on the corruption allegations surrounding Ms Choi and her former aides and voeing to accept a direct investigation into her actions - but avoided questions regarding Ms Chois alleged interference with government business.

She has also reshuffled her inner circle, sacking eight aides and nominating three new top cabinet officials, including the prime minister, but these measures have been described as a diversionary tactic.

Some opposition parties have threatened to push for her removal if she doesn't distance herself from domestic affairs and transfer the duties to a prime minister chosen by parliament. There have also been calls for a separate investigation into the scandal led by a special prosecutor.

How many more astonishing things must happen before this country changes for the better? said Park Won-soon, the opposition mayor of Seoul and a potential presidential candidate, vowing to push for the president's resignation.

The president has 15 months left in her term. If she resigns before the end of it, South Korean laws require the country to hold an election to pick a new president within 60 days.

Additional reporting by agencies
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Before the war we could get a visa for France in half an hour. In two days, we could get a six-month permit for the UK. Now, we have to do this.

Hamza Menel, a well-dressed Libyan man, gestures out to the sea from the Bourbon Argos, the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) rescue ship carrying him and almost 900 other refugees and migrants to Italy.

The 26-year-old was a police officer during the Libyan revolution, being swiftly jailed by rebels following the death of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

After two years his father bribed officials to allow his only son to escape, but they continued hunting him and after attempting to get a visa to France from Tunisia, he paid people smugglers 1,400 (1,250) for a place in a boat packed with more than 100 other migrants.

It was the only solution to escape Libya but the boat was terrifying, Mr Menel says. My highest hope is to get to Germany and find my friends there.

I know it will be difficult, but not more difficult than what has already happened.

Yahia bin Yahia, 27, and Hamza Menel, 26, paid extra to board a wooden boat, but smugglers forced them into a rubber dinghy instead

Among his fellow passengers is another Libyan man  27-year-old Yahia bin Yahia. The engineer is from the city of Sirte  now Isiss largest stronghold in North Africa.

Recommended A day rescuing refugees from the Mediterranean Sea

They entered without resistance in February last year, he recalls. They came in cars with their face covered. They didnt talk to anyone.

Weeks later, militants from the so-called Islamic State launched an offensive to take control of the city, winning a battle for control with local militias and imposing the groups bloody interpretation of Sharia law.

They kill people and then they hang their bodies up in the streets so people can see them, as a lesson to others. The shut everything down, Mr Yahia says. I couldnt stay there.

The pair paid extra to board a wooden boat equipped with GPS and a satellite phone, thinking it would be safer than the dinghies now used to lower costs and evade detection.

In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A baby being taken on to MSF's Bourbon Argos ship from a boat carrying 130 migrants and refugees Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A refugee boat carrying 101 people being rescued by MSF's Bourbon Argos Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A refugee boat carrying 101 people being rescued by MSF's Bourbon Argos all images by Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A baby among refugees on a boat carrying 185 people off the coast of Libya Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea Migrants and refugees sleeping after being rescued by MSF's Bourbon Argos ship Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A crew from MSF's Bourbon Argos ship rescuing a boat carrying 130 migrants and refugees off the coast of Libya, at sunrise Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A woman in a stretcher being lifted onto MSF's Bourbon Argos ship from a boat carrying 130 migrants and refugees off the coast of Libya Lizzie Dearden

The vessel was launched from Sabratha late on Thursday night but minutes into the journey, bandits pulled up in a speedboat and boarded, with a gunman stripping those on board of their money, mobile phone and possessions.

Shortly afterwards, armed smugglers forced their passengers into a rubber dinghy, beating Mr Menel when he complained of being tricked. The overloaded boat was in the water for seven hours before being rescued.

It was just one of many saved by humanitarian ships off the Libyan coast on Wednesday, with 868 people taken aboard the Bourbon Argos.

Among them is Ali Ibrahim Salman, from Syria. The 51-year-old moved to Libya for work in the 1990s but returned with his family after the start of the revolution in 2011, only for battles between Islamist rebels and government troops to later reach his hometown in Hama province.

I went back to Syria but it was too dangerous to stay, he says. Asked why, he falls silent and looks out to sea, before quietly continuing his story.

My baby was killed. He was in the bedroom when the Islamists fired a shell. The shrapnel flew through the window and he died.

Ali Ibrahim Salman, a 51-year-old Syrian man fled Syria after losing his child in a shelling

Mr Salman is planning to join relatives in Sweden and later be joined by his family, but hopes one day to return home.

I hope one day to go back, he says. When stability comes back, I will go back.

He has a small blanket laid out on the metal floor of the Bourbon Argos deck, which marks his only personal space on the ship. Passengers are tessellated across its decks, bow and gangways.

Some have found room on top of a ventilation shaft, another man is using mooring rope as a makeshift hammock, while others shelter from the wind under lifeboats.

A long line stretches from the Bourbon Argos hospital, in a converted shipping container, and dozens queue for showers and toilet. Food rations, consisting of high-energy bars, biscuits and fruit juice  come twice a day.

More than 24 hours into the 300-mile journey to Europe, the elation of surviving the treacherous boat crossing over the Mediterranean is starting to fade as concern creeps in.

Are you going to take us back to our country? one woman asks as air workers pick over hundreds of migrants crammed on the deck.

Many refugees hope to find safety in countries like Germany, Belgium, Sweden or Italy

No, she is reassured, we are going to Italy. But beyond that no promises can be made. Most of those on board the Bourbon Argos are unaware of the difficulties they will face upon arrival in Europe, and that many of them will not meet the requirements to legally stay.

The vast majority of the rescued men, women and children are from Africa, representing countries including Nigeria, Gambia, the Ivory Coast, Mali and Senegal.

Recommended On board the largest refugee rescue ship in the Mediterranean

One man is from Nepal and speaks only his native language, making it impossible for the MSF crew to find out how he got to Libya and why.

Some are aiming for specific countries, with Germany, Belgium, Sweden and Italy among the favoured destination. Others are less fussy.

I dont care, says Didi, a 33-year-old Nigerian woman. Anywhere as long as we are safe.

She left her home country on her own to find work, being smuggled out of the country inside of a lorry transporting cows to reach Niger.

They didnt give me any food or water, Didi recalls, surrounded by women and children in a converted shipping container. I almost died.

When the lorry finally stopped, she was forced to labour on a lime farm with other migrants for three weeks to pay for their onward journey, then kept in a prison in Libya before being able to board a boat into the Mediterranean.

Not everyone wants to go to Europe, she says. Some of them want to go home, but theres no way back.

Suleiman Boussy, his wife Fatima and their two children have fled Burkina Faso

Next to her, small children toddle around and play with aid workers walkie talkies, oblivious to their parents troubles.

Suleiman Bouissy sitting with his wife Fatima and two children says what started as a family move from their home on Burkina Faso to find work in Libya degenerated into a nightmare, when violence consumed the town where they settled and a gang kidnapped their 14-month old daughter.

She was released unharmed but Mr Bouissy decided to flee to find safety in Europe, following more than 330,000 refugees and migrants to have reached its shores this year. At least 4,200 people have died in the attempt so far in 2016, the deadliest year on record.

His experience is similar to hundreds of his fellow passengers, with one man arriving with a gunshot wound received just days ago in the country and another who had to be stretchered on to the Bourbon Argos as a result of the torture he underwent there.

A Parliamentary report found the UK ultimately responsible for the chaos and bloodshed that followed its joint intervention in Libya, creating a power vacuum that a fragile new government, multiple rebel groups and Isis are still battling to fill.

Mr Menel is angry over his home countrys collapse. After Iraq, we knew it would be total devastation, he says.

Europe should make it easier for people facing terrorism from the new groups to get to safety. We shouldnt have to risk our lives like this.
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A protest has been held outside the British embassy in Moscow in response to a demonstration at the Russian consul in London for Aleppo.

A small group of protestors chanted "Hands off Russia, hands off Syria" and held Russian flags and placards baring slogans such as "United Kingdom, stop!", "England  [this] is war".

It was in response to a protest held on Thursday, Russian media outlet Life reported, when protesters in London used hundreds of mannequin limbs to protest the Russian intervention in Aleppo.

Recommended Read more Fake limbs dumped at Russian embassy in protest over Aleppo attacks

Hundreds of civilians have been killed by airstrikes from Russian and Syrian government airstrikes on the city, drawing international condemnation.

The Russian consul complained to the Foreign Office about the London protest and said it interrupted the work of the Embassy and compromised the security of the diplomatic mission.

Both countries have been involved in a war of words over Syria and perceived Russian aggression in eastern Europe, particularly in Ukraine. Russia says it is fighting terrorism in Syria and acting against Nato encirclement.

In October, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson urged people to protest outside the Russian Embassy in London because of the countrys involvement in the Middle East.

In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Show all 19 1 /19 In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Syrian boys cry following Russian air strikes on the rebel-held Fardous neighbourhood of the northern embattled Syrian city of Aleppo Getty In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russian defense ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov speaks to the media in Moscow, Russia. Konashenkov strongly warned the United States against striking Syrian government forces and issued a thinly-veiled threat to use Russian air defense assets to protect them AP In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Syrians wait to receive treatment at a hospital following Russian air strikes on the rebel-held Fardous neighbourhood of the northern embattled Syrian city of Alepp Getty In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov speaks at a briefing in the Defense Ministry in Moscow, Russia. Antonov said the Russian air strikes in Syria have killed about 35,000 militants, including about 2,700 residents of Russia AP In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Jameel Mustafa Habboush, receives oxygen from civil defence volunteers, known as the white helmets, as they rescue him from under the rubble of a building following Russian air strikes on the rebel-held Fardous neighbourhood of the northern embattled Syrian city of Aleppo Getty In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Civil defence members rest amidst rubble in a site hit by what activists said were airstrikes carried out by the Russian air force in the town of Douma, eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria Reuters In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria A girl carrying a baby inspects damage in a site hit by what activists said were airstrikes carried out by the Russian air force in the town of Douma, eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria Reuters In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Civilians and civil defence members look for survivors at a site damaged after Russian air strikes on the Syrian rebel-held city of Idlib, Syria Reuters In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Civilians and civil defence members carry an injured woman on a stretcher at a site damaged after Russian air strikes on the Syrian rebel-held city of Idlib, Syria Reuters In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Volunteers from Syria Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets, help civilians after Russia carried out its first airstrikes in Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria The aftermath of Russian airstrike in Talbiseh, Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Smoke billows from buildings in Talbiseh, in Homs province, western Syria, after airstrikes by Russian warplanes AP In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russian Air Forces carry out an air strike in the ISIS controlled Al-Raqqah Governorate. Russia's KAB-500s bombs completely destroy the Liwa al-Haqq command unit In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Caspian Flotilla of the Russian Navy firing Kalibr cruise missiles against remote Isis targets in Syria A TASS/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russia claimed it hit eight Isis targets, including a "terrorist HQ and co-ordination centre" that was completely destroyed In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria A video grab taken from the footage made available on the Russian Defence Ministry's official website, purporting to show an airstrike in Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria A release from the Russian defence ministry purportedly showing targets in Syria being hit In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Russia launched air strikes in war-torn Syria, its first military engagement outside the former Soviet Union since the occupation of Afghanistan in 1979. Russian warplanes carried out strikes in three Syrian provinces along with regime aircraft as Putin seeks to steal US President Barack Obama's thunder by pushing a rival plan to defeat Isis militants in Syria In pictures: Russian air strikes in Syria Caspian Flotilla of the Russian Navy firing Kalibr cruise missiles against remote Isis targets in Syria, a thousand kilometres away. The targets include ammunition factories, ammunition and fuel depots, command centres, and training camps A TASS/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis

However, in addition to being rebuked by Russian officials, his remarks were also criticised by Sir John Sawers, former head of MI6.

Sir John said: We all have to be a little bit careful and mindful of the security of our embassy in Moscow when we think about calling for demonstrations here in London.we need to be careful about the consequences of things that we call for."
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A French court has handed a three-month suspended sentence to a teenager who named his wifi network after the terrorist group Isis.

The 18-year-old renamed his wifi "Daesh21"  a hybrid of the Arabic acronym for the fundamentalist group and the number of the province, Dijon, where he lived.

The case was brought to court after a neighbour saw the network name was available to connect to and called the police.

He was handed the suspended sentence after refusing an offer of 100 hours community service.

But the man's lawyer Karima Manhouli contested the punishment, telling French media: There was no sympathy for terrorism! There was only the word Daesh21.

She said that officers had searched and investigated the teenager but found nothing else that suggested he had terrorist sympathies.

"It was a stupid act by a young man of 18 who cant explain why he did it," she added.

"I do not think that renaming a Wi-Fi network is an act of praise. Its neutral, its nonsense, its not an argument.

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The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. 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The unnamed man was prosecuted under a French anti-terrorism law passed in 2014 that makes it a crime to "directly provoke acts of terrorism or to publicly praise one such act".

If convicted, offenders can be punished by up to five years in prison and a 75,000 (67,000) fine.

The punishments can be increased by up to seven years in jail and a 100,000 (890,000) if the crime was committed using an "online public communication service".
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Turkish police have used tear gas, water cannon and plastic bullets to break up a protest by hundreds of people against the imprisonment of a group of journalists from secularist opposition newspaper Cumhuriye.

Riot police rapidly moved in as protestors demonstrated outside a mosque in Istanbul, shouting slogans denouncing the fascist state and vowing we will not be silent, hours after nine journalists were formally arrested pending trial by an Istanbul court.

The crowds were dispersed as officers sprayed torrents of freezing water from trucks, as well as using tear gas and firing plastic bullets, according to AFP.

The journalists, who include some of the most prominent names in Turkish journalism, were arrested in raids on Monday and will now be held behind bars ahead of a trial, as part of an intensifying crackdown on dissent by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Following their arrests Turkish courts ordered a media blackout, prohibiting the press from reporting on the detention of Cumhuriyet journalists.

The arrests are the latest in a huge crackdown following a failed coup attempt to oust President Erdogan in July. Since the coup, more than 100 media outlets have been shut and dozens of journalists detained.

Prosecutors said staff at the paper, one of the few still critical of President Erdogan, were suspected of crimes committed on behalf of Kurdish militants and US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is accused of instigating the coup attempt by the government. He denies any involvement.

Earlier this year the former editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet, Can Dundar, was given a five years and 10-month jail sentence for revealing state secrets in a front-page story.

Protesters hold copies of the latest edition of the Turkish daily newspaper Cumhuriyet after nine of its journalists were placed under arrest (Yasin Akgul/Getty)

Following his detention, Mr Dundar wrote on Twitter: Our crime is our writing, our headlines, our news. We will write again. We will write even more...

It comes days after two leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), along with up to 11 other MPs from the group, whose support base is largely made up of Kurds from the region.

Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag were detained at their homes in Ankara as part of a counter-terrorism investigation, security sources told Turkish media.

After his arrest, Mr Demirtas said in a written statement read by his lawyer that he was the victim of a civilian coup by the government and the palace.

On Saturday, authorities appointed a new mayor to Sirnak municipality, part of a campaign over recent weeks of replacing pro-Kurdish officials in the mostly Kurdish southeast.

A bomb in Sirnak province on Saturday killed two children and wounded four, an attack that the local governor's office blamed on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

The recent spate of arrests of dissenters has sparked immediate alarm among Turkey's Western allies.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said she was extremely worried over the detentions, while US State Department spokesman John Kirby said there was a worrisome trend of limiting freedom of expression in Turkey.

The Turkish authorities sparked further controversy on Friday by slapping restrictions on social media and messaging services like WhatsApp.

In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Show all 17 1 /17 In pictures: Turkey coup attempt In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish President Erdogan attends the funeral service for victims of the thwarted coup in Istanbul at Fatih mosque on July 17, 2016 in Istanbul, Turkey Burak Kara/Getty Images In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Soldiers involved in the coup attempt surrender on Bosphorus bridge with their hands raised in Istanbul on 16 July, 2016 Gokhan Tan/Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt A civilian beats a soldier after troops involved in the coup surrendered on the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey, 16 July, 2016 REUTERS/Murad Sezer In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Surrendered Turkish soldiers who were involved in the coup are beaten by a civilian Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Soliders involved in the coup attempt surrender on Bosphorus bridge Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wave flags as they capture a Turkish Army vehicle Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt People pose near a tank after troops involved in the coup surrendered on the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey, 16 July, 2016 Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish soldiers block Istanbul's Bosphorus Brigde Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt A Turkish military stands guard near the Taksim Square in Istanbul Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Pierre Crom/Twitter In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish soldiers secure the area as supporters of Recep Tayyip Erdogan protest in Istanbul's Taksim square AP In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Murad Sezer/Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish soldiers detain police officers during a security shutdown of the Bosphorus Bridge Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish Army armoured personnel carriers in the main streets of Istanbul Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Chaos reigned in Istanbul as tanks drove through the streets EPA/TOLGA BOZOGLU In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan speaks to media in the resort town of Marmaris Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Supporters of President Erdogan celebrate in Ankara following the suppression of the attempted coup Reuters

Users were still encountering problems loading social media on Saturday and had trouble using Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections, which people often use to circumvent such restrictions.

Turkey remains under a state of emergency that was imposed after the failed coup in July, which allows President Erdogan and his government to bypass parliament when drafting new laws and to restrict or suspend rights and freedoms.

In October the Turkish government announced it planned to submit proposals to parliament for constitutional changes that would make Mr Erdogan executive president, expanding his powers further.
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Abdul Halim fled the northern city of Kunduz this month, after militants and security forces had been clashing for days. Now hes 200 miles away in Kabul, sleeping in a tent and living on aid. He is part of a looming humanitarian crisis aid agencies here are struggling to contain. Before the current crisis, more than a million people had already been uprooted. This year, at least another million Afghans are on the move inside Afghanistan and across its borders, in what the United Nations warns is an alarming new wave of displaced people.

Many, like Abdul, fled violence or conflict; others escaped hardships such as poverty or drought. Still others were forced to return from Pakistan and Iran. Even as the numbers grew, Afghanistan agreed to accept Afghan asylum seekers deported from the European Union. The deal, signed in October, could see the EU construct a separate terminal for deportees at Kabuls international airport, and as many as 100,000 Afghans could return. This sudden increase in the displaced has put a lot of pressure on Afghanistan, which has had 30 years of war, said Nader Farhad, spokesman for the UN refugee agency in Kabul. Its not easy to put together the infrastructure, to provide the services that are required, he said, adding that the displaced need everything from food and blankets to jobs and health care.

To the European countries, we say: instead of investing in the return of Afghans to Afghanistan, tackle the root causes, Farhad said. If the UN and other aid agencies fail to provide emergency assistance, it will be a humanitarian crisis, he said.

Massive displacement has plagued Afghanistan for years, beginning with the Soviet invasion in 1979.

After driving from Pakistan the previous day to a UN encashment centre on the outskirts of Kabul, a family of Afghans wake up at dawn and boil tea after a night sleeping on top of the trucks that carried them (Washington Post) (The Washington Post)

That conflict kindled two decades of war. When the United States invaded in 2001, some 4 million Afghans were living in Pakistan and Iran. Many of those refugees later returned, driven by hopes for stability and peace. But now, Afghanistan is witnessing some of its worst violence since the US toppled the Taliban. More than 1,600 civilians were killed in the first six months of 2016, according to a UN report released in July. That was the highest number of civilian casualties in the first half of a year since the UN began keeping track in 2009. The violence has been driven by Taliban assaults on Afghan cities, putting more civilians in the crosshairs. And the clashes have pushed even more people from their homes.

The fighting was intense. There was artillery, rockets, aerial bombardment, Abdul, 38, said of this months days-long battle between Afghan and Taliban forces in Kunduz city. Insurgents briefly seized the city at the same time last year.

My children were screaming, our neighbours houses destroyed. We had no option but to leave, he said.

More Afghan refugees arrive from Pakistan (Washington Post)

In Helmand province, in the restive south, more than 60,000 people have been displaced this year, according to the UN, and militants have fought pitched battles in the capital, Lashkar Gah. At least 5,000 of those displaced in Helmand were forced out only in the last two months, the UN says, and thousands more have fled to neighbouring provinces and beyond. In some provinces, the [armed] groups have more power there, and the government, it is very difficult for us to reach [the impacted population], said Sayed Rohullah Hashemi, an adviser to the minister of refugees and repatriation.

We dont have the capacity to do so, especially in our ministry, he said. The government cannot reach everyone on its own.

In a dusty lot east of Kabul, the UN refugee agency has erected a centre for the hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees arriving from Pakistan. At least 5,000 refugees cross the border from Pakistan every day. The UN gives them a small stipend and vaccinates the children against measles and polio. The influx began after Pakistani authorities announced a deadline for Afghan refugees  of which there were 1.7 million registered with the UN  to leave. Many of the refugees had lived in Pakistan for decades, or were even born there after their parents had fled.

Afghan children arrive outside the UN centre on the outskirts of Kabul (Washington Post)

Jumauddin, 27, was born in Pakistan to Afghan parents. Now he's returning to Kunduz province, to the Khanabad district where Taliban fighters hold sway. He says he has no choice. Kabul is too expensive, and maybe in Kunduz I can plough a plot of land, said Jumauddin, who, like many Afghans, goes by one name. I know that there was fighting there even last week, but I have no other option.

The government is worried about the return of refugees to areas where insurgents are active. But right now, the Taliban control more territory than at any time since 2001. We are facing the return of tens of thousands of Afghan each month ... This will add very much to the vicious cycle of insecurity and joblessness, said Bashir Bezhen, an Afghan analyst and political commentator. Reports have already surfaced of returning refugees clashing with locals over resources and land. The displaced are often rejected, or pushed into squalid camps. They also face the threat of forced eviction and rarely have access to clean water or food.

A man prays beside the truck that carried him and his family to the centre (Washington Post)

They are the poorest of the poor; they often live in open air, the UNs Farhad said. But they should go back to their homes when they feel secure. It has to be voluntary, and of their own accord.

In the area where Abdul took shelter, the displaced worried that the government would force them out. The fighting in Kunduz city had subsided, but they couldnt just pack up and go home. They want us gone from here, but we dont have anything, not even the money to get back, Abdul said. He first fled Kunduz on foot, with his children and just the clothes on his back. The government is incapable of creating jobs for these people, or of improving the economy in the remote places where they live, Bezhen said. Criminal and terrorist networks will seek out the jobless and displaced youth, he feared. It will push Afghanistan into deeper crisis.
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Former Cabinet minister Sir Vince Cable has accused the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of seriously misleading him over a missiles deal with Saudi Arabia.

The agreement was used to export weapons to the kingdom, which is leading a coalition in a controversial bombing campaign in Yemen.

The former business secretary said he was given assurances the UK would be granted oversight over where British-made weapons were used. Such a level of control was afforded to the Americans.

Sir Vince says these promises assured him the risk to innocent lives was minimal and led him to sign licences for laser-guided Paveway IV weapons.

Since the Yemen conflict escalated in March 2015 - when the Saudi-led coalition started its campaign in support of the Yemeni government and against Houthi rebels - at least 11,000 civilians have been killed.

The MoD has denied military personnel were involved in the targeting chain and denied the assurances were ever offered to Sir Vince.

"That is categorically contrary to what I was told was going to happen, Sir Vince told The Guardian.

If what they are now saying [is] I was not offered oversight on an equivalent level to the Americans, and that this would involve oversight of targeting, then I was seriously misled.

That is total fabrication because that was very specifically stated. That is not something that I would have made up."

He added: "My very clear understanding was that the equipment would be supplied to Saudi Arabia on the very clear basis that British personnel would have oversight of what the Saudi air force was doing, on the same basis as the Americans."

Sources told the newspaper the MoD was "desperate" to get the licences signed off because the Saudis were putting "enormous pressure" on the Government.

More than three million people have been displaced by the conflict in Yemen and at least 80 per cent of the population now relies on humanitarian aid, according to Human Rights Watch.

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. 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Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. 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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. 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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. 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In October, the number of suspected cholera cases rapidly ballooned to over 1,400, the World Health Organisatio has saidn.

Fourteen million people in the country are hungry and 370,000 children are starving, due to the Saudi-led bombardment of the country an a blockade against food imports, Unicef has said.

Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry said: "It is extremely disturbing to discover that the sale of arms for use in Yemen was approved by Vince Cable on the basis of a lie, and provides yet more evidence that limiting civilian casualties in this conflict has been the least of the Government's concerns".

The MoD told The Guardian while it had agreed to "increase oversight of the targeting process" last year, this did not never included oversight of precisely where air strikes were carried out.

"British personnel are not involved in carrying out strikes, directing or conducting operations in Yemen or selecting targets and are not involved in the Saudi targeting decision-making process," a spokesman said.
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The High Courts decision in the Article 50 litigation (R (Miller) v Secretary of State) illustrates the tension between the rule of law, the democratic will and the place of our representatives to determine it. Put another way, between the judiciary, the electorate and Parliament.

Who has the authority and who the legitimacy to make decisions of such magnitude as Britains membership of the European Union? How may those decisions be made? And who must arbitrate when the powers of government and Parliament and the effect of the decision of the people, in a referendum, are in doubt?

That final question answers itself. A strong and independent judiciary, able not only to determine complex questions of law but to do justice for the weak against the strong, is the cornerstone of a society of laws. Judges have an onerous responsibility. They are not the enemies of the people but the guardians of their rights. They must balance the relationship between people, government and Parliament. Yet they are fallible and will always disappoint some. To attack judges or litigants personally is the behaviour of the demagogue, not of mainstream newspapers or democratic politicians.

So the judiciary cannot be blamed for determining the limits of the authority of the Crown, the role of the people and the power of Parliament. But that is not to say that they  or their power  are beyond criticism; nor that criticism of judgments is in some way contrary to the rule of law. Far from it. Open  even distasteful  debate is the lifeblood of a stable society.

 Landmark Brexit Ruling: What happened and what happens next?

These tensions could not be more heightened than they were in Miller. The referendum it concerned was authorised by an Act of Parliament introduced by a government elected on a manifesto commitment to follow its result; it was enacted on the express understanding that the government (not Parliament) would withdraw in the event of a Leave vote; and the prime minister, during the campaign, undertook to give notice under Article 50 in that event. Save for one reference to the legal effect of a referendum being advisory in a House of Commons paper, the intention of Parliament was to delegate the decision to the electorate.

Yet the political argument of the claimants has been to represent themselves as the champions of Parliamentary sovereignty; occasionally expressed in opposition to popular democracy. It is suggested that ensuring that Parliament has a vote before notification  a process that will lead inevitably to the United Kingdom leaving the European Union  would be to allow the government to defeat rights accrued by membership of the Union, including rights that could not be replicated outside it.

This argument succeeded in its legal form. The governments freedom to operate in the international plane by terminating the EU Treaties was, the Court found, abrogated by the European Communities Act 1972, whether or not the 1972 Act expressly withdrew that prerogative power. Notification would have the inevitable result of terminating statutory rights and so could not be done without Parliamentary approval.

The governments legal argument can be put simply. Only the Crown has the power to act internationally; only the government can make or terminate treaties. Indeed, the Court recognised that the Crowns prerogative power to conduct international relations is regarded as wide and outside the purview of the courts precisely because the Crown cannot, in ordinary circumstances, alter domestic law by using such power to make or unmake a treaty. (Paragraph 32)

An important part of the governments argument  though given little weight in oral argument  was that rights conferred by Acts of Parliament dependent upon the UK being a party to treaties can be and have been varied and even removed by the government. A particular example is the right not to be subject to double taxation, which, though enshrined in domestic law, are vulnerable to being terminated not only by the government but by foreign governments. This argument is supported by Professor John Finnis, Professor Mark Elliott and Professor Paul Craig.

Brexit Concerns Show all 26 1 /26 Brexit Concerns Brexit Concerns Brexit will put British patients at 'back of the queue' for new drugs Brexit will put British patients at the back of the queue for vital new drugs, the Government has been warned  forcing them to wait up to two years longer A medicines regulator has raised the alarm over a likely decision to pull out of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), as well as the EU itself. ealth Secretary Jeremy Hunt dropped the bombshell , when he said he expected the UK would quit the EMA  because it is subject to rulings by the European Court of Justice. Getty Images Brexit Concerns London to lose status as 'gateway to Europe' for banks One of Germanys top banking regulators has warned that London could lose its status as gateway to Europe for the banking sector after Britain quits the European trading bloc. Andreas Dombret, who is an executive board member for the BundesbankGermanys central banktold a private meeting of German businesses and banks earlier this week in Frankfurt that even if banking rules were equivalent between the UK and the rest of the EU, that was still miles away from [Britain having] access to the single market, the BBC reports. Jason Hawkes Brexit Concerns Exodus The number of financial sector professionals in Britain and continental Europe looking for jobs in Ireland rocketed in the months after the UK voted to leave the European Union Shutterstock Brexit Concerns Brexit is making FTSE 100 executives richer Pay packages of many FTSE 100 chief executive officers are partly tied to how well share prices are doing rather than the CEOs performance -- and some stocks are soaring. ritish equities got a boost since the June vote because the likes of Rio Tinto, Smiths Group and WPP generate most sales abroad and earn a fortune when they convert these revenues back into the weakened pound. Sterlings fall also made UK stocks more affordable for overseas investors. Rex Brexit Concerns Theresa May: UK to leave single market Theresa May has said the UK "cannot possibly" remain within the European single market, as staying in it would mean "not leaving the EU at all". Getty Brexit Concerns Lead campaigner Gina Miller and her team outside the High Court Getty Brexit Concerns Raymond McCord holds up his newly issued Irish passport alongside his British passport outside the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns SDLP leader Colum Eastwood leaving the High Court in Belfast following a judges dismissal of the UK's first legal challenges to Brexit PA wire Brexit Concerns Migrants with luggage walk past a graffiti on a wall as they leave the 'Jungle' migrant camp, as part of a major three-day operation planned to clear the camp in Calais Getty Brexit Concerns Migrants leave messages on their tents in the Jungle migrant camp Getty Brexit Concerns The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (Adra) which distributes approximately 700 meals daily in the northern Paris camp states that it is noticing a spike in new migrant arrivals this week, potentially linked the the Calais 'jungle' camp closure - with around 1000 meals distributed today EPA Brexit Concerns Migrant workers pick apples at Stocks Farm in Suckley, Britain Reuters Brexit Concerns Many farmers across the country are voicing concerns that Brexit could be a dangerous step into the unknown for the farming industry Getty Brexit Concerns Bank of England governor Mark Carney who said the long-term outlook for the UK economy is positive, but growth was slowing in the wake of the Brexit vote PA Brexit Concerns The Dow Jones industrial average closed down over 600 points on the news with markets around the globe pluninging Getty Brexit Concerns Immigration officers deal with each member of the public seeking entry into the United Kingdom but on average, 10 a day are refused entry at this London airport and between 2008 and 2009, 33,100 people were detained at the airport for mainly passport irregularities Getty Brexit Concerns A number of global investment giants have threatened to move their European operations out of London if Brexit proves to have a negative impact on their businesses Getty Brexit Concerns Following the possibility of a Brexit the UK would be released from its renewable energy targets under the EU Renewable Energy Directive and from EU state aid restrictions, potentially giving the government more freedom both in the design and phasing out of renewable energy support regimes Getty Brexit Concerns A woman looking at a chart showing the drop in the pound (Sterling) against the US Dollar in London after Britain voted to leave the EU Getty Brexit Concerns Young protesters outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, to protest against the United Kingdom's decision to leave the EU following the referendum Getty Brexit Concerns Applications from Northern Ireland citizens for Irish Passports has soared to a record high after the UK Voted in favour of Leaving the EU Getty Brexit Concerns NFU Vice President Minette Batters with Secretary of State, Andrea Leadsome at the National Farmers Union (NFU) took machinery, produce, farmers and staff to Westminster to encourage Members of Parliament to back British farming, post Brexit Getty Brexit Concerns The latest reports released by the UK Cabinet Office warn that expats would lose a range of specific rights to live, to work and to access pensions, healthcare and public services. The same reports added that UK citizens abroad would not be able to assume that these rights will be guaranteed in the future Getty Brexit Concerns A British resident living in Spain asks questions during an informative Brexit talk by the "Brexpats in Spain" group, about Spanish legal issues to become Spanish citizens, at the town hall in Benalmadena, Spain Reuters Brexit Concerns The collapse of Great Britain appears to have been greatly exaggerated given the late summer crowds visiting city museums, hotels, and other important tourist attractions Getty Brexit Concerns The U.K. should maintain European Union regulations covering everything from working hours to chemicals until after the government sets out its plans for Brexit, said British manufacturers anxious to avoid a policy vacuum and safeguard access to their biggest export market Getty

So it is by no means certain  despite the strength of the High Court (effectively the Court of Appeal in all but name and containing its two most senior judges)  that the governments appeal will fail.

Yet what is the true legal effect of this decision? The control that the Court has declared Parliament to have is extremely limited: no more than that only it may authorise notification of withdrawal from the EU by the government. While an Article 50 notification might contain expressions of objectives, these could not bind the Government acting on the international plane. Moreover  as the Court acknowledged  even if objectives set out in an Act of Parliament could bind the government, the negotiations are wholly outside Parliaments hands. Ultimately, Parliament will be limited to authorising withdrawal and to authorising or to rejecting, but probably not to amending, the deal agreed with the European Council.

And what of the political effect? Parliament has already enacted a referendum on the understanding that it would respect the will of the people. The only decision that the people have made is to leave the EU and the only way in which it can be put into effect is through notification by Article 50. So Parliament has had its sovereignty restored in order to choose between respecting the result of a referendum it legislated for or to ignore it. It may do no more.

A grand and important assertion of Parliamentary sovereignty? A grubby attempt to thwart the will of the people? Or a damp squib?

Francis Hoar is a barrister specialising in public law.
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Of the Syrians, I have had it easy. Yes, I was jailed both by the Syrian government and later in Lebanon. Yes, I lost all my worldly possessions and have been separated from my family for four years. But I am a lucky one.

I say that because due to my persecution by Syrian President Bashar al-Assads regime, I was able to get political asylum in France. The government kindly supported me with living costs and helped me learn French. More than anything I want to give back to that society.

But why I am really lucky is political asylum also meant I was able to fly directly to Paris from Lebanon. I never had to face the ignominy of a potentially deadly boat ride followed by near-endless marching to get to a continent to find it was closing its borders to people exactly like me.

That is the situation thousands of my countrymen and women have found themselves in in Greece.

The closure of a series of European borders in a domino effect has left thousands of hopeless and traumatised refugees in the country in Catch-22 situations. Either they wait the seemingly endless days hoping for papers that may never come, or they pay a smuggler to take them to their desired country illegally  running the risk of being sent back.

 Refugee women forced out of Italian town after locals block streets

So while I have started to rebuild my life in France, I felt I couldnt ignore the suffering of my fellow countrymen and travelled to the ill-equipped and dirty camp of Nea Kavala, a military compound in northern Greece.

Europe is a big lie, said to me Issa Alkheder, a civil engineer graduate from Syrias prestigious Aleppo University, in a typical comment. I dreamed of finding work here as an engineer, of turning all the ideas in my head into reality. But for six months my brother and I have been stuck in a tent in northern Greece waiting for the unknown.

Its a slow death.

As the camp is set on the land of a dried lake, a heavy downpour leaves many of the tents sodden within a few hours.

The camps residents come from war zones all over the world, and there is a level of tension between them  which sometimes bubbles over into violent quarrels. Residents complain that the Greek military doesnt often intervene to disperse these quarrels and protect vulnerable families and children.

This lack of protection is increasingly turning some communities of refugees into mafia-like groups. The majority of residents dont feel safe, accusing the military of failing to give them the protections they deserve.

Hasan Elias, a physics graduate from Saladin University in Iraq, is also stuck. We endured a lot of suffering, he said. "Patience has limits. We couldnt tolerate it anymore.

Thank God we crossed the sea miraculously, but the shock was huge when got to Europe and realised human rights is just a phrase. We had to forget about studying and our future. Our reality now is torn tents.

In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A baby being taken on to MSF's Bourbon Argos ship from a boat carrying 130 migrants and refugees Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A refugee boat carrying 101 people being rescued by MSF's Bourbon Argos Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A refugee boat carrying 101 people being rescued by MSF's Bourbon Argos all images by Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A baby among refugees on a boat carrying 185 people off the coast of Libya Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea Migrants and refugees sleeping after being rescued by MSF's Bourbon Argos ship Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A crew from MSF's Bourbon Argos ship rescuing a boat carrying 130 migrants and refugees off the coast of Libya, at sunrise Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A woman in a stretcher being lifted onto MSF's Bourbon Argos ship from a boat carrying 130 migrants and refugees off the coast of Libya Lizzie Dearden

Different generations are not getting the education and support they need, many of whom fled their countries for exactly that reason. Under the blistering Greek sun, where the temperatures reach 38 Celsius, lie the elderly, pregnant women, new-born babies and the sick. Their tents don't protect them from the heat. The camp has no electricity, leaving people in complete darkness at night.

The medical care and facilities are also lacking, the nearest hospital miles away. Emergencies can lead to frantic attempts to find a doctor, particularly at night. Medicine is often in short supply.

For me, it was perhaps harder than the other volunteers in the camp. As one of the few Arabic speakers, and a Syrian, the refugees clung to me  believing I could be their chance to leave the camp or help them somehow.

I felt somehow guilty that I was in my position and they theirs. The differences between us seemed somehow random. A bureaucratic decision gave me a future once again; a bureaucratic decision has taken away theirs.

Europe should provide solutions to improve the conditions for refugees and asylum-seekers in Greece. It should also help the cash-strapped Greek authorities to provide appropriate, safe shelter, adequate sanitary facilities and appropriate medical care. For the refugees, who believed Europe was their way to a better life, it is the only way to show them the dream wasnt an illusion.
This week marks the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, a Category 3 storm which formed on October 22, 2012 and caused $70 billion in damage in roughly two weeks as it moved from the Caribbean to Canada, $11 million of which came from its impact in Rhode Island. Do you believe Rhode Island is more or less prepared to handle a large storm in the decade since Hurricane Sandy? Let us know in this week's poll question below.

You voted:
On his 51st birthday (that went by recently), Shah Rukh Khan received special love from from Yash Raj Films, with whom he shares a long-standing relationship. For, to commemorate his birthday YRF will release his recent hit film 'Fan' across China this weekend.

To be screened in major Chinese cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Chengdu and Chongqing, 'Fan' will give hordes of local Shah Rukh Khan fans an opportunity to watch the B-Town's King Khan in a never seen before Avatar on the big screen.

Commenting on this release, Avtar Panesar, Vice President International Operations said, "Shah Rukh Khan is adored in all over the world and of course, equally in China. With the release of FAN across China we are delighted to offer his fans a chance to experience the movie in their language. In our ongoing endeavors to take Indian cinema to all corners of the world outside of India, we are confident that his growing audiences in China will embrace this film as here as well and continue to build a solid base for Indian cinema".

The German fans are also in for a treat as well, since a German language DVD and Blu Ray of 'Fan' will also release across Germany this weekend. With Shah Rukh Khan`s massive fan following in Europe, King Khan continues to rule the overseas markets...
A day after the air quality in Delhi improved slightly, it has worsened yet again on Saturday. The air quality indices were measured at 999 in RK Puram and Anand Vihar, owing to the PM 1o pollutants in the air in the early hours.

A 42-point action plan was finalised by the environment ministry in consultation with state governments in December last year. Though the ministry had fixed different timelines for different actions, a majority had not been acted on in the past 10 months. Read more

1. One Terrorist Killed, Soldier Injured In Kashmir's Shopian, Encounter Still Underway

One terrorist was killed and an Indian soldier was injured after an encounter broke out in Shopian district of south Kashmir on Saturday afternoon. The security forces came under attack after they launched a search operation along with police in Dobjan village after getting information about presence of four militants there.

The security forces moved to the target house, hiding militants resorted to firing in an attempt to break the cordon. Read more

2. 60 Indians Have Joined ISIS And Most Of Them Are Fighting In Raqqa, Accused Tells NIA

Islamic State group's fighter Subahani Haja Moideen, who trained in Iraq in 2015 and met some of the Paris attackers, has informed Indian intelligence agencies that most youngsters from India who joined IS are based in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the de-facto capital of the caliphate.

More than 60 Indians are said to have joined the Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi-led terrorist organisation since 2014 and some have been killed in the war there. Read more

3. Come Clean On Britain's Role In Operation Blue Star, Labour Party Asks Theresa May

Labour party Deputy Leader, Tom Watson, said that Britains Sikh community deserves to know the truth in the wake of allegations by Sikh Federation UK that the UK Foreign Office had removed files with new evidence of British involvement in the military operation on Golden Temple in June 1984.

His statement followed claims that the Foreign Office had intentionally removed files referring to the possibility of the Special Air Services (SAS) unit of the British Army being involved after an Indian request for military assistance in the setting up of a National Guard for internal security duties during Operation Blue Star. Read more

4. Will There Be Surgical Strikes Against China? Shiv Sena Asks Centre, After Chinese Incursion

Shiv Sena today asked the Centre if there will be a similar action against China, like the Indian Army's surgical strikes on terror launch pads at the LoC in September."The time has come to look at Chinese incursions (in Indian territory) seriously. Surgical strikes against China, similar to the ones carried out against Pakistan, will be the befitting answer," the Sena said.

"Will there be such an attack (against China)," an editorial in Sena mouthpiece Saamana asked. Read more

5. 12 Injured In Clashes In Srinagar As Protests Return To The Valley After A Short Lull

At least 12 people were injured in fresh clashes between protesters and security forces, following death of a 16-year-old boy due to alleged poisoning in Eidgah area of Srinagar.

Qaiser Sofi, who was reported missing on October 25 and found in an unconscious state in Shalimar area of the city six days later and hospitalised and had died on Saturday morning.

Local had alleged that the teen was force fed some poisonous substance by security forces. Read more
After reports from a resort in Haryana, where ducks were tested positive for avian influenza, the Haryana government immediately responded with the culling of 150 ducks in the Hisar district.

Around 150 ducks were culled in Hisar district of Haryana to prevent spread of bird flu after samples of dead birds from a local resort tested positive for Avian influenza. The Centre also asked the Haryana government to take steps to control bird flu after the samples of ducks sent from a Haryana Tourism resort at Hisar were found positive.

"Around 150 ducks have been culled today. Earlier 11 birds were found dead at lake and samples of dead birds were tested positive for bird flu," a district official said.

"We are on high alert," Hisar Deputy Commissioner Nikhil Gajraj said and added that all precautionary measures are being taken to prevent spread of virus. Entry to the Blue Bird tourist complex has been restricted, he added.

PTI

Meanwhile, the Union Agriculture Ministry in a statement said: "The samples sent from domestic ducks at Blue Bird Restaurant of Haryana Tourism in Hisar, Haryana, to NIHSAD, Bhopal on November 2 have been found positive for H5N8 AI virus.





"The state government of Haryana has been requested to initiate control and containment operation as per action plan."

The Action Plan of Animal Husbandry for Preparedness, Control and Containment of Avian Influenza was released by the Centre in 2015. Giving an update on bird flu situation in various parts of the country, the Centre said that the control and containment operations are being carried out at various epicenters in Kerala.

"A video conferencing was conducted by this Department on November 2 to review the situation in Kerala and preparedness of the neighboring states namely Karnataka and Tamil Nadu," the statement said.

BCCL

There is no further report of mortality from any part of Punjab where post operation surveillance is going on.

In Delhi, the Centre said that six ducks at Madipur Lake reportedly died on November 3.

"The samples have been collected by the Department of Animal Husbandry, Delhi. There is no report of mortality from any other part of Delhi. The Delhi Government has carried out disinfection process at all the affected sites as per Action Plan on Avian Influenza," the statement said.
Life expectancy in Gujarat is 68.7 years which is abouut 0.8 years higher than that of the country as a whole. The study of mortality carried out between 2010 and 2014 reveals that the life expectancy among women is higher than that of men.

BCCL/representational image

Data released by the Census of India reveals that life expectancy among men was 66.6 years while the same among women was 71. The life expectancy between 1970-1975 was 48.8 which was at par among male and female.

Officials said that life expectancy in the state has increased by nearly 20 years over four decades.

Health commissioner JP Gupta said that life expectancy is the biggest parameter of health and wellbeing of the people of a state.

AP/representational image

"Life expectancy depends on several reasons among which include health, and better and improved lifestyle. In Gujarat on an average, 12 lakh children are born every year and around 4 lakh people, including infants, die," Gupta said.

He said that the state government is concerned about the infant mortality rate which, according to the state health department, was around 30, a decline from 36 in 2013. He said that the government is dedicated to reducing this further and efforts are going on to bring it down.

According to the data, in the 42 years between 1971-2013, the birth rate in the state has come down from 40 to 20.8  a reduction of nearly 50%. Simultaneously the fertility rate, which was 5.6, has also come down to 2.3.

AP/representational image

According to the data, the growth rate in terms of life expectancy among men in the state was 0.43 between 1970-75 and 2010-2014, while the same was 0.54 among women.

The census data further reveals that infant mortality, which was over 100 till 1985, has seen a considerable decline.

In the last 13 years the infant mortality rate decreased from 62 in 2000 to 36 in 2013.

Officials further said that the decrease in infant mortality rate was because of various schemes of the state government. These schemes include Chiranjivi project among others.
Six people, most of them from one family, were killed in an accident on the Eastern Freeway, south Mumbai, on Saturday morning. Three others are injured and have been rushed to the JJ hospital.

The accident led to a massive traffic jam on the Eastern Freeway's southbound stretch with the backlog stretching up to Sewri, police said.

TOI

The mishap was reported around 9 am. There were at least nine people travelling in a cab which turned turtle. According to preliminary information, the door of the taxi flung open while the vehicle was in motion near Wadi Bunder, causing the driver to lose control of the vehicle and ram into the divider.

Maharashtra: 6 died & 3 injured after a taxi turned turtle in Dongri area of Mumbai pic.twitter.com/sQjoIHIoDJ  ANI (@ANI_news) November 5, 2016

The taxi is believed to have toppled multiple times before coming to a standstill.

The occupants of the cab included three women, two children and men. Pydhonie traffic police immediately reached the spot to extract the victims from the wreckage.
Hindi News viewers are talking about a programme that was aired last night. The show focused on the curbs put of the freedom of expression and the ban on the channel on November 9. NDTV journalist, Ravish Kumar, invited two mime artistes as his guests to his live show as a response to the I&B Ministry's decision to ban the news channel.

During the talk show, which was supposed to be about the rising air pollution levels in the capital, the conversations steered around the video clip showing Junior Home Minister Kiren Rijiju stating the "There is a rise in the culture of people asking unnecessary questions" and saying that "this should stop."

Then, after a brief introduction to the culture of mimicry in India, Ravish Kumar introduced his two guests - dressed in the mime attire - to the show.

The 40-minute show was a satire on the government's decision to ban the news channel and in retaliation to the government's stand on questions being raised - by journalists and citizens alike.

The show evoked strong emotions from people, who responded against the proposed ban.

Hats off to Ravish Kumar @NDTV fr coming up with d idea of Mime to put his point. It says a lot without words.  Chiraag Devyani (@chirag_goud) November 4, 2016

Kudos to Ravish For taking on this govt's ban on NDTV it's minister who frowns upon ppl questioning govt,with humourhttps://t.co/6kQp4KJyX0  Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) November 5, 2016

Ravish show mime, NDTV, powerful voice, is d talk of d town, Modi dream to become hitler impose emergency oppose with tooth & nail Modi fail  Social Just Republic (@Mohitmsood) November 5, 2016

Brilliant response on the silencing of democracy: @ravishndtv on mime artists and the NDTV ban. https://t.co/vq3uMDPBxI

(* in Hindi)  Nilanjana Roy (@nilanjanaroy) November 4, 2016

You Don't Have to Shout .

If You Are True Your Voice Gonna Heard Just by Mime !#IMNDTV #Ndtv  night watchmen (@crick_crook) November 4, 2016

Silence is the most powerful cream & the mime on #NDTV proved it....#NDTVBanned #Emergency  Narendra Pandey (@ProfNKPandey) November 5, 2016

Superb episode by #ravishkumar #NDTV India on reluctance of the govt to answer qs by media, power of #trolls #mime https://t.co/Wf0R67lMty  Ruhi Khan (@khanruhi) November 4, 2016

Ravish Kumar brings mime artists on prime time to ridicule ban on NDTV (video)https://t.co/GVLJlZ8Gee pic.twitter.com/ldbjw9N3yj  Gowri Ramesh (@preeti_singh12) November 4, 2016

There were also those who opposed the daring act.

So according to liberals, a scripted Mime show by #RavishKumar makes up for NDTV's breach of security.  Kunal Karanjkar (@kunal_karanjkar) November 4, 2016

Only difference between trolls & #RavishKumar is, Trolls use words & He used mime. Both are equally abusive. #NDTV pic.twitter.com/gd5qLFFyTY

 Musharraf Rajput (@musharrafrajpu) November 4, 2016

@ndtv NDTV Hindi is officially a mime show.. happy viewing.  Yogesh Khandeparkar (@yakhandeparkar) November 5, 2016

And then, there was this!

Arnab quit times now just to be a mime artist and appeared on NDTV prime time.

Lolz  Ritika Jain (@ritikajain01) November 5, 2016

Politicians came out in support against the ban as well:

I hope the whole media goes off air for a day in solidarity wid NDTV. https://t.co/rjHAk1Z53a  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) November 4, 2016

NDTV ban is shocking. If Govt had issues with Pathankot coverage,there are provisions available. But ban shows an Emergency-like attitude

 Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) November 4, 2016





Younews

This is the same channel which had a one-hour black on air with only a voice-over to protest the beating up of students at Patiala Court in February this year.

The latest, however, was a ban from the I&B Ministry, for leaking "sensitive" information during the Pathankot attacks of January this year.

The channel has been instructed to be off-air on November 9.
One terrorist was killed and an Indian soldier was injured after an encounter broke out in Shopian district of south Kashmir on Saturday afternoon.

The security forces came under attack after they launched a search operation along with police in Dobjan village after getting information about presence of four militants there.

The security forces moved to the target house, hiding militants resorted to firing in an attempt to break the cordon.

One militant was killed and a soldier injured in the retaliatory fire, an official said. A fierce gunbattle is still going between the two sides.

BCCL/ Representative Image

This is the second time in less than a month the Indian security forces have come under attack in Shopian.

Last month a grenade attack on a CRPF convoy had left eight people injured. This also comes amid the heightened security and an increase in infiltration of terrorists to India from PoK.
A meeting convened by the central governement with Delhi, Punjab, Rajasthan, UP and Haryana conceded that a roadmap drawn up last year had failed to deliver results due to poor implementation.

AFP

Also Read: 10 Pictures That Show What Pollution Has Done to Delhi

A 42-point action plan was finalised by the environment ministry in consultation with state governments in December last year.

Though the ministry had fixed different timelines for different actions, a majority had not been acted on in the past 10 months.

Reuters

The Delhi government will examine the possibility of providing funds from the Environment Compensation Charge (ECC) and diesel cess to neighbouring states for incentivizing various machinery like happy seeders, rotavators, straw choppers, gyro rakes, bailers, mulchers to minimize straw burning by farmers," said an environment ministry post-review meeting statement.

Also Read: Sorry Delhi, Air Pollution Is Here To Stay, But Here're Some Things That Can Be Done To Reduce Its Impact

With neighbouring states raising the issue of finances, it was felt that funds from Delhi's green cess being collected from new high-end diesel cars and SUVs as also from commercial vehicles entering the city could be utilized. This could motivate Delhi's neighbours to clean up their act and contribute to making the capital's air healthier.

AFP

Other measures include closing of brick kilns operating on obsolete technologies in the NCR during the winter season and ensuring control of fly ash from the Badarpur thermal power plant in the capital.

With stubble burning a major reason for polluted air, the issue was discussed threadbare and top officials from the Delhi government agreed to consider the proposal of extending financial assistance to neighbouring states.

Delhi government is expected to soon get back to the Centre. If it agrees to assist neighbouring states, over Rs 300 crore will be available for purchase or subsidy for machinery that can encourage eco-friendly measures to dispose of stubble after harvesting crops.

Also Read: Diwali Is One Cause, NASA Satellite Pics Show Stubble Burning In Punjab And Haryana Contributing To Pollution And Smog

"Delhi government has assured it will immediately come out with a plan of action to utilize the money available with it from the collection of environmental tax and 1% cess for steps to improve the environment," said environment secretary Ajay Narayan Jha after he chaired the review meeting.

AFP

Jha admitted weak enforcement has become a major stumbling block in the ongoing efforts to control air pollution in the NCR. "There are many areas where much more needs to be done. Enforcement mechanism is still weak. States have been asked to make enforcement stricter and take appropriate steps," Jha said.

Also Read: Living In Delhi These Days? Save Yourself From Pollution, Here Are 8 Ways
There have been three forest fires in Jammu and Kashmir in the past week, and according to experts, it has been contributing to the smog covering the skyline in Delhi and NCR. The incessant smoke and pollution from these fires has gone unchecked, resulting in pollution in some parts of north India.

According to reports, the north-westerly wind that has been blowing has been bringing in the smoke from the paddy fields in Haryana and Punjab can also be held responsible for bringing in harmful effects of the forest fires of Kashmir into the low-laying areas of Punjab, Haryana and Delhi.

The first forest fire raged for almost a week and ended only after burning 10,000 trees. The second and third fires were smaller in scale although the third occurred at the heart of the forest division. The third and latest was a massive fire that broke out on Friday evening.

Despite assurances, villagers reported that hardly any steps were taken in the initial days to quell the fire.

ALSO READ: Forest Fire Raging Near Kupwara In Kashmir For Three Days, No Relief In Sight Yet

Kashmir Life

In its report filed early last month, the World Health Organisation had reported that apart from vehicular emissions and smoke from factories, forest fires also play a role in affecting the levels of air pollutants.

As the situation in the national capital worsens, schools are shut down and people are advised to stay indoors, there is also an urgent to stay swifter action against forest fires breaking out in the northern states.

ANI

While the authorities are yet to take action on the frequent forest fires in J&K and Uttarakhand, its impact will continue to affect the residents of the lower regions.
Arrested by police and allegedly harassed, an assistant primary school teacher in Madhya Pradesh's Shivpuri district has killed himself by consuming poison.

30-year-old Manoj Purohit was arrested on charges of gambling, a day before Diwali. Purohit, who also runs private bus service, reportedly had an argument with the police earlier too.

According to his family he was subjected to humiliation in police custody. Apart from being thrashed and stripped, was also allegedly made to lick shoes of the policemen.

Purohit consumed poison on October 30 and died at the Jhansi Hospital on Thursday. In his suicide note, he blamed five policemen and a self-acclaimed journalist for his suicide.
Islamic State group's fighter Subahani Haja Moideen, who trained in Iraq in 2015 and met some of the Paris attackers, has informed Indian intelligence agencies that most youngsters from India who joined IS are based in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the de-facto capital of the caliphate.

indiainteracts

Based on his interaction with another IS senior member from India, who he was in touch with regularly during his five-month stay in Mosul last year, Moideen came to the conclusion that most Indian recruits are in Raqqa.

Intelligence agencies are trying to verify his claims as their assessment suggests many Indians, including 22 from Kerala, are fighting for the IS in Afghanistan.

Also Read: Even As Reports Of Youths Joining ISIS Emerge, Govt. Says It Has Failed To Attract Indian Youth

More than 60 Indians are said to have joined the Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi-led terrorist organisation since 2014 and some have been killed in the war there.

AFP/representational image

Moideen, the most battle-hardened recruit from India, has provided interesting details about life of an IS fighter inside its territory.

Moideen claims that once a foreign fighter, like him, reaches IS territory in Iraq or Syria, he is kept in a group of other foreign fighters, in his case numbering 22-25.

Also Read: With ISIS Using Social Media To Recruit Indian Youths, Home Ministry Hires Adviser To Curb Radicalisation

Moideen said he entered Iraq from the Turkish city of Urfa by cutting a barb wire at the border along with other fighters from Jordan, Germany, Europe, UK, France, Lebanon, Pakistan and Afghanistan, who were travelling with their families, in April 2015.

From there, they were taken to Tel Abaid town of Syria where they were kept in small houses. "We were given food twice a day  once before 10 am and second meal after sunset.

The day usually began very early in the morning when we pray, and then do exercise. After that we have to attend the two hours religious class everyday which is taken in Arabic and also translated in English," Moideen says.

After the religious class every day, three senior IS members delivered the 'baith' (oath) of loyalty to recruits, six at a time, in the name of Al Baghdadi. The classes are held only for a couple of weeks.

Also Read: Indian Youth Joined ISIS Not For Jihad, But To Get Sex Slaves!

After that, the men were taken to Mosul to the IS' military training camp. Moideen was kept in a group named Umar Ibnu Khatab Khatiba, headed by a French national with the given name of Abu Suleiman Al-Francisi.

AFP/representational image

His group, also had Pakistani national and former Lashkar-e-Taiba veteran bomb maker Mohammad Ghani Usman, arrested from Austria earlier this year and charged for Paris attacks 2015.

The arms training is extensive which covers learning how to use AK rifles, grenades, rocket launchers and even war tactics. The fighters, Moideen says, practice stripping and assembling weapons, most of which are dummies.
UKs Opposition Labour party has called on British Prime Minister Theresa May to come clean about the role played by Britain in Operation Blue Star before her three-day visit to India starting on Sunday.

AP

Labour party Deputy Leader, Tom Watson, said that Britains Sikh community deserves to know the truth in the wake of allegations by Sikh Federation UK that the UK Foreign Office had removed files with new evidence of British involvement in the military operation on Golden Temple in June 1984.

His statement followed claims that the Foreign Office had intentionally removed files referring to the possibility of the Special Air Services (SAS) unit of the British Army being involved after an Indian request for military assistance in the setting up of a National Guard for internal security duties during Operation Blue Star.

AP

While the Foreign Office said it had merely borrowed the files, the Labour party said the fact the files exist raise important questions.

Watson added: David Camerons previous inquiry failed to reveal the full facts and we now learn that vital new documents relating to the massacre have been removed from the National Archives by ministers. The revelation that these new documents exist suggest that Parliament may have been inadvertently misled by a former Foreign Secretary.

After over 30 years of demanding answers, Britains Sikh community deserves to know the truth, no matter how embarrassing it is for the current government. After the failure of the Cabinet Secretarys internal inquiry, there should be a full independent investigation into these matters.

AFP

The Cabinet Secretarys inquiry refers to an official UK government inquiry in 2014 into the exact nature of British involvement in the Indian Army operation at the Golden Temple.

The inquiry had been ordered by then British Prime Minister David Cameron after documents released previously under the 30-year declassification rule had implied British SAS commanders had advised the Indian government as it drew up plans for the removal of militants from Golden Temple.

The report concludes that the nature of the UKs assistance was purely advisory, limited and provided to the Indian government at an early stage in their planning, William Hague, then UK foreign secretary, had told the House of Commons in February 2014.

Reuters

Sikh Federation UK claims the latest note it found, marked confidential, was written on July 3, 1984, a month after the operation, which points to a more prominent British role.

The note was written by a civil servant in the Foreign Offices South Asia department and copied to Ministry of Defence officials and the high commissioner in Delhi.
30-year-old Jade Logan from Co Antrim, Northern Ireland, had stepped out of her mother's house to take her dog for a walk when two minutes later she felt hands over her mouth and her head being pulled back. She was being attacked by an unidentified man just yards away from her own house when her fiercely loyal 2-year-old Staffordshire terrier jumped straight in and thwarted the would-be rapist's plan.

Representational image/The Daily Dot

The Staffordshire terrier, Lola, started growling and bit the attacker so hard that he eventually fled. Shook up by the incident, Logan, a mother of three, told Belfast Live, "I have no doubt as to what his intentions were, he was definitely out to rape me. He said, 'Your dog can watch'. He was too strong and I was so terrified I couldn't get turned round to see him."

mirror.co.uk

Logan who has now taken the matter to the police, agrees that if it wasn't for Lola, the outcome would've been quite different. "Lola had a really good grip of him in her jaw and he started to struggle to try and get her off," Logan further explained. "As he was trying to get Lola off his arm he had to let me go and as soon as he got free he ran off."
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After having been in education for forty-four years as a teacher, coach, counselor and administrator,has retired. He uses his psychology and counseling background in crafting psychological thriller/mysteries.
Renter protection activists counter the lies of the California Apartment AssociationBy Lynda Carson - November 4, 2016The complaints are numerous and wide spread about the alleged lies and deceit being used by the California Apartment Association (CAA) to defeat the renter protection ballot measures in the cities of Richmond San Mateo , and Mountain View Renters have also been complaining about landlords stealing the lawn signs that are promoting the renter protection ballot measures in the City of Alameda, and other cities. In Burlingame, tenants have pointed out that the landlords have more money to spend on larger signs that are against the renter protection ballot measure in that town. Lawn signs that are larger than what the tenant activists are using to promote Measure R.According to Cindy Cornell, Founder of the Yes on Measure R campaign in Burlingame,In our campaign for rent stabilization in Burlingame (Measure R), we have consistently seen lies and distortions of the truth in mailers, tv and radio commercials, letters to the editor, and directly out of the mouth of Josh Howard, Executive Director of CAA's Tri-County Division. They have maligned renters by their imagery and their words, using fear mongering and dog whistles. The CAA has encouraged owners to evict renters in advance of November, scaring them into thinking that Measure R would be the end of the world.Twice the CAA sent out fraudulent mailers against Measure R made to look like they came from the California State Legislative Analyst's Office. In the content, they excerpted a portion of a report from the LAO from February and made it appear that the LAO was opining that Measure R would not help low-income renters, which is hideously false. The CAA has repeatedly told voters the following lies about what will happen if Measure R passes: That criminals will move in next door and you won't be able to get rid of them (racist and classist dog whistle); That Measure R will create a tax on homeowners (it will actually be paid for by fees to landlords); That the Rental Housing Commission created by Measure R will take away from police, fire, and emergency services funding; That unelected people would have unlimited power of the purse; That a secret group drafted the Measure; That rent stabilization means renters will be subsidized; That rent stabilization would hurt low-income people; That the quality of housing would declineThe CAA has historically befriended local politicians and presented themselves as innocent representatives who only wish to help solve housing issues. In fact, they represent only the monied interests that wish to keep flipping apartment buildings to increase profits for the few, at great expense to our communities. They are one of the tools used to shift massive amounts of wealth from low- and middle-income people up the chain, and are a major roadblock to making significant housing policy changes that will actually solve problems in the Bay Area. We are hoping that the public has been able to see that, in truth, this emperor has no clothes, and the CAA's influence will diminish among politicians and voters alike.The lies and deceit of the CAA are so radical and extreme that they have been frightening the landlords into evicting the renters from their apartments before the voters can vote on November 8. And the propaganda of the CAA have made some landlords feel that is alright to harass and frighten the renters out of their apartments by damaging the property of renters, in rent controlled apartments.Protesting against the dirty tricks of the CAA, as recent as Thursday October 13, tenant activists around the Bay Area joined together outside the Hayward regional office of the California Apartment Association (CAA) and the Prometheus Real Estate Group in San Mateo to protest against the lies and deceit of the CAA being used to fight against renter protection ballot measures in the cities of Richmond, Oakland, Alameda, San Mateo, Burlingame, and Mountain View. Reported also by the New York Times , the activists also filed a complaint with the California Fair Political Practices Commission against the CAA.In opposition to the renters in the David vs. Goliath renter protection campaigns taking place in the Bay Area, are the greedy landlords, speculators, realtors & realtor associations, and apartment associations that are spending a ton of money to have the notorious California Apartment Association run some massive campaigns against Bay Area renters seeking renter protections. The massive campaigns and big money being spent by the CAA are corrupting the political process in the Bay Area, and are obscene in breadth, and scope.The big money of the CAA and its wealthy campaign contributors have spent a fortune of money in TV and radio attack ads, mailers, newspaper ads, printers, politicians, campaign consultants, and polling recently, in the effort to convince voters to vote against renter protection ballot measures that can be voted on in November, in 6 Bay Area cities.Records reveal that between 1/1/2016 and 9/24/2016 the CAA-Issues Committee took in $829,398 in campaign contributions from big monied landlords and speculators that do not want renters to have any renter protections, including $50,000 from KW Multi-Family Management Group, LLC, $150,000 from Prometheus Real Estate Group, Inc, owned by a billionaire family, $50,000 from wealthy landlord & speculator Tod Spieker, $25,000 from Tower Alameda LP, $85,000 from Woodmont Real Estate Services, LP, $40,000 from Mountain View Housing Council, $45,000 from Vasona Management, Inc, $25,000 from ACCO Management CO, $20,000 from the Tan Group, and $100,000 from Equity Residential, a very wealthy firm out of Chicago.According to public records , and these are not all the public records available, however it reveals that the California Apartment Association Issues Committee has recently spent $250,000 in TV attack ads with Cabletime, around $52,000 in TV & radio attack ads with Firestar Productions, $17,000 in radio attack ads on KCBS Radio, $8,500 in radio attack ads on KFOG Radio, $17,200 in radio attack ads on KGO Radio, $17,000 in radio attack ads on KNBR Radio, and $10,500 in radio attack ads with Weller Media Services against renter protection ballot measures in the Bay Area.Councilwoman Gayle McLaughlin of Richmond who is a fervent supporter of renter protections said, Here we are just days from the election and we have a great opportunity to continue our incredible progressive work in Richmond. We share so much together - our history of struggle and resiliency has made us strong. Measure L is the next step for a future where working and middle-class families are a distinct part of Richmond. Measure L will protect good tenants while assuring that landlords get a fair return on their investment.In the last week of this local election we are seeing mailers from landlord lobby groups that are deeply twisted and outright false.Claims such as, "Rent control is coming to single family homes!" are showing up in mailers in an attempt to scare homeowners with blatant lies.Let's take a look at the facts: Rent control does not apply to single-family homes, only multi-unit apartments built before 1995. Condos are also exempt from rent control.Measure L will help lower crime by stabilizing our neighborhoods.Measure L will help reduce homelessness. When people can't pay highrents, they are often forced into dire straits.Measure L will allow kids to stay in their schools because when families are forced to move, kids are forced to change schools and that has a profound effect on their achievement and general well-being.Measure L will not make it more difficult to remove tenants who are involved in illegal activities or causing a nuisance. These are just causes for eviction.And Measure L does not apply at all to primary homeowners who lease their homes temporarily, who rent out rooms in their homes, or rent in-law units.Another disreputable statement: The California Apartment Association argues that Measure L is flawed because rent control should apply only to lower-income families. Unethical landlords would love this - a loophole that allows them to rent to higher-income families at whatever rents they can charge.Let's face it: The United States is dealing with a major national housing crisis, and who would argue that countless families are suffering. We need to continue building more housing, including truly affordable housing. However, we need to be realistic. New development and construction takes time and Richmond families need protection now.Let's make sure we do all we can to give renters a chance to benefit from our transformation before it's too late. Vote for Measure L on November 8 and let's keep moving Richmond forward!Councilwoman Gayle McLaughlin was also quoted in The Nation about the struggle for renter protections in Richmond.Renter Protections On The Ballot In 6 Cities On November 8In Oakland, the list of serial mega evictors is available to see who is involved in the mass evictions taking place in that town, revealing the need for strong renter protections to help stabilize families, and communities.In Alameda mass evictions have been occurring due to a lack of strong renter protections, and the Alameda Renters Coalition is urging voters to vote against Measure L1, and to vote for Measure M1 as the way to protect renters and stabilize communities in their city.In Oakland Measure JJ is on the ballot in November and if voted into law it will help to protect renters by strengthening existing renter protection laws. Voters are urged to vote YES on Measure JJ to help stabilize communities in Oakland, and slow down greedy landlords involved in price gouging and eviction-for-profit schemes.The struggle for renter protections in Richmond has been an epic battle against the lies and deceit of the California Apartment Association (CAA) , and its corrupting influence on local politicians Activists are urging voters to vote on Measure L as a way to stop landlords involved in price gouging and eviction-for-profit schemes in Richmond. Measure L makes the landlords accountable for their actions when engaging in price gouging . If passed by the voters in November, Measure L would help to stop the mass evictions taking place in Richmond that are condoned by Mayor Tom Butt, and Councilmembers Nathaniel Bates and Vinay Pimple.In the City of San Mateo, renters and activists collected more than 11,000 signatures to place a renter protection ballot measure on the ballot for November 8 that includes rent control and just cause eviction protections. Activists are urging the voters in San Mateo to vote on Measure Q as a way to stabilize communities and protect families from displacement.In the City of Mountain View renter protections are also on the ballot. Activists and renters are urging voters to vote on Measure V to protect over 14,000 households, including families, teachers and nurses from rent price gouging and eviction-for-profit schemes. Activists are urging renters to vote for Measure V, and to vote against weak renter protection measure placed on the ballot by the City Council.Renters and activists have also had a fierce battle in Burlingame over renter protections and activists are urging voters to vote for Measure R in November. If passed by the voters Measure R will provide rent stabilization and just cause eviction protections to help stabilize communities and protect families from displacement of their housing due to speculators, realtors, and greedy landlords.Renter protections will be on the ballot in 6 cities during November in the Bay Area. No matter how hard the landlords and the California Apartment Association are trying to stop the renters movement, tenant advocates across the Bay Area are urging renters to vote on strong renter protections during the upcoming November elections in the cities of Richmond San Mateo , and Mountain View . The activists are urging people to vote no against any weak proposals placed on the ballot by the City Council in Alameda, and Mountain View.Joshua Howard of the California Apartment Association did not respond to my request for an interview in regards to the alleged lies and deceit being used to suppress the vote for the renter protection ballot measures in the Bay Area that can be voted on, on November 8.Lynda Carson may be reached at tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com >>>>>>>>>>>>
The #BringBackOurGirls (BBOG) advocacy group has thanked President Muhammadu Buhari, the Nigerian Army and other security agencies working toward rescuing the remaining Chibok schoolgirls in Boko Haram captivity.

The BBOG made this known on Saturday in a statement released by its spokesperson, Sesugh Akume.

The group was reacting to the rescue of Maryam Ali Maiyanga on Saturday by troops in Gwoza local government area of Borno.

According to the group, we welcome news of the return of another of our abducted. Preliminary investigations on our part, show that Maryam Ali Maiyanga (Number 198 on our list), a school prefect, is from Askira Uba and was abducted along with her twin, Halima Ali (Number 197), who is yet to return. We shall update the public with more details as necessary.

We applaud the federal government under President Muhammadu Buhari, the military and other security formations working day and night to rout the terrorists and rescue all Nigerians in captivity, it stated.

The BBOG, however, expressed sadness over the death of the Commanding Officer of the 272 Task Force Tank Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Muhammed Abu Ali, a highly-rated, young officer and 4 other members of his team, in a separate incident at Mallam Fatori yesterday.

We send our heartfelt condolences especially to their families, the Nigerian military, the group said.
The Oyo State Police Command has arrested a former Federal Road Safety Corps member, who killed an official of the FRSC in Oyo town.

The suspect, Nurudeen Alin (32), and his accomplice, Mohammed Garba (26), went to the residence of their victim, Yahuza Fakai, at College Road, Amejiogbe area of Oyo town and stabbed him with a knife several times.

The state Commissioner of Police, Samuel Adegbuyi, who paraded the suspects at the command headquarters in Ibadan, said investigation revealed that Ali was dismissed from the FRSC for driving licence touting offence, stating also that the victim had on many occasions supported Ali with money after he lost his job.

He said, The victim and Ali were friends and after Ali was dismissed, he got a lot of financial help from Fakai. On October 14 this year, Ali and an accomplice, Garba, went to Fakais house and stabbed him to death. The Atiba police division was mandated to unravel the murder, leading to the arrest of the suspects. The murder weapon, a knife, was recovered from them.

Ali, who confessed to the crime during an interview with correspondents, said his late friend had promised to give him some money but delayed in doing so, which was what made him angry and attacked him.

Fakai was my friend because we worked together at FRSC before I was dismissed. He had been helping me until I killed him. A day before he was killed, he called me and gave me some money. He also said that I should see him again for more money. I went to his house with Garba but when we got there, I needed to receive a call and stepped out, by the time I returned to the house, Garba had stabbed him in the neck. He handed the knife to me and I also stabbed him. We left him for dead. I was later arrested in my house by the police, said the suspect.

Giving the account of his involvement in the crime, Garba said the deceased had promised to assist Ali but delayed the assistance after learning that he was hugely indebted.

He said, Our aim was to threaten him with the knife so that he could release the money but after stabbing him in the neck, I realised that the injury was life threatening so I left the scene because I was afraid. Ali stabbed him more leading to his death. I had never met the deceased before that day.

Source: Punch
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has confirmed that a former Comptroller-General, Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Abdullahi Dikko, returned N1 billion to the Federal Government.

There were reports during the week that the former customs boss returned the sum to the Nigerian government.

Confirming the reports on Saturday in Abuja, the commissions spokesperson, Wilson Uwujaren, said Mr. Dikko, who headed the NCS between August 2009 and August 2015, was arrested by the EFCC in June over alleged diversion of N40 billion from the services coffers.

He was later released, reportedly due to his poor health and was expected to return more money.

Mr. Uwujaren also confirmed the seizure of a multi-billion naira property belonging to the former customs boss at 1 Audu Ogbe Street, Jabi District of Abuja, saying it was under investigation.

The EFCC spokesperson also confirmed the release of ex-Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro, who had been in the commissions detention since October 17.

He said that the former minister returned N100 million as reported and that the amount was being verified by the commission.

He dropped his Nigerian and American passports, apart from being released to two sureties, Mr. Uwujaren said.
Suleja residents were woken to a sporadic gun fire recently which led to the murder of a nursing mother who took a bullet in the chest to save her infant baby. AGBO-PAUL AUGUSTINE (Abuja) reports on the new wave of crimes in the Niger town.

Last Sunday will remained a black day in the minds of residents of Suleja in Niger State as Rahimat Ometere, 28 who hails from Okeyi local government area of Kogi State was killed by bullets from dare devil robbers who attacked her home at about 2am.

The nursing mother fell to the bullets shot sporadically at her home while she struggles to save the life of her young infant caught in the heat of gun fire.

The sad development has left many residents of Gwazulu community popularly called APC Quarters in shock.

The bullet ridden apartment of the deceased will leave any visitor wondering what could have informed such a violent attacks on a family of four.

Ometere took a hit in the chest while her five-months-old baby Hurraho Shaibu was strapped on her back. She died instantly on the floor of her sitting room as the blood from her ruptured heart coloured the floor.

Principal witness to the crime, Late Ometeres husband, Abdullateef Shaibu, who also hails from Okeyi LGA and runs a local barbers shop, told LEADERSHIP Weekend that he came back from work at about 10 pm the previous day with only N2, 000 cash.

He said they were sleeping at about 2 am when they heard the sound of a fallen fence. My wife woke up and alerted me that it is as though our fence has fallen and said further that she is seeing peoples legs jumping over the fence to the compound.

Within seconds, I heard the first gun shot from the back of our home. We immediately moved out of the living room to the sitting room and saw several touch lights flashing into the rooms.

The robbers started screaming at us to open the door as they sustained heavy gun shots into our rooms hitting everywhere.

I immediately told my wife to stay on the floor while I pleaded with the assailants to stop shooting into the house but they refused and kept spreading bullets at the house.

My wife was nursing our five months old baby and while she struggled to protect the baby from the array of bullets piercing all through our windows and doors, she took a bullet in the chest and fell.

On seeing her in the pool of her blood, I screamed at the robbers that: you have killed my wife and suddenly they all ran away jumping the part of the fence they broke in, the grieving Shaibu narrated.

The traumatised husband further said even after the robbers left his apartment, he was too afraid to venture outside, had to make calls to relatives for help.

My wife was confirmed dead at a local hospital by a Doctor who informed me that I have lost her to the bullet, he added.

Other witnesses in the area confirmed the incident. They told LEADERSHIP Weekend that they too were to afraid venture out of their homes because the gun shot was so heavy, a neighbour said.

Shaibu further said that it took one of the residents to put a call to the Police headquarters in Abuja to call the Suleja Command to response long after the assailants have escaped from the scene.

We tried to reach the Suleja B Division Police Headquarters but failed to get them on the phone. Its very frustrating that we live just about 400 meters away from the Police Station and to get the attention of the Force in an emergency like this is a problem, a resident lamented.

Residents say when the Police finally arrived the scene of the crime; the robbers had fled only for them to escort the lifeless body of the victim to hospital.

The Police failed us and this is not the first time its happening to us as the police is now a lame duck, another resident said.

When LEADERSHIP Weekend visited the Suleja B Divisional Headquarters of the Police Force, the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) declined to speak on the matter but referred our correspondent to the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO) in Minna, the Niger State capital.

Meanwhile, residents of the town narrated series of robbery attacks on innocent traders in Suleja, citing several incidences.

They said several shops have been looted some very close to the local Police Headquarters, they claimed.

Recently, a trader from the citys abattoir lost his life on the same road where the Police station is located when robbers attempted to rob them of N7 million they were carrying to the market to buy Cows.

Also, a woman who runs a drinks store was robbed at 6pm of N1.4 million about 300 meters from the Police station. Even the mosque located just by the station where it shares a gate together have been robbed in the past without the Police knowing, Said Musa Babayo, a resident.

The Police have been indicted for not living up to their responsibilities in the town as robbers continue to terrorise innocent people daily.

LEADERSHIP Weekend learnt that only recently, a company driver almost lost a Toyota Corrolla saloon car to robbers around Kwamba area of Suleja at about 8pm.

Residents say the robbers shot sporadically into the air but were unable to snatch the keys to the car from the driver who was only lucky that night.

Angry residents lampooned the Police for mounting what they described as Illegal Road Blocks in front of the Police Headquarters in Suleja.

LEADERSHIP Weekend observed the road block at about 7:30 am when over 7 Police officers were seen obstructing traffic and collecting various sums of money from motorists.

The Police, they said take advantage of the morning rush hours of commuters to Abuja to extort monies from commercial motorists.

Under the guise of checking Vehicle Document and plate numbers of commercial motorcyclists, the Police, residents claimed have turned the Suleja-Gwazulu-Kaduna/Abuja road bypass into a toll gate.

Speaking to LEADERSHIP Weekend on the development, the PPRO, Niger State Command, DSP Bala Elkana dismissed the claims that crimes is on the increase in the city. He rather said, the crimes in Suleja has taken a pattern and not an increment.

What we have is not an increment of crime in the area, rather it is a pattern and we have deplored our intelligence unit knowing the time, Elkana said.

He added that just on Monday, the Command had a meeting concerning the new patter of crimes in Suleja and our State Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) have been moved to Suleja to flush out the bad elements, he assured.

He attributed the closeness of Suleja to the nations capital as one of the reasons for crimes as criminals are taking advantage of the cheap accommodations in the area to base their operations.

On extortion, the Police spokesman said the command is just receiving the report for the first time from LEADERSHIP Weekend. He assured that the anti-corruption unit of the command will swiftly move into action to apprehend all the officers involved in the illegality.

As the grieving family of the stained mother wait for justice, the residents continue to live in fear as many have resorted to self-help.

Source: Leadership
The Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) worldwide has condemned the recent judgment delivered by a magistrate court in Kano State, which discharged the alleged killers of Mrs. Bridget Aghahime, who was lynched by a mob in a market.

Mrs. Agbahime, 74, a trader at the Kofar Wambai market in Kano, was killed on June 2, 2016 over alleged blasphemy.

The Police later charged five suspects  Dauda Ahmed, Abdulmumeen Mustafa, Zubairu Abubakar, Abdullahi Abubakar and Musa Abdullahi  to court on a four count charge of allegedly inciting disturbance, culpable homicide, joint act and mischief.

The Chief Magistrate, Muhammad Jibril, discharged the five suspects and terminated the case as advised by the Attorney-General of Kano State.

Reacting to the judgment, IPOB, in a statement by its secretary yesterday, accused the court of bias.

A statement issued by the Publicity Secretary of IPOB, Mr. Emma Powerful, accused the court of bias.

We condemn the judgment with every totality, the magistrate and the government of the state were instrumental to the killing of an innocent woman who committed no crime against Islam. How can a well-trained lawyer and a magistrate who attended so many seminars and courses release a murderer? the statement added.

Describing the verdict as a dangerous signal, IPOB said it was aware that the arrests made before the suspects were taken to court was to deceive the public.
In the last three months, Gadilo Agbajo, an Arogbo, Ondo State indigene, has been involved in three kidnaps, which netted the gang he led N14.8m in total.

But when Agbajo and eight other members of the gang were brought before journalists at the Lagos State Police Command headquarters following their arrest, the explanation he gave for his life of crime surprised many.

According to Agbajo, whom the gang members said was responsible for sharing the ransom money in the bush anytime the families of their victims paid, he was not a selfish criminal.

Agbajo explained that he used his criminal activities to help his friends.

When some of my people who did not have job could not pay their house rents, they came to meet me for help.

I normally told them that they should not worry and that I would find a way to help them and they could help me as well. My way of helping them is getting them involved in the kidnapping business rather than for them to roam the streets without work.

In July 2016, Saturday PUNCH learnt that Agbajos gang kidnapped a pastor of a parish of the Redeemed Christian Church of God at Santos bus stop in Isawo, Ikorodu, Lagos State, Olukayode Bajomo, on a Sunday morning just before the weekly service.

A witness of the abduction said the kidnappers wore attractive clothes as if they had come for the church service.

The witness said, The pastor came earlier around 7am to prepare for a workers meeting. The shocking thing was that the men walked in quietly like new members.

They dressed like people who had come to church. They had Bibles with them. They did not shoot or display any weapon. It was when they got to the pastor that they brought out their guns and ordered him to come with them.

The gang also kidnapped Otunba Lateef Ogunfowora, who owns Lat Ogun Petroleum in Ijebu Ode.

Agbajo said, When I was introduced to kidnapping by Blessing Bamidele, the first person we kidnapped was a white man. After that, Bamidele always called me anytime he had an operation.

We later kidnapped a man in Ijebu Ode, one at Epe and another at Gberigbe side. We got N6m from one, N5m from another and N3.8m from the third victim.

I am not the leader of the group like my other colleagues said. Bamidele Blessing introduced me to the work. I got N1.2m in one.

The police recovered two AK47 rifles from the suspects along with six magazines, 51 rounds of live ammunition and a set of army uniform.

Agbaso said they got the uniform from his brother-in-law, a soldier, but he said the soldier knew nothing about their operations.

According to them, the guns were usually hidden in a bush after each operation by a member of the gang.

Responding to Agbajos allegation that he introduced him to kidnapping, 26-year-old Bamidele, another Arogbo, Ondo State indigene living at Ijebu Ode, said Agbajo was lying.

He said, I have been living at Ijebu-Ode for one year. Gadilo (Agbajo) introduced me to kidnapping. He led our group and shared every money we made. I got N1.9m from the N6m we made. I was an oil vandal before I became a kidnapper.

Another member of the gang, Pleasure George, who again said he was an indigene of Arogbo, said they had another boss they rarely saw.

He described him as OC, the leader of the water group.

According to him, OC was the one who provided the gang with the guns they used.

George said.We could not just see him anyhow. He usually came to our area if he wanted to see his wife and that was usually the time we had access to him.

One day, he sent one of his boys to deliver the guns to us and we started our operations. We only go to him when we take his share of the ransom to him. Out of the N6m we got from one of our last operations, we gave him N1.5m. His share varies according to how much we make.

The Lagos State Commissioner for Police said investigation was still ongoing and that members of the gang would be charged to court as soon as investigators completed their work.

Source: Punch
The Police Command in Kaduna State on Saturday said it had arrested the suspected murderer of a National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) member serving in the state.

The commands Public Relation Officer, Aliyu Usman, told journalists in an interview that the hoodlum was arrested on Wednesday.

Mr. Usman said the suspect, Adamu Jibrin, 22, had made useful statement to the police on the offence.

We recovered six loaded cartridges, two knives, two cutlass, a double barrel and one Samsung phone in his room at Unguwar Yero Area in Kaduna, Mr. Usman said.

The NYSC member, Lawal Kontagora, was killed on the October 17. Two suspects were earlier arrested on October 20.

According to him, the kingpin is still under investigation, but the two other suspects have already been charged to court.

The police spokesman said the arrest were carried out by the State Intelligence Bureau (SIB).

He assured the public of their commitment to rid criminals and their activities in Kaduna.

We need the support of every one to achieve it, Mr. Usman said
The Nigerian Army has disclosed how one of the abducted Chibok girls, Maryam Ali Maiyanga, was rescued by troops of 121 Battalion, deployed at Pulka, Gwoza Local Government Area of Borno State.

Maryam was early Saturday rescued while troops of Operation Lafiya Dole, were screening some escapees from Boko Haram terrorists hideout in Sambisa forest at about 6 a.m.

In a detailed statement, the Army Spokesman, Col. Sani K. Usman said the girl was discovered with her 10-month-old son.

She was discovered to be carrying a 10-month-old son, named Ali. She has been taken to the units medical facility for proper medical check-up.

It is imperative to state that troops have been working round the clock to clear remnants of Boko Haram terrorists wherever they might be hibernating and also rescue all persons held hostages by terrorists, he said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Boko Haram terrorists had released 21 of the 219 kidnapped girls on October 13 after negotiations between them and the Federal Government which was facilitated by the Swiss Government and the Red Cross.

The girls were abducted in April 2014 by the insurgents.
President Muhammadu Buhari has expressed optimism that Nigeria is destined to achieve greatness in spite of the current challenges.

Mr. Buhari spoke in Sokoto on Saturday when he inaugurated the Kalambaina 500 housing estate built by the state government at the cost N4.8 billion.

According to him, in spite of the challenges, we are determined to overcome them and fight corruption.

The administration will continue to bring development to Nigerians, improve security and welfare of Nigerians, he said.

The president noted that Nigeria had in the early 1960s witnessed reputable peace, culture of discipline and commitment to national development.

Unfortunately, the situation had changed now, but we are committed to taking Nigeria to greatness.

The relevance of the caliphate in the scheme of things in Nigeria cannot be over emphasised, President Buhari added.

The president further stressed the need to give all Nigerians equal opportunities for self actualisation.

The president also urged Nigerians to continue to work for sustainable peace, unity and socioeconomic progress of the country.

He commended the Sultan of Sokoto for being a fearless and tireless peacemaker and bridge builder within and outside Nigeria.

He also hailed the sustained support and cooperation of the traditional rulers and the state governments to the Federal Government.

Mr. Buhari also commended Gov. Aminu Tambuwal for executing the project, and urged the beneficiaries to make good use of the facilities.

Mr. Tambuwal said that the houses were built as part of efforts to fulfil his campaign promises to the people.

The governor hailed the president for his support to the states, noting that the modest achievements were attributable to this gesture.

The Commissioner for Lands and Housing, Bello Gwiwa, said that the estate was provided with road networks, water facilities and school networks, among others.

The Senate President, Bukola Saraki, and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, among others attended the event. (NAN)
Nigerian newspaper headlines November 5, 2016.

The Nation

The Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) on Friday threatened to commence what it termed internal revolution in the Southeast to protest alleged continued failure of Igbo political leaders to address infrastructural challenges in the zone.

Thisday

The governors of Delta, Rivers and Akwa Ibom states  Ifeanyi Okowa, Nyesom Wike and Udom Emmanuel  yesterday debunked the claim made by the Rivers State Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Davies Ikanya that the governors were behind the allegation by Justice Sylvester Ngwuta and Justice Inyang Okoro of the Supreme Court, who accused Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi of prompting them to pervert the cause of justice to favour the APC governorship candidates, especially in Rivers and Akwa Ibom states.

Leadership

All Progressives Congress stalwart, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has expressed sadness over the death of Afenifere Leader, Sir Olaniwun Ajayi, describing him as a true Awoist who taught many of the younger generations of politicians including himself the doctrines of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

Vanguard

The House of Representatives Committee on Local Content, has accused major international Oil companies operating in the country of deliberately violating the Nigerian Local Content Act on the employment of expatriate in the petroleum industry.

Punch

The Federal Government and the State of Israel have held a meeting to work on a partnership to combat cybercrimes and provide homeland security in the country.

Guardian

Soldiers of the Operation Lafiya Dole in Gwoza have foiled an attempt by a suicide bomber to visit mayhem on the people but lost one soldier in the process.

The Sun

When Chidinma Okeke, a 19-year-old student of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka won Miss Anambra Beauty Pageant organised by the Anambra Broadcasting Service, in 2015, little did she or anyone else know that her reign as a beauty queen would record a sad end.

Premium Times

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Friday said the engagement of the first 200,000 out of the Federal Governments 500,000 Volunteer Job Programme will begin in about two weeks time.
Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, has said the decision of the National Judicial Council (NJC) directing judges under investigation to step aside, portends great danger to the nations democracy.

He made the assertion when the executive members of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Port Harcourt, branch paid him a courtesy visit on Friday.

The NJC announced the decision to suspend the judges on Wednesday over allegations of corruption.

According to Gov. Wike, the u-turn by the NJC will encourage politicians to write petitions against any judge whose judgment is likely to go against such politician.

This move to ask judges to step aside is in favour of politicians because no judge will deliver judgment against government or a ruling party.

The implication is that politicians can now write as many petitions alleging that they saw a judge taking brown envelope  which will warrant the judge to be asked to step aside.

For us, politicians, we are happy with this development because if I notice that I will lose a case, then I will tell my lawyer to write a petition which will result to the judge stepping aside.

So, in other not to be alleged to have done anything wrong, judges will not give judgment against government or the ruling party.

This is because if judges deliver judgment against government or the ruling party, then agencies of government will come after them, he alluded.

Mr. Wike said the development portends grave danger to the judiciary arm of government and to the common man.

He said the move was a clear manipulation and attempt to silence the opposition, especially as the nation was heading toward 2019 general elections.

The governor said that example to the manipulations was INECs quick reaction to announce federal and state legislative rerun elections shortly after the National Assembly ordered it to do so.

Simply because the Senate said it must conduct election within five weeks; the next day, INEC came up with a time table for the election.

This is the same INEC that cited insecurity as reason why it could not conduct elections in Rivers, and now within one day after Senates position, the same INEC released a time table.

The question is when did INEC meet security agencies to now take a position that there is no longer security problem in Rivers State, hence the decision to conduct the rerun elections?

All these boil down to manipulations which not only endanger our democracy, but threatens us as a people, he said. (NAN)
A former Deputy Governor of Osun State, Senator Iyiola Omisore, has refunded the sum of N350 million of the N1.7 billion public funds, which he was accused of receiving from the Office of the former National Security Adviser (ONSA).

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on July 3 arrested Mr. Omisore in his Abuja home and detained him for some days before he was granted administrative bail after striking a deal with the anti-graft agency to refund the N1.7 billion in instalments.

As part of the deal, the former Osun deputy governor paid the first instalment of N300 million to the EFCC before he was allowed to go home.

It was learnt that the PDP chieftain paid another N50million to the EFCC yesterday.

A top-level source in the EFCC confirmed the development, saying: We hope he will pay up the balance as soon as possible.

We are determined to retrieve all slush funds for the nations use, the source added.

It would be recalled that about N4.685billon was transferred by the ONSA to Sylva McNamara Limited, a company linked to a former Minister of State for Defence, Senator Musiliu Obanikoro.

Of the sum, about N3.880billion was allegedly given to Governor Ayodele Fayose and Senator Omisore through cash and bank transfers by Obanikoro.

Omisores share was said to be about N1.7billion.

The former Deputy Governor gave the list of companies which benefited from the N1.7billion slush fund that was released by the ONSA to him.

According to a report by the EFCC, some of the funds were remitted as follows: Fimex Gilt Limited (N160m)  8/8/2014in UBA; Metropolitan Consortium (N350m)  9/7/14 in First Bank; Sawanara (N300m)  1/8/14 in First Bank and Metropolitan Consortium (N350m)  1/8/14 in First Bank.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) yesterday quelled the rumours surrounding his emergence as vice presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2015 presidential elections.

Recently, there was controversy over how a relatively unknown Osinbajo emerged running mate to then General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) in the last presidential election after a Professor of International Studies, John Paden, claimed in his official biography of the president that the former Lagos State Commissioner for Justice was picked by Buhari ahead of Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu and ex-Governor Babatunde Fashola.

In the biography titled Muhammadu Buhari: Challenges of Leadership in Nigeria and launched two months ago in Abuja, Prof. Paden claimed that Buhari chose Osinbajo above others, despite immense pressure from Tinubu to do otherwise.

The authors claim generated controversy because the general belief was that Tinubu nominated his former commissioner for justice as running mate to Buhari.

Erasing doubts over his emergence as the APC presidential running mate, Mr. Osinbajo, a Professor of law, confirmed that he was nominated by Tinubu, under who he served as commissioner in Lagos State.

I was nominated by the leader of our party, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, under who I served as a commissioner in Lagos State, Osinbajo said at a colloquium on the state of the nation in Lagos organised by the Coalition of Nigerian Apostolic Leaders (CNAL).

Osinbajo at the colloquium also spoke of Federal Governments determination to intensify the battle against corruption which he called one of the key strategies for liberating the country from recession.

Government, he said, would revamp the economy through diversification, development of infrastructure and creation of a conducive atmosphere for the private sector to increase productive activities and boost employment opportunities.

According to the vice president: The reasons for the recession are because of the drop in the production of oil and corruption. Other factors are the manifestation of the two problems.

While pointing out that things were not going to change overnight as a result of the damage that had been done to the economy, Mr. osinbajo recalled that even the Israelites once complained to Moses to take them back to Egypt, the land of corruption, when they got to the Red sea.

Urging Nigerians to have patience with the Federal Government as it intensifies its efforts at repositioning the economy, the vice president lamented that $15 billion was lost to corruption through the defense contract under the last administration.

He said the problem in the Northeast could have been averted, if the money meant for arms procurement had not been stolen.

The vice president explained measures adopted to boost revenue generation and prevent graft. These include the banishment of the menace of ghost workers and payroll fraud, the enforcement of tax compliance, the introduction of the Treasury Single Account (TSA), the expansion of the Value Added Tax (VAT) coverage, the deregulation of the downstream sector and concerted action on the foreign exchange rate .

He said the Federal Government will pursue the diversification of the economy through the development of agriculture to guarantee food sufficiency, job creation and export to attract earnings.

On the anti-corruption war, Osinbajo said: Allegations of corruption must be submitted to the right channels. The President does not interfere in the activities of the agencies. He has given the agencies concerned the independence to act, when a formal complaint is submitted. Where there are proven cases of corruption, the appropriate agencies will always act.

Osinbajo also said Christians should not panic over speculations about Sharia bill in the National assembly.

He said The government should not be interested in any Sharia matter beyond what is in the constitution. If the government is interested, it is the Attorney-General that will submit the bill, following the decision of the Federal Executive Council.
The Bishop of Living Faith Church worldwide, Dr. David Oyedepo, has warned critics of the school fees charged by the churchs premier higher institution, Covenant University, to desist or risk incurring the wrath of God.

Oyedepo, in a telecast to a pre-Shiloh 2016 Convention gathering of the church monitored via satellite in Jos, Plateau State on Saturday, said the critics were acting in ignorance.

He said one of such critic smitten with a strange plague of chronic mouth odour over the act, only received spiritual pardon following his confession and my intervention before he was restored to dignity.

Bishop Oyedepo said the issue of school fees paid by students of the university was a godly agenda to meet the demands of raising godly children in an environment conducive for learning.

He said such criticisms were products of ignorance as what students pay could not be compared with what obtained elsewhere that lacked facilities.

The school fees has Gods approval and is in accordance with the quality of facilities provided by the university in meeting the educational needs of the nation, he said.

He said the church in its pioneering role in pushing the frontiers of education with excellence had concluded plans to establish offshore universities.

The cleric said a fully automated Bible press by the church had been completed and would be launched soon.

Oyedepo, however, quoting from some verses of the Bible, which include Matthew 24:6-8, 1Peter 2:9, Joel 2:2 and Mal. 4:1, said the current economic meltdown was predicted but that committed Christians would be exempted.

He prayed for resources for parents to always meet the demands of the time and declared the theme of this years Shiloh holding between Dec. 6 and Dec. 10 as My Case is Different.

The bishop said this years annual event of Shiloh would not be advertised as past events as it would be church based.
President Muhammadu Buhari arrived Sokoto on Saturday to attend the Sokoto Durbar festival. He also took out time to commission a housing scheme for 500 civil servants in the state.
The Chibok girl who was rescued earlier today by the Nigerian Army has been handed over to the Borno state government.

Maryam Ali Maiyanga was rescued by troops at a raided Boko Haram camp in Pulka axis of Gwoza local government area of Borno state.

Premium Times reported that the commander of the Lafiya Dole counterinsurgency operation in Borno, Major General Lucky Irabor led a team of military officials to hand the girl and her 10-month-old son to some state government officials.

The rescued girl was received by Bornos Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Kaka Shehu Lawan on behalf of the state governor, Kashim Shettima, who is in Abuja for an official function.

Lawan expressed the appreciation of Governor Shettima, whom he said had sent in commendation to the military for doing the the country, the state and the people of Chibok proud.

He also revealed that the girl would remained in the custody of the state government, pending the next available flight to Abuja because there is no flight schedule in and out of Maiduguri on Saturdays.
Cocoa Posts Moderate Gains on Strength in Global Chocolate Demand Barchart - 5 minutes ago December ICE NY cocoa (CCZ22 ) on Tuesday closed up +13 (+0.56%), and December ICE London cocoa #7 (CAZ22 ) closed up +10 (+0.52%). Cocoa prices on Tuesday posted moderate gains. Cocoa prices saw support... CCZ22 : 2,348s (+0.56%) CAH23 : 1,898s (+0.69%)

Sugar Prices Climb on Brazil Production Concerns and Shipment Delays Barchart - 7 minutes ago March NY world sugar #11 (SBH23 ) on Tuesday closed up +0.46 (+2.56%), and Dec London white sugar #5 (SWZ22 ) closed up +5.50 (+1.04%). Sugar prices Tuesday rallied to 1-week highs as recent heavy rain... SBH23 : 18.43s (+2.56%) SWZ22 : 532.70s (+1.04%)

Coffee Prices Relinquish Some of Monday's Sharp Gains Barchart - 9 minutes ago December arabica coffee (KCZ22) on Tuesday closed down -3.10 (-1.74%), and Jan ICE Robusta coffee (RMF23) closed down -14 (-0.76%). Coffee prices Tuesday fell moderately, with robusta posting a 2-1/2 month...

Cattle Commentary Walsh Trading - 24 minutes ago December cattle was down today again .525 cents, settling at 151.950 for the day. These levels look to be the first level of support, from the earlier resistance levels of August and September. There was...

Cotton Locked Up on Limit Gains Barchart - Tue Nov 1, 11:54AM CDT Cotton futures are sitting at their limit 3 cent gains at midday. @GC*1 is off its highs so far, but is up $8/oz at midday. Crude oil is trading higher on 24% gains to 88.62/bbl. The USD is off its lows... CTZ22 : 75.00 (+4.17%) CTH23 : 74.64 (+4.19%) CTK23 : 74.85 (+4.18%)

Hogs Mixed on Firm Board Barchart - Tue Nov 1, 11:54AM CDT Midday hog futures prices are within 30 cents of UNCH. The back months are slightly higher, led by the 30 cent gain in April. The nearby Dec and Feb contracts are 5 to 20 cents in the red so far. The USDA... HEZ22 : 85.200s (+0.32%) HEJ23 : 93.600s (unch) KMZ22 : 95.375 (-0.10%)

Cattle Mixed at Midday Barchart - Tue Nov 1, 11:54AM CDT December through April live cattle futures are trading red at midday. Dec is down the most with a 32 cent loss, while April is holding firm on a 7 cent giveback. The summer 23 contracts are up by 2... LEZ22 : 151.950s (-0.34%) LEG23 : 155.250s (-0.37%) LEJ23 : 158.875s (-0.13%) GFX22 : 176.925s (-0.39%) GFF23 : 178.200s (-0.70%)

Mixed Midday in Wheat Market Barchart - Tue Nov 1, 11:54AM CDT Wheat futures on the Chicago board are up by 3 to 4 cents so far. KC wheat is in the red with midday weakness of as much as 4 cents. MPLS is also lower so far, giving back 2 3/4 to 4 1/4 cents. Weekly... ZWZ22 : 902-4s (+2.30%) ZWH23 : 919-0s (+2.20%) ZWPAES.CM : 8.3557 (+2.52%) KEZ22 : 990-0s (+1.15%) KEPAWS.CM : 9.4781 (+1.16%) MWZ22 : 986-0 (+0.48%)

Beans Extending Rally through Tuesday Midday Barchart - Tue Nov 1, 11:54AM CDT Midday soybean prices are up another 15 3/4 to 25 3/4 cents in the front months  led by Nov. Meal futures are fading with prices mostly lower at midday within 1% of UNCH. Soy oil prices are up 20 to... KOF23 : 4,276 (+1.02%) ZSYAUS-BIW.CM : 52.96 (+0.11%) ZSX22 : 1435-6s (+2.04%) ZSPAUS.CM : 14.0358 (+2.32%) ZSF23 : 1447-6s (+1.99%) ZSH23 : 1454-2s (+1.87%)
The capital flow of equity and debt has increased dramatically over the past few years, helping self-storage become the golden child of niche real estate. Delivering higher returns and a more stable cash flow than other investments, the industry is well-positioned for the time being.

A wise real estate investor once told me, Youre not in the self-storage business; youre in the real estate business. While storage facilities have an extremely reliable income stream, the real estate aspect has more to do with property value than the operational side of the business. With that said, how can an owner protect his asset value? Following are four strategies that will help you preserve it.

1. Regularly Review Your Financing

Even though your facilitys operational performance may fluctuate, the financing market affects your value more than day-to-day operation. Todays buyers and sellers are enjoying the low interest-rate environment. This has allowed buyers to grow their portfolios and sellers to achieve very aggressive pricing.

It would be prudent of all self-storage owners to regularly evaluate their current financing to ensure theyre preserving their cash flow and property value. Depending on your investment horizon, locking in long-term, fixed-rate debt may be a wise move. However, maintaining flexibility with regard to prepayment penalties, trapped equity and the ability to sell when the market presents an opportunity might be more valuable.

2. Watch Your Operating Expenses

Its important for every owner to understand the effect of each dollar of net operating income (NOI) on property value. Every dollar saved in operating expenses adds one dollar to the NOI, which results in $12 to $16 in facility value. For example, if youre able to reduce your trash expenses by $50 per month ($600 per year), youll have increased the value of the property by $7,500 to $10,000.

At one time or another, weve all procrastinated our review of operating expenses. However, these need to be reviewed regularly to ensure the property value stays intact.

3. Know Your Market

The secret is out! Self-storage is widely considered a viable investment opportunity and is being considered on nearly every vacant piece of ground. Due to the success of the sector over the last five to 10 years, were now seeing new development nationwide. This will have a meaningful impact on the operational performance and value of existing properties as new competitors come online.

If youre operating a self-storage business, take the time to understand your market and know what new projects are likely to compete with your property. You can do this by talking with your local planning department about any inquiries and submittals that have been made. Also research which pieces of land have the appropriate zoning for storage. This will give you an idea of what to expect as industry developers and brokers canvas the country for good sites.

4. Know Your Investment Horizon

The value of your self-storage asset goes up and down as market sentiment and debt markets change. To truly understand the value of your investment, you must at some point sell it. Obviously, your investment horizon will vary depending on your individual objectives. However, to maximize value, you should consistently evaluate the current market, including its risks and opportunities, to see how these dynamic factors impact property value. This will allow you to make the best decisions and appropriately position your asset.

Prices have never been higher and the uncertainties of the world never less settled, so if youre at or near one of those personal crossroads, its time to get serious about maximizing your investment value. Talk with a qualified, local broker to get the necessary information to make an informed decision.

Ben Vestal is president of the Argus Self Storage Sales Network, a national network of real estate brokers who specialize in self-storage. Argus provides brokerage, consulting and marketing services to self-storage buyers and sellers and operates SelfStorage.com, a marketing medium and information resource for facility owners. It also offers panel discussions in which brokers from around the country share their insights on self-storage market fundamentals and economic trends in their regions. To access recordings, visit www.argus-selfstorage.com/presentations.html. For more information, call 800.55.STORE; e-mail [email protected].
Quants have affirmed what most allocators hold to be true: Investing in private equity funds is a skill unto itself.

Limited partners (LPs) returns tend to persist beyond what random distribution would indicate, an analysis of 12,043 investments by 630 LPs has found. One standard deviation in allocator skill translated to roughly 3 percentage points in added annual internal rate of return (IRR), according to the working paper, published in August by the Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics at Ohio State Universitys Fisher College of Business.

The four authors, who derived their 15-year sample (19912006) from data providers S&P Capital IQ and Thomson Economics VentureXpert, found it consistent with research firm Preqins industrywide performance figures.

Using a model designed to measure general partner (GP) skill, the researchers controlled for investments vintage year, strategy (buyout versus venture capital), and other factors to isolate LPs fund and manager selection ability.

Dartmouth Colleges endowment added more value through skill than any other institution analyzed, followed by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The Louisiana State Employees Retirement System, perhaps surprisingly, came in first among pension funds, handily topping the Canadian and Californian giants.

The greatest selection-based losses all came from U.S. public funds: the Teachers Retirement System of the State of Illinois, the New Hampshire Retirement System, and the Ohio Police and Fire Pension Fund. The New Jerseybased Meadows Foundation and the U.K.s Wellcome Trust placed last among nonprofits.

These estimates are relatively noisy, the authors warned, noting an average 2.5 percent standard of error. It does appear, however, that the LPs we identify as being in the top [skill] group do have noticeably better performance than those in the bottom group.

The findings reflected investment performance for funds lifespan; they didnt account for performance spreads on stakes bought or sold midway. Likewise, portfolio holdings were only as complete as reported in the two databases.

Individual LPs rankings ought to be taken with caution, but whats clear is that the ability of LPs to pick GPs is not random, and better LPs outperform less talented LPs, the researchers wrote.

Therefore, they concluded, it makes sense for institutional investors to bid to acquire the best investment officers, and that high-quality investment officers can more than earn their relatively high salaries.

Even CIOs who would quibble with their skill score probably agree.

Leanna Orr is Global Content Director of Investor Intelligence Network (IIN), Institutional Investors private community for asset owners.
Lemergenza surriscaldamento globale non si arresta. Lo rivela la Nasa (Ente Nazionale per le attivita Spaziali e Aeronautiche) lagenzia governativa civile responsabile del programma spaziale degli Stati Uniti dAmerica e della ricerca aerospaziale.

Secondo lEnte statunitense, infatti, nel 2016 la temperatura globale si e attestata a 1,1 gradi centigradi in piu rispetto al XIX secolo, vale a dire rispetto ai livelli preindustriali (il periodo iniziato a partire dal Settecento in Gran Bretagna e diffusosi nell800 in buona parte del mondo). Nel 2015, evidenzia la Nasa, era gia stata raggiunta la soglia di 1 grado.

Un colpo pesante per la comunita internazionale che, alla conferenza Onu di Parigi sul clima svoltasi nel dicembre 2015, si era impegnata a mantenere laumento del termometro al di sotto dei 2 gradi centigradi, e possibilmente entro un grado e mezzo, entro la fine del secolo. Ma, a inizio secolo, siamo gia a oltre un grado.

Le brutte notizie non finiscono qui. Se dal globale passiamo al locale, di questo passo lItalia risentira (entro il 2100) di un aumento di temperatura ben al di sopra dei due gradi preventivati.

Lo rivela il Wwf (World Wide Fund for Nature), lorganizzazione internazionale non governativa di protezione ambientale piu nota al mondo. Secondo lOng, i cambiamenti climatici in Italia saranno a dir poco preoccupanti. Le migliori e piu avanzate elaborazioni dellautorevole Centro Euromediteraneo per i Cambiamenti Climatici (Cmcc), indicano  nello scenario ritenuto piu probabile  un incremento della temperatura media in Italia pari a circa 3 gradi per la fine del secolo per lintero territorio nazionale.

Se si considera lultimo trentennio del XXI secolo (2071-2100)  scrive in un comunicato la ong ambientalista  laumento di temperatura giunge anche a circa 4 gradi nel nord-ovest della penisola italiana nel periodo estivo. Nello scenario peggiore, inoltre, laumento della temperatura media in Italia sara invece di circa 6 gradi entro la fine del secolo. Lurgenza dellazione anche nel nostro Paese e ormai e un obbligo civile e morale, conclude il World Wide Fund for Nature.

Emergenza caldo evidenziata anche dalla Coldiretti (Confederazione Nazionale Coltivatori Diretti), la maggiore associazione di rappresentanza e assistenza dellagricoltura italiana. Il 2016  evidenzia la confederazione sorta nel 44  si e classificato al quarto posto tra gli anni piu caldi di sempre, con una temperatura di 1,24 gradi superiore alla media del periodo. Per il calcolo, la Coldiretti si e basata sui dati del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Cnr) che rilevano le temperature dal 1800. Nella classifica degli anni piu caldi dallinizio dellindustrializzazione  e percio dellinquinamento atmosferico su larga scala  ci sono, nellordine, 2015, 2014, 2003 e 2016. Seguono il triste elenco: il 2007, 2012, 2001, 1994, 2009, 2011 e, infine, il 2000.

Siamo di fronte agli effetti dei cambiamenti climatici  scrive Coldiretti  che si stanno manifestano con un pesante impatto sullagricoltura italiana, che negli ultimi dieci anni ha subito danni per 14 miliardi di euro. Si moltiplicano gli eventi estremi, sfasamenti stagionali e precipitazioni brevi, ma intense, e il repentino passaggio dal sereno al maltempo. Siccita e bombe dacqua con forti piogge a carattere alluvionale, ma anche gelate estreme e picchi di calore anomali si alternano lungo lanno e lungo tutta la Penisola. Anomalie che si evidenziano anche in questi giorni  conclude Coldiretti  con lItalia divisa in due, tra un nord dove e allarme incendi e siccita ed il centro sud che e seppellito dalla neve.
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For many people, the goal is to be able to treat Social Security as a supplement to retirement savings and income. The average monthly retirement benefit is $1,485.63, whichdepending on where you live and your expensesmay or may not be enough to live comfortably. So if you're approaching retirement having saved less than you'd like, and hope to live on Social Security alone, you'll need a game plan to make it work.

Key Takeaways Waiting to take Social Security until age 70 will increase your benefit by 8% a year beyond full retirement age.

Medicare and Medicaid can help seniors pay healthcare costs in retirement.

Relocatingwhether it's moving to a state with a lower cost of living or retiring abroadmay help your Social Security dollars go farther.

Who's Banking on Social Security?

Nearly nine out of 10 Americans ages 65 and older currently receive Social Security. The Social Security Administration (SSA) estimates that among elderly Social Security beneficiaries, 37% of men and 42% of women rely on Social Security for 50% or more of their income.

According to a 2019 Gallup poll, 57% of retirees rely on Social Security as a major source of income, while only 33% of near-retirees say they expect Social Security to be a major source of income once they retire.

Near-retirees may expect less from Social Security because the system's funds are predicted to run out of reserve money by 2034, at which pointif no changes are made to the systemincoming taxes will become insufficient to fully fund new payments.

However, many Americans may end up more reliant on Social Security than they expect. In the Gallup poll, for example, just 25% of non-retirees say they are saving enough for the day when they quit working. Half think they should be saving more, while 18% have no retirement savings at all.

Living on Social Security as your primary or only source of funds takes some creativity. These strategies can help you successfully navigate your finances during retirement.

Delay Taking Social Security

Full retirement age is 67 for older adults born in 1960 or later. You can begin taking your Social Security benefits as early as 62, but your benefits will be reduced for each year you take them ahead of schedule.

On the other hand, if you can put off taking your benefits past full retirement age, you'll see your monthly benefit check increase. For someone who was born in 1943 or later and waits until age 70 to apply for Social Security, the increase should come to 8% per year. (After age 70, there's no benefit to continuing to delay.)

Downsize Your Home

Housing costs can easily eat up your Social Security benefits. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that people ages 65 to 74 spend approximately 34% of their household income on housing each year. That amount climbs to 36.2% for those ages 75 and older.

Moving to a less expensive home can have a significant effect on your monthly cash flow. Ideally, if you have a mortgage on your home, you will have fully paid it off before you retire.

Relocate

Moving to a less expensive home in your current city can help free up cash for retirement. But in some cases, a more significant moveto a different state or even moving abroadcan be worth considering.

If you live in a state with a high cost of living and high taxes, moving to one with a lower cost of living and more favorable taxes can make your budget easier to work with.

Streamline Your Other Expenses

If you've managed to make your housing more affordable, the next step is reducing other line items in your budget, such as utility bills, transportation expenses, and food costs.

The key question that you must ask is: What do you really need to have an enjoyable retirement, and what can you live without? Could you ditch cable TV, for example, in favor of watching TV online? Could you swap an expensive hobby like golf for a low-budget one like gardening? If you own two cars, could you sell one of them? These kinds of decisions can be tough, but they can make your transition to retirement on Social Security benefits a much smoother one in the long run.

And if you've got substantial obligations, such as credit card debt or a car loan, you'll want to get them paid off before retiring, if possible.

Keep Healthcare Costs Under Control

Healthcare in retirement can be extremely expensive, so you need a plan to pay for it, especially if you have an existing medical condition. While Medicare can cover some of the costs once you turn 65, it doesn't pay for everything. If you've retired and your income is exclusively coming from Social Security, youll need to look beyond Medicare to pay for your medical expenses.

$300,000 The amount a 65-year-old couple will need for healthcare costs (excluding long-term care) during retirement, according to Fidelity Investments.

Medicaid, for example, is available to low-income seniors, and you can have this coverage along with Medicare. It's designed to help pay for premiums and pick up the tab for things Medicare doesn't cover, including long-term care.

The Bottom Line

Retiring on Social Security alone is far from ideal. If you've still got time before you retire, consider looking for ways to build up your savings. Start by chipping in as much as you can to your employer's retirement plan, if you have one, especially if it comes with a matching contribution.

If you don't have a 401(k) or similar plan at work, an individual retirement account (IRA) is another way to grow your savings. The more you set aside now, the less pressure you'll feel to make your Social Security benefits stretch.

Nevertheless, if you do have to stretch your benefits, downsizing, relocating, cutting your overhead, controlling healthcare costs, and delaying taking Social Security can each make a big difference.
On the back of announcing 215 jobs from nine North American and European high-growth firms, for the Dublin and Waterford regions, IDA Ireland yesterday unveiled data from research firm fDi Markets showing that Ireland now ranks first (ahead of Britain and France) in terms of attracting US early-stage firms and third (behind the UK and Germany) in relation to western European firms; but first on a combined basis.

According to fDi Markets, Ireland is the market leader in winning 20 to 100 job projects from early-stage, fast-growth companies with revenues of less than 30m over the period 2010-16 from US and European companies, said IDA chief Martin Shanahan.
The company has released a report highlighting the positive social and economic impact of the Airbnb community on regional and rural Ireland.

It found that Airbnb users contributed an estimated 74m to regional and rural communities in Ireland last year.

The figure included 47m of estimated visitor spending by driving additional footfall to regional businesses and 27m earned by the host communities themselves.

The report is an analysis of all travel to, and within, regional and rural Ireland outside Dublin, from September 2015 to August of this year.

The study revealed that 6,000 hosts, outside of Dublin, earned an average additional income of 2,700 per household with 44% of hosts stating they are using the income to make ends meet.

In Dublin, 88% of hosts share their primary residence.

However, outside the capital, the figure falls to 64% and includes many traditional holiday destinations, indicating a number of people share their second home or holiday home.

Some 82% of guests said Airbnb accommodation would make them more likely to return, while 85% said they chose Airbnb accommodation because they wanted to live like a local.

There were 331,000 inbound guests to regional and rural Ireland in the past year staying an average of 2.6 nights each, visiting for holiday and leisure.

The global head of customer experience at Airbnb, Aisling Hassell, said that more and more people in rural Ireland were recognising the value in sharing their home or a room in their home.

They are of all ages and from all walks of life. This report shows the positive impact this new form of tourism is having on more remote parts of the country that havent traditionally benefited from tourism, enabling guests to experience some of the most beautiful parts of the Emerald Isle, away from the typical holiday destinations.

Ms Hassell said rural communities are reaping benefits from Airbnb, particularly in parts of Ireland where alternative accommodation was not available.

Launching the report, Rural Affairs Minister Heather Humphreys said Airbnb had brought tourists to parts of Ireland they may not otherwise see.

The benefit of the Airbnb model is that it can bring new visitors to remote locations, providing a new potential source of revenue for communities. By providing alternative accommodation options in rural villages and towns, we can help to grow tourism and have a positive knock-on impact on other businesses in rural Ireland, she said.

The report points out that the benefit of Airbnb is it helps support a longer tourist season and delivers a positive economic impact by supporting existing businesses and the development of new, micro-businesses in food, craft, hospitality, and culture.
Speaking in Dublin, Mr Nesbitt said he feared Brexit would mean the return of a hard border between North and South, but hoped that would not be the case.

He said Belfast and Dublin are equally adamant that the Common Travel Area be allowed to continue, and he asked the EU to be sympathetic to their argument: There is likely to be uncertainty for up to five to 10 years and the High Court adds to uncertainty.

Northern Ireland has this land border not just between it and the Republic but between the UK and the EU. The Common Travel Area needs to be protected and we are asking them to be sympathetic to our situation, he added.

He said the Republic of Ireland could well be the Norths best friend and best advocate when it comes to the Brexit negotiations.

Mr Nesbitt is encouraging politicians in the Republic to be cautious of the language used when discussing Brexit.

His visit to the capital comes just over 24 hours after the British High Court ruled that prime minister Theresa May cant trigger article 50 without consent of parliament.

Mrs May is set to appeal the decision.

Mr Nesbitt says now is not the time to talk about border polls.We recognise that of the remaining 27 members of the European Union, the Republic is likely to be our best friend and our biggest advocate, that we do want to work with them.

But we also have to respect the fact that we signed up to a UK referendum and the people of the UK said we want to leave the European Union.

Meanwhile, Fianna Fail has announced it is to hold a special Brexit conference next Saturday in Dundalk.

Politicians and agricultural lobby leaders from both sides of the border will address the conference, which will be chaired by TD Declan Breathnach.

Meanwhile, Taoiseach Enda Kenny, said that in response to Brexit, the Government recognises that competition for new investment will be very strong and as such we have to continue to be very competitive and attractive for new business.

In the recent budget we increased the resources to the IDA and Enterprise Ireland to put more boots on the ground in target markets to help Irish businesses export more and to attract in new investment, he said.
Safety officer Gerard Furlong claimed that last March he had been outside his home at 19 Arran Rd, Drumcondra, when he was approached by neighbour Peter Lambe who said in an extremely aggressive manner he wanted to talk. Mr Furlong alleged he felt intimidated and unsafe and told Mr Lambe, a man aged in his 40s who lives at 28 Arran Rd, Drumcondra, he did not want to speak with him.

The court heard that Mr Lambe then tried to headbutt Mr Furlong and to grab his shirt. Mr Furlong had fallen while trying to escape, and Mr Lambe had repeatedly punched and kicked him in his head and face with his fists and elbow.

Matthew Jolley, counsel for Mr Furlong, told the court that gardai were called by a neighbour, and his client, who was bleeding, was taken to the emergency department of the Mater Hospital in Dublin.

Mr Furlong claimed he suffered severe anxiety after the alleged attack and felt unsafe when outside the front of his home. He alleged he suffers from depressive symptoms and needs to lock his car doors as he gets in.

Judge Jacqueline Linnane heard that, out of fear for his and his familys safety, Mr Furlong had installed a CCTV recording camera outside his home and made a formal complaint to gardai.

He instructed Murray Flynn Maguire solicitors, who issued civil proceedings against Mr Lambe. The court heard criminal proceedings are also being considered.

Mr Jolley said about a month ago, Mr Furlong was walking with his grandson, aged 2, when Mr Lambe approached them and said in an intimidating manner to get the fucking camera off his house. Counsel said that after Mr Furlong had told Mr Lambe that this camera was not looking at his house, the neighbour had told his client that he should drop all this legal and court shit and that if anything was to happen, he would wipe out his family. Mr Jolley told Judge Linnane that Mr Furlong had been in shock and in fear for his grandchilds safety and had called the gardai.

Counsel said Mr Furlong had been terrified by the brutal attack and the threats and, given the urgency of the matter, was looking for injunctions against Mr Lambe pending the hearing of the legal action.

Mr Jolley said Mr Lambe had been on notice of yesterdays application butdid not appear in court yesterday.

Judge Linnane granted Mr Furlong a temporary injunction restraining Mr Lambe from intimidating, harassing, using or threatening violence against him and his family. She also granted an order restraining Mr Lambe from approaching within 10 feet of the Furlong property, except to access his own property. Judge Linnane directed that, given the seriousness of the matter, Mr Lambe be served personally with court proceedings.
Jason Carroll, aged 25, of 16 Bridevalley View, Fairhill, Cork, said through his solicitor, Michael Quinlan, at Cork District Court yesterday the threat to blow in the windows and damage his grandfathers home was made so that he would be arrested. It was a deliberate attempt to be jailed so that he could get off heroin.

Judge Olann Kelleher said he could understand the unusual rationale behind the offence but he said it was nevertheless a frightening experience for the accuseds grandfather.

Jason Carroll pleaded guilty yesterday to breaching a safety order by putting his grandfather in fear on October 11. Judge Kelleher sentenced him to six months in prison.

Inspector Daniel Coholan said Garda Sean Murray responded to a call to 16 Bridevalley View at 10pm that night where he met the complainant Patrick Carroll.

A safety order was in force against his grandson. He was visibly shaken and fearful. His grandson was sitting in the sitting room.

Jason Carroll said if he had not been arrested he would break up the house and put in the windows.

Patrick Carroll told Garda Murray his grandson had carried out such a threat last year.

Jason Carroll may have been under the influence of an intoxicant. He said he had injected heroin earlier in the day and he showed Garda Murray the needle marks in his arm, Insp Coholan said.

His 23 previous convictions included counts for breaching a safety order and causing criminal damage last year. He also had a previous count for assault causing harm.

Mr Quinlan, solicitor, said, This was an unusual situation. He had a very serious addiction to heroin. He deliberately breached the safety order in order to be arrested and sent to prison.

Already in prison serving another sentence, Carroll wanted to stay there to deal with his heroin addiction.
While the council may not have got resources from central government to bolster its enforcement role, Mr Justice Michael White said he hopes, in future, a blind eye will not be turned to this degradation of the environment.

The council was not a party to the case before him but there was undisputed evidence it did not follow up on planning conditions it had laid down for Keegan Quarries Ltd. Had the council taken its enforcement responsibility seriously, the breach of the water table would not have arisen, he said.

The breach, with possible consequences of polluted water leaching off the lands into water courses and either affecting other private land owners, the public water supply or the natural environment, was of serious consequence.

The failure by KQL to progressively restore the lands as work was proceeding was also a most serious breach.

The judge made the comments in a judgement on proceedings by Robert Henry Fowler, son of the late John Fowler, against KQL over operation of a quarry on lands at Clegarrow and Rahinstown, Co Meath owned by the Fowlers.

Quarrying operations began on the lands from 1997 under licences granted by the late John Fowler. Quarrying has now ceased, KQL has surrendered the license and left the property which, the judge said, includes two very deep lakes dug by KQL with no regard to the planning permission.

There would have to be a screening assessment to ensure no leaching from the site of pollutants which could affect the Special Area of Conservation site of the River Boyne and Blackwater, he said.

The court will appoint an expert in that regard who would also give advice about the feasibility of infilling all the water bodies on the lands and other issues. The cost of preparing the report should be borne by KQL, he directed. He has adjourned the case to allow the sides consider what specific orders should be made arising from the judgement.

Among various claims, it was alleged KQL was carrying out unauthorised development and restoration of the lands. In November 2014, the High Court directed, on consent of the sides, KQL to apply for substituted consent for certain operations.

Because Bord Pleanala refused an extension of time for the substituted consent application, the matter returned to the High Court.

In his reserved judgement, Mr Justice White rejected arguments by KQL he should refuse relief due to alleged acquiescence by the late John Fowler with planning breaches. Mr Fowler died tragically as a result of an accident in 2008, his evidence was not available and his widow had to take over matters without much prior knowledge of the contractual relationship between her late husband and KQL.

The court could not establish the deceased conscientiously acquiesced in the breach of the water table but was satisfied quarrying on lands outside the planning permission was done with consent of the late Mr Fowler. KQL should have got a revised permission, he added. While this was a private law case, there was also a strong public interest, the judge said.
James Doyle, 49, of Pier View, Mount Carmel Road, in Wicklow town developed an adjustment disorder following the death of his sister, Anne Shortall. The mother of three was found dead on a property outside Killoughter, Co Wicklow on April 7, 2015. Mr Doyles partner, John McCabe told an inquest into his death that he had been feeling down for a number of weeks.

Hed been suffering from depression since the death of his sister. His mood was down, he was withdrawn, he didnt talk much. Following Annes death he withdrew into himself, Mr McCabe told Dublin Coroners Court.
The Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association (ISME) has hit out at the Governments reaction to the narrowly avoided Garda strike and the ongoing strike plans by some second-level teachers.

ISME chief Neil McDonnell said the position of the unions was unsustainable.

Public sector pay restoration threatens to unravel the progress and sacrifices made by Irish workers over the last eight years. If the Government reneges on the current agreements we run the risk of repeating the catastrophic mistakes of the 2000s. The position of the unions on public sector pay is unsustainable. Unions are holding the Government to ransom to profit the few, at the expense of the many, he said.

Meanwhile, financial adviser Eddie Hobbs said questions need to be asked about the fact CSO data suggests pay levels have been restored across many public service grades, including gardai, education, and health.

He pointed to average weekly earnings of 1,304 for gardai in the second quarter of 2016, compared to just over 1,200 in 2009. Figures he showed for education employees showed average weekly earnings at 904.57, around the same as in 2008 but slightly higher than in 2010 or 2011. While the averages may be skewed by the fact hiring restrictions mean fewer recent and lower-paid entrants, he said significant numbers of older and higher-paid public servants left under early retirement.

Its all to do with how salary increments are driving rises in average pay, of gardai or teachers, which means they are back above what they were paid in 2008 or later years. There has been a crushing burden on young people who have gone into public sector professions on lower pay, but that is being addressed and they are not the only ones experiencing appalling rent rises and taxes.
Government officials say the estimated 40m special deal for gardai, who deferred a strike this week, may have to come from outside the 300m already allocated for public pay next year.

The deal recommended by the Labour Court has triggered pay demands from unions who want to accelerate talks on finding a successor to the Lansdowne Road agreement.

Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe confirmed to the Irish Examiner last night that fresh talks would be held with unions.

The Government will engage as necessary through public service management with the public services committee of Ictu and other representative bodies, under the oversight and governance arrangements provided within the Lansdowne Road Agreement, to address any issues that arise from the Labour Court recommendation, he said.

The wider implications of the recommendation, in relation to the continued operation of the Lansdowne Road Agreement as it applies to all public servants across the public service, requires careful consideration and assessment by the Government.

Fresh pay demands would impact on spending elsewhere, the minister warned.

There is a fixed amount of money available for public services and public pay for next year. More funds for pay restoration or acceleration will impact on funds available for other needs.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said the Government did not have an endless pot of money.

But several trade unions insist the package for the GRA and AGSI is outside the agreement.

Impact said the new offer for gardai was a material change.

The Civil Public and Services Union called on Ictu to decide on a new campaign to reverse cuts.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisations Liam Doran said Lansdowne Road was a document that could be bent.

The stress of strike action by gardai made the Government come forward, he said.

Unions warn of individual disputes erupting and instead want a collective talks process to look at unwinding pay cuts.

A joint statement from Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald and Mr Donohoe welcomed the decision by gardai not to strike and said the outcome of a garda ballot was awaited. Ministers also stated support for Lansdowne Road as the centrepiece of public pay policy.

They said: The cost of the proposed settlement will be met within existing budgetary allocations.

But Government officials privately admitted the near- 40m package for low and middle-ranking gardai may come from outside the 300m allocated for public pay next year.

Labours Brendan Howlin said there was no doubt that what was paid to gardai must be paid to others, or the pay agreement would collapse and there would be a series of strikes.

Fianna Fail called on the new public pay commission to meet unions immediately.

An initial analysis by the Irish Examiner of the Labour Court deal suggests the countrys 10,330 frontline gardai could receive an increase in annual pay of between 2,800 and 3,100.

Estimates suggest new recruits could see pay rise from 23,000 to around 29,500. The offer includes a payment of 15 per annual leave day, worth up to 510 a year. Gardai would also be paid for pre-shift briefings, potentially up to 1,400 a year. Restored rent allowance would be worth up to 4,500 for new gardai.

Meanwhile, the closure of more than 500 schools from Monday looks inevitable and could continue indefinitely unless the ASTI hammers out a resolution to its dispute with the Department of Education over the weekend.
Im so happy this day has come, said Hillary Clinton earlier this year when she became the first woman nominated for president by a major American political party, following a stirring, searing riposte to Donald Trump.

Still, delegates in Philadelphia could have been forgiven for wishing, if only for a moment, that someone else with first lady experience was the nominee.

Three days before, Michelle Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention with a speech that sliced Trump and his mean-spirited vision of America into ribbons.

Without so much as mentioning his name, she made him look small and praised Clinton as gritty champion of progress.

Her address sent the delegates and assembled pundits into rapture.

In this election, we cannot sit back and hope that everything works out for the best. We cannot afford to be tired or frustrated or cynical, she said of a battle against a Republican candidate unlike any in memory.

We need to knock on every door, we need to get out every vote. We need to pour every last ounce of passion into electing Hillary Clinton.

Then came her New Hampshire speech last month about Trumps lewd comments.

When Michelle speaks, Democrats and not a few Republicans listen.

From her straight-from-the-heart oratory to her dynamic fashion choices and the pop culture videos that invariably go viral, she commands unprecedented attention.

To pitch fitness routines, she posted a video that showed her kickboxing.

To reach young adults with a message of healthy eating, she fed kale chips to a pair of comedians dressed in drag on late-night television.

In the first week after she laughed and sang her way through an episode of Carpool Karaoke with James Corden, the video had recorded 35 million views.

She has fun, but she is strategic. Each appearance is designed to move the needle, as her staff puts it, on a project she cares about.

After running through Stevie Wonders Signed, Sealed, Delivered and Beyonces Single Ladies in Carpool Karaoke, Michelle described her international education effort, Let Girls Learn, designed to reach some of the worlds 62 million girls who are not in school.

So much could be corrected in the world if girls were educated and had power over their lives, she said.

My message to kids here is, dont take your education for granted, because there are girls around the world who would die to get the education that we have.

The scene was patented Michelle.

As she instructed her staff soon after arriving in the White House without a map in 2009, Dont just put me on a plane, send me someplace and have me smile.

One newly prominent admirer is Melania Trump, the Slovenian-born fashion model who would become first lady if Trump defies the odds and win.

She created a firestorm at the Republican National Convention when she borrowed, word for word, lines from one of Michelles most renowned speeches. A speechwriter said the cribbing was inadvertent.

Michelles fans are nostalgic ahead of the Obamas White House departure.

But she has some work to do, none more important to the Obama legacy than helping Clinton defeat Trump.

Michelle and Hillary have never been close, dating to the tense 2008 presidential campaign.

Yet putting another Democrat in the White House, and not incidentally electing the first female president, is a cause the first lady proved she can embrace.

No one is happier about Michelles ringing endorsement than the Clinton team.

They saw firsthand in that first campaign the power and the passion she can bring to the fight.

Starting in early 2007, as Barack Obama was introducing himself to American voters, Michelle played the role of validator.

She travelled the country, offering reassuring words about her largely unknown husband, whose challenge to the Clinton juggernaut seemed quixotic at best.

The Obamas have always recognised the power of personal narrative.

Barack told Oprah Winfrey in 2004: Politics has to be guided by facts, but to move people, you have to tell stories.

Michelle deftly crafted her 2008 stump speech as a series of scenes and lessons from their lives, each intended to reveal Baracks character and her own.

She spoke quietly and deliberately, without notes, putting audiences at ease by saying that she, too, wondered just who this charming young law student was when they met at a Chicago law firm in 1989.

Ive got nothing in common with this guy, she would say. He grew up in Hawaii! Who grows up in Hawaii? He was biracial. I was like, okay, whats that about?

Michelle, more than Barack, has an instinct for what people are thinking and feeling. She also tends to be more direct and she hates to lose.

Many a campaign worker can recall Michelle leaning toward a wavering Democrat in the early days of that 2008 race, demanding to know what it would take to put him in Baracks column. The staff started calling her The Closer.

In the White House, too, Michelle is known for her strong views.

She tells the president exactly what she thinks. She doesnt hold back. She is completely honest, says presidential advisor and friend Valerie Jarrett. Another Chicago friend, Marty Nesbitt, describes Michelle as the most do whats right person in Baracks circle.

A key to Michelles popularity is a sense of authenticity.

She talks openly about the scorn she faced as a teenager when she set her sights on attending elite Princeton University.

She reveals her vulnerabilities, including moments when she worried she was hurting Baracks electoral chances and, in the White House, when she feared disappointing the voters who had sent them there.

Michelle trained at Princeton and Harvard Law School and before her husbands election, had spent 20 years building a successful career largely independent of him.

When they entered the White House, determined to make a difference in her unelected, unpaid and not exactly self-chosen new role, she turned to issues that had long animated her, notably the intersection of children, health, education and the nations persistent inequality. She focused first on childhood obesity and nutrition.

More than one-third of American children are deemed overweight or obese; a disproportionate percentage are African American or Hispanic.

Later, she pushed young people, especially children of colour and more especially girls, to fight for the education that she credits for launching her out of Chicagos working class, where her father was a shift worker in the city water plant.

No first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt has paid so much attention to issues of race, class and inequality.

Yet what sets Michelle apart are the creative ways she targets her message to the audiences she most wants to reach.

She has mastered social media, posting humorous videos, as well as more serious tweets, Instagram photos and, most recently, Snapchat posts.

It has become routine for her to make cameo appearances on television, from Sesame Street to police drama NCIS to doing push-ups with talk show host Ellen DeGeneres.

While Michelles favourability percentage consistently reaches into the 60s - higher than her husbands, in a deeply polarized nation, Republican critics mock her body, belittle her chosen history lessons and dismiss her nutrition admonitions as the hallmarks of a nanny state.

After nearly 10 years in the public eye, she has heard it all. Her line is, Our motto is: When they go low, we go high.

What will she do next? With her eldest daughter Malia taking a gap year before starting at Harvard, Michelles options now appear limitless, but she has told friends that she has made no firm decisions.

Before Baracks election she was a hospital executive at the University of Chicago, and had focused on improving healthcare for disadvantaged African Americans on Chicagos South Side: the Obamas will be building a presidential library and community centre there.

The family are reportedly planning to stay in the Washington area, renting a nine-bedroom mansion in the Kalorama neighbourhood, while Sasha finishes high school.

She will write a book, no doubt pocketing millions. Most of all, she will be looking forward to time outside the spotlight, to travel, spend time with family, drive in a car with the windows down and go for a walk when no one is watching.

One place she has no desire to go is back to the White House as president - although it remains a popular idea.

No. Nope. Not going to do it, she said in March.

Lest there be any doubt, Barack said recently that three things in life are certain: Death, taxes and Michelle not running for president.

Evidence from the past few months suggests, however, that mere words will not stop her most ardent fans from dreaming of the day.

Peter Slevin, a former national correspondent for The Washington Post, is an associate professor at Northwestern University and the author of Michelle Obama: A Life (Knopf Publishing)
THE migrant crisis might start to look very different if only we were able to connect the people willing to help with those in desperate need of it.

There are many, many ordinary people who want to do something to ease a humanitarian crisis that, in 2015, forced 24 people to flee every minute.

The hundreds who gathered outside the Dail on Wednesday to urge the Government to take in 200 children from Calais was one example of that. But there are many more. For instance, 9,000 Irish people signed an online petition this week calling for the same thing and, last year, a further 6,000 pledged a bed to a refugee, but those beds are still waiting to be filled.

That system is working well in other countries, so why cant those pledges be fulfilled more quickly here? Where is the blockage and what can we do to fix it?

The need to do that could not be more urgent. At the end of last year, one in every 113 people in the world was either a refugee, an asylum seeker or internally displaced, putting them at a level of risk for which the UN High Commissioner for Refugees knows no precedent.

The full horror of those risks was hammered home this week as the French authorities dismantled the so-called Jungle migrant camp at Calais.

Some of the 1,500 unaccompanied children slept in the charred remains of the camp but the French government later put them up in heated freight containers furnished with bunk beds. French President Francois Hollande seemed pleased with that.

They have all been sheltered, whereas they were still in the mud and cold a week ago, he told the Voix du Nord newspaper.

Here, you might wonder why there was any need to debate the question of offering sanctuary for just 200 of them. But then that is 200 times more than the number we have already housed in the country, which comes to a grand total of one.

Dr Fergus OFarrell, lay leader of the Methodist Church in Ireland, brought the truth of that shocking figure into stark relief at the Dail protest on Wednesday.

He said: The most shameful day of my life was when they  [several other churches at the European Commission]  put up the chart showing countries [that had] received unaccompanied children from Calais and Ireland had received one.

Sr Stansilaus Kennedy was there too. We are not asking 200 children come today or tomorrow, we are asking for the commitment to be made, she said.

But why cant they come today or tomorrow? Judging by the response from ordinary people, we are more than ready to receive.

Child and Family Agency Tusla has sounded a note of caution. It has warned against taking in children in one fell swoop, as some of them have serious issues and would need specialist help.

While true, that cant be used as a delaying tactic as the slow, grinding process of officialdom has already left a seemingly unbridgeable gap between the members of the public genuinely willing to help and the growing number of refugees.

Add to that the layers of red tape and bureaucracy inherent in the government response to the crisis and you begin to understand why just one child has made it to Ireland.

Here is one example of the gobbledygook that comes from the Department of Justice in response to an online petition calling on it to let the children in. The relocation of asylum seekers is a complex and sensitive process, involving various aspects of European and domestic law In addition to the logistical challenges, human rights and security considerations must be taken into account.

Where is the urgency in that?

If a person is drowning in the Mediterranean or a parentless child is sleeping in the charred remains of a burnt-out camp in Calais, you dont tell them that the relocation of asylum-seekers is a complex and sensitive process. You do what the LE James Joyce and all the wonderful Irish naval vessels have done  you save 10,000 lives first and then you refine the details of the longer-term solution.

Minister for Equality, Immigration and Integration David Stanton made a very good point when he said he welcomed the Dail debate but said the matter should not be politicised too much.

He said the Governments doors were open for constructive ideas of support.

One constructive idea might be to look to Canada. To date, that country has received a total of 33,239 Syrian refugees, and has well-thought-out plans to welcome more. Those refugees are government-supported and privately sponsored in a system that harnesses the public goodwill to help.

You can log on to the government of Canada website and read, in detail, how to make a difference with clearly outlined steps of how anybody can get involved. Their government initially pledged to take in 25,000 Syrian refugees but was forced to extend the programme when private sponsors  ie, ordinary citizens  responded with more offers of help.

All over the country, people have come together to raise funds for accommodation and they have organised a range of measures designed to help Syrian refugees feel at home  English classes, training, driving classes and, most touching of all, friendship.

But then, Canada has a very long tradition of welcoming displaced people to its shores. During the Famine, the population of Toronto was some 20,000, yet they did not baulk at the challenge when nearly twice that number, 38,000 Irish people, arrived on coffin ships.

It must have seemed like the apocalypse, but they set up feeding stations and fever hospitals and dealt with the crisis.

There was no debate  just a response from the heart to what was unfolding in front of them.

Looking at how the Canadians manage a refugee crisis  then and now  might provide David Stanton with lots of constructive ideas on how to kickstart the Irish effort and involve the many who want to help.
The unanimous decision by delegates of the Garda Representative Association on 28 September to hold four strike days  on the Fridays of November  was an unprecedented moment for the organisation, the Government and the country.

The day before, 95% of members who returned a ballot to the GRA said they were willing to take industrial action, up to and including withdrawal of labour.

Senior garda sources then told the Irish Examiner that only a skeletal service could be provided on November 4 without the 10,300-odd members of the GRA.

That was on the basis they had the 2,000-plus sergeants and inspectors.

Senior gardai said they feared a nightmare scenario of the sergeants and inspectors going out on the same days.

We reported that this very proposal would feature at a special delegate conference of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors on October 17.

Sources within Garda HQ were said to be animated and there were reports that contingency plans were already being drawn up.

The consequences for vast swathes of policing from regular police work to specialist activities  was clear to all.

So the potential crisis was well known, or should have been well known, to everyone within the apparatus of the State five weeks ago.

The GRA did have a meeting with the Tanaiste on 3 October, but everything seemed to move very slowly.

When this reporter mentioned to a Government official that the clock was ticking, it was treated as a joke.

In those first three weeks nothing much happened.

The nightmare scenario moved closer to being a reality on October 17 when AGSI delegates decided to withdraw labour on the same days in November.

Until the AGSI voted to go out the Government seemed willing to let this ride out, said one GRA source yesterday. They thought they had cover with the AGSI.

On October 17, a Garda HQ source said: The debate so far has been around the rights and wrongs of strike action. Thats fine, but the reality is we will have effectively no gardai on those Fridays. I dont think the public have grasped that and politicians dont realise the gravity of it.

GRA had their first meeting with Department of Justice officials on October 18. The department assured the media that the gravity of the situation was fully realised. But still things moved incredibly slowly and the talks dragged on.

It was only on the bank holiday weekend that the Workplace Relations Commission was utilised, with less that a week to go. Why on earth was it all left so late?

Did the Government think that if they used the WRC and the Labour Court late in the day  with the expectation that the strike would be deferred to allow for talks  they could handle the crisis?

At an intense meeting with GRA leaders on Thursday morning, Garda management described the catastrophe facing the country, leading to the GRA leaders massively increasing its emergency cover.

It should never have got to this state, said a GRA source yesterday. If the Government had taken this seriously three weeks ago, and made a serious offer, wed have two weeks then to ballot and this crisis could have been avoided.

The entire mess is a model in exactly how not to handle a crisis as serious as this.
Economy The Irrawaddy Business Roundup (November 5)

US-based Quasar Resources is hoping to develop at 33MW dual fuel power plant at the Thilawa Special Economic Zone. Above, workers are transported via truck to the zone. / Soe Zeya / Reuters

New trends seen in Burmas business landscape

Three key trends are emerging in Burmas business landscape, according to an analysis reported in Malaysias The Edge business publication.

The first trend identified in the review by analyst Terence Wu of Singapores OCBC bank is that manufacturing is receiving a much larger share of total investments in Burma during 2016.

By September of this year, manufacturing made up 53.1 percent, or US$686.9 million, of all new investments in Burma. During the previous year, the figure was 14.1 percent.

The analysis notes that Burmas investment commission has identified labor-intensive manufacturing as a priority area. It surmises, by contrast, that extractive industries are not a priority for the current government due to the divisive effects of many projects in conflict areas.

Rising levels of foreign investment account for the second trend identified in the OCBC analysis, The Edge reported. This year to date, 70 percent of all approved investments in Burma are either wholly owned by foreigners or joint ventures. Foreign involvement was only present in 56 percent of all investments in the previous year.

The third trend identified by Wu concerns the greater amount of investment into the Rangoon region, which accounted for 80 percent of all investment this year, compared to 65 percent a year ago.

But Rangoons status as the investment destination of choice may reduce as changes in tax incentives under the new Myanmar Investment Law may help to channel investment towards less developed regions, according to Wu.

Meanwhile, Burmas Directorate of Investment and Companies Administration (DICA), has issued updated figures indicating that foreign direct investment from April to the end of October this year reached US$2 billion from a total of 64 projects. A total of 29 local projects with investment of $155 million were also approved during the same period.

Malaysia Bank extends loan for microfinance project

Malaysias Maybank has provided a US$1 million loan to the microfinance operator Myanmar Finance International Limited (MFIL), a joint venture with AIM-listed Myanmar Investments International (MIL), DealStreet Asia reported.

Myanmar Finance Company Limited and MIL own a 37.5 per cent stake each in MFIL. The Norwegian Investment Fund for Developing Countries (Norfund) holds the remainder.

As of September, MFIL had six branches in Burma and was planning to open another four. It was managing a loan portfolio of $5.1 million for 38,000 borrowers.

Norfunds regional director Fay Chetnakarnkul said, The loan from Maybank will be an important contribution to MFIL growth and will thereby support the promotion of more financial inclusion in Myanmar.

Maybank began operating in Burma in October 2015. It has financed the Yangon International airport, gas pipelines and highway projects, among others.

Temenos to host digital banking roundtable

The opportunities and challenges posed by digital banking for local banks will be the topic of a roundtable event to be held at Rangoons Sule Shangri-la hotel on Nov. 8.

Switzerland-based software specialist in banking and finance, Temenos, will host the gathering titled Digital Banking Transformation  How Should Myanmar Banks Respond?

Martin Frick, Temenos managing director for Asia-Pacific, will lead the presentations and discussions geared towards senior bank managers and technology officers.

Burmas banking sector is growing fast, from a low base. Technology provides the sector with an opportunity to leapfrog ahead in the next ten years, Temenos said in a statement.

Texas firm eyes energy projects

US energy development company Quasar Resources is planning to invest up to US$400 million in Burmas power sector over the next five years, founder and managing director Lin Tun told DealStreet Asia.

The Texas-based company is currently in talks with the government over a 100MW solar power station it hopes to develop in Sagaing Division, with an investment of around $150 million.

It also hopes to develop a 64MW hydroelectric power plant in the Upper Saedawgyi region. The project would involve building a new dam, with an investment of up to $150 million.

Quasar Resources is also looking to develop at 33MW dual fuel power plant at the Thilawa Special Economic Zone.

Meanwhile DealStreet Asia also reported that the Mekong Angel Investors Network (MAIN), started by the Asia Development Bank-backed Mekong Business Initiative as well as Lotus Impact Fund is planning to undertake tour missions in Burma every quarter starting in February 2017.

The trips, aim to bring angel investors to the country, and similar tours will be undertaken to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

CEOs to share tips with budding entrepreneurs

Leading local business people will be available to share business guidance and advice with aspiring entrepreneurs and start-up businesses at an event in Rangoon on Wednesday, Nov. 9.

The event starting at 6pm is hosted by the Founder Institute Yangon and takes place at the offices of tech hub Phandeeyar on Merchant Road. Prior registration is required, at the phandeeyar.org website.
In Person Dateline Irrawaddy: We have seen a certain degree of deadlock in the peace process.

On this weeks Dateline, Sai Leik, Ko Ye, and Kyaw Zwa Moe discuss how the peace process looks nowand what it might look like in the future.

Kyaw Zwa Moe: Welcome to Dateline Irrawaddy! We have repeatedly heard about peace over the past five or six years across the country. Daw Aung San Suu Kyis administration believes peace is a top priority for the countrys political stability and is working to achieve it. But at the same time, there are continued clashes between the Burma Army and ethnic armed groups near the border areas. Well be discussing where the peace process is nowif it has stalled, or is moving forward or backwardand whether Daw Aung San Suu Kyis political goals for national reconciliation and peace over the next four or five years are realistic. U Sai Leik, joint general secretary-1 of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) [an ethnic Shan political party], and executive director Ko Ye of the Tagaung Institute of Political Studies will join me for discussion. Im Irrawaddy English editor Kyaw Zwa Moe.

Speaking of conflict, war and peace, Ko Ye, your institution has studied these topics in depth. We have heard lots of talk of peace ever since former President U Thein Seins government assumed power in 2011, but the peace process has failed to make progress in certain aspects as clashes continue. It seems that clashes have even intensified lately. Clashes should have deescalated after Daw Aung San Suu Kyis 21st Century Panglong Conference, but instead the reverse is happening. Where is the peace process now? Is the amount of clashes high or low?

Ko Ye: Today, it is generally accepted that we are moving toward peace. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi held the 21st Century Panglong Conference and is trying to achieve peace through political means. But the reality is that we are still in a circle of conflict that we cant yet break out of. From last October until this September, there were 304 clashes according to our statistics. From this January until September, there were 207 clashes and from the power transfer [in April] until September, there were 110 clashes. This is a pretty high number.

KZM: Do these figures represent only the clashes between the Burma Army and ethnic armed groups or do they also include clashes between ethnic armed groups?

KY: Only the clashes between the Burma Army and ethnic armed groups. This is a pretty high number given that we are in the midst of an ongoing peace process. Despite the so-called peace process, we still hear gunfire, smell blood, and see the troubles displaced persons are facing in the camps. Even a genuine ceasefire has not yet been achieved.

KZM: U Sai Leik, Daw Aung San Suu Kyis government held the 21st Century Panglong Conference at the end of August. Many ethnic groups attended the conference, which contributed a lot to the governments peace policy. But there is a question about whether the Burma Army is cooperating. Before the conference, clashes renewed in Kachin State on Aug.17. The Burma Army reportedly used fighter jets and a two-year-old girl was allegedly killed by artillery fire. Why are there clashes? Are they deliberate military attacks or is it just lower-level friction on the ground?

Sai Leik: Frankly speaking, there may be a misunderstanding between the government and the military. Daw Aung San Suu Kyis government held the 21st Century Panglong Conference, which was wrong from the very beginning. The conference was said to be all-inclusive but not every group was allowed to attend. As far as Im concerned, they could not attend because of restrictions by the military. I doubt that the governments peace process and the militarys peace process are the same. The military has its own six peace principles and the government has a seven-point peace policy and there are conflicts between the two. The question is if the process can progress.

KZM: Despite Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her government preaching and working toward building peace, there are hundreds of clashes on the ground, which could intentionally or unintentionally undermine the peace process and peace negotiations. How can these clashes be stopped?

KY: It is incorrect to say the problem is in the lower levels because the military used fighter jets that would not be used without a decision from top-level management. Looking at the ongoing conflicts, I found two points. One is that the rhetoric about the decades-long war in our country remains the same. One side says they are fighting a fair war and the other side says they are fighting for equality. They only think about how to justify the fighting. They still cant solve the problem through non-violent means. So, the rhetoric itself is a problem.

Another thing is in regards to tactics. They fight with the intention of killing rather than putting pressure on the other side. So, it is quite difficult to stop these conflicts. There have been calls for peace and national level dialogue but there have been no equitable developments between the two. It is difficult for the peace process to move forward while conflicts still cant be solved. If this continues, the peace process will reach a deadlock. We have already seen a certain degree of deadlock in the peace process. Another problem that contributes to the deadlock is technocratic peace, which is overly-focused on technicalities without looking at the underlying causes and grievances on the ground. I am concerned that the peace process will become too technical.

KZM: The former U Thein Sein government had a lot of [peace] advisers. I spoke with them and most of them talked about technical issues such as what provisions the NCA [Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement] should include. They only discussed about technical things when they spoke with international peace academics. We should question how much people are suffering [from wars] and how strong the political will [of leaders] for peace is.

U Sai Leik has also questioned the collaboration between the government and the military. This is a big question. We cant gauge the depth of the relations between Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the commander-in-chief. The two are of course always seen smiling together in pictures, but we dont know how good their relationship is in reality. For example, the government has not said a single word about the militarys attacks in Kachin State. So more than 20,000 locals staged a demonstration in Kachin State. The question is why the government has kept silent.

Are they not in a position to tell Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing that the attacks should be stopped? What is your view on the collaboration between the two sides?

SL: I think it will concern the political interests of each individual and each group. Given their actions, it is obvious that they are building a political empire. It will lead to bad results as Ko Ye has said because ethnic armed groups, on the other hand, will also try to protect and promote their own political interests. The suggestion I would like to make is, it is not enough to just build good relations between Daw Aung San Suu Kyis government and the military. Only when a tripartite relationship is established [between the government, the military, and ethnic armed groups] can the root-causes of the problem be found. And while the upper levels are only thinking about their political gains, if the [peace] academics only give advice from a technical point of view, it will be more difficult to achieve peace. So in a nutshell, tripartite dialogue is a must to find out how to reconcile relations between civilians and the military, as well as among civilians, because reconciliation between the government and the military is just not enough.

Another thing is that top leaders meet few other people in our country. The government and ethnic armed groups may meet, but the new government has hardly met other influential people or association members in ethnic regions. This is not good. The last thing is, there is no strong opposition [party]. As a result, no one dares to criticize the government. There is no one who will point out the faults of the government. We need a good opposition. If there is a good opposition, as well as public cooperation, we can have hopes.

KZM: We have also been talking about national reconciliation and a democratic, federalist union, which is a long-term process for which peace needs to be built. But if we focus on ongoing conflicts, do you think it is possible to hold tripartite negotiations? Over the past 20 years, dialogues were called for, but they never happened. There was dialogue under U Thein Seins government, but it was only nominal. Will the military be willing to accept a dialogue if the government were to call for one now?

KY: I think that, rather than forcibly putting the existing problems into a technical framework, only genuine political dialogue will be able to break the existing gridlock.

KZM: What do you mean by genuine political dialogue? What yardstick could you use to measure this?

KY: By genuine political dialogue, I mean dialogue that focuses carefully on how to handle the existing reality. There are existing conflicts. But they dont discuss those conflicts. Instead, they leaped to the next stage and make calls for peace with a grand vision for 2020 or 2025. The existing conflicts are the major problems the country is facing. If those problems cant be solved, it is not genuine political dialogue. Again, there is a saying that if a country has so many reconciliation events, it shows that that country still does not have reconciliation. We need to be careful that there are not too many events.

Another thing concerns local and international academics. Peace is not a luxury item for academics. Peace is a real problem. Rather than making it a technocratic peace [process] for academics, they should focus on solving the real problems. Our country is ranked 148th out of 188 countries on the human development index, and we are behind Laos and Cambodia. And we are ranked 199th out of 199 countries on the health care index recently released by the WHO. Regarding the poverty rate, we are the poorest among Asean members, at 25.6 percent. This highlights the need for our political leaders to solve existing problems in order to move to the next stage. They should consider these things, take a pragmatic approach, and make swifts steps to hold negotiations.

KZM: The problem cant be solved if one side does not accept it, even if the other side does. As U Sai Leik said, if they are just working toward some future mission with some big political aim, it is impossible to engage in people-oriented peace. Also important is the means for building peace. Leaders, most importantly Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and ethnic leaders, especially leaders of armed ethnic groups, should find various solutions.

Recently, the government announced a seven-point national reconciliation and peace policy. Besides signing agreements from peace conferences, the policy includes amending the undemocratic 2008 constitution, based on those agreements. Only after the constitution is amended will elections be held in accordance with this amended constitution. This is the sixth point of the policy. Although Daw Aung San Suu Kyi does not disclose the timeframe officially, I assume shes referring to 2020 [elections]. This is because if the timeframe is too long, peace and conflict will clash and we will be back to the status quo, unable to move out of this vicious cycle of civil war. The seventh point is to build a democratic federal union in line with the results of multi-party democratic elections. This may be the ultimate aim. I would like to question the timeframe. It is only five years from now. What can be done in these five years? What is the major obstacle, though there are of course many smaller challenges?

SL: There are seven points in the NLDs peace and national reconciliation policy. With point sixth, a new constitution will be drafted and approved based on agreements reached at the 21st Century Panglong Conference. And a multiparty general election will be held in accordance with the constitution. This is to counter Section 436, which reserves 25 percent of parliamentary seats for the military. Its a good idea. But is it possible? The most important thing is, how much is the military willing to cooperate? If the military disagrees, it is difficult to move forward. So the most important thing to keep in mind is, to what extent can we persuade the military. If all ethnic armed groups, all political parties, and the government are on one side and the military is on the other, it will surely participate.

KZM: At the Panglong [conference], what Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said was much in line with what ethnic armed groups like the KIO [Kachin Independence Organization] and KNU [Karen National Union] said in terms of policy. They said that they support the policies of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Is the military the only group that has different policy priorities?

KY: In my opinion, the military wants to cling to the 2008 constitution, the current NCA framework, and to the six-point peace principles of the military chief. Apart from other groups, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi herself has talked about amending the constitution, which clearly shows that she has different views from the military. On the anniversary of the NCA signing, KNU chairman Saw Mutu Say Poe said that he wanted the Burma Army and the government to grant certain concessions in order to keep the peace process moving. If the military clings to its policies, the peace process will end up in gridlock. To overcome this, Daw Aung San Suu Kyiwe know that she is a leader who emphasizes dialogueethnic leaders, and the military should hold parallel dialogues in order to break the existing gridlock.

KZM: Throughout the entire peace process, leaders are of course important, but are there people on peace committees who are not very serious about achieving peace? Are their actions creating problems for the peace process? Before the peace conference in August, retired Lt-Gen Khin Zaw Oo gave us an interview about the conference, and some ethnic groups were not happy with what he said. Have you seen similar actions that have supposedly undermined the peace negotiation at the lower level?

SL: Yes, we have seen such things on both sides. Among ethnic armed groups, there are NCA signatories and non-signatories, as well as groups that think they dont need to sign the NCA. One of the leaders of the NCA signatories has implied that he would move forward according to the NCA timeframe, so the political dialogue will be held in February, as scheduled, and the groups that still have not signed the NCA by then will be left behind. This is not a constructive approach. And we have to question the [motives of the] military. Regarding the tensions between Wa and Mongla groups, we have to question if the military played a part in causing these tensions. Likewise, the military clashed with the SSPP [Shan State Progressive Party/Shan State Army-North] and the RCSS [Restoration Council of Shan State/Shan State Army-South], and it is clashing with the KIA [Kachin Independence Army]. Does the military view those fights as necessary? We need to assess if they are fighting in order to pressure groups into signing the NCA, or if they are fighting because they dont want them to sign the NCA? So, yes, I would say that there are undesirable people and attitudes in this circle.

KZM: It is fair to say that this problem has been around since our country gained independence in 1948well over 60 years agoand that people are still suffering from this problemwe still hear gunfire. Many people, including us, have called on leaders to end this problem, and both of you made some suggestions earlier. What else would you say to leaders?

KY: First of all, it is important that leaders have political will. There should be the political will to serve the interests of the people. Likewise, the second-level peace negotiators appointed by themthere are ethics of negotiation and ethics of peace processesshould observe those ethics carefully so as not to offend the other side and to keep the peace process moving.

SL: Ethics are critically important. At the same time, not only top leaders but also second-level peace negotiators should see each other as equals. Leaders belong to different ethnic groups, which differ from one another in size. But it is critically important that they view each other as equals. Only then will we achieve national reconciliation and internal peace, things we aspire for. The seven-point peace policy of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is very good. I think it can be beneficial to both sides. But then, there may also be people who will rock the boat out of self-interest, and we need to be careful about that.

KZM: Well, well wait and see what happens with the peace process. Every citizen in our country wants peace. But I dont know what will happen, and neither do the people. It is fair to say that the destiny of our countrys peace will be determined by a handful of leaders.
Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2017

CenturyLink, which said earlier this week that it is aiming to buy Level 3 Communications, signaled said that it is selling its data centers and colocation business for $21.5 billion to a consortium consisting of BC Partners, Medina Capital Advisors and Longview Asset Management, according to Light Reading.

CenturyLink will hold a $150 million stake in the entity formed by BC Partners and Medina Capital, the story said. The venture will launch during the first quarter of next year. The venture will also offer perimeter security, segmentation, visualization and security policy enforcement in the fraud protection, machine leaning, data discovery and analytics and insider threat detection.

Using the Sun to Power Drones

Drones are one of the many exciting technologies to emerge during the past decade. Being able to send an unmanned device aloft speeds package delivery in both urban and rural settings more safely. Such devices can also quickly inspect potentially hazardous areas and get a handle on damage from storms or other disasters.

For that reason, increasing functionality of the drones is a big deal. Computerworld reports that Alta Devices is producing thin film solar panels that can power drones far longer than batteries can. The story says that the approach was demonstrated on the Bramor ppX, which was developed by the Slovenian firm C-Astral Aerospace. The demo featured six solar panels, which extended the flight time of the drone from 3.5 hours to 5.5 hours. The efficiency of the panels, which will be included on a commercialized version of the ppX, is 31.6 percent, according to Alta.

A good example of the benefits of drones is their use by Verizon to inspect stadiums. The carrier expanded the program this week.

Chinese Certificate Authority Given the Boot

Certificate authorities are the organizations that check to see that the sites that a browser is seeking to go to are who they say they are. This is vitally important, of course, when it comes to use of the web for connections to financial institutions, health care firms and other mission-critical organizations.

eWeek reports that CA WoSign and its affiliate, StartCom, will no longer be trusted by Google, Microsoft and Mozilla. This could cause disruptions for hundreds of thousands of sites.

The certificate revocation has been in the works for more than a year. The reason stems from the companys issuances of a Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) to GitHub without authorization. An investigation by Mozilla revealed multiple  and purposeful  violations.

Broadcom Buys Brocade

Chipmaker Broadcom is buying Brocade for $5.9 billion. Light Reading says that the goal is to acquire its storage business. Broadcom plans to divest itself of Brocades networking units. The deal consists of $5.5 billion in cash and $0.4 billion of net assumed depth, according to the story.

The assets include wireless and campus networking, data center switching and routing and software networking assets. Ruckus Wireless, which Brocade bought in April for $1.2 billion, will be among the properties shipped out.

The Many Keys of 5G

It is generally accepted that the cellular industry has a tremendous amount of work to do in anticipation of 5G. Prabhakar Chitrapu, the lead member of the technical staff for small cell platforms at AT&T, gave a presentation at SCWS 2016 in which he laid out just how much work must be done.

The RCR Wireless story is a bulleted list of what must be accomplished to create a mature technology. A second list details what the enablers are. He finishes with bullet points that explain why todays carriers will be the main conductors of 5G. It is a very illuminating set of lists.

Carl Weinschenk covers telecom for IT Business Edge. He writes about wireless technology, disaster recovery/business continuity, cellular services, the Internet of Things, machine-to-machine communications and other emerging technologies and platforms. He also covers net neutrality and related regulatory issues. Weinschenk has written about the phone companies, cable operators and related companies for decades and is senior editor of Broadband Technology Report. He can be reached at [email protected] and via twitter at @DailyMusicBrk.

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Engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) published a research in the journal Nature Materials about the possibility of using spinach as biological bomb detectors. They said it still needs to be tested for real, but it could eventually lead to a possible sowing of seeds across a site suspected of containing landmines and use the plant detection system to locate them.

The researchers said that by embedding tiny tubes in the plants' leaves, they can be made to pick up chemicals called nitro-aromatics, which are found in landmines and other buried munitions. Information can then be relayed wirelessly real time through a handheld device.

Professor Michael Strano, co-author of the study, said, "our paper outlines how one could engineer plants like this to detect virtually anything. The plants could be used for defense applications, but also to monitor public spaces for terrorism related activities, since we show both water and airborne detection. Such plants could be used to monitor groundwater seepage from buried munitions or waste that contains nitro-aromatics."

The researches implanted nanoparticles and tiny cylinders of carbon called nanotubes into the spinach plant's leaves. They then used a laser to prompt the embedded nanotubes to emit near-infrared fluorescent light. To detect this, they used an infrared camera connected to a Raspberry Pi computer. The scientists can pick up signal from about 1m away from the plant and they are currently working on increasing that distance.

This is not the first time that plants have been tweaked using nanotechnology. Strano's team used similar techniques to improve plants' photosynthesis ability and to develop detectors for hydrogen peroxide, TNT, and the nerve gas sarin. "The goal of plant nanobionics is to introduce nanoparticles into the plant to give it non-native functions. This is a novel demonstration of how we have overcome the plant/human communication barrier," Strano said.
WikiLeaks has been characterized over this weeks to releases different batches of Hillary Clintons campaign chairman John Podesta emails, in which there has been revelations that have been awful surprises both for the American voters and for the Democratic nominee, considering that this information could harm her image. Given this fact, this has been the most notorious revelations so far.

Liberals Think She Doesn't Have Any Chances To Be President

Clintons campaign chairman John Podesta received an email from liberal columnist Brent Budowsky, in which he explained that the democratic candidate wouldn't have any chances of becoming president. In fact, Podesta said that she could only win if the Republican nominee were Donald Trump, instead of anyone else among the candidates.

The issue about this comment is that Budowsky told it at the time when everyone thought that there weren't any chances for Trump to become a presidential candidate, since it was considered a joke to think that Republicans would end up choosing him as their nominee.

"Right now I am petrified that Hillary is almost totally dependent on Republicans nominating Trump. [S]he has huge endemic political weaknesses that she would be wise to rectify... even a clown like Ted Cruz would be an even money bet to beat and this scares the hell of out me...." Budowsky wrote.

Podesta Wrote That Clinton Hates "Everyday Americans"

One of the worst moments in Clintons public appearances was when she told during a democratic debate that she could put half of Donald Trumps supporters into what she called, "the basket of deplorables," which caused many critics against her, arguing that none presidential candidate should despise everyone who have different political stances.

The most awful thing about this situation is that WikiLeaks later published one of Podestas emails, in which he described Hillary in a very horrendous way. "I know she has begun to hate everyday Americans, but I think we should use it once the first time she says I'm running for president because you and everyday Americans need a champion," Podesta wrote.

She Received Debate Questions In Advance

One of the things that many Trumps supporters has repeatedly claimed is that the media is against him, which makes WikiLeaks actions against Hillary a move that just equilibrates the election. Although many of the media has legitimately exposed its reasons to be against the Republican candidate, taking a clear position supporting a candidate is not precisely an ethical move.

However, the most controversial case were when WikiLeaks revealed that Clinton received questions in advanced at the time when she was competing against Bernie Sanders at the Democratic Primaries. This is something that definitely broke neutrality, and show that impartiality doesn't exist in this elections , as reported by the Observer.

Close Relations With Goldman Sachs

Clinton has always claimed her position against banks, showing a similar attitude as Bernie Sanders in order to catch the leftist voters among Democrats. However, WikiLeaks revealed that far from not having any kind of connections with these finance organizations, she actually got to the point of giving three paid speeches at Goldman Sachs, which is probably one of the most unpopular banks in the U.S., being blamed for the financial crisis some years ago.

Although here comments weren't an endorse to capitalism and bank corruption, this has been one of the most important WikiLeaks revelations, considering how harmful could be for Clintons image, who have characterized for not be related with these groups in the elections, in order to not lose voters.
Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi released its first flash sale of Mi Mix Standard and Exclusive Edition, and both flagships got sold out in just 10 seconds, which represents the companys fastest selling smartphone ever, after the 50 seconds that Mi Note 2 lasted to getting sold out a couple of days ago.

No One Knows How Many Mi Mix Were Sold

The only issue about this incredible selling is that it is unknown how many Mi Mix smartphones were put up for sale and consequently moved within the 10 second period. In fact, many think that it could have been just a few devices, giving the fact that some reports revealed that Xiaomi plans to produce only 10,000 units each month, which is not precisely a high number.

According to Ubergizmo, Mi Mix features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 chipset that can be found along with 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB under the hood, in addition to a massive 6.4-inch display. Apparently, the problem about the Mi Mix is that is made out of ceramic, because when it looks incredibly aesthetic, it is very slippery, which could be a huge problem for users.

A Great Phone With A Nice Price

The Mi Mix store page posted that a second flash sale is being scheduled for November 8, which is expected to be as incredible as this last one. According to the International Business Times, U.K. and U.S. are looking to import these phones, which grabbed a fair amount of attention on its press event on October 25, thanks to its impressive screen-to-body ratio of 91.3 percent.

The price of both Mi Mix variant are relatively affordable, since you can find it at CN3,499 ($469) for the 4GB model and CN3,999 ($534) for the 6GB model, which also make everyone understand why it the first flash was sold so fast. Although the Mi Mix is currently available only for China, it is expected to be released to the U.S. in a very short time.
South Korean company Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. said on Thursday that it was weighing many options to limit the environmental impact of discontinuing the Galaxy Note 7, after it was recall when it was known that the mobile devices suddenly burst in flames, which represented an incredible setback for the company.

Enter Greenpeace

According to the International Business Times, environmental group Greenpeace issued a statement earlier this week urging the South Korean company to show its plan of disposing the recalled phones, advising to not burn the devices in order to avoid any environmental impact.

"Greenpeace is calling on Samsung to be transparent and publish its plan to deal with dismantling and disposing these phones. We also urge Samsung not to dump or burn the devices. It would be truly innovative if Samsung avoided the huge waste and environmental impact that comes from dumping and burning these devices!," senior IT campaigner at Greenpeace told.

"The world is watching how Samsung will respond to this crisis. Now is the perfect opportunity for the brand to show leadership and vision, breaking with the old ways and opening the door to rethinking how it designs, sells and reuses its electronics," he added

Samsung Hasn't Revealed Its Plans

Giving this statement, Samsung assured that the company will dispose every single Note 7 without making any environmental impact. However, the worlds largest smartphone maker in the world didn't explain which plan they will use, and didn't refer to Greenpeace in its statement.

"We recognize the concerns around the discontinuation of the Galaxy Note 7 and are currently reviewing possible options that can minimize the environmental impact of the recall in full compliance with relevant local environmental regulations," Samsung told Reuters.

Samsung permanently ended sales of the Note 7 in October, after selling 3.06 million of these mobile devices in the world. This situation represented one of the biggest crisis in the companys history, to the point where even the South Korean economy was affected. Although Samsung has to dispose these smartphones, it is necessary that this action doesn't represent any environmental impact.
Source: VNA

The comeback was driven by the recovery of import markets, improved fishing and preservation procedures and export businesses efforts to expand markets.

Customs statistics showed exports of fresh/live/frozen tuna made up USD180.7 million of total exports, up 9.5 percent over the same period last year, while exports of frozen tuna fillets and processed tuna were up 14.3 percent and 1 percent, respectively.

The exports went to 8 key markets, namely the US, EU, ASEAN, China, Israel, Japan, Canada and Mexico, occupying 88.2 percent of national tuna export value.

The association expects tuna exports will continue to increase in the final months of the year.

The US market is set to remain as the biggest importer of Vietnamese tuna.

ASEAN, China and Israel remain promising destinations for Vietnams tuna, said the association.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, there is still more room for Vietnam to boost tuna exports to these markets.

It suggested local firms focus more on improving steaming, drying and canning technologies to enhance exports of processed products.

They also need to exploit EU markets with high import demands such as Italy and Belgium following high growth in tuna exports to both countries in the past 8 months./.
Even though Jamie Dornan has successfully portrayed his role as Christian Grey, opposite to Dakota Johnson as Anastasia Steel on the "Fifty Shades of Grey" movie, it looks like the actor himself is also not pleased with his role as much as the audience. Despite having been successful in his portrayal, some still believe that another actor will be a better Christian Grey: Ian Somerhalder.

Jamie Dornan And Dakota Johnson Find It Exhausting Rather Than Arousing To Simulate Sex Scenes In "Fifty Shades Of Grey"

It has already been previously admitted by actor Jamie Dornan that simulating sex scenes for about five hours is as exhausting as Dakota Johnson claims it to be. It doesn't please him well to portray the role of a man who is a BDSM sex addict, especially which in reality, he is a husband and a father to two young children. He has previously opened up about his dismay on his role, prompting that he should be choosing better roles next time. It wouldn't make him such a great father figure once his kids grow up and see their dad in movies, hurting women for pleasure.

Ian Somerhalder Should Have Been The Better Pick For The Role Of Christian Grey?

Despite the unusual storyline, the movie and its book which it is based upon has been very popular to today's generation. There is no telling whether or not it is because there are more people these days that succumb to BDSM sexual acts. Thus, Dornan is still uncomfortable with his role. With this, the audience still believe that there is another actor best fit for the role that was given to him, "The Vampire Diaries" actor, Ian Somerhalder. He already portrays a sadistic vampire who uses women for blood and lust in the television series, which would make him the best man for the role of Christian Grey, had it not been given to Jamie Dornan.

In his series, which is already coming to an end sometime next year, he already portrays the role of a man who doesn't have much emotion when it comes to sex. It can be recalled that during the first few seasons of "The Vampire Diaries," he would compel women to be his sex slave and use them for pleasure and their blood. The actor has always been taking extensive measures in the portrayal of the roles given to him. The character of Christian Grey is much closely similar to the actor's role as Damon Salvatore in the show, aside from the latter being a vampire: a complicated man with hidden issues who falls in love with the simple girl.

Jamie Dornan Signed Contract To Portray Christian Grey In All Movie Installments; Ian Somerhalder To Be Part of "Fifty Shades Darker" In Different Role

When it comes to having the need to replace Jamie Dornan in his portrayal as Christian Grey in the upcoming "Fifty Shades Darker" and "Fifty Shades of Freed," they know better now as to who will be best fit to replace him. Nevertheless, there have been reports that Ian Somerhalder will be part of the "Fifty Shades" movie installments as a different character, Jack Hyde. He has a complicated background to the storyline as well, to which Somerhalder will be best fit to portray as well.

Despite the theories and demands, both Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan have signed a contract to reprise their respective roles for the three movie installments of "Fifty Shades of Grey."
The first look on the evil Count Olaf of "A Series of Unfortunate Events" by Lemony Snicket has just been released and he is just as terrifying as he is described on the children's book. Neil Patrick Harris's portrayal as the antagonist has been very well-received based on the trailer alone.

First Look On The Horrifying Count Olaf On "A Series Of Unfortunate Events" Official Trailer

It has already been confirmed months before that Netflix will do an adaptation of the famous children's book, Lemony Snicket's "A Series of Unfortunate Events," but only recently did the audience see a closer look on the series' antagonist, Count Olaf. This is portrayed by Neil Patrick Harris who has been well known of his portrayal of countless roles, mostly done on stage as he is a theatre actor as well. Although the actor is best known for his portrayal as a comedic Barney Stinson in the hit sitcom "How I Met Your Mother," this won't be the first time to see him in a thriller concept.

Neil Patrick Harris Praised By His Portrayal Of The Antagonist Based On The Trailer Alone

Neil Patrick Harris also appeared in the psychological thriller, "Gone Girl" but it has been reported that his role as Count Olaf would be way more terrifying than his previous portrayals. His character is described as an awful, terrifying and horrible count who will trick three orphans into taking their fortunes. As the kids try to stop Count Olaf from his tricks in taking their money, they also try to figure out how their parents have died.

Count Olaf is just as horrifying as he sounds and he seems on the trailer. He will do whatever it takes to take the fortune out of the three orphans, since he believes he could easily manipulate them as they are just kids, one an infant. This adaptation of "A Series of Unfortunate Events" by Netflix will definitely be as pleasing and appealing as the book. The Netflix series will also star Joan Cusack, Patrick Warburton and Louis Haynes, executively produced by Daniel Handler and Barry Sonnenfeld.

All eight episodes of "A Series of Unfortunate Events" will be released by Netflix on January 13, 2017.
In a world where the technology is fast changing, our jobs are not secure anymore. The fast paced advances in the robotics industry are threatening our employment security.

Robots Will Take Our Jobs

It has been predicted that human jobs will be taken over by robots. Various research studies conducted by market and tech analysts are forecasting that, over the next twenty years, the vast majority of U.S. jobs will be run over by robots.

Survey studies have shown that the vast majority of respondents anticipate that artificial intelligence and robotics will permeate wide segments of daily life in the near future. This can have huge implications for a wide range of industries such as transport and logistics, health care, home maintenance and customer service. But, while the experts are largely consistent in their forecast for the development and evolution of technology itself, they are deeply divided on how advances in robotics and AI will impact the employment picture in the near future.

Elon Musk's Vision

Robots and intelligent machines seem likely to become the workforce of the future. People will have less work to do as more and more jobs are replaced by technology. The iconic Silicon Valley futurist who is the founder and CEO of SpaceX, Testla and SolarCity, Elon Musk, believes that people will ultimately become sustained by payments from the government while their jobs are performs by robots.

According to Musk, is a pretty good chance that the government will have to introduce a universal basic income or a similar measure that will sustain people's living expenses as the unemployment due to technological advances will become rampant. There will be no other options.

Universal Basic Income

According to CNBC, each individual will get a regular check from the government in a country with a universal basic income scheme. In fact, there are already countries that are considering to introduce a universal basic income, In Switzerland, for instance, the government considered this summer to introduce a universal basic income of 2,500 Swiss francs ($2578) a month. The proposal sparked a broad, even global debate. However, the plan was ultimately rejected by the Swiss voters.

According to Wired, President Obama addressed the idea of a universal basic income in an interview this summer with Joi Ito, the Director of MIT's Media Lab and Scott Dadich, editor in chief of Wired. The debate whether a universal income is the right model is expected to continue over the next 10 years. It remains to be seen whether this idea is going to be accepted by a broad base of people.

While technology is rapidly changing the global workforce, the society is slowly getting accustomed with the idea of a basic human income. But, according to Musk, people will not get bored, since the leisure time will increase and they will have time to do more interesting things.

A universal basic income for all and a long horizon of leisure time may sound good. However, for some, it can also be intimidating. Having a job is grounding for many. A career can be something that gives purpose to life. Many Americans would probably prefer to continue doing some kind of work, even when a universal basic income scheme will be implemented.
Nature can create various things, but then also has its limits. There are things that cannot be possible, or so it seems. A physicist recently shows that a new subatomic structure is possible, even though people say it can't be done.

Neutrons are highly unstable. They cannot remain such for too long and will convert into protons after ten minutes. That is why a group of neutrons cannot remain for too long because of its unstable nature. However, James Vary, who is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa State University has demonstrated that it can be done.

Vary and visiting scientist Andrey Shirokov and an international team have shown through supercomputer simulations that a group of neutrons called a tetraneutron is possible. A tetraneutron is a group made up of four neutrons.

A tetraneutron can create a resonance, which is a structure stable enough before decaying. The tetraneutron doesn't last very long. The tetraneutron created by the simulation lasted for only 5x10^(-22) seconds before decaying. It might not be long, but the time is enough to study neutrons and see how strong neutron bonds can form.

The simulation done by the team has validated an earlier observed evidence of a tetraneutron at the RIKEN Radioactive Ion Beam Factory (RIBF) in Saitama, Japan, as the Iowa State University site reports. Looking for evidence of a tetraneutron has taken a long time. For 40 years scientists looked for its existence, with little success.

For the Japanese research, a beam of Helium-8 has been collided with a regular Helium-4 atom. The result is a tetraneutron along with another Helium-4 atom. The tetraneutron's life was brief even in that experiment.

So far there is not much objects in nature that is made up of neutrons except for a neutron star, Science Daily notes. A neutron star is a collapsed star with a mass equal to that of the Sun but whose size is greatly smaller than it. Research is still needed if there are other objects that can be created much like that of a neutron star made up of neutrons.

Many have long thought that a group of neutrons cannot exist naturally until a physicist shows that a new subatomic structure is possible. With the creation of a tetraneutron, there are more possibilities in research now available. An earlier experiment has also shown how planets are formed.
The woes keep piling up for Samsung. The Korean company is now recalling 2.8 million washing machines in the United States.

The decision came about after Samsung received more than 700 reports wherein the machines vibrated excessively. The excessive vibrations caused the lids of the top-load washers to detach in some cases. Of the 733 reported cases, nine people were hurt from getting hit by the flying or falling lid. One of the victims suffered from a broken jaw while another injured a shoulder.

According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, "the washing machine top can unexpectedly detach from the washing machine chassis during use, posing a risk of injury from impact."

Is my washer included in the recall?

The washers were made between March 2011 and November 2016, according to reports. The models involved have a price range of $450 to $1,500 and were mainly purchased from Best Buy, Lowe's, Sears, The Home Depot and other home appliance stores around the country. Refer to this list to know the serial numbers of the affected models.

Only top-load washers are affected by the recall. Front-load machines are not included.

What to do?

Samsung advises those who bought the washers in question to report their concern so the company can take the necessary actions. One option Samsung is offering is a free in-home repair. The repair will involve reinforcing the top of the washer. Those who choose this option will receive a one-year extension of the manufacturer warranty. The other option is to receive a "loyalty incentive" worth $150 on the purchase of a new Samsung washing machine. Those who prefer a different brand will also receive a rebate.

In the meantime, the company suggests that the owners refrain from using the high-speed cycle. And use the delicate or waterproof cycles instead. Samsung will provide a Home Label Kit which includes updated information on how to use the washer properly.

Samsung's series of unfortunate events

This recall comes after Samsung was forced to scrap the Galaxy Note 7 because of battery issues that caused the handsets to catch fire and explode. An estimated total of 1.9 million Note 7s were recalled as a result.
All the New Zealand phone companies decided to blacklist the Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 in straight two weeks. This is due to the incidents happened in different countries on the burning battery of the said smartphones.

The group of New Zealand telecommunications industry has announced a complete "blacklisting" of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7, with the smartphone to be blocked across all mobile networks as of November 18. This blacklisting propaganda is being put in place in coordination with Samsung as a safety measure after the Galaxy Note 7 began catching fire on its battery several months ago, according to New Zealand Telecommunications Forum (TCF) CEO Geoff Thorn.

"Numerous attempts by all providers have been made to contact owners and ask them to bring the phones in for replacement or refund. This action should further aid the return of the remaining handsets," Thorn said. "Anyone who is still in possession of a Samsung Note 7, please return it to your service provider as soon as possible."

According to ZDNet, users of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 can check their handset's unique IMEI number on the TCF website to see whether their phone has been blocked. Samsung and the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a global recall of the smartphone in September, following 92 initial reported incidents in the United States where the batteries overheated and caught fire.

APAC airlines Air New Zealand, Qantas, Virgin Australia, Jetstar, Tigerair, Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Dragonair, Hong Kong Airlines, HK Express, AirAsia, Etihad Airways, and Emirates were among those that last month began enforcing a total ban of the smartphone on all flights, citing potential fire risk. Aside from those airlines, the US Department of Transportation also banned the Note 7 on US flights just a few weeks ago.

While Samsung is currently undergoing a worldwide recall of 2.5 million handsets, some mail services are refusing to carry Note 7 returns. Remember that Samsung also halted the production and sales of the said smartphone.

Cellular companies can block Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones from connecting to their networks because each device has a unique 15-digit code, called an IMEI, that is checked automatically each time a device attempts to make a connection. They are using it to keep track on each and every smartphone they have in their record.
Apple and Samsung have seen better days. Their last flagship offerings didn't pan out as they expected. The iPhone 7 was met with mixed reviews while the Galaxy Note 7 was a disaster.

Apple is currently on a downward slide in terms of revenue. The company reported earlier that it is on a third consecutive quarterly decline this year. Samsung, meanwhile, to a major hit when it had to stop production of the Note 7 and recall those already out in the market.

The two giants in the tech industry will try to reclaim their glory with their upcoming flagship smartphones - the iPhone 8 and the Galaxy S8.

This head-to-head is solely based on rumors floating around. There is yet an official announcement from both sides regarding the rumored smartphones.

According to reports, both devices will be launched in 2017.

Apple iPhone 8

The new iPhone is rumored to have three variants in terms of the display. It will come in 4.7, 5.5, and 5.8 inches. The iPhone 8 will also have a curved 4K OLED display with a 1920 x 1310 resolution.

The iPhone 8 will also come in 32, 128, and 256 GB internal storage while it is expected to have 3 or 4GB of RAM. Its processor will likely be the A11 processor.

There will be two cameras -- an 8MP front camera and a 12MP rear camera. The latter will have dual lens and will be capable of 4K video recording.

It will possibly have an iris scanner and wireless charging.



Samsung Galaxy S8

The S8 will come in two variants. Both 5.1 and 5.5-inch display will feature the curved 4K AMOLED screen with a 2160 x 3840 resolution.

It will probably come with 64GB internal storage which is expandable to 256GB. The S8 will have 4 to 6GB of RAM and will run on either Qualcomm Snapdragon 830 or Samsung Exynos Pocessor.

As for the camera, the S8 will have a 12MP front camera with wide angle lens while the 16MP rear camera will have dual lens, 4K video recording capability, and optical image stabilization.

The Galaxy S8 will likely have an iris scanner, as well.

Samsung's return to respectability will probably depend on the S8 though the company is pushing the S7 and S7 Edge to soften its fall. From the looks of the rumored specs, the S8 may turn out to be impressive. Apple, meanwhile, continues to break standards and the next iPhone may surprise many.
It's already less than a week before another historic US election. No matter whom Americans vote for, the security and credibility of the election should be ensured. US military hackers are prepared to retaliate amidst the threats of possible cyber mischief by Russia and other countries.

US Military Hackers Are Ready To Retaliate

NBC News was able to review top secret documents regarding the said action that US hackers could take. A senior intelligence official also revealed that Russia's electric grid, telecommunications network and the Kremlin's command systems have been penetrated by the US military hackers.

Apparently, secret American cyber weapons will attack these if the US deem it necessary. This might have been to address concerns over Russia's plan to disrupt the upcoming election. US intelligence officials are anticipating a cyber mischief that will include possible release of fake documents.

There might also be a proliferation of bogus social media accounts to spread misinformation. NBC further reports that a Russian hacker called "Guccifer 2.0" has tweeted a threat. The US is warned to monitor the elections "from the inside system".

The Reason Behind Russia's Possible Cyber Mischief

According to The Washington Post, US official said that the intelligence agencies do not see Russia as capable of using cyber espionage to alter the presidential election's outcome. However, they admitted that Moscow may continue to meddle after the voting has ended. This is to make the result look less credible.

Russia will be adding more fire to an already heated political race. If the country is successful, it may put further divisions on what already exist. President Vladimir Putin has denied allegations of Russian hacks to the US.

Though cybersecurity experts and intelligence agencies shared that the Russia seems to intentionally not cover their tracks.

The Reluctance To Retaliate

The Washington Post further reports that The White House has been weighing countermeasures for months. However, the government was reluctant to retaliate. Such early action may inflict even more direct damage.

Some have expressed that the Russian threat would be diminished when the Election Day ends. They also took into consideration the effect it may have to the next US president.
This year has probably seen the best of the best in smartphones ever. If it weren't for the explosion cases of Samsung's phablet, there may not be a lot to complain about. Needless to say, if there is only one spot for 2016's best smartphone, the OnePlus 3 has a good chance of snagging it. Everyone may have their own bet as to which phone is the best. However, based on overall value, it's undeniable that OnePlus 3 is hard to beat. If you're not convinced, here's a quick assessment.

OnePlus 3 Level Of Improvement

One of the best ways to determine a smartphone's success is through its level of improvement. How much of consumers' feedback did the company listen to? As for the OnePlus 3, it's pretty much a big improvement over the OnePlus 2. The OnePlus 3 is more premium looking and while its design isn't exactly groundbreaking, it is much improved. It's clear that the company listens to what their market wants. As per Tech Radar's report, the OnePlus 2 may not have met its expectations, but luckily, the OnePlus 3 did.

OnePlus 3 Price

The OnePlus 3 is priced $399 at launch. It's worth noting that the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and the iPhone 7 Plus are at the $770 to $780 mark. OnePlus's flagship-for-half-the-price offer is pretty visible when you compare it with its premium competitors. The OnePlus 3 is basically a flagship, it's just not priced as such. It's price is comparable to the prices of higher midrange smartphones but OnePlus' phones offer more than what you can get from a midrange phone.

OnePlus 3 Compromises

Just like all smartphones, the OnePlus 3 has to sacrifice some things to balance the deal out - just like how Samsung and Apple compromised the price for the premium features. As for the OnePlus 3, the display isn't exactly topnotch. It's a good 1080 x 1920 pixel resolution that may not be bad at all. It's just not comparable to the S7 Edge's display that has 1440 x 2560 pixel resolution. But come to think of it, OnePlus 3 shares the same resolution with the iPhone 7 Plus.

Furthermore, OnePlus's 2016 flagship doesn't have a microSD slot which may not be very appealing to some. However, it's also worth noting that the iPhone 7 Plus also isn't equipped with a microSD slot. However, Apple's latest device has multiple storage options that you can choose from. As per GSM Arena, the OnePlus 3 only has a 64 GB storage option, which actually isn't so bad. If you're not that much of a heavy user and if you have already proven yourself okay with last year's 16 GB smartphones, then OnePlus 3's storage should be more than enough for you.

OnePlus 3 Power

OnePlus 3's overall specifications clearly suggest that the phone is uber-powerful and in no way inferior to its expensive competitors. It is undeniably ahead when it comes to RAM size and it's also competitive when it comes to camera, battery and processor. It's worth noting that OnePlus 3 has 6 GB RAM while the S7 Edge has 4 GB RAM and the iPhone 7 Plus has 3 GB RAM.

The OnePlus 3 comes with a 16 MP/8 MP camera combo, 3000 mAh battery and a powerful Snapdragon 820 processor. Just like all premium smartphones, OnePlus 3's latest masterpiece also has a fingerprint sensor. Overall, this phone is pretty much a dream come true to consumers and a nightmare for premium phone makers.
"Pirates of the Caribbean 5" remains to be a sure thing despite the lack of news from the movie creators. Based on Disney's timeline, this is scheduled for a summer release specifically on May 26, 2017, just a month after the release of "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2."

"Pirates Of The Caribbean 5" Title Change

Jack Sparrow, played by Johnny Depp, is still wanted at sea although it seems that getting caught by bounty hunters and the authorities is nothing compared to his new enemy. Jack has one nemesis who is pursuing him actively - the ghostly pirate Salazar (Javier Bardem).

Although the movie has been in production for some time now, there's news that the movie will have a new title in some countries. In the United States, the official title of the upcoming movie will be "Pirates of the Caribbean 5: Dead Men Tell No Tales." However, in the U.K., the film will have the subtitle "Salazar's Revenge" while in Italy, France, and Spain, the subtitle will be "The Revenge of Salazar."

There has been no official statement as to the reason behind the change. The movie will be the same although the titles are a bit different in certain countries.

The Revenge Of Salazar

The fifth installment in "The Pirates of the Caribbean" film series focuses on Captain Salazar's revenge on Sparrow. The ghostly captain relays a message for Sparrow through Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites), Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) and Will Turner's (Orlando Bloom) son. Henry is in search of his absentee father who assumed the identity of Davy Jones. It is worth noting that Knightley will not be making an appearance in this installment.

Meanwhile, Jack is scouring the high seas for the Trident of Poseidon - the only weapon that could protect himself from Salazar's attacks. In his journey, he crosses path with Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario) who is also looking for the artifact.

The newest "Pirates of the Caribbean" installment has the same theme as the first movie in the franchise. The ghostly theme and the plotlines are promising enough that it could save the franchise and lead to the production of a sixth installment.
Ambassador Nguyen Phuong Nga, head of the Vietnam Mission to the UN (Photo: VNA)

The statement was made by Ambassador Nguyen Phuong Nga, head of the Vietnam Mission to the UN, while commenting on the election of Ambassador Thao to the ILC during the 71st General Assembly of the United Nations on November 3in New York.

The world community lauded Vietnams policy of respecting international law in international relations, both bilaterally and multilaterally, regionally and internationally, she said.

Vietnams principle of peacefully settling all disputes based on international law and strictly implementing international commitments has also been lauded, stated the diplomat.

Ambassador Thaos success is also a result of ceaseless efforts during the past year of the Foreign Ministry as well as representative offices of Vietnam abroad, including the Vietnam Mission to the UN in assisting the diplomat in running for the position.

Ambassador Nga said that Thaos election to the ILC for the 2017-2021 period is significant as international law is proving important. Amidst rapid changes in the world with many complicated issues and challenges in peace, security, development and human right, the international legal system should be completed to meet the requirements of new situations.

She also expressed her belief that with his experience and knowledge as a lawyer and a diplomat, Ambassador Thao will represent Vietnam and developing countries to make a positive contribution to the ILC./.
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Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (R) receives Lao Minister of Planning and Investment Suphan Keomisay on November 4th (Photo: VNA)

Meeting with Lao Minister of Planning and Investment Suphan Keomisay in Hanoi, the PM said the upcoming visit by the Vietnamese Party leader is important to both countries, thus they need to make thorough preparations for this trip, especially cooperation documents to be inked.

He highlighted the special and time-tested Vietnamese-Lao relations, asking the two sides to work closely to realise the two governments cooperation plan for 2016 and prepare for the 39th meeting of the Vietnam-Laos intergovernmental committee slated for next year.

Regarding certain issues, PM Phuc said as a landlocked country, Laos could transport goods via Vietnams ports. Whether it chooses to use Vung Ang port or Cua Lo port in central Vietnam, it must comply with local regulations.

The two sides need to provide the best possible conditions for the scheduled implementation of power projects and the electricity sale and purchase, he noted, asking the Lao Government to continue improving investment climate and facilitate Vietnamese businesses operations.

He assured that the Vietnamese Government is also making efforts to promote the local business environment on par with that of the four other ASEAN countries of Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines in the near future.

The Vietnam-Laos and Laos-Vietnam cooperation committees should also work harder to fulfill tasks assigned by their respective countries Politburos and governments, the host said, pointing out modest bilateral trade compared to the two neighbours potential and relations.

For his part, Minister Suphan Keomisay said his working visit to Vietnam aims to prepare for the coming visit by Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.

He said that he hopes the two ministries of planning and investment will strengthen economic and investment partnerships between their nations, and that Laos wants to promote the electricity sale and purchase with Vietnam./.
Photo: VGP

During the reception, the Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister said that the strategic partnership between Vietnam and Thailand is growing well in all areas, especially in economics, trade and investment. According to Mr Dung, businesses play a great role in reinforcing, promoting and deepening the strategic partnership by investing in projects and carrying out trade exchanges.

In 2016, Vietnam and Thailand are organizing diverse activities to mark the 40th year since establishing diplomatic relations. At present, the two countries are effectively realizing the action program on carrying out the Vietnam - Thailand strategic partnership in the 2014-2018 period in all areas.



In trade and investment, the two countries are making efforts to increase bilateral trade turnover to USD20 billion by 2020. Praising the Amata Groups early investment in Vietnam in the 1990s, the Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister suggested the group make greater contribution to building and developing industrial zones and hi-tech zones in Vietnam.

Amata Group President Vikrom Kromadit expressed his thanks to the Vietnamese Government, ministries and localities for making favourable conditions for the groups investment over the past 20 years.

He also appreciated the Vietnamese Governments efforts in making a clear and equal business environment between domestic and foreign businesses, showing his support for Vietnams recent investment attraction and production development policies.

Amata Group was among the initial Thai businesses realizing the great investment potential in Vietnam. It established the Bien Hoa Amata Industrial Zone in 1994. In the future, Amata looks towards the building of smart cities and hi-tech industrial zones in Vietnam, including an expected industrial - urban complex in Dong Nai and Quang Ninh provinces using tens of billions of USD./.
Ambassador Nguyen Hong Thao when he was Vietnamese Ambassador to Malaysia (Photo: VNA)

With 120 of 191 votes in favour, Vietnamese Ambassador to Kuwait Nguyen Hong Thao was chosen as one of the members of the commission, Vietnam News Agency reported.Earlier, 10 candidates ran for the seats of the Commission for the Asia - Pacific region. This was the first time Vietnam had a candidate running for Commission member.

The commission is a very prestigious international legal forum and an agency specializing in drafting important conventions, including conventions on the law of the sea. In addition, the commission carries out studies on major issues of international law - law on the relations among nations.

The Commission, belonging to the United Nations, has 34 members elected by UN member countries every five years. Commission members are often famous professors, diplomats and lawyers who are experienced in studying, teaching and practising international laws. The members are distributed by geographic regions with no two members having the same nationality. The Asia - Pacific region is allowed to elect seven members.

Established in 1947 by the UN General Assembly, the International Law Commission is responsible for studying and making proposals to promote the development and codification of international laws.

Ambassador Nguyen Hong Thao is an expert in international law who has a firm academic foundation and factual experience. He was Vice President of the National Border Committee, Head of negotiation delegation for border agreements with neighbouring countries, and a legal consultant for the draft law on the sea of Vietnam in 2012.



He has worked in the diplomatic sector for 40 years, being the Vietnamese Ambassador to Malaysia between 2011 and 2014 and having been the Vietnamese Ambassador to Kuwait since 2014./.
Valeant Pharmaceuticals arrive at a slippery slope as they are battered by scandals, lawsuits, and debts that one can only hope to climb out of. It didn't take much for them to decide to ultimately decide to sell acquisitions they bought over the years to stay afloat.

According to The New Yorker, Valeant's downfall started when CEO Michael Pearson arrived. Pearson scrapped the traditional approach of investing into research and development, and instead suggested to buy companies that already have existing products in the market and eventually, reduce costs while increasing prices. The New Yorker further dubbed Valeant as a "serial acquirer" while trying to regain the money used for acquisition by rendering almost half of the workforce jobless.

From then on, Valeant became more of a roll-up than a pharmaceutical company. It only grew through acquisitions and because it is preceded by its reputation, it then falls eventually. Pearson's strategy arrived at its breaking point, with the company now known for the scandals it is in, The New Yorker adds.

As a matter of fact, the company is being sued by Sprout Pharmaceuticals in a deal where Valeant was supposed to "adequately market" and commercialize Addyi, a female libido pill. The complaint mentioned that return of investment may not be at all possible if this continues, the Financial Post reports.

Joseph Papa, the new Valeant CEO, has his hands full with the legal lawsuits as well as keeping the company profitable. This is the reason why he is eager to sell past acquisitions made by the company to balance out debts and expenses.

One angle Valeant is looking at is the sale of its eye surgery equipment business, which the company was able to acquire after the purchase of Bausch & Lomb. The sale could amount to $2.5 billion as per people in-the-know estimates, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

As per Reuters, another option Papa is looking at is to sell its Salix stomach-drug business. Apparently, Japan's Takeda Pharmaceutical is one of the companies showing interest in the purchase of the said business. If successful, it could get Valeant around $10 billion, which could help it with the current financial woes it is facing.

With the events occurring, it may not have been wise to continue acquiring other businesses without enriching Valeant's core. Unfortunately for Papa, he has to turn it around if the company is to remain in existence.
With the US elections just around the corner, more people are starting to worry about their jobs and have begun to look elsewhere.

According to The Guardian, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Democrat presidential bet Hillary Clinton are neck-on-neck on the most recent polls, so it is anyone's ball game at this point. The turnout of voters will also determine the outcome of the elections heavily, the Guardian adds.

In an article in CNN, it would appear that a Trump presidency may make the country's employment rate turn for the worst. CNN identified four categories where the two candidates would battle it out, all in relation to jobs, taxes, stocks and economy. In a nutshell, Clinton appeared as the safer option, especially taking into consideration the job creation side of things. Trump, on the other hand, may make things difficult due to his proposed foreign policies.

Although perceived as a close fight and one ultimately dependent on how many will cast their votes, it would appear that a lot of Americans are not taking their chances. It didn't take much for people to look up north.

Monster Worldwide, a job posting platform, reported that there was an incredible increase in queries using the world "Canada" this year, which was at 30,296. This is a very notable increase from almost 20,000 last year, CNBC reports.

Furthermore, it appears that the top cities preferred by job seekers are Toronto, Ontario and British Columbia.

This is an enormous 58 increase in job queries for the platform, and based on recent events, the unpredictable election has its hands on it. The findings of Monster Worldwide supports this presumption.

CNBC further adds that a few celebrities expressed their thoughts of moving to Canada should the Republican candidate win. Bryan Cranston, Ne-Yo, and Drake are a few who were vocal in saying they would "return home" should Trump assume the presidency.
As the US election is nearing its end, Republican candidate Donald Trump vehemently denounces the strong support expressed by the incumbent president Barack Obama over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

The presidential campaign concludes on November 8 and for the past week, the president has actively endorsed Clinton to the American people in several state rallies. Donald Trump complained how the head of state poured tremendous time and effort in campaigning for the Democratic Party's representative. He cited that Obama's recent endeavors are not part of the official 'unbiased' duties of the nation's chief executive.

The Republican representative even slanders the current president, describing his administration as 'incompetent', according to the report by Business Standard. Trump derisively depicts Obama as a 'campaigner-in-chief' instead of commander-in-chief.

In a related chronicle by Sunshine State News, both Republican and Democratic camps are making their final push in the state of Florida. Donald Trump is backed by Indiana governor and former Chair of the House Republican Conference, Mike Pence. For Hillary Clinton, the husband and former US president Bill Clinton stands alongside Obama in solidarity for the Democratic Party.

In Miami, the current president Obama addressed to the public to seriously think of their own future. The president insinuates how their votes can have far-reaching consequences that stand above the mere intrigue brought by the same reality shows financed by the television tycoon-turned-politician rival.

Curiously, Obama does not hold back his support for Hillary Clinton in the US election despite the controversy reaped by that brazen alliance. To that end, the incumbent president was even caught fire by the latest wave of email hacking scandal implicating the Clinton camp for criminal conspiracy with the Justice Department and FBI.

In the recent poll reports, the narrow race between Trump and Clinton is leaning towards the latter's favor. Other analyses also put the Republicans on the losing side.
THE CENTRAL ORGAN OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF VIETNAM The Voice of the party, State and Vietnamese people on the internet

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Q: Why have the Jewish people not rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem?

Answer: The Islamic mosque Al-Aqsa, Dome of the Rock, was built in the Old City in Jerusalem over the place where the Temple of Solomon stood.

Islamic tradition says the rock was the site of Muhammads ascension into heaven. Jewish tradition says this rock was the altar upon which Abraham almost sacrificed his son Isaac. Some say the mount is the spot from which God scraped dust to create the first man, Adam. Obviously, it is a place that is holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians. To build a temple in Jerusalem would require a different location.

According to the Bible, David wanted to build a temple for worship and to house the Ark of the Covenant containing the Ten Commandment tablets. King David said, Hear me, my brethren and my people. I had it in my heart to build a house of rest for the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and for the footstool of our God; and I made preparations for building. But God said to me, You may not build a house for my name, for you are a warrior and have shed blood. (1 Chronicles 28:2-4) His son Solomon built the Temple. It was not a large building, but it was elaborate. The First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. After returning from exile, the Jews rebuilt the temple, completing it in 515-516 B.C. After Alexanders death, the Seleucid king, Antiochus IV, defiled the Temple by sacrificing swine at the altar. This act caused the Jewish Maccabean revolt and ultimately the cleansing and rededication of the Temple in 164 B.C. The Hebrew word for rededication is Hanukkah. King Herod the Great renovated the Temple in 20 B.C. The Temple is mentioned in the New Testament. Jesus, as a boy, taught in the Temple. The story of his chasing the moneylenders is told in the New Testament. Rome destroyed the Second Temple in A.D. 70 after the defeat of the Jews in their rebellion of A.D. 68. In the seventh century, Muslims captured Jerusalem and built Al-Aqsa mosque. The full name Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa means the farthest mosque. It is associated with the Night Journey when Muhammad left Mecca to go to the farthest mosque and was taken to heaven. Over the years, the mosque has been damaged by fire, crusaders, and earthquakes. The present building was completed in 1035 and remains a holy site.

Follow-up

Several readers responded to the last article about churches holding gun classes. One reader said his gun was to protect his family. He felt that was OK with God. I must admit that we do live in dangerous times, and we all share a deep feeling of wanting to protect our families. It is a situation to which I have given much thought; however, I still feel that it is my responsibility to speak to the teachings of Christ. Jesus did not defend himself, and he chided Peter for attempting to do so. I do not hold a judgmental position, but I think that it is important to remind people of the difficulties of following all of the teachings of Christ. To say one is a Christian or a believer of any faith is easy, but to live every day as a committed person is not easy.

Three points are clear to me. First, Jesus said to love our enemies and return good for evil. He did not say, Love your enemies unless they threaten you, then shoot them. His admonishment against violence and his commandment to love are categorical. My second point is that I do inveigh against any church holding concealed-carry classes in the house of the Prince of Peace. Third, I must admit that many times in my life, I have found it hard to turn the other cheek and following all of Jesus teachings is a challenge for me. When we struggle, we must remember Ephesians 4:32: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christs sake hath forgiven you.

I learn from readers comments, and I pray for the understanding of the mysteries of life and God beyond book knowledge. At this time, I am reminded of John 4:24: God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.
In the nonpartisan race for a judicial seat in Forsyth Superior Court, challenger Jonathan Dills is charging that the incumbent, Eric Morgan, is misrepresenting himself as a conservative and is getting endorsements from liberal Democrats.

Dills, 50, and Morgan, 51, are both registered Republicans seeking a job in which they will make decisions in criminal felony cases and civil cases where the amount of claims is more than $25,000.

In the past week, Dills has sent out two different robocalls to potential voters, saying Morgan has been endorsed by Winston-Salem Democrats for Hillary Clinton. Clinton is the Democratic nominee for president.

Jonathan Dills is a lifelong conservative Republican who supports Donald Trump, a woman on one of the robocalls said, referring to the Republican nominee for president. (Dills) supports the Constitution and is against judicial activism.

Another robocall said Dills is the true conservative and a constitutionalist. The call also said that Dills serves as the legal counsel for the Forsyth County Republican Party and has been active in the local Republican party since 2004. The robocall said Morgan has been endorsed by the local Democrats for Hillary Clinton.

Morgan said a mailer is being circulated that looks like it is from the Forsyth County Republican Party. The difference is that Dills name is the only one listed for the judicial race for Forsyth Superior Court. The actual mailer from the Forsyth County Republican Party lists Dills and Morgan.

Nathan Tabor, former chairman of the Forsyth County Republican Party who has run for elected office, posted a message on his Facebook page, saying that Morgan was endorsed by liberal Democrats.

I know for a fact that Democrats would NEVER endorse a candidate that supports my values, he wrote on his Facebook page.

The post has since been taken down. Dills said Tabor is not on his campaign committee and he had nothing to do with Tabors post.

Eric Ellison, chairman of the Forsyth County Democratic Party, said the party has not endorsed anyone in the judicial race but added that many members are supporting Morgan. The Clinton campaign has not endorsed anyone in the judicial race.

Dills said he and other people with his campaign have seen workers at polling sites telling voters that the Democratic party has endorsed Morgan. Morgan said he is not aware of anyone making such statements. Dills also said a prominent Democrat made a robocall on Morgans behalf. That Democrat is Bill Freeman, a retired Forsyth Superior Court judge.

Dills said he has tried to run a positive campaign but felt he had no choice but to respond to an opponent sending out mixed messages.

It is unfortunate, but some people are angry at my opponent for mixed messaging, he said in an email. I have asked everyone to stop any vitriolic commentary about my race. It is fair to point out to Republicans his association with an extremely different agenda.

Dills points to a Facebook page called Greensboro, Winston-Salem for Clinton/Kaine, which refers to Tim Kaine, Clintons running mate. On Oct. 25, there was this posting on top of a Winston-Salem Journal story about the race: We adamantly support and recommend Eric Morgan for Superior Court Judge. We encourage ALL Democrats to vote Eric Morgan, as currently there is no listing for this judgeship on the Blue Slate.

Its not clear who is behind the Facebook page.

Morgan said he is not aware of any Democrats endorsing his campaign. He said he is concerned that voters are getting misleading information. Morgan touts his endorsements from law-enforcement organizations such as the N.C. Police Benevolent Society, and the fact that N.C. Bar Associations Judicial Performance Evaluation Survey rated him higher than any other candidate for a superior court seat in North Carolina.

I tried really hard to run a race that is suitable to the office I hold, he said. I think its critical that the voters have confidence in the judicial candidates.

Dills said he wants to continue to have a positive campaign but he also believed he needed to respond.

These races are non-partisan, and politics should not enter the equation, but unfortunately, it does, he said.
State labor officials said Friday that they are investigating Thursdays death of an unidentified contract construction worker in Kernersville.

The N.C. Occupational Safety and Health Division said its investigation will focus on how the fatality occurred and whether or not violations of any of its standards were a contributing factor.

It is the first workplace-related fatality in Forsyth County this year, according to state labor officials.

There have been 37 workplace-related deaths in North Carolina this year as of Sept. 30, including four in Guilford County and one each in Watauga and Wilkes counties.

A division investigation can take from a few weeks up to four months to complete, agency spokeswoman Dolores Quesenberry said.

Kernersville police officers responded to a report of a construction accident in the 1200 block of Wilson Heritage Trail at 11:24 a.m. Thursday. They found a piece of construction equipment overturned and its operator dead, according to a police news release.

Police said they arent conducting a criminal investigation of the death.

They are withholding the victims name until relatives are notified. State labor officials said they rely on local authorities to release the identity of workers who die in a workplace-related accident.

The site is part of the Northern Beltway construction and is about 1.6 miles northeast of East Forsyth High School.

The Watauga fatality occurred on Jan. 6 and involved Danny Woods of Woods Logging, a 50-year-old man who was struck by a falling tree.

The Wilkes fatality occurred on Aug. 17 and involved Joe Campbell Roofing Inc. and a 24-year-old man who fell from a roof.

The four Guilford workplace fatalities this year involved:

Stonewall Logistics Inc. on Jan. 26. A tractor-trailer hit a 54-year-old man.

PeoplePower Inc. on Jan. 27. A vehicle hit a 69-year-old woman.

Tetra Tech Construction Inc. on March 8. A 28-year-old man was struck by a counterweight.

Yolanda Gomez, doing business as International Roofing and Remodeling A 36-year-old man fell from a roof.

In 2015, Forsyth County had two of the 41 workplace fatalities statewide. The Triad and Northwest North Carolina accounted for six altogether, all of which were men.
Calls by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for his supporters to watch for fraud at the polls have raised concerns about a longstanding but little used Election Day tactic  citizen voter challenges.

At least four battleground states  Florida, Iowa, Nevada and Pennsylvania  not only allow private citizens to challenge the eligibility of other voters inside polling locations but place the burden of proof on the person who is challenged. In Florida and Pennsylvania, a challenged voter in certain circumstances must cast a provisional ballot that may or may not be counted.

Voting experts said they do not expect such challenges to be widespread. They also said anything is possible on Tuesday following Trumps unprecedented and unsubstantiated warnings of a rigged election.

In states where the burden rests heavily on a voter who is challenged, untrained private citizens could create chaos.

Some voters might decide its not worth the hassle to deal with this and may end up disenfranchised, said Rick Hasen, an election law expert and professor at the University of California, Irvine. To the extent, if this is happening on a large scale, it could lead to long lines and deter people from waiting.

The ability of citizens to challenge the eligibility of fellow voters is different from the use of trained poll watchers, who are selected in advance by campaigns or political parties and must register in advance with local election officials. The Democrats overall ground game advantage in swing states includes having many more of these registered election monitors than the Republicans.

Of the 39 states that allow private citizens to challenge voters at the polls, just 15 require challengers to provide proof of their claims, according to a 2012 report by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYUs School of Law. Some of those do require challengers to sign an affidavit and include penalties for making a false or frivolous claim.

In recent years, Alabama, Ohio and Texas have banned citizen challenges at the polls.

There are generally two types of voter challenges: those that occur before an election and those allowed on Election Day.

The NAACP in North Carolina recently filed a lawsuit alleging thousands of people, many of them black, were removed improperly from voter rolls after being challenged by private citizens. In most of those cases, mail sent to the persons address was returned as undeliverable. A federal judge on Friday ordered three N.C. counties to restore voter registrations canceled in the 90 days preceding the election.

Experts say voter challenges that occur ahead of Election Day can allow local officials to look into the claims and voters to fight for their right to vote.
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

I used the word suppressed in the title quite deliberately. Corporate television media in the United States is colluding in a cover-up of the threat of climate change, and they have specifically blacked out the climate change issue with regard to this election.

The guilty parties are Comcast (owner of NBC Universal, including MSNBC/ NBC.com), the Walt Disney Company (the owner of ABC), Viacom/ CBS, Time Warner (owner of CNN), and Twenty-First Century Fox (i.e. sleazy pressslord Rupert Murdoch).

These five media conglomerates run by Stephen B. Burke, Robert A. Iger, Leslie Moonves, Jeff Zucker, and, well, Rupert Murdoch are trying to drown your grandchildren. Please do drop them a line (contacts hyperlinked except Fox, which is a multi-billion-dollar trolling operation so why bother?) and let them know you arent happy about their plans for genocide against our future generations.

Several studies have substantiated that none of the television news operations have bothered to report on policy during this election it has all been horse race 24/7. This is because multi-billion dollar corporations are extracting money from you and they dont want you getting uppity about policy issues.

Since they didnt tell you, I will. Here are 5 climate tie-ins with the election that the news channels didnt convene panels to dissect at length. Maybe they didnt report them at all. Maybe it was in a single sentence or in that ticker at the bottom where they sometimes put real news.

1. It is rare for China to say anything to a US presidential candidate publicly. Beijing nevertheless came out and blasted Donald Trump for saying he would renege on the Paris climate agreement. Xie Zhenhua, Chinas top climate negotiator, said that The world is moving towards balancing environmental protection and economic growth. Of politicians like Trump, he added, If they resist this trend, I dont think theyll win the support of their people, and their countrys economic and social progress will also be affected . . . I believe a wise political leader should take policy stances that conform with global trends . . . China is investing heavily in renewables at some social cost and wont sit still for US backsliding.

2. While the election has been going on, something has gone seriously wrong with this years arctic sea ice cover. Zack Labe, a doctoral student in climate science, posted to Twitter, Sea ice extent has set 142 new daily record lows. and for the first time since 1970 hadnt reached seven million square kilometres by November. Trust me. This is monstrously bad. The less ice on land in the arctic and antarctic, the more water in the sea. If your house is near a beach, this should concern you. A lot. Why, you might even expect it to be on the news.

NASA Goddard:  Older Arctic Sea Ice Disappearing

3. The Paris Climate accord became international law on Friday. Question: Is America going to be a scofflaw nation and rampage around destroying the climate for everyone on earth?

4. Americans are already being displaced from their homes by climate change.

5. Our burning of fossil fuels now seems likely to throw the Southwest into a decades-long mega-drought.

So go ahead and talk about the trivial things, about the horse race, about the petty insults back and forth and the emails (there doesnt seem anything interesting in the emails).

Meanwhile the single biggest story of this election season is being studiedly ignored in the campaign (well, Hillary brought out Al Gore for one day and she wants lots of solar panels) and more especially on our television sets. It is like an alternate reality where we have no idea that emitting billions of metric tons of carbon dioxide every year by driving cars and heating homes and businesses etc. are causing a planetary melt-down.

At least please let your congressional representatives know you are worried about this issue. They can be pressured. And, I think we need some nice legal marches.
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By Aimee Shalan | Al-Shabaka | (Maan News Agency) |  

If Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour passes over the perimeter of her homes driveway in her village of Reineh in the Galilee, an alarm will sound at the British multinational security firm G4S and the Israeli authorities will be alerted. Israeli police arrested Tatour in the early hours of Oct. 11, 2015 for her poem, Qawem ya shaabi qawemhum (Resist My People, Resist Them), which was posted to her YouTube account earlier that month. On Nov. 2, Israel charged her with incitement to violence and support for a terrorist organization.

In January, after three months in prison, Tatour was placed under house arrest near Tel Aviv, far from her village. After a lengthy struggle, the prosecution conceded in July that she could be held in her familys home. While Tatours trial proceeds, she will remain under house arrest and will continue to be monitored by G4S as a threat to Israels security.

Such British complicity in the cultural repression of Palestinians is not a recent phenomenon. One can argue that it has its roots in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which, by calling for the establishment of a nation for the Jewish people while all but disregarding the existence of the Palestinians inhabiting the land in question, set in motion the process of dispossession, exile, and social and cultural fragmentation that continues to the present day. And this was but the beginning of a British approach to the Palestinian people that has suppressed their culture and history.

Indeed, today, as Israel funnels substantial financial resources into promoting its cultural output internationally, the United Kingdom (UK) is taking measures to censor Palestinian cultural expression and creativity. From the involvement of private companies such as G4S in the house arrest of Tatour to ministerial moves to block the cultural boycott and stifle academic debate, while UK visas are frequently denied to Palestinian artists and educators, Britains repressive actions are aiding Israel by supporting its one-sided narrative  a narrative that helps Israel continue its occupation of Palestinian territory and deepen its apartheid regime.

There will likely be much scholarly and policy analysis of the fallout from the Balfour Declaration for Palestine and the surrounding countries over the past 100 years (including by think tanks such as Al-Shabaka.) This commentary makes the case for a focus on the cultural dimension and provides the background and arguments for such a focus by examining the British role, then and now.

Balfour and the Origins of Cultural Repression

Despite its devastating impact on Palestinians, the Balfour Declaration means little to most people in Britain. If you were to ask the average person on a UK street what it was, they would most likely know next to nothing about the document.

However, the British government is planning to commemorate the centenary of the declaration in November 2017. Earlier this year, former British Prime Minister David Cameron said he wanted the UK government to mark the anniversary together with the Jewish community in the most appropriate way. At the time, it was not altogether clear what he meant by appropriate. Today, we are none the wiser, but plans to mark the occasion are nonetheless still rumored to be in the pipeline, though now under the auspices of Britains controversial new foreign secretary, Boris Johnson.

In his brief but fateful 1917 declaration, then Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour proclaimed the British government would use their best endeavors to facilitate the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people. Thus, even before the British Mandate had officially begun, Balfour promised Palestine to the Zionist Federation without the consent of its Palestinian inhabitants. His concise erasure of Palestinian culture and history is found within the very vocabulary he used, referring to the indigenous, majority population only as non-Jewish.

Though Balfour did acknowledge Palestines inhabitants two years later, he assigned their lives less value than the Jewish people who would take possession of the land. He announced in a memorandum, Zionism be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in an age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.

The logical outcome of this denial of Palestinian culture and history was the eventual dispossession and dispersal of the Palestinian population in 1948, followed by the demolition or Judaization of towns and villages emptied of their inhabitants.

The prejudicial sentiment expressed by Balfour underscores the UKs relations with Israel to this day. It therefore comes as little surprise that the government did not consult with the UKs Palestinian community before announcing its intention to mark the centenary.

Nevertheless, Palestinians are already mobilizing to take action against the UK for its historic role in the purloining of Palestine. Last year, Egypts Popular Palestinian Campaign to sue the United Kingdom initiated a case to restore the right of the Palestinian people to their land. In addition, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas recently announced that he intends to sue the UK government over the Balfour Declaration. He also accused Britain of supporting Israeli crimes since the end of its mandate over Palestine and called on the Arab League to help the Palestinian Authority launch its lawsuit.

The legacy of Balfour and the British Mandate includes a long history of Israel repressing Palestinian expression, from the plundering of Palestinian libraries and the imprisonment of Palestinian writers to the banning of Palestinian cultural activities and the obliteration of cultural sites and schools in Gaza.

Immediately after the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948, Palestinians who remained within the borders of what then became Israel were forbidden to study their cultural inheritance or to remember their immediate past.

An obituary of Mahmoud Darwish in 2008 recalled how, when he was eight years old, the young poet recited a poem at his schools annual celebration of Israels birth about the inequality he noticed between the lives of Arab boys and Jewish boys. Afterward, the Israeli military governor summoned him. If you go on writing such poetry he said, Ill stop your father working in the quarry. The utterance of the simplest of truths by a Palestinian child clearly frightened the Israeli military governor enough to threaten the livelihood of his family.

Then, as now, the Israeli authorities could not countenance the cultural expression of a Palestinian consciousness. Darwish went on to be imprisoned five times by the Israeli authorities, mostly charged with reciting poetry thought to be seditious and detrimental to Israels status and stability.

Attempts to stifle Darwishs voice have continued beyond his death. In July 2016, Israels defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, went so far as to equate the poets work to Mein Kampf after Israeli army radio unexpectedly broadcast Darwishs poem, ID Card. Liebermans comments came after the Israeli culture minister, Miri Regev, called on him to stop funding the radio station on the grounds that it had gone off the rails and was providing a platform for the Palestinian narrative.

It would thus seem that very little has changed since the early days of Israels establishment. And recent moves by the UK to block the cultural boycott and stifle academic debate show a significant rise in the extent to which Britain has become openly involved in the censorship of those speaking out against Israel.

Originally published in full on Al-Shabakas website on October 26, 2016.

The views expressed in this article are the authors and do not necessarily reflect Maan News Agencys or Informed Comments editorial policy.

Al-Shabaka is an independent non-profit organization whose mission is to educate and foster public debate on Palestinian human rights and self-determination within the framework of international law.

In this Al-Shabaka policy brief, Aimee Shalan analyzes the legacy of the Balfour Declaration on Palestinian-British relations in the occupied Palestinian territory and the United Kingdom, particularly regarding the repressing of Palestinian cultural voices. The second part of this brief will be published on Saturday.
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TeleSur |  

Current FBI agents have told outlets that there are elements within the agency leaking info in order to favor Donald Trump.

FBI Director James Comey was driven in part by a fear of leaks from within his agency when he decided to tell Congress the FBI was investigating newly discovered emails related to Hillary Clinton, law enforcement sources said on Thursday.

There is now mounting evidence to suggest that a group within the FBI may been acting out of an interest to cause harm to the Clinton campaign.

Two law enforcement sources familiar with the FBIs New York Field Office, which initially discovered the emails, said a faction of investigators based in the office is known to be hostile to Hillary Clinton. A spokeswoman for the FBIs New York office said she had no knowledge about this.

A report from the Guardian also indicated that there is hostility toward the U.S Democratic presidential candidate.

The FBI is Trumpland, one current agent told the Guardian, referring to Republican nominee Donald Trump.

The agent added that the reason why theyre leaking is theyre pro-Trump.

Democratic Party sources also said such a faction was likely responsible for a recent surge in media leaks on alleged details of an ongoing FBI investigation of the Clinton Foundation.

According to various media reports, the anger toward Clinton hit a fever pitch when Comey decided in July not to recommend an indictment for Clintons use of the unauthorized server at her home in Chappaqua, New York  rather than the State Department system  after classified government secrets were found in some of her emails.

That controversy was revived when Comey disclosed in a letter to senior lawmakers that the FBI was looking at new emails as part of a probe into Clintons use of a private email system while secretary of state.

The new emails turned up as FBI investigators were examining electronic devices used by former Democratic Representative Anthony Weiner in connection with an alleged sexting scandal. Weiners estranged wife, Huma Abedin, is a Clinton confidante.

Further complicating matters, the actions of FBI Director Comey may have broken the law.

On Sunday, U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid wrote to Comey to accuse him of partisan actions that may have been contrary to the 1939 Hatch Act.

Richard Painter, a chief White House ethics lawyer to former Republican President George W. Bush, accused Comey on Saturday of violating the Hatch Act.

The Hatch Act bars government employees from taking part in political activities that include soliciting or accepting donations from a political party and using official authority to interfere with the outcome of an election.

A Hatch Act investigation is an administrative, not a criminal, matter. Penalties may include removal from office, a demotion or temporary suspension, or a civil penalty no higher than $1,000. In cases of high-level officials, the disciplinary decisions on OSC actions are made by the president.

It is unclear if the FBI inquiry has upset the balance in the race, though 62 percent of likely voters yet to vote said the FBI review would make no difference to their vote, while 57 percent of Republican supporters said that they were less likely to vote for Clinton after the FBI review.

The race has tightened with several swing states that Republican Donald Trump must win shifting from favoring Democrat Hillary Clinton to being toss-ups, according to polling conducted by the Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation project.

The two presidential candidates are now tied in Florida and North Carolina, and Clintons lead in Michigan has narrowed so much that the state is too close to call. Ohio remains a dead heat and Pennsylvania is now tilting to Clinton.

With the White House race decided through the Electoral College system of tallying wins on a state-by-state basis, Clinton and Trump are focused on a handful of battleground states. Trump began the day in Florida before heading to North Carolina for two rallies. Clinton was in North Carolina for two rallies.

Florida and North Carolina are both must-win states for Trump as he tries to piece together the 270 electoral votes needed to capture the White House. Clinton, who has comfortable leads in big states such as California and New York, could more easily reach 270 votes without winning either Florida or North Carolina.

Via TeleSur



Related video added by Juan Cole:

Big Picture RT: Is the FBI really Trumpland?
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By Mustafa Habib | Baghdad | (Niqash.org) |  

Its not only the Iraqi army gunning for the Islamic State in Mosul. The extremists former allies, who helped them control the city, have also declared a desire for revenge, two years after they were betrayed.

On October 17, just before dawn in Iraq, the countrys Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared that the battle to push the Islamic State group out of Mosul had begun. The extremist group had been in control of the city since June 2014. But two days before this announcement, another group was also declaring war on the Islamic State, or IS, group.



Members of the Naqshbandi Army.

This was the militia known as the Jaysh al-Tariqa al-Naqshbandia  or the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order. This movement  which has strong links to Saddam Husseins outlawed Baath political party  is classified as a terrorist organization by many. The Naqshbandi Army is led by former members of the Baath party and senior officers of the former Iraqi army and is under the command of Saddam Husseins deputy, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who is described by the New York Times as a top military commander and a vice president in the Hussein government and one of the few prominent Baathists to evade capture by the Americans.

In a statement issued last week, the Naqshbandi Army called upon the people of Mosul to rise up against the IS group and they warned the Shiite Muslim volunteer militias, who are poised to enter the fray in towns around Mosul, not to enter the city.

They have the same convictions they always did. They also have the ability to organize within just a few days. So theyre waiting for their opportunity.

The Naqshbandi Army are not the only group inside Mosul to prepare to take revenge on the IS group. There are other pockets of resistance too. Small groups with limited weapons are starting to announce their plans to fight the group. These include the so-called Prophet Yunus Brigades, the Mosul Brigades, Ahrar al-Mosul (or the Free People of Mosul) and the M movement, with M being the first letter of the Arabic word, muqawama, which means resistance.

Last week the group Ahrar al-Mosul announced that they had assassinated one of the IS groups leaders, a man known as Abu al-Farouq, who was apparently responsible for managing the extremists spoils of war. And the Mosul Brigades claimed they had attacked a weapons storehouse. There have also been reports from the news agency, Reuters, of a coup attempt that was foiled by the IS group and which resulted in 58 executions.

But none of this can be confirmed and while the resistance groups have started to make noises about what they are doing, the locals have little faith in them as yet  they are small and not centrally organized. Its likely they also lack weapons.

The Naqshbandi Army are quite likely to be one of the groups most worrying the IS group inside the city right now. After all, they also bear the IS group a big grudge; back in 2014, the IS group betrayed them badly.

Looking back to when the extremists first took control of Mosul just over two years ago, the IS group appeared to have formed alliances with other armed factions inside Mosul in order to take control of the city. All of these were opposed to the then-Iraqi government headed by Nouri al-Maliki and had made good use of the anger that many of the people of Mosul, with its Sunni Muslim majority population, felt towards the Shiite Muslim-led government.

An alliance was established that brought the Naqshbandi Army together with the IS group as well as with other smaller local militias, like Ansar al-Sunna, and these groups worked together against government forces to establish what would eventually became an IS stronghold.

In June 2014, locals in the city were pleased about this revolution against the government and when they came out onto the streets to celebrate, some carried posters of Saddam Hussein and of his red-haired, former deputy, al-Douri. A committee made up of former army officers and Baath party officials held a meeting and decided that one of their own, veteran military man, Hashim al-Jammas, who had fought in the Iran-Iraq war, should be the new mayor of the city. They even decided to ask the foreign fighters who had arrived with the IS group to leave  after thanking them for their efforts, of course. The council saw the changes in Mosul as a revolution by and for local Sunnis, not as an invasion by foreign extremists.

However the IS group surprised all of their co-conspirators on the morning of Friday, June 13, 2014, when it refused the councils requests and asked all other factions to swear allegiance to it, or to withdraw and hand over their weapons, under threat of death.

The IS group began to target members of the other armed militias, especially those belonging to the Naqshbandi Army, Ansar al-Sunna and the Salahaddin Brigades, who were united in their refusal to swear allegiance to the IS group.

And over the past two years, the IS group has continued to arrest or kill any individual associated with the Naqshbandi Army, the former Baath party or the former Iraqi army. A few weeks ago dozens of retired soldiers were arrested by the group and their fate remains unknown.

Unlike in the provinces of Anbar and Salahaddin the members of militias like the Naqshbandi Army in Mosul were organized and disciplined; their members and leaders were army veterans. Whereas in those central Iraqi provinces, the militias tended to be led by clerics who relied on tribal allegiances and fighters. Additionally, Mosul is not a city that runs on tribal loyalties, like so many others in Iraq. Locals tend to be loyal to a certain organization or party, rather than a clan.

This is part of the reason that the US was unable to encourage locals to form their own anti-extremist fighting groups in Mosul, as they did in Anbar, Salahaddin and Diyala. The men who might resist were not as faithful to family ties as they were elsewhere; every single one had to be persuaded, rather than just one or two tribal leaders.

As the fighting for the city has started, it is clear that the IS group is increasingly paranoid about potential soldiers inside the city.

With good reason, says Mohammed Nouri, an MP from Mosul. There is some coordination between the citys internal resistance and the Iraqi security forces and the international coalition conducting airstrikes in Iraq, he confirms.

Despite the risks and the fact they are not well armed, there are many individuals inside Mosul resisting the IS group, he told NIQASH. They have made many sacrifices as the IS group arrests and kills them to frighten others away from resistance.

There will be further coup attempts when the Iraqi army reaches the outskirts of Mosul, suggests Abu Qais al-Jibouri, a former member of the Baath party and former leader in the Naqshbandi Army, who joined the governments reconciliation project three years ago and now provides analysis and information on extremist groups. The factions in Mosul belonging to the Baath party and to the Naqshbandi Army are powerless at the moment and they are being harassed and terrorized by the IS group. But they are waiting for the right opportunity to act.

They still have the same convictions and ideology they always did, al-Jibouri told NIQASH. They also have the ability to organize within just a few days. So theyre waiting for the collapse of the extremist group so they can get to the weapons stores to arm themselves and so they can start to take revenge on the IS group, which turned against them two years ago.

Still, al-Jibouri cautions, these smaller groups inside Mosul may not be the trusted allies the Iraqi government needs in the northern city. They may well turn against the government again in the near future.

For one thing, it is clear that most of the members of the IS group in Mosul are Iraqis and that many are actually former members of the Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein. Their primary goal is power, al-Jibouri notes. They left the organization, Al Qaeda in Iraq, took some theology lessons and then became part of the IS group  and many say they did this for their own ends, not because they believe firmly in religious law or the fantastical ideology the IS group espouses. Hundreds of these kinds of individuals joined the IS group and if things start to look grim in Mosul, they will simply fade back into their families and civilian life and wait for the next opportunity, al-Jibouri suggests.

The lack of trust goes both ways. The smaller armed groups inside Mosul may well be preparing for the IS groups demise. But they also remain reluctant to cooperate fully with the Iraqi government forces. They worry that the same thing that happened to those Iraqis who cooperated with the US to fight Al Qaeda will happen to them, once the battle has finished. Under former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, those Sunni Iraqis who turned against Al Qaeda never received any of the things that they were promised, such as money, security and being absorbed into the official armed forces.

Via Niqash.org
[JURIST] A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York [official website] on Thursday denied [opinion, PDF] a motion for preliminary injunction [complaint, PDF] challenging the New York law [text] that makes it a misdemeanor crime for voters to post pictures of their ballots on social media. The plaintiffs had challenged [JURIST report] the law last week, claiming that banning ballot selfies violates citizens freedom of speech and expression and hinders the cultural movement that promotes taking pride in ones vote. Judge Kevin Castel, however, took issue with how closely the challenge comes to election day and stated that plaintiffs failed to establish a clear or substantial likelihood of success required to justify injunction. Castel further stated that the publics interest in orderly elections outweighs the plaintiffs interest in taking and posting ballot selfies. The plaintiff have expressed [Reuters report] their disappointment in the ruling and do not intend to file an appeal at this time.

Voter rights continue to plague this election cycle, and more courts have examined the issue of ballot selfies approaching the US general election. Currently 18 states have restricted the practice of taking of ballot selfies. On Thursday a federal judge denied [JURIST report] a legal challenge to the Californias ban on ballot selfies. Last week the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit granted a stay [JURIST report] on the preliminary injunction that had halted Michigans ban on taking ballot selfies. In November a similar law banning the ballot selfie was rejected [JURIST report] in New Hampshire.
Bridget Kelly and William Baroni, former New Jersey officials under Governor Chris Christie [official website], were found guilty [tweet; US Attorneys Office for the District of New Jersey] Friday of all counts against them for the 2013 lane closings on the George Washington Bridge. Kelly and Baroni were facing nine counts [press release] including conspiring to fraudulently misuse federal property, wire fraud and deprivation of civil rights. The prosecution alleged [WSJ report] that Kelly and Baroni used the lane closings to cause massive traffic jams as an act of revenge against a New Jersey mayor for not supporting Christies reelection efforts.

Christie has denied having any knowledge that the closures, implemented under the guise of a traffic study, were to be used as political retaliation. Last month a New Jersey judge signed a summons accusing [JURIST report] Christie of misconduct for his alleged role in the closure of the bridge lanes. Christie was not charged by federal prosecutors or held responsible by other investigations into the George Washington Bridge lane-closure. The charges in the summons come from a citizens misconduct complaint. The complaint alleges that Christie knowingly refrained from ordering that his subordinates take all necessary action to re-open local access lanes.
[JURIST] The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) [advocacy website] on Friday urged [press release, PDF, in Hungarian] the EU to better address Hungarys sustained attack on human rights and democracy since Prime Minister Viktor Orban [official website, in Hungarian] took office in 2010. Upon the beginning of Orbans term, Hungary adopted [report] a new constitution called the Fundamental Law [text, PDF], which has since been criticized for neglecting international human rights standards and fast-tracking political procedures in a manner that jeopardizes the countrys separation of powers. In the Paris-based organizations report [text, PDF], the FIDH described how the changes to Hungarys laws have since threatened the rights of not only its civil society but also the migrants and refugees that have come to its borders. The FIDH has accused the EU of largely ignoring these issues and failing to utilize the available mechanisms to hold Hungary accountable for its actions. The FIDH has therefore called on the EU to use Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union [text, PDF] to address these issues and suspend Hungarys treaty rights if necessary. Hungary has rejected [AP report] the FIDHs accusations, stressing that the country must be allowed to manage its own national interests and security concerns.

The FIDHs accusations echo similar statements [JURIST report] made by Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] in 2015 against the EU for refusing to take action to address Hungarys laws and practices regarding human rights. In 2013 the Hungarian government enacted constitutional amendments [JURIST report] after receiving criticism over its 2012 amendments. The amendments contained new rules on the recognition of religious groups, as well as modifications to the bans on political advertisements on commercial television and radio stations. The changes allowed political campaign advertisements on commercial TV and radio, but broadcasters would not be allowed to charge for them. Political parties were also be given equal air time. The Hungarian Justice Minister stated that the amendments were proposed as the result of pressure due to the harsh criticism Hungary received. HRW and other human rights groups criticized [JURIST report] the changes as largely cosmetic, highlighting a lack of resolve over issues surrounding weakened human rights protections in the country.
The outlook for the upcoming winter is a big uncertainty, with no definitive answers for how much snow we might have or how cold it could be. However, NWS is certain that at some point in the next five months or so, severe weather will affect Nebraska. NWS stresses the importance of educating and preparing the community to meet the challenges that lie ahead.
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FILE - In this Sept. 29, 2016 file photo, emergency personnel respond to a train crash in the Hoboken train station, in Hoboken, N.J. Lawmakers investigating September's deadly New Jersey Transit train crash could finally get a chance to question top agency officials who skipped out on an oversight hearing last month. NJ Transit says new executive director Steve Santoro and other key leaders will testify before the legislative committee on Friday, Nov. 4, 2016 (Tariq Zehawi/The Record via AP, File)
Deborah Livingstone, president of Peachland Arts Council stands in front of Remembrance Day banners in downtown Peachland on Wednesday. The 31 banners which just went up will be up for two weeks till after Remembrance Day.
Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) Artem Sytnyk again proposed to the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) to use technical opportunities of the Bureau to check electronic declarations of officials and politicians.

"I address NACP for the tenth time 10 or 15 people from NACP could start working in the Bureau," he said during the discussion on operations of NABU in Kyiv on Saturday.

He said that NACP employees could use technical opportunities of NABU and get access to the registers of the Justice Ministry, Interior Ministry and other agencies when they examine e-declarations. NACP does not have these resources today.
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Doc, Im tired.

This is a refrain that we hear from many of our patients who have been incarcerated in Californias prisons for decades. Now past the midway points of their lives, our patients describe how the absence of autonomy  what they eat, how they dress, how frequently they bathe, how they spend their day, and when they communicate with their families  has taken its toll, making them weary and despondent. For most of them, the fatigue is inextricably linked to the realization that they are serving a sentence that is disproportionate to their crime.

As physicians, we have no prescription for this type of suffering. The etiology of the problem is political (and financial), embedded in the draconian laws of the tough-on-crime era. Due to these laws, thousands like our patients are currently spending an outsize portion of their lives behind bars.

During his first term, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a law requiring fixed sentences for most crimes, effectively abolishing the possibility of parole. Driven largely by fear, and disproportionately affecting people of color, this was the first of the series of tough-on-crime laws, including the notorious three-strikes law, which produced Californias severely overcrowded prisons. To keep up with the surge in population, California has built 23 new prisons since 1980, bringing the total to 33. In comparison, just one additional campus has been added to the University of California system over this period.

Nearing the end of his tenure, Brown now acknowledges that the criminal justice legislation he supported in the 1970s has had unintended consequences. As physicians, the consequence that we see most clearly is poor health.

In 2001, the health care system in Californias prisons was ruled unconstitutional, and ultimately placed under federal receivership, based on evidence that on average one prisoner died weekly from malpractice or negligence. Although the quality of medical care improved following this decision, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 found that health care remained inadequate due to overcrowding. In other words, although the intention of the tough-on-crime era was incarceration as punishment, a further consequence has been poor health among those incarcerated.

This is the historical context out of which Proposition 57 has emerged. Intended to reduce overcrowding, and backed by Brown, the state ballot measure would expand the possibility of parole to thousands of people who have served their base sentence for a non-violent felony. It comes on the heels of Propositions 36 and 47, under which thousands of people have been released from Californias prisons. The recidivism rates under these measures are in the single digits, far below the state and national averages.

Although improving the health care system by way of lowering the prison population is a major driving force behind Proposition 57, we cannot help but reflect on the significant health benefits that our qualifying patients stand to gain if the measure passes. No matter how much the health care system in Californias prisons improves, there are less visible health consequences of living in prison that are independent of health care access and quality, but rather related to confinement itself.

There is a large body of research demonstrating that people in lower social classes have higher mortality rates than people in higher classes, despite equal access to health care. These findings stand even after accounting for differences, including smoking, obesity, activity, and baseline illness.

The key question raised by this research is why people who are less well off experience more disease and live shorter lives. According to Dr. Michael Marmot, principal investigator for the Whitehall Studies and a leader in the field of the social determinants of health, the answer lies in two factors: autonomy and social participation. These are key features missing in the lives of our patients. By virtue of their confinement, they have little control over their lives, feel disempowered by their circumstances and lack support networks, resulting in a higher burden of disease and death.

We are not naive to the health risks facing those who are re-integrating into the community. More attention and resources need to be invested in the health and safety of people during the re-entry period. However, there is no question that the net health (and other) benefits of freeing an individual from confinement far outweigh the risks.

With this in mind, we call on health care providers in California and other states facing ballot measures on the criminal justice system (e.g., Oklahomas State Questions 780 and 781) in November to consider how their vote will impact the health of human beings living behind bars. For us personally, Proposition 57 presents an opportunity to finally do more than simply bear witness to our patients suffering. We will have the opportunity to improve their health by voting in favor of a measure that would start the process of restoring the autonomy and sense of social belonging needed for a healthy life.

Rahul Vanjani and M. Catherine Trimbur are physicians.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
The investigation of the "gas case" against MP Oleksandr Onyschenko will be completed by the end of this year, and conviction in absentia could apply to him, Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) Artem Sytnyk has said.

"First cases we had launched are in courts or almost in courts. If we had managed to detain Onyschenko, this is one of the first cases In fact, we have reached the final stage. I think that this year depending on the place of staying of the main suspect there will be conviction in absentia or we will send the case to court," he said in Kyiv on Saturday.

He said that earlier on Friday an important person in the case was detained.

"I think that the case is almost finished. The only thing is that we do not have the main suspect. I hope that Interpol would make a positive decision [and put Onyschenko on the international wanted list]," he said.

Onyschenko is suspected of organizing a scheme to steal money from the natural gas production and sale projects with Ukrgazvydobuvannia, resulting in around UAH 3 billion in losses to the state.

The Ukrainian parliament has authorized his arrest and prosecution. However, Onyschenko, using his parliamentary status, fled Ukraine.

On August 8, he was placed on the national wanted list.

On October 19 NABU said that Interpol within 30 days would decide whether or not to declare Onyschenko international fugitive from justice.
Ukrainian PM discusses intensification of cooperation with new Polish ambassador to Ukraine

Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has met Polish Ambassador to Ukraine Jan Pieklo who recently began his diplomatic mission in the country.

The press service of the Ukrainian government has reported, Groysman congratulated the Polish ambassador with the start of his work in Ukraine.

"I would like that the result of our work was the national rapprochement of our countries and deepening of our cooperation," he said.

The prime minister said that Poland is a strategic partner of Ukraine.

"Many years traditionally relations of our two countries are friendly and strategic not only at the national level, but at the local one. I think that our common task is to deepen this cooperation and realize all potential opportunities," Groysman said.

He said that during the 26th Economic Forum in Krynica-Zdroj in September he held negotiations with Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo/

Groysman also said that a meeting of the intergovernmental commission for economic cooperation should be held.

The interlocutors pointed out promising and strategically important cooperation between Ukraine and Poland in many spheres, including trade, economic, infrastructure and transborder cooperation.

"We have many tasks. I hope that we would be able to effectively use the tools we have to deepen this cooperation. Investment, business, cultural exchanges and trade relations  all these we should use by 100%," Groysman said.
     

                    


SHARE Craig Romano, author of Kitsap Hikes, with his son Giovanni at Grand Forest on Bainbridge Island. Romano called the Grand Forest "one of the finest urban trails ... anywhere." (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO) Craig Romano's "Urban Hikes: Kitsap" is now available in bookstores and online.

By Tristan Baurick of the Kitsap Sun

Craig Romano, the author of more than a dozen hiking books, says Kitsap wouldn't have warranted its own trail guide a decade ago.

But he recently noticed a change.

"There's been such a big push for new trails, new parks in Kitsap," he said. "I saw there would be a lot of new opportunities, and that not a lot of people would have heard of these places."

Romano's newest book is all about Kitsap's trails. Published by Seattle-based Mountaineers Books and now popping up in stores, "Urban Trails: Kitsap" highlights 36 short hikes across the Kitsap Peninsula. The 172-page book is loaded with photos and maps. Each trail description notes mileage, elevation gain, difficulty level and information for dog owners and families with kids.

The book is aimed at locals as well as the multitudes who can access Kitsap by ferry.

"They can fight traffic on the east side (of Seattle) or they can hop on a ferry and be in Bremerton or Bainbridge in no time," Romano said.

The book is the first in a planned seven-part urban hikes series. The next two installments will feature destinations around Bellingham and Olympia.

Romano, who lives in Skagit County, says he spent about a year researching for his Kitsap book. And by research, he means hiking.

"I run or walk every place I write about," he said. "Some guide book authors don't do that, but that becomes pretty obvious when a reader actually goes to these places."

Romano gets a little breathless when he starts talking about his favorite Kitsap hiking spots.

Hansville Greenway: "An all-day adventure!"

Guillemot Cove Nature Preserve near Seabeck: "Stunning, one of my absolute favorite places!"

Stephenson Canyon Park in East Bremerton: "Feels like you're deep in the Olympics!"

Grand Forest Park on Bainbridge Island: "One of the finest urban trails, and not just in the Puget Sound region. One of the best anywhere."

He had high praise for the Kitsap County and Bainbridge park systems. With the help of local land trusts and volunteer groups, county and Bainbridge park leaders have rapidly expanded existing parks and added several new ones.

The county parks department acquired more than 1,100 acres over the past two years, and will add new properties near Bangor and Port Gamble in the coming months. The department is also eyeing large timberlands in Hansville and South Kitsap.

Bainbridge's ever-growing Grand Forest now offers hikers an array of terrains  from dark, hilly forest to mountain-view meadow  and trails that link to neighborhoods and other parks.

"The way Bainbridge connects and expands things, there are really places you can spend all day," Romano said.

A college history major, Romano can't help but highlight spots where modern trails intersect with the more colorful events in the county's past. The book touches on the lumber mill days of Port Gamble, naval history at Manchester State Park and Fort Ward Park, and the internment of Japanese Americans at Bainbridge's Pritchard Park, where dozens of families where shipped off to camps during World War II.

Romano puts a spotlight on a few parks that many locals have never heard of, including Square Lake, a large South Kitsap property Washington State Parks no longer promotes, and Anderson Point Park, a sandy beach destination that reopened last year after a lengthy closure.

Romano is an unabashed advocate for getting families outdoors. It makes them fitter, healthier and happier, he says, and it makes them care about and want to preserve natural places. In the book's introduction, he laments the fact that many people think only of the Olympics and Mt. Rainier when planning an outing. But such trips can be costly, time-consuming, and intimidating for inexperienced hikers. Instead of infrequent trips to national parks, Romano wants families to take frequent trips to local parks.

"A lot of people don't know what's in their backyard," he said. "Or else they pooh-pooh it because its not Olympic National Park. That's really too bad, because you can run, hike or walk so many nearby places. You can do it after work, on the weekend. And so many of them are quite stunning."

Hiking Guide Launch

Guide book author Craig Romano will give a photo presentation and reading from his new book, "Urban Trails: Kitsap" on Thursday at the Traveler store, 256 Winslow Way, on Bainbridge Island. The event begins at 7 p.m.
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By Josh Farley of the Kitsap Sun

BREMERTON  The city of Bremerton's transition to "self-insurance" turned out to be short-lived.

After just two years of handling its employees' insurance claims in-house, Bremerton Mayor Patty Lent is abandoning the program and returning to a traditional model of purchasing insurance for the city's more than 300 employees in 2017.

Touted as a cost savings measure, self-funding insurance removed the middleman and allowed the city to pay out its own claims from premiums it collects from employees. But it added risk by requiring the city to cover medical expenses should employees need more care than city officials predicted.

In the first year of self-insurance, the city paid out more than $4 million in claims, more than it expected. Only a small margin was left before claims would have to be covered by city taxpayers.

That prompted Lent to pull the plug.

"I felt it was a vulnerability that we couldn't sustain and we needed to have a buffer," Lent said.

Officials had hoped to develop a reserve account that would withstand bad years. The state Department of Enterprise Services also requires local governments to maintain two months in reserves for paying claims, city Human Resources Director Charlotte Belmore noted.

For 2017, the city signed up for plans that will cost about $3.7 million, Belmore said. Some premiums for employees will actually decrease and some can also enroll after a time in a retiree medical plan, she added.

Bremerton wasn't the only local government to experiment with self-funded insurance. Kitsap County transitioned to it about two years before Bremerton's move. Amber D'Amato, county finance director, said it has worked well, though there were several county employees who submitted hefty claims in 2015

By self-funding, entities essentially trade having to pay for an insurance company's overhead and profit margin in exchange for assuming the risk those companies take on. That could backfire, but it could also save money in the long run, she said.

"Realistically, we're just one catastrophic claim away from disaster," she noted. "But overall we are pleased with decision (to switch)."

Bremerton, which also had a rough 2015 in claims, could not shoulder that load, Lent decided. The county employs about 1,200 people, four times more than the city. That scale likely helped.
Kitsap Rescue Mission volunteer Patti Van Buskirk gives a towel and toiletries to client Leann Gibson-Remey on Thursday at the mission's shelter on Sixth Streete in Bremerton. (LARRY STEAGALL / KITSAP SUN)

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By Josh Farley of the Kitsap Sun

BREMERTON  The organization hoping to become Kitsap County's first year-round homeless shelter got off to a smooth start this week.

Rows of blue chairs inside the lobby of Kitsap Rescue Mission on Sixth Street quickly filled each night with those approved for a night's stay. Each visitor got a towel for a shower and a set of scrubs to wear for sleep.

"This is the only place I could go," said Leann Gibson-Ramey, who spent Thursday night at the shelter. "I have a lot of gratitude that this shelter is here."

While the rescue mission has previously opened a year-round day room and a shelter in winter, Walt Le Couteur, its director, hopes the organization will be open each night permanently. He hired two new staff members to go with about 90 volunteers to run it.

The rescue mission's opening establishes a bottom rung on a ladder of housing options for low-income people in the community. Each person must register with Kitsap Community Resources' Housing Solutions Center in the morning to get a spot. That way, they're punched into a database that helps advocates find them longer term housing as it becomes available, according to Monica Bernhard, KCR's director of Housing and Community Support Services.

Bernhard also applauded the opening as demand for shelter in wintertime grows.

"We continually have waiting lists and as the weather gets colder, they're just aren't places for people to go," she said. "We're absolutely thrilled they're going to be open."

The rescue mission raised $800,000 to buy the building, near Sixth's intersection with Park Avenue, and do demolition and remodeling work inside. Le Couteur said there's much more to be done and that the organization hopes to raise more than $2 million in donations and grants for a complete renovation. For now, the shelter can house up to 30 people each night.

Nearby, the Salvation Army also plans to open a winter shelter. A grant from Kitsap County will kick start its shelter in January, but Salvation Army staff hope the city of Bremerton can help get it running in December, according to Sheryl Piercy, its social services director.

Piercy noted that the Salvation Army's threshold for welcoming guests is lower than the Rescue Mission's  people with dogs, say, or even someone who is intoxicated but not causing trouble could take one of the 40 beds at the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army's shelter is intended to be temporary during the winter.

"I wish we could open sooner," Piercy said.

Carolynne Bowlen, night monitor at the rescue mission, said around 10 people a night have been staying at the shelter in its first week. She has an appreciation for it herself. Without her mother's help, she says she and her children would be homeless.

Without her mother, "I would be just like everyone else here," she said.
Debbie Macomber, center, and her A Good Yarn Shop business partner Sandy Payne reminisce about their times at the shop on Friday. The yarn shop closed Friday. (LARRY STEAGALL / KITSAP SUN)

By Christina Henry of the Kitsap Sun

PORT ORCHARD  It's the end of one chapter for Debbie Macomber and the start of another.

The best-selling author and avid knitter is closing A Good Yarn Shop in Port Orchard after eight years in business. Macomber wants to expand the benevolent arm of Debbie Macomber, Inc., which includes efforts to place hand-knit blankets in the arms of refugee children, said her daughter and business manager Adele LaCombe.

Macomber, whose works of women's fiction have been translated into many languages, based her Cedar Cove series on the town of Port Orchard, where she and husband Wayne raised their children. A Good Yarn Shop was loosely based on a 2005 book in her Blossom Street series.

"I always said that if I couldn't be a writer, I'd own a yarn store," Macomber said. "With A Good Yarn Shop, I got to do both. I've been so blessed to be able to share my passions for writing and knitting with our community, and fellow knitters and readers."

On Friday, the shop's last day in business, many regulars stopped in to say goodbye and to reminisce.

"This was more than a place to buy yarn," said Sue Dwyer of Port Orchard. "This was where we met our friends. I'm deeply saddened."

The shop became a place for people involved in fabric arts to exchange ideas and learn from one another, said Jenn Mohr of Port Orchard, a spinner who learned to knit from people at the shop.

"As soon as you walked in, you had instant camaraderie and friendship with other people in the store," Mohr said "I'm heartbroken."

"It was just welcoming. It was just a nice place to come," said Cindy Allison of Bremerton.

The physical shop fostered a large online community of knitters loyal to Macomber, which led to her Knit One Bless Two initiative. The charitable program encourages Macomber's readers and other knitters to make hats, scarves, blankets and sweaters that have filled hospitals, homeless shelters and elementary schools around the world.

In 2013, Macomber became national spokeswoman for World Vision's Knit for Kids. In 2014, she distributed hand-knit sweaters to children in Kenya.

World Vision plans to distribute 32,000 blankets in backpacks to children in refugee camps and war torn areas of the Middle East. Macomber is spearheading publicity about the blanket collection.

"The numbers are staggering," said LaCombe of children displaced by conflict. "We as a company and Debbie felt personally drawn to help them."

LaCombe recently traveled to a refugee camp in Jordan to distribute blankets. She recalls one Syrian family she met who had left all their possessions behind, including family photos. The mother was grateful for the handcrafted blankets her children received, LaCombe said.

Macomber's company next wants to focus on sponsoring education initiatives in Lebanon and Jordan, both inside refugee camps and outside, as those countries' resources have been drained by supporting refugees, LaCombe said.

Knitters are urged to send their blankets directly to World Vision.

In other changes, Macomber's Victorian Rose Tea Room over the summer became The Grey House Cafe. The bright pink Victorian-style building  in Macomber's Village Square complex, where the yarn shop and Macomber's offices are located  is now a stately gray. The cafe still serves breakfast, lunch and high tea. Hallmark has made it a licensed outlet for Cedar Cove gifts.

LaCombe said the decision to close the yarn shop was driven from the perspective, "where is our time best spent?" She hopes A Good Yarn Shop's online community of knitters will stay together.

Meanwhile, knitters who regularly gathered at the shop are looking for a new home. Sandy Payne of Gig Harbor, who is Macomber's business partner in the yarn shop, has been putting out feelers.

Mohr, the spinner, is hopeful friendships knit together at the yarn shop will stay strong.

"We'll find ways to keep meeting with each other," she said.

And of course they'll keep on knitting.
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The assistance from Japan in providing technical equipment for Ukraine's international broadcasting multimedia platform has been discussed by Ukrainian Information Policy Minister Yuriy Stets and Japanese Ambassador to Ukraine Shigeki Sumi.

The press service of the Information Policy Ministry reported that at a meeting on Thursday the sides also agreed to try to find a possibility of launching the Japanese version of Ukrinform news agency that would help Japanese to receive information directly from Ukraine.

Stets asked Shigeki Sumi to raise the issue of Roman Suschenko, a special correspondent of the Ukrinform Ukrainian national news agency arrested in Moscow for international discussion.

"I would kindly request you to assist in raising this issue because any statement from a country is a path of liberation for the journalist," he said, adding that the issue is a political one.

Shigeki Sumi expressed his understanding of the importance regarding the issue of the arrested Ukrainian correspondent. He pointed out an interest in receiving information directly from Ukrainian sources for Japan.
The U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch has said that Ukraine would not be urged to implement its political liabilities foreseen in the Minsk agreements until Russia fulfills its liabilities in the security sector.

Minsk agreements give a better chance for restoring peace in Ukraine and they determine the clear way to peace and restoration of Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty on the territories of Donbas that are not beyond Ukraine's control, she said. Local election could be held only if the security conditions are observed meeting Ukrainian legislation and OSCE standards, Yovanovitch said in an interview with ZN.UA published on Saturday.

She said that Vice President of the U.S. Joe Biden focused on the U.S. efforts aimed at providing for the implementation of liabilities under Minsk agreements by Russia.

Yovanovitch also said that the U.S. supports powers of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) and welcomes efforts of its governor Valeriya Gontareva aimed at cleaning up the banking sector. The transparent and successful banking sector is guarantee of economic restoration in Ukraine, she said. Ukrainian banks mean a lot for financing of innovations and investment. This would trigger economic growth and success of the private sector, the ambassador said.
Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) Artem Sytnyk has said that trends that show that Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) does not want to be deprived of the function of investors are seen.

"If there is a political will, this agency [State Bureau of Investigations] could be created Prosecutor General's Officeis trying to leave investigation as a tool being the most powerful in Prosecutor General's Office," Sytnek said on Saturday.

He said that Prosecutor General's Office divisions have lost the function of general control. The representative function of PGO has been restricted now, and this is the positive result of the reform.

"If the PGO loses investigation, this will be the office to support public prosecution that would not have a powerful resource," he said.

He recalled that at present, the second phase of testing candidates to the State Bureau of Investigations is being held. The creation of this agency is not covered well in media.

He backs the creation of the State Bureau of Investigations so that NABU had a reliable partner.
Lee Rae-na / Captured from KBS



By Park Si-soo



Lee Rae-na, a daughter-in-law of CJ Group Chairman Lee Jay-hyun, was found dead at her home in New Haven, Connecticut, on Friday morning (local time), said the company on Saturday. She was 20.



The exact cause of her death is unknown, according to CJ officials. She married the chairman's son and the group's heir apparent Lee Sun-ho in Seoul in April.













She is a daughter of Lee Yong-kyu, a former member of K-pop group Koreana and relative of Korean actress Clara Lee.
By Park Si-soo

More than 100,000 people took to streets to hold an anti-president rally at the Gwanghwamun Plaza in downtown Seoul, Saturday evening.



They are chanting anti-president slogans with placards that read "Park Geun-hye must step down."



Police have dispatched some 20,000 riot police officers to control the protest and prevent angry protesters from making their way toward the presidential office, Cheong Wa Dae, which is located just a few kilometers away from the scene.










Mercedes-Benz's all-new E300 sedan



By Jhoo Dong-chan

Mercedes-Benz Korea, the German automaker's affiliate here, sold more than 6,000 cars last month, a record high figure in its history. Another German luxury brand BMW also sold over 5,000 cars in Korea last month, nipping at the heels of Mercedes-Benz Korea.

The German premium automakers' performances are in stark contrast with other German players Audi and Volkswagen, which struggle to find their feet after reputation damage caused by the government's cancellation of their sales licenses earlier this year.

According to a Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association (KAIDA), Mercedes-Benz Korea sold a total of 6,400 cars in Korea last month, to carve out a 31 percent of the market for imported automotives, a record monthly figure among the KAIDA members.

Mercedes-Benz Korea's spike is attributable to the success of the all-new E-Class sedan, fully redesigned after seven years with a distinct style, enhanced efficiency and technological innovation.

Since Mercedes-Benz started to market the all-new E300 and E220d here in July, both models have been the best sellers for three consecutive months.

Thanks to the E-Class models' surge, Mercedes-Benz topped a 30 percent market sales among imported automakers in August, and sold 5,087 cars in September for a 15 percent increase year-on-year.

The rival BMW also sold 5,415 cars last month, following Mercedes-Benz by an inch.

BMW Korea's results are even more remarkable considering it has not introduced the new 5-Series, the German automaker's popular sedan model, to Korea this year.

BMW's strong sales last month was led by the popular 520d. The mid-size sedan sold 1,732 cars last month.

The BMW 520d has been the best-selling imported car in Korea during the January-September period of 2016, a strong candidate for "the imported car of the year."

In the meantime, Volkswagen and its sister brand Audi have remained underachievers after the emission scandal.

Audi and Volkswagen sold 506 and 184 cars, respectively, in September. The figures further slipped to 475 and 30 cars apiece last month.

"If the poor sales trends continue, Audi and Volkswagen should consider pulling out of Korea. As you know, lots of people lost interest in the two brands after the worldwide emission scandal," said an industry insider who asked not to be named.

"Along with Audi and Volkswagen, other imported automakers' sales were not very good this year, but only Mercedes-Benz and BMW show strength. It will be interesting to see whether the two German automakers will be able to continue their momentum during the remainder of this year."
An advanced U.S. missile defense system will be deployed to South Korea in the next eight to 10 months to better counter growing threats from North Korea, the chief of U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) said Friday.

Gen. Vincent K. Brooks made the remarks in a seminar hosted by the Association of the Republic of Korea Army in Seoul.

In July, South Korea and the U.S. announced a decision to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea to better defend against the North's evolving nuclear and missile threats.

As for the issue of rotational deployment of strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula, Brooks said "that is under review" and it is a decision to be made by high-ranking policymakers.

But the four-star general made it clear that the idea of bringing nuclear weapons back to the peninsula will "complicate" the situation in the Asia-Pacific region.

This year alone, Pyongyang has conducted two nuclear tests in January and September and launched a series of missiles as part its efforts to achieve the goal of developing a nuclear-tipped long-range ballistic missile that could hit parts of the U.S. mainland. (Yonhap)
Uhm Hyun-Kyung is confirmed to be one of the cast members of the new SBS drama Defendant along with Kim Min-Seok and veteran actor Uhm Ki-Joon. The lead actor and actres for the drama is still undetermined, because both Ji Sung and Han Ye-Seul have not confirmed their participation.

Defendant is scheduled to air in 2017 to replace Romantic Doctor, Teacher Kim" that currently replace the time slot of Moon Lover: Scarlet Heart Ryeo as Monday and Tuesday night drama on SBS starting Nov. 7.

Last week actress Uhm Hyun-Kung has confirmed her role as second lead character in the drama according to report by JTBC News. Hyun-Kyung will join veteran actor Uhm Ki-Joon who has already confirmed their participation in the drama.

Hyun-Kyung is known as the female host in the KBS variety show Happy Together Season 3. She hosted the show with four best KBS variety show male hosts Yoo Jae-Suk, Park Myeong-Su, Jun Hyun-Moo and Jo Se-Ho. Happy Together is one of the long running Thursday night variety show.

Previously, young actor Kim Min-Seok have confirmed his joining the cast member of Defendant as reported by News One. The drama is written by script writer Choi Soo-Jin whose previous work is SBS drama City Hunter in 2011.

Director Jo Young-Gwang will direct the thriller drama which tells the story of prison break. Jos previous work was SBS Hyde, Jekyll and Me in 2015.

Defendant follows the story of a prosecutor Park Jung-Woo who finds himself suffered an amnesia and being locked up in the prison cell. He was sentenced to death for a false accusation. He must try to remember things and proe his innocence.

Actor Ji Sung and actress Han Ye-Seul have been offered to become lead actor and actress in the drama, but neither of them have confirmed to participate.

Meanwhile, watch how Uhm Hyun-Kyung showed her charm in the Happy Together episode 340 hosting the casts of 1 Night 2 Days with her seonbae-nim with an English subtitle below:


Ladies prepare yourselves because it has been confirmed that Lee Joon Ki (Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo), Lee Jong Suk (Pinocchio, I Can Hear Your Voice), and Ji Chang Wook (K2,Healer, Empress Ki) will be coming together along with Park Hae Jin (My Love from the Star), EXO's Kai and 2PM's Taecyeon all in one show! This will definitely be a Hallyu dream come true for k-drama fans because six of the hottest and most popular men in South Korea today will be joining forces with the Lee Cho Hee, in a brand new web mini drama 'First Kiss for the Sixth Time.'

According to a report made by Allkpop, the news has already been confirmed by News 1 and will be produced by Lotte Duty Free. It should be noted that Lee Cho Hee has been starring in numerous roles since she was young. On the other hand, Lee Jong Suk, Lee Joon Ki, Ji Chang Wook and Park Hae Jin are all well respected actors and heartthrobs who starred in many successful k-dramas while Kai and Taecyeon are both from famous k-pop groups namely EXO and 2PM. Taecyeon has been acting and playing lead roles since 2010 while Kai had just recently made his acting debut early this year.

First Kiss for the Sixth Time will center on Choi Ji Woo's character as she searches for the 'perfect partner' to share her first kiss with and while this web drama may not be a complete TV series, still fans would definitely be reeling when they see six of their all time favorite Korean stars all in one show. According to iTech Post, this may just be the most star studded web series ever.

Here, you'll see Lee Jong Suk portray a Korean top star, Lee Joon Ki as a sexy chaebol, Ji Chang Wook as a secret agent, Park Hae Jin as a dreamy co-worker, Kai as the charming young friend and lastly, Taecyeon as the naive rich bachelor.

Now, who wouldn't to be in Lee Cho Hee's shoes, right? What a lucky girl!
Minister of the South Africa 's Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services Dr. Siyabonga Cwele takes a selfie with students who are leaving for China for a two-week training on Nov 3rd, 2016 in Johannesburg. (People's Daily Online/Zhang Jiexian)

Pretoria, November 4 (People's Daily Online) - Training opportunity has been awarded to ten South African students who will receive international training through Huaweis program in Beijing and Shenzhen, China.

Besides cutting-edge technologies such as 5G, LTE and cloud computing, students are also to learn more about Chinese culture and gain cross-cultural work experience in a global business environment. What makes this program unique is that it also offers first-hand learning opportunities through interaction with Huawei staff and visits to its laboratories, where program participants can engage in hands-on practice and witness live demonstrations of the latest information and communications technology (ICT).

The beneficiaries are top students from various universities and universities of technology across South Africa, and are a vibrant mix of both male and female outstanding students. Tsholofelo Mashwabi from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University said: "It is not enough to be in the confines of a class room and lab when you aim to be a future leader in this ever evolving ICT space. I am truly excited about visiting China to explore beyond boarders what the offerings of ICT are, and getting a first world experience of ICT. "

Tsholofelo Mashwabi from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (People's Daily Online/Zhang Jiexian)

Huawei celebrated the send-off of its first Seeds for the Future students from SA on Thursday night, in partnership with the Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services (DTPS).

Huawei and DTPS signed a Cooperation Contract in July on capacity building, the joint Innovation and Experience Centre, and skills training. This training is a part of its roll out.

Minister of the DTPS Dr. Siyabonga Cwele said: "We are committed as the government to see South Africa be globally competitive. There is no better place to invest than in our youth who are the future of this country. The seeds should remember that they carry the hopes and dreams of this nation."

Minister of the South Africa's Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services Dr. Siyabonga Cwele addresses the send-off ceremony for South African students on Nov 3rd, 2016 in Johannesburg. (People's Daily Online/Zhang Jiexian)

The Chinese Economic and Commercial Counsellor Rong Yansong addresses the send-off ceremony for South African students on Nov 3rd, 2016 in Johannesburg. (People's Daily Online/Zhang Jiexian)

The Chinese Economic and Commercial Counsellor Rong Yansong said: "The cooperation between China and South Africa will benefit the African continent and its people, wish the students would be experience ambassadors on their return to SA."

Huawei's Seeds for the Future Program is a globally recognised flagship social investment program that takes students from all around the world to receive ICT training and culture exchange at Huawei's Shenzhen and Beijing branches.

Huawei South Africa CEO, Steven Wu said: "It prides us to finally see this initiative kick-off in South Africa as well. We are glad that through our focus in investing in local institutions of higher learning, and our perseverance in strategic partnership with the DTPS, the breakthrough is in the horizon, and we wish our young talent returns with the required optimism and skills."

Over the past seven years, the program has been implemented in 67 countries and regions across five continents, benefiting over 15,000 students from 150 universities. More than 1,700 university students from around the world have taken a study trip to the Huawei headquarters, including more than 800 visitors in 2015.
The SLFP does not condone the continuation of the Emergency Regulations (The Public Security Ordinance) more than a day necessary

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Johannesburg November.4 (People's Daily Online) - DISCOP Africa is held during Wednesday to Friday at the Sandton Convention Center in Johannesburg.

As an important platform for pitching, development, financing and co-production of television and film industry, it's expected to draw thousands of delegates from thousands of companies around the globe, and runs until Friday.

This year's event attracts over a thousand content production companies from over 100 countries around the globe to showcase their works. DISCOP gives players of the industry the chance to network with content creators, established production, commissioning and advertising executives.
PRESS RELEASE

Push for Glass-Steagall in the Farm Belt

Nov. 4, 2016 (EIRNS)A number of initiatives to demand re-instatement of the Glass-Steagall banking separation law, and related action, are in play in the U.S. Midwest farm states, which are also being slammed by the cumulative impact of three years of low prices for farm output, and the general economic breakdown process.

Last weekend, the Kansas Cattlemens Association had a briefing to attendees at their annual state convention, on the urgency of Glass-Steagall, in a presentation on the world economic situation by EIR's Robert Baker. The KCA board had already concurred in support of Glass-Steagall.

Activists for this policy include even some longtime farmers who had driven in the tractorcade from Kansas to Washington, D.C., in the Winter of 1979, to protest the ruinous conditions at that time. One of them arranged for a meeting with a mayor of a small town in northern Kansas in the wheat belt, whose personal concern is to restore NASA. These men, custom grain harvesters, reported on the impossible low grain prices. Barley, for example, is getting only $2.26 for a bushelas low as 30 years ago.

In Iowa, another tractorcade veteran from the American Agriculture Movement, a LaRouchePAC activist, had a posting in the Nov. 2 Marshalltown Times Republican, "Glass-Steagall for Better Day." It stated,

"Our economy is about to blow out. Glass-Steagall is the only thing that can help we the people or we will be forced to pay the national debt individually. Following Glass-Steagall the next step is to initiate the Hamiltonian policy. It is imperative to have Congress move and act on these policies as they return from recess. Call your Congressperson. These policies will help we the people. For a better day."

In Kansas and the other states, the most common reaction of ranchers and farmers, is that, they had not seen the big picture before. They had no idea of the size of the derivatives and bad debt crisis, nor of the great developments in Eurasia. They absolutely want to jail the Wall Street criminals.

Across the board, harvest-time reports show untenable losses per acre and per head, continuing for the third straight year. This is the "wipe-out" phase for family farming. An Iowa farm activist reports that pork producers are losing $35-$45 per head; beef producers are losing $500-$650 per head. Grain prices likewise are trending below production costs.
PRESS RELEASE

Japanese and Chinese Business Leaders Met in Beijing, Agreed To Cooperate on Belt and Road

Nov. 4, 2016 (EIRNS)Concluding a two-day meeting in Beijing, Japanese and Chinese leaders released a joint statement that they will "further enhance collaboration on projects in third countries, including infrastructure development in Asia and the promotion of the One Belt, One Road policy." The meeting was organized by the Japanese Business Federation (Keidanren) and the China Center for International Economic Exchanges. It was attended by 60 CEOs. The Chinese participants urged their Japanese counterparts to encourage the Japanese Government to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

The CEO framework was established in November by former Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, and met earlier in Tokyo. It aims to strengthen exchanges between Japanese and Chinese companies regardless of the state of bilateral diplomatic relations. The Beijing meeting was also attended by Keidanren Chairman Sadayuki Sakakibara.
PRESS RELEASE

NSA Expert Bamford: Blaming Russia for Hacking Is Like Iraq War Groupthink

Nov. 4, 2016 (EIRNS)In a Reuters article that has been picked up by Russia Insider, the Daily Mail, and others, James Bamford, an expert on the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), tears apart the Obama Administrations intelligence community claims that Russia is the source of hacking into Democratic Party-linked e-mails and is leaking the e-mails in order to fuel scandals that will hurt Clintons election campaign.

Bamford warns against the "unanimity" behind the accusation. "There is also the problem of groupthink that led to the war in Iraq," Bamford says.

"For example, just as the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the rest of the intelligence establishment are convinced Putin is behind the attacks, they also believed it was a slam-dunk that Saddam Hussein had a trove of weapons of mass destruction."

Bamford also questions how rapidly Russian intelligence was blamed for the hacking of Democratic National Committee (DNC) e-mails. He points out that it was the private cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, called in by the DNC, that "took just a month or so before it conclusively" blamed the FSU (Russian intelligence agency) and GRU (Russian military intelligence) for being behind it.

"Most of the other major cybersecurity firms quickly fell in line and agreed. By October, the intelligence community made it unanimous."

Finally, Bamford warns about the escalation, as the White House has been tasking the CIA to give it a menu of countermeasures Obama can use against Russia in retaliation.

Such countermeasures are "a prospect that has long worried Richard Clarke, the former White House cyber czar under President George W. Bush," Bamford says.
PRESS RELEASE

Peruvian and Bolivian Leaders Issue Declaration To Cooperate on Bi-Oceanic Railroad

Nov. 4, 2016 (EIRNS)Today, at the conclusion of a three-day meeting of their respective cabinets in Sucre, Bolivia, Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczyinski (PPK) and Bolivian President Evo Morales signed a "Declaration of Sucre," which, among other things, commits both governments to building a bi-oceanic railroad and related port and highway infrastructure.

The route agreed to will go from Ilo in Peru (whose port must be expanded), through the Bolivian cities of Santa Cruz, Oruro, and La Paz, and on to the Brazilian port of Santos. According to Perus Vice President Martin Vizcarra, who is also Transportation Minister, "besides a specific Memorandum of Understanding on the Peru-Bolivia bi-oceanic corridor, with [corresponding] timeframes and goals," the two governments also signed agreements to build four other transporation corridors.

Although PPK reiterated during his meeting with Morales that the China-backed northern Brazil-Peru rail route proposed at the 2014 BRICS summit in Brazil, is "too expensive" and "damaging to the environment" and should be rejected, China, and specifically the China Railway Company, is still very much interested in that proposed route. In the context of the emerging New Paradigm, and growing Chinese involvement in building Ibero-American infrastructure, there is no reason why it shouldnt be built, along with many other such projects. PPK may recognize that China is a leading force in the new global reality, but his 40-odd years of service to Wall Street and London shouldnt be overlooked.

Morales was pleased with the result of the bi-national cabinet meeting. He describes the rail project as the "Panama Canal of the 21st Century," or the Qhapac Nanthe route that united the Inca Empire or Tawantinsuyo. Given current tensions with Chile, and a strike at the Chinean port of Arica through which most of Bolivias shipments leave for Asia, Morales is anxious to seal a long-term deal to use the Peruvian port of Ilo. According to informacion.com, the Peruvian Congress is currently considering a 2010 agreement which, if approved, would grant Bolivia a contract to use the port for 99 years.
Question: Our board president does not want to have monthly meetings even though our association bylaws specifically state that board meetings must occur every month. The president insists that when the state common interest development act was re-codified in 2014 our CC&Rs and bylaws were overridden, making it no longer necessary for our board to meet monthly as required in the bylaws. Is this a correct interpretation of the law?

Also, I thought that Civil Code Section 5500 required the board to regularly review the statements we receive from financial institutions documenting our operating and reserve accounts. If the statements are received monthly, doesnt that mean the board should meet monthly to conduct the review in open session?

Answer: The president of your board is misinterpreting the law. And yes, the board must convene monthly meetings that are open to association owners.

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Civil Code section 4205 establishes a hierarchy of document authority. In the event of any conflicts between governing documents and the law, it is true that the law prevails. However, there has to be an actual existing conflict between documents. The hierarchy discussion would only be triggered if your governing documents required a monthly meeting of the board and your president could point to a California law that prohibits monthly meetings or that mandates meetings at some other interval.

Civil Code section 5500 calls for a review of the associations financial records on at least a quarterly basis. If, as you state, the board receives association financial records on a monthly basis, then there is no reason why it cant meet more frequently, especially since the current bylaws require monthly meetings.

Moreover, California Code of Regulations, Title 10, Section 2792.20(a) requires boards to hold regular meetings as prescribed in bylaws. And your associations bylaws specifically state that board meetings must occur every month.

Board meetings are important because they are the only way for owners to learn about the governance and maintenance of their property firsthand. It is also the only open forum where owners may speak directly to the board of directors  which is why board meetings are open for attendance by the associations owners.

It is as common as it is smart for association boards to meet monthly. The logistics of operating a common interest development are complicated, and since the board cannot take action on any item of business outside of a legitimate board meeting (absent an emergency), regular meetings are the only way for board directors to fulfill their fiduciary obligations.

Less frequent meetings may prevent board directors from taking timely action in managing association business. Also, less information will be able to be distributed to the titleholders, and with that the board risks breeding distrust.

Any attempt by an individual director, such as your president, to interfere with the board holding regular meetings may subject that director to liability. It is a breach of the duty of care for any director to unilaterally make the decision to avoid holding meetings.

The president is always free to resign his or her position to let another owner gladly fulfill those duties to the association and its titleholders.

Zachary Levine, a partner at Wolk & Levine, a business and intellectual property law firm, co-wrote this column. Vanitzian is an arbitrator and mediator. Send questions to Donie Vanitzian, JD, P.O. Box 10490, Marina del Rey, CA 90295 or noexit@mindspring.com
On Century Boulevard near Los Angeles International Airport, travelers can pick among 14 hotels, ranging from budget lodging to a stylish three-diamond inn.

In reality, the choices are more limited.

All the hotels clustered on the busy thoroughfare are owned, managed or licensed by just six companies, led by Marriott International Inc., the worlds largest hotel company after its recent $13-billion takeover of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc.

Nationwide, nearly half of the 53,400 hotels are linked to the six hotel giants  Marriott, Hilton Worldwide, Intercontinental, Wyndham Worldwide, Choice Hotels and Best Western Hotels & Resorts.

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Despite a few murmurs of concern in the corporate travel world, Marriott swallowed Starwood with no opposition from antitrust watchdogs around the world. And the dominance of a handful of hotel companies hasnt sparked the kind of protest seen in the airline, telecom, bank and insurance industries.

It hasnt been a top concern until now, said Diana Moss, president of the American Antitrust Institute, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit think tank that focuses on competition and consumer choice.

The institute, which has opposed several airline mergers on antitrust grounds, is looking more closely at the increasing merger activity in the hotel industry.

Hotels tend to fly under the radar, Moss said. They dont get a lot of attention.

The merger of Marriott and Starwood  creating a hotel behemoth with 5,800 hotels in more than 100 countries  was just the latest hotel deal to concentrate the industry in the last few years.

In 2015 alone, Frances AccorHotels bought the Toronto-based parent company of the luxury Fairmont, Raffles and Swissotel brands for $2.7 billion; Intercontinental Hotels Group acquired Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants for $430 million; Marriott acquired Delta Hotels & Resorts for $135 million; and a Wyndham Worldwide subsidiary acquired Dolce Hotels & Resorts for $57 million.

Before the Marriott and Starwood deal, the series of acquisitions did little to reduce competition in the hotel industry, but the latest transaction might be a game changer, according a report by CWT Solutions Group, a consultant to the travel industry.

With daily room rates and occupancy levels at all-time highs in many major markets, basic economics dictate that less competition will only lead to even higher prices, the report said.

In Los Angeles, Marriott and Starwood account for nearly half of corporate travel spending, among the highest percentages in major market where those companies operate, CWT said.

Marriott spokeswoman Felicia McLemore rejected suggestions that the companys greater girth cuts into the choices available to travelers.

The lodging industry continues to be very fragmented compared to other travel-related businesses, such as airlines, with robust competition from numerous lodging brand companies and independent operators, she said.

Some hotel analysts predict little fallout from the increasing clout of the top six hotel companies.

Among the reasons: A big share of those brand hotels are simply licensed to carry a franchise name but are owned or managed by local hoteliers, who can set the nightly rates based on local demands.

Also, most major hotel giants oversee a range of brands, from cut-rate to high-end, giving consumers more options.

The industry is very segmented, said Andrew Coggins, a management professor at New Yorks Pace University. If you look at any big hotel company, they manage different brands. The brands appeal to different segments of the market.

For example, the New Yorker, a Wyndham hotel in Manhattan, offers rooms for more than $400 a night. Meanwhile, the Travelodge in Jersey City, N.J.  another Wyndham hotel  rents rooms for as little as $70 a night.

There are checks and balances within the system, said Bruce Baltin, a hospitality consultant with PKF Consulting.

Short-term rental businesses such as Airbnb, HomeAway and VBRO are also adding competition, particularly in big cities and tourist areas, to keep hotel giants from abusing their dominance by imposing exorbitant rates.

Airbnb hosts keep 97% of what they charge for their listing and make travel more affordable for the middle class, Airbnb spokesman Nick Papas said.

Business travelers who have spent many nights each year in hotels say they dont notice the dominance of a handful of hotel companies when they travel.

Rancho Palos Verdes resident Kerry Welsh, a venture capitalist and inventor, has racked up millions of airline miles and stayed in countless hotels. Welsh said he thinks that the Internet has made it easier for travelers to compare hotel rates, making it harder for big hotel chains to take advantage of any dominance.

I stay in hotels a lot and Im not as concerned about who owns them, rather that they have the right amenities, he said.

Neal Nakagiri, president of a securities brokerage firm in Burbank, said a big advantage of staying at big chain hotels is being able to collect loyalty points to earn discounts or free hotel stays.

Nakagiri said he and his family stayed in at a luxury hotel in Barcelona in May and a resort in Hawaii in October.

In both cases we used our Starwood points instead of cash, he said.

hugo.martin@latimes.com

To read more about the travel and tourism industries, follow @hugomartin on Twitter.
BRUSSELS, Nov. 4 -- The cooperation between China and 16 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries boomed in the past year, experts and officials said days before the opening of an annual China-CEE summit.

The upcoming fifth summit of China and 16 CEE countries will be held in Riga, capital of Latvia.

The China-CEE summit, with a view to deepening traditional friendship and increasing mutual benefit, was initiated in Warsaw in 2012, and subsequently staged in Bucharest, Belgrade, and east China's Suzhou city.

FRUITFUL OUTCOMES

Dubbed as the 16+1 mechanism, the cooperation between China and CEE countries has yielded fruitful outcomes since Suzhou summit in November 2015, during which the two sides prioritized sectors for cooperation from 2015 to 2020, ranging from infrastructure, finance, agriculture to people-to-people exchange.

"By implementing the agenda set forth on the Suzhou Summit and linking 16+1 mechanism with the Belt and Road Initiative, China and CEE countries have seen fruitful outcomes during the past year, setting an example for regional cooperation," said Professor Wang Yiwei, director of the Center for European Studies at Renmin University of China.

One example is the launch of a thermal power plant in Stanari, 180 km northwest of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina(BIH), in September.

The power plant is built by a Chinese company with the help of a 350-million-euro (386.94 million U.S. dollars) loan from China Development Bank.

It is the first project to utilize the 10-billion-U.S. dollar Special Credit Line under the 16+1 mechanism, Chinese Ambassador to BiH Chen Bo told Xinhua in an interview after the launching ceremony, adding its success represents a concrete result in the 16+1 format.

Another example is Romania's announcement in May that the construction of Cernavoda nuclear power plant would be the country's priority.

According to a Memorandum of Understanding signed by China General Nuclear and Romanian national nuclear company Nuclearelectrica in November last year, they will develop, construct, and operate unit three and four of the plant.

With an investment of more than 7 billion euros (7.74 billion U.S. dollars), it is the largest cooperation project in terms of the volume of capital between China and CEE countries.

The third example is the project for modernizing the Belgrade-Budapest railway. The construction work of the railway section in Serbia began late last year, and the section in Hungary was given go-ahead by the country's parliament in April, paving the way for the flagship project under the 16+1 mechanism.

The 370 km railway will significantly improve the transportation between the two countries, as it will shorten the traveling time between the two countries from eight hours to less than three.

By promoting interconnectivity, China and CEE countries have reshaped their trade structure and scaled up their trade volume. Data show that the number of China-Europe freight train lines, since its inception in 2011, have amounted to 39.On a regular basis,16 Chinese cities operate the cargo trains to about a dozen European cities. The trade volume between China and CEE countries reached 56.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2015, an increase of 28 percent comparing to 2010.

Moreover, China-CEE countries have also deepened cooperation in the fields like traditional Chinese medicine, agricultural products and financial network during the past year, Wang noted.

"The 16+1 mechanism echoes the 'Look East' policy of EEC countries, deepens China's cooperation with CEE and the Europe at large, setting examples for other regions to link their own development strategies with China's Belt and Road Initiative," said Wang, adding "the 16+1 mechanism itself becomes a highlight of regional cooperation."

SOLID FOUNDATION FOR COOPERATION

Analysts noted China and CEE countries have solid foundation for collaboration, as CEE countries, which are eyeing better infrastructure and interconnectivity, want to use China's strength in these fields.

CEE countries are attracted to 16+1 mechanism because they need more investment to improve their infrastructure and economy, according to Professor Men Jing, director of the center for EU-China study at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium.

"At the same time, China is promoting the Belt and Road Initiative. To see it on the map, although the initiative covers west Europe, the key points are CEE countries," Men added.

The economies are complementary and thus have tremendous potential in cooperation, especially in the fields of industrial equipment and interconnectivity, professor Wang noted.

Taking interconnectivity as example, the professor said CEE countries had a plan of linking "Three Rivers" - namely the Elbe River, the Odra River, the Danube River - with "Three Seas" - namely the Baltic Sea, the Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea, while China is working with parties involved to build the China-Europe Land-Sea Express Line, which connects CEE with south Europe.

"Under the 16+1 mechanism, the two ambitious plans have tremendous potential for China-CEE cooperation," Wang said.

TIES WITH EU

When promoting the 16+1 cooperation, an unavoidable issue for China is its ties with the European Union(EU).

"Europe used to have a negative attitude towards the 16+1 mechanism, seeing it as China's tactic to split the EU," said Shada Islam, director of policy at Brussels-based think-tank Friends of Europe.

"In recent years, however, the EU gradually viewed it with understanding. But the EU must be assured that 16+1 mechanism is not a secret meeting," said Islam.

As the EU realized that China-CEE cooperation help narrow the gap among its members, the bloc now is more positive towards 16+1 mechanism, Wang noted.

China is also paying attention to the EU's concern about governance standards under the mechanism, he said.

"The 16+1 mechanism is an important part of China-EU relations; China is neither willing nor capable of splitting Europe," said Ambassador Yang Yanyi, head of the Chinese Mission to the EU, in an exclusive interview with Xinhua.

"China definitely has no idea to split the EU," Men echoed the ambassador. However, the professor added, "the result or effect of the 16+1 mechanism may unintentionally cause some misunderstanding on the EU side."

"So China should make efforts to remove the EU's suspicion on this issue, so as not to harm bilateral relations," she said.

Since the very beginning of China-CEE summit in 2012, China has been willing to invite the EU to participate in the 16+1 mechanism, Yang noted.

"China-CEE cooperation, guided by the principle of openness and transparency, aims at strengthening China-EU relations in an all-around way," said the ambassador.

"As always, China supports the integration of Europe and hopes that Europe is united, stable, and prosperous," she said.
Cara Delevingne made a very public response via her Instagram account to false comments by British newspaper The Sun regarding her participation at the Victorias Secret show in London two years ago.

The U.K. tabloid paper published an article earlier this week that stated Delevingne was rejected from a casting for the 2014 Victorias Secret show held in London for allegedly being too bloated.

In response to the comment, the actress and model shared a letter by Victorias Secret chief executive officer Edward Razek addressing the false allegations, on Instagram. Its shameless to discuss womens bodies just to sell papers, read the caption accompanying the image.

The letter, which was signed by Razek, explains that when organizing the London show, the company had made huge efforts to secure Delevingne in its top model lineup and the only reason she didnt make an appearance were prior commitments to a movie she was shooting at the time.

Contrary to the Suns claims, which they never bothered to fact check with me, Victorias Secret made every effort to have you in the London show. I know because I was the one making the effort. The alleged casting where supposedly disparaging remarks were made never happened. There was NO casting, wrote Razek.

He went on to invite Delevingne to join this years Victorias Secret show which will take place in Paris, on Nov. 30.

We tried hard to have you there. You would have made the show better, as you do anything and everything youre involved in. So allow me to extend the invitation once again. If youre free on November 30, please join us in Paris.

Even though Delevingne expressed her love for Victorias Secret by publicly sharing Razeks letter  followed by heart emoticons  there is no confirmation that she will be walking the Paris show and joining the likes of Gigi and Bella Hadid, who have already confirmed their attendance via social media.
Extraordinarily lucky ladies might have artwork commissioned in their honor once or twice in a lifetime. Then theres Lady Dior, which the house of Dior asked seven artists to use as a canvas for their creative visions as part of the limited-edition Dior Lady Art collection, launching Nov. 29 in Miami during Art Basel. Granted, the Lady Dior is a handbag, not an actual lady, but as the brands signature, top-selling style its the subject of a major creative and commercial push timed to the prime holiday shopping season.

Mat Collishaw, Ian Davenport, Daniel Gordon, Chris Martin, Jason Martin, Matthew Porter and Marc Quinn  all British or American  were invited by Dior to design versions of the classic top-handle Lady Dior style based on their work. The project actually began in June with Quinn, who created a limited-edition run of bags for the opening of the brands Bond Street store in London.

Dior expanded the project, approaching the other artists to submit drawings and images to the atelier, which determined what could be realized within the parameters of handbags and accessories. A back-and-forth exchange ensued, pushing the artists boundaries and those of the Dior studio.

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The result is a bold, visually distinctive collection of handbags and accessories (evening clutches, key chains, scarves, bracelets and some smaller leather goods in addition to the top-handle) that take the Lady Dior, with its understated architectural shape and classic cannage motif inspired by the Napoleon III chairs that Monsieur Dior used for his shows, out of its refined comfort zone.

Prices range from $360 for a card holder to $11,500 for a mink bag, with most bags priced between $3,500 and $6,000. With a maximum of 100 of each style being produced, the bags are basically collectors items.

The iconic Lady Dior bag, which launched in 1995, has already inspired internationally renowned artists such as Olympia Scarry, Nan Goldin, Mounir Fatmi, said Sidney Toledano, chief executive officer of Christian Dior Couture, referencing the Lady Dior As Seen By exhibition that launched in 2011. When the idea came about to make limited-edition Lady Dior bags for people to own, we approached artists, like Marc Quinn, who were very excited to create something that people can collect as art.

Jason Martin adapted his sculptural monochrome metallic paintings in undulating 3-D leather constructions. The colorful, melting vertical stripes from Davenports Colorfall series were reproduced on silver, embossed leather. Collishaws bags feature highly realistic butterfly prints  one yellow, one blue  inspired by one of his major photography works. Quinn reproduced his still-life oil paintings of orchids, as well as a silvered leather Lady Dior decorated with relief flower petals, and styles that feature his famous blue iris eye prints. Gordon translated his graphic collages through inlaid black-and-white mink done in the bags cannage pattern.

Brooklyn-based painter Chris Martin adapted two of his most recognizable works: a frog print from a painting titled Frog 1, and sequins inspired by the abstract lines of multi-colored glitter from Chameleon.

The process for me was, you can have a painting that is a really good painting but its not a good purse? Martin said. What looks good? What is something that is legible on that size? What looks good in that kind of a public presentation? For me, it was all very brand new to design something that will be walked around the street. I like that idea a lot.

Porter, a Brooklyn-based photographer, referenced his flying car photos that feature miniature scale model muscle cars in mid-air. For the Dior Lady Art project, he created a new drawing  a car suspended over a traffic light  from scratch in Photoshop for one side of the bag, with the other side featuring a graphic, car-inspired black-and-white camouflage image. His bags use marquetry techniques in glazed calfskin with suede details and car-shaped charms in addition to the Lady Dior charms that dangle from each bag.

Porter said he almost mistook the original e-mail asking for his participation for spam. He noted that the process of submitting ideas for the project and dealing with the atelier had an air of mystery, but ultimately, he was impressed with Diors capabilities.

[The Dior team] came to my studio, and it was like spies descending on my workspace, he said. They showed up  a bunch of people dressed in black in an SUV, speaking in hushed tones  the communication was always a little vague. It was a real thrill when they opened up this case and the designer revealed all of these real-world designs that were made from what I sent them.

As visually compelling and diverse the work of the artists involved in the project is, its impossible to overlook one major thing they have in common: Theyre all men  enlisted for a design endeavor with the keyword Lady no less. Asked what the reasoning was, a representative for the house said that it wasnt a matter of intention or oversight but timing. Some female artists were reportedly approached for the project but couldnt participate because of other obligations or scheduling conflicts.

As for whether Dior is prepared to take a hit from the PC police, the representative said that after Diors spring show by the houses new, first-ever woman creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri  who was not involved in the Lady Art Project  it should be obvious that the house of Dior is pro-feminist. To spell it out, the collection featured T-shirts printed with We should all be feminists.

There will be opportunities for Dior to collaborate with a broad range of artists in the future, as it has in the past. The house has a rich history of ties to the art world, beginning with Christian Dior himself, who was a gallerist in Paris before founding his couture house. For the fall 2007 couture collection celebrating the houses 60th anniversary, John Galliano paid homage to Irving Penn, Rene Gruau, Rene Bouche, Christian Berard and Jean Cocteau.

As Toledano mentioned, Dior has engaged in extensive artist collaborations specifically for the Lady Dior, which was introduced under his guidance 21 years ago and was immediately given a high-profile endorsement when Bernadette Chirac, the wife of then-president Jacques Chirac, gave one to Princess Diana.

In 2011, the Lady Dior As Seen By exhibition featured photographs, sculptures and multimedia works based on the history of the Lady Dior bag. The exhibition opened in Shanghai and traveled to Hong Kong, Beijing, Tokyo, Milan and, earlier this year, Dusseldorf, Germany. With each city, new local artists were commissioned  none of the works were sold commercially  with participating artists including David Lynch, Peter Lindbergh, Patrick Demarchelier, Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Wanda Collective, Arturo Berned, Kum Chi Keung, Wen Fang, Alice Anderson Studio, Kohei Nawa, Liu Jianhua, Quentin Shih, and Rong Rong and his wife Inri.

To launch Dior Lady Art, there will be a pop-up installation Nov. 29 at Diors Miami Design District store during Art Basel with Jason Martin, Collishaw, Davenport and Porter in attendance. On Dec. 1, a freestanding pop-up dedicated entirely to Dior Lady Art will open in Beverly Hills through February 2017. Additional launches will follow at the Avenue Montaigne store in Paris, New Bond Street in London, Mall of Emirates in Dubai and China World in Beijing.
Welcome to the dark side.

According to the color clairvoyants at Benjamin Moore, the Scandinavian cafeteria look is out and the opulence of the Russian Tea Room is in

The paint giant has anointed Shadow (chip no. 2117-30) as its 2017 color of the year. The deep, dark purplish hue  think eggplant  is in stark contrast to last years top color selections. (Benjamin Moore chose Simply White, while color tastemaker Pantone chose a baby-pink-and-blue combo.)

Its a 180-degree pivot, admitted creative director Ellen ONeill, who made the announcement last week in Los Angeles, getting a jump on other color gurus who have traditionally waited until closer to years end to unveil their dueling predictions for what color will dictate design, style and decor trends in the months ahead. I think the fact that we championed white for the past 12 months has made us a little color-deprived. You know, everybody thinks theres some big science around [choosing a directional color], but its gut.

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Well, that and a whole lot of frequent-flier miles.

ONeill and a team of color specialists determine trends through forecasting research and culture-seeking style safaris that take them around the globe.

The inspiration for the selection of Shadow was everywhere: black booths at a Paris flea market, charcoal-colored shopping bags in France, the light and dark at play in the chiaroscuro backgrounds of Flemish paintings, street life in South Korea, window displays and restaurant design.

This year, ONeill said, a trip to the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen was especially formative. In a space dedicated to the works of Danish neoclassicist sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, darkly painted galleries appear to recede behind gleaming white marble and plaster artwork. It was incredibly peaceful, ONeill said, there is just something about an object of beauty in a dark space.

She added: I remember a very dramatic room at the Kips Bay Show House in New York about two years ago, and one of the walls in the dining room was [painted] Shadow but it was lacquered, and the other three walls were white. It was a showstopper.

Sure, but will it play in L.A.?

The forecaster said the answer is yes, adding that Southern Californias Arts and Crafts bungalows would present a natural canvas: That kind of architecture with colors that are more moody and muddy would be stunning.

Its layering and a wealth of palettes and patterns and textures that I feel people are kind of craving, ONeill said.

Interior designer Alison Glen of LA Dwelling, who was in attendance for the Benjamin Moore unveiling, said that although its not for everyone, the darker palette will definitely play a role in refreshing home decor.

I think [Shadow] is going to work with the grays we have now and the taupes that are coming in.  It will add the wow factor.

Home@latimes.com
Good morning. Im Paul Thornton, The Times letters editor, and it is Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016. Were a full hour further from the end of the seemingly ceaseless 2016 election than you might think, but its because of a good cause: Daylight Saving Time ends early Sunday morning, so remember to set your clocks back one hour, lest you are left out of our semi-annual time-travel ritual.

Anyone who has thumbed through a sample ballot or voter guide knows theres a daunting list of candidates, judicial offices and measures to weigh below the big-ticket race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. This is where The Times Editorial Board can help you, dear voter.

Months before Tuesdays election and even early voting began, members of our editorial board pored over the fine print of more than a dozen measures  statewide and local  and interviewed the candidates running for office. Below is a list of The Times Editorial Boards recommendations, along with links to the complete endorsements. The following roundup, which was written by members of the board, will also be published in Sundays print edition.

President: Hillary Clinton. Clinton has the experience, wisdom, demeanor, thoughtfulness and policy positions to make a good U.S. president. Donald Trump is manifestly unfit in each of those areas.

U.S. senator: Kamala Harris. Its a race between two Democrats to succeed Barbara Boxer. Harris, a smart and pragmatic criminal justice reformer, is a better choice than Loretta Sanchez, a hard-working but often erratic congresswoman.

U.S. representative, 44th District: Nanette Barragan. In another battle between Democrats, attorney Barragan has strong environmental credentials. State Sen. Isadore Halls environmental record is dismal.

L.A. County supervisor District 4: Janice Hahn. A congresswoman and former City Council member, Hahn articulates the needs of the homeless, the jailed, the sick and the poor.

L.A. County supervisor District 5: Kathryn Barger. Barger is an accomplished policymaker who would bring pragmatism and creativity to the board.

Judge of the Superior Court Office No. 11: Stephen Schreiner. A criminal prosecutor, Schreiner has decades of trial experience.

Judge of the Superior Court Office No. 42: Efrain Matthew Aceves. Experience in many jury trials makes Aceves the best.

Judge of the Superior Court Office No. 84: Susan Jung Townsend. Townsend is the better of the two veteran prosecutors running for this judicial seat.

Judge of the Superior Court Office No. 158: David A. Berger. Berger has 20 years of experience in jury trials.

Proposition 51 (school bonds): No. This bond perpetuates an inequitable school construction funding system that favors the wrong school districts for the wrong reasons.

Proposition 52 (Medi-Cal hospital fees): Yes. The measure would support Medi-Cal, the healthcare program for the poor, by requiring hospitals to continue paying an existing tax on their services. Federal money would continue to match the revenues.

Proposition 53 (revenue bond voter approval): No. It makes no sense to require voters statewide to weigh in on local bond funding for large local projects such as bridges or reservoirs that are financed by tolls or other user fees.

Proposition 54 (legislative transparency): Yes. Improve transparency by requiring the Legislature to publish bill language 72 hours before voting on it.

Proposition 55 (income tax extension): No. A temporary income tax on the wealthy lifted California out of the recession. Now it is time to more forward and rework state taxation to make it fairer and more stable.

Proposition 56 (tobacco tax): Yes. Increasing state tobacco taxes has been proven to reduce smoking, and in this case would also raise money to pay Californias healthcare costs.

Proposition 57 (criminal sentencing and parole): Yes. The measure keeps criminal sentences intact for felonies but allows inmates to apply for parole and rehabilitation credits to shorten the additional prison time tacked on by various sentence enhancements.

Proposition 58 (bilingual education): Yes. Give parents the option to choose between intensive English or dual-language immersion programs and provide needed local flexibility on how schools teach English-language learners.

Proposition 59 (Citizens United constitutional amendment): No. Altering the 1st Amendment is not a good way to fix campaign finance laws.

Proposition 60 (condom use in adult films): No. There are better routes to performers safety than this proposition, which would allow any resident to sue film productions and participants that depict sex but dont use condoms.

Proposition 61 (state prescription drug purchases): No. Preventing the state from paying more for drugs than the Veterans Administration pays could prompt companies to jack up prices for everyone else.

Proposition 62 (repeal death penalty): Yes. Replace the death penalty with life without parole for the states worst criminals.

Proposition 63 (gun regulation): Yes. Curb gun violence by requiring felons and others who lose their gun rights to actually get rid of their firearms and take other reasonable steps to restrict gun possession to the law-abiding.

Proposition 64 (marijuana legalization): Yes. The time has come for the state to treat marijuana more like alcohol and less like heroin or cocaine.

Proposition 65 (carryout bag fees): No. This confusing measure is little more than a ploy by the plastic bag industry to distract voters from keeping in place the much-needed statewide ban on single-use plastic bags.

Proposition 66 (accelerate death penalty): No. This attempt to accelerate executions in California is likely unworkable, and if it succeeds it would require unacceptable compromises of basic constitutional rights.

Proposition 67 (plastic bag ban referendum): Yes. Voting yes on this measure would keep in place a statewide ban on free plastic grocery bans that end up polluting oceans and degrading the environment.

Measure A (Los Angeles County parcel tax for parks): Yes. The cost of having to do without funding for parks in Los Angeles County would be higher than the 1.5 cents per square foot of built space that would be imposed by this parcel tax.

Measure M (L.A. Metro sales tax for transportation): Yes. A permanent sales tax increase will help keep roads and sidewalks in good repair, expand the regions rail lines and fund maintenance and operation so that L.A.s transit service does not deteriorate as have those in other cities.

Measure CC (L.A. Community College District bond): Yes. This measure funds the construction of needed facilities and amenities on the nine campuses of the Community College District.

Measure FF (Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority parcel tax): Yes. This $15 tax enhances fire protection and helps preserve open space in a hillside district in the San Fernando Valley.

Measure GG (Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority parcel tax): Yes. This $35 parcel tax supports property values in a Hollywood Hills district by funding fire patrols, trail repair and preservation of open space.

Measure HHH (L.A. City homelessness housing bond): Yes. This city bond would finance the construction of housing for people living on the street and begin, at long last, a serious effort to alleviate the misery of the homeless and the irritation of those who demand that something be done about the growing crisis.

Measure JJJ (L.A. City affordable housing mandate): No. This measure purports to provide affordable housing and good-paying jobs but will likely make low-cost units far too expensive for developers to build.

Measure RRR (L.A. DWP reform): Yes. These incremental management and oversight tweaks fall short of whats needed but would bring some improvement to the Los Angeles utility that provides residents and businesses their water and electricity.

Measure SSS (L.A. City airport police pensions): No. Even the airport police union that negotiated this proposed charter change isnt supporting it.

Reach me: paul.thornton@latimes.com
Each day, Emilia Mata boards three buses from Huntington Park to her factory job in Los Angeles.

The trip can take up to 2  hours one way and often leaves her right leg sore and swollen.



For the record: A previous version of this article said that South Gate recently switched in favor of the measure. South Gate, as a member of the Gateway Cities Council of Governments, now supports the measure. The South Gate City Council, however, opposes the proposal.

She is among the many bus riders who could benefit if voters pass Measure M on Tuesday. The sales tax increase is tied to transportation and would fund more than a dozen major transit projects, including a rail line that would connect downtown Los Angeles to more than a dozen southeast cities, such as Huntington Park, South Gate, Paramount, Bellflower and Artesia.

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The only problem, critics say, is that the West Santa Ana Branch Line, as its called, probably wont be completed until 2041.

Thats a long time for Mata, 64, a seamstress who will be 89 by then.

God knows, Ill probably be dead, she said, laughing, as she waited for the final bus home on a recent afternoon.

Bus riders Josh Ayala, 18, center, and Hazel Hernandez, left, are reflected in the window of a bus at Firestone and Atlantic boulevards in South Gate. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times )

Officials expect strong voter support for Measure M in central Los Angeles and on the Westside. But in the southeast portion of the county, many cities have banded together to oppose the proposal, arguing that their residents would not see their fair share of transit projects.

That dissent, experts said, could keep the plan from winning the necessary two-thirds majority.

The ballot measure would raise an estimated $860 million a year by creating a new half-cent tax with no end date. The rate would increase to 1% in 2039 when another half-cent tax expires.

The tax would provide a permanent source of revenue for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, giving the agency more leeway to draft one of the most ambitious transit plans in recent U.S. history. The proposals include untangling many highway bottlenecks, building a rail tunnel through the Sepulveda Pass and helping with overall transit operations and maintenance. It would also help cities with local needs, such as pothole repairs and sidewalk improvements.

In the southeast area, where many of the 2.1 million residents are blue-collar workers and the car-less rely heavily on buses, a train would be a game-changer. Metro estimates that up to 75,000 people would ride the West Santa Ana Branch Line, which would run from Union Station to Artesia. That compares only to the Blue Line, Metros busiest light rail, which has an estimated 81,000 weekday boardings.

Bus riders wait at Firestone and Atlantic boulevards in South Gate. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times )

Our whole way of life would be different, said Huntington Park City Councilwoman Karina Macias. People would take it to work, to school, and it would help us promote our city and all our businesses.

The line had received $240 million in seed funding from Measure R, the half-cent sales tax voters approved in 2008. Back then, officials set a tentative opening date of 2027.

Measure M offers two completion dates: the first half of the line, to the south, would open in 2028, and the full ribbon-cutting would occur in 2041.

Many leaders in cities such as Maywood, Paramount and Bellflower, who have been pushing for a train for more than a decade, felt snubbed by the switch.

Were not saying our project should go in front of anyone elses, but there should be a fair and equitable distribution of projects in different parts of the county, said Nick DeLuca, spokesman for the Gateway Cities Council of Governments, a group of 27 cities that mostly opposes the plan.

With contributions from a number of cities, the council launched an educational campaign to inform residents about the potential downsides to Measure M.

Carl Green, 59, of Lynwood, waits for a bus at Pacific and Clarendon avenues in Huntington Park. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times )

Some worry that massive projects, such as the $8-billion Sepulveda Pass tunnel, could delay the West Santa Ana Branch Line beyond 2041.

We have some legitimate concerns about what will happen when work starts on the tunnel, said Karen Heit, transportation deputy for the Gateway Cities Council. They could start digging and find a community of trolls living under there, and then things will get pushed out more.

Sensing the discord, Metro officials and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti began meeting with leaders in southeast cities to address their concerns.

According to Metro officials, Measure R did not specify rail construction. It provided funding for transportation research, along with an opening date, which was subject to change depending on what research produced, said Metro spokeswoman Pauletta Tonilas.

Now, with Measure M, a southeast light rail line will be built at a cost of $4 billion, she said. The projects finish date was determined after ranking it against dozens of other county projects  taking into account their cost and how well they provide safety, mobility and sustainability, among other things.

We know everyone would like their projects to be done in the first 15 years, Tonilas said. But we did the best we could with all the tools we had to deliver equity for decades to come.

The outreach paid off, to a certain degree. Council representatives for a few cities  such as Compton, South Gate and Huntington Park  switched in favor of the measure. The South Gate City Council, however, continues to oppose Measure M.

Macias, the Huntington Park council member, was among those who changed their minds. She said Metro officials seemed to listen and understand the areas concerns. They spoke of possible public and private partnerships to potentially move up the rail lines opening date by a few years. Last month, the Metro board approved a contract to do initial environmental work.

Its still not a perfect plan by any means, but were providing an olive branch, Macias said. I will be knocking on their door if projects dont move forward as promised.

Looking ahead, Macias said the southeast cities stand to lose more if the measure passes and they have a sour relationship with Metro.

Gene Daniels, a 20-year member of Paramounts City Council, doesnt buy that logic.

They can tell you anything they want to tell you, he said. But its not going change whats already in Measure M. When youre a politician, youre only as good as the next election.

Daniels is concerned that his constituents will be stuck with an endless tax that will hardly, if ever, benefit them.

People believe theyll vote Tuesday and that Wednesday theyll be fixing streets, fixing highways and building that train, but they wont, he said. That money will go to the Westside.

At bus stops across the southeast, riders opinions varied. Many would not be voting because they are not citizens, but if the measure passes, their sales tax will increase just the same.

Mata, the seamstress, said that even though she is probably too old to benefit from the light rail, she would gladly pay a higher tax rate for the sake of her grandchildren.

We cant just think of ourselves, she said. We need to make a path for those who will come after us.

Jessica Zepeda, 22, plans to vote for the first time Tuesday. The South L.A. resident takes two buses to work at a beauty shop in South Gate. The trip lasts 45 minutes.

Sitting outside the Azalea Shopping Center on a recent evening, Zepeda said she hadnt given much thought to how shed vote. She knew about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, but the local measures? She had no idea where to begin.

Honestly, she said. I just want my husband to buy me a car.

esmeralda.bermudez@latimes.com

@LATBermudez

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Arrests of protesters at Alfred Olango shooting site in El Cajon can continue, judge rules
Linda Reedy has long been convinced that voter fraud was afoot, with ballots cast even by people who were not American citizens.

But it wasnt until after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump began to sound the drumbeat of rigged elections and asked supporters  particularly in hotly contested battleground states  to monitor polling stations that the 53-year-old Laguna Niguel resident finally heeded the call of the election day poll observer.

Reedy not only trained to become an observer, she opened her home this week for others to learn from a coordinator for the private Election Integrity Project how to keep an eye out for irregularities on Tuesday.

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I just want to make sure that people who are eligible to vote are able to vote, Reedy said. And that they arent being cheated or manipulated by any party.

She waved off studies that stated that voting fraud is rare. Those researchers, she said, just arent looking in the right places.

A victory by Hillary Clinton in deeply blue California is expected  with some polls showing the Democratic candidate with a large lead. But that hasnt stopped some people  mostly conservative and overwhelmingly white  from signing up to try to scour for voter fraud.

Overall, researchers have found that instances of voter fraud are minuscule, with only a handful of cases that would be highly unlikely to swing a national election. In 2014, Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt, who studies elections, found 31 credible claims of someone pretending to be someone else at the polls from more than 1 billion ballots cast since 2000.

Orange County has a controversial history when it comes to poll observing. In 1988, the Orange County registrar of voters was told that mostly Latino residents arriving at 20 Santa Ana polling locations were greeted on the day of the presidential election by uniformed guards holding signs with a message in Spanish and English that read: Non-Citizens Cant Vote.

The guards had been hired by the campaign of a Republican state assembly candidate, and the incident produced allegations of voter intimidation and racism  as well as a lawsuit that eventually was settled.

Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert who teaches at UC Irvine, said allegations of voter fraud have long been used as part of a political strategy.

There have been Republican operatives who have used unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud as means of trying to rile up the Republican base, Hasen said, though he added that many of the people who will go and volunteer in these so-called integrity efforts really do believe that there is a major problem, and there is no amount of evidence to convince them otherwise.

Trumps calls for supporters, who are mostly white, to watch for fraud by urban voters, including in places like Philadelphia  with a population that is about 50% black  has led many critics to accuse him of bigotry. The GOP nominee also has stated that immigrants in the country illegally are being allowed to pour into the U.S. to cast votes in the election.

Trumps statements have put the Republican National Committee in an uncomfortable situation. For three decades, the party has been under a federal court order that bars efforts to police the polls on election day, arguing that it might intimidate minority voters.

On Friday, the RNC told a federal judge that the party cant be held accountable for what Trump says. The group said it is careful to steer clear of poll-monitoring operations.

The highly polarized nature of this election and Trumps talk about voter fraud has stoked distrust even in parts of deeply blue California, which is far from a battleground state. Moreover, for the first time since the Depression, the traditionally Republican stronghold of Orange County, which has undergone major demographic shifts in recent decades, could vote for a Democrat for president.

Katherine Gerdis, a coordinator with the Election Integrity Project  which touts itself as nonpartisan but which also advocates for a number of conservative causes, including strict voter identification laws  said the organization has trained more than 100 people in Orange County and recently led a poll observer training seminar in Los Alamitos.

Although the group is not associated with Judicial Watch, a well-known right-wing organization that launched a similar effort by the same name in 2012, it does draw volunteers from the Tea Party and anti-illegal immigration organizations.

Many of the 15 mostly white and older women in attendance at a recent meeting said they were motivated to become poll observers out of fear of fraud and malfeasance during the upcoming election. Some believe voting by non-citizens is widespread and agreed with Trumps allegations of a rigged election.

I believe the future of our nation is at stake with this election, said Gloria Pruyne, 78, of Fountain Valley, who sported red pants and a blue sweater over a white shirt  with sparkly U.S. flags dangling from her ears. Im extremely concerned about Americas future.

Janice Heaney, a retiree who lives in Cypress, attended the Los Alamitos seminar with two friends who are equally concerned about the election.

I just feel like there is a lot of invalid voting, she said. I just feel like I would like to keep it honest.

Moments earlier, Heaney listened to a video of an Election Integrity Project trainer listing the dos and donts of poll observing.

Ruth Weiss, statewide director of education and training for the Election Integrity Project, stood next to a lighted fireplace as she laid down the ground rules:

Be professional, not intimidating, she said. Do not photograph or record. Do not touch election material.

If you observe anything that feels illegal or wrong or suspicious to you, step out and call the EIP hotline immediately, Weiss said.

Gerdis stressed that two poll workers must be in the same vehicle and not in separate vehicles when they drop off ballots at the end of election day. If thats not the case, she urged the participants to report it to the EIP hotline.

But in Orange County, poll workers are allowed to drive separately as long as they follow each other.

Its a discrepancy that worries Nia Hartman, an electrical engineer from Rossmoor who has worked Orange County polling stations for 22 elections. She attended the seminar out of curiosity.

Though she said she was glad to meet other concerned citizens, she said she was taken aback by the generic information provided at the seminar, which in some cases did not match official Orange County procedures.

She said she worried that this could result in observers documenting correct actions as infractions and unnecessarily inflate peoples fears.

Im concerned that they are doing some fear-mongering with some of the issues they brought up, Hartman said. Its as if they want to find fraud.

Hartman also wondered why the participants didnt attend poll worker and observer classes hosted for free by the county.

Anybody can go to the Registrar of Voters and take the two- or three-hour poll worker class, and itll answer all their questions, she said. They can get the education for free, and it will be accurate.

Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley said only about 11 people had signed up for the poll observer class put on by the county. Thats a departure from the 2012 election cycle, when the county trained 60 observers. He said he welcomes anyone to come observe on election day.

My desire is to have full transparency because I think there is a lot of misinformation out there, Kelley said.

Kelly Haile, who attended the Laguna Niguel seminar hosted by Reedy, said she started to lose faith in the voting system when she rented a home in West Covina years ago.

The 53-year-old, who now lives in Huntington Beach, said she received two additional ballots during every election cycle at the West Covina home. One ballot was for a woman who had long since died and the other was for the womans daughter, who was in prison.

Even after Haile emailed and called the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters office repeatedly, the issue never was solved, she said, and the ballots kept coming.

While some would chalk it up to pure negligence, Haile believed it was intentional and an opening for potential voter fraud.

Her experience in West Covina and news reports she said indicate voter fraud, paired with Trumps unprecedented call to his supporters to watch polling places on election day, led Haile to attend the seminar.

I dont put anything past the system, she said.

In light of such a contentious election cycle, Kelley has taken extra steps to make sure election day goes smoothly.

Though the Registrar and the Orange County district attorneys office has partnered on election day previously, this year, the agencies plan to ramp up their cooperation. The district attorneys office will have 10 teams of two investigators in the field, ready to respond immediately if problems arise in polling stations.

Though Kelley said he doesnt anticipate any issues, he wants to be extra prepared.

Last thing I want to do is break up skirmishes on election day, he said.

cindy.carcamo@latimes.com

Follow Cindy Carcamo on Twitter @thecindycarcamo

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A federal judge has denied a request by protesters and the NAACP to ban law enforcement from arresting people who continue to gather at the spot where Alfred Olango was fatally shot by an El Cajon police officer.

U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino said in her ruling Friday that there was not a legal basis to grant an injunction against law enforcement in this case. But she said she recognizes that the circumstances underlying the protesters request have provoked genuine concern on behalf of all those involved.

The San Diego branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, along with 11 protesters and three children, noted two instances when law enforcement broke up protests at the shooting site in the Broadway Village Shopping Center by declaring the gatherings unlawful assemblies.

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Sheriffs deputies in riot gear descended on the crowd, and people who failed to obey the order to disband were arrested. The protesterscontend law enforcement violated their civil rights.

El Cajon police said that at one protest someone was overheard threatening to return with a gun after a fight broke out, and at the second, motorists were being stopped in the street and one vehicles tires were slashed.

The judge noted that protesters were allowed to gather at the shopping center several other times without being rousted by police.

Accordingly, across a span of approximately 15 days, the court is left with only two, sharply disputed accounts of gatherings each declared an unlawful assembly, Sammartino wrote. Such a showing does not satisfy plaintiffs burden to show a likelihood of substantial and immediate irreparable injury.

Alfred Olango, 38, was fatally shot by El Cajon police Officer Richard Gonsalves on Sept. 27. Cellphone and security camera video caught the brief encounter and showed Olango with his hands clasped as if holding a weapon and pointing it toward the officer.

Authorities said Olango had grasped a vaping device with a silver cylinder, and the officer thought it was a gun.

kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Davis writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Good morning. It is Saturday, Nov. 5. Heres what you dont want to miss this weekend:

TOP STORIES

Back to the future: Could Wilshire Boulevard serve as a blueprint for Los Angeles future? The grand concourse that was built for the automobile will soon be home to the subway. And the glamorous department stores that once dotted the Miracle Mile area have been replaced by new apartment buildings. Los Angeles Times

Invasion of privacy: A former Playboy playmate was charged Friday as prosecutors allege she snapped a nude picture of a 70-year-old woman at the gym. Dani Mathers, 29, faces one misdemeanor count of invasion of privacy. While body-shaming, in itself, is not a crime, there are circumstances in which invading ones privacy to accomplish it can be. And we shouldnt tolerate that, said City Atty. Mike Feuer. Los Angeles Times

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Long haul: The megacommute has taken over the Bay Area. Thats when it takes a single driver 90 minutes or more to drive one way to work. It shows how hot our economy is, but it also shows how bad our housing and traffic problems are, said Russell Hancock, president of Joint Venture Silicon Valley. Mercury News

Uber loading: As ridesharing booms, cities are asking a key question: Where should drivers drop off passengers? Its turned into quite a debate. SFist

Community leader: E.J. Jackson died at the age of 66. The South L.A. businessman was known for his annual Thanksgiving turkey giveaways. E.J. worked very hard to be of assistance to families, to children, and even though we are all focused on the Thanksgiving giveaway, he was doing this all year, said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles). Los Angeles Times

Hell vouch: With the election approaching, partisans are trying to reach voters in any way they can. One effort being noticed: The California attorney who wrote a passionate Facebook post about his old roommate Tim Kaine. Vox

Married men vote: A SurveyMonkey study shows that California is one of only a few states where a majority of married men support Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. SurveyMonkey

You may proceed: Prosecutors may continue their case of voter fraud and perjury against former L.A. City Councilman Richard Alarcon and his wife. If Alarcon is retried and convicted of a felony, he would be barred under state law from holding elected office. Just weeks after his conviction was overturned earlier this year, Alarcon announced he would run for Congress. Los Angeles Times

Taco taco: Can it be? A Chipotle is coming to Echo Park. Eastsider LA

Beach crash: A vehicle with L.A. Countys Beaches and Harbors division ran over a man on Venice Beach Friday. The man, in his 50s, suffered traumatic injuries and was listed in serious condition. Los Angeles Times

THIS WEEKS MOST POPULAR STORIES IN ESSENTIAL CALIFORNIA

1. A janitor for BART grossed $270,000 in pay and benefits. Mercury News

2. How a coastal champion once ended up defending the Bay Boys. Daily Breeze

3. Twenty-eight gifts for the Southern Californian in your life. BuzzFeed

4. This 30-year-old billionaire just finalized the most expensive home purchase in San Francisco so far this year. SFist

5. Why did an arsonist target one of the citys most reviled buildings? LA Weekly

ICYMI, HERE ARE THIS WEEKS GREAT READS

Getting serious: Silicon Valley has been criticized for focusing more on getting rich than helping others. But theres a new movement to help philanthropists do a better job, using techniques learned in business. New York Times

New restaurant: Movie great Francis Ford Coppola is trying to explain, and perhaps deflect, criticism over his new Napa restaurant that serves Native American cuisine. San Francisco Chronicle

Back to where it all began: Dance legend Carmen de Lavallade returned to South L.A. to talk to students about the power of art and self confidence. It was a message that not all students were open to. You are a part of that history, and you will be a part of that history, and dont let anybody tell you different, de Lavallade said. Los Angeles Times

Shades of Nostalgia: Route 66 was different for black America. The Atlantic

LOOKING AHEAD

Monday: Sen. Bernie Sanders will be in L.A. in support of Proposition 61.

Tuesday: Its election day. Heres your guide to the states 17 ballot propositions.

Friday: Veterans Day events will be held across Southern California.

If you have a memory or story about the Golden State, share it with us. Send us an email to let us know what you love or fondly remember about our state. (Please keep your story to 100 words.)

Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments, complaints and ideas to Alice Walton or Shelby Grad.
Sacramento police arrested a 16-year veteran of the department at a local hotel on Friday and have booked him on suspicion of possessing illegal drugs while armed.

Officer Isaac Knutila, 45, was also booked on charges of possession of amphetamines, possession of a controlled substance and possession of more than an ounce of marijuana, according to a police department statement.

Police launched an investigation of Knutila last month after allegations surfaced that the officer might have been involved in prostitution-related activity at a hotel within the city limits, the department said.

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Knutila has been placed on administrative leave pending termination of employment, police said, adding that there was no indication that Knutila engaged in criminal activity while on duty.

It is unacceptable that a member of law enforcement would violate the publics trust, Deputy Chief Brian Louie said in the statement. We hold our officers to the highest standard and I assure you that these actions dont reflect upon the hardworking men and women of the Sacramento Police Department.

Since launching its investigation in October, the statement said, the police department dedicated a vast amount of internal and external resources to the case, conducting surveillance and undercover operations focused on Knutila.

On Friday, detectives served a search warrant and located a usable amount of narcotics in Knutilas possession, the statement said.

The police department said wat is working with the Sacramento County district attorneys office on the case. Officials said that the criminal investigation is ongoing.

matt.stevens@latimes.com

Twitter: @ByMattStevens

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California voters next week will consider the fate of the death penalty, and in few places are the stakes as high as Riverside County.

Ten years into a state moratorium on executions, many prosecutors have stopped seeking capital punishment altogether. Riverside, however, is condemning killers at the highest rate in the country. The county has sent 22 people to death row in the past five years, the same number as Los Angeles County  where more than six times as many murders were committed.

Whether a crime merits execution, according to both legal experts and public officials, is a matter of geography as much as anything.

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Thats how it should be, Riverside County Dist. Atty. Mike Hestrin said, contending that how the death penalty is used in each county should reflect the local sentiment.

There are two measures on the ballot Tuesday: one calling to repeal the death penalty and the other seeking to narrow the time frame from sentencing to execution.

Since capital punishment was put on hold a decade ago over questions surrounding lethal drug protocols, prosecutors in 33 California counties have not condemned a single person. Half a dozen counties recently have taken inmates off death row, abandoning legal appeals to keep them there.

But in Riverside, death sentences increased after the freeze.

I know we are seen as the death penalty center, said Hestrin, a Republican. But capital cases are reserved for what he said he views as the most horrible crimes  and are essential to defining community values.

It creates a common feeling that we seek and deliver justice. ... It expresses outrage at heinous acts.

He cited the death sentence given last year to Tyrone Harts, who shot his girlfriend and then set her on fire, leaving four of her children to try to douse the flames with small cups of water.

In deciding to seek capital punishment, Hestrin said, he measures evil  whether the killing involved a predator, stalking, planning.

The prosecutor attributed Riverside Countys meting out of the death penalty to a crime rate he said is relatively high. California Department of Justice reports, however, show Riverside ranked in the bottom fourth for violent crime in 2015.

Moreover, Hestrin said, a majority of the voters he serves supports capital punishment. In 2012, almost two-thirds of them voted against a ballot initiative to repeal death sentences.

We are a county that wants law and order, he said. I dont shy away from that.  I feel we seek and deliver justice.

These are literally the worst of the worst of the worst.  Susan Schroeder, chief of staff for the O.C. district attorneyas office

Californias execution freeze also plays a part. Hestrin said Riverside voters would be less supportive if those death sentences were not symbolic.

According to death row rosters across the nation, 25 people have been sentenced this year  a dramatic fall from the 49 death penalties handed down in 2015, which was a 41-year low.

At its peak in 1996, the nation condemned 315 individuals.

Death penalty opponents say the sentencing decline reflects shrinking public support for capital punishment.

They carry those doubts with them into jury deliberation rooms, said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

Supporters instead see more selective prosecution, with fewer questionable outcomes.

That is how it should be, said Kent Scheidegger, director of the Sacramento-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which has gone to court to force California to resume executions.

The discretion county prosecutors have in deciding to seek a death sentence is wide, so often it depends on who is making the call.

Hestrin said there were 22 pending death penalty cases in Riverside County when he took office.

He removed seven from the list, including a homicide that involved a love triangle, deciding execution would be an inappropriate outcome. Cases he has added for trial include a man who killed his father, uncle and a bystander after being discharged from a psychiatric facility and another accused of killing two Palm Springs police officers.

Other defendants who could face the death penalty in Riverside County if convicted include a woman accused of shooting her husband to take his money, a man charged with kidnapping and killing a teenager on her walk home from school and a gang member accused of firing into a house, killing a 6-year-old.

Four pending cases in Orange County, by contrast, involve three accused serial killers and a man charged in the mass murder of eight people.

These are literally the worst of the worst of the worst, said Susan Schroeder, chief of staff for the Orange County district attorneys office. The death penalty, she said, should be reserved for crimes in which the only just punishment available to us in a civilized society is death.

The disparities have led some defense lawyers to argue that it is as wrong to condemn a person by geography as it would be by race.

Appellate lawyer Mike Clough  whose clients include the serial arsonist who started the Esperanza wildfire that killed five firefighters  said the rate at which the death penalty is handed out in Riverside does not follow crime trends, demographics or even voter leanings.

There isnt any answer but politics, Clough said, adding that Riversides judicial system is tilted to favor a death verdict.

Three-fourths of the county judges who have upheld death sentences since 2011 previously worked as prosecutors. And seven judges presiding over trials in which 39 defendants were condemned had been death penalty prosecutors.

It becomes a self-replicating system at that point, Clough said.

Prosecutorial discretion also has left some crime victims struggling to comprehend when the death option is taken off the table.

Sometimes, the reason is purely financial.

In an appeal that took 13 years for a hearing, the state Supreme Court in 2015 ordered a new sentencing trial for a man condemned in the torture slaying of a 20-year-old woman in Shasta County.

Her brother, Jason Sinner, said county officials told him a new sentencing trial would cost $2 million  and introduced him to the woman prosecuting child abuse cases who could use the money instead.

My sister was just as good as anybody, Sinner said.

All I wanted them to do is stand up a little bit and say the death penalty is messed up. Get rid of it, or embrace it and get it working.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

For updates and more, follow @paigestjohn.

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I am 25 and still afraid of the dark: Victims families wrestle with grief as they weigh the death penalty on the ballot
By Matthew Rusling (Xinhua) 09:16, November 05, 2016

WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 -- Conservative-leaning Fox News Network has walked back claims that an indictment of U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clintonis likely, but it remains unknown whether that will stop the rumors from circulating.

Fox News put out a report Wednesday claiming an indictment of the Democratic nominee was "likely," after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced it would re-open an investigation into alleged wrongdoing on the part of Clinton.

The news spread like wildfire and was re-printed by a number of highly-respected news publications, including Real Clear Politics - famous for its average of polls - and The Hill, as well as countless conservative websites and blogs.

But later, Fox appeared to walk back the comments, with the host, Bret Baier, saying he had spoken "inartfully." A number of other U.S. media outlets refuted Fox' s claims, with news outlets including NBC News, ABC News and CNN saying that their sources have told them otherwise.

On Thursday evening, Clinton's campaign called on the FBI to release a statement to put an end to what it called baseless news reports by Fox News.

But many search engine searches still show the initial Fox reports at the top of the page of search results, depending on the keywords used.

Moreover, conservative talk radio has latched onto the topic, and it remains unknown whether the rumors will continue to spread.

Such rumors are expected to cause further damage to Clinton campaign so close the the Election Day, as experts said they would dampen the enthusiasm among her supporters.

Clinton has been plagued by several scandals investigated by the FBI, including her use of a private email account instead of a secure government account while she was secretary of state, and the "pay for play" charges against the Clinton Foundation, a charity founded by Hillary Clinton's husband and former President Bill Clinton.

INDICTMENT WOULD BE DEVASTATING, BUT UNLIKELY

U.S. experts said an indictment would be devastating for Clinton- especially if she clinches the White House, but emphasizing that such indictment is unlikely.

"It would be devastating for a sitting president to be indicted. That would be very disruptive to the political system and the ability of that leader to function in the future," Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Darrell West told Xinhua.

Still, West added that an indictment is unlikely. "However, I don' t think there is much risk of this happening," he said.

Indeed, the ultimate decision maker on an indictment would be the Attorney General, who is appointed by the president.

"It is unlikely that an Attorney General appointed by President Clinton is going to allow an indictment to go forward," West said.

Dan Mahaffee, an analyst with the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, told Xinhua that if Clinton win the Nov. 8 election, any future indictment would create a shadow over her first 100 days and arguably delegitimize her presidency in the eyes of many Republicans.

That would further the partisan deadlock in Washington and exacerbate the negative tenor of politics, Mahaffee said.
Larry Carlisle was down on his luck, stricken with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and injuries from having been beaten up when he was a cab driver. So six months ago he left Oklahoma City and set off for a new life in Pueblo, Colo.

It was, he said, an oasis.

In my ailments, Ive turned to cannabis, he elaborated.

His plan is to start a fish farm. But for now, the 58-year-old Carlisle camps out with friends who go by the names Cactus and Cowboy, eating what they can scrape together from food stamps, soup kitchens and dumpsters. They are part of a homeless population that has grown dramatically since the county embraced the pot industry.

More than anywhere else in Colorado, Pueblo tied its future to the marijuana jobs, tax revenues and other economic benefits touted by legalization advocates around the country. But almost three years after legalization took effect in Colorado, Pueblo is reconsidering that strategy.

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On Tuesday, voters will decide whether to ban recreational marijuana businesses. There are two essentially identical measures up for vote  one for the city of Pueblo, the other for outlying Pueblo County, where all of the recreational businesses are currently located.

Backers of the proposals say the industry has oversold the economic benefits and become a drain on local hospitals and law enforcement. The companies and their supporters say those problems have been overblown and that any issues are easier to address when regulated enterprises rather than criminals are selling the drug.

How the measures will fare is a mystery, because there havent been any public polls.

With marijuana initiatives on the ballot in several states, the drug could soon be legal for recreation or medicinal use in as many as 29 states. As the first state to legalize marijuana for recreational use, Colorado is being closely watched by other places trying to decide how to regulate pot.

The Colorado law, approved by voters in a 2012 referendum, left it up to each of the 335 cities and counties to decide what sort of businesses to allow. More than 70% banned pot business outright, according to CannaRegs, a firm that tracks local marijuana laws.

Some municipalities held citizen referendums. In Pueblo, decision-making fell to local officials.

The county commissioners saw marijuana as an opportunity to revive the fortunes of a place that never recovered from the closure of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company steel mill in the 1980s.

We all got real poor, real quick, said Lucinda Gallegos, a marketing consultant whose father and other relatives worked at the mill. We went from wearing Nikes and Levis to Pro-Wings and Sassoons.

Besides industry-friendly regulations, Pueblo also offered marijuana growers cheap and abundant land and labor, access to water and enough sunshine to cultivate in greenhouses rather than in far more expensive, artificially lit indoor spaces.

While Denver, about 100 miles to the north, is the hub of the states marijuana industry, Pueblo has become its second city. The county is now home to nearly 200 growing operations, processors and shops that supply marijuana for recreational use.

In a county of just over 150,000 people, the industry employs about 1,300, according to a local trade group called Growing Pueblos Future.

Among the businesses is Los Suenos Farms, which claims to be the largest legal cannabis farm by acreage in North America. It employs 80 people, about a third of whom have college degrees, with a payroll of about $2 million.

That money is going to rents, cars, housing and food, said one of its major investors, Bob DeGabrielle, a real estate developer from North Carolina.

Pot taxes have helped fund construction at the local high school, road improvements, scholarships for local students and the new Institute of Cannabis Research at Colorado State University Pueblo.

Sal Pace, a county commissioner, said that as legalization spreads across the country he hoped Pueblo could one day become the Napa Valley of Cannabis.

But proponents of getting rid of the recreational marijuana industry say any benefits are far outweighed by its burdens.

I dont believe its even paying its own way, said Charlene Graham, a former deputy chief of the Pueblo police and head of Citizens for a Healthy Pueblo, which wants to ban pot businesses.

Rising homelessness has become a key campaign point. Posada, a homeless services organization, has assisted 5,486 people this year, up from 2,444 for all of 2013, the year before legalization for recreational use took effect.

Were importing poverty, said Anne Stattelman, the groups executive director. This is already a vulnerable community, and now the new arrivals from out-of-state want to use Colorado like their mothers basement.

Many arrive on Interstate 40 from Texas, Oklahoma and other conservative states in the Southeast without legal marijuana or state-subsidized Obamacare for the poor. Pueblo isnt the first town where drivers can legally buy marijuana, but its the first one large enough to offer social services. And its cost of living is among the lowest in the nation.

Other proponents of banning pot businesses say the industry has damaged the reputation of the town. We think its a negative for our community to be regarded as a center for a drug culture, the Pueblo Chieftan editorialized in its support of the measures.

Proponents also point to concerns about organized crime. Police have conducted several raids this year on homes where pot is being grown to illegally ship and sell out of state.

But the marijuana industry and it backers say that banning businesses would have no bearing on whether people grow weed in their own homes. The accuse marijuana opponents of saying anything in an effort to turn back legalization.

Were fighting a group of prohibitionists, said Jim Parco, an economics professor at Colorado College who owns a local dispensary.

Pro-pot forces also downplay concerns about rising homelessness. Pace, the county commissioner, said the new arrivals are to some degree to be expected in a boom town and not a problem thats worth killing the countys newest industry.

If voters ban marijuana businesses, it could create new problems for Pueblo. DeGabrielle said he and other investors in the industry are prepared to sue the county to recoup their money.

Im participating in a legal, authorized, state approved industry, he said.

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The Supreme Court weighed in on behalf of Arizonas Republican leaders Saturday and cleared the way for them to enforce a new state law that makes it felony for anyone other than family members and caregivers to deliver mail-in ballots to official polling places.

The high court in a brief order with no registered dissents blocked a ruling of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which on Friday had halted enforcement of the new law.

It is not clear what will happen now. County election officials had said they did not plan to vigorously enforce the new law. However, the Arizona Republican Party said it was training volunteers to watch and report people who were seen dropping off ballots.

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In April, shortly after the new restriction was adopted on a party-line vote in the state Legislature, lawyers for the Democratic National Committee sued, arguing the restriction could prevent thousands of legal voters, particularly those on Indian reservations and on the Mexican border, from having their ballots counted. They said many of these people do not have a post office nearby and rely on others to collect and deliver their ballots.

The law makes a crime out of the longstanding practice pursuant to which thousands of voters have relied on friends, neighbors, advocacy and political organizations and campaigns to collect and deliver their early ballots to ensure they arrive by 7 p.m Election Day deadline, they said.

Prior to 2013, Arizona was under the close scrutiny of the Voting Rights Act and could not change its voting laws without seeking approval from the Justice Department. But the Supreme Court struck down that provision of the 1965 law on a 5-4 vote and said it was no longer needed to protect the rights of minorities.

Free from federal oversight, Arizona lawmakers passed the new restriction in March. Republicans said that allowing community groups to collect and deliver mail-in ballots could result in fraud.

Under Arizona law, mail ballots have to be received by the polling places by Tuesday.

A federal judge refused to block the new law, and a 9th Circuit panel upheld that decision on a 2-1 vote.

But on Friday, the full 9th Circuit reconsidered that decision and voted to put the Arizona law on hold.

Its order came on a 6-5 vote, with Democratic appointees making the majority and five Republican appointees in dissent. Chief Judge Sidney Thomas, speaking for the majority, said the order would maintain the status quo and prevent confusion.

But on Friday evening, Arizonas attorney general and the Arizona Republican Party filed a joint emergency appeal with Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who oversees the 9th Circuit. They said 26 states, including California, have similar laws on the books. They asked for a stay of the appeals courts decision and argued the last-minute order from the 9th Circuit was disruptive and could cause confusion.

The application for stay presented to Justice Kennedy and by him referred to the Court is granted, the court said in a Saturday order.

The handling of the matter suggests the justice did not delve into the merits of the dispute but agreed with Arizonas claim that the federal courts should not interfere on the eve of the election.

Court disputes over voting laws often divide justices along party lines 

david.savage@latimes.com

On Twitter: DavidGSavage

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Hillary Clintons big campaign concert finale? Beyonce (and backup dancers in pantsuits)

Beyonce takes the stage in Cleveland. First song: Formation. Outfit: pantsuit (of course) pic.twitter.com/bzEs3u93Aj  Monica Alba (@albamonica) November 5, 2016

Backed up by pantsuit-clad dancers, Beyonce sang Who run the world? Girls! and declared: Im with her.

Queen Beys performance followed her husband, Jay Z, and a collection of other top rappers at a get-out-the-vote concert here Friday that doubled as a high-wattage campaign event for Hillary Clinton.

Clinton quoted Jay Z, referring to him as Jay, in tracing the civil rights movement to President Obamas election.

We have unfinished business to do, more barriers to break, and with your help, a glass ceiling to crack once and for all, she said to the raucous crowd. So please take this energy out with you.

(Matt Rourke / AP)

Clintons stop in Cleveland came amid a furious final week of

campaigning with some of her biggest supporters from the political and entertainment worlds.

On Thursday she was joined by Bernie Sanders and Pharrell Williams in North Carolina. Shell return to Cleveland again Sunday for an event with LeBron James. And Monday she will close her campaign with her husband, daughter and the Obamas.

Friday nights event was originally advertised as featuring only Jay Z, but as Clinton headed for Cleveland after a pair of stops in Pennsylvania and Michigan, her campaign informed reporters that the rapper was bringing some special guests as well.

The series of performances, vulgar lyrics and all, were interspersed with pitches for Clinton.

Im here tonight because respect matters to me, Jay Z said.

It doesnt really matter who I am. Im here to celebrate our next and first woman president, Chance the Rapper said.

Beyonce, though, was the show-stopper, including a duet with her husband.

Beyonce recalled the pride she felt in seeing Obama, the nations first black president, elected eight years ago. Now, the nation was on the cusp of history again, she predicted.

But we have to vote, she said. "... We have to think about the future of our daughters, our sons, and vote for someone who believes in them as much as we do. And thats why Im with her.
California Democrats ask Obama to pardon nearly 750,000 Dreamers, but White House says it wouldnt work

The members of Congress who persuaded President Obama to grant temporary legal status to hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought into the country illegally as children are now asking him to use a pardon to prevent those immigrants from being deported by President-elect Donald Trump.

The White House, however, promptly batted down the idea.

Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Downey) and Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) sent a letter to Obama on Thursday asking him to use his pardon authority to forgive the past and future civil immigration offenses of the nearly 750,000 people granted deportation deferrals under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.

They believe that would keep those people from being deported, and even though it would leave them in legal limbo without work permits or visas, they could more easily apply for legal status from within the U.S. without immigration offenses on their records.

They wouldnt have a piece of paper, they wouldnt have work authorization, but they wouldnt have to be living in fear every moment of their lives about deportation, Lofgren said after a news conference Thursday.

Lofgren, a former immigration attorney, said the pardons would probably be applied to the civil offenses related to entering and remaining in the country without authorization.

But whether a pardon would actually be applicable in the so-called Dreamers situation is unclear. Lawyers disagree over whether the immigrants could be pardoned for civil crimes they havent been formally accused of, and whether such a pardon would actually prevent them from being deported while they seek legal status.

A White House official signaled late Thursday that the administration was not considering a pardon for those registered under DACA because it believes a pardon would not allow them legal status.

We note that the clemency power could not give legal status to any undocumented individual. As we have repeatedly said for years, only Congress can create legal status for undocumented individuals, an administration official said.

After immigration reform efforts stalled in Congress during Obamas first term, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus pressured Obama to act independently to protect from deportation certain immigrants brought into the country illegally when they were children. He then used an executive order to create the DACA program in 2012.

The Dreamers, one in three of whom are estimated to live in California, gave the Department of Homeland Security their fingerprints, home addresses and other information to undergo background checks that allowed them to defer deportation under DACA.

At the time, advocates and the administration emphasized that providing the information would protect the Dreamers and was worth the risk. But with Trump vowing to deport millions of people who are in the country illegally and many fearing he may let the DACA program expire, Dreamers are worried the information they provided will be used to deport them.

Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), whose husband is an immigration attorney, said at the news conference she has been getting a flood of messages from frightened Dreamers. On Tuesday she sent a letter to Obama asking him to keep their information from the Trump administration.

We promised these recipients security, and now they are facing a nightmare, she said.

Roybal-Allard said those who pushed Obama to create the program and persuaded people to come out of the shadows to register with the government have an obligation to protect them.

These are kids. We feel a sense of responsibility. We went out into our districts and we talked to the Dreamers, and they asked us, Is it really OK for us to do this? Roybal-Allard said. And we said, No, dont worry, you need to come forward. Now we are in a situation where all that we said, in fact, could possibly be reversed.

Although the presidents pardon power is normally used for individual cases, there is some precedent for the chief executive to pardon a large group of people.

President Jimmy Carter pardoned half a million Vietnam War draft evaders in 1977, and at least seven other presidents have issued broad pardons.

Congress and the Supreme Court cannot undo a presidential pardon, nor can a new president.

Lofgren said if Obama doesnt pardon the Dreamers, she hopes he responds with his own idea to help them.

These young people are not alone, they are not going to be abandoned by us, she said.

UPDATES

4:59 p.m. This post was updated with additional details throughout.

2:15 p.m. This post was updated with the White Houses response to the proposal.

This post was originally published at 11:30 a.m.
President Obama extolled the virtues of Hillary Clinton and warned of the dangers of Donald Trump, and then he boiled it down to a personal appeal:

I need you to go out and just nag the heck out of folks who arent voting, Obama said Friday. I need you to tell them that Barack is personally asking them.

It was no coincidence that he took this message to Fayetteville State University, a historically black college in North Carolina, the battleground state with the highest percentage of black voters.

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Troubled by early voting statistics, Obama is exhorting black voters to turn out for Clinton as they did for him. But Obama faces a host of challenges in trying to hand Clinton his near-unanimous share of record-breaking black votes in 2008 and 2012. Not only is he not on the ballot, but Democrats also worry that Trump and the Republicans are trying to suppress black votes.

If blacks dont vote, Obama said recently, hed take it as a personal insult to his legacy, which depends largely on a Democratic successor who would keep his executive actions intact.

One Democratic North Carolina congressman is worried enough to be sounding the alarm. As the state wound down its early voting this weekend, some 22% of early ballots had been cast by black voters  down 8% from 2012.

President Obama will take it as a repudiation if we dont vote, said Rep. G.K. Butterfield, who is chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. Weve got to make sure that doesnt happen. Weve got to protect the Obama legacy.

Clinton may be making up some of the difference with white college-educated voters, who flock to her more than they did to Obama, said Michael Bitzer, a Catawba College political science professor who has has been tracking the early voting statistics in his state over the past few days. In addition, the number of ballots cast by other minorities, including Latinos and Asians, are up, he said.

Could she be making up that deficit in black voters in other areas? Most definitely, he said. But this is a whole new dynamic.

Republican analysts have predicted for two years that a drop in the black vote would be a big factor in the 2016 presidential race. The midterm losses for other Democrats were warning signs, said Kevin Madden, a GOP strategist and former senior advisor to Mitt Romney.

These are voters who, even when they were disappointed in Obama, were steadfast in their electoral support for him, said Madden. With Clinton, the same intensity is just not there.

Clinton campaign officials say the black turnout picked up at the end of the week after North Carolina opened additional voting sites, the result of a protracted battle between Democrats and Republicans about when and where to allow voting early.

In Guilford County where Greensboro is located, for example, black turnout over the past three days was 60% higher than in the same time in 2012, according to campaign officials.

At the same time, in Florida, another crucial battleground, 22% more African Americans had cast votes as of Friday than had done so at that point in 2012, the campaign said.

Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook described a different coalition of voters than the one Obama relied on, one that could be less dependent on black voters.

In addition to Clintons stronger support among college-educated white voters, the campaign is also counting on women, including registered Republicans, to put her over the top.

The Hillary coalition is actually starting to emerge in the early voting, Mook said.

Of course, the math works better for Clinton if theres a strong showing from black voters. Democrats have suspected for weeks that Republicans would try to suppress or even intimidate black voters, especially after Trump began calling for volunteer election observers to show up at the polls in what Democrats saw as an attempt to depress black turnout.

North Carolina is one of four states  along with Georgia, Texas and Florida  that had faced extra scrutiny from independent observers under Voting Rights Act guidelines until the Supreme Court relaxed its rules three years ago.

Strict new voter ID laws in North Carolina and Texas, both backed by Republicans, were struck down this year when federal judges declared that the burden for compliance fell unfairly on minorities. Lawyers in both states are trying to ensure that registered voters are not stopped from voting because they dont have photo identification.

Thats why President Obama and Michelle Obama have been on the campaign trail in the homestretch, trying to transfer their appeal over to Clinton as best they can, said Madden.

Obamas answer is to dial up the personal appeal in the final days before the election. In an interview with radio host Tom Joyner, recorded while he was campaigning in Ohio last week, Obama said he understands what black people might be thinking.

People in the barber shops and the beauty salons might be saying to themselves, We love Barack, we especially love Michelle, Obama said. In 2008, he went on, It was so exciting, and now were not excited as much.

In Fayetteville, the president brought the first lady, perhaps the most popular political figure in the U.S. right now, into the matter.

A strong showing at the polls, he said, would be the best sendoff they could give to him and his wife.

Twitter: @cparsons, @chrismegerian

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Donald Trump and his campaign surrogates have been banking that a cadre of voters who rarely surface at the polls will show up and buoy his campaign as it drives toward Tuesdays election.

Yet while reliably Republican voters are showing up at early-voting sites, they are being met there by a countering army: women, Latinos and other supporters of Hillary Clinton.

The early vote is an imperfect measure of results, but two points seem clear.

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The first is that an election whose negativity seemed destined to drive away more voters than it attracted has so far done the reverse, prompting a record deluge of early voting in many of the states that will decide the presidency. By Tuesday, experts estimate, as many as 40% of the eventual ballots may have already been cast.

The second is that Trump has been helpful to Clintons efforts to increase voting among women and Latinos.

In key states like North Carolina, Nevada and Florida, gains among women and minorities have bolstered the Democrats efforts to block Trumps avenues to victory. Trump, too, has seen big turnout increases among his targeted voters, but they have not overwhelmed the Democratic forces as some in his party had hoped.

In Nevada, a giant get-out-the-vote operation by Culinary Union Local 226, which represents casino workers, has contributed to a dominant showing for Clinton in early voting.

Half of the locals 32,500 registered voters have cast votes. Shuttles cart workers to and from voting sites. Nine hours a day, 300 volunteers knock on doors and others call voters from the union hall. The operation, which began with citizenship and voter registration drives, is aimed at union workers, their relatives and the public.

The intensity is driven in part by distaste for Trump, who has made derogatory comments about women and Latinos throughout the campaign.

He created a climate where the election became very personal, said the locals political director, Yvanna Cancela.

When measured, enthusiasm among Democrats in Nevada ranked higher than that of Republicans, said Tom Bonier, chief executive of TargetSmart, which analyzes voter data. This is a reversal of what many polls have shown throughout the year and suggests that both candidates can count on an intensely motivated base.

Early voters are valued by both campaigns, and particularly so in this scandal-tossed year; once cast, the verdict cannot be changed if the voters sentiment shifts, except in rare instances unlikely to affect the elections outcome. And they are also protection, particularly in the Midwestern and Northern states, against weather than might complicate efforts to get to the polls on election day.

There is no certain connection between the early-vote winners and the ultimate results. Until election day, it will be impossible to assess whether those who cast ballots early are the same ones who otherwise would have shown up on Tuesday, or whether they dramatically expanded the pool of voters. And at least one key state, Pennsylvania, has little early voting, meaning that the results will rest on Tuesdays turnout.

Clinton officials said in a conference call Friday that their early-voting efforts had targeted those who dont always show up, so that they would broaden their overall number of voters.

Our strategy all along was not just to bank the biggest lead that we could, but to bank the voters who have the lowest propensity to turn out, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said.

Locking those voters down also helped free Clinton to concentrate in the final days of the race on places where the majority of votes are cast on election day. She was in Detroit and Pittsburgh on Friday and headed to New Hampshire and Philadelphia in coming days.

Michigan is one of these states that doesnt have early voting, she pointed out at Detroits Eastern Market. Ive been all over the country going to states that are already voting  but Michigan votes on Tuesday.

Trump campaigned in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania on Friday, emphasizing his contention that Clinton should be disqualified from the presidency due to corruption. As he has in recent days, he also encouraged early voting.

Those studying the numbers say there has been an uptick in voters who rarely cast ballots, or who never have. The latter category is particularly valuable to Clinton, since younger voters side with her lopsidedly.

Mook portrayed the Democratic effort as a blazing success and took to task the decidedly lower-profile effort by Trump to draw out early voters.

We have so far not seen a surge from the Trump camp and his voters, Mook said. And if he hasnt banked his votes by this point, hes going to have an even taller task.

But if Democrats are bragging about an advantage, the numbers paint a more nuanced picture: Voting is up among many groups, including those who would be reliably considered Trump voters.

Looking at the vote in North Carolina, for example, University of Florida political scientist Michael McDonald said that the womens vote had increased 11.8% over the 2012 totals. That would aid Clinton, based on her fairly strong standing among women.

Yet at the same time the mens vote had increased by 10.4%, McDonald said. That would accrue to Trump.

Both candidates have tried to boost early voting in the last several weeks. Clinton arrived in Ohio the day before the close of registration in mid-October, and two days before the start of early voting, a travel pattern she has kept up in other states. Ohio remains one of the campaigns biggest challenges; although Democrats were catching up in early votes as the final weekend before the election neared, Republicans had outdistanced them early on.

Clinton has sent President Obama; his wife, Michelle; former President Bill Clinton; Vice President Joe Biden; and two senators  Vermonts Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren  to battleground states to increase early voting.

Obama won the White House twice on the strength of a muscular get-out-the-vote effort, building a coalition of African Americans, the young and women.

Clintons desired coalition is somewhat different. The turnout rate for African Americans slumped early on, a circumstance the presidents visits to important states has been meant to address. Turnout by black voters seems to have increased over the last few days.

Clinton is far more dependent than was Obama on women and Latinos  the latter a group that has not always shown up for their favored candidates. This year, however, they are.

In Florida, according to officials there, Latinos already have obliterated their turnout for the entire 2012 election. In Nevada, Cancela says she expects Latinos to make up at least 20% of the electorate, 2 points above the 2012 mark.

The results among women are striking as well.

Of the 21 states studied by TargetSmart, women accounted for more than 55% of the electorate in 15. In North Carolina, women had cast almost 57% of the early votes, several points above their strength in voter registration. The same was true in Ohio, and in two states worrying Democrats  Wisconsin and Michigan.

Women do make up the majority of voters in those states, but in each case were showing up in proportions that exceeded their registration advantage.

In Florida, women made up 60% of the Democratic early-voting sample to less than 38% for men, a factor of 5 points over the registration gap. Women also had a gender gap of more than 4 points among Republicans and independents.

The nearly 23-percentage-point gap among Democrats is eye-popping, said Daniel A. Smith, a University of Florida professor who analyzes voting.

The question is what proportion of the votes of different subgroups is aligning with either candidate. Clinton has made a big pitch for the support of suburban Republican women in key states, a vote that usually goes to the Republican nominee. Until the election day ballots are counted, it wont be known how successful her efforts have been.

Similarly, a boost in Democratic early voters would be a strong sign for any other party nominee. But this year, Trump has attracted many blue-collar Democrats, particularly in the Midwest, so he too could benefit from a surge in the opposite party.

In any case, by the time the polls close Tuesday, many more voters may have cast ballots than anyone might have predicted.

Theres been this theory that since the election has been so overwhelmingly negative, that would depress turnout, said Bonier. The early-vote data suggests so far thats not the case, that we are headed toward a high-turnout election.

cathleen.decker@latimes.com

Twitter: @cathleendecker

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In California, theres at least one thing that Hillary Clinton supporters and Donald Trump supporters can agree on: If their candidate loses on election day, they want the victor put under a microscope by Congress.

The simmering hostility and hyperpolarized electorate may, at the very least, provide cover to politicians who continue with the partisan bickering and Washington gridlock that has frustrated voters for years.

A new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll asked likely California voters backing Clinton and Trump if they wanted their member of Congress to work with or act as a check and balance on the newly elected president if their candidate loses on Tuesday.

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Among Clinton supporters, 72% wanted their representative to act as a check and balance on Trump. Only 18% wanted the representative to work with the Republican in the case he wins.

Among Trump supporters, 80% wanted their member of Congress to do the same with Clinton. Just 14% opted for working with the Democrat should she become president.

The polarization is so extreme, I dont know if it can get worse, said Anna Greenberg, the Democratic pollster whose firm forms half of the bipartisan team that produced the survey for USC and The Times.

Everybody believes its important to compromise, but they dont want their side to, said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC. Regardless of the outcome, its pretty clear that if the opposition party wants to be obstructionist, theyre going to have the overwhelming support of their own followers.

The poll also found 69% of Californias voters had an unfavorable impression of Trump, while 28% saw the New York billionaire in a favorable light. For Clinton, 42% of voters had an unfavorable impression of the former secretary of State, compared with 56% favorable.

While most California voters dont care much for Congress as a whole (71% disapprove), they do give their own representatives relatively good marks.

Mirroring national trends, the survey found 43% of likely voters approved of the job their member of Congress was doing in Washington, compared with 25% who disapproved. A greater percentage of Democrats favor their representative than Republicans and independents do, which is not surprising in a state where 39 of the 53 House lawmakers are Democrats.

Regardless of who wins the White House, the next president will enter office with the highest unfavorability rating in recent history, said pollster Randy Gutermuth of the Republican polling firm American Viewpoint, the other half of the team that conducted the survey.

Democratic attorney Bryan Caforio, who is challenging Rep. Steve Knight (R-Lancaster), hasnt hesitated to cast Trump as a political boogeyman in their hotly contested race for Californias 25th Congressional District.

If Donald Trump is continuing to put forward the hateful, divisive policies; the bullying behavior; the misogynistic, racist, bigoted conduct thats hes done this far, Im not going to let that stand, Caforio said after a campaign rally in Santa Clarita last week. Because hes not going to insult the people who live in our community, and theyre going to have a representative who is going to stand up to him and his hateful positions.

Protesters hold signs outside of a campaign rally for Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Riverside in May. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images )

Retired aerospace worker Dennis Ray of Lancaster, who lives in that congressional district, is just as worried about Clinton.

Ray, a 72-year-old Republican who took part in the USC/Times survey, said Clinton has a long history of being deceitful and evasive. Her decision to use a private server for her emails while secretary of State put the country at risk by giving hackers an opportunity to tap into classified information, he said.

Shes a liar, Ray said. If I did what she did, Id be in jail.

Up north in Marin County, fellow Republican Michael Biber said despite Clintons faults, she would be a much better president. Trump, he said, would be dangerous.

Hes a nincompoop. Im astonished that someone as ignorant and callous and tasteless as Trump could win the Republican nomination, said Biber, 67, a retired government affairs executive from Greenbrae who also took part in the poll.

The ballot box guide to Californias propositions >>

During the primary, Biber supported Ohios Republican Gov. John Kasich.

Biber said hes currently building a vacation home in Costa Rica.

If Trump is elected, I will lobby my two college-age kids to come to Costa Rica and live with us, he said.

Hardcore Clinton supporter and Democrat Martha Hassenplug had a different perspective. She didnt take part in the poll but attended a rally for U.S. Senate candidate Kamala Harris in Santa Barbara on Tuesday and wasnt shy about sharing her opinions.

She said she doesnt like Trump. Not one bit. But the gridlock in Washington has to end, and both parties need to set aside their differences and put the country before politics.

We have to work together, Hassenplug said. I dont care if we elect a monkey with four heads.

phil.willon@latimes.com

Twitter: @philwillon

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Here are some final mumblings before this distressing election is mercifully concluded.

Yes, practically everything to be said already has been repeatedly. But not quite everything.

1. Gov. Jerry Brown has been out there in TV ads, robo-calls and campaign appearances fibbing about a ballot measure that has him panicked.

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Its Proposition 53, which would require statewide voter approval of any government project financed with more than $2 billion in state revenue bonds.

Theyre bonds repaid by a projects users, such as water bill payers in the case of Browns proposed monster twin tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Thats a $15.5-billion project.

Brown is worried that Proposition 53 would collapse the water tunnels and also his sorely underfunded, $64-billion Los Angeles-to-San Francisco bullet train project. Its tens of billions of dollars short and a potential revenue bond is the only savior in sight.

So whats the fib? Brown has been telling voters 53 takes away local control and also increases the cost of roads, bridges and hospitals.

The local control pitch is just bunkum.

There never has been much, if any, local control over such a massive project. Local projects just arent that expensive. Anyway, Proposition 53 is about state  not local  bonds. The measure defines the affected projects as those financed, owned, operated or managed by the state.

State means the State of California, the measure spells out plainly, although the state could partner with a local entity. State, the proposals text continues, does not include a city, county  school district, community college district or special district. The University of California also isnt affected.

In the Brown-financed opposition TV ads, theres a guy dressed in a firefighters uniform. Whats that about? Nobodys going to need a statewide vote to douse a brush or house fire. When theres a major natural disaster, repairs are mostly paid for by the federal government.

Highway construction? Its usually funded through general obligation bonds  which long have required voter approval  and are repaid with gasoline taxes.

Updates from Sacramento 

When Brown warns about 53 jacking up the tab for roads, bridges and hospitals, its hyperbole. The state doesnt even build hospitals, except for prisons.

One more thing: Brown must be listening to Donald Trump too much. Last week he told a high-powered San Francisco breakfast crowd that his corgi dog had told him to pee on 53.

Cute. At least the governor is getting off Latin.

2. Just as I was about to vote against Proposition 61, which would lower the states cost for prescription drugs, I noticed that pharmaceutical companies were spending an astronomical $109 million fighting it.

If the drug companies are spending this much money, that indicates theyre very worried about their future profits. And that means Proposition 61 could ultimately help us consumers.

The measure is sponsored by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which is being heavily outgunned. The yes campaign has spent about $17 million.

Proposition 61 would forbid state agencies from paying more for a drug than the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which traditionally gets the best deals. The state buys pharmaceuticals for current and retired state employees, prisoners and poor people. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is a big booster of 61.

Opponents, including many veterans, contend the drug companies would merely make up for their state revenue loss by boosting prices for everyone else.

Theyd undoubtedly try. But that argument is reminiscent of businesses always claiming that any tax increases on them would just be passed on to consumers. The truth is its not that easy. Thats why there are hordes of lobbyists in Sacramento and Washington fighting business tax hikes.

Proposition 61 might just be the tool to start forcing down prescription drug prices for everyone. And thats why the pharmaceutical companies are spending obscenely to scuttle it.

3. It seems counterintuitive and cockeyed that Californians are on the verge of discouraging cigarette smoking by dramatically raising the tobacco tax while encouraging pot smoking by legalizing it.

Proposition 56 would raise the cigarette tax by $2 per pack in an effort to make smoking unaffordable for the poorest. Smoking does cause cancer.

Proposition 64 would legalize marijuana for getting zonked and set off a stampede of weed marketers. Studies have shown that too much pot is bad for brain cells, especially among young people.

Dont bother mentioning that youd have to be 21 to legally buy cannabis. More and more kids are going to toke up.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper made sense last week when he advised other states to go slowly and probably wait a couple of years to see how legalization goes in his state. Find out, he urged, whether theres a dramatic rise in teen toking and stoned driving.

4. It was eye-opening to read a Field poll last week on the presidential race in California. Hillary Clinton led by a whopping 20 points. But Donald Trump was favored by 16 points among born-again Christians. What?

Trumps demeanor is far from the Christian-like behavior I was taught in Sunday school.

Actually, Trump has been reminding me of fictional gubernatorial candidate Willie Stark  a Louisiana Huey Long knockoff  in the novel and movie All the Kings Men.

Demagogue Stark pledges to do this to his political enemies once elected: Nail em up. Trump vows to arrest Clinton, drawing chants from supporters of Lock her up.

But Stark spoke the political truth about this: If ya dont vote, ya dont matter.

george.skelton@latimes.com

Follow @LATimesSkelton on Twitter

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10:15 a.m.: This article was updated to reflect the bullet train project is tens of billions of dollars short of funds.

This article was originally published at 11:55 a.m.
With just days until the election on Tuesday, Glendale Councilwoman Laura Friedman has again outfundraised her opponent, City Clerk Ardy Kassakhian, in their bid for the 43rd District seat in the state Assembly.

During the brief filing period, from Sept. 25 to Oct. 22, Friedman reported receiving $160,465 in campaign contributions, which included $2,208 in non-monetary contributions  a fundraising event at the home of Maroon 5 guitarist James Valentine and another fundraising engagement hosted by Pasadena Councilman Steve Madison, according to the Secretary of the States financial records.

Friedman and Madison both serve on the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, which oversees the Hollywood Burbank Airport.

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Meanwhile, Kassakhian reported getting $125,423 in contributions during that same period. He had no non-monetary contributions.

Friedman and Kassakhian are vying to succeed Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Glendale), who is termed out of that office.

The Glendale councilwoman also outspent her opponent, shelling out $293,146 during the roughly one-month period, mainly on campaign mailers. Friedman reported having $119,745 left in her war chest.

Kassakhian, who had $249,646 to use during that period, nearly emptied out his campaign fund, spending $173,973  mainly on consultants and postage for mailers. That left the city clerk with $75,672 at the end of the filing period.

Parke Skelton, Friedmans campaign consultant, said they are cautiously optimistic as the clock winds down to election day.

Our response in the field is good, Skelton said. We feel like were out-communicating Ardy and I feel like were in pretty good shape.

Kassakhian and Larry Levine, a campaign consultant for Kassakhian, didnt respond to requests for comment.

Portantino vies with Antonovich

The race for the seat in the state 25th Senate District is also heating up, as former state Assemblyman Anthony Portantino outfundraised and out-spent Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich during the same filing period.

Portantino reported receiving about $1.2 million in total contributions from Sept. 25 to Oct. 22  $430,305 in cash donations and $808,935 in non-monetary contributions from the California Democratic Party, according to the Secretary of the States financial records.

Meanwhile, Antonovich reported receiving $417,089 in campaign contributions during the one-month filing period  $248,032 in cash donations and $169,057 in non-monetary contributions, mainly from the California Republican Party.

The two candidates are looking to succeed Sen. Carol Liu, (D-La Canada), who is termed out.

During the last filing period, Portantino incurred more than $335,000 of outstanding debt, which was more than any other candidate running for the state legislature had amassed. Portantino reported spending $658,144 during the current filing period and ended with $98,273 in debt.

On the other hand, Antonovich spent $337,660 during the current filing period and ended with $70,650 in debt.

Portantino heads into the election with $211,799 in his war chest, edging out Antonovichs sum of $151,713.

--

Anthony Clark Carpio, anthonyclark.carpio@latimes.com

Twitter: @acocarpio
Britain urged to honor its commitments on Tibet

(Xinhua) 09:17, November 05, 2016

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying (Source: fmprc.gov.cn)

BEIJING, Nov. 4 -- China on Friday urged Britain to live up to its commitments with China on Tibet.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying made the remarks when asked to comment on a meeting between Lobsang Sangay, the "prime minister" of the "Tibetan government in exile," and John Bercow, speaker of Britain's House of Commons, on Tuesday.

China voices strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to the Bercow-Sangay meeting, for it severely damages China's core interests, Hua told a daily press briefing.

Lobsang Sangay is a secessionist and the ringleader of the self-proclaimed "Tibetan government in exile," which has no legitimacy at all, she said.

On March 10, 1959, after a failed armed insurgency, the Dalai Lama fled abroad.

The so-called "Tibetan government in exile" is an illegal organization, and not recognized by any established government in the world, said Hua.

The Chinese government resolutely opposes secessionist activities by the ringleaders of the Dalai Lama clique in any country, in any capacity and under any name, she said.

China is also firmly against any contacts between any foreign officials and the leaders of the clique, she added.

She urged the British side to fulfill its commitments on Tibet and refrain from interference that damages China-Britain relations.
Two days remain of Laguna Art Museums fourth annual Art & Nature, an event composed of special exhibitions, a commissioned outdoor artwork, keynote lecture, panel discussion, sound performance and a family festival on the theme of arts engagement with the natural world.

Visitors to Main Beach can view California artist Phillip K. Smiths installation, 1/4 Mile Arc, which reflects the changing colors of the ocean, sky, and shoreline throughout the day and night, according to a news release.

The installation contains about 250 stainless-steel poles with mirrored surfaces, Cody Lee, the museums director of communications, wrote in an email.

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British art historian Martin Kemp, acknowledged as the worlds leading authority on Leonardo da Vinci, will speak about the iconic Mona Lisa as a statement of the artists ideas about nature. The presentation is set for 7 p.m. Saturday at the museum, 307 Cliff Drive.

The museum, in collaboration with several organizations such as the Beall Center for Art + Technology at UC Irvine, the Laguna Bluebelt Coalition and the Laguna Ocean Foundation, will host a free family festival at 2 p.m. Sunday.

In addition to events at the museum and Main Beach, organizers will partner with several local galleries and other organizations hosting Art & Nature-related exhibits through Sunday.

For more information, a schedule of events and to purchase tickets to discussions and performances, excluding the festival, visit lagunaartmuseum.org.

bryce.alderton@latimes.com

Twitter: @AldertonBryce
No visitor to Orange County can mistake the impact that philanthropic Irvine family members have made on the growing Southern California landscape.

Since its creation in 1937 by agricultural pioneer James Irvine, the James Irvine Foundation has awarded over $1 billion in grants to more than 3,000 nonprofits that elevate arts engagement, education and public policy decision-making.

Joan Irvine Smith, an arts patron and the great-granddaughter of James Irvine, who established the Irvine Co. real estate and development firm, announced Oct. 27 that she will donate her entire California Impressionist painting collection, valued at $17 million, to the UC Irvine campus.

The collection of 1,200 works is currently housed in The Irvine Museum, a space Smith established in 1993 to exhibit California Impressionist paintings that reminded her of the undeveloped Orange County of her youth.

Smith, who began collecting California Impressionism in the early 90s, founded the nonprofit museum in an office tower off Von Karman Avenue, which today attracts 35,000 to 40,000 annual visitors.

The family plans to christen a personal landmark with an anticipated new museum at the UC Irvine campus, and the permanent home will house the collection that consists of works by Guy Rose, William Wendt, Granville Redmond, Edgar Payne and many others.

The focus wasnt just about starting a museum  it was to talk about the environment issues we face today, which are just as equally important, Smiths son, Irvine Museum President James Irvine Swinden, said Wednesday afternoon during a tour of the museum. My mother has always been involved in these issues, and it seemed appropriate that the collection end up on the ranch.

See this bridge? he asked, pointing to a Franz Bischoffs landscape, Arroyo Seco Bridge. This now is where the Pasadena Freeway is.

Educational and community outreach has remained one of the museums paramount missions, Swinden said, as it provides students attending both public and private schools in the Orange County school districts field trips, free busing and a donation of a complete set of hardbound museum publications.

The museum, which offers complimentary admission to all visitors, also welcomes elementary school children to view the collection and travel to the San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary to experience the wetland habitat and its inhabitants.

Many of these children never have set foot in a museum, and oftentimes, Swinden said he learns they return to view the art collection with their parents.

The donation was also seen as a victory for the home team, UC Irvine, as The Irvine Museum collection has traveled across the U.S. and around the world 18 times to international institutions.

Its so tremendously exciting, said Howard Gillman, who became UCIs sixth chancellor in September 2014. We know how historic and foundational the collection is for our broader aspirations.

Two years ago, Gillman designed a new program, Illuminations, an arts and culture initiative aimed at preparing students to participate in a discussion that addressed questions of human culture and social values.

The programs list of activities and events coincide with the universitys plans to connect with regional arts and cultural institutions, Gillman said, and in the long run, he envisions UC Irvine becoming the center for California art with the Irvine familys world-class pieces.

Its an added benefit to have the pieces exhibited on a college campus as current art faculty members may provide valuable insight into the history of works in the museum collection, Gillman said.

Plans for a museum have come full circle since Los Angeles modernist architect William Pereira included a regional art museum in his original campus master plan more than 50 years ago, Swinden said.

UC Irvine will not demolish the campuss Aldrich Park to build a new museum, but it will seek funds to build one near the center of the campus.

I hope a visitor understands theyre observing first-class works of art created by artists who were trained in Paris, New York and all over Europe, Swinden said.

But I also hope they understand the environment message, Swinden said. Everyone has a responsibility to preserve natural resources and were asking, How do you take a step further in doing so? How do we maintain that now? It cant just be preserved in a painting.

kathleen.luppi@latimes.com

Twitter: @KathleenLuppi
It was lunchtime Thursday at Thurston Middle School, and a comfortable hum of conversation filled the campuss newly renovated library.

Students grabbed seats at tables or inside alcoves with partitions shaped as semicircles. One girl listened to a friend rehearse a presentation on the Boston Massacre for a social studies class. A boy, with an open laptop nearby, wrote notes on a piece of paper.

The scene dispelled notions of libraries as places of silence where one hesitated to make a peep, or move a chair, for fear of getting nasty looks from neighbors.

Crews spent the summer transforming the space into an area where students have options. They can work together on a group project, or study by themselves for an upcoming exam.

Principal Jenny Salberg said she was inspired by the Laguna Beach High School library renovation in 2015 and wanted to give a similar experience to Thurston students.

We felt like we needed space that matched the classrooms, Salberg said.

As such, crews replaced fixed book cabinets with movable ones, installed new carpet, and added multiple items including an interactive whiteboard system, LCD monitors and chairs and desks that can can be relocated throughout the room, allowing students to work together.

The old library contained tables and desktop computers, which allowed students to use the space as a lab. Since students either bring their own computer or tablet, or check out a Chromebook at school, the tables and computers were no longer needed, district Chief Technology Officer Mike Morrison said.

When you are trying to form groups in the library that are working on various projects together there was very little room to do this effectively with the permanent book shelves and permanent lab, Morrison said. Now we can facilitate larger groups with breakouts.

Teachers can request to use the library for a lesson, or students can study during lunch or breaks.

Sarah Schaeffer, a sixth-grade English teacher, brought her students to the library for a lesson on sentence structure prior to lunch on Thursday.

Schaeffers class experimented with an interactive whiteboard that allows students, with the touch of a finger, to drag notes to different places on the board.

The Nureva system, which incorporates infrared and cloud-based technology, allows a teacher or student to project text from his or her computer onto the board. Notes resemble paper sticky notes taped to a wall.

Schaeffer created three different categories: simple sentences, complex sentences and compound sentences.

Students took turns dragging sentences into their proper categories, receiving tips from classmates if they didnt know the answer right away.

At this point, were getting kids used to it, Schaeffer said. Well continue to use it for prewriting.

The best part is having students collaborate on different ideas.

The district paid $13,000 for the Nureva system at Thurston, Morrison said, adding that Laguna Beach High School journalism students also use the technology in their class, which cost about $5,000. Thurstons system incorporated two projectors, he said.

Earlier in the period students, working with their laptops, typed responses to Schaeffers questions such as, What can be used to join two independent clauses?

Their answers, without names attached, appeared on one of the librarys LCD monitors.

The screens are very helpful, Quinn Butler, 12, said. From anywhere you sit, you can see the boards and interact with them.

Guests at SchoolPowers annual Dinner Dance earlier this year contributed $120,000 toward the librarys $185,000 cost. SchoolPower is a nonprofit that raises money for Laguna Beach Unified School Districts four campuses.

Gauging by the 50 or so students inside the library during lunch Thursday, the space has become a destination point.

Brooklyn Bryan, 13, who listened to a friend practice her presentation, said she likes the new layout.

Its less cluttered and a lot more open, Brooklyn said.

bryce.alderton@latimes.com

Twitter: @AldertonBryce
The developer of Banning Ranch filed a lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court on Friday challenging state officials denial of a development project in coastal Newport Beach that included hundreds of homes and a hotel.

Newport Banning Ranch LLCs suit, which is also requesting monetary damages of at least $490 million, comes nearly two months after the 12-member California Coastal Commission denied the companys plan to build 895 homes, a 75-room hotel, 20-bed hostel and 45,100 square feet of retail space on 62 of 401 open acres in West Newport.

During their meeting on the project Sept. 7, to explain their decision the commissioners cited a lack of cohesion between Newport Banning Ranch and commission staff members, who had recommended the project be reduced by about one-third.

In addition to the monetary damages, Newport Banning Ranchs suit is asking the court to overturn the Coastal Commissions decision.

There were an extraordinary and unprecedented amount of procedural errors, misinformation and errors in fact that did not provide the opportunity for a balanced decision that considered all the facts, Michael Mohler, senior project manager, said in a statement.

Coastal Commission representatives could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon.

The lawsuit points to commission staffs designation of 64 acres for burrowing owl habitat, a decision Newport Banning Ranch believes eliminated the majority of the projects available land for development and made the project financially unfeasible.

A burrowing owl was displayed during a Coastal Commission discussion Sept. 7 of the Banning Ranch development project. Commission staff designated 64 acres for burrowing owl habitat, a decision Newport Banning Ranch contends eliminated the majority of the projects available land for development and made the project financially unfeasible (Don Leach / Daily Pilot)

The case also alleges that commission staff failed to inform the commissioners about biological surveys on the Banning Ranch property indicating that, in most years, burrowing owls havent used the land to breed and, in fact, only one owl actually forages there.

Mohler said the decision to designate additional acreage for the owls was based on inapplicable assumptions by a zoologist working with the project opponents who admitted to the inaccuracies during the hearing, and a lack of expertise by staff.

The lawsuit equates the commissions denial to an illegal taking of private property without compensation and a violation of the developers 5th and 14th amendments.

The suit marks another turn in the long fight over the future of the Banning Ranch property, which for decades has been fenced off and consumed by oil drilling operations.

As part of its proposal, Newport Banning Ranch set aside about 329 acres as preserved, natural open space with about seven miles of public trails. Despite that, environmentalists maintained their strong opposition to any development on the site.

The Coastal Commission first considered a larger, city-approved project for Banning Ranch in October 2015. After an eight-hour hearing, the commission sent Newport Banning Ranch back to the drawing board to make significant cuts to the projects footprint and scope.

Commissioners and staff suggested at the time that they likely would favor less intense development.

In May, staff recommended approval of the smaller version of the development with a series of conditions to further reduce its footprint, but Newport Banning Ranch opted to postpone a hearing before the commission, arguing that some issues remained unresolved and that it needed more time to review the staffs recommendations.

At the time, commission staff identified about 55 acres within Banning Ranch as having potential for development.

Staffs latest reduction in the recommended buildable area boiled down to creating a foraging area for burrowing owls, which they said have been present at Banning Ranch for decades.

In a report released in late August, staff indicated it would sign off on developing only about 19.7 acres outside of areas identified as environmentally sensitive habitat, particularly for burrowing owls.

Newport Banning Ranch representatives then responded that commission staffs recommendation amounted to a denial of the project and was not based on the current conditions of the land, which was degraded after some 70 years of oil drilling.

hannah.fry@latimes.com

Twitter: @HannahFryTCN
Vivante on the Coast, a 145-unit Costa Mesa senior housing community, was recently recognized by the Building Industry Assn. of Southern Californias 55+ Housing Council with a Gold Award for Best 55+ Assisted Living/Memory Care Community.

We are honored to be recognized by the Building Industry Assn. for Vivante, said Cory Alder, president of Nexus Cos, the Santa Ana-based developer of Vivante.

From inception, we were committed to elevating the lifestyle opportunities for our residents, Alder said. Every detail of Vivante, from the interior design to the dynamic daily programming, extraordinary cuisine and committed team, has been thought through to ensure that we are enhancing each and every day for our seniors.

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Room and Board noted as top workplace

Room and Board, a Minnesota-based furnishings retailer with a location in Costa Mesas South Coast Collection shopping center, was named one of Americas Best Workplaces in Retail by consulting firm Great Place to Work and Fortune magazine.

Room and Board, considered a small- to medium-sized company, was named to the list based on the results of an anonymous survey of hundreds of employees.

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Villa Real Estate closes on two Newport properties

Kim Bibb, a founder Newport Beach-based Villa Real Estate, recently closed on a Balboa Peninsula real estate transaction valued at nearly $13 million, according to a news release.

A four-lot property with one home at 1902 E. Balboa Blvd. sold for $7.2 million. Nearby, 1909 E. Bay Ave., which contains a bayfront home with a dock, sold for $5.7 million.

Tara Shapiro of HOM Sothebys was the co-agent representing the purchaser on 1902 E. Balboa. Elizabeth Thamer of Villa represented the seller of both properties, which is a family trust.

San Clemente-based Rincon Homes bought the Balboa Boulevard property and intends to subdivide it to build four homes there in early 2017.

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Balboa Capital moves to Costa Mesa

Balboa Capital, a financing company, recently moved its corporate headquarters from Irvine to Costa Mesa.

The company is now within 28,000 square feet of space at 575 Anton Blvd., a high-rise within the Met office campus, formerly known as the MetroCenter at South Coast.

Our new office reflects our forward-thinking goals that focus on company growth and our customer-centric operational strategy, said Robert Rasmussen, chief operating officer. We added more than 100 employees in 2016, and we now have a spacious and modern facility that will allow us to expand our sales and operations divisions so we can continue to meet or exceed the expectations of our customers.

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New Penn Financial names regional manager

Michael Sunnaa has been named regional manager of New Penn Financials Costa Mesa office at 575 Anton Blvd., according to a news release.

Sunnaa has more than 20 years of mortgage experience, including time at Wells Fargo.

I make sure to look at my customers complete financial well-being and see how we can help improve that, he said in a statement. I always ask myself how I would like myself or my family to be treated and I treat my clients, partners, and employees with that same respect.

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KOCE to leave Golden West College

PBS SoCal KOCE is moving operations later this month from Golden West College in Huntington Beach to Los Angeles, according to a news release.

KOCEs master control systems and signal transmission line will move to a shared site in the Sawtelle district, according to a news release.

The broadcast hub will be at Centralcast LLC, a master control facility for public television stations in Syracuse, N.Y.

The move expands PBS SoCals broadcast capabilities, improves reliability with new critical recovery resources and system redundancies, and reduces operating costs while adding station capacity, the station said in a statement.

This move expands our footprint across the region and strengthens our operations, added PBS SoCal President and CEO Andrew Russell in a statement. It also reflects our commitment to being good stewards of public funds, because it makes our operations more effective and efficient.

PBS SoCal also maintains a regional office in Costa Mesa.

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Dan Donahue Center begins expansion

A Santa Ana nonprofit recently began its expansion of a facility named after the late Dan Donahue, founder of Donahue Schriber, a Costa Mesa-based private real estate investment trust.

KidWorks, which serves at-risk children and families, will double its space by combining the 10,000-square-foot Dan Donahue Center with an adjacent 10,366-square-foot industrial building, which it had been leasing.

The combined facility will bring new learning labs, a multipurpose space, a recreation court, fitness room and more, according to a news release. More than $3.5 million has been raised for the expansion.

Donahue, known for his role in transforming Newport Beachs Fashion Island, died in 2002.
Newport Beach officials will consider a plan Monday that could streamline the approval process for homeowners and businessowners who want to renovate or improve coastal zone properties.

The California Coastal Commission in September signed off on the citys Local Coastal Program Implementation Plan, a regulatory document that the commission requires all coastal cities to create to guide development in the states coastal zone.

Roughly half of Newport is in the zone, which encompasses the citys entire shoreline and includes areas such as the Balboa Peninsula, Balboa Island, Corona del Mar and the Back Bay.

The local coastal program consists of a land-use plan, which was certified by the Coastal Commission in 2005 and most recently updated in 2009, and an implementation plan.

Councilman Ed Selich said the document is important for homeowners because it only requires them to go to the city for approval when they want to complete a renovation, instead of spending months waiting for the Coastal Commission to sign off.

Residents who live in the coastal zone and want to complete a home renovation currently have to obtain permits from the city and the Coastal Commission. The process can take up to 18 months.

It might not affect them today, but eventually if they have a home or business repair this document is going to make their life much easier, Selich said. It makes the whole process a lot more efficient.

In all cases, permits issued by the city could still be appealed to the Coastal Commission, according to city staff.

The 12-member commission, which is responsible for enforcing the state Coastal Act, has long asked cities along the coast to prepare programs to cover rules for development and protection of coastal resources. The local coastal programs are intended to give cities more control over projects in their areas, which would decrease the state agencys workload.

Newport Beach started crafting its document in the 1970s, and the Coastal Commission began pushing cities to finalize the plans in the early 2000s. Since then, the city has been paying fines of $12,000 annually because the commission has not yet approved its plan.

The City Council first approved the plan in 2015, and now is required to sign off again before it can be implemented.

Mondays meeting begins at 6 p.m. at the Newport Beach Civic Center, 100 Civic Center Drive.
A state agency that monitors disclosure filings by elected officials and candidates is seeing a flurry of activity in advance of Tuesdays election.

Complaints to the Fair Political Practices Commission from coastal Orange County are leaving local election-watchers wondering whether the grievances are meritorious or acts of political opportunism.

Those who monitor the complaints, as well as those whove been on both ends of them, say its not that simple.

Sometimes, they said, the complaints indeed uncover mistakes or intentional misrepresentations in campaign paperwork, doing the necessary job of forcing legally mandated transparency. But other times, they said, filers are nitpicking for simple mistakes in hopes of generating negative headlines about their opponents.

Needless to say, election years can generate hundreds of complaints.

Part of that is just the nature of there being more campaign activity, filings requirements, and candidates raising and spending money, said FPPC spokesman Jay Wierenga. But we are also cognizant some campaigns use the complaint process as a tactic to gain attention or get into the media.

When a complaint is filed and accepted, the subjects then are placed under FPPC investigation, a term that finds its way into headlines. And it can often take months for the FPPCs small staff to determine whether a violation has taken place.

We take all complaints seriously, but we frown on it being used as a tactic, Wierenga added. And we take every measure to try to quickly determine the validity of a complaint, and to either dismiss or open a case in an attempt to resolve it quickly, hopefully before an election so voters can have that information when they decide.

The Sacramento-based FPPC is made up of a five-member, nonpartisan commission that makes determinations on enforcement cases and legislation related to the Political Reform Act.

Only the FPPCs Enforcement Division  which consists of around 30 lawyers, investigators, auditors and staff  look through complaints and open certain cases for investigation.

According to an executive staff report, the agencys Enforcement Division received 202 complaints and referrals from Aug. 30 through Oct. 6. Between Aug. 4 and Aug. 29, 366 were received.

Wierenga said the agency normally sees an uptick in complaints in the months leading up to an election.

If violations are found, the parties can negotiate a settlement and bring that to the commission. If a complaint lacks merit, it is dismissed, according to the FPPC website.

Cal State Fullerton political science professor Stephen Stambough said its relatively easy for citizens to file complaints and that they file them for different reasons.

Part of it is motivation to find an angle that will work in telling a narrative against an opponent but part of it may be frustration over something they feel wronged by, and they want to go through the process of having a hearing for that, Stambough said. Politics is a repeated game. Even if the ruling on this wouldnt come down until after the election or something is found later in the investigation, you can use that the next time around in terms of deterring someone from running.

Many complaints surrounding the candidates of local races relate to the disclosure of information on forms required of all public officials and candidates for office.

There are numerous local examples from the last year alone.

One involves allegations from the Costa Mesa Sanitary District that the Mesa Water District may have improperly used public money to advocate in favor of Measure TT, an advisory ballot question asking voters if the two agencies should pursue a merger.

The water district, which sponsored the measure, says the allegations against it are untrue, but the sanitary district stands by its allegations. The FPCC has yet to rule.

In November 2015, Balboa Island resident Bob McCaffrey filed a complaint with the FPPC against council candidate Jeff Herdman for allegedly receiving campaign contributions prior to filing a mandatory form.

Herdman is running against Lee Lowrey, whom McCaffrey supports, and Mike Glenn for the District 5 seat.

After an investigation, the agency fined Herdman $200.

Herdman said his detractors have used the complaint for fodder.

Theyve spun that into hit pieces, basically claiming that Im corrupt, he said, adding that he doesnt think the complaints hold much weight with voters.

Earlier in 2015, Herdman himself sent a letter to the FPPC alleging that a campaign contribution Newport Councilman Scott Peotter received violated the Political Reform Act and city code. Peotter, who ran on the Team Newport slate, denied wrongdoing. The FPPC hasnt ruled.

In the Costa Mesa City Council race, the FPPC is looking into a complaint filed by Tim Sesler, a planning commissioner, against City Council candidate John Stephens, which alleges he failed to properly disclose information related to the income he receives from his law firm.

Stephens has since filed an amended economic interest disclosure form, indicating he has no sources of income that meet the agencys reporting threshold.

A complaint against Ocean View School District board President Gina Clayton-Tarvin, who is up for reelection, is another open case, albeit an older one. It was filed by a resident in August, alleging reimbursements by a teachers association for campaign spending werent properly documented in 2012.

Any time a complaint comes into a government agency it should be taken seriously, Clayton-Tarvin said. Being that this was from 2012, I was surprised by it, since there was no complaint or concern at that time.

Another FPPC complaint in the same Huntington Beach school district was recently dismissed. The state cleared candidate Kathryn Gonzalez, who was accused by a former city planning commissioner of not properly stating on a disclosure form her income from her employer. But the FPPC found she didnt need to since her employer isnt currently doing business within Ocean View boundaries.

Michael Glenn, who is vying for the District 5 seat in Newport, said hes seen FPPC complaints used as a tactic to discredit candidates.

He said sometimes the complaints have resulted from a simple error on the part of the candidate and complaints exploiting that error should be taken with a grain of salt. However, he said, watching the reaction of the candidate in question also can be telling.

Its about catching that headline, but its also a test to see what your opponents reactions are going to be, Glenn said. If they come out and give you misleading information, thats an entirely different thing. When they really hurt candidates is when people start trying to cover up their error.

Longtime Newport Beach campaign consultant Dave Ellis has another view.

Ellis said hes not a supporter of candidates filing frivolous complaints against opponents, and said the agency is there to investigate legitimate violations.

However, he added, the investigations stemming from the complaints often would in years past be used as content in mailers against a candidate after it gained media attention.

But, he doesnt see FPPC complaints generate the headlines like they did in years past.

The press doesnt take the bait anymore, he said.

Staff writer Luke Money contributed to this report.

alexandra.chan@latimes.com

Twitter: @AlexandraChan10

hannah.fry@latimes.com

Twitter: @HannahFryTCN
Five family members, including two Fountain Valley residents, pleaded guilty Tuesday to defrauding over $100,000 in government subsidies by violating public housing assistance laws.

Dong Hong Phan, 75, and his wife Anh Tuyet Ly, 65, both of Fountain Valley, each pleaded guilty in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana to one felony count of aid by misrepresentation, one felony count of grand theft by public housing fraud and admitted sentencing enhancements for taking over $50,000 to $100,000, according to the Orange County district attorneys office.

Phan and Ly were sentenced to 14 days in jail and five years of probation apiece. Phan also had to pay $176,613 in restitution to the Orange County Housing Authority and Santa Ana Housing Authority, two organizations that provide housing assistance to low-income adults.

Phan and Ly were accused of illegally providing housing to four members of Lys family from 2003 to 2013 while they were receiving housing subsidies from the OCHA. This violated a law that disallows individuals who are receiving housing aid from renting from family members, according to the district attorneys office.

The family also did not report over $83,000 in overseas wire transfers to China.

Three of Lys family members, who are all from Westminster, pleaded guilty to multiple felonies related to public housing fraud.

John Gang Ly, 27, was sentenced to three years in state prison, Linda Linh Gia Ly, 23, was sentenced to 44 days in jail and five years of probation and Thu Ha Le, 54, was sentenced to 212 days in jail and five years of probation.

Thang Chinh Li, 66, also of Westminster, is the only family member who has not pleaded guilty. Li has been charged with a range of felonies including seven felony counts of perjury by declaration. Li faces a maximum sentence of 13 years and four months in state prison if he is convicted, according to the district attorneys office.

Li will appear in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana on Nov. 14 for a pretrial hearing.

benjamin.brazil@latimes.com

Twitter: @benbrazilpilot
Newport Beachs oldest yacht club plans to break ground in January on a new clubhouse to replace its current 97-year-old building, which floods during high tides and has fallen into disrepair.

The Newport Harbor Yacht Club will demolish the existing clubhouse to make way for a 23,163-square-foot, two-story building overlooking the harbor at 720 W. Bay Ave.

The new building, modeled in the same coastal style as its nearly century-old predecessor, has been more than a decade in the making for the 770-member yacht club, said Staff Commodore Tim Collins.

This really is the culmination of a 12-year process, he said. The membership is very excited about this next phase and planning for the next 100 years.

Club members were very clear during the projects initial phases that they wanted a design in keeping with the clubs traditions, the Balboa Peninsula and the surrounding neighborhood, Collins said.

The Newport Harbor Yacht Club was established in 1916, when the city and Orange County were planning to dredge the harbors sandbars and improve its entrance to create a recreational harbor.

The club moved to its current building in 1919. Though it has been remodeled and enlarged, the clubhouse has never been replaced.

The club has grappled for years with how to restore the aging structure.

In 2012, it approached the city with plans for the new clubhouse. It asked the city to allow it to build the structure as tall as 36 feet. The city typically limits waterfront buildings to 31 feet.

Ultimately, the clubs plan was approved by the Planning Commission and the City Council. In March, the project cleared its final hurdle when it won approval from the California Coastal Commission.

Jeff Larsen, principal at MVE Architects and lead designer on the project, said he wanted to build a clubhouse inspired by the housing designs on Peninsula Point and Balboa Island.

He also wanted the building to fit the personalities of the members who would use it, and he made an effort to make it elegant and functional without being ostentatious, he said.

The street entrance to the building will lead to a small lobby area with chairs and a front desk. To the left, the grand hallway, featuring wood floors, will lead to the dining room area overlooking Newport Harbor, renderings show.

The formal dining room will feature recessed lighting and floor-to-ceiling glass doors that slide to access the harbor. Across the grand hallway, the Pirates Den Bar  a more casual space  will have a wood bar and stone fireplace.

The building also will feature a boardroom and a space for junior sailing members.

The second floor of the clubhouse will feature an expansive room for guests to congregate before functions, a members living room with a fireplace and another events area with harbor views that can be sectioned off with panels. The second floor also will have an expansive deck where members can watch regattas and other harbor events.

The foundation of the building will be raised several feet above sea level in an effort to prevent flooding during king tides. The current clubhouse often floods when storms and tides overwhelm the Balboa Peninsula.

Incorporating the old buildings charm and character in the new clubhouse was a key element of the design, Larsen said.

The history of the place is so strong, so the new building is reminiscent and has some similar elements of the old building, he said. So many people have grown up going to this yacht club. It made me realize its not about the style of the building and the exterior. Instead, its a vessel for the yachting family there and the community, a place that holds these relationships and memories.

Construction is expected to last about 18 months. In the meantime, members will be able to congregate on a charter vessel at the east dock. The vessel will host the clubs food and beverage service, Collins said.

We want to keep members coming to the club even though we wont have the capacity for private parties, he said. We want to give them a reason to come down and see the progress on the new building.

hannah.fry@latimes.com

Twitter: @HannahFryTCN
As the candidates for three available seats on the Newport-Mesa Unified School District board count up the contributions to their campaigns, incumbent Vicki Snell and candidate Leslie Bubb have recorded the most so far this year, with more than $25,000 each.

Snell, a Costa Mesa resident who is seeking reelection Tuesday as the trustee for Area 1, had raised $25,272 as of Oct. 22, the end of the most recent filing period for contribution disclosures. The money includes a $21,000 loan from her husband, Richard.

I want to be independent when making decisions that affect our children and independent of any special-interest group, Snell said of being funded mostly from within her family.

Snells other donors include members of the Costa Mesa Sanitary District and Jackson Tidus Law Corp. in Irvine.

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FOR THE RECORD

11/5, 10:16 a.m.: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Snell received a contribution from the Harbor Council PTA. The Harbor Council PTA, in fact, does not give political donations to candidates.

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Snell is being challenged in Area 1 by Michael Schwarzmann, a Costa Mesa resident who directs an accounting and technology firm.

Campaign contribution reports show Schwarzmann has garnered a total of $17,758, including $3,000 from the Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers.

Bubb, a Newport Beach resident and teacher trainer who is challenging board President Dana Black for the Area 6 seat, is a close second to Snell in overall contributions.

Bubbs $25,256 total includes $3,000 from the California Federation of Teachers, along with donations from lawyers, homemakers and leaders of various companies.

Its a beautiful thing when you have dedicated a portion of your life to a cause thats important and then see your community stand alongside you in an effort to help you succeed, Bubb said.

Blacks campaign war chest totals $23,587, including $16,500 in loans.

Many contributors in Blacks latest filing were retired Newport Beach residents who gave amounts as large as $1,000.

Competing for the Area 3 seat are incumbent Martha Fluor and Newport Beach businesswoman Amy Peters.

Peters has collected $23,226 for her campaign, including recent contributions mainly from individuals in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa. She also has received $3,000 from the California Federation of Teachers.

Fluor has raised $18,732, with $16,000 of that from loans.

The bulk of her most recent contributions were from individual donors, including William Buck Johns, president of Newport Beach-based Inland Group Inc., and an almond grower in Fresno.

alexandra.chan@latimes.com

Twitter: @AlexandraChan10
(Xinhua) 09:27, November 05, 2016

BEIJING, Nov. 5 -- He left as a boy, but after two years in the army Zhao Songqing returned to college as a man.

Zhao, 23, an undergraduate, has now returned to Beijing-based Beihang University to complete his studies, one of 150,000 college army recruits in 2014.

In an attempt to add vigor and diversity to the military, China's armed forces have conscripted undergraduates since 2001, and an increasing number of highly educated students are joining up.

The army lets them express their patriotism in the most direct way possible: by putting down pens and picking up guns.

"It's a great honor for a soldier to make contributions to the nation and its people," Zhao said.

The most difficult but memorable period of Zhao's service was fighting severe floods with his fellow soldiers as China experienced a pattern of freak weather this summer.

It was July 6, just before he finished his service, when Zhao's company was put on "first-degree combat alert." They needed to stand ready to hit flood-ravaged areas -- floods that went on to kill hundreds across China.

They received the order in the afternoon. Hours later, more than 20 soldiers and a lot of supplies crammed into the back of the truck to begin a grueling 30-hour journey.

"It was too hot to sleep, and I could only focus on two things," he said. "I must keep myself safe for my parents' sake, and more importantly, I had to do my best for those flood victims."

Zhao went into the danger zone, not even telling his parents what mission he was on.

Honghu, where Zhao's company was stationed, is a small riverside city in central China's Hubei Province and was one of the areas worst-hit by the flooding.

Every day, the soldiers reinforced the dams with sandbags. Sometimes, they had to jump straight into the river to rebuild the dams.

"The military uniform bestowed us with a sense of honor, so we were willing to work hard and take risks," Zhao said.

Two years ago, just before becoming a senior, Zhao's classmates were busy applying for jobs or graduate school, but he was set to join the army instead.

"I'd always wanted to do something for the nation," he said. "I saw two years in the army as an opportunity to harden myself."

Army authorities are keenly aware of the bravery it takes for young undergraduates to enlist.

"It requires great courage for college students to make the decision," said Qi Jianli from the military office of Beihang University. "College students usually have more opportunities, more choices. They have varied voices around them to give them advice."

Like many enlisted college students, Zhao's parents did not agree with his choice at first. Instead, they hoped that we would follow a "normal" path -- go to grad school, get a good job and make a fortune. But Zhao was insistent, and finally they relented, encouraging him to be the best soldier he could be.

Over two years, Zhao gradually got used to the army's fierce collectivism. He toughened up and turned into a real soldier, inside and out.

After the victory of the Long March of the Red Army in 1930s, more than 100,000 people, mainly educated young people, trudged into war zones to join the army in Yan'an, Shaanxi Province, and other bases of resistance against Japanese aggression. Their arrival promoted literacy in the army and fueled the great victory of the revolution.

The China's Ministry of National Defense recruitment brochure states: "Enlisting more college students can improve the average quality of the army, and inject vigor and vitality into the army's knowledge-base."

In 2001, China's armed forces, for the first time in its history, recruited more than 1,000 undergraduates from universities in a pilot program.

Since 2005, conscription has expanded to cover all colleges and universities. As more and more preferential policies and compensation have been issued for such students, over 100,000 college students have joined the army every year since 2009.

"For the students, joining the army is not just about military skills, but also to toughen themselves up," Qi said. "I remember the first female soldier from Beihang, Wang Yunhong. She looked delicate, but in the army she behaved tough and won many honors."

Zhao recalls that when he was on duty in Shanghai in August last year, a devastating explosion ravaged his hometown, Tianjin, resulting in the deaths of more than 100 rescue workers.

"They came from all over the nation, and died for my hometown. At the exact same time, I was guarding the hometown of other people."
Parent organizers are preparing to open a charter school next fall in Glendale where they have held recent meetings to discuss the schools future leadership, policies and other goals.

Modeled after Glendale Unifieds Benjamin Franklin Magnet School, the International Studies Language Academy, or ISLA, will offer students opportunities to learn in German, Spanish, Italian or French.

Organizers are currently in talks to secure a Glendale property for the school, said Gillian Bonacci, chair of the schools board of directors.

Join the conversation on Facebook >>

Last year, Bonacci worked with fellow parent Hilary Stern to propose the charter school. Both were parents of students who were in the dual-language programs at Franklin Elementary. Also, Bonacci and Stern were instrumental in securing a $1-million environmental grant for the school.

In late 2015, they submitted a petition to the Glendale Unified School Board in hopes the charter would help compensate for the high demand for Glendale Unifieds seven dual-language programs, which often have long wait lists.

While the school board members considered the petition, several parents on both sides came to board meetings, which sometimes became heated, to speak for or against the proposal.

The Glendale school board unanimously denied the petition last December on a recommendation from district staff that the school didnt present a sound educational program, largely due to financial concerns tied to teachers salaries and training opportunities.

The Los Angeles County Office of Education subsequently struck down the petitioners appeal with a 5-1 vote in February, leading Bonacci and Stern to file a second appeal to the State Board of Education.

In April, the states Advisory Commission on Charter Schools voted 6-0 to recommend that the State Board of Education approve the charter petition, and the board did, with a 7-2 vote in May.

The schools initial five-year term was approved on the condition that it open within Glendale Unifieds boundaries, according to a state report.

Since then, members of the schools board of directors have met to discuss enrollment, staff recruitment and the schools future location.

Our target location is south Glendale in the triangle between the 5, 134 and 2 freeways, Bonacci said.

The school plans to serve about 430 students in its first year in grades from transitional kindergarten through seventh grade, according to the state report. Eighth grade will be offered the following year.

In the three weeks since we opened enrollment on our website, we have already processed enough applications to fill over half of our seats, Bonacci said. Parents recognize the manifold benefits a bilingual, bi-literate education in a rigorous academic setting brings to their student, and they are clamoring for it, not only here in Glendale, but across the country.

Because the State Board of Education approved the charter petition, about 1% of the revenue generated by the International Studies Language Academy will go to the California Department of Education for oversight activities, according to the state report.

In all, 28 charter schools operate under the State Board of Education, according to the report.

Twenty of the charter schools were authorized by state officials on appeal following denials by local school boards or county officials.

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Kelly Corrigan, kelly.corrigan@latimes.com

Twitter: @kellymcorrigan
If 55% of voters approve Measure GC on Tuesday, officials at Glendale Community College will gain access to $325 million to pay for major facilities upgrades and infrastructure improvements.

When the colleges Board of Trustees approved a resolution this past summer to place the bond on the Nov. 8 ballot, they did so after spending months putting together a 156-page facilities master plan that theyll use as a guide if the measure passes.

Over the last few months leading up to the upcoming election, Glendale Community College President/Supt. David Viar made rounds to local clubs and organizations to share how the college could benefit with 21st century upgrades.

Join the conversation on Facebook >>

The $325-million bond would cost property owners about $21 per $100,000 of assessed value. No vocal opposition to the measure has emerged.

Back in June, a consultant who polled 600 local voters told the colleges board of trustees that 57% of those polled would support a Glendale Community College bond.

Supporters for Measure GC include Doug Dall, former Clark Magnet High School principal whom Viar tapped to help campaign for the bond through social media, mailers and phone banking efforts.

Aside from infrastructure upgrades such as replacing gas lines and upgrading classrooms, the bond could also fund new facilities to house the schools highly esteemed robotics, engineering and computer-aided manufacturing programs and build a new parking structure, among other projects.

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Kelly Corrigan, kelly.corrigan@latimes.com

Twitter: @kellymcorrigan
England

The Kennington Bed & Breakfast is 50 yards from the Kennington tube station and minutes from all of Londons major attractions. Sian Goodlad is a very welcoming host and provides an extensive breakfast buffet. Double rooms from about $145 a night.

Kennington Bed & Breakfast, 103 Kennington Park Road, www.kenningtonbandb.com

Nessa and David Bernstein

Seal Beach
The head of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh ordered an investigation Friday into the police shootings of eight escaped prisoners in what activists described as extrajudicial killings.

After members of his government spent days attempting to justify the deaths, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan bowed to intensifying pressure and said a retired judge would lead an inquiry into the jailbreak and the deaths.

Eight inmates fled a prison Monday in the central city of Bhopal and were shot dead a few hours later in what police described as an hour-long gun battle. The police said the fugitives fired first and that three officers were injured with a sharp instrument during a clash.

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But video and audio recordings obtained by news media appeared to contradict that version of events.

Videos reportedly taken by onlookers showed the prisoners standing on a hilltop with raised hands, apparently trying to surrender.

Wait, they are trying to talk to us, one policeman is heard saying, before another fires at the group. The prisoners were some distance away, raising questions about how they could have wounded the cops.

In another video, a policeman is seen shooting at a body on the ground while another officer says, He is alive  kill him.

Then, on Thursday, an online news outlet, Catch News, published audio recordings from the state police control room that appeared to show commanders directing officers to kill the men.

Finish everyone, one is heard saying.

Witnesses added to the doubts about the polices story. The head of Eint Khedi village outside Bhopal, where the killings took place, said the fugitives did not have weapons and only threw stones at the police. The chief of the states anti-terrorism squad also told a news channel the men were unarmed.

After the incident, Chouhan immediately fired five jail officials and asked federal investigators to probe the jailbreak  but not the killings.

His change of course reflected growing calls to account for the deaths of the eight men, who were awaiting trial on a range of terrorism charges.

The controversy was stoked by brusque initial responses by several Indian officials to the killings. Dont question the authorities, they said.

We should stop this habit of raising doubts and questioning the authorities and the police, said Kiren Rijiju, the junior minister for home affairs. This is not a good culture.

We are observing in India that people have developed this habit of raising unnecessary questions, he said. Merely on the basis of some videos, you cannot raise alarm bells.

The states home minister, Bhupinder Singh, claimed the escapees were planning a huge terror attack. Even Sanjeev Shami, the anti-terrorism chief who acknowledged the prisoners were unarmed, defended the killings because they were dreaded criminals.

The deaths are the latest in a long history of what Indians euphemistically refer to as encounters, but which activists call extrajudicial killings, in which criminal suspects are bumped off in murky circumstances.

The Asian Center for Human Rights said 10,900 Indians died in extrajudicial killings between 2004 and 2014.

Manisha Sethi of the Jamia Teachers Solidarity Assn., a Delhi-based human rights group, said Muslims and members of disadvantaged tribal groups are particularly vulnerable to such killings because authorities often brand them as militants.

Several top politicians said the Bhopal shootings were justified because the prisoners were associated with the Students Islamic Movement of India, or SIMI, a banned militant group that came to prominence for organizing communal protests against the demolition of a revered mosque by Hindu radical groups.

India first outlawed the group in 2001 following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States and has extended the ban multiple times.

The point of the Bhopal case is that unless you associate them with SIMI, the charges against them are robbery and sedition, which are not proven, Sethi said. But the state and a section of the media are trying to legitimize their killing by referring to them as terrorists.

Activists say the killings allow authorities to eliminate suspects without waiting for Indias slow-moving judicial system to run its course. Encounter specialists in law enforcement often gain promotions and are glorified in Bollywood movies as heroes.

Politicians also are accused of using encounter specialists to settle personal scores.

Activists hope the Bhopal probe will explore how the inmates were able to flee the high-security prison, whose closed-circuit cameras were not working at the time of their escape.

A post-mortem report found multiple bullet wounds in the bodies, three of which were shot in the back.

But the history of official investigations in such cases is not encouraging.

When Sethi filed a request under Indias Right to Information Act for details about encounter cases in the capital, New Delhi, she found there had only been two or three judicial investigations and hardly any police inquiries since 1995.

Instead, she said, police reports filed after such killings are often made against the person who was killed.

Dead men do not talk, she said.

Parth M.N. is a special correspondent. Staff writer Shashank Bengali contributed to this report.

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After Spain's Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy visited and informed the King Felipe VI late Thursday, he revealed the country's new composition of conservative Popular Party's government and the member of his Cabinet which continued with Soraya Saenz de Santamaria as deputy prime minister. He kept his economic team unchanged but he added several younger faces and set forth the two of his controversial ministers.

The main reason of what had up until Thursday was the presence of the party's secretary general and has now been appointed as defense minister, Maria Dolores de Cospedal. Cospedal is the second woman who serves as Spain's defense minister after Carme Chacon served in 2008 in the Socialist government of previous prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. According to EFE, the main opposition Socialist Party spokesperson, Mario Jimenez said that Rajoy's selection was not a government for dialogue.

The comment of the opposition didn't bode well for Rajoy's government that still needed to negotiate legislation in Parliament. The members of the new government served previously in the post or ministerial except for Alfonso Dastis who served Spain as the ambassador to the European Union and he is the new Minister of Foreign Affairs. The three ministers will remain to continue to lead the Spain's economic since 2011: Luis de Guindos as an economy minister, Maria Fatima Banez as the ministry of labor and Cristobal Montoro in finance, according to Financial Times.

Hence, the continuity of Mr. De Guindo's will likely to look upon by investors in Brussels as he was seen as a reliable partner of the European Commission. Rajoy's government and his cabinet encounter the immediate challenge of passing a budget that meets the required target by the European commission. The Prime Minister is facing an intense pressure from the European commission about the 2017 budget Brussels needed Spain to bring next year deficit down to as much as 3.1% of GDP.
Digital image of Old Summer Palace. [Photo/Chinaculture.org]

In 1860, Beijing's Old Summer Palace of Emperor Qianlong (1736-1795) was burned down by Anglo-French forces. The great loss of this exquisite palace was a tragedy in history.

However, modern technology has brought it back to life again, in terms of digital images and experience.

An exhibition featuring a digital Old Summer Palace, based on 10 years of research, was held at the Center of International Cultural Exchange in Beijing on Tuesday.

With a total of 14 general showpieces, the event provided 11 digital interactive experience activities, six digital films and presentations of 50 historical sites from the palace.

The showcase also features a series of lectures, documentaries, books and cultural creative products fairs.

Running through Nov 27, the exhibition offers free admission.
People protect themselves from the pollution in Beijing's downtown Guomao area during heavy smog on Friday. ZOU HONG/CHINA DAILY

Northern regions of the country will confront more frequent and stronger smog this winter due to the impact of the La Nina phenomena, a senior air pollution control official warned.

La Nina is a periodic cooling of the surface of the equatorial Pacific Ocean, which causes abnormal weather patterns.

Beijing has experienced four rounds of smog since October, and neighboring cities like Tianjin and those in Hebei province have issued emergency response alerts.

"La Nina will bring challenges for governments to control smog during the heating season, but the peak this year will not be as high as last year," said Liu Bingjiang, head of the Ministry of Environmental Protection's atmospheric environment department.

In November and December, many cities including Beijing, and Harbin in Heilongjiang province, saw air quality index readings off the chart.

Liu said the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region has taken tough measures to reduce emissions. For example, over 500,000 households in the region have changed their energy consumption from coal to gas or electricity, which is forecast to cut the emission of sulfur dioxide and dust by 40,000 metric tons.

But governments are urged to fully implement the restrictive measures, especially on smoggy days, said Tian Wei-yong, head of environmental monitoring in the ministry.

The ministry's inspection teams, which have been in eight smoggy cities since Wednesday, have exposed many companies that were discharging pollutants against government restrictions, Tian said.

"For the polluters, it's more than just receiving heavy fines," he said. "Those who falsify monitoring data will face severe punishments from judicial organs."

Chen Jining, minister of environmental protection, said the revised laws have helped to deter polluters and reduce pollution.

Cao Yin contributed to this story.
(Global Times) 09:48, November 05, 2016

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government told the media on Friday they have been informed by the central government that an interpretation to Hong Kong's Basic Law Article 104 has been included in the schedule of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee. It's said that the NPC itself brought up the subject of interpretation.

Following the news, the two Hong Kong legislators-elect who defied norms and openly touted "Hong Kong-independence" during their swearing-in and a few extreme opposition forces expressed their opposition, and some Western media joined their attack on the NPC decision. They claimed the NPC's interpretation means the central government is taking direct control of Hong Kong and damaging its autonomy. Their response is anything but surprising.

It's widely known that the Article 158 of the Basic Law states that the NPC holds the right to interpret the law. Now that the Hong Kong society is split over how to interpret Article 104, which specifies Legislative Council members' swearing-in obligations, it is the responsibility of the NPC Standing Committee to interpret the article in order to maintain the stability of Hong Kong. It will help Hong Kong better understand the Basic Law and end the dispute. Hong Kong localists and radical opposition parties only represent one side of opinion; while the voices condemning the legislators-elect's actions are also very loud in Hong Kong.

The Basic Law is more than 20 years old, and it could not foresee what we face today. Laws must keep up with the times.

The behavior of tampering the oath and unfolding "Hong Kong-independence" banners clearly violate the Basic Law.

However, Article 104 has no specific reference on how to define such behavior and what punishment should it carry. There were a number of similar issues in the past when some people willfully violated the law and imperiled national security but claimed to have acted within the law, resulting in a great deal of dispute and confusion.

The legitimacy of Hong Kong's legal system originates from the authorization of the NPC, and it must operate under the principle of "One country, two systems." The stand of Hong Kong opposition forces shows that they don't intend to abide by the law at all or they only have partial understanding of the law.

The opposition forces' resistance against the central authorities is politically motivated and has nothing to do with the law itself.

It is time for the central authorities to uphold the bottom line of the Basic Law, re-establish the supremacy of law and resolutely respond to extreme political forces.
sands.jpeg

Personnel at Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem recognized a patron as a fugitive, according to Pennsylvania State Police. (Matt Smith | lehighvalleylive.com file photo)

( )

A man wanted in two states was captured after being recognized by personnel at the Sands casino in Bethlehem, according to Pennsylvania State Police.

Robert Lourenco, 45, of Staten Island, N.Y., was spotted at the Sands about 3:30 p.m. Friday, state police said in a news release.

Authorities found he was wanted for larceny out of Middlesex County in New Jersey and grand larceny in Yonkers, N.Y.

Lourenco was charged as a fugitive and sent to Northampton County Prison where he awaits extradition, state police said.

Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Alison Langton and Kate Kollet call themselves bacon experts.

"We will go to the ends of the earth to find the best slice," said Langton, of Middlefield, Conn.

On Saturday, that quest brought them to Easton's Centre Square for this year's PA Bacon Fest.

Now in its fifth year, the two-day festival celebrating cured swine strips is expected to draw some 75,000 people. It continues Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Midday Saturday, more than 100 vendors were offering food and wares. There was bacon on a stick, bacon gyros, bacon beer and bacon ice cream. Next to one stand, Easton Hospital offered free cholesterol tests with results to be mailed home -- "Enjoy today, feel guilty next week!" a worker at the booth barked to passers-by.

There are two pig roast competitions over the weekend, and a bacon-and-brew tasting with Breakaway Farms and Weyerbacher. Chefs had demonstrations and cook-offs. Artists showed off bacon-inspired works.

Dawn Elliott, of Nazareth, came prepared. She wore a pig hat and porcine earrings. It was the second year she wore the hat, purchased from a street vendor in New York City.

"I always wanted to find a pig hat and I finally found one," she said, coming off volunteer duty selling bacon for the Easton Main Street Initiative.

Langton and Kollet also sported bacon-wear. Kollet, of Bethlehem, wore an "I (heart) bacon" T-shirt; Langton's said "Body by bacon."

The two previously got their bacon fix at one of the annual Bacon 5K Challenges hosted by the Lehigh Valley IronPigs. But this was Langton's first time at Bacon Fest.

"I was in a moment of peace, serenity and bacon grease," she said. "My slice of heaven."

Get your photo taken with Oinkster, the #PABaconFest5 mascot! pic.twitter.com/a4EFrzZkL2  PA Bacon Fest (@PABaconFest) November 5, 2016

Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
The Lehigh Valley Auto Show is already getting souped up for its 20th year.

The Greater Lehigh Valley Auto Dealers Association will hold the 2017 edition of the auto show March 23 to 26 on Lehigh University's Goodman Campus under the theme "20 years old and still has that new car smell."

To celebrate, organizers are planning to make next year's event the biggest ever, with a new fourth venue to accommodate the array of vehicles on display. Thirty-two manufacturers will be represented with makes and models that include cars, trucks, SUVs, motorcycles and ATVs. Ford and Toyota have signed on to for test rides.

The show draws not only enthusiasts, but also those shopping for a car or researching a potential purchase. According to the dealers' association, more than 25 percent of 2016 attendees who were planning to purchase a car left the show knowing what brand they wanted. And 56 percent of those who purchased vehicles after the show said the show influenced their purchase decision.

Before the auto show kicks off in earnest, a preview gala on the night of Wednesday, March 22, will raise money for the Children's Hospital at Lehigh Valley Hospital. The funds will support an effort to consolidate child cancer care and infusion at the hospital's Cedar Crest campus and to build a child-friendly waiting area.

Visit the show 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday, March 23, through Saturday, March 25), and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday, March 26. Parking is free.

Andrew Doerfler may be reached at adoerfler@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @adoerfler or on Facebook.
The 21-year-old Philadelphia man killed in an Allentown shooting early Saturday was a first-semester student at Northampton Community College, the school confirmed in an email to students and faculty.

Ibrahim Bah was found wounded in the 2000 block of East Clair Street by officers responding to a report of gunfire at 12:42 a.m. a block away on Hanover Avenue, about a quarter-mile from Allentown's border with Bethlehem, according to city police.

He was hospitalized and died two hours later, the Lehigh County Coroner's Office reported later Saturday. The death was ruled a homicide.

College spokeswoman Heidi Butler said students were taking the news hard.

"The NCC campus community is shocked and saddened by this news," college President Mark Erickson said in his email to the school. "Our immediate thoughts and prayers go out to the family as we all mourn this senseless loss and look for ways to support one another in the midst of tragedy."

Erickson said Bah was a general studies student. Details of the crime are unclear at this point as authorities continue their investigation.

NCC will have counselors available at the residence halls this weekend and in campus offices on Monday, Erickson said.

Anyone with information on the shooting is asked to contact Allentown police at 610-437-7721. Callers can remain anonymous.

Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
quarry explosion memorial

A memorial was installed in October to commemorate an explosion on March, 26, 1942 at the Lehigh Portland Cement Co. quarry in the Sandts Eddy section of Lower Mount Bethel Township that killed 31 people.

(Courtesy photo | for lehighvalleylive.com)

TROPHIES

Seventy-four years after an explosion killed 31 workers at a Lehigh Portland Cement Co. quarry in Lower Mount Bethel Township,

to create a permanent memorial to the victims. The March, 26, 1942, blast was caused by the detonation of 20 tons of dynamite. It was was heard for miles; many people were injured by flying glass from shattered windows. In October, residents placed a marker listing the names of the dead at Church Hill Cemetery off Route 611, with a simple remembrance in the program: "The cause of the blast is unknown but to God." Among those who organized the effort are former state Rep. Rich Grucela and his wife Gina, family members of the victims, and the Lower Mount Bethel Civic Association. Together they raised $18,000. "It was a tragedy that was overlooked," Grucela said. "These quarry workers were part of the generation that built this country."

The Slate Belt Regional Police Commission this week recognized three police officers for their live-saving efforts. In September,

prevented a suicidal man from jumping from a quarry ledge, engaging him in talks until he became weary and unsteady on his feet. They managed to get close enough to grab him and remove him from danger. In August,

responded to call at a Pen Argyl home, where a 21-year-old woman had overdosed on heroin. Moskella administered nalaxone, which revived the unconscious woman.

TURKEYS

The

has given up on legislation this year to address a court ruling that cut off millions of dollars in casino revenue-sharing money to host towns. The remedy, which had been coupled with legalization of internet gambling in a House-passed bill, is vital to dozens of municipalities, including Bethlehem, that rely on casino payments. This deal could have been sewn up without missing the court's 120-day grace period. The old agreement was declared unconstitutional as a result of a lawsuit brought by the owners of Mount Airy Lodge and Casino. Senators expect to reintroduce legislation in the new session that starts in January.

who is serving a 12- to 20-year state prison sentence on drug convictions, is accused of masterminding the attempted burglaries of a Lehigh County judge's home -- apparently in an attempt to prove his value as an informant and get a reduced sentence. Miranda, according to police, sent a letter warning authorities that a judge's life was in danger. The prediction appeared to come true when men twice attempted to break into the home of Lehigh County Judge Robert Steinberg in Allentown in July. Investigators said they discovered Miranda had recruited a group of unwitting men to break into the home to steal drugs, money and guns. Miranda was charged with criminal solicitation of burglary, criminal use of a communication facility and conspiracy to commit racketeering. Seven persons were arrested and face charges in connection with the attempted burglaries.

on private property have struck again -- this time spray-painting political and obscene messages on the Wooddale United Methodist Church in Middle Smithfield Township, according to State Police at Swiftwater. Anyone with information about the crime can report it anonymously by calling 570-839-7701. This is the second such attack in recent weeks. Earlier, vandals hit the neighborhood of U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey in Upper Milford Township, spray-painting anti-Trump messages on the houses of Toomey's neighbors.
Freshly brewed coffee lovers are able now to order locally roasted beans with the click of a computer mouse.

Baby Harry Coffee Co. opened its cafe last November at 34 Broadway in Bangor. Its own brand of roasted Peruvian and Sumatran coffee is now available on Amazon.com.

Owner Eileen Gentile said she wants her coffee to be available for people beyond her everyday cafe patrons.

"We want to get our coffee into the bigger market," Gentile said. "We want people to know, with fresh roasted coffee, there is a difference."

Gentile imports coffee from Indonesia, Central America and South America. She said she insists her imports are ethically sourced. Her importers only bring in beans harvested from farms where there are good conditions and fair pay for workers.

In order to sell via Amazon, Gentile had to submit papers that confirmed her labeling was consistent with all state laws and federal Food and Drug Administration codes. She also provided inventory spreadsheets.

Amazon will now provide her with orders to be processed.

The coffee company shipped its first online fulfillment order Wednesday. Since she ships directly from her shop, beans will be shipped to customers within 24 hours of being roasted.

Gentile trained with a coffee roasting expert in Idaho to learn the secrets of a well roasted bean.

"It's all about temperature, air and time," Gentile said.

Unroasted beans come in sacks from around the world. Gentile roasts a new batch every day for her shop. Cafe customers can sit and enjoy a cup of coffee or purchase roasted beans to take home.

Only whole beans are available online. Shop customers can buy the roasted beans whole or ground.

"We recommend you have a grinder at home because it's best to grind right before you brew," Gentile said.

Ten percent of company earnings benefit Eastern European children who have been raised in orphanages. One of these children was the eponymous inspiration for the company's name, Baby Harry.

John Best is a freelance writer. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Hey, registered voter: Did you know you can cast your ballot this weekend in Warren County?

County residents can vote in person at the county clerk's office, which will be open 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The office is on the first floor of the county courthouse, 413 Second St. in Belvidere.

Otherwise, polls are open statewide 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday.

Here are some links that could be useful before you vote.

Who's running?

Eight municipalities and both of the county's congressional districts have contested races. We list them here.

A full list of municipal candidates is available on the county's website here; and the full slate of school board candidates can be found here.

We also have profiles on the candidates for:

County freeholder

County sheriff

In addition, five municipalities have ballot questions: Alpha, Belvidere, Greenwich, Knowlton and Washington. You can read about them here. There are also two statewide ballot questions: One asks if the recently increased gas tax should be spent exclusively on transportation projects, the other if gambling should be allowed outside Atlantic City.

Where do I vote?

It's an important question. If you don't know, New Jersey's state department lets you look up your polling place online here.

You can also check your registration on the site here.

What's my congressional district?

There are two in Warren County. If you're not sure which one you're voting in, the U.S. House of Representatives website lets you check by entering your ZIP code here.

What if there's voter fraud?

It's a topic that's been discussed lately. U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman says his office will receive and respond to reports of election irregularities, voter intimidation or any other activities that would interfere with a citizen's right to vote on Election Day. His office's Election Day Hotline at 888-636-6596 will be active Monday through Wednesday, and will be staffed live on Election Day in English and in Spanish.

New Jersey voters may be asked to show identification at their polling place if they did not do so when registering with the county commissioner or if identification information cannot be verified.

Anything else?

More links, documents and other information -- including offices to contact -- are available at www.warrencountyvotes.com.

Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Colder and snowier.

The Eastern PA Weather Authority isn't taking a huge leap in comparing its winter forecast released Friday night to what actually happened a year ago.

Without a 31-inch blizzard-like event in January, last winter would have been pretty much devoid of snow. And with an average temperature of 45.8 degrees in December, it was a record setter at 13.5 degrees above normal.

But when the weather turns after Thanksgiving from what has been a warm and dry autumn, it will be colder than normal in December, said Bobby Martrich, meteorologist and owner of the Allentown-based weather forecasting company.

And as the weather pattern shifts, Martrich said, we'll go from drought to above normal precipitation. In other words, keep the boots and shovel handy.

In a normal year, the Lehigh Valley gets 32.9 inches of snow.

Ladies and gents... the EPAWA 2016-2017 Winter Outlook is here:https://t.co/DN7YB9UgbF pic.twitter.com/dkrcJ5HnZL  Bobby Martrich EPAWA (@epawawx) November 4, 2016

Martrich figures the region will get between 120 to 140 percent of that amount this coming winter -- or 40 to 45 inches.

Eastern PA's projections don't figure in a blizzard, even though one of the top three years it used for comparison due to similar conditions was 1995-96, which had the second-worst snowstorm on record at Lehigh Valley International Airport.

That season also had the second-most amount of snow -- 71.8 inches -- since records began being kept locally in 1922.

Consider that another of the years for comparison is 2013-14, with its pesky storms amid terrible cold piling up the third-highest snow total at 68.1 inches, and you do have to wonder if we're in for a doozy.

But Martrich figures this season's storms won't be as frequent as that year, when it seemed to snow every day.

Martrich said there is abnormally warm water off the Atlantic Coast, so conditions exist for a coastal storm to pick up a great deal of energy. But blizzards, as we learned last January, are tough to predict when they're only days away. So they must remain out of the equation for a seasonal forecast, Martrich said.

The polar vortex, which was strong a year ago and only ventured south about the same time as the blizzard arrived, is weaker and is expected to displace, split and drop well into Canada, meaning colder weather, he said. Think early 2014.

Extensive snow cover in Siberia is apparently influencing the influx of cold air, he added.

And with a La Nina out in the Pacific and expected shifts in the jet stream, the liquid component should be present, Martrich said.

He expects to have more snow than normal in December and the majority of it to be on the ground by the end of January.

The cold won't lock in as it did three years ago, so a warming trend arrives in mid to late February, ushering in an early spring, according to the weather company. It won't be unlike the surprise warming after the Blizzard of '96 that led to the first of several river floods in the Lehigh Valley and northwest New Jersey over the next 10 years.

But without a blizzard or blizzard-like storm, flooding is unlikely, Martrich said.

Interstate 95 probably won't be the cutoff between snow and other nasty types of winter precipitation as that traditional line likely is to the northwest, meaning more sleet and freezing rain in the Lehigh Valley, he said. Storms overall should track more inland, he said.

Ski season, which got a very late start a year ago in the Poconos, should be longer this time around as colder temperatures and available natural snow should make a difference, he said.

But remember, this is a long-range forecast based on the available science.

A year ago, Martrich figured on colder than normal weather after a warm start and more precipitation than an average season.

Some things came to pass, other things didn't happen.

That's the challenge, he said, of trying to guess March's weather in November.

"It will be a change in itself seeing December and January below normal" in temperature, he said for this season, expressing more confidence in the early part of his forecast than the latter.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
China to donate 10 friendship school buildings to Myanmar per year

China has planned to donate 10 friendship schools per year to Myanmar worth about 10 million yuan, Tian Shanting, Chinese Cultural Counselor to Myanmar told an inauguration ceremony of second China-Myanmar friendship school building Friday.

The school building was built in a village in Pwint Phyu township, Magway region. China also donated 10 million kyats to financially support for scholarship.

Tian said that China and Myanmar has been cooperating and exchanging in not only basic education but also higher education sectors.

China will continue to cooperate in vocational education sector of Myanmar, he added.

Daw Khine Yin Mon, headmistress of the school, said the new school building makes the students to learn in a better condition for health.

First China-Myanmar friendship school building was inaugurated in Shwekyin, Bago region in late October along with a program of China-Myanmr friendship scholarship and stipend to support the education development.
IN THE weeks to come, many families will be busy wrapping presents for their loved ones.

But there are many other families who will be relying on the generosity of others to put a few gifts under the Christmas tree  and more crucially, food on the table.

Again this year, some 7,000 food hampers will be distributed to those in need across Limerick city and county in the run-up to Christmas.

Fr Seamus Enright, rector of the Redemptorists at Mount St Alphonsus, told the Limerick Leader that hampers worth in excess of 120,000 were distributed in Limerick last year, and they would hope that peoples generosity could see the same level distributed this Christmas.

The religious order, which works on this campaign in association with St Vincent de Paul, is now ready to collect donations from people for the hampers. People can give non-perishable dry foods, cash, or toys for children.

Its a big undertaking, but people have always been very generous to us. A lady called in recently to donate toys, and brought her children to Smyths toystore first to get them to pick out the gifts for others that they would like to receive themselves, said Fr Enright.

Donations can now be dropped into the office attached to the church, or to SVP, which distributes the packages, on Hartstonge Street.

Novas, which supports homeless people and those at risk of becoming homeless, is urging Limerick restaurants and hotels to support families in B&B accommodation with hot meals.

The appeal, from Novas Intensive Family Support Service on Mungret Street, comes as approximately 15 families reside in hotels and B&Bs around the city and county every night, accounting for 22 adults and 26 children.

Clare Brooks, manager of the service, observed the spike in families seeking support in the last 24 months. She said that the greatest problem is the dearth of supply in the private rented market.

Our volunteers will pick these meals up and deliver them to the families directly, so businesses that get involved in the appeal dont have to worry about that side of things, she said. Any interested businesses can contact 061 468033.

Meanwhile, those in charge of the Team Hope Christmas shoebox appeal are delighted they have finally found an unit to accept goods and pack them for overseas. From Wednesday next, November 9, they will take in donations and shoeboxes filled with goods at Unit F3, Limerick Enterprise Development Park, Roxboro Road. The warehouse will be open each weekday from 10am til 9pm until Friday, November 25.

The shoeboxes can be filled with small gifts  bearing the four Ws  something to wash with, something to wear, something to write it, and something to Wow the recipient  even a small cuddly toy, which will fit in the box. They hope that 12,000 boxes of gifts will be sent to children in war-torn and impoverished countries again this year.
A CHRONIC shortage of priests coupled with falling attendances at Mass may give rise to a situation whereby some churches will have Mass every second Sunday or one Sunday a month, according to the Bishop of Limerick.

In an in-depth interview with the Leader this week, Bishop Brendan Leahy said the Church are acknowledging the issue of a shortage of priests and are being proactive.

We are not trying to pretend it isnt there, he said.

One of the things we are doing here is we have moved more clearly towards a team ministry model, that is three or four priests looking after several parishes together. There will be teething problems because its new and we have to think it through but we have to move in that direction, he explained.

However, he acknowledged that the dearth of priests means that the parish priest in the future might find himself to be parish priest of two or three parishes.

Thats going to be a challenge. How can he be the parish priest of two or three parishes? He cant keep going with all the work and administration, so we are going to have to reflect on it.

Lay people, Bishop Leahy said, will play a key role in keeping the Church vibrant into the future.

We are going to see teams of priests but not just teams of priests, I think we will see lay people working within the teams so that is going to be a development. Here, for instance, we have the first new lay general manager, lay diocesan secretary. Catherine Kelly replaced Fr Paul Finnerty  it was always a priest before that, he explained.

When asked if in 10 and 20 years time there will be enough priests in Limerick to say Mass every Sunday, Bishop Leahy responded: In 10 years time certainly we will still have that but what we may have is that not every church will have Mass every Sunday, it might be that some churches will have Mass every second Sunday or one Sunday a month.

The 56-year-old who was ordained Bishop of Limerick in 2013 said he is not frightened by the difficulties.

I feel we need to grapple with the logistics of what needs to be sorted out but I feel God is doing something  I really do believe that.

On the issue of priests income, Bishop Leahy said that the Christmas dues, Easter dues and also Harvest dues go towards a priests income with the weekly collection going towards the upkeep of the local church.

But we are seeing that those dues are declining, that people dont think that they are important, he said.

The income for a parish priest, Bishop Leahy explained is approximately 27,000 while the income for a curate, is approximately 24,000.

Speaking on the subject of celibacy, Bishop Leahy acknowledged that it is a big commitment and often a struggle but cautioned against an over exaggeration of that struggle.

Dont tell me married people dont have struggles  they have major struggles to keep faithful to their relationship. A man or a woman may see another man or woman and say, Oh I could have tried that, but no, they have a family now so they must be faithful to their person. Likewise, a priest, or a religious sister or a consecrated person chooses the way of celibacy. Yes, of course there are struggles and temptations like there are in any walk of life.

- See the broadsheet editions of the Limerick Leader for the full interview and a seven page feature on the Church in Limerick
China's tourism generated over a quarter of global tourism jobs in 2015

China's tourism industry contributed greatly to global employment last year, a new report indicated.

The country's tourism sector generated more than a quarter of the jobs in the world's tourism industry in 2015, according to a report released Friday by the Wuhan Branch of China Tourism Academy.

Hu Jing, head of the branch, said that China ranked first globally in the numbers of tourists travelling domestically, outbound tourists, domestic tourism consumption, outbound tourism consumption and employment.

According to the report, the number of China's outbound tourists increased almost tenfold from 2001 to 2015, reaching 128 million last year.

"The tourism boom is a result of a good environment for the industry in China, including favorable policies, the number of days with good air quality and better treatment of garbage," Hu said.

The report has been published annually since 2011.
Apr 29, 2021, 6 PM

A Mulready stamped envelope with 13 Penny Blacks, mailed from London on May 16, 1840, is the earliest known use of stamps on a letter to North America. Schuyler Rumsey sold the cover at his Sescal 2016 auction for $69,000.

From the Skywalk collection of Nova Scotia offered by Schuyler Rumsey at Sescal 2016 in September, an example of the 1857 issue in reddish purple, sound and with partial watermark, sold for $20,700.

By Matthew Healey, New York Correspondent

At the Sescal stamp show in Los Angeles, Schuyler Rumsey offered the Skywalk collection of Nova Scotia as part of a three-day sale, Sept. 23-25.

The collection featured some of the classic rarities and famous postal history items from that British North American colony, which joined Canada in 1867.

Nova Scotias first issue, in the 1850s, included a diamond-shaped 1sh stamp depicting the crown of Great Britain and four heraldic flowers of the empire. The stamp was first issued in 1851 in violet, and in 1857 in reddish purple (Scott 6). Just six examples of the latter shade survive unused, and two of them featured in the Skywalk sale.

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One, described as completely sound and showing part of the papermakers watermark, sold for $20,700, including the 15 percent buyers premium added by Rumsey to all lots. The other, with somewhat wider margins but marred by a light corner crease, boasted a pedigree that included famous-name collections such as Ferrary and Lichtenstein. It sold for $10,925.

Besides stamps, the Skywalk collection had an extensive range of postal history telling the story of postal relations between the colony and the rest of North America, as well as across the Atlantic.

One remarkable cover, sent from London in 1840, consists of a Mulready stamped envelope embellished with no fewer than 13 Penny Blacks, Britains first postage stamp. Posted on May 16, just 10 days after the first day of issue, it represents the earliest known use of stamps on a letter to North America. Originally, there were 15 stamps on the letter, but two apparently fell off during opening.

The endorsement per Unicorn steamer via Liverpool indicated that the sender hoped the letter would be carried on that Cunard steamships maiden voyage; the wild assortment of postmarks includes a red boxed Put in after 7 oclock at night, and a manuscript If too late, per first steamer. As it happened, the letter missed the Unicorn and went on a different ship to New York.

The postage of 1sh 4d paid twice the ship letter rate within the British empire. In New York, however, the cover was marked 102, for $1.02, representing the quadruple rate for a letter going over 400 miles, plus the 2 ship fee. Further handwritten notations show the calculation of the postage due from the recipient at Digby, near Halifax.

Opened out for display and with some minor flaws and reinforcements, the cover sold for $69,000.

A stunning black-bordered mourning cover sent to India in 1853, franked with a pair of Nova Scotias 1s dull violet stamps (Scott 7) and a 6d yellow green (4), all full-margined, was described as the finest cover between those two countries. It traveled first to England, then to Malta, Alexandria, Ceylon and finally to its destination in Madras.

A veteran of major collections including that of William H. Gross, who called it one of his favorite items, the cover bested its result from his 2009 sale to bring $103,500.
By Xinhua writer Fei Liena (Xinhua) 10:59, November 05, 2016

BEIJING, Nov. 5 -- The European Unionshould rethink about its new "country-neutral" method and take a more free and convenient EU-China trade into consideration, as Chinese Premier Li Keqiangis on a central and eastern Europe tour to foster cooperation.

Besides visiting Latvia, Li is to attend a meeting with government heads of the 16 central and eastern European (CEE) countries, among which 11 are EU members, and to discuss trade and economic cooperation with them.

It's also expected that both parties are to discuss whether the EU would fulfill its WTOobligations to grant China market economy status (MES) by Dec. 11 this year. The deadline is just a month away.

China has been repeatedly calling on WTO members, including the EU, to end the surrogate country practice against China in anti-dumping cases after the deadline.

The Article 15 of the Protocol on China's accession to the WTO in 2001 has clearly dictated that China will automatically switch over to market economy status when the surrogate country approach expires in 15 years, which means, by that day, the legal foundation for treating China as a non-market economy is gone.

Facing the pressure of the expiry, however, the European Commission has decided to do the bait and switch trick and have it both ways after six months of mulling -- it proposed in July to abolish its "non-market economy" list, and set up a new "country-neutral" method to strengthen its trade defense instruments.

In the new methodology, the EC proposed to take "international prices" into account in its anti-dumping investigations, yet the WTO protocol has clearly regulated that after the expiry date, any future anti-dumping cases against China should make comparison with prices or costs in China.

The new method also speeds up the anti-dumping and anti-subsidy procedures, and imposes at least the same, or even higher duties in certain circumstances.

By doing so, Brussels is gearing up to the American approach toward Chinese imports, which allowed Washington to impose heavy duties on Chinese commodities.

Though the method hasn't been officially proposed to the European Council and Parliament yet, China is keeping a close eye on its development, while at the same time urges the EU to "neatly and cleanly fulfill its WTO obligations without any additional conditions by Dec. 11," said Chinese Assistant FM Liu Haixing.

The WTO protocols are the consensus reached between China and other WTO members during the accession negotiation. No signatary party should evade its obligations by trying to change the rules of game or playing it vague. Doing so would be a distortion of rules and deliberate misinterpretation of the WTO protocols.

During Li's visit, it's highly possible that he will negotiate China's MES issue with CEE countries, the most vibrant economies on the European continent.

As there are 11 EU members among the CEE countries, China expects them to prompt the EU to fulfill the obligations in due time.

China is the EU's second-biggest trading partner, with daily trade flows of over 1 billion euros (1.13 billion U.S. dollars).

Giving China MES will make China-EU trade ties, including the China-CEE relations, even stronger, as at such a difficult time, the world's two major economies need each other more than ever.
Liu is seen after the sentencing on November 4, 2016 at a court in Beijing's Chaoyang District. [Photo: thepaper.cn]

The arrested offender in the Beijing Heyi Hotel assault has been sentenced to two years in prison, along with a fine of 5,000 yuan, for carrying out pimping activities.

According to the Beijing Chaoyang District Court, the male offender, surnamed Li, earlier admitted that he belonged to a prostitution ring and that he was handing out flyers for escort services on the night of the attack on April 3.

Li mistook the female victim as a trouble-maker sent by his competitors, and he attempted to drag her away and called his associates for help. The victim, however, was instead just a tourist visiting Beijing.

Her screaming and fighting back led Li to quickly escape the scene.

The image from the hotel's security monitoring system shows a man trying to grab a woman near the hotel's elevator entrance on April 3, 2016. (file photo)

The victim later posted her story and security video footage showing the incident on Chinese social media, saying that she was assaulted for no reason inside the hotel.

Her posts instantly became viral in China, and the hotel was blamed by many for failing to protect her.

A police investigation shows this was not Li's first offense and that he was on record for procuring a prostitute with two clients in the same Heyi Hotel earlier in March.

After his arrest, Li named four accomplices. An accomplice of his, surnamed Liu, was also arrested and prosecuted for pimping activities and extortion.

A further investigation of Li's prostitution ring is ongoing.
Time-worn facilities

(Image credit: Evgeny Ermolov/Russian Arctic National Park)

A team of Russian researchers has rediscovered the site of the secret German World War II base "Schatzgrabber" ("Treasure Hunter") on the Arctic island of Alexandra Land, in the Barents Sea, more than 1,100 kilometers (650 miles) north of the Russian coast.

The base was built by the German military in 1943 as one of a network of secret weather-watching stations on remote Arctic islands far to the north of mainland Europe.

Many decades of snow and ice have now crushed the main wooden bunkhouse of the German weather station into splinters. [Read full story about the secret German base]

Relics

(Image credit: Evgeny Ermolov/Russian Arctic National Park)

The research team from the Russian Arctic National Park, based in Arkhangelsk, say theyre the first to fully explore and map the wartime site on the remote island. They have also documented more than 600 objects at the site of the former German weather station, and sent them to the park museum in Arkhangelsk for further study.

These canisters once contained food and other supplies that were regularly airdropped to the base by German aircraft.

Left behind

(Image credit: Julia Petrova/Russian Arctic National Park)

The finds include the remains of military equipment and weapons left behind by the occupants of the weather station when the base closed in 1944.

These rounds and an ammunition pouch for a German Mauser 98 rifle were found among the debris of the bunkhouse.

Evidence of settlement

(Image credit: Evgeny Ermolov/Russian Arctic National Park)

The wartime German base on Alexandra Land was a scientific weather-watching station, but it was surrounded by fortifications and minefields in case it was discovered and attacked.

This is the remains of one of the bunkers.

Questions remain

(Image credit: Julia Petrova/Russian Arctic National Park)

The Schatzgrabber base is the subject of much speculation about its purpose, but the researchers reported no evidence that it was more than a weather-watching station to give advanced warning of conditions for German military operations.

This image shows two automatic thermometers found at the site, designed to be carried aloft in a weather balloon.

Emergencies recorded

(Image credit: Julia Petrova/Russian Arctic National Park)

In 1944, a medical emergency broke out at the base after the staff ate contaminated meat from a polar bear they had shot for food.

German aircraft flew two missions from Norway to Alexandra Land to evacuate the sick base staff. One of the aircraft landed at an emergency landing strip on the island that was discovered by the Russian research team this year.

Remaining evidence

(Image credit: Evgeny Ermolov/Russian Arctic National Park)

Among the wartime artifacts found at the emergency airstrip site on Alexandra Land were the remains of tents, equipment and fuel drums

Technical leftovers

(Image credit: Evgeny Ermolov/Russian Arctic National Park)

The researchers also found batteries  probably for radio equipment  smoke bombs, and signal flares at the emergency airstrip, near Cape Nimrod on Alexandra Land.

Emergency supplies

(Image credit: Evgeny Ermolov/Russian Arctic National Park)

This wrapper from a pack of signal flares found at the emergency airstrip on Alexandra Land is written in German and dated 1941. [Read full story about the secret German base]
People of Miao ethnic group perform during a fair to celebrate their new year in Leishan, southwest China's Guizhou Province, Nov. 4, 2016. (Xinhua/Tao Liang)
The IDA has declined to respond to scathing remarks directed at it by local politicians in the wake of the Cameron job cuts announcement.

A spokeswoman for the state development agency said officials were not intent on issuing any kind of response following a recent meeting of Longford County Council.

At its October monthly meeting, elected members took aim at the IDA, accusing it of getting away with blue murder in attracting overseas investment to County Longford.

The outburst came just days after locally based manufacturer Cameron announced its plans to cut 170 jobs at its Longford town based plant by January.

The IDA is getting away with blue murder, said an indignant Cllr Mark Casey. There is 170 people affected and those 170 jobs are gone out of Longford on a whimper - on a whimper.

Cllr Martin Mulleady was another to speak out, claiming he had not crossed paths with anyone from the IDA or Enterprise Ireland in his 12-and-a-half years on the council.

In the direct aftermath of that meeting, the Leader made contact with the IDA, sending them a copy of the article in question.

Earlier this week however, a spokesperson replied and insisted the agency would not be commenting on the matter at this juncture.
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
KATHMANDU, Nov. 4 -- The Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) on Friday called for increased Chinese investment in the country's tourism, agriculture, energy and other infrastructure sectors.

During a meeting with a six-member delegation from China's Yunnan Province, the Nepal's private sector body told the Chinese side that Nepal was heading towards political stability following the promulgation of a new constitution last year and the investment climate in the Himalayan nation has been improving.

FNCCI Vice President Dinesh Shrestha said Nepal now needs more investment and technology transfer from China in the areas of energy, tourism and infrastructure while reminding the Chinese officials that Nepalese entrepreneurs have been closely working with their peers from Yunnan province in recent years.

Nepalese business leaders also mentioned importance of the Chinese investment in tourism given the growing tourist arrivals from China.

Although Chinese tourist arrivals in Nepal plunged by 28 percent in the first half of 2016 following last year's deadly earthquake, China has continued to remain the second largest source of foreign tourists after India.

Yang Hui, deputy director general at the Department of Commerce of Yunnan, said he would work toward encouraging entrepreneurs from the southwest Chinese province to invest in Nepal.

In the last 2015-2016 fiscal year that ended in mid-July, China topped the chart in making foreign direct investment (FDI) to Nepal, pledging more than one-third of total FDI commitments the country received. Enditem
(Xinhua) 15:37, November 05, 2016

CHENGDU, Nov. 5 -- After a flight of more than 20 hours, Mei Lun and Mei Huan, the first pair of surviving giant panda twins ever born in the United States, arrived at Chengdu early Saturday morning in their first trip to China.

Breeders with the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, the zoo's Chinese partner, and a throng of panda-lovers greeted the three-year-old bears at Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport around 5 a.m.

Expert Lan Jingchao with the base said the twins would not meet the public immediately until a month-long quarantine check to ensure their health was completed.

Born on July 15, 2013, the twins got their names meaning"something indiscribably beautiful and magnificent" through an online vote.

They are the fourth and fifth offspring of Lun Lun and Yang Yang who came to Zoo Atlanta in 1999 under a collaboration agreement between China and the United States.

Lun Lun has so far produced seven cubs in five births. As part of the agreement, panda cubs born in the United States to parents on loan from China are to be returned to China when they are of age.

Giant pandas in Chengdu have visited 13 countries and regions in total, including Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Mexico, and gave births to 27 cubs overseas.

The Chengdu Research Base is also conducting technical cooperation with their peers in five countries, the United States, Japan, Canada, France and Spain. Enditem


A video surfaced this week which purports to show Lebanese Hezbollah fighters present on the outskirts of the Iraqi city of Mosul. The footage, published by Pan-Arab news site Al-Araby Al-Jaeed, was reportedly filmed in al-Zarka, approximately 30 miles southwest of Mosul, where thousands of Shiite militia fighters have assembled. Though the fighters, seen in the video training Iraqi Shiite militiamen to fire mortar shells, are not wearing their militias insignia, their distinct southern Lebanese accents betray their membership in the Lebanon-based Iranian proxy group.

According to the videos accompanying report, an unnamed Iraqi Shiite militant said that the Hezbollah fighters arrived in the area days earlier to reinforce local Shiite fighters.

[Hezbollah chief] Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah sent them to support us, for Syria and Iraq are all on one side, he said.

Hezbollahs intervention in Iraq is not new, its fighters and advisors have been on the ground since the outset of the Iranian-led fight against the Islamic State. Hezbollah has been sending highly trained military experts to help in managing the battles against the extremist Sunni organization. Their presence was made known in late 2014, when Hezbollah commander Ibrahim al Hajj was killed fighting against the Islamic State in northern Iraqs Tel Afar. Nasrallah himself finally acknowledged sending Hezbollahs fighters to Iraq in a 2015 speech, describing the organizations presence at the time as small and in its earliest stages. He also issued an invitation for volunteers to join them there to fight ISIS.

Since then, Hezbollah appears to have stepped up its involvement in Iraq. In late April, Hussein Yazadan, a Kurdish military official, alleged that the Shiite organization had deployed 1,000 fighters to the city of Kirkukon  approximately 100 miles southeast of Mosul  on Iranian orders and were concentrating in the nearby town of Taza Khurmatu. Led by an Islamic Revolution Guard CorpsQuds Force (IRGC-QF) commander, the Hezbollah guerillas arrived in the area to provide support for the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) fighters as part of Irans attempt to solidify its control over both oil-rich cities of Kirkuk and Mosul, and establish a land-bridge to the Syrian border. Yazadan said that the Hezbollah fighters were wearing PMF uniforms in an effort to conceal their identity. At the time, Hezbollah denied having sent such a large contingent of fighters to Iraq, instead claiming it had sent the PMF dozens of military experts and trainers months prior to Yazadans warning.

Hezbollahs Iraqi presence actually predates the rise of ISIS by a decade, going back to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Hezbollah developed its own insurgent capability in Iraq, engaging in assassinations, kidnappings and bombings. At Irans behest, Hezbollah also created Unit 3800, an external operations unit to train and assist Iraqi Shiite militias  known as the Special Groups  fighting against US and multinational forces. In fact, the group is even rumored to have sent its late legendary military commander Imad Mughniyeh to Iraq in early 2006 to help train members of the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia led by Muqtada al-Sadr.

However, the key figure in this effort by Hezbollah was Ali Musa Daqdouq.

Daqdouq joined the Shiite organization in its early days in 1983 and quickly rose to commend its Special Operations Unit 2800, Unit 3800s predecessor. In May 2006, Daqdouq was sent to Iran to coordinate the Special Groups training program with the IRGC-QF, and make periodic visits to Iraq. Daqdouq trained Iraqi militants in carrying out terrorist operations, including the IED attacks, especially using Explosively Formed Penetrators, which Hezbollah excelled at using against Israel during the IDFs 15-year occupation of south Lebanon. He also trained them to use mortars, rockets and sniper rifles, as well as carrying out intelligence and kidnapping operations.

US forces finally captured Daqdouq in March 2007, along with the leader of the Asaib Ahl Al-Haq Shiite militia, which carried out the Jan. 2007 attack on the Karbala Joint Provincial Coordination Center. Five US soldiers were captured during the attack and later executed.

Currently, Hezbollahs activities in Iraq are being led by Muhammad Kawarithmi, who works on behalf of the groups leadership to promote its interests in Iraq. Through Kawarithmi, the organization continues to provide training, funding, political and logistical support to Iraqi Shiite militant groups.

David Daoud is an Arabic-Language Analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

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.
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for massive car bombing in the city of Diyarbakir, which is in southeastern Turkey. Citing the government-run Anadolu Agency, the Associated Press reported that at least nine people (two policemen and seven civilians) were killed and upwards of 100 more were wounded. The Islamic States Amaq News Agency claimed the blast hours after it rocked the city.

Citing a security source, Amaq claimed: Fighters from the Islamic State set off a car bomb parked in front of the headquarters of the Turkish police in Diyarbakir in southeast Turkey.

Turkish authorities quickly blamed the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a US-designated terrorist organization. It is possible the PKK did carry out the attack. But if the Islamic States claim is accurate, then the so-called caliphates men carried it out just two days after Abu Bakr al Baghdadi called for attacks inside Turkey.

On Nov. 2, the Islamic State released the first audio message from Baghdadi in nearly one year. Baghdadi spent part of his address blasting the apostate Turkey for showing its true face by striking inside the lands of the caliphate. The Islamic States emir said that the Turkish government thinks it can safely descend onto the battlefields of the sons of monotheism and the lions of jihad, but they are not truly secure. Baghdadi called on his loyalists to bring Turkey into their conflict, while also fighting those Turkish soldiers who have come to them in the Levant. He likened infidel Turkish soldiers to dogs.

Earlier this year, Turkey launched Operation Euphrates Shield, which has successfully claimed territory from the Islamic State in northern Syria. In his audio address, Baghdadi argued that Turkey has taken advantage of the fact that his men have been distracted by the war against the infidel nations and have been forced to defend their territory.

In the past, the Islamic State has been deliberately ambiguous about high-profile terrorist attacks inside Turkey. For example, it is widely suspected that the group was responsible for the suicide bombings and shootings at the Ataturk Airport in Istanbul in late June. Forty-five people were killed and more than 200 others were wounded.

But the Islamic State never claimed responsibility for the high-profile assault in Istanbul. By contrast, Amaq issued a statement regarding the car bombing in Diyarbakir just hours after the fact. As opposed to Istanbul, Diyarbakir is a major city in the part of the country that is predominately Kurdish. And the Islamic State has been fighting Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria for years.

Still, Baghdadis call for operations inside Turkey was clear. And his men claim to have followed through on his threat by attacking Turkish police.

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.
Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook confirmed in a statement today that Faruq al Qatani, a senior al Qaeda leader who was plotting against the US, was killed in an airstrike last month. Cooks full statement reads:

We can now confirm that the precision strike conducted by the U.S. military on Oct. 23 in Kunar, Afghanistan, resulted in the death of senior al-Qaeda leader Faruq al-Qatani. Al-Qatani was al-Qaedas emir for eastern Afghanistan and one of the terrorist groups senior plotters of attacks against the United States. This successful strike is another example of U.S. operations to degrade international terrorist networks and target terrorist leaders who seek to attack the U.S. homeland, our interests and our allies abroad. Another al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan, Bilal al-Utabi, was also targeted in a separate strike. We are still assessing the results of that strike.

The Long War Journal has written about Qatani on a number of occasions. He was a prominent al Qaeda member for years. Osama bin Ladens files show that Qatani was trusted to establish safe havens in Afghanistan more than six years ago, meaning he had plenty of time to establish a robust network in the country. In addition to having a hand in al Qaedas external operations  that is, plots against the West  he also supported the Taliban-led insurgency against the Afghan government, US forces and their allies.

The US launched airstrikes against senior al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen in October. Like Qatani and his lieutenant in Afghanistan, the al Qaeda figures in Syria and Yemen were suspected of either planning attacks against the West, or supporting such plots.

For more on Qatani (also known as Faruq al Qatari), see LWJ reports:

Osama Bin Ladens Files: Very strong military activity in Afghanistan

Treasury designates head of al Qaedas eastern zone in Afghanistan

US targeted 2 senior al Qaeda leaders in eastern Afghanistan

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, Nov. 5

Trend:

Yerevans attempt to rename the fictitious regime in the Armenia-occupied lands of Azerbaijan to the Artsakh Republic under the fictitious process of constitutional change is yet another policy by Yerevan to deceive the international community and the OSCE Minsk Groups co-chairs, says Hikmat Hajiyev, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman.

Speaking to Trend Nov. 5, Hajiyev said that after the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents' meetings in Vienna and St. Petersburg, Armenia was expected to take constructive and concrete steps, but with such provocative actions, Yerevan is pursuing a policy aimed to inflict harm to the negotiations held for a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
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Culture / Art Republik

A new arts center in Santiago will support Chilean contemporary art in a newly renovated Modernist space on the premises of the historic Los Cerillos Airport.

Nov 05, 2016 | By AFPRelaxnews

Active between 1929 and 2006, the Los Cerillos Airport  said to be a symbol of modernization for the country  was located on grounds donated to Chile in 1928 by American philanthropist David Guggenheim. Earlier this year, the airport building was transferred to the National Council of Cultural and Arts Chile, which opened to the public in September in a renovated space that will house the National Centre for Contemporary Art.

In preparation for the opening of the arts space, the 4,000-square-meter former airport building was renovated to complement its original Modernist architecture. Exhibition spaces are joined by libraries and space for archives, research and storage, all intended to conserve public and private collections of contemporary art.

While a full exhibition program is still to come, the September opening was accompanied by the exhibition Una Imagen llamada Palabra (An Image Called Word) curated by the Chilean artist Camilo Yanez and featuring works from the last 50 years by artists including Gonzalo Diaz, Paz Errazuriz, Eugenio Dittborn, Ivan Navarro and Cecilia Vicuna.

The center will be home to the contemporary art collection of the National Council of Culture and Arts Chile, including works currently housed in the Councils gallery, Galeria Gabriela Mistral.

Announcements revealing the future director of the center and the full exhibition program are to follow in early 2017.
Kochi: The CPM decided to replace Zakir Hussain with T.K Mohanan as the Kalamassery Area Secretary in light of the case against him for abducting and threatening an industrialist. The decision was taken at the district secretariat meeting attended by state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan.

District secretary P.Rajeev said that the party will investigate the allegations against Hussain and that he was replaced because a police investigation is being conducted against him.

Hussain had gone into hiding soon after the case was registered, and the party took the decision even as the court is to decide on Hussains bail petition today.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 5

Trend:

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has signed an order providing funding for the completion of the construction of Balakan-Sarbulaq-Gabagchol-Khaalatala road in Balakan.

Under the presidential order, 2.1 million manats were allocated from the State Budget for the completion of the construction of the road connecting 15 residential areas with the total population of 44,000 people.
Russia on Thursday granted citizenship to the American action film star Steven Seagal.

Seagal, who is known to be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, used to visit that country frequently and often accompanied Putin to martial arts events. He had also earlier voiced his support for Russias annexation of Crimea.

French actor Gerard Depardieu and American boxer Roy Jones Jr. are few others like Seagal who had applied for Russian citizenship.

Hard to Kill, Under Siege and Above the Law of the 90s are some of Segals famous movies.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 5

Trend:

Planned large-scale military exercises of Azerbaijani Armed Forces undoubtedly caused fear in Armenia, said the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry in a message.

The Azerbaijani Armed Forces, respecting the decision on the conflict made by the intermediaries at the international level, carry out exercises on their territories involving all types of troops, and it in no way violates the international requirements, the ministry said.

If international institutions and organizations have to impose sanctions against any country, it must be Armenia in the first place, since that country does not attach importance to decisions of international organizations, it is indifferent to them and grossly violates them, said the ministry's message.

The message further said that there must be an appropriate reaction to Armenia holding military exercises on the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, and sanctions should be imposed against Armenia, said the message.

Azerbaijans Armed Forces will hold large-scale exercises from Nov. 12 through Nov. 18. More than 60,000 members of military personnel, over 50 planes and helicopters, over 150 tanks and armored vehicles will be involved in the exercises, the ministry said previously.
This US Election is a Chance for the Republicans to Build a New Coalition

BY GEORGE FRIEDMAN : The election is far from over, and given the pattern of this election, nothing can be taken for granted. So while (at the moment) Hillary Clinton appears to be winning, less than two weeks remain.

I generally focus on the broad geopolitical forces that shape and reshape the world. But, there are two reasons to be interested in this US election.

First, shifts in the behavior of the US affect geopolitics globally. Second, this election has revealed some profound changes in the underlying dynamics of American politics.

The New Deal shaped an unlikely coalition

The frame for thinking about this issue lies with the two major political parties. I want to begin with the Democrats because it is the party that has undergone the most profound change. It is also the party in which change is least discussed.

The framework of the Democratic Party was set in the New Deal. It was an unlikely coalition of Southern whites, Northeastern industrial workers, and African Americans. Its core was based on poverty.

The Civil War ended 67 years before the New Deal, and the South remained impoverished. In the north, the Great Depression had crushed both the ethnic industrial class (many of whom were just a generation or two away from immigration) and those African Americans who moved north after the Civil War.

The Democratic Party won the election of 1932 because it cast itself against the economic and social disruption of the Depression. It created a coalition of those who had been most affected.

The Republican coalition was focused on small businesses, small towns, the more prosperous farmers, professionals, and the upper class. It was the party of both wealth and culture. It held a disdain for the South that dated back to slavery. It also felt an unease about the waves of Eastern and Southern European immigrants and massive industrial urbanization.

This was the coalition that had ruled the country since the Civil War. But its power had been broken by the Depression.

The Republicans argued that the Depression was caused by the reckless consumption and lifestyle of the 1920s. Their solution was a dose of austerity. The Democrats view was that this was a systemic failure of capitalism one that required state intervention.

The two coalitions lasted until 1964 when Barry Goldwater took the South away from the Democrats. Goldwater was crushed in the election, but he led a coalition shift that reshaped American politics.

The Democrats retained Northeastern ethnic workers and a growing black voting bloc. The Republicans retained the wealthy, the professionals, farmers, and a shrinking small town base.

But in 1964, Southern Democrats shifted to the Republican party. This move resulted in 28 years of Republican presidents in the 48 years between 1968 and 2016.

American politics has shifted to cultural issues

A new section of the population emerged during those 48 years: the suburbanites. This group was relatively well-to-do and tended to be better educated. The suburbs were spurred by the VA loans to World War II vets and the interstate highway system that made the land around cities accessible.

The pre-World War II suburbs were Republican, but this shifted as the Depression-WWII generation moved in. Then their children, the Baby Boomers, caused a stable coalition to be much less predictable. The Boomers had a general tendency to be socially liberal (after growing up in the 1960s) and more economically conservative.

Increasingly, the Republicans sought to hold and expand their coalition with two strategies. One was the need for tax cuts. The other was the culture wars: opposing abortion and gay marriage, supporting prayer in schools, and the like.

During this time, the Democrats remained wedded to the New Deal strategy. Then they added abortion rights, gay rights, and opposition to prayer in schools to their strategy. Cultural issues became at least the equal of economic issues.

The white South remained attached to the Republicans. African Americans remained attached to the Democrats. The children of the ethnic industrial workers now lived in the suburbs, and they were split.

The suburbs consisted of a majority that was socially liberal and a large minority that was socially conservative. But both of these groups shared a general tendency to be economically conservative.

In recent times, the parties issues have become increasingly about social mores. The children of the Boomersthe Millennialsare now voters. And they are strikingly like their parents.

But beneath the surface, a massive shift has been taking place.

The Democrats gave up on the working class

The foundation of the New Deal coalition was that the Democratic Party was the party of the workers and the Republican Party was the party of the upper-middle class.

But the culture wars cut the Democrats ties to blue collar workers without college degrees. This class also tends to be very socially conservative in all parts of the US.

The Democrats had already willingly given up Southern conservatives. Now, they were prepared to give up social conservatives everywhere. The problem, though, was that the social conservatives were (to a large extent) the same non-college-educated workers that had once been the core of the New Deal coalition.

President Barack Obama sought, not entirely successfully, to keep this group in the coalition. Then, Hillary Clinton decided to use them to discredit Donald Trump.

She painted Trump (and he painted himself) as the spokesman for those who were not college educated, white, socially conservative workers. Clinton understood that this was not simply a group that was no longer favored by the Democratic Partyit was repulsive to the Democratic Party.

There is an argument that soon the United States will cease to be a predominantly white country and that this group is increasingly irrelevant. A reasonable argument, it is posed in such a way as to create both a sense of desperate embattlement among white workers (particularly male) and a sense of loathing toward this group in the rest of the country.

There are two baskets. One is the deplorables who should have been expelled from the Democratic Party back in 1964 with the South. The second is the impoverished and hopeless.

But the key here is that Clinton did not try to split Trumps hold over this second group, as Lyndon Johnson or Harry Truman would have. Rather, she treated them as alien and unimportant. The Democrats gave up this core constituency of the New Dealthe white, undereducated working class, committed to strict social values.

Clinton calculated that the price of retaining them was to accept strict social values. If she did that, she would lose heavily with the Democrats new base the socially liberal in all classes.

Look at this another way. American politics had been driven by economic issues since 1932. Now, they are driven by social issues. From the Democrats point of view, the working class was on the wrong side of these social issues, so Clinton gave up on them.

What future parties will look like?

The Democrats created chaos in their base, but in an orderly fashion. The Republicans created it in a disorderly way. Trump drew the white working class to him and engaged in what proved to be the losing side of the social values debate.

The Republican Party lost the culture wars in 2016: they added the white working class (as Reagan had in part) but united them on social issues that simply didnt have the votes.

The issue, at present, is this: What is the Democratic Party about now if it has already won on gay rights, abortion, and prayer in schools? What is the reason to vote Democrat in 2020?

The major political battles on the cultural issues have been won. And while the battle may continue, a massive reversal on these issues would require a massive reversal in the political structure of the US.

The issue at this point is the fate of those earning below the median income. These are the people in the second basket of Trump supporters and the former core of the Democratic Party.

But because of the Democrats shift on cultural issues, they are now more aligned with the classes who earn above the median income. If they focus on those below, they must shift their cultural views. If they focus on those above, they alienate their old base.

If the Republicans now have the South and the white working class, what do they do once the culture wars subside? Both parties tossed out historical coalitions to fight the culture wars.

The Democrats no longer have a clear hold on any group for primarily economic reasons. At one time, this issue had been the Democrats foundation. The Republicans actually have more currency there now. But these recently added groups and the traditional Republican base dont live well with each other.

It is tempting to say that the Republicans are a permanent opposition party now, but that would be wrong. For the moment, they have the possibility of owning the emerging challenge in the US the ability of the middle class (and those below) to afford a decent standard of living. This was one of Reagans issues and Trump resurrected it. The question is: What will the Republicans do with it now?

I will argue that when we look back at this year, the Republicans will have lost the election, but they have been handed an opportunity to build a new coalition.

The US may or may not find that whites are a minority, but it is not clear that all non-whites have common interests. The Republicans acquisition of white non-college educated malesplus the Southis not trivial. This is a vital base, but its not enough.

Tying this base together with a winning coalition wont be easy. It challenges what the Republican Party has become for the last generation. But then, Trump has bought an end to that phase of Republican history.

Watch George Friedman's Ground-breaking Documentary, Crisis & Chaos: Are We Moving Toward World War III?

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Gold Will Win US Presidential Election 2016

Gold could rise to at least 8% following election

Gold could rise to at least 8% following election Trump victory will push gold up 10%

Uncertainty pre and post election likely to support the gold price

Election jitters are one of several drivers for the gold price

Trump win will release a wave of risk aversion

Safe-haven demand maybe set to rise in coming weeks

To the relief of some but the worry of many others the US election is now just days away. Unlike past elections this one appears to grown more uncertain and fraught the closer it gets.

Since the FBI announced further investigations into emails associated with Hillary Clinton, her lead has narrowed and voters appear to be even more undecided.

For some the decision is a fate worse than death, as Reuters reported, Young Americans are so dissatisfied with their choices in this presidential election that nearly one in four told an opinion poll they would rather have a giant meteor destroy the Earth than see Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in the White House.

There appears to be one winner amongst all this though, gold. Regardless of who will enter the White House in January, the gold price is set to perform well in both the short and long-term.

Gold price to climb no matter who wins

The news of the gold prices positive run surrounding the elections made headlines this week when HSBC analyst James Steel published a note stating gold would climb 8% no matter who wins.

Backing this up the World Gold Council wrote yesterday, We expect that both the presidential and congressional elections results will be supportive of gold regardless of the outcome, given the high uncertainty in the direction of policy and the possibility that the results may be contested.

Clinton policies will drive gold upwards

Should Clinton win then for many this will be a relief and also a reason to carry-on as if little has happened. General consensus is that little will change with another Clinton in the White House. Unless the Democrats miraculously manage to take control of Congress, then get ready for another four years of stalemate.

According to Steel, this will still be bullish for gold, Such an outcome would largely support our current expectations for gold. Our bullish base case, built on expectations of a low rate environment and recovering physical demand, is a forecast of USD1,400/oz by end-2016 with an average forecast price of USD1,275/oz. For 2017, we forecast gold at USD1,440/oz by year end with an average price forecast of USD1,310/oz. If Mrs. Clinton wins, we believe her trade policies in particular and shift to protectionism would reaffirm our already bullish outlook. If contrary to current poll indications the Democrats also take control of Congress, then there could be a more expansionary fiscal policy. This could have a more bullish impact on our 2017 forecasts.

Not everyone is as bullish about gold should Clinton win, in the short-term. Jeff Nichols wrote earlier this week, My guess is that Wall Street and foreign stock markets would be relieved by a Clinton victory, with equity prices posting brief short-term gains, and gold giving up the small gains it registered in the days immediately prior to the election, said Nichols

Wayne Gordon, executive director for commodities and foreign exchange at UBS Group AGs wealth-management unit, agreed, telling Bloomberg, If Hillary Clinton is elected, we think gold can probably fall by $20, $30.

Trump win means more uncertainty for us but certainty for gold

UBSs Gordon sees a Trump win to be hugely beneficial to the gold price, If Donald Trump is elected next week, we think gold can go anywhere shy of $1,400So the clear skew in this trade is to the upside.

When it comes to Trump this is where Steel sees a very positive environment for gold, a Trump win would be decidedly gold-bullish, in our view, given the potential for increased protectionism, higher budget spending and geopolitical risks. Gold prices could jump to USD1,500/oz relatively quickly, and end the year at that level on a Trump win. This could raise our 2016 average price to USD1,300/oz. For 2017, gold could rise further to USD1,575/oz by year end with an average of USD1,410/oz.

For the majority of those weighing in on gold-price moves over the election, it is the air of uncertainty that is creating a positive environment for gold.

A Trump win would see likely see a wave of risk aversion, said Daniel Hynes, senior commodity strategist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. Gold prices have already moved higher as a result of the U.S. presidential election becoming less clear. Assuming polls continue to tighten, gold prices should continue to edge higher.

Only gold is learning from history

History has generally shown that when there is a change in the partisan affiliation of the presidency, the price of gold benefits. When there is no change in administration then gold tends not to react.

Meanwhile, some believe that golds reaction depends on which party is in the White House. Some research I carried out a few years ago found that gold generally performed better under a Democrat administration.

However history doesnt appear to come into this election. The only thing that history is feeding into right now are the predictions on the gold price. We know from experience that gold performs well during times of uncertainty.

Gold is seen as a hedge against political uncertainty, and President Trump would bring more political unpredictability than any president for generations, particularly over the U.S. Federal Reserves leadership and monetary policy strategy, James Butterfill, head of research and investment strategy at ETF Securities, wrote in a recent note. Butterfly expects gold to climb by as much as 10% in the year proceeding a Trump victory.

Long-term, the gold price doesnt care

At present the gold price is reacting to the uncertainty surrounding the election result, but long-term the outlook is also bullish. Ron Paul sees little difference between the two parties and sees a bullish environment, not matter what the outcome is on Tuesday.

We quoted Ron Paul, earlier this year who stated, Politically speaking, there is going to be a lot more uncertainty and that may go into the markets  If people are depending on political stability to get the market going I dont think its going to work out.

Nothing ever really changes regardless of which party wins. Governments keep growing, the deficits keep growing and the Fed keeps borrowing and printing more money, he said. I dont expect a lot to change.

Golds bright future is down to uncertainty and safe-haven demand in the short-term, but in the long-term this election will be a mere brick in the long-road, bullish road ahead.

Gold Prices (LBMA AM)

04 Nov: USD 1,301.70, GBP 1,042.79 & EUR 1,172.57 per ounce

03 Nov: USD 1,293.00, GBP 1,040.61 & EUR 1,165.90 per ounce

02 Nov: USD 1,295.85, GBP 1,056.51 & EUR 1,169.76 per ounce

01 Nov: USD 1,284.40, GBP 1,048.58 & EUR 1,167.52 per ounce

31 Oct: USD 1,274.20, GBP 1,046.25 & EUR 1,163.22 per ounce

28 Oct: USD 1,265.90, GBP 1,042.47 & EUR 1,160.96 per ounce

27 Oct: USD 1,269.30, GBP 1,038.29 & EUR 1,162.93 per ounce

Silver Prices (LBMA)

04 Nov: USD 18.30, GBP 14.65 & EUR 16.48 per ounce

03 Nov: USD 18.07, GBP 14.50 & EUR 16.32 per ounce

02 Nov: USD 18.54, GBP 15.05 & EUR 16.70 per ounce

01 Nov: USD 18.24, GBP 14.91 & EUR 16.54 per ounce

31 Oct: USD 17.76, GBP 14.59 & EUR 16.22 per ounce

28 Oct: USD 17.61, GBP 14.51 & EUR 16.13 per ounce

27 Oct: USD 17.66, GBP 14.41 & EUR 16.16 per ounce

This update can be found on the GoldCore blog here.

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Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 5

By Elena Kosolapova  Trend:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit Azerbaijan until late 2016, however, the exact date of the visit is not yet known, Israels Ambassador to Azerbaijan Dan Stav said in an interview with Trend.

Stav added that this visit will be historical, because Netanyahus last visit to Azerbaijan was for few hours in 1997.

So it is a great opportunity to meet again with the president of the country, he said. We have excellent relations and I do believe that ongoing interactions between the two senior leaders on the level of president of Azerbaijan and prime minister of Israel are of great importance in order to promote bilateral relations between the two countries.

Normally interaction between such leaders is an opportunity to raise all the pending issues between the two countries both in political relations and economy, Stav noted.

Such a visit will give a right signal to the private sector in both Azerbaijan and Israel that the two countries governments are welcoming this cementing of economic ties, he said.

We also try to push forward completion of certain agreements that will facilitate the interaction between private sectors of both countries, Stav noted. We consider Azerbaijan as a country with a great potential to develop agriculture, IT, pharmaceutical sector.

The current slumping oil and gas prices are a great opportunity to diversify economy in Azerbaijan, Stav said.

We really want to see Azerbaijani ministers going to Israel in order to develop relations, especially in agriculture, IT, communication, pharmaceutics, the ambassador noted.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
SPRINGFIELD -- On Oct. 6, 1995, a body with a gunshot wound to the head was found in Tolland State Forest.

The body was identified nearly two decades later as that of Marcia Honsch, 53, of Brewster, New York. Now, her husband Robert Honsch, 72, is charged in Hampden Superior Court with her murder.

Trial dates have been set in the case and then postponed. The parties were before Hampden Superior Court Judge Edward J. McDonough on Oct. 27 to get a new set of dates. The trial is now set to begin May 1.

In Connecticut Honsch faces a murder trial in connection with the fatal shooting of his daughter, Elizabeth Honsch, 17.

Elizabeth Honsch's body -- with a gunshot wound in her head -- was found wrapped in trash bags and a sleeping bag behind a shopping plaza in New Britain on Sept. 28, 1995.

Honsch, who was living in Ohio when arrested, was arraigned for Marcia Honsch's murder in August 2014 in Westfield District Court. The case moved to Hampden Superior Court in September of that year.

On Feb. 28 there will be a hearing on defense lawyer Paul Rudof's anticipated motion to exclude evidence from the state of Connecticut. On March 28 there will be a hearing on the defense's anticipated motion to challenge the admissibility of a prosecution expert who will testify about a palm print found on trash bags wrapped around Elizabeth Honsch's body.

Assistant District Attorney Karen J. Bell said the outcome of that hearing will affect a significant amount of evidence in the prosecution's case.

Bell said previously that three "palm-type impressions/prints" were recovered from the bags. They were compared to Honsch's palm prints by a forensic scientist at the Ohio attorney general's office. Honsch's prints used for comparison were taken by the Wayne County Sheriff's Department in Ohio.

For nearly two decades investigators said the bodies were unidentifiable, although they were determined to be mother and daughter through DNA testing. A relative from Virginia revived the question of their disappearances earlier in 2014, according to police, and helped positively identify the bodies.

Honsch was tracked down in Dalton, Ohio, with a new wife and three children. He was interviewed by police in July 2014 and arrested. He had been living under the name Robert Tyree.

On Jan. 10 a hearing is scheduled on Rudof's motion to dismiss the case or grant other relief. He is arguing exculpatory evidence was destroyed.

The motion centers on a vehicle owned by Barry Troy, which the defense says was torched on the same night and in the same general area in Tolland State Forest where Marcia Honsch was killed.

Rudof listed a number of reports and other written matter about the investigation into the burned vehicle he says have been destroyed. Those include a report written by an insurance investigator, a transcript of a 1996 insurance investigator's interview with Troy and his wife, and phone records of seven people.

"Because these items are relevant to a third-party culprit defense as well as a defense premised on the failure of law enforcement to adequately investigate these potential third-party culprits, the destruction of this evidence substantially hampers the defendant's ability to present these defenses," Rudof wrote.

He said even if the judge concludes dismissal of the murder charge is not warranted, the defense should have wide latitude to present third-party culprit evidence through questioning investigating officers.

In Massachusetts, a defendant is entitled to present evidence that another person committed the crime. To be admissible, the evidence must be relevant, not too remote or speculative, and must not confuse the jury by diverting their attention to collateral matters. Judges make decisions whether third-party culprit evidence can be admitted at trial.
DURHAM,Conn. A 28-year-old East Haddam man was killed Friday morning when the car he was driving went out of control on Maiden Lane in Durham, struck a guard rail and rolled over.

Connecticut State Police told the Hartford Courant that Clifford Petrizzo was ejected from the car as it rolled and was killed in the 8:15 a.m. crash.

The Connecticut State Police Accident Reconstruction Unit is continuing to investigate the incident.
EAST LONGMEADOW - A man who attacked a police officer Friday evening is in critical condition after another officer shot him.

Police were attempting to arrest Clifford Ahern, 59, on a warrant for assault and battery out of Palmer District Court.

He was pulled over Friday, but sped away from the traffic stop after a brief interaction with the officer, police said. Ahern drove directly to his home, where three officers were already waiting.

Ahern allegedly charged at one of the officers and slashed his shirt with a knife. The officer suffered minor injuries. Another officer shot Ahern.

Police said Ahern has a "history of confrontations with police and prior violent criminal offenses."

Hampden County District Attorney Anthony Gulluni praised the officers Saturday.

"The dedicated and professional officers who serve and protect in our cities and towns across Hampden County face potential danger each and every day they go out on patrol," said Gulluni. "This incident is an unfortunate reminder of this reality."

The shooting is under investigation by Massachusetts State Police and the Hampden County District Attorney's Office.

"I am proud of the men and women of the East Longmeadow Police Department," said Chief Jeffrey Dalessio. "Like all the other officers out there who wear the badge, to protect and serve the public every day, often putting their own lives on the line."

Dalessio said the officers involved in the incident are on administrative leave.
SPRINGFIELD -- Assistant District Attorney Janine M. Simonian wanted

Hampden Superior Court

Judge

John S. Ferrara

to sentence a 36-year-old city man to two to three years in state prison.

Marcus Copeland pleaded guilty Thursday to breaking and entering in the daytime to commit a felony and larceny over $250 from a person over 60. The woman from whose house he stole jewelry was 74.

Ferrara said he would sentence within the guidelines recommended by the state. He sentenced Copeland to 2 years in the Hampden County Correctional Center in Ludlow, with one year to be served and the balance suspended with three years probation.

Ferrara said he believed Copeland, who cried as he was handcuffed and brought out of the courtroom, was getting a break because the state guidelines understate his out-of-state record.

Sentencing guidelines look at the person's criminal record, the crime committed and other factors. Judges can go above or below the guidelines if they choose. Prosecutors can argue there are mitigating factors that call for a sentence above the guidelines; defense lawyers can argue mitigating factors that call for a below-guidelines sentence.

Simonian read an impact statement from the daughter of the victim. The daughter said her mother had gone out for a brief time and returned to see a broken windowpane in the door. The house alarm she had set when she left was sounding.

"The first thing she noticed was a black glove on a bed where she slept every night," the daughter said. "Her voice was trembling when she called."

The woman had recently lost her husband of 57 years, and asked her daughter if she could sleep over. The daughter said her mom has limited her outings during the daytime. Her mother's life as she knew it has changed after the trauma the break-in caused, she said.

Simonian said the break-in was Dec. 4, 2015, shortly before 2:30 p.m. There were several items of jewelry, worth about $550, missing from a wooden jewelry box in a bedroom. The jewelry box had a mirror on the inside, and that's where Copeland left a fingerprint, Simonian said.

A police detective found jewelry matching the description of the stolen items had been pawned at Loan USA. The detective got the jewelry and the woman identified it. The woman will get her jewelry back.

Simonian said Copeland has a juvenile record dating back to age 11, including six state Department of Youth Services commitments.

Copeland has an adult record in this state and Virginia, Simonian said. The record includes breaking and entering, larceny, assault with a dangerous weapon, resisting arrest and malicious damage, she said.

Simonian called Copeland a career criminal, saying, "Although people do make mistakes, Mr. Copeland has made too many."

Defense lawyer Johnathan R. Elliott asked for a sentence of three years probation. He said Copeland has just begun mental health counseling, which he never had before.

"He's known there's been something wrong for many years," Elliott said. He said Copeland has found out he has post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

As conditions of probation, Copeland must stay away from the victim and participate in mental health counseling.
This is an update of a story posted at 3:09 p.m. Friday.

SPRINGFIELD -- Depending on who you are and your affiliation, you may or may not be able to hear Springfield Police Department radio transmissions.

If you are a member of select Springfield media, your blackout ended sometime Friday afternoon.

If you are a member of the public or any number of area police scanner junkies who used to be able to listen in on the urban drama unfolding in real time, then your blackout continues.

One day after city police enacted a total blackout of their radio transmissions, the city announced it is taking steps to allow local media access to the encrypted signals. According to an announcement from the office of Mayor Domenic Sarno, the move was made "in the interest of transparency."

News organizations considered "bona fide local news media," or those with an FCC license to broadcast over AM, FM, VHF or UHF frequencies, or newspapers with a daily print circulation of 75,000 or more, will be granted access to the primary police patrol channel.

By that definition, the only news media that would qualify are Western Mass News, WWLP-TV, New England Public Radio and The Republican.

Commissioner John Barbieri said on Friday that, in considering the move to total encryption over the last two years, the department had not considered the impact on the press. It was not until after the fact Thursday, when he began to hear feedback from local media, that he realized the oversight.

Barbieri said he had sympathy for members of the public who enjoy listening to police dispatches on home scanners. But he said encryption is necessary to protect officers, as well as victims of domestic violence whose names might be given over the radio.

The commissioner spent much of Friday drafting a policy that would grant major area media access immediately. By Friday afternoon, the police department had arranged to provide temporary equipment for local media to receive police transmissions. The receivers were issued at no cost.

Moments after The Republican received its new scanner and turned it on, it came to life with a report of a shooting on Boston Road.

Wayne Phaneuf, executive editor for The Republican, said he was pleased with the city's decision to let the media listen in. That will allow the local press to serve the public by reporting on events affecting the community as they happen, he said.

"We are pleased that we will have access to police scanner traffic to inform our readers and internet users of not only stories of crime and traffic but be able to inform them of ways they can assist the police," Phaneuf said.

"We are thankful for the transparency needed to do our job," he said.

The policy revision was not greeted as warmly by City Council President Michael Fenton. He said the city should scrap the revision and go back to the scrambling policy as it was originally implemented on Thursday.

In a statement to The Republican, Fenton said:

"Cutting off public access to police radio communications while permitting preferred media outlets to have access to these live radio communications is completely counterintuitive. If public safety concerns are really what is driving this policy, civilians should not have access to it and neither should the media. The public safety interests of the Springfield Police Department and our residents far outweigh the interests of the media getting quickly to the next crime scene.

"Additionally, the way that certain media outlets are arbitrarily left out of this access to information is highly suspect. I can't imagine how this policy would survive a challenge on constitutional grounds by a media outlet that is left out of this access. The mayor's definition of 'bona fide local news media' is arbitrary and the policy should be reversed immediately to be consistent with the policy announced by the SPD just 48 hours ago."

Listening to the scanner squawk

The new scanner policy represents a change in the way things were, if not forever then at least for the last several decades.

Springfield Police began using radio transmissions as early as 1936. An article in The Republican from March of that year talks of two-way radio transmissions as "as step toward modernization of the local department."

Since the invention of relatively cheap scanners in the mid-70s, members of the press and public have been able to listen in. The signals were broadcast by a public agency over publicly owned airwaves.

And certainly "the criminal element" has always listened in. The first reference to criminals with a scanner in The Republican dates back 1984 with a trio of failed Pittsfield bank robbers. But in recent years, departments across the county began to grow concerned about both the portability of scanners and the speed with which scanner information proliferated.

A decent portable scanner can cost a few hundred dollars. Anyone with a smartphone can download any number of apps, some of which are free, that allow them to listen in over the internet. Some Pioneer Valley police and fire departments stream their radio transmissions online as well as over the airwaves. Springfield Police used to have their main channel available over the internet but stopped the practice a few years ago.

With social media tools like Facebook or Twitter, information broadcast over the emergency channels can also be quickly disseminated to an audience far beyond just some guy with a scanner.

Police departments nationally began encrypting transmissions as far back as 2011, citing the spread of information -- and sometimes misinformation -- as well as concerns for officer safety.

Springfield is the first area department to fully encrypt all of its broadcast channels.

For years, much of the traffic on the police narcotics bureau channel has been encrypted. Detectives planning a raid at a drug house would understandably not want the people inside to know they are coming.

The decision on Thursday blocked all transmissions, even the most routine police matters.

Barbieri said the move had been considered for 21/2 years. The decision to implement this week came after two police officers in Des Moines, Iowa, were ambushed and shot to death while sitting in their patrol cars.

Many departments not sold on encryption



Other regional police departments contacted by The Republican said they do not scramble their communications and have no interest in doing so.

A spokesman for Boston Police said the department does not scramble any of its radio transmissions, and there are no plans to change that. If members of the press or public are out there listening, that is not a concern, the spokesman said.

Hartford Police broadcasts are mostly open except for the "most covert cases," said Deputy Chief Brian Foley.

"I would say 95 percent, maybe 98 percent, are not encrypted," he said.

Foley said he would love to see the department adopt the same approach as Springfield someday, but he said it will not likely happen soon because of the cost.

"We have a different philosophy. We've very, very open on many levels," he said.

Northampton Police Chief Jody Kasper said her department has no plans to follow

Springfield's lead.

"We do not encrypt. Anyone can scanner our transmissions," she said.

Kasper said she is not necessarily concerned that sensitive information will be broadcast over the air for the scanner-listening public. Officers are trained to avoid that, she said.

"We use radio codes for some things that are sensitive," she said. "For other things that are too sensitive to go over the air, we do have other means of communicating with our officers."

Chicopee Police also do not block transmissions. In fact, department spokesman Michael Wilk said Chief William Jebb was exploring putting the main police channel on the internet to allow more public access. The plan is on hold for the moment while the department upgrades its communications center and radios, he said.

Wilk said the department understands there are many residents who sit at home listening to a police scanner, and the department has no problem with it. Many times those people act as eyes and ears for the department.

"People will look out their window and call the police station if they see something," he said.

Wilk said that while the department is committed to transparency, he also understands the issue from an officer safety standpoint, and how police could feel that by broadcasting their location they could become targets for a lunatic with a gun and a grudge.

At best, transparency can be a balancing act. "It's a double-edge sword," Wilk said.

East Longmeadow Police Chief Jeffrey Dalessio said that with a recent communications upgrade, his department has the capability to scramble its signal, but for the most part it chooses not to.

"We certainly don't do it regularly," he said.

East Longmeadow is so small compared to Springfield that officers have a concern that anyone listening in could figure out locations or even names associated with the police discussions, he said.

If sensitive information is being broadcast, like names of victims or witnesses, officers can employ the scrambler and prevent anyone from overhearing. But in those instances, officers can text, email or telephone the same information just as easily, he said.

A greater concern for Dalessio is whether his officers will be able to monitor Springfield transmissions. The two departments can still communicated through the Western Massachusetts Law Enforcement Channel (WMLEC), but East Longmeadow Police used to commonly listen in on the Springfield broadcasts because the two communities share a border and crime sometimes migrates across it.

With Springfield encrypting, his department will no longer be able to do that. He said he planned to reach out to Barbieri about his department being allowed to access the Springfield transmissions.

Kade Crockford of the Massachusetts chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said the move by Springfield is "pretty troubling" for a few reasons.

One is that it cuts off the ability of the public to monitor in real-time what the police are doing. She made her comments prior to Springfield relaxing its policy to allow some media access.

But most troubling, she said, was that the move to encrypt was made by the city with no public debate.

"It is not clear why a police department would want to do this. It doesn't seem in the interests of public safety or transparency," she said.

Crockford said there is simply no evidence of officers being endangered by radio channels accessible by the public.

"In a free society, it is important members of the public have real-time access to what the police department is doing, especially in the absence of evidence that is a public safety threat," she said. "I hope Springfield Police reconsider."
Charter school advocates host 'Yes on 2' event in Springfield

Michelle Hernandez, a mother of three living in Springfield. Great Schools Massachusetts, an educational organization advocating for lifting the charter school cap, held an event in downtown Springfield on Monday, September 12, 2016 in support of the ballot effort to lift the cap.

The Republican/MassLive.com is running a series of stories looking at who is funding each of the four 2016 Massachusetts ballot questions. Here is a look at the money behind Question 2.

By far, the most well-funded ballot question is Question 2, which would allow the state to approve 12 new charter schools a year outside of an existing cap. Supporters of charter school expansion, primarily through the Great Schools Massachusetts committee, have raised $23.6 million. The opponents of expansion, Save Our Public Schools, have raised $14.1 million.

Some of the money funding the charter school effort comes from local corporations. One ballot committee, Expanding Educational Opportunities, raised a total of $575,000 from seven Massachusetts businesses -- MassMutual Financial Group, State Street Bank, EMC Corporation, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Partners Healthcare, The Kraft Group and Suffolk Cares. (The committee gave the money to Great Schools Massachusetts, the main pro-charter group, to spend.)

Other money comes from wealthy individuals from out-of-state. Arkansas' Alice Walton, who runs a family foundation funded by the proceeds from Wal-Mart, donated $710,000, while her brother Jim Walton gave $1.1 million. Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg contributed $490,000.

A lot of the money comes from individuals in the financial industry, generally working in Boston. The investigative news outlet International Business Times reported that financial executives who manage money for Massachusetts state pension funds contributed $778,000 to groups backing Question 2.

There are also outside education reform groups who have contributed huge sums of money to the campaign. Most notably, the New York-based Families for Excellent Schools gave $15.6 million.

Groups like Families for Excellent Schools are nonprofits that do not have to disclose their donors.

"This is a truly unprecedented financial push by the charter school industry and their billionaire backers to buy our election with untraceable money whose source we will never know," said Juan Cofield, president of the New England Area Conference of the NAACP and chairman of the No on Question 2 campaign, in a statement.

Dominic Slowey, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, responded that the outside money is a way to "balance the political playing field" with unions who have influenced federal, state and local elections for years. "For decades, the teachers' union has been able to outspend and outmaneuver and out-politick on Beacon Hill to control the debate and to influence legislative outcomes," Slowey said. "This is the first time that we're able to have some financial assistance behind us to put up a fight."

Slowey added that most of the charter school campaign's money is coming from business leaders, community leaders and philanthropists.

Mo Cunningham, associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Boston, said the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, which allowed corporations to give unlimited amounts of money to political campaigns, made so-called "dark money," where the donors do not have to be disclosed, much more common. "Outside spending and dark money is part of the landscape now," Cunningham said.

The anti-charter school money comes mainly from teachers' unions. The Massachusetts Teachers Association donated $7.5 million, the American Federation of Teachers donated $2 million, the National Education Association gave $5.4 million, and tens of thousands of dollars apiece came from local teachers' unions in Boston, Salem, Lynn, Lawrence and Lowell. Several labor unions also donated to the ballot committee.

The enormous amount of money on both sides of the question means that both campaigns have been running a large amount of paid advertising, in addition to conducting direct mail campaigns and grassroots organizing. Polling has found that voters are paying a lot of attention to the discussion, even though it will primarily affect urban districts, and it will likely be a tight race.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 5

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has received credentials of newly appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the State of Eritrea Petros Tseggai Asghedom.

Petros Tseggai Asghedom reviewed a guard of honor.

Ambassador Petros Tseggai Asghedom presented his credentials to President Ilham Aliyev.

President Ilham Aliyev then had a conversation with the Ambassador.

Ambassador Petros Tseggai Asghedom conveyed greetings of President of the State of Eritrea Isaias Afwerki to President Ilham Aliyev. The diplomat said his country was interested in developing bilateral relations with Azerbaijan. The Ambassador said he would spare no efforts to develop cooperation.

President Ilham Aliyev said bilateral relations between the two countries were not so active. President Ilham Aliyev said Petros Tseggai Asghedom`s activity as an ambassador would create a good opportunity for discussion of the issues of mutual interest in various fields and for development of relations. The head of state noted that trade cooperation was very low and expressed hope that the Ambassador would hold meetings with representatives of various institutions in Azerbaijan to explore the opportunities of cooperation in economic and other areas.

President Ilham Aliyev thanked for the greetings of President Isaias Afwerki and asked the Ambassador to communicate his greetings to the Eritrean head of state.
Diemand Egg Farm 'Buy-In'

Faith Diemand sold eggs at $3 a dozen. Deimand Farm is the one farm in Massachusetts whose hens would be affected by Question 3.

(Mary Serreze/ The Republican)

The Republican/MassLive.com is running a series of stories looking at who is funding each of the four 2016 Massachusetts ballot questions. Here is a look at the money behind Question 3.

Question 3 would ban the confinement of egg-laying hens, calves raised for veal and breeding pigs in cages too small for them to stand up, extend their limbs or turn around. Only one Massachusetts egg farm would be affected by this provision. The bigger impact would be to ban the sale of meat or eggs from animals confined in these types of cages, which would raise food prices.

The pro-ballot question Citizens for Farm Animal Protection has $2.6 million, dwarfing the $302,000 from the ballot question opponents, Citizens Against Food Tax Injustice.

The ballot question is the result of a year-long campaign by the Maryland-based Humane Society of the United States, which has donated $2.4 million to the ballot committee. Additional money comes from state and national animal rights groups and some individual donors.

Stephanie Harris, Massachusetts state director for the Humane Society and campaign director for Citizens for Farm Animal Protection, said last month that although much of the money comes from the Humane Society, the group engaged more than 1,000 volunteers to help with the signature drive to get the question on the ballot.

"We have a broad and diverse coalition engaged, who are supportive of preventing cruelty to animals and protecting Massachusetts families," Harris said.

The money has allowed the campaign to pay professional staff and run a traditional campaign with television ads, field organizing and campaign literature.

In contrast, the opponents of the ballot question have run a much smaller campaign, although they have released some advertising on cable TV.

Citizens Against Food Tax Injustice is funded primarily by Forrest Lucas of Indiana, the president of Lucas Oil Products, who founded a nonprofit to defend the interests of farmers, ranchers and animal owners and who donated close to $200,000 to the ballot committee.

The National Pork Producers Council donated another $100,000. Additional money has come from the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, the New England Brown Egg Council and other food- and agriculture-related groups.

The committee hired anti-poverty advocate Diane Sullivan as its local face. Sullivan has been meeting with various groups to stress the impact on poor consumers who will see food prices rise.

"I am a one-woman show," Sullivan told The Republican/MassLive.com last month.
David Ortiz

Boston Red Sox's David Ortiz waves to fans as he is honored before the Red Sox's game against the Toronto Blue Jays at Fenway Park in Boston on Sept. 30, 2016. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

(Elise Amendola)

Gate 34 in Terminal C at Logan Airport will be named after David Ortiz, according to the Associated Press.

The AP story states:

An employee of JetBlue Airlines announced to Big Papi and a crowd that the airline was naming Gate 34 in Terminal C after him during a private party to honor the star at a restaurant in Boston's Seaport District on Friday night.

"You mean I'm going to have my own gate at the airport?" Ortiz said, holding a microphone on the stage. "You're (messing) with me, aren't you?"

The 40-year-old Ortiz, who led Boston to three World Series titles, won the 2016 AL Hank Aaron award for the best hitter in the league. He retired after the Indians eliminated Boston in the

ALDS last month.

He led the majors in doubles (48), extra-base hits (87), slugging percentage (.620) and

OPS

(1.021).

Ortiz also bashed 38 homers and drove in 127 runs.
Several local companies and entrepreneurs were honored Thursday night as part of economic development organization Prospera Business Networks https://www.prosperabusinessnetwork.org/ annual Business Excellence Awards.

Out of a pool of 31 nominees, winners were chosen in five separate categories from economic leadership to business of the year.

"Its amazing what we do here in the Gallatin Valley," said Prospera Executive Director Paul Reichert. "Thats why were here, to celebrate the people and businesses that make this community special."

By Lewis Kendall Chronicle Staff Writer

Full Story: http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/economy/companies-innovators-honored-at-annual-prospera-business-awards/article_5984f176-844e-5a43-814f-fe18f733b11e.html
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 5

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has received the credentials of newly appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Albania Genti Gazheli.

Genti Gazheli reviewed a guard of honor.

Ambassador Genti Gazheli presented his credentials to President Ilham Aliyev.

President Ilham Aliyev then had a conversation with the Ambassador.

Hailing successful development of Azerbaijan-Albania relations, President Ilham Aliyev emphasized good political ties between the two countries. President Ilham Aliyev recalled with satisfaction with the Albanian President's and Prime Minister's visits to Azerbaijan and his meetings with them, and said that these visits are of crucial importance in terms of developing bilateral cooperation. Pointing to the development of bilateral ties, President Ilham Aliyev underlined the energy cooperation as one of the main areas of these relations.

The head of state noted that relations in the energy sector will create a good opportunity for cooperation in other fields, including investment making, trade and transport. Hailing the importance of joint implementation of the significant project as Southern Gas Corridor, President Ilham Aliyev underlined SOCAR's keenness to make investment in Albania. The head of state expressed his hope that Azerbaijan and Albania, which have constantly supported each other in international organizations, will continue cooperation within these institutions. Underlining the importance of mutual support in bilateral relations, President Ilham Aliyev described Albania as a friendly country to Azerbaijan and hailed the fact that the same attitude was shown towards his country in Albania too. He noted the significance of strengthening partnership and using the existing potential to the maximum extent.

Ambassador Genti Gazheli conveyed greetings and best wishes of President of Albania Bujar Nishani and Prime Minister Edi Rama to the head of state and the people of Azerbaijan. The Ambassador underlined the importance of Trans-Adriatic gas pipeline to his country. Hailing the exceptional nature of diplomatic ties, Ambassador Genti Gazheli said that he will remain committed and spare no efforts to expanding Azerbaijan-Albania economic relations.

The head of state thanked for the greetings of President Bujar Nishani and Prime Minister Edi Rama and asked the Ambassador to extend his greetings to the Albanian head of state and Premier.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 5

Trend:

With just a couple of days before the US presidential election day, the interest of the international audience to this process continues to grow, Azay Guliyev, Azerbaijani MP, vice-president of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (OSCE PA), told Trend Nov. 5.

Although it is unclear who will be the winner, it is no doubt that this year's election campaign differs greatly from the past ones, he said.

In fact, the election revealed the paradoxes and complexity of the US political system rather than convinced everyone that this election is the brightest example of US democracy, he added.

This election once again demonstrates the power of media and its influence on public opinion, Guliyev noted. Most of the prominent US media, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy Journal publicly express their support to candidate from Democratic Party.

It is not surprising that Mr. Donald Trump is not happy with this support to his rival, he said. In his speeches and twits Mr. Trump called the media dishonest and distorted and accused media in double standards. Furthermore, Republican candidate noted that media deliberately misleads the public opinion by conducting the phony polls according to which Hillary Clinton is leading. Such a disproportion in terms of the support of the media is the thing need to be reconsidered.

This years campaign will be remembered with the wide claims of the large scale voter fraud as Donald Trump called it, Guliyev added. Though for most of us, it is hard to believe that any voter impersonation can occur during the US presidential election, Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research states that only a third of Republicans say they have a great deal or quite a bit a confidence that votes will be counted fairly.

As Vanessa Barford from BBC News wrote, Justin Levitt, professor at Loyola Law School, found 31 known cases of impersonation fraud in 1 billion votes cast in all US elections between 2000-2014, Azerbaijani MP said. Besides, Donald Trumps adviser Rudy Giuliani told CNN that he recalled 720 dead people voting in the 1982 election in Chicago, dead people generally vote for Democrats instead of Republicans, says the former mayor of New-York. I am not sure that these allegations are enough to claim something, but the facts itself are enough to be surprised.

Guliyev added that this year's campaign is more famous for the compromising materials.

We witness that the candidates are busier with revealing the faults and possible offenses of the rival rather than deep analysis of the issues of national and global importance, he noted.

Though I cant call myself an expert in the US election system, I was confused with the fact that US President Barack Obama takes the side and expressed his support to Hillary Clinton, Guliyev said. I wonder what kind of reaction it may cause in the international community if this case happened in another country, not saying Azerbaijan.

Institutional recourses are involved for or against the candidates, Azerbaijani MP said. Eleven days before the presidential election in the US, FBI director James Comey announced that the FBI had restarted the investigation against Hillary Clinton due to the additional emails discovered. This will definitely affect negatively the opinion of those who is going to vote for Hillary Clinton.
A workshop for employees of the SOCARs business units dealing with process automation was held by representatives of Schneider Electric company at Baku Higher Oil School (BHOS). BHOS specialists and students also attended the workshop. Two reports, namely Telemetrics, Remote Control of SCADA System, and Wireless Sensors and New Generation of Modicon M580 Controllers for Oil and Gas Industry were presented.

Opening the workshop, BHOS Vice-Rector for Training, Science and International Relations Ramiz Humbatov welcomed representatives of Schneider Electric and SOCARs business units on behalf of BHOS management. As he reported, such workshops were organized at the Higher School in the past and would be regularly arranged by the BHOS Lifelong Learning Department in the future.

The workshop participants discussed lectures delivered by experts of Schneider Electrics division in Russia. The lectures were delivered by Natalia Nielsen, Business Development Manager, Marketing-Process Automation CIS; Nickolay Sobol, ID PAC Product Manager CIS, Industry Business, Russia; and Yuri Serebrennikov, Chief Technical Advisor.

The workshop participants included representatives of SOCARs Head Office, Azneft Production Union, Oil and Gas Research and Design Institute, Gas Export Department, IT and Communications Department, Azersu JSC and Sentra Ltd.
*Editors note: The McDowell News has partnered with McDowell EMS to provide a series of articles on their assistance during Hurricane Matthew.

Its been one month since Hurricane Matthew struck the eastern side of North Carolina, and McDowell EMS members reflect on their assistance.

Between Sept. 28 and Oct. 11, the eastern side of North Carolina was struck by Hurricane Matthew, a Category 5-level tropical cyclone. At the request of N.C. Emergency Management, McDowell EMS deployed three teams to various eastern counties in the state to assist in the wreckage.

Team One, containing Emergency Services Director William Kehler, Lt. John Bruner and Cpt. Chad Robinson, were deployed Saturday, Oct. 15 to Kinston; according to Kehler, arriving to their destination was far from easy.

When we arrived through Raleigh, we landed in the quadrant of the storm, which delayed us significantly, said Kehler. As we stayed overnight in one of the hotels provided for us, we were caught in a flash flood in downtown Kinston; within a matter of 10 or 15 minutes, the streets we had just came down were filled with swift water and we were boxed in. It was one of the scariest situations Ive been involved in.

Robinson and Bruner confirmed the danger of merely traveling to their destination, claiming that their team needed to provide constant updates to Emergency Management on their whereabouts.

The next morning, Team One was deployed to Bladen County for assistance. Serving as the logistics manager, Robinson recalled surveying the damage.

Logistics in Bladen County was a nightmare, said Robinson. You had people surrounded by water with nothing to drink. It was depressing, just getting supplies and everything needed for the community to move forward.

In spite of the terrible situation, one moment in particular for Robinson remained with him upon arriving home.

While we were deployed in Bladen, there was a woman working dispatch, just constantly working and working; she told us that she was working while her house was underwater, said Robinson. She still cares enough about the community that even though her house and everything she owns is completely underwater, she still wants to help out everyone else. Thats the kind of people that we worked with Bladen.

Bruner recalled the experience of arriving to Bladen and the reaction of the community.

Typically, its an hour-and-a-half to travel from Kinston to Bladen County; it took us about eight hours to navigate through flood water and destroyed property, said Bruner. But when we walked into their emergency operations center, those people looked so tired and so glad to see somebody  it was like we might have already been friends. They were so appreciative and the County Manager was there every day to thank us.

To Kehler, one of the biggest takeaways from the deployment is preparation for the next possible disaster.

This was a tremendous training experience for us and taking everything into consideration, were going to run through our after-action review and go, What did we learn through all of the teams deployed, how can we improve for the next time this happens and be better prepared? said Kehler. It was an important experience for all of us.
*UPDATE: According to Yzquierdo, monetary goals for the Go-Fund-Me page have been met and that all further interested donations and inquiries should be sent to standingrock.org.

A Marion local has started a Go-Fund-Me page to attend one of the biggest protests currently facing the country.

Heather Edwards Yzquierdo, a yoga instructor and Marion native, will be traveling during Veterans Day weekend to protest the Standing Rock pipeline in North Dakota.

Since August of this year, numerous protests have been held against the construction of an oil pipeline to run through four states between North Dakota and Illinois. The pipeline, estimated at 1,172 miles long and a cost of $3.7 billion, would shuttle 470,000 barrels of crude oil a day upon completion through an underground deposit called the Bakken Formation, according to Energy Transfer Partners (ETP). However, members of Standing Rock, a Sioux Native American reservation, have filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, saying that the pipelines navigation would disturb ancient burial sites and could potentially damage their main water source.

Like most of the national public, Yzquierdo learned about the pipeline through social media.

My first response was to listen and watch the videos posted early on by tribal leaders, said Yzquierdo. As I continued to research the source of the dispute, it became apparent that this was a blatant disregard for sacred tribal land and treaties signed in the past.

The legality of running the pipeline through Standing Rock has been hotly debated: members of the tribe claim the land and protest activity is protected under a treaty established in 1851, which Dakota Access  the source of the construction  has allegedly violated; however, Dakota Access and Morton County, N.D. police claim the protests are being held on privately-owned land.

Regardless, the pipeline  known publicly as the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL)  has received international attention through social media and most mainstream sources, with activists around the world gathering on-site to protest the construction.

Yzquierdo plans to be one of those activists, running a Go-Fund-Me page to raise funds for supplies.

Most of the supplies I would need include warm clothes, a tent, food to help contribute to the existing supply, said Yzquierdo. There have also been requests for natural healing items, so I would be also travel with several varieties of salves and healing products courtesy of my mothers herbs.

But these plans to travel and attend come with risks. While protest efforts have attempted to be peaceful, tension between Standing Rock activists and law enforcement has raised to violent extremes, resulting in numerous arrests, assaults on both sides and an ostensibly hostile atmosphere.

When asked if she was concerned with stepping into this kind of environment, Yzquierdo didnt mince words.

Of course! No one wants to go to jail or be pepper strayed or hit with rubber bullets. But I also think about our mountains and our water. What would we endure to keep Catawba, South Toe River or Mount Mitchell free of a pipeline?

Should Yzquierdo raise the funds she needs, she plans to leave for Standing Rock between Wednesday and Friday.

I think, like most of my neighbors, we have a lot of respect for the ways of the native people and we also feel like when no one seems to hear our voice. So, this feels like a necessary step, said Yzquierdo. Today, Standing Rock; tomorrow, itll be somewhere else we hold sacred. So, if I can make it happen, Ill go.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 5

By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:

The AzeriKimya Production Union of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) has signed two contracts with Technip Italy Nov. 5, as part of the project for modernization and reconstruction of the ethylene-polyethylene plant in Sumgayit.

The engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract envisages work on the design, supplies, construction, setup, testing and commissioning of new facilities, equipment and infrastructure.

The AzeriKimya Production Union has also signed a contract for the provision of consulting services in project management (PMC) with SOCAR-KBR.

In March 2016, the AzeriKimya Production Union signed a contract with Technip Italy on conducting detailed designing and providing services to support supplies as part of the project for reconstruction of the ethylene-polyethylene plant in Sumgait.

During the signing ceremony, SOCAR's President Rovnag Abdullayev noted that processing installations will be modernized and the new ones will be constructed as part of the plant's reconstruction.

This will make it possible to increase the production facilities at Azerikimya, ensure the supply of raw materials to polyethylene and polypropylene production installations and to meet the demand in the country, he said.

It will also increase the country's export potential, enhance the security of the technological process and the quality of raw materials and finished products, noted the SOCAR president.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 5

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

Turkmenistans President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov has discussed topical issues of cooperation at the meeting with Uzbekistans Deputy Prime Minister Ulugbek Rozukulov, the Turkmen state information agency Turkmen Dovlat Khabarlari reported.

"Uzbekistan attaches great importance to the development of a full-scale dialogue with Turkmenistan, which, based on the mutual goodwill of the parties, is getting filled with new specific content year by year, a high-ranking representative from Tashkent said in a message.

Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov has, in turn, noted that the two countries are linked by the close and good-neighborly relations.

Strengthening of mutually beneficial cooperation with the closest neighbors, including Uzbekistan, is a strategic priority of Turkmenistans foreign policy, said the president of Turkmenistan.

Availability of favorable opportunities for building productive relationships in the spheres of trade and economy, agriculture, as well as transport and communication sector, was noted during the meeting.

The parties expressed confidence in the stability of the good-neighborly relations and successful continuation of constructive cooperation, serving the interests of both countries and the countries citizens.
Arstechnica, Friday, November 4, 2016 4:56 PM

Federal judges in New York and California have refused to block laws banning ballot selfies.

A last-minute, judicially-imposed change in the protocol at 5,300 polling places would be a recipe for delays and a disorderly election, as well-intentioned voters either took the perfectly posed selfie or struggled with their rarely-used smartphone camera, U.S. District Court Judge P. Kevin Castel in New York wrote.

Lawmakers in California recently passed a law legalizing ballot selfies, but that measure doesn't take effect until 2017.

Read the whole story at Arstechnica 
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Around 200,000 to 400,000 new cases of leishmaniasis with approximately 40,000 deaths are recorded annually. Most of the cases were recorded in India, Brazil, Nepal, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan and Bangladesh.Current drug treatments for Leishmaniasis are found to be ineffective due to prolonged administration, toxic side effects, drug resistance, and expensive cost.Earlier this year, the research team from Dundee discovered delamanid which is an oral nitro-drug that is used for tuberculosis treatment to be effective in treating leishmaniasis.Recently they have teamed up with Wellcome Trust Sanger in Cambridge and have discovered a new protein which may develop better and effective nitro drugs for treating leishmaniasis.The protein NTR2 is present in leishmaniasis parasite while absent in humans. This protein was found to convert delamanid and other nitro drugs into toxic elements which are capable of damaging the parasite.Research study be Professor Alan Fairlamb and Dr. Kevin Read has identified two classes of nitro drugs which are found to be curative in animal models of visceral leishmaniasis.First group involves the unicyclic drug fexinidazole which undergoes phase 2 clinical trials in Africa under Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) . Second group involves bicyclic nitro drug delamanid which shows new hope in treating leishmaniasis.The study findings was published in the journalProfessor Alan Fairlamb, Wellcome Principal Research Fellow in the School of Life Sciences at Dundee said that,"There has been considerable interest in developing new compounds to target diseases like leishmaniasis, particularly because the existing drugs are very unsatisfactory and increasingly becoming unusable due to resistance in the parasite."The research study comes to a conclusion that if all drugs are activated by NTR1 it would lead to drug resistance to both fexinidazole and delamanid. The discovery of new protein NTR2 specifically activates delamanid.Further, this research would help in designing better drugs to increase efficacy, decrease toxicity and reduce drug resistance.Source: Medindia
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Occupational and environmental causes should be routinely elicited in the history, including length, severity, and timing of the exposure in relation to the onset or worsening of the patient's cough, smoking history and atopic history, reviewing Material Safety Data Sheets and/or occupational hygiene reviews of the patient's workplace, and the time period between last exposure and medical evaluation

Where the history suggests an occupational or environmental cause, the panel suggests lung function testing and when appropriate rhinolaryngoscopy (a method for examining the nose and throat)

Where there is a history of occupational or environmental exposure, the panel suggests a number of objective tests such as sputum cytology, before and after exposure methacholine tests to demonstrate potential causality, immunologic tests, and tests for chronic beryllium disease

Where there is a high suspicion that cough is due to environmental and/or occupational exposures, the panel suggests that these patients be managed according to evidence-based guidelines for these exposures and/or be referred to specialists with expertise in environmental and occupational disease.

The American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) first published evidence-based guidelines on the diagnosis and management of cough in 1998 and updated these guidelines in 2006. Since the previous statement, there has been an increased understanding of the mechanisms of cough related to environmental triggers. There have also been several studies that have clarified laryngeal disorders leading to chronic cough and the role of occupational and environmental triggers for laryngeal causes of cough.For the purpose of this latest report, experts reviewed occupational and environmental contributions to chronic cough with a focus on factors not covered in the 2006 Cough Guideline. They provided suggestions for investigating and managing these factors when suspected."We recently identified ten general chronic cough guidelines and protocols, but only the three published since 2006 included advice on detailed occupational and environmental assessments. One additional cough statement focused entirely on occupational cough," explained lead investigator Susan M. Tarlo, MBBS, FCCP, of Toronto Western Hospital, and University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. "However, of the 28 cohort studies of patients with chronic cough that specifically noted that they followed guidelines or protocols, none provided details regarding occupational and environmental assessments, suggesting a gap between recommended guidelines and clinical practice."The CHEST Expert Cough Panel performed a comprehensive literature search using the MEDLINE and TOXLINE literature databases, supplemented by articles identified by the panel's occupational and environmental subgroup members, to identify occupational and environmental contributions to chronic cough. The literature review identified relevant articles regarding mechanisms, allergic environmental causes, chronic cough and the recreational and involuntary inhalation of tobacco and marijuana smoke, nonallergic environmental triggers, laryngeal syndromes and occupational diseases and exposures.The subgroup developed guideline recommendations or suggestions, which then underwent review and voting by the full cough panel. Consensus-based statements were developed for the approach to diagnosis due to a lack of strong evidence from published literature."There is a need for further documentation of occupational and environmental causes of cough and to close the gap between guidelines and clinical practice," commented Tarlo. "Identifying occupational and environmental causes of chronic cough can affect symptom management and offers opportunity for exposure control and prevention in the future."This report has been endorsed by the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology, the American Association for Respiratory Care, the Asian Pacific Society of Respirology, the Canadian Thoracic Society, and the Occupational and Environmental Medicine Association of Canada.Source: Eurekalert
That SRK is the King of comebacks has been said out loud so many times, they might just start teaching that in schools soon. With that wit and sass, theres no interview he hasnt nailed. And yet, when you think the man couldnt get better, he proves you wrong. Anupama Chopra recently interviewed him in Lisbon, where he was shooting for Imtiaz Alis The Ring and he was at his cocky best. Check out some of the things he said.

FilmCompanion

Think Shah Rukh Khans idea of romance in films is screwed up? Well, he surely agrees.

Ive made an art and profession out of loving women who are going to get married to someone, are already married or engaged. I run after them, and I get them from wherever they are. Sometimes through my charm, sometimes I throw them off the building. I think I have a problem.

He was also quick to admit that actors are probably acting all the time.

Actors have malice. Actors hug in public and abuse in private.

FilmCompanion

He loves the fact that hes all that we can never be and so not modest about it.

I can be very modest and say its a very regular life, its normal. But obviously its not normal. Theres no other place Id rather be. I love being loved. I love being a big star. I love being in the public eye. I love being criticized. I love being controversy-ed. I love being Shah Rukh Khan.

He also thinks hes every womans dream guy. You want to call this cocky but well, you wont. Because SRK.

I want to learn how to cook Italian food. I think its very sexy. And Ive got all the other sexy qualities. Ive got a tattoo on! I want to learn ten songs on a guitar and sing them to every woman in the world. 10 songs on a guitar, an open jeep, Italian food cooking abilities...looks, I have. Yeah, Im a full package man, come on! I deserve to be a superstar. (laughs) And Im humble. 

Hes unstoppable, he says.

If you throw me to the wolves, Ill come back leading the pack. I really believe that.

FilmCompanion

He also went on to say that as long as they make films, there are going to be people outside Mannat waiting to meet him. SRK surely knows how to be cocky and still not cross the line.

As long as they make movies, there are going to be people outside Mannat to see me. I always had this belief  if I ever join cinema, Id be the biggest star in the world. I may become that, I may not. But I wake up with that belief every day. When youve been working 25 years of your life and youre working 18 hours a day, what keeps you going? Why should I find this exciting? Every morning to wake up and act without a break for 25 years. Nearly 12-13 years of my life have gone in doing this. What excites me is the belief. That till they make movies, they will love me. And when theyre not there (which will never happen), maybe its only because theyve changed their places. So maybe Ill go and buy a house there, Im rich enough to do that! Its a belief of an innocent child and it can never be wrong.

And of course, there were some very, very candid confessions that made up for all the high-headedness, if you could call it that.

A lot of the bravado, a lot of the stuff that I do on stage with the immense amount of confidence I have is 90% of what Im not. Its the desire to be that person.

Not sure if he really meant this, but it sure left everyone impressed.

I dont wear my stardom like a tuxedo. I wear like a T shirt. And thats how it should be. If youre a real star you dont need to prove it in any other way than being gentlemanly, kind and cool.

FilmCompanion

Talking of failures, he announced that hes the most dangerous when hes failed. And it sounded as inspiring as intimidating!

Im such an impudent, incorrigible, uncontrollable, arrogant and self centered human being, if you tell me not to do it, Ill do it again. And Ill do it worse, if need be. Im not happy that I failed. I wish I had done it right. But failure encourages me even more. Heartbreak is followed by no Im not letting this go. Every time I fail, Im dangerous. 

You can watch the whole interview here

Keep slaying with your words, SRK.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 5

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

The second meeting of the joint intergovernmental Turkmen-Qatari Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation was held in Doha, said the Foreign Ministry of Turkmenistan.

The meeting was attended by heads and representatives of state structures of the two countries.

At the meeting it was noted that today "a solid foundation for all-round boost of mutually beneficial cooperation with great potential" has been created.

The sides discussed issues of expansion of cooperation in such areas as fuel and energy complex, financial and banking, trade, industry and transport.

According to the message, the Turkmen government delegation was also received the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

Diplomatic relations between the two countries were established in 1996.

In April this year, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov invited the representatives of the Qatari business community to participate in the construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI).

According to him, a new energy highway is designed to ensure long-term supply of natural gas in the major countries of South-East Asia, contribute to solving the economic problems of the region, important social and humanitarian issues.
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Tehran, Iran, November 5

By Mehdi Sepahvand  Trend:

Irans Chabahar Free Zone will start operation in one month when its first phase goes on stream, said Hassan Mohammadi Moein, Chabahar Free Zones deputy manager for transportation.

The preparations are 95 percent through and as the phase is completed, the ports transit capacity will increase from 2 to 8.5 million tons, he said, Tasnim news agency reported.

The port currently berths Panamax and Neopanamax ships. It has a 100,000-ton pier. The last phase of the port is expected to be completed in 2020 with 22 piers and a capacity of 86 million tons.

The Chabahar-Iranshahr railway will come on stream in two years, Moein said.

The ports development comes with a budget of 24 trillion rials ($754 million). Investors from India, Belgium, and Spain have expressed willingness to build a new airport inside the zone.

Chabahar is headed to become a rival for Gwadar in nearby Pakistan. India is investing heavily in Chabahar.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 5

By Emil Ilgar  Trend:

Iran has agreed with Frances Total and Anglo-Dutch Shell separately on construction of petrochemical plants, based on $240/ton ethane feedstock price, Islamic Republic's Deputy Oil Minister for Petrochemicals Marzieh Shahdaei said Nov.4.

Earlier she announced that Total agreed to invest $2 billion to construct an ethane cracker and two poly ethylene units in Iran.

Shell has also agreed to invest in Iran's Ibn-e Sina petrochemical plant.

Shahdaei said that Shell and Total would enjoy a 25-percent benefit with $240/ton price for needed ethane feedstock for their projects.

Her statement is a response for domestic petrochemical companies which criticise the government plan to increase the feedstock price.

Last week Irans oil ministry increased ethane price for domestic companies to $240/ton, a step that was heavily criticized and the oil minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh had to cancel that himself.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 5

By Fatih Karimov  Trend

Iran and Indias state-run company ONGC have launched the final round of talks on development of Irans Farzad B gas field, Mohammad Meshkinfam, managing director of Pars Oil and Gas Company, said.

If no agreement is reached for cooperation, Iran will hold an international tender for development of the field, Meshkinfam said, Mehr news agency reported Nov. 5.

The financial investment model for development of the gas field is the main source of disagreement between the two parties, he said, adding that if the disputes on financial investment model are settled, technical and executive issues can be settled as well.

The Indian side has only two months to deal with Iran, otherwise the fields development will be offered to other international companies through tender, Meshkinfam said.

Last month, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, Irans oil minister, said that Tehran is not pleased with the New Delhi-based ONGCs proposal for development of Farzad B gas field.

Zanganeh said that Iran has granted another opportunity for the Indian side to submit a reasonable financial investment model, adding that it will be the last chance for Indian company and Iran will make another decision if ONGC fails to offer a reasonable option, Zanganeh said.

Earlier in August it was announced that Iran and India have ended differences over development of Farzad B gas field and ONGC is expected to invest some $5 billion in the project.

In 2008, a consortium of OVL (ONGC Videsh Ltd.), Oil India Ltd. and Indian Oil Corp. discovered the Farzad B gas field, which is estimated to contain 12.8 trillion cubic feet of recoverable reserves.

In August 2010, OVL submitted a revised master development plan (MDP) for producing 60 percent of the field's in-place gas reserves, but did not sign a contract with the Iranian side out of fear it would be exposed to sanctions imposed by the US on Iran's energy sector, which did not allow foreign companies to invest more than $20 million a year in the country's energy sector.

After the West lifted sanctions against Iran under the nuclear agreement, OVL proposed a $3 billion field development plan to Iran to develop Farzad B.
By Emil Ilgar  Trend:

Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov.4

Iran says it has stooped power export to Turkey due to long delayed debts of the Turkish side.

The deputy of Irans Energy Ministry Houshang Falahatian told Mehr Nov.4 that the Turkish company which was importing electricity has about $200 million worth of debts to Iran.

According to the latest statistics, released by Turkey Energy Market Regulatory, the country has stopped power import from Iran since the beginning of June.

During January-May, Turkey imported about 543.134 million kilowatts hours (kWh) of Iranian electricity.

However, according to Irans Energy Ministrys official statistics, the country exported about 10,239 million kWh during last fiscal year, of which Turkeys share was 17.6% (or 1,802 million kWh).

Falahatian said Nov.4 that Turkey would clear it debts to Iran in the coming 4-5 months.

Before, he told Mehr on Nov.2 that Iraq has $1 billion worth of debts to Iran due to power imports. Iraq imported about 69 percent of Irans total power exports during the last fiscal year.

Irans total electricity exports decreased by 26 percent during the seven months of current fiscal year to around 4,610 million kWh, according to the latest weekly statistics of Energy Ministry.
Tehran, Iran, November 5

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

Turkish Minister of Economy Nihat Zeybekci is in Tehran to seek venues for closer cooperation.

Leading a large economic and business delegation, Zeybekci was invited by Irans Minister of Industry, Mine, and Trade Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh, IRNA news agency reported November 5.

The Turkish official met Irans First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri, who stressed improvement of cooperation in transport, tourism, banking, as well as economic activities in third countries.

Jahangiri also underlined previous economic agreements between Tehran and Ankara and called for their swift implementation.

Zeybekci, for his part, said Iran and Turkey should consider cooperation in industry, mining, agriculture, as well as iron and steel.

He is also slated to meet with ICT Minister Mahmud Vaezi, who also heads an Iranian-Turkish committee on economic cooperation, as well as Transport Minister Abbas Akhondi later the day.

Before departing for Iran, Zeybekci said his country attaches great importance to economic relations with Iran.

He stressed the need for implementation of the agreement on preferential trade between Tehran and Ankara.

He noted that the agreement on preferential trade between the two countries which was signed in January 2015 entailed discounts on customs tariffs on 125 items.

He said the agreement served to encourage more diversity in trade and economic exchanges in economic and trade relations between the two countries.

Trade turnover between Iran and Turkey stood at $5.4 billion during the first seven months of 2016.

The figure indicates a fall by 11 percent compared to same period of preceding year.
A bomb exploded in Jakarta's international airport early Sunday, wounding 11 people, one seriously, police said.

The blast occurred at about 6:30 a.m. behind a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in the departure area of the domestic terminal, said Jakarta police spokesman Prasetyo, who uses a single name like many Indonesians.

Police Chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar said the explosion was due to a bomb, adding there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Dede, a food service worker in the airport, said by telephone that there was a brief power outage, "then I heard a loud explosion."

He and other witnesses said the blast knocked out windows and tossed chairs across the terminal. There was blood everywhere, they said.

Police had sealed off the area near the restaurant but the terminal was open and flights were departing, Dede said.

The blast comes four days after Abu Bakar Bashir _ the spiritual leader of the al-Qaida-linked terror group Jemaah Islamiyah _ went on trial for treason. It also follows the arrest Wednesday of 18 members of the group, including three wanted in the Oct. 12, 2002 Bali bombings which killed 202 people.

On Thursday, a small pipe bomb exploded outside the main U.N. building in downtown Jakarta but no one was injured.
HURON COUNTY  While everyone agrees that Huron County has a drug problem, officials differ in their opinions on how to address it.

Huron County Sheriff Kelly J. Hanson says 1,500 children are reached annually through drug prevention efforts at public schools conducted by his office.

Huron County Prosecutor Timothy J. Rutkowski has asked the Huron County Board of Commissioners to fund an $18,000 drug prevention program that would send Assistant Prosecuting Attorney David Wallace around the county educating people about opioid addiction and other drug issues.

Hansons office has been providing drug education for years, and says that if the board allocates funding for drug prevention, his office should be eligible for the same amount given to any other program.

We would be insulted if money is allotted for a drug abuse program and it wasnt allotted to us, Hanson told the Tribune.

Rutkowski did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Our office has been providing that service, as well as other safety educational services, for as long as Ive been a part of our Sheriffs Office, Hanson said in a recent letter to the board.

All of the schools, whether from the eight public districts, or the many rural and private/parochial are offered these programs, which I believe all participate. And that doesnt include all of the other drug awareness presentations that weve done outside of the school setting, Hanson wrote.

Of Rutkowskis requested $18,000, $15,000 will be for Wallaces speaking time, travel to various meetings, presentation costs, and creation of website content and social media distribution, according to his recent presentation to the board.

The remaining $3,000 will be for supplies, publications and handouts, according to Rutkowskis proposal.

Rutkowski told the board last month that he would like the allocation to be renewed annually.

Hanson has asked that the board allocate to the sheriffs office an amount equal to what is allocated to other programs for drug prevention so that the sheriffs office can enhance its program.

He said he wanted to make the board aware of the service by the sheriffs office.

Weve been doing safety education and drug abuse awareness education for over 33 years, he said in the letter. We are in contact with our school administrators, police and fire, EMS and different service clubs frequently.

Most importantly, all is being done with no special allotment of funds, other than the donations, grants, forfeiture and in-house staffing that we have.

If the board is considering allocating any extra funding for drug awareness, we too would like to be considered for the same amount.

Not only because weve been doing it for a long time and already have presentations scheduled, but also so we can further enhance our efforts instead of making due with what we have.

Board Chairman John Bodis said that the board is so caught up in wind turbine issues, that it hasnt had a chance to discuss Rutkowskis proposal.

Bodis, who has a 35-year law enforcement background, would like to see a comprehensive approach to the drug problem involving law-enforcement, the prosecutors office, and even judges, from beginning to end.

Its more advantageous if they work together, he said. They all have different jobs. They all have different perspectives on how these situations develop.

Drug education prevention should start with young students, Bodis added.

Commissioner Ron Wruble agreed that a multifaceted approach is necessary.

He said all county agencies that deal with drug abuse issues should join forces, including the health department, Huron Behavior Health and school districts.

Rutkowskis proposal would be worthwhile, he said.

Its money well spent. We have to do whatever we can to stem the tide here.

Wruble said this may be an opportunity to sit down with the sheriff and prosecutor and devise a way to run both programs.

Theres no sense in doing what somebody else is already doing, he said, noting that if county agencies work together, their efforts would less likely be duplicated.

The only way for us to combat this is to join forces.

The issue of funding will go into 2017 budget talks, which will soon take place, Wruble said.

Commissioner Clark Elftman said he supports doing as much as possible to curb the drug problem.

We havent approved any funding. Well hash that out and see what happens. The more we can do, the better off we are, Elftman said.
SEBEWAING  The village of Sebewaing hosted a special open house tour Thursday to showcase available business property to buy or rent.

For decades, the downtown has languished because it is several blocks off of M-25, which is the main highway going north to the tip of the Thumb.

Because several new businesses were developed over the years along M-25, most travelers think that is the main business area of the community. Thursdays business open house was a way to change that perception.

Residents started a grassroots movement in January to spark interest and development in the downtown.

The tour included seven business properties after a brief meeting in the Sebewaing Chamber of Commerce hosted by chamber Secretary Chris Deming, village President Alex Khoury, and Sebewaing Light and Water Superintendent Melanie McCoy.

This communitys open house is a great way to show all of the properties at one time that are available. Its unusual to do such (a side by side) comparison, said Scott Romain, who was among those who participated in the tour.

Romain had been interested in opening Thumb Rum and Brew Co. in downtown Caro. His plan was to brew rum and operate a restaurant until he ran into resistance from the Caro City Council and started looking at options elsewhere.

The village of Sebewaing is among several communities I have looked at and others will be looking at as well, Romain said.

Real estate brokers like Sue Wiese with Kelly & Co. as well as Dale Bolzman with Tri-County Reality, and a few property owners were on hand to show off the properties and answer questions.

The first business the group tour stopped at was the former Normans store at 232 N. Center St.

That store has a lot of potential. It has three floors and a freight elevator, said Bay Shore Camp and Family Ministries Director Jeff Parsons, who had an interest in the property at one time.

The building was looked at, but decided it would be better for the community for it to be used as a business than to be part of a non-profit, which wouldnt generate taxes.

Also, village officials are willing to offer new businesses some incentives. Sebewaing is the only community in the state that has gigabit broadband Internet service as well as 24-hour support for it.

We will offer free Internet installation and free first month service for new business customers, McCoy said.

Another incentive to attract new businesses and support expansion is special discounted rates on water and electrical service.

The communitys revitalization efforts are helped from being an associate member of the Michigan Main Street program offered through the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA). That association has netted some results.

In less than a year, five properties have been purchased  the latest last month: Julie Epperson bought the property at 36 N. Center. One of the former businesses at that location was the Snack Shack restaurant.

According to Epperson, she has several ideas for the property, which include a location to teach painting, home decor and taking advantage of the Sebewaing River by renting paddle boards, aqua bikes and canoes.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 5

By Fatih Karimov  Trend

Irans crude oil export to Japan increased by 179.8 percent in September and reached 1.492 million barrels.

The figure indicates a rise by 128.5 percent compared to the preceding month, Japans ministry of economy, trade and industry reported.

On a daily basis, Irans crude oil export to the Asian country stood at 334,000 barrels per day in Sept. 2016 compared to 185,000 barrels per day in Sept. 2015.

Tehran was Japans fourth crude oil supplier after Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar with a share of 9.7 percent.

Saudi Arabia exported 4.906 million barrels of crude oil to Japan in Sept. 2016, or 31.8 percent share of the countrys total crude oil imports.

According to the latest statistics, destination of 63 percent of Iran's oil is Asian states, which are the big hub for oil consumption in the world.

During sanctions, Iran could sell maximum one million barrels a day to its customers, but now it allocated more than 2.5 million bpd crude oil for export and the Asian countries are still major customers.
MARLETTE  Two people were arrested Thursday night and several drugs were seized, following a bust by the Sanilac Drug Task Force.

A search warrant was executed shortly after 11 p.m. in the 6600 block of Lilac Drive, according to the Sanilac County Drug Task Force. Authorities seized crack cocaine, marijuana, drug paraphernalia, including packaging for sales, weight scales and nearly $450 in cash that was located with the drugs.

A 32-year-old male and 43-year-old female Marlette couple were taken into custody, booked and released on bond for charges related to the illegal drugs.

The Task Force was assisted on scene by the Marlette Police Department, St. Clair County Sheriff's Office K-9 and the Sanilac County Sheriff's Office Uniform Services.

The investigation is still ongoing.
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Sole Shareholder Company, ITW Holdings Australia L.P., ITW Holdings I Limited, ITW Holdings II Limited, ITW Holdings III Limited, ITW Holdings IV Limited, ITW Holdings IX Limited, ITW Holdings Inc., ITW Holdings V Limited, ITW Holdings VI Limited, ITW Holdings VII Limited, ITW Holdings VIII Limited, ITW Holdings X Limited, ITW Holdings XI Limited, ITW ILC Holdings I Inc., ITW IPG Investments LLC, ITW Imaden Industria e Comercio Ltda., ITW India Private Limited, ITW International Holdings LLC, ITW Invest Holding GmbH, ITW Ireland Holdings Unlimited Company, ITW Ireland Unlimited Company, ITW Italy Holding Srl, ITW Japan Ltd., ITW Korea LLC, ITW LLC & Co. KG, ITW Limited, ITW Lys Fusion S.r.l., ITW Materials Technology Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW Meritex Sdn. Bhd., ITW Metal Fasteners S.L., ITW Mexico Holding Company S. De R.L. de C.V., ITW Mexico Holdings LLC, ITW Morlock GmbH, ITW Mortgage Investments II Inc., ITW Mortgage Investments III Inc., ITW Mortgage Investments IV Inc., ITW Netherlands Administration BV, ITW Netherlands Beta B.V., ITW Netherlands Finance Alpha BV, ITW New Universal LLC, ITW New Zealand, ITW Ningbo Components & Fastenings Systems Co. Ltd., ITW Novadan Sp. Z.o.o., ITW PPF Brasil Adesivos Ltda., ITW Packaging Technology China Co. Ltd., ITW Participations S.a r.l., ITW Pension Funds Trustee Company, ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids Japan Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids Korea Limited, ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids OOO, ITW Performance Polymers ApS, ITW Performance Polymers Wujiang Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers and Fluids Group FZE, ITW Peru S.A.C., ITW Poly Mex S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Polymers Sealants North America Inc., ITW Pronovia s.r.o., ITW Pte. Ltd., ITW Qufu Automotive Cooling Systems Co. Ltd., ITW Real Estate Germany GmbH, ITW Residuals III L.L.C., ITW Residuals IV L.L.C., ITW Rivex, ITW SMPI, ITW SPG Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Simco-Ion Shenzhen Co. Ltd., ITW Slovakia s.r.o., ITW Spain Holdings S.L., ITW Specialty Film LLC, ITW Specialty Films France, ITW Specialty Materials Suzhou Co. Ltd., ITW Sverige AB, ITW Sweden Holding AB, ITW Test & Measurement Equipment Shanghai Co. Ltd, ITW Test & Measurement GmbH, ITW Test and Measurement Italia Srl, ITW Test and Measurement Services Industry and Trade Ltd., ITW Texwipe Philippines Inc., ITW Thermal Films Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW UK, ITW UK Finance Beta Limited, ITW UK Finance Delta Limited, ITW UK Finance Gamma Limited, ITW UK Finance Limited, ITW UK Finance Zeta Ltd., ITW UK II Limited, ITW Universal II LLC, ITW Welding, ITW Welding AB, ITW Welding GmbH, ITW Welding Products B.V., ITW Welding Products Group FZE, ITW Welding Products Group S. DE R.L. De C.V., ITW Welding Products Italy Srl, ITW Welding Products Limited Liability Company, ITW Welding Produtos Para Solgdagem Ltda., ITW Welding Singapore Pte. Ltd., ITW de France, ITW do Brasil Industrial e Comercial Ltda., Illinois Tool Works Chile Limitada, Illinois Tool Works ITW Nederland B.V., Illinois Tool Works Inc., Impar Comercio E Representacoes Ltda., Industrie Plastic Elsasser GmbH, Inmobiliaria Cit. S.A. de C.F., Innova Temperlite Servicios S.A. de C.V., Innovacion y Transformacion Automotriz S.A. de C.V., Instron Brasil Equipamentos Cientificos Ltda., Instron Foreign Sales Corp. Limited, Instron France S.A.S., Instron GmbH, Instron Japan Company Ltd., Instron Korea LLC, Instron Shanghai Ltd., Instron Thailand Limited, International Leasing Company LLC, Isolenge - ITW Sistemas de Isolamento Termico Ltda., Itw Spraytec, KCPL Mauritius Holdings, Kester, Kleinmann GmbH, Krafft S.L., Loma Systems, Loma Systems BV, Loma Systems Canada Inc., Loma Systems sro, Lombard Pressings Limited, Lumex Inc., Lys Fusion Poland Sp. z.o.o., M&C Specialties Co., MAGNAFLUX GmbH, MEHB Holdings Limited, MGHG Property LLC, MTS 2 LLC., MTS 3 LLC., MTS China Holdings LLC, MTS Europe Holdings LLC, MTS Holdings France S.a.r.l., MTS Japan Ltd.., MTS Korea Inc.., MTS Systems China Co. Ltd., MTS Systems Corporation, MTS Systems Danmark ApS., MTS Systems Europe B.V., MTS Systems Finance C.V.., MTS Systems Germany GmbH, MTS Systems Holding B.V.., MTS Systems Hong Kong Incorporated, MTS Systems Limited, MTS Systems Norden Aktiebolag, MTS Systems S.r.l, MTS Systems., MTS Systems.., MTS Sytems Do Brazil, MTS Testing Solutions India Private Limited., MTS Testing Systems Canada Ltd., Manufacturing Avancee S.A., Meritex Technology Suzhou Co. Ltd., Meurer Verpackungssysteme GmbH, Miller Electric Mfg. LLC, Miller Insurance Ltd., NDT Holding LLC, NOVADAN APS, North Star Imaging Inc., Nova Chimica S.r.l., Orbitalum Tools GmbH, PENTA-91 OOO, PR. A. I. Srl, PT ITW Construction Products Indonesia, Pacific Concept Industries Limited Enping, Panreac Quimica S.L., Paslode Fasteners Shanghai Co. Ltd., Peerless Machinery Corp., Polyrey, Premark FEG L.L.C., Premark HII Holdings LLC, Premark International, Premark International LLC, Prolex Sociedad Anonima, QSA Global Inc., Quimica Industrial Mediterranea S.L., R&D Engineering A/S., R&D Prague s.r.o., R&D Steel ApS., R&D Test Systems A/S., R&D Tools and Structures A/S., RDGDK Engineering Private Limited, Ramset Fasteners Hong Kong Ltd., Rapid Cook LLC, Refrigeration France, S.E.E. Sistemas Industria E Comercio Ltda., ST Mexico Holdings LLC, Sealant Systems International Inc., Sentinel Asia Yuhan Hoesa, Shanghai ITW Plastic & Metal Co. Ltd, Simco Japan Inc., Simco Nederland B.V., Societe de Prospection et dInventions Techniques  SPIT, Speedline Holdings I Inc., Speedline Holdings I LLC, Speedline Technologies GmbH, Speedline Technologies Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Speedline Technologies Mexico Services S. de R.L. de C.V., Stokvis Celix Portugal Unipessoal LDA, Stokvis Danmark ApS, Stokvis Holdings S.A.R.L., Stokvis Promi s.r.o, Stokvis Prostick Tapes Private Limited, Stokvis Tapes B.V., Stokvis Tapes Benelux B.V., Stokvis Tapes Deutschland GmbH, Stokvis Tapes France, Stokvis Tapes Hong Kong Co. Limited, Stokvis Tapes Italia s.r.l., Stokvis Tapes Limited, Stokvis Tapes Limited Liability Company, Stokvis Tapes Norge AS, Stokvis Tapes Oy, Stokvis Tapes Polska Sp Z.O.O., Stokvis Tapes Shanghai Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes Sverige AB, Stokvis Tapes Taiwan Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes Tianjin Co. Ltd., Stolvis Holdings II S.A.R.L., Subsidiaries, Technopack Industria Comercio Consultoria e Representacoes Ltda., Teknek China Limited, Teknek Japan Limited, Teksaleco Ltd., The Miller Group Ltd, Thirode Grandes Cuisines Poligny, Tien Tai Electrode Co. Ltd., Tien Tai Electrode Kunshan Co. Ltd., Unichemicals Industria e Comercio Ltda., VR-Leasing Sarita GmbH & Co. Immobilien KG, VS European Holdco BV, Valeron Strength Films B.V., Veneta Decalcogomme S.r.l., Versachem Chile S.A., Vesta, Vesta Global Limited, Vesta Guangzhou Catering Equipment Co. Ltd, Viltronics Soltec, Vitronics Soltec B.V., Wachs Canada Ltd., Wachs Subsea LLC, Weigh-Tronix Canada ULC, Weigh-Tronix UK Limited, Wilsonart International Holdings LLC, Wynn Oil South Africa Pty Ltd., Wynn's Automotive France, Wynn's Belgium BVBA, Wynn's Italia Srl, Wynn's Mekuba India Pvt Ltd, and Zip-Pak International B.V..

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Tehran, Iran, November 5

By Mehdi Sepahvand  Trend:

$300 million worth of medicinal herbs have been exported from Iran since January, according to Peyman Yousefi Azar, director of Medicinal Herbs Department of Irans Ministry of Agriculture

This is while saffron comprised almost two thirds of the exports, he told reporters, IRIB news agency reported November 5.

In the meantime, the Damask rose comprised a third of the exports, Yousefi Azar said.

Noting that there is already a market worth around $150 billion for medicinal herbs in Europe, the official stated that different kinds of herbal tea comprise half of the market of medicinal herbs.

The official said that if Iran makes due investment, medicinal herbs could eventually become an important non-oil source of revenues.

The key consumer markets of Iranian-grown medicinal herbs in order of import volume are Pakistan, the UAE, Germany, Japan, and China.

Iran is generally considered as one of the most geographically diverse countries and can host 7,500 floral species, of which 1,800 are used in medicine.

The country produces around 210 tons of saffron each year, of which some 70 percent is exported.
The following companies are subsidiares of LyondellBasell Industries: A. Schulman, A. Schulman 's-Gravendeel B.V., A. Schulman AG, A. Schulman Asia Limited, A. Schulman Belgium BVBA, A. Schulman Canada Ltd., A. Schulman Castellon S.L., A. Schulman Europe GmbH & Co. KG, A. Schulman Europe International B.V., A. Schulman Europe Verwaltungs GmbH, A. Schulman Gainsborough Ltd, A. Schulman GmbH, A. Schulman GmbH (Austrian Branch), A. Schulman Holding Company France S.A.S., A. Schulman Holdings (France) S.A.S., A. Schulman Holdings S.a.r.l., A. Schulman Inc., A. Schulman Inc. Limited, A. Schulman International Inc., A. Schulman International Services BVBA, A. Schulman Ireland Limited, A. Schulman Magyarorszag Kereskedelmi Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, A. Schulman Nordic AB, A. Schulman Plastics (Branch), A. Schulman Plastics (Dongguan) Ltd., A. Schulman Plastics (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., A. Schulman Plastics (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., A. Schulman Plastics BVBA, A. Schulman Plastics India Private Limited, A. Schulman Plastics PTY. LTD., A. Schulman Plastics S.r.l., A. Schulman Plastics SAS, A. Schulman Plastics bvba Bornem Sucursala Cluj-Napoca, A. Schulman Plastics organizacni slozka, A. Schulman Plastk Sanayi ve Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, A. Schulman Plasticos do Brasil Ltda., A. Schulman Polska Sp. z o.o., A. Schulman Real Estate GmbH & Co. KG, A. Schulman S.A.S., A. Schulman S.a.r.l., A. Schulman Thermoplastic Compounds Limited, A. Schulman Thermoplastic Compounds Sdn Bhd, A. Schulman de Mexico S.A. de C.V., A. Schulman del Peru S.A.C., A.Schulman Poznan Sp. Z o.o., ARCO Chemical, AS Global Holdings Inc., AS Mex Hold S.A. de C.V., AS Worldwide LLC, AS Worldwide LLC & Cie S.C.S., ASI Akron Land Co., ASI Employment S.A. de C.V., ASI Investments Holding Co., Al Waha Petrochemical Company, BKV Beteiligungs- und Kunststoffverwertungs-gesellschaft mbH, BMC Deutschland GmbH, BMC Dongguan Limited, BMC Far East Limited, BMC TetraDURTurkey Plastik Hammadde Kompozit Uretim Sanayi ve Ticaret Limted Sirketi, Basell (Thailand) Holdings B.V., Basell Advanced Polyolefins (Dalian) Co. Ltd., Basell Advanced Polyolefins (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Basell Advanced Polyolefins (Thailand) Company Ltd., Basell Arabie Investissements SAS, Basell Asia Pacific Limited, Basell Bayreuth Chemie GmbH, Basell Benelux B.V., Basell Chemie Koln GmbH, Basell Europe Holdings B.V., Basell Germany Holdings GmbH, Basell Holdings Middle East GmbH, Basell Iberica Poliolefinas Holdings S.L., Basell International Holdings B.V., Basell International Trading FZE, Basell Italia S.r.l, Basell Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Basell Moyen Orient Investissements SAS, Basell North America Inc., Basell Orlen Polyolefins Sp. Z.o.o., Basell Orlen Polyolefins Sprzedaz Sp. Z.o.o., Basell Poliolefinas Comercial Espagnola S.L., Basell Poliolefinas Iberica S.L., Basell Poliolefinas Ltda., Basell Poliolefinas S. de R.L. de C.V., Basell Poliolefine Italia S.r.l., Basell Polyolefin Istanbul Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Basell Polyolefine GmbH, Basell Polyolefines France S.A.S., Basell Polyolefins Company BVBA, Basell Polyolefins India Private Limited, Basell Polyolefins Korea Ltd., Basell Polyolefins UK Limited, Basell Sales & Marketing Company B.V., Basell Service Company B.V., Basell Slovakia s.r.o., Basell Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Basell UK Holdings Limited, Basell UK Ltd., Brindisi Servizi Generali S.c.a.r.l., Bulk Molding Compounds Inc., Bulk Molding Compounds Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Bulk Molding Compounds do Brasil Industria de Plasticos Reforcados Ltda., Citadel Brazil Holdings LLC, Citadel Intermediate Holdings LLC, Citadel Plastics Holdings Cooperatief U.A., Citadel Plastics Holdings Inc., Citadel Plastics Mexico Holdings LLC, Citadel Plastics Netherlands Holdings LLC, Compagnie Petrochimique de Berre SAS, Compagnie de Distribution des Hydrocarbures SAS, EMS Holding Ltd., EPS Ethylen-Pipeline-Sud Geschaftsfuhrungs GmbH, EPS Ethylen-Pipeline-Sud GmbH & Co. KG, Elian S.A.S., Equistar Bayport LLC, Equistar Chemicals LP, Equistar GP LLC, Equistar LP LLC, Equistar Mont Belvieu Corporation, GuangZhou Basell Advanced Polyolefins Co. Ltd., HGGC Citadel Plastics Holdings Inc., HGGC Citadel Plastics Intermediate Holdings Inc., HMC Polymers Company Limited, HPC Holdings LLC, Hadlock Plastics LLC, Houston Refining LP, I.F.M. S.c.a.r.l., ICO Europe C.V., ICO Holdings LLC, ICO Holdings New Zealand Limited, ICO Petrochemical Cayman Islands, ICO Polymers Cayman Islands, Indelpro S.A. de C.V., Infraserv GmbH & Co. Hochst KG, Inmobiliaria Satchmo S. de R.L. de C.V., Innovacion Y Desarrollo en Materiales Avanzados A.C., J.R. Courtenay (N.Z.) Limited, LPI Holding Company, LYB (Barbados) SRL, LYB Advanced Polymer Solutions Ireland Limited, LYB Americas Finance Company LLC, LYB Equistar Holdings LLC, LYB Export Holdings Limited, LYB Exports Inc., LYB Finance Company B.V., LYB International Finance B.V., LYB International Finance II B.V., LYB International Finance III LLC, LYB Ireland 2 Limited, LYB Ireland Limited, LYB La Porte Hyperzone LLC, LYB Luxembourg S.a r.l., LYB Matrixx Holdings Inc., LYB Receivables LLC, LYB Trading Company B.V., LYB Treasury Services Ltd., Limited Liability Company "LyondellBasell Polyolefins", Limited Liability Company A. Schulman, Lucent Polymers Inc., Lyondell Asia Holdings Limited, Lyondell Centennial Corp., Lyondell Chemical Company, Lyondell Chemical Europe Inc., Lyondell Chemical Overseas Services Inc., Lyondell Chemical Products Europe LLC, Lyondell Chemical Properties L.P., Lyondell Chemical Technology 1 Inc., Lyondell Chemical Technology L.P., Lyondell Chemical Technology Management Inc., Lyondell Chemie (PO-11) B.V., Lyondell Chemie (POSM) B.V., Lyondell Chemie Nederland B.V., Lyondell Chimie France SAS, Lyondell China Holdings Limited, Lyondell Greater China Holdings Limited, Lyondell Greater China Ltd., Lyondell Greater China Trading Limited, Lyondell Japan Inc., Lyondell PO-11 C.V., Lyondell POJVGP LLC, Lyondell POJVLP LLC, Lyondell POTechGP Inc., Lyondell POTechLP Inc., Lyondell Refining Company LLC, Lyondell Refining I LLC, Lyondell South Asia Pte Ltd, LyondellBasell Acetyls Holdco LLC, LyondellBasell Acetyls LLC, LyondellBasell Advanced Polyolefins Mexico S.A. de C.V., LyondellBasell Australia (Holdings) Pty Ltd, LyondellBasell Australia Pty Ltd, LyondellBasell Brasil Ltda., LyondellBasell Canada Inc., LyondellBasell Central Europe Kft., LyondellBasell China Holdings B.V., LyondellBasell Circular Economy B.V., LyondellBasell Covestro Manufacturing Maasvlakte V.O.F., LyondellBasell Egypt LLC, LyondellBasell F&F Holdco LLC, LyondellBasell Finance Company, LyondellBasell Holdings France SAS, LyondellBasell Hungary Kft, LyondellBasell Industries Holdings B.V., LyondellBasell Industries N.V., LyondellBasell Investment LLC, LyondellBasell Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., LyondellBasell Polyolefin (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., LyondellBasell Services France S.A.S., LyondellBasell Subholdings B.V., LyondellBasell Taiwan Co. Ltd., LyondellBasell Transportation Company LLC, Millennium Chemicals, Natpet Schulman Specialty Plastic Compounds, Ningbo ZRCC Lyondell Chemical Co. Ltd., Ningbo ZRCC Lyondell Chemical Marketing Co. Ltd., OE Insurance Ltd, Oil Casualty Insurance Ltd., Oil Insurance Limited, PD Glycol LP, PO JV LP, PO Offtake LP, POSM II Limited Partnership L.P., POSM II Properties Partnership LLC, PT A.Schulman Plastics, PT ASchulman Plastics Commercial, PTT Chemical PCL, Poly Pacific Polymers Sdn. Bhd., Poly Pacific Pty. Ltd., PolyMirae Co. Ltd., Premix Holding Company, Premix Inc., Prime Colorants Inc., QCP B.V., QCP Holding B.V., QCP IP B.V., Quantum Composites Inc., RIGK GmbH Gesellschaft zur Ruckfuhrung industrieller and gewerblicher Kunstoffverpackungen mbH, Rayong Olefins Co. Ltd., Rexene - LDPE and PP Businesses, SCG ICO Polymers Company Limited, SJS Plastiblends, San Jacinto Rail Limited, Saudi Ethylene & Polyethylene Company, Saudi Polyolefins Company, Sociedad Espanola De Materiales Plasticos Semap S.A., Societe des Stockages Petroliers du Rhone SA, Solvay Engineered Polymers, Surplast S.A., TRV Thermische Ruckstandsverwertung GmbH & Co. KG, TRV Thermische Ruckstandsverwertung Verwaltungs-GmbH, Technology JV LP, The Matrixx Group Incorporated, ULSAN PP Co. Ltd., YNCORIS GmbH & Co. KG, Zylog Plastalloys, and tetra-DUR Kunststoff-Produktion GmbH.

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The Chemours Company provides performance chemicals in North America, the Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. It operates through four segments: Titanium Technologies, Thermal & Specialized Solutions, Advanced Performance Materials, and Chemical Solutions. The Titanium Technologies segment provides TiO2 pigment under the Ti-Pure and BaiMax brands for delivering whiteness, brightness, opacity, and protection in various of applications, such as architectural and industrial coatings, flexible and rigid plastic packaging, polyvinylchloride, laminate papers used for furniture and building materials, coated paper, and coated paperboard used for packaging. The Thermal & Specialized Solutions segment offers of refrigerants, thermal management solutions, propellants, foam blowing agents, and specialty solvents. The Advanced Performance Materials segment products portfolio includes various industrial resins, specialty products, membranes, and coatings for consumer electronics, semiconductors, digital communications, transportation, energy, oil and gas, and medical, and others applications. The Chemical Solutions segment comprises a portfolio of industrial chemicals used as raw materials and catalysts for gold production, clean and disinfect, oil and gas, water treatment, electronics, and automotive applications. The company sells its products through direct and indirect channels, as well as through a network of resellers and distributors. The Chemours Company was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware.
Official White House Photo by Pete Souza(WASHINGTON) -- President Obama delivered this week's presidential address focusing on open enrollment and healthcare.



The president also referenced the Chicago Cubs saying, "Americans have been fighting for the idea that health care is a right and not a privilege since the second-to-last time the Cubs won the World Series. Im not talking about the 2016 Cubs  Im talking about the 1908 Cubs."



Obama credited the Affordable Care Act for lowering the uninsured rate and said that accessible healthcare is an important part of America.



"Insurance is based on the idea that were all in it together. Thats what makes it work. And its the same idea thats always made America great," he added.



Read what the president's full address:



Hi, everybody. Americans have been fighting for the idea that health care is a right and not a privilege since the second-to-last time the Cubs won the World Series. Im not talking about the 2016 Cubs  Im talking about the 1908 Cubs.



Thats a really long time. And thanks to the efforts of so many of you, we did it. Today, 20 million more American adults know the financial security of health insurance. On top of that, another three million more kids have coverage than when I took office. In fact, never in American history has the uninsured rate been lower than it is right now  and health care prices have been rising slower than they have in 50 years.



If you havent gotten covered yet, nows the time to do it. Its open enrollment season. That means you can go to HealthCare.gov and shop for insurance plans in a marketplace where insurers compete for your business. HealthCare.gov is faster and easier to use than ever before. With a few clicks, you can start comparing plans to see which one is right for you and your family. You can even look up your doctor and medications as you shop. Most Americans who get coverage through HealthCare.gov can find an option that costs less than $75 a month. Thats probably less than your cell phone bill.



Now, most of us dont get our health care through the Marketplace. We get it through our job, or through Medicare or Medicaid. And what you should know is that, thanks to the Affordable Care Act, your coverage is better today than it was before. You now have free preventive care. There are no more annual or lifetime limits on essential health care. Women can get free checkups, and you cant get charged more just for being a woman. Young people can stay on a parents plan until they turn 26. Seniors get discounts on their prescriptions. And no one can be denied coverage just because of a preexisting condition.



Thats because our goal wasnt just to make sure more people have coverage  it was to make sure more people have better coverage. And as we continue working to make the system better, theres something you can do to help yourself and help the country. Go to HealthCare.gov. Get covered. And if theres someone you care about who hasnt signed up yet, help them get covered today, too.



Enrollment is open right now, but only until January 31. If you sign up by December 15, youll be covered by the beginning of the year. So go check out HealthCare.gov or call 1-800-318-2596, and someone will personally help you find a plan thats right for you.



Insurance is based on the idea that were all in it together. Thats what makes it work. And its the same idea thats always made America great. Thanks everybody, and have a good weekend.



Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Trinseo PLC, a materials solutions provider, manufactures and sells plastics and latex binders in the United States, Europe, the Asia-Pacific, and internationally. The company operates through six segments: Engineered Materials, Latex Binders, Base Plastics, Polystyrene, Feedstocks, and Americas Styrenics. The Engineered Materials segment offers rigid compounds, including polycarbonate compounds, acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene compounds, and PC blends to consumer electronics and medical markets for equipment housing applications; thermoplastic elastomer soft plastic compounds, such as overmolds, sealings, tubing, and films for footwear shoe sole, personal care, consumer electronics, and automotive high-end applications; and PMMA products to building and construction, automotive, medical, and consumer goods applications. The Latex Binders segment provides styrene-butadiene, styrene-acrylate, vinylidene chloride, and butadiene-methacrylate latex products for the commercial and niche carpet markets, as well as performance latex products for the adhesive, building and construction, and technical textile paper markets. The Base Plastics segment offers various compounds and blends for automotive and other applications. This segment also engages in the acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene, styrene-acrylonitrile, and polycarbonate businesses. The Polystyrene segment provides general purpose polystyrenes and high impact polystyrene for use in appliances, food packaging and food service disposables, consumer electronics, and building and construction materials. The Feedstocks segment offers styrene monomer, a basic building block of plastics. The Americas Styrenics segment provides styrene and polystyrene. The company was incorporated in 2015 and is based in Berwyn, Pennsylvania.
China Mobile Limited provides mobile telecommunications and related services in Mainland China and Hong Kong. The company offers local calls; domestic and international long distance calls and roaming services; and value-added services, such as caller identity display, call waiting, conference calls, and others. It also provides wireless Internet service, as well as digital applications comprising music, video, reading, gaming, and animation; wireline broadband services; and wireline voice services. In addition, it offers dedicated line and IDC services to corporate customers in a range of industry sectors; and basic corporate communication products comprising corporate VPMN and SMS, and tailor made solutions. Further, the company provides international telecommunications services, which includes IDD, roaming, Internet, MNC, and value added business services. Additionally, it offers telecommunications network planning, design, and consulting services; roaming clearance, IT system operation, and technology support services; value-added platform development and maintenance services; mobile data, and system integration and development services; network construction and maintenance, network planning and optimizing, and training services; electronic communication products design and sale of related products; and non-banking financial services. It also provides mobile cloud research and development services; call center services; e-payment, e-commerce, and Internet finance services; and mobile Internet digital content services, as well as operates a network and business coordination center. The company serves 950 million mobile customers and 187 million wireline broadband customers. The company was formerly known as China Mobile (Hong Kong) Limited and changed its name to China Mobile Limited in May 2006. The company was incorporated in 1997 and is based in Central, Hong Kong. China Mobile Limited is a subsidiary of China Mobile Hong Kong (BVI) Limited.
During the opening three days of the Mosul offensive, U.S.-led airstrikes rattled the city at a rate of one bomb every eight minutes, an official said.

The sheer volume of strikes sets the operation apart from others in the ongoing campaign against militants affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, according to Col. Daniel Manning, the deputy director of the Combined Air Operations Center.

"It's a pretty intense bombing campaign if you think about each of these bombs are precision-guided weapons  so it's a really high rate to be concentrated over one city over a prolonged period of time," Manning told Military.com in a telephone interview Friday.

Since Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's Oct. 16 declaration of the beginning of the assault to recapture Mosul, whose population has dwindled to about 665,000 residents, the air coalition conducted more than 191 strikes through Nov. 1, employing over 1,352 weapons for operations, according to Air Forces Central Command spokeswoman Kiley Dougherty.

From the start of Operation Inherent Resolve in 2014, Dougherty said the coalition has struck Mosul with 1,239 targets, dropping 5,941 bombs.

"You tend to employ more weapons when the weather is better, and when you're partner forces are on the move because when they're on the move, they're finding the enemy, forcing the enemy to reveal themselves, and we're there to strike them," Manning said.

"We can certainly employ weapons in all weather -- we have sensors that can look through the weather -- but [a storm] usually slows down an operation of this size," he added.

Mosul has been a months-in-the-making operation, Manning said. And planning out the airspace for Air Force and coalition aircraft has been essential to "work the stack" of aircraft operating in a vast city but tight airspace.

Aircraft from drones to fighters to bombers "are given different altitude restrictions, from low to very high where you're assigned a certain block of altitude at the flight of two aircraft, and you maintain that block knowing that there are aircraft below and above you," Manning said.

The same goes laterally. If there is an artillery strike from below that has the ability to fire high enough where "it can reach aircraft, you have to stay East or West of a certain line," he said.

A coveted aircraft during the operation has been the B-52 long-range bomber. The Stratofortresses have the ability to stay airborne for a longer duration, have capable sensors to identify targets, and carry a wide-variety of bombs "attacking everything from vehicles to large-site targets."

"Frankly, we want our partners and the enemy to see the airpower [the B-52] has overhead," Manning said. "A B-52 encourages our partner force that we have their back. Being seen is actually a pretty good thing."

In April, several B-52s arrived at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, to join the American-led campaign in place of the B-1B Lancer. The aircraft stepped up lucrative targeting throughout May and June, more than doubling their strikes against weapons caches, then-AFCENT spokesman Lt. Col. Chris Karns told Air Force Times in June.

The tactics ISIS have been using to try and thwart the coalition in Mosul aren't revolutionary but they've complicated the dynamic throughout the city, Manning said. The group has burned oil trenches to throw off intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft; set off vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices; attempted hostage takeovers; and used snipers to kill coalition forces.

RELATED: Raqqa Offensive Should Wait for Fall of Mosul: Turkey

That's why ISR aircraft -- most heavily used throughout the Middle East theater -- are a must-have to predict ISIS' next move while detecting the location of civilians.

In May, Lt. Gen. Charles Brown, now the deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, noted the use of ISR almost always translates into a more clean-cut mission.

"I would actually like to have more ISR and really be able to use it," he said at the time, "Because what it helps me to do is develop targets [and] ... strike at the same time as we develop those targets. The more ISR I have, I can minimize the risk to civilian casualties and continue the precision air campaign that we have."

"It's also very likely when ISR aircraft go out over Mosul, they will employ one if not all of the weapons that they have," Manning said.

For example, MQ-1 Predators and MQ-9 Reaper drones account for 15.6 percent of strikes in OIR, ACC spokesman Benjamin Newell told Military.com last month. They also account for 8.6 percent of all Combined Forces Air Component weapons dropped in OIR. "They are involved in nearly every operation in OIR, in one capacity or another," Newell said.

"This is a very, very difficult way to fight," Manning said. "And we can't say when it's going to be over."

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.

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Tehran, Iran, November 5

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has said culture can bring security to the world beyond military power and diplomacy.

At the inaugural of Iran Press Show 2016 in Tehran, Rouhani said terrorists have found a footing in the Middle East because they were equipped with modern cultural rather than military tools, IRIB news agency reported November 5.

Mosul fell in half a day because its population of 1.5 million had lost their attachment to Baghdad not because militarily the city was overwhelmed by terrorists, he said.

He urged influential entities in Iran to allow freedom of expression to the media and not restrict them by taking them to court.

The 22nd International Press Exhibition which opened in Tehran Nov. 4 evening hosts over 900 press organizations in 620 pavilions.

This years press event focuses on transparency and honesty. It is held in Imam Khomeini Mosalla Mosque in Tehran.

Several briefing sessions by foreign journalists, numerous workshops and expert meetings on up-to-date journalism are to be held on the sidelines of the event.
FILM REVIEW

'Doctor Strange'

2.5 stars (out of 4)

MPAA rating: PG-13 for sci-fi action and violence throughout, and an intense crash sequence

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, Rachel McAdams, Chiwetel Ejiofor

Director: Scott Derrickson

Run time: 115 minutes



"Doctor Strange" asserts that reality is not what it seems. Of course, its reality is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a place where indomitable hulks and obstinate ant-men and pertinacious captains America wage battle against interdimensional creature-beings big and small, so the challenge here is to supersede that which is already super.

Director Scott Derrickson is up to it, at least visually. "Doctor Strange" is an artisanal buffet for hungry eyes, popping with the type of psychedelic, kaleidoscopic weirdness that'll have you wondering who dosed your popcorn with psilocybin. Bizarre extra-earthly dimensions are explored, time is warped and reversed and looped, alternate realities are folded and braided and knotted. What's up is down and right is left, and why, exactly, all this was so, I don't know, the film's internal rationale eluding me like a vague dream, in strict defiance of such lucid, vivid imagery.

To such an assertion, apologists will no doubt plead: It's magic! It eludes explanation! Just go with it! And I did, as much as I could. Played with buoyancy by a game Benedict Cumberbatch, Doctor Strange is a neurosurgeon-turned-sorcerer, and the newest character tied to the massive "Avengers" story arc. His origin is one of great arrogance followed by great humility. Stephen Strange is rich, talented and revered for his skills with a scalpel, but a terrible car wreck renders his once-steady hands permanently shaky. Distraught, and having exhausted all Western-medicine treatments, he seeks a cure in a Kathmandu back alley, where he finds mystical gurus practicing the ways of Eastern voodoo thaumaturgy goofball abracadabra whatnot. Which looks like a lot more fun than being angsty and sad.

The mumbo-jumbo is the type of stuff that doesn't gel with Strange's ego. It takes a few slaps from The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) to get him off his high horse; one separates his astral self from his physical self with a wild whoosh, and another sends him tumbling through space and time, which resembles a electric pink-neon blue-hot purple digital hallucination by original "Doctor Strange" comic-book creator Steve Ditko. His mind suitably blown, Strange sticks his nose in some old books and participates in group hocus-pocus tai chi classes, and eventually learns how to cut teleportational holes in the continuum and conjure neon-green occult symbols which float above his hands and grant him the ability to do all kinds of useful things in battles against evil magicians. He also befriends an anthropomorphic scene-stealing red cape, of course.

Before long, Strange becomes an ally of The Ancient One and her disciples - who include Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Wong (Benedict Wong) - against student-turned-bad Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen), who wants to either destroy the world or rule it, I can never tell which. Their skirmishes feature impressive and copious special effects, which look great on the IMAX screen, and even sometimes in 3-D, I'm woe, but also happy, to admit. But when the Manhattan streets twist themselves into M.C. Esher-esque phantasmagoria, it's a gratuitous display of just-because-we-can visual wizardry reeking of look-ma showoff indulgence. The film's style functions alone, almost divorced from narrative logic. Why, exactly, does Manhattan fold on top of itself? So the movie doesn't look like any other movie, of course. (Well, any movie in the Marvel canon, at least. It looks a lot like "Inception," only more, you know, foldy.)

Still, Cumberbatch is enjoyable enough at the eye of the nonsense vortex, cracking one-liners like a whip, and preventing the movie from taking itself too seriously. He enjoys a few inspired moments with Rachel McAdams, playing Christine Palmer, a wisp of a character who's Strange's earthly ex-girlfriend. Giving its supporting cast something interesting to do within their own heads is the challenge Doctor Strange" fails to meet. Asked to do little besides scowl and furrow his brow, Ejiofor is handed a role far below his skill set. And Swinton has considerable presence, as usual - it helps that her head is shaved bald, rendering her eyes and ears more pronounced - but she's given nothing interesting to say.

Refreshingly, the film stands pretty much on its own in a franchise burdened with significant chronology. (Should you stay until the end of the credits? Does the Hulk like to smash?), although it never quite fulfills the potential of its main character, or the man playing him. Lurking in the margins is the implication that Cumberbatch might be better served exchanging lines with Chris Pratt and/or Robert Downey Jr. in one of the million-zillion Marvel movies yet to come. Ultimately, despite its visual ambitions, "Doctor Strange" is a push.
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Judge Kirk Tabbey, left, and Robin Stephens are running for the 14A District Court in Washtenaw County.

(Courtesy)

ANN ARBOR, MI - In just a few days, voters will decide between incumbent Judge Kirk Tabbey and his challenger Robin Stephens, a Washtenaw County public defender, for the only contested judge's seat in the county.

The judicial seat on 14A District Court is up for election on Nov. 8.



The incumbent, Tabbey, has served on the bench since his appointment in 1997. He previously served as a prosecutor in Jackson County and served as a public defender and prosecutor in Washtenaw County, he said.

Stephens, who has served as a public defender for 17 years, previously worked in private practice, as an academic adviser at the University of Michigan, where she also handled academic discipline, and as an assistant dean of students at Capital University Law School in Ohio, she said.

If re-elected, Tabbey said he hopes to continue to deliver justice in the community, focus on restorative justice and rehabilitative options for offenders, and turn the domestic violence docket into a domestic violence problem-solving court by tracking the outcomes of cases.

"I have been providing justice for 20 years - that is without privilege to anybody that is without prejudice to anyone," he said.

"I will give you a fair hearing, I will listen, I will deliver justice in that fashion that will provide protection to those that need to be protected and that punishes wrongdoers, but with the understanding that I need to also provide a pathway to the offender for some prosperity later in their life."

Tabbey also noted a number of contributions he's made to the judicial community, including changes in computer crime laws, his efforts to remove Michigan's driver responsibility fees, and implementation of on online traffic ticket mediation options.

Though he was disciplined with a 90-day unpaid suspension from the bench in 2014 after he pleaded guilty to a drunken-driving charge, Tabbey said he believes he has paid a high price for the incident and is a better judge for it.

Tabbey said the incident - in which he was accused of towing a boat with a vehicle while under the influence - was the result of him drinking that day to deal the pain caused by an implant separating from his knee while on the boat and being moved into the driver's seat.

"I understand more about what a lot of people go through when they get these kind of cases, so I think I've been a more compassionate and understanding judge as a result," he said.

Stephens said she's running as a way to begin to pay back all the community has done for her, particularly in providing her an education, and to put her diverse life experience to good use. She noted that she once was a single mother living in public housing and worked hard to gain her education and go on to a career in social work and law.

"The life experience, my educational background is so diverse ... how can those not come together to be a really good opportunity for someone with a lot of critical thinking experiences to be a really good judge in the community," she said.

She said she's worked in probate court, criminal law, family law and with juvenile cases, and hopes to expand and work in Washtenaw County's specialty courts and work within schools and the rest of the community to identify problems and develop solutions.

She said she'll approach everyone in her court as a person with different life experiences that have led them there and hopes to give Washtenaw County voters a choice when they go to vote, as many incumbent judges have run unopposed.

"It's something that I felt I have to do," she said. "I have to give the people of Washtenaw County an opportunity to make a choice as to whether or not (they want) the judge that is there by appointment, ... that has sat there unopposed for all these years. I just felt that I was in a space, in a place and time to give the people of Washtenaw County a choice."
BAY CITY, MI -- A 25-year-old Bay City man accused of pulling another man from a truck and beating him with a beer bottle in an apparent fit of jealousy has accepted a plea offer.

Charles A. Burch III was to appear for a preliminary examination before District Judge Timothy J. Kelly on Wednesday, Nov. 2. Rather than proceed with that hearing, though, Burch took the opportunity to plead no contest to a count of aggravated assault.

The charge is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

In exchange, the prosecution agreed to dismiss a four-year felony count of assault with a dangerous weapon and misdemeanor assault and battery.

By pleading no contest, Burch did not verbally admit to having committed a crime. Kelly had to rely on police reports to enter a conviction on the record.

Those reports, contained in court files, state that the afternoon of Aug. 28, police went to the McLaren Bay Region hospital emergency room for an assault complaint. They met with a 24-year-old man who told them he had been attacked the previous day.

According to the patient, at about 7:30 a.m. on Aug. 27, he was in his truck parked in the parking lot behind Stables Martini & Cigar Bar, 804 E. Midland St. He was making out with a woman when his door was opened from the outside and Burch, the woman's ex, began choking him, he said.

Burch ended up pulling the man from the truck and he landed on the ground, he told police. Burch then punched the man in the face and head, according to court records.

"When we got separated, he picked up a beer bottle that had fallen out of my truck and hit me in the head with it," the man told police, according to court files. "I think he hit me twice with it."

The man eventually pushed Burch away. Burch then left, as did the man and the woman.

Police wrote in their reports, contained in court files, that the man had bruising to his face and head. He told them he hadn't planned to call them, but visited the hospital when he twice nearly passed out.

Police later spoke with the woman, who gave a similar account, saying Burch pulled the man from the truck and assaulted him. She said she did not see the bottle used as a weapon, though, as she was looking away at that point.

Authorities issued a warrant for Burch on Sept. 30. He voluntarily appeared for his arraignment in Bay County District Court on Monday, Oct. 17.

Judge Kelly is to sentence Burch at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 27.
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Treb T. Taylor (left) and Cole J. Fader

(Courtesy )

BAY CITY, MI -- Three area 18-year-olds are facing felonies due to police alleging they broke into another teen's house and made off with food and a toaster oven.

At about 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 30, Bay County Sheriff's deputies responded to a burglary complaint in the 3400 block of East Beaver Road in Bangor Township. As the first deputy arrived, he pulled up behind a silver Pontiac that was still running and parked adjacent to the victim's house.

In the car's driver's seat was Cole J. Fader. Treb T. Taylor, Austin M. Cnudde, another male and a girl were the passengers, court records show. All of the males were 18 and the girl was 16.

The 18-year-old male resident of the home told deputies he was upstairs when he heard footsteps in his driveway. He looked outside and saw a male he believed to be Cnudde wearing a bandana throw a rock through a large bay window, valued at $500, according to court records show.

He then heard subjects talking from downstairs, one of which taunted him to come down, he told deputies.

The teen eventually ventured downstairs and saw his door was open. His freezer had also apparently been ransacked, with pizza rolls, ice cream bars, and a gallon jug of Kool-Aid missing, court records show. His toaster oven was also stolen, records show.

The victim told deputies he believed he was targeted as retaliation for having recently reported a deer poaching incident on his property involving Cnudde and friends.

Deputies interviewed the teens in the Pontiac. Fader told them Cnudde had asked him to drive him to a house so he could break into it. Cnudde offered him gas money and Fader accepted, he said. Fader claimed Cnudde also told him the house was vacant, though there was a marijuana grow operation inside, court records show.

Fader said the girl with them kicked a window of the house, then Cnudde chucked the rock through it. He saw Cnudde, Taylor, and the girl go inside the house, he said.

Cnudde initially told deputies he did nothing wrong, then said he was the only one who went into the house, court records show.

Taylor said he was "pretty much along for the ride but when (Cnudde) went in the house he did too because he didn't want anything to happen to him," court records show.

The fourth 18-year-old in the Pontiac told deputies he stayed in the car but saw Cnudde through the window taking items from the freeze and putting them in a bag he had, court records show.

Deputies searched the Pontiac. In its trunk, they found the missing food items and toaster, as well as a baggie of marijuana, court records show.

The next day, Fader, Cnudde, and Taylor appeared in Bay County District Court, where all three were charged with first-degree home invasion and larceny from a building. The charges are 20- and four-year felonies, respectively.

Cnudde was also arraigned on a misdemeanor count of malicious destruction of property between $200 and $1,000.

The trio is to appear for a preliminary examination before District Judge Mark E. Janer at 2 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 17.
Iraqi troops advancing towards Mosul battled on Saturday for the last town left between them and the Islamic State stronghold to the north, which is already under assault from special forces fighting inside the city's eastern districts, Reuters reported.

Saturday's attack on Hammam al-Alil, about 15 km (10 miles) south of Mosul, targeted a force of at least 70 Islamic State fighters in the Tigris river town, commander of the Mosul operations Major-General Najm al-Jabouri said.

Jabouri said the assault began around 10 a.m. (0700 GMT) and some militants had tried to escape across the river, although others put up heavy resistance and the troops had thwarted three attempted suicide car bombings.

"(The battle) is very important - it's the last town for us before Mosul," Jabouri told reporters. Iraqi helicopters were supporting the army, he said, backed also by jets from a U.S.-led air coalition which had been hitting Islamic State targets in the town for several days.

A military statement said security forces had raised the Iraqi flag over a government building in the town, but did not say whether it was fully under their control.

The operation to regain control over Mosul began in the morning of Oct. 17. In addition to Iraqs government forces, local Peshmerga paramilitaries participate in the operation.

The operation is supported by international anti-terrorism coalition air force.

Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq with a population of 1.3 million people, has been under the IS control for more than two years.

Mosul was surrendered almost without a fight during the extremists attack in June 2014.

The Islamic State considers Mosul as its main stronghold in Iraq.
FLINT, MI -- Actress Anne-Marie Johnson was in Flint Saturday, Nov. 5 rallying the vote for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Johnson made her second Michigan stop of the day at the Beauty Images Salon, 3725 South Saginaw Street in Flint, where she spoke to members of the community about the importance of voting in the upcoming presidential election. She said she has been advocating for the Clintons since 1992 when she was part of the first Rock the Vote campaign.

Johnson, who is well-known for her roles on "That's So Raven," "In the Heat of the Night," and "In Living Color" said she has already been to Denver, North Carolina, and Florida just to name a few, but she wanted to make sure she came to Michigan as well.

"I just knew in my stomach I had to come to Michigan," Johnson said. "This is true America and the America I know. The America Donald Trump is describing to the globe is not the America I recognize."

As patrons sat inside the salon getting their hair done and stylists worked they gathered around to hear Johnson talk about the campaign. She said it is more important than ever before for people to get out and vote on Tuesday, Nov. 8.

"This is do-or-die for this country, and that's not rhetoric. That's not hyperbole," Johnson said. "I want to rely on making sure that we show up and when I say 'we' specifically as African Americans, but also 'we' as women need to show up. We're gonna do it, but I'm not satisfied with 270, I want her with over 300 which means it's a mandate which means if Congress stalls any of her decisions, specifically her appointments, America's gonna see this. America's gonna witness this. This is not a fluke. If she gets a mandate, America is gonna be fed up with the stalling. That's why it's important."

Beauty Images Salon Owner Sheena Leaym said Johnson's words were inspiring. She said being able to be involved with the campaign also meant a lot.

Leaym echoed the sentiment that it is important for people to get out and vote.

"A lot of people need to recognize that this election is very important because it's serious, it can go for the worst," Leaym said. "We need to know what we're standing for and continue to stand for it as a whole and everyone come together and be on one accord. We can really do numbers if we all get out and vote. As African Americans, Hispanic, and every race because it's not just about a white and black thing."

Johnson isn't the only actress to make a stop in the Flint-area while on the campaign trail.

Emmy Award-winning actress Uzo Aduba from "Orange is the New Black," actress Bellamy Young from ABC's "Scandal," and Cher have all made appearances in the Flint-area over the past week.

Coming up on Sunday, Nov. 5, Bill Clinton will be campaigning in Michigan at a public "Get Out the Vote" rally in Lansing. On Monday current President Barack Obama will be in Ann Arbor, while presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton will be campaigning in Grand Rapids.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Use your seat belt? Without being too dramatic, police say it could save a life.

In this week's Ask a Trooper, state police Lt. Greg Poulson talks about the law on seat belts and child restraints, the common excuses for not buckling up and the statistics showing why we should. He also talks about the worst part of being a police officer: notifying families of a tragic death.

Have a traffic question? Email state police Lt. Rob Davis and the troopers at the Lakeview and Rockford posts at AskTpr@michigan.gov

Here's Lt. Davis:

I've had a few questions recently concerning child seat laws and thought a good opportunity to go over the restraint laws in general. I reached out to Lt. Greg Poulson of the Rockford Post who has nearly 30 years' experience and can speak honestly as to the impact that wearing seatbelts can have.



Lt. Rob Davis

Lt. Greg Poulson: Despite the best efforts of law enforcement and others to educate people about the importance and benefits of wearing a seat belt, many still do not.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 87 percent of people wear their seat belts, leaving 13 percent of people unrestrained. While this number is a large increase from the meager 60 percent of people who wore seat belts in 1995, the number still is not where it should be, at 100 percent.

According to the Center for Disease Control wearing a seat belt is the most effective way to save lives and reduce injuries in car crashes.

Considering car crashes are the leading cause of death among those between the ages of 5 and 34, you could say wearing a seat belt is the most effective way to save lives, period. And remember, requiring that everyone who rides in your car wear a seat belt, may save the life of your child, friend or other loved ones.

Some people still believe that seat belts either don't help or make things worse. The evidence shows otherwise. More than 50 percent of people who died in car accidents were unrestrained. That may not seem to prove anything, but when you consider that 87 percent of people wear their seat belt, that statistic becomes startling.

It has been proven that wearing a seat belt reduces the rate of serious injuries and deaths in car crashes by 50 percent. One of the main reasons seat belts are so helpful is that they prevent people from being ejected from the car during a crash. People not wearing a seat belt are 30 times more likely to be ejected from their vehicle and 75 percent of people who are ejected from their vehicle die from their injuries. It is estimated that nearly 5,000 deaths per year could be prevented if everyone wore their seat belt.

But, people continue to make excuses as to why they don't want to wear their seat belt. Below are a few of the most common reasons people say they don't wear their seat belt and reasons they should start.

1. "I'm not driving very far." While the fact that you are not driving very far may seem like a perfectly good reason for not wearing a seat belt, it's not. Three out of four crashes (75 percent) occur within 25 miles of home. So while you may not be driving very far, there is still a chance you may be involved in an accident and your seat belt may be the only thing keeping you from being thrown through your windshield and into the tree you just hit.

2. "It hurts me." It may very well be uncomfortable to you, many things that are good for you are not fun. Not many people like to exercise or eat healthy, but they are for your own good. It also becomes habit over time and then you stop realizing the discomfort or inconvenience. Again, a little discomfort is a much better than suffering a severe injury or worse.

3. "I'm riding in the back seat." You can be thrown from a vehicle even if you are riding in the back seat. Not only that, but you also pose a larger risk to the people in the front seat if you are unrestrained. If you are involved in a crash there is nothing to keep you from flying into the person in front of you, possibly causing them injuries. So, if possibly saving your own life isn't enough motivation to buckle up, think about the person sitting in front of you that you may hurt by not wearing your seat belt.

As you can see, there is little argument that seat belt usage plays an important role in our lives. The Michigan State Police steadfastly support the seat-belt and child-restraint laws in this state and will take primary enforcement action at all observed violations of this law.

Michigan has a primary seat belt law, which means law enforcement can stop and ticket motorists solely for not being buckled up.

The law requires:

* Passengers 8-15 to buckle up in all seating positions

* Drivers and front seat passengers to be buckled up

To provide optimal protection for any rider, and to be in compliance with Michigan law, the lap portion of a lap/shoulder belt must be worn low and snug across the hips and the shoulder portion must be snug across the chest, away from the neck and face. The shoulder portion should NEVER be worn behind the back or under the arm.

In older vehicles with separate lap and shoulder restraints, both systems must be used. Improperly wearing a seat belt carries the same penalty as failing to wear a seat belt, and can cause more injury in some crashes than if the belt was not used. Consult your vehicle's owner's manual to determine proper use.

Michigan's child passenger safety law requires:

* Children younger than age 4 to ride in a car seat in the rear seat if the vehicle has a rear seat. If all available rear seats are occupied by children under 4, then a child under 4 may ride in a car seat in the front seat. A child in a rear-facing car seat may only ride in the front seat if the airbag is turned off.

*Children to be properly buckled in a car seat or booster seat until they are 8 years old or 4-feet-9-inches tall. Children must ride in a seat until they reach the age requirement or the height requirement, whichever comes first.

As you can see, wearing a seat belt can be beneficial to both you and others around you. Statistics show that wearing a seat belt makes driving much safer. If your own safety isn't enough to sway you to wear your seat belt, think about the loved ones who would be devastated to lose you. If even that isn't enough think about the fact that police officers can pull you over and give you a ticket just for not wearing your seat belt.

In my twenty-seven years serving in the Michigan State Police I have investigated many accidents and tragic situations. I have also had to deliver death messages to numerous families in the course of my duties.

There is no responsibility more heart wrenching to a police officer than to have to deliver the message of a loved one's tragic death to their family. This is magnified even greater when it involves a traffic crash in which the victim was not restrained properly.

Seat belt usage will save your life. For your sake, your families, friends and the motoring public, please buckle up every time.
Donald Trump is returning to Michigan for the second time in a week, with a rally planned for 6 p.m. Sunday in Sterling Heights.

And his daughter Ivanka will be featured at a Hudsonville event on Monday.

Sunday's rally will be at the Freedom Hill Amphitheater, according to Trump's campaign website.

Tickets are available by clicking here.

Sunday's visit to Michigan is Trump's seventh time in the state since he accepted the Republican nomination for president as his campaign continues to target Michigan voters.

On Monday, Ivanka Trump will attend at Michigan Women in Business Roundtable event at 10:30 a.m. in the Pinnacle Center in Hudsonville.

The Monday event is closed to the public.

Current polling in Michigan shows Hillary Clinton in the lead, with Real Clear Politics showing Clinton ahead by an average of 5 points in recent statewide polls. But many state Republican leaders and Trump supporters still feel the state is within striking distance.

Trump was in the Grand Rapids suburb of Walker last Monday, and his running mate Mike Pence was campaigning in Michigan on Friday and today. Sarah Palin is holding a campaign rally for Trump in northern Michigan on Sunday.
Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama will be in Michigan on Monday in separate get-out-the-vote rallies, while former President Bill Clinton will campaign in the state Sunday.

Hillary Clinton will hold her rally Monday afternoon in Grand Rapids, according to the campaign website, with time and location still being determined.

Obama will hold a rally at 9 a.m. Monday at Fisher Stadium in Ann Arbor, according to the campaign.

Bill Clinton will be in Lansing at noon Sunday, for a rally at the UAW 652 hall, 426 Clare St.

All three events are open to the public. Persons can click here to RVSP for the Hillary Clinton rally, click here for the Obama event and here to see Bill Clinton.

Earlier Saturday, Donald Trump's campaign announced he s returning to Michigan for the second time in a week, with a rally planned for 6 p.m. Sunday at the Freedom Hill Amphitheater in Sterling Heights.

Sunday's visit to Michigan is Trump's seventh time in the state since he accepted the Republican nomination for president as his campaign continues to target Michigan voters.

Current polling in Michigan shows Hillary Clinton in the lead, with Real Clear Politics showing Clinton ahead by an average of 5 points in recent statewide polls. But many state Republican leaders and Trump supporters still feel the state is within striking distance.

Trump was in the Grand Rapids suburb of Walker last Monday, and his running mate Mike Pence was campaigning in Michigan on Friday and today. Sarah Palin is holding a campaign rally for Trump in northern Michigan on Sunday.
JACKSON, MI - The Lofts on Louis downtown Jackson development emerged after an unassuming meal at the Grand River Brewery.

Ryan Henry, co-founder of development and construction group Kincaid Henry, came to the brewery with a friend for a meal and casual conversation about development in the area.

When John Burtka asked about their conversation, he told Henry he wanted to talk.

Now, Kincaid Henry and Burtka's Lofts on Louis are becoming a reality, with construction set to begin at 209 W. Louis Glick Highway next week. The groundbreaking ceremony was Friday afternoon, Nov. 4.

"John, you're used to making 'bubbly' happen, and excitement and partying," said U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, who attended the event. "This will be a party, here. I applaud you."

The four-story, 47,000-square-foot development is supposed to take about a year to complete. The $5.4 million project was helped by a $1.3 million performance-based loan from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.

Burtka and partner Detroit Entrepreneur Development LLC will also receive a nine-year property tax abatement from the city of Jackson.

"You have to have faith that this actually can happen," Henry said.

All city council members had a shovel for the ceremonial dig Friday. Others at the event included Consumers Energy President and CEO Patti Poppe, MEDC representative Dominic Romano and State Rep. Earl Poleski.

"These are the types of things in local communities that drive our state," Romano said. "We're here to support this project."

The Rev. Chas Canoy from St. John the Evangelist Catholic church blessed the property during the groundbreaking.

There's already been great interest in the 18 two-bedroom units and 12 one-bedroom units - which will include granite countertops, nine-foot ceilings, stainless appliances, individual washers and dryers and more.

The four-story mixed-use development was proposed as a first-floor urban grocery along with the 30 apartment units.

Burtka will offer hard-hit tours through the development once the construction moves forward.
KALAMAZOO, MI - Kalamazoo College faculty, students, staff and the community welcomed their new president, Jorge Gonzalez with open arms at Stetson Chapel Saturday afternoon.

The chapel held the inauguration of Gonzalez, Kalamazoo College's 18th president on Saturday, Nov. 5. Gonzalez has been acting as president since July and succeeds Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran, who retired June 30 after 11 years as president.

Wilson-Oyelaran, who became the first woman and first African-American president of Kalamazoo College, announced her retirement in April 2015.

"This is a symbolic ceremony, steeped in the traditions of this institution, reminding us of our shared heritage and the continuity of purpose represented by each of our leaders, past and present," Charlotte Hall, chair of the board of trustees said of Saturday's event.

Other speakers at the ceremony included Kalamazoo Mayor Bobby Hopewell, representatives of the faculty, students and staff, alumni and more. Colleges and universities from around the country also sent representatives to show their support including Western Michigan University President John Dunn.

"I really knew after speaking with him just for a few minutes what a great and amazing man he is," Mayor Hopewell said.

Other speakers expressed their excitement and hope for the college's future with Gonzalez as president.

"In the matter of months since Jorge has taken office, I see the campus transformed," Tanush Jagdish, student representative and junior at Kalamazoo College said.

The 18th president has a history with Kalamazoo College, as his wife Suzie, graduated from the very institution he is now overseeing in 1983.

"My grandfather and father could never have imagined a Mexican would have a chance to be a president somewhere such as K," Gonzalez said in his inaugural address.

Gonzalez reflected on his past, from living in Monterrey, Mexico to his time spent at Michigan State University, where he earned his master's degree and Ph.D. in economics. Gonzalez also touched on the importance of experiential learning, liberal arts as well as globalization and diversity in his address.

"It's truly an honor and tremendous privilege to be given the responsibility to lead an institution that has been here for 183 years," Gonzalez said.

Prior to arriving at Kalamazoo College, Gonzalez served as vice president for academic affairs and dean of Occidental College for six years and was a faculty member at Trinity University for 21 years.

"Earlier he (Gonzalez) said that he had won the lottery," Mayor Hopewell said. "That's not true. We have, here at K and in this community."
President Barack Obama chastised supporters at a rally for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in North Carolina on Friday as tensions spiked when a supporter of Republican opponent Donald Trump stood up and began shouting, Reuters reported.

Obama was interrupted when a white-haired white man in a beret and suit jacket with what appeared to be military patches stood up with a Trump sign and started yelling. He was quickly drowned out by screaming and booing by the crowd, which was predominantly African-American.

Obama repeatedly told the at-capacity crowd jammed into a gym at Fayetteville State University to "focus" and to "settle down."

"Everybody sit down and be quiet for a second!" Obama said. "You've got an older gentleman who is supporting his candidate," he said as the protester was led away.

"We live in a country that respects free speech," he said. "It looks like he might have served in our military  weve got to respect that."
business Storyboard talks to Nestle about new realities of brand building Storyboard Editor Anant Rangaswami spoke to Chandrasekar Radhakrishnan, Senior Vice President & Head of Communications and E-Commerce at Nestle India about the new realities of brand building, the Maggie crises and building brands with purpose.
you are here:
Be warned. Be afraid. Get ready. The biggest disruption to Australia is on its way. Most people know about it. Most people know how it will change everything. But most people arent prepared for the tsunami thats coming.

If you work in retail, your world is about to get turned on its head. If you own a retail business, then youve had fair warning. If you are a big retail player like Myer or David Jones, youd want to think about cashing up and getting out now.

Soon, the likes of Target, Myer, David Jones, Kmart, JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman, Coles, Woolworths and even Aldi are about to get a swift kick up the pants.

Let me make this clear. Whats coming is going to change the fabric of corporate Australia. Some of the biggest names in Aussie retail have their heads on the chopping block. The executioner is coming and, in one swift, fatal blow, it will lop off the heads of incumbent Aussie retailers.

This executioner had already made its impact in the US, UK and Europe. Now its headed for Aussie shores.

This executioner goes by the name Amazon.

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The most dominant company in the world

Amazon is an exceptional company. Most people in Australia, however, have limited experience with it. If you jump onto Amazon.com.au, you will find a selection of books and Kindle books.

Thats it. Thats the extent of Amazons presence here in Australiafor now.

However, when Im back in the UK, things are a little different. When I go to Amazon.co.uk, my selection is a little broader.

The list of departments I can shop from includes:

Books

Electronics and computers

Home, garden, pets and DIY

Clothes, shoes and jewellery

Sports and outdoors

Cars and motorbikes

Fresh

There are more  so many more. Thats just a sample. Now, youd recognise most of those things. But you might be wondering what the category Fresh is.

Fresh is (as the name suggests) fresh food  groceries. Amazon is now a supermarket. Its encroaching the space of traditional bricks-and-mortar supermarkets.

Where Amazon has completely changed the face of retail shopping, its now having the same impact on the supermarket industry. A few months ago, I asked: will Metcash [ASX:MTS] exist in four years time?

Based on my experience and understanding of the tech world, I would say probably not. At the time, I was of the view that Amazon  with its Amazon Fresh service  will swoop in (eventually) and dominate the Aussie grocery market.

While all the focus is on the health of companies like Metcash, Woolworths, Coles and the growing dominance of Aldi, everyone has missed the real threat: Amazon.

Dont underestimate the importance of the Aussie market for Amazon. Just because it isnt here yet doesnt mean it doesnt want to be. Australia poses a unique challenge to Amazons business model.

One of the most important aspects of Amazons service is fast, efficient delivery of goods. If it takes four to five working days, its simply inefficient. You may as well pop to the shops. But if Amazon can deliver anything to your door in a day or less, they become relevant. If they can deliver groceries to your door the same day, why would you bother going to the supermarket?

But Australia is a logistical nightmare for that kind of service. So before Amazon really hits Aussie shores, it wants to make sure it gets it right. Get it wrong, and itll never dominate the Aussie market.

Give me time and Im yours forever

Living in the UK, I see firsthand the benefits of Amazon. Just recently, a pop-up window in my Amazon account let me know I Saved 200 in delivery fees and 50 trips to the shops.

While the 200 saving is nice, its the 50 trips that really impressed me. You see, Amazons been able to give me something that no bricks-and-mortar retailer ever could. Amazon has given me time. The time saved going to a shop, dealing with useless shop assistants, trying to find something thats out of stock anyway.

Thats extra time I got to spend with my wife. Or time to get in that little bit of extra research for Australian Small Cap Investigator or Revolutionary Tech Investor. Or just time to relax and unwind.

Thats the power of companies like Amazon  theyre more than just ecommerce platforms. In fact, Amazon is more than just ecommerce. Its the worlds largest provider of cloud services too.

Its also pushing harder into streaming content. Its taking on Netflix head to head  and both companies are looking to dominate existing TV networks.

And just when you thought that was it, Amazon is also a first mover in the smart home space. Its Amazon Echo (and artificial intelligence system, Alexa) is one of the most innovative pieces of tech Ive ever come across.

What it all adds up to is Amazon getting ready to bring its dominance to the Aussie market. Speaking to The Australian Financial Review yesterday, Justin Braitling, Chief Investment Officer of Watermark Funds Management, said,

[Amazon] will be dropping distribution centres and performance centres in every state next year. They will be doing general merchandise and they will be doing fresh as well. We spoke to the guy rolling out Amazons business here in Australia and in his words: We are going to destroy the retail environment in Australia.

If Braitlings source is accurate (and I think he is), Australian retailers are in trouble. They arent prepared for an Amazon onslaught. They should be, because it will change everything. And perhaps the best investment move in all of this is to short every single Aussie retail company.

Amazons coming and its going to take over Australia.

Regards,

Sam Volkering,

Editor, Money Morning

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The US military killed al-Qaidas leader for northeastern Afghanistan in an air strike last month, in a major blow to the group as it seeks to re-establish safe havens in the country, the Guardian reported.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook described the assault that killed Farouq al-Qahtani as a precision strike and said it took place on October 23 in Kunar, east of the capital, Kabul.

This successful strike is another example of US operations to degrade international terrorist networks and target terrorist leaders who seek to attack the US homeland, our interests and our allies abroad, Cook said in a statement.

He said another al-Qaida leader in the country, Bilal al-Utabi, was targeted in a separate strike, though the results of that attack were not yet known.

Last month, US official said multiple missiles had levelled two compounds in Kunar where the men were believed to be hiding.

One US official said the attack represented the most significant strike against the al-Qaida leadership in Afghanistan in years.

The Pentagon has been actively hunting for Qahtani for four years. He had long-standing ties with Osama bin Laden before his death in 2011 in a US raid on his compound in Pakistan.

Qahtani has operated in Afghanistan since at least 2009 and led an al-Qaida battalion since at least mid-2010.

His deputy Utabi was seen as the second- or third-most senior al-Qaida leader in Afghanistan.
November 05, 2016

Are We To Love Al-Qaeda Or Fear It?

I Saw My Father Dying: A View From Aleppos Government-Held Side:

Even as Syria and Russia threatened an all-out assault on the rebel side of Aleppo, saying Friday was the last chance for people there to exit, they had been unable to put down a counteroffensive by a mix of Qaeda-linked and United States-backed insurgent groups.

Three Qaeda-linked suicide bombers attacked a military position with explosive-packed personnel carriers on Thursday, ...

Sources: U.S. intel warning of possible al Qaeda attacks in U.S. Monday

Sources told CBS News senior investigative producer Pat Milton that U.S. intelligence has alerted joint terrorism task forces that al Qaeda could be planning attacks in three states for Monday.

...

I Saw My Father Dying: A View From Aleppos Government-Held Side:

Instead, they are trying to break the siege, with Qaeda-linked groups and those backed by the United States working together  the opposite of what Russia has demanded.

Sources: U.S. intel warning of possible al Qaeda attacks in U.S. Monday

The source said there has been pressure on al Qaeda and its affiliates AQAP and AQIS (al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent) to regain relevance with its mission.

What is the message the U.S. government is sending with such accounts? Are we to love al-Qaeda or fear it?

Or are we to fall silent in awe of the sheer genius of Obama's strategic planning?

h/t Mark Ames

P.S. That AQ and CIA "rebels" mercenaries are one bunch is, of course, not new. We wrote about Your Moderate Cuddly Homegrown Al-Qaeda since October 2013. What is new is the NYT, the house organ of the U.S. government, now openly reporting it. What is the message in this?

Posted by b on November 5, 2016 at 18:41 UTC | Permalink

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Im writing this column as I sit under an umbrella at glorious Myrtle Beach during a short 4-day vacation away from home.

Its been close to 20 years since I felt the pound of the surf and sand between my toes. Once I moved to Charlotte from New York, and then to Morganton about 11 years ago, the mountains had taken top slot in my places to be, so I didnt think much about the beach until my son and his wife invited me to join them right before Halloween. It would also give me some Grandma time with my granddaughter who had just turned 7.

Its not that I havent had my share of beach memories. My first had to be that of Coney Island with my parents who knew well the thrill of the beach and busy fun-filled boardwalk.

When I was 8, and my parents purchased a split-level home for $15,000 built on a potato farm on Long Island, we were surrounded by water.

Sunken Meadow State Park had become our beach escape as kids. It was blanket-to-blanket sandscapes and a mixture of ethnicity in languages and musical tastes courtesy of battery run radios, and tunes ranged from Frankie Avalon and Fabian to Latin music with a fearsome beat.

The beach was so much fun for my siblings and me, even the 15-minute car ride home sitting on towels that Mom had spread out in the backseat of Dads old Chevy. We didnt care that sand was everywhere, even in our ears, because it was family time.

A Honolulu vacation followed when I was 19 and memories of glorious beaches and the majestic mountains of Diamond Head were clouded by the tired faces of servicemen on R and R from battle in Vietnam. It left me feeling sad.

I was next on Lumley Beach in Freetown, Sierra Leone, West Africa, at 21. Taking what the Africans called a poda-poda (open-aired minibus) from the office to the beach on Saturday afternoons was quite an experience as we were packed in tightly, me in a tie-dyed dress attempting to converse in the spoken pigeon English of Freetown.

Lumley was always deserted except for an occasional fisherman, but I loved the tranquility. I found a cove that I labeled my special place and can still picture it in my mind some 48 years later because it was Mother Natures finest gift during a time of exploration for me.

I met many Europeans and Lebanese merchants on my trips to Lumley and, on one afternoon, I met a British couple and their daughter Christine who was 10 years old. After that, the couple always invited me to travel with them to the beach in their little air-conditioned Fiat, a welcome respite from the cramped poda-poda.

Lumley was special except for one afternoon when jellyfish washed onto the shore and frightened Christine who had swam out too far. They wrapped around her and she panicked. Im not much of a swimmer, but I somehow got to her after grabbing a jellyfish that had wrapped around my arm and ripping it away from my body. We went to the Peace Corps physician on staff and were both fine, but Lumley had lost its magic after that day.

There were trips to Fire Island with the kids, another trip to Hawaii courtesy of a visit to Maui, and enjoyment on the crystal-white and light-pink sands of Bermuda.

And, now, decades later, I sit here at Myrtle Beach, marveling at the beauty of the pounding waves as the tide rolls in, watching my granddaughter build a sandcastle for her toy mermaid doll, and listening to the cries of the seagulls hunting for a scrap of food.

Which beach out of all of them would I call my favorite?

There is no answer to that because whatever beach Im lucky enough to be sitting on is an amazing creation of nature and truly a blessing to all of us as long as we make time to enjoy it.

And, yes, I will return to Myrtle Beach next October because 20 years is much too long to wait to appreciate what I could have enjoyed all these years.

Peg DeMarco can be reached at pegdemarco@earthlink.net.
The logo of the ride-sharing service Uber is seen in front of its headquarters on Aug. 26, 2016, in San Francisco, California. (Photo : Getty Images/Justin Sullivan)

Findings of a recent study undertaken by three universities in the United States has suggested that ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft may discriminate on the basis of gender and race. The researchers took as many as 1,500 rides in the Boston and Seattle regions to collect data from three different taxi-hailing companies.



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The study published by National Bureau of Economic Research found that compared to the white riders, black rides had to often endure longer waiting times as well as frequent cancellation. Similarly, women may be duped by the drivers, as they have often been taken on elongated routes and also charged more.



The study was conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, and the University of Washington over two years. Undergraduates at these universities were provided with identical phones with ride-sharing apps from Uber, Lyft and Flywheel. They were each asked to take rides on a few selected routes.



The undergraduates were asked to note down a few details like when they requested the ride, when the driver accepted the request, when they were picked up and when they reached their destination. The researchers at Seattle belonged to different racial backgrounds, while each researcher who participated in the Boston experiment, requested rides under two names - one white name and another typically black name.



During the experiment, it was observed that both UberX and Lyft took about 28 percent time longer to accept trip requests from black riders in Seattle compared to those from their white counterparts. It was also found that women were exposed to longer routes by some drivers for profiteering, BBC reported.



In Boston, the cancellation rate for black-sounding names was more than twice as frequent as for those using white-sounding names. Moreover, it was found that the chances of ride requests from males with black-sounding names more likely to be cancelled.



On the other hand, female passengers were taken to their destinations via elongated routes. Female researchers stated that often some drivers were "chatty" and they drove them on very long routes. Sometimes, they even drove through an intersection several times just to charge more. The researchers noted that apparently the female riders were exposed to extra travel for profiteering as well as to flirt with passengers.



Concluding their report, the authors noted, "Passengers have faced a history of discrimination in transportation systems." They added that top hail-riding companies like Uber and Lyft present the "opportunity to set right the long prevailing discrimination or worsen it." The authors suggested that removing names of the guilty drivers from trip bookings may help to ease the immediate problem, but other means should be introduced to end the discrimination."



Watch undercover agents investigating alleged discrimination by taxi drivers in Washington DC:






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To further protect the integrity of our editorial content, we keep a strict separation between our sales teams and authors to remove any pressure or influence on our analyses and research.

Read our editorial policy to learn more about our process.
China's new Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter (Photo : Twitter)

China unveiled for the first time in public its new fifth generation jet fighter during the China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition 2016 in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province.



A pair of the new Chengdu J-20 fighters made a flyby over thousands of spectators during the air show\s opening ceremonies on Tuesday, the Global Times reported. After the flyby, one of the fighters immediately left off into the distance, while the other place performed several turns before following its companion and ending the minute long display.



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The brief demonstration was met with cheers and applause from the audience. Meanwhile, a member of the Pakistani Air Force delegation described the J-20 first public flight as being "impressive."



While this is the first time that the Chinese air force showcased the J-20 to the public, images of the new fifth generation stealth fighter were first leaked online in 2010.



China is said to have developed the J-20 as a rival to the United States' own fighters, the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning II.



The J-20 has been regularly compared to the F-22 due to their similar designs, particularly in the application of stealth technologies like reduced radar cross sections and the use of radar absorbent materials to further hide the planes from detection. Russia is the only other country with a fifth generation fighter in active development, the Sukhoi T-50.



However, World Military Affairs Magazine editor Chen Hu noted that, while there are similarities, the two planes being compared take on vastly different roles. He explained that the F-22 is designed primarily as an air-superiority fighter that is also meant to take down anti-air defenses.



On the other hand, the J-20 seems to be intended more as a bomber to tackle large ships like aircraft carriers. Chan said that the different roles are due to the two countries having different defense priorities.



Experts said that China is likely sending a signal to other countries with the public display of the new aircraft.



According to Sam Roggeveen of the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia, the country is showing great confidence in the capabilities if the plane with the demonstration, Reuters reported.


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Gov. Greg Abbott and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn responded to reports Friday that al-Qaida would be targeting Texas before Election Day.

CBS News reported early Friday morning that al-Qaida could be planning attacks in Texas, New York and Virginia the day before the election. Abbott said his office was working with law enforcement officials and the states department of public safety to monitor the potentially dangerous situation, although the CBS report does not specify what the threat is or why Texas, New York and Virginia are being targeted.

RELATED: FBI, NYPD assess possible al-Qaida threat on US election eve

Texans should go about their daily lives as usual, but remain vigilant over the next several days and report any suspicious activity to state or local law enforcement, Abbott said in a statement. The State of Texas will continue to do everything it can to ensure the safety and security of its citizens.

A source told CBS News that the Federal Bureau of Investigations is taking the threat seriously and has alerted joint terrorism task forces on the matter.

It wasn't immediately clear how the intelligence came to investigators' attention. An NYPD spokesman says in a statement the information "lacks specificity."

RELATED: Record set in Bexar early voting

In a statement, the FBI said it was working closely with law enforcement agencies and sharing intelligence reports.

Officials say they regularly assess all possible security threats ahead of major events.

As Election Day nears, federal law enforcement is planning for several worst-case scenarios, the CBS report stated.

Cornyn urged vigilance in the wake of the threat of election-eve terror attacks, saying people should follow the "see something-say something" rule.

"It's obviously cause for vigilance, and the fact of the matter is the FBI director has said there are open homegrown terrorist investigations in every FBI field office in America. The terrorists obviously starting with al-Qaida have now morphed into the Islamic state, Isis or Isil but what they're doing now is effectively using social media and the internet to inspire people here in America to take up arms and to kill innocent civilians. So I'm confident that they are doing the best they can, but the threat is proliferating and obviously the ability they might have to disrupt the election and make a big impact, they're going to take advantage of that," Cornyn said, answering questions from reporters after a speech Friday.

Asked what he'd tell concerned Texans, Cornyn said, "I guess at the airport now they say 'If you see something, say something,' and really the eyes and ears of the regular citizens like all of us are the best anti-terrorist weapon that the law enforcement agencies have. Because if you do see something irregular, something that causes some concern, just report it to local law enforcement. They have the organization in place to deal with it,to investigate it, to see if it's a serious problem or not," Cornyn said. "It really ... falls to all of us to do our part, not just have law enforcement handle it by themselves

RELATED: Texas' Abbott says go about daily life while threat assessed

The Texas Department of Public Safety released a statement shortly after the governor's saying the agency was "constantly in touch with fellow law enforcement and intelligence officials" regarding the terror threat.

"DPS is continually monitoring events involving potential public safety impacts across the state and nation. We can also assure Texans that we adjust our level of vigilance to meet any potential or emerging threats, and will also adjust our security measures as threats warrant," the statement read.

Staff writer Peggy Fikac and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

kbradshaw@express-news.net

Twitter: @kbrad5
British Banker Rurik Jutting Charged With Two Counts Of Murder (Photo : Getty Images)

A 31-year-old male secondary school teacher in Hong Kong entered on Thursday a guilty plea to sexual intercourse and indecently assaulting three minor students. With his admission of his crimes with the High Court, the man faces jail term.



He admitted to five counts of unlawful sexual intercourse and three counts of indecent assault. It was actually a 14-year-old female student who approached the chemistry teacher and invited him to have a meal on March 1, 2014, South China Morning Post reported.



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After the meal, they went to his house, talked, hugged and kissed. The student told her teacher she liked him, and they entered into a relationship. They had sex a month after in a rented room at a Lamma Island guest house. Since then, they were intimate at the students house and another guest house in Mui Wu, but they used contraception such as the pill and condoms, until May 2015.



After four months, another female student, 14, told the teacher she liked him, and after they went out, they became lovers on their second date. But in July 2015, while watching a movie, the teacher placed his hand in her underwear which led to a break up.



The second student told her friend, a 15-year-old female student, what happened. In the same month, it was the third student the teacher was seeing. When she once visited him home, he allegedly kissed and molested the third student. They had sex, but she gave in only because she was frightened by the Christian teachers request.



Two weeks ago, he suggested to the second student for a breakup, who, in turn, reported him to another teacher on the same day.



Justice Andrew Chan Hing-wai adjourned sentencing until Nov. 21, while experts are preparing the psychiatric and psychological reports on the teacher.



According to The Standard, unlawful sexual intercourse with minors is punishable with five years jail term.


New members inducted into Institute of ...
VDZ Publishers Night (Photo : Getty Images)

Because his comments about Chinese people, Belgians who speak French and gays placed trade between China and the European Union in danger, Germanys European Commissioner apologized to them.



Last week, Guenther Oettinger, at a German business forum, called Chinese people slit eyes, made a joke about compulsory gay marriage and spoke against Belgiums attempts to prevent a trade agreement between Canada and the EU, Reuters reported.



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He issued an apology after EC President Jean-Claude Juncker called him on Wednesday. Chinas Foreign Ministry did not like Oettingers slit-eyes remarks which the ministry said is a reflection of the baffling sense of superiority among politicians in the west.



Before the apology, EU Commissioner Guenther Oettinger was only willing to admit his remarks on Oct. 25 were only sloppy. The commissioner explained that he made those comments to jolt businesses out of any complacency toward competition from China. But he eventually had time to reflect on his utterances.



In his 300-word statement, the EU commissioner apology stated, I can now see that the words I used have created bad feelings and may even have hurt people  This was not my intention and I would like to apologize for any remark that was not as respectful as it should have been.



In delivering the wake-up call to his German and European listeners, Oettinger insisted he has great respect for the dynamics of the Chinese economy because China is a partner and a tough competitor.






A total of 6,242 voters in Hale County already have cast their votes in the Nov. 8 General Election. Thats almost a thousand more than in the last presidential race in 2012, and almost equal to eight years ago when Barack Obama defeated John McCain to win his first term.

Early voting ended Friday, with the general election set for Tuesday, Nov. 8. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

County Clerk Latrice Kemp late Friday reported that during the two weeks of early balloting, 4,358 cast ballots at the courthouse in Plainview, 451 in Hale Center, 247 in Petersburg and 544 in Abernathy. In a separate Tax Ratification Election for Cotton Center ISD, 26 have voted early during the same two-week period. Petersburg ISD also is conducting a TRE on Nov. 8, but its part of the General Election ballot in the affected voting precincts.

In addition to the in-person early voting numbers, Kemp reports that 642 mail ballots have been returned to her office with another 109 still outstanding.

The 6,242 total early votes to date this year compared to 5,325 in 2012 and 6,387 in 2008.

On Election Day, polling places include:

--Pct. 101, 102, 112: Ollie Liner Center, 2000 S. Columbia, Plainview

--Pct. 103, 104, 105: First United Methodist Church, 1001 W. Seventh St., Plainview

--Pct. 110: Martin Resources, 1920 Hwy. 194, Plainview

--Pct. 111: Seth Ward Baptist Church, 601 E. 24th St., Plainview

--Pct. 202, 203, 204, 205, 206: Hale County Courthouse, 500 Broadway, Plainview

--Pct. 213, 316: Hale Center School Technology Center, 1209 Ave. D, Hale Center

--Pct. 214: Petersburg Community Center, Petersburg

--Pct. 215, 318: Abernathy City Hall Courtroom, 811 Ave. D, Abernathy

--Pct. 304, 306, 307, 308: Trinity Building, Wayland Baptist University, 820 Utica, Plainview

--Pct. 305: YMCA, 313 Ennis, Plainview

--Pct. 317: Cotton Center First Baptist Church, 2324 FM 179, Cotton Center (General Election and TRE)

--Pct. 406, 408: PISD Education Complex, Board Room, 2411 Yonkers, Plainview

--Pct. 407, 409: First Assembly of God, 1300 N. I-27, Plainview

--Pct. 419: Edmonson Baptist Church, 113 E. First, Edmonson

--Pct. 420, County Barn Precinct 4, 883 FM 179, Halfway

Voters should bring both their voter registration card and an approved form of photo ID to cast a ballot. Those who do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain a form of approved photo ID now have additional options when voting in person.

According to the Office of the Texas Secretary of State, those who dont have any of the required photo IDs can still vote by (1) signing a declaration at the polls explaining why the voter is reasonably unable to obtain one of the seven forms of approved photo ID, and (2) providing one of various forms of supporting documentation.

Supporting documentation can be a certified birth certificate (must be an original), a valid voter registration certificate, a copy or original of one of the following: current utility bill, bank statement, government check, or paycheck, or other government document that shows the voters name and an address, although government documents which include a photo must be original and cannot be copies. If a voter meets these requirements and is otherwise eligible to vote, the voter will be able to cast a regular ballot in the election.

The seven forms of approved photo ID are:

--Texas driver license issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS)

--Texas Election Identification Certificate issued by DPS

--Texas personal identification card issued by DPS

--Texas license to carry a handgun issued by DPS

--United States military identification card containing the persons photograph

--United States citizenship certificate containing the persons photograph

--United States passport

With the exception of the U.S. citizenship certificate, the approved photo ID must be current or have expired no more than four years before being presented for voter qualification at the polling place.
Lazadas Acquisition of Singapore Online Grocer to Boost Its Presence in SE Asia

Alibaba founder and chairman Jack Ma waves as he leaves a hotel in Singapore following a meeting with investors in 2014. (Photo : Getty Images)

RedMart Ltd's presence in Southeast Asia is expected to expand after Lazada Group, an online shopping company backed by China e-commerce titan Alibaba Group Holding, agreed to buy the Singapore online grocer.



Alibaba-backed Lazada, which sells goods from smartphones to baby products throughout the region of 600 million people, said in a statement that it will buy Redmart to benefit from its operational and technological capabilities.



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Redmart, which was established in 2011, has its own fleet of delivery vans and offers daily home delivery of fresh produce and frozen foods.



A Wall Street Journal report cited sources familiar with the transaction as saying that the sale involved about $50 million.



RedMart postponed its plans to expand overseas in May after it encountered funding problems earlier this year. The company said on its website that its total funding is $27 million, after raising $23 million in a Series B funding in 2014. Its investors included SoftBank Group Corp, Vissionaire Venture, a San Francisco-based firm and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, among others.



Since its launch four years ago, Lazada has been pushing for its expansion in Southeast Asia. Alibaba said in April said it will pay about $1 billion to buy major shares in the company.



Lazada said in the statement that the acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of the year and RedMart will be allowed to operate independently even after the acquisition.



Hugh Mason, a co-founder of JFDI, the pioneer incubator in the region, said that many Southeast Asian tech startups fail to attract investors that will help fund them during the early stages since most investors from the region are more comfortable with traditional assets or established businesses.



Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Credit Suisse Group AG served as advisors on the deal, the press release said.



Lazada operates and promotes online shopping in Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.


WWE Raw Review; An alternative way to how WWE should book Kevin Owens vs Seth Rollins going forward into Survivor Series

Kevin Owens standing tall (Photo : gettyimages.co.uk)

Kevin Owens and Seth Rollins doing battle at a house show (Photo : gettyimages.co.uk)

Ever since the powers that be decided to split the WWE brand into Raw and Smackdown live, arguably it's been Smackdown or The Blue Team, that has excelled in the rating wars and in the genuine art of storytelling.



A shorter show and more focus on promoting the talent the right way could be the reason for this. In the last couple of weeks, however, The Red Team that's known as Raw has come back well by making some good decisions in terms of booking.



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First, the decision to get Bill Goldberg back into the WWE after a 12-year absence, although it's not being well received by fans as it can be, to be fair to the creative they have pulled things back somewhat by adding Rusev into a potential feud with The Big Man.



This decision to put The Bulgarian Brute somewhere towards the main event picture is a good decision in my humble opinion. Former US champions Rusev has shown he is a very talented wrestler, after all, he was unbeaten for a year before backstage politics slightly ruined his push into the main event picture.



The reason why I make such a reference to the Goldberg and Lesnar feud is because the WWE have already set up a feud after feud (Rusev vs Goldberg). Potentially the same could be said in regards to another feud that is currently brewing between The Architect Seth Rollins and Candian superstar Kevin Owens.



After losing their title match at Hell In A Cell, it was obvious that Rollins was naturally going to play some part in this week's Raw, which he did and the way he did was due to clever booking from the creative team.



In this week's Raw, there was a segment which at the end of it which saw Raw manager Mick Foley make a match between Roman Reigns against Chris Jericho for his US title, a very smart move there. What put the icing on the cake of that move, however, was that Owens was going to be at ringside for his old pal Jericho.



The match between The Big Dog and Y2J, although arguably ended in a disqualification due to Kevin Owens interference, it was what happened after the match that got many "licking their lips in the WWE Universe as Reigns faced a beat down from the two Candian's KO and Jericho.



That didn't last too long as The Architect Rollins came and made the save for his former Sheild brethren and that's where the show ended, which sets up this feud beautifully. I think I have the answer as to how this feud should go.



This week's Raw closed on a cliffhanger, will Roman and Seth become an alliance or won't they? That was great, but the creative team need to build on this and there's no better way to take this feud (Owens and Rollins) by branching it off with a Jericho and Reigns feud.



In my humble opinion, a tag team match up would be a good introduction to getting this feud going between the four men. Of course, the feud between Seth Rollins and Kevin Owens is very much in full flow now, I get that, but I think Jericho and Reigns are needed to be put in this feud to help Roman finally get the approval of the crowd.



The best way to do that is get a tag team match set up between the four men and put it on the card for Survivor Series, or make it be that Seth Rollins gets included in the five on five match and make it be that both men (Reigns and Rollins) ruin team Raws chances by taking out Jericho and Owens to ruin their team's chances of victory.



That might make them move to Smackdown due to their betrayal, but that might make a move for a Sheild reunion on the cards? Don't rule out anything with the WWE creative team, the possibilities are endless!


U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement / U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

A woman was arrested in San Jose on suspicion of attempting to sell knock-off cosmetic products imported from Asia that officials say likely contain hazardous materials, including lipstick that can glue lips together.

The suspect, whose name was not released, was investigated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security after agents discovered multiple shipments to her home by a known counterfeit exporter in Asia.

Counterfeit cosmetics and beauty products can lead to long-term health problems and can contain hazardous materials including, cyanide, arsenic, mercury, lead, urine and rat droppings, said officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security Investigations.

Those who conduct the illegal import and sale of these items are doing so with complete disregard for public safety and will be held accountable for their criminal actions, said Ryan L. Spradlin, special agent in charge of HSI in San Francisco.

If charged and convicted, the suspect can face up to three years in prison and a fine of up to $500,000.

The Santa Clara County district attorneys office is currently reviewing the case to determine whether to press charges, said James Schwab, a spokesman for ICE.

Investigators seized close to $100,000 worth of counterfeit products from the suspects home, including lipstick, hair-styling products, eyelash adhesive, powder compacts, eyeshadow, eyeliner and electronic curlers and hair straighteners, Schwab added.

Information on how the woman was selling the products was not immediately available.

Special agents confiscated from the womans home a number of fake products under the guise of popular makeup brands, including Kylie Lip Kits and MAC.

Last October, news that fake websites were selling counterfeit Kylie Lip Kits spread quickly after consumers tweeted their surprise at the side effects caused by the products. Many, unknowingly, used the websites to purchase the fake products believing they were receiving a deal on the coveted lip glosses.

One person posted a video of her lips glued together after using a knock-off lip kit. Another user tweeted that the lip gloss she ordered contained gasoline.

Counterfeit cosmetics can pose a serious risk to consumers health as they often contain unregulated ingredients, Spradlin said.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani
Beyonce and Jay Z got into formation for Democrat Hillary Clinton at a "Get Out the Vote" rally in Cleveland, Ohio, Friday night. But the free concert starring two of music's biggest names drew some controversy.

Wearing a polka-dot pantsuit, a nod to Clinton's campaign trail fashion choice, Beyonce belted out her anthem "Freedom" from her top-selling "Lemonade" album, and a few other songs, complete with backup dancers in pantsuits. Jay Z also took the mic before introducing Clinton to the crowd. Clinton joined the power couple on stage and urged voters for their support.
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AMSTERDAM  Three suspects sought for stealing from cars were captured Friday afternoon after running away from a crash in a car they had stolen, Amsterdam police said.

City police said they were on the lookout for a car whose occupants stole purses from parked unoccupied vehicles at a town of Amsterdam business by smashing the car windows. Police spotted the car, which fled, sideswiped a car at Market and Division streets, lost control and crashed into the pole.
1 Voting access: A federal appeals court on Friday blocked an Arizona law making it a felony to collect early ballots, a win for the Democratic get-out-the-vote effort shortly before election day. The order from an 11-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means it wont be a crime for groups to go door to door to collect early ballots from voters and deliver them to the polls. Its a tactic especially effective in minority communities. A three-judge panel had rejected a bid last week from Democrats and some voters to block the law. They allege it violates the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act because it hurts minorities ability to vote. The Republican-controlled Legislature enacted the law, which GOP Gov. Doug Ducey signed.

2 Train safety: Federal investigators found numerous safety violations in New Jersey Transits commuter train operations, including the lack of on-board emergency tools and working fire extinguishers, and trains stopping too close to each other. NJ Transit Executive Director Steve Santoro disclosed the findings of a Federal Railroad Administration review at a state oversight hearing Friday. The hearing was scheduled after Septembers fatal train crash in Hoboken that killed one woman and injured more than 100 people. An Associated Press analysis of safety data from January 2011 through July 2016 found that NJ Transit trains have been involved in 157 accidents since the start of 2011, three times as many as the largest commuter railroad, the Long Island Rail Road.
When voters head to the polls Tuesday, they will be faced with requests for two millages, both renewals.

Faced with crumbling roads and a lack of funds from the state, voters will be asked to renew 1 mill for city and county roads.

If approved, the millage would raise more than $3.4 million for the purpose of continuing constructing, maintaining, repairing and improving highway, road, street and bridge systems in Midland County, including the cities of Midland and Coleman and the village of Sanford. One mill is equal to $1 for every $1,000 of taxable valuation.

The city of Midland would receive 60 percent, or $2.1 million, and Midland County would glean the other 40 percent for township roads. One mill is equal to $1,000 of taxable valuation.

Currently, county residents have approved two separate road millages, each for up to 1 mill. The first was renewed in 2012 by a 67.9 to 32.1 percent margin. This is the one up for renewal on Tuesday. It was first enacted during the early 1970s. If passed, the millage would run from 2017 to 2020.

The other 1 mill road millage voters approved in 2014 by a 59-41 percent margin. This millage runs through 2018, when the electorate will probably be asked for a renewal.

If voters turn down the 1 mill renewal request on Tuesday, it would mean an approximately $1.8 million gap between what is needed to maintain the system in good repair and what is needed to avoid a sharp decline in conditions, stated Brian McManus, city of Midland engineer. The Midland County Road Commission estimates that 36 percent of local roads are in good condition, 34 percent are fair and 30 percent poor. Renewal of the millage will continue to trend road conditions into the good and fair categories and decrease the number of roads in the poor category.

In 2014, Midland County Road Commission Interim Manager Russ Inman stated that 27 percent of the roads are in good condition while 37 percent are deemed fair and 36 percent poor.

I did talk with (the Midland) City Council in January during our planning retreat and they were very supportive of it, McManus shared earlier this year with the Midland County Board of Commissioners. I explained to them we are getting all our maintenance work done with these road millages. This would be keeping our assets from deteriorating. Streets are an asset, they need to be protected.

The other millage is a 0.25-mill renewal for public transportation (County Connection).

If approved, the renewal would provide funding to continue existing levels of countywide public transportation services exclusive of transportation services provided by the city of Midland for the years 2016 to 2019. If approved and levied in its entirety, the millage is estimated to raise $860,427 in the first year.

Since its inception in 2000, Midland County residents have been very supportive of a millage for County Connection. The 2000 request was for 0.15 mill. The last time there was an increase, in 2008 when the millage went from 0.15 to 0.25 mill, the margin of approval was 55 percent to 45 percent. In 2012, the millage passed by a 59.5 percent to 40.5 percent margin.

The actual 2016 road millage request reads as follows:

Shall the County of Midland, Michigan (hereafter County) renew the previously voted increase in the limitation on the total amount of general ad valorem taxes which may be imposed for all purposes upon all taxable real and personal property in Midland County, as provided in Article 9, Section 6 of the Michigan Constitution of 1963, as amended, which last resulted in a levy of 1.0 Mill ($1.00 per $1,000.00) of taxable valuation of such property as finally equalized, for a levy of up to 1.00 Mill of taxable valuation in 2017 through 2020, both inclusive, apportioned according to the statutory formula found in to Act 133, Public Acts of Michigan, 1968, for the purpose of continuing construction, maintaining, repairing and improving highway, road, street and bridge systems in the County, including the Cities of Midland and Coleman, and the Village of Sanford, which if fully levied, is estimated to raise $3,441,7109 in the first year?

The Public Transportation Services millage reads:

Shall the previously voted increase in the limitation on the total amount of general ad valorem taxes which may be imposed for all purposes upon real and personal property in Midland County to fund public transportation services, which last resulted in a levy of up to 0.25 Mill ($0.25 per $1,000) of taxable valuation, be renewed for levy of up to 0.25 Mill ($0.25 per $1000.00) of taxable valuation as finally equalized, in the year 2016 - 2019, both inclusive, as authorized in Article 9,  6, of the Michigan Constitution of 1963, as amended, for the purpose of providing funding to continue existing levels of countywide public transportation services, exclusive of transportation services provided by the City of Midland, which if approved and levied in its entirety is estimated to raise $860,427.00 in the first year?
Actor Mel Gibson attends the premiere of Warner Bros. Pictures' 'Mad Max: Fury Road' at TCL Chinese Theatre on May 7, 2015 in Hollywood, California. (Photo : Getty Images/Kevin Winter)

Mel Gibson's "Resurrection," the film about Jesus Christ's resurrection is still three years from now as it is a big story that will explore the happenings surrounding the event. The movie is a follow-up of the "The Passion of the Christ" which is a blockbuster R-rated film in 2004, making more than $600 million worldwide over a $30 million budget.



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Gibson guested on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" on Nov. 1, Tuesday, and discussed about the possible 2019 resurrection movie. He teased it will not only focus on the resurrection itself but more.



"It's an amazing event and to underpin that with the things around it is really the story," Gibson said on the show. "It's not some kind of chronological telling of just that event. That could be boring.'"



The actor turned filmmaker said the "Resurrection" will have "bad guys from another realm." It will cover what happened to the three days after the death of Christ.



Gibson believes it is worth thinking about having part of the movie taking place in hell as it will explore the three-day period between Christ's death and resurrection. He made it clear there is a legitimate story to tell about the resurrection after Stephen Colbert jested that the subject may not have a lot of stories.



The 60-year-old filmmaker will be working with screenwriter Randall Wallace for "Resurrection," according to The Hollywood Reporter. They have worked together in "Braveheart" and the original Christ movie. After being revealed earlier this year, the sequel to Christ's story has yet to find a financing of any kind, Movieweb reported.



Gibson's 2004 hit described Christ's sufferings during his final days, crucifixion and death. The film starred Jim Caviezel as Christ, Maia Morgenstern as Mary and Monica Bellucci as Mary Magdalene. It drew a large number of religious moviegoers and received three Oscar nominations.



Gibson is currently promoting for his real-life war drama, "Hacksaw Ridge" which is getting a lot of positive buzz lately. It is his return to directorial job after a decade-long hiatus as his last project was "Apocalypto" in 2006.



Watch Gibson talk about the upcoming movie on Colbert's show:






There's a disturbing pattern, especially in the United States, that all entrepreneurs face: Criminal acts drive an increase in regulation and governance, which leads to more costs of compliance, to avoid penalties and litigation. This includes payment-card industry (PCI) compliance if you accept credit cards, HIPAA compliance if you see patients, workers compensation laws, data privacy rules -- the list goes on and on.

Consider our upcoming election (don't get me started): The much-discussed email breach by Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump's insistence that Clinton's regulatory policies will "drive business out," are prime examples of how advances in technology and criminal activities and governmental responses are affecting U.S. businesses.

Related: When Starting a Business, Beware All the Taxes and Regulations

But the burden of compliance has to be nonpartisan. After all, more than 20 percent of small business owners claim that government regulation is the single most important challenge they face. And 47 percent of organizations say they struggle to keep up with changes in regulations and adjust their policies accordingly.

So, how can entrepreneurs address the trickiest regulatory pitfalls?

The secret lies in finding the right balance between mitigating business risks and allocating resources. We call this "practical compliance."

What's your risk tolerance?

Every business is different, of course. However, too many regulatory requirements are written as one-size-fits-all solutions. A hospital is very different from a dental practice, for example, but HIPAA requirements for the two are the same. This happens despite the fact that both entities have very different risk-tolerance and resource-allocation scenarios.

Finding your level of risk tolerance as it relates to regulatory compliance, then, is key to "practical compliance."

If you don't allocate any resources to compliance, for example, your employees can spend 100 percent of their time working on the most important priorities of the business. That sounds ideal, but if you're not allocating any time and resources to understanding and implementing regulatory compliance, you're exposing yourself to unnecessary risk.

Let's say you run a dental practice. Now, consider the implications for HIPAA (the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability law providing data privacy and security provisions for safeguarding medical information).

At your dental practice, neglecting these HIPAA compromises, which protect health information, might expose the practice to financial and reputation risk, should a data breach, patient complaint or HIPAA audit occur.

Related: 5 Trends Reinventing Healthcare

On the other hand, if you hire a full-time compliance officer, overinsure the business and work to understand and implement every law and regulatory requirement, you may have nothing left to pay your bills or grow your business.

Striking the right balance

Dealing with regulations requires manpower, energy and money. You can't get around it, but that doesn't mean regulations are bound to crush your entrepreneurial spirit. Determine the right balance by taking these steps:

1. Designate an owner. The cost of hiring a full-time employee to focus on compliance goes far beyond his or her base salary. You'll pay 10 percent or more to cover various taxes and workers' compensation insurance, and company-paid portions of medical insurance and 401(k) contributions will further drive up the cost of hiring a full-time employee.

Most new businesses don't have the resources to cover these expenses. Instead, find the right person who you can designate to lead the charge internally. Ensure this person has the skill set to research, teach and implement a culture of compliance in your business.

He or she should have a thorough understanding of your business's inner workings, should be flexible and inquisitive and should be able to stay abreast of the always-changing regulatory environment.

By designating the right person, you'll be able to make progress more quickly and streamline decision-making and execution.

2. Determine your risk tolerance, and align your priorities. Meet with your owner to discuss your key priorities. What compliance areas are the "hot spots" in your industry? For example, in healthcare, it could be HIPAA or OSHA. What's going to keep you up at night? Focus on those areas first. You can't do it all, but focusing on the "critical few" will help you make progress and mitigate your risks along the way.

Also, there are different types of insurance policies that can quickly mitigate your risk. For example, in healthcare, we advise practices to obtain data breach coverage, which specifically focuses on costs relating to fines, penalties and notification of patients if a breach occurs.

3. Budget time and resources. Now, it's time to realistically determine what all of this will cost. Going through the budgeting process helps refine your risk tolerance, too. Perhaps something you wanted to do can wait, or maybe something is much cheaper than you originally thought.

Established companies fare better at meeting regulations without draining their resources because they have experience navigating such legal waters. Smaller businesses can face a higher cost trying to adhere to regulations. So, establishing a budget of time and money will help you meet your goals.

Every hour of an employee's time costs about $20. In-house training may cost $3,000 to $5,000 or more per year. Documenting policies and procedures may cost another $1,000 to $2,000 per year.

Your costs should correlate with your risk tolerance. What are you willing to spend to reduce the risk of penalties, data breaches, employee or customer complaints, etc.? Figure out your practical risk level; then, allocate a budget each year to mitigate them. You'll never mitigate all your risks, but by going through the budget exercise, you'll focus on the areas of greatest concern.

4. Speak with peers and trusted advisors. Even the most savvy entrepreneurs can't do everything alone, and the consequences of a misstep in compliance could be disastrous. However, there's no need to reinvent the wheel.

Speak to your peers or hire a trusted advisor to kickstart the process. Seek guidance from attorneys, accountants, compliance consultants or your IT provider. All will provide valuable experience to lessen your learning curve. Tapping into your network of various outside experts will allow you to focus on the thing you do best: growing your business.

Related: Compliance Is a Pain. How to Outsource It.

Regulations aren't going away. In fact, they will likely intensify. However, adopting a practical approach will help you not only find the right balance for your business, but also mitigate your risks by allocating the right level of resources. Don't let the requirements overwhelm you.

Focus on the critical areas, and adopt a culture of compliance from the start. You'll sleep better, and your customers and employees will benefit from your leadership.

Related:

Protect Your Business From Regulatory Pitfalls, With 'Practical Compliance'

Here's how to see Which One of Your Friends Are Using Tinder

Could U.S. Tech Companies Face Overseas Warrants?



Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
With last weeks announcement of a $400,000 gap to the United Way goal of $4.5 million, the community continues to rally to help fulfill the needs of Midland County neighbors. This week, United Way is reporting total donations of $4,451,320, achieving 99 percent of its goal. Final campaign results will be shared at the Chamber Connection hosted by the Midland Country Club on Nov. 16.

Our community is blessed to have very giving people and we are counting on this generosity to get us to goal, said this years Campaign Chair, Rich Wells. Midland County has a surprisingly large number of families, 32 percent of our total population, who either live in poverty or are one inconvenience away from living in poverty. To them the services provided by the agencies supported by United Way represent a chance for a hand up in life. This is important. United Way is not a hand out; it is a hand up. United Way truly is that tide that lifts all boats.

United Way reports seeing a whirlwind of campaign activity this past week, with many local companies and organizations reporting great results.

The Dow Chemical Co. and Dow Corning Corp. combined efforts this year to exceed a goal of $1.7 million. Their last push efforts included United Ways Driving Impact car lease raffle sponsored by Dow with the generous support of Garber. They reported many department with 100 percent participation, a 50 percent increase in donations from their annual auction and 11 Impact Tours offered to their employees for a firsthand glimpse of the impact of their donations.

MidMichigan Health recently wrapped up its campaign, with an incredible 8 percent increase, reporting exceeding the $260,000 goal with $262,525 pledged. The hospital saw great success with Jeans Day, United Way T-shirt sales and its annual basket auction, with donations to these activities totaling $33,448. MidMichigan Health subsidiary Presidents and Diane Postler-Slattery agreed to a Lip Sync Competition if the goal was reached. This incentive was a great motivator to the employees.

Consumers Energy raised over $800 in special events for United Way. The utility held its first-ever chili cook-off, sold CE logo wear, conducted a bake sale and held a drawing for a one-week use of its Chevy Volt company car. They also offered a pizza party for the entire site if they had 50 percent or more of their employees turn in their pledge cards and they saw a 58 percent return rate.

United Way and their partner agencies impact the lives of those in need each and every day. In addition, they ran an incredible campaign with Family and Childrens Services and 1016 Recovery Network leading the way, each with increased giving of 40 percent over last year. They also conducted the inaugural Agency Games, creating a fun and competitive atmosphere, with Midland Area Homes taking first place.

The Great Lakes Loons had 100 percent participation this year, boasting a 50 percent increase in their overall giving.

In addition to running great employee campaigns, our friends at the city of Midland and Midland County hosted their annual Change War. Congratulations to the county for winning for the second year in a row! Overall coin collections from both organizations resulted in $561 for United Way.

Members First Credit Union raised an impressive $14,815 in support of United Way and generously donated services to counting all of the change collected throughout the entire campaign.

With each campaign, I continue to see just how incredibly generous our community is. They come together to support the needs of our neighbors through the work of United Way. We are proud to have the second highest per capita giving for the entire United States. It is this level of giving that enables us to impact so many lives throughout the entire year. I am humbled and inspired to see such support. said Ann Fillmore, United Way executive director.

If you want to learn how you can be a part of the change, contact United Way at 631-3670 or online at www.liveunitedmidland.org
Will Anna Duggar file for a divorce following Josh Duggar's scandal? (Photo : Instagram/Josh Duggar)

"19 Kids and Counting" alum Anna Duggar still wants to have another child with her husband, Josh.



According to InTouch Weekly, the former reality TV star has been urging Josh to make baby number five. However, the patriarch is contemplating on whether or not having another child is the best thing to do especially since there are rumors that they will soon file for a divorce. The publication noted that Duggar is just a few weeks away from filing her divorce papers and that she's also been in contact with lawyers.



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Meanwhile, it has been seven months since Josh went back home from a short stint at rehab facility where he sought treatment for pornography addiction. Josh also admitted to sexually molesting five underage girls, two of which were his own sisters. Throughout his stay at the facility, Duggar has revealed that she found strength from her friends who never left her side when they discovered that Josh has been cheating on her.



Just recently, Duggar appeared in the "19 Kids and Counting" spinoff, "Jill & Jessa: Counting On" where she was asked to talk about her husband and having children. However, Anna's friends were not necessarily happy to see her once again tied to the scandal and on television. "They were horrified that she's been persuaded to talk on-camera about Josh and then wheeled out with children, looking like everything was fine," an insider said.



Unfortunately for the couple, Duggar is rumored to no longer be on the same page when it comes to mending her marriage to Josh. "Hearing those outside views changed Anna incredibly. She now agrees and feels angry that Josh has treated her so appallingly for so long," the insider added.



"Jill & Jessa: Counting On" has been renewed by TLC for a third season.


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Kerr County Sherrifs Office deputies have arrested a man suspected of killing his wife in October 2015 and hiding her body at a remote ranch for more than a year.

Isidro Lopez Jimenez, 53, was charged with felony first degree murder and tampering with physical evidence after being taken into custody late Friday afternoon.
Convair B-36B (Photo : graphmaster/YouTube)

Diver Sean Smyrichinsky, during a recent diving trip near Banks Island in Canada, claimed to have found a Mark IV bomb that was missing when a U.S. bomber crashed off North Coast in British Columbia during the early days of the Cold War.



The Royal Canadian Navy would deploy a vessel to check the divers find, CBC reported. Smyrichinsky dived near Haida Gwaii, an archipelago 80 kilometers west of BC, actually looking for fish for the next day, The Guardian reported.



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Smyrichinksy described what he saw as looking like a bagel cut in half and surrounding the bagel are bolts molded into it. When he returned to his ship, he told his crew, I found a UFO. I found the strangest thing Id ever seen!



When he investigated what he found, Smyrichinsky said he learned that there was a U.S. Air Force bomber, the Convair B-36B, which crashed off BC in 1950. According to historian Dirk Septer, in a book published in early 2016, three engines of the aircraft caught fire over Canadas northwest coast on Feb. 13, 1950.



After four years, the planes wreck was found in the coastal mountains of BC. The U.S. eventually admitted it lost its first nuclear bomb. When Smyrichinsky searched the bomb on Google images, he confirmed it was what he saw. With the Google photo, the diver said, What else could it possibly be? I was thinking UFO, but probably not a UFO.



The Canadian Armed Forces confirmed the location of bomb as coinciding with the 1950 crash site, Major Steve Neta said. He added according to record, it was just a dummy capsule, which means there is hardly any risk of what Smyrichinsky saw being a nuclear weapon






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Investigators are searching for a San Antonio woman who went missing at a ranch in west Kerr County on Nov. 2.

Megan King, 26, was last seen at the Auld Ranch, a sprawling, 5,600-acre property along Hwy 83 about 30 miles west of Kerrville.
San Antonio police are investigating a possible gang-related shooting in the parking lot of a Northeast Side bar that left four people wounded early this morning.

Officers at the scene said about 50 shots were fired shortly after 4 a.m. outside Snoop's Tavern, 10726 Perrin Beitel Road. One victim with gunshots wounds to the leg was taken in stable condition to San Antonio Military Medical Center. Three other people drove themselves to nearby hospitals.
I had no idea the young woman who stood in front of me at the polling place was a first-time voter.

Its not the kind of thing you can tell from looking at the back of someones head for half an hour.

Besides, from the moment we first crossed paths at the front door of Las Palmas Library and heard cheering, she didnt react when we heard the frequent first-time voter festivities coming from the front of the early-voting line.

She was young, with long, curly hair pulled back into a braid as thick as the strong ropes found in shipyards. She was having a conversation with her mother who, from time to time, walked over to sit in a nearby chair.

But other than the brief exchanges with her mom, she stood in silence along with the other hundred or so voters waiting for their shot at the ballot. And it really was silent, as if nobody wanted to know what the guy in front of them or the woman behind them was thinking or for whom theyd be voting.

It was as if everyone in line was politely hoping everyone else would just mind their own business.

When it was her turn, the elections clerk gave her a big smile.

First-time voter! the clerk sang, clapping loudly. Everyone in line followed suit. The young woman blushed just a little.

Shes my daughter, the voters mom said proudly from a nearby chair. Now at the front of the line, I stepped back and told her to please go ahead of me; she said shed voted days before.

I just came to keep her company, she said.

While the elections clerk printed out my label, I wished I could take back the past 30 minutes so I could say a few things to First-Time Voter.

I would tell her that it isnt always like this; that this election has been a circus and that, sadly, a lot of people voted against a candidate instead of voting for the candidate of their choice.

I would tell her that there are millions of people who will say that her vote doesnt count but that she needs to believe that it does. I might even go on to tell her that it matters even more when were not picking a president, because fewer voters turn out for elections that dont bring the big fights to the family dinner table. And I would tell her that her power would increase the further down the ballot she went.

I might mention hanging chads and Iraqis holding up purple thumbs. Id tell her about how for years, Id heard colleagues say impartial journalists shouldnt vote and how I used that  and many other lame explanations  as an excuse not to fulfill what I now know is my duty.

And Id tell her how scared so many of us are to make the wrong choice  and how scared so many of us are about how well be affected by the elections outcome.

Id tell her that the hoopla the elections workers made when they discovered she was a first-timer is just as much for all of us as it was for her; its a testament to our system of government.

Of course, if Id actually told her all the things I wanted to tell her, Id have gotten on her nerves and would likely be labeled the Las Palmas Nuisance.

And I knew that really wouldnt do.

Instead I just grabbed my I Voted! oval  which I referred to as my receipt  and moved on while hatching a plan for the next time I was forced to stand in the voting line behind someone with the lush and shiny hair of an 18-year-old.

mariaanglin@yahoo.com
As a lifelong Republican, I did what I never thought Id do.

I cast my ballot for Hillary Clinton on the third day of early voting. I voted for Hillary not because I wanted to make history by helping her become the first woman president (although if it happens it will be a proud moment); I voted for her because I want Donald Trump to lose.

And maybe what Im doing will have no effect at all, since Texas will probably go red anyway. Also, theres always the possibility that Trump will pull it off and become president. But still. Everyone has a duty to vote. And to vote his or her conscience.

When I told one of my Republican buddies about my decision, he gasped. I thought you were voting for the Libertarian, Gary Johnson.

Yes, that was my original intention. I like Johnson and his platform a lot. I think hes a decent man who would make a decent president. But I felt I had to do something more than not vote for Trump. I had to vote against Trump.

My friend tried to dissuade me from voting for Hillary: Hillary will increase our taxes, shell let illegals in, tank our economy, weaken our defense and appoint a liberal Supreme Court justice who will bankrupt the American morality.

Wow! Seems to me that Donald already took care of the last one. When a parent cant let a child watch a presidential debate for fear of what they might hear, Id say weve hit rock bottom in the morality department. That said, lets look at each of my friends arguments:

Hillary will increase our taxes. Yes, she will.

Still, Id rather pay a few extra bucks in taxes than risk the possibility of an ego-maniac macho putting his small middle finger on a button that would set off nuclear holocaust. Now, thats a bad hombre.

Democrats will tank our economy. Doubtful.

Republican Herbert Hoover was president in 1929 when the Great Depression occurred. Democrat Franklin Roosevelt pulled us out. My friend George W. Bush was president in 2008 when the next worse depression happened. Democrat Barack Obama pulled us out of that one. At the end of Bill Clintons term, our country enjoyed a budget surplus, not a deficit. No president can take full responsibility for growing or shrinking an economy; still, the sitting president gets the credit or the blame.

Our military will become weaker. No.

Democrats are as hawkish as Republicans when it comes to our countrys defenses. Roosevelt declared war on Japan and directed our generals to lead the Allied Forces in Europe. Harry Truman dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima that killed over 100,000 Japanese civilians but ended World War II. Lyndon Johnson kept us in Vietnam, while Richard Nixon got us out. Bush kept us safe after 9/11. So did Obama. Bush got rid of Saddam Hussein. Obama got rid of Osama bin Laden. All the recent brutal acts of terrorism are the work of American-born or naturalized citizens. Plus, Clintons experience as secretary of state, and her awareness of the dangers we face in the world, make it unlikely that she would dramatically reduce defense funding.

Hillary will give amnesty to immigrants. Not likely. But so what?

No Democrat has ever given full and permanent amnesty to illegal immigrants. The only official mass amnesty involving immigrants was given to 2.7 million Mexican workers in 1986. Republican Ronald Reagan did that. And guess what? Nothing bad happened. They became regular hardworking, taxpaying American citizens, no better, no worse than you and me.

Hillary will appoint a liberal Supreme Court justice. Of course she will. And whose fault will that be? Donald J. Trumps.

He could have won if he hadnt turned off so many of us with his insults and lunatic proclamations promoting divisiveness and hate. As Jeb Bush observed, You cant insult your way to the presidency.

For a long while after this historic election, whether its President Trump or President Clinton, millions around the world will be mocking us for our naivete in helping create the biggest election-year circus ever. The media that Trump hates are the very media that created him. They were his accomplices at the beginning because Trump attracted more viewers and more viewers meant more income for the media. Trouble is, they didnt revoke his free pass until it was too late.

For years to come, historians, analysts, cartoonists, pundits, comedians and anyone with his or her finger on the social media keyboard will be evaluating this election ad nauseam.

Its really sad on many levels. Trump tapped into some important feelings among the American electorate, feelings that need to be addressed, and problems that need to be aired and solved rationally and with statesmanship. But he didnt have the patience or the depth to propose rational answers.

In just two more days, our long nightmare election will be over. If Hillary is able to fend off the latest email brouhaha and win, whats next for Trump? Hell probably spend a few weeks blaming everyone and his sister for a loss of his own making and write a book telling how he was screwed out of the presidency. Theres almost no way his ego will allow him to accept the massive rejection of millions on election night when they send a clear message: Youre fired.

If that happens, you can bet Trump wont go away. In his mind, he must remain relevant. To do that, hell first have to take the Trump name off his expensive hotels and resorts hoping customers will come back. Then he could start a new movement and call it The Trump Supremacists or, better still, he could sign up as a contestant on the Biggest Loser reality show. After all, the title fits. Looks like the stress of campaigning has turned him into an eating machine.

Lionel Sosa is a marketing executive and political consultant.
Everyone who loves living in Texas has his or her own list of things that make our state a great place. For me, its the people, our vibrant cities  along with the barbecue and breakfast tacos  that rise to the top of the list.

Often credited for attracting businesses and new residents to Texas are our low taxes and, of course, lack of income tax. The latest rankings from the Tax Foundation listed Texas as 46th in the amount of combined state and local taxes paid by residents.

Even though the overall tax burden is low in Texas, one tax has always drawn the most complaints from Texans: the property tax.

A statewide poll last year found the property tax was the most unpopular of major state and local taxes, with 54 percent saying they were dissatisfied with the amount of property taxes Texans pay.

Last year, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick appointed a special Senate committee to examine property taxes in Texas and make recommendations for reforming and reducing property taxes. The committee has spent most of this year holding hearings in cities all across the state.

In Texas, most of the revenue from property taxes  about 55 percent, according to the state comptroller  goes to school districts. Cities collect only about 16 percent of property taxes.

But the Senate committee has refused to consider or even discuss ways to reduce school property taxes, and it has pretty much ignored the fastest growing category of property taxes, which is taxes levied by the more than 2,000 special purpose taxing districts created by the Legislature.

Instead of focusing on the real causes of high property taxes in Texas, Patrick and the chair of the Senate committee, Sen. Paul Bettencourt of Houston, have made it clear they want to impose statewide restrictions on city property taxes and effectively put a state cap on the annual budgets of all Texas cities.

Because their proposed solution  a 4 percent cap on city property tax revenue increases  does not address the real cause of property tax increases, it will not provide real tax relief.

If a 4 percent cap had been in effect over the past decade, the average homeowner in San Antonio would have seen a reduction in city taxes of only $44 per year  or $3.67 per month. Any legislator who tries to convince Texas homeowners that this is real tax relief will end up looking foolish.

Remember, city property taxes, on average, make up only 16 percent of property tax bills statewide. And city property taxes are not skyrocketing as some state leaders want you to believe. From 2009 to 2014, the total amount of property taxes levied by Texas cities increased by only 19 percent, while state revenue collections increased by 46 percent during the same period, according to the state comptroller.

The Senate committee has been a fount of misleading information about city taxes. Earlier this year, Bettencourt wrote in a column for this paper: In San Antonio between 2005 and 2014, city tax levies have grown 55 percent while median household income has grown only 22 percent.

That statement is true on its face, but the comparison is misleading. City tax levies refers to the total amount of taxes on all property in the city, and that amount increases from year to year as the population grows, as new areas are annexed into the city, and as new construction adds more homes and buildings to the tax rolls. San Antonio is one of the fastest-growing major cities in the country, so its total property tax collections will obviously increase from year to year.

But Bettencourt carried his misleading comparison to the extreme by writing: In other words, an average family faces a tax bill that is increasing 2 times as fast as income.

That qualifies as pants on fire. When a new office building is constructed in San Antonio and begins paying city property taxes, it increases the total amount of taxes levied and collected by the city, but it does not increase the tax bill of the average family or any other family.

Such attempts to mislead and scare Texans about the tax bills on their homes just distracts us and legislators from the real problem  which is the way Texas depends on property taxes to pay for public education.

The Legislature depends on property taxes to reduce the amount of state funds it has to spend on schools. A recent headline from the Texas Tribune tells the real story: Rising local school property taxes ease state budget woes. Under the states Robin Hood school finance scheme, 230 school districts were required to send part of their local property tax receipts to the state treasury this year.

For example, this year the state recaptured more than $29 million in property taxes from the Alamo Heights Independent School District, which is about 40 percent of the taxes paid to the district. The Texas Education Agency has estimated that the amount of local property taxes sent to the state will increase from $3.7 billion in the current state budget to $5.1 billion in the next budget.

Im no expert on the school finance system, but I do understand that the current system grew out of the need to equitably distribute education funding and that is an important goal.

But when the Legislature is using local school property taxes to balance the state budget, it explains why state lawmakers want to divert public attention from the school finance system and try to blame Texas cities for high property taxes.

Imposing a statewide cap on city budgets will not solve the problem of high property taxes, but it will create other serious problems.

Public safety  police, fire and EMS  is the largest item in every citys budget. A cap would prevent cities from hiring additional personnel, raising salaries and benefits, acquiring new technology (like body cameras) or dealing with underfunded pension systems.

A cap would force cities to focus on funding basic, vital services and eliminate nonessential, nonmandated spending, such as the economic development incentives that helped attract the Toyota plant to San Antonio, and thus would reduce job creation and damage the states economic growth.

It would also make our traffic problems worse by limiting the amount of money that cities can contribute to state highway construction projects, which amounts to well over $100 million per year.

Decisions about city taxes and city budgets should continue to be made by local voters and their locally elected officials. This obviously is working well as businesses and people from all over the world continue to flock to Texas cities because of the economic opportunities and quality of life they offer.

Texans would be better served if state lawmakers focused their efforts on their own budget.

Bennett Sandlin is executive director of the Texas Municipal League.
Stranger Things Season 2 update: Barbara to return after being missing; Eleven to be the main character in the second installment?

'Stranger Things' title logo as seen in the trailer (Photo : YouTube/Netflix US & Canada)

It was just recently when the hit Netflix science fiction-horror series, "Stranger Things," concluded its first season. With the show already renewed for a second installment, recent reports claim that "Stranger Things" Season 2 might feature the return of Barb or Barbara Holland (Shannon Purser) after her disappearance in the first season.



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According to IGN, speculations relating to the return of Barb in "Stranger Things" Season 2 sparked after Netflix released a teaser video involving a report that the teenager is missing. Although there has been no confirmation about Barb's comeback in the second installment, fans are reportedly hopeful that she will eventually be on the anticipated second season.



Meanwhile, other rumors are suggesting that Barb may no longer return in "Strangers Things" Season 2 because the character is too weak or too light for the series. While other sources are claiming that the character may have a chance to do comeback but with a different attitude or is a lot stronger than the previous Barbara.



On the other note, a report on Independent claim that Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) has been confirmed to be part of "Stranger Things" Season 2. It was also said that Eleven is going to be a main character in the second installment. It can be remembered that Eleven and his friends battled with the Demogorgon; however, after she eventually destroyed the monster, Eleven suddenly disappeared with it, and the finale concluded with Eleven's whereabouts still not known.



The same report also revealed the actors that have been confirmed to reprise their roles, such as Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Charlie Heaton, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo and Caleb McLaughin. The publication also said that the titles of "Stranger Things" Season 2 have already been unveiled, with one episode titled "Madmax," which is said to focus on Max (Sadie Sink).



No specific date has been provided regarding the release of "Stranger Things" Season 2, but the second installment is expected to air sometime next year.






Suppose Hillary Clinton wins Texas on Tuesday by, say, 4 or 5 percent. Or, say Donald Trump wins by the same margin.

Democracy in action, right? Not quite.

In either scenario, all of Texas 38 electors will go to the winner. All of them. This is because the Constitution  and Supreme Court interpretations  spell out that Texas can choose to be a winner-take-all state. All but two states have decided so.

In other words, the national popular vote for the purpose of electing presidents is not binding. And that means all those votes on the losing side  Democratic, Republican or third party  effectively dont count beyond Texas. This, in a country that says that one person, one vote is among its most cherished values.

This isnt an argument for not voting in this election. You must. Even if all electors go to one presidential candidate, which candidate gets to the White House is vitally important.

But the process can be fairer. In presidential elections in most states, its one person, one vote, but only for determining which candidate gets all the states votes when its electors meet in December to do the actual electing.

This Editorial Board has recommended Clinton. That doesnt mean, however, we are blind to how unfair to Texas Republicans the Electoral College process will be if she carries the state. And we are equally concerned that all those Democratic votes in the presidential election will be negated by a Trump win. This concern exists no matter the margin of victory.

Consider: In 2004, George W. Bush won more than 3 million more votes than did John Kerry. Had Kerry won 60,000 or so more votes in Ohio, he, not Bush, wouldve been president. A shift of 214,393 votes in 2012 would have given the presidency to Mitt Romney, though Barack Obama won nearly 5 million more in the popular vote.

These calculations are by National Popular Vote, a group that wants what its name says.

Defenders of the Electoral College argue that it prevents the tyranny of the majority. But how is the tyranny of a minority of battleground states  those garnering the most attention from presidential candidates  any better?

Electors are determined by the number of a states U.S. House representatives and U.S. senators, for a total nationally of 538 (that includes the three electors to which the District of Columbia is entitled under the 23rd Amendment). It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

Making the popular vote actually binding has the beauty of reflecting the popular will, a concept that should be as highly valued at the national level as it is in local and state elections.

The nation has seen the popular vote subverted four times, most recently in 2000 when Al Gore won more than a half-million more votes but lost the Electoral College.

In 1824, Andrew Jackson won both the popular vote and the Electoral College, but because neither candidate won 131 electoral votes, the election went to the House of Representatives. John Quincy Adams became president.

In 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes won the election by a one-vote margin in the Electoral College, though he lost the popular vote by more than 250,000 ballots. Sorry, Sam Tilden.

In 1888, Benjamin Harrison won the Electoral College and the presidency, though Grover Cleveland got 90,000 more votes than Harrison.

National Popular Vote advocates a compact by the states that the winner of the national popular vote will get all those states electoral votes. The agreement doesnt kick in until the number of electors in the compact states reaches 270. Ten state legislatures and the District of Columbia have agreed, for a total at the moment of 165 electoral votes.

Yes, a form of winner-take-all, but the beauty in this approach is that it makes the popular vote count, and it doesnt require a constitutional amendment, an exceedingly difficult process.

But states might also decide on their own to distribute their electors proportionately. If a losing candidate, for instance, gets 45 percent of the vote, he or she gets 45 percent of the electors.

The goal should be making the national popular vote binding.

This has been an excruciating election, one that nonetheless features many of us trooping to the polls to do our duty  if only to determine who all the states presidential electors go to. This is still extremely important, not to mention all those down-ballot contests.

But after the dust settles, the Texas Legislature should determine if it wants all of the states votes to count in a national election.
Metaphorically speaking, a Donald Trump presidency would be tantamount to boarding a 787 whose pilot doesnt even have a license to fly a Piper Cub, and knows neither where to go nor how to get there.

Vicki Seifert, Fredericksburg

Stay open-minded

Straight-ticket voting is quick and easy; you push one button and you are done. However, this method shows a lack of diligence when looking at the candidates.

There may be qualified candidates in the opposing party who deserve your vote. I urge you to study and consider everyone.

If you are inclined to vote straight party but want to vote for one person in the opposing party, you can. This will not invalidate your ballot. Keep this in mind as you go to the polls and vote.

Richard Caldwell, Boerne

A single benefit

Having two despicable presidential candidates go head-to-head has one silver lining: voter turnout.

C.H. Hood

Play by poll rules

Re: Strict rules abound for poll watchers, Editorial, Oct. 27:

Thank you for this editorial, which is much needed and greatly appreciated by clerks, judges, voters and poll watchers who participate at the polls in this necessary exercise of democracy.

I have been very concerned that Donald Trump is urging supporters to be poll watchers in certain areas, which supports his message that the polls are rigged. It also seemed that he was encouraging confrontation, because at no time did I hear him educate his potential poll watchers about the need to be certified and trained. It is serious business. All poll watchers must abide by the regulations.

If self-declared but uncertified poll watchers show up at the polls, they will be turned away by the presiding election judge. Mr. Trump would see such action, valid though it is, as proof of a rigged system to keep him from winning.

Hopefully, your editorial will prevent this from happening on Election Day.

Carol Carpenter, Boerne

Prominent noses

When it comes to Donald Trumps lies and Hillary Clintons lies, even Pinocchio is embarrassed.

Steve Ochoa

The lesser bad

When an action results in a good effect while also necessarily involving a bad effect, we say we go for the greater good.

Donald Trump, in my opinion, is the lesser bad over Hilary Clinton.

As a conservative, he has my vote.

Clay McGaughy

Groping a reality

Re: Diving into trash, Your Turn, Oct 24:

How fortunate the letter writer never experienced sexual abuse. Her letter clearly explains why women dont come forward after being abused. The statement that people would be stupid to believe them is exactly why abuse is not reported.

More than 50 years ago, as a 12-year-old, I was groped by a Christian outstanding citizen. Twenty years later, while walking down a crowded street, a man did to me exactly what Donald Trump bragged about getting away with. Until this letter, I had not told a soul about this.

Neither I nor the letter writer knows if the Trump accusers are telling the truth. But I am not stupid enough to believe that it could not have happened.

Betty Loper

Branded with an L

For poor Hillary Clinton. It will be a lose-lose situation.

If she loses, she loses.

If she wins, she will be branded and immortalized as the worst candidate to win the presidency in the history of humanity. She will push the womens movement back a thousand years.

Mike Mendiola

Tainted by Trump

At work, colleagues say Trump supporters stay quiet because they do not want to be ridiculed. It is probably because they do not want to be tainted by his bigotry, misogyny and ignorance. Maybe that is why House Speaker Paul Ryan keeps his distance.

When asked whom I support, I say Hillary Clinton because of her experience, temperament and knowledge, which is why Barack and Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, many generals and several world leaders proudly stand by her.

Adam Castillo

A decent man

It is very disturbing to see letters claiming President Barack Obama has destroyed our country and that he tells only lies. I assume most of this garbage comes from listening to extremist talk show hosts and from supporters of a Republican Congress that vowed, from the moment he was elected, to do everything possible to obstruct him.

What is so objectionable about his record? He pulled most of our troops out of the disastrous war that set the whole Middle East aflame!

He prevented Iran from developing a nuclear bomb for at least 15 years. Obamacare, even with its problems, has brought health insurance to 20 million.

He killed Osama bin Laden. He has earned the respect of our allies, who look to him for leadership. He inherited, but has rescued, the economy from the worst recession since the Depression.

He could have done much more but for the venom from those opposed to his very election.

He may have flaws, as we all do, but he is a decent, religious man, intelligent and eloquent, and he deserves recognition for his accomplishments!

Michael Aratingi
The court also sentenced four individuals to life in prison, seven to three-year prison terms, one individual to 15 years in prison and acquitted two others

Cairo Criminal Court confirmed Saturday a preliminary death sentence against two men for "joining a militant organisation" in a trial known in the media as "The returnees from Libya" case.

The court also sentenced four individuals to life in prison (25 years in jail per Egyptian law), and seven individuals to three-year prison terms, one individual to 15 years in prison, and acquitted two others.

In February 2015, Egypt's prosecutor general referred 16 people arrested on the Egyptian-Libyan border to criminal trial, accusing them of involvement in deadly terrorist acts outside Egypt and planning to attack buildings and properties inside the country.

In October, the court issued a preliminary death sentence against the two, pending the non-binding consultative opinion of the countrys grand mufti, as per Egypt's penal code.

The sentences can still be appealed before the Criminal Appeals Court.

Egypt launched a strike against Islamic State militants in Libya in February 2015 in retaliation against the killing of 21 Egyptian Copts by the radical group.

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Egypt's military raided three major armed terrorist hotspots in North Sinai, killing 11 militants, the armys spokesman announced in an official statement on Saturday.

The spokesman said that the army tightened a siege on other militant hotspots in North Sinais El-Arish and Sheikh Zuweid, seizing arms, wireless communication devices, computers and cameras.

The spokesman added that the army's operation against the insurgency has reached a critical stage in uprooting terrorism.

The statement added that 28 explosives were located in the El-Arish and Rafah areas and that 29 other explosive devices that had been planted to target security forces were defused.

The anti-terror operation Martyr's Right was first launched in September 2015 to root out militants operating in the restive Sinai Peninsula.

On Friday, an Egyptian army brigadier general was shot dead in El-Arish.

Egypts army launched a new security offensive two weeks ago against Islamist militants in North Sinai, killing over 50 in response to a militant attack one week earlier that killed 12 soldiers and injured six others.

This campaign includes operations by Special Forces units, the second and third field armies, as well as the police, all of whom aim to capture and target terrorist elements and outlaws in the vicinity of villages, cities and residential areas in North and Central Sinai.

In mid-October, President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi extended a state of emergency in designated areas of the North Sinai governorate for three months, starting 31 October.

A state of emergency was originally declared in certain areas of the restive province in August 2013, and has been consecutively renewed ever since.

The army and police have been battling an entrenched Islamist insurgency for several years in North Sinai.

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CCC members Job Sikhala and Godfrey Sithole, charged with obstructing the course of justice, yesterday lost their contest against the November 15 trial date after the court ordered them to return to court on September 6 for their routine remand.

Sikhala and Sithole, through their lawyers, had contested that they return to court for their routine remand, demanding that they wanted to be tried within the next 14 days.

They had also demanded that the State furnish them with court papers for them to prepare for their trial.

This was after the State led by Mr Lancelot Mutsokoti requested that they return to court within two weeks in the interim, while they wait for their trial on November 15.

Yesterday, Mr Mutsokoti told the court that Sikhala and Sitholes demands had been explained to them and were given a way forward by the prosecution after they appeared before another magistrate over the same issue.

Harare regional magistrate Mr Stanford Mambanje remanded the matter to September 6 for routine remand.

Sikhala and Sithole also lost their latest bail bid, based on what they argued were changed circumstances, after Harare regional magistrate Mrs Feresi Chakanyuka dismissed the application after noting that there were no changed circumstances from June 17 when they first made a bail application that was turned down.

Sikhala and Sithole, through their lawyers Mr Jeremiah Bamu and Ms Beatrice Mtetwa, had mounted a fresh bail bid based on the passage of time and the fact that Sikhala had not been posting videos.

ZimLive, an online news portal, had written a letter confirming that Sikhala had not posted a video on the platform.

The two had also told the court that there were other people arrested for causing the violence that occurred in Nyatsime following the killing of Moreblessing Ali, whom they claimed as their party supporter.

It turned out that Ali had not been killed by Zanu PF officials as claimed by CCC supporters, but was allegedly killed by her former boyfriend, Pius Jamba, who has since been arrested and appeared in court.

In their application, Sikhala and Sithole had also argued that some owners of the trucks that the State alleges were hired by Sithole, were also arrested in connection with the violence.

 Herald

Breaking News via Email
In Chicago, the final wait for a Cubs win mixes joy and sorrow ESPN (Kokuanani)

Adobe is working on an audio app that lets you add words someone never said The Verge (Dan K)

Harvard cancels mens soccer season over lewd rankings of women players Reuters (EM)

Electric Superhighways Cant Come Soon Enough MIT Technology Review (J-LS)

More U.S. middle school students dying of suicide than car crashes Reuters (EM)

Why Morning People Thrive Atlantic (resilc). Cant relate to being strongly tied into a particular type of schedule.

Health anxiety may increase risk of heart disease, research finds Guardian

Brexit

Over 240 Migrants Drown Off Libyan Coast Due to Bad Weather The Wire (J-LS)

Turkey rocked by protests after high-profile arrests euronews (furzy)

Ukraine/Russia

Vladimir Putin grants Russian citizenship to Steven Seagal USA Today

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

2016

Soda taxes may spread if voters check ballots in California, Colorado Reuters (EM)

NY fines Chinas AgBank $215m over money laundering violations Financial Times

Gay Neoliberal Candidate in San Francisco Disproves Myths About LGBT Values Truthout

This Election Shines a New Light on Wall Streets Bro Culture Bloomberg

DAPL

At Standing Rock, women lead fight in face of Mace, arrests and strip searches Guardian

Obama Is Pathetic on Human Rights in North Dakota Reader Supported News (RR)

Texas insurer drops push to let homeowners forgo right to sue Texas Tribune. Margarita:

Not many (probably) remember that the largely successful effort to gut tort laws around the country started in mid-80s by insurance companies, after they lost money in the early 1980s real estate boom/bust. Not satisfied with the current tepid tort laws, they are at it again.

And Adam Levitin via e-mail:

I love that the arbitration is getting priced. This is a great example of what Ive tried to teach in contracts for years: the law only looks at the one-off contract. But the insurer doesnt give a shit about the individual contract. Its all actuarial tables. And that creates a total mismatch. The consumer is a one time player, while the insurer is a repeat player. The consumer will rationally value the arbitration clause at basically nothing (theres an optimism bias toono one gets married thinking that theyre going to get divorced), because the odds of it being important are so low and theres only one contract. But because the insurer is doing multiple contracts, even low odds matter. As a result consumers will never properly price for arbitration clauses and the like. Notice, btw, that the CFPB cannot stop this because it doesnt have authority over home insurance. Thats all state level regulation.

Rolling Stone and journalist found guilty over false Virginia rape story BBC

Samsung recalls 2.8 million washing machines in U.S. over injury risk Reuters. EM:

Hey, look at the bright side  at least the washers arent bursting into flame! But, imagine a future where most new washers are connected to the Interwebs  were hackers to trigger such an excessive-vibration condition, it would be a rather eerie consumer-product analog of the US/Israeli Stuxnet hack of the Iranian nuclear-program centrifuges.

Big Hit on Drug Stocks Caps $26 Billion Decline for John Paulson Wall Street Journal

The Descent of the Left Press: From IF Stone to The Nation Counterpunch

Class Warfare

Proposal To Allow First-Year Resident Physicians To Work 28 Hours In A Row Puts Residents, Patients, Public At Risk Of Serious Injury, Death Public Citizen

Antidote du jour. One of National Geographics nature photographs of the year, this one by Zhayynn James.

Four zebras stand in the Masai Mara National Preserve in Kenya at the end of the day as the sun seeps through the clouds, lighting the sky a vibrant orange.

See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here.
NASCAR championship contenders have plenty of ARCA Menards Series experience The Championship 4 have been set for the NASCAR Cup Series, NASCAR Xfinity Series and NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, and the contenders in each series all have plenty of experience  and in most cases success  within the ARCA Menards Series platform.
Italy's Foreign Ministry says two Italians and a Canadian citizen who had been kidnapped in Libya have been freed and returned safely to Italy.

The ministry said the three men were "liberated" in southern Libya during the night and brought early Saturday on a special flight to Italy.

A statement said their release was due to "the efficient collaboration of local Libyan authorities" but did not provide details.

They were kidnapped on Sept. 19 in Ghat by a group of armed men who blocked their vehicle.

It identified the Italians as Danilo Calonego and Bruno Cacace and the Canadian citizen of Italian origin, Frank Poccia.

ANSA news agency said they are all technicians with an Italian company, Conicos, which is doing construction work at an airport in Libya.

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Congratulations to Ms Madge (McGrath) Fogarty, formerly from Rathkenny, Fethard, who was recently a monthly winner in the community category of the Glanmire Sports, Business and Community Awards.

She is a very proud Tipperary woman and a mother of two boys, Shane and Tomas, who both now have very successful careers and are living away from home.

Madge, daughter of the late Kay and Denis McGrath, founded PND (Postnatal Depression Ireland) in 1992, at a time when there was no support for women suffering from Post Natal Depression anywhere in Ireland. She is current chairperson and the group are due to celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2017.

Together with her lifelong friend Bernie Kealey from Dublin, Madge launched the first Irish book on PND in 2010 entitled Recovering from Post Natal Depression, and dedicated it to Nollaig and Tadgh Kenneally, who lost their lives in 2007. They were the cruel victims of Postnatal Depression.

Madge also joined Glanmire Area Community Association close on 25 years ago and ended up being secretary for 20 years and over the years has become an integral part of Glanmire and its environs, community wise.

Madge has featured on many TV and radio shows, been to the Dail, spoken at the Guinness Hop Store and Trinity College Dublin and in UCC in Cork and many other parts of Ireland. She has recently been invited to speak at an International Conference on Womens Mental Health in the RDS in Dublin from March 69, 2017, which will be one of the many highlights of her groups 25th Anniversary.

A truly remarkable woman in every sense of the word, Madge Fogarty is a worthy recipient of the Community Award sponsored by Michael Magner and his team at the Vienna Woods Hotel.
Sstudents and staff in Cashel Community School celebrated Positive Mental Health Week.

The week was packed full of activities to promote wellness in the school community. Teachers planned the week. In pastoral care classes students received wellness bookmarks from Mental Health Ireland highlighting the five key actions they can do to feel good and function well: Connect, Be Active, Take Notice, Keep Learning and Give. Students completed a survey on what music makes them feel happy and these songs were played at lunchtime.

A series of speakers visited the school -Transition year received a wellbeing talk from St. Patricks Mental Health Services, second year students got a presentation from Tipperary Youth Club Services highlighting the importance of connecting and trying new things. On Wednesday the school welcomed former Tipperary manager Liam Sheedy to the school where students were reminded of the importance of self- belief, exercise, fun and dealing with setbacks. Students received lollipops with the YOLO logo on Friday evening which generated lots of smiles.

First year students were treated to Zumba classes reminding them to try new challenges and have fun, mindfulness classes were introduced in Religion classes allowing students to interrupt the busyness of everyday school life and concentrate on their breathing. The first year choir sang at lunchtime celebrating the theme Express Yourself. All sixth years were involved in a tea and connect class reminding them that it is ok to talk about our challenges in life and the HSE #Little Things Campaign was discussed during these classes also. The Guidance Department visited all first year classes reminding classes of their support networks in school.

Humourfit Theatre visited on Friday with drama pieces on Alcohol Misuse and The Value of Life for senior cycle. The staffroom celebrated too where teachers donned odd shoes promoting the Walk In My Shoes Campaign from St. Patricks Mental Health Services and reminding students that it is good to talk about Positive Mental Health . The Green Ribbon Campaign supporting mental health one conversation at a time was also supported.

A Kindness Tree was set up in school and classes were encouraged to perform act of kindness throughout the week there was a great response to this and the tree was in full blossom by the end of the week. Positive affirmations were displayed around the school and on the display screens which reminded everybody that small things can make a big difference.
Marketing more Big Pharma to kids?

Difficulty taking medicine has long served as a deterrent to overdose

(NaturalNews) Parents generally do not enjoy fighting with their children to get them to take pills when they are sick, but a new spray to make medicine easier to swallow may do more harm than good.As reported by, swallowing pills can be difficult both for adults and kids when suffering from certain illnesses. To make taking pills even more difficult  say, when you have a sore throat  often doses must be taken a few times during the day.And while pediatricians and parents have been struggling for years trying to improve ways for children, especially, to take their oral medications, they haven't had much luck. However, a small study published in the October 2016 issue of the journalfound that a flavored spray called Pill Glide can make taking pills more flavorful and, hence, more enjoyable.But that might also be a bad thing, especially for children.Dr. Catherine Tuleu, a pharmaceutical researcher at University College London, toldthat there had been "a significant decrease" in difficulty in taking pills with the spray."The kids liked to be in charge and to change the flavor," Tuleu  who conducted the small study with colleagues at Great Ormond Street Hospital in the United Kingdom  added.And that might just be part of the problem.As has reported , it's not just the fact that Big Pharma is working to make it easier for kids to take pills that's a problem; it's theof pills being marketed to them, including dangerous antidepressants.Researchers from the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Denmark conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of 68 clinical studies involving 70 trials covering 18,526 patients in a bid to gauge the use and scope of antidepressants and associated harms , including suicidal thoughts and tendencies, deaths and aggression, as well as akathisia, a form of restlessness believed to increase suicide and violent behavior.In attempting to determine how antidepressants impacted children in particular, the researchers determined that as a result of poor design of clinical trials that assessed key antidepressants, as well as misreporting of findings in published studies, "the true risk for all associated serious harms ... remains unknown for children, adolescents and adults."Nevertheless, the researchers concluded thatinformation was either missing or inconclusive, it was better to restrict prescribing antidepressants to children until a better, more comprehensive study showing more conclusive results could be conducted.Only, that's not happening. As we have also reported , children as young as a year old are being given these harmful, dangerous drugs.The UK's National Health Service (NHS) reported that between the months of January and March 2016, the NHS Tayside Trust prescribed antidepressants to at least 450 children. Health officials said that the youngest person prescribed such medication during this particular time frame was 7-years-old, but in 2014, there was an instance where a 1-year-old was prescribed a mood-altering antidepressant.However, on further review, the trust revealed that in reality as many as four 1-year-old children were prescribed antidepressants in 2014 alone. That's shocking.And now, Big Pharma is trying to find a way to make taking dangerous drugs like thesefor kids.Once upon a time, the medical industry found it beneficial to prescribe and hand out medication that was unpleasant to take  not as a form of punishment, but because the unpleasantness acted as a built-in deterrent to kids overdosing on their medicines. After all, if pills are harder to take, or medicine doesn't taste great, what kid would want to take more of it?But in today's "progressive" world, nothing is supposed to hurt, make our kids uncomfortable or create a situation in which they have to deal with any adversity.
As most of you know, earlier this summer, Informa PLC proposed to purchase Penton Information Services in a US$1.4 billion deal. Were pleased to announce that the acquisition has been completed, and were excited about next steps. You can see the official announcement from Informa online here.

Since Informa acquired Virgo Publishing three years ago, weve had the experience of working with a driven team focused on helping make markets and support business growth. As weve collaborated with our now-colleagues on Vitafoods, weve seen new initiatives on both sides of the pond informed by our learnings. And weve remained committed to the natural products industry, providing the information and forums you need to make critical connections.

Since the early 1990s, Jon Benninger and I have been active in the natural products spaceI even started my industry career at New Hope (the photo below was my first Expo West back in 1993). We were there before DSHEA, before the Flavr Savr tomato. We remember the Gooch-able standard and have seen Whole Foods impact on CPG products in every retail channel. At SupplySide West and Expo West, we talk with our friends about how folks never leave this industrythey always show up again at a different company, still interested in supporting the growth of this natural products space.

Here in Phoenix, our business has gone from a single entrepreneur owner, into private equity ownership (several times), and now were part of Informa, a company dedicated to events, content and knowledge, which serves many different specialist communities across the world. And things are good. Were investing in growth, in content, in the event experience. And we are excited we now have the chance to think about how we move forward with the talented, committed team at New Hope as part of the family. More to come in the months and years ahead, but we wanted to thank you for your continued passion and support. And if you've got questions, feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] or Jon at [email protected].
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured a partial solar eclipse in space, and they have shared their experience in a hypnotizing animation.

Partial solar eclipses happen when the moon comes between the sun and the earth, but they don't align in a perfectly straight line. It is called "partial" solar eclipse because during the fleeting moment when the moon passes by, the moon only partially covers the Sun's disc.

In the animation shared by NASA, the sun appeared to be shaking as the moon passes in front of it. Viewers who have seen the animation were spooked by the sun's movement, but as NASA explained, the shuddering is not executed by the sun nor is it caused by the moon.

"From SDO's point of view, the sun appears to be shaking slightly - but not because the solar observatory was spooked by this near-Halloween sight. Instead, the shaking results from slight adjustments in SDO's guidance system, which normally relies upon viewing the entire sun to center the images between exposures," NASA explained.

According to Space.com, the lunar transit occurred for about an hour, between 3:56 p.m. and 4:56 p.m. EDT (1956 to 2056 GMT), during Sunday's eclipse, which was visible from SDO's vantage point in Earth orbit but not from the ground.

At peak coverage, the moon covered only about 59 percent of the sun.

In the photos captured in extreme ultraviolet light, the sun appeared to be red and the edges of the shadows are well-defined because there was no atmosphere to distort the light.

Meanwhile, Tech Times notes that the function of the SDO is to observe and track the sun's activities as it greatly influences the weather patterns on space. Because it is capable of tracking the sun's activities, SDO also delivers warnings to astronauts and satellites in case the sun's activity could pose danger to them.

Above all, it aims to gather information about the sun's structure and how it deploys energy into space. It gathers a single CD worth of data every 36 seconds.
Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis have discovered chicken bones from Ethiopia that could explain how domesticated chickens crossed ancient roads and seas.

Discarded bones of a chicken leg that were etched with teeth marks from a meal thousands of years ago provide one of the oldest known physical evidence for the introduction of domesticated chickens to the continent of Africa. This was confirmed by the radiocarbon dating of about 30 chicken bones unearthed at the site of an ancient farming village in present-day Ethiopia.

"Our study provides the earliest directly dated evidence for the presence of chickens in Africa and points to the significance of Red Sea and East African trade routes in the introduction of the chicken," explained Helina Woldekiros, lead author and a postdoctoral anthropology researcher in Arts & Sciences at Washington University.

The red junglefowl Gallus gallus, widely considered to be the main wild ancestor of today's chickens, was first domesticated 6,000 to 8,000 years ago in sub-Himalayan northern India, southern China, and Southeast Asia. This species of domesticated chickens gives modern researchers valuable clues about ancient agricultural and trade contacts.

"It is likely that people brought chickens to Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa repeatedly over long periods of time: over 1,000 years," Woldekiros said. "Our archaeological findings help to explain the genetic diversity of modern Africans chickens resulting from the introduction of diverse chicken lineages coming from early Arabian and South Asian context and later Swahili networks."

Chickens that have been featured on ceramics and paintings suggested that chickens were first introduced to Africa through North Africa, Egypt, and the Nile Valley about 2,500 years ago. The earliest evidence of chicken bones in Africa could be traced to approximately 685 to 525 B.C. from the Saite levels at Buto, Egypt.

"Our study also supports the African Red Sea coast as one possible early route of introduction of chickens to Africa and the Horn," Woldekiros said. "It fits with ways in which maritime exchange networks were important for global distribution of chicken and other agricultural products. The early dates for chickens at Mezber, combined with their presence in all of the occupation phases at Mezber and in Aksumite contexts 40 B.C. to 600 A.D. in other parts of Ethiopia, demonstrate their long-term success in northern Ethiopia."

The findings of Woldekiros support the possibility of the many ways in which people transport domestic animals around the world through migration, exchange, and trade.
An unidentified polio-like disease has killed a six-year-old boy on October 30. Daniel Ramirez Porter's demise is the latest addition to the deaths linked to the mysterious disease.

According to AOL, Daniel has exhibited symptoms of a fever and, soon after, headaches, stumbling, drooling, and speech problems prior to his death.



He was taken to Seattle Children's Hospital, but the doctors failed to identify the disease and thus failed to treat him properly. The doctors initially thought it was a neurological condition called acute flaccid myelitis (AFM). Just like polio, AFM is characterized by a sudden weakness in muscles and decreased or absent reflexes.

"They had no clue what it was," De Guzman, 33 told Washington Post. "At first they thought it was a bacteria, so they were giving him antibiotics. That didn't work, and they figured out it was a virus. They were giving him pain medicine, blood pressure medicine and steroids to help with swelling in his brain."



His parents eventually agreed to place Daniel into a medically induced coma.

"They said they could try to put him in an induced coma to let his body fight the virus," De Guzman said. "All Daniel wanted to do when he got this was to rest, so we chose the coma."

At least 30 doctors went to see Daniel's condition. But none of them has managed to provide cure to the infection. Daniel's death was announced on a facebook page made by his mother. She refused to label the disease as AFM, rather she called it an "unknown virus."

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that at present, the rare condition has already affected 89 patients in 33 states.



Researchers at the CDC said they are more puzzled than ever by what is causing the unidentified condition.

"CDC is concerned about AFM and the individuals and families affected. We are intensifying our efforts to figure out what causes AFM and puts people at risk."
Turkish authorities ordered the formal arrest pending trial on Saturday of nine executives and journalists of a leading opposition newspaper following their detention on Monday, broadcaster NTV said.

The detention of the editor and senior staff of Cumhuriyet over the secularist newspaper's alleged support for a failed coup in July was described by a top EU politician as the crossing of a red line against freedom of expression.

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A new study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution may have revealed a previously unknown element of whale songs: particle motion plays a vital part in their communication. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution biologist Aran Mooney believes this may play a vital role in locating other whales in the open ocean.

In a paper published in the online journal Biology Letters, Mooney reports approaching a group of humpback whales off the coast of Maui, Hawaii. He and his team measured two components of the whales' songs: pressure waves (the type of sound wave that pushes on human eardrums, allowing us to hear), and particle motion (the physical vibration of a substance as sound moves through it). The extensive underwater particle motion surprised Mooney.

"We threw our gear over the side, and let ourselves drift away from whales while measuring both particle motion and sound pressure. We didn't expect particle motion to be projected much at all, just a few meters away at most. But as we got progressively further away, the particle motion stayed loud and clear," Mooney recounted. Data gathered by Mooney's group showed that the whales' particle motion, especially in lower frequencies of sound, could travel much further than the distance recorded. "It's a whole other avenue of sound that we never knew whales could use."

Detecting particle motion required sensitive underwater accelerometers, which had not been widely available to researchers until recent years. Mooney and his team, however, had this equipment on hand for an unrelated study in the area and were able to collect these unexpected recordings.

Since humpback whale ear bones are fused to the animals' skull, this could provide a direct link to any sort of vibration in the water column. "This could mean that their hearing is influenced by the way sound conducts through their bones," Mooney explained. "It raises the question: does a whale's lower jaw act like a tuning fork to direct vibrations to their ears? Previous papers have shown this bone conduction might be a viable mode of hearing."

But if whales could in fact sense particle motion as Mooney and his team discovered, the similar vibrations caused by humans might interfere with the way the giant animals communicate.

"Most human-made noise in the ocean low frequency, and the level of sound is doubling every decade. There's constantly more shipping, more seismic exploration for oil and gas," Mooney stated. Mining and construction, such as pile-driving machinery, is also increasing, resulting in low-frequency particle motion that might propagate for miles underwater. "We humans don't hear well in water, so we overlook noise in the ocean, but it's very relevant cue for marine animals," Mooney concluded. "This could be a major concern for whales."
An unsuspecting diver came across a very strange underwater find.

According to Toronto Sun, Sean Smyrichinsky went off Pitt Island, near Haida Gwaii to dive for see cucumbers. While he did not have any luck finding sea cucumbers, he stumbled upon an old nuke that got the Canadian Army very interested.

"I found this big thing underwater, huge, never seen anything like it before," Smyrichinsky said.

No one on the boat had a single clue about what it was. Few days later, he came across an old fisherman.

"Nobody had ever seen it before or heard of it, (because) nobody ever dives there," he said. "Then some"I came up telling all my buddies on the boat Hey, I found a UFO. It's really bizarre.' And I drew a picture of it, because I didn't have a camera." old-timer said Oh, you might have found that bomb.'"

The bomb the fisherman is referring to is a Mark IV bomb. CBC reported that the old bomb went missing after Convair B-36B, a U.S. bomber crashed off B.C.'s North Coast in the early days of the Cold War. The report added that Smyrichinsky browsed the Internet to confirm if what he saw was really the Mark IV bomb.



"It was a piece that looked very much like what I saw," he said. "The plane that was carrying the bomb, it crashed 50 miles south of where I found that object." "What else could it possibly be? I was thinking UFO, but probably not a UFO, right?"

Smyrichinsky sent an email to Canada's department of national defence, detailing his find. Reports said The Royal Canadian Navy will dispatch one of its warships, HMCS Yellowknife, a coastal defence vessel, later this month to inspect the mysterious object.

"What we will also do we will also embark a small team from Fleet Diving Unit Pacific who are very well versed in operating this kind of equipment and they will provide explosive ordinance oversight in determining what the object is when they do in fact find it," Lt. (N) Greg Menzies, a spokesman for the Royal Canadian Navy told Radio Canada International.
Mothers, who say they represent Bay Area families who lost their sons to police shootings, dont plan to rest until officers have been held responsible for their actions.

On Friday, a small, but determined group that calls itself Mothers on the March Against Police Murders conducted a so-called sit-in at San Francisco District Attorney George Gascons office.

The group, which included mothers and fathers, promised to hold weekly protests at the office until Gascon files charges against the officers involved. Participants said they want justice for young people, including Mario Woods, Alex Nieto and Kenneth Harding, Jr., who were killed by police officers.

"No matter what happens, we're going to be here every single week and sit down in this office until he decides to file murder charges, Elaine Brown said.

The group held up signs and said today was just the beginning of the campaign.

Gascon has refused to charge these officers with murder because he says  in his own words, in a community meeting  he's looking for the perfect case, said Maria Christina Gutierrez. Well, there's no perfect case. There will never be a perfect case."

Gascon did not meet the groups members, so they left flyers on the walls of his office and said they will be back next Friday.

Gascons office did not respond to NBC Bay Areas request for comment.
The San Jose police brass is urging beat officers to be careful when approaching crime scenes.

NBC Bay Area learned that the departments commanders sent out an alert warning officers to wait for backup when responding to violent crimes, especially in light of a recent spike in gang violence.

The goal, police spokesman Albert Morales said, is to remain vigilant and practice officer safety and wait for  backup when they respond to an incident that could potentially lead to a violent act.

The alert also asks officers to be visible and patrol gang hot spots whenever possible, to help prevent retaliation among gang members.

Meanwhile, the surge in gang violence is of grave concern to San Jose residents, one of whom described it "as out of control."

Some gathered at Capitol Park on Friday to pray for the victims of a double shooting -- one of whom died. Witness Alicia Cruz remembered hearing "pop-pop" over five times.
Gunn High School student Ember Lin-Sperry isnt a doctor. But shes found a cure for young patients at a local hospital.

The 16-year-old created Project Birthday Box, a non-profit which donates birthday party supplies to hospitals where some children have to celebrate birthdays.

Lin-Sperrys mom, who is a maternity nurse at Stanford Medical Center, told her about pediatric nurses who often buy supplies using their own money to decorate patient rooms.

I thought, thats not their job, said Lin-Sperry.

Project Birthday Box is her remedy. Since February 2016, she has been collecting money and supplies from the community to give to Stanford hospital.

She first had the idea as a fourth-grader when she donated party supplies as a Girl Scouts project. When she went on a service trip to Belize years later, she decided she wanted to help her own community again.

Each birthday box typically includes colorful streamers, cone-shaped party hats, stickers, games, paper plates and napkins, and coloring books. Hospital rules prohibit candles, balloons, and food.

Neighbors and friends who have leftover streamers, party hats and other items have donated. Lin-Perry has also hosted fundraisers, donation drives, and won a $300 grant to keep the project going.

She has delivered between 20 to 30 bags so far. She credits her family, fellow students and her grandmother for helping with the non-profit.

Her cousin, who lives in San Jose, plans to spread the project and donate items to Good Samaritan Hospital.

To donate, contact projectbirthdaybox@gmail.com.
The World Series was quite a wild ride for Chicago and Cleveland. And now, thanks to a friendly wager between both cities' amusement parks, another wild ride will be getting a new name.

In a video posted online ahead of Game 1 of the World Series, Six Flags Great America in north suburban Gurnee proposed a bet to Sandusky-based Cedar Point.

The wager began simply enough: If the Cubs won the World Series, the Cedar Point team had to post a video of themselves singing "Go Cubs Go."

Cedar Point accepted, then upped the ante. If the Indians won, Great America's staff would have to sing "Cleveland Rocks," and the winning city's park would get to choose a ride at the other to rename for the entire 2017 opening weekend.

By now, we all know how the World Series ended - and Cedar Point made good on their promise.

The Ohio park posted a video on Friday of some very glum staff members adorned in Cubs gear, singing the team's victory song. They also revealed that the Top Thrill Dragster will be named the "Top Thrill Cubster" in May. [[400129561, C]]
Chicago's 103rd official Christmas tree is set to be delivered to Millennium Park Friday night.

A 69-foot, 10,500-pound Norway spruce tree will serve as the city's official holiday tree this year, after it was donated by the Bill Scholla family of Wauconda.

Each year, the city's Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events receives submissions from people willing to donate their trees to the city. Scholla's tree was selected out of 120 entries received this year.

The tree's official lighting will take place on Nov. 18 in Millennium Park at 6 p.m.
Iraqi special forces threw themselves back into battle Saturday after a first foray into Mosul was blunted by stiffer than expected resistance from militants defending the birthplace of their "caliphate".

While the elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) fought the Islamic State group in the streets of Mosul, the army and federal police attacked one of the last sizeable towns on the more distant southern front.

The mass exodus feared by aid groups of some of the million-plus civilians still trapped in Mosul has yet to materialise but the number of people displaced by the battle has grown sharply in recent days.

"Our forces are now engaged in fierce fighting inside the neighbourhoods of east Mosul," CTS spokesman Sabah al-Noman said, adding that the "fighting is house to house."

In Bartalla, a town to the east that Iraqi forces have used as a base since retaking it in the early days of the nearly three-week-old offensive, ambulances returning from the front with wounded CTS fighters whizzed by on a regular basis.

CTS forces made their first real push into the streets of Mosul on Friday but were met by a deluge of bombs and gunfire, and eventually forced into a partial pullback after a few hours.

"We weren't expecting such resistance. They had blocked all the roads," said one officer. "There are large numbers of jihadists... It was preferable to pull back and devise a new plan."

The hitch in the CTS advance appeared to contradict reports that IS had moved its resources away from the east of Mosul to the west bank of the River Tigris.

The militant group had looked increasingly pragmatic when vastly outnumbered and outgunned in recent months, sometimes giving up emblematic bastions almost without a fight.

But some of the 3,000 to 5,000 militants estimated to be inside the city may have been galvanised by a rare message from their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Thursday.

The militant supremo released an audio recording for the first time in almost a year urging his fighters not to retreat.

Federal forces on the southern front attacked Hamam al-Alil, one of the main towns between their staging base in Qayyarah and Mosul.

"Army and federal police forces are attacking the Hamam al-Alil (area) from three sides with the support of army aviation," Staff Lieutenant General Abdulamir Yarallah said in a statement released by Joint Operations Command.

Forces working their way up the Tigris Valley have had more distance to cover than those on other fronts since Iraq launched the operation to retake Mosul on October 17.

Their advance has been slowed by IS resistance in villages along the way, bombs planted by the jihadists and concerns for the safety of civilians that has in some cases prevented full use of their firepower.

While the corridors called for by aid groups to allow the safe passage of civilians have yet to materialise, the number of arrivals in the displacement camps dotting the area has increased markedly.

The ministry of displacement and migration said it had taken in 9,000 displaced people during the past two days.

It put the total number of Iraqis displaced into camps since the start of the operation at 29,539.

Relief organisations were fighting the clock to build up their shelter capacity ahead of the feared mass exodus from Mosul.

Despite complaints from Iraqi forces on the ground that the number of air strikes has been insufficient, the US-led coalition insists it is providing more intense and sustained air support than ever before in its two-year campaign against IS.

Brett McGurk, US President Barack Obama's envoy to the coalition, hailed the latest military developments in a message on social media.

"New advances on all axes. Ways to go, but ahead of schedule," he said.

US and other commanders have warned that the offensive could take weeks or months.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who has visited the front lines several times since the offensive started, has vowed to rid the country of IS by the end of the year.

Retaking Mosul could effectively end the IS group's days as a land-holding force in Iraq and deal a death blow to the "caliphate" Baghdadi proclaimed in the city in June 2014.

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The 111 year old Bunker Hill Congregational Church is closing due to dwindling membership and financial resources.

Bunker Hill Congregational Church United Church of Christ will hold it's final worship service Sunday, Oct. 6 at 10 a.m. at the church on Bunker Hill Avenue.

The decision to close the church has not been an easy one, according to church leaders.

In the 1980s, about 100 people would worship there on a Sunday, but in the last decade membership and financial resources have dwindled. Now, that number has declined to about 20 people on a Sunday. So the church and its members have decided they can no longer stay open.

We hoped that this building would always be a church and always be a beacon on the hill. And God brought us in touch with Walnut Hill Community Church -- and the members have voted to gift the property to Walnut Hill, said church moderator, David Simpson.

The church has a rich history. In 1905, the Bunker HIll Congregational Church was officially organized with 68 charter members. In 1924, the church completed much of the present Bunker Hill Avenue church, which including the gymnasium, church school, parlor and other community activity rooms. The sanctuary was completed in 1941.

NBC Connecticut toured the church with Simpson, who told us giving the gift of the church was bitter-sweet for him because for many, like him, this church has been a part of his family for years.

Baptized in this church, my family was very active in this church. I was confirmed, married in this church, my two girls have been married in this church, said Simpson.

Now, only few things that belonged to Bunker Hill remain in the church -- a room filled with photo albums dating back to the early days of the church and bibles and hymnals on pew -- just enough for Sunday's final goodbye.

One of the things that I hope is that God is looking down at the people of Bunker Hill and saying well done well done servants of God.

The last worship will be followed by fellowship, then a dinner for all of its members.

Walnut Hill Community Churchs pastor said they are thankful for such a wonderful gift from Bunker Hill.
Cromwell Police are asking for the public's assistance in locating a man they say robbed a Liberty Bank on Friday night.

Police were dispatched to 72 Berlin Road around 5:40 p.m. after they received a 911 call about a bank robbery.

Police said Gregory Dearborn presented a bank teller with a note demanding money and implied he had a gun, however, no weapon was shown, police said.

Dearborn was seen leaving the bank, with an undetermined amount of money, in a green 1981 Ford pick-up truck.

Police said the truck was reported stolen out of Durham earlier Friday afternoon.

According to authorities, Dearborn has connections to Meriden and is wanted by Meriden police for larceny.

Anyone knowing Dearborn's location is asked to call Cromwell Police at 860-635-2256.
A 17-year-old boy was shot and killed on Porter Street in Waterbury just before 4:30 p.m. Saturday.

The victim was shot three times, including once in the head, police said.

He was transported to Waterbury Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

Police are investigating and ask anyone with information to call the Waterbury Police Department.
A little known section of Connecticut elections law allows a small subset of voters to change their ballots before election day.

For voters who have already submitted absentee ballots, they can have their ballot withdrawn that theyve already delivered to their local registrar and submit a new ballot in person.

They must withdraw it before Election Day and then they must vote in person, said Melissa Russell, the President of the Registrars of Voters Association of Connecticut and the Republican Registrar for the town of Bethlehem.

Russell said its meant for people to be able to cast their ballot in person, which is one of the main intentions of Connecticut election law. She also said there is paperwork involved.

What you need to do is sign off and swear that youre not going to be in town or that you have religious reasons that you are not going to vote in person.

The issue of vote changing has been brought up on the campaign trail by Donald Trump, urging voters who may have buyers remorse, to change their ballots from Hillary Clinton to him. Several states have wider provisions and reasons for allowing people to change their votes like in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan.

Deputy Secretary of the State James Spallone explains that in Connecticut the law is extremely narrow when it comes to allowing a vote change.

"The way the statute is written, if a person votes by absentee ballot and they realize that they will be able to vote in person the law is written to encourage people to vote in person."

Even if someones intent is to change their vote rather than the realization that they will be able to vote in person, Spallone said that doesnt matter.

"How they vote is secret and the law is designed to allow them to vote in person instead of by absentee if they're available."
A Madison solar company has surrendered its home improvement contractors registration in an agreement with the Department of Consumer Protection.

This week BeFree Solar signed off on an agreement that effectively puts it out of business for a month at a minimum and maybe longer.

BeFree Solar got on the states radar after customers complained about the companys business practices. NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters profiled a Killingworth man that eventually got BeFree to take the panels off his roof because of a conflict over what he ordered versus what was installed. BeFree did the removal even though it insisted it never did anything wrong.

The Department of Consumer Protection pursued several other cases against BeFree, principally centered on a failure to have sales people licensed before completing transactions with customers. BeFree reached an agreement with the DCP without admitting it did anything wrong, surrendering its home improvement contractors registration and volunteering to make a $10,000 payment to the state.

DCP investigator Rob Pero told the NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters, The penalty was severe enough to send a message to the industry that the department takes it seriously that, there was just more than paperwork here. And so thats why I think you see the amount, and why you see the surrender.

We reached out to BeFree and its attorney and have not heard back. The company can apply for a new home improvement contractors registration in December, but the DCP could object and lengthen the time before they get a new one and are back in business. The DCP adds be-free cannot even work on any of its existing projects until it gets a new registration.
The image of the Dallas Cowboys certainly wouldnt be the same without the dazzling smiles, crop tops and signature white boots of the cheerleaders who grace the sidelines at every game.

The cheerleaders are a vital part of the Dallas Cowboys' brand, and their history is unmatched.

Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Through the Years

Kelli Finglass, who has directed the squad for 27 years, said the cheerleaders are timeless. She, herself, was a cheerleader in the 1980s for five years.

They embrace tradition, yet they also keep us young and relevant in our choreography and our music and performance, Finglass said.

One thing that has remained a tradition since the 1970s is the signature uniform.

Paula Van Wagoner was never a cheerleader, but she was the first person to ever officially don the uniform.

Van Wagoner was the original designer of the classic booty shorts, crop top and beloved white boots.

She was a fashion designer in 1972, and was asked to create a uniform to represent the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. With her design in hand, she presented her creation to the head of the Dallas Cowboys, Tex Schramm, on a hanger.

I can remember Tex Schram saying, 'We need to see it on a body,' so I went and put on the uniform and came back and modeled it for him, she said. So I was the first person to wear the uniform the way it is today.

She said she thought the uniforms would last throughout a season, maybe.

I actually thought the uniforms might last through that first season, not for 44 years, Van Wagoner said.

A look a the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders uniforms through the years.

Although the uniforms are practically unchanged, the importance of diversity on the team is something that has developed through the years. The squad is a diverse group representing 18 states and three countries.

One of those women, Yuko Kawata, is from Osaka, Japan. The 23-year-old said shes always dreamed of being a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader and made the team despite language and culture barriers.

It is so hard, she said. But every moment I think, 'Oh, Im living my dream!' I need time for understanding, but everything for my dream.

Jinelle Davidson is a 29-year-old cheerleader from Australia. Shes been on the squad for four years and said she loves every minute of her time in Dallas.

I think its so special to have a team of 37 ladies and everyone comes from somewhere different and has a different story and has gone through their own different experience to make this team, Davidson said.

She said the feeling of cheering inside AT&T Stadium is an indescribable experience.

Theres no feeling like it, she said. I have goosebumps right now talking about it.

But through all the years and all the changes, much has stayed the same.

There's energy, a sisterhood, a common denominator of overachieving women that become very close, Finglass said.
There are new troubles for Dallas County Schools, the school bus agency at the center of an NBC 5 investigation that found hundreds of bus drivers running red lights.

The Coppell Independent School District superintendent sent a note to parents, complaining that DCS is so understaffed many buses are late getting kids to or from school.

In that e-mail, Superintendent Mike Waldrip says the district is having a "trying time" dealing with Dallas County Schools.

Just this week Coppell apparently had problems with many DCS buses running 30 to 40 minutes late.

And they're not the only ones complaining. The school board president at the Dallas Independent School District tells NBC 5 Investigates he has similar concerns about poor service from the area's biggest bus agency.

In recent weeks DCS has become best known for bus drivers running red lights, accumulating hundreds of tickets  that the agency paid for using taxpayer money  and now new concerns about management at DCS, in an email from one of the 11 districts its serves.

Coppell ISD's superintendent told parents, in part:

"...Our team has been in constant communication with Dallas County Schools (DCS) since the beginning of the school year regarding their inconsistencies in services ... Due to illness and terminations, our bus fleet remains under-staffed by DCS.

"At this time, we cannot change our transportation services for the current school year ... we are required to continue our contract with Dallas County Schools' transportation services for our students.

"We appreciate your patience during this trying time with Dallas County Schools."

Dallas ISD School Board President Dan Micciche says his district, the largest in the area, is also seeing an unacceptable number of late buses.

"We need to see a drastic improvement in the bus service that we are provided from Dallas County Schools," Micciche said.

Between that, and the red light ticket scandal, Micciche says it's time for Dallas ISD to consider other bus providers.

"We will ensure that the service improves or we will get another provider to take the kids to school on the buses," Micciche said.

DCS responded Friday, saying:

"Coppell ISD has had a significant and unexpected increase in student population and added 1,500 students to the bus routes. More students require more bus drivers ... We have recently hired new drivers to address this issue but we urgently need about 10 more.

"We are working to fulfill the demand as quickly as possible and we understand the parents' and the district's frustration. We are hopeful local drivers with a commercial license will see this as a terrific opportunity."

The driver shortage is apparently not related to the drivers fired for running red lights. None of the drivers ousted in that scandal were ones that bused kids in Coppell.

NBC 5 Investigates reached out to Coppell ISD Friday night, and a spokesperson said the district did not want to say anything beyond what was in the note to parents.
A free conference to encourage and share the importance of professional health services and faith is being held this weekend in Dallas.

The African American Faith-Based Mental Health Initiative will host this first of its kind gathering called Peeling Back the Layers: Tools for Healing the Hurt.

It's Saturday, Nov. 5 at 9 a.m. at Concord Church, 6808 Pastor Bailey Drive.

The conference offers five tracks: Clergy, Caregiver, General, Justice and Youth.

It opens with a panel discussion titled, African-Americans and Mental Health: Suffering in Silence.

Other conference sessions will include:

Depression, Anxiety, and Suicide: Trends and Challenges Facing African-Americans

Helping Yourself to Health: Connecting Emotional Well-Being and Physical Health

The Clinical and Biblical Perspective on Mental Health from the Church

For more information, click here.
A Texas state trooper is under investigation after two Fort Worth women claim he got pliers to help remove piercings from their breasts and later injured one of them with his hands.

The trooper, identified in the women's arrest records as Michael Tice, has been placed on administrative duty, said Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Tom Vinger.

The women, 18-year-old Tayler Myers and 19-year-old Courtney Palacios, said they were returning to Fort Worth from a concert in Houston on Monday when the trooper stopped them for speeding in Marlin, east of Waco.

The trooper said he found a single pill in the vehicle and arrested them and two male friends for drug possession, the women said.

Myers and Palacios said they were in the back seat of the car and knew nothing about the pill, which they said the trooper claimed to find in the driver's door.

While being booked into the Falls County Jail, the two women said the trooper asked them to remove any piercings.

"And then we told him, 'Well, where do we go to take out our nipple rings?'" Myers said. "And he was like, 'You are going to have to do it right here, in the open.'"

They said they turned away and raised their shirts.

"We ended up getting one of them out," Palacios said. "We each got our right one out. But we were having trouble with the left. It was not coming out at all."

That's when they say the trooper went to his car  and returned with pliers.

He asked them to continue to try to remove the piercings themselves but they were unable.

Then Palacios said the trooper touched her.

"He came up to me and he got really close to it, and he was just staring," Palacios said. "He's like, 'I think it unscrews from the left side.' So then, without gloves or anything  and I could see dirt under his nails, it was extremely disgusting  he gets on there and he tries to twist it and he starts shaking from trying so hard and he ends up pulling it and ripping it and it starts bleeding."

Palacios said the pain was sharp.

"I'm like 'ow, ow, ow, ow, ow,' saying it really loud," she said. "He finally stops and backs away and he just stares at me. He didn't say sorry or anything or acted like it was a big deal."

She said she was bleeding but neither the trooper nor the jailers offered to get her medical help.

"It was extremely uncomfortable and uncalled for and I don't think he should have been anywhere near me," Palacios said.

Palacios said the piercing never did come out and she was finally allowed to keep it in.

Myers said a female jailer used the pliers to try to remove her piercing while the trooper was nearby.

"I feel like it's not right, what he did, at all," said Myers, whose father is a Fort Worth police sergeant and mother is a police dispatcher.

The women have hired Fort Worth attorney Curtis Fortinberry and are considering filing a lawsuit.

"He has violated every policy and procedure known to police work," said Fortinberry, a former Fort Worth officer. "That is just absolutely mind-boggling that he would do this."

Palacios later went to the hospital and expects her wound to heal.

The two women also were cited for having alcohol in the car and Palacios was charged with having a fake identification card.

They said three Texas Rangers interviewed them on Thursday and took photos of Palacios' injury.

Falls County Sheriff Ben Kirk and District Attorney Kathryn Gilliam did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Donald Trump criticized rapper Jay Z at a rally in Tampa, Florida, on Saturday for explicit language in songs he performed at an Ohio rally for Hillary Clinton Friday.

Trump, who has faced heavy criticism for his rhetoric during the campaign, admitted he liked Jay Z and Beyonce, but took issue with the expletives in Jay Z's music.

He used every word in the book last night, Trump said.

Jay Z used curses in songs and during interludes, as did rappers Chance the Rapper and Big Sean, at the rally in Cleveland. Beyonce did not curse during her appearance.

Ive never said what he said in my life," Trump said. "It shows you the phoniness of politicians and phoniness of the whole system

Trump spoke at a rally in Florida Saturday morning, the first of several stops as he vowed to press into Democratic strongholds over the campaign's final days he made appearances in North Carolina and Nevada, with another anticipated in Colorado.

However, his Nevada rally was interrupted by a disturbance that caused security to rush Trump off stage. It was unclear what caused the disturbance or if it would affect his plans for Colorado.

Unlike Clinton, who had Jay Z, Beyonce, Katy Perry and Jon Bon Jovi campaigning for her Saturday, Trump was largely on his own, he conceded  even as he promised to march into Minnesota, a state that hasn't backed a GOP presidential nominee in more than four decades.

"Hillary Clinton has all of these celebrities and failed politicians out campaigning for her," a defiant Trump declared in North Carolina, one of four battleground states he was visiting on Saturday. "I just have me, but I have my family."

Clinton addressed a crowd of supporters in Pembroke Pines, Florida, Saturday afternoon, where she urged people to vote early and to turn up to polls on Election Day.

She also mentioned Jay Z and Beyonce's support for her, telling the crowd the couple views the election in terms of how it will affect their daughter's future.

Later, she was joined by Perry in Philadelphia. Perry wore a blue cape bearing the phrase "I'm with Madame President" when she walked onstage to join Clinton.


As'ad's Bio

As'ad AbuKhalil, born March 16, 1960. From Tyre, Lebanon, grew up in Beirut. Received his BA and MA from American University of Beirut in pol sc. Came to US in 1983 and received his PhD in comparative government from Georgetown University. Taught at Tufts University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, Colorado College, and Randolph-Macon Woman's College. Served as a Scholar-in-Residence at Middle East Institute in Washington DC. He served as free-lance Middle East consultant for NBC News and ABC News, an experience that only served to increase his disdain for maintream US media. He is now professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. His favorite food is fried eggplants.
A news outlet linked to the Islamic State group said its fighters staged a bombing that killed nine people in southeastern Turkey, according to US-based monitors, after Ankara blamed Kurdish militants for the attack.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Friday's bombing was carried out by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has regularly targeted security forces since ending a truce in 2015.

The early morning attack on a police headquarters in the Kurdish-majority of Diyarbakir left nine people dead, including two police, and over 100 wounded.

It left a swathe of devastation, blowing out the entire front of a nearby apartment block and leaving the surroundings covered in rubble.

Emergency workers on Saturday began to sift through the damage while residents arrived to pick up whatever belongings they could salvage, an AFP photographer said.

The pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) said six of its MPs, including its co-leaders, had narrowly escaped injury in the attack as they were being held in the police complex following their detention overnight.

The US-based SITE Intelligence Group cited an "insider source" for the IS group -affiliated Amaq news agency as saying that "Fighters from the Islamic State detonated an explosives-laden vehicle parked in front of a Turkish police headquarters in Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey."

If confirmed, the claim would be the first ever by IS group for an attack in Turkey, although it has been blamed over the last year for a series of strikes against Kurdish activists, tourists and on Istanbul airport.

There has so far been no denial or claim of responsibility from the PKK.

In an audio message released earlier this week, reclusive IS group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi broke a nearly year-old silence to call for attacks against Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia, and for his fighters to hold their ground in their stronghold of Mosul, Iraq.

Ankara has troops stationed at a base just outside Mosul and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's escalating rhetoric has raised fears of an expanded Turkish military intervention in Iraq.

Yildirim said the PKK had again showed its "ugly face" with the attack.

The HDP meanwhile said its co-leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag as well as four other MPs had been brought to the police complex overnight after their detention early Friday.

It said in a statement Demirtas had been taken to court just before the attack and Yuksekdag was in the complex when it happened.

Without directly saying its MPs were the target, it noted that the minibus packed with explosives had blown up early following an alert from a taxi driver.

"All the facts must be revealed about this attack which was planned to be even more devastating and did not reach its intended target," the HDP said.

The two co-leaders and 10 other HDP MPs have now been placed under arrest ahead of trial by the courts.

Demirtas and Yuksekdag have been transferred by air to prisons in the western regions of Edirne and Kocaeli respectively, well away from Diyarbakir.

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Most Americans will cast their votes without any problems on Election Day, but some may be challenged on their voting eligibility, experience or witness voter intimidation, or have trouble finding the right polling place.

There have been reports of several voting issues across the U.S. during early voting: A Texas judge ordered local election officials in San Antonio to stop incorrectly telling voters that photo ID is required to cast a ballot; an Iowa woman was charged with voter fraud after she allegedly voted for Donald Trump a second time; and civil rights advocates in North Carolina said voters were illegally dropped from registration lists after their eligibility was challenged.

The nations largest nonpartisan coalition of more than 100 organizations, led by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, has been fielding voters complaints from across the country since the primaries. The coalition will ramp up its efforts on Election Day, bringing 4,500 legal volunteers and 2,500 grassroots volunteers to help answer questions from voters calling into their Election Protection hotline.

[NATL] Highlights From the 2016 Campaign Trail

They can be reached at 866-OUR-VOTE (English only), 888-VE-Y-VOTA (English/Spanish) and 888-API-VOTE (English, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Bengali, Hindi, Urdu and Tagalog).

Were bracing for a higher volume of calls on Elections Day and remain vigilant, said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director at the Lawyers Committee. We want to ensure that voters are able to cast their ballot free from discrimination and harassment.

Heres what you should know before heading to the polls:

Am I ready to vote?:

Among the most frequently asked questions from people calling the Election Protection hotline over the years are: Am I registered? Where do I vote? What do I need to bring with me?

Voting laws vary from state to state and before casting a ballot voters should verify that they are registered to vote at their current address, find out where their polling place is and ensure they have the proper form of identification required by state law  if ID is even required. People who moved recently and did not change their address for voting purposes may face additional obstacles in getting to the right voting place or will have to cast a provisional ballot, instead. Contact your local board of elections to ensure youre registered to vote and check out this vote prep plan. Google has also made it easy to find out where your polling place is.

Still confused? Call the hotline.

Were on the phones, but were also sitting in front of the computer and we can help people in real time by finding their voter information, said Adam Laughton, an associate at Seyfarth Shaw law firm who will serve as a call center captain in Houston, Texas.

He added that local election board websites often get overwhelmed on Election Day, so calling the hotline can be the quickest way to access voter registration information. Election Protection volunteers can also be found at many polling places and there are lawn signs in front of polling sites advertising the hotline.

Voter ID Laws:

Voter ID laws vary from state to state and a recent national survey found that Americans are confused about voter ID laws. According to the survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, some voters live in states that do not require identification to vote but think it is needed. Others live in states that require IDs but mistakenly believe they do not need one to vote, the survey found.

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Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have no identification requirement, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Twenty-two states request identification but provide conditions that permit voters without it to cast a ballot without requirements to confirm identity. That means voters can cast a provisional ballot or sign an affidavit of identity in order to vote. Ten remaining states have strict identification requirements. Check your state's requirements before heading to the polls as there have been changes to some states voter ID laws.

In the summer of 2013 the Supreme Court eliminated a vital provision of the Voting Rights Act, triggering more than a dozen state legislatures to pass restrictive voter ID laws. Federal courts across the U.S. have overturned, challenged or blocked some of those laws.

With millions of votes already cast in the U.S. presidential election pointing to an advantage for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in critical battleground states, as well as signs of strength in traditionally Republican territory, both candidates were pushing get-out-the-vote efforts Thursday in the key swing states of Ohio and North Carolina.

One such example is the Texas voter identification law. A federal appeals court loosened ID rules in July, allowing voters to present alternative documentation such as a voter registration certificate or a utility bill and sign a document affirming a reasonable difficulty in obtaining a photo ID. Despite the ruling, voting rights groups say not all polling locations are relaying that message.

Laughton said incorrect printed instructions about the voter ID law were posted in polling places in San Antonio and the hotline has been fielding calls from confused voters and poll workers across the state.

"Poll workers just dont have the grasp on the final points of the law and how its changed or the workaround the court put in place," he said.

Voters Being Challenged:

A voters eligibility can be questioned before they complete and cast a ballot by voter challengers at polling sites, according to the Lawyers Committee. The voting challengers might be appointed by political parties or other organizations, depending on state law. These voter challenges are often fraught with discriminatory practices and can intimidate qualified voters from voting, the Lawyers Committee said.

As Hillary Clinton traverses battleground states across the country in the final stretch of the presidential election, Donald Trump took a detour from the campaign trail for the ribbon cutting ceremony Wednesday of his Washington, D.C. hotel  but his remarks made clear the race to the White House was not far from mind. Trump claims the hotel is a...

Generally speaking, your identity your citizenship, whether youve already voted, those are all reasons someone can properly challenge a voter, said Adam Humann, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis law firm in New York which is running one of the Election Protection call centers. Things like race, ethnicity, gender  those are not proper basis to challenge a voter.

Each state has a different procedure for how to overcome a challenge. The Lawyers Committee recommends that if someone is challenged at a polling site they should contact the hotline so an attorney could walk them through the process.

The first thing is to remain calm and recognize that in every state theres a legitimate basis for people to challenge voters and thats done to protect the integrity of the system, Humann said. There should be election officials on site who can assist if there are voter challenge issues and heres a lot of resources if youre worried that people are making improper challenges or acting improperly.

Voter Intimidation:

Theres a history of voter intimidation in past U.S. elections and this year may not be any different. According to Clarke, voters have been calling the Election Protection hotline with complaints that they felt intimidated when showing up to vote early. In Texas, Laughton said, there have been instances of unofficial poll workers and campaign volunteers telling voters at a polling places to go to a non-existent polling site.

Footage shows towering flames in San Francisco as crews battle a fire caused by a gas explosion.

We encourage people to call our hotline even if it doesnt personally affect them but they see something wrong at the polling place, if its intimidating signs, presence, or poll workers acting inappropriately, Laughton said. He added that volunteers can contact a county attorneys office which may direct deputies to go to a polling place if theres a disruptive situation.

The Lawyers Committee suggests the following steps when met with voter intimidation: First, do not engage. Second, continue inside and make sure you vote. Then notify a poll worker or official. Third, call the Election Protection hotline: 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683). From there, concerned voters can pass along info and local polling officials will be notified and take the proper next steps.

In addition to answering the hotlines, the coalition has representatives on the ground at polling places in 28 states. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which supports state and county election officials, will be monitoring for voter fraud and disruptive election behavior.

Provisional Ballots:

If a voter is not able to cast a regular ballot because their name is not appearing on the registration list at the polling place, the voter does not have a required form of voter identification, or an election official challenges the voters eligibility, they should cast a provisional ballot.

After a voter has cast a provisional ballot, election officials determine whether or not to count the provisional ballot by verifying the voters eligibility. Depending on the state, a voter might have to take additional steps to verify eligibility in order for the provisional ballot to count.

According to the Lawyers Committee, many poll workers are improperly trained to handle provisional ballots, and may fail to inform voters of their right to it. They can also mistakenly misinform an eligible voter entitled to cast a regular ballot that the voter must instead cast provisional ballot.

A provisional ballot is the last resort, said Laughton. They will be counted several days after the election.

There are no clear and uniform standards for counting provisional ballots, according to the Lawyers Committee and many states do not count provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct, while others do. Provisional ballots can also be rejected if the voter is not registered to vote, the voter did not complete or sign the provisional ballot or the voter did not provide sufficient identification.

Problems With Voting Machines:

There are various types of new and old voting machines being used across the U.S. and if you see a machines malfunctioning, alert a poll worker or call the Election Protection hotline.

Anyone using an electronic voting machine, kind of like an ATM, make sure it has registered your vote for the candidate you intended to vote for before you press that last button to submit your vote, said Marjorie Lindblom, a retired partner at Kirkland & Ellis and the former national co-chair of the Lawyers' Committee. Just always check to make sure your vote is going to count correctly.

When Kevin Leighty went to get the paper Friday morning, he noticed something was off with the Donald Trump sign he and his wife had put in the front yard of their Platteville, Wisconsin, home. The frame holding it was there, but there was no sign. They reviewed surveillance video from cameras they have on their house, and found a...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump raised suspicions in late October about the voting machines in Texas despite producing no evidence of an actual problem.

"A lot of call-ins about vote flipping at the voting booths in Texas. People are not happy. BIG lines. What is going on?" Trump said in a tweet.

But Texas Secretary of State Carlos Cascos, a Republican, said that there was no evidence of vote-flipping, a term that's used to describe a correctable technical glitch on older electronic voting machines.

Loughton said if a voter notices a lot of machines down, the line getting long, and poll workers not acting to resolve it, report the problem to the Election Protection hotline. Long lines can mean theres a high turnout or that a county has done a poor job planning and didnt get enough machines and poll workers, he said.

Another issue that's come up in early voting this year are voter selfies. Nineteen states prohibit posting photos of ballots and voting laws for ballot selfies are unclear in a dozen states, according to reports.

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A proposed amendment to the state constitution to legalize medical marijuana has gained widespread support in Florida two years after falling just shy of passing.

Most state polls have support for Amendment 2 above the 60 percent threshold needed for approval. A similar measure was on the 2014 general election ballot and received 58 percent.

Supporters say they have listened to concerns from two years ago and changed the amendment's wording to tighten oversight over the industry and protect children from harm.

In the meantime, the Florida Legislature has passed two measures allowing limited use of medical marijuana, though delays in implementing them have fed support for an amendment that would make it more broadly available.

Opponents say there still isn't enough research proving the benefits in medical treatment. They also warn that the state will be overrun with pot shops and that children could illegally gain access to the drug.

If approved, Florida would be the 26th state along with the District of Columbia to legalize the marijuana plant for medical use. Florida is one of 16 states where only part of the marijuana plant is used.

``The legislature has failed to expand and open up the entire plant to use and only a narrow scope,'' said Dennis Deckerhoff of Tallahassee, who says he will vote yes. ``If the Legislature doesn't want to do it, now it will be up to the voters.''
Authorities say a Florida woman lied about having an affair to make her cheating husband jealous, and then her angry husband fatally shot the supposed other man.

The Bradenton Herald reports that the shooting occurred Thursday morning.

The Manatee County Sheriff's Office says deputies responded to a Bradenton home and found Dequan Randolph dead. Witnesses at the scene identified the shooter as Derrick Frazier.

Frazier initially told detectives he was never at the scene. Authorities say he changed his story several times, eventually claiming that Randolph had pulled the gun, and a struggle ensued.

Frazier has been charged with second-degree murder. He was being held without bail.
The only passenger wearing a seatbelt in an Interstate 95 crash in Martin County was killed while three others in the SUV survived.

Florida Highway Patrol reports three survivors in the Friday crash weren't wearing seatbelts, yet passenger Casimiro Aquino was wearing a safety belt and was killed.

The 56-year-old Miami man was pronounced dead at the scene. Two passengers were airlifted to St. Mary's Medical Center and the driver was taken by ambulance to Jupiter Medical Center and transferred to St. Mary's.

Florida Highway Patrol said the vehicle's driver lost control after tread separated from a tire, causing it to swerve off the highway and roll over several times.
The four students who were arrested at Norland High School in Miami over a loaded gun found on campus, appeared in court on Saturday.

The students were arrested and charged with possession of a gun on school property Friday. The judge ordered that all students remain in secure detention.

Outside of the courtroom a mother's eyes filled with tears and questions. She did not want to share her name, but says the punishment does not fit the crime for her 15-year-old daughter.

"I don't have any guns at my house and she knows the severity of that," the mother said. "So for them to try an pin it on her, that's not right. All them boys, she's the only girl. It just doesn't sit well with me."

The school at 1193 Northwest 193rd Street was temporarily placed on lockdown while officials searched the school for any other possible weapons.

A tip received through the "See Something, Say Something" program initially informed police about the gun. School Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho tweeted, commending the student who made the anonymous call.

In total, five students - two males and three females - were brought in for questioning, including Sabrina Placide. She says she handled the backpack that carried the gun.

"They told me to pass it and I didn't know what was inside of it, so I just passed it," Placide said.

That's all it took for police to pull Placide into the office in their search to find the students responsible.

"This boy had a gun in his bookbag, the police came and took him, he gave the bag to another boy and they started checking people's book bags," Placide said.

On Saturday evening, one parent is asking for justice for her child.

"I feel like my daughter shouldn't be there," the parent said. "She didn't bring no weapon to school."

We are not releasing their names or showing their faces because they are minors.
President Barack Obama is granting clemency to 72 more federal inmates whose sentences will now end earlier than expected.

Obama has been commuting sentences at rapid-fire pace in his final months, including a batch of 98 last week. All told, Obama has granted 944 people clemency, including 324 who were serving life sentences.

The White House says it's more than the previous 11 presidents combined.

Almost all of those receiving commutations were convicted of drug-related offenses. Most are considered nonviolent offenders, although some were convicted of firearms charges in connection with drug crimes.

White House counsel Neil Eggleston says the individuals "have earned a second chance."

Obama isn't setting them all free right away. Many will see their sentences end in 2017 or 2018, long after Obama has left office.
What to Know Two women were killed at a Halloween party in Newburgh over the weekend

The women were shot when someone opened fire after what may have been some sort of dispute, police said

A vigil for the women was planned Monday afternoon

Police say they've arrested the 17-year-old boy wanted in the shooting deaths of two young women at a Halloween party in Orange County last weekend.

Nija Johnson of Newburgh was taken into custody outside of New York state Friday afternoon. Police were expected to release more details Monday.

Tabitha Cruz, 20, and Omani Free, 18, were gunned down at an apartment party in Newburgh at about 1 a.m. Sunday. Authorities said the two women were standing near the DJ booth when gunfire erupted and they were hit.

Five other people were wounded in the shooting, but they were all expected to survive. Police said some sort of dispute broke out shortly before the shooting.

Free was a high school senior at Newburgh Free Academy and had made a last-minute decision to go to the party, about five blocks from her home, with a friend, said her mother, Rhonda Valentine-Free.

Valentine-Free said she had left home to go to her own social engagement and didn't know her daughter had decided to go to the party. She said she and her husband first got word that something had happened when a friend of their 15-year-old son who had been at the party called to say their daughter had been shot. She said they went to a hospital, where their daughter died hours later.

Students at Newburgh Free Academy joined others in the community Monday to remember the two women, one of whom was a senior at the school.

Two other men, 21-year-old Rainier Hamilton and 20-year-old Tyson Oliveira, were arrested hours after the party on charges of tampering with physical evidence. Hamilton is also charged with criminal possession of a weapon. Both men were arraigned Monday in city court and ordered held on $50,000 bail. Their assigned lawyers couldn't be reached for comment.
With the presidential election just a few days away, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are making their final appeals with multiple stops in key swing states.

In our experience, we have found that facts are stretched more than usual in the final, desperate days of a close presidential campaign. And that is certainly the case this year. In stump speeches this week, the messaging was clear. Clinton stuck to the theme that Trump is unqualified and unfit to be president, while Trump hammered at the theme that Clinton is corrupt.

In this story, we will look at a sampling of the misleading claims made by Clinton during speeches this week.

In a separate story, we have a sampling of misleading statements by Trump (which you can read here). Some academics argue that politically motivated reasoning may lead you to only read one of these stories. Prove them wrong.

Clintons Final Push

In speeches this week, Clinton laid out the case for her contention that Trump is unqualified and unfit to be president. But in many cases, Clinton twisted Trumps words to make her point.

On nuclear weapons:

I am running against a man who says he doesnt understand why we cant use nuclear weapons. He actually said, then why are we making them?  Oct. 31 in Kent, Ohio.



As we wrote after the last debate, thats according to MSNBCs Joe Scarborough and based on an anonymous source, not a verified quote from Trump. Scarborough said in early August that an anonymous source, a foreign policy expert who went to advise Donald Trump several months earlier, had said that Trump three times asked if we had them why cant we use them. The Trump campaign denied that account.

But even the prospect of an actual nuclear war doesnt seem to bother Donald Trump. Good luck, enjoy yourselves, folks, was what he had to say about a potential nuclear conflict in Asia. I wonder if he knows that a single nuclear warhead can kill millions of people. These are weapons today far more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. To talk so casually, so cavalierly about mass annihilation is truly appalling.  Oct. 31 in Kent, Ohio.



Thats twisting Trumps words a bit, as we also explained in our fact-check of the last debate.

Heres what Trump said on April 2: Were protecting Japan from North Korea.  I would say to Japan you gotta help us out.  And I would rather have them not arm. But Im not going to continue to lose this tremendous amount of money. And frankly, the case could be made, that let them protect themselves against North Korea. Theyd probably wipe them out pretty quick. And if they fight, you know what, that would be a terrible thing, terrible. Good luck folks, enjoy yourself. If they fight, that would be terrible, right? But if they do, they do.

On multiple occasions, Trump did say perhaps Japan and South Korea should have nuclear weapons to protect themselves. But it isnt clear  as Clinton suggests  that Trump was talking about a nuclear war between Japan and North Korea when he said, Good luck folks, enjoy yourself. In that instance, Trump was focusing on his argument that Japan should pay the U.S. more for providing protection for that country.

On 9/11:

After the world watched with horror as the twin towers fell, he called in to a New York TV station, and even on that horrible day when thousands of people lost their lives, he couldnt stop himself from pointing out that now, because the towers had fallen, a building he owned was the tallest in lower Manhattan. What kind of person brags at a moment like that?  Oct. 31 in Kent, Ohio



Trump did say that, though well leave it to readers to decide if he was bragging, as Clinton put it. It seems to us a more plausible interpretation, given the fuller context of the interview, that Trump was lamenting the dramatic change to an iconic New York City skyline.

Trumps comments came in a nearly 10-minute interview with WWOR-TV in New York after he was asked first about whether he had increased security at Trump Tower, and then whether his landmark building at 40 Wall Street had been damaged.

Trump responded, Forty Wall Street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and it was, actually, before the World Trade Center, was the tallest. And then when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second-tallest, and now its the tallest.

He then went on to describe how debris  brick, mortar and steel  was piled 2 feet high outside the building, even though it is several blocks from the World Trade Center.

I think one of the very sad things is going to be when you look at the skyline of New York, which has become so emblazoned in your memory, and you are looking at the skyline of New York and you see  these two buildings, whether you loved them or you dont love them, they were a great part of the skyline, Trump said Its hard to believe.

You can listen to the entire interview via Politico, which included a quote from Alan Marcus, who was working that day for WWOR, commenting that even on 9/11 Trump couldnt get away from being the brand manager of Trump. But as we said, it is equally plausible that Trump was putting into perspective the dramatic change to the New York skyline.

On praising China:

He even praised the Chinese government for massacring protesters in Tiananmen Square.  Oct. 31 in Kent, Ohio.



This is another example of Clinton and Trump disagreeing over the interpretation of what Trump said. In a 1990 interview with Playboy, Trump said, When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it, then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength.

During a Republican debate in March, CNNs Jake Tapper asked Trump about those comments.

That doesnt mean I was endorsing that, Trump explained. I was not endorsing it. I said that is a strong, powerful government that put it down with strength. And then they kept down the riot. It was a horrible thing. It doesnt mean at all I was endorsing it.

On Russian influence:

The U.S. intelligence community has now confirmed that the Russian government, which means Putin, is directing cyberattacks against targets in the United States to influence the outcome of our election. So ask yourself, why would Putin be trying to get Donald Trump elected president? Could it be because of all the nice things Donald has said about him or the fact that he has promised to adopt pro- Kremlin policies? Or maybe because of the extensive business dealings with Russian oligarchs with ties to Putin?  Oct. 31 in Kent, Ohio.



Clinton is right that U.S. intelligence officials have pointed a finger at Russia for recent cyberattacks affecting the Democratic Party. The Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security issued a joint statement on Oct. 7 saying they were confident that recent hacks into the email systems of the Democratic Party were directed by the Russian government. And, they wrote, These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process.

But Clinton, so far, has no proof that the Russians are trying to get Donald Trump elected president.

According to a New York Times story published on Oct. 31, after Clinton made her remarks, And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.

Twisting Trumps words:

You see I dont think I have all the answers. I dont think anybody has all the answers. When Donald Trump, at his convention, said he alone could fix everything in America.  Nov. 2 in Tempe, Arizona.



As we have written before, Clinton is misrepresenting remarks Trump made during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. Trump never said hed be the only one to fix absolutely everything. He said that as a political outsider, only he can fix a rigged system. And, in fact, he talked about working with others in that same speech.

He doesnt believe in equal pay.  Nov. 1 in Dade City, Florida.



As weve written, Trump doesnt support equal pay legislation, but he has said that he believes in paying people based on performance, not gender.

And you know Donald Trumps strategys pretty simple. He says he wants to suppress young people from voting, women from voting, people of color from voting. I mean thats a lot of people.  Nov. 1 in Dade City, Florida.



The Clinton campaign pointed us to articles in Bloomberg Businessweek, New York magazine and the Wall Street Journal  all of which cite anonymous Trump campaign officials talking about efforts to depress Democratic voter turnout.

For example, the Bloomberg story quotes a senior official saying, We have three major voter suppression operations under way, including efforts to lower voting among Clinton strongholds: idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans.

None of the stories quotes Trump directly. We cant independently verify the accuracy of accounts given by anonymous Trump campaign officials. But even in these press accounts, Trump himself did not say those things, meaning that  at best  Clinton goes too far when she claims, He [Trump] says 

On Muslims:

He [Trump] wants to ban every Muslim in the world from coming to the United States.  Nov. 3 in Raleigh, North Carolina.

That was Trumps initial proposal in December. At the time, he called for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our countrys representatives can figure out what is going on. By July, in his convention speech, he dropped the reference to religion and said, we must immediately suspend immigration from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism until such time as proven vetting mechanisms have been put in place.

On NBCs Meet the Press after the convention, Trump explained why he was no longer targeting Muslims: Im looking now at territories. People were so upset when I used the word Muslim. Oh, you cant use the word Muslim. Remember this. And Im okay with that, because Im talking territory instead of Muslim. 

During the second presidential debate, Trump said, The Muslim ban is something that in some form has morphed into a extreme vetting from certain areas of the world. Asked to explain whether or not the Muslim ban still stands, Trump responded, Its called extreme vetting. He then went on to discuss the vetting of refugees.

Many questions remain about the details of how Trump would implement his plan, which countries would be included among those that would be subject to extreme vetting, and how that would apply to visitors to the U.S. Nonetheless, Trump has clearly changed his initial call for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.

FactCheck.org is a non-partisan non-profit organization that will hold candidates and key figures accountable during the 2016 presidential campaign. FactCheck.org will check facts of speeches, advertisements and more for NBC.
Police arrested a man accused of stealing three computers from an SUV that may have contained information about Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in Philadelphia.

A search warrant was executed Saturday at a home on the 500 block of Diamond Street where police found three computers as well as a 27-year-old man. The man, who investigators say has a lengthy criminal history, was taken into custody. Police say charges against him are pending.

The investigation began Friday when four men who work for the Hillary Clinton campaign reported a theft. The men told police they parked their 2016 Buick Enclave on Brown Street in the Northern Liberties section of the city around 8 p.m. and went to a nearby restaurant. When the men returned, they discovered that someone had smashed the window of their vehicle and stolen three backpacks containing MacBook Pros as well as other items.

Clinton Pennsylvania press secretary Stephanie Formas said the items stolen were personal belongings of three advance staffers. Police say the computers may have contained scheduling information surrounding Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

The Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security were notified and worked with Philadelphia Police during the investigation. Officials say the theft was random however and the man accused of stealing the computers had no indication that the four victims were affiliated with any campaign work.
Istanbul police on Saturday used tear gas, water cannon and plastic bullets to break up a protest by hundreds of people against the arrest of pro-Kurdish Turkish deputies.

The protestors demonstrated outside the main mosque in the Sisli district on the European side of the city shouting slogans denouncing the "fascist" state and vowing "we will not be silent".

But police rapidly moved in, dispersing the crowds by spraying torrents of freezing water from trucks, using tear gas and firing plastic bullets, AFP correspondents said.

The protest came after nine MPs from the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), including its two co-leaders, were jailed on Friday ahead of trial on terror charges.

Meanwhile, Istanbul courts on Saturday ordered the imprisonment of nine executives and editorial staff from the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper.

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EAST GREENVILLE -- How to police two tiny boroughs here in rural northwest Montgomery County has dominated public debate for months.

But recently, the civil discourse has devolved to the point that, at a town meeting last week, a former councilman told the mayor that "you would be stoned" if the mayor marched in a Halloween parade for local children.

Another contentious meeting is scheduled for Monday night, as the mayor will again try to defend dismantling the Upper Perkiomen Police Department. Its demise would end a longstanding partnership of towns whose history stretches back to William Penn.

East Greenville and Pennsburg have shared the police force known locally as Upper Perk for almost 40 years. A third adjacent borough, Red Hill, which is even smaller than its neighbors, left the partnership in the late 1990s to go with state police coverage.

East Greenville Council voted in September to cut ties, though it left open the possibility for mediation.

Borough Mayor Ryan Sloyer, who has served in that role since 2001, describes rising costs for the police department, which employs a police chief and nine officers, as the main reason for ending the partnership.

Sloyer, who some residents have called on to resign over the months-long bickering about police, put forth a plan last month to create a borough police force that would consist of a chief, an officer and two or three part-time officers. It would also utilize state police coverage about 25 percent of the time. He said his plan will save the borough $800,000 over four years.

His opponents, including some of the community's business leaders, dispute his numbers and blame him as the biggest reason for the planned split of the Upper Perk force. During an acrimonious meeting Oct. 27, former borough Councilman Joseph Rock complained to the governing body that they were puppets of Sloyer. Then he said Sloyer had so alienated himself in the community that the mayor could not even march in the recent Halloween parade.

"At the Halloween parade, you stood on the sidewalk," Rock said from the podium. "You can't go in the Halloween parade in this borough because you would be stoned. You understand that? You would have that much fear that you cant even go in the Halloween parade with kids from elementary school. Its terrible."

Sloyer admitted in an interview with NBC10.com that, at times, his push for his own police force has felt like "political suicide." But the son of parents who themselves were longtime Republican leaders in the region said he plans to run again for mayor in 2017.

"I actually look forward to a campaign against Keith Gerhart," Sloyer said in an interview Thursday. Gerhart is a former Council member who has announced he will challenge Sloyer next year. Sloyer didn't have a challenger in his last two re-election bids. "We've done a lot for this borough and we'll continue to do a lot."

Meanwhile, in Pennsburg, the mayor there has been pushing a plan to not only save the police partnership with East Greenville, but expand it to four neighboring towns: Red Hill, Green Lane, Marlborough and Upper Hanover.

Mayor Vicki Lightcap said the joint department would bring into one organization all of the towns and boroughs that are in the regional school district. Her plan is considered a longshot.

The six municipalities encompass the Upper Perkiomen Valley. The Perkiomen Creek begins in the hills just west of the valley, which is also where the four counties of Berks, Bucks, Lehigh and Montgomery come together. The region's population is 20,336, according to 2015 Census estimates.

The creek eventually winds its way to a meeting point with the Schuylkill River at Valley Forge National Park.

The breadth of the valley can be seen from a vista along Kutztown Road near the offices of the local newspaper, Town and Country.

Since 1899, the paper has covered the ups and downs of Upper Perk. Its current owner and publisher, Larry Roeder, has roots in the valley dating back eight generations.

He called the current political climate "embarrassing" for an area that's always been "a tight-nit, small-town, loyal community."

Roeder is also a former longtime member of the Upper Perkiomen Police Commission, which oversees the department and is made up of representatives from East Greenville and Pennsburg.

He served on the commission in the 1980s and 1990s. That was a time when, he said, the towns could solve their problems by talking to each other.

He has lamented the current political climate in his weekly paper's editorials.

"At a recent meeting of the Upper Perk Police Commission, there were three attorneys sitting at the table: one for East Greenville, one for Pennsburg and one for the Police Commission," Roeder wrote in an Oct. 20 editorial. "There was a time, for many years, when there wasn't a need for even one attorney to attend the Police Commission meeting."
A driver was gunned down inside a car on Route 42 in Bellmawr early Saturday morning and police say the motive for the shooting is unclear.

State police report the man was shot and killed while driving along the highway after another vehicle pulled up beside him and opened fire.

Police are searching for the shooter and ask that anyone with information to call New Jersey State Police.

This story is ongoing and will be updated as more information is released.
Theres no question about it. Healthcare is expensive, very expensive.

Even people with insurance can often find themselves struggling to pay their monthly premiums.

While politicians debate what needs to be fixed with the U.S. Healthcare system, a new industry is gaining steam just across the border in Tijuana and even further down in Mexico. More Americans are choosing to get their medication, treatments and dental procedures in Tijuana and even further down in Mexico.

Mike Gasparro lives in Bonita, but he manages Dr. Dalias Dental Care Clinic in Tijuana. Most of their customers are Americans; some are from San Diego, others make the trip all the way from the East Coast.

While low prices are the biggest factor, theres also immediacy.

[Patients] will come to the office in the U.S. and they will refer them to another dentist who then refers them to another dentist and in our case all of our specialists are under one roof, Gasparro said.

In some cases the price difference is nearly 70 percent less.

Tamara Shapiro lives in Los Angeles, but for the last two years, shes been getting her teeth fixed in Tijuana. She said she drives down to San Diego, parks her car and then walks over to Tijuana for her visits.

Its totally worth it, Shapiro said. When it comes to lower prices, its a no brainer. I spent $30,000 dollars for three implants in the states--- and [in Tijuana] I got 14 teeth pulled and partials for $14,000."

While cheaper care in Mexico is nothing new, the booming industry is not tapping into tourism.

Companies like Medical Departures help Americans find a clinic for their specific needs in the city or beach town they want to visit. Once patients pin point the type of vacation theyre looking for, they can find a clinic where they can kill two birds with one stone.

We can tell them, the most beautiful beaches in Mexico are in Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Playa del Carmen, says Virginia Osuna from Medical Departures. We have patients from San Diego, from Phoenix, from Yuma, from Florida, New York, New Jersey. From all over the U.S.

But its not all fun and games. There are concerns about safety in Mexico and in finding doctors who work in Mexico, but are certified in the U.S

A patient from Texas called in and told me 'I'm not afraid of the cartels, fights or instability with the government. I'm afraid that you will send me with a bad dentist,'" said Osuna.

The number of people seeking medical treatment is expected to rise even more. The Mexican government expects it will rise to roughly 700,000 visitors by 2020.
No matter what happens on Election Day, you can count on this: there are plenty of deals and freebies to be had on Nov. 8 in San Diego.

Heres a list of some tasty treats voters can cash in on come Election Day  just rock your I Voted sticker and enjoy:

 Breakfast Republic: This cool, breakfast-centric eaterys two locations  North Park (2730 University Ave.) and Liberty Station (2865 Sims Road, Ste. 106)  will serve free apple pancakes on Election Day. Both locations open at 7 a.m. daily.

 Brians 24: After a long day at the voting polls, the 24-hour restaurant in downtown Gaslamp Quarter (828 Sixth Ave.) will offer patrons a free short stack of pancakes.

 Miss Bs Coconut Club: This newcomer to Mission Beach (3704 Mission Blvd.) will celebrate Election Day by offering patrons a complimentary shot dubbed the Great Idea. Miss Bs Coconut Club is open daily from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., with brunch served every day until 2 p.m.

 Backyard Kitchen & Tap: Another popular beachside spot, Backyard Kitchen & Tap (832 Garnet Ave.) will give patrons 20% off their tab on Election Day with their I Voted sticker. The eatery also plans to sell $5 Don Julio and Crown Royal drinks for those who could use a cocktail after the polls.

 Farmers Bottega: This charming little spot in Mission Hills (860 West Washington St.) will also toast to the power of a good drink on Election Day, offering voters a free mimosa or glass of champagne. Farmers Bottega is open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. to 10 p.m.

 Grater Grilled Cheese: This casual spot in Mission Valley (5618 Mission Center Rd., #1002) specializing in unique versions of the classic sandwich plans to offer a free half-cup of tomato bisque with the purchase of any sandwich on Nov. 8. Now, that sounds comforting on Election Day.

 Fig Tree Cafe: All three locations  Pacific Beach (5119 Cass St.), Hillcrest (416 University Ave.) and Liberty Station (2400 Historic Decatur Rd., #103)  will offer a free half-order of French toast. The PB and Hillcrest locations open at 8 a.m.; Liberty Station at 7 a.m.

 Woodstocks Pizza: The San Diego (6145 El Cajon Blvd.) and Pacific Beach (1221 Garnet Ave.) pizza joints will offer Happy Hour specials all day long on Election Day.

 Krispy Kreme: The popular doughnut chain will offer one free doughnut of choice to patrons wearing their I Voted sticker. Local Krispy Kreme shops  which open daily at 5:30 a.m. and 6 a.m.  include Chula Vista (2305 Otay Lakes Rd., Suite 206); Clairemont (4180 Clairemont Mesa Blvd.); Rancho Carmel (11050 Rancho Carmel Dr.).
A 34-year-old man found critically wounded in the driveway of a home in San Diegos East County died Friday night, officials confirmed.

The San Diego County Sheriffs Department (SDSO) said deputies were called at around 10 p.m. to investigate reports of an assault in front of a home in the 1300 block of Oro Street in unincorporated El Cajon.

When deputies arrived, they discovered a man lying in the driveway of the home, suffering from trauma to his upper body. He was alive, but badly injured. Deputies began treating the man, as paramedics rushed to the scene.

The victim was taken to a local hospital where he died a short time later, the SDSO said.

.@SDSheriff Homicide detectives tell me this is the 28th homicide in 2016, the highest rate of homicides in a decade for their jurisdiction pic.twitter.com/EMnExjKiQu  Ramon Galindo (@RamonGalindoNBC) November 5, 2016

The SDSO said that during the investigation, detectives tracked down El Cajon resident Vincent Frank Pedersen, 43, as the suspect in the homicide. Pedersen was arrested at a home down the street from the crime scene -- in the 700 block of Oro Street.

SDSO Lt. Kenneth Nelson said Pedersen faces one count of murder in the killing of the victim, who has not yet been identified. The motive behind the shooting is unknown.

Neighbors were shocked to see deputies swarming the street, since the area is typically pretty quiet.

Resident Bob Whittle said he was watching TV with his family when they heard what sounded like a shot coming from outside.

"It's very quiet; its a good neighborhood," Whittle told NBC 7. "All our neighbors are great, and everyone kinda looks out for each other."

Neighbor Paula Griswold said she saw dozens of patrol cars from the sheriffs department on the street overnight and crime scene investigators.

She said seeing deputies swarming the home where the victim was found did not surprise her because that house has been bringing unwanted activity to her neighborhood for quite some time.

Weve had problems with them for years, Griswold explained. Weve tried to get it taken care of. Weve had some issues over the years just because of the whole situation, the drug situation. 

But its sad that it had to happen like this, she added. We live in a great neighborhood.

The investigation is ongoing and anyone with information on this case can reach out to the SDSOs Homicide Detail at (858) 974-2321 or (858) 565-5200.

SDSO homicide detectives told NBC 7 this marks the 28th homicide in their jurisdiction this year -- the highest rate of homicides in a decade for their jurisdiction.
San Diego voters looking to avoid possible long lines on Election Day can head to the polls this weekend to cast their ballot.

The San Diego Registrar of Voters office will be open Saturday and Sunday for residents who would like to vote early.

NBC 7s Rory Devine heard from early voters at the Registrar of Voters Office who say they dont trust polling places or the U.S. Postal Service.

Long lines may be an issue on Election Day as voters fill out the longer, two-card ballot, said San Diego County Registrar of Voters Michael Vu in a statement. Weekend voting gives voters yet another option to cast their ballots or drop off their mail ballots before Election Day.

This is the first year San Diegans will fill out a two-card ballot, because of the large number of contests on the Nov. 8 election. On the ballot this year, there are over 180 decisions to make when voting.

Jerry Bob and Patty Beasley are warning others after one of their mail-in ballots came as one piece instead of two. NBC 7s Rory Devine is here to fill you in.

County officials are urging residents to plan ahead, do research and mark up a sample ballot before coming in to vote.

The office is located at 5600 Overland Avenue, San Diego, 92123 on the County Operations Center campus.

On both Saturday and Sunday, the office will be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

If you have a mail-in ballot, you can drop it off at a number of locations across the county, including outside the registrar's office this weekend, on Monday or on Election Day.

Election officials are preparing to send out a record-number of mail-in ballots, including to voters in San Diego County. NBC 7S Chris Chan reports.

NBC 7s Chris Chan reports from the San Diego Registrar of Voters where staffers expect to send out 960,000 ballots this week.
Two men participating in the Million Mask March in Washington, D.C., have been arrested for vandalizing federal property and the Trump International Hotel, police say.

D.C. police officers found several buildings and sidewalks in the area had been vandalized with spray paint, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest, and the Trump hotel at 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest, about 11:15 a.m. Saturday.

Two people have been arrested for vandalizing the new Trump hotel and the FBI building in the District. News4s Darcy Spencer reports the men arrested were part of the Million Mask March.

A neon green "X" covered the FBI emblem, and the word "corrupt" and images of masks were spray-painted on sidewalks and a column at the FBI building. At the hotel, someone spray-painted the steps and the message, "We Suck," near the entrance. The front doors of the hotel also have scratch marks, according to the police.

DC police say FBI building vandalized during #millionmaskmarch today. Live report ahead at 6. pic.twitter.com/d5TQRtpXfH  Darcy Spencer (@darcyspencer) November 5, 2016

A Metropolitan Police Department cruiser was also damaged by demonstrators, police said.

Eric Roberts, 27, of Florida, was arrested and charged with defacing government property and resisting arrest. Police said they confiscated several cans of spray paint and stencils from Roberts.

Police also arrested Danny Hamilton, 35, of Louisiana, and charged him with destruction of D.C. government property and resisting arrest.

It wasn't immediately clear if they had attorneys to represent them.

Thousands were protesting capitalism in the Million Mask March in cities throughout the world, according to activist network Anonymous. Marchers are wearing maskes "to protest corruption, censorship, inequality and war," Anonymous said on Twitter.

Video from one demonstrator shows D.C. police and protesters clashing:
Election got you stressed out? All over D.C., bars and restaurants are hosting election night watch parties for those who need to unwind -- but still want to keep up with the news.

Check out these spots to take advantage of themed drinks, menus and cocktail "polls" as you wait to see who'll be moving into the White House next.

Barcode (1101 17th St. NW)



DT Nation, an event management company in D.C., and Party Politics will host Judgment Day, an all-night event to wait out the results of the election. The night will be broken up into three parts: happy hour from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., election results from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m., and the after-party starting after 11 p.m. and until 2 a.m. Enjoy drinks and music from DJs such as DJ Jahsonic, DJ Kerim, Malik the Drummer and Harry Hotter.

BlackFinn (1620 I St. NW)

If you are one of the first 75 people who arrive (and you have RSVPd on Facebook), youll get a free drink on the house. Didnt make it in time? There will still be $3 beers, $4 cocktails and $5 shots from 4 p.m. to to close.

Busboys and Poets (Various locations)

Each Busboys and Poets location will host an Election Day Watch Party 2016. In addition to screening the election results, there will be drink specials and "more surprises" in store. Check their event page for more details.

Democracy Prep Congress Heights (3100 Martin Luther King Jr Ave. SE)

Democracy Prep Congress Heights is hosting a election night watch party for the community with free admission, pizza and activities for children. Doors open at 7 p.m.

Kingbird (2650 Virginia Ave. NW)



Located in the Watergate Hotel, Kingbird -- the hotel's restaurant offering American cuisine with a French twist -- has an entire election night-themed menu planned for Tuesday. Grab a date and order dishes such as Hillary Clinton's Pickwick's Oliveburger or Trump's Battered Toast Crispy Fishwhich, and split the Winner Take All for dessert. The bar will serve cocktails named for things that happened along the campaign trail.

Maryland Live! Casino (7002 Arundel Mills Circle, Hanover, Maryland)



The Rams Head Center Stage at Maryland Live! Casino will host an election night watch party with prize drawings every hour starting at 7 p.m. Attendees can win VIP DC tourist days, a tour of Philadelphia, a trip to Canada or Free Slot Play. At the casino, any Live! Rewards members who earn 500 points on Tuesday can swipe their card at any promotional kiosk to reveal Free Play of up to $5,000.

Penn Social (801 E St. NW)

Make sure you can see the election result with Penn Socials 22-foot screen. The night also includes special happy hour specials which run from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. in addition to $4 Samuel Adams beers all night.

Quarter + Glory (2017 14th St. NW)

Cast your ballot during Quarter and Glory's election week happy hour by choosing your favorite election-themed cocktail at this 14th & U spot. Your vote for The Undecided punch, Do the Donkey, Elephants Never Forget, You Be Hillin' or Get Trumped enters you in their election day raffle for a private cocktail class or a bottle of Macallan 12-year-old whiskey.

Quill (1200 16th St. NW)



Make sure to don your "I Voted" sticker if you plan on spending election night at Quill, The Jefferson's upscale cocktail bar in Logan Circle. From 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on election night, anyone wearing the sticker will receive half off their themed drinks. Hillary Clinton supporters can order any mixed drink with Rock Town Vodka, made in Arkansas where Hillary became first lady of the state when Bill Clinton became governor in 1979. Donald Trump supporters can indulge in the Holy Grail Mocktail, an allusion to the candidate's sobriety.

Shaws Tavern (520 Florida Ave. NW)

Dont want to miss any election results? Join Shaws Tavern at 5 p.m. to enjoy results on the bars 11 televisions with sound. The watch party also includes half-priced burgers and pizzas as well as drink specials.

Teddy and the Bully Bar (1200 19th St. NW)



Enjoy Trump steak bites or Clinton barbecue sliders at this south-of-Dupont bar that pays homage to 26th president Theodore Roosevelt. In addition to themed food, you'll find contests, special guests and giveaways. If you've been playing along with the bar's Cocktail Voter Poll, stop by to see whether the Trump Tower or the Clinton Email Box has been the more popular drink during the election cycle. Keep in mind there is a $50 minimum per person during Election Night. RSVP to reserve your spot.

Town Danceboutique (2009 8th St. NW)



The Human Rights Campaign, along with Victory Fund, which works to elect LBGT leaders to public office, will host an election night watch party at Shaw's Town Danceboutique. There will be food, dancing, drinking and big screens to watch the action. Doors open at 6 p.m., but make sure to RSVP -- seating is limited and on a first-come, first-served basis. Entrance is free, but there's a $10 suggested donation to pay for an annual Human Rights Campaign membership, which also comes with a thank you gift.

Did we miss your favorite spot? Tell us @dcscene!

ALSO SEE: After Casting Your Vote, Cash on These Election Day Deals, Freebies
Khizr Khan, the father of fallen U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan, campaigned for Hillary Clinton in Virginia on Friday.

Khan, a Muslim-American, gained national attention when he spoke alongside his wife during the Democratic National Convention, lashing out at Donald Trump for his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country.

Since the DNC, Khan has become a key ally for the Clinton campaign, appearing in an ad for the nominee and repeatedly speaking out against Trump.

On Friday, he met with store owners and fired up supporters for Clinton and LuAnn Bennett, Democratic challenger in Virginia's 10th congressional district, at a diner in downtown Leesburg.

"My family is a testament to the goodness of this country," Khan told supporters.

A poll released Thursday by the Hampton University Center for Public Policy said Trump is leading Clinton 44 to 41 in Virginia. The poll's margin of error is 4.57 percent.

Democratic Party leaders and Khan acknowledged the polls have tightened in Virginia, but Khan said he is not concerned.

"I have [a] firm belief that on the day of the election, Virginians will vote for the good values of this country. They will reject - they will reject the candidate that has caused the division that espouses hatred, un-American hatred," Kahn said.

Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring said he'll be spending the closing days of the campaign in Loudoun County.

"I grew up here, and I'm going to be working as hard as I can through Eleciton Day to make sure that we get our votes out for Hillary Clinton and Virginia's own Tim Kaine," Herring said.

Republican leaders in the county said the Hampton University poll came as no surprise.

"We knew it was going to tighten, because it always does, and we knew our state was much more conservative than a 12- to 16-point blowout like the polls were saying," said John Whitbeck, chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia.

Whether Virginia has regained its battleground status might not be clear until Election Day, but GOP grassroots volunteers say they feel momentum moving their way.

"Whether or not any other big-wigs come through, we're out with our message in the last four days. It's 120 hours until Election Day," said Loudoun County GOP Chairman Will Estrada.
The White House was on lockdown for a short time Saturday afternoon after a Secret Service officer spotted a man walking nearby with a weapon.

A spokesperson for the United States Secret Service said the officer noticed the man with a weapon in a holster about 1:12 p.m. while walking on Pennsylvania Avenue near Madison Place, on the eastern side of Lafayette Park.

The officer confronted the suspect and there was a brief struggle before the officer arrested him.

The suspect has been charged with carrying a firearm without a license, carrying unregistered ammunition, resisting arrest and committing a crime while wearing a mask.

The White House returned to normal operations after the suspect was taken to the Metropolitan Police Department.

President Barack Obama was not at the White House at the time. He was in Maryland, playing golf at Andrews Air Force Base.
More than 2,200 migrants were rescued in the Mediterranean on Saturday as they tried to reach Europe and 10 bodies were recovered, Italy's coast guard said in a statement.

The migrants were picked up from 13 rubber dinghies, two small boats and one large vessel in 16 separate rescue operations.

The International Organization for Migration's said this week that 4,220 migrants had died in the Mediterranean so far this year, compared with 3,777 in the whole of 2015.

As of Nov. 2, 159,496 people had reached Italy by sea this year, the IOM said. .

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American University sophomore Bex Warner wanted to vote but almost missed the chance. The 19-year-old college student in Washington, D.C., was registered back home in Illinois but nearly forgot to request an absentee ballot in time.

The voting reminder tool VotePlz and Facebook posts from friends prevented the student from standing out this crucial election.

"I probably wouldn't have voted if I hadn't seen reminders," Warner said.

More organizations, companies and candidates than ever seem to be sending voting reminder text messages, and data suggests they increase voter turnout.

Text message voting reminders increased turnout by 3 percent, D.C. political consultant Dr. Aaron Strauss found in a nationwide study of 2006 election results. He specializes in experiments that measure the impact of voter outreach techniques.

"The idea is that this can take the probability of voting from 50 percent to 53 percent," Strauss said.

With Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump locked in a tight race, a 3 percent boost in voter turnout would be huge. In the 2012 national election, under 54 percent of the voting-age population cast a ballot, according to the Pew Research Center.

Research conducted on a California election in 2009 also suggested that voter turnout increased by 3 percent after residents received a text message the day before the election reminding them to vote.

Facebook reminders to register to vote also had an impact, data suggests. The Center for Election Innovation & Research found that online voter registration activity increased by as much as sixteen-fold as Facebook reminded users that deadlines were approaching.

People who receive repeated reminders to vote and think through when they will do so boost their chances of following through, Rock the Vote civic technology director Jen Tolentino said.

"When you make a plan, you're a lot more likely to vote," she said.

Voting reminder text messages help eliminate "process issues" that occur when people want to vote but don't know how or where, Brandon Naylor said. He's a spokesman for Democracy Works, a nonprofit that sends TurboVote reminders.

"Those are problems we can eliminate through technology," he said.

Here are four voting reminder systems you can sign up for:

Rock the Vote: The nonpartisan nonprofit sends voting reminder text messages and emails to more than 5 million users. Rock the Vote is helping users make specific plans for when and where they will vote. Users can use the Rock the Vote systems to email themselves their plans.

To signs up, visit RocktheVote.com.

TurboVote: TurboVote reminders sent by text message and email are telling users when and where they can vote, when early voting begins and ends, and more. The reminders being sent to more than 556,000 users by text message and more than 601,000 by email are designed to take the guesswork out of voting, Naylor said.

To sign up, visit TurboVote.org.

VotePlz: This service tells users when and where they can vote on Election Day, how they can vote early and what rights they have at polling locations. VotePlz also helps users think through how they will get to the polls, showing how long each mode of transportation will take.

To sign up, visit VotePlz.org.

Purple: The text message service Purple sends users voting reminders and interactive election updates. The messages are designed to "feel conversational and fun, while also remaining accurate and non-partisan," the Nieman Journalism Lab reported earlier this year.

To sign up, visit getpurple.io.
One person died Saturday following a three alarm fire at an abandoned home in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood.

Initial reports of a heavy, 2-alarm fire at a home in Roxbury came in Saturday morning. Heavy flames consumed the 2-story house on George Street and it quickly escalated to 3-alarms. Firefighters were unable to enter the home before it collapsed into itself.

Neighbor Ralph Alvarado was getting ready to leave his home when he saw the smoke. He bravily rushed in and found a man trapped.

Alvarado said the man was, "gasping for air, his face was in black smoke, and his clothes were burned."

A man trapped inside the home was transported to a local hospital and according to the Boston Fire Department is receiving treatment for "serious burns."

Later in the day, the Boston Fire Department confirmed 'an adult fatality' after discovering the body during a search of the building. The identity of that person is not yet known.

Fire officials and neighbors said homeless people and drug addicts were known to occupy the house at times.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation but fire officials say the building is a total loss.
Two people suffered multiple gunshots and were hospitalized after a shooting in Manchester, New Hampshire early Saturday morning.

Police first responded to reports of a shooting in the area of 134 Armory Street where they found a male victim with several gunshot wounds. They also found a suspect fleeing the scene. After stopping that car, police located a second gunshot victim inside  a female victim who was also transported to a local hospital.

The two men believed to be involved in the shooting are in custody. The men were identified as Michael Sirois, 22, of Chester, and Jason Gerry, 21, of Sandown.

Sirois has been charged with first degree assault with a deadly weapon and second degree assault with a deadly weapon, Gerry has been charged with second degree assault.

Both men are expected to be arraigned Monday at 9th Circuit Manchester District Court.

Manchester Police do not believe the shooting poses any threats to the public.
Vermont State Police say a school cafeteria worker sexually assaulted two students.

Valerie Gilmore, 27, of Lyndonville, worked for the catering company that provides meal services to Lyndon Institute.

Vermont State Police say they, along with the Department for Children and Families, received a report of an inappropriate relationship between Gilmore and two students who were 15 and 16.

Investigators say they discovered the illegal sexual contact took place off school grounds and after school hours.

Gilmore also allegedly gave the students cigarettes and alcohol on several occasions.

The suspect was cited to appear in court in January to answer to charges of sexual assault, furnishing alcohol to a minor, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, police said.

It is unclear if Gilmore has secured an attorney.

Gilmore's employer, Aladdin Food Management Services, has placed her on leave, police said.
Police say a Massachusetts man was shot Friday night after he assaulted an East Longmeadow police officer with a knife.

Authorities said they had obtained a warrant for Clifford Ahern, 59, of East Longmeadow, for assault and battery on a family member and were attempting to pull him over in his vehicle.

After a brief interaction with an officer, police say Ahern sped away and drove to his house.

When Ahern got out of his vehicle, police said he pulled out a knife and attacked one of the officers who had followed him to the house.

The officers shirt was torn by the attack and he suffered minor injuries.

Police said another officer on the scene discharged his gun following the attack, striking Ahern.

Ahern was transported to Bay State Medical Center in Springfield where he is listed in critical but stable condition.

The incident remains under investigation by the Hampden District Attorneys Office and the Massachusetts State Police Detective Unit. It's unclear what charges Ahern will face.
The Massachusetts Attorney General's Office is investigating why a key was found hidden outside the door of the Framingham Police Department's evidence room.

Ken Ferguson, Chief of Police, said his office first notified the Middlesex District Attorney's Office upon the discovery.

Ferguson said it appeared that only two evidence officers who were authorized to access the evidence room, knew of the key.

"All information suggests that this key was hidden as a back-up means, and convenience measure, for these two authorized evidence officers to access the outer door, if they had locked themselves out of their office," Ferguson said in an emailed statement.

The police chief said corrective and disciplinary action would be taken with anyone who did not maintain "the security and integrity of the department's evidence room."

He went on to say that in September 2015, new security and access control measures were implemented, which included having the exterior evidence room door lock changed. Ferguson said there is also a security camera pointed at the evidence room door.

Ferguson did not name the two officers but a statement Saturday from the Middlesex District Attorney does:

"While the investigation by the Office of the Attorney General into whether Framingham Police Officer (Alan) Dubeshter, who served as the evidence officer, took money from the evidence room remains open, our office has sent notices of discovery to all attorneys who represent defendants in cases in which Officer Alan Dubesther was a witness. We have thus proactively notified all defendants who may potentially be impacted to ensure their right to a fair trial.

The matter remains under investigation by the Attorney General's Office.
A North Attleboro police officer will run in honor of her daughter who couldn't.

Kristine Crosman's daughter Kailyn had cerebral palsy which bound her to a wheel chair.

"We always thought her life would be very very limited because of it," said Crosman.

Despite her limitations, Kailyn joined her first Special Olympics event when she was about 6 years old.

"They had her shoes off and hitting the bottom of her feet and shaking and we didn't know why they were doing that but they were simulating her running and the smiles on her face were literally ear to ear," Crosman said.

Kailyn remained an athlete until her death at just 9 years old.

"She was sick but you never think you're going to lose your child," said Crosman.

Crosman remained involved with Special Olympics and last year she was chosen as a torch runner for the world games in California.

Next year, she will travel to Austria as one of just ten runners selected to carry the torch for the final leg.

Crosman has participated in dozens of special Olympics events.

She will run for 10 days through 45 cities.

It ends with a polar plunge into the icy cold waters in Austria.

She hopes to use the same inspiration she found last year to get through this next challenge.

"I could see these pink shoes that she used to wear all the time and from that moment on I realized I just have to do this," said Crosman.
Politicians descended on New Hampshire over the weekend as the race for president has tightened.

Surrogates like Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren have been rallying volunteers in Concord and beyond to get Hillary Clinton supporters to the polls on Tuesday.

Republicans think they can buy New Hampshire, democrats think its going to be up to the voters and the voters are going to vote to build a future, not just for some of us but for all of us, said Warren at a rally on Saturday.

In Windham, former New Hampshire Senator Bob Smith welcomed Trump surrogate Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama to inspire his supporters to vote on Election Day.

Ive been told repeatedly that you have probably the best organized state in the nation and youre working hard, youre knocking on doors, making phone calls, doing the bread and butter work that takes us from a close election to victory, Sessions said.

Several politicians from traditionally blue Massachusetts also crossed the border to try to convince their neighbors to the north to follow their lead, knowing the impact New Hampshire can have on the election.

My daughter doesnt deserve to have a president like Donald Trump, quite frankly Id be embarrassed and ashamed if he were our president so Im up here fighting for her, Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern said.

I know the polls were saying its close but just from talking to people on the street I feel the difference from this week to last week, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said.

We wont know until Tuesday whether all the handshakes and heart-to-hearts made a difference for one candidate over the other.

I think its that tight right now, even inter-personally between families, people at work, theres enough of that out there that I do think that some of these last minute issues may sway some people, New Hampshire voter Lisa Potter said.

Both campaigns are making a big final push for votes in New Hampshire.

Clinton will be in Manchester for a rally on Sunday, while both President Barack Obama and Trump will campaigning in the state on Monday.
A low-speed car chase leads to a drug bust early Saturday morning in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Early Saturday morning, N.H. State Police attempted to pull over a Jeep Patriot on Maplewood Avenue in Portsmouth for a moving violation. The driver, identified as 31 year old Travis Tulo from Durham, N.H. refused to stop his car and the chase began.

The pursuit ended when the driver eventually surrendered and turned into a residential driveway. Both the driver and the passenger, 21 year old Kyle Haggett from Exeter, N.H. were taken into custody without incidents.

During the investigation a N.H. State Trooper discovered half an ounce of Methamphetamine inside the car and both Tulo and Haggett were taken to Rockingham County Jail. Tulo was held on $10,000 cash bail and received multiple drug charges, including possession with intent to distribute and a fourth offense of DWI-Drugs. Haggett was held on $5,000 cash bail and charged with conspiracy to distribute a controlled drug.

Tulo and Haggett will be arraigned on Monday, November 7.
A hate crime investigation is underway at a New England university, after a Latin phrase from the Crusades was written inside the student center at the University of Southern Maines Portland campus.

The graffiti read "Deus Vult," which is a phrase picked up by the alt-right movement as an anti-Muslim phrase.

"A lot of Muslims were killed during [the Crusades], so it wasnt just hateful speech, it was threatening speech," said Halima Noor, Vice President of USMs Muslim Student Association.

USM officials say the vandalism is being investigated as both a campus security concern and student conduct violation. Their findings may be forwarded to the Attorney Generals office, if it is determined to be a hate crime.

"Were treating this with the highest priority," said Bob Stein, USM Executive Director of Public Affairs. "We have zero tolerance for this kind of behavior."

Students packed a public meeting with the Student Senate on Friday afternoon, both upset by the graffiti, and by the way the student leaders handled it.

Messages exchanged between Executive Board members show that student senators debated about reporting the graffiti.

Some of the student leaders admitted to knowing who committed the vandalism, adding that the student was a friend. They suggested cleaning up the graffiti, and not reporting it to police.

The messages included pig emojis and jokes about imposing Sharia law  content some Muslim students called offensive, and "Islamphobic" at the senate meeting.

"There needs to be some sort of racial, religious training so people understand these types of things should never occur," said Noor.

Two student senators resigned as a result of the messages: Benjamin Bussiere and Derrick Stanley.

"My comments were inappropriate and I want to sincerely apologize," said Bussiere in the meeting. When he announced he would be resigning, the audience cheered.

Bussiere added that the student responsible for the graffiti will be held accountable, because classmates have passed along his name to police.

USM officials said the incident has elevated tension on campus, but could serve as a learning experience.

"Sometimes its the most serious and difficult issues that move the university forward," said Stein.
Thousands of South Koreans took to the streets Saturday to demand embattled President Park Geun-Hye resign over a crippling corruption scandal.

Protesters chanted slogans and carried banners urging Park to step down, the day after she issued a grovelling televised apology over the influence-peddling affair which has shattered public trust in her leadership.

Some 40,000 demonstrators were expected to turn out at the rally in central Seoul, watched over by 20,000 police officers.

Police had banned protesters from marching through the streets, citing traffic congestion, but thousands were permitted to gather.

But authorities were braced for demonstrators trying to make their way towards the presidential Blue House.

In a highly personal televised address to the nation Friday, Park said the scandal involving her long-time confidante Choi Soon-Sil was "all my fault", but denied reports linking her and Choi to a religious cult.

Park's approval rating crashed to just five percent this week, the lowest-ever rating for a sitting South Korean president.

"I thinks she should step down as she has lost all her moral authority as president", a 53-year-old, who gave only his family name Ahn, told AFP.

A formal investigation is focused on allegations that Choi, 60, leveraged her close relationship with Park to coerce local firms into donating large sums to dubious non-profit foundations that she then used for personal gain.

Choi was formally arrested on Thursday on charges of fraud and abuse of power, but public anger has largely focused on allegations that she meddled in affairs of state and had access to confidential documents, despite having no official position or security clearance.

The South Korean media has portrayed Choi, whose late father was a shadowy religious leader and an important mentor to Park, as a Rasputin-like figure who wielded an unhealthy influence over the president.

"What is really irritating is the fact that Choi was acting like a regent for Park, controlling her decision-making", said a 20-year-old political science student Kim Do-Hyun at the rally.

In an effort to restore trust in her administration, Park has reshuffled ministers and senior advisers, bringing in figures from outside her ruling conservative Saenuri Party.

Reacting to her address, the main opposition Democratic Party insisted her changes had been cosmetic and warned that it would begin a campaign for her ouster unless further steps were taken.

Park is unlikely to step down, with analysts suggesting she will limp on to the end of her term with her power severely undermined at a time of slowing economic growth, rising unemployment and elevated military tensions with North Korea.

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With the New Hampshire Senate race extremely tight, both candidates spent Friday meeting voters during multiple stops throughout the state.

During those stops, Sen. Kelly Ayotte and Gov. Maggie Hassan got an earful from voters.

"It has been awful, it is the first time I actually feel afraid of an election," Maureen Novelline said. "I'm old enough to have seen a lot of elections and this is one of the worst."

Speaking outside a diner in Hudson, Ayotte said in the waning days of this election season, it is all about meeting voters.

"This is really a grass-roots state, so I'm really looking forward to being out in the state," she said. "We are stopping everywhere, we are going to be taking this tour up and down our state."

After stopping in the diner, Ayotte headed to Nashua, where she spent some time working the drive-thru at a local Burger King.

"I'm really impressed," Christopher Ferris said.

Ferris, a veteran, added a lot is at stake come Tuesday.

"I think this election is probably the most important election of my life," he said.

Ayotte's day of campaigning came on the day that New Hampshire learned of the death of resident David J. Whitcher, a U.S. Army Special Forces Staff Sergeant. Ayotte released a statement on his passing:

"It is with a heavy heart that we mourn the loss of U.S. Army Special Forces Staff Sergeant David J. Whitcher, a former member of the New Hampshire National Guard who completed two deployments to Afghanistan, who tragically lost his life in a training accident. His loss reminds us that all of those who serve risk their lives every day to keep us safe, a sacrifice that can never be repaid. Joe and I extend our sincerest thoughts and prayers to his mother Kathy, his wife Victoria, and his son David during this difficult time."

In Manchester, Hassan met employees of a local company.

The governor walked around shaking hands, then spent about 15 minutes talking to dozens in the company's conference room.

"We have always known this is going to be a really close campaign and I'm just working over these next few days to talk with the people of New Hampshire about what we have been able to accomplish," Hassan said. "Just talking to as many people as I can, that is always in these last few days of elections, you just want to get out."

Both candidates have full schedules until Tuesday.

"It has been a long process, what are we going to afterwards?" Sally Kelly said with a laugh. "The wonderful part of this whole election cycle is that it has brought so many more people into it."
Election mailers are filling mailboxes across New England this week. But one in Massachusetts stood out from the bunch, and the attorney general's office is getting involved.

The questionable pamphlet shows a hand covering a little girl's mouth and reads "Shame on you Michael Day," alleging that the Democratic state representative "voted against protecting women and children from level 2 and 3 sex offenders falsely claiming to be transgender."

Mimi Lemay's 6-year-old son, Jacob, is transgender.

"We have three kids," Lemay said. "He's the middle. He transitioned at the age of 4."

One of her children still attends school in Stoneham. The town is one of many areas that recently received the flier from the Marlborough Republican City Committee.

The bill it criticizes Day for supporting protects transgender people from discrimination in public bathrooms. Lemay believes the mailers are putting transgender people in harms way.

"What was really shocking was that this was happening in Massachusetts, where I think the education has been a little better on this topic," expressed Lemay.

Caroline Colarusso is running against Day.

"That's not the issue," Colarusso told necn. "The issue is that the level 2 and 3 sex offenders are protected. That's a mistake."

She says the mailers simply expose Day's voting record.

"He should have joined the other 23 bipartisan Democrats that crossed party lines and said we need to protect women and children not sex offenders," Colarusso said. "Essentially, that's what his vote did."

The same mailers, with Rep. Ken Gordon's name, were also distributed.

"We shouldn't be putting people in fear in order to get a vote, and that is what this mailer was intended to do," Gordon said. "No matter how people feel about the underlying issue."

Day agrees. He's urging Gov. Charlie Baker, who signed the bill into law over the summer, to respond.

"I think the governor either has to choose to disavow this and disavow the candidates that support that tactic, or stand up and say, you know, I do support this type of thing," said Day.

Whatever results from those mailers and this election, Lemay remains optimistic.

"I feel that Jacobs future is going to be bright," she said.
Question 4 on the Massachusetts ballot would legalize marijuana for recreational purposes. A group of doctors in the Bay State is wholeheartedly in favor of the effort.

"I'm here to support legalizing marijuana fully, said J. Wesley Boyd, MD, PhD on the steps on the State House Friday morning.

Boyd and more than 100 hundred other Massachusetts physicians are voting yes on Question 4.

If it passes, they say it comes with many benefits, including decriminalizing the market and eliminating racial disparities.

"The laws have been applied heavily toward minorities and the poor," said Boyd. "If the police had been busting down doors on upper-middle class white people in the Back Bay or Beacon Hill years ago, this issue would have been settled."

"The FBI, in September, released a statistic that in 2015 greater than 500,000 Americans were arrested and prosecuted for simple possession, said Jordan Tishler, MD, a cannabis physician and spokesperson for Doctors for Cannabis Regulation.

Doctors also say they could have more honest conversations with their patients and ensure they're getting the drug from a safe place.

"The current system isn't working. They're getting it from the street. It could be filled with pesticides. It could be laced with fentanyl, said Susan H. Lucas, MD.

Those who oppose Question 4, like Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, said it jeopardizes public safety.

To support his views, Baker referenced a wrong-way crash in Vermont that killed five teens. According to a toxicology report, the driver who caused the crash had "significant" levels of THC in his blood.

"There is no way to measure driving while high," said Baker. "It's a huge issue for those in law enforcement who've seen increases in fatalities associated with driving while high in states that have legalized recreational marijuana."

Some doctors don't agree with that. They argue that other substances, like tobacco and alcohol, can be more deadly.

"Tobacco is the number one killer in our midst. Alcohol is the number three killer in our midst," said Boyd.

If Question 4 passes, anyone 21 or older can use marijuana recreationally and a household of two or more could grow up to 12 plants.

The 117 physicians who support the bill say a study shows it would increase the state's revenue like it has in Colorado, where recreational use of the drug became legal in 2012.

"By the year 2020, we would generate about $100 million in new taxes based on about a billion dollars in marijuana sales in Massachusetts," said Jim Borghesani, communications director for Yes on 4.

"I think the best thing for all of us to do at this point is acknowledge it's a bad question," said Baker. "Acknowledge that we're not going to be able to stay ahead of it based on the way it's written."
A French soldier deployed to an anti-Islamist force in Mali died overnight from injuries sustained in a mine blast, the presidency said Saturday.

The man, a non-commissioned officer who was not identified by name, was wounded on Friday when his armoured vehicle struck a mine, it said.

French President Francois Hollande "hailed the sacrifice" of the man killed, the statement said.

French soldiers deployed to Mali in early 2013 to help drive back Islamist militants who had overrun parts of the west African country, a former French colony.

France's Operation Serval in Mali was later replaced by Operation Barkhane, a broader offensive against Islamist groups with some 3,000 French soldiers deployed in five African countries.

Eighteen French soldiers have been killed since the start of French operations in Mali, including three killed in April when their vehicle also struck a mine in the north.

Last month six French troops were wounded in a similar explosion.

Militants were driven back from Mali's main cities in the French-led operations but vast swathes of the country remain out of the control of Malian and foreign forces.

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By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The government on Friday has slapped a $1.55 million fine on Reliance Industries and its partners, BP and Niko Resources Ltd, for extracting natural gas that came under the state-owned ONGC in the KG basin.



According to the sources, the Oil ministry has issued a notice to all the three partners seeking compensation and asked them to respond in 30 days. The Mukesh Ambani led firm has said that it will challenge the decision through arbitration.

The oil ministry on November 3 issued a notice to all the three partners seeking $1.47 billion for producing 338.332 million British thermal unit in seven years ended March 2016. After deducting $71.71 million royalty paid on the gas produced and adding an interest at the rate of Libor plus 2 per cent totaling USD 149.86 million, a total demand of USD 1.55 billion was made on RIL, BP and Niko.



Originally, ONGC had sought suing RIL and seeking compensation for the gas that had migrated from its blocks KG-DWN-98/2 (KG-D5) and Godavari PML in the KG basin in the Bay of Bengal to neighbouring KG-DWN-98/3 (KG-D6) block of RIL and produced by the private company.



The government had appointed a one-man committee under retired Justice A P Shah to go into the issue. In a report by the Justice A P Shah Committee presented to the Oil Ministry, it said that the Mukesh Ambani-led firm should pay the government for the gas that had seeped from ONGC blocks into its fields in seven years ended 2016.



RILs action of producing and selling gas migrated from ONGC block is unjust enrichment, the report said. Reacting to the development, RIL said it proposes to invoke the dispute resolution mechanism in the PSC and issue a Notice of Arbitration to the Government. RIL remains convinced of being able to fully justify and vindicate its position that the Governments claim is not sustainable, RIL said.

NEW DELHI: The government on Friday has slapped a $1.55 million fine on Reliance Industries and its partners, BP and Niko Resources Ltd, for extracting natural gas that came under the state-owned ONGC in the KG basin. According to the sources, the Oil ministry has issued a notice to all the three partners seeking compensation and asked them to respond in 30 days. The Mukesh Ambani led firm has said that it will challenge the decision through arbitration. The oil ministry on November 3 issued a notice to all the three partners seeking $1.47 billion for producing 338.332 million British thermal unit in seven years ended March 2016. After deducting $71.71 million royalty paid on the gas produced and adding an interest at the rate of Libor plus 2 per cent totaling USD 149.86 million, a total demand of USD 1.55 billion was made on RIL, BP and Niko. Originally, ONGC had sought suing RIL and seeking compensation for the gas that had migrated from its blocks KG-DWN-98/2 (KG-D5) and Godavari PML in the KG basin in the Bay of Bengal to neighbouring KG-DWN-98/3 (KG-D6) block of RIL and produced by the private company. The government had appointed a one-man committee under retired Justice A P Shah to go into the issue. In a report by the Justice A P Shah Committee presented to the Oil Ministry, it said that the Mukesh Ambani-led firm should pay the government for the gas that had seeped from ONGC blocks into its fields in seven years ended 2016. RILs action of producing and selling gas migrated from ONGC block is unjust enrichment, the report said. Reacting to the development, RIL said it proposes to invoke the dispute resolution mechanism in the PSC and issue a Notice of Arbitration to the Government. RIL remains convinced of being able to fully justify and vindicate its position that the Governments claim is not sustainable, RIL said.
By Express News Service

CHENNAI: Swedish luxury carmaker Volvo has launched the highly-anticipated S90 in India at Rs 53.5 lakh, ex-showroom, Delhi on Friday. With the launch of its newest sedan S90 has an under 2-litre diesel engine, the company said that it is expecting to close the year with 20 per cent increase in sales.



Our sales rose 20 per cent last year to around 1,400 units. We are sure with the S90, we will be able to match that growth rate or even improve upon it provided we get enough units, Volvo Auto India managing director Tom von Bonsdorff said on the sidelines of the car launch.



The S90 is the longest sedan in its segment with a length of 4,963 metres.

Since the Spring launch, the S90 has been getting huge demand globally and I hope that the headquarters can send us at least 1,000 units here, Bonsdorff said.On the uncertainty over diesel cars in the country, he said if there is market we can bring in petrol models anytime. Currently, it has two petrol models- S40 and S60.



Its present dealers are in Delhi, Mumbai, Gurgaon, Ahmedabad, Surat, Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Kochi, Vishakhapatnam, Kolkata and Vijayawada

Bonsdorff also said that he expects to close the year with 4-5 per cent market share.

CHENNAI: Swedish luxury carmaker Volvo has launched the highly-anticipated S90 in India at Rs 53.5 lakh, ex-showroom, Delhi on Friday. With the launch of its newest sedan S90 has an under 2-litre diesel engine, the company said that it is expecting to close the year with 20 per cent increase in sales. Our sales rose 20 per cent last year to around 1,400 units. We are sure with the S90, we will be able to match that growth rate or even improve upon it provided we get enough units, Volvo Auto India managing director Tom von Bonsdorff said on the sidelines of the car launch. The S90 is the longest sedan in its segment with a length of 4,963 metres. Since the Spring launch, the S90 has been getting huge demand globally and I hope that the headquarters can send us at least 1,000 units here, Bonsdorff said.On the uncertainty over diesel cars in the country, he said if there is market we can bring in petrol models anytime. Currently, it has two petrol models- S40 and S60. Its present dealers are in Delhi, Mumbai, Gurgaon, Ahmedabad, Surat, Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Kochi, Vishakhapatnam, Kolkata and Vijayawada Bonsdorff also said that he expects to close the year with 4-5 per cent market share.
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: The murder case of RSS worker R Rudresh took a curious turn on Friday with BJP MP Shobha Karandlaje accusing Infrastructure minister Roshan Baig of having a direct involvement in the killing. An angry Baig rubbished the allegation as a bundle of lies meant to disturb communal harmony in his Shivajinagar assembly constituency and also threatened to file a defamation suit against Karandlaje.

Karandlaje alleged that Baig was worried about the rising popularity of Rudresh in his constituency and that he hired contract killers to eliminate him. She demanded that the state government hand over the probe to NIA or CBI. She also sought Baigs resignation.

She told Express that her statement was based on information she gathered during her interaction with police officers investigating the case and general opinion of the people of Shivajinagar.

Later BJP state general secretary CT Ravi and former BJP MLC Go Madhusudan also backed her statements.

BENGALURU: The murder case of RSS worker R Rudresh took a curious turn on Friday with BJP MP Shobha Karandlaje accusing Infrastructure minister Roshan Baig of having a direct involvement in the killing. An angry Baig rubbished the allegation as a bundle of lies meant to disturb communal harmony in his Shivajinagar assembly constituency and also threatened to file a defamation suit against Karandlaje. Karandlaje alleged that Baig was worried about the rising popularity of Rudresh in his constituency and that he hired contract killers to eliminate him. She demanded that the state government hand over the probe to NIA or CBI. She also sought Baigs resignation. She told Express that her statement was based on information she gathered during her interaction with police officers investigating the case and general opinion of the people of Shivajinagar. Later BJP state general secretary CT Ravi and former BJP MLC Go Madhusudan also backed her statements.
By Express News Service

CHENNAI: Three persons hailing from Nepal were arrested on Friday in connection with the murder of a 60-year-old home alone woman at T Nagar four days ago. Police have recovered `40,000 stolen by them.

The arrested were identified as Gorak Singh (34), his friends Maan Singh (36) and Lalit Kohli (30), all natives of Nepal. Police said that Gorak Singh had allegedly plotted to murder Shanthi, who was living alone in a one- storey building on Habibulla Road, a busy street at T Nagar.

With the help of call records received from the locality, we found that one of the suspects had informed Gorak after Shanthi was murdered which was recorded, saidChennai Police Commissioner S George.

He said Gorak Singh was working as a security guard at a jewellery showroom on Usman Road at T Nagar three years ago. Later, he worked in a house in the same street. Learning that Shanthi was living alone, he wanted to steal the valuables from her. For this, he decided to eliminate her and roped in his friends from Nepal.

His three friends reached the city, a month ago and worked in a hotel at Mylapore, the officer said.

City police have claimed to have cracked the murder case of a 48-year-old woman whose partially burnt body was recovered from a hut opposite her house in Thousand Lights, by arresting two persons including a tenant of the deceased.

The arrested were identified as Suganthi, 35, and her accomplice Yuvan. They allegedly kidnapped Dhanalakshmi, murdered her on November 1 and hid the body at Suganthis house.

Police said Dhanalakshmi, the house owner, had recently questioned Suganthi about Yuvan and other men visiting the house during late hours. She had even told Suganthi to vacate the house, due to the continuous visits of men. Angered by this, Suganthi allegedly decided to murder the house owner, for which she roped in Yuvan, said City Police Commissioner S Geroge.

He further said Dhanalakshmi had come out of her house on the first floor, when Suganthi and Yuvan who were waiting on the ground floor allegedly murdered her and kept her in Suganthis house for a day.

A case was registered with the Thousand light police station and the duo were sent to judicial custody.

A 34-year-old man was arrested on Friday in connection with the murder of a woman lawyer P Lakshmi Sudha (58) at her house in West Mambalam.

The arrested has been identified as M Karthikeyan, a resident of Nolambur, who allegedly killed Lakshmi claiming she had forced him to continue his relationship with her.

On Wednesday, Lakshmis sister Vidhya along with the housekeeper Vimala found the body of the woman in the house with stab marks on her back.

Investigations from our team revealed that Karthikeyan visited the house on 31 October and the duo had a fight. During the fight, Lakshmi had allegedly threatened Karthikeyan that she would tell his wife about their relationship, city Commissioner S George quoted the suspect.

Angered by this, Karthikeyan murdered Lakshmi and fled the scene. Based on eye witnesses, police arrested the man who ran a massage centre. The suspect was married in 2015.

Kumaran Nagar police arrested Karthikeyan and was remanded in Puzhal prison on Friday.

CHENNAI: Three persons hailing from Nepal were arrested on Friday in connection with the murder of a 60-year-old home alone woman at T Nagar four days ago. Police have recovered `40,000 stolen by them. The arrested were identified as Gorak Singh (34), his friends Maan Singh (36) and Lalit Kohli (30), all natives of Nepal. Police said that Gorak Singh had allegedly plotted to murder Shanthi, who was living alone in a one- storey building on Habibulla Road, a busy street at T Nagar. With the help of call records received from the locality, we found that one of the suspects had informed Gorak after Shanthi was murdered which was recorded, saidChennai Police Commissioner S George. He said Gorak Singh was working as a security guard at a jewellery showroom on Usman Road at T Nagar three years ago. Later, he worked in a house in the same street. Learning that Shanthi was living alone, he wanted to steal the valuables from her. For this, he decided to eliminate her and roped in his friends from Nepal. His three friends reached the city, a month ago and worked in a hotel at Mylapore, the officer said. City police have claimed to have cracked the murder case of a 48-year-old woman whose partially burnt body was recovered from a hut opposite her house in Thousand Lights, by arresting two persons including a tenant of the deceased. The arrested were identified as Suganthi, 35, and her accomplice Yuvan. They allegedly kidnapped Dhanalakshmi, murdered her on November 1 and hid the body at Suganthis house. Police said Dhanalakshmi, the house owner, had recently questioned Suganthi about Yuvan and other men visiting the house during late hours. She had even told Suganthi to vacate the house, due to the continuous visits of men. Angered by this, Suganthi allegedly decided to murder the house owner, for which she roped in Yuvan, said City Police Commissioner S Geroge. He further said Dhanalakshmi had come out of her house on the first floor, when Suganthi and Yuvan who were waiting on the ground floor allegedly murdered her and kept her in Suganthis house for a day. A case was registered with the Thousand light police station and the duo were sent to judicial custody. A 34-year-old man was arrested on Friday in connection with the murder of a woman lawyer P Lakshmi Sudha (58) at her house in West Mambalam. The arrested has been identified as M Karthikeyan, a resident of Nolambur, who allegedly killed Lakshmi claiming she had forced him to continue his relationship with her. On Wednesday, Lakshmis sister Vidhya along with the housekeeper Vimala found the body of the woman in the house with stab marks on her back. Investigations from our team revealed that Karthikeyan visited the house on 31 October and the duo had a fight. During the fight, Lakshmi had allegedly threatened Karthikeyan that she would tell his wife about their relationship, city Commissioner S George quoted the suspect. Angered by this, Karthikeyan murdered Lakshmi and fled the scene. Based on eye witnesses, police arrested the man who ran a massage centre. The suspect was married in 2015. Kumaran Nagar police arrested Karthikeyan and was remanded in Puzhal prison on Friday.
Chandni U By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: She works towards preventing sexual harassment at the workplace and specialises in setting up governance models, prevention and redressal committees of sexual harassment in the corporate world.

Today, Viji Hari, CEO of Kelp HR, is an author. Launching a fact-based fiction, BCC: Behind Closed Cubicles, she brings out 18 short stories from real incidentsincluding her personal experiences in harassment. City Express asked her questions that you might want answers to. Excerpts follow

Author Viji Hari/Martin Louis

What should employees be aware of when they are sexually harassed?

Each organisation with more than 10 employees must have a sexual harassment committee consisting of mature men and women from the organisation along with a third party member. Now, you should know that not only office employees but non-staff and clients are also protected under the Act. You dont have to go the police; all you need to do is send an email to the committee for investigation. The findings and suggestions are given to the highest authority who takes action.

Doesnt a complaint affect their place and job?

We conducted a survey and 22% were victims of sexual abuse but only 55% of the victims were ready to lodge a complaint. Why? They were scared they might get their name dirty or lose their job. Thus, they want to keep it quiet. But you need to understand that it may wreck your life in other ways and you have a committee that keeps it confidential.

If something as little as a dirty joke can pass off as harassment, how can the friendly vibe be maintained?

A dirty joke, sharing your co-workers profile picture, or a strange handshake all are subtle examples of harassment, verbal, non-verbal or physical. There was a case of a woman from a remote village landed a job in Bengaluru corporate company. She was unable to get along with the cultural difference there. Going on dates, socialising over drinks, and casual hugs were not something she was familiar with. Now, harassment is a thin line  uneasiness. If either of the party is uncomfortable about certain something, its harassment. She was uneasy while the others were not. So, the job of a company is to create sensitisation so that no one loses an opportunity.

What about office romances?

(laughs) Some organisations encourage office romances. They get married and would want to stick together in the same place and company. How does harassment play a role here? If a person is genuinely interested, we tell them to give the other person subtle signals. Try twice and if he/she does not reciprocate, back off!

What can someone who works in a small organisation do?

The life of a salesperson. For instance, if a third party enters the shop and shouts at the person in foul language, the other employees have the right to throw the customer away.

(Behind Closed Cubicles is available at Amazon, Flipkart at `200)



CHENNAI: She works towards preventing sexual harassment at the workplace and specialises in setting up governance models, prevention and redressal committees of sexual harassment in the corporate world. Today, Viji Hari, CEO of Kelp HR, is an author. Launching a fact-based fiction, BCC: Behind Closed Cubicles, she brings out 18 short stories from real incidentsincluding her personal experiences in harassment. City Express asked her questions that you might want answers to. Excerpts follow Author Viji Hari/Martin LouisWhat should employees be aware of when they are sexually harassed? Each organisation with more than 10 employees must have a sexual harassment committee consisting of mature men and women from the organisation along with a third party member. Now, you should know that not only office employees but non-staff and clients are also protected under the Act. You dont have to go the police; all you need to do is send an email to the committee for investigation. The findings and suggestions are given to the highest authority who takes action. Doesnt a complaint affect their place and job? We conducted a survey and 22% were victims of sexual abuse but only 55% of the victims were ready to lodge a complaint. Why? They were scared they might get their name dirty or lose their job. Thus, they want to keep it quiet. But you need to understand that it may wreck your life in other ways and you have a committee that keeps it confidential. If something as little as a dirty joke can pass off as harassment, how can the friendly vibe be maintained? A dirty joke, sharing your co-workers profile picture, or a strange handshake all are subtle examples of harassment, verbal, non-verbal or physical. There was a case of a woman from a remote village landed a job in Bengaluru corporate company. She was unable to get along with the cultural difference there. Going on dates, socialising over drinks, and casual hugs were not something she was familiar with. Now, harassment is a thin line  uneasiness. If either of the party is uncomfortable about certain something, its harassment. She was uneasy while the others were not. So, the job of a company is to create sensitisation so that no one loses an opportunity. What about office romances? (laughs) Some organisations encourage office romances. They get married and would want to stick together in the same place and company. How does harassment play a role here? If a person is genuinely interested, we tell them to give the other person subtle signals. Try twice and if he/she does not reciprocate, back off! What can someone who works in a small organisation do? The life of a salesperson. For instance, if a third party enters the shop and shouts at the person in foul language, the other employees have the right to throw the customer away. (Behind Closed Cubicles is available at Amazon, Flipkart at `200)
By Express News Service

CHENNAI: Expressing concern over the failure of the heads of three connected departments in convening a meeting to discuss arrangements for the ensuing north-east monsoon, the Madras High Court directed them to file affidavits explaining reason for the same.

First bench of Chief Justice SK Kaul and Justice R Mahadevan said as rightly pointed out by A Narayanan, the petitioner in his PIL, meetings of the committee were held in breach of directions passed by the court on June 4.

Directors of Municipal Administration and Water Supply and Town Planning departments and Commissioner did not participate in the meeting.

Let them file affidavits explaining their absence in the meet and as to why the meetings are conducted in breach of the orders for which purpose, even the Chairman and Managing Director, Chennai Metro Water Supply will file an affidavit, the bench said and posted the matter for further hearing on December 21.

CHENNAI: Expressing concern over the failure of the heads of three connected departments in convening a meeting to discuss arrangements for the ensuing north-east monsoon, the Madras High Court directed them to file affidavits explaining reason for the same. First bench of Chief Justice SK Kaul and Justice R Mahadevan said as rightly pointed out by A Narayanan, the petitioner in his PIL, meetings of the committee were held in breach of directions passed by the court on June 4. Directors of Municipal Administration and Water Supply and Town Planning departments and Commissioner did not participate in the meeting. Let them file affidavits explaining their absence in the meet and as to why the meetings are conducted in breach of the orders for which purpose, even the Chairman and Managing Director, Chennai Metro Water Supply will file an affidavit, the bench said and posted the matter for further hearing on December 21.
Jayanthi Somasundaram By

The two-bedroom flat at Chennai in Tamil Nadu is strewn with banners, placards, badges and slogans reading Save our elephants and rhinos, Kill the ivory trade, not the elephants.

Gearing up for the Global March for Elephants, Rhinos and Tigers scheduled for the year-end, Shrilekha Venkateswar, 32, and Ramakrishna Dhanasekaran, 32, both founders of The Wild Walkan organisation that promotes wildlife literacy and conservation in Indiasay this year its going to be bigger.

Over 120 cities across the globe will organise marches to promote the cause. And The Wild Walk will spearhead the event in Chennai. Its a peaceful demonstration and we will have people from all walks of life joining us, Shrilekha explains. This year, only Hyderabad and Chennai are representing India. Shrilekha is excited to organise this march for the third year. She says she expects over 1,000 participants.

During previous two years, we held the march at the Marina beach in Chennai. This year the location is yet to be decided. Apart from the march, we plan to do activities to sensitise people on wildlife and responsible tourism, she says.

Growing up in a home that involved in conversations and activities related to wildlife conservation, Shrilekha realised that she wanted to live and work around nature.

When I was seven, I would return from jungle trips and share stories with my classmates at school. It was quite unfortunate that I never had an audience except my family, says Shrilekha, who believes that wildlife literacy is the only way to inspire others to sustain the habitat. Finding a career in digital marketing, she took every opportunity to conduct wildlife literacy camps at schools and for corporate teams.

Educating children is crucial; we believe that helping them understand nature and act responsibly is a life skill by itself, explains her partner-husband-film maker Ramakrishna. Officially launched in 2013, The Wild Walk has always been a peoples movement. It aims at involving the common man in conservation activitieswhether it is filling a tank with water for wild elephants to drink, cleaning a part of jungle in Mudhumalai, or sharing stories with children.

Their focus has always been to spread the knowledge on wildlife and they feel it is important to tell people the truth and its consequences.

Weve been working on wildlife literacy programmes with 15 schools in Chennai for the past one year. One of the key initiatives we run is Sanctuary Asias Kids for Tigers campaign. Over the years, Ive found that children are naturally interested in wildlife; when we present the real scenario before them, they feel responsible and want to change their behaviour to protect the environment, says Shrilekha.

Ramakrishna stresses that one need not be a conservationist or an organisation to protect the wildlife and everyone can do their bit. When tourists visit a jungle, they take out their mobile phones and click pictures.

They do not understand that their gesture upsets the wildlife. If you do visit a jungle, just sit and appreciate its beauty. There has been an increase in wildlife photographers, which is great, but it is important that they behave ethically and not disturb the natural habitat of animals, he says.

Shrilekha, who does the field activity of conducting rallies and workshops in schools and offices, says, Ramakrishna takes care of the documentation and makes short films, which we host on our website and blog. These help people take action.

The duo echoes that nature will evolve with or without human beings. If not for human beings, some other predator will take over and continue the chain of life. What motivates us to continue this journey is the sparkle in the eyes of the children. They absorb the information, and want to act upon it, says Shrilekha.

Her husband feels that speeches are great, but it is high time we stopped blaming the government for the state of affairs and rolled up our sleeves to give back to the nature.

The two-bedroom flat at Chennai in Tamil Nadu is strewn with banners, placards, badges and slogans reading Save our elephants and rhinos, Kill the ivory trade, not the elephants. Gearing up for the Global March for Elephants, Rhinos and Tigers scheduled for the year-end, Shrilekha Venkateswar, 32, and Ramakrishna Dhanasekaran, 32, both founders of The Wild Walkan organisation that promotes wildlife literacy and conservation in Indiasay this year its going to be bigger. Over 120 cities across the globe will organise marches to promote the cause. And The Wild Walk will spearhead the event in Chennai. Its a peaceful demonstration and we will have people from all walks of life joining us, Shrilekha explains. This year, only Hyderabad and Chennai are representing India. Shrilekha is excited to organise this march for the third year. She says she expects over 1,000 participants. During previous two years, we held the march at the Marina beach in Chennai. This year the location is yet to be decided. Apart from the march, we plan to do activities to sensitise people on wildlife and responsible tourism, she says. Growing up in a home that involved in conversations and activities related to wildlife conservation, Shrilekha realised that she wanted to live and work around nature. When I was seven, I would return from jungle trips and share stories with my classmates at school. It was quite unfortunate that I never had an audience except my family, says Shrilekha, who believes that wildlife literacy is the only way to inspire others to sustain the habitat. Finding a career in digital marketing, she took every opportunity to conduct wildlife literacy camps at schools and for corporate teams. Educating children is crucial; we believe that helping them understand nature and act responsibly is a life skill by itself, explains her partner-husband-film maker Ramakrishna. Officially launched in 2013, The Wild Walk has always been a peoples movement. It aims at involving the common man in conservation activitieswhether it is filling a tank with water for wild elephants to drink, cleaning a part of jungle in Mudhumalai, or sharing stories with children. Their focus has always been to spread the knowledge on wildlife and they feel it is important to tell people the truth and its consequences. Weve been working on wildlife literacy programmes with 15 schools in Chennai for the past one year. One of the key initiatives we run is Sanctuary Asias Kids for Tigers campaign. Over the years, Ive found that children are naturally interested in wildlife; when we present the real scenario before them, they feel responsible and want to change their behaviour to protect the environment, says Shrilekha. Ramakrishna stresses that one need not be a conservationist or an organisation to protect the wildlife and everyone can do their bit. When tourists visit a jungle, they take out their mobile phones and click pictures. They do not understand that their gesture upsets the wildlife. If you do visit a jungle, just sit and appreciate its beauty. There has been an increase in wildlife photographers, which is great, but it is important that they behave ethically and not disturb the natural habitat of animals, he says. Shrilekha, who does the field activity of conducting rallies and workshops in schools and offices, says, Ramakrishna takes care of the documentation and makes short films, which we host on our website and blog. These help people take action. The duo echoes that nature will evolve with or without human beings. If not for human beings, some other predator will take over and continue the chain of life. What motivates us to continue this journey is the sparkle in the eyes of the children. They absorb the information, and want to act upon it, says Shrilekha. Her husband feels that speeches are great, but it is high time we stopped blaming the government for the state of affairs and rolled up our sleeves to give back to the nature.
Saima Afreen By

Jeelani Bano, 80, looks frail in her sea green sari with that mop of pepper-and-salt hair. Her demeanour is genteel, but only a talk about her stories on bonded labour, her aapa Ismat Chughtai and Progressive Writers Movement lights up her eyes. The decades pass on her soft wrinkled face as she turns pages of her autobiographical book Main Kaun Hoon and takes you back to an era gone by thats still alive in her Banjara Hills house in Hyderabad, serenely tucked in another time-frame.

As Urdu Day approaches on November 9, she speaks about her association with the language. Many of her stories appear to be of our time. Jagirdari may have gone but capitalistic clutches dont let go of the bonded slavery. Her story Paththaron ki Barish is heart-wrenching. Bano, who has authored 22 books, says, A lot of writers of our time revolted against this inhuman system. Something also sparked in me and I wrote such stories. But today also, the situation of daily labourers is the same.

Her book Aiwan-e-Ghazal, which tells the tales of feudal landlords in Hyderabad, has been translated into 14 languages. She then talks about her dear aapaIsmat Chughtaithe firebrand writer.

She was also from Badayun in Hyderabad, where I was born. She was friends with my mother and supported me a lot in writing, says the 2016 NTR National Literary Award winner showing the letters Chughtai sent to her. Ismat wrote to her, After marriage, respect your writing as much as you would respect your husband and in-laws. In 70s, when Jeelani Bano and her husband Anwar Moazzam, poet and writer, went to Pakistan, famous poets and scholars came to meet them at the border. She shares, Nobody wants to understand what people of both the nations want. Sarhadein dilon ko nahin baant saktin (Borders cant divide hearts).

When once she went to the US, a scholar asked her, Youre a Muslim woman. How did you get permission to write? To this, she replied, Nobody has stopped me from writing. Perhaps you havent been to India or else you wouldnt have asked me this.

Renowned poets and scholars such as Shakeel Badayuni, Makhdoom Mohiuddin, Jigar Muradabadi and Kaifi Azmi were hosted at her Mallepally home. But, she along with other children werent allowed to go to the baithaks. The young Bano would watch these poets, while playing in the courtyard.

Such gatherings shaped up her thought process. But she has a lot of respect for Marxist poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. When he came to Hyderabad in August 1978, she recalls, he was staying at the house of Mariam Bilgrami in Mallepally. Showing her photograph with the bard, she says, He wrote to me after he was released on parole from jail, saying Your writing determines your place in literary circles.

When she met Faiz, she said, Mujhey Jeelani Bano kahtey hain (I am addressed as Jeelani Bano). To this, Faiz Ahmed replied, Hum bhi toh yehi kahtey hain (I also call you that).

Bano is so passionate about her work that she attended a story-telling event of her works at the open cultural space Lamakaan. She stood at the door after the interview as the pillar holding past and present sturdily. And for once her frame didnt look frail.

Jeelani Bano, 80, looks frail in her sea green sari with that mop of pepper-and-salt hair. Her demeanour is genteel, but only a talk about her stories on bonded labour, her aapa Ismat Chughtai and Progressive Writers Movement lights up her eyes. The decades pass on her soft wrinkled face as she turns pages of her autobiographical book Main Kaun Hoon and takes you back to an era gone by thats still alive in her Banjara Hills house in Hyderabad, serenely tucked in another time-frame. As Urdu Day approaches on November 9, she speaks about her association with the language. Many of her stories appear to be of our time. Jagirdari may have gone but capitalistic clutches dont let go of the bonded slavery. Her story Paththaron ki Barish is heart-wrenching. Bano, who has authored 22 books, says, A lot of writers of our time revolted against this inhuman system. Something also sparked in me and I wrote such stories. But today also, the situation of daily labourers is the same. Her book Aiwan-e-Ghazal, which tells the tales of feudal landlords in Hyderabad, has been translated into 14 languages. She then talks about her dear aapaIsmat Chughtaithe firebrand writer. She was also from Badayun in Hyderabad, where I was born. She was friends with my mother and supported me a lot in writing, says the 2016 NTR National Literary Award winner showing the letters Chughtai sent to her. Ismat wrote to her, After marriage, respect your writing as much as you would respect your husband and in-laws. In 70s, when Jeelani Bano and her husband Anwar Moazzam, poet and writer, went to Pakistan, famous poets and scholars came to meet them at the border. She shares, Nobody wants to understand what people of both the nations want. Sarhadein dilon ko nahin baant saktin (Borders cant divide hearts). When once she went to the US, a scholar asked her, Youre a Muslim woman. How did you get permission to write? To this, she replied, Nobody has stopped me from writing. Perhaps you havent been to India or else you wouldnt have asked me this. Renowned poets and scholars such as Shakeel Badayuni, Makhdoom Mohiuddin, Jigar Muradabadi and Kaifi Azmi were hosted at her Mallepally home. But, she along with other children werent allowed to go to the baithaks. The young Bano would watch these poets, while playing in the courtyard. Such gatherings shaped up her thought process. But she has a lot of respect for Marxist poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. When he came to Hyderabad in August 1978, she recalls, he was staying at the house of Mariam Bilgrami in Mallepally. Showing her photograph with the bard, she says, He wrote to me after he was released on parole from jail, saying Your writing determines your place in literary circles. When she met Faiz, she said, Mujhey Jeelani Bano kahtey hain (I am addressed as Jeelani Bano). To this, Faiz Ahmed replied, Hum bhi toh yehi kahtey hain (I also call you that). Bano is so passionate about her work that she attended a story-telling event of her works at the open cultural space Lamakaan. She stood at the door after the interview as the pillar holding past and present sturdily. And for once her frame didnt look frail.
Mohan Das Menon By

While narratives on the freedom struggle varyingly interpreted the British rule over India as negative, enduring or unconstitutional, none could substantively analyse how India came under British subjugation around 1748. One major zone of national operational activity that separated the not-so-integrated Bharatvarsha of yore and British imperialists was generation, accumulation and utilisation of intelligence in national endeavours.

Countries like Britain and France, both frontline colonists, had an advantage over the rest of the world in that their mastery over their intelligence arenas was always strong. Britain mastered the Asian continent and France the African, even as both countries succeeded in colonising IndiaFrance partially but Britain substantively. They were assisted by their loyal boat masters who ventured out for over centuries of overwhelming sailing experiences.

The vulnerabilities of peninsular India and its lack of maritime control systems were recorded by each mission along the west and east coasts. India rarely had any intelligence paradigms to refer to or fall back upon to strengthen its maritime and territorial boundaries.

Both London and Paris were also masterfully guided by the folklore and real-time experiences of Portuguese boat masters even as preliminary intelligence sharing originated between Lisbon, London and Paris on how to access the Indian ground terrain through boat masters. Portuguese navigator Vasco de Gama was among the earliest of notables to call upon the Zamorin of Calicut in 1498 that drew attention to the significance of Peninsular India to the world at large and its maritime vulnerability.

After Independence, while Indias first Union Cabinet under PM Jawaharlal Nehru had many politically informed individuals, none seemed empowered enough to judge that inheriting the Intelligence Bureau from its British mentors was never a sufficient condition for intelligence generation to protect Indias territorial and maritime needs. It was only after the Chinese aggression in 1962 and Pakistani military forays in 1965 that vulnerabilities came to fore and New Delhi, in 1968, decided to institute a foreign intelligence service to address the global arena of threat postulation, manifestation and neutralisation to garner composite Indian security needs more comprehensively.

With passage of time, challenges to Indian security order magnified dimensionally even as the US, Russia, France, Britain and China sought their Autonomously Determined Intelligence Priority Terrains (ADIPTs) in different parts of the world and enveloped themselves in their seemingly eternal comfort zones as permanent members of the UN Security Council.

As this superstructure is unlikely to be impacted in near future, the rest of the world has to put up with Washingtons exigent priority to dismantle the ISIS in Syria and elsewhere, the Russian non-negotiable interest in strengthening Bashar al-Assads regimen in Damascus, alongside British and French resistance to such Moscow-driven tactics. While rendering prominent roles for each of the P5 powers, the web seems to be enshrining clouds of conflict, rarely engendering any aspirations for peace in the other equally affected regions of tension, including Iraq, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

In the meantime, Chinas largely non-sustainable claims and derivative war games in the South China Sea are also accentuating and the fragile China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and its territorial scope expose Beijings version of ADIPTs. These include priorities encompassing Balochistan, a Pakistani province under a siege of sorts.

Each of these engagements appears intelligence-driven meant to neutralise potential threat components interpreted by the P5, each operating out of silos of its own making.

Since 9/11, the over-emphasis on the P5 and the lack of emphasis on the UNGA for dealing with major tension spots has hardly served the cause of global peace or served to arrest global tensions at their very roots. The ADIPTS of the P5 have contrarily contributed in upsetting the balance of peace in todays world.

This makes it imperative that the Indian intelligence apparatus takes note of the fact that the big power threat perceptions are often laced with biases. It must empower its own system of intelligence gathering and objective analysis without being swayed by the big power projections. Some global agencies have occasionally been involved in campaigns to disproportionately emphasise a larger-than-life ISIS presence in India. While this does not appear true so far, campaigns premised on exaggeration need to be dealt with prudently and countered suitably.

The writer is a former additional secretary, Cabinet Secretariat

mdmenonconsulting@gmail.com

While narratives on the freedom struggle varyingly interpreted the British rule over India as negative, enduring or unconstitutional, none could substantively analyse how India came under British subjugation around 1748. One major zone of national operational activity that separated the not-so-integrated Bharatvarsha of yore and British imperialists was generation, accumulation and utilisation of intelligence in national endeavours. Countries like Britain and France, both frontline colonists, had an advantage over the rest of the world in that their mastery over their intelligence arenas was always strong. Britain mastered the Asian continent and France the African, even as both countries succeeded in colonising IndiaFrance partially but Britain substantively. They were assisted by their loyal boat masters who ventured out for over centuries of overwhelming sailing experiences. The vulnerabilities of peninsular India and its lack of maritime control systems were recorded by each mission along the west and east coasts. India rarely had any intelligence paradigms to refer to or fall back upon to strengthen its maritime and territorial boundaries. Both London and Paris were also masterfully guided by the folklore and real-time experiences of Portuguese boat masters even as preliminary intelligence sharing originated between Lisbon, London and Paris on how to access the Indian ground terrain through boat masters. Portuguese navigator Vasco de Gama was among the earliest of notables to call upon the Zamorin of Calicut in 1498 that drew attention to the significance of Peninsular India to the world at large and its maritime vulnerability. After Independence, while Indias first Union Cabinet under PM Jawaharlal Nehru had many politically informed individuals, none seemed empowered enough to judge that inheriting the Intelligence Bureau from its British mentors was never a sufficient condition for intelligence generation to protect Indias territorial and maritime needs. It was only after the Chinese aggression in 1962 and Pakistani military forays in 1965 that vulnerabilities came to fore and New Delhi, in 1968, decided to institute a foreign intelligence service to address the global arena of threat postulation, manifestation and neutralisation to garner composite Indian security needs more comprehensively. With passage of time, challenges to Indian security order magnified dimensionally even as the US, Russia, France, Britain and China sought their Autonomously Determined Intelligence Priority Terrains (ADIPTs) in different parts of the world and enveloped themselves in their seemingly eternal comfort zones as permanent members of the UN Security Council. As this superstructure is unlikely to be impacted in near future, the rest of the world has to put up with Washingtons exigent priority to dismantle the ISIS in Syria and elsewhere, the Russian non-negotiable interest in strengthening Bashar al-Assads regimen in Damascus, alongside British and French resistance to such Moscow-driven tactics. While rendering prominent roles for each of the P5 powers, the web seems to be enshrining clouds of conflict, rarely engendering any aspirations for peace in the other equally affected regions of tension, including Iraq, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. In the meantime, Chinas largely non-sustainable claims and derivative war games in the South China Sea are also accentuating and the fragile China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and its territorial scope expose Beijings version of ADIPTs. These include priorities encompassing Balochistan, a Pakistani province under a siege of sorts. Each of these engagements appears intelligence-driven meant to neutralise potential threat components interpreted by the P5, each operating out of silos of its own making. Since 9/11, the over-emphasis on the P5 and the lack of emphasis on the UNGA for dealing with major tension spots has hardly served the cause of global peace or served to arrest global tensions at their very roots. The ADIPTS of the P5 have contrarily contributed in upsetting the balance of peace in todays world. This makes it imperative that the Indian intelligence apparatus takes note of the fact that the big power threat perceptions are often laced with biases. It must empower its own system of intelligence gathering and objective analysis without being swayed by the big power projections. Some global agencies have occasionally been involved in campaigns to disproportionately emphasise a larger-than-life ISIS presence in India. While this does not appear true so far, campaigns premised on exaggeration need to be dealt with prudently and countered suitably. The writer is a former additional secretary, Cabinet Secretariat mdmenonconsulting@gmail.com
G Parthasarathy By

It is clear that both the military and civilian establishments in Pakistan badly misread Prime Minister Modis outreach to the countrys elected leadership in his first two years in office. His warmth towards his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif were meant to signal to the world that Mr Modi was prepared to go the extra mile with Pakistans leadership, in a quest for cordial relations.

His meetings with Sharif in Delhi, Ufa and Lahore were misread by both Islamabad, where the political leadership is based, and Rawalpindi, where army chief General Raheel Sharif had taken control of Pakistans national security and foreign policies.

The attack on the Pathankot IAF base and the refusal of the military establishment to act against its perpetrators from the Jaish-e-Mohammed, which had also masterminded the December 13, 2001 attack on Indian Parliament, triggered the beginning of a new approach to relations with Pakistan by Mr Modi. In his Independence Day speech, Mr Modi surprised his countrymen and the world, by referring to Indias sympathy for the human rights violation by the Pakistan army in Balochistan. This was accompanied by publicised visits to India by Baloch resistance leaders in exile. These visits were even more startling than Indias approach to freedom fighters from Bangladesh in 1971, who remained largely out of sight, when in India.

The fact that Mr Modis Independence Day speech was not an isolated occurrence, but part of a wider redrawing of the entire matrix of the India-Pakistan relationship, became clear, when New Delhi invited representatives of BIMSTEC, which comprises six of Indias neighbours, to the Goa BRICS Summit. This effectively excluded Pakistan, which has undermined every effort for promoting regional economic cooperation in SAARC.

A process of excluding Pakistan from regional economic cooperation in South Asia was commenced, with India joining other South Asian neighbours, notably Bangladesh and Afghanistan, to initiate a boycott to the scheduled SAARC Summit in Islamabad. Mr Modi appears determined to see that no effort is spared to diplomatically isolate and internationally expose Pakistan, as a sponsor of terrorism. This effort is being coordinated with Afghanistan and Bangladesh, who are also victims of Pakistans ISI-sponsored terrorism.

The terrorist attack on an Indian army unit in Uri led to an unprecedented Indian response. In a carefully planned cross-border attack, units of Indias elite Special Forces destroyed terrorist launch pads and camps across the Line of Control (LoC). Over 50 assembled terrorists and some soldiers of the Pakistan army were killed. This was the first time ever that the Army units undertook such a strike, at widely dispersed terrorist targets, across the LoC. The psychological impact of the recent attack on Pak army units deployed along the LoC and terrorist training camps cannot be overestimated, or overemphasised. Pakistan has been served notice that India can and will strike at terrorist locations, when necessary.

Interestingly, not a single country in the world criticised Indias action. This is primarily because such cross-border raids elsewhere have been justified under the provisions of the UN Charter. This action followed the boycott of the SAARC Summit, which isolated Pakistan in South Asia.

The Uri attack was strongly condemned by countries ranging from the US, Germany and Russia, to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain. It led to an unprecedented American warning to Pakistan. While urging Pakistan to go after terrorist networks, a senior American official noted: The US will not hesitate to act alone, when necessary, to disrupt and destroy these (terrorist) networks. China alone still acts as an apologist for Pakistan sponsored terrorism.

The writer is a Former diplomat

dadpartha@gmail.com

It is clear that both the military and civilian establishments in Pakistan badly misread Prime Minister Modis outreach to the countrys elected leadership in his first two years in office. His warmth towards his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif were meant to signal to the world that Mr Modi was prepared to go the extra mile with Pakistans leadership, in a quest for cordial relations. His meetings with Sharif in Delhi, Ufa and Lahore were misread by both Islamabad, where the political leadership is based, and Rawalpindi, where army chief General Raheel Sharif had taken control of Pakistans national security and foreign policies. The attack on the Pathankot IAF base and the refusal of the military establishment to act against its perpetrators from the Jaish-e-Mohammed, which had also masterminded the December 13, 2001 attack on Indian Parliament, triggered the beginning of a new approach to relations with Pakistan by Mr Modi. In his Independence Day speech, Mr Modi surprised his countrymen and the world, by referring to Indias sympathy for the human rights violation by the Pakistan army in Balochistan. This was accompanied by publicised visits to India by Baloch resistance leaders in exile. These visits were even more startling than Indias approach to freedom fighters from Bangladesh in 1971, who remained largely out of sight, when in India. The fact that Mr Modis Independence Day speech was not an isolated occurrence, but part of a wider redrawing of the entire matrix of the India-Pakistan relationship, became clear, when New Delhi invited representatives of BIMSTEC, which comprises six of Indias neighbours, to the Goa BRICS Summit. This effectively excluded Pakistan, which has undermined every effort for promoting regional economic cooperation in SAARC. A process of excluding Pakistan from regional economic cooperation in South Asia was commenced, with India joining other South Asian neighbours, notably Bangladesh and Afghanistan, to initiate a boycott to the scheduled SAARC Summit in Islamabad. Mr Modi appears determined to see that no effort is spared to diplomatically isolate and internationally expose Pakistan, as a sponsor of terrorism. This effort is being coordinated with Afghanistan and Bangladesh, who are also victims of Pakistans ISI-sponsored terrorism. The terrorist attack on an Indian army unit in Uri led to an unprecedented Indian response. In a carefully planned cross-border attack, units of Indias elite Special Forces destroyed terrorist launch pads and camps across the Line of Control (LoC). Over 50 assembled terrorists and some soldiers of the Pakistan army were killed. This was the first time ever that the Army units undertook such a strike, at widely dispersed terrorist targets, across the LoC. The psychological impact of the recent attack on Pak army units deployed along the LoC and terrorist training camps cannot be overestimated, or overemphasised. Pakistan has been served notice that India can and will strike at terrorist locations, when necessary. Interestingly, not a single country in the world criticised Indias action. This is primarily because such cross-border raids elsewhere have been justified under the provisions of the UN Charter. This action followed the boycott of the SAARC Summit, which isolated Pakistan in South Asia. The Uri attack was strongly condemned by countries ranging from the US, Germany and Russia, to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain. It led to an unprecedented American warning to Pakistan. While urging Pakistan to go after terrorist networks, a senior American official noted: The US will not hesitate to act alone, when necessary, to disrupt and destroy these (terrorist) networks. China alone still acts as an apologist for Pakistan sponsored terrorism. The writer is a Former diplomat dadpartha@gmail.com
PTI By

BAREILLY: Hafiz Saeed, Pakistan-based Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief and mastermind of Mumbai terror attack, cannot be considered a Muslim as he has "terrorist ideology" and has "brought infamy to Islam", declared an Islamic seminary here while giving a 'fatwa' (edict) against him.

The seminary of the Barelvi sect dubbed Saeed, founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba who carries a USD 10 million bounty on his head, as "outcast" from Islam and declared that following him or considering him as Muslim is "illegal".

A 'fatwa' is a legal pronouncement in Islam which is given by a mufti, a Muslim scholar of a recognised authority, who is an interpreter or expounder of Islamic law.

The fatwa issued by Mufti Mohammed Saleem of Manzar-e- Islam Saudagaran, an institution associated with Dargah Ala Hazrat, said that considering Saeed as a Muslim and listening to his words was "illegal" and "prohibited".

As per the fatwa, Saeed is a man with "terrorist ideology", who with his acts has brought "infamy to Islam and Muslims across the world".

"Therefore, it is compulsory for every Muslim not to follow him and keep away from his ideology," it said.

The 'fatwa' was issued in a reply to a question asked by one Mohd Moinuddin of Jaipur who had mentioned in his query that Saeed considered those writing against Allah and Prophet Mohammad as Muslims.

Besides, Saeed publicised anti-religious ideology and points of view and provoked people to create terror, Moinuddin said and asked whether such a person should be considered as Muslim.

In his 'fatwa', Mufti Saleem said that having any type of connection with persons working against the dignity of Allah and the Prophet was illegal and 'haraam', an act that is forbidden by Allah.

It said since Saeed was having contacts with such persons, he has been outcast from Islam.

The ruling came close on the heels of Saeed asking Pakistan Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif to send troops to Kashmir to "obey" the pending order of Pakistan founder M A Jinnah.

Addressing a rally held under the banner of 'Defence Council of Pakistan' in Karachi on Sunday, Saeed had claimed, "Kashmiris had announced before the partition that they wanted to remain with Pakistan. But after the partition, India forcibly sent Army to Jammu and Kashmir.

"On this Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammad Ali Jinnah ordered his commander-in-chief to respond by sending troops but he refused (to obey his orders). Now, I ask Gen Raheel Sharif to sendtroops in (Jammu and) Kashmir as Quaid-e-Azam's order is pending," Saeed said.

He said he was not asking for a war with India but they (Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Raheel) must form a strategy regarding the Kashmir issue.

BAREILLY: Hafiz Saeed, Pakistan-based Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief and mastermind of Mumbai terror attack, cannot be considered a Muslim as he has "terrorist ideology" and has "brought infamy to Islam", declared an Islamic seminary here while giving a 'fatwa' (edict) against him.The seminary of the Barelvi sect dubbed Saeed, founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba who carries a USD 10 million bounty on his head, as "outcast" from Islam and declared that following him or considering him as Muslim is "illegal".A 'fatwa' is a legal pronouncement in Islam which is given by a mufti, a Muslim scholar of a recognised authority, who is an interpreter or expounder of Islamic law.The fatwa issued by Mufti Mohammed Saleem of Manzar-e- Islam Saudagaran, an institution associated with Dargah Ala Hazrat, said that considering Saeed as a Muslim and listening to his words was "illegal" and "prohibited".As per the fatwa, Saeed is a man with "terrorist ideology", who with his acts has brought "infamy to Islam and Muslims across the world"."Therefore, it is compulsory for every Muslim not to follow him and keep away from his ideology," it said.The 'fatwa' was issued in a reply to a question asked by one Mohd Moinuddin of Jaipur who had mentioned in his query that Saeed considered those writing against Allah and Prophet Mohammad as Muslims.Besides, Saeed publicised anti-religious ideology and points of view and provoked people to create terror, Moinuddin said and asked whether such a person should be considered as Muslim.In his 'fatwa', Mufti Saleem said that having any type of connection with persons working against the dignity of Allah and the Prophet was illegal and 'haraam', an act that is forbidden by Allah.It said since Saeed was having contacts with such persons, he has been outcast from Islam.The ruling came close on the heels of Saeed asking Pakistan Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif to send troops to Kashmir to "obey" the pending order of Pakistan founder M A Jinnah.Addressing a rally held under the banner of 'Defence Council of Pakistan' in Karachi on Sunday, Saeed had claimed, "Kashmiris had announced before the partition that they wanted to remain with Pakistan. But after the partition, India forcibly sent Army to Jammu and Kashmir."On this Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammad Ali Jinnah ordered his commander-in-chief to respond by sending troops but he refused (to obey his orders). Now, I ask Gen Raheel Sharif to sendtroops in (Jammu and) Kashmir as Quaid-e-Azam's order is pending," Saeed said.He said he was not asking for a war with India but they (Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Raheel) must form a strategy regarding the Kashmir issue.
By Express News Service

Political high drama erupted over ex-serviceman's alleged suicide over the non-implementation of the OROP scheme. While the government received flaks from various political quarters, political parties used the occasion to take swipe at the BJP and government over the issue of surgical strikes.

Hitting back, BJP accused Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal of doing "politics over deaths" after they targeted Modi government over suicide by an ex-serviceman, and asserted that it had fulfilled its commitment on OROP, while Congress had failed to do so.

Political reactions and comments stated pouring in soon after the incident came to light on Wednesday morning. Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal was first to target PM Narendra Modi saying both farmers and soldiers were ending their lives in his regime. The AAP leader also rued that it was "very sad" to see that soldiers have to fight against external enemy along border and "within" for their rights.

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi asked the PM to implement One Rank, One Pension in a meaningful way in the wake of alleged suicide by an ex-serviceman over the issue and said soldiers should not have to struggle to claim what is their due.

Thereafter, the Congress scion reached RML hospital to meet the family of ex-serviceman Ram Kishan Grewal. Naya Hindustan ban raha hai bhaiya, isko pehchaniye (A brand new India is forming)," Rahul said after he was turned away from the gates of RML hospital by security forces. "For the first time, we are not being allowed to meet the families of our soldiers. Kaisa Hindustan banaya ja raha hai? (What sort of a country are we living in?)," asked the Congress leader, taking a jibe at PM Modi.

In the meantime, Delhi deputy CM Manish Sisodia was also stopped by the police while he was trying to enter the hospital.

Gandhis detention led to more reactions as the Congress' Ghulam Nabi Azad said, "Since the NDA government came to power, the democracy of India has finished and dictatorship is in power. Rahul Gandhi's arrest is the last draw towards dictatorship."

Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee also criticised the move to prevent Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia from visiting the hospital. "It is very sad that one of our former jawans committed suicide. Very unfortunate that Rahul Gandhi and Manish Sisodia were stopped from visiting the bereaved family," she said in a tweet.

However, home minister Rajnath Singh defended the action of Delhi Police. "Whatever has to be done for risk reduction, the Delhi Police will do," he said while replying queries on the issue.

Taking advantage of the raging controversies Kejriwal targeted the BJP over the issue of surgical strikes and the recent controversies on 'downgrading' of military ranks and the 'cuts' in disability pension of defence personnel. The day after the surgical strikes, government brought huge cuts to army's disability pensions. Then, ranks of the military officers were lowered. These are big deceits. And they go about town tomtomming the surgical strikes. The army is being deceived and misused for political gains," the AAP chief said.

Left parties accused Centre of killing an ex-serviceman, who allegedly committed suicide over OROP, contending its "betrayal" over the scheme caused the tradegy. "The basic issue is that a soldier has not been killed by anyone across the border, but has been killed by a government which betrayed its promises on OROP causing him to commit suicide which is great tragedy for the country," CPI(M) Politburo member Brinda Karat said.

BJP criticised the politics ove the alleged suicide. "What Rahul Gandhi and Kejriwal are doing is nothing but politics over death. It seems they keep looking for doing politics wherever such deaths occur," BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma said.

Time line of events:

Tuesday

12 :00 Ram Kishen Grewal and his friends went to Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajans residence

12: 15 pm: Ram Kishen Grewal and his friends went to Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajans residence

1 pm: Reaches Jawahar Bhawan, which houses the Ministry of External Affairs, and sat in the lawns behind it.

1: 10 pm : Consumes poison and calls his sons saying he is sacrificing his life:

1: 15 pm : A call to Police Control Room

1: 14 : He was declared dead by hospital authorities .

11 pm : His family members arrive at hospital



Wednesday

4: AM : The body was Ram Kishen Grewal at Lady Hardinge Medical College

1 :19 PM: Deputy CM Manish Sisodia arrives at RML Hospital

1: 28 PM: Deputy CM Manish Sisodia was detained by Delhi Police from RML Hospital

1: 45 PM: Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala arrives at RML hospital

2: 05 PM: Congress Vice president Rahul Gandhi arrives at RML hospital

2: 09 PM: Rahul Gandhi left RML hospital

2: 10 PM: Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala was detained from RML hospital

3: 00 PM: AAP leader Sanjay Singh and Dilip Pandey sat on dharna at Parliament Street police station

3: 30 PM: Rahul Gandhi detained at Mandir Marg police station

3: 30 PM: Arvind Kejriwal reached at Lady Hardinge Medical College

4:00 PM Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi leaves Mandir Marg police station

6: 14 PM: Kejriwal was detained after he was not allowed to enter Lady Hardinge Medical College

6: 15 PM : Rahul Gandhi, Jyotiraditya Madhavrao Scindia detained after meeting late ex-serviceman's family

6: 27 PM : AAP Dilip Pandey & Sanjay Singh detained as they protested outside Parliament street police station

8: 39 PM : Rahul Gandhi, Jyotiraditya Madhavrao Scindia and other Congress leaders released

Political high drama erupted over ex-serviceman's alleged suicide over the non-implementation of the OROP scheme. While the government received flaks from various political quarters, political parties used the occasion to take swipe at the BJP and government over the issue of surgical strikes. Hitting back, BJP accused Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal of doing "politics over deaths" after they targeted Modi government over suicide by an ex-serviceman, and asserted that it had fulfilled its commitment on OROP, while Congress had failed to do so. Political reactions and comments stated pouring in soon after the incident came to light on Wednesday morning. Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal was first to target PM Narendra Modi saying both farmers and soldiers were ending their lives in his regime. The AAP leader also rued that it was "very sad" to see that soldiers have to fight against external enemy along border and "within" for their rights. Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi asked the PM to implement One Rank, One Pension in a meaningful way in the wake of alleged suicide by an ex-serviceman over the issue and said soldiers should not have to struggle to claim what is their due. Thereafter, the Congress scion reached RML hospital to meet the family of ex-serviceman Ram Kishan Grewal. Naya Hindustan ban raha hai bhaiya, isko pehchaniye (A brand new India is forming)," Rahul said after he was turned away from the gates of RML hospital by security forces. "For the first time, we are not being allowed to meet the families of our soldiers. Kaisa Hindustan banaya ja raha hai? (What sort of a country are we living in?)," asked the Congress leader, taking a jibe at PM Modi. In the meantime, Delhi deputy CM Manish Sisodia was also stopped by the police while he was trying to enter the hospital. Gandhis detention led to more reactions as the Congress' Ghulam Nabi Azad said, "Since the NDA government came to power, the democracy of India has finished and dictatorship is in power. Rahul Gandhi's arrest is the last draw towards dictatorship." Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee also criticised the move to prevent Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia from visiting the hospital. "It is very sad that one of our former jawans committed suicide. Very unfortunate that Rahul Gandhi and Manish Sisodia were stopped from visiting the bereaved family," she said in a tweet. However, home minister Rajnath Singh defended the action of Delhi Police. "Whatever has to be done for risk reduction, the Delhi Police will do," he said while replying queries on the issue. Taking advantage of the raging controversies Kejriwal targeted the BJP over the issue of surgical strikes and the recent controversies on 'downgrading' of military ranks and the 'cuts' in disability pension of defence personnel. The day after the surgical strikes, government brought huge cuts to army's disability pensions. Then, ranks of the military officers were lowered. These are big deceits. And they go about town tomtomming the surgical strikes. The army is being deceived and misused for political gains," the AAP chief said. Left parties accused Centre of killing an ex-serviceman, who allegedly committed suicide over OROP, contending its "betrayal" over the scheme caused the tradegy. "The basic issue is that a soldier has not been killed by anyone across the border, but has been killed by a government which betrayed its promises on OROP causing him to commit suicide which is great tragedy for the country," CPI(M) Politburo member Brinda Karat said. BJP criticised the politics ove the alleged suicide. "What Rahul Gandhi and Kejriwal are doing is nothing but politics over death. It seems they keep looking for doing politics wherever such deaths occur," BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma said. Time line of events: Tuesday 12 :00 Ram Kishen Grewal and his friends went to Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajans residence 12: 15 pm: Ram Kishen Grewal and his friends went to Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajans residence 1 pm: Reaches Jawahar Bhawan, which houses the Ministry of External Affairs, and sat in the lawns behind it. 1: 10 pm : Consumes poison and calls his sons saying he is sacrificing his life: 1: 15 pm : A call to Police Control Room 1: 14 : He was declared dead by hospital authorities . 11 pm : His family members arrive at hospital Wednesday 4: AM : The body was Ram Kishen Grewal at Lady Hardinge Medical College 1 :19 PM: Deputy CM Manish Sisodia arrives at RML Hospital 1: 28 PM: Deputy CM Manish Sisodia was detained by Delhi Police from RML Hospital 1: 45 PM: Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala arrives at RML hospital 2: 05 PM: Congress Vice president Rahul Gandhi arrives at RML hospital 2: 09 PM: Rahul Gandhi left RML hospital 2: 10 PM: Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala was detained from RML hospital 3: 00 PM: AAP leader Sanjay Singh and Dilip Pandey sat on dharna at Parliament Street police station 3: 30 PM: Rahul Gandhi detained at Mandir Marg police station 3: 30 PM: Arvind Kejriwal reached at Lady Hardinge Medical College 4:00 PM Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi leaves Mandir Marg police station 6: 14 PM: Kejriwal was detained after he was not allowed to enter Lady Hardinge Medical College 6: 15 PM : Rahul Gandhi, Jyotiraditya Madhavrao Scindia detained after meeting late ex-serviceman's family 6: 27 PM : AAP Dilip Pandey & Sanjay Singh detained as they protested outside Parliament street police station 8: 39 PM : Rahul Gandhi, Jyotiraditya Madhavrao Scindia and other Congress leaders released
Sanjay Singh By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Fearing yet another downgrade, Indias civil aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) wants all 23 international airports across the country to ensure they upgrade their operational standards, customer outreach and infrastructure to world standards  to impress the international civil aviation watchdogs team during its visit in March 2017.

A top government official told Express that the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is more concerned about international operations and so, international airports need to tune up. Incidents involving commercial aircraft have been increasing at international airports in India, something which is also

disturbing Indian authorities ahead of the ICAO visit.

India has witnessed over 25 near-miss incidents in the past year involving commercial aircraft according to the DGCA, of which at least 15 have occurred at Chennai, Mumbai and Jaipur  all international

airports. Incidentally, the Mumbai and Chennai international airports alone cater to around 35 per cent of

international inbound and outbound traffic.

A senior ministry official pointed out that near-miss incidents have become rampant at the Mumbai airport as it caters to more flights while its infrastructure is limited.

Similarly, the Chennai international airport also has been facing increasing near-miss incidents besides dozens of incidents of glass panels and sections of the false ceiling falling ever since the airport was renovated and modernised in 2012. These incidents have put the lives of passengers at risk forcing

the National Human Rights Commission to intervene, though the incidents continue unabated. A survey last year found that the Chennai airport was the seventh worst in Asia.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in January 2014 downgraded Indias civil aviation sector citing safety oversight and lack of infrastructure at airports and manpower at DGCA.

Though the downgrade was withdrawn in March 2015, there is looming danger that the

downgrade may recur, which has been brushed aside by India, as it claims it has largely addressed their concerns. The FAAs decision to downgrade was taken after two visits by the ICAO in 2013 which pointed fingers at Indias lack of will to address issues and bring services at par with international standards prescribed by the ICAO.

NEW DELHI: Fearing yet another downgrade, Indias civil aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) wants all 23 international airports across the country to ensure they upgrade their operational standards, customer outreach and infrastructure to world standards  to impress the international civil aviation watchdogs team during its visit in March 2017. A top government official told Express that the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is more concerned about international operations and so, international airports need to tune up. Incidents involving commercial aircraft have been increasing at international airports in India, something which is also disturbing Indian authorities ahead of the ICAO visit. India has witnessed over 25 near-miss incidents in the past year involving commercial aircraft according to the DGCA, of which at least 15 have occurred at Chennai, Mumbai and Jaipur  all international airports. Incidentally, the Mumbai and Chennai international airports alone cater to around 35 per cent of international inbound and outbound traffic. A senior ministry official pointed out that near-miss incidents have become rampant at the Mumbai airport as it caters to more flights while its infrastructure is limited. Similarly, the Chennai international airport also has been facing increasing near-miss incidents besides dozens of incidents of glass panels and sections of the false ceiling falling ever since the airport was renovated and modernised in 2012. These incidents have put the lives of passengers at risk forcing the National Human Rights Commission to intervene, though the incidents continue unabated. A survey last year found that the Chennai airport was the seventh worst in Asia. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in January 2014 downgraded Indias civil aviation sector citing safety oversight and lack of infrastructure at airports and manpower at DGCA. Though the downgrade was withdrawn in March 2015, there is looming danger that the downgrade may recur, which has been brushed aside by India, as it claims it has largely addressed their concerns. The FAAs decision to downgrade was taken after two visits by the ICAO in 2013 which pointed fingers at Indias lack of will to address issues and bring services at par with international standards prescribed by the ICAO.
By PTI

MUMBAI: Union Minister J P Nadda today sought corporate sector and non-government organisations' involvement to make healthcare services available for people across the country.



"The provision of healthcare, though primarily the responsibility of the government, cannot be undertaken by the government alone... Corporate sector and NGOs must share the responsibility and supplement the efforts of the government in providing healthcare services," he said.



The Union Minister for Health was here to present National Oral Healthcare Sushruta Awards organised by Indian Dental Association (IDA) here.



Oral diseases are becoming the leading health problem these days and are attributed mainly to the rapidly changing lifestyles, wide-spread use of tobacco and increased consumption of alcohol, he said, adding they pose a major threat to our public health.



Socially and economically weaker sections of the community need to be educated on the importance of oral health and access to dental services in rural areas must improve, he added.



The IDA has set up Oral Cancer Foundation for the early detection and treatment of oral cancer and in this regard a registry for exclusive oral cancer cases is also in place apart from the tobacco intervention initiative, the minister said.



The association has also developed a software for the effective management of dental resources personnel which could prove useful to the Health Ministry in monitoring the deployment of dental personnel and shaping oral health policies, he said.



The Minister expressed confidence that the tools devised by the IDA to combat oral ailments would make a significant contribution to oral healthcare management.

MUMBAI: Union Minister J P Nadda today sought corporate sector and non-government organisations' involvement to make healthcare services available for people across the country. "The provision of healthcare, though primarily the responsibility of the government, cannot be undertaken by the government alone... Corporate sector and NGOs must share the responsibility and supplement the efforts of the government in providing healthcare services," he said. The Union Minister for Health was here to present National Oral Healthcare Sushruta Awards organised by Indian Dental Association (IDA) here. Oral diseases are becoming the leading health problem these days and are attributed mainly to the rapidly changing lifestyles, wide-spread use of tobacco and increased consumption of alcohol, he said, adding they pose a major threat to our public health. Socially and economically weaker sections of the community need to be educated on the importance of oral health and access to dental services in rural areas must improve, he added. The IDA has set up Oral Cancer Foundation for the early detection and treatment of oral cancer and in this regard a registry for exclusive oral cancer cases is also in place apart from the tobacco intervention initiative, the minister said. The association has also developed a software for the effective management of dental resources personnel which could prove useful to the Health Ministry in monitoring the deployment of dental personnel and shaping oral health policies, he said. The Minister expressed confidence that the tools devised by the IDA to combat oral ailments would make a significant contribution to oral healthcare management.
By Online Desk

BULDHANA: Four more persons were held on Saturday in connection with the Buldhana rape case, where around a dozen girls were raped at an ashram school here.

A total of 15 people have been arrested so far.

The Maharashtra Government yesterday formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the incident.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis yesterday said the Buldhana rape incident will be probed under the supervision of a female IPS officer and assured that strict action will be taken against the accused.

The accused include president, secretary and joint secretary of the private boarding school, which is 450 kilometers from Mumbai.

Meanwhile, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Nawab Malik has demanded the ouster of Tribal Minister Vishnu Sawra and Women and Child Development Minister Pankaja Munde for alleged negligence towards tribals.

He has also demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis for the alleged apathy towards tribals.

The issue came to light when one of the girls, who had visited her parents to celebrate Diwali, started complaining of stomach pain and on medical examination was found to be pregnant. After persistent inquiry by her parents, the girl told them about the ordeal she and some of her other friends underwent. Her parents then rushed to ex-revenue minister Eknath Khadse, who in turn asked agriculture minister Pandurang Phundkar to intervene. Phundkar visited the school  Nanabhau Kokre Ashramshala  and spoke to officials, leading to police action.

(With ANI Inputs)

BULDHANA: Four more persons were held on Saturday in connection with the Buldhana rape case, where around a dozen girls were raped at an ashram school here. A total of 15 people have been arrested so far. The Maharashtra Government yesterday formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the incident. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis yesterday said the Buldhana rape incident will be probed under the supervision of a female IPS officer and assured that strict action will be taken against the accused. The accused include president, secretary and joint secretary of the private boarding school, which is 450 kilometers from Mumbai. Meanwhile, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Nawab Malik has demanded the ouster of Tribal Minister Vishnu Sawra and Women and Child Development Minister Pankaja Munde for alleged negligence towards tribals. He has also demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis for the alleged apathy towards tribals. The issue came to light when one of the girls, who had visited her parents to celebrate Diwali, started complaining of stomach pain and on medical examination was found to be pregnant. After persistent inquiry by her parents, the girl told them about the ordeal she and some of her other friends underwent. Her parents then rushed to ex-revenue minister Eknath Khadse, who in turn asked agriculture minister Pandurang Phundkar to intervene. Phundkar visited the school  Nanabhau Kokre Ashramshala  and spoke to officials, leading to police action. (With ANI Inputs)
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The Centre has issued a Gazette notification to formally put Mumbai-based Islamic Research Foundation Education Trust promoted by controversial Salafist preacher Zakir Naik under prior permission category for violations under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act.



Through the notification, the Home Ministry said that on the basis of records available and reports received from intelligence agencies, the Central Government is satisfied that the IRF Education Trust has violated certain provisions of the FCRA.



"Now, therefore, the central government in exercise of powers conferred by sub-section (3) of section 11 of the FCRA 2010, hereby specifies that the IRF Education Trust shall obtain prior permission of the central government on each occasion before accepting any foreign contribution in accordance with the provisions of section 12 of the Act and rules made there under," the notification said.



The decision comes after reports by different agencies pointed out that Naik was utilising foreign funds received by his NGOs under FCRA norms for radicalising and inspiring youth into terror activities, an official said.



The Centre has also issued final show cause notice to Islamic Research Foundation, another Naik-promoted NGO, to cancel its FCRA registration.



The Ministry will soon declare IRF as an unlawful association under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act after seeking a Cabinet approval for the move.

NEW DELHI: The Centre has issued a Gazette notification to formally put Mumbai-based Islamic Research Foundation Education Trust promoted by controversial Salafist preacher Zakir Naik under prior permission category for violations under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act. Through the notification, the Home Ministry said that on the basis of records available and reports received from intelligence agencies, the Central Government is satisfied that the IRF Education Trust has violated certain provisions of the FCRA. "Now, therefore, the central government in exercise of powers conferred by sub-section (3) of section 11 of the FCRA 2010, hereby specifies that the IRF Education Trust shall obtain prior permission of the central government on each occasion before accepting any foreign contribution in accordance with the provisions of section 12 of the Act and rules made there under," the notification said. The decision comes after reports by different agencies pointed out that Naik was utilising foreign funds received by his NGOs under FCRA norms for radicalising and inspiring youth into terror activities, an official said. The Centre has also issued final show cause notice to Islamic Research Foundation, another Naik-promoted NGO, to cancel its FCRA registration. The Ministry will soon declare IRF as an unlawful association under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act after seeking a Cabinet approval for the move.
Aishik Chanda By

Express News Service

KOLKATA: Its been nearly 20 years since Mamata Banerjee left the Congress, and yet her party Trinamool Congress has decided to celebrate the birth centenary of Indira Gandhi in a big way on November 19.

The party is flush with it recent elevation to the status of a national party, and Mamata Banerjee is said to be keen to use this momentum to emerge as a leader of the anti-BJP political forces in time for the 2019 elections.

Towards this end, the Trinamool Congress supremo is leaving no stone unturned, using contemporary issues to corner the Modi government while simultaneously engaging in a conversation with anti-BJP parties. In partnership with Nitish Kumar, Lalu Prasad Yadav and even the Congress high command, Mamata Banerjee is hoping to leverage issues by which to probe the chinks in the BJPs armour during the winter session of Parliament this month.

Highly placed sources in the Trinamool Congress confirmed that the party, along with JD(U), RJD, Aam Aadmi Party and Congress are planning to corner the BJP over issues such as the encounter killing of eight SIMI operatives in Bhopal last week, the one-day ban on NDTV Hindi over its coverage of Pathankot attack and the Grewal suicide.

This informal cooperation of anti-BJP parties may lead to a formalization of an alliance ahead of the general elections of 2019. "An alliance of all anti-BJP parties will be nurtured keeping the 2019 elections in mind," a Trinamool Congress insider said. The move to celebrate the Indira anniversary sounds rather ironic because Mamata Banerjee has depleted the Congress ranks through floor crossovers.

And now the move to steal the thunder of the Congress by appropriating the Indira icon would help her projecting Trinamool as an alternative to the grand old party and a better opposition to the BJP," a political analyst said.

The West Bengal chief minister has sharpened her attacks on the Hindutva camp in recent weeks. During a visit to Jangalmahal, she indirectly blamed the BJP for the communal violence that shook four urban areas in four different districts during the between Dussera and Muharram.

With the Samajwadi Party embroiled in a bitter family feud and Jayalalithaa just recovering, political analysts believe that this may be the opportune time for Mamata to take the lead in bringing all anti-BJP parties together and may even lead the alliance.

KOLKATA: Its been nearly 20 years since Mamata Banerjee left the Congress, and yet her party Trinamool Congress has decided to celebrate the birth centenary of Indira Gandhi in a big way on November 19. The party is flush with it recent elevation to the status of a national party, and Mamata Banerjee is said to be keen to use this momentum to emerge as a leader of the anti-BJP political forces in time for the 2019 elections. Towards this end, the Trinamool Congress supremo is leaving no stone unturned, using contemporary issues to corner the Modi government while simultaneously engaging in a conversation with anti-BJP parties. In partnership with Nitish Kumar, Lalu Prasad Yadav and even the Congress high command, Mamata Banerjee is hoping to leverage issues by which to probe the chinks in the BJPs armour during the winter session of Parliament this month. Highly placed sources in the Trinamool Congress confirmed that the party, along with JD(U), RJD, Aam Aadmi Party and Congress are planning to corner the BJP over issues such as the encounter killing of eight SIMI operatives in Bhopal last week, the one-day ban on NDTV Hindi over its coverage of Pathankot attack and the Grewal suicide. This informal cooperation of anti-BJP parties may lead to a formalization of an alliance ahead of the general elections of 2019. "An alliance of all anti-BJP parties will be nurtured keeping the 2019 elections in mind," a Trinamool Congress insider said. The move to celebrate the Indira anniversary sounds rather ironic because Mamata Banerjee has depleted the Congress ranks through floor crossovers. And now the move to steal the thunder of the Congress by appropriating the Indira icon would help her projecting Trinamool as an alternative to the grand old party and a better opposition to the BJP," a political analyst said. The West Bengal chief minister has sharpened her attacks on the Hindutva camp in recent weeks. During a visit to Jangalmahal, she indirectly blamed the BJP for the communal violence that shook four urban areas in four different districts during the between Dussera and Muharram. With the Samajwadi Party embroiled in a bitter family feud and Jayalalithaa just recovering, political analysts believe that this may be the opportune time for Mamata to take the lead in bringing all anti-BJP parties together and may even lead the alliance.
Fayaz Wani By

Express News Service

SRINAGAR: With the unrest in the Valley set to complete four months, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Saturday said worst phase of crisis in Kashmir is over and asked police to give local militants chance to return to the normal life.

The worst phase of the prevailing crisis is over, Mehbooba said while chairing a meeting of top civil and police officials, here.

She was informed by the officials that the situation is slowly returning to normalcy with almost 90 percent drop in street protests during this month as compared with July.

"Kashmir has witnessed a very painful and frustrating situation over the past few months. Now as the situation is returning to normalcy, we have to prepare a roadmap to pull our people out of this agonizing and complicated situation and heal their wounds," Mehbooba said.

She said the government has to support the affected families of the unrest. "Those who died or suffered injuries are our own people. The administration should reach out to these families. It will be good to involve elders and local Auqaf Committees in the process".

At least 92 people have been killed, more than 13000 injured and over 9000 including separatists, youth and government employees arrested in Kashmir in over three months of unrest triggered by the killing of 21-year-old Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani on July 8. The life in Valley has remained paralysed for last 120 days due to separatists sponsored shutdown.

Mehbooba said the government will review the cases against those youth, who have been participating in street protests.

"We will review those cases, where students and first-timers are found to be involved. We will talk to their parents and get their assurances that their wards will not participate in protests in future. We can't go on arresting people. There should be a different and empathetic plan of action to contain the situation," she said.

Expressing concern over burning of schools in Valley, Mehbooba said such incidents have inflicted colossal loss on the society at a time when the process of development has been halted due to the ongoing situation.

"As if the casualty suffered by the process of development in Kashmir due to the ongoing situation was not enough, we now have people burning down schools. Such incidents will not only destroy the social fabric of our society but it will also impact the future of our children who are toiling hard to shine in every field, despite the odds," she said.

At least 32 schools have been torched by unknown persons in the Valley in last three months.

On local youth joining militant groups, Mehbooba said it is a cause of concern.

The civil and police administration should take steps to wean away such youth from the path of violence with compassion. Such youth must be given an opportunity to return to normal life and provided an honorable livelihood, she said.

Mehbooba asked the officials to get in touch with their families and talk it out with them. We should seriously think about how and what kind of future they should have in a welfare society like ours where every citizen has equal rights.

A local militant of Lashkar-e-Toiba surrendered before security forces in Sopore area yesterday after the house, where he was hiding, was encircled by the security forces. The security officials asked the militant to surrender and took his father to his place of hiding so that he can motivate his son to surrender and lay down weapons. After being motivated by father and local elders, the Lashkar militant surrender.

However, another local militant of Hizbul Mujahideen was today killed in an encounter by security forces in South Kashmirs Shopian district.

SRINAGAR: With the unrest in the Valley set to complete four months, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Saturday said worst phase of crisis in Kashmir is over and asked police to give local militants chance to return to the normal life. The worst phase of the prevailing crisis is over, Mehbooba said while chairing a meeting of top civil and police officials, here. She was informed by the officials that the situation is slowly returning to normalcy with almost 90 percent drop in street protests during this month as compared with July. "Kashmir has witnessed a very painful and frustrating situation over the past few months. Now as the situation is returning to normalcy, we have to prepare a roadmap to pull our people out of this agonizing and complicated situation and heal their wounds," Mehbooba said. She said the government has to support the affected families of the unrest. "Those who died or suffered injuries are our own people. The administration should reach out to these families. It will be good to involve elders and local Auqaf Committees in the process". At least 92 people have been killed, more than 13000 injured and over 9000 including separatists, youth and government employees arrested in Kashmir in over three months of unrest triggered by the killing of 21-year-old Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani on July 8. The life in Valley has remained paralysed for last 120 days due to separatists sponsored shutdown. Mehbooba said the government will review the cases against those youth, who have been participating in street protests. "We will review those cases, where students and first-timers are found to be involved. We will talk to their parents and get their assurances that their wards will not participate in protests in future. We can't go on arresting people. There should be a different and empathetic plan of action to contain the situation," she said. Expressing concern over burning of schools in Valley, Mehbooba said such incidents have inflicted colossal loss on the society at a time when the process of development has been halted due to the ongoing situation. "As if the casualty suffered by the process of development in Kashmir due to the ongoing situation was not enough, we now have people burning down schools. Such incidents will not only destroy the social fabric of our society but it will also impact the future of our children who are toiling hard to shine in every field, despite the odds," she said. At least 32 schools have been torched by unknown persons in the Valley in last three months. On local youth joining militant groups, Mehbooba said it is a cause of concern. The civil and police administration should take steps to wean away such youth from the path of violence with compassion. Such youth must be given an opportunity to return to normal life and provided an honorable livelihood, she said. Mehbooba asked the officials to get in touch with their families and talk it out with them. We should seriously think about how and what kind of future they should have in a welfare society like ours where every citizen has equal rights. A local militant of Lashkar-e-Toiba surrendered before security forces in Sopore area yesterday after the house, where he was hiding, was encircled by the security forces. The security officials asked the militant to surrender and took his father to his place of hiding so that he can motivate his son to surrender and lay down weapons. After being motivated by father and local elders, the Lashkar militant surrender. However, another local militant of Hizbul Mujahideen was today killed in an encounter by security forces in South Kashmirs Shopian district.
By Express News Service

CHENNAI: Assuaging ruffled feelings in Tamil Nadu over the draft New Education Policy, Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar on Saturday clarified that the draft is not final draft but posted on the MHRD website to seek suggestions.

"The ministry will prepare a final draft,", he said at the national convention on education organised by Bharatiya Jain Sangathana here.

On challenges faced by the education system, Javadekar said 270 million students are studying from KG to post graduation. "We have achieved the quantity but we need the quality. We need community-based participation to encourage education. Two days ago, I visited Aurobindo Society where they had come up with a new approach towards education without spending much. Everyday I am finding laudable participation. Education is political as well as a national agenda," he said.

The minister said he called for a dialogue with the parliamentarians on the New Education Policy and more than 100 MPs have expressed their willingness to deliberate. "I wrote articles in 16 different regional languages seeking suggestions on the proposed policy and received several good suggestions from all the States. With those, we will make the final draft," he said.

According to him, the government's mission was to improve quality of education at all levels, while boosting research and innovation. "Unlike the British system where we were not allowed to question, we should encourage inquisitiveness and creativity among children which is the basis of education and adds value to the nation," Javadekar said.

For joyful learning, he said a three-day event would be organised with the participation of voluntary associations like Bhartiya Jain Sanghatana and others. Every state could learn from other states on successful innovations.

Speaking on the occasion, Shantilalji Muttha, founder of the sangathana, said "We are ready with new value education programs for Tamil Nadu. We are working on programmes like mulyavardhan for all government schools and we are also empowering girl child with education in rural areas."



CHENNAI: Assuaging ruffled feelings in Tamil Nadu over the draft New Education Policy, Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar on Saturday clarified that the draft is not final draft but posted on the MHRD website to seek suggestions. "The ministry will prepare a final draft,", he said at the national convention on education organised by Bharatiya Jain Sangathana here. On challenges faced by the education system, Javadekar said 270 million students are studying from KG to post graduation. "We have achieved the quantity but we need the quality. We need community-based participation to encourage education. Two days ago, I visited Aurobindo Society where they had come up with a new approach towards education without spending much. Everyday I am finding laudable participation. Education is political as well as a national agenda," he said. The minister said he called for a dialogue with the parliamentarians on the New Education Policy and more than 100 MPs have expressed their willingness to deliberate. "I wrote articles in 16 different regional languages seeking suggestions on the proposed policy and received several good suggestions from all the States. With those, we will make the final draft," he said. According to him, the government's mission was to improve quality of education at all levels, while boosting research and innovation. "Unlike the British system where we were not allowed to question, we should encourage inquisitiveness and creativity among children which is the basis of education and adds value to the nation," Javadekar said. For joyful learning, he said a three-day event would be organised with the participation of voluntary associations like Bhartiya Jain Sanghatana and others. Every state could learn from other states on successful innovations. Speaking on the occasion, Shantilalji Muttha, founder of the sangathana, said "We are ready with new value education programs for Tamil Nadu. We are working on programmes like mulyavardhan for all government schools and we are also empowering girl child with education in rural areas."
By Express News Service

JAGTIAL: Jagtial police released three Afghan nationals and the duo from Uttar Pradesh on Saturday. The grounds on which they were held initially remained unclear. The five of them were arrested at Allipur village in Raikal mandal on Friday.

Local police and intelligence teams on Saturday thoroughly interrogated. Superintendant of police Ananth Sharma alleged that they had come to India for treatment on a medical visa but they misused it by staying behind and engaging in business in the country. He added that they took the help of locals to help them sell Halwa and herbal products in the villages of Jagtial.

They also sold similar products in Adilabad. Police interacted with their family members in Afghanistan over the phone and enquired. Police also checked all their belongings which included a camera, cell phone, medicine products among other miscellanous items.

The SP said that they were going to write to the relevant authorities, seeking their details. Sharma reiterated that the purpose their visit to India had been misused, adding that it was illegal for foreign nationals on a medical visa to do business in the country. He heaped praise on the youth who had helped the police catch them.

JAGTIAL: Jagtial police released three Afghan nationals and the duo from Uttar Pradesh on Saturday. The grounds on which they were held initially remained unclear. The five of them were arrested at Allipur village in Raikal mandal on Friday. Local police and intelligence teams on Saturday thoroughly interrogated. Superintendant of police Ananth Sharma alleged that they had come to India for treatment on a medical visa but they misused it by staying behind and engaging in business in the country. He added that they took the help of locals to help them sell Halwa and herbal products in the villages of Jagtial. They also sold similar products in Adilabad. Police interacted with their family members in Afghanistan over the phone and enquired. Police also checked all their belongings which included a camera, cell phone, medicine products among other miscellanous items. The SP said that they were going to write to the relevant authorities, seeking their details. Sharma reiterated that the purpose their visit to India had been misused, adding that it was illegal for foreign nationals on a medical visa to do business in the country. He heaped praise on the youth who had helped the police catch them.
By Express News Service

THRISSUR: The CPM on Friday evening suspended Wadakkanchery councillor P N Jayanthan and party member Bineesh, who are accused in the Wadakkanchery gangrape case, from the partys preliminary membership. The decision was taken in the partys district secretariat meeting held on the day.

However, it was decided that Jayanthan could continue as councillor of the 27th division in Wadakkanchery Municipality. The duo are members in Kuranchery local committee.

Earlier, the Wadakkanchery area committee met in the presence of District Secretary K Radhakrishnan to discuss the action to be taken against the duo.

The committee recommended suspending them from the party, which was approved in an urgent district secretariat meeting later. Saying that the party would not protect criminals, Radhakrishnan said, The party and police will investigate the case. If a leader is committing a crime, he will be punished. The inquiry will look into the motive behind the allegation and financial dealings.

In the same breath, he said allegations against Jayanthan were part of a conspiracy. The preliminary inquiry has thrown up no evidence of rape. If they are found innocent, we will protect them, he said. The meeting observed that financial dealings by Jayanthan and his accusation in the rape case were damaging to the party.

Meanwhile, in a media briefing to announce the partys decision of suspending the duo, Radhakrishanan revealed the names of the victim and her husband, asking what was wrong in revealing her name when the names of those allegedly accused, including Jayanthan, were already circulating in the media. He also made personal attacks on the victim, saying that she had not been caring for her children for the past nine years. He demanded an inquiry against the woman, who raised the grave allegation against Jayanthan in a press conference in the capital a day earlier.

Congress has called for a hartal in Wadakkanchery Municipality on Saturday demanding the resignation of Jayanthan from the councillor post.

THRISSUR: The CPM on Friday evening suspended Wadakkanchery councillor P N Jayanthan and party member Bineesh, who are accused in the Wadakkanchery gangrape case, from the partys preliminary membership. The decision was taken in the partys district secretariat meeting held on the day. However, it was decided that Jayanthan could continue as councillor of the 27th division in Wadakkanchery Municipality. The duo are members in Kuranchery local committee. Earlier, the Wadakkanchery area committee met in the presence of District Secretary K Radhakrishnan to discuss the action to be taken against the duo. The committee recommended suspending them from the party, which was approved in an urgent district secretariat meeting later. Saying that the party would not protect criminals, Radhakrishnan said, The party and police will investigate the case. If a leader is committing a crime, he will be punished. The inquiry will look into the motive behind the allegation and financial dealings. In the same breath, he said allegations against Jayanthan were part of a conspiracy. The preliminary inquiry has thrown up no evidence of rape. If they are found innocent, we will protect them, he said. The meeting observed that financial dealings by Jayanthan and his accusation in the rape case were damaging to the party. Meanwhile, in a media briefing to announce the partys decision of suspending the duo, Radhakrishanan revealed the names of the victim and her husband, asking what was wrong in revealing her name when the names of those allegedly accused, including Jayanthan, were already circulating in the media. He also made personal attacks on the victim, saying that she had not been caring for her children for the past nine years. He demanded an inquiry against the woman, who raised the grave allegation against Jayanthan in a press conference in the capital a day earlier. Congress has called for a hartal in Wadakkanchery Municipality on Saturday demanding the resignation of Jayanthan from the councillor post.
By Express News Service

KOZHIKODE: The Kerala police on Saturday arrested a man for ordering his wife not

to breastfeed their newborn baby, and a preacher who gave the man that advice. Aboobakker from Omassery, the father of the infant, and Hydrose Thangal Musthirivalappu, a religious preacher from Kalamthode, were arrested under the Juvenile Justice Act based on a complaint lodged by a nurse at the EMS Cooperative Hospital at Mukkom.

On Thursday, Aboobakker refused to let his wife Hafsath, who had delivered her second child at the hospital, to breastfeed their baby for 24 hours citing religious reasons.

According to the police, the 24-year-old woman obeyed her husband as she feared he may divorce her if she didnt do as told. Aboobakker said he followed the teachings of Hydrose Thangal who had advised him that a baby should not be fed until five daily prayers were called after its birth. The hospital authorities decided to file a complaint against Aboobacker as he refused to allow his wife to feed despite requests by doctors and police officials.

KOZHIKODE: The Kerala police on Saturday arrested a man for ordering his wife not to breastfeed their newborn baby, and a preacher who gave the man that advice. Aboobakker from Omassery, the father of the infant, and Hydrose Thangal Musthirivalappu, a religious preacher from Kalamthode, were arrested under the Juvenile Justice Act based on a complaint lodged by a nurse at the EMS Cooperative Hospital at Mukkom. On Thursday, Aboobakker refused to let his wife Hafsath, who had delivered her second child at the hospital, to breastfeed their baby for 24 hours citing religious reasons. According to the police, the 24-year-old woman obeyed her husband as she feared he may divorce her if she didnt do as told. Aboobakker said he followed the teachings of Hydrose Thangal who had advised him that a baby should not be fed until five daily prayers were called after its birth. The hospital authorities decided to file a complaint against Aboobacker as he refused to allow his wife to feed despite requests by doctors and police officials.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: Initiating a rare disciplinary action, the Telangana State Medical Council (TSMC) has cracked the whip on more than six doctors and issued warnings on several others for unethical and faulty medical practices.

Taking a serious note of the unethical medical practices, the council suspended the licence of Dr Chandra Bhushan of Global Hospital, who had a few months ago unsuccessfully performed height-increasing surgery on one Nikhil Reddy, an IT professional from Hyderabad, for two years.

Dr Chandra Bushan, orthopaedic surgeon has been barred from practicing medicine for two years, the TSMC announced.

Similarly, Dr Namratha, chairman of Srushti IVF Centre at Secunderabad, has been banned from practicing for five years. She now faces a lifetime ban from performing surrogacy when a school teacher died during hysteroscopy in her clinic in August.

Further, the TSMC has banned three doctors for six months for their unethical psychiatric practices.

The doctors are - Dr Rahul Carter of Serenity Foundation Secunderabad, Dr Hari Kumar Rava of Mind Crest Hospital of Psychiatry and Rehabilitation and Dr Minhaj Zafar Nasirbadi of Samtha Rehabilitation centre.

Finding another doctor T Manoj Kumar guilty of conducting unnecessary appendicitis surgeries on people from rural areas of Karimnagar district, the TSMC suspended him for a period of three months. Seven other doctors who were associated with these surgeries have been given stern warnings by the council.

Dr Kirshna Kanth Reddy has been suspended for a unspecified period for his non-compliance to TSMC orders. The council had earlier ordered him to display his MBBS equivalent degree. The council said the suspension would be revoked if and when he chooses to comply with its order.

Two others, K Swamy and D Rajesh, who the TSMC did not refer to as doctors have been recommended to the police for practicing and dispensing allopathic drugs without any qualifications.

The decision taken on Friday to ban the doctors is unanimous, said Dr E Ravindra Reddy, chairman of TSMC.

This year September, a failed anaesthesia procedure resulted in a woman going into a coma with 70 pc brain damage. According to sources, the TSMC is now examining the issue.

HYDERABAD: Initiating a rare disciplinary action, the Telangana State Medical Council (TSMC) has cracked the whip on more than six doctors and issued warnings on several others for unethical and faulty medical practices. Taking a serious note of the unethical medical practices, the council suspended the licence of Dr Chandra Bhushan of Global Hospital, who had a few months ago unsuccessfully performed height-increasing surgery on one Nikhil Reddy, an IT professional from Hyderabad, for two years. Dr Chandra Bushan, orthopaedic surgeon has been barred from practicing medicine for two years, the TSMC announced. Similarly, Dr Namratha, chairman of Srushti IVF Centre at Secunderabad, has been banned from practicing for five years. She now faces a lifetime ban from performing surrogacy when a school teacher died during hysteroscopy in her clinic in August. Further, the TSMC has banned three doctors for six months for their unethical psychiatric practices. The doctors are - Dr Rahul Carter of Serenity Foundation Secunderabad, Dr Hari Kumar Rava of Mind Crest Hospital of Psychiatry and Rehabilitation and Dr Minhaj Zafar Nasirbadi of Samtha Rehabilitation centre. Finding another doctor T Manoj Kumar guilty of conducting unnecessary appendicitis surgeries on people from rural areas of Karimnagar district, the TSMC suspended him for a period of three months. Seven other doctors who were associated with these surgeries have been given stern warnings by the council. Dr Kirshna Kanth Reddy has been suspended for a unspecified period for his non-compliance to TSMC orders. The council had earlier ordered him to display his MBBS equivalent degree. The council said the suspension would be revoked if and when he chooses to comply with its order. Two others, K Swamy and D Rajesh, who the TSMC did not refer to as doctors have been recommended to the police for practicing and dispensing allopathic drugs without any qualifications. The decision taken on Friday to ban the doctors is unanimous, said Dr E Ravindra Reddy, chairman of TSMC. This year September, a failed anaesthesia procedure resulted in a woman going into a coma with 70 pc brain damage. According to sources, the TSMC is now examining the issue.
COLOMBO: India and Sri Lanka on Saturday agreed to set up a Joint Working Group (JWG) on the vexed fishermens issue and stipulated that the JWG will meet every three months and the Ministers of Fisheries will meet every six months, according to a joint communique issued by the Foreign Ministries of the two countries.



The Indian and Sri Lankan delegations in the JWG would include representatives from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, the Coast Guards and Navies of the two countries.



The first ministerial meeting would be held on January 2, 2017 in Colombo.



The Fishermens Associations of the two countries to meet every six months to take further their dialogue from the meeting held on November 2, 2016 in New Delhi.



These decisions were taken at a meeting of Indian and Sri Lankan Foreign and Fisheries Ministers in New Delhi on Saturday.



Among those who attended Saturdays ministerial meeting were: Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Minister of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare Radha Mohan Singh, Sri Lankan Minister for Foreign Affairs Mangala Samaraweera, the Sri Lankan Minister for Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Development Mahinda Amaraweera, Indian Minister of State for Road Transport, Highways & Shipping Pon Radhakrishnan and the Sri Lankan Member of Parliament M.A. Sumanthiran. The issue touches the Tamil fishermen of North Sri Lanka.



Sumanthiran, who belongs to the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), has been seeking a ban on bottom trawling in both Sri Lanka and India. This is the first time, a Tamil MP has been included in a Sri Lankan official delegation discussing the fishing issue with India.



Terms Of Reference for JWG



The Terms of Reference for the Joint Working Group on Fisheries would include (i) expediting the transition towards ending the practice of bottom trawling at the earliest, (ii) working out the modalities for the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for handing over of apprehended fishermen, and (iii) ascertaining possibilities for cooperation on patrolling.



The issue of the release of detained fishing vessels will be discussed at the first JWG meeting.



Both governments agreed on setting up a hotline between the two Coast Guards. There was support for expediting the provision of communication tracking sets to the fishermen. They also agreed to the request by the Fishermen Associations that there should be no violence and no loss of life in the handling of fishermen by the Navies and Coast Guards of the two countries.



The Ministers noted that the process is underway for the release of fishermen presently in custody on either side.

COLOMBO: India and Sri Lanka on Saturday agreed to set up a Joint Working Group (JWG) on the vexed fishermens issue and stipulated that the JWG will meet every three months and the Ministers of Fisheries will meet every six months, according to a joint communique issued by the Foreign Ministries of the two countries. The Indian and Sri Lankan delegations in the JWG would include representatives from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, the Coast Guards and Navies of the two countries. The first ministerial meeting would be held on January 2, 2017 in Colombo. The Fishermens Associations of the two countries to meet every six months to take further their dialogue from the meeting held on November 2, 2016 in New Delhi. These decisions were taken at a meeting of Indian and Sri Lankan Foreign and Fisheries Ministers in New Delhi on Saturday. Among those who attended Saturdays ministerial meeting were: Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Minister of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare Radha Mohan Singh, Sri Lankan Minister for Foreign Affairs Mangala Samaraweera, the Sri Lankan Minister for Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Development Mahinda Amaraweera, Indian Minister of State for Road Transport, Highways & Shipping Pon Radhakrishnan and the Sri Lankan Member of Parliament M.A. Sumanthiran. The issue touches the Tamil fishermen of North Sri Lanka. Sumanthiran, who belongs to the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), has been seeking a ban on bottom trawling in both Sri Lanka and India. This is the first time, a Tamil MP has been included in a Sri Lankan official delegation discussing the fishing issue with India. Terms Of Reference for JWG The Terms of Reference for the Joint Working Group on Fisheries would include (i) expediting the transition towards ending the practice of bottom trawling at the earliest, (ii) working out the modalities for the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for handing over of apprehended fishermen, and (iii) ascertaining possibilities for cooperation on patrolling. The issue of the release of detained fishing vessels will be discussed at the first JWG meeting. Both governments agreed on setting up a hotline between the two Coast Guards. There was support for expediting the provision of communication tracking sets to the fishermen. They also agreed to the request by the Fishermen Associations that there should be no violence and no loss of life in the handling of fishermen by the Navies and Coast Guards of the two countries. The Ministers noted that the process is underway for the release of fishermen presently in custody on either side.
By AFP

CHARLESTON: A man who filmed a white South Carolina police officer shooting an unarmed black man five times in the back testified Friday that he agonized for days over what to do with the potentially incriminating footage.

Feidin Santana was walking to work on April 4, 2015, in North Charleston, South Carolina, when he stumbled into the middle of a police foot chase.

Santana filmed the encounter between 50-year-old Walter Scott and North Charleston policeman Michael Slager, which ended with the fatal shooting of Scott and Slager claiming self defense.

Days later, Santana released the video to media outlets, leading to Slager being swiftly fired from his job and arrested on charges of murder.

Santana, a 23 year old barber, instantly became a minor celebrity, visiting New York for prominent media interviews about his footage and being praised for providing a new perspective of the police encounter.

The footage of the shooting reverberated within the United States as it occurred during much public scrutiny of lethal police force against black men.

During testimony Friday, Santana said his decision to release the video was a tortured one.

He said he hesitated to release it for days because he feared for his safety.

Only when he learned that Scott had died, and the police were claiming the shooting was justified, did the immigrant from the Dominican Republic share the video to challenge the record of what was said to have occurred.

Santana, who did not witness the entire interaction between Scott and Slager, insisted he never saw Scott attack Slager or grab the policemans Taser, as Slager had claimed.

Instead, he testified, Scott was trying to elude Slager, shaking free from his grip and "determined to get up and get away from that Taser."

When Slager shot eight bullets toward Scotts back, killing the suspect, Santana was shocked.

"That's something I will never forget," said Santana, who filmed the incident from behind a fence. "It's something I didn't expect."

Over the next few days Santana scoured the Internet for online commenters who expressed doubt about the police version of events.

After finding a sympathetic local Black Lives Matter leader, Santana eventually showed the video to relatives of Scott, obtained a lawyer, and then shared the footage with the media.

The murder trial resumes Monday.

CHARLESTON: A man who filmed a white South Carolina police officer shooting an unarmed black man five times in the back testified Friday that he agonized for days over what to do with the potentially incriminating footage. Feidin Santana was walking to work on April 4, 2015, in North Charleston, South Carolina, when he stumbled into the middle of a police foot chase. Santana filmed the encounter between 50-year-old Walter Scott and North Charleston policeman Michael Slager, which ended with the fatal shooting of Scott and Slager claiming self defense. Days later, Santana released the video to media outlets, leading to Slager being swiftly fired from his job and arrested on charges of murder. Santana, a 23 year old barber, instantly became a minor celebrity, visiting New York for prominent media interviews about his footage and being praised for providing a new perspective of the police encounter. The footage of the shooting reverberated within the United States as it occurred during much public scrutiny of lethal police force against black men. During testimony Friday, Santana said his decision to release the video was a tortured one. He said he hesitated to release it for days because he feared for his safety. Only when he learned that Scott had died, and the police were claiming the shooting was justified, did the immigrant from the Dominican Republic share the video to challenge the record of what was said to have occurred. Santana, who did not witness the entire interaction between Scott and Slager, insisted he never saw Scott attack Slager or grab the policemans Taser, as Slager had claimed. Instead, he testified, Scott was trying to elude Slager, shaking free from his grip and "determined to get up and get away from that Taser." When Slager shot eight bullets toward Scotts back, killing the suspect, Santana was shocked. "That's something I will never forget," said Santana, who filmed the incident from behind a fence. "It's something I didn't expect." Over the next few days Santana scoured the Internet for online commenters who expressed doubt about the police version of events. After finding a sympathetic local Black Lives Matter leader, Santana eventually showed the video to relatives of Scott, obtained a lawyer, and then shared the footage with the media. The murder trial resumes Monday.
By AFP

PESHAWAR: Pakistani security forces blew up a market in a restive tribal region near the Afghan border to avenge the killing of an army officer in a bomb attack, the authorities said Saturday.

The market housing more than 100 shops was destroyed on Thursday in Wana, the capital of the South Waziristan region, one of the seven semi-autonomous tribal areas where the army has been battling Taliban and Al-Qaeda linked militants for more than a decade.

"The security forces ordered the shopkeepers to leave the market, which had over 100 shops and blew it up with explosives," senior local administration official, Zafar-ul-Islam told AFP on Saturday.

An improvised explosive device (IED) killed an army major on Tuesday outside a weapons shop as the military staged a raid of the market.

Afghan national Kharoti Khan, who owned the shop, was arrested and his house demolished a day after the explosion, Islam said.

He added the market was demolished as part of a "collective responsibility" to curb militancy from the area.

Since 2007 the government has encouraged vigilante forces comprising tribesmen -- locally known as peace committees -- to defend their villages against the Taliban.

The tribal areas are off-limits to journalists and it is impossible to independently verify incidents reported by the military or militant groups.

The army launched an operation in June 2014 in neighbouring North Waziristan to wipe out militant bases in the tribal areas and bring an end to a bloody insurgency that has cost thousands of civilian lives since 2004.

As a result security has improved. Scattered attacks still take place, but fewer than previously.

According to data from the South Asia Terrorism Portal, 457 civilians and 182 security forces were killed in Pakistan from January 1 to September 11, putting 2016 on course for fewer casualties than 2015.

Last year, the country recorded its lowest number of militant-related killings since 2007, when the Pakistani Taliban was formed.

PESHAWAR: Pakistani security forces blew up a market in a restive tribal region near the Afghan border to avenge the killing of an army officer in a bomb attack, the authorities said Saturday. The market housing more than 100 shops was destroyed on Thursday in Wana, the capital of the South Waziristan region, one of the seven semi-autonomous tribal areas where the army has been battling Taliban and Al-Qaeda linked militants for more than a decade. "The security forces ordered the shopkeepers to leave the market, which had over 100 shops and blew it up with explosives," senior local administration official, Zafar-ul-Islam told AFP on Saturday. An improvised explosive device (IED) killed an army major on Tuesday outside a weapons shop as the military staged a raid of the market. Afghan national Kharoti Khan, who owned the shop, was arrested and his house demolished a day after the explosion, Islam said. He added the market was demolished as part of a "collective responsibility" to curb militancy from the area. Since 2007 the government has encouraged vigilante forces comprising tribesmen -- locally known as peace committees -- to defend their villages against the Taliban. The tribal areas are off-limits to journalists and it is impossible to independently verify incidents reported by the military or militant groups. The army launched an operation in June 2014 in neighbouring North Waziristan to wipe out militant bases in the tribal areas and bring an end to a bloody insurgency that has cost thousands of civilian lives since 2004. As a result security has improved. Scattered attacks still take place, but fewer than previously. According to data from the South Asia Terrorism Portal, 457 civilians and 182 security forces were killed in Pakistan from January 1 to September 11, putting 2016 on course for fewer casualties than 2015. Last year, the country recorded its lowest number of militant-related killings since 2007, when the Pakistani Taliban was formed.
By AFP

BAGHDAD: Elite Iraqi forces are facing tough resistance as they battle the Islamic State group in eastern Mosul. Here are some facts about the country's biggest military operation in years:

Where are the Iraqi forces?

Iraq's elite Counter-Terrorism Service pushed into the Al-Karama area of eastern Mosul but faced heavy resistance and pulled some units back on Friday. CTS said its forces were again engaged in fierce fighting in east Mosul the following day.

Soldiers have also advanced toward the northern and southeastern edges of the city. Forces from Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region were active in the early days of the operation, but federal troops have since taken the lead in the fighting.

On the southern front, army and police forces have launched a multi-pronged attack on Hamam al-Alil, an area located about 14 kilometres (8 miles) from the outskirts of Mosul, the military says.

The Hashed al-Shaabi, an umbrella group for pro-government paramilitary forces that is dominated by Iran-backed Shiite militias, are fighting southwest of Mosul in a bid to retake the town of Tal Afar, which lies between the city and Syria.

They have gained ground in recent days, but the western approach to Mosul remains largely open for now.

What is the US-led coalition doing?

The US-led anti-IS coalition is carrying out air strikes against the jihadists as well as targeting them with artillery. It has hit IS with some 3,000 bombs, missiles, rockets and shells since the drive for Mosul began on October 17.

But some Iraqi commanders have still complained that there are not enough strikes, and said they want the coalition to step up its campaign.

Most of the more than 7,000 coalition military personnel in Iraq are in advisory or training roles, but there are also those carrying out artillery strikes, as well as special forces personnel who have carried out raids against IS.

How are the jihadists responding?

IS has targeted attacking Iraqi forces with suicide bombers, mortar rounds and small arms fire, in addition to bombs hidden in houses, buildings and roads that make up an integral part of the jihadists' defences and still cause casualties even after they withdraw.

Inside the territory they still control, the jihadists are responding with the same brutality that has been the hallmark of their more than two-year rule.

Mosul residents told AFP that IS has forcibly gathered civilians in and around the city for possible use as human shields, corroborating United Nations reports of similar kidnappings.

The UN has also said it has received reports that IS has executed nearly 300 people in the Mosul area since October 25.

The jihadists have also staged diversionary attacks, including in the northern city of Kirkuk and the western town of Rutba, in attempts to draw attention and forces away from the Mosul theatre.

How are civilians affected?

As Iraqi forces advance, thousands of civilians have fled IS-held areas to escape both jihadist rule and impending fighting.

The US says up to one million people could be displaced by the battle for the city -- a major problem given that existing, under-construction and planned camps can only house about half that number.

Iraq's Ministry of Displacement and Migration said Saturday that it had received 9,000 displaced Iraqis over the previous two days, while more than 29,000 have been displaced since the operation began.

Displacement is especially difficult for rural farming communities, whose wealth lies in fields and livestock that they cannot take to camps.

The situation for displaced Iraqis will get even more difficult as winter rains and colder weather set in.

BAGHDAD: Elite Iraqi forces are facing tough resistance as they battle the Islamic State group in eastern Mosul. Here are some facts about the country's biggest military operation in years: Where are the Iraqi forces? Iraq's elite Counter-Terrorism Service pushed into the Al-Karama area of eastern Mosul but faced heavy resistance and pulled some units back on Friday. CTS said its forces were again engaged in fierce fighting in east Mosul the following day. Soldiers have also advanced toward the northern and southeastern edges of the city. Forces from Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region were active in the early days of the operation, but federal troops have since taken the lead in the fighting. On the southern front, army and police forces have launched a multi-pronged attack on Hamam al-Alil, an area located about 14 kilometres (8 miles) from the outskirts of Mosul, the military says. The Hashed al-Shaabi, an umbrella group for pro-government paramilitary forces that is dominated by Iran-backed Shiite militias, are fighting southwest of Mosul in a bid to retake the town of Tal Afar, which lies between the city and Syria. They have gained ground in recent days, but the western approach to Mosul remains largely open for now. What is the US-led coalition doing? The US-led anti-IS coalition is carrying out air strikes against the jihadists as well as targeting them with artillery. It has hit IS with some 3,000 bombs, missiles, rockets and shells since the drive for Mosul began on October 17. But some Iraqi commanders have still complained that there are not enough strikes, and said they want the coalition to step up its campaign. Most of the more than 7,000 coalition military personnel in Iraq are in advisory or training roles, but there are also those carrying out artillery strikes, as well as special forces personnel who have carried out raids against IS. How are the jihadists responding? IS has targeted attacking Iraqi forces with suicide bombers, mortar rounds and small arms fire, in addition to bombs hidden in houses, buildings and roads that make up an integral part of the jihadists' defences and still cause casualties even after they withdraw. Inside the territory they still control, the jihadists are responding with the same brutality that has been the hallmark of their more than two-year rule. Mosul residents told AFP that IS has forcibly gathered civilians in and around the city for possible use as human shields, corroborating United Nations reports of similar kidnappings. The UN has also said it has received reports that IS has executed nearly 300 people in the Mosul area since October 25. The jihadists have also staged diversionary attacks, including in the northern city of Kirkuk and the western town of Rutba, in attempts to draw attention and forces away from the Mosul theatre. How are civilians affected? As Iraqi forces advance, thousands of civilians have fled IS-held areas to escape both jihadist rule and impending fighting. The US says up to one million people could be displaced by the battle for the city -- a major problem given that existing, under-construction and planned camps can only house about half that number. Iraq's Ministry of Displacement and Migration said Saturday that it had received 9,000 displaced Iraqis over the previous two days, while more than 29,000 have been displaced since the operation began. Displacement is especially difficult for rural farming communities, whose wealth lies in fields and livestock that they cannot take to camps. The situation for displaced Iraqis will get even more difficult as winter rains and colder weather set in.
By AFP

FRANKFURT: Several thousand Kurds marched in the western Germany city of Cologne on Saturday in support of pro-Kurdish politicians jailed in Turkey the previous day.

The demonstrators -- numbering 6,500 according to Cologne police and up to 15,000 according to the protest's organisers -- carried flags and banners promoting the People's Democratic Party (HDP).

On Friday, the HDP's two leaders, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, and several of the party's legislators, were remanded in custody by a court in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir.

The United States and the European Union have both raised alarm over the arrests, in a crackdown since the country's July 15 coup attempt.

Police in Cologne said that Saturday's march took place without incident.

Numbering around a million, the Kurdish community in Germany is the largest in Europe.

The country is also home to the world's largest community of people of Turkish origin.

In late July, some 40,000 people marched in Cologne in support of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Elsewhere, more than 2,000 Kurds staged a demonstration in Paris carrying placards with slogans such as "Turkey bombs, Europe stays silent".

FRANKFURT: Several thousand Kurds marched in the western Germany city of Cologne on Saturday in support of pro-Kurdish politicians jailed in Turkey the previous day. The demonstrators -- numbering 6,500 according to Cologne police and up to 15,000 according to the protest's organisers -- carried flags and banners promoting the People's Democratic Party (HDP). On Friday, the HDP's two leaders, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, and several of the party's legislators, were remanded in custody by a court in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir. The United States and the European Union have both raised alarm over the arrests, in a crackdown since the country's July 15 coup attempt. Police in Cologne said that Saturday's march took place without incident. Numbering around a million, the Kurdish community in Germany is the largest in Europe. The country is also home to the world's largest community of people of Turkish origin. In late July, some 40,000 people marched in Cologne in support of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Elsewhere, more than 2,000 Kurds staged a demonstration in Paris carrying placards with slogans such as "Turkey bombs, Europe stays silent".
By IANS

NEW YORK: California Attorney General Kamala Harris is set to become the first Indian American elected to the US Senate in next week's election, having built up a commanding lead over her rival, according to polls.

Indian Americans also appear to be heading for a breakthrough in the House of Representatives, where more of them are expected to join the sole Indian American, Ami Bera from California.

At least two candidates for the House, Pramila Jayapal of Washington State, and Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, have near-certain chances of winning, while Bera has shown a strong lead in the primary and that could see him re-elected.

Another candidate, Ro Khanna, who is running to represent the Silicon Valley, is reported to have a slim lead over the veteran incumbent Mike Honda.

All these candidates are Democrats and since the election of Republican Bobby Jindal to the House in 2004, no viable Indian American candidate for Congress has emerged in that party, although Nikki Haley, the current governor of South Carolina, belongs to it.

Mary Thomas, who sought a Republican Party ticket from Florida, was defeated in the party primary.

Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, 35, is the only Hindu ever elected to Congress although she is a not of Indian descent, and she appears set for re-election.

Strengthening her chances, the Hawaii state Republican Party leaders have withdrawn support to their own candidate, Angela Kaaihue, who is challenging Gabbard because she made anti-Hindu statements and called Gabbard a "pathetic Hindu 1,000 gods leader".

Kamala Harris leads her rival, Loretta Sanchez, by between 17 and 20 percentage points according to different polls released earlier this week.

Senators are elected by the entire electorate in their states and 52-year-old Harris has already won two state-wide elections for Attorney General in 2010 and 2014, and this adds to her edge in the upcoming Senate race.

Harris has a dual identity: She is also counted as an African American as her father is a Jamaican of African descent and she follows the Baptist faith.

She would become the second American woman of African descent elected to the Senate and join the two other African Americans there.

She derives her equal claim to Indian heritage from her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a cancer specialist from Chennai.

Because in California and Washington states the primaries that are used to whittle down the number of candidates in the election are common for all parties with the top two irrespective of their parties moving to the general election stage, Harris, Khanna and Jayapal are facing fellow Democrats.

Ami Bera, a 51-year-old doctor, who had an eight percent lead over his Republican rival Scott Jones in the common primary, has come under a cloud after his 83-year-old father, Babulal Bera, was found guilty of illegally funding his son's election campaign and sentenced to a year in prison.

Prosecutors, however, cleared Ami Bera of involvement in his father's crime and he appears to have put it behind him.

Jayapal, 51, who is a state senator, had a 23.1 per cent lead over her fellow-Democrat, Brady Wilkinshaw, in the primary election. A financial analyst by profession, she was born in India and has been a civil rights activist championing immigrant causes.

Krishnamoorthi, 43, is running from a traditional Democratic stronghold where the party candidate won the last election by a margin of 11 per cent. Born in India, he is a technology entrepreneur heading two companies and has also served as Illinois state deputy treasurer.

Khanna, a lawyer and former federal deputy assistant commerce secretary, lost the last election to fellow Democrat Honda by 3.6 percent, but in the primaries this year he was ahead by 1.7 percent. He has the backing of former President Jimmy Carter, while Honda could not get President Barack Obama to endorse him this time.

Another Democrat, Peter Jacob, has a long-shot at winning from a New Jersey constituency that is heavily Republican and where that party's candidate won the last election by a margin of 21 percent.

But a private poll conducted for Jacob's campaign reportedly found that he was lagging by only four percent. The 30-year-old was born in India and is a social worker by profession.

In 1956 Democrat Dilip Singh Saund, a Sikh, became the first Indian American elected to Congress. After a gap of 48 years Jindal followed him in 2004.

Jindal left Congress in 2007 to become the governor of Louisiana and ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for president this year.

Five years later, Bera won his Congressional seat. Bera left Hinduism for the Unitarian faith and Jindal for Catholicism.

NEW YORK: California Attorney General Kamala Harris is set to become the first Indian American elected to the US Senate in next week's election, having built up a commanding lead over her rival, according to polls. Indian Americans also appear to be heading for a breakthrough in the House of Representatives, where more of them are expected to join the sole Indian American, Ami Bera from California. At least two candidates for the House, Pramila Jayapal of Washington State, and Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, have near-certain chances of winning, while Bera has shown a strong lead in the primary and that could see him re-elected. Another candidate, Ro Khanna, who is running to represent the Silicon Valley, is reported to have a slim lead over the veteran incumbent Mike Honda. All these candidates are Democrats and since the election of Republican Bobby Jindal to the House in 2004, no viable Indian American candidate for Congress has emerged in that party, although Nikki Haley, the current governor of South Carolina, belongs to it. Mary Thomas, who sought a Republican Party ticket from Florida, was defeated in the party primary. Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, 35, is the only Hindu ever elected to Congress although she is a not of Indian descent, and she appears set for re-election. Strengthening her chances, the Hawaii state Republican Party leaders have withdrawn support to their own candidate, Angela Kaaihue, who is challenging Gabbard because she made anti-Hindu statements and called Gabbard a "pathetic Hindu 1,000 gods leader". Kamala Harris leads her rival, Loretta Sanchez, by between 17 and 20 percentage points according to different polls released earlier this week. Senators are elected by the entire electorate in their states and 52-year-old Harris has already won two state-wide elections for Attorney General in 2010 and 2014, and this adds to her edge in the upcoming Senate race. Harris has a dual identity: She is also counted as an African American as her father is a Jamaican of African descent and she follows the Baptist faith. She would become the second American woman of African descent elected to the Senate and join the two other African Americans there. She derives her equal claim to Indian heritage from her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a cancer specialist from Chennai. Because in California and Washington states the primaries that are used to whittle down the number of candidates in the election are common for all parties with the top two irrespective of their parties moving to the general election stage, Harris, Khanna and Jayapal are facing fellow Democrats. Ami Bera, a 51-year-old doctor, who had an eight percent lead over his Republican rival Scott Jones in the common primary, has come under a cloud after his 83-year-old father, Babulal Bera, was found guilty of illegally funding his son's election campaign and sentenced to a year in prison. Prosecutors, however, cleared Ami Bera of involvement in his father's crime and he appears to have put it behind him. Jayapal, 51, who is a state senator, had a 23.1 per cent lead over her fellow-Democrat, Brady Wilkinshaw, in the primary election. A financial analyst by profession, she was born in India and has been a civil rights activist championing immigrant causes. Krishnamoorthi, 43, is running from a traditional Democratic stronghold where the party candidate won the last election by a margin of 11 per cent. Born in India, he is a technology entrepreneur heading two companies and has also served as Illinois state deputy treasurer. Khanna, a lawyer and former federal deputy assistant commerce secretary, lost the last election to fellow Democrat Honda by 3.6 percent, but in the primaries this year he was ahead by 1.7 percent. He has the backing of former President Jimmy Carter, while Honda could not get President Barack Obama to endorse him this time. Another Democrat, Peter Jacob, has a long-shot at winning from a New Jersey constituency that is heavily Republican and where that party's candidate won the last election by a margin of 21 percent. But a private poll conducted for Jacob's campaign reportedly found that he was lagging by only four percent. The 30-year-old was born in India and is a social worker by profession. In 1956 Democrat Dilip Singh Saund, a Sikh, became the first Indian American elected to Congress. After a gap of 48 years Jindal followed him in 2004. Jindal left Congress in 2007 to become the governor of Louisiana and ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for president this year. Five years later, Bera won his Congressional seat. Bera left Hinduism for the Unitarian faith and Jindal for Catholicism.
By Associated Press

FAYETTEVILLE: Asserting that Donald Trump is "unqualified" for to be the next US president, outgoing US Vice President Joe Biden has said the Republican presidential nominee's rhetoric on foreign policy and national security emboldens Russia and helps Islamic State in its propaganda.

"Trump actually said, imagine what. Think of what this does to embolden Putin with the lies he's telling people in his home of Russia and around the world about the United States," Biden said at an election rally yesterday. "Think of what confidence and help it gives to ISIS and others when he says in a debate with the US military moving on Mosul, the center of the caliphate set up by ISIS, he says that the reason the coalition is moving, after all this planning, is to make Hillary Clinton look strong," he said.

73-year-old Biden is considered as an eminent foreign policy expert. As a Senator for more than three decades, he was a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was its Chairman before becoming the Vice President.

"I'm supposedly an expert on foreign policy and national intelligence matters. I promise you, that's the propaganda that is being sold in Syria and in Iraq right now, that this is really about the US really only going after ISIS because we want to make it politically more palatable," Biden said. "When he was asked whether or not he agreed that the Russians and Putin were hacking the United States through cyber espionage, he said that the 17 US intelligence agencies that have come out and said on the record that they know it was Putin and the Russians," he said.

"He wants to be commander-in-chief. He says to the world that our national intelligence agencies don't know what they're talking about. All kidding aside, think of the damage that does to us internationally. Think how that plays into the hands of radicals around the world. Putin is a strong leader who didn't invade Ukraine, in case you haven't noticed," he said. Biden also slammed Trump for saying that a nuclear Japan and Saudi Arabia would be just fine.

Citing his interaction with world leaders, he said the damage being done is already manifested. "This man is totally, thoroughly, as a consequence of what he doesn't know, what he thinks he knows and the way he's demonstrated his character, he is thoroughly unprepared and unqualified to be the commander-in-chief of the US. It's not even close," he said.

"Getting up at 3:30 in the morning and tweeting vitriol about a woman's body, her body shape and her weight? What does that say about the character of this man who wants to. I mean, all kidding aside, pick the worst president in American history, can you fathom any president of the US doing something like that?" Biden said.

FAYETTEVILLE: Asserting that Donald Trump is "unqualified" for to be the next US president, outgoing US Vice President Joe Biden has said the Republican presidential nominee's rhetoric on foreign policy and national security emboldens Russia and helps Islamic State in its propaganda. "Trump actually said, imagine what. Think of what this does to embolden Putin with the lies he's telling people in his home of Russia and around the world about the United States," Biden said at an election rally yesterday. "Think of what confidence and help it gives to ISIS and others when he says in a debate with the US military moving on Mosul, the center of the caliphate set up by ISIS, he says that the reason the coalition is moving, after all this planning, is to make Hillary Clinton look strong," he said. 73-year-old Biden is considered as an eminent foreign policy expert. As a Senator for more than three decades, he was a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was its Chairman before becoming the Vice President. "I'm supposedly an expert on foreign policy and national intelligence matters. I promise you, that's the propaganda that is being sold in Syria and in Iraq right now, that this is really about the US really only going after ISIS because we want to make it politically more palatable," Biden said. "When he was asked whether or not he agreed that the Russians and Putin were hacking the United States through cyber espionage, he said that the 17 US intelligence agencies that have come out and said on the record that they know it was Putin and the Russians," he said. "He wants to be commander-in-chief. He says to the world that our national intelligence agencies don't know what they're talking about. All kidding aside, think of the damage that does to us internationally. Think how that plays into the hands of radicals around the world. Putin is a strong leader who didn't invade Ukraine, in case you haven't noticed," he said. Biden also slammed Trump for saying that a nuclear Japan and Saudi Arabia would be just fine. Citing his interaction with world leaders, he said the damage being done is already manifested. "This man is totally, thoroughly, as a consequence of what he doesn't know, what he thinks he knows and the way he's demonstrated his character, he is thoroughly unprepared and unqualified to be the commander-in-chief of the US. It's not even close," he said. "Getting up at 3:30 in the morning and tweeting vitriol about a woman's body, her body shape and her weight? What does that say about the character of this man who wants to. I mean, all kidding aside, pick the worst president in American history, can you fathom any president of the US doing something like that?" Biden said.
By IANS

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama said that Republican nominee Donald Trump does not share the values of most Americans and is "uniquely unqualified" to hold the nation's highest office.



Obama on Friday travelled to North Carolina for the second time in three days to rally support for Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton, Efe news reported.



"Don't choose fear. Choose hope," the country's first African-American President told a largely black audience at Fayetteville State University.



"If you believe we're stronger together, then we can't elect a president who vilifies minorities, mocks Americans with disabilities, calls immigrants criminals and rapists. We can't elect a president who brags that being famous allows him to get away with something that, if you read the description, qualified as sexual assault; who calls women 'pigs,' 'dogs,' and 'slobs' and grades them on a scale of one to 10. That's not America," Obama said, referring to Trump.



The president went on to reflect on how he and wife Michelle Obama have tried to raise their daughters, Malia and Sasha.



"And we've taught them to respect everybody, that nobody is higher than you, but nobody is lower than you, and you don't lift yourself up by putting somebody else down. Those values that we've taught our children, that you're teaching your children, your grandchildren, we can't have a president who every day seems to violate those basic values," he said.



Noting that many Republicans have disavowed their party's nominee, Obama said it was "because Donald Trump is uniquely unqualified."



The latest polling shows Trump and Clinton tied in North Carolina, which most experts see as a must-win state for the Republican.



Obama narrowly won the state in 2008, but lost here in 2012, also by a slim margin.

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama said that Republican nominee Donald Trump does not share the values of most Americans and is "uniquely unqualified" to hold the nation's highest office. Obama on Friday travelled to North Carolina for the second time in three days to rally support for Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton, Efe news reported. "Don't choose fear. Choose hope," the country's first African-American President told a largely black audience at Fayetteville State University. "If you believe we're stronger together, then we can't elect a president who vilifies minorities, mocks Americans with disabilities, calls immigrants criminals and rapists. We can't elect a president who brags that being famous allows him to get away with something that, if you read the description, qualified as sexual assault; who calls women 'pigs,' 'dogs,' and 'slobs' and grades them on a scale of one to 10. That's not America," Obama said, referring to Trump. The president went on to reflect on how he and wife Michelle Obama have tried to raise their daughters, Malia and Sasha. "And we've taught them to respect everybody, that nobody is higher than you, but nobody is lower than you, and you don't lift yourself up by putting somebody else down. Those values that we've taught our children, that you're teaching your children, your grandchildren, we can't have a president who every day seems to violate those basic values," he said. Noting that many Republicans have disavowed their party's nominee, Obama said it was "because Donald Trump is uniquely unqualified." The latest polling shows Trump and Clinton tied in North Carolina, which most experts see as a must-win state for the Republican. Obama narrowly won the state in 2008, but lost here in 2012, also by a slim margin.
Young man, be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education.Remember, too, every day, and whenever you can, repeat to yourself, Lord, have mercy on all who appear before Thee today. For every hour and every moment thousands of men leave life on this earth, and their souls appear before God. And how many of them depart in solitude, unknown, sad, dejected that no one mourns for them or even knows whether they have lived or not! And behold, from the other end of the earth perhaps, your prayer for their rest will rise up to God though you knew them not nor they you. How touching it must be to a soul standing in dread before the Lord to feel at that instant that, for him too, there is one to pray, that there is a fellow creature left on earth to love him too! And God will look on you both more graciously, for if you have had so much pity on him, how much will He have pity Who is infinitely more loving and merciful than you! And He will forgive him for your sake. (The video above is a choral setting of the words Eternal Memory (  in Old Church Slavonic, from the Greek   ) from the Byzantine Rites equivalent of the Requiem service. The author of this setting, Pavel Chesnokov (1877-1944), was a remarkably prolific composer of sacred music, with over 400 pieces to his name; very sadly, when the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, where he has served as choirmaster, was destroyed in 1933, Chesnokov was so distraught that he stopped composing altogether. (The church was demolished to make way for a gigantic public building that was never realized, and reconstructed on the same site from 1995 to 2000.)Although All Souls Day has passed, it has become a common custom to extend the special season of prayers for the dead through the whole of November. recently published a useful reminder of the original intention of Pope Benedict XV , when in 1915 he granted all priests permission to say three Masses on November 2nd, a custom originally observed only in Spain and Portugal, namely so that they might pray for those who had been killed in war. We also ought to persevere in this holy intention, and remember especially to pray for the many Christians who were killed in the War-to-End-All-Wars, and the many wars that have happened since, for it is ... a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.
Last week, Princess Marie of Denmark visited Myanmar. That visit was realized for the purpose of focusing on poverty reduction from the viewpoint of Princess Marie as the patron of DanChurchAid. Princess Marie visited a village that has not received aid yet in the middle region of the country and also other villages that have become a part of DanChurchAid Project. That visited was realized in confidence because of safety.
Portsmouth boy bullied for long hair has plan to donate it

It makes me feel so proud of him, his generous spirit. He cares about others more than he cares about himself sometimes."
Reporter

Debra Pressey is a reporter covering health care at The News-Gazette. Her email is dpressey@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@DLPressey).
The success of HIV treatment programs depends upon the identification, enrollment, and retention of HIV-infected individuals, but public health officials have learned that there are numerous barriers to such success at every point in this care continuum.

HIV-centric programs carry a stigma, patients' transportation to the HIV clinics can be a problem, and patients tire of repeat visits to learn whether they have become eligible for HIV treatment. Chronic noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes and hyptertension are another growing global epidemic, accounting for 38 million deaths annually, with three quarters of those deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries.

Michael D. Sweat, Ph.D., professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina and director of the Center for Global Health, has worked with American and Tanzanian scientists and other colleagues since 1994 to study ways to increase HIV screening and care in Tanzania. Sweat is the principal investigator for the $3.1M NIH grant received in October by the Center for Global Health to study the integration of diabetes and hypertension screening into HIV screening. This study will evaluate the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of the novel integration of diabetes and hypertension screening and care with HIV screening and care. An earlier pilot study led by Sweat indicated that this approach is likely to increase HIV testing, a finding that is relevant throughout the world, including rural, impoverished areas of the U.S.

"Global health is everyone's health," said Sweat. "The greatest burdens of disease in the world--HIV, diabetes, and hypertension, among others--know no borders. This grant will enable us to discover better and more efficient ways to address these threats to health, no matter where they arise."

Sweat's institutional collaborators will be Clemson University's Department of Bioengineering, which has worked with Arusha Technical College in Tanzania in the past to develop low-cost health technology solutions for resource-poor settings, and Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, which will provide clinical services and collaborate on data collection and analysis.

"HIV and AIDS continue to be a huge problem in Tanzania," said Jessie Mbwambo, M.D., professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences. "However, we cannot neglect other growing health needs such as diabetes and hypertension. We believe that by integrating diabetes and hypertension care with HIV care we can likely improve health in all these domains much more effectively and at a lower cost."

Delphine Dean, Ph.D., Gregg-Graniteville Associate Professor of Bioengineering at Clemson University, will direct the development of low-cost, diagnostic devices in her laboratory and provide technical support to the health clinics in Tanzania. Dean's laboratory recently developed a low-cost glucometer designed to print (on an inkjet printer) test strips on filter paper loaded with reagents to which a drop of blood is applied to determine the patient's blood sugar level. A patent on the glucometer was filed through the Clemson University Research Foundation.

"The lack of medical equipment, devices, and tests in resource-poor areas such as rural Tanzania limits clinicians' ability to diagnose and treat," said Dean. "By working together, we can improve accessibility to technology and improve global health."

Patient enrollment is projected to begin in the fall of 2017.
News18  Blogs  World

America, Script the Right History

Supporters cheer Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump (not pictured) and display a Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton sign at a campaign event at the Jacksonville Equestrian Center in Jacksonville, Florida, on November 3, 2016. Reuters/Carlo Allegri

The debates are over, the punches delivered and the cards on the table before the American people. With just three days to go, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are headed for a Presidential election like no other, where voters will deliver a crucial decision and make history. November 8 may see the first female President of the United States or the first racist, misogynist, conspiracy theorist enter the hallowed White House and become the Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful nation in the world.



The Republicans have endorsed or have been forced to endorse a man who embodies the racism and sexism that has disenfranchised minorities and women for decades in the United States. Not only has his endorsement exposed the utter bankruptcy of the GOP; he is the creation of an 8 year long Republican campaign of feeding the most extremist socio-economic views to voters in the red states as a counter to Obamas liberal politics. In 2012, Mitt Romney was too clean a candidate to attract such a voter base, while Trump has become the poster boy.



Trump has lied, abused and dared American institutions with minor political consequences. He continues to remain a contender. Such behavior is no longer a deal breaker in American politics. Trump supporters have made it evident that they live in a fact-free bubble, eat-up his fact-free assessment of the United States, the problems facing it, as well as his constitutionally impossible solutions.



Imagine a US Presidential candidate who attracts thousands of supporters with his greatest hits like, he will kill the children of terrorists with drones; throw out 12 million Mexicans; ban Muslims; give nuclear weapons to Saudi Arabia; run a scam university; cheat veterans of charity money; not pay taxes; pick Putin as his favourite leader; abuse the handicapped; say climate change is a hoax created by China; make lewd remarks about women; brag about sexual assault; and be accused of sexual assault by over 10 women. Hillary Clinton faced attacks for calling Trump supporters deplorable. Yet, what other word can one use for those who support a candidate that spouts such venom?



Ever since the Hot Mic incident, support for Trump has dipped in many Republican states namely Arizona, Nevada, Utah and Florida, which have turned from Red to Battleground or Democrat-leaning states. However, in the final leg, Trump continues to close the gap. The polls show that Clinton is set to clinch 268 of 438 Electoral College votes with Trump trailing at 204. The 'magic' number stands at 270, but the figures continue to shift in swing states. Trump supporters still rally around him, cheer when he says that the system is rigged, and that his loss in the polls will be proof of that.



Hillary may not be the ideal candidate for Democrat supporters after Obama, yet voting for her is not only the right thing, it is the adult thing to do. The Republican voter base has reared its angry head as a divisive political force in America, and the GOP leadership has to mull whether in the future, a slicker version of Trump may anchor their party in the wrong direction, disenfranchise it from pan-America.



Charles II once said that, Democracy is the power of equal votes for unequal minds. The views of voters are not gospel, they can be misinformed. Just look at the Brexit vote, where the victorious exit camp launched a misleading campaign about the benefits of leaving the European Union, and now the value of the Pound continues to fall.



The US Presidential election is no longer a battle of ideologies, it is a battle of reality vs. alternate reality, a baffling state of American politics in the era of information explosion. Trumps ascendency has raised the stakes, where the fight is for the soul of the most powerful democracy in the world, a nation of immigrants, a legacy secularism and strength fought and achieved over 200 years. America cannot afford to empower a leader who has developed his political strength through division, denigration and advocating violence, and sully the memory of the great reformers who have sat in the Oval office or repeat the consequences of handing the reins of power to lesser men. The American people must teach a lesson to Trump and his supporters; show them the consequences of trying to poison the American spirit.
New Delhi: ELECTED local body leaders of Jammu & Kashmir on Saturday met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and requested him to take a personal initiative to restore peace in the state that has been marred by violence for around four months now.



A 30-member delegation of the All Jammu and Kashmir Panchayat Conference (JKPC), which is an apex body of Panchayat leaders of the State of Jammu and Kashmir, also expressed concern over the series of school burnings that has been happening in the state.



"The majority of the people want peaceful and dignified life in the State. Vested interests have exploited youngsters and are playing with their lives and future," JKPC chairman Shafiq Mir said.



Mir said that his organisation that was founded in 2012 has itself been a victim of Pakistan-sponsored terror.



"Viewing our campaign for democracy against their interests and policy, the terrorists started attacks on us during which our 14 Sarpanches have been killed so far and more than two dozen were left injured in different attacks," he said.



The organisation also submitted a memorandum to the PM demanding holding polls for panchayat and urban local bodies in the state after implementing 73rd and 74th amendments of Indian Constitution.



The memorandum also requested details of the money that he central government has given to state leaders in the past 70 years and demanded to know if "that money has gone to the pockets of ruling class only why they have not been prosecuted and made accountable like other politicians of the country."



The PM assured the delegation that he will look into their demands. He mentioned that growth and development of J&K figures high on his agenda since growth of villages, where majority of people live, is important to the overall economic development of J&K.


Shimla: At least 16 people were on Saturday killed and over two dozen injured when a private bus plunged into the Beas river near Vindravani in Mandi district, about 155 km from here.



The ill-fated bus with over 40 passengers on board was travelling to Kullu from Manali when it veered off the road while trying to avoid a motorcyclist and fell into the turbulent Beas, police officers said.



The incident, in which 16 people were killed, took place hardly 3 km from Mandi, police said.



The victims are yet to be identified.



The injured people, over two dozen of them, were rushed to the zonal hospital at Mandi. The condition of two of them is stated to be critical.



The bus was close to the banks of the river which made rescue operations easier, police said.



Mandi Deputy Commissioner Sandeep Kadam and IG Ajay Yadav immediately reached the spot along with rescue teams



Though there was only a remote possibilityof passengers getting washed away in the river, divers have been called in as a precautionary measure to locate missing persons, if any.



The Mandi DC said rescue operations were in progress and all possible help is being provided to the victims.



Transport minister G S Bali expressed deep shook over the accident and said an inquiry would be launched to ascertain its cause.



Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, who is in Delhi, has been informed about the accident, he said.



Most of the people travelling in the bus were from Mandi and Kullu and other places on the Mandi-Kullu National Highway 21.


Jaipur: Bollywood actor Rakhi Sawant has been booked for wearing a dress with pictures of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in August, police said.



The First Information Report was lodged at a police station in Rajasthan's Rajsamand district, over 350 km from here.



"The FIR was lodged on Thursday evening by a local resident against the actor. The complainant said by wearing the particular dress, she not only insulted the Prime Minister but also indulged in obscenity," a police official from Kankroli Police station in Rajsamand told IANS on phone.



"We registered the case under the Indian Penal Code provisions and started investigations," the official added.


Hours after BJP chief Amit Shah attacked BSP Supremo Mayawati in a rally in Uttar Pradeshs Saharanpur, Behenji hit back and said the country will have to face serious consequences of dictatorship if the BJP were to gain power in the state in the upcoming assembly elections in 2017.The Constitution needs to be saved by throwing away BJP in the polls, Mayawati said.Taking a direct swipe at PM Narendra Modi she said: PM Modis government has not been able to complete even one-third of its poll promises in the past two and half years of their tenure.The BSP Supremo also pointed out that incidents like Rohith Vemula suicide and flogging of Dalit youth in Una could have been avoided and the way Muslims and Dalits have suffered is saddening as the government continues to follow the RSS agenda.On the current rift within the Samajwadi Party (SP), Mayawati said that BJP will draw benefits from this division in SP.The way Shivpal and Akhilesh supporters are fighting they will contest elections to defeat each other, she added further.Mayawati didnt spare Uttar Pradesh CM Akhilesh Yadavs Samajwadi Rath Yatra either and said, Had SP worked on the lines of Sarvajan Hitay, they wouldnt have felt the need of starting a Rath Yatra.Mulayam wouldnt have to act as a secular leader by inviting leaders from various parties, She said.Samajwadi Party is divided due to the selfish nature of party members and the infighting makes it evident that all is not well there, she said.She added that supporting SP would amount to supporting BJP which means bringing an anti-poor, anti-dalit, anti-muslim government in UP."The Muslim community should not waste its vote, otherwise it will directly benefit the BJP. This would clearly mean allowing formation of an anti-Dalit, anti-Muslim and anti-poor government in the state," she added.On the question Mahagathbandhan in UP similar to the one in Bihar, Mayawati said the SPs efforts reflect that they have already accepted their defeat and there is nothing worth recalling as far as the ruling partys work is concerned.SP is just trying to fool common people by their acts and none of the parties have any concrete reason to form a coalition with them, she said.
The rath aims at also informing people about our future plans.. to tell people about the work we have done, how it is progressing and what we are going to do in the future. I am confident the people will once again vote the SP into power.

I think smartphone will make governance more efficient and reduce corruption. Today, this technology is spreading across the world. If we see this kind of environment in UP I think it is fantastic for the state, people will love it.

: Samajwadi Party on Saturday celebrated its 25th birth anniversary with pomp and splendour in the presence of all the prominent members of Uttar Pradeshs first family and leaders of Mahagathbandhan. After almost two weeks of internal squabbling between various factions led by UP CM Akhilesh Yadav and SP state Chief Shivpal Yadav, the family members tried putting their differences to rest, at least for the time being.In an exclusive interview to CNN-News18, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav talks about his election campaign, development and SPs prospects in the forthcoming elections.A: The kind of support we have received from people during Rath Yatra is amazing. It proves that the work done in the 4 and a half years in education, healthcare and development have resonated with the people. People want development as it improves their lives. Development is the way forward. People believe that development is what will change their lives for the better. This is why I believe I will get whole-hearted support.It's possible that I'm able to do all this because of my youth. In the future, I think if a leader can do something alongside politics, then he can do it and must do it. It's part of politics.. if he gets to play he should. It's true that we might not have played with any administrators. Administrators also wonder why the government doesnt play with themA: UP is constantly changing. The new generation is aspirational. They dream of great things and see a bright future for themselves. How will this change happen?Metro is coming to Lucknow and it will be completed in record time. I've also made India's largest expressway that too was completed in record time. So I think that the state in which 18 lakh laptops have been distributed, a state in which pension for women goes straight to their accounts... soon we will introduce smart phones and if smartphones become part of governance, then people can get to know government policies.BJP will have to answer the people as to what they have done for them. BSP should also be able to say what they can offer other than the elephant and the stone. They only have the agenda where they build stone elephants and bleed the taxpayers' money.A: If like-minded people have a common, great goal.. for both the 2017 and 2019 polls, if we are able to have a good alliance I think it's great. Former PM HD Deve Gowda did it in Karnataka, it sent a message there. In Bihar, too, Lalu Prasad Yadav could do it. I think SP can transform the government in UP and in India too. Like-minded leaders must come together for both the 2017 and 2019 polls.A: See someone gave me a sword on the stage. So I just went along with it. It was merely a part of the celebrations on stage. It shouldn't be looked into too seriously.
Chennai: Denouncing references to the Emergency in the context of the one-day ban on NDTV India channel, Information and Broadcasting minister Venkaiah Naidu on Saturday said the action against the Hindi news channel was taken in the interest of the "country's safety and security".



Addressing a press conference, he said the NDA government has the highest regard for freedom of media and politicisation of such issues will only affect the safety and security of the country.



He also slammed Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi for "talking about the dark days of Emergency".



"I was surprised, aghast. Some people talked of Emergency-like situation. The action was taken in the interest of the country's safety and security", he said.



"I do not know how they are saying this is the first time. I read in a newspaper today that it is first time (that Government has issued a ban on a television channel). Shall I give the list of how many times channels were ordered to go off air?", he asked.



Listing out the names of some of the channels that were banned in the past, he said, "AXN was banned for two months.



FTV was banned for two months. Enter10 for one day. ABN AndhraJyoti seven days. Al Jazeera was banned for five days for showing wrong map of India.



"These are all done earlier. Now they are saying it is done for the first time, murder of democracy, Emergency reminiscent and all", he noted.



"People know what is good and what is bad and people understand what is required in the larger interest of the country. That is why I saw that people on social media supported the Government's stand except some people who are not well informed", he said.



"Politicisation of such issues will affect the safety and security of the country", Naidu, who is here to attend a conference organised by Builders Association of India, said.



Maintaining that the Government was duty bound to act on such issues and does not require to approach the courts, he said, "I have to answer tomorrow in Parliament. I have to answer people tomorrow."



"Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi is talking about dark days of Emergency. Do you know what is Emergency? Some people who were in the Congress at that time and now in different political parties also joined the chorus now because it has become a fashion. They just want to use each and every occasion to criticise the government and take the name of the Prime Minister for each and everything", he said. .
Sanaa: Hundreds of supporters of Yemen's rebels protested in the capital Sanaa on Saturday against a UN peace roadmap aimed at ending a devastating war between the Shiite insurgents and loyalists.



UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed last month put forward the peace plan aimed at halting fighting between the Huthis and forces loyal to the government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.



The Mauritanian diplomat, who arrived in the insurgent-held capital on Thursday for his second visit in a week, has led talks in Yemen since April 2015 and brokered several ceasefires that were often violated and failed to generate momentum towards a peace deal.



"Get out!" protesters shouted outside the hotel where Ould Cheikh Ahmed is staying, holding up photos of the victims of a war that has escalated since the military intervention of a Saudi-led coalition against the rebels and their allies in March 2015.



Hadi last week rejected the UN proposal, while the rebels said it was "basis for discussion" despite containing "fundamental flaws".



Yesterday, rebel ally and former president Ali Abdullah Saleh said the plan was a "good basis" for talks to end "military operations carried out by Saudi Arabia".



The contents of the UN roadmap have not been made public. But informed sources say it calls for agreement on naming a new vice president after the rebels withdraw from Sanaa and other cities and hand over heavy weapons to a third party.



Hadi would then transfer power to the vice president who would appoint a new prime minister to form a government in which the north and south of Yemen would have equal representation.



Nearly 7,000 people have been killed in the war -- more than half of them civilians -- while another three million are displaced and millions more need food aid.
Washington: The US has confirmed the death of a top Al-Qaeda leader in an air strike in northeastern Afghanistan last month, in a major blow to the terror group in the war-torn country.



"We can now confirm that the precision strike conducted by the US military on October 23 in Kunar, Afghanistan, resulted in the death of senior Al-Qaeda leader Faruq al-Qatani," the Pentagon Press Secretary, Peter Cook, said yesterday.



Al-Qatani was Al-Qaeda's emir for eastern Afghanistan and one of the terrorist group's senior plotters of attacks against the US, he said.



"This successful strike is another example of US operations to degrade international terrorist networks and target terrorist leaders who seek to attack the US homeland, our interests and our allies abroad," Cook said.



The Pentagon has been hunting for al-Qatani for four years. He had longstanding ties with Osama bin Laden before his death in the 2011 US raid on his Pakistan compound.



He said another Al-Qaeda leader in the country, Bilal al-Utabi, was targeted in a separate strike, though the results of that attack were not yet known.



"We are still assessing the results of that strike," the Pentagon Press Secretary said.










With the holidays approaching, the Bedford County Sheriffs Office warns residents to be wary of scams. According to the Sheriffs Office, common scams now occurring include: A phone call from someone identifying themselves as the sheriff or a deputy threatening to arrest if you dont pay up for missing jury duty; a call from a grandchild seeking assistance; or a call from someone claiming to be with the IRS seeking payment.
Voter registration is up across the Lynchburg area and statewide, according to Virginia Department of Elections data.

The registration increased amidst relentless national media coverage of the heated presidential race. A surge in last-minute registrants and people checking their registration information on deadline crashed the Virginia Department of Elections website last month.

In the Lynchburg area, Bedford County has seen the largest increase in the number of registrations, at about 5.5 percent, compared to December 2012, just after the last presidential contest. Registration for the county and then-city was 53,398 in 2012, rising to 56,753 for Tuesdays election.

In Lynchburg, registrations are up about 4.2 percent, from 54,460 in 2012 to 56,753 in 2016.

Appomattox County showed the smallest voter registration increase, up only 29 voters to 10,687.

Bedford County Registrar Barbara Gunter thinks many of the new registrants are people who might not have updated their voter information if not for the attention surrounding the presidential election. Some of these people, she said, might have ended up voting on provisional ballots, which they would have to defend to the electoral board later.

This year, I think people have actually given it the attention thats needed, Gunter said. All of that will be so helpful on Election Day with keeping lines moving in the precincts.

Liberty Universitys Vines Center precinct continues to host the highest number of Lynchburg voters with 7,139, although 2,108 of those voters are inactive, also the highest in the Hill City. The next closest precinct is the Moose Lodge on Lakeside Drive 4,801, only 773 of which are inactive.

With only active voters counted, the Vines Center still leads with 5,031; Cornerstone Community Church on Old Graves Mill Road comes in second with 4,112.

An inactive voter is someone who was sent a letter from their registrars office looking to confirm their address, but could not be reached, Gunter said. Inactive voters will have additional scrutiny on Election Day but may vote, Gunter said. All voters must have a valid photo ID to vote.

As of Friday afternoon, Lynchburg was on its way to possibly meeting the number of absentee ballots cast in 2012. The Lynchburg registrars office had collected about 980 in-person absentee ballots and about 1,229 absentee ballots by mail, for a total of 2,209.

The city mailed another 522 absentee ballot applications prior to Tuesdays deadline to request one. They could be turned in, in-person up until today and will be counted if they arrive by 7 p.m. on Election Day. Voters still can vote absentee in-person until this evening.
HIT ON COPS MOM

Police described the murder as a hit and that one of Francis children, a policeman, had been receiving death threats.

As news of Francis murder spread like wildfire in her home community of Lopinot, shocked residents described her as a kind-hearted, pious woman, who regularly attended services at the Church near to where she met her death.

Newsday understands that Francis son, PC Shane Dyer, who works at the Besson Street Police Station, was recently threatened by gunmen at his Laventille home. The threat was reported to the police station where he works. Relatives at Francis Lopinot home told Newsday yesterday that her son had, in fact, been threatened at least three times by gunmen in the area. Newsday understands that when Francis moved out of her Laventille home, her son had taken residence there.

One relative told reporters yesterday that as soon as Dyer had become a police officer, he warned him to get out of the ghetto.

However, it would seem, when the warning was not heeded the gunmen made good on their threat. Newsday understands that at about 10.30 am, officers of the Besson Street Police Station responded to a report of gunshots along Piccadilly Street, Port-of- Spain. When police officers checked, they saw Francis slumped over in the drivers seat inside a white Nissan Tiida.

Police officers checked and realised that Francis who was shot at least four times, was still alive and rushed her to the Portof- Spain General Hospital, where she died while being treated. Police officers later determined that earlier that morning Francis had left her place of worship after a prayer session and had run some errands in the city.

When she returned, she was sitting at the drivers seat of her vehicle and was about to go home, when a man dressed in a CEPEP one-piece worksuit, walked up the her car, pointed the gun at Francis and shot her four times. He then walked off. While police officers, homicide detectives and crime scene investigators processed the scene, Francis fellow worshippers made a public call for the persons who killed her to repent. We want justice for Felicia, whether through God or through man, said Kathleen Julien, a fellow worshipper.

But we also want whoever did this to repent.

We are appealing to the killer...give your life to Christ and repent for your wicked ways. It is wickedness that has taken over the country.

These people have no love or regard for man woman or child. But God is in charge. If we as Christians begin to cringe in fear, then the entire world would be lost. Julien told reporters at the scene that on every Friday, the Womens Group of the church would gather and pray for an hour over the country, its citizens and its leadership.

They called it the hour of power.

After the prayer session they were supposed to go out together, but they both had errands to run. According to Julien, they both went their separate ways and planned to meet in front the church. We were supposed to meet each other after we did what we had to do, said Julien, But, as fate would have it, it seems that someone else was waiting there for her... Julien said that she went home to get something to eat, when she got a phone call from a brother at the church.

The man told her the unbelievable news that Francis, whom she had just left, and was expecting to speak to again in a matter of minutes, was shot dead.

Pastor Mervyn Cato, the head officiator of the church yesterday told Newsday that Francis, who had originally lived in Laventille, was a member of the church for more than 20 years.

Newsday was told that despite moving to Lopinot a number of years ago, she was still an avid member and an elder in the church. She was a member of the Womens Group, and she prayed for and assisted women in and out of the church, on various issues.

Newsday understands that church members, especially members of the Womens Group, will gather to perform a special prayer service for Francis. Newsday was also told that the churchs congregation would also be praying for the soul of the killer who took Francis life. Francis murder brings the toll for the year to 388.
No One Has

Done This Before

in Billboard's History
(Newser)  "A man getting out of the car to go to the toilet led to the discovery of one of the most important sites in Australian pre-history," archaeologist Giles Hamm tells ABC News. Hamm was surveying a section of Australia's Flinders Ranges when his partner, aboriginal elder Clifford Coulthard, had to go to the bathroom. "Nature called and Cliff walked up this creek bed into this gorge and found this amazing spring surrounded by rock art," Hamm says. At the time, Hamm thought the newly discovered human settlement, a site called Warratyi, was only 5,000 years old. It turns out it's closer to 49,000 years old, and that has huge ramifications for our knowledge of ancient Australian civilization, Sky News reports. Hamm and his team published a study on Warratyi this week in Nature.

The discovery of Warratyi in the arid interior of the continent means humans either arrived in Australia up to 10,000 years earlier than previously believedor they expanded across the continent at a much quicker rate, Science Alert reports. Researchers at the site found 4,300 objects, including tools, and 200 bone fragments from multiple animals, including a 5,500-pound marsupial. The bones help explain how early Australians interacted with megafauna, including hunting them. The tools show Australians were using bone and stone axes earlier than believed and are evidence that early Australians developed some technologies on their own rather than adopting them from other peoples as previously believed. (Ninety rocks in Australia could rank up there with Stonehenge.)
(Newser)  Brad Pitt is asking a judge to grant him joint custody of his six children in his split from Angelina Jolie Pitt, according to a divorce filing Friday. The actor's request was included in his response to Jolie Pitt's Sept. 20 petition to end their two-year marriage, the AP reports. She sought sole physical custody of their six children, who range in age from 8 to 15. Custody has been the major issue in the breakup so far, with authorities investigating Pitt over what happened during a dispute on a private flight with his family in mid-September. The couple reached a temporary custody agreement that allowed the actor to visit his children while the investigation by a child welfare agency in Los Angeles is ongoing.

The outcome of the investigation could impact how a judge determines custody arrangements, although courts in California generally favor awarding joint custody. Pitt's filing does not include any new details about the couple's breakup. Pitt cited irreconcilable differences and makes no mention of a prenuptial agreement that will govern how the pair divides their assets. He also cites Sept. 15 as the day of their separation, one day after the alleged plane altercation between Pitt and his 15-year-old son, Maddox. Pitt was accused of being abusive toward the teenager, sources told the AP, but authorities were not notified when the plane landed in Minnesota. (Read more Brad Pitt Angelina Jolie breakup stories.)
(Newser)  "The bad guys, I hate to say it, are smart," a former DEA agent tells the Wall Street Journal. "They always seem to be a step ahead of the regulators. The UN estimates that chemical labs around the world are cranking out "new psychoactive substances" weekly, so fast the DEA and other law enforcement agencies can't keep up. The Journal takes a deep look at one of those substances, a synthetic opioid called U-47700, that caused 125 fatal overdosesat leastin the first nine months of 2016. U-47700 was created by a US pharmaceutical company in the 1970s while searching for the "Holy Grail," a painkiller as strong as morphine but without the risk. It was abandoned after tests on mice showed it caused dependence.

Enter unscrupulous foreign labsmany of them in Chinawhich officials say are combing through old patent records to recreate U-47700 and other abandoned drugs. The labs sell these new versions of old synthetic drugs online, labeling them research chemicals not for human consumption to give themselves legal cover. The first fatal U-47700 overdose in the US was believed to be in May 2015. The DEA didn't move to add it to the list of illegal drugs until September 2016, the same month two 13-year-old friends in Utah overdosed on it. It probably won't help. One former U-47700 user says Chinese labs "have a backup list a mile long," which means the next U-47700 is on its wayif it isn't here already. Read the full story here. (Read more opioids stories.)
(Newser)  US military hackers are ready should Russia try any cyber shenanigans during the election Tuesday, NBC News reports. Senior intelligence sources say the US has successfully hacked into various Russian systems, including command systems at the Kremlin, telecommunications networks, and the electric grid. Officials describe this as "preparing the battlefield." Officials say they would only use the US' advanced cyber weapons against Russia if it attacks the US "in a significant way," something that's not expected. Rather, officials are expecting something along the lines of "cyber mischief."

It would be very difficult for hackers outside the US to change the outcome of the election, as the election itself is too decentralized, the Verge reports. According to the Los Angeles Times, officials don't think there's any way Russia could change vote returns or mess with counting. However, it definitely could do things to damage people's confidence in vote tallies. That includes faking documents and otherwise spreading misinformation. One hacker US officials say is a front for Russian intelligence already tweeted they were going to monitor the election "from inside the system." And it sounds like if Russian hackers go too far on Election Day, the US military is ready to respond in kind. (Read more Election 2016 stories.)
(Newser)  A 45-year-old man charged with keeping a missing woman chained up like a dog on his South Carolina property was described as a "devil on a chain" by a neighbor decades ago, Greeneville Online reports. In 1986, Todd Kohlhepp15 at the timeforced a 14-year-old girl back to his house at gunpoint, tied her up, and raped her. He told authorities he didn't know why he did it; maybe he was rebelling because his dad was out of town. Kohlhepp's mom made excuses for him, pointing out that he walked the girl home afterward. "Does that sound like a dangerous criminal?" she asked. Kohlhepp was sentenced to 15 years in prison after being allowed to plead down to a kidnapping charge. A probation officer called it a "travesty of justice."

Kohlhepp's rape of a teen girl wasn't an isolated incident. Documents show an "emotionally disturbed" teen with "explosive anger issues." He threatened to kill his mom, dumped bleach into a goldfish bowl when he didn't get a gerbil, shot a dog with a BB gun, and locked a neighbor boy in a dog cage. His father said the only emotion Kohlhepp could show was anger, and he spent time in a mental health facility. Kohlhepp was charged with kidnapping this week after 30-year-old Kala Brown was found in a storage container on his property, the AP reports. A body was found buried on his property Friday, and police are looking for more. Brown, who was hired to clean Kohlhepp's property, says she saw him shoot and kill her boyfriend. (Read more missing person stories.)
(Newser)  The National Enquirer paid $150,000 to keep a former Playboy model's 10-month affair with Donald Trump out of the news, the Wall Street Journal reports. Sources tell the Journal that Trump, while married to Melania, had an affair with Karen McDougal, 1998 Playmate of the Year, in 2006 and 2007. According to Jezebel, photos McDougal included in a "Throwback Thursday" tweet in 2015 seem to confirm anecdotes about the affair contained in the Journal's report. The Journal states McDougal appeared ready to go public with the affair, signing a $150,000 contract with American Media Inc., owner of the Enquirer, for exclusive lifetime rights to her story. But the Enquirer never ran it.

The Journal reports this is a practice called "catch and kill" that tabloids use to keep certain stories from getting out there. As part of the contact, which the Journal saw, McDougal, who sources say expected the Enquirer to run the story, was not allowed to talk about the affair with anyone else. American Media, whose CEO is friends with Trump, tells the Journal it never "paid people to kill damaging stories about Mr. Trump." It claims the contract was for McDougal to write a monthly column, among other things. The Journal reports McDougal never wrote for or appeared in any American Media publications after signing the contract. A Trump spokesperson says rumors about an alleged affair are "totally untrue." (Read more Donald Trump stories.)
(Newser)  One of the 276 women and girls kidnapped from a Nigerian boarding school by Boko Haram in 2014 was found by the Nigerian army Saturday, CNN reports. The girl, identified by Reuters as Maryam Ali Maiyanga, was carrying a 10-month-old baby, her son Ali. She was with a group of people who escaped a Boko Haram base in the Sambisa Forest. Maiyanga was number 198 on Bring Back Our Girls' list of Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped in April 2014. She was abducted with her twin sister, who is still missing.

Of the 276 girls and women taken from the Chibok boarding school, 57 quickly escaped from Boko Haram. Another was found in May after escaping, and 21 were freed in October as part of a deal made by the Red Cross and the Swiss government. The Nigerian government says it's negotiating with Boko Haram to release 83 more of the schoolgirls. The rest, sources tell CNN, are either dead or don't want to leave Boko Haram. The terrorist group has been fighting for seven years to set up an Islamic state in Nigeria, the BBC reports. It's killed some 15,000 people and displaced more than 2 million during its insurgency. (Read more Boko Haram stories.)
(Newser)  Tens of thousands of South Koreans poured into the streets of downtown Seoul on Saturday, using words including "treason" and "criminal" to demand that President Park Geun-hye step down amid an explosive political scandal, the AP reports. The protest came a day after Park apologized on live television amid rising suspicion that she allowed a mysterious confidante to manipulate power from the shadows. Holding banners, candles, and colorful signs that read "Park Geun-hye out" and "Treason by a secret government," a sea of demonstrators filled a large square in front of an old palace gate and the nearby streets, singing and thunderously applauding speeches calling for the ouster of the increasingly unpopular president.

Demonstrators then shifted into a slow march in streets around City Hall, shouting "Arrest Park Geun-hye," ''Step down, criminal," and "We can't take this any longer," before moving back to the square and cheering on more speeches that continued into the night. Earlier in the week, prosecutors arrested Choi Soon-sil, the daughter of a late cult leader and a longtime friend of Park, and detained two former presidential aides over allegations that they pressured businesses into giving $70 million to two foundations Choi controlled. There are also allegations that Choi, despite having no government job, regularly received classified information and meddled in various state affairs, including the appointment of ministers and policy decisions. (Read more South Korea stories.)
People have always looked up to Britains royal couple, Prince William and Kate Middleton. But recently, there are rumors spreading that the royal couple is on the way to a divorce. Could this be true?

HNGN shares that Duchess Kate Middleton and prince William are not performing well on their marriage. Kate and William are living apart and only keep the happy couple facade for in front of the public, while under the mask, things have been going pretty bad for both of them.

It is rumored that the reason for their marriages failure is none other, but the Queen of England herself. Queen Elizabeth has kept both William and Kate on tight schedules, in different parts of the world, which has left them incapable of bonding with one another and their children.

According to Celebrity Dirty Laundry, Kate and William have been purposely kept apart by Queen Elizabeth, who has become tired of their carefree attitude, especially during their trip throughout Canada. According to her, they have their duties as royals and she is ready to teach them this lesson the hard way. The tedious schedules and hard work are her way of reminding her grandson and his wife that even though a couple, they are also royals and this carries certain obligations with itself.

Morning Ledger shares additional information on the reasons which have forced Queen Elizabeth into such harsh actions. According to sources of the magazine, the royal couple has been neglecting their obligations towards the crown. Instead of visiting charity events and tending to their royal commitments, they have accepted invitations to movie premiers which they gladly attended.

Duchess Kate Middleton herself has often been in the spotlight for neglecting her royal duties. She has often evaded charity events in turns of pursuing her own personal goals. Critics of Kate Middletons behavior point that she obviously has no interest in pursuing her royal obligations and prefers to become a celebrity to a full fledge royal.
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Is Troye Sivan Gay, Who Is His Boyfriend and What Is His Net Worth? Troye Sivan is an Australian singer and songwriter best known for songs like Happy Little Pill, Youth, Heaven (with Betty Who) and The Boyfriend Tag (with Tyler Oakley) which have all garnered him different awards and ranked on the Billboard Charts. Sivan, who was born in South Africa but now resides in the United States, is ...

Did iDubbbz Have Cancer, Is He Gay and Who Is His Girlfriend Now? iDubbbz is one YouTuber who has made a career out of courting controversy. Renowned for his absurdist channels and comedy video series, the Los Angeles based personality is the owner of two channels, iDubbzTV, and iDubbzTV2, as well as the brains behind comedy video series such as Content Cop, Kickstarter Crap, Gaming News Crap, and ...

Inside Greg Gutfelds Love Story With Wife Elena Moussa and Why Fans Thought He Was Gay Greg Gutfeld is a seasoned American television producer whose career in the media industry has spanned over a decade. He is a man of many talents who makes extra income through comedy, journalism, and editorial works. Gutfeld regularly appears on Fox News Channel as a panellist and co-host of the political talk show The Five ...

Works That Made Bo Burnham A Household Name and How Much He Is Worth Now One of YouTubes first viral stars and the worlds most exciting young comedian, Bo Burnham, has always amazed critics and comedy aficionados alike. Often regarded as the Justin Bieber of comedy, thanks to his fresh looks, floppy blond hair and hoodies, he has a multi-faceted career bigger than many comedians twice his age. It wouldnt ...

Is Louie Anderson Gay And What Is His Net Worth? Louie Anderson has one of the most abstract faces in the industry and equally knows how to use it to his advantage. He is not only a stand-up comedian but also an actor and television host who is known for his distinctive comic wits. Some of his notable projects include Family Feud, where he was ...

Is Don Lemon of CNN Gay, Who is His Partner and What Is His Salary? Don Lemon has risen to become one of the most recognizable faces on CNN over the past few years. The fiery journalist, who anchors CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, is liked and somewhat disliked for his strong and candid opinions on a variety of matters that do not just include politics but also race, significantly, matters that ...

Is Rachel Maddow Gay, Who is the Wife and How Much Does She Earn in Salary? Rachel Maddow is an award-winning American journalist, political commentator, and television news anchor. She is best known for hosting the popular nightly TV show The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. Prior to this, she hosted a talk radio program on Air America Radio from 2005 to 2010. As of now, the TV sensation co-anchors MSNBCs ...

Demystifying Pokimane  Her Real Name, Ethnicity & Boyfriend Like most social media celebrities in this digital era, Pokimane Thicc is one of those stars who took advantage of the internet to make a name for herself. Given the unlimited potentials which the social media space offers, many people have been instantly propelled to fame just by posting creative online contents. Not only has ...

A Breakdown of Kris Jenners Net Worth, Sources Of Income and Relationships Over The Years Standing outside and looking in, Kris Jenner looks like the oil that greases the wheels of the entire Kardashian/Jenner machine. She has been dubbed a momager and rightfully so because she seems to have had a part to play in the trajectory of each and every one of her daughters individually and the Kardashian brand ...

Pursuits That Brought Liza Koshys Fame To its Zenith and Her Love Life Since David Dobrik Liza Koshy is an American actress who has leveraged YouTube as a platform to promote her comedy while also serving as a television host on occasions. She is talented and funny and has gathered a lot of fans from around the world. Koshy started on Vine in high school and was able to get millions of ...

Alex Aiono Biography  Inside The Life Of The American Singer Not everyone who started from the streets has attained the heights where Alex Aiono is currently. His story could be referred to as the perfect definition of rising from Grass to Grace. He came into the limelight after he started out as a YouTuber, singer, and producer. One fascinating thing about the young YouTuber is ...

Virginia Vallejo Biography And Her Love Story With Pablo Escobar Virginia Vallejo can be referred to as one of the oldest whistleblowers in history after her involvement with Pablo Escobar which made her famous. Over the years, many questions have been raised about her relationship with the drug lord and why she endangered her life to be with him despite his notorious acts. The death ...

Princess Love Bio  Ethnicity, Real Name & Parents For many people, Princess Love is simply Ray Js wife but there is so much more to this feisty lady than meets the eye. She is a star in her own right and has many feathers on her cap. Princess Love is a reality TV star, a model, video vixen, and fashion designer. She and her ...

Who is Papa Franku Also Known As Filthy Frank or Joji, Where is He Now? The social media as we all know today has given people the opportunity to be creative and innovative and at the same time, make something of themselves. YouTube is one of the known social platforms we have today that makes it possible for people to express their God-given talents and post videos they created to ...

Who Is Molly Qerim, How Did She Become a Famous Sports Anchor and Who Is Her Husband? Molly Qerim is an American sports anchor popularly known for moderating First Take, a highly rated sports talk show, on ESPN. Prior to joining ESPN, Qerim hosted Fantasy Live and NFL AM on NFL Network. It is quite obvious that the widely acclaimed television personality is in a class of her own when it comes ...

Safiya Nygaard  Height, Parents & Net Worth Safiya Nygaard is an American YouTuber, writer, content producer, and director who is popular for posting makeup, beauty and fashion videos on YouTube. Her videos regularly top at least one million views, thanks to her lively character as well as her willingness to experiment with outrageous outfits and different beauty products. Here are the things to ...

The Rigors of Sunlen Serfatys Career Journey Until CNN and Fun Facts About Her Personal Life CNN correspondent, Sunlen Serfaty is an Emmy Award-winning journalist known for covering a broad range of breaking news stories, national news, and Washington politics. She has been able to garner widespread recognition for herself which even goes beyond the sphere of her work. Her profile also increased with the extensive work she did in covering ...

Demystifying Jazz Jennings Real Name, Boyfriend & Family Of One The Youngest Transgenders Jazz Jennings is an unusual personality who became famous as a transgender activist and was recorded as the youngest documented public figure to be seen as transgender. She is also a YouTube personality and spokesmodel for brands, her fans, and other transgenders. She fought for acceptance in her high school with her super supportive family for over ...

Inside Fred Armisens Life  Ethnicity, Romantic Relationships and Gay Rumors Fred Armisen is an award-winning American comedian, he is also a writer, an actor as well as a musician. He was a cast member of the legendary comedy show, Saturday Night Live for 13 years and also one of the brains behind the successful satirical show Portlandia. Find out more about this incredibly talented guy ...

Ed and Lorraine Warren Biography: Cases, Kids, and Family Life Have you ever woken up with fear you could not explain, or felt a strange presence that made the hair at your nape rise or even experienced strange occurrences around you? Well, these were some of the promptings that made the well-known paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren delve into trying to explain the ideas ...

Truth About Tony Romos Wife, Kids and Life Since His NFL Retirement Tony Romo grew from the field as a quarterback to the screens as an American Football Analyst. He was a quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys in the richest football league in the world (NFL) before retiring. As a junior, he was honored as an All-Ohio Conference Member, an Ohio Valley Conference Player of the Year and ...

Who is Brittany Venti, The Controversial Game Streamer and YouTuber? In recent times, many people live stream themselves playing video games. This has become a popular pastime on the internet and many highly skilled gamers have become internet celebrities through this means. However, some of them rather than becoming renowned for their gaming skills and great commentary, have become controversial and infamous. A good example ...

Rob Dyrdeks Family: His Kids And Relationship With Wife Bryiana Noelle Flores A multi-talented star and an elite pro skateboarder, Rob Dyrdeks success story began at a remarkably young age. Yet another proof that schooling doesnt always correlate with success, Rob has established himself not just as a phenomenal sportsman but also as a successful entrepreneur. Besides perfecting his skill as a natural talent on the board, ...

xChocobars  Biography and Everything You Should Know About Her Having distinguished herself and recorded massive successes in an industry notably dominated by men, it is very safe to say that Xchocobars deserves all the attention and cash she makes from her career. A household name on Twitch (a smart live streaming video platform), the online-gamer is popularly known for streaming classic games such as Stardew ...

Everything To Know About Mary Padian, Her Boyfriend and Net Worth Mary Padian is a famous American television reality personality best known for her involvements on the Reality show Storage Wars. She also has her own shop called Mary finds where she displays her antique collections. Since her childhood, Padian has been a creative learner. At the time, she used to create new items out of reusable ones and ...

Betsy Woodruffs Family Life: Is She Married or Related To Bob Woodruff? An old name in the world of journalism, Betsy Woodruff has warmed her way into the hearts of many with her impressive talents. Through hard work, Woodruff has carved a niche for herself in a very competitive field. Betsy has strong family and work values and is also an advocate for equal opportunities for everyone ...

Matpat (Matthew Patrick)  Wife, Height & Net Worth As far as internet business is concerned, Matpat remains one of the most dynamic and seasoned figures. He boasts a wealth of experience that has helped him in growing his business from one level of greatness to another. Like most successful people, MatPat started out small but today, he makes millions of dollars from his ...

Facts About Ricegum  His Girlfriend, Real Name & Net Worth Ricegum is an online gamer and YouTube sensation who ditched college; took advantage of the digital era, and made a name for himself on the internet. Though he began as a gaming YouTuber, Ricegum soon gained recognition as a controversial internet star following his many diss tracks. Here is everything you need to know about the youngster ...

Joy Taylor Once Married MLBs Richard Giannotti  Inside Look At Her Love Life and Family The erosion of the sexist idea that women have no business in sports broadcasting created a host of women celebrities who attained fame outside of modeling and acting. One of them, Joy Taylor, a radio personality and TV host for Fox Sports 1, has been in the industry since 2009, becoming one of the most ...

What To Know About Conan OBriens Wife, Kids & Family Today The name Conan OBrien is one that jumps right at you almost immediately you start talking about the most popular television hosts in the USA and this is no surprise because the man behind that name has risen to become one of the most admired men in the business. Known for hosting the late-night talk ...

David Letterman  Net Worth, Wife & Son In all of American, one man whose face has been seen frequently by late night TV talk show lovers is none but David Letterman. The comedian and TV show veteran has been hosting late night talk shows for more than three decades. His Late Night with David Letterman show began on February 1st, 1982 aired ...

Demystifying Sssniperwolfs Family Background And The Boyfriends Shes Had Since she launched her eponymously named channel in 2013, Sssniperwolf has been on the rise when it comes to video game influencers. She is one of the biggest names in the online gaming subgenre of YouTube videos. Real name Lia Shelesh, she started with Call of Duty: Black Ops II but has diversified with other ...

Lester Holt  Wife, Family & Net Worth Lester Holt is a multiple award-winning journalist, newscaster, reporter, and actor who has worked for notable media houses like WCBS TV, CBS, MSNBC and among others. His remarkable feat in journalism has endeared him to the hearts of many and earned him some awards and recognitions. Read on to get acquainted with his biography, ethnicity, ...

What Is Louis C.K. Doing Now, Where Are His Family And How Much Is His Net Worth? It is not easy to make it in comedy. It takes more than a funny bone and the ability to elicit a few giggles from a listening audience. For all the complexities that go into making a successful career in comedy, Louis C.K, the Washington D.C-born comedian, did it. For years, he was at the ...

The Progression of Hoda Kotbs Career, Her Ancestry and Family Life Hoda Kotb gained fame as a television host and news anchor for NBC. She anchors the shows signature show Today, and it has been an excellent vehicle for her skills in front of a camera. Kotb has won several awards, including Daytime Emmys and Peabody Awards. Simply put, she is one of the most successful ...

Jerry Seinfelds Family: All About The Amazing Comedians Wife and Kids Apparently one of the highly important entertainers in America, Jerry Seinfeld is a man of many talents. A very funny man, he is considered to be one of the most successful comedians in the USA who has been in the business as a professional rib-cracker for more than 40 years. As an actor, he has ...

The Rigors Of Sarah Silvermans Rise To Prominence And Rundown Of The Men She Has Dated A comedian, writer, and actress, Sarah Silvermans art and craft is as unique as you would ever find. Her poignant use of comedy to discuss social issues such as race, sexism, politics, and religion has gained her an impressive following. As unorthodox as her style is, so is her life experiences. She previously suffered from epiglottitis ...

Who Is Hannibal Buress, Does He Have A Wife or Girlfriend & Why Was He Arrested? Making people laugh when they are tense or not in the mood is a tough order and to ply the trade, it must indeed take some guts and expertise, this is what the humor maker, Hannibal Buress has been able to achieve and sustain after his inital teething process. The African-American is a screen writer, stand-up ...

The Success of John Mulaneys Career Efforts Since His Work On Saturday Night Live and Facts About His Wife John Mulaney had been working as a professional comedian for years before Saturday Night Live changed his status for life and like many who are now his fans, you probably did not know of him then. However, that changed when he joined the sketch comedy show in 2008. Since then, he has been one of ...

Jeff Dunham  Wife, Children and Net Worth Ventriloquism is a very subtle method of making an inanimate object (like a puppet, doll or dummy) appear to be saying words which are actually coming from the person (holding the inanimate object). In effect, the individual throws his/her voice to the puppet and can even appear to be having a conversation with it. Not ...

Ellen DeGeneres  Net Worth, Wife  Portia de Rossi & Parents Ellen DeGeneres is an American female standup comedian who has proven that whatever a man can do, a woman can also do. Since her journey as a standup comedian started in 1981, she has held swirl as one of the finest comedians America and the world at large has seen. She is often referred to ...

Revisiting Joan Rivers Death  The Daughter, Husband & Net Worth She Left Behind Joan Rivers was a renowned American comedian, TV host, writer, and actress. Her brand of comedy consisted of scathing one-liners and no individual or topic is spared. She hosted her own talk shows in the 80s and 90s and was a pioneer for women in stand up comedy. She was the first woman to host a late night ...

The Struggles of Margaret Chos Childhood, How It Influenced Her Career Growth and Love Life Margaret Cho is best described as a comic star who knows how to maneuver everything related to life into a rib-cracking joke. She is also known to criticize every social and political problem, especially those involving race and sexuality. Apart from her talents as a comic actress, she does amazingly well as a singer and ...

Where Is Eric Bolling Today? Who Is His Son & What Is His Net Worth? Eric Bolling who was once a notable figure on Fox News, is an American TV personality, an author, and versatile Journalist. As a political and financial analyst/commentator, he anchored discussions bothering on finance for Fox Business Channel. Here is everything there is to know about his career, family, and allegations that led to his exit ...

Who Is Chelsea Handler and Does She Have A Husband or Boyfriend? Chelsea Handler is one of Americas top female comedians. She is also an actress, writer, television host, producer, and activist. She is known to be very outspoken even with things that are very personal. In separate interviews with The New York Times, Handler revealed that she had an abortion twice when she was 16. She has authored five books ...

How Did Laura Lee Achieve Fame, How Much is She Worth and Who is Her Husband? Laura Lee is a popular American YouTuber, make-up artist and beauty blogger. From posting videos of her makeup routines on Instagram, Lee has transformed into a beauty influencer and a YouTube sensation. Today, her YouTube Channel has over 630 million views and 4.5 million subscribers. Asides having millions of followers across all social media platforms, ...

Madison Gesiotto Bio  Ethnicity, Parents & Measurements Madison Gesiotto is no ordinary woman; although she excelled in quite a number of pageants and competitions while she was in school, it is her views on politics and issues in America that has made her name known to most people. She possesses beauty and intelligence in a seemingly equal measure and has been able ...

Who Is Lil Tay? Parents, Brother, Sister, Age, Net Worth, Ethnicity Child stardom is nothing new in the entertainment world. With the advent of social media, we have seen more stars made from the internet than ever before, and Lil Tay is one of them. Her uploaded rap videos trademark is cursing, swearing, cash-throwing, and use of obscene languages. Her fame went wild after she dropped ...

What To Know About Tig Notaros Wife, Kids and Family Today Tig Notaro is an American stand-up comic star, writer, actress, and radio analyst. Since she started her career in 2001, she has become one of Americas best comedians, particularly when it comes to observational comedy. One prominent aspect of her routine involves her family, which includes a wife and two children. Interestingly, Tig Notaro is part ...

Who Is Chantel Jeffries? What To Know About Her Age, Ethnicity & Net Worth Chantel Jeffries is a lady of many talents. Beyond being celebrated as a DJ, she has fared well as a model, an actress, musician, and as an artist. She first rose to fame on Instagram where she has a large following. However, in recent times, she has hit the spotlight for her rumored relationships with some ...

Is Ellen DeGeneres Married, Who Is The Brother  Vance DeGeneres and Family Members? Ellen DeGeneres is one of a kind celebrity in todays world as she has used her wealth for the greater good for many people. She has served a host of famous awards shows like the Grammy, Primetime Emmy and Academy Awards. Moreso, she is probably one of the most decorated entertainment personalities around the world and ...

Carli Bybel Bio  Height, Boyfriend & Net Worth Video blogging is now on the rise and YouTube is the place where most of it happens. If you are a lady who cares about her looks or a guy who likes to help his woman out with her looks, then one person whose name rings a bell when it comes to giving beauty tips ...

Who Is Lexy Panterra? What To Know About Her Ethnicity, Boyfriend & Net Worth Lexy Panterra is one of the YouTube personalities whose breakout came through the Twerk dance videos she posted on her social media handles and YouTube which has so far generated over 13 million views for her. From there on, she created her LexTwerkOut workout program in 2014. She is sure very talented as she as moved ...

Who Is AnneMunition? What Is Her Ethnicity & Does She Have A Girlfriend or Boyfriend? AnneMunition is a professional gamer and content creator of American origin. She is one of the most sought-after streamers on Twitch  a popular online platform for watching and streaming videos, especially video games. AnneMunition has almost half a million followers on Twitch and her channel has accumulated at least 13 million views. Her favorite games ...

Norm MacDonald  Former Wife, Son & Net Worth Recently, 59-year-old former Saturday Night Live stand-up comic Norm MacDonald caused a not-so-funny stir when he expressed his personal opinion about the #MeToo movement speaking in defense of Louis CK and Roseanne Barr. Following the backlash of his actions, he is diligently doing damage control for his questionable opinion by posting a public apology on ...

Inside Iliza Shlesingers Life With Husband and How Much She is Worth Now Witty, spontaneous, and truly humorous, Iliza Shlesinger is an American comedian who is clearly proving that the stereotypical claim that women are not really funny is not only incredibly wrong but completely outrageous. Having been in the game for more than 10 years, Shlesinger has grown bigger with each step, stunning fans with her incredible ...

Who Is Nessa Diab? Details of her Parents, Ethnicity & Relationship With Colin Kaepernick Nessa Diab has gained more fame as the girlfriend of different footballers than in her career. She is currently with the popular National Football League (NFL) player, Colin Kaepernick, and has stood by his side during his most trying times. Also known for her mononym, Nessa, she recently engaged in a tweet battle with the ...

Samantha Bee  Inside the Life of Full Frontal Comedian and Presenter We have over the decades seen various brands of humor and personalities who have walked the ropes. One of the formidable forces in the world of comedy is no other than the iconic Samantha Bee of the Daily Show who now runs her own television show on TBS channel. She is a Canadian-American political commentator, ...

What Happened To Jessica Williamss Boyfriend And Which Are Her Best Works? Jessica Williams is a woman who has a lot of feathers in her cap  and keeps acquiring more. The former senior political correspondent of the comic Daily Show, who is also a comedian and actress whose recent movie appearance include starring as a playwright just recovering from a recent split with her boyfriend, Damon, and ...

Who is Nicole Byer? Here are 5 Facts You Need To Know About The Comedian Nicole Byer, an American comedian, actress, and writer, made a name for herself after she played supporting roles on MTVs prank show Ladylike and the reality show Girl Code. The latter was a series that featured comedians who analyzed in minute details, all the issues that young women deal with daily, from period to dating, to weird friendship dynamics and questions about sex. Currently, ...

A Closer Look At Bart Kwans Ethnicity, Height & Personal Life Bart Kwan is one of few Asians who is known for being successful in the comic industry at an international level. His fame broke out after the YouTube channel which he created with his close pal Joe Jo garnered up massive followings. The talented duo has been running the channel since 2007 and their success ...

Heres How VanossGaming Achieved Fame Online, His Worth and Other Facts About The Gamer For many years, the decision to drop out of college to pursue an online career was considered to be foolish and self-destructive by conventional wisdom. It was no different when Evan Fong, popularly known as VanossGaming, dropped out of college to pursue a YouTube career. However, that radical move paid off, and he stands shoulder to ...

Desi Perkins  Ethnicity, Net Worth & Husband YouTube is littered with videos of makeup tutorials by different people but if you are interested in learning how to do your makeup like a pro, there is just one person on that platform who you must follow. She is none other than Desi Perkins! She is a popular make-up artist, Instagram star, and vlogger. Desi, ...

The Phases of Casey Neistats Pursuits and His Love Story With Candice Pool YouTuber, vlogger, filmmaker, and creator extraordinaire; these are just a few hats that Casey Neistat wears and the story of how he got here is incredible. A native of Connecticut, Neistat started out by making refreshingly-authentic short films and videos that featured content that was based on everyday life and called attention to serious issues. He ...

Connor Franta  Inside The Life of American YouTuber YouTube has produced a lot of young celebrities in modern times and Connor Franta happens to be one of them. Apart from being a YouTuber, the young American is also an entrepreneur, entertainer, and writer. His journey to fame began almost a decade ago when he started a self-named YouTube channel where he uploads content ranging ...

Rhett and Link  Bio, Who are Their Wives, Net Worth and Family Facts Rhett and Link refer to an American comedy duo who are very popular on YouTube. They are known for their comic songs, viral commercials, skits and the daily show, Good Mythical Morning. Good Mythical Morning is the most watched daily show online, averaging 100 million views in a month. The show has featured guests such ...

A Walk Through The Maze of Ryan Higas Career Pursuits And Relationship With Arden Cho Ryan Higa is not only celebrated as a YouTube star, but he is also famed for appearing on television screens as an actor and comedian. Nigahiga, his Youtube channel, has gathered over 20 million subscribers and billions of views with his different comic acts, short films, and music videos uploads. With the rise in his career, ...

What to Know About The Shows That Made Craig Ferguson a Star and His Family Ties Rising to the top of your profession can sometimes be a hard and difficult process. It requires days and nights of working consistently hard to be better than what you were yesterday. It requires not giving up when all of your experiences seem to be pushing you to quit. It is because of these challenges ...

David Dobrik Married Liza Koshy for One Month  Inside His Family and Relationships David Dobrik is a YouTube sensation who has garnered fame not just for his vlogs but his love life too. Given his career as a YouTuber, his channel is one place where he shares his romantic escapades. With a cute boyish look like his, this Slovakian young man is definitely a good catch, and not ...

Merrell Twins Bio  Ethnicity, Parents & Boyfriend One of the beautiful things about modern life is social media. As rudimentary as it might seem, it could turn out to be the greatest thing that would be invented in the next 50 years because of its impact on human life. Very few tools have revolutionized human behavior and culture as much as social ...

Who Is Bunny Meyer, Is She Married & What Is Her Net Worth? Bunny Meyer is a YouTube celebrity who has amassed over 8.8 million subscribers with 1.5 million viewers on her channel. She is popularly known as Grav3yardgirl and is one of the highest-paid YouTubers in the world. She initially started out as a fashion designer and later chose the path of a YouTuber. Grav3yardgirl has used her knowledge on fashion, makeup, ...

Ninja  Inside The Life of The American YouTuber and Internet Personality Ninja is a talented video game player known for his mastery of Fortnite and other seemingly difficult games he plays with ease. The video gamer made a career out of what is ordinarily the hobby of many people and has since then amassed a huge online following. Find out about him here, including the controversies that ...

What Is Eva Gutowskis True Sexuality and How Did She Rise So Fast As an Influencer? Ever since Eva Gutowski joined YouTube in 2011, it has been an interesting journey for her, moving from one milestone to the other. Backed by an army of young women and teenage girl fans known as Evanators, she has risen to become one of the most-talked-about personalities in the digital stratosphere. She has also leveraged ...

Emma Chamberlain Biography  Age, Height & Net Worth Before now, people in the entertainment industry could only achieve popularity after many years of dedication and hard work but since social media came into the scene, massive success and overnight popularity became possible. That is the story of Emma Chamberlain who encountered fame as a fifteen-year-old. Emma is one of the many young people who became ...

Anna Akana  Ethnicity, Boyfriend & Net Worth There is a new crop of YouTubers known by their different contents with a very strong uniqueness that stands every one of them out, some upload video games, some fashion while some others have comedy video contents to showcase on their channels. Anna Akana has used her platform to showcase her comedy contents to the ...

Revealing Truths About Lilly Singhs Ethnic Background, Family and Her Relationship With Yousef Erakat Lilly Singh is an Indian-Canadian YouTube personality, actress, and comedian also known as Superwoman. She kicked off her YouTube career in 2010 with the launch of her channel IISuperwomanII and followed it up with a vlog channel in 2011. This paved the way for her fame and success which led to a world tour. The ...

Who Is Andrea Constand, Is She Married and What Is Her Connection With Bill Cosby? Many people got sexually molested but could not voice out due to the stigma victims suffer and what will become of them thereafter. Very few of the victims danm every consequence to seek justice and bring the perpetrator to the book, like Andrea Constand. She never got any media buzz, not until her friend cum molester; ...

Who Is Lazarbeam (Lannan Eacott)? Here Are Facts You Need To Know Lannan Eacott became a person of interest after his YouTube channel, LazarBeam pulled him to the limelight. Initially, he started with uploads of Madden Challenge videos before deciding to build his own channel in January 2015. Within the space of three years, his YouTube channel had gathered over 7 million loyal subscribers. Today, he has not ...

Puzzling Facts About Wengies YouTube Success and More About Her Fiance Among the many YouTubers who have succeeded in winning the hearts of millions of people is Wengie. She is a Chinese-Australian YouTube personality, vlogger, singer, and voice actress. Wengie is famous for a lot of things, from her simple life hacks, DIYs, craft ideas to fun experiments, tricks and pranks. Her content portfolio also includes hair tutorials, diet & fitness tips, lookbooks, ...

Is Jeffree Star A Billionaire and How Much Does He Make On YouTube? If looks can be deceptive then theres no other person who proves this maxim better than Jeffree Star. A quick look at Stars pictures would likely leave you wondering whether or not to tag him a male or female. But who says being controversial has to be a curse? For Star, his looks have caught ...

The Place of Rosanna Pansinos Career Hats In Her Rise To Fame and Facts About Her Personal Life There are a few phrases that could summarize Rosanna Pansinos rise to fame. None of them can do it better than the famous axiom, no knowledge is lost. Her popularity YouTube comes out of her foray into other professions, specifically acting. Although acting now occupies one of the major professional hats in Rosannas resume, it was ...

Muselk (Elliott Watkins) Biography  Age, Girlfriend and Net Worth The new and best in-thing in terms of career is video gaming and we have over time seen young men and women make massive income from an activity that was purportedly designed to serve as a hobby or a relaxation activity. One of such individuals is the Australian-born YouTube Celebrity and Twitch streamer, Muselk, whose ...

PopularMMOs Biography: 5 Interesting Facts You Need To Know We have over the years seen social media millionaires, especially on the YouTube social platform. These celebrities cum millionaires have made names for themselves after carving out niches on the internet, and a typical example of one of such exciting media personality on the YouTube is American Minecraft gamer and YouTube star, PopularMMOs whose channel ...

Jason Nash Once Married Marney Hochman  What To Know About His Ex-Wife and Kids The now-defunct video-sharing app Vine was the path that led Jason Nash to fame. With it, he built an audience of over two million followers, which he parlayed into a significant YouTube career. That move has seen him become one of the most popular personalities on the internet, with the cash income to go with ...

Where Does Dantdm Live? What Do We Know About His Net Worth, Wife and Brother? Most parents buy video games for their kids to occupy their time leisure, while other parents frown at their kids when they play video games. Despite the disparity, every parent would be proud of their child if he/she eventually turns a celebrity or millionaire through playing video games like Dantdm. Biography of Dantdm Dantdm was born Daniel ...

LaurDIY  Biography: 5 Facts You Need To Know About The YouTuber LaurDIY is the YouTube channel of Lauren Riihimaki which she created on December 1, 2011, when she was still a college undergrad with the sole aim of giving Do It Yourself (DIY) as well as practical fashion and beauty tips to her followers. She has used the channel to establish herself as a YouTube personality ...

Lachlan Ross Power  Bio And Family Life Of Australian The YouTube Star It is amazing the varied sources of income that the internet has made possible in this day and age. Internet fame can get its holder a whole lot of monetary and social benefits, but it must be noted that it does not come easy or cheap. For those who desire fame, content is the sacrifice ...

Alfie Deyes  Bio and Net Worth: Everything You Need To Know Alfie Deyes is one internet personality you definitely would like to know about. He boasts of over 10 million subscribers on three of his YouTube channels and has three bestseller books to his name. He is probably the most renowned young personality on YouTube today and his vlogging empire continues to grow by the day. ...

Colleen Ballingers Love Story With Husband Erik Stocklin and How Much She Is Worth Now Colleen Ballinger is an American comedian and YouTuber who is a very funny, adventurous, and highly talented woman. She is also an actress, singer, and writer. Collen is widely known for her work on YouTube where she posts content on her channel, Miranda Sings. The comedian has gained many subscribers over the years and has ...

Who Are The Dude Perfect Members and How Much Are They Worth? Entertainment in the 21st century can be digested in many forms and with platforms like YouTube, the creators and purveyors of entertainment have been democratized. Today, one of the most popular platforms to exhibit ones creative talents is YouTube, even though there are other platforms like Twitter, Facebook, who suffer in comparison to YouTube because ...

Who Is Rudy Mancuso, What Is His Earning Power and What Do We Know About His Girlfriend? Rudy Mancuso started his internet journey on Vine. He would later transition to YouTube where he solidified his place among the internets most beloved comedic creators. He is now regarded as one of the renowned internet personalities in the world, with a presence in mainstream TV and film projects like Comedy Centrals Drunk History and ...

Vsauce (Michael Stevens) Biography and Net Worth: All You Need To Know The advent of YouTube and the internet as a whole revolutionized how human beings consume information. With each passing year, the percentage of learning that is done in a traditional classroom decrease as a seismic shift to internet-based learning happens in our education industry. From open courses online to YouTube classes and videos, there are ...

How did Jake Paul Make His YouTube Big Break and Who is His Wife? One of the most interesting Social Media personalities of the 21st century is the young and popular Jake Paul whose elder brother is the famed Vine star, Logan Paul. Jake has utilized the power of the internet to bring himself to the limelight with a channel named JakePaulProductions that has amassed up to six billion ...

5 Facts You Need To Know About Reaction Time (Tal Fishman)  The American YouTuber Before 2015, the leading meaning of reaction time was the amount of time it takes to respond to a stimulus, until Tal Fishman started his channel, Reaction Time on YouTube and the dominant meaning changed. Today, a google search of Reaction Time would deliver Tal Fishmans videos and YouTube channel link with a few physics ...

Grace Helbig  Net Worth, Boyfriend and Family Life of The YouTuber Grace Helbig is an American internet personality, comedian, actress, and writer. She became popular due to her daily vlog series, DailyGrace, which ran on My Damn Channel from 2008 to 2013. Helbig is also popular for her own indie series on YouTube, ItsGrace, which she launched in 2014. Her vlogs which feature random stuff such as ...

Mark Wiens Bio  Ethnicity, Wife and Parents Food is a great way to connect with people. We all love to eat, if not for the pleasure of food, the satisfaction of quenching hunger, and the very process of providing and sharing that food is part of the strongest bonds that bind humanity together. Maybe it is our historical connection to food, where ...

Is Filthy Frank Dead, What Happened To Him and How Much Is He Worth? As George Kusunoki Miller, he was a nobody. However, as Filthy Frank, George was one of the most famous internet personalities on the planet. The Filthy Frank Show, a sketch series on his YouTube channel, TVFilthyFrank, was one of the platforms most influential creations. He is the reason a crazy dance song, Harlem Shake, made it ...

CaptainSparklez Bio  Net Worth, House and Cars of The Famous YouTuber Sometimes, what society wants from its citizens is quite different from what the citizens want for themselves. This is evident in the life and career of video blogger and American YouTube personality, Jordan Maron famous for his YouTube channel CaptainSparklez. He dropped out of school after discovering his talent in playing an online game called Minecraft. ...

Who is Simply Nailogical (Cristine Rotenberg)? Here are Facts You Must Know Canadian Youtube personality, Simply Nailogical (Cristine Rotenberg) originally started out polishing and designing nails even before it became a trendy culture in the social media. Simply Nailogica started out her showbiz career in her early days as a child actress, acting in commercials for game and toy companies. Aside from acting, she is blogger, vlogger, specializing ...

5 Interesting Facts You Need To Know About Huda Beauty In the world of entrepreneurship, it is interesting when an individual has a mentor who he/she looks up to, this yield more productivity on the part of the individual. The iconic and rich American beautician and makeup artist Huda Kattan nicknamed Heida is the founder of the Huda Beauty blog which is number one Instagram beauty blog ...

Is Dino MasterChef Gay? Details About His Ethnicity, Girlfriend, Where He Is Now Food, for the better part of the early years of human life, was nothing more than what we needed for survival. There was no artistry or curation to the method of cooking. The scarcity of food left no room for artistic expression until we figured out agriculture and we could make as much as we ...

Who Is Gabbie Hanna And How Did She Become Famous? As the world shifts to digital media and depends more and more on streaming services for its news and entertainment content, YouTubers have become one of the leading creators in the new media world. Their understanding of the online audience: how to create, maintain, and increase followers, are all handy skills that have primed them ...

Jacksepticeye  Height, Girlfriend & Net Worth Jacksepticeye is a YouTuber and actor who gained popularity with a series of gaming videos he uploads on his channel to the delight of millions of his subscribers. He is Known primarily for his comic video game series titled Lets Play and his vlogs. His channel was formerly ranked 46th in the list of most subscribed ...

Chris Heria Personal Details: About His Wife, Height & Ethnicity Background In this generation, keeping fit has become one of the major criteria for being hale and hearty. In fact, most occupations these days are majorly concerned with ones body mass, weight and looks. Unlike the past where most people have to register in a gym to keep fit, social media has made it quite easy ...

Everything You Need To Know About Game Grumps Gaming is becoming incredibly popular on YouTube these days with game vloggers make millions of dollars out of them yearly. One of the most popular up-coming gaming YouTube channels is Game Grumps. The Lets Play series was created in 2012 and celebrated its fifth anniversary on July 18th, 2017. In six years of its existence, the ...

Daithi De Nogla Biography, Girlfriend and Net Worth YouTube has created an avenue for many to make wealth and become famous from the comfort of their homes while having fun. Many have built a career out of the platform, uploading numerous videos that have earned them the admiration of viewers across the globe. For Daithi De Nogla, he is loved for his humorous commentary on ...

Does Phoebe Robinson Have A Boyfriend or Husband and What Do We Know About Her Family? Phoebe Robinson is a New York-based comedian, writer, and actress. She is best known as the co-creator and co-host of the WNYC Studios podcast 2 Dope Queens. Just like some other female comedians, she never had any original plans of becoming a stand-up comedian even though, according to her, she took a class on a whim at Carolines on Broadway. After ...

Who Are Lex and Alana from Listed Sisters? What Is Their Ethnicity & Is the Show Cancelled? America is a country built on diversity. Everywhere you look all over the country, a countless number of immigrants or children of immigrants have become an integral part of the fabric of the country. From entertainment to business, immigrants are creating a niche for themselves and climbing to the summit of their respective professions. One ...

Riveting Facts About Danielle Lombard And What She Is Best Known For The American entertainment industry is one that provides many avenues for aspiring hopefuls to express their talents and become famous. From films to television shows and game shows, there is no shortage of ways for men and women who desire fame to pursue and earn it in the United States of America. Another tested medium ...

Unearthing New Details About The YouTube Success And Personal Life of Alex Burriss of Wassabi Productions Wildly hilarious and truly audacious, Alex Wassabi is an American YouTuber who has become a very popular face on the video-sharing platform after having garnered millions of subscribers over the years by keeping people glued to his channel with his witty parody video releases. If you have always loved parody videos, there is every chance ...

Everything You Need To Know About H2O Delirious H2O Delirious whose full birth name is reported to be Jonathan Gormon Dennis has successfully kept himself mystified by hiding his face behind the masks leaving his loyal fans speculating who he really is for many years. The American YouTube star is easily identified by the Jason Mask Style with make-up which he wears on his ...

Who Is HolaSoyGerman and What Happened To Him? German Garmendia has certainly seen it all when it comes to internet success. His channels, HolaSoyGerman and JuegaGerman are in the top twenty most subscribed channel on YouTube. The Chilean YouTuber found a way to tap into one of the worlds greatest inventions and make a living from it. He has been able to build ...

Who Are Glenn Becks Family, What Is His Net Worth And What Happened To Him? The American political commentary space is filled with different personalities. A few of them, through their rhetoric, charisma, and resources have been able to build a large following of men and women who listen to them for insight and direction for various political and social issues in the United States. For Conservatives, the story is ...

Following Charissa Thompsons Rise Through The Ranks Of Sports Casting and All About Her Boyfriend Superstar TV host and sportscaster, Charissa Thompson, has been hailed as one of the highest-profile women journalists in America, and the reason is there for all to see. She has worked for popular establishments such as Versus, Yahoo! Sports, ESPN, GSN, and Big Ten Network. She currently hosts the popular pre-game show, Fox NFL Kickoff, ...

Is Chris Kattan Gay or Does He Have A Wife? What Is His Net Worth? Chris Kattan is a popular American comedian and actor. He has appeared in several comic movies and TV series such as The Middle, A Night at the Roxbury and Bunnicula. Kattan is, however, most popular for his six-year stint as a cast member of Saturday Night Live. During his time on the legendary show, he ...

Everything You Should Know About the Rise of Insta Star Claire Abbott and Why She Gave It All Up A lot of young Americans have shot into the limelight for uploading different kinds of videos on YouTube. Some of these young stars include Connor Franta, Desi Perkins, Emma Chamberlain, the Dolan Twins (Ethan and Grayson), and Claire Abbott. The latter became a social media celebrity for uploading sexy bikini pictures of herself on social media. Apart from ...

5 Facts You Need To Know About The YouTube Channel  h3h3Productions H3h3Productions is a YouTube channel that specializes on Comic responses or reactions of other contents or trendy stories. The celebrity couple that created the channel has over time racked up sizable views for their commentaries and contents. Even though they had their own fair share of copyright cases, thankfully they scored an unprecedented victory in all ...

Lilypichu Bio  Height, Brother and Love Story With Albert SleightlyMusical Chang Like most popular internet celebrities, Lilypichu is one of those Twitch streamers who spend their lives on camera. From daydreaming about the possibility of becoming a full-time professional streamer, she grew to live out her dreams on the popular live streaming platform where people play games, make crafts, and showcase their day-to-day activities. Given the rise of ...

KSI  What To Know About His Girlfriend, Brother  Deji Olatunji & Net Worth Assuredly, when Internet inventors Vint Cerf and Bob Khan created the technological masterpiece, they probably did not know how massive the creation will be harnessed by many for different purposes including as a platform for earning money through content creation. One of such person who smiles to the bank regularly today for spending time creating ...

The Interesting Progression and Highlights of Carrie Keagans Career as a Host and Actress Carrie Keagan has garnered huge fame through her various stints on television. She is not just your regular TV host but one with a difference. Keagan has hosted several high profile events and TV shows, including VH1s Big Morning Buzz Live and Fox News Channels Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld. However, not many know she ...

The Gist On Elise Jordans Marriages And Her Rise To Prominence Political commentaries tend to be boring when it is handled by someone who does not have a knack for it. However, when you see the likes of Elise Jordan run the same commentary, you will have a lot of reasons to look forward to watching her again as the journalist is well-versed in the field ...

What Is Timmy Thick Best Known For and How Successful Is The Star? Thanks to the internet, many people whose talents would have ordinarily gone unnoticed have become famous. A very good example of this modern-day internet celebrity is Timmy Thick, an American social media star. He became popular on Instagram due to his penchant for posting raunchy pictures of himself. He also often posted videos of himself ...

What Does Heather Storm Do For a Living and Who Is She Dating? Reality Television is a great way to make a name for oneself as well as amass a fortune. Heather Storm can attest to this as she is one of those who have made a name and earned a lot from reality TV. She made her name appearing on shows like Car Fanatics, Awesome Autos, and, ...

Matt Carriker Biography  Net Worth, Wife & Height Unlike your regular veterinary doctor next door, Matt Carriker chose to spice up his noble profession with the unusual. Though he is known to many as a medical practitioner, Carriker is better renowned as a YouTube star and an animal lover. Having recorded huge successes on his various YouTube channels, the vet doctors name and ...

Jillian Mele of Fox News Career Achievements, Husband & Measurements There are quite a good number of presenters on radio and television who listeners and viewers may never wish to miss any of their shows because of their sensational golden voice, beauty or the special way or artistry they anchor their shows. Jillian Mele is one of such. She has been at the top of ...

Who is Gillian Turner of Fox News? Her Fiance or Husband and Net Worth Gillian Turner is well-known as a news correspondent for Fox News Channel but before she became a TV personality, she built an intimidating resume working for different institutions, including the American government. She served in different capacities at the White House National Security Council during the administration of former US Presidents  George W. Bush and Barack Obama. ...

Gloria Govan Bio  Age, Ethnicity & Height Even as Gloria Govan is famous as an American actress, author, a TV host, and reality television star, shes more popular as the wife of the former NBA player, Matt Barnes. She became known after appearing on the Florida version of the reality television series, Basketball Wives and later, Basketball Wives: LA  after Matt was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers. Sadly, ...

Michael Fishmans Interesting Start as an Actor and Why He Divorced His Wife of Many Years When one door closes, another one opens. As silly as that axiom may seem, it is the story of the resurgence of Michael Fishman, who plays D.J Conner on the popular show, Roseanne. Having played the character for several years as a child actor into his teenage years; when the show originally ended, Michael did ...

Who Is October Gonzalez  Tony Gonzalezs Wife? All You Need To Know October Gonzalez is a popular American TV host and media personality. Additionally, she is also a model. Gonzalez has hosted several TV shows such as Beat Shazam, Entertainment Tonight, and Rachel Ray. She has also featured in several reality TV shows. Gonzalezs fame is not just due to her profession but also because of her ...

Who Is Tony Berlin  Harris Faulkners Husband: His Children and Family Facts Tony Berlin is a popular American media guru. He has variously worked as a reporter, anchor, and producer for some of the biggest TV networks in America. They include CNN, CBS, NBC, and ABC (where he hosted the popular Good Morning America). Berlin has now diversified into public relations and owns his own PR firm. ...

The Progression of Gianna Tobonis Journalism Career and Details About Her Marriage to Kyle Buckley Gianna Toboni may not be your ideal newscaster but her unusual reporting is what made her a household name. The American journalist is renowned for her hard-hitting and authentic reportage. A motivator and activist for total press freedom, Gianna loves to explore pervasive cultural issues. Not only does this unique and ambitious journalist call for all ...

Dog The Bounty Hunters Family Including Details of His Late Wife and Kids Popularly known as Dog, a name which he got from the television series, Dog The Bounty Hunter, Duane Chapman, an American bounty hunter, and one-time bail bondsman, went from being convicted for a felony to being a reality TV star. He was brought to the limelight following the capture of the convicted criminal, Andrew Luster in 2003 and this eventually made ...

Vicky Karayiannis, Chris Cornells Wifes Bio, Children and Family The world of showbiz is made up of different people who serve different roles, and function in a variety of capacities, and one of the most important people are those in the background. Publicists are undoubtedly one of these background people yet they are vital to the life and fame of most of our favorite ...

Joe Rogan Has A Step-Daughter and 2 Other Kids With Wife Jessica Ditzel  Meet His Family Joe Rogan is a popular American stand-up comedian and TV host. His journey to stardom began in the late 80s and has seen him host several shows, the most popular is the game show titled Fear Factor. The exciting show dares contestants to face some of their greatest fears and embark on challenging stunts. The ...

Josh Gates and Wife Hallie Gnatovich Have 2 Kids But Who Has the Higher Net Worth? Best known for his explorations and adventures, Josh Gates, is a television presenter with a voracious appetite for seeing the world and the beauties in it. Some of that beauty, however, is in his home, in the form of two children he shares with his wife, Hallie Gnatovich. Not excluded is their marriage which has lasted ...

Holly Sonders Wiki, Plastic Surgery & Why She Divorced Her Husband  Erik Kuselias After trying everything within her capacity to have a low key wedding, Holly Sonders was drawn to the public because of her husbands controversy at his workplace. Well, the two are rumored to be divorced but the article below will give more light on how true these rumors are. Meanwhile, Holly Sonders is yet to ...

Nadeska Alexis Bio  Age, Boyfriend & Net Worth Journalism is one diverse profession that allows the practitioners to choose their area of specialty, build a career on it by reporting the truth and facts which in the long run will distinguish them as deserving commendation and recognition among their peers. Some choose to specialize in political journalism, while to others it is sports ...

Media Platforms Charlamagne Tha God Has Explored and All The Controversies He Has Courted Charlamagne Tha God is an American on-air personality, radio presenter, and more recently, author. He is popularly known as a co-host on New York radios nationally syndicated show, The Breakfast Club, a program he has been hosting alongside DJ Envy and Angela Yee since 2010. However, his early years had no connection to his current career ...

A Look At Jimmy Fallons Net Worth and Family Including His Wife & Kids Sometimes, a childs passion for something is a pointer to what he/she would become in the future. As a child, Jimmy Fallon was literally obsessed with watching the late-night comedy program, Saturday Night Live (SNL). Then, his parents would tape the clean parts for him to watch and later, he and his sister would re-enact sketches from the ...

Kay Adams Biography  Does The Sportscaster Have A Husband or Boyfriend? When you hear the phrase sports enthusiast, women are hardly the first group that comes to mind. Well, thats changing pretty fast. Especially with the rise of female sports analysts and broadcasters like Kay Adams who is famed for knowing more about sports than most men do. And why not, shes paid handsomely for it ...

Ben Shapiros Family  Meet His Wife, Kids and Sister Who is Popular for the Wrong Reasons A multi-talented man, Ben Shapiro is a man of controversial nature, an attribute that has made him an unusual public figure. An intellectual whose career path was clearly defined even before he became a man, the Jewish conservative commentator has always had his way with words. He became popular by sharing his critical and often ...

QVC Shawn Killinger Bio  Husband, Net Worth & Facts To Know Shawn Killinger is a prominent TV personality who has worked her way to the top. Though not initially a journalist by training, she defied the odds and today has established herself as a household name, as well as, worked alongside some industry legends. More than just being a reporter, newscaster, and anchor, heres all you ...

Liv Lo  Dissecting the Ethnicity, Parents and Personal Life of Henry Goldings Wife While many are aware that Liv Lo is the better half to Crazy Rich Asians star Henry Golding, only a few understand why his beautiful wife appears increasingly endearing to fans. A former model turned TV personality, and fitness star, Liv has an impressive resume which when combined with that of her statuesque spouse is considered a perfect ...

Stpeach Age, Husband and Other Facts About The Twitch Streamer Lisa Vannatta, famously known by her online alias, STPeach is a Canadian video game streamer cum vlogger who has garnered fame through her appearances on different video-sharing/social networking platforms such as Youtube, Instagram, Twitch, Reddit, and Twitter. The beautiful lady got her career to a start in August 2015 when she joined the live streaming video platform, Twitch. She rose to ...

Insights into Seth Meyers Wife, Family and What His Net Worth Is Celebrities are mostly remembered and known for the work they do. For Seth Meyers, his career as a comedian, writer, actor, TV host, and producer is his biggest identifier. He was on Saturday Night Live SNL show as a head writer and cast member for more than ten years during which he built a reputation ...

Who Is Jessica Gadsden  Age, Net Worth & All About Charlamagne tha Gods Wife Jessica Gadsden is an American fitness coach as well as a personal trainer. She is better known as the spouse of popular American media personality, Charlamagne Tha God. Charlamange Tha God is a well-known TV and radio personality in the U.S. He has featured in several shows (both on the radio and TV) and is ...

Who Is Collins Tuohy  Michael Ohers sister ? Her Wedding, Husband & Net Worth Collins Tuohy is an American entrepreneur, philanthropist, blogger, and social media personality. She is also better known as the adoptive sister of NFL player, Michael Oher, whose life story inspired the Hollywood blockbuster The Blind Side. The Blind Side tells the true life story of Oher who grew up in an impoverished background consisting of a ...

Eye-Popping Facts About The Personal Life And Career Success Of Sportscaster Heidi Watney Heidi Watney is a media personality who has created a niche for herself as a sportscaster. Starting out as a radio presenter, the brilliant young lady has gone on to work for several prominent sports networks, and currently, she is with the MLB. The sportscaster is also known to have been an avid sports lady right ...

Marty Lagina Bio  Siblings (Martina and Rick Lagina), Net Worth and Wife Marty Lagina is an American engineer and businessman who has risen to fame as a reality TV star. This is thanks to his involvement in the adventure TV series, The Curse of Oak Island. The Curse of Oak Island is a long-running TV series which airs on the history channel. The show aims to solve ...

Is Jordan Schlansky Just A Character or a Real Life Person and What Does He Do? The world of late-night television is an interesting one. Shows during that time are geared towards giving viewers comedic relief from a long day at work through interviews and comedy sketches. The often charismatic host of this show requires the balancing talent of a producer whose primary job is to deliver great episodes. It is ...

Heres How Wealthy Jimmy Kimmel Is From All The Phases of His Career, Marriages and Sons Health Jimmy Kimmel is a renowned late-night talk show host known for his charm, wit, and the A-list guests he features on his show. As the host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! On ABC, Jimmy has been serving comedy to television viewers for years which played a pivotal role in launching him into mainstream fame and enabled ...

Natasha Bertrand Biography  Is She Married? Who Is the Husband & What Is Her Age? Natasha Bertrand is not just a young prominent journalist but a first-rate investigative reporter. With her natural beauty and smile, Natashas sharp, insightful political commentary also makes her a thorough reporter. Her sound political perspective and coverage in the country have made her a force to be reckoned with in the profession. Renowned for her ...

What Happened to Shane Kilcher? His Injury Update, Net Worth and More Shane Kilcher is well-known thanks to the Discovery Channel series Alaska: The Last Frontier. It is a show that documents the daily lives of the extended Kilcher family, people who live without plumbing or modern heating. The episodes follow their routines as they rely on hunting and farming for their nutritional needs as well as ...

Is Stephanie Gosk Gay or Lesbian, Who is the Wife or Partner  Jenna Wolfe? In August 2013, NBCs Today viewers were greeted with two shocking news. Today weekend anchor, Jenna Wolfe, announced that she was as a lesbian, introducing her partner as NBC News correspondent Stephanie Gosk, and said the two are expecting their first child. A long time has passed since then and certainly, a lot of things ...

Nikki Mudarris  Bio and Net Worth: 5 Interesting Facts You Need to Know Nikki Mudarris, also known as Miss Nikki Baby, is a reality television star, model and fashionista. Shes best known for VH1s reality TV series Love & Hip-Hop: Hollywood. Her entrepreneurial skills enable her to create and run a successful lingerie line Nude by Nikki. Not only that, but Nikki has also successfully run the Las ...

5 Interesting Things You Need To Know About Kelly Nash Ever heard of the lady who gained national prominence for taking a selfie with a dangerous ball just a few inches away from hitting her? Its no other person than Kelly Nash, an American sports broadcaster currently working as host of The Rundown show which airs on MLB Network every weekday at 2 pm ET. ...

Understanding The Height of Fame John Oliver Achieved With The Daily Show and How He Met His Wife Without knowledge of who he is and his exemplary career, John Oliver cuts an unassuming figure of a regular man but he is one of the most influential personalities in America, especially on television. Since he began his career in 1998, he has been a loud and unapologetic agent of change, using his wit and ...

Why Did Big Chief Leave Street Outlaws, Where Is He Now And Why Did He Divorce His Wife? Justin Shearer, otherwise known by his professional name Big Chief is a famous street racer and television personality. He is famously known for being one of the main characters on the racing reality television series, Street Outlaws. Justin, who had been a significant part of the show since its premiere in 2013, appeared in a ...

Who is Josina Anderson of ESPN? Her Husband and Family Facts There has been a gradual paradigm shift in the world of sports which has today produced the likes of Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, and other female athletes that are pulling great feats in different sporting fields. Their achievements have also been followed by the emergence of female sports journalists such as Jillian Mele, Eboni Williams, ...

Is Brittany Wagner Married, Who Is The Husband, How Old Is She? Brittany Wagner has been an inspiration to a lot of sports youngster. She has won the hearts of many athletic students with her role as a life coach and an academic counselor. She is well groomed in her career and has worked over a decade for The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and The National ...

Tati Westbrook Bio  Age, Husband & Net Worth With five videos dished out every week, alongside running her own brand, beauty guru, and YouTube superstar Tati Westbrook has proved to the world that theres utterly no impossibility or limit to whatever one is passionate about. Tati is best known for being the owner and manager of the worlds most-viewed beauty and lifestyle YouTube channel, ...

Cathy Areus Long Road to Becoming a Freelance Journalist and What to Know About Her Kids An American freelance journalist, news analyst, and author, Cathy Areu has built a lasting reputation for herself on cable television. Popular for her skillful and sassy presentation of professional views on varying topics including cultural and feminist issues, Cathy is an inspiration to many women across the globe. In addition to being a journalist, she ...

Tucker Carlsons Love Story With Wife Susan Andrews, their Children and Net Worth Today On the TV screens, Tucker Carlson is that fiery fellow who passionately dishes out his conservative and often controversial views on issues of national importance. Such brazenness has fetched him many enemies, especially on the left-wing, but it has also helped him cement a reputation as one of the foremost broadcast journalists in America. His ...

Paige Wyatts Net Worth, Boyfriend and Where She Is Now Paige Wyatt became popular after the Wyatt family began running the reality television show, American Guns. The Wyatt family comprises Rich Wyatt (father), Renee Wyatt (mother), Paige and Kurt Wyatt (children). Rich Wyatt originally ran a gun shop, the Gunsmoke Guns in Wheat Ridge, Colorado which is outside of Denver. The business which he ran together ...

The Progression of Howard Sterns Career As A Media Personality And Why He Divorced His First Wife Howard Stern is a legendary American radio host, who has also done some notable work as an actor, producer, author, as well as photographer. The radio personality achieved worldwide fame as a result of his self-titled radio program, The Howard Stern Show. As a professional radio personality, he has worked in different radio stations. Since 2006, ...

Lisa Joyners Biography  Ethnicity, Net Worth and Other Key Facts Lisa Joyner is an American Journalist, TV talk show host, and actress. Some of her well-known works are her correspondences for the Los Angeles based TV KCBS, inFANity show, Find My Family Show including her film and television appearances in Brimstone, American Sweetheart, The Bold and The Beautiful among others. Lisas passion for reconnecting people with their biological families ...

Amanda Balionis Rise Through the Ranks of Sportscasting and the Identity of Her Boyfriend Amanda Balionis is an American sportscaster currently working as a golf broadcaster for CBS Sports. Among so many of her works in the field of sports reporting, Amandas PGA Tour coverage seems to be the most popular so far. She covered the Super Bowl working with CBS Sports social media team in Atlanta, where she ...

Dissecting Charles Paynes Sexual Allegations, Its After Effects and More About His Wife Charles Payne had a respectable career as an analyst on Wall Street before he made the transition to television and became a contributor and later a host on Fox. In that time, his expertise has come under scrutiny, and he has been at the center of at least one major controversy. The major controversy in question ...

Erik Asla And Tryra Banks Split: Everything You Need To Know Tyra Banks and Erik Asla have called it quits! The couple, who began dating in 2013 and have a son named York Banks Asla, has decided to end what everybody taught was the perfect relationship. Neither person has come out to give a reason for the breakup, but what is obvious right now is that ...

What to Note About Dr Terry Dubrows Qualifications, TV Works and Marriage to Heather Kent In the realm of people that we expect to see regularly on our screens, medical doctors are closer to the bottom of the list. Aside from the fact that their work has little correlation with TV, they are presumably too busy to pursue life as TV personalities. Yet, a few of them have usurped this ...

Jessica Goch  Bio: 5 Things You Didnt Know About Ninjas Wife Jessica Goch is the Schofield-born American Social Media Influencer who has worked as a model but is now better known as a host and interviewer of prominent Electronic sports celebrities at popular gaming events/tournaments. The screen queen also serves as the manager of her famous husband Ninja aka Tyler Blevins whose exploits on Twitch and Fortnite has ...

CNNs Chris Cuomo Biography  Wife, Family & Net worth Chris Cuomo needs no elaborate introduction as he has starred graced many prominent Television cable networks and his voice has been heard through acknowledged radio shows. He is a television journalist and Lawyer who has previously worked for ABC News as Chief law and justice correspondent as well as a co-anchor on 20/20. If you still ...

Neil deGrasse Tyson  Family, Religion & Net Worth Neil deGrasse Tyson is a distinguished American astrophysicist and author who has been able to achieve so much after falling in love with astronomy at the age of 9. He has since attended and become an alumnus of prestigious universities such as Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia, and also recorded numerous achievements in his field of ...

Is Simon Cowell Gay? Does He Have A Wife or Girlfriend and Why is He Famous? Simon Cowell is a well-known talent show judge, TV producer, entrepreneur and one of the most popular TV personalities that Britain has ever produced. In conjunction with his company, Syco, Cowell is the brain behind hugely successful talent hunt shows such as The X-Factor UK, The X-Factor US, Britains Got Talent, Americas Got Talent and ...

Everything To Know About Joanna Gaines Life With Chip Gaines, Their Business Pursuits and Kids Joanna Gaines and her husband Chip Gaines became celebrities after their television show Fixer Upper began airing back in 2013. The show which was about home renovation and decoration ran for about 6 seasons with a total of 79 episodes before the couple bade farewell to it in April 2018. Apart from their appearances on ...

Who Is Larry The Cable Guy? What To Know About His Wife And Net Worth Larry the Cable Guy is a self-professed country kid renowned for his trademark Southern accent and sensational catchphrase Git-R-Done! The famous comedian who talks about anything under the sun has gone on to become one of the most memorable characters in comedy history. Join us in unearthing lesser-known facts about the former on-air-personality, standup comedy superstar, movie ...

Who Is Patrick Starr, What Is His Net Worth and Gender? The make-up industry over the years has grown to become a billion dollar industry not just because there are probably more women wearing make-up but because a whole lot of men, especially the young ones, have become bold enough to wear it unlike before. A few of these men, like Patrick Starr, have even gone ...

How Did Chris Jansing Become a Senior Correspondent at MSNBC and Who Is Her Husband? An award-winning American television news reporter and journalist, Chris Jansing has succeeded in carving a spectacular niche for herself in the field of TV journalism. Outstanding for not just her excellence in journalism, Chris is also cherished for her incredibly gorgeous looks post 60! For close to four decades, Jansing has continued to soar in her ...

Jaclyn Glenn Biography  Age, Height & Ex-Boyfriend American Youtuber, Jaclyn Glenn, rose to prominence through her self-titled YouTube channel Jaclyn Glenn. She has remained an acclaimed atheist and continues to air her views on hot issues from politics, religion, animal rights, to atheism. During the heated 2016 US Presidential elections, Glenn featured in Hump Trump: Official Donald Trump Song. Her parallel acting career ...

Is Pat Sajak Married to a Wife or is He Gay With a Partner? Pat Sajak is one of the most popular TV game show hosts in America. He commenced his career as a radio disk jockey as well as a TV weatherman before being tapped to host Wheel of Fortune, the longest-running syndicated game show in the United States. Sajak has hosted the popular game show from 1983 ...

Nayyera Haqs Bio  What To Know About Her Husband, Parents And Family Nayyera Haq can take anyone on political debates as well as discussions on social issues affecting many. Her ability to masterfully deliver her stance on every issue or political debate has made her a regular face in morning and evening news media platforms. This is not a common feat especially for someone from her kind ...

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The Daily News-Miner encourages residents to make themselves heard through the Opinion pages. Readers' letters and columns also appear online at newsminer.com. Contact the editor with questions at letters@newsminer.com or call 459-7574.
New York:

The US is mindful of a potential al Qaeda threat that looms over November 8 general elections, the White House has said amid reports that the terrorist outfit was planning an attack in America.

"We're particularly mindful of the kinds of risks facing the United States around significant events. Sometimes it's holidays, like the holidays at the end of the year, or the Fourth of July," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told while flying with the US President Barack Obama tothis city in North Carolina on Friday.

"Sometimes that's around specific events of national significance. So we're certainly mindful of the potential ofincreased risks around a national event like Election Day. "Even as we're mindful of those risks, the President's national security team and certainly our Homeland Security Department is taking the necessary steps to protect theAmerican people and mitigate any changes to the threat picture," Earnest said.

He said he had seen reports about of al Qaeda threats. "I can't comment specifically on them. I don't have a new intelligence assessment to offer from here," he said. "What I can tell you is that the President and hisnational security team are vigilant about all threats that arefacing the US," he said. Earnest said Obama was being updated every day on therisks that are facing the the US.

"The President's national security team adopts a posture of ensuring that we're adapting to the latest threat picture,"he said.

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Mosul :

Iraqi special force delved deeper into Mosul's urban center, unleashing the most intense street battles against Islamic. State militants since the offensive began nearly three weeks ago.

Smoke rose across eastern neighborhoods of Iraq's second-largest city as heavy fighting continued after sundown, with explosions and machine gun fire echoing in the streets as mosques called for evening prayer. More than 3,000 Iraqi troops took part in the assault

under heavy US-led coalition air support, but the pace of the fight also slowed as Iraqi forces moved from fighting in more rural areas with few civilians to the tight, narrow streets of Mosul proper.



Sniper fire repeatedly stalled the advance, as commanders called in airstrikes or artillery support after coming under fire. As the operation got underway, columns of armored vehicles wound through the desert, pushing through dirt berms and drawing heavy fire as they closed in on the middle-class Tahrir and Zahara districts. The area was once named after former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Seven suicide attackers in explosives-laden vehicles barreled toward the troops, with two getting through and detonating their charges, Ltd. informed Col. Muhanad al-Timimi.

Others were destroyed, including a bulldozer that was hit by an airstrike from the US-led coalition supporting the offensive. At least seven special forces troops were killed and an officer and three soldiers were wounded, said an Iraqi military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to brief reporters.

"The operation is going well, but it's slow. These kinds of advances are always slow," said Iraqi special forces Capt. Malik Hameed, as IS fighters could be seen running in the distance to reposition themselves. "If we tried to go any faster we would take even more injuries."

An Iraqi television journalist traveling in a Humvee was wounded in one of the suicide car bomb attacks. Earlier, at the eastern approach to the city's urban center, militants holed up in a building fired a rocket at an Iraqi Abrams tank, disabling it and sending its crew fleeing

from the smoking vehicle. The advance in that area then stalled.

The push began as dawn broke with artillery and mortar strikes on the Aden, Tahrir, and Quds districts, just west of the special forces' footholds in the Gogjali and Karama neighborhoods, al-Timimi said.

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New York:

New Yorks state bank regulator fined the giant Agricultural Bank of China USD 215 million on Saturday for citing a deliberate failure to scrutinize dubious money transfers.

The bank has violated anti-money laundering laws and obscuring suspicious transactions involving Russia, China, Afghanistan and other countries.

Citing a deliberate failure to scrutinize dubious money transfers, the Department of Financial Services said the bank, the third-largest in the world, created a substantial risk that terrorist groups, sanctions-barred countries and criminals could have passed funds through the bank.

The bank had also silenced a whistleblower who attempted to carry out internal investigations, according to the DFS.

The move by the powerful New York regulator followed a September action by the Federal Reserve, which ordered AgBank to improve internal controls against money laundering.

Natasha Taft, a former staffer, settled a lawsuit against the bank that month after claiming she had been forced out of her job after reporting potential violations to the Fed.

DFS also said today that bank staff had taken deliberate steps to hide US dollar transactions passing through its New York branch that could have been tied to violations of trade sanctions and anti-money laundering laws.

Bank examiners found the bank had used evasive transaction methods, including masking the true identity of parties to transactions using SWIFT, the global network which enables financial transfers.

According to the DFS, examiners identified unusually large round-dollar transactions between Chinese companies and counterparties in Russia and Yemen, dollar payments between a customer of Turkish Bank and a client at Afghan Bank whom the US Treasury had linked to financial network used to fund drug trafficking.

Certain invoices involving China and Russia appeared to be counterfeit or falsified, while other documents suggested US-dollar trades with Iranian counterpartiesincluding documentation indicating dollar transactions were made for a sanctioned counterparty, the DFS said.

The bank also deliberately ignored warnings from the agency to improve its internal compliance measures as the volume of international transactions increased beginning in 2013, the DFS said.

DFS will take swift and appropriate action when our investigation finds egregious conduct and intentional circumvention of a regulated banks compliance program, Financial Services Superintendent Maria Vullo said in a statement.

In addition to paying the penalty, the bank agreed to take immediate steps to improve its legal compliance, including hiring an outside monitor.

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New Delhi:

India and Bangladesh are committed to root out terrorism, no matter from where it originates, and address other concerns like human trafficking and fake currency, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said on Saturday.

He made the remarks during a meeting with a Bangladesh delegation led by Minister of Disaster Management and Relief Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya who voiced Dhaka's concern over terror attacks in Pathankot and Uri.

In an apparent reference to Pakistan, Singh said India and Bangladesh have no difference of opinion on where from terrorism originates and how to eradicate it from the South Asian region, an official release said.

Thanking Bangladesh for its crackdown on Indian insurgent groups operating from its soil, Singh said both countries also have an understanding on addressing various issues of concern including human trafficking and fake currency.

Chowdhury Maya sought India's help in weather forecasting and real-time sharing of satellite imagery and remote sensing data so that the risks of disasters such as floods and cyclone can be minimized.

He also sought training for Bangladesh personnel in earthquake Rescue Operations.

The Home Minister assured India's all help and sharing of all weather inputs besides extending training facilities to Bangladesh disaster response forces at the Gujarat Institute of Disaster Management and other premier institutions.

A Bangladesh government statement said the Home Minister conveyed his appreciation for Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for strongly pursuing a policy of 'zero tolerance' towards terrorism.

India, he said, was thankful to Dhaka's firm determination not to allow its land for use by terrorists and militants, the release said.

The statement said India and Bangladesh also agreed to bolster cooperation in disaster management through sharing of each other's experience in advanced warning, evacuation, rescue and relief operation.

Chowdhury Maya is leading Bangladesh delegation to the Asian Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction being held in New Delhi.

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Patna:

A legal adviser of a private finance company was shot dead by an unidentified miscreants at Rambhadra locality in Vaishali district of Bihar on Saturday.

Superintendent of Police Rakesh Kumar said the incident occurred late last night when one Pankaj Kumar, a legal adviser with Kotak Mahindra Finance Company, was returning to his residence in Hajipur after completing his duty in Patna.

The deceased was the resident of Baghmali colony which is adjacent to Rambhadra locality under town olice station.

He was employed with the finance companys office in Patna, the SP said.

The reason behind the killing is still unknown, the SP said, adding that police is investigating the matter from all angles.

On the basis of the statements of the deceaseds family, the process of lodging an FIR is currently underway, he said.

The body would be handed over to the deceaseds family after the post-mortem, the SP said.

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Lahore:

Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief and Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed has criticised the Nawaz Sharif government for giving a cool response to India over alleged atrocities in Kashmir, saying people in the Valley need Pakistans full practical support.

The Pakistani governments response to India over atrocities in Kashmir is cool and by doing so it is not pleading the case of oppressed Kashmiris, Saeed said, delivering Friday sermon at JuD headquarters Masjid-e-Qadsia.

ALSO READ: (26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed finds easy villain in India for Pak's political turmoil)

He said there is no value of one or two statements in favour of Kashmiris by the Prime Minister and other members of his government rather they need full practical support.

ALSO READ: (Pakistani lawmaker demands action against 2008 Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed)

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New Delhi:

India and China have agreed to maintain the pace of their high-level exchanges in counter-terrorism and other fields after friendly and open discussions between their National Security Advisors.

NSA Ajit Doval and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi, State Councillor, concluded their discussions in Hyderabad yesterday in a friendly, open and cordial environment, it was officially stated here on Saturday.

ALSO READ: (India-China relationship under stress, 1988 arrangement done by Rajiv Gandhi no longer 'effective tool': Former NSA Menon)

Ministry of External Affairs said their discussions covered a wide agenda spanning bilateral, regional and international issues of mutual interest. It was Yangs third visit to India in the last two months.

The two sides agreed to maintain the pace of high-level exchanges in political, economic, defence and counter-terrorism fields.

They also agreed that the forthcoming high-level engagement in counter-terrorism is yet another manifestation of growing convergence of views of two countries on this pressing challenge facing international community, it said.

ALSO READ: (China ready for talks on India's entry into NSG but opposed to UN ban on JeM chief Masood Azhar)

However, there was no official confirmation on whether the two sides discussed contentious issues such as China blocking Indians entry into Nuclear Suppliers Group as also stopping Indian efforts to get JeM chief and Pathankot mastermind Masood Azhar getting banned by the UN.

NSA Doval and State Councillor Yang, who are also the Special Representatives on the Boundary Question of India and China respectively, agreed to hold the 20th Round of Special Representatives Talks on the Boundary Question in India next year.

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New Delhi:

IRF Educational Trust, promoted by controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, has been put under prior permission category, thus preventing it from receiving foreign funds without getting nod from the central government.

In a gazette notification, the Home Ministry said that on the basis of records available and reports received from intelligence agencies, it found that the IRF Education Trust has violated various provisions of the Foreign Contribution Regulations Act (FCRA) 2010.

ALSO READ: (Islamic preacher Zakir Naik's NGO to be barred from foreign funding)

Now, therefore, the central government in exercise of powers conferred by sub-section (3) of section 11 of the FCRA 2010, hereby specifies that the IRF Education Trust shall obtain prior permission of the central government on each occasion before accepting any foreign contribution in accordance with the provisions of section 12 of the Act and rules made thereunder, the notification said.

The move came after different investigations found Naik to be involved in utilising funds meant for his NGOs for alleged radicalisation of youths and inspiring them into terror activities, official sources said.

Government is also in the process of cancellation of the FCRA registration of Islamic Research Foundation, another NGO promoted Zakir Naik, and a final show cause notice to the organisation has already been issued.

Interestingly, the IRFs registration under the FCRA was renewed in September inadvertently despite multiple probes against Naik, leading to suspension of a Joint Secretary and four other officials in the Home Ministry.

Government is also planning to declare IRF as an unlawful association under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and a nod from the Union Cabinet is awaited for it.

ALSO READ: (Zakir Naiks NGO Islamic Research Foundation to be banned under anti-terror law)

According to a draft note, which is based on the inputs from Maharashtra Police, Naik, who heads the IRF and IRF Educational Trust, has allegedly made many provocative speeches and engaged in terror propaganda.

Maharashtra Police has also registered criminal cases against Naik for his alleged involvement in radicalisation of youths and luring them into terror activities, a source said.

Naik also transferred IRFs foreign funds to Peace TV for making objectionable programmes. Most of the programmes, which were made in India, contained alleged hate speeches of Naik, who had reportedly urged all Muslims to be terrorists through Peace TV, sources have claimed.

Naik came under the scanner of the security agencies after Bangladeshi newspaper Daily Star reported that one of the perpetrators of the July 1 terror attack in Dhaka, Rohan Imtiaz, ran propaganda on Facebook last year quoting Naik.

The Islamic orator is banned in the UK and Canada for his hate speech aimed against other religions. He is among 16 banned Islamic scholars in Malaysia.

ALSO READ: (Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu asks if Zakir Naik is boss of Indian Muslims)

He had been popular in Bangladesh through his Peace TV, although his preachings often allegedly demean other religions and even other Muslim sects. The Mumbai-based preacher is currently abroad and has not returned to India ever since the controversy erupted.

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New Delhi:

Bollywood actor Aditya Pancholi has been sentenced to one year imprisonment in a 12-year-old assault case in Mumbai.

Citys Andheri court also slapped a fine of Rs 20,000 on the actor. The incident took place in 2005 in which Pancholi was accused of assaulting his neighbour over a parking dispute.



Speaking about the incident, Pancholi denied any wrongdong saying that the complainant used to live in his society as a tenant and he did not know about it.

The complainant had claimed that he had suffered fracture injuries, and had suffered a bleeding nose due to the assault.

Pancholi, on the other hand, says that the claim of the fractured limb and assault was an "afterthought as that was why the case was registered a day later."



Later, Pancholi's lawyers moved the court for bail.

Pancholi said, "It is very harsh sentence. It's not like I was found involved in a terrorist activity or some bomb blast. I will definitely appeal against the order. After being granted bail, Pancholi paid the bail amount of Rs 12,000 and tried to see to it that he could leave the court immediately.



This is not the first time the actor has landed in a controversy. He had been booked for assaulting another neighbour Bhargav Patel in 2013, while there is another case registered against him of assaulting pub bouncers in a drunken state in Juhu in 2015. The brawl that time had been over Pancholi's wanting the DJ to play his favourite Hindi track.

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Los Angeles:

California's Attorney General, Kamala Harris is poised to become the first Indian- American Senator in the US Congress as latest polls have placed her "far ahead" of her rival days before the November 8 general elections.

Harris, 51, has already got the backing of US President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to be the state's next Senator, brightening her chances to become the first from the community ever to be a member of the Upper House.

She heads into the US Senate election with a considerable lead over fellow Democrat Loretta Sanchez, whose plan to coalesce Republicans and Latinos behind her has not materialised, according to a new poll.

Harris is far ahead of Sanchez for US Senate, The Sacramento Bee reported yesterday.Harris is leading Sanchez, a 10-term congresswoman from Orange, 47 to 23 per cent, among likely voters.

Some 17 per cent remain undecided, and another 13 per cent volunteered that they plan to sit out the contest between two members of the same party. Among those who have already voted, 55 per cent chose Harris, 26 per cent backed Sanchez and 14 per cent said neither, the report said.

While Sanchez has touted herself as the business-friendly choice for disaffected voters, about one-third of Republicans and 12 per cent of unaligned voters told pollsters they will not cast a ballot for either Sanchez or Harris, it said.

That means more Republicans are choosing not to vote at all than to support Sanchez (26 per cent). The survey, released four days before voters head to the polls, also found Republicans do not see much ideological difference between them, the report said.

Harris has never trailed since launching her bid in January 2015, with her share of the vote increasing seven percentage points since a May poll.

She continues to hold advantages in all major regions of the state, and with voters in all age ranges and educational backgrounds, it said.

Harris, who was born in Oakland, California, is the daughter of an Indian mother who emigrated from Chennai in 1960 and a Jamaican American father.

California Democrats have overwhelmingly endorsed Harris for US Senate, solidifying her front-runner status in the race to become California's next Senator.

Harris and Loretta Sanchez were vying for their party's seal of approval to replace Senator Barbara Boxer, who is retiring.

If she wins, Harris will make history by becoming the first ever US Senator of Indian-origin.

There have been several Indian-American Congressmen in the House of Representatives, including current member Ami Bera and retired member Dalip Singh Saund, both from California too.

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New Delhi:

A minor girl was allegedly gangraped by three-four men, including an acquaintance at a hotel in central Delhi's Paharganj area.

The incident happened on Friday when the minor was called by an acquaintance for a meeting to a hotel in Paharganj, police said.

When the victim reached there, the acquaintance was sitting with his other friends whom she didn't recognise, said a senior police officer.

They allegedly took turns to rape the minor after which they threatened her of dire consequences if she approached the police, he added.

The victim reached home and informed the incident to her family who then filed a complaint, police said. The medical examination of the girl confirmed sexual assault, the police officer said adding teams have been formed to nab the accused.
New Delhi:

Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain inspected Bhalswa landfill site on Saturday and said it was "one of the major contributor" of air pollution in the city due to frequent fires at the dumping site.

"This is a big cause of air pollution in Delhi as there are frequent cases of fire at several spots at the site. There is a need to address this problem," he told reporters.

The minister said the Delhi government and civic bodies are working out a plan to dispose the excess garbage and douse flames.

"MCD (Municipal Corporation of Delhi) has asked for 15 to 20 days to douse the fire," Jain said.

The government is also considering to use part of garbage for road construction and rest can be utilised in waste-to-energy plant, he said.

Watch: As smog engulfs Delhi-NCR, MCD schools to remain closed on Saturday, face masks out of stock

Located in north-west Delhi, Bhalswa landfill site is spread over 21 acres and was commissioned in 1994. It receives about 2,700 tonnes of garbage per day.

Delhi Congress leaders had in June met Lt Governor Najeeb Jung regarding pollution caused by the landfill site and urged him for its closure.

"Smouldering Bhalswa land fill has not only made the air in the area toxic and highly polluted, but the underground water in the area has also been contaminated," they had said.

'Emergency situation'

Earlier in the day, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal too met environment minister Anil Dave and sought Centres urgent intervention to deal with the challenge.

Kejriwal likened the city to a gas chamber with main reason being smoke from farm fires in Punjab and Haryana and appealed to people to minimise use of vehicles.

After the meeting, Dave said he has called a meeting of environment ministers of all neighbouring states on Monday and will request them to curb stubble burning in their states as it increases level of smog in Delhi.

There is an emergency situation in Delhi. The situation is bad, particularly for children, patients, women and elderly. We need to take immediate steps to deal with the situation, Dave told reporters, adding he was also exploring the possbility to call a meeting of chief ministers of all neighbouring states on the issue.

Read: Delhi's air quality oscillates between 'severe' and 'very poor' due to worst smog in 17 years
New Delhi:

As the election day of the US Presidential Election 2016 is inching closer, speculations have started doing round that who will be the next President of the United States of America?

Before the crucial November 8 affair, when the citizens of USA will select their leader for the next four years let us give you a brief idea how the first citizen of the nation is selected. Know how the President of America is nominated, selected in the party and finally becomes the candidate for the US Presidential election.

An election for President of the United States occurs every four years on Election Day which for 2016 election is supposed to take place on November 8. Generally the day remains Tuesday after the first Monday of the November month.

>>The election process kick starts with the primary elections and general meeting and proceeds to nominating conventions, during which each political party selects a nominee.

>>The nominee then announces a Vice Presidential running mate with him for the elections. The candidate then does campaigning across the country to communicate and explain their agenda and plans to voters and participate in debates with candidates from other parties.

>>During the penultimate Election Day, the citizens of America head to the polls to cast their vote for President. But the tally of those votesthe popular votedoes not determine the winner. Instead, Presidential elections use the Electoral College.

>>To win the election, a candidate must receive a majority of electoral votes. In the event no candidate receives the majority, the House of Representatives chooses the President and the Senate chooses the Vice President.

The US Presidential election process follows the following routine cycle:

# Spring of the year before an election  Candidates announce their intentions to run.

# Summer of the year before an election through spring of the election year  Primary and caucus (a meeting of the members of a legislative body who are members of a particular political party, to select candidates or decide policy) debates take place.

# January to June of election year  States and parties hold primaries and caucuses.

# July to early September  Parties hold nominating conventions to choose their candidates.

# September and October  Candidates participate in Presidential debates.

# Early November  Election Day

# December  Electors cast their votes in the Electoral College.

# Early January of the next calendar year  Congress counts the electoral votes.

# January 20  Inauguration Day

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RIDGEFIELD  Officials hope that the towns little-used train station in the Branchville neighborhood will someday be the focal point of a bustling new downtown.

For more than a year, Ridgefield, the Western Connecticut Council of Governments and Fitzgerald and Halliday consultants have been developing a plan designed to attract new commercial development along Ridgefields slice of the Route 7 corridor.

Its like the forgotten child of Ridgefield, said First Selectman Rudy Marconi. Its part of town, but we never put anything into it, never made an effort, and thats what we want to do with this.

The most recent draft of the $250,000 plan for a transit-oriented development (TOD), paid for by a grant from the Department of Transportation, would establish five focus areas in the neighborhood nestled between Redding and Wilton along Route 7. Each would be zoned for a different type of housing, including apartments and townhomes, commercial space that fronts Route 7 and the creation of new shared parking, to replace many of the private lots that serve businesses in the area.

As an example, plans for the focus area that runs along the west side of Route 7, south of Branchville Road and north of Old Town Road, envision replacing the current commercial space with mixed-use and commercial development. If fully built out, the plan could include 105 apartments, 34 townhomes and about 18,000 square feet of commercial space. It would also allow for outdoor patios between some of the building for seating or outdoor dining.

In total, the plan envisions nearly 100,000 square feet of commercial space, 300 apartments and 250 townhomes in the TOD area. But Francisco Gomes, a senior project manager with the consulting firm, noted that the plan is likely to change and is entirely dependent on private development.

Throughout the redevelopment area, which extends into neighboring Wilton and Redding, there would be new sidewalks, crosswalks and other improvements to make it safer and more convenient for pedestrians to reach the Branchville train station.

In addition to the streetscape improvements the plan calls for new zoning  a mixed-used district, a medium-density residential district and a high-density residential district -- that would encourage the desired development.

Like Bethel and Danbury, which are also in various stages of their own TOD plans, the Branchville proposal focuses on the train station, which is served by Metro-Norths Danbury branch line.

The line, which runs from Danbury to South Norwalk with connecting service to Stamford, New Haven and New York City, has seen increased ridership in recent years  a trend that Marconi believes will continue.

I think its really exciting, what theyre proposing, Marconi said. "Were looking to keep track with the real world and the upgrades that were doing. That, someday, will be a major rail line for transportation north and south.

Gomes said the plan will be updated in the beginning of December and hopes a final version will be complete by the end of the year.

But, he said, it will be years before the vision can become a reality.

It has to be driven by private development and local property-owners, Gomes said. Were not recommending that the town do any taking of private property. Rather, its a vision for what kind of development could occur."

Several roadblocks also remain. Chief among them is the lack of a sewer line and access to a treatment plant.

Previous versions of the TOD plan show that the least expensive option is to connect the area to a nearby treatment plant in the Georgetown section of Redding. That plan is estimated to cost about $2.5 million, however, and Redding is not able to sell its excess sewer capacity until it determines the future of its own TOD plan, said First Selectwoman Julia Pemberton.

Pemberton said the town still hopes the former Gilbert & Bennett wire mill  just over a mile to southeast of the Branchville station  can someday be converted into a mixed-use development.

Original plans for the site, a former factory on the Norwalk River, included building a new stop on the train line, which runs just past the property. The factory would be transformed into an apartment building with more than 400 units.

But the project has for years been delayed by a lawsuit over millions of dollars of debt owed by the property owners. A judge recently gave the town, which is seeking to foreclose on the land and gain control over it, first priority in collecting the more than $3 million in delinquent property taxes.

The ultimate goal is successful development," Pemberton said. What exactly that will look like, its too soon to say.

In the meantime, Pemberton said, she is keeping a close watch on its neighbor to the west.

I applaud what Ridgefield is looking at doing for Branchville, she said. "Hopefully in few years well look at the wire mill in positive way and see a long-term plan coming to fruition. Certainly, TOD is all the rage right now."

awolff@newstimes.com; 203-731-3333; @awolffster
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NEW MILFORD  Liba Furhman paused a moment Friday morning, admiring a photo of Main Street where the white church and other buildings stood out against a backdrop of rolling hills.

Sempra would have been right there, Furhman said as she tapped the upper right section of the photo in the middle of the trees, indicating the location of a failed proposed power plant.

Furhman, who served as mayor from 1991 to 1995, spent the last two years of the 1990s as the chair of PowerALERT, a community organization of hundreds of residents fighting a proposal to build a 500-megawatt power plant in town.

The proposal, by California-based Sempra Energy, was unanimously denied by the state Siting Council in December 1999 because it went against the states environmental, economic, recreational and public welfare policies.

But nearly 20 years later, the Sempra project has re-emerged in conversation as residents again contemplate whether a power plant powered by natural gas should be built in town. This time the proposal comes from Panda Power Funds, a company based in Texas that has built several other plants around the country.

Panda proposes building a 550-megawatt natural gas plant on the site of the former Century Brass mill. The plan was unveiled last month and will be discussed at informational sessions at 7 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday at Sarah Noble Intermediate School and at 1 p.m. Thursday at Town Hall.

People on both sides of the Panda proposal have cited the Sempra plan, both to note the similarities and heighten the differences between the two projects.

Panda representatives have emphasized the cleaner and more efficient technology of their plan compared to Sempras and have expressed a willingness to work with the community to address its concerns.

Id want the people of New Milford to know that were early in the process and we will address these issues, said Bill Pentak, vice president of investor relations and public affairs for Panda Power Funds. We really do have a listening ear on this.

But many of the environmental and property-value concerns raised in the 1990s have resurfaced online in reference to Pandas project, including at least three Facebook pages and a petition that had more than 730 signatures by Friday evening.

Furhman said she has talked to other people about starting a new PowerALERT group, but there isnt anything official yet.

To me there are just as many similarities, Furhman said. Granted, 15 years have passed and there will be some differences, but on the whole its incredibly similar to Sempras proposal.

Furhman became involved in the fight against Sempra in the summer of 1998, after driving day after day past the proposed site at the intersection of Route 7 and Rocky River Road and wondering why nothing was being said or done about it.

It was very quiet, she said. I dont even know if there was a sign.

Shortly after meeting with the Grassroots Coalition, a group founded in the 1980s to address quality-of-life and environmental issues, PowerALERT was created as a subset of the coalition. The group was joined by individual residents and neighborhood groups, as well as environmental organizations including the Housatonic Valley Association and the Washington Environmental Council.

Once PowerALERT started researching and sharing information on the impact of power plants on New Milford, other groups started to come forward, Furhman said.

PowerALERT also raised about $400,000 to cover its legal and consulting fees. The first fundraiser was chaired by fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, who was among several celebrities to oppose the plant.

The main point of contention between PowerALERT and Sempra was the accuracy of emissions and air quality data provided to the community. PowerALERT hired consultants whose data the group believed better represented the real environmental impact.

We based everything we said, published and shared on facts and science, Furhman said. We used expert, technical consultants. If we didnt know what to say, we turned to our experts so we knew everything was vetted and true.

PowerALERT handed out leaflets, advertised in newspapers, broadcast on local-access channels and spoke at local meetings, including Town Council and public hearings for the zoning and inland/wetlands commissions, both of which voted against the Sempra proposal.

I remember the zoning commission meeting being in the middle of a blizzard at the high school, but people came, she said. It was amazing.

Town Council also held a non-binding referendum to gain idea of the publics stance on the project.

The referendum had the largest turnout of any referendum at that time and residemts voted 6-to-1 against Sempra, Furhman said.

By the time the Siting Council came to town in the fall of 1999, Furhman said, more than 10,000 people had signed a petition against the proposal, and the mayor and town council opposed the project.

There was such a groundswell of support against the power plant that people were lining the highway with signs saying No to Sempra as the Siting Council came to town, she said, adding that more than 1,200 people showed up at the councils first evening meeting.

The biggest difference Furhman sees between the two plans is land ownership. Sempra owned the proposed site and submitted an application that the community was able to review. Panda, by contrast, does not own the land, which it seeks to buy from the town, and has no reason to prepare an application until the sale seems certain. Town voters would have to approve sale of the land.

Both plants would be fueled by natural gas, but Panda officials say technology has advanced grealty since 1998.

The Sempra proposal called for two gas turbines and a steam turbine, while the Panda proposal calls for one gas turbine and one steam turbine. It would also only include one stack that would probably be 100 to 140 feet tall, much less than the two 213-feet stacks proposed by Sempra.

With the improvements in technology, obviously these plants are much more efficient than they were back then, said Brandon Upchurch, senior director of development for Panda Power Funds.

The equipment Panda has used at other plants is constantly being upgraded with newer software to make it more efficient, even after the initial construction, Pentak said.

Theyre more efficient, theyre cleaner and theyre safer, Pentak said. Theyve come a long way.

Another difference is the type and amount of water that would be used.

Upchurch said the plant would use 50,000 to 100,000 gallons of treated water from the towns sewer plant each day, compared to the 96,000 to 162,000 gallons of gray water -- treated water from sinks, showers and the like  that Sempra planned to use.

The Panda proposal wont disrupt wetlands or the Housatonic River floodplain, he said, both of which were concerns the Siting Council expressed in rejecting the Sempra proposal.

Mayor David Gronbach said the type of gas-powered plant Panda proposes is already operating in town.

After Sempra was rejected, that same kind of technology and electric generation was approved at Kimberly-Clark, he said.

In addition to the evolving technology, the economic landscape has also drastically changed since the Sempra proposal, when Wall Street was booming and a new high school was under construction to accommodate expected population growth, Gronbach said.

There was a lot of optimism in New Milford at that time and then we had 9/11, the great recession and terrible job loss, he said. The expected manufacturing and development that was expected when they expanded the sewer plant never materialized.

Gronbach urged residents to approach the Panda proposal with open minds and to separate it from Sempras.

We have to weigh the costs and benefits of this plan to todays reality and not that of 1998, he said.

kkoerting@newstimes.com; 203-731-3345; @kkoerting
First drug-resistant fungal infections identified in US

United States,Health/Medicine, Fri, 04 Nov 2016 IANS

Washington, Nov 5 (IANS) Thirteen individuals have become ill from a serious and sometimes fatal fungal infection previously unseen in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday.

The fungus, Candida auris, is known to occur in healthcare settings such as hospitals and nursing homes, CNN reported.

Seven cases occurred between May 2013 and August 2016 in four states: Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey and New York. As of August 31, four of these seven patients, all with bloodstream infections, died, though it is unclear whether their deaths were due to C. auris.

The remaining six cases were identified after August and are still under investigation.

"It appears that C. auris arrived in the United States only in the past few years," Dr. Tom Chiller, Chief of the CDC's Mycotic Diseases Branch, said in a statement.

He added that scientists are working to better understand the fungus so they can develop recommendations to protect those at risk.

C. auris bloodstream infections have a 50 per cent fatality rate in some countries, according to one study.

Some strains of this yeast are multidrug-resistant and cannot be treated by the three major classes of antifungal medications.

First reported in 2009 in Japan, cases have been recorded in South Korea, India, South Africa, Kuwait, Colombia, Venezuela, Pakistan and the United Kingdom.

"Experience outside the United States suggests that C. auris has high potential to cause outbreaks in healthcare facilities," the CDC notes on its website.

Importantly, this deadly organism is difficult to identify using traditional laboratory biochemical methods.

--IANS

lok/
Sri Lankan President arrives Sunday on India trip

Delhi,National,Indo-Pak/Pakistan,Diplomacy, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

New Delhi, Nov 5 (IANS) Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena is arriving here on Sunday for a two-day India visit during which he will also attend an international conference on tobacco control.

After his arrival on Sunday evening, Sirisena will have a meeting with President Pranab Mukherjee at Rashtrapati Bhawan, an official statement said.

On Monday, he will attend the seventh session of the global tobacco-control conference at the Indian Exposition Mart in Greater Noida, on the outskirts of the national capital. The Sri Lankan President is expected to return on Monday evening.

India is hosting the biennial conference of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). It is the only international treaty to deter tobacco consumption.

Delegates from 180 countries are expected to attend the conference. Pakistan has decided to skip the conference in the wake of the deteriorating ties with India.

--IANS

sar/rn
Kidnapped from Chibok, Nigerian girl found with baby

Nigeria,Defence/Security,Terrorism, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Abuja, Nov 5 (IANS) One of the Chibok schoolgirls abducted in Nigeria has been found with a 10-month-old son, the military announced on Saturday.

The girl was discovered in Pulka in northern Borno state, spokesman Sani Usman was quoted as saying by BBC.

The announcement came nearly a month after 21 Chibok girls were freed following negotiations with Boko Haram Islamist militants.

More than 270 schoolgirls were seized from the north-eastern town in April 2014, sparking international outrage.

Usman said the latest girl to be found was discovered by soldiers screening escapees from Boko Haram's base in the Sambisa forest.

Boko Haram has been fighting a long insurgency in its quest for an Islamic state in northern Nigeria. The conflict is estimated to have killed more than 30,000 people.

The freeing of 21 girls in October came after talks mediated by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Swiss government.

Until then, there had only been one confirmed release of a student kidnapped from Chibok - a 19-year-old woman found by an army-backed vigilante group.

More than 50 girls managed to escape on the day they were kidnapped.

--IANS

ahm/bg
Brazilian astronomers discover 2 new planets

Brazil,Science/Tech, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Brasilia, Nov 5 (IANS) A team of Brazilian astronomers has discovered two new planets around a star similar to the sun known as HIP 68468.

The two new planets, dubbed "super Neptune" and "super Earth", are the first to be discovered by Brazilian astronomers since the discovery in 2015 of a planet similar to Jupiter, according to Brazil's G1 news website on Friday.

Astronomer Jorge Melendez, a professor at the Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Sao Paulo, and head researcher, said one of the objectives of the team was to compare the solar system with other planetary systems, Xinhua news agency reported.

The planetary environment around HIP 68468 is quite different from the system that includes Earth, he said.

While the mass of the newly discovered planets was similar to that of Earth's and Neptune's, the planets rotate very close to their star, which suggests they may have migrated from a more exterior to a more interior region of their planetary system.

"Super Neptune, called HIP 68468c, has a mass that is 50 percent greater than the planet Neptune. But while our Neptune is far from the sun (30 times the distance between the Earth and Sun), the orbit of the new planet is only 70 per cent of the Earth-Sun distance," G1 said.

Super Earth, or HIP 68468b, has a mass that is three times larger than Earth's, and its orbit is barely 3 percent of the distance from Earth to the Sun.

That means that it is "practically stuck to its star", HIP 68468, which is 6 billion years old and some 300 light years away from Earth.

According to Melendez, the research indicates that the star HIP 68468 has "swallowed" a planet, due to the presence of high levels of lithium, an element that is usually abundant in planets, not stars.

The discovery was made at the European Southern Observatory in Chile's northern Atacama Desert.

--IANS

ksk/vm
IS builds huge defences, torches oil wells to defend Mosul

Burkina Faso,Defence/Security,Terrorism, Sat, 05 Nov 2016 IANS

Mosul (Iraq), Nov 5 (IANS) The Islamic State jihadis have built huge defences at the entrances to the besieged Mosul city and blocked off roads with military reinforcements, satellite pictures have revealed.

Friday had witnessed the most intense street battles of the three-week-old assault on the IS-controlled city, with explosions and machine gun fire echoing through the streets after sunset, the Mail online reported.

The IS fighters appear to have bulldozed parts of the city to create a "clear line of sight" that likely will help them fight off Iraqi forces.

It comes as dramatic pictures showed how retreating IS fanatics have sparked huge fires and created a toxic smoke cloud the size of New York City by torching oil wells, the Mail said.

Thousands of families are said to be living in a "smoke-filled hell" in Qayyarah, with no access to clean water after the IS set 19 wells ablaze during their retreat from villages.

It comes as an estimated 3,000 Elite Iraqi forces backed by artillery and air strikes have reportedly captured six districts of Mosul from the IS - and raised the Iraqi flag above the city for the first time in two years.

The United Nations warned the IS were prepared to use brutal tactics to defend the city amid reports young boys were being ordered to fight.

Iraqi special forces Captain Malik Hameed said: "The operation is going well, but it's slow. These kinds of advances are always slow. If we tried to go any faster we would take even more injuries."

With several oil fields still under the IS control around the de-facto capital, and the potential for thousands of people to flee to the Qayyarah area, there is a risk that many more will be affected, the Mail added.

--IANS

ahm/vm
SAN DIEGO, Nov. 4, 2016 /CNW/ -- OneRoof Energy, Inc. ("OneRoof"), a residential solar services provider and wholly-owned subsidiary of OneRoof Energy Group, Inc. (TSXV:ON) announced today that it has closed solar financing funds with unrelated third-party investors that will finance over $17 million of residential solar projects to be originated with homeowners located in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey and New York. The third party investors will provide the tax equity portion of these funds and OneRoof will provide the sponsor equity. These transactions are expected to serve as templates for additional funds with these investors, the documentation of which should be substantially streamlined for follow on transactions.

"The company is very excited to have closed these latest rounds of project financing, and looks forward to working on future transactions with both of these partners," commented David Field, president and CEO of OneRoof. "These new funds enable us to continue to expand our installation base and provide more affordable clean power to customers across the country."

Under the terms of the funds, OneRoof will assume the role of the operations and maintenance provider and will remain the primary point of contact with the homeowner.

About OneRoof Energy

OneRoof Energy, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of OneRoof Energy Group, Inc., is a solar services provider dedicated to its "Solar 2.0" approach: an innovative model that enables consumer services companies in various verticals to sell residential solar while confidently relying on their solar partner for implementation. OneRoof uses its proven technology platform, big data and proprietary systems to help its partners reach out to their customers who can benefit from solar while building a channel into the home for 20 years. OneRoof provides its partners with customized, turn-key solutions, offering homeowners a suite of financing options, including traditional loan, lease and PPA financing together with system design, installation management and ongoing system monitoring and maintenance. OneRoof is based in San Diego, California, and serves residential customers in nine states: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania with plans for additional expansion. For more information, visit www.oneroofenergy.com.

Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Information

Certain statements contained in this document, including those that express management's expectations or estimates regarding the Company's future performance, are "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information is necessarily based on a certain number of estimates and assumptions, which while considered plausible by the management when they are made, are inherently subject to significant commercial, economic and competitive risks and uncertainties. We advise investors not to rely unduly on forward-looking information. The Company further declines any intention or obligation to publicly update this forward-looking information, whether due to new information, or future or other events, unless required by applicable law.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its regulation service provider (as these terms are defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) bears responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release.

Investor Relations Contact:

David Field

President and Chief Executive Officer

OneRoof Energy Group, Inc.

(858) 458-0533

[email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140225/MM71994LOGO

SOURCE OneRoof Energy, Inc.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on Thursday questioned the National Legal Adviser of the All Progressives Congress, Dr...

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on Thursday questioned the National Legal Adviser of the All Progressives Congress, Dr. Muiz Banire (SAN).The EFCC also seized his passport before releasing him on administrative bail after detaining him for several hours.The former Lagos State Commissioner for Transport, was quizzed for an alleged bribery of a judge.The senior advocate was said to have transferred about N500, 000 to Justice Terseer Agbadu-Fishim of the National Industrial Court.A source told The Punch, While detectives were probing Justice Fishims account, they discovered that Banire deposited money into the judges account. So, we invited him and he did not deny it. He only said the money was not a bribe.Banire was quizzed by the EFCC for several hours and his passport was seized from him. He will return for more questioning as investigations continue.In a text message to the newspaper, Banire admitted to giving the judge money.Banire wrote, Thank you for clarification sought. I have no official relationship with the said judge. I have never appeared before him in any matter and in fact, in my entire professional career, I have only recently a month ago appeared at the industrial court before a separate judge.He was an old friend in the 90s, who only called me up some years back to seek financial assistance due to his mothers death. Beyond that, I have not seen him in the last 17 years.Meanwhile, Nyesom Wike, Rivers State Governor, has condemned the National Judicial Councils directive to judges under investigation to step down.(Punch)
The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to suspend two of his ministers, Rotimi Amaechi and Ogbonnaya O...

The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to suspend two of his ministers, Rotimi Amaechi and Ogbonnaya Onu, who were indicted after the recent raid on Judges.The PDP made the call in a statement issued on Friday evening. The statement read, ''It is public knowledge that on Thursday, 4th of November, 2016, the NJC announced the decision to suspend Justices Sylvester Ngwuta and Justice Inyang Okoro of the Supreme Court. Others are Justice Mohammed Tsamiya Presiding Justice of the Court of Appeal, Ilorin Division; Justice Kabiru Auta  Kano State High Court; Justice Adeniyi Ademola  Federal High Court, Abuja; Justice1. A. Umezulike  Former Chief Judge of Enugu State and Muazu Pindiga  Federal High Court, Gombe Division.2. The suspension was based on the investigation of these Justices by the Directorate of State Security (DSS) on various allegations of corruption.3. It is important to note that Justices Ngwuta and Okoro have alleged that they are the targets of a witch hunt because they refused offers of inducement and bribes made to them by the Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi and the Minister of Science & Technology, Chief Ogbonnaya Onu  to subvert the course of justice in appeals against the decisions of lower Courts in election petitions in Abia, Akwa Ibom, Ekiti and Rivers States.4. In order to allow for a fair and independent investigation, it is incumbent on President Muhammadu Buhari to ask these Ministers to step aside pending the conclusion of investigations into these issues. The Judiciary has set a very good example in its quest to fight corruption. It has proven that it is ready to reform itself and we commend the NJC for taking this bold step. Likewise, we call on the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari to emulate the decision of the National Judicial Council (NJC) mandating the 7 Justices to suspend the performance of their judicial functions pending the conclusion of investigations against them.5. Anything less will confirm the long held notion that President Muhammadu Buhari and his administration consider themselves to be above the law and not subject to the provisions of our laws and the institutions of our democracy.6. If President Muhammadu Buhari retains these Ministers in the face of the serious allegations against them, he will reveal that the entire judicial corruption saga is nothing more than deliberate attempt to blackmail the judiciary in order to subjugate it and make it a rubber stamp Institution of the administration.7. God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria. ''
Chidiebere Nwakali, who is on loan to Norwegian club IK Start from Manchester City, has been nursing a minor knee injury for the past three weeks.He has suffered a minor knee injury and that is why he has been sidelined, a source informed.After a difficult time at Spanish second-tier league club Girona, the 19-year-old Nigeria midfielder has enjoyed a great run at Start but last featured for the Norwegian strugglers in early October.He also spent a week back in Nigeria after he was granted a compassionate leave following a family bereavement.He posted 22 appearances and scored three goals for this season for Start, who are doomed for a return to the second division at the end of this campaign on Sunday.He has said he hopes to move to a bigger league on another loan deal next season as he aims to soon be considered more seriously by Manchester City.
Anthony Martials agent, Philippe Lamboley, has revealed that the player was hurt, after Manchester United handed Zlatan Ibrahimovic his no. 9 shirt.Martial was originally given the shirt number, when he joined the Old Trafford club from Monaco in 2015. But he had to settle for no. 11 after Ibrahimovic arrived last summer.I am not going to lie about it, it hurt him when Manchester United took the number nine jersey off him. He was surprised by it and he was disappointed for a few days, Lamboley told RMC.But he is a professional. He knew that he had to fight back.Personally, I did not accept the decision, which I thought was disrespectful and misplaced. I let the United hierarchy know how I felt. You do not do things like that. We have turned the page, but not forgotten about it.Lamboley, however, insists that his client is happy at Old Trafford, despite speculations he is unhappy under new manager, Jose Mourinho.It is not true that Anthony has a bad relationship with Mourinho, he added.They have a professional relationship. Im sure Mourinho will get the best out of him, just like Louis van Gaal did before him.Anthony is happy at United. We are trying to get out of a bad spell, he is no longer smiling all the time. People who know him know that he likes to smile.He is very committed to United and his team-mates. He wants just one thing and that is to enjoy a great season with United and win titles. Just let him do his job, let a 20-year-old enjoy himself. What he has already achieved is incredible. And I can promise you that the best is yet to come.
The Nigerian Army says it has rescued another abducted Chibok schoolgirl. Military authorities said troops rescued the girl early Saturday...





The Nigerian Army says it has rescued another abducted Chibok schoolgirl. Military authorities said troops rescued the girl early Saturday during an operation against Boko Haram insurgents at Pulka village of Gwoza local government in Borno State.The girl, who was found with a 10-month-old baby, identified herself as Maryam Ali Maiyanga. She also informed the soldiers that her son, whom she bore to a Boko Haram member, is named Ali.The spokesman of the Army, Sani Usman, said in a statement that the girl had been taken to a military facility for medical attention.Troops of 121 Battalion, Nigerian Army, deployed at Pulka, Gwoza Local Government Area, Borno State, for Operation LAFIYA DOLE today, Saturday 5th November 2016, at about 6.00am, while screening some escapees from Boko Haram terrorists hideout in Sambisa forest, discovered one of the abducted Government Secondary School Chibok girls, named Maryam Ali Maiyanga among them, said Mr. Usman, a colonel.She was discovered to be carrying a 10-month-old son, named Ali. She has been taken to the units medical facility for proper medical check up.It is imperative to state that troops have been working round the clock to clear remnants of Boko Haram terrorists wherever they might be hibernating and also rescue all persons held hostages by terrorists, he said.
Jonathan Eze, Media Aide to Senator Musiliu Obanikoro has confirmed his release by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.





Jonathan Eze, Media Aide to Senator Musiliu Obanikoro has confirmed his release by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.A statement issued by the media aide on Friday evening read, "It delights us to announce that the former Minister of State for Defense, Senator Musiliu Obanikoro has been released from the custody of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), this evening. We are however not resentful but thankful to the Almighty for the gift of life and good health and the process which began from his voluntarily turning himself over to the anti-graft agency and his subsequent release.''We thank all his friends and followers who supported him in prayers and supplication among others. God bless you all.
A former Deputy Governor of Osun State, Senator Iyiola Omisore, has now paid back N350million of the N1.7billion public funds which t...

Omisore first paid N300million and another N50million to the EFCC yesterday.A top-level source in the EFCC confirmed the development, saying: We hope he will pay up the balance as soon as possible.We are determined to retrieve all slush funds for the nations use, the source added.About N4.685billon was transferred by the Office of National Security Adviser (ONSA) to Sylva McNamara Limited, a company linked to a former Minister of State for Defence, Mr. Musiliu Obanikoro.Of the sum, about N3.880billion was allegedly given to Governor Ayodele Fayose and Senator Omisore through cash and bank transfers by Obanikoro.Omisores share was said to be about N1.7billion.The former Deputy Governor gave the list of companies which benefited from the N1.7billion that was released by the NSA to him.According to a report by the EFCC, some of the funds were remitted as follows: Fimex Gilt Limited (N160m)-8/8/2014in UBA; Metropolitan Consortium (N350m)9/7/14 in First Bank; Sawanara (N300m)1/8/14 in First Bank and Metropolitan Consortium (N350m)-1/8/14 in First Bank.Meanwhile, there were indications yesterday that the Acting Chairman of the EFCC, Mr. Ibrahim Magu, has approved the release of a former Minister of State for Defence, Sen. Musiliu Obanikoro, and Dr. Reuben Abati who was a former Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan from custody.While Obanikoro refunded N100.4million to the EFCC with an undertaking for the return of about N480million, Abati was granted bail to go and source for the N50million allocated to him by the Office of National Security Adviser( ONSA).A top source said: Having substantially met his bail conditions, the EFCC has released Obanikoro from custody. Apart from refunding N100million, he also pledged to pay back about N480million.Regarding Abati, the EFCC released him on bail to source for the N50million credited to him by ONSA.
Justice Ignatius Igwe Agube, a member of the fresh three-man panel set up to determine the appeals relating to the dispute over the gove...

Justice Ignatius Igwe Agube, a member of the fresh three-man panel set up to determine the appeals relating to the dispute over the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ondo State lamented yesterday that the party was subjecting the judiciary to unnecessary headache.He said the inability of members of the PDP to imbibe democratic tenets and act in accordance with democratic norms account for why the judiciary was being constantly invited to resolve what ordinarily ought to be internal issues of the party.Justice Agube, who currently serves in the Owerri Division of the Court of Appeal, was speaking in Abuja at the first sitting of the new panel constituted on November 2 by the President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa, to replace the former panel led by Justice Jumai Sankey which withdrew from the appeals on November 7.The judge noted that the current crisis in the Ondo PDP, which resulted from the internal polarisation of the party, would have been avoided where members of the party had allowed internal democracy.I have stressed this fact before now. I did so in Kwara and Yobe that there is need for the PDP to internalise democracy. If they had resolved their issues internally, they would not be here washing their dirty linen in public. Ordinarily, the court has no business resolving your internal disputes, he said.Justice Agubes intervention was informed by the open disagreement in court yesterday by some leaders of the two factions of the PDP over who should represent the party during yesterdays proceedings.While Adedayo Adeyeye and Ben Obi (from the Ahmed Makarfi faction) stood up and announced that they were representing the PDP, another set of people, including Cairo Ojougboh (from the Ali Modu Sheriff camp), also claimed to be representing the PDP, a development that infuriated Justice Agube.The panel, headed by Justice Ibrahim Saulawa (Acting Presiding Justice of the Calabar Division of the Court of Appeal) adjourned all pending applications in the four appeals in relation to the Ogun PDP dispute to November 7 for hearing.The panel adjourned to Monday despite requests by lawyers to the appellants, including Wole Olanipekun (SAN) and Ahmed Raji (SAN) ,that their preliminary applications be heard promptly in view of the urgency required by the matter.Olanipekun, lawyer to a former Attorney General of Ondo State and a contender to the PDP governorship ticket, Eyitayo Jegede (SAN), urged the court to promptly consider his clients application for leave to appeal the decision of the Federal High Court, Abuja on the issue.He said the matters are election related which require expeditious hearing.Respondents lawyers, including Beluolisa Nwofor (SAN), said there was no urgency in the cases because they are pre-election matters which do not require any special panel to be heard.Nwofor argued that if the court must conduct any further proceedings in the cases, it must first determine the motion on notice he filed for his client on November 3, 2016 which queries the jurisdiction of the new panel to sit over the appeals.In the motion filed for members of state executive of PDP in the six South West states (loyal to Ali Modu Sheriff), the court is asked to reverse the decision by its President, Justice Bulkachuwa, to constitute the fresh panel.They also asked the court to disband the panel on the grounds that it was allegedly constituted in breach of the applicants right to fair hearing guaranteed under Section 36 of the constitution.The applicants equally prayed the court to order the return of the case files relating to the appeals and the application for leave to appeal as an interested party (against the decision of the Federal High Court of 14th October 2016 in suit No. FHC/ABJ/CS/395/2016)  filed by Eyitayo Jegede (factional PDP candidate of the Ondo PDP) to the Registry of the Court of Appeal to take its normal course and turn in the docket of the court.The affected appeals are: CA/A/551/2016 filed by Ahmed Makarfi and Ben Obi against Biyi Poroye and 10 others and CA/A/551A/2016 filed by Clement Faboyede and another against 10 others; CA/A551B/2016 filed by the PDP against Biyi Poroye and 9 others and CA/A/551C/2016 filed by Eyitayo Jegede against Prince Biyi Poroye and 10 othersThey argued that not only did the President of the Court of Appeal act without hearing from them, the case, being a pre-election matter did not warrant any urgency to require the constitution of a special panel.They added that those who filed the appeals against the June 29 and October 14, 2016 decisions of Justice Okon Abang of the Federal High Court, Abuja were not parties in the cases leading to the decisions.The applicants also argued that no orders were made against any of them (those behind the new appeals) and that they (the applicants), who were plaintiffs in the suits, were not informed when the President of the Court of Appeal acted solely on the request by the appellants to constitute the panel on the grounds of urgency.
Speaking with reporters yesterday, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made the announcement saying:Meanwhile, it wasnt a big for the actor to be made a citizen of Russia; the pair has been bromancing each other for quite a long time after they reportedly attended several martial-arts events together in Russia and visited an academy there in 2013. In 2015, the actor also attended the Victory Day parade held in Red Square to mark the 70th anniversary of Russia's victory over Nazi Germany.
President Jacob Zuma of South Africa on Saturday said he was not afraid of being jailed over the release of an anti-corruption report crit...

President Jacob Zuma of South Africa on Saturday said he was not afraid of being jailed over the release of an anti-corruption report critical of him.Thousands of protesters called for the president to resign after the 355-page probe was released and some opposition politicians said Zuma should face criminal charges.But addressing supporters since his first public appearance since investigators documented signs of government corruption, Zuma recalled how he was jailed during apartheid.Im not scared of jail. Ive been to jail during the struggle, he said.People think democracy is done at courts. They never mention the will of the majority they always talk about courts. They never even speak to us about democratic debates because they know we are good at debates.They think by going to courts they are intimidating the ANC. We are not going to be intimidated even if it means I get arrested today I am used to it. I have spent a lot of time in jail you cannot threaten me with jail time .I am not scared of jail I have been there.Last week, the Public Protector, an anti-graft watchdog, asked a judge to investigate whether Zuma, cabinet members and some state companies acted improperly in their dealings with wealthy Indian businessmen.The Gupta brothers, Ajay, Atul and Rajesh, who are friends of Zuma and work with his son, have been accused of influencing cabinet appointments and securing sweetheart government tenders.
Our dear country, Nigeria shone brightly on the global stage as the news broke early in the week of a successful surgery a team of medic...

Our dear country, Nigeria shone brightly on the global stage as the news broke early in the week of a successful surgery a team of medical doctors, led by Nigerian-born Dr. Oluyinka Olutoye, carried on an unborn baby at a Texas hospital in the US.According to medical reports, the unborn baby had sacrococcygeal teratoma, a rare tumour that appeared at the base of the babys tailbone. These types of tumours, it is estimated, occur in about one of 40,000 pregnancies, and if left unchecked, could continue taking the babys blood supply and eventually cause heart failure.The babys mother, Margaret Boemer, first sensed that all was not well when her ultra-sound technician stayed unusually quiet during a routine 16-week prenatal checkup. Subsequent tests later showed that Boemers unborn child was suffering from the rare tumour.One of the hospitals she visited in Houston, according to reports, strongly recommended that she should terminate the pregnancy. The report further had it that the hospitals reasoned that performing open fetal surgery -removing the baby before term in order to operate on the fetuswas too risky.But Margaret Boemers story changed when she got to the Texas Childrens Hospital, where the doctors examined the tumour and gave her some words of hope. Interestingly, two doctors at the hospital, Oluyinka Olutoye and Darrell Cass, had about seven years ago, successfully performed a similar surgery.Seven years after, Oluyinka Olutoye and Darrell Cass, alongside a team of about 20 others, performed yet another miracle when it carried out a successful surgery on the unborn baby to remove the tumour and returned it to the mothers womb; a feat that has generated global recognition of the baby as the baby born twice.To carry out the operation on the baby named Lynlee Hope at 23 weeks, Olutoye and his team removed her from her mothers womb, operated on her and then returned her to the womb where the injuries from her operation healed and she continued to grow until she was born again at 36 weeks.According to reports, while Olutoye and his team were in the middle of the procedure, the babys heart stopped and needed to be restarted. She also required a blood transfusion at a stage.Coming at a time when the image of the country is being bashed on the international scene by loads of negative reports about her citizens, Nigerians from all walks of life shelved their tribal and religious differences and rolled out the drums to celebrate the rare feat by one of their own.The Federal Government had set the tone for the celebration when it felicitated with Olutoye and the people of Nigeria on the feat. According to a statement issued by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, Hon. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, President Muhammadu Buhari received the news of Dr. Olutoyes unique feat with excitement and fulfillment and looked forward to meeting with him soonest.Nigerians are great people, making greater positive impacts in all fields of human endeavour in the Diaspora. Dr Olutoyes feat is one of such testimonies, the statement added.In an exclusive interview with The Nation, Dr. Olutoye said he was humbled by all the attention the feat had generated.He said: I am truly humbled by all the attention that this has received. It is a privilege to work at Texas Childrens Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine, to lead a team of talented physicians, nurses and others to provide care for Margaret Boemer and her baby Lynlee. It is a blessing to be able to care for families like the Boemers in their time of need.We should not forget that these brave parents are the ones who did not give up on their child but sought to do all they could to improve her outcome. They deserve the focus and attention. For me to be caught up in all this excitement is only by the grace of God.Olutoye, who obtained his medical degree from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, in 1988 before his doctoral degree in anatomy from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA, in 1996, had relocated from Nigeria to the US to seek further educational opportunities.He said: At the completion of my medical education in Nigeria, I realised that I read about a lot of different aspects of medicine that I didnt have the opportunity to be exposed to locally. I therefore sought further educational opportunities in the United States.The Ido Ani, Ondo State-born surgeon is a son of Major-General Olufemi Olutoye (rtd) and Prof. Omotayo Olutoye. He described his childhood as wonderful.He said: I had a wonderful childhood. I was born in Lagos and grew up with two loving parents, (Major-General (rtd) Olufemi Olutoye, OFR and Prof. Omotayo Olutoye); three sisters (Dr. Bunmi Okanlami, Funke Olugboji, Toye Gansallo) and two brothers (Air Commodore (rtd) Dr. Femi Olutoye, Dr. Segun Olutoye); grandparents, numerous cousins, uncles and aunties.It was, and still is, a wonderful loving environment. We were all taught the importance of hard work and a solid education, and most importantly, the fear of The Lord. I hail from Ido-Ani in Ose Local Government Area of Ondo State, and my father is the Alani of Ido-Ani, Oluwatomiloye the 1st.As a son of a soldier father and an academic mother, Olutoye said he was introduced early in life to a life that placed emphasis on the need to strive for excellence. He maintained that the character his parents helped him to inculcate as a child has endured till now.He said: The quest for excellence was introduced at an early age. I attended elementary school at Lagos University Staff School and subsequently Kings College Lagos. The character and friendships established in those formative years have endured to date.I proceeded to Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife for my medical education at the Faculty of Health Sciences. There I met my beautiful bride (Prof. Toyin Olutoye, nee Balogun) who is an anesthesiologist. We are blessed with two children. I had further training at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idi-Araba, prior to seeking additional training in the USA.In the USA, I started my post-graduate medical education in pediatrics at Howard University and District of Columbia General Hospital. I then had my general surgery training at Virginia Commonwealth University Hospitals, Richmond Virginia, during which I took time off for research and obtained a Ph.D in Anatomy from Virginia Commonwealth University.Following my training as a general surgeon, I sought additional training in pediatric, fetal and thoracic surgery at the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia. I then took up a faculty position at Baylor College of Medicine and, with my colleague, Dr. Darrell Cass, established the Texas Childrens Fetal Center at Texas Childrens Hospital in Houston Texas.Growing up in such a family, the surgeon said he never wanted to be anything else but a medical doctor. I always wanted to be a medical doctor, he said in response to what his childhood dream was.Despite the deluge of negative stories about Nigerians back home, Olutoye and many other Nigerians in the Diaspora have continued to do great exploits in their host countries. According to Olutoye, such feats are possible when they have access to resources and infrastructure.Nigerians are a talented people. If they decide to apply themselves, they can achieve much. When they then have access to resources and infrastructure, they can attain even greater heights, he said.In the face of growing desperation by young Nigerians who risk their lives to cross the Mediterranean just to get to Europe and America, Olutoye urged Nigerian youths to always note that the grass is not always greener on the other side of the divide.Do the best you can with what you have where you are. To quote Eleanor Roosevelt, the grass is not always greener on the other side. Look before you leap, he said.Given the global attention the feat may have attracted to Olutoye and his colleagues at the Texas hospital, one may want to believe that the people behind the feat would now walk around town with shoulders raised. For Olutoye, however, such glory should be given to God.I am the same person I was before. It is not about me. I give God all the glory.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) yesterday laid to rest speculations about his emergence as presidential running mate in last years e...

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) yesterday laid to rest speculations about his emergence as presidential running mate in last years electionHe said in Lagos that he was nominated by the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.I was nominated by the leader of our party, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, under who I served as a commissioner in Lagos State, Osinbajo said at a colloquium on the state of the nation in Lagos organised by the Coalition of Nigerian Apostolic Leaders.His statement tallies with the earlier account of the event given by the Secretary to the Lagos State Government ,Mr. Tunji Bello.Osinbajo at the colloquium also spoke of Federal Governments determination to intensify the battle against corruption which he called one of the key strategies for liberating the country from recession.Government,he said,would revamp the economy through diversification, development of infrastructure and creation of a conducive atmosphere for the private sector to increase productive activities and boost employment opportunities.Osinbajo said: The reasons for the recession are because of the drop in the production of oil and corruption. Other factors are the manifestation of the two problems.The vice president, who explained that things were going to change overnight, said a lot of damage had been done to the economy. He noted the impatience of Nigerians, recalling that even the Isralites once complained to Moses to take them back to Egypt, the land of corruption, when they got to the Red sea.Urging Nigerians to have patience with the Federal Government as it intensifies its efforts at repositioning the economy, Osinbajo lamented that 15 billion dollars were lost to corruption through the defense contract under the last administration. He said the problem in the Northeast could have been averted, if the money meant for arms procurement had not been stolen.The vice president explained measures adopted to boost revenue generation and prevent graft. These include the banishment of the menace of ghost workers and payroll fraud, the enforcement of tax compliance, the introduction of the Treasury Single Account (TSA), the expansion of the Value Added Tax (VAT) coverage, the deregulation of the downstream sector and concerted action on the foreign exchange rate.He said the Federal Government will pursue the diversification of the economy through the development of agriculture to guarantee food sufficiency, job creation and export to attract earnings.On the anti-corruption battle, Osinbajo said : Allegations of corruption must be submitted to the right channels. The President does not interfere in the activities of the agencies. He has given the agencies concerned the independence to act, when a formal complaint is submitted. Where there are proven cases of corruption, the appropriate agencies will always act.Osinbajo said Christians should not panic over speculations about Sharia bill in the National assembly.He said The government should not be interested in any Sharia matter beyond what is in the constitution. If the government is interested, it is the Attorney-General that will submit the bill, following the decision of the Federal Executive Council.Sharia is in the constitution; it is only applicable to Islamic marriage. You cannot change
RUNNEMEDE -- A man shot "several times" from a passing vehicle on a South Jersey expressway early Saturday has died, New Jersey State Police said.

Authorities are now seeking the public's help in finding those involved.

According to the preliminary investigation, the unidentified victim was shot around 2:30 a.m. in the southbound lanes of Route 42 near Exit 14, said New Jersey State Police Sgt. First Class Gregory Williams.

It's believed another vehicle pulled up alongside the white Ford Fusion the victim was driving, opened fire and then fled the scene, State Police said.

The victim's vehicle then ran off the roadway.

He was taken to Cooper University Hospital in Camden where he later was pronounced dead, Williams said.

The victim was alone in his vehicle at the time of the incident.

More details about the man who died were not immediately released by police.

Anyone with any information about the shooting is asked to call New Jersey State Police at the Bellmawr Station at 856-933-0662. Anonymous tips are welcome, authorities say.

Some lanes on Route 42 were closed for a time while the investigation into the shooting was conducted. Lanes have since reopened.

The spot where the shooting took place is not far south of where Route 42 and Interstate 295 intersect.

Bill Gallo Jr. may be reached at bgallo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow Bill Gallo Jr. on Twitter @bgallojr. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
inn of the dove cherry hill

The Inn of the Dove, located off Cuthbert Boulevard in Cherry Hill, bills itself as an "anytime romantic adult escape," Nov. 2, 2016. (Greg Adomaitis | For NJ.com)

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CHERRY HILL TWP. -- It's an unseasonably warm Wednesday at the Inn of the Dove as two carts of laundry are carried between the rolling hills and cottage-like rooms of Cherry Hill's "anytime romantic adult escape."

While there's no signs of business along the meandering cul-de-sac stretch, there aren't any immediate indicators that the crime-prone property is up for sale, either.

"I don't think they are actively marketing," Bridget Palmer, Cherry Hill's communications director, said this week.

However, emails obtained by NJ Advance Media through an Open Pubic Records Act request appear to show an interest from the inn's management in meeting with Florida-based Advanced Recovery Systems (ARS), which has been eyeing property in Cherry Hill to open an addiction-treatment facility.

"I wanted to follow up with regard to the developer that is potentially interested in our site so I can meet with them," Anil Patel, of Pennsauken-based Northstar Hotel Group, wrote in April to Cherry Hill Mayor Chuck Cahn and township Planning Director Paul Stridick.

There was at least one sticking point: The $2.7 million asking price, according to an email from ARS representative Jay Fertig to Cherry Hill officials as the parties wrangled over a fitting home for the facility.

"His asking price is almost three times the price of the Masonic Lodge," Fertig wrote of the shuttered USS New Jersey Lodge #62 in an April 13 email to Cahn and Stridick. "Even if he comes down, we are still looking at a $1.6 million delta between the lodge and the inn."

Patel did not respond to an emailed request for comment. Cherry Hill officials said the inn, alongside three other "dilapidated and underutilized" areas were targeted in Nov. 2014 for redevelopment under New Jersey's redevelopment laws.

Only one, America's Best Value Inn, has been turned into a "beautiful residential area," Palmer said. That doesn't mean their eyes have been averted from the Inn of the Dove in the two years since the initiative began, however.

Billed as a "villa-style suites" featuring "every amenity for a pleasure trip that's close to home," the inn has made headlines over the years for reasons beyond the Jacuzzis it advertises on roadside signage: a human trafficking bust, a fatal shooting and an armed robbery at the front desk.

Online customer reviews also paint a lackluster picture, with some saying the property is outdated, overpriced and in disrepair.

A woman inside the inn's lobby earlier this week who identified herself as a supervisor declined to comment. Inside the main office, signs explicitly state that cancellations must be made 48 hours in advance. The inn's website also emphasizes its cancellation policy.

"It's a big factor in these areas," Palmer said of previous criminal incidents. "Criminal activity is a driving force to redevelopment," she continued, noting that input from police is part of the redevelopment process that must go before local planning and zoning boards before heading to council.

As recently as March, Cherry Hill was "extremely interested" in marketing the Inn of the Dove as it wanted to "turn the property around," Stridick wrote to ARS representatives. While that deal appears to have fallen through, Cherry Hill officials say their interest in developing the property remains.

"It's still one of the properties under study," said Erin Gill, Cherry Hill's chief of staff. "It's old. It's somewhat outdated. It's just a matter of time before that spreads somewhat further."

While the development process encourages private development in otherwise stagnant areas, it remains unclear what Inn of the Dove management intend to do.

"I do think that everything is for sale -- for a price," Gill said.

Greg Adomaitis may be reached at gadomaitis@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @GregAdomaitis. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
NEWARK -- Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, who federal prosecutors said was punished by Republican Gov. Chris Christie's camp for not endorsing Christie in the 2013 gubernatorial election, had a strong, but curt, reaction to Friday's Bridgegate verdict.

"There isn't really much anyone can say other than this is a sad day for New Jersey," Fulop said in a brief statement to NJ Advance Media Friday following the guilty verdicts against former Christie insiders Bill Baroni and Bridget Kelly in the Bridgegate scandal.

Though he did not end up testifying at the Bridgegate trail, Fulop was expected to be a witness for the prosecution after emails revealed alleged retaliation by Christie's allies. According to the nine-count indictment, there was a "coordinated and deliberate refusal by the conspirators to communicate with, meet or respond" to Fulop after he became mayor in July 2013.

Fulop, seen in a file photo, reacted to the Bridgegate verdict Friday.

The emails appeared to center around favors for a private firm Fulop was representing in exchange for the endorsement.

Fulop did not end up endorsing Christie, and had little to say about the emails when news broke that he might testify. He declined to comment further on the Bridgegate trial Friday.

"Now that the trial has concluded, it is obvious that Mayor Fulop was only mentioned as a potential witness so that the prosecution could convey how he was mistreated (by Christie aides)," Fulop spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill said Friday.

Fulop, who was widely expected to run for governor when Christie's second term is up next year, announced in September that he would not seek the office. His critics speculated that the prospect of testifying partially informed his decision not to run.

Baroni and Kelly were found guilty Friday of a conspiracy to create traffic tie-ups at the George Washington Bridge in 2013 as retribution to Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich, who, at the time, backed off of his previous political support for Gov. Christie.

Both have said they plan to appeal the decision.

Jessica Mazzola may be reached at jmazzola@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @JessMazzola. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
JERSEY CITY -- Hudson County likely won't see a tight race when it comes to the presidential election next week.

Democratic candidate and Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to win the majority of votes in the historically blue county over Republican candidate Donald Trump.

"I love Hillary," said Adnan Awan as he sat on Summit Avenue right outside of Journal Square.

Despite polling numbers showing the race between the two major party candidates is close, Awan said he's "99.9 percent sure" Clinton will be the next president. His two biggest issues with Trump is that he doesn't "talk good about the ladies" and feels as though the businessman does not understand that terrorism is not about religion.

Awan, who has lived on Vroom Street for about two months, said Clinton is the best candidate for the job because he believes she treats people of every race and ethnicity equally.

In 2008, President Barack Obama received about 73 percent of the vote in Hudson County while 26 percent of residents voted for Republican candidate, according to data from the Hudson County Clerk's Office. The remaining voters either selected a third party candidate or wrote in a name on the ballot.

Both Clinton and Trump have been at the center of controversial issues in the weeks leading up to Election Day. The FBI announced last week it was looking into whether there is classified information in emails found while investigating former congressman Anthony Weiner's sexting scandal. Trump has been accused of making inappropriate sexual advances on numerous women.

For 21-year-old Rudaiha Islam, she's still not sure who she will be voting for on Tuesday but she does have one message to her fellow voters: "Don't vote for Donald Trump.

"He's racist. He's stupid," the Jersey City woman said.

The Hudson County Young Republicans, however, say Trump is the right person for the job.

Chairman of the organization Josh Sotomayor-Einstein said many feel it's "important to leave the era of big government" and that Trump would be the candidate to accomplish just that. The 34-year-old Hoboken resident said the investigation into Clinton's emails is a national security issue.

"On the left, we see an accomplishment of negative things," he said.

The United States stands for equality and if Clinton were to not see punishment would be a "slap in the face to that," Sotomayor-Einstein said.

Victor Pinto, a 33-year-old Kearny man, is a registered Republican voter but he said he isn't supporting the business man or the former First Lady in this year's election. He said he'll vote for a third party candidate -- either Gary Johnson or Jill Stein -- noting that all four candidates are "idiots."

"I'm using my vote to vote for something," Pinto said, adding he'll roll the dice when he enters the voting booth.

Caitlin Mota may be reached at cmota@jjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @caitlin_mota. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
JERSEY CITY -- No arrests have been made yet in Thursday night's fatal shooting of a man on Fulton Avenue, the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office said this afternoon.

At about 9:15 p.m. on Nov. 3, Jersey City police responded to a report of shots fired in the area of Fulton Avenue, where they found Michael A. Bowers, 34, of Jersey City on the sidewalk at 208 Fulton Ave., the HCPO said.

The prosecutor's office said Bowers, who had multiple gunshot wounds to his torso and an extremity, was treated at the scene and then transported to Jersey City Medical Center-RWJBarnabas Health, where he was pronounced dead at around 9:45 p.m.

The fatal shooting is the second homicide in Jersey City in seven days and the 20th of the year.

Family members told The Jersey Journal yesterday that Bowers was a father of four children and described him as a die-hard Eagles fan and a man who didn't bother anyone.

His cousin said the 34-year-old loved playing video games and enjoyed super heroes. Bowers had a Superman tattoo and a "Clark Kent alter-ego," she said.

The HCPO said no arrests have been made in the shooting and that its Homicide Unit is actively investigating the case with assistance from Jersey City police.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the prosecutor's office at 201-915-1345 or to leave an anonymous tip on the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office official website at: http://www.hudsoncountyprosecutorsofficenj.org/homicide-tip/.

All information will be kept confidential, the HCPO said.

Jonathan Lin may be reached at jlin@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @jlin_jj. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
Bonnie Watson Coleman announces bill to reform pipeline approval process

Signs on Goat Hill Road show opposition to the proposed PennEast pipeline

(Michael Mancuso | For NJ.com)

WEST AMWELL -- In a rural town where municipal elections generally draw little attention, West Amwell's Democratic slate has far exceeded their opponents' fundraising, bringing in close to $45,000, with much of it coming from labor unions.

The influx of donations has prompted the Republicans to accuse the Democrats of buying the election and having the backing of unions that support construction of the controversial PennEast pipeline -- claims the group adamantly refutes.

There are three seats up for grabs after residents last year approved expanding the township committee from three members to five.

Democrats William Corboy, Eric Richard and Michael Heron are running against Republicans Gary Hoyer, Zach Rich and Jim Cally.

Richard says the Republicans are inventing an issue over campaign contributions to divert attention away from issues they have raised about the incumbents' increased spending and taxes.

"A full slate running an aggressive campaign makes them nervous," he said. "They are upset that Democrats even have the gall to try to run against them."

He said in a township that is 2-to-1 Republican, the Democrats immediately started at a disadvantage and needed money to have any chance at winning. In fact, the Republicans have only had one year with a contested race since 2009.

"Unless you have resources to communicate with people, you're not going to win," Richard said. "If you want to run a campaign, money is a necessary evil."

The latest campaign finance records show that the Democrats have raised $44,855 in the primary and general election campaigns.

Candidates are required to report only contributions above $300, but of the $35,850 in contributions they disclosed, all but $1,000 came from labor unions -- which tend to overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates and causes at all levels of government.

About 44 percent of that money, or $16,000, came from the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 9. Another $6,000 came from Sheet Metal Workers Local 25. Other smaller donations came from unions representing steelworkers, firefighters, electricians, painters, transit workers, health professionals and other public and private sector employees.

By contrast, the Republicans had three contributions above $300 totaling $3,000.

Richard said that as part of his job as a legislative affairs coordinator for New Jersey State AFL-CIO, he works with labor leaders on a daily basis and those that contributed to his campaign did so because they want to see him succeed.

"Every single one of them, I know personally," he said. "If there's some sort of issue about me being pro-labor, that's who I am. It's something that I wear as a badge of honor that those type of folks support me."

Both campaigns oppose the PennEast pipeline -- arguably the biggest threat facing West Amwell -- but the donations from unions don't sit well with the Republicans who say they are the very same people who support the pipeline because it would create jobs.

Rich, the incumbent mayor, said union members give money to a candidate they believe will fight for their causes.

"AFL-CIO believes through and through they need the pipeline because it creates jobs for their labor force," he said. "So when sheet metal workers and pipefitters give money, they're not giving money because they like Eric. They're giving money because they believe he'll fight for what they believe in."

Richard countered, saying that accepting a donation from a union doesn't mean he has to see eye-to-eye with them on every issue, the pipeline being chief among them.

He said he lives a half-mile away from the proposed route and has adamantly opposed the project since Day 1.

"This is a personal issue for me and the fact that they think I would take a single contribution from someone who would impact the safety and health of my family is completely absurd," he said.

Richard explained that there are five unions that are signatories to the pipeline that would receive all of the work if it were to proceed and he has refused to accept a single penny from them.

He said the business manager of UA Local 9, his campaign's largest contributor, has been a close friend of his for more than a decade.

"Even though he might be supportive, he gets no benefit from it whatsoever," Richard said, adding that Local 274, not Local 9, would have jurisdiction over the PennEast project.

Richard accused the Republicans of trying to distract voters from the real issues.

But Rich defended his record on the township committee, saying that he has kept the cost of government low even as costs for salaries, benefits and supplies continue to rise.

Cristina Rojas may be reached at crojas@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @CristinaRojasTT. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
METUCHEN-- A phony bomb threat called in to Metuchen High School Friday may have been intended to distract authorities during a bank robbery, police said.

The bomb threat was phoned in around 11 a.m., Bruce Peragallo, the school's principal, said in a letter to parents. The building was deemed clear around 1:40 p.m. following a sweep by bomb-sniffing dogs.

One of the borough's two TD Bank branches was robbed Friday, Metuchen police said in a Facebook post. Two suspects were later arrested in Piscataway in the course of an investigation by State Police and the Piscataway and Metuchen departments.

The incidents remained under investigation Friday night. A call left with Metuchen police Friday night was not immediately returned.

Paul Milo may be reached at pmilo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@PaulMilo2. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 5, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Karen Karapetyan visited the National Assembly of Nagorno Karabakh Republic and had a private conversation with the President of parliament Ashot Ghulyan. As Armenpress was informed from the press service of the Government of Armenia, PM Karapetyan and Ashot Ghulyan met with the chairmen of NKR National Assembly standing committees afterwards.

The President of NKR National Assembly praised the format of meeting with the Armenian Premier and Cabinet members, noting that it is Karen Karapetyans initiative. According to Ghulyan, the meeting aims to discuss future steps for strengthening and deepening the already high level relations between Armenia and Artsakh.

Highlighting the meeting with the parliamentarian of Artsakh, Karen Karapetyan mentioned that it will give an opportunity to hear their remarks and visions of developing the economies of Armenia and Artsakh and raise their security level.
Artist Dread Scott's 1988 provocative work 'What is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag?' (Photo courtesy of Dread Scott and the CAC).
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.
The St George Illawarra Dragons have granted Dunamis Lui a formal release from his current playing contract.

The Toa Samoa international has been granted a release to take-up an opportunity with another NRL club.

Lui made his first-grade debut for the club in the opening round of last season against the Melbourne Storm and made 10 NRL appearances in total.

"Dunamis has received an opportunity elsewhere that he would like to pursue and we thank him for his services and contributions to our club," Director of Rugby League Pathways Ian Millward.

"Everyone at the Dragons wishes Dunamis all the best."

This article first appeared on dragons.com.au
England have kept their Four Nations chances alive with a comeback 38-12 victory over a brave Scotland outfit.

Scotland set the pace early by securing an 8-0 lead in first 25 minutes before England slowly pegged their way back into proceedings.

England v Scotland: Five key points

Draw Widget - Round 2 - England vs Scotland

Following their disappointing one-point loss to New Zealand last weekend, England now need to beat Australia at London's Olympic Stadium to ensure their place in the tournament final at Anfield on November 20.

They may still be without vice-captain James Graham (knee) who hardly sounded confident when discussing his medial injury during the match.

While a win over the Bravehearts was expected, it didn't come easy for Wayne Bennett's Wall of White after Scotland centre Kane Linnett posted first points in the sixth minute.

Scotland winger Matty Russell scored what could prove to be the try of the tournament 18 minutes later by touching down despite his entire body  bar his try-scoring arm - suspended over the sideline.

England finally hit back in the 28th minute through back-rower Elliott Whitehead who easily slotted through Scotland's defence.

Whitehead made it a double in the 35th minute when he skilfully regathered an ordinary grubber kick from halfback Luke Gale to secure a 12-8 half-time lead.

England followed on from where they left off in the second half and finally capitalised through centre Mark Percival in the 49th minute.

Winger Ryan Hall scored his 30th try in his 30th Test six minutes later thanks to a magic sideways grubber from eventual man of the match George Williams.

Scotland captain Danny Brough was sin-binned in the 57th minute due to a professional foul of which England scored through Jermaine McGillvary immediately after.

Gale scored his maiden Test try in the 62nd minute after being on the receiving end of some slick England passing through Scotland's middle defence.

Scotland back-rower Dale Ferguson's try in the 70th minute offered some relief for the Bravehearts though it came at the cost of Liam Hood five minutes later when he was assisted off with a concussion.

England back-rower Liam Farrell capped off the 26-point win when he scooped up a Williams kick that ricocheted off Scotland halfback Danny Addy.

England 38 (Elliott Whitehead 2, Mark Percival, Ryan Hall, Jermaine McGillvary, Luke Gale, Liam Farrell tries; Luke Gale 5 goals) defeated Scotland 12 (Kane Linnett, Matty Russell, Dale Ferguson tries) at Ricoh Arena, Coventry. Half-time: England 12-8.
WASHINGTON  An engine disk that broke apart and forced an American Airlines jet to abort a takeoff in Chicago last week shows signs of fatigue cracking, according to a preliminary report released Friday by accident investigators.

A high-pressure turbine disk in the Boeing 767s right engine broke into four pieces, which shot out of the engines housing. Investigators have recovered about 90 percent of the disk, and an examination shows evidence of an anomaly where the fatigue cracking begins, the National Transportation Safety Board report said.

Metallurgical examinations of the disk are underway to determine what caused the cracking, the report said.

Disk pieces were spewed up to a half mile away and a fierce fire enveloped the right side of the plane after the failure. The plane was traveling at 154 mph and was seconds from lifting off from OHare International Airport for Miami when pilots slammed the brakes.

The fire was fed by a pool of jet fuel that formed under the wing when the plane came to a stop.

All 161 passengers and nine crew on American Airlines Flight 383 safely evacuated. Twenty-one people suffered injuries, mainly from the evacuation.

Such uncontained engine failures are rare and serious events that can cause extensive damage to the aircraft. The broken pieces are fired out of the engine at high speeds, effectively becoming shrapnel.

The engine involved in the Oct. 28 incident is a General Electric CF6-80. The NTSB has identified at least three previous uncontained engine failures in commercial airliners in which a disk from that family of GE engines broke apart  two on the ground in the United States in 2000 and 2006, and one while an Air New Zealand plane was climbing after takeoff on a flight from Australia to New Zealand in 2002. But those cases involved a different type of disk, and its not clear there is any relationship to the disk failure in Chicago.
"Not only does the pain from the accident still sit with him, he's in pain every day. They say it will be that way for a long time and will probably never change."
EAST CHICAGO  Families living at the lead- and arsenic- contaminated West Calumet Housing Complex will have more time to move and no longer have to pay rent under a civil rights settlement reached this week between the East Chicago Housing Authority and a Chicago-based fair housing organization.

The Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law first filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on Aug. 29 on behalf of six former and current residents and a coalition of concerned citizens, Calumet Lives Matter.

The complaint alleged the East Chicago Housing Authority  uncommitted at that time to covering security deposits, moving expenses and assisting with the housing search  was noncompliant with federal law.

Katherine Walz, director of housing justice with the Shriver Center, said the agreement  which also offers protections to eligible former residents  represents the organizations collective best efforts to protect families.

The hard-fought battle was by the residents themselves, Walz said Friday. You cant imagine how difficult it is to sue the very program that provides you housing.

Residents are calling the agreement  approved Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development  a significant victory for the more than 1,000 being forced to relocate from the complex, which was built in the early 1970s on the footprint of a former lead smelter. The complex and Carrie Gosch Elementary School are part of the first zone of an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site.

Sherry Hunter, a community activist with the coalition Calumet Lives Matter, said rent abatement and an extended relocation deadline were key battles she fought for, and won.

People have come to me and hugged me and thanked me. I keep telling them you dont need to thank me for something that should have been done anyway by (ECHA), Hunter said.

Jewel Harris Jr., attorney for ECHA, said all parties had the same goal in mind, which was to make sure residents had protections.

It was just a question of how and how do we get that plan in writing, Harris Jr. said Friday.

Settlement highlights

Under the agreement, residents have until March 31 to find housing and will receive assistance with the search. The local Housing Authority also agreed to waive rent owed between July 22 and March 31, 2017, and reimburse any rent paid for this month. They also cannot be evicted, threatened with eviction or charged with late fees.

ECHA will offer relocation benefits to eligible residents, including those who moved out before city officials announced last summer the soil contained unsafe levels of lead and arsenic.

Residents who moved out before the announcement will qualify for benefits if they can demonstrate they left because of lead- or arsenic- related health concerns or have children younger than 6.

Harris Jr. said the ECHA staff is unsure how many families left for that reason.

We dont have a list of people. They would have to come forward and demonstrate thats why they left, he said.

Families that have not found new housing by March 31 can transfer out of West Calumet on an emergency basis. Those families will have until July 1 to take their housing vouchers to a new location, according to HUD.

ECHA may initiate emergency transfers to other public housing units, but only after units are inspected for lead, according to the agreement. City and Housing Authority officials have said in the event of an emergency transfer, the plan is to relocate residents to Harborside Apartments on Guthrie Street  but only as a last resort.

We not only want to move them out of a place that caused the lead poisoning, we also want to ensure they dont move into other housing with ... lead contamination, Walz said.

Residents with disabilities or with elevated blood lead levels will be offered additional time and assistance to move.

Prospective apartments that have been inspected by ECHA will be reinspected, and the Indiana State Department of Health will facilitate risk assessments before anyone with elevated blood lead levels moves into a new unit.

I just want a safe home

Krystle Jackson, a mother of four who left the complex in mid-July because of her sons elevated blood lead levels, is one client named in the initial complaint. She said ECHA staff told her earlier this year she was ineligible for assistance because she left prior to the citys announcement on July 22.

With my son, in March, they didnt do anything. But they (knew the EPA) had taken soil samples, Jackson said. They wanted nothing to do with it.

She said her daughter, now 3, also tested positive for lead about a year ago.

Jackson, who said she was homeless at one point over the summer, is now expected to receive a housing voucher within the next five days and receive priority access to a vacant public housing unit in East Chicago, other than at West Calumet.
PORTAGE  Police have arrested a 40-year-old man in connection a robbery Wednesday morning at Chase Bank.

Brian L. Cox was arrested about 11 a.m. Friday at Loves Gas Station, 3150 Grant St., in Gary, according to the Portage Police Department. He has been charged with robbery, police said.

Cox is accused of entering Chase Bank, 3275 Willowcreek Rd., just before noon Wednesday and handing the teller a note. He then allegedly lifted his sweatshirt to reveal a handgun tucked in his waistband, according to police.

The teller gave Cox an undetermined amount of money, according to police. Cox then allegedly fled out of the bank and headed east toward Breckenridge Apartments.

There, police say he got in a black Dodge Charger and fled east on Lute Road.

Cox was apprehended by agents from the FBI-led Gang Response Investigative Team, officers from the Portage Police Department and the U.S. Marshals Great Lakes Fugitive Task Force, according to a news release from the Portage Police Department.

Police Chief Troy Williams in the release commended the actions of investigators, but also the public for calling in tips about the robbery.
He was the best.

No politician in my time did it better than Robert A. Pastrick.

He had a knack for turning adversaries into friends. I believe I even saw him change some Republicans into Democrats.

Bob Pastrick could schmooze with the best of them. Better than most.

As one of the longest serving mayors in America, Bob could pick up the phone and talk to virtually anyone, including presidents.

I suspect there was a good deal of symbolism in that he was buried four days prior to a presidential election. My guess is that he sensed the end was near and voted absentee.

Bob lived for elections. Those running for office locally coveted his endorsement, especially since he was Lake County Democratic chairman almost as long as he was mayor.

When he was chairman, precinct committeemen worked for the party, not just for themselves.

If committeemen didnt go door-to-door with the Democratic message, they heard about it from the chairman.

And after a session behind the barn, that committeeman generally remembered where he stood in Lake County politics.

In the eyes of some, he walked on water. Others said thats only because he couldnt swim.

Regardless, he had the ability to pick himself up after his critics dragged him through real or imaginary political scandals. He came through them all pretty much unscathed.

One of those was the sidewalk affair prior to the 1999 mayoral primary. Critics said the project constituted the misuse of casino tax revenue. To Pastrick and his supporters, it was a beautification project that happened to coincide with an election.

Seven East Chicago city officials were convicted of federal felonies in the sidewalks scandal. Pastrick wasn't charged in the criminal indictments. However, the former mayor was named in a related civil racketeering lawsuit in federal court  one he lost.

A federal judge branded Pastricks administration as corrupt and ordered Pastrick and former political allies to pay $108 million in damages in the 2011 civil lawsuit.

The sidewalks were prominent in the King of Steel Town documentary on the 1999 mayoral primary between Pastrick and Stephen R. Stiglich, who once served as Bobs police chief.

It was explained the sidewalks ran down a city block, although they bypassed the house with a Stiglich sign in the yard. Thats how politics worked in Indiana Harbor. And, opponents shook hands after the votes were counted.

Even more than politics, Pastrick loved East Chicago. He worked tirelessly to keep the city alive as jobs in the steel industry were drying up.

Ultimately, the Indiana Harbor and East Chicago business districts became ghost towns as the ethnic founders of the city fled south because of increasing crime.

And, the merger of East Chicago Washington and East Chicago Roosevelt high schools into East Chicago Central seemed to take some of the spirit out of the city.

It was the King of Steel Town that shadowed Bobs last hurrah. And, it signaled the beginning of the end for Bob Stiglich.

It was somewhat of a love-hate relationship between Pastrick and Stiglich.

Sometime after Stiglich had died in 2005, I asked Pastrick if he missed the guy everyone call Stig.

I pray for him, is all he said.

I suspect there are a lot of former and present East Chicagoans praying for Bob Pastrick today.
NY1 VIDEO: We're wrapping up our week-long look at the New York Comedy Festival with one of the headliners, New York native Tracy Morgan. He performs Saturday night at Carnegie Hall as part of the festival, and he spoke with NY1's Stephanie Simon about the crash that nearly killed him, recovering, and what it means to make people laugh.
The family of a man who died after being Tasered during a police confrontation in the Bronx is asking for the State Attorney General's office to open a criminal investigation.

Ariel Galarza's family says the 49-year-old was not emotionally disturbed or violent as police have claimed.

Police say Galarza was Tasered twice after he threatened officers with a glass bottle Wednesday night at his apartment on Mayflower Avenue in Pelham Bay and resisted arrest.

That's when Galarza went into cardiac arrest.

He was rushed to the hospital where he died.

"I want justice," said Mildred Galarza. "I want the Attorney General to investigate the police department. Thats what I want. I want justice for my brother. My brother wasnt a violent person. Not especially towards cops. We have cops in our family."

On Thursday, members of the State Attorney General's office were at the scene to determine if they have jurisdiction in the case.

We have reached out to them for comment on the case.
Muslim leaders are encouraging their communities to cast their ballots on Tuesday.

The Islamic Leadership Council sent out a bulletin to the city's Imams to urge Muslims to fulfill their civic duty.

Those we spoke with say this a crucial election for a community that has been at the center of some campaign rhetoric about immigration and terrorism.

"We just focus on making sure that the community is no longer passive politically and civically, we push them to be engaged," said Executive Director of the Islamic Leadership Council of New York Chiekh Ahmed Barack.

"It's important for Muslims to know that our voices and input is important for our own country, and the safety and security, and the future of our country, as well," said one man.

"I think it is important for Muslims to vote for the reason that it is very important for us to have our voice heard," said another.

Activists at the Bronx Muslim Center say each vote strengthens the voice of minorities.
Benedict Cumberbatch, now flying into theaters as Doctor Strange, hosts Saturday Night Live for the first time. Alex Gibney investigates the potential for cyberwarfare. And ponder presidents past  some fictional, some not so much  in the final weekend before the election.

Whats on TV

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE 11:30 p.m. on NBC. Benedict Cumberbatch makes his hosting debut a day after Doctor Strange, in which he plays Marvels supersurgeon turned superhero, arrives in theaters. (Manohla Dargis of The New York Times called it giddily enjoyable, adding that its also so visually transfixing, so beautiful and nimble that you may even briefly forget the brand.) Solange is the musical guest.

ZERO DAYS (2016) 9 p.m. on Showtime. Alex Gibney mines the dark side of digital connectedness  notably, the ability of malware to wreak enough chaos to essentially shut down the world. The documentary begins with the true story of a cyberattack against a nuclear power plant in Iran and a secret program, Stuxnet, that ended up infiltrating computers around the globe. Writing in The Times, Stephen Holden said that the sobering documentary exposes a whole arena of potential terror and calamitous destruction surrounded in secrecy.
Mr. Santoro said he was not the executive director when Mr. Drewniak was hired and he now had a different chief of staff, Paul Wyckoff, who was seated next to him at the hearing. Mr. Drewniak returned to his previous job as policy and strategic planning director.

At the end of the hearing, Mr. McKeon said he believed officials were still dancing a little bit in evading questions about Mr. Drewniak. He said he had identified 10 people who worked for the agency and had ties to Mr. Christie but little transportation experience, though he declined to identify them.

Were going to stop New Jersey Transit and the Port Authority and other places as being dumping grounds for patronage, Mr. McKeon said. That has got to stop.

Mr. McKeon said he was unimpressed with testimony at the first hearing from Richard Hammer, the states transportation commissioner, who said there were no real problems at the agency. Lawmakers are planning to hold several more hearings on New Jersey Transit in the months ahead.

After months without a public meeting, New Jersey Transits board met twice recently and approved its annual operating budget last week. The board also approved financing for the lease of radio spectrum needed to implement positive train control, which can automatically stop or slow a speeding train.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the fatal crash in Hoboken and has not determined a cause. Investigators said they did not know yet whether the safety technology could have prevented the crash, but they have said it could have prevented other crashes, including an Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia last year that killed eight people.
Public schools are required to educate children with disabilities in regular classrooms as much as possible, but according to a federal investigation, the Yonkers school system routinely flouted that rule. And instead of creating a specific plan for each student, as is required, the district essentially copied and pasted language from one childs file to the next.

As a result of the investigation by its Office for Civil Rights, the federal Education Department announced on Friday that Yonkers Public Schools had agreed to revamp its special-education procedures.

In the 2014-15 school year, almost 4,300 Yonkers students received special-education services, out of nearly 26,500 students in the district. Of those, more than 80 percent spent some time outside of general education classrooms; half of them were excluded for at least 75 percent of the school day.

Half of the files reviewed by the Office for Civil Rights contained nearly identical boilerplate text that offered no information specific to the students for why students could not succeed in general education settings, or an explanation as to why the length/percentage of time placed outside of the regular education classroom was appropriate or necessary, the Education Department said in a news release.
As the Republican candidate for president in 2016, Donald J. Trump has accomplished many things. He engaged in rhetorical tactics unprecedented in recent American electoral history. He was straightforwardly misogynistic. He repeatedly endorsed obviously false claims. There were frequent open discussions of the intentions behind his many odd comments, retractions, semi-retractions and outright false statements.



On a certain level, the media lacked the vocabulary to describe what was happening. Trump was denounced repeatedly for lying and at times the apparently more egregious bald faced lying. But that is not a sufficient description. Neither was the charge by the philosopher Harry Frankfurt that Trump was in fact a master of bullshit, which is distinct from lying in that the speaker is not just communicating information he knows to be false, but is unconstrained by any consideration of what may or may not be true. While this description is technically true, it is at best terribly misleading. This presidential campaign has revealed that our academic and media class has insufficiently grappled with the problem of mass communication.

Liberal democratic societies by definition have a pluralism of value systems. This poses a problem for the politician seeking to gain office, just as it does for the advertiser seeking to gain customers. The total audience consists of sub-audiences with conflicting value systems. The problem of mass communication in a liberal democracy is that of creating and conveying a maximally appealing message to an audience made up of groups with conflicting value systems.

There is a familiar way to respond to the problem in United States presidential politics. It is to convey shared acceptance of a value system to one specific group of voters, while concealing ones commitment to it to other groups in the audience. In the 2012 campaign, the Republican candidate Mitt Romney repeatedly said that President Obama was weakening the work requirements on welfare. The claim was immediately debunked. In an essay for The Stone, I used Romneys strategy to explain this familiar response to the problem of mass communication. The goal was to communicate to a certain group of white Southern voters that Romney shared their racial attitudes. But the strategy of communication was sophisticated enough that it provided plausible deniability to the many Republican and independent voters who do not share racist ideology.
O.K., guys. Its election time. You probably have a few last-minute questions. Fire away.

I live in Florida and I am so, so, so tired of this! I cant turn on the TV without looking at a stupid Trump or Clinton ad, and every five minutes theres somebody at the door or on the phone asking me if Ive voted. Ive voted! Why cant they leave me alone?

 Overwhelmed in Orlando

The rest of the nation appreciates what a burden this is for you swing state voters. Sort of reminds us of a high school cheerleader moaning about how traumatic it is to have to fend off a dozen invitations to the prom.

I live in Massachusetts and I might as well be in Croatia! Nobody ever bothers to run presidential ads here, or campaign here. Nobody writes. Nobody calls. I might as well just stay home and not vote.

 Alienated in Amherst

There are no excuses for not voting. Imagine what would happen if Hillary Clinton won the Electoral College and lost the popular vote. The Republicans in Congress would have to interrupt their impeachment hearings to hold investigations on how the election got stolen.
That resistance is traditionally couched in doctors adherence to our understanding of the Hippocratic oath. But its becoming harder for us to know what is meant by do no harm. With the amount of respirators and other apparatus at our disposal, it is almost impossible for most patients to die unless doctors or patients families end life support. The withdrawal of treatment, therefore, is now perhaps the most common way critically ill patients die in the hospital.

While withdrawal implies a passive act, terminating artificial support feels decidedly active. Unlike assisted suicide, which requires patients to be screened for depression, patients can ask for treatment withdrawal even if they have major depression or are suicidal. Furthermore, withdrawal decisions are usually made for patients who are so sick that they frequently have no voice in the matter.

Some doctors skirt the question of assisted suicide through opiate prescriptions, which are almost universally prescribed for patients nearing death. Even though these medications can slow down breathing to the point of stoppage, doctors and nurses are very comfortable giving them, knowing that they might hasten a natural death.

In extreme cases, when even morphine isnt enough, patients are given anesthesia to ease their deaths. The last time I administered what is called terminal sedation, another accepted strategy, was in the case of a patient with abdominal cancer whose intestines were perforated and for whom surgery was not an option. The patient, who had been writhing uncontrollably in pain, was finally comfortable. Yet terminal sedation, necessary as it was, felt closer to active euthanasia than assisted suicide would have.

While the way people die has changed, the arguments made against assisted suicide have not. We are warned of a slippery slope, implying that legalization of assisted suicide would eventually lead to eugenic sterilization reminiscent of Nazi Germany. But no such drift has been observed in any of the countries where it has been legalized.
In recent years Republicans in state legislatures have expressed grave concern about voter fraud as they presented a solution of tough voter ID laws and other restrictions that deprive low-income and minority voters of the ballot. Many of these voter-suppression measures have become law despite clear evidence that voter fraud is practically nonexistent.

Recently, though, a fraud case did arise  though it wasnt exactly the kind that Republicans have so loudly warned about.

Last week, around the time when Donald J. Trump was in Iowa, the Des Moines police arrested a resident named Terri Lynn Rote on suspicion of voter fraud, a Class D felony in Iowa. Apparently persuaded by Mr. Trumps rhetoric that the system is rigged, Ms. Rote, the police said, cast ballots for Mr. Trump at two early voting sites.

In Florida, another crucial swing state where Mr. Trump has fumed about a vast conspiracy to rig the election against him, a poll worker in Miami, Gladys Coego, was accused of illegally marking ballots on behalf of a Republican mayoral candidate. She has also been arrested.
The Donald Trump campaign inadvertently performed a public service when it exposed the weakness and vulnerability of the euphemisms long used by political journalists. News organizations have been forced to acknowledge that phrases like stretched the truth and fudged the facts are useless for describing a candidate who speaks falsely in virtually every breath. Genteel circumlocution has given way to calling out lies as lies.

Mr. Trumps campaign has also made it difficult for opinion writers  even those disposed to give him the benefit of the doubt  to avoid describing his behavior as racist. The signal moment came when, having already characterized Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists, he declared an American-born judge of Mexican descent unfit to preside over a lawsuit against the con game known as Trump University. Even the House speaker, Paul Ryan, had to concede that this was the textbook definition of a racist comment.

Instead of using phrases like racially inflammatory or racially insensitive, editorial pages were calling racism by its name. The shift was clear in the language of the endorsements Hillary Clinton received from news organizations across the political spectrum.

The Cincinnati Enquirer  endorsing a Democrat for president for the first time in a century  observed that Mr. Trump seemed incapable of even opening his mouth without saying something misogynistic, racist or xenophobic. The Dallas Morning News  in its first Democratic presidential endorsement since before the United States entered World War II  argued that Mr. Trumps appeal to racism and other pathologies brings out the worst in the country. The New Yorker recoiled from a Trump campaign it described as sickeningly sexist and racist.
While Congress shamefully fails to face up to the toll of gun carnage, Californias lawmakers and voters are forging ahead with innovative safety measures, including mandatory background checks for the purchase of ammunition, not just guns.

The focus on ammunition sales, for which there are no federal controls, is a creative addition to Proposition 63, a ballot initiative that polls indicate should pass on Tuesday. It is being watched as a barometer of the re-emergence of gun controls as a national issue, exemplified by Hillary Clintons proposals for stronger laws after years of Democratic wariness at tackling the problem. In contrast, Donald Trump has the endorsement of the National Rifle Association and smugly echoes its destructive campaign to arm more and more citizens.

Three other states will offer voter initiatives on gun safety, as citizen movements try to circumvent the gun lobbys intimidation of state legislators. In Maine and Nevada, voters will consider tighter background checks on gun sales. Voters in Washington State will decide whether judges should have the power to seize the weapons of people deemed threats to public safety and family members.

The California proposition  tailored to deal with the use of military-style assault weapons  includes a ban on high-capacity magazines holding more than 10 cartridges. The initiative would also stem the flow of firearms by requiring law enforcement to confiscate the weapons of newly convicted felons, and by applying penalties against owners who fail to report stolen or missing guns, which often disappear into the black market.
CUPERTINO, Calif.  Silicon Valley is bent on disrupting the world. Its products affect how millions upon millions of people live and work. But when it comes to the physical space that many technologists call home, there are increasing demands to leave things alone.

The heart of Silicon Valley is a 75-mile strip of land anchored by San Francisco at one end and San Jose at the other. In between is a suburbia strewn with corporate campuses and the estates of those who run them. Congested and forbiddingly expensive, it is a region choking on its own success.

Silicon Valley has been flashing a vacancy sign for decades  come here and build a company, said Larry A. Rosenthal, a specialist in land use and urban policy at the University of California, Berkeley. Now some people are saying, Weve hit our limit. They may be reaching their threshold tolerance for pain.

On Tuesday, voters across Silicon Valley will vote on a slew of initiatives intended to rein in that growth. In one community, they can keep houses off the surrounding hills for 20 years; in another, they will have the option to reduce an already low annual cap on housing construction; in a third, there is a measure to restrict sprawl.
CHARLESTON, S.C.  Before court began here on Friday, the countys chief prosecutor stepped into the gallery and spoke quietly to the family of Walter L. Scott, a black man who was shot and killed by a white police officer last year.

The videos coming up, the prosecutor, Scarlett A. Wilson, said. If you cant take it, everybody understands that. Its rough. Its hard. Its emotional.

Less than two hours later, with Mr. Scotts mother out of the courtroom, rapt jurors fixed their attention on the video: a cellphone recording of some of the fatal encounter between Mr. Scott and Michael T. Slager, the North Charleston police officer now on trial for murder. The video shows Mr. Slager firing eight rounds toward the back of Mr. Scott, who had fled a traffic stop and become involved in a struggle with the officer.

As the jury of 11 white people and a black man watched States Exhibit No. 237, a female juror held her right hand to her lower lip. A male juror repeatedly swallowed. Mr. Slager watched the video on a screen near the defense table as the sound of gunfire boomed, shot after shot, through the courtroom.
Rear Adm. Gene La Rocque, a decorated Navy veteran who spoke out against the wastes of war, was labeled a traitor by some and went on to found the Center for Defense Information, a private think tank that was described as both pro-peace and pro-military, died on Monday in Washington. He was 98.

His death was confirmed by his son John.

Admiral La Rocque attracted particular attention when he gave an interview to Studs Terkel for his 1984 book, The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two.

I hate it when they say, He gave his life for his country,  Admiral La Rocque told Mr. Terkel. Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these kids. We take it away from them.

They dont die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them.

In the same conversation, Admiral La Rocque described the State Department as having become the lackey of the Pentagon and lamented the loss of civilian control.
There is this perception that if you are doing art you are this rich white guy from Beverly Hills, he said. But I am not this rich white guy. I came to this country with $36 in my pocket. And its pretty sad that after 30 years I am being told to go back where you came from.

The activists in the neighborhood are making no apologies for the radical tactics and portray themselves as defenders of working-class neighborhoods in the city. They look to other neighborhoods, such as Echo Park and Silver Lake, that were once working class and are now filled with upscale bakeries that sell artisan doughnuts and have replaced mom-and-pop taco shops and locally owned grocery stores.

We think of gentrification as displacement and white supremacy, said Nancy Meza, an organizer of Defend Boyle Heights, a group that formed nearly a year ago and has organized most of the protests against the galleries. Ms. Meza said that some gallery owners brought dogs out to intimidate local residents walking the street. These galleries are coming in and trying to replace the current culture that is already in Boyle Heights. They are not looking to attract members of our communities.

As the protests have built in recent months, many gallery owners have tried to ignore them. Mr. Nicodim did not report either episode in front of his gallery to the police. But somebody did. After Capt. Rick Stabile saw reports of three separate cases of vandalism targeting what was labeled white art, he said it was common sense to pursue the acts as hate crimes because they were targeting the owners based on race. There are no suspects so far, but a hate crime conviction is punishable by up to a year in jail. After the episodes, he organized a meeting of the gallery owners and promised them a greater police presence for gallery openings.

Everyone has a right to protest, but when it becomes a hate crime, we have a problem in the area that we really need to address, Captain Stabile said. The concern is this getting more out of hand.
That decision was one of three federal rulings on Friday aimed at protecting the right to vote.

In Arizona, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit blocked a state law that barred third parties from collecting completed absentee ballots from voters  so-called ballot harvesting, a widely used get-out-the-vote tactic. And in Ohio, a United States district judge granted Democrats request to bar Donald J. Trumps campaign and its allies from intimidating voters, but extended the ban to Hillary Clintons campaign as well.

In the Ohio lawsuit, one of five that Democrats have filed in major states, Judge James S. Gwin issued a broad order that barred political workers from a range of activities within 100 feet of a polling place and 10 feet of a line of voters. They include questioning, harassing, loitering, following, and photographing or recording prospective voters or those who are leaving polling places after voting.

The judge also extended the order to a Trump political ally, Roger Stone, who had formed a group called Stop the Steal that announced aggressive poll-monitoring plans, including stopping voters to conduct exit polls after they had cast ballots. That was also barred within the areas defined in the order.

But judges in two of the other five states where similar suits were filed acted differently. A federal district judge in Arizona refused the Democratic request for an injunction, saying Republican urgings to watch polls for fraud simply do not prove actual or likely intimidation. And a Nevada court declined to issue an order against the Trump campaign or the Nevada Republican Party, but said it would consider a similar order against Mr. Stones organization on Monday.

The North Carolina ruling involves roughly 4,500 registered voters in Beaufort, Cumberland and Moore Counties who Republican challengers said had moved away, voiding their registration to vote. In all three cases, the challengers had sent mail to the voters home addresses and reported to local election officials the names of those voters whose mail was returned and marked undeliverable.
WASHINGTON  Hillary Clinton forwarded a chain of emails in 2009 to her daughter, Chelsea, that included information, most likely about climate talks, that the State Department later declared to be classified, according to a new batch of emails released on Friday.

The email chain was among thousands of messages that the F.B.I. uncovered as part of its yearlong investigation into Mrs. Clintons handling of classified information on the private email server she used while secretary of state.

The State Department had previously released parts of the chain  which involved senior members of the White House, Treasury Department and State Department  with the information entirely redacted. The disclosure on Friday appeared to be the first to show that Mrs. Clinton had forwarded information of a delicate nature to her daughter, who had an email address on her server under a pseudonym.

The chain, among 285 pages of emails released by the State Department on Friday, renewed attention on Mrs. Clintons handling of classified material, an issue that has dogged her campaign from its inception and has given fodder to her Republican rival, Donald J. Trump. The F.B.I. reignited the issue last Friday when its director, James B. Comey, informed Congress that investigators had uncovered additional emails to and from a close Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, on the computer of her estranged husband, Anthony D. Weiner.
CLEVELAND  In an election year when Hillary Clinton is depending on young black voters to turn out, she may have gotten her biggest boost yet here on Friday.

Some of the most famous names in hip-hop came out to rally votes for her at an event that featured Beyonce, Jay Z and Chance the Rapper, all of whom implored thousands of cheering people to back the Democratic presidential nominee.

Hello, Cleveland! Mrs. Clinton said as she stood onstage with Beyonce and Jay Z.

Mrs. Clinton called Beyonce a woman who is an inspiration to so many others and thanked Jay Z for addressing in his music some of our biggest challenges in the country: poverty, racism, the urgent need for criminal justice reform.

When I see them here, this passion and energy and intensity, I dont even know where to begin because this is what America is, my friends, she said.
On the day in June that Todd Axtell became police chief in St. Paul, he happened to meet Frank Baker, a local resident who wished him well in his new job. Then, the next night, a police dog bit Mr. Baker on the leg and a police officer kicked him, leaving him hospitalized for two weeks with collapsed lungs and large lacerations.

As with so many violent police encounters across the country, the incident was captured on grainy dash camera video, with officers yelling commands and Mr. Baker, an African-American man in his 50s, shrieking in pain. But when the footage was released on Friday, it came with something not often seen in such cases: An apology.

Im disappointed and upset by what the video shows, said Chief Axtell, who met with Mr. Baker this summer while he was hospitalized, and again on Friday to offer his deepest apologies.
UNITED NATIONS  An American diplomat who helped shape the Obama administrations efforts to steer South Sudan to independence in 2011 says he is appalled by the actions of its leaders, including those he personally knows.

Im horrified and disgusted by it, said the diplomat, David Pressman, an alternate American representative to the United Nations. How can you not be?

Mr. Pressman leaves his post next week to become partner in the law firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner.

The leadership of this country were handed an incredible opportunity, he said in an interview, along with what he called huge amounts of assistance from the United States and from U.S. taxpayers.
TORONTO  The first building in Canada to bear the name of Donald J. Trump  a 65-story hotel and condominium in downtown Toronto  did not get off to an auspicious start. Shortly after it opened in 2012, it started shedding glass, and for the first of many times, the police had to close the surrounding streets because of falling debris.

On Tuesday, an Ontario court placed the Trump International Hotel and Tower into receivership after the owners failed to make debt payments for more than a year. That came after a three-judge panel on the Court of Appeal for Ontario found last month that the projects investors had been deceived. And in a third legal action, the hotels owners tried to remove the Trump name from the building and cancel his companys contract to manage the hotel.

Apartments and hotel rooms in the building that were sold as condominiums to dozens of investors have consistently lost money, and are probably now unable to be sold except at a steep loss. The vast majority never found buyers to begin with and have been sitting empty for years.

The failure of the Trump Tower in Toronto, a city that has been one of North Americas most buoyant real estate markets, stands out as a blow to the brand in Canada.
Through the newspapers lawyers, Mr. Lagace learned that the Montreal police had obtained 24 warrants this year to track his movements using GPS data from his iPhone and to also record the individual numbers of all texts and calls to and from it.

As several legal experts questioned the legality of the spying and the province promised journalists greater protection, it emerged that the Quebecs provincial police force had spied on six other journalists. Montreals force acknowledged that it had also monitored a reporter during 2014.

Adding to the growing controversy over spying, the Federal Court of Canada ruled on Thursday that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service broke the law by keeping vast amounts of data for later analysis. It also found that the domestic spy agency had deceived justices of the peace in its applications for wiretaps.

Tower trouble. The building in Toronto bearing Donald J. Trumps name under license, which contains a hotel managed by his companies, has endured more than its share of problems. Over the years, bits of it have fallen off. Its owners have feuded with Mr. Trumps company and tried to remove his name. An appeals court found that those owners had deceived condominium investors. And on Tuesday, the tower went into receivership.

Its in Torontos financial district, where finding a table during lunch can be a challenge. That certainly was no problem when I stopped in to eat at Trump International Hotel and Tower on Thursday, which remains open spite of being up for sale.
Aleppo, one of the worlds oldest continuously inhabited cities, has an estimated 1.5 million residents on the government side, including thousands who have fled from the east, where the United Nations says about 275,000 are trapped by government forces, suffering shortages of food and water along with indiscriminate bombing.

This is my first visit since 2001, when I wandered around the bustling old souks, which date from medieval times; visited the ancient citadel that towers at Aleppos heart; and admired the gleaming uniformity of cream-colored stone-clad buildings in the wealthier districts that turn pink at sunset.

Now, the citadel has been returned to its original purpose as a military stronghold, with government troops perched behind its crenelated walls. Much of the old market, whose narrow passageways became a hide-out for rebels, lies burned and bombed.

I rode in from Damascus with a dozen other journalists on Wednesday. We made the final approach to Aleppo through a narrow, winding government-controlled corridor, crawling behind delivery trucks and minivans. The bus wound through earthen berms and collapsed buildings, then through a choke point that has changed hands several times. Shells kicked up dust and smoke in the distance.

Then, suddenly, we were in a seemingly functional city. The green buses that have been used to evacuate civilians and rebels from besieged areas were packed with commuters. Taxis knotted up at roundabouts decorated with fountains and newly installed solar panels. Residents are far better off than they were in 2014, when it was rebels who had besieged the government side.

But a closer look revealed small signs of war: Water distribution centers, with tanks filled by wells to supplement shortages. Generators rumbling on sidewalks, to mitigate power cuts that leave the streets pitch-dark at night. And, a few doors down from our hotel, a top-floor apartment smashed by a recent shell.

We asked for rooms facing west, away from the bulk of shelling, a war correspondents reflex. From a high window, we could see a dark plume of smoke, silhouetted against the sunset, rising over the southwestern neighborhoods, where rebels were trying to advance. Only the next morning did we realize that the eastern face of the hotel was checkered with boarded-up windows from years of shelling.
You would be hard put to find any place short of the borders of the Soviet Union where the population is as terrorized as it was among blacks in the South, he told a congressional hearing in 1966.

Reflecting on that period in an interview this year with The 74, a news site, Dr. Seeley said, We didnt get much integration going, nor did we convert the Southern people, who I think are still unconverted.

Providing equal opportunity to young people, whether by breaking down racial barriers or adjusting school-aid formulas for rich and poor districts, was a goal that would occupy him for more than 50 years.

In 1970, asserting that the education establishments obligations went beyond academics, Dr. Seeley challenged President Richard M. Nixons contention that the schools could not cure every ill.

He ignores the fact that schools have been one of the major instruments through which our society has perpetuated its historic racism  at public expense and in public institutions, he wrote in a letter to The New York Times. Most of the blacks in this country either attended segregated schools, or their parents attended segregated schools, which were in fact set up to educate blacks that they were not fit to associate with whites. This is an ugly fact which we do not like to face.

Beginning with his 1981 book Education Through Partnership, Dr. Seeley largely evaded the polarized debate over why public education had been failing. He distributed the blame to the school systems themselves, citing poor training and mismanagement, as well as to external factors like poverty, changing demographics and shortchanged budgets.

He consistently championed what he called competence for all through collaboration of all in a pupil-teacher-parent community  a philosophy he embraced as the director of the Public Education Association (now the Center for Educational Innovation), an advocacy group, from 1969 to 1980, and as a CUNY professor.
In the future, will we be kind?

Shortly after I had checked in with Sasha, the friendly young manager of the Union Square co-working space where I was renting desk space, she led me to a table where five other freelancers steadfastly pored over their laptops as if immured in iron lungs.

The one chair at the table that was devoid of a human occupant was filled instead by an overcoat and scarf, which Sasha moved to the side of the table as she beckoned me to sit.

O.K., I said unsurely. But if that person comes back, Im going to sic him on you.

Sashas eyes flickered with intrigue and curiosity, as if I had invited her to look at a severed head in a jar. She told me, Im here for that kind of awkwardness.

To get a glimpse of what manners will be like in the office of the future, it behooves us to look at co-working spaces, those offices peopled by freelancers or by workers who have different employers. Many sources predict that by 2020, half of the work force will be freelance.
That a demagogue like Mr. Trump would emerge when there is a lot frustration in the lives of Americans who feel that their suffering is ignored isnt without precedent. Which is why the greater sin of the Republican Party wasnt that Mr. Trump won the nomination by carrying a plurality of votes in a large field. It was that people who surely knew better rallied to Mr. Trump once he became the nominee. Some advised him, others defended him and excused him, and still others tried to ignore him. Certain people acted worse than others. But in the end, they were all caught up in Mr. Trumps ethical confusion and moral corruption. They didnt pull him up; he pulled them down.

It is not as if the trends cited above were unknown to responsible Republicans and conservatives before the advent of Mr. Trump. They were, and some party loyalists challenged them at the time. Those efforts clearly failed, and Republicans have to come to terms with the fact that the rot was far more advanced than we understood.

Those of us who have long defended the Republican Party could do worse than honestly assess what role we might have played in all this, what we missed and why, and what more we could have done to stop it. When you are part of a political movement that chose Donald Trump as your nominee, some serious self-reflection is in order.

For now, though, the Republican Party faces a crisis. If Mr. Trump loses, the party faces a daunting reconstruction challenge. Policies that promote economic growth, social mobility and greater opportunity are important. But in some respects the partys stance on the tax code, wage subsidies, higher education, tax credits or entitlement programs are a secondary priority.

Republicans need to wrestle with more fundamental questions first: Will their party choose as its leaders people who respect democratic institutions and traditions, or not; who conceive of America as a welcoming society or as one that is racially and religiously closed; who are committed to helping or exploiting the weak and vulnerable; who admire or oppose tyrants; who respect truth or view it in purely utilitarian ways; who abhor ignorance or embrace it? Will Republicans gravitate toward leaders who have authoritarian tendencies, who incite violence in their followers, and whose personalities are vindictive, cruel and disordered?

In a post-Trump world, Republicans need to ask themselves if their party will be characterized by its aspirations or its resentments. Can it make its own inner peace with living in an increasingly diverse and nonwhite America? Does it conceive of its role as tamping down or inflaming ugly passions? Does it believe in a just social order or not?

These questions are not about whether the economic concerns of Mr. Trumps core constituency should be taken seriously and addressed by Republican policy makers. They clearly should, and in fact many of the people who urged the party to focus on this long before Mr. Trump entered the race are his most scathing critics. These questions go to how the Republican Party conceives of itself, its role and purpose in our political system and our common life. No single person can answer them. This self-definition rests with Republicans in every state and social stratum.
The government of Australia has come under withering criticism for its harsh anywhere-but-here approach to refugees and other migrants who attempt to reach the country by boat. But instead of revisiting a cruel and costly policy  which involves sending everyone intercepted at sea to offshore prisons  Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has decided to double down.

His administration intends to propose legislation this week that would bar anyone who seeks to enter Australia without authorization and by boat from ever setting foot in the country. That would ban, among others, the approximately 1,200 people currently being held in camps in Nauru and Papua New Guinea from finding a legal way to even visit Australia, where some have relatives.

Mr. Turnbull billed the lifetime ban as a stern message to smugglers. They must know that the door to Australia is closed to those who seek to come here by boat with a people smuggler, he said last Sunday during a news conference. Its closed. But his initiative targets refugees who are scrambling to find a haven amid the largest displacement crisis since World War II.

Australian lawmakers should oppose this proposal. Draconian immigration measures are often passed without due consideration for the human toll and opportunity cost they represent.
Southmoor, England  As a foreigner with dual British and Russian citizenship, it is not for me to comment at length on the merits of the rival candidates for the presidency of the United States. But it seems uncontroversial to say that neither appears to be a Washington or a Lincoln, and that the elective presidency is coming under increasingly critical examination.

That their head of state should be elected by the people is, I imagine, the innate view of almost all American citizens. But at this unquiet hour, they might well wonder whether  for all the wisdom of the founding fathers  their republican system of government is actually leading them toward that promised more perfect union.

After all, our American cousins have only to direct their gaze toward their northern neighbor to find, in contented Canada, a nation that has for its head of state a hereditary monarch. That example alone demonstrates that democracy is perfectly compatible with constitutional monarchy.

Indeed, the modern history of Europe has shown that those countries fortunate enough to enjoy a king or queen as head of state tend to be more stable and better governed than most of the Continents republican states. By the same token, demagogic dictators have proved unremittingly hostile to monarchy because the institution represents a dangerously venerated alternative to their ambitions.
ONE of the great misperceptions of this political year, among many Democrats and Republicans alike, is that Hillary Clinton is a third-rate candidate with no core or convictions  oops, wrong word, but you get the point.

So in this last column before the election I want to pitch you the reasons to vote for Clinton and not just against Donald Trump.

Ive known Clinton a bit for many years, and I have to say: The public perception of her seems to me a gross and inaccurate caricature. I dont understand the venom, the lock her up chants, the assumption that she is a Lady Macbeth; its an echo of the animus a lifetime ago some felt for Eleanor Roosevelt.

(When Roosevelt spoke up for Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor, a letter in The Los Angeles Times thundered: When she starts bemoaning the plight of the treacherous snakes we call Japanese (with apologies to all snakes), she has reached the point where she should be forced to retire from public life. Strong women sometimes drive people nuts.)
It is a history of coded race-baiting combined with myopia and cowardice that puts the Republican establishment in lock step now with the alt-right, the Ku Klux Klan, the racists and misogynists and nut jobs, the guy who shouts Jew-S.A., the crowds that scream, Lock her up. For some it is taxes, abortion or immigration, for many it is simply Clinton hatred that allows them to justify supporting a candidate who also stands for torture, reckless war, unchecked greed, hatred of women, immigrants, refugees, people of color, people with disabilities. A sexual predator, a business fraud, a liar who runs on a promise to destroy millions of immigrant families and to jail his political opponent.

If Mr. Trump is rejected on Tuesday, the nation will have a momentary breather. And some good news to build on. The Republicans who have spent the last weeks and months jumping on, then off, then on the Trump bus will have been discredited, and some may be unseated. Those in the Trump inner circle will be freshly disgraced, and perhaps go away  like Rudy Giuliani, former New York mayor, now Mr. Trumps conspiracy ghoul, and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who has been separately brought low in an unrelated courtroom drama. And the electorate will have demonstrated its decency.

The rejection of Trump is the simple part. Win or lose, the harder job will be confronting the conditions that spawned him. This countrys problems will still be deep and complex, and the Republicans in Congress show no signs of giving Mrs. Clinton any more respect than they gave President Obama, or of abandoning their jihad against responsible governing. If she wins, Mrs. Clinton will have the burden of managing the jihadis, while governing for the benefit not only of her supporters but also of the tens of millions who will have voted for Mr. Trump expecting  against all evidence  that he will make everything better. It wont be easy.

Winter Is Coming is the title Garry Kasparov gave his book about Vladimir Putin. Autumn is here in the United States, too. Its time to focus. To confront what Trump represents, the better to end it. Let this election have the salutary effect of reminding Americans as a nation of who we are, and the good we can do, when we are put to the test.
JOHN E. STAFFORD

Rye, N.Y.

To the Editor: Hillary Clinton is not just the first woman to be a major-party nominee for president; she now also holds the distinction of being the first candidate to be under the shadow of a possible reopening of an F.B.I. investigation heading into the election. Win, lose or draw, this is something that could dog her for years. Do we really need another Clinton administration frozen in scandal? Instead we can choose a legendary businessman who says he will cut taxes for the middle class, build a wall to stop the flow of illegal immigrants and illicit drugs, and make us the energy capital of the world.

Is it really that difficult a choice?

EUGENE DUNN

Medford, N.Y.

To the Editor: I have voted Democratic for the past 60 years. This year will be my last. I will switch to independent after I hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton. It was very upsetting to see how little the Democratic National Committee did to support Bernie Sanders during the primaries, going all out for Hillary. By anointing Hillary and not seeking alternative candidates, the D.N.C. did us a great disservice. Hillary Clintons low ratings didnt just evolve during this election. She was a known quantity. Will the new chairperson of the D.N.C. learn from this election?

EVELYN WOLFSON

Wayland, Mass.

To the Editor: It is time to stand up to the character assassination attempts against Hillary Clinton. No person in public office or politics is pure, and to expect no flaws is unrealistic. Hillary has been strongly speaking out for those with limited voices (the impoverished, people of color, women and children, etc.) ever since her college days. She has been excoriated by the machine of public opinion for so many petty reasons, and there have been several attempts to catch her at any potentially illegal act. Despite this, she has prevailed and continued to speak out for those less fortunate.

Regardless of any flaws that she has, it would be a travesty to see our nation wake up on Nov. 9 to discover that voters have elected a demagogic narcissist as our president. Anyone out there who doesnt want to feel Brexit regret must think over his or her vote very carefully, because everyones vote bears a great weight in this election.

RITA BABAUTA KILEY

Eugene, Ore.

To the Editor: Susan Faludi attributes opposition to Hillary Clinton to misogyny (How Hillary Clinton Met Satan, Sunday Review, Oct. 30). I vividly recall the sexist rants directed at Mrs. Clinton in the 1990s, and I defended her at that time. Today, though, I find myself opposed to Mrs. Clinton, and not because I have the slightest qualm about electing a woman as president.
We will awaken Sunday to yet another disturbance in the chronosphere  our twice-yearly jolt from resetting the clocks, mechanical and biological. Thanks to daylight saving time, we get a dose of jet lag without going anywhere.

Most people would be happy to dispense with this oddity of timekeeping, first imposed in Germany 100 years ago. But we can do better. We need to deep-six not just daylight saving time, but the whole jerry-rigged scheme of time zones that has ruled the worlds clocks for the last century and a half.

The time-zone map is a hodgepodge  a jigsaw puzzle by Dali. Logically you might assume there are 24, one per hour. You would be wrong. There are 39, crossing and overlapping, defying the sun, some offset by 30 minutes or even 45, and fluctuating on the whims of local satraps.

Let us all  wherever and whenever  live on what the worlds timekeepers call Coordinated Universal Time, or U.T.C. (though earth time might be less presumptuous). When its noon in Greenwich, Britain, let it be 12 everywhere. No more resetting the clocks. No more wondering what time it is in Peoria or Petropavlovsk. Our biological clocks can stay with the sun, as they have from the dawn of history. Only the numerals will change, and they have always been arbitrary.
What was missing is a sense that this coverage is actually important. After The Washington Post broke the story that the Democratic National Committee had been hacked, The Times came back with its own solid piece, but it didnt crack the front page and it earned only a modest mention on the home page. A piece laying out evidence that the Russians may be trying to falsify voting results in state databases ran on A15 and got minimal play digitally. Another on Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. signaling that the White House was prepared to order a rare covert cyberattack against Russian found a home on page A19.

Whats more, while several reporters have periodically contributed to the coverage, no one was dedicated to it full time. Thats too bad. In my view, The Times should have assembled a strike force and given it a mandate to make this story its top priority. You can tell from the outside when the newsroom is turbocharged by a story. The latest coverage of the F.B.I. director, James Comey, is one example. Industrial-scale cybercrime, it appears, is not.

Turbocharged coverage might have led readers inside the cloak-and-dagger underworld of the hackers and the hacked. It might have more fully explored the government lapses in protecting information systems. And it could have told readers more about the effort to uncoil Trumps involvement, if any, in the hacking. When you think about it, there are few more crucial assertions than whether a possible occupant of the White House participated in an act of espionage against his country.

Many readers have raised concerns. Jack Archer, a resident of Oakland, Calif., asks: If reports of ties between Trump and the Russians are accurate, and several of them are, as we now know, why is The Times ignoring what is potentially the most important story about presidential politics in how long? In your and my lifetime, at least.

The Times finally weighed in on this question last week, concluding that there is no compelling evidence linking Trump to the hackers. The piece, which ran on A21 and down page on the website, appeared to have been in the works for some time. Yet it was published just seven days before the election, and was unsatisfying in exploring the back story that led to its conclusions.

I asked Sanger, a highly knowledgeable and seasoned hand on matters of cyberwarfare, about the challenges in covering information hacks. American drone strikes and Russians bombing a hospital in Syria are immediate, gripping, tragic human stories, he said. A cyberstrike, by nature, is subtle, its effects often hidden for months, its importance usually a mystery. The bigger story here is that a foreign power has inserted itself in the fundamental underpinnings of American democracy using cybertechniques. Weve never seen that before.

That sounds like a pretty powerful argument for all-hands-on-deck coverage. After all, Trumps treatment of women, Clintons email servers, the foundations of each candidate  all of it will soon fade out. The cyberwar, on the other hand, is only getting started.
It is hard to begrudge Democrats their gloating about the state of the Republican Party as the campaign enters its final hours. By most measures, Donald J. Trump appears headed for defeat. Win or lose, the Republican Party is scattered and divided, and faces wrenching post-Election Day battles over its future.

But it is not only the Republicans. Democrats face their own challenges after Nov. 8, whether or not Hillary Clinton captures the White House. While not as severe as those roiling the Republican Party, those challenges stand ready to complicate the early days of a Clinton presidency, should she win, and any effort by the Democratic Party to move into a post-Clinton era, should she lose.

The sprawling Democratic coalition lined up behind Mrs. Clinton  labor and Silicon Valley moguls, Latinos and white middle-class women  could easily splinter as attention turns from a campaign to the specifics of governance. Moderate Democrats in Congress will need to worry about primary challenges from the left, much as moderate Republicans faced Tea Party challenges from the right. That will be particularly true should Mrs. Clinton begin striking compromises with Republicans to pass, to name one example, an immigration overhaul.

And while the tensions between Mrs. Clinton and her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, may be forgotten, they are hardly gone. Mr. Trump was a powerful force that helped bridge two wings of the Democratic Party through the fall, so his departure might not be an entirely welcome development for the party.
Each Saturday, Farhad Manjoo and Mike Isaac, technology reporters at The New York Times, review the weeks news, offering analysis and maybe a joke or two about the most important developments in the tech industry.

Mike: Good morrow, Sir Farhad. How doth thou feelest this faire morning?

Do you like the way Im talking? Im really into this video game where Im a witch hunter in like the 1400s and have to speak to everyone like this. Then I hack up scary monsters with my sword and cool potions. Its very much like my real life.

Farhad: Its interesting that you mention that. To distract myself from this crazy election, Ive been playing Mario games on my kids Nintendo Wii. But I guess Im still not in a good mood, because I started getting annoyed that Princess Peach keeps getting herself kidnapped. She seems pretty careless, if you ask me.

Mike: Right, onward toward our voyage into thee wild beasts and demons of technology!

So on Halloween, a new streaming video Q. and A. app called Whale was released, winning over the hearts and minds of at least one tech blog in Silicon Valley. Whale makes me immediately think of Twitters faulty fail whale, so Im not sure about the whole branding issue here. But it was built by this guy Justin Kan, whos basically been doing (and making big bucks off) live video stuff on and off for years. So, well see.
Deal vs. Deal

There is, of course, no guarantee that LinkedIn will give Microsoft the edge it seeks in data analytics, machine learning and C.R.M. software. The company has a history of fumbling big acquisitions, including its disastrous acquisition of Nokia, which ended in a $7.6 billion write-off, after which Microsoft backed away from mobile phones.

While Salesforces acquisitions and war chest are relatively small, the company highlighted in a presentation to analysts this fall that it had acquired Quip in part to land its co-founder, Bret Taylor, a former Facebook and Google executive. Analysts view Mr. Taylor as someone who can weave Salesforces pieces into a more competitive company.

In the meantime, Mr. Benioff cut a deal in May to use primarily Amazons cloud computing services, not Microsofts. The deal was worth $400 million over four years for Amazon.

Microsoft wooed away a big Salesforce customer, HP, in September to use Dynamics.

Salesforce began grumbling to regulators in Europe about the LinkedIn deal last month, raising concerns that the agreement would hinder access to LinkedIns data for other companies and give Microsoft an unfair advantage. Mr. Benioff even blasted the deal on Twitter.

Given Microsofts history and existing monopolies, it is sometimes necessary for antitrust enforcement agencies to intervene to ensure that Microsoft is operating in a manner that promotes competition, rather than stifles it, said Mr. Norton, Salesforces chief legal officer.

Its not clear if the complaints will be a problem for the deal, which has already been approved in the United States.

In response to Salesforces complaints, Microsoft has said it will bring more price competition to the market. But neither company is totally estranged from its rival, and they say they must work together. In a statement, Peggy Johnson, an executive vice president at Microsoft, said that while well continue to compete, we look forward to continuing to partner.
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 5, ARMENPRESS. Proper management of human resources and preparation of skillful personnel is the key task for the Ministry of Defense of Armenia, Armenpress reports Armenia MoD spokesperson Artsrun Hovhannisyan told at Gyumri Technology Center, referring to issues of army reforms and technological confrontation.

We seek to have more educated sergeants, officers and high ranking military officials who will be able to make correct decisions. When the resources are insufficient, we think of using what we have more efficiently. The footage that appeared on the net during the April war where a sergeant was commanding in a position caused much criticism. Many said that there was no order, but missed one key factor; operation was underway. One sergeant very skillfully managed the operation, where the battle ended with no casualties. It is very important to have thermal imaging cameras, but you may have 10 cameras but no one to make use of it, Artsrun Hovhannisyan said, assuring that everything is done to keep Armenian soldiers combat ready.

We continue to keep the focus on proper management of human resources. Anyway, modernization of armaments is underway. This process did not start after the April war. We always did that, he said, stating that the volume of acquired arms during the last 10 years far exceeds the armaments acquired by the 200 million USD loan.

By the most moderate calculations we need 30 billion USD to modernize the entire arms stockpile of Armenia, the MoD spokesperson said, adding that it is impossible to do that in short period and brought the example of Azerbaijan. The modern weapons of Azerbaijan reached their destination 5 years after the request. Trade of armaments is not like everyday trade, Artsrun Hovhannisyan noted.

Armenuhi Mkhoyan
Together, the candidates and their allies are often overwhelming white candidates  some of whom have complained that they were targeted merely because of their race.

Since last year, the effort has produced two black district attorneys in rural Mississippi and one in Caddo Parish, La.  known as the nations leading jurisdiction for death sentences. And on Tuesday, four black candidates are expected to cruise to election as the top local prosecutors in Chicago; St. Louis; Orlando, Fla.; and suburban Henry County, Ga.

In many ways, it is just as important as the governors race or the presidential race, said Benjamin L. Crump, a Tallahassee, Fla., lawyer involved in the push, who has represented families of the victims in some of the most highly publicized killings of African-Americans in recent years, beginning with the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in 2012.

It may have a more profound effect on your life than any national office will have, because this is going to determine whether your children get trumped-up charges and have the words felony conviction on their backs for the rest of their lives, Mr. Crump said, or, even worse, if they are going to be killed in cold blood and broad daylight, and no one will be held accountable for it.

Aramis Ayala, who defeated a Democratic incumbent in the primary for Florida state attorney for Orange and Osceola counties, was a television analyst during the trial in which Mr. Zimmerman was acquitted. And Kim Foxx was advised by Mr. Crump in her successful primary challenge to Anita Alvarez, the incumbent states attorney in Cook County, Ill., who was criticized for her handling of the 2014 fatal police shooting of Laquan McDonald, a black 17-year-old.
The final week of the 2016 presidential race has seen a blitz of television ads in swing states, with more than $86 million in airtime reserved by the campaigns and their allies. Both campaigns are airing ads devoted to winning over women.

THE CLINTON AD Hillary Clintons campaign is once again using Donald J. Trumps own words to paint him in a negative light. A new commercial, titled What He Believes, features the Republican nominee insulting women in interviews, making lewd and degrading comments, saying that allowing a wife to work is a very dangerous thing, and bragging about walking into beauty pageant changing rooms while contestants were nude.

The ad, which is accompanied by melancholy piano music, ends with text overlaying a darkened photo of Mr. Trump, changing from Anyone who believes, to Anyone who says, to Anyone who does what he does is unfit to be president.

THE MESSAGE The Clinton campaign has spent millions of dollars on advertisements conveying a similar message, but none as direct as this one, which explicitly links Mr. Trumps history of vulgar and demeaning comments to his fitness for office.
Its the demographics that are bailing her out, Mr. Schale said.

In Orlando, voters waited up to 90 minutes on Saturday at one early voting location at a library, some spending the time taking pictures of one another in front of candidates signs. Parking lots for a quarter-mile surrounding the area were packed.

Mrs. Clinton clearly carried the day there. Jon-Carlos Perez, 30, an independent voter and a concrete laborer originally from Puerto Rico, said he cast his vote for Mrs. Clinton in part because shes not an idiot like Trump.

Alyssa Perez, 23, a doctoral student at the University of Central Florida who voted at another busy location in Orlando, said she considered Mr. Trump to be anti-women, anti-Hispanic, anti-Muslim and said, I dont want to live in a country where there is a president who has those kinds of views.

Canvassing on Saturday morning in North Miami, Mary Kay Henry, the president of the Service Employees International Union, and a handful of local members focused on households, many of them Haitian or Hispanic, with an infrequent voting history. But nearly every resident who answered their door assured her they had already voted.

The word is out, said Ms. Henry, as roosters scooted between yards.

But it was not just Florida where Hispanics were poised to send a powerful message. In Nevada, which has the fastest-growing Latino population in the West, Democrats appeared to have built a fearsome advantage in Las Vegass Clark County at the end of early voting Friday, largely because of a surge of votes from Mexican-Americans. The early voting period was extended until 10 p.m. at one Hispanic grocery store in Las Vegas, where the images of hundreds of voters waiting in line ricocheted across the internet. (On Saturday, Mr. Trump claimed, without any evidence, that the hours had been extended so Democrats could be bused in.)
I asked Ken Thompson, the Brooklyn district attorney, for his thoughts about why there were so few elected black prosecutors across the country.

He had other ideas.

We spoke by phone on the morning of Sept. 13. He did not mention that he was sick with cancer, and I had no way of knowing. On Oct. 4, Mr. Thompson, 50, announced his illness. Five days later, he was dead.

Our interview was supposed to last 15 or 20 minutes. But Mr. Thompson kept going off on tangents. In retrospect, I am glad I did not try to stop him.

Some of what he told me would be familiar to anyone who had listened to his campaign speeches: how he was shaped by growing up in public housing and by his mother, a police officer who raised him by herself.
This election is most like 1980, Peter D. Hart, a veteran Democratic pollster, said of the election in which Ronald Reagans large victory also delivered the Senate to Republicans. If the presidential election narrows to less than 3 percent, then Democrats will need some good fortune to win control of the Senate. My advice is to watch the margin between Clinton and Trump.

Unlike many other races around the country, the fight for the Senate seat in New Hampshire features two women whom voters know well in a state where most elected officials seem familiar with at least half the people they run into. Ms. Ayotte was the states attorney general before she was elected to the Senate, and Ms. Hassan is a product of the Democratic mentoring system under Senator Jeanne Shaheen, another former governor.

Both have run well-calibrated campaigns focused on the states opioid problem and fiscal future. Both have been accessible to voters, who expect it here, with six debates, 10 candidate forums and dozens of campaign stops.

Ms. Ayotte runs a five-kilometer race almost every Saturday in towns around the state, and favors truck stops and town dumps to meet voters. She will campaign for 24 straight hours beginning Monday morning. Its going to be fun, she said, perhaps redefining notions of enjoyment.

Ms. Hassan has relied on the star power of her party, campaigning in recent weeks with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who won the state big in the Democratic primary; as well as Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts; Michelle Obama, the first lady; and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. I am just working hard every day, Ms. Hassan said at a bakery last week.

Ms. Ayotte has struggled mightily with the candidacy of Mr. Trump, at first giving him lukewarm support. And when asked during a debate if she saw Mr. Trump as a role model for youths, she replied, Absolutely. She then put out a statement contradicting the remark, which became a bludgeon for Ms. Hassan. Ms. Ayotte finally dumped Mr. Trump, a dizzying ride that may have tainted her brand of independence. Ms. Hassan has had her own troubles with Mrs. Clinton.
The world, too, is waiting anxiously for this election to be over:

In India, right-wing Hindus who pray at their temple for Donald J. Trump to defeat Islamic extremism. In Saudi Arabia, a crown prince who engaged in a Twitter war with Mr. Trump. (Dopey Prince, Mr. Trump called him.) In Mexico, economists who predict that the peso will plummet if Mr. Trump wins. In Japan, a generation that has taken United States military protection for granted, but worries that it might no longer be able to do so.

But regardless of who wins, after a presidential campaign marred by scandal, political violence, allegations of corruption and fears of voter fraud, Americas image stands tarnished in the eyes of its own people and the world.

The United States has always attracted its share of international criticism on foreign policy, especially during the Iraq war. But rarely has its political system been subjected to such widespread scorn and ridicule. Eight short years after the nation was lauded for overcoming its deepest prejudice by electing a black president, this campaign has laid bare an ugly underbelly of American politics. And it has exposed the capacity of a nation defined by its democratic ideals to fall victim to the same antidemocratic forces that have stymied third world countries.

How much luster the American brand has lost is hard to quantify. Global polls, taken largely before the campaigns worst moments, still find the United States the worlds most admired country. Tourism and foreign direct investment are down, but not shockingly so.
LAGOS, Nigeria  One of the more than 200 schoolgirls abducted in 2014 by the Boko Haram extremist group has been found by soldiers, a Nigerian Army spokesman said Saturday, weeks after the militants released 21 of the girls.

About 270 girls were kidnapped from the village of Chibok in April 2014 by Boko Haram, which has killed 15,000 people and displaced more than two million during a seven-year insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic caliphate in northeastern Nigeria.

Dozens of the girls escaped in the initial melee, but more than 200 remained missing for more than two years.

The girl, Maryam Ali Maiyanga, was discovered by troops who were screening escapees from Boko Harams base in the Sambisa Forest on Saturday morning in Borno State, said the military spokesman, Sani Usman.
The narrative by now is a familiar one. American ground forces get into trouble, and they respond by calling for airstrikes, which often kill civilians. According to the latest figures for Thursdays clash, 36 civilians were killed, along with 14 Taliban fighters and at least five coalition soldiers.

In such cases, the Taliban quickly issue a social media bulletin blaming the Americans and their Afghan allies for any civilian deaths, survivors and relatives of the victims denounce the episode as an atrocity, the American military promises an investigation, and human rights groups deplore the senseless loss of civilian life.

On the ground, as Thursdays events demonstrated, the reality is sometimes less straightforward.

There is no doubt that many civilians died on this street, including 25 relatives of Allahdad, 70, who works as a teacher trainer for a Western-financed aid group and who, like many Afghans, has only one name.

Allahdad lost a brother, four sisters-in-law, a cousin, three of his own children and 16 other relatives, mostly children 10 or younger. Three of his relatives houses, all on the same block of the street on which the Americans died, were heavily bombed and severely damaged. Nearby homes were untouched.

What Allahdad apparently did not lose were any fighting-age male relatives, and among the rest of the civilian dead there were only a handful; most were children, women and old people. Residents said their young men had all emigrated to Iran for work, but there were plenty of young men in the village on Friday, many of them heavily armed.
MANILA  The torture was more than 40 years ago, but Loretta Rosales remembers it vividly.

Twice during the dictatorship of Ferdinand E. Marcos she was arrested by his henchmen for leading street protests. During her detention, she said, she was sexually molested, choked with a belt, given electric shocks and subjected to Russian roulette.

So the news that President Rodrigo Duterte wants to transfer Mr. Marcoss remains to a heroes cemetery in Manila hit her in the gut.

Now they want to make him a hero, Ms. Rosales, a leftist politician who is now 77, said in a recent interview. Doing so would betray Mr. Marcoss victims, she said, and whitewash the past.

We have a right to the truth, she said, and so, too, do the generations after us.

The debate over the reburial of Mr. Marcos, 30 years after he was ousted in the People Power uprising, has forced a national reckoning over a wrenching period of Philippine history.
MANILA  A Philippine mayor who had been accused of drug trafficking by President Rodrigo Duterte was shot and killed by police officers in his jail cell on Saturday, the police said.

The mayor, Rolando Espinosa Sr. of Albuera, a town in Leyte Province in the central Philippines, had been arrested in October, several weeks after Mr. Duterte included him in a list of about 150 Philippine officials who he said were involved in narcotics. Mr. Espinosa, who had denied any wrongdoing, is the second politician on the list to have been killed by police officers in a little more than a week.

The Leyte provincial police said Saturday that Mr. Espinosa and his cellmate, identified as Raul Yap, had been killed in a firefight with police officers, who woke them at dawn while searching their cell. The provincial police chief, Juvy Espinido, told a Manila radio station that both men had resisted the police but said he could not provide further details.

Later, the police said they had recovered two handguns from the jail cell. Bags containing what was believed to be methamphetamine, marijuana and drug paraphernalia were also found inside the cell, the police said.
SEOUL, South Korea  In 1973, a newspaper advertisement in the South Korean city of Daejeon announced the arrival of The Messenger From the Spiritual World, a messiah who embodied the best of Buddhism, Christianity and other religions.

Religious leaders of all beliefs, come and learn from him! it read. Those in distress or afflicted with incurable diseases, come and seek his counsel!

The Messenger was Won Ja-kyong, one of several aliases used by Choi Tae-min  a man who, more than 20 years after his death, is at the root of a scandal that has roiled this country and sent President Park Geun-hyes approval rating to the lowest point of any modern South Korean leader, according to Gallup Korea. Tens of thousands of people marched in Seoul, the capital, on Saturday, demanding Ms. Parks resignation.

The scandals primary figure is not Mr. Choi but his daughter, Choi Soon-sil, who has inherited his role as a secretive adviser for the president. This past week, Ms. Choi was arrested and charged with using her influence with Ms. Park to extort large sums from Korean companies.
BELFAST, Northern Ireland  On the surface, Britain would seem to be in the throes of an alarming wave of hate crimes.

In 2015, Britain recorded eight times as many hate crimes as the United States, which has five times as many people; that was 31 times the hate crimes reported in France and 88 times the total in Italy.

The rise of the nationalist U.K. Independence Party, resentment of immigration, terror attacks in Europe and perceptions of anti-Semitism on the fringes of the Labour Party have all contributed to an atmosphere of increased fear and hostility in parts of Britain.

Things seemed to worsen after Britain voted in June to leave the European Union, an outcome driven in large part by anti-immigrant sentiment. A Polish familys house and a Romanian-owned shop were set on fire; Eastern Europeans were spat upon, beaten up and told to go home.
WASHINGTON  In July, the Islamic State carried out one of the deadliest car bombings in Iraq since the American invasion in 2003, killing more than 300 people in Baghdad.

The Pentagon responded by rushing a three-star general to the capital to offer the Iraqi authorities new technology, tactics and advisers to help thwart additional attacks. And in the weeks before the current Iraqi push to reclaim Mosul, the American-led air campaign against the militant group redoubled its strikes on car bombs and car-bomb factories.

So far, the strategy has worked. The threat by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, to retaliate for the Mosul assault with crippling car bombings in Baghdad has been largely neutralized. Such bombings, military officials fear, could terrorize the capital and unleash a new spiral of violence, undermine the government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and pressure it to divert troops to defend Baghdad.

Theres no silver bullet or magic machine, Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, who was the top American military commander in Iraq until August, said about the need to combine tactics, technology and intelligence to identify and combat car bombs. The enemy is adaptive, and we need to be adaptive, too.
TEHRAN  In the past, Iranians looking to mock the United States would burn cardboard effigies of Uncle Sam or Lady Liberty. But in recent months, as the American presidential election took a series of bizarre turns, Iranians seeking to make fun of the Great Satan have ditched the arts and crafts and simply switched on their TV sets.

Irans state television, a bastion of conservative ideologues, for once interrupted its regular programing about the murders and crimes committed by the United States and broadcast all three debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump  live.

In a country that tightly controls information about the United States and depictions of Western democracy generally, the decision to show the debates was unprecedented but by no means inexplicable: The presidential campaign shows the United States political system in such a poor light, hard-liners evidently want it to speak for itself.

We only need to sit back and let these candidates show themselves how idiotic they are, said Hamidreza Taraghi, a conservative analyst and a regular guest on state television. The best way for us to prove that the U.S. government is corrupt and hideous is by showing these people live on our TV.
Auburn Universitys Department of Poultry Science celebrated the completion of three new buildings at the Charles C. Miller Jr. Poultry Research and Education Center at a dedication ceremony Friday.

The new buildings, two poultry research houses and a poultry equipment testing and evaluation house, were constructed over the summer and are the first of a three-phase construction project at the education center.

The testing and evaluation house will be the nations only facility dedicated only to testing and refining equipment to improve poultry farming efficiency and profitability, according to a release.

Dr. Paul Patterson, dean of the College of Agriculture and director of the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station, said the facility will help professors further equip students who are facing an industry with increasingly higher demands.

We recognize that we must maintain sustainable poultry production methods that produce safe products and an economical, environmentally prudent and socially responsible manner, Patterson said. I would argue that these new facilities are coming at just the right time.

We also put the latest technology in these houses to expose and train our students when they come out to the workplace, said Randall Ennis, president of the World Poultry Foundation and graduate of Auburn University. The ultimate objective of the design of the facility was to offer real world solutions to our problems.

The new facility will replace the universitys current Poultry Research Farm Unit off South College Street, which is more than 40 years old. Phase two of the project will begin in the spring and will add administrative, office and classroom buildings to the site on Auburn Lakes Road. Phase three will complete the center with live-bird research houses, a processing facility and a visitors center.

The center was named after Charles C. Miller, Jr., who received textile engineering and agricultural business and economics degrees from Auburn in 1938 and 1940. In honor of Miller, his children, Charles C. Buddy Miller, III and Pinney Allen, supported the construction with a $2.5 million gift to the department.
Betty Jean Lively Humphrey May 29, 1940 - November 1, 2016 Surrounded by her girls and loved ones our Sweet Betty peacefully passed into the loving arms of our Lord and Savior Tuesday, November 1, 2016. A Graveside Service will be held at 2:00 pm, Sunday, November 6, 2016 at Auburn Memorial Park Cemetery with Reverend Libba Stinson officiating. A visitation will be Saturday evening, November 5, 2016 from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. at Jeffcoat-Trant Funeral Home. Born to Frank and Inez Lively on May 29, 1940 in Denison, Texas. Betty spent her young life in Denison. She was salutatorian of her graduating class at Denison High School. Denison was where she met her handsome prince, Harold, while he was stationed at Perrin Air Force Base. Harold and Betty were married on September 21, 1958, before coming back to Alabama to start their life and family together. A devoted wife and mother, Betty was a homemaker focusing on her family while Harold finished his service at Fort Rucker and returned to make their home in Auburn. After their girls started school, Betty began working at Glendean Drugs in 1970 retiring in 2014 completing 44 years of dedicated service to her community, spreading smiles and laughter, touching countless lives of her customers and coworkers who became family. Preceded in death by her parents, Frank and Inez Lively; her brother-in-law, Oliver Fontaine Parker; and by Harold, her beloved husband just nine days before their 41st anniversary. Betty is survived by her children Tonia and Don Barron, Tami and Rob Routhier, and Terri and Eric Carson. Gran Gran's Precious Sweet Loves include grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Jami and Ashley Routhier and their children Tanner, Ryan, Reid, Robert, and Ryder; Robyn and Joey Tabb and their children Grace Jane and Griffin; and Jacob and Jeremy Carson. Betty is also survived by siblings Nancy Stamm, Jimmy and Anita Lively, Sara Parker, Tommy and Louise Lively; in-laws Jimmy and Martha Ann Carter and James and Mary Parker; and many nephews, nieces, and cousins. Betty's quick wit and infectious smile were a blessing to all that knew her. She loved her family and friends and delighted in spending time with them. In lieu of flowers, Betty would like you to make a donation in her memory to Lee Scott Academy, 1601 Academy Drive, Auburn, AL 36830, or Open Door Ministries, 915 Cowart Cobb Road, Adel, GA 31620, both were very near and dear to her heart. In honor of Betty's memory please share a smile and a hug with a loved one today. Her infectious laughter lives on in her friends and family. Her family would like to thank the nurses and staff at East Alabama Medical Center 8th Floor and ICU Special Cardiac Care Units. Your kindness and compassion will always be remembered. Jeffcoat-Trant Funeral Home & Crematory is directing. www.jeffcoattrant.com
ARCADIA  Nobody ever talks about the nose of the Beholder.

Until now.

As Gary Stevens steered 6-year-old Beholder into the Santa Anita stretch and found Mike Smith and 3-year-old Songbird alongside, he flashed back. Stevens can flash back farther than most jockeys, being 53. He thought about Winning Colors, whom he rode for D. Wayne Lukas, and Personal Ensign in the 1988 Breeders Cup Distaff, same race as this. They kicked up furious mud at Churchill Downs, and Personal Ensign barely won.

I told myself that I couldnt let this one get away, Stevens said.

Somehow he didnt. Beholder beat Songbird by a nostril.

All the rest, including Stellar Wind, were spectators. Stevens yelled when he got through the wire because he thought hed won by more than he did. Smith congratulated him, and when Stevens got to the winners circle he saw B. Wayne Hughes, the owner.

You might as well put me in the paddock next to her, Stevens said.

This was Beholders goodbye present to her game. The crowd of 45,673 set a record for a Breeders Cup on Friday. In a time of rampant exaggeration, you can solidly call her one of the great fillies-to-mares in racing history.

She had finished second in her past three races, losing to Stellar Wind twice. Before that, she won eight consecutive. She retires with 18 wins and six runner-up finishes in 26 races. In the other two she finished fourth, and one of those was her debut.

She gave me absolutely everything today, Stevens said. Thats why this is emotional and so bittersweet. I wont be riding her again or any horse like her.

Richard Mandella, the trainer, had to swallow emotion, too.

This week I said Songbird and everybody else had better get their running shoes on, Mandella said. I dont usually say things like that. I kinda slapped myself for a minute.

But you didnt have to know anything to watch her work and know how good she was running. Anybody would have had that confidence. People were coming out of the stands to tell me.

Somebody asked Mandella if the world had left Beholders bandwagon when she lost twice to Stellar Wind.

Well, I planned it like that, to make her look vulnerable, Mandella said. So that when she did win, it would look like I did something very special. Its all in the planning.

He smiled. Ive always said that really good horses appreciate my training better than others, he said.

But if you can win by finishing second, Songbird did.

This was her first loss, in her first close race. In only two of her 11 victories was the second-place horse within 3 1/2 lengths. So how would Songbird face up to her big sisters, especially when they didnt dissolve in her presence? The answer was in the photo finish.

Stevens knew the answer when Songbird refused to spit the bit. He thought he heard a third set of hooves coming from the outside, but Beholder and Songbird kept going, and the noise went away. He put his head down and kept going until he saw purple from the corner of his eye. Those were Breeders Cup signs that signaled the line was nigh. He later called it a street fight.

People ask me on a daily basis why Im still riding, Stevens said. Well, you cant replace this experience. Its the ultimate.

Songbird has already captured the public. She hit the board as a 1-to-5 favorite, moderating to 4-to-5. Beholder wound up 3-to-1, but there was more money bet to win on Songbird, almost a million dollars, than on Beholder and Stellar Wind combined.

Stellar Wind had trouble at the gate and scrambled to get fourth, behind Forever Unbridled. But thats what distinguishes Beholders five-year run. Theres always a trap door out there.

She got beat a few times, Mandella said. But you can lay that on me. Most of her losses had some kind of story behind them, whether its an ulcer on the throat, a cut to the bone in New York, falling behind the gate in the Kentucky Oaks. We dont need to make any excuses today.

In her previous defeats it was almost like she knew was beaten midway through the stretch and decided to look after herself, Stevens said. Today she didnt look after anything. She laid her heart out there.

Many of Fridays fans will return Saturday for California Chrome and the Classic. He and the rest will have big shoes to fill, but at this point they can use Beholders.

Contact the writer: mwhicker@scng.com
Are you a good service provider? I believe that I am. So what! What differentiates me from my competitors? What differentiates you from your competition? Have you ever been asked this question? If so, how did you respond? I have given the question considerable thought and I believe that in order to be a good service provider, you must possess most or all of the following characteristics.

Experience and Stability: How long have you been in your industry? How long have you been with the same company? Businesses do not enjoy becoming your learning curve. If you are new to your industry or company, consider involving someone within your company with more seniority to assist you in the assignment. Although this involves some revenue sharing, you probably will have revenue to share and can utilize the experience as your own.

Empathy: A service providers ability to empathize with a company is crucial. Zero in on the companys problem and empathize with their position. Dont just try to solve the problem before you properly diagnose the disease and empathize with the issues involved. If you own your company, make sure that your prospect knows this and that you have solved employment issues, space issues, legal issues, cash flow shortages or surpluses, etc. As an example: I am a small business owner just like you and we dealt with the same issue likethis.

Creativity: Give some thought to the creative solutions that you have employed and the ways in which you will use creativity to deal with the issue at hand. As an example: I use social media to market myself and my clients. Have you found any benefit in using social media marketing with your business?

Resourcefulness: Have you ever listed how many professionals you know or have referred, by category? Try it. How many attorneys, CPAs, Commercial Insurance brokers, sign companies, IT people, etc. do you know? How about knowing someone that is looking for a job? Maybe your prospect is looking for such a person with those skills and you can make an introduction. As an example: I can refer you to someone who can solve your problem  try me!

<a href="http://THANKS and GIVE BACK: >THANKS and GIVE BACK: Do you thank your clients for their business? How? The best way to thank a client for their business is to refer some business to them. Do you know who your clients ideal customer is? If not, you certainly should. As an example: Ask your prospects, do your service providers refer business to you? I do and would like to refer business to you!

Allen Buchanan is a principal and commercial real estate broker at Lee & Associates, Orange. He can be reached at 714.564.7104 or abuchanan@lee  associates.com. His website is www.allencbuchanan.com
Being a California Chrome fan is a lot of fun. If only it paid better.

Heres sobering news for anyone who thinks the way to riches is to simply bet on the best horse: If youd wagered $2 on California Chrome in each of his 10 U.S. races since he burst onto the national scene by capturing the 2014 Kentucky Derby, youd have cashed six winning tickets and turned a net profit of  20 cents. Chromes popularity makes his odds too low for him to ever again be a value bet.

So gamblers may be of two minds before Saturdays Breeders Cup Classic at Santa Anita: admiring California Chromes record-setting achievements, wishing him well in pursuit of another historic win; but looking for another horse to bet on, with odds juicier than Chromes even-money morning line.

The sane alternatives are Arrogate (5-2) and Frosted (5-1).

Neither has the favorites resume. But each has shown the brilliance and stamina needed to win the 11/4-mile Classic  3-year-old Arrogate with a 131/2-length victory in the 11/4-mile Travers and Frosted with a 141/2-length win in the 1-mile Metropolitan after strong runs behind American Pharoah in the 11/4-mile Derby and 11/2-mile Belmont.

Frosted has what political writers would call a path to victory because of his ability to sit coolly behind Chrome and Arrogate and rally.

Frosted shouldnt be ignored by bettors hoping to cash in on the Classic and the connected multi-horse bets.

SATURDAYS PICKS

The first horse listed for each race is my choice for likeliest winner; the second is a dont forget where you heard it price horse:

 Juvenile Fillies: Union Strike, Yellow Agate

 Filly and Mare Turf: Seventh Heaven, Catch a Glimpse

 Sprint: A.P. Indian, Limousine Liberal

 Turf Sprint: Washington DC, Mongolian Saturday

 Juvenile: Syndergaard, Klimt

 Turf: Flintshire, Mondialiste

 Filly and Mare Sprint: Carina Mia, By the Moon

 Mile: Alice Springs, Miss Temple City

 Classic: Arrogate, Frosted

Contact the writer: kevin.modesti@dailynews.com
DANA POINT  Huntington Beach may be Surf City. But Dana Point is on a mission to show it is the real epicenter of the surf industry in Southern California.

Dana Point is set to launch several projects to highlight its surfing heritage at its southern border  where Pacific Coast Highway starts, just across from Doheny State Beach. Two park plazas  one celebrating the early history of California and PCH and the other the birth of the surf industry in Dana Point  are being designed and could break ground late this year.

Dana Point is, after all, where Hobie Alter  creator of the foam surfboard  first shaped and sold boards. Surfer magazine was born there. And it was the home of Killer Dana, a right-breaking wave just off the headlands that was famous for producing huge surf until construction of the Dana Point Harbor in 1966 stopped the break.

The citys plans include a tower resembling the iconic 1920s Richfield Beacon oil tower at the entrance to the plaza and a monument to Alter that will sit on shell-embedded pavers that replicate the beachfront on Copocabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro.

City officials say the parks  planned on land donated as part of a new 168-unit upscale condominium development  will help reclaim the citys surf ranking among other such notable towns as Huntington Beach and Santa Cruz, which have waged legal battles over who is the real Surf City. Huntington Beach emerged victorious.

We need to own our story, Ursula Luna-Reynosa, the citys director of community development, told Dana Point City Council members this week, before they voted to give the project a green light. Surfing started in Hawaii but the surf industry was born in Dana Point. This was the economic power that was the engine of the surf industry, which has led to the surf culture we know today.

But the two parks arent all. Two weeks ago, the City Council approved plans to study moving the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center  now in an industrial park in San Clemente  to Dana Point.

A study with key surf industry stakeholders and city officials is underway to determine the best spot for the new museum. Programs and the size of the museum still need to be evaluated.

Luna-Reynosa said the big push to promote the towns surf history came when she stumbled across an article in Sunset Magazine earlier this year.

Highway 1 begins unceremoniously, emerging from a tangle of freeway ramps in Orange Countys Dana Point. There is a glimpse of ocean, but it isnt until Laguna Beach that Highway 1 becomes Pacific Coast Highway in more than name, the article states.

That unflattering description didnt mesh with what Luna-Reynosa and other locals know about their town, she said.

Owning Dana Points surf story

To get first-hand knowledge of the citys surfing history, Luna-Reynosa got in touch with Dick Metz, one of the early Doheny surfers who partnered with Alter and was the inspiration for Endless Summer. He later founded the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center.

The more she learned from Metz, she said, the more inspired she became.

The $50 million condo development at the citys entry point on Highway 1 created a perfect opportunity.

Dana Point was a wide spot in the road, said Metz, 86. We grew up in Laguna and wed come down to where Dana Point is. There was no city, no fire department or police. The other towns had rules and laws.

In the 1930s, Doheny was the place surfers from Laguna Beach, Newport Beach and San Clemente first came to ride the original 100-pound redwood surfboards.

You could camp on the beach and live there, Metz said.

During World War II, surfers were introduced to balsa wood boards after English engineers invented an aircraft made from the wood and used fiberglass to make it rigid.

The balsa and fiberglass boards were less than half the weight of the redwood boards, making surfers more mobile and bringing even more surfers to Doheny. In the 1950s, Alter began working with foam for even lighter boards.

He was instrumental in coming up with the foam boards, Metz said.

Alter produced about 80 boards at his familiys home in Laguna until his father built a two-car garage in Dana Point. That became the nations first Hobie shop. And it was the place for surfers to hang out, Metz said.

Alter died in 2014 at age 80. His orginal shop has since been transformed into the restaurant Taco Surf.

Dana Point was where the action was, Metz said.

If you wanted to get into a movie or magazine, you wanted to be where those were being made. This was the place, he said. It wasnt Santa Cruz or Huntington Beach or anywhere else.

Taking back the surf identity

The two parks will give Dana Point an identity beyond Dana Point Harbor and Doheny State Beach, Luna-Reynosa said.

The first plaza will present Dana Points history in California, including a topographic map of the states surf spots from Trestles to Mavericks in Northern California. Interpretive signs and a timeline will depict the history of Highway 1. Another sign will explain the California Coastal Act, which regulates coastal development and public access.

In the surf plaza, Alters statue will be flanked by 10 others depicting surf pioneers. A panel will tell the story of the famed Killer Dana surf break. And current world-class surfers, such as Capistrano Beachs Rachel Tilly, who took first place in China a year ago, will be recognized.

A real-time feed from Surfline will update visitors with water temperatures and surf conditions.

When Carlos Olvera ran for City Council four years ago, one of his priorities was improving the citys south entry. Parts of Pacific Coast Highway in the state are designated as scenic, and Olvera wanted to see the Dana Point segment designated as such.

The complete surfing history began here in Dana Point, said Olvera, who is also the citys historian. I dont mean just riding a wave but the skill, the board design, the people, the music, the associate apparel and the movies. That set the tone for a sleepy little beach town where an unknown industry was born.

Huntington Beach Mayor Jim Katapodis is having none of that.

You can tell Dana Point, Nice try, he said. Do they have the U.S. Open of Surfing? No. The U.S. Open of Surfing is held in Surf City USA.

Staff writer Greg Mellen contributed to this report.

Contact the writer: 714-796-2254 or eritchie@ocregister.com or on Twitter:@lagunaini
Republican Congressman Darrell Issa held a modest lead over Democratic challenger Doug Applegate with more than 183,000 votes counted Wednesday in a Orange and San Diego county race that has attracted national attention after Applegates unexpectedly strong primary increased the possibility of a upset.

In each of his seven previous re-election bids, Issa cruised to victory by 16 percentage points or more. But Republicans shrinking voter registration advantage in the district, which straddles the county line, and Issas affiliation with the controversial campaign of Donald Trump buoyed Applegates candidacy.

MORE O.C. RESULTS: Orange County city, school races, measures

MORE PROP RESULTS: California propositions

MORE LEGISLATURE RESULTS: U.S. Senate, House and California legislature

While Applegate was ahead in San Diego County, Issas advantage in Orange County gave him the edge. He dismissed the notion that his candidacy was hurt by Trump.

Four years ago, voters in my district voted for Obama but crossed the line to vote for me, he said. So I have never been tied to the presidential candidate, Donald Trump or otherwise.

Applegate, meanwhile, told supporters that the race was far from decided.

Its going to be a long night, he said. Maybe a long couple of days, but I want you to all hang in there. The fight isnt over. Lets throw Darrell Issa off the Hill.

Issa, 62, is best known as a watchdog and critic of the White House. The Vista resident built that reputation during his four-year stint as chair of the House Oversight Committee, where he launched numerous investigations into the Barack Obama administration.

Applegate, 62, is an attorney and retired Marine Corps colonel making his maiden voyage into politics. The San Clemente resident supported Bernie Sanders in the primary and shares many policy positions with the former presidential candidate. Hes said he wants to bring his military expertise to Congress, particularly in terms of national defense and veterans issues.

In the primary, Issa won 51 percent of the vote and Applegate got 46 percent in a district that includes the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base.

Through Oct. 19, Issa had spent $3.9 million to Applegates $975,000. But the challengers strong primary showing attracted a flood of independent expenditures from Capitol Hill Democrats and labor unions who added Issa to the list of House Republicans who could be vulnerable because of their support for Trump.

With $4.8 million spent on behalf of Applegate in independent expenditures  and just $69,000 in independent expenditures for Issa  Applegate and his backers were poised to spend 50 percent more on the race.

While he hadnt spent his own money as of the Oct. 19 filing, Issa has plenty of personal funds on hand thanks in large measure to his former ownership of the car alarm company that produced the Viper security system. The Capitol Hill publication Roll Call has ranked him the wealthiest member of congress with a net worth of $255 million.

Issa has endorsed Trump, is a member of his National Security Advisory Committee and introduced him at a San Diego rally. But he has condemned Trumps lewd open mic comments and has a different approach to dealing with illegal immigration than the presidential nominee.

Issa favors a guest-worker program to fill the many of the low-wage jobs now held by undocumented immigrants and has noted the a massive border will not address the people who enter the country legally but overstay their visas.

Unlike Issa, Applegate supports Obamas executive orders enabling many undocumented immigrants to remain in the country legally. Applegate also supports a path to citizenship for those in the country without papers.

Contact the writer: mwisckol@ocregister.com
Years before Jessica Arellano emerged as the jazz saxophonist Jessy J, she was a young girl living in Riverside County who thought the flute looked like the instrument for her at a summer band camp between the third and fourth grades.

But the band director said there were too many people playing the flute, and she asked me to play the saxophone instead, says the 33-year-old, who lives now in Anaheim and, with the just-released California Christmas, has a holiday album out.

I asked my teacher how I could listen to saxophone recordings, and she told me about all the great saxophone players like Charlie Parker and Cannonball Adderley, says Jessy J, who plays today and Dec. 4 at Spaghettini Jazz Bar & Grill in Seal Beach to introduce the new album.

That set her course for a deep and abiding love of all kinds of jazz, but the classical piano shed played since age 4 and the rock n roll all around her as she grew up also filtered in.

I really loved classical music, Chopin, Debussy, Bach, Rachmaninov, Jessy J says. And then I really liked Led Zeppelin. I liked Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. Everyone you could think of. George Michael.

When she embarked on her professional career, though, in which shes established herself as a contemporary jazz player who embraces the Latin beats and rhythms of her heritage, it was another performer who inspired her ultimate destination.

I modeled my career a little bit after Ricky Martin, Jessy J says of the Puerto Rican-born pop star. He was mainly a Latin artist and then he crossed over into the U.S. pop market with La Vida Loca.

To Jessy, its all part of her journey through many colors on the musical spectrum.

I thought there was a natural evolution for me as a musician, she says. I started off in classical and then went to traditional jazz. In college I played in a Latin jazz group.

I always thought of fusing Latin music with jazz in a contemporary setting so that everyone could understand it. It has its roots in all the genres.

I wanted to branch out and reach as many people as possible with my music, Jessy J says.

After graduating from the University of Southern California with a degree in jazz studies, she joined the cast of the musical Blast! in which she played sax but also danced and acted. She worked as a studio and touring musician for well- artists such as Michael Buble, Michael Bolton and Jessica Simpson.

With a new name  Jessy her nickname and J for jazz  her official debut album, Tequila Moon, arrived in 2008, with the title track reaching No. 1 on the Billboard smooth jazz charts. A year later, the song Tropical Rain from her sophomore release, True Love, repeated that feat.

California Christmas, her sixth album, is a project shes wanted to do for a long time, but also did not want to rush.

I love Christmas, Im a Christmas baby, says Jessy J, whose birthday is Dec. 28.

I always wanted to have a Christmas album but it took time to arc my career to the point where I could have one.

The record includes such standards as Silent Night, done in a bluesy arrangement, and Joy to the World, on which keyboardist Jeff Lorber appears. Guitarist Paul Brown, who produced the Tequila Moon album, is back to contribute, too.

Ive been planning this album in my head for four or five years, Jessy J says. Id say, OK, this Christmas what are my favorite songs? Feliz Navidad is just a family tradition of ours. I wanted to include a class piece by Bach, Jesu, Joy of Mans Desiring, because that brings us more to Christmas Day.

At Spaghettini, shell focus mostly on the new album, playing the Christmas songs in public for the first time, though her best-known songs from earlier albums will also find spots in the set.

It was fun actually changing the arrangements of all these songs, Jessy J says. I think theyre all unexpected.

As for the hopes that come with the release of a record aimed only at a particular time of the year?

I think it will be a classic and people can enjoy it every year, she says.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7787 or plarsen@ocregister.com
SANTA ANA  Youngsters gathered on the front lawn of the Illumination Foundations Childrens Resource Center on North Ross Street on Friday, eagerly awaiting the unveiling of a tall, rectangular object.

As adults pulled off a sheet and revealed a case filled with books, mounted on a wooden stick, the childrens eyes grew wide.

Spider-Man! four-year-old Ian Cruz said gleefully as he reached up for a book about the superhero.

Cruz, who lives across the street, was among the first to take advantage of the newest Little Free Library book exchange  and the 50,000th in the world.

The Little Free Library nonprofit estimates that 50,000 little libraries amount to 35.5 million books being shared per year or 10 million more than the New York public library system.

We together as neighborhoods across the world have the biggest exchange in the whole world and it started with a box in front of a home like this, Little Free Library founder and executive director Todd Bol said.

Marytza Rubio, manager of grants for the foundation fighting homelessness, applied for the Little Free Library nonprofits impact fund available to high-needs neighborhoods.

In January, Rubio founded her own nonprofit, the Makara Center for the Arts, with the goal of establishing a brick-and-mortar lending library because the Santa Ana Main Library is the only large facility for the city of more than 340,000 residents.

Bol said his nonprofit considered how the area is impacted by the homeless population, as well as other challenges, in selecting Rubios application for the milestone Little Free Library. The goal is to open 100,000 worldwide by the end of 2017.

It had a beautiful story and we thought it was appropriate, Bol said. We felt this place would produce high-impact seeds of change.

Cruzs mother, Verenice Cruz, 35, said they will frequent the little library often.

Its closer for me, she said in Spanish. I like it better here.

Foundation staff were concerned that the box would be vandalized or otherwise mistreated, Rubio said, but they went with it anyway.

What if someone takes all the books? I guess thats a good thing. Thats exactly what we want, Rubio said with a laugh.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7762 or jkwong@ocregister.com or on Twitter: @JessicaGKwong
The Village at Orange, a mall that has been renovated twice in attempt to boost foot traffic, has been sold by its landlord, Vestar.

Rumors of a sale have swirled through Orange in recent days. Vestar refused to comment, but employees confirmed the 45-year-old mall had been sold and an announcement was imminent.

The mall off North Tustin Street got a facelift a year ago as Vestar spruced up the facade and added a few new retailers and restaurants.

Such a sale, or flip, is common for properties like this, retail experts say.

Developers like Vestar come in to aging centers, re-tenant them, and sell them for a premium, said Michael Brandon, owner of Newport Beach-based retail restaurant consulting firm Brandon-California.

Vestar also owns The District at Tustin Legacy and The Shops at Rossmoor. It acquired the 855,728-square-foot Orange mall in 2013 with an eye for revitalizing the tired shopping center, whose last major upgrade was in 2004. Last year the developer secured a $45 million loan to cover the acquisition, as well significant upgrades.

We feel that the center has struggled in the past and that with our investment and the opening of new stores, it will regain its relevance in the community, Axtell told the Register last year.

Anchors Wal-Mart and JCPenney remain busy but interior corridors often suffer from a lack of foot traffic. The wing near Sears has a handful of vacancies covered by signage proclaiming exciting new stores coming soon.

Construction crews worked at the mall for months, upgrading various parts of the mall including its main entrance. Much of the work occurred during the busy holiday season last year, causing traffic jams in key parking lots.

The mall has welcomed new tenants that appear to be targeting a younger demographic: The Habit Burger Grill, Buffalo Wild Wings, Noodles & Company, Ulta Beauty and Jimmy Johns Gourmet Sandwiches.

Last year, Home Goods, the household division of TJ Maxx, replaced the shuttered Old Navy. Buffalo Wild Wings moved into the former Oggis full-service space near Walmart. San Clemente-based Oggis used the mall to test a build-your-own, fast-food pizza concept.
The Irvine Museum has donated its permanent collection to UC Irvine, with the agreement that the university will raise money for and build a new museum to exhibit the art on its campus within 15 years.

The Irvine Museum focuses on California impressionist paintings from about 1890 to 1940. The free-admission museum is on the ground floor of Airport Tower, a 17-story, glass-walled office building near John Wayne Airport. Joan Irvine Smith, chairwoman of the museums board, and her mother, Athalie Richardson Irvine Clarke, formed the Irvine Museum 1992 from their private collections. Rather than spend money on a new building, they opted to rent space to display the works, said James Irvine Swinden, president of the museum and Irvine Smiths son.

The space was never intended to be permanent, and its not without limitations, said Executive Director Jean Stern. With a new home on the universitys campus, the schools academic resources and scholarship could be brought to bear on the collection and its explication for a large audience, said Howard Gillman, chancellor at UC Irvine.

TIMELINE

But a new building may be several years off. The university has yet to choose a location on campus, begin to raise money, draw up plans or set a price tag.

Gillman said that over the next six to 12 months, more details will be solidified. The cost could be between $50 million and $100 million, he said. Of that, the building could account for $40 million to $50 million. Additional funding could be used for an institute to study California art.

Our commitments to California art are so ambitious that they can really only be met if we can imagine a destination that is a great art museum  on the campus itself, Gillman said.

Were not talking about just a slightly larger gallery, but something that (will be) a mecca for the understanding and display of California art, Gillman said.

The donation of art is contingent on UC Irvine building a new museum within 15 years, according to the agreement Irvine Swinden and Gillman signed last month. Irvine Swinden said he was confident the university would be able to meet that deadline.

Gillman said he was hopeful a new museum could be built within the next five years. Its certainly going to be a very high priority for me.

As chancellor, Gillman has pushed arts and culture on campus through his Illuminations initiative. That effort is part of what led Irvine Swinden to propose to the museums board that the collection be transferred to the university, Irvine Swinden said.

As to whether the new museum would have free admission, Gillman said, The finances for the eventual museum are still to be determined, but we are doing this as part of our public mission to make these collections available to as many people as possible.

TIES TO THE LAND

Stern said the founding of the Irvine Museum helped raise the profile of California impressionism. Like other types of impressionism, California impressionism is marked by visible brushstrokes and an emphasis on color and light. It depicts California settings, and many of the paintings in the Irvine Museum collection show Orange County generations ago.

Were the only museum in the country, let alone Orange County, that specialized in the California impressionist style, Stern said. It had been overlooked for many, many years until we came on the scene.

Irvine Smith sought out Stern to help create the museum in the 1990s, based on his expertise on California impressionism, Stern said.

She had collected other types of art but began to focus on this genre 26 years ago, he said. She recognized that her family was so closely tied to the land in Southern California that she wanted to collect works of art that dealt with the land, landscapes, scenic views, what California looked like when her family was first involved in this area.

Really, my mother was the impetus for this, Irvine Swinden said of the Irvine Museum. What really prompted her was she had such affinity for the land.  She wanted to have some way of sharing this with the community.

In its current location, the museum displays about 50 paintings at a time in roughly 2,000 square feet of space. A new museum would doubtlessly be larger, Gillman said. Moreover, he added, it could encourage other collectors to pass their California art to the museum.

If the plans come to fruition, the UCI museum would be the second new museum on an Orange County university campus born from a private collection. The Hilbert Museum of California Art opened on Chapman Universitys campus in February. It was formed from Mark and Janet Hilberts collection of California scene art, showing everyday life in California in the 20th century.

In the meantime, the current museum at Airport Tower will stay open. Even after a new museum is built, Irvine Museum will continue as a separate entity, Irvine Swinden said. The Irvine Museum has published or helped publish 21 books on California art and its collection, and gives them for free to schools and libraries that request them. Its also toured its collection through roughly 70 museums, and even through Europe in 2002 and 2003.

The Irvine Museum, separate from the future UC Irvine museum, will continue its outreach and book publishing, Irvine Swinden said. The agreement with UC Irvine allows the Irvine Museum to borrow its collection from the university for touring exhibitions.

Stern, who is 70 and has worked at the museum since its founding, said he plans to move with the collection to UC Irvines campus once a new museum is built.

Im planning to work here as long as I can and as long as Im a benefit to the museum, he said.

Contact the writer: aboessenkool@ocregister.com
PESHAWAR, Pakistan  A court in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Friday ordered that the National Geographics famed green-eyed Afghan Girl be deported once her detention expires, a prosecutor said.

The case of Sharbat Gulla, who was arrested 10 days ago over having allegedly forged ID papers and staying in Pakistan illegally, has drawn international attention and criticism of the Pakistani authorities.

She gained international fame in 1984 as an Afghan refugee girl, after war photographer Steve McCurrys photograph of her, with piercing green eyes, was published on the cover of National Geographic. McCurry found her again in 2002.

In 2014, she surfaced in Pakistan but went into hiding when authorities accused her of buying a fake Pakistani identity card.

On Friday, prosecutor Mohsin Dawar said she faces deportation after five days, when her 15-day jail term is to expire. He said the court also fined Gulla a sum of 110,000 rupees, which is about $1,100.

Dawar said that Judge Farah Jamsheed handed down the punishment after Gulla, wearing the traditional all-covering burqa, was brought before the court where she pleaded guilty to the charges against her.

Earlier, she had denied the charges against her, according to officials.

Amnesty International criticized the decision to deport the famed Afghan woman.

Pakistans decision to deport Sharbat Gula is a grave injustice. For decades, she was known as the worlds most famous refugee and seen as a symbol of Pakistans status as a generous host, said Champa Patel, the London-based rights groups South Asia director.

She added that by sending her back to a country she hasnt seen in a generation, and which her children have never known, her plight has become emblematic of Pakistans cruel treatment of Afghan refugees.

On Thursday, Pakistans foreign ministry said Gulla was hospitalized after falling ill while in custody.

Dawar, the prosecutor, said she is being treated at Peshawars Lady Reading Hospital for a liver ailment and that she is likely to stay in the hospital until her deportation.

Gullas attorney Mubashir Nazeer claimed the court treated her kindly, in view of her illness, and that it would also consider the fact that she has four children  three daughters and a son  all minors.

Its unclear what will happen with her children if Gulla, who is a widow, gets deported.
ARCADIA  Suddenly, trainer Kiaran McLaughlin loves Santa Anita. Or at least he should.

McLaughlin told the media Monday that he didnt like coming to Santa Anita because he never does well at The Great Race Place, but his fortunes changed dramatically Friday.

Tamarkuz, an 11-1 outsider, upset 3-5 favorite Dortmund in the $1 million Breeders Cup Dirt Mile, giving McLaughlin his first victory at Santa Anita and jockey Mike Smith his record 23rd Breeders Cup victory.

The winner, a 6-year-old son of Speightstown who had raced exclusively in New York since coming to the U.S. in June 2015, rallied past Gun Runner in the stretch to post a 3 1/2-length win  his first victory in America. He had won three graded races in Dubai  a Grade II and two Grade IIIs  before coming to the U.S.

Accelerate finished third, a half-length ahead of Dortmund. It was the first time in 14 career starts Dortmund lost a race that wasnt won by either California Chrome or American Pharoah. It was also only the second time hes finished worse than third. He finished fourth in the 2014 Preakness Stakes.

Final time for the mile on the main track was 1:35.72 after last years Breeders Cup Sprint winner, Runhappy, set fractions of 22.45, 45.37 and 1:10.00 before fading to finish eighth in the nine-horse field with Gary Stevens aboard.

Tamarkuz returned $25.80 for the victory.

Well, now all the media knows why Frosted (another McLaughlin trainee) is running in the Classic, said the trainer, who won his third Breeders Cup race in 36 tries. Frosteds connections had considered running in the Dirt Mile before deciding on the Classic.

This feels great. This finally gets the monkey off my back with my first Breeders Cup winner (since 2007).

Dortmunds trainer, Bob Baffert, was hoping his 4-year-old son of Big Brown would take the lead early with Martin Garcia in the saddle, but it didnt work out that way.

But we got into a good position (second). It was a pretty hot pace, he said. He looked great down the backside. When I saw the fractions, I got a little worried. The track is demanding today. He just didnt bring it like he has before.

JUVENILE TURF

Oscar Performance, ridden by Jose Ortiz and trained by Brian Lynch, tracked longshot pacesetter Wellabled from second most of the way, took the lead turning for home and held off Lancaster Bomber and troubled favorite Good Samaritan to win the $2 million grass race.

The 2-year-old son of Kittens Joy won the one-mile race in 1:33.28 while sitting off fractions of 22.30, 45.88 and 1:09.44. It was his third win in four starts. He came into the race off a six-length victory in the Grade III Pilgrim at Belmont Park on Oct. 1.

Oscar Performance, who paid $15.20 to win, beat Lancaster Bomber by 1 1/4 lengths. It was a neck farther back to third-place finisher Good Samaritan, the 5-2 favorite who raced extremely wide into the clubhouse turn. Ticonderoga, a 23-1 longshot, finished fourth.

It was the first Breeders Cup victory for both Ortiz and Lynch.

JUVENILE FILLIES TURF

Jockey Javier Castellano and trainer Chad Brown teamed for a victory in the $2 million grass race for 2-year-old fillies with New Money Honey, out-finishing 23-1 longshot Coasted,with Mike Smith up, by a half-length.

Final time for the one mile on the grass was 1:34.01. Pacesetter Lull, a 20-1 outsider, set splits of 22.35, 45.75 and 1:10.05 before fading to fourth, three-quarters of a length behind third-place finisher Cavale Doree.

New Money Honey, a daughter of Medaglia dOro, returned $15 for her second victory in three tries. She won the Grade III Ms Grillo Stakes at Belmont Park on Oct. 2.

Contact the writer: awilson@scng.com
Zulmai Nazarzai walked out of jail Friday after nearly six years behind bars for failing to hand over money as a judge ordered.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Andrew Banks jailed Nazarzai in 2010 on a civil contempt charge, for failing to turn over more than $360,540 to statisfy part of a $4 million judgment. The Attorney General sued him for bilking homeowners in a fraudulent loan modification scheme, and won.

Nazarzai said he took the cash from his closet and gave it to his then-girlfriend, who packed it in a black duffel bag and headed to Los Angeles to deliver it to the court receiver. But she blacked out on the way, she testified, and when she woke up, the money was gone.

Banks called it the most incredulous story he had ever heard  and Ive heard some whoppers  and sent Nazarzai to jail on contempt charges for defying his turn-over order.

A dramatic hearing last week  ordered by the state Court of Appeal and, according to legal scholars, long overdue  was to decide whether Nazarzai lacks the present ability to comply with Banks order; whether theres a substantial likelihood that continued confinement will accomplish the purpose; and whether Nazarzais continued confinement has, in fact, become punitive rather than coercive.

The burden of proof was on Nazarzai, Banks said in an order issued Friday, and he still believes that Nazarzai could produce the money if he wanted to.

He has failed to meet his burden on the first question, Banks wrote. I find he does not lack the present ability to comply with the order in question.

I further find that there is a substantial likelihood that continued confinement will accomplish the purpose of the turnover order.

The final question provides me with the most challenging issue, Banks wrote. It is my view that although the confinement to date has not been punitive, in my mind it has become close to that point. In this circumstance, my oath to support and defend the Constitutions of the United States and the state of California compel me to not try and cut the issue too finely. Therefore I declare that further confinement of Zulmai Nazarzai would be punitive rather than coercive and order that the Sheriff of Orange County release him from custody under my contempt order.

Legal scholars have likened the case to Les Miserables and decried the approach as a modern take on debtors prison.

Civil contempt is a tool judges use to compel reluctant witnesses to testify, deadbeat parents to pay child support or recalcitrant journalists to reveal sources.

The law gives judges sweeping authority to use this tool: One can be held in civil contempt as long as a judge thinks its possible for you to comply and theres a chance of compliance. Former lawyer H. Beatty Chadwick set the American record for time in jail on a contempt charge, spending 14 years behind bars under circumstances similar to Nazarzais.

In 1995, a Pennsylvania judge ordered Chadwick to place $2.5 million into a court-controlled account during divorce proceedings. Chadwick said he couldnt, as he had lost the money in bad investments. His wifes lawyer charged that he actually hid it offshore.

The judge believed the wife: Chadwick went to jail for failing to produce the money. He stayed there until 2009, when the court finally agreed that his incarceration had morphed from something coercive into something punitive. Continued jail time wouldnt result in him producing the money, the court concluded, and he was set free.

Chadwick noted that if he had been convicted of third-degree murder, he would have been out in half the time.
 A tiny dachshund  whod been dressed as a lion to greet Halloween trick-or-treaters  a few hours later grunted a tiny roar to alert his masters to a fire.

At 2:55 a.m. Tuesday, Todd and Stephanie Murphy were awakened by 4-year-old, 18-pound Beau in their bedroom kennel.

His bark was different, Todd said. It wasnt the usual, Hey, I need to go to the bathroom. It wasnt the rare, impatient bark as if he wanted to get on our bed.

Instead, it was sharper  low and serious, an insistent wake-up call.

Stephanie then heard a crackling noise, and Todd got up. Across the street at 108th and Frances Streets (north of West Center Road), he saw a plume of fire from a neighbors detached garage.

He called 911. Firefighters arrived, helped two occupants from the home and declared the blaze under control at 3:25 a.m. Officials said the cause was accidental, due to an electrical malfunction, and estimated damage at $75,000.

It could have been worse. The neighbor, retired real estate appraiser Dale Harkert, 91, said he is very grateful to the Murphys and their dog.

They saved us, he said. As intense as the fire apparently was, it could have gone from one structure to the other and involved the house. We are really, really lucky.

Sound asleep, he was awakened by a doorbell and the sound of his door getting kicked in. He instinctively grabbed for his revolver, but hadnt removed it from a soft case.

He saw firefighters at the door, who escorted him outside in his pajamas and bare feet. His son, Jeff Harkert, quickly followed, along with two dogs and a cat.

Dale, who has lived in the home for about 50 years and raised three children there with his late wife, said the house wasnt damaged, but the fire easily could have spread.

Because the weather was good, the Murphys had left a window slightly open for fresh air. Todd said that might have been enough for Beaus sensitive snout.

The canine hero was adopted two years ago from a rescue shelter, and Todd said the wiener dog seemed to enjoy barking hello to kids dressed up on Halloween.

But as for Beaus lion costume?

He hated it, Todd said. You could see it on his face: You guys, this is so humiliating. 

Omaha pastor wrote of 'war in all of its reality' after WWII

 In the European aftermath of World War II, a 21-year-old Nebraska farm boy  a future Methodist minister  was moved to write about the stunning death and destruction.

As we passed through the streets, he wrote, I got my first real idea of the terrible force that a planeload of bombs must carry.

He had arrived after America and its allies won the war. But he soon saw wrecked planes, tanks and cars as well as battlefield debris and whole trains that had been bombed and wrecked and burned ... a mass of twisted and rusted steel.

His name was Marlon Loftis, and he grew up in the town of Herman, 35 miles north of downtown Omaha. In the postwar occupation, he served as a code-room chief and cryptographer.

After his later career as a pastor in Nebraska and Iowa towns, he died at 66 in 1991.

Recently, son Rod Loftis of Omaha for the first time came across what his dad had written as a young man.

I was blown away, said Rod, 65, who shared the essay with The World-Herald. Ive read it over and over. It sounds just like him.

The young Marlon Loftis also wrote about agriculture in France and Germany, with vineyards on the sides of mountains, but no corn to be seen anywhere. Belgian horses and oxen were everywhere.

As Veterans Day approaches, we honor all who have served in the military, including those who didnt see combat. Its clear from the young Marlons writing that he honored those who went before him in arms.

This had been war in all of its reality, he wrote. It seemed unbelievable that here on this field so far from home, so many of our boys had fallen, giving their all for what they believed in.

Hitlers claim of a super or master race was false, the future pastor observed, adding that America was strong because we are every race on earth melted into one.

Creighton University hosts Opus Prize event this month

 People may not have heard about the Opus Prize, but Creighton University welcomes the public to see an unsung hero receive $1 million.

The 7 p.m. event on Nov. 17, which has rotated annually among Catholic universities since 2004, presents what CU calls the worlds most prestigious faith-based humanitarian award.

Father Daniel Hendrickson, Creighton president, said the three finalists are inspirational for us because they are combating some of the worlds most pernicious problems: homelessness and addiction, the plight of refugees and human trafficking.

The finalists, one of whom has an Omaha connection, are: the Rev. Peter Balleis, former international director of the Jesuit Refugee Service in Africa; Sister Anne Jordan, coordinator of Cana Communities Incorporated in Australia; and Sarah Lance, co-founder of the Sari Bari organization in India, which works on behalf of women and children who have been forced into sexual trafficking.

A California native, Lance worked in Omaha from 2003 to 2005 for the international mission Word Made Flesh.

Two of the three each will receive $100,000.

The Opus Prize is funded by the Opus Foundation, an outgrowth of the Opus Group, a family of commercial real estate development, construction and design companies headquarters in Minneapolis with offices and projects across the country.

It is not related to Opus Dei, a Catholic organization founded in Spain in 1928 with the aim of re-establishing Christian ideals in society.

The finalists will be in Omaha the week of the presentation and will visit Creighton classes. They also will appear on a panel at Creighton at 7 p.m. on Nov. 14, where the public will see videos by Father Don Doll of Creighton, who traveled with others from CU to view the finalists work in Australia, India and Africa.

The events are free and open to the public, but attendees are asked to reserve seats for the Nov. 17 presentation at the Holland Center. Go to ticketomaha.com/Productions/opus-prize-at-creighton-university.

Hendrickson last year announced the Creighton Global Initiative to develop new opportunities for study, service and engagement in Omaha and around the world. Hosting the Opus Prize, he said, is another way for CU students, faculty and staff to think about the ways they can better serve society.
LINCOLN  If you turned your dial to country radio during a certain era, youd hear Alan Jackson.

And if you were a big fan of country during that same era, youd have to be an enormous fan of Jackson and his several dozen No. 1 hits.

Lots of those fans showed up Friday to see the longtime country star play Pinnacle Bank Arena. About 11,000 fans packed into the building to hear Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning), slow-dance to Remember When and sing about all the words to Chattahoochee.

In his signature white cowboy hat and Western shirt  and his mustache, too  Jackson led his eight-man band through 90 minutes of his best-known tunes.

Were gonna play some country music songs about life and love and heartache and drinking and dancing and all the things that make country music, Jackson said.

Thats what he did, and people loved it.

Jackson played Tall, Tall Trees and fans screamed the words. I overheard fans shouting about how the song was real country. You know, not like that new stuff, they said.

The most fun of the night came when Jackson played fewer songs and talked a lot more.

After kicking off the show with a bunch of familiar songs, Jackson and his band sat on stools and he introduced his first hit song, Here in the Real World.

Then he told stories about coming up in Nashville, playing all the local bars and writing his first songs. Then he played Chasin That Neon Rainbow and told another story. And on and on it went as he played pieces of Wanted and She Got the Rhythm, I Got the Blues while telling tales of hitting the road after his first record, writing songs with Randy Travis and working toward new hit songs early in his career.

It was a fun look into his career, which started in 1990, and the tour, which kicked off last year and celebrates his 25th anniversary in country.

Fans loved it.

Yall are pretty loud. Its Friday night, innit? Jackson said. Youre supposed to be having fun tonight.

The show continued with his litany of popular songs, including newer collaborations with Zac Brown Band and Jimmy Buffett, including As Shes Walking Away and Its Five OClock Somewhere.

Jackson has so many hits its hard to remember them all, but he refreshed peoples memories with song after song.

Near the end of the show he busted out some of his most popular. Beginning with Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning), fans remained on their feet through the end of the show.

Jackson followed with Dont Rock the Jukebox, and fans sang every word. Remember When came next, and couples threw their arms around each other and slow-danced.

Fans went nuts for the shows final two songs.

As Jackson sang Chattahoochee, he was joined by a chorus of voices singing with him about going down to the river.

Then the place erupted as Jackson closed out his set with Where I Come From as video of Lincoln flashed on the giant video screens. It started with O Street and Runza before going to shots of Memorial Stadium, which made the crowd cheer.

Jackson came back for an encore of Mercury Blues, which got the crowd dancing and singing one last time.
About 80,000 Nebraskans and 45,000 Iowans who have individual or family health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces should renew their plans or pick new ones by Dec. 15 to keep coverage in effect Jan. 1.

Nebraska Insurance Director Bruce Ramge said the Nebraska figure includes more than 35,500 people whose 2016 plans wont continue in 2017 because Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska and UnitedHealth Group wont offer the plans.

He said Nebraskans should be actively engaged in selecting a plan that best suits their needs. Insurance agents and licensed navigators can provide advice. To find a navigator near you, go to localhelp.healthcare.gov.

In Iowa, Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield is participating in the exchange for the first time.

Open enrollment for plans under the federal law, also called Obamacare, works like this:

 Through the end of January you can renew, change or enroll for the first time in a plan in the marketplace at HealthCare.gov and determine whether you qualify for tax credits or other cost-reducing incentives. Nearly 90 percent of the people with plans this year receive the subsidies, which are based on family income and size.

 If you enroll in a plan by Dec. 15, coverage under the new or renewed plan begins Jan. 1. If you enroll between Dec. 16 and Jan. 15, coverage begins Feb. 1. If you enroll between Jan. 16 and Jan. 31, coverage begins March 1.

 If you have a policy from the marketplace and do nothing, you will be re-enrolled automatically in the same plan, if it exists, even though terms have changed for the coming year, or a similar plan if the 2016 plan no longer exists.

Ramge said people with plans that will continue to exist should review the 2017 version because the plans will have higher rates and may have different terms, such as prices for prescription drugs or the network of doctors and hospitals covered by the plan.

Nebraskans with 2016 plans from Blue Cross and UnitedHealth will be enrolled automatically in a different plan that the exchange determines is as similar as possible. Ramge said those plans may not be what the consumer wants, so people whose plans are ending should shop for a 2017 plan on HealthCare.gov.
One of Whole Foods Market Inc.s largest shareholders has met with potential activist investors to discuss making sweeping changes to the upscale grocery chain, including replacing management and exploring a sale of the company, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The shareholder, among the companys 10 biggest, raised its concerns in recent meetings with activist investment funds after losing patience with the companys direction, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the process is private. The investor cited as some key issues Whole Foods poor inventory and vendor management, high costs and failure to make the most of its unique appeal to millennial shoppers.

Several activist investors, who asked not to be identified, said they are aware of the shareholders suggestions and are studying Whole Foods carefully. Its unclear if any has begun accumulating a position in the Austin, Texas-based company, which has a market value of about $8.9 billion.

Whole Foods Market values the strong and open relationships we have with our shareholders, Brooke Buchanan, a spokeswoman for the company, wrote in an email Friday. We are focused on pursuing the right strategies to position the company to produce strong results and returns for our shareholders over the long term.

The company said Wednesday it will end its long-standing practice of having dual chief executive officers, naming co-founder and co-CEO John Mackey to serve as sole CEO starting Dec. 31.

Larger mainstream grocers, including Kroger and Walmart Stores, continue to advance on Whole Foods organic turf, which is a drag on Whole Foods sales. Kroger has a market value of about $29 billion and Walmart is valued at about $214 billion. Whole Foods is trying to fight back by offering more discounts and starting a new chain aimed at younger shoppers.
Three terrorists of Lashkar-e-Taiba were also arrested during the operation.
DAKOTA CITY, Neb.  Two men have been charged with first-degree murder in the death of an Emerson, Nebraska, man whose severed arm and leg were found in the trunk of a car in northeastern Nebraska.

The Sioux City Journal reported that 25-year-old Andres Surber and 18-year-old Misael Galvan-Hernandez were charged Friday in the death of Kraig Kubik, 41.

Authorities believe the two men went to Kubiks trailer home on Tuesday demanding he turn over a car that had once belonged to Surber. The next day, officials said, they found a large amount of blood in Kubiks yard.

Investigators later found bloody clothing and a key to a Chevrolet Impala at Galvan-Hernandezs home in Wakefield. When officials found the Impala on property owned by Subers family in Dixon County, they discovered Kubiks arm and leg in its trunk. Officials continue to search for the rest of Kubiks remains.

Kubik was last seen around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday. Authorities stopped at his house about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday after Kubiks young son made statements at school that his father had been killed or harmed, according to an affidavit filed by investigators late Friday afternoon.

Authorities found a sizeable red stain of what appeared to be fresh blood in Kubiks front yard. Also, a flashlight that appeared to be covered in blood was found, as well as a 50-yard long trail of blood droplets that spanned the yard and seemed to end near a set of relatively fresh tire marks.

According to the affidavit, Kubiks girlfriend told authorities that she witnessed two men come to the home on Tuesday and demand Kubik return a car that had once belonged to Surber. She said that both of the men were particularly aggressive and menacing throughout this earlier conversation, according to the court document.

The girlfriend also told authorities that security footage showed two individuals entering the residence later that same day, at 10:43 p.m. When deputies reviewed the surveillance video, they believed at least one of the men resembled Surber, who they were familiar with from prior contacts with law enforcement. They were unable to identify the other man in the video.

Authorities contacted Galvan-Hernandez and Surber at Galvan-Hernandezs residence in Wakefield. Both men said they didnt know the whereabouts of Kubik. The document said authorities found two pairs of shoes and clothing inside the residence that had blood on them.

After obtaining a search warrant, blood was found on exterior door handles of Surbers car and on a glove. Inside the car, a key was found to a Chevy Impala.

The investigation led authorities to a rural Dixon County property owned by Surbers family, after his mother told law enforcement officers her son had been there earlier in the day and was perhaps involved in some type of mischief.

An Impala was found at the abandoned farmstead and blood was observed on the rear bumper.

Officials obtained a warrant to search that trunk and found a detached human arm and leg. Using a national database, authorities matched the fingerprints to those belonging to Kubik.

An abandoned farmhouse and several other older vehicles are parked at the rural Dixon County property at where the Impala was found. The property is about 24 miles north and west of Kubiks house in neighboring Dakota County. The Kubik house is about 1.5 miles north and east of Emerson.

Surber and Galvan-Hernandez were placed in custody Wednesday as persons of interest. Dakota County officials had until 2 p.m. Friday to file charges or release the two men. The charges came Friday afternoon.

In May, Surber was released from a Nebraska state prison after serving 34 months of a five-year sentence for felony charges of second-degree assault and first-degree false imprisonment, according to the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services.

Galvan-Hernandez, 18, is a resident of Wakefield, and Surber, 25, did not have an address listed.

Residents of Emerson expressed shock as details emerged about the grisly slaying.

George Berner, a cashier at Pony Express, Emersons lone gas station, said the store had been buzzing with the news. Just about everybody in the village of about 800 knew Kubik, he said.

He came in here quite often to get his stuff with his little boy, Berner said. He was a pleasant guy. A lot of people liked him.

Vi Heckens, former owner of the Tri-County Bar on Main Street in Emerson, said she remembered Kubik when he was in high school, coming in to play pool with his friends. His death compares to nothing she has experienced in the past 46 years as an Emerson resident, she said.

This is just a little bitty town  we cant believe something like this is going on, Heckens said. Were just mortified.
Shopping event: Living Faith United Methodist Church, 5310 S. 182nd Ave., will host a West O Shopping Event from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 5, featuring more than 60 vendors and crafters. Admission is free; bring canned goods or make a donation for a shopping tote (quantities are limited). For more information, call 402-393-2321.

Members and friends celebration: St. Paul United Methodist Church, 5410 Corby St., will observe a members and friends celebration as part of worship at 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 5, and with a single Sunday service at 10 a.m. The congregation continues centering on The Fruitful Living Series by Bishop Robert Schnase, with Novembers focus on extravagant generosity and stewardship.

Harvest turkey dinner: Emmaus Lutheran Church in Kennard, Nebraska, will host a turkey dinner from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Sunday at the Kennard Auditorium. Cost is $10 for adults and $5 for children age 7 and younger.

Free puppet and black-light show: Presbyterian Church of the Master, 10710 Corby Circle, will host its annual fall production, God at Work: A Work in Progress, at 2 and 5:30 p.m. Sunday. ACE Puppet Troupe will perform Christian and secular skits, including spectacular black-light effects. A cookie reception will follow each performance. Freewill donations accepted. For more information, contact Rita Wright at Wrightrmb@gmail.com or 402-670-1593.

Election Day Prayer Vigil: Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, 113 N. 18th St., will hold an Election Day Prayer Vigil on Tuesday. The cathedral will offer several short prayers services, as well as the Holy Eucharist and will be open for silent meditation and prayer throughout the day from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. The specific schedule for the day is as follows: 8 a.m. morning prayer; 11:45 a.m. quiet organ meditation; Noon Holy Eucharist; 5:30 p.m. evening prayer; 7:45 p.m. Compline. For more information, contact Brother James Dowd at 402-342-7010.

Election Day meal: The United Methodist Women of Trinity United Methodist Church will serve their annual Election Day soup and pie meal from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday in the churchs Johnson Community Center at 8009 Q St. in Ralston. The cost is $8.50 per adult and $4 per child age 10 and younger. That includes a bowl of chicken noodle soup with homemade noodles or homemade chili, crackers, raw veggies, pie and drink. Proceeds will go to support the groups mission work. For more information, call the church office at 402-331-4054.

The Carry Home: Nature writer Gary Ferguson will speak Thursday on his latest book, The Carry Home  Lessons from the American Wilderness, at Countryside Community Church, 8787 Pacific St. The 7 p.m. lecture is part of the Center for Faith Studies lecture series. Ferguson will address the themes of his book and sign copies during a reception following the lecture. Books will be available for signing at the event, courtesy of the Bookworm. Tickets: suggested donation $10; students are free with ID. Reserve tickets by emailing kellyk@countrysideucc.org or calling 402-391-0350. For more information, go online to centerforfaithstudies.org.

Weekend retreat: The Rev. Francis A. Nigli will present a retreat titled Totus Christus at St. Benedict Center in Schuyler, Nebraska, Friday through Nov. 13. Nigli is the associate pastor at St. Wenceslaus Parish. The retreat begins at 7:30 p.m. Friday and ends at 5 p.m. Nov. 13. For more information, call 402-352-8819 or go online to StBenedictCenter.com.

Fall Arts and Crafts Fair: St. Marks United Methodist Church, 8550 Pioneers Blvd. in Lincoln, will host is annual Fall Arts and Crafts Fair from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Nov. 12. Lunch and snacks will be available. The United Methodist Women also sponsor a bake sale. Admission is free; however, those attending are encouraged to bring a nonperishable food item to support the local food pantry. For questions or more information, call 402-489-8885.

Lecture: Leide Lessa, an international speaker, will talk on Making the Right Decisions at 4 p.m. Nov. 12 at the University of Nebraska at Omahas Thompson Center, 6705 Dodge St. Her talk will explore the connections between decisions, solutions and prayer. The talk is free and open to the public.

Special service and concert: Kountze Memorial Lutheran Church, 2650 Farnam St., will commemorate all the saints who have died in the faith with special worship services at 9 and 11 a.m. Sunday. The liturgy will include trumpet and harp musical selections by Craig and Mary Bircher, Omaha Symphony musicians, and a display of more than 200 handmade quilts by the churchs sewing circle to benefit Lutheran World Relief. Nursery care is provided, and a full breakfast will be served from 8 to 11 a.m. in the fellowship hall. At 3 p.m. Sunday, organist Catherine Rodland will be in concert at the church. The concert is free and open to the public. Parking is available to the west of the church. A reception will follow.
TEMPLETON, Iowa  A great-grandson and a grandson of bootleggers took a shot 10 years ago at capitalizing on a smooth hometown whiskey with a good, old-fashioned story.

Now the company is celebrating a decade of keeping the famed whiskey flowing and is planning to produce barrels and barrels more in this western Iowa community of 362 people.

Templeton Rye Spirits bottles and distributes Templeton Rye, a whiskey with a colorful Prohibition-era history involving local bootleggers, gangster Al Capone and a nickname, The Good Stuff.

The company is marking the milestone with a hometown celebration today and in the release of 6,080 bottles of whiskey set aside to age in oak barrels a decade ago. Iowa retail outlets will get 927 bottles; the others are being distributed nationally.

The company also is barreling ahead with a $26 million plan to construct a 34,500-square-foot distillery and two large warehouses on its 20-acre property in Templeton. The Iowa Economic Development Authority approved $1.6 million in tax credits last month to help facilitate the expansion and renovation.

Construction is expected to begin in March and to be completed 20 months later. The expansion is targeted to add 27 workers, many of them salaried, to the current roster of about six full-time and 12 to 15 part-time employees.

The distillery will be able to produce 500,000 gallons of rye whiskey annually. The two aging warehouses will store 20,000 barrels each. The first Iowa-distilled Templeton  aged four years  would appear on store shelves in about 2022.

Co-founder Keith Kerkhoff, 62, whose grandfather Alphons Kerkhoff cooked rye whiskey during and after Prohibition, said the project will drive tourism and add to Templetons reputation as a premier whiskey.

I wont live to see it, but my vision is that Templeton would be the next Lynchburg, Tennessee, he said, referencing the home of Jack Daniels whiskey.

Deirdre Marie Capone, a grandniece of Al Capone, told Kerkhoff that Templeton Rye was her famous relatives favorite whiskey. It was smuggled aboard livestock trains bound for Chicago.

The company made its first sales when 68 barrels of whiskey  based on a recipe of Alphons Kerkhoffs  completed a four-year aging process in 2006. It was one of the first contemporary rye whiskeys.

Kerkhoff and partner Scott Bush, whose great-grandfather also cooked rye whiskey, teamed up with Vern Underwood of California-based Youngs Holdings, an alcohol distributor, which bankrolled the company. Templeton Rye produced its 1 millionth bottle in 2013. The company doesnt disclose detailed figures, but Kerkhoff said it has never had a down sales year.

After its Iowa launch, the whiskey initially became available in Illinois and the San Francisco area before spreading nationwide. California is the companys No. 1 market. Illinois is second.

The company settled lawsuits in 2015 over labeling that implied the whiskey was made in Iowa. Until its Iowa distillery is built, the company will continue to use a mash made up of 95 percent rye from MGP Ingredients in Indiana as the whiskeys foundation. The Iowa operation combines distilled rye whiskey with its proprietary formula and local water in batches of 900 gallons for bottling in Templeton.

Mayor Ken Behrens said the companys expansion will not only mean a bigger tax base but more well-paying jobs.

Maybe well be able to attract more people to town, which will lead to more housing being built and more new growth, he said.

The mayor said its hard to specifically quantify the precise economic impact Templeton Ryes comeback has had on the community, but he said new tax revenue and hometown pride help the town.

Were very fortunate that weve been able to survive in a way that not all rural communities across the country can claim, Behrens said.

Templetons bootleg history hasnt always been a source of pride, Behrens said.

Some people did end up in jail, and that was never anything to be proud of, he said. But people did what they had to do to survive, and now its given our town some notoriety and an economic boost. The story is great. The product is great. The good times are just starting.

*************

Templeton Rye Spirits marks a decade of bottling a historic whiskey in Templeton, Iowa, with a public celebration today. The town is 14 miles north of Audubon, Iowa, and 95 miles east of Omaha

3-5 p.m.  Open house at Templeton Rye, 209 E. Third St.

5-5:30 p.m.  Cocktails at Templeton Community Center

5:30-6 p.m.  Food supplied by Woodfellas BBQ and The Still

6 p.m.  Remarks

6:45 p.m.  Bootlegger stories

7:30 p.m.  Jake McVey performance

A commemorative Templeton Rye gift will be distributed to the first 300 people at the event.
Iowa Republicans are hoping for a good election night that could hand them total control of the states legislative and executive branches for the first time in nearly two decades.

To do that they need to retain their majority in the House and flip three Senate seats  something that could happen, according to Dennis Goldford, political science professor at Drake University.

Republicans have a reasonable shot at flipping it, Goldford said.

Goldford said there are a half-dozen incumbent Democrats to watch Tuesday night. Those include Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, who represents Council Bluffs and Carter Lake.

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, was in Gronstals backyard this week. Appearing at a campaign event in Council Bluffs, Branstad sought to fire up volunteers by telling them how Gronstal and his fellow Democrats have blocked GOP legislative priorities.

In the past Ive been able to work with him on some things, but his caucus has gotten more liberal and he has gotten more and more partisan, Branstad said of Gronstal.

He said the Iowa House has been passing bills Gronstal wont even bring up in the Senate, including a water-quality bill.

We have the opportunity to have a Senate that will work with us and not attack us and not kill every bill that we get through the House of Representatives, Branstad said.

Gronstal told The World-Herald that he has worked with Branstad to find common ground on some areas, such as commercial property taxes, but that the water-quality legislation was simply an all-out attack on education funding in the state.

It would be a disaster for local schools, he said.

Gronstal said he feels good about the chances of re-electing Democrats to the Iowa Senate and that he sees a couple of opportunities to pick up seats  although he declined to identify them. He said hes heard the rhetoric from Republicans about retaking the chamber before and seen it come to nothing.

And he warned about the consequences if the Republicans are successful.

Iowa has always had a strong commitment to K-through-12 education, and that is lacking with the current crop of Republican candidates that are out there, Gronstal said.

Gronstal is facing Republican Dan Dawson, who serves in the Army Reserves and has deployed to Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is a special agent with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.

My priorities are decent-paying jobs, Dawson told The World-Herald. We could have the safest streets, we could have the best schools, but if we dont have a job for someone to come and earn a living for their family, theyre never going to be planting roots here in this area.

Gronstal touted his work on behalf of the district, which he said has included legislation that helped bring Google to town and got the Mid-America Center built.

Goldford said that if Republicans do take over the Senate, Iowa will join a number of states where Republicans are in charge of both the Legislature and the governorship.

It gives Branstad complete control, Goldford said.
It took Stacey Shields less than a hour to renew her drivers license at the Sarpy County office of the Nebraska Department of Motor Vehicles.

Her Thursday visit was an improvement from the time she waited almost two hours at the DMV office in Papillion before giving up because it was taking too long.

Most people dread the DMV, Shields said. Most people expect to wait a long time.

For three Sarpy County Board members, those waits have gotten too long.

When 50 disgruntled customers are lined up in the County Courthouse halls for hours, it reflects badly on Sarpy County, said board member Jim Warren. So board members, tired of hearing taxpayer complaints, want to get the state DMV office out of the courthouse.

Warren and Fred Uhe, Sarpy County spokesman, said theyve seen people waiting so long, theyve ordered pizza and Jimmy Johns sandwiches for delivery to the courthouse. Uhe said the lines  and wait times of up to four hours at their worst  have been a problem for at least two years.

It makes Sarpy County look bad, and the growing county could use the more than 1,300 square feet for its own functions, board members said.

The long waits are not unique to Sarpy County. In Douglas and Lancaster Counties, waits in recent weeks have also stretched at times to up to five hours, according to the DMVs website, where people can reserve a spot in line and check wait times.

More than half of the states DMV applications go through offices in those three counties, though the offices are home to less than half the agencys staff  a situation the DMV is hoping to change.

Rhonda Lahm, director of the Department of Motor Vehicles, said shes aware of the problem with long wait times and said it has been an ongoing issue in other counties as well, although the DMV keeps data on wait times for only the states three largest counties.

A spot check of several other DMV offices around the state indicated that long wait times appear to be less of a problem elsewhere.

County treasurers in Hall, Buffalo and Dodge Counties said generally there are not long wait times at their DMV offices. Dodge County Treasurer Cathy Dill said people from the Omaha area will occasionally come to her office because its faster than going to the Douglas County locations.

Still, those getting licenses in Douglas County this week said the wait time is manageable.

Joe Braun, who was getting a license at the South Omaha DMV location, said with more locations in the metro area its more convenient to visit the DMV than in his previous home state of Maryland.

Sarpy County differs from Lancaster and Douglas Counties in that its sole DMV office is housed in the County Courthouse, where people often associate it with the county.

Douglas County has four locations and Lancaster County has two locations, all of which are housed in separate buildings paid for by those counties. Douglas County Treasurer John Ewing and Lancaster County Board member Todd Wiltgen said when people have complaints about wait times, they direct them to the state.

In Sarpy, by contrast, the office is the first thing visitors see when they walk through the courthouse doors. And County Board members often have heard complaints.

Shields, a Sarpy County resident, said she doesnt get mad at the county or the state when she has to wait. Its just the process of getting or renewing a license that can be annoying, she said.

Other Sarpy residents have been less understanding.

Kelly said discussion about Sarpy Countys DMV office was sparked in part by a letter published in The World-Heralds Public Pulse in June.

In the letter, a 79-year-old Papillion resident wrote that he waited for more than four hours for a two-minute eye exam to renew his drivers license. In his letter, he said the system needs to be fixed. When reached by phone, the man said, in jest, that he hoped he died before he had to go back to the DMV.

Customers can renew licenses and change addresses and receive other services online at clickdmv.ne.gov, but drivers cant always avoid the DMV. The 79-year-old was required to renew his license in person because of his age.

Lahm said her office cant predict when people will decide to go to the DMV but, generally speaking, DMV offices are busier during the summer months, on days when school is not in session and often on Mondays and Fridays.

For months, Sarpy County officials have been updating wait times on the countys Facebook page, with a link to the DMV website to reserve a spot in line. This week, wait times in Sarpy County ranged from no wait to close to an hour.

The DMV also has struggled to retain employees, Lahm said, and new workers take time to train. To help address the issue, she said, the state has consolidated training to the Millard location in Douglas County.

Lahm said the state has tried to work with Sarpy County and other locations by offering some Saturday hours for driver tests, opening earlier during the busy summer months and moving more experienced staff to busier offices. But she said the DMV must consider the needs of the entire state when making decisions, not just the needs of one county.

Sarpy County Board Chairman Don Kelly said those added efforts have done little to address the problem.

Weve patiently been waiting three months for something to improve, and Im not seeing any improvement, Kelly said during a board meeting in October.

Kelly has sent letters asking the DMV to find a new location by July 2017.

To accomplish that, Kelly and Warren hope to take advantage of a new law to move the DMV and its long lines off Sarpy Countys turf.

In the most recent legislative session, Lahm asked for a change in state law to allow the DMV to assume all responsibility for drivers license services and to remove the requirement that there be a DMV office in each county, provided by that county.

Previously, the DMV was required to partner with each county, with the DMV responsible for processing and testing applicants and the county collecting fees and issuing the temporary documents. Counties kept part of the fee to offset their costs.

The model was an outdated way to serve customers, state officials said. Changing the statute would allow the DMV to look at different delivery options.

The current service delivery model creates a significant workload imbalance across the state, said Sen. Curt Friesen of Henderson, who introduced the bill at the request of the DMV and spoke during a legislative hearing on the bill. Many stations have few, and sometimes, no customers all day, while other stations experience up to three- to four-hour wait times on busiest days.

How and if the DMV plans to take advantage of the new law has not been announced. Lahm said the department is still reviewing its budget.

Warren and Kelly, the Sarpy board members, with the support of board member Tom Richards, want to return the fees the county receives to the DMV, with the idea that the state use the money to find a new location to rent in Sarpy County. The board members said the county could help the DMV find that new location.

While the statutory authority might exist, its another thing to have the money for it to happen, Lahm said.

State Sen. Jim Smith of Papillion, chairman of the Transportation and Telecommunications Committee, said the intent of the bill was to allow the DMV and counties to work together to improve the licensing process but not necessarily to give the counties the power to evict the state.

Still, Smith said it never makes a good impression of government when large numbers of people are waiting to be served. He said he wasnt aware of Sarpy Countys frustrations until this week, but said he understands them.

He said he doesnt want to overspend on idle employees, but customers should be served in a timely manner.

Sarpy County residents get a certain level of service when they visit other sections of the courthouse, Warren said, and thats not being met by the DMV.

It doesnt seem like theyre coming back with any real proposals to solve it, Warren said, which I think puts us in a real bind, because its delivering a level of service to the residents of Sarpy County that I think is just not fair and below standard.
Jamie Halds voice broke Saturday as he recalled his son, an 18-year-old Northwest High School senior, who died in the collision of a car and pickup truck the night before.

He was not just some kid, the father said. He was a great man. Really, really great. He stayed out of trouble, was a good son.

Jason Hald turned 18 last month and was to graduate in May. He wanted to study computer science, maybe video games, his father said.

An 18-year-old woman driving a Chevrolet Cavalier was drunk and had run a red light, authorities said, when she slammed into a pickup Friday night just beyond Omahas north city limits. The crash killed Hald, a passenger in the back of the Cavalier.

A man in the front passenger seat was taken in grave condition in a helicopter to Creighton University Medical Center, said Lt. Rob Jones of the Douglas County Sheriffs Office.

The Cavaliers driver was taken in serious condition in an ambulance to the Nebraska Medical Center, Jones said.

The Sheriffs Office did not release the names or ages of the vehicles occupants Saturday, and it did not offer an update on the conditions of the two injured.

Neither the driver of the pickup, a Ford F-250, nor a 12-year-old boy in a passenger seat was injured, Jones said.

The collision occurred about 8:30 p.m. at Sorensen Parkway and Wenninghoff Road, a few blocks north of Northwest High School. The driver of the Cavalier, traveling on Wenninghoff Road, ran the traffic light at Sorensen Parkway and hit the F-250, Jones said.

Danielle Batiste, 18, a friend of Jason Hald and of the Cavaliers driver, said shed spent time with them Friday evening and planned to meet up with them later. When they stopped answering her text messages and calls, she grew worried.

I just had a sinking feeling, she said.

Jason was bubbly and was never down about anything. He was laid-back, always up for an adventure and loved making people laugh, Batiste said. He was just a really good guy.

On Saturday morning, Northwest Principal Tom Lee sent out a note to its staff, informing them of Halds death. He wrote that Halds sister attends Northwest and that she and other relatives will need support. Grief counseling will be available Monday to students and staff.

Sometimes you just dont have the words for all of this, and so we just keep the family in our prayers, Lee wrote.
With Election Day less than a week away, opponents in the District 7 legislative race are clashing over one candidates past support of charter schools.

John Synowiecki and Tony Vargas, both Democrats, are competing for a nonpartisan legislative seat that represents downtown and South Omaha.

Synowiecki said this week that Vargas needs to answer for his past support of charter schools, a contentious issue nationwide and in Nebraska.

Vargas, an Omaha Public Schools board member, has said that his views on the issue have evolved and that he does not support any type of charter schools that would undermine public education.

Nebraska is one of seven states that does not allow charter schools. Several bills authorizing charters have been introduced in the Legislature in recent years, but havent gained traction and have been fiercely opposed by public school officials and teachers unions.

Advocates believe charter schools can offer innovative curriculums and a choice for parents outside of failing traditional public schools or expensive private schools.

Synowiecki said charter schools siphon dollars from public schools and have an uneven record of improving student achievement.

I do think the voters in District 7 need to know this race is made up of one individual that has a history, a record, affiliated with charter schools, Synowiecki said. Having gone door-to-door in District 7, theres absolutely no appetite whatsoever for charter schools.

Vargas said voters in the district are focused on bigger issues, such as Medicaid expansion and job creation, than charter schools.

Two teachers unions have gone in different directions with their endorsements. The Nebraska State Education Association backed Synowiecki, and its political action committee has donated more than $7,500 to his campaign.

The executive board of the Omaha Education Association, which represents OPS teachers, endorsed Vargas, praising his relationship with the union as an OPS board member and his vote against extending the school day. Ive been really proud of the work Ive done with teachers, Vargas said.

Vargas won the May 10 primary with 1,220 votes, compared with 745 for Synowiecki.

Vargas was appointed to the OPS board in 2013. He has worked as an education consultant and a middle school science teacher with the Teach for America national program. Teach for America trains college graduates to be teachers and places them in both rural and urban charter and traditional public schools.

He has voiced support for charter schools in the past and received campaign contributions from donors with ties to charter schools, including $5,000 from Arthur Rock, a venture capitalist who sits on the Teach for America board and has given millions to the KIPP charter school network.

The Leadership for Educational Equity, an organization that supports Teach for America alumni, has contributed $15,750.

Vargas said both Rock and Leadership for Educational Equity donate to Teach for America alumni and candidates that support education, without any stipulation on party or policy. He disputed that they have any connection to the charter school movement.

In February 2014, Vargas testified in support of Legislative Bill 972, which would have authorized the creation of five charter schools in Omaha. The bill did not get out of committee.

At the time, Vargas said charter schools could be an option for parents, especially those faced with the prospect of sending their kids to low-performing neighborhood schools.

There is no silver bullet, but there is a cadre of solutions that can help solve the inequities in public education ... and one of the things on the list is charter schools,  Vargas said at the hearing.

Vargas also served on the board of the Nebraska Alliance for Quality Education, an education group that supported school choice and charter schools, among other issues.

And in June 2015, photos show he attended a school choice block party hosted by the LEARN Coalition, a local parent organization that advocates for charter schools and expanded options for OPS parents. At the rally, Vargas posed for photos with Gov. Pete Ricketts, who has said low-income students could benefit from the option of charter schools.

Vargas said he wasnt at the event to support charters, but to introduce himself to Ricketts and express interest in the vacant legislative seat in District7.

At a League of Women Voters of Greater Omaha forum in September, Vargas said he has been on the record several times recently opposing charter schools.

As a good public official, I think our job is to listen to constituents, he said. For the last two years, Ive listened to teachers, responding to their needs, making sure Im advocating on behalf of union rights, and Ive done that and Ive learned and changed my opinion on this issue.

Vargas also said Synowiecki had been a proponent for school vouchers when he served in the Legislature from 2002 to 2008.

Synowiecki said he indicated support for school vouchers in one questionnaire early in his legislative career, but said he never voted that way.
The Nebraska Liquor Control Commission voted unanimously this week to require the beer stores in Whiteclay to reapply for their liquor licenses.

In doing so, the commission asked a key public policy question that has lingered for years: Can Whiteclay, an unincorporated village of 14 people, adequately police itself?

Its a fair question, given the history and remote location of Whiteclay, two miles from the legally dry Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Whiteclays four beer stores sell the equivalent of 3.5 million cans of beer a year, mainly to reservation residents, and crime is common in the village. The reservation suffers from epidemic alcoholism, poverty, crime and fetal-alcohol-related symptoms.

Requiring Whiteclays beer stores to reapply for their licenses should pressure both Sheridan County and the State of Nebraska to explain their enforcement efforts.

The Sheridan County Sheriffs Office is 22 miles from Whiteclay, in Rushville. And the Nebraska State Patrol doesnt regularly post someone in Whiteclay, though a task force appointed by Gov. Pete Ricketts has called for the state to increase its law enforcement presence in the village. Ricketts says the patrol has spent 485 hours so far this year on enforcement efforts in Whiteclay, up from about 256 hours a year from 2002 to 2015.

But John Maisch, a former liquor enforcement attorney in Oklahoma and a documentary filmmaker, has said help often takes 45 minutes to arrive. He offered a report that showed Sheridan County spent about one-third of its $5.2 million general fund budget on law enforcement and related expenses, much of it involving Whiteclay.

Sheridan County Board member Jack Andersen disagrees with assertions that law enforcement in Whiteclay is inadequate, although he said it would be nice if the state helped the county financially. Andersen and others from Sheridan County worry that if the stores liquor licenses arent renewed, alcoholics from the reservation will simply drive to other Nebraska towns, possibly causing even more problems.

Whiteclays problems have no simple solutions. But its good to see the Liquor Commission require the beer stores to reapply for their licenses and answer some tough questions.

The discussion is overdue.
Morals, judgment are job prerequisites

A president has to be a reasonably good person  one who has good personal morals to live by and the intelligence to use ethics in judging others.

Donald Trump has neither. I think hes a very good con man.

People say hes a good businessman and hell solve our financial problems. How successful is he if his companies had to declare bankruptcy six times? And there are 75 open lawsuits against him right now.

Im voting for Hillary Clinton, the person he calls crooked. Call me crazy, but, in the end, I believe it will be Trump who is locked up.

Stanley Gocek, Blair, Neb.

Maybe its just a bad dream

Can we just call a mulligan on this election and start over? Neither existing major-party candidate should be allowed to run.

Jan Nosky, Bellevue

Clintons betrayal of women

Its obvious to me that Donald Trump is lying about his past actions with women, but his sins are not as great as those of Hillary Clinton, such as accepting millions of dollars in donations for the Clinton Foundation from countries that demean women by not allowing them to drive a car or even be seen on the street without a male accompanying them.

Wouldnt it be nice if we had a decent choice in this presidential election?

Dr. John Ewing, Hastings, Neb.

Seeing is believing

I agree with Maya Angelou. When someone shows you who they are believe them the first time.

Louise Blair, South Sioux City, Neb.

Not fighting for the unborn

Hillary Clinton says shes spent her life fighting for children. Yet she has defended Roe v. Wade and says she will continue to do so.

Virginia Campbell, Omaha

Change isnt worth this option

After all the comments, actions and people who have come forward to confirm what Donald Trump said on a hot mic was true, we still have a lot of voters who say they will vote for him.

After all that Trump has said about Mexicans, Muslims, a war hero, women, our supposedly poor economy (its not), our supposedly depleted military (its not) and on and on, there are still a lot of people voting for him.

After devoting his entire life to living in luxury while stiffing people who worked for him and giving less to charity than you and I, there are still a lot of people voting for Trump.

After only one major newspaper has endorsed him, there are still a lot of people voting for Trump.

Wanting change is understandable, but this guy is the worst pick I could have imagined, and, judging from their comments, many Republicans would agree.

By voting for Trump, youre endorsing his ideas about race, greed, bigotry, charity and treatment of women.

Dale Rezac, Omaha

Other Bible teachings on death penalty

Regardless of position on the question of capital punishment, inaccurate statements should be corrected. One writer referred to how thou shalt not kill, but the accurate translation should be thou shalt not murder.

Sen. Ernie Chambers cites the non-death penalty for Cain but ignores God later turning Lots wife to salt for disobeying his direction.

Chambers next cites the case of Jesus refusing to judge the woman required by Gods law to be stoned for the act of adultery. But he ignores the fact that Jesus did not disavow or contradict the law but acted as defense for the woman by requesting witnesses. Jewish law required two or three witnesses for conviction. There were none. Consistent with Jewish law, Jesus did not judge the woman.

Chambers ignores Jesus statement for a proper punishment as a large millstone tied around his neck and drowned in the deep sea (Matthew 18:6). Or His statement in Matthew 26:52, put your sword back into its place, for all who take the sword will die by the sword. He ignores Gods specific directions for the death penalty for murder found in Exodus and Leviticus and the repeated statements by Jesus that He came to fulfill the law and that not one stroke of the law should be removed.

Neil Schilke, Fremont, Neb.

Wayne would bring strong skills to Lincoln

Justin Wayne is the right person for Legislative District 13.

He has demonstrated his lifes passion for service and our community by being a trusted advocate for education, justice and child welfare reform. I have seen him in our community when nobody else would be there.

Wayne has always fought for justice. Whether representing at-risk youth in his law practice or standing up to make sure our schools are equally represented on the school board, he will do what is right for all Nebraskans.

Rarely do we find an individual so dedicated to completely understanding all of the issues and the potential ramifications of the decisions by our elected officials. This is exactly the type of thoughtfulness and vision we should demand from our legislators.

Mary Adams, Omaha

Public service, not resume building

Rick Kolowski vs. Ian Swanson. The names may not carry as much weight as Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump, but local elections, like the race in Legislative District 31, often influence our lives just as much (if not more).

Swanson criticizes State Sen. Kolowski as being a career politician. Ironic, coming from someone looking to jump-start his political career. Public office is about representing people, and, in order to do that job, you need to have worked for a living and have more to show than a flag pin and a freshly printed political economy degree.

Evan Ludes, Omaha

Linehan understands families plight

Taxes in Nebraska are too high. Not every candidate seeking office this year understands and appreciates this reality.

But District 39 candidate Lou Ann Linehan does. She knows that property and income taxes are forcing too many retirees to consider leaving Nebraska.

I know many personally who have made this choice. And Im confident that Linehan will work hard to fix this problem in Lincoln. My vote for Legislature in western Douglas County is for a conservative voice, Lou Ann Linehan.

Angela Miller, Omaha

Garrett a friend to Nebraskas vets

Ive been doing veterans advocacy since 1969 after coming home from Vietnam, and I can tell you State Sen. Tommy Garrett understands what our veterans and their families go through. It was an honor to work with Garrett on legislation to lower hunting and fishing fees for veterans and their spouses.

Garrett has been a great supporter of our Gold Star families and our 100 percent service-connected disabled veterans. He has fought to lower the tax burden on these families and was a great help in creating a homestead exemption for disabled veterans, widows and widowers.

I hope people vote for Garrett on Tuesday so veterans can keep a partner in the Legislature to help improve our quality of life.

Greg Holloway, Bee, Neb.

NPPD needs Gary Thompson

Gary Thompson has served four terms on the Nebraska Public Power District board. From the beginning, he has promoted renewable energy and has led the fight for increased wind energy while ensuring there is sufficient base load generation to ensure reliability of the system.

He currently chairs the boards nuclear committee. He understands the challenges Cooper Nuclear Station faces in complying with Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations and has done an outstanding job of working with the plants management and staff to bring it to high ratings by national agencies.

The plant continues to face future financial and regulatory challenges.

I urge you to vote for experience this election, which is exemplified by Gary Thompson.

Norman Wallman, Cortland, Neb.

former state senator
Column: A backgrounder for the US Presidential elections

Feature

oi-Oneindia

By Vappala Balachandran

Prima facie, the US system of Presidential elections will appear to be labyrinthine. Why did they have to have a peculiar system for electing their President when they could have had a simpler way of choosing him or her through direct universal suffrage or indirectly through their 51 states? Why did they have to choose their President through an intermediary called "Electoral College"? Why should there be "Popular votes" and "Electoral Votes"?

The answer to this lies in the history of the evolution of their federal union of States at the 1787 Philadelphia Constitutional Convention. The participating 13 Colonies wanted to preserve their own independent decision making powers in all aspects including the Elections.

Thus Article II of the US Constitution lays down the process of the Presidential Election: "Each State shall appoint in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of Electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress".

The emphasis is on the words "as the Legislature thereof may direct". A "Committee of Eleven" appointed by the Constitutional Convention to devise means of upholding the independence of the President recommended a system of election by some "most knowledgeable and most informed" group of "Electors" to be appointed by the States.

This is the Electoral College.

In the beginning there was no stipulation that these "Electors" should be political persons or that they should be elected. However over a period of time all the States decided to get political parties to nominate their "Electors" and have them elected directly by the public to have a semblance of direct election at least during the first stage of Presidential Election.

Also read: Race for the White House: Barack Obama asks Americans to choose hope over fear

Not many people in India would thus realize that on November 8 the US voters will not be voting for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump but only to the "Presidential Electors" belonging to the Democratic or Republican Parties.

The second stage of this election will be on December 19 when the "Presidential Electors" will meet at their state capitals to officially elect the President. The polling on November 8 is the "Popular Vote", while the one on December 19 is the "Electoral Vote".

The winning candidate has to get 270 electoral votes. Rules stipulate that he or she should get "majority" of the present 538 electors, which is the total number of Senators and House Representatives.

However, surprises can happen on December 19, through the "Winner Takes All" system, which is totally unknown to us. The party getting the majority of popular votes in a State is given all the Electoral votes of that State by the Governor.

The only exceptions are 2 States-Maine and Nebraska. For example if the Republican Party gets 15 of the 29 seats in New York State, they will be given all the 29 seats of that State.

Also read: China's 'monkey king' picks Trump as next US president

The "Winner Takes All" practice started in 1824 although there is no specific constitutional sanction. However this is legal since the states are empowered to choose any method to "Appoint" their "Presidential Electors". Maine and later Nebraska feel that the "Winner Takes All" system does not satisfy the "Fair Vote" criterion.

The third stage in the Presidential Election is on January 6, 2017 when a Joint Session of the Congress chaired by the Vice-President, who is the Chairman of the Senate, formally receives the Governors' reports on allocation of Electoral votes and legally certifies the Presidential Election.

In case none gets majority, the House of Representatives elects the President while the Senate elects the Vice President.

Some interesting incidents had occurred in the past. One was on January 6, 2001 when Vice-President Al Gore, himself a candidate for the President, had to certify (as Chairman of the Senate) George W. Bush as the President despite a very acrimonious campaign and controversial counting method in Miami.

In fact he even over ruled objections raised by Democrats in the Joint Session and certified Bush as the winner. The other, more interesting incident was in 1961 when Richard Nixon as Vice President was contesting against John.F Kennedy.

At first the Hawaii Governor gave all his state Electors to Nixon and sent the report to the Congress. However there was a recount, which determined Democrat candidate Kennedy as the victor.

The Governor sent a second list to Vice President Nixon allotting all Electoral votes to Kennedy which reached the Capitol Hill on the day of the Joint Session. Nixon, without any hesitation, accepted this and certified Kennedy as the final victor!

Sometimes the differences in popular votes and Electoral votes between candidates are very convincing. In 2012 Obama received 51.1% of popular votes and 332 electoral votes against Mitt Romney's 47.25% popular votes and 206 electoral votes.

But that was not so in 2001 when Al Gore won more popular votes (48.4%) than George W.Bush (47.9%). Still Bush was narrowly elected by the Electoral College as President with 271 electoral votes against Gore's 266. In 1960-61 it was wafer thin for popular votes: 49.72% for John F. Kennedy and 49.55% for Richard Nixon. Yet the difference in "Electoral Votes" was substantial: Kennedy 303; Nixon 219.

Admittedly the contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is very tight. There have been some speculative reports in Indian media based on our Washington based correspondents that the gap is so narrow that only the US Supreme Court could decide the outcome. This is not strictly correct.

Every stage including the timing of the Presidential election is mentioned in their constitution and subsequent laws. Firstly, the term of President Obama and Vice President Biden has to end on 20th of January 2017 under the 20th Amendment.

The electoral process cannot go beyond that. Several laws have been passed by the Congress fixing the days for the elections of thePresidential Electors, their meetings at State capitals and for the final Joint Session of the Congress to put a final seal on the election of the new President and Vice President.

These dates must be adhered to, so that there will be no constitutional deadlock preventing the new president taking over from President Obama who has to demit his office on 20th January.

In fact this was the crux of Supreme Court ruling in Bush v.Gore 531US 98(2000) ending the Florida Recount controversy. The Court ruled by 5-4 that no constitutionally valid recount could be completed by a December 12 "safe harbor" deadline as the Electoral College was scheduled to meet on December 18, 2000, to decide the election.

[The writer is a former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat and author of "National Security & Intelligence Management-A New Paradigm]
As the countdown clock struck zero, rocket of Aakash BYJUS took off from Bandra Bandstand

Aditya Pancholi gets 1-year-imprisonment for assaulting neighbour

India

oi-PTI

Mumbai, Nov 6: A local court on Saturday convicted Bollywood actor Aditya Pancholi and sentenced him to one-year imprisonment for assaulting his neighbour.

"The local magistrate's court at suburban Andheri has convicted Pancholi for assaulting and criminal intimidation", a senior police official said. The Magistrate Amitabh Panchbhai after convicting Pancholi released him on the bail of Rs 12,000.

According to police, Pancholi hit his neighbour Pratik Pasrani and reportedly fractured his nose at their building in 2005. The police had said that Pancholi's guest had parked his vehicle at the space earmarked for Pasrani at 'Magnum Opus' Apartments in suburban Versova.

Pasrani objected to it and asked the security staff to clear the vehicle following which an altercation broke between the duo and the actor assaulted Pasrani, they had said.

The police initially registered a non-cognizable case but the medical examination revealed that Pasrani's nose was broken, so the police registered a case of grievous hurt and criminal intimidation.

PTI
Battle UP- Nervous SP gets set to stitch grand alliance at silver jubilee event

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Nov 5: The Samajwadi Party will take a shot at forming a Grand Alliance today as it celebrates its silver jubilee today.

All eyes are on the gala event to be held today in Uttar Pradeshand what would be keenly watched is the guest list. Battling infighting in the party, the Samajwadi Party will look to rope in as many parties as possible to be part of its grand alliance.

The regional satraps of the erstwhile Janata Parivar will share the dais at the Janeshwar Mishra Park today. The likes of Deve Gowda, Lalu Prasad Yadav and Sharad Yadav are expected to be on stage today.

While Mulayam may just manage to stitch up an alliance, he would also not want any kind of showdown between his brother, Shivpal and son Akhilesh. He even drove down on Friday to the house of Shivpal to ensure that there is no chaos at today's function.

Grand Alliance in UP: Wait there are many twists to the tale

Mulayam even instructed that those members expelled by Akhilesh are not allowed at the venue today.

There it's still a lot of nervousness among the top ranks of the party.

The alliance is extremely important for them to battle both the BSP and the BJP. Those being invited to be part of the grand alliance too would watch closely at the developments within the SP. It is indicated that they are backing Akhilesh as the leader of the SP.

Will it be a grand show of unity? It appears so and in this context one must note what Shivpal had to say. " Abhi hum tote nahin hain" (we have not broken up as yet).

OneIndia News
Before NDTV India, Kashmir Reader faced ban and its still on

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

New Delhi, Nov 5: The day-long ban on the television news channel--NDTV India--by the government over its Pathankot attack coverage drew sharp criticism from opposition political parties and several senior journalists on Friday.

The ban is effect from 00:01 hrs on 9th November to 00:01 hrs of 10th November, says a statement by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

Those who opposed the ban called it "shocking and authoritarian" and reminiscent of Emergency days.

However, more than a month ago, a Kashmiri daily was banned by the state government and the suppression on the newspaper is still on.

On October 2, the Jammu and Kashmir government ordered a ban on the publication of the Srinagar-based English daily, Kashmir Reader.

The ban order issued by Deputy Commissioner Srinagar Farooq Ahmad Lone said that the newspaper contains "material and content which tends to incite acts of violence and disturb public peace and tranquility". An official release issued by the Director Information Chowdhary said the ban order was issued a week after a notice was served to the newspaper, asking it to explain its position on a series of stories published by it.

In the wake of the ongoing turmoil in the Valley, the local media alleges that the state government is curbing its "freedom of expression".

In July, the state government banned the publication of newspapers from valley for several days terming it a "reluctant decision" and a "temporary measure to address an extra-ordinary situation".

The Valley is on the boil in the wake of the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in an encounter with security forces on July 8.

Mir Hilal, the editor of Kashmir Reader, which first hit the stands on May 15, 2012, said Kashmiri journalism, heroic largely, has not been demoralised but intimidated quite often.

In an article written by Hilal, the editor added, "In Kashmir, therefore, developing a strong awareness of "caution" is part of the journalistic grooming. It is a gradual drawing up of a Lakshman Rekha in one's mind. During the past month we have been asked, ad nauseam: Were you not cautious enough? It translates into "why push the limit". Many concerned and well-meaning journalists made us feel as if we had invited the ban on ourselves. Not that they condone the gag. They only point to the futility, or stupidity, of "annoying the state"."

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Saturday, November 5, 2016, 10:46 [IST]
Bengal artists in fix as Centre's thermocol ban comes just ahead of Durga Puja

PFI ban 'dangerous' as every Muslim who speaks his mind can now be arrested: AIMIM chief Owaisi

The PFIs one-point agenda was attacks on Hindus

'Appears to have lost its mental balance': Min Karandlaje on Opposition's demand to ban RSS

Ban on hijab in schools, colleges to continue in Karnataka: Minister

Debate: Is India facing an emergency-like situation?

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

New Delhi, Nov 5: In the last 72 hours, India witnessed two episodes--where voices of dissent faced stiff censorship from the Narendra Modi-led government.

First, when the leaders of opposition parties like Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal went to meet the family members of a retired soldier, who committed suicide over OROP, were detained by the Delhi Police.

Thereafter, the news of a day-long ban by the government on the television news channel NDTV India over its Pathankot attack coverage shocked everyone.

In both these episodes, opposition political leaders and members of journalism fraternity stood together to raise their voices against suppression of "freedom of expression".

Those who opposed the government's attempts to stifle voices of dissent called it "shocking and authoritarian" and reminiscent of Emergency days.

On Saturday, the hashtag--Emergency--was trending on the micro-blogging site Twitter. Here we bring you few tweets:

Firmly worded Editors' Guild condemnation of ban on NDTVIndia. Correct to call it censorship, compare with Emergency pic.twitter.com/FDUU5myIBQ  Shekhar Gupta (@ShekharGupta) November 4, 2016

Brilliant,must read piece by @pbmehta on Modi gov creating every condition characterising emergency w/o declaring ithttps://t.co/ipxDrcIy4F  Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) November 5, 2016

Outstanding DO Read & THINK.

As only Pratap Mehta can: There is no Emergency https://t.co/B1mrVYE38G via @IndianExpress  Abhinandan Sekhri (@AbhinandanSekhr) November 5, 2016

Those Using the term " Emergency " so Casually- Do not Have any Knowledge of -What "Emergency" imposed by #Pappu 'a Grandmother was !!  Intolerant_Bull (@loosebool) November 5, 2016

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Saturday, November 5, 2016, 11:39 [IST]
IRCTC update: 115 trains cancelled on Nov 01; here is the complete list

Delhi: Metro trains collide, major disaster averted

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

New Delhi, Nov 5: According to media reports, a major metro train disaster in Delhi was averted in the nick of time on Friday.

The metro trains--on a trail run--reportedly had a head-on collision. Fortunately, no causalities have been reported.

The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has issued a statement in this regard.

"An incident occurred yesterday at 3:45 pm at Kalindi Kunj Depot of Line-8, in which a train, which was under complete control of Hyundai ROTEM for commissioning was moved perhaps inadvertently in reverse direction by the ROTEM staff. Responsibility for the incident is of ROTEM and prima facie it appears to be negligence on part of the ROTEM staff. However detailed inquiry is being conducted by ROTEM to look into this lapse and for suitable action," read the statement.

The incident happened at Kalindi Kunj depot. An inquiry has been ordered by the DMRC.

Delhi: Two Metro trains on the same track during trial yesterday, accident averted. Inquiry ordered pic.twitter.com/jTDist7mfg  ANI (@ANI_news) November 5, 2016

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

Fresh protests rock Srinagar after teen's mysterious death

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Srinagar, Nov 5: Security forces on Saturday clashed with a group of protesting mourners carrying the body of a teenager who died in a hospital here previous night days amid conflicting reports about the cause of his death.

Qaisar Ahmed, 16, was brought to the hospital on October 28 in an unconscious state. His family alleged he bore torture marks when he was found a day after he went missing from his home in Shalimar area on outskirts of Srinagar city.

However, police claimed that the boy had consumed poison. Ahmed died around 10 p.m. Friday.

His body was taken in a procession on Saturday morning for a funeral at martyrs graveyard in Eidgah area of the old Srinagar city.

A police spokesman said some angry protesters from the procession threw stones at security forces, resulting into a clash. Police used tear smoke shells and pellets to disperse the angry protesters that caused injuries to over a dozen civilians and security men.

In another incident, three policemen, including a junior level officer, were injured on Friday night in an improvised explosive device (IED) explosion in Dadsara village of Pulwama district.

Police said militants fired some shots in the area to lure the security men out of the police station after which they exploded the IED.

A school was torched in Saidunara area of Bandipora district during the night taking to 29 the number of educational institution set ablaze by unknown miscreants during the past few weeks in the Kashmir Valley.

IANS
Good News: Jayalalithaa is hale and hearty and five rumour-mongers get bail

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

Chennai, Nov 5: Within hours after Apollo Hospitals in Chennai informed that J Jayalalithaa has completely recovered, media reports say five alleged rumour-mongers arrested for spreading "lies" about the chief minister's health got bail on Friday.

The Madras High Court granted bail to five persons, who were all arrested last month.

The court directed each of them to furnish a personal bond of Rs 10,000 with two sureties, to the satisfaction of the magistrates concerned to secure the bail and get released.

So far, a total of eight persons were arrested on the charge of spreading rumours about the health of Jayalalithaa.

Moreover, around 50 cases have been registered by the Chennai Police against alleged rumour-mongers in the last 40 days.

Earlier, the police had warned of stern action against people who spread wrong information about Amma's health.

Ever since Jayalalithaa has been admitted to Apollo Hospitals in Greams Road, her health has been subject to countless rumours, speculation and even fake pictures spread through social media.

She is undergoing treatment at the hospital since September 22.

The hospitals authorities have indicated that the chief minister would be soon discharged from the hospital to go back to her home.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Saturday, November 5, 2016, 7:43 [IST]
From Kerala to Maharashtra, horrific rape cases are back to haunt India

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

New Delhi, Nov 5: In the midst of all the "noisy" political developments, most of the rape cases reported from across the country in the last few days got buried in the inside pages of newspapers along with minor news reports.

From insensitive questions posed to a gang rape victim by cops in Kerala to rape of a dozen tribal girls in a residential school in Maharashtra--several such shocking rape incidents have come to light this week.

Here we bring you few of them:

Mumbai: On Monday, a 28-year-old woman, who had gone house-hunting in an Andheri (W) slum in Mumbai with her husband, was gang-raped by four men. Reports say, all the four accused and their accomplices were arrested a day later.

Greater Noida: Three women were allegedly gang-raped at gun-point by six men who pretended to be policemen, in the early hours of Wednesday (November 2) in Greater Noida near Delhi. The women worked at a brick kiln. The alleged criminals also looted cash and jewellery from the houses of the victims.

Kerala: On Thursday, a gang rape victim in Thrissur went public with her horrific story. The woman, who was gang-raped by her husband's friends, was forced to withdraw her complaint because of humiliation by the police.

"Which one of them gave you the greatest pleasure?" she was allegedly asked by a police officer.

Buldhana district, Maharashtra: On Thursday, police arrested 10 teachers and staff members of a residential school for tribal children at Pala village of Khamgaon in Buldhana district, Maharashtra, for allegedly raping a dozen girl students.

Hyderabad: Hyderabad police, on Thursday, arrested father-son duo for allegedly raping twin sisters for a year in Hyderabad. The police said that the mother took money in return for the sexual assault committed on her daughters.

North 24 Parganas district, West Bengal: A woman, who worked as a caretaker of an old woman in Shaktinagar of Maslandpur in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, was gang-raped by three men on Thursday. The police arrested two of the accused, the third on is absconding.

OneIndia

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Story first published: Saturday, November 5, 2016, 10:28 [IST]
NDTV off air-National security threat not justifiable said committee

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Nov 5: A threat to national security cannot be justified on any grounds, the panel that looked into the NDTV ban had said.

The Inter-Ministerial Committee which looked into the matter also noted that this was not the first violation by the channel and there are instances in which the Programme Code of Cable act had been violated.

Sources tell OneIndia that the decision to take the channel off for a day on November 9 instead of 30 days was taken because it felt that NDTV could not get away with the 'huge indiscretion and violation of rules' in its coverage of the Pathankot terror attack.

The source also said that equating this ban to the days of emergency is rubbish. Similar orders numbering 21 had been issued by the UPA government since 2005.

Similar orders issued since 2005:

Sources also said that the Information and Broadcasting Ministry had issued similar orders since 2005. During the UPA government's regime 21 orders were issued against different channels which were found to be violating the cable TV rules and programme code guidelines. Bans have been issued between one day to two months, the source also added.

When the decision on NDTV was taken, the committee had noted that the channel had revealed sensitive details like location of ammunition depot and place where terrorists were held up, location of school and residential areas which could have been misused by handlers of the intruders.

This could have jeopardised national security and also lives of civilians and defence personnel, the committee also noted. Moreover the channel had also been given time to explain its side of the story.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Saturday, November 5, 2016, 8:50 [IST]
Gods on the runway: Kerala airport halts flights every year to make way for temple procession

I will break your legs: SFI issues threat to principal in presence of cops in Kerala

No breast milk on religious grounds - Parents booked by Kerala police

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Nov 5: The Kerala police has registered a case against the parents who had denied breast milk to their child citing religious grounds. The Kerala police which received a complaint in this regard have registered the case under the Juvenile Justice Act.

[Also Read: Breastfeeding against my religion says man from Kerala]

The hospital authorities had complained that the father of the child had insisted that the new born not be fed breast milk for 24 hours citing religious grounds. He had said that the baby should not be breastfed until the completion of five prayers.

Aboobacker, a resident of Kozhikode in Kerala had argued with doctors at the hospital that a preacher had told him to give the child some honey and water from Mecca.

The hospital authorities at the EMS Cooperative Hospital at Kozhikode pleaded, coaxed and even tried threatening him. But the man refused to budge. After a heated argument, he forcefully sought a discharge and left the hospital.

Breastfeeding against my religion says man from Kerala

The man argued that a cord from the belly button of the child will provide the required nutrition.

The hospital authorities say that he denied a baby of its right. We repeatedly asked him to allow the baby to be breastfed, but he refused to budge.

We did everything possible to convince him, but he was adamant, a nurse from the hospital said. The father cited what his preacher had told him. He was told by his preacher that the baby should not be breastfed until the completion of five prayers.

OneIndia News
Social media companies free to do business, but should be accountable to Indian laws: Ravi Shankar Prasad

Big step towards transparency: Prasad on first compliance report by Google, FB under new IT rules

If over 45 countries use Pegasus, why target just India?, asks Ravi Shankar Prasad

Patel got Bharat Ratna only when a non-Gandhi was PM: BJP

India

oi-PTI

Hyderabad, Nov 4: Stating that the NDA Government was inspired by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad today said the country's first Home minister got the Bharat Ratna only in 1991, when someone from outside the Gandhi family was the Prime Minister.

"Our dream to make India a big power comes from Sardar Patel's thinking. He had a vision to make India a strong nation in the world," Prasad said, delivering a talk on 'Sardar Patel: Intricacies and Imperatives of Nation Building', organised by BJP.

Had Patel handled the Kashmir issue, "the story would have been different", Prasad said. Patel was given Bharat Ratna in 1991 by the Narasimha Rao government, 41 years after his death, the Union Law Minister said.

"Which were those forces which were stopping Bharat Ratna from being given to Sardar Patel? He got Bharat Ratna in 1991 only because the then PM was from outside the (Gandhi) family," he said. Patel should have been India's first Prime Minister, Prasad added.

Patel had written to Jawaharlal Nehru early on cautioning him about China's policy, but Nehru was then impressed by China and spoke of friendship.

However, when the Kashmir matter went to the UN, there was not much support from China, Prasad said, quoting from Patel's letter, and added that it showed Patel's far sightedness.

Thanks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's robust diplomacy, even countries like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Muscat, Iran, Qatar, Dubai and Abu Dhabi now stand with India on issues related to Pakistan, he said.

"Rahul Gandhi used to say Narendra Modi goes on foreign trips. Narendra Modi did not go to foreign countries for vacations, but to strengthen country's security and to weaken Pakistan's (security)," he said.

PTI
Pratyusha Banerjee suicide: Should case be handed over to CBI?Sign online petition if you support

Pratyusha Banerjee suicide: Parents of actor demand re-investigation, allege police negligence

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

Mumbai, Nov 5: The alleged suicide case of the television actress Pratyusha Banerjee is likely to be re-opened by the police soon.

After a purported transcript of the actress' "last" telephonic conversation with her boyfriend came out on Friday, the lawyer of her parents said they would seek re-investigation.

The parents of the actress alleged that the police had overlooked several aspects related to her case.

Police have registered a case of abatement of suicide against Rahul Raj Singh, her boyfriend, who has secured pre-arrest bail.

Transcription of Pratyusha's purported conversation with him before the suicide was reported by section of a media.

Pratyusha, who shot to fame with her role of 'Anandi' in the TV serial 'Balika Vadhu', was found dead at her house on April 1 in what appeared to be a suicide.

Advocate Neeraj Gupta, representing her parents, said that police seemed to have overlooked many aspects and they wanted the case to be re-investigated.

"Police didn't investigate the case properly. They ignored many important aspects. As of now we don't have entire charge sheet. Once we get it, we will study the documents and file a fresh application on Monday," Gupta said.

When asked about specific aspects which the police has missed its probe, he said "Name of a third person has come up in the telephonic conversation where Pratyusha is saying he was giving her life threats. Who is this person and why is he giving threats to Pratyusha, why police ignored this fact?"

The police also didn't look properly into Pratyusha's blood and viscera reports, he said.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Saturday, November 5, 2016, 13:07 [IST]
Rift between CPI-M, CPI out in the open in Kerala

I am not a PM face for 2019 elections, says Nitish Kumar

'No question of giving away even an inch of land': Yediyurappa on Belagavi border issue

There is no rift, SP will unitedly fight elections: Akhilesh

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Lucknow, Nov 5: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday denied any rift within the ruling Samajwadi Party and said all party leaders will "unitedly" fight the 2017 assembly elections on the SP symbol.

"There is no rift in the party, and all of us will fight the elections on the party's symbol 'cycle'," Akhilesh Yadav told reporters on the sidelines of the SP's Silver Jubilee gala here.

The Chief Minister's remarks came after his uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav earlier made an indirect attack on him at the event.

Read more: LIVE: "You gave me a sword but don't want me to use it", Akhilesh takes a dig at Shivpal

Asked if there were chances of an alliance with the Congress, the Chief Minister said, "I have left the decision of alliance with Netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav)."

Emphasising on the 25th year celebrations of the party, Akhilesh said, "We are spreading the ideology of Samajwad (socialism) in the country."

The Chief Minister also thanked former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, Janata Dal-United leader Sharad Yadav and noted Supreme Court lawyer Ram Jethmalani for attending the event.

Addressing the crowd earlier, Akhilesh's uncle, Shivpal Yadav, referring to his dismissal twice from the state cabinet recently, said he was neither greedy for any post nor any ministry.

If required, the SP leader said he was ready to give even his blood and everything for the Samajwadi Party.

IANS
You are too cool about Kashmir, Hafiz Saeed tells Pakistan

India

oi-Vicky

Bengaluru, Nov 5: Lashkar-e-Taiba chief, Hafiz Saeed has accused the Pakistan government of being too cool about the Kashmir issue. Response by the Nawaz Sharif government is too cool about the Kashmir issue, Saeed said.

According to a report in the Dawn, Saeed said that there is no value in just issuing statements in favour of the Kashmir people. "Instead offer full and practical support," Saeed says.

He said that Pakistan should resolve all issues through talks or risk becoming tools of international forces who will ignite a crisis in Pakistan.

Also read: Pakistan lawmaker questions government's failure to act against Hafiz Saeed

Two weeks back, Saeed had said that India was behind the political crisis in Pakistan. He made the statement after the Quetta attack and blamed India for igniting tensions in Pakistan so that the Kashmir issue cannot be raised by Pakistan.

Kashmir has disappeared from the national scene, he had also said.

Saeed is wanted by India in connection with the Mumbai 26/11 attacks. India accuses Pakistan of being too soft on Saeed who has been fuelling terrorism against India both in Kashmir as well in other parts of the country.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Saturday, November 5, 2016, 17:49 [IST]
Race for the White House: Barack Obama asks Americans to choose hope over fear

International

oi-PTI

Fayetteville (US), Nov 5: Slamming Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump for his divisive politics and rhetoric, outgoing US President Barack Obama has urged American voters to choose "hope" over fear in the November 8 general elections.

"I need you to vote! Don't choose fear, choose hope! Don't choose fear, choose hope! Don't choose fear, choose hope! Go out there and vote. And if you do, we'll remind the entire world why America is the greatest nation on Earth," Obama told thousands of his supporters in this garrison city in North Carolina yesterday.

North Carolina is considered as one of the key battleground State, as the race to the White House has tightened in the last few weeks.

Both the campaigns, more so for Trump, now believe that winning this State is key to winning presidency.

"Understand the stakes," Obama, 55, said in another stump speech, in Fayetteville, which once had a thriving slave market, signs of which are still present in the city's historic downtown.

"Right now, you can reject the mean-spirited politics that would take us backwards. Right now, you can elect a leader who has spent her entire life trying to move this country forward - our first female President. An example 'A' for our daughters and our sons," Obama said amidst huge applause from thousands of his supporters.

This week Obama has held as many as three rallies in North Carolina including two yesterday in Fayetteville and Charlotte.

"You have a chance to shape history. Don't let that slip away. Don't fall for the easy cynicism that tells you politics doesn't matter, my vote doesn't matter, they're all crooked, it's all the same. That's what those who have been opposed to me and now oppose Hillary - they want you to think that way so you don't vote," he said.

"If you believe we're stronger together, then we can't elect a President who vilifies minorities, mocks Americans with disabilities, calls immigrants criminals and rapists," he said.

"We can't elect a President who brags that being famous allows him to get away with something that, if you read the description, qualified as sexual assault; who calls women 'pigs', 'dogs' and 'slobs' and grades them on a scale of one to 10. That's not America. This is not a Democrat or a Republican. That's not America," he said.

Obama said if Americans cherished the Constitution, they cannot elect a President who threatens to shut down the press when they say something he doesn't like; who threatens to throw his opponents in jail; who discriminates against people of different faiths.

"Our Constitution does not allow that. There are places around the world that's acceptable, but that's not the United States of America," he said.

"If you believe that America is stronger when everybody does their part, if you believe that America is stronger when everyone pays their fair share, then we can't elect the first candidate in decades who refuses to release any tax returns; admits he has not paid federal income tax in years; somebody who stiffs small business people who do work for him or workers who've done work for him and he owes them," he said.

PTI
South Africa: Massive outrage over anti-Indian racist remarks on social media

International

oi-PTI

Johannesburg, Nov 5: Several white South Africans who posted anti-Indian racist remarks on social media on Diwali have been taken to court by the country's ruling and opposition parties.

The most serious of the posts read, "To those idol- worshippers and devil disciples who buy them in the name of religion, p*** off to your backwoods of India".

The same user also wrote that he would derive great pleasure from "strangling them and watching them turn blue while their tongues popped out".

Amid outraged reaction from South Africans of all races, the user put up an apology, but both the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) in Parliament have laid charges in the Equality Court (EC) after refusing to accept the apology.

"I posted some remarks in anger yesterday and would like to apologise to those people I have offended. Anger is not an excuse and I realise the foolishness of my remarks was uncalled for. Once again, my sincere apology and I will undertake to promote divali (sic) in a positive no-bangs manner," the apology read.

Another offensive post which has since been deleted read "(Indians) are supposed to revere animals, with a cow being sacred, but as my friend from India once said, the f****** 'charos' (a derogatory term for South African Indians) sent here from India to cut cane were all the low class rubbish with no morals, it shows!".

"Vulgar and offensive language hark back to the crude apartheid past and undermines the hard work in building social cohesion in our country," ANC provincial secretary Super Zuma told the Daily News.

"We are determined to make an example of racists who chance their hand and think they will get away with it. Racists are a tiny, badly-bred minority who must be isolated in our communities and be forced to bear the consequences of the actions. It is important that all our communities learn about each other's practices and respect the right to freedom of religion," Zuma said.

"This language has no place in our constitutional democracy, where the right to religious freedom is enshrined in our Bill of Rights. It is disgustingly hateful and fundamentally undermines the dignity of many South Africans," said DA provincial chairman Haniff Hoosen.

South African Hindu Mahasabha president Ashwin Trikamjee welcomed the ANC's decision to prosecute the offenders.

He said people who were upset about even controlled fireworks displays during Diwali were taking advantage of the soft nature of the Hindu community by using the occasion to make racist remarks about Indians.

PTI
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 5, ARMENPRESS. 38 Martyrs of Catholic Church executed by the communist regime in Albania during 1945-1974 due to their religious faith were beatified on Saturday by the Vatican in a Mass organized at St. Stefan Church in Shkodra, a city steeped tradition and culture situated in northeast Albania.

Armenpress reports, citing the Albanian Telegraphic Agency, this event deemed as the most important after the visit of Pope Francis and Canonization of Mother Teresa of Albanian descent brought together thousands of believers and citizens from Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro and other countries. In attendance of the Mass were senior officials of Vatican, clergymen from different countries across the world and heads of religious communities in the country.

Archbishop Massafra expressed gratitude to His Holiness Pope Francis for the gift he gave to the Albanian land by accepting to count among the Blessed and servants of God the Archbishop Vincens and his martyr companions.

The decree for beatification of 38 Martyrs of Albanian Catholic Church was signed in April by Pope Francis, an act that ranks them alongside the most renowned figures of world Catholicism.

The Albanian Catholic clergymen have spent years in jail under the communist regime which annihilated the Albanian Catholic Church.

Two days prior to beatification of 38 Martyrs of Catholic Church Albanian parliament passed a resolution condemning the crimes against clergy under the communist regime. This grand ceremony has drawn the attention of public opinion not only in Albania but all across the region.
Kerala lawyers boycott newspapers starting Saturday

Kochi

oi-Anusha

Ernakulam Bar Association has decided to boycott newspapers starting Saturday after the general body unanimously passed a resolution on Friday demanding that media personnel be stopped from entering court premises. The resolution comes as a result of the ongoing standoff between lawyers and journalists in Kerala.

The resolution also appealed to the district judge that only accredited media personnel be allowed to report on court proceedings and appealed to all lawyers to boycott newspaper subscriptions from Saturday until the issue is resolved.

Friday's resolution also said that no lawyer will represent media persons in court and extended the association's full support to those lawyers accused in cases related to the dispute. The resolution passed by the general body also states that a 5-member panel will work towards bringing 'facts' of the case before the people.

The standoff between lawyers and media personnel in Kerala began after lawyers started asking journalists to leave court halls on multiple occasions and obstructed reporting in July this year.

Journalists in Kerala believe that lawyers started troubling them following a media report on a government pleader allegedly misbehaving with a woman in Kochi.

OneIndia News
BJP calls for Mysuru bandh over its worker's death

Mysore

oi-Anusha

Mysuru-Kodagu MP and BJP leader Pratap Simha on Saturday called for bandh in 4 taluks of Mysuru over BJP worker Magali Ravi's death. Simha called his death a political murder and called for a bandh in taluks of Periyapatna, Hunsur, H D Kote and K R Nagar on Monday.

Speaking to the media about Ravi's death the BJP MP said, "Ravi was killed while returning from peace talks arranged by the police between people of different faiths over Tipu Jayanthi celebrations. This is the 6th such incident in the last 2 years and speaks volumes about the law and order situation".

[ALSO READ: BJP worker found dead near Mysuru, family suspects murder]

Simha urged the government to initiate action immediately and not play politics over the issue.

B S Yeddyurappa blames Siddaramaiah

Reacting to the party worker's death, BJP's Karnataka State President B S Yeddyurappa held Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah directly responsible for Ravi's death. "Almost 14 pro-hindu activists and RSS members have been killed during Congress government in Karnataka. It is high time that the government quits vote bank politics in the name of Tipu Jayanthi and work towards restoring law and order in the State".

BJP worker Magali Ravi was found dead near Periyapatna on Friday evening. His family suspect it to be a case of murder and a case under Sec 302 has been filed accordingly.

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Story first published: Saturday, November 5, 2016, 18:11 [IST]
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From Paul Craig Roberts Website

The election was set up to be stolen from Trump. That was the purpose of the polls rigged by overweighting Hillary supporters in the samples. After weeks of hearing poll results that Hillary was in the lead, the public would discount a theft claim. Electronic voting makes elections easy to steal, and I have posted explanations by election fraud experts of how it is done.

Clearly the Oligarchy does not want Donald Trump in the White House as they are unsure that they could control him, and Hillary is their agent.

With the reopening of the FBI investigation of Hillary and related scandals exploding all around her, election theft is not only more risky but also less likely to serve the Oligarchy's own interests.

Image as well as money is part of Oligarchic power. The image of America takes a big hit if the American people elect a president who is currently under felony investigation.

Moreover, a President Hillary would be under investigation for years. With so much spotlight on her, she would not be able to serve the Oligarchy's interests. She would be worthless to them, and, indeed, investigations that unearthed various connections between Hillary and oligarchs could damage the oligarchs.

In other words, for the Oligarchy Hillary has moved from an asset to a liability.

A Hillary presidency could put our country into chaos. I doubt the oligarchs are sufficiently stupid to think that once she is sworn in, Hillary can fire FBI Director Comey and shut down the investigation. The last president that tried that was Richard Nixon, and look where that got him.

Moreover, the Republicans in the House and Senate would not stand for it. House Committee on oversight and Government Reform chairman Jason Chaffetz has already declared Hillary to be "a target-rich environment. Even before we get to day one, we've got two years worth of material already lined up." House Speaker Paul Ryan said investigation will follow the evidence.

If you were an oligarch, would you want your agent under this kind of scrutiny? If you were Hillary, would you want to be under this kind of pressure?

What happens if the FBI recommends the indictment of the president? Even insouciant Americans would see the cover-up if the attorney general refused to prosecute the case. Americans would lose all confidence in the government. Chaos would rule. Chaos can be revolutionary, and that is not good for oligarchs.

Moreover, if reports can be believed, salacious scandals appear to be waiting their time on stage. For example, last May Fox News reported:

"Former President Bill Clinton was a much more frequent flyer on a registered sex offender's infamous jet than previously reported, with flight logs showing the former president taking at least 26 trips aboard the "Lolita Express" -- even apparently ditching his Secret Service detail for at least five of the flights, according to records obtained by FoxNews.com.

"Clinton's presence aboard Jeffrey Epstein's Boeing 727 on 11 occasions has been reported, but flight logs show the number is more than double that, and trips between 2001 and 2003 included extended junkets around the world with Epstein and fellow passengers identified on manifests by their initials or first names, including "Tatiana." The tricked-out jet earned its Nabakov-inspired nickname because it was reportedly outfitted with a bed where passengers had group sex with young girls."

Fox News reports that Epstein served time in prison for "solicitation and procurement of minors for prostitution. He allegedly had a team of traffickers who procured girls as young as 12 to service his friends on 'Orgy Island,' an estate on Epstein's 72-acre island, called Little St. James, in the U.S. Virgin Islands." Some Internet sites, the credibility of which is unknown to me, have linked Hillary to these flights.

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Protectors at Standing Rock

(Image by thiscantbehappening.net) Details DMCA



Media coverage of the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline has been hopelessly myopic. Certainly environmental justice, police brutality and the violation of sacred burial grounds are important topics, but no one has addressed the larger systemic issues at play: Native American treaty rights and how their handling portends dismally for the everyone else. Even the most self-centered and politically apathetic must realize Pastor Martin Niemoller's warning that it's only a matter of time before even the most mainstream of society are persecuted.

To truly appreciate the full significance of the protest, one has to understand the historical context.

Every person in the United States has the right to clean water, but for Native Americans, that right is two-fold. The treaties that set up Indian reservations were not simply land-ownership agreements. The terms actually dictated a broader set of terms. This includes not just land, but also the obligation to protect tribal property and assets; in other words, natural resources such as clean water.

Furthermore, the Snyder Act of 1921 delineated that the federal government is also obligated to provide health care to federally recognized tribes. While this typically takes the form of providing clinics and health insurance through Indian Health Services, ensuring clean water is obviously a basic tenant to providing basic public-health care.

So when the Sioux who live on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation demand that their source of clean water is protected, it's not simply a matter of basic human rights, but also a contractual financial obligation.

But the bigger concept at play here is that the 56.2 million acres of land that are identified as reservation land (at totally of only about 2% of the United States), are actually held "in trust."

Most of us don't know what that means. In life experience of the average American, you either own something or you don't, but a "trust" is something in between. Some rich children have an idea. It's similar to the "trust funds" that wealthy people set up for their children. The money is named to them and for their use, but with active management and significant restrictions on its use. Only at least with rich kids, at a certain age, the trust money usually is given to them outright and they can spend it however they see fit. That will never happen for the lands held in trust for Native Americans.

What that means on a practical level is that even if a specific tribe has rights to the land of reservation, it's only in the setting of the highly regulated Bureau of Indian Affairs.

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CyberBerkut hack team published the internal documents of the presidential administration of Ukraine related to the visit of its former leader Boris Lozhkin to the USA in June 2016.

Among other documents the collection of damaging documents concerning Paul Manafort are of particular interest. He was an adviser on the Ukrainian presidential campaign of the former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his Party of Regions.

The results of CyberBerkut's investigation on the basis of the received documents are surprising. As it turns out, now the whole state machine and the entire administrative system of Ukraine are working for its overseas bosses and patrons.

It was discovered that the documents were handed over to Boris Lozhkin during his meeting with Evan Ryan, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs, in Washington. And that was just the beginning of a larger campaign of the US State Department to discredit Manafort, who held at that time the post of Donald Trump's campaign chief.

Taking into consideration nearly a decade of Manafort's work as the political adviser in Ukraine, supporters of Hillary Clinton in the Department of State decided to use their power. They set a task to the Ukrainian leadership to find some dirt on Manafort and make it public.

The wishes of their bosses were transmitted to Kiev via Valery Chaly, the Ambassador of Ukraine to Washington who previously was the Deputy Head of the presidential administration of Ukraine.

At that time, the SBU had already had the secret ledgers of Party of Regions at their disposal. Paul Manafort, the adviser of Yanukovych, and many other well-known Ukrainian politicians were mentioned there.

The whole operation was designed to leak this information to the media. Viktor Trepak, the former first deputy chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine, while leaving the intelligence agency incidentally picked up a pack of documents and somehow miraculously escaped prosecution. Then he gave these documents for the analysis both to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and Serhiy Leshchenko, the Ukrainian MP, who had long been known as an American agent of influence.

At the same time, the Department of State sent instructions to the US Embassy in Ukraine and personally to the ambassador Jeffrey Payette to supervise the operation. Shari Bistransky, the US Embassy Cultural Affairs Officer, became responsible for the communication with the chief "investigator" Sergei Leshchenko as usual.

Moreover, in order to dispel any doubt there is an access to the profile on the notorious traitor Serhiy Leshchenko that describes his activities for the benefit of Washington in detail.

As a result, the leaks led to the Manafort resignation from the post of Trump election campaign chief in mid-August.

It should be noted that this information operation was the final chord for Payette, who moved to Greece at the end of August, and Lozhkin, who triumphantly left the presidential administration in late August. As for Leshchenko, who bought a luxury apartment in the center of Kiev in the late August as well, this campaign became a kind of a career promotion. In October 2016, he had the honor to personally meet Victoria Nuland.
For the past eight years millions of people have expended billions of words speculating about exactly how the United States kills people with missiles from drones (and missiles from other sources, such as manned aircraft, targeting people identified with drones). There is good reason to believe that for each such attack there exists a video and audio record of what the drone pilots saw and what they and their colleagues said to each other as they decided to launch a missile and as they observed its results.

This is a level of documentation we rarely have with killings by domestic police officers, who are typically filmed by observers with phones, a method of documentation that excludes the leadup and the aftermath.

It's also a level of documentation that is almost entirely denied to the public, meaning that it doesn't actually do us much good. As far as I know we have not seen a single video or heard a single audio recording of a drone murder. The "Collateral Murder" video is a powerful record of a non-drone attack.

With drones, however, we do have one (incomplete) transcript of what was said during the hours leading up and the minutes following one particular attack. This was an attack in Afghanistan in February 2010 that killed zero fighters but numerous innocent civilians. According to survivors, 23 men, women, and children were killed. According to the U.S. military 15 or 16 were killed and 12 wounded. The U.S. military apologized and paid some $4000 to the family of each acknowledged victim.

The ACLU obtained the transcript in 2011, and it was published by the Los Angeles Times, which wrote an account of the incident, but I didn't pay much attention until the new film, National Bird, dramatized part of it. I think it deserves a bit longer excerpt than either the Times or National Bird provided. So, here is my selection plus commentary. Feel free to read the whole thing at the links above and make of it what you may.

00:38 (JAG25): We are going to hold on containment fires and try to attempt PID, we would really like to take out those trucks.

PID means positive identification. This individual is eager to send missiles into trucks on the ground in Afghanistan but is aware of the need to identify somebody in one or more of them as an armed fighter. In fictional fantasies like Eye in the Sky or presidential speeches, targets must exclude any possibility of killing civilians and the targeted people must be known, specifically identified, be beyond any possibility of arrest, and be "immediate and continuing" threats to the United States of America. None of those criteria or anything like them are even discussed in this actual drone attack. Instead, the question of whether to launch hellfire missiles at automobiles is whether the targeted people are males over 10 years old and whether at least one of them has a gun. As we'll see, even those standards are not met, but they are discussed.

00:38 (Slasher03): Copy that. Break, break, Slasher, we passed you coords for the vehicle on the west side of the river again you have multiple dismounts in the open break. On the east side of the river there's an additional vehicle majority of the dismounts are inside a compound located just to the north of that vehicle if you get eyes on that compound. Compound has multiple movers as well as one pickup truck hot. 00:38 (Slasher03): Kirk97, Slasher in addition if you're able to pick up illumination it appears the two vehicles are flashing lights signaling between.

Before anyone was murdered on this day, everyone was discussed for hours with words like "vehicle," "compound," "dismounts," and "movers" -- which simply has to have a different impact than "cars," "houses," "pedestrians," and "people walking around."

... 00:41 (Pilot): Does he have a weapon?" 00:41 (Sensor): Can't tell yet 00:41 (MC): Can't tell CLASSIFIED

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More than one person has referred to this presidential election cycle as a roller-coaster ride. The more apt metaphor is sifting through the chaff for the grains of truth. The focus on both major-party candidates from their opponents and their supporters has been on two items: lies and morals. Unfortunately, the candidates who could have taken the high road on both counts were either forced out of the campaign by party machinations, lacked much appeal in the primaries, or represent third parties that people still dismiss under the "wasted vote" myth. One possible high roader, Bernie Sanders, made the mistake of overstating his case rather than sticking to the facts that were substantive enough to get him where he was going had he not been blocked. The result of all this has brought a new shallowness to politics along with an escalation of the partisan war that began with Newt Gingrich twenty years ago.

The consequences are enormous. Most unnoticed has been the extent to which anyone not interested in either major-party candidate has been completely turned off to the election and to politics generally. A huge portion of the populace already was apathetic due to the lack of responsiveness to constituents that federal representatives have long been developing and the shameless refusal of political leaders in both houses of Congress to put forward legislation and act on presidential nominations.

The Occupy movement brought with it an opportunity for people seeking progress to spark some enthusiasm among this segment of potential voters. Due to its ridiculous in-fighting, failure to produce a common agenda, and hesitancy to engage the 99 percent it claimed to represent, the potential faded and is now nonexistent.

The Sanders campaign brought yet another opportunity. That was spoiled on the overwhelming focus on Sanders the candidate versus Sanders the leader of a political revolution. Had he endorsed the creation of a separate organization working with his campaign to promote the political revolution he claimed to lead, we would still have a large, engaged group of citizens working to that end. Instead, he endorsed his rival and destroyed any hope of progressive politics having any meaningful chance in the near term.

And what of those grains of truth? Donald Trump is the most brazenly open ego to have run for president since Ronald Reagan. Unlike Reagan, he lacks the "aw, shucks" false charm that Reagan developed as a radio announcer and actor from the Midwest. Donald Trump has New York City stereotype written all over him. Yet, he plays just as well to the old Yellow Dog southerners that shifted to the GOP in the 1970s because he is so direct and plain spoken about the things they most fear. Trump took the measure of the GOP base years ago when he derided it. He used that knowledge to squash his rivals.

Pundits and analysts of all stripes from day one of Trump's candidacy have missed the fact that it does not matter if Trump believes what he says or tells the truth about anything. However, their perspective is that of well-educated people who accept scientific evidence over belief. Trump is not and never has been seeking votes from well-educated people who accept scientific evidence over belief. It was obvious fourteen months ago that he was playing to a specific crowd, the crowd that gets hottest about who the GOP nominee is going to be. People who were turned off by and dismissive of his rhetoric never got it and still don't get it.

Trump did what the GOP bureaucracy never wanted: a candidate chosen by the GOP base. It worked for Reagan because he was able to convince enough people after the convention that he really wasn't as extreme as he claimed in the primary. However, he also was helped in the general elections by the GOP base being so much stronger. He had, after all, brought it to its height in 1984. The proportion of the population in some southern states that is old Yellow Dog has declined in Virginia, North Carolina, and even Texas over the last two-plus decades. Similarly, better educated, less bigoted citizens have risen in Utah and Nevada. Latino populations are beginning to make a difference in Nevada and Arizona vis-a-vis the existing Western individualism crowd, as they already have in New Mexico and Colorado.

As for Hillary Clinton, it baffles the mind that more people do not see just how much she mirrors Richard Nixon's campaign tactics and attitudes toward public office. I wrote about it in January, when it already was clear. The two reasons may be that most people discussing the election have forgotten or never learned about Nixon's dirty tricks and her testimony before the Benghazi Committee. The first is easy to understand. Absent at least one class on American politics, no one under the age of fifty-five (my age) was old enough to have lived through Watergate and almost no one is around who remembers or has read about his shenanigans in 1950 running for the US Senate. They do not know about the Checkers Speech in which he successfully debunked claims that he was being enriched by donors by noting his wife Patricia wore a good Republican cloth coat, not furs, and then admitting they got their dog Checkers from a donor.

I mentioned the correlation between Nixon's speech and Clinton's testimony nine months ago. Good old George Will finally caught on this week. She handled the committee extremely well, but really as well as one would expect someone who has been in public life for so long and has faced so many inquiries into her behavior. The fact is that Benghazi and many other things the GOP has tried to tag her with going back to 1992 have lacked evidence or plausibility. One does wonder why she is the only politician in the USA today who has seen three people involved with her activities die suddenly, unexpectedly, and in odd circumstances. However, that remains innuendo and is a pitiful hammer to use. There are more serious problems that do not lack evidence.

Not one person has grasped that she told Anderson Cooper in March that she traded her Iraq War vote for George W. Bush providing funding for lower Manhattan after 9/11. Traded a vote for war that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths for money she should have been able to negotiate from the administration based on it being the duty of the government to put its money where its patriotic mouth was. In addition, the private email server was a huge lapse in judgment that ought to have been better investigated from the start. It is preposterous to believe it could not have been used for discussions of classified material; no one is that retentive to be so careful as to avoid mixing that information with routine business. Now we know that Colin Powell knew she was going to blame him as a way of getting around it.

Speaking of the retired general, Powell also pointed out something that should be evident even to people who have supported her. Clinton is cursed with the hubris that tells her she is better than everyone else, the rules do not apply, and she is destined to make history as the first female president of the USA. Close associates pointed this out when she said she didn't have to reveal the contents of the speeches she made to Wall Street in exchange for huge amounts of personal income to her. It was obvious in the way she handled healthcare reform in her husband's first term. It was quite clear in the way she attacked Barack Obama in 2008. It remains easily seen in her handling of the FBI reopening its investigation of the private email server. Would it not be influencing the election by withholding the information? Aren't her supporters at all concerned if a government agency fails to publicize what it is doing?

The truth is that neither candidate is fit for the Oval Office. As some have mentioned, perhaps this election will turn the wheel to revolution. The facts indicate that it is indeed rigged and Wall Street will do anything to make sure Hillary Clinton is elected.
Earlier this month, a special British court that rules on secret spying activities issued an emphatic denunciation of the nation's domestic mass surveillance programs. The court found that "British security agencies have secretly and unlawfully collected massive volumes of confidential personal data, including financial information, on citizens for more than a decade." Those agencies, the court found, "operated an illegal regime to collect vast amounts of communications data, tracking individual phone and web use and other confidential personal information, without adequate safeguards or supervision for 17 years."

WHILE MOST EYES ARE FOCUSED on the presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, three major events prove how widespread, and dangerous, mass surveillance has become in the west. Standing alone, each event highlights exactly the severe threats which motivated Edward Snowden to blow his whistle; taken together, they constitute full-scale vindication of everything he's done.

[Subscribe to Glenn Greenwald] Glenn Greenwald is a journalist,former constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times bestselling books on politics and law. His most recent book, "No Place to Hide," is about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world. His forthcoming book, to be published in April, 2021, is about Brazilian history and current politics, with a focus on his experience in reporting a series of expose's in 2019 and 2020 which exposed high-level corruption by powerful officials in the government of President Jair Bolsonaro, which subsequently attempted to prosecute him for that reporting.
From Middle East Eye

The Syrian and Russian bombing is not dissimilar from recent US and Israeli offensives - but you wouldn't know that from the reporting



Syria and Russian bombing

(Image by Oriental Lista) Details DMCA



The Russian-Syrian bombing campaign in eastern Aleppo, which has ended at least for the time being, has been described in press reports and op-eds as though it were unique in modern military history in its indiscriminateness. In an unusual move for a senior US official, Secretary of State John Kerry called for an investigation of war crimes in Aleppo.

The discussion has been lacking in historical context, however. Certainly the civilian death toll from the bombing and shelling in Aleppo has been high, but many of the strikes may not be all that dissimilar from the major US bombing campaign in Iraq in 2003, nor as indiscriminate as Israel's recent campaigns in densely populated cities.

The impression that the bombing in Aleppo was uniquely indiscriminate was a result of news reporting and commentary suggesting, by implication, that there are no real military targets in east Aleppo.

But in fact, al-Nusra Front turned Aleppo into the central hub of a massive system of conventional warfare in Aleppo province in late January 2016 when it sent an enormous convoy of at least 200 vehicles with troops and weaponry into eastern Aleppo. A dramatic three-minute al-Nusra video shows what appears to be hundreds of vehicles full of troops and trucks with weapons mounted on them.

The Russian command in Syria has drones observing the routes in and out of Aleppo, so it certainly knew where many of those military sites were located. Syrian opposition sources also revealed that Nusra began immediately to put the military assets at its disposal underground, digging deep bunkers to protect troops, military equipment and tunnels through which troops and weapons could be moved unseen.

The move underground explains the Russian use of bunker-buster bombs for the first time in the war. As the Guardian reported, Justin Bronk of the British defense think tank Royal United Service Institute concluded that the Russians "have high-grade intelligence of the whereabouts of Syrian opposition positions," mainly because bunker buster bombs are too expensive to use simply to destroy buildings at random.

But like Hamas fighters in Gaza in 2014, the Nusra Front-led command in Aleppo has moved its troops, weapons and command centers around in the tunnels that they have built. So many of the Russian and Syrian air strikes are almost certainly hitting targets that have already been abandoned. And in other cases, the wrong target has undoubtedly been hit.

The Aleppo Health Directorate, a local monitoring group, estimated that 400 civilians had been killed in the first three weeks of bombing in east Aleppo. The United Nations put the death toll at 360.

As terrible as that toll of civilian lives is, the United States should drop the stance of moral superiority. When the US military invaded Iraq in 2003, it made no effort to keep track of how many civilians were killed in its bombing and artillery fire, claiming it had no way to tell who was civilian and who was not.

And the best estimates of civilians killed in US and Israeli urban wars don't provide any basis for moral superiority. A survey of Baghdad's hospitals by the Los Angeles Times in May 2003 produced an estimate of at least 1,700 civilians killed in the first five weeks of American war. The estimate included those who had died in ground fighting and from unexploded ordnance, but even with those contributing factors subtracted from the total, it would still be far greater than those killed in the assault on east Aleppo on a weekly basis.

The three-week Israeli war on Gaza City in 2009 and the seven-week war on Gaza in 2014 were also far deadlier than Aleppo. The former killed 773 civilians, according to an investigation by the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem. The latter killed 1,473 Palestinian civilians, according to the UN Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The one feature of the Russian-Syrian air offensive on east Aleppo that seems most clearly to violate the laws of war is the targeting of hospitals. Media accounts have referred to air strikes with barrel bombs that have hit two major hospitals in the rebel-held part of the city.

The Syrian government has been acting as though it regards the hospitals in eastern Aleppo as serving the Nusra Front command, and the hospitals, which are under intense pressure from the militants who run that part of Aleppo, have fed the government's suspicions.

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From Our Future

As the presidential campaign hobbles through its last dispiriting days, the central concerns of voters are getting lost amid the screech of scandal, real and invented. This election isn't about Clinton's "damned emails" or Trump's Putin bromance. What's really driving this election is a mounting populist anger that has roiled both parties.

These forces aren't new, as John Judis notes in his book, The Populist Revolt. Trump's angry voters were foreshadowed by the Tea Party, and earlier by Pat Buchanan's "peasants with pitchforks" campaigns; Bernie Sanders stunning surge came after Occupy Wall Street. And they won't go away when the last vote is cast this November. Sanders and allies are already driving reforms and running candidates at the local and state level. Trump's legions will spark a civil war within the Republican Party, with some likely to self-organize into more threatening formations.

None of this is a revelation. Yet elite Washington still doesn't get it. The establishment has still not acknowledged the scope of its failure. President Obama is rolling out his legacy tour, pointing with pride to the recovery from the Great Recession, 20 million more with health insurance, record months of private-sector job growth, low unemployment, and the first signs of wages' beginning to inch upwards. America's alliances, foreign-policy experts intone, continue to "keep the peace" across the world. Our global economic strategies are touted as vital to our prosperity. This is, the president assures us, the "greatest time to be alive."

But most Americans aren't in on the deal. They continue to struggle with stagnant incomes and economic insecurity. Entire communities have been devastated, with little relief. Banks got bailed out but not homeowners. For working and poor people, the basics -- clean water, good roads, modern schools, affordable college and health care, secure retirements, decent housing -- seem increasingly at risk or out of reach. America's military may be the most powerful in the world, but we fight endless wars without victory.

Nothing exemplifies this disconnect between the establishment and ordinary Americans more than the astonishing plan of President Obama and the business lobby to cram the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal through the lame-duck Congress after the election. The United States has run trade deficits unprecedented in the annals of time. Our trade deals have cost jobs, undermined wages, and devastated communities. Defenders say they benefit the nation generally, and the winners could or should recompense the losers. But they never do. Instead, global corporations fix the rules to gain access to cheap labor abroad, while stashing their profits overseas to avoid paying the taxes they owe.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) embodies the stacked deck. It was negotiated in secret of, by and for the global corporations. Michael Froman, Obama's trade representative who shepherded through the deal, comes, no surprise, from Citibank. Obama argues that the TPP is about free trade and leveling the playing field, but the TPP isn't really a trade deal -- tariffs are already low. And it doesn't level the playing field: It cuts special deals for global investors, including their own private legal system that gives global corporations rights that no citizen or small business enjoys.

Both Clinton and Trump oppose the TPP. It was exhibit one in the populist argument made by Bernie Sanders. Leading environmental, consumer, labor, citizen-action, and human-rights groups are organized against it. The white working-class voters who flocked to Trump's banner loathe it.

Yet, bizarrely, first thing after this election is over, President Obama, the Republican leaders of the House and Senate and the business lobby are planning to launch a full-court press to drive the TPP through a lame-duck session of Congress. Editorial boards will chime in. Former presidents and secretaries of state will be trotted out in support. Froman is already wheeling and dealing in the back rooms.

The big fight will be in the House of Representatives. Two or three dozen legislators will be retiring, voluntarily or by will of the voters. Most will be looking for lucrative jobs as lobbyists and consultants. The Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party and Chamber of Commerce Republicans will sign up. The business lobby will ante up the necessary price in exchange for the right vote. The president will push Black Caucus members not to oppose his last "legacy" measure.

Even then, it is hard to imagine House Republican leaders forcing their members to vote for a treaty that is toxic to Trump supporters. But whether the treaty passes or not, the very act of trying to force it through a lame duck session of Congress will only add petrol to the populist fires. This will be, in the imitable words of Joe Biden, a Big f*cking Deal. The president, the Republican leaders, the foreign policy establishment and the business lobby are essentially giving a stiff middle figure to an aroused American electorate. Safe seat incumbents in both parties who vote for it are likely to find themselves with primary opponents. The frustration and disgust with beltway corruptions will deepen. The Sanders forces and unions may open new ties to the Trump voters.

This debate will set the stage for the Clinton presidency. She will either lead the opposition against Obama or be tarred even more as a dishonest cynic by right and left alike. Pundits bemoan the prospect that a Hillary Clinton presidency will be plagued interminably by Republican congressional investigations. But the popular anger roused by the TPP fight will burn much hotter and much longer than dozens of congressional hearings on Clinton's emails.

Originally published in The Nation
Stars Cabaret

Stars Cabaret in Beaverton

(The Oregonian/File)

The operator of the closed Beaverton branch of an Oregon strip club chain is requesting a delay in court proceedings on underaged child prostitution allegations because it has filed for bankruptcy, court records show.

A hearing is scheduled Monday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Portland to determine if the request of Frehoo Inc., which ran Stars Cabaret in Beaverton, will be granted. The move could delay an administrative hearing of a civil rights complaint against the strip club chain from the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries that is scheduled to begin Wednesday in Tualatin.

Stars Cabaret had locations in Beaverton, Bend, Salem and Tualatin but announced plans to sell the Beaverton club earlier this year to Spearmint Rhino. Court documents show the Beaverton business closed July 31; the rest remain open.

BOLI sued Frehoo and other owners and managers of the Beaverton club in April alleging two underage teen girls who were working there in 2012 and 2014 were subjected to sexual harassment and no one took any corrective action.

According to court records, Frehoo filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy Monday. It reported a little more than $298,000 in assets and nearly $18 million in liabilities, bankruptcy filings said. Doug Cushing, who is representing the company in its bankruptcy case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

Two lawsuits

were filed in Washington County Circuit Court in July against Stars Cabaret on behalf of the girls. One lawsuit said a 13-year-old girl danced nude on stage for customers and performed sex acts in a back room between September 2012 to December 2012. Another girl is alleged to have been hired at 15, danced nude five times in August 2014 and September 2014 and was groped by customers.

Court documents filed Tuesday by the 15-year-old's attorneys claim the company has been "actively diluting its worth," and the bankruptcy filing is to try and force dismissals of the lawsuits.

Former Stars Cabaret manager Steven Toth, Victor Moreno-Hernandez and Yahir Muniz were all convicted for sexually abusing the 13-year-old. The girl was staying with Muniz when she met Moreno-Hernandez. Soon after, Moreno-Hernandez and Toth arranged a deal to use her for prostitution in a back room for Stars' customers and share the profits.

Toth was

for first-degree sexual abuse, second-degree sodomy and compelling prostitution. Moreno-Hernandez was sentenced to 30 years and 10 months in prison for first-degree sexual abuse, second-degree rape, second-degree sodomy, second-degree unlawful sexual penetration, compelling prostitution and delivery of methamphetamine to a minor. Muniz was sentenced to six years and three months in prison for second-degree rape, second-degree unlawful penetration and second-degree sodomy.

According to court documents, Toth told BOLI investigators that club co-owner Randy Kaiser confronted him about the prostitution at the club a week before he was arrested and hired an attorney for him after he was taken into police custody.

Another man, Anthony Curry, was

in 2015 for putting the 15-year-old to work as a stripper. According to a Washington County prosecutor, he met the teen after she ran away from a drug treatment center and brought her home to stay with him. He soon began sexual abusing her, got her a fake ID and helped her get jobs dancing at Jags Clubhouse in Portland, The Dolphin II and Stars Cabaret in Beaverton, and Sunset Strip in Cedar Hills.

According to court documents in both Washington County lawsuits, there is evidence the company failed to protect the girls and didn't train employees to identify, investigate or prevent sex trafficking.

Other illegal acts occurred at the Beaverton club, court documents said. Toth told BOLI investigators that co-owner Jeff Struhar often got drunk at the club while working, that Toth had to drive him home on occasion because he was too drunk to stand and that Struhar once took money from the till to pay a dancer for oral sex.

Dancers and bartenders told BOLI investigators that women were being prostituted out of the club and were forced to trade sexual favors for better shifts, court documents said. One witness told investigators that he had sex at the club regularly, used cocaine there and paid Toth to receive sexual services from women.

Toth admitted letting dancers leave with customer who paid for sex, court documents said, and that another manager, Todd Mitchell, once received $600 to $700 from a man for the services of two 18-year-old dancers.

According to court documents, Kaiser told BOLI investigators that all four of the clubs didn't implement measures to prevent these things from happening because they weren't obligated to.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com

503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey
Correction appended

A higher education commission meeting Friday offered a sneak peek of what could be a contentious debate in the 2017 legislative session over limited state resources.

After brief debate, commissioners reordered a previously approved list of budget requests from public universities, giving priority to Oregon State University's growth plans in Bend over a late-arriving proposal from the University of Oregon for a dramatic new research campus in Eugene.

Gov. Kate Brown asked the volunteer education board to convene a special meeting to evaluate UO's request for $100 million in state bonds, part of the Phil and Penny Knight Center for Accelerated Scientific Impact announced Oct. 17. The capital budget requests are recommendations. Oregon lawmakers and Brown will ultimately approve university budgets, including state bonds, in 2017.

UO's request came months after the commission had already approved its top capital projects at the state's seven public universities, which included 19 projects totaling more than $444 million.

Then the Knights' $500 million gift came calling. The donation from the Nike co-founder and his wife isn't contingent on state support. But UO officials say the state is needed as a partner to make the $1 billion initiative a reality. The school quickly asked for its project to be added as a priority for the upcoming 2017-19 biennium.

Hans Bernard, UO's associate vice president for state and community affairs, told the commission the university understands the request "may be a source of frustration" for the commission and its sister institutions.

"We simply could not wait for future budget cycles," Bernard said.

Some commissioners pushed back, asking what the university would lose by holding on until the next budget cycle. UO officials responded that the project's timing and scale would be jeopardized if the state doesn't chip in.

The Knight campus is part of a broader $1 billion effort over the next decade, and the school expects an additional $500 million from donors. UO said it plans to ultimately build three 75,000-square-foot buildings on campus and hire at least 30 new scientists.

The higher ed commission ranks its projects based on a series of priorities, including the potential benefits for underrepresented students and how it would help boost graduation rates.

According to the higher ed agency ranking presented at the meeting's outset Friday, the Knight project came in 11th. Portland State University's proposed new education school building, which is requesting $45 million in state bonds, ranked second.

"We believe, however," Bernard said, "that this investment, if weighed against other investments in the state budget cycle, presents an opportunity that is unprecedented for the South Willamette Valley."

OSU celebrated the grand-opening of its first new academic building in Bend in September.

Commissioner Enrique Farrera, an adviser at Clackamas Community College who is a nonvoting participant on the higher ed body, pressed UO officials on the timing of their request.

Commission Vice-Chair David Rives also expressed some concern about the timing, though he said "nobody is questioning that this is a great gift."

Ben Cannon, the higher ed agency's executive director, told commissioners their concerns would be passed along to the governor. "Clearly as the discussion today has suggested," Cannon said, "there may be some difficult decisions ahead for the governor and the Legislature."

The commission ultimately approved adding the Knight project to the list, bringing the requested capital budget to more than $444 million. In the current state funding cycle, lawmakers approved roughly $252 million, for comparison.

Following the UO decision, commissioners promptly elevated OSU's request for $20 million for new roads, parking and other work at its Bend campus above the Knight project - dropping the UO proposal to 13th. The OSU project includes $9 million in work on at 46-acre pumice mine adjacent to the growing Bend campus.

The project list also includes another $49.5 million for OSU-Cascades buildings. President Ed Ray said earlier this year the Bend campus should be treated as an eighth campus.

Correction: A previous version of this story had the incorrect total projection for capital construction costs in 2017-19. The requested figure is $444 million.



-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen
1944 Press Photo Sadie Hawkins day

Daisy Mae and Moonbeam McSwine fight over Li'l Abner on Sadie Hawkins Day at Washington High School in 1944. Al Capp's popular comic strip sparked celebrations for more than 40 years.

(The Oregonian)

Isabel Torrey

This story starts with two ifs:

No. 1: If you have a current copy of The Old Farmer's Almanac, page 144 informs you that Sadie Hawkins Day this year comes on Nov. 5.

No. 2: If you don't remember this exciting event, here's a bit of background. In the old cartoon comic strip "Li'l Abner," Sadie was one of many characters in Dogpatch, a hillbilly community where males wore denim overalls held up by a single shoulder strap. Sadie, daughter of Hekzebiah Hawkins -- Dogpatch's mayor and earliest settler -- was still unmarried at age 35. Her father feared Sadie would continue living at home, relying on him, the rest of her life.

Isabel Torrey

According to Al Capp, the cartoon's founder, Dad Hawkins -- desperate to find a husband for his daughter -- came up with what he thought was an ideal remedy: "Sadie Hawkins Day."

He summoned all unmarried Dogpatch men and challenged them to a footrace. When subpoenaed men reported, he loudly proclaimed, ""When ah fires (my gun), all o' yo' kin start a-runnin! When ah fires agin -- after givin' yo' a fair start -- Sadie starts a runnin'. Th' one she ketches'll be her husbin."

This novel idea, of course, reversed the then-gender-role-tradition of males being the aggressors. Instead, once-a-year, females should take the initiative in inviting a male on a date.

Due to resultant fan letters and the enormous popularity of his cartoon concept, Capp made the race a tradition on the first Saturday in November. Soon, "Sadie Hawkins Day" was celebrated at 40,000-plus events throughout the country, extending more than 40 years.

In fact, the race was still being held during my own college days. Surprisingly, my alma mater sanctioned it -- even though our denominational-school's hierarchy frowned on such frivolity. However, the father of our own campus' "Sadie" was also the college-board's president, so maybe the faculty members feared bucking his authority when he sealed the proclamation that the dozen, dateless girls who'd previously signed up, plus all "non-committed men" were expected to participate.

Although I was ineligible -- I had a "steady" (what we called an official boyfriend back then) -- I joined the excited hundreds of non-runners lining the route.

Our race's rule mimicked that of Mr. Hawkins'. "If a chaser snags, or touches, her object, he will be her partner" at a student body party held that night in the school's gymnasium.

At the appointed hour, the starter gun cracked and the men took off, spraying gravel in the process. Moments later, another crack and a dozen girls were in hot pursuit.

The first male runner passing our sight was Frantz, the school's fullback -- and popular bachelor -- breaking his own school record on the gridiron. He zipped past, as wild-eyed as if being chased by a banshee. The "banshee" behind him? Sadie -- jaws set, eyes riveted, heels drumming impending doom -- traveling the speed of sound.

Now it doesn't take Einstein's relativity theory of E=mc2 (E for energy, m for mass, c for light velocity in centimeters squared) to realize even the speed of sound isn't as fast as the speed of light -- the rate fullback Frantz was hitting.

Rounding a nearby corner, he spotted a tree, a mere sapling, but his only hope to escape the hot breath he now sensed burning his back.

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"Last-Chance Frantz" applied his "c" (light-velocity) and clambered, ape-like, up its feeble trunk. There, tree and man whipped back and forth, Frantz clinging and suspended almost in mid-air.

No problem. Sadie simply slowed her E (energy) to a halt, plunked her "m" (mass) at the tree's base, doubtless using her own "c" (velocity) reasoning: "He'll have to come down sometime."

Her prey was still treed when I left the scene.

So what happened? I don't know. At age 18, I was more interested in joining my steady at the party. But it's one of those things you always wonder about: How long did Sadie sit there? Did Frantz ever come down? If not, are his now-whitened, sun-bleached bones still in that campus tree?

This piece closes with another two ifs:

No. 1: If I ever learn answers, I'll let you know.

No. 2: If you wonder, "Is this a true story?" Yes (other than changing Sadie's and Frantz's names in case they ever read this. And, yes, maybe I did exaggerate their respective speeds a bit, but I'll bet you got the picture and the photo of my Sadie Hawkins Day Race pin is proof.)

Isabel Torrey, a longtime columnist, lives in King City, Oregon.
HULK.JPG

Hulk Hogan won $115 million in damages in his case against gossip website Gawker.com.

(New York Post )

By Noah Feldman

It's easy to bemoan the Gawker-Hulk Hogan settlement and condemn the Florida courts for not throwing out the verdict. But there's a deeper point that matters more and shouldn't be lost: The First Amendment and its values can be thwarted and distorted by private actors with extremely deep pockets.

Much as we rightly celebrate our free-speech tradition, it isn't designed to withstand vast economic disparities. Indeed, the First Amendment value of government neutrality with respect to speech can sometimes function as an invitation for the richest private speakers to drown out others who may even be fairly rich themselves.

In the Gawker case, the First Amendment fell short because the judicial interpretation of it remains incomplete. Had Hulk Hogan sued Gawker for libel, he wouldn't have gone far -- because the First Amendment has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to protect the media from libel suits by public figures unless the falsehoods are disseminated with disregard for whether they were true, or with knowledge they were false. But because Hogan sued for infringement on his privacy under Florida law, the state courts were able to avoid applying the First Amendment principles that have developed in the context of libel law.

There is every reason to believe that, eventually, the Florida Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court would have gotten the law right and decided the case for Gawker. But in real life, a media entity that has declared bankruptcy and been acquired by new owners has good reason to settle outstanding conflicts rather than taking the risk of disastrous, greater losses.

The truth is that there's no certain way to avoid such a result under the First Amendment. Judge-made law has to evolve on a case-by-case basis. It would be nice if there were more statutes to block suits like Hogan's, but even such pro-free-speech laws can't cover every foreseeable scenario.

Ultimately, the First Amendment, like other parts of the Constitution, can be enforced only by ordinary judicial processes. Those processes take time and money -- and they necessarily carry the risk of defeat. That's why the threat of libel suits remains powerful even when those lawsuits are almost certainly doomed to failure, as we saw recently when the American Bar Association balked at publishing a report that criticized Donald Trump for being a libel bully.

When all parties enter the courts with roughly similar resources, the legal process is usually sufficient to vindicate First Amendment values. Hulk Hogan and Gawker might actually have been roughly equal. But when Peter Thiel's vastly greater resources came into the picture, it became much harder for Gawker to be confident that it would prevail and prevail quickly.

Resource disparities are the bane of the legal system, of course. In criminal cases, the system constantly struggles with the relative resources allocated to public prosecutors and public defenders. The occasional rich defendant, however, enjoys an obvious, O.J. Simpson-style advantage over even the best-funded prosecutors.

A similar result can be observed when it comes to campaign finance. It could be argued, of course, that expenditure of money in campaigns has no relation to free speech, but 40 years ago, the Supreme Court chose a different path. Since the landmark 1976 decision of Buckley v. Valeo, the courts have treated campaign finance as interwoven with free speech.

In that paradigm, opponents' free-speech competition for votes is inevitably joined with their competition for money to buy airtime to affect those votes. The free market in ideas, which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes intended as a metaphor, becomes something closer to a literal market in which expenditures can influence outcomes.

The First Amendment can't do anything about this, because it is neutral by design.

The First Amendment is at its most effective at protecting speech from government action. It's much less effective when private parties go to war using it as a shield or a weapon. That shouldn't necessarily make us love the First Amendment any less. But we should recognize its limitations.

(c) 2016, Bloomberg View

Noah Feldman, a Bloomberg View columnist, is a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard.
On a late January day, near the end of the 41-day occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a man named John Killman joined Ammon and Ryan Bundy and other protesters.

He spoke with a French accent and provided occupiers with food and firearms training. He was friends with many of them on Facebook.

There was a catch, however: John Killman didn't exist.

The discovery that Killman was an FBI informant hit just before the surprising outcome of the trial of seven refuge occupiers. The revelation may have sounded the death knell for a struggling prosecution, now faced with more questions about how informants may have influenced the case.

Killman's secret role wouldn't have come to light except for a chance conversation and fast detective work by defense attorneys.

***

It was during a lunch break in the waning days of the federal conspiracy trial of the occupiers when defense lawyer Lisa Maxfield picked up an intriguing lead.

Maxfield was interviewing a potential witness, Matthew Deatherage, about his role manning the gate at the refuge during the takeover.

Suddenly, he leaned toward her.

In a hushed voice, he revealed that "this weird French guy" had shown up "out of nowhere" at the bird sanctuary just a few days before the FBI arrested Ammon Bundy and other occupation leaders.

"I thought he was an agent provocateur," Deatherage told the lawyer.

He showed Maxfield what he said was the man's Facebook page. The only pictures were of a military-style rifle in front of a scenic background of arches under the name "John Killman." Most of his Facebook friends were people involved in the armed seizure of the refuge to protest federal land management.

Deatherage described how Killman, speaking with a foreign accent, had provided training on guns and military tactics.

"Oh, that guy!" chimed in defendant Shawna Cox, who was nearby in the eighth-floor courthouse room set aside for the defense. "You need to unmask him."

Later that night over beers and mussels in a downtown bar, Maxfield and fellow defense attorney Tiffany Harris decided they needed to smoke out the mystery man.

"Let's go get what we can get," Maxfield said.

If they could show that an informant egged on the occupiers, particularly in encouraging them to use guns, that could taint the government's evidence. Even at the 11th hour, they believed the effort was worth a try.

Their deadline sleuthing would soon expose Killman as Confidential Human Source No. 2. Their find pressured prosecutors to acknowledge to the jury that the FBI had gathered intelligence from a total of 15 informants in the case, including nine sent into the refuge.

Their work led to one of the most jaw-dropping moments of testimony during the five-week trial, threw the government's most inflammatory piece of evidence into question and raised reasonable doubt in the jury room during deliberations.

U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown's instructions to the jury noted that informants are legal and a common FBI tactic and that authorities can use them "to engage in stealth and deception" to assume the role of a member in an alleged conspiracy. Yet police and trial experts say their use can boomerang, raising concerns about entrapment or collusion.

"It's one of the most challenging things in law enforcement to successfully use an informant, protect their life and hopefully use them again in the future," said retired FBI agent Clint Van Zandt. "The good FBI agents cultivate informants, send them into situations where an undercover agent couldn't pass muster. But it can always backfire."

Ferreting out 'John Killman'

From the bar on the night of Oct. 7, Maxfield immediately called her investigator, Rachel Philips, with the tip. She suggested Philips reach out to other refuge occupiers who might have encountered Killman.

Philips spoke with one occupier who confirmed that Killman was involved in the firearms training at the refuge boat launch. The next day, she reached Karl Koenigs, a Wisconsin man known by the nickname "Capt. Karl," who hadn't been indicted in the case but had been attending parts of the trial. He had spent three weeks at the refuge near Burns and said he commanded a unit of occupiers dubbed the "Alpha Squad."

Koenigs remembered Killman telling him and others at a morning briefing that he had been part of the Swiss army and involved in special forces. Killman shared tales of where he'd been and what he'd done.

Koenigs had something even better than memories of Killman. "Well, I got his phone number," he told the investigator.

Philips immediately dropped the number into a reverse directory and up popped an unusual name: "Fabio Minoggio."

A Facebook photo of Minoggio showed him posing in front of what looked like the Swiss Alps.

Defense lawyers showed this Facebook photo to Oregon standoff trial defendants to track down Fabio Minoggio, aka John Killman.

The lawyers passed the picture around to the defendants on trial for conspiracy to prevent federal workers from doing their jobs at the refuge. They agreed it showed the man they knew as Killman, though he appeared younger in the photo.

Maxfield -- who represented Neil Wampler of Los Osos, California -- immediately had subpoenas served at every address they found for Minoggio, in Nevada, Arizona and Utah. The lawyers paid for private process servers to do the job because it would have taken the U.S. Marshals Service at least a week and the lawyers couldn't wait that long with testimony wrapping up.

On Friday, Oct. 14, Maxfield received a voice mail.

"I don't know who this Mr. Wampler is," the caller with the foreign accent told her, elongating the name so it sounded like "Woompler." He also mentioned getting a subpoena "about some kind of Burns thing.''

The caller identified himself as "Samuel" and said he was in Arizona. He couldn't just leave his life and drive to Portland, he said. "I don't even know what this is all about,'' he added.

But the trial defendants confirmed the voice on the message sounded like Killman. Maxfield had her investigator call him back. Philips reached him that day and he acknowledged receiving the subpoena.

"We labeled the subpoena Fabio Minoggio. What's your full name?" Philips asked.

"That's exactly the name," he said.

"We're subpoenaing you as a witness because of the Malheur refuge case. Have you heard of it it?" she asked.

After a slight pause, he replied, "Yeah but what did I witness? I didn't witness anything besides, I didn't know, I don't know the guy. I Googled him up, but..."

"But you were at the refuge for a bit, weren't you?" she continued.

"Well, I brought twice donuts, but that's about it," he said, later adding he spent three days there.

"Did you ever use a different name when you were there?'' she asked.

"Yeah, I usually go under John," he said.

"Did you go under John Killman?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

This still image taken from a video recording shows men firing rifles from the boat launch of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Jan. 25.

"Did you ever talk to the guys about defensive driving tactics or shooting guns?'' she asked.

"Well, I went to the range. I'm all about, uh, safety and when I saw how they shot -- and how they manipulate the muzzles at each other, I nearly fainted," he said.

"So you gave them safety tips?"

"Yeah," he said.

"And were you ever paid for your time at the refuge?" she asked.

"What?! No," he responded.

"Could have been by anybody. There were people paid by the FBI just to go and hang out,'' she said.

"No," he told her again.

"I'm going to call you back in just a few minutes with our witness coordinator and set up how to get you here on a flight, OK?'' she said.

After another long pause, he told her, "Well ... you know you infringe in my life."

"It's a federal subpoena. Once you've been served, you have to honor the subpoena. It's a court order," Philips said.

She called him back quickly with more information on logistics. Minoggio said he was a single father with a young son.

"You're both coming," the investigator told him, saying the U.S. Marshals Service would get plane tickets for the two of them.

'The Mad Minute!'

Later that day, as the defense lawyers were back in court for the trial, Maxfield received a series of text messages. They were from her law partner, Kristen Winemiller.

A Facebook page put up under the alias 'John Killman.' Defense lawyers learned the Facebook page was created in January, after the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge had started.

Winemiller had just taken a phone call from a detective with the Hualapai Tribal Police, saying he was reaching out on Minoggio's behalf and that Minoggio was in the middle of taking police academy courses to become an officer on the northwestern Arizona reservation.

The detective said Minoggio was claiming he had not been at the refuge or in Harney County, had nothing to do with the case and had no idea why he had been subpoenaed. The detective said Minoggio would lose his place in the police academy if he had to travel to Oregon to testify.

Winemiller told the detective that Minoggio already admitted to their investigator that he was in eastern Oregon during the occupation and knew exactly why he was subpoenaed.

The detective then offered to have Minoggio testify by phone so he wouldn't miss any classes, but Winemiller said neither the defense attorneys nor the judge would allow that. The detective responded that FBI agents had told him that Minoggio could indeed testify by phone if necessary.

Hearing that the FBI was involved bolstered their hunch about Minoggio. The lawyers figured he must be Confidential Human Source No. 2 - as described in one of the 15 heavily redacted FBI reports on the agency's informants in the case.

The report included information about how the informant brought food to the refuge to help ingratiate himself with the occupation's leaders, spent three days in late January at the refuge, reported back to the FBI about the presence of a shooting range there, estimated the number of rounds fired and described types of training offered.

That night, Minoggio and his son flew to Portland, and the defense investigator picked them up at the airport and dropped them off at the downtown Hotel Monaco. At noon Saturday, Minoggio met with defense lawyers Maxfield and Harris, standby counsel for Cox, in Harris' law office.

He showed up in a polo shirt, slacks and heavy gold jewelry around his neck. He divulged more of his background, saying he was born in Switzerland and served in the Swiss military for 20 years.

His son, about 4 or 5 years old, interrupted at one point when Minoggio tried to deflect a question about which military branch he had been in. "That's not true, Daddy. You were in the Army!" the boy said, according to the lawyers.

Minoggio told them he was trained in "psy-ops," weaponry and martial arts. Asked why he went to the refuge, he said, "I am in this because of my love of gun safety," according to the lawyers' notes. He also said he didn't want to miss a "moment in history."

"I have a keen sense of history," he told them. When the Berlin Wall fell in Germany, he was there, he said. He went to the refuge because he sensed the occupation, too, would become a milestone.

The road leading into the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, January 2016.

"My heart is with Ammon but he is badly advised," Minoggio told the lawyers.

Maxfield and Harris showed him Government Exhibit No. 73 -- a video played for jurors at least four times. An occupier filmed it Jan. 25, capturing a group of men standing in a line at the refuge boat launch and firing off rifles in a barrage of bullets toward the water.

"That is the mad minute! All those shells were created in the mad minute!" Minoggio immediately exclaimed, the lawyers recounted.

Minoggio told the lawyers that he was there to assess their gun handling skills. The occupiers wanted to practice, worried that the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team would raid the refuge, he said. Up to 18 people, mostly men in their 20s and 30s, participated, he said.

How did he rate them? "Unworthy," he said, according to the lawyers' notes.

Minoggio, though, remained adamant that he wasn't working for the FBI or paid by the federal government.

Prosecutors refuse to confirm ID

That Saturday afternoon, the defense lawyers turned to the prosecution team for help confirming Minoggio's identity.

Maxfield sent an email at 2:30 p.m. to three assistant U.S. attorneys.

"Y'All, We just interviewed a man known to refuge protesters as 'John Killman.' We believe his true name is Fabio Minoggio,'' she wrote. "Would you please advise whether this individual was an agent, informant, contractor of the government while at the refuge, Bunkerville or otherwise. Did the government send Mr. Minoggio to the refuge? ... Finally, was he compensated by any federal agency? Were his services used by any federal agency?"

Seventeen minutes later, prosecutor Geoffrey Barrow responded: "Lisa, I'm not sure I understand your question."

He explained that prosecutors had given the defense their reports on confidential sources in July. He also noted that the judge had just ordered the government to give her all its folders and reports from confidential sources so she could rule on a defense motion to compel their identities.

"What more do you believe is required?'' Barrow asked.

FBI informant Fabio Minoggio, waiting in an eighth-floor room of the federal courthouse in Portland to be called as a witness for the defense in the Ammon Bundy trial.

Less than 10 minutes later, Maxfield made it clear: "The short version: is this dude an informant?"

Defense lawyers heard nothing more from prosecutors.

The following Monday, lawyers from both sides were back before the judge. That morning, Harris had filed a motion, urging the court to order the government to identify whether Killman was one of its confidential human sources.

Barrow, however, argued that prosecutors aren't obligated to disclose any information identifying informants. If a person takes the witness stand and lies about their role, then the government must come forward and correct any misinformation, he said.

The judge described the quandary as "a very unique scenario.'' She ruled that she wouldn't order the government to identify any of its 15 confidential sources, but if a witness testified in a way that the government knew was false, "then we have a different story.''

Judge Anna J. Brown inside the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse during the trial for defendants of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation.

The judge asked Harris what "Mr. Killman" would say once he was called to the stand. Harris said she honestly didn't know. She would expect him to tell the truth once he was sworn in, but she told the court he had consistently denied that he was an FBI informant.

It's not uncommon for informants to hold back or lie outright to others while working for a law enforcement agency. The work of FBI informants is built around deception, experts say, but they're instructed to obey the law at all times. On the witness stand, they can't lie under penalty of fines or jail time like anyone else.

Meanwhile, as the legal arguments played out, Maxfield was one floor down in the courthouse with Minoggio. "I was hoping I could get him to come clean,'' she said.

"I said to him, 'Look we know you are CHS 02, an FBI informant. We're going to call you as a witness," Maxfield recalled. "I'm not waiting for you to tell me. I'm telling you I know you are this guy. What I'd like to know now is, after we met, did you talk to the FBI after you talked to us?"

After some hemming and hawing, she said, Minoggio admitted he did.

Throughout, Maxfield said, Minoggio was nervously sending text messages to someone and yelling at her and her investigator: "You've made me lose my job!''

Getting to the witness stand

Back in Courtroom 9A, the judge wouldn't let the defense call "Mr. Killman'' as a witness without first allowing him to consult with his own court-appointed attorney. Defense lawyer Norm Sepenuk arrived, met with Minoggio and asked to meet with the judge privately in her chambers.

When the judge emerged, she relayed that Sepenuk suggested the witness wouldn't be of much use to the defense.

Maxfield and Harris weren't about to dismiss him. Harris called him to the stand.

He raised his right hand, took an oath to tell the truth and publicly revealed his true name: Fabio Minoggio.

Observers in the public gallery traded quick glances and smiles. But the courtroom was silent in anticipation as Minoggio confirmed what others had suspected in a short but pointed back-and-forth with Harris:

Law enforcement personnel at the airport in Burns in January during the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

He admitted he was an informant for the FBI, had infiltrated the refuge and had supervised the shooting range during his three-day visit, from Jan. 23 through Jan. 26. He said the FBI paid his expenses, including the cost of a bulletproof vest he bought on his drive to the refuge because he presumed he'd be in "harm's way."

He said he provided training on firearms safety and proficient use of firearms to the occupiers.

After Minoggio's testimony, the defense rested its case.

During their closing arguments, defense lawyers repeatedly hammered the government for not disclosing that a man who agents had sent into the refuge was supervising a shooting range for occupiers.

The inflammatory video of occupiers rapidly-firing rifles from the boat launch occurred a day or two after Minoggio arrived at the refuge, they pointed out.

It was also Minoggio who trained defendant Jeff Banta at the refuge on hand-to-hand combat and how to drag someone from a car, his lawyer Robert Salisbury reminded jurors. A prosecutor had asked Banta, on cross-examination, about whether he participated in tactical training at the refuge on how to remove someone from a car, but never mentioned it was an informant who had led that instruction.

"Why didn't the government just tell the truth about Fabulous Fabio?'' Salisbury asked.

Marcus Mumford, Ammon Bundy's attorney, chuckled about the "Killman" alias that he said he presumed the FBI gave Minoggio. "Of course, that's what the government thinks of the occupiers,'' he said.

Another defense attorney, Matt Schindler, called it a "catastrophic mistake'' for prosecutors not to identify the informants. He asked jurors: "How can you trust a federal government who placed a dozen informants into the conspiracy then doesn't'' tell you who or what they did?

Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Gabriel tried to put the concerns to rest in his rebuttal. The government is allowed to use informants in investigating crimes, he said.

"We're not relying on the informants in this case to prove'' the conspiracy charge, Gabriel told jurors, but relying on the evidence presented at trial.

But the damage had been done.

'Remember Fabio'

Defense questions about the role informants played resonated with jurors, who returned across-the-board acquittals on the federal conspiracy charge against Ammon Bundy, older brother Ryan Bundy and five co-defendants.

Ammon Bundy

One juror did a "full 180-degree turn" after learning there were six informants on the refuge whose names never emerged during the trial, said Juror 4, the only one among the nine women and three men on the panel to speak publicly about deliberations.

The "choice of the prosecution to allow that much room for mysterious influence there (remember Fabio?) was decisive," Juror 4 said in an email to The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Minoggio is now listed as an officer with the Hualapai tribal police on the agency's website. Calls and messages to his cellphone went unreturned.

Hualapai Tribal Police Chief Francis Bradley said only, "This isn't our investigation. I'm not going to have any comment on this.''

Another officer with the tribal police department, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly, said the agency would "certainly not penalize someone who was just doing lawful business for the FBI."

Ryan Bundy

Van Zandt, the retired FBI agent who now works as a security consultant, said the use of informants carries risks but also benefits. The FBI likely got help from Minoggio, who could report back about the firepower "they were up against'' at the refuge, he said.

"A good informant has to be able to ingratiate themselves into a group, and to gain credibility within a group, that informant has to have something to do, something to add," he said.

If the defense, though, raises claims of complicity, he said, "the government has to counter with evidence of a predisposition on the part of defendants to do this type of activity anyway."

In the Bundy case, the jurors were left with troubling, and apparently insurmountable, questions about Minoggio's role.

After the surprising verdicts were returned Oct. 28, the defense lawyers gathered for drinks at a downtown Portland bar.

Amid their celebration, they raised and clinked their glasses together in a toast.

To "Fabulous Fabio!"

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonian
Wasco County commissioners have tentatively denied Union Pacific Railroad's plan to expand tracks along the Columbia River Gorge where an oil train derailed in June.



Commissioners voted Wednesday to reverse a decision by the county's planning commission and tentatively deny the railroad's application to add four miles of a second mainline to existing tracks in and around Mosier.



A final vote is expected Thursday once application documents are updated, commission chair Rod Runyon said Friday.



Union Pacific had sought a permit for the double track project last year, but the June 3 train wreck in the tiny Oregon town sparked a massive fire and renewed concerns about the safety of oil trains rolling through the region.



Federal investigators in a preliminary report issued in late June blamed the derailment on Union Pacific for failing to properly maintain its track.



Union Pacific spokesman Justin Jacobs said Friday the project is designed to increase efficiency through a bottleneck area and reduce the number of trains idling in Mosier and other Gorge communities.



"We plan to continue working with the community to understand its concerns and address them moving forward," he wrote in an email. He did not immediately answer a question about whether the railroad plans to appeal.



The railroad has said that the double track would allow trains to pass each other without stopping and isn't about increasing train traffic but improving efficiency.



Last month, the Yakama Nation appealed county planners' approval, saying the project violated tribal treaty rights. The tribe said the expansion would increase train traffic along the Columbia River and interfere with tribal members' ability to access fishing sites that lie alongside those train tracks.



The tribe argued that more train traffic and the potential for oil spills threaten cultural resources.



Runyon said he and the other two county commissioners diligently listened to facts presented during a five-hour hearing on Wednesday.



"It was not a flippant decision for sure," he said. "We take very seriously what we do."



He expected any decision would be appealed.



Conservation groups cheered the decision. Friends of the Columbia Gorge, Columbia Riverkeeper and Physicians for Social Responsibility had also appealed the initial permit approval. Much of the tracks would run through the Gorge's National Scenic Area.



"The Planning Commission ignored tribal treaty concerns, environmental and scenic impacts on the Gorge, objections from the City of Mosier, and even the concerns raised by their own staff when they granted the permit last month," Kevin Gorman, executive director of Friends of the Columbia Gorge said in a statement.



Union Pacific had also appealed that September approval, challenging conditions placed on it by planners.

-- The Associated Press
Election Oregon Votes Record Number

Hundreds of Oregon voters have reported receiving robocalls in recent days questioning their voter-registration status and indicating that their ballots won't be counted unless they update their registration. The Oregon Secretary of State's office said an investigation is being launched to determine who is behind the apparent voter-suppression effort. (AP Photo/Don Ryan, File)

(Don Ryan)

A flood of so-called robocalls to potentially hundreds of voters around the state prompted the Oregon Secretary of State's office Friday to reassure voters their ballots will be counted.

In a twist late in the day, however, the Oregon Republican Party said some of the calls were part of their get-out-the-vote effort targeted at Republican or Republican-leaning voters whom elections officials had placed on inactive status. Those inactive voters would not have received ballots but still have an opportunity to vote at their local county clerk's offices.

The response from Secretary of State Jeanne Atkins' office came after people around the state reported receiving automated phone calls telling them they were not registered to vote and their ballots would not be counted.

"We are not sure who is behind these calls, but we take this type of voter suppression activity very seriously," Atkins said in a statement Friday morning. "There is simply no circumstance under which an Oregonian who has received a ballot should receive a call challenging their registration status. Get your ballot in by 8 p.m. Tuesday, and your vote will be counted."

Bill Currier, chairman of the Oregon Republican Party, said the automated calls were not intended to confuse anyone.

"We're trying to make sure legitimately registered Republican voters, because that's our constituency, receive a ballot and can vote," Currier said.

The Coos County clerk's office reported fielding more than 100 calls from worried voters Thursday and Friday.

"These are bogus calls questioning peoples' voter-registration status and indicating that their ballots wouldn't be counted unless they updated their voter registration," said Terri Turi, Coos County clerk. "This is always a very busy season anyway, but we basically had to stop what we were doing and concentrate on the phones."

Elections officials in Multnomah and Clackamas counties didn't immediately return calls, but the Washington County clerk's office also reported receiving calls from area voters.

"We are getting calls from lots of folks," said Mickie Kawai, the county's elections division manager. "One person called and said he doesn't even live in the county anymore. He was miffed he was getting called at all."

In most cases, variouis clerks said, the callers were, in fact, registered to vote. In fact, most of them already had voted.

That message was amplified by Atkins, whose statement indicated that anyone who received a ballot is already registered to vote, and their ballot will be counted as long as they turn it in by 8 p.m. Tuesday.

The Secretary of State's office is describing the robocalls as an "apparent voter suppression scheme," and spokeswoman Molly Woon said the agency is working with the Oregon Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Justice to investigate whether the calls violated any laws.

"These calls went out all over the state, and our county clerks have been taking calls since last night," Woon said. The Secretary of State's office had not identified the source of the calls as of Friday afternoon but they came from at least two phone numbers, one in Oregon and one in Washington.

"The transcript of one I've seen, it's worded so carefully it's actually not clear if there's any illegal activity going on," Woon said. "But given how panicked people are, we felt we need to reassure them if they got their ballot in by 8 p.m. Tuesday, it will be counted."

Since it's now too late to mail in your ballot, you can find the closest drop box by visiting oregonvotes.gov/dropbox.

-- Hillary Borrud

503-294-4034; @hborrud

(Dana Tims, The Oregonian/OregonLive, contributed to this story)
Heading into the final days of the fall election, Oregon voter turnout is on track to reach 80 percent by Tuesday's deadline.

If it surges that high, it would nudge the state's electorate just past 2 million votes cast in the bruising battle between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, swamping the previous record of 1.84 million votes cast in the 2008 Barack Obama-John McCain presidential election.

As of Friday morning, 41 percent of Oregon registered voters had returned ballots to county elections offices. That matches the voter turnout rate at the same point in the 2012 presidential race and is just two percentage points lower than in the 2008 presidential contest, during which President Obama held two massive rallies in Portland and set much of left-leaning Oregon on fire.

The final five days of balloting may not deliver enough ballots to crest the 2 million vote mark, however. Final turnout will depend in large part on Oregon voters who are not registered as Democrats or Republicans -- and who make up fully one-third of registered voters.

So far, just 25 percent of non-affiliated voters have turned in ballots, compared with 48 percent of both Democrats and Republicans. Non-affiliated voters are more likely than party members to wait until the final days or hours to cast a ballot.

Both Clinton and Trump are viewed unfavorably by a majority of American voters. If not the lure of the top of the ballot, what could draw voters who haven't voted yet to follow through and do so?

The state's most expensive battle ever waged over a ballot measure, the white-hot contest over the $3 billion a year Measure 97 corporate tax, could help. There is also a race for governor, which normally only occurs in non-presidential years, and an unusually close contest for secretary of state.

Local measures, from marijuana bans and a light rail prohibition to county commission races and big school bonds, could make the difference in some communities. So far, turnout is highest in small rural counties, eight of which already have ballots from more than half of registered voters safely tucked away inside a county elections office.

Among counties with at least 30,000 voters, Lincoln County has the highest turnout, 49 percent. Clackamas and Washington counties have the lowest, at just 37 percent.

Those two counties' Republicans trail Democrats in turnout by at least 3 percentage points, an unusual margin in those large suburban counties, which are home to nearly one-fourth of all the state's Republicans.

In 2012, Republicans in both Washington and Clackamas turned out to vote at rates two percentage points higher than their Democrat counterparts.

Statewide, Oregon voter turnout ultimately reached 81 percent in 2012 and 84 percent in 2014, suggesting 80 percent turnout remains in reach for this election.

That the state's voters are nearly on track with previous turnout rates is notable because so many more voters are registered this year, due largely to the state's new "motor voter" law that automatically registered 250,000 new voters.

Conventional wisdom among political scientists was that few of those automatically registered voters, 90 percent of whom declined to register with a party, would cast ballots.

But that thinking is almost entirely based on patterns in states where voters have to go to the polls during voting hours on election day, a higher bar than filling out a ballot on one's own timetable and dropping it off without having to wait in line.

As of Friday morning, slightly more than 1 million Oregonians, including 171,000 non-affiliated voters, had returned ballots.

-- Betsy Hammond
March 10, 2015

I acknowledge that my behavior has not always been wise and that I have not always used good judgment in making decisions before I act. I am not my behavior, and while it is easy to blacklist a person based upon only perceived behavior I don't want to be labeled as someone I am not. I have a daughter that needs me, and I am trying to focus my attention on doing the best I can to be a good father. She has changed the way I see things. She has made me aware of the person that I need to be. I don't want to be placed into a category where I will be susceptible to being stereotyped or always assumed as a problem. I behaved badly before partially because I was struggling with an addiction issue that I no longer partake in. During that time, I felt invincible and powerful. After going to jail, my use ceased cold turkey and then my daughter was born.

[A gang supervisor rejected the appeal because the letter was postmarked five days past the 30-day deadline. Read the full text.]

Origins of the list

The creation of gang lists like Portland's followed a strain of urban policy originating in the 1960s, when fear of black urban rebellion was fresh in policymakers' minds, according to Harvard historian Elizabeth Hinton.

Letters from the list

The Oregonian/OregonLive explores what it's like to be on the list of people Portland police have labeled gang members -- and what it's like to try to get off it.

Read the full series.

The term "gang member" is a new iteration of "juvenile delinquent" and "career criminal," Hinton wrote in her 2016 book "From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America."

Each term was applied primarily to black youth, she said in an interview. "It really became this means to target that population in a race-neutral way," she said.

Hinton's book quotes a 1988 confidential handbook that the California Attorney General's Office distributed to law enforcement. She found a copy in the Portland State University library.

The handbook says: "Most street gang members have very egocentric personalities which is shown in their use of graffiti, the way they dress, the types of cars they drive, and their fascination with heavy gold jewelry. If a Crip or a Blood is not bragging about his very successful business enterprise, then he will most assuredly want to be known as a deadly, ruthless person."

Among the evidence of gang membership cited in the handbook is a black man walking through an airport with a white woman. The list of "typical profile characteristics" of Crips and Bloods starts with two bullet points: "Black males" and "13 to 40 years old."

Portland police started keeping tabs on people they considered gang members in the late 1980s. News clippings said Portland's list had 2,800 people on it by the 1990s, when 20-year-old Ernesto Ysasaga challenged its existence.

Ysasaga sued the city in 1993 claiming police labeled him a gang member and told his employer, who fired him. The young man hung out with a group of graffiti artists who called themselves "Art Fiendz." He said police labeled the taggers a criminal gang even though they weren't involved in shootings or drug dealing.

Ysasaga's attorney argued that Portland had mislabeled at least 100 people as gang members and sought to start a class action on their behalf. At the time, police offered no way off of the list.

A federal judge agreed that Portland had violated Ysasaga's constitutional rights and barred police from using the list until the city created a new gang designation policy. The judge required the police bureau to more clearly outline criteria for gang designations, to promptly notify anyone about to be named to the list, and to provide an appeal process.

The judge told Portland to void the list and start over. By 1996, city attorneys had a new system in place with the court's blessing.

That system remains in place today.

Next: Life on the list

-- Carli Brosseau

cbrosseau@oregonian.com

503-294-5121; @carlibrosseau
A natural gas pipeline that has been blamed for a devastating explosion two weeks ago in Northwest Portland was not nicked, gouged or otherwise pierced by excavators, but instead the line may have been hit and displaced, an official said Friday.

Gas could have escaped from the line after being hit and displaced by a backhoe, said Lori Koho, administrator of the Public Utilities Commission's safety reliability and security division. Scrape marks on the pipeline at the point of digging show a backhoe hit the line, she said.

The explosion in the popular Northwest 23rd Avenue shopping district obliterated one building, damaged several others and injured eight people.

Loy Clark Pipeline Co. of Tualatin was digging in the area of a construction project at 23rd and Glisan Street when it struck a NW Natural gas line on Wednesday, Oct. 19. A Loy Clark construction worker warned employees in the building that later exploded that their crew had hit a gas line. Three firefighters were near the building when it exploded.

The state PUC, Oregon OSHA, NW Natural and Portland Fire & Rescue are conducting separate investigations of the blast. Officials with the agencies, including Koho, said their investigations are continuing.

Koho, however, provided a glimpse of some of the information known thus far about the pipeline that extended from the point of Loy Clark's excavation to a building at 500 N.W. 23rd Ave.

"That line had evidence of being hit," said Koho, who saw the line after it was safe for investigators to approach the blast site. "I did not see evidence of there being a nick or piercing at that point of excavation. The line had been scraped, at least by the excavating tool at that point."

Koho said the section of the line that stretched from the excavation site to the building that exploded is in NW Natural's possession.

Koho said a backhoe was used in the excavation. However, she said Oregon Administrative Rules for utility excavation call for "noninvasive practices to be used 2 feet on either side of (the pipe location) until they find the line that's there and it has been identified."

Noninvasive excavation could be digging by hand or using machines designed for that purpose.

Koho said she did not know if Loy Clark's three-person crew was using noninvasive digging methods. A spokesperson for MDU Resources Group, Inc., the publicly held company in North Dakota that owns Loy Clark, declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigations of the incident.

Koho also offered an explanation about how natural gas could have migrated underground from a damaged pipe into a building - as apparently was the case with the 110-year-old Alfred C. F. Burkhardt House, which stood at 500-510 N.W. 23rd Ave., and housed Portland Bagel Works, Fetch Eyewear and Art Work Rebels Tattoo Parlor. The structure exploded less than an hour after the the Loy Clark crew reported the gas leak, severely damaging a next-door building at 2281 N.W. Glisan that housed Dosha, an Aveda salon, as well as an upper-floor residence.

"Gas can easily migrate through soil," Koho said. "As I understand it, (the Alfred C. F. Burkhardt House) had a basement and it also may have had an abandoned dumb waiter." Both could have provided an environment for gas to migrate through the structure.

Both Koho and a Portland Fire & Rescue spokesman said it is not known what the source of ignition was for the blast.

NW Natural spokesperson Melissa Moore declined to comment Friday evening on Koho's remarks and instead sent a written statement.

"NW Natural believes that it is inappropriate at this time to comment on a statement about what the OPUC has or has not learned about the incident. NW Natural has its own theories about the event based upon the facts that are currently known, including a call from the excavation company, Loy Clark. We understand that the OPUC will reach a conclusion for its investigation after considering all the facts, and not before."

--Allan Brettman

503-294-5900

@allanbrettman
Trader Joe's on MLK: Northeast Alberta Street and MLK boulevard

Nearby businesses are divided as Trader Joe's plans to build a new store in the King neighborhood.

(Casey Parks/The Oregonian)

Urban renewal had decimated Portland's African American neighborhoods before. But, in 2000, city leaders promised this time would be different. This time, they said, money spent in North and Northeast Portland would benefit the poor, the elderly and people of color.



Sixteen years later, that still hasn't happened.



"We over-promised and under-delivered," said Kimberly Branam, the executive director of the Portland Development Commission, which oversees the city's urban renewal projects. The plan's intended beneficiaries, Branam said, "were, in fact, those who were most harmed."



White developers leveraged that city cash into multimillion-dollar apartment projects, and rising prices pushed African Americans and poor white people out. And now, Branam said, the city has five years and $32 million left in its Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area to make amends.



The money will be spent helping African American businesses and homeowners, adding to millions of dollars already set aside to help those who were displaced. Still, the city's pledge might not be enough.



While Portland's housing and economic development agencies have funneled $159 million into the area since 2000, private investors pulled in by a new TriMet MAX line have spent nearly $1 billion bringing offices, restaurants and high-end housing to what was a neglected and deteriorating place.



"What impact we thought we would have has really been dwarfed by these major market forces," Branam told more than 100 African Americans gathered at a Northeast Portland church in October.



The $32 million might not make a noticeable difference, Branam told the crowd, but city leaders had learned from the past. This time, they would do better, she said.



Audience members shifted in their seats. They'd watched promises crumble before. Would this time be any different? And even if it was, was it too small to matter?



***





Eliot resident affected by the Emanuel Hospital Urban Renewal Relocation Project, photographed in 1971. Image courtesy of City of Portland Archive.

Urban renewal is a complex tax-collecting tool with a simple premise: City officials redirect property taxes into "blighted" neighborhoods, hoping to kick-start growth and seed long-term revival.



Over time, Portland's African Americans learned to associate urban renewal with a darker truth: When cities pledge to make neighborhood improvements, they often end up pushing existing residents out.



City leaders used urban renewal in the 1960s to build Veterans Memorial Coliseum, evicting thousands of African Americans in the process. They used it in 1970 to kick another 300 North and Northeast Portland homeowners out when Emanuel Hospital leaders proposed an expansion.



That "negative legacy" still lingered, city leaders acknowledged when proposing another round in 2000. But officials had learned their lessons: They wouldn't evict North and Northeast Portlanders. They would help them thrive.



Urban renewal dollars paid for the MAX Yellow Line and improvements at Dawson Park. They helped build condos and affordable housing on North Killingsworth Street and a food cart pod in Kenton.



Some of those projects, including the Vanport Square on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, did benefit ethnic minorities.



Property values soared. But the city's promise to help minorities prosper didn't pan out: Between 2000 and 2013, the median income for African Americans still in the neighborhood decreased 31 percent, to $24,322.



By 2014, more than 10,000 African Americans had left the inner city. The city-funded "better" neighborhood was also unmistakably whiter.



When city leaders offered a $2.4 million discount to developers hoping to build a Trader Joe's on a vacant lot at Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. and Alberta, African Americans said that was the last straw.



The dust-up became national news. Conan O'Brien joked about it in a monologue, and Trader Joe's pulled out.



In the aftermath, Mayor Charlie Hales promised to spend $20 million on new affordable housing or help for existing homeowners. A year later, Hales said the city would spend $67 million more to subsidize affordable housing in the the Pearl District and parts of North and Northeast Portland.



Money for both proposals, Hales said, would come out of the city's urban renewal budgets. That left less money for small business loans and projects such as improving North Lombard Street.



Development officials who had banked on having $60 million to spend in the Interstate corridor now had only $32 million. Before moving forward with the reduced budget, they studied the work they'd done since 2000.



"We found over and over and over again," said Tory Campbell, the interim economic development director, "that the African American community has been by far the most disadvantaged in all of those efforts."



***



In early 2016, the development commission appointed 11 people - 10 of them African American -- to script a plan for the area's remaining millions.



They tapped Roslyn Hill, who turned a blighted stretch of Northeast Alberta Street into an arts district, and Stephen Green, a venture capitalist working to rebrand the inner city as a "Soul District," along with other business and civic leaders.



The group proposed spending $2 million in grants and $6 million on loans to help property owners fix up homes and businesses. They suggested setting aside nearly $2 million to help people build in-law cottages in their yards and more than $10 million for "vibrant, culturally relevant spaces."



City leaders presented a near-final draft at two meetings in October. Free food lined one wall. Posters depicting the harm urban renewal had dealt African Americans in 1970 stretched along another.



"We have been really upfront about our past," Branam said. "We're not delighted with ourselves and the $32 million. This feels like the work that needs to be done."



The meetings showed how challenging that work could become without more trust. Conversations stalled when city workers used acronyms unfamiliar to the crowd. But what the attendees lacked in wonky know-how, they made up for with lived experiences.



City officials scrapped one goal - awarding $2.5 million to business owners who commit to hiring minorities - after black attendees suggested it wouldn't work. They'd had bosses who'd hired minorities to fulfill a pledge but then did nothing to help them succeed.



A proposal to use some money on loans instead of grants worried others, Campbell said, because loans require collateral.





Tory Campbell

"What happens if it doesn't work?" Campbell, an African American business owner himself, asked a crowd attending the second meeting. "I can do what?"



"Lose my house," many called back.



"Very legitimate concerns," he said. "And it's based on a history, too, right?"



"Mmmhmm," audience members said.



Loans would allow the city do more with the smaller budget, he explained. The $32 million wouldn't go far if they gave it all out in grants.



"If you get a loan then pay it back," Campbell said, "those dollars are reinvested to create more opportunities beyond just yourself."



At the previous meeting, audience members had warned against spending $10 million on big "culturally relevant" projects. They feared the city would build an African American history museum.



"If that's how you feel, we will roll with that," Campbell said. "But I wanted to pause and say what we are talking about is places where there is business, where the property and things there are owned by black folks or folks of color."



With that, he broke the crowd into groups to pore over the plan. In one church classroom, about a dozen people met to evaluate the line items. The crowd was skeptical the money could close the gap between whites and African Americans.



Locally, the group said, they faced repeated discrimination. They talked about racism that persists in construction unions and the struggle felons face finding work. They said the state didn't employ enough African Americans in its civil rights division.



A woman groused about black people who sell their homes to white people. Another said Portland's black population is too spread out now to limit investment to the inner city. If someone has been pushed out to Gresham, why should they commute to North Portland to open a business?



Dana DeKlyen, a program manager for the development commission, explained that urban renewal money is restricted. The $32 million might make a bigger difference in the underdeveloped eastern stretches of the city, but it has to be spent in same area where it's collected.



"Where is the Interstate Corridor?" another woman asked. DeKlyen looked around the room, but there was no map showing the boundaries -- a large, but patchy area that stretches from Northeast Broadway Street to St. Johns.



"It starts at MLK," DeKlyen said.



"MLK and what, though?" the woman asked.



As people packed up to go, Hill, the developer who remade Alberta Street, suggested $8 million might not be enough for anchor projects in what have become some of Portland's hottest neighborhoods. The city spent more to build Vanport Square, the Northeast Portland hub for minority business owners. And that was a decade ago. Land is more expensive now.



"We wouldn't even be able to do one with this cost," Hill said.



"And how many in Vanport are still businesses of color?" a woman asked. "How many sold to white people?"



-- Casey Parks

503-221-8271

cparks@oregonian.com; @caseyparks
Anita Harris.jpg

Anita Harris, 90, passed away this week one day after casting a ballot for Hillary Clinton.

(Photo courtesy of Scott Harris)

Anita Harris will be cheering from above on Election Day, her son Scott says.

That's because the Clackamas County voter cast a ballot for Hillary Clinton earlier this week before passing away at 90. Scott Harris posted a photo of his mother holding her ballot on the secret National Pantsuit Day Facebook group on Wednesday, which quickly went viral.

"My Mom. Voting for HRC. She waited 90 years. She passed away last night. She'll be cheering from above Tuesday nite," he posted on the group page.

His mother had been ill and in hospice for eight months, Scott Harris told The Huffington Post. She had been living at the Tanner Springs Assisted Living Facility, he said.

He also told A Plus that his mother was part of a get-out-the-vote push for Clinton as recently as a few months ago.

"She was always politically minded and 'opinionated' long before women with opinions were accepted," he told the site in an email. "You could not silence her voice."

The Facebook post has so far received more than 2,600 comments and been seen by more than 20,000 people.

Scott Harris said that his mother didn't want a fancy service when she died.

"She just wanted us to go eat great Chinese food so when we do we will toast her and HRC," he told The Huffington Post.

And as one intrepid commenter has pointed out, Anita Harris was registered in a state where mail-in ballots are still counted even if the voter dies after casting it. (Good thing she didn't live in South Dakota.)

The Oregonian/OregonLive has reached out to Scott Harris for comment. This post will be updated if we hear back.

--Eder Campuzano

503.221.4344

@edercampuzano

ecampuzano@oregonian.com
TOPSHOT-US-VOTE-DEBATE

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton (R) and Republican nominee Donald Trump walk off the stage after the final presidential debate at the Thomas & Mack Center on the campus of the University of Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada on Oct. 19, 2016.

(Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)

Many Oregon voters have already returned their ballots, but plenty are still filling them out over the weekend just days before they're counted.

Those who haven't yet made up their mind in the presidential race may have Googled a thing or two about Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton in the last full week before Election Day.

Thanks to Google Trends, we've been able to take a look at what Beaver State voters searched for in the week leading up to Nov. 8.

Here's what we found.

As far as the candidates' popularity as raw search terms, Clinton edged Trump out consistently over the last seven days.

But when the candidates are taken as topics -- say, when Oregonians plugged in queries that were related to either candidate without searching for one or the other specifically -- Trump tops Clinton by even wider margins.

Google has a nifty tool that tells us the most popular terms paired with the candidates' names as well as which search phrases saw an uptick in queries over the seven-day period.

These are some of the more popular Clinton- and Trump-related topics Oregonians searched.

Conspiracy theories upon conspiracy theories

Both Trump and Clinton are attached to search results that either connect them to conspiracy theories or point searchers to absurd stories about their opponent.

One of the most bizarre may be Clinton's disproven connection to a so-called Satanic ritual called "spirit cooking."

Right-wing conspiracy sites have relished in taking hacked emails from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta released by WikiLeaks and spinning individual notes into tall tales. The spirit cooking fiasco came about when InfoWars editor Paul Joseph Watson drudged up an email that referred to an art installation called "Spirit Cooking" and took it to mean that Clinton participated in food preparation rituals that involved bodily fluids.

If Trump was attending occult/sex rituals involving pigs blood, urine & semen, would MSM report it? NOTHING from CNN on #SpiritCooking. Posted by Paul Joseph Watson on Friday, November 4, 2016

The note to Podesta -- in which Clinton was neither sender nor recipient -- was merely an invitation to a dinner in celebration of a Kickstarter campaign for the artist who created an art installation called "Spirit Cooking" in the late '90s.

Other fake stories pertaining to the candidates include MSNBC correspondent Chris Matthews endorsing Trump, New York Police preparing to arrest Clinton for pedophilia and that the FBI will indict the Democratic nominee after an investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

All of those stories were thoroughly debunked. (Or in the case of the last one, mistakenly reported by Fox News's Bret Baier.)

Trump pens

One of the stranger breakout searches is for a pen adorned with a plastic Trump head that spits out some of the Republican nominee's favorite quotes.

The pen includes such phrases as, "I will be the greatest president that God ever created," "Our leaders are stupid. Our politicians are stupid," and fan favorite, "We will have so much winning if I'm elected that you may get bored with winning."

Beyonce

Because of course, when Beyonce -- in a pantsuit, no less -- joins husband Jay-Z and Chance the Rapper for a get-out-the-vote concert, Google is bound to be swarmed by the Bey Hive. There's just no question about it.

North Carolina polls

The Tar Heel state saw a 4,650 percent increase in Google searches from Oregon in the last week, signaling our curiosity of how the election is going in one of the year's most high-profile swing states.

Trump, Russia and illiteracy

Alleged ties between Trump and Russian interest also garnered a sizable increase in Google searches over the last week. Much of that is due to reports that the FBI is sitting on information that ties the Republican nominee to interests in Moscow.

FBI Director James Comey has reportedly refused to raise suspicion of any connections between Trump and Russia, which has earned him rebuke from Democrats in the wake of an internal investigation into the agency's records division, which allegedly fired off a series of pro-Trump tweets this week.

In a less serious turn, the Oct. 31 episode of "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee" inspired another popular Google query: Can Donald Trump read?

The search term is in all likelihood an attempt by Oregonians to find a segment of Bee's show in which she takes one of Trump's favorite qualifiers -- "a lot of people are saying" -- and turns it on its head with footage from the Republican nominee's testimony during a recent deposition.

The bit pairs video of Trump declining to read legal documents with Bee's commentary to offer the hilarious, probably false theory that the GOP standard-bearer may not be entirely literate.

You can watch the segment below. (Warning: It contains some crude language.)

It'll be interesting to see how Oregonians' search habits pivot on Nov. 9. With any luck, they'll be more interesting than "who won the presidency?" but less soul-crushing than what was likely the most popular election-related online query in 2000: "What's a chad?"

--Eder Campuzano

503.221.4344

@edercampuzano

ecampuzano@oregonian.com
To the editor:

The presidential campaign should be serious, thoughtful and respectful. It should give us a choice between competing versions of America. This campaign season has felt like a reality show dominated by a candidate who exhibits vulgarity, cruelty, vengefulness, narcissism, boastfulness, sociopathy, bigotry and disrespectfulness. He has been called unhinged, dangerous and indecent. Watching his treatment of his fellow competitors during the primary debates was stomach-churning. The lack of civility, coarseness, insulting name-calling, cruelty and constant interruptions was no cause for cheering.

I find him repugnant and personally offensive ... a modern P.T. Barnum who has built a career by ripping off people, stiffing contractors and skipping out on his bills. He has been sued thousands of times for refusing to pay employees, vendors and small businessmen.

Complaints of Clinton dishonesty cant compare to Trump. He lies so freely that the Pulitzer Prize winning website Politifact rates 71 percent of his utterances to be untrue. Douglas Brinkley, history professor at Rice University states, In American history weve never had a major presidential candidate who fabricates facts with the regularity of Donald Trump. Theda Skapol, a government and sociology professor at Harvard says Trumps dishonesties have set a new standard. He lies constantly and shamelessly. I do think we are in new territory. The party of Honest Abe has been struck with Dishonest Don.

Temperamentally he has the maturity and self-control of a child. He is driven by revenge, provokes anger and encourages his followers to indulge in their worst impulses. I have never seen so much fear and anger in a political campaign. His ability to channel the rage of his base, unfortunately, doesnt translate into a qualified presidential candidate. His debate performances with Secretary Clinton demonstrate that he is able to appear presidential for about 30 minutes, but then loses self-discipline and reverts to type, reacting to digs, interrupting and losing his temper. Kellyanne Conway, his campaign manager, asks him to focus. He cannot.

We have a clear choice. Certainly, Clinton has her own issues. That is a separate analysis. But ask yourself this: if we subjected Trumps tax returns and emails to the same scrutiny, what might we find? The double standard for transparency is mind-boggling. As outlined in David Cay Johnstons investigative book, The Making of Donald Trump, his law-breaking and corruption rivals anything real or imagined compared with Clinton.

Hillary has worked hard for 30 years to improve the lives of Americans. She is incredibly smart and temperamentally is stable, steady and can work respectfully with others, both at home and on the world stage.

Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker, who normally strives for neutrality in his work, commented that Asking this man to assume the highest office in the land would be like asking a newly minted driver to fly a 747. George Schultz, one of the most respected Republican foreign policy voices around, was asked about the prospect of a Trump administration. His response was a brief and personal, God help us!

JOYCE HOWARD

Midland
BLOOMINGTON  A special platter in honor of the Chicago Cubs World Series victory was served Friday at Bloomington Hy-Vee's Market Grille.

Instead of hot dogs, hamburgers or other traditional ballpark foods, the $10 platter featured a goat kebab, goat stew, a goat taco and a roasted goat cheese crostino.

The offering was a nod to the famous Billy Goat curse that fans, with varying degrees of seriousness, blamed for the Cubs going 108 years without a World Series title.

Alex Gregory, the store's meat manager, came up with the idea of a goat roast "after Bill Murray sported his 'I ain't afraid of no goat' shirt and the whole goat curse became very popular," said Kyle Aschemann, the store's assistant meat manager.

The shirt the actor wore at Game 1 of the Cubs National League Division Series parodied the slogan for his movie "Ghostbusters."

"I just thought if the Cubs won the World Series, why not do a goat roast?" added Gregory. He called local meat vendor Gridley Meats, which Iyad Abbed and his five brothers own, to provide a goat for the roast.

Abbed thought it sounded like fun.

"Finally after winning a World Series after 108 years we wanted Cubs fans to come out and eat goat with that curse coming to an end," said Abbed, adding he's a Cubs fan who believed in the hex on the team.

The curse dates back to ushers barring tavern owner William Billy Goat Sianis and his a pet goat, Murphy, from entering Wrigley Field for Game 4 of the 1945 World Series.

Sianis set the curse in motion when he reportedly said, The Cubs aint gonna win no more. The Cubs will never win a World Series so long as the goat is not allowed in Wrigley Field."

The Cubs lost that Series and every National League pennant since until this postseason.

Yvonne Hurt of Bloomington picked up take-out orders of the roasted goat for herself and her husband.

"I'm a big Cubs fan, and me and my husband wanted to try the goat items. He's kind of disabled so we got goat to go," she said. "I told him I never believed in that curse, but there are people who do."

This postseason and in other seasons the Cubs organization has allowed Sianis' son to walk a goat across the field in an attempt to reverse the curse.
BLOOMINGTON  Just a little more than a week into the 2016 Give Thanks campaign, Pantagraph-area residents have donated three-fourths of the turkeys needed for hungry McLean County residents this Thanksgiving.

Home Sweet Home Ministries announced Thursday that 1,518 turkeys have been donated in the campaign that began Oct. 25. That means 482 turkeys are needed for Home Sweet Home and Midwest Food Bank to reach their goal of 2,000 turkeys to feed 10,000 people on Thanksgiving.

The campaign concludes Nov. 21. Turkeys will be paired with 2,000 already-donated boxes of ingredients for side dishes and distributed to families in need Nov. 19 and 21.

People who wish to help may purchase and deliver turkeys to Home Sweet Home or the food bank; may buy $15 turkey cards at Hy-Vee, Jewel-Osco or Vale Church; write a check to either agency or give on one of the agencies' websites.
BLOOMINGTON  A Chicago man initially charged with providing an Illinois State University student with Ecstasy during a July incident on campus pleaded guilty Friday to a lesser offense after the state acknowledged that lab tests showed it was a different synthetic drug, cathinone.

Shawn Childs Sr. 40, was accused of bringing Ecstasy pills to Hewett Hall where he and his son Shawn Childs Jr. were staying as part of Preview, an orientation event for new students on the Normal campus. The father allegedly admitted to police that he left the gathering and returned with alcohol for the underage students.

Childs Jr. is charged with sexually assaulting a woman who allegedly was given a cathinone pill by another man who allegedly bought it from Childs Sr.

Childs Sr. was placed on 30 months of probation in exchange for his guilty plea to possession of cathinone, a controlled substance linked to "bath salts."

The amended charge is a Class 3 felony, less serious than the original Class X charge involving Ecstasy that carried a mandatory prison term of six to 30 years.

At a court hearing Friday afternoon to consider a request to lower the $100,000 bond on the drug charges for Childs Sr., the defendant grew increasingly frustrated after his lawyer asked that the hearing be postponed until next Thursday.

"That's prolonging it," said Childs Sr., adding, "I got proof that the police lied to the grand jury."

Childs Sr. contends police gave different versions of where he was when the drug were found.

After a brief recess, Childs Sr. returned to the courtroom with his lawyer, public defender Jim Tusek, and stood, calm but tearful, at the bench. Following a second break, Tusek and Assistant State's Attorney Jeff Horve told the judge that a plea deal had been reached.

According to police, Childs Sr. allegedly sold a pill for $10 to an unidentified male student who then reportedly put the drug into a drink a woman consumed with the knowledge that a substance had been added.

Childs Jr. is charged with criminal sexual assault of the female student, who was with the group that included the father, son and the unidentified male student. The unidentified male student has not been charged.

Horve said police found pills in Childs Sr.'s pockets that tested positive for Ecstasy but further testing by the state police crime lab identified the substance as cathinone.

The Childs' case is the first time the synthetic substance has been picked up in McLean County, said Horve.

State's Attorney Jason Chambers said Friday that when an unfamiliar substance is found during an arrest, "it takes more diligence from the lab to determine so that we can make certain we prosecute for the right offense and penalty."

The father and son were stopped at the Amtrak station in uptown Normal on July 21, the day after the alleged rape.

Childs Jr. is free after posting $10,035.

After the hearing, Tusek said: "I think this is an appropriate and fair outcome to this case. He really needs to go home and take care of his children."

As a condition of his probation, Childs Sr. was ordered to obtain a substance abuse evaluation and complete recommended treatment. His 180-day jail sentence was satisfied by time served in jail.
BLOOMINGTON  Daylight saving time ends early Sunday morning and the American Red Cross reminds homeowners to test their smoke alarm batteries when they turn their clocks back one hour.

"Working smoke alarms cut the risk of dying in a home fire in half," said Lyn Hruska, CEO of the Red Cross Central and Southern Illinois Region. "Turn and test is a reminder to set your clocks back and take a few minutes to push the test button to make sure all alarms are working."

Red Cross and firefighters recommend having working smoke alarms on every level of a home, including inside and outside bedrooms.

Daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. Sunday, but most people adjust their clocks  fall back  Saturday night before they go to bed.

Nationwide, Red Cross responds to 66,000 disasters each year; most of them are home fires.

Since October 2014, Red Cross has installed more than 6,200 smoke alarms in Central and Southern Illinois in a home fire preparedness campaign. Anyone who needs a smoke alarm or would like their smoke alarms checked should contact Red Cross at 844-319-6560 and press 9 or visit www.getasmokealarm.org.

Red Cross also reminds homeowners to create and practice a fire escape plan. Make sure everyone in the family knows how to get out of every room and how to get out of the house in less than two minutes. Select a location outside for everyone to meet.

Keep disaster supplies in an easy-to-carry bag. That way, they are available in case you need to get out of the house quickly.
The adversary violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between the Karabakh and Azerbaijani opposing forces around 40 times, from late Friday night to early Saturday morning.

November 5, 2016, 10:03 Azerbaijan fired over 620 shots at night

STEPANAKERT, NOVEMBER 5, ARTSAKHPRESS: During this time the Azerbaijani armed forces fired more than 620 shots toward the Armenian position-holders, and by way of various caliber weapons, informed the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic Defense Army news service.

But the NKR Defense Army vanguard units adhered to the maintenance of the ceasefire, and continued confidently carrying out the military task set before them.
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is considered as the most powerful woman on the internet but despite her VIP status she expertly manages a work and home life balance. With five kids to raise, the tech industry top executive is grateful for parental leave. She tells parents that they need to take advantage of taking time off from work more.

Susan Wojcicki is instrumental in changing parental leave policies for Google, the parent company of YouTube, in the last two decades. The company now offers paid parental leave for 18 weeks for moms and 12 weeks for dads, CNN Money reports.

She witnessed how this shift has improved YouTube's workforce and how other Silicon Valley companies have followed suit. By relaxing the rules about parents taking time off to be with their kids or family, YouTube eventually was able to retain their talented workers. Their talents, on the other hand, could enjoy more time with the kids. It's basically a win-win situation for employer and employee.

Susan Wojcicki believes that a generous parental leave policy is actually good for business. "We wanted to retain women, we wanted to show them that Google cared, that they can be a mother and they could work at Google," she told CNN Money.

If the policy didn't exist with her company, the CEO expressed that there is no other course but to leave and she would not have second thoughts about it. "What if I had to go back to work on day 10? I would quit. That's what I would do," the mother said, according to Wired.

Despite her position and privilege, where she can afford to hire help all around, Susan Wojcicki is still a mom who juggles her work and time with her children. She doesn't see motherhood as a hindrance to having a career and in fact, she says that being a parent has help her become a better CEO.

Wojcicki hopes companies would be more open to expanding parental leave and parents should take advantage of this as it offers a good overall outcome, both at work and at home. Get to know the YouTube executive and her principles about work and home life balance in this video below.
"Prison Break" Season 5 is believed to share the same plot of the Greek poem Odyssey where a man resurrected from death to search for his wife and son. In the upcoming fifth season of the hit series Prison Break, Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller) is suggested to find a way to leave Yemen to finally meet his son Mike (Christian Michael Cooper). Could it be possible that Michael will not get the chance to see his son on "Prison Break" Season 5 which will lead for a possible sixth season?

"Prison Break" Season 5 is expected to see Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) and Sara Tancredi (Sarah Wayne Callies) team up with Michael's long time friends to help free Michael from Ogygia Prison in Yemen, Parent Herald reported. Though it was a tough job to get through the Ogygia security, Lincoln and Sara will apparently be successful in helping Michael out. However, the shady firm that Michael worked for in the past is expected to kill him, causing danger to Lincoln and Sara's lives as well.

"Prison Break" Season 5 is then suggested to see how Michael, Sara and Lincoln implement a way to leave Yemen safely. Reports claimed that the organization that Michael was involved in is a powerful terrorist group. Apparently, Michael did something that crossed the line which leads the group to have him imprisoned.

That said, it will not be easy for Michael to escape the terrorist group. This will reportedly cause him to be trapped in Yemen and lose the chance of meeting his son for the first time. If he fails to leave the country, will Michael still be able to see Mike in the future?

It seems possible that the series creator will leave a cliffhanger on the finale of "Prison Break" Season 5 and renew the show for another season to continue the story. It is interesting to see a Prison Break Season 6 that will follow Michael's quest to be with his son. However, long-time fans of the show may find it better to see Michael and Mike finally see each other as "Prison Break" Season 5 wraps up.

"Prison Break" Season 5 is slated to premiere in Spring 2017 though no official air date has been confirmed. In the meantime, drop your thoughts in our comments section below to let us know if you have "Prison Break" Season 5 predictions in mind. You can also watch the official teaser of "Prison Break" Season 5 here.
There's been a lot of talks about the Moto M. From its 64-bit Helio octa-core processor to its behemoth of a battery, the soon to be released Smartphone will definitely be a beast, if not a powerhouse.

Everything about the Moto M is interesting, considering that it is now in the capable yet nurturing arms of Lenovo. There's also word that it will be revealed on November 8 alongside the Lenovo P2. But until one (or both) comes up with an official info sheet, all these speculations will remain as such until something legit comes up.

To add to the hype, Android Headlines got hold of what is supposed to be the final make of the Moto M. These "promotional images" are quite fresh since this is one of the few occasions the M was spotted and how it would look like should it pushes through with the announce date. The creator was also in a giving mood by giving some of the Moto M's specifications.

So far, the pictures are easy on the eyes. Its rose gold and red-to-maroon motif could pretty much speak for the Smartphone itself: elegant, classy, yet crammed with the latest innovations. Among others, the fingerprint scanner will be situated at the back, right below the camera. Likewise, the Moto M will have three on-screen buttons, a standard 4GB RAM and 32GB onboard storage and Android 6.0 Marshmallow Operating System.

The images also detailed that the Moto M will come with a 3,050mAh battery - a far cry from the previous leak about a massive 5,100mAh juicer. Rounding the rumors is a 16megapixel rear camera with LED flash and an 8megapixel front facing clicker. A metal chassis will be exepcted, too, so as the traditional volume rocker and power buttons "on the right side of the phone."

November 8 is fast approaching for the Moto M. Can Lenovo make it to D-Day? There have been a stack of rumors and nibbles of images here and there; if this is the case, then they are ready for launch.
Vicki Gunvalson, reality star of "Real Housewives of Orange County," was snapped flashing her breasts and the image immediately went viral on social media. FBI has become involved after the agency received a complaint regarding a teenage girl tweeting the topless photo of Vicki.

#BreakingNews #RHOC Tamra Judge Shares Topless Pic of Vicki Gunvalson To Minor Triggering FBI Probe! Read Complaint: https://t.co/104qe1p2zI pic.twitter.com/iq6toqRpQs  All About The Tea (@AllAboutTheTea_) November 3, 2016

According to TMZ, the topless photo was taken by Vicki's co-star, Tamra Judge, when the cast was on a trip to Dublin, Ireland. Other cast members received the photo of Vicki and it eventually went viral on social media. However, it's disturbing to learn that a 15-year-old girl tweeted the topless photo of the reality star.

Rosalie Coleman filed a complaint to the Internet Crime Complaint Center of FBI. She claims that Vicki's co-star, Judge, sent the topless photo to a 15-year-old girl and urged her to share the photo online in order to disgrace Vicki.

Coleman adds that she has informed the Child Protective Services as well as the Sheriff's Department in Orange County regarding Vicki's topless photo being tweeted by a minor. But she said that both of them did not take any step to solve the issue. This is why she reported the incident to FBI and it's reported that the agency is already looking into the incident.

Insiders said that Judge indeed sent the topless photo of Vicki to the cast members and crew of the show, as pointed out by Page Six. However, sources close to Judge said that she did not send the photo to a 15-year-old girl.

Heather Dubrow, co-star of Vicki, explained why Vicki flashed her breasts. Dubrow was FaceTiming her husband, Terry Dubrow, who is a plastic surgeon and Vicki asked him to examine her nipples because they seem uneven to her. Apparently, this is the reason why Vicki exposed her breasts.

Vicki has not yet commented on the matter. For now FBI is evaluating the case but has yet to start a formal investigation.
It will be just a few days until the United States elect a new president. Until then, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump continue to attack one another in a social media fight that has amused the voters.

The presidential race just got more entertaining, especially since both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will not give up the fight as they continue to oppose each other's views. Just recently, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump took it to Twitter to say that one is "unfit for president."

It was during the Halloween when Democratic presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton said to Donald Trump that he is "unfit" and "unqualified" to become president. Hillary Clinton continued attacking her rival, especially the issues surrounding Donald Trump's offensive statements against women.

"We work together. So there are many reasons why I think it is fair to conclude that Donald Trump is unqualified and unfit to be president," Hillary Clinton said.

"For my entire life, I've been a woman. When I think about what we now know about Donald Trump and what he's been doing for 30 years, he sure has spent a lot of time demeaning, degrading, insulting, and assaulting women. And I got to tell you, some of what we've learned - some of this stuff is very upsetting," she added.

During the same time, Donald Trump took the social media why Hillary Clinton is "unfit" to become president. He even described Hillary Clinton as a "crook" in handling email issues.

"Look at the way Crooked Hillary is handling the email case and the total mess she is in. She is unfit to be president. Bad judgement!" Donald Trump posted.

Both candidates have been campaigning on different locations. Donald Trump was with Mike Pence in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania while Hillary Clinton was in Florida.

Donald Trump criticized Hillary Clinton's defense of the Canadian health care system and the latter fired back when she campaigned with former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, who claimed being offended when Donald Trump allegedly weight-shamed her.

The United States Election Day is scheduled on Nov. 8. Who among the presidential candidates is your bet? Tell us by posting a comment below.
A heart-breaking news emerged this week as a couple who injected their toddlers with heroin made the headlines. The 24-year-old mother and her partner were arrested after two children age six and four were tested positive for the drug.

Ashlee Rose Hutt, a 24-tear-old mother and her boyfriend, Leroy McIver, 24 made the headlines after they allegedly injected Hutt's children with heroin. Not only does the couple use the illicit drugs but they also inject the kids with it, according to BBC.

Leroy McIvler and Ashlee Hutt are both set on $100,000 bail. A report from Washington Post then highlighted that side from children's mother, who is addicted to drugs, their living conditions were also not suited for the kids to grow up on.

"The kids lived in deplorable conditions," Pierce County Sheriff's Department spokesman Detective Ed Troyer told The Washington Post. "It wasn't a good living situation even without the issue of heroin. We, unfortunately, find kids living in deplorable conditions all too often, but we don't see parents intentionally putting drugs into kids."

The children, who are in custody described heroine as a "feel good medicine." It was then mentioned that their mother injects them with heroin to put them to sleep. As the case moved forward, McIver and Hutt pleaded not guilty and it remains unclear if they both have their own lawyers or not.

"He described the 'feel good medicine' as a white powder which was mixed with water," the affidavit stated. "His parents then used a needle to inject the 'feel good medicine.'"

Two of Hutt's children were found positive for heroin on their hair follicles. It was also mentioned that they have puncture marks and bruises for consistent cocaine injections. As of the latest update in regards to Hutt's children, they are already doing well in custody.
The U.S. division of Samsung has recalled at least 2.8 million units of their top-loading washing machine due to reports of injuries caused by a malfunctioning system.

Samsung is now recalling washing machines https://t.co/OYekWQDmqD  The New York Times (@nytimes) November 4, 2016

Samsung explained on its official blog that the voluntary recall was the result of reports coming in stating that the drums in the washers can lose balance triggering violent vibrations that has an outcome of the top part separating from the main washer.

According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), nine injuries ranging from an injured shoulder and a broken jaw have been reported. This breaking news comes a week after the Galaxy Note 7 controversy and Samsung is still reeling from their loss due to that product recall.

The current recall of Samsung washing machines consists of the top-loading model that was produced sometime between March 2011 and November 2016. Samsung also mentioned in an official statement that there are rare cases where Samsung washing machine units can have abnormal vibrations when dealing with water-resistant items and bulky beddings. These can cause serious property damage and personal injury.

Samsung sent a request to customers to send in their Samsung washing machine with serial numbers if they want to check if their unit is affected by the problem. The Korean company Samsung is keeping silent about disclosing the washing machine models that are currently under scrutiny.

But a Samsung spokesman said that Samsung washing machine users should switch to the lower-speed delicate cycle in order to prevent the violent vibrations when cleaning the mentioned materials. The problem may not be restricted to the United States. Based on the reports, it is still unclear how many units are affected.

In reference to the lawsuit filed on August 12 in a New Jersey court, some U.S. customers have said that their Samsung washing machines have exploded during normal use. The senior vice president and general manager of home appliances of Samsung Electronics America John Herrington mentioned that the company's priority right now is the safety of its customers.

He also said that providing easy choices to all their loyal customers during the recall along with reducing safety risks is Samsung's current protocol. Actions are being taken quickly with the help of the CPSC to make it known to consumers that the disruption in their homes will now be lessened and a lot of options will be available.
A mother was found dead in The Gap, Brisbane last week. Authorities are now reportedly working on the theory that her strict parenting style is the probable cause.

Simona Zafirovska was arrested and charged with murder of her mother, Radica, on Thursday, after she voluntarily spoke with the police about her death. The police had found the alleged murder weapon, which was understood to be a piece of wood, hence, the belief that she beat her mother to death.

The traditional belief of the 56-year-old mother was unknown but majority of Macedonians were Orthodox Christians. Orthodox Christianity is approximately 66 percent while Islam is estimated at 30 percent with small groups of Roman Catholics, Protestants and atheists, according to Countries and their Culture Forum.

Traditionally, the young ones show great respect to the old. It is believed that Orthodox culture places great respect in parental authorities, therefore, there are certain restrictions among children on where they can go and whom they can be with, Daily Mail Online learned.

Experts believe that strict parenting style has its own benefits. However, if it is not balanced with warmth, care and affection, it can turn out to be detrimental among children.

Dr. Laura Markham, a clinical psychologist, said that strict parenting can create problems with the behavior. All decisions are coming from the parents so this parenting style basically deprives the child of the chance to learn self-discipline.

It could turn out worst if strict parenting style has incorporated punitive discipline. Children are more likely to become rebellious, depressed, angry and overweight or become an excellent liar, Our Everyday Life found out.

At this point, whether the parenting style was the reason why Zafirovska killed her mother remains to be proven. Only that Neil Lawler, the 20-year-old's lawyer, said that his client was in the state of distraught and would undergo mental health assessment.
Xiaomi Redmi 4, Redmi 4A smartphones have been just released in China after the launch of Redmi 3 in January 2016. Reportedly, the Redmi 4 smartphones have three variants: Redmi 4 Standard Edition, Redmi 4 Pro edition and Redmi 4A.

The three variants have different RAM, storage options and processors. Redmi Note 3 came in two variants: a 3GB RAM, 32GB variant and a 2GB RAM+16GB variant. Redmi 4 Pro edition has a 5-inch 1080p display, better than the 720p resolution offered by the earlier Redmi 3 phones, and on the standard Redmi 4, Redmi 4A variants. The Pro version also gets extra RAM and storage at 3GB and 32GB, along with a higher-end Snapdragon 625 octa-core processor clocked at 2.0 Ghz. The GPU is Adreno 506 clocked at 650 Mhz, the Indian Express reported.

Xiaomi has released its new Redmi 4 smartphones with a metal unibody design and 2.5D glass. Both the phones come with a fingerprint sensor on the back. The design is similar to Redmi 3S, Redmi 3 and Redmi Note 3 series design.

With the Redmi 4 standard edition, the processor is a Snapdragon 430 octa-core one clocked at 1.4Ghz, and it comes with 2GB RAM+16GB storage. The GPU on the Redmi 4 standard edition is Adreno 505 clocked at 450MHz.

When it comes to the camera, the same in both the phones with 13MP on the back with PDAF, flash and 5MP on the front. Both phones also sport the exact same dimensions and weight: 141.3mm x 69.6mm x 8.9mm and 156g. The battery remains the same as the Redmi 3 series at 4100 mAh.

Redmi 4 Pro and Standard edition have GPS, AGPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Infrared, Gyro, Acceleration, Proximity sensor, Ambient light sensor. The Pro edition is priced at 899 Yuan approximately $135, while the standard edition comes at 699 Yuan, approximately $105.
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T20 World Cup: I Am Hopeful That India Will Play Final - Sourav Ganguly Praises Rohit Sharma And Co

WATCH: Virat Kohli Spends Time With KL Rahul in Training Session, Advices Him to Adjust Few Things

IND vs BAN: Dinesh Karthik Pull up Pretty Well in Training Session, Will Take Final Call on Him Tomorrow - Rahul Dravid

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This is who prolife Christians have crawled into the sewer with. And they will be remembered for it.

Prolife Christian Trump supporters have wrought more destruction on the prolife cause and done more harm to the witness of the Church in the past three months than the Left have achieved in the past three decades. And for what?

Charles Krauthammer writes:

We are entering a period of unprecedented threat to the international order that has prevailed under American leadership since 1945. After eight years of President Obamas retreat, the three major revisionist powers  Russia, China and Iran  see their chance to achieve regional dominance and diminish, if not expel, U.S. influence. At a time of such tectonic instability, even the most experienced head of state requires wisdom and delicacy to maintain equilibrium. Trump has neither. His joining of supreme ignorance to supreme arrogance, combined with a pathological sensitivity to any perceived slight, is a standing invitation to calamitous miscalculation. Two generations of Americans have grown up feeling that international stability is as natural as the air we breathe. Its not. It depends on continual, calibrated tending. It depends on the delicate balancing of alliances and the careful signaling of enemies. It depends on avoiding self-inflicted trade wars and on recognizing the value of allies like Germany, Japan and South Korea as cornerstones of our own security rather than satrapies who are here to dispatch tribute to their imperial master in Washington. It took seven decades to build this open, free international order. It could be brought down in a single presidential term. That would be a high price to pay for the catharsis of kicking over a table.

I have worked for years writing about and trying to explain the Faith for those outside the Church and for those within it struggling to believe. One of the things I therefore have to do is try to describe the distinction between the guidance the Church offers and the sometimes unbelievably stupid and evil acts of Catholics. Many is the time Ive had to point out that just because there is a picture of some bishop or priest offering a Nazi salute, this does not tell the whole story. I have to point out that two million Polish Catholics were murdered for resisting Hitler. That the pope resisted. That thousands of priests and religious resisted. That we have to remember all that as well and not get suckered into easy anti-Catholic narratives based solely on the foolish Catholics (and there were many of these) who somehow could not see the visible-from-space obvious that was plain as the noses on their own faces. In short, I have to, in defense of my Faith, constantly address the question How could they *not* have seen?

Thats why I oppose Trump. Because my grand-daughters are going to ask that question about my generation. They will have all the videos of the Catholics now loudly condemning their fellow Catholics to hell while proudly making the stupidest political decision of my lifetime and I dont want to have to say to them, There were lots of us who resisted. Dont abandon the Faith because of the folly of some Catholics. It is Jesus who is the Truth, not we foolish, blind and sinful members of his Body. Forgive us for the catastrophe we marched the world into with both eyes open. Remember always that it was the Catholics who hated, fought, ridiculed, and opposed the Holy Father the loudest who were at the forefront of falling down before the Golden Ass and that it was serious, Mass-going Catholics who respected the Pope and the Magisterium who were the ones with whom Trump polled lowest. And pray for us that God will forgive us too.
Prominent, Ailing Human Rights Lawyer Sees 64th Birthday Pass by in Evin Prison

11/05/16

Source: International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran

"I hope my father will be freed soon and his next birthday will not be in Evin Prison," said Maedeh Soltani, the daughter of imprisoned prominent Iranian human rights lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani, on Nov 1, 2016-his 64th birthday.





Abdolfattah Soltani



"My father has served more than half of an unjust prison sentence and qualifies for conditional release, but all his requests have gone unanswered," she told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. "He has been eligible for conditional release for a long time, but the prosecutor is not responding to us. It seems the prosecutor only listens to security officials."

She also expressed serious concerns about her father's health.

"My father is suffering from heart disease. He has stomach problems, blood pressure swings and spinal disk pain. Doctors have said that prison will worsen his condition," she said. "My family and our lawyer have written many letters asking for follow-ups on his medical problems, but they have not made any difference."



Political prisoners in Iran are singled out for particularly harsh treatment, including denial of medical care.

Maedeh Soltani added that she and her mother were prevented from delivering a petition demanding Abdolfattah Soltani's freedom-signed by 12,450 people, including civil and social activists-to the Tehran prosecutor's office. Dated September 17, 2016, it addresses Judiciary Chief Sadegh Larijani. "But they didn't even accept the petition," she said. "Just like that, the Judiciary disrespects more than 12,000 intelligent adults and only listens to security officials."

Abdolfattah Soltani, a well-known lawyer who represented dissidents and political prisoners in Iran, was arrested on September 10, 2011. He is serving a 13-year prison sentence for "being awarded the [2009] Nuremberg International Human Rights Award," "giving interviews to the media about his clients' cases," and "co-founding the Defenders of Human Rights Center" with Nobel Peace winner Shirin Ebadi.

According to Article 58 of Iran's New Islamic Penal Code, "...the deciding court can issue the order of conditional release for convicts sentenced to more than ten years imprisonment after half of the sentence is served, and in other cases after one-third of the sentence is served."

"We have frequently asked the Judiciary to make an independent decision on my father's case," Maedeh Soltani told the Campaign. "We want them to either facilitate my father's freedom or hold a new trial with a fair and impartial judge to investigate my father's case... It seems that Judiciary officials are determined not to respond to our numerous requests for his conditional release."

In May 2016 Maedeh Soltani told the Campaign that her father's health was worsening, but that prison officials were refusing to provide adequate medical care: "In recent months this is the fourth time my father has been taken to the prison infirmary for chest pains and severe heart palpitations. But unfortunately my mother's requests for my father's medical furlough (temporary leave) for hospitalization have not been accepted so far."

Abdolfattah Soltani was granted medical furlough on January 17, 2016 for 21 days, and was returned to Evin Prison before he had fully recovered. He was also hospitalized for 41 days in 2013 for heart and digestive problems.
Elderly Baha'i Man Brutally Murdered Amid Islamic Republic's "Systematic Hatred" of Baha'is

11/05/16

Source: International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran

Sixty-three-year old Farhang Amiri, a Baha'i man that was well-known in his community, was stabbed to death outside his home in the city of Yazd, 312 miles southeast of Tehran, on September 26, 2016, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran has learned.



The late Farhang Amiri,





Sixty-three-year old Farhang Amiri, a Baha'i man that was well-known in his community, was stabbed to death outside his home in the city of Yazd, 312 miles southeast of Tehran, on September 26, 2016, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran has learned.

"The suspects have confessed that they killed Amiri because he was an 'apostate,' and they wanted to go to heaven," a source close to the victim told the Campaign. "They said the Quran has sanctioned killing apostates, and that's what they did. Their written confessions are in the case file."

"He had a knife up to the handle in his side and another in his heart," said the source. "He also had stab wounds in other parts of his body."

The Baha'i community is one of the most severely persecuted religious minorities in Iran. The faith is not recognized in the Islamic Republic's Constitution and its members face harsh discrimination in all walks of life as well as prosecution for the public display of their faith.



Amiri's murder is part of a "systematic effort by the Iranian authorities to encourage hatred and bigotry against Baha'is," Bani Dugal, the principal representative of the Baha'i International Community (BIC), said in a statement on October 26, 2016.

"Just in the city of Yazd alone, there have been multiple acts of persecution over the past few years, including dozens of wrongful arrests and imprisonments as well as scores of raids on Baha'i residences and businesses," she added.

"The Amiri family wants this case to be investigated fairly and hopes it will take its legal course," the source told the Campaign. "The Baha'i faith does not believe in retribution, but [the family] demands the next maximum punishment."

Ongoing Discrimination

The source described the events surrounding the murder to the Campaign: "... Two days before the incident on September 24, two men came to the door at Mr. Amiri's house. His son lived upstairs with his family and his elderly mother lived downstairs. The two men rang the doorbell and asked if the car parked outside was for sale. Mr. Amiri's son said the car was not for sale. Two days later [the men] returned in the evening and rang the doorbell again. This time Mr. Amiri's mother opened the door. She's an elderly woman and has a habit of opening the door without asking who's there."

The source continued: "She opened the door and didn't see anyone. So she called her son to go outside and see who rang the bell. Mr. Amiri went outside and after a few minutes they heard him scream. His wife and daughter went outside. The wife held his bloody body in her arms and the daughter ran after two men who were running away in the alley and she screamed for help. One of the suspects was arrested by neighbors and shopkeepers and the other, who got away, was later arrested by police. Unfortunately, the ambulance arrived half an hour later and Mr. Amiri died before reaching the hospital."

The suspects are in custody while the case is being investigated by Branch 7 of Yazd's Criminal Court, according to the source.

Asked if Amiri promoted the Baha'i faith in his community, the source told the Campaign: "He never promoted the Baha'i faith, but he and his family were well-known in the neighborhood as Baha'is because they had lived there a long time."

Amiri had retired from his job in the private sector a year earlier in 2015 and had started working as a truck driver. After Iran's 1979 revolution, the government confiscated his family's property and he was left with no choice but to work in the private sector after Baha'is were banned from working for the government, said the source.

"In 1955, Farhang Amiri's father, Hedayatollah Amiri, was killed along with six other relatives-Roghieh Amiri, Fereydoun Amiri, Ali Akbar Amiri, Abdolrazagh Amiri, Amanollah Amiri and Gholamali Amiri-because of their Baha'i faith," added the source. "They were known as 'Yazd's Seven Martyrs'."

In its report published on October 30, 2016 titled "The Baha'i Question Revisited: Persecution and Resilience in Iran," the BIC estimates that since 2005, "when the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began to re-intensify the persecution [of Baha'is]," there were more than 860 arrests of Baha'is in Iran and around 275 Baha'is were sent to prison.

"During that time, at least 240 Baha'is have been expelled from university and thousands more have been blocked from enrolling through various ruses," continued the report. "There have been more than 950 specific, documented incidents of economic discrimination, such as shop closings or dismissals."

In addition to being denied constitutional rights as citizens, Baha'is are referred to in Iran's state media as "unclean," "members of a deviant religious cult," "agents of foreign powers" or "supporters of the toppled Pahlavi regime." They are also consistently denied entry into universities and are prohibited from working in governmental offices.

In April 2016, 54 leading international business owners and economists wrote a letter to Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, calling for an end to the harassment and discrimination of Baha'i business owners.

"We view the recent spate of business closures by Iranian authorities not only as a violation of religious freedom and human rights, but also as an affront to the freedom to do business," said the letter, which was signed by prominent figures from Brazil, India, Australia, Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

In his annual reports, Ahmad Shaheed, the United Nation's special rapporteur for human rights in Iran until October 30, 2016, repeatedly detailed the widespread abuse and discrimination against Baha'is in Iran, and has called on the Iranian government to end its religious intolerance.
Can Iran and Israel Make Up?

11/05/16

by Eldar Mamedov (source: LobeLog)



David Menashri of Tel-Aviv University

David Menashri of Tel-Aviv University

As Iran watchers in Washington brace for a more hawkish new US administration, the Woodrow Wilson Center hosted a conference on October 31 on a subject that continues to bedevil US-Iran relations: the mutual security perceptions of Israel and Iran.

One of the main speakers at the conference-Israel's foremost expert on Iran, David Menashri, of Tel-Aviv University-was very pessimistic about the Iranian-Israeli enmity ending as long as the current regime in Iran exists. For Menashri, the Islamic Republic lacks any incentives to improve relations with the Jewish state because Iran feels empowered after last year's nuclear deal-the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). It has been steadily increasing its influence in the region to the extent that it now feels more powerful than at any time since the 1979 revolution.

Consequently, Menashri argued, Israel has to abandon any illusions about ever returning to its old "periphery strategy," which consisted of creating a web of discreet diplomatic and intelligence relationships with an outer ring of non-Arab, moderate Middle Eastern states-hence the term "periphery"-to counter-balance the radical Arab core. Iran under the Shah was a key cog in this strategy, alongside Turkey and Ethiopia. Since the Iranian "periphery" is now radical and the Arab "core" has turned "moderate," it makes sense for Israel to cultivate relations with Sunni Arab states, such as Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf states, to counter Iran's "radical" influence.

There is an element of rationality in this assessment. The official anti-Israeli Iranian rhetoric may have lost its intensity since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stepped down as president in 2013, but hostility toward Israel (as opposed to the Jewish people) is deeply ingrained in the very fabric of the Islamic Republic. Also, in a region beset with sectarian tensions, even limited Israeli-Arab reconciliation is surely a good thing, as is a rapprochement between Iran and Iraq. However, the current seemingly irreconcilable enmity between Iran and Israel can't last indefinitely. In fact, there are abiding strategic interests for both sides to reach out.

Relations with Sunni States

From the Israeli perspective, the newly budding quasi-alliance with Sunni Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia may well prove to be short-lived. Egypt under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is experiencing a repression in the name of stability more severe than anything experienced under the Mubarak dictatorship. Despite al-Sisi's best efforts, however, the regime has failed to stamp out resistance, including an armed uprising in Sinai. The lack of security deters badly needed foreign investment, and thus economic recovery, which in turn fuels further radicalization.

Moreover, al-Sisi's crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood has convinced many Egyptian Islamists of the futility of seeking change by democratic means and increased the ranks of armed insurgency. If an alternative to Mubarak was the Muslim Brotherhood, an alternative to al-Sisi might well be something much nastier, along the lines of the so-called Islamic state (ISIS or IS). A hypothetical Islamist government in Egypt is likely to be much more hostile towards Israel than the Muslim Brotherhood ever was-for doctrinal as well as political reasons-since Israel is seen as supporting a brutal regime that kills and tortures Islamists.

Saudi Arabia, another putative quasi-ally, is entering uncharted waters. The stability of the kingdom can no longer be taken for granted. The slump in oil prices, an uncertain succession, and the military failures in Yemen would be challenges enough. But then there's also the much-vaunted "radical reform" program "Vision-2030," especially provisions encouraging the incorporation of women in labor market, which might disrupt the traditional social contract between the Al-Saud family and the population, and also undermine the position of the conservative Wahhabi clergy. And just like in Egypt, the most likely alternative to the current regime might be something even more regressive and violent.

Even when the international anti-IS coalition succeeds in eliminating the self-proclaimed "caliphate" in Raqqa, the ideology of Salafist jihadism that inspires IS will not disappear. IS feeds into Sunni Arab revanchism by capitalizing on a perceived Sunni loss of power and prestige to previously marginalized actors such as Kurds and Shiites. This fired-up jihadism will keep challenging "moderate" actors in the region, including Jordan-another Israeli partner, which, incidentally, is also one of the largest sources of IS fighters.

Salafist jihadists seem presently focused on Shiite "apostates," and Israel has so far been spared the attacks by IS and al-Qaeda. But Israelis should not underestimate the threat of Salafist jihadism. Although Israel is capable of dealing with this threat, the disintegration of more Arab states and the surge of jihadis in the resulting power vacuum will create massive instability that will inevitably affect Israel. And even if IS or its surrogates are ultimately defeated, pervasive anti-Semitism in the Arab world-unlike in Iran, where the Jewish community, although discriminated against, has its religious rights and political representation enshrined in the constitution-will make any alliance with the Sunni Arab states at best a short-term and inherently unstable tactical arrangement. In this context, a far-sighted Israeli policy would be to take advantage of the West's renewed dialogue with Iran to foster the moderation of Tehran's positions towards Israel, rather than bandwagoning with the Saudis in trying to undermine it.

Iran-Israel Detente?

From the Iranian perspective, enmity toward Israel makes little practical sense, apart from maintaining the few highly visible symbols of the revolution-another being a compulsory hijab. Courting the so-called "Arab street" turned into a failure once Iran threw its weight behind the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. Even Hamas, once supported by Iran, has turned to Saudi Arabia as its main sponsor. Trying to regain the sympathies of the Arabs by denouncing the Saudi rapprochement with the "Zionist entity" is not likely to succeed either: the deep-seated Arab rejection of Shiite Persians, strengthened by the ascendancy of Salafist ideology, makes it extremely unlikely.

So, although the gains are ephemeral, Iran pays a real price for the anti-Israeli rhetoric of some of its high-ranking officials in terms of its relations with the West, and not only in Washington, but also in European capitals. While the EU is trying to capitalize on the JCPOA, German Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said that the recognition of Israel is a precondition for a full normalization of ties with Germany. Iranians could rightly retort that Israel has repeatedly threatened military action against Iran, in violation of international law. But the hard reality is that for the foreseeable future Israel will be a factor in the formulation of the Western policies towards Iran, albeit to different degrees in US and the EU. It is in Iran's national interest to acknowledge this reality.

Obviously, decades of cold war between Iran and Israel have ensured a deeply ingrained hostility between the sides. But it's time for political realism on both sides to prevail and start putting out feelers for the potential normalization of relations.



This article reflects the personal views of the author and not necessarily the opinions of the European Parliament.





About the Author

Eldar Mamedov has degrees from the University of Latvia and the Diplomatic School in Madrid, Spain. He has worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia and as a diplomat in Latvian embassies in Washington D.C. and Madrid. Since 2007, Mamedov has served as a political adviser for the social-democrats in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (EP) and is in charge of the delegation for inter-parliamentary relations between the EP and Iran.
President Obama endorses Cyrus Habib for Lieutenant Governor of Washington State

11/05/16

Source: Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans (PAAIA)

"Cyrus's intelligence, track record, and proven commitment to Washington State set him apart. I am pleased to endorse and support his campaign for Lieutenant Governor." - President Obama





Cyrus Habib: www.cyrushabib.com

If elected, he will be the first Iranian-American Lieutenant Governor in history

Donate tp Cyrus Habib's campaign here



OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON - Cyrus Habib, a Washington State Senator, renowned law professor, and Rhodes Scholar, is poised to become the first American of Iranian descent to be elected to Lieutenant Governor.

Cyrus, fully blind since the age of eight and three-time cancer survivor, is currently the highest ranking Iranian American in government. His victory in the Washington State campaign for Lieutenant Governor would mark another significant achievement for the Iranian American community.

Recently, President Obama endorsed Senator Habib, saying "Cyrus's intelligvence, track record, and proven committment to Washington State set him apart."

Cyrus's successful campaign for Lieutenant Governor would serve not only as a victory for the Iranian American community, but also as a rejection of the hate mongering, bigotry, and calls for exclusion based on ancestry seen in our nation's political discourse.
An apparent domestic conflict left a Moreno Valley man shot to death, another man with a bullet injury to a hand, and two questioned for their involvement in the killing.

The initial investigation reveals that this shooting was not a random act of violence, Sgt. Jon Radus said in a statement. This shooting stemmed from a domestic dispute between the victims and suspects, and they all knew each.

It occurred at about 9:45 p.m. Thursday in the 1300 block of South Orange Avenue, in a neighborhood of apartment complexes, and prompted police to post messages via social media encouraging residents to stay indoors and to avoid the area while a search was underway for suspects.

Alton Evans III, 40, died at a hospital after being shot multiple times in the upper body, authorities said. A 22-year-old, shot in the hand, was expected to fully recover.

Zachary Simmons, 20, Moreno Valley and Andre Evans, 39, of Hesperia, were arrested and booked on suspicion of murder.

But they were released Friday pending further investigation due to conflicting accounts about what may have occurred leading up to, and during, the altercation, Radus said in a statement.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7865 or afausto@scng.com
Note to self  never turn 40 two weeks before a presidential election.

I went on vacation the week of Oct. 24 to celebrate my birthday with family in Las Vegas. Shockingly, I did not win big and Im back in the newsroom facing a deluge of late-hour election news.

This is my attempt to catch up as we head into the final weekend before Election Day. Its also a reminder to check out the Southern California News Groups family of websites  including but not limited to www.pressenterprise.com, www.sbsun.com, www.redlanddailyfacts.com and www.dailybulletin.com  on election right for the latest results and to visit those websites for previews of local races youll see on your ballot.

Here we go:

 U.S. Senate candidate Loretta Sanchez met with representatives of several Inland Empire conservative groups on Sunday, Oct. 20 in a bid to win support in her race against fellow Democrat Kamala Harris, the Redlands Tea Party Patriots announced.

I would love to get your vote, she was quoted as saying in a tea party news release. Im not telling you Im not a Democrat; I have Democrat positions, but I have voted against Democrats many times. I work with Republicans.

Sanchez likely needs a lot of Republican and independent votes to beat Harris, the California attorney general who has consistently led in the polls.

 California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon is scheduled to be in the Inland Empire on Saturday, Nov. 5 to campaign for Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown, D-San Bernardino.

Rendon and the California Democratic Party are backing Brown in her race against Democrat Eloise Reyes, whose backers, including labor unions and environmental groups, are upset with Browns votes on gun control bills, climate change legislation and other matters.

Speaking of Reyes, shell have 75 to 100 volunteers canvassing for her this weekend, according to her campaign.

 Democrat Abigail Medina is using her endorsement from President Barack Obama for all its worth. The Medina campaign has put out TV and radio ads promoting the endorsement, which is a relative rarity in a state legislative race.

Medina, a San Bernardino school board member, hopes high voter turnout helps her beat Assemblyman Marc Steinorth, R-Rancho Cucamonga, in the 40th Assembly District, which includes Redlands, Rancho Cucamonga and part of the city of San Bernardino.

Steinorth is touting his own endorsements, including being named legislator of the year by the California Small Business Association.

 Two years ago, Vice President Joe Biden held a late-hour rally for Pete Aguilar in Colton to boost Aguilars bid for the 31st Congressional District seat.

Aguilar won that race and now, hes rolling out Bidens endorsement again in his rematch with Republican Paul Chabot. Biden re-affirmed his support for Aguilar, D-Redlands, his campaign recently announced.

Meanwhile, Chabot has gotten the support of the National Rifle Association, which paid for a pro-Chabot mailer.

 Inland Republican congressional candidate Doug Shepherd took his campaign to new heights by virtually skydiving in Perris on Sunday, Oct. 30.

Shepherd, who is running against Rep. Mark Takano, D-Riverside, was supposed to skydive for real. But the jump was canceled due to inclement weather, a spokeswoman said. Instead, Shepherd skydived with the help of an indoor simulator.

As for Takano, he tweeted an Instagram of himself this past week making volunteer recruitment calls on Hillary Clintons behalf in Nevada.

 Finally, Republican congressional candidate and state Sen. Jeff Stone received a special honor from the Israeli parliament for his extensive work in fighting anti-Semitism and working to make sure Israel is treated fairly in the global marketplace, his campaign announced.

Stone, who is Jewish, has made opposition to the Iran nuclear deal a centerpiece of his campaign against Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-La Quinta. He also sponsored a resolution passed by the legislature that called for an end to anti-Semitism on university campuses and has opposed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement which seeks better treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government.

Ruiz is favored to win re-election in the 36th Congressional District, which includes the Pass, Hemet, San Jacinto and the Coachella Valley.
The virtually unknown Center for Social Justice and Civil Liberties is in a restored historic 1926 building in downtown Riverside and offers a walk through the rich and diverse social history of the community through rare and unique exhibits.

The Riverside Community College District opened the Center for Social Justice and Civil Liberties in 2012. The $5.5 million project involved the restoration of the original architecture of Los Angeles architect Stiles O. Clements. The building, constructed in 1926, later housed the Citrus Belt Savings and Loan. It features an ornate Spanish baroque facade in the elaborate Churrigueresque style, which was discovered after being masked for 50 years.

The building speaks to the regions rich history, and the exhibits expound upon the past, using documentaries and art to tell stories that most residents have never heard. Riverside Stories, the interpretive exhibit visitors encounter, is devoted to civil rights and social justice in the context of 20th-century Riverside. It is shared through the stories of Riverside residents who made significant contributions as they fought for equality throughout their lifetimes.

The stories shared include that of the Harada family, who challenged the Alien Land Act in court on behalf of their American-born children, and Frank Johnson, who fought to integrate a public swimming pool in the 1920s so his daughter could swim. The exhibits also share the struggles of Rupert and Jeannette Costo, who championed Native American Rights, as well as John Sotelo, the first Mexican American to be elected to City Council.

All of the stories here that are being told now are completely relevant to what is happening now, said M.J. Abraham, interim director of the center. So, the center creates a safe haven for conversations that visitors may not feel safe to discuss elsewhere.

Wolde-Ab Isaac, RCCs president, believes that the center has the capacity to be a world-renowned resource that not only tells the overlooked and inspiring stories of Riversides diverse history, but encourages the community to share untold stories that need to be heard.

The most significant exhibit the center has to share is the collection of Japanese American artist Mine Okubo, an alumna of RCC. Okubo had a burgeoning career as an artist when she was interned with her family in the Topaz Camp in Utah during World War II under Executive Order 9066. Her collection of more than 8,000 artworks, professional papers and personal memorabilia were given to RCC in a bequest from her estate.

Okubo is known for Citizen 13660, the first memoir by an internee, as well as an illustrious career as an illustrator for Fortune, Time, Life, and The New Yorker. Her personal art documented her time in internment and gives an intimate view into her world. Abraham said Okubo often explains the intimacy of this collection to children through the lens of documenting their own life with a cellphone.

Imagine if you had to sketch everything you saw in order to capture the experience, said Abraham. This was her cellphone. It was a historical look at her culture and what she saw. It has a tremendous value. Yet, the public doesnt really know about it.

The public is invited to visit Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. or by appointment. Both Abraham and Isaac hope that more of the public will take advantage of this opportunity and explore what the center has to offer, including a childrens program that was recently launched.

Visitors consistently tell me that they had no idea we were here and that what they discover here is amazing, said Abraham. We havent branded or launched officially, but its time we become a piece of the threadwork of this community. If you havent been here, then come visit us.

The center is at 3855 Market St. in Riverside. Information: socialjustice.rccd.edu or 951-222-8846

The Community Foundations mission is to strengthen Inland Southern California through philanthropy.

Contact the writer: community@pressenterprise.com
Thousands of cargo containers stranded on port terminals after the collapse of Hanjin Shipping Co. will be cleared from local storage yards next week thanks to a new agreement.

Long Beach port officials are working with terminal operator Total Terminals International  which the now-defunct Hanjin has a majority stake in  to bring in a vessel Tuesday that could move up to 4,300 containers out of the Port of Long Beach and local storage yards and back to Asia, freeing up coveted real estate.

Until recently, Hanjin cargo containers had been turned away at the ports, leaving the steel containers piled high at terminals and in storage yards as freight handlers struggled to figure out what to do with them.

Just as problematic, freight handling companies werent equipped to pull the containers off of chassis, causing a shortage of these vital pieces of equipment that allow trucks to haul goods.

This is an opportunity to reposition over 4,300 Hanjin containers back to Asia, but just as importantly, providing much important relief to the chassis inventory and keep the supply chain moving, said Noel Hacegaba, Long Beach ports chief commercial officer.

With the latest move, there will still be about 3,000 Hanjin leased or owned cargo containers left in the area, he said.

The mostly 40-foot-long industrial containers carry hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods from the ports to retailers across the country. Everything from furniture to car parts is loaded into the boxes.

People are trying to return these (containers) so they can get them out of their hair, said Mark Hirzel, chairman of the Los Angeles Customs Brokers and Freight Forwarders Association.

Truckers normally take the empty containers back to the port and load them onto a new container ship to return to their origin country. But with Hanjin buried in bankruptcy proceedings, the company hadnt been running new ships to pick up and replenish empty containers.

In the warehouse business, the worst thing is to have dead space, Hirzel said. Nobody wants something that takes up space. he said.

There was no space on several terminal docks, he added. They simply need to get it cleared out.In addition to the containers owned by Hanjin, the terminal will also be accepting boxes that had been leased by the shipping giant.

Under the agreement announced Thursday, the Port of Long Beach agreed to waive its fee for access to the terminal. The terminal, meanwhile, is loading the vessel arriving Tuesday at its own cost.

We feel this is a fair and necessary accommodation to keep goods moving through the ports in Southern California and to ensure our customers are able to remove their containers, Hacegaba said in a statement.

Hanjin, the seventh-largest shipping company in the world, collapsed Aug. 31 after failing to secure funding from the Korea Development Bank. It cut services off shortly after, leaving ships with billions of dollars worth of cargo stranded and cargo containers scattered around the world.

At one point an estimated 15,000 Hanjin leased and owned containers in Southern California had nowhere to go. Truckers couldnt drop them off at the port, as terminals werent accepting the goods. Terminals began to accept some of the containers a few weeks ago.

Contact the writer: ruranga@scng.com or @racheluranga
A Mead Valley man who gunned down his son during a property-related confrontation at the defendants home was sentenced today to 40 years to life in state prison.

Smith Ellison Jr., 68, was convicted in September of second-degree murder with sentence-enhancing gun and great bodily injury allegations for the April 17, 2015, slaying of 28-year-old Jason Ellison.

Riverside County Superior Court Judge Bernard Schwartz imposed the sentence required by law.

According to testimony at the defendants roughly monthlong trial, Smith Ellison and his son had several disagreements that culminated in a dispute over the younger mans use of an ATV parked in the driveway of Ellisons home in the 21800 block of Rogers Lane.

Sheriffs investigators said he pulled a pistol on his son after the latter came to retrieve the ATV for weekend recreation.

The defendant had been stewing over a previous encounter with his son and refused to open the security gate, telling him via telephone to hop over and walk up the drive, where the ATV was sitting, according to the prosecution.

Jason Ellison left his 4-year-old daughter in his car and jumped the fence, after which his father emerged from his house. According to Deputy District Attorney Michael Lough, the defendant came prepared for a confrontation, armed with a handgun.

Witnesses told sheriffs investigators that father and son had a hostile exchange, during which the younger Ellison postured aggressively, prompting the defendant to shoot him in the upper body.

Smith Ellison told detectives that his son had attempted to attack him, and he opened fire in self-defense. According to Lough, the father was irate that his son had shown no respect for him then and on previous occasions, making him mad enough to kill the victim.

Jason Ellison was still alive when deputies arrived at the house. He was transported to Inland Valley Medical Center in Wildomar, where he died about an hour later.

Smith Ellison had no prior felony convictions.
The tug-of-war over the $280,000 payout from a life insurance policy taken out by San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook wont be settled for at least another 10 months, and more likely well beyond that.

A court hearing scheduled for Nov. 14 was canceled after the federal government and the attorney for Farooks mother, Rafia Farook, agreed to postpone further action until Oct. 20.

U.S. District Court Judge Jesus G. Bernal approved the delay Monday, Oct. 31.

Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, died in a gun battle with police hours after they killed 14 people and wounded 22 others Dec. 2 in a terrorist attack targeting Farooks San Bernardino County Department of Public Health co-workers at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino.

Rafia Farook was listed as primary beneficiary for the $280,756.17 benefit and has said in court documents that she is entitled to the money.

But the Department of Justice has said the money is subject to civil forfeiture as assets derived from a federal crime of terrorism, according to a complaint. Federal attorneys have said the money should go to the families of the deceased and the survivors.

The money is in the custody of the U.S. District Court Clerk.

The government asked for the delay because it believes that allowing evidence gathering in the case is likely to have an adverse effect on the governments ability to prosecute the related criminal cases, a court filing said without elaborating.

In one of those cases, Riverside resident Enrique Marquez Jr. is charged with providing material support to Rizwan Farook and Malik, as well as marriage fraud. Marquez and Rizwan Farook were former neighbors and longtime friends. That trial is scheduled for Sept. 26 after being postponed from March 21. Additional delays in what government attorneys described as a complex case are not out of the question.

In the second case, Syed Raheel Farook, the shooters brother; Raheel Farooks wife, Tatiana Farook; and her sister, Mariya Chernykh, all face charges in a marriage-fraud case. Prosecutors say Marquez was paid to marry Chernykh, a Russian national, in order to help her remain in the U.S. but that they didnt live together. Trial is tentatively scheduled for March 28 after being rescheduled from Nov. 8.

All defendants have pleaded not guilty.

In the insurance case, Minnesota Life Insurance did not dispute that the money was owed to somebody. Company officials claimed that Rafia Farook had material knowledge of, and/or participated in, the planning of the terrorist attack executed by her son and daughter-in-law.

Rafia Farook has disputed that assertion in court documents.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9569 orbrokos@scng.com Twitter: @Brian_Rokos
A $150,000 lithium ion-powered generator caught fire while it was being prepped in Riverside for shipment to a Texas trade show, city fire officials say.

The blaze was reported at 9:59 a.m. Friday, Nov. 4, at Pacific Engery LLC, 7490 Jurupa, just east of Van Buren Boulevard.

Workers noticed that the generator was making unusual noises and beginning to smoke, so they used a forklift to move it outdoors into a parking lot before it burst into flames, said Battalion Chief Jeff DeLaurie.

The generator was loaded with 360 lithium-ion batteries that were destroyed with the generator. Its unclear what caused the fire, DeLaurie said.

Because burning lithium-ion batteries react violently to water, and to avoid toxic runoff, firefighters decided to let the generator burn, rather that pour water on the blaze.

It burnedalmost three hours, DeLaurie said.
Updates with death of suspect

A man acting erratically outside a Palm Springs Rite Aid was shot and killed by Palm Springs police Friday following a physical struggle that also wounded an officer.

It happened just after 1:30 p.m. in the parking lot of the Rite Aid at 366 S. Palm Canyon Drive, according to Sgt. William Hutchinson.

Palm Springs police received several 911 calls regarding the man, with reports suggesting that he might have been armed, Hutchinson said.

Callers reported that the man was making threatening statements, racial and homophobic slurs, and was seen urinating in public and exposing himself, Palm Springs Police Chief Bryan Reyes said at a late Friday afternoon press conference.

Two uniformed officers got into a struggle while trying to take the man into custody, bringing the trio to the ground and resulting in injuries to one of the officers and shots being fired.

The suspect was taken to a hospital, where he later died. His name was being withheld until his family could be told of his death.

Hutchinson said he did not know if the reports indicating the man was armed turned out to be true.

Reyes declined to comment on the extent of the officers injuries.

The investigation has been turned over to the Riverside County Sheriffs Department, Reyes said.

The Riverside County Sheriffs Department is encouraging anyone with information to contact its Central Homicide Unit at 951-955-2777.

The shooting comes less than a month after the Oct. 8 shooting deaths of Palm Springs police officers Jose Gilbert Vega and Lesley Zerebny.

Vega, 63, and Zerebny, 27, were gunned down as they responded to a family disturbance call at a Palm Springs residence. A third officer was wounded in the gunfire.

The alleged killer, 26-year-old John Hernandez Felix, is in custody, facing charges of murder, attempted murder and numerous firearm-related felonies.

Felix is next due in court Thursday at the Larson Justice Center in Indio.

Staff writer Alex Groves contributed to this report.
Though his fate will hang in the balance on Election Day, Corvain Cooper wont get to cast a ballot.

The 37-year-old will be in a cell in central Californias Atwater federal prison, where hes serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for convictions involving marijuana.

I was placed in a federal prison at its highest level, with felons who all committed acts of violence, the Los Angeles native said in a series of monitored emails sent from prison.

Yet they all have release dates.

Soon, Cooper could too.

Though most of the attention surrounding Proposition 64 centers on how the measure would make it legal for adults to consume recreational marijuana, the law would do something else: potentially reduce prison sentences and clear old criminal records related to marijuana.

Cooper is one of more than 6,000 people serving time who could potentially have their time behind bars shortened or even go free if Prop. 64 passes on Tuesday, according to an estimate by the Drug Policy Alliance, which is funding the measure.

Check out our new marijuana-related website: The Cannifornian

Another 1 million people convicted of marijuana-related misdemeanors and felonies could petition to have their records changed or cleared, the nonprofit organization estimates. That would give them wider access to jobs, housing and other services that are currently out of reach.

The criminal code changes are so profound that, even if I didnt like other things in the initiative, I would vote for it just for that, said Chris Conrad, a longtime marijuana activist whos backing Prop. 64 even as many friends in the medical cannabis community remain divided over the measure.

CRIMINAL ASPECT OF POT?

Opponents of Prop. 64 have many objections to the measure, including the provision that could allow convicted drug dealers whove served out their sentences to enter the newly legal pot market.

But Andrew Acosta, spokesman for the No on 64 campaign, said the measures criminal justice reforms havent been a big point of contention. Thats because many people say they view pot as essentially legal in California today.

Medical marijuana was decriminalized in 1996, allowing residents to buy it or grow it at home with an easy-to-get doctors recommendation.

And in 2010, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made carrying small amounts of marijuana an infraction. That triggered an 86 percent drop in misdemeanor arrests for pot over the past five years.

I dont have people in jail for possession of marijuana unless its a lot of marijuana packaged for sales, said Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens, who is opposing Prop. 64.

But a Drug Policy Alliance report shows California still has an average of 11,000 felony arrests for marijuana-related crimes each year, with more than half of those resulting in time behind bars. And data show minorities are more likely than whites to be arrested or jailed.

A CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE?

Though black, Latino and white people consume and sell pot at similar rates, the Drug Policy Alliance report shows Latinos were 26 percent more likely than white people to be arrested for a marijuana felony in 2015, while blacks were five times as likely.

Its almost always white people who say that law enforcement leaves us alone when it comes to drugs  and especially when it comes to marijuana, said Lynne Lyman, California director for the Drug Policy Alliance.

When white people are caught with more than an ounce of weed, Lyman said, they commonly get charged with possession, which is a misdemeanor that might carry just a $500 fine.

But minorities caught with the same amount are often charged with intent to sell, the data show, which is a felony that could get them up to three years in prison.

Such racial disparities are the reason Silicon Valley billionaire Sean Parker has given more than $7 million to support Prop. 64, according to campaign spokesman Jason Kinney. And theyre the main reason rapper Jay Z, actor Danny Glover and a number of other stars cite for backing Prop. 64.

Opponents of the measure point out studies that show uneven enforcement hasnt improved even in states that have legalized marijuana.

While marijuana arrests dropped by 60 percent in Colorado and 90 percent in Washington state from 2008 to 2014, after these states legalized pot, a Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice study found that blacks were still two times more likely to be arrested for related crimes than whites.

It shows that once again legalization advocates are only paying lip service to racial justice questions to advance the agenda of the marijuana industry, said Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which is funding opposition to Prop. 64.

Sabet and other opponents argue that legal marijuana actually harms minority communities, with a concentration of pot shops and farms popping up in poor Colorado neighborhoods.

Theres evidence of that trend already playing out in California, with low-income cities such as Adelanto and Desert Hot Springs among the first to permit commercial marijuana cultivation in hopes of balancing their budgets with pot tax revenues.

While legalizing marijuana doesnt even the playing field, Lyman said it does reduce the number of blacks and Latinos arrested.

Lyman also points out that up to $50 million generated by Prop. 64 taxes would go toward grants for job training and other services in communities such as Los Angeles, Santa Ana and Riverside, which have historically high drug incarceration rates.

CHANGING THE SYSTEM

If Prop. 64 has a clear victory Tuesday, a sweeping overhaul to Californias criminal code would kick in Wednesday.

Other than selling to minors and home butane extraction, which is using volatile materials to make marijuana concentrates, Lyman said, Prop. 64 reduces or eliminates every marijuana criminal penalty currently on the books.

Right now, anyone without a medical marijuana card who gets caught with an ounce of weed faces a $100 ticket, while non-patients growing a few plants at home can get a felony. Under Prop. 64, both of those activities would be legal for anyone 21 and older.

Prop. 64 is the nations first legalization measure that would eliminate all pot-related criminal penalties for people under 18, with jail time and fines swapped out for community service and drug education courses. And at age 18, related criminal records would be sealed so convictions couldnt stop them from getting financial aid for college or other services.

The measure would increase one fine: A ticket for smoking pot where tobacco is banned would go up by $150.

But law enforcement could no longer use the smell of marijuana, or the presence of paraphernalia, as a basis for broader searches.

Conrad, who has served as an expert witness in some 2,500 marijuana-related cases, said removing weed as probable cause will eliminate a common point of contact with police that often escalates into something more serious.

Out of all the court cases I have been involved with, probably 50 percent start off with cops saying they smell marijuana, he said.

Mike Ramos, district attorney for San Bernardino County, and other law enforcement leaders take issue with Prop. 64 allowing people with prior drug convictions to work in the newly legal pot market.

Its one thing to have a conversation about formerly incarcerated drug offenders working in a dispensary, said Ken Corney, president of the California Police Chiefs Association. This is an inflexible mandate imposed by the drafters of Proposition 64 to allow drug traffickers to own and operate marijuana cultivation sites and dispensaries.

Lyman argues it would be a harm upon harm for industry pioneers whove paid for their crimes to be denied licenses once cannabis becomes a legitimate career.

CLEARING THE RECORD

Since Prop. 64 would reduce penalties retroactively, anyone whos been convicted of a marijuana-related misdemeanor or felony in California could petition to have their sentences reduced or their records expunged.

And some people with pending marijuana charges could see them automatically dropped or downgraded.

That could remove thousands of barriers now facing people who have criminal records for pot, according to Eunisses Hernandez with Drug Policy Alliance, with felony convictions affecting everything from their ability to own a gun to adopting a child.

Ingrid Archie knows about those obstacles all too well.

She grew up in foster care after her alcoholic mother attacked her older sister with a knife.

When she was 18, Archie was living with someone who was involved in gangs and drugs. Their L.A. home was raided, and officers seized a large amount of marijuana. Archie spent three years in state prison.

After she got out, Archie tried to get her life on track. Shed been working at Verizon for a couple of years in 2009 when the company instituted a stricter policy regarding employees with felonies. She was immediately laid off, which triggered several more rough years.

Today, Archie has regained full custody of her two daughters and is working at a nonprofit in Los Angeles that helps families impacted by incarceration. Still, she has that felony drug possession conviction on her record.

LIVES IN LIMBO

With polls showing Prop. 64 likely to pass, Drug Policy Alliance is planning free legal clinics to help people petition to have their sentences or records changed.

Archie will be at the nonprofits Election Night party in Los Angeles. If the measure is approved, aides will assist her in filling out paperwork on the spot to ask for that 2004 felony charge to be cleared from her record.

Just north of Merced, at Atwater federal prison, Cooper will be waiting to hear the news.

In 2011, he was caught with half a pound of marijuana and served nearly a year in jail.

He said he learned his lesson, focusing after his release on his fiancee, two daughters and a clothing store he opened in his old neighborhood.

Then in 2013, federal agents swarmed his driveway. Soon, he was being extradited to North Carolina, where a childhood friend got a reduced sentence by fingering Cooper as being involved in a decade-old conspiracy to traffic pot.

The conviction should have given Cooper perhaps 10 years behind bars, but prosecutors used his prior offenses to enhance his sentence. The judge had no choice but to give him life in prison without parole.

The crime didnt fit the time, argued Coopers mother, Barbara Tillis, who now lives in Rialto.

Cooper appealed the sentence and lost. Then Long Beach activist Cheri Sicard told him about Prop. 64, and he felt a surge of hope.

Under the measure, his 2011 marijuana felony could become a misdemeanor. He could then petition for his sentence to be reduced to the original 10 years.

With credit for time served and good behavior, Cooper could potentially be out of prison within a couple of years if Prop. 64 becomes law.
First it was newspapers, then radio, television and now social media.

Throughout history, advances in mass media technology have played a vital role in presidential elections, shaping how voters view the candidates and the issues. In 2016, experts say, a new force has become communications king  social media.

Surely we will look back on this election as a turning point, observed Renee Van Vechten, associate professor of political science at the University of Redlands. We are in a social media election, for better or worse.

According to a July study by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, 24 percent of American adults said they had turned to the social media posts of Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton for news and information about the election. Thats compared to 15 percent who said they got information from the candidates websites or emails.

Related:

Your guide to the most compelling Election Day races in the Inland

Breakdown of Californias 17 propositions

The results were not surprising to Van Vechten.

Through Facebook postings and Instagram postings the average voter picks up on the events that are unfolding in the campaign and then responds to them in real time, Van Vechten explained. That certainly marks a difference over past elections.

Republican nominee Trump has effectively made social media the cornerstone of his campaign. He boasts 12.9 million followers on Twitter  compared to Clintons 10.2 million  and has provided them with a steady stream of blunt commentary and headline-grabbing remarks.

Hes completely mastered this particular medium, Van Vechten said. He has branded this sort of communication with the voters in a way that no one else has.

Professor Ira Kalb, a marketing and branding expert at the USC Marshall School of Business, credited Trump with an effective approach to reaching his followers. Trump takes the same phrase and keeps repeating it, like crooked Hillary, crooked Hillary, Kalb said. He talks in such simple terms that his audience can understand it. In communications, thats very important.

In some ways, Twitter has worked better for Trump at getting his message out than a paid publicist, noted Chad Kawalec, president of West Hollywood-based Brand Identity Center, which advises companies, celebrities and athletes on managing their public brands.

He uses Twitter to kind of fulfill that need to constantly be able to speak to his people, his followers, Kawalec said. Its almost like a virtual rally for him  he can use it to make a speech any time he wants.

In Kawalecs opinion, Trumps success communicating through Twitter boils down to one quality. Hes very authentic. He says what he thinks, come hell or high water. You know no consultant is going to be telling him to say that stuff, he explained.

But some of Trumps online swipes have produced condemnation, including his denunciation of former Miss Universe Alicia Machado. After Clinton brought up the Venezuelan-born Machado at the first presidential debate  accusing Trump of humiliating her when she put on weight  he later tweeted, Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?

Trumps tweet raised eyebrows for the content and the timing  he posted it at 3 a.m. Clinton responded with a tweet of her own: This is unhinged  even for Trump.

Twitter gives Trump direct access to the electorate but that means the electorate has direct access to Trumps id, said Jack Pitney Jr., professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College. And a lot of people dont like what they see. In March, when he retweeted the unflattering contrast between the glamour shot of his wife Melania and an unfortunately negative photo of (Sen. Ted Cruzs wife) Heidi Cruz, that was just needlessly cruel.

Trump is playing to his supporters who are eating it up, agreed Van Vechten. But hes managed to offend just as many people by saying what is on his mind.

Clinton, meanwhile, has taken a more cautious approach to reaching voters online.

Social media Clinton is just as scripted as TV Clinton, Pitney stated. Its filtered. Its not nearly as exciting but that can be a good thing.

Kawalec praised Clinton for a coordinated approach to messaging. Shes doing stories on Snapchat. Shes on Instagram. She is literally everywhere. She is using it highly strategically.

The brand identity expert believes Clinton learned something from her former boss, President Barack Obama, about how to capitalize on the new mass media.

I think Obama really set the stage in the last election where he kind of trained people in how politics could use social media. Before that, it might have felt a little amateurish. He kind of professionalized it. And Hillary has absolutely built on that, Kawalec said. Trump is still using it in a very organic way that just a general celebrity would use it.

Whatever the candidates approach, social media has become a dominant force in politics, with Twitter and Facebook live streaming the presidential debates and voters reacting to the candidates comments in real time.

Social media has essentially changed the relationship between politicians and voters.

Its giving everybody the feeling that they have direct access to these candidates. Because they can literally tweet to them or message them and they feel like theyre directly talking, even if the candidates never really respond to them, Kawalec said.

But the ascendant role of social media  and speaking in 140 characters on Twitter  comes with a significant downside, some observers maintain.

(Americas) founders were so absorbed with setting up a system in which deliberation  on the merits of issues and policies  would be at the heart of democracy. To do that you have to have depth of information. And yet in a tweet-filled world, its nothing but shallow, Van Vechten said. Theres no breadth or depth to the kinds of statements that are made through social media.

Still, theres no disputing social media will continue to change the political game.

In a lot of ways this is about the democratization of information, Van Vechten remarked. People do really feel when they have access to information they are equipped to interpret it and they dont need (traditional) media to tell them what to think.
Marlow Ugapo wants to be a model when she grows up. But to be the best, she said, shell need a college degree.

The Mentone Elementary student already knows which college she wants to attend  Brigham Young University-Hawaii  and she has the full support of her school, a recent addition to the No Excuses University program.

Its really cool, the 10-year-old Mentone girl said Thursday. Weve never been a part of anything, so this is a brand-new experience for me.

The No Excuses University network focuses on college-readiness starting in pre-kindergarten and asks participating schools to help their students meet all reading, writing and math standards.

Schools across the region belong to the No Excuses University network; Mentone Elementary is one of the latest. Schools have to apply to become part of the program.

The application process took two years for Mentone, just the second school in the Redlands Unified School District to be admitted to the program. Arroyo Verde Elementary in Highland joined in 2014.

We want all of our students to learn and know they have potential, and that college is possible in the future, said Mentone Principal Sonya Balingit. We are the first step in planting that seed. Its the ignition to excite them.

Each Mentone classroom has adopted a college to promote.

For example, Whitney Spaldings fourth- and fifth-grade combination class is known around campus as the Mountaineers from Western Colorado University.

It is Spalding who encouraged Marlow to shoot for higher education. Learning is an everyday process, she said.

Being a No Excuses school exposes our students to the many different colleges and universities available and encourages them to be lifelong learners, Spalding said. I think now that Im teaching fourth and fifth grade, I can see what they are interested in, help enhance their hobbies and encourage them to find their passion early on.

Encouraging children to pursue higher education has been one of Mentones goals for years, but the No Excuses program puts a new emphasis on it.

These kids embrace everything we do on campus, Spalding said. They are excited about No Excuses and Im excited to see what they end up doing in the future.

Contact the writer: khernandez@scng.comTwitter: @TheFactsKris
A 28-year-old state prisoner was re-arrested barely a day after he walked away from a Moreno Valley group home, California prison officials say.

Michael Diaz was found at 3:35 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 4, in a homeless camp in Moreno Valley, said prison spokeswoman Vicky Waters. He was taken to the California Institution for Men in Chino.

Waters was reported missing at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday after he removed his ankle monitor, Waters said.

Under Californias alternative custody program, eligible prison inmates may serve up to the last 12 months of their sentences in a private home, transitional care facility, residential drug treatment facility, or similar facility.

Diaz was imprisoned in June 2015 from Riverside County with a two-year sentence for drug possession and possession of a firearm by a felon or drug addict.
Editors Note: Menifee Valley Historical Association President Elinor Martin was incorrectly identified in a previous version of this story.

When it comes to preserving traces of Menifees history, the city has its own monuments men.

It was Riverside County Supervisor Marion Ashley who came up with the idea of erecting monuments to designate historically significant spots around the city, Menifee Valley Historical Association Project Manager Bill Zimmerman said.

The latter is responsible for executing the idea, which consists of installing a dozen markers inscribed with the stories of pioneering families and points of interest.

Zimmerman told the story of the supervisors involvement at a ceremony Thursday for the unveiling of the first monument. It sits along the 74 in Menifees Romoland community at a property still owned by descendants of the pioneering Motte brothers.

Ashley, who spoke at the ceremony, said he grew up in Romoland, where his father, a potato farmer, worked for the Motte family. About two years ago, Ashley and Zimmerman attended a Perris event, during which the supervisor remarked that though Menifee lacks a place recognizable as an old town, it has a colorful past with features that could be commemorated with monuments.

He said, Bill, you do the work, and well help you pay for it, Zimmerman told a crowd of several dozen people attending the event. It took place in front of the Motte familys barn housing an antique car collection.

The monument is one of six the association plans to install in the ensuing weeks, with others on their way in the coming year. Ashleys office and the city jointly provided $10,000 for the program. The local chapter of the Society of Colonial Dames XVII Century raised about $600 for print materials supporting the project.

Were proud of our ancestors, association President Elinor Martin said. Were excited about this monument program because this is going to honor those people.

Alphonse, Frank and Charles Motte left France in the 1880s and began farming land in the area now known as Romoland, a tradition carried on by Alphonses son, John Victor Motte, and his grandsons, John and Leon.

To recognize our family is wonderful, said John Motte, who attended the unveiling with his brother.

Other sites earmarked for monuments are the William Newport and James Ferrell ranches, the old Menifee and Romoland schools and Kings Inn, a resort built as the centerpiece of Sun City.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9690 or michaelwilliams@scng.com
A pig and a sheep may seem like an unlikely pair, but two such animals who were found in Jurupa Valley appear to be inseparable.

Now, the animals will get to stay together after being adopted by a nonprofit rescue organization Saturday, Nov. 5, according to officials.

A representative for the organization, Farm Sanctuary, picked up the animals from the Riverside County Department of Animal Services Jurupa Valley shelter, wrote spokesman John C. Welsh in a news release.

The animals were discovered on Oct. 24 by a Jurupa Valley woman who saw them on her property. Since that time, Animal Services workers have discovered the animals enjoy each others company, often cuddling with one another in their pen.

Welsh wrote in an email Saturday that the pig is about four months old while the sheep is believed to be a little over a year old.

The animals were placed at one of Farm Sanctuarys ranches in Acton, along the 14 Freeway corridor in Los Angeles County.

At any rate, we are very happy these two barn buddies are heading to a place where they can continue being companions to each other, wrote Welsh.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9693, agroves@scng.com or @AlexDGroves on Twitter.
Election Day is a big day for California voters  both in significance and sheer girth.

Among the choices on a truly fat statewide ballot: Picking a new U.S. senator to represent the Golden State  and weighing 17 complex initiatives.

U.S. SENATE

Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Orange, and California Attorney General Kamala Harris, both Democrats, are vying to win retiring Sen. Barbara Boxers seat in the U.S. Senate.

The congresswoman failed to make up any ground on her foe in the final poll conducted by SurveyUSA, issued last week by the Southern California News Group and KABC/Eyewitness News.



Related:

Your guide to the most compelling Election Day races in the Inland

How Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton changed the social media game

Harris entered the final week of the campaign with support from 47 percent of the likely and early voters polled. Sanchez was at 27 percent, and 26 percent of those polled remained undecided.

Sens. Boxer and Dianne Feinstein endorsed Harris, as has President Barack Obama; New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the designated Senate Democratic leader beginning next year; Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; and the California Democratic Party.

Sanchez earned the endorsements of 20 members of Congress, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and the conservative National Review.

PROPOSITION 51

Would authorize $9 billion in general obligation bonds for public school buildings, charter schools, vocational education facilities and community college campuses. The bonds would be paid off over a 35-year period at a total cost of about $17.6 billion.

PROPOSITION 52

Would extend a law that imposes fees on hospitals to fund health care for people with low incomes, primarily the Medi-Cal program that serves a third of Californians. The initiative would indefinitely enshrine the fee in law, making it harder for the Legislature to use the money for other purposes.

PROPOSITION 53

Would require voter approval before revenue bonds exceeding $2 billion can be issued. Promoted by a wealthy Stockton farmer and businessman, the measure seeks to block Gov. Jerry Browns plan to build two tunnels to divert water from the Sacramento River delta for use in Southern California.

PROPOSITION 54

Would require the Legislature to publish bills for at least 72 hours before voting on them and to post videos of legislative proceedings online.

PROPOSITION 55

Would extend a temporary income tax increase on the wealthy for another 12 years, raising an estimated $4 billion to $9 billion per year through 2030 for schools, community colleges, Medi-Cal and budget reserves. Voters first approved the higher tax rates for incomes above $250,000 in 2012.

PROPOSITION 56

Would raise cigarette taxes by $2 to $2.87 per pack and hike taxes on other tobacco products and nicotine products used with electronic cigarettes. It would raise an estimated $1 billion in the first year, with much of the money earmarked for health care for people with low incomes.

PROPOSITION 57

Would give corrections officials more say in when criminals are released and strips prosecutors of the power to decide when juveniles should be tried as adults. The measure is promoted by Gov. Brown.

PROPOSITION 58

Would roll back Californias voter-approved 1998 ban on teaching English learners in any language other than English, giving school districts the option to bring back bilingual education.

PROPOSITION 59

A nonbinding measure that asks whether California lawmakers should push for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would overturn the Citizens United Supreme Court case, which threw out restrictions on corporate and union political contributions.

PROPOSITION 60

Would require that pornography actors wear condoms while filming sexual intercourse and require porn producers to pay for vaccinations and medical exams for actors who perform in the films.

PROPOSITION 61

Would prohibit the state from paying more than the Veterans Administration for prescription drugs. The measure would apply to health programs for prison inmates, retired government workers and some low-income Californians on Medi-Cal.

PROPOSITION 62

Would repeal the death penalty in California and set the maximum sentence as life without the possibility of parole. It would apply retroactively to inmates currently on death row.

PROPOSITION 63

Would enact several gun-control measures, including background checks for ammunition sales and a ban on high-capacity magazines.

PROPOSITION 64

Would legalize the use and possession of marijuana for adults 21 or older and create licensing standards. Revenue from sales and cultivation taxes would pay for youth programs, environmental protection and law enforcement.

PROPOSITION 65

Would require that a $0.10 fee for grocery bags be used for environmental programs, redirecting money that now goes to grocers and other retail stores. The measure is promoted by opponents of Proposition 67, which would enact a statewide ban on single-use plastic grocery bags and require a fee for paper and thicker plastic bags used at checkout.

PROPOSITION 66

Would speed up the appeals process so death-row inmates are executed more quickly.

PROPOSITION 67

Would enact a statewide ban on single-use plastic grocery bags and require large retailers to charge at least a dime for recycled paper bags and reusable bags.
The Riverside Community College District Foundation has a new leader.

Launa Wilson started Oct. 3 as executive director of the foundation, which was created in 1975 to support student scholarships, academic and career programs at Moreno Valley, Norco and Riverside City colleges.

Wilson replaces Amy Cardullo, who retired in July after 21 years with the district.

Wilson previously worked at UC Riverside as the senior director of development in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.

Before that, she served as director of development for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Foundation, where she was in charge of fundraising for the universitys Greenspun College of Urban Affairs.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9292, stwall@scng.com, @pe_swall
On Sept. 18, 1888, a train pulled into the San Jacinto station and dropped off a newly arrived family from England.

Thomas and Jane Farmer, with their son and three daughters, got off the train, collected their belongings, looked around at their surroundings  and began to cry.

Although San Jacinto was about 20 years old at the time, the small town had only just gotten railroad access, and there was quite a bit of speculation on what the town would become. Part of the speculation was on the part of Thomas Farmers brother, John, who already had come to the area and was singing its praises to his brother and family, urging them to come to California since they wanted to come to America anyway.

According to Ruth Nelson, the Farmers granddaughter, when the Farmer family finally arrived, it was on one of those days when the Santa Ana winds were blowing in full force, obscuring the mountains that John had told them were so plainly visible and beautiful from his house in the San Jacinto Valley. Trying to avoid the blowing dust, newspapers and other debris, all the Farmer family could do was sit down and wonder what it had gotten itself into.

After a while, the Farmers secured a plot of land on the north side of town near the San Jacinto River and began to farm. That did not work out well, though, as their land was subject to flooding from the river at least once a year for the three years they owned it.

Desperate for something else to sustain his family, Thomas learned that a small hotel in town was up for sale. Although he knew nothing of the hotel business, he figured it had to be better than trying to farm near the river.

He bought the hotel that, luckily, was also the stage stop between San Jacinto and the mountains to the east, Temecula to the south and Riverside and San Bernardino to the west and north.

He renamed the hotel the Farmer House, and the regular stage traffic, together with traveling salesmen, kept the hotel going for the next several years.

Around 1900, San Jacinto received another soon-to-be-well-known visitor by the name of William Vosburg. Vosburg, a Canadian living in Los Angeles, wanted to take an adventure and so bought a train ticket to the end of the line  San Jacinto.

Once there, according to the family story, he didnt have enough money to return, so he decided to stay. He found a few odd jobs in San Jacinto, but most importantly, he began to court Anne Farmer, the 24-year-old younger daughter of Thomas and Jane, and they soon married.

This marriage was fortuitous because the elder Farmers were looking to retire and William and Anne Vosburg needed income.

So the Vosburgs bought out her parents, renamed the hotel the Vosburg Hotel and maintained the business at South Ramona Boulevard and South San Jacinto Avenue for many years.

William and Anne died in 1939 and 1945, respectively, and the hotel was maintained after their deaths by their children Ruth, William and Jane. The hotel was sold out of the family in 1971, thus ending roughly 80 years of hotel ownership by the Farmers and Vosburgs.

Today, the building sits empty after a large remodeling effort to convert it into offices.

Hopefully, it will reopen in the near future.

Thanks go to Betty Jo Dunham of the San Jacinto Museum (and Thomas and Jane Farmers great-granddaughter) for assistance on this article.



RELATED:

Historic Vosburg Hotel renovation may quicken (May 21, 2015)

Vosburg Hotel charmed guests for decades (Dec. 10, 2011)

San Jacinto may negotiate for historic hotel and care facility (April 21, 2011)



If you have an idea for a future Back in the Day column about a local historic person, place or event, contact Steve Lech and Kim Jarrell Johnson at backinthedaype@gmail.com.
With their signature red caps and rally cries of Lock her up!, Donald Trump supporters are typically hard to miss.

But is there another kind of Trump voter, one invisible to the polls and silent in the face of family, co-workers and friends? And are there enough secret or shy Trump voters to make a difference on Tuesday, Nov. 8?

Probably not, according to a recent study. And there would have to be a large number of them in swing states like North Carolina and Ohio to make a difference, said John Johnson, a data analyst, author and CEO of Edgeworth Economics.

If theyre hidden in California, theyre probably burrowed deep. The latest voter registration numbers show the state with an all-time record of 19.4 million voters, with the percentage of GOP voters falling to 26 percent from almost 30 percent a few years ago.

Related: Donald Trump supporters plan to watch California polling places

The latest polls show a tightening race between Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. The general consensus is that Clinton is leading, but that her victory by no means is a given.

The silent majority concept goes back to 1969, when President Richard Nixon first used the term in a speech to describe Americans who support his plan for ending the Vietnam War. The term appears on Trump campaign signs as the reality TV star and businessman spreads an economic populist message aimed at voters, especially blue-collar whites, who feel ignored by Washington and victimized by free trade.

According to the hidden Trump voter theory, a significant number of Trump backers arent picked up by polling firms that screen respondents based on their likeliness to vote, excluding Trump voters who lack solid voting histories. Other arguments are that Trump voters are less willing to be polled when theres bad news for him or because they dont trust the media.

Related: Do Southern California GOP politicians still support Donald Trump?

Another part of the theory is that some voters are afraid or embarrassed to tell others about their support for Trump, especially to women or minorities angered by Trumps comments.

One group would be middle- and upper-class white people, said Harold Clarke, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, whose focus includes public opinion, voting and elections. A lot of these people are liberal and supporting Hillary.

THUMBS TO FINGERS

John Berry, a cabinet member of the Redlands Tea Party Patriots, believes there are lots of hidden Trump voters. Berry, who has a pro-Trump bumper sticker on his vehicle, said he constantly gets thumbs-up and horn honks as he drives around, along with a few middle fingers.

Its a 10-to-1 ratio (in favor of) thumbs-up to middle fingers, he said. Redlands has a plurality of GOP voters, but San Bernardino County as a whole is more Democratic than Republican.

There is precedent for polls to underestimate a candidates support. In 1982, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley lost his bid for California governor despite leading in the polls.

Related: Trumps San Bernardino claim refuted by fact-checkers

The miss gave birth to the Bradley effect  the idea that polls and election outcomes might differ when minority candidates run against white candidates. Its tied to what social scientists call social desirability bias, or the inclination by those polled to give answers viewed favorably by others, including support for Bradley, an African-American who ran against a white candidate, George Deukmejian, in 1982.

Last week, the polling firm Morning Consult, in partnership with the political news website POLITICO, published a study involving 2,075 likely voters to learn why Trump did better in online polls than telephone polls.

Participants responded to a few background questions online before being assigned to a live telephone interviewer or a similar online interview. The study conducted in late October found that while Clinton led by five points among those interviewed by phone and three points in the online poll, the results werent statistically significant, meaning secret Trump voters arent likely to swing the election.

Voters with a bachelors or post-graduate degree and those in households earning more than $50,000 annually tended to back Trump in higher numbers online, the study found.

ROOM FOR SECRETS?

As Trumps poll numbers improve, Loren Collingwood, a UC Riverside assistant political science professor, doesnt see much room for secret Trump voters. What I see is a general consolidation of right-leaning voters  voters who would normally vote Republican  behind Trump, as a result of the (recent) FBI statements, he said.

Related: Donald Trump supporters, protesters rally in Temecula

The FBI late last week said it is probing new emails related to Hillary Clinton. Those emails were found on the laptop of former Congressman Anthony Weiner, who has been caught up in an alleged sexting scandal. The FBI did not release the content of those emails.

Most polls do not have a very large undecided vote at this point  this is where the Bradley effect voters would most likely come from, he added. In addition, (Libertarian presidential candidate Gary) Johnson is seen as a reasonable alternative for Republican-leaning voters, so closet Trump supporters in a poll would have the alternative of going for Johnson, not Clinton.

If theres any polling error, Collingwood said, it might be in underestimating the minority vote. That could bode well for Clinton, who does much better than Trump with non-whites.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9547 or jhorseman@scng.com
Government has disclosed plans to import 10,000 metric tons of fish feed from China, next year.



Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture, Sherry Aryeetey who disclosed this said the move is to improve Ghanas fishing industry by reducing the high cost of operation in that sector.



According to her, the initiative is a collaboration between the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture and the Chinese Embassy in Ghana.



The Ministry of Fisheries in collaboration with the Embassy of China will receive 10,000 metric tonnes of fish feed next year for fish farmers, she said.



Ms Sherry Aryeetey further indicated governments plan to establish a fish feed at Akuse in the Eastern region.



In collaboration with a private company, we are facilitating a 40,000 metric tons of fish feed mill at Akuse; this factory will employ about 200 people. In addition, the fish processing factory at Elmina will also produce 10,000 metric tonnes of fish feed and this will further reduce the cost of operation, Ms Aryeetey observed.



The Minister made the remarks at an occasion to mark this years National Farmers Day Celebration.



The event which was on the theme, Agriculture: A Business Response to Economic Growth was organized at Kintampo in the Bono Ahafo region.



In attendance were, the President John Mahama who expressed his governments resolve to commit resources to improve the agric sectors contribution to the nations GDP; Minister of Agriculture; Alhaji Mohammed-Muniru Limuna as well as other state officials.

Source: citifmonline.com









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

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Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.
Former Attorney General, Martin Amidu, has alleged that the current Attorney General (AG), Marietta Brew Appiah Oppong, withdrew her application to examine embattled businessman, Alfred Agbesi Woyome over the GHC51 million judgement debt saga, because President Mahama personally gave an order.



The Citizen Vigilante, as he is often-times referred to, in a statement issued to the media moments after filing the application at the Supreme Court to personally examine Mr. Woyome, argued that the AG backtracked in order to protect some National Democratic Congress (NDC) officials, who benefited from the GHc51 million paid Mr. Woyome by the state as judgment debt.



In my application I filed today [November 4, 2016], I made use of information provided to me that: .when the Judgment Debtor was served with the order of the Court, he went to inform the NDC of which he is a member and financier; and the incumbent Government, in particular the Attorney General and the President personally, that should the order applied for by the Government for his examination be not discontinued, he will have no option at his appearance at the Court than to disclose truthfully and faithfully to the Court on oath the names of all NDC and Government beneficiaries of the judgment debt, which was paid to him as a result of the unconstitutional conduct of the Attorney General declared in the decision of this Court.



I have also stated the information available to me and my belief that: the NDC and the Government realizing the power of this Court pursuant to its order granted for the examination of the 3rd Defendant/Respondent/Judgment Debtor to order the judgment debtor or officer to produce any books or documents in the possession of the judgment debtor relevant to these questions at the time and place appointed for the examination took to panic resulting in the President instructing the Attorney General upon her own advice to him to discontinue the application for examination of the judgment debtor which the Court had already ordered, Mr. Amidu added.



According to the one-time Attorney-General in the erstwhile Mills' adminstration, if given the chance the good people of Ghana will hear and see the beneficiaries of the unconstitutional judgment debt in the NDC and this Government.



He further challenged President Mahama to allow his examination of Mr. Woyome to commence if government has nothing to hide.



Gargantuan crimes were indeed committed as I stated in 2012. Corruption is trying to prevent the public from hearing the whole story from the horses own mouth. I challenge the honesty and integrity of the President and the Government to allow the examination of its financier, the Judgment Debtor, Alfred Agbesi Woyome to proceed without hindrance if they have nothing to hide.





Read a copy of Martin Amidu's statement below



AMIDU APPLIES TO THE SUPREME COURT TO EXAMINE ALFRED AGBESI WOYOME THE JUDGMENT DEBTOR  BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU



Today, spurred on by agitations from the public who are protesting against the lack of probity, accountability and transparency on the part of the Government in purporting to discontinue the Governments application and consequential order granted by the Supreme Court on 19th October 2016 (ordering Alfred Agbesi Woyome to appear before the Court on Thursday 10th day of November, 2016 at 9: 00 am in the forenoon to be examined orally on Oath to ascertain whether he as the 3rd Defendant/Judgment Debtor has any property or other means of satisfying the Judgment), I have this morning 4th November 2016 filed an application at the Supreme Court for leave to examine the Judgment Debtor as the citizen public interest Plaintiff in favour of whom the case was decided for the Republic of Ghana.



I have examined the circumstances surrounding the Governments reluctance to enforce the judgment and orders of the Court with the seriousness which the matter deserves. I share the view expressed by objective and reasonable members of the public that because the Government was the 1st Defendant/Respondent against whom the Supreme Court made declarations of unconstitutional conduct in paying the judgment debt to Alfred Agbesi Woyome the Government has been pretending for purely political reasons at each turn to take steps to enforce the judgment and orders of the Court only to deliberately abort them. I agree that the Governments objective has always been to create the appearance and impression in the minds of the unsuspecting public that it is complying with the enforcement orders. The Attorney Generals latest application to discontinue the Governments application to examine its financier, Alfred Agbesi Woyome, is one more such trick to deceive the public and obstruct the course of justice.



In my application I filed today, I made use of information provided to me that: .when the Judgment Debtor was served with the order of the Court he went to inform the NDC of which he is a member and financier and the incumbent Government, in particular the Attorney General and the President personally, that should the order applied for by the Government for his examination be not discontinued he will have no option at his appearance at the Court than to disclose truthfully and faithfully to the Court on oath the names of all NDC and Government beneficiaries of the judgment debt which was paid to him as a result of the unconstitutional conduct of the Attorney General declared in the decision of this Court.



I have also stated the information available to me and my belief that: the NDC and the Government realizing the power of this Court pursuant to its order granted for the examination of the 3rd Defendant/Respondent/Judgment Debtor to order the judgment debtor or officer to produce any books or documents in the possession of the judgment debtor relevant to these questions at the time and place appointed for the examination took to panic resulting in the President instructing the Attorney General upon her own advice to him to discontinue the application for examination of the judgment debtor which the Court had already ordered.



The full application can be found on my website at martinamidu.com.



I would like to assure all public spirited Ghanaians that should I be given the opportunity to examine the Judgment Debtor, Alfred Agbesi Woyome, in Court the good people of Ghana will hear and see the beneficiaries of the unconstitutional judgment debt in the NDC and this Government. Gargantuan crimes were indeed committed as I stated in 2012. Corruption is trying to prevent the public from hearing the whole story from the horses own mouth. I challenge the honesty and integrity of the President and the Government to allow the examination of its financier, the Judgment Debtor, Alfred Agbesi Woyome to proceed without hindrance if they have nothing to hide.



Martin A. B. K. Amidu



4th November 2016

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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

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Just when the utter fkn deluge of opinion pieces about Bernard Salts dumb smashed avo story started to die down, old mate decided to have another crack. This time, hes tut-tutting at young people yet again, for spending all their money on Bali holidays instead of saving it.

You cant really blame demographer-slash-expert level troll Salt for having another crack at millennials: his smashed avocado piece went viral as fuck, even showing up in the US and UK media, so his editors at The Australian were probably frothing for a good follow-up.

His latest piece, published this morning, opens:

Gather round, boys and girls, for I have a tale to tell that will touch your hearts. I want to talk about two tribes that inhabit this land, the money mortals and the money magicians. Money mortals live in a mean old finite world where a certain amount of money comes in each week and thats all there is. Can you imagine that, boys and girls, a world where money is limited and where there is no legitimate way to get more? Lets call this money-challenged place the real world.

Classic Salt. The column then goes on to explain the concept of saving money to people who might not understand it:

The idea of budgeting is this: you pay everything that has to be paid first, and then you make your lifestyle fit around whatever you have left. But thats not all. Some money mortals do something else to ensure the survival of their species. Does anyone know what that is? Anyone? Thats right, they save.

Then we get to the real meat of the column:

Now heres the thing. When a money mortal meets a money magician, the latter will complain that theyre broke. And this makes the money mortal feel very sad for the money magician; some have even been known to help out money magicians in the forlorn belief that they might be converted by good deed into money moralism, however boring that might be.

But then do you know what happens, boys and girls? A week after money magicians complain about being broke, they post on social media photographs of themselves in a pool in Bali!

After his last column went viral, Salt claimed that it was all a big stitch-up and if wed read it properly, we would have realised that he was parodying the voice of an old out-of-touch person in a hipster cafe.

This time around, hes clearly parodying the voice of a tedious baby boomer whos got whats his and is now freely shitting on everyone else as they try to jump on the first rungs of the ladder.

yeah that is not at all condescending pic.twitter.com/6umMKe2RHU  Helen Davidson (@heldavidson) November 4, 2016

I guess Salt and The Australian achieved their aim insofar as the article went viral, and here we all are talking about it.

Im hoping he gets to publish at least one more of these before the law of diminishing returns kicks in. My suggestion would be a piece on how Pokemon Go is driving up Sydney house prices so that whole mess is really all our fault.

Source: Herald Sun.

Photo: Agung Parameswarma / Getty.
CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses sexual assault. If you would like to talk to a counsellor about rape, sexual assault or domestic violence, give the people over at 1800 RESPECT a call on 1800 737 732.

A U.S. jury has found Rolling Stones publisher and one of its reporters liable for defamation in relation to an explosive 2014 story that detailed an alleged gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity house.

The story, entitled A Rape On Campus, was published in 2014, and detailed the experiences of a woman identified as Jackie, who said that she had been beaten and assaulted by seven men at Phi Kappa Psi.

In the outrage that followed, the university suspended all of its fraternities, but certain claims in the story were questioned, Charlotesville police found no evidence of the alleged assault and no substantive basis to support the version of events in the article.

Rolling Stone retracted the story after an independent report by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism found that writer Sabrina Rubin Erdley failed to engage in basic, even routine journalistic practice, citing failures at every stage of the process.

After a trial of two weeks, at which more than 11 hours of video evidence was shown, the jury of eight women and four men found that Rolling Stones publisher Wenner Media and its writer Erdley had defamed school administrator Nicole Eramo.

Dean Eramo said that she had been portrayed as the chief villain of the story, in part because of a claim that she had tried to prevent Jackie from going to the police.

Lawyers for Eramo said that Edrley approached the story with a preconceived narrative, and ignored any contrary evidence, portraying the dean as callous and insensitive to the plight of an alleged rape victim.

Eramo reportedly wept in court as the verdict was read out, and her lawyer Libby Locke said:

The jurys verdict is a complete vindication of Nicole Eramo, and a complete repudiation of Rolling Stones and Ms. Erdelys false and defamatory article. We are looking forward to the damages phase of the trial.

Sabrina Rubin Erdely was found liable for defamation in relation to two parts of the original story, and also in relation to interviews she gave after its publication, with a Slate podcast and The Washington Post.





Wenner Media were found liable for defamation for three parts of the story, one of them relating to the fact that they chose to republish it with an editors note but did not change or remove any part of the original.

The jury will return Monday to consider damages; Eramo is reportedly seeking $US 7.5 million.

Rolling Stone have since released a statement apologising to Eramo, admitting that it overlooked reporting paths and made journalistic mistakes in relation to the story.

Source: CNN Money.

Photo: Jay Paul / Getty.
Over 100 firefighters are battling a fire in Revesby thats threatening to damage homes in the south-western Sydney suburb.

Residents along Gallipolli and Jellicoe streets have been told to leave their homes, with burning car wrecks threatening to cause explosions and thick smoke blanketing businesses.

Fierce fire is burning at a Revesby factory, along with several other blazes across NSW. #9News pic.twitter.com/C1uDkpxUpq  Nine News Sydney (@9NewsSyd) November 5, 2016

Yowza.

Emergency crews say they were called just after 11am to an industrial fire at GMS Spares on Mavis St. Two people suffering minor burns and smoke inhalation were hospitalised.

Since midday, the fire has been burning out of control, and toxic fumes from the burning wrecks present potential hazard to anyone nearby. For real, look at the size of that smoke plume:

WARNING: Smoke from Revesby fire is toxic residents urged to stay inside @9NewsSyd #9News pic.twitter.com/qkh0B1waUG  Sophie Walsh (@sophie_walsh9) November 5, 2016

Luckily the winds blowing it east, across an industrial lot, but that still aint gonna make it easy for emergency services on deck.

Road closures are ongoing with drivers urged to avoid the area. It looks like this one might just burn for a while.



Source: NSW Police / FRNSW.

Photo: Nine News Sydney / Twitter.
In what may be the most inspired bit of casting since, well, Maya Rudolph played her on SNL, it has been reported that Lady Gaga is in line to portray Donatella Versace on the upcoming third season of American Crime Story.

The first season of the anthology series dealt with the O.J. Simpson murder trial, the second will be set in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the third, already announced, will focus on the 1997 murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace.

Gaga has been pretty cozy with series creator Ryan Murphy of late, appearing in several seasons of his hit FX show American Horror Story, and it was Murphy who sparked this latest rumour.

Per reports in The Guardian, Murphy was sitting on a panel when asked if Gaga would be a good choice to play Giannis uber-fabulous sister Donatella. He reportedly grinned in response and said: Ya think?

If anyone can capture the essence of the human crocodile leather bag that is Donatella Versace, we know its Lady Gaga (or Janice from The Muppets, but she may not actually be available).

Gianni Versace was shot on the steps of his Miami Beach mansion in July 1997 by serial killer Andrew Cunanan, who latter committed suicide, aged 27, on a houseboat.

Cunanan murdered at least five people during a three-month period in 1997, and before Versaces murder, was listed on the FBIs Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.

The next two seasons of American Crime Story will be filmed concurrently next year, and Murphy is also working on another show, entitled Feud, about the great rivalries of the past.

The first season of that show will focus on the legendary old Hollywood feud between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.

Now, since you were probably going to look for it anyway:

Donatella Versace SNL from JeffDenver on Vimeo.

Source: The Guardian.

Photo: Bertrand Rindoff Petroff / Getty.
clintontrump-6c8ee31c58ca5064.jpg

The presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is heating up in Pennsylvania.

(Associated Press photos)

Pennsylvania is back in play.

The state hasn't sent a Republican to the White House since George H.W. Bush in 1988, but the unprecedented candidacy of Donald Trump may change that tradition.

This was supposed to be part of Democrat Hillary Clinton's firewall, along with blue states like California and New York.

Throughout a big chunk of the election, she held an 8- to 10-point lead in Pennsylvania.

As of Friday night, her advantage had dwindled to 3 points, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls.

"A Trump victory here wouldn't surprise anyone," said Terry Madonna, political analyst and pollster at Franklin & Marshall College.

As was the case when Clinton had a double-digit lead in Pennsylvania, it all comes down to the southeast corner of the state.

"Trump is starting to do better in the Philly suburbs," Madonna said. "Republicans are coming home."

Clinton has dropped in all Pennsylvania polls and those in other battleground states as a renewed email scandal continues to dog her campaign.

Last Friday, FBI Director James Comey told Congress the bureau is reviewing newly discovered emails that may be relevant to the prior investigation into Clinton's use of a private server as secretary of state.

The new emails were found during the Anthony Weiner investigation, which kicked off in late August after the former congressman was found sexting a 15-year-old girl. Weiner's estranged wife, Huma Abedin, is Clinton's longtime aide.

It's unclear what's in the emails. Comey hasn't given many details, and that's been a big challenge for Clinton.

"She's been on defense all week," Madonna said.

Clinton is still favored to win Pennsylvania, but narrowly.

That's why both campaigns are doubling down in Pennsylvania. Clinton held a rally early Friday afternoon in Pittsburgh, and Trump held a rally Friday evening in Hershey.

Vice President Joe Biden will be campaigning for Clinton in the state this weekend, including a stop Sunday in Harrisburg.

Trump will be in the Pittsburgh suburbs Sunday night, and the Clintons and Obamas will campaign together Monday night in Philadelphia.

Both campaigns are trying to rally turnout so they can win Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes as part of the 270 needed to win the presidency.

Trump's senior communications adviser Jason Miller on Friday told NBC host Chuck Todd that the Republican nominee has "six, maybe even seven" paths to 270, including a win in Pennsylvania.

While Clinton still has a big edge with the Democratic registration advantage in Philadelphia, Madonna said Trump is gaining ground.

"This is as close as a Republican has been since Bush in 1988," Madonna said. "This is unpredictable. This is really odd."

Clinton also has an advantage with the more organized ground game, but Trump supporters are more enthusiastic, Madonna said.

Democratic strategist and CNN commentator Van Jones described as "momentum versus the machine."

And the Clinton machine is likely to prevail in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, said Kyle Kopko, political scientist and professor at Elizabethtown College.

"I'm still expecting Clinton to win by a 3- to 5-point margin," Kopko said.

The presidential election between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat John Kerry in 2004 was also close, with Kerry winning the state by 144,000. But Kerry still lost the election and couldn't make up for electoral losses in Ohio, Florida and North Carolina.

Those three states are all battlegrounds in this election. Trump has a 5-point lead in Ohio, Clinton is up a few points in Florida, and North Carolina is a dead heat, according to polls.

Trump's path to 270 is steeper than Clinton's. Her worst-case scenario is 272, Kopko said.

But Pennsylvania is a must-win for her because, as Trump's campaign chief Kellyanne Conway said, "If Trump wins Pennsylvania, you'll know he won the presidency."

Trump's numbers tanked after an October surprise revealed a 2005 video in which the Republican nominee was heard bragging to former Access Hollywood host Billy Bush about groping women and making uninvited sexual advances.

Since then, at least a dozen women have come forward to accuse Trump of sexual assault or misconduct.

The Republican nominee has vehemently denied those claims and said he will sue his accusers at the end of the campaign.

Those accusations have been overshadowed in the last week by the questions and innuendo around Comey's latest email announcement.

Trump has benefitted from the distraction and is seeing a boost in state and national polls.

Clinton's lead nationally is now just 1 point.

"This is a surge," said Jeffrey Lord, a CNN commentator, Trump supporter and Camp Hill resident. "This is momentum."

Now, his candidate just needs to keep moving in the right direction, he said.

"Stay on the issues, stay on Obamacare, stay on coal, stay on trade," Lord said. "He really has a shot at winning this."
About 200 people who showed up at the Capitol to protest a planned rally by about 50 neo-Nazis are lighting firecrackers near police horses and throwing tomatoes at police.

The National Socialist Movement, one of the country's largest neo-Nazi groups, selected the state Capitol as the location for their biannual rally against diversity today from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. The group obtained a permit for a protest on the capitol steps.

The counter protesters are behind a barricade but there have been several tense encounters with police who are keeping them there. Here's PennLive reporter John Luciew's reports from the scene:

Counter protesters threatening to breach police barriers. @PennLive pic.twitter.com/zvaBfsv2NI  John Luciew (@JohnLuciew) November 5, 2016

A few more tomatoes hurled at police from counter protesters. #HBG @PennLive  John Luciew (@JohnLuciew) November 5, 2016

Heard a couple 'Heil Hitlers' from the Neo Nazi demonstrators. #HBG @PennLive  John Luciew (@JohnLuciew) November 5, 2016

firecracker just thrown at the feet of a police horse. Getting tense. @PennLive  John Luciew (@JohnLuciew) November 5, 2016

Police officers are moving in and out toward counter protesters. @PennLive #HBG pic.twitter.com/s7UejO6VAJ  John Luciew (@JohnLuciew) November 5, 2016

Man wearing 'proud infidel' T-shirt hit with a flagstick by counter protester. They are following him. @PennLive #HBG  John Luciew (@JohnLuciew) November 5, 2016

Small fireworks again being shot over the heads of the mounted police. Horses a little nervous.@PennLive #HBG  John Luciew (@JohnLuciew) November 5, 2016

Something just caused the mounted police officers to burst through the barricades & chase protesters. #HBG @PennLive pic.twitter.com/6Mon7Z7OmP  John Luciew (@JohnLuciew) November 5, 2016

Looks like a neo-Nazi group photo as the demonstration is wrapping up. #HBG @PennLive pic.twitter.com/7G18Ym5KqD  John Luciew (@JohnLuciew) November 5, 2016
casualties.jpg

Sgt. 1st Class Ryan Gloyer, left, and Capt. Andrew Byers died in fighting Nov. 3 in Afghanistan. Photos provided by U.S. Army

(U.S. Army)

The Department of Defense has identified a soldier from Western Pennsylvania as one of two Green Berets who died in Afghanistan Nov. 3.

Sgt. 1st Class Ryan A. Gloyer, 34, of Greenville, Pa., and 30-year-old Capt. Andrew D. Byers of Rolesville, N.C., died in Kunduz, Afghanistan.

Both men were members of the 10th Special Forces Group at Fort Carson, Colo.

The Associated Press reported that more than 30 people, including 26 civilians, were killed in the battle, a joint U.S.-Afghan raid against the Taliban involving NATO airstrikes.

Defense officials said the soldiers had gotten off a helicopter and were moving on foot with Afghan forces when they came under fire. Four other U.S. troops were injured.

Byers had been in the Army more than eight years and Gloyer for nearly 12.

According to the Army Times, Gloyer had deployed three times to Afghanistan and once to the Democratic Republic of Congo.



Gloyer's awards and decorations include the Bronze Star with V device, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, two Meritorious Service Medals, two Army Commendation Medals, the Afghanistan Campaign Medal with Campaign Star, the Combat Infantryman Badge, the Expert Infantryman Badge, the Parachutist Badge, the Ranger tab and the Special Forces tab.

Byers had deployed once to Afghanistan, once to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and served in Italy, the Army Times reported. He also was awarded a Bronze Star and Purple Heart posthumously.






Andre Price child death McKeesport.png

Days after charging his girlfriend in the death of their toddler son, police have also charged 23-year-old Andre Price Jr. of McKeesport, saying that while Price was told by his girlfriend that their child had been harmed, he never reported it to authorities.

PITTSBURGH -- On Wednesday, police arrested 21-year-old Christian Clark of McKeesport for the smothering death of her 17-month-old son. It was a shocking crime, they said, and one which Clark had chronicled from start to finish with a string of excruciating text messages.

"I'm killing them," one of the messages read alongside a laughing emoji with tears streaming down from the eyes.

"I'm literally going to jail you have a funeral to plan," the messages continued. "I really snapped this time."

Police initially said that while the recipient of those messages, the child's father, had failed to report them, he wasn't expected to face any charges as a result.

On Thursday, that all changed, with police arresting 23-year-old Andre Price Jr. of McKeesport and charging him with two felony counts of child endangerment.

It's not clear what changed the investigators' minds or why, and an attempt to reach officials for an explanation afterhours Friday was unsuccessful.

But according to previously published reports, Clark had sent Price text messages before, during and after the alleged crime; warning him she planned to do it, confessing to it and even documenting the aftermath.

"She is not dead. Him on the other hand, he doesn't budge," Clark reportedly texted Price soon after sending him images of their children face down on an air mattress. According to officials, Clark had smothered her and Price's 17-month-old son on the mattress and tried to do the same with their 2-year-old daughter. The girl survived and is currently in a relative's custody.

Police say Clark's own text messages show that she suspected Price of cheating on her and may have been motivated by a desire for revenge. Officials say she wanted him to return to their apartment and was angry when he refused.

There are also past allegations of domestic abuse between the couple, the Post Gazette reported, including one case for which Price is currently headed to trial.

And while Clark initially denied harming their children in speaking with police, officials say she ultimately confessed when confronted with her text messages to Price, the same that now have him facing charges as well.

Price was arraigned on the resulting child endangerment counts early Friday and remains confined to Allegheny County Prison on $10,000 bail. Online court records did not list an attorney for him as of Friday evening.

Clark is also imprisoned, and facing homicide and attempted homicide counts with bail having been denied her. Preliminary hearings are tentatively scheduled for both during the week of Nov. 14.
This past summer Alex Driehaus had the opportunity to intern as a staff photographer at PennLive.

Driehaus, a senior at Ohio University, aimed her Canon 5D Mark III at scores of interesting subjects - from participants at a candlelit vigil for victims of violence, to concert-goers at Creation Festival and some pretty excited kids at a book release party for "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child."

But for Driehaus, one of the most interesting assignments was one she took on herself.

Over the course of the summer, Driehaus spent time with three women whose way of life and faith have unwittingly and unwillingly thrust them to the forefront of national discourse: The women - Kareema Taghi and sisters Mona and Ola Soweilam - are Muslim.

Driehaus jumped into the photo essay idea the day she met Mona at a park in Mechanicsburg. Mona - as per usual - was playing with her kids - as if she herself was a kid.

"I had tried to photograph Muslim women at Ohio University but people were closed off and weary," Driehaus says. "Mona was very open and willing to be photographed so I ran with it."

Over the course of weeks, Driehaus spent time with the women, shadowing them on their errands and day-to-day responsibilities of being heads of households and businesses. Driehaus walked away from the assignment with a broader world perspective:

"I think the biggest lesson was realizing how similar they are to everyone else," she says. "There are a lot of stereotypes you hear about Muslim women and they are just completely untrue. Ola owns her own business and is very much in control of the finances. Karima is very involved in her community. None of these women are staying at home oppressed by men. They all have very different stories."

This fall, Driehaus returned to Ohio University to finish her degree in photojournalism. She is working towards a career in that field.

Asked what she hopes her photos will convey to readers, Driehaus said:

"I hope people see the photos and see the similarities between themselves and these women and realize that people aren't so different - despite the conversation happening in the political sphere. I hope they just realize that people around them despite seeming different all see the same thing they do. The majority of the Muslim population is very kind and opened and not what you see with ISIS."

Mona Soweilam

One of the first things that strike you about Mona Soweilam is the fierce jubilance with which she approaches motherhood.

Soweilam, a 31-year-old native of Egypt, immerses herself in fun and games with her two children, Rawan, 8, and Gamal, 4. The family, along with husband Gaber Al-Sayed lives in Camp Hill.

Watching her spend time with her children - and witnessing her joy and laughter with them, you quickly realize that the inner child in Soweilam is still very much alive.

"I love playing with them. I like to be like a little kid," she says. "I don't get embarrassed to act like a little child... I never get shy or ashamed to run around like a little child in front of a stranger and act crazy, even wearing my scarf. I love going to their age level and their way of thinking."

While play is very much at the center of her relationship with her children, Soweilam is strict about cultivating in them a sense of respect and propriety for themselves and others.

"I always tell them you always have imagination, an imaginary red line between you and a stranger. And do not let anyone cross that red line, and you to do not cross that red line," she said. "I try to teach them everything, respect people, love people, be friendly with everyone, love everyone."

Kareema Taghi

Raised in the United Methodist Church, Kareema Taghi converted to Islam just months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks in this country. She lives in Mechanicsburg with her husband and her daughter Aisha.

Taghi still negotiates the double-take looks from strangers - and even the bold overtures from total strangers who come up to her questions.

"A lot of times people will say, 'I don't want to offend you, but can I ask this question?' and I pretty much am open to any question," she says. "There hasn't been anything that I really haven't heard. And so you know I think most Muslims are like that."

Taghi says she is happy to share information about her faith to anyone who wants to learn more - but she is not out to convert anyone.

"I don't push my faith out on anybody, I don't I don't go to the door knocking and you know trying to convert people, that's not that's not me, that's not my personality," she says.

Taghi does say she wishes more people would try to better understand her faith.

"The things I wish people knew more about Islam is one, we have the same God," she says. "A lot of people say well you worship Allah, and what they don't understand is that the Arabic word for God, the Christian God in their Bible is Allah.. and it's just like any other. French has a word for God, Spanish has a word for God, English has you know God. So a lot of people think that were worshipping something different, and we're not. God, Allah, is the God, the creator of the universe, the creator of the heavens and earth, and the same God that the Jews and Christians worship."

Like many Muslims across the world, Taghi tries to set the record straight about her faith:

"Our religion does not condone violence at all, self-defense yes, that's fine, but to go out and kill innocent people ... anybody who does that, it's not for religion, it's for political reasons," she says. "That's it. It has nothing to do with religion, they can say it's in the name of God, they can you know say whatever, but it's a political thing and has nothing to do with religion, nothing."

Ola Soweilam

Ola Soweilam saw a void and decided to fill it. About a year ago, Soweilam was moving from Harrisburg to Camp Hill when she realised the immediate area did not have a halal market. (Halal is the term for food that complies with Islamic law - similar to the way kosher food complies with Jewish law.)

"I'm one of the customers," she said. "I need this stuff and I know how hard it is to buy this stuff."

Soweilam decided to open up her own business. (Did we mention she is Mona's older sister?) She had never owned a business before but that did not deter her. With the help from friends, she honed her business skills, learning everything from ordering wholesale to keeping the books.

These days El Ola Halal grocery on Market Street in Camp Hill offers an array of products from across not only Egypt but parts of the Middle East. Soweilam stocks a myriad of spices and dry goods as well as fresh products, and even clothing.

"It's hard work," says Soweilam, who has two children. "In the beginning it was so difficult for me."

A lot of the products in her store may be labeled in Arabic, but she says that shouldn't deter people from trying their hands at cooking the food. Soweilam is more than willing to lend a bit of culinary tutoring.

"A lot of Americans check out what I have and ask about how to cook," she says. "I encourage people if they are interested, they can come over and I can help get the spices together. Some of the spices might be strange for them."

In Egypt, just about every city is known for one iconic dish. A native of Alexandria, Soweilam naturally favors the signature dish of that Mediterranean port city: the Alexandrian style beef liver known as Kebda Eskandarani.

"The beef liver is done certain way," she says. "Everybody knows Alexandria liver."

The specialty dish is made "with a lot of garlic..we fry it and it smells good and tastes good. You can do it as a wrap, in bread."

Soweilam plans to install a prepared-foods counter - which might be great news for anyone holding out for some beef liver.
Cameron McLay

Pittsburgh Police Chief Cameron McLay addresses a news conference after being introduced by Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto on Friday, Sept. 12, 2014, in Pittsburgh. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)

(Keith Srakocic)

PITTSBURGH -- Two years after taking the helm of this city's 890-member police force, and amid mounting friction with his own officers, Pittsburgh police chief Cameron McLay has announced he will be stepping down, saying he's accomplished what he can in the role of chief and is ready to pass the torch.

"I think I have done the job that I came to do. I think I have taken it as far as I can," McLay, 59, told the Post Gazette.

His decision to resign comes weeks after the city's police union returned a "no confidence" vote against him, although a direct correlation between the two was denied.

The union vote, however, followed a string of controversies involving McLay's sometimes internally unpopular stances on social issues, his scrutinized appearance at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July, and what some believed was a police reform push overly critical of the members of his own department.

Of course McLay disagreed and called the pushback the inevitable price of progress. He had also come aboard amid possibly the most turbulent time in modern policing, with relations between officers and the communities of color they serve drawing widespread scrutiny nationwide, and putting some in the law enforcement community on the defensive as well.

It is against this backdrop that McLay vowed, sometimes controversially among his own rank-and-file members, to challenge racism at work, and to work with community activists like those under the Black Lives Matter banner. Some police unions blame the Black Lives Matter movement for stoking anti-police sentiment in the U.S. in the wake of a series of high-profile police killings of unarmed black men. Because of that, even tacit support for the movement from a police chief was sure to raise eyebrows.

But for all of his critics, McLay has also been lauded by city officials and comunity activists for helping to mend fences between the city's police department and its African American community.

McLay is also credited with a 51 percent drop in lawsuits against city officers and with having helped to launch training programs to reduce racial bias among officers while encouraging more "community policing" in Pittsburgh. He also vowed to investigate further an internal report that found the use of force by Pittsburgh Police continued to disproportionately impact city residents of color.

"The changes that Chief McLay has made are here to stay," Mayor Bill Peduto said shortly after McLay announced his resignation Friday.

McLay, a native of Wisconsin, was the first outsider to lead the bureau in more than 150 years. He also arrived after former police chief Nate Harper was sent to prison for failing to file federal income taxes and for stealing from the police bureau.

But if McLay was tasked with erasing the stain of corruption Harper had left, some in the department say he failed in his approach.

"I just think he had a narrative," Officer Robert Swartzwelder, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 1, told the Post Gazette.

"When he came here, the police department was 'corrupt.' The police department was not corrupt. You had some problems at the top, but you did not have problems with the rank-and-file."

In the end, the gulf that emerged between them may have proven unbridgeable.

With his exit, McLay's former assistant chief, Scott Schubert, will take over as his interim successor.

Schubert will serve as acting chief for a period of 90 days before officials decide if he's to assume the role full-time.

McLay's last day before he takes leave will be Election Day on Tuesday, TribLive.com reports. The outgoing chief said he may return to Wisconsin to be with family.
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- The suspect in a shooting at a Pennsylvania Wal-Mart store told police he opened fire on his co-worker because the employee was offended he was changing genders to female and had threatened him, police say.

Zachary McClimans, 22, of Sharon, told police he raised his concerns to management at the Hermitage store last week but "no decision had been made" regarding the other employee, police said in a criminal complaint Friday.

McClimans decided one "solution" to the problem was shooting his co-worker so McClimans took his grandfather's .380-caliber pistol and drove to the store, the complaint said. Although McClimans originally planned to shoot the other employee outside the store, McClimans went in and shot him about 10:30 p.m. Thursday, the complaint said.

The employee was shot four times, including twice in the back, authorities said. He was taken to St. Elizabeth Hospital in Youngstown, Ohio. Hermitage police said he's expected to recover.

An attorney for McClimans wasn't listed in court documents. Phone calls to several of his relatives went unanswered, except for one man who refused to give his name and declined to comment.

McClimans also is charged with aggravated assault and reckless endangerment, theft and carrying a firearm without a license.

The Wal-Mart store in Hermitage, about 70 miles north of Pittsburgh, closed overnight Thursday after the shooting. It reopened Friday morning. Store employees wouldn't comment, but Wal-Mart spokesman Charles Crowson confirmed in an email that one worker was injured and said one worker was fired.

"Our thoughts are with the associate who was injured. The other associate involved has been terminated," Crowson said. "We're continuing to gather all of the facts and work closely with law enforcement."

Wal-Mart said police would have to answer any questions about McCliman's allegation of harassment at the store.

Although McClimans told police he's switching genders, it wasn't known if he has begun identifying as female. Police checked the box marked "male" on the criminal complaint and did not list any feminine aliases for McClimans.
The gloves came off Friday night as the candidates in one of the most heated down ballot races in Pennsylvania faced off for their final debate in the state senatorial race for the 15th legislative district.

Between the jabs and figurative punches, Democratic incumbent Rob Teplitz and Republican challenger John DiSanto exchanged sharp words, the former accusing his rival of flip flopping on issues and being unprepared for public office. DiSanto countered time and again accusing his opponent of lying and talking in circles without saying anything.

Sitting at opposite ends of a white couch perched in the center of the stage at Midtown Arts Center, the candidates started the evening on a polite, even cordial tone, but quickly turned into a heated encounter that at times got so heated moderator Blake Lynch, one of the organizers of the debate, had to reign in the contentious banter.

The respective exchanges drew equally loud jeers and applause from the audience, which was heavily comprised of millennials - the target audience of the night's event.

Interspersed between respective charges and accusations, the candidates exchanged quibbling reminiscent of marital strife.

"He constantly lies about me," DiSanto said, during one sharp rebuttal to charges laid on him by Teplitz.

Moments later, Teplitz took on the accusations made by his rival, leaning forward a bit as DiSanto turned away and saying to him: "Can you look at me when I talk to you."

At one point, in the heat of the quibbling, Teplitz said of DiSanto: "He's not running for the Senate. He's running to be in the Village People."

That may or may not have come prior to DiSanto accusing his rival of displaying "the same pattern" of sitting "in front of crowd talking policy but say nothing."

"I 've not seen him do anything," DiSanto said.

Coming just four days before Election Day, the debate caps off what has been one of the most heated races in Pennsylvania, pitting a popular Democratic incumbent with a conservative newcomer handpicked by one of the Senate's most powerful figures.

DiSanto, 56, the former president of Triple Crown Corp., a construction and property management company, who now is a crop farmer, was recruited by Sen. Scott Wagner, R-York County, who as chairman of the Senate Republican Campaign Committee. Wagner has pointed to Teplitz's seat as one the Republicans can reclaim this election.

Teplitz in 2012 won the election in the historically Republican stronghold. But since then, the 15th legislative district, which includes Harrisburg and Dauphin County, underwent redistricting a few years ago, dramatically changing the political landscape across the densely populated district.

What had been a district with a Democratic voter registration edge in 2012 is now one where Republicans hold the advantage because the last redistricting swapped out portions of Dauphin and York counties with Republican-rich Perry County.

Teplitz and DiSanto have waged a contentious fight via TV ads - each respectively assailing the other's career, politics and general acumen. On Friday night that tone and tenor continued on the debate stage.

Neither candidate dropped bombshells, adhering to the talking points that have defined their respective campaigns in the areas of education reform, tax reform, job creation and on down to taxing fracking.

DiSanto reiterated that he was focused on job creation, education reform, pension reform and tax regulation and reform. He said the millennials in the district were being saddled with the burden of poor economic policies, adding that he would apply his 35 years of business experience to helping make Pennsylvania business friendly on a global level.

Teplitz stressed his work "fighting for schools and good jobs," vowing to continue to invest in public education and restoring cuts to the system. He enumerated his support for legislation and programs that support safe communities while being sensitive to the issues of racial issues across community policing.

Teplitz said he was sensitive to the needs of a highly diversified community, adding that he led by example: "My office looks like the district," he said, noting the diversity of his staff.

Answering the question about racial disparities and issues in police matters, DiSanto said that "everybody bleeds the same color...and we can't help have biases...but we need to get past the rhetoric."

"We need to look inside a person's heart and try to connect," he said. "Our country is competing with the rest of the world and the only way we are going to compete is to work together."

The two rivals talked extensively about tax reform, with Teplitz reiterating that he is "open minded" to any piece of legislation and that a fair assessment should be done to determine if "we should be doing more." He said he was opposed to imposing taxes on hardworking Pennsylvanians before applying taxes to out-of-state gas drillers.

DiSanto re-articulated his stance on tax reform - that of completely eliminating property taxes and broadening the tax base with higher sales and personal taxes.

Teplitz accused of of talking about eliminating property taxes but not being forthcoming with details about increases to income and sales taxes.

"He won't tell you how much," he said.

"He constantly lies about me," DiSanto countered.

In addition to questions on education, taxes and school choice, the candidates delved into an exchange on medical marijuana and legalizing marijuana.

Teplitz took DiSanto to task on having earlier said he was in favor of legalizing marijuana but eventually flip-flopped on the issue.

He said the last thing the Legislature needed this year prior to approving medical marijuana was for someone to jeopardize the process "by going farther" than the General Assembly was willing to go.

DiSanto denied having a change of mind on the issue and turned the exchange on Teplitz reverting back to his charge that "it's the same issue" - that of his rival not saying anything of substance.

To that Teplitz replied: "John you don't understand. You not only not understand the policy issue but you don't understand it well enough to explain your position."

DiSanto got another dig in, saying"I 've not seen him do anything," in his four years in office.

One of the livelier reactions from the crowd came amid a discussion on issues centering around the LGBTQ community. After Teplitz outlined legislation that he has sponsored that would address the rights of the LGBTQ community, DiSanto mentioned "We are stronger together," borrowing one of the iconic campaign slogans of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

The evening closed out with a question on the minimum wage.

Teplitz, who supports raising it to $10.10 - with regular cost of living increases - said people who work should be able to make a living wage and stay out of poverty.

"It's the right thing to do economically and the right thing to do morally," he said.

DiSanto said he does not support raising the minimum wage to $15 - which was the question from the member of the audience - and said he supports a "training wage" that would allow; students "to grow" into a minimum wage job.

;
After seeing Republican candidate Donald Trump speak in Hershey Friday, volunteers at Trump's campaign headquarters in Hampden Twp. today, Nov. 5, were slightly tired but energized.

Inside the Donald Trump campaign office at Twin Ponds West in Hampden Twp.

The final push is on, just three days before the general election on Nov. 8.

Many volunteers gathered at the Trump office inside Twin Ponds West around 11 a.m. to hear Texas Governor Rick Perry and Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant speak.

The governors are in Pennsylvania today to support Trump.

"The excitement is palpable and it has always been like this," said Cynthia Rejoyce Lindsey, a volunteer from Mechanicsburg. "I think it flows from the top."

Throughout the campaign and this weekend, Lindsey said she will be canvasing door-to-door in local neighborhoods to spread the word about voting on Nov. 8.

"I look forward to coming here every day, and I wouldn't do this unless I believed in Mr. Trump. I'm excited for this election. We are going to turn Pennsylvania red," she said.

Check out the video, above, to see more on the happenings today at the Trump campaign office.
HERSHEY - If Donald Trump wins Pennsylvania, it will be because of crowds like this.

The Republican presidential nominee isn't supported by the party establishment, but he has wooed blue-collar and middle class crowds looking for a hero.

They believe Trump is the guy who can change their lives - even if he hasn't said how.

On Friday night in Hershey, he wouldn't tip his hand to the enemy and say how he will defeat ISIS, but his supporters believe him when he says he can.

They cheer for "the wall" and chant together about locking up Democrat Hillary Clinton.

They're not supporting him in spite of the video scandal. They supporting him because of the video scandal.

"He never tried to hide who he is," said Katie Maukus, a supporter from Schuylkill County. "What he said wasn't right, but he didn't lie. Hillary's a liar."

Maukus was one of thousands of supporters waiting to get in the Trump rally Friday night in Giant Center.

It was Trump's largest crowd in Pennsylvania, with about 13,000 in attendance, said Paul Engelkemier, deputy communications director for the Republican Party of Pennsylvania.

Many of those supporters interrupted his zingers to scream, "We love you!"

The enthusiasm for Trump was equal to Clinton opposition in the room. Numerous times the crowd booed and chanted, "Lock her up!" when Trump's negative ads against her aired on the Jumbotron.

Gary Eberly, a Berks County resident, used fashion to make his point, wearing a "Deplorable Lives Matter" shirt.

Gary Eberly of Fleetwood, Berks County, is donning his "Deplorable Lives Matter" shirt at the Trump rally in Hershey pic.twitter.com/AHCTSXcMtL  Candy Woodall (@candynotcandace) November 4, 2016

Trump was here to make sure their support - and their anger - shows up at the polls on Tuesday.

"We're doing great all over the state," Trump said. "I really believe we'll do well in Philadelphia because that's where I went to school."

Trump was referring to his time at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.

Thousands of university students petitioned against him during the primary, and the school newspaper endorsed Clinton.

Philadelphia is the area of the state where he polls the worst, trailing Clinton by more than 20 points - including after the recent email review.

Trump's strongholds are in the blue-collar suburbs of Pittsburgh and Scranton, as well as central Pennsylvania.

He spoke directly to those voters Friday night, promising to unleash shale energy while also bringing back coal jobs and steelworkers.

Trump hasn't said how he will do that, but he plans to cut corporate taxes to spur economic growth.

"We are living through the greatest jobs theft in the history of the world," Trump said.

In many ways, the speech Friday night in Hershey was a playlist of Trump's greatest hits.

To loud applause, he slammed Clinton's initial support of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and he lamented the higher premiums Pennsylvanians will have to pay because of Obamacare.

He also used the Pennsylvania Turnpike as an example of the country's crumbling infrastructure, slamming the interstate's potholes. "Our country's going to hell," Trump said.

The Republican nominee said he'll fix the roads and the inner cities, saying again that African-Americans should support him because, "What the hell do you have to lose?"

Some of the loudest cheers came when Trump brought up the FBI's renewed inquiry into Clinton's use of a private server while secretary of state.

"Now she's got bigger problems," Trump said. "If she were to win, it would create a constitutional crisis that would drag on for years and years."

But perhaps his biggest advantage is the number of fatigued voters who feel like the election has dragged on for years and years.

Clinton is on the wrong side of an enthusiasm gap, and her biggest challenge in these waning days is turnout, according to analysts.

She and Trump are making a final push in Pennsylvania this weekend, hoping to capture the state's 20 electoral votes.

Vice President Joe Biden will be campaigning for Clinton in the state this weekend, including a stop Sunday in Harrisburg.

Trump will be in the Pittsburgh suburbs Sunday night, and the Clintons and Obamas will campaign together Monday night in Philadelphia.

A state once considered part of Clinton's firewall, along with California and New York, is back in play, analysts said.

Clinton is still favored to win Pennsylvania, but her lead has slipped to 3 points, according to RealClearPolitics.

Trump, who is already up in Ohio and close in Florida and North Carolina, could seal his path to 270 with a win in Pennsylvania.

"If Trump wins Pennsylvania, you'll know he won the presidency," Trump's campaign chief Kellyanne Conway said Friday night.

And Trump guaranteed this adoring crowd that's exactly what he'll do.

"Boy, are we going to win," he said. "We're going to win Pennsylvania big."
Donald Trump and Gov. Mike Pence campaign in King of Prussia

Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, and vice presidential running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, hold a private campaign event in King of Prussia, Pa., Tuesday, November 1, 2016. Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.com

(Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.)

By Michael Gerson

Sixteen years ago I awaited the arrival of Election Day, anxious but hopeful.

Michael Gerson (PennLive file)

I was a part of a presidential campaign that had challenged the stereotype of Republicanism with a series of policy proposals on education, addiction treatment and other elements of social welfare.

Suspend, for a moment, your views on the efficacy of No Child Left Behind and the faith-based initiative. Accept that we viewed the coming election -- if we won -- as the mandate for a certain model of governance.

I was deeply and personally invested in the outcome of the 2000 election. I believed that the reform of Republican ideology would serve the whole country, the common good.

When I walked into the West Wing for the first time, and entered the Roosevelt Room just as the picture above the fireplace was being switched from Franklin to Teddy, I felt the continuity and burden of a noble experiment in self-government.

In his first inaugural address (a document I helped produce), President George W. Bush expressed the goal of his administration this way: "Sometimes our differences run so deep, it seems we share a continent but not a country. We do not accept this, and we will not allow it.

Our unity, our union, is the serious work of leaders and citizens in every generation. And this is my solemn pledge: I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity."

We were not, of course, unique in this idealism. This was the commitment of Barack Obama's administration when it entered the White House. And Bill Clinton's administration. And nearly all that preceded them.

I own up to being even more emotionally entangled in the result of the 2016 election -- not because of any change in policy or ideology, but because of Donald Trump's proposed shift in the very purpose of the presidency.

His political theory, such as it is, is "us" vs. "them." The "them" may be Republican elites, or liberal elites, or migrants or Mexicans or Muslims.

Trump would be elected on the promise of fighting, rounding up, jailing or humbling any number of personal and political opponents.

Take away this appeal, and there is nothing left but grasping, pathetic vanity.

The undercurrents of economic anxiety and cultural disorientation that Trump exploits are real, deserving both attention and sympathy.

But Trump has organized these resentments with an unprecedented message: The United States is weak and broken, a hell of crime, terrorism and expanding misery, beset from within and without, and now in need of a strong hand -- his strong hand -- to turn things around.

The single most frightening, anti-democratic phrase of modern presidential history came in Trump's convention speech: "I alone can fix it." A Trump victory would be a mandate for authoritarian politics.

Trump's ambitions would be bounded by strong legislative and legal institutions and by his own risible ignorance of real leadership.

But a Trump administration would be a concession to the idea that America needs a little more China, a little more Russia, a little more "so let it be written, so let it be done" in its executive branch.

I never imagined that Republican leaders -- many of whom I know and have respected -- would fall in line with such dangerous delusions, on the theory that anything is better than Hillary Clinton.

Most options are better than Clinton. But not all. And not this.

The GOP has largely accommodated itself to a candidate with no respect for, or knowledge of, the constitutional order.

Every constitutional conservative should be revolted. Those who are complicit have adopted a particularly dangerous form of power-loving hypocrisy.

But now, with polls tightening, it may not only be Republicans who abandon central tenets of their democratic faith.

It is almost beyond belief that Americans should bless and normalize Trump's appeal:

Normalize vindictiveness and prejudice.

Normalize

Normalize

Normalize contempt for the vulnerable, including disabled people and refugees fleeing oppression.

Normalize a political tone that dehumanizes opponents and excuses violence.

Normalize an appeal to white identity in a nation where racial discord and conflict are always close to the surface.

Normalize every shouted epithet, every cruel ethnic and religious stereotype, every act of bullying in the cause of American "greatness."

In the end, a Trump victory would normalize the belief that the structures of self-government are unequal to the crisis of our time.

And this would not merely replace the presidential portrait above the fireplace. It would deface it.

Michael Gerson is a columnist for The Washington Post. His work appears weekly on PennLive.
GREAT AMERICAN PRESIDENTS.jpg

By Alan Garfield

America has had plenty of rough-and-tumble presidential campaigns.

But Donald Trump has brought campaigning to new lows of tawdriness, mean-spiritedness, and reckless incitement of violence.

He has denigrated people with disabilities, Mexicans, Muslims, and women.

Trump has even refused to say that he will accept the results of the election if he loses.

But don't let Trump's depravity make you lose sight of our nation's fundamental decency.

Here are a few reminders to nourish your soul and restore your pride in a nation that Puritan John Winthrop, and later Presidents John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, called a shining "city upon a hill."

When President George H. W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, which protects people with disabilities from unjustified discrimination, he said that our nation's "problems are large, but our unified heart is larger."

He described America as "the most generous, optimistic nation on the face of the Earth" and said Americans will "not rest until every man and woman with a dream has the means to achieve it."

Ruth Bader Ginsburg struck a similar note when she wrote the Supreme Court decision granting women the right to attend the Virginia Military Institute.

Ginsburg, who as a lawyer for the ACLU's Women's Right Project in the 1970s won a string of early Supreme Court victories establishing women's right to equal treatment, readily acknowledged that the physical differences between men and woman are "enduring" and called them a "cause for celebration."

But they are not to be used, she said, for "denigration . . . of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual's opportunity."

As a U.S. Senator from Delaware, Joseph Biden introduced the Violence Against Women Act to Congress. Now, as Vice President, Biden has continued his campaign against the abuse of women.

Earlier this year, he reminded world business leaders that women's economic progress is meaningless without protection from violence:

"None of this matters if a woman is not safe," he said, "safe in her workplace, safe in her home, safe on the street. It's a basic human right - the right to be safe."

Every American child learns Emma Lazarus' revered poem, The New Colossus, which Lazarus wrote to raise money for the pedestal that holds the Statue of Liberty.

In the poem, that "mighty woman with a torch" tells the Old World, "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!"

But for America, she says, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be breathe free."

How many among us (excepting Native Americans and those whose ancestors were brought here as slaves) do not have family members who fit that description and were eternally grateful that this nation allowed them to settle here?

When President George Washington sought to reassure members of Newport, Rhode Island's Jewish community that our great nation tolerates people of every faith, he referred to the Old Testament verse:"Everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid."

As Washington explained, the government of the United States "gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance."

Given Trump's unwillingness to commit to accepting the election's outcome, many Americans might be thinking of another Washington quote that has been widely attributed to the first president (but never actually verified).

Washington is said to have openly pondered, "What is most important of this grand experiment, the United States?"

He then answers his own question:

"Not the election of the first president but the election of its second president. The peaceful transition of power is what will separate this country from every other country in the world."

Even though Washington may never have said this, the statement has endured in the minds of Americans, probably because it captures our gratitude for living in a country that has enjoyed the peaceful transition of power for over two centuries.

May we continue to be so blessed.

Alan Garfield is a professor at Widener University Delaware Law School.
Donald Trump and Gov. Mike Pence campaign in King of Prussia

Donald Trump leaves the stage. Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, and vice presidential running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, hold a private campaign event in King of Prussia, Pa., Tuesday, November 1, 2016. Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.com

(Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.)

By Eugene Robinson

This is no ordinary election. Time for a reminder of what's at stake:

Climate policy and the clean-energy economy: For anyone who accepts the scientific consensus that global warming poses a clear and present danger, there is only one choice. Hillary Clinton will continue along the path laid out by President Obama and other world leaders. Donald Trump has claimed, ridiculously, that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese.

Eugene Robinson (PennLive File)

For the first time, the three nations most responsible for spewing heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- China, the United States and India -- have all formally agreed to curb emissions.

The landmark Paris agreement is the biggest and most important step taken to date. Clinton would honor the accord; Trump would renounce it on his first day in office.

The rest of the world is moving rapidly toward renewable sources of energy, which recently surpassed coal as the largest global source of power-generating capacity.

According to the International Energy Agency, last year an estimated 500,000 solar panels were installed worldwide every day.

Clinton would encourage the growth of the clean-energy sector, which has the potential to create millions of jobs. Trump promises a renaissance of fossil fuels -- mining more coal, pumping more oil -- even though the electric-power industry is moving on.

The Western alliance: Since the end of World War II, NATO has been the globe's most important military alliance, a bulwark against Soviet -- now Russian -- expansionism and a source of peace and prosperity. It is no accident that the United States and Europe are the world's biggest economic powers.

Clinton may be a bit hawkish for some tastes, but she is firmly committed to the NATO security framework. Trump describes NATO as if it were a protection racket.

Trump has repeatedly and consistently expressed a desire for an alliance with Russia, even after it seized Crimea from Ukraine and intervened to save the murderous regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Trump often voices his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin -- who, according to U.S. intelligence analysts, has deployed an army of Internet hackers against the Democratic Party in a shocking and unprecedented attempt to meddle in our election.

Trump has done nothing to refute Clinton's claim that he would be Putin's "puppet" in the White House.

Immigration reform: An estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the United States, most of them from Mexico and Central America. Clinton supports common-sense immigration reform that would secure the southern border, modernize our system of legal immigration and bring undocumented people out of the shadows by giving them legal status and a path toward citizenship. Trump does not.

Trump launched his campaign by saying of Mexican immigrants: "They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

He has called for building a physical wall along the entire border with Mexico and absurdly said that Mexico would somehow pay for it.

And he pledges to deport all of the undocumented, in what would amount to a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing. Doing so would require a gargantuan and intrusive deportation force the likes of which this country has never imagined, let alone witnessed.

The social fabric: The country is undergoing inexorable demographic change.

By 2044, if not sooner, according to the Census Bureau, there will be no racial or ethnic majority; non-Hispanic whites, in other words, will be less than 50 percent of the population, becoming a minority just like every other group. This is already the case in California, Texas, New Mexico and Hawaii, and nationwide among childrenyounger than 5.

Clinton understands and embraces these changes. Trump, by contrast, has become the champion of those whites who, like King Canute, would hold back the sea.

It is no accident that he is avidly supported by the likes of David Duke, the unabashed white nationalist, Holocaust denier and former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

When Trump says "Make America Great Again," many minorities hear "Make America White Again."

Fiscal sanity: Clinton proposes new spending -- including to improve the Affordable Care Act -- that would increase the national debt by $250 billion over the next decade, according to the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Trump's combination of huge tax cuts and increased spending, however, would balloon the debt by a crushing $10 trillion over the same period.

I could go on, but you get the point. Donald Trump gravely threatens our future. He must be stopped.

Eugene Robinson is a columnist for The Washington Post. His work appears on Saturdays on PennLive. Readers may email him at eugene@robinsonwashpost.com.
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On 5 November Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan sent a congratulatory address to the participants of "Armenia-25: The World and Women" conference held by the Women's Council of the Republican Party of Armenia, Central Information Department of the Office of the Artsakh Republic President stated.

November 5, 2016, 12:40 Bako Sahakyan sent a Congratulatory address to participants of Armenia-25: The World and Women

STEPANAKERT, NOVEMBER 5, ARTSAKHPRESS: The address runs as follows:

"Dear participants of the conference, I welcome all of you and congratulate on launching this significant event.

During the whole history of our people an Armenian woman has always been the symbol of native hearth and family, a pivotal guarantee of maintaining national traditions, patriotic upbringing of the younger generation. It is impossible to imagine the longevity of our people, our victories, self-confidence and optimism without these values.

Nowadays Armenian women are actively involved in public and political life too, they have tangible role in the state building process, defense of the Motherland, educational, upbringing and other spheres of state's life.

It is a great accomplishment, which is also a necessary precondition for a steady development of the state and becoming a part and parcel of the civilized world.

The Women's Council of the Republican Party of Armenia is especially distinguished by political and public activism and holding this event is a conspicuous proof of that.

Topics to be discussed during the conference are significant and urgent and it is welcome that women representing Artsakh's political and public sphere are also participating in your activities.

I wish all of you efficient work, successes in life and your activity".
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The FBI has been leaking information to the Trump campaign, and top House Democrats are calling for a federal investigation. If Trump loses on Tuesday, the FBI could be facing a world of trouble.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings and Rep. John Conyers, Jr., the Ranking Members of the House Committees on Oversight and Government Reform and Judiciary, sent a letter calling on the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice calling for an immediate investigation into the FBI leaks to the Trump campaign.

Here is the full text of the letter:

This morning, Rudy Giulianione of Donald Trumps closest and most vocal campaign advisersappeared on national television and confirmed that he had obtained leaked information about the FBIs review of Clinton-related emails several days before FBI Director James Comey sent his letter to Congress last Friday about this matter.

In fact, Mr. Giuliani went even further and bragged about the information he had obtained, stating: Did I hear about it? Youre darn right I heard about it.

Already, Director Comeys letter from last Friday had broken with longstanding precedent by confirming publicly that the FBI was in the process of taking investigative steps relating to newly-discovered emails, despite the fact that Director Comey had not yet even seen these emails or determined whether they were significant.

It is absolutely unacceptable for the FBI to leak unsubstantiatedand in some cases falseinformation about one presidential candidate to benefit the other candidate. Leaking this information to former FBI officials as a conduit to the Trump campaign is equally intolerable.

For example, on Wednesday, Fox News anchor Bret Baier claimed on national televisionbased on multiple leaksthat the FBI was actively and aggressively investigating the Clinton Foundation and that an indictment was likely. This morning, however, Mr. Baier was forced to correct his report, admitting that it was a mistake.

These unauthorized and inaccurate leaks from within the FBI, particularly so close to a presidential election, are unprecedented. For these reasons, we are calling on your office to conduct a thorough investigation to identify the sources of these and other leaks from the FBI and to recommend appropriate action.

Thank you for your consideration of this request.

If Trump loses on Tuesday, and Democrats take control of the Senate, the FBI is going to facing several congressional investigations. There are already plans to investigate the bureaus investigation of Hillary Clintons emails. It is probable that members of Congress will want to investigate the leaking of information to a presidential campaign.

There is a faction within the FBI that is trying to help Donald Trump win the election. This has been made obvious over the past week.

If Trump goes down, he may set off a firestorm that will make the Congressional investigation into the FBI one of the top political stories of 2017.

A Democratic victory on election day will mean accountability for the FBI.
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Republicans may pay by losing elections for a generation after nominating Donald Trump, as Hillary Clinton is building a new and even more diverse coalition within the Democratic Party.

In a conference call with reporters, Clinton campaign manager Robbie Mook announced an early voting turnout record. At least 40% of voters in battleground states are turning out early.

In Florida, more registered Democrats than Republicans have turned out to vote early or by mail. The Clinton camp believes that they are winning Florida by 170,000 ballots In North Carolina, there has been a 16% increase in early voting, and in Nevada more than 40% early voted.

According to Mook, Clinton strategy has been to turn out voters who didnt vote in previous elections.

The Clinton campaign manager also said that there had been no surge from the Trump campaign and his voters, so the Republican nominee is going to need to outperform Romney on Election Day in Florida, North Carolina, and Nevada to win.

Mook also told reporters on the call something that should worry Republicans to death. Hillary Clinton has built a new political coalition.

The first part of the Clinton coalition is made up of Latino voters. The Latino vote has increased 120%-130%. The second part of Clinton coalition is Asian-American voters who have seen a 90% increase in early voting turnout. The third part of the new Clinton coalition is suburban women. Millennials are supporting Clinton after eight years of backing President Obama. The final piece of the Clinton coalition is African-Americans. African-American early voting turnout is 22% higher than in 2012.

Hillary Clinton is building on the Obama coalition as Latino, Asian-American, and suburban women voters are becoming a bigger part of the Democratic coalition. While Donald Trump has shrunken the Republican Party down to its white, male, older conservative base, Hillary Clinton is turning the Democratic Party into the diverse face of Americas future.

The autopsy that the RNC did after their defeat in the 2012 election is proving to be true.

Republicans had four years to diversify their party, but they chose the opposite path.

Now, the price for nominating Donald Trump may be paid at the polls for a generation.
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*The following is an opinion column by R Muse*

So, Donald Trump claims he is a champion of law and order and has often pledged that he would enforce the law balanced with justice and fairness. Like everything Trump claims or promises, it is a fair bet he is doing the opposite and where law and order is concerned, Trump is again in trouble for violating federal laws. In fact, he was just charged with deliberately violating federal labor rights of his own employees because Donald Trump only looks out for Donald Trump.

Of course the media failed to note another Trump legal violation and failed to report that on Wednesday the national Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that Donald J. Trump has continued to illegally refuse to bargain with employees, about 500, at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. The employees had earlier voted to officially unionize in despite threats and warnings from Trump that they would face retribution if they dared cross the big boss.

The federal labor board ordered Donald Trump to immediately recognize the workers union and begin bargaining a contract with them according to federal law. The NLRB ruling also said Trump must put up notices in and around the hotel property admitting the Donald was guilty of violating a federal labor law. The board wrote, We find that the Respondents [Trumps] conduct constitutes an unlawful failure and refusal to recognize and bargain with the Union.

That was good news for the hotel employees and it prompted the Secretary-Treasurer of the union representing the workers, Geoconda Arguello-Kline to say, Mr. Trump should accept the federal governments order to negotiate and treat his workers with respect. Mr. Trump is breaking federal law and Trump Hotel Las Vegas is operating illegally. Trump also employed a union-busting outfit to frighten underpaid workers into rejecting union representation.

At about the same time Trump hotel employees began organizing last year, the Donald hired the union avoidance (read union busting) consulting firm Lupe Cruz and Associates. That specialty company, which has already busted union campaigns at American Apparel, the Conway trucking company, and some Hilton hotels, boasts on its website that it can help prospective clients in their un-American effort to preserve a union free work place.

Trump hotel workers related to ThinkProgress that they were forced to attend meetings with Trumps union-busting representatives for the specific purpose of forcing them to be subjected to fear mongering and intimidation until they fully embraced Trumps reasons they should not be organized. One hotel housekeeper shared that Trumps union busters:

Intimidated us a lot. They pressured us a lot to vote no. They told us the union only wants our money, that if we supported the union wed lose our jobs, that the company would put our names on a blacklist and no other hotels in Las Vegas would hire us. They told us to think of what our children would do if we were out of work. Everyone was very stressed. People were afraid.

Still, brave workers voted to unionize and after the union won the election, Trump refused to recognize the results; because he didnt win. As a self-proclaimed law and order advocate, Trumps natural inclination was to violate the law and illegally retaliated against two of the workers responsible for the union organizing effort; by firing one and denying a promotion to another. Because he violated the law, Trump was forced to rehire the former and pay both employees back wages, and pay a fine of more than $11,000.

Trump tells his idiot supporters that he will be their blessed messiah and make them prosperous, but Trump only looks out for Trump and his only regard for workers is how he can best rape them financially.

In Las Vegas, for example, Trump International Hotel workers, over 80 percent who are immigrants and over 50 percent are women , all earn $3 an hour less than most Las Vegas hotel employees.

Another Trump employee, Maria Jaramillo, told ThinkProgress six months ago that besides substandard wages, the poor benefits package pushed the workers to unionize. We dont get an [annual] raise, we have to pay for our [health] insurance, and we have no retirement explained. Im not making enough to give my kids a better future.

One of Trumps employees said, He (Trump) says he wants to make America great. Well, he should start here in his own house, his own business.

Some hotel workers have been following Trump on his campaign trips around the country to try to pressure and shame him into coming to the bargaining table, but they learned that Donald Trump is incapable of feeling shame.

More than one or two Americans suspects that Trump is so shameless that despite a ruling and order from the federal government, he will not abide by the NLRB ruling and order and it is a suspicion that the largest police union in the nation endorsing Trump and all of his blue-collar supporters should take as a portent of their plight if their anti-union hero is elected president. There is irony in the biggest law enforcement union endorsing an anti-union advocate who is also guilty of violating federal laws by refusing to bargain with union workers, but that irony is likely lost on a union that endorsed Trump primarily because he promised to ban Muslims from America.

Donald Trump is not interested in law and order any more than he is concerned with the plight of American workers or their prosperity. If he were interested in either, he would not deliberately violate federal labor laws for the sole purpose of paying his employees as little as possible; it is something one suspects his ardent cop and stupid working-class supporters are unaware of.
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Speaking this afternoon in Wilmington, North Carolina, Trump launched into an epic rant, complaining that Biden is going around campaigning against him. What really got him, however, was that Obama is going, using Air Force One.

Trump demanded to know who is paying for that, by the way, which is rich coming from a guy who tried to get out of paying taxes on his own plane and uses other peoples money to buy himself luxury items and collectibles.

The Republican nominee also renewed his false claim that Obama is always screaming at protesters even though the president hasnt screamed at even one before petulantly exclaiming,

Ill tell you what. He should not be campaigning for Hillary Clinton. He should be at the Oval Office working on jobs.

Trump wont admit, of course, that President Obama holds the record on job creation. Because, as you know, Trump has promised to create all those jobs Obama has already created.

Per Sopan Deb, covering the event for CBS News, this is how the rant went:

Trump in Wilmington: "But wherever I go and I see [Obama] screaming at people that are protesters" pic.twitter.com/EnCHLtCFTu  Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) November 5, 2016

Watch Trumps complete speech. His comments about Biden and Obama come at the 2 hour, 20 minute mark:

Of course, as Katy Tur and others have reminmded the biggest liar in American political history, they do show the crowds. They always show the crowds.

Donald Trump is losing and he is panicking. He sounds more unhinged every day, every speech, and his lies, already record-breaking, are coming faster than ever.

Generally, outgoing presidents dont spend a lot of time campaigning for their successors, but few outgoing presidents are as popular as Barack Obama. If George W. Bush was a hindrance to his party, Obamas approval ratings just keep going up.

And Trump, already hurting at the polls, just cant stand that. So he cries foul. Trump, according to his narrative, is supposed to be the tough guy.

Instead, just as he did when he complained about not having a musical artist playing at his rally, he just sounds like a kid on the playground crying because another kid has a friend, and he doesnt.
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In one of the swing states where Donald Trump is supposedly running strong, a new poll has Hillary Clinton seizing the lead with just three days to go.

According to a Loras College survey released Saturday, the Democratic nominee has taken a one-point lead in the Hawkeye State.

Results:

Iowa Poll via @LorasPoll Clinton 44

Trump 43

Johnson 3

Stein 3

Undecided 7https://t.co/sKNcA4CSZw  Janie Velencia (@JanieVelencia) November 5, 2016

The poll conducted Nov. 1-3 shows that the race in Iowa will come down to the wire, but its a sign that Trump isnt even doing that well in states where the political media had already assumed he would win. It also seems to align closely with a Quinnipiac poll at the end of last month that showed the race virtually tied in the Hawkeye State.

RealClearPolitics shows the race in the state only within a couple percentage points.

According to Christopher Budzisz, the director of the Loras College Poll, the race in Iowa will come down to each campaigns ground operation.

The presidential race is within the margin of error, and both campaigns will be pushing hard to ensure their supporters get to the polls, Budzisz said. Iowa GOP turnout efforts for Election Day may be more important this year than ever before given the role of early voting.

Nobody seems to be paying attention to Iowa anymore, but in a race as close as the one in the Hawkeye State, Hillary Clintons ground operation could quietly steal it from the red column and slam the door on a Trump presidency.
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The release of the infamous Access Hollywood recording, featuring Donald Trump engaging in what he calls locker room talk, has spawned much debate regarding its consequences for the election and what it reveals about Trumps fitness to lead and how he would lead.

Much of this discussion, I believe, actually distracts us from what we can definitively learn from Trumps language.

Trumps language alone gives us enough to know what his presidency would have in storehow he would govern and, more precisely, how he would represent Americans of all genders, races, and identities in the unfortunate event he accrues 270 electoral votes on November 8.

Language is a system of representation. Our government is a political system of representation. We elect people to represent us. How an individual represents others in language, I contend, tells us a lot about how he or she will represent others in the political arena.

Almost immediately, though, when it came to the Access Hollywood tape, the question became whether Trump did actually commit the acts he spoke about, abusing his position, power, and authority to grope women, grab them by their p-y, kiss them against their wills, and more. Several women came forward with stories of experiencing Trumps sexually predatory behavior, turning Trumps alleged behavior into a question of he said/she said.

When Anderson Cooper asked Donald Trump if he understood the behavior about which he boastedand to which he implicitly admitted constituted sexual assault, Trump was quick to challenge Cooper, claiming never to have actually committed those acts but merely to have engaged in typical locker room talk like all men do. Just because he bragged about it, didnt mean he did it, was his defense.

He characterized this kind of talk as typical male chatter, as any man could verify. This statement prompted many professional and former professional athletes to contradict Trumps characterization of mens locker room chatter.

But how men actually talk in the locker room is not the main issue. And while Trump, not Hillary, belongs in prison if what the stories of the women who have come forward are true, the veracity of these stories is not even necessarily the main issue.

My point is that what he said is enough to disqualify him as a president who could effectively represent womennot to mention the various other constituencies he has insulted. His fitness does not hinge on whether or not he actually engaged in the behavior his language represents. The matter does not hinge on what she said but on what he said.

The mid-19th-century American writer Margaret Fuller, an early feminist who advocated for womens rights, particularly voting rights, explains the point.

At one point in her 1845 work Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Fuller orchestrates a dialogue between a woman who believes she needs the right to vote to make sure her interests are properly represented and a man who articulates the standard positions that allowing women into the political sphere will disrupt the sanctity of the domestic space and undermine family life. Besides, he insists, men do a fine job of representing womens interests, as women privately influence their men in the home, where they hold sway.

Fullers response to this dialogue clarifies for us why it is so important women have the right to vote and also how the language men usewe might all use in our culturegives us insight into how in the act of governing any candidate, such as Trump, will represent womens interests. She writes,

Knowing that there exists in the minds of men a tone of feeling toward women as toward slaves, such as is expressed in the common phrase, Tell that to women and children; that the infinite soul can only work through them in already ascertained limits; that the gift of reason, Mans highest prerogative, is allotted to them in much lower degree; that they must be kept from mischief and melancholy by being constantly engaged in active labor, which is to be furnished and directed by those better able to think, &c., &c.,we need not multiply instances, for who can review the experience of last week without recalling words which imply, whether in jest or earnest, these views, or views like these,knowing this, can we wonder that many reformers think that measures are not likely to be taken on behalf of women, unless their wishes could be publicly represented by women?

Fuller could have spoken these words today with no less relevance than they had in 1845. We certainly cannot review the experience of last week without recalling some pejorative or diminishing phrase of Trumps regarding women and many others.

And Fuller makes clear that the language is indictment enough given the political system in which we live. We live in a representational democracy, meaning we have the right the elect those who we believe will be best speak for us and represent our interests in the political forums where policies that impact us are discussed and decisions are made regarding our collective life in America.

If our leaders think negatively about those of us whom they represent, how can they possibly represent our interests? Suppose a leader thinks I am hopelessly stupid and uneducable. Can I really expect that leader will advocate for me to have access to higher education or seek to open opportunities for me to participate in society in a key decision-making capacity? If my representative thinks that physically I am inherently weak, will that person work, for example, to give me an opportunity to be an astronaut?

The point is, when our language misrepresents people and doesnt comprehend their full capacity and potential, we all lose. We lose the opportunity to unlock the full potential and talent of our nations population so we can harness these contributions for the social good.

We should want a leader who will see the best in us, even when we cant see it ourselves, and who will seek to cultivate our best powers in the legislation and policies she proposes.

We need a leader who will, indeed, represent, as they say.

The problem with Trumps language is not just that it portends what he will do but also what he wont. Thats what he said.
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Donald Trump is the candidate who campaigned on building a wall, but it is Hillary Clinton who has built an early voting firewall in Nevada and Trump is paying for it.

Nevada election expert Jon Ralston examined the early voting numbers and concluded that Trump has already lost the state, and will take Nevadas Republican US Senate candidate Rep. Joe Heck, and two House seats down with him.

The numbers, according to Ralston:



The Democrats won Clark County by more than 11,000 votes Friday (final mail count not posted yet), a record margin on a record-setting turnout day of 57,000 voters. The Dems now have a firewall  approaching 73,000 ballots  greater than 2012 when Barack Obama won the state by nearly 7 points. The 71,000 of 2012 was slightly higher in percentage terms, but raw votes matter. The lead is 14 percentage points  right at registration. You know what else matters? Registration advantages (142,000 in Clark). Reminder: When the Clark votes were counted from early/mail voting in 2012, Obama had a 69,000 vote lead in Clark County. Game over.

The statewide lead (some rurals not posted) will be above 45,000  slightly under the 48,000 of 2012, but still robust. Thats 6 percentage points, or right about at registration. The GOP turnout advantage was under a percent, worse than 2012 when it was 1.1 percent.

Trumps constant attacks have driven Nevada Latinos to the polls in massive record-setting numbers, and the result will gut the Republican Party in the state.

Hillary Clintons campaign was out to build a firewall that would put Nevada out of reach for Trump, and that is exactly what they have done.

Trump has built his wall, but it is a wall of Latino votes against him. The Republican nominee laid the first brick when he called Mexicans rapists on the day he announced his presidential candidacy. His ploy to drive up the white vote by targeting Latinos for abuse has backfired and may have cost the GOP any hope they had of keeping the Senate.

If Latinos repeat what they have done in Nevada in other swing states, election day could be a total bloodbath for the Republican Party.

It was Hillary Clinton who built an electoral wall, and Trump is paying for it.
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Record turnout among Hispanic voters in Florida has helped Democrats storm ahead in early voting in the state, according to the state officials.

Out of nearly 6 million votes already in the Sunshine State, Democrats have a 7,000 vote edge. Its narrow, but if the Hispanic vote continues to surge for Clinton, her lead will likely grow as Election Day nears.

According to Univision:

A dramatic surge in recent months by Hispanic voters is becoming daily more evident in official early voting data, according to analysis by University of Florida political scientist Daniel Smith.

It very well could be the Hispanic vote that saves Hillary Clinton in Florida, said Smith, who tracks the states voting patterns on his blog, electionsmith.com.

Its just been eye-popping the turnout by Hispanics, he added, citing data from early in person voting and voting by mail in Florida, the largest swing state which pundits say is a must-win for Republican Party candidate Donald Trump to have any chance of being elected president.

Polls currently show the race to be statistically tied.

The large turnout comes on the back of record voter registration by Hispanics in Florida this year. Smiths analysis found that nearly 23 percent of the 820,000 voters who registered this year in Florida describe themselves as Hispanic. While ethnicity is optional on voter forms, the number is way over the 16 per cent Latino share of the states population. New white voters represented 52 percent of new voters, despite accounting for 68 percent of the voting population.

It appears that a campaign filled with racially offensive and insensitive rhetoric by Donald Trump is taking its toll. In Tampa today, Trump even made this puzzling comment:

Trump in Tampa: As you know, the Cubans just endorsed me  Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) November 5, 2016

Fact check: not true.

Of course, its not just minority voters in the state that should be worrying the Trump campaign.

As

All of this spells trouble for Republicans not just on Nov. 8, as it would all but guarantee a Clinton win in the state, but it would also hurt their chances in future presidential elections.
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When Melania Trump spoke on Thursday, the irony gene wasnt the only thing missing in her scripted narrative. While painting a picture of the ideal immigrant who followed the law, she avoided giving answers to questions about her immigration status when she began her modeling career.

According to documents obtained by the Associated Press, Melania was paid $20,056 for 10 modeling jobs that occurred in the seven weeks before she got a work visa. This is based on accounting ledgers, contracts and related documents reviewed by the AP.

In other words, Melania Trump was an undocumented worker, or in the vernacular of Trumps campaign an illegal.

A partner in the now defunct modeling agency that signed Trump verified its contract with her and his signature on it. Melania Trumps signature was verified by comparing it with her signature on her marriage certificate in 2005.

Back in August, when Politico published a story raising questions about Melanias immigration story, she tweeted a letter written by her attorney.

According to that letter, Melania arrived from Slovenia on August 27,1996 on a B1/B2 visitors visa. She acquired her first H1B visa on October 18, 1996.

While Melania could have negotiated a contracted under the B1/B2, she wasnt eligible to work in the United States until she got the H1B visa, a visa Donald would like to eliminate.

According to APs reporting, ledgers show Melania earned $20,056 for 10 modeling assignments during that period before she got her H1B visa.

The accounting ledgers for the firms models were listed on hundreds of pages of continuously fed paper that appeared yellowed with age. They were authenticated by a former employee who worked at the firm at the time. The employee spoke on condition of anonymity because this person feared retaliation and threats from Trumps presidential campaign.

The AP report also relies on exhibit markings on the documents which are consistent with documents filed in New York state court.

Some of the ledgers identify Melania Trump by her professional name, detailing her involvement with the agency between July 1996 and September 26, 1997. Others identify her as Melania Knaus, listing her gross earnings for the period before she acquired her work visa. The documents also reveal the company paid Melanias rent, lent her money and paid for her pager. Finally, the documents show the firm deducted federal taxes from Melanias gross earnings.

This is a story about a model from Slovenia who is much like the typical undocumented workers Melania and her husband vilified throughout this election season.

Questions surrounding Melanias legal status when she began her modeling career in the United States have been swirling since August, following reports by CBS and GQ that she falsely claimed to have earned a college degree in Slovenia.

As Politico reported,

Representatives of the Trump campaign and the Trump Organization did not address detailed questions about the timing and circumstances of Melania Trumps arrival in the country, but campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks responded to the emailed questions by stating, Melania followed all applicable laws and is now a proud citizen of the United States. In a statement issued hours after POLITICO published this report, Trump reiterated on Thursday that she had been at all times in compliance with the immigration laws of this country. But her statement conspicuously avoids addressing multiple reports and photographs that place her in the United States and working as a model in 1995, as well as her multiple past statements that she would return every few months to Europe to renew her visa. (Other news outlets, including Bloomberg View, have also noted the inconsistencies in her account.)

Chances are if the Trumps were less strident in their expressed contempt for undocumented immigrants, these details wouldnt matter. But they do matter given Donald Trumps rhetoric and his calls for policies that include broader use of E-verify. Trump also noted that federal law prohibits illegally paying immigrants.

This news is unlikely to affect Melania Trumps citizenship status  under current application of existing law. Under the law, the government can try to revoke citizenship when it determines a naturalized citizen willfully misrepresented or concealed facts relevant to his naturalization. In practice, the government only takes that step in cases involving terrorism or war crimes. One high profile example is John Demanjuk, aka Ivan the Terrible.

Ironically, Melania would have been protected under President Obamas executive order on prioritizing deportations. That order would deport violent felons first, something Melania obviously is not.

In Donald Trumps America, someone with Melanias story would be deported automatically. If they tried to enter the country again under similar legal circumstances, they would face jail time before being deported again. Unlike Melania, they would have to show documentation vs. the just believe approach used by the Trump campaign.

The fact that Melania used her story, most recently in her speech on Thursday, to justify support for her husbands hard-line rhetoric and policies makes its veracity relevant to the election.

As a young entrepreneur, I wanted to follow my dream to a place where freedom and opportunity were in abundance. So of course, I came here, she said. Living and working in America was a true blessing, but I wanted something more. I wanted to be an American.

One cant fault Melania Trump for her dreams. However, she crosses the line when she crushes the dreams of other undocumented immigrants by pointing to her official experience  an experience that is based on a fairy tale.
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After asking Donald Trump not to attend a campaign event last month in Wisconsin following the release of the Access Hollywood video, Paul Ryan came out on Saturday and said he would be happy to campaign with his nominee.

Just moments after welcoming Trump to hit the trail with him, though, the GOP nominees campaign unexpectedly canceled the event, saying there was a scheduling conflict.

More from The Cap Times:

Seconds later, a spokesman for Trumps Wisconsin campaign alerted reporters that the event had been canceled, citing a scheduling conflict. This isnt the first time there has been controversy surrounding the Republican Speaker of the House and the GOP nominee for president. Not only did it take Ryan an extended period of time before he would even support his own nominee, but he has repeatedly had to distance himself from Trump and often criticize his offensive campaign rhetoric. Ryan even called Trumps attacks on a federal judge the textbook definition of racism. Just last month, he disinvited Trump to a campaign event in Wisconsin. After each of those instances, Paul Ryan eventually warms back up to Trump  just to be humiliated by him again, as he was on Saturday. The two men are a living example of the rift that exists between Republicans who know they must try to appeal to a more diverse America and those who think they should double down on the politics of racial resentment and fear mongering. Donald Trump and Paul Ryan do their best to pretend they support one another, but their secret civil war often leaks into the public view. On Nov. 8, when Trump loses, it is likely that this private feud within the GOP will become a public spectacle.
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The presidential election is definitely shifting, but not in the direction that one party was hoping for. Here is the presidential projection map for November 5.

The baseline map:

Democrats are still set to begin election night favored to win 258 electoral votes. There continues to be no sign of Republican nominee Donald Trump making any successful inroads into Hillary Clintons blue firewall. What has become very consistent in this election is that Hillary Clintons early voting muscle is putting up several hurdles for Trump that are making his already difficult task of winning the White House nearly impossible.

Here is the best case scenario currently for Donald Trump:

Even if Trump wins Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio, Iowa, Utah, Arizona, and Georgia, he will still lose the election to Hillary Clinton 290-247. The only polling showing Trump as competitive in blue states is coming from partisan Republican polling firms in what appears to be an effort to distort the polling models and averages. A CNN poll showing Trump doing well in Nevada appears to be an outlier, as Hillary Clinton has pretty much put the state away with record-setting early voting turnout. GOP early voting turnout in Nevada is actually worse for Trump than it was for Romney. The state looks to be lost. Trumps best case scenario still leaves him short of winning the White House.

The closeness of contest in Georgia changes the best case scenario for Hillary Clinton:

This is the scenario where everything breaks Hillary Clintons way on election night. She wins Florida, North Carolina, and Nevada. The big change is that according to Nevada election expert Jon Ralston, Clinton has locked up Nevada. Trump cant win the White House without Nevada, which is why he is campaigning in Reno on Saturday. Hillary Clinton could end up with as many as 355 electoral votes on election night. If she keeps Florida, Ohio, and New Hampshire in the Democratic column, and flips North Carolina and Georgia. Realistically, this is the best map that Hillary Clinton could put together on Tuesday.

Here is the most likely scenario for election day:

The most likely scenario is that Hillary Clinton wins North Carolina and Nevada while keeping the Democratic blue states in her column. Clinton is making a strong late push in Ohio, but the Buckeye State remains one of the two most likely, along with Iowa, to flip to the Republican column. Clinton is putting up good early voting numbers in Florida, and she has led in the last three credible polls of the state by a small margin. Florida might be a coin flip, but Clinton does have a small edge.

Hillary Clintons electoral college range is between 290 and 320.

Hillary Clinton remains the favorite to win the White House on Tuesday. Trump doesnt break 270 with the states that he is leading or tied in. If Trump has lost Nevada, his White House hopes may have gone with it. Trump is to the point where only a series of upsets will lead to a victory on election day. Clinton can win the presidency in multiple ways, while Trump needs a Hail Mary with the clock nearly at zero.

Note: These projections take into account polling averages, early voting statistics, and current polls. They are subject to change and will be updated daily through election day.


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We saw yesterday how President Barack Obama handled a protester at a Clinton rally in North Carolina, reminding the crowd that the gentleman in question has First Amendment rights, among other things.

Donald Trump, however, speaking at a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania, remembers it differently, claiming Obama screamed at the protester and that it was a disgrace.

Here is what President Obama said:

First of all, we live in a country that respects free speech, second of all it looks like he may have served in our military, and weve got to respect that. Third of all, he was elderly, and weve got to respect our elders.

Yet according to Trump, in defiance of the video evidence, this is how it went down:



He was talking to the protester, screaming at him, really screaming at him. By the way, if I spoke the way Obama spoke to that protester, they would say, He became unhinged!  And he spent so much time screaming at this protester and frankly, it was a disgrace.

Here is how CBS News Sopan Deb captured the incident:

In Hershey, Trump went on a looooong riff on how Obama handled a protester: pic.twitter.com/49AaZY6IlR  Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) November 5, 2016

This is remarkable, given Obamas admonition to the crowd to Dont boo, vote.

Nothing like this happened. None of it. In contrast to Trump, President Obama was reasoned and respectful in his interaction with the protester. There was no screaming involved. Far from screaming, Obama told the crowd to not even boo the man.

What Trump is saying, when the facts are taken into the account, is that President Obamas defense of a Trump supporter was a disgrace. Which is pretty much how Trump has proven he views facts: as a disgrace.

Donald Trump lives in a reality of his own making, where facts are meaningless. He just invents things out of whole cloth to sell to his audience of rabid haters, who lap up every dishonest word.

Donald Trump just invented an episode for his audience, which has no more interest than their leader in actually learning anything. When Hillary Clinton referred to deplorables, this is exactly what she meant.
Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz's two-day sentencing hearing began Tuesday with the families of the 17 people he murdered getting their first chance to speak to him directly. "We hope that you, the monster who did this to our son, endure a painful existence in your remaining days. Whatever pain you experience in prison unfortunately will be a fraction of what Ben endured," said Eric Wikander, the father of student Ben Wikander, who has undergone seven surgeries. Read more'A monster': Families, wounded confront Parkland shooter
This month will mark the 83rd anniversary of the Soviet Union's attack on Finland in November 1939, when the Soviet Goliath pounced on the neighboring David. It started a conflict that became one of the most intensely brutal engagements of the Second World War, much of it in temperatures 30  Read moreCommentary: Are Russian leaders headed for another winter war?
Dressing up just seemed like the right thing to do, so I swapped my jeans for a pair of blue plaid bellbottoms.

After all, it was a momentous occasion.

There were a half-dozen cars parked on the street, which was about a half dozen more than you would normally see on a Tuesday night.

It just added to the excitement.

A couple of ladies I knew sat at a scarred wooden table and greeted me when I walked in. I pulled out my driver's license to prove who I was; they waved me off because in a town of 350 people, everyone knows everyone else.

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One of the ladies paged through a book, then spun it on the tabletop and used her finger to indicate where I should sign my name.

I did, and a different lady handed me a paper ballot.

This is a pretty big deal, I thought to myself.

It was Nov. 2, 1976.

I was 18 years old, the ink on my high school diploma was barely dry and my knowledge of the upcoming election was pretty limited  sometime in November, right?

Besides, I had bigger concerns than electing a president  the engine in the Pinto was making weird noises and the price of gas had jumped to almost 60 cents per gallon.

But then came a Saturday afternoon in September.

I was pulling a cold bottle of Squirt out of the cooler in front of the cafe while one of the area's gentlemen farmers tried to decide between root beer and RC.

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He was already on the far side of 90, and after he chose a bottle of Hires and popped the top, we leaned on the edge of the cooler and started making small talk  the weather was good, the price of soybeans wasn't.

Eventually the conversation circled around to the election, and he told of how he'd walked in from the farm  three miles  to cast his very first vote for Roosevelt.

Teddy, not Franklin.

Granted, he claimed the walk was uphill both ways, but otherwise I believed him.

"You walked three miles just to vote?" I asked. "Why?"

He looked at me like I was daft: "If you don't vote, you can't complain." It was the first time I'd heard it, but it wouldn't be the last.

"Complain about what?"

Half an hour later, my Squirt was gone and my mind was reeling from a crash course in political science that was equal parts civics lesson, gripe session, personal experience and common sense. And it did something that hadn't happened until that afternoon: it sparked my interest in the process of democracy.

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And I started paying attention to the election.

Half a dozen yard signs had sprung up around Rose Creek, and if the signs were any indication, the election was going to be very close  three of the signs said "Jimmy Carter for President" in Palmolive green and white; three read "Ford / Dole" in a patriotic red, white and blue.

I started reading something other than Beetle Bailey in the newspaper.

And  even though I found it mind-numbingly dull  I watched most of a televised presidential debate.

Carter and Ford both seemed like nice guys. But as I began to identify differences between them, my own political ideology was starting to take shape.

And on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, I signed my name in the big book, sat at a long cafeteria-style table, poised my pen over a paper ballot  and made an X in one of the boxes.

The air seemed a little crisper and the moonlight a little brighter as I walked home  two blocks, uphill both ways.

I stayed up to watch the 10 o'clock news, but all the announcer had to say was that the presidential race was too close to call.

I crawled into bed with a transistor radio and an earphone. The newsman said the race was still a toss-up, and I fell asleep to the sound of KC And The Sunshine band telling me I should shake my booty.

When I woke up in the morning I was still wearing the earpiece and the radio battery had gone dead.

I didn't know until I was in the car on the way to an early class at Austin Community College that Jimmy Carter had been elected president.

A peanut farmer. Imagine that.

For the first time, I'd been part of the process. It was a powerful feeling.

And I've had the same feeling every four years since.

As a country, we cast 80 million votes for president on Nov. 2, 1976. Did mine really make a difference?

It did to me.
A former school bus driver in Rochester has sued the bus company, alleging it took no action when he was harassed and discriminated against by at least 14 employees.

Philip Bologna, 64, was hired by First Student Inc . in 2011 to drive a school bus in Anoka ; he transferred to the Rochester office in the summer of 2012.

In a civil lawsuit filed in August in U.S. District Court, Bologna claims he was "discriminated against and harassed because of his wife's race and skin color and was retaliated against by" First Student.

The case outlines three violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 : discrimination by association on account of race and color, harassment and retaliation; as well as four violations of the Minnesota Human Rights Ac t: discrimination by association on account of race and color, harassment, reprisal and marital status discrimination.

Bologna's wife is African American.

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The behavior in question began almost immediately after Bologna started working in the Rochester office, where he drove school buses about 28 hours per week and spent 20 hours per week doing video security, which involves maintaining and archiving videos taken in the buses. His annual salary was about $42,000.

The lawsuit makes the following allegations:

Slurs and epithets

 In the autumn of 2012, Mike Pearce, an assistant manager for First Student, said he was "so dusty I looked just like a (n-word). Oh, I hope I didn't offend anyone, I meant to say neegra, oh, maybe that was offensive. I meant to say Negro."

The comments were made in front of Bologna and others, the court document says, and Bologna told Pearce he was offended by the remarks.

 While around Bologna at work, First Student employees used a racial epithet to describe President Barack Obama.

 Another employee, Bob Wolf, told Bologna he "didn't like blacks."

 Pat Malloy, a trainer for First Student, referred to Somali students as "the blue people," meant as a slur referring to the color of their skin. Bologna was present.

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Work conditions

 When Bologna's bus was being repaired, he asked shop manager Larry Kramer what work was being done so he could file a report on the condition of the bus, per company policy. Kramer allegedly told Bologna "it was none of his business" and refused to describe the work.

Bologna informed a manager, Jon Goetz; the next day, Kramer again refused to provide a list of the repairs. Kramer kept the bus in the shop an "unreasonably long" time, the complaint says, "interfering with (Bologna's) work performance."

 Other workshop employees of First Student "cursed angrily at (Bologna) and sped through the vehicle lot as close to him as possible," making Bologna fear for his safety.

 In the summer of 2012, Leigh Baldwin, a dispatcher for the company, sped through the lot to block Bologna in, the suit claims. Baldwin wouldn't move his bus or give Bologna his keys so Bologna could move the bus, "completely refusing to cooperate" with him.

 In the spring of 2013, "Mark," a driver for First Student, told Bologna that "colored kids" give him the most trouble.

 In the fall of 2013, Bologna told Goetz about the incidents. Goetz reportedly called Bologna paranoid and didn't investigate the claims.

Harassment alleged

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 About 3:30 a.m. one day in the winter of the 2013-14 school year, Bologna was with other bus drivers in the break room when one of the drivers mentioned a broken garage door that allowed "coons" to come in. Kenny Smith, another driver, allegedly said, "as long as it's not the two-legged kind."

When Bologna asked Smith what he meant by the comment, Smith said he was referring to "(n-words)." Bologna asked Smith not to use that word around him; Smith replied, "(expletive) you, and you're stupid," the court document says.

Bologna reported the incident to Goetz.

 In March 2014, employees Kevin Harbaugh, Dianne Pank and Monica Mata reportedly talked about running Bologna out of the company. They ended their conversation with the chant, "coon, coon, coon," which Bologna believed was referring to the garage door incident.

 The next morning, Bologna found a purple powder on his bus seat that left his trousers stained. Several days later, his bus headlights were turned on, causing the bus battery to die. Soon after, Bologna's bus key went missing.

A week later, Bologna received a phone call from an unidentified man, asking him if he wanted to worship Satan. Soon after, Harbaugh, a morning gatekeeper for First Student, denied Bologna entrance to the vehicle lot.

 Unnerved and afraid for his safety, the lawsuit says, Bologna spoke to supervisor RJ Oelshlager, who told Bologna he'd "brought these things on himself."

 On April 2, 2014, Bologna accidentally hit a parked car while pulling out of a parking lot, requiring his student passengers to transfer to another school bus. In the office later that day, shop manager Kramer "charged at (Bologna) with an extended arm," telling him to get out and not return until Goetz returned. Kramer hadn't followed company policy in suspending Bologna.

Discrimination by association

 In September 2014, Pank repeatedly "turned over pictures of Frederick Douglass and (Bologna's) wife" that were on Bologna's desk. When he complained to Oelshlager, Pank explained that she didn't want to look at the photos.

 In December 2014, Linda Bowar, a driver for First Student who started a coat drive for disadvantaged children, told some of the drivers  including Bologna  "let's hope the white kids get the coats," the complaint says. The comment was made "with her hand over her mouth as if to say it secretly."

 In October 2015, David Anderson, a First Student employee, told Bologna he'd been watching him, that Bologna had fooled everyone in the office except him. Anderson later allegedly told Bologna he would "kick his ass."

Job changes

 On May 10, 2016, Bologna again complained about the harassment, this time to Pearce, who approached Anderson.

The next day, a bus video  maintained and archived by Bologna as part of his job duties  captured Pearce telling Anderson (about Bologna), "I would just as soon give him (expletive) until he quits and leaves, but that's just me, and you didn't hear that from me."

 On May 16, 2016, Bologna showed Goetz the video. Goetz reportedly became angry at Bologna and told him he couldn't pull the video on another employee.

 On June 28, 2016, Goetz told Bologna he was no longer in charge of maintaining the videos, but he could continue to handle video formatting.

 On June 29, 2016, Kramer told Bologna the workshop was taking over all video formatting.

As a result, Bologna's duties were "significantly and substantially reduced," causing him to lose about a third of his work hours.

 On July 8, 2016, Bologna found his time card had been altered to reflect about 30 fewer minutes than he'd actually worked.

First Student response

The bus company, in its answer to the complaint, either completely denies the allegations or "is without sufficient knowledge or information to form a belief as to the truth or falsity of the allegations, and on that basis, denies the allegation."

It did, however, acknowledge Bologna "captured a video of Mike Pearce. That video speaks for itself as to its contents." The answer goes on to say First Student "denies each and every remaining allegation" in the description of the incident.

Seeking damages

Bologna is asking for damages in excess of $75,000 for each of the seven counts, citing "the loss of past and future income, mental anguish, emotional distress, humiliation and embarrassment." In addition, he's asking for reimbursement of attorney's fees and court costs.

The suit also asks that First Student be ordered to pay a civil penalty to the state of Minnesota and be required to adopt practices in conformity with the requirements of the federal unlawful employment practices and the Minnesota Human Rights Act.

Bologna has requested a jury trial. A pretrial conference has been set for Nov. 16 at the federal courthouse in Minneapolis.

His attorney didn't return a call Friday seeking comment on the case.
KASSON  KoMet hill is alive with the sound of music, and the school district wants everyone to hear about it.

The Kasson-Mantorville High School drama department is marking the first theatrical production inside its brand new performing arts center by staging "The Sound of Music."

With more space than ever to put on a full-scale production, there was no holding back on a full-scale musical that will involve about 60 students.

The department "went all out," with a budget of nearly $12,000 for royalties and stage materials, said Bernie Buehler, the show's director. In the past. the department would budget about $1,900 for two shows.

"You couldn't do performances like this" with that budget, Buehler said

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"We're going all out," Buehler said. "This is going to be as close to a professional theater performance as you're going to get. The motto for this show is, 'Tell everybody.'"

The musical is set in Austria on the eve of Anschluss in 1938. Sophomore Gabby Thomas plays the lead role of Maria Rainer, a woman who takes a job as governess to a large family while she tries to decide whether to become a nun. She eventually falls in love with the children and their widowed father, Capt. von Trapp, played by senior Jace Gray.

"The Sound of Music" was a choice of the heart for Buehler. He wanted to be the first person to direct a musical in the new performance space.

"Everyone knows this musical," he said. "We definitely wanted this place to be filled with music. The energy for this show from our students and district is amazing."

Performances will be Nov. 11-12 and 18-19 at 7 p.m.; Nov. 13 at 2 p.m.; and Nov. 15 at 12:30 p.m. There are also opportunities to purchase tickets for an authentic Austrian dinner catered by Omar's Kitchen for $12 per person before the shows on Nov. 12 and Nov. 19.

Admission is $8 for adults and $5 for students.

Comparing the new performance space to the old gymnasium space is like comparing night and day. The old stage had 26 lights that the tech department controlled with a flick of the switch. The new 55-foot stage has about 100 lights, and a new fly system that gives more flexibility for transitioning more elaborate backgrounds and sets. There's also a new orchestra pit, so performers don't have to be hidden on stage, as they were previously before.

"We have the stained glass windows in the church, and the moonbeams that go through the graveyard," said Pat Moran, technical director. "In the previous gym, we couldn't even dim our house lights."

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Behind the stage there's a new area where actors can watch monitors that broadcast what's happening on stage. There are also new dressing rooms and a scene shop.

With all the changes, there was a revival of interest among students interested in being a part of the first musical held in the performing arts center.

"I normally would have had some casting changes, but now people really want to be a part of this," he shared. "I didn't have one single cast member quit during this."

Cody Rysavy, 17, and a junior, is this year's assistant student director. After performing in 14 shows during his school career, Rysavy enjoyed stepping to the side and helping bring "The Sound of Music" to life.

"You know, it's funny that I wrote a persuasive essay in middle school stating that K-M should definitely get a new auditorium," Rysavy laughed. "We're really a big family, and this is definitely one of my favorite casts to work with."

A bit overwhelmed by the grand scale of their first musical in a new space, Rysavy was proud of how much growth and attention there was for the fine arts in the school district.

"I'm so excited by the brand new generation of the K-M drama department," he said. "We used to be very small and looked down upon. There's definitely a shift in mindset. I hope when people come to the show that they know we're here to stay and we're growing. So, grow with us."

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The Region of Melanesia: Hints of an unidentified, extinct human species have been found in the DNA of modern Melanesians  those living in a region of the South Pacific, northeast of Australia. Map source: "Regional Geography of the World: Globalization, People, and Places"
The Clinton Foundation has admitted that it accepted a $1 million gift from Qatar while Hillary Clinton was U.S. secretary of state without informing the State Department. Clinton had promised to let the Department review new or materially increased support from foreign governments.

The Clinton Foundation claims that this did not violate Hillarys promise because the $1 million gift did not materially increase Qatars support for the operation. Apparently, it considered $1 million just a drop in the bucket.

It was more than that. Reuters reports that, according to the Foundations website, Qatars government has directly given a total of between $1 million and $5 million over the years. Unless the Foundation is hiding something, the $1 million gift materially increased Qatars support.

The Clinton Foundation isnt the only beneficiary of Qatars largesse. It also finances Hamas and extremist groups operating in Syria. And it has been negligent at best when it comes to cracking down on Qataris who provide funds for ISIS and like-minded jihadists.

Naturally, such a country like that, because it also looks to the U.S. as its main guarantor of security, wanted to line the pockets of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Naturally, the Clintons wanted to hide the fact that it agreed to have their pockets lined.

Qatar isnt the only instance in which the Clintons violated Hillarys promise. According to Reuters, at least eight other countries gave new or increased funding to the Foundation without the State Department being informed. They include Algeria, which gave for the first time in 2010. The Foundation admits, as it must, that some of these donations should have been reported.

This story is just one illustration of Clintons legendary disregard of the rules. Its a telling illustration because the rule in question goes to the integrity of American foreign policy  a matter as to which Bill and Hillary Clinton are indifferent.
A jury in Virginia has found Rolling Stone magazine and its reporter Sabrina Erdely liable for defamation in connection with Erdelys now-refuted story of a gang rape at the University of Virginia. The plaintiff in the case is university dean Nicole Eramo, who was portrayed as callous in Erdelys article. The verdict would have been more satisfying if it had been on behalf of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and its members, who were the principal parties defamed by Rolling Stone.

The linked article is in the Washington Post, whose reporting contributed greatly to the unraveling of Erdelys fiction. And yet the Post cant resist incorporating into its story the very canard that the Rolling Stone article sought to perpetuate:

Once its flaws were exposed, the articles deeper message of the effects of campus rape  a pervasive national problem  was lost amid the allegations of shoddy reporting.

But is campus rape a pervasive national problem? That is what Rolling Stone tried, and failed, to demonstrate. In fact, college-age women who are not students are more than 50% more likely to be raped than coeds. So why isnt the pervasive problem non-campus rape? This strikes me as a clear case of classism.

And the incidence of rape, like other violent crimes, has declined dramatically in recent years. According to FBI statistics, rape is at a 40-year low. So why, suddenly, is it pervasive? The current hysteria about campus rape is driven by lustlust for money and power, on the part of feminists and their enablers.

The Washington Post doesnt quite dare to tell the truth about Rolling Stones fabricated rape story, but it does quote the magazines lawyer, who, facing a jury that had heard the evidence, acknowledged what really happened:

Sexton said that, in effect, Erdely and Rolling Stone had fallen victim to what he called at points a hoax, a fraud and a perfect storm.

The entire campus rape culture theme is a hoax and a fraud.
Nine Minnesota men have pleaded guilty (six) or been convicted (three) in the big ISIS conspiracy case that was originally filed in Minnesota last year. Minnesota men is the preferred media descriptor of the Somali defendants in the case.

The case was assigned to Judge Michael Davis, before whom the case was tried over three weeks this past May. I attended the trial and wrote about it every day on Power Line. I also covered the case in three articles for the Weekly Standard (all of which are accessible here) and in the City Journal column ISIS in the Twin Cities.

Judge Davis has scheduled the sentencing of all nine men over hearings scheduled over three days, November 14-16. I plan on attending and reporting what happens at the hearings.

This past Thursday the parties filed memoranda supporting proposed sentences as to each of the nine defendants. Stephen Montemayor covers the memoranda and the parties proposed sentences in the Star Tribune article Shorter sentences sought for ISIL recruitment defendants.

I have been particularly interested in the prosecutions proposed sentences for the three men whose trial I attended. The government urges a 40-year sentence on Guled Omar and 30-year sentences on Mohamed Farah and Abdirahman Daud.

The governments memoranda are long, detailed and powerful. In court and in the governments memoranda, the Obama administrations political correctness falls away. The euphemisms evanesce. Toward the end of the governments memorandum on Omar one finds this:

Respect for the law is a particularly important factor in this case. No trial in the aggregate memory of the U.S. Attorneys Office has been conducted in more of an atmosphere of intimidation, harassment, and incipient violence than the trial of this case. The families of cooperating defendants were harassed in the courtroom, in full view of the testifying witness; there was a fistfight in the corridor outside the courtroom; multiple individuals had to be ejected from the courtroom for not following the Courts rules of behavior. A stern sentence is needed to promote respect for the law, to demonstrate clearly that this is a nation of laws. * * * * * As the Court witnessed in the Courtroom and surrounding press coverage, despite the gravity of the charges, the defendants had significant community support.

I have tried to emphasize these points myself here and in the articles I wrote about the trial. I highly doubt that you will find these devastating observations quoted or explored in the Star Tribune or elsewhere. I want to take the liberty of bringing them to your attention and asking you to let them sink in this morning.
The Politics of Biafra and the Future of Nigeria

Safari Books Ltd., 2016

280 pages.

There has been, in recent times, a steady increase in the production of texts authored mostly by Nigerians of Igbo nationality, whose theme is related to, or virtually fixed or fixated on one theme  Biafra. This is understandably so, to my mind. The month of May 2017 will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the commencement of the Nigerian Civil War  a thirty month bloody conflict that claimed the lives of millions of Igbos in their homeland, which has almost overshadowed the earlier but equally horrific pogrom in Northern Nigeria that targeted the same group.

There have been hundreds of chronicles, as there have been chroniclers, of those years of strife. The victorious ones have broadcast their version and vision of the truth for all who care to listen for all of these fifty years of restive peace. The silence of the crushed has also held its sway for all of this half century of post-war reunion. But not anymore. Since the very first book on the civil war, Raph Uwechues Reflections On The Nigerian Civil War-Facing the Future was published, a thousand and one tomes on the Biafran tragedy in fiction and non-fictional genres, have made it to millions of shelves across the world.

The other pertinent point is that even among the crushed whose collective hurt still unites the nationality, there is yet no agreement on some of the renditions of important events that happened and the roles played by some equally important individuals during the war and after. No one can answer with certainty the question, Whodunit?.





In this book, I have tried to present a complete picture of the relationship between Zik and Ojukwu and his role during the war, to tell a complete story of that era as much as possible, to enable the younger generation have a fuller picture of what happened.

And what poetry can capture the tragedy of war? It is equal to living in a tragic land/To living in a tragic time. Not minding the obvious verity in these words by the great American poet, Wallace Stevens in Dry Loaf, I think J.P. Clarke-Bekederemos lines in his poem on the civil war, Casualties, convey the brutal nature and wider extent of the tragedy of this particular strife, in the way they reveal how all contesting narratives and contested truths are overwhelmed by violence:

The drums overwhelm the guns

Caught in the clash of counter claims and charges

When not in the niche others left,

We fall.

All casualties of the war.

Because we cannot hear each other speak.

Because eyes have ceased to see the face from the crowd.

The publication of Chudi Offodiles 280-paged tome, The Politics of Biafra And The Future of Nigeria, has offered a moment for the re-examination of the tragic incidents that nearly split Nigeria. Countering the position of some powerful citizens that the issue of the Nigerian state was already a settled matter, he asks: Settled by who? In any case, nothing is ever settled until it is settled right. Nigeria is still very much unstable and the democratic institutions remain fragile. Anything to counter here?

The Politics of Biafra And The Future Of Nigeria contains seven Parts that are sub-divided into twenty Chapters. Part One titled Prelude To War contains four chapters: Preview; Igbo dentity Crises; The 15th January 1966 Coup; The 29th July 1966 Counter Coup. Part Two titled Period of hostilities comprise: On Aburi We Stand; The Biafran Intelligentsia; Biafras Non-Igbo Actors; Britain and the Horrors of War. Part Three, titled Igbo Political Trajectory includes: Nnamdi Azikiwe (1904-1966); RuptureOjukwu vs. Azikiwe; Achebe Takes On Zik. Part Four titled Post War Years has: The Asika Years (1970-75), The Years of Decline (1976-1998); Dr. Ekwuemes Bid For Power; The Years of Decline (1999-2015). Part Five titled Biafra: From Surrender To Rebirth contains: MASSOB, IPOB, BILIE Human Rights Initiative. Part Six titled The Future of Nigeria contains: Biafra and Nigeria; The War Philosophy; Sardauna Was A Federalist; Conclusion. Part Seven, the appendix section, incorporates the three-part treatise titled Reconstructing Nigeria For Posterity, by a leading Nigerian thinker, economist and former Central Bank of Nigeria governor, Professor Chukwuma Soludo.

Mr. Chudi Offodile, a lawyer and a two-term member of the House of Representatives, who said he was just two-and-a-half years old when the war broke out and was exactly five years and two months old when it ended, states in this new book, while making a retrospective scrutiny of the Nigerian Civil War almost half a century after the outbreak of hostilities on May 30th, 1967, that if General Yakubu Gowon had not breached the Aburi Accord, the thirty-month Nigerian Civil War that decelerated the post-independence promise of national development and integration and claimed millions of lives, would not have happened.

A contestable point here, but the author rewards a close reading of the book with a persuasive analysis of the historic Aburi Accord which was reached between January 4 and 5, 1967 at a meeting attended by delegates of both the Federal Government of Nigeria, led by Nigerias war-time leader, General Yakubu Gowon, and the Eastern Regions leader, Colonel Emeka Ojukwu.

The now famous Aburi, a small town in Ghana, presented a last chance meeting of avoiding an all-out war between Eastern Nigeria and the rest of Nigeria. The Accord broke down due to its contested interpretations by both parties. The war began a few months later. However, that the war happened and millions of Igbos were killed, isnt contestable. Or, is it?

Retracing the sequences of missteps that precipitated the war, Offodile expresses regret that some officials acting on behalf of the Federal Government circumvented the implementation of an important provision of the Accord and plunged Nigeria into a bloody conflict: The decision by Gowon to dissolve that conference and then unilaterally set up a political committee to advise him on the creation of between 12 and 14 states exposed clearly the real motives for the breach of the agreement. The constitutional conference had the mandate to draft a new constitution and a timetable for the return to civil rule. Gowon and the new power elite in Lagos wanted to elongate their hold on power and state creation was the bait. Yet, they successfully branded Ojukwu as the ambitious one, despite clear evidence to the contrary. It was the breach of Aburi that led to the war and nothing else.

Projecting into the future of Nigeria in global terms and condemning what he calls Nigerias descent into a dysfunctional Unitary-Federalism, Mr. Chudi Offodile in this book, also lends his voice to the calls for the restructuring of the federation

Mr. Chudi Offodile who was elected to Nigerias Federal House of Representatives in May 1999 for Awka North/South Federal Constituency of Anambra State and served as Chairman, Special Committee on Joint Venture Oil Operations, 2001-2003, and Chairman, Public Petitions Committee between 2003 and 2005, posits that in view of the prevailing turmoil in the land, there should be an end to the arbitrary use of state power. And, to foster a sense of national belonging, Nigerian citizens need to agree on the terms of being together. Anything to counter here?

The book does not shy away from stating that the non-inclusive exercise of State power by successive governments at the centre has been responsible for the revival of the Biafran idea and the emergence of MASSOB (Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra) and IPOB (Indigenous People of Biafra). They have a strong following and should be engaged, the author counsels. Hardly anything to counter here. Or is there?

The most important counter-narrative in this book must surely be the three chapters (nine, ten, and eleven) devoted to the controversial rupture in the relationship between the great Zik and Ojukwu, ex-Biafran leader, which the author opines has divided the Igbo politically down the middle into two extreme stances. Those who believe, like Zik, that the Igbos should embrace a peaceful return to Nigeria but seek equal partnership with the other regions and nationalities that comprise Nigeria, are one. The second are those Igbos, like Ojukwu, who wanted out of Nigeria. And portentously, still do, even though the defunct Biafran leader, now late, had shifted ground before his demise five years ago.

Nigerias First Republic President, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, suffered a major loss of acceptance among the Igbos close to the end of the war when after supporting the Igbo resistance effort, advocated a peaceful resolution to the three-year bloody conflict. The author clearly succeeds in explaining why there should be more understanding of Ziks Pan-Nigeria position, against the dominant view also reinforced by the equally illustrious Chinua Achebes scurrilous attack on Zik, for allegedly abandoning the Igbo in their time of need. A commendable section that reiterates the authors major concern in this book emphasises that: no Igbo man or woman should hang another for not agreeing with them.

The author of The Politics of Biafra And the Future of Nigeria, whose father, Mr. Chris Offodile, now late, was the first Nigerian Editor of the Hansard (the official parliamentary reports of the Federal House of Representatives) and the author of a biography on Dr. M.I. Okpara, former Premier of Eastern region, reveals serious concern about what he sees as the unsatisfactory performance of some of the past governments in South-East Nigeria. He also counters this with detailed facts of the accomplishments of one Igbo man who acquired the unenviable description of being one of the most vilified Igbo men while alive and after his passing.

Yes, he dared to praise Ukpabi Asikas post war administration (1970-1975), as the golden era of governance in the one of the old four regions in the First Republic, which now comprises five states out of 36 in the federation  Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo. He suggests that one of the most effective ways to alter the dismal picture of non-performance by governments in the South-East is through the devolution of powers to the States: I am persuaded that a change in the structure of the federation will make for better performance by the component units but even with the present arrangement, we could have done better but I leave that for the citizens of the respective states to make their own assessment.

Projecting into the future of Nigeria in global terms and condemning what he calls Nigerias descent into a dysfunctional Unitary-Federalism, Mr. Chudi Offodile in this book, also lends his voice to the calls for the restructuring of the federation: I stand firmly on the side of those who insist that the present consumption structure must give way to a competitive structure, no matter how configured. Anything to counter here?

Certainly I find nothing to counter in the prime message The Politics of Biafra and The Future of Nigeria has penned for his Nigerian readers and others interested in Nigerias well-being: even as its author shares a Pan-Nigeria vision, Nigerians must keep re-examining their history as a first step towards charting a clearer, calmer and kinder future.

An Equitable and Inclusive Federal Structure Will Address Existing Fears In Nigeria

(A conversation with Chudi Offodile)

PREMIUM TIMES: The Nigerian Civil War that broke out in 1967, almost fifty years ago, ended in 1970, and although youve stated in your new book that you were just about two when the war began, what can you recall about that period, especially as it relates to your personal and family history?

Chudi Offodile: I was just two-and-a-half years when the war broke out between Nigeria and the defunct Biafra and by January 1970 when the war ended, I was exactly five years and two months old. So all I know about that whole era are stories and accounts rendered by my parents and relatives, and from books and other sources. I hope that does not disqualify me from contributing to the debate on the issues arising from the war.

PREMIUM TIMES: And, why have you decided, after all this time, that this is a subject that would interest the Nigerian public to the extent that you have devoted over 280 pages to what some would consider an already settled issue.

Chudi Offodile: Settled by who? In any case, nothing is ever settled until it is settled right. Nigeria is still very much unstable and the democratic institutions remain fragile. There is need to reinforce the structures of the country through deliberate inclusiveness in order to achieve stability. The key to a better economy is a patriotic citizenry. No matter what policies you come up with and millions of the citizens dont feel they are a part of the country, you will have millions of people just trying to cheat their way through. Its like a basket case. You patch here and it leaks from there. There is no perfect society but we should always strive towards perfecting the union. It is a constant work in progress. Nothing like non negotiable.

PREMIUM TIMES: The Aburi Agreement was signed in Ghana by the two parties to the hostilities, and its your position that it was the failure to respect the terms of this Accord that led to the war. And which also inevitably foisted, in your own words, on a multi-ethnic country, the absurdity of unitary-federalism. First, within the context of the current national debate on re-balancing Nigerias lopsided federation, is it not too late to continue to dwell on the Aburi Accord? Secondly, what are your suggestions for repairing the injuries that the breach has caused?

Chudi Offodile: It is never late to discuss historical matters. Someone once said that history is always current because it always manages to repeat itself. In the case of the Aburi agreement, I am of the view that it was the breach of this agreement voluntarily entered into in Ghana that led to the war. The terms of the agreement were clear and unambiguous. No one disputes the original terms. But once General Gowon returned to Lagos, the so-called super bureaucrats, composed mainly of ethnic minorities in the North and South of Nigeria, persuaded him to jettison the agreement. That was not really a problem, and let me even concede for a moment that they had genuine reasons and even good intentions for all, the problem was that they UNILATERALLY altered it. To suggest therefore that General Ojukwu should have accepted the unilateral alteration, even if it offered the East 95 percent of the original agreement, as argued by Chief Phillip Asiodu, is at the root of the lack of honour and integrity in the conduct of national affairs. As I pointed out in the book, honour and integrity cannot be measured in percentages.

The second point about the Aburi Agreement which may be even more important than the first, is that both sides agreed that the constitutional conference which was ongoing before the counter-coup that brought Gowon into power should continue and draft a new constitution for Nigeria. The decision by Gowon to dissolve that conference and then unilaterally set up a political committee to advice him on the creation of between 12 and 14 states clearly exposed the real motives for the breach of the agreement. The constitutional conference had the mandate to draft a new constitution and a timetable for the return to civil rule. Gowon and the new power elite in Lagos wanted to elongate their hold on power, and state creation was the bait. Yet, they successfully branded Ojukwu as the ambitious one, despite clear evidence to the contrary. This is one of those strange paradoxes of history. How can one who wanted a new constitution drafted and a return to civil rule be accused of provoking a war because of his ambition? Ojukwu had his own faults but they manifested in Biafra but not before it. It was the breach of Aburi that led to the war and nothing else.

Let me finally point out that this same matter of whether the people or the government should work out the structure of their government was an issue in 1970 when the instrument of surrender was being negotiated after the fall of Biafra. The Biafran Chief Justice, Late Sir Louis Mbanefo, insisted on inserting clause c of the surrender instrument, which after accepting the EXISTING ADMINISTRATIVE AND POLITICAL STRUCTURES (12 States), says that any future constitutional arrangement will be worked out by the representatives of the Nigerian people. Six years later, in 1976, General Murtala Mohammed and General Olusegun Obasanjo unilaterally increased the number of states to 19. General Babangida added his and General Abacha brought the number to 36. This raises issues of jurisprudence and, of course, the compelling argument that the new states arbitrarily created have been accepted by the people by electing representatives in those states under the existing constitution over the years. Equally compelling, is the concern, in view of existing tensions in the land, of the sustainability of the arbitrary exercise of state power. There is the need to have Nigerians agree to the terms of our union. It will infuse the citizenry with the missing dose of patriotism.

PREMIUM TIMES: I suppose the thesis upon which your book stands is that the dominant view that has prevailed in Igboland has been tragically wrong in protecting the long term political interest of the Igbo man in Nigeria, hence the need to give space to the so-called excluded view. What assurance is there that the counter-narrative will not mislead?

Chudi Offodile: Not exactly! I am careful not to dismiss any narrative, opinion or ideas as wrong. I do not claim to understand the issues better than anybody else nor do I have all the answers. But as is often said, facts are sacred, while opinions are free. Whereas we are entitled to our opinions, we are not entitled to our own set of facts. What I noticed as I interrogated the facts of our history, the Nigerian question or what I call the Biafra dilemma, is that most of the dramatis personae did not and still do not treat facts with the sacredness it deserves, hence the need for the counter-narratives provided in the book. To answer your question directly, the counter-narratives will not mislead but rather would provide a clearer picture for those interested in the truth.

Nigeria is an idea and I believe in that idea, and this book is my little contribution towards ensuring that the idea of Nigeria endures and that it works better for the common good of all its peoples, not for some of its people. It is perfectly in order for citizens of any country, at any time in the existence of the country, to interrogate the very idea of their country

PREMIUM TIMES: You mnetioned that the Igbos crises of identities have also been responsible for their maltreatment in certain parts of the country before, during and after the war. Can you explain? What measures should be taken in the short, medium and the long-term to end all discriminatory practices against the Igbos and other ethnic nationalities across Nigeria?

Chudi Offodile: So who is an Igbo? Why would people who bear Igbo names claim not to be Igbo? They do so because to be Igbo is to be marginalised. The bar is set higher for you. That is the downside. But in a way the discrimination may have helped in creating a very competitive Igbo society, which may be an advantage in the long run. We need a more inclusive and equitable federal structure to address existing fears in Nigeria.

PREMIUM TIMES: You have posited in the chapter titled, The Rupture: Ojukwu vs Zik, that the soured relationship between Zik and Ojukwu during the war has actually tended to determine the way the South-Easterner thinks and how far she goes in terms of her relationship with the Federal Government. It seems, from your reflections in the book, that you are more at home with Ziks pan-Nigerian vision?

Chudi Offodile: Thank you for this particular question. Nnamdi Azikiwes pan-Nigerian vision, as you put it, did not materialise in his lifetime and was resented by a cross-section of very respected intellectuals of Igbo origin, particularly after his defection from Biafra to Nigeria in 1969. Project Nigeria to which he devoted a lifetime of service failed him and his Igbo people that he organised and lifted from civil obscurity and provided with an irrevocable stake in Nigeria were left unsatisfied. I believe he did his best, and if as Igbo we are unable to realise our stake in Nigeria, its our burden not his.

And if Nigerians have failed to realise his vision, its our shame not his. On the rupture, both Zik and Emeka Ojukwu believed in maintaining the Nigerian federation by negotiation and diplomacy but by the time Ojukwu, as the Head of State, finally decided that Biafras sovereignty was not negotiable, Zik felt otherwise and took the unpopular, and for some the unpardonable, decision to defect from Biafra. With that defection, very respected intellectuals of Igbo origin, particularly Professor Chinua Achebe, set about deconstructing his legacy and ridiculing his national posture. This reminds me of what Chimamanda Adichie refers to as the danger of a single story. She makes the point that a single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story. In this book, I have tried to present a complete picture of the relationship between Zik and Ojukwu and his role during the war, to tell a complete story of that era as much as possible, to enable the younger generation have a fuller picture of what happened. I had battled with this issue for a very long time and I discussed it on so many occasions with my dad, who like most members of his generation, were saddened by Ziks defection from Biafra and held it against him. Some people will disagree with me but writing about this has given me peace.

PREMIUM TIMES: The Igbo require more than one point of view on the question of the future of Igbo nation. No one should attempt to delegitimise alternative views as was done in Biafra. You said in your book and cited the two reports by Dr. Pius Okigbo and Major General Effiong that could have forced a rethink on secession. Is this your counter-statement to the ongoing agitation for the restoration of Biafra?

Chudi Offodile: People form their opinions on the basis of their experiences, and therefore those agitating for Biafra are entitled to their own opinions and ideas because that is what it is  an idea. No one should be in prison for agitating for an idea or expressing his or her opinion on any matter at all. Nigeria is an idea and I believe in that idea, and this book is my little contribution towards ensuring that the idea of Nigeria endures and that it works better for the common good of all its peoples, not for some of its people. It is perfectly in order for citizens of any country, at any time in the existence of the country, to interrogate the very idea of their country, the basis of the union, and how to strengthen it. For some, it may be how to secure their right to self-determination and for others, how to maintain the status quo. It will be arrogant of anyone or group to consider their own opinion or ideas superior to the opinions or ideas of other people. Managing competing ideas is the basis of modern society.

PREMIUM TIMES: Following from the foregoing, is this also your own way of giving a nod, literally, to the national debate on the need to restructure the Nigerian polity?

Chudi Offodile: No question about that. The future of Nigeria depends to a large extent on how the calls for restructuring are handled. Those who insist on the status quo keep on attacking the patriotism of those who call for a review of the existing structure, instead of giving reasons for the continuance of what has clearly failed. In the end, it is what it is  a contest of ideas. I stand firmly on the side of those who insist that the present consumption structure must give way to a competitive structure, no matter how configured. A lot of Nigerians have become global citizens, living and competing all over the world. The government of their home country should modernise and embrace global best practices, in line with the aspirations of several thousands of its people playing on the world stage. That would help lift millions out of poverty.

PREMIUM TIMES: Your reference to The Surrender Instrument read at the end of the war on January 15th implicates the Nigerian state as deliberately breaching one of the most important terms of the surrender that reads thus: That any future constitutional arrangement will be worked out by representatives of the people of Nigeria. More states have been created by successive military regimes since the twelve states were created at the onset of the war. How far has this worsened the lopsidedness between the federal and the state governments?

I feel strongly that Ukpabi Asika should be judged, not on the basis of the opinion he held, his opposition to the declaration of Biafra, but on the basis of his achievement in office as the Administrator of the defunct East Central State. He put together an excellent cabinet made up of mostly returnees from Biafra and discharged his responsibilities creditably. Of course, he made mistakes, but who doesnt?

Chudi Offodile: Nigeria at Independence had three regions or states  the Northern, Western and Eastern regions. The Mid-Western region was subsequently created constitutionally, making it four regions. After the military takeover in 1966 and just before the outbreak of the civil war in 1967, General Gowon arbitrarily created 12 states. After the war in January 1970, the defeated Biafra signed a surrender instrument accepting the existing structure of Nigeria at that time which was 12 states with a proviso that any future changes or alteration will be worked out by the representatives of the people which was not followed in the creation of additional 24 states.

PREMIUM TIMES: How can this particular proviso assist the process of legitimising the call and the eventual convening of a framework to restructure Nigeria?

Chudi Offodile: The calls for the restructuring of the federation are legitimate. I only brought up that point not to legitimise the calls for restructuring but to draw the attention of those who use words like non-negotiable, that the entire arrangement was arbitrary and therefore negotiable, at least from the point of view of a significant population that rejoined the federation in 1970. These are facts of our history that cannot be ignored or wished away.

PREMIUM TIMES: You captured the revival of the Biafran idea in the agitations of MASSOB (Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra), IPOB (Indigenous People of Biafra), and BHRI (Billie Human Rights Initiative) as the Igbo response to the failure of former Vice President Alex Ekwueme to be nominated in 1999 in Jos as PDPs Presidential flagbearer, and as a continuation of the marginalisation of the Igbo in Nigeria. And you said you do not see a resolution of the Biafra dilemma without a Federal Government engagement with these groups. How do you mean?

Chudi Offodile: The groups exist and I have mentioned them and how they emerged and the ideological differences among them  the groups that call for self-determination of the indigenous people of Biafra. They are not secret organisations. They do not operate underground. It is an incontrovertible fact that they did not exist before 1999. Uwazurike formed MASSOB in 1999, I believe, in response to the mood of the Igbo nation after Dr. Alex Ekwueme lost his presidential bid. It is there in Wikipedia. The struggle has gone beyond Uwazurike. There are several other groups but Nnamdi Kanu has emerged as a charismatic leader and captured the imagination of not a few of the Igbo people. They have a strong following and should be engaged.

PREMIUM TIMES: Can you explain how this position relates to the overarching thesis of your book which, as you have stated, is the devolution of powers to the regions?

Chudi Offodile: It is really for the government to decide on how to go about it. I pointed out in the book that Uwazurikes detention for two years, between 2005 and 2007, radicalised his followers like Nnamdi Kanu, Uche Madu, Uche Mefor and others. Remember how Boko Haram became radicalised after the killing of Mohammed Yusuf and others. We should learn from history, but government is always faced with competing and oftentimes conflicting views.

PREMIUM TIMES: In another instance of the contrapuntal design of your book, and in opposing received popular wisdom side with a counter-reality, you described Anthony Ukpabi Asika, the pro-Nigeria Igbo intellectual and then Administrator of East Central State, as the most unpopular Igbo man alive at a point due to his position on the war. Does this hate feeling still prevail?

Chudi Offodile: Possibly! But I feel strongly that Ukpabi Asika should be judged, not on the basis of the opinion he held, his opposition to the declaration of Biafra, but on the basis of his achievement in office as the Administrator of the defunct East Central State. He put together an excellent cabinet made up of mostly returnees from Biafra and discharged his responsibilities creditably. Of course, he made mistakes, but who doesnt? Our post-war survival was very important.

PREMIUM TIMES: Again, you seem to have a soft spot for him judging from the manner you detailed his accomplishments in chapter twelve, The Asika Years  1970-75. The picture is that of Ukpabi Asikas tenure representing a yet unmatched golden era of governance in the South-East. Is this really true? And if it is, does it implicate the performance of those who came before and after him?

I included Professor Soludos articles on reconstructing Nigeria for prosperity as Appendix because I found the prescriptions he made quite compelling. Rather than going ahead to rehash the same arguments already well laid out, I sought his permission to include his work as the appendix to the book and he graciously agreed. The idea of restructuring has political and economic linkages.

Chudi Offodile: All we need to do is check out his record of accomplishments and compare this with those of the others. The only government with a better record is that of Dr. Michael Okpara in the defunct Eastern region. This is a personal opinion but I do not expect any objective person to contradict this position; however you know my people are very emotional about Biafra. Once again, I thought it necessary to tell a complete story of the post-war era.

PREMIUM TIMES: You treated your readers to two chapters in Part Four: Post War Years with almost the same title. The first The Years of Decline  (1976-1998) deals with the failures of military governors/administrators posted to the South-East, while the second The Years of Decline  (1999-2015) deals with appalling failures of the civilian governors in the South-East during a democratic dispensation. This is a refreshing self-critical and audacious submission from a South-Easterner. Is this another instance of this books counter-narrative to the usual one that blames the Federal Government for everything that goes wrong in the states? So, how do you make the underperforming South-East governors measure up to the expectations of their people, given the stupendous resources theyve received from the Federal Government.

Chudi Offodile: I am persuaded that a change in the structure of the federation will make for better performance by the component units, but even with the present arrangement, we could have done better but I leave that for the citizens of the respective states to make their own assessment.

PREMIUM TIMES: There are over twenty pages of three parts of an appendix excerpted from essays written by Professor Chukwuma Soludo entitled, Reconstructing Nigeria For Posterity  I, II, III. How do the issues in your work, which are mainly focused on finding a political solution to Nigerias political instability, connect with Soludos economic perspective?

Chudi Offodile: No one is all knowing. I included Professor Soludos articles on reconstructing Nigeria for prosperity as Appendix because I found the prescriptions he made quite compelling. Rather than going ahead to rehash the same arguments already well laid out, I sought his permission to include his work as the appendix to the book and he graciously agreed. The idea of restructuring has political and economic linkages. In fact, if the restructuring envisaged will not lead to the improvement of the economy, then it would not be worth the effort. The whole idea is to create a competitive federal structure that will create a productive economy, as against the existing consumption based arrangement.

PREMIUM TIMES: A new national population census is being planned for 2018, for which almost N300 billion is being proposed. What are your views concerning the past exercises and the politics that have surrounded them?

Chudi Offodile: Census is good for planning purposes. It is politicised in Nigeria because of the kind of system we operate. Money accrues generally into the federation account and all the states share from it every month. Factors like population, land mass, school enrolment and other factors are used in the sharing formula. Of all the factors used in the distributing of the funds, only, perhaps, land mass cannot be rigged. And, of course, population gives advantage in elections, which gives access to power. These things will not be so important if a proper federal arrangement is worked out.

PREMIUM TIMES: Again on a personal note, you are a lawyer and were elected to Nigerias Federal House of Representatives in May 1999, as the Representative for Awka North/South Federal Constituency of Anambra State, but you said you gave up on electoral politics after two unsuccessful attempts to get elected to the Senate in 2007 and 2011. Have you given up on serving the people? Besides the electoral setbacks, is your retirement reflective of your aversion for the way things are being run currently at all levels in Nigeria. Also, what next after this publication?

Chudi Offodile: I happen to believe that if the basis of your participation in politics is service to the people, then it is perfectly possible to serve the people in other ways than by holding public office. Thinking about how to win elections make it very difficult for people to hold honest views. I like to be able to call a spade by its name.
Search and Rescue personnel of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) in conjunction with officers and men of the Nigerian Navy have apprehended 16 stowaways on a United States bound vessel, MV Colombia River.

The arrest, which was effected on Friday at the Lagos fairway bouy, was sequel to a distress signal sent to the Regional Search and Rescue Coordination Centre based in NIMASA which in turn alerted the Nigerian Navy. The Navy immediately sent its vessel NNS Karaduwa to the location of MV Colombia River where 16 stowaways were apprehended and one of them sustained an injury on the shoulder while attempting to escape arrest.

The injured stowaway was immediately taken away by the NIMASA Search and Rescue team on its vessel NIMASA Benue to the Agencys Search and Rescue Base Clinic for treatment while the others were taken away by the Navy for profiling and subsequent hand over to the Security Agencies for further investigation.

According to Lami Tumaka, NIMASAs head of corporate communications, the crew of the Hong Kong flagged vessel had originally thought they were under attack by armed pirates but preliminary investigation show that the persons on board the vessel were only intruders who hid in the vessel to leave the shores of Nigeria in search of greener pastures in the US.

The stowaways, who included one Liberian national, are in custody and will be handed over to the Nigerian Immigration Service for further action.

Ms. Tumaka said piracy and related activities have drastically reduced in Nigerian waters as a result the combined efforts of the Nigerian Navy, NIMASA and other stakeholders with Lagos accounting for zero incident in the last six months.
The Nigerian Army says it has rescued another abducted Chibok schoolgirl.

Military authorities said troops rescued the girl early Saturday during an operation against Boko Haram insurgents at Pulka village of Gwoza local government in Borno State.

The girl, who was found with a 10-month-old baby, identified herself as Maryam Ali Maiyanga.

She also informed the soldiers that her son, whom she bore to a Boko Haram member, is named Ali.

The spokesman of the Army, Sani Usman, said in a statement that the girl had been taken to a military facility for medical attention.

Troops of 121 Battalion, Nigerian Army, deployed at Pulka, Gwoza Local Government Area, Borno State, for Operation LAFIYA DOLE today, Saturday 5th November 2016, at about 6.00am, while screening some escapees from Boko Haram terrorists hideout in Sambisa forest, discovered one of the abducted Government Secondary School Chibok girls, named Maryam Ali Maiyanga among them, said Mr. Usman, a colonel.

She was discovered to be carrying a 10-month-old son, named Ali. She has been taken to the units medical facility for proper medical check up.

It is imperative to state that troops have been working round the clock to clear remnants of Boko Haram terrorists wherever they might be hibernating and also rescue all persons held hostages by terrorists, he said.
It is an especially sad day for the Nigerian Army. Its most efficient fighter has died in battle after surviving deadly onslaughts and dodging bullets for years.

Muhammed Abu-Ali, a lieutenant colonel, died in an ambush laid for his troops by the terrorist Boko Haram sect, PREMIUM TIMES learnt.

Fourteen Boko Haram insurgents and four other soldiers died in the attack, the army said.

Mr. Abu Ali, commanding officer of 272 Tank Battalion, is reputed as the armys bravest commander and fighter in Nigerias ongoing anti-terrorism war.

Last year, he bagged accelerated promotion for his gallantry and efficiency on the battlefield.

Highly-placed military officials with knowledge of the battle that claimed the officer and his colleagues informed this newspaper of the development.

One of the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the attack occurred at Mallam Fatori, a major Boko Haram stronghold on the northernmost tip of Borno State, on Friday evening.

The source said Mr. Abu-Ali was hit by several bullets as he tried to reinforce troops to repel an ongoing attack in the town.

A few hours earlier, Boko Haram launched a sustained attack on the troops of Operation Lafiya Dole.

As the battled raged, Mr. Ali recognised an immediate need for reinforcement. But his team was met by another group of terrorists while making its way back to the battlefront.

Mr. Ali was killed in the firefight that ensued, the source said

The attack also left six other soldiers dead, while Boko Haram lost 14 of its members.

Another source told PREMIUM TIMES that the timing of the attack makes it highly probable that an insider might have provided Boko Haram with intelligence on troops movement.

The source said the Army leadership on Thursday morning withdrew one officer and 49 combatants from Mallam Fatori.

The terrorists struck shortly after the troops withdrew.

This indicates that the terrorists possibly had advance information of the reduction in the number of troops on the frontline around there, the source said.

The spokesman of the Nigeria Army, Colonel Sani Kukasheka Usman, who confirmed the incident said four other soldiers also sustained injury during the fight.

PREMIUM TIMES recalls that, in September 9, 2015, Mr. Abu-Ali was granted accelerated promotion by the Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai, for his courage, bravery and exceptional performance.

An expert in handling armour tanks, Mr. Abu-Alis men dubbed him the panacea of Boko Haram due to his unmatched bravery in uprooting terrorists.

He was also recognised for the critical roles he played in taking out Boko Haram from many of its strongholds across the Northeast.

The Army spokesman, Sani Usman, a colonel, described him as hero of our time during the ceremony which took place in Borno State.

It is not immediately clear if his family has been informed about the development, which has plunged troops on the battlefield into a weekend of mourning, sources said.

The intensity of Boko Haram activities across the beleaguered Northeast has taken an audacious dimension in recent weeks, coming after several months of relative success by the Nigerian troops and their West African counterparts.

A fortnight ago, scores of Nigerians troops went missing in a similarly ruthless assault by Boko Haram. The attack also claimed an unknown number of troops while wounding about 22 others.

As of Saturday afternoon, the soldiers, about 83 in number, are still missing in action, PREMIUM TIMES understands.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has confirmed media reports that a former Comptroller-General, Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Abdullahi Dikko, returned N1 billion to the Federal Government.

The commissions spokesperson, Wilson Uwujaren, gave the confirmation via SMS to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Saturday.

Mr. Dikko, who headed the NCS between August 2009 and August 2015, was arrested by the EFCC in June over alleged diversion of N40 billion from the agencys coffers.

He was later released, reportedly due to his poor health and was expected to return more money.

Mr. Uwujaren confirmed the seizure of a property belonging to the former customs boss in the Jabi District of Abuja, saying it was under investigation.

Media reports had identified the property as a mansion worth N2 billion and located at 1 Audu Ogbe Street, Jabi, Abuja.

The EFCC spokesperson also confirmed the release of ex-Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro, who had been in the commissions detention since October 17.

He said that the former minister returned N100 million as reported and that the amount was being verified by the commission.

He dropped his Nigerian and American passports, apart from being released to two sureties, Mr. Uwujaren said.

Mr. Obanikoro submitted himself to the EFCC on Oct. 17 following accusations of a N4.7 billion fraud also linked to his two sons, Jide and Gbolahan. (NAN)
The Nigerian Army has handed over Maryam Ali Maiyanga, the rescued Chibok schoolgirl to officials of the Borno State government.

Maryam was earlier today rescued by troops at raided Boko Haram camp in Pulka axis of Gwoza local government area of Borno state

The commander of the Lafiya Dole counterinsurgency operation in Borno State, Lucky Irabor, a Major General, led a team of military officials to the government where the girl and her 10-month-old son were handed over the government officials.

The state Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice received the girl on behalf of the state governor, Kashim Shettima, who had travelled out of the state for an official function in Abuja.

The Attorney General expressed the appreciation of Governor Shettima, whom he said had sent in commendation to the military for doing the the country, the state and the people of Chibok proud.

He added that due to the lack of flights in and out of Maiduguri on Saturdays, the girl would remained in the custody of the state government, pending the next available flight to Abuja.
President Muhammadu Buhari has expressed optimism that Nigeria is destined to achieve greatness in spite of the current challenges.

Mr. Buhari spoke in Sokoto on Saturday when he inaugurated the Kalambaina 500 housing estate built by the state government at the cost N4.8 billion.

According to him, in spite of the challenges, we are determined to overcome them and fight corruption.

The administration will continue to bring development to Nigerians, improve security and welfare of Nigerians, he said.

The president noted that Nigeria had in the early 1960s witnessed reputable peace, culture of discipline and commitment to national development.

Unfortunately, the situation had changed now, but we are committed to taking Nigeria to greatness.

The relevance of the caliphate in the scheme of things in Nigeria cannot be over emphasised, President Buhari added.

The president further stressed the need to give all Nigerians equal opportunities for self actualisation.

The president also urged Nigerians to continue to work for sustainable peace, unity and socioeconomic progress of the country.

He commended the Sultan of Sokoto for being a fearless and tireless peacemaker and bridge builder within and outside Nigeria.

He also hailed the sustained support and cooperation of the traditional rulers and the state governments to the Federal Government.

Mr. Buhari also commended Gov. Aminu Tambuwal for executing the project, and urged the beneficiaries to make good use of the facilities.

Mr. Tambuwal said that the houses were built as part of efforts to fulfil his campaign promises to the people.

The governor hailed the president for his support to the states, noting that the modest achievements were attributable to this gesture.

The Commissioner for Lands and Housing, Bello Gwiwa, said that the estate was provided with road networks, water facilities and school networks, among others.

The Senate President, Bukola Saraki, and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, among others attended the event. (NAN)
Wife of the Vice President, Oludolapo Osinbajo, has stressed the need to eradicate adult and youth illiteracy in the country to enhance national development.

Mrs. Osinbajo, who spoke in Abuja, Thursday, at the one-day private sector lunch by UNESCO in support of Revitalizing Adult and Youth Literacy (RAYL) project, said that Nigeria should focus on tackling illiteracy one person at a time, rather than dwelling on the statistics of illiteracy in the country.

This came in reaction to a survey tracking illiteracy which has revealed that about 65 million Nigerians are still illiterate, according to National Programme Advisor on Education, UNESCO, Regional Office Abuja.

My first experience of being an illiterate was when I went to the Netherlands. I cant speak or read Dutch, all the signs were in Dutch. I cant tell whether it was a nutritious meal or poison. So, that shows how dark and lonely it feels to be an illiterate. You have so much information around you but you cannot access them, he said.

Lets not look at the statistics, lets look at it individually. Lets look at the woman that wants to send her children to school but doesnt have money. Who can compare the joy when a child graduates from school, when a man gets his first job or the ability to employ and pay so many people? Let us have a deeper look so as to achieve greater results, she said.

In her goodwill message, wife of Kebbi state Governor, Zainab Bagudu, said that her NGO, Mass Literacy for the less privileged Almajiris, has sent 300 Almajiris to school and has produced a graduate.

She narrated how she promised an Almajiri boy who refused to go to school N200 per day to convince him to go to school.

In his welcome Address, Benoit Sossou, director, UNESCO Multi-Sectional Regional Office, said that in order to increase the literacy rate of the country, Nigeria initiated the project Revitalizing Adult and Youth Literacy in Nigeria.

This effort is made possible by the generous intervention of the Federal Government through MDG office which made available financial resources to the tune of one billion Naira self-benefitting funds-in-trust domiciled with UNESCO, he said.

He added that the (RAYL) programme has made positive impact on the target population by making over 4 million people literate in 146 local government areas out of 774 LGAs between 2012 and 2015.

This is a far cry from achieving a literate Nigeria, he said.

He urged the private sector to invest more on a wider range of literacy so as to make more profit out of their businesses.

In his remark, the Minister of Education Adamu Adamu, represented by Aladu Abubakar said that there was still about 50 million adults who cannot read or write a simple sentence in Nigeria.

Also in attendance were representatives of the wives of Ebonyi and Nassarawa state governors, Rachel Umahi and Salamatu Al Makura.
The Police Command in Kaduna State on Saturday said it had arrested suspected the murderer of a National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) member serving in the state.

The commands Public Relation Officer, Aliyu Usman, told the News Agency of Nigeria in an interview that the kingpin was arrested on Wednesday.

Mr. Usman said the suspect, Adamu Jibrin, 22, had made useful statement to the police on the offence.

We recovered six loaded cartridges, two knives, two cutlass, a double barrel and one Samsung phone in his room at Unguwar Yero Area in Kaduna, Mr. Usman said.

The NYSC member, Lawal Kontagora, was killed on the October 17. Two suspects were earlier arrested on October 20.

According to him, the kingpin is still under investigation, but the two other suspects have already been charged to court.

The police spokesman said the arrest were carried out by the State Intelligence Bureau (SIB).

He assured the public of their commitment to rid criminals and criminality in Kaduna.

We need the support of every one to achieve it, Mr. Usman said. (NAN)
The Police Special Anti Robbery Squad (SARS) says it has fatally injured a notorious bandit and left others with degrees of injures in an exchange of fire power in Nsukka axis of Enugu State.

The commands spokesman, Ebere Amaraizu, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Enugu on Saturday that SARS engaged the bandits at about 7:15 p.m. on Friday.

Mr. Amarizu said the fatally injured hoodlum was later taken to the hospital, where a doctor certified him dead.

He said an automatic single barrel gun was recovered from the bandit.

He said the group had been a torn in the flesh on members of the public, especially within Odenigwe Road axis of Nsukka and its environs.

It was gathered that SARS operatives in Nsukka zone had encountered the suspected hoodlums at about 7:15 p.m. in the night during their routine patrol.

On sighting the hoodlums, exchange of fire ensued between SARS operatives and the hoodlums which left one of the suspected armed robbers fatally injured, he said.

Mr. Amaraizu said a manhunt had been intensified toward getting the fleeing members of the gang.

The state command is appealing to hospital owners in the state and its environs to watch out for those who may approach them with suspected bullet wound for treatment and report promptly to any nearby police station.

The Deputy Commissioner of Police, Mr Okpongkpong Imaikop, has lauded the effort of SARS operatives and the timely information of the members of the public.

While maintaining that the command will stop at nothing toward ensuring that there is functional security in the state, he said.

According to him, the deputy commissioner also advised would-be hoodlums and mischief makers to have a change of mind.

He quoted the DCP as saying that the command was working in partnership with sister security agencies and will not rest on it oars until the entire area is secured. (NAN)
We may think we spend most of our time in the kitchen cooking or in the family room watching TV. But the truth is, we spend one-third of our lives sleeping  so the bedroom wins. And yet, this is not where our decorating dollars go.

A lot of people want their bedroom to have personality, says Rebecca Atwood, a Brooklyn textile designer, but theyre not sure what to do. If your bedroom is basic but you want beautiful, Atwood, a paint-color pro, and Annie Elliott, owner of bossy color in Washington, have some ideas to revive it.

The first might be the hardest: Clear out the clutter. Organize clothes and find somewhere else to store the gift wrap. The surface clutter is a huge problem for all of us, Elliott says.

Think through color after that, and throw convention out the door. After all, this is the room that you start and end the day with. If a room is large, go with a light color, Elliott says, and if it is small, embrace it with a dark, cozy selection.

Then look to subtle, relaxing patterns  think watercolors, dots, embroidery. An injection of pattern can enliven any space, Atwood writes in her new book, Living With Pattern: Color, Texture and Print at Home.

Hit the refresh button on your bedroom with less clutter, new paint and interesting textiles, and enjoy a private space made for rest.

If you really love pattern, you should have a patterned duvet, Atwood says. But pattern doesnt always mean big and loud: The bedroom is a good place to try soft designs such as marble- and water-inspired fabrics. Roar + Rabbits Organic Landscape Duvet Cover + Shams ($29-$109, westelm.com) hit the mark with deep colors done in a painterly way.

Offer the bedroom a rustic touch with the mango-wood Treago Table Lamp ($169, dwellstudio.com). Its petite enough for a nightstand, and matches  yet updates  any current scheme.

A nightstand such as the Baby Relax Miles Campaign Nightstand ($149.99, target.com) doesnt have to have its twin on the other side of the bed, Elliott says. She has used everything from an antique demilune to a bachelors chest in her projects. The trick is to make sure the heights are the same and the lamps match.

Sheets are one of the most natural places to add pattern, Atwood says. Theres a lot of options out there for small-scale prints, such as stripes and dots. Those are the ones that are going to go with everything. The Pebble Slate Grey Sheet Set ($179.95-$219.95, crateandbarrel.com) gives polka dots an organic feel.

Atwoods Woven Throw Blanket in navy features one of her new patterns and is great for the end of a bed or, for a twist, to hang over a headboard and give it a different, layered look for a season ($349, rebeccaatwood.com).

One of Atwoods favorite bedding brands is Parachute. Its products are basic and unfussy and feature lots of linen options, such as the Linen Stripe Duvet Cover Set ($329-349, parachutehome.com), which Atwood says is great year-round. If you want more seasonal fabrics, she notes that percale is light and airy for summer; sateen feels a bit warmer at night for spring and fall; and flannel, of course, is classic winter bed wear.

Elliott, a former art historian, likes to make bedrooms feel like real rooms, not just caves for sleeping. For that, lighting is key, she says. Even if you have tiny bedside lights, she advocates for table and floor lamps as well. The Uteki Painted Lamp Ensemble adds a nice spot of pattern, too ($148-$298, anthropologie.com).

Elliott chooses nightstands with drawers for many of her clients because she likes clean, uncluttered bedrooms. (You have to have a place for a tissue or a pen, she says.) The Marcelle 3-Drawer Nightstand ($619, rhbabyandchild.com) has three. Whichever nightstand you choose, measure its height and make sure it works with the height at which you sleep, because contemporary furniture is often low to the ground.

When updating a standard bedroom to something more interesting, think about texture, too. Look at crochet, linen, things that are knit, Atwood says. A puckered seersucker-like stripe is also nice, as on the Tidal White Duvet Cover ($223-$308, pineconehill.com).

Its an age-old design question: How many pillows should go on the bed? If you share a bed and the other person is anti-pillow, shams or one accent pillow might be your only chance for fun  so make it count. Check two boxes and add texture with World Markets Black, White and Gray Kilim Lumbar Pillow ($49.99, worldmarket.com).

If youre iffy on pattern in the bedroom, Atwood says to start with pillowcases. You can test and see if you like it, she says. Then, if you want to add the matching sheets, you can. Atwood also says she loves seeing bold shams. Try the Thandie Watercolor Printed Shams ($39-$49, ballarddesigns.com).

Atwood likes big pillows to prop yourself up in bed for reading, or tickling kids on the floor. Pottery Barns Solid Velvet Lumbar Pillow Cover comes in six saturated colors and can be monogrammed ($29.50, potterybarn.com).

Small-scale patterns, such as the cross-stitch, running stitch and diamonds in the Milou Embroidered Linen Sheet Set ($309-$369, restorationhardware.com), read as texture from a distance, Atwood notes. These types of patterns are easy to layer and match.

Elliott favors a clean, white bedding cover because your bed has a lot of visual real estate in a room, she says. Theres so much look-at-me bedding, but if you make white a main part of your room, you make your life so much easier. In particular, she likes a nice, classic matelasse, such as the Boyfriend White Matelasse Coverlet ($243-$359, pineconehill.com).
ATLANTIC CITY  In October 2007, the city was in turmoil, its mayor having disappeared amid allegations hed lied about his military record in Vietnam.

National media dubbed Bob Levy the missing mayor. City Councilman William Marsh served as acting mayor in Levys absence.

Marsh recently recalled getting a visit from two state officials during that time. The officials asked him to sign a letter giving the state control of the citys Law Department and Business Administrators Office.

They sent the (Casino Reinvestment Development Authority) director and a real close ally of the governor to my office to offer a deal for us to let the state come in, Marsh said. They said, If you sign it now, we can take it up to Trenton and then we can start this automatically.

Marsh asked for time to review the letter, but he never signed it. The two state officials  then-CRDA Director Thomas Carver and Diane Legreide, Gov. Jon S. Corzines liaison to Atlantic City  initially denied involvement but later admitted drafting and offering input on the letter, Press archives show.

The prospect of the state controlling Atlantic City has been around long before this latest struggle, in which the state, after rejecting the citys fiscal recovery plan last week, now has the ability to assume the citys major decision-making powers.

Since the dawn of casino gaming, state officials have pondered the idea of running Atlantic City. Its an idea that comes and goes, driven often by periods of local turmoil or scandal.

Steven Perskie, a former state lawmaker, authored the 1978 law that allowed casinos in the resort. He said officials in Gov. Brendan Byrnes office suggested adding language to the Casino Control Act to make a state agency with regional authority over the city and Atlantic County, similar to the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission.

I was very much opposed to it at the time, and its part of the reason why the governor chose not to do it, Perskie said in October. I have come to the view that if we had to do it all over again, we should have bitten the political bullet at the time. It would have been very unpopular locally  I probably wouldnt have survived politically  but it probably would have been a smarter thing to do.

The idea of a state takeover resurfaced a decade later, in 1989, after State Police arrested Mayor James Usry, two sitting council members and a former councilman on corruption charges. Some state legislators called for a takeover in the wake of the arrests. Two legislative committees held joint hearings to weigh options for state intervention.

I think you have, on the one hand, the viewpoint of Atlantic City, in olden times, as being a sugar daddy. The state thought that by taking it over, (the state) could benefit more greatly from the resources than what Atlantic City was bringing to the table, said Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University. And this kind of consistent effort (to take over) that you dont see with other municipalities, by and large, is really insulting.

The takeover talk was muted after Sen. Jim Whelan, D-Atlantic, became mayor in 1990. For Whelan, who sponsored the law that could soon let the state take over the citys finances, it was all about cooperation and compromise with the state.

One of the goals I had was to try to calm the waters because we looked like a banana republic, Whelan said. We had a good partnership with the state. I had a good personal partnership with Sen. (Bill) Gormley. And we got stuff done.

Whelan cited Atlantic City International Airport, the convention center and the Atlantic City-Brigantine Connector tunnel as examples. The city owned and operated the airport, but it didnt make money and required expensive capital improvements, Whelan said. So he decided it was best for a state authority to run it.

It was my judgment and collective judgment ultimately that it should be run on a regional basis because its a regional asset, Whelan said. So if the region is going to benefit and the states going to benefit, why should the city bear the cost for the capital improvements to the airport?

When Whelan became a state lawmaker, he sponsored a law that required the state to sign off on any sale of Bader Field, the 143-acre swath of undeveloped waterfront property. Whelan said the point of his bill was to add an extra set of eyes on any potential deal for the former airstrip.

State oversight has increased heavily under Gov. Chris Christie. A state financial monitor was put in City Hall in 2010, the state-run Tourism District was implemented in 2011 and an emergency manager was appointed in 2015.

Christie signed the so-called takeover law in May, which could let the state sell city assets, hire or fire workers and break union contracts, among other powers, for five years to fix the citys dire finances.

Mayor Don Guardian, a Republican mayor now battling the state for his citys sovereignty, said Christie and Senate President Steve Sweeney discussed a takeover with him before he was sworn in.

They had said they were planning a state takeover in January (2014), Guardian said. They postponed it.

This time, though the state appears intent on finishing the job, despite Guardians best efforts.

Then again, you never know. In 1989, after the Legislature held hearings about taking Atlantic Citys government, it never acted.

One of the advocates for keeping local control  another Republican named Donald  was skeptical of the idea.

You can say youre going to do a state takeover and then appoint some stiff to run Atlantic City, and were in bad shape, said Donald Trump. If a (state) appointment is wrong, it could be disastrous. And most likely the appointment will be wrong.
Three Lacey Township residents were among six people arrested in a sting on a southern Ocean County heroin ring, authorities said.

Derek Simone, 32, of Lacey, and Luis Quintana, 38, of Jersey City, were charged as heroin dealers and taken to the Ocean County jail, according to the county Prosecutors Office.

The pair used homes on Sinclair Avenue in Lacey and in Jersey City to store and sell heroin, police said. Nine police departments executed no-knock warrants Thursday.

Lacey police arrested Kyle Pianetti, 24, and Colleen Marie, 54, both of the Lanoka Harbor section, and Travis Hill, 26, of Berkeley Township.

Jersey City police arrested Quintana and Ester Lopez, 36.

Police seized about 350 bags of heroin from both locations and about 50 grams of cocaine and $3,800 in cash from the Jersey City site. Police seized a bank account belonging to Quintana they allege was used in the drug scheme.

Quintana was charged with possessing and conspiracy to possess heroin with intent to distribute, distribution of heroin, and possession of more than half an ounce with intent to distribute cocaine.

He was taken to the Ocean County jail on $105,000 bail.

Simone was charged with possession of heroin, possess with intent to distribute heroin and conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute heroin.

Hill, Pianetti and Marie were charged with possession of heroin and conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute heroin. Hill and Marie were released on a summons. Hill was taken to the Ocean County jail on $20,000 bail.

Lopez was charged with possession of heroin, possession of heroin with intent to distribute, possession of cocaine and possession of cocaine over half an ounce with intent to distribute. She was released on a summons.

Detectives from the Prosecutors Special Operations Group, Southern Enforcement Unit, investigated along with other police investigators.
LINWOOD  If student preferences are an accurate predictor, Hillary Clinton will win New Jersey next week.

The Democratic candidate for president won 56 percent of the vote to Donald Trumps 29 percent in the New Jersey Mock Election results announced Friday.

The event was coordinated by the New Jersey Council for Social Studies, the New Jersey Center for Civic Education at Rutgers University, the Community Foundation of New Jersey and the New Jersey Social Studies Supervisors Association to generate interest in civics and voting.

How teachers approach the 2016 election topic Ocean City Intermediate School social studies teacher Nick Verducci admits he cant wait for

Hillary Clinton was also the winner in the National Student/Parent Mock Election, and the EveryKidVotes mock election project.

As the nations voters prepare to cast their ballots Tuesday, students in area schools have been holding their own debates, campaigns and mock elections, with interesting results.

Libertarian Gary Johnson won three states in the Mainland Regional High School mock election Friday.

Teacher Brian Smith speculated Johnsons support for legalizing marijuana resonated with some students.

Grace Kenney, 16, of Linwood, who played Johnson during a school debate, said the schools campaign and mock election gave her the chance to learn more about the Libertarian Party.

It showed me how the media can drive the election, she said. Third-party candidates dont get much attention.

Donald Trump was the eventual winner at Mainland, though there was some speculation that Russell Bongiovannis hilarious portrayal during the school debate gave him an edge.

I had a lot of fun with it, Bongiovanni, 17, of Northfield, said. I think some did vote for me because I was funny.

This year, almost 66,000 students in 74 school districts also participated in a New Jersey Mock Election. Students rejected the gas tax, with 64 percent voting against it, but supported term limits for congressman.

The state mock election had no schools voting from Atlantic County  Mainlands voting was a separate exercise  but schools in Cape May and Ocean counties supported Trump, while Cumberland County went for Clinton.

Robert ODell, president of the state Social Studies Supervisors Association said they hope to get more schools involved next year in a mock election for the New Jersey governors race.

Smith, who teaches the AP U.S. Government course at Mainland and coordinated the schools mock election, said the student-run project generated a lot of excitement.

I came in this morning and students were talking about who they were going to vote for, he said.

Junior Caroline Reed had volunteered to divide classrooms into states for electoral votes, a process that was more complicated than she anticipated.

It was the biggest math problem, she said. It took four gym classes to equal California.

Smiths students turned a corner of the school library into election headquarters Friday, with tables covered in posters, election results, and donut and pizza boxes. Students colored states red or blue as the results came in and made periodic schoolwide announcements during the day.

Smith credits the debates with generating a high level of interest, saying the students did a great job researching and presenting the policy issues.

Valerie Speirs, 16, of Linwood, who portrayed Hillary Clinton, said she focused more on policy than acting, noting Trump is more of a performer. She thought Linwood leaned more Republican anyway, so she wasnt entirely surprised by the results.

Students also visited classrooms to campaign and said Trump supporters were the loudest.

Especially the freshmen, said Eliana Pisetzner, 16, of Linwood, who added the project showed her how much work goes into a campaign and election.

Jelani Gandy, 17, was on the Trump team for the project but said hes still a Clinton supporter.

It didnt change my mind, but it was interesting to learn more, he said.

Jess Clouser, 16, of Linwood, said she is now more open to third parties, though the students found third-party candidates tended to focus on one or two issues and did not have broad platforms.

Id never even though about third parties before, said Eva Scheffler, 17, of Northfield, who portrayed Jill Stein in the debate. But there really arent just two parties.

As they prepared to announce the winner, the losers prepared concession speeches, and Michal Milhous, 17, of Northfield, wrote Trumps victory speech.

Well, it turns out the election wasnt rigged after all, the speech began.
For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the "elites" to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME.

Jones chronicles the history of the global elite's bloody rise to power and reveals how they have funded dictators and financed the bloodiest warscreating order out of chaos to pave the way for the first true world empire.

Watch as Jones and his team track the elusive Bilderberg Group to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III.





to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. Learn about the formation of the North America transportation control grid, which will end U.S. sovereignty forever.





Discover how the practitioners of the pseudo-science eugenics have taken control of governments worldwide as a means to carry out depopulation.





View the progress of the coming collapse of the United States and the formation of the North American Union.

Never before has a documentary assembled all the pieces of the globalists' dark agenda. Endgame's compelling look at past atrocities committed by those attempting to steer the future delivers information that the controlling media has meticulously censored for over 60 years. It fully reveals the elite's program to dominate the earth and carry out the wicked plan in all of human history.

Endgame is not conspiracy theory, it is documented fact in the elite's own words.




Nastydress is looking to expand its business growth potential with a newly launched affiliate marketing program

SHENZHEN, China, Nov. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Nastydress, a brand that aligns its product designs with the latest fashion trends to raise the bar for the online designer garments retail market, recently launched its affiliate marketing program.

The fashion e-commerce store has grown exponentially over the last several years due to its low price commitment and high quality products. Nastydress has managed to remain a profitable venture by liquidizing a large quantity of inventory daily, rather than selling small amounts of inventory at high prices. The owners believe that the newly launched affiliate marketing program would spell more growth and expansion of their brand in terms of total reach and revenue.

To keep prices affordable, Nastydress is now soliciting cooperation from its loyal fan base to help promote the brand. Nastydress has been able to retain the majority of its buyers and word-of-mouth publicity has played a key role in promoting their products. To give even more exacting incentives to their patrons and subsidiary associates, Nastydress has now introduced their affiliate marketing program. Partners who join the affiliate team are now allowed to pick hours, snag more savings than average buyers on Nastydress products, and make huge commissions.

"Our ecommerce store is renowned globally for having one of the largest and most extensive inventories of fashion products," said Ice Yen, a top executive. "The company was been built around the vision of providing customers the cheapest prices and now we provide more ways to save with our affiliate program. Customers who become affiliate partners on Nastydress can buy the products that they sell and earn commission on even their own purchases. The savings are not just limited to the affiliate partner as the savings are transferrable to family and friends."

"The new affiliate program offers up to 18% in commission, which is way above the average 5-10% threshold offered by other ecommerce stores", Yen claimed.

The new Nastydress affiliate program can now be availed at http://affiliate.Nastydress.com/. Interested affiliates and business partners can also sign up by clicking the affiliate link at the bottom of the Nastydress homepage. The process to sign up is quick and customers can begin selling right away.

For further questions, contact affiliate@Nastydress.com.

Related links:

http://www.Nastydress.com/

http://affiliate.Nastydress.com/

Related Links

http://www.Nastydress.com



SOURCE NastyDress
DUBLIN, November 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global Boronate Affinity Chromatography Market 2016-2020" report to their offering.

The global boronate affinity chromatography market to grow at a CAGR of 5.36% during the period 2016-2020.

Affinity chromatography is a separation method that utilizes the specific binding interaction between an immobilized ligand and its binding partner for separation and purification. Boronate affinity chromatography is based on the boronate functional group and used for the selective separation and molecular recognition of cis-diol-containing compounds in industries like healthcare, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology.

The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global boronate affinity chromatography market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated by the sales of instruments, reagents, and other consumables at market prices. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.

Growing demand from emerging nations will be a key trend for market growth. The rapid expansion of several R&D facilities can be witnessed in many developing economies such as China, India, South Africa, and Brazil. These countries are experiencing high growth rates, which creates huge growth potential for the laboratory equipment market.

Rapidly growing process industries such as the chemical industry will drive the demand for these products during the forecast period. Investments from private investors will also have a positive impact on the growth of the market. The increasing migration of R&D facilities from Western countries to developing APAC nations due to lower capital and labor costs will lead to a higher demand for boronate affinity chromatography products and other similar laboratory equipment over the forecast period.

Key vendors

AMS Biotechnology

Bio-Rad Laboratories

Merck

Thermo Fisher Scientific

Other prominent vendors

Becton

Dickinson and Company

Helena Laboratories

Pall

Phenomenex

Regis Technologiesc

Shimadzu

Trinity Biotech

Tosoh

VWR International

Waters

W.R Grace

Key Topics Covered:

Part 01: Executive summary

Part 02: Scope of the report

Part 03: Market research methodology

Part 04: Introduction

Part 05: Market landscape

Part 06: Market segmentation by product

Part 07: Geographical segmentation

Part 08: Market drivers

Part 09: Impact of drivers

Part 10: Market challenges

Part 11: Impact of drivers and challenges

Part 12: Market trends

Part 13: Vendor landscape

Part 14: Key vendor analysis

Part 15: Appendix

For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/g3c776/global_boronate

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com



SOURCE Research and Markets
DUBLIN, November 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Smart Metering in Europe - 12th Edition" report to their offering.

Are you looking for detailed information and comprehensive data about the European smart metering market (electricity and gas)? The analyst team has been covering smart metering continuously for more than thirteen years. Now in the twelfth edition, Smart Metering in Europe is our flagship 250-page report covering AMM in EU28+2. Learn more about the EU energy policies driving the adoption of smart metering and the latest market developments in Europe.

Smart Metering in Europe is the twelfth consecutive report analysing the latest developments for smart metering (electricity and gas) in Europe.

This strategic research report provides you with over 250 pages of unique business intelligence, including 5-year industry forecasts, expert commentary and real-life case studies on which to base your business decisions.

Highlights from the twelfth edition of the report:

- Full coverage of the European market with in-depth market profiles of all countries in EU28+2.

- Case studies of smart electricity and gas metering projects by the leading energy groups in Europe.

- 360-degree overview of next generation standards for PLC and RF smart grid communication.

- Updated profiles of the key players in the metering industry.

- New detailed forecasts for smart electricity and gas meters in 30 countries until 2023.

- Summary of the latest developments in the European energy industry.

This report answers the following questions:

- What are Enel's plans for the second wave of smart meters in Italy?

- What will be the effects of Germany's new legislation for the introduction of smart meters?

- Which countries are going forward with smart metering in Central Eastern Europe?

- Who were the winners in the recent tenders in Norway and Austria?

- Which emerging wireless IoT networking technologies are best positioned for smart metering applications?

- Which are the leading suppliers of smart metering solutions for the European market?

- What are the plans for smar t gas meter rollouts until 2022?

- How are ICT providers positioning themselves in the value chain?

Smart Metering in Europe in its twelfth edition is the foremost source of information about the ongoing transformation of the metering sector (electricity and gas). Whether you are a vendor, utility, telecom operator, investor, consultant, or government agency, you will gain valuable insights from our in-depth research.

Report Structure:

1. Electricity, gas and district heating markets in Europe

2. Smart metering solutions

3. Networks and communication technologies

4. Smart metering industry players

5. Market profiles

6. Case studies: Smart metering projects in Europe

7. Market forecasts and trends

Companies Mentioned:

- ADD Grup

- AEM

- AP Systems

- Aclara Technologies

- Aidon

- Apator

- Arqiva

- Atos Worldgrid

- CGI

- Capgemini

- Circutor

- Corinex

- Cuculus

- Cyan Technology/Connode

- Devolo

- Diehl Metering

- EDMI Meters

- EMH Metering

- Elgama Elektronika

- Elster

- Enoro

- Ericsson

- Ferranti Computer Systems

- Flonidan

- Gorlitz

- Hager

- Hexing Electrical

- IBM

- Iskraemeco

- Itron

- Janz

- Kaifa Technology

- Kamstrup

- Kapsch

- Kisters

- LG CNS

- Landis+Gyr

- Linyang Energy

- MeteRSit

- NURI Telecom

- Networked Energy Services

- Oracle

- Ormazabal

- Pietro Fiorentini

- Powel

- Power Plus Communications

- RIZ

- Rejlers

- SAP

- Sagemcom

- Sanxing Electric

- Schneider Electric

- Sensus

- Siemens

- Silver Spring Networks

- Telecontrol STM

- Telefonica

- Telekom Austria

- Trilliant

- UtilityConnect

- Vodafone

- Wasion

- Xemex

- ZIV

- ZPA Smart Energy

For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/8t7hm6/smart_metering_in

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com



SOURCE Research and Markets
To promote the local culture and art further, Guru Online, on behalf of Jiangsu Tourism Administration, invited American photographer and YouTuber Jay Mantri to Jiangnan. Mantri visited a list of 2016 China-US Tourism Year destinations in the area and experienced first-hand the charm of the region.

During the 10-day Discover Jiangnan cultural tour, Jay visited six major cities in Jiangsu; Nanjing, Yangzhou, Nantong, Suzhou, Wuxi and Yixing. He experienced local folk arts, including kite-making, dim sum making, blue calico dyeing, Kunqu Opera and purple clay teapot making, but of all the destinations, he was most impressed by the ancient water town of Zhouzhuang, located near Suzhou.

"Before my visit, local media and "China Towns" in the US were the only sources for me to learn more about this country," commented Mantri, "yet after this Discover Jiangnan journey, I want to tell my friends and followers, if you'd like to experience authentic Chinese culture, there's no better place than Jiangnan. I love Zhouzhuang! Old houses, stone bridges and narrow lanes, everything there put me in awe. I'll be back with my friends and show them how wonderful this ancient place is."

Discover Jiangnan was a great success, receiving over 16 million impressions, and around 100,000 netizens from around the world, including the United States, Italy, Canada, Singapore, Australia, France and Germany, have interacted with the official travel page of Jiangsu.

To watch a short movie of Discover Jiangnan and videos of local folk art, go to the official Visit Jiangsu social media pages:

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/VisitJiangsu

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/visitjiangsu/

Discover Jiangnan Ambassador Profile

Jay Mantri

American travel photographer and vlogger Jay Mantri is a social media influencer based in Los Angeles. His YouTube account Mike & Jay Explore, in collaboration with Mike Dewey, has gained over 730K views. Jay runs a photography and video website, that is highly favored by his followers, especially in America and Europe. Jay has also cooperated with administration offices in Oregon, Colorado, Indonesia and Costa Rica, and online travel magazine Matador Network.

Instagram: http://instagram.com/ajaymantri

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/mikeandjayexplore

Website: http://www.jaymantri.com

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161104/436210

SOURCE Jiangsu Provincial Tourism Administration
NEW YORK, Nov. 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- July 2016 sees rises and falls in the market prices of major amino acids in China for various reasons.

In particular, the price of lysine soars due to tight market supply. Meanwhile, some domestic threonine producers raised their quotations, affected by the environmental inspections this month. On the contrary, frequent floods reduce downstream demand for methionine and therefore, the market price of methionine falls slightly over last month.



Thanks to the rises in the market prices, some amino acids improved their profitability. For instance, Yongan Pharmaceutical announced a large rise in its H1 2016 net profit, mainly due to the growth of both the sales volume and price of its taurine products. The leading taurine manufacturer may continue to raise prices in order to boost profits. In recent years, the company has expanded into the food and health care product industries.



Yet, there are some amino acid enterprises facing great challenges. Star Lake Bioscience predicted to continue suffering losses in its H1 2016 financial pre-announcement and may delist if the losses continue in H2. Its API businesses which are of high gross profit margin may be its way out.



Domestic market of amino acid derivatives develops stably. On 5 July, Zhenyuan Pharm announced its plan to expand SAM production capacity in the coming period. At present, there are only two domestic enterprises approved to sell SAM for injection. Given the large demand, the SAM market is promising.On 5 July, 2016, Zhenyuan Pharm announced its plan to expand SAM production capacity in the coming period. At present, there are merely two enterprises allowed to sell SAM for injection. However, given the large domestic demand, more pharmaceutical manufacturers have started to apply for production approval. So far, the Chinese SAM market has been in stable development.

On 1 July, 2016, the 2016 Exchange Meeting on Key Production Technologies for Non-cereal Biomass Polyamine & Polyamino Acids was held in Hohhot City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. At the conference, experts disclosed that the optimization of polyglutamic acid fermentation technique has been completed already.



New Hope Liuhe plans to acquire Besun Agricultural to expand its live pig farming business into Northwest China. Given the fact that China's pig farming industry is enjoying increasing levels of profit, most leading feed enterprises have launched swine breeding projects, with the practice predicted to become more common in the near future. Expansion of the pig breeding industry can facilitate national control on the number of pigs available for slaughter and consequently reduce the negative impact of the "economic circle of pigs".



Yongan Pharmaceutical announced a large rise in its H1 2016 net profit, mainly due to the growth of both the sales volume and price of its taurine products. The leading taurine manufacturer may continue to raise prices in order to boost profits. In recent years, the company has expanded into the food and health care product industries.



Inner Mongolia Fufeng's two key techniques, "Amino Acid Extraction through Secondary Ultracentrifugation Degerming-Concentration-Continuous Ionization Treatment" and "Technique for Treating Fume Produced by Amino Acid Production Process", were authenticated to be "International Initiation" and "International Leading" respectively. As national environmental requirements get stricter, enterprises should invest more into research on environmentally-friendly production technologies to recycle effluent and exhaust in the production process and to reduce reosurce loss and pollutant discharge, which will make them more competitive in the market.



Star Lake Bioscience predicted to continue suffering losses in its H1 2016 financial pre-announcement. Given the fact that it has been in deficit for two consecutive years, the company is confronted with the risk of delisting. Fortunately, its API businesses which are of high gross profit margin may be its way out.

China's supply of lysine gets tight due to reduction in production, resulting in the soaring market price in early July 2016. Given the dramatic increase, downstream purchasers hesitate and hold a "wait-and-see" attitude, which to some extent affects the price surge. CCM predicts the market price of lysine to stay high in the short term.



In July 2016, groups of inspectors were assigned by the SEPA to 7 provinces / autonomous regions (like Ningxia) for environmental inspection. Affected by this, Ningxia EPPEN may cut down its output of threonine and some domestic threonine producers raised their quotations. The market price of threonine shows a MoM increase of 9.09% this month. Analyst CCM predicts that this upward trend may continue in Q3.

In July 2016, frequent floods reduce downstream demand for methionine. Therefore, China's market price of methionine falls slightly over last month. As more new methionine projects are put into operation, the price is likely to continue declining in the near future.



China's MSG export price hit a new record low in May 2016 over the past 6 years, due to the declining export volume, intensified competition and decreasing corn price. At present, MSG is mainly exported to developing countries in Asia. Additionally, the monopoly in domestic MSG market may facilitate the price to be raised jointly, but it is less likely to happen because of the decreases in corn price and export volume.

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LOS ANGELES, Nov. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Gigastone, the Leading Global Mobile Technology Accessory Brand announced today; that in light of the recent torrent of press, relating to Apple claims regarding counterfeit Apple products, it feels it is important to reiterate that its entire range of iOS Flash Drive and Flash Drive Reader products, are Apple MFi Approved. Gigastone wants to assist customers with strategies to prevent purchasing fake substandard products.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161104/436491

Gigastone Micro SD Flash Memory

In much the same way customers are being duped into purchasing Apple products that are not the real thing, many other leading brands are suffering the same fate. For example, those same customers are being duped into believing that certain products that bear the MFi logo and appear to be Apple approved, are in actual fact cheap reproductions. Apple has a stringent program whereby manufacturers of Apple mobile technology accessories, can submit their products and receive the coveted "Made for iDevices," MFi approval. The process maintains that certified Apple accessories bearing the MFi mark, meet the high standards required to be associated with the high quality authentic Apple products.

Harold Katz, Gigastone Chief Marketing Officer commented, "Many mobile technology accessories available online, claiming to be MFi approved, are not and don't meet the exacting standards required for MFi approval." He went on to elaborate, "Companies like Gigastone expend huge effort, ensuring that its products are of a high quality and meet and exceed industry standards. Maintaining these standards can make it more difficult for quality conscious suppliers, like Gigastone, to effectively compete in some situations. The end result is that the real loser is the customer, who is left with a substandard product that many times does not work."

Gigastone urges all customers to take the time to investigate the authenticity of products prior to their purchases;

Visit the suppliers site to ensure that the product in question exists.

Ask the supplier for referral to authorized vendors.

Google the product and review the results for signs of questionable suppliers.

Search product reviews for customers that have suffered at the hands of dubious suppliers.

If the price of the same product varies greatly when searching on Google Shopping, it is more likely that the cheaper products may be fake.

Be aware that large Online Retailers list both their own product lines as well as 3 rd party vendor products, not necessarily authenticated by the site being visited.

party vendor products, not necessarily authenticated by the site being visited. Ask the seller if the product is authentic and if the approval marks it bears are genuine.

This is a global issue across all product lines and Gigastone urges customers to make a stand, in an effort to ensure that products offered by suppliers are authentic.

Gigastone distributes a full range of memory products as well as mobile technology accessories, including the Gigastone iOS Flash Drives. The iFlashdrives come in a number of configurations to meet the needs of the Apple iPhone and iPad users. The Gigastone iFlashDrive software allows users to:

Backup iPhone data from your device to the external memory of the Gigastone iPhone Flash Drives.

Backup can be done automatically. (Photos/Contacts/Calendar)

iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox and Facebook Album data can be moved to the external Gigastone IOs Flash Drive.

The data is secured by Touch ID Security and/or Encryption.

All photos, movies and data is accessible from the iPhone or iPad without having to move the data from the external iOS Flash Drive to a iDevice.

The Gigastone iOS Flash Drives have both Lightning and USB adapters or removable MicroSD cards, so backed up data can easily be moved to any computer without the need for the iDevice.

Data can also be copied from a computer to the iOS Flash Drive and accessed from an iPhone or iPad.

The full Gigastone i-FlashDrive range can be viewed on the Gigastone Web Site.

About Gigastone

Gigastone is the leading global mobile accessory brand, specializing in state-of-the-art, high-end mobile peripherals and technology. For two decades, Gigastone has been distributing technology to all the major big-box and Electronic Commerce stores. Gigastone has leveraged its engineering, manufacturing and quality control skills to drive world-class production and deliver quality products. A uniquely positioned company, poised to continue to grow and maintain its leadership in the fast paced consumer electronics space.

Gigastone currently has eight major offices around the globe; USA, Canada, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, France, Brazil and China, with distributors in Asia, the Americas, and Europe. Notable distributors include Walmart, Costco, Target, Best Buy, Amazon, Guo Mei, JD.com, E-Mart and The Source. Gigastone continues to launch world-class mobile peripherals, constantly diversifying its product range to meet consumer demand. Customer focus is the key to ongoing Gigastone global success.

Related Images

image1.png

image2.png

image3.png

image4.png

Related Links

BBC - Apple complains Amazon's US site is selling fake products

Los Angeles Times - Many 'genuine' Apple products on Amazon are dangerous fakes, Apple says

Related Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RFLmZ5920c

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE Gigastone

Related Links

http://www.gigastone.co


GREENVILLE, S.C., Nov. 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- GrandSouth Bancorporation (GRRB:OTCQB), the holding company for GrandSouth Bank

We are pleased to give you an update on our strategic growth plan and our financial results through September 30, 2016. After successfully raising additional capital in February of this year, we immediately began to put it to work by recruiting some of the best banking talent in SC. Our commitment to ensuring that our growth in assets be of the highest quality led to a substantial investment and restructuring of our credit department. In November of 2015, we hired Richard Harrington as our SVP and Chief Credit Officer. He has over 25 years of credit experience working with First Union, Summit National Bank, and First Citizens. Richard has three highly trained credit analysts on his team to support our underwriting process. These additions have allowed us to enhance our analysis of risk, credit policy, accuracy of credit grading, and the calculation of the allowance for loan loss reserve. This is the foundation that is required to build quality loan growth.

We continued to invest our capital by opening branches in 3 new markets within the past year. Our Greer office opened in December 2015 and is led by our Market President, Jack Lucas. Jack has 26 years of banking experience having worked with BB&T, where he served as their Market President in Greer. He joined our company in July 2014. In less than a year our Greer office has grown to $21 million in deposits and $25 million in loans. In August of 2016, we opened in Columbia and hired David Anderson as our Market President. David has over 38 years of experience in banking having worked with C&S, Nations Bank, and First Citizens. Our Columbia office is located at 1901 Assembly Street. In September of 2016, we opened in Orangeburg and hired Michael Delaney as our Market President. Michael has 18 years of banking experience having worked at First Union, South State and First Citizens. Our Orangeburg office is located at 1085 Saint Matthews Road.

All of our new hires were strategically recruited and are very experienced. They know their markets and how to do their jobs. They are all bankers that produce at high levels and have managed large high quality portfolios.

As you will note in the following financial report, our 3rd quarter earnings are down substantially from the same period last year. Noninterest expense for the 3rd quarter of this year increased by 45% to $5.9 million from $4.1 million for the 3rd quarter of 2015. This is the result of our investment in human resources and expansion into three markets. Additionally, there were approximately $700 thousand in non-recurring expenses related to a negotiated settlement of an employment contract and fees associated with the settlement of an interest swap contract. The bank also recorded a larger provision in the allowance for loan loss in the amount of $790 thousand for the 3rd quarter of this year compared to $390 thousand for the 3rd quarter of 2015. This increase was related to a write down of two loans that experienced a decline in collateral value.

Total assets grew 13.7% to $482 million from $424 million at September 30, 2015. Total loans grew by 10% for that same period with the majority of growth coming in the third quarter of this year. Total deposits grew by 23% to $374 million compared to $304 million at September 30, 2015. This improved the banks liquidity and lowered our loan to deposit ratio to 95%. Additionally, we decreased our outstanding wholesale funding balance by 34% year over year.

We believe the investments we have made in human resources and moving into new markets will provide long term growth and profitability for our company. In closing, I would like to mention that we have hired a new Human Resources Director, Mike West, who brings great knowledge in talent acquisition, performance based evaluations, strategic planning, employment law, and succession planning.

We think the investments we have made in our Credit and Human Resources areas are a very important component of our growth strategy. Our goal is to give our customers exceptional service, provide financial products they need, and extend credit on terms they can repay. Our company will always put quality and integrity before growth. Our mission is to always do the right thing for our customers, shareholders, and employees.

Sincerely,

JB Schwiers

President

GrandSouth Bancorporation (GRRB:OTCQB), the holding company for GrandSouth Bank, announced today that net income for the quarter ended September 30, 2016 was $127 thousand compared to $1.4 million during the quarter ended September 30, 2015.

The Board of Directors declared a dividend of $0.10 per common share ($0.105 per Series A preferred share) payable on November 25, 2016 to shareholders of record on November 10, 2016. This is our fourteenth consecutive quarterly dividend.

Overview

Net loans increased by $22.58 million , or 6.31%, during the quarter.

, or 6.31%, during the quarter. GrandSouth Bancorporation's efficiency ratio was 85.19% during the third quarter of 2016 compared to 61.78% during the third quarter of 2015.

GrandSouth Bancorporation's return on average assets was 0.11% during the third quarter of 2016 compared to 1.32% in the same quarter last year.

The return on average equity was 0.96% in the third quarter of 2016, down from 12.58% in the third quarter of 2015.

Net Interest Income

During the third quarter of 2016, net interest income before the provision for loan losses was $6.7 million, up from $6.4 million during the third quarter of 2015. Average loans during the third quarter of 2016 were $369.6 million compared to $345.0 million during the same period last year. The net interest margin was 6.15% in the third quarter of 2016, down from 6.65% in the third quarter of 2015 and down from 6.35% in the prior quarter.

Noninterest income

Noninterest income was $227 thousand during the third quarter of 2016, compared to $193 thousand during the same quarter of 2015.

Noninterest Expense

Noninterest expense was $5.9 million for the third quarter of 2016 compared to $4.1 million for the third quarter of 2015. Growth in non-interest expense during the quarter was impacted by the Company's in-process expansion of two new offices in the Columbia and Orangeburg, S.C. markets. Employee compensation increased by $1.3 million compared to the third quarter of 2015. Additionally, there were approximately $700 thousand in non-recurring expenses related to a negotiated settlement of an employee contract and fees associated with the settlement of an interest swap contract. During the third quarter of 2016, we sold $106 thousand of other real estate owned (OREO) properties recognizing gains of $97 thousand, and we recognized impairment in the amount of $10 thousand on OREO properties resulting in a net gain of $87 thousand. This compared to a loss on OREO of $126 thousand for the third quarter of 2015.

The efficiency ratio increased to 85.19% during the quarter ended September 30, 2016 from 61.78% during the third quarter of 2015.

Loan Portfolio

Net loan growth in the third quarter of 2016 was $22.58 million.

The composition of our loan portfolio consisted of the following at September 30, 2016 and December 31, 2015:







September 30,

December 31,





2016

2015





(Dollars in thousands)











Loans secured by real estate:







Commercial, financial and agricultural $ 111,990

$ 100,485

Real estate - construction, land development and other land loans 37,041

47,714

Real estate - mortgage 200,101

182,284

Installment loans to individuals 35,642

38,867



Loans, gross 384,774

369,350

Allowance for possible loan losses (4,412)

(4,315)



Loans, net $ 380,362

$ 365,035















Loan Loss Provision/Asset Quality

The loan loss provision for the quarter ended September 30, 2016 was $790 thousand, compared to $390 for the same period last year. Net charge offs for the three months ended September 30, 2016 were $724 thousand, compared to $454 thousand for the same period in 2015.

OREO as of September 30, 2016 was $4.8 million compared to $5.3 million as of the end of the previous year. Nonaccrual loans were $3.5 million at September 30, 2016 compared to $1.7 million at the end of last year.

GrandSouth Bancorporation's allowance for loan losses as a percentage of total loans at September 30, 2016 was 1.15%, compared to 1.17% at the end of 2015. Management believes the allowance is adequate at this time but continues to monitor trends in environmental factors which may potentially affect future losses.

Securities Portfolio

Investment securities, all of which are available-for-sale, were $28.5 million at September 30, 2016 up from $14.9 million at December 31, 2015.

Securities in our investment portfolio as of September 30, 2016 were as follows:

callable agency securities in the amount of $10.0 million

residential government-sponsored mortgage-backed securities in the amount of $11.6 million and residential government-sponsored collateralized mortgage obligations totaling $129 thousand

and residential government-sponsored collateralized mortgage obligations totaling taxable municipal bonds in the amount of $1.0 million

nontaxable municipal bonds in the amount of $5.8 million

During the third quarter of 2016, we purchased $2.0 million of callable agency securities and $4.2 million of residential government-sponsored mortgage-backed securities. Three callable agency securities in the amount of $5.7 million and one municipal bond in the amount of $500 thousand were called.

Deposits

Total deposits were $404.1 million at September 30, 2016 compared to $350.3 million at December 31, 2015. Interest-bearing accounts were $336.4 million at September 30, 2016 up from $304.7 million at December 31, 2015.

Shareholders' Equity

Total shareholders' equity increased from $42.7 million at December 31, 2015 to $52.1 million at September 30, 2016 as a result of a previously announced completion of the sale of $12 million in common stock through a private placement, the redemption of all remaining Series T-3 preferred stock and the retention of earnings. Our Tier 1 Risk Based Capital Ratios were 15.18% and 14.90% for GrandSouth Bancorporation and GrandSouth Bank, respectively, as of September 30, 2016.

GrandSouth Bancorporation is a bank holding company with assets of $482.2 million at September 30, 2016. GrandSouth Bank provides a range of financial services to individuals and small and medium sized businesses. GrandSouth Bank has six branches in South Carolina, located in Greenville, Fountain Inn, Anderson, Greer, Columbia and Orangeburg, S.C.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that relate to future events or the future performance of GrandSouth Bancorporation. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance or results. These forward-looking statements are based on the current beliefs and expectations of the respective management of GrandSouth Bancorporation and GrandSouth Bank and are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies, many of which are beyond their respective control. In addition, these forward-looking statements are subject to assumptions with respect to future business strategies and decisions that are subject to change. Actual results may differ materially from the anticipated results discussed or implied in these forward-looking statements because of numerous possible uncertainties. Words like "may," "plan," "contemplate," "anticipate," "believe," "intend," "continue," "expect," "project," "predict," "estimate," "could," "should," "would," "will," and similar expressions, should be considered as identifying forward-looking statements, although other phrasing may be used. Such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties and may not be realized due to a variety of factors. Additional factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements are discussed in the reports (such as Annual Reports) filed by GrandSouth Bancorporation. You should consider such factors and not place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. No obligation is undertaken by GrandSouth Bancorporation to update such forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the issuance of this press release.

GrandSouth Bancorporation

Greenville, SC

Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets

(Unaudited)









September 30,

December 31,







2016

2015







(Dollars in thousands) Assets







Cash and due from banks $ 13,630

$ 11,695

Interest bearing transaction accounts with other banks 15,499

456

Federal funds sold 13,438

3,701



Cash and cash equivalents 42,567

15,852

Certificates of deposit with other banks 2,500

2,000

Securities available-for-sale 28,472

14,885

Other investments, at cost 957

1,276

Loans, gross 384,774

369,350

Allowance for loan losses (4,412)

(4,315)

Loans, net of allowance for loan losses 380,362

365,035

Premises and equipment, net 9,147

8,814

Bank owned life insurance 6,349

6,226

Assets acquired in settlement of loans 4,773

5,275

Interest receivable 3,207

3,133

Deferred income taxes 1,273

1,274

Goodwill 737

737

Other assets 1,889

1,983



Total assets $ 482,233

$ 426,490













Liabilities and shareholders' equity







Deposits









Noninterest bearing $ 67,688

$ 45,515



Interest bearing 336,366

304,746





Total deposits 404,054

350,261

Federal Home Loan Bank advances 13,500

22,000

Junior subordinated debentures 8,247

8,247

Interest payable 88

98

Other liabilities 4,219

3,138



Total liabilities 430,108

383,744

Shareholders' equity 52,125

42,746



Total liabilities and shareholders' equity $ 482,233

$ 426,490















Condensed Consolidated Statements of Income

(Unaudited)









For the three months

For the nine months







ended September 30,

ended September 30,







2016

2015

2016

2015







(Dollars in thousands)





















Interest income $ 7,302

$ 6,908

$ 21,793

$ 19,925 Interest expense 629

532

1,777

1,489

Net interest income 6,673

6,376

20,016

18,436 Provision for loan losses 790

390

1,915

390 Net interest income after provision

for loan losses 5,883

5,986

18,101

18,046 Noninterest income















Service charges on deposit accounts 106

71

313

213

Gain on sale of securities -

21

6

23

Net gain on sale of premises and equipment 19

20

25

88

Increase in value of life insurance assets 42

32

123

94

Other 60

49

169

107



Total noninterest income 227

193

636

525 Noninterest expense















Salaries and employee benefits 3,765

2,514

9,582

7,110

Premises and equipment 388

247

996

707

Loss on sale and impairment of

assets acquired in settlement of loans (87)

126

(311)

164

Data processing 303

200

735

526

Other expenses 1,509

971

3,320

2,444



Total noninterest expense 5,878

4,058

14,322

10,951 Income before income taxes 232

2,121

4,415

7,620 Income tax provision 105

760

1,616

2,810 Net income 127

1,361

2,799

4,810

Deductions for amounts

not available to common shareholders:



Dividends declared or accumulated on preferred stock (30)

(40)

(121)

(118) Net income available to common shareholders $ 97

$ 1,321

$ 2,678

$ 4,692

Financial Highlights

(Unaudited)





















For the three months

For the nine months







ended September 30,

ended September 30,







2016

2015

2016

2015







(Dollars in thousands)





















Per share data:















Earnings per share, basic $ 0.02

$ 0.38

$ 0.61

$ 1.38

Earnings per share, diluted $ 0.02

$ 0.37

$ 0.59

$ 1.32

Book value per share $ 11.16

$ 10.56

$ 11.16

$ 10.56

Tangible book value per share $ 11.00

$ 10.35

$ 11.00

$ 10.35

Weighted average shares outstanding, basic 4,557,455

3,443,933

4,415,118

3,411,363

Weighted average shares outstanding, diluted 4,665,298

3,618,568

4,522,725

3,555,716

Shares outstanding at end of period 4,558,975

3,453,075

4,558,975

3,453,075





















Selected performance ratios and other data:













Return on average assets 0.11%

1.32%

0.83%

1.60%

Return on average equity 0.96%

12.58%

7.30%

15.03%

Yield on average earning assets 6.04%

6.58%

6.30%

6.55%

Cost of funds 0.68%

0.61%

0.65%

0.59%

Net interest margin 6.15%

6.65%

6.43%

6.68%

Efficiency ratio 85.19%

61.78%

69.35%

57.76%

Charge-offs, net to average loans 0.78%

0.52%

0.67%

0.41%





As of



September 30,

December 31,



2016

2015



(Dollars in thousands)









Shareholders' equity to total assets 10.82%

10.03% Tier 1 risk-based capital ratio 15.20%

13.61% Intangible assets







Goodwill $ 737

$ 737









Other real estate owned $ 4,773

$ 5,275 Nonaccrual loans 3,530

1,685 Loans past due 90 days and accruing interest (a) 115

142

Total nonperforming assets 8,418

7,102 Allowance for loan losses to loans, gross 1.15%

1.17%



(a) - Amount represents the net of the loans wholly or partially guaranteed by the US Government.

SOURCE GrandSouth Bancorporation
"Pennsylvania is a critical battleground for Donald Trump and victory there could deliver him the Presidency," said Eric Beach, Co-Chair of the committee. "The state has been a top priority from the start so it's exciting to see such incredible enthusiasm and broad support for Trump there the weekend before the election. We were thrilled to add Mike Huckabee to our tour and the crowds were very excited to see both him and Sheriff Clarke."

Great America PAC final push includes this Battleground State Bus Tour through swing states with a multi-pronged $9 million independent expenditure in support of Donald Trump's candidacy for President. The program includes TV, radio, and digital campaigns. In addition, Great America PAC's campaign offices in those states, established earlier in the campaign, have been working hard as they push to turn out voters on Election Day.

Great America PAC is the premier Pro-Trump Super PAC led by veteran Republican strategist, Ed Rollins. The group has raised and spent over $30 million in support of Donald Trump's candidacy, broadcasting more than 20,000 TV spots and 300,000 radio ads, secured over 250,000 contributors, built a file of millions of active, newly engaged Trump supporters across the country, placed over 10 million phone calls, and sent over 2.5 million pieces of mail.

Contact: Leigh Beach

[email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161104/436433LOGO

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161105/436519

SOURCE Great America PAC

Related Links

https://www.GreatAmericaPAC.com


DUBLIN, November 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "The Future of Latin America Fuel Oil Supply and Demand, 2005- 2025: Trends, Drivers, Challenges and Forecasts of Fuel Oil Production and Consumption under Current Market Dynamics" report to their offering.

Latin America Fuel Oil Outlook report provides detailed analysis and forecast of Fuel Oil consumption patterns and supply scenario in all key Fuel Oil markets in Latin America. Forecasts of production and demand of each of the Fuel Oil markets in Latin America are provided annually from 2005 to 2025.

Drivers and challenges of industry growth in each of the Latin America countries are analyzed. Further, information on current refining capacity, refining complexity along with planned refining infrastructure details are also provided in the Latin America Fuel Oil outlook report.

Historic data is taken largely from government ministries and companies involved, ensuring highest accuracy of the data. Further, forecasts are made through our sophisticated methodology considering current market conditions and future prospects. Fuel Oil Forecasts for each market are evaluated by in-house experts and also validated by industry professionals to ensure utmost accuracy and certainty.

The research work also provides information on leading refining companies in each country along with business profiles of three leading Fuel Oil suppliers in the region. All latest industry developments in Latin America Fuel Oil are also provided in the report.

Scope

- Annual forecasts of country wise Gasoline consumption and Gasoline production from 2005 to 2025

- All key Gasoline markets across Asia Pacific are analyzed in detail

- Refining, coking, FCC and Hydrocracking capacity outlook for each of the refining markets in Asia Pacific are provided from 2005 to 2020

- Drivers and Challenges of operating and or investing in Asia Pacific Gasoline markets

- Details of all planned refining projects in each of the Gasoline markets in Asia Pacific

- Details of leading Gasoline suppliers in Asia Pacific markets are provided

- Company profiles of three leading refining companies in Asia Pacific Gasoline markets

- All largest Gasoline industry developments in Asia Pacific Gasoline

Key Topics Covered:

1. Tables & Figures

2 Executive Summary

3 Argentina LPG Production and Consumption Outlook to 2025

4 Bahamas LPG Production and Consumption Outlook to 2025

5 Brazil LPG Production and Consumption Outlook to 2025

6 Chile LPG Production and Consumption Outlook to 2025

7 Colombia LPG Production and Consumption Outlook to 2025

7 Colombia LPG Production and Consumption Outlook to 2025

8 Dominican Republic LPG Production and Consumption Outlook to 2025

9 Panama LPG Production and Consumption Outlook to 2025

10 Paraguay LPG Production and Consumption Outlook to 2025

11 Peru LPG Production and Consumption Outlook to 2025

12 Puerto Rico LPG Production and Consumption Outlook to 2025

13 Suriname LPG Production and Consumption Outlook to 2025

14 Trinidad and Tobago LPG Production and Consumption Outlook to 2025

15 Uruguay LPG Production and Consumption Outlook to 2025

16 Venezuela LPG Production and Consumption Outlook to 2025

17 Business Profiles of Leading Refiners

For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/hdq4mp/the_future_of

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com


WASHINGTON, Nov. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- North Carolina native J. David Cox Sr., who leads the nation's largest federal employee union, today hailed a court ruling restoring voting rights to thousands of mostly black residents who were illegally removed from the rolls.

North Carolina native J. David Cox Sr., second from left, who heads the nation's largest federal employee union, the American Federation of Government Employees, marches to the polls with voters from Windsor, N.C., on Nov. 4 in an outreach effort being led by the Rev. William J. Barber, second from right, civil rights leader and member of the NAACP's national board.

"A federal court judge has prevented the state of North Carolina, my home state, from revoking the voting rights of thousands of residents who were purged from the rolls or otherwise challenged even though they are legally entitled to vote," said Cox, who is national president of the American Federation of Government Employees.

"This decision is great news for the people of North Carolina and for our democracy. Too many people fought and died for the right to vote to see those rights stripped away through questionable tactics and blatantly discriminatory laws."

The residents in this case are largely black and their voter registrations were challenged when mail delivered to their homes was returned as undeliverable, a practice known as voter caging. Two state chapters of the NAACP filed a lawsuit on behalf of the targeted voters, arguing a violation of the National Voter Registration Act.

U.S. District Court Judge C. Loretta Biggs from Winston-Salem issued a preliminary injunction on Friday, Nov. 4, ordering the state to restore the challenged residents to the voting rolls and ensure their votes will be counted on Nov. 8. She also barred the state from cancelling the registration of other voters based on change of residency through the contested method.

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the largest federal employee union, representing 670,000 workers in the federal government and the government of the District of Columbia.

For the latest AFGE news and information, visit the AFGE Media Center.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161105/436518

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20131120/MM21150LOGO

SOURCE American Federation of Government Employees

Related Links

http://www.afge.org


DENVER, Nov. 4, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Pillar of Law Institute won a preliminary injunction this evening against the enforcement of a Colorado law against "ballot selfies," photographs of one's own marked ballot usually displayed on social media.

"This is a big victory for Coloradoans, allowing them to unquestionably express their support for candidates and causes in this election," said Stephen Klein, Pillar attorney and co-counsel in the case. "Today, free speech won."

The order, issued by Judge Christine M. Arguello of the United States Court for the District of Colorado, followed a hearing over two days in which Pillar's case, Hill v. Williams, was consolidated with another case, Harlos v. Morrissey. The lawsuits were brought in response to a stern declaration late last week from the Denver District Attorney warning that ballot selfies are illegal in Colorado and punishable as a misdemeanor.

"Law enforcementincluding the Denver District Attorney, the Colorado Attorney General, and the Colorado Secretary of Statemade every effort to disown the law after warning citizens against ballot selfies or otherwise exposing their ballots," said Klein. "Thankfully, this ploy did not hold up. This injunction protects Colorado voters from a $1,000 fine and up to a year in jail simply for celebrating their right to vote."

Klein joined co-counsel Michael Francisco of MRDLaw in Denver, who guided the case, and co-counsel Daniel Domenico of Kittredge LLC. The case will continue to a final judgment on the merits after election day next week.

The Pillar of Law Institute is a nonprofit public interest law firm. Located in Washington, DC, Pillar represents citizens nationwide against unconstitutional censorship of political speech. This is Pillar's second ballot selfie case; it recently secured a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit in Michigan, Crookston v. Johnson, which was stayed by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on October 28 due to timing issues.

Click here to read Judge Arguello's order.

Contact

Stephen Klein

Attorney, Pillar of Law Institute

[email protected]

(202) 815-0955

SOURCE Pillar of Law Institute

Related Links

https://www.pillaroflaw.org


SAN DIEGO, Nov. 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Procopio represented Strata Equity Group (Strata), a San Diego-based real estate investment firm, in its recent acquisition of 24 institutional grade multifamily communities comprising 6,294 residential units in Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The seller was advised by New York-based DRA Advisors, LLC. Mortgage financing was provided by CBRE placing Freddie Mac/CME debt.

"We are proud to partner with Strata on this acquisition that both raises their national presence and drives their investment initiatives," said Robert Brown, Procopio Partner and lead counsel to Strata. "We are pleased to have assisted our client with this strategic and expansive acquisition."

"Ours was a complex deal involving multiple states and 24 different properties that we could not have undertaken on our own," said David Michan, President of Strata Equity Group. "Bob and his team were on-point every step of the way, delivering exceptional service in managing this large transaction and all of its intricacies. Their resourcefulness, combined with their experience, was essential in helping us execute this agreement swiftly and effectively."

The Procopio legal team included Robert Brown, Amy Cannon, David Jones, John Lee, and Ashley Stecher.

About Procopio

Procopio is a full-service business and litigation law firm committed to thoughtful problem solving and improving your bottom line. With more than 150 attorneys based in San Diego, Silicon Valley, Phoenix and Austinwe're passionate about knowing your business and helping you grow and protect it for the long term. Procopio has the flexible infrastructure to support both small to mid-sized companies and large multinationals at every stage of the business life cycle. Our global reach across Asia and Latin America further expands our international partnerships and cross border capabilities. At Procopio, we are focused on what is important to youproviding smart, innovative and practical solutions in a cost-effective manner to help your business thrive. Learn more at Procopio.com.

Media Contact: Angela Giombetti

Communications and Public Relations Manager

Phone: 619.906.5740

Email: [email protected]

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch LLP

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LOS ANGELES, Nov. 4, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In light of the heated rhetoric that has come to characterize this historically polarized presidential campaign, USC Shoah Foundation has released a new activity on IWitness  its free online education platform for secondary students  called "Skittles, Deplorables and 'All Lives Matter': Leadership and Media Literacy."

The aim of the activity is to help students discern the difference between arguments, persuasion and propaganda in an age where the volume and velocity of information via traditional and social media channels can be dizzying.

It also highlights the dangers of portraying entire groups of people based on race or religion as homogenous.

The activity was piloted last month in the classroom of an after-school program in Chicago run by an organization called After School Matters.

"The idea is to encourage teens to carefully consider the source of the messaging they see in the media  no matter their political beliefs," said Dr. Kori Street, director of education at USC Shoah Foundation. "This activity better equips them to navigate the blizzard of information with a critical eye, and to become savvy consumers of media and responsible contributors to the public dialog."

Like all IWitness activities, "Skittles, Deplorables and 'All Lives Matter'" is rooted in the video testimony of genocide survivors and eyewitnesses. It opens with a clip of testimony from Ruth Pearl, a Holocaust survivor and the mother of journalist Daniel Pearl, who was murdered in 2002 by terrorists who denounced his Jewish ancestry.

"Dehumanizing people is the first step on inviting violence like the Nazism and fascism," Pearl says in the testimony. "It's very easy to dehumanize. I'm sure the killers of Danny didn't have any sense of identifying the humanity that connects us."

Students also view a clip of testimony from Paul Parks, World War II vet who helped liberate the concentration camp in Dachau, Germany. In it, he explains his motivation for fighting on behalf of a country that still mistreated blacks.

"I guess I'm fighting for the right to fight when I get back home," he says in the interview. "I know what the end of bigotry looks like."

The activity exposes students to several controversies stemming from current events.

Keeping Parks' testimony in mind, students are asked to read news articles about the Black Lives Matter movement and to consider the meaning of the "All Lives Matter" mantra that is often used in response to it.

Students then read a tweet posted by Donald Trump Jr. in September 2016 comparing Syrian refugees to a bowl of Skittles, as well as a quote from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton referring to half of the supporters of her GOP rival, Donald Trump, as a "basket of deplorables."

With these messages and others, students are instructed to read supplemental news articles and to fill out a "message analysis worksheet," in which they must classify the message as an argument, persuasion or propaganda based on a set of criteria. Finally, they identify an issue and  after employing responsible research methods  craft a message, which they post on the social-media platform of their choice.

"Teens don't always know their voices matter and this activity helped them realize their voices do matter," said After School Matters instructor Michael Levesque. "It also helps enhance their digital literacy skills and, perhaps even more importantly, it encourages critical thinking."

Students in the Chicago pilot enjoyed learning about how political messages can affect people and the importance of being an informed citizen.

"I learned that we need to be mindful when presenting our ideas on social media and that we must support our opinions with facts to be taken seriously," one student wrote in a survey after the conclusion of the activity. "I learned that to be worldly knowledgeable, we must learn from multiple sources and be well-informed, especially if we wish to speak of these matters and use our voice."

IWitness is a free educational website from USC Shoah Foundation that uses testimonies  personal stories  from survivors and witnesses of genocide to teach students worldwide the importance of compassion and bringing about positive societal change.

Geared toward students ages 12-20, IWitness has grown considerably since its 2012 inception, and is used by tens of thousands of students and teachers around the world.

To access the new activity or the 70 others stored on the platform, users need only to visit the website  iwitness.usc.edu  and register.

For teachers interested in learning more about the website, the next IWitness professional development seminar will be on Nov. 17.

https://sfi.usc.edu/events/iwitness-professional-development-webinar-2

Evaluations of IWitness are showing the program markedly boosts student interest in civic engagement and significantly increases the likelihood that they will recognize the importance of speaking up against stereotypes.

About USC Shoah Foundation

USC Shoah Foundation  The Institute for Visual History and Education is dedicated to making audio- visual interviews with survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides, a compelling voice for education and action. The Institute's current collection of more than 54,000 eyewitness testimonies contained within its Visual History Archive preserves history as told by the people who lived it, and lived through it. Housed at the University of Southern California, within the Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, the Institute works with partners around the world to advance scholarship and research, to provide resources and online tools for educators, and to disseminate the testimonies for educational purposes.

Visual History Archive is a registered trademark of USC Shoah Foundation  The Institute for Visual History and Education Reg. U.S. Pat. &Tm. Off.

Contact: Josh Grossberg 213-740-6065

[email protected]

Rob Kuznia 213-740-0965

[email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20131213/DC32956LOGO

SOURCE USC Shoah Foundation
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London, Oct 31 : 'Thunderstorms' in the ionosphere are to blame for loss of GPS signals on low-orbiting satellites, says a study that used data from the European Space Agencys Swarm mission.

"What we see here is a striking example of a technical challenge being turned into exciting science, a true essence of an Earth Explorer mission such as Swarm," said Rune Floberghagen, ESA's Swarm mission manager.

"These new findings demonstrate that GPS can be used as a tool for understanding dynamics in the ionosphere related to solar activity. Perhaps one day we will also be able to link these ionospheric thunderstorms with the lightning we see from the ground," Floberghagen noted.

Launched in 2013, ESA's three Swarm satellites are measuring and untangling the different magnetic fields that stem from Earth's core, mantle, crust, oceans, ionosphere and magnetosphere - an undertaking of at least four years.

As with many satellites, the Swarm trio carries GPS receivers as part of their positioning system so that operators keep them in the correct orbits. In addition, GPS pinpoints where the satellites are making their scientific measurements.

However, sometimes the satellites lose their GPS connection. In fact, during their first two years in orbit, the link was broken 166 times.

The new paper, published in Space Weather, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, described how Swarm had revealed a direct link between these blackouts and ionospheric 'thunderstorms', around 300-600 km above Earth.

"Ionospheric thunderstorms are well known, but now we have been able to show a direct link between these storms and the loss of connection to GPS," one of the study authors Claudia Stolle from GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, noted.

These thunderstorms occur when the number of electrons in the ionosphere undergoes large and rapid changes. This tends to happen close to Earth's magnetic equator and typically just for a couple of hours between sunset and midnight.

As its name suggests, the ionosphere is where atoms are broken up by sunlight, which leads to free electrons.

A thunderstorm scatters these free electrons, creating small bubbles with little or no ionised material. These bubbles disturb the GPS signals so that the Swarm GPS receivers can lose track, the study said.
New Delhi, Oct 31 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday stressed the need to bring down the backlog of cases pending before the judiciary in the country.

Modi also emphasised the need to rope in the best of talents while drafting Indian laws and said it could be the biggest service to the country's judiciary.

Speaking at the 50th anniversary function of Delhi High Court here, the Prime Minister called for the inclusion of people from the lower strata of society into judiciary.

As the (central) government is the biggest litigant in the country, he had asked his government to not enter into unnecessary litigation, the Prime Minister said.

"We need to offload the judiciary's burden. We have to make strong laws. It's the responsibility of the elected government," he added.

On Friday, the Supreme Court had rapped the Centre for sitting on the top court collegium's recommendations on the appointment of judges to various high courts. The government's inaction amounted to paralysing and locking out the judiciary, the apex court observed.

Modi said the judiciary is facing many challenges at present, but it's our job to find an opportunity in this situation and increase our capabilities. "If we all work together, we will be able to do it," he said.

The Prime Minister paid tribute to the contribution of all those who have been associated with Delhi High Court over the last five decades.

He said all concerned must fulfil, in accordance with the Constitution of India, whatever responsibilities have been assigned to them.

"The issue of an All India Judicial Service has been debated and mired in controversy. But, debates and discussions are part of a democracy," he said.

He talked about how it's necessary to bring those from the lower strata into the judicial system.

"Can the Dalits, the oppressed, the exploited, the poor, those coming from the lower strata of society -- can they be inducted in this system? We need to evolve a new system where they can be included," said the Prime Minister.

"Judiciary has been respected for centuries in India. All government machinery will work to support judiciary in the best possible manner," said Modi.

Noting that October 31 also marks the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Modi said Sardar Patel was instrumental in the creation of the All India Civil Services.

The Prime Minister also complimented the legal fraternity for strengthening the Alternative Dispute Resolution mechanism.

Established on October 31, 1966, Delhi High Court completed 50 years on Monday.

The event to commemorate the occasion was held at Vigyan Bhavan and attended, among others, by Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Supreme Court and Delhi HC judges, Delhi Lt. Governor Najeeb Jung, and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
Mumbai, Oct 31 : Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Monday completed two years in office -- and the ride so far has been rough, but the road ahead appears equally tough.

Sworn-in as the head of a rickety minority government with external support from the mercurial Nationalist Congress Party, Fadnavis breathed easily only five weeks later when its time-tested ally Shiv Sena 'defected' to the government from the Opposition.

However, his 'Mr. Clean' image notwithstanding, he faced real opposition from within -- both by his ambitious colleagues in the Bharatiya Janata Party and the blow-hot-blow-cold ally Shiv Sena.

The Congress-led opposition has also kept him on his toes, but the real threat is expected only when he faces an opposition-sponsored no-trust move and a breach of privilege motion during the winter session of the state legislature in Nagpur, in December.

The Shiv Sena has continued to play truant during most of the past two years -- with severe criticism in public and in private and through stinging editorials in the party mouthpieces, Saamana and Dopahar Ka Saamana.

At times, it appeared Fadnavis was literally 'sleeping with an embedded enemy' as the opposition parties threw the gauntlet at Shiv Sena to "show guts and get out" (of government).

But it was Fadnavis's diplomatic skills, coupled with his dark statement that 'he had files ready' on everybody, besides a warm personal rapport with Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray and the confidence of the BJP central leadership, that he has managed to surf through smoothly.

"I'm here for five years ... I am stable," he confidently asserted on the eve of completion of two years in office.

Challenges came on other fronts, too, like allegations of corruption against some of his cabinet colleagues which he contemptuously dismissed.

"There have not been any scams in the past two years... There have been charges of corruption, yes... but they were only that, not backed up with evidences or documents," Fadnavis observed.

On his senior-most colleague Eknath Khadse, who had to quit the cabinet under a cloud, Fadnavis expressed confidence that he (Khadse) would emerge clean and return to the cabinet soon.

But the Congress pounced on him for what it dubbed as 'double standards' on corruption -- and senior Congress leader Sanjay Dutt termed the statement hinting at Khadse's return as an attempt to subvert the probe against the ex-minister.

There is the ongoing agitation by the politically powerful Maratha community, seeking reservations and amendments to the atrocities laws, on which the government sits on a sticky wicket, while Maratha strongman and NCP chief Sharad Pawar enjoys Fadnavis's dilemma.

Though Fadnavis says the government is committed to reservations, it could open a Pandora's box of similar demands from the Muslims and other smaller but significant communities -- and it could be a genie difficult to bottle.

But, thanks to support from the central leadership, he neutralised internal challenges to his leadership and claims to the CM's seat by some of his cabinet colleagues.

Yet, the two ruling allies continue to be at loggerheads over a separate state of Vidarbha. The Shiv Sena demands a clear statement on the issue of a 'united Maharashtra' from Fadnavis, especially since the BJP is in favour of smaller states.

Now, all of his political skills will be on trial at the upcoming 'mini-general elections' in the state to around 230 civic bodies, including mega-corporations like Brihanmumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Pune, Nashik, Nagpur and others, between November 27, 2016 and January 8, 2017.

This time, the BJP has played safe and lassoed in the unpredictable Shiv Sena with an alliance for the civic polls -- unlike the 2014 assembly elections which the two parties fought independently.

Performance-wise in the past two years, most consider it a mixed bag of goodies, with high marks on some issues like water conservation efforts coupled with a benevolent monsoon.

This was offset by low scores on the agrarian crisis punctuated by farmland suicides and, recently, the spectre of malnutrition plaguing some backward regions, triggering processions by different groups, which adversely hit the government's image.

(Quaid Najmi can be contacted at q.najmi@ians.in)
Seoul, Nov 1 : Choi Soon-sil, a longtime confidant of South Korean President Park Geun-hye suspected of having meddled in state affairs, was placed under emergency detention on Tuesday after hours of questioning by prosecutors on risks of fleeing and destroying evidence Choi, who testified on Monday at a prosecutor's office in Seoul after passing through a massive crowd of media, "is in an extremely unstable psychological state, and it's possible an unexpected event could occur if she is released," a prosecution official told Yonhap News Agency.

The prosecution believes that, if left free, the 60-year-old woman may attempt to flee the country or destroy evidence on the allegations of corruption and peddling influence which she is suspected of being involved in.

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office now has 48 hours to seek a warrant to formally arrest Choi, who previously denied all of the charges against her on Monday.

The woman, who does not hold any public office but is believed to have exercised a great personal influence on Park Geun-hye for years, is accused of having used her personal relationship with the president to access confidential documents and covertly interfere in state affairs, Efe news reported.

Prosecutors also believe that, by using her links with Park, she pressured some companies to donate generous grants to two state foundations, Mir and K-Sports, and subsequently took over some parts of the funds.

On Saturday, thousands of people took to the streets of downtown Seoul to demand the resignation of the head of state, whose approval ratings are dropping.
Mumbai, Nov 1 : Marathi actor Gashmeer Mahajani, who is making his Bollywood debut with the film "Dongri Ka Raja", feels glad that people don't look at Marathi cinema as downmarket anymore.

"I am glad that people don't look at Marathi cinema as downmarket. Being Marathi my mother tongue... I am proud about that. As an actor I want to do all kinds of cinema because for me, the language doesn't matter. But Marathi is something which will always be close to my heart," Gashmeer told IANS.

Gashmeer is known for his Marathi films including "Deool Band" and "Carry On Maratha".

He said: "We have to handle this openness of the audience more responsibly. We can't take it for granted. It's a stepping stone and we need to be more careful."

"Filmmakers have to come up with more good content to sustain for a longer time. We should invest only on content-oriented films and let's not drive away the audience that has started coming to theatres," he added.

Talking about his Bollywood debut, Gashmeer said: "I couldn't have asked for a better launch. I believe this is the perfect film for me to make my debut in Bollywood. The film is a love story set in the underworld."

Directed by Hadi Ali Abrar, "Dongri Ka Raja" also features Ronit Roy, Sachin Suvarna, Ashwini Kalsekar and Ashmit Patel.

Produced by P.S. Chhatwal and Filmy Keeda Productions, the film will release on November 11.
Washington, Nov 2 : President Barack Obama has suggested that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton faces a double standard as the first female presidential nominee of a major party against an outlandish opponent whose rhetoric and behaviour were being normalised.

"I saw her as my Secretary of State. I saw her in the Situation Room making arguments to go after (Osama) bin Laden even though it was risky, tirelessly circling the globe as Secretary of State, respected around the world," Obama said on Tuesday during a rally in Columbus, Ohio.

"Her efforts are not always flashy and they're not always appreciated here at home, but she made me a better president and she didn't ask for credit."

Pitting Clinton against Republican rival Donald Trump, Obama argued that the choice to succeed him is not even close, Politico reported.

It's Clinton, he stressed, who has the experience, intelligence, temperament and heart to occupy the Oval Office.

The President even swatted down the "I love you" that was shouted from the crowd so he could continue making his case, remarking that "I love you back, but I want talk about Hillary for a second."

"You know, we always want to see the new shiny object, and if you get beat up enough in this political environment that's so toxic, after a while people start believing stuff. Hillary Clinton is consistently treated differently than just about any other candidate I see out there," Obama said.

Obama challenged men specifically to look in the mirror and ask themselves why, exactly, they may be feeling so much discomfort with Clinton, Politico reported.

"I want every man out there who's voting to look inside yourself and ask yourself," he said, adding "When a guy's ambitious and out in the public arena and working hard, well, that's OK. But when a woman suddenly does it, suddenly you're all like, 'Well, why is she doing that?' I'm just being honest."

Obama railed against the Republican nominee, casting Trump as an atypical candidate who is "uniquely unqualified" for office and would erase the progress of his administration if elected.

Clinton, he said, summarising his position, "is so much better qualified than the other guy. She has conducted herself so much better in public life than the other guy. That this notion that somehow, you know, it's hard to choose - it shouldn't be."
It is a mood linked to a more overt focus on Australias national interests. Echoing similar developments in Canada and New Zealand, the Australian aid agency, AusAID, was absorbed into the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in late 2013, a move which incoming prime minister Tony Abbott described as enabling the aid and diplomatic arms of Australias international policy agenda to be more closely aligned.

An era of intervention centred on exporting good governance and economic liberalisation that took Australian-led missions to Solomon Islands and East Timor has given way to a new mood of austerity.

THE PACIFIC Solution for asylum seekers arriving in Australias waters by boat needs to be seen in the context of broader changes in Australian foreign policy.

The previous governments winding down of the ten-year Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) in mid-2013, and the transfer of many of its civilian programs to the Australian High Commission, was similarly claimed to be ensuring the alignment of program objectives with Australias broader national interests.

The primacy of the national interest in contemporary Australian Pacific policy is most strikingly expressed by Operation Sovereign Borders: entailing military interception of unauthorized maritime arrivals who are then sent to Manus Island in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, two islands that were formerly administered by Australia under United Nations trust territory arrangements.

The incoming Abbott government did not initiate the Pacific Solution. John Howards 19962007 Coalition government was responsible for a first phase of offshore processing of Australias unwanted asylum seekers.

The policy was halted by the incoming Kevin Rudd-led Labor government, which assumed office in December 2007. At the time, Rudds new Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Chris Evans, described it as a cynical, costly and ultimately unsuccessful exercise.

Transports were nevertheless resumed in 2012 under Julia Gillards government to fend off opposition criticism that boats carrying would-be refugees had recommenced landing on Australias shores.

In mid-2013, Gillards successor as prime minister, the restored Kevin Rudd, signed a Regional Resettlement Arrangement (RRA) with PNG with the objective of ensuring that any unauthorised maritime arrival entering Australian waters will be liable for transfer to Papua New Guinea (in the first instance, Manus Island) for processing and resettlement.

Operation Sovereign Borders may have entailed a toughening of the earlier Labor stance and greater secrecy in administration, but the core policy was bipartisan.

Rudds Regional Resettlement Arrangement led to a 2013 spike in asylum-seeker transports to Manus Island, and those sent to Nauru soon also doubled. PNG played only a minor role in the 200108 phase of the Pacific Solution whereas Nauru, with a population of around 10,000, hosted over a thousand asylum seekers in both phases.

Numbers accommodated at Nauru and Manus Island combined peaked at 2,432 in February 2014. In the initial phase, assessments of refugee status were undertaken by Australian officials and by the UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee agency.

In the second phase, determinations were at least in theory to be disposed by Papua New Guinean and Nauruan officials themselves. Both countries passed legislation to facilitate this, an example of what Shahar Hameiri identifies as an inside-out approach of external powers transforming the governing architecture of intervened states from within.

Those found to qualify as refugees were expected to be resettled in PNG, but in Naurus case  where the population constraints are severe  the Australian government sought additional resettlement agreements with other countries, such as Cambodia.

The first phase of the Pacific Solution was estimated to have cost around AU$1 billion, including the associated aid packages. Immigration and border protection expenditures on the Nauru and Manus Island detention centres reached AU$3.9 billion over the 201213 to 201516 financial years, not including any other departmental costs (e.g. under the defence portfolio) or the associated aid packages to sweeten the deals (under the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade portfolio).

To put that in comparative perspective, Australian spending on the 14-year 200317 RAMSI operation is budgeted to reach AU$2.9 billion. Other additional operational costs for support for unauthorised maritime arrivals living in community based arrangements have controversially been charged under the Australian aid program.

What have been the repercussions of Manus Island and Nauru hosting the detention centres?

As Dalsgaard and Wallis point out, caution is advisable: predictions of massive disruption to traditional culture occasioned by episodic commercial ventures or military installations on Manus have proved wrong in the past.

For Papua New Guinea, the detention centre is far less economically important than is its counterpart for Nauru. PNG has other sources of foreign earnings: gold, silver, copper, logging, coffee, palm oil, cocoa, fisheries and above all liquid natural gas.

By contrast, for Nauru the centre has provided a lifeline in the wake of the decline of the countrys phosphate industry. Some phosphate exports continue. After temporary closure of port facilities in 2003, small-scale mining of secondary phosphate deposits resumed from late 2005.

Like its central Pacific Island neighbours, Nauru has also obtained some increase in fishing license earnings as a result of the Parties to the Nauru Agreements Vessel Day Scheme. Nevertheless, Nauru has become highly reliant on revenues associated with the detention centre. Income levels fell sharply when the refugee processing centre last closed in 2008. Nauru politicians have therefore been much less prone to oppose the re-opening of the centre than their PNG counterparts, fearing a negative reaction from cash-strapped electorates.

Hosting Australian detention centres might, then, be seen as another chapter in the long history of island micro-states dexterously using strategic assets to capture unusual sources of foreign exchange earnings.

But the costs are potentially severe and enduring for both Nauru and PNG, whether these come as a result of the sudden termination of the centres or of pressures to honour commitments to resettle refugees.

On 26 April 2016, the PNG Supreme Court found the Manus Island detention centre to be in violation of the 1975 Constitution. Prime Minister Peter ONeills Constitutional Amendment No. 37 (Citizenship Law) 2014  which sought to qualify and restrict the constitutional rights of asylum seekers  was found to have failed to demonstrate that detention was in the public interest and reasonably justifiable in a democratic country.

Orders were that the Australian and Papua New Guinea governments shall forthwith take all steps necessary to cease and prevent the continued unconstitutional and illegal detention of the asylum seekers or transferees at the relocation centre on Manus Island.

The next day, ONeill announced that the Manus detention centre would be closed, and that Australia would be required to make alternative arrangements. There would be negotiations between the governments about the time frame of the closure and about managing the settlement of legitimate refugees who are interested in staying in Papua New Guinea. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was adamant that none would be allowed to resettle in Australia.

To sustain its offshore detention policy, the Australian government is dependent: 1. on PNG honouring commitments to resettle those assessed as genuine refugees; 2. on finding other alternatives for the Nauru refugees; 3. on establishing other facilities for so-called transferees presently on Manus Island and for any new arrivals in Australian waters (whose status is yet to be determined); and 4. on continuing to repatriate those deemed not to be genuine refugees to their places of initial embarkation.

Changes in Australian foreign policy since the Coalition assumed office have not entailed any disengagement from the Pacific region. Efforts have been made to protect the Pacific from substantial cuts to other parts of Australias foreign assistance programme.

Claims of a paradigm shift in Australian aid policy conceal important elements of continuity  for example, in the emphasis on private sector growth, performance incentives, value for money self-reliance, and innovation.

The new austerity in aid policy has been acclaimed as entailing a closer alignment with Australias national and commercial interests, but it is only a convenient myth (or a euphemism to disparage perceived past idealism) to claim that the now defunct AusAID, or the mission to Solomon Islands, or even Gareth Evans 1988 doctrine of constructive commitment to the Pacific, ever truly departed from such a focus. No robust state ever abandons its national interest, although some project this through a broader regional or normative lens.

In their dealings with less powerful states, strong states do, however, often take advantage of asymmetries in power. Seeking sites for its detention centres and hosts for the resettlement of refugees, the Australian government scoured the Pacific Islands and Southeast Asia. It settled on Manus Island and Nauru, two islands that were formerly administered under Australia through United Nations trusteeship arrangements.

Both PNG and Nauru had remained thereafter post-independence recipients of substantial Australian funding. In the new millennium, Nauru in particular was too reliant on Australian assistance, and too devoid of alternatives, to refuse. The consequences for both countries have been substantial, as have the implications for Australias reputation in the region.
Islamabad, Nov 2 : Mukhtaran Mai, the gang rape survivor of Pakistan who works towards bettering the lives of women in her village, walked the ramp for a fashion week in Karachi.

Designer Rozina Munib chose to have the gang rape survivor and women's rights activist Mukhataran as a showstopper at the Fashion Pakistan Week in order to convey a message of her valour and bravery to women facing adverse situations.

Mukhataran wore traditional wedding wear designed by Rozina, with her head remaining covered the way she keeps it.

Mukhtaran Mai runs a sanctuary cum shelter for women and children in her native Muzaffargarh district of Punjab province.

A symbol of hope for the neglected victims of violence, Mukhtaran said she was at the show to spread awareness about women's struggles, those shunned by the society as well as their families.

Ahead of the show, designer Rozina told Dawn: "I have no intention of glamourising her into a model for the show. She will be wearing the kind of clothes that she would normally wear to a wedding. The purpose behind bringing her to Karachi and making her a part of my show is to tell her story so that it gives courage to other women.

"Mukhtaran suffered terribly but instead of committing suicide or succumbing to depression she stood up for her rights. She won against all odds and moved on with her life. She has remarried now and runs a sanctuary where she provides shelter to women and helps them in becoming self-sufficient."

"It is Mukhtaran's story that inspired me to call my collection 'Zindagi ke Rang'. Life brings its share of pain but one has to be strong enough to rise above it," Rozina added.

A short film by Asad-ul-Haq highlighting Mukhtaran's work for her village's women was shown at the event.

Mukhtaran was ordered to be gang-raped by a tribal council in 2002 after her 12-year-old brother Shakoor was accused of having an affair with a woman of the superior Mastoi tribe. The accused were acquitted by the Pakistan Supreme Court.
New Delhi, Nov 2 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday chaired a meeting to discuss a roadmap to reduce the country's dependency on import of oil and gas, sources said.

They said the Petroleum Ministry broached strategies at the meeting to achieve the objective of reducing the imports, including increasing production of crude oil and gas, promoting bio-fuels and renewables, energy efficiency and promoting conservation.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave attended the meeting.

Others present included NITI (National Institution for Transforming India) Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, Cabinet Secretary Pradeep Kumar Sinha and senior officials from Prime Minister's Office and ministries of petroleum, external affairs, home, finance and defence.

According to the data with the Oil Ministry's Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell, India imported crude oil worth $63.97 billion in 2015-16, while product imports amounted to $9.95 billion. Exports of products, on the other hand, was of the tune of $27.06 billion.

Thus, the country was a net importer of crude and products worth $46.87 billion. In 2014-15, when the oil prices were still high, the country was net importer of crude and products worth $77.61 billion.
Seoul, Nov 4 : South Korean President Park Geun-hye said on Friday she will accept an investigation over a corruption scandal involving her close confidante "if necessary", raising the prospect of her becoming the first sitting South Korean head of state to face a prosecutorial probe.

During a nationally televised address to the nation, Park renewed her apology for the political scandal involving Choi Soon-sil that has sent her approval ratings into free fall and prompted nationwide calls for her resignation, Yonhap news agency reported.

"If necessary, I am determined to faithfully respond to a prosecutorial investigation myself," Park said in a voice choked with emotion.

She added that she would also accept a special probe by an independent counsel that the ruling and opposition parties have been seeking to enact.

Park faces accusations that she allowed Choi access to advance drafts of her public speeches and presidential documents, some of which reportedly included confidential information, possibly in breach of a law governing the handling of presidential records.

The president is also suspected of playing a role in raising funds from major conglomerates to establish two non-profit foundations dedicated to promoting Korean culture and sports.

Choi is being investigated to determine if she misappropriated money from these foundations and if she submits to a probe, it will mark a first in South Korea's history.
Seoul, Nov 4 : Prosecutors questioned an executive director of South Korean conglomerate Samsung Group over allegations that a close friend of President Park Geun-hye pressured local companies to donate billions of won to two non-profit foundations.

Prosecutors said the executive appeared at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office to bear witness to suspicions that Choi Soon-sil collaborated with former presidential secretary An Chong-bum to push the companies.

There have been allegations that the money at the foundations, Mir and K-Sports, was then unlawfully funneled to Choi, who is at the centre of a political scandal, Yonhap news agency reported.

Samsung is the third conglomerate to be investigated over the suspicions after Lotte and SK, among 53 companies from 19 business groups that took part in the donation worth some 80 billion won ($70 million) in total.

The amount donated by Samsung's affiliates totaled about 20 billion won.

Prosecutors are also looking into allegations that the conglomerate directly gave some 2.8 million euros ($3.1 million) to a German company owned by Choi, under the name of a consulting arrangement.

Prosecutors have been accelerating their probe into the scandal, seeking a warrant to formally arrest the 60-year-old Choi and putting An under emergency detention to avoid the possible destruction of evidence.

The latest scandal has sent Park's approval rating into free fall and prompted nationwide calls for her resignation.
Charlottesville, Nov 5 : A federal jury has found that Rolling Stone magazine and writer Sabrina Erdely defamed a former University of Virginia associate dean in a since-retracted story about campus rape.

It took the jury three days of deliberations to decide that Erdely should be liable for defamation, with actual malice, for her "A Rape on Campus" feature story, which has since been discredited, New York Post reported on Friday.

Rolling Stone magazine and Wenner Media are also responsible for defaming former UVA associate dean Nicole Eramo, jurors decided.

Eramo sued the three defendants for $7.5 million, claiming the 9,000-word article, which was published in November 2014, painted her as being indifferent to gang rape allegations made by a student identified only as "Jackie".

She smiled tightly with tears in her eyes as the verdict was read.

In the next phase of the trial, the jury will be asked to determine damages.

During closing arguments, Eramo's attorney argued that the campus rape story, which began with Jackie's horrific account of being gang-raped at a fraternity house, was reported with a "reckless disregard for the truth".

"Every one of [Erdely's] stories has a victim, a villain and a vindicator A Erdely and Rolling Stone were intent on imposing that on this story," lawyer Tom Clare charged.

Rolling Stone's lawyers contended that Erdely was fooled by Jackie, and had no reason not to believe her story at the time.

"Sabrina was acting in good faith when she wrote the article with the information she had," lawyer Scott Sexton insisted. "Our world would shut down if we walked out that courtroom door and expected everyone to lie to us."
Shanghai, Nov 5 : With the internet taking on an industrial dimension whereby new equipment and other technologies are transforming the way goods are produced, industrial innovation must integrate multiple digital concepts to revolutionise existing processes, top executives of 3D software major Dassault Systemes said here at an event.

Digital technology can drive the industrial (r)evolution 4.0 -- innovation programmes to reduce manufacturing costs, increase efficiencies and sustainability, inspire creativity and generate new business models, the French technology company demonstrated at its two-day "Manufacturing in the Age of Experience" event that concluded on Friday.

"Digital's most visible value is to increase productivity and competitiveness, but its true power is the imagination. Manufacturers that succeed will be those that will create a world which does not yet exist," said Pascal Daloz, Executive Vice President, Brands and Corporate Development, Dassault Systemes.

"The digital factory is not only virtual, connected and automated, but is above all an execution system, where men's skills are turned to innovation, performance, quality and continuous change," Daloz said.

"The virtual becomes constitutive of the products themselves. As a consequence, the value is migrating to the cloud services where data are a strategic asset for the industry to reinvent itself," Daloz noted.

The event highlighted how the digital makeover of the manufacturing sector is essential for creating a dynamic, holistic and more sustainable production model that results in a better consumer experience.

Dassault Systemes provides "3DEXPERIENCE" universes for collaboration and innovation to implement innovative strategies in supply and demand.

The 3DEXPERIENCE platform features virtual design, simulation, manufacturing and collaboration applications in a digital environment that integrate products, processes and supply chains, and offer a federated view of a manufacturer's business in real time.

During the plenary session of the even, top brand leaders of the compnay gave presentations on virtualising the industry value chain Top officials from Airbus Helicopters, Doosan Infracore and Honda Motor also shared customer case stories on manufacturing transformation and success.

Dassault Systemes is focused on developing technologies and solutions that propel digital transformation in industries ranging from aerospace to life sciences.

(Partha Sarathi Mitra attended the event in Shanghai at the invitation of Dassault Systemes. He can be contacted at ps.mitra@ians.in)
New Delhi : With no sign of the unrest in Kashmir subsiding, the state is passing through one of the worst phases of its history. The scene has been made gloomier by the fact that both the Centre and the state government appear to be clueless about a solution.

Although Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti believes that only five per cent of the people in the state are supporting the insurgency, she has been unable to rally the remaining 95 per cent in the government's favour.

Her administrative inexperience and political timidity may be responsible for her seeming helplessness.

But, unfortunately, her coalition partner, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has also been unable to come out with ideas other than the use of strong-arm methods, of which the pellet gun remains the primary weapon, to bring the situation under control.

It has to be noted that these guns, which can cause blindness, are not used anywhere else to control agitating mobs as, for instance, when the Jats went on a rampage in Haryana or when there was anti-Tamil violence in Bengaluru over the Cauvery waters dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

If there is a feeling of alienation among the ordinary Kashmiris, it cannot but have been accentuated by such patent differences in crowd-control measures.

It is also undeniable that like the people of the northeast, the Kashmiris are also nowadays being looked at with mistrust for being "different".

Quelling the turmoil in the Kashmir Valley should not be the only objective, therefore, of the government and civil society. There is also a need to reach out to the Kashmiri students and others who are studying and working in other parts of the country.

However, winning hearts and minds does not appear to be high on the list of priorities of the Centre as when the then Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, spoke of insaniyat, or humaneness, while dealing with Kashmir.

Instead, the BJP leaders still seem to be guided by their customary hardline attitude although there hasn't been any talk recently of abrogating Article 370 (of the constitution) which confers a special status on Kashmir.

In a belated attempt to douse the flames, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh did go to the valley to mediate with the putative trouble-makers -- the separatists of the Hurriyat Conference.

But the latter showed no interest in talking to the all-party delegations which accompanied the Home Minister. Having succeeded in cornering the Centre and the state government, the separatists obviously saw no reason to come to their rescue.

But the situation is now taking a turn which is causing concern even to the Hurriyat. It is the burning of nearly 30 schools, including a 113-year-old institution in Anantnag district, which has made even the hardliner, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, describe the arsonists as "enemies of the people of Kashmir".

It is possible that the Hurriyat has realised that the situation is going out of its control, which is why it does not seem to know who the arsonists are.

The Lashkar-e-Taiba has been mentioned in this context. But whichever organisation is behind the incendiary attacks, what is a matter of deep concern is the surfacing of a brand of Islamic fundamentalism associated with the Taliban of the Af-Pak region, which is known for the attack on a Peshawar school in 2014 and the shooting of the school girl, Malala Yousafzai (now a Nobel peace prize winner), in 2012.

While the Taliban's opposition to women's education may have currently metamorphosed into a rejection of education in general, it is a pity that Kashmir should have become the venue of their depredations.

It is sadly ironic that a state, which was known for the most gentle form of Islam associated with the pluralistic concept of Kashmiriyat, should fall prey to a vicious expression of hate.

Even if Geelani is today criticising the arsonists, he and the others in the Hurriyat cannot ignore the fact that it is their pursuit of a Shariat-based society with its cruel medievalism which decrees the cutting off of a thief's hands and pushes women indoors, which has encouraged fundamentalism to take root in Kashmir at the expense of democratic norms.

The burning of schools is only to be expected in such a negative atmosphere since a modern education is anathema to the zealots. If the latter can ensure that a generation will grow up unlettered and untutored, they can be easily manipulated not only to throw stones at the police but also swell the ranks of the militants.

Any failure to bring them to book will only make the conditions even more anarchic, turning the once widely acclaimed paradise on earth into a lawless tract of land where no civilised existence is possible as in large areas in the Af-Pak region.

As before, Kashmir remains a test case for the success of the multicultural ethos. But only large-scale investment, starting with the rebuilding of the burnt-out schools and creating widespread employment opportunities, can dispel misapprehensions about a hard-hearted Centre and bring the people in the valley closer to the rest of the country.

(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)
Aleppo (Syria), Nov 5 : People in Syria's east Aleppo city are bracing for a full-scale Russian aerial assault after Moscows deadline for rebels and civilians to surrender expired on Friday.

The Kremlin gave residents of east Aleppo a "last chance" to come out of the besieged enclave by 7.00 p.m. but as the sun set over the battered city there was no sign of people taking up the offer, the Telegraph reported.

Those inside said they now expected Russia and the Syrian regime to resume a heavy bombardment of east Aleppo, where around 275,000 civilians and 8,000 fighters are surrounded by government forces and running out of food and medicine.

"The Russian warplanes are going to make it hell for us again," Abdulkafi al-Hamdo, a teacher by profession, told the Telegraph. "They will say they offered to let us leave and because we didn't it means we are all terrorists and deserve to be killed."

Russian and Syrian jets have refrained from striking east Aleppo for the last two weeks and on Friday opened several humanitarian corridors for 10 hours to allow rebel fighters and civilians to come out of the area.

Green government buses waited at the end of the passages to pick up anyone who did venture out.

But by nightfall no one appeared to have used any of the eight corridors and the two sides gave different explanations for why civilians were staying inside the besieged city.

The Syrian regime said residents were being stopped from leaving by rebel fighters and jihadists who wanted them as "human shields" to deter an assault. Rebels appeared to fire rockets at one of the corridors in what may have been an effort to discourage people from going out.

Russia's only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, arrived off the Syrian coast this week after a voyage through the English channel and the Mediterranean and its jets are expected to join in the bombardment.

The depleted Syrian army is relying heavily on Russian airpower and thousands of fighters from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Lebanese Shia militia Hizbollah.
Islamabad, Nov 5 : Mysterious banners in Pakistan with pictures of the Army Chief General Raheel Sharif are once again surfacing in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. But this time the message urges the army general to "participate" in the next general election due in 2018.

The banners in bold English, urge the Army Chief - who is due to retire November 29 - to participate in the next general election in 2018. The text of the posters urges Parliament to amend a law which bars army officials from taking part in political activities for at least two years after retirement, reports the Express News.

This is not the first time banners relating to the popular Army Chief have cropped up in major cities in Pakistan. In July, banners with pictures of Gen. Sharif were on display in major cities across Pakistan, urging him to impose martial law and take control of the country.

Interestingly, the banners sprung up overnight on all major boulevards in the cities despite the presence of several security checkpoints and patrol. The banners were put up in Karachi, Lahore, Quetta, Peshawar, Hyderabad, Rawalpindi, Sargodha, Faisalabad, among others.

In February, days after Gen. Sharif announced he would step down, banners were put up on the streets of the capital urging him to extend his tenure.

However, unlike the most recent banner, the old banners were put out by an organisation named the "Move on Pakistan" party. The party - which has little grass-root support - has been registered with the ECP and a businessman from Faisalabad, Mohammad Kamran, is its chairman.

On January 25, Gen. Raheel Sharif laid to rest speculation that he would continue to serve as the military chief beyond November 2016 when he is due to retire, insisting he preferred to relinquish the job - unlike two of his predecessors.

By declaring his intentions well in advance, Gen. Sharif has become the first army chief since 1998 to doff his military uniform after completing his three-year tenure. He was appointed as the country's 15th army chief on November 29, 2013.
Kolkata, Nov 5 : The West Bengal government has so far handed over physical possession of 508 acres of land to farmers of Singur in Hooghly district after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee kicked off the process on October 20, an official said on Saturday.

Of the 997.11 acres acquired for the Nano project by the erstwhile Left Front government, Banerjee had claimed that 932 acres of land was made cultivable, while work was going on to develop the remaining 65 acres.

"The process of giving physical possession of land has been going at a satisfactory pace. So far, we have handed over physical possession of 508 acres of land to farmers," Hooghly's Additional District Magistrate (LR) Purnendu Maji told IANS.

Banerjee, who had spearheaded the anti-land acquisition protests from 2006-2008 as the supremo of Trinamool Congress, commenced cultivation in a symbolic gesture by sowing a mustard seed in October.

"Ongoing process of giving physical possession to farmers is expected to be completed by November 10. Sheds and materials of car factory have already been removed. The state government will hold an auction to sell these materials," Rabindranath Bhattacharya, a lawmaker from Singur, told IANS.

A division bench of Justices Arun Mishra and V. Gopala Gowda of the Supreme Court on August 31, directed that the land be returned to the farmers of Singur within 12 weeks. The court-stipulated time-frame will expire by November-end.

The government gave land documents to majority of farmers, he said.
Lucknow, Nov 5 : Senior leaders from the erstwhile 'Janata Parivar' on Saturday called for unity and urged all parties to come together to oppose communal forces.

Led by former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda, the leaders pitched for opposition unity at the silver jubilee celebrations of the Samajwadi Party (SP) at Janeshwar Mishra Park in the state capital.

Deve Gowda said he would be happy to see all parties come together and form an alliance under the leadership of his one-time Defence Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav. Referring to his term as the Prime Minister and Mulayam as Defence Minister, the Karnataka leader said the time had come for like-minded parties to come together and defeat the "forces which were out to divide the society and the nation".

"People who came to power in the name of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the man behind uniting various provinces into one India, are now out to divide the nation," he remarked in his spirited address.

Former Janata Dal-United president Sharad Yadav, who was representing Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar at the function, spoke of the old ties within the Socialist group and said it was good that they had gathered together at the silver jubilee gala of a party formed and nurtured by their friend Mulayam.

He however was non-committal on any 'Third Front' formation and told media persons before attending the event that it was too premature to say anything in this direction. "We have come here on the invitation of Mulayam Singh Yadav, an old friend, a 'sangharsh ke saathi', to be part of the silver jubilee function of the Samajwadi Party," he said.

Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief Ajit Singh said a tie-up between like-minded parties was the need of the hour. The former Union Minister, who is the son of former Prime Minister Choudhary Charan Singh, was in the past bitterly opposed to Mulayam since the Yadav chieftain was picked by his father over him as his political successor. He is of the view that an alliance be stitched up between 'secular forces' ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, if not the 2017 state assembly polls.

Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav, who had in the 90's scuttled a chance for Mulayam to become Prime Minister, was also singing a different tune this time. Now, a relative of Mulayam, as his daughter is married to the grand nephew of Mulayam, Lalu announced on Saturday that his party will not field any candidates in the Uttar Pradesh polls, and in fact he would be addressing several rallies in support of SP candidates.

"We will hound Modi out of UP, as we did in the Bihar polls," Lalu said, while hinting that he and RJD ally, the Janata Dal-U, were not averse to joining hands in Uttar Pradesh if it emerged as a potent force against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

State Samajwadi Party chief and former PWD Minister Shivpal Singh Yadav and SP national general secretary Amar Singh too have been pushing the case of a 'grand alliance' between the old Janata Parivar parties.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has earlier said he is opposed to any such idea, and maintained the party should go it alone in the next state assembly polls. However, he did a u-turn recently and said he now leaves the issue of alliance with other parties to his father Mulayam Singh Yadav.

(Mohit Dubey can be reached at mohit.d@ians.in)
Bengaluru, Nov 5 : British Prime Minister Theresa May will be in this tech hub on Tuesday on the last leg of her maiden three-day official visit to India starting Sunday, an official said.

"May has a busy schedule during her day-long visit on Tuesday as she will participate in as many as five events soon after arriving from New Delhi," a protocol officer told IANS here.

The 60-year-old British leader is arriving in New Delhi on Sunday for her first bilateral visit outside the European Union after she assumed office in July following the resignation of David Cameron in wake of Brexit, or Britain's vote to leave the European grouping.

"May's first engagement will be at the international airport around 11 a.m. where she will meet Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in the VIP lounge for bilateral discussions," said the official who declined to be named as he is not authorised to brief the media on the visit.

May will then drive to the state-run Stone Hill model school near Papanahalli in the city's northern suburb to interact with its students.

She will visit Dynamatic Technologies Ltd at the Peenya industrial state for a firsthand account of the aerospace firm's manufacturing facility.

"From Peenya, May will go to the Someshwara Temple at Halasuru in the city centre and seek blessings of its deity, Shiva. The 15th century temple is one of the oldest in the southern state, dating back to the Chola period," the official noted.

May's last engagement in the city will be a luncheon meeting with chief executives of India Inc at a leading hotel before flying to London in the evening.

An Indo-British Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) delegation will also call on her after the luncheon meet.

"Elaborate security arrangements are being made for the safety of May and her delegation. Vehicular traffic will be diverted and regulated to facilitate quick and smooth passage of her motorcade," the official added.

May will be the fourth British Premier to visit Bengaluru after her (Conservative) Party's then leader John Major on January 9, 1997, his Labour Party successor Tony Blair on January 4, 2002 and Cameron on July 28, 2010.
Dharamsala, Nov 5 : National Award-winning actor Girish Kulkarni believes that the Indian education system lacks the training of appreciation of art due to which it gets diversified, making it tough for artists to showcase their talent.

Girish along with Marathi filmmaker Umesh Kulkarni, Himachal Pradesh filmmaker Sanjeev Kumar, Bengali filmmaker Bauddhayan Mukherji and actor Chittaranjan Giri took part in a panel discussion, titled "Cinema India" at the fifth edition of Dharamshala International Film Festival here on Saturday.

While talking about Marathi cinema, which is currently considered to be having a gala time, Girish said: "In Maharashtra, we lack the cinema culture. People love going to theatres and they themselves make efforts to watch films. We must credit the mainstream Hindi cinema, which has created that kind of culture."

"It's a unique film culture, which we can witness across India. That thing is less for regional films though," he added.

Girish, who has appeared in Marathi films like "Valu", "Bihir", "Deool" and "Gabhricha Paus", said that Maharashtra lacks "cinema infrastructure", but things are slowly changing now.

"Now the scene is changing as multiplexes are coming in. But with the ticket pricing films are beyond the reach of masses," he said.

"Another important aspect is that in our education system as a whole, there is no training whatsoever about appreciation of art. That's completely missing," Girish said.

"It's a very difficult process which has been simplified to a great extent by Hindi filmmakers. They just had their own grammar, which is a very simplified one. It connects to a bigger mass that regional cinema lacks," he added.

Talking about the Marathi film industry, Girish said that there is no support from independent producers.

"In Marathi cinema, there are no producers. They all are one film producers. They come in with some odd hopes and money, and later go away. They never had any interest in looking forward to any integrities of this field. That responsibility also comes on the creative people, who are not good at business," he said.

Girish feels that to compete with Bollywood and Hollywood, regional filmmakers should try to produce compelling content.

"There have been talks like Marathi cinema is doing really well and wanting to produce big names. But I think you have the same audience, which is getting scattered into the variety of content," he said.

"It's not only mainstream Bollywood, but also includes the big Hollywood banners, which are now here to compete. Now you have to produce compelling content, which will completely fit with the audiences' mood. It's a very tough and challenging task," Girish added.

Girish says "government could not do anything" in helping independent filmmakers by providing funds to them.

"Maharashtra government just gives subsidy to Marathi films. The only place where government can help is by approaching National Award winners to motivate and help the younger ones. We can only improve when we will stop relying on the government," he said.

(The writer's trip to Dharamsala is at the invitation of the Dharamshala International Film Festival organisers. Sandeep Sharma can be contacted at sandeep.s@ians.in)
New Delhi, Nov 5 : Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday called for the need to identify dangerous buildings in the national capital, which are on the verge of collapsing.

"There is a need to identify the dangerous buildings in the national capital. Unfortunately the MCD (Municipal Corporation of Delhi) whose work it ir, is not doing it. We want MCD to quickly look into the issue so that other buildings don't collapse," he said after visiting a woman critically injured when a three-storey building collapsed in the Azad Market on Friday.

Coming out of Hindu Rao Hospital, he said that separate reports have been sought from the divisional commissioner and the civic body on the incident.

"I asked them to give fair a report. A FIR should be registered and guilty should be punished. As per the law, Rs 2 lakh has to be given to family of deceased and Rs 50,000 to injured person. We have sanctioned this amount. But their house has completely collapsed. The family is poor, we will see if more is required. More money can be given to them," said Kejriwal.

Police had said a woman, identified as Jimla, 47, was killed and her daughter, Komal, 23, critically injured when the century-old decrepit building in the Azad market in north Delhi collapsed. Two families were residing the building which had three flats.

"One of the families had gone to their hometown in Bihar for Chhath Puja celebrations. The other family, of which Jimla and Komal were members, stayed back," a police officer had said.
New Delhi, Nov 5 : Amid suggestions in the party that Rahul Gandhi should be elevated as party president at the Congress Working Committee meeting on November 7, former Delhi Chief Minister and the party's chief ministerial candidate in Uttar Pradesh Sheila Dikshit says the "party wants Sonia Gandhi to continue" as president.

"Well..she is continuing because the party doesn't want her to go just now. The party wants her to continue, obviously because she has steered the party extraordinarily well. So let us see," Dikshit told IANS when asked if Sonia Gandhi was ready to continue as party president.

Asked if elevation of party Vice President Rahul Gandhi was expected during the CWC meeting, Dikshit said: "That is something Mrs. Gandhi (Sonia Gandhi) will take a decision on."

There have been repeated suggestions from party leaders that Rahul Gandhi should take over the reins of the party from his mother Sonia Gandhi.

Party leaders Jairam Ramesh, Digvijaya Singh and Kamal Nath are among those who have suggested that Rahul Gandhi should take over as party chief.

A party leader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said it was for Rahul Gandhi to decide the time of his elevation.

"He has to decide," he said, adding that Sonia Gandhi will continue to be a guiding force after Rahul Gandhi's elevation.

Another party leader said that Rahul Gandhi should take over now as it will bring about a single-point decision making. Sonia Gandhi, she said, should also not be made to take on a hectic poll campaign.

Sonia Gandhi had collapsed during a party roadshow in Varanasi in August and had taken ill. Her first public engagement after that was meeting with Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi on October 17.

Sonia Gandhi became party chief in 1998 and is the longest-serving president of the party. She was re-elected party chief in 2010 for a five year term.

With her term ending last year, the party had written to the Election Commission seeking time to hold organisational elections by the end of this year.

The CWC meeting is expected to take a decision to seek more time from the Election Commission to conduct its organisational elections.

(Sidhartha Dutta can be contacted at sidhartha.d@ians.in)
Dhaka, Nov 5 : The idol of Hindu goddess Lakshmi, stolen from a vandalised temple, was found in a mosque in Bangladesh's Nasirnagar, six days after communal violence rocked Brahmanbaria district, even as a Muslim youth was caught torching a Kali temple in another area on Saturday, media reports said.

Police arrested Sumon Islam, after he torched the Satpai Kali Temple in Netrokona area on Saturday morning. Locals rushed to the spot, doused the fire and nabbed Sumon, who was later handed over to the police.

Bangladesh police recovered the Lakshmi idol from a mosque in Bitui village, in Nasirnagar sub district of Brahmanbaria, acting on a tip-off by the imam of the mosque.

The idol is suspected to have been stolen during the October 30 communal attacks in Brahmanbaria when a dozen temples were vandalised and around 100 Hindu homes ransacked.

Politicising the attacks, opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) Vice-Chairman Hafizuddin Ahmed said the expulsion of three local Awami League leaders for their alleged involvement in the October 30 communal attacks proved the ruling party's involvement in the attacks.

Ahmed demanded that the government set up a judicial inquiry to identify the real perpetrators and bring them to book, The Daily Star reported.

In another development, residents of Rishipara -- a Hindu dominated locality -- in Nasirnagar foiled an attempted attack on their homes on Saturday.

Witnesses described the attackers as youths aged around 20 years, who fled on a boat on facing resistance from the locals, Dhaka Tribune reported.

This comes a day after several Hindu homes were torched in Brahmanbaria district on Friday, raising fears over growing communal tensions.

On October 30, a mob of around 3,000 armed Muslims attacked nearly 100 Hindu houses and at least 10 temples, vandalising and looting valuables.

The attacks were reportedly in response to a Facebook post that satirised the Masjid al-Haram - a holy site for Muslims.

Police have so far detained 43 people over the attacks.
Saharanpur, Nov 5 : BJP President Amit Shah on Saturday attacked the ruling Samajwadi Party over the ongoing feud in the Yadav family, saying those responsible for governing the state are busy abusing each other.

"The ones, who were given power to bring development in the state, are today busy in insulting each other," Shah said while addressing an impressive public rally before commencing the "Parivartan Yatra" of his party.

He said western UP had contributed majorly to the stunning victory of the BJP in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, so the yatra has been kicked off from here.

"Uncle is busy in abusing his nephew and nephew is busy in abusing his uncle," Shah quipped.

The BJP President's remarks came after Samajwadi Party General Secretary Shivpal Singh Yadav on Saturday again made a veiled attack on his nephew at the Silver Jubilee celebration of the party in Lucknow.

Referring to his dismissal from the state Cabinet twice, Shivpal said that he is neither greedy for any post nor any ministry. He also said if the party so wishes, he is ready to give even his blood and everything at his command.

"While some people get power in lineage, there are many who are silent workers," Shivpal said.

Even Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav took a dig at his uncle after the latter presented him a sword and said, "You have given me a sword and I will use it."

Shah exuded confidence that by December 24, the party's target of two-thirds majority would be met, as "the people of the state are now in no mood to tolerate the corruption of Mayawati and the goondaraj of Samajwadi Party government".

These two parties, he alleged, have brought the wheel of development to a grinding halt in the state and that for development to ring in again, the BJP is the best choice.

The BJP President pointed out how under the watch of Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, Jawaharbagh incident had happened, in which a SP and a police inspector had died, apart from 24 others.

He also said that the Bulandhshar gang rape, killing of policemen, police officers' posting scam and many other incidents are a poor reflection on the Samajwadi Party government and the time has come for the people to bid adieu to them.

Targeting Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati, the BJP President said, "Remember your rule Behenji, when most attacks on the Dalits took place in Uttar Pradesh?"

"Maximum murders took place during Mayawati's rule, while the crime rate was 30 per cent above the national average. There was also rampant corruption when Mayawati was the CM," Shah said.

He also reminded the BSP chief of the scams which took place during her tenure.

"If BSP again comes to power, UP will not benefit but Mayawati will have additional 200-300 statues of her own across the state," Shah mocked.

He slammed the SP and the BSP for the poor condition of the state and said that during their 15-year rule, they have derailed the growth process in Uttar Pradesh.

Raking up the issue of migration from western UP, Shah said, "During SP's rule, crime has grown by a massive 161 per cent. Western UP has been worst hit, and as a result, the inhabitants of this region have been forced to migrate to other states."

"I assure all of you that if the BJP forms government in UP, no one will have to leave his or her village. If anyone has to leave, it will be those who are trying to uproot you from your homes and villages," he said.

The BJP President also targeted the SP and the BSP for giving tickets to criminals and said, "Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav had said that till the time he is the CM, Mukhtar Ansari and Afzal Ansari will have no place in the SP. The voter of UP today wants to know whether now both of them are in SP.

"Why do you continue to be the CM of the state?" he asked.

He also said, "The entire SP is full of Mukhtars, Afzals, Ateeqs and Azams, while the BSP has Naseemuddin. There is devil on one side and deep sea on the other."

Attacking the Congress for doing politics over the death of an ex-serviceman, Shah said, "A soldier has committed suicide and they are doing politics for vote bank. This is disgusting."

Slamming Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, Shah said, "Rahul Gandhi talks about OROP (One Rank, One Pension), but it is the BJP government that implemented the policy while the Congress dragged it for decades."

Attacking the opposition over triple talaq issue, Shah said, "The Congress, SP and the BSP have been protesting the government's response to the Supreme Court query on the issue of triple talaq."

"Even Muslim women have the right to a secure and safe life and practices like triple talaq should go. For the sake of votes, these parties are playing with the rights of Muslim women," Shah alleged.

The Parivartan Yatra will pass through all the assembly constituencies of the state and reach Lucknow on December 24.
New Delhi, Nov 5 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said that development of Jammu and Kashmir is high on his agenda.

Reiterating a humanitarian approach, he said that 'Vikas' and 'Vishwas' will remain the cornerstones of the Union government's development initiatives for the state.

He made these remarks while meeting a 30-member delegation of the All Jammu and Kashmir Panchayat Conference, which called on him at his official residence here here.

The delegation briefed the Prime Minister on development issues concerning the state, and said that benefits of central assistance to the state have not reached the villages due to non-empowerment of the Panchayats, in line with the rest of the country.

They also apprised the Prime Minister of the prevailing situation in the state while expressing deep concern over the burning of schools by anti-national elements.
New Delhi, Nov 5 : Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday said that Delhi Police is being sensitised to the security needs of people from the northeastern states living in the national capital.

"We are making Delhi Police more and more sensitive to the security needs of our friends from the northeast. Delhi Police has recruited over 450 smart young boys and girls from the northeast in the last one year," the minister said while addressing the 53rd Annual Meet of the Naga Students' Union Delhi (NSUD) here.

He said that the government is committed to ensure that the Naga people have their rightful honour, dignity and pride of place in the country.

"I know that India cannot be happy if our Naga brothers and sisters are unhappy, and India cannot be great unless our Naga brothers and sisters share this sense of greatness," he said.

He also asked the Naga students to bring to his notice any suggestion that may strengthen their sense of security.

"Feel free to bring it to my notice. I will do my best," the minister said, adding that the Home Ministry has a minister from the northeast - Kiren Rijiju "who can understand your problems and relate with you better".

The Home Minister also appreciated the role of Naga Students' Union in Delhi, saying it provides care of a family to the Naga students.
Adam (left) and John Law flank Rob Schaid, broker/owner of RE/MAX Plaza.

RE/MAX Geneva Realty of Lake Geneva, Wis., has merged with RE/MAX Plaza, a four-office firm located in northern Illinois with a staff of more than 50 sales associates. The merger was jointly announced by John and Adam Law, broker/owners of RE/MAX Geneva Realty and Rob Schaid, broker/owner of RE/MAX Plaza.

The Lake Geneva location at 101 Broad St. is being renamed RE/MAX Plaza. The RE/MAX Plaza locations in Illinois include its McHenry headquarters and offices in Wauconda, Woodstock and Richmond.

John Law has successfully operated RE/MAX Geneva Realty for the last 16 years. Explaining the decision to join forces with RE/MAX Plaza, Law said, it was time to be part of a company that could offer my clients enhanced exposure and provide our agents with the systems and tools to help them compete in the changing market place.

Schaid said he is delighted to welcome John and Adam Law and their team of experienced, high producing agents and add the Lake Geneva location to the RE/MAX Plaza organization.

John is one of the most respected realtors in the community, and Adam is an up and coming top producing agent. I am proud to have them join our team. Its something that doesnt happen every day, and the fact that they chose to join forces with us is one of the largest compliments I have received in my career, he said

John and Adam Law will continue serving buyers and sellers in the Lake Geneva market.

Schaid noted that the addition of a strong Wisconsin office had been an objective of RE/MAX Plaza for some time.

Even before we took this step, about 10 percent of the transactions we completed involved property in Wisconsin, and much of that was in Walworth County, so Lake Geneva is an ideal location for us, he said.

Schaid explained that a major motivation is the demand he has seen from Illinois residents for property in southern Wisconsin.

Whether they are looking for a second home or want to relocate for retirement or other reasons, we are seeing a great deal of interest in that area. Of course, Lake Geneva is an outstanding community with a national reputation and a strong real estate market, so we are thrilled about being part of it, he said.

We look forward to building on the tradition of service that John and Adam have delivered to their clients and taking it to an even higher level, he said.

RE/MAX Plaza, founded in 1987, is part of RE/MAX, a global real estate organization with 104,000+ sales associates in 90+ nations.
Nathan Hobbs, One-Way Electric, LLC We invest heavily in our electrician team, in order to build their confidence, improve our services, and elevate the Amarillo community. We deliver our quality electrical services with honesty and integrity. There is only one way, the right way.

Nathan Hobbs is a true Texas Panhandle native who holds a special place in his heart for serving his community. After serving the City of Amarillo for four years as an electrical inspector, Mr. Hobbs decided he could better serve his community as an electrical service provider. Nathan is proud to announce the launch of his local business, One-Way Electric, LLC.

One-Way Electric, LLC offers residential and commercial electrical repairs including, new build wiring, complete re-wiring for remodel, panel upgrades, EV (Electric Vehicle) charging station install, back up generator services, appliance repair, LED lighting and more. Their licensed electricians are at the forefront of safety and have the most recent knowledge of electrical codes and new electrical guidelines for Amarillo. However, Nathan Hobbs and his team of certified electricians not only service Amarillo, but also the surrounding communities such as: Bushland, Borger, Dalhart, Dumas, Canyon, Claude, Happy, and Hereford.

We invest heavily in our electrician team, in order to build their confidence, improve our services, and elevate the community. We deliver our quality electrical services with honesty and integrity. There is only one way, the right way. Nathan said.

Nathan was born in 1972 in a small East Texas town. When he was seven months old, his parents relocated up to the beautiful city of Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle. He started in the electrical industry in 1999. Eight years later Mr. Hobbs went to work for the City of Amarillo as an electrical inspector. After four years as a city inspector, Nathan realized the need for more quality electricians in Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle. In 2011, he resigned from his position with the City Of Amarillo to start One-Way Electric, LLC.

As part of their commitment to customer service, One-Way Electric, LLC offers after hour emergency service calls, online scheduling, in home consultations and detailed quotes. They have over 30 years of electrical experience. Home ownership and property management is stressful enough. We pride ourselves on being professional and on-time getting the job done the right way the first time. Our trained electrical technicians prepare in advance to provide you with the quality service you deserve. Nathan explains. One-Way Electric, LLC assigns a licensed electrician to every project, big or small.

For more information about One-Way Electric, LLC and their electricians visit their website http://www.onewayelec.com, email nathan(at)onewayelec(dot)com, call (806)681-1217. Follow One-Way Electric, LLC on Facebook, Linkedin, and twitter.
For many decades, Tomi Ungerers 140-plus books, posters, sculptures, and films have inspired creativity and imagination in children and adults worldwide. Now, in commemoration of his 85th birthday, friends and fans can show their appreciation for the artist whom Maurice Sendak described as a spectacular graphic genius. Phaidon Press is creating a virtual birthday tribute of his admirers drawings and written messages, some of which are revealed here. The press is also celebrating the authors bountiful contribution to childrens literaturefor which he received the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1998with the publication of Tomi Ungerer: A Treasury of 8 Books, a slipcase volume that also includes more than 50 previously unpublished sketches, storyboards, and photographs.

Ungerer, who writes stories in English, French, and German, was born in 1931 in Strasbourg, France, which became part of Germany after the Nazis took over the city during World War II. Deeply affected by his boyhood wartime experiences, the author has long created stories and art that reflect his abhorrence of injustice, violence, and discrimination. Yet, Ungerer writes in a letter that opens his treasury, creating childrens books also enables him to return to my childhood. I create them for the child that lives inside me. Thanks to this child and his innocence, everything remains fresh and new, and I can be carried away freely into my childhood fantasies.

Both of these creative impulses are manifest in the Treasury, which compiles three of Ungerers classic picture books (The Three Robbers, Moon Man, and Otto); four works long unavailable in English (Zeraldas Ogre, Flix, The Hat, and Emile); and Fog Island, a PW Best Childrens Book of 2013.

After looking at Tomis backlist with a fresh eye, we decided to take the opportunity to make a timeless, larger tribute to his work, said Cecily Kaiser, Phaidon publishing director, childrens books, about the genesis of the treasury. Tomi has such a loyal following, far and wide, and we wanted to bring his work together in the most deserving way. For all his art and design genius, he is so humble and so appreciative of the efforts others put in on his behalf. It was such a joy to see how pleased he was when he first saw a finished copy of the treasury.

The virtual 85th birthday tribute to Ungerer also sprang from Phaidon staffers brainstorming sessions. Because Tomi is so special and has influenced so many, we decided that inviting fans to help us celebrate him creatively online would be a great way for them to share their gratitude, said Meagan Bennett, art director for childrens books. Its an opportunity to let all the love for him to shine in one place. And the response has been overwhelming.

Those who are interested in viewing the birthday wishes Ungerer has receivedor who would like to add their owncan do so online. On the authors actual birthday, November 28, Phaidon will present him with printed versions of the tributes (though well-wishers can still post greetings on the site after that date).

As his landmark birthday draws near, the ever energetic Ungerer is looking ahead to his next book project. There is still one book I want to doand I am going to do it, he stated. It is a book about thirst and hunger in the third world. I already have the elements of the story, but I havent yet found the key element to tie it all together.

Meanwhile, the authors thoughts are on his upcoming milestone, and on his first-ever treasury. At 85, I have reached the right speed without a drivers license, he said. If I had to, Id start my whole life all over again just to learn more from my mistakes. My life has been an extended childhoodin keeping my innocence as reckless as it could be. And this treasury is here to prove it!

Tomi Ungerer: A Treasury of 8 Books by Tomi Ungerer. Phaidon, $49.95 Oct. ISBN 978-0-7148-7285-8
This week, Jeff Kinney Doubles Down in D.C.; M.T. Anderson and Gregory Maguire take part in a musical engagement; readers in Grand Rapids are seeing cats; and Henry H. Neff tours for his new middle-grade fantasy.

Next Stop  the World

Jeff Kinney kicked off his global tour for Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Double Down on November 1, with events in Kinneys hometown of Washington, D.C., including stops at the Library of Congress and at Politics & Prose. Here, he greets two Wimpy Kid fans in view of Capitol Hill.

A Rural Reading

M.T. Anderson (l.) and Gregory Maguire read from works by E.B. White, Robert Frost, Sherwood Anderson, and others, at The Chapel at Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, Vt., on October 30, as part of an event sponsored by Bear Pond Books in Montpelier. They read as part of a program called Music for Barns, which is devoted to the celebration of rural life and the music it inspires. The Aurea Ensemble from R.I. also performed for guests.

Very Good Things

Good Things Happen to Readers, a donation program managed by the Grand Rapids Student Advancement Foundation, recently provided copies of Brendan Wenzels They All Saw a Cat to students in 26 Grand Rapids public school classrooms. On November 1, volunteers picked up cartons of books from the local independent bookstore Schuler Books & Music, to drop them off at the participating schools. Every student in the classrooms was given a copy to take home.

Back in the (Classroom) Saddle Again

Author Henry H. Neff is currently on tour for Impyrium, the first book in his new middle grade fantasy series. Neff, a former teacher, is making stops at schools in Chicago, Houston, Memphis, New York City, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, and Philadelphia. In Houston, Neff visited Westchester Academy for International Studies. Here, Neff is pictured with teachers (from l.) Silvia Urteaga, Kelly Kiehnoff, and Nichole Nakadate.
ROCK ISLAND -- A local teen is among 10 students who are receiving Making a Difference Scholarships from Royal Neighbors of America.

Anthoney Brown, of Woodhull, is joined by students from Oregon, Kansas, California, Iowa, Ohio, Wyoming and Highland, Ill.

Each recipient will receive a four-year, renewable grant worth up to $8,000 -- $2,000 each year. The scholarships are awarded annually to help graduating high school seniors earn a degree at an accredited college or university. Only members of Royal Neighbors are eligible to apply.

Headquartered in Rock Island, Royal Neighbors of America is one of the oldest women-led life insurers in the U.S. Since its creation in 1961, the Royal Neighbors of America Scholarship Program has awarded more than $5 million to its members. The program accepts applications from Sept. 1 until March 1 each year; for more details, visit royalneighbors.org.
Did you know a real bear inspired A.A. Milnes Winnie-the-Pooh"? Did you know H.A. Rey originally named Curious George Fifi?

In honor of Poohs 90th birthday and Curious Georges 75th anniversary, read the stories behind these stories: Sally M. Walkers Winnie: The True Story of the Bear Who Inspired Winnie-the-Pooh and Louise Bordens The Journey That Saved Curious George.

To learn in general about how writers create stories, try Eileen Christelows picture book What Do Authors Do? The comic-book format featuring pets humorous dialogue balloons makes it fun to read. (Christelow created the Five Little Monkeys series.)

Author autobiographies

You might also enjoy reading about the people behind popular books. Author autobiographies include Betsy Byars The Moon and I, Beverly Clearys A Girl from Yamhill and My Own Two Feet, Tomie De Paolas 26 Fairmount Avenue" (and its many sequels), Peg Kehrets Five

Pages a Day, Lois Lowrys Looking Back: A Book of Memories, Phyllis Reynolds Naylors How I Came to Be a Writer, Jon Scieszkas Knucklehead, Jerry Spinellis Knots in My Yo-Yo String, and R.L. Stines It Came from Ohio!

Books about writing

If these titles inspire children to write their own stories, they can find help in library books. Primary graders can turn to Loreen Leedys Look at My Book: How Kids Can Write and Illustrate Terrific Books, Nancy Loewens Once Upon a Time: Writing Your Own Fairy Tale and Show Me: Writing Your Own Picture Book, plus Nel Yamtovs How To Write a Fractured Fairy Tale.

Intermediate students will find a wealth of information in Karen Benkes Leap Write In!, Nancy Bentley's and Donna Guthries Writing Mysteries, Movies, Monster Stories and More, Tish Farrells Be a Creative Writer, Dan Gutmans My Weird Writing Tips and Vicki

Hambleton's and Cathleen Greenwoods So, You Want to Be a Writer?

Greg Roza describes Cool Careers Without College for People Who Love To Write.

For more

To read books children have published professionally, do an advanced search at search.prairiecat.info for written and illustrated by and Landmark.

Also, search authors biography, creative writing, English language composition and exercises, and fiction authorship. Adding "juvenile literature" limits hits.

Browse call numbers 808.02-06 for writing tips and 813.54 and B for author biographies.

Thanksgiving books, activities

Teresa Batemans Gus, the Pilgrim Turkey goes south to avoid being someones holiday meal. Lay your hand on a piece of paper with thumb and fingers spread apart. Trace around it to make Gus. Use crayons, markers, and/or scraps of colored paper or material to give him a new outfit.

Take turns hiding him for other family members to find. Can you give him clothes that will blend in with his surroundings?

Related books include Lorna Balians Sometimes Its Turkey, Sometimes Its Feathers, Eve Buntings A Turkey for Thanksgiving and Dav Pilkeys Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving.
President Obama granted today commutations to 72 individuals, including two Davenport men, according to a news release from the White House.

The men and their offenses are as follows:

 Justin L. Border

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute drugs; possession of drugs with intent to distribute; felon in possession of firearm.

Sentence: 20 years imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (August 11, 2003).

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

 Leonel Cano Vela

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute cocaine.

Sentence: 30 years imprisonment; eight years supervised release (March 17, 2003).

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

According to the White House website, President Obama has commuted the sentences of more people than the past 11 presidents combined.
DAVENPORT  In a final effort to push voters to the polls on Tuesday, Democratic and Republican party representatives brought some of their best surrogates to rallies on Friday.

Former presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders appeared before a crowd of more than 300 people at Modern Woodmen Park, urging support for Hillary Clinton.

"I'm asking you to work hard to bring people out to the polls on Tuesday.

"This election is not about Hillary Clinton. It is not about Donald Trump. This election is about you and the middle class of this country. It is not a personality contest. We're not voting for class president of our high school. We are voting for the most powerful public official in the entire world."

Sen. Sanders was introduced by former Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who praised the senator as a former colleague and personal friend.

"Bernie Sanders speaks plainly, he speaks from the heart, with good values and a keen mind. During my time in the Congress and Senate, I have two people I have worked with whom I have admired without reservation  Bernie Sanders and (Minnesota) Sen. Paul Wellstone."

Under a cloudless blue sky, Sen. Sanders spoke for more than half an hour, thanking Iowans for supporting a progressive party platform and calling for an end to income inequality.

"We need a movement of people who have the courage to stand up to the billionaire class whose greed is wreaking havoc on our economy. We cannot continue to have unequal distribution of wealth."

For those considering voting for Donald Trump, Sen. Sanders urged them to take a closer look at what he stands for, knocking the candidate on trade issues and the manufacturing of his garments overseas. Sen. Sanders noted that Hillary Clinton, like him, also opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

"Trump is not a candidate who will represent the working class or middle class of this country. Despite all of Trump's talk about outsourcing, and his concerns about trade, this is a billionaire who is doing business with a factory in Bangladesh, paying his workers $.33 cents an hour!"

Many in the crowd waved "Stronger Together" signs in support of Clinton, while others wore "Feel the Bern" T-shirts.

Moline residents Brynn and Christine Sheley said they came to the rally to show their support for Hillary Clinton.

"I support what she stands for: middle class people, education and pro-choice," Mrs. Sheley said. "With Trump, what you see is what you get. He's a ticking time bomb. He is on his best behavior right now. I'd hate to see what he would be like if he was elected."

Across town at the Scott County Republican Party headquarters office on Utica Ridge Road, about 50 people showed up to hear various candidates make the case for Donald Trump.

Iowa Republican Party Chairman Jeff Kaufmann predicted Republicans will win across the board.

"We can take it all. We're going from the White House, all the way down to the supervisor races.

"This isn't just electing a president. This is electing an administration. This is electing thousands of people who are going to come into Washington, D.C., and either drain the swamp or wade around in it and bring out little gold nuggets for themselves," he said.

Mr. Kaufmann spoke of the basic principles of Republican values.

"Smaller government is better than bigger government. We cannot sustain a $20 trillion debt. We cannot continue to flourish under absolute regulation, and we cannot continue to shun the idea that life is precious from conception on. That is the difference between our two presidential candidates.

Mr. Kaufmann praised Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley for his "political act of courage" by refusing to allow confirmation hearings on Merrick Garland, President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court.

"He did his part. We've got to do ours. (Grassley) would want you to vote. He would want you to go after that neighbor who says, 'I can't go there." Well yes, you can!

"It's not enough that you vote  we've come too far. You've got to go beyond your comfort zone in the next several days, with friends, with neighbors, with relatives. All of you have somebody you can influence. We've got to do everything in our power to make sure the Supreme Court reflects us  not a leftist agenda that's of the extreme minority."

Mr. Kaufmann said if Hillary Clinton is elected, she may soon be under indictment relating to the current FBI probe into the discovery of more emails.

Davenport farmer Glenn Keppy said electing a Republican president to appoint the next Supreme Court justice is extremely important to him.

"We need to get an appointee who will uphold the Constitution and make sure Americans have the rights our founding fathers intended us to have. There are things happening in government the last eight years that I think are taking this country down," Mr. Keppy said.

He admits to being a reluctant Trump supporter.

"When this campaign started, he wasn't my first, he wasn't my second, he wasn't my third choice. But today, if you compare the two leading candidates against one another, there is no way you can vote for anyone else than Donald Trump."

Mr. Keppy was appointed in 2006 as associate administrator of the Farm Service Agency under the George W. Bush administration.

"(Trump) is going to change Washington, D.C. I spent four years of my life working in Washington, so I know how it works.

"There is some frosting (Trump) is going to cut off the cake and streamline some things. He is going to be a change maker."

Kurt Whalen, who is a candidate for Iowa House of Representatives, District 93, said this election is important because it represents a choice between globalism and nationalism. He is running against Democratic incumbent Phyllis Thede.

"I'm seeing our nation slip away from us. We are turning from less of a Republic and into more of a Socialist society. I think that's the wrong choice for America. We have veterans who fought with their blood, sweat, and tears against that. I want to see my two boys grow up in a real republic and not a banana republic."

LeClaire resident Vivian Martin said she was inspired to attend the GOP rally because she, too, is worried about losing an appointment on the Supreme Court, among other issues, including the perceived loss of religious freedom.

"I enjoy Christmas. I don't want to feel like I am offending anyone for celebrating it. I feel like the Supreme Court is taking away our religious heritage. They're trying to make us feel ashamed for being Christians."

She said she admires Mr. Trump because he's not a lawyer or a politician, and he's not politically correct.

"He's from New York, and I think that's their way. He's brash. Even Jesus picked a prostitute and a tax collector to work for him. How do I know (Jesus) isn't working through Trump to get us back to where Christianity is not like an illness? Everyone is entitled to their own religion," she added.

"(Trump) loves the United States of America. I know that he will do his best"
China's tourism generated over a quarter of global tourism jobs in 2015: Report Updated: 2016-11-05 15:48 (Xinhua)

Tourists on Phuket Island, Thailand, enjoy unspoiled scenery. [Photo provided to China Daily]

WUHAN - China's tourism industry contributed greatly to global employment last year, a new report indicated.

The country's tourism sector generated more than a quarter of the jobs in the world's tourism industry in 2015, according to a report released Friday by the Wuhan Branch of China Tourism Academy.

Hu Jing, head of the branch, said that China ranked first globally in the numbers of tourists travelling domestically, outbound tourists, domestic tourism consumption, outbound tourism consumption and employment.

According to the report, the number of China's outbound tourists increased almost tenfold from 2001 to 2015, reaching 128 million last year.

"The tourism boom is a result of a good environment for the industry in China, including favorable policies, the number of days with good air quality and better treatment of garbage," Hu said.

The report has been published annually since 2011.
Many Italian politicians now speak in "apocalyptic tones" after a major earthquake struck the country Sunday, according to Monsignor Richard Soseman, a Campbell's Island native who's spent the last nine years working at the Vatican in Rome.

"It is terribly sad to see all of the fallen buildings, churches and steeples, but also major places, city halls and walls," Monsignor Soseman emailed earlier this week. The alumnus of St. Anne's elementary school in East Moline, now known as Our Lady of Grace Academy, is a 1981 graduate of Alleman High School, Rock Island.

"Only rubble remains, and they don't see how things will ever be rebuilt, despite national politicians' promises," he wrote. "Sunday's earthquake was the most powerful in Italy for over 30 years, which was shocking to people."

According to the Associated Press, the earthquake registered 6.6 on the Richter Scale, lower than the 7.1 statistic first reported but still forcing 15,000 people to seek temporary shelter.

"Fortunately, when the earthquake hit, at 7:40 local time, I was in the breakfast room on the ground floor of our building," Monsignor Soseman wrote. "I had been at prayer earlier on the fifth-floor chapel, which shook much more violently, so I am glad I was finished with prayer."

Daylight savings time also had ended a few hours before the earthquake struck, he wrote.

Monsignor Soseman said there was no damage to his residence or his office in Rome. St. Peter's also escaped noticeable damage, he said, but a St. Paul Outside the Walls structure had a fissure over the main entrance.

The Italian areas of Nursia (Norcia) and Tolentino weren't as lucky. Nursia, where the earthquake reportedly was centered, was destroyed. It had been a haven and center of support and restoration during August quakes.

Sunday's earthquake "brought an end to that," Monsignor Soseman said, adding he knew monks in Nursia who were "faithful," "well-respected" and "towers of strength."

"A friend who lives at Tolentino, in LeMarch, said that everything was destroyed there," Monsignor Soseman said. Major buildings were closed pending safety inspections. Frequent aftershocks have kept many people out of their homes, "so almost everyone was sleeping in their cars or camping out in tents," he wrote.

"So when the standing buildings collapsed, very few people were inside," he said, noting that any vibration or tremor "instantly puts people on edge."

Monsignor Soseman said Sunday's earthquake seemed to last many hours. In fact, it lasted only a minute or two. He said he and a couple of colleagues rushed outdoors, after he had finished his Italian sugar doughnut, to watch baskets on balconies sway wildly back and forth.
At least 6,840 U.S. service members have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There were 249 deaths from Illinois and 74 from Iowa. Several of the soldiers killed in Iraq from the Quad-Cities and surrounding area are listed below.

-- Sgt. Landis W. Garrison, Rapids City, was with the 333rd Military Police Co., Illinois National Guard based In Freeport. He died April 2004, in Abu Ghraib, Iraq.

-- Army Sgt. Jessica M. Housby, Rock Island, was with the 1,644 Transportation Company-Medium Truck Cargo out of Rock Falls. She died Feb. 9, 2005, from an improvised explosive device detonated near her convoy in Route Golden, Iraq.

-- Army Specialist Michael Patrick Pittman, Davenport, was killed on June 15, 2007, in Baghdad, Iraq when insurgents attacked his unit using an improvised explosive device and small arms fire. He was with the 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division Fort Riley, Kan.

-- Navy Master-at- Arms 1st Class Jennifer A. Valdivia, Cambridge, was killed Jan. 16, 2007. The 27-year-old was assigned to the naval security force for naval support activity. She died of non-combat injuries in Bahrain.

-- Army Pvt. Scott M. Tyrrell, Sterling, died Nov. 23, 2003, serving during Operation Iraqi Freedom. The 21-year-old was assigned to C Company 299th Engineer Battalion 4th Infantry Division (Mech) based in Fort Hood, Texas. He died of wounds received on Nov. 14 when an ammunition point caught fire in Tikrit, Iraq.

-- Marine Pfc. Nicholas M. Skinner, Davenport, died Aug. 26, 2004, during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was assigned to Battalion Landing Team 1/4 11th Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif. He was killedy enemy action in Najaf, Iraq.

-- Marine Sat. Bradley S. Korthaus, Davenport, died March 24, 2003, serving during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was assigned to Engineering Company C 6th Engineer Support Battalion 4th for Service Support Group Peoria. He died while fording a canal in the vicinity of Camp Uper in Iraq.

-- Raymond Michael Speer, Davenport, died April 9, 2004. He was with the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines 2nd Marine Division Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Jejune, North Carolina. He died from hostile fire in the Al Anbar Province, Iraq.

-- Petty Officer 1st Class Jerry Allen Tharp, 44, Aledo, died July 12, 2006, in Iraq. He died of enemy action when his dismounted patrol was struck by an improvised explosive device (IED) while operating in the Al Anbar province in Iraq. Tharp had enlisted in the Army in 1978. He had served in both the Army and the Navy Reserves. His tour in Iraq was with the Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 25 out of Rock Island. He had more than 18 years of military service.

Of the 6,840 deaths, 4,486 were in Iraq. There were 2,354 in Afghanistan. The service branches included the Army, Marines, Army National Guard, Navy, Air Force, Army Reserves and Marine Reserves.

The causes of death included hostile action, 2,662; IED 2550; non-combat, 689; helicopter accident, 417; vehicle accident 362; unknown, 64; other-unknown 58 and airplane crash, 359.

In operation Enduring Freedom, the name for the war in Afghanistan, which began in October 2001 and officially ended last December, 2,351 Americans were killed. Operation Iraqi Freedom, the initial name for the war in Iraq, lasted from 2003 to 2010 during which 4,412 were killed. Operation New Dawn as the campaign was renamed after the US reduced its troop presence has claimed 66 deaths on the American side, according to Quartz.com.

(Other sources include thefallen.militarytimes.com and the Washington Post and legacy.com)
Almost 50 Illinois counties have filed lawsuits against Democratic Governor, JB Pritzker, and the ill crafted SAFE-T Act. Introduced in the General Assembly by the Illinois Black Caucus, the Act passed the Democratic-led General Assembly in the wee hours of Jan. 13, 2021. Amongst many of its weaknesses and deficiencies, the Act eliminates cash bail, emboldens criminals, and makes it even more difficult for law enforcement to keep offenders off our streets. Public Safety personnel and States Attorneys across our great State have decried the legislation, noting that it was drafted and written with very little constructive input from Public Safety leadership, from either party; potentially impacting every Illinois community with dangerous consequences. Allowing perpetrators to bail out of jail, based on their good word that they will be glad to return to court is laughable, at best, and both ludicrous and dangerous, at worst. Soon after the SAFE-T Act was passed at the State level, the Republican-led Henry County Board drafted a resolution, requesting that the General Assembly repeal and replace the SAFE-T Act with a new criminal justice bill, this time with input from professional law enforcement, States Attorneys from across the State, and other Public Safety officials. We unanimously passed our resolution on May 19, 2022, and encourage all County Boards in Illinois to follow our lead. Our Republican-led Board in Henry County believes we all, Democrats, Independents, and Republicans, deserve effective and fair law enforcement in our communities.
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The United States has long waited forand sometimes actively aspired toregime change in Cuba. For nearly 60 years, the United States has opposed the Castro regime's misrule at home and support of communist insurgents and dictatorships abroad. Cuba's alliances with the now-defunct U.S.S.R., and more recently with Venezuela, added to the United States' distaste for the regime.

Cuba is beginning to change in ways that may enable it to become a more open and free society.

Over the last two years, the Obama administration has tried to reach out to Cuba. In a particularly striking action, on Wednesday the U.S. abstained from voting on a United Nations resolution condemning the U.S.'s own embargo against that nation. At the same time, the island has also shown signs of limited internal reforms. Political scientists and historians may debate to what extent these reforms stemmed from Cuba's dire economic state and the aging of its octogenarian leadership, and the extent to which U.S. efforts at reconciliation have contributed to the island's changing policies. Regardless, it appears that Cuba is beginning to change in ways that may enable it to become a more open and free society, which should be welcomed.

These changes, however, may create risks with respect to U.S. border security. The Castro regime has been able to curtail the movement of migrants to the United States, despite the island's poverty. The de-communization of the economy could worsen living standards for some Cubans in the short term, as was the case in many ex-communist countries before they recovered. The Castro regime's ability to control domestic crime may also diminish; Venezuela's crime rate has shot up as its government totters, and the same could occur in Cuba. These conditions, in the absence of a strong central authority curtailing migration, could impel large numbers of Cubans to attempt to cross the Florida Strait in search of a better future. The actual collapse of the Castro regime, if it leads to a more divided government or one that lacks control over parts of the island, could contribute to disorder that would both stimulate and enable a mass exodus. Such migration could occur even if the U.S. changes its policy allowing Cubans who reach U.S. soil to stay. While treating Cubans like other unauthorized migrants might inhibit some from undertaking the trip, the possibility of successfully evading the authorities and living clandestinely could still entice some migrants, as it has those of other nations.

There has not been a mass migration to the United States via sea for over two decades, despite the 2010 Haitian earthquake and ongoing economic challenges in much of the Caribbean. In part, this reflects the strong deterrent posture of the U.S. Coast Guard as it demonstrates presence along major migration routes and its continuing efforts to rescue and repatriate the limited numbers of people who undertake this journey. However, like any military service or agency, the Coast Guard and Customs & Border Protection's Air and Marine Operations units can be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Moreover, Cuba could serve not only as a source of migrants, but also as a way-station for migrants from other nations. The island is only 50 miles from Haiti and 85 from Jamaica (as opposed to 90 miles from Key West, Florida). If the U.S. were unable to stem a tide of mass migration by sea from Cuba, and there were few controls within Cuba to inhibit movement to the island, populations from other islands could be tempted to join the fray.

The risks of post-dictatorial disorder sparking mass migration via sea are substantial.

The risks of post-dictatorial disorder sparking mass migration via sea are substantial, as Europeans have found over the last five years. In 2011, Libya and Syria both had uprisings against their respective dictators. The collapse of centralized dictatorships, and the ensuing civil wars, have caused millions of people to flee their homes, with many of them trying to reach Europe by sea. Amid Libya's chaos, the country has become a hub for people-trafficking from other nations. A failed state in close proximity to developed countries has facilitated movements that even the vastness of the Sahara and numerous deaths in the Mediterranean have not deterred.

While immigration benefits the United States in many respects, having thousands of people risk their lives at sea on unstable, overloaded vessels would be a humanitarian disaster; the many bodies that have already washed up on Europe's shores are testament to that. Nearly everyone in the United States is an immigrant or the descendant of immigrants, and most recognize the value that immigration can contribute to this country. However, it needs to be conducted via a managed process, not by having individuals risk their lives on fragile boats and literally wash up en masse.

In addition to serving as a transit route for migrants, Cuba could also become one for drugs. Under communism, Cuba has also been able to stamp out international drug trafficking by executing those associated with it. However, to the degree that the Castro regime's tight control over its maritime borders and internal activities begins to falter, drug traffickers may detect opportunities to move product through the island. Its proximity to other islands could enable South American cocaine to reach the United States via a series of short hops.

The emergence of a less totalitarian Cuba, one with which the United States can better engage, is a welcome development in most respects. The United States can and should continue to promote a Cuba that is more open to ideas and personal freedoms. However, as with the fall of dictators in Libya and Syria, it should anticipate the possibility that a changing Cuba will contribute to less secure maritime bordersand plan accordingly to deter and interdict mass movements of both drugs and people.

Scott Savitz and Paul DeLuca are senior engineers at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation.

This commentary originally appeared on U.S. News and World Report on November 1, 2016. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
The RAND Corporation is accepting applications for up to three Stanton Nuclear Security Fellows. The application deadline is January 9, 2017.

The Stanton Nuclear Security Fellows Program was created to stimulate the development of the next generation of thought leaders on nuclear security-related topics by supporting interdisciplinary research that will advance policy-relevant understanding of the issues.

Fellows carry out a yearlong period of independent research. During their RAND tenure, fellows are expected to produce policy-relevant studies that contribute to the general body of knowledge on nuclear security. Fellows are located at one of three U.S. RAND offices: Santa Monica, CA; Washington, DC; or Pittsburgh, PA.

Doctoral students will receive a $50,000 stipend, postdoctoral fellows will receive an $80,000 stipend, and junior faculty fellows will receive a $110,000 stipend.

Preference will go to candidates who are postdoctoral students or junior faculty members. Doctoral students may be considered if they have a well-defined dissertation topic in the field of nuclear security and are enrolled in a widely recognized graduate program. They also must include as part of their application at least three dissertation chapters (that have been approved by the candidate's adviser for submission). Junior faculty at law schools or with a law degree as their terminal degree are eligible. Prior experience is broadly defined to include disciplines such as nuclear policy, security, engineering, physics, and related fields.

The Stanton Foundation was created by former CBS President Frank Stanton, who is widely regarded as one of the greatest executives in electronic communications. In 1954, President Eisenhower appointed Stanton to a committee convened to develop the first comprehensive plan for the survival of the United States following a nuclear attack. Stanton led the effort to develop plans for national and international communication in the aftermath of a nuclear incident.

Stanton also served as the chairman (196167) and as a trustee (195778) of RAND. The Stanton Foundation aims, through its support of the Nuclear Security Fellows program, to perpetuate his efforts to meet these challenges.

For more information, contact Sarah Harting at (703) 413-1100, ext. 5675 or Sarah_Harting@rand.org.
Ten years after the service was launched, Al Jazeera English is now adding a high definition option for Sky and Freeview viewers in the UK and Ireland.

Established in 2006, Al Jazeera English currently broadcasts to over 280 million households across 135 countries. It now transmits from broadcast centres in Doha, Qatar and the Shard in London, as well as more than 70 news bureaux around the world. As well as Sky and Freeview, the Al Jazeera English standard definition channel is carried on Virgin Media, Freesat and Sky.We are very excited to announce the launch of Al Jazeera English HD on Sky, commented Abdulla Al Najjar, Al Jazeeras executive director of global brand and communications. "As a network, we are committed to expanding onto new platforms and look forward to increasing the reach of our ground-breaking content across the world. The availability of Al Jazeera English on Sky HD is our commitment to understanding the importance of the UK and Ireland for our award-winning content.
Al Jazeera, November 4, 2016

At least 30 civilians, including women, children and babies, have been killed and dozens wounded in a NATO air strike in the northern province of Kunduz, Afghan officials have said.

The air raids on Thursday were in support of US and Afghan forces during an attack targeting senior Taliban commanders, according to provincial spokesman Mahmood Danish.

"Afghan forces and coalition troops conducted a joint operation against the Taliban insurgents. In the bombardment 30 Afghan civilians were martyred and 25 others were wounded," Danish told AFP news agency.

Kunduz civilians told Al Jazeera the death toll was even higher than the figure given by officials.

Afghan officials said on Thursday there had been heavy fighting overnight a few kilometres outside the Kunduz city centre, which Taliban fighters succeeded in entering last month before being driven out.

The target of the joint operation appeared to be two senior Taliban commanders killed in the fighting among 65 fighters, Kunduz police chief General Qasim Jangalbagh told AP news agency.

Al Jazeera's Abdullah Shahood, reporting from Kabul, said that Afghan commandos, supported by NATO forces, descended from helicopters in two locations in Kunduz province, including in the village of Boze Qandahari, about 3km north of Kunduz city.

"The Afghan forces came under fire by the Taliban in the area and that's when the air strikes were called in," Shahood said.

"Most of these casualties are women and children, and they are as young as three months old."

Dr Mohammad Naim Mangal, director of a hospital in Kunduz, said his facility received the bodies of a dead man and a child and treated 30 people, including children, wounded in the fighting.

The civilian deaths sparked angry protests among locals, with relatives rallying with the coffins of the victims to the governor's office.

"They were chanting 'Death to America', 'Death to President [Ashraf] Ghani" and they were [vowing] to take revenge," Shahood said.

"Ordinary people were sleeping in their homes. The Taliban attacked Kunduz and then the bombs came ... All night the airplanes were bombing," a resident said.

"About 50 people died; 40 to 50 people were injured. What did those children do wrong? I want justice for the killers."

The US military said it had conducted the air strikes to protect "friendly forces" in an operation in which two American soldiers were killed.
SCO prime ministers' meeting gives strong boost to regional economic, security cooperation Updated: 2016-11-05 16:03 (Xinhua)

BISHKEK - The just-concluded prime ministers' meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) greatly boosted economic and security cooperation among SCO member states, providing fresh impetus to a new type of international relations marked by win-win cooperation.

Over the 15 years since its inception, the organization has played an indispensable role in promoting regional stability and prosperity and also contributed to world peace and development.

Upholding the "Shanghai Spirit" of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality and consultation, the SCO is about to embrace a brighter future by continuing to deepen pragmatic cooperation on economy and security among its member states.

During the meeting in Kyrgyzstan's capital Bishkek, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang put forward a six-pronged proposal on the organization's future development and cooperation.

Li's proposal, covering a wide range of fields including industrial cooperation, innovation, a regional financing mechanism and people-to-people exchanges, reflected the strong willingness of the SCO members to deepen practical cooperation.

The proposal, which is in line with the overall interests of the whole region, will also help improve people's livelihood and well-being in the region.

Security cooperation and economic cooperation have been two major driving forces behind the rapid development of the regional cooperation mechanism.

Safeguarding regional security is an important mission of the SCO, and one of the top priorities in cooperation among its member states. As a major multilateral mechanism in safeguarding regional security, the organization has dedicated itself to improving its risk resistance capacity and creating a harmonious environment conducive to regional stability.

On security cooperation, Li urged all members during the meeting to observe a concept of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security, suggesting more information exchange and cooperation in law-enforcement so as to ensure the safety of peoples, institutions, enterprises and personnel of SCO members.

He also asked SCO members to further strengthen their cooperation and coordination on security and boost the construction of regional anti-terrorism institutions and mechanisms.

It is expected that the SCO will continue to play a pivotal role in safeguarding security in the Eurasian region.

Economic cooperation is another major force driving the development of the organization. Amid a sluggish world economy, accelerating industrial upgrading and carrying out multilateral cooperation are the common aspirations of SCO member states.

During the meeting, leaders of the SCO member states vowed to make joint efforts to drive forward regional economic cooperation and integration and signed a joint communique on deepening cooperation within the SCO.

In the communique, the six leaders agreed that expanding and deepening cooperation among SCO members are in line with the overall interests of the sustainable development of the regional economy.

They reaffirmed that promoting people's welfare and living standard while further enhancing cooperation in fields that accord with common interests are the SCO's top priorities.

According to the communique, initiatives proposed for regional economic cooperation, including China's Silk Road Economic Belt Initiative, are conducive to seeking new models for international cooperation and cementing ties among member states.

They also ratified a list of measures to further promote cooperative projects within the SCO from 2017 to 2021.

Premier Li said that China stands ready to make joint efforts with other SCO members to boost regional trade and facilitate investment, adding that China is open to the initiative of establishing a SCO free trade zone.

As to enhancing production capacity cooperation, Li said China is ready to make joint efforts with other member states to make production capacity cooperation a pillar of regional trade cooperation. Major cooperation projects, including a power plant in Uzbekistan, an oil refinery in Kyrgyzstan, a cement plant in Tajikistan and a China-Uzbekistan industrial park are underway.
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Gigi Hadid will host the 2016 American Music Awards with Jay Pharoah.

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The 21-year-old model confirmed as much Friday on Twitter after ABC announced the news in a press release earlier in the day.

Hadid and Pharoah, 29, will host the annual ceremony Nov. 20 at Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. The awards show will be broadcast live on ABC beginning at 8 p.m. ET.

"I'm so excited to host the 2016 AMAs with Jay Pharoah," Hadid said in a statement.

"Jay is known for his spot-on impressions so I can't wait to take the stage with him to show my goofy side and celebrate this year's nominees!"

"Can't wait to host the AMAs with the beautiful Gigi Hadid (so much innocence in her eyes) and being in the building with some of my industry friends, who I've probably impersonated at some point I'm sure," Pharoah added. "It's gonna be a fun night!"

ABC had revealed the day previous that recording artists The Weeknd, John Legend, Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj will perform at the show.

Lady Gaga, Fifth Harmony and Bruno Mars are among the other stars slated to sing.

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Hadid is known for her modeling work with Guess, Tommy Hilfiger and Victoria's Secret.

Pharoah starred on "Saturday Night Live" for six years, and has also appeared in "Ride Along," "Top Five" and "Get a Job."
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Since our ancestors in the American colonies declared themselves independent from Great Britain in 1776, Americans, on both sides of the political spectrum, continue to fight long and hard for what they believe are their rights and freedoms.
SHARE Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures as he speaks during a campaign rally Thursday, Nov. 3, 2016, in Selma, N.C. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

By CHAD DAY, Associated Press JULIE BYKOWICZ, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP)  Donald Trump has shown more than 586 hours of television ads in the general election, and until now something has been missing: his voice.

There is no footage of him speaking, no archival recordings to build out his life story and no direct-to-camera appeals to voters. He doesn't utter a word other than the legally required recording, "I'm Donald Trump, and I approve this message," at the end of his commercials.

That's about to change. In one of the final ads of the race, the Republican presidential nominee will take his case to the voters, his campaign says.

Americans have been subjected to more than $500 million in TV ads  $88 million and counting just this week  since the contest between Trump and Hillary Clinton began in June.

With the election days away, The Associated Press analyzed Kantar Media's ad data to find out what the candidates have been telling voters about themselves. The review covered 22 Trump campaign ads and 68 by the Clinton campaign, which had aired more than 311,000 times by Monday on national networks, local broadcast channels and national cable stations.

AP found a lack of Trump's voice in his own commercials and an overabundance of his words in Clinton's. That's helped drive what is by far the most dominant message of general election advertising, that each candidate believes the other is unfit for the White House.

Trump has been silent in his ads because his campaign wanted them "not be centered around him but the movement itself," said Jessica Ditto, a Trump spokeswoman.

A different view: The campaign "may have concluded that voters like the idea of Trump more than the actual Trump," said Will Ritter, co-founder of the Republican ad firm Poolhouse and an outspoken Trump critic. "They could worry that when he opens his mouth, people are reminded he is in no way prepared to be president."

That's what Clinton's campaign is hoping.

More than half of her ads hold Trump against himself, the AP found. They feature Trump appearing to mock a disabled reporter, using profanity at rallies, seeming to threaten to use nuclear weapons and making disparaging and predatory comments about women.

To hammer Clinton, Trump's ads talk about Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state, her response to the terrorist attacks in Benghazi and her untrustworthiness.

Beneath the avalanche of attack ads are positive  sometimes even issues-focused  commercials. Clinton has an ad solely on the importance of clean energy, while Trump has one about the need to put coal miners back to work.

But neither candidate is focusing ads on issues he or she brings while campaigning, the AP found.

At his giant rallies, Trump frequently says he'll redo trade deals. That topic gets few mentions in his advertising. When she's addressing supporters, Clinton vows to make wealthy people pay their fair share by increasing taxes. She's barely talking about that in ads.

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CLINTON ISSUE ADS

Clinton's chief advertising message is that she fights for children. Her ads dive into photo and video archives to showcase those parts of her resume, and actor Morgan Freeman describes Clinton in melodious cadence as "a woman who spent her life helping children and families."

While only two less frequent Trump ads mention children, such ads dominate more than half of Clinton's barrage of commercials.

"I've spent my life fighting for children, and I'm not stopping now," Clinton says in an ad that's been broadcast more than any other during the general election. The spot does not go into specific policy or achievements, but shows Clinton over the decades talking about children.

The same message is delivered in a new, end-of-campaign spot that has rocketed to the top of her play list. This one shows parents marking off the heights of their kids as Clinton says a country is judged by what it does for its children.

Clinton strategist Joel Benenson said such ads remind people of the work Clinton has done and tell voters something they may not know about her work for children, families and women. He also said it strikes a clear contrast with Trump.

"Donald Trump has a lifetime of really stiffing average people and putting himself first all the time," he said.

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TRUMP ISSUE ADS

Trump's top advertising message to voters is that he would shake up Washington. The commercials not so subtly suggest a brighter future by switching from washed-out tones when Clinton is mentioned to full color when he is.

Trump is making more of a positive case for his presidency than Clinton does for herself in ads of the past few weeks, AP found. "It takes a builder to rebuild the American dream," a narrator intones. "And Donald Trump has the blueprint."

Viewers might not have expected that optimism; the Republican convention was far more downbeat than the Democrats'.

However, in recent days Trump has released some of his most brutal Clinton ads.

Trump's most common commercial of the general election centers on the economy. "In Donald Trump's America, working families get tax relief, millions of new jobs are created, wages go up, small businesses thrive," a narrator says.

One of Trump's newest ads, which he has deployed so heavily that it's his second most common overall, seems to be a response to Clinton's boast about her long record of public service.

"Hillary Clinton won't change Washington; she's been there 30 years," the ad begins. "Taxes went up, terrorism spread, jobs vanished, but special interests and Washington insiders thrived." The ad then says: "Donald Trump will turn Washington upside down, Day One."

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Keep track on how much Clinton and Trump are spending on television advertising, and where they're spending it, via AP's interactive ad tracker. http://elections.ap.org/content/ad-spending

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Associated Press writer Lisa Lerer contributed to this report.
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Q. In the Christian tradition, All Souls' Day commemorates dead family members and friends. Does your faith tradition have such a day? If so, how do you remember your dead that day? What do you do?

In the Catholic faith, all of the month of November is dedicated to the remembrance of those who have died. We place special prayer envelopes on the altar signifying those lives as part of our Eucharistic offerings. On All Souls Day itself, we pray specifically that all our loved ones may be taken home safely and lovingly to heaven, and from there become advocates for us as we continue our life journeys. In our parish we light a candle for every person who has died in the last year.

In the Mexican tradition, the Dia del Morte  Day of the Dead  is celebrated often in local cemeteries by food, and by storytelling making the remembrance of those buried there known to children and grandchildren of the deceased.

Respect for the dead is evidence of our faith in the goodness of God to not let a single one of his creations perish. It is our prayer that we see everyone again in heaven.

Deacon Mike Evans

Sacred Heart Church, Anderson

In the Science of Mind tradition adherence to traditions are individual decisions. At times the various communities will elect to attend other faith traditions' sacred events or present such in their own communities to develop appreciation, awareness and understanding of other traditions practices. There are not set observances however.

When someone has a family member die, how they honor the passing of a loved one is an individual decision as well. Most people have a celebration of life or other practice to recognize the passing.

This tradition encourages individuals to incorporate family traditions or rituals from other traditions into honoring services. This tradition proactively supports the individual's expression of their connection to the sacred.

I have officiated at many gatherings helping family to craft what represents their family member.

I've adopted the planting of a tree to honor ones who have died. I do so through Turtle Bay's Plant-A-Tree program.

The Rev. Lynn Fritz

Centers for Spiritual Living, Redding

The closest thing the Jewish tradition has is the Yizkor Service, observed each year on the afternoon of Yom Kippur, the closing of the New Year's service. There are prayers to remember the community's members, our family members, service personnel and friends and notables that congregation members may choose to have remembered.

There are other rituals to bring closure to loved ones who have died. The family observes Shiva, a week of mourning after the death. It involves sitting on low chairs and receiving visiting friends who pay respects. Family members recite the Kaddish, the memorial prayer, each day for one year after the death of their loved one. There are differing views on the journey of the soul after death, but all agree that the best memorial is the memory of the love and good deeds the deceased has given.

Art Tilles, social action chair

Temple Beth Israel, Redding

We celebrate All Saint's Day, remembering the souls that have gone on before us, but also celebrating and remembering our own call to become living saints. We find our inspiration from those who have passed as well as those saints around us still.

Tara Macy, lay servant

First United Methodist Church, Redding

I'm blessed with the memory of family and friends that have passed. However, those souls now belong to God and are no longer beneficiaries of my prayers.

All mankind will see and kneel before God upon our physical death. We are without excuse when it comes to believing if he exists. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and it is through him that we arrive safely before God and his judgement seat.

My prayers are reserved for those still breathing, both believers and those in need of Christ Jesus.

Jim White, lay leader

Weaverville Church of the Nazarene

Next week's question: How do you define moral behavior? Do you believe people can be successful if they always practice their faith's moral dictates?

View all responses to the weekly question on Redding.com. E-mail jskropanic@redding.com.
SYRACUSE  Colleen Deacon received the support of the state's lieutenant governor and a former member of Congress at a get-out-the-vote rally Friday.

Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul endorsed Deacon, D-Syracuse, in the 24th Congressional District race. Deacon is challenging U.S. Rep. John Katko, a freshman Republican.

"I feel very confident that Syracuse and the multiple counties of this district are going to realize that someone like Colleen can make a difference in their lives, and that's what you need to know when deciding who to vote for on Election Day," Hochul said.

"Colleen will make your lives better because she understands, from the ground up, what the needs are of the people of this community."

The endorsement from Hochul is the latest show of support from current or former members of the House of Representatives.

Hochul was elected to Congress in May 2011 to represent a western New York district. She lost her re-election bid in 2012.

She recalled that polls show her trailing early in the race. Recent polls have shown that Deacon is trailing Katko, R-Camillus, by more than 20 points in the 24th District contest.

Deacon will learn her true standing when voters go to the polls Tuesday. For Hochul, the polling didn't match up with the result. While the polls early on showed her losing by four or five points, she ended up winning the special election by five points.

"It's OK to be down as long as, at the end of the day, you pull it out, which is what we're doing to do here," Hochul said.

Hochul made her endorsement at the rally, which was attended by several central New York Democrats and prominent officials, including U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner.

Deacon has received strong support from top Democrats throughout her campaign. President Barack Obama endorsed her in October and starred in her final TV ad of the 2016 election.

The 24th Congressional District includes all of Cayuga, Onondaga and Wayne counties, plus the western part of Oswego County.
Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight

Friends and family attend the funeral service for Modoc County Sheriff's deputy Jack Hopkins on Saturday at the Little Shasta Cemetery near Montague.

SHARE Jack Hopkins Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight Modoc County Sheriff Mike Poindexter presents Carol Hopkins with a flag during the funeral service Saturday for her son, Modoc County Sheriff's deputy Jack Hopkins, at the Little Shasta Cemetery near Montague. Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight Lance and Carol Hopkins, right, greet people Saturday at the funeral for their son, Modoc County Sheriff's deputy Jack Hopkins, at the Little Shasta Cemetery near Montague. Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight Lance and Carol Hopkins pay respects to their son, Modoc County Sheriff's deputy Jack Hopkins, on Saturday at his funeral at the Little Shasta Cemetery near Montague. Related Photos Photo gallery: Services for Modoc deputy Jack Hopkins

By Sean Longoria, Record Searchlight

UPDATED: 4:08 p.m.

YREKA  Hundreds of law enforcement officers from across the state and country, along with family, friends and others, paid their respects Saturday to Modoc County sheriffs deputy Jack Hopkins.

The emotional funeral ceremony at the Siskiyou Golden Fair Grounds in Yreka began with the arrival of Hopkins casket, covered by the American flag. Hopkins fellow Modoc County officers carried the casket into a pavilion at the fairgrounds.

Hopkins, 31, was shot dead Oct. 19 while responding to a domestic disturbance call Oct. 19 south of Alturas in rural Modoc County. His death elicited a nationwide  and even international  response of support from fellow law enforcement agencies, many of which sent representatives to the service.

His life of public service began long before he put on the sheriffs office badge in 2015 and at every turn he stood ready to risk his life to keep his community safe, California Attorney General Kamala Harris said.

In pursuit of public safety, he made the ultimate sacrifice and the state of California will never forget his life of service and his sacrifice.

Closer to Hopkins home, Modoc County Sheriff Mike Poindexter recalled speaking to Hopkins when he applied for a job.

It was clear to me that his entire commitment was to his career in public safety, Poindexter said. We ran Jack through our field training program. Jack quickly demonstrated that we was not only very intelligent and a quick learner but he was also sincere, he was humble, compassionate and dedicated  admirable and desirable traits for a quality peace officer.

Like others who spoke Saturday, Poindexter also recalled Hopkins smile, which he wore often.

When I think about Jack, and Im certain that will happen often for the rest of my life, his smile is the first thing Im going to see, Poindexter said.

Hopkins was born in Livermore and raised in Siskiyou County. He worked for two years as an officer for the Alturas Police Department before becoming a deputy in Modoc County last year.

His parents, Lance and Carroll Hopkins, still live in Yreka. Hopkins is one of six children, with two brothers and three sisters.

One of those sisters, Rebekah Hopkins, spoke at the service, recalling a close relationship with her brother.

We struggled through so much together and his resiliency and his refusal to quit gives me the strength that I need to pursue my goals and my ambitions, Rebekah Hopkins said. He was always my hero and the reason I love Batman.

Following the ceremony, a procession of law enforcement vehicles brought Jack Hopkins body to the Little Shasta Cemetery about 15 miles east of Yreka, where his body was buried.

Hopkins accused killer, Jack Lee Breiner, remains in custody without bail. He pleaded not guilty last month to murdering Hopkins and trying to kill Poindexter, in addition to other charges. Breiner is due back in court Jan. 12.

Hopkins was the fourth California law enforcement officer to die in the line of duty in a span of two weeks.

Click here for a video from Saturday's service.

ORIGINAL STORY:

YREKA  Funeral services were held this afternoon for a Northern California deputy who was shot to death when he investigated a domestic disturbance last month in a rural area south of Alturas.

The funeral for deputy Jack Hopkins took place in Yreka. He was memorialized at a two-hour service that was held at the Siskiyou Golden Fair grounds' indoor arena and attended by numerous law enforcement personnel.

The 31-year-old Hopkins died instantly after being shot Oct. 19. The suspect, Jack Lee Breiner, was shot and wounded by Modoc County Sheriff Mike Poindexter after a pursuit. He pleaded not guilty last week to a murder charge.

The Modoc County Sheriff's Office says Hopkins was humble, happy, good-natured and known for putting others' needs before his own. Another memorial will be held for him at the Modoc High School Gym on Nov. 18.

Hopkins was the fourth California law enforcement officer to die in the line of duty in a span of two weeks.

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By Joe Szydlowski of the Redding Record Searchlight

With only three days left until the election, many voters have marijuana on the mind: If they pass Proposition 64 and legalize weed on Tuesday, what should they expect on Wednesday.

The answer: Nothing too different. Public use would remain outlawed, cities and counties could pass regulations and bans, and dispensaries can sell to only those with medical recommendations.

But that's not to say the measure, which is polling in favor at about 60 percent, won't have a big impact on Northern California  even in the short-term.

Though little reliable data exist about marijuana use, the few recent surveys indicate medical marijuana use at about 4 percent to 5 percent of the statewide population.

That's about half of the share of Californians who said they regularly toked in 2014 in an in-depth national survey.

But Northern Californians rank higher than the rest of the state  and country  with a rate of 14 percent, just shy of the top 10 of 400 regions in that survey.

Some say the Emerald Triangle accounts for Northern California being that high. But dispensaries in Oregon say they sell recreational weed to plenty of Californians  most of them from the Redding and Yreka areas.

ELECTION DAY

On Wednesday, all California adults will be able to smoke marijuana legally if Proposition 64 passes.

And there are plenty of them in Northern California: About 14 percent of its residents, including the pot-friendly Emerald Triangle, regularly use marijuana, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, which used three years of in-person survey data from tens of thousands of households to gauge regional use for 2014.

Another 5 percent have smoked within the previous year  both in line with previous biennial reports.

And it's likely not all medical. A 2012 statewide California Highway Patrol survey of drivers, including some from Redding and Eureka, and a CalNORML 2014 survey found about 4 percent of respondents had a medical marijuana recommendation. Dispensaries in Medford, Oregon, say they see plenty of business from Redding, with one reporting 85 percent to 90 percent of Californians come from the North State.

Under the proposition, they also could grow up to six plants in their home. All other marijuana offenses, save those involving sales to youths and impaired driving, are automatically reduced to misdemeanors, said Jason Kinney, spokesman with Yes on 64 campaign.

Industry and state regulations will be phased in over the following year, with large-scale cultivation operations illegal until the 2020s.

Indeed, no recreational businesses legally can open until the state begins issuing licenses, expected by Jan. 1, 2018 at the latest. State regulators with the Bureau of Medical Cannabis Regulation can decide whether to let medical dispensaries sell recreational marijuana as a stop gap.

"If recreational adult use becomes legal in California, the bureau will determine the appropriate steps and timeline to implement the provisions of the new law in an efficient and thoughtful manner," Laurel Goddard, information officer with the agency, wrote in an email Friday afternoon.

Until then, only those with a valid recommendation can buy from a dispensary, Kinney said.

So Shasta Lake dispensary Leave It To Nature will still be medicinal-only, said Stacy Lidie, its owner.

"Until I'm told officially I can sell, I would never break the law. I am 100 percent compliant with the law," she said. "I think it's important to me, it's important to my staff and it's important to the community. I will say (prohibition) is a ridiculous law."

She said she is in favor of Proposition 64 because it allows the Legislature to tweak the recreational market, but not the medicinal one.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

Legal dispensaries aren't what worry Jamie Kerr, director of 530 Collective in Shasta Lake, who opposes Proposition 64 but supports legalization itself. She points to Redding's ban on dispensaries, the legal fight that ensued and ended with the city's ban intact.

If Proposition 64 passes, she worries about a rehash of that battle as recreational-only shops quickly open as fly-by-night operations safe from the ordinances on medical marijuana because Redding and Shasta Lake's ordinances govern only medical marijuana.

Redding's city attorney, Barry DeWalt, acknowledged the possibility but cautioned against hitting the panic button about recreational marijuana startups.

"I really don't see it as that great of an issue for city (governments) simply because they have the ability to regulate or ban them," he said. "If that weren't the case, no local control, it'd be a nightmare  cities would be scrambling, the notion that the sky's falling would have some credence to it."

Shops also can't open legally without permission from the state under Proposition 64, so Redding has some time to breathe while its ban keeps its teeth, DeWalt said.

That's why, if Proposition 64 passes, he'd recommend the City Council adopt a moratorium on marijuana businesses initially so council members and staff can study and discuss the issue.

Anderson city staff have been discussing Proposition 64's ramifications, said Jeff Kiser, its city manager. He declined to get into specifics because he's still learning about the law and what regulations it would allow. But city staff members are eyeing potential problems and possible ordinances.

Currently the city bans medicinal dispensaries and allows small personal grows only in outbuildings with smell-mitigation, he said.

"There's concern from all over California. If every apartment unit could have six plants, where and how does someone live if they don't want to be around those plants," he said. "I don't think all the answers are out there yet."

In Shasta Lake, Kerr, also chair of the city's Planning Commission, and fellow dispensary directors Tammy Brazil, with Queen of Dragons, and Lidie, with Leave it to Nature, have pushed for the city to change its medical marijuana ordinances to apply to all marijuana. City staff members have been looking into it.

The city's special sales tax applies to all marijuana sold, she said. That tax, added to the ones Proposition 64 levies, makes her worry users and patients will be priced into the black market.

Lidie acknowledged the measure has flaws, but the Legislature can tweak the recreational rules, she said. So it is an important step against prohibition and provides an alternative to more dangerous prescriptions, she said.

"I don't think it's a perfect piece of legislation. I think it's a good start," she said.
British Prime Minister Theresa May will be in India tomorrow, but Cyrus Mistry will no longer head the Indo-UK CEO forum, discovers Nivedita Mookerji.

With days to go for the Indo-UK Tech Summit from November 7 to 9 in New Delhi, much of what is to come is shrouded in mystery.

The biggest question mark is on the leadership of the CEO forum, which will be part of the summit when United Kingdom Prime Minister Theresa May visits India from November 6 to 8.

While Cyrus Mistry, who was replaced as chairman of Tata Sons last week, has been head of the CEO forum from India's side, a decision has been taken to make a change.

An official working on the Indo-UK summit said Mistry would be replaced at the CEO forum.

The new head will be from the forum, but "it's work in progress".

Among others, Bharti group Chairman Sunil Mittal's name did the rounds for the new co-chair of the Indo-UK CEO Forum.

The Prime Minister's Office will take a decision on the new name and is likely to be announced closer to the event.

Ratan Tata, who became the interim chairman of Tata Sons last week after Mistry's ouster, is listed as a VIP speaker at the Indo-UK summit.

Apart from the uncertainty around who would head the CEO forum from the Indian side, the programme and the delegation list, too, have not been revealed yet by the event organisers and partners -- the British high commission, Confederation of Indian Industry, and the Union government.

An executive close to the event said the UK delegation would have around 250 members including business representatives, educationists, thought leaders and government officials.

The total number of participants at the summit could cross 1,000.

From the UK side, minister of state for universities, science, research and innovation Jo Johnson, and secretary of state for international trade Dr Liam Fox are expected to be among the key participants.

Top representatives of GlaxoSmithKline, Barclays Bank, HSBC, the University of Cambridge and the University of Glasgow, too, are likely to be there.

Besides Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who along with May will inaugurate the summit, many of the National Democratic Alliance council of ministers including Nirmala Sitharaman, Prakash Javadekar, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Harsh Vardhan will attend sessions on health care to smart cities, robotics to start-ups and automation to education.

CII President Naushad Forbes told Business Standard that the Indo-UK summit will focus on R&D and advanced manufacturing, among other things.

The business models of companies have to change, with higher stress on innovation and investment in R&D, he said, while replying to a question on slowing growth and cautious forecast by IT companies.

On Brexit, he said it was bound to be a centre-piece of conversation.

Exactly one year after Modi's trip to the UK, May's India visit is being seen as beginning of a new era of economic relations, at the core of which is technology collaborations, an official handling the event said.

The two countries are looking to boost the quantum of trade in the backdrop of slowing signs. There has been a decline of 10 per cent in trade between the two countries from 2013-2014 to 2015-2016.

The UK, however, is the third largest investor in India, in terms of foreign direct investment, and the largest among G20 countries.
Over the past decade, RIL has never announced lesser dividend to its shareholders even when faced with lower profits

With the Union Petroleum Ministry imposing a fine of $1.55 billion on the Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) for illegally extracting natural gas from ONGC fields in the Krishna Godavari Basin, the companys shares fell by over 2 per cent since morning.

However, the decision could have little long term impact on RIL which had a market capitalisation of over Rs 338,000 crore or around $47 billion in 2015-16.

Thats because RIL is sitting on a massive pile of cash. Its profits for 2015-16 stood at almost $4.5 billion. This was a 17 per cent increase in profits as compared to last year even though the groups revenue fell by 24 per cent.

This shows that RILs operating margins, primarily in its oil and gas business, had significantly increased. With the global price of crude oil expected to remain stable at its currently low levels, RILs refining margins could further improve in the next financial year.

If RIL were to pay the $1.5 billion fine, it would shave off barely a third of its profits made this year. It could also dent the groups dividend payouts.

In 2015-16, RIL paid its 2.5 million public shareholders Rs 3,095 crore (Rs 30.95 billion) or roughly $450 million. If this fine were to be absorbed by RILs shareholders, they would ideally not receive any dividend for the next two years if RIL wants to increase or maintain its profitability at the same levels it has done in the past.

But RILs payout to its shareholders has never declined over the last decade. In fact it has almost doubled from 2006 levels when it paid its shareholders a dividend Rs 1,440 crore (Rs 14.4 billion) or roughly around $230 million.

If RIL decides not to let its shareholders absorb the loss, it would show as reduced profits in its books next year. However, RILs growth in profits have been astronomical since the Modi government came to power.

In 2014-15, it earned Rs 22,719 crore (Rs 227.19 billion) or around $3.5 billion as profits which increased to Rs 27,417 crore (Rs 274.17 billion) or roughly $4.1 billion this year.

RILs earnings from 2009-10 to 2013-14 were muted with the group seeing reduced profits in 2011-12 and 2012-13. Even when its profits went down during those years, the dividend payout had increased marginally from Rs 2,531 crore (Rs 25.31 billion) to Rs 2,643 crore (Rs 26.43 billion) - roughly $15 million.

If RIL pays the fine, it could be a zero sum game for the government. RIL contributed $6.5 billion to the exchequer according to its financial statements in 2015-16.

That was almost $1.8 billion more than the previous year. If RIL pays the penalty, the government would get what it anyways gets as taxes from the group.

However, the penalty would send a strong message to others like RIL, which is that stealing the gas of state-owned companies and making a profit on it cannot be tolerated in India.
Small- and mid-size companies where Cyrus was the chairman did better on bourses than large Tata group companies

The small and medium sized Tata Companies were the star performers during the Mistry's nearly 45-months tenure as Tata Sons chairman.

Tata Steel subsidiary and pig-iron manufacturer Tata Metaliks tops the chart with 66.5 per cent compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) in its market capitalisation during Mistry tenure at the helm of Tata Sons.

The company's market capitalisation jumped nearly seven times during the period from Rs 158 crore (Rs 1.58 billion) at the end of 2012 to Rs 1,068 crore (Rs 10.68 billion) on October 24, 2016 the day Cyrus was removed as Tata Sons chairman.

This was largely due to a turnaround in the company finances and the investors betting the company's planned merger with Tata Steel and delisting from the bourses. (See adjoining table)

The company posted a net profit of Rs 122.8 crore (Rs 1.23 billion) in FY16 against a net loss of Rs 114 crore (Rs 1.14 billion) in FY13.

Cyrus Mistry took over the group chairman on December 28, 2012.

It was followed by Tata Elxsi, whose market cap was up 6 times under Cyrus watch growing at a CAGR of 60 per cent during the period growing from Rs 718.4 crore (Rs 7.18 billion) at the end of December 2012 to Rs 4,151 crore (Rs 41.51 billion) on Mistry's last day at Bombay House.

The companys net profit was up nearly seven times during the period to Rs 155 crore (Rs 1.55 billion) in FY16 from Rs 21 crore (Rs 210 million) in FY12, while its net sales was up 60 per cent cumulatively during the period growing from Rs 611.2 crore (Rs 6.11 billion) in FY13 to Rs 1,087 crore (Rs 10.87 billion) last fiscal.

Voltas was next on the league table with 42 per cent CAGR growth in its market capitalisation during the period growing from Rs 3,502 crore (Rs 35.02 billion) at the end of December 2012 to Rs 13,019 crore (Rs 130.19 billion) on Mistry last day in office.

Voltas performance on the bourses was underpinned by a sharp improvement in its margins thanks to decline in raw material costs and a steady growth in its topline.

Tata Communications was a big outperformer with 32.1 per cent CAGR growth in its market capitalisation during the Cyrus tenure at Bombay House. The company showed a steady growth in its topline and bottom line in the last three fiscal years.

Ironically, Cyrus Mistry was not chairman any of these companies and their board is chaired by other Tata Sons' directors. In all Cyrus Mistry was chairman of seven of the 26 listed group operating companies.

Among the companies where Cyrus Mistry is chairman, Indian Hotels tops the performance charts with 21.3 per cent CAGR growth in market capitalisation during the period. It was followed by Tata Consultancy Services (19.1 per cent) and Tata Motors (17.1 per cent). Other outperformers during the period include Tata Chemicals (14 per cent), Rallis (12.9 per cebt) and Trent (12.4 per cent).

In comparison, Tata Power was the biggest laggard under Cyrus with 6.3 per cent CAGR decline in its market capitalisation during the period. The company has been hit by losses at its Mundhra plant besides rising interest cost in its large borrowings.

It is followed by Tata Global beverages whose market capitalisation declined at CAGR of 1 per cent a year during Cyrus tenure. The company's is under stress due to poor profitability of its European and North American operations, which together are bigger than its profitable domestic operations in terms of revenues.

Tata Steel is next on the chart with a stagnant market capitalisation during the period. Other under performers include Oriental Hotels, TRF and Titan Company.

Not surprising Cyrus Mistry entire focus was on turning around the strugglers and leaving out-performers untouched.

In line with this thinking, groups companies such as Tata Power, Indian Hotels, Tata Communications, Tata Chemicals and Tata Steel have sold their non-core and loss-making units and used the proceeds to muscle-up their balance sheet.

Companies where was Chairman Other Tata Group Companies MKt Cap Growth* Mkt Cap Growth* Company CAGR (%) Company CAGR (%) Indian Hotels 21.3 Tata Metaliks 66.5 TCS 19.1 Tata Elxsi 59.6 Tata Motors 17.1 Voltas 41.9 Tata Chemicals 14.0 Tata Communications 32.1 Tata Steel -0.1 Automobile Corp of Goa 29.5 Tata Global Beverages -1.0 Tata Sponge Iron 21.3 Tata Power -6.3 Benares Hotels 18.4 NELCO 17.5 Tinplate 15.8 Rallis 12.9 Trent 12.4 Automotive Stampings 9.0 Tata Investment Corpn 8.1 Titan Company 7.9 TRF 6.7 Oriental Hotels 5.2 Tata Coffee -1.1 Tayo Rolls -3.5 Tata Tele(Mah) -8.7 * Compounded annual growth in market caputalisation between December 31, 2012 and October 2016

Photograph: PTI Photo
As Tata and DoCoMo look for out-of-court settlement, here's a blow-by-blow account of the long legal tussle

Tata Group and NTT DoCoMo are planning to settle their differences by seeking the Reserve Bank of India's permission, under a fresh application, for Tata Sons to remit $1.17 billion to the Japanese company to buyback DoCoMos 26.5 per cent stake in their loss-making joint-venture Tata Teleservices.

According to the report, lawyers from both the parties are busy trying to find a way out and according to sources the government might give its nod to such a move in a bid to highlight the ease of doing business in India.

As Tata and DoCoMo move towards a possible out-of-court settlement of the issue, Business Standard takes a look at how the Tata-DoCoMo dispute started and progressed.

What is the dispute about?

The dispute centres around the Tata Group not honouring a contract signed between Ratan Tata and DoCoMo in 2009.

Under the contract, the Tatas would buy back DoCoMo's shares in Tata Teleservices at least half the acquisition prices in five years. However, when DoCoMo decided to exit the Indian market in 2014, Tata Sons refused to buy back the shares at the pre-determined prices.

The reason for Tata Sons' refusal was that in the period between 2009 and 2014, a change in regulation led to the RBI objecting to the transaction committed on a pre-fixed price. DoCoMo had asked Tata to buy back shares at $1.2 billion but the Tatas offered a lower exit price. DoCoMo's original investment in 2009 was valued at $2.2 billion.

Incapable of finding an external buyer, Tata had made an application to the RBI to acquire the DoCoMo holding themselves, as previously agreed upon. The regulator refused the application at the time.

What action did DoCoMo take?

DoCoMo sued Tata Sons in the US and the UK courts, apart from litigation in the Delhi high court over the matter.

The Tatas were sued by DoCoMo in the London Court of Arbitration in January last year.

In June this year, a three-member international arbitration panel ordered Tatas to pay $1.17 billion (Rs 7,956 crore) to NTT Docomo for breach of contract.

But, Tata Sons did not pay $1.2 billion to DoCoMo and the latter sued Tata Sons in the United Kingdom Commercial Court and in the United States earlier in October to enforce the award.

On July 25 this year, the English court passed an ex-parte order in favour of NTT DoCoMo, allowing the company to realise the amount of the award against Tata's assets in the UK, subject to Tata Sons contesting the adjudication.

In response to DoCoMo's application in the English court, the Tatas had argued that DoCoMo could not attach Tata Motors' or Tata Steels properties in the UK, as Tata Sons is a minority shareholder in Tata Steel and Tata Motors-JLR.

DoCoMo also filed a separate enforcement application in the Delhi high court. The Tatas are challenging these proceedings as well, however they have still deposited the full sum of the arbitral determination with the registrar of the high court, subject to final adjudication in the matter.

Then in October this year, DoCoMo sued Tata Sons in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeking $1.2 billion in damages that it had won in the London Court of Arbitration.

At the same time, the Delhi high court allowed the RBI to file an intervention application in the enforcement proceedings initiated by DoCoMo against Tata Sons. RBI had pressed to intervene in the ongoing enforcement proceedings and requested the court to allow the regulator to state its position regarding the legality of the award.



With the long-drawn legal tussle not yet resolved, reports indicate that under its new leadership, Tata Sons would seek an out-of-court settlement to the issue.

Image used for representation purpose only

Photograph: Reuters
'Ever since Mr Modi has come to power NDTV has been facing inquiries from different agencies of the government.'

'Those close to the ruling party have been openly advocating that the government use all powers to ensure that NDTV shuts shop.'

Having a black screen is nothing new for NDTV.

IMAGE: The blank NDTV screen when the government banned the telecast of India's Daughter.

Remember, when the home ministry decided to ban Leslee Udwin's documentary India's Daughter, which was supposed to air on the NDTV network on March 8, 2015, NDTV deliberately carried a placard for one full hour at prime time.

But this time it is different. The government has decided to censor the news channel. Black it out.

In an unprecedented order NDTV's Hindi channel NDTV India has been ordered to go off air on November 9, 2016 for 24 hours, for allegedly showing strategic security details during the Pathankot terror attack.

The inter-ministerial committee in its order says, 'that under section 20(2) of the cable act the provision was for taking channel off air for 30 days... however, IMC recommends a token penalty of one day's off air... this is the minimum penalty that must be imposed on the Channel for their transgression coupled with their unrepentant demeanour as noticed during the meeting of IMC.'

WOW! Really! That is a big favour. Go off air for a day and be happy!

And this punishment comes your way because you were 'unrepentant' during the meeting.

What did you expect us to do? Beg and cry? When we knew we had not done any wrong!

Obviously, NDTV will fight back. We always have.

IMAGE: The blank screen on NDTV India as prime time anchor Ravish Kumar delivered his opening riff on the state of news television journalism in India.

Fortunately, the Editor's Guild, the Broadcast Editors Association, the Press Club of India, the National Broadcasters Association, senior editors, senior politicians have come out in support of NDTV.

This arbitrary dictatorial order of the government needs to be opposed. It is an attack on the freedom of the press.

If the information and broadcasting ministry had a problem with the coverage it could have gone to the National Broadcasters Standards Authority.

If the NBSA did not take any action, then there were other ways to penalise the channel. But force it to go off air. That's blatant censorship, unheard of in a free democratic country, except during the Emergency.

Ever since Mr Modi has come to power NDTV has been facing inquiries from different agencies of the government. But the network has not allowed its brand of journalism to be affected.

Those close to the ruling party have been openly advocating that the government use all powers to ensure that NDTV shuts shop. But the network continues to refuse to succumb to pressure.

With its tagline 'Truth- Experience First,' its credibility soars at a time when media credibility is at its lowest.

The columnist works at the NDTV network and this column has been written in an individual capacity, not at the behest of the columnist's employers.

The columnist has chosen to stay anonymous for understandable reasons.
'People don't want to watch a screaming channel if given a decent alternative.'

Jawhar Sircar's Twitter account describes him as one who has paid a price for airing his views frankly.

The outgoing chief executive officer of the public broadcaster Prasar Bharati quit his post a year before it ends due to 'tiredness of unsuccessfully bringing a change.'

In a conversation with Arindam Majumder, Sircar, below, left, on his last day at office, blasts the sarkari culture at the organisation and stops short of saying it will die if it does not accept change.

Your tenure comes to an end earlier than expected. What changes have you tried to bring in and were they successful?

Doordarshan had gone on a self-destruction mode long ago.

Why did Greece fall?

Why did Turkey with such a glorious past now become a problem for the region? Because, they refused to change with time.

The decline started getting noticed when private players such as STAR got syndicated programmes at a heavy cost. They got in Who Wants To Be A Millionaire to India as Kaun Banega Crorepati and improved upon it with Amitabh Bachchan, while DD (Doordarshan) was happy with its cardboard programme.

It happens because its decision-making powers are constricted. Despite that, DD was able to grab eyeballs thanks to good programmes such as Ramayana, Mahabharata, Nukkad, and Buniyad, which were done by outsiders.

Since 2003, there was a rethink by management and it decided to create its own programmes. That was a disastrous decision.

They drove away talent and operators started coming in.

From 2012 when I took charge, I tried to cut free of this syndicate and there was resistance. Most of the officials were in 'no change' mode.

Those who started talking realistically were branded 'class enemies.'

I believe I was branded one, but somebody had to tell the emperor that you are not wearing clothes. The syndicate started working against me.

Still, I am glad that there is 100 per cent unanimity now on the board regarding the slot sale.

Why do you think a public broadcaster should sell slots to private parties? How does it benefit?

First of all, DD's losses are real.

The moment we go in for slot sale, the slot operator is not living off government money. It means, when a private player bids Rs 4 lakh (Rs 400,000) for the slot, he earns that Rs 4 lakh through quality programmes.

This also helps in breaking the syndicate of some 'favourite producers' who kept on doing sub-standard programmes under different names.

But Doordarshan officials say it has been unsuccessful in finding bidders meeting the basic eligibility criteria...

When somebody is under economic threat, they will not kiss you.

The battle has been fought thrice and finally there is consensus that it needs to be done.

Who gave DD the authority to decide suo moto that nobody in India is eligible?

If you have such a strong view, then you come back to the board.

Who has delegated that power to them?

Am I to believe that among the four top producers in India doing top-class work elsewhere, no one was eligible? It's a ridiculous decision.

While the board at Prasar Bharti sent a message, the babus there sent a very different message. There was cross-messaging going on.

Basically, it is a step to open up the system to private players.

It happened in telecom, airlines, and banks.

Why should Doordarshan follow a backdated policy?

Have you been able to convince the board of the policy?

I will not say that. But, the board was very clear -- anybody who doesn't agree with the system should get out.

DD also lost the competitive advantage because it stopped many educational programmes...

I was coming to that. Serials are just the lead.

Why is nobody looking at the regional channels? So, the question of cross-benefiting was thought of.

If there are good documentaries in Tamil or Kannada, let's show it in Hindi.

DD can never be a national channel by not showing regional programmes.

By January, DD will be showing more features and quality features.

Has the shift from analog to digital has been slow for Prasar Bharati?

Yes. I had a huge fight regarding this too.

Do you know how much short waves guzzle? Around Rs 120 per crore per year!

All India Radio doesn't even have 120 listeners. Why are they running?

The board has ordered its closure. There is a need to shut down terrestrial towers and let go half the workforce manning those.

Why do Doordarshan programmes fail to attract viewers?

Because it's completely sarkari.

Now that is a problem when you are competing with the private sector -- lack of creativity.

A small example: AIR doesn't have a sanctioned post for a radio jockey in the days of FM!

Anyone who tries to change things is shunted out.

The English king never does any wrong because he never does anything.

DD News in one hour during prime time alone has 60 per cent viewership among all English news channels.

How? We hired a guy from a private channel and gave complete freedom.

People don't want to watch a screaming channel if given a decent alternative.

When we show sports, people watch us. That means people want to watch DD.

There should be a system where you don't need to wait for UPSC (the Union Public Service Commission) to find you a video editor.

There should be recruitment from industry on short-term contracts and there should be a hire-and-fire policy.

It's all about a single guy who comes and decides to bell the cat.

You have been a bureaucrat. Do you think you should be the last and this organisation should be led by specialists?

I will be happy to be the transition man. But who from the current market will be ready to work for Rs 80,000 a month?

Is the organisation ready to pay Arnab Goswami's salary? We will get Arnab then.

Main image published only for representational purposes. Jawahar Sircar's image: Kind courtesy Ramank257/Wikipedia Commons
Kicking off Uttar Pradesh poll campaign, Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah on Saturday took a dig at infighting in the Mulayam Singh Yadav family and targeted the ruling Samajwadi Party as well as the Bahujan Samaj Party, saying neither party is bothered about development of the state.

Addressing 'Parivartan rally' (rally for change) in Saharanpur in western UP, he said the state has lagged behind in development because of the SP and the BSP rule and that only a BJP government with full majority can bring it back on track.

"While on one hand, it is the nephew (Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav) who is abusing the uncle (SP state unit president Shivpal Yadav), on the other behenji (BSP supremo Mayawati) is abusing both of them...No one is concerned about the development of the state," Shah said.

"The state has lagged behind a lot...the SP and the BSP cannot improve the situation here and it will be only the BJP government with full majority which can bring the state back on tracks," he said.

Attacking 'goonda' elements in the ruling SP, he alleged that the party is mired in illegal mining among other ills like corruption.

Shah said while Akhilesh wants to project himself as 'vikas purush' (development man), people like mafia don Mukhtar Ansari are in his party despite the chief minister claiming they would not be allowed in.

"The entire SP is filled with such people," he added.

Targeting Mayawati, the BJP chief said, "behenji says she will improve the situation but she has Naseemuddin Siddiqui".

He contended that, "it is between devil and deep sea for the people of the state in the context of these two parties."

Shah also took veiled dig at Samajwadi Party's efforts to form a 'mahagathbandhan' ahead of the upcoming Assembly polls by hosting senior leaders of the erstwhile Janata Parivar in the state capital, Lucknow on Saturday, saying "they are happy shaking hands with each other..but what would happen by your shaking hands? In a democracy, government is formed only when the people shake hands with you".

Attacking Mayawati, he said though she claims to make the state "goonda free" (criminal free), she needs to recall the number of scams which took place during her previous government."

Citing the different scams worth thousands of crores, Shah alleged that all the funds meant for development were used in setting up memorials and statues. "If she returns to power, she will set up 200 to 300 more of her statues instead of doing any good for the state," he said.

Alleging that SP, BSP and Congress have spoiled UP, Amit Shah said only BJP can provide a "goonda-free" UP.

Attacking Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi for his stand on 'One Rank, One Pension', the BJP chief said, "he seems to have forgotten that the issue is very old and despite Congress being in government led by his relatives all this while, nothing was done to redress this demand."

"It is very shameful that vote politics is being done on the suicide of an ex-serviceman to mislead the people...But they will not get influenced as they know the reality and servicemen know that it is the Modi government which has given them OROP," he stressed.

He also criticised Rahul Gandhi for his comments after surgical strikes that Prime Minister was doing 'khoon ki dalali' (using blood of soldiers for political gains).

"During your (Congress governments), there were firings on the borders regularly but it is the Modi government which is at the helm now and it knows well how to give a befitting reply," Amit Shah said.

Attacking BSP, SP and Congress for raising a lot of hue and cry over the Modi government's stand on triple talaq, Shah asked, "should the rights of Muslim women not be safeguarded? Should the triple talaq like arrangement not be done away with? ..What is this mockery you are playing with the rights of women for vote bank politics?"

Photograph: @BJP4India/Twitter
Information and Broadcasting minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Saturday attacked those criticising the one-day ban on NDTV India over its Pathankot coverage, saying the "belated criticism" is clearly "ill informed and politically inspired" to create a controversy.

The belated criticism of the action proposed to be taken against NDTV India for violating the norms of live coverage of anti-terrorist operations by security personnel in Pathankot in January this year is clearly ill informed and politically inspired, he told reporters in Chennai.

"Such reactions that came a day after the government's decision was in public domain on November 3, 2016 was clearly an afterthought, suggesting a motivated design to create a controversy where none existed," the senior minister said.

He asserted that people of the country should know that the United Progressive Alliance governments, during 2005-14, ordered several TV channels to go off air in 21 instances, for a period ranging from one day to two months for showing obscene visuals including 13 cases of telecasting 'Adult' rated certified films.

One channel was taken off air for 30 days for telecasting a sting operation, he said.

"People of the country are also wise enough to appreciate which of the two violations -- showing obscene visuals at the stroke of midnight and risking the lives of defence personnel and civilians through a live telecast of anti-terrorist operations in broad daylight -- is a serious threat to the interests of the nation including its sovereignty, integrity and security," Naidu said.

The minister said the decision against NDTV India was not based on any newly invented rule and principle.

"The ground on which action has been proposed against NDTV India was only a logical conclusion of concerns clearly articulated by the UPA government in various advisories issued after 26/11 terror attacks on multiple targets in Mumbai in 2008," he said.

Rejecting criticism that compared the present case to Emergency, Naidu said many Bharatiya Janata Party leaders and a large number of activists were at the "worst receiving end of Emergency and would shudder to even think of doing the same to others and particularly, in respect of freedom of media."

Responding to criticism by Editors Guild of India, Naidu said, "The Editors Guild of India, a responsible organisation that took a full day to come out with its response should realise that under Sub-section (2) of Section 20 of the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995, Central Government is required to regulate or prohibit the transmission of any channel or programme in the interest of sovereignty, integrity and security of India and as per Para 8.1 of Uplinking Guidelines, is empowered to take action for transmitting any objectionable content inconsistent with public interest.

Therefore, the government is not required to approach the courts in such cases, as suggested by the guild, he added.

"I leave it to the wisdom of the Editors Guild to ponder if the decision against NDTV India for the reasons explained, is really reminiscent of the dark days of Emergency," he said.

Naidu said that very recently in an interaction, he had stressed that effective self-regulation by media is the best way of protecting its freedom and we are committed to it.

"I also said that freedom is best upheld when its value is fully appreciated. In this case, that much valued freedom was not put to best use by NDTV India. I am happy to note that the people of the country are broadly with the decision in the matter of NDTV India," he said.

Always, there will be a minority who are critical of whatever the government does in the best interest of the country, Naidu added.

The minister also said that in several advisories issued by the previous UPA government, all news and current affairs TV channels were clearly asked to exercise restraint, maturity and sensitivity while reporting on anti-terrorist operations in the larger interest of safety and security of security forces involved in such operations and civilians.

Expressing concern over continued violations, the then UPA government concluded that any coverage violating such norms amount to coverage against the interests of the nation, he added.

Naidu said the NDA government too issued a couple of such advisories and like the then UPA government, noticed continued violations as in the case of Gurdaspur terrorist attack.

As the government is deeply committed to upholding the sovereignty, integrity and security of the country, particularly, in the context of cross border terrorism, the government issued a Gazette Notification in March this year requiring TV channels to limit live coverage of anti-terrorist operations to the briefings of designated officers, in the larger security interests involved, he said.

NDTV India, in this case has been found to have violated this provision and was found to be unrepentant about what they have done. This channel was also found to have resorted to similar violations earlier, he said.

This decision, accordingly, was only a culmination of the larger security concerns being expressed since 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

The Inter-Ministerial Committee that recommended action against the channel did so after duly acknowledging the instant reach and power of television unlike other media and only recommended suspension of telecast just for one day as a token, so that the said channel cannot get away completely for being even unrepentant in the matter.
Two women teachers at a Patna school were arrested for allegedly touching a 6-year-old girl inappropriately, the police said on Saturday, November 5.

The victim is a lower kindergarten student at the school.

Patna Senior Superintendent of Police Manu Maharaj said the teachers were arrested after an FIR was lodged against them under Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act 2012.

A medical examination of the child by a senior lady doctor confirmed injuries to her private parts, rhe police claimed.

Forensic experts also visited the school to collect evidence.

The police questioned the school principal about the incident and recorded the statements made by the child's parents.

Maharaj has asked Patna city Superintendent of Police Chandan Kushwaha to investigate the case.

According to the FIR filed by the victim's grandfather, the child complained to her mother about pain in her private parts and informed her that two teachers, whom she called 'Badi Mam' and 'Chhoti Mam,' had touched her despite her protest.
At least 18 people were killed and 24 others injured on Saturday when a private bus plunged into the Beas river near Vindravani in Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh.

The ill-fated bus with over 40 passengers on board was travelling to Kullu from Manali when it veered off the road while trying to avoid a motorcyclist and fell into the turbulent Beas, police officers said.

Fourteen people died on the spot, three succumbed to their injuries in the zonal hospital at Mandi, while one critically injured person died on the way to Indira Gandhi Medical College in Shimla, police said.

The incident took place hardly 3 km from Mandi. The injured people were rushed to the zonal hospital there.

Mandi Deputy Commissioner Sandeep Kadam and IG Ajay Yadav immediately reached the spot along with rescue teams.

Though there was only a remote possibility of passengers getting washed away in the river, divers have been called in as a precautionary measure to locate missing persons, if any, Kadam said.

The Mandi DC said rescue operations were in progress and all possible help is being provided to the victims.

Mandi SDM, Vivek Chandel, said Rs 15,000 has been given as immediate relief to the next of kin of the deceased while the injured have been given Rs 5,000 each.

Transport minister G S Bali expressed deep shook over the accident and said a magisterial inquiry has been ordered to ascertain its cause.

He said besides the insurance claim of Rs 1 lakh, the next of kin of the deceased would be given Rs 4 lakh and seriously injured persons Rs 25,000 as relief.

Most of the people travelling in the bus were from Mandi and Kullu and other places on the Mandi-Kullu National Highway 21.

Meanhwile, Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh conveyed his condolences to the bereaved families and wished speedy recovery to injured. He directed the district administration to provide all possible assistance to the family members of the victims and those injured in the accident.

In his condolence message, Governor Acharya Devvrat expressed sympathy with the families of the deceased and prayed for peace of the departed souls.

State Health Minister Kaul Singh Thakur, Excise and Taxation Minister Prakash Chaudhary and Panchayati Raj, and Rural Development Minister Anil Sharma, all hailing from Mandi district, have also expressed grief over the accident and conveyed their condolences with bereaved family members.

IMAGE: Rescue operation was in progress after a bus fell into Beas river on Delhi-Manali national highway near Mandi on Saturday. Photograph: PTI Photo
With the 2016 Presidential election drawing near, Bible-believing Christians are as divided over their votes as at any time in recent memory. Very few offer support to Hillary Clinton, given her rabid support of abortion and disrespect for religion. The divide instead comes between Christians who plan to hold their noses and vote for Donald Trump and others who refuse to endorse such a scandalously ungodly man. On the one hand, we hear, "Save the Supreme Court!" On the other hand, "Disassociate from evil!" What we are really hearing is the shattering of a paradigm, in this case the evangelical willingness to compromise politically with "lesser evils" in pursuit of public good. A couple of realities are making this approach less palatable to many believers:

First, Christian involvement in politics has not succeeded in rallying a "moral majority" that will keep America from going down the tubes. The reality is that our generation has witnessed a spiritual and moral disaster of biblical proportions, even though "Christian" candidates have often won the elections. In this situation, increasing numbers of believers wonder if the pursuit of political power might be doing more harm than good. Might it be that the moral influence of Christians has been greatly lessened because we are seen to compromise on principle? Might the hypocrisy of, say, abandoning our moral convictions for the sake of a couple of Supreme Court seats (itself a most uncertain hope), actually speed the culture's rejection of Christian ethics?

Second, we ask the question if the gaining of political power is the correct objective for Christians at all. True, followers of Jesus are citizens of the secular realm and have a duty to serve there as salt and light. But shouldn't the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20 at least make our witness to the gospel and the character of God a higher priority? And if our political compromises have the effect of making a mockery of our witness, should we not stop making these compromises? In short, shouldn't we consider making gospel integrity a higher objective than political success?

Whatever happens in next week's national election, it is clear that Christians need to think about an entirely new paradigm when it comes to political engagement. Do we consider a third party that would be explicitly Christian (following the example of Abraham Kuyper in the Netherlands)? Such a course would have cons as well as pros, but perhaps the time has come to give it serious thought. In the meantime, this unsettling election surely calls for believers to pause and reflect biblically. To this end, let me suggest 3 biblical principles that can inform not only our future paradigm but also our voting decisions in the coming national election:

The Christian must trust in God, not in man. Psalm 118:8-9 says, "It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes." Armed with this faith, there is no reason for Christians to support ungodly men or women as a "necessary means" to our survival and success. We have a sovereign, almighty, covenant-keeping God who cares for us. Why would we disgrace that faith by selling our support to political candidates of either party who behave in a morally contemptuous manner? Here is the question the world wants to know about us: Who do we trust, in God or in princes?

The Christian must aim for faithfulness, leaving the outcome to the Lord. This is not to say that Christians remain uninvolved in political or other public affairs. But being a Christian surely limits us from endorsing blatant sin and giving public support to grossly ungodly candidates. As Psalm 97:10 says, "O you who love the Lord, hate evil!" To this the pragmatists answer, "But the Supreme Court!" But the psalmist continues: "[The Lord] preserves the lives of his saints; he delivers them from the hand of the wicked."

The Christian must prize the name and reputation of Jesus and think first about the spread of his gospel message of salvation. From this perspective, government persecution is not the greatest evil we should fear. The church often flourishes spiritually when under oppression. But the church is always crippled by hypocrisy and betrayals of our message. Far above any fear we should have of secularist oppression, Christians should dread a compromise to the public integrity of our witness to Christ and his kingdom.

I find that these principles do not permit me to give public support (or my vote) to either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump for the simple reason that the lesser of two evils remains evil. I do not believe it is my duty to "win the election," but rather to conduct myself according to biblical standards of truth and grace. I do not want to send a message to the world that my fear of tyranny and persecution is stronger than my faith in God to rule and protect. I know that many of my fellow believers disagree with this, either because they evaluate the candidates differently or fear that compromise is simply necessary at this hour. While I beg to differ, can we at least start a discussion after this election about our strategy for political engagement in the midst of a culture that happens to be the mission field for our witness to Jesus and his saving grace?
Morgan County Election Board reviews financial records

The Morgan County Election Board met Friday to review the campaign finance reports of local candidates running for office.
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The owners of the independent Tajik newspaper Nigoh (View) have suspended operations ahead of the outlet's 10th anniversary.

Nigoh's owner, the Indem think tank, said in a statement that it would halt printing the newspaper due to a "lack of appropriate conditions."

The statement, released earlier this week, gave no further details, adding "we can make no further comment."

Nigoh had no debts or tax arrears, EurasiaNet.org reported, and its owners have pledged to continue paying its employees until 2017.

EurasiaNet.org reported that Nigoh was forced to close by Tajik officials unhappy with the paper's reporting about the banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT).

Nigoh had also previously written critical articles about the prosecution of lawyer Buzurgmehr Yorov, who was given a 23-year prison term last month for allegedly inciting social unrest and calling for the overthrow of the government.

Yorov had represented IPRT members in court and his case is seen by rights groups as being politically motivated.

Tajik officials have shut down dozens of nonstate and opposition media outlets under the authoritarian rule of President Emomali Rahmon, who has been in power for almost a quarter century.

Based on reporting by EurasiaNet.org
At least 30 people were injured in Indian-controlled Kashmir on November 5 during clashes between government forces and mourners at a funeral procession for a teenager.

Police and paramilitary soldiers interrupted the mourners carrying the body of a teenage boy whose family alleges he died of police torture in Srinagar, the main city in Kashmir.

According to witnesses, hundreds of young men threw rocks at the troops, while another group of mourners took a different route to bury the boy.

Government forces fired shotgun pellets, warning shots, and tear gas fearing the procession could become a larger rally against Indian rule in the region, said a police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity.

These demonstrations are the largest protests against Indian rule in recent years. The killing of a popular rebel commander in July sparked the protests, during which 90 civilians were killed and thousands injured.

The Kashmir region has been divided between India and Pakistan since independence from British rule in 1947. Both claim the entire territory for themselves.

Based on reporting by AP


Mohammad Nayeb-Zehi was among the hundreds of worshippers who gathered on September 30 at the Great Mosalla, a religious site in Iran's southeastern city of Zahedan, for Friday Prayers.

Just hours later, the 16-year-old's family learned he was dead.

Nayeb-Zehi was among the scores of people gunned down by security forces in a brutal crackdown following anti-government protests in Zahedan, the provincial capital of Sistan-Baluchistan Province, which is home to the country's Baluch minority.

"He was a simple laborer and not political," Nayeb-Zehi's brother, Ahmad, told RFE/RL's Radio Farda in a telephone interview from Zahedan, adding that his sibling had been shot in the heart. "We're in pain, and we cannot accept it."

The crackdown in Zahedan came amid weeks-long nationwide protests triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old who died on September 16, days after she was detained by Iran's morality police.

In Sistan-Baluchistan, public anger at the authorities escalated amid reports that a 15-year-old Baluch girl had been raped by a police official in the province's southern port city of Chabahar.

The violence erupted soon after protesters gathered outside a police station near the central mosque in Zahedan. Members of the crowd chanted anti-government slogans, and some threw rocks. Security forces responded with deadly force by firing on the crowd from the station, according to witnesses.

Security forces also raided the central mosque and the nearby Great Mosalla and opened fire on worshippers using live ammunition, rights groups said, adding that many were shot in the head, heart, neck, or torso, revealing a clear intent to kill or seriously wound.

At least 94 people were killed and 350 wounded on that day, referred to as "Bloody Friday," according to the U.S.-based Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. At least 13 minors were among those killed, including Nayeb-Zehi.

The victims were overwhelmingly Baluch -- a mostly Sunni ethnic group that has long faced disproportionate discrimination at the hands of the Iranian authorities.

"He was martyred inside the Mosalla while holding his prayer mat," said Ahmad Nayeb-Zehi.

Nayeb-Zehi's family first visited Zahedan's Khatam al-Anbia hospital, hoping he was among the wounded. They later found his body in a seminary at the Great Mosalla.

"We entered a room there and saw about 10 bodies," said Ahmad Nayeb-Zehi. "[Mohammad] was among them."

He said the authorities prevented the family from filming the scene. "I told them this has to be documented, it has to be published by international media," he said, adding that footage later emerged on social media showing the gruesome scene at the seminary.

The family refused to send Nayeb-Zehi's body to the morgue. Instead, his body lay in the living room for around 24 hours before he was buried.

"We said he was martyred and there was no need for an autopsy," said Ahmad Nayeb-Zehi.

The authorities accused Jaish al-Adl, a Sunni militant group, of attacking the police station. The group is recognized as a terrorist organization by both Iran and the United States and has previously claimed deadly attacks in Sistan-Baluchistan targeting Iranian security forces.

But local and independent sources have rejected the authorities' claims.

The authorities have also reported a much lower number of fatalities, announcing that only 19 people, including several members of the security forces, were killed.

Ahmad Nayeb-Zehi said the authorities were "rubbing salt into the wounds of the people" by claiming "terrorists" were involved.

He said he witnessed a military helicopter shooting at civilians near the Great Mosalla. "I haven't even seen such scenes in Hollywood movies," he said. "A helicopter was shooting at people. A lady was shot in front of my eyes."

RFE/RL could not verify his account. But activists have accused security forces of shooting at protestors from helicopters.

"I don't know what the intention of this crime was," he said. "Our only demand from the establishment is for the murderers of our [family members] to be punished."

The killings have led to widespread anger in Sistan-Baluchistan, one of Iran's poorest provinces.

Anti-establishment protests have been reported in Zahedan since the crackdown, including on October 14 and October 21, when protesters took to the streets after Friday Prayers and chanted "Death to the dictator."

During his Friday Prayers sermon on October 21, influential Sunni cleric Molavi Abdolhamid Ismaeelzahi said senior officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, were "responsible" for the September 30 killings.

"We are surprised by the silence of the high-ranking officials," he said in his sermon, which was posted on his website.

"Scores were killed here without any reason. I don't have the exact number. Some have reported 90, some say less, some say more," Ismaeelzahi added.

He also said people will not be satisfied until "those who killed the people" are brought to justice.

The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center said the events of September 30 amounted to "a massacre of protesters by security forces."

"The government's total denial of responsibility for the massacring of citizens by its security apparatus is consistent with similar past denials and is evidence that internal calls for investigation of such crimes are insufficient," said the rights group, which documents human rights violations in Iran.
A Russian hacker who was convicted for his leading role in one of the largest data thefts in U.S. history has been released from prison after serving most of his 12-year sentence.

Vladimir Drinkman was released from a Pennsylvania jail on October 28, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons told RFE/RL.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) did not respond to an RFE/RL request for comment on whether Drinkman had been turned over for deportation, a process that can take up to several months. Drinkman's lawyer, Igor Litvak, declined to comment. RFE/RL could not immediately reach Drinkman.

Drinkman was a key member of a criminal hacking group that penetrated major U.S. corporations, including Heartland Payment Systems, which at the time it was breached in 2008 was one of the biggest U.S. payment-processing firms. The Heartland attack -- the largest breach in history at the time -- cost the payment company more than $200 million in losses.

Varonis, a U.S.-based cybersecurity firm, ranks the attack on Heartland among the 10 largest data breaches of all time.

The gang also breached Nasdaq OMX Group, 7-Eleven, JC Penney, JetBlue Airways, and others, according to prosecutors. In total, they stole the data of more than 160 million credit cards, leading to more than $300 million in damages.

Greg Hunter, a Virginia-based lawyer who has represented cybercriminals from the former Soviet Union, said the Heartland case demonstrated the sophisticated evolution of Russian-speaking hackers.

"This was the beginning of specialization," Hunter told RFE/RL. "Rather than an individual hacker spending a lot of time stealing credit card data and then trying to monetize it, you had guys specializing in breaching the security apparatus of a site, others selling the data."

The appearance of hacker forums was critical to the phenomenon of a division of labor, he said.

Hacker sites "allowed these guys to find each other and work together. A guy who breaches banks could just focus on that, knowing he could find others to either help him know what to get and how to use it, or just buy his services outright," Hunter said.

Several of the most commonly used forums where hackers bought and sold stolen credit card data and traded tips included Cardplanet and Direct Connection. A Russian man, Aleksei Burkov, was extradited from Israel to the United States and later pleaded guilty in 2020 to U.S. charges related to his oversight of those forums.

He was deported to Russia last year.

According to U.S. court filings, Drinkman and another co-conspirator, Alexandr Kalinin, specialized in penetrating network security and gaining access to the corporate data systems. Drinkman along with a third man, Roman Kotov, also focused on mining the networks to steal valuable data.

Another Russian man, Dmitry Smilyanets, then sold the stolen credit card information on forums for $10 to $50 each and distributed the proceeds of the scheme to the others, according to prosecutors.

Kalinin and Kotov, both of whom are Russian citizens, are believed to still be in Russia.

Drinkman was arrested in the Netherlands in June 2012 at the request of the United States, along with Smilyanets.

While Smilyanets cooperated with U.S. authorities and arrived in the United States a few months after his arrest, Drinkman fought his extradition for more than a year.

Ultimately, Drinkman pleaded guilty in 2015 and was sentenced to 12 years in prison, including time served since his arrest. It is one of the harshest sentences given to a Russian hacker.

Drinkman served a total of 10 years and four months, or 86 percent of his sentence. U.S. federal prisoners earn credit each year for good behavior and typically serve 85 percent of their sentence.

Smilyanets was sentenced to just time served, or less than six years, and currently resides in the United States, where he works as a cyberthreat intelligence analyst.

He declined to comment when contacted by RFE/RL.
Police in Kosovo and Albania say they have arrested nearly a dozen people on suspicion of committing terrorism-related offenses.



Kosovar police said on November 5 that they had arrested seven people in various parts of Kosovo for alleged involvement in "terrorism and acts against the constitutional order and security of Kosovo."



Police said in a statement that they had confiscated equipment and other evidence related to the case.



They added that the suspects were arrested in Mitrovica, Ferizaj, and the capital, Pristina, among other places, and would be detained for 48 hours.



Kosovar police spokesman Baki Kelani told RFE/RL on November 5 that the situation in the country is "calm and stable."



Meanwhile, in neighboring Albania, police say they have arrested four people for reportedly recruiting members for the Islamic State group and for funding rebel groups in Syria.



A police statement said the arrests took place on November 4 and involved a joint operation with police in Kosovo and Macedonia, where several other suspects had been detained.

With reporting by AP
The death toll from a recent explosion and fire at a Pakistani shipbreaking yard has risen to 20, officials said on November 5.

At least 59 others were injured on November 1 when a gas cylinder exploded, starting a fire inside an oil tanker at the Gadani yard in the southwestern province of Balochistan.

Muhammad Hashim, commissioner of the Kalat region, which includes Gadani, told the AFP news agency that he does not have confirmation about the missing. Laborers say at least seven of their colleagues are unaccounted for.

A high-level committee formed by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to investigate the causes of the fire had its first meeting in Karachi on November 5. A final report will be available within a week, an official statement said.

The Gadani shipbreaking yard, which stretches along 10 kilometers of Pakistans coast, is located about 60 kilometers northwest of Karachi.

It is the third-largest shipbreaking facility in the world and employs more than 6,000 people.

Based on reporting by AFP


The Pentagon confirmed that air strikes in Afghanistan last month killed Al-Qaeda leader Faruq al-Qatani, taking out a top plotter of attacks against the United States in a "significant blow" for the terrorist group.

The U.S. military targeted Qatani and his lieutenant Bilal al-Utabi in separate drone strikes in Kunar Province in northeastern Afghanistan on October 23.

But while the Pentagon has determined that Qatani, the extremist group's leader for the region, was killed, the fate of Utabi remains unclear, press secretary Peter Cook said on November 4.

Kunar provincial officials have said both militants were killed, along with a half dozen other militants in the strikes.

Cook said Qatani was the terrorist group's "senior plotter of attacks against the United States."



Both of the men were involved in efforts to reestablish a safe haven for Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, he said.

Based on reporting by AP, Reuters, AFP, and dpa


A roadside bomb killed 11 people and wounded a dozen more on their way to a wedding in the northern Afghan province of Faryab, officials said on November 4.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast, which killed women and children and wounded the bride, but officials blamed Taliban militants.

Roadside bombs are a favorite weapon of the Islamist militants fighting to oust the Western-backed Kabul government.

Insurgents frequently target Afghan police and military, but a recent surge in attacks and government military actions has also taken a heavy toll on civilians.

The United Nations recently cited a 42 percent rise in casualties caused by pro-government forces this year compared to 2015.

It said Islamist militants were responsible for the majority -- 61 percent -- of total casualties in Afghanistan, however.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP
World leaders have strongly condemned Turkey's arrest of a dozen Kurdish lawmakers in a widening crackdown on dissent since a failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Early on November 4, Turkey jailed, pending trial, the co-leaders of parliament's third-largest party, the Peoples' Democratic Party or HDP, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, as well as 10 other lawmakers from the same party. Three were later released.

The arrests followed the detention or suspension of more than 110,000 officials since the coup attempt in July, and "go beyond what is permissible," the United Nations human rights office said.

The White House said it was "deeply disturbed" by the arrests of lawmakers, while Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark summoned Turkish diplomats over the detentions.

European Parliament President Martin Schulz said the actions "call into question the basis for the sustainable relationship between the EU and Turkey."

But Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim insisted the arrests were legal, even as Turkish police raided and searched the HDP party's head office in Ankara and blocked access to HDP headquarters.

"Turkey is a nation of laws, nobody has preferential treatment before the law... What's been done is within the rule of law," he said.

The Kurdish lawmakers were arrested after they refused to give testimony in a probe linked to what the government termed "terrorist propaganda."

"Politics can't be a shield for committing crimes," Yildirim said.

The HDP party made history last year by becoming the first Kurdish party to win 10 percent of the vote and enter parliament. It warned that the detentions risk triggering civil war with Turkey's 15 percent minority Kurdish population.

The HDP on Twitter called on global leaders "to react against the Erdogan regime's coup."

"This is a dark day not only for our party, but for all of Turkey and the region as it means the end of democracy in Turkey," it said.

'Judicial Theater'

The arrested party leader Demirtas said he does not fear "a fair and impartial judiciary," but believes the courts have lost their independence and the cases against party legislators are "judicial theater...ordered by Erdogan."

The HDP said the charges are politically motivated and Kurdish lawmakers are being targeted because the party opposes Erdogan's efforts to change the constitution and give himself new powers at the expense of parliament, weakening checks and balances.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Tom Malinowski said on Twitter that he was "deeply troubled" by the arrests.

"When taking legal action against elected reps, democracies have a higher duty to justify actions and preserve confidence in justice," he added.

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said she was "extremely worried" by the detentions, and raised her concerns in a telephone call with Turkey's foreign and EU affairs ministers late on November 4.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Ankara had a right to fight terrorism, but could not use it to justify gagging opponents.

"The kind of detentions of democratically elected members of parliament we are seeing in Turkey today is an assault on the right to political representation and participation for millions of voters and defies fundamental principles of any country that claims to be democratic and based on rule of law and human rights," said Human Rights Watch's Turkey director, Emma Sinclair-Webb.

The leader of Turkey's main opposition group, the Republican People's Party, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, warned that the detentions will "butcher democracy" in the country.

Erdogan and the ruling AK party accuse the Kurdish party of having links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Kurdish militant group that has waged an insurgency against the government for decades.

The HDP denies any direct links and says it is working for a peaceful resolution to the Kurdish conflict. Among those arrested were the party's negotiators seeking to forge peace between the PKK and the government.

Even before arresting the lawmakers, Turkey had removed dozens of elected HDP mayors from office and replaced them with trusted Ankara loyalists.

In a video message after the lawmaker arrests, one of the PKK's top commanders, Murat Karayilan, said the group would intensify its armed struggle against Turkey and called on all Kurds -- the country's largest minority -- to react.

With reporting by AP, AFP, dpa, and Reuters
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My Facebook feed just a few days before the election:

A painting/sculpture of Donald Trump made of pig intestines.

A story claiming: Tim Kaine: Hillary Will Modify Obamacare To Include Gun-Addiction Therapy.

A photo meme comparing Chelsea Clinton to Mr. Ed.

A photo of a burned-out black church in Mississippi with Vote Trump spray-painted on the side.

A photograph of Hillary Clinton speaking to a crowd filled with photoshopped FBI agents: Hillary has been drawing bigger crowds.

A link to a nymag.com story: Therapists Say This Election Is Traumatizing Women.

Ahem. Just women? What about men? LGBTQ?

And arent women among the legions on social media slinging F-bombs, crazy rumors and rabid rants against Trump or Clinton and/or, worse, their supporters and, yes, even their own friends?

The hate. The blind devotion. The total deafness to hypocrisy, simple logic and decency. Seemingly, the whole nation is in desperate need of a rabies shot.

This is where social media have pushed us, with the mainstream media galloping to catch up.

On my feed the same morning:

The Washington Post: Former CIA Chief: Trump Is Russias Useful Fool.

And Reuters: North Korea Says Trump Isnt Screwy At All.

Yes, my friends, I am suffering from election fatigue. Its become brutal and surreal, like somehow Tuesday just cant happen.

Maybe there will be divine intervention, like that rain delay at the end of the ninth inning of the last game of an incredible World Series.

Maybe Queen Elizabeth II will declare a sovereign, nonviolent coup offering tea and crumpets and well wisely run home to mom. Cheerio!

Yes, my election malaise has me fretting riots, a terror strike, a stock market collapse, a meteor strike.

Can we survive this?

Well, at least we cant buy a whole states worth of votes for a million bucks, as you reportedly could in 1876, when the nation celebrated its 100th birthday with marauding gangs on horseback preventing blacks from voting and federal troops mustering to avert disaster.

The presidential candidates then, Rutherford Hayes and Samuel Tilden, got the same kind of treatment in the social media of the time (papers, pamphlets, word of mouth) as Clinton and Trump.

Tilden was sickly (cue Hillarys coughing), a fat-cat bachelor accused of being in the pocket of the corrupt railroad industry. A briber, thief and drunken syphilitic, as the Smithsonian Magazine recalled it.

Hayes, the Republican (the parties later swapped ideologies), was a war hero of sorts and a family man known to be honest, but supported voting rights for former slaves, not exactly a Happy Days plot in war-torn America.

The election was a disaster that took months to resolve. Corruption and hijinks made state-by-state results so questionable, hanging chads would be rock-solid in comparison.

Hayes lost the popular vote by a quarter-million votes but won the Electoral College by one.

Back it up even further, we can feel the love when Thomas Jefferson and John Adams duked it out.

Voters were warned that if Jefferson won, murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest would be openly taught and practiced and girls would be forced into prostitution.

And Adams? Pamphlets raced across the land warning that he behaved neither like a man nor woman but instead possessed a hideous hermaphroditical character.

Modern Facebook trolls have nothing on those ink-stained mudslingers.

But perhaps you, too, feel the recent ramping up of the vitriol and weirdness on social media, as well as the worldwide tension that seemingly has the globe on the brink of disaster.

Its like theres something strange in the atmosphere, as recent mayoral candidate Alan Schintzius told me after Thursday nights 29th (whew!) election forum.

I dont believe its all social medias fault. There has been a marked national and worldwide decline in religious practice and a surge in secularism. As National Geographic recently reported, the new international religion is none.

I believe many have replaced religion with political and social ideologies, which is why were seeing the same wide-eyed, unyielding devotion to causes and ideals that used to be reserved for religious zealots.

The old if you dont agree with me, youre going to hell has become if you dont agree with me, go to hell. Along with much worse name-calling.

We dont discuss issues anymore, we pick sides with no middle ground, populated by supporters or enemies with scorched earth in between.

But maybe this is all just election fatigue talking.

Tuesday will come, if I may repeat a few lines from my Thursday commentary for CBS-6 News.

There will be no rain delay or extra innings.

We will peacefully vote and elect and cheer and groan and hopefully laugh with our friends about how we got so caught up in it all, remembering again that civility is part of being a civilian.

Then well go on with being brothers and sisters, working together to make our world a better place  even if weve elected less-than-perfect leaders.

These long-darkening storm clouds will part, and well be able to see a path that we can all honor.

Thats my prayer, anyway.
The down-ticket endorsement came as a surprise to the 31-year-old director of NRV, a local venture capital firm. It was part of a much larger effort by the president to lend his support to people who worked under his administration, according to a Politico report .

Doerr, the Virginia Field Director for Obamas Organizing for America in 2010, is running against incumbent Dawson Boyer, a 30-year-old Realtor who was appointed earlier this year. He replaced Glen H. Sturtevant Jr., who vacated the seat on Richmond Public Schools governing board after his election to the state Senate.

It was certainly a surprise to me, but it is an honor to receive the presidents endorsement, Doerr said. He joins over 50 local community leaders, teachers and parents from all backgrounds and political stripes who believe that we can do better for our children. I am focused on keeping this race local, adding to the 6,000 doors my campaign has knocked in the district and talking to as many constituents as possible about how we can work together to create a better RPS.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, the Republican vice presidential candidate, will hold a rally tonight at George Mason University in Fairfax County.

People who want to attend the 8 p.m. event can register for up to two tickets per mobile number at GOP presidential nominee Donald Trumps website, at www.donaldjtrump.com/ schedule/register/fairfax-va/

The stop three days before the election in Virginias most populous locality  home to more than 1.14 million people  shows that Trumps campaign believes a tightening Virginia remains in play.

In order to succeed in Virginia on Tuesday, Trump would have to cut down on Democrat Hillary Clintons margins in populous and diverse Northern Virginia.

In 2008 and 2012, Democratic nominee Barack Obama swept the four counties and five cities of Northern Virginia, building an insurmountable cushion in each contest.

In his 2012 re-election bid, Obama won Fairfax County alone by more than 108,000 votes and carried Northern Virginia by more than 231,000. Obama won statewide by fewer than 150,000 votes.

Separately or jointly, Trump and Pence have made more than a dozen trips to Virginia since Clinton named U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., as her running mate on July 22.

Kaine returns to Virginia on Monday for a rally in Northern Virginia and a homecoming stop in Richmond, where he will vote on Tuesday morning.

Details of the Kaine stops have not yet been released.
Saleh: Either honorable peace or confrontation until victory





SANAA, Nov. 5 (Saba)  President of the General People's Congress (GPC), Ali Abdullah Saleh, said either honorable peace or continuing confrontation until victory.



"The steadfast Yemeni people in repelling the aggression, no matter how much they suffer or present sacrifices, they are today more ready to comprehensive peace but not surrender," the former president of the republic said in a post in his official Facebook seen by Saba on Saturday.



"We are extending our hand to peace for us, our neighbors and the peoples of the world..not in submission to the will of the enemy or to its dictation, but peace of brave men," Saleh wrote.



He said the new UN-proposed peace roadmap is a "good basis for negotiations, but it should be including ceasing the aggression leading by Saudi Arabia, lifting blockade, stopping financing mercenaries and terrorist groups and pulling out foreign forces."



The GPC president also called on all national parties for unifying efforts to force "the Saudi aggression to respect the will of the Yemeni people, the independency of Yemen and end its aggression war."



"We at the time of renewing our people readiness to positively deal with all peace-seeking initiatives that aim to stop bloodshed, preserve the Yemeni unity, integrity, security and stability, and achieve fair, comprehensive peace for Yemen and the region.., we at the same time confirm that if the Saudi aggression did not stop, then the Yemeni people are in the highest degree of readiness today, militarily and popularly, to continue fighting the aggression at all levels and in all circumstances until victory," Saleh added.









ZaK



SABA

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[05/November/2016]
SYRACUSE  With four days to go until the election, Democratic congressional candidate Colleen Deacon received key support from some of New York's most prominent elected officials.

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul and Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner were among the speakers at a rally Friday to kick off get-out-the-vote efforts throughout central New York.

Deacon, D-Syracuse, is locked in a fiery contest with U.S. Rep. John Katko, a freshman Republican seeking a second term representing the 24th Congressional District.

Polls show Katko has a double-digit lead in the race. But Hochul, who served 18 months in Congress after winning a special election in May 2011, reminded the crowd that inital polling showed she was trailing in her congressional bid. She went on to win the race by five points.

"It's OK to be down as long as, at the end of the day, you pull it out, which is what we're going to do here," Hochul said.

Each of the speakers highlighted the importance of electing women to office while also criticizing Katko, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and GOP positions on key issues.

Miner panned Katko for not denouncing Trump earlier in the election and for the congressman's votes to defund Planned Parenthood. That has been a sticking point with Democrats because of Katko's statement during the 2014 campaign that he wouldn't vote to cut off funding to the women's health care organization.

"We need to hold him accountable so that the country sees that we, as a community, are moving forward, not backward," Miner said.

Gillibrand's appearance at the rally was her latest show of support for Deacon, who previously worked as the senator's central New York regional director. She held that post for six years before stepping down to run for Congress.

Shortly after Deacon declared her candidacy in October 2015, Gillibrand endorsed her and sent a fundraising email on her behalf. The senator also visited central New York in early June for a press conference with Deacon in the Syracuse area.

As she began speaking Friday, Gillibrand noted how "personally proud" she was of Deacon.

"She has owned her ambition and decided to run for this congressional seat because she knows she can make a difference in Washington," Gillibrand said.
A first-of-its-kind journey along India and Pakistan border

What binds the two most talked about nations - India and Pakistan together? What makes the
Kansas AG candidates weigh in on plans for Uri price gouging investigation

Either Kris Kobach or Chris Mann will take over the Kansas attorney general natural gas price gouging investigation after the November 2022 election.
Developer Doug Manchester closed escrow Friday on the Mr. As restaurant building in Hillcrest in a series of real estate deals.

Manchester, the former publisher of the San Diego Union-Tribune, bought the 13-story Fifth Avenue Financial Center at Laurel Street for $71.5 million from Westbrook Financial, developer Casey Brown and his partners. They had paid $39.3 million for the property in 2014, according to CoStar Group.

Built in 1965 by the late John Alessio, the 168,000-square-foot office building is topped by Bertrand at Mr. As restaurant featuring sweeping views of San Diego Bay and Balboa Park. Brown had commenced renovations and Manchester said they would be completed over the next year. No change is planned for Mr. As.

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We are very proud to acquire this landmark property, one of the most iconic buildings on the West Coast, Manchester said.

The deal is related to a transaction involving the city and the former SDG&E/Sempra Energy headquarters at 101 Ash St.

Developer Sandory Shapery, who had sold a 49 percent interest in the building to Manchester, is in escrow to sell it to Cisterra Development for $72.5 million, according to the city.

Cisterra in turn has signed an agreement to lease the 314,545-square-foot building to the city for 20 years, after which the city would gain ownership.

The city has agreed to pay $6.4 million per year or $128 million over the life of the lease plus $9.6 million or a total of $60.4 million in operating expenses over the same period.

Manchester plans to move his Manchester Financial Group headquarters from the SDG&E building to his new Fifth Avenue property on Dec. 1.

They wanted me out of there by Jan. 1, so I am accommodating them a month early, Manchester said.

Manchester had previously sold the U-T building in Mission Valley for $52 million to the Casey Brown Co. last year and the U-T relocated to a downtown high-rise in May.

The city plans to move about 1,100 employees out of other downtown locations into the SDG&E building, which opened in 1969 and was bought by Shapery in 1994 for $22 million. The City Council approved the lease-to-own deal Oct. 17.

Sempra Energy, SDG&Es corporate partner, moved last year to a new headquarters built by Cisterra near Petco Park.

In another pending deal, Manchester said he hopes to finalize by Dec. 29 the addition of an unnamed joint venture partner to help redevelop the Navy Broadway Complex at the foot of Broadway, on which Manchester holds a 99-year ground lease with the Navy.

His development consultant, Perry Dealy, said demolition of the vacant Navy warehouse and other buildings will begin in February, followed by a construction start later in 2017 on a new Navy regional headquarters paid for by Manchester.

The $1.2 billion, 2.9-million-square-foot Manchester Pacific Gateway development, which will include the Navy building, would add hotels, office buildings and retail space on the blocks bounded by Broadway, Harbor Drive and Pacific Highway.

Dealy said all legal challenges have been overcome.

Were excited about the benefits the project will give to the region and downtown, he said.

Environmentalists have tried to sidetrack the project since it was approved in 2006 and it remains unclear if new legal challenges will surface in coming weeks.

roger.showley@sduniontribune.com; (619) 293-1286; Twitter: @rogershowley
As pricey luxury hotels increasingly dominate Californias oceanfront and family-run budget motels fade away, the Coastal Commission frets that families of modest means will be deprived of an affordable overnight stay near the beach.

Holding its third workshop in two years on the vexing issue, California Coastal Commissioners this week struggled to coalesce around a plan to encourage, if not mandate, more low-cost lodging while stemming the loss of the few affordable options that remain. What was different this time, though, was the notion that short-term vacation rentals offered on platforms like Airbnb and VRBO should figure into the calculus of boosting affordable lodging on the coast.

While commission staff had framed half a dozen recommendations for addressing what it says is an acute shortage of reasonably priced accommodations, it was short-term rentals that drew the most attention from the public.

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Advocates of such rentals, which have proliferated across the country thanks to the huge popularity of Airbnb, pleaded with the commission to fight coastal towns that they say are increasingly outlawing rentals in residential neighborhoods. Meanwhile, residents in established neighborhoods have pressed their elected leaders to shut down what they say is a commercial use disrupting their once peaceful communities.

Just this week, the San Diego City Council rejected a proposed ban sought by Council President Sherri Lightner, who argued that vacation rental stays of under 30 days are already a prohibited in the citys single-family neighborhoods. The council majority and city planning staff disagreed.

Referencing San Diegos failed effort to outlaw Airbnb rentals, Coastal Commissioner Greg Cox urged the commission to weigh in on the increasingly contentious issues dogging short-term rental hosts and the neighborhoods where they operate.

I understand if someone buys a house next to you and constantly rents it out, it has impacts, said Cox, a San Diego County Supervisor. But there are ways jurisdictions can handle this, and I think the Coastal Commission has a role to play and to provide guidance.

In a lengthy report highlighting the challenges the commission has faced over the last several decades in prodding developers to help pay for or produce low-cost lodging like campgrounds, cabins and hostels, the staff raised the possibility of being more proactive in preserving short-term rentals, a hot-button issue up and down the coast.

They can increase public access to the coast, opening up a trip to the coast for many families that might not be otherwise able to afford more expensive hotel options, the staff report said. The Commission should continue to discourage bans and other broad prohibitions on vacation rentals, and it should continue to support local governments in developing reasonable and balanced regulations.

Commission staff has telegraphed more than once to the city of San Diego that any changes in its municipal code that would more strictly regulate short-term rentals would need the blessing of the commission.

The commission staffs belief that everyone deserves an affordable place to vacation on the coast has its roots in the early 1970s, when the precursor to the 1976 Coastal Act was being drafted. Written into the act was a specific section to protect, and, where feasible, provide lower-cost visitor facilities, which can include overnight lodging.

In the nearly 40 years since, the commission has had mixed success as pressure has grown to swap out aging motels and quaint inns with pricey ocean and bay-view resorts.

In public comments at the Thursday workshop and in letters sent to the commission, individuals pleaded with commissioners to take a stronger stance in heading off short-term rental bans. Beach cities like Santa Monica and Redondo and Hermosa Beach have increasingly cracked down on shorter duration vacation stays in residential neighborhoods.

Richard Matthews, representing the Monterey County Vacation Rental Alliance, said the county is making it more and more difficult for homeowners like himself to to rent out their properties for vacationers.

Ive rented my home on the Monterey coast for 40 years but Im now being threatened with being shut down by Monterey County, which interprets that short term rentals are prohibited, he told commissioners. That interpretation was not submitted to the Coastal Commission for review. We ask that the commission get involved and intervene with these jurisdictions.

Commissioners, who seemed taken aback by the publics single-minded focus on the vacation rental issue, agreed it deserved a separate, more robust discussion. It also agreed that yet another workshop that includes input from hotel operators and developers is needed to tackle the broader issue of affordable lodging.

Acting Executive John Ainsworth noted that the commission staff is currently drafting a white paper on short-term rentals.

If (local) ordinances do ban short term rentals, a local coastal plan amendment or coastal development permit is required but we face a huge challenge with many jurisdictions who dont think we have any business regulating short term rentals, Ainsworth advised the commission.

Vacation rentals been part of our tradition along the coast and have provided a real valuable resource for low cost visitor accommodations. Those in-room rentals and second units are very affordable in many cases.

lori.weisberg@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-2251

Twitter: @loriweisberg
Gang violence in Oceansides Eastside neighborhood that was beaten back years ago, in part by residents determined to take back their streets, has returned in recent months, threatening the progress the largely Latino community has made in improving the area.

A 15-year-old girl was killed in September at the neighborhoods signature park, one of three slayings in Eastside since June.

The murders have sounded the alarm in the community prompting neighborhood leaders, law enforcement and city officials to renew efforts to prevent future violence.

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Weve been down this road before, said Randall Godinet, former director of the Boys and Girls Club of Oceanside and one of many people worried that the neighborhood could plunge back into its dark past. We can do it again.

Gang violence plagued Oceanside in the 1990s, especially the Eastside neighborhood. Godinet said there were two dozen murders in the city in 1995 until community leaders brought rival gangs together for a truce.

The Sept. 3 shooting death of 15-year-old Annebell Flores at Balderrama Park has stoked old fears. Two suspected gang members, Daniel Ramos and Elias Ramos, were arrested charged last week in her murder and both have pleaded not guilty.

Though the slaying has shaken the neighborhood, police and residents agree that crime is not nearly as dire as it was 25 years ago

We belong to this community and weve seen some great strides. Do we have work to do? Yes, we have work to do, said police Capt. Tom Aguigui said. But I know that, being here almost 29 years, were moving in the right direction.

Joining in the call for action is Robert Espinoza, Annebells grandfather. He made an emotional plea for help to the City Council on Wednesday night, just hours after attending the arraignment of the two defendants.

We need programs for these kids who are 13, 14 years old. You guys have the power to do that, said Espinoza, whose family made Oceanside their home 41 years ago after he left the U.S. Marines.

These communities should have funding for programs available. I come to you as a grandfather and father asking for change and solutions, he said.

Espinoza has become involved in a community group called Save Our Streets that was formed to prevent violence nearly a decade ago, after Oceanside Police Officer Dan Bessant was shot to death by teenage gang members.

The group is led by Wayne Godinet, Randalls brother and a longtime community advocate, who said attendance at Save Our Streets meetings have increased since September, galvanized by Annebells death.

About two dozen people attended a recent meeting at the Joe Balderrama Recreation Center including council members Esther Sanchez and Jack Feller, the citys Neighborhood Services Director Margery Pierce, former Mayor Terry Johnson and members of Annebells family.

Ive never heard or felt the response that weve been getting now, Wayne Godinet said. Its an outcry. Its a plea and its at the point now that there needs to be a response Superficial rhetoric is not going to work.

One of the main pleas from the community was a need for more after-school programs in the neighborhood and longer hours at the recreation center, which is open weekdays 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Some of the centers programs were cut and city staff was laid off during the Great Recession, and only recently has the city started boosting funding for neighborhood programs.

Activists say if the recreation center had been open a little later, perhaps the girls death could have been prevented.

Police were called to the park around 2:30 a.m. Sept. 3 and found Annebell mortally wounded near the playground. She died before she could be taken to the hospital.

If we close our centers down at 5 or 6 oclock in the evening, then whos serving those kids? Randall Godinet asked. If our doors were open and she could walk in one of those doors and she could meet with somebody or talk to somebody or just sit there, one person could have made a difference that day.

Earlier this year, the City Council designated nearly $200,000 in its budget for afterschool and gang prevention programs, including $75,000 for Project Reach in Libby Lake, $60,000 for Project Reach in Eastside and $60,000 for North County Lifeline in Crown Heights.

Advocates say those programs are a good start but they can only serve a limited number of children. They would like to see partnerships between volunteer groups and the city to serve more children.

Pierce, the citys neighborhood services director, said shes willing to consider those proposals but they need to be fleshed out.

Im not afraid to push things forward but we need to have something concrete, Piece said. I need to understand what Im talking about. Who, what, when and how?

Wayne Godinet said there has been something of a disconnect between the community and City Hall, particularly since Concha Hernandez Greene, a longtime community advocate, became ill and died two years ago. She was part of a neighborhood coalition that organized marches and cleanup efforts in the 1990s aimed at reclaiming Balderrama Park, which was then overrun with gangs, drug pushers and prostitutes.

Greene, whose own son was murdered in 1996, understood the neighborhood and knew how to get attention from police and city officials.

Concha was a dominant physical force and a voice, Wayne Godinet said. She had no problem coming out to scold the homeboys. She was loud and proud. Someone like her is way missing. What we need is people that understand the plight of young boys and girls as they get peer pressure and start finding their identity.

He said the group is trying to fill that void by bringing voices from the community, including members of the Flores family, together with city and police officials to make things happen.

That seems to be paying off.

Annebells mother said during the Save Our Streets meeting that she wanted to install a memorial for her daughter, perhaps a bench, at Balderrama Park.

Pierce said the department would support the idea if the family submits a proposal.

edward.sifuentes@sduniontribune.com

@EdwardSifuentes
Five years after opera composer David T. Little graduated from high school in 1997, he came back to his New Jersey alma mater to speak at a career day. Mingling with his former classmates, he realized that while he was studying music in college, many of his fellow alumni were fighting wars and facing death in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Their experiences and those of U.S. veterans from three other wars became the inspiration of Littles Soldier Songs, which San Diego Opera presents in its West Coast premiere on Friday, Veterans Day, at the Balboa Theatre.

The 55-minute rock-infused opera looks at war from three perspectives: a young gun-obsessed boy, a fighting man in the heat of combat, and a veteran in his 60s looking back on the experience. All of the characters are played by baritone David Adam Moore with a live ensemble conducted by percussionist and longtime UCSD music professor Steven Schick, in his company debut.

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Little said Soldier Songs grew out of his own desire to learn more about the grim realities of war and to give these often-unsung heroes a voice.

I realized Id never thought about their experiences, and how can I know them if I didnt understand this very significant part of their lives? I had strong feelings against the war, but I needed to separate the war from the warrior, he said.

About the same time Little began pondering the subject, he won a prize commission to write a music piece for the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, a group that often incorporates theatrical elements into its performances.

Soldier Songs

When: 7 p.m. Nov. 11 and 12. 2 p.m. Nov. 13.

Where: San Diego Opera at the Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave., downtown.

Tickets: $20-$185

Phone: (619) 232-7636

Online: sdopera.org

As a musical theater lover whose parents met in a production of West Side Story, Little said he decided to use the opportunity to develop the work into a full-length operatic song cycle with scenery, costumes and projections.

Opera deals with large emotions and it deals in the contrast and tension between the text and the subtext, he said.

To create the 11 songs that make up Soldier Songs, Little interviewed his grandfather, who fought in World War II, his stepfather who worked in intelligence during the Cold War and his uncles who fought in Vietnam and Laos. He also interviewed his high school buddy (and fellow career day speaker) Justen Bennett , a field medic in the Iraq/Afghanistan wars after 9/11. Bennetts harrowing, hand-written description of running from falling bombs, which he calls steel rain, is sung in its entirety in Soldier Songs.

There are songs of wars carnage, war propaganda, soldiers bravado and coping mechanisms, as well as death. And there are songs written from Littles own perspective as a 6-year-old boy who played with G.I. Joe dolls, a teen who loved war video games and a man, who returns to his high school career day to find the hallway display case filled with photos of his old friends in military uniforms.

While gathering vets stories, Little said the one phrase he heard over and over was Ive never talked about this to anybody.

Soldier Songs begins with those words and ends with the phrase the closed mouth speaks, a plea for veterans to share their experiences as a way of healing. When Soldier Songs premiered in 2006, the medic Bennett came with family members who said afterward theyd never heard the stories hed shared for the opera.

Since its premiere, Soldier Songs has been produced 10 times in the U.S. and Europe and several future productions are planned.

Because of the dark nature of the piece, Little said most of the veterans he interviewed have never seen Soldier Songs because its too painful for them to relive those memories. Thats not a surprise to Tomer Zvulun, who is directing the San Diego Opera production. Zvulun spent three years in the Israeli army as a medic in an infantry battalion.

Im an ex-soldier and when I heard Soldier Songs for the first time; it spoke to me on a visceral level, Zvulun said. That part about soldiers not wanting to talk about their experience is a universal truth.

Zvulun first directed Soldier Songs last year at Atlanta Opera, where he is the artistic director and general manager.

There, he worked with Atlanta veterans to make the opera more relevant to the local community. Photos of Atlanta service members who died in war were shown before the shows and after each performance, a 30-minute public discussion was held to allow vets to share their own experiences.

For this production, San Diego Opera is working with three local veterans groups to include photos of soldiers and Marines who gave their lives, and discussions are planned after each of the three performances next weekend.

The second part was the critical part, Zvulun said. Through the performances, we earned the veterans trust to share their experiences. It allowed them to open up.

Bringing Soldier Songs to San Diego has long been a pet project for former state Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, who has served for many years on San Diego Operas board of directors.

Fletcher spent 10 years in the Marine Corps, serving in Iraq, Africa, Yemen and Central America. He also runs Three Wise Men, a veterans support group working to reduce the epidemic of suicides among veterans with post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Fletcher said Soldier Songs will not only encourage veterans to tell their stories, it will also help the 99 percent of Americans who have never served to better understand their sacrifices.

It will be a jolt, he said. Society needs to have a real understanding of the impact we make when send other people into harms way.

Soldier Songs is the first production of San Diego Operas new Shiley Detour Series, designed to do more adventurous and site-specific work that connects with the local community.

Zvulun applauds the effort. He said Atlanta Opera has had great success, both critical and financial, with a similar outreach effort over the past four years.

As part of this community outreach effort, San Diego Opera established a website (soldiersongs.sdopera.org) where veterans and family members have uploaded photos from World War II to Iraq and Afghanistan. There are links on that page where the public can buy tickets to the opera for needy local veterans.

In a partnership with KPBS, the opera will present Soldier Songs in its first-ever live opera telecast at 7 p.m. Saturday. The performance will be shown in San Diego on Cable 11, Cox 1011, Time Warner 15-1 and channel 15 (UHF digital channel 30).

David Bennett, San Diegos new general director, said tapping into the local veteran community to kick off the series was a natural: With San Diegos long military history, Soldier Songs seemed like a perfect place to begin.

pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com
As bitterly contentious as the current presidential campaign has been, it still doesnt quite match the kind of savage transfer of power on display in Shakespeares Julius Caesar.

A sharp dagger, after all, decides things with a bit more finality than even the most sharply divisive debate. (Just ask great Caesars ghost.)

And yet there are connections to be found between Caesar and our own political moment that make it an abundantly fitting play to stage on the eve of this election, says D.J. Hopkins, director of San Diego State Universitys School of Theatre, Television, and Film.

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And by virtue of bringing together an all-female cast, the schools production of the great tragedy is dovetailing with subjects that have loomed particularly large in the run-up to the vote.

The idea developed in discussions between Hopkins and director Delicia Turner Sonnenberg, co-founder and executive artistic chief of the woman-centered Moxie Theatre Co., which sits just a mile or two from the SDSU campus.

Hopkins and his SDSU colleagues initially had programmed Caesar in part out of a desire to honor the 400th anniversary of Shakespeares death this year.

It helped that its such an overtly political play, and one thats right for our divided times, says Hopkins. He adds that it was all the more exciting to me to program Caesar right before our presidential election.

Julius Caesar

When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays. 2 p.m. Sundays. Through Nov. 13.

Where: San Diego Stage University Experimental Theatre, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego.

Tickets: $15-$17

Phone: (619) 594-6884

Online: ttf.sdsu.edu

In discussing how to approach the work, Delicia and I immediately agreed that we couldnt do the play with only two women actors, Hopkins says.

The play only has two women characters, and a conventional actor-character casting for this play isnt interesting to Delicia or me. Thats not a view of the world that either of us sees.

It was Delicia, though, who proposed casting all the roles with women. Its a strong choice that highlights some of the assumptions that underlie this very masculine play, and heightens the relevance of our production in relation to this contentious election season.

From the start, Sonnenberg wanted to avoid conveying any sense that the cast members were somehow pretending not to be women.

I dont want them stereotyping male behavior, says Sonnenberg, who has become one of the top directors in town. I want them diving into juicy roles. Instead of Shakespeares all-male cast, we have an all-female cast, but essentially the job of the actors in both cases is the same  to tell the story of the fall of the Roman Republic.

Our gender conversations, when we have them, have more to do with physicality. I had them observe male movement, casual walking and gestures. D.J. arranged for a lieutenant colonel to come in and teach them stances, salutes, marches, turns, etc. It was very helpful because male and female soldiers walk, stand, march in the exact same way. It gave us a unifying physical vocabulary.

Hopkins is a Shakespeare scholar who has not worked directly on a production of Caesar before but has written about the play in his book City / Stage / Globe: Performance and Space in Shakespeares London.

He is particularly fascinated with how Shakespeare is interpreted for modern audiences, and how the Bards works jibe with contemporary concerns.

Once you hear Julius Caesar read by a cast of women, its impossible to miss the plays many comparisons between men and women, Hopkins says. Male and female characters alike continually refer to women as weak and cowardly, and the male characters are repeatedly told to avoid acting womanish.

By changing who tells the story, were subtly changing the meaning of the story. I find Delicias casting choice both a powerful critique and a reminder that popular thinking about women in government and society today is not so far removed from Shakespeares views or those of ancient Rome.

He adds that the gender disparities present in the societies the production depicts have become the explicit subject of the current presidential campaign, a development that we did not expect when we programmed this play. (That said, the show doesnt put too fine a point on modern parallels: Caesar doesnt wear a weird yellow wig, Hopkins notes.)

Sonnenberg agrees its important not to place too much emphasis on such connections, so as to give the audience some room to discover and decide for itself.

As a director, Ive learned (the hard way) that when working on a political play, its best to not beat the audience over the head with politics, she says.

This time around, I made choices that may resonate with the current election or not. They may raise questions about honor and power and which bodies get to seek that power  which bodies get to play great roles. Or maybe not.

Lately, Sonnenberg adds, shes been thinking about an interview that the former Supreme Court Justice David Souter gave in 2012.

Justice Souter said republican government wasnt threatened by foreign invasion or a military coup, but by civic ignorance, Sonnenberg recalls. (He said), What I worry about is, when problems are not addressed and the people do not know who is responsible, one person will come forward and say, give me total power and I will solve this problem. That is how the Roman Republic fell.

I hope one of the things that resonates is how important it is to be an informed citizen, lest we be easily moved from one side or the other with big personalities and great speeches.

Twitter: @jimhebert

jim.hebert@sduniontribune.com
New York real estate heir Robert Durst arrived in Los Angeles on Friday and will be arraigned next week on a murder charge in the 2000 slaying of his friend Susan Berman, the Los Angeles County district attorneys office said.

The arrival of Durst, who is scheduled to appear at the Airport Courthouse Monday afternoon, marks the latest chapter in a legal saga that was reinvigorated last year when the New York aristocrat was featured in the HBO documentary series The Jinx.

Durst, 73, had been due to be transferred to Southern California by Aug. 18 from a federal prison in Louisiana, where he had pleaded guilty to a weapons charge.

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Bob Durst didnt kill Susan Berman and he doesnt know who did, Dursts attorney, Dick DeGuerin, told The Times on Friday. Hes eager to get to trial to prove it.

DeGuerin said he expected a preliminary hearing in the case to take place in the spring and a trial later in 2017. Durst was booked into the Los Angeles Police Department jail at 1:20 p.m. Friday. His move from Louisiana was delayed this summer as federal prison authorities had at one point proposed moving him to an Indiana prison with more sophisticated medical facilities.

Durst has insisted he had nothing to do with Bermans fatal shooting.

The six-part HBO series explored the disappearance of Dursts first wife, Kathie, who went missing in New York in 1982, and the slaying of Berman, a writer who was found dead in her Benedict Canyon home in 2000. Police believe Durst killed Berman because she planned to speak to New York prosecutors about Kathies disappearance.

Among the evidence against Durst is a letter sent to Berman in 1999 that has handwriting strikingly similar to that on an anonymous note sent to Beverly Hills police at the time of Bermans killing, telling them that they would find a cadaver at Bermans house. In both samples, the writing is in all capital letters, and Beverly Hills is misspelled as Beverley Hills. In the final episode of the HBO documentary, Durst admitted he wrote the letter to Berman but denied writing the cadaver note.

In 2003, a Texas jury acquitted Durst even after he admitted killing his neighbor, Morris Black, chopping the body into pieces and then dumping the remains into Galveston Bay.

At the time, Durst was living in Galveston under an assumed identity as a mute woman in a threadbare apartment that rented for $300 a month. At the sensational trial, Dursts legal team, spearheaded by DeGuerin, laid out an elaborate argument of self-defense.

Morris Black died as a result of a life-and-death violent struggle over a gun that Morris Black had threatened Bob Durst with, DeGuerin told jurors.

Before the series finale of The Jinx, Durst disappeared from his Houston condo, prompting a manhunt that ended in New Orleans. Federal prosecutors filed a weapons case against him after FBI agents found a loaded revolver in his hotel room there.

Durst pleaded guilty to a weapons charge and was sentenced in April to seven years and one month in federal prison.

In a letter to a Times reporter, Durst wrote that he is eager to come to Los Angeles to defend himself.

Id rather be going to California on my own, but Im anxious to get to trial to prove I didnt kill Susan Berman, Durst wrote. You couldnt print what I think about The Jinx. I didnt kill Susan Berman, and I dont know who did.

richard.winton@latimes.com

Follow @lacrimes on Twitter

Times staff writer James Queally contributed to this report.

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UPDATES:

4:45 p.m.: The article was updated with additional details about Dursts transfer from a Louisiana prison, details about an HBO documentary and comments from Dursts attorney.

4 p.m.: This story was updated to reflect that Durst was booked into the LAPD jail at 1:20 p.m. Friday

This article was originally published at 3:45 p.m.
If going green in housing is one of your goals, the 2016 Green Homes Tour on Saturday, Nov. 12, will give you loads of ideas.

The one-day tour, sponsored by the San Diego Green Building Council, aims to celebrate best practices in green residential design and building. Tour goers have the opportunity to see a variety of green features in real-life settings and meet industry professionals.

This years tour includes 10 residential projects around the county, including a LEED Platinum-certified home in Ramona, homes in Jamul and Campo that feature straw bale construction, a Chula Vista lofts project that incorporated sustainability at all stages of development, and a green home remodel in Pacific Beach.

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Hours for the self-guided tour are 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tickets are $15, or $10 for SDGBC members; tickets for students are $5 (with ID) and children under 16 are admitted free. To learn more or purchase tickets, visit www.usgbc-sd.org.
Florida voting machine

Thanks to eBay there is never a shortage of weird things you can buy. And now, you can add voting machines to that list.

But this isn't just any ordinary voting machine. This one is a Votomatic machine from Florida that was used in the 2000 Bush vs. Gore election.

Those voting machines gained a lot of attention when voters complained that punch card voting was confusing and they were worried that their votes were being under-counted. In fact, voters in Palm Beach County, where it appears this voting machine is from, filed a lawsuit challenging the election results.

After that contentious election, the federal government outlawed punchcard voting machines, saying all jurisdictions have to replace them.

So if this year's election has you feeling nostalgic for a magical period when the political climate was kinder and gentler, you might be willing to shell out $2,400 for this voting machine as a reminder that it never really existed.

This machine comes complete with a photo of George W. Bush and unused punch cards.

The sale ends Saturday.

NOW WATCH: How the perfect body for men has changed over the last 150 years





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When Sally Ann Zolls son was getting ready for his deployment to Iraq with the U.S. Army Reserve, she suggested that her daughter-in-law video record him reading books for their 18-month-old son. With her background in elementary education and her husband having also previously served in the Army Reserve, it struck her as a good way to keep her son involved in her grandsons everyday life while he was away. Little did she know that a non-profit organization was created in 1989 doing that very thing.

Today, Zoll is CEO of that organization, United Through Reading, which uses video recordings of service members reading to help keep military families who are physically separated bonded through the act of reading aloud together.

The  program creates emotional connections between parents and their children, encourages early childhood literacy and a love of reading, and makes homecomings easier on both service member and child, she says. More than 80 percent of participants report that recordings are enjoyed every day or even several times a day. Its not unusual for children to watch a recorded story 250 times during a 10-month deployment.

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Zoll, 66, lives in Coronado with her husband, James, and they have two children and four grandchildren. She talks about how United Through Reading was started, why they focus on reading aloud and how the program has helped families.

Q: Where did the idea for this kind of service come from?

A: United Through Reading was founded in 1989 by the wife of a Naval flight surgeon who was deployed when their daughter was a baby. When her husband returned, their daughter didnt recognize him. She was also a reading specialist who continually saw children entering school at a disadvantage because they had little or no exposure at home to reading. Through these two experiences, a concept emerged.

Q: Why focus on reading aloud, as opposed to another activity?

A: We know that the read-aloud experience, or shared book reading, stimulates the oral language skills of children and the act of reading encourages the development of language and other emergent literacy skills, which in turn help children to prepare for school. Reading aloud with a parent helps to assist children in the area of vocabulary development and growth and familiarizes young children with the language found in books, especially in regard to the more sophisticated word choices that children are unlikely to encounter in every day conversation.

Q: How does the program work?

A: Typically, on arrival the service members sign in, are guided to select a book, and then are shown the recording space and given process information. In order to meet the needs of our beneficiaries, the program is delivered in several different ways. For some commands, we will arrange for pre-deployment sessions in which our own staff or command volunteers will record service members at their commands prior to deployment. In commands with space and resources available, we will deploy embedded with the command, staffed by command volunteers who will record service members on ships or bases worldwide. We also have permanent recording stations located at select USO sites, base libraries, chaplains offices, etc., around the world where service members are welcome to come in at any time and make a recording. We provide a wide selection of books and service members are also welcome to bring their own. Where possible, the books are sent home along with the video.

Staff or volunteers are available to start the camera and provide guidance on making the recordings. The service members are given privacy during the filming so that they will feel free to express themselves with comfort. The typical recording is about 10 minutes long, but that depends on the book selected and on the additional messages included by the service members.

What I love about Coronado ...

Coronado is reminiscent of my small hometown, Greenfield, Ind. We can walk or bike anywhere we need to go. Our children and grandchildren have freedom to explore the island due to its small size and compact layout. There is a great sense of community. It is my little hometown with great weather.

Q: How is what United Through Reading does different from someone using something like Skype or FaceTime?

A: Many families enter deployment thinking they may be able to take advantage of technologies that connect them in real time like Skype, FaceTime, or even a simple phone call. Often times, they are quickly disappointed. Children will sit in front of a computer, tablet, or cell phone and try to listen to their service member read to them only to find that the connection is unreliable. The call will drop out or freeze for a few seconds making it nearly impossible to follow along with the book. In other cases, the service member isnt available for long enough sit down for a full bedtime story, giving the family only a few seconds to say hello. With United Through Reading, families are guaranteed special and uninterrupted time with their service member that can be viewed over and over again (by receiving the videos in the mail). Having a video to pop in and watch on demand is reliable, repeatable and available.

Q: What age range is the program geared toward?

A: Toward children of any age who experience a deployment or separation from a service member they love. While the program is often utilized by service members with children of young ages (0-10 years old, and even in utero), the read aloud experience of a video has also shown extremely beneficial for older children (10 years plus) as well. One high school senior was thrilled when her father sent her his recording of Dr. Seuss Oh the Places Youll Go because he couldnt attend her graduation ceremony.

Q: How do these recordings help children? The parents?

A: Through these simple stories on video, children see their parents face, hear their voice, and follow along with the book. Children watch their videos day after day until they have memorized every word, every gesture, every happy ending. And as in many storybooks, magical things happen for these military kids: anxieties fade; they bond with their deployed parent; homecomings are less stressful as children are welcoming a parent home, not a stranger; and they learn to love books and reading. For the service member who is away, this makes them feel like they are part of the daily routines at home, they get to be a part of special occasions like birthdays and holidays by sending a special story home, and they are contributing to parenting responsibilities because spouses at home are supported as parenting is shared and these videos give the caregiver at home a break.

Q: What has the response to United Through Reading been from families?

A: Overwhelmingly positive. We hear on a regular basis from participant families who credit United Through Reading for keeping their families connected despite deployment, for teaching their children to love reading and books, for taking the stress out of both military separation and reunions, and from a handful of families even helping their children to overcome speech delays or reading difficulties.

Q: What is the best advice youve ever received?

A: Hire smart people and get out of their way. This advice has never ever failed me.

Q: What is one thing people would be surprised to find out about you?

A: In the summer following high school graduation, I worked at the rayon factory in my hometown. I worked on an assembly line putting folded childrens pajamas and T-shirts into plastic bags and running them under heat to seal the plastic. The windows in the factory were sealed shut and there was no air conditioning. It was a sweat shop in the true sense of the word. And I often resembled an I Love Lucy moment as the bags started to pile up and the conveyor belt kept moving causing serious frowns and frantic hand motions from the factory supervisor up on the catwalk.

Q: Describe your ideal San Diego weekend.

A: An ideal weekend is staying in Coronado and spending time with our children and grandchildren. There is nothing better than gathering together on our front porch or by the pool listening to the joyous laughter of our children and grandchildren at play. Pitch perfect. Of course, on a rainy day, delving into a delicious book with music in the background and my husband by my side can be pretty ideal too.

Email: lisa.deaderick@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @lisadeaderick
It was 2007, and Amore Stasilli remembers hearing talk among National Guard members in San Diego.

Call Master Sgt. Jaffe in Sacramento, the rumor went. See what she can do for you.

Today, Stasilli deeply regrets making that call.

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At the time, however, the then-first lieutenant jumped out of her chair in glee when she learned that the California National Guard agreed to repay her $24,000 college-loan debt.

Master Sgt. Toni Jaffe, the low-level administrator at the center of what has become a national scandal, approved the loan repayment after just a few emails and phone calls.

My understanding was that it was an incentive to stay in. To be totally forthright, that part was ambiguous, Stasilli said. At no time did I have to promise to do anything.

She and other California National Guard members have been handed bills to recoup re-enlistment bonuses and college loan payments that were fraudulently granted in the biggest scandal to rock the states citizen-soldier ranks in recent memory.

RELATED: The woman at the center of the scandal

The Pentagon now says 13,000 California Guard members are affected.

Those individuals fall into four categories:

In roughly 1,100 cases, troops received payments they werent entitled to get.

About 5,300 cases were examined and found to have something wrong with their files, but are considered fixable.

Approximately 4,000 contracts were deemed valid.

In some 3,200 cases, the troops have left the service and a determination of their repayment status still needs to be made.

A Pentagon spokeswoman said Friday that about 1,600 California Guard troops were referred to recoupment.

Of those, 900 had active cases before a Oct. 26 order by U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to temporarily suspend collections. For the rest, the troops either paid the money back or their appeals were granted.

Jaffe, who was in charge of the California Guards retention and bonus program, pleaded guilty in 2011 to improperly awarding at least $15.2 million in bonuses and loan repayments.

She served 30 months in jail, while a handful of officers were convicted but avoided any significant detention.

Its still unclear what Jaffes motive was in granting bad bonuses and loan deals from which she saw no personal financial gain.

For Stasilli, there was a rude awakening in 2010 when she got an official letter in the mail.

It said that I had received benefits that I wasnt entitled to, and Ill have to repay, Stasilli said. I was shocked and outraged. They never contacted me to get my side of the story.

The government eventually demanded more than $33,000, which was the amount of her school loans plus interest, fees and penalties. Because she balked, the Guard plunged her into tax-return garnishment. Her credit score went from the high 700s to the 500s, she said.

Several California National Guard troops said the Pentagons temporary suspension of collection efforts isnt enough.

Theyd like to see Congress or the Pentagon release them from repayment responsibility without going through whats reported to be a labyrinthine appeals process  a process that Carter has pledged to streamline by January.

After all the crap theyve put us through, and hardship and mud theyve dragged us though, they can just forgive it, Stasilli said.

She thinks the public would agree.

When you consider all the things that are forgiven at the corporate levels in this country, I think thats something that even taxpayers would vote for, said Stasilli, a former intelligence officer.

She added: Id rather be thrown on the mercy of the voters than the federal government.

The lead plaintiff in a possible California National Guard class-action lawsuit voiced a similar sentiment.

Ash Carters statement is no remedy, said Bryan Strother, a Cal Guard sergeant from Oroville who was ordered to repay $15,000 in re-enlistment bonus money and $5,000 in college loans. Filed in February, the lawsuit  brought by Michigan attorney Daniel Willman, Strothers friend who took the case pro bono  seeks to have the government waive the debts.

A federal lawyer has filed for dismissal, arguing that Strothers appeal was granted in August. Willman said a judge will is expected to rule in January.

Prior to the lawsuit, Strother said, When I first started talking about this, no one would talk to me at the National Guard Bureau.

Stasillii has her own battle scars from trying to appeal the $30,000 repayment order that went to collections.

Her state contacts helped her file a federal appeal, telling her that was the route to take. The 2014 rejection letter cites her failure to file a state appeal first.

Its been like a ping-pong ball, back and forth, Stasilli said. This has been ongoing for six years.

In an interesting footnote, the former officer eventually got a detailed, written answer from the Guard about why her loan repayment wasnt allowed.

She was astounded.

It was a pretty egregious breach of things that were considered in the eligibility criteria. I was really far off, she said.

If I had any idea, I wouldnt even have called (Jaffe). But nobody knew. It was all word of mouth.

jen.steele@sduniontribune.com

Facebook: U-T Military

Twitter: @jensteeley
The woman at the heart of the National Guard bonus scandal remains something of a mystery  even as some Guard veterans said she deserves a break after being scapegoated for a $15 million fraud.

Retired Master Sgt. Toni Jaffe pleaded guilty in 2011 to defrauding the government by wrongly approving re-enlistment bonuses and college loan repayments for thousands of California citizen-soldiers between 2007 and 2009.

The issue resurfaced this month when news broke that the government was forcing roughly 10,000 troops to repay amounts as high as $20,000  garnishing wages, destroying credit ratings and forcing some people to refinance homes to settle their debts.

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Most of these soldiers didnt know the money they received was doled out illegally.

Whats puzzling in this saga is why Jaffe, a career Guard member who lived in a modest Sacramento suburb and had been the California Guards state bonus and incentive manager since 1996, went off the rails in the latter half of the 2000s.

RELATED: National Guard soldiers seek to waive repayments

Even the U.S. Attorneys Office acknowledged in Jaffes plea bargain that she received no personal financial gain, other than token gifts, by green-lighting the unjustified bonuses.

At her May 2012 sentencing hearing, Jaffes lawyer told the judge: Why would Ms. Jaffe do what she did? When I asked her why ... she said she wanted friends.

But several Guard veterans who have closely followed the case said they dont believe it. They said she was under intense pressure from above to approve bonuses at a time when the Guard was awash with cash to increase enlistment, and that officials above her needed to provide boots on the ground for unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jaffe served a 30-month federal sentence.

A handful of officers enmeshed in the fraud also received convictions, but the master sergeant is the only person who served any significant jail time.

A longer list of headquarters officers were removed from their jobs, but most were allowed to retire with their pensions, according to reporting by the Sacramento Bee in 2013.

Toni Jaffe has 10,000 friends? No. Nobody knows who she is outside of joint forces headquarters in Sacramento, said Bajun Mavalwalla, who created a Facebook page called Pardon Master Sergeant Toni Jaffe.

Mavalwalla, a retired California Guard officer who now lives in Denmark, said he isnt friends with Jaffe and isnt in contact with her. He dealt with her while a Guard recruiter for seven years.

He called Jaffe the perfect patsy because she was a non-commissioned officer working in the headquarters office and dependent on those above for career stability.

The only thing I could think of that could make this right is to pardon her, Malvalwalla said in a telephone interview from Denmark.

I think she belongs in jail, but not alone. And uneven justice is not justice.

Hes not alone.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee launched an investigation last month, and an official said they want to see more National Guard officials held accountable.

A staffer said, Were not only interested in accountability for those who engaged in criminal activity, but also those who oversaw the program.

The lead plaintiff in a potential class-action lawsuit on behalf of California Guard troops said he is sympathetic to Jaffe.

It was really sad she was the only fall guy for this, said Bryan Strother, whose attorney filed a lawsuit in February to protest the $20,000 repayment the Guard was demanding.

She was doing what she was told. They were looking to keep retention up.

Jaffe served her sentence and was released in October 2014, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The last facility she was held in was in Waseca, Minn., a low-security federal site for female offenders.

Officially, she owes restitution for the $15.2 million in fraudulent bonuses and loan repayments that she approved.

Shes kept a low profile since being released. She still owns a house in Citrus Heights, outside Sacramento, with her husband, according to property records. A call there wasnt returned.

People who were friends with her on Facebook said she closed her account. No photos of her are circulating on the Internet.

Jaffe was disgruntled about her plight back in 2010, when she gave a rare comment to the Sacramento Bee.

They are still trying to blame me for s--- I didnt do, she told the newspaper. I wish I never joined the Guard. I regret it, and I hate the Guard.

On the other hand, emails cited in her plea deal indicate that the master sergeant had an inkling that her paperwork wasnt strictly by-the-book.

After approving a $20,000 retention bonus for a Guard captain in January 2009, Jaffe emailed him, saying, Please dont say anything to anyone on this, according to her plea agreement.

The captain, who wasnt eligible for the critical skills retention bonus, emailed back: Toni, I owe you. Whenever you want to cash in on that token, let me know.

jen.steele@sduniontribune.com

Facebook: U-T Military

Twitter: @jensteeley
A few high-tech titans have created what could be likened to a mini version of the XPRIZE that rewards visionary innovators able to resolve seemingly unsolvable problems.

The Breakthrough Junior Challenge, backed by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his entrepreneur wife Priscilla Chan, and Russian internet mogul Yuri (and Julia) Milner, rewards innovative approaches to understanding a concept or theory in the life and physical sciences.

The grand prize is $400,000, and a San Diego teen is in the running.

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From about 6,000 entries from students age 13-18 living in 148 countries, Anne Berry, 16, a Solana Beach junior at Canyon Crest Academy, was named one of 30 global semi-finalists (12 are from the United States) in this years competition.

She is blown away, said her mom, Julie. She is really proud and happy to represent her school. Julie added that, during the judging, her daughter was interviewed by an engineering director from NASA about her Breakthrough Challenge topic: explaining the relationship between space and time.

If Berry wins in December, she will receive a $250,000 scholarship; her school will get a $100,000 science lab, and the chemistry teacher who inspired her to enter will be given $50,000. Not bad for someone barely old enough to legally apply for a job.

The budding scientists each created a video presentation illustrating their concept. These are posted online at: facebook.com/BreakthroughPrize/videos/ as well as on YouTube.

As with many competitions, social media play a role. The viewers favorite (voting ends on Nov. 9) will automatically become a finalist.

The winner will then be determined by a panel that includes Pulitzer Prize recipient Siddhartha Mukherjee, author Lucy Hawking (the daughter of renowned physicist Stephen Hawking), former astronaut Mae Jemison, past winners, and others.

Whatever the Breakthrough Junior Challenge outcome, Julie said the interviewer from NASA encouraged Anne to do her next video about black holes.

Ben Clay, in the white hat, and Nikki Clay, in red sweater, join in the Nov. 3 ribbon-cutting for San Diego States new Clay Gateway entrance. Behind them is the center median tower. (Eduardo Contreras/UT )

Costly honor: The new gateway to San Diego State University at Montezuma Road and Campanile Drive is called the Clay Gateway.

The name has nothing to do with the composition of the 25-foot tower, but rather Nikki and Ben Clay, longtime university supporters to whom the entrance is dedicated.

As fate had it, Thursdays official campus ribbon-cutting, officiated by SDSU President Elliot Hirshman overlapped with the Clays weekly Rotary Club meeting.

So the couple couldnt be there to protest when their Rotary Club 33 President John Morrell levied the customary $500 fine for members basking in the public spotlight  but its all in the name of another good cause.

diane.bell@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1518

Twitter: dianebellSD

Facebook: dianebell.news
A Mexican businessman convicted of illegally funneling campaign contributions in the 2012 San Diego mayors race wants a new lawyer, a move that will postpone the final phase of the high-profile case.

A federal court jury convicted Jose Susumo Azano Matsura on Sept. 9 of 36 charges including conspiracy to make political contributions by a foreign national, falsifying records and making contributions in other peoples names. The jury could not reach a verdict on a charge that he unlawfully possessed a firearm.

He was set to be sentenced on Dec. 12. But at a hearing Friday, San Diego lawyer Edward Norton said Azano wanted to replace Michael Wynne, the attorney who represented him during the nearly six-week trial this past summer, with another lawyer.

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The new attorney will have to get up to speed to file what are expected to be several post-trial motions and get prepared for a sentencing hearing if those motions fail.

That means the original sentencing date will be put off, likely several weeks. Judge Michael Anello scheduled a status hearing in two weeks, when new dates for motions and the sentencing for Azano and his son, Edward, will be set.

The jury convicted Azanos son of the conspiracy charge but deadlocked on six falsifying records charges. Campaign consultant Ravneet Singh was convicted of four charges of conspiracy and falsifying records. A fourth defendant, Marco Polo Cortes, was acquitted of four charges, and the jury deadlocked on three others, including the main conspiracy charge.

Federal prosecutors have not said publicly if they plan to retry Cortes and Singh on the charges the jury did not reach a verdict on. Meanwhile, Singhs lawyer said Friday he wants to go forward with his sentencing set for Dec. 19.

The case centered on more than $500,000 in contributions and campaign services that prosecutors said Azano funneled into the mayoral campaigns of first District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and later Rep. Bob Filner in 2012. Filner eventually won the mayors job but resigned amid a sexual harassment scandal.

Azano is a Mexican citizen and it is illegal for foreign nationals to contribute to U.S. elections.

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San Diego Rep. Juan Vargas said a 2012 dinner he had in a downtown San Diego restaurant with a Mexican billionaire at the center of an illegal campaign finance scandal was about Sempra Energy.

Twitter: @gregmoran

greg.moran@sduniontribune.com
CalGang, a statewide database law enforcement agencies use to share information about suspected gang members, has been around for more than a decade, but how its operated and maintained has mostly been walled off from the public.

Assemblywoman Shirley Weber has been working to change that, and some of her efforts have recently paid off.

Last year, the San Diego Democrat requested an audit of the database, which contains names, addresses and other personal information about people believed to be either gang members or affiliates. As of a year ago, it had the names of 150,000 people, including about 6,000 from San Diego County. The average length of time they had been in the database was 5 years.

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Unless the suspected gangster was a juvenile, law enforcement agencies didnt have to notify people if their names were in the system.

According to state authorities, such information was available on a right-to-know and need-to-know basis, meaning it could only be accessed by law enforcement personnel for legitimate purposes. Being identified as an active gang member can increase the punishment a person faces if convicted of a crime that a judge or jury concludes is gang-related.

The audit Weber sought was released in August, and it revealed that the CalGang system may be rife with errors, including hundreds of people whose names should have been purged from the system but were not. One particularly jarring finding was that more than 40 people included in the data reviewed had birth dates showing they were less than a year old when their names were added to the database.

In September, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Webers bill requiring law enforcement agencies to notify people when their names are added to CalGang, unless providing that information would compromise an active criminal investigation. The bill also made it easier for those whose information is in the database to request to have it removed.

Some defense lawyers and community activists whove long questioned how police identify and document suspected gang members might score those developments as victories in an ongoing push for more transparency.

Weber calls them a first step.

We will look to see whether the agencies are embracing the report and working to make changes, she said.

State Assemblywoman Shirley Weber addresses her supporters at the San Diego County Democratic Party Headquarters. (Misael Virgen / San Diego Union-Tribune )

Making sure changes happen

Weber said members of her staff have taken part in workshops and meetings with law enforcement representatives since the audit was released, but she has yet to meet directly with members of the San Diego Police Department, which oversees the regional database for San Diego and Imperial counties.

I think (collecting) data is good, but data like anything else can be dangerous if used inappropriately, she said. It is information that can have some devastating effects on peoples lives.

CalGang is designed to target members and associates of criminal street gangs  as defined by state law  as well as keep track of names, physical descriptions, tattoos, vehicles, field interviews and criminal histories.

Agencies use CalGang, which is funded by the state, to share information and collaborate when investigating and prosecuting gang crimes. Records in the database are supposed to refer to documents outside the system that police can use to support an arrest or request for a search warrant.

Although the audit did not focus on San Diego County law enforcement agencies, it notes that the San Diego Police Department is responsible for training and overseeing CalGang users in the region, which can include other local police and sheriffs departments, probation and district attorneys offices.

The San Diego County Sheriffs Department and District Attorneys Office, declined to be interviewed for this story, referring questions about CalGang to San Diego police authorities.

San Diego police declined interview requests and did not respond to a list of questions submitted by email, referring instead to information posted on the departments website. According to the site, police are bound by law and policy to maintain the confidentiality of gang intelligence records.

Lt. Scott Wahl, a police spokesman, said in an email that the departments gang unit did not have to remove or update any entries as a result of the state audit.

The review confirmed the system is working correctly and purging information in accordance with state guidelines and federal law, Wahl said.

Finding flaws in CalGang database

Auditors reviewed information in the CalGang database from four law enforcement agencies: the Los Angeles Police Department, Santa Ana Police Department, Santa Clara County Sheriffs Office and Sonoma County Sheriffs Office.

The resulting report criticized CalGang for its weak leadership structure  its executive board is made up of law enforcement representatives from 15 participating agencies, including San Diego  and said it had not done enough to make sure information entered into the database was accurate and appropriate.

This report concluded that CalGangs current oversight structure does not ensure that law enforcement agencies collect and maintain criminal intelligence in a manner that preserves individuals privacy rights, wrote state auditor Elaine Howle in a letter to the governor and Legislature.

Howle noted several instances in which the four agencies could not substantiate the CalGang entries they had made. Specifically, they failed to provide enough support for 13 of 100 people reviewed in the database, and 131 of 563 of the CalGang criteria entries that were examined.

The audit also found some agencies had failed to comply with a 2014 state law that requires law enforcement to notify parents or guardians before entering information about juveniles in the database. Auditors reviewed 129 juvenile records from two agencies, 70 percent of which had been added to the database without proper notification, according to the report.

Brian Watkins, a San Diego defense lawyer, said hes seen many situations in which people had been identified as gang members as children or teens, and were unaware their names were listed in the CalGang database until it came up much later, long after they had left any gang activity behind.

I recognize the problem with gangs and the need to police them, but is this the best way to do it? I dont know, Watkins said. Currently, the answer is no.

The audit also uncovered evidence that some CalGang data had been used for purposes other than law enforcement. According to the report, at least four appellate cases referenced expert opinions based on CalGang information and three agencies confirmed they use the database for employment screenings.

Although these practices do not appear to be common place, they emphasize the effect CalGang can have on a persons life, Howle wrote.

The auditors recommended the state Department of Justice take responsibility for administering and overseeing CalGang and requiring periodic reviews of its records.

The department agreed with that recommendation, although representatives said in a letter that it would need additional funding and resources  as well as a vote from the Legislature  in order to take over the task.

Webers bill requires any law enforcement agency that uses CalGang to submit an annual report to the Department of Justice, containing information about the number of people included in the database, the number of requests for removal from the database over the previous year and the number of people who were removed automatically.

The reports will be posted on a website starting in February 2018.

dana.littlefield@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @danalittlefield
District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis announced Friday that her office has concluded its review of three officer-involved shootings and determined in each that the shootings were justified.

In keeping with protocol announced earlier this year, Dumanis released video clips and still photos related to two of three incidents in San Diego County within the past two years. The recordings were taken from surveillance cameras, body-worn cameras, cameras mounted on a police helicopter and a dashboard camera.

With context, video evidence can aid the public in understanding why and how an officer-involved shooting occurred and build a public trust in law enforcement, Dumanis said.

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In one of the shootings, family members of a 55-year-old Vista man who was shot by law enforcement authorities in North County last year asked that the video not be released to the public. Dumanis said the man suffered from mental health issues and had methamphetamine in his system when he was killed.

A familys wishes are not the sole factor in determining whether to release video in an officer-involved shooting, the district attorney said, but she does take that into consideration.

The law gives law enforcement officers the same self-defense rights as any member of the public, but they also have additional rights because of the nature of their jobs.

Peace officers may use deadly force in the course of their duties under circumstances not available to members of the public, Dumanis said. The law further recognizes that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments in circumstances that are tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving.

Dumanis said her office will only release video that is relevant to the legal analysis used to determine whether the officers involved bear any criminal liability for the shootings. In other words, she said, the video shows what happened in the minutes  or moments  leading up to the shooting.

In the most recent incident, on May 11, four San Diego police officers opened fire on Thongsoune Vilaysane, 30, killing him as he backed a stolen car toward two officers at the end of a pursuit through Encanto, police said.

The officers were watching a house where drug activity had been reported. It was about 9:30 p.m. when they saw an Acura drive away and followed it. They discovered that the car had been stolen in Carlsbad and went on a short pursuit. The driver crashed into a parked car on Pagel Place and officers surrounded him, police said.

Instead of obeying orders to get out of the car, Vilaysane put the vehicle in reverse and nearly hit two officers. Four of them fired a barrage of rounds, killing Vilaysane.

In a letter to San Diego Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman, Dumanis said that by reversing in the direction of the officers, (Vilaysane) transformed the vehicle in to a weapon, and that the video shows the car coming within a few feet of at least one of them.

The second shooting occurred on Aug. 4, 2015, when Daniel Robert Avila, 55, of Vista, was fatally shot by three Orange County sheriffs deputies and two Border Patrol agents.

One of the deputies came across Avila on Las Pulgas Road at Interstate 5, near Camp Pendleton, about 12:30 p.m. Avila was said to be acting strangely and threatened to kill a deputy and himself, San Diego County sheriffs investigators said.

The deputy took cover at his car and talked to Avila for an hour. After other deputies and the Border Patrol agents got there, Avila got out of his car. Authorities said his right hand was wrapped in a black shirt when he raised his arm toward the deputies.

One deputy fired a less-lethal type round at Avila, hitting him in the abdomen. When he pointed his hand at the law officers again, he was shot several times by the deputies and agents using regular ammunition, authorities said. Avila had no weapons on him or in his car.

Dumanis concluded in her letter to the Orange County Sheriffs Department that the deputies reasonably believed Avila had a firearm and they need to act immediately to avoid being killed or seriously injured.

San Diego County Sheriffs Department officer-involved shooting on April 8, 2014.

In the third incident, La Mesa resident Allan David Riley, 55, survived being shot once in the abdomen by a San Diego County sheriffs deputy on April 8, 2014, in La Mesa.

Sheriffs investigators said deputies and La Mesa police were working a special anti-crime operation. Two deputies stopped to talk to Riley at a Jackson Drive gas station shortly after 9 a.m. A computer check showed a felony arrest warrant associated with the false name Riley first gave them.

Riley was reported to have resisted arrest and got into a struggle with one deputy. He pulled out a nine-inch hunting knife and stabbed the deputy in the leg. The deputys partner shot Riley in the abdomen.

Riley was convicted this week of felony charges including assault with a deadly weapon. He faces up to 38 years and four months at a sentencing hearing set for Dec. 9 in San Diego Superior Court.

dana.littlefield@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @danalittlefield
A drunken driver who caused a fatal head-on collision when he swerved into oncoming traffic on a Poway highway was sentenced Friday to 11 years and eight months in prison.

Roy Dunkin, 51, of Ramona pleaded guilty to gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and DUI causing injury, with allegations that he injured more than one person in the crash.

Lucas Makana Riley, 24, was driving a Mini Cooper when it was struck by the defendants GMC Denali HD pickup. Riley died at the scene.

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At the end of a lengthy hearing in San Diego Superior Court, Judge Laura Halgren sentenced Dunkin to the maximum term available under the law. Hell serve half of his total sentence.

Deputy District Attorney Cally Bright, who has prosecuted fatal DUI cases for a decade, said this was one of the most difficult sentencing hearings she had attended.

Bright said there were 260 pages of victim impact statements submitted by Rileys family, friends and supporters, easily twice what she had seen in other cases.

The letters and the statements in court by the family were so heart wrenching and so heartfelt, and their devastation so pure, that really Im pleased that the judge gave this defendant the maximum amount of the time that she could based on the circumstances of this crash, Bright said.

The crash happened about 7 p.m. on Aug. 20 on state Route 67 just south of Cloudy Moon Drive.

Dunkin had been at his granddaughters first birthday party earlier in the day, where he drank alcohol, the prosecutor said. He admitted later that he had consumed three to four beers.

After he left the party and was driving home, Dunkin ran a red light, then veered into the southbound traffic lanes while heading north on the highway. He struck a Buick sedan, sending it spinning, and then moments later ran head on into Rileys Mini Cooper.

The much smaller car burst into flames.

The family of Lucas Makana Riley, 24, who was killed by a drunken driver, meet with the news media after the driver was sentenced. From left are his brother, Cory Riley, and parents Tami and Mark Riley. (Dana Littlefield / San Diego Union-Tribune )

He literally had no chance, Bright said, noting that Riley was trapped inside the car.

The prosecutor said Dunkins blood-alcohol content was 0.16 to 0.18 percent at the time he was driving, at least twice the limit for drivers in California.

After the hearing, Rileys father called drunken driving and the existing laws in place to punish that conduct a cultural problem. He said what happened to his son was not an accident.

These are willful incidents, said Mark Riley, who traveled to San Diego from Hawaii. Unfortunately, they keep happening.

Riley, who stood with his wife, Tami, and 29-year-old son, Cory, said everyone in society needs to take a role in deterring this type of behavior.

Referring to Dunkin, the father said: We hope and pray that this mans future is different from his past.

dana.littlefield@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @danalittlefield
A federal judge on Friday denied a request by protesters and the NAACP to ban law enforcement from arresting people who continue to gather at the spot where Alfred Olango was fatally shot by an El Cajon police officer.

U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino said in her ruling that there was not a legal basis to grant an injunction against law enforcement in this case. However, she said she recognizes that the circumstances underlying the protesters request have provoked genuine concern on behalf of all those involved.

The San Diego branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, along with 11 protesters and three children, pointed to two instances when law enforcement broke up protests at the shooting site in the Broadway Village Shopping Center by declaring the gatherings unlawful assemblies. Sheriffs deputies in riot gear descended on the crowd, and people who ignored the order to disband were arrested.

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They contend law enforcement violated the protesters civil rights.

El Cajon police said that at one protest someone was overheard threatening to return with a gun after a fight had broken out, and at the second, motorists were being stopped in the street and one vehicles tires were slashed.

The judge noted that protesters were allowed to gather at the shopping center several other times without being ousted by police.

Accordingly, across a span of approximately fifteen days, the Court is left with only two, sharply disputed accounts of gatherings each declared an unlawful assembly, Sammartino wrote. Such a showing does not satisfy Plaintiffs burden to show a likelihood of substantial and immediate irreparable injury.

The protesters also asked the judge to prevent trespassing arrests in the future. Sammartino denied that request, stating protesters have not shown a persistent pattern of police incorrectly applying the state trespassing law.

Bryan Pease, attorney for the NAACP and protesters, said Friday: The ruling explicitly withheld deciding the merits of our case for now, and instead found that there was not enough evidence that the actions of police will be repeated. However, there have been additional incidents since the ruling that show the police misconduct is continuing and ongoing.

Olango, who was black, was killed Sept. 27 after police said he took a shooting stance and aimed an object at the officer, who shot him. The object was a vaping device.

El Cajon Shooting On Now Dumanis rules El Cajon police shooting of Alfred Olango justified 2:09 On Now Justice for Alfred Olango 1:33 On Now Video: Protests in the weeks following Olango shooting 1:43 On Now El Cajon City Council Meeting 10.11.2016 1:49 On Now Protest still present after El Cajon Shooting 2:49 On Now Video: Faith leaders, demonstrators rally in El Cajon 3:32 On Now Video: Rally after El Cajon shooting 1:45 On Now Video: Prayer vigil draws crowd in El Cajon 1:12 On Now RAW: Full video of Alfred Olango officer involved shooting 1:46 On Now Angry crowd grows after man is shot by police in El Cajon 1:15

kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @kristinadavis
Amid the anguish of losing his son, Nicolas, in a terrorist attack last summer, Conrad Leslie sees one spark of hope: the ideals of tolerance and cooperation that guided the bright and outgoing boy wont end with his life.

Nicolas Leslie, a 20-year-old UC Berkeley student from Del Mar, was one of 84 people killed in the French city of Nice on July 14 when Tunisian national Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drove a box truck through a promenade filled with people celebrating Bastille Day. The attacker was killed in a shootout with police.

Since Leslies death, his parents, Conrad and Paola, have been working with UC Berkeley to create a scholarship in their sons honor that will help other students study abroad. While their loss could have hardened them against such programs, Conrad Leslie said it left them convinced of the need for cultural exchange and international dialogue.

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The funds title, Victory of the People, comes from the Greek meaning of the name Nicolas, and describes their philosophy in encouraging foreign study.

You cant let fear win, Conrad Leslie said.

How do we expect our children to change the world, if we dont let them out of the house? he asked. When you have positive people travelling, students intermingling with other people, then theres sharing of ideas.

The scholarship effort has raised $9,000 so far, and is aiming for $50,000 to create a permanent endowment that will aid Berkeley students with tuition and living expenses abroad.

A Torrey Pines High School graduate, the younger Leslie entered Berkeley with a major in environmental sciences. There he joined Net Impact Berkeley, a business consulting club focused on sustainable innovation. After two years of environmental studies, he switched to a business major, convinced he could have a bigger impact in that realm.

He told me, I dont want to be the person gathering the data. I want to build the company, run it. If I go into business and do something environmental I can change the world. I can create opportunities for other people, his father said.

Leslie took a step toward that goal last summer when he enrolled in the European Innovation Academy in Nice, where students from around the world worked together to learn entrepreneurship. He pitched a device to detect lactic acid buildup in athletes, and his startup proposal was funded for six months, Conrad Leslie said.

His parents were confident in his ability to navigate life abroad. A dual citizen of his mothers native Italy and raised in Del Mar, Nicolas Leslie travelled globally, spoke three languages and mingled easily with people of diverse backgrounds.

He had Spanish, Cuban, Jamaican, Italian blood in him, Conrad Leslie said. It was like the United Nations. He brought everybody together.

Leslie quickly befriended students from the program, coaxing some shy or studious classmates out of their shells. He had joined them for the French independence celebration, Bastille Day, when the truck barreled through the plaza.

His father rejects the notion that his son was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He had this clear path to success, Conrad Leslie said. Even though some people say he was really unlucky that last day, I say he was lucky. He was where he was supposed to be. He was going somewhere. And he didnt do anything wrong. He was just a young kid enjoying life.

What was wrong, his father said, was the violence of another young man, radicalized by notions of hate and enmity as potent as Nicolas dreams of peace and inclusion. Even as Conrad Leslie recalls the attack with grief and disgust, he cant help but imagine that the attacker was, at one time, not unlike his son, and that perhaps the right influence might have steered him away from that crowded plaza.

Why did this guy turn to terrorism, Conrad Leslie asks himself. He wasnt a religious person. He was just somebody that was enamored of the ideology. And unfortunately, it was the opposite ideology of my son. My son was like, lets all get along, lets be friends, lets collaborate. If he would have met Nicolas right then, (Nicolas) would have said, theres no God in the world that wants you to kill innocent people.

The nightmare that Leslies parents have experienced contrasts with the familys previously idyllic life in Del Mar. Paola, a stay-at-home mom, devoted herself to her son, bringing him hot lunches at elementary school. Father and son were best friends, and spent countless days sharing their love of the ocean.

I taught him how to surf when he was in kindergarten, how to snowboard, how to dive, how to spearfish, Conrad Leslie said. And I saw him get better than me.

Those memories shine a light when grief threatens to consume them.

The first thing that happens in the morning is, you wake up, you open your eyes, and you get this message in your head Nick is dead, and it just crushes you, he said.

He and Paola take solace in the kindness of others who mourn their sons loss. Friends have held benefits in his name. Former teachers are creating a sitting room in Nicolas honor at Del Mar Heights Elementary School.

Political leaders of both stripes have lent a hand or a sympathetic ear. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista helped coordinate with other government agencies when the couple learned their son had died. President Barack Obama called with condolences, sharing his own thoughts as a father. Months later, people still leave anonymous gifts and flowers at their home.

Nobody could really understand, how do you move on, how do you keep walking on this Earth, when you lose your son, Conrad Leslie said. But we do believe that Nicolas has a message. And hes still alive through these wonderful things that people are doing.

deborah.brennan@sduniontribune.com Twitter@deborahsbrennan
The Arctic is on course to be ice-free during summers by 2045, and the average American is contributing mightily to the rapid melting, a new study says.

The study recently was published in Science, the peer-reviewed journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It finds that Americans are among the worst offenders when it comes to annual carbon emissions, which are linked to rapidly melting Arctic sea ice.

Sea ice is frozen ocean water that melts each summer, then refreezes each winter. Its summertime area has been shrinking each year by nearly 34,000 square miles, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

According to Science:

The jet fuel you burned on that flight from New York City to London? Say goodbye to 1 square meter of Arctic sea ice.

The average American emits about 20 tons of carbon dioxide a year, which causes a whopping 600 square feet of Arctic sea ice to melt away, according to USA Today.

Residents of Australia, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan and Oman also release carbon emissions that are similar to those of Americans.

The study says every metric ton of carbon dioxide thats released into the atmosphere appears to cost the Arctic another 3 square meters of summer sea ice. According to Science:

If both the linear relationship and current emission trends hold into the future, the study suggests the Arctic will be ice-free by 2045  far sooner than some climate models predict. The study suggests that those models are underestimating how warm the Arctic has already become and how fast that melting will proceed.

Shrinking Arctic sea ice puts many animal species at risk, including polar bears. Its also been linked to the persistent drought in California and recent big snowstorms along the East Coast, study lead author Dirk Notz of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology tells USA Today.

The Paris Agreement on climate change, which went into effect Friday, sets an international target of 2 degrees Celsius of global warming. According to the study, thats not enough to save Arctic summer sea ice from completely disappearing.

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Have you taken steps to reduce your carbon footprint? Share your thoughts below or on Facebook.

This article was originally published on MoneyTalksNews.com as 'You Cause 600 Square Feet of Arctic Ice to Melt Each Year'.

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A former Southwestern College governing board member cant seem to comply with campaign finance laws.

A trustee for four terms, Terri Valladolid is being fined $9,000 by the state Fair Political Practices Commission for breaking the same campaign laws she was found guilty of violating on three other occasions.

Valladolid, 69, left the board in 2014.

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She is charged with three counts of failing to file semiannual campaign statements in the time allowed, and one count of failing to pay annual committee fees on time.

Campaign statements disclose the contributions made to a candidate and how the money is spent.

Valladolid has previously been fined for not filing as required a total of 14 semiannual campaign statements between 2007 and 2014. Those penalties totaled $8,000.

In this case, the political watchdog agencys Enforcement Division has proposed a $9,000 penalty against her and the campaign committee she controls. The penalty reflects a $2,500 fine for each of the first three counts, and a $1,500 fine for the fourth count.

The FPPC cited a pattern of noncompliance as an aggravating factor in making the assessment. It also considered penalties in prior cases involving similar violations.

The commission found Valladolid did not file three semiannual campaign statements due last year and this year. A review of the campaign statements that were finally filed June 27 showed the campaign committee reported no contributions and expenditures of $1,352 and $400.

According to the FPPC, failure to make the disclosures is considered a serious violation because it deprives the public of important information about the campaigns contributors, expenditures and financial activities.

Commissioners will consider the fine at the Nov. 17 meeting in Sacramento.

If its approved, the matter is closed. Valladolid has already paid the fine. But if they reject the deal, a full evidentiary hearing will be required. The maximum penalty is $5,000 per count, for a total of $20,000.
Manuel Paul, the former superintendent of the San Ysidro School District who spent two months in federal prison on a corruption charge, has refused to answer questions in a lawsuit filed against him by the district.

Paul asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination while being deposed for the case in July, according to court documents.

In all, Paul refused to answer 22 questions that had to do with corruption charges he pleaded guilty to in 2013 and 2014.

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The situation has attorneys on both sides fighting over whether Paul will be forced to answer the questions, and if San Diego Superior Court Judge Richard Strauss will impose monetary sanctions.

San Ysidro is suing Paul for the return of more than $200,000 he received in severance before pleading guilty to state and federal corruption charges. He stepped down from the schools chief position in 2013 amid a pay-to-play scandal that would sweep through three South County school districts.

Lawyer Daniel Rodriguez advised Paul to take the Fifth on any questions related to topics that were discussed while being interrogated by the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys Office three years ago.

Rodriguez said if the answers Paul gave now varied even slightly from those he gave in 2013  because of inaccurate recollection, confusion, misunderstanding or other reasons  he would be opened up to an imminent likelihood of criminal liability.

William Trejo and Sandra Garcia, who represent San Ysidro, want the judge to compel Paul to answer.

The district lawyers argued there is no threat of Paul incriminating himself because he is constitutionally protected against double jeopardy. He has been convicted and served time in 2015 on the charges related to the questions.

The questions Paul refused to answer centered on the exchange of cash between him and a contractor who wanted to do business with the school district.

The money was covered up as political contributions to three board members running for re-election. The trustees amended their campaign finance forms to show the cash as a donation.

Lawyers on both sides are seeking payment for legal fees for the amount of time spent arguing the matter. San Ysidros attorneys are asking Strauss for about $7,200 in sanctions, while Pauls are requesting nearly $5,000.

In addition to the severance package reimbursement, the school district is also asking for damages and attorneys fees in the case.

Deputy Superintendent Arturo Sanchez-Macias said the district has paid its lawyers about $121,000 so far to handle the lawsuit, which was filed Feb. 2, 2015.

The trial is set to start Jan. 20.
The escalating number of homeless people who die on the streets of San Diego will be remembered in a silent march and symbolic display of shoes downtown Sunday afternoon.

Youll see people on our staff, including me, moved to tears in this program, said Herb Johnson, president and CEO of San Diego Rescue Mission. It really gives a lot of meaning to the work that we do.

People who want to participate in the annual event are asked to meet before 3 p.m. at the San Diego Rescue Mission, 120 Elm St.

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Participants will carry electric candles and 115 pairs of shoes, symbolically representing each homeless person who died in San Diego this year.

The silent procession will end on the Harbor Drive side of the County Administration Center, 1600 Pacific Highway, at about 3:45 p.m.

Once at the center, each pair of shoes will be set down on the steps of the building with a mock toe tag containing the name of a deceased homeless person.

Its a pretty gruesome sight to look at and realize how many people have died living on the streets of San Diego, Johnson said.

The names of the deceased come from the San Diego County Medical Examiners Office, which has reported a steady increase in the deaths of homeless people over the past few years.

This years report of 115 deaths was a noticeable increase from 90 reported last year and 56 in 2014.

I get the list form the coroners office every year, Johnson said. The numbers kind of hung around in the 40 or 50 range for a number of years. Two or three years ago it took a dramatic leap.

Johnson said it is unclear why the numbers have increased.

What really caught my eye was the number of suicides, he said. Eleven.

The dead also include homicides, including three men slain by what authorities say was serial killer who terrorized homeless people earlier this year.

The procession will stop for prayers at churches and ministry sites along the way, and also will walk through Little Italy as it moves to the County Administration Center.

Johnson said pedestrians and diners along the popular stretch are certain to notice the procession, and in the past he remembers people showing signs of support as they recognize the cause.

The Rescue Mission has held the vigil for about nine years as a way of raising awareness in the general public about the hardship of being homeless in San Diego, Johnson said.

For participants, especially those who are clients of the mission, the walk is even more powerful.

They have an opportunity to think of their lives and how theyve changed at the Rescue Mission, he said. Its an opportunity for them to think about where their lives have been.

Johnson said about 200 people usually participate in the vigil. People who dont want to participate in the mile-long procession are welcomed to show up at the county building for an interfaith celebration that will include Christian pastors, an imam and rabbi, Johnson said.

Besides comments from faith leaders, the names of every deceased homeless person will be read aloud during the vigil. Sgt. Carol Beason of the San Diego Police Departments Homeless Outreach Team will read the first 15, and two male and two female residences of Rescue Missions programs will read the remaining 100 names.

Felicia Daniel from Christ United Presbyterian Church in South Park, which Johnson attends, is scheduled to sing two hymns at the event

gary.warth@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @GaryWarthUT

760-529-4939
Immigration reform became a last-minute push in the campaign for U.S. Senate in California this week, as Rep. Loretta Sanchez held an event in San Diego and Attorney General Kamala Harris appeared in Elk Grove.

The two Democrats are vying to replace outgoing Sen. Barbara Boxer.

Both want to create a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants already in the United States. That path to citizenship would include codifying into law the protections for unauthorized immigrants brought to the U.S. as children as well as unauthorized parents of U.S. citizens that President Obama made through executive actions.

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Both women are the children of immigrants. Sanchezs parents immigrated from Mexico. Harriss mother is from India, and her father is from Jamaica. Both credit their heritage with making immigration an important issue for them personally. They have their differences on the issue, too.

Sanchez in San Diego

Sanchez promised while campaigning at San Diegos Chicano Park on Thursday that she would bring a comprehensive immigration reform bill to Congress within 60 days of her arrival in Washington.

Sanchezs plan includes detention facility reform and visa wait time reduction.

This is the No. 1 moral imperative of our time, Sanchez said. She said that her experience as co-chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus immigration task force gives her an advantage over Harris to quickly get to work on the issue.

Her proposal will be ready to go within 60 days of her Senate term, said Luis Vizcaino, spokesman for Sanchezs campaign, via email. Kamala will still be trying to find the Senate bathroom.

Sanchez wants to end the detention of families by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and instead use alternatives to detention such as ankle monitors for those who officials choose to keep tabs on while theyre being processed through immigration court.

She said she wants to close private immigration detention facilities, and she also wants to get rid of the laws that impose three-year or 10-year bans on re-entering the U.S. for those who have been deported.

I cant tell you how sad it is when families need to leave the country and cant see their children for 10 years, she said.

Sanchez wants to fund more English classes for immigrants to help them integrate into the community. She also plans to increase border security.

Harris in Elk Grove

Harriss plan includes protections for immigrants who report crimes as well as workplace protections for those who are unauthorized.

She emphasized the importance of immigration reform while campaigning for Rep. Ami Bera, D-Sacramento, Thursday. People need to stop associating unauthorized immigrants with criminals, she said.

Harris wants to protect unauthorized immigrants from scams and workplace abuse, and she wants to encourage them to cooperate with law enforcement by providing protections to those who report crimes. Current immigration law includes some protections for immigrant crime victims through a program called a U-visa.

Harris also wants to make unauthorized immigrant college students eligible for federal student aid programs.

Nathan Click, a spokesman for Harris, said that while Harris does not have a timeline for introducing immigration reform legislation like Sanchez, Harris has a track record of helping immigrants while working as attorney general for California.

Shes gotten real results for real people, Click said. Thats the major difference here.

kate.morrissey@sduniontribune.com, @bgirledukate
When the election is over, where do we go from here?

Three more days.

Worn out and worried, fearful and frustrated, American voters stumble to the finish line of a rancorous presidential campaign more divided politically than at any time in nearly 25 years.

Where do we go from here?

After the election, said Carl Luna, a political science professor at Mesa College and the University of San Diego, I think were all going to need to go in for psycho-therapy, family therapy and reconciliation therapy.

There will be lots to talk about.

If the polls leading into Tuesdays election are accurate, Democrat Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States. Typically, the vanquished foe  in this scenario, Republican Donald Trump  congratulates the winner and offers good wishes for the nations future, assuring a smooth transition of power that has long been a hallmark of American democracy.

But this has been far from a typical campaign, and Trump has refused to say that he will accept the results  unless he wins. Hes spent recent weeks claiming without evidence that the election is rigged. Most of his followers have adopted that position, according to polling, and some are talking openly about backing a revolution if their candidate loses.

New presidents traditionally get a honeymoon of varying lengths after an election, and Clinton has outlined what she expects to put forward in her first 100 days in office. Republican leaders in Congress, though, have announced other plans, including blocking any Supreme Court nominations she makes and launching a steady stream of investigations of her.

If Trump wins, Luna said, it will probably be incredibly close, which will leave a lot of people feeling disenfranchised and not believing he actually won.

All that has San Diegans on both sides of the presidential question doubting the likelihood of any post-election meeting of the minds, in Washington, D.C., or elsewhere.

I really hope that the two parties can put their weapons aside and look at what is most beneficial for the country, but I only have about a 10 or 20 percent hope of that happening, said Bill Loeber, a Del Cerro resident who supports Clinton. I think it could get a lot worse.

Ellen Shaw, who splits her time between Rancho Bernardo and Henderson, Nev., and is backing Trump, said, Were so polarized, I just dont see that people getting along is possible. Its wishful thinking.

To Luna, who has spent 25 years making his living researching, teaching and writing about politics, this campaign has been just the most colossal wear on the psyche, one that has left him vaguely depressed, almost as if he were suffering from a form of electoral PTSD.

Americans are resilient, and we ultimately come together, he said. But sometimes its late in the movie before we do.

The great divide

History is rife with examples of divisive U.S. presidential campaigns. This stuff always looks like its never happened before, but it has, said Samuel Popkin, an emeritus professor of political science at UC San Diego who has written several books about races for the Oval Office, including his newest, The Republican Crackup and the Future of Presidential Politics, due out early next year.

In 1800, President John Adams was pitted against his own vice president, Thomas Jefferson, and their intense rivalry  the two had also competed in 1796, with Adams winning  led to ferocious personal attacks. Each side predicted the countrys ruin if the other won.

Adams was called a hideous, hermaphroditical character with neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman. Jefferson was called a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-bred Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.

The race was so close  Jefferson and his partys second choice, Aaron Burr, tied with 73 electoral votes  the outcome had to be decided, in Jeffersons favor, through seven days of backstage political maneuvering.

But even by historical standards, this years race between Clinton and Trump has exposed deep partisan divides. The Pew Research Center released a report in June that showed Republicans and Democrats now have more negative views of the opposing party than at any point in nearly a quarter century. And the animosity is personal.

(Beto Alvarez)

Among Republicans, about 50 percent of those surveyed by Pew said Democrats are more close-minded, immoral, lazy and dishonest than other Americans. Among Democrats, 70 percent said Republicans are more close-minded, with smaller numbers describing them as more dishonest (42 percent), immoral (35 percent) and unintelligent (33 percent).

Pew also asked voters their opinions of the opposing party, and for the first time in surveys dating back to 1992, majorities on both sides said they had very unfavorable views. For the Republicans, the 58 percent who feel that way was up from 46 percent in 2014 and 32 percent in 2008. Among Democrats, 55 percent feel that way now, up from 43 percent in 2014 and 37 percent in 2008.

The survey was conducted from March to May, before either Trump or Clinton had secured the nominations, but even then the dislike of each by the voters in the opposite party was profound. Asked to rate Clinton on a scale of 0 to 100, 59 percent of Republicans gave her a zero. Even more Democrats (68 percent) gave Trump a zero.

Polling by Gallup has found similar sentiments. Last month, it asked voters who they were supporting, and why. The top reason given (28 percent by both Democrats and Republicans) was dislike of the other candidate, outpacing experience, policies, personal character and party affiliation. By contrast, in 2008, the last presidential election without an incumbent running, hardly any of the respondents said they were voting for Barack Obama or John McCain because they disliked the other, according to Gallup.

The rise in political animosity comes at a time of diverging feelings about where the country is headed. About 80 percent of Trump supporters say the country is worse off than it was 50 years ago for people like them, according to Pew, as opposed to 19 percent of Clinton backers who feel that way. Similarly, Trump supporters are more pessimistic about the countrys future, with 68 percent saying life will be worse for the next generation. Just 30 percent of Clinton supporters believe that.

Local sentiments

Marjorie Anderson, a Del Mar resident, doesnt have to go far to find presidential disagreement. Shes voting for Clinton. Her husband is for Trump.

We dont even talk about it, she said. We cant.

She said shes hopeful that Clinton, if elected, can bridge the partisan gap through her experience and contacts in Washington, D.C. She has a lot of friends in government, and I think she can bring the parties together, Anderson said. She knows how to get things done.

But Anderson also has her doubts. Its like the two sides hate each other, she said. Id like to see them not immediately saying no to whatever the other proposes. If they are just going to get in the way, what are they there for? They should get out of the business.

Frank Cantrell, a San Diegan who supports Trump, said any bridging of the gap under a Clinton presidency will depend on what she attempts to do. His main concerns, he said, are what happens with the Supreme Court and the borders, and what kind of life his children and grandchildren will enjoy.

If we dont have good leaders, were going to be in trouble, he said. I dont like Donald for a lot of reasons, but I think Hillary will be the end of the country.

Loeber, the Del Cerro resident, has mixed feelings about his choice, too  Clinton. Im not a big fan, but Mr. Trump disgusts me, he said. He has no realistic policies, and what he spews is nonsense.

But he also said the Republican nominee has tapped into the frustration voters feel about income inequality, the different rules that exist for rich people, and the jobs being shipped overseas. I think elected officials have been ignoring the needs of the middle class for so long and have just not been able to speak the language of families struggling to make ends meet.

He said hes not optimistic about things changing because of the influence of big money campaign contributions and gerrymandering that creates political districts so secure theres no incentive for representatives to cooperate with the enemy.

Shaw, the part-time Rancho Bernardo resident who supports Trump, isnt expecting much cooperation, either. If Hillary is elected, theres no chance in the world anything positive is going to be accomplished, she said. If Trump wins, we will have a safer country, better economic growth and maybe well bring more people over to our (the Republican) side.

As for the Republicans in Congress already vowing to launch investigations of Clinton if she wins, Shaw said, I dont care if its divisive or not, she absolutely should be investigated. Shes a criminal.

Talking to San Diegans about their presidential choices reinforces many of the findings in the Pew research. They sharply dislike the opposing candidate and are distrustful of his or her supporters  so much so that several declined to be interviewed by name for this story or to have their photos taken. I dont want anybody coming to my house and throwing rocks, one of them said. They tend to blame the other side for how strident the campaign has been.

Pews research indicates that even bringing opposing voters together to talk wont do much to ease the disagreements. About the same percentage on each side (65 percent of Republicans, 63 percent of Democrats) say that when they discuss politics with those of the other party, they find they have less in common than they thought they did.

Roughly half in each party find talking about politics with opponents is more stressful and frustrating than interesting and informative.

Echo chambers

Political animosity and its effect on the countrys ability to find common ground is an ongoing concern at the University of San Diegos Institute for Civil Civic Engagement, where Luna is the director. How, he asked, do you start to heal the breach and make Americans feel like Americans first, and Republicans or Democrats second?

One of the problems, he said, is the rise of partisan media, especially on cable TV, that caters to the like-minded and fuels a belief that journalists in the mainstream media are biased, too.

People in journalism are becoming as despised as the politicians, and that allows the crackpots on the internet to set the agenda, Luna said. There has to be some accountability for the irrational, non-fact based stuff people are being fed.

Despite the research showing the current futility of conversations between political opponents, Luna said he would favor small groups of people getting together in rooms in neighborhoods all across America, just to talk.

Prejudice seldom survives a 15-minute conversation, especially if there is a meal involved, he said. You have to get out of your echo chambers.

The Institute for Civil Civic Engagement holds a conference every spring, and Luna said next Aprils will be about bridging the political chasm in America, about asking the question, Where do we go from here?

Assuming, of course, people can agree on where here is. And on who we are.
A 27-year-old man accused of shooting another man at a Mira Mesa park Tuesday turned himself in to San Diego police Friday evening.

Michael Paganvega was arrested at police headquarters on Broadway, then booked into jail on suspicion of negligent discharge of a firearm.

Police had looked for him Tuesday at a home that a SWAT team surrounded for hours, but he was not found.

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The victim told police he was getting a drink at a water fountain at the Hourglass Community Park on Black Mountain Road when he was shot in the buttocks. He took an Uber ride to a Veterans Administration hospital in La Jolla where staff called police about about 4:15 a.m.

Later in the day, police went to a home a mile away from the park where they believed Paganvega was holed up. A SWAT team, which was called out about 3:30 p.m., used several flash-bang grenades to try force him out.

After several hours, the SWAT team swarmed into the home and discovered Paganvega was not inside.

Police considered him armed and dangerous.

Twitter: @D4VIDHernandez
A wrong-way driver smashed into another motorist on Interstate 5 in Bay Park Friday night, leaving one dead and the other badly injured in their burned cars, authorities said.

The collision was so severe, investigators have not been able to figure out which of the cars was going south in northbound lanes, the California Highway Patrol said.

Not all witnesses had been interviewed as of Saturday night, a CHP official said.

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Several 911 callers reported a black vehicle south in northbound lanes, approaching Balboa Avenue about 10:10 p.m. Officers headed that way to try to stop the driver, but one minute later, the cars collided south of Balboa, the CHP said.

Both cars were black, authorities said.

The crash caused both vehicles to catch fire, with one of them becoming fully engulfed in flames, San Diego fire spokesman Lee Swanson said.

Witnesses reported a bystander, possibly a tow truck driver, sprayed some of the flames with a fire extinguisher, the CHP said. Firefighters got there shortly after and doused the wrecked vehicles.

It took firefighters about 30 minutes to free a 33-year-old woman from her 2007 Mitsubishi. She was taken to a hospital with major injuries.

A man of unknown age was trapped in his 2012 Kia Forte and died, the CHP said.

All northbound lanes were shut down into early Saturday while authorities investigated the crash and cleared the wreckage.

Traffic was diverted off the freeway onto Balboa Avenue.

Twitter: @D4VIDHernandez
In a region in which the corruption of disgraced former Rep. Randy Duke Cunningham wont be forgotten, Rep. Duncan D. Hunters serial spending of campaign funds for personal uses is obnoxious. So are his repeated attempts to depict this illegal spending as being inadvertent and innocent.

The announcement in Thursdays Riverside Press-Enterprise that the Alpine Republican would pay back $49,000 to his campaign account was appropriate. But while Hunter took full responsibility for his actions, he also said the charges were primarily authorized by the campaign. Groan.

The wide range of things that Hunter and, apparently, his family members used campaign funds for  40 trips to grocery stories totaling nearly $7,000; $229 at a Disneyland gift shop; more than $2,000 on hotels, restaurants and train trips in Italy in 2015, and much more  suggests he saw political contributions as his to spend on whatever he wants. Its good to be a congressman in a safe seat coasting to re-election.

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Theres no excuse for Hunter not to manage his campaign funds lawfully from here on out. But his awful judgment has stained his reputation.

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

Facebook: UTOpinion
The U-T has taken a no on Measure A position (Reject backward-looking Measure A, Oct. 12), citing a theory that self-driving cars will make public transit obsolete. That seems unlikely  public transit will continue to move people for decades, regardless of futuristic fantasies.

Letters and commentary policy

The U-T welcomes and encourages community dialogue on important public matters. Please visit this page for more details on our letters and commentaries policy.

E-mail letters@sduniontribune.com

Mail: Andrew Kleske, Reader Outreach Editor San Diego Union-Tribune P.O. Box 120191 San Diego, CA 92112-0191.

You can also leave a comment below

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Traffic on Interstate 5 looking toward the San Diego Skyline. (John Gastaldo/U-T )

But a no vote does guarantee more traffic congestion and growing carbon dioxide pollution. It means less open space and fewer wildlife species for future generations to enjoy. Quality of life in San Diego will take a devastating hit.

A yes vote means funding for urgently needed public transit and wildlife conservation. These are verifiable facts  not just futuristic speculation. Voters should support a cooler, cleaner and happier future for their children and grandchildren. Climate change and wildlife extinction is happening now. We dont have time to waste.

David Engel

Del Mar

* * *

SANDAG commits fraud. Every time it presents numbers, it lies.

For decades SANDAG has consistently lied about the projected costs (SANDAG always low-balls the cost  by a lot), the publics usage of such projects (SANDAG always badly inflates the projected ridership numbers), the growth of our countys population (SANDAG always overestimates growth) and the revenue the agency will get from tax increases.

Honest errors are understandable, but when every error ends up overselling boondoggle expenditures, thats not an error. Its fraud.

SANDAG is a rogue agency that hoodwinks its gullible governing board. The boards a pushover for slick PowerPoint presentations from the expert SANDAG staff. Never does the board seek independent analysis, nor do they check if SANDAGs performance matches projections.

Richard Rider

Scripps Ranch

FBIs October surprise smacks of partisanship

Regarding FBIs James Comey should be investigated (Nov. 1): FBI Director James Comeys latest allegation against Hillary Clinton is the most transparent illustration of Republican political schemes that are designed to tarnish her reputation by means of innuendo rather than facts. Once the suspicion against her is set up, the Hillary haters jump on the circus wagon and begin howling lock her up!

Unfortunately, once the allegation is out, many people cannot help but hear the loud shouts and assume they must be based on facts.

Hence, Hillary Clintons untrustworthy image keeps growing. Much of it is unmerited. Please note that even staunch Republicans have criticized Comey for making his allegation at a time that could influence the elections.

Cynthia Wootton

San Diego

* * *

Ive been searching for a reasonable explanation why Comey would release a bombshell into the election at this late date.

There is the fact that he is a Republican, of course, and it is simply in his nature. Theres also the possibility that he wants to get reappointed to another term and he has figured out that a President Clinton would never let him keep his job.

Bob Schmidt

La Jolla

Krauthammers choice of Clinton is wrong

Charles Krauthammer has finally imploded in his latest article, A final, awful choice (Nov. 4). He makes it crystal clear that he loathes Donald Trump and is rooting hard to get Hillary Clinton elected president.

I was stunned by his cowardly stance, ruining my confidence in his usually spot-on analysis. This election is about shattering the cozy status quo enjoyed by both lawless Democrats and hand-wringing Republicans, for which there is no longer any perceivable difference. Both parties are about money and maintaining political power at any cost, and thats what is destroying our country.

I thought Krauthammer understood this. Sadly, he sides with a corrupt Clinton, knowing full well that Clinton is already infecting the nation and our international partners with her own brand of self-centered nastiness, all for her own personal gain.

Charles Bell

Chula Vista

League urges a no vote local on Measure B

The League of Women Voters supports policies that provide decent homes and a suitable living environment for all residents of San Diego County. Though a well-funded campaign presents the Lilac Hills development as the answer to San Diegos housing needs, it is not the solution. The League opposes Measure B.

The League of Women Voters (LWV) believes this project is inconsistent with the countys general plan and is not suitable for the location. This is a rural area of farm fields, lacking the infrastructure required for the proposed development of 1,746 homes. In the countys general plan, the area is zoned for 110 homes.

Ballot-box land use planning falls far short of the systematic approach required for county land use decisions arrived at collaboratively with community planners. Dont reward developers who choose to bypass this process.

Join the League of Women Voters in voting no on Measure B.

Jeanne Brown

LWV San Diego

Martha Cox

LWV North County

Want to see more letters that appear only online? Follow @UTLetters on Twitter and UTOpinion on Facebook.
In Tuesdays presidential election, there are some states where Hillary Clinton is expected to win easily and some where Donald Trump is projected to comfortably win. With that in mind, some Clinton voters are already trying to make their votes count in states where its more likely to matter.

An app called #NeverTrump allows voters in these states to connect with third party voters in more competitive states so they can trade votes and both vote in good conscience. The theory goes that third party votes dont necessarily have much impact anyway, so it doesnt matter where they occur, while Clinton votes in swing states could make all the difference.

Screen shot from #NeverTrump app.

The app uses a bot to collect info and allows users to chat based on location and vote, and then use the honor system to get the job done.

Take California for example, where Clinton has been crushing Trump in the polls by as many as 26 points. California has more than 900 people on the app so far looking to swap their votes to states like Nevada and Florida.

Within minutes of signing up for the app hypothetically saying I was a Clinton voter in California, a Jill Stein voter in Pennsylvania messaged me to swap votes.

Friday morning, the app had 17 people in San Diego trying to trade their votes and more than 5,000 people trying nationwide.

Of course, its worth noting that apps and vote trading on the honor system warrants a certain level of skepticism, and you can see that people in the chat rooms are suspect too, or choosing to trade Facebook information to make a safer connection there.

Some are even asking for photos of ballots for proof, even though in many states thats illegal.

But a lot of people seem committed and willing to give it a shot, sending messages like these:

I will vote for any third party candidate in MA for a Hillary vote in New Hampshire. No Trump in New England!

NJ Clinton voter here, any Stein voters in swing states want to trade?

California Clinton voter looking to trade with someone in swing state, especially Colorado as thats where Im from.

Screen shot from #NeverTrump app.

Vote trading isnt a new concept. In 2000, websites emerged to trade third party candidate Ralph Nader votes to help Al Gore in states like Florida.

This year, theres also a website that tries to encourage voters across the country who dislike both Clinton and Trump to join forces and vote for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.

Do these things even work? Who knows.

But it such an odd election year, perhaps odd ideas are worth considering.

Email: abby.hamblin@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @abbyhamblin
In a historic first for a presidential campaign rally, Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine gave a whole new definition to the words si, se puede upon delivering a full campaign speech ... in Spanish.

Kaine had previously given speeches in Spanish  he learned the language as a missionary in Honduras during the 1980s  but on Thursday he demonstrated his fluency to a crowd in Arizona where the Democratic Party is looking to capitalize on one of the largest increases in early voting by Hispanic voters.

No hablo espanol perfectamente, Kaine said at one point during his speech, admitting he doesnt speak perfect Spanish. But despite the awkward accent and flat-sounding rolling rs, the Virginia senator delivered a coherent message about immigrants historic strides in the U.S. and the differences between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Kaine had previously delivered other speeches in Spanish, once in the Senate floor in 2013 and earlier this year during a campaign stop in Miami where he spoke for about five minutes. Thursdays speech was different in that he delivered a full-length speech to connect with Hispanic voters and convince them to vote for Clinton.

Todos somos americanos, Kaine told the crowd, saying that were all Americans.

Kaine also addressed controversies in the state such as Arizonas strict anti-immigration legislation known as SB 1070 and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio who faces criminal contempt charges for defying court orders to stop his mass-targeting of Latinos in the state. The mentioning of Arpaio drew boos from the crowd.

One of the highlights of the speech was the moment Kaine referred to Trumps insults against immigrants from Mexico. Kaine said Trump is a payaso, Spanish for clown.

It was a Spanish lesson that people on Twitter took with a little humor and scorn.

https://twitter.com/sddphoto/status/794536858529058819

https://twitter.com/phil4gop/status/794387564375326720

https://twitter.com/wes15019238/status/794502987028664320

The New York Times published a story praising Kaines Spanish, calling it Muy Bien. And the Spanish-language network Telemundo used the speech as the lead story and even touted the fact that it was done in our language.

But did Kaine hit the mark? The verdict on his speech was mixed.

https://twitter.com/edatpost/status/794359434935943168

https://twitter.com/fjbar75/status/794502489764667393

https://twitter.com/SteveJazz/status/794508990327693312

https://twitter.com/MariaLiaCalvo/status/794548953752731648

Will speeches like these help Clinton win enough Hispanic voters to pull a victory in states like Arizona? Tell us what you think of Senor Kaine.

Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @RunGomez
In a year when extraordinarily unlikely events have come to pass with surprising regularity, there is now considerable interest in the possibility that, when votes are counted on Tuesday, the result is inconclusive. That is to say, that neither Democrat Hillary Clinton nor Republican Donald Trump achieves the 270 electoral votes needed to secure the presidency.

With the caveat that the likelihood of such an outcome is tiny (the website FiveThirtyEight puts it at 1.2 percent) there are a couple of distinct ways in which it could play out. The two candidates could, in theory, each finish with 269 electoral votes. Or, a third party candidate could win enough electoral votes to keep both of the major party contenders under 270.

Related: Is Trump Pulling Ahead? Heres What the Polls Are Really Saying

In either case, the National Archives explains what would happen next:

If no candidate receives a majority of Electoral votes, the House of Representatives elects the President from the 3 Presidential candidates who received the most Electoral votes. Each state delegation has one vote. The Senate would elect the Vice President from the 2 Vice Presidential candidates with the most Electoral votes. Each Senator would cast one vote for Vice President. If the House of Representatives fails to elect a President by Inauguration Day, the Vice-President Elect serves as acting President until the deadlock is resolved in the House.

Given that the Republican Party controls more state delegations than the Democrats do, that would seem to be a recipe for a Trump presidency. However, there is another remote possibility.

Note that the rules require the House to choose from the three candidates who received the most electoral votes. In a 269-269 split, that would be immaterial. However, there is a small but very real chance that for the first time since 1968, a third-party candidate might win electoral votes at the ballot box.

Related: This Stock Market Indicator Points to a Trump Win

Story continues

Evan McMullin, a former Capitol Hill staffer, is running as an independent, offering a conservative alternative to Trump. He is not doing particularly well nationwide, but has the potential to win the state of Utah in a three-way split. (The usually Republican Beehive State is in play this cycle because its heavily-Mormon population is turned off by Trump. McMullin is a fellow Mormon who went to Brigham Young University in Provo.)

Were McMullin to take Utahs six electoral votes, that would put him in play as a candidate if the election were thrown to the House of Representatives.

Its possible to imagine a scenario in which establishment Republicans, who have never been comfortable with Trump, might rally behind McMullin. It is, however, extremely unlikely, just like an Electoral College deadlock in the first place.

But then, a little more than a year ago, FiveThirtyEight gave Trump only a 2 percent chance of winning the Republican nomination in the first place.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
A policeman fires a tear gas canister to disperse Muslim protesters near the presidential palace during clashes after a rally against governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, a Christian accused of insulting Islam, in Jakarta, on November 4, 2016 (AFP Photo/Gianrigo Marletta)

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has postponed a trip to Australia due to start Sunday after violence broke out at a mass rally against a Christian governor accused of insulting Islam, the government said.

Around 50,000 people marched in Jakarta on Friday to protest comments made by governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, with clashes erupting between police and demonstrators -- one of whom reportedly died of an asthma attack.

"Current development has required the President to stay in Indonesia," a statement released on Saturday by the foreign ministry said.

Widodo visited Australia in 2014 for the G20 shortly after being elected as president, but this month's trip would have marked his first official bilateral visit.

The statement added that Widodo had called Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to inform him that the trip, scheduled for 6-8 November, would be delayed.

Turnbull responded in a statement: We were sorry we would not be able to welcome him to Australia tomorrow but entirely understood the need for him to remain in Indonesia at this time.

The protest in Indonesia's capital was triggered by accusations that Purnama, better known by his nickname Ahok, insulted Islam by criticising opponents who used Koranic references to attack him ahead of an election in February.

Purnama apologised for the remarks, but his opponents have built a groundswell of support calling for his arrest and incarceration under Indonesia's tough blasphemy laws.

Demonstrations were initially peaceful but turned ugly in the evening when protesters refused to go home, resulting in thousands of hardliners clashing with police, setting vehicles ablaze and hurling bottles and rocks at officers.

Police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar said one man died of an asthma attack during the protest, although some local media sites suggested it could have been brought on by tear gas.

About 160 people had to be treated for the effects of tear gas and eight police officers were also injured in the protest, he said.

Ten people thought to have instigated the violence have been arrested.

Police said they would be questioning the governor on Monday over the allegations which would be handled "quickly and transparently".
The public health agency of the United Nations wants to conduct an upcoming tobacco-control conference in India. The conference should free ties to the tobacco industry, leaders are proposing to get rid of any delegates representing the business interests of the tobacco industry like what happened last year.

In the previous years, Vietnam and China each sent a tobacco industry representative as part of their delegation to the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Given the incident, WHO wants to change the ruling to disallow the industry representative to join the conference.

Reuters reported the official diplomatic communication last Oct. 17. The report comes from the WHO FCTC secretariat, in the report, it has been stated that countries who will be represented by the tobacco industry will be escorted out. In behalf of the treat's leadership, it has been proposed that any business representative "would be requested to leave the premises" of the conference.

COP7: Pakistan to skip anti-tobacco conference in India next week https://t.co/kjpcPAcLQd via @wionews  Shylaja Varma (@ShylajaVarma) November 3, 2016

As follows, under the proposed rule, it could also cater the tobacco growers in smaller developing countries. The rule can defend small growers against the health authorities, especially UN.

As for tobacco growers, Farmers can count on the state to buy their tobacco, but they earn much less from it than they would by selling other crops, and they often come under pressure from village officials to grow it in order to fill quotas that come from the Tobacco Corp.itself.

In line with this, it is still unclear if the FCTC will adopt the new rules in regards of the industry delegates. But, a government official from Vietnam said that on condition of anonymity that the industry would not send representatives as part of the country's 2016 delegation. China, however, still has no comment.
Japan has launched the Himawari-9 weather satellite on Wednesday (November 2), with the help of its H-II A rocket. Himawari-9 is the second of two-third generation satellites in Japan's Himawari weather monitoring series. It was lifted off at 3:20 p.m (local time) from the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima region.

The spacecraft will conduct the weather observations over the Asia-Pacific regions and will supply the essential data to forecasters from Japan, New Zealand, Australia, South-East Asia and other neighboring regions. Along with Himawari-8, which was launched in October 2014, this new weather satellite is expected to provide significant observational data to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) and the Ministry of Transport.

The term 'Himawari' means sunflower and it is a series of spacecraft which began in July 1977 with the launch of Geostationary Meteorological Satellite 1 (GMS-1) which took on the name Himawari after reaching the orbit. According to NASA Spacefight.com, GMS-1 was the first one among the five American-built-first-generation satellites. Himawari-9 can capture images of certain areas at a faster rate of 2.5 minutes.

As per a report published in Zee News, The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, LTD postponed the launch of Himawari-9, which was initially scheduled for November 1, due to unfavorable weather conditions. The satellite weighed nearly 3500kgs and it was separated from the rocket at 3:47 p.m. It entered the geostationary transfer orbit successfully with a high point of 35,976 km, low point of 250 km and an orbit inclination of 22.4 degrees.

Himawari-9 is expected to offer detailed and more accurate images of storms, clouds and other weather systems to the forecasters located in Japan and across the Western Pacific. The position of Himawari-9 will be fixed at 140 degrees east longitude for a mission which is scheduled to last up to 15 years for the Japan Meteorological Agency. Himawari-8 and Himawari-9 will replace Japan's last pair of meteorological satellites, MTSAT 1R and MTSAT 2, which were launched in 2005 and 2006 respectively.
On November 1, NASA announced that they are seeking information about the instruments that could be carried to the moon on future commercial spacecraft. They are expecting to carry the instrument with one company that is developing a lander and the company is also offering certain financial support for the development of the mission.

NASA is all set to gather information on technologies, instruments and other helpful tools which can be sent to the surface of the moon. According to Space News, the request for information (RIF) was released by NASA seeking the details regarding "small payloads that could be delivered to the moon as early as the 2017-2020 timeframe using U.S. commercial lunar cargo transportation service providers." The RFI was issued through the Advanced Explorations Systems Division of NASA.

As per a report published by Natural World News, a NASA official said in a statement, "Multiple US companies are developing robotic lunar landing capabilities and have expressed plans to provide commercial cargo delivery services to the Moon in the near future." He also added that information on lunar payloads that could be launched as early as 2017 would be valuable to NASA as it works to understand the potential role of the moon in future exploration activities.

The RFI does not mention about the specific companies but two American companies named Astrobotic and Moon Express are developing the commercial lunar landers. Both these firms are competing in the Google Lunar X Prize. NASA is only seeking ideas and not asking for any fund. An official stated that NASA is not planning to purchase any instrument or fly anything officially.

According to Space News, Moon Express announced its 'Lunar Scout' program, wherein the firm will provide $500000 each for up to three instruments and is ultimately selected by NASA to fly on its lunar lander. The payloads could fly as soon as 2017. Moon Express has earlier worked with NASA in the Lunar Cargo Transportation to promote the development of commercial lunar landers.
The Canadian military is now investigating the reports of a strange "pinging' noise coming from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean. Hunters said that they hear the "pinging" sound in the Fury and Hecla Strait, which is a channel of water in the northwest of the Inuit Hamlet Igloolik.

The "pinging" sound heard was like a "hum" or "beep" that scares the animals, according to Paul Quassa, a member of the legislative assembly. Ashley Lemire, the spokeswoman for the Department of National Defense stated that the Canadian military is aware of assertions of unusual sounds originating from the seafloor in the Fury and Hecla Strait in Nunavut. She further said that the aircrew performed various multi-sensor searches in the area. This includes an acoustic search for 1.5 hours, without identifying any acoustic anomalies. She added that the crew did not identify any surface or subsurface contacts, as noted by the Guardian.

Nobody knows what is the "pinging' sound from the seafloor. There are many speculations and theories from people. Some blame it to Baffin land Iron Mines Corporation, which just conducted sonar surveys of nearby Steensby Inlet with collaboration with its Mary River mine southwest of Pond Inlet. On the other hand, the company said that they are not conducting any surveys in the area, according to CBC.

Meanwhile, Quassa suspected that the sound is created on purpose by the Greenpeace. He said that they have heard in the past of groups like Greenpeace putting in some types of sonars in the seafloor to get the sea mammals out of the way so Inuit won't be able to hunt them. However, these have never been substantiated. The Greenpeace denies the claims.

As of now, the community does not know what is the "pinging" sound from the seafloor. Quassa said that they're still working on it. Meanwhile, the Canadian military is on their way to find the probable answers.
Apple iPhone 8 may find itself a new competitor in Huawei. Huawei is presently the third largest smartphone manufacturer with 33.6 million shipped devices in the third quarter. Richard Yu, chief executive of Huawei's consumer business group, told Reuters that Huawei wants to become world's second largest smartphone manufacturer beating Apple, which is currently at the second spot.

Apple commands a 12 percent market share with 45.5 million shipped devices and Samsung leads the pack with 20.1 percent market share and 75.3 million shipped devices. Huawei may be a new player in the smartphone segment but is a veteran in the building telecommunication networks. Huawei has been in the smartphone market for only four years. Yu said,

"When we announced four years ago that we wanted to sell phones, people told us we were crazy. When we said we wanted to sell 100 million phones, they said we were crazy."

Meanwhile, Huawei has recently launched a new premium phone, Mate 9 targeted at the European market. Huawei Mate 9 price is at 699 Euros. It has also launched a Mate 9 Porsche which is priced at 1,395 Euros. The Huawei Mate 9 is equipped with artificial intelligence feature. The AI can learn about the user's habit and automatically make the most used app easily available. As reported in GSM Arena.

Apple iPhone 8 will also have tough competition from Huawei regarding innovation. Yu has stated they will take on Apple iPhone 8 with their own innovations. Although Huawei Mate 9 is only equipped with AI, the smartphone maker plans to incorporate Virtual Reality, Augmented reality in the future phones.

The Cupertino is already being criticized for lack of innovation in its new iPhones and Samsung is dealing with the aftermath of Note 7 fiasco. Huawei has a window of opportunity to win over some loyal users. Interestingly, the smartphone giant is already number one player in the Finland market.

Over the years mobile industry has seen a fierce Apple Vs Samsung battle. With the entry of Huawei, the battle is about to get more intense.
Bird hunting is one of the people's favorite past time. Enable to feel good about this hobby, one must shoot a bird. Now, researchers discovered that the smaller the bird's brains are, the more they are likely to be shot.

A pair of scientists found that birds with bigger brains are less likely to be shot by hunters, compared to birds with smaller brains. The research paper was published in the journal Biology Letters. The researchers are Andre Pape Mller from the Universite Paris-Sud in France and Johannes Erritze with House of Bird Research, in Denmark. They illustrate the study that they have conducted, comparing the bird brain in hunted prey.

In the study, the research team gathered the statistics database used by taxidermists in Denmark. The data are from the years 1960 to 2015 it also includes 3781 birds among the 197 species, according to IFL Science.

The experts looked at the factors, including organ size, gender, body mass, species, and color. They have found the one factor that highlighted among the rest. The scientists have clearly discovered that birds with larger brains are thirty times less likely to be shot compared to birds that have a smaller brain, relative to the size of their bodies were more often to be shot, according to Phys.org.

As follows, the team suggested that hunting is very likely to have an evolutionary impact on animals, especially the ones that are being hunted by humans. The researchers indicate that they do not believe that hunters are targeting a specific species which are smaller. Thus, birds with larger brains are more likely to learn how to be vigilant to humans.

The study authors propose may lead to a conclusion that as a matter of fact, birds that have a smaller brain lack intelligence to recognize humans that hold a gun. Smaller brain birds are more likely to stay longer compared to bigger brainy birds that fly away seeing humans with guns.
Motorola Moto X was scratched by Motorola from its list of Android 7.0 Nougat update eligible devices last month. Moto X users are questioning if they could ever get the same upgrade to their smartphone. The move to remove the Motorola Moto X from its roster of Android 7.0 Nougat able devices is not surprising for Motorola considering that the company has an 18-month software update service. They also did this with the release of the Android Marshmallow update.

On the other hand, all is not lost for Motorola Moto X users because there is still a way for users to experience the newest Android update from Google. This can be done through a number of custom ROMs currently available in the internet.

One of these custom ROMs that can be used to upgrade Motorola Moto X is CyanogenMod. This ROMs is the most famous among the list of custom ROMs. SeannyM a member of XDA Developer Forum has made the latest Android 7.1- Nougat-based CM14.1 custom ROM possible. A bit of precaution is needed to perform this upgrade. Motorola Moto X users are implored to look into the entire process and list down the numerous item of prerequisite to be able to gauge the hazard of undergoing the update.

Here are some precautions and prerequisites before users decide to go with the custom ROM update of the Android 7.1 Nougat.

Like any other experimental firmware the new Android Nougat ROM has some few bugs in it. Users should keep this in mind in using the ROM. Before anything else, the Android 7.1 Nougat CyanogenMod [unofficial] CM 14.1 custom ROM can only be installed on second generation Motorola Moto X only. If the ROM is tried on other devices it may cause some harm on the phone, you can check your device model by going to Settings then go to About phone and see the model number.

The installation of the custom ROM causes the phone to improve on its performance and UI utilization. It also voids the company warranty, meaning that Motorola will no longer be responsible in bringing in new updates. However, users can restore the warrant by using the device with stock-ROM. Users should make sure that the device is rooted before installing the ROM. This means that users should make a backup of the phone's data because the custom ROM needs to clear the memory of the device to install.

Furthermore, the users should make sure that their Motorola Moto X have at least 80 per cent charge in case the phone gets temporarily bricked once the installation stopped because of a power drain. Moto X users should keep in mind that this installation should be done by skilled and knowledgeable person about the ROM.
Over the years, most (if not all) people have learned that too much consumption of fried foods may lead to heart disease. But it's not until recently that revealed a twist to this thought. According to a new study, it is too much heat that may actually increase risk for heart problems.

According to CNN, the study suggests that the temperature people are cooking their food may be the real problem and not the amount of oil used. Study leader and professor Raj Bhopal of the University of Edinburgh stressed that new compounds are created when when food gets heated up to a high temperature and some of those compounds are harmful to the health.

Bhopal added that the harm has nothing to do with frying, but it is more of an outcome of the cooking process. Cooking with too much heat leads to the release of neo-formed contaminants (NFCs). NFCs include trans-fatty acids, which are known to increase the risk for heart disease. The trans fats are produced at a very high rate when the temperature is high.

In connection to this, researchers believe that foods involving cooking in hot oils at high temperatures may explain the reason for the higher rates of heart illness in certain populations. These populations include those in South Asian descent. Reports say they have a four times greater risk of getting heart illnesses compared with the general population.

In the study published in Science Direct, the researchers reviewed available evidence of NFCs in Chinese and South Asian populations. They likewise looked for possible links between the chemicals and heart problems. They found that Chinese snacks has less than one percent trans fatty acids, while there is a huge amount in Indian snacks.

Bhopal said the e difference between Chinese meals and Indian cooking was that the former include more boiled foods, stir fries, and light fried items; while Indian cooking involves longer cooking, deeper frying, and using pressure cookers. In hindsight, he out the emphasis on the temperature.

According to professor Michael Miller of the University of Maryland Medical Center, heating and frying can make healthy oils unhealthy. He added that heart disease can occur when oils that have been boiled are reused.

Apparently, the aforementioned information indicates the problem is indeed too much heat while cooking. Deep fried food lovers should take note of this.
Bartalla (Iraq) (AFP) - Iraqi special forces threw themselves back into battle Saturday after a first foray into Mosul was blunted by stiffer than expected resistance from jihadists defending the birthplace of their "caliphate".

While the elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) fought the Islamic State group in the streets of Mosul, the army and federal police attacked one of the last sizeable towns on the more distant southern front.

The mass exodus feared by aid groups of some of the million-plus civilians still trapped in Mosul has yet to materialise, but the number of people displaced by the battle has grown sharply in recent days.

"Our forces are now engaged in fierce fighting inside the neighbourhoods of east Mosul," CTS spokesman Sabah al-Noman said, adding that the "fighting is house to house".

In Bartalla, a town to the east that Iraqi forces have used as a base since retaking it in the early days of the nearly three-week-old offensive, ambulances returning from the front with wounded CTS fighters rushed by on a regular basis.

CTS forces made their first real push into the streets of Mosul on Friday but were met by a deluge of bombs and gunfire, and eventually forced into a partial pullback after a few hours.

- Rising displacement -

"We weren't expecting such resistance. They had blocked all the roads," said one officer. "There are large numbers of jihadists... It was preferable to pull back and devise a new plan."

The hitch in the CTS advance appeared to contradict reports that IS had moved its resources away from the east of Mosul to the west bank of the River Tigris.

The jihadist group had looked increasingly pragmatic when vastly outnumbered and outgunned in recent months, sometimes giving up emblematic bastions almost without a fight.

But some of the 3,000 to 5,000 jihadists estimated to be inside the city may have been galvanised by a rare message from their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Thursday.

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The jihadist supremo released an audio recording for the first time in almost a year, urging his fighters not to retreat.

Federal forces on the southern front attacked Hamam al-Alil, one of the main towns between their staging base in Qayyarah and Mosul.

"Army and federal police forces are attacking the Hamam al-Alil (area) from three sides with the support of army aviation," Staff Lieutenant General Abdulamir Yarallah said in a statement released by Joint Operations Command.

Forces working their way up the Tigris Valley have had more distance to cover than those on other fronts since Iraq launched the operation to retake Mosul on October 17.

- 'We were always scared' -

While the corridors called for by aid groups to allow the safe passage of civilians have yet to materialise, the number of arrivals in the displacement camps dotting the area has increased markedly.

The ministry of displacement and migration said it had taken in 9,000 displaced people during the past two days.

It put the total number of Iraqis displaced into camps since the start of the operation at 29,539.

Relief organisations were fighting the clock to build up their shelter capacity ahead of the feared mass exodus from Mosul.

In a camp east of Mosul, displaced Iraqis are living a spartan existence.

"They gave us blankets but it's not enough and the weather is very cold. We are 19 inside this tent," said Yunes Hassan, 53.

Another man said services were lacking and the food insufficient.

"When I bring a plate of food, all my kids are fighting to eat it," 30-year-old Ahmed said.

But they are still free of IS: "Here, we and our kids can sleep until the morning; it's not like back home where we couldn't sleep. We were always scared," 51-year-old Abu Osama said.

Despite complaints from Iraqi forces on the ground that the number of air strikes has been insufficient, the US-led coalition insists it is providing more intense and sustained air support than ever before in its two-year campaign against IS.

Brett McGurk, US President Barack Obama's envoy to the coalition, hailed the latest military developments in a message on social media.

"New advances on all axes. Ways to go, but ahead of schedule," he said.

US and other commanders have warned that the offensive could take weeks or months.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who has visited the front lines several times since the offensive started, has vowed to rid the country of IS by the end of the year.

Retaking Mosul could effectively end the IS group's days as a land-holding force in Iraq and deal a death blow to the "caliphate" Baghdadi proclaimed in the city in June 2014.
As governments convene in Marrakech, Morocco, for this year's meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the impact of a changing climate continues to be felt several thousand miles to the north.

This year's minimum Arctic sea ice extent tied with 2007 for the second-lowest on record, and its regrowth in fall and winter is proving to be sluggish. From Oct. 1 to 15, ice extent increased by less than one-third of the 1981-2010 average gain for that period; by Oct. 31, Arctic sea ice extent stood at 2.73 million square miles, the lowest extent in the satellite record for that date.

Meanwhile, a new study in the journal Science argues that computer models have been underestimating Arctic sea ice loss, and that the region could become effectively free of summer sea ice by 2045. In the study, Dirk Notz of the Max Planck institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany and Julianne Stroeve of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., compared annual human-caused greenhouse gas emissions with observations of September Arctic sea ice extent over the period 1968 to 2000. They found that the two elements had a strong linear relationship, to the extent that it was possible for them to calculate that every additional metric ton of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere resulted in the loss of about 33 square feet of Arctic sea ice.

RELATED: Bowhead Whales Are Adapting to Warming Arctic

This enabled them to come up with a way of showing how individual actions contribute to changes in the Arctic. For example, they calculated that every seat on a flight from London to San Francisco comes at a cost of about 54 square feet of sea ice. The annual carbon emissions of the average American would be enough to melt about 500 square feet - nearly 10 times as much as the average Indian, for example.

"So far, climate change has often felt like a rather abstract notion. Our results allow us to overcome this perception," said Stroeve.

Notz and Stroeve then used their discovery to look at the Arctic's future, and found that an additional 1,000 gigatons of carbon would be enough to reduce Arctic sea ice cover in September to below 386,000 square miles - which, given that that ice would be tucked into a few pockets such as northern Greenland, would effectively render the Arctic Ocean ice-free. At present rates of CO2 emissions, which are around 35 gigatons per year, that scenario would unfold by around 2045.

RELATED: A Texas-Sized Chunk of Ice Is Missing from the Arctic

They found that the extent of ice loss outpaced that in most computer models, because, Notz said, those models likely underestimate the amount of Arctic warming that is taking place. Measurements of air temperatures above the Arctic Ocean remain limited.

"Models are not perfect," Stroeve said. "And if you can use observations by themselves to forecast when Arctic ice will go away maybe that's in some ways better."

WATCH: Could Alaska Be The New Center For Global Trade?
The family of Bob Regets wishes to thank the following: Dr. Maini, the many wonderful nurses at St. Joseph's Hospital and those from Lifetime Care while he was at home, for the extraordinary care he received. The Rev. Colopelnic, pastor of SS. Peter & Paul, for his blessings, prayers and support during Bob's illness, including the beautiful memorial service after Bob passed. Bob's Central High Class of '58 for their caring and support.

All those who sent get-well wishes, sympathy cards, flowers and donations to SS. Peter & Paul Ukrainian Church in Bob's memory.

To all those who attended the beautiful memorial services, including the Auburn Fire Department and the retirees.

To our family, friends and Wegmans who helped in any way with the "Celebration of Bob's Life" dinner following the service. To James Plis for his invaluable guidance and support.

May God bless you all.
With just days before Tuesday's vote, there's little daylight in the poll results between Democrat Hillary Clinton and GOP rival Donald Trump in their presidential bids.



And in the key races that will determine which party controls the Senate, a handful have tightened to within the margin of error. Democrats are hoping to turn four of those red Senate seats blue to win back control.

If Clinton wins the White House, Democratic control of the Senate would ease confirmation of her appointments, including a new Supreme Court justice. A Republican-controlled Congress could effectively thwart much of any Clinton presidential agenda.

If Donald Trump is the winner, a Democratic-controlled Senate could provide a check on his legislative agenda, which would prove harder to block if the GOP controls both chambers.

While a number of House races remain close, the Democrats have a much slimmer chance of capturing the 218 seats needed to wrest control from Republicans.

To take control of the Senate, Democrats need a net gain of four seats, for a total of 50, if Clinton wins. (With 50 seats, her running mate, Tim Kaine could cast a tie-breaking vote.) If GOP rival Trump becomes president, the Democrats need a net gain of five seats, giving them a 51-49 majority.

Of the eight Senate races considered toss-ups, seven are currently represented by Republicans: Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In Nevada, Democrat Harry Reid is retiring, Republicans have a shot at picking up another seat.

Democrats appear to be on track to flip at least two of those seats. In Wisconsin, Democratic former Sen. Russ Feingold holds a polling lead against incumbent Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, according to the average poll results tracked by Real Clear Politics. In Illinois, incumbent Republican Sen. Mark Kirk has trailed Democratic challenger Tammy Duckworth in the polls, which have more recently widened in her favor.

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If those trends hold, Democrats would need another two seats if Clinton wins, or three seats if Trump becomes president.

Here's how the remaining toss-up races break down, state by state:

Indiana

Though Indiana has typically been a reliably red state, the retirement of Republican Sen. Dan Coats has given an opening to Democrat Evan Bayh, a former governor and senator who retired in 2011. While the race is expected to be close, Bayh maintains a nearly 2.3 point lead in the polls, but that lead has been shrinking.

Missouri



GOP Sen. Roy Blunt held a comfortable lead through the summer, but his race against Democrat Jason Kander, Missouri's secretary of state, has tightened considerably, with just a 1.5 point edge  less than the margin of error. The final count is expected to be close.

Nevada

GOP Rep. Joe Heck is hoping to flip this Senate seat from blue to red, after the retirement of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. But Reid's handpicked replacement, Catherine Cortez Masto, has closed the gap, trailing by 1.4 percentage points. Heck has tried to distance himself from Trump, calling on him to quit the presidential race after the release of the "Access Hollywood" tape capturing his demeaning comments about women.

New Hampshire

Clinton's lead in the Granite State against Trump may also help Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan in her bid to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who has struggled to distance herself from Trump after earlier citing him as a role model for children. Ayotte is holding onto a slim lead in the polls.

North Carolina

While the state was once considered a safe Republican seat, incumbent Sen. Richard Burr is in a tough fight against Democrat Deborah Ross, a former state legislator, who briefly led Burr in the polls earlier this month. Burr's campaign has also benefited from Clinton's aggressive campaigning in the Tar Heel State, where Burr leads by 1.5 percentage points.

Pennsylvania

Democrats are also hoping to flip a Republican seat in Pennsylvania, where incumbent GOP Sen. Pat Toomey is trailing Democratic challenger Katie McGinty, who has opened up a 3.8 point lead. Pennsylvania has a split congressional delegation but has voted for Democrats at the top of the ticket in the last six presidential elections.





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A credit score is used to determine whether a potential buyer can make a big purchase, but in China a social credit score can be used to hold up more mundane purchasing decisions. 4.9 million people have been banned from flying on planes because of their poor credit scores, according to a report out this week in the Global Times, a news outlet under the Chinese Communist Party's People's Daily. A further 1.65 million are prohibited from taking trains as a result of credit defaults.

In China, while an individual credit rating does use financial information to put together a picture of a Chinese citizen's trustworthiness, social, political and legal variables are also used to construct a consumer profile and assign a score. These scores aren't assigned by financial companies or credit rating agencies, but rather technology firms. According to a Citigroup report published earlier this year, financial-technology companies have about the same number of clients as China's major banks.

RELATED: China 'Clone Factory' Scientist Eyes Human Replication

According to the Washington Post, eight private companies have already set up databases with government approval that compiles a range of consumer information. Scores can range from 350 to 950 and are linked to a national identity card.

So what kind of information is used to create a score? Defaulting on a loan, failing to pay taxes, breaking traffic laws, online purchasing decisions or even social media activity can all factor in to a score.

One of the largest is Sesame Credit, a subsidiary of online retailer Alibaba, which has a user base 400 million strong, and already has a system up and running. In fact, Baihe, an online dating service in China with 90 million clients, encourages users to display their Sesame Credit score in order to attract a mate.

It almost sounds like something out of a dystopian sci-fi thriller, and in fact a similar system was featured in a recent episode of the show "Black Mirror." But in China, such a system is already in place, and though it's allegedly voluntary for now, it will become mandatory in 2020. The program is still in its infancy, Wang Zhenyu, a researcher with the China University of Political Science and Law, told the Global Times, and more transparency is needed, making punishments clear and allowing for an appeals process.

RELATED: 120,000-Year-Old Human Found in China

Although it's unlikely that the United States would implement such a system any time soon, "we should take overseas uses of these technologies as a warning of what we don't want to see here," Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told Seeker.

Stanley, who focuses on privacy issues in the United States, sees some local parallels to the social credit system in China, "in terms of the collection of data on individuals and their activities, the use of that data to give people scores to make judgments and predictions, and the use of those kinds of scores to produce the behaviors that institutions want."

"With technology moving forward at a breakneck pace, we need to pay heed to some of the darker ways in which this technology could be used," Stanley said.

WATCH VIDEO: Is China An Atheist Country?
Consider this the next time you flush: New research from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has found a way to turn your waste into biocrude, a petroleum-like substance that can be refined and used as fuel.

The process is like what the earth does when, over millennia, it creates the crude oil we have come to rely on to power our cars and heat our homes. But hydrothermal liquefaction -- HTL, as the PNNL calls this innovative technique, developed by a team led by Rich Hallen and researchers Andy Schmidt and Justin Billing -- uses high pressure and temperature to accomplish this in minutes.

Does this mean we can look forward to poo-powered homes and vehicles?

"Not really," explains Corinne Drennan, Energy & Environment Directorate at PNNL. "If you look at the amount of petroleum we consume, the percent you could replace with poo is not significant." PNNL estimates that a single person could generate two to three gallons of biocrude per year. But humans use huge quantities of crude oil to power our modern lifestyles. That would be just a drop in the bucket of that demand. "If you crunch the numbers," says Drennan. "It is not even a percent of what we consume."

RELATED: Can New Energy Technology Save the Planet?

The technology, more immediately, solves a problem most of us would rather not think about. Waste is increasing, rapidly, while methods of disposing of it are aging and inadequate. According to a recent report, the volume of waste generated globally will grow by nearly 50 percent over the next ten years. We need innovative ways to recapture and use that waste. "This is a low hanging fruit," says Drennan. "It helps waste water plants with the energy consumption and tipping fees associated with managing sludges and bio solids." PNNL licensed the technology to Utah-based Genifuel Corporation, which is building a demonstration plant in Vancouver. It hopes to be the first wastewater treatment utility in North America to host hydrothermal liquefaction at one of its treatment plants.

There is no single solution to our out-of-control demand for fuel. We need to solve that from many angles. This technology is a great beginning to solving the problem of recapturing what is currently a useless form of waste. And sewage is just one form of wet waste we currently do not recycle. "It could also include manure, waste from distilleries and wineries, from paper manufacturing, and similar sources," says Drennan. "Those kinds of things, when you add them up and aggregate them, start making a real impact."

The PNNL's approach eliminates the need for drying this sort of waste, which historically made recapturing it prohibitively expensive. Instead, the material is pressurized to 3,000 pounds per square inch and fed into a reactor at about 660 degrees Fahrenheit. Heat and pressure break the cells down into biocrude and an aqueous liquid. And that can be processed using conventional petroleum refining techniques.

Even if the world's political leaders can't agree to cut carbon emissions, they have agreed to spend more money on new technologies that could achieve the same goal.

The Mission Innovation initiative will see 20 countries doubling investments in clean energy research and development over the next five years. Meanwhile, a separate effort led by Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and other tech CEOs called the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, will solicit private investment to fund programs.

RELATED: 11 Bizarre Sources For Alternative Energy

This is an early step when it comes to finding alternative sources of energy but it is a disruptive one. Because working with the renewable resources we already know how to process to create energy can be expensive. "Agricultural waste can cost hundreds of dollars a ton," says Drennan.

And, right now, this sort of wet waste has no value. In fact, we willingly pay someone to take it away. "Currently, in the U.S., sewage sludge goes into the landfill," agrees Chan Park, associate research engineer at UC Riverside's Center for Environmental Research and Technology. "And the tipping fee to do this is 60 dollars per ton. And you have to dry the sewage sludge before sending it to the landfill. In the past, it was dried in the open air by the sun. Nowadays, sun drying is banned so people use fuel to dry it."

Finding a way to turn wet waste into energy will produce energy and save these disposal fees. HTL might even  eventually  make wet waste as valuable as other forms of biofuel. But don't start hording. Your poo is not likely to have a monetary value any time soon. "That would be hilarious," says Drennan. "But it's not likely to happen in my lifetime."

WATCH: Which Countries Run On 100% Renewable Energy?
It's been a whirlwind couple of years for Lana Rodriguez.

Rodriguez first opened her vintage shop,

"I was seeing a lot of other retailers opening up in Detroit and I was like, 'If they can do it, so can I,'" Rodriguez says.

While Rodriguez put in plenty of hard work to pull off the grand opening of her permanent storefront this August, she certainly didn't get there alone. Along the way she enrolled in a class at the

"It's really growing," Rodriguez says. "It's almost like a family. It sounds cheesy but it really is true. Within that network, you find everyone."

The entrepreneurial ecosystem has seen particular growth in the last five years. Organizations and programs like

Cydney Camp, small business development manager at the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation



"It's always been a very strong network, but recently we've started to see an uptick in the support and resources available," says Cydney Camp, small business development manager at the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation. "People are coming to express interest and help bring the city back."

Entrepreneurial elementary school

There's a general track to the ecosystem, with many organizations catering to entrepreneurs at various stages of their journey toward starting a full-fledged business. Rodriguez compares it to a public school systemthe organizations roughly parallel elementary school, high school, and the post-graduation period when one is applying for opportunities to grow their business.

For Rodriguez, "elementary school" in the ecosystem was the Build Institute's programming for fledgling entrepreneurs. She enrolled in the institute's "Etsy Craft Entrepreneurship" class last year. Rodriguez didn't plan to focus her business on Etsy or even online, and mostly took the class because it was the institute's cheapest offering. However, she learned a lot about web design and enjoyed the sympathetic perspective of her teacher, who was herself a jewelry maker. Rodriguez also found the

April Boyle, executive director of Build Institute



"It allows people to get out there," Rodriguez says. "If they're still in the vision phase of their business, they can test the waters before having to pay $300 for a vending fee."

Build Institute founder and executive director April Boyle says she originally conceived the institute as a "feeder" to other ecosystem organizations, allowing prospective entrepreneurs to get basic training, experience, and networking with a low barrier to entry.

"If you're not a highly resourced entrepreneur, somebody like Dan Gilbert or John Varvatos or the guy from Shinola, it's still very difficult to navigate the city and to understand how to get a small business open," Boyle says. "They don't make it easy for the little guy."

Deeper learning

The "feeder" concept worked well for Rodriguez, who moved up to the next stage of her ecosystem education through a referral from Build to TechTown's SWOT City Southwest Detroit program. That program helps entrepreneurs develop a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis for their businesses and then draw up a growth plan and goals. From there, Rodriguez also quickly jumped into Retail Boot Camp, an eight-week TechTown program that covers a broad range of topics including building regulations, branding, and identifying startup costs.

Regina Ann Campbell, TechTown's managing director of place-based entrepreneurship



"Our entrepreneurs may understand their product and service, but they don't know how to do the nuts and bolts," says

, TechTown's managing director of place-based entrepreneurship. "You need to give them help to walk through."





As in the case of her Build Institute class, Rodriguez found resources that ran much deeper than she expected. Through Retail Boot Camp she had access to experts in a variety of fields, including architecture, accounting, and social media strategy.

"They just have a lot of resourcesstuff that you know you need, but you kind of put them on the back burner, especially if you don't have the money for it," Rodriguez says. "Everyone would love to have an accountant and a strategic social media plan, but realistically when you're one person you're taking a picture and loading it and that's all. That's your plan. Or you're just Googling 'how to do my taxes.'"

Even after completing SWOT City and Retail Boot Camp, Rodriguez has been pleased to find that her connections at TechTown continue to provide speedy assistance when she's navigating new terrain in her business.

"They constantly want to know, 'What are the issues that you guys are facing?'" Rodriguez says. "And then they help you get answers."

Getting business off the ground

Once a new entrepreneur gets a handle on his or her business idea and develops a basic working knowledge of business ownership, the greatest challenge yet arises: securing capital. Fortunately, Detroit's business ecosystem offers plenty of options at this stage as well. Rodriguez got an initial funding boost from Retail Boot Camp, which provides a $7,500 grant to five of the most promising graduates in each camp session.





Items for sale at Mama Coo's Boutique But she got an even bigger boost in April with her $18,000 grant from Motor City Match. A collaboration between the city of Detroit, the DEGC, the Economic Development Corp. of the City of Detroit, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Motor City Match provides grant funds to cover renovation, buildout, and startup costs for new Detroit businesses. Rodriguez says the grant allowed her to not only renovate her business' historic building at Trumbull and Bagley, but add aesthetic touches as well.

"I was able to fulfill the vision that I had for my store," she says. "You can always come back and fix it the way you want once you have a little money, but this allowed me to actually have my store the way I wanted it."

Motor City Match is just one of the DEGC's many programs dealing with higher-level concerns in Detroit business development. Camp says the organization works with everything "from large companies all the way down to small businesses in different neighborhoods," assisting with aspects ranging from site selection to tax incentives and business loans.

"I see us as being sort of a convener, as one of the hubs around the city to attract entrepreneurs and kind of point them in the right direction and give them a little bit of the help that they need ... to get their business off the ground," Camp says.

Spreading the word

With so much assistance available, Camp says the main challenge for resource providers is that many prospective and existing Detroit business owners aren't aware of all the ecosystem's offerings.

"Getting the word out, making sure that all of these resources are available to the broadest amount of people possible, is always a challenge," she says. "We have to be diligent and really committed to that kind of outreach, just making sure that people know what we have to offer."

Campbell and Boyle agree, both noting that they've made efforts to bring their programs into Detroit's various neighborhoods. Again, Rodriguez is a good success story for those efforts: she originally discovered the Build Institute because it had set up shop right in her neighborhood at the Ford Resource and Engagement Center.

Campbell says TechTown is eager to show Detroiters that entrepreneurial resources are available to more than just those who live or run businesses in Midtown. "We've found over these past three years you see a lot more neighborhood businesses coming in to TechTown because they realize this is for them as well," she says.

For her part, Rodriguez says she now sings the praises of Detroit's entrepreneurial ecosystem to "everyone that will listen," asserting that there are "so many resources available that it's silly."

"Shame on me if my business closes, because I'm totally set to succeed and to have longevity," she says. "If it closes, it's my fault and then I don't deserve it. It's ridiculous how much stuff has been offered to me that I can take advantage of."

Support for this feature is provided in part by Motor City Match, a program that connects new and expanding businesses with Detroits quality real estate opportunities, providing them with funding and tools to fuel the citys entrepreneurial revolution. Learn more at

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2017 is shaping up to be a big year for Dexter-based

The 5,800-square-foot Chicago restaurant will serve craft beers, distilled spirits, and wines from the

Grant calls the new location a "no-brainer" for Jolly Pumpkin, which also has locations in Traverse City, Ann Arbor, and Detroit and is known for its distinct brand of sour, barrel-aged beers. Plans for a Chicago expansion have been in the works since Jolly Pumpkin opened its third location in Detroit's Midtown last year.

Grant says getting in front of new customers is key to the brewery's success, and opening shop in a "great Midwestern city" like Chicago provides new opportunity to do so.

"The point of direct contact with the beer drinker is just so important for Jolly Pumpkin, because the beer is very different," Grant says. "Being able to interface with who's drinking the beer and talk with them about what they're drinking and what they're experiencing is just really important for us."

Also new for Jolly Pumpkin next year will be a farm-to-table restaurant at its Dexter brewery, which currently has a tasting room with snacks, but no dining.

The new venture will seat 50 to 70 patrons and will be run by Maggie Long, the longtime chef at Jolly Pumpkin's Ann Arbor location. Long was also recently tapped to help develop the menu for Avalon International Breads'

"It'll be more intimate, like you're sitting in her kitchen environment," Grant says. "It'll be a really neat experience for the guest."

Grant hopes the city of Dexter will greenlight the project once a new wastewater system is installed, and the new venture will also open next year.

Grant says Jolly Pumpkin's ownership and management team is always looking for new opportunities, especially within Michigan, if and when the timing is right. But he also says they're mindful about not overextending.

"We're still very small," he says.

Grant credits business partner and brewer Ron Jeffries' dedication and craft with putting the company in its current position.

"He makes great beer, [and] he does not sacrifice quality to cut costs or cut corners or get something out the door quickly," Grant says. "He's a perfectionist, and it really shows in the end product."
A favorite bakery is expanding with the opening of a second location in Oakland County. Love & Buttercream, the Royal Oak bakery that opened in 2012, will be opening in Birmingham as Love & Buttercream Too.At 6,300 square feet, the new Love & Buttercream is more than five times the size of the Royal Oak location. Like the original location, Love & Buttercream Too will feature handcrafted treats made on-site and always from scratch.There will be some differences, as the abundance of space allows owner Brooke Wilson Vitale the opportunity to try new things. The Birmingham location will have a retail and seating area, including breakfast options, coffee service, and WiFi. A private events space will allow for wedding cake tastings, event planning meetings, children birthday parties, girls' night outs, bridal showers, corporate events, and baking and decorating classes.The Birmingham location's daily offerings include five to eight varieties of cupcakes, French macarons, cake pops, sugar cookies, cakes, mini pies, whoopie pies, scones, mini doughnuts, and more."We set ourselves apart by using fresh, high-quality ingredients, and try to source organically and locally whenever possible," Wilson Vitale says. "No shortenings, preservatives, oils, or any of the fake stuff here."Wilson Vitale has been baking for much longer than 2012, when her shop opened. She grew up baking with her grandmother, eventually working out of her parents' basement. By 2010, she was taking cake orders and baking from home.The Royal Oak Love & Buttercream location remains open. It's located at 3202 Crooks Rd.Love & Buttercream Too celebrates its grand opening Wednesday, Nov. 9 and will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. It's located at 746 E Maple Rd., in Birmingham.
Construction has started on the Meta Physica Wellness Center in Corktown. The business will be located in the Bagley and Trumbull building, which counts the Bearded Lady salon and barber shop, Mama Coo's Boutique, and the Farmer's Hand market as its tenants. The latter two businesses are Motor City Match winners. All four businesses in the Bagley and Trumbull building will be women-owned.Meta Physica Wellness Center owner Jenevieve Biernat started her massage business in Midtown, which she has since outgrown. The Corktown studio will feature expanded services, including two massage rooms, three saunas, a raw juice bar, and an apothecary. Biernat won both a $50,000 Hatch award and a $20,000 Motor City Match grant for her business earlier this year."Every bit of money helps," Biernat says. "You don't always know how much you need going in but it turns out you need a lot of money to do this."Biernat says that once she's established, she'd like to put herself in a position to help others through the Motor City Match application process.A resident of Corktown, Biernat has been visiting the other shops at Bagley and Trumbull nearly every day, learning from her future neighbors, and soaking up as much advice and information that she can.Another $20,000 Motor City Match grant winner, Noelle Lothamer, is currently in the midst of construction of an Eastern Market storefront for her Beau Bien Fine Foods . The Michigan-sourced fruit jam-, chutney-, and mustard-makers recently celebrated the one year anniversary of their Eastern Market location, which has served primarily as a kitchen.Lothamer says the money won from Motor City Match has quickly gone toward construction costs, including the storefront, roof, and some other much needed repairs. "As soon as we knew we could spend it, we did."The hope is for the storefront to open by Thanksgiving, though Lothamer cautions that there is no set date. In addition to acting as a retail area for their jams, chutneys, and mustards, the Beau Bien Fine Foods storefront will also offer grab-and-go sandwiches, salads, and drinks.Meta Physica Wellness Center is located at 1707 Trumbull Ave.Beau Bien Fine Foods is located at 2478 Riopelle St.


One interesting job before Naturalicious: In grad school I was an editor at a risque book publisher. Every book I was responsible for editing was basically 50 Shades of Gray on steroids. When I interviewed for the job, they just told me it was for an editing position. It wasn't until the day I started that I realized I'd be editing freaky books. It was a pretty interesting gig, though, and my co-workers were really cool. It was a very laid back office; we could bring our pets in whenever we wanted and wear pajamas to work every day of the week if we chose to. The culture was nothing like you'd expect for that sort of business.



Favorite music to work to: 70s Funk (i.e. The Gap Band, Earth Wind & Fire, The Commodores, SOS Band, etc.)



One indispensable beauty care tip: Coconut oil is good for practically everything. It's an incredibly effective makeup remover, it's perfect for helping your nails grow faster and stronger, and it's a phenomenal conditioning ingredient when found in hair care products. I can think of at least 10 excellent beauty uses for coconut oil. I always keep a jar of unrefined, virgin coconut oil in my bathroom cabinet and another in my suitcase for when I'm traveling.

LeBron James. Beyonce Knowles-Carter. Serena Williams. These are household names throughout the United States and even much of the world. They're also members of the The Root 100 for 2016, a list of the 100 most influential African-Americans as put together by The Washington Post-owned publication The Root . In November, a gala is being held in New York City to celebrate those that have made the list.Also attending that gala will be Gwen Jimmere, a local entrepreneur who has seen tremendous growth in her all natural line of beauty products, Naturalicious . In just three years, Jimmere has quickly gone from creating an all-natural hair care product in her Canton, Michigan kitchen to being picked up by international beauty product distributor Jinny Beauty Supply and the first African-American woman to hold a U.S. patent for a natural hair care product. She's now based out of the ponyride facility in Detroit's Corktown neighborhood, where she and her team make all the products by hand.Jimmere comes from a corporate communications background where, before even creating Naturalicious, told a friend who worked at The Root that she would one day make it to their 100 list. It only took her four years to do so."To find out that I'm actually on it is a full circle moment for me," she says.Jimmere hails from Cleveland. After attending Kent State University for both her undergraduate and master degrees, she was recruited by Ford Motor Co. to become their global digital communications manager. She would later leave Ford to become the digital marketing director for Uniworld, and soon after make her Root 100 proclamation.An influential moment for Jimmere was seeing Chris Rock's documentary movie "Good Hair" during her pregnancy. She cites a scene that shows a pop can being submerged in a typical hair relaxer product and subsequently disintegrating. Concerned about what she was exposing her body and her unborn child to, Jimmere decided to create a safer and more natural hair product. She experimented, researched, and honed her product. Still, she treated it as a hobby, something she might one day give to family and friends.A couple of years later, with a two year old son and about 30 days from divorce, Jimmere was laid off from Uniworld. What some might see as a dead end turned out to be a window of opportunity. With little left in the bank, Jimmere decided that it was now or never."Having your back against the wall forces you to not doubt yourself," Jimmere says. "You don't really have the luxury to doubt yourself. It's like, I might as well just try everything because the worst that can happen is nothing."That attitude, coupled with a desire to make her son Caiden proud, got Naturalicious off the ground. Jimmere called the Whole Foods Market in Detroit to set up a meeting, eventually convincing them to carry her product. Now several Whole Foods locations carry Naturalicious. And Jinny Beauty Supply just signed on to distribute, starting out in 1,500 stores and eventually growing to 7,000.Naturalicious currently carries 10 products, all made by hand, designed for people with curly hair. The company is becoming known for both its all natural ingredients, and 3-in-1 and 5-in-1 products that help cut down on time. The clay comes from Morocco, the oils from Italy, Spain, and Argentina.Jimmere moved the company out of her kitchen and into ponyride this past May, making her first hires. Three of her six employees are supplied through Services To Enhance Potential, or STEP , which connects employers with people with special needs looking for work. She anticipates having to hire more people soon.Another member of the team is her son Caiden, now five years old. Caiden holds the title of chief candy curator, making sure that each order is accompanied by a piece of candy.As Jimmere relates Caiden's enthusiasm for Naturalicious, there's no need to question whether her son is proud of her. She's got it.: CEO + Founder, Naturalicious: 2013
Press Release

November 4, 2016 Bam to gov't, stakeholders: Join forces to take education to next level Come together to take our education systems to the next level! This was the challenge issued by Sen. Bam Aquino to concerned government agencies and private stakeholders during the 2016 Philippine Education Summit held Thursday at the SMX Convention Center. "I am hopeful that all stakeholders are willing to work together and focus on producing quality education," said Sen. Bam, chairman of the Committee on Education, Arts and Culture in the 17th Congress. In the 2017 budget, P650 billion has been earmarked for education, or equivalent to 19 percent of the total budget. Out of this, P567 billion will go to the Department of Education, P75 billion to the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and P6.87 billion to the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA). "Now that we have the resources to make a quantum leap in our education sector, let's come together to take our educational systems to the next level," Sen. Bam pointed out. However, Sen. Bam said the challenge is to make sure that the budget for education is felt by the public, especially the students in public schools and state colleges and universities (SUCs). During the summit, Sen. Bam also reiterated the Senate's commitment to support the government's pursuit to further improve quality of education in the country. As chairman of the Committee on Education, Sen. Bam is pushing for the passage of a measure that will give free tertiary education in all SUCs. Sen. Bam has filed Senate Bill No. 177 or the Free Higher Education for All Act giving free tuition fee to all students in SUCs. Sen. Bam has also submitted Senate Bill No. 170 or the Trabaho Center in Schools Act that creates an employment office in every senior high school, giving SHS graduates access to available job opportunities. The senator also wants to give out of school youth (OSY) in the country access to education through his Senate Bill No. 171 or the Abot Alam Bill, which seeks to institutionalize alternative learning system (ALS).
Press Release

November 4, 2016 STATEMENT OF SEN. FRANCIS PANGILINAN ON DAY PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT COMES INTO FORCE November signals the start of a substantial global action to address the climate crisis. Today, November 4, last year's Paris climate agreement will enter into force ahead of next week's COP 22 (22nd Conference of Parties) discussions in Morocco. We welcome this initiative by world leaders both in politics and science, and hope that the Philippines will ratify this landmark climate deal. Located along a typhoon belt and the Pacific Ring of Fire, our country is a disaster hotspot that hosts super typhoons, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes. And who are most vulnerable to the devastating effects of these disasters? Filipinos in rural areas who rely on agriculture and fisheries for their food and livelihood. Too much rain leaves farmlands flooded, as too much heat renders fields unfit for planting. On the other hand, climate-related conditions, such as warmer sea surface, ocean acidification, and rising sea levels, have killed and are killing marine species. Climate change threatens our ability to produce food as well as the income of our food producers, already the poorest in our society. Given these, world action must complement with local initiatives. On our end, we have filed several measures to increase their income in general and to counteract the devastating effects of disasters in particular. One of them is the Expanded Crop Insurance Act of 2016. Our agriculture sector incurs almost P10 billion damages due to climate change. Through the Expanded Crop Insurance, our farmers will have a safety net whenever natural disasters render their crops useless. Right now, only 3% of damaged crops are insured, leaving most farmers in debt. We aim to ease their burden a little by ensuring enhanced credit rating plus government support in agricultural production. Climate change is a global concern because it affects everyone. It is also local because it impacts on the food we eat. Those who grow or catch our food must be able to build back faster and better.
A view of the Goldman Sachs stall on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange July 16, 2013. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) - Libya's $67 billion sovereign wealth fund will turn to the UK Court of Appeal, a source said on Friday, after a high court judge denied it permission to appeal her judgment in a $1.2 billion case against Goldman Sachs.

Responding to the fund's request, Judge Vivien Rose denied it permission to appeal her October judgment in which she dismissed the Libyan Investment Authority's (LIA) case against Goldman Sachs over nine equity derivatives trades made in 2008.

But a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters the LIA is now likely to seek permission from the Court of Appeal.

Litigants can ask the Court of Appeal for permission to proceed with an appeal if the trial judge has refused permission.

In the LIA's court filings, seen by Reuters, the fund said an appeal would be confined to its claim in respect of four trades made in April 2008, and a prestigious internship that Goldman Sachs offered to Haitem Zarti, the younger brother of Mustafa Zarti, a key LIA decision-maker at the time.

"We say the offer of an internship was a bribe in civil law," Roger Masefield, a lawyer for the LIA, told the court. "This was sufficient to create a real possibility of a conflict of interest in the mind of Mustafa Zarti."

Goldman Sachs said in an emailed statement there was no basis for an appeal. "The judgment clearly established that the internship did not have a material influence on the decision of Mr Zarti and the LIA to enter into the April Trades," it said.

(Reporting by Claire Milhench; editing by Sujata Rao and Mark Trevelyan)
Last weeks Portals described how Union Square evolved in the 19th century from a wasteland of sand dunes to a landscaped public square surrounded by churches and a thriving, diverse residential neighborhood. But as the area developed, it also acquired a seamy side: the narrow, two-block-long Morton Street, known now as Maiden Lane.

From the 1870s until 1896, this little street was one of downtowns most notorious brothel alleys, filled on Saturday nights with drunken men doing business with the women who presented themselves in street-level windows.

As Tenderloin historian Peter Field notes in Maiden Lane: The Real Story, an article that will appear in the summer issue of the Argonaut, the streets first brothel opened in 1862 and within a few years was followed by many others. At first the brothels were relatively respectable parlor houses, but as the street declined it became filled with lower-rent cribs, small rooms that prostitutes rented by the night, hanging a sign with their name on it from a bedpost.

Although public outrage over Morton Street periodically flared up, the police tolerated it and other well-known brothel alleys such as Belden Place, St. Marys Place and Quincy Place, following a policy of containment. Beat cops were also paid off.

Cracking down

Authorities finally cleaned up the street in 1896, when a prostitute who was the adopted daughter of a police sergeant was found dead on Morton along with her boyfriend in an apparent double suicide. The police drove out the streets prostitutes and never allowed them to return.

They also shut down several other brothel alleys, which had unforeseen consequences: So many displaced prostitutes spread out across town that a grand jury quickly recommended that no more of these alleys be closed.

In 1899, the city sought to cement the streets new respectability by giving it the somewhat grandiose name of Union Square Avenue. It was renamed Manila Avenue in 1909 and finally given its current name, Maiden Lane, in 1922. Ironically, its now one of the most elegant streets in all of downtown.

Chris Stewart/SFC

Square transformed

Maiden Lane wasnt the only thing that underwent a makeover: Union Square itself was completely redesigned at the turn of the century, thanks to San Franciscos involvement in the Spanish-American War of 1898.

As the port of embarkation for the Philippines, the city was filled with patriotic fervor. To commemorate Adm. George Deweys victory over the Spanish fleet in Manila Harbor, the city decided to erect a monument, and a citizens committee organized by Mayor James Phelan chose Union Square for the location.

The figure of Victory that tops the Dewey Monuments 79-foot granite shaft and 18-foot pedestal was executed by sculptor Robert Aitken. His model was Alma de Bretteville, who had earned money doing nude modeling. The head of the citizens committee that selected Aitkens statue was Adolph Spreckels, who was so taken with the literally statuesque, 6-foot-tall model that he married her.

Because Spreckels was a sugar magnate, his wife often called him her sugar daddy. Big Alma Spreckels went on to become one of San Franciscos most famous socialites and philanthropists.

Joe Rosenthal/The Chronicle

Rise of retail

Around the time the Dewey Monument was dedicated in 1903, Union Squares pathways were redesigned and the first of its Canary Island palms were planted. At the same time, two wings of the elegant 13-story building that was to anchor the square, the St. Francis Hotel, were completed.

Then the 1906 earthquake and fire hit. The catastrophe gutted the St. Francis and practically everything else within a mile of the square. Union Square was used as a campground for the St. Francis displaced guests, hundreds of whom were fed at long outdoor tables.

The hotel was quickly rebuilt, and over the decades the squares most famous buildings followed: the 1909 City of Paris, the 1923 Fitzhugh Building, the OConnor Moffat department store (now Macys) in 1928, and the I. Magnin facade (now Louis Vuitton) in 1945.

By 1939, the year the first Christmas tree in Union Square was lit, retail development in the area had expanded so much that parking was becoming a major problem. As Gregory J. Nuno notes in A History of Union Square, which appeared in the summer 1993 edition of the Argonaut, by 1940 the Union Square area featured 17 large retail stores, 11 office buildings, 88 hotels, 15 clubs and seven theaters, and the local garages could barely handle one stores customers.

Digging a garage

Accordingly, the city partnered with a corporation to build a garage under Union Square  the first underground parking structure in the world. Getting it done was not easy. Three years of engineering research were required, and the city had to overcome a lawsuit challenging its right to lease the land under a public park to a private corporation.

Ground was finally broken in 1941, and the entire block excavated to a depth of 48 feet. The column of the 350-ton Dewey Monument, which had been knocked askew by the 1906 quake, was hollowed out and fitted over a rod of reinforced concrete that extended all the way to the foundation.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

The garage was finished in the summer of 1942, as World War II raged. It was designed to serve as a bomb shelter if needed. Eighty-million cubic-feet of sand from the excavation was used to make the beach at Aquatic Park.

The retail area around Union Square declined in the late 1960s, but surged again as the adjacent Financial District expanded. By 1985, it boasted one of the greatest concentrations of retail stores in the world.

After an international competition, the square was remodeled again between 1997 and 2002. Today, the former desert is the unquestioned heart of the city.

Special thanks to Peter Field for providing an advance copy of his forthcoming article on Morton Street.

Every corner in San Francisco has an astonishing story to tell. Gary Kamiyas Portals of the Past tells those lost stories, using a specific location to illuminate San Franciscos extraordinary history  from the days when giant mammoths wandered through what is now North Beach to the Gold Rush delirium, the dot-com madness and beyond.

Trivia time

Last weeks trivia question: What primitive San Francisco timepiece was once advertised as the largest in the world?

Answer: The 28-foot sundial on Entrada Court.

This weeks trivia question: What film opens with a shot of a cable car passing Union Square? (Hint: The director makes his customary cameo appearance minutes later.)

Editors note

Every corner in San Francisco has an astonishing story to tell. Gary Kamiyas Portals of the Past tells those lost stories, using a specific location to illuminate San Franciscos extraordinary history  from the days when giant mammoths wandered through what is now North Beach to the Gold Rush delirium, the dot-com madness and beyond.
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Workers building a condo development have uncovered the remains of an old ship right next to the Old Ship Saloon on Pacific Avenue at the edge of San Franciscos Financial District.

The discovery is almost certainly what remains of the Gold Rush ship Arkansas, which arrived in San Francisco in December 1849, was run up on the shore, and later became a saloon, a store, a boardinghouse, a bordello, a hotel and a saloon again before it was dismantled and buried for good nearly 160 years ago.

The area where the ship was found was part of the fabled Barbary Coast, once one of the toughest and most dangerous districts in the world. Sailors were shanghaied from the Barbary Coast, and some say ghostly figures still haunt the area.

The remains of the old ship were discovered in 1890 and rediscovered this fall. Work crews found them while doing foundation work for a seven-story condo building. They found pieces of the ships hull and what might be parts of its cargo, including leather shoes and bottles. The biggest piece was a 15-foot wood fragment that appears to be the ships keel, buried in mud about 25 feet below the surface.

Its an interesting story, said James Allan, an archaeologist who led a team examining the artifacts. He believes the remains are whats left of the Arkansas. Its in the right place, he said.

Grosvenor Americas, which is developing the site, made no public announcement of the discovery, though the company did report it to city officials as required by law.

Thomas Webb/The Chronicle

Allan and a team of archaeologists and historians examined the bits and pieces of the ship, decided that they would be too difficult to excavate and preserve, and buried them again. The site is surrounded by a chain-link fence, and it is not possible to see the ships grave.

Allan thinks Grosvenor Americas did the right thing by the old ship by treating it appropriately. They did a great job, he said.

Though the discovery was kept quiet, the word got out through talk at the Old Ship Saloon next door and via Internet postings. Members of E Clampus Vitus, a group interested in both Gold Rush history and drinking, posted stories about the old ship last weekend.

Its fascinating that we have a Gold Rush ship graveyard under our feet, said James Jarvis, a member of E Clampus Vitus. Jarvis has been working for 22 years on a book about vanished but historic San Francisco saloons.

I love the drinking history and social history of the city, he said.

Eric Luse/The Chronicle

The corner of Pacific Avenue and Battery Street has both. Jarvis said the site is historic because drinks have been served there continuously since 1851. Bill Duffy, who owns the Old Ship, said his place is the oldest bar in the city, though others maintain that the Saloon on Grant Avenue in North Beach is older. But the Old Ship certainly comes with a story.

It begins 183 years ago, when the three-masted sailing ship Arkansas was launched in New York. The ship had an uneventful life for 16 years, until it was caught up in the Gold Rush of 1849.

Though the Arkansas was an old vessel by the standards of the day, it was chartered by a Methodist society to sail for California. There were 112 passengers aboard, 76 of them Methodists, bound for the gold fields to spread the word of God. The others were gamblers and men with all manner of vices, according to a diary of the voyage kept by Robert N. Ferrell, one of the passengers.

The ship sailed from New York on June 26, 1849, bound for San Francisco and never to return, Ferrell wrote. It was a nightmare voyage. The ship ran short of food, got into huge storms. Sickness broke out and three passengers died.

When they got to San Francisco after a six-month voyage, the ship ran aground on Alcatraz, was badly damaged, and was run ashore at the Pacific Street wharf.

The harbor was full of stranded ships, and the Arkansas was converted to a store ship, with its masts cut off. A hole was cut in its side, and it became a saloon, reached by a plank. Here a poorly spelled sign told customers: Gude bad and indiferent spirits sold here at 25 cents each.

Later, the Arkansas became a hotel, a bordello and a boardinghouse. In 1857 or so, what remained of the Arkansas was dismantled. When its remains were discovered in 1890, The Chronicle reported that under several feet of accumulated dirt and rubbish lay an interesting discovery  the skeleton of a ship.

In the fires that followed the 1906 earthquake, everything above ground in the area was burned. In 1907, a brick building was erected on the site and named the Old Ship Saloon, which stands today.

These days it serves food and drink. A good lunch crowd, said Bill Duffy, who has owned the Old Ship Saloon since 2002. A neighborhood bar, said Mark Schachern, who was having a drink there this week. It has a nice feel to it.

But there is something else in the air, Duffy said. There are two upper floors, rented out as single-occupancy rooms. And sometimes, he said, tenants have told him about what he calls some kind of ghostly presence, something like that, in the rooms.

Its hard to explain, he said, but this is the only saloon in town with roots that go back to the Gold Rush and the Barbary Coast.

Carl Nolte is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cnolte@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carlnoltesf
Parks in San Franciscos southern neighborhoods must look at their peers to the north with envy  they arent as well maintained, theres more litter, and the equipment is aging.

Open spaces in Districts 10 and 11  which include the Bayview-Hunters Point, Visitacion Valley, Crocker Amazon, the Excelsior and Mission Terrace  scored 10 percentage points lower in meeting the citys maintenance standards than the highest-ranking area, which includes SoMa and parts of downtown, according to a recent report released by the city controllers office.

The evaluation, in its 11th year, has routinely ranked parks in those districts as the worst. Each parks score is based on the evaluations of 12 features, including trees, restrooms, buildings and general amenities. The citys 221 parks are divided into seven service areas, making further comparisons between different sections of the city easier.

Average scores rose last fiscal year to 85.6 percent overall, an increase of 0.4 percentage points from 2014, and the gap between the highest- and lowest-scoring districts also closed by 3 percent.

But there was a sharp difference between the lowest- and highest-ranked parks. Excelsior Playground, at 64.5 percent, and India Basin Shoreline Park, at 65.3 percent, were the worst in the city. At the top were Cabrillo Playground, at 98.2 percent, and Sunnyside Conservatory, at 97.7 percent.

Everything is moving in the right direction, said Rec and Park Commission President Mark Buell. We are trying to give more resources and spend more money in the needed areas. The report highlights where we need to focus our attention.

City officials are hopeful that Proposition B  which passed in June and will allocate $64 million to Rec and Park this fiscal year  will close that gap between the best and worst parks. The lowest-ranking parks will be the first to receive much-needed court resurfacing, play area renovations and field improvements. Measures to make sure money is spread equally were outlined at the departments commission meeting last month.

Its important that we think about how we can use our economic boom to be deliberate about how money flows into places like Visitacion Valley and the Excelsior, said Supervisor John Avalos, who represents District 11, at the meeting. Everyone goes to their parks to enjoy them. The equity measures are the lens by which we make later decisions.

A score of 85 percent is considered a well-maintained park, the report said. The good news: An additional 10 parks moved up the scale since last year to achieve scores of 90 percent or higher. The greatest increases were seen in wealthier parts of the city  District Three, including Nob Hill, North Beach and the Financial District, and District Five, including Noe Valley, Twin Peaks and the Castro  with a bump of 18.7 percentage points for Gilman Playground, 18.6 points for Washington Square, 17 points for Joe DiMaggio North Beach Playground, 16.7 points for Grattan Playground and 15.8 points for Ina Coolbrith Park.

Conversely, the greatest decreases were again predominantly seen in Districts 10 and 11. Adam Rogers Park in the Bayview sank by 12.3 percentage points, Visitacion Valley Playground by 11.9 points, India Basin Shoreline Park by 13.5 points and Excelsior Playground by 11.6 points. The Buchanan Street Mall in the Fillmore sank by 16.4 points. The gap between the highest and lowest parks was 33.7 percentage points  eight points less than in 2014.

Supervisor Malia Cohen, who represents District 10, which includes the Bayview, said the report reflected the harsh reality residents face on a daily basis getting resources and projects completed.

I am not surprised by the finding, she said. I am still encouraged by the commitment that Rec and Park has made to the southeastern neighborhood parks to close that gap. The overall goal is to bring all parks to an equal point.

About 40 percent of the 20 highest-scoring parks were in what the department calls equity zones  parks in underserved neighborhoods needing extra attention  compared with 25 percent in 2015, the report shows. The 2012 Clean and Safe Neighborhoods Park bond also poured $195 million into Rec and Park to improve 15 neighborhood open spaces. Of that money, $15.5 million was invested in failing playgrounds, like Sgt. John Macaulay Park and Washington Square Playground. Cohen commended the department for improving those open spaces.

More projects using Prop. B dollars in lower-scoring districts are already slated for next year, including field renovations at Crocker-Amazon and Youngblood Coleman, and childrens play area renovations at Hyde-Turk Mini Park and Merced Heights Playground, said Rec and Park Director Phil Ginsburg.

If youre rating something, there will always be a high and a low, Ginsburg said, adding that the department suffers more than $1 billion in deferred maintenance. We want that gap to continue to decrease. Its going to take a little bit of time. Theres a lot of work to be done. But next year is the big push.

Lizzie Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ljohnson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LizzieJohnsonnn
Michael Macor / The Chronicle

A woman in her 60s died after her canoe overturned Friday on the Russian River in Sonoma County near Healdsburg, police said.

Paddling through wine country on the river, the woman and two of her friends were separated from their canoe when it flipped Friday, according to the Sonoma County Sheriffs Office.
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Like most election junkies, I have been obsessively watching the myriad polls and forecasts handicapping the presidential race between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump.

The usual players, of course, pop up: Gallup, Zogby, Ipsos, Quinnipiac, Marist. And then theres SurveyMonkey.

It is jarring to see a company named after a banana-eating primate among the countrys most prominent pollsters. But through its partnerships with NBC and the Washington Post, the Palo Alto data analytics firm has muscled its way into the national debate over whos going to win the White House Tuesday.

Were in it in full for this election, Jon Cohen, the companys senior vice president of survey research and former top pollster for the Washington Post, told me last week.

This is heady stuff for a company that started out providing simple tools for businesses to get feedback from customers, or groups to plan events. It wasnt until 2012 that SurveyMonkey started eyeing politics. But before the monkey could swing in the power corridors of Washington, it had to prove it could develop scientifically sound methods to produce accurate results.

Internet polls have a deservedly bad rap. Powered by widgets that dont sample an audience or prevent the most basic forms of manipulation, these popularity contests are rightly viewed as unscientific and unreliable. Think of the faux flash polls that popped up immediately after the recent presidential debates, widely cited by right-leaning outlets like the Drudge Report and wildly at odds with more rigorous polls.

Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle

But over the past decade, two big things have happened: People stopped using landline telephones long relied on by pollsters, and more people went online.

And with caller ID, people can ignore calls they dont recognize. As a result, old-fashioned phone surveys have not only become more time-consuming and expensive, but also inaccurate, said Steven Smith, director of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis.

Response rates are going way, way down, he said.

Online polls offer the prospect of quickly reaching a large and diverse group of people in a cost-effective way, Smith said.

But Internet polls still present problems. For one thing, the type of person willing to take a lengthy online poll about politics may not be representative of the general population. To compensate, pollsters would adjust the sample size by adding weights to certain demographic groups to better reflect the public.

Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

However, this year, the Pew Research Center published a study that found online polls significantly overestimated blacks and Hispanics, two groups that tend to have less Internet access than whites. The group determined the polls sample of African Americans and Hispanics was reported as 11.3 and 15.1 percentage points, respectively, higher than it really was.

There were widespread errors found for estimates of blacks and Hispanics, the study said. In addition, these results suggest that researchers ... are at risk of drawing erroneous conclusions about the effects associated with race and ethnicity.

SurveyMonkey says it has been able to overcome these problems through sheer scale  big data, in Silicon Valley parlance. A typical polls sample size can include anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand people. SurveyMonkey reaches tens or even hundreds of thousands of people for a typical political poll.

SurveyMonkeys ambitions have grown accordingly. This election season, the company has worked with the Washington Post to create a 50-state poll and a 15-state battleground poll based on interviews with 74,000 people. SurveyMonkey is also working with NBC News on weekly online polls.

Every day, more than 3 million people take the companys polls on a variety of subjects  it still does customer-satisfaction surveys, and yes, suburban moms use it to plan Girl Scout meetings. From this base, SurveyMonkey is able to recruit such a large and diverse group that the company only needs to make minor adjustments to the sample, Cohen said.

The raw data is surprisingly good, he said.

Cohen acknowledges that there is still a digital divide that separates whites from blacks and Hispanics, but the proliferation of cheaper smartphones has narrowed that gap.

In 2014, from a nationwide sample of 200,000 adults, SurveyMonkey correctly predicted the outcomes of all 36 races for the Senate and 33 out of 36 gubernatorial races. A later analysis by the Washington Post found that SurveyMonkeys average margin of error in forecasting individual races was 3.2 percentage points, compared with a five percentage point average with live phone surveys.

It appears that these approaches work fairly well, Smith of Washington University said.

Such a large sample can preclude the need for significant adjustments, because it can account for smaller, more uncommon demographics not reflective of the general population, he said.

Even the weird combinations  say, rich people under the age of 25 with Ph.D.s  are going to appear with some frequency in the sample, Smith said.

Besides SurveyMonkey, other Silicon Valley companies are expanding into the business of elections. VoteCastr in Palo Alto plans to stream live results through its mobile app on election day. And Quid, a San Francisco analytics startup, has been hired by a large corporation to analyze the elections impact on the country, said founder and CEO Bob Goodson.

Cohen of SurveyMonkey wants to move beyond just predicting election results. The real value in the data is to understand the changes in demographics and attitudes of the American electorate, he said.

We need to understand the election, not just handicap it, Cohen said.

Thomas Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: tlee@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ByTomLee
The average janitor earns $26,180 a year. But one San Francisco-based janitor has managed to increase that average tenfold. Liang Zhao Zhang, a BART system service worker, raked in over $275,000 in 2015, thanks to overtime pay.

BART spokesperson Alicia Trost confirmed that Zhang made a base salary of $57,945 and $162,050 in overtime pay. Benefits brought him to a total of $276,121.

This is the third year in a row the janitor has made a six-figure salary.

While researchers at Transparent California, the nonprofit that released the 2015 public employee compensation data, call BART's compensation packages outrageous and irresponsible, Zhang isn't the one to blame, according to his employers. He "signs up for every overtime slot that becomes available," Trost tells CNBC. "He is likely working almost every day of the year cleaning our stations."





SFGate reports that Zhang clocked over 4,000 hours in 2015. To put that into perspective, the typical BART employee works about 2,000 hours per year.

"He is signing up for time that is also available to others," Trost explains. "If he doesn't take the hours, someone else will. The sign-ups are based on seniority."

It's difficult to determine exactly how much Zhang makes per hour  overtime pay is different depending on the type of shift  but SFGate estimates that he is "making roughly $56 an hour before taxes and when you pull out benefits from his salary."

While a $276,000 salary is impressive, it's not even close to what the head of BART pulls in: Grace Crunican, who was named general manager of the transit system in 2011, brought home $458,810 in total pay and benefits last year, according to Transparent California.





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A young doctor from Delaware with a transgender patient wanted to know how his medications for bipolar disorder would affect his hormone therapy.

The physician, still in a residency program, contacted TransLine, an e-consultation service that operates out of San Franciscos Lyon-Martin Health Services, which serves women and transgender people.

Ive never done this before, the doctor wrote. Do you have any advice on whether Im doing the right thing?

TransLine, which does not take questions directly from patients and provides only clinician-to-clinician support, has grown from answering an average of three questions a month when it started in 2012 to more than a question a day now. Most of the questions concern hormone therapy, but they also include queries about surgery, insurance coverage, fertility and mental health.

This is a much-needed service. There really is nothing else like it in the country, or even the world as far as we know, said Lyon-Martins trans health manager, JM Jaffe, who manages TransLine.

TransLine is essentially a form of telemedicine, the growing practice of providing medicine remotely. While some practices involve video or other more sophisticated technology for virtual visits, TransLine is a basic email consultation service that relies on volunteer clinicians to answer questions, typically within 30 hours.

Liz Hafalia/The Chronicle

About three years ago, TransLine started adding providers from health centers around the country who have expertise in transgender care so Lyon-Martin staff no longer have to answer all the questions. The clinic has partners in Boston, Philadelphia, Springfield, Mass., and Baltimore, and plans to work with a practice in Chicago. Lyon-Martin became part of the HealthRight 360 group of free clinics last year.

We have providers all over the country and our vision is to expand it further, Jaffe said.

Lyon-Martins medical director, Dr. Dawn Harbatkin, modeled TransLine after UCSFs National HIV Telephone Consultation Service, which provides providing readily available expert HIV/AIDS consultation to clinicians nationwide.

I used the HIV warmline all the time to support my care, she said. I figured if Im a physician in the middle of Iowa and I have a transperson come into my practice ... there should be a place to go to get questions answered.

Awareness about transgender care is increasing, but its not a specialty, nor is there any certification or national standards for care, Harbatkin said. We starting to see changes in medical school curriculum, in nurse practitioner curriculum that, over time, will see some impact, but its slow going, she said.

As the service has grown in popularity, so has the level of complexity of the questions asked by providers around the country, said Dr. Nick Gorton, a Lyon-Martin physician.

It used to be I have a trans patient. What do I do? Gorton said, adding he used to be able to answer about 90 percent of the questions off the top of his head.

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In another recent question submitted to TransLine, a doctor in Oregon asked what needed to be done for a male-to-female patient whose testosterone levels had fallen below normal levels due to hormonal therapy. The volunteer physician chimed in with various suggestions of how to adjust the medications.

Jaffe is not a physician, but often answers questions about insurance and cultural sensitivity.

Occasionally, well get a provider who is very new to trans care and is not asking questions the right way or is misgendering their patient, said Jaffe, who finds it rewarding to help. We want to be very clear how grateful we are they are serving trans patients and that they have found their way to the TransLine and want to do the right thing.

Victoria Colliver is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vcolliver@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @vcolliver
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Insurance giant American International Group has opened an office in San Mateo to market life insurance primarily to Asian Americans and, to a lesser extent, Asian citizens living in the United States.

All salespeople in the office must be bilingual in English and an Asian language. About 95 percent of the staff is Asian American, said Elaine Liu, AIG vice president and chief marketing officer for Asian Markets.

The office has Asian art, signs in English and Chinese and meeting spaces that look, vaguely, like tea rooms. At its grand opening last month, there was a lion dance and tea ceremony.

Although the office will sell insurance to anyone, it is specifically designed to serve Asian American consumers, the company said in a press release.

Its part of what AIG calls its Asian markets initiative, announced in July 2015. The initiative is what remains of AIGs in-house insurance sales network after it was drastically downsized in January. Most of AIGs life policies are sold through independent agents.

Many U.S. companies focus on Asians or other ethnic groups, though usually not to the extent that AIG is doing with its internal staff. Several California banks, including East West Bank and Cathay Bank, have deep roots in the Asian American community.

AIG

AIG started in 1919 in Shanghai, but moved its headquarters to New York City in 1939. It sells a wide range of commercial and consumer insurance. Global life insurance accounted for about 12.4 percent of operating revenue and 9.2 percent of operating income in the first nine months of this year, but its a slow-growing business.

The U.S. life insurance market is fully mature. Growth prospects are limited, said Morningstar analyst Brett Horn said.

AIG focuses on Asian Americans because they are the nations fastest-growing racial group, thanks largely to immigration, Liu said. They also have the highest median income of any ethnic group, and are the most likely to have a bachelors or advanced degree, according to U.S. Census data.

But they are underserved when it comes to life insurance, said John Deremo, executive vice president of AIG Financial Distributors. About 30 percent of the (U.S.) population does not own individual life insurance. Among Asian Americans, its 45 percent.

Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The Chronicle

Liu said AIG salespeople in California who have been targeting the Asian markets, particularly Chinese markets, have shown production levels almost twice as much as the general market. So it makes a lot of business sense for us to put more focus, more language and cultural support behind this market.

Although the focus is on Chinese Americans, the office caters to all Asian groups, and it has materials in nine languages.

AIGs San Mateo office has about 40 salespeople and 50 employees overall, with about 10 more in a satellite office in San Jose. Id like to see it grow significantly. There are very strong demographics in that part of the country to support more robust growth, Deremo said.

AIG opened its first Asian-themed office in Pasadena last summer. It has 50 to 60 sales reps. It has another office in Rockville, Md., with 30 to 40 reps. AIG plans to expand the concept to Houston and Northern New Jersey.

In January 2014, AIG announced a major expansion of its in-house or career sales staff, and rebranded it the AIG Financial Network. The Asian initiative was part of that transformative growth strategy, the company said in a July 2015 press release.

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Last fall, however, activist investors Carl Icahn and John Paulson, whose companies own stakes in AIG, began urging the company to cut costs and split into three pieces, to avoid the regulatory burden that comes with being a systemically important financial institution (a.k.a. too big to fail). AIG was bailed out during the financial crisis, but has no government ownership now.

AIG has resisted breaking up, but has shed some noncore operations and cut costs. In early January, it quietly and abruptly shut down all but four of its 178 AIG Financial Network offices around the country. The company did not disclose the number of layoffs involved, but at the time the network had about 1,500 employees. Before the shutdown, the network accounted for about 10 percent of AIGs life insurance sales.

The only offices that remained open were Pasadena, Rockville, Pleasanton and Daly City. The latter two closed later and were consolidated into the San Mateo office.

Although the remaining offices are catering mainly to Asian Americans, the company began marketing to foreign citizens living in the United States toward the end of last year, Liu said. We can provide services and products to customers who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents (green card holders), although they must meet certain requirements.

Among other things, they must have a bank account in the United States. They also must own real estate, have a business or investment account here, or be an employee of a U.S. company. They also must be in the United States at least 15 days a year and purchase the policy here.

Other U.S. companies also market life insurance to wealthy foreign citizens, who might want it for a variety of tax, investment and estate-planning reasons.

Kathleen Pender is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: kpender@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kathpender
Arrest rates have dropped for all racial groups in California over the past decade, but African Americans are still much more likely than whites to be arrested on felony charges, the state attorney generals office reported Friday.

In 2015, blacks were 10 times as likely as whites to be arrested on robbery charges and three to five times as likely to be arrested on charges of burglary, theft or assault, the report said. For felonies involving narcotics, black men were six times as likely as white men to be arrested, and black women were 2.9 times as likely as white women.

The disparity was even larger for charges of prostitution, in which black women were 20 times as likely to be arrested as white women.

The differences were much less for Latinos, who were about twice as likely as non-Latino whites to be arrested for robbery and were arrested at about the same rate as whites for narcotics. The report also noted that the racial gap was much larger a decade ago, when African Americans in California were about 17 times as likely as whites to be arrested on narcotics charges.

The report, part of a year-old project by the state attorney generals office to study arrest records statewide, comes at a time of national controversy and protests over racial issues in law enforcement and police killings of black men.

The data show pervasive inequalities in our criminal justice system, Attorney General Kamala Harris said in a statement accompanying the report. We must continue the national dialogue about criminal justice reform and promote the American idea that we are all equal under the law.

The data are disturbing but not surprising, said Rory Little, a law professor at UC Hastings in San Francisco and a former federal prosecutor.

In part, he said, it reflects differences in income, as police tend to patrol more in poorer neighborhoods, which also are more likely to be communities of color. Another reason, he said, is unconscious bias, which police share with the rest of society.

If you (the officer) see a poorly dressed person walking down the street looking in car windows, you might follow the black person more than the white person, Little said. If asked for an explanation, the officer would probably say, He just looked suspicious to me.

While there are no recent racial breakdowns of crime rates in California, the arrest percentages are somewhat similar to the statewide prison population. A 2013 report by the Public Policy Institute of California found that Latinos and African Americans made up less than 60 percent of the states population but 71 percent of the prisoners, and that blacks were incarcerated at nearly five times the rate of Latinos and nearly nine times the rate of whites.

Fridays report noted the effect of Proposition 47, the 2014 initiative that reclassified drug possession and theft crimes under $950 as misdemeanors instead of felonies.

Felony arrests in California dropped by 29 percent in 2015, the report said, while misdemeanor arrests increased by 11 percent.

But arrests have also declined over a longer period, the report said: by 17.5 percent, or an average of 32,500 a year, since 2008. Narcotics arrests declined steadily from 2005 to 2014 and then fell nearly 70 percent in 2015, the report said.

The figures reflect the scaling back of the war on drugs, said Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, criminal justice and drug policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union in California. She said studies have shown that whites and blacks use drugs at similar rates but blacks are arrested more often for drug crimes.

California lawmakers acted two years ago to equalize the sentences for crimes involving crack cocaine, committed mostly by blacks, and those involving powder cocaine, committed mostly by whites. Possession of crack for sale formerly carried nearly twice the sentence as possessing powder cocaine. The disparity for those crimes at the federal level was formerly 100 to 1 but was reduced to 18 to 1 by a similar act of Congress in 2010.

Elisa Della-Piana, legal director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco, said racial disparities in the system wont be eliminated by focusing solely on law enforcement and sentencing.

I think looking at how we tinker with criminal justice has brought some benefits, she said, but its time to look at investing in schools and jobs instead of police and prisons.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelko
Change has come to America.

The Chronicles front page from Nov. 5, 2008, covers Barack Obamas decisive presidential election victory.

Obama, the 47-year-old senator from Illinois who defined the 2008 presidential election as a clarion call for change, was elected in a landslide Tuesday night as the nations first African American president, the story read.

His victory represented more than the shattering of a racial glass ceiling. After eight years of conservative control of the White House, it also heralded transformational changes in the nations political landscape.

The odds were stacked against Obama throughout much of the campaign, but he and his running mate, Joe Biden, cruised to victory, taking 365 electoral voters to challenger John McCains 173, winning 28 of the 50 states and garnering a nearly 10 million-vote edge in the popular vote.

Democratic supporters and political commentators waxed poetic about the triumph, but no one but the historic night in perspective better than Obama himself.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer, he said.

Its been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, in this defining moment, change has come to America.

See more front pages: Go to SFChronicle.com/covers to search a database of hundreds of Chronicle Covers articles that showcase the newspapers history.

More from the Archive The Vault Home of the San Francisco Chronicle's archive and more than 150 years of journalism covering the Bay Area and beyond.

Chronicle Covers highlights one classic Chronicle newspaper page from our archive every day for 366 days. Library director Bill Van Niekerken and producers Kimberly Chua, Michelle Devera and Jillian Sullivan contributed to the project. Tim ORourke is the executive producer and editor of SFChronicle.com. Email: torourke@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TimothyORourke

(Click to enlarge)




The presidential candidates are spending $1.3 billion, and Californias 17-item ballot is drawing more than $450 million in contributions. San Francisco has its own spin on this money-soaked pattern with millions coming from a handful of wealthy givers.

These big-bucks donors are behind a flood of mailers pouring through door slots and waves of TV ads aimed at steering voters their way. Four givers including three individuals and a trade group are spending $30 million on issues that range from a soda tax to mayoral powers.

But the heavy spending is more than dollar signs. The ballot is turning into a battlefield reserved for the rich and connected. A small giver, hewing to campaign donation limits, doesnt count when major battles heat up. Income inequality has a home on the ballot.

Faced with contribution limits, wealthy donors, unions and interest groups are able to essentially run outside spending caps designed to rein in runaway influence. Millions of dollars are shunted through donation channels to mask the real source. These funds flow to independent committees, barred from working in concert with a candidate, which are free to raise unlimited amounts and spend it on favorite causes and candidates.

These evasive tactics arent new. The heavy spending may even backfire by spewing out so many ads and brochures that voters learn to ignore it all. But the ocean of uncontrolled money is eroding the publics belief in the electoral process. Money breeds contempt.

The soft-drink industry is laying out $21.3 million to defeat a soda tax while former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has dumped in $8 million to support it. A string of other individuals from tech and real estate are funneling in six-figure sums to back measures that protect mayoral responsibilities against the progressives brazen power grab.

We have endorsed both the soda tax and preservation of the mayors clout. But the causes and candidates arent the point. Its the loose rules that allow big money to play such a magnified and often disguised role. Voters are given only nominal information via blandly named committees, not the names of the interests behind the mailers.

The solutions so far are haphazard and incomplete. San Francisco office-seekers can collect public money if they agree to spending limits, but that system is voluntary. Campaign donation caps do nothing about controlling a wealthy candidate or outside committees.

On the national level, the Supreme Court in its disastrous Citizens United ruling in 2010 brought on a deluge of money by allowing business and labor groups to spend without limit. Proposition 59 on the state ballot asks lawmakers to work to overturn the ruling.

This countrys electoral system from Washington to San Francisco demands an overhaul that screens out the overwhelming power of money. Americans need to push for a constitutional amendment that supersedes Citizens United by asserting a right to regulate money in politics in order to protect the integrity of the democratic process.
If you attack the establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make you a member of it is how late humorist Art Buchwald described the establishments cruelest form of payback. In that spirit, I watch Airbnb, the $25.5 billion company that was born to disrupt staid financial institutions, slowly become part of the usually taxpaying power elite.

If they were thinking strategically, then Airbnbs founders probably wouldnt have started their home-rental platform in San Francisco, a city where residents could do anything in their bedroom except rent it to Danish tourists.

It probably felt right at the time. Brian Chesky and friends rented sleeping space in a South of Market apartment. Airbnb seemed like a vehicle to let people be free  free to visit pricey cities like Ess Eff without paying hundreds of dollars a night for a hotel room; free for renters and homeowners to make a little extra money on the side by renting out a spare bedroom. It seemed like a bargain for both parties, who could avoid paying the citys 14 percent hotel tax.

Tourists who booked rooms with Airbnb felt virtuous, because staying in someones home or residential neighborhoods gave them entree to the less touristy side of San Francisco. Hosts maintained that they were good for their communities because they directed guests to local eateries and, by using existing space, they helped contain the citys carbon footprint.

There were just a few problems. One: GOP political consultant Reed Galen, who advises tech companies, noted that in San Francisco the average citizen whos not a tech zillion-aire hates the tech industry. Locals blame tech money and highly paid tech workers for driving up the cost of living in the Special City. And Airbnb is another tech company.

Two: Opportunists found they could make more money with short-term rentals than long-term leases so they siphoned space from the citys already stretched-thin housing stock.

Three: It wasnt fair that bed-and-breakfast owners and small hotels had to pay a hotel tax, while Airbnb hosts did not.

As Airbnb got bigger, it became harder for the Internet platform to allow hosts to opt out of paying the tax and impossible for City Hall not to force the issue. So Airbnb began paying the hotel tax  and, when squeezed harder, back taxes. Now critics complain that many hosts have not registered as businesses and are not submitting inventory of their furniture, appliances and housewares to be taxed, too.

At a Chronicle editorial board meeting Wednesday, Airbnb biggies David Owen and Chris Lehane compared the company to a child approaching adulthood. In the toddler stage, the platform didnt color within the lines, but as the company matures, it is learning to live within regulations.

City Hall now is pushing for a 60-nights-per-year cap on short-term stays  undeterred by voters rejection last year of a 75-night limit.

Lehane told the editorial board that of all the home-rental platforms, Were the only one thats paying taxes. Airbnb tried to get Sacramento to push through a statewide hotel tax that all home-rental platforms would pay. Thats right  now Airbnb is pointing fingers and pushing for uniform payment of taxes.

In May, after voters in Austin, Texas, passed a measure requiring that ride-hailing drivers be fingerprinted, Uber and Lyft left the city. As San Francisco threatens more regulations, has the platform thought about moving its headquarters out of The Special City? Not at all. Lehane responded, At the end of the day, we can figure all this stuff out.

Uber and Lyft also have headquarters in San Francisco. You have a bunch of Democrats coming into blue cities with their many regulations and taxes, Galen observed, and the blue cities want nothing to do with them, or little to do with them.

Why not settle in a red state, where entrepreneurs are welcome? Lehane told the editorial board about visiting Arizona, where the Republican governor is committed to making the state a hub for the sharing economy. We were in Arizona actually arguing for some regulations, Lehane told The Chronicle. Maybe that means Airbnb has become so big that it now wants to make sure scrappy competitors are regulated. Or maybe the head-office guys have migrated away from Airbnbs roots.

Will the tech community vote for Libertarian Gary Johnson, who wants to lower taxes and reduce regulations? No, theyre lining up behind Hillary Clinton, even though she has shown little sympathy for sharing-economy startups and repeatedly talks in favor of stifling regulations. Lehane said Clinton can distinguish between the different types of sharing, labor versus assets. The home-rental platform, he suggests, rents property (homes)  as opposed, we are to infer, to the ride-hailing platforms that rely on labor (drivers). In truth, both platforms are hybrids that rent assets (rooms, cars) and labor (housekeepers, drivers). Telling the government to pick on someone else may be the worlds oldest profession.

Debra J. Saunders is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: dsaunders@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @debrajsaunders

Hillary Clinton on sharing

Meanwhile, many Americans are making extra money renting out a spare room, designing websites, selling products they design themselves at home, or even driving their own car. This on demand or so-called gig economy is creating exciting opportunities and unleashing innovation, but its also raising hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like in the future.

July 13, 2015
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Things are getting ugly between Board of Supervisors President London Breed and the Tenants Union.

Breed never had much love for the group. Years ago the public housing where she and her grandmother lived was razed and they were displaced. Breed reached out to the Tenants Union and was told the group didnt work with people in public housing. (It still doesnt for the most part, focusing on renters living in private market housing).

Now, the latest spat centers on Breeds position on Proposition V, the ballot measure that would impose a penny-per-ounce tax on soda and other sugary drinks in San Francisco.

At a Sept. 28 debate between Breed and challenger Dean Preston, she told the audience she opposed the measure. She didnt explain why.

But just a few weeks later Breed retweeted a campaign ad in support of Prop. V that said: Protect our children from the harmful effects of soda.

She ratcheted up the rhetoric a week later. In a tweet on Oct. 27, Breed accused the Tenants Union, which supports Preston, of accepting money from the soda industry. The tweet, directed at the Tenants Union, said she was tired of all the dirty $$$ the soda industry is throwing at our community - and that youre laundering! Shame!

The Tenants Union has accepted $130,000 from the American Beverage Association to campaign against Prop. V. The Tenants Union is also actively campaigning for Preston  who, incidentally, supports the tax.

Breed didnt respond to a request for comment about her position. Her chief of staff, Conor Johnston, said Breed was never very enthusiastic about another tax, but shes been disgusted by all the big soda money flooding into our communities in the last few months. She voted for Prop. V.

The supervisor isnt the only one that has flip-flopped on the issue. In 2014, the Tenants Union supported a similar measure to tax sugary drinks  which it now criticizes as regressive. That proposition failed.

Emily Green is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: egreen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @emilytgreen
A federal appeals court rejected a lawsuit Friday that accused Nevada officials and the state psychiatric hospital in Las Vegas of violating patients civil rights by giving them bus tickets and dumping them in other states.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, in a 2-1 decision, said it could not consider the merits of the suit because the plaintiff, James Flavy Coy Brown, failed to raise a key argument in his initial appeal documents. The ruling on procedural grounds upheld a lower court decision that dismissed the suit.
Americans will go to the polls next week to elect the 45th President of the United States. While this years election is in many ways highly unusual, the two major party candidates share at least one characteristic with many previous presidents: extraordinary wealth. Regardless of who moves into the Oval Office, he or she will rank among the wealthiest presidents in American history.

From the founding of the republic through President Barack Obamas tenure, U.S. presidents tend to be far wealthier than the typical American. The richest president in U.S. history was also the first. At the peak of his wealth, George Washington was worth an estimated $580 million in 2016 dollars.

ALSO READ: America's Richest (and Poorest) States

The net worth of Americas presidents is often tied to the economic conditions of their time. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that the first few presidents were owners of large plantations, farmlands, and slaves. Washington, like many of the presidents of his day, made most of his money, outside of salary and inheritance, as a plantation owner.

Like many subsequent presidents, Washington was born into financial prosperity. When he was only 11 years old, Washington inherited 10 slaves from his father and, later in life, his Mount Vernon estate as well.

He also married into money. His wife, Martha Washington, inherited a sizeable estate from her first husband, Daniel Custis, when he died soon after falling ill in 1757. Custiss estate spanned more than 17,500 acres and, as was common at the time, was run by 300 slaves.

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Washington was one of the largest landowners in the country. Not including his Mount Vernon estate, Washington owned more than 50,000 acres across the country in what are now the states of Kentucky, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. In addition, Washingtons Virginia plantation, Mount Vernon, consisted of five separate farms on 8,000 acres of prime farmland run by more than 300 slaves. As president, Washington earned well more than subsequent presidents: his salary was 2% of the total U.S. budget in 1789.

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After serving as president, Washington started a whiskey distillery on one of his Mount Vernon farms. At the time of his death, the distillery was the largest in the United States, producing nearly 11,000 gallons of whiskey annually.

ALSO READ: The Most Democratic County in Every State

Washington's fortune, along with that of every other president in U.S. history, is likely dwarfed by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trumps net worth. Since Trump has not yet made his tax returns public, his net worth is difficult to assess. Conflicting statements from the real estate tycoon himself further complicate the accuracy of any estimate. Based on financial disclosures, 24/7 Wall St. estimates that Trumps net worth falls between $2.9 billion and $10 billion.

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In the 1800's, San Francisco's Maiden Lane was known as Morton Street. About the last thing that you would find there was a fair maiden. The women, by most newspaper accounts, were tough. They'd often beat up men who happened down the narrow lane. The fee for a good time seemed more like a formality. There was a good chance that the patron would leave a brothel minus the rest of his money and other valuables, according to reporting from the time.

Gambling was rampant, and the street was no stranger to murder and suicide. Assaults and muggings were all too commonplace. In 1882, several of the gambling dens were raided. Reports of patrons having money or other valuables stolen by the courtesans, was a very common occurrence. The earliest mention of Morton Street in the San Francisco Chronicle digital archives was in 1869, when there was a petition to change the name of the roadway from St. Mark's Place. 1872 was the earliest newspaper report of prostitution.

The prostitutes were referred to by many different names, as reported in the paper: courtesan, cyprian, siren, hag, nymph and harlot were among them. Their places of business were called "bawdy houses" and "bagnios," among other names. The johns were sometimes referred to as lovers. Many of the women used pseudonyms such as Miss Josephine.

Gambling was open and rampant. It occurred in saloons as well as in the brothels. The prostitutes often ran con games such as "bunko" and the panel game. They were more likely to be arrested for crooked gambling, assaults or robbing the customers. Instead of being arrested for prostitution, they'd be arrested and fined for vagrancy. Victims would often elect not to press charges for fear of their name being associated with the street. Burglaries were also commonplace. There was one report where a couple was home asleep when someone broke into their home and squirt chloroform into their faces.

The situation was becoming intolerable to the neighboring residents. In 1872, there was a "petition against a nuisance." Businesses in the area were fed up.

"A petition signed by sixty residents and property owners on Morton Street, has been presented to the Chief of Police, asking the suppression of houses of ill-fame on that street. With the exception of one block, consisting of nine houses, the neighborhood is respectable, and the people consider it a hardship to be obliged to submit to the annoyance of the idle and dissolute men who congregate in the vicinity. Respectable women cannot go into the street without danger of insult by the hoodlums who are attracted solely by the houses complained of. The bawds of Morton Street are becoming an intolerable nuisance to respectable people in that neighborhood."

Later that year, Chief Patrick Crowley ordered a Blockade on Morton Street

"Sometime since residents on Morton Street, better known as St. Mark's Place, petitioned Chief Crowley to cause the removal of certain bawdy houses in the neighborhood, and the last evening an officer was stationed at one of the houses to prevent entry of any visitors to the place. It is proposed to continue this blockade until the street is rid of the courtesans."

The next day Chief Crowley raised the police blockade on a number of Morton Street houses of ill-fame, the disreputable occupants having moved to less respectable quarters. But, the businesses continued to flourish on Morton Street, despite the attempts to end it, as told by this article that appeared a few years later, where police went undercover.

"Officers Rogers and Lindheimer made a journey through Morton Street last night in citizens' dress and captured three unwary females, Mary Parker, Ella Rose and Lizzie Clark, as being inmates of a house of prostitution. They deposited $60 bail each, and were released to appear today for trial, or as is more probable forfeit their bail."

These articles also showed that the blockade did very little to stop the prostitution.

"Lizzie Hall was called to answer a charge of assault to murder. She is charged with having shot a man in a house of ill-fame on Morton Street, about six weeks ago. The case has been continued several times owing to the prostrated condition of the injured man. It was ascertained yesterday that the man had disappeared, and the case was dismissed."

"A veteran hag, names Mrs. Severance, whose place of residence on Morton Street, brought up a respectable citizen inhabiting that thoroughfare on a scandalous charge. The trouble originated in the efforts of the defendant and other respectable people to suppress the infamous establishment kept by this woman. The evidence showed the charge to be entirely unfounded, but the court found the woman Severance guilty of a misdemeanor in connection with the case, and she was ordered to appear for sentence tomorrow."

The next day Clara Severance, "keeper of a disreputable den on Morton Street," was fined $10 for "throwing water on children to gratify a spite against her neighbors."

As this story that appeared in the paper on September 20, 1876 showed, the brothels weren't always run by madams. Here's a tale of a former sailor who went into what he considered to be a more lucrative business.

"Another procurer. A villain with numerous uncharged crimes against him."

"On Monday evening an individual giving the name of Martin Mace was taken into custody on a charge of felony. Attired in fashionable clothes, the circumstances tend to prove, however, that he is a consummate villain, and should have long ago been consigned to quarters in San Quentin. A few days ago the police received information that two girls were being kept against their will in a house of bad repute on Waverly Place. The report was found to be incorrect, but still lead to the arrest of Mace. The two girls had been induced by another procurer named Lawless, to go to Portland. They were not desirous to leave the current place. But, they were underage and Mace was a bad character. He was arrested on a charge of felony.

Mace was long known to police as a professional blackmailer, preying on clients, who would rather pay up than have their names revealed. Before coming to California he was a sailor before the mast. His ship went down one night with no apparent reason, and an immense sum of money was paid as insurance. He then abandoned a seafaring life and assumed proprietorship of a house of ill-fame on Morton Street, which business turned out to be much more lucrative that that of a sailor.

He dressed very neatly and had a gentlemanly look, which hid his sinister character. This led him to succeed in winning the affection s of an estimable young lady, the daughter of a respectable citizen. They were married and he took his young wife to his Morton Street residence, where they strove to inculcate in her a liking for the shameful life. She was eventually rescued by a gentleman with "benevolent propensities" and plotted with two friends to rescue the woman. They helped her escape and sent her to New York. An angered Mace then blackmailed the gentleman, who didn't want his name revealed. He agreed to pay a sum of $10,000. The two who assisted in her escape also paid unrevealed sums of money."

As this article relates, the area was even dangerous to the policemen who patrolled the area.

June 7, 1879 Rough Reception

"Yesterday morning Officer Bodwell was informed that a man had been robbed of $500 at a house of ill-fame on Morton Street. He at once went to the scene of the alleged robbery to inquire into the matter, and was attacked there by four men. The officer was forced to use his pistol, and fired four shots at his assailants, who thereupon fled. None of the shots fired are believed to have taken effect. On June 14, 1879, James Toland, the third of the four hoodlums who attacked Officer Bodwell on Morton Street a week ago, was arrested in Oakland yesterday by Detective Jones."

Years later, on December 13, 1883, another blockade was set up. This led to accusations of the police accepting bribes. A witness stated that she saw a Police Commissioner accept a bribe through one of three holes in her front door. This lead to an almost Keystone Kops scene, where a carpenter and a policeman were sent to get the door and bring it to court. The door disappeared when a prostitute distracted the carpenter. You can read the article as it appeared in the paper below.

"December 11, 1883 Where is the door? The question at present agitating the police."

"During the last two or three meeting of the Police Commissioners Officer Collins has been under investigation, charged with having received bribes from a courtesan named Maggie Kennedy, residing at 129 Morton Street. During the investigation several witnesses for the prosecution swore that they had seen Officer Collins taking money from the woman. They said they were stationed behind a door with three holes bored in it and saw the woman pay Collins the money. A great diversity of opinion as to the exact location of the holes in the door was shown by the witnesses who drew diagrams for the benefit of the Commissioners.

Last night several new witnesses were called for the defense , and they testified that they had visited the house in question and had carefully examined the door, but could not discover the three holes spoken of by the other witnesses. Furthermore, they were positive that the door had not been changed, as the doors upstairs were smaller than those on the floor below. Among the witnesses called who had examined the door was a carpenter named Robertson.

The Commissioners, anxious to ascertain the truth of the matter, sent Officer Rainsbury and the carpenter Roberson to the house to get the door and bring it before the Board. The two departed and on their errand and when they arrived at the house Rainsbury marked the door with his name. He was then sent by the carpenter to procure a wagon to convey the door to the old City Hall, which (Roberson) was taking it down. After procuring a team Officer Rainsbury drove back to the house, but found that Robertson and the door had both disappeared. Thinking that the carpenter had started off to the Commissioners' the officer made haste to the City Hall, but found that neither man nor door had arrived. He then went back to the house and met Robertson on Stockton and Sutter Street and questioned him about the door. He said that he had taken the door to the corner of the streets named and was waiting for the team, when a woman approached him and said a man wanted to see him on Morton Street. He left the door standing against a post and followed the woman, but soon found out that he had been duped. When he got back to the place where he left the door it was gone."

It afterwards was learned that three witnesses for the prosecution, Messrs. Cushman, King and Cannavan, had followed the officer and carpenter to the house. They were brought before the Commissioners, but denied all knowledge of the whereabouts of the door. They said that they had visited the house, but had been told that the officer and another man had taken the door away. Detectives were immediately sent out to hunt for the door, but returned empty handed. Accordingly the case was postponed until such time as the door can be found. Ultimately, Officer Matthew Collins was dismissed from the force by the Police Commissioners for receiving a bribe from a Morton Street woman of ill repute.

Legalize it?

There were arguments before a committee for brothels to continue operation. One police commissioner stated that if the houses were cleared from Morton Street, they would just move to another part of the city. A resident, Mr. Griffin, explained how the "families of respectable citizens are protected by the presence of these women," and next pointed out that the houses that were occupied by them were adapted to no other purpose and that they would have to be pulled down. Another resident, Mr. Shirley arose to defend the women by declaring that "they were not as bad as reported, for he had not heard any complaints of robberies and other offenses on the street." Apparently he wasn't a Chronicle subscriber.

Having relieved their minds, the members of the committee agreed that they had no jurisdiction over the matter and that the police might attend to it. It was finally agreed to recommend the passage of a resolution asking the Chief of Police to enforce the ordinances regulating houses of ill-fame. The next day, it was confirmed in the paper, that no additional legislation was needed to remove the bawdy-houses on Morton Street from Dupont (now Grant) to Stockton Streets. Current police enforcement was deemed sufficient.

November 28, 1883 "Rescuing silly girls from the clutches of the depraved creatures."

The line was drawn when children were involved. It came to Police Superintendent Moulder's attention that there was the case of prostitutes luring a couple of local school girls inside her quarters. Fortunately, Miss Castelhun, the Principal of the school, had heard of their absence and its cause. She acted promptly in the matter by going into Morton Street herself and "rescuing the silly girls from the clutches of the depraved creatures." This brought about a cry to close the businesses down.

In late 1884, the police continued to blockade Morton Street to prevent the brothels from conducting business. Despite the blockade, the prostitutes appeared to manage to conduct business somehow. The reports of the customer getting robbed persisted. In fact, it seemed like there were so many reports of customers being robbed, that the fee that was charged seemed like a formality, or minimum. If you didn't keep your eye on your pants, you were going to be relieved of the money in your wallet, or any gold in your pockets. There were ample reports of men walking down Morton Street and being dragged into the brothels and robbed. The blockade was lifted in May 1885. After the lift, there were several charges of graft, pocketing bail money and bribery against the police who ran the blockade. One officer was said to be seen kissing "Big Camille." All charges were ultimately dismissed.

Throughout the 1880's, the story doesn't change. A California Street resident was mugged by six courtesans on Morton Street. They stole his overcoat, which had a gold pocket watch and wallet with sixty dollars in it. After an officer tussled and arrested Minnie Colbey, dressed in a short dress and pink stockings, referred to as "a chubby damsel who sings the siren's song on Waverly Place," the judge suggested that the police go after the "opulent property owners who leased the houses to the degraded women." In 1887, there was a decision to start photographing the women and put their pictures in a rogues' gallery, so the victims could more easily identify them. In 1888, the headline "The Old, Old Story" was dusted off in reflection of a situation that seemed to have no end in sight.

According to a San Francisco Chronicle article, published in 1996, the street was finally cleared of prostitution in 1896. The street has had many names in its checkered history. In 1898 it was renamed Union Square Street. In 1904 it was renamed Manila Street. In 1906, the street was decimated by the earthquake and fire. In 1921, the name was changed back to Union Square Street. That same year, a jeweler named Albert Samuels petitioned to have the name changed to Maiden Lane, in honor of the same named street in Manhattan. He succeeded in doing this in 1922. Ever since, people have erroneously associated the name maiden with the prostitutes who once plied their trade.

The photo gallery above captures the more recent history of the colorful street, beginning in the mid 19th century.

Bob Bragman is a producer for SFGATE. His writing reflects his love of the Bay Area, in addition to his passion for vintage pop culture, ephemera and vernacular photographs. To see more of his content, please click here.
Each week about 1.5 million Americans without paid sick leave go to work despite feeling ill. At least half of employees of restaurants and hospitals  two settings where disease is easily spread  go to work when they have a cold or the flu, according to a recent poll.

To address that issue, Chipotle began offering paid sick leave to all its U.S. employees this year. The chain is hoping to reduce the spread of infectious disease  like the norovirus outbreaks traced to its restaurants last year and earlier this year. Although many industrialized countries already require employers to offer paid sick leave to all employees, the United States does not.

Paid sick leave is not free, of course. Economic theory suggests that its cost would be passed from employers to employees in the form of lower wages or reductions in other benefits. Yet employees and their co-workers may be better off with an incentive to take time off when sick.

Many recent studies point to the benefits. A study by Philip Susser, now a medical student, and Nicolas Ziebarth, a Cornell economist, backs up Chipotles theory that paid sick leave could reduce the spread of contagion. Their study, published in the journal Health Services Research, estimated that 45 percent of the U.S. workforce does not have paid sick leave; thats about 50 million workers.

Low-income mothers are particularly likely to work while sick. Another study, by LeaAnne DeRigne of Florida Atlantic University and colleagues, explains why. It found that families with less ability to afford unpaid time off are more likely to lack paid sick leave. According to the study, published in Health Affairs, 65 percent of families with incomes below $35,000 had no paid sick leave, while the same was true of only 25 percent of families with annual incomes above $100,000.

Paid sick leave slows the spread of disease. States and cities that require employers to offer paid sick leave  such as California in general, and San Francisco in particular  have fewer cases of seasonal flu than comparable cities and states. Flu rates would fall 5 percent if paid sick leave were universal. According to one estimate, an additional 7 million people contracted the H1N1 flu virus in 2009 because employees came to work while infected. The illnesses led to 1,500 additional deaths.

Paid sick leave has other benefits besides reducing flu deaths. For example, workers may use it for preventive care, forestalling subsequent, more serious health problems. Workers lacking paid sick leave are more likely to delay needed medical care, a finding that holds for both insured and uninsured workers. In other words, though health insurance helps people pay for health care, it does nothing to help them afford to take time off to get it.

Sicker workers may be more prone to job-related injuries. One study found that even within industries in which accidents and injuries are relatively more likely  like forestry, mining and construction  workers with paid sick leave experienced fewer of them than workers without it. Another study found that employees who work while sick are more likely to have heart attacks than those who take time off.

Paid sick leave may also enhance productivity and reduce turnover. One study estimated that the lower productivity of sick workers costs employers as much as their medical care.

Children benefit from their parents paid sick leave, too. Most directly, it helps workers afford to care for sick children. Additionally, the children of new mothers who return to work more rapidly, perhaps because they lack paid time off, are less likely to be breast-fed or to receive recommended medical checkups and immunizations.

Though a few cities and states mandate paid sick leave, there is no national requirement. Under the Family and Medical Leave Act, enacted in 1993, employers with more than 50 workers must offer 12 weeks of leave within a 12-month period, but it is unpaid. Because of a new Obama administration rule, an estimated 300,000 private-sector employees working on government contracts will get paid sick leave starting Jan. 1.

Paid sick leave is not the only way to improve access to health care for workers. The ability to see a doctor or a nurse outside of business hours  for example, via telemedicine or at a health clinic at a drugstore or other retail location  can also improve access to care.

We tend to focus on health care coverage as the only way to reduce the cost of care to patients. But there are many other costs we rarely consider, time taken from work among them. Even when they are insured, many U.S. workers  unlike those in every other industrialized country  are exposed to this cost.

Austin Frakt is a health economist with several governmental and academic affiliations who wrote this for the New York Times.
Mary Anne Graham is a retired teacher and Tony Graham is a recovering lawyer. Together, they own and operate Pattersonss Irish Pub in Mendocino. They would love to take you on a spin around the block in their 1955 Beardmore Taxi.

Owning a traditional Irish pub requires some degree of authenticity, hence it was our duty to collect an original London taxi and an iconic red phone booth to go with your pint of Guinness. Our 1955 Beardmore London taxi has quite a history. William Beardmore was a Scottish shipbuilder in the 1900s who also had his hand in locomotives, motorcycles and fine motorcars. His London taxi was known as the Rolls Royce of Taxi Cabs.

In order to avoid tax issues, it was originally considered a farm vehicle, so the outside luggage compartment was designed to fit a bale of hay. Now it fits a compliment of luggage. The taxi is made from a hodge-podge of materials. It has an aluminum body, fiberglass fenders and an ash wood frame.

Incredibly, I found the Beardmore in Fort Bragg. An elderly gentleman had it in his garage for 20 years, and would drive it on Sundays to brunch. Due to failing health he sold it to me. It has been in the driveway of the pub since 2000. Originally it had a 2-litre diesel engine and a 3-speed manual transmission with probably about a million miles on it. It was easily replaceable with a Ford Falcon 4-banger and an automatic transmission.

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Taking a ride in this taxi is an attraction in itself. One of the things that makes this car so fun to drive is that it literally turns on a dime in order to navigate the narrow London streets. With the steering wheel cranked over, it will make a U-turn on the rear wheels. Try that in your SUV.

The passenger area is amazing. It easily holds six passengers, with headroom to accommodate your felt top hat. Trimmed in red leather and chestnut, it is truly a trip back in time. The signage telling you to mind your head and to watch the gap is so fun. San Francisco taxis have a major flaw - you cannot tell when they are for hire or not for hire. This taxi has lighted signage that tells you both.

Sorry, but the Beardmore is not Wi-Fi enabled. In Mendocino you are lucky if you get one bar. It doesnt have a stereo either, but there is a boom box so you can bring your own retro cassette tapes.

Although a classic collectors vehicle, the Beardmore is not in great demand and would probably fetch only $10K if in excellent condition. We bought it and restored it for purely sentimental reasons, not as an investment. Besides, the Beardmore looks great next to our red London phone booth, which is a story in itself. These phone booths are a national treasure in the UK and are no longer available for export. They are made of iron and weigh one ton.

The Beardmore spent its working life mostly in the City of Liverpool. From what we were told it even carried the Beatles to Abby Road, and was also hired out for many weddings and movies. In 1987 the Beardmore won an award for the Best Vintage London Cab.

Hundreds of photos have been taken with the Beardmore. Its truly a great selfie opportunity for kids and tourists alike. I drive it every year in our local 4th of July parade, along with my Penny Farthing bicycle. Another great photo op is our red London phone booth, which will soon be installed in front of the taxi. The next time youre in Mendocino, stop by for a friendly pint and a photo with a couple of fantastic British icons. Wed love to see you.
San Francisco Police Department / San Francisco Police Department

A 20-year-old student at the University of San Francisco was arrested on suspicion of producing, uploading and distributing child pornography, police said Friday.

Sam Kerfoot, a nursing major, was arrested on the schools campus in San Franciscos Inner Richmond neighborhood Thursday, according to the San Francisco Police Department, following an investigation that dated back to early September.
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A UCSF surgeon who worked at the university-affiliated Veterans Affairs Medical Center in San Francisco was arrested and jailed on suspicion of 99 felony crimes in connection with prescribing opioid narcotics, according to university officials and jail records.

Christopher Owens, 49, a former associate professor of surgery, was arrested Thursday, the university said, after being placed on investigatory leave in June and on unpaid leave in September. UCSF terminated Owens physician privileges last week and fired him from the faculty.
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Two Texas women are "part of a trend" that is sending women to plastic surgeons and dishing out thousands of dollars to look like Ivanka Tramp, the daughter of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

A Wednesday night edition of Nightline featured Tiffany Taylor and Jenny Stuart, two Texans who want to emulate Ivanka Trump's looks at all costs.

Taylor is a 33-year-old oil and gas consultant with three children and a "Texas girl through and through" who is voting for Trump, while Jenny Stuart is a 36-year-old job recruiter who voted for Hillary Clinton, though she wants to look like the offspring of the opposition, according to the episode.

RELATED: San Antonio plastic surgeon broadcasts surgeries on Snapchat, Facebook Live

It's unclear which part of the Lone Star State the two ladies are from, but they both hired high-profile, Houston-based plastic surgeon Dr. Franklin Rose to trump their expectations.

Taylor told Nightline she has undergone multiple surgeries to become her "idol," including a beast augmentation, rhinoplasty, cheek injections, a "mini" eye lift and liposuction. The ABC show followed her through a second nose job. She estimated all of her work has cost about a year of time and $60,000, yet still urged skeptics to give it a try.

"[...] you're going to be so happy," Taylor promised in the interview. "I mean, don't judge until you try it."

RELATED: Playboy model's death 'ruled an accident' after suffering injuries from chiropractor

She was pleased with her latest round of facial reworking.

"I see perfection, absolute stunning perfection," Taylor said in the interview.

Stuart, who said she's constantly being told she looks like Angelina Jolie, also trusted Rose with her procedure. Though she was headstrong in her decision, friends and family -- including her 6-year-old daughter -- were not on the same page, but she had the surgery done anyway.

She spent $30,000 on her procedure which included liposuction, a Brazilian butt lift, a nose job, a breast enhancement and injectable facial fillers, according to the show.

RELATED: Iceland man says Donald Trump's son left 'white powder' at rental, paid 15 women to hang out

Rose told Nightline he finds joy in working on women who are naturally attractive.

"In an odd way, it's sort of more enjoyable because you can take the beautiful into hyper-beautiful," he said, adding that he has experienced an uptick in patients wanting to look like Ivanka Trump.

Viewers shared their thoughts on the Texans via Twitter using the #Nightline hashtag. While some found humor in Stuart's decisions to look like a Trump, but stand with Clinton, others were disheartened.

"What a sad story this is on #Nightline of the Ivanka-wannabees," @BobAKABuffy sounded off. "Surprised @DanBHarris could hold back from commenting."

mmendoza@mysa.com

Twitter: @MaddySkye
BALTIMORE  The driver of the school bus involved in a deadly crash last week in Baltimore was taking medication for seizures when he had an accident two years ago, his wife told investigators at the time, according to records obtained by the Associated Press.

Glenn Chappells wife spoke with officers after her husband apparently lost consciousness, crashing into trees and shrubbery but emerging unscathed from the single-car accident in Howard County on Feb. 9, 2014.

Chappell, 67, died Tuesday morning along with five other people when the school bus he was driving rear-ended a car before colliding with an oncoming Maryland Transit Administration bus. Eleven people were injured. A probe into the cause of the crash is ongoing, and a federal investigator said Friday that no mechanical defects have been found in the two buses.

The National Transportation Safety Board has completed the mechanical inspections of both vehicles and found no deficiencies, said investigator Jennifer Morrison.

The NTSB and Baltimore police have also obtained four surveillance videos that show the school bus on its approach to the crash site, but none shows the collision, Morrison said.

It appears from the surveillance video that the bus, which was not carrying children, was traveling faster than the posted speed limit, but its exact rate is still being determined, police spokesman T.J. Smith said.

Authorities have also said they are looking into Chappells health records but have declined to answer specific questions about whether he suffered from any medical conditions.

According to the 2014 accident report, Chappell was driving in Ellicott City about 9 a.m. when he apparently suffered a medical condition and lost consciousness, crossed oncoming traffic and eventually struck a guard rail. Chappell was taken to a hospital with no apparent physical injuries.

Another aspect of the investigation concerns Chappells medical records and drivers license.

On Thursday, the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration announced that Chappell did not have a valid commercial drivers license because his medical examiners certificate had expired. Agency spokesman Chuck Brown provided copies of two warning letters the MVA sent Chappell.

But Chappells daughter and an attorney for his employer, AAAfordable Transportation, disputed the agencys claim. AAAfordable had a valid certificate that was set to expire in June 2017, said attorney George Bogris.
Microsoft Steve Ballmer

The 33-year partnership between Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his 30th employee, Steve Ballmer, has not fared well since Ballmer left the CEO job almost three years ago.

Gates and Ballmer have "drifted apart," Ballmer told Bloomberg TV's Emily Chang.

"He has his life. I have mine. Microsoft was the thing that bound us. We started off as friends but really got quite enmeshed around Microsoft. Since I've gone, we really have drifted a little bit."

He says for most of their time together, Microsoft was like "my baby and Bill's baby. We were growing it and nurturing it. He was kind of like the senior partner, I was the junior partner. If it was raising of children, I would say it was like mom gets to decide more than dad."

Things didn't shift even after Gates stepped down from the CEO role in 2000 to become chief software architect, and Ballmer took over.

"When I became CEO, we had a very miserable year. Bill didn't know how to work for anybody and I didn't know how to manage Bill. I'm not sure I ever learned," Ballmer said.

And Ballmer's choice to leave Microsoft in 2013, "was not a simple thing for either one of us."

"He and I have always had a brotherly relationship, the good parts and the bad parts and in the end that was a bit more difficult than not, particularly with the strategic direction change," he said.

"The stock price wasn't going anywhere, so the rest of the board felt pressure, despite the fact that profits were going up. So I think you had a combustible situation," he added.

Disagreement over hardware

The two men also had a "fundamental disagreement" about how important it was to be in the hardware business. While Microsoft had always dabbled in hardware like everything from keyboards to Xbox, it had never built PCs. And it wasn't making its own phones.

bill gates

Ballmer chose to do both of those things, launching the Surface and buying Nokia. When Surface launched, Gates was a vocal and public supporter of it.

Story continues

But Ballmer said he had to push the board into accepting the idea of Surface and "things came to a climax about what to do around the phone business."

Looking back, Ballmer said he wishes he had pushed into the hardware business sooner.

Ballmer also said that he did his best work after Gates left his full-time job at Microsoft as chief software architect in 2008, including launching Bing. While one could argue that the Bing search engine never became much of a threat to Google, it did cause Microsoft to build data centers worldwide and learn the fundamentals of cloud computing.

And with that experience, under Ballmer, Microsoft was able to move into cloud Office 365 and Azure.

All three of those things: cloud computing software, cloud computing hosting surfaces, and more exciting hardware  including multiple versions of Surface and new devices like HoloLens  are the core of current CEO Satya Nadella's strategy.

Today, as owner of the LA Clippers, Ballmer is no longer directly involved with Microsoft except as one of its biggest shareholders. He left the CEO job in 2014 and stepped from the board a few months later. There's new excitement around Microsoft and the share prices are up, so Ballmer says he's happy with the company. He's also happy about his achievements there.

"I started a company that had 2.5 million in revenue and 30 people and I left a company that had 22 billion in profit and I feel that net, net, was a pretty good success," he said.

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WASHINGTON  Black clergy are taking to the pulpits and the streets nationwide this weekend in hopes of energizing voters ahead of election day, seeking to make a difference in the presidential contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Many expect a drop in black voter participation this year, primarily because Barack Obama, the nations first African American president, is not on the ballot. His historic candidacy in 2008 and re-election in 2012 helped to fuel record black turnout.

Voting, for us, is both a spiritual and a political issue, said Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP and architect of the Moral Monday Movement in North Carolina. Barber will be one of several clergy at the historic Riverside Church in New York City on Sunday evening for a revival service to encourage voting Tuesday.

In battleground states such as Florida, Ohio and North Carolina, other black clergy are extending Souls to the Polls efforts for a second weekend to get black churchgoers to cast ballots early or on election day. Souls to the Polls events are based around black churches that encourage their parishioners to vote  although they cannot tell them whom to support  and try to make it easier for elderly, busy or just reluctant voters to cast ballots.

The number of African American voters has increased steadily: 12.9 million in 2000, 14 million in 2004, 16 million in 2008 and 17.8 million in 2012. In the last presidential election year, blacks for the first time voted at a higher rate, 66.2 percent, than did whites, with a rate of 64.1 percent, or Asian Americans or Latinos, with rates of about 48 percent each.

No one expects those numbers for blacks this time around, said Derrick McRae, pastor of the Experience Christian Center in Orlando. But Im pretty confident were going to show up.

At several historically black colleges and universities, students have held marches to the polls to encourage early voting not just for president but for other issues they care about.

For Floridians, the issues of social justice, criminal justice reform and economic parity are also critical, said Salandra Benton, convener of the Florida National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and the Florida Black Womens Round Table.

Florida and North Carolina are considered key states for both Trump and Clinton, with the potential to push either of them toward the electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

In addition to helping people vote, several black churchgoers also plan to monitor polling places to ensure potential voters are not intimidated by anyone trying to depress turnout through trickery or misinformation.
1 Development dispute: Developers have sued the California Coastal Commission for more than $490 million for failing to approve an Orange County project that would have turned a 401-acre stretch of oil field overlooking the Pacific Ocean into a housing and retail development. Newport Banning Ranch is appealing the commissions Sept. 7 decision to reject a plan that would have cleaned up the property to build nearly 900 homes, a 75-room resort, commercial space and a park. The commission instead recommended a scaled-down version of the plan on bluffs farther from the ocean near Newport Beach. In the lawsuit filed Friday, builders said the counter-proposal was not economically feasible.

2 Fatal stabbings: Two children and a woman were fatally stabbed Saturday at a Newark, N.J., home during an attack that left three others injured, authorities said. Acting Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn Murray said an 11-year-old boy, an 8-year-old girl, and a 23-year-old woman were killed. Two 13-year-olds and a 29-year-old woman were hospitalized in stable condition with stab wounds. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka asked anyone with information to come forward to help police arrest the attacker.
Former Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer said he made a big mistake when he claimed that the iPhone wouldn't sell because it cost too much.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Ballmer said he didn't understand at the time how mobile carrier subsidies would make the iPhone affordable.

"I wish I'd thought about the model of subsidizing phones through the operators," he told Bloomberg. "And there was business model innovation by Apple to get it essentially built into the monthly cell phone bill," Ballmer said.



Ballmer also said his commitment for the company to make its own handsets and tablets aided in the breakup with his friend, company co-founder Bill Gates .



Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO from 2000 to 2014, told Bloomberg recently that the tech company got into the hardware business too late and, when it did, Gates and other board members disapproved due to differences in strategic direction. Afterwards, Ballmer and Gates "drifted apart," according to the report.

The former executive said he had pushed the board for support with its Surface RT, Microsoft's first-generation hybrid tablet computer. When the device didn't do too well, Ballmer said the mistake was waiting too long, according to the report.

A spokesperson for Microsoft did not immediately respond for CNBC's request for comment about the report.



Read the full report from Bloomberg here.
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David Changs food empire spans more than a dozen restaurants in three countries, nine dessert bars, two cocktail lounges, one publishing company and a prepared-foods business. He has won multiple James Beard Foundation Awards and a pair of Michelin stars. In his spare time, he appears on television shows and cooking specials and writes for his magazine, Lucky Peach.

So last spring, when Chang unveiled Ando, a restaurant with no dining room, only deliveries, the enterprise felt a little small: dispatching lunchtime fare to office workers by courier in a swath of Midtown Manhattan.

But Chang says Ando is part of a larger plan: to create a more sustainable model for restaurants in a time of rising costs and slim profit margins, and to pay workers well in an industry known for low wages. He says he plans to expand beyond New York, building a business to dwarf all of his previous accomplishments.

Ando may be his biggest gamble in one more way: The project is the first in his Momofuku restaurant group to take in significant venture capital financing, $7 million in its first round.

In Silicon Valley, where most venture investors are, that kind of money signals an intention to create a mass-market business, an ambition that statistically is more likely to end in failure than in the next Facebook. There is a reason venture money is called risk capital.

The move is a big departure for a man who has famously eschewed outside money from anyone but friends and family.

I got into the restaurant business not to make money on other peoples terms, Chang, 39, said in a recent interview in San Francisco.

It also shows how startups are seen as this eras path to riches. In 2000, with the stock market surging, cabdrivers offered up technology stock tips. In 2007, when real estate was booming, civilians became property developers and home flippers. And in 2016, with venture money flooding into young tech startups, everyone has an app and harbors Uber-style ambitions. Even Chang.

Last year, venture investors poured more than $4 billion into food delivery startups globally, according to research firm CB Insights. Several delivery-only restaurants sprouted in U.S. cities with the promise of saving owners money by requiring less space and removing the need for waiters. Chang said he could use those savings to pay his cooks more.

But some startups have struggled. A San Francisco service called SpoonRocket went out of business last spring. Others, like Munchery in San Francisco and other cities, have slowed.

If you dont achieve high volume and scale, all the savings of ditching the dining room go away, said Venky Ganesan, a managing director at Menlo Ventures and an investor in Munchery. Food is a lot tougher than it looks.

The infusion of venture capital increases the pressure on Chang and on Ando CEO Hooman Radfar, a partner at startup studio Expa, which was the first outside investor in Ando.

Youre signing up for a certain level of ambition focused on growth when you take venture money, said Kirsten Green, whose Forerunner Ventures is the largest investor in Andos first round of venture financing.

Green made early investments in Dollar Shave Club, which was sold to Unilever for $1 billion in July, and in Jet.com, which was sold to Walmart for $3.3 billion in August. She hopes for nothing less from Ando.

Hopefully well make a big successful business, and then well look for a liquidity event, Green said. A liquidity event is Silicon Valley parlance for one of three outcomes: listing the company on the stock market, selling the business or letting a private equity firm buy out early investors.

Chang has expressed some ambivalence about the possibility of cashing out. There have been numerous occasions where weve turned down lucrative offers, he said. We werent after the almighty dollar. We were on our own path.

By now, many Americans know the story of Chang, the enfant terrible who went from ramen purveyor to Michelin-starred chef in just five years.

Even as he enjoyed unusually quick success, he remained obsessed with the specter of failure. Each endeavor was born of an impetuous desire to start something new, followed by months of anxiety and painstaking sweating over every detail.

Chang has a voracious appetite for growth. He sees it as the answer to many of the restaurant industrys most intractable challenges, including the stratospheric cost of real estate and the struggle to pay talented chefs a living wage in expensive cities.

But its hard for star chefs to grow without losing their quality, edge or attention to detail.

I feel like everyone wants us to crash and burn, including the New York Times, he said, referring to the newspapers largely disapproving review of his latest Manhattan restaurant, Nishi. He has since acknowledged Nishis flaws and moved to address problems like excessive noise and uncomfortable backless stools. Im not going to let them win, he said.

But Chang said he realizes that he will always have critics, even within his own organization.

Ando is a simple concept, the kind that tends to underpin businesses that deliver big wins for venture investors. Chang founded it last fall to create dishes like fried chicken or cold spicy noodles with pork that can stand up, and even improve, under the logistical constraints of delivery.

He hired JJ Basil, a former sous-chef at New York restaurant WD-50, to develop the menu and run the kitchen. In place of a host and servers, Chang substituted the Ando app, which was built by Expas technology experts.

He began with one kitchen, in Midtown, and delivers only to that part of New York. He said it is unclear when and how Ando might expand.

As with everything Chang does, Ando is a little complicated. While he was tinkering with the idea, Chang invested his own money and lent his name to another Manhattan lunch delivery service, Maple. The move felt akin to investing in a lo mein shop months before opening Momofuku Noodle Bar. But Chang insisted there was room in the market for both operations.

Also, Ando has not embraced Silicon Valleys move fast and break things ethos. Take, for example, cheese sauce, a single component of the restaurants NYC Cheesesteak.

We saw the cheese started sogging up the bread and we had to change the recipe, Basil said. Then we thought, lets put hozon in it  Momofukus chickpea sauce.

Then we had to figure out how to thicken it up. Then we added calcium ... and a little bit of carrageenan. Now it travels extremely well. But it took us four months.

The Ando menu is still growing. And there is the push and pull between venture capitals data-driven culture and the instinctive way that chefs work.

Dave has an ability to zero in on things that people really love, not because hes got a huge computer, said Andrew Salmon, Changs business partner in Momofuku.

He said they were wary of outside money until they were introduced to Expa, which ultimately co-founded Ando and put seed money into it.

Left to their own devices, he said, they could never have built Ando without Silicon Valley-style money and expertise.
Stanford Lipsey, a publisher who persuaded Warren Buffett to invest in newspapers and whose chain of Nebraska weeklies won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing fundraising excesses by Boys Town, the charity for orphaned children, died Tuesday at his home in Rancho Mirage (Riverside County). He was 89.

His death was confirmed by his wife, Judith.

Under Mr. Lipsey, the Sun Newspapers, in the Omaha area, won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Investigative Specialized Reporting (a category since discontinued) in 1973 for disclosing that Boys Town was still soliciting contributions even though it had accrued hundreds of millions of dollars in assets and its caseload of abandoned and handicapped youngsters had shrunk.

The Sun estimated that the net worth of Boys Town, which was founded in 1921 by the Rev. Edward Flanagan, was growing by as much as $18 million a year  four times as much as it needed to maintain its programs.

Boys Town, Americas richest city: 700 boys with $209 million, the headline proclaimed in the Sun papers, owned by Buffetts Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate.

The Pulitzer, rare for a weekly news organization, prompted fundraising reforms: Boys Town hired consultants and abandoned its alarmist appeals for contributions.

Mr. Lipsey left Omaha in 1980 to join the Buffalo News, a major daily newspaper in that area. Buffett, from his Omaha headquarters, had recently bought it. Three years later, Mr. Lipsey was appointed publisher and remained in that job for almost three decades, retiring in 2012.

In Buffalo he was a crusader for the citys economic revival, a preservationist and, as an early and well-rewarded investor in Berkshire Hathaway, a philanthropist. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., once called him western New Yorks guardian angel.

Mr. Lipsey was born in Omaha (as was Buffett) on Oct. 8, 1927, to Jewish immigrants from Russia. His father, Jacob, owned a wholesale poultry and meat market. His mother was the former Molly Brick.

He got a camera when he was 10 and became photography editor of his high school newspaper and college yearbook. After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1948 with a bachelors degree in economics, he served in the Air Force as the editor of a base newspaper.

His first marriage, to the former Jeanne Blacker, ended in divorce.

In addition to his wife, the former Judith Hojnacki, he is survived by two children, Janet and Daniel Lipsey, from his first marriage, and two grandchildren.

Mr. Lipsey got his start in the publishing business when he joined an Omaha company that distributed two free weeklies. Within 15 years, he had expanded it to become the Sun Newspapers, a chain of seven paid-subscription weeklies and five that were distributed free.

Mr. Lipsey was introduced to Buffett in 1969 and later sold the company to Berkshire Hathaway, which had only $50 million in assets then, compared with more than $550 billion today.

The Sun weeklies were hungry for exclusives in their competition with daily newspapers, Mr. Lipsey recalled. Buffett suggested that a reporter for the West Omaha Sun go to Washington and retrieve the federal form on which charities like Boys Town are required to disclose their contributions and assets.

While it was common knowledge that Boys Town had become flush, the extent of its assets was stunning. The data on the federal form was about the most important piece of information we could lay our hands on, Mr. Lipsey told Bloomberg TV in 2012.

In Buffalo, as publisher of the News, Mr. Lipsey led the paper as it won its battle for survival with the Courier-Express, its rival, which stopped publication in 1982. In 1999, he appointed the first woman to hold the post of editor of the News, Margaret Sullivan. (She was later the public editor of the New York Times and is now the media columnist for the Washington Post.)

This year, Mr. Lipsey was among a group of investors who bought the daily newspaper the Berkshire Eagle in Massachusetts. He was credited with encouraging Buffett to invest in community newspapers again in 2012.

The best news in the newspaper industry is Berkshires acquisition of all those newspapers, Donald Graham, the former chairman of the Washington Post Co., told the Buffalo News recently, and that wouldnt have happened without Stan.
Derek Dammann / Getty Image

Firefighters have contained a one-alarm fire at a home in San Francisco's Mission District this afternoon, according to fire officials.

The fire was first reported around 11:40 a.m. in the at 2888 Folsom Street, fire officials said.
Organisers for a November 5, 2016 peace rally in Tel Aviv honoring slain Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin said about 50,000 people attended, while Israeli media said 20,000 (AFP Photo/Jack Guez)

Tel Aviv (AFP) - Thousands of people attended a memorial rally for slain Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin on Saturday, despite earlier fears it would be cancelled, an AFP journalist said.

Organisers put the number at around 50,000, while Israeli media said 20,000. Police did not give an official estimate.

There had been fears that lack of funding would for the first time in 21 years prevent the annual event in the central Tel Aviv square which bears the name of the Nobel peace laureate shot dead at the site by a Jewish extremist on November 4, 1995.

The rally has traditionally been a display of respect for Rabin and of support for peace with the Palestinians, which he sought.

On Monday, the usual organisers said they had been unable to raise sufficient funds to hold the commemoration and that it might not be possible to go ahead.

It was only on Friday that the opposition Zionist Union, a parliamentary alliance of Rabin's Labour party and the centrist HaTnuah, said it would step into the breach.

"I could not resign myself to the cancellation of the rally," Labour leader Isaac Herzog posted on his Twitter account.

"We decided to preserve the tradition and to take over the organisation of the event."

The intervention of the centre-left comes despite a pledge by those close to Rabin after the murder to hold a major non-partisan rally in his memory each year for all Israelis.

"It's sad that the evening has become a political event, but we came anyway because the important thing is the goal of raising our children in a better country," said Ayelet Barak, who like many others attended the event with her young children.

Many youth activists wore T-shirts bearing logos of Israeli opposition parties or with slogans such as "We do not forgive or forget".

Herzog gave a fighting speech from the podium.

"Tonight we are not lighting candles, we are going to war for our democracy," he said.

Mass peace rallies have become increasingly rare in Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government seen as the most right-wing in the country's history.

Rabin won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for his role in negotiating the Oslo peace accords, which envisioned an independent Palestinian state.

Rabin's killer, Yigal Amir, was opposed to the Oslo accords. He is serving a life sentence in prison.
As the U.S. election season enters its final days, Americans are stressed out about who will win, but they're not the only ones closely watching the presidential contest.

U.S. allies  and otherwise  are monitoring the election with apprehension, as the winner will have significant influence over the global agenda. But just as Americans are divided on their preference, so too are key nations around the world.

Here's a brief collection of how other countries are assessing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump .

A new investigation from Newsweek claims to reveal why President Vladimir Putin's Russia is "backing" Trump, saying that "the Kremlin's campaign is motivated not so much to support Trump as it is to hurt the Democratic nominee." That campaign, intelligence officials have said , includes the repeated cyberattacks against Democrats, but it also includes wall-to-wall promotion of anti-Clinton stories on Russian propaganda outlets RT and Sputnik.

Several top former officials have suggested that Russia likes Trump because he serves as a "useful idiot" for Moscow when he allegedly undermines U.S. alliances with isolationist and transactional foreign policy comments.

According to Newsweek, meanwhile, Putin was "infuriated" by Clinton's tough talk on the fairness of Russia's 2011 parliamentary elections. Additionally, according to the report, Putin "was also encouraged by the relentlessly positive comments about him by Trump, even after the Republican nominee began receiving criticism within his own party for sounding too supportive of the Kremlin."

For his part, Trump used to insist that he "got to know [Putin] very well" when both appeared (separately) on the CBS program "60 Minutes." But when pressed by Clinton on the relationship during the third presidential debate, Trump said, "I don't know Putin. He said nice things about me. If we got along well, that would be good."

Clinton, meanwhile, has repeatedly painted Moscow as a malevolent international actor, not only for its actions in Ukraine and the Middle East, but also for its alleged involvement in her own campaign.

Story continues

As Europe's third-largest economy, and a historical American ally, France occupies an important place in the American view of the world. But just like in the U.S., France has seen a war of words between a center-left presidency and an increasingly vocal right-populist movement.

As might be expected, French President Francois Hollande endorsed Clinton over the summer, saying in a newspaper article in Les Echos newspaper that "the best thing the Democrats can do is to elect Hillary Clinton." As for Trump, Hollande reportedly said the Republican nominee's "excesses" gives observers a "retching feeling."

But Marine Le Pen, who leads France's far-right National Front party, has said she would cast her vote for Trump if she lived in the United States. The National Front's anti-migrant sentiments and skepticism of globalist outlooks share considerable similarities with Trump's platform.

Still, a recent poll from YouGov showed that only 9 percent of the French would cast their vote for Trump if they lived in the U.S. Clinton, meanwhile, saw hypothetical support from 62 percent of French people.

According to that YouGov poll, Europe's largest economy is an even bigger supporter of Clinton: 69 percent said they would hypothetically vote for Clinton, while only 8 percent tapped Trump.

Perhaps more strikingly, a whopping 65 percent of Germans said they would be "afraid" if Trump won the election.

Those poll results mirror CNBC's reporting in the country, where nearly everyone interviewed either expressed support for Clinton, distaste for Trump or apathy on the subject. Business leaders in the country said they were concerned about the GOP nominee's rhetoric on trade, which has emphasized renegotiating deals to be tougher on other countries. But even leaders of Germany's strong movement against a free trade agreement backed by President Barack Obama said they opposed Trump: Although their goals aligned on trade, these campaigners said, Trump's reasoning came from a zero-sum understanding of global interaction, while theirs was more about promoting environmentalism and democratic values.

For his part, Trump has been critical of German Chancellor Angela Merkel , saying incorrectly that crime had skyrocketed under Germany's liberal refugee policies. In fact, one of his lines of attack against Clinton has been likening her to the German leader.

But even Merkel's opponents say they are not Trump supporters. As one German politician told CNBC, most in the country don't think Trump would help the U.S., and those who do think Trump's prescriptions will "make America great again" are largely anti-Americans who don't want the U.S. to succeed in the first place.

The United Kingdom is still reeling from its June Brexit vote to leave the European Union. That campaign has been likened to the U.S. election  including by Trump himself  as many prognosticators said the establishment-backed "stay" side would defeat the populist "leave" proponents.

Although that unanticipated result does not mean Trump is a favorite in the U.K., it perhaps explains Clinton's relative unpopularity: In the October YouGov poll of several European nations, the U.K. boasted the lowest percentage who said they'd vote for Clinton  a meager 59 percent to Trump's 8 percent.

Scott Lucas, a professor of American studies at the University of Birmingham, told CNBC this summer that a lack of clarity on what exactly Trump would do if elected "unsettles" many people in Britain.

"I think in general most people in the U.K. would feel much more comfortable with Hillary, because she's a known factor. Even if you disagree with her, you know pretty much where she's going to come from," he said.

The U.S. neighbor to the south has been a favorite punching bag for Trump. In fact, Mexico was one of the very first targets for the political pugilist.

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best," Trump said when he announced his candidacy in 2015. "They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

The GOP nominee attempted to patch up the relationship when he met with President Enrique Pena Nieto, but that confab appeared unsuccessful after Trump and the Mexican leader publicly disagreed about what had been said.

"Regardless of where in Mexico, the people here don't want Donald Trump to win," Eloisa Hernandez, a 29-year-old restaurant owner from Queretaro, Mexico, told CNBC this summer .

"He's a person who is not qualified to hold the presidency of the most powerful country in the world, as is the U.S," she told CNBC via telephone. "The racist comments he made when he began his campaign were obviously not received well by us."

A less obvious supporter of Trump or Clinton is Israel . The Jerusalem Post reported earlier this week that U.S. absentee-voters in Israel were siding for Trump 49 percent to Clinton's 44 percent, according to exit polling.

A survey of Israelis, however, found that 42 percent preferred Clinton and 26.5 percent favored Trump. That same poll found, however, that 63 percent thought that Clinton would be tougher on the Israeli government about renewing peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

Both candidates have attempted to paint themselves as unshakable stewards of the U.S.-Israeli alliance.

Trump has said he would ensure that Palestinians enter any negotiations "knowing that the bond between the United States and Israel is absolutely, totally unbreakable." Clinton, for her part, has said "we will never allow Israel's adversaries to think a wedge can be driven between us."

Beijing has a policy of not picking favorites in foreign elections, but that doesn't mean China has held its tongue on the candidates.

Xie Zhenhua, China's special representative for climate change, made headlines on Tuesday when he rebuked Trump for suggesting that he would pull out of a global pact to fight climate change.



"If they resist this trend, I don't think they'll win the support of their people, and their country's economic and social progress will also be affected," Xie said in response to a question about Trump.

"I believe a wise political leader should take policy stances that conform with global trends," he added.

Despite that recent rhetorical wrist-slapping, Beijing's propaganda mouthpieces have been equally critical of Trump and Clinton.

On Trump, Chinese outlets have described him as an "irrational type," whose mouth is too small and who employs a "childish style of speaking," He's seen as a candidate who would "bring changes to the Sino-U.S. relationship," but who embodies"pragmatism" despite his "dubious record of success as a businessman."

Clinton, experts say, is also viewed negatively by Beijing. The Chinese government sees the former secretary of state as a more hawkish version of Obama, and she has previously rankled Beijing on human rights  extending all the way from a 1995 speech that stirred controversy in Beijing, up to a 2015 tweet about the country's persecution of feminists.

 Reuters and CNBC's Jacob Pramuk and Fred Imbert contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The U.S. economy is lifting job growth and wages but not voters' spirits.

Americans are choosing a president against a backdrop of slow but steady growth that has managed to restore the economy from the crushing setback of the Great Recession. The government's October jobs report , released Friday, showed that hiring remains solid, with 161,000 jobs added. The unemployment rate is a low 4.9 percent.

Yet the recovery, the slowest since World War II, has left many Americans feeling left behind, especially those who lack high skills or education or who live outside major population centers.

"The (typical) U.S. household is in a much better spot than they were eight years ago," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. "But it hasn't been a great decade for anyone either. You've still got a big chunk of the population who feels this hasn't worked for them."

The economy's weak spots are a top concern for a majority of voters, who say the U.S. economy is in poor shape, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll. At the same time, they say their own personal finances are good.

Fifty-three percent of voters say the economy is "poor," while 46 percent say "good," according to the poll, conducted Oct. 20-24. Yet 65 percent say their own finances are good, versus 34 percent who rate them poor.

Seventy-three percent of Hillary Clinton supporters say that the economy is good; just 16 percent of Donald Trump supporters say so.

And while 60 percent of whites say the economy is poor, 60 percent of nonwhites call it good. Yet whites and nonwhites are about equally likely to say their own personal finances are good.

Consider 73-year-old Charles Muller, who lives outside Trenton, New Jersey, and describes his personal finances as fine. He has a pension from 26 years as a state employee and receives Social Security.

But the broader economy seems fairly weak to Muller. A friend was laid off during the recession, then earned a teaching certificate, and yet still can't find a full-time teaching job. And a friend's daughter who recently graduated from college is stuck as an assistant manager of a dollar store.

"I know a lot of people who are struggling and have been unable to find jobs commensurate with their education levels," Muller said. He is supporting Trump, though he sees the major presidential nominees as "the two worst candidates I've ever been given a choice of."

Here's a snapshot of the U.S. economy of the eve of the elections:

___

SLOWER BUT STILL-SOLID HIRING

The job market has proved itself resilient.

Employers have added an average of 181,000 jobs a month this year. That's down from last year's robust 229,000 average. But it's nearly double the monthly pace needed to lower the unemployment rate over time. The number of people seeking unemployment benefits is near a 40-year low  evidence that layoffs are scarce and most Americans are enjoying strong job security.

Blake Zalcberg, president of OFM, a furniture manufacturer in Raleigh, North Carolina, hopes to add nine employees to his 58-person company, including graphic artists, photographers and sales staff. He expects sales to grow by a third next year.

"It's a fairly robust furniture market," he said.

___

PAY FINALLY ACCELERATING

With the unemployment rate down to 4.9 percent from a peak of 10 percent in 2009, businesses have been forced to compete harder for new employees. That's giving workers more bargaining power when they seek new jobs and finally boosting pay. Average hourly wages grew 2.8 percent in October from a year earlier  the fastest 12-month pace in seven years. Still, historically speaking, that's not great. Wages typically rise at about 3.5 percent each year in a healthy economy.

___

CAUTIOUS CONSUMERS

Steady hiring and modest pay increases have emboldened more Americans to buy high-cost items like new cars. Auto sales are running near last year's record pace of more than 17 million vehicles. Yet caution still reigns: Americans' spending grew just 2.1 percent in the July-August quarter, down from a much healthier 4.3 percent in the previous three months.

___

HOUSING HAS NEARLY RECOVERED

The bursting of the last decade's housing bubble wiped out trillions in household wealth, cost more than 5 million Americans their homes and triggered the Great Recession. Yet the home market has mostly recovered, with nationwide average purchase prices just 7 percent below their 2006 peaks. Greater home values have helped many families recoup some of their lost wealth. Sales of existing homes have plateaued this year at a nearly healthy level of about 5.4 million.

Doug Duncan, chief economist at Fannie Mae, foresees sales growth slowing next year. But younger Americans are increasingly likely to buy homes, suggesting that millennials are tiring of living in apartments  or in their parents' basements and are starting to move out.

___

BUSINESSES HOLDING BACK

Companies with optimistic outlooks typically spend more on computers, machinery and other equipment to keep up with demand. Instead, in recent months the opposite has happened: Business investment in new equipment has fallen for four straight quarters. Some of that pullback occurred because oil drillers slashed spending on steel pipe and other gear in response to sharply lower oil prices. But many companies are also likely holding off on new spending until after the election, when potential economic policy changes will be clearer.

___

WEAK WORKER PRODUCTIVITY

The U.S. economy has failed to grow much more efficient. Since the recession began in 2007, productivity  or output per hour of work  has grown at less than one-third the annual pace it did from 2000 through 2007. Rising productivity is vital to raising living standards, because it enables companies to raise pay without raising prices.

Economists blame a range of factors for the slowdown: Americans are starting fewer new companies, which tend to be quicker to adopt new technologies. And weaker investment in roads, ports and other infrastructure has slowed shipping and commuting times.

___

MANY STILL LEFT BEHIND

Millions of Americans haven't benefited from the consistent hiring of the past several years. Middle-income jobs in manufacturing and office work were permanently lost in the recession and have been replaced by lower-paying work in retail and fast food. Many of the unemployed have given up looking for work and are no longer counted as unemployed.

Nicholas Eberstadt, author of a new book, "Men Without Work," notes that this has been a long-term phenomenon. For every unemployed man ages 25 through 54, three others are neither working nor looking for work. That ratio has doubled since 1990.
vladimir putin

The US government is prepared to take countermeasures in the event of a Russian cyber-attack that could interfere with the upcoming presidential election, NBC News reported.

According to a senior intelligence official who spoke to NBC, the US is eyeing potential targets including Russia's power grid, telecommunications systems, and the Kremlin's command systems as potential targets if the US experiences a significant attack.

The US previously deployed cyberattacks during the Iraq War when it temporarily shut down the power grid in Baghdad, the NBC News report noted.

The White House and the Department of Homeland Security are spearheading the effort against possible cyber intrusion from Russian actors.

"I think there's three things we should do if we see a significant cyber-attack," retired Admiral James Stavridiss told NBC. "The first obviously is defending against it. The second is reveal: We should be publicizing what has happened so that any of this kind of cyber trickery can be unmasked. And thirdly, we should respond. Our response should be proportional," he said.

Officials are concerned of a possible cyber-attack that would cripple some online services similar to the one that shut down large parts of the internet last month.

However, US officials believe Russia's aim may be to undermine the election by spreading misinformation, but not go as far as launching a large-scale attack that would amount to an act of war.

Hackers would find it very difficult to meddle with actual votes as the election is designed to be decentralized and voting machines aren't connected to the internet, officials said.

The US has taken the contingency measures as its relationship with Russia and President Vladimir Putin has grown increasingly hostile.

Story continues

In a cryptic tweet Friday, a hacker officials suspect is linked to the Russian government that goes by the name "Guccifer 2.0" invited other hackers to monitor the election from inside the system."

In October, The US Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence formally accused the Russian government of the Democratic Party hack that led to the release of thousands of emails involving Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Clinton said the hack was politically motivated and an attempt to sway the election in favor of Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump.

The Democratic nominee has questioned Trump's praise of Putin and accused him of nefarious business deals with Russians.

NOW WATCH: The National Guard has an elite cyber security division to protect elections from being hacked





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NASA recently delivered the grim news that the Great Salt Lake has lost 48 percent of its water volume since 1847.

The largest body of water in the United States after the Great Lakes has suffered due to both nature and man. Farming, industry, a five-year drought and higher-than-normal temperatures have all contributed to The Great Salt Lake's lowest recorded water level.

According to NASA, nearly 40 percent of the water that would naturally flow into the Great Salt Lake has been diverted by man, raising concerns for the 250 species of migratory birds that depend on the lake for food.

WARMING SUMMERS: Video: NASA timelapse footage shows Arctic Sea ice disappearing

The images above are of Farmington Bay, one of the areas of the lake that has shrunk the most.

"Farmington Bay has been nearly desiccated as the result of the combined effects of drought and water withdrawals from the rivers feeding the lake," said Wayne Wurtsbaugh, a watershed scientist at Utah State University, in a prepared statement. "Farmington Bay is an immensely important feeding area for migratory shorebirds and waterfowl. Even at the low level we have now, it is still important, but the greatly reduced size has diminished its value."

Wurtsbaugh said the solution is greater conversation, especially for the water used in agricultural irrigation, which makes up approximately 63 percent of water usage.

RECORD-BREAKING: NASA calls it: 2016 will be the hottest year in Earth's history

The drying of the Great Salt Lake has led to more and larger dust storms in the area, but Wurtsbaugh said the worst may be yet come.

"A wildcard for the fate of the lake is what global climate change may do to the basin," Wurtsbaugh said. "Warmer air temperatures are projected to lower runoff, but our data shown in the white paper suggests there haven't been climate change effects on the runoff yet."

Click through above to see the images as well as harrowing statistics about climate change.
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If you are unaware that California is about to elect a new U.S. senator Tuesday, you arent going to find out about it from state Attorney General Kamala Harris.

Harris, the front-runner in the race to replace retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer, made a stop in San Francisco Friday to give a brief street-corner speech where she barely mentioned herself or her campaign. And she certainly didnt talk about Orange County Rep. Loretta Sanchez, her challenger in the Democrats-only showdown.

Instead, Harris spoke only about the importance of the election.

Candidates up and down the ballot are making decisions that affect our lives, like whether we can afford to get from home to work, Harris said in front of the Embarcadero BART Station on Market Street, giving a nod to Lateefah Simon, a candidate for the BART Board of Directors.

Do for her what youve done for me, Harris added.

It wasnt the speech of a candidate worried about whats going to happen Tuesday.

Im reminding people that Im running just by being there with other candidates, Harris said in an interview. I remind them every time I go in a room to support people I believe will make great leaders.

The last round of campaign stops by the two Senate candidates highlight their different plans for the final days of the campaign.

Sanchez, who has been running as a more moderate alternative to Harris, has focused almost all her efforts in her home base of Southern California, making only a foray into the Central Valley, where she joined Democratic Rep. Jim Costa of Fresno as he praised her for her congressional experience on national security issues.

The home-field emphasis isnt surprising, given that Sanchezs new TV spot notes that only one Senate candidate has lived and worked her whole life in Southern California, a lightly disguised slap at Harris Bay Area roots and her time as San Franciscos district attorney.

The congresswomans stops have been short of the type of shared-platform campaign events with other candidates that Harris has been doing, and thats by design, said Luis Vizcaino, a spokesman for Sanchez.

Rep. Sanchezs events are policy heavy, he said in an email, where she meets with students, homeowners, mortgage-crisis victims to discuss specific policy proposals: immigration reform, strengthening U.S. military, ensuring water security, helping homeowners hurt from the mortgage crisis.

Harris schedule reflects a growing confidence that shes headed for Washington in January. By traveling the state helping fellow Democrats, shes also building up the reservoir of favors owed and goodwill she will need as she becomes even more of a power player in California politics.

In recent weeks, Harris has campaigned with state Senate hopeful San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener, Assembly candidates in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, congressional candidate Bryan Caforio, state Senate and Assembly hopefuls in Los Angeles County and with hard-pressed Democratic Rep. Ami Bera in Elk Grove (Sacramento County).

After her San Francisco stop Friday, Harris jumped back on her Fearless for the People campaign bus for a trip to a Pleasanton rally for Democrat Cheryl Cook-Kallio, whos running for the East Bay Assembly seat now held by Republican Catharine Baker.

Shes trying to spread the love, said Nathan Click, a campaign spokesman.

Harris quickly dismissed suggestions that her statewide bus tour to close the campaign is anything like an early victory lap of California.

People shouldnt be cynical, she chided. Im working hard until the last day and trying to meet with as many people as possible.

A new Field Poll, in which 25 percent of those surveyed said they have voted already, shows that Harris strategy appears to be working.

The attorney general now holds a 47 percent to 23 percent lead over Sanchez among likely voters, slightly better than the 42 percent to 20 percent margin she had in the September poll. The numbers havent changed much since the June primary, when the two Democrats finished one-two, with Harris leading 40 percent to 19 percent.

Harris leads Sanchez in every part of the state and among voters of every age and ethnic group. The poll even gives the attorney general a 36 percent to 33 percent edge with Latino voters, a group that Sanchez, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, has been looking to for overwhelming support.

The only groups favoring the congresswoman are conservatives, 27 percent to 21 percent, and Republicans, 26 percent to 19 percent.

But even those numbers are less helpful to Sanchez than they might appear, since 31 percent of Republicans say they wont vote for either of the two Democrats and another 24 percent remain undecided.

If you take the people who say they arent voting from the survey, Harris has a 54 percent to 27 percent lead, exactly 2-to-1, said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll.

The poll shows 17 percent of voters are still undecided, a surprisingly high number for a typically high-profile race this close to the election.

This reflects that the Senate race hasnt been getting attention from voters, and that the candidates arent getting out much information, said DiCamillo.

Thats especially bad news for Sanchez. While Harris has run and won statewide, Sanchez has never run for office outside her Orange County congressional district.

There hasnt been much shifting in the numbers, likely because there hasnt been much visible campaigning, DiCamillo said.

Even though this is Californias first open Senate seat since 1992, the landmark presidential battle between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump has pulled all the attention from the Senate race, and Sanchez hasnt been able to raise enough money to shift the spotlight to herself.

As of Oct. 19, date of the last federal campaign finance report, Harris had out-raised Sanchez by better than 3-to-1, $14.5 million to $4.11 million. The attorney general also had more than twice as much money left in the bank.

The Field Poll, conducted from Oct. 25 to Oct. 31, is based on a survey of 1,498 likely voters.

John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com
LOS ANGELES  In California, the guidelines for how to teach science are changing.

It should be hands-on, education officials now say, and its concepts should be connected to other subjects.

California is one of a number of states that in recent years adopted what are called Next Generation Science Standards  goals for each grade intended to make science more experiential, coherent and relevant.

State education staffers then gathered groups of science teachers and over 3,000 public comments about how to translate those goals into lessons.

The state education board on Thursday approved a science curriculum framework that came out of that field research. While the standards state key principles and what students should know by the end of each grade, the framework, officials say, is the how.

The document is supposed to guide publishers to develop new textbooks for use in the states public schools.

The aim is to prepare students graduating from high school to be critical consumers of information and capable problem-solvers, the framework states in its introduction.

It calls for students regularly to engage in hands-on science or investigations  and not simply memorize information to regurgitate.

In the old days, students were in the back, teachers sat in the front, said Bryan Boyd, a former science teacher who consults on science programming for the state Education Department. The students, he said, werent real scientists and couldnt apply what they learned.

Now, instead of teachers presenting diagrams or models, students should be led to come up with their own. One potential lesson guide asks kindergartners to brainstorm ways to save water or paper. The teacher can then tell them how their ideas relate to the key environmentalist concepts of reduce, reuse and recycle. Then students can draw the solutions they came up with and choose from those words to label them.

Teachers also should try to show students how science connects with other subjects, especially in elementary school, where one teacher oversees all areas.

To relate science to English/language arts, the framework suggests asking kindergartners to express ideas about plants and animals by using language such as I think and I agree with and then asking them to write down their thoughts.

In a discussion of how to teach science effectively, the framework suggests that connecting scientific concepts to art can spark creativity for teachers and students alike.

Over the course of a students schooling, the framework says, students understanding of science should grow in sophistication  from noticing visible phenomena in the early grades to understanding bigger systems later on in elementary school. In middle school, they should come to know the microscopic world. In high school, the subatomic.

Lessons build on one another. In kindergarten, students learn about what happens when objects are pushed or pulled. In third grade, they learn that these motions are forces and that they can interact in complex ways, as they can see on the playground when they kick balls, push swings or land after coming down slides.

After fifth grade, districts have different options for how they can order the science curriculum. They can maintain the separation of scientific disciplines or use an integrated model in which students learn about ideas from multiple disciplines at once. Long taught as clearly delineated separate courses, chemistry, earth science, biology and physics can be blended.

In an integrated middle school curriculum, sixth-graders would learn about water, weather, climate change, cells, reproduction and heat. Seventh grade would cover rock cycles, plate tectonics, natural hazards, photosynthesis and atoms. In eighth grade, students would explore the universe, resource consumption, evolution, forces, energy and gravity.

This spring, the state will do a pilot run of new science tests connected to the standards. Next year, the tests will be administered officially, and students will receive their scores.
BEIRUT  An offensive by Syrian insurgents aimed at the government-held part of the city of Aleppo has killed at least 74 civilians, including 25 children, an opposition monitoring group said Saturday.

The insurgents launched the assault eight days ago, hoping to break a months-long government siege on the rebel-held eastern part of the city, which has been subjected to months of devastating Syrian and Russian air strikes. The insurgents have seized a district on Aleppos edge and a nearby village.

The Syrian military said the first three days of the rebel offensive killed more than 80 people. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the different figures.

Rights groups and the U.N. have sharply criticized the rebels over the shelling of western Aleppo districts, which has killed a number of civilians. Such criticism had mainly been focused on the government and its allies, accusing them of indiscriminate shelling and air strikes on rebel-held areas.

Moscow declared a halt to air strikes on eastern Aleppo on Oct. 18, but Syrian and Russian warplanes have continued to strike around the citys edges and in the surrounding province. The strikes, which have hit a school and several medical facilities, have killed more than 400 civilians in less than a month and wounded more than 2,000 people.

On Friday, a renewed 10-hour Russian offer of a moratorium on air strikes expired. None of the estimated 275,000 residents of eastern Aleppo departed during the unilateral cease-fire, as they had been urged to do by Russia and the Syrian government.

Russian officials had not said what would happen when the deadline expired. But the arrival of a Russian aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, into the Mediterranean and its heading to the Syrian coast suggested Moscow may intend to escalate its operations.

On Saturday, Syrias pro-government Sama TV said another Russian ship, the frigate Admiral Grigorovich, has arrived in the Mediterranean to reinforce the other military ships already present at the Syrian coast. Admiral Grigorovich is one of the most advanced classes of frigates in the Russian navy and can fire cruise missiles.

Footage from the activist-run Thiqa News Agency appeared to show missiles targeting the town of Darat Izza in northwestern Aleppo province on Saturday. A team of first responders known as the Syrian Civil Defense, or White Helmets, said at least three people were killed in the air strikes and 15 others were wounded.

There has been an intense aerial bombing campaign in the western Aleppo countryside and nearby Idlib province in recent days. Rebels said it appeared to be an attempt to sever their supply lines.

An insurgent alliance known as the Army of Conquest, which includes the al Qaeda-linked Fatah al-Sham Front, has led the attack on western Aleppo. It is the second time insurgents have tried to break the siege imposed on the territory since July. An earlier offensive that breached the siege in August for a few weeks was repelled.

Abu Saeed al-Halabi, a member of Fatah al-Sham based in Aleppo, said Russia has intensified its air strikes during the insurgent-led offensive, but he said the aerial campaign has not curtailed the effort.
MOSUL, Iraq  Islamic State fighters launched counterattacks Saturday against Iraqi special forces in eastern Mosul, emerging from populated areas deeper in the city to target the troops with mortars and suicide car bombs in clashes that raged late into the night.

Artillery shelling thundered across the city as snipers traded fire from rooftops and civilians emerged from the front lines waving white flags. There were fresh indications that other residents were being held back by the militants to be used as human shields.

The seesawing battle highlights the challenges ahead for Iraqi forces as they press into more densely populated neighborhoods of the countrys second largest city, where they will not be able to rely as much on air strikes because of the risk of killing civilians.

Daesh is in the city center and we must be very careful as our forces advance, said Maj. Gen. Sami al-Aridi of the Iraqi special forces, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

The special forces entered the Gogjali district, on the eastern edge of Mosul, on Tuesday, marking their first major foray into the city itself after more than two weeks of fighting in its rural outskirts.

Islamic State fought back Saturday, pushing the special forces from the southern edge of the neighborhood. Both sides fired mortar rounds and automatic weapons, while the Iraqi troops also responded with artillery. Snipers dueled from rooftops in residential areas, where most buildings are just two stories high.

Dozens of civilians emerged from their homes over the course of the day. Many traveling with children and elderly relatives said they had to walk more than 6 miles to reach a camp for the displaced.

Just a few miles from the clashes, Iraqi officers coordinating air strikes with the U.S.-led coalition watched live drone footage showing a team of Islamic State fighters regrouping near the front line.

Theyre moving in front of the mosque, an Iraqi soldier said as he called in an air strike, which moments later flattened a small building. Civilians moved into the area soon thereafter, and the soldiers said the militants appeared to have corralled them there to prevent further strikes.

Daesh have continued to hide behind civilians and facilitate harm to them, said Col. John Dorrian, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, which has been launching air strikes to aid the Iraqi advance.

He said Iraqi forces and the coalition developed a plan that is intended to reduce the possibility of civilian casualties and collateral damage.

But Iraqi Cpt. Naqib Jaff, who was covered in dust after helping to hold positions east of Mosul overnight, said the air support hasnt been enough and that the coalition was only striking suicide car bombs.

He said that in previous operations against Islamic State-held towns and cities, civilians would be moved away from the front lines, allowing forces to advance. But he said in Mosul, his men have been ordered to keep families inside their homes.

Weve never been in such a situation before. We would be fighting and there would be a family right next to us, he said.

The government has ordered residents to stay inside, fearing a mass exodus from the city, which is still home to more than 1 million people.

The advance of the Iraqi forces was also slowed by fortifications erected by the extremists in the more than two years since they captured the city. Trenches and berms have turned the streets and alleyways into a maze.
1 Presidential apology: In an extraordinary display of abject apology during a moment of supreme crisis, South Korean President Park Geun-hye took sole blame Friday for a heartbreaking scandal amid rising suspicion that she allowed a mysterious confidante to manipulate power from the shadows. Park also vowed to accept a direct investigation into her actions, but the opposition, sensing weakness, immediately threatened to push for her ouster if she doesnt distance herself from domestic affairs and accept a prime minster chosen by the Parliament.

2 China space program: Chinas plans for a permanent space station remain firmly on track with the successful launch of its new heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket that will enable ambitious future missions, including a planned trip to Mars. The towering rocket that blasted off Thursday night from the Wenchang launch center will be used to launch components for the Tiangong 2 space station and other massive payloads. China launched the Tiangong 2 precursor facility in September and sent up two astronauts in mid-October to live aboard it for 30 days. The stations 20-ton core module will be launched in 2018, and the completed 60-ton station is set to come into full service in 2022 and last at least a decade.
1 Hostages released: Two Italians and a Canadian citizen kidnapped in southern Libya in September were freed unharmed and brought to Italy on Saturday, authorities said. The men, technicians working on a construction project at an airport, were seized Sept. 19 by armed men who blocked their vehicle in Ghat, a Sahara Desert city near the border with Algeria. There was no information if any ransom was involved in the mens release.

2 Indonesia protests: President Joko Widodo canceled a visit Saturday to Australia after a huge rally in the capital by Muslim hard-liners descended into violence, killing one and injuring almost 200. The Foreign Affairs Ministry said his trip scheduled from Sunday to Tuesday will be postponed because current development has required the president to stay in Indonesia. He addressed the nation late Friday after clashes broke out between police and hard-liners who refused to disperse and demanded the arrest of Jakartas minority-Christian governor for alleged blasphemy.
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SEOUL  Tens of thousands of South Koreans poured into the streets of downtown Seoul on Saturday, using words like treason and criminal to demand that President Park Geun-hye step down amid an explosive political scandal.

The protest, the largest antigovernment demonstration in the capital in almost a year, came a day after Park apologized on live television amid rising suspicion that she allowed a mysterious confidante to manipulate power from the shadows.

Holding banners, candles and colorful signs that read Park Geun-hye out and Treason by a secret government, a sea of demonstrators filled a large square in front of an old palace gate and the nearby streets, singing and thunderously applauding speeches calling for the ouster of the increasingly unpopular president.

They then shifted into a slow march in streets around City Hall, shouting Arrest Park Geun-hye, Step down, criminal and We cant take this any longer, before moving back to the square and cheering on more speeches that continued into the night.

Park should squarely face the prosecutions investigation and step down herself. If she doesnt, politicians should move to impeach her, said Kim Seo-yeon, one of the many college students who participated in the protest.

Earlier in the week, prosecutors arrested Choi Soon-sil, the daughter of a late cult leader and a longtime friend of Park, and detained two former presidential aides over allegations that they pressured businesses into giving $70 million to two foundations Choi controlled.

There are also allegations that Choi, despite having no government job, regularly received classified information and meddled in various state affairs, including the appointment of ministers and policy decisions.

I came out today because this is not the country I want to pass on to my children, said another demonstrator, Choi Kyung-ha, a mother of three. My kids have asked me who Choi Soon-sil was and whether shes the real president, and I couldnt provide an answer.

Police estimated the crowd at 45,000, although protest organizers said about 200,000 people turned out.

Police used dozens of buses and trucks to create tight perimeters in streets around the square in front of the palace gate to close off paths to the presidential office and residence. Thousands of officers dressed in full riot gear closely monitored the protesters.

Park has tried to stabilize the situation by firing eight aides and nominating three new top Cabinet officials, including the prime minister, but opposition parties have described her personnel reshuffles as a diversionary tactic. One poll released Friday had Parks approval rating at 5 percent.
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There were no special handshakes or secret passwords required to enter Canberra's Freemason centre on Saturday, as the fraternity opened its doors to the public.

Visitors were able to enjoy a rare glimpse of what goes on in an organisation often maligned as secretive and shadowy.

Canberra Masonic Centre District Grand Inspector of Workings, Roman Chalawinskyj and Worshipful Master Elect Ben Neit at the open day. Credit:Rohan Thomson

Among Freemason ranks were 10 former Australian prime ministers, including the first, Sir Edmund Barton, and the longest-serving, Sir Robert Menzies.

Sixteen Canberra suburbs are also named after Freemasons.
Firefighters are working to contain an out-of-control bushfire that is approaching homes near Jervis Bay.

A spot fire broke out early on Saturday morning in Callala Bay, west of Stott Crescent, as crews battled a blaze in the area that jumped containment lines during hazard-reduction burns on Friday.

While the fire was moving towards homes, a NSW Rural Fire Service spokesman said there was no immediate threat to homes in the area.

The fire has already burned 490 hectares of bushland. Helicopters have been brought in to help fight the blaze.
Medibank has single-handedly caused the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman to announce a record: the greatest number of complaints in any quarter of its 20-year history.

Despite having less than a third of the market, Medibank's policyholders accounted for 61 per cent of the 1683 complaints made to the ombudsman between July and September, a huge 60 per cent jump in total complaints compared with the same quarter last year.

Medibank is scrambling to save its reputation by promising to offer more value, exceed expectations and invest in customer service, after losing 225,000 customers in the past financial year.

In its quarterly bulletin, the ombudsman said its staff were "challenged" by the deluge of complaints, which was caused largely by Medibank's migration from a 38-year-old mainframe system to a new one.
There's another massive deal you've never heard of. The Trans-Pacific Partnership  negotiated in secret between Australia and 11 other nations over 10 years  appears to be dead.

It would have allowed US corporations to sue Australian governments in offshore tribunals, as they have long wanted to do, effectively trumping our own High Court. Donald Trump himself opposes it (bless him) as does Hillary Clinton, although she once helped to draw it up.

Whoever is elected president on Wednesday has pledged to abandon it.

So you would think we would be safe. Except that, in what The Wall Street Journal calls a long-shot, Barack Obama is going to attempt to push it through in the so-called lame duck weeks between Wednesday and the inauguration of his successor in January. Hundreds of economists and law professors have urged him not to, saying the provisions of the TPP would allow foreign investors  and foreign investors alone  to bypass "the basic procedures of the US justice system".
One of the most simultaneously intriguing and terrifying elements in politics is the extent to which teeny-tiny events can have horrifying unintended consequences.

How could Hillary Clinton possibly have known, when back in 2001 as a new Senator she took her young staffer Huma Abedin along to a Martha's Vineyard Democratic National Committee retreat, that Abedin would there meet and fall in love with Anthony Weiner, a man whose propensity for sharing snapshots of his nether regions with schoolgirls would  a decade-and-a-half later  devastate the campaign of Hillary for President?

Looking back, that might have been an away-day to miss.

Similarly, when farmer and businessman Rod Culleton  in a fit of anger  snatched the key to a tow truck waiting to repossess his leased farm vehicle near Guyra in 2013, it is very unlikely that he, or indeed anyone involved, foresaw that this confrontation would three years later create an exciting new opportunity for the High Court to make the Australian Senate even more miserable for the government of Malcolm Turnbull than it already was.
The republic debate I did with Professor David Flint at NSW Parliament House last Monday, in front of 200 members of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy? It went well!

I was treated with courtesy, if not necessarily respect for my position, and hope I returned it in kind. I do confess to being amazed that when I called for a show of hands as to how many of them would like to go back to having God Save the Queen as our national anthem, a forest of them went up, and was stunned when the same number admitted they wanted to go back to the Privy Council, too! But I guess I shouldn't have been.

A surprising amount of people in Australia really think England does it better. Credit:Bloomberg

They seemed to be quite nice people, but the fundamental belief that if it is English it is just better  see governmental and judicial overview  and Australians can't be trusted to do it themselves, seems to be part their DNA. I don't get it, but we will get there.

What sort of chocolate bar, Harry?
Fed up with suburbia, Kye Schaaf and Gill Wheadon left Alice Springs more than 13 years ago for a caravan trip across the outback.

It wasn't the usual Winnebago or campervan. Ms Schaaf and Mr Wheadon's camel caravan was pulled by eight camels. Along with the camels, the solar-powered caravan was home to a donkey, dogs, doves and parrots. Their chickens quickly learned that the best spot to catch the breeze was in the front where their heads could stick out.

For three years the camel caravan travelled from the Northern Territory to NSW. The couple often exchanged their labour for a resting place from the heat on outback properties whose generosity astounded them. "We'd be 100 kilometres down the road ... and a postie would pull up with a casserole," recalled Mr Wheadon.

Finally, they came to rest for a summer  a stay that turned into 11 years  at Lake Pamamaroo's abandoned scout camp on Crown land.
The Australian Federal Police will spend $40 million to fortify its buildings in the country's capital cities, amid increasing fears of improvised explosive devices and car and truck attacks.

Citing the fatal shooting of NSW Police accountant Curtis Cheng at Parramatta in October 2015 and three other attacks against police facilities in the Gold Coast, Sydney and Adelaide this year, the AFP has told Federal Parliament the works are critical for protecting officers and staff.

Upgrades to AFP facilities in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth will form part of Operation Rampart, which will begin in February and is expected to be completed by the end of next year.

An assessment of security vulnerabilities at AFP facilities across the country found improved fortifications were needed to reduce the threat from homemade bombs and unauthorised access by intruders and vehicles.
The Australian Medical Association has detailed shocking cases of apparent medical neglect, wasting and severe ill-health among asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru, and accused immigration bureaucrats of failing to adequately follow up cases.

In a submission to a Senate inquiry, the peak medical body revealed it is regularly contacted by asylum seekers seeking intervention in their healthcare, but is frustrated by a lack of co-operation from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.

A photo from the newly-cleared "refugee processing centre 3" in Nauru, where family groups are being accommodated. Credit:J Jeremiah

In one case, the AMA was told a female asylum seeker on Nauru suffering severe depression had wasted to just 30 kilograms and was experiencing possible kidney failure. But the patient's fate was unknown because health contractor IHMS refused to disclose the medical records, it said.

The association also received photographs of a female asylum seeker self-harming after reported physical and sexual assault on Nauru and contacted the department "on several occasions" expressing concern for her mental health.
Dani Mathers apologised months ago after provoking outrage by posting a photo on social media of a nude 70-year-old woman in the shower area of a Los Angeles fitness centre. The 2015 Playboy Playmate of the Year was also banned from LA Fitness gyms, suspended indefinitely from her gig on a popular Los Angeles radio station and excoriated online, forcing her to go into social media hibernation.

But the 29-year-old's punishment won't end there.

Dani Mathers is facing criminal charges. Credit:ET

Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer filed criminal charges against Mathers on Friday. She faces a single misdemeanour count of invasion of privacy, Feuer said in a statement.

If convicted, Mathers faces up to six months in jail and a $US1000 fine. Her arraignment is scheduled for November 28 in Los Angeles Superior Court.
Amin Afravi's room in Manus Island regional processing centre after he lit his bed on fire. He says he also has an untreated prostate problem. And despite serious attempts at self-harm, Amin states he has still not received any counselling, or any other mental health support. Amin Afravi is an Iranian refugee on the Manus Island regional processing centre. "They checked my blood pressure - everything - and said, 'you don't have anything' because I didn't get burned," he said of the treatment he received after Friday's self-immolation attempt.

A Department of Immigration and Border Protection spokesman confirmed that a "minor fire" at the Manus Island centre was extinguished on Friday afternoon. He said one resident was "suspected to have suffered minor injuries from smoke inhalation" and was "offered medical assistance and is being monitored on-site". Amin Afravi was slashed in the neck with a knife during the violent 2014 riot. He believes the wound was not treated properly. They said there was "no information to suggest the small fire at the Manus RPC today was the result of a self-immolation attempt". Amin said he fled Iran for his own safety, believing that he was at risk of being imprisoned due to his political dissidence. Amin Afravi suffered minor burns to his face after he tried to self-immolate about five weeks ago.

He arrived at Christmas Island in mid-2013, before being transported to Manus. Over the years, as well as developing a severe case of psoriasis and prostate problems, he says a slash to his neck during the 2014 riot has never been treated properly. Amin sewed his lips together in protest. The private medical contractor on the island is International Health and Medical Services. A source who is in close contact with Amin and other detainees at Manus Island says self-harm and suicide attempts occur daily.

Amin has a severe case of psoriasis which he believes is not being treated properly. The attempts involve swallowing razor blades, drinking shampoo, eating washing powder, self-immolating and hanging. "It [suicide] is a continual risk ... and he [Amin] is not the only person there who has or who thinks about suicide very frequently. There would be hundreds." Several asylum seekers sent to Manus Island have died. One was murdered during riots that swept through the detention centre, another detainee died from septicaemia after cutting his foot and another who drowned at a waterfall. Iranian 23-year-old refugee Omid Masoumali self-immolated in April in Nauru, yet his wife said it took about 24 hours for a medical airlift team to transport him to an Australian hospital.

That same week, Somali refugee Hodan Yasin, 21, sustained severe burns to 70 per cent of her body and lost fingers after attempting to self-immolate on Nauru. She was denied basic levels of social support over nearly five months of treatment including specialist trauma counselling for refugees, according to media reports. In May, a mentally ill female Iranian refugee at Nauru locked herself in her family's unit and set it alight, but was rescued by a security officer before firefighters arrived. That same month, a Bangladeshi man died of suspected heart failure on the island after a medication overdose, alleged to have been deliberate. Incident logs from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection covering one year, obtained by Fairfax Media under freedom of information laws, revealed that in the year to July 2015 there were 188 incidents of self-harm involving asylum seekers at Nauru, about one every two days. There were 55 such self-harm acts at Papua New Guinea's Manus Island. Dr Barri Phatarfod, a general practitioner and president of Doctors for Refugees, said Amin's case undermined official statements that detainees on the island receive care comparable to that received by Australians. "You've heard it straight from the individual after the event. That person has not been offered even the most basic of counselling and that is out of step with what we expect in Australia. This is just one example of how the health care given to these people differs so dramatically from what we expect in Australia.

"The fact that he has had this sort of care doesn't surprise me." The Australian Medical Association has long called for greater scrutiny of detention centre operations and the provision of health services to asylum seekers. AMA President Dr Michael Gannon said the association regularly receives reports detailing failure to provide proper physical and mental health treatment and services for asylum seekers. He recently pointed to revelations in the recent leaking of more than 2000 incident reports from staff at the Nauru Regional Processing Centre and a scathing assessment of conditions at the centre by a joint Amnesty International-Human Rights Watch investigation. "These disturbing reports echo long-held concerns by the AMA about the lack of proper physical and mental health care being provided to people in immigration detention," Dr Gannon said.
EXCLUSIVE

More than 1 million Australian homes and businesses have been connected to the National Broadband Network by components made in a Shanghai factory controlled by China's Communist Party.

How safe are the NBN components? Credit:Fairfax Art and Design

The revelation comes at a time when China is suspected of mounting massive cyber-espionage attacks on Australia and after successive Labor and Coalition governments banned Chinese company Huawei from NBN involvement on security grounds.

Fairfax Media has confirmed that NBN contractor, France's Alcatel-Lucent, used its Shanghai-based subsidiary to make fibre optical and copper components used to link homes and businesses to the network.
As we trudge towards the finishing line of this year's United States presidential campaign, news on the election will be awash with concepts foreign to most Australians.

The electoral college, blue and red states, numbers spread across a map and the electoral vote versus popular vote are outside Australia's political vocabulary, which can bewilder observers of the presidential election from across the Pacific.

Votes for president are made state by state, rather than an overall popular vote. Credit:Real Clear Politics

So how do American voters elect their president?

To attempt to explain it, let's imagine Australia has an elected head of state and chooses them using America's "electoral college" method.
A Sydney couple accused of robbing a man after arranging to meet him through an online dating app will appear in court on Wednesday.

Andrew Rhodes-Lightfoot, 27, was arrested on Friday with girlfriend Syndan Leah Marini, 21, after they allegedly lured a man to a Liverpool unit block for a meeting arranged through the app Plenty of Fish.

The victim met Ms Marini, who led him into the unit block where he was confronted by Ms Rhodes-Lightfoot, armed with a crowbar, police said.

The pair allegedly robbed the man of his Samsung Galaxy mobile phone, leaving him unharmed.

Mr Rhodes-Lightfoot pleaded his innocence while appearing via audiovisual link in Parramatta Bail Court on Saturday.
Megan Haines is taken from the Supreme Court during her trial. Credit:Anthony Johnson The jury responsible for finding her guilty of the 2014 murders in the NSW Supreme Court this week were unaware of her chequered history: the damning misconduct findings, drug conviction, assault and theft investigations and insulin misuse suspicions. Equally oblivious were the relatives of her murder victims. The family of deceased Marie Darragh leave the NSW Supreme Court: (from left) Charli Darragh, Janet Parkinson and Shannon Parkinson. Credit:Daniel Munoz "I am shocked and absolutely appalled she got her nursing registration back," Ms Darragh's daughter Charli Darragh said on Friday.

"I can't fathom it. I am lost for words." Marie Darragh, 82, with daughter Charli Darragh. Following Haines' conviction last week, the litany of problems that have shadowed her nursing career can finally be revealed. Haines came to Australia in 2000 and registered as a nurse in Victoria the following year. Within five years she was the subject of her first complaint investigation after failing to care for a patient at Box Hill Hospital. Victim: Isabella Spencer, 77.

Two years after that complaint, another was made about Haines threatening to access patient information at Maroondah Hospital. Also in 2007 she was reported for an alleged minor assault, understood to be slapping or pushing a patient, at Caulfield Medical Centre. Victim: Marie Darragh, 82. However, the most serious allegations, stemming from her time as a nurse at the same centre, were yet to come. After routine blood tests picked up the presence of insulin in the systems of two elderly patients at the facility in early 2008, suspicion fell on everyone, a former colleague of Haines' said.

The drugged patients' missing jewellery was then uncovered but it was unclear who the culprit was. One of the women had a security guard posted outside her room because of fears that whoever was responsible could return. "This poor patient, they didn't know what had happened, so they put a guard outside her door until it was worked out," the former colleague said. "Everyone was a suspect at that point." Three days after the second patient was drugged, police searched Haines' Boronia home.

They didn't find any jewellery but there was a small amount of drugs, believed to be cannabis, prompting a charge for drug possession. It is understood that police did not further investigate the suspected drugging of patients after failing to find the jewellery. A person familiar with the investigation said this was because neither patient was left seriously ill, and, without finding the missing jewellery, there was nothing that proved someone had intended to harm them. The Nursing Board of Victoria stripped Ms Haines of her registration in February 2008. A year later she applied to have it reinstated, but was knocked back because her third misconduct probe was still going. After the watchdog system for health practitioners moved from a state to a federal model, Haines made another bid for her registration in 2012 through the former Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency.

This time she was successful. AHPRA, which has refused to comment on its decision citing Haines pending sentence hearing, attached reporting conditions to her registration. This initially hampered her effort to get a job until St Andrews Village in Ballina took her on in 2014. Haines was working her sixth shift on May 9 that year when she learned she had fallen into the centre of yet another complaint investigation. After ripping open the envelope holding the written complaints about her, Haines injected insulin into Ms Darragh and Ms Spencer. Another resident, Marjorie Patterson, had also made a complaint about Haines and woke up on the night of May 9 to the nurse giving her Panadol, a practice Ms Patterson told police had never happened before.

Several days later Haines resigned and in July of that year she was arrested and charged over the nursing home murders. It is understood the NSW Homicide Squad arrests prompted Victoria Police to again investigate the jewellery theft and mysterious insulin injections years earlier at Caulfield Medical Centre. Haines' relative told police that another relative had visited the nurse in Mullawa Women's Detention Centre in Silverwater on July 11, 2014. Haines told that visitor to remove some unique jewellery from behind a power point at her home in Seaspray, in East Gippsland. But police had been told the jewellery had already been removed and given it to a friend, with instructions to remove the stones from a ring and melt the rest down.
Sydney Trains will pay consultants Ernst & Young $17 million for advice on how to transform its business, under a government contract to run for less than a year.

The same amount of taxpayer money would buy 34 buses, or three ferries, a primary school, a police fixed-wing aircraft, or a police sniffer dog command centre, a Fairfax Media analysis has found.

The NSW government contracts website describes the $17.6 million deal signed by Sydney Trains with the consulting firm in September as covering "management advisory services".

Asked how advice could be this expensive, a Transport for NSW spokesman said "the value of the contract is proportional to the project's large scope".
A 21-year-old man is in hospital after being shot in the abdomen at Nambucca Heads on NSW's north coast.

Police were called to an address in the town at about 12.30am on Sunday to find the man outside a unit block on Raleigh Street with a single gunshot wound.

He was taken to Coffs Harbour Hospital in a stable condition.

Police are looking for two unidentified offenders who reportedly fled the scene in a dark-coloured vehicle.

A crime scene has been established at the property.
Controversial former police minister Jo-Ann Miller is rallying for a return to Queensland cabinet.

Ms Miller, forced to resign from cabinet late last year after being dumped as police minister, has thrown her hat into the ring to replace Leanne Donaldson as agriculture minister.

Ms Donaldson resigned in parliament on Thursday after admitting to driving an unregistered car and also having an outstanding $8000 rates debt eventually settled by the Queensland Labor party.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has appointed current Police Minister Bill Byrne to take over the agriculture portfolio he held last year.
Rough seas off Torquay have claimed their second drowning victim in two days following the death of a kayaker on Saturday morning.

Police were called to Fishermans Beach in the popular Victorian coastal town about 10.30am, following reports of a lost kayaker.

There have been three drowning deaths across the state in two days Credit:Simon O'Dwyer

Air Wing, water police and local police searched the area, locating the man in the water about 11.30am.

Emergency services pulled the man from the water, but were unable to revive him.
With temperatures due to spike at 37 degrees in Perth on Saturday and big crowds expected at the beaches people have been warned about everything from sunburn to rip tides as well as boat safety, bush fires and burn offs.

Surf Life Saving WA General Manager Chris Peck said beach goers need to watch out for dangerous rips.

With big crowds expected at the beach today Surf Life Saving WA has issued a warning about rip tides. Credit:Surf Life Saving WA

"We are worried about rip conditions with the longer swell period, up to 16 seconds between each swell, which will mean a large volume of water coming into that beach environment which will create rips and probably flash rips," he said.

"Rips are still the number one cause of drowning deaths on Australian beaches and on average three people die per year in Western Australia as a result of tides."
London: Ministers are preparing for an early general election after the first Conservative MP resigned in protest at Theresa May's handling of Brexit.

The prospect of the Prime Minister being forced to call a national vote in order to deliver Brexit is now being "openly discussed" by ministers, senior sources said.

Facing a battle to deliver Brexit: Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May. Credit:AP

It came after Stephen Phillips, the Leave-supporting MP for Sleaford and North Hykeham, triggered a by-election, saying that he had "irreconcilable policy differences with the current government".

Mr Phillips said that he was resigning because Mrs May had failed to "appreciate the constitutional necessity" of consulting Parliament before triggering Article 50, which begins formal Brexit negotiations with Brussels.
WASHINGTON: Chelsea Manning tried to kill herself at the start of a week of solitary confinement at the prison barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, last month, a punishment imposed for a previous attempt to end her life in July.

Manning, the former US Army intelligence analyst who is serving a 35-year sentence for leaking archives of secret documents to WikiLeaks, disclosed the attempted suicide, which took place on October 4, in a statement she dictated over the phone to a member of her volunteer support network. She asked that it be sent this week to The New York Times, said members of the network who want to keep their identities private.

Chelsea Manning. Credit:US Army

Chase Strangio, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer representing Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning, said, "I can confirm there was a second suicide attempt."

"She asked me to confirm that," he added.
Delhi: For the first time ever, more than 1800 public primary schools in India's capital will close to protect children from exposure to dangerous levels of air pollution, authorities said on Friday.

The decision affects more than 1 million children.

A thick, acrid smog has settled over the capital over the past week, a combination of smoke from burning crops in surrounding agricultural states, fireworks on the Hindu festival of Diwali, dust and vehicle emissions.

Levels of the most dangerous particles, called PM 2.5, reached 600 micrograms per cubic meter in different parts of the city this week, according to the Delhi Pollution Control Committee.
Pittsburgh: Hillary Clinton honed her closing argument against Donald Trump on Friday, asking supporters to stage "an intervention" with friends and family members who plan to vote for Donald Trump by explaining to them that "anger is not a plan."

She asked voters to imagine Trump standing in front of the Capitol and being in charge of the nation's nuclear arsenal.

"Think about what it would mean to entrust the nuclear codes to someone with a very thin skin who lashes out at anyone who challenges him?" Clinton asked. "Imagine how easy it would be that Donald Trump would feel insulted and start a real war, not just a Twitter war at 3 in the morning."

"Sometimes the fate of the greatest nations comes down to a single moment," Clinton said. "This is one of those make-or-break moments for the United States. This is in your hands."
In 2008, Barack Obama won 96 per cent of the black vote. Credit:AP "We do not see, often enough, the people who love Hillary Clinton," the feminist writer Chimamanda Adichie wrote in The Atlantic last week, in a piece boldly titled 'Why is Hillary Clinton so widely loved?'. "Yet millions of Americans, women and men, love her intelligence, her industriousness, her grit; they feel loyal to her, they will vote with enthusiasm for her." Hillary Clinton with supporters at a campaign rally. Credit:AP The overwhelmingly negative narrative around Clinton's candidacy was something that intrigued Rachel VanSickle-Ward, an associate professor of political studies at Pitzer College. After Clinton prevailed in the Democratic primaries against another popular insurgent who drew huge crowds at rallies, Bernie Sanders, VanSickle-Ward argued that the media was missing much of the enthusiasm for Clinton that carried her to victory.

"This idea that there was an enthusiasm gap or a lack of enthusiasm for Clinton, that's not borne out by the data," she told Fairfax Media. "The reason it's being presented as true is representative of some broader problems of how we talk about her main supporters, which are women and people of colour." Clinton's supporters may have been less visible or less likely to show up to a rowdy rally, she argued, or may have been deterred from voicing their support because of the very strident backlash they sometimes were faced with, but that doesn't mean they weren't there. This was something writer Michelle Goldberg outlined during the primaries too, after seeing far more vocal support for Sanders  his bumper stickers and T-shirts outnumbering those for Clinton "by what seemed like 20 to 1"  in her own New York neighbourhood. But on primaries day, Clinton won the area emphatically, with exit polls showing higher levels of support, particularly among women and minority voters. Reflecting on why she hadn't seen that support around her before the vote, Goldberg posited that perhaps she had deceived herself into thinking "that the candidate with the most white male support had the most support, period".

"I had let myself mistake the loudest people for The People," she said on Slate. Indeed, some of the most enthusiastic supporters for Clinton in this final stretch of the campaign are not necessarily at her rallies or on most journalists' social media platform of choice, Twitter. Julie Zebrak, a former government lawyer from Maryland and mother of two teenagers, quit her job in June so she could start her own Facebook-centred online campaign for Clinton. "I felt like it was now or never to stay home with my girls, and it was now or never to help elect the first woman president," she told Fairfax Media. Zebrak, 45, has long admired Clinton, for her work at the Children's Defence Fund, for her fight for children's health insurance and her advocacy for women's health and rights.

"There's only one person I trust, and there's only one woman I trust to do that, and that's Hillary," she says. "So it's not just about being the first woman president, it's about this woman being president." Frustrated that she felt all she was hearing about Clinton in the media was about "the damn emails and Benghazi", Zebrak started a Facebook group called "Moms4HRC" (Hillary Rodham Clinton) that shared posts about Clinton's record  particularly on issues relating to children and women  and encouraged other women to get involved, whether hosting small fundraisers to raise money, or spreading information to their friends. Today there are over 21,000 followers of her page, and they're also starting to share their feelings on voting early. "It is elation," says Zebrak. "Women saying: 'I had to check three times to make sure it was right, or I burst out crying, or I had tears in my eyes'. That's the kind of feedback." There are many groups like this, and even, according to Zebrak and several reports, secret Facebook groups for women who support Clinton but don't want to deal with the backlash from their Clinton-hating relatives or friends.

Creeping into some online spaces, too, is the particular excitement of women who were born in an era where having a female president was literally impossible. Sarah Benor, along with her mother and two friends, was inspired by her own grandmother to set up a website called 'I waited 96 years' to document the experience of women born before their right to vote was enshrined in the United States in 1920, who were excited to vote for Clinton this year. People have been sending in pictures and words from their mothers and grandmothers all over the country, like 103-year-old Velva Stone from California. "My mother was a suffragette," Stone says on the website. "She instilled in all of her daughters, particularly me, a love for democracy and a need to participate in society  to contribute. I have voted in every election since I became eligible and I am so proud to be able to vote for a woman for president!" Clinton herself has leaned into the historic nature of her candidacy and emphasised her gender in her campaign in a way she explicitly avoided during her unsuccessful 2008 primary run  from her slogans "I'm with her" to unsubtle shattering of a glass ceiling on screen at the Democratic convention in July.

She's touted some gendered roles she's held  being a mother and grandmother  as virtues, qualifications even, for leadership, and has put some issues particularly affecting women, such as reproductive rights and equal pay, at the fore of her campaign. "I've really kind of matured in my understanding of how symbolism can be efficacious, so I'm more embracing of that," Clinton herself said in an interview earlier this year. "But at the end of the day, being the first woman president can only take you so far. What have I done that can actually produce positive results in somebody's life? I'm still a results-oriented kind of person, because that's what I think matters to people." Her direct challenge of Trump's "scare rhetoric", as she put it, on the issue of late-term abortions during the final presidential debate last month was a defining moment of her candidacy for pro-choice women. "I'll confess I felt a small thrill," said New York Times writer Emily Bazelon. "She sounded like the first woman running for president, defending other women  our autonomy and our control of our own bodies."

Of course, though, this excitement does coexist with a significant amount of other very different feelings about her candidacy  from women, from her own supporters, from feminists. It's complicated, to say the least. She does not invoke the same levels of enthusiasm and passion even among Democrats as the last history-making candidate, Barack Obama. Enthusiasm for Clinton in late October  defined as people who said they were affirmatively voting for her as opposed to against the other candidate  was 56 per cent, according to FiveThirtyEight. For Obama in 2008, it was a stratospheric 80 per cent. "But that's uncommon," the website observed. Clinton's level of affirmative support was about average for most presidents since 1980. There is a significantly lower level of support for Clinton, too, among women than there was for Obama among African-Americans  Obama won 96 per cent of the black vote, while Clinton has a 14-point lead with women in the latest Times poll. For some feminists on the left she is too conservative on economic reform, too hawkish and militaristic on foreign policy and too closely aligned with her husband's punitive welfare and criminal justice reforms of the 1990s to be embraced.

"There are certain things that I don't want to co-sign in the name of feminism that I think are militarist, imperialist, white supremacist, whether they are conducted by women or men," said the black feminist theorist bell hooks earlier this year, explaining why she couldn't support Clinton's candidacy. And while on the right there are many women who say they would like to see a woman president, they cannot embrace this woman. "I would love to see a woman president," a Trump voter named Tina told New York magazine this week. "Get Condoleezza Rice in there. I'm telling you what, if she ran, I would campaign for her. But Hillary and I don't share the same values." As election day approaches, many voters feel they are emotionally limping to the finish line, and the fact that this is the first American election where a woman has a real chance of becoming president may be far from the front of many women's minds. Loading
Melania Trump, the wife of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and an immigrant from Slovenia, was paid for 10 modelling jobs in 1996 before she received legal authorisation to work in the United States, the Associated Press reported on Friday night.

The AP cited detailed ledgers from Melania Trump's modelling agency, as well as a contract she signed with the firm, concluding she was paid more than $20,000 for the work over a period of seven weeks.

The finding contradicts repeated statements from both Melania and Donald Trump, who have insisted that she scrupulously followed US immigration law when she came to the United States as a striving model.

It also creates a potential political embarrassment for the Republican nominee, who has based much of his campaign on a vow to crack down on illegal immigration  including deporting people who have violated the terms of their immigration status.
It is not just that Donald Trump himself has called on his supporters to "observe" voters at polling booths in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where minorities might cost him the state of Pennsylvania.

It is not just that Republican governors are systematically seeking to prevent African Americans from voting .

It is not just that it has selected as a candidate a man with a professed authoritarian streak, and a fondness for Vladimir Putin, a man who has said he may not accept the result of the election should he lose.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump: a face over the crowd. Credit:AP

It is not just that Donald Trump has threatened to imprison his opponent should he win, nor even that his supporters chant, "lock her up" whenever they gather in his name.

Having lost the popular vote in five of six of the last presidential elections and facing the very real possibility of losing another, the leaders of the party are now actively threatening to undermine the very institutions at the heart of American democracy if the electorate does not elect their candidate.

A handful of Republicans in Congress - including the chairman of the powerful House Homeland Security Committee - have suggested that should Hillary Clinton win they will move to impeach her for her use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state.

"This [committee's] investigation will continue whether she wins or not, but assuming she wins and the investigation goes forward, and it looks like an indictment is pending, at that point of time in the Constitution, the House of Representatives would engage in an impeachment trial," Michael McCaul said during an interview on Fox News.
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PHILIPSBURG:--- The former Chairlady of Parliament Sarah Wescot Williams has sent a letter to the chairman of parliament asking when will be next public meeting of parliament to appoint members of several committees. The letter sent to the chairman of parliament is below.

To The Chairperson of Parliament

The Honorable Claret Connor

Philipsburg, St. Maarten.

November 4, 2016

Honorable Chairperson,

Kindly inform me when the next (public) meeting of this Parliament will be convened to appoint members to the committees of Parliament so that subsequently these committees can meet and appoint their (vice)chairpersons.

I hope this is next week, as I believe that it is of utmost importance that the committee of General Affairs be formed, as this committee should invite the Minister of General Affairs to apprise the Parliament of the escalation of tension between the 2 sides of the island as far as the Oyster Pond boundaries are concerned.

Verbiage, used by the Prime Minister of St. Maarten, such as "aggressive act" has serious connotations in diplomatic relations and should not be used lightly. In addition, I believe that on a matter such as this the local (none European) authorities on both sides should close ranks in the interest of our populations.

It is, therefore, my intention to request that the Committee of General Affairs of Parliament convenes a meeting to discuss the aforementioned in the presence of the Minister of General Affairs.

Awaiting your prompt response.
GREAT BAY (DCOMM):---The public is invited to a heart health conference to be held on Tuesday, November 8 at the Belair Community Center from 6.30pm to 8.30pm. Entrance is free and a transportation shuttle will be available at the Le Grand Marche Supermarket location on Bush Road to take persons to the Belair Community Center.

The shuttle service will start at 5.30pm and run in 15-minute intervals until 6.00pm. The shuttle will take persons back to the Le Grand Marche Supermarket at the end of the conference after snacks and refreshments have been provided to attendees.

The African Caribbean Heritage Alliance (ACHA) and the White & Yellow Cross Care Foundation (WYCCF), in collaboration with Health City Cayman Islands, are organizing this public meeting.

Health City Cayman Islands is a medically advanced tertiary hospital located near High Rock in the district of East End on Grand Cayman.

Many diseases from the heart and blood vessels can be prevented or the onset can be delayed when living a healthy life style and taking care of your body and mind.

From that perspective of prevention and providing preventative health care, a cardiovascular medical specialist from the aforementioned facility will be on island to help educate the population of Sint Maarten on how to better take care of their heart health together with a local cardiovascular medical specialist from Sint Maarten.

A heart attack survivor and his wife will also share their experience.

Topics that will be highlighted are the current situation on Sint Maarten regarding heart health and life style modification in CAD- current guidelines, and sudden death in athletes, which is a hot topic in the Caribbean.
GREAT BAY(DCOMM):--- October 24 marked World Polio Day. The Collective Prevention Services (CPS), a department from the Sint Maarten Ministry of Public Health, Social Development and Labour, would like to commend Rotary Club of St. Maarten-Mid Isle for organizing activities to create awareness about polio which shows that the global commitment to eliminate polio is also adhered to on Sint Maarten by the non-governmental organization community.

Rotary Club of St. Maarten-Mid Isle joined other Rotary Clubs worldwide in observing the aforementioned day. A fundraiser was held which was very successful.

Rotary International has been working with international partners to eliminate polio, and has reduced polio cases by 99.9 percent worldwide since its first project to vaccinate children in the Philippines in 1979. Rotarians have helped immunize more than 2.5 billion children against polio in 122 countries.

Poliomyelitis is a highly contagious disease caused by a virus that invades the nervous system and can cause paralysis in a matter of hours. It especially affects children under age five. There is no cure, but it is preventable. When administered several times, the polio vaccine can provide lifetime protection. More than 15 million people around the world who are walking today would be paralyzed if not for vaccination.

The Region of the Americas is celebrating 25 years with no cases of wild poliovirus. The last case was detected on August 23, 1991, in Peru. The countries of the region, supported by the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), were able to eliminate polio and maintain the Americas free of the disease by achieving high rates of vaccination coverage of children and through sustained epidemiological surveillance to ensure early detection of any outbreaks.

In 1975, nearly 6,000 cases of polio were reported in the Region, and in 1991 the last six cases were detected. Three years later, in 1994, the disease was formally declared eliminated from the region. Since then, no child has been paralyzed by polio in the Americas.

For more information, you can call CPS 542-2078 or 542-3003.
SUNNYVALE, CA  (Marketwired)  11/04/16  We are advised by Druva that journalists and other readers should disregard the news release, Druva Announces Industrys First Data Availability and Governance Solution for Salesforce issued Monday, October 31, 2016, over Marketwired

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WASHINGTON  Citing a desire to both maximize the cargo delivered to the International Space Station and ensure it stays on schedule, Orbital ATK said Nov. 4 it will launch its next Cygnus mission on an Atlas V rather than its own Antares rocket.

Orbital ATK said that the OA-7 Cygnus mission, previously planned to launch on an Antares rocket from Wallops Island, Virginia, will instead launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the spring of 2017. The company said this is a one-time arrangement, with future Cygnus launches returning to the Antares.

The shift in launch vehicles for OA-7 was a "collaborative effort" between NASA and Orbital ATK, said Frank DeMauro, vice president of human space systems in the companys Space Systems Group. "We jointly realized that getting a little more cargo on OA-7 in the spring was in NASA's interest," he said in a Nov. 4 interview. "We jointly realized that having the highest assurance that we could meet the schedule was also in NASA's interest." [Launch Photos: Orbital ATK's Antares Rocket Returns to Flight]

Launching on an Atlas, DeMauro said, allows the Cygnus to carry more than 300 kilograms of additional cargo versus using an Antares. The OA-7 mission will be able to accommodate more than 3,500 kilograms of cargo in its pressurized module, as well as an external cubesat deployer from NanoRacks, bringing its total capacity to about 3,600 kilograms.

DeMauro said there were no issues with the upgraded version of the Antares that launched for the first time Oct. 17 on the OA-5 Cygnus mission. However, moving the launch to the Atlas does give the company's workforce "margin flexibility" to prepare for the next launch, which now is likely to take place in the middle of 2017. "It is fair to say that the Atlas will have a higher probability of supporting that mission in the spring, even though we do believe Antares would have done that," he said.

That additional performance and schedule assurance comes as two other cargo spacecraft that support the ISS suffer delays. Launches of SpaceX Dragon spacecraft are on hold as the company continues an investigation into a Sept. 1 explosion of a Falcon 9 during preparations for a static-fire test. The next Dragon mission, previously scheduled for November, is now expected to take place no earlier than January, depending on when the Falcon 9 returns to service.

A Japanese H-2 Transfer Vehicle mission also experienced delays because of a spacecraft leak found during launch preparations. That mission, originally planned to launch in early October, is now scheduled for Dec. 9.

An Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft is encapsulated in a payload fairing ahead of a launch atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket in March 2016. (Image credit: United Launch Alliance)

DeMauro said Orbital ATK's Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA gives the company flexibility to switch launch vehicles for Cygnus missions. He declined, though, to discuss any increased costs to Orbital ATK by switching launch vehicles or if NASA will pay more for this mission as a result, citing proprietary company financial information.

"We are still working to finalize the details of this change," he said. "While we expect it to go forward, we're still working through the final details."

From an operational standpoint, DeMauro said there will be little difference between OA-7 and two previous Cygnus missions that launched on Atlas 5 vehicles in December 2015 and March 2016. Orbital ATK ordered those launches to continue cargo services after the failure of an Antares rocket carrying another Cygnus spacecraft in October 2014.

DeMauro said the company will use the same payload processing facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center for the OA-7 mission as it did for the two previous ones, and follow similar procedures to prepare the spacecraft for launch. "That's one of the things that enabled such a quick turnaround," he said.

After OA-7, DeMauro said Orbital ATK will resume using Antares vehicles for Cygnus mission for the remainder of its current CRS contract, likely to run through 2018. That includes two Antares launches in the second half of 2017 and two in 2018. The exact schedule of missions will depend on the overall ISS schedule and when NASA needs those missions to fly, he said.

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.
Back in the 2000s, when Branimir Blagojevic was developing a sensor for the military to detect airborne bio-hazards, he had no idea the technology could later be used in the search for extraterrestrial life.

His original work focused on the novel use of lidar  which stands for Light Detection and Ranging  and is based on similar principles as radar. Instead of using radio waves like radar, lidar uses laser light to detect objects and measure the distance to a target. This why lidar is often referred to as "light radar."

Blagojevic, now a NASA technologist at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, realized that the technology behind seeking out toxins and pathogens in the air might have an application beyond Earth and may even contribute to NASA's mission to work out whether Mars has (or had) life.

"If past life existed on Mars, it could be possible to detect with this kind of instrument," Blagojevic told Seeker.

RELATED: Mars Rover Curiosity Can Now Fire Laser

Currently, any mission sent to Mars is pretty limited in how it searches for evidence of biology, past or present. The Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity, for example, can scoop a sample of regolith (the dusty powdery "soil" that covers the Red Planet) in the hope that the tiny amount of pulverized rock contains biological chemistry. Making physical contact with any material intended for analysis is a concern; though any robot sent to Mars is sanitized, there's a risk of contaminating the "pristine" sample with contaminants from Earth, potentially skewing test results.

Also, the slow and laborious process a robot must go through to collect and analyze samples means very few samples can be taken from any given location. It could be that the sample analyzed by the Mars rover scoops a completely sterile sample, but unbeknownst to the robot or its controllers back on Earth, there could be Mars dirt crawling with organic chemistry only a couple of meters to the left. They would never know.

Blagojevic likens this maddening search as trying to find the proverbial "needle in a haystack." But it's worse than that  we don't yet know where the haystack is.

So how do you narrow the odds of finding biological material on Mars? One method could be to use Blagojevic's Bio-Indicator Lidar Instrument, or, simply "BILI."

A dust devil snakes across the Martian landscape, kicking dust into the air. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Ariz.)

Mars is no stranger to lasers. Currently, Curiosity uses its ChemCam to laser-blast rocks so its sensors can study the vapor produced to decipher what chemicals it contains. Mars rocks will be safe from BILI, however.

Blagojevic, working with NASA planetary scientists Melissa Trainer, Alexander Pavlov and Melissa Floyd, hopes to mount this lidar system on a future Mars rover much in the same way ChemCam is used by Curiosity, but rather than aiming it at interesting geological features, this future rover would shoot its laser at particles in the Martian atmosphere. During its mission, the rover would scan its environment for dust plumes. Once it finds a wind-blown plume, likely above a hard-to-reach slope, it would fire its twin ultraviolet lasers into the dust.

As the laser light hits individual dust particles, energy from the laser will cause any particles in its path to produce light, a phenomenon known as florescence. The light from these fluorescing particles can then be measured, revealing what chemicals they are made of. If there's any organic matter in the dust (known as bio-indicators), BILI should be able to decipher its signal.

And the best thing is that this is all carried out remotely, possible hundreds of meters from the rover, meaning a huge area could be scanned for organic chemistry and contamination from the rover wouldn't factor into the measurements.

"This will basically increase the probability of finding life by roving the surface of Mars," said Blagojevic.

RELATED: Cassini Zeros in on Daring Dive into Enceladus' Plumes

The applications on Mars are obvious, and we could see future rovers using BILI to scan dusty red plumes, but could the technology be used to hunt for life elsewhere in the solar system?

"Beyond Mars, we did some calculations modeling whether this instrument could work on frozen worlds like the moon Enceladus and maybe Europa," Blagojevic said.

Enceladus is one of Saturn's enigmatic moons that possesses a thick icy shell surrounding a subsurface ocean. Through tidal interactions with Saturn, Enceladus produces heat in its core that keeps the subsurface water in a liquid state. Its ocean is of huge interest to astrobiologists because, on Earth, where there's liquid water there's life.

The internal heating and constant stresses on the icy shell causes some of the liquid water to erupt to the surface of the moon, like opening the cap of a soda bottle. Huge quantities of water vapor are lost to space, creating the moon's trademark plumes. If there's any extraterrestrial biology in that water, it's being vented to space also.

NASA's Cassini mission has used onboard sensors to "taste" these plumes as it flies past (pictured above), but detailed analysis is needed. Could BILI be mounted to a flyby mission to Saturn to possibly fire its UV lasers into the plumes to see if organic chemicals are present also?

"We found that it will be challenging because the water plumes on Enceladus have very low density" when compared with dust particles in Martian air, said Blagojevic. On average, Enceladus' plumes have an extremely low density, so to detect anything, a spacecraft would need to fly within 50 kilometers of the moon's surface and the laser would need to be in the 1 watt range to detect any florescence.

RELATED: Possible Europa Tectonics Could be Boon for Alien Life

"It's possible, but it requires a more powerful UV laser that may or may not be feasible for future flyby missions," he said.

As for Europa, lacking the obvious long-duration plumes that Enceladus has, whether this lidar system can be used to seek out biological chemistry would depend on if any aerosols exist close to its surface, cautions Blagojevic. The Jovian moon holds even more promise than Enceladus as a potentially habitable place for aquatic extraterrestrial life to thrive in its sub-surface ocean. Some optimistic hypotheses posit that multi-cellular life may even be possible.

As we know chemistry from inside the moon cycles to the surface  through apparently active icy tectonics  if there is biology in Europa's oceans, evidence of its presence may be found on the icy surface. And if there's some mechanism causing these organic chemicals to rise above the ice, perhaps a lander-mounted BILI could be used to reveal its secrets.

Originally published on Seeker.
A 1986 image of Saturn's rings taken by the Voyager 2 spacecraft, including two moons it found: 1986U7 and 1986U8, now called Cordelia and Orphelia, respectively.

In the 1970s and 1980s, NASA sent twin spacecraft  Voyager 1 and Voyager 2  on a quest to explore the solar system. Both probes zoomed by Jupiter and Saturn, and Voyager 2 continued on to see Uranus and Neptune.

The spacecraft made many discoveries, including finding several moons at each system. But long after Voyager 2 left Uranus behind in 1986*, and with fewer spacecraft exploring the outer solar system, we are still finding new satellites. Some, surprisingly, are from old Voyager data being reanalyzed with new techniques.

Other finds are from the venerable Hubble Space Telescope, which has been in Earth orbit since April 1990. It shows that even decades after Voyager, there are likely new moons waiting to be found -- especially with the sharper eye of the James Webb Space Telescope slated to start working in 2018.

Part of the secret appears to be the Cassini factor. Scientists have been learning a lot about ring behavior, and how satellites affect them, since the mission has been examining Saturn in 2004. Recently, scientists applied that understanding to the Uranus system, using data from Voyager obtained in 1986. They found regular patterns in the rings that suggest there could be moonlets there.

RELATED: Baby Moon-Birthing Collision Slapped Earth Sideways

"There were some very clear periodic variations in the structure of the alpha and the beta rings," said University of Idaho physics researcher Matthew Hedman, who was a participant in the experiment led by doctoral student Rob Chancia, in an interview with Seeker. "The opacity of the ring just changed in a periodic way over a couple of kilometers. The thing that was weird about the structure was it had different wavelengths in different places. It wasn't the same kind all the way around the ring, which a lot of ring structures are."

A composite Hubble Space Telescope image showing Neptune (color) and a new moon (black and white). (Image credit: NASA, ESA, M. Showalter/SETI Institute)

The closest analog he could think of is something called a "moonlet rake." While the term sounds straight out of a James Bond movie, in reality it describes how a moon perturbs material on the other side of a ring gap. It was first described for the Encke gap, a famous gap in Saturn's outer rings.

But here's where the story stops, at least for now. Hedman and his graduate students will publish the results shortly in the Astronomical Journal in the hopes that somebody more experienced in spacecraft imaging can find moonlets. Hedman will continue investigating and comparing ring structures across the solar system, as not everything yet can be explained by moons.

One researcher who may carry the torch is a veteran moon-hunter himself. The SETI Institute's Mark Showalter was the one who first described moonlet rakes. He's been processing spacecraft images since Voyager; he was a grad student when the spacecraft passed by Saturn, and was doing his postdoctoral work during the Uranus and Neptune encounters.

RELATED: Moon-Forming Earth Impact was a Direct Hit

Thirty years of moon-hunting came in very handy for him in 2013, when his team announced they had discovered yet another moon around Neptune, using Hubble. So how could Voyager go right past the moon and not easily find it? The camera was built on 1970s technology, and it was working in low light, Showalter said. He also found the Uranian moons Cupid and Mab (using Hubble) in 2003; one was practically invisible in Voyager data when he looked again, while the other one was barely detectable.

One of his next projects will be looking again at Uranus to see if those moonlets are there, he said. "I do have a lot of Hubble data of the Uranus system," he said in an interview. "Now that I know where to look, based on Rob and Matt's results, I do plan to do a search of the existing archive of Hubble data from Uranus for any chance to pick out these little objects."

A moon is spotted around the dwarf planet Makemake in this Hubble Space Telescope Image from April 2015. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Parker and M. Buie (SwRI))

While the thrill of discovery is what excites the public, there are more fundamental things these new moons can teach us. At Neptune, Showalter was fascinated that his tiny moon discovery in 2013 did not follow the pattern of smallest to largest moons (from the center of Neptune outward) previously discovered in the system. He noted that Neptune's system was completely changed by the capture of Triton (a very large moon) early in the solar system's history, but it's hard to know all the dynamics with the information we have so far.

Other moon mysteries lie in other parts of the solar system. When New Horizons was on its way to Pluto, the moons Styx and Kerberos were found in 2011 and 2012, respectively. Nix was also found in 2005, the year before it launched. (All three finds included researchers part of the "Pluto Companion Search Team", who were tasked specifically for New Horizons' flight.) Previously, only the moon Charon was known  discovered in 1978.

"The Pluto team is intrigued that such a small [dwarf] planet can have such a complex collection of satellites," NASA said in a 2012 statement. "The new discovery provides additional clues for unraveling how the Pluto system formed and evolved. The favored theory is that all the moons are relics of a collision between Pluto and another large Kuiper belt object billions of years ago."

And earlier this year, a moon was found around the dwarf planet Makemake  reinforcing the idea that all dwarf planets have satellites, the team said at the time. The same techniques were used to find Makemake's moon as for the Pluto satellites discovered in 2005, 2011 and 2012. Other searches of Makemake had revealed nothing.

"Our preliminary estimates show that the moon's orbit seems to be edge-on, and that means that often when you look at the system you are going to miss the moon because it gets lost in the bright glare of Makemake," said lead imager Alex Parker, of the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, in a statement at the time. (Parker did not respond to requests for an interview before this article's deadline.)

*Editor's note: A previous version of this article stated that Voyager 2 left Uranus in 1989; it was in fact 1986. An edit has been made to correct this error.

Originally published on Seeker.
It's a scary scenario: an asteroid headed for Earth, just four years away from slamming into our home planet. It may be too short a span to plan an asteroid-deflection mission, but it's long enough to present very different challenges from those of a more typical crisis, like a hurricane or earthquake.

NASA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) came together Oct. 25 to plan a response to such a hypothetical event. In a "tabletop exercise," a kind of ongoing simulation, the two agencies tested how they would work together to evaluate such a threat, prevent panic and protect as many people as possible from the deadly collision.

"It's not a matter of if, but when, we will deal with such a situation," Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's Science Mission Directorate's new associate administrator, said in a statement. "But unlike any other time in our history, we now have the ability to respond to an impact threat through continued observations, predictions, response planning and mitigation." [In Images: Potentially Dangerous Near-Earth Asteroids]

The exercise, held in El Segundo, California, brought together representatives from NASA, FEMA, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the Department of Energy's national laboratories, the Air Force and the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, JPL officials said in the statement.

It was the third such exercise; previous ones had allowed for a deflection mission, but in this simulation, there was too little time for that type of response.

"It is critical to exercise these kinds of low-probability but high-consequence disaster scenarios," FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate said in the statement. "By working through our emergency response plans now, we will be better prepared if and when we need to respond to such an event."

Representatives from NASA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Department of Energy's national laboratories, the Air Force and the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services came together to formulate a response to a simulated asteroid impact possibility in 2020. (Image credit: The Aerospace Corporation)

The asteroid in this test scenario appeared to be between 300 and 800 feet (100 to 250 meters) long in the first simulated measurements the participants were given. At first, the probability of a 2020 impact was only 2 percent, but as the group continued to simulate tracking it over time and the fictional months went by, the impact probability rose to 65 percent  and then 100 percent, in May 2017. By November of that year, in the scenario, they found that it would hit across Southern California or nearby in the Pacific Ocean.

The research laboratories' scientists calculated the impact's footprint, the population that would be displaced, the effect on infrastructure and other data that would slowly become clear over such an asteroid's approach. That gave the participants the information they needed to plan for an evacuation process, and decide how to convey necessary information to the public in the most effective way over the course of the asteroid's approach (plus debunk dangerous misinformation and rumors).

"The high degree of initial uncertainty, coupled with the relatively long impact warning time, made this scenario unique and especially challenging for emergency managers," Leviticus A. Lewis, chief of FEMA's National Response Coordination Branch, said in the statement. "It's quite different from preparing for an event with a much shorter timeline, such as a hurricane."

NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, established in January, supervises NASA's efforts to track asteroids and other approaching near-Earth objects (NEOs) and coordinates its interactions with the other U.S. agencies that would deal with a potential impact and decide whether to try a deflection mission or coordinate an emergency response, as in this exercise. Europe has a similar NEO Coordination Centre in Italy.

"These exercises are invaluable for those of us in the asteroid science community responsible for engaging with FEMA on this natural hazard," NASA Planetary Defense Officer Lindley Johnson said in the statement. "We receive valuable feedback from emergency managers at these exercises about what information is critical for their decision making, and we take that into account when we exercise how we would provide information to FEMA about a predicted impact."

Although deflection wasn't an option for this training scenario, there is research into that area. For example, NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission, which recently finished its first planning stages, is largely a sample-collection mission, to pull a boulder off an asteroid's side  but it is also slated to test out pulling the asteroid's orbit slightly off course using the spacecraft and sample's gravitational pull.

Philip Lubin, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara whose laser propulsion system has been incorporated into the Breakthrough Starshot program to send a probe to neighbor star system Alpha Centauri, originally intended the system to zap and deflect incoming asteroids.

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
Shaheed El Hafed, November 4, 2016 (SPS) The President of the Republic and Secretary General of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali, received Thursday at the Presidency of the Republic a delegation of representatives of Italian associations of solidarity with the Saharawi people's struggle for freedom and independence.

During the meeting, the President of the Republic welcomed the visit of the delegation to the Saharawi refugee camps and liberated territories of SADR, and the support of the Italian associations of solidarity with the Saharawi people and their role in raising the public opinion around the Saharawi issue.

The meeting was attended by Mohamed Mahidi Zerga, a member of the Polisario Front representation in Italy.

Several Italian associations fund projects in the Saharawi refugee camps and liberated territories of SADR, it should be recalled. (SPS)

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Paris, Nov. 5, 2016 (SPS) - Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Friday called on the Moroccan authorities to end all restrictions on reporting freedom in Western Sahara, under Moroccan occupation, and "stop violating the rights of Sahrawi and foreign journalists to cover developments in the territory.

"By detaining reporters during demonstrations, putting Sahrawi citizen journalists on trial and deporting foreign journalists, the Moroccan authorities make life impossible for media personnel and maintain an arbitrary control over reporting in this territory," RSF said in a statement.

Morocco currently controls more than 80% of Western Sahara, which is considered by the United Nations as a non-self-governing territory, said RSF.

The UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), which "is supposed one day to organize a referendum in which the territory's inhabitants would determine its future status," is also monitoring the 1991 ceasefire between Morocco and the Polisario Front, added the RSF statement. (SPS)

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Windhoek, November 5, 2016 (SPS) - The Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of SADR to Angola and Namibia, Abah Dei Shaikh met with the Secretary General of SWAPO, Namibia, Nangolo Mbumba, where they discussed ways to boost cooperation and strengthen bilateral relations between the two countries.

The Secretary General of SWAPO reiterated the firm stance of his country in support of the Saharawi cause, emphasizing that they will continue to support the efforts of Africa and the UN in finding a fair solution that guarantees the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination and independence.

The Saharawi ambassador expressed his gratitude to the State of Namibia and SWAPO for their firm positions of support for the Saharawi people to freedom and independence.

The Saharawi Ambassador briefed the Secretary General of SWAPO on the latest developments in the Saharawi question, the looting of Saharawi natural resources by Morocco, its continued repression, torture and violation of human rights in the occupied territories of SADR. (SPS)

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Lisbon (Portugal), Nov. 5, 2016 (SPS) - Portuguese President Mr. Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa stressed that the situation in Western Sahara deserves greater attention from the Government of the Portuguese Republic.

It came in a response to a letter from Adala UK in Portugal, in which it demanded the release of Sahrawi political prisoners in particular the group of Gdeim Izik and enabling the people of Western Sahara to exercise their right to self-determination.

The Portuguese president highlighted that he takes into account the provision of Article 135 of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic and that the government implements the Portuguese foreign policy. Accordingly, in this context, the content of the message was sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is the competent public authority in dealing with these issues on behalf of the President of the Republic, he added. (SPS)

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T alented 20-year-old drone photographer Gabriel Scanu picked up his first DSLR camera at just 12 years old - with a cinematographer for a father, he says that cameras have always been a huge part of his life from a young age.

Scanu, who has gained a following on Instagram thanks to his incredible drone photographs of some of the worlds most incredible coastlines, says he has always been creative ever since he was a little boy.

From the waves crashing over Brontes famous saltwater rock pool in New South Wales to the magnificent panorama surrounding Bixby Canyon Bridge in California, his photographs are enough to make you want to cancel Christmas and book your next escape from London.

To shoot his aerial photographs, Scanu says he uses a really basic DJI Phantom 4 Kit.

I like to keep things as simple and stripped down as possible, he says, to make it easier shooting on the move.

I tend to take the drone up to a decent height and capture as wide of a scene as possible. I usually look for colours that pop and interesting textures.

I also like to shoot with the camera tilted completely level to the ground to give a direct-down point of view.

Gabriel Scanu

Despite hailing from Sydney, the drone photographer says that a recent trip to California topped his list as his favourite place to snap.

Id have to say the Big Sur region was one of the most photogenic places Ive ever seen, he says.

Green grass, Yellow flowers and hidden waterfalls tucked away in little coves along the coast. Definitely my favourite place.

He says that drones have opened new doors for himself and other photographers, as there are now no limits in respect to what perspective you can capture.

It definitely allows everyone access to experiment and get creative with a new outlook, he enthuses.

Scanu would now like to take his drone to Iceland, as he says it has always been on his bucket list.

Follow Gabriel Scanu on Instagram: @gabscanu

Follow us on Twitter: @elifeandstyle
P olice are hunting a man over two terrifying sex assaults in Clapham which they believe are linked.

Scotland Yard today said an incident in which a woman was forced to fight off a sex attacker with her keys is also being linked to another assault.

The Met has now released CCTV images of a man wanted in connection with both incidents.

In the first, the 27-year-old victim was attacked from behind in the early hours of June 26.

A man forced his victim into the communal area of a building in Klea Avenue at 2am where he seriously assaulted her.

The attack is now being linked to another in which a woman was followed into a building in Clapham Common South Side in the early hours of May 22.

The victim was attacked before managing to fight off the man, who fled the scene.

Police said they now want to speak to an Asian man, between 25 and 35 years old, of medium build, 5ft 5ins in height with short black hair. He had an English accent, detectives said.

Officers said he was seen on CCTV near to where both incidents occurred and they urgently want to speak to him.

Detective Inspector Andrew Wadey from the Met's Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse Command said: These incidents were terrifying assaults on lone women in the Clapham area. We are appealing for the public's help - it is vital to our investigation that the man in the images is identified.

There have been no arrests.

Anyone who can identify the man shown in the CCTV stills, or who has information that may assist police, is asked to contact Detective Constable Richard MacKenzie on 020 8721 4251 or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.


C entral London erupted into anarchic scenes as riot police attempted to disperse the crowds at the end of the Million Mask March.

As officers tried to make arrests, they were charged at by protesters furiously shouting of f*** the police and police brutality.

Several glass bottles were thrown as police escorted another protester away as pockets of aggression moved sporadically around Trafalgar Square.

Hoards of officers attended the protest and 33 people were arrested  some for refusing to remove their masks.

Police bottled at Million Mask March 2016

The protest was scheduled to end at 9pm but hundreds of activists were refusing to leave, sparking intervention from riot police.

Masked march: Police arrest a protester by Buckingham Palace / Getty Images

Images and video of the march show fireworks and flares being let off from the crowds, and some were reportedly thrown at people.

Million Mask March London 2016 1 /20 Million Mask March London 2016 Getty Images Getty Images Protesters confront the police on The Strand, PA Protesters confront the police on The Strand PA Police arrest a protester clutching a mask in Trafalgar Square Getty Images Protesters don V for Vendetta-inspired Guy Fawkes masks EPA Protestors follow police down Whitehall, London PA There is an increased police presence for the march Joel Goodman/LNP Masked protesters hold banners and flares as they stand on Nelson's Column Getty Images The march was organised by the group Anonymous to protest austerity, government policy and what they consider corperate AFP/Getty Images Campaigners set off flares as they began the march to Downing Street Getty Images The group met at Trafalgar Square Getty Images A masked protester holds a sign which reads 'We Are Legion' in Trafalgar Square Getty Images Many are wearing the Guy Fawkes mask associated with the Anonymous hacking collective Getty Images A protester holds a sign reading 'England under new management' AFP/Getty Images

Protesters were adorned with Guy Fawkes masks and carrying banners with anti-Government slogans written on them.

Fireworks thrown at bus stop at Million Mask March

The Metropolitan Police force had issued a warning in the run-up to the march, organised by the hacking group Anonymous, emphasising that restrictions would be enforced following violent scenes last year.

March: Riot police went in to disperse the crowd / PA

Conditions limited the protest to a three-hour period between 6pm and 9pm on a prescribed route between Trafalgar Square and Whitehall.

Dozens of police vans head to Million Mask March

Police said anyone who breached the conditions or the route would be arrested.

Police: By 9pm 33 people had been arrested / PA

Officers were also given the power to arrest someone if they refused to remove their mask when asked.

Angela Windsor, an unemployed 40-year-old, said she travelled from Wales to take part in the event.

Masked: The protest was organised by hacking group Anonymous / EPA

She said: "Nobody is protecting people - nobody cares.

"I think everyone here cares enough about people to make the effort to come down and try and do something, because the officials aren't doing it."

Protest: Police patrolled the route of the march / PA

She said anyone who tried to incite a repeat last year's violent displays would be missing the point.

"Nobody wants a fight, we just want change," she said.

But she was forced to defend the wording of a sign she was brandishing - including the words "death to the monarchy" - when questioned about it by passers-by.
P olice have confirmed that ten people have been arrested during the first hour of the Million Mask March in London  including some for refusing to take off their mask.

Increased police presence is in place around central London as Anonymous campaigners armed with fireworks and flares march from Trafalgar Square to Whitehall.

And in the first hour of the protest, which began at six, ten people has been arrested including one for having an offensive weapon in the form of a blade.

Six arrests were in connection with drugs and two were for obstruction because campaigners refused to remove their mask when asked by police.

Activists: Protesters were lighting fireworks and flares / Getty Images

MetPoliceEvents tweeted that Section 60 and Section 60AA had been authorised which means police have the power to require the removal of disguises.

Million Mask March London 2016 1 /20 Million Mask March London 2016 Getty Images Getty Images Protesters confront the police on The Strand, PA Protesters confront the police on The Strand PA Police arrest a protester clutching a mask in Trafalgar Square Getty Images Protesters don V for Vendetta-inspired Guy Fawkes masks EPA Protestors follow police down Whitehall, London PA There is an increased police presence for the march Joel Goodman/LNP Masked protesters hold banners and flares as they stand on Nelson's Column Getty Images The march was organised by the group Anonymous to protest austerity, government policy and what they consider corperate AFP/Getty Images Campaigners set off flares as they began the march to Downing Street Getty Images The group met at Trafalgar Square Getty Images A masked protester holds a sign which reads 'We Are Legion' in Trafalgar Square Getty Images Many are wearing the Guy Fawkes mask associated with the Anonymous hacking collective Getty Images A protester holds a sign reading 'England under new management' AFP/Getty Images

The Twitter account then added: This request can be made by an officer to prevent or control criminal offences being committed.

Video footage shows members of the crown setting off fireworks and flares as they marched in front of Parliament.

Conditions of Million Mask March 2016

The curfew of the event is at 9pm and police have warned that anyone who does not abide by the restriction will be arrested.
A young man was today in hospital after being shot in an affluent area of north London in the early hours of this morning.

Armed police were called to Muswell Hill just after 3am after reports of shots being fired, but no victim was found at the scene.

About half an hour later a 22-year-old man attended a north London hospital with gunshot wound. He is now in a serious but stable condition, with injuries that are not believed to be life-threatening.

Residents told of their shock at the shooting as a police cordon remained in place around Muswell Hill Broadway throughout this morning.

One person said: Muswell Hill is on lockdown because of a shooting.

Author Sarra Manning added: So there was a shooting last night. Whole swathes of Muswell Hill cordoned off.

Vic Langer said on Twitter: Bizarre morning - as I left my flat this morning I realised I had been sleeping in a police cordon. Looked pretty serious.

And Simon Lipson posted on Facebook: Comforting to know that the shooting in leafy, villagey, peaceful Muswell Hill last night. Took place more than 5 minutes' walk from my house.

A Met Police spokesman said: Police were called shortly after 03:00hrs on Saturday, 5 November, to reports of shots fired in Muswell Hill, N10.

Armed officers attended the scene - no victim or suspect was identified at the location.

Scotland Yards gang crime unit is investigating the shooting and there have been no arrests.

Anyone with information should call police on 101 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.


A humble teenager is believed to have been stabbed to death while trying to stop a fight from escalating, police said today.

Ziggy Worrell-Owusu, 19, was knifed repeatedly while out with friends amid a crowd of up to 60 people in Goodmayes, east London.

He had been at the Basement Shisha Lounge to celebrate a friends 18th birthday, but was stabbed during an altercation and carried out of the venue by paramedics before being pronounced dead in hospital about an hour later.

He was the 10th teenager to be stabbed to death in London this year.

Two 17-year-old boys have been arrested over the incident and bailed until mid-December, Scotland Yard said.

Police today said that Mr Worrell-Owusu, from Hackney, may have been injured as he tried to break up an altercation.

Stabbed to death: Ziggy Owusu was trying to break up a fight when he was attacked

Detective Inspector Euan McKeeve said: "Ziggy was a popular young man and I would encourage anyone with information about this tragedy to come forward.

"One line of inquiry is that Ziggy stepped in to prevent a fight escalating between others.

"There were a large number of young people inside the Basement Shisha Lounge who would have witnessed this incident and the events that led up to it.

"Some of these people may be reluctant to tell police what happened, but I would urge them to come forward of their own accord and speak to us."

DI McKeeve also urged anyone at the party with phone footage or pictures to hand it to police, and appealed to parents of teenagers who were there to ask them to come forward.

A friend of Mr Worrell-Owusu told the Standard after the attack: It was just a night out. He was a humble and calm guy, he never went out looking for trouble.

Everyone is in so much pain because of how humble he was and also because he tried to help and solve a problem and in return suffered. He was an innocent guy that just tried to stop a fight. Im not sure who the fight was between.

Another added: He was one of the funniest guys I ever met. I always loved seeing him. Im so shocked this has even happened to him. Im so heartbroken.

Anyone with information should contact police on 020 8345 3865 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
A mysterious man who dresses up as a giant white rabbit to wave at commuters in west London once a month says he does it to take people's minds off bad news.

The white rabbit of Barnes has been appearing at the same spot on the first morning of each month for the past year in a variety of costumes including a multi-coloured waistcoat and a burkini.

This week, his appearance on a foggy November morning just after Halloween was widely shared on social media and described by some alarmed people as terrifying.

But Spike Mclarrity, a performance artist who is behind the furry costume, said those who find him sinister are in the minority and his fan base is growing.

He told the Standard: Im just a bloke wearing a costume, thats the reality of it, but its what it does to people.

"Something shifts, something happens, their perspectives change.

Shifting your consciousness: The white rabbit man / Sarah Travers

Sitting on the wall, if somebodys on a bus or in a car you can see them and theyre obviously thinking about whats happening in their day.

But suddenly they see me and their consciousness shifts. Is that a rabbit I just saw on the wall?

Unmasked: Spike Mclarrity / Spike Mclarrity

Then that becomes a story for the day. Theyll say youll never believe what I saw today. Thats one of the things I enjoy.

Mr Mclarrity bought the outfit six years ago at a Charing Cross store after being invited to a mad hatters tea party event in Paris. After seeing the delighted reactions of the French capitals residents as he made his way through the city, his alter ego was born.

Celebrity chums: The white rabbit with Boris Johnson / Spike Mclarrity

He explained: A friend of mine asked me to do it here and said I should do it on the first day of the month.

Last November I thought, alright, Ill do it, and here I am a year later.

My friend takes photos. The idea was a collection of photos to be like a calendar showing a year in the life of a rabbit by the river.

Alongside his west London appearances, hes been all over the world in the costume, with visits to Japan, Barcelona, Malta and a host of other places.

As the rabbit, he has also met Boris Johnson, been to a Royal wedding and campaigned against the imprisonment of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

He said: At first people are a bit daunted by the costume but they then just demand photos. Generally, people do really like it.

If I see somebody doesnt, I might walk across the road. But the response has been amazing.

On his Facebook page he also likes to share some rabbit wisdom to see people through dark times.

The former care worker, now on his second costume after someone spilled paint on the original outfit, said: Weve been living in such a difficult year with Brexit and racism and terrorism so its just to have someone say its alright.
H undreds of masked protesters armed with flares and fireworks are marching from Trafalgar Square to Downing Street for the annual Million Mask March.

Activists adorned in Guy Fawkes masks and holding signs reading "our human need not corporate greed" are preparing to march to Whitehall in support of organisers Anonymous.

Images and video show hundreds of disguised participants clambouring onto the base of Nelson's Column and brandishing flares and flags.

Fireworks were set off my members of the crowds as it marched past Wesminister Abbey.

Tensions ran high at the Million Mask March 2016

Angela Windsor, an unemployed 40-year-old, said she travelled from Wales to take part in the event.

Million march: A masked protester holds a sign which reads 'We Are Legion' / Getty Images

She said: "Nobody is protecting people - nobody cares.

Anonymous march: Police march with protesters / PA

"I think everyone here cares enough about people to make the effort to come down and try and do something, because the officials aren't doing it."

She said anyone who tried to incite a repeat last year's violent displays would be missing the point.

Dozens of police vans head to Million Mask March

"Nobody wants a fight, we just want change," she said.

Trafalgar square: Masked protesters hold placards and wave flags as they stand on and around Nelson's Column / Getty Images

But she was forced to defend the wording of a sign she was brandishing - including the words "death to the monarchy" - when questioned about it by passers-by.

Police bottled at Million Mask March 2016

There were angry scenes as the procession continued, with police forming a ring of steel outside Parliament.

Officers stood firm, telling the protesters to stay within the boundaries.

Several supporters, masked and otherwise, argued they should be free to pass on public roads.

While most opted for a Guy Fawkes mask, the crowd was also dotted with people dressed in Darth Vader helmets, while others were wrapped in scarves.

There is an increased police presence at the march, after the supporters were dubbed masked criminials by police.

Conditions of Million Mask March 2016

Metropolitan Police Commander BJ Harrington said it was apparent that some only went along "intent on criminality" after last year's march saw missiles and fireworks thrown at police.

He added: "Last year we saw participants causing criminal damage to public property, smashing the windows of businesses and attacking police officers all whilst harassing and intimidating families as they visited theatres, dined out or shopped in the West End.

MArch: Fireworks are reportedly being set off in crowds / Getty Images

"The public found this completely unacceptable. This was not peaceful protest by any measure.

Fireworks thrown at bus stop at Million Mask March

"Those who chose to behave like this are not protesters, they are criminals, and they undermine the thousands of people who protest responsibly and safely in London every year."

But a Facebook event promoting the march appeared to be putting on a defiant front, posting on their Facebook page that "the police are not your friends".

They called on "the Metropolitan Police to restrain from violence and their usual mob mentality".

March: Protesters last year clashed with police / Ramzy Alwakeel/ES

Police have imposed conditions on the march, limiting it to a three-hour period between 6pm and 9pm between Trafalgar Square and Whitehall.

Officers have warned that anyone breaching the conditions could be arrested for public order offences.
P rotesters planning to attend tonights Million Mask March warned Londoners to "expect us" as thousands of masked criminals are expected to descend on the capital.

Clad in Guy Fawkes masks, thousands of supporters of Anonymous, the anarchic hacking collective, are expected at the event in central London from about 6pm.

Police have warned "masked criminals seeking to run amok" that they will be arrested if the anti-capitalist protest turns violent.

Last year's march saw ugly scenes as missiles and fireworks were thrown at police. Four officers and six police horses were injured.

Conditions of Million Mask March 2016

More than 1,000 people are estimated to have taken part and there were more than 50 arrests.

Masked protest: Demonstrators near Parliament Square last year / PA

A Facebook event promoting the march has almost 20,000 people expected to attend.

Among the posts on the page are messages telling London to 'expect us' and branding police "pigs". One message addressed to police said: "We are many, you are so few, obey the wishes of the people."

Swarm: Protesters surround the Aston Martin in Lower Grosvenor Place last year (Yui Mok/PA Wire ) / Yui Mok/PA Wire

Ahead of the event, Metropolitan Police Commander BJ Harrington said it was apparent that some only went along "intent on criminality".

He added: "Last year we saw participants causing criminal damage to public property, smashing the windows of businesses and attacking police officers all whilst harassing and intimidating families as they visited theatres, dined out or shopped in the West End.

Clash: A man being detained by police in Regent Street during the Million Mask March last year / Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire

"The public found this completely unacceptable. This was not peaceful protest by any measure. Those who chose to behave like this are not protesters, they are criminals, and they undermine the thousands of people who protest responsibly and safely in London every year.

"As we look ahead to this weekend, my message is simple: if you want to protest peacefully, that is your right and we want to work with you.

"If you commit criminal acts - that is not peaceful protest - and you are liable to be arrested."

Taking a stand: Anonymous protesters in Trafalgar Square last year / Getty

However, protest organisers Million Mask March London appeared to be putting on a defiant front, posting on their Facebook page that "the police are not your friends".

They called on "the Metropolitan Police to restrain from violence and their usual mob mentality".

Almost 20,000 people have said on Facebook that they will attend the event.

Police have imposed conditions on the march, limiting it to a three-hour period between 6pm and 9pm on a prescribed route between Trafalgar Square and Whitehall.

Any static protest must only take place in Trafalgar Square, Richmond Terrace and Parliament Square and the Met warned anyone breaching the conditions could be arrested for public order offences.

Chief Superintendent Pippa Mills said: "We will always facilitate peaceful protest and have a strong history of doing so. However we have strong reason to believe that peaceful protest is the last thing on the minds of many of the people who will come along this year.
T hugs who hurled fireworks from balconies and set alight a childrens play area have left residents of a south London housing estate too scared to leave their homes.

Numerous people living in the Tulse Hill Estate, Lambeth, were forced to call police on Halloween as a gang of six or seven young men shot fireworks around a childrens park and set fire to play equipment.

A 29-year-old woman who lives there told the Standard that she has called officers at least six times over the past three weeks to report youths terrorising the estate.

She said: The bangs were so loud, it was scary. It must have been even worse for people around here with families.

They were big fireworks they were setting off, someone could have been really hurt.

Firework chaos: Thugs are said to have set off fireworks and set fire to a children's play area in the Tulse Hill Estate / Twitter

She added that members of the community were too scared to go to the area to inspect the damage.

The woman, who asked not to be named due to fears for her safety, said: People are too scared to go out and confront them.

You feel intimidated, you dont feel like you want to live here anymore.

Yobs are also said to have targeted people with bangers.

The recruitment consultant spoke of how she rushed to help a disabled neighbour when she heard him screaming, only to find teenagers, believed to be aged around 17, setting fireworks off so close to his flat that the windows shook.

She also described how a young family were forced to leap into their car as thugs hurled rockets from a second floor balcony on to the ground.

The woman said: I dont know what more can be done. The police say its just the time of year and it will die down but there was all the violence when it was hot.

Its so scary, you dont want to leave your house. Youre not getting sleep because there are bangs at 1am.

"Young professionals and families live here, people have children, people need to work.

Harrowing scenes: Youths armed with knives attacked two men on the estate

Her claims come after harrowing footage emerged appearing to show around 10 youths subjecting two men to a frenzied knife attack before leaving one for dead on the estate in the early house of October 30.

A spokesman for the Met Police confirmed officers had been called to reports of youths throwing fireworks and setting fire to play equipment on the estate on October 31.

He added: "In the last week officers across London have responded to a number of incidents where fireworks have been used in an anti-social and dangerous manner.

It is totally unacceptable to aim fireworks at any person. It is an offence to throw or let-off a firework in any street or public place.

It is also illegal to possess fireworks in a public place if you're under 18. Anyone caught committing firework related offences will be arrested and taken into police custody.
A woman is fighting for life and three others are in hospital today after she was hit by a double-decker bus in south London.

The pedestrian, aged 60, was struck by the bus in Surbiton this morning.

She was rushed to hospital after the crash in Upper Brighton Road where her condition is described as life-threatening.

Police, paramedics and Londons Air Ambulance raced to the scene at the junction with Croylands Drive at about 10am.

Passengers on the bus  three woman aged 23, 42, and 40  were also taken to a west London hospital with minor injuries.

Police said the bus driver is assisting with their enquiries.

The surrounding roads were closed for hours as police investigated but have since reopened.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Mets Serious Collision Investigation Unit 0208 543 5157 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800-555-111.
L abour will only let Theresa May trigger leaving the European Union if she agrees to the party's "Brexit bottom line", Jeremy Corbyn has said.

The opposition will join forces with Tory Remain supporters and other parties to block Article 50 - the process for leaving the EE - if the Prime Minister does not guarantee access to single market, the Labour leader told the Sunday Mirror.

Mr Corbyn suggested Mrs May, who has a slim Commons majority, would be forced into an early election if she fails to meet Labour demands, according to the newspaper.

The Government is appealing a High Court ruling ordering that the PM must seek MPs' approval to trigger Article 50.

Gina Miller: The businesswoman won her legal challenge / Hannah McKay/EPA

Mr Corbyn told the Sunday Mirror: "The court has thrown a big spanner in the works by saying Parliament must be consulted. We accept the result of the referendum.

"We are not challenging the referendum. We are not calling for a second referendum. We're calling for market access for British industry to Europe."

The Labour leader dodged calls earlier over whether he would be happy if there was an early election but told the newspaper the party was "ready for it".

High Court rules Government cannot trigger Article 50 without parliamentary approval

"If the Government calls an election, we're ready for it," he said.

"We have the members, the organisation and the enthusiasm. We welcome the challenge.

"It would give us the chance to put before the British people an alternative economic strategy for this country."

Liz Truss: The Justice Secretary defended the legal system / EPA

It comes after the PM was urged to calm the backlash sparked by the controversial High Court ruling on the process for leaving the European Union.

Former attorney general Dominic Grieve described the attacks as "chilling and outrageous" and "smacking of the fascist state".

Justice Secretary Liz Truss bowed to pressure from barristers to speak out but only went as far as saying the independence of the judiciary is the "foundation upon which our rule of law is built".

The Bar Council had urged Ms Truss to speak out as a "matter of urgency", saying: "A strong independent judiciary is essential to a functioning democracy and to upholding the rule of law."

Ms Truss said: "The independence of the judiciary is the foundation upon which our rule of law is built and our judiciary is rightly respected the world over for its independence and impartiality.

"In relation to the case heard in the High Court, the Government has made it clear it will appeal to the Supreme Court. Legal process must be followed."

What is Article 50? - Explained

But shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon said the comments were "too little, much too late" and condemned Ms Truss for "failing to adequately stand up to attacks on (the) judiciary".

"Liz Truss has still failed to condemn these attacks on the British judiciary as being 'Enemies of the People' and talk in the press of the sexuality of a judge," he said.

"I'm afraid that it's far too little, far too late from Liz Truss."
C onservative ministers are reportedly preparing for an early general eleciton after Theresa May's government faced a blow in its plans for Brexit.

The Prime Minister may call an election in order to be given a mandate to pull Britain out of the EU, the Daily Telegraph reported.

The newspaper said the prospect of a vote is being "openly discussed" by ministers after this week's developments.

It comes after Mrs May was rocked by the resignation of a pro-Brexit Conservative MP over "irreconcilable policy differences". Stephen Phillips announced he was quitting over the Government's failure to appreciate the need to consult Parliament over Brexit.

There have also been calls for Mrs May to take action to calm the backlash sparked by a controversial High Court decision that Parliament must vote for Article 50  by which the process of withdrawing from the EU begins  to be invoked.

Boris Johnson: Brexit will benefit the EU

Former ministers have warned the Prime Minister she must "make clear" that the independence of the judiciary is a fundamental element of British democracy after judges came under attack from pro-Brexit MPs.

But Bob Neill, the Conservative chairman of the justice select committee, said the attacks were "threatening the independence of our judiciary" and had "no place in a civilised land".

He told The Times: "Some of the things which have been said about the court's judgment by politicians have been utterly disgraceful.

"All ministers from the Prime Minister down must now make clear that the independence of the judiciary is fundamental to our democracy. You have to respect that even if you think they have got a decision wrong.

"Some members of Parliament do not appear to understand that this judgment had nothing do with subverting the will of the people."

Former attorney general Dominic Grieve described the attacks as "chilling and outrageous" and "smacking of the fascist state".

Brexit: Tory MP Stephen Phillips resigns citing 'irreconcilable differences'

Anna Soubry, a former minister and prominent Remain campaigner, said some media reports were "inciting hatred".

"I think we have to call this out and say 'not in my name'," she told the Guardian.

"It needs somebody like Boris Johnson to step up and speak out. He's our Foreign Secretary and he knows what the reaction of the rest of the world is as they look at our great country and are horrified. What message are we sending out to the rest of the world? Probably that this nation is in grave danger of losing the plot - and I think we might have done".
J eremy Paxman lambasted David Cameron for his unforgivable decision to call a referendum on Britains EU membership.

The acerbic ex-Newsnight presenter took aim at the former PM, saying he put the Conservative Party ahead of the UK.

Mr Paxman, 66, well known for his no-nonsense approach to interviews, shared his damning indictment of Mr Cameron on Irish broadcaster RTE One's The Late Late Show on Friday.

He told the host Ryan Tubridy: "I'm not a great fan of Cameron, actually, if you really want to know. I think he probably knew that.

"You look at the Brexit referendum - what Cameron did was to put the interests of his party above the interests of his country and that seems to me to be well-nigh unforgivable.

Criticism: Jeremy Paxman

"He put the whole question of the country's identity up for grabs in a referendum and then didn't even bother to make the case for staying in Europe.

"So I think he's got quite a lot on his conscience, I think he's been a pretty terrible prime minister actually."

Under fire: David Cameron, pictured with wife Samantha / AFP/Getty Images

Mr Cameron resigned as Tory leader, and then as MP for Witney, Oxfordshire, after a humiliating EU referendum defeat.

Brexit: Tory MP Stephen Phillips resigns citing 'irreconcilable differences'

Mr Paxman stood down as presenter of the BBC's flagship political programme after 25 years as presenter in the summer of 2014.

Despite his low opinion of Mr Cameron, the journalist said he liked "chancer" Boris Johnson.

He said: "I quite like him actually. I think he's funny and you can forgive all sorts of things in someone who's funny."

Mr Paxman even said he was fond of Russell Brand who he clashed with over the entertainer's calls for young people not to vote.
T he Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall have begun their official tour of the Middle East with a visit to Oman.

The trip, organised by the UK Government, aims to promote partnerships in wildlife conservation, women in leadership and other areas.

The couple began their visit in the capital city, Muscat, where they were given a ceremonial welcome as guests of Omans ruler, Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said.

The prince was handed a sword and joined in with a group performing an Al Razha dance before his wife was presented a bouquet of flowers.

On tour: Prince Charles during the tour of Oman / AP

Prince Charles later toured the new National Museum, showcasing the county's history with over 5,000 objects, which is officially opening in July.

Church: The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall attend a service / PA

Meanwhile, Camilla went to meet children and patients at the Oman Cancer Associations Dar Al Hanan Hostel.

The association was launched in 2002 by four-time Omani cancer survivor Yuthar Al Rawai.

The couple then reunited to attend a service of celebration at Bait Al Noor Church, marking the 125th anniversary of the final visit to the country by the First Bishop of Lahore, Bishop Thomas Valpy French, who travelled to Oman in 1895 to establish an Anglican Church in Arabia.

He was in poor health and died a few months later but his work was continued by others.
A schoolboy diagnosed with bone cancer should be moved to a palliative care regime to minimise suffering in his final months despite his parents objections, a judge ruled today.

Doctors told Mr Justice MacDonald that the youngster was terminally ill and is expected to live for three to five months with curative treatment no long possible.

His parents argued that doctors could still treat his symptoms and mounted a fight for their "beautiful" son's "right to life".

His mother, a former nurse, said the youngster's symptoms ought to be managed according to the progression of his disease and that doctors should not pre-determine his death.

But Mr Justice MacDonald on Friday approved the care plan put forward by doctors, who said the boy should have palliative chemotherapy to reduce pain that would become excruciating if not managed.

He said the case was "unbearably sad" and said the youngster's parents were suffering "unimaginable agony".

One specialist told Mr Justice MacDonald that the youngster had a "huge, painful tumour" which was "fast growing". Another had wiped away tears as she gave evidence.

The judge had analysed issues at a private hearing in the Family Division of the High Court in London.

He said journalists could report the hearing provided the youngster was not identified even though members of the public were not allowed to attend.

Mr Justice MacDonald said: "Neither the mother or the father in this case are anything other than loving parents who are simply trying to stay upright in the darkening storm which has engulfed their family."
O ne of the Nigerian schoolgirls taken by Boko Haram in 2014 has given birth to a baby fathered by one of her kidnappers, the country's military has said.

The girl was found with her 10-month-old son in the northern Borno state, said spokesman Sani Usman. It is not clear how she escaped yet.

It comes almost a month after 21 girls were freed following negotiations with the militant group.

In April 2014, 276 girls were kidnapped by Boko Haram fighters who raided a boarding school in the small village of Chibok.

The kidnapping was met with international outrage and prompted a global social media campaign with the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls which was championed by Michelle Obama.

Over 100 of the girls are still unaccounted for.

Boko Haram has reportedly kidnapped thousands of people during its fight to create an Islamic state in northern Nigeria.

The group emerged around 14 years ago in opposition to Western education but quickly radicalised.
A mayor imprisoned over drugs charges has been shot dead in his cell following a shoot-out with police in the Philippines.

Rolando Espinosa apparently opened fire on officers as they raided his cell in a firearms and illegal drugs search.

The former mayor of coastal town Albuera is the second local government executive to be killed by police in President Rodrigo Dutertes crackdown on drugs.

Samsudin Dimaukom, a mayor in Mr Dutertes home province of Mindanao, died in a shootout with police in October along with nine of his guards.

In yesterdays incident, officers from the criminal investigation and detection group had gone to issue a search warrant against Espinosa and fellow inmate Raul Yapp.

Rodrigo Duterte: The Philippine president has waged a bloody war on the county's drug users and pushers / AP

After the gun battle, they reportedly found two pistols along with a small packed of suspected methamphetamine and various drug paraphernalia.

An investigation into the deaths has been launched amid questions as to how the pair obtained guns in prison.

In August, Epsinosa turned himself into police after Mr Duterte asked him and his son Kerwin to surrender over their involvement in the illegal drugs trade.

He was later released but then arrested and charged with illegal drug possession in October.

The Philippines outspoken president has waged a bloody war against the countrys thousands of drug users and pushers.

He caused outrage after comparing himself to Adolf Hitler and vowing to slaughter three million drug addicts.

According to official figures, more than 3,500 people have been killed in police operations or by vigilantes since Mr Duterte gained power.
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LINCOLN  Users of the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge will continue to see construction and equipment along public roads and trails until freeze-up as an aquatic habitat project progresses there.

Road and trail closures could occur for short periods as the project progresses. Access for ice fishing this winter should not be affected.

The project focus is to address the presence of invasive common carp in the system and prevent their passage through existing water control structures.

Control structures, berm improvements, fish barriers and dredging were planned at Watts, Hackberry, Dewey, Whitewater, Clear, Pelican and Willow lakes. Work has progressed and construction has been partially completed at Watts, Pelican, Whitewater, Dewey and Hackberry Lakes. A water control structure and barrier near completion at Willow Lake is designed to limit upstream carp movement and reduce numbers of carp migrating into the refuge lakes.

Progress has been made with channel clean-out between the lakes by using heavy equipment for excavation and a hydraulic dredge. This will allow U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) biologists to more effectively manage lake water levels to enhance sport fish populations and waterfowl habitat in the future.

The project is a partnership between the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, using Aquatic Habitat Program funds, and the USFWS.

For more information, call Game and Parks Zac Brashears at 402-376-8080 or Mark Porath at 402-471-5583. For information on the project or the refuge, call Juancarlos Giese at 402-376-1889 or visit: http://www.fws.gov/refuge/valentine.

* * *

Join Deer Exchange to donate or receive venison

Nebraskans wanting to donate or receive harvested deer can participate in the Deer Exchange.

This program is designed to accommodate the additional harvest of deer. It brings together hunters who have a surplus of deer with recipients willing to accept the deer meat.

The Deer Exchange, which is available annually from Sept. 1 through March 1, allows hunters and potential venison recipients to join a database and search for other participating parties in their area. Parties will work out the details of the transfer. While the venison cannot be sold, recipients may pay for the processing or butchering of the meat. Donors and recipients can register online for free.

Recipients will have the choice of accepting whole field dressed deer, skinned and boned deer, wrapped and frozen deer or processed meat. Donors are responsible for properly field dressing and checking deer at a check station before transfer.

When transferring game animals, the hunter must provide the following information on a transfer tag: name, phone number, permit number or seal number, estimated weight of meat (in pounds), species of animal, date taken, signature of donor and name of recipient. A transfer tag is available in the 2016 Big Game Guide.

To join the Deer Exchange or view participants, visit OutdoorNebraska.gov/deerexchangeprogram.
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By MARK EVANS mevans@stegenherald.com Bloomsdale will probably host a major fireworks display. The pyrotechnics will not take place until 2024, however. During the Oct. 12 board of aldermen meeting, Kevin Wehner and city officials again discussed the possibility of a July 4 fireworks display at the youth soccer fields on land leased by the city
Many years ago, I invited a friend and his wife to bring their kids to my house for Halloween. As our kids went trick-or-treating, my friend and I walked along drinking old-fashioneds. Some of the neighbors would see us on the sidewalk, wave us up and splash some whiskey in our glasses. Meanwhile, our wives would stay at the house passing out candy.

The whole thing became a tradition for both families. Even when the kids outgrew trick-or-treating, my friend and his wife still came over every Halloween, including last Monday.

My friend is Steven Roberts. His wife is Eva Frazier. Their oldest son is Steven Roberts Jr.

I mention this just so my bias is clear.

On the other hand, Ive worked at this newspaper for years. I have a deep attachment to it. I wrote a column for more than 30 years, and I have great respect for my successor, Tony Messenger. I am petty enough that I have been mildly annoyed that he has done as well as he has. I was kind of hoping hed struggle a little bit. He is a fine writer, and he takes on the tough issues.

No issue is tougher than what is called the rape culture. Thats a term that is used to describe ways in which society normalizes male sexual violence. One of the chief ways is to blame the victim.

Which brings us to Cora Faith Walker and Steven Roberts Jr.

Last month, Messenger wrote about a letter Walker had just sent to Todd Richardson, the speaker of the Missouri House. In the letter, Walker said she had filed a complaint with police alleging that she had been raped by Roberts.

Both Walker and Roberts had just won Democratic primaries for the Missouri House. Both won in districts that are overwhelmingly Democratic. So both were expected to win easily in November and assume their seats in January. In her letter, Walker asked that Roberts not be seated until an investigation was completed.

Messenger interviewed Walker. She told him she had gone to Roberts apartment on a Friday night in late August to discuss the upcoming legislative session. She said she had two glasses of wine and woke up in bed the next morning.

I had no recollection of why I was still there, she said. She added that she remembered nothing after the second glass.

To me, the implication seemed clear. A date rape drug.

Rape is a very serious allegation. But at that moment, thats all it was  an allegation.

At least, that is what it used to be. But to good people who oppose the rape culture, to treat an accusation as an allegation is to blame the victim. When Roberts declared that he and Walker, who is married, had a previous sexual history and the sexual encounter on the evening in question was consensual, Messenger wrote that within 72 hours of talking to me, Walker was subjected to a statement from Roberts indicating she was an adulterer ...

Does chivalry require that a man accused of rape by a married woman stay silent?

Walker denied any previous sexual history with Roberts.

Messenger was hardly alone in expressing his belief in Walkers allegation. State Rep. Margo McNeil wrote a letter to the newspaper stating that she and other members of the National Womens Political Caucus of Metro St. Louis also believed Walker. McNeil expressed disappointment that an editorial, which called Walker courageous, nevertheless did not support Walkers request that Roberts be denied his seat while an investigation went forward.

There was an added element to the case. In the spring of 2015, a law student accused Roberts of groping her underneath a table while she was at a downtown bar with friends. Roberts denied the allegation, and no charges were filed, but the paper published a story, naming Roberts but not his accuser. The accusation was deemed newsworthy because Roberts was, at the time, an assistant circuit attorney.

Did this earlier story indicate guilt, or did it make him an easy mark?

Either way, this latest allegation was of a much more serious nature. A man who would rape a woman belongs in prison.

Just as Messenger, McNeil and others seemed to believe Walker, I wanted to believe Roberts. At least I was predisposed enough in that direction to wonder why Walker, who has a masters degree in public health as well as a law degree, did not get drug-tested immediately. Why wait weeks to come forward?

At any rate, Roberts has filed a defamation suit, brought two days after authorities declined to press charges against him. Roberts said he had evidence to back his claim that the Friday night encounter was social in nature. I visited his attorney, Jeremy Hollingshead, who showed me what he said were text messages from the Friday night in question. Just got to Troys, was the first message at 8:01. Troys is a jazz joint on Olive Street. Be there in 15, was the second message. Hollingshead said the first message was from Walkers phone, the second from Roberts phone.

He showed me a videotape from Straubs in the Central West End. Roberts and an attractive young woman get out of a car and approach the door. Its locked. Straubs closes at 10. Then Hollingshead showed me a receipt from Schnucks. Also from that Friday night, at 10:33. Items purchased included beer, Red Bull, wine and a corkscrew. Also, a package of condoms.

Finally, the attorney showed me a photo taken by Roberts cellphone the night before the alleged rape. An attractive young woman is nude, standing next to a disheveled bed. She seems to be posing. Hollingshead said the woman was Walker. I do not know her so I cant say. But the woman in the photo has some distinctive tattoos, and I suspect the attorneys assertion could be easily proved or disproved.

A nude photo. I dont know what to think. Young people seem to have little regard for any right to privacy. Thats theirs to disregard. The rest of us ought to hold dear to the presumption of innocence. It is, or used to be, the bedrock of our legal system.
ST. LOUIS  The ex-boyfriend of a woman fatally shot in what police have called an ambush in the Baden neighborhood in 2014 was sentenced Friday to life in prison without parole.

A jury in September found Terrell Fats Perkins, 29, guilty of first-degree murder and 11 other charges including assault, unlawful weapons and armed criminal action.

The charges stem from a shooting July 20, 2014, in the 700 block of Thrush Avenue when a group of people showed up at the home of Perkins' ex-girlfriend, Jolice Trice, to fight.

Trice, 25, and others came outside and were met by Perkins, his brother, DeonAndre Dre Ford, and another man, prosecutors said. All had guns. Some of the others in a group that included Perkins mother had sticks, Tasers and a knife.

Trice was shot in the leg  a bullet hit her femoral artery  and she was pronounced dead at a hospital within an hour.

Ford, now 23, and his and Perkins mother, Patricia Perkins, now 55, also face charges including murder, first-degree assault and armed criminal action. Police have said Patricia Perkins arranged the fight and was also armed with a pipe. They are both set for trial Nov. 28.
WEEPING WATER  Weeping Water students spotlighted the anxieties of taking a test Friday during public performances of the schools one-act play.

Members of the WWHS one-act cast and crew delivered This Is a Test for students and community members in the school auditorium. Elementary, middle and high school students watched an afternoon performance of the comedy at the end of the school day. A performance for local residents took place in the auditorium on Friday night.

This Is a Test focuses on the stress that a high school exam can cause for students who may or may not have studied. Michaela Lawrence plays the lead role of a student who is worried about the score she will receive. The script leads the audience through her reactions while the test is taking place.

Weeping Water will compete in several one-act contests later this fall. The Indians will take part in the East Central Nebraska Conference Meet at the Lofte Theatre on Nov. 15. Students will travel to Central Community College in Columbus for the District C2-2 Meet on Nov. 29. The Class C-2 state competition will be held at the Johnny Carson Theatre in Norfolk on Dec. 8.
WASHINGTON, Mo.  Three people from Union were charged Friday with burglarizing the home of Kenneth Allen Jr., 70, who was found dead there Thursday.

Blake S. Schindler, 17, Timothy D. Wonish, 30, and Whitney Dawn Robins, 28, all face charges of felony burglary and receiving stolen property and are being held in lieu of $200,000 cash bail.

Charging documents say that there appeared to have been a struggle and that Allens body was found with his hands and feet bound, with property missing.

Major Case Squad Deputy Commander Gary Higginbotham said Allens cause of death remained unknown Friday. A press release from investigators said that the suspects were involved in the death.

Its not clear what led investigators to Schindler and the others, but charging documents say that nine of Allens credit cards and seven checkbooks were found in Schindlers vehicle after his arrest, and one of Allens credit cards was found in his pants pocket.

Wonish and Schindler declined to talk to police, but Robins admitted using the cord from a lamp to tie Allens feet, charging documents claim. She said Wonish and Schindler participated in the event. Relatives of the three could not be reached for comment, and no attorneys for them were listed in online court records.

One suspect was arrested at a relatives house and the others were arrested at a hotel, all in south St. Louis County.

An acquaintance found Allen dead about 8:30 a.m. Thursday at his home in the 300 block of Elmwood Estates Drive near Washington, Mo. The man had gone there to help move furniture.

Franklin County Sheriff Gary Toelke said the department called in the Major Case Squad in part because of a conflict between Allen and the department.

Kenneth and Jan Allen had filed suit in federal court in St. Louis on Aug. 1, alleging that their business, Meramec Recovery Center Inc., unfairly lost a contract. The suit against Franklin County and others alleges that their business with the countys drug court suffered because some participants were forced by sheriffs Lt. Jason Grellner to work as informers for police. That, the suit says, exposed those people to the drug culture and caused them to fail drug tests. Meramec, which worked for the drug court since 2000, lost its contract in 2013 after complaining, the suit says.

Grellner, who is one of the defendants, said in August that the allegations were untrue. He suggested the action was motivated by political opponents who circulated the claim before the suit was filed. On Aug. 2, Grellner lost his run to be the Republican nominee for sheriff.

Robert Patrick of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
Missouri on Tuesday will be among a handful of pivotal states whose voters will determine control of the United States Senate and greatly influence the direction of the federal government beginning in January.

With Republicans 59-seat House majority projected to shrink, control of the Senate will help decide how much of the next presidents policies and plans become reality.

From Supreme Court justices to trade deals to the enduring differences on immigration, the Senate  with the filibuster threat hanging over the party controlling it  will be the make-or-break chamber for a host of important issues.

Thats why outside groups aligned with either incumbent Republican Sen. Roy Blunt or his Democratic challenger, Secretary of State Jason Kander, have poured at least $35 million into the race.

Their spending  ranging from the super PAC of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell on the right, to a cluster of union and Democratic-related groups on the left  has surpassed the $26 million that the Blunt and Kander campaigns collectively had raised by mid-October.

A Post-Dispatch poll released Oct. 28 showed Blunt and Kander in a virtual tie.

The Senate is controlled 54-46 by Republicans, but more of the seats up for grabs Tuesday are held by the GOP.

Republican senators Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, Richard Burr in North Carolina and Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania are, like Blunt, in tight and fierce re-election fights. Republicans are trying to hold an open seat in Indiana; Democrats hope to retain the Nevada seat being vacated by retiring Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid.

Missouri has not always been in this toss-up category or on the national radar. But in an anti-Washington year, Kanders status as a relative newcomer with a thinner public record to defend than Blunts, together with Kanders Army service in Afghanistan, made the 35-year-old a potent outsider opponent for the 66-year-old Blunt.

Kanders early fundraising prowess got him noticed, and when once toss-up Senate races in Ohio and Wisconsin turned decisively for the Republican and Democrat, respectively, many national donors saw Missouri as the next logical place to put their money. Hence the record-breaking outside spending.

None has spent more than the $10 million-plus that McConnells Senate Leadership Fund, supported by big Republican donors, has poured in to try to save Blunt.

Collectively, Democrats have answered with more than $5 million from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, according to the latest tally by the campaign spending watchdog, the Center for Responsive Politics. The NRA has spent $3 million on Blunts behalf. Kander has been bucked up by $1.7 million from VoteVets, and $1.8 million from a group calling for the end to unlimited spending in campaigns.

The same kindling that has fired Trumps turn-Washington-upside-down insurgency has been used by Kander to charge that Blunt is too tied to Washington lobbyists, including those in his own family, to put Missourians first.

Blunt says Kander will be a rubber stamp for Clinton if she is elected president, and that Kanders political leanings are too far left for most Missourians. Speaking to Kanders attacks on Blunts lobbyist family  his wife, a daughter and two sons are lobbyists  Blunt said in a fundraising appeal that Kander has talked a lot more about my family than what he can do for families like yours.

Blunt was Greene County clerk before being elected as secretary of state, where he served for eight years. He lost a Republican gubernatorial primary in 1992. He was elected to the U.S. House in 1996, and in 2010, he easily defeated Democrat Robin Carnahan for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Christopher Kit Bond.

Blunts experience as a 20-year Washington insider has been marked by rapid rises to leadership positions in both the House and Senate. But while he can point to bipartisan legislative accomplishments that benefited Missouri, the insider status that helped lead to them has been subject of attacks by critics.

Missouri was overlooked, nationally, at first because of Blunts reputation as a very good retail campaigner. Some underestimated how the same anti-Washington impulses propelling Trump, especially in Republican-leaning presidential states like Missouri, could damage veteran GOP incumbents lower on the ballot. The establishment Republican Blunt ended up sharing the top of the ticket with two candidates  Trump and gubernatorial candidate Eric Greitens  who rail against a rigged political system.

The expectation was that Blunt was sufficiently entrenched and financed that he could withstand anything a Democratic challenger could throw at him, said Peverill Squire, the Hicks and Martha Griffiths Chair in American Political Institutions at the University of Missouri.

What I dont think outsiders fully anticipated is that Kander is a very good candidate or that Blunt as the ultimate insider would have run with GOP presidential and gubernatorial candidates who claim the system is corrupt and rigged to the advantage of insiders, Squire said. Given Blunts vulnerabilities on this score, Im surprised the Kander campaign hasnt raised the question of what Blunt would do if he lost. I doubt anyone thinks he would move back to Missouri.

Blunt closed his campaign with the help of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who narrowly lost to Trump in Missouris presidential primary last spring. In a joint appearance in Springfield, Mo., Cruz, Blunt, Greitens and other top-of-the-ticket Missouri Republicans appealed for a Republican sweep statewide.

Cruz echoed one of Blunts final arguments: that the Senate voters choose on Tuesday will be asked to confirm the replacement to the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.

The homestretch of Kanders campaign included a bus tour throughout the state, where he is closing with an argument that he has made since announcing his candidacy in February 2015: that Washington wont change unless voters change who they send there.

Described by friends and colleagues as a man on the move, Kander has tried to present himself as a fresh face, despite a resume that includes holding statewide office and serving two terms in the Missouri Legislature, where in a group dominated by Republicans, he unsuccessfully pushed for campaign finance reform.

Kander then narrowly won a bid for secretary of state in 2012, becoming the youngest statewide elected official in the country.

The ad in which he assembled an AR-15 rifle while blindfolded attracted national attention, but it has been his relentless attacks on Blunts long tenure in Washington and on his connections to lobbyists and big donors that has attracted more attention in Missouri.

After 20 years there, Sen. Blunt has changed, Kander told the Post-Dispatch. He no longer believes what he used to believe.

Blunt responded that while a lot of people could assemble a gun, not everyone was a Clinton supporter like Kander.

If elected, Kander says his top priorities include a middle-class tax cut and continued efforts to make elections more ethical, including redistricting reform and overturning a Supreme Court decision that allows corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts of money to support or criticize candidates for office.

Blunt has promised to continue efforts to peel away at the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obamas signature health care law. Blunt has been one of the Senates most vocal critic of the law.
In a political era defined by intractable partisanship, Missouris gubernatorial matchup carries some irony: Democratic Attorney General Chris Koster, who is a former Republican, faces Republican and former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens, who is an ex-Democrat.

That twist notwithstanding, Missouri voters going to the polls Tuesday should have no trouble distinguishing between the two candidates, whose policy prescriptions hew closely to their opposing party platforms  and whose political personas should look familiar to strategists on both sides.

In Koster, Democrats are banking on what has worked for them in conservative-leaning Missouri before: a mainstream moderate who touts a deep political resume, campaigns on competence and steers clear of his national partys ideological skirmishes.

The governor of Missouri is not an entry-level job, Koster says in one ad, a central theme that he repeats regularly in interviews and on the stump.

Republicans, in choosing someone with myriad accomplishments but zero political experience, are hoping Greitens can ride the outsider lane to victory. It worked for Republican Bruce Rauner in neighboring Illinois 2014 gubernatorial race  and its currently being tested in the Republican presidential candidacy of Donald Trump.

Ill take dead aim at politics as usual, Greitens says in a now-famous primary campaign ad in which he fires a semi-automatic rifle to spark an explosion. If youre ready for a conservative outsider, Im ready to fire away.

As of the end of October, the two candidates had raised almost $58 million combined, which  added to what was raised by additional primary candidates  has made Missouris governors race the most expensive state campaign in the country this year, at more than $76 million. Both campaigns in the general election have spent down most of their respective war chests with aggressive advertising.

Recent polls, including one conducted for the Post-Dispatch, indicate a virtually tied race.

CULTURE OF ETHICS

In the history of Missouris major-party gubernatorial nominees, Greitens, 42, has among the least political experience  none, basically  while touting what might be the widest-ranging resume outside of politics. A Maryland Heights native, he is a former Navy SEAL, decorated combat veteran, humanitarian activist, Rhodes scholar, best-selling author and founder of the Mission Continues, a philanthropic organization for returning veterans who want to serve their communities.

He has parlayed that resume and his lack of political background into an outsider-themed campaign, catching a wave that has propelled conservative politics for the past few years. It allowed him to beat three more politically experienced opponents in the Aug. 2 Republican primary.

But it has also created some problems with unity in the Republican Party, where Greitens had few connections coming in. He was an active Democrat up until a few years ago and was once considered a potential Democratic congressional candidate. That and his penchant during the campaign for ethics-based attacks on the Republican-controlled Legislature caused some in-party strife and may have cost him gun-rights and agricultural endorsements that usually go to the Republican.

Still, Greitens supports a familiar litany of standard Republican positions: anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-abortion, pro-gun-rights. He has stressed his support for right-to-work legislation that would weaken unions and, proponents claim, improve the states business climate.

Greitens has made it a top goal to create a culture of ethics in Jefferson City, including a gift ban on lobbyists, restrictions on revolving-door arrangements in which lawmakers leave the Legislature and immediately become lobbyists, and bans on fundraising during legislative sessions.

People ... want an outsider, someone who is willing to clean up Jefferson City and is tough enough to do it, Greitens told the Post-Dispatch editorial board last month. Were bringing a different perspective to politics.

However, he hasnt supported campaign contribution limits  a notable exception for someone who has received more high-dollar individual donations than anyone in state history.

Greitens entered the final week of the campaign with $2.7 million on hand. His money has been provided largely by out-of-state private sources and, more recently, by huge infusions from the Republican Governors Association  a testament to the closeness of the race.

CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRAT

Koster, 52, has been in elected office for more than two decades. Three years after graduating from law school at the University of Missouri, he became Cass County prosecutor, running and winning as a Republican. After a decade as prosecutor, the St. Louis native won a seat in the state Senate, representing four counties south of Kansas City.

He began a quick rise into leadership in the GOP-controlled chamber and was elected caucus chair in 2005. As a senator, Koster was known as a politically pragmatic legislator with a prosecutors flair for debate.

In 2007, as he was poised to run for attorney general, Koster switched parties, saying he disagreed with Republicans on embryonic stem cell research and labor laws.

As a Democrat, Koster has stayed on the conservative side of some issues, which helped him win the backing of the Missouri Farm Bureau and other top agriculture groups, as well as the National Rifle Association.

Each of those endorsements could help Koster collect enough votes in traditionally Republican rural areas to best his GOP rival. And, he says, they could help him bridge the partisan divide between the governors office and the Republican-led Legislature.

I think Im seen as a conservative Democrat ... (in) a very conservative state, Koster told the Post-Dispatch editorial board Oct. 8.

If elected, Koster has four main goals: Block right-to-work legislation, boost spending on schools, increase the states investment in road construction and leverage $2 billion in federal money to expand Medicaid.

With Republicans in charge, he said, the Legislature is unlikely to increase taxes in order to improve school funding. That means other areas of government will have to be squeezed in order to spend more on education. He has not said just what he would cut.

Koster entered the final week of the campaign with an estimated $3.1 million in his campaign account. While much of his fundraising has come from labor union sources, he also has received $3 million from the Democratic Governors Association.

ALTERNATIVE CANDIDATES

The gubernatorial ballot will be rounded out by three third-party or independent candidates:

 Don Fitz, of University City, a former state research psychologist and part-time teacher, is the Green Party candidate. He is promoting familiar Green Party themes including environmentalism, social justice, labor rights and use of government to spur the economy.

 Cisse Spragins, owner of a Kansas City-based pest control and biological cleaning company, is the Libertarian candidate. She supports legalization of drugs and other victimless crimes but opposes most government spending or any government involvement in nonessential areas.

 Lester Turilli Jr., a Stanton businessman whose family has long operated the Meramec Caverns tourist attraction in the Ozarks, is unaffiliated with any party. He is running a Christian faith-based campaign with advertising provided mostly via dozens of billboards around the state  a time-tested strategy in his family business.

The governors seat is open because incumbent two-term Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, is being term-limited out.

Walker Moskop of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON  An increasing number of people from far-flung corners of the world have tried to sneak into the United States among the hundreds of thousands of others, most of them Latin American, caught at the Mexican border in the last year, according to arrest data from the Homeland Security Department.

The arrests of more than 8,000 people from India, China, Romania, Bangladesh and Nepal from October 2015 to the end of August is offering a new challenge to immigration agents tasked with fully identifying would-be immigrants and quickly deporting people caught crossing the border illegally.

The group of overseas migrants represents a tiny fraction of the more than 408,000 people caught crossing the Mexican border illegally in the last year. But the arrests suggest a rising trend in the number of migrants opting for a convoluted trek that sometimes wends across the seas to South America, over land to Central America and then through Mexico before arriving at the U.S. border illegally.

For decades Mexico dominated the discussion on illegal immigration as the country from which most immigrants went to the border illegally. But in recent years the number of Mexican nationals who have been trying to sneak into the United States has dropped.

India and China are now squarely among the top 10 countries of origin for people caught trying to sneak into the United States. Large numbers of immigrants from those two countries have long come to the United States legally and many have overstayed visas to remain here. Now some people are taking a different approach altogether by making their way to Mexico to try to sneak into the United States as visas are harder to come by.

Victor Manjarrez, a former Border Patrol sector chief and director of the Center for Law & Human Behavior at the University of Texas at El Paso, said the rising number of migrants from countries far beyond the Americas should be seen as a growing concern.

That is very unusual. If I was still sitting as the chief of El Paso or Tucson ... Id be a little concerned, Manjarrez said. In the grand scheme, as a percentage, its relatively small, but the raw numbers are such a big jump historically.

The changing face of illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border is a small part of a broader trend of global migration, with millions of people fleeing their home countries. But the arrival of so many people from far beyond U.S. borders brings with it broad implications for U.S. border security and other immigration enforcement efforts.

The Homeland Security Department has made arresting, jailing and deporting recent border crossers a top priority for immigration agents. Most Mexican migrants caught at the border are sent home within just a few days. But for migrants from countries a continent away the process is often far longer and costlier for the U.S. government as the migrants wait in immigration jails for travel documents to return home or a judge to decide their fate.

The uptick in arrivals of people from other continents, combined with an increase in overall border crossings in the last 12 months, has led to a spike of more than 40,000 people being held in immigration jails in recent weeks. Immigration and Customs Enforcements budget gives them enough money to house 34,000 people at any given time and the recent overflow has officials worried they may face a budget shortfall of more than $130 million in the coming months if the trend continues.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said the agency had enough money to operate at current levels until Dec. 9, when a temporary budget resolution expires. After that, she said, Homeland Security will work to either shift money from other parts of the department or find another alternative budget strategy. She described the potential budget adjustment as common.

Manjarrez said border agents and immigration officials faced multiple challenges with a rise in immigrants from so far away, including language barriers and crowded detention centers.

The further away you get from the Americas, the more difficult it is to really know who they are, Manjarrez said of the governments ability to fully identify some would-be immigrants.

The director of the Washington Office on Latin Americas Mexico program, Maureen Meyer, said it appears that many of the overseas migrants are making their way through Mexico via South American countries, including Brazil, where entry visas are either easy to come by or not required. And their final destination is more often than not the United States.

I think its reflecting a gradual trend, as of at least particularly the last year, Meyer said.

While the exact draw of the round-the-world route isnt entirely clear, Meyer said an expanding network of human smugglers appear to be taking advantage of the increasingly popular smuggling routes that use Mexico as a transit country.

Theres a lot of smuggling that goes through Mexico that you dont see, Meyer said. She added that rumors of lenient treatment of some immigrants in the United States may also be a factor.

The recent influx of overseas migrants may be a harbinger of things to come.

More than 7,000 people who claimed to be from Africa have been arrested in Mexico from January to August, according to statistics maintained by Mexican immigration authorities. The number of such immigrants has been on the rise in recent years.

In 2013 Mexican immigration authorities arrested fewer than 1,000 migrants from Asia and Africa, while the number rose to nearly 11,000 from January through August.
LOS ANGELES  In a pioneering prosecution against body shaming, the Los Angeles city attorneys office on Friday filed criminal charges against a former Playboy playmate, alleging she secretly photographed a 70-year-old woman in the nude while she was in the shower area of a Los Angeles fitness center.

Prosecutors often use invasion of privacy charges against peeping Toms and people who conceal cameras to take sexually suggestive photos of women. But legal experts said this marks a rare time authorities have brought charges against someone over photos making fun of someones weight. It comes amid growing awareness and outrage about body shaming  particularly common on social media.

Prosecutors charged Dani Mathers, 29, with one misdemeanor count of invasion of privacy. Mathers is accused of posting an image of the woman on her Snapchat social media account in early July with a mocking caption about the womans appearance, sparking a widespread public outcry.

Mathers, the 2015 Playmate of the Year, later apologized for taking a photo of the woman in a locker room shower at an LA Fitness exercise center and posting it online.

That was absolutely wrong and not what I meant to do, she said. I know that body shaming is wrong. That is not the type of person I am.

She said the photo was meant to be sent as a private message, but was posted publicly.

Mathers attorney Thomas Mesereau said his client did nothing illegal.

I am disappointed that Dani Mathers was charged with any violation, he said. She never tried to invade anyones privacy and never tried to violate any laws.

City Attorney Mike Feuer said Friday that it was important to send a message with the criminal charges filed against Mather.

Body shaming is humiliating, with often painful, long-term consequences, he said. It mocks and stigmatizes its victims, tearing down self-respect and perpetuating the harmful idea that our unique physical appearances should be compared to air-brushed notions of perfect. What really matters is our character and humanity. While body shaming, in itself, is not a crime, there are circumstances in which invading ones privacy to accomplish it can be. And we shouldnt tolerate that.

Los Angeles police began an investigation in July after receiving a report of illegal distribution of the image. LA Fitness officials reported the posting to police as well, officials said.

Mathers shared the photo of the naked woman July 13 with the caption: If I cant unsee this then you cant either.

Leonard Levine, a veteran Los Angeles defense attorney who has defended cases involving gym photos, said all those cases involved alleged voyeurs. This case is different because the motive for sharing the photo appears to be solely mocking the woman.

I am not aware of any case where it was done other than where prosecutors alleged it a prurient interest, he said.

Former prosecutor Dmitry Gorin agreed the circumstances here are unique.

Most have some lascivious intent. In this case, the aspect of the shaming is a very unusual motive that I have not seen prosecuted before, he said.

Lawyers for Mathers could say the alleged victim did not have an expectation of privacy, said Louis Shapiro, a Los Angeles defense attorney.

Mathers can argue though that a person has no expectation of privacy in the locker room when they are undressed and that the prosecution is simply trying to stick a square peg in a round hole because they dont have the evidence for the charge they really want to prove  , he said.

Digital technology has made the capturing of others secretly in their most private moments easier.

A prominent Washington, D.C., rabbi last year was sentenced to six years in prison after he pleaded guilty to secretly recording 52 women as they prepared for a religious bathing ritual.

In California, a U.S. Border Patrol supervisor admitted in federal court that he secretly recorded seven female co-workers in the bathroom of the Chula Vista office. Some states have increased the penalties for taking secret images, making it a felony. In New York offenders can get up to four years in prison for a first offense.
The last time voters in Maine were asked about gun rights, they easily passed a constitutional amendment creating a right to own firearms that shall never be questioned.

Three decades later, the state known for its hunting tradition will vote on whether to tighten restrictions on gun sales and transfers.

Maine is one of four states, along with California, Nevada and Washington, where voters will decide Nov. 8 whether to enact tougher firearms laws. In a change from past elections, there are no statewide initiatives seeking to expand gun rights anywhere in the U.S.

The presence of so many ballot questions in the same year reflects the strategy, growing power and deep pockets of gun-control supporters, who are outspending opponents in all four states. They hope passage of the proposals shows widening support for more measures designed to keep firearms away from dangerous people.

In Maine and Nevada, a group founded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has spent millions advocating for background checks on nearly all gun sales and transfers. Supporters want to close gaps in the federal system that allow felons, domestic abusers and the mentally ill to buy firearms from private sellers at gun shows and online without a background check.

I do call it a movement. People are really getting fed up with all the violence, said Judi Richardson, 57, of South Portland, Maine, who gathered signatures to help place the initiative on the ballot.

Her daughter, Darien, 25, was fatally shot in 2010 during a home invasion that remains unsolved. The investigation hit a dead end because the handgun used to kill her was bought without a background check from a seller who told police he did not know the buyers name. Richardson said the Maine initiative would help reduce gun violence by making firearms harder to access and easier to trace.

In Washington state, advocates who successfully campaigned for a background check law in 2014 are now seeking passage of a measure that would allow judges to issue orders temporarily seizing guns from people who are deemed a threat. For instance, concerned families could seek the removal of guns from relatives threatening to harm themselves or others.

Californias lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, is leading the campaign for a first-of-its-kind law that would require anyone buying ammunition to pass a background check and obtain a state permit.

Gun-safety groups say a Democratic sweep that includes a White House victory and party gains in Congress would put pressure on federal lawmakers to strengthen the national background-check system.

Congress has blocked attempts to mandate universal background checks, even after the fatal shooting of 20 elementary school students in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012. That prompted groups such as Bloombergs Everytown for Gun Safety to focus on a state-by-state strategy often compared to the strategy used to spread gay marriage.

The history of gun-related ballot initiatives shows how the tide of public opinion may be turning. During the last 40 years, states have approved 15 out of 18 ballot initiatives to expand gun rights and six of nine to restrict them, according to Ballotpedia, which tracks the initiatives.

Supporters organized the initiatives in Maine and Nevada after the states governors, both Republicans, vetoed in 2013 background check bills approved by their legislatures.

Everytown is the largest spender in those states, assembling coalitions that include concerned parents, families of gun violence victims and law enforcement officials. The movement has also been financed by entrepreneurs such as Nicolas Hanauer of Seattle, who has donated more than $1 million total to the Washington, Maine and Nevada campaigns.

My guess is they will be successful, and you will see voters in different geographies and backgrounds who are willing to stand up for stronger gun laws, said Zach Silk, a Hanauer aide who is helping lead the Washington campaign.

If the Maine and Nevada initiatives pass, half of Americans would live in the 20 states that require universal background check laws on gun sales, Everytown President John Feinblatt said.

Opponents say the measures will not stop criminals and go too far by banning the routine sale and transfer of guns between law-abiding citizens, who would have to drive to a firearms dealer and pay for a background check that can cost $30.

Its a restriction on the freedom of the good guys, said Charles Rumsey III, 75, of Bangor, Maine, secretary of the Penobscot County Conservation Association, which is opposing the initiative in that state.

The retired Defense Department employee recently borrowed a rifle from a longtime acquaintance after his malfunctioned so he could compete in a shooting event. He worries that such a transfer would be illegal without a background check.

The Maine and Nevada initiatives would require anyone buying or receiving a gun to pass a background check at a federally licensed dealer, with limited exceptions for hunting and transfers of guns between family members. Anyone who has a felony or disqualifying domestic abuse conviction would be denied, as required by federal law.

Rumsey said the possible effects are not well understood and that questions are getting drowned out by the safety message of supporters.

The National Rifle Association is financing opposition efforts in Nevada and Maine but has spent far less than supporters. NRA spokeswoman Jennifer Baker said the states were carefully selected because they were electorally advantageous for gun-control supporters.
PRENZLAU, Germany  While the streets of Warsaw have been engulfed by vehement protests over the governments plan to further restrict abortion, individual Polish women are struggling daily to find ways of ending their unwanted pregnancies.

Monika, 19, had recently split up with her boyfriend when she realized with horror that she was pregnant. With no partner, no money and years of education ahead, she decided an abortion was her only option. But abortion in Poland is illegal in most cases, and even when she tracked down a doctor rumored to bend the rules, he refused.

So Monika did what many Polish women before her have done  packed a bag, crossed the border into Germany and had an abortion in a place where it is safe and legal. Many have also gone to the Czech Republic, Slovakia or the Netherlands.

I feel good now, she said from her hospital bed after ending her 7-week pregnancy in Prenzlau, Germany. I would have had no one to leave the baby with and would not have coped financially. I was not ready to face this.

Poland, like the United States, is a society deeply divided over abortion. The Central European nation has one of the most restrictive laws in Europe and a government loyal to the Catholic church that wants to further restrict abortions. But a recent attempt to impose a total ban on abortion outraged many Polish women, who held street protests that forced lawmakers to abandon that idea.

Now the ruling party is pushing for a near-total ban  a move that seems to be creating new support for abortion rights.

Another Polish woman having an abortion in Prenzlau, 22-year-old Ewa, said the recent protests made her aware that abortion was possible abroad.

Other women who wrote on the internet about their experience helped me take the decision, she said. I thought it would be worse, but its OK now. I feel fine.

Both women declined to give their full names or hometowns, afraid of being identified and condemned back home.

In Poland, abortion is allowed only through the 12th week in cases of rape or incest, if the womans life or health is in danger or if the fetus is irreparably damaged. Poland had 1,040 legal abortions last year, but experts say the true number of abortions is about 150,000 per year in the nation of 38 million. Women import banned abortion pills from elsewhere, travel abroad for the procedure or resort to secret, unsafe abortions by nonmedical people looking to earn money.

In fact, even abortions allowed by law are often denied to women due to a large number of doctors who declare themselves conscientious objectors.

A leading polling institute in Warsaw, CBOS, estimates that at least one in four Polish women have probably had an abortion, but very few will admit to it. Several young men speaking Polish were in the waiting room at Prenzlau hospital, but denied their partners were there for abortions.

Monika was given an appointment within a week of calling Dr. Janusz Rudzinski, a Pole who lives in Germany and heads the hospitals Department of Gynecological Oncology, Special Operating Gynecology and Aesthetic Surgery.

During two hours that he spent with AP reporters, Rudzinski answered at least eight calls in Polish. Each time he assured the caller that abortion is legal in Germany through the 12th week. He said the hospital performed about 20 abortions a week on Polish women.

Nobody draws pleasure from having an abortion. There are always some reasons for it, bigger or smaller, Rudzinski said.
One thing you can say about Donald Trump, the man is quotable. Lets let him speak for himself:

On women

 All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me  consciously or unconsciously. Thats to be expected.

 Lyin Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a shoot in his ad. Be careful, Lyin Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!

 Such a nasty woman (Hillary Clinton).

 Look at that (Carly Fiorinas) face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president? I mean, shes a woman, and Im not supposed to say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?

 You know, it really doesnt matter what the media write as long as youve got a young, and beautiful (vulgar euphemism for woman).

 Ive got to use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her. You know Im automatically attracted to beautiful  I just start kissing them. Its like a magnet. Just kiss. I dont even wait.

 And when youre a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

 She does have a very nice figure. Ive said that if Ivanka werent my daughter, perhaps Id be dating her.

 I dont (change diapers). Its not my thing. You know what, Im a good father but thats not my thing and Melanias going to be a great mother. To a large extent its up to the women.

 There has to be some form of punishment (for women who seek abortions).

 Oftentimes when I was sleeping with one of the top women in the world I would say to myself, thinking about me as a boy from Queens, Can you believe what I am getting?

On border security

 I will build a great wall  and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me  and Ill build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.

 When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending the best. ... Theyre sending people that have lots of problems, and theyre bringing those problems with us. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists.  And some, I assume, are good people.

 Well, someones doing the raping, Don! I mean, somebodys doing it. Whos doing the raping? Whos doing the raping?

 We have some bad hombres here, and were gonna get em out.

On politics

 One of they key problems today is that politics is such a disgrace. Good people dont go into government.

 How stupid are the people of Iowa?

On Donald Trump

 The beauty of me is that Im very rich.

 My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body.

 I think the only difference between me and the other candidates is that Im more honest and my women are more beautiful.

 The point is, you can never be too greedy.

 I was down there, and I watched our police and our firemen, down on 7-Eleven, down at the World Trade Center, right after it came down.

 My IQ is one of the highest  and you all know it! Please dont feel so stupid or insecure; its not your fault.

 I had some beautiful pictures taken in which I had a big smile on my face. I looked happy, I looked content, I looked like a very nice person, which in theory I am.

 You know, wealthy people dont like me.

 My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings  even my own feelings  but I try.

 Im a negotiator, like you (GOP Jewish Coalition) folks.

 There have been many bad things said about me over the years, and in some cases theyve been true. It doesnt bother me. If I have a fault and somebody exposes that fault or talks about that fault, you wont hear me complain.

On America and the world

 I think if this country gets any kinder or gentler, its literally going to cease to exist.

 Ill shake hands. I shake hands with people. But its not something I like  look, Im not a huge fan of Japan, but I love their (bowing) custom.

 The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

On military affairs

 I will be so good at the military your head will spin.

 I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me.

 The other candidates  they went in, they didnt know the air conditioning didnt work. They sweated like dogs.  How are they gonna beat ISIS? I dont think its gonna happen.

 I would bomb the (vulgarity) out of em!

On military service

 He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who werent captured.

 Ive been so lucky in terms of that whole world. It is a dangerous world out there (in terms of sexually transmitted disease). Its scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam era. It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.

 Ive made a lot of sacrifices.
Theres no comfort zone in this presidential election. Democrat Hillary Clinton definitely has acquired a portfolio of significant flaws, as would anyone who has spent a lifetime in public service. Donald Trump is the least qualified candidate ever to run for president. He is a narcissist who cant control his own impulses. He blithely utters insults that, in the presidency, could do serious damage.

It is unthinkable to turn over the most powerful job in the world to such a man. Voters must insist that a responsible, articulate, seasoned, well-informed leader take the helm. Thats Hillary Clinton.

Trump has a way of fouling everything he touches. We cringe at the disaster  a word he inappropriately invokes daily  he would make of our country and its standing in the world. Putting him in the White House would be an act of unprecedented voter irresponsibility.

Contrary to Trumps defeatist rhetoric, the world still looks to America for guidance and leadership. The American presidents words ripple across the world, making news from the remote highlands of Afghanistan to the pampas of Argentina. Trumps penchant for gaffes and insults literally could provoke wars. Americans cannot hand so much power to someone so reckless.

Consider the stock markets nosedive since FBI Director James Comey alerted Congress to the existence of new emails that could be related to Clintons tenure in the State Department. The increased potential of a Trump victory has caused investors to withdraw billions of dollars from the stock market. The financial markets have no faith in Trump.

Look closely at Trumps plans for building a wall on the Mexican border, or fixing the health care system, or improving the nations infrastructure. He could be talking about a trillion dollars in expenditures, yet he has never offered a viable payment plan. Anyone who thinks he can be trusted with money need only look at his failed casino ventures  which cost American taxpayers more than $900 million.

As weve written, Clinton is no angel. But anyone who spends as many years in public service as she has will gain a share of scandals and embarrassments. For every bad judgment call shes made, Clinton has hundreds of uncelebrated, great judgment calls that have kept this nation running smoothly and upheld our stature abroad.

Donald Trump has no public service record whatsoever. His private business record is a horror. Yet some voters propose to make someone so inexperienced, so deeply ignorant, so verifiably racist and misogynistic, the president? Americans must not take that risk.

Far too much is at stake in this election to allow someone as dangerous as Trump anywhere near the levers of power. Hillary Clinton is time-tested and battle-hardened. She is the only candidate capable of grappling with the presidencys massive responsibilities.
St. Louis-area voters will find seven questions at the bottom of their Nov. 8 Missouri ballot, including five proposed amendments to the state constitution, one change to state law and a proposed tax increase to benefit senior citizens in St. Louis city and St. Louis and St. Charles counties.

Perhaps the most contentious items involve efforts to raise tobacco taxes to help stop smoking, disenfranchise voters who dont have state-issued photo identification, and establish much-needed campaign contribution limits.

Amendment 3, a proposal to increase cigarette taxes a total of 60 cents over four years, has gotten the most attention. Money from the higher taxes would be used for early childhood education.

Opponents have loaded their arguments with unsubstantiated allegations that the amendment would harm stem cell research. They say it wouldnt raise taxes enough to discourage smoking and would ban public health agencies from advocating for stronger tobacco laws. Other concerns revolve around the possibility that tax money could go to private and parochial childhood education.

They also complain there must be a problem because Big Tobacco supports the tax. RJR Tobacco Company has spent millions advocating for it because the tax would squeeze off-brand tobacco companies harder, eventually raising their taxes to $1.27 a pack. Its worth noting that other tobacco interests are pouring money into fighting Amendment 3. So whose backing is more suspicious?

Confusion also surrounds Proposition A, which would raise taxes on cigarettes 23 cents a pack over five years, with proceeds going to fix roads and bridges.

If both measures pass, the one with the most votes would take effect. Bottom line is Missouris 17-cents a pack cigarette taxes are lowest in the nation, and whatever can be done to discourage smoking is worthwhile. Yes votes on Proposition A and Amendment 3 would send a strong message that its time for Missouri smokers to quit.

Amendment 6 would require Missouri voters to present government-issued photo identification before casting a ballot. This measure would disenfranchise as many as 225,000 Missourians, mostly college students, low-income citizens, the disabled and very elderly who are least likely to have state-issued photo ID or a means to get one.

Supporters contend it would stop fraud by voter impersonation, a solution in search of a problem since it doesnt exist locally or nationwide. Vote no on Amendment 6.

Voters who want to reclaim Missouri government should vote yes on Amendment 2. It would reimpose limits on donations to state political candidates and require more transparency from individuals and groups making donations.

Missouri is called the Wild West of politics because it is the only state in the nation that has no ethics rules on donations and gifts to politicians. This measure would help clean up Jefferson City and reduce special-interest influence.
So my question is, if the department is defunded, and low pay continues, what will happen the next time the police are desperately needed and only a handful of them are available?
A view outside an Agricultural Bank of China building in Beijing, China, August 26, 2016. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

By Suzanne Barlyn

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Agricultural Bank of China Ltd <601288.SS> will pay a $215 million penalty for violating New York state's anti-money laundering law, the state's financial regulator said on Friday.

Bank officials engaged in "intentional wrongdoing," including masking possibly suspicious transactions at its New York branch. Some transactions involved parties which are subject to U.S. sanctions, the New York State Department of Financial Services said.

The bank also "silenced" the branch's chief compliance officer, who raised concerns to managers about an "alarming" pattern of suspicious financial transactions, the regulator said. Among the transactions were payments from Yemen to Chinese companies and "unusually large" transfers between Chinese and Russian companies.

The bank, in a consent order with the regulator, agreed to put in an independent monitor to address "serious deficiencies," the regulator said.

Officials at Agricultural Bank of China and its New York branch could not be immediately reached for comment.

The bank holds total assets of about $2.8 trillion, including around $9.5 billion at the New York branch, New York state officials said.

Since 2013, the New York branch has cleared U.S. dollar transactions involving foreign correspondent banks in "rapidly increasing volumes," according to the consent order.

In dollar clearing, transactions in foreign currencies between parties are satisfied in U.S. dollars using a U.S.-based bank.

In 2014, the New York regulator warned the bank that its systems for monitoring suspicious transactions were inadequate, and told the bank not to boost its dollar-clearing business until it put improved surveillance measures in place.

While the practice is common, dollar-clearing can be risky for banks since it can be used by criminals and militant groups planning attacks to launder and move money.

"The bank willfully ignored (the state's) warning and dollar-clearing transactions by the bank at the New York Branch skyrocketed in 2014 and 2015," the regulator said.

Agricultural Bank of China's tactics to mask transactions included sending coded messages through an international wire messaging system which compliance staff use to screen and monitor financial activity.

The compliance officer, whom the regulator did not identify, believed that many of the "opaque" transactions involved bank customers whose identities should have been disclosed for monitoring purposes.

In once instance, a Turkish bank processed dollar transactions for an Afghan bank customer which is known by the U.S. Treasury Department for its ties to a network associated with drug traffickers and illicit cash flows.

Branch managers, in response to the compliance officer's concerns, directed the officer not to communicate with regulators.

The compliance officer left in June, 2015.

One month later, New York bank examiners discovered an "unmanageable" backlog of nearly 700 potentially suspicious transactions that had not yet been investigated.

(Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Bill Rigby)
By Laila Kearney

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two people were stabbed and their suspected attacker was injured at Rutgers University's business school in New Jersey on Friday, the school said.

A suspect was taken into custody after the incident that started at about 2:30 p.m. EDT at Rutgers' New Brunswick campus, which includes locations in nearby Piscataway Township, the school said in a statement.

"All three individuals were transported to a local hospital for treatment of their injuries," Antonio Calcado, senior vice president of institutional planning and operations at Rutgers, said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families."

The campus was placed on lockdown but reopened shortly after the suspect was captured at about 3 p.m.

The incident involved two "members of our campus community" and a former student, Calcado said.

The extent of the injuries was not disclosed. It was not clear what motivated the attack or how the suspect was injured.

Campus police, who are leading the investigation, did not respond to requests for further details.

Students at the business school said they saw a woman covered in blood and screaming on the fifth floor of the building where the incident occurred, the Star Ledger newspaper reported.

"I just heard the screams," business student Suiyi Jiang told the Daily Targum, the school's newspaper. "Then (a) guy called the police and said, 'Somebody is stabbing. There's blood everywhere.'"

Shortly after, police entered the building and cleared out students and faculty, the newspaper reported.

Last year, an 18-year-old student stabbed and injured two people after an argument in a dormitory at Rutgers, the flagship school of the State University of New Jersey system.

(Additional reporting by David Ingram; Editing by James Dalgleish and Tom Brown)
AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Tavis Smiley, New York Times best-selling author and host of the late-night television show Tavis Smiley on PBS and The Tavis Smiley Show from Public Radio International (PRI), is lending his voice to support Texas CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) in creating positive change in the lives of foster children. Smiley served as the opening keynote speaker at the 2016 Texas CASA Conference held in Dallas, Texas, at which he issued a call for the recruitment of additional community volunteers to serve as powerful voices for vulnerable children navigating the child protection system.

Volunteers, staff and board members from local CASA programs participated in the conference to enhance their training, leadership and advocacy skills as they seek to serve children across the state. Smiley contributed to the agenda by sharing his personal experience on how he overcame obstacles that threatened to derail his life. Thanks in part to mentors in his life, Smiley was able to carve out a role in the world where today he is a recognized champion for human rights and empowerment issues and is committed to inspiring the next generation of leaders. It is in this role that Smiley called upon participants of the Texas CASA Conference to join in fueling a powerful movement in which CASA volunteers are actively sharing their stories with others in the community to increase the recruitment of volunteers. The goal is to ensure that every Texas child in foster care, who is in need of a volunteer, has one.

When a child enters foster care because his or her home is no longer safe, a CASA volunteer can be appointed by a judge to represent a childs best interests. A volunteer guides a foster child through the overburdened and complex child protection system with the goal of reaching a safe and permanent home. Volunteers spend a significant amount of time with the child getting to know them and their individual needs.

The work of a CASA volunteer also involves gathering information from everyone involved in a childs daily life, including family members, foster parents, teachers, doctors and social workers. CASA volunteers use the information they collect to report to the judge, advocating for the childs physical, emotional and educational needs. They are not foster parents; they are highly trained community advocates acting as a powerful voice for a child or sibling group.

Smileys keynote address at the conference spoke to how powerful voices, coming together as one, can create a lasting impact in the lives of children which creates a community where no child is overlooked or forgotten.

How to Help

To learn how you can help children in your community, find your local CASA program at BecomeACASA.org. Volunteers must be 21 years of age or older and willing to commit to at least one year of advocacy. No special educational background or experience is required.

About Texas CASA

Austin-based Texas CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) is the statewide organization of 72 local CASA programs that recruit and train volunteers to advocate for children in the child protection system. Last year, 9,131 well-trained volunteers served 27,953 children in 213 of the 254 Texas counties. Texas CASA supports the local CASA programs by advocating for effective public policy for children in the child protection system and by providing funding, training and technical assistance to program staff, board and volunteers.

CASA volunteers are everyday members of the community doing extraordinary work by choosing to speak up for abused and neglected children in their communities. They are screened and trained, then appointed by the court to advocate for the best interests of a child or sibling group in the foster care system. CASA volunteers work to move the children through foster care and into safe, permanent homes as quickly as possible.

www.TexasCASA.org | Twitter.com/TexasCASA | Facebook.com/TexasCASAInc

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161105005007/en/

GDC Marketing & Ideation

Marcie Casas, 210-236-5000

Public Relations Director

[email protected]

or

Texas CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates)

Leslie Morton, 512-610-6101

Training & Communications Director

[email protected]

Source: Texas CASA
BEIRUT (Reuters) - A Syrian government official said he did not expect civilians or rebels to leave besieged eastern Aleppo on Friday during an evacuation window announced by Russia and accused insurgents of blocking any exit.

Moscow and the Syrian army told rebel fighters this week to leave opposition-held neighborhoods with light weapons through two corridors by Friday evening, and said civilians would be allowed to evacuate by other exit points.

There was no sign of any evacuations, however.

"I wish civilians would exit ... but I expect that won't happen, not under these circumstances," Fadi Ismail, an official based in Aleppo in Syria's reconciliation ministry, told Reuters via telephone.

Ismail said fighters from al Qaeda's former Syria branch were preventing both rebels and civilians who wished to leave from doing so, and that factions appeared determined to fight on.

"Jabhat al-Nusra is in control of all of the crossings. For civilians, it's impossible to leave as long as Nusra controls the area," he said, referring to the group which now calls itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

"We're communicating with civilians and even with some militants, the ones who want to leave. Unfortunately, when militants want to leave it's individual cases, not (entire) factions handing themselves over."

Rebels say that Fateh al-Sham has a very small presence in Aleppo city itself, although the powerful group has been crucial for the fight against President Bashar al-Assad's forces and their allies more widely in Aleppo province.

Ismail said prospects for a deal with rebels looked bleak, and he expected military action to resume if no one left on Friday.

"All the messages (from rebels) that I used to receive were 'we're coming for you with car bombs'," he said. "There was nothing to suggest reconciliation would happen."

Asked what would happen if no one evacuated, he said: "There must be military action, of course".

Russia is expected to resume its bombardment of Aleppo once the evacuation window closes later on Friday. Moscow says it has not launched air strikes on the city for more than two weeks as Damascus calls on rebels to leave.

Insurgents have meanwhile launched a counter attack to try to break the siege on eastern Aleppo, which has been mostly surrounded by pro-government forces since July.

Assad seeks the recapture of Aleppo as a strategic prize in the civil war, which is in its sixth year. Some 250,000 people are trapped in eastern Aleppo, and around 1.5 million live in the government-held western neighborhoods.

(Reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus and Ellen Francis in Beirut; Writing by John Davison; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
By Makini Brice

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haiti's interim President Jocelerme Privert defended a government-coordinated storm relief effort on Friday, saying aid had reached some 2 million victims of Hurricane Matthew, amid anger about uneven distribution of food and other materials.

The category-4 hurricane hit Haiti a month ago, killing as many as 1,000 people. It wiped out crops, led to a spike in cholera cases and left tens of thousands homeless in the already fragile country.

Privert said the storm cost Haiti $2 billion in damage, nearly a quarter of the annual GDP of the poorest country in the Americas.

Haiti has been determined to avoid mistakes made after a devastating 2010 earthquake, when foreigners led the aid effort and billions of dollars were spent with disappointing results.

While United Nations officials and charity leaders publicly praise the government for leading the response to the disaster, critics and some victims say aid has been politicized, with disproportionate supplies distributed to people close to political leaders.

Security forces shot dead at least one person and injured others in clashes over aid delivery in the hard-hit port town of Les Cayes this week, while there have been instances of road blocks and looting in areas where trucks carrying food, hygiene kits, tarps, water and medical supplies pass through.

Privert admitted aid distribution remained a challenge because many communities were still inaccessible. He also said looting and misappropriation of aid were partly to blame for the problems, but said nowhere had been left behind.

There is not a single community, accessible or inaccessible, that has not received assistance from the state, Privert said, citing medical supplies delivered to Rendel, a community grappling with a cholera outbreak, by helicopter.

Privert did not specify what kind of assistance had reached the 2 million people, saying only that 788 tons of food and non-food items had been delivered. That represents a relatively small amount for each of the 2 million he said received aid.

All communities will be accessible by Nov. 13, which is also the deadline for restoring functionality to some 300 voting centers before a scheduled presidential election on Nov. 20, Privert said.

No one can prevent the Nov. 20 elections from occurring, the interim president said, rejecting a widely held view that it will be difficult to organize a vote with a large swath of the country struggling to recover.

The first round of the presidential election was held on Oct. 25, but was ultimately scrapped after political leaders alleged widespread fraud.

Privert gave statistics that 546 people died and 128 disappeared in the storm, although local officials have told Reuters that 1,000 people died in the hurricane.

(Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Bill Rigby)
Members of hardline Muslim groups attend a protest against Jakarta's incumbent governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, an ethnic Chinese Christian running in the upcoming election, in Jakarta, Indonesia, November 4, 2016. REUTERS/Beawiharta

By Fergus Jensen and Agustinus Beo Da Costa

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia's President Joko Widodo postponed a visit to Australia on Saturday after a mass protest in Jakarta that briefly turned violent as Muslim extremists pressed for the resignation of the capital's governor, a Christian they say insulted the Koran.

Widodo has faced criticism for failing to rein in hardline groups that had promised for weeks to bring tens of thousands onto the streets of the capital, and during Friday's protest his office said he was inspecting a rail project at the airport.

At a news conference after midnight on Friday, he blamed "political actors" for fanning popular anger over city Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, who is standing for re-election in February, competing with two Muslims for the job.

The governorship of the capital is a powerful position and one held by Widodo before he became president two years ago.

Widodo had planned to use his Nov. 6-8 visit to Australia to cement improving ties, with a focus on economic and maritime cooperation and efforts to counter Islamist militancy.

"Looking at the latest situation and condition in Indonesia that require the presence of the president, President Joko Widodo decided to postpone his scheduled state visit to Australia," a statement from his office said.

The protest against Purnama, the first ethnic Chinese to hold the position of Jakarta governor, was largely peaceful but in the evening the crowd grew restive and police restrained them with tear gas and water cannon fire.

One person died and more than 100 were injured in the violence, many of them police officers. Three vehicles were torched and 18 were damaged, national police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar told a news conference on Saturday.

Clashes broke out in a north Jakarta area where there are large communities of non-Muslims and about 15 people were arrested there for looting a minimart, Amar said.

Some Chinese-owned shops and restaurants were shuttered in northern Jakarta on Saturday, while security officers guarded a temple and a school, according to a resident.

A spokesman for the Islamic Defenders Front, a group that led the protest, denied responsibility for the violence and said the "provocateurs" were the police who fired tear gas.

The group may organize another protest if the legal process against Purnama for his Koran comments is not allowed to run its course, said Munarman, who goes by one name. "If the law is ignored ... then we will call for similar action."

WIDODO BLAMES 'POLITICAL ACTORS'

Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim population, but most follow a moderate form of Islam and protests on such a large scale are rare.

Ethnic Chinese make up just over 1 percent of Indonesia's 250 million people, and they typically do not enter politics.

Indonesian Chinese have faced persecution and violence in the past, especially during the turmoil that gripped Jakarta when former strongman Suharto was toppled in the late 1990s.

About a dozen Muslim groups have accused Purnama of insulting Islam after he jokingly said his opponents had used a verse from the Koran to deceive voters. The verse implies that Muslims should not choose non-Muslims as leaders.

Police are investigating the case against Purnama, who has apologized for his remarks, insisting he was not criticizing the Koranic verse but those who used it to attack him.

Purnama, popularly known as 'Ahok', is a no-nonsense reformer with little patience for the corruption widely blamed for the chaos and dilapidated infrastructure of an overcrowded city of 10 million.

He remains popular despite efforts by Muslim groups to vilify him and is seen as the frontrunner in the election, though many voters are angry with him for evicting thousands from slums to modernize Jakarta.

Widodo, a Muslim, has vowed not to interfere in any legal proceedings against Purnama, who is an ally of the president. But he told the news conference that any legal process involving Purnama would be executed "swiftly, firmly and transparently".

He criticized politicians - whom he didn't name - for inciting die-hard protesters after most had already gone home.

" ... we deplore the incident after the Isha prayers, when [demonstrators] should have already disbanded but became violent. And, we see this was steered by political actors who were exploiting the situation," he said.

A former furniture salesman who became the first president of Indonesia from outside the military or political elite, Widodo struggled in his first year to assert himself but since then he has built alliances across the political spectrum.

Analysts say that by openly supporting Purnama he could weaken his support base.

"From his perspective this visit to Australia just doesn't seem to match the urgency of this happening in Jakarta: although it's not conceivable that he might be overthrown ... it is conceivable that he could be greatly reduced in power to support the re-election of Ahok," said political analyst Wimar Witoelar.

(Additional reporting by Angie Teo and Eveline Danubrata in JAKARTA and by Jarni Blakkarly in MELBOURNE; Writing by Eveline Danubrata and John Chalmers; Editing by Catherine Evans)
By Sonya Dowsett

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain said security forces had arrested the head of Basque militant separatist group ETA in south-western France on Saturday in a joint operation between the French domestic intelligence service and Spanish police.

Mikel Irastorza was detained in a house in Ascain, a village near the Pyrenees mountains, the Spanish Interior Ministry said in a statement, adding that the 41-year-old leader of the illegal organization had been on the run since 2008.

Irastorza had led ETA for just over a year since the arrests of two previous leaders in France last year, the ministry said.

"(The arrest) is a crushing blow to ETA, removing its leadership and eliminating the part that controlled arms and explosives," it said, adding that the operation remained open.

French and Spanish media reported that Irastorza is being held in the French city of Bayonne.

ETA, which does not normally comment in such situations, was formed in the late 1950s during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco and aims to establish an independent Basque state in northern Spain and southern France.

The group killed over 800 people over several decades through bombings and execution-style killings.

However, ETA has been severely weakened in recent years after hundreds of its members were arrested and some of its weapons were seized. It called a unilateral ceasefire in 2011 and pledged to turn in its weapons, although a full handover has yet to happen.

A Spanish man and a French woman were also arrested, the ministry said, alleging they had given shelter to Irastorza and were the owners of the house where he was arrested.

(Editing by Alexander Smith)
A farmer works in her rice field in Suphan Buri province, north of Bangkok, Thailand November 2, 2016. REUTERS/Chaiwat Subprasom

By Patpicha Tanakasempipat

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand's military government has rolled out a series of rescue packages in a bid to help rice farmers, most of whom hail from the political heartlands of the government it toppled, amid tumbling prices of the grain.

Farmers in Thailand, the world's second-largest rice exporter, have traditionally been politically powerful and many helped elect former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra in 2011.

Her administration was removed in a 2014 military coup.

The military government has been anxious to head off potential confrontation with farmers but said in its first year in power that it also wanted to wean them off expensive populist schemes such as a rice scheme introduced by Yingluck which bought rice from farmers at above-market rates.

But in recent weeks the military government has announced measures worth at least 59.28 billion baht ($1.70 billion) aimed at curbing market supply and stabilizing rice prices.

The measures come as the ruling junta is trying to ensure a smooth transition following the death of much-loved King Bhumibol Adulyadej and to maintain stability ahead of a 2017 general election.

"There's a possibility for tension, which could be used to incite political gatherings," said Kan Yuenyong, executive director of Siam Intelligence Unit think-tank.

"The government fears the situation would get out of control, so they have to intervene," he said.

FACEBOOK RICE

Global rice prices have plunged over the past months as the world's largest rice producers anticipate an influx of new stocks towards the end of the year.

Some Thai rice farmers have taken matters into their own hands and are turning to social media network Facebook to sell their grain, shunning rice millers, the industry's traditional middlemen, whose prices they say are simply too low.

Nim Inthasorn, 33, who hails from the northeastern province of Kalasin, said she has received orders for over 50 tonnes of rice since she started a Facebook page in October.

"I would hold the rice until prices improve, but that isn't practical so this is what I can do now," she said.

Her family's jasmine rice fetches around 7 baht ($0.20) per kilogram from rice millers, but on Facebook she can sell it for 23 baht ($0.66) to 34 baht (0.97) per kilogram, she added.

But the trend is unlikely to take over traditional methods of selling rice, said Pisanu Sangyoo, an analyst at the Thai Rice Exporters Association.

"Most farmers still have to do business with rice millers and exporters," he said.

Government spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd said this week the government supports farmers selling their grain online.

(Editing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Michael Perry)
Branding for Vodafone is seen on the exterior of a shop in London, Britain, September 10, 2015. REUTERS/Toby Melville

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Vodafone's Dutch subsidiary said on Friday it had sold fixed-line operations with around 150,000 customers to Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Mobile Nederland for an undisclosed sum.

Vodafone agreed to sell the operations as a concession to European Union regulators in order to gain approval for the larger merger of Vodafone's Dutch operations with Liberty Global's Dutch subsidiary Ziggo.

Vodafone is the second-largest mobile provider in the Netherlands, while Ziggo is the biggest cable company.

Together they are expected to form a strong competitor to KPN, the former Dutch state telecommunications company.

(Reporting by Toby Sterling; editing by Jason Neely)
A Volkswagen (VW) logo covered with mud and dust is seen on the wheel of a car in Grafenwoehr, Germany, October 26, 2016. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle/File Photo

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Volkswagen expects to be able to use its tweaked MQB modular platform for the next two generations of cars, creating substantial cost savings, VW brand chief Herbert Diess said.

"In the past months we have worked on the cost side of MQB and made significant progress," Diess told German daily Boersen-Zeitung in an interview published on Saturday.

Volkswagen is cutting investments at the VW brand and stepping up development of electric vehicles as it battles to cope with the fallout from its diesel emissions scandal.

The MQB platform - the base for most of its small and medium front-wheel-drive models - uses a large number of common parts across its range of models and brands, allowing it to assemble vehicles more quickly and at lower costs.

"The MQB has high technical substance, so we can use it for the next two vehicle generations without further major investments," Diess told Boersen-Zeitung.

Volkswagen has said it wants to increase MQB-based vehicle output to 7 million cars by 2018 from about 2 million in 2014.

Sources told Reuters last month that Diess wants to cut annual costs at the troubled VW brand by 3.7 billion euros ($4.1 billion) through 2021 in a so-called future pact with workers.

They said his plan would help to lift the operating margin at the VW brand, the group's largest by sales, to 4 percent by 2020 from an expected 2 percent this year.

That is less than a previous 6 percent target and below profitability benchmarks at rivals Renault , Peugeot , Ford (NYSE: F) and General Motors (NYSE: GM).

Diess told Boersen-Zeitung that a 4 percent margin was the minimum a carmaker needed to earn its cost of capital and that 6 percent was necessary to fund investments in the future.

"We are rising to that challenge. We will achieve more in the future with fewer investments to respond to competition," he added.

($1 = 0.8973 euros)

(Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Stephen Powell)
Agriculture production slides as crops affected by pesticides and weedicides ban By Quintus Perera View(s): View(s):

Sri Lankan agriculture production of certain crops has dropped sharply this year owing to the ban on pesticides and weedicides with experts warning of a situation where the countrys food security is at stake.

Top level agricultural research scientist professionals (Members of the Sri Lanka Organisation of Agriculture Professionals (SLOAP)) raised this issue at a media briefing last week in Colombo. They say banning chemical fertiliser and widespread campaigns carried out against the use of these material has reduced agriculture production in

Sri Lanka.

The media briefing organised by the SLOAP explained scientific facts on various recent issues related to agriculture in Sri Lanka and focused on the use of agro-chemicals, food security and impact of inappropriate agricultural practices on the environment and human health.

Dr. Parakrama Waidyanatha, a member of SLOAP and an agricultural research scientist with long years of experience, showed how far the non-usage of the chemical fertiliser in the short period had affected some varieties of agricultural produce.

Quoting data from the Central Province Agricultural Department, he said maize production had fallen this year so far by 20 per cent when compared with 2105 output, ulundu was down by 31 per cent, chillies by 24 per cent and kurakkan by 55 per cent.

With regard to the Glyphosate weedicide ban, he said that there is no scientific base to indicate that this chemical is the root cause of kidney disease and said that an international workshop organised jointly by the World Health Organisation and the Presidential Task Force on the prevention of kidney disease held last April concluded that there was no scientific base to indicate that agro-chemicals is the root cause for this disease.

Quoting Prof. Bombastus von Hohenheim, founder of toxicology, Dr. Waidyanatha said that while all substances are poisonous and nothing is not poisonous, the level of poison is ascertained by the quantities used.

Dr.W. M. A. D. B. Wickramasinghe, a former Additional Director of Research, Department of Agriculture, Peradeniya, said that fertiliser is used for plant growth to provide nutrients and fertiliser use should be balanced as soils are poor in fertility due to continuous cultivation.

Explaining toxicity in fertiliser, he said not only in chemical fertiliser even in organic fertiliser there is a toxic content. He said the problem arises when farmers use too much fertiliser like in potato cultivation where some farmers use around seven times more than the required and prescribed quantity.

He said that there are 17 essential plant nutrients and without them a plant is unable to complete its life cycle, while function of one essential element cannot be replaced by another.

Implying that the scientific research based composition of fertiliser use has immensely helped human life, Dr. Wickramasinghe indicated that in 1940 Sri Lankas population was 6 million and 60 per cent of rice was imported. Then paddy cultivation in the country was with traditional varieties without any agrochemicals and the life expectancy was only 46 years.

But today  in 2015  life expectancy is 74.3 years with food production based on well researched agrochemicals. He said that this vast improvement in the life expectancy and other pluses in food production are due to the improved research and extension services, improved food and nutrition status, improved adaptation of modern technology, improved health and education.

To get the same yield from agrochemical-based production, a large amount of organic fertiliser has to be used and invariably the same amount of toxicity is in the large quantities of organic fertilizer, he pointed out.

The presentations were moderated by Prof K. Samarasinghe, President, SLOAP and Prof. in Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Peradeniya University.
Cheap tea imports for blending will ruin Ceylon Tea brand and endanger industry, warns top producer View(s):

The import of cheaper teas to Sri Lanka for blending purposes will not only destroy the Ceylon Tea brand but also endanger the entire industry and its two million dependents, warns tea industry veteran Merril J. Fernando.

In a response to Plantations Minister Navin Dissanayakes interview in the Business Times last week on various tea developments, he recalled how he urged then President J.R. Jayewardene against a similar move in 1979. In a letter to the Business Times, Mr. Fernando said:

The Ministers statement to your newspaper provides good news as well as very disturbing news. As a veteran in the tea industry, backed by very substantial investments in all of its segments, I have a fair knowledge of every aspect of the industry. In this background, I consider it my sacred duty to explain my feelings about the Ministers statement.

1. Re-introduction of the Fertiliser Subsidy

Re-introduction of the fertiliser subsidy for RPCs is most welcome to all RPCs. It will make a significant contribution to the industry.

2. Bringing back Glyphosate

The prospect of bringing back glyphosate will inspire a sign of relief to RPCs. They must be encouraged not to rely entirely on weedicides and to shift their reliance to a more sustainable system of weeding which would progressively reduce reliance on glyphosate.

All RPCs would join me in commending the Minister for these initiative for whilst chemical inputs like glyphosate cannot be a long or medium term solution, their elimination needs to be planned and managed over a period of time.

As a part of our commitment to ensuring environmental sustainability of our plantations, Dilmah Conservation has assisted Kahawatte Plantations in testing, refining and developing bio char, as an ecologically friendly and safe alternative to artificial fertilisers. Bio char additionally strengthens the plant, making them better able to resist pests and fungi, as well as produce better quality teas. We believe that bio chair and similar methods are the final solution and we offer our research and methodology to our colleagues in the industry for the benefit of Ceylon Tea.

The Ministers search for other organic fertilisers is commendable. When they become available, their use will strengthen the Ceylon Tea brand and as a result prices will improve further.

3. Revision of Lease Agreement

The Ministers observations on the extension of RPC leases are important, however, it is vital to assess progress of each RPC in greater detail. For example, compare the assets entrusted to RPCs initially and where they are today. A complete inventory of assets at both points is essential. Obtain full details of agricultural practices maintained, improvements to production and importantly, all information about lands, buildings leased out and how that income benefitted RPCs.

I agree with the Minister that applying pressure on RPCs at this time will not present an answer to their problems. This is the appropriate time to establish a cordial working relationship between a competent government body and RPCs. This can be achieved by an ongoing dialogue among Government, Planters Association, Smallholders Association, Factory Owners Association, large exporters of tea including, value added tea.

4. Monitoring Scheme

A stringent mechanism to monitor the work of RPCs is an urgent necessity. People competent to monitor plantations are ex senior planters, who carry a wealth of experience and knowledge badly needed in the industry today. I feel that some reputed planters now, living in retirement, will accept an advisory role in developing the industry.

5. Palm Oil production

As a commodity palm oil is subject to the uncertainty of a market that is tainted by growers who are damaging the environment in expanding cultivation and also to volatility and control influenced by major players. My priority, in respect of crop diversification, is an aggressive programme to develop spices, for which Sri Lanka is famous, and command a ready market at lucrative prices. Planting of cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, cloves, pepper, vanilla, on vacant lands should be encouraged and incentivised. Ceylon cocoa is famous for its quality and therefore, unproductive land around Matale region should be utilised for the crop. Diversification should receive priority for these crops where parallel development of value addition strategies and infrastructure will produce a significant benefit to the national economy and reinforce Sri Lankas uniqueness in the spice industry. Spices will also provide an additional source of income to RPCs while enhancing export revenue.

6. Blending Ceylon Tea

In my opinion, the good intentions of the Minister will be destroyed by his partiality towards promoting a CEYLON TEA HUB. I have personally opposed free importation of tea since 1979, when the late Minister Lalith Athulathmudali came up with this idea, having visited a tea blending and trading centre in Holland. He was vociferous in implementing his wish. I explained to him at length the potential implications of such a venture and followed up with another meeting with him and the late President J.R. Jayewardene on this subject.

They accepted my position and did not wish to risk any harm to the tea industry. Since then, I find myself continually defending and protecting Ceylon Tea for the nation. Amidst the reality that every kilogramme of Ceylon Tea, whilst the most expensive in the world, is sold, the only motivation for importing tea for blending is to reduce the cost of tea, and in that process, substitute tea from cheaper origins for quality Ceylon Tea. Most of the vociferous advocates of a tea hub are traders, whose only interest is their bottom line. With the future of the Ceylon Tea industry being so obviously aligned with quality and value addition, it is clear that proponents of blending Ceylon and other teas for export have no other interest in the sustainability of the industry and, wish to exploit producers by selling cheaper. As any marketer with an understanding of the beverage market will explain, price is a temporary tool and a bottomless downward spiral in competition with other producers.

I am now accused of having a vested interest in preventing a Ceylon Tea hub. Of course, I have vested interests in protecting our tea industry. My family has very significant investments in  tea plantations, which are recognised for their excellent performance; tea brokering in Forbes & Walker Ltd and an enviable record in establishing the only fully

Sri Lankan owned-globally respected brand name. These enterprises represent the top end of performance and quality. In protecting these interests, we protect CEYLON TEA.

Marketing DILMAH CEYLON tea as No. 1 quality in the world, Ceylon Tea Services Plc, a listed company is delivering very generous returns to investors. An investment of Rs. 10,000 in Ceylon Tea Services Plc originally, delivered Rs. 7 million in dividends up to 2015 and the Rs. 10,000 investment reached Rs. 17 million in the stock market in June this year. MJF Groups average export price is Rs. 1,500 per kilo.

As a strategy, selling cheap has failed, not only in tea but in every other category. The benefits are invariably temporary. The cry for making Ceylon Tea cheaper by blending with cheaper tea from other origins is clearly motivated by the self-interest of some traders, totally disregarding the interests of Ceylon Tea and the national economy.

These numbers establish that (COP) cost of production of a kilo of Ceylon Tea is, by far, and equally our selling prices are also e highest amongst all producing countries. Equally, our selling prices are the highest. Nevertheless, the industry is in dire straits. Sitting in this comfortable market position, what will a tea hub do? It will bring disaster to our industry by fatally damaging the Ceylon Tea brand that next year celebrates its 150th anniversary.

The hub is intended to make Ceylon Tea / Ceylon Tea blends cheaper, therefore every kilo of tea imported into the country will be substantially below our COP (cost of production) and cheaper blends will be exported. Cheaper blends will reduce our FOB earnings and the gap between our COP and selling prices will widen. That is the point when the foolishness of a tea hub will be realised and the facility withdrawn. Sadly, all possible damage to Ceylon Tea would have occurred by then. Believers in Pure Ceylon tea, who pay handsome prices for it will then lose trust in the tea that comes from Sri Lanka, knowing that it has become a mixture of tea from different countries. Whatever short term gains the traders make with their cheaper blends, will be unprofitable and eventually lost as the countries from which they import tea compete with us.

More importantly the fate of any brand is determined by consumers and if the trust and awareness of that have been built over 150 years is dismantled by permitting Ceylon Tea to be mixed with tea from other origins, the consequences will be irrevocable. A century and a half of promoting Ceylon Tea, and the association between Sri Lanka and quality tea would require no more than a few months to destroy a brand that takes decades to build but  especially in the digital age  only weeks to destroy.

You would then not find a single person in the country who supported the hub. Only the Minister and the government of the day will be driven to accept responsibility. In the early 1980s free importation of tea for re-export was permitted. There were such flagrant abuses that the government was forced to change the policy and correct their error. We cannot afford to face another similar eventuality.

The social, political and economic consequences of permitting importation of tea from any other origin, necessarily therefore cheaper than Ceylon Tea, would extend to disruption of the livelihoods of over two million dependents, including smallholders, workers on RPCs and the ancillary industries and local economies in areas of Sri Lanka where tea plantations dominate. The outcomes are almost certain to require considerably greater state intervention in financially supporting affected industries and communities, than the perceived benefit from permitting international brands to take advantage of the image of Ceylon Tea. Political instability that would be the natural outcome of the social and economic disruption that is a clear result of this, would only add to the melee.

7. Promoting Ceylon Tea

There are more Ceylon Tea brands around the world, than those exported from Sri Lanka. A good example is Russia. Some of our exporters built brands for Russian traders over the years. I pointed out to the government and the trade repeatedly, that they will use our exporters to pack Russian brands on attractive contract packing rates and will sooner or later, establish production facilities in Russia and reduce Ceylon tea content in their packs having built those brands exploiting Ceylon tea. I was highlighting this fear from 1990 for some years however no one took any notice of it.

They will then add a token presence of Ceylon Tea to their packs and reply on cheaper tea to lower their prices while continuing to exploit consumer perception of Ceylon Tea as the worlds finest. The most harmful aspect of this business is that all the blended tea packs in Russia and elsewhere are sold as Ceylon Tea. Further damage is inflicted on Ceylon Tea by those Russian brands now also appearing on supermarket shelves throughout Europe, West Asia and Asia Pacific. This is the reward we receive for co-operating with those companies.

On the 150th anniversary of one of the worlds great agricultural endeavours, we should celebrate Ceylon Tea and build on the achievements of the past, not dismantle them with damaging consequences for all including proponents of import of tea for blending and re-export.

The following figures will make you wonder why some traders are crying for a tea hub.
Finance Ministers Ease of Doing Business forum praised by exporters View(s):

Some of the entrepreneurs and industrialists present at the 10th Forum of Ease of doing business organised by the Ministry of Finance, say that this is a unique and results-oriented exercise.

They made these comments to the Business Times on the sidelines of the forum held last week with Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake presiding, at the Old Times Building in Colombo.

The many problems of the entrepreneurs which were listed reveals how the whole regulatory machinery causes delays, thus leading to corruption causing immense problems and excess spending.

However many of the cases were solved instantly by the Minister by confronting the relevant state officials in solving the problem. Mr Karunanayake indicated that some of the difficulties brought before them involves government revenue and they have to be mindful of that important factor while solving the industry and business peoples woes.

As certain projects are to be approved by several state agencies the delays are inevitable and therefore it was felt that all these agencies need to be pooled together and the approval to be given through one agency.

This was clearly apparent when the Minister discussed the major difficulties confronted by the clay tile manufacturing industry. Clay is the essential raw material for the tile industry. Due to obtaining approval from various state agencies, tile industrialists find it extremely difficulty in getting a permit to mine clay, as clay mining is banned without a permit.

Baptist Fernando, President, All Island Clay Roofing Tile Manufacturers Association (AICRTMA), urged the Finance Minister to work out a process to ensure a continuous supply of clay for their industry because at present obtaining this essential raw material legally is extremely difficulty and therefore they were compelled to obtain their requirements from illegal mining.

He said that permits are issued after the clearance is obtained from several government regulatory agencies while the illegal mining flourishes. He said that they have their own land which is rich with clay and requested the Minister to intervene to mine them legally.

The Minister was surprised to note the illegal mining of clay and why the illegal mining could not be eliminated.

Mr.Fernando said as far back as November last year their association has submitted seven applications for permits that would cover an area of around 10 acres but they were allowed only three permits that would cover about little more than 10 perches. If all their applications are permitted that clay would suffice for one year but if only the permitted extents are allowed this would suffice only for few days whereas this raw material is needed by 225 factories islandwide while the Wayamba Province alone has 165 factories.

Mr. Fernando, pointing out that each factory employs 10 families, urged the government to make it a policy to use clay tile for all the new government buildings in the backdrop of the government decision to ban the use of asbestos.

Mr. Karunanayake called for a quick report on the issue from all the relevant agencies in a bid to ensure a quick and workable solution.

Col. (retired) C. Weeratunga, Global Sea Food (Pvt) Ltd presenting their issue said that they are importing form trays to pack the re-processed frozen fish products for their special export order project and they were in the practice of importing the trays under HS Code 3923.10.90 (trays). But the Sri Lanka Customs notified them that the HS code has been changed to 3923.10.40 which is defined as boxes for which the tax component would be higher.

He showed the item which clearly resembled a tiny tray and told the forum that a custom officer asked some money  what could be implied as a bribe to settle the matter  but as he declined agree to this request, the matter is now being inquired and the three containers already in the Port were held under Customs custody.

The delay is costing them demurrage and huge legal fees by way of retaining counsel at the inquiry and by now that cost exceeds their profits from exporting the product.

Twenty such issues faced by the entrepreneurs and industries were taken up at the forum. Most of them were settled instantly with the agreement of the state officials present while in the case of those that could not be solved instantly, reports were called for from relevant state agencies with the instructions that they should be submitted in one week. -(QP)
HSBC: Its still not over! View(s):

Amidst serious charges of tampering accounts and hoodwinking the regulators, HSBC Sri Lanka is embroiled in a dispute with local staff which resulted in HSBC headquarters in Hong Kong probing allegations by workers. Investigators from HSBC headquarters had sent an LN (Lotus Note) which is an internal HSBC Group communication method to staff listing a telephone number to contact this international team to make an appointment and tell their story at the Cinnamon Grand Hotel, sources said. The reason why they gave us specific time slots was because that way we wont bump into each other, a staff member who had met with the investigators told the Business Times. He said that some ex-HSBC staff who had been terminated also met up with the international team to share their issues.

This came about when HSBC Sri Lanka experienced its biggest blow to-date when some senior managers at HSBC Corporate Banking were sacked over charges that incentives-based performance figures were misrepresented with positions vacated as a result were filled with foreigners. Industry sources said that the Head of Human Resources was sent out of the bank through a Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) due to many findings at these meetings. The HSBC staff member said that the international team wrote down all details and assured that a process will be on to rectify what was done. That process is now on. And we are hopeful.
PM spells out Sri Lankas third generation of economic reforms View(s):

Sri Lanka plans to overcome the current economic challenge by uplifting the country from a lower middle-income country to a higher middle income country in the first instance and thereafter to a high income country within the next 3 to 4 years.

With the aim of achieving this target by doubling the personnel income levels by 2025 and escalate growth rate up to 7 percent per annum, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe unveiled the governments 1500 day economic development programme in his policy statement made in parliament on October 27.

He made a comprehensive statement outlining key reforms the government was planning to introduce for the next 1500 days. This will be followed by the 2017 budget to be presented by Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake on November 10.

Along with the IMF, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, lending institutions of the US, Europe and Japan have expressed their willingness to lend Sri Lanka funds at considerably low rates of interest. These funds would enhance and strengthen the economy, the Prime Minister revealed.

Commenting on the policy statement, several, economists said that it is essential to make this plan a reality by promptly implementing it with the necessary financial inputs from the 2017 budget.

The government should set in motion the proposals put forward in the policy statement and the two main parties in the government should reach a consensus and make a commitment towards this end, they pointed out.

Doubling the current level of per capita national income from USD 4000 to USD is no magic trick  rather, it is setting in motion a planned effort to grow at a faster rate. If we continue to grow at our current rate of 5 per cent per annum we will only double our personal income levels by 2033, the Prime Minister stated.

Inequalities

In 2015, the government addressed the inequality in income distribution at a national level. Consequently, it has been able to uplift the income levels of low income earners and public officials. At the same time, tax levies are being imposed on affluent groups to fund higher wages and minimise government borrowing, he added.

The Government also plans to create a positive investment climate that will generate jobs. Hurdles that stand in the way of achieving growth for business start-ups will be removed.

The processes of starting a business, getting construction permits, electricity connections and bank credit, registering property, protecting minority investors, the payment of taxes, trading across borders, the enforcement of contracts, the resolution of insolvency, and regulations governing labour market will be efficient mechanisms that will facilitate business growth. Additionally, the Government will also prepare legislations to establish a single window for investment approval. Further, the government will hold discussions with the trade unions and relevant stakeholders. The targeted outcome is to bring Sri Lanka within the top 70 nations of the Doing Business Index by 2020.

Towards creating newer markets for exports, the government is also negotiating three trade agreements  ETCA with India and two FTAs with China and Singapore.

These are significant developments even as these two large economic regions struggle to maintain economic momentum in their domestic markets, which have been traditional export destinations for our businesses.

Expressing his views on the economic policy statement, Shiran Fernando, Lead Economist at Frontier Research told the Business Times that this plan should be made practical as it will bring economic stability in the country.

He stressed that the plan and the budget should be agreeable to each without any mismatch.

The main budget proposals should not be counter to the plan put forward by the premier, he said, adding that next year will be crucial for the country to fast-track the economic reform agenda indicated in the policy statement.

Trade pacts

Sri Lanka needs to finalise trade agreements with China and Singapore as trade and FDI need to increase significantly and rapidly, he added.

Regaining the GSP+ facility is also a positive sign for the improvement of Sri Lankan exports, he pointed out.

Mr. Fernando noted that the government should be more clear and transparent on the debt to equity swap with Chinese investors in Hambantota port and Mattala airport. It is better if it comes as FDI, he said.

Referring to GSP+, the Prime Minister said: In 2003, as the then Prime Minister, I set in motion the application process for GSP+, subsequently concluded by President Chandrika Kumaratunga. While Bangladesh also enjoyed concessional entry into the EU markets, Sri Lanka lost the GSP+ incentive in 2010.

In his policy statement, Mr. Wickremesinghe noted that in 2003, the textile and garment sector in Sri Lanka stood at US$ 2.5 billion, while in Bangladesh; it was $ 5.2 billion. Last year Sri Lankas exports went up to $ 4.8 billion while in Bangladesh it stood at$ 26.6 billion.

Most of us thought that our next generations would have to pay the debts incurred for Hambantota port and Mattala airport. Now, we have entered into a debt to equity swap. Chinese investors have made significant commitments to invest equity in the debt strapped Hambantota Port and the Mattala Airport as PPP ventures, the PM added.

The Government plans to receive sufficient funds to offset these debts, he revealed.

The governments development strategy will be aimed at capturing trading opportunities within these identified Indian Ocean markets via pursuing trade liberalisation agreements with their governments. Concurrently, we are focusing on defining the two development corridors across the country  this will be a focal area for investment by the public and the private sector.

The logistical and infrastructural facilities that provide faster, secure links to the global value chain empowering viable business ventures, will be spearheaded for the first time in Sri Lanka, in these development corridors.

The two development corridors will correspond to the two distinct halves of the country irrigated by the two monsoons. The South-Western corridor will have as its major axis the proposed Kandy-Colombo highway linked to the existing Southern highway. This region has the strongest potential to link up with global value chains, because of its close proximity to the Katunayake airport and the Colombo harbour.

This project envisages creating a Megapolis Development Authority to develop the entirety of the Western Megapolis an urban area of over 8  million people.

Sub corridor

A brand new financial city centre is to be based at the new reclaimed land development project alongside the Port of Colombo.

A sub-corridor will stretch along the central highlands from Kandy via Nuwara Eliya to Badulla and linked to the Kandy-Colombo highway.

This will connect the revitalized plantations economy and modernized agricultural pursuits and will also lay emphasis on tourism and service delivery initiatives.

The second North-Eastern development corridor will connect the Eastern Province and the North Central Province to Jaffna linking the Trincomalee Port City to the Rajarata. The completion of the Moragahakanda and the Malwatu Oya reservoirs will create new vistas for the country and will result in the region gaining more land for agriculture. It will further result in the historic cities of Polonnaruwa and Anuradhapura emerging as modern urban centres. Trincomalee will be urbanized and transformed into a world-class Port City.

The governments intention is to create a lawful economic environment that will set the stage for sustainable development. It will incorporate a sustainable development entity that will provide the necessary framework and initiate mechanisms required. I called this the third generation of economic reforms, the PM noted.

The first generation was introduced by President Jayewardene, the second by President Premadasa.

The new plan of the government is based on multifaceted economic linkages to global supply chains and the planned increase in trade development. Many qualified people prefer well-paying jobs that are given based on professional capabilities. It is not viable to maintain a low paying production based economy, he said.

When asked to make some comments on the trade and commerce perspective, Thilak Godamanna , President of the National Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka, said that they welcomed the policy statement of the Prime Minister but the important aspect is its implementation.

The government should allocate necessary funds to relevant state agencies and ministries to implement the programmes stipulated in the plan. Otherwise the whole exercise will become fruitless he added.

The economic success of the plan will depend on the ability to deliver its results to the people effectively and efficiently, he emphasised.

A practical methodology should be developed by the government soon to make this plan a reality, he pointed out.

New board to manage state enterprises

The government will establish a Public Commercial Enterprise Board by law which is an organization that will manage SOEs enabling them to be more efficiently run on a commercial basis ensuring value for money. We are creating a Public Wealth Trust through which the shares in state-owned entrepreneur enterprises will be held in trust for the people, the PM said.

Plans are underway to set up a fully empowered National Agricultural Marketing Authority to coordinate the marketing of agricultural products, and develop existing markets, transport and storage facilities. In addition, new infrastructure facilities such as cool storage will be added at a divisional and regional level, for preservation of food before or after purchase.

It is also planned to create 250 polas, farmer markets island-wide for farmers to bring their produce to local markets.

Under the education reforms, a fresh policy initiative for making 13 years of education mandatory is now in place.

A pilot project on providing 13 years of mandatory education will commence next year. Those who do not pursue higher education after O/Ls will be trained under an upper Secondary Vocational Education system.

The digital economy will empower the nation  through providing affordable and secure Internet connectivity to every citizen in any part of Sri Lanka, removing barriers for cross-border international trade.

A platform for cashless payments will also be created. Digital technology will be included as a new subject in the school curriculum. The government plans to foster entrepreneurship opportunities in digital commerce while providing training in cyber security monitoring and response.

Commenting on the digital economy and creating agencies for this purpose, Subhashini Abeysinghe, Head of Economic Research at Verite Research, noted that it is essential to eliminate bottlenecks that hamper successful implementation of a paperless trading platform and the main impediment is the non-acceptance of electronic documents and e-signatures.

In 2006, the Electronic Transaction Act No 19 was passed in Parliament, providing the legal framework for the country to accept e-documents, she said adding that there must be assurance the courts will accept the e-signature in the event of a dispute and the matter ends up in courts. This Act gives that validity to the e-signature. But its still not accepted in any transactions, she pointed out.

This was because of the inability to accept electronic signatures in situations where a signature is required for processing, she said. Even 10 years later, to clear cargo or process the documentation, hard copies of the documents, signed by hand should be physically submitted and e-documents are not accepted she revealed. - (Bandula)
All that rubbish and more to come View(s):

In a few days time the world will know who has crept into the White House in what must surely be a Hobsons choice that even Hobson would not have contemplated. The two candidates provide as stark a contrast as American history can offer and both count for smells numbers 1 and 2 in the civic nostril.

When the people of the United States are asked to choose between an impudent and temerarious candidate and another whose trustworthiness and judgment are sullied, then we must pity the citizens of the most powerful nation in todays world just as Sri Lankans pity themselves at the choices they are saddled within their own small political world.

If millions of voters in the US are left with two candidates of dubious character and have to leave their country in the hands of one of them- one an unpredictable maverick and a seeming misogynist and the other an aggressive and dangerous woman whose past performance has shown so-what have they left but to fall back on hopeful incantations.

If such is the plight of the sole super power whose president will have his or her finger on the nuclear button, as it were, what chance will a country such as Sri Lanka have as greater numbers of political Trumps and devious Clintons tramp across the country flying their flags of false promises.

In the last year the world has watched and listened to the tragicomedy being played out on the American stage as the country searched for a successor to the incumbent Barack Obama. Millions of TV viewers were glued to the box as the two candidates slugged it out during three separate debates. But the American electorate has been none the wiser for it. All one saw was the splattering of mud that has stuck to both and hardly improved their images.

So after more than 600 days of campaigning the two will meet for the last shoot out at the O.K. Corral on Tuesday. But the curtain will not come down on this disgraceful episode in American democracy for the show must go on as it must in our relatively tiny Sri Lanka.

In our own little world there have been plots and sub-plots  some tragic, some comic  in the last 20 months or more as politicians, their business cronies, relatives, friends, political discards and other riff-raff jostled for power, influence and means to fiddle the state and the people.

Sri Lanka may not be much bigger than some states in the US. But that does not mean that our politicians and their hangers-on cannot out do their American counterparts when it comes to putting self before country while oozing patriotism from every pore.

While our attention has remained focused all these months on the comic interludes and scatter-brained campaigns that have gone on in the name of democracy- at- work in the US with such a massive spread of media available to us here, the happenings in Sri Lanka have somehow not received the attention they should have.

Not that we are incapable of turning on our own pantomime. It is just that the timing of the big event across the Atlantic or Pacific depending from which direction one approaches the US of A, has been so distractive that they have gone unnoticed. So entertaining has been the election drama with even the FBI stepping into add some colour as if it did not have colour enough, that I almost missed the remarkable comment of one of our own presidents of not too long ago.

As though Sri Lankas own political canvass was monochromatic and dull, out steps Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga to add a colourful splash of political gossip. At an event in Gampaha former president Chandrika Kumaratunga is reported to have said that J.R.Jayewardene, the first executive president, tried to split the SLFP by offering inducements to the then No.2 of the SLFP Maithripala Senanayake and Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Maithripala Senanayake of course has passed away but Mahinda Rajapaksa has laughed off the whole thing.

What intrigues me-like all the stories that are now being told of Donald Trump  is why this story has not been told before. I do not, of course, put it beyond Junius Richard to want to divide the SLFP. He once tried to have Anura Bandaranaike fill a vacant seat by not putting forward a candidate against him at a by-election. It is not surprising that he was called Junius the genius.

The more disturbing question is why this story seemed to have been buried in the recesses of the Kumaratunga mind or wherever and not been told before. Why is it being resurrected now? Is it because SLFP Mac 2 is in the offing? If JR made a move as Chandrika Kumaratunga says he did with inducements it would have happened in the 1980s. She says she has proof.

One would have thought that she should have done a Wikileak many years ago especially when her relations with Mahinda Rajapaksa had reached rock bottom. But yet she seems to have kept silent about it  at least it was not made public, as far as I remember- until a week or so ago.

Surely this is not the kind of political drama that remains closeted when so much capital could be made out of it, if that is the intention in disclosing it now. It seems like an FBI act in A minor.

But when it comes to comedy the best this government appears to be able to produce is a kind of Manappuwa- Josie Baba scenario from the earliest days of Sinhala cinema. Remember the fiasco about the VAT proposal? There was the original 11% VAT. Then the wise guys in government wanted to raise it to 15% but made such as hash of trying to get it through that it ended up in court. It was held that the procedure was wrong. These chaps who had spent years in parliament, possibly twiddling their thumbs and collecting duty-free vehicle permits, did not even know how it should be done.

So then what happens! The traders did not know whether it was 11% as it stood or 15% as it was intended to be. In the confusion the unscrupulous businessmen and traders made a tidy profit selling goods at 15% VAT when it should not have been so. As usual it was the poor citizens who paid while the rich could not care less.

Now handing over a country to a set of people who cannot get even simple procedures straight is like putting Trump in the White House with a couple of boxes of jigsaws and telling him to run the US of A.

See what an absolute mess has been made of the issue of treasury bonds. This has been dragging on since February last year and still not seen a resolution. When the term of the acting governor of the Central Bank Arjuna Mahendran was not extended largely because of the bond controversy the unexpected happened. The man who the President refuses to have as head of the Central Bank ends up in the Prime Ministers office as an adviser. Not an adviser on treasury bonds, surely.

When COPE, the parliamentary watchdog on state enterprises resurrects the investigation into the bond issue, the previous inquiry by the then COPE having been aborted with the dissolution of parliament, it is claimed that some UNP members in it acted in a manner that was not in the best interest of COPE and its investigation.

Why, the wise guys of the UNP in COPE even tried to submit a minority report. Like the lack of understanding displayed over procedures on the VAT issue, the UNPs COPE group that included lawyers did not seem to know that Parliaments Standing Orders did not allow for minority reports to be submitted.

One can quite understand why, spurred on by the Minister of Provincial Councils and Local Government Faizer Musthapha, the government is concerned with getting rid of our rubbish.

The other day President Sirisena officially launched the new rubbish collection scheme from his Paget Road residence. Armed with bags and coloured rubbish bins adorning the background, President Sirisena was given a lesson in separating one lot of rubbish from the recyclable.

Politically such a lesson should come in handy especially when some day he has to separate the sheep from the goats in the cabinet. Some would wish it happens sooner. But then one cannot have all ones wishes granted especially when it comes to the idiosyncracies and the lunatic-fringe behaviour of politicians.

Now that Minister Musthapha seems so concerned with making sure that rubbish is properly collected and disposed of, he would be wise to have a whole array of coloured bins lined up near that house by the Diyawanna Oya.

There is so much rubbish emanating from that sanctum sanctorum, that repository of the peoples sovereignty, Faizer Musthapha would need to arrange for garbage trucks to turn up several times a day.

If I might contribute a thought or two to the over-worked mind of Minister Musthapha still grappling with the problem of local government elections, perhaps he could have bins in the hue of each political party.

That would help see whether any of thoughts of the individual parties can be recycled though I doubt it.
More (legal) horrors of the counter-terror draft View(s):

The Governments proposed draft on a new counter-terror law for Sri Lanka is rather like a thoroughly unpleasant case discovery. Each time that one revisits afresh, new horrors are unearthed.

Several other fiendish offences

Drawn reluctantly back to this document following representations from several quarters, it may be said that absorbing its contents could well qualify as being subjected to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment within the meaning of Article 11 of the Constitution. Possibly, this exercise may not warrant that necessary degree of severity amounting to an infliction of torture. But even that is debatable, given that psychological torture is encompassed within the modern definition of the term.

This accusation is warranted by the drafts atrociously wide reach of acts classified as offences which, in whole, would prohibit the entire range of democratic activity. A few such offences were commented upon in these column spaces following extracts of the draft being exclusively published in this newspaper, (see Is this counter-terrorism in a far deadlier garb? the Sunday Times, October 16, 2016). Apart from these, several other fiendishly contrived offences are also included as terrorism related offences and associated offences which carry stiff penalties. I will return to this later.

But first, some general observations are pertinent. On sober consideration, it is the very height of unfounded optimism as expressed by some politicians, to claim that this document can somehow be cleaned up during the parliamentary committee process. In fact, there is a distinctly mischievous danger therein, given the eager propensity of even the political representatives of the minorities to conform to unhealthy compromises of the Unity Government. Leaving this draft to their slender mercies carries a high degree of risk.

Government must formally admit ownership

Accordingly the only viable safeguard lies through robust public calls demanding that the Government formally admit to the ownership of this counter-terror draft. Thereafter public discussion must follow on its contents. Timorous complaints that the Government has failed to present the document for public scrutiny really will not do.

And lest the misguided think that this is a concern limited only to the North and East, the contrary is the case. The Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA, 1979), which this new counter-terror law is meant to replace even though it is far worse, was first used against leftist activists of the majority community under the Jayawardene dispensation.

Since then, the PTA has been employed with scant regard to ethnicity, though the decades long Wanni war meant that its victims were predominantly of Tamil ethnicity. In the eighties, ordinary Sinhalese citizens were targeted by the PTA during the so-called period of terror in the South. The media was the first victim of the combined ill effects of the PTA and emergency regulations imposed under the Public Security Ordinance (PSO, 1947). Journalists were threatened, assaulted, imprisoned and killed under these laws.

Cardinal fault is ours

Those pontificating on media standards while living in the comfort of their secluded corners amidst retreating in dismayed disorder at the disarray of their much hyped rainbow alliance need to be forcibly reminded that journalists lived (and sometimes died) under the shadow of these laws. From that perspective, it is somewhat miraculous that notwithstanding its considerable racist, communalistic and chauvinistic warts, the mainstream media continues to function at all in this country.

Returning to that era of terror is still very much within the bounds of possibility. The cardinal fault is ours in allowing such a horrendous draft to emerge in the first instance. Secretive legislative drafting in exclusive conclaves, whether in relation to transitional justice, counter-terror or constitutional reform, should have not been tolerated from the inception. This is an exercise which runs directly counter to good governance precepts.

Pulling out ad hoc parts of the transitional justice package rather like a seedy magician with his rabbits hat has already led to incendiary resentment on the part of people directly affected by the conflict feeling excluded and marginalized. This miserable experience suffices to illustrate the dangers of complacency, even with the best of intentions. That process must not be repeated where the counter-terror draft is concerned. The repercussions would be exceedingly unfortunate.

Offending the principle of legality

As a matter of law, there is a clear argument why this draft is incapable of being revised to be acceptable. Each and every paragraph offends the first principle of legality which stipulates that a contemplated offence should be clearly defined, described in precise and unambiguous language. This was why in the past, terms such as threatening or endangering the sovereignty or territorial integrity of Sri Lanka or effecting any other political or governmental change in national security laws were completely contrary to the Rule of Law. The public uproar to revise these arbitrary laws arose from that exact objection.

Quite apart from the drafts vague definition of terrorist acts, there are terrifyingly familiar echoes in its classification of terrorism related offences. This prohibits words either spoken or intended to be read or by signs etc which causes or intends to cause the commission of acts of violence between different communities or racial or religious groups. The prohibition is coupled with intent to cause harm to the unity, territorial integrity or sovereignty of Sri Lanka or the peaceful coexistence of the people.

These were the same clauses used to imprison journalists and dissenters in the past with the importation of additional references to unity and peaceful coexistence. These prohibitions are contrary to the Johannesburg Principles on National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information which permits expression to be punished only if it incites imminent violence and there is a direct and immediate link thereto.

Disposing of the draft without further ado

Ludicrously the proposed offences also encompass theft of property by the State, including data, intellectual property or other information. What exactly is meant by other information is a matter for wild surmise.

In sum, this is the worst national security draft ever to be proposed in the history of this country, including under the Executive Presidencies of Jayawardene, Premadasa, Kumaratunga and Rajapaksa. It remains to be seen if President Maithripala Sirisena is desirous of having this dubious honour associated with his celebrated yahapalanaya Presidency. The public demand must be to dispose of it unceremoniously and without further ado.
President concerned  probe on Dubai account has ceased, Thajudeen case has gone under View(s):

Startling disclosures in exclusive interview with the Sunday Times; Avant Garde case becomes hilarious no case, no progress on MiG case also

Sirisena says FCID, CID and CIABOC and other agencies must expedite investigations on mega cases instead of carrom board cases

Constitutional changes next year

By Our Political Editor

President Maithripala Sirisena who chaired last Tuesdays weekly ministerial meeting at the Presidential Secretariat heard some bitter criticism from his ministers over the painfully slow pace of the Governments drive against bribery and corruption.

For nearly an hour, the issue came to the fore in the aftermath of the parliamentary oversight Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) findings on the February 27, 2015 bond issue by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL). Its report, now public, reveals there was reasonable doubt that former CBSL Governor Arjuna Mahendran made an intervention or used pressure in the issue of the bonds. The report also said that Perpetual Treasuries Limited, once linked to Mahendrans son-in-law Arjun Aloysius obtained large financial profits in the sale of bonds.

One of the critics of the Governments slow pace on this score was Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka. He said ministers should not be lulled into the belief that matters arising from the bond issue have blown over. The Joint Opposition may bring a vote of no-confidence on the Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, he said. We will have to defeat such a political move intended to embarrass the Government, he declared. However, he cautioned that ministers should not forget that the people would not have confidence in the Government if it did not uphold its main pledges during presidential and parliamentary elections to punish those responsible for bribery and corruption. In 2017, when elections are held to Provincial Councils in the East, Sabaragamuwa and North Central, voters may turn against the Government, he argued.

He said there was no purpose in state investigative agencies going after minor cases whilst those more serious ones were in limbo  a position which President Maithripala Sirisena underscored barely two hours later in an exclusive interview Tuesday with the Sunday Times. Ranawaka raised eye brows when he sounded a warning. He said he would have to decide on his political future if the Government did not bring to book the culprits involved in mega deals.

Another Minister who was equally critical was Rajitha Senaratne. He complained that there were several instances where large scale corruption during the previous Mahinda Rajapaksa administration was yet to be carried out or completed. Senaratne, who himself has to keep an appointment with the Bribery and Corruption Commission, cited the Greek Bond issue where the CBSL made placements as well as the oil hedging deal at the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) where the losses amounted to millions of dollars or billions of rupees. He endorsed Ranawakas view that only less serious cases were being followed by the investigative agencies whilst progress on more serious cases was tardy. Senaratne later told a media briefing on Wednesday that the Government was looking forward to the motion of No-Confidence against the Premier. The Joint Opposition was reportedly preparing for this. All MPs, both from the UNP and the SLFP, he said, would stand together to defeat it. He charged that the motion would boomerang on the sponsors for every finger pointed at the Government, 25 would be pointed at them.

The Joint Opposition Leader Dinesh Gunawardena told the Sunday Times, We are yet to take a decision on a no-confidence motion against the Premier. We will discuss this at the party leaders meeting on Tuesday (November and decide thereafter at a parliamentary group meeting.

Whether the MPs backing Mahinda Rajapaksa will support the move also remains a question. Rajapaksa has taken up the position that the Government and not the Prime Minister alone should be blamed for the BCSL bond scam.

Minister and UNP General Secretary Kabir Hashim told the ministerial meeting that concrete action should be taken against wrongdoers including those behind the bond scam. Minister Dayasiri Jayasekera said that as a member of the COPE, he has sat through proceedings. Those responsible for the bond scam, he said, should be punished. Minister Mangala Samaraweera noted that some investigations involved time since they had to be carried out in different countries since a paper trail had been left behind by those responsible. He said personally he believed that monies of members of the Rajapaksa family were stacked abroad.

Premier Wickremesinghe pointed out that the COPE report had been sent to the Attorney General for follow-up action. President Sirisena who responded to the issues raised by ministers acknowledged that an independent probe into the bond issue would be necessary.

After the Cabinet meeting, President Sirisena sat down at his suite at the Presidential Secretariat for an exclusive interview with the Sunday Times. I asked him for his views on the CBSL bond issue and what he proposed to do. His reply:

The COPE has a history. Most governments have not acted on COPE reports. According to information available, there have been issues about the Bond transactions since 2007/2008 period. Nobody spoke of them. Now we have received the COPE report concerning the issue with Arjuna Mahendran.

It is the politicians who are debating on the issue according to their party positions on whether it is right or wrong. It (the findings) is not a decision given based on views of political parties. Since the report is out now, it should be submitted to an independent, impartial body which does not have politicians. That is my opinion. If somebody has done wrong, he should be brought before courts. Not only this incident, but investigations should also be done on Central Bank bond issues as well as other frauds in the past 10 years.

Therefore, I expect an investigation covering a 10-year period regarding the bond issues of the CBSL. It will begin with investigations into the current case followed by other cases through an independent body. I believe that a judicial procedure will be advisable.

Q You mean it will not be a Special Presidential Commission of Inquiry?

A: I need to get legal advice to decide whether it should be a Commission or a one person judicial process and as to how it should be handled. However, politicians should stay away and it should be handed over to the judiciary to carry out an independent investigation. That is my expectation.

On Thursday, President Sirisena went public with plans to go for an independent and impartial judicial process at a meeting in Maharagama. A news release from his Media Secretariat said: The investigation into the Central Bank bond issue should be free from political interference, President Maithripala Sirisena said, adding that the investigation regarding this issue will be directed for an independent and impartial judicial process. He made these remarks addressing the Inauguration Ceremony of SLFP membership promotion programme held in Maharagama, today (03).

The President further emphasised that he stepped down from the previous government and established a new government with the support of all, not to allow one section in the society to do the erroneous things and to only punish some persons who did wrong things.

Even though the COPE fulfilled their duties, respecting the laws of the Parliament and the Constitution, various opinions have been brought in this regard. Nevertheless a precise response on this issue can be brought to the public through a proper judicial process, the President said 

Like his revelations to the Sunday Times and his public declaration, President Sirisena is quite focused on the February 27, 2015 controversial CBSL bond issue. He has clinically dissected the issues to be addressed  who is responsible and should face punishment when the legal process he initiates completes the task. In doing so, he has made it abundantly clear that he will not be influenced by viewpoints or positions taken up by different personalities, political parties or groups. A source close to the President said yesterday President Sirisena would make a final decision on the matter in the coming week. The source said one of his concerns is not to allow a probe that would be time consuming. Thus, the source explained, that his choice may narrow down to a serving senior judge conducting the probe as against a Commission of Inquiry which consumes a long period of time. The other modalities would be worked out, the source said.

President Sirisena is still livid about the manner in which the media reported his speech to war heroes who received documents for houses and lands from him at a function at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute (SLFI) on October 12. The media reported that matter in such a way that it would create some controversy. Some important parts were not published in the state media. The English language media in particular tried to give a wrong interpretation and thereby create a wrong impression among the public. My speech was for 45 minutes. They suggested I had asked investigations to be stopped.

Q What type of wrong interpretation was this?

A: Things like saying that I am against ongoing investigations. That is why they said that my SLFI speech was contrary to the pledges given during the elections. The English language media, in particular said that I had made a statement against the mandate given at the elections. That is the wrong impression created. If my full speech was taken in context, the view which I was trying to make is clear. People can easily criticise, but when you are running a Government you face various challenges, and those who criticise do not have the experiences of these challenges.

They may be able to easily make statements. It is the person who carries out the duties who knows the difficulties. In 2015, the 19th Amendment was passed with a two thirds majority with the help of those SLFP members who were not in the Government. I dont think anywhere in the world a two thirds majority has been obtained for Constitutional changes. Only, I know about the effort taken for this. It is, as a result of it, the Independent Commissions came into existence. I created these Commissions through the 19th Amendment. What I said was that the Commissions should function impartially and independently without a political agenda.

The investigations on large scale frauds have stopped. Only minor investigations such as the misuse of a vehicle, purchasing flag posts, and distribution of carom boards are being carried out and action filed in courts. But the expectations of the people were higher. They wanted serious frauds and corruption investigated.

The FCID was created to investigate and take action on large scale corruption and fraud. The FCID was given a limit. But, now it has taken over all investigations. I assume it has some 400 cases. The FCID was not set up to investigate private disputes, management issues of companies, issues of board of directors, financial disputes in companies etc. That was not the purpose. Especially we wanted priority given to cases of misuse of state funds and state property and to give priority to cases of corruption, misappropriation and fraud. This is what the officials there should be doing.

But, the President said, the objectives are not achieved when they concentrate on other things. Even the other institutions are same. Take the Commission to Investigate Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC). The Commissioners are good. They are all performing their duties honestly. The other staff should understand this. They should work honestly and impartially. That was my criticism. It was about working impartially and independently. I have been speaking of these issues within the Government for the past one year. It was how the officials at the lower ranks should act upon. That was not about telling the Commission to stop investigations or bring pressure on the investigators. I was talking about a broader issue. But, the media interpreted it in a wrong manner.

As a result a wrong impression was created among the public. Even today what I say is that the investigations and cases of large scale corruption should be expedited.

Q Could you give an example of such cases?

A: One of them is the investigations about the deposit of moneys in a bank in Dubai. That investigation has stopped. The Avant Garde Maritime Services Limited ship is with us for the past one year. The Government Analysts report on this is hilarious. I hear the report says that the weapons in the ship had rubbed against each other and the numbers had got erased. Now the situation is that there is no case and we are taking care of the ship for the past year. The Thajudeen murder case (being probed by the Criminal Investigation Department  CID) is being suppressed. There is the case about the procurement of MiG-27 fighter jets. I can cite more examples. The people want to know about them.

I need to speak out so that the truth is revealed. Otherwise the public will assume that I am not taking care of this. It is not our duty to intervene in the work of the investigative agencies. We have created them and expect them to act independently. If some of the officials, at the lower ranks do not perform their duties, the objectives are not achieved. That is the reason to make such a statement.

I made a statement about the arrest of former Commanders. The media distorted and reported it. As the Minister of Defence, and as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, I should be made aware if a serving or retired Commander is arrested and taken to courts. Like those serving, even those retired have links in the armed forces. The public perception should be understood when action is taken. We should not act against the will of the people. We should act in a manner where the wish of the public is fulfilled.

Q How do you do that?

A: The officials should know how to do that. I do not select the cases. It is the responsibility of those officials in the respective institutions to investigate cases regarding what people expect action to be taken.

Q By this, do you mean that action should not be taken over some cases?

A: I have not said that. What I say is that action should be expedited and done efficiently.

Q You mean in a manner that the public appreciates it?

A: Yes.

Q Are you satisfied with the functions of the Bribery Commission, FCID and the CID?

A: Actually, the officers are taking a great effort. I am aware of that. But they need to expedite cases and they should be more efficient because it is beyond the expected time period of the public. The people expected speedy investigations and results. It is already 20 months. The investigations should be expedited as it is nearly two years. The delay is the question.

Q How do you hope to expedite them? Is it through higher officials or through the Ministers?

A: The Ministers are not relevant to the investigations. It is not the duty of the politicians. It is the duty of the officials who are carrying out the investigations. Earlier the politicians used to intervene. We have stopped that. Earlier telephone calls were given before judgments were delivered in courts. Investigations were stopped. It happened in that manner earlier. However, now there is no such intervention and we expect investigations to be done in the right manner. That remains the question.

Q Some say that former ministers are loyal to the Government as there are investigations against them. Your comments?

A: That is not the reason they have joined the Government. We invited them. They did not come by force. Our manifesto said that we will form a consensual Government or a National Government. I too said this. Besides, according to the Parliamentary election results no party could have formed a government on its own. The UNP had 106 members and the SLFP (UPFA) had 95. Since no party could form a Governmen on its own it was essential to get together to form a consensual Government. Nobody came by force, but we invited them. If they did not come in we could not have formed a Government. We could not have had a Government with 106 members.

Q There is belief that the aid and assistance expected from the US and other western countries were not what you expected. You also reportedly mentioned this. Can you comment?

A: The Asian countries generously support us. India, China, Pakistan, Japan and Korea support us. Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand are other countries also support us. Western countries too help us, particularly some of the assistance that was stopped during the Rajapaksa governments era is now being received. For instance, specialised training provided to the armed forces from the United States and Britain has been resumed. Economic assistance from countries like the US and European countries is being received. There is investment coming from Western countries from the private sector which is strong in those countries. The ban on fish exports to European Union was lifted with the support of Western countries. We are confident that the GSP + facilities will also be restored. Therefore, the US and European countries are providing assistance. But most of the help is coming from India, Japan, China and other Asian countries.

Q It was said during the previous regime that the development of the North was given to India and the South to China. What is your Governments approach?

A: We do not distribute districts or areas to countries. They are false reports. But, when investments come in, we decide on them. Foreign investments are one aspect. There are local investments as well. We also should look into how we could improve local industries. As an agricultural country how do we give prominence for agriculture? How do we develop local industries? For this purpose how do we get modern technology from Western and other countries? If a country needs to develop, it is more than economic assistance, we should depend on modern knowledge and technology.

With this our intellectuals can develop the country. What we need to concentrate on bringing in is modern technology and knowledge. We need to improve the country on our own. The tourism industry is taking a leap. The fisheries industry is another. As an island nation the fisheries resources are important. We have not exploited the fisheries resources properly. Not even five per cent of it has been used. Within the country we have mineral resources which need to be given consideration. As a country, to develop, we need local and foreign investments as well as private sector to improve the Agricultural sector, self-employment, rural development and local industries.

Q Your comments on the recent incidents in the North.

A: The incident in the north where two student deaths were reported is tragic. There is an investigation going on. There is a judicial process. We are sorry about the incident. Such incidents should not take place. The incident is a grave mistake. We have decided to pay compensation to the families of the two students.

I think if these incidents involved students in the south, it would have been much worse. Therefore, we should not consider this as something which happened in the north. Wherever the incident took place, there will be unrest among the public in that area. There will be protests. Therefore we condemn such incidents and they should not take place.

Q Do you think that there were any outside elements linked to it?

A: No. Going by the current investigations what has happened is clear. Four to five policemen are in remand custody and the Judiciary will decide on the case.

Q Will the new Constitution be ready by the end of the year.

A: It cannot be done this year. Our expectation is that it will be done next year.

Q Will the Executive Presidential system also be abolished?

A: That is mentioned in the manifesto. All things mentioned in the manifesto should be implemented.

Q You mentioned that you will serve only one term. Do you still maintain that position?

A: What I have said will not be changed.

Q What is your policy on selling of state institutions?

A: I do not agree with the word Selling. The media also use the word selling. Our policy is that profit making institutions should remain with the Government. They should be further developed. For the loss making institutions, we should have a scheme to develop them with the help of the private sector. This does not mean a total sale. We should enter into joint-ventures with the private sector. If there are unbearable losses there is no harm in disposing them. I will not allow institutions like Litro Gas, Lanka Hospitals (former Apollo Hospitals) and Ilmenite to be sold.

Q Sections of the media have reported about speculation over a cabinet reshuffle. Any comments?

A: We have not discussed such a thing so far.

Like some of his ministers, President Sirisena is quite conscious about the public discontent over delays or even stalling of some high profile investigations. Other than diverse political necessities that have more often brought about this situation, understandable though an undesirable feature of the UNP-SLFP alliance, there are a number of other issues too.

It is no secret that in some instances the investigators have been left to complain that there has been pressure from political leaders. On the other hand, at least a section of the ministers close to President Sirisena and are monitoring developments argue investigators are trotting out this reason for delays in most cases.

In essence what these ministers are underscoring is a need to probe the probers. That no doubt will be as time consuming as the 20 month delay already encountered. The irony here appears to be the lack of a proper Government mechanism to keep tabs on progress or otherwise of the investigations. It is still not too late to identify the real reasons and expedite the process. This, however, will have to be carried out without interference in the investigations. Of course, it is fraught with the same danger that has slowed down at least some of the mega probes.
Broken Promises View(s):

This article is part of a continuing series on Sri Lankan history

The Captain General of Sri Lanka, Don Philip Mascarenhas was appointed as the Viceroy of India. So he left the island. By this time, relations between the Dutch and King Rajasinghe were getting strained and there arose mutual differences. Both parties had to remind themselves of the promises made earlier.

By this time, seven years had elapsed after the arrival of the Dutch, to assist the king. Up to then, the Dutch had spent ten lakhs of gilders

(a unit of money in Holland then) on the Dutch army. The king had been unable to pay even half of this amount. By this the king had broken the promise he made.

The king did not even supply foodstuff or merchandise as agreed earlier. The earlier understanding was to hand over the forts conquered by the Dutch to the king. But the Dutch violated this and held on to the forts they conquered, thereby breaking a promise.

Even in the temporary agreement signed between the Dutch and the Portuguese, it was stated that these forts belonged to the Dutch company. The king was very angry over this condition. But he was helpless and could not do anything as the Portuguese were friendly with the Dutch during this period.

King Rajasinghe sent out a decree, proclaiming that the Dutch, under no circumstances should maintain any security measures in the areas that belonged to the king. When the Dutch received this announcement, they sent a copy of the old agreement to the king.

By Halaliye Karunathilake

Edited and translated by Kamala Silva

Illustrated by Saman Kalubowila
Playwright turned prolific actor By Susitha R. Fernando Bibishana Kurera plays prominent role in The Court is Silent View(s): View(s):

Talented actor and playwright Bibishana Kurera has been rewarded for years of hard work and dedication to the theatre and cinema by being given a prominent role in internationally acclaimed filmmaker Prasanna Vithanages controversial film The Court is silent or Usawiya Nihadai which is now being screened.

In this documentary film, allegedly based on a story where a judge sexually abuses the wife of a suspect produced before his court, Bibishana plays the crucial role of the devastated and incensed husband. The film records the husbands version at an inquiry conducted by a panel of judges, and Bibishana successfully portrays the husbands complete dejection and protest against a corrupt judicial system.

Commenting on Bibishanas acting, veteran writer Kathalene Jayawardene noted in her recent review that the credit for the miracle of keeping the viewer glued to a documentary film for almost one hour, should be divided among filmmaker Prasanna Vithanage, cinematographer M. D. Mahindapala, music director Kand actor Bibishana Kurera.

The renowned writer comments on how Bibishana, in his very first main role in a film, has proved his ability to take up any challenging role.

It was a complex character of a man who was devastated and disgusted about the entire system of governance and law and order. Im glad that many appreciated my role, Bibishana said about his performance in the film. He was glad that popular actor Ranjan Ramanayake and other film personalities like Sunil T Fernando and Tissa Nagodavithana too, have appreciated his performance.

A former student of St Josephs college, Negombo, Bibishana made his first theatrical appearance playing in nativity and passion plays organised in churches.Negombo, famous for its religious piety, arts and culture is known as Little Rome and offered many opportunities for budding artistes like Bibishana.

His first appearance in a national drama was in Dik Dakna, a play produced by the Colombo University in 1999. In 2004 he scripted, directed and produced the stage play Pashana Warsha and it got selected to the final round of the State Drama Festival. This followed stage plays Numba Mama saha Eya (You, Me and She) and Thawath Minihek in 2005 where he established himself as a versatile actor. Bibishanas next step was to produce his own play Local Gamini, and it won five awards including best play at the Rukmani Devi Felicitation theatre festival.

Bibishana made his first appearance in cinema as an additional cast member in Prasanna Vithanages Ira Mediyama (August Sun). This followed a few other films like Suriya Arana, Samanala Thatu and Akasa Kusum. He played a prominent role in Wehi Dawasa directed by Badraji Mahinda Jayatilake, a film which is yet to be released.

Having realized Bibishanas talent scriptwriter and writer Lucian Bulathsinghala invited him to perform in his one episode teleplay Madona Watha where Bibishana played alongside acclaimed actor Tony Ranasinghe. To act with Tony Ranasinghe was a dream come true for me, says Bibishina with a smile of great satisfaction. Later he joined Kadadora a serialised teleplay directed by Rajiv Ananda.

Bibishana expressed his gratitude to Prasanna Vithanage and Daminda Madawela for having faith in his talent and providing him the opportunity to play in the film.
Soup Bowl for the soul View(s):

Its a Friday afternoon as the Scott Hall of the Methodist church in Colpetty, slowly filled up. The sound of pleasant chatter, backed by beautiful smiles, greets one at the door. Men andwomen, both old and young and from all walks of life. They were those who could not afford the luxuries of a fancy luncheon that some of us could, let alone a simple lunch. And to some this probably was the only meal that they would have for the day.

The project which is called the Drop in centre is one undertaken by The Soup Bowl, which is a hospitality ministry, aimed at serving those who are underprivileged. As a mission which started off initially, with wanting to provide a meal to orphans and poor people, it has functioned for almost two and a half years, its founder Rishani Sittampalam tells us.

My parents are deceased and I live away from home. So I want to take something of home to a person who does not have that sense of home and security, she says adding that they strive to do their best to provide a home cooked meal to someone who needs it.

The Soup Bowl is a monthly project and the team visits orphanages, elders homes and single parent households. They also conduct a 100 Christmas gift programme, where money is collected over the year and essential items are bought and distributed among the underprivileged. Aside from Rishani, it also comprises of Erandi Narangoda, Jamie Alphonsus, Kshanika Argent, Pasan David and several other volunteers.

So the Soup bowl is basically the mother and under that we have our weekly projects, one of which is the drop in centre. Rishani explains adding that they hope to open it up one day as a soup kitchen. Where they can cook a hot meal and serve three meals and provide education to those who need it.

Right now we are providing soft skills to a girl, who is a differently abled adult. So we teach her things like sewing etc. We also teach some others spoken English, Rishani says adding that they had a young child coming over for the class, all the way from Negombo, later on that day.

Generally the drop in centre has a group of around 80-90 people, who come in. And it ranges from elderly people, to security guards and street cleaners etc. Anyone can come and we would offer them food. You just have to be hungry for a meal, no one is turned away, she says adding that even though its done in a Christian place it goes beyond all ethnic and religious beliefs. We dont know their ethnic backgrounds and it doesnt really matter, what matters, is that they come here and fellowship over a meal.

The project initially took form last year (2015), when Rishani and her friend Nina had wanted to give a meal to the poor people near Visakha road. But they didnt have the space or a kitchen for it. Thats when they approached Rev. Angeleena of the Methodist church, who told them that they could use the Scott hall, because it was available during lunch hours.

The food is usually bought from Lantheruma (The Lantern), which gives them a chicken lunch with five vegetables at a very nominal price of 150 rupees. The money for the food is usually obtained via donations, for which the Soup bowl places requests on their Facebook page.

Eighty lunch packets are bought, which sums up to 12,000 rupees and sometimes as more people come in, more packets are bought. To donate, one can either sponsor the lunches by financing them or pledge to provide eighty packets on a Friday, which can be dropped off at the Scott Hall. Prior to doing this they request that you call at the beginning of the week to keep them informed.

Rs.12,000 rupees is our need, but you can give anything you can. We usually have people who give us the cash or someone who will sponsor the food like an alms giving. You could either give us 80 packets or 60 packets and we will buy the rest, she says.

The lunch is served between 1.30 pm and 4 pm and the leftovers are sent off with the families, who are present at the end of the evening so that food does not go waste. The drop in centre also provides an evening cup of tea, for those who stick around. This is usually given by the church. They also accept donations of tea time snacks.

Whatever our needs are we usually put it on our Facebook page. And since this has been happening here, we have had certain people from the church who also donate, Rishani tells us.

The Drop in Centre is more than just a place where people come to get food. Most of those who come there do so for the company. And many of them have a heart-warming story to relate.

Most of these people want to talk. I think with most of our projects, even with the homes, they dont want us to bring anything fancy, they just want our time. They want to sit down and talk to you, thats all they need, she says.

Apart from the Drop in Centre, Soup bowl also has their daily project which is called WeGiveStuffAway (WGSA). This is where they have a couple of outlets that give them their leftover groceries or surplus groceries. It is done every night from about 9.30 pm to 12 am. We go about from place to place collecting the vegetables and then we go deliver it to the needy, like families or even homes and orphanages, She tells us.

Its the lack of volunteers that is their main challenge, she explains. Especially when it comes to lunch, most of the people are working at that time. They also face a lack of volunteers in their grocery arm.

We also need people to teach classes. If someone would like to volunteer their time, to teach a child for an hour or so that would be a blessing, Rishani adds.

Aside from this, Rishani works as well. And when I ask her how she balances this with her work, she looks me in the eye, with a smile, You dont have the time. Its just that you make it a priority because people should matter at the end of the day. Our priorities are such that sometimes its baseless. People dont have the time for one on one communication. With Soup Bowl we encourage people to get to know those who are underprivileged and hope that maybe it would touch their hearts.

For donations or ways to volunteer, they could be reached on https://www.facebook.com/TheSoupBowlSriLanka/

(JS)
Experts query SriLankans departure from Europe View(s):

Travel industry experts are questioning the national carriers move to stop flights to European destinations, a decision it started implementing last month.

In my view, SriLankan Airlines has to explain a fundamental issue, said Rohan J. Abeywickrama, an expert in transport and aviation. That is, how can Middle Eastern airlines like Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad operate to the same European destinations from the Middle East and make profits? Most of the time, their fares are lower to the European destinations than SriLankan Airlines.

SriLankan stopped flying to Paris and Frankfurt from October 31, 2016, citing losses. CEO Suren Ratwatte told the Sunday Times that his strategy was to make the airline more regional in outlook. I want the ability to reorient the airline from trying to compete on these long-haul routes which are now patently obvious that we cannot, and to concentrate on our strengths, he said. As a regional carrier, we are very, very, competitive.

But experts like Mr. Abeywickrama feel the company should have looked at different strategies to continue flying to Europe. One former employee of SriLankan and an airline consultant said, Supposing the same situation arises in London. What will happen? Will you pull out of there, too?

He suggested SriLankan looks at working with different partners, and looks at downward integration for its products. For example, can we operate to places like Berlin by working with a partner like Air Berlin? he said. Air Berlin operates to almost 150 destinations in Europe and elsewhere in the world. When you pull out of Germany and France, SriLankan has no connection to Europe.

Yes, there may be difficulties, he continued. Qantas was flying at a big loss but they looked at staff and how things could be changed. They restructured and last year, they made a huge profit. The CEO of Qantas went on record to say team effort contributed to profitability. The airline business is a team business.

Mr. Abeywickrama insisted that the taxpayer, who is bearing the losses made by SriLankan, must be told the truth. While the industry norm of a global full service airline was to have around 175 employees per aircraft, SriLankan Airlines had more than double the figure. This contributed towards additional costs like office space, utilities, staff welfare, etc. The Middle Eastern airlines are keeping their staff levels below 175 and sometimes at around 150.

Many analysts complained that the SriLankan Airlines operational hub  which is Bandaranaike International Airport  has one the highest prices for fuel in the world. The charges for airport services were also high as were terminal charges. By contrast, the Middle Eastern airlines benefited from much lower, competitive charges.

Obviously, SriLankan Airlines is suffering from the domino effect of all these negative factors, said Mr. Abeywickrama. That is why it is making losses on European routes while other airlines make profits.

Aviation professionals are shocked by what SriLankan has chosen to do to cut losses, he held. Instead of reducing the fleet and leasing three aircrafts to Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), the sensible strategy would have been to use them to increase destinations and frequencies and earn more revenue. Of course, this requires new route planning and aggressive marketing and sales. The choice of the Sri Lankan Airlines seems to be to go backwards and cover up their inability to market and sell.

Giving away aircraft and destinations worsened the problem of excess staff. Can the SriLankans management tell the taxpayers how many employees are being retrenched when aircraft and destinations are being reduced? asked Mr Abeywickrama.

The Middle Eastern carriers get a better yield because of their passenger mix; they had a larger per centage of high-paying business travellers who chose them due to superior service and, more importantly, frequency. Emirates has four daily flights from Paris. SriLankan had four flights a week with a majority of passengers being of the ethnic and holiday categories that generate a lower yield. The Middle Eastern carriers also get critical mass.

If SriLankan wants to increase yield, they have to improve service quality, said Mr. Abeywickrama. That cannot be done by giving the aircraft they have away to PIA.

The path SriLankan Airlines has chosen to tread is to make further losses and reduce its global competitiveness, Mr. Abeywickrama said. Any company that comes into partner with SriLankan would not be pleased with the current management strategy and vision.
Fishermen in Hambantota displaying black flags to protest against the use of illegal nets which they say are affecting the industry  Pic by Rahul Samantha Hettiarachchi.
Flexible working hours from next month View(s):

By Damith Wickremasekara

Flexible working hours are to be offered to thousands of public servants serving in Colombo and the outskirts in a fresh bid to reduce traffic congestion at peak hours, a top official said yesterday.

Megapolis and Western Development Ministry Secretary Nihal Rupasinghe told the Sunday Times that the proposal would be implemented on a trial basis from next month and on a permanent basis from January in the Battaramulla area.

The Megapolis Ministry and the Transport Ministry are also having talks with private companies to encourage them also to have flexible working hours. According to the plans, public sector employees will be given the opportunity to clock in between 7 am and 10 am and leave between 3.00 and 6 p.m. At present most public and private sector organisations have fixed working hours from 8.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m.

However, it will be compulsory for employees to be working between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. to ensure minimum inconvenience to the people who call over for official purposes. Currently the Housing, Highways, Plantations and Education Ministries, the Immigration Department, the Department for the Registration of Persons, the Examinations Department, the Road Development Authority, the Urban Development Authority, the Foreign Employment Bureau are among the important institutions functioning in Battaramulla.

An estimated 350,000 people including employees and visitors come to the area on a daily basis. Mr. Rupasinghe said after trying the plan out in Battaramulla, the flexible working hours would be introduced in Colombo city and other areas with Cabinet approval.

Meanwhile, in a related move, more UDA lands are to be open for vehicle parking to further reduce traffic congestion.
Judicial mechanism to probe bond issues over the past ten years: President to ST View(s):

A judicial mechanism to probe the February 27, 2015 bond issue by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) will also cover similar issues in the past ten years, President Maithripala Sirisena told the Sunday Times.

In an exclusive interview with this newspaper, he said there was a need to take the investigation out of the hands of politicians. The President spoke on the findings of the parliamentary oversight Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE). Made public last week, the report revealed the former Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran made an intervention or used pressure in the issue of bonds. It also said that Perpetual Treasuries Limited, once linked to Mr. Mahendrans son-in-law, obtained large financial profits in the sale of bonds.

There have been issues over bond transactions since 2007/2008 period. Nobody spoke of them, President Sirisena said. Since the report is now out, he said, it should be submitted to an independent, impartial body which does not have any politicians. Now, it is the politicians who are debating on the issue according to their party positions on whether it is right or wrong, he pointed out.

I am expecting an investigation covering a ten-year period of bond issues by the CBSL. It will begin with the February 27, 2015 issue of bonds and extend to other cases, he added. President Sirisena was critical of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), the Financial Crimes Investigation Division (FCID) and the Commission to Inquiry into Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) for probing small issues leaving behind the mega cases. As a result, for over 20 months, they have not been able to bring to book any of the big offenders, he added. The President said that constitutional amendments would not be passed this year and would be done next year.

Full details of the interview by Our Political Editor appear in the Political Commentary.
Lankan domestic need not clean high-tower windows in HK From Kapila Bandara in Hong Kong View(s): View(s):

Sri Lankan domestic helpers in Hong Kong and those arriving in the city to begin working in households will be spared the death-defying window-cleaning task in the skyscraper flats of their employers.

A few foreign helpers have plunged to their deaths trying to clean windows in tower blocks that millions of Hong Kong people call home.

The most recent tragedy was that of a Filipina who fell and died in August. This year, four women have perished.

Hong Kongs labour officials were forced to take the decision to prohibit employers from demanding that their home helpers clean the windows in tower blocks, following pressure largely from the Philippines and not Foreign Employment Bureau officials of Sri Lanka. Foreign Employment Minister Thalatha Athukorala has not made any representations to Hong Kong either, domestic helper organisations say.

Unlike Sri Lankan labour officials who pay scant attention to migrant workers who earn billions of US dollars for the nation, the Philippines pressed the issue by demanding a ban on window-cleaning. Manila even sent its Labor and Employment Secretary Silvestre Bello to Hong Kong.

More than 186,000 Filipino domestic helpers work in Hong Kong, while there are 1,145 Sri Lankan helpers, mostly women.

Under the new requirements, which will soon take effect, foreign domestic helpers may be asked to clean the exterior of windows in towers only if windows are protected by safety grilles. The helper should also be under the watch of the employer.

The new rules will be added to the domestic helper contracts by the Immigration Department. Hong Kong Labour Secretary, Matthew Cheung, said ccupational safety could not be compromised, adding that employer interests had also to be considered.

For more than 30 years, Sri Lankans have not been represented in Hong Kong by an accredited diplomat. At present, an ageing Chinese businessman involved in shipping, acts in an honorary capacity. His appointment by the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government was not known to most of the Sri Lankans here.

From the end of September, a foreign domestic helper is entitled to a minimum monthly salary of HK$ 4,310 (Rs. 82,421). Under the contract, employers must provide food free of charge, but employers may also choose to give a monthly food allowance of HK$ 1,037 (Rs. 19,843) in lieu. These mandatory amounts are applicable to contracts signed after October 1.
Malaysia may ban group which attacked our envoy View(s):

The Malaysian Government is considering a ban on the group that attacked Sri Lankas High Commissioner Ibrahim Ansar at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in September, authorities there informed a visiting senior official of Sri Lankas Attorney Generals Department.

Senior Additional Solicitor General Dappula de Livera was told by the Malaysian authorities that the group behind the attack had been identified and a ban was under consideration. The Malaysian Police have also taken steps to charge the suspects with unlawful assembly, mischief and causing hurt.

Mr. De Livera who undertook the visit at the request of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and on the Directions of the Attorney General met Malaysias Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) and other officials probing the attack on Mr. Ansar and Deputy High Commissioner Majintha Jayasinghe.

The Sunday Times learns Mr. De Livera said Sri Lanka was hopeful there would be a comprehensive investigation and all those responsible would be brought to justice as the case was of international significance.

During the visit Mr. De Livera also met Malaysias Deputy Foreign Minister and Secretary General of the Ministry of Home Affairs and senior police officials.

The case will be taken up in a Malaysian court again tomorrow.
Poaching: Lanka rejects request for grace period View(s):

Sri Lanka has rejected an Indian proposal for a three-year period to phase out illegal fishing practices (bottom trawling) in the Palk Strait and the Gulf of Mannar by Tamil Nadu fishermen, a request to release the confiscated boats and to grant 80 days of fishing in Sri Lankan waters, Fisheries Minister Mahinda Amaraweera said by telephone from New Delhi.

The rejection came during high-level talks in the Indian capital. The Sri Lankan delegation led by Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera and Mr. Amaraweera was unable to break the deadlock in the continuing mass scale poaching in Sri Lankan waters by Indian fishermen. The Indian delegation comprised External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan and State Minister of Shipping P. Radhakrishnan. TNA MP M. Sumanthiran was also in the Sri Lankan delegation as the Indian poaching affects mostly northern Sri Lankan Tamil fishermen.

The two sides agreed to set up a Joint Working Group (JWG) to continue negotiations on the issue of illegal fishing practices. The Indian side had asked for time to divert Indian fishermen to deep sea fishing, but the Sri Lankan side said three years were too long a period for this.

(Visit a joint media statement issued after yesterdays talks)
True to his name he will always be immortal By Sandun Jayawardena Family members, dignitaries and artistes bid farewell to their beloved Pandit Amaradeva View(s): View(s):

The nation bid adieu yesterday to Pandit W.D. Amaradeva, whose State Funeral was held at Independence Square in front of thousands of mourners. They included a host of dignitaries including the countrys President, Prime Minister, fellow artistes and members of the public. The nation bid adieu yesterday to Pandit W.D. Amaradeva, whose State Funeral was held at Independence Square in front of thousands of mourners. They included a host of dignitaries including the countrys President, Prime Minister, fellow artistes and members of the public.

Heavy rains had fallen earlier in the day, though the crowds kept coming. By the time funeral proceedings began at 3.30 p.m. there was bright sunshine. The final rites were performed at around5 p.m. after religious observances and speeches in honour of the late artiste. There were condolence messages from Buddhist, Christian, Hindu and Islamic religious leaders. The proceedings included a 17-gun salute by the armed forces.

Expressing his condolences, President Maithripala Sirisena described Pandit Amaradeva as a man for the ages, who awakened the consciousness of a nation. He stressed that Pandit Amaradeva, true to his name, will be immortal despite his death as his legacy would live on through the ages.

He reminisced about his association with the late artiste, which went back 25 years to the time he invited him to impart his musical knowledge to schoolchildren in Polonnaruwa. He never imposed conditions and accepted my invitation straight away, the President told the gathering.

The President also pledged to establish a national centre for the arts in the name of the late maestro. He requested Pandit Amaradevas fellow artistes to provide guidance to the Government in establishing such a centre.

Mr. Sirisena said the Government chose to hold a state funeral for the artiste at Independence Square as this was the greatest tribute a Government could pay to such an inspiring human being.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe described Pandit Amaradeva as a national treasure. He reminisced about the time Dinesh Gunawardena, Anura Bandaranaike and himself were taught music by Pandit Amaradeva at Royal College Primary. I would rate his attempts to teach the three of us music as one of his lifes failures, he quipped.

Pandit Amaradeva was someone who rose to prominence through the new media of those ages, the Prime Minister opined, pointing out that new audiences were exposed to his music via radio, television, cassettes, CDs and then the internet. The world can now listen to his music on YouTube.

Professor Sunil Ariyaratne, who headed the funeral committee, praised Pandit Amaradeva as an exceptional Sri Lankan artiste whose greatness will likely remain unparalleled for all time. All those who came after him more or less followed his footsteps. As such, they are all essentially his children, he observed.

Prof. Ariyaratne said those who lived in the time of Pandit Amaradeva should consider themselves privileged as those who lived and died before his time or who will be born after his death, were never and will never be able to have the privilege of seeing him in the flesh.

Pandit Amaradevas remains were kept at the Independence Square since Friday morning for the public to pay their final respects to the beloved artiste until 3 p.m. yesterday. President Maithripala Sirisena too was among the entourage which brought the late maestros remains to Independence Square on Friday, even helping to carry the casket. Large crowds kept streaming in throughout Friday and Saturday to honor one of the countrys most beloved artistes.

Born Wanakkuwatta Waduge Don Albert Perera in 1927, Pandit W.D. Amaradeva would go onto leave an indelible mark on all Sri Lankans through his contribution to music over 60 years. His services earned him both national and international recognition.

The maestro, hailed by many as the doyen of Sinhala music and song, passed away on Thursday at the age of 88 at the Sri Jayewardenepura Teaching Hospital. He had been rushed to the hospitals Intensive Care Unit (ICU) earlier that morning due to a sudden illness. Many of his fellow artistes who heard the news of his death also arrived at the hospital to convey their sympathies.

A week of national mourning was announced from last Thursday in his honour. National Flags at Government buildings flew at half mast in honor of the veteran musician. All liquor stores, cinemas and meat stalls within the Colombo Municipal limits were closed yesterday in view of the state funeral.
Another life-saving medical chapter takes its first steps Soon patients in need of bone marrow transplantation will be able to seek treatment at a local state hospital, reports Smriti Daniel View(s): View(s):

Sri Lankan doctors at the National Cancer Institute in Maharagama (NCIM) working with the National Blood Transfusion Service and the Ministry of Health have become the first in this country to successfully complete a procedure known as stem cell mobilisation, a critical step leading up to another big milestone  the first autologous stem cell transplant to be conducted in a local public hospital.

It has taken the tightly knit, multi-disciplinary team at the NCIM, now also known as Apeksha Hospital many months and the support of multiple stakeholders to come to this point. Close partnerships with St. Vincents Hospital in Australia allowed the 16-member team to gain hands -on experience abroad and the partnership is ongoing as the newly established Bone Marrow Transplantation Programme gears up for its first year.

The first to benefit is a 48-year-old mother of two from Kochikade who was diagnosed with multiple myeloma eight months ago. A form of cancer, multiple myeloma causes cancer cells to accumulate in bone marrow, where they compromise the functioning of healthy blood cells and produce abnormal proteins that can adversely impact kidney function. Cancer is now the third most common cause of death in Sri Lanka. Most patients with malignant bone marrow diseases will succumb if not treated properly. The impact of having a transplant for them is huge, it is a new lease on life, says Dr. Prasad Abeysinghe, Consultant Oncologist and the BMT Team Leader at NCIM.

Doctors have spent days working closely with their patient, as she has undergone the gruelling process that could save her life and return her to her family. Dr.Abeysinghe tells the Sunday Times that various teams have been involved every step of the way: The clinical team is headed by Dr.Abeysinghe himself, while Consultant Haematologist Dr.Sasikala Suresh leads the haematology group, Consultant Microbiologist Dr. Samanmalee Gunasekare leads the infection control group and Consultant Transfusion Physician, Dr. Lakmali Morawaka leads the stem cell collection group. They have had to work in close concert to ensure the success of the programme.

Dr. Suresh explains that currently many patients requiring bone marrow transplants typically go abroad, where costs can be as high as $40,000 for the time-consuming procedure. Dr. Abeysinghe adds that since the process is such a long and demanding one, a patients best interests may not be served by going abroad as the logistics of long term care are harder to work out. Instead, Sri Lankans can now find treatment at NCIM, where the procedure has been designed in keeping with international standards.

When the stem cells being inserted belong to the patient themselves, the process is known as an autologous transplant. However, the more complicated procedure is when a donors stem cells are used, and that is known as an allogenic bone marrow transplant.

There are three ways of collecting stem cells, says Dr.Morawaka, explaining that the cells can either be extracted from the bone marrow or from cord blood, i.e where blood from placenta or the umbilical cord of a newborn is used as a source of stem cells. In Sri Lanka, the private sector offers only what is known as direct bone marrow extraction, where the cells are taken from the marrow itself through a syringe.

The third option is what the team at Maharagama have set out to do, and is actually the recommended approach, say the doctors. In the process, known as peripheral stem cell collection, the cells are harvested from the blood using a special machine. In the days before, Dr. Sureshs team uses medication to stimulate the production of stem cells. They then mobilize these cells, stimulating them out of the bone marrow and into the bloodstream, from where they can be collected. Blood tests are then carried out to ensure there are enough cells circulating to justify the next step.

Under Dr.Morawakas team, the patient is hooked up to an apheresis machine  their blood is pumped through the machine, which separates out the stem cells before the blood is circulated back in to the patients body. The collected stem cells then have to be painstakingly processed to ensure they are viable and free of disease. If enough stem cells have not been collected, the process is repeated the next day. The cells must also be frozen to an exacting standard, so that they remain viable for years should the patient ever need them again.

The staff in the infection control groupare closely involved at every stage says D. Ayesha Nilanthi, Nurse, infection control. She and the team have to ensure that the patient remains free of infections that could prove life threatening  this includes responsibility for everything from deciding how antibiotics will be used to battle infection pre and post-transplant to maintaining the sterility of the collected samples in the long-term. Success is only possible by paying an extraordinary amount of attention to detail.

Its no wonder then that the BMT team are now celebrating having finished their first stem cell mobilisation.The next and final stage involves using chemotherapy to destroy the malignant cells, after which the patient will be rescued with a transfusion of her own healthy bone marrow. She will require intensive supportive care for several weeks afterward while the new stem cells take root and begin to produce the platelets and red and white blood cells she needs to live. The full impact of the procedure is likely to be known only over a period of years.

With this initial success, the BMT team at NCIM have gained the confidence they need to tackle at least another 12 bone marrow transplants in the coming year. Haematological malignancies are common in children and young adults, and the team hopes that many young lives will be saved thanks to the new centre. They will also begin to take on more complex cases requiring donor stem cells. There arent any shortcuts for bone transplant programme, says DrAbeysinghe, saying it will take painstaking effort every step of the way.

For the team, this has been a fascinating and humbling process, in particular because it took the effort of so many people to bring them here. There were the challenges of venturing into a totally new field, and their gratitude to Prof. David Ma, and Associate Prof. John Moore and the rest of the team at St. Vincents is heartfelt. Scholarships supported by the Australian government and by local donors such as MAS and A.G.R. Samaraweera, Chairman of Maliban, allowed the entire team to travel. In Australia, the Sri Lankan community and in particular Jude and Chrishanthi Fernando, did a great deal to support the programme with awareness and fund raising.

On a personal level, the BMT programme has meant working weekends, late nights and time away from family for the entire team. Dr. Suresh says just mastering this new field has been challenging  though a significant portion of the training was hands on, it now continues over email and Skype, which for her is a new and interesting medium of learning.They hope the establishing of this centre will lead to others around the island, as more local doctors and clinicians are able to train with the team at Apeksha. Going forward, they hope to set up a bone marrow registry that will not only support Sri Lankans but those of Asian descent wherever they may be in the world.

The new facilities will be hosted inside the Razavi building adjoining NCIM which was donated by the Ahamad Tea Firm in London, with additional funding from the Ministry of Health. Its amazing to see it all coming together, says Dr.Abeysinghe, it would have been difficult for us to produce something like this overnight. It is truly state of the art, and in keeping with the way bone marrow transplant units are developed all over the world.
Elephantine appeal to save the star of our wildlife View(s):

Elephants are in the news almost daily- as victims or villains. Elephants are in the news almost daily- as victims or villains.

Many admire them for their magnificence, respecting them for their sanctity.For others, they are enemies damaging their property, destroying their crops and killing their loved ones.

The Sri Lankan elephant, listed endangered in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is depleting- approximately 10,000 at the dawn of the 20th century now dwindled to around 4500.

Sri Lankas Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC) annually kills around 70 humans; HEC and other catastrophes also claim about 200 elephant lives.

Though now illegal, in colonial times, elephant hunting was a popular sport. British hunter, Sir Samuel Baker is reputed to have killed countless elephants, once killing 11 before breakfast and another 104 within three days. According to folklore, the gravestone of a British Governor famous for mass elephant slaughter, is annually struck by lightning, for that sin.

In 1937, the Fauna and Flora Protection Ordinance prohibited elephant hunting and killing. The then fine of Rs.2000, now stands enhanced upto Rs.500,000.

Elephant kraals, a timber stockade to trap and tame elephants for domestication was another cruel pursuit. The final kraal in Panamure in 1950,was organized by Sir Francis Molamure, then Speaker, State Council (later Parliament). As Stranger Times narrates, the participants of that kraal included top blue bloods of Ceylon, including the Governor General. It was a normal rounding up until the herd was led to the stockade where two females were in estrous.One young bull had run into the stockade, reacting violently when the matriarch who was his lady love was noosed. To save kraal participants, the tusker was shot, leading to countrywide commotions and a ban on kraals.Today, a monument honours this Tusker who fought to protect his herd.

HEC occurs when elephants lose their habitat with deforestation for development, illegal felling of trees and encroachment, sometimes with political support. The animals then storm villages in search of food and water.Translocation, elephant drives and electric fences have not mitigated the HEC. Simple options tried are beehive and palmyrah fences  elephants avoiding buzzing and spiky trees. Experts have recommended remedies, but HEC continues. Both human and animal need protection within an environment to co-exist. While commending the National Elephant Conservation Policy, environmentalists lament its non implementation.

There are traditional elephant owners; others acquire elephants for commercial use and prestige, sometimes capturing calves after killing the mother. No welfare standards exist for elephants possessed by individuals, temples and devales, thus exposing them to neglect and cruelty.The Animal Welfare Trust has succeeded in getting the authorities to formulate welfare regulations, which hopefully will soon become law.

With numerous requests for elephants from temples and devales, then President D.B. Wijetunge, in 1994 issued guidelines on donations to religious institutions - donations were to be from Pinnawela, in evaluating the requests, the institutions need for elephants, its historical tradition in conducting annual peraheras continuously for at least twenty five years, its capacity to maintain the animal,were to be considered. A temple or devale possessing an elephant was ineligible to receive more. Donation of elephants to the temples of the Mahanayake Theros however, remained at Presidential discretion.These guidelines now appear to have become obsolete.

Sannasas granting elephants require the animals to be used for religious or cultural activities, but some are hired for other purposes.The Attorney General opines that the Constitution empowers the President to grant only immovable property.

With the CID and the Attorney General now prosecuting persons keeping elephants illegally and taking the animals into custody, a campaign discrediting animal welfare organizations,alleges that they receive foreign funds to destroy Buddhism and culture and hence they are behind the prosecutions. Since there are enough elephants outside, for peraheras, the campaigners are perhaps attempting to mislead the public to gain sympathy.

Our ancient kings exported elephants as tributes or for ceremonial use or warfare. Now, our Heads of State gift baby elephants to foreign nations as symbols of goodwill.Conservationists and animal rights activists state that this affects conservation and separating babies from mothers is cruel. Some argue, why not now, if it happened then? The response  should we perpetuate such practices when animals are being globally recognised as non-human persons with rights and feelings?As Hans Kriek of SAFE, an animal welfare organization in New Zealand comments elephant gifting is more about politics and international relations than animal welfare. These symbols end up in zoos, deprived of their natural habitat, vulnerable to chronic physical ailments and severe emotional trauma. Mali gifted to the Philippines (1974 )remains isolated in a barren enclosure for forty years;Saheli (Pakistan1991) is alleged to have been poisoned; Kadir (Czech Republic 1971) was put down, as he became a threat when Prague zoo was flooded; Kaavan (Pakistan 1985) is suffering from a mental illness isolated in unfamiliar habitat and the most heartrending is little Jayathus fate. Gifted to the United States in 1984 when only twenty months old, Jayathu died within weeks of arrival, of a mysterious illness as the New York Times reported, with symptoms of diarrhoea, loss of appetite and weight loss. Calling them gracious gifts, some of our diplomats take pride in facilitating gifting. It would be more gracious (and humane) to gift an inanimate object, not a living being with no voice or choice to plead Dont take me away from my mother and family.

In 2005, India discontinued the practice of Heads of State gifting animals.The current Wildlife Minister assuring animal activists that he will not allow elephants to be gifted (while expressing helplessness regarding previous negotiations), publicly declared that he does not like sending elephants abroad. So there is hope.

Elephants die in train accidents; fall into agro wells; get electrocuted; are blasted by hakkapatas; during transport; are struck by lightning, among others.

Train drivers are expected to reduce speed in elephant roaming areas; wildlife authorities talk about installing thermographic cameras to warn train drivers; in Africa, underpasses prevent elephant deaths. Are these only dreams for us?

Wildlife and police officers frequently save elephants who fall into wells; recently, a police officer was killed by the saved victim.Tusker Parakrama died when the floor of the lorry transporting him collapsed. Elephants used for rides, games like polo and New Year festival races are often trained cruelly  the animal tortured until its spirit is crushed and will obey any command, out of fear.

And, now we hear of a government pundits outrageous suggestion to sell wild elephants to enhance State coffers and resolve the Human-Elephant Conflict!

The government received global plaudits for destroying tusks found en-route to Dubai, demonstrating Sri Lankas zero-tolerance of the illegal ivory trade.

Today, hunting and killing are banned; there are no kraals; but elephants continue to suffer other tragedies.

If elephants could vote, the future of these majestic sentient beings may change, at least a little bit  because there would be a lot more political will to protect them.
It took him years to figure out fiction is about characters View(s):

Sunil Yapas journey to his first novel,Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, began with a picture at a protest in Seattle of a woman with long red hair on the pavement on her knees in a crowd.

He thought she looked like she was praying or was in pain. A man leaned over her, tending a wound on her head, while people milled about. Yapa told a journalist from The Rumpus: I was thinking, what would make this woman risk getting teargassed, getting pepper sprayed, getting beaten, not for her own rights, but for some kid in a sweatshop making shoes in Sri Lanka, or in Bangladesh, or in Vietnam? Thats an amazing thing. I wanted to know what their story was, I wanted to think what would bring someone there, and what about the world had changed that that was something that now was important in the world.

Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist was a runaway success, making it on to Time Magazine and Amazon.coms Best Books of the year, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick, and an Indies Next Pick and the winner of the 2010 Asian American short story award.

The book follows its characters over the course of a day  the now infamous World Trade Organization protests that took place along the streets of Seattle in 1990a day that started peacefully and ended in blood.Yapa was working with a big cast of characters, but one of his most challenging was likely writing from the perspective of the police, who were accused of terrible violence.

Yapa speaks about how the police were outnumbered and under-trained. When I started researching, I knew right away I didnt want the cops to be an easy villain. Yapa felt that if the book was to be about empathy, then he needed to challenge himself to empathise. One of his most influential resources turned out to be recordings in the city hall archives of the police radio scanners from all five days of the protest. What he heard helped him see the other side.

Its wild because you can hear how it starts out pretty calm, and by day three its absolute panic. People talking over each other, yelling in the background, teargas going off, the concussion grenades going off. You can hear theyre scared. Even the most basic research tells you that most of the cops didnt have any lunch breaks, some hadnt eaten in eighteen hours, some hadnt peed in eighteen hours, hadnt slept. And then I can start to understand a little bit. Its not an apology or an excuse, but I can start to empathize with being in that situation.

Yapas first draft was very different  for starters, he had 60. (His second had only seven). Yapa has told journalists that his laptop getting stolen forced him to completely reconsider the book. I was obviously devastated, but it was a blessingI got really lucky to be able to re-examine it. I dont know why it took me so longI think Im pretty smart, and I had gone to University of Houston, I had gone to London Film School, I had gone to Hunter College, so I had a lot of people teaching me, and I still hadnt figured out that fictions about charactersIt took me four years and a lost manuscript to understand that.

The biracial son of a Sri Lankan father and a mother from Montana, Yapa has lived around the world, including Greece, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, China, and India, as well as London, Montreal, and New York City. Sunils work has appeared in Guernica, American Short Fiction, LitHub, The Multicultural Review and others.
Land Information Minister Louise Upston wants paper map users to have their say on proposed changes to the way Land Information New Zealand prints and charges for its maps.

LINZ is proposing to raise the wholesale cost of paper maps, potentially from $3.30 to $6.80.

Louise says the trusty paper topographic or topo map has long had a place in Kiwi culture, but increasingly people are using digital versions from LINZs website.

While paper maps are still an essential tool for navigation  after all they dont run out of batteries  the greater use of digital maps means there has been a reduction in demand, she says.

This means the price of LINZs maps no longer reflects the costs of producing them, especially as wholesale prices were last changed in 2009.

The new prices will better reflect the costs involved.

LINZ also proposes to make greater use of other printing methods and print fewer maps at a time so that they are more up to date. However before any changes are made, it is important that map users have their say on these proposals.

LINZ produces topographic maps of New Zealand, offshore islands and Pacific and Antarctic regions. These are available from map retailers and for download from the LINZ website. The data used to produce maps is also freely available online from the LINZ Data Service.

Information on the proposed changes and making a submission is available at www.linz.govt.nz/ptmc
Belinda Sands never allowed herself to dream about winning the big prize when she and partner Tom Walch first opened the Greerton Lotto store.

In the last few years I have let myself dream a little about winning, Ive seen it happen to so many other people and now I think it could happen to anyone, so why not me? Why not indeed.

Greerton Lotto is the Bay of Plentys luckiest store, having sold the most number of First Division winning tickets  23 to be exact  since it opened for business about 14 years ago.

With a breath-taking $38 million up for grabs with Powerball tonight, Kiwis all over New Zealand have flocked to their local Lotto shop in thier droves with the hope of scoring for themselves the lucky, golden ticket.

Belinda says this week theyve probably doubled the number of tickets they usually sale, with a broad cross section of the community walking through the doors.

Weve had all of our regulars plus some newbies come in to the store, theres also been a lot of businesses whove been buying group tickets for the draw.

This week our most popular ticket weve sold has probably been the $24 Power Dip, but quite a few people are adding Strike because the prize is up to half a million, so thats a bit of attraction too.

With all the new faces coming in, Belinda gives a little chuckle when asked if the regulars were starting to feel a little protective of their patch.

Maybe a little, she says adding another giggle. But our regulars have been great, of course they want to be the winner, but they also hope the winning ticket is sold by our shop again.

And of course, Belinda also hopes the winning ticket is sold from Greerton Lotto.

Belinda says nearly all of the winners who had purchased their ticket from her shop have come in after the draw to let them know they were the lucky punter.

When someone whispers over the counter that was me who won on the weekend I love it, its really neat.

So what would be the first thing Belinda would do if she won tonights $38m Powerball?

Id fly to Cairns in Australia and buy my son and grandson a house. Ive got it all planned out, Belinda says with a hearty laugh.

For more information about tonights $38 million Powerball draw visit Lotto NZs website at: mylotto.co.nz
2016-07-14-jb-civic-0116.jpg

Norma Tippett of Onondaga Hill and Richard Levy of DeWitt, author of a book about the history of Civic Morning Musicals are shown on the stage of the Everson Museum's Hosmer Auditorium.

(Photo by John Berry)

The Kneisel Quartet is one of the many top-tier groups and performers CMM has hosted over the last 125 years.

By Renee K. Gadoua

The great American composer and pianist Edward MacDowell visited Syracuse to give a February 8, 1898, concert at Central Baptist Church, at Montgomery and East Jefferson streets. The performance was "delightfully surprising, for he proved himself worthy to be classed with the virtuosi," according to a Syracuse Evening Herald account. Further, the newspaper said, "the recital, as a whole, was one of the best of the good things musically that Syracuse has been treated to through the channels of the Morning Musicals club."

That well-received performance came just eight years after the founding of Morning Musicals, a club that started with recitals in the homes of Syracuse women. The organization became Civic Morning Musicals in 1952 after merging with Civic Music Association, which was founded in 1917.

CMM celebrated its 125th anniversary with special concerts from fall 2015 to spring 2016. The group, led by a volunteer board, also published a book illustrated with many historic photos and concert programs. "Civic Morning Musicals, 1890-2015, 125 years," is by Richard Levy and Beth Sotherden.

The organization has hosted performances by dozens of top-tier musicians and musical groups, including the New York Philharmonic, Vienna Choir Boys, Boys Town Choir, the Pittsburgh Orchestra, the Boston Symphony and the Kneisel Quartet. Individual performers include the pianist Olga Samaroff (1908, 1919); the Italian tenor Tito Schipa (1925); violinist Jascha Heifetz (1936); English mezzo-soprano Janet Baker (1969); Israeli-American violinist Itzhak Perlman (1968); and American soprano Beverly Sills (1974).

"During the early years, there was no Syracuse Symphony, no opera here," says Richard Levy, a retired Syracuse University biochemistry professor who sang for 35 years with the Oratorio Society and served on CMM's board from 2003 to 2016.

"They brought in everyone," Levy says. "It had a huge presence for many years."

CMM hosts several Sunday concerts each year as well as its long-running free Wednesday recitals. The group also supports young musicians through recitals, scholarships and competitions. The group's educational mission dates from its early years. This took the form of a music school for underprivileged students that CMM ran from 1917 to 1929.

Despite CMM's mission of supporting emerging musicians, the group struggles to attract young audiences.

"Classical music is a hard sell," says Norma Tippet, a longtime CMM board member who has performed as a soprano with several local choral groups.

The anniversary concerts highlighted CMM competition winners who became professional musicians. A November 2015 concert, for example, featured three professional violinists who won concerto competitions. They are Sarah Crocker Vonsattel of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Patrick Dalton-Holmes of the Saint Louis Orchestra and freelance artist Will Knuth.

"We've always brought in very distinguished musicians," Levy says.

CMM s2016 chedule

Wednesday Recital Series: 12:30 p.m. Wednesdays through May 24. Free concerts are at the Hosmer Auditorium at the Everson Museum of Art, 401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Live! at the Everson: 2 p.m. Sundays at Hosmer Auditorium. Admission is $20.

* Nov. 6: Helen Boatwright 100th Birthday Anniversary: Celebrating Syracuse's Soprano and Teacher Extraordinaire

* Nov. 27: Journeys for Voice and Piano

* March 5: The Jefferson Quartet & Pianist Ida Tili-Trebicka

* April 9: 19th-Century Instruments

* June 4: CNY Young Artists Live!

To see updated schedules and events, visit the group's website.

Renee K. Gadoua is a freelance writer and editor. This article appeared in the Sept./Oct. 2016 edition of The Good Life Central New York magazine.

The Good Life magazine: Meet the weather forecasters of Central NY
Sweden Pope

Pope Francis and Lutheran federation president Bishop Munib Younan arrive for an ecumenical event at the Malmo arena, Sweden, Monday, Oct. 31, 2016. Francis traveled to secular Sweden on Monday to mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, a remarkably bold gesture given his very own Jesuit religious order was founded to defend the faith against Martin Luther's "heretical" reforms five centuries ago.

(L'Osservatore Romano / Pool Photo via AP)

Noah Feldman, a Bloomberg View columnist, is a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard.

By Noah Feldman | Bloomberg View

Pope Francis is continuing along his remarkably liberal path, most recently by praising Martin Luther at a ceremony in Sweden beginning a yearlong 500th anniversary commemoration of the Reformation. Yet despite the pope's openness, and the corresponding good faith of the Lutherans, the two sides were unable to effect a reconciliation. The episode raises two questions: Why try? And how is it that, in this post-theological age, not even Christian believers can get past their own wars of religion?

To start with the obvious, it's moving that the pope would speak positively about Martin Luther, who technically is still under a ban of excommunication issued by Pope Leo X in 1521. In 2011, Benedict XVI offered some mild approbation of "Luther's burning question" -- about the nature of justification, or salvation, in Christ. But Francis went further, saying that Luther's issue is "the decisive question of our lives," and that his doctrine of justification "expresses the essence of human existence before God."

In case you're a little rusty on your soteriology, Luther's transformational argument about salvation can be summed up in the slogan "faith alone." God grants salvation as an act of free grace based on the believer's faith in Christ, not the believer's actions. In contrast, the Catholic Church believes in salvation through a combination of faith and acts.

Despite what would appear to be significant differences, the Catholic Church and a raft of Lutheran churches signed in 1999 a "Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification" that enabled them to claim that they now share "a common understanding of our justification by God's grace through faith in Christ."

I'll spare you the doctrinal heavy lifting. What's significant about the document is that it shows churches can find common ground when they want to. After the joint declaration, it seemed conceivable that Catholics and Lutherans might actually be able to repair their schism and enter into communion with each other.

Why bother to try? Part of the answer is undoubtedly theological. Catholics and Lutherans alike are committed to the idea of the church as a single mystical body. They therefore consider the 500-year-old breach a "wound in the body of Christ," as the two sides agreed to put it in a joint statement this week.

But the desire for union goes further. In an era when Islam seems to be rising, and Christianity finds itself on the defensive, especially in rich Western countries, resolving internal conflict has public relations value. It's embarrassing for a faith that wants to teach love, peace and harmony to find itself still divided by disagreements that produced hundreds of years of war and violence. The continuing division between Catholics and Protestants is a reminder that disagreement over what appeared to be small differences can be pervasive and violent.

Given the value of reconciliation, why can't Catholics and Lutherans enter communion with one another? At the level of theology, the problem isn't the doctrine of justification but the other classic divide between the two churches: belief about what happens during the Eucharist, when the bread and wine consecrated by the priest become in some sense the body and blood of Christ. The Catholic Church believes in transubstantiation, according to which the substance or essence of Christ's body and blood are present in the bread and wine at the moment of communion. The Lutheran doctrine of "sacramental union" is a bit different and more complicated. The body and blood are really present, but not in the same way as the bread and the wine.

This theological divide could be bridged. Luther did not take the view, adopted by many other Protestants, that the holy supper of communion is symbolic only, or that Christ's body and blood are not real presences at the altar. Indeed, it's fair to say that the two churches are closer together on communion than they were on the doctrine of justification, which they "resolved" by their joint declaration.

So why can't the Catholic and Lutheran churches get to yes? The answer lies in 500 years of institutional development, not in theology. Churches, like other institutions, develop strong identities and affiliations that go far beyond belief. To be a Lutheran is, in no small part, not to be a Catholic. To be a Catholic is, importantly, to belong to the church that rejected Luther's Reformation.

As a result, priests and lay people alike would find it all but impossible for the two churches to say they were in communion. The divisions are at the level of fundamental identity. The culture of worship plays some role -- Catholic velvets and silks are different from plain Lutheran black and white. But even these divisions matter mostly because of how they relate to identity.

The upshot is that Catholics and Lutherans are in this sense like Sunnis and Shiites -- divided more by identity and history than by theology or belief. The good news is that they aren't at war, and haven't been for centuries. The bad news is that identity divisions created over centuries can take centuries to fade away.
Finally, the government has made a decision on airport expansion. It has been on the cards for years, but the fact that any expansion would upset residents meant that the issue has been so toxic successive governments have avoided a decision like the plague.

Yet, the argument runs, airport expansion is desperately needed. London is a centre of global commerce, arguably only second to New York. If it wants to continue as a place where workers, businessmen and tourists flock from across the globe, London needs this runway. Whether expansion happened at Gatwick or Heathrow residents would be enraged, at least now a decision has been made.

Except, all this attention on London reveals a problem with the way we think about our country and our economy. Look at other big government projects like High Speed Rail 2, Currently estimated to cost 55 billion pounds, with the first phase to Birmingham only finished by 2026. For all that, it will shave off about half an hour in journey times between Birmingham in London. HS2 and Heathrow expansion are part of our fetishisation of London and by extent globalisation. This fetish forces the following logic: we need a third runway to keep us connected to the global economy. We need to make it easier to get to London to allow the benefits of Londons economic growth to spread out to the regions.

Yet its not just HS2 or Heathrow, our whole transport system is centred around getting to and from London. The modern equivalent of the phrase All roads lead to Rome is all railways lead to London. Of course, London should be easier to get to than a tiny Yorkshire village, but our obsession with the capital has meant the areas like the North of England have been completely neglected beyond economic sense. The government has ignored calls from think tanks to prioritise HS3, linking northern cities together. Planned northern infrastructure projects have double the estimated rate of return as the big sexy London projects like Crossrail and HS2. The economic logic behind our London centric view is clearly flawed. Leaving the north with diesel trains converted from buses is a result of this perverted economic logic which promotes London as our global city above all others.

The North isnt the only neglected region in the UK but it is an exemplar of how we have over-prioritised London beyond common sense. Since the 1980s the large cities, Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester have slowly pulled out of the dive of deindustrialisation, yet its a resource that remains untapped. The Northern Powerhouse is little more than empty rhetoric, putting projects that shouldve been done decades ago all under one title. Projects budget have been in the millions, compared to the billions spent on London. The fact the government choose to close the offices of the department responsible for the Northern Powerhouse in Sheffield and move it to London, shows how committed the government is to energising the north.

Politicians, Brexiter and Remainer alike are now lining up to declare that the UK is open for business or should remain so. Brexiters declare that leaving the EU will make us more open to the world, Remainers have established the group Open Britain to try and fight any isolationist Brexit which might stop free trade and movement. For some areas of Britain, like the 3km2 of The City of London, this is vital, as is the infrastructure to allow it continue to suck in talent and money from the regions and the world.

But what is the point of London being a global centre of capital if this doesnt benefit, to borrow a phrase from the politicians phrasebook: hard-working people? At the moment, it doesnt, most people are still worse off than before the financial crisis. Then even within London, the city is failing to work for residents. Working and even upper-middle class residents are being priced out of areas that have been their familys homes for years by global customers looking to buy property as a capital investment.

To answer the obvious criticism: Im not anti-free trade. I understand comparative advantage, how free trade between nation makes each and every nation wealthier. But it is a fallacy pretend that the current situation works for the whole country. Giving the North decent infrastructure, allowing the cities to pool their skills and resources, would not only help the North but help London. If the magnetic pull of London for people like us has a counter, then the massive demand for housing in London might be abated, prices might fall, across the south east. Or, at the very least, we would have the option to live and work in a city where rents wont annihilate any hope of ever buying our own homes. If our generation, north and south, cant live decent lives, with goods jobs and homes we can afford, what is the point of being a global country?
Arguably the most important issue of our time, the environment is something which our generation should be fighting to protect. University students should be the core of this movement, but instead they are busy fighting for other things, and studying for their degrees. I am by no means saying that the environment is more important than womens rights, LGBT+ concerns, and combatting racism for example, however it is worth remembering that if we do not do anything to protect our planet and reverse the damage we have already done, then we will not have long to live. That is to say that all too often this fundamental issue is overlooked in favour of seemingly more pressing problems we face in daily life. The environment does not seem to relevant to many students, they cannot connect with this issue on a personal level which makes the campaign much less attractive.

The difficulty is, how can we make environmental campaigns more inviting? How can we encourage university students to participate when there is so much else going on in their lives? Green officers in Cambridge college JCRs have their work cut out. Even trying to get people to attend a meeting can be challenging, and people respond much more to issues relating to homelessness for example than to the boring ways of trying to make our electricity use more efficient. It seems that, in spite of being an integral part of our future as humans on this planet, nobody can find the time in their lives to help combat climate change. It seems such an impossible and daunting task that students would rather instant satisfaction of other campaigns than less popular green issues.

This lack of involvement from the student body also seems to be part of a wider phenomenon in Cambridge. At Cambridge University you might expect to find a whole host of students ready and willing to fight for their beliefs, to protest about the important things in life. However, this all seems a little stifled by the academic and social pressures of university life. There are undoubtedly many students running societies and schemes and they should be celebrated, nevertheless there are still so many students who do nothing but their degree for fear of not having enough time to cope with it all. I am not saying these people are weak, in many ways they are doing the most sensible thing and putting their well-being first rather than overworking themselves, but the fact remains the same: Cambridge is not a place conducive to student run projects and extra-curricular activities. There are many options, but no time to get fully involved in anything in order to make a substantial difference. From this perspective it is even less surprising that many people forget almost entirely about environmental issues, given everything else that they have going on in their lives.
Cambridge loves to talk about itself. Now of course, everybody loves a bit of late-night ADC self-congratulation, but it means that a show about being (or not-being) at Cambridge has to contend with a lot of other chat to be interesting. Dropouts!, by virtue of being set Somewhere Outside Of Cambridge, manages to joke about the experience in a way that was thus largely un-cringeworthy.

We watch two students as they adventure to the New University of Studies, finding new love, making new friends, and most importantly joining WakeboardSoc. Piers and Herbert, the lead characters  two living, breathing stereotypes  were actually both funny and compelling. Expecting to hate what I anticipated would be a collage of nauseating uni in-jokes, private school stereotypes, and ironic homoerotic frisson, I was disarmed by the chemistry of the two as they stumbled and shambled about the stage.

If Cambridge does love to talk about itself, it flounders when it comes to talking about other people. The Outside World was on the stage in the form of two characters wearing tracksuits, making jokes about drug dealing and absent fathers. You could feel a collective grimace wafting over the audience at these stereotypes. The writers will no doubt try to defend the characterisation as a satiric attack on the way Cambridge students see others. There was not enough in the show for this claim to be legitimate. And why indulge in such snobbery at all?

Despite this weakness, the writing was elsewhere excellent. High-quality writing squeezes its best jokes out of the least predictable corners of the script. The biggest success of Dropouts! was how, despite being self-consciously about types of people and situations we all know (or think we know), it managed not to vomit up the same gags that we have heard time and time again.

Despite the fact that it arguably runs out of steam in its latter half, and some poorly handled politics, the show must be given great credit for talking about the predictable in unpredictable ways, as well as for making the snoozefest of uni banter as silly as it really should be.

7/10
Although Google didnt drop any new details on the progress of Andromeda at its big Pixel event last week, that doesnt suggest any tempering of enthusiasm for the new operating system.

#Googles #Andromeda: 1 OS to rule them all. Is another operating system what consumers need? Many people think so. https://t.co/GFPr02ruE7

 Ali Zartash-Lloyd (@Cognisant2000) October 7, 2016

Andromeda reportedly is a mashup of Android and Chrome, with features from Chrome having been ported into Android rather than the other way around. Its expected to show up next year in a new laptop, dubbed Pixel 3, Android Police reported last month. The project is known internally as Bison.

Putting It Together

Andromeda apparently is distinct from Googles current bid to bring Android apps to Chromebooks through the App Runtime for Chrome project, and the Pixel 3 wont be marketed as a Chromebook.

Google also plans to launch a Huawei-manufactured Nexus tablet that will run Andromeda, 9to5 Google reported last month.

A Chrome and Android mashup would provide a common platform across all devices that includes not only the OS but the browser functions as well, observed Michael Jude, a program manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan.

Its what Microsoft was trying to do before the government told them they couldnt, he told TechNewsWorld.

Reaching for Andromeda

Google has been on a trajectory to hybridize Android and Chrome OS in terms of running apps, the Web/Touch model and other aspects, noted Al Hilwa, a research program director at IDC.

Im not surprised to see Andromeda devices, he told TechNewsWorld.

This move is essentially what weve said all along Google should do, Hilwa remarked. Clearly they can only do it at a certain pace, given that these are established platforms with OEM ecosystems.

The pace has been fairly sedate for Google. Executive chairman Eric Schmidt appeared to hint at the hybridization in his keynote at the 2011 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Chrome and Android would have more features in common, Schmidt said two years later, though Google intended to keep the OSes separate. Those comments followed Android guru Andy Rubins move from the Android unit to head unspecified new projects. Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who was then head of the Chrome OS unit, was Rubins replacement.

That move increased speculation that Google was planning an eventual merger of the two OSes.

Hardware Expectations

Andromeda will optimize access to Google Assistant from hybrid PCs and tablets, suggested Werner Goertz, a research director at Gartner.

However, Googles new Allo chat app and its new Pixel hardware devices will be more relevant, he told TechNewsWorld ahead of last weeks event, as theyre integrated with Google Assistant.

They will form the starting point for a new ecosystem for Googles virtual personal assistant, Goertz noted. As such, Googles strategy resembles that of Amazon with Alexa.

The Pixel 3, slated for release next year, will be an ultra-thin laptop with a 12.3-inch display, Android Police reported. Its expected to have a tablet mode, but whether it will be a 2-in-1 device like Microsofts Surface Book or have some other form factor is unknown.

It will have an Intel M3 or i5 Core processor with 32 or 128 GB of storage and 8 GB or 16 GB of RAM, according to Android Police. It also will have a fingerprint scanner, two USB C ports, a 3.5 mm jack, stylus support, stereo speakers, quad mikes, and a backlit keyboard with a glass trackpad employing haptic tech and force detection. Battery life is expected to be about 10 hours.
Salesforce has agreed to acquire its Marketing Cloud partner Krux, which offers a data management platform.

Salesforce will pay US$340 million in cash and issue between 3.4 million and six million shares of common stock to consummate the deal, according to documentation filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. Thats worth an estimated $700 million in all.

Benefits to Both

Krux will extend the Salesforce Marketing Clouds segmentation and targeting capabilities to power consumer marketing with even more precision at scale, said Krux CEO Tom Chavez.

Further, Krux will feed Salesforces new artificial intelligence system, Einstein, with billions of new signals, providing corporations with more data about their users.

Krux will continue supporting its partner ecosystem.

The acquisition was absolutely needed and expected, said Sheryl Kingstone, a research director at 451 Research.

Its a great addition to not just the data cloud, but also the marketing cloud, as the world demands contextual 1:1 intent-driven engagement, she told CRM Buyer. Its all about the data for the future of intelligent business applications.

Salesforce is making a big push into AI, having developed Einstein to integrate AI into all of its products and serve as a nervous system across its entire business.

Einstein includes product recommendations; Predictive Sort, which turns up sort and search results based on how likely customers are to make a purchase; and Commerce Insights, which helps retailers understand product purchase correlations to help improve their store planning and merchandising.

Data lies at the heart of those efforts, and that is just what Krux offers. Through its data management platform, it serves as an intelligent marketing center that corporations can leverage to deliver media, content and commerce experiences to deepen customer engagement, strengthen

At the Crux of Krux

Every month, Krux interacts with more than 3 billion browsers and devices, supports more than 200 billion data collection events, processes more than 5 billion CRM records, and orchestrates more than 200 billion personalized consumer experiences.

Krux uses AI to analyze all of those signals to identify audiences for targeted marketing and advertising efforts.

Clients include Kellogg, ConAgra, JetBlue, Time Warner and Peugeot-PSA.

Happier Together

When Salesforce unveiled its next-generation marketing cloud last year, Krux was one of the partners in its digital marketing and digital advertising ecosystems.

Krux earlier this year deepened its integration with the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, empowering advertisers to match third-party data with customer information on their Salesforce instances.

Krux also entered the Salesforce independent software vendor partner program, which enables customers of both firms to use their customer data to target consumers on the open Web, while also enriching their customer profiles with online engagement data.

The resulting two-way data exchange between the data sets let Salesforce clients consistently increase the value of both their online and offline data.

It made sound business sense for Salesforce to extend the partnership by purchasing Krux.

Kruxs technology has real-time access to extensive customer data, which is crucial to understanding the process a consumer goes through when making a purchase, said Anne Moxie, a senior analyst at Nucleus Research.

Salesforce will be able to leverage this data with its artificial intelligence offering, Einstein, she told CRM Buyer, to potentially either make its marketing campaigns more dynamic, so that it can respond to consumer actions in real time, or  for highly granular customer segmentation.

It will make targeting more accurate, Moxie noted, because the neural networks and deep learning models in Einstein can use the real-time data thats collected from Krux for improved campaigns.
IBM on Tuesday announced that it will incorporate its IBM Watson cognitive capabilities into the MobileFirst for iOS ecosystem to help boost the productivity of the global workforce.

It was a little more than two years ago that the company entered a groundbreaking partnership with Apple to enhance the mobile enterprise space.

IBM executives, speaking at the companys World of Watson conference in Las Vegas, positioned the move as part of an overall rollout of enhancements to IBM Watson technology, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to support human interactions with intelligent bots at a scale rarely seen.

All of this means at its core were working on Watson to make sure it can read at scale, reason with a purpose, learn with each outcome and interact with us naturally, IBM Watson General Manager David Kenny told attendees at the conference.

On the Ground and in the Air

The company has optimized several new technologies to work with the iOS 10 speech framework  including IBM Natural Language Processing, Watson Conversation and other Watson APIs  enabling millions of workers who use the MobileFirst technology to control apps with simple voice interactions. The improvements are meant to help companies gain more insight into customer behavior and interactions in the field.

The extended relationship with Apple is the most interesting thing that IBM announced at the conference, according to Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

Given Watsons many powerful, often unique capabilities, the move will help MobileFirst apps stand out from the pack, and should entice developers focused on workplace and enterprise apps, he told the E-Commerce Times. It also reflects another interesting point: that IBM is better at explicating and reinforcing the business value of Apple products than Apple is itself.

One of the new apps that workers can use in the field is Find & Fix, which lets field technicians use an Apple iPhone or Apple Watch to select jobs based on proximity and priority. Thats presumably more efficient than going by a preselected schedule to determine how they move from location to location without information on how complex each assignment will be.

Workers also can use the app to get turn-by-turn directions and real-time traffic and parking information. In addition, workers can use the Apple camera built into the phone to scan bar codes and communicate with off-site specialists via FaceTime.

The relationship with IBM is going to be very important for Apples enterprise business, observed telecom analyst Jeff Kagan.

Watson will help Apple modernize in advance, he told the E-Commerce Times. Artificial intelligence is going to transform every industry, including wireless and devices, and that means Apple iOS.

Other uses of Watson technology with MobileFirst include the opt-in Passenger + app, which lets flight attendants get deeper insights into passenger interests while they are in flight, IBM said.Retail salespeople can use the technology to gain insights into customer purchasing preferences, while financial advisors can use it to help make investment decisions.

A Banks Experience

Since launching the Apple partnership two years ago, IBM and Apple have worked hard to expand the use of IBM technology to the mobile worker, and to get Apple devices into their hands.

A lot of us thought the real power of this relationship would result from IBM putting Watson behind Siri, noted Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

This isnt that, but it is showcasing the power of Watson on the iPhone, and that is certainly a big step in a similar direction, he told the E-Commerce Times.

The companies earlier this year announced an agreement with Alior Bank, based in Poland, to use three MobileFirst apps  for scheduling, sales and signing up new clients  along with 1,300 Apple iPhones, iPads and MacBooks deployed to the banks workforce.

We have been impressed by the incredibly fast and effective way Apple and IBM have teamed with Alior to design and build the apps, which boost the productivity of our private banking advisors, said Tomasz Motyl, chief innovation officer at Alior Bank.

They understood our business and easily turned ideas into working solutions  making the decision to expand our collaboration an easy one, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Our private banking advisors got a modern tool that enables secure insight into the customer portfolio in the way that is the most convenient for the customer  accessible from anywhere on iPads. Using those apps, advisors provide customers with unique private banking advisory services and more varied offers, tailored to the individual preferences and financial plans of our customers, Motyl explained.

MobileFirst for iOS apps give to our employees and customers the service they desire, immediately and in context, simultaneously optimizing banking processes and making them more cost effective, he added. We believe that the introduction of MobileFirst for iOS apps will revolutionize the in-branch experience.
Google on Tuesday announced Jamboard, a digital whiteboard for collaboration in the cloud.Its compatible with G Suite and Google Search, as well as Google Drive. Users can collaborate and broadcast their work globally through Google Hangouts.

Jamboard has a 55-inch 4K display with touchscreen functionality, a built-in HD camera, speakers, and WiFi connectivity.

Features include sticky notes, stencils, and handwriting and shape recognition.

Jamboards touchscreen can differentiate between the stylus and the eraser. It also can sense when someone uses a finger to erase content from the screen rather than write on it.

The stylus and digital eraser dont require batteries or pairing, Google said.

The Jamboard will be available for purchase next year at a price point of less than US$6,000.

An early adopter program will enable Google to fine-tune Jamboard for G Suite customers.

Whats Good About Jamboard

Jamboard appears superior to other whiteboards because it looks tightly coupled with Google productivity apps, said Michael Jude, a program manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan.

Since many people are already knowledgeable about Google collaboration, this seems like a logical extension, he told the E-Commerce Times. Jamboard is perfect for distributed work environments and for offices that still have office parks.

Jamboard is rather slick, and that will appeal to cutting-edge companies, Jude remarked. The cutting-edge feel to this thing may attract companies that might have gone with more traditional collaborative approaches.

Jamboards Drawbacks

Including collaborative versions of the more advanced tools that specialists require, such as CAD solutions for engineers, would make Jamboard even more valuable, suggested Jim McGregor, a principal analyst at Tirias Research.

A tool like this should be huge for engineers, who naturally love whiteboards  but you have to have the tools, and all parties involved need to have the platform, he told the E-Commerce Times.

It helps expand Googles presence and recognition as a hardware system provider, especially for enterprise solutions, but this isnt going to be a breakout product for Google, McGregor said.

The demand for such a device is rather limited, he explained. It doesnt really enable anything new  it just makes everything easier by integrating all the tools and interfaces into a single platform.

Among the challenges it would present are convincing the IT staff to purchase, install and maintain it; making it available in all the locations that need it; and retraining people to use it, McGregor said.

Products like the Jamboard arent enterprise class devices  theyre point solutions  like printers, copiers and scanners, better sold by firms that meet point needs and have other, similar products to sell, maintained Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

The only large firms that likely could sell these well are firms already selling other document-related solutions, and Google currently isnt one of those, he told the E-Commerce Times. This is one more case where it looks like Google just doesnt get the enterprise.

Jamboard vs. the Surface Hub

Right now, the gold standard for this use is likely the Surface Hub, because it blends a variety of technologies into whats likely the most advanced conferencing board on the market, Enderle suggested.

Googles approach with the Jamboard is far cheaper, but it leaves out a ton of features, like videoconferencing, which are necessary to make a current-generation connected board make sense, he added.

The Jamboard reminds me a lot of products we had 10 or so years ago that could store and forward what you wrote on them, Enderle said. This one ties into Googles back end better, but Im wondering where the last decade went.

While the demand for connected whiteboards has never been very big, the Jamboard does tie into Googles overall strategy of indexing the world, Enderle pointed out. Whats done on this board will be captured, recorded and indexed, and thats a value.
Just recently, Samsung started to rollout a huge update for its Gear Manager application; however, things didn't go exactly as expected. We understand several Gear S2 owners have been taking to Android-related forums and complaining about not being able to view incoming calls on their nifty smartwatch.

Before receiving the update, users were able to get notifications about incoming calls, text messages, emails, among other things. However, after the update, users are saying these notifications have changed. Apparently, whenever an email comes along, the notification comes up, but it says "can't show email for security reasons."

What's more interesting is the fact that the notification is asking users to view emails via their smartphone instead.

Now, one is certain if the glitch affects all user accounts or only a few. At the moment, from looking at the Android Central forum, several users are experiencing the same problems, so it's clear the issue is relatively widespread.

"After updating the Gear app on my S7 phone I now get 'Can't show email for security reasons. View it on your phone...' on the Gear S2 watch when I get an Email notification. Before the update I would get the subject and the beginning of the email," according to Gear S2 owner on Android Central.

SamMobile is reporting that one user is complaining that email notifications are being delivered in standard format for his Gmail and Outlook mail accounts, but not for his Exchange account.

Samsung has yet to make a statement regarding the current issue, but we're certain the company will release a fix eventually to iron out the bugs.

Samsung's Little Problems

It might take a while for Samsung to release a fix for the Gear Manager update seeing as the company suffered some serious setbacks in the past. The launch of the Galaxy Note 7 went well, then things started to explode, but not in a good way.

The company was forced to recall the devices, but everything came to a halt when Samsung announced it would end the manufacturing of the Galaxy Note 7. A solid device went the way of the dodo bird due to bad battery design.

This has caused several Galaxy fans to switch over and get an iPhone 7, a huge blow that could turn out to be a long-term problem if these folks enjoy the Apple experience. However, seeing as the company is willing to pay its customers to stick around, maybe there's a silver lining in all of this for Samsung.

One thing is for sure, the Galaxy S8 needs to come good, or else it won't be a pretty sight.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
If you thought the flip phone was dead, think again! Samsung just unveiled a high-end W2017 clamshell smartphone.

We first heard of the Samsung W2017 flip phone back in June, when word first got out of a new high-end Samsung clamshell codenamed "Veyron." The rumor mill then went in overdrive trying to anticipate what this new flip phone would bring to the table and leaked specs painted an exciting picture.

It's now the moment of truth, as the new Samsung W2017 flip phone just made its official debut in China, as SamMobile reports. No pricing details are available at this point, but here's what the device has to offer in terms of specifications.

The Samsung W2017 packs the powerful Snapdragon 820 quad-core processor, paired with 4 GB of RAM to ensure a speedy performance. The handset has an internal and external 4.2-inch Super AMOLED Always On Display with a full HD resolution (1080p), a 12-megapixel main camera with an f/1.9 aperture and 4K video capture, a 5-megapixel front camera and 64 GB of native storage expandable up to 256 GB via microSD.

The stylish clamshell powerhouse further comes with dual-SIM support, 4G LTE connectivity and a 2,300 mAh battery with fast charging support. The smaller battery is a tradeoff due to the clamshell form factor, but the phone makes up for it in processing power and sleek design.

Speaking of design, the Samsung W2017 features an elegant metal body and comes in two color options: black and gold.

In terms of software, the Samsung W2017 will apparently ship with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow on board out of the box, potentially getting an upgrade to the latest Android 7.0 Nougat later on (unconfirmed). The device also seems to support wireless charging and mobile payments, likely via Samsung Pay.

That's quite a big change from the flip phone of yesteryear, which was good for basic phone functions and perhaps a simplistic game or two, but not much else. The Samsung W2017 aims to cater to those who love the clamshell form factor, but would like some modern specs and features to go along with it and bring it on par with current smartphones. When it comes to availability, however, things may be trickier. Samsung reportedly plans to release the W2017 in China at first, and it remains unclear for now which other markets will get the handset. Some of Samsung's previous high-end clamshell phones made it to India and some other Asian countries, but did not reach the United States. This means the Samsung W2017 may not arrive stateside either, but who knows? There's still hope until Samsung officially states otherwise.

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Adobe is developing new software that will function similar to the picture-editing application Photoshop, but will instead work for audio files.

Details regarding the software, which has been codenamed Project VoCo, was revealed by Adobe developer Zeyu Jin at the Adobe MAX conference in San Diego.

One of the major functions of the ever-developing Photoshop is adding to an image things that were not there when the picture was taken. This same function will be seen in Project VoCo, allowing users to add words that are not part of the original audio file.

Project VoCo Demonstration

A representative for Adobe confirmed that the software, which also comes with standard speech editing and noise cancellation capabilities, was indeed shown off at the MAX conference.

In the demonstration of the software, Jin took an audio clip of a speech and opened it. By opening an edit box and typing in text, words were added to the audio file that were said in the same voice as the one present.

According to Jin, Project VoCo needs about 20 minutes of recorded speech so that the software will be able to add words to the audio clip accurately. According to Creative Bloq's Craig Stewart, that length of recorded speech is impressively short for how accurate the added words sounded like compared to the original voice.

How Will Project VoCo Be Used?

Adobe, also known for Lightroom and Adobe Stock, said that Project VoCo is intended for users who made mistakes or decided to insert changes into recorded audio files. As long as the minimum recorded time of 20 minutes is met, the software's algorithm will handle the requested additions and changes.

Similar to how Photoshop revolutionized image editing and creation, Project VoCo has the potential to transform the way audio engineers work in editing, polishing and cleaning up recordings. On the other end though, the software presents ethical implications as it can function as a tool to falsify statements to the benefit of the user or to cause harm to others.

However, it should be noted that a similar issue cropped up as Photoshop was developed, but the public was able to develop a mindset of being critical of possibly edited images. Project VoCo could push the formation of a similar mindset against doctored audio clips.

Project VoCo Release Plans

The software, which is the product of a collaboration between the Adobe Research team and Princeton University, is still in an early prototype stage. Adobe has not yet revealed any commercial plans for Project VoCo, but audio engineers might already be looking forward to its release.

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There are two more times we will get to see a supermoon 2016.

We first saw one on Oct. 16, and we will see the last on Dec. 14. The second supermoon of the year, which will take place on Nov. 14, will be simply out of this world. The moon will be full on the same day as perigee for about two hours, which makes it an extra-supermoon.

The term supermoon has become a scientifically documented fact, originating in the astronomy theories of modern researchers, when the moon is within roughly 90 percent of its closest possible distance to Earth. The term is used today in a broader sense, describing a moon that is closer to Earth than usual.

The orbit of the moon is elliptical, which makes one side (perigee) approximately 30,000 miles closer to Earth than the other (apogee). A syzygy, as the phenomenon is described, is the scientific name for when our planet, the sun and the moon line up while the moon is orbiting the Earth.

This phenomenon makes the perigee-syzygy of the system created between our planet, the moon and the sun an event as our natural satellite is positioned on the other side of our planet, which allows us to experience a supermoon.

The Closest Moon In Seven Decades

The supermoon on Nov. 14 is the closest full moon in the 21st century that we'll experience, and it won't reach this closeness again until November 2034.

However, it's not the only special supermooon we're experiencing in 2016, as the one in December will wipe out our possibility to see the Geminid meteor shower. Because of the bright moonlight, the visibility of meteors will be significantly reduced, which will make the meteor shower significantly less impressive.

The perigee full moon can be up to 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than the full moon in the apogee position, but it's always possible for this difference to be blurred away by different factors, such as clouds or the intense urban lights of the big cities.

And while the differences are often difficult to tell, NASA's official position is that a supermoon is "undeniably beautiful" in itself, which encourages people around the world to book the day.

However, if you do plan on observing the phenomenon yourself, you should make sure that the place you're in is dark enough to make the most of the moment. The peak is expected to be reached at 8:52 a.m. EST, and people from Australia will experience it on Nov. 15.

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The suicide rates among U.S. middle school students doubled in just seven years, becoming bigger than the number of children between the ages of 10 and 14 who died as a result of car crashes, according to a federal report released on Nov. 3.

The suicide rate among this population increased from 0.9 to 2.1 per 100,000 children from 2007 to 2014, while the traffic deaths have declined to 1.9, as reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The car crash mortality rate is only available until 2014, and it consistently decreased by 60 percent since 1999, the year when the U.S. government monitored these figures for the first time. In absolute numbers, there were 425 children who took their own lives in 2014 alone, as opposed to the number of deaths caused by car accidents, a recorded number of 384, according to the CDC.

While the leading cause of deaths among children still consists of accidents of all kinds, accounting for 750 reported fatal accidents in 2014 within the age group, the fact remains that, back in 1999, there were four times more deaths caused by car crashes than by suicide.

The data suggests that the situation of automobile accidents has improved, while the suicide rates among middle school children has increased dramatically.

"Any rise (in youth suicides) should be of concern, there's no doubt. In time we might uncover some reasons, but a cautionary note [is] not to rush to any conclusions from this," Mark Kaplan, professor of social welfare at the University of California in Los Angeles, told Fox News.

According to the same source, the array of reasons that lead children to such extreme behavior is complex. This makes them complicated to understand, analyze, explain or act upon.

The mortality rate as a result of traffic accidents has steadily decreased. However, the situation was easier to combat, especially because of new and improved cars as well as the awareness campaigns carried out in order to convince people to drive more carefully. Having better tires, airbags and more accident-proof cars in general is one of the most important contributing factors to the drop in mortality among this age group.

However, when it comes to children's safety, their psychological experiences and traumas, and their perception of failure, it's harder to intervene because of the subjectivity of the human factor, which makes these data extremely sensitive to deal with.

Suicides have occurred in many different forms, including epidemics, such as the one in Palo Alto, where from 2009 to 2015 10 children committed suicide.

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The hardware specification of the OnePlus 4 has been a mystery, and as such, rumors arose as folks try to determine what's under the hood. The latest rumor could be something we can finally believe in, and if it turns out to be true, we could be looking at the most powerful smartphone in 2017.

Over the short few years, the OnePlus brand has been on the rise. Steadily gaining a small following to the point where we now care. The current device is the OnePlus 3, but with the OnePlus 4 on the horizon, we're getting genuinely excited here.

Now, we have no idea when the device will hit the market, but it could be around June or July, as that's the same time period the OnePlus 3 was released. The company might not want to release the handset in early 2017 seeing as that's the time Samsung announces its Galaxy line of flagship smartphones.

Let's Talk About The Specs

Rumors claim the OnePlus 4 could come with a super-fast Snapdragon 830 SoC that runs at 3GHz. An Adreno 620 GPU might also feature in the device along with 8 GB worth of RAM, and an internal memory of up to 128 GB. As for the battery, we're hearing it could storage capabilities up to 4,200 mAh.

As for the camera, the main shooter is expected to be 24-megapixels, but no word if this is a dual camera set-up. When it comes down to selfie shooter, First Post is reporting 8-megapixel, which should be more than good enough.

A phone like this will have a huge display, and the rumors are claiming 5.5-inches to be maximum. The resolution is 2K (2,560 x 1,440).

What About The Operating System?

At launch, the device will likely hit store shelves with the OxygenOS, according to India Today. It's a mobile operating system based on Android Nougat 7.1. We understand it might also support two sim cards and wireless charging to round off the main features.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 830 will be the latest from the company, and is expected to be a 10nm chip. This should deliver increased performance and better battery life. However, how much of a performance and battery life we're looking at is still left to be seen.

The OnePlus 4 isn't the only device on the horizon for the Chinese company. The OnePlus 3T is set for release this year on Nov. 14. It's a slight upgrade over the OnePlus 3, nothing out of this world.

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It has been a long wait for Dragon Ball fans. Dragon Ball Super started in the summer of 2015 in Japan, but it's only been recently that watching the latest episodes of Dragon Ball Super in America is (legally) possible thanks to a new partnership between Funimation and Crunchyroll. The current story arc of the show is now available for viewing through Crunchyroll's streaming service, with earlier episodes being added regularly.

That being said, only English subtitled episodes of the show are currently available. Which raises the question: when is an English dubbed version of the show coming? Most American fans of the show grew up with the English voice actors for Goku, Vegeta and the rest of the Z fighters, and watching Dragon Ball without them seems wrong. Fans may be able to legally watch Dragon Ball Super now with English subtitles, but it's far from an ideal scenario for many.

No need to worry. Funimation has confirmed (via IGN) that an English dub of Dragon Ball Super is in the works, one that will presumably bring back many of the voice actors from the English dub of Dragon Ball Z. If you're like me and can't get over Goku's Japanese voice, this is great news.

Unfortunately, Funimation makes no mention of when fans can expect an English dub of the show to release. Considering the sheer number of episodes involved (there are currently 60 plus episodes and counting), it could still be a while before fans can watch Dragon Ball Super with all the voice actors they remember from their youth. In the meantime, Funimation will continue adding subtitled episodes of the show for streaming as they are completed. Currently episodes 1-10 and 47-64 are available for viewing, with episodes 11-46 coming at a later date.

Funimation will be handling the home distribution for Dragon Ball Super in the United States and Canada as well, so fans can expect some fancy boxsets once the entire series has been dubbed. Funimation recently brought the two latest Dragon Ball films stateside for limited theatrical runs and eventually home release, films that saw much of the show's original English voice actors returning.

There you have it. You can watch Dragon Ball Super now, but if you want the English voice cast, the wait is going to be a little longer. Wanting to keep up with Dragon Ball Super while waiting on the English dubbed version? You can read up on some of the latest events (and fan theories) here.

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German prosecutors are not satisfied with how Facebook handles hate speech, so they're going after its executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Prosecutors in Munich are reportedly investigating Zuckerberg, as well as other Facebook executives, for potential hate speech and criminal incitement. The investigation should also determine whether Facebook's policies are in violation with hate speech laws in the country.

Attorney Chan-jo Jun reportedly filed the criminal complaint in Munich back in September, German publication Der Spiegel reports. Jun filed another complaint last year in Hamburg, but it hit a dead end because prosecutors ultimately decided that Facebook did not fall under German jurisdiction. It remains to be seen whether the new complaint will have a better fate, but Munich prosecutors seem to think it might stand a chance.

The new complaint alleges that Facebook failed to remove hate speech from its social network even after learning that it was violating German laws. Moreover, the complaint mentions Zuckerberg by name, as well as COO Sheryl Sandberg and Facebook's European and German regional managers, Richard Allan and Eva-Maria Kirschsieper, respectively.

Jun seeks to force the Facebook executives to remove the postings considered in violation of German law. The filing contains examples of such violations, listing 438 posts that are allegedly racist, incite to violence or make references to Nazis and the Holocaust.

This is not Facebook's first brush with such matters, as the social network was even sued for facilitating terrorist attacks. Facebook is not the only one in this position either. Twitter was similarly accused of facilitating ISIS "hateful rhetoric," and a number of other heavyweight tech players are trying to combat online hate speech.

The latest investigation that German prosecutors launched against Facebook, Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives is part of a wider crackdown seeking to make the online environment clean of hate speech. Just earlier this week, a German justice minister said that both Facebook and Twitter would face legal action if they don't improve their responses to hate speech.

Facebook already pledged back in August to collaborate with authorities in the fight against terrorism, following the terror attacks in Germany.

It remains to be seen whether the latest complaint against Facebook in Germany will achieve its goals, since Facebook has its European operations based in Ireland and would therefore not fall under German jurisdiction.

Facebook, for its part, says it hasn't violated any German laws, and it's working on combatting online hate speech.

"We are not commenting on the status of a possible investigation but we can say that the allegations lack merit and there has been no violation of German law by Facebook or its employees," said a Facebook spokesman, as cited by Reuters.

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Samsung, through a software update, will soon limit the charging capabilities of Galaxy Note 7 smartphones in the United States in a bid to get owners of the remaining units out in the wild to replace the device.

Despite the potential fire risk presented by the Galaxy Note 7 due to defective batteries, some users have stubbornly decided to hold on to the smartphone despite the ongoing worldwide recall program for the device.

Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Software Update

Last week, Samsung announced that it is releasing a software update in Europe that will limit the battery of the smartphone from being charged beyond 60 percent. The move comes as part of the effort to get Galaxy Note 7 owners to have the smartphone finally replaced.

Samsung is now doing the same thing in the United States, as the company announced through a press release.

"We remain focused on collecting the outstanding Galaxy Note 7 phones in the market," Samsung stated, adding that the battery charging limit will be released in the coming days.

In addition to the battery limitation, the software update will also add reminder pop-up notifications to the smartphone which will appear whenever the owner charges, restarts or turns on the screen of the Galaxy Note 7.

Galaxy Note 7 Recall In The United States

Samsung said that almost 85 percent of all the Galaxy Note 7 smartphones in the United States have been exchanged under the ongoing recall program, with most customers choosing to replace the device with another one by Samsung.

The company then reiterated their call for all customers who are still using the Galaxy Note 7 to power down the device and reach out to their retailer or carrier immediately to have the smartphone exchanged.

The Galaxy Note 7 was recalled due to cases of exploding batteries, and while the units still out in the wild have presumably functioned without any problems, there is no certainty that they will never catch fire.

Solving The Galaxy Note 7 Issue

To keep customers, and the people around them, safe from potential explosions, Samsung has taken more drastic measures beyond the recall program and limiting the charging capabilities of the device. In New Zealand, Samsung has teamed up with carriers to disconnect the Galaxy Note 7 smartphones in the country from wireless networks.

Samsung has not yet gone that far with carriers in the United States, but if customers continue to be stubborn, the company may be forced to implement such an action in the country.

Samsung saw its operating profit in the third quarter sink to the lowest level over the past two years due to the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco. The company, however, promised that it looks to quickly recover from the debacle, with Samsung looking forward to its next flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S8, to try to restore its reputation and win back the trust of customers.

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A deadly fungus has reportedly reached U.S. hospitals where it is said to have killed a few patients.

Federal health officials said the yeast known as Candida auris has already infected 13 patients and killed four.

"It appears that C. auris arrived in the United States only in the past few years," said Dr. Tom Chiller, who heads the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's branch of fungal diseases.

Global Outbreak

According to the CDC, the disease was first identified in 2009 in a Japanese patient who had an ear ailment.

The fungus C. auris has caused a global outbreak and has been detected in countries such as Britain, India and Israel. Making the appearance as bloodstream infections, it has defied treatment from antifungal drugs.

An alert was issued by the CDC in June asking U.S. laboratories to report suspected cases of the fungus to federal, state and local healthcare departments.

It is likely that the outbreak may compound the task of healthcare authorities worldwide, who are already struggling to control bacteria that are resistant to most antibiotics.

The toll from drug-resistant superbug bacteria is already too high, with 23,000 Americans and 700,000 people worldwide dying from superbug strains annually.

Symptoms Of C. Auris

According to experts, C. auris is an ascomycetous species of fungus and grows as yeast. It causes candidiasis infections with a display of symptoms such as difficulty in swallowing, a burning sensation, genital itching, and discharge of white fluids.

The CDC reports that all patients affected in the U.S. had become very sick. They included a paraplegic in Illinois whose catheter was attacked by C. auris and four more from New Jersey, New York and Maryland.

According to CDC officials, all these patients had severe medical conditions, including cancer, and had been in the hospital for 18 days when they tested positive.

However, doctors are still unsure if the killer fungus was the main reason for their death or their underlying health problems were to be blamed.

Difficult To Identify Cases

One of the major challenges of C. auris, including finding a cure, is the difficulty in identifying the fungus. It needs special laboratory facilities. Otherwise, most samples go misidentified as other fungal species, the CDC said.

Meanwhile, Amesh Adalja, senior associate at the Center for Health Security at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre warned that C. auris carries high mortality threats.

The CDC appealed to all stakeholders to ensure the thorough cleaning of hospital rooms and a strict check of facilities to confirm whether patients admitted had this infection.

"We need to act now to better understand, contain and stop the spread of this drug-resistant fungus," said CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden.

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We have witnessed a lot of rumours, launches, and reports this week along with a couple of interesting stuffs that happened in the technology world.

This week, Apple was awarded a patent for its bendable iPhone concept, Apple iPhone 6 got a price cut, Zebronics launched a mechanical keyboard which is entirely different - much like back-to-pavilion from Chiklet to retro mechanical style, ZTE and Samsung announced Android flip phones, Gameloft launched Asphalt Xtreme for free, and OnePlus 4 has been tipped to launch in 2017.

Also, this week, speculations surfaced over the Internet regarding the Samsung Galaxy S8s bezel-less display and LG G8s iris scanner. We also listed out top television sets under INR 30,000.

While a top 10 listicle would definitely not be enough to sum up this week, here's our try as we put in 10 best stories we have covered this week in consumer technology.

Apple iPhone 6 Gets A Price Cut; Now It Costs Just INR 33,990

In just over a few weeks since the launch of the new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus in India, Flipkart is now offering a pretty interesting discount on the price tag of Apple iPhone 6. Users can now purchase an iPhone 6 at a price of INR 33,990 instead of the INR 36,990 price tag, thereby giving a discount of INR 3,000 to the new buyers.

Read The Full Story Here

Would You Like To See A Bendable iPhone In Future?

Apple has been finally awarded the new patent that was filed back in Aug 28. However, Patently Apple seems to have claimed that the news did not become public during the filing process as Apple had applied for the patent under an Engineers name, so as to keep the whole patent process under the wraps.

Read The Full Story Here

Samsung Galaxy S8 May Come With A Bezel-Less Display

We all know that Samsung is trying its hard luck to once again impress its customers who lost their loyalty to the company due to the in-famous Galaxy Note 7. But, how far the company is planning to go with its upcoming Galaxy S8 to put the fire set by Galaxy Note 7 off - this is something we still do not know.

Read The Full Story Here

LG G6 May Sport An Iris Scanner

Recently, reports started surfacing over the Internet hinting the drop out of the modular design in LGs upcoming flagship smartphone, G6, which is expected to be launched next year. The reports also claimed that the fall of the companys current flagship smartphone, G5 and its modular accessories due to a fact that users had to remove the battery to add in modules, was a reason for the company to take this step.

Read The Full Story Here

LG's Flagship Smartphone V20 Will Be Priced At Rs 49,990

Announced in September, the LG V20 is rolling out in global markets. After the G5's lacklustre reception, LG clearly wants to take on the Galaxy S7 and iPhone 7 with its new phone. In fact, the Korean company is all set to launch its latest flagship in India. According to gadgets.ndtv.com, the V20 will be pegged at Rs 49,990.

Read The Full Story Here

Apple Mistakes Its Customer For Saddam Hussain's Keen

Sharakat Hussain, a cab driver in Britain bought the iPhone 7 for his sister last month. Since she did not want the iPhone, Hussain returned the phone and requested a refund. However, this simple process turned into a mess when an Apple employee asked Hussain to confirm that he is not related to the deceased Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussain.

Read The Full Story Here

Apple iPhone 6 Gets A Price Cut; Now It Costs Just INR 33,990

South Korean smartphone giant Samsung has recently launched a new dual-display Android flip phone, dubbed as the W2017, which is currently available only in China. The smartphone is said to be the successor to W2016 that was launched last year.

Read The Full Story Here

Will OnePlus 4 Be Launched In 2017?

Its been two years since OnePlus launched its first budget flagship smartphone, the OnePlus One. Now, the company has brought in 2 more flagships already, and reports say that a new variant of its latest flagship, OnePlus 3 is in the works too. But, what about the Chinese companys next flagship device?

Read The Full Story Here

Xiaomi Unveils The Mi Air Purifier Pro In China

With pollution and electric waste taking toll on the environment, Air Purifiers are on the brink of becoming a necessity. Little wonder then, the Chinese brand is quite serious about this appliance space. Improving upon its Mi Air Purifier 2, Xiaomi has unveiled the Mi Air Purifier Pro.

Read The Full Story Here

Lenovo Wants You To Design Its Next MotoMod

LG has given up on its modular accessories meant for its flagship smartphone G5. However, Motorola is still trying hard to make its MotoMods work. In a latest initiative, the Lenovo's subsidiary is encouraging fans to submit the ideas for MotoMods. If your idea is really interesting, there is a good chance that it will be financed through Indiegogo.

Read The Full Story Here

Top 10 Stories
It appears that my 2016 open-water fishing season is coming to a close: It may even be over, although I hope to get in another quick trip or two. This year, like all other years, I have learned and relearned a good number of things related to fishing. Following are some of those things.

I truly believe that, for the most part, fishing continues to improve across the Midwest. I had fantastic fishing action on Clear Lake this spring. When I was a young angler in the 70s Clear Lake was a bullhead lake: Walleyes were far and few between and muskies werent a part of the ecosystem. Today, bullheads are rare, walleyes are abundant and muskies are as common as muskies get. The lake has improved dramatically due to dredging and water quality improvement.

My most recent trip to Kabetogama Lake in northern Minnesota was another reason for optimism. Mostly when I visit Kab, and I get there annually, we chase walleyes with outstanding success.

Last year I was introduced to Kabs crappies, and that was a win. This year we decided to focus on smallmouth bass. That was nothing but the best. Big ones, little ones and in-between ones. The future for Kabs smallmouth, and fishing in general, is tremendous.

Thats not to say there arent problems in some places. Over-harvest can and will goof up a good thing, and we need to be aware of that. In some places, panfish sizes are down due to anglers keeping too many big ones.

Same thing with northern pike: If we keep too many six- and eight-pounders, were not going to see the 15- to 17-pounders.

And we certainly need to get things figured out on some lakes regarding the number of walleyes that can be harvested safely. We need to get our arms around whats best for fishing in the 21st century going forward and, being respectful to all involved, move on from bad past policies.

Fishing techniques continue to evolve and improve. Planer boards just a few years ago were tools primarily for salmon, trout and walleyes. In just the past couple of years weve experienced outstanding results using boards for perch and crappies. Boards really will put more fish in the boat, and the folks at Off Shore Tackle recognize this. Thats why they continually tweak their boards for specific applications. Just when we think boards are as good as theyre going to get, Off Shore comes up with an improvement.

Improvements and tweaking apply to pretty much all of the equipment that we use. Rods that are of higher quality than rods just a few years ago are less expensive. Sonar continues to reveal more and better detail, and the mapping incorporated into todays sonar is incredibly helpful in catching fish and navigating. And theres more to come.

Lures and lines and boats also continue to improve, as does the clothing that keeps us warm and dry on the water.

So many equipment improvements and, in many places, so many fish. Im already looking forward to open water fishing in 2017.
This Andean country is "once again threatened by those who, unable to contribute to democracy, bet on confrontation and violence," he denounced. | Read More
DES MOINES (AP)  The distraught daughter of a man accused of killing two Iowa police officers said Friday that she talked to her father just two hours before the fatal shootings, and it was the most normal conversation that weve ever had.

Samantha Greene sobbed as she watched her father, Scott Michael Greene, make his first court appearance though a television monitor from jail.

The 46-year-old stood silently, staring straight ahead, as the judge set his bond at $10 million on two charges of first-degree murder.

Hes never once showed any ill action or thought against the police, so its complete shock, the 25-year-old woman said after the hearing, adding that she and her sister wanted to express our deepest sympathy to the family of the lost and the officers themselves.

Her father is charged in the deaths of Des Moines Police Sgt. Anthony Beminio and Urbandale Officer Justin Martin. Investigators said the officers were killed early Wednesday while sitting in their patrol cars in separate attacks about 2 miles apart.

Beminio is the son of Trish and Frank Beminio, a Belmond city councilman and the citys former police chief.

Court documents show the shootings occurred just hours after a judge ordered Scott Greene to move out of his mothers home, saying he had hit and financially exploit his mother. The documents also show he faced intense money problems.

Samantha Greene and her 15-year-old sister met with reporters following the brief court hearing in a small courtroom at the Polk County Jail.

We do not condone what our father has done. It was a shock to even us that the man we knew so well was capable of doing something so tragic, she said.

She said she talked with her father on the phone around 11 p.m. Tuesday. She declined to detail what they discussed, but described her father as compassionate and nurturing.

She said he had shown no recent indications of anger or irritation, but that he had recently been upset at losing his father to cancer and the end of a relationship.

Witnesses reported seeing Scott Greene flee in a truck from where Martins car was parked after hearing gunshots around 1 a.m. Wednesday in Urbandale, a suburb of Des Moines, according to documents filed by the Polk County Attorneys Office.

The documents say Greene encountered Beminio at an intersection in Des Moines just four minutes later, not 20 minutes as investigators previously said.

Beminio was stopped facing eastbound at a stop sign when Greene turned westbound, stopped and without hesitation discharged multiple rounds into the driver side door area of the fully marked squad car, the documents allege.

The truck, a high-powered rifle and other evidence was found in a rural area northwest of Des Moines, near where Greene turned himself in to an employee of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources Wednesday afternoon.

Greene was assigned a public defender during Fridays court hearing. The judge also informed him that the two murder charges he faces carry maximum mandatory life prison sentences.

A preliminary hearing, where Greene will likely enter a plea, was scheduled for Nov. 14.

Funeral services are scheduled for Monday for Beminio and Tuesday for Martin. A national charity, the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation, said it will donate funds to the families of both officers, and pay off the mortgage on the home owned by Beminio.

Greene, an unemployed father who lived in the Des Moines suburb of Urbandale, was behaving erratically and was increasingly desperate for money in recent weeks, court records show.

District Judge Carla Schemmel ruled Tuesday that Greene had committed elder abuse against his 66-year-old mother, Patricia Greene, by physically hitting and financially exploiting her.

She ordered him to move out of his mothers home, where he had been living in a basement bedroom, before Nov. 6 and to stay away from the home for a year.

Patricia Greene had applied for the restraining order Oct. 19, two days after she was arrested and charged with striking her son in the face during an altercation that he recorded with his cellphone.

She wrote in the application that she believed her son set me up to get me in trouble.

Patricia Greene wrote that while she was in jail, Scott Greene told one of her friends that Patricia Greene needed to give him $20,000 and that if his mother paid, he would move and not bother her again.

Patricia Greene also wrote that her son had sent an acquaintance a bunch of rambling, offensive text messages, warned that he would no longer take care of her cat and was going through her personal belongings. She said her son had subjected her to mental, emotional and financial abuse.
MASON CITY  Early voting is down this year in Cerro Gordo County compared to 2012, the last presidential election year, but is up in some other North Iowa counties.

In Cerro Gordo County, 7,462 voters had submitted absentee ballots or voted absentee in person as of Friday afternoon, compared to 7,887 four days before the election in 2012. There are 884 ballots that have been sent out this year but have not yet been returned as of Friday.

The figures so far are 3,018 ballots from registered Democrats, 2,443 from Republicans, 1,982 with no party affiliation and 19 who registered as members of other parties.

County Auditor Ken Kline said in-person early voting at the auditors office is up, while mailed-in ballots are down from 2012.

About 900 more people have voted in person this year compared to 2012, he said. Mailed-in ballots are running about 1,500 less than in 2012.

I dont have a reason for that, said Kline. Usually, mailed-in balloting is party-driven while in-person voting is just individuals who want to vote.

The auditors office takes special precautions to safeguard all absentee votes it receives, said Kline. The sealed envelopes are kept in file cabinets inside a vault. Both the filing cabinet and the vault are locked with separate keys until it is time for the votes to be counted.

Here is a rundown of early voting in other North Iowa counties.

Winnebago County  Early voting is up in Winnebago County with Republicans leading the way. As of Friday afternoon, 1,975 ballots had been returned so far, compared to 1,664 at the end of the voting period in 2012.

The breakdown was 463 from registered Democrats, 667 from registered Republicans and 845 no party affiliation.

Worth County  Absentee voting in Worth County has already outpaced the 2012 general election. As of Friday, 1,069 of the 1,235 requested absentee ballots had been returned.

A total of 1,056 absentee votes were cast in the last presidential election in Worth County.

Kossuth County  Fewer absentee ballots were requested in Kossuth County this year than four years ago.

Residents returned 2,952 of the 3,311 absentee ballots requested as of Friday.

Records show 3,711 people voted by absentee ballot in 2012.

Mitchell County  Requests for absentee ballots totaled 2,068, slightly up from 2012 when there were 2,012 requests with 1,986 actually voting. The county had no figures on how many people have voted so far this year.

Hancock County  All but 150 of the 1,690 absentee ballots requested by Hancock County voters had been turned in by Friday. Residents cast 1,638 absentee ballots in the last presidential election.

Butler County  In Butler County, county officials have seen fewer requests for absentee ballots than in 2012.

As of Friday, about 2,400 voters had requested absentee ballots, according to the county auditors office: 1,462 by registered Republicans, 546 by Democrats, and 482 by voters with no party affiliation.

People come to register to vote that have never voted, so we were surprised by that, said Auditor Lizbeth Williams. People in their 50s.

All but 280 had returned ballots, according to the office. In 2012, Butler County had 2,600 requests for absentee ballots.

Franklin County  Franklin County also has seen fewer voters requesting absentee ballots. This year 1,657 voters requested absentee ballots: 902 by registered Republicans, 429 by Democrats and 299 by voters without a party affiliation.

Of those, 1,447 have been completed and returned to the office, according to Auditor Michelle Giddings. In 2012, the county had 1,908 requests for absentee ballots, she said.

Floyd County  Floyd County has received 3,251 requests for absentee ballots this year. Of those, 2,912 had been returned, said Auditor Gloria Carr.
SHREVEPORT  A federal jury on Friday cleared Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal of allegations he turned a blind eye to systemic civil-rights abuses committed by several deputies, including jailhouse beatings and a practice in which narcotics agents preyed on New Iberia's black community for sport.

After four hours of deliberations, the jury acquitted Ackal of all charges, including conspiracy and deprivation of civil rights. The panel returned the not-guilty verdict at 4:30 p.m., dealing a stunning rebuke to the U.S. Justice Department, which led a wide-ranging probe into misconduct dating to Ackal's first months in office in 2008.

"I'm not a crook and don't intend to be one," Ackal said after walking out of the courthouse, flanked by his attorney and relatives. "The prosecutors had the bad guys but they wanted my scalp."

Trouble seeing the video above? Click here.

The sheriff, who won re-election last year to a third term, described the allegations against him as a smear campaign, adding that the deputies who testified against him had "betrayed my trust and a lot of people depending on them for their safety."

"One of the things that this case did was help eliminate rogues form the Iberia Parish Sheriff's Office who went beyond the law and beat on innocent people and planted drugs on innocent people," the sheriff told reporters outside the downtown courthouse here. "That is totally opposite of what I am and what I've been, and i'm going to go back to New Iberia and make sure my house is very clean."

The shocking allegations of abuse within the department, stretching back nearly eight years to the beginning of Ackal's first term, went largely uncontested during the five-day trial.

The sheriff's defense attorney, John McLindon, argued throughout that Ackal remained in the dark about the apparently routine beatings carried out by his office's narcotics task force and the brutal treatment of inmates.

Asked after the verdict how he'd remained oblivious to the misconduct in his department, Ackal said the deputies and their supervisor acted in secret and covered up their misdeeds. The sheriff said he would have fired and arrested the deputies, whom he repeatedly referred to as "rogues," had he known about the beatings and abuses of prisoners.

Ackal, who did not take the stand, said deputies who acted in an unlawful manner are "going to get what they deserve" but said he's concerned the federal government will give some only brief jail sentences as a result of their testimony against him.

Supporters hailed the verdict as vindication for a sheriff who was stripped of his gun as he awaited trial. Ackal never considered stepping down, they said.

"He is a lawman first and foremost," said Lloyd Nicholson, a friend who has known Ackal since the first grade and who led the sheriff's re-election campaign last year.

"As a manager, you rely on the people that you put in place to keep you informed," Nicholson said. "He will have to start all over again re-directing, getting the right people in office, and I hope and think hell be a little bit better at scrutinizing them this time and not just relying on people."

Ackal is returning to a fractured community that has followed this week's testimony in horror. Many residents of the West End, New Iberia's historically black community, said they feel the sheriff is unfit to serve. "It's going to be a hard road back," said Marlon Lewis, a barber running for City Council.

New Iberia Mayor Hilda Curry acknowledged that the Ackal proceedings "placed a shadow over the city" and "definitely caused an issue with perception." But she insisted there are "many excellent deputies who work for the Sheriffs Office."

"I think, as a community, everybody just has to pull together," she said.

Ten of Ackal's deputies pleaded guilty in the case, and several of them took the witness stand this week and described a culture of impunity in which the sheriff not only condoned but encouraged the mistreatment of suspects and inmates. The proceedings were transferred to U.S. District Court in Shreveport due to pervasive pre-trial publicity.

Jurors heard shocking stories of inmates being assaulted for no reason, allegedly once in Ackal's presence. The testimony focused in large part on the sheriff's narcotics unit, described more than once as Ackal's "baby."

Deputies said they were encouraged to "tune up" suspects who fled arrest, and they acknowledged beating and arresting one man who had punched a supervisor at a bar. In one case, which, they said, an inmate inmate was forced to simulate oral sex on a baton.

Federal prosecutors sought to portray Ackal as a ruthless leader who instilled his own version of the law over his first two terms in office. During closing arguments, federal prosecutor Mark Blumberg described the number of people beaten by narcotics officers during Ackal's tenure as "staggering," estimating it totaled in the hundreds of victims. It amounted to a "widespread conspiracy to use more force than necessary," Blumberg said.

The kind of violence could not have "remained hidden, in secret, from the most powerful law enforcement officer in the parish," the prosecutor added.

At one point, talking about a April 2011 contraband sweep at the jail in which inmates were beaten with metal batons, Blumberg said, "The only explanation that makes sense of that eruption of violence would be Ackal."

Deputies testified that Ackal said "take care of that for me, baby," and then took inmates inside the jail's chapel, where there were no cameras to record the assault.

Defense attorney John McLindon, however, described the civil-rights abuses as the work of a rogue narcotics unit whose members agreed to testify against their boss under the terms of plea agreements. McLindon emphasized to jurors that the deputies who testified against his client had taken deals after lying before grand juries or under oath in legal depositions. When interviewed by FBI agents, the investigators made clear they wanted to go after "bigger fish" and deputies provided that information, he said.

"Just like the National Enquirer, these guys got to sell that story to get paid," said McLindon. He emphasized that nobody testified that Ackal "laid a finger on anyone," and said there were no records the sheriff could have looked at that detailed the beatings, either out in the community or in the jail.

Before closing arguments, McLindon called the last defense witness, a deputy who said he was never asked to beat anybody by the sheriff. At times Ackal would say, "take care of that for me, baby," but Scott Hotard said he never interpreted it as an order to do something illegal.

Hotard also testified that his stepson was arrested on a drug charge during a period when he didn't work at the sheriff's office, telling him he was beaten at the jail. He initially didn't believe him he said, but now does.

The narcotics division under scrutiny during the trial had an icy relationship with the rest of the sheriff's office, Hotard said.
"Hamlet is searching; he's uncertain. 'To be or not to be' are some of the most famous words in theater, and they define Hamlet," says Sam Bryan, who will play the role in the Ascension Community Theatre's production.
MASON CITY | The Caring Pregnancy Center of Mason City will host its annual dessert reception at 7 p.m. Nov. 12 at The Music Man Square.

The theme will be "30 Years of Transformation."

This year's reception will be not only a celebration of 30 years since the creation of the Caring Pregnancy Center, but also a reflection on how far CPC has come as Pastor Larry Yeoman, who was instrumental in the beginning of CPC, returns as the featured speaker.

The Caring Pregnancy Center is a Christ-centered ministry committed to upholding the sanctity of human life by assisting women and men facing facing unplanned pregnancies and financial difficulties.

For more information on the reception or to register, visit www.cpcmasoncity.org, or call 641-424-2237.
The people in charge of East Baton Rouge Parish government finances are in a holding pattern while they try to gauge the impact of August's devastating flood.

Friday afternoon, mayor-president Kip Holden unveiled the 2017 budget to the Metro Council including his spending plan for the $317 million general fund.

"It's pretty plain vanilla," city-parish finance director Marsha Hanlon said in an interview afterward.

The Metro Council will have about a month to digest the 534-page document before members have to approve it. Hanlon said her office has taken tax assessor Brian Wilson at his word that the flood damage will largely be balanced out by new development in the past four years since the last reassessment. As a result, the 2017 budget looks a lot like the 2016 one, she said.

"We're just taking a conservative approach," Hanlon remarked.

There are some noteworthy aspects, though. The Redevelopment Authority, which has long complained of lack of financial support, is proposed to get a modest stipend  $200,000.

And despite the flood, a pair of LSU economists opined that the city-parish will see growth in the next few years.

"We are projecting a growth of almost 9,000 jobs in 2016 or a 2.2 percent growth rate and a growth rate of just over 4,500 jobs in 2017 or a growth rate of 1.1 percent," wrote professors James Richardson and Loren Scott in a letter included with the budget.

If the city-parish does see some growth and corresponding new taxes, at least some of the additional funding will have to go back to paying flood costs. The federal government will pick up most of the tab  in the past week, it sent the city-parish the first check, for $23 million. However, locals will still likely be on the hook for several million to pay for debris pickup, property damage, and other expenses, Hanlon said.

According to the budget, there is currently a little over $11 million in the city-parish's rainy-day fund.

Much of the document details minutia of the city's finances  employee benefits, insurance and other matters.

However, the budget itself was not debated Friday. The meeting was brief and attended by only one-third of the Metro Council  Scott Wilson, Tara Wicker, Donna Collins-Lewis and LaMont Cole.

The presentation of his final budget served as a sort of victory lap for Holden, who is leaving office due to term limits. The mayor talked about the progress Baton Rouge has made since he delivered his first budget 12 years ago, specifically noting endeavors like the Green Light Plan for improving roads, the Water Campus research site and the ongoing overhaul of the parish's sewer system.

"I'm pleased to report to you that the economic future of our parish and our region looks bright," Holden told the Metro Council.

The council members present praised the outgoing mayor.

"I almost wanted to grab a tissue there. ...It was very touching," Collins-Lewis said.

"I think you're leaving a great legacy," Wicker added.
The Task Force on Structural Changes in Budget and Tax Policy has partnered with Gov. John Bel Edwards to make permanent a bloated Louisiana s
Stephen Handwerk, left, executive director of the Louisiana Democratic Party, and Jason Dore, executive director of the Louisiana Republican Party, agree on little. But on Monday, October 24, 2016, at the Press Club of Baton Rouge, both said they didn't want David Duke to participate in next week's televised debate and criticized the metrics used to allow the white supremacist on the debate stage in the U.S. Senate campaign.
An 100-year-old woman has been left without a landline in Canberra's north while she suffers a severe medical condition that can leave her without breath and needing urgent assistance.

Irene McCawley, who became a centenarian in June, keeps in contact with family and friends through her home phone, her only form of telecommunication. Two weeks ago her phone broke, and frustratingly, her good health deteriorated in the same period.

Rena McCawley, who turned 100 in June, has been left without a working phone line. Credit:Jay Cronan

Ms McCawley has lived at her home in Page for 34 years, for about 15 of which she has been on her own. She said this was the first time she'd literally been disconnected from the outside world.

She feels so isolated and worried she might not be able to call an ambulance if needed that her neighbour, Madhu Kalia, has been staying overnight so she can get some sleep.
The online leak of the personal details of more than 500,000 Red Cross blood donors has not led to a drop in the number of donors.

Figures from the Red Cross reveal the number of people donating blood in the week after the data leak remained stable compared to the same period last year.

Blood donor Neil Canavan, of Duffy, said he isn't particularly surprised by the recent Red Cross data breach. Credit:Rohan Thomson

The data leak involved the personal details  including sexual and medical history  of 550,000 blood donors between 2010 and 2016 accidentally placed on a public section of the Red Cross website between early September and October 24.

A Red Cross spokesman confirmed the organisation received almost 2000 emails from donors about the data breach as well as 1700 calls to a dedicated hotline.
MASON CITY | All community members are invited to attend a new version of God's Portion Day as well as an evening gala Nov. 12 at Newman Catholic Schools.

Newman traditionally has hosted a God's Portion Day event to support the mission and vision of the school system. This year two separate events will be held that day for the same cause.

The first event, GPD 2.0, is 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Newman High School gym. No ticket is required for this event, which will feature the traditional live and silent auctions, bake sale, kids fun alley and raffles.

The second event, Newman Gala: Gather and Grow, is 6 to 11 p.m. in the elementary gym.

This event will feature drinks, hors d'oeuvres, a gourmet dinner and guest speaker Aaron Thomas. A live and silent auction will be held, as well as numerous games of chance. Go to www.newmancatholicfoundation.com/gpd to purchase gala tickets online.

Call the Newman Foundation office at 641-423-6638 for more information on either event.
A tattoo should do the trick, Malcolm If the refugees are sent to a third country, perhaps they should be tattooed upon departure with the initials BAR (Banned Australian refugee). Or perhaps in this digital age inserting a barcode under their skin to enable quick scanning is more appropriate? This would allow for their immediate identification and quick removal if they ever seek a return to our shores via a tourist visa. However, I doubt any of them will ever want to return to Australia  a country that has treated them so badly during their time of troubles. Andrew Powell, Caulfield THE FORUM Maltese cross to bear

On October 28, 1916, a group of 214 young Maltese men arrived in Melbourne on the French ship Gange. The government of Billy Hughes considered them prohibited immigrants. They had to pass a dictation test in Dutch, which they failed. There was a lot of fear that these "dark men" would steal the jobs while Australians were fighting abroad. Some of these Maltese men, being British, had fought with Anzacs at Gallipoli. During World War I Malta became known as "the Nurse of the Mediterranean"; some 80,000 wounded soldiers, mostly Anzacs, were being cared for on the island. The hospitals were full, and every public space was converted to a hospital, and every able-bodied man and woman was enlisted to work in them. Yet in Australia these Maltese were regarded as aliens and were not allowed to set foot in the country. They were taken to Noumea on the Gange, where they languished for several months. When they were finally allowed to enter Australia, they were detained for months on the old hulk the Anglian. A century later, history is repeating itself. Georgina Scillio, Fairfield What are we?

What's become of us? We give a stingy 0.2 per cent of our gross national income as foreign aid; we persecute asylum seekers; and we allow our greenhouse emissions to keep rising despite pledging last year in Paris to reduce them. Are we the world's worst citizens, or what? Leigh Callinan, Bendigo Bludgeoning elderly The federal government's last budget contained massive cuts to aged care, targeted at frail older people with complex needs such as dementia and heart disease. UnitingCare Australia, Aged and Community Services Australia and Catholic Health Australia commissioned independent modelling of the cuts on 39,000 people across 501 aged care homes  21 per cent of the aged care sector. The results are stark. The government is removing more than $2 billion from aged care, with the support for frail older people cut by more than $6500 per person each year, rising to more than $18,000 for those with very complex needs. The costs of many essential health services will no longer be covered, including physiotherapy and wound care. Such cuts will compel providers to review their services with the real risk that they will no longer be able to accept clients being discharged from hospital. We call on the government to stop the cuts while we work together to identify a more sustainable means of meeting the health care needs of older people. Peter Bicknell, UnitingCare Australia

Accreditation too lax While there are some excellent aged care homes, recent reports of medical negligence, neglect and inadequate personal care suggest that numerous providers prioritise profits over residents' quality of life. How do such homes pass accreditation? Ten years ago, a Senate committee held an inquiry into the sector. Its report criticised the accreditation standards, finding them too generalised to effectively measure care outcomes. Unfortunately, vague phrases such as adequate nourishment and hydration, effective continence management, optimum levels of mobility and sufficient staff continue to be used. Consider the case of a friend. She has been classified correctly as a "falls risk"  meaning she is not permitted to walk without a staff member. Due to insufficient staff and a culture that sees many residents spend most of the day immobile, her son has sole responsibility for "maximising her mobility". Given that the accreditation process enables aged-care facilities to receive government funding, it should be a rigorous assessment not a rubber stamp. Sarah Russell, Aged Care Matters

Privatising disaster The belated discovery by the head of the ACCC that privatisation is almost always to the disadvantage of citizens was welcome. So it is of great concern to find that profit-based aged-care facilities are well on the way to achieving a monopoly in the sector. The trend towards higher resident costs and lower service quality will continue apace. The situation is further proof that Coalition ideology is a serious impediment to people's wellbeing. The idea that private enterprise can do a better job than trained and resourced public servants has taken over. Australians are the worse for it. Private entities operate to maximise the financial return to shareholders and the top employees (with service and the importance of their work secondary), while government entities have an entirely different goal  that of serving the people at large (with the national good and service to the people paramount). Governments try to convince us this is not so, even in the face of scandalous, if not criminal, misuse of public money. Robert Lees Andrew, Hamilton

Voices of vengeance Historian Niall Ferguson has observed that after previous economic depressions, voters sought "political payback". Millions of people in the West feel betrayed by the parties whose policies allowed the global financial crisis to happen  but then neither punished the hustlers who caused it nor protected those who suffered the most. Now that it's time for change, or at least revenge, a messenger is needed. Who is talking about fixing capitalism so it works for ordinary people? Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump and Pauline Hanson. David Mackay, Macleod Government needed Our country seems to have two oppositions and no government. The official opposition appears to be doing its job. Yet after three years the official government continues to act as an opposition. No minister speaks without first blaming the opposition and then avoids answering all questions. Policy, such as it is, seems to consist of being as nasty as possible to everyone except the rich and business and denying the obvious need to tackle increasing inequality and climate change. We need a government that governs for all of us, not just the extreme far right.

Bill Godfrey, Mt Stuart, Tas A vital division Mark Kenny demonstrates convincingly that the role of the solicitor-general is not only traditionally independent of the attorney-general but, as the government's pre-eminent legal resource, its detachment is vital to the effective working of cabinet government ("How we'll pay for the power play", 30/10). It is also clear how Attorney-General George Brandis has neutered the role, apparently aware that Mr Turnbull could not or would not interfere. It is becoming increasingly clear that Mr Turnbull enjoys the status of the role as PM without exercising any real power. Paul Ormonde, Northcote

Cherish the teacher Recent letters (30/10) powerfully demonstrate the huge stress that forces many teachers to resort to desperate measures such as discontinue their vocation, take early retirement and even contemplate suicide. An ever-increasing volume of administrative tasks is forced upon teachers and principals, in particular, reducing their time and energy to be the caring professional whom we entrust to support young people. We are all responsible for this deplorable situation; we, as a society, grossly undervalue teachers and their magnificent profession; they are hugely under-appreciated, under-resourced and underpaid. Father Kevin Burke, Eltham Respect and restraint

I hope the tragic story of Mark Thompson's experiences as a principal (Extra, 23/10) gives parents pause for thought when dealing with their child's teachers. We must resist the temptation to aim at them our frustrations at how the world treats our children just because teachers are accessible. They are often experts not just in child development but also in each child's day-to-day challenges. We can work with teachers to help our children grow strong, rather than against them in a quest for validation of our fears. Jackie Steel, Coburg North City up the pole In Melbourne, every suburban streetscape is blighted by power and data transmission poles, with the wires scything through street tree canopies, leaving only trunks and branches as a pathetic parody of what councils originally envisioned. You only have to walk these streets and turn your eyes to the horizon to see how truly ugly these streetscapes are. In the suburbs, Melbourne will never be close to the most liveable city until, like the world's truly liveable cities, power and data transmission utilities are put underground ("World's most liveable city? Pull the other one", 30/10).
Here's something that will come as no surprise to anyone: the guidelines governing our state MPs' perks are so flimsy, so inconsistent, and so lacking in transparency that a good old shakeup is long overdue.

And here's something that's equally unsurprising: many politicians like it that way, knowing that the rules generally rely on them doing the right thing  or not getting caught if they rort the system.

Victorian Corrections Minister Steve Herbert. Credit:Facebook

That much became clear again this month, when Corrections Minister Steve Herbert was busted using his taxpayer-funded car to chauffer his pampered pooches, Patch and Ted, around the state.

In case you somehow missed it, Herbert is the upper house MP who'd occasionally get his ministerial driver to ferry his dogs from his property in Parkdale to his country residence at Trentham, about 120 kilometres away.
Karl Stefanovic says he will not discuss his recent marriage breakdown for the "sake of my kids", but his friends say there could be a few other reasons as well.

Stefanovic, who has refused to be drawn on the matter, was a major no show at the Spring Racing Carnival in Melbourne this week, despite having flown to the Victorian capital to host Today, alongside Lisa Wilkinson, who did enjoy a day inside the marquees of the Birdcage, along with the rest of the Today crew.

Who is missing from this shot? Deputy PM Julie Bishop and her partner David Panton pose for a selfie with TV host Lisa Wilkinson and friends in the Emirates marquee on Derby Day. Credit:Jesse Marlow

But for Stefanovic, it was a quick flight back to Sydney, keen to avoid any unwanted publicity which might add further pressure on an already delicate situation with his wife of 21 years, Cassie Thorburn.

"Their separation has become a network problem ... if she really wanted to tip the bucket on Karl, she could ... Cassie really is holding the cards in this ... it is going to cost Karl a lot of money," explained a long-term associate of the couple.
A man has died after fleeing a burning house in the Lockyer Valley, west of Brisbane, on Friday night.

Emergency services were called to the Churchable residence about midnight where one occupant, a 70-year-old man, was seriously injured after escaping the fire.

A man has died in hospital after a house fire in the Lockyer Valley.

The man was treated at the scene, before being airlifted to the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital. Police confirmed he died on Saturday morning.

The Main Green Swamp Road property was destroyed by the fire and a woman who was also inside the residence was uninjured.
News that yet another state MP is battling breast cancer has reignited fears about a possible link with the Victorian Parliament, where a forensic review recently found "a greater than expected number of cases".

Documents reveal that 127 people have been identified with some form of cancer while working at Spring Street over the past three decades, including 17 cases of breast cancer  a higher incidence rate compared with that of the general population.

Brunswick MP Jane Garrett faces a backlash over timber logging in her inner city seat. Credit:Josh Robenstone

Brunswick Labor MP Jane Garrett revealed on Thursday that she was the latest parliamentarian to be diagnosed with the disease, which in recent years has also affected government frontbencher Fiona Richardson, parliamentary secretary Judith Graley, former Brumby government minister Maxine Morand and the late Lynne Kosky.

Ms Garrett  who was forced to quit as emergency services minister in June amid bitter ructions over the CFA  announced on Facebook that she would take time off for ongoing treatment, but planned to return to work "as soon as possible" next year.
A man has died and a woman is in hospital after a car hit a tree in Wheelers Hill, south-east of Melbourne.

A police spokesman said it's believed a silver hatchback struck a tree as it travelled inbound on Ferntree Gully Road, about 2.50pm Saturday.

A man has died at Ferntree Gully Road in Wheelers Hill, after a car hit a tree.

The male driver died at the scene and a female passenger was taken to The Alfred in a stable condition, with non-life threatening injuries.

Police are investigating the cause of the crash, the man is yet to be identified.
A teenager has been injured and a man arrested after a violent confrontation in Melbourne's CBD on Sunday morning.

A 19-year-old man from Sebastopol, near Ballarat, was slashed across the face and rushed to hospital shortly after a scuffle broke out outside a Swanston Street fast food restaurant, near the corner of Flinders Street, about 12.35am.

Police are still searching for the driver of a car that crashed in December. Credit:Scott Barbour

Witnesses say two men began arguing out the front of the McDonald's store about 12.30am.

One of the men then left and returned with a knife, before the slashing the teenager across the face.
A toddler remains in a serious condition in hospital after she was rescued by a bystander from a river in north east Victoria.

The near-drowning was one of four tragic incidents in state's waterways, in just two days.

The 18-month-old Melbourne girl had travelled to Harrietville with her family for a car show, the Border Mail reported.

Her mother was briefly distracted when the girl entered part of the Ovens River, near the town's caravan park, about 11.30am on Friday.
MASON CITY | The Mason City Council of the Knights of Columbus recently donated $2,000 to the Caring Pregnancy Center to help defray the cost of its ultrasound program.

The Caring Pregnancy Center, located in Mason City, is a Christ-centered ministry committed to upholding the sanctity of human life by demonstrating the love of Christ to women and men facing an unplanned pregnancy.

In early 2015 the the CPC added limited non-diagnostic ultrasound to its services through the financial support of the Knights of Columbus, donors, churches and grants.

Of those who have received an ultrasound at the CPC, 95 percent have chosen to continue their pregnancy, according to the CPC.

The original cost for the ultrasound machine was covered by the Knights of Columbus. Since this undertaking began, more than $37,000 has been raised for the CPC through all the local Knights chapters.
Florida: Hillary Clinton concentrated her final push for the presidency Saturday on an effort to galvanise Latino voters, as early voting numbers signalled their turnout was swelling in key states that Donald Trump needs to win.

Clinton returned to South Florida for a rally in this city, which is filled with Hispanic and Caribbean immigrants, seeking to drive more of her supporters to the polls on what was the last day of early voting for some counties in the state.

Even as she fought a rearguard action to defend a series of more heavily white states that appear to have tightened, making trips to Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, Clinton appeared to find a growing advantage in the more diverse presidential battlegrounds.

This long, unpredictable and often downright bizarre election was, in other words, ending along the lines it had been contested all along: with Americans sharply divided along demographic lines between the two candidates. But Democrats continued to hold the upper hand, thanks in part to the changing nature of the electorate in the most crucial states: Florida and a cluster of states in the South and West.
if the people of Biafra want Republic of Biafra, it will be a reality during my administration. ----Donald Trump Donald Trump I wi...
6 hours ago

Its Still Not Too Late To Get Into Energy Stocks

If you are wondering if it's too late to get into energy stocks the best answer is no. Energy prices are down from their peak and there is a potential slowdown in demand on the way but, for now, the underlying fundamentals are highly in favor of higher share prices.

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These guys and gals didnt hear thank you enough when they returned from service, and they dont hear it enough today.

So were going to make the first introduction to some neighbors you should know.

On the heels of the Globe Gazettes successful project a year ago honoring veterans of the Vietnam War, were starting a similar They Served With Honor series focusing on veterans of the Korean War.

The stories will start Friday  Veterans Day  and will feature weekly profiles of North Iowans who served in the conflict. The profiles will appear online Mondays and in print Tuesdays.

Iowa sent 85,000 troops to Korea, and more than 500 didnt return. Locally, 35 from North Iowa died there, including Rockford native Leighton Kreider.

Kreiders death in a prisoner camp at age 20 prompted his brother Harlan, then 16, to join the Navy two years later in 1953.

The motive behind Harlans enlistment was to bring his brother home. Its a mission that continues today.

You can read more about the Kreiders in the coming weeks.

All of the features will be available at globegazette.com, and were hopeful the project is successful enough to publish all of the profiles in a special section on Memorial Day weekend.

It would be, like the section on Vietnam Veterans, a great keepsake and resource for family members, educators and part-time historians.

We have a good start on Iowans to profile, but were looking for more.

If you or someone you know served in Korea, please let us know. Weve expanded the focus for this series to include deceased veterans, so family members can share their stories, too.

The easiest way to share a name with us is by email  news@globegazette.com  but well also take your phone call.

And thank the veteran.
The Luxembourg Citrine and Pearl Bandeau (Photo: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

One of the more unusual tiaras in the Luxembourg vaults is todays piece: a bandeau tiara of pearls and stones that are either citrines or yellow topazes. (Well go with citrine here, mainly because more people seem to identify the gems as such. They really could be either one!)

The tiara shares a great deal in common with the familys amethyst bandeau. Like that tiara, this one is also a part of a demi-parure, with coordinating earrings and a necklace. I think its highly possible that these two sets were made at the same time, during years when Grand Duke Jean and Grand Duchess Josephine-Charlotte were the reigning couple in the country. She wore the tiara for a state visit to Italy in the early 1980s; she also wore the tiara at an event in Denmark near the end of her life.

The current grand duchess, Maria Teresa, chose this tiara for one of her first formal portraits after becoming the hereditary grand duchess. Apart from an outing in the 1990s, when Princess Margaretha of Liechtenstein wore the tiara during a Luxembourg/Belgium state visit, the piece was not seen again until more recently. Princess Alexandra wore the tiara during the 2011 National Day gala, and her mother appeared in the set once again on a 2012 state visit to Germany.

Photo: JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP/Getty Images

And continuing her tour through the tiara holdings of the grand duchy, Hereditary Grand Duchess Stephanie has also donned this sparkler. She appeared in the tiara at the wedding of Princess Madeleine of Sweden, which took place in the summer of 2013. Cleverly, on that occasion, the yellow stones in the tiara and her blue order sash combined to form the colors of the Swedish flag  which, accidental or not, was pretty nifty!
On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be elected president. But no matter who prevails, Russian President Vladimir Putin can declare a victory of his own in the 2016 presidential race.

Russias hacking and leaking of private emails and documents from U.S. political organizations marked an unprecedented campaign to interfere with American elections. And while its not clear that Putin was specifically trying to get Trump elected, half a dozen U.S. intelligence officials and Russia experts told The Daily Beast that the hacking campaign succeeded in embarrassing American politicians, fomenting an already polarized electorate, and turning Putin himself into a major character in the election year narrative.

I think he has certainly succeeded in introducing additional discord into our political system, said Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. And hes endeavored to weaken Secretary Clinton so if she is successful in the election she is a less formidable foe.

Schiff, who has been briefed on the hacks by U.S. intelligence officials, said the intelligence community views the Russian campaign with great alarm. In part thats because interference with the presidential election is not a singular event. Rather, it fits in a pattern of increasingly bold moves by Russia to challenge U.S. influence and to enhance Putins standing with his own people.

I think the shift began well before this [hacking] with Putins rising hostility, with the invasion of Ukraine, with their conduct in Syria, Schiff said. This is just the latest form of Russian aggression against the U.S. and our interests. And, he added, theres no reason to think it will cease after Election Day.

U.S. intelligence analysts have also closely watched Russias propaganda campaigns in Europe. Those efforts, which preceded the U.S. hacking operation and were also aimed at undermining elections, propagated false information about national leaders and eroded public support for the European Union. Last summer, a senior E.U. official said that Russian propaganda websites and social media trolling had been documented in every European country. Hundreds of disinformation websites had been spotted in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. The EU now has a task force dedicated to debunking conspiracy theories and fake news stories being churned out by Moscow.

Were seeing a troubling escalation of that kind of conduct here in the United States, Schiff said.

Why Putin decided that last summer was the moment to extend so-called active measures into the United States is a matter of significant discussion inside the U.S. intelligence community. But his confidence in his own political longevity was badly shaken, observers say, by protests in Moscow in 2011 and later the overthrow of a pro-Russian government in Ukraine. Putin sees the United States as the secret architect of these movements, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper explained at a security conference in Aspen, Colorado, last summer.

I think that their approach is they believe that we are trying to influence political developments in Russia, we are trying to effect change, and so their natural responses is to retaliate and do onto us as they think weve done onto them, Clapper said.

Schiff said that the hacks, which the intelligence community officially pinned on the highest levels of the Russian government in October, can be seen as payback for Putins erroneous conclusions that the Obama administration is responsible for his political troubles. To strengthen the legitimacy of his own rule, Putin routinely seeks to expose corruption and unfairness in U.S. and European politics and to accuse his adversaries of behaving no differently than him. The leaked emails from the DNC and later inside Clintons own campaign gave him powerful ammunitionshowing that the DNC and its leadership were working hard to undermine Clintons Democratic rivals, and passing supposedly confidential information to her campaign.

Theres a domestic portion to Putins agenda here, Peter Clement, a deputy assistant director at the CIA and the agencys most senior Russia analyst, said in rare public remarks at a conference in Washington, DC, in September. If you look at the leaks that came out most recently on the DNC, the Russian media were very, very quick to pick up the fact that, See, the West is always lecturing us, and yet look at this primary system. Was it a truly level playing field? Which is something the Americans always criticize the Russians about.

Clement said that Russian press also seized on documents hacked from the World Anti-Doping Agency that showed American athletes taking banned substances after Russian athletes were thrown out of competition for their own drug use. (Some well-known American athletes received permission from the agency to take drugs for common ailments.) The revelations were another opportunity for Putin to expose what he sees as the Wests hypocrisy and to try to normalize Russias behavior on the international stage.

If you watch the Russian media closely, these themes come through loud and clear, Clement said. I think Putin sees this as a way of trying to legitimize to his own people, You know, were not any different than anybody else. Everybody does the things that they accuse us of doing, and at least we have stability and order at home.

But in targeting the U.S. elections, Putin is also playing to American voters.

I suspect Putin wanted the hacking and leaking to be just ambiguous enough to be deniable, but obvious enough to make a point: we can do this, we have done this, we dont fear you, Mark Galeotti, a senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations in Prague, told The Daily Beast.

Its classic Putin, jerk geopolitics, trying to win the initiative by some alpha-male stunt, the cyber equivalent of bringing his big dog into meetings with [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel, who is notoriously afraid of dogs.

If Putins M.O. is to intimidate world leaders, in the U.S. campaign, he flipped that approachtalking up a candidate instead. What facilitated this, I have to say, and made it more successful, is that one of the presidential candidates decided to be an enabler, Schiff said.

Trump has publicly praised Putin as a wise and strong leader, encouraged Russian hackers to expose more of Clintons emails, and consistently denied that Russia is responsible for the hacking campaign, despite the consensus of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies to the contrary.

This was a tremendous boon to the Kremlin because they could publicize on RT [the English-language Russian TV network] and back home that one of the major candidates believes Russia had nothing to do with this, Schiff said. It gave credibility to their deniability.

Writing in the Washington Post on Friday, former CIA Director Michael Hayden said that Trump was playing the old Soviet role of the useful fool, some naif, manipulated by Moscow, secretly held in contempt, but whose blind support is happily accepted and exploited.

Clinton has seized on this idea, too, and practically made Trumps suspected links to Putin part of her stump speech. Her campaign has said that the hacks were designed specifically to boost Trumps chances of winningan assertion that not even the intelligence community has made. Her campaign publicized a widely criticized article that suggested Trumps company had a secret line of communication to a Russian bank. And in the third presidential debate, Clinton called Trump a puppet of the Russian president.

While there is clearly a Clinton strategy to discredit Trump as a Kremlin stooge, that also may play into Putins hands.

Calling Trump Putins puppet is a sign of the weakness of the American political system, said Fiona Hill, who served as the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council.

It appears so weak and fragile that outsiders can actually meddle about in it. Thats a win because he wants to say U.S. politics is terrible. Hes always trying to take a stab against U.S. exceptionalism, said Hill, whos now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of the book Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin.

The very thing that Putin wants, to loom large in his adversaries imagination and their conversations, is what he got this election season. I was cringing every time Putin was mentioned in debates, Hill said.

The omnipresence of Putin in the campaign has also demonstrated, both to a Russian and American audience, that Russia cannot be dismissed after the votes for president are counted.

How can it be a regional power if it was the central topic of the third debate? Sergei Markov, who runs a pro-Kremlin think tank, told Foreign Policy columnist Julia Ioffe.

Not everyone is equally impressed with the success of Russias active measures campaign. In seeking to disrupt the American elections, Putin may not have thought ahead to what comes next.

In the short term, Putin has certainly achieved what he set out to do, primarily in creating problems for Clinton, Galeotti said. But as ever I feel Putin misunderstands and under-estimates democratic systems, and did not think through the longer-term implications.

Assuming Clinton wins, Galeotti continued, she is likely to be a far more hostile president than before, closer to the Clinton Putin imagined. Even if Trump wins, the national security establishment in DC with which he will have to work is certainly now convinced that the Putin regime is a clear and present danger not just to the international order but Americas democratic system.

Theres no sign that the Russians will end their active measures campaign with the election on Tuesday. Indeed, they have plenty of incentives to continue. A President Clinton would enter office politically weakened by the Russian leaks as well as ongoing disclosures about her use of a private email system. And a President Trump could easily find himself on the receiving end of a Russian propaganda campaign should he turn on Putin.

The White House has promised that the U.S. will respond to the Russian hacks, though its not year clear what form that retaliation might take. Sanctions? Leaks of Russian government communications? A cyber attack on Russian computer systems?

Officials have said that any U.S. response will likely wait until after the election. Presuming Clinton is the victor, it will fall to her to help craft and ultimately enforce a strategy to deter Russian aggression in the future.

Unless they pay an increasingly high price for this, theyll continue to meddle the way they are, Schiff said.
With just three days before the election Hillary Clinton is pulling out all the stops to get millennial voters to go and vote, with events featuring Katy Perry, Jay Z and Beyonce.

But the biggest star she's got in her repertoire might still be Bernie Sanders.

Clinton and her former Democratic primary nemesis gathered on a conference call Saturday afternoon -- because,of course, theres nothing young people love more than weekend conference calls -- to encourage millennials to head to the polls.

"Hillary Clinton's views are far, far, fare superior from anywhere Donald Trump is coming from," the self-described socialist argued.

Warning of an "oligarchy" in the United States that would mean young people lie "in a country where a handful of billionaires are in control of our economic and political life," Sanders said that the stakes were "enormously high" in this election.

"I hope all of you know that change never comes from the top on down, Sanders told millennial voters on the call. Any important change in America comes from the bottom on up."

Both Clinton and Sanders emphasized issues they hope will resonate with younger voters: ending voter suppression, addressing Climate change, limiting the role of money in politics, and challenging systemic racism by reforming the criminal justice system.

"In our country, as all of you know, we have struggled for hundreds of years with racism, with sexism, with discrimination of all forms, Sanders said. It is hard to believe that in the year 2016, there is a candidate for a major political party, Mr. Trump, who has made a cornerstone of his campaign trying to divide us up and running a campaign based on bigotry."

The former Secretary of State has struggled with galvanizing young voters over the course of the campaign. During the primaries, more people under 30 voted for Sanders than Clinton and Trump combined -- with plenty of room to spare. He received more than 2 million votes, while Trump and Clinton won less than 30 million votes from this voting block .

"He has fought for progressive values, and I can't wait to work with him in the years to come, Clinton said, of the Vermont senator.

A Harvard Institute of Politics poll of millennials found that favorability of Clinton has improved since the Democratic National Convention, with all the tumultuousness of the Democratic primary behind her. In July, Clinton was viewed unfavorably by 60 percent of young voters, and favorably by only 31 percent. Last month, she was viewed favorably by 48 percent of young voters and unfavorably by 51 percent.

Last month, emails stolen from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta were leaked onto the web, threatening to disrupt coordination between the Sanders and Clinton wings of the party. The leaked emails showed statements Clinton made behind closed doors to big banks and Wall Street firms -- a major issue during the primary campaign. She praised bankers, supported open markets and said that politicians needed a "public and private position" during negotiations -- in many ways validating Sanders' critiques of Clinton and the American political system.

But a Democratic Party divide has failed to materialize, in part because many Democrats view the Republican nominee as such an odious character they put less stock into it.

So on Saturday afternoon, Clinton went with her primary argument of the campaign: at least shes not Trump.

Our vision of America is so different from that of Donald Trump, Clinton said. His is dark and divisive. Ours is hopeful and inclusive.

Ultimately, the views of young voters towards Hillary Clinton will matter. As she notes, more young voters have registered to vote in 2016 than ever before. With so many people in this demographic having supported Sanders, his endorsement carries heavy weight.

Drag your friends out to get out the vote, Sanders urged. The future of the planet is at stake.
Make America Number 1, the pro-Trump super-PAC controlled by hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, has paid law firms associated with Rudy Giuliani $563,003 in 2015 and 2016.

The PAC, originally called Keep the Promise 1, supported Ted Cruz before shifting to Donald Trump after he secured the Republican nomination this spring. It began paying Bracewell & Giuliani for legal and compliance services in June of 2015, making $336,495 in payments until February 14, 2016. It stopped using Bracewell a couple of weeks after Giuliani left the firm in January.

Ted Cruz dropped out of the Republican presidential field on May 3. Sometime that month, Rebekah Mercer and Kellyanne Conway, who led the PAC when it was backing the Texas senator and is now Trumps campaign manager, had lunch with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. There, the Washington Post reported, Ivanka and Rebekah bonded over parenting young children and being the daughters of hard-charging, successful fathers, according to people familiar with their conversation.

Also in May, on the 12th, the PAC retained Giulianis new firm, Greenberg & Traurig, initially paying $99,470 for legal and compliance services. In June, the PAC changed its name and aligned itself squarely with Trump. On its website, the group described itself as supporting conservative principles, upholding the rule of law, and opposing ethically challenged candidates Its (sic) first special project entitled, Defeat Crooked Hillary, will shed light on what the Clintons (sic) want to keep in the dark.

On July 22, the PAC paid Greenberg $9,698 for legal consulting services. That payment came the day after the Republican National Convention, which Giuliani spoke at and attended with his wife. If the payment had anything to do with covering the expenses of a convention speaker, that might well violate the federal guidelines  including operating independently of a campaign  that Giulianis firm was supposed to oversee as part of its compliance services.

Three payments in September and October tallied $118,340, also for legal consulting services.

A call to Giulianis aide at the Greenberg firm was not immediately returned. Hogan Gidley, the communications director for the PAC, said he could not answer the Beasts questions but that he would try to get someone else at the PAC to respond.

After I reported in the New York Daily News in September that Greenberg Taurig represents both Trump and Kushner Companies, the real estate firm headed by Trumps son-in-law Jared, Giuliani took a leave of absence, saying he would return after the election. Kushner is one of Greenberg Taurigs top development clients; Trump has used the firm himself for small Florida matters. Shortly after Giuliani joined Greenberg in January, Trump announced that the former mayor, whos become one of his most prominent surrogates, was acting as an informal adviser to the campaign.

Conway joined the Trump campaign on July 1 and was later promoted to campaign manager. She was briefly replaced at the PAC by David Bossie, the longtime head of Citizens United who has made a career of his war against the Clintons. Steve Bannon, who became chair and CEO of the Trump campaign on August 17, had previously been the executive chairman of Breitbart News, which counts the Mercers as major investors. After just weeks at the outside group, Bossie rejoined Conway as Trumps deputy campaign manager and Rebekah Mercer herself then took charge of day-to-day control of the PAC.

While his firm has been on the PAC payroll, Giuliani has been fanning the flames of every Clinton controversy. But he has made it clear that he thinks the Clinton Foundation issues are the worst, saying on Fox this week: This was the one I always thought was clearer. Invoking his history as a federal prosecutor, Giuliani said he could make a case against the Clintons on the foundation in two months. The foundation has long been a fixation of the Mercers as well. They fund the Bannon-led non-profit Government Accountability Institute whose president, Peter Schweizer, author of Clinton Cash, an innuendo-strewn book about the foundation that apparently became fodder for a probe initiated by FBI agents from the New York office earlier this year. Rebekah Mercer serves on the Institutes board and co-produced, with Bossie, a documentary based on the book that was released just before the Democratic National Convention.

Giuliani confirmed in a Fox interview Friday what the Beast reported Thursdaynamely, that he has been talking to agents about the Clinton cases. He didnt say if hed told those agents that his firm represents a Trump super-PAC run by one of Trumps biggest donors, the Mercers, whove given at least $15.5 million. Or that his firms clients include Trump and the Kushners. Giuliani described his conversations with outraged agents as if they were one-sided exchanges, with agents complaining about FBI and Justice Department brass blocking legitimate probes for political reasons, and him just taking it in. I did nothing to get it out, he said today, referring to the Comey letter renewing the email probe and subsequent leaks that have rocked the presidential campaign. Later that day, though, he said that he had spoken only to retired agents.

If Giulianis firm had been charged with compliance oversight for the PAC, the results have been questionable, and not just because of the timely disbursement to his firm in July. The PAC has a substantial relationship with two companies that have been connected to Bannon and had shared the same Beverly Hills address as Breitbart, paying millions for video and data services from production house Glittering Steel (which has worked with the Mercers PAC in both its Cruz and Trump incarnations) and political data firm Cambridge Analytica.

There may have been nothing questionable about that before August, but the two entities have been paid more than $4 million by Make America Number 1 since the Breitbart head  who said Friday that he intends to return there after the election  took over the Trump campaign. A film industry source this week described Glittering Steel to The Daily Beast as little more than a front for Bannon.

If the Federal Election Commissionpresently deadlocked between its two Republican and two Democratic commissionersactually looks at campaign violations, it might want to work out what interest, exactly, the CEO of Trumps campaign has in the two biggest vendors for a super-PAC.

Avoiding legally prohibited coordination between campaigns and PACs, after all, is just the sort of conflict that they pay lawyers to ensure theyre in compliance with.

Anna Lenzer contributed research to this report.
In the final three days before Election Day, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has taken on a new target: rapper Jay Z.

On Friday night, the hip-hop artist and businessman, and of course Beyonce, joined Hillary Clinton on-stage at a campaign rally in Cleveland, in the key swing-state of Ohio.

"This other guy [Trump], I don't have any ill willhe cannot be my president," Jay Z said on Friday evening. "He cannot be our president. Once you divide us, you weaken us. We are stronger together." (He then introduced "the next president of the United States, Miss Hillary Clinton.")

On Friday night, Trump retaliated by incorporating Jay Z into his stump speech, a tactic he continued to use into Saturday morning.

"I didn't have to bring...Jay Z [to get a big crowd], Trump boasted at his own rally. "I'm here all by myself. Just me, no guitar, no piano, no nothing.

On Saturday morning, Trump kept talking about the Clinton-endorsing,Obama-loving rapperand the rappers filthy, dirty lyrics.

"We don't need Jay Z to fill up arenas...we do it the old-fashioned way, Trump said at his rally in Tampa, Florida. I actually like Jay Z, but the language last night, ohhhh...I was thinking, maybe I'll just tryshould I use that language for one of mine?

The crowd responded to the question with loud boos.

Can you imagine if I said that? Trump continued, taking to bashing the more R- and PG-13-rated words in the rap lyrics. So, he used every word in the book...last night. He used language last night that was so bad, and then Hillary said, I did not like Donald Trump's lewd language. My lewd language?...I've never said what he said in my life! But that shows you the phoniness of politicians.

It wasnt just Trump using lewd or coarse language that got him in trouble. Last month, he was caught on tape bragging about being able to get away with sexually assaulting women due to his celebrity status. But conservative, pro-Trump rebuttals to the 2005 Access Hollywood pussy tape have often attempted to change the subject to simply naughty language.

In February, Trump also repeated an audience member who called GOP rival Ted Cruz a pussy.

At least in public, Trump has for years claimed an affection for Jay Z, however shared or unreciprocated the emotions might be. As recently as November of last year, the real-estate mogul was calling Jay Z a good guy, when asked by Yahoo News.

I really like Jay Z but there is trouble in paradise, Trump tweeted in May 2014, weighing in on the big news of the leaked security-footage of Solange attacking Jay Z in an elevator. When his wife's sister starts whacking him, not good! No help from [Beyonce] leads to a mess.

But when the entertainer became politically active, Trump seemed to have no more niceties for him.

In late 2012, Trump went after President Obama for fundraising and campaigning with the rapper in times of crisis:

In the past, Trump has been something of an aspirational figure referenced in many rap songs, prior to his divisive presidential run and racist birther crusade. And in the New York high-society scene, he and Jay Z would sometimes rub shoulders at public events.

For instance, at a fashion show in 2002, Trump actually sat with Jay Z and none other than Monica Lewinsky at an event for designer Luca Orlandi.

Trump was later listed as a sponsor for a presidential fundraiser for Al Sharpton, who sought the Democratic nomination in 2004. Also on the list of sponsors was Jay Z and Russell Simmons (who is now also a Clinton supporter).

At the time, Trump claimed he had no idea why his name was on the roster, telling the New York Post: "It's a ridiculous situation. I know nothing about his campaign, I know nothing about his party. Nobody ever called me about it. I like Al Sharpton, but I'm not supporting him."

In the past year, evidence surfaced that on Jay-Zs part theres no love lost. Last Week Tonight host John Oliver claimed in March that Jay Z contacted the network to get one of his Make Donald Drumpf Again hats, which was meant as a dig on Trumps familys original last name when they came to the United States.
If early voting in key battleground states is any indication, the Republican nominee may be dead in the water before the polls open Tuesday morning. Strategists have been crowing for months about Donald Trumps utter lack of in-state political organization and the power of the Clinton voter turnout machine.

That infrastructuregirded by door-to-door campaigning, automated text messages and volunteer phone bankshas already begun to pay off.

According to NBC News, the Clinton camp has reportedly made 45 million direct voter contacts since start of early voting and has nearly one million [volunteers] this weekend.

In at least two states, North Carolina and Nevada, Clinton appears to have built a firewall. Few states, however, are as important to Trump as North Carolina.

If Mr. Trump does not win the state, his path to the presidency  already narrow  becomes nearly impossible, writes Nate Cohn for the New York Times.

Already, about 2,585,000 people have voted in North Carolina, out of about 4,574,000 we think will eventually vote, says Cohn. Based on the voting history and demographic characteristics of those people, we think Hillary Clinton leads in North Carolina by about 6 percentage points. We think she has an even larger lead  9 percentage points  among people who have already voted.

With one day left in early voting, about 4.6 million voters have already turned out early in Tar Heel State-- up from 4.5 million at this point in 2012.

Out west in Nevada, Republicans almost certainly lost Nevada on Friday says political analyst Jon Ralston. The Silver State firewallwhich now approaches a 73,000 ballot margin in favor of Clinton  is larger than 2012 when Barack Obama won the state by nearly 7 points.

Trump is dead, Ralston contends, and hell need a Miracle in Vegas on Election Day,

If those numbers hold up and are reflected down the ballot, Republicans will also lose retiring Senator Harry Reids seat, two House districts and the state legislature.

In both North Carolina, less regular voters -- those who probably did not pass the polling screen of likely voters and who are demonstrably more non-white-- are representing a larger share of voters.

States like Florida and Georgia are reporting similar surges. Predominantly black Fulton County, the largest in the Peach State, recorded a record early turnout. To the north in Gwinnettonce a suburban GOP strongholda markedly more diverse electorate lined up at early polling places to cast their ballots. Across the state, compared to 2012, Hispanic turnout is up 144 percent and the state has broken its 2008 early voting record.

Early voting in Florida is also at an all-time high. While Trump continues to be competitive in the swing state, tellingly, 28 percent of Republicans who voted early, cast their ballots for Clinton. Early turnout among African Americans in the Sunshine State has increased 74 percent over 2012 and Latinos, among whom Trump has exceedingly high negatives, showed up in unprecedented numbers. Puerto Ricans, already U.S. citizens and qualified to vote, are making a significance difference in central Florida and are expected to side with Democrats.

Taken together, changing demographic trends in Florida and Georgia, could remake the map not only in 2016but in election cycles to come.

In Wisconsin, which also boasts record early voting, Clinton is reportedly leading 60-34 among early voters according to Public Policy Polling. Home to Governor Scott Walker and House Speaker Paul Ryan, Trump cancelled a planned rally that was set for Sunday. Ryan, who has shown lackluster support for the GOP nominee, and Trump were scheduled to make a joint appearance.

Does this mean the 2016 presidential election is over? No. It does, however, mean that the Trump campaignwhich eschewed the importance of ground efforts during the GOP primary-- has its work cut out for them on Nov. 8.

Traditionally, Republicans have had a stronger showing among voters who wait for Election Day to cast their ballots. But, Clinton is running up what may be an insurmountable lead in states that Trump can ill-afford to lose.

If Clinton ultimately takes Nevada, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia and Wisconsinnot to mention Michigan and Pennsylvania, where she currently leads polling the election will be a blowout of epic proportions.
By Robert Speel, Associate Professor of Political Science, Erie campus, Pennsylvania State University

As states continue to count their ballots in the 2020 election, it seems possible that Democrats and Republicans will end up in court over whether President Trump will win a second term in the White House.

President Trump has said hes going to contest the election results  going so far as to say that he believes the election will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has a team of lawyers lined up for a legal battle.

In recent weeks, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that this years election is rigged and has predicted rampant voter fraud.

While its unprecedented to call an election rigged before voting has even taken place, there is a history of candidates and the media crying foul after suspicious results.

The most recent presidential election that had rumblings of rigging was 2004. Two years later, Robert Kennedy Jr. published an article in Rolling Stone claiming that Ohio election officials had made decisions that stole the election from Democratic candidate John Kerry. (If Kerry had won Ohios electoral votes, he would have defeated Republican president George W. Bush that year.) But while some Democrats parroted Kennedys allegations, Bushs margin of victory in Ohioover 100,000 votesled many to dismiss them.

However, the most plausible claims of a rigged presidential election were made in 1876, 1888, 1960 and 2000. In each case, the losing candidate and party dealt with the disputed results differently.

If theres a close or contested vote this year, perhaps the candidates could take a cue from the past.

1876: A compromise that came at a price

By 187611 years after the end of the Civil Warall the Confederate states had been readmitted to the Union, and Reconstruction was in full swing. The Republicans were strongest in the pro-Union areas of the North and African-American regions of the South, while Democratic support coalesced around southern whites and northern areas that had been less supportive of the Civil War. That year, Republicans nominated Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, and Democrats chose New York Governor Samuel Tilden.

But on Election Day, there was widespread voter intimidation against African-American Republican voters throughout the South. Three of those Southern statesFlorida, Louisiana and South Carolinahad Republican-dominated election boards. In those three states, some initial results seemed to indicate Tilden victories. But due to widespread allegations of intimidation and fraud, the election boards invalidated enough votes to give the statesand their electoral votesto Hayes. With the electoral votes from all three states, Hayes would win a 185-184 majority in the Electoral College.

Competing sets of election returns and electoral votes were sent to Congress to be counted in January 1877, so Congress voted to create a bipartisan commission of 15 members of Congress and Supreme Court justices to determine how to allocate the electors from the three disputed states. Seven commissioners were to be Republican, seven were to be Democrats, and there would be one independent, Justice David Davis of Illinois.

But in a political scheme that backfired, Davis was chosen by Democrats in the Illinois state legislature to serve in the U.S. Senate (senators werent chosen by voters until 1913). Theyd hoped to win his support on the electoral commission. Instead, Davis resigned from the commission and was replaced by Republican Justice Joseph Bradley, who proceeded to join an 8-7 Republican majority that awarded all the disputed electoral votes to Hayes.

Democrats decided not to argue with that final result due to the Compromise of 1877, in which Republicans, in return for getting Hayes in the White House, agreed to an end to Reconstruction and military occupation of the South.

Hayes had an ineffective, one-term presidency, while the compromise ended up destroying any semblance of African-American political clout in the South. For the next century, southern legislatures, free from northern supervision, would implement laws discriminating against blacks and restricting their ability to vote.

1888: Bribing blocks of five

In 1888, Democratic President Grover Cleveland of New York ran for reelection against former Indiana U.S. Senator Benjamin Harrison.

Back then, election ballots in most states were printed, distributed by political parties and cast publicly. Certain voters, known as floaters, were known to sell their votes to willing buyers.

Harrison had appointed an Indiana lawyer, William Wade Dudley, as treasurer of the Republican National Committee. Shortly before the election, Dudley sent a letter to Republican local leaders in Indiana with promised funds and instructions for how to divide receptive voters into blocks of five to receive bribes in exchange for voting the Republican ticket. The instructions outlined how each Republican activist would be responsible for five of these floaters.

Democrats got a copy of the letter and publicized it widely in the days leading up to the election. Harrison ended up winning Indiana by only about 2,000 votes but still would have won in the Electoral College without the state.

Cleveland actually won the national popular vote by almost 100,000 votes. But he lost his home state, New York, by about 1 percent of the vote, putting Harrison over the top in the Electoral College. Clevelands loss in New York may have also been related to vote-buying schemes.

Cleveland did not contest the Electoral College outcome and won a rematch against Harrison four years later, becoming the only president to serve nonconsecutive terms of office. Meanwhile, the blocks-of-five scandal led to the nationwide adoption of secret ballots for voting.

1960: Did the Daley machine deliver?

The 1960 election pitted Republican Vice President Richard Nixon against Democratic U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy.

The popular vote was the closest of the 20th century, with Kennedy defeating Nixon by only about 100,000 votesa less than 0.2 percent difference.

Because of that national spread  and because Kennedy officially defeated Nixon by less than 1 percent in five states (Hawaii, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico) and less than 2 percent in Texasmany Republicans cried foul. They fixated on two places in particularsouthern Texas and Chicago, where a political machine led by Mayor Richard Daley allegedly churned out just enough votes to give Kennedy the state of Illinois. If Nixon had won Texas and Illinois, he would have had an Electoral College majority.

While Republican-leaning newspapers proceeded to investigate and conclude that voter fraud had occurred in both states, Nixon did not contest the results. Following the example of Cleveland in 1892, Nixon ran for president again in 1968 and won.

2000: The hanging chads

In 2000, many states were still using the punch card ballot, a voting system created in the 1960s. Even though these ballots had a long history of machine malfunctions and missed votes, no one seemed to know or careuntil all Americans suddenly realized that the outdated technology had created a problem in Florida.

Then, on Election Day, the national media discovered that a butterfly ballot, a punch card ballot with a design that violated Florida state law, had confused thousands of voters in Palm Beach County.

Many who had thought they were voting for Gore unknowingly voted for another candidate or voted for two candidates. (For example, Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan received about 3,000 votes from voters who had probably intended to vote for Gore.) Gore ended up losing the state to Bush by 537 votesand, in losing Florida, lost the election.

But ultimately, the month-long process to determine the winner of the presidential election came down to an issue of hanging chads.

Over 60,000 ballots in Florida, most of them on punch cards, had registered no vote for president on the punch card readers. But on many of the punch cards, the little pieces of paper that get punched out when someone votesknown as chadswere still hanging by one, two or three corners and had gone uncounted. Gore went to court to have those ballots counted by hand to try to determine voter intent, as allowed by state law. Bush fought Gores request in court. While Gore won in the Florida State Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled at 10 p.m. on Dec. 12 that Congress had set a deadline of that date for states to choose electors, so there was no more time to count votes.

Gore conceded the next day.

The national drama and trauma that followed Election Day in 1876 and 2000 could be repeated this year. Of course, a lot will depend on the margins and how the candidates react.

Most eyes will be on Trump, who hasnt said whether or not hell accept the result if he loses. On election night, he announced he had won before all the votes had been counted in a number of battleground states.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Nov. 1, 2016.

Robert Speel is Associate Professor of Political Science, Erie campus, Penn State. This article is an updated version of an article published in 2016 by The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news organization.
NORTHWOOD  After failed attempts to to sell its lone wind turbine, Northwood-Kensett may soon have a buyer.

Alta-based company Gro Wind, LLC has offered to purchase it for $15,000, according to Superintendent Michael Crozier.

The final sale will need to be approved at a special school board meeting scheduled for Monday, he said.

We are excited to be a this point, he said.

Last year, the school district informally shopped around its 250-kilowatt wind turbine. Purchased in 2002, the turbine is on a wind farm 18 miles away, 410th Street near Joice.

Wind turbine might be history at Northwood-Kensett NORTHWOOD | Interested in buying a wind turbine? If so, Northwood-Kensett Schools may have a

It bought the turbine 14 years ago for $68,000.

The initial plan called for the turbine to be moved to the Northwood-Kensett school campus in Northwood, but that never happened.

The turbine remains out at the wind farm, where it generates electricity the district sells to Alliant Energy.

When it goes down, the biggest problem is that ... it can be broken down for a week before we know, he said. If that was on campus it might be a different story.

Officials estimate the equipment should generate $12,000 to $14,000 annually, but has earned far less due to mechanical breakdowns. Instead, its generated about $4,050 in total profits over five years, Crozier told the Globe Gazette last year.

Last few years weve made money, but there was a time where a big part went down on it, he said.
Long, long ago, in a cold land with an ancient wall up north, a handful of powerful aristocratic families fought for control of a coveted throne in a struggle that pitted brother against brother. Meanwhile, across the narrow sea, an exiled Targaryen with a trio of dragons gathered an army to take back her crownno, no, wrong story. This is a different onethe OG War of the Five Kings, otherwise known as the Wars of the Roses, in which two cadet branches of the House of Plantagenet waged a bloody, all-consuming battle to rule fair England.

The tale of the squabbling descendants of King Edward III was a favorite of William Shakespeare, who devoted eight full-length plays to the subject (maybe with some help from Marlowe). Known as the Henriad, they stretch from the reign of the doomed Richard IIoverthrown by his cousin Henry Bolingbroketo the downfall of the monstrous Richard III at the hands of Henry Tudor (the grandfather of Shakespeares own royal patron, Queen Elizabeth). Now, five of those plays have been condensed and adapted by the Tony award-winning director Ivo van Hove and the theater group Toneelgroep Amsterdam in a four-and-a-half-hour homagerendered into Dutch with quasi-Shakespearean English subtitlesthats playing at BAMs Next Wave Festival this weekend.

The production, called Kings of War, centers on Henry V (played by Ramsey Nasr), his son Henry VI (Eelco Smits), and their malformed, malevolent relative Richard III (Hans Kesting). All three rulers are still grappling with the shock dethroning of Richard II, a coup that reverberates through their battles of succession. Henry V, Bolingbrokes son, mulls a foreign invasion in order to smooth over the civil wounds left by his dads power-grab. A generation later, his weak-willed and pious child, Henry VI, is impotent to stop his rivals from advancing their own designs on the crown.

Finally, after Richard helps his eldest brother, Edward, become ruler in Henrys placefollowed soon after by Edwards suspicious demisethe hunchback king clings to power with a might makes right strategy that turn his weak legitimacy claims into mere window-dressing for a tyrant.

Though war is in the plays titleand though its spans some of historys best-known battlesthe clashes of armies happen offstage. The real action here is psychodramatic, as the rulers fight their internal passions and demons. Henry V struggles to outgrow his reputation as a wayward kidPrince Hal, that pal of the bon vivant Falstaffto become a powerful and pragmatic leader. Henry VI waffles and mewls, a sensitive soul who just cant manage to make a stand for himself or his family even when their lives are at stake. And Richard III, well, well get to him and his demons in a minute. Suffice it to say, theyre large enough to wreck entire families and nations.

Both the Bard and van Hove hold up Henry V as the model for what a good king should be. (One of Shakespeares most affectionate touches, calling his king Harry, is sadly left out of the Dutch production.) Henry surrounds himself with trustworthy advisors. He knows that the road to success lies through self-mastery. He is merciful when it is called for, and pitiless when he needs to protect not only himself but his nation.

Most of all, Henry cares about the human cost of war. Hes the only king we see interacting with his soldiers and the common people, disguising himself to move among them and know their minds. He agonizes over whether his claim to the French throne is solid enough to justify the potential loss of lives. And he solemnly feels the responsibility for those lives, noting that leaders stay up at night wracked with the worst kind of moral dilemmas so that their subjects may sleep soundly in their beds.

In fact, van Hoves production lionizes Henry so much, it seems to come at the expense of his complexity. One of the thorniest decisions of Henrys lifeboth historically and in Shakespeares playoccurs right after his famous win at the Battle of Agincourt. The English, heavily outnumbered and exhausted, have somehow managed to mow down their foes and capture a fair number of French nobles in the process. According to the chivalric rules of war at the time, these hostages should be allowed to live and be ransomed back to their country. But Henry gives the controversial order to his troops to slaughter their prisoners of war. Its a command that makes his knights balkeven though its a tactically sound one. The French prisoners are still far more numerous than the English and could easily revolt and overthrow their captors. And so, as Henry sees it, they must die.

Such are the wrenching choices that face kings. In removing this detail, the Dutch play loses a chance to show Henrys true ironclad depths.

Where Henry V has the inner fortitude to shepherd his country, his son just wants to be one of the sheep. Power is something that Henry VI shrinks from. Hes constantly dominated by stronger personalitieshis regent, his queen, his queens loverand these fraudulent counselors quickly run England in the ground, losing the French territories so dearly won by King Harry. Where the father knew what it meant to sacrifice for the greater national good, the son is mired in his obsessive pieties and fears. In his own heavy is the head speech, Henry VI expresses no great concern for his people or his country. Instead, its a self-pitying monologue about how being king means that everyone wants to stab you in the back. True, in his case. But his father also faced death plots, and that didnt deter him from ruling.

Never mindHenry VI wishes for a quieter life. By the end of his reign, his transformation from feeble and unwilling actor to figurehead is complete. As his wife and son do battle against the Yorkist forces, the Lancastrian monarch is sent far from the fray, to sit alone on a molehill. There, he quietly gives his fate up to God and dreams about the peasants life, oblivious to the thousands of commoners nearby who march to death in his name.

The Dutch production makes clever use of the stage, setting it up like a war room that could almost be located within the kings own minds. It also hangs a large screen over the proceedings, and employs lots of handheld cameras, to capture offstage goings-on and unusual vantage points, with decidedly mixed results. When the mega-screen shows us Machiavellian machinations in the corridors of power, or displays the dastardly Richards secret regicides, its an effective complement. When it is used for silly one-off jokessay, to film Henry VI milling around with a herd of, yes, sheep during the kings most intense speechits a distraction that undercuts the real marrow of the play. And when it turns into a war radar, hanging over an empty set as Henry V shouts a truncated version of the St. Crispins Day Speech (we few, we happy few, we band of brothers) from backstage, its a huge fumble that makes you want to sneak away to the bathroom to watch Kenneth Branaghs version on YouTube.

But the play shines when it gives its magnificent actors the space to do what they do best. One of the most entrancing scenes involves no special effects, no Vice-y camera shots or woolly herds. Its just Henry V and the French princess Catherine de Valoiswhom Harry and Shakespeare rakishly call Katesitting at a breakfast table as the king tries to woo her. Ramsey Nasr lets his Henry shift from a proud and triumphant conqueror into a regular guy whos still a little tongue-tied around the ladies. (Its amusing to hear Henry belittle his looks in this love-speech, for Nasr resembles a young Branagh; the real Henry may have suffered from scars on his face, where a battle arrow struck him as a teen.) When Catherine giggles at Henrys nervous ramblings, we know shes a goner and were instantly shipping them. The stage sparkles with their sheer presence.

Compare this to Richard IIIs ominous seduction of the grieving Lady Anne (in a nice touch, shes played by the same actress who portrays Catherine, the excellent Helene Devos). Richard has just helped kill her father and her husband and he is going to use Anne and then discard her. But Richard is a first-rate actor (as is Hans Kesting) and the wolf comes across like a lovestruck lamb. Its a dark mirror of Harry and Kates love scene, wherein Henry earnestly promises Catherine that his devotion will remain loyal and true despite the passage of time. Meanwhile Richard is pledging undying love to a woman hes already planning to murder.

Where Henry wants to wed Catherine to bring peace between their nations, Richard wants to marry Anne to further his own civil war. And so we have moved from a ruler who sees himself as a servant to his countrys greatnessone who wants every Englishman to feel that greatness in himself, tooto a king whose country exists only to serve his wounded ego and his devouring ambition. Richard wants to feel powerful, something he never got to feel as a misshapen youngest son. Yet even when hes all alone, hes imprisoned by self-loathing, telling himself that hes not half the man his rivals were. He knows that others see him as a monsterand while hes going to punish them and make them pay for their disdain, hes also internalized their hatred. Its a psychological void that can never be filled, no matter how high he climbs, no matter how many people he kills.

When a ruler is driven by his warped insecurities, the entire nation suffersand soon Richard has destroyed not only his own family, but his countrys tenuous stability.

Richard is the master of #Nothingmatters and when he says hes a lover of peace and your best ally, you better run fast in the opposite direction. By the plays end, we are very far from King Harrys glorious reign and England smolders in the shadow of a chaotic sociopath. Van Hoves production (and Shakespeares plays) are the ultimate study in leadership, coming just before Election Day. Coincidence? Perhaps not.

Kings of War runs through Nov 6 at BAM.
Bill Maher is the Rodney Dangerfield of political satire. No respect.

The uncompromising comic who brought political comedy to late-night television with Politically Incorrect has received 35 Emmy nominations between that and his HBO series Real Time with Bill Maher, winning zero. If that werent enough, Mahers been trying for years to get President Barack Obamawho is no stranger to televisionon his highly-rated program, culminating with a White House petition garnering 320,000 signatures. Well, on Friday night, POTUS finally gave in, granting Maher a sit-down interview that ran much longer than the twenty minutes allotted Samantha Bee.

For the interview tonight, we were thrilled to be invited to the Roosevelt Room of the White House where the president was, said an ecstatic Maher. And I can tell you that the president was extraordinarily generous with his time. I wanted to ask him the kind of questions that we crazy people here at Real Time might be interested inthe kinds of questions he doesnt often get.

After delivering his usual spiel about how much hes loved this job and what a singular privilege its been, POTUS was grilled with a couple of tough questions by Maherone on the state of the news media, and the other on legalization of marijuana. He dodged the latter, but delivered an interesting response to the former. The question Id have when it comes to the media is how do we create a space where truth gets eyeballs and is entertaining, and we can build a common conversation? asked President Obama. When I leave here, one of the things Im most concerned about is the balkanization of the media where youve got 800 stations and youve got all these websites. People have difficulty now just sorting whats true and whats not. If you dont have some common baseline of facts, you know, we can have a disagreement about how to deal with climate change, but if we have a big chunk of the country that just discounts what 99 percent of scientists say completely, its very hard to figure out how we move the democracy forward.

POTUS then took aim squarely at the TV network that hates him most: Fox News. The problem is weve got all these filters. Look, if I watched Fox News, I wouldnt vote for me either because youve got this screenthis funhouse mirrorthrough which people are receiving information. How to break through that is a big challenge, he said. This whole conversation thats been had lately in the aftermath of the rise of Trump, this notion that part of whats happened is both Republican and Democratic elites have neglected the white working class, the truth of the matter is that every policy Ive put forward would make a huge difference with the white working classand the black working class, and the Latino working class.

But defending his record aside, we are now less than four days out from Election Day, and the reason why President Obama agreed to come on Real Time was to try and swing disaffected liberals (aka Sanders supporters) towards Team Hillary. The stakes are high, said POTUS. I will say this: the choice in this election should be really clear. And anybody whos watching your show and was a supporter of mine or was a supporter of Bernies, is a progressive generally, this idea that somehow, well, both of them have problems and nothing will change either way?

The president shook his head. Listen, all the progress weve made on climate changethe Paris Agreement, HFC Agreement, Aviation Agreement; the 20 million people who have health insurance right now that didnt have it before; all the progress weve made on trying to check the excesses of Wall Street, Dodd-Frank, and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau; any chance of immigration reform, including the work that we did to make sure that these amazing Dreamer kids who are now going to college or serving in our military are not suddenly deported or at risk of deportation. Every single issue that weve made progress on over the last eight years is going to be on the ballot in the form of this choice. And I have worked with Hillary Clinton and I know her, and she is somebody who cares about these issues, shes done her homework, she cares deeply about ordinary folks, her policies are aligned with yours and mine, and, yes, she is somebody who believes in compromise and you dont get a hundred percent of what you want, but you know what? Thats the way this democracy works. Anybody thats sitting on the sidelines right now or deciding to engage in a protest vote? Thats a vote for Trump. That would be damaging for this country, and would be damaging for the world. So no complacency this time.
Imagine, for a moment, that Prince Charles, at the age of 32 (the age Harry is now) had, instead of announcing his engagement to the 19-year-old ingenue Lady Diana Spencer had started going out with a 35-year old American actress with a show reel full of steamy sex scenes, like Prince Harrys new girlfriend, the American Suits actress Meghan Markle.

As the case of Prince Andrew (whom, one may recall, was banned by his mothers flunkies from marrying the actress Koo Stark on the grounds she had once appeared for a brief moment naked in a movie) reveals, there would have been a major scene.

Now imagine that Charlesor indeed Andrewhad started going out with girl who had a white father and a black mother.

As the writer and aristocrat Lady Colin Campbell told the Daily Beast it would have been unimaginable as little as 20 years ago for a senior member of the House of Windsor to have a mixed race girlfriend.

So, the lack of comment with which the news that Meghan Markle has an African-American mother has been received is a heartening sign that the British monarchy, dragged perhaps by Prince Harry, may finally be embracing our multicultural world.

Lady Colin adds that she is unsurprised that Harrys new relationship has been received without a murmur.

The ethos of the age is acceptance and inclusiveness, Lady Colin said. The days when marriages were regarded as desirable only if people were of the same class and color are gone. People have awoken to the fact that such marriages may have lots to recommend them. What used to be verboten is now regarded as desirable in many quarters, she said.

The Windsors have not always projected the most open-minded of attitudes when it comes to raceconsider Prince Philips jocular racist outburstsbut in fact there is an interesting precedent.

The Queen was required to give assent to the marriage of the Honorable James Lascelles, her first cousin once removed, when he married his Nigerian wife, Joy Elias-Rilwan, in 1999.

The Queen had to approve the marriage because rock musician James, 57th in line to the throne, is in the direct line of succession, and she did.

Markle has written (on her lifestyle website The Tig) that when she is asked about her parentage: I could say Pennsylvania and Ohio instead I give them what theyre after: My dad is Caucasian and my mom is African-American. Im half black and half white.

Whether or not this relationship is the real deal is of course a matter of conjecture. Harrys friends have been notably silent on the subject of his new relationship, largely because all except a key few have been kept completely in the dark about it.

But since the story was broken by the established and reliable royal reporter Camilla Tominey last weekend, details of the romance, which allegedly began in June when Harry was in Canada helping promote the Invictus Games, have been leaking out.

The two were apparently introduced through a network of chums connected to Alexander Gilkes, an Old Etonian school friend and former employer of Princess Beatrice at his online auction house Paddle8.

In an interview with the Daily Beasts Tim Teeman in 2014, Gilkesdeclining to speak of his friendship with Prince William and Kate Middleton, said: Im the son of a doctor, and the key to working in the art world is to have boundaries of discretion. If you cant act in a discreet manner, you wont have a long career. I respect peoples privacy. Celebrity is not something I consciously pursue.

Among the claims that have been made is a report that Harry spent Halloween with Markle at Soho House Toronto, and Markles Instagram account wearing a beaded bracelet matching one that Harry often wears.

There have been reports that Harry has spent the last week holed up at her Toronto home on a sleepy suburban street, and may even be there still.

How much of this is true and how much exaggeration is anyones guess. And although the palace never comments on the love lives of its star cast members, if the story was without foundation it would have been killed by now.

So, it is safe to say, after a week of speculation and rumor, that this is realand Harry now has a terrific chance to change the shallow party prince narrative that has dominated so much of the last decade and more of his life.

The prince has previously spoken of the difficulties of meeting a partner, lamenting that any sign of him speaking to a woman leads to rumors she is, suddenly my wife.

As Harry has always been keenly aware, the difficulty he faces is someone who fully accepts and is prepared to take on the surrender of privacy that being his wife entails.

In that sense, Markle is a catch; the fact that she is already famous means that dating a royal is likely to be less of a leap for her than the other girls he has tried to share his life with thus far.

But the most remarkable thing is what Harry and Meghans relationship has already quietly announced: that the age of multicultural inclusiveness has finally reached the House of Windsor.
Dale E. Pringnitz

GARNER  Dale E. Pringnitz, 68, of Garner, died Friday, Nov. 4, 2016, at Mercy Medical Center-North Iowa in Mason City.

A visitation will be held from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 6, at the United Presbyterian Church in Garner followed by a funeral service at 4 p.m. with the Rev. Justin Asche officiating.

A graveside service will be held 10 a.m. Monday, Nov. 7, at Concord Township Cemetery in Garner.

Cataldo Funeral Home in Garner is in charge of arrangements.
OSAGE  A former Mitchell County Extension director will witness his 25th presidential election this week.

Edgar Dorow, who will turn 97 soon, recalled the first presidential election he remembered growing up.

The first election I recall was Alfred E. Smith, Democrat, against Herbert Hoover in 1928, said Dorow, who would have been in elementary school at the time. Hoover won, but I couldnt vote then.

Reminiscing about national politics, Dorow said, Hoover then ran against Franklin Roosevelt and Roosevelt won. My dad was a Republican and he wasnt too happy about that. Roosevelt had a great imagination and initiated a lot of programs like the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corp).

The government program helped to pull the nation out of the deep depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s by hiring the unemployed to rebuild Americas infrastructure.

Dorow pointed out a couple of examples of the CCCs work.

They built the tower at Pilot Knob State Park, near Forest City, and on the River Road they built a stone waterway, which routed water down a steep incline to the river, to prevent erosion.

Dorow remembered how Roosevelt kept in touch with Americans through his weekly radio fireside chats, where he talked about the economy and other issues, attempting to rally a struggling nation.

Dorow said his family, who farmed near Garner, didnt have a radio until the mid-1930s. He said his family depended on daily delivery of the Mason City Globe Gazette, which arrived in their rural mailbox.

We got a lot of political information from the Globe Gazette, he said.

Though he personally never saw a whistle stop, Dorow did recall hearing about them.

Roosevelt went around the country campaigning by train and so did Harry Truman, said Dorow. Truman was famous for his train trips across the United States. The last car on those trains had a balcony on it, and when the train stopped, he would speak from it when he campaigned.

Dorow was drafted in 1942 and sent for training to Texas. He later served in a finance office in North Africa, after the Allies had freed the area.

I was in North Africa serving, but I dont remember voting there. Harry Truman was president, when I returned in January of 1946, said Dorow. You had to be 21 to vote then, and I dont think I first voted until after World War II. Back then, we voted in rural schoolhouses out in the townships. I dont think they were as nasty back then as they are today.

Next came presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy.

Eisenhower had a lot of good programs, said Dorow. Under him, the interstates were built, and airports and seaports were improved.

Kennedy was the youngest president up to that time, Dorow said.

Because Kennedy was Catholic, people were concerned he would follow church leaders, he said.

The Russians thought they could intimidate Kennedy, because he was young and experienced, but Dorow said Kennedy stopped intercontinental missiles from coming into Cuba.

Dorow said he was working at the Mitchell County Extension building in his basement office when he got the news Kennedy had been shot.

It was a tragedy he was shot, said Dorow.

When Johnson became President, he got a lot of things done, said Dorow. He got the civil rights bill passed.

Another President Dorow discussed was President Jimmy Carter.

Carter did a lot more to help the world after he got out of the presidency, he said. He is highly respected all over the world.

Speaking of todays national political climate, Dorow said, Politicians will do what they want to do and what is to their advantage.

Dorow, who never ran for office, is encouraging to young voters.

I believe young voters should be informed and be involved in politics, if they want to be, but a lot of people arent informed, said Dorow. He said if he could change the political system, he would ask candidates to be civil and truthful.

I have already voted by absentee ballot, said Dorow. Its convenient for me. If you do it too early you might change your mind, but I havent changed my mind yet.
NEW YORK, Nov. 04, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Tyson Foods, Inc. (Tyson or the Company) (NYSE:TSN) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Southern District of New York, and docketed under 16-cv-08108, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons or entities who purchased or otherwise acquired Tyson securities between November 23, 2015 and October 6, 2016 inclusive (the Class Period). This class action seeks to recover damages against Defendants for alleged violations of the federal securities laws under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the Exchange Act).



If you are a shareholder who purchased Tyson securities during the Class Period, you have until December 16, 2016 to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll free, ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and number of shares purchased.

[Click here to join this class action]

Tyson, together with its subsidiaries, operates as a food company worldwide. Through its Chicken segment, Tyson raises and processes chickens into fresh, frozen, and value-added chicken products. The Company sells its products through its sales staff to grocery retailers, grocery wholesalers, meat distributors, warehouse club stores, military commissaries, industrial food processing companies, chain restaurants or their distributors, live markets, international export companies, and domestic distributors, as well as through independent brokers and trading companies.

The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Companys business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) Tyson systematically colluded with several of its industry peers to fix prices in the broiler-chicken market; (ii) the foregoing conduct constituted a violation of federal antitrust laws; (iii) consequently, Tysons Chicken segment revenues during the class period were the result of illegal conduct; and (iv) as a result of the foregoing, Tysons public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.

On September 2, 2016, the market had its first inkling of Defendants fraud, when food distributor Maplevale Farms, Inc. (Maplevale) filed an antitrust class action complaint in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against Tyson and several other poultry producers, including Pilgrims Pride Corporation, Perdue Farms, Inc., and Sanderson Farms, Inc., alleging that Tyson and the other companies named in the complaint had conspired since 2008 to manipulate the prices of broiler chickenschickens raised specifically for meat productionby coordinating and limiting production and exchanging detailed information about prices, capacity, and sales volume, in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, 15 U.S.C.  1-7 (the Sherman Act).

Between September 7, 2016 and October 7, 2016, eight more class action complaints were filed against Tyson and other poultry companies in the Northern District of Illinois, on behalf of individual consumers and indirect purchasers of broiler chickens, all alleging that Tyson had engaged in the price-manipulation scheme described in Maplevales complaint.

On October 7, 2016, Pivotal Research (Pivotal) downgraded Tyson from Hold to Sell. Explaining the downgrade, analyst Timothy Ramey directed investors attention to the allegations of price manipulation by Tyson and its industry peers and described the Maplevale complaint as powerfully convincing.

On news of the downgrade, Tysons share price fell $6.63, or 8.91%, to close at $67.75 on October 7, 2016. From the filing of the Maplevale action on September 2, 2016 to Pivotals downgrade on October 7, 2016, Tysons share price fell $8.69, or 11.37%.



The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com
Proposed strip center in Burlington hinges on TIF agreement

A Burlington developer has plans to build a strip mall to the east of the former Wal-Mart building, but says he'll need a TIF agreement to do it.
What is true conservatism? That question, more than anything else, is the argument raging in the Republican Party todayone side fully represented in the partys establishment wing, while the other resides in the hearts of true patriots at the grassroots, those who carry the American Revolutions sacred fire of liberty. Yet most true conservatives may not realize that their closely held philosophy of limited government originated in the South. It is a Southern institution, and conservatives outside the South are espousing Southern values, whether they know it or not.

Americas political divide began as an ideological battle, and thus far the only one in our history, between two of President George Washingtons Cabinet officers, a fight that also pitted the two great regions against each otherSecretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton from New York and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson from Virginia. It is a clash that is still raging today. In essence, the real breakdown today is not Republican or Democrat, Liberal or Conservative, but Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian. This is the sum total of our whole political dispute. As Professor Clyde Wilson has written, Friends, you must have either Jefferson or Hamilton. All the fundamental conflicts in our history were adumbrated during the first decade of the General Government in the contest symbolized by these two men.

The original Hamiltonians, based in New England, believed in a strong central government, a national banking system, fiat currency, a national debt, high tariffs and internal taxes, direct aid to corporations, loose construction of the Constitution, the suppression of civil liberties, and, later on, an internationalist foreign policy.

Concentrated in the South, Jeffersonians, by contrast, believed in limited government, federalism, sound money, low taxes and tariffs, no national debt, government separation from banks, no support for corporations or big business, a strict construction of the Constitution, including the protection of civil liberties held by the people, and a non-interventionist foreign policy. Simply put, the Hamiltonians believed in the merits of government; Jeffersonians trusted in the people to govern themselves.

Operating under the label of Federalists, Hamilton and his arguments carried the day during the Washington and Adams administrations, the first twelve years under the new Constitution. The government created a national bank (an early forerunner to the Federal Reserve), levied an array of internal taxes that included duties on land and alcohol, and began running up a national debt, which Hamilton believed would be a public blessing. In 1798, the government suppressed civil liberties with the Alien and Sedition Acts, a series of new laws designed specifically to quash the followers of Jefferson.

But Jefferson and his new Republican Party won a great victory in 1800, taking the White House and sweeping both houses of Congress, a triumph Jefferson himself predicted, which stopped the big government onslaught and killed the Federalist Party, but not Hamiltonian thought. President Jefferson immediately instituted what he termed in his first inaugural as a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This, he said, is the sum of good government. As President, Jefferson cut spending, eliminated all internal taxes, repealed the Alien and Sedition Acts, and pardoned all those prosecuted under it. He was no pseudo-conservative!

Over the next sixty years, for the most part, the nation was governed by Jeffersonian principles, operating in what would become the modern Democratic Party. Though it took some time, the Jeffersonians eventually repealed Hamiltons entire program, including the ultimate destruction of the Bank of the United States and the elimination of the national debt under Andrew Jackson. Yet the great political divide remained and culminated in the War for Southern Independence, when the Jeffersonian South had finally reached the breaking point and realized that the new Lincoln government, based exclusively on Hamiltonian principles, would, most assuredly, intervene in the internal affairs of the Southern States and plunder them like never before with Lincolns economic program that included a high tariff designed to enrich the North, deplete the South, and reward well-connected cronies such as railroad magnates and other corporate hacks.

Though he referred to himself as a Henry Clay Tariff Whig, Lincoln was, in fact, a Hamiltonian, who believed in the merits of big government. He claimed to hold the Declaration of Independence in the highest regard, but he once referred to the American Revolution as a struggle for national independence by a single people. His inference was that a single people, whom he considered Northerners and Southerners to be, could not legally break up, for it was one American family. This was one of his legalistic arguments against the right of secession, or in his way of thinking, his belief that he could hold the South in the Union by force and against Southern will. Under such a belief, Lincoln was an imperialist.

In a political sense, though, Lincoln was wrong. There is no such entity as the American people, not today and not then. Northerners and Southerners, even in Lincolns day, did not see themselves as residing in a single American family. Opinions abound, from both sides of the Mason and Dixon Line, that the two regions were polar opposites. And most sentiments were quite strong. One Mississippian, writing to former governor John A. Quitman in 1857, put it this way: The descendants of the narrow-minded, sanctimonious, bigots, who landed at Plymouth Rock from the Mayflower, and the descendants of the Cavaliers of Virginia who landed at Jamestown are two peoplesand they must ever so remain. The high-toned gentlemen descended from the cavaliers, and the round head fools descended from the Psalm-singing Pharisees of New England, can never really become one people.

Ellen Renshaw House of Tennessee, writing in her diary on May 25, 1865, said, Our hope is gone, President Davis is a prisoner. He was captured more than two weeks ago with all his family. General Smith has surrendered, and the people of the South are slaves  to the vilest race that ever disgraced humanity. Edmund Ruffin, in his diary account at the end of the war, referred to Northerners as the vile Yankee race. These sentiments were prevalent throughout the South, before and after the war.

Northerners also held similar views, though not necessarily as harsh. The famous diarist George Templeton Strong of New York City, a political conservative, though not a Jeffersonian, wrote in December 1860: I fear Northerner and Southerner are aliens, not merely in social and political arrangements, but in mental and moral constitution. We differ like Celt and Anglo-Saxon, and there is no sufficient forceto keep us together against our will. In another entry in January 1861, he wrote: I fear we are two peoples, unable to live in peace under one feeble federal government. In other words, it might take a strong central government to force the two differing peoples to live together. This is something the Jeffersonian South did not want to see, but what the imperialistic-minded Lincoln had in mind all along.

Even foreigners saw the differences. The French traveler Alexis de Tocqueville, in his 1835 book, Democracy in America, wrote: Two branches may be distinguished in the great Anglo-American family, which havegrown up without entirely commingling; the one in the South, the other in the North.

These vast differencesbetween North and Southwere reflected in their political philosophies and the way they believed the country should be governed, visions that were often miles apart, though not in the opinion of most academic historians, many who contend that political parties of the day were not all that different. Yet by the late 1850s, Southerners were moving closer and closer toward separation, which a great many Northerners, though not all, were unlikely to allow without a struggle.

The Northern intellectual, Orestes Brownson, who has been described as the greatest writer of the nineteenth century, understood this growing divide. As a New Englander himself, residing in Vermont, Brownson sized up the attitudes prevailing in his section of the country in an essay published in 1864 in Brownsons Quarterly Review. We have some madmen amongst us who talk of exterminating the Southern leaders, and of New Englandizing the South. We wish to see the free-labor system substituted for the slave-labor system, but beyond that we have no wish to exchange or modify Southern society, and would rather approach Northern society to it, than it to Northern society.

Brownson went on to describe the mindset of the Yankee in a chilling similarity to modern-day liberals: The New Englander has excellent points, but is restless in body and mind, always scheming, always in motion, never satisfied with what he has, and always seeking to make all the world like himself, or as uneasy as himself. He is smart, seldom great; educated, but seldom learned; active in mind, but rarely a profound thinker; religious, but thoroughly materialistic: his worship is rendered in a temple founded on Mammon, and he expects to be carried to heaven in a softly-cushioned railway car, with his sins carefully checked and deposited in the baggage crate with his other luggage to be duly delivered when he has reached his destination. He is philanthropic, but makes his philanthropy his excuse for meddling with everybodys business as if it were his own, and under

The New Englander has excellent points, but is restless in body and mind, always scheming, always in motion, never satisfied with what he has, and always seeking to make all the world like himself, or as uneasy as himself. He is smart, seldom great; educated, but seldom learned; active in mind, but rarely a profound thinker; religious, but thoroughly materialistic: his worship is rendered in a temple founded on Mammon, and he expects to be carried to heaven in a softly-cushioned railway car, with his sins carefully checked and deposited in the baggage crate with his other luggage to be duly delivered when he has reached his destination. He is philanthropic, but makes his philanthropy his excuse for meddling with everybodys business as if it were his own, and under pretense of promoting religion and morality, he wars against every generous and natural instinct, and aggravates the very evils he seeks to cure.

This perfectly describes the Hamiltonian mindset. Jeffersonians, however, did not think this way at all.

Jefferson himself saw these differences very early and wrote about them more than six decades before secession. To his friend John Taylor of Caroline, Jefferson wrote, in his famous reign of witches letter in 1798, as if he were speaking of two differing people, one seeking to control, even conquer the other. The young country was completely under that saddle of Massachusetts and Connecticut, who ride us very hard, cruelly insulting our feelings, as well as exhausting our strength and substance. New Englanders, he said, displayed a great perversity of character, which was a main reason for the natural division of our parties.

In 1861, Southerners, completely exacerbated by the threats of the North, determined to create a government of their own, one reflecting their principles, and they believed that they had every right to do so. Yet the Hamiltonian Lincoln denied the right of any state to secede from the Union. As he said in his first inaugural address, Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this.

By contrast, Jefferson also faced a secession movement upon his election to the presidency in 1800, as many New England states considered establishing their own Northern Confederacy rather than live under the rule of this radical Virginian. In his first inaugural address, he dealt with the issue of sectional unhappiness far differently than Lincoln would sixty years later. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, believed in the right of self-determination for all peoples; the Hamiltonian Lincoln clearly did not.

The Confederacy, as a government under Jefferson Davis, was administered on Jeffersonian principles, the polar opposite of Lincolns administration. The Confederate Constitution was a culmination of Jeffersonian Conservatism. It was much like the U.S. Constitution but with numerous important changes.

One key difference can be found in the Confederate Constitutions Article 1, Section 2, Clause 5, which gave the state legislature the power to impeach and remove any judicial or other Federal officer, resident and acting solely within the limits of any State. This was the heart and soul of Confederate governing principles. If federal officials meddled in local affairs, they could be banished from the state. This was one of the crucial components of Jeffersonian political thought, designed solely to preserve federalism.

There were also other notable differences in the Confederate Constitution that fall along Jeffersonian lines: The President could serve only one six-year term and had a line item veto to control spending. It outlawed protective tariffs, banned the international slave trade, removed the general welfare clause, prohibited federally-funded internal improvements (today known as earmarks), required a two-thirds vote of each house of Congress for most appropriations, forbid recess appointments, and prohibited persons of foreign birth who had not obtained citizenship from voting for any office on the state or federal level.

But the contrast with the Northern government was vast. Lincoln, and most Presidents after him, being of the Hamiltonian mode of thinking, established all the central tenets of Hamiltons political thought: a national banking system, a fiat currency, high protective tariffs, an income tax, money for corporations, and the suppression of civil liberties. And as a result, the United States nearly lost its constitutional republic during this War of Northern Aggression and the later period of Reconstruction.

Most importantly, the destruction of republicanism culminated with Lincolns quashing of the federal system. States rights were crushed and buried. The very act of militarily blocking a states right to leave the Union did irreparable damage to the country and its republican form of government. The war, wrote Governor Richard Yates of Illinois in 1865, has tended, more than any other event in the history of the country, to militate against the Jeffersonian idea, that the best government is that which governs least. The war has not only, of necessity, given more power to, but has led to a more intimate prevision of the government over every material interest of society. This last point was one of Hamiltons main goals.

When Confederate General Richard Taylor, son of former President Zachary Taylor, returned home to his Louisiana plantation in 1865, he found that society has been completely changed by the war. The [French] revolution of 89 did not produce a greater change in the Ancient Regime than has this in our social life. Historians, even those who lived through the conflict, understood the profound changes the war brought. George Ticknor wrote in 1869 that the war had left a great gulf between what happened before it in our century and what has happened since, or what is likely to happen thereafter. It does not seem to me as if I were living in the country in which I was born. In short, the war destroyed the Age of Jefferson.

Modern scholars have also made note of this fact. As the Hamiltonian James M. McPherson points out in Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution, after the war

the old decentralized federal republic became a new national polity that taxed the people directly, created an internal revenue bureau to collect these taxes, expanded the jurisdiction of federal courts, established a national currency and a national banking structure. The United States went to war in 1861 to preserve the Union; it emerged from war in 1865 having created a nation. Before 1861 the two words United States were generally used as a plural noun: The United States are a republic. After 1865 the United States became a singular noun. The loose union of states became a nation.

And all of this at the hands of the Hamiltonian Party of Lincoln, which hoped to dominate the new nation as no other political entity had before it.

Other scholars have also noted at how profoundly the nation had been changed. Lincoln and his party, writes historian Heather Cox Richardson, transformed the United States. Before the war the national government did little more than deliver the mail, collect tariffs, and oversee foreign affairs. By the time of Appomattox, the United States had changed. Wartime Republicans constructed a newly active national government designed to promote a worldview of an industrialized America, with Washington playing an increasingly interventionist role. A strong central government dominated the postwar nation. It boasted a military of over a million men; it carried a national debt of over $2.5 billion; and it collected an array of new internal taxes, provided a national currency, distributed public lands, chartered corporations, and enforced the freedom of former slaves within state borders. Each of these developments flew in the face of Jeffersonian Conservatism.

Reconstruction, like the war before it, continued the goal of destroying the old Jeffersonian Union and erecting a new one in its place, one based on government control rather than on individual liberty. Many of the Radical Republicans, the madmen referred to by Brownson, like Thaddeus Stevens, sought to ethnically cleanse the former Confederacy during Reconstruction. Unlike Lincoln, they believed the Southern states had, in fact, seceded from the Union, or at least used it to their advantage, viewing the South as conquered territory to be treated as such. Senator Zachariah Chandler of Michigan said it this way: A rebel has sacrificed all his rights. He has no right to life, liberty, property, or the pursuit of happiness. Everything you give him, even life itself, is a boon which he has forfeited.

Radical Republicans hated the South and Southern institutions, particularly the Jeffersonian philosophy of government, which they hoped to destroy for good. They wanted the complete subjugation of the region, vindictive punishment of the rebels, the overthrow of all Southern state governments, and the confiscation of all land and homes. Peoples from the North and West would then be sent to the South to repopulate it, ensuring that it would remain firmly Republican and solidly Hamiltonian. In other words, they wanted to make the South like the North, sweeping away all vestiges of Southern culture and politics. Lincolns Navy Secretary, Gideon Wells, the lone conservative Democrat in the Cabinet, called the Radical plan an atrocious scheme of plunder and robbery.

But neither the war nor Radical Reconstruction killed Jeffersonianism completely; it received a brief revival under Grover Cleveland, a rare Northern proponent of Jeffersons ideas. As a conservative, Cleveland saw himself as one who could, as President, put the spilled milk back in the bottle, or at least some of it. He believed himself to be in the mold of the nations founders, especially Jefferson, who could reverse the destruction of political institutions the war and Reconstruction had wrought, just as the Sage of Monticello turned back the destructive Federalist tide in 1800. This is why the Hamiltonians of his day fought so hard against his election as President, for Cleveland stands out as the lone Jeffersonian among all Presidents from Lincoln to Obama, a statesman who held as tight to those principles as any President in American history.

First elected in 1884, after twenty-four consecutive years of Hamiltonian White House rule, Cleveland became the first Jeffersonian to serve as President since before the war. A quarter century of corruption, profligate spending, high taxes, and an ever-expanding government had been the norm. When Cleveland entered office, he instituted honest government, ended presidential luxury, slashed the bureaucracy, halted out-of-control spending by vetoing a record 414 bills, protected the massive budget surplus that Republicans were all too eager to spend, and reduced the national debt by twenty percent. Not a bad record for a first term.

In 1888, he was defeated for a second consecutive term by Benjamin Harrison, although he won the popular vote. Though determined not to seek another term, he quickly changed his mind when he saw what the Hamiltonians under President Harrison were doing to the country, and what some were doing within his beloved Jeffersonian Democratic Party, moving it closer to the Party of Lincoln in the hopes of being more successful in future elections. In 1892, Cleveland threw his hat back in the presidential ring and, like Jefferson in 1800, took back the White House and led his party to a sweep of both houses of Congress, the first time Jeffersonians controlled the entire government since 1858 under James Buchanan. The future seemed bright indeed.

Yet, sadly, fate intervened. During his second term, from 1893 to 1897, Cleveland faced a severe economic depression, one that had resulted from the massive re-imposition of Hamiltonian fiscal policies during the preceding Harrison Administration. A month before Cleveland took his second oath of office, the economy began to crumble. And even though neither he nor his party had anything to do with the collapse, and even though he used Jeffersonian methods to end it within two years, Cleveland and the Democrats received all the blame. In the mid-term election in 1894 Democrats were routed, losing both houses of Congress, and in 1896, the Hamiltonians were back in charge with the election of William McKinley.

In my view, the Panic of 1893 killed Jeffersonian Conservatism for good, as Republicans successfully spun it as a Democratic Depression, which seemed plausible when prosperity returned under McKinley. To get around that label, Democrats began shedding Jeffersonian principles and began embracing more Hamiltonian ideas. By the early twentieth century, one disgruntled Jeffersonian Democrat wrote that the old party as we knew it, is dead.

In 1912, after sixteen years in the political wilderness, Democrats managed to rebound and elect Woodrow Wilson to the Presidency, but even though he had Southern roots, he was no Jeffersonian, and his two terms showed him to be more progressive than any President since Lincoln, a trend that has continued for the last century. As the columnist George Will has written, We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamiltons country. And so it is. The Southern political philosophy of Jeffersonian Conservatism that died with Grover Cleveland has never been resurrected, for today we have no major party that espouses those values. It is only alive in the hearts of true Sons of the South.

Republished with gracious permission from The Abbeville Review (October 2016).

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CAIRO  Centura Public Schools held a community engagement meeting to present its strategic plan to the community Thursday night.

Marcia Herring, director of board leadership at the Nebraska Association of School Boards, spoke to community members about the plan. Based on research she has been doing with Centura since the beginning of the year, she addressed four topics: engaging youth, economic development, communication and housing.

Herring, who has been working with the school on a larger strategic plan, said the meeting was important to have in order for Centura schools to grow and continue providing quality education.

Oftentimes, the viability of our school district is dependent upon the viability of our community and vice versa, Herring said.

Based on her research, the four topics are the things the Dannebrog, Boleus and Cairo communities need and want to work on. She said with engaging youth, the community could look into more opportunities for young people, such as community service and jobs.

With economic development and identifying business partners in the community, Herring said it could include career opportunities such as job shadowing and internships. The state expects students to be career-ready, so building these business relationships between the school and the community could benefit students.

With communication, Herring addressed that increased communication between the school and the community, saying that what it is doing as a community to educate kids is always a plus.

She said the last area of improvement is housing. Housing is an issue across Nebraska, but it also impacts the schools. She said its a need and a challenge for the Centura district. Without adequate housing, theres limited space for teachers or families in the area to live. That affects the number of people attracted to the district.

Herring said all of these issues have to be addressed by the community and the school, and that is the purpose of the community meetings.

She said she just comes alongside and helps with research and guiding with the plan, but the community members have to take it upon themselves to implement change. The community will have to try to form a large core group of people to take charge on implementing ideas for how to address these issues.

Herring said with more people, theres more momentum and drive to proceed with ideas. The school and community partnership is an important part of offering students a good learning environment.

When it becomes their idea, it becomes more purposeful and you see them actually carry that out, she said. It is amazing what is generated in those conversations.
With less than a week before election day, the Vote Yes for Prop E committee has been visiting organizations and attending public events in an effort to garner support for the school tax referendum on the upcoming ballot.

Support for the referendum will provide the Edwardsville School District with $6.9 million in extra funding annually and long-term stability to the district through a .55 cent tax increase to taxpayers.

According to Vote Yes committee members, the number one concern they hear from the community is how will the .55 cent tax increase translate to homeowners pocketbooks. But theyve also seen some misinformation and confusion circulating when homeowners try to calculate how the tax will impact their own real estate taxes.

Diana Speicher, a Vote Yes Prop E committee member whose grown children all attended District 7 schools and have graduated from EHS, was visiting the Main Street Community Center in Edwardsville Tuesday morning to clear up any confusion. Thats why were out here today, Speicher said. Theres been some misinformation about calculating taxes. But its always confusing on how your tax rate is calculated. Thats why were hoping that folks would stop by today so that we could explain it to them.

Speicher explained that the miscalculations occur when a homeowner takes their assessed valuation (market value) and multiplies it by the 4.77 new tax rate. But the tax rate is actually applied to one-third of that amount, she noted.

The actual formula to obtain the exact tax impact of Prop E for any home is Fair Market Value divided by three, minus any exemptions, divided by 100, and then multiplied by $0.55.

When reviewing a typical Madison County residents real estate tax bill, the fair market value or assessed value is the starting point. From there a non-farm assessment as well as a township multiplier and state multiplier reduce the taxable amount. Then theres also a homestead credit which is an additional reduction, and then if youre over 65 you get an additional reduction on your tax rate, Speicher said. So really we just want to provide more of an education process so that they understand the true impact.

The committee is handing out a chart that provides an example of the calculations, and Speicher explained by using the example how some homeowners calculations have gone astray. If you have a house with a fair market value of $200,000, they are applying the 4.77 percent (tax impact) to that number as opposed to whats really $66,000. Then if it's an owner-occupied home, you take $6,000 off which brings it (taxable amount) down to $60,000. And if youre a senior over 65 you take an additional $5,000 off so that brings it down to $55,000. They are thinking the tax rate is applied to the full market value - or $200,000 in the example - which is untrue. Its a third of that amount.

And its not just seniors, its everybody, Speicher stressed who were making this calculation mistake. So thats why were trying to get the word out. The tax is against only a third of the fair market value of your house.

Edwardsville District 7 School Board Member Dorothy Hummel was also at the center to help offer any clarification. Having served as a city council alderman for six years prior to being a school board member, she pointed out that shes experienced through her years in public service that it wasnt uncommon to see confusion around property tax calculations. Very few people knew how property taxes were calculated, she stressed.

We also have a lot of new residents in the community since a tax referendum has been proposed, Speicher pointed out.

Speicher also noted that in their talks with citizens that they found that people were surprised that citizens in District 7 support about 80 percent of the school districts total budget through property taxes. We only get 17 percent of our money from the state, Speicher said.

Also I think folks are surprised that Edwardsvilles tax rate is currently the lowest in the metro-east and will be the second lowest if the referendum passes. Only the Granite City school district will be lower at $4.5833, she added. OFallon is comparable (in home values) and their tax rate is $5.3. Its just so much higher than ours. Weve been getting away with a pretty darn good buy for the last 40 years. Its just time to pony up. You get what you pay for.

Helen R. Rios, a 73 year-old Edwardsville resident who was at Main Street Community Center on Tuesday, told Hummel and Speicher that she had already voted and had voted yes for Prop E. I have three children, and I have three grandchildren in school so Im all for education. I think its a good idea. Im really for it, she said.

While many senior citizens on fixed incomes may understandably oppose a tax increase, Speicher pointed out that she tells folks that they can count on an increase of between $20 and $40 a month depending on a homes assessed value. If I take my husband and two girls to Dennys for breakfast - Im not talking dinner - but if you go to breakfast, thats $40. So we dont go out for breakfast one Sunday morning a month, and I make pancakes instead. Speicher stressed. And thats at the higher end. If youre talking a $20 to $25 increase, for the grand kids youre having popcorn and a movie at home rather than going to a show. Thats one outing.

To me, how do we expect our children to value education if the community is saying, 'Im not going to support you. I want you to be a good citizen, but Im not going to support you,' Speicher said. I just feel its and obligation and responsibility as a citizen because these kids are going to be our doctors and our lawyers in the future.
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Linkedin M. Taufiqurrahman and Kornelius Purba (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 5, 2016

We have long prided ourselves as the worlds third largest democracy after India and the US, and the country with the worlds largest Muslim population. The international community and global media outlets often describe Indonesias version of Islam as peaceful, tolerant and moderate.

We boast that violent, intolerant and radical Muslim groups are very small in number and influence. We believe that the countrys two major Muslim organizations, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, are the legitimate standard-bearers of Islam in Indonesia.

We like to think that we are a pluralist society, a nation built on a foundation that disregards skin color, ethnicity and faith. We submit to the belief that we, as Indonesians, cling to the idea of unity in diversity.

On Friday, we woke up to the disturbing reality that we havent progressed very far from nativism and tribalism.

The Nov. 4 rally has exposed some of the ugliest parts of our politics, where skin color, ethnicity and faith become weapons to attack political rivals. With the presence of incumbent Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Ahok Purnama, a Christian and a Chinese-Indonesian, it is easy to see and hear the racist undertones in the political campaigns of his rivals. While the demonstration proceeded peacefully, at least until the evening, it was shocking to see some protesters shouting horrifying phrases such as kill Ahok, or displaying posters reading: Wanted: Ahok, dead or alive.

Where were the leaders of NU and Muhammadiyah on Friday?

Where were the leaders of the major political parties supporting Ahoks reelection bid?

The mass protest was led by people widely known for their dislike, if not hatred, of President Joko Jokowi Widodo. Indeed, the hard-line Islam Defenders Front (FPI) led the rally, and lead the anti-Ahok movement.

FPI leader, Rizieq Shihab, an Indonesian of Arab descent, seems to have a personal grudge against Ahok, because the Jakarta governor is the only state official in the country who has the guts to demand that the central government dissolve the FPI.

In the lead-up to Fridays rally, scores of Ahoks political rivals put Jakartas gubernatorial election in the context of a holy war, or crusade against an infidel, with people such as former Muhammadiyah chairman Amien Rais urging Muslims not to vote for Ahok because he is a dajjal (a kind of anti-Christ).

Earlier this week, while flanked by a number of policemen, a protester, dressed in full Islamic garb, made a long speech and offered to give Rp 1 billion (US$76,900) to anyone who could kill Ahok if the incumbent governor visited certain areas in West Jakarta. Shortly after the speech, Ahok was forced to flee from a neighborhood in Rawa Belong in a public minivan after a group of protesters started to taunt him and demand that he leave the area where he was campaigning.

On Friday, protesters hung a massive banner reading Hang Ahok Right Now from a pedestrian bridge near Gambir Station. And the saddest part of this whole episode is that more than 100,000 people bowed to this violent rhetoric and showed up for the Nov. 4 rally.

The Jakarta election should be about the programs that the candidates are proposing to solve the myriad of problems plaguing the capital, from severe traffic congestion and pollution to garbage collection problems, reclamation controversies and housing for the poor. But since the campaign period began in mid-October, we have heard nothing but calls for Ahok to drop out from the race on allegations that he insulted the Quran. And nothing fires up the political base of Ahoks rivals more than allegations that he insulted Islam.

The rivals of Ahok, who will certainly reap huge political gains if Ahok drops out of the race as a result of Fridays rally, certainly share some of the blame for fanning primordial sentiments to get what they want.

All of us, however, should take responsibility for allowing such sectarian sentiments to grow and fester in our democracy.

We have been complacent for too long, happy to think that the movements against Ahok, and those groups responsible for acts of intolerance and violence in this country, are only fringe groups who matter little in politics.

On Friday, we were proved wrong. These groups now hold the keys to the Jakarta gubernatorial election and, probably, the success or failure of our experiment in democracy.

The sharp-tongued Ahok often provokes anger for his direct manner. However, it is hard to deny, even for his most hostile foes, that under his leadership, Jakarta has progressed and improved.

But the allegations that Ahoks programs are beneficial to the middle and upper-income class of people, many of whom are Chinese-Indonesians and non-Muslims, and harmful to lower-income citizens, are also not totally baseless.

It is a brute reality that there are Muslims who do not want to have a non-Muslim leader. Many Muslims complain that they are a majority in this country, but a minority in terms of economic access.

It is also understandable that many non-Muslims fight as die-hard supporters for the reelection of Ahok because for a long time they have felt, rightly or wrongly, that they are second-class citizens in this country.

Some of them even believe that Jesus sent Ahok to save Jakarta, and later, if elected president, Indonesia. No one can touch Ahok because God will not allow anyone to harm him, their thinking goes.

The leaders of mainstream religious or political organizations are out of touch with the social and political reality. They belittle the role of small organizations such as the FPI.

Is this because they are too afraid to confront the intimidation and intolerance of the FPI and their ilk, or because Indonesias mainstream leaders actually agree with these small groups?
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Linkedin Evi Mariani (The Jakarta Post) Sydney  Sat, November 5, 2016

Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, unveiled the preparation for revolutionary 5G during Asia Pacific Innovation Day in Sydney early this month, targeting to roll out the revolutionary technology worldwide by 2020.

A collaboration between Huawei, the Committee for Sydney and the Australian Technology Network of Universities (ATN), the Innovation Day attracted 150 experts, researchers from many different industries, the government and journalists from the Asia Pacific and beyond.

In his speech at the event  which carried the theme Brilliance of Exploration Li Jinge, President of Huawei Asia Pacific, said that future explorations in ICT would require input from all parties as there were many unknowns in creating an intelligent society.

The event, officially opened by Greg Hunt, Australias Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science through a video, presented 19 speakers from different industries, including Abdurazak Mudesir, Huaweis Vice President of 5G Marketing Europe, who talked about 5G preparation.

Besides Mudesir, Charles Lawoko, the Director at the Industry Doctoral Training Centre at Australian Technology Networks Universities, talked about the application of data science, while Peter Lawther, the Chief Technology Officer for Fujitsu Oceania, delivered a presention about the Internet of Things (IoT).

Mudesir said for 5G the world had to prepare for better household access to Internet, which in 2015 stood at 300 million households having more than 10Mbps, 400 million having less than 10Mbps, and 1 billion households having no access.

By 2020, 5G needs 100 times faster traffic capacity, twice the number of wireless transmission sites, and 10 times the bandwidth compared to the present.

The revolutionary technology, he said, would fully connect the world and would usher in artificial intelligence, augmented reality/virtual reality known as AR/VR, hologram technology, and self-driving vehicles among other innovations. 5G will support machine-to-machine communication, called the Internet of Things, which has been projected to connect at least 20 billion devices by 2020.
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Linkedin Evi Mariani (The Jakarta Post) Sydney  Sat, November 5, 2016

A speaker at the 2016 Huawei Asia Pacific Innovation Day in Sydney, Australia, talked about the importance of smart infrastructure to create smart cities while highlighting the importance of smart people behind it.

Adam Beck, founding Executive Director of Smart Cities Council Australia New Zealand, said there were two different lenses through which people could see smart cities: the smart infrastructure lens and the smart people lens.

The smart infrastructure lens, the smart things you see. Mobility, buildings, connectivity, a whole range of different systems and solutions ..., he said during his presentation.

Meanwhile, his definition of smart infrastructure includes portable water monitoring; smart parking; city-wide free Wifi, including on public transit; and earthquake early detection systems.

Theres also another lens we dont often talk about, is through the smart people lens. There is this gentleman from a company called Soofa, which is developing internet-enabled park benches and kiosks and a whole range of other designs and solutions, Beck said.

He said Soofa was a small startup, they had a great entrepreneurial spirit and a human-centered approach to building smart cities. It provides a great opportunity for a citizen-focused solutions that are often dominated by large infrastructure conversation.

Soofa Bench can accommodate three people and can charge their phones with solar power.

The smart city movement is a global agenda and cities cannot compete globally without smart infrastructure, Beck said.

Innovation Day is a flagship series focused on global innovation hosted by Huawei. Thus far, Huawei Innovation Day has been held in Stockholm, Milan and Munich.

The 2016 Innovation Day in Sydney presented 19 speakers from all over the world.
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post)  Fri, November 4 2016

As the nations capital, Jakarta is the center of government, business and media. It is no wonder then that Jakarta is often a popular place for citizens to vent their anger and protest. However, not all protests are peaceful. The protest in 1998 turned into a riot, leading to casualties. Here are five recent protests that disintegrated into riots, causing injuries and vandalism.

FPI versus Ahok

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Linkedin Corry Elyda (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 5 2016

On the day more than 100,000 people from across the country took to the streets of Jakarta to call for the prosecution of Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama for alleged blasphemy, the incumbent candidate could only visit the sidewalks in Muara Karang, near his house in Pantai Mutiara residence in Pluit, North Jakarta.

Ahok, who drove there by himself, while followed by his guards, took the opportunity to have a chat with a parking attendant at the location.

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 5, 2016

Jakarta gubernatorial candidate Anies Baswedan urged the government to investigate the alleged involvement of the people responsible for turning the peaceful rally into a riot in Jakarta on Friday.

The rally, which saw over 100,000 people swarm Jakarta streets, was organized by multiple Muslim groups to demand the criminal prosecution of Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama for allegedly insulting verses in the Quran.

Anies said on Saturday that he hoped that the government could resolve the issue as soon as possible and the clash would not happen again.

He also said he hoped the government would enforce the agreement between the protesters and the government on the blasphemy case.

Therefore, we can continue our daily activities as usual, he said, as quoted by kompas.com.

The rally initially ran peacefully but violence broke out after dusk when a group of protesters, allegedly members of the Association of Islamic Students (HMI) and the Islam Defenders Front (FPI), started to throw bottled water and stones and began attacking police personnel.

Shortly after midnight, President Joko Jokowi Widodo held a press conference, during which he accused "political actors" of taking advantage of the situation.

Anies previously served as Education and Culture Minister under Jokowi's presidency but was ousted in the second Cabinet reshuffle in late July.

Anies, Ahok and Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, the eldest son of former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, are currently running as official candidates in the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election. (cor/hwa)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 5, 2016

Residents of the Chinatown area of Glodok in West Jakarta said they would run business as usual while staying alert following a religion-driven rally that turned violent on Friday in downtown Jakarta.

Ina, 60, an Indonesian woman of Chinese descent, said she decided to keep her Ming Yen restaurant, which serves bakpao (steamed buns) and siomay (steamed dumplings), open following security guarantees from law enforcers.

"Security personnel in my subdistrict have assured me that they would protect us at all costs. I, however, have been warned to remain vigilant," she said on Saturday.

The rally on Friday, which saw over 100,000 people swarm Jakarta streets, was organized by multiple Muslim groups to demand the criminal prosecution of Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama for allegedly insulting verses in the Quran.

Ahok, a Christian and Indonesian of Chinese descent, has sparked uproar among Muslim groups after he made a comment on verses in the Quran during his visit to Thousand Islands regency in late September. The police have received about a dozen reports regarding the case.

Meanwhile, Tani, 34, who owns a shop selling Buddhist meditation supplies in Glodok, said she closed her shop early on Friday for safety reasons.

Lani, Tani's mother, said she had advised her daughter to close the shop early, as she feared the possible recurrence of the 1998 riots, when Indonesians of Chinese descent became mob targets.

"I hope Pak Ahok can learn something from this. Although his work is good, he sometimes acts too tough, which might hurt some people," said the 71-year-old woman. (fac/hwa)
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Linkedin Tama Salim (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 5 2016

A recent incursion to Myanmars troubled Rakhine state by several top diplomats has prompted Naypyidaw to allow international aid and monitoring to resume in the area for the first time since violence erupted there last month.

Indonesias Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi said Thursday that the visit joined by Indonesian ambassador to Myanmar Ito Sumardi was an initial step toward finding out the actual situation in the region and that Indonesia would be ready to help if needed.

Ambassador Ito meanwhile emphasized the importance of discretion in dealing with the issue, including, for instance, providing humanitarian assistance to the long-persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority, for fear of increasing sectarian tensions.

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The article Power companies file suit challenging New York nuclear subsidies in The Citizen on Oct. 19, 2016 points out the large subsidies bestowed on the nuclear industry by Gov. Cuomo. The governor sees nuclear power as a way to meet ambitious goals to reduce the use of greenhouse gas emissions which are contributing to man-made climate change. Coal and natural gas are not happy with this.

Rep. John Katko has recently lent his voice to action on climate change by signing onto a Republican resolution saying Congress needs to act now. He deserves thanks and urging to do more.

Conservatives, economists and business leaders are speaking out on a better way to protect our economy from climate change: a revenue neutral carbon fee as proposed by Citizens' Climate Lobby.

A fee would be placed on carbon-based fuels, beginning at $15 per ton of carbon dioxide and increasing each year by $10/ton until needed emissions reductions are achieved. Revenues from the fee are returned to all American families as a monthly check, as opposed to top down subsidies to favored industries.

The plan accounts for the true cost of burning fossil fuels to the environment, public health and economy. The plan has been well studied and shown to be an economic winner or draw for over 67 percent of Americans, and to create a net of 1 million jobs in the first four years after implementation. Not supporting the plan would be to refuse to protect the environment and the economy!

Please tell Congress that you want a carbon fee and dividend to grow the economy and protect the environment in a fair way. Congressman Katko or your representatives need to hear from you now.

Michael Hammond

Camillus
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Linkedin Mario Rustan (The Jakarta Post) Bandung  Sat, November 5 2016

We are experiencing two-front anxieties this month. Many Americans I know have voted early and are urging other Americans to vote. In Indonesia, everyone was concerned about the Nov. 4 (Friday) protests, especially Chinese-Indonesians.

They are not scared. They know they will prevail. More Americans would vote for Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump. Many Indonesians knew that no riot would happen in Jakarta.

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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Depok  Sat, November 5 2016

Depok Mayor Mohamamd Idris Abdul Shomad officially launched the knock on the door program on Friday designed to help people sort out and process waste in their houses.

The idea came about following the finding that Depoks waste mainly comes from households.

We will, therefore, come directly to peoples houses and ask to sort out their waste, he said as quoted by wartakotalive.com on Friday.

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Linkedin Donny Fernando (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 5 2016

Around 100,000 Muslims from Jakarta and other cities took to the streets of the capital city on Friday in a mass rally calling for the National Police to prosecute Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama for alleged blasphemy.



Arriving at Istiqlal Mosque in Central Jakarta in the morning, the protesters brought anti-Ahok banners and pamphlets.



The rally, which started after Friday prayers, was peaceful until 6 p.m.  the time when the protesters ended their demonstration.



However, at around 7:30 p.m. the rally turned violent with protesters setting two police vehicles on fire. Police fired tear gas and the protesters pelted security officers with stones.



A number of Muslim leaders, including Islam Defenders Front (FPI) chief Rizieq Shihab, House of Representatives deputy speaker Fadli Zon and former Peoples Consultative Assembly speaker Amien Rais also joined the rally.



The protesters gathered at several points, including at Hotel Indonesia Traffic Circle, outside City Hall and the National Monument.



The rally demanded the prosecution of Ahok on allegations of blasphemy related to his quotation of the Quran during a working visit to Thousand Islands.



Police deployed 20,000 personnel to secure the rally and ensure public transportation, such as TransJakarta buses and Commuter Line trains, ran normally.

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Linkedin Sudibyo M. Wiradji (The Jakarta Post)  Sat, November 5 2016

A wise-looking man, who was injured several times during the Vietnam War, but how made his name in the conflict, was recently in Jakarta to give a photography workshop to several local enthusiastic photojournalists.

He carefully observed photos taken by the assigned photojournalist on a laptop by turns in a clean and air-conditioned hotel room. I think this a good picture, he said, commenting on a photo. Then he explained why the photo was good.

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 5, 2016

Tensions in Jakarta are gradually easing after a rally by thousands of people turned violent on Friday.

In front of the House of Representatives in Senayan, a crowd that had attempted to forcefully enter the compound began to disperse at 4 a.m. on Saturday.

They agreed to leave the area after leaders of the protesters had met with People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) Speaker and National Mandate Party chairman Zulkifli Hasan and a number of lawmakers, including Sufmi Dasco Ahmad of the Gerindra Party and Abu Bakar Al-Habsy of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS).

Like the government has promised, the [police] will immediately process the case regarding the [alleged] insulting of the Quran by Ahok, Zulkifli told the crowd, referring to gubernatorial candidate and incumbent Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Thahaja Purnama, as quoted by kompas.com.

(Read also: Q&A: Is Indonesia at stake in Nov. 4 anti-Ahok rally?)

Around 100,000 people from various Muslim organizations swarmed Jakarta streets to demand the criminal prosecution of Ahok for alleged blasphemy.

Ahok, a Christian and Indonesian of Chinese descent in the Muslim-majority country, sparked uproar among Islamic groups with a comment on verses in the Quran during his visit to Thousand Islands regency in late September. The police have received around a dozen reports regarding the case.

The rally was peaceful until Friday evening, when some protesters refused to disperse although the time for rally had ended. The police had given a permit to stage the protest until 6 p.m.

(Read also: Anti-Ahok campaigners demand to meet Jokowi in person)

Some protesters started throwing stones and bottles at police officers after the deadline and tried to break through the police barricade to enter the State Palace.

Police used tear gas after several protesters set off firecrackers and ignored calls to leave the area. Meanwhile, police also prevented protesters from other areas from heading toward the State Palace.

The mass later moved to the House compound, as House Deputy Speaker Fadli Zon of Gerindra publicly welcomed them to spend the night in the area, saying it was the house of the people.

Nearing 9 p.m., police and military with 1,500 personnel in total began to tighten security at the House to anticipate the mass exodus.

(Read also: Violence spills over into North Jakarta)

The mass began to arrive at approximately 10 p.m., but no one could get into or out of the building for security reasons.

At the eleventh hour, protesters occupied the road in front of the building. They insisted to stay the night at the building, even though there was no official statement from the House since it is in recess.

Meanwhile in North Jakarta, unidentified protesters vandalized a minimarket and damaged motorcycles in Penjaringan area, near the residence of Ahok. The security forces, however, managed to disperse the mob and brought the situation under control by midnight. (hwa/bbn)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 5, 2016

In the wake of a violent rally on Friday evening, Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Mochamad Iriawan told the public that he means business with his duty to secure the capital.

Iriawan said he was even ready to personally patrol Jakarta streets to uphold security in Jakarta.

I will inspect areas of Jakarta using a motorcycle, Iriawan told the press at the State Palace on Friday evening.

I will also inspect the House of Representatives building, since hundreds of protesters are there at this moment."

(Read also: Jakarta cools off after violent rally)

Iriawan stated that he had deployed over 1,000 police personnel to ensure security at the House complex. Police also beefed up security in several other areas of Jakarta.

He added that a joint police-military security force had been deployed to safeguard residential areas and economic centers.

Tens of thousands of protesters flocked to the Jakarta streets on Friday to demand the immediate arrest of Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama over an alleged blasphemous remark. (asm/dmr/hwa)
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Linkedin Ina Parlina and Tama Salim (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 5, 2016

Following a violent rally in front of the State Palace on Friday, President Joko Jokowi Widodo has postponed his visit to Australia, which was initially scheduled for Nov. 6 to 8.

The Presidents planned visit was expected to strengthen economic and maritime cooperation between the two neighboring countries.

In a statement released on Saturday, the Foreign Ministry said the President had called Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to inform him of the sudden postponement.

Current developments require the President to stay in Indonesia, the ministry said in the statement, without detailing whether the visit had been rescheduled.

The Presidents trip was planned as a reciprocal visit, after Turnbull visited Indonesia last November.

On Friday, around 100,000 people from various Muslim organizations swarmed Jakartas streets to demand the criminal prosecution of gubernatorial candidate and incumbent Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama for alleged blasphemy.

Ahok, a Christian of Chinese descent in the Muslim-majority country, sparked uproar among Islamic groups with a comment on a verse in the Quran during a visit to Thousand Islands regency in late September.

Ahok was Jokowis deputy when the latter served as Jakarta governor between 2012 and 2014. He later replaced Jokowi after the latter won the presidential election.

The rally, which initially ran peacefully, turned to chaos on Friday evening when some protesters refused to disperse although the agreed time for the rally had ended. (hwa)
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Linkedin Syamsul Huda M. Suhari (The Jakarta Post) Gorontalo  Sat, November 5 2016

Students must not be the target of discriminatory policies set by the State University of Gorontalo (UNG) as they need to study in a safe and supporting environment regardless of their sexual orientation, activists say.

A coalition of 16 NGOs have lambasted UNG rector Syamsu Qamar Badu for issuing a campus policy that monitors and forces lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students back to normalcy.

Not only was it discriminatory, the regulation also violated basic human rights for people to get an education as stipulated in the Constitution, head of Nahdlatul Ulamas Institute for Research and Human Resources Development (Lakpesdam) Wahiyudin Mamonto said on Friday.

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 5, 2016

Looting reportedly triggered by Friday's massive rally is estimated to have caused significant losses for vendors and businesses in Penjaringan, North Jakarta.

Paryanto, 35, a field coordinator for vendors in Jl. Gedong Panjang in Penjaringan, said that most of the vendors affected were not traumatized by the invasion of hundreds of looters. However, their losses were estimated to reach hundreds of millions or rupiah.

"A huge amount of money is needed to repair the destruction. As well as that, time is also needed to assure customers that this area is safe," he told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

On Saturday, at least 10 businesses were recorded as being victims of the attacks. They include two convenience stores, Alfamart and Indomaret, and Bakso Tukul, a meatball soup outlet owned by well-known comedian Tukul Arwana. Police lines have been set around the area, located in front of the Pakin Transjakarta bus station, while broken glass is still scattered.

The looting broke out at around 7:30 p.m. on Friday after a huge demonstration in Central Jakarta calling for the prosecution of inactive governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama for alleged blasphemous remarks about Islam. Around 100,000 protestors flocked to the city to push the National Police to prosecute Ahok, who is seeking a second term as governor of the capital.

Paryanto said that most of the perpetrators were teenagers from Muara Baru, North Jakarta, who had one taken advantage of the chaotic conditions in the city after the rally. The Penjaringan Police have detained 15 suspects in the case. (fac)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 5, 2016

The Environment and Forestry Ministry hopes to accelerate the land redistribution and legalization program amid protest from farmers and activists over the slow progress of the agenda.

The ministrys secretary general, Bambang Hendroyono, said on Friday that the government would address the issue of land legalization, part of President Joko Jokowi Widodos agrarian reform program, at the 6th Forestry Congress held from Nov. 29 to Dec. 2 in Jakarta.

The program comprises, among other elements, the certification of 9 million hectares of land for farmers.

The land [legalization] program is ongoing now. However, we can push for the acceleration by involving stakeholders, farmers, activists and analysts in the congress," Bambang said.

The participants of the congress will also discuss national forestry issues primarily in Sumatra, Sulawesi, Kalimantan and Papua.

The agrarian reform agenda was included in Jokowis multifaceted Nawacita development program, but some analysts say the program has not shown encouraging progress.

The governments lack of will to make its commitments a reality during the last two years has sparked conflicts between farmers and corporates. In the first half of 2016, the Agrarian Reform Consortium (KPA), an NGO that campaigns for the creation of a fair agrarian system, recorded 270 agrarian conflicts across the country. (adt/hwa)
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 5 2016

The State Secretariat has appealed a ruling issued by the Central Information Commission (KIP) instructing it to disclose a report drawn up by a state-sanctioned investigation into the murder of human rights activist Munir Said Thalib.

The reason [why weve appealed the ruling] is that we think the ruling is ambiguous, State Secretary Pratikno said as quoted by kompas.com on Friday.

The official said the State Palace did not have the report requested by the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) and therefore it was odd for the commission to order it to disclose it.

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Linkedin Nurul Fitri Ramadhani and Moses Ompusunggu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 5, 2016

The stakes have been raised for the political parties supporting Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama, the man at the center of possibly the largest rally the country has seen since the 1998 downfall of Soeharto.

Parties endorsing his candidacy in next years gubernatorial election, however, have insisted they will keep him in the race despite mounting pressure from Muslim groups, led by the hard-line Islam Defenders Front (FPI), to have him prosecuted for alleged blasphemy.

Officials from the pro-Ahok coalition have dismissed rumors saying that President Joko Jokowi Widodo has asked Ahok to stand down from the election, which is slated for February 2017 and is seen as an overture for the 2019 presidential election.

The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which has the most seats on Jakarta city council, claimed the rally had nothing to do with the Jakarta gubernatorial election.

The rally is aimed at expediting the legal process of Ahoks alleged blasphemy case. It bears no relation to the election, PDI-P executive Hendrawan Soepratikno told The Jakarta Post on Friday, adding that the party had no worries about whether the case would damage Ahoks candidacy.

Thats the risk of democracy. The most important thing is the people can freely vote [for their preferred candidates], he added.

As many as 100,000 protesters from various Muslim groups hit the streets of Jakarta on Friday, focusing their rally in front of the Presidential Palace as they demanded the government support the prosecution of Ahok for alleged blasphemy related to a remark he made about Al-Maidah verse 51 in the Quran.

The protesters accused President Joko Jokowi Widodo of trying to protect Ahok, his deputy when Jokowi was Jakarta governor.

Although admitting that the case, if not the rally, could undermine Ahoks chances in the election, the Golkar Party remains upbeat that Ahok can win the election.

Ahok has been cooperative. He is open to following the legal process. He will follow the process. He has also apologized, said party politician Ace Hasan Syadzily, who is also a member of the Ahok-Djarot campaign team.

Ahok, a Christian of Chinese descent, has garnered huge popular support in the Muslim-majority capital despite his double-minority status. His candidacy is seen as a test case for Indonesia, which touts itself as role model for Muslim democracy.

The NasDem Party has urged Ahok to go on. The rumor [that Ahok has been told to give up his candidacy] is a hoax, NasDem Jakarta branch chairman Bestari Barus said. The lebaran kuda is over. Its time to go back to the competition and give our best, he added, referring to an old Betawi term to describe something that has zero possibility of taking place.

Bestari was taking a jab at former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, whose eldest son, Agus Harimurti, is one of Ahoks rivals, when he used the term to remind Jokowi that the rallies against Ahok would not stop until the government listened to the protesters aspirations.

Political observers say the incumbent is now caught between a rock and a hard place in deciding whether or not to continue on in the gubernatorial election.

Ahoks movements have already been severely restricted in the capital amid rising sentiment against him.

Risks loomed if Ahok decided to continue running in the election, said Jakarta State University (UNJ) political analyst Ubedillah Badrun, pointing to the massive outrage voiced by the protesters during Fridays rally. The pressure is so intense that this kind of demonstration is surely likely to take place in the future if Ahok still tries to compete in the election, Ubedillah said.

Ubedillah said it was likely that Ahoks candidacy would be decided by PDI-P chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri as she was the most experienced politician in Ahoks camp and thrived on this kind of pressure.

Paramadina University political expert Hendra Satrio said it was still possible for Ahok to run in the election, but under the condition that he curb his outspoken style to prevent a similar brouhaha in the future

He added that if Ahok decided to stay in the gubernatorial election, it would also secure the interests of political parties backing his candidacy, as well as Jokowi, who is a close friend of Ahok.
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Linkedin Moses Parlindungan Ompusunggu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 5, 2016

The police said Saturday that the looting of convenience stores and other business units in Penjaringan, North Jakarta, on Friday night had nothing to do with the massive rally held by Muslim groups on the same day.

Police spokesperson Insp. Gen. Boy Rafli Amar said that 15 people suspected of orchestrating the looting had been arrested, and they had not been among the hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding the prosecution of inactive Jakarta governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama for alleged blasphemy in Central Jakarta.

"They are denizens from surrounding areas, including from Muara Baru [North Jakarta] who used the rally as a moment to loot and create violence," Boy said.

Previously, a group carrying a banner reading "Laskar Masjid Luar Batang" (Luar Batang Mosque Militia) managed to reach the residential area in Pantai Mutiara, North Jakarta, where Ahok lives. However, they failed to enter the high-security gated community, which was heavily guarded by police officers and military personnel.

Failing to reach Ahok's residence, the group then returned to Luar Batang, where they tried to attack cars passing by in the street. The looting also occurred in this period of time.

A neighborhood next to Luar Batang, called Pasar Ikan was demolished in April this year, while the city planned to evict families in Luar Batang, part of the citys heritage area, where the historical Luar Batang mosque stands. Ahok had planned to revitalize the mosque and evict some families as part of the Kota Tua revitalization project. (evi)
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Linkedin Moses Omposunggu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 5, 2016

The police are questioning 10 people who allegedly stirred up a riot that took place in the wake of a large-scale rally involving multiple Muslim groups on Friday in Jakarta.

Violence broke out after dusk when some groups of protesters at the rally, which demanded the criminal prosecution of Jakarta governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama for alleged blasphemy, refused to comply with a police order to disperse.

On Saturday, National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Boy Rafli Amar said that the 10 alleged provocateurs were from regions outside Jakarta, including West Nusa Tenggara.

The results of the interrogation will be announced in the next 24 hours, Boy said.

Boy, however, declined to comment on the affiliation of the people under questioning. He also refused to confirm whether or not they are part of the Association of Islamic Students Association (HMI), as was reported by local media earlier.

Around 100,000 people from various Muslim organizations swarmed Jakarta streets on Friday, temporarily paralyzing activities downtown.

The rally ran peacefully until Friday evening, when some protesters refused to disperse after the rally. The crowd then moved to the House complex and was caught in a standoff with over 1,000 military and police personnel.

Boy said two police personnel, five military personnel and a fireman were injured as a result of the riot. Three police trucks were burned and 18 police and military vehicles were broken from being attacked by protesters. (hwa)
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Linkedin Haeril Halim and Ina Parlina (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 5, 2016

A massive rally calling for the criminal prosecution of Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Ahok Purnama for alleged blasphemy ended in violence on Friday night as protesters defied a police order to disperse.



At midnight, President Joko Jokowi Widodo praised the rallys Muslim leaders for keeping the rally in order during the day. However, we regretted the violence in the evening. Political actors took advantage of this situation, he said.



The President further stated that the legal process against Ahok would take place in a transparent fashion.



The anti-Ahok rally ran peacefully early in the day, but soon after dusk, violence broke out following a scuffle involving a small number of protesters, who were allegedly members of the Muslim Students Association (HMI) and activists from the Islam Defenders Front (FPI), the firebrand Islamic organization that played a leading role in Fridays protest.



In a strange turn of events, the FPI joined forces with the police at one point to call for the HMI students to disperse and not to get closer to the State Palace.



As the scuffle broke out between the riot police and the alleged HMI students, unidentified protesters torched three police trucks parked on the corner of Monas Square.



In the midst of the chaotic situation, the police started firing tear gas and used water canons to disperse the crowd.



Learning about the clash, hundreds of protesters, who were on their way back to Istiqlal Mosque, started streaming back to the area near the State Palace.



Three police officer was reported to have been injured in the confrontation.



Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Wiranto went down to the protest site near the State Palace soon after 9 p.m. to calm down the protesters.



They should have all dispersed. They know me, they should have calmed down. Back off, Wiranto told the protesters.



Some of the protesters retreated and headed toward the House of Representatives complex.



Earlier this week, Peoples Consultative Assembly (MPR) Speaker Zulkifli Hasan, a National Mandate Party (PAN) politician, said the compound would be open to protesters who wanted to spend the night there after the protest.



Earlier on in the protest, signs promoting violence could be seen in the crowd, which was composed of a number of Muslim groups. Some of the signs used strong language to condemn Ahoks statements about a verse in the Quran, which the protestors deemed as insulting to the Muslim faith.



Carrying banners reading prosecute Ahok, arrest Ahok, and Ahok go home, some groups in the crowd threatened Ahok with death.



Some protesters gathered in front of Istiqlal Mosque were caught on camera chanting bunuh, bunuh si Ahok sekarang juga (kill, kill Ahok right now).

Marching on: Muslims march along Jl. MH Thamrin during a rally in Jakarta on Friday. Around 100,000 Muslims took to the streets on Friday demanding the prosecution of Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama for alleged blasphemy. They called on the police to immediately detain Ahok.(JP/Wendra Ajistyatama)



Elsewhere, near Gambir Station, a group of protesters hung a makeshift banner bearing the words: gantung Ahok disini (Hang Ahok right here).



While the majority of the more than 100,000 protesters who showed up for the anti-Ahok rally were concentrated around the State Palace, a small number of protesters managed to reach the residential area of Pantai Mutiara, Pluit, North Jakarta, where Ahok lives.



The crowd failed to enter the residential complex, which was heavily guarded by scores of personnel from the Jakarta Police and the Indonesian Military (TNI). The protestors could only chant Ahok, get out,.



The protesters carried a banner reading Laskar Masjid Luar Batang (Luar Batang Mosque Militia). Luar Batang residents have been in dispute with the Jakarta administration following the citys plan to demolish houses in the area as part of the revitalization of the mosque for religious tourism.



The Friday protest went smoothly during the day without any incidents and the majority of the protesters left the demonstration grounds before 6 p.m., the deadline given by the Jakarta Police for the rally. Some of the protestors enjoyed the festive mood of the demonstration.



The security authorities have been credited for taking measures aimed at easing tensions.



Along the way from Istiqlal Mosque, where the protesters gathered for Friday prayers, to the State Palace, food and drinks provided by the FPI were easily available for the marchers.



The supplies were delivered by the leaders at our headquarters in Petamburan [in Central Jakarta], said Anwar, an FPI member.



Anwar said he did not know who had financed the purchase of the food.



Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Mochamad Iriawan said that in order to prevent possible clashes, on-duty police personnel were not allowed to use firearms or bayonets.



Police personnel were also instructed to chant the Asmaul Husna (the 99 names of God) to calm down the crowd if they became violent.



The Jakarta Police also dispatched dozens of female officers wearing hijabs to stand guard in front of the State Palace in the hope of calming protesters.



It was at this peaceful stage of the rally that leaders of the demonstration tried to negotiate their way into the State Palace to meet with the President.



But because Jokowi, who on Thursday pledged to remain at the palace during the rally, decided to go to Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Banten, for an impromptu visit to check on the progress of the construction of a railway network linking downtown Jakarta with the airport, the leaders of the demonstration could only meet with Wiranto.



Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin also attempted to talk with the protesters.



At around 3 p.m., however, the protesters declined to negotiate with Wiranto and insisted on meeting with Jokowi.



Yes, I am representing the government. We are representing the government, Wiranto told the leaders, referring also to Lukman Hakim, National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian and Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung.



The rally leaders declined to talk with Wiranto and left the grounds of the State Palace.



I cant [go on]. Im just a messenger, said Muslim cleric Bachtiar Nasir, one of the rallys leaders.



Later in the afternoon, the protest leaders agreed to meet with Vice President Jusuf Kalla at his office on Jl. Medan Merdeka Utara in the vicinity of the State Palace.



Speaking after the meeting, Kalla said the investigation into the alleged blasphemy case implicating Ahok would be completed within two weeks.



Our conclusion is that in the case involving Ahok, we will uphold the law indiscriminately and it will be completed within two weeks, Kalla told reporters.



Tito earlier said that the National Polices Criminal Investigation Department had scheduled a questioning session for Nov. 7 and would soon summon Ahok.



Safrin La Batu, Indra Budiari, Agnes Anya, Callistasia Anggun Wijaya contributed to this report.

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Linkedin Haeril Halim and Ina Parlina (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 5 2016

A massive rally calling for the criminal prosecution of Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Ahok Purnama for alleged blasphemy ended in violence on Friday night as protesters defied a police order to disperse.



At midnight, President Joko Jokowi Widodo praised the rallys Muslim leaders for keeping the rally in order during the day. However, we regretted the violence in the evening. Political actors took advantage of this situation, he said.



The President further stated that the legal process against Ahok would take place in a transparent fashion.



The anti-Ahok rally ran peacefully early in the day, but soon after dusk, violence broke out following a scuffle involving a small number of protesters, who were allegedly members of the Muslim Students Association (HMI) and activists from the Islam Defenders Front (FPI), the firebrand Islamic organization that played a leading role in Fridays protest.



In a strange turn of events, the FPI joined forces with the police at one point to call for the HMI students to disperse and not to get closer to the State Palace.



As the scuffle broke out between the riot police and the alleged HMI students, unidentified protesters torched three police trucks parked on the corner of Monas Square.



In the midst of the chaotic situation, the police started firing tear gas and used water canons to disperse the crowd.



Learning about the clash, hundreds of protesters, who were on their way back to Istiqlal Mosque, started streaming back to the area near the State Palace.



Three police officer was reported to have been injured in the confrontation.



Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Wiranto went down to the protest site near the State Palace soon after 9 p.m. to calm down the protesters.



They should have all dispersed. They know me, they should have calmed down. Back off, Wiranto told the protesters.



Some of the protesters retreated and headed toward the House of Representatives complex.



Earlier this week, Peoples Consultative Assembly (MPR) Speaker Zulkifli Hasan, a National Mandate Party (PAN) politician, said the compound would be open to protesters who wanted to spend the night there after the protest.



Earlier on in the protest, signs promoting violence could be seen in the crowd, which was composed of a number of Muslim groups. Some of the signs used strong language to condemn Ahoks statements about a verse in the Quran, which the protestors deemed as insulting to the Muslim faith.



Carrying banners reading prosecute Ahok, arrest Ahok, and Ahok go home, some groups in the crowd threatened Ahok with death.





Some protesters gathered in front of Istiqlal Mosque were caught on camera chanting bunuh, bunuh si Ahok sekarang juga (kill, kill Ahok right now).



Elsewhere, near Gambir Station, a group of protesters hung a makeshift banner bearing the words: gantung Ahok disini (Hang Ahok right here).



While the majority of the more than 100,000 protesters who showed up for the anti-Ahok rally were concentrated around the State Palace, a small number of protesters managed to reach the residential area of Pantai Mutiara, Pluit, North Jakarta, where Ahok lives.



The crowd failed to enter the residential complex, which was heavily guarded by scores of personnel from the Jakarta Police and the Indonesian Military (TNI). The protestors could only chant Ahok, get out,.



The protesters carried a banner reading Laskar Masjid Luar Batang (Luar Batang Mosque Militia). Luar Batang residents have been in dispute with the Jakarta administration following the citys plan to demolish houses in the area as part of the revitalization of the mosque for religious tourism.



The Friday protest went smoothly during the day without any incidents and the majority of the protesters left the demonstration grounds before 6 p.m., the deadline given by the Jakarta Police for the rally. Some of the protestors enjoyed the festive mood of the demonstration.



The security authorities have been credited for taking measures aimed at easing tensions.



Along the way from Istiqlal Mosque, where the protesters gathered for Friday prayers, to the State Palace, food and drinks provided by the FPI were easily available for the marchers.



The supplies were delivered by the leaders at our headquarters in Petamburan [in Central Jakarta], said Anwar, an FPI member.



Anwar said he did not know who had financed the purchase of the food.



Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Mochamad Iriawan said that in order to prevent possible clashes, on-duty police personnel were not allowed to use firearms or bayonets.



Police personnel were also instructed to chant the Asmaul Husna (the 99 names of God) to calm down the crowd if they became violent.



The Jakarta Police also dispatched dozens of female officers wearing hijabs to stand guard in front of the State Palace in the hope of calming protesters.



It was at this peaceful stage of the rally that leaders of the demonstration tried to negotiate their way into the State Palace to meet with the President.



But because Jokowi, who on Thursday pledged to remain at the palace during the rally, decided to go to Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Banten, for an impromptu visit to check on the progress of the construction of a railway network linking downtown Jakarta with the airport, the leaders of the demonstration could only meet with Wiranto.



Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin also attempted to talk with the protesters.



At around 3 p.m., however, the protesters declined to negotiate with Wiranto and insisted on meeting with Jokowi.



Yes, I am representing the government. We are representing the government, Wiranto told the leaders, referring also to Lukman Hakim, National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian and Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung.



The rally leaders declined to talk with Wiranto and left the grounds of the State Palace.



I cant [go on]. Im just a messenger, said Muslim cleric Bachtiar Nasir, one of the rallys leaders.



Later in the afternoon, the protest leaders agreed to meet with Vice President Jusuf Kalla at his office on Jl. Medan Merdeka Utara in the vicinity of the State Palace.



Speaking after the meeting, Kalla said the investigation into the alleged blasphemy case implicating Ahok would be completed within two weeks.



Our conclusion is that in the case involving Ahok, we will uphold the law indiscriminately and it will be completed within two weeks, Kalla told reporters.



Tito earlier said that the National Polices Criminal Investigation Department had scheduled a questioning session for Nov. 7 and would soon summon Ahok.



Safrin La Batu, Indra Budiari, Agnes Anya, Callistasia Anggun Wijaya contributed to this report.

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Linkedin Safrin La Batu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 5, 2016

The organizer of the Friday large-scale rally has suspected that some people stirred up a riot in the initially peaceful rally that later turned violent.

The Movement of Indonesian Council Edict Supporters (GNPF-MUI), the rally organizer, said the people, whom they referred to as provocateurs, could have been both the participants and the police.

There were provocateurs infiltrating the participants side of the rally [] their haircuts were short, we have their photographs. But [they are] not necessarily from the military or police, GNPF-MUI chairman Bachtiar Nasir said on Saturday.

Bachtiar suspected there were also provocateurs on the police side because police officers who shot tear gas at the participants did not follow the orders of National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian and Military Commander Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo, who both instructed the officers to stop shooting.

He said when police officers opened tear gas fire at the participants, some representatives of the rally were in the middle of mediation with the State Palaces representatives. Some in the State Palace, including Vice President Jusuf Kalla, he said, were shocked by the sudden shooting from the officers.

He said both Tito and Gatot came out of the State Palace and immediately instructed the officers to stop shooting the tear gas, but they continued shooting.

Early in the morning, the National Police said they were currently questioning 10 people for allegedly stirring up the riot. The police showed the picture of young men in casual attire violently attacking police officers with bamboo. (evi)
Commerce and Restructuring Director at state-owned aircraft manufacturer PT Dirgantara Indonesia (PT DI) Budiman Saleh (left) explains the company-made NC212i aircraft to Philippine Air Forces Chief of Air Staff Maj. Gen. Rozzano Briguez (right) and Philippine Undersecretary for Finance and Materials under the Department of National Defense Raymundo Elefante at PT DIs headquarters in Bandung, West Java, on Friday. The company is in the final process of completing two NC212i aircraft worth US$19 million ordered by the Philippines.(JP/Arya Dipa)(PT DI) Budiman Saleh (left) explains the company-made NC212i aircraft to Philippine Air Forces Chief of Air Staff Maj. Gen. Rozzano Briguez (right) and Philippine Undersecretary for Finance and Materials under the Department of National Defense Raymundo Elefante at PT DIs headquarters in Bandung, West Java, on Friday. The company is in the final process of completing two NC212i aircraft worth US$19 million ordered by the Philippines.(JP/Arya Dipa)
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post)  Sat, November 5 2016

HEAD over heels

Timberland Outlet, Pacific Place Mall, South Jakarta



Nowadays, personal brands are very important. People dont want to be like anyone else, said Daisy Tan, general manager of VF Southeast Asia, a retail company that sells Timberland Indonesia apparel, which is known for its iconic black and brown boots.



She was describing an apparent characteristic of the tech-savvy millennial generation, also referred to as Gen Y.



This need to keep up with the lifestyle of millenials is why the retail store recently launched a new concept in Pacific Place shopping center, Jakarta. Themed Heritage, Reimagined, the retailer seeks to bring forth personalized experience, particularly in boot making, by setting up small workshops inside the store where customers interact with the shoemakers and create customized illustrations on their boots.



We call this heritage because this reminds us of where we began: The store was established in the 19th century in the middle of a workshop where the craftspeople worked with the leather and all the materials to create the boots, Daisy said during a press briefing on Oct. 28.



Heres how the heritage concept meets the demands of the digital era: Part of their personalized service is an illustrator who draws on the boots  either avocado shapes or Korean popo characters that were made globally famous by social media. Although the basic illustrations have been set in stone, customers are invited to add their own stories and details to them. A buyer, for instance, might want to tell a story involving a small child who rides pillion on a motorcycle and the illustrator will finish it within 30 minutes of purchase.



In conjunction with the launch of the new concept, the retailer also introduced its latest fashion pieces called the Harvest Gold collection, embodying layers of brown derived from amber and gold hues. The collection, comprising combinations of shirts, pants, jackets and shoes, juxtaposes color tones that are similar to gold, like yellow and ginger.



On the sidelines of a trunk show displaying the new items, Daisy took the time to talk to J+ about the art of boot making and the retail trade in apparel in general. The following are excerpts from the interview.



How long did it take for you and your team to come up with this new store concept?



It started five years back, when we undertook a massive study to understand the customers who buy our products. We found that most of them, although they love outdoor activities so much, are also into lifestyle and fashion. People also want to enjoy interacting with storekeepers by talking to them and watching them work; the workshop seeks to facilitate that.



You launched this new concept in Malaysia three weeks ago before bringing it to Indonesia. How did people respond there?



This concept enables customers to actually touch the products. Previously, people were afraid to do that because the products are not cheap. After this concept was launched, weve also found that people stay in the store longer to explore more.



Speaking about personalized shoes, you also have a service called Design Your Own, which has not been launched in Indonesia yet. Tell us a little bit about that.



This is where we encourage people to design their own boots in whatever color they want. They can also design their own shoelaces, silhouettes and things like that. From here, people can actually get a sense of how to design shoes and we are able to accommodate the requests because our shoes are handmade. It takes more than two months to deliver the customized shoes to our customers.



How do you innovate with new boot designs, particularly in this new collection?



This time, we want to focus on gold. We retain the consistent elements of our products regardless of the design: We use materials that are water resistant and gold. The current trend of footwear in Southeast Asia is the popularity of sneakers, with their strong grip on our soles. This is why, in this new collection, we design shoes that are similar to how sneakers look and yet are very flexible and light. +Sebastian Partogi

Sake+ celebrates 2nd anniversary with Choya

Sake+ restaurant, Senopati, South Jakarta

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Linkedin Tama Salim (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 5, 2016

Turkish Ambassador to Indonesia Sander Gurbuz has made a clarification regarding a Facebook post mistakenly claiming he was taking part in a large-scale rally against gubernatorial candidate and incumbent Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama on Friday.

The post, which spread quickly through social media after it was uploaded late on Thursday, features a photograph of the envoy and Turkeys deputy defense minister, Suay Alpay, in a crowd in front of the Istiqlal Mosque in Central Jakarta, leading many to believe they were part of the rally held on Friday to demand the criminal prosecution of Ahok for alleged blasphemy.

Facebook user Said Anshar first uploaded the photograph with the misleading accompanying text: "A message of support for 'Aksi Bela Quran' [Rally to defend the Quran] from Mr. Erdogan conveyed by the staff of the Turkish Embassy", referring to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Gurbuz explained that Alpay, who was in town to attend the INDO DEFENSE convention, had gone sightseeing to Istiqlal, the countrys largest mosque, and the nearby National Monument (Monas) complex on Thursday. The crowd depicted in the post, he added, had asked them to take pictures together after seeing the Turkish flag on the official's car.

"His sightseeing tour has nothing to do with today's [Friday] demonstrations. It's unfortunate that some people can use it [the picture] for their own purposes," the envoy said in a message, adding that Turkey had no intention to meddle in Indonesia's domestic affairs. (hwa)
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Linkedin Endy Bayuni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, November 5 2016

On a recent flight from Jakarta to Bali, I was struck to see that half of the passengers on board Garuda Indonesias Airbus 330 were tourists from mainland China. You can distinguish them from the Southeast Asias Chinese diaspora by their behavior. They tend to be louder but thats probably because they travel in large groups. A few days later on my flight home, the same thing happened. Had it not been for the noisy Chinese tourists, the Garuda plane would have been half empty.

October is a low season in the tourism calendar, so hotels and restaurants in Bali (and Jakarta), and airlines like Garuda, have the Chinese tourists to thank. This is even more important considering that other countries are sending fewer tourists because of the global economic slowdown this year.

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(lead article)

The Socialist Workers Party is your party!

SWP launches 10-day effort to broaden reach

Militant/Maggie Trowe

As the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election comes to a close, the crisis of both capitalist parties is deepening. Whether Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump is elected, the new president will be the first in U.S. history starting their term distrusted by the majority of the population.

The election wont end the widespread discussion and debate among working people about how to deal with the impact on them of the grinding economic contraction and financial crisis of capitalism that continues to unfold.

As this unfolds the Socialist Workers Party is expanding its political activity in the working class centered on discussion with workers at their doorsteps about the crisis of the capitalist system, and what working people can do to fight in their own class interests.

Party members are organizing a special 10-day effort Nov. 3-12 in cities, towns and rural areas, where they will engage in the widespread political debate going on among workers. They are explaining how the crisis facing working people is rooted in the dictatorship of capital and the need for the working class to fight to take political power.

Party branches nationwide have cancelled Militant Labor Forums for the weekend before the election to put more time into these door-to-door discussions with workers.

Interest in a working-class party

The 10-day effort will serve to further place these discussions in the working class at the center of the ongoing activity of SWP members. Leaders of the party will travel to cities where there are branches to help lead in taking advantage of the broad openings among working people for this kind of discussion, today and in the years to come, about working-class politics and the fight for socialism.

The Clintons Anti-Working-Class Record: Why Washington Fears Working People by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes is now available (see excerpt ). It will be an invaluable tool in advancing this discussion and drawing workers toward the party.

As they knock on workers doors, Socialist Workers Party members find more and more interest in finding an alternative to the bosses parties. Is that against Clinton? Jim Kusek asked SWP presidential candidate Alyson Kennedy when he overheard her explaining The Clintons Anti-Working-Class Record in Lomita, California, Oct. 29.

Yes, both the Democratic and Republican parties are against the interests of working people, Kennedy said. Workers are facing the effects of the deepening economic crisis. The reason we are having these problems is because of capitalism. We need to look to our class to chart a way forward.

Kusek agreed.

The working class is the issue in this election, SWP vice-presidential candidate Osborne Hart told students at a Vanderbilt University campaign debate in Nashville, Tennessee, Oct. 24. Others on the panel included Mary Mancini, chair of the Tennessee Democratic Party; Heather Scott for the Libertarian Party; and Howard Switzer of the Green Party.

The capitalist rulers and their representatives like Clinton and Trump fear us. Thats why Clinton describes us as deplorable and irredeemable, its why Trump seeks to scapegoat and divide us, he said. The system of capitalism which they defend is in a historic crisis for which they have no solutions.

Deepening crisis in capitalist parties

When revelations showed Trump joking about groping women and getting away with it, and when he responded to a firestorm of criticism by attacking women as nasty, his poll numbers fell. Numerous Republican elected officials said they couldnt support him. Their party was fraying at the edges.

The main liberal capitalist media outlets  from the Washington Post to the New York Daily News  have carried out a relentless hysterical attack on Trump. But this week their spotlight was on Clinton when FBI Director James Comey announced the agency would resume a review of the former secretary of states email practices after thousands of emails were discovered in a separate inquiry into former Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner, estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

The Clinton campaign responded by sharp accusations at Comey for trying to influence the election and having a blatant double standard in investigating Clintons emails while refusing to look into alleged Trump ties with Russia. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to Comey Oct. 30 accusing him of criminally covering up explosive information about ties between Trump and Moscow.

But the next day President Barack Obama defended Comey as a man of integrity. And Attorney General Loretta Lynch said she continued to have confidence in him.

This comes on top of continuing evidence that the Clintons  Bill and Hillary  used public office to increase their wealth and enrich their family foundation.

The Occupy Wall Street wing of the party  led by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who had his campaign for the Democratic nomination scuttled by a dirty campaign led by party leaders, and liberal Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren  has moved to increase its influence.

In an Oct. 27 Boston Globe op-ed, Sanders said a new Democratic administration had to have a treasury secretary prepared to take on the greed and illegal behavior of Wall Street, not someone who comes from Wall Street or will leave office to go to Wall Street.

Warren sent Obama a letter accusing Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White of being too close to big business and called for her ouster.

The divisions in the Democratic Party, and the fights that are coming, are clear.

With the race tightening, Clinton backers are now saying it really doesnt matter if Trump wins the popular vote, because he can never win in the Electoral College.

Trump has said the election is rigged. And it does happen. Study the history of how then Mayor Richard Daleys Democratic machine in Chicago found enough votes in city cemeteries to give John F. Kennedy Illinois  and the presidency  in 1960.

But whoever wins, the ruling capitalist families will control the White House. The economic, political and moral crisis of capitalist rule will deepen. And the burgeoning discussion in the working class about how to stop the attacks of the bosses and their government, and their expanding wars abroad, will continue and deepen.

The 2016 election will be history, but the SWP will keep on expanding the partys reach, knocking on doors, joining the discussion and showing by its actions that the SWP is the party the working class needs.

Sam Manuel in Atlanta and Deborah Liatos in Los Angeles contributed to this article.
(front page)

Oregon land protesters acquittal is gain for workers

SEATTLE  In a victory for the rights of all those standing up to abuses by the U.S. government, a jury Oct. 27 found brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy and five others not guilty of conspiracy and other frame-up charges. They were on trial for their participation in the pro-rancher protest occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon last winter.

But the Bundys were not released from prison. Instead, they are being sent to Nevada to stand trial on more frame-up charges for resisting federal attempts to confiscate their fathers cattle in 2014. When defense attorney Marcus Mumford demanded to see an official detainer ordering his clients to remain in prison, federal marshals threw him to the ground, used a Taser on him, handcuffed and arrested him.

The verdict shocked big-business news media and politicians. Off the Charts Unbelievable: Will Acquittal of Oregon Refuge Occupiers Embolden Extremists, Militias? read a headline in the Oct. 28 Washington Post. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown issued a statement saying she was disappointed.

The acquittal is good for working people and all those fighting the governments spying and trampling of democratic rights, said Mary Martin, Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor of Washington. And it strengthens the fight to free the Hammonds.

Ammon Bundy initiated the civil disobedience occupation to protest the jailing of father and son Dwight and Steven Hammond, cattle ranchers near the Malheur refuge. The two had been convicted on frame-up arson charges for setting controlled burns to protect their land from wildfires and invasive species. They were sent to prison a second time after an appeals court ruled that the judge in their trial had erred by giving them a sentence less than the minimum set under the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.

The occupation also protested what many ranchers call federal overreach  government policies that limit ranchers and farmers access to federal land, increase grazing fees and restrict watering rights for livestock. More than 50 percent of the land west of the Mississippi is owned by the U.S. government.

The governments admission that they had 15 paid FBI informants operating in the protest occupation or in the nearby town of Burns, Oregon, undermined the prosecutions case.

The only violence that occurred during the refuge occupation was the Jan. 26 police killing of protest leader Robert LaVoy Finicum, who along with the Bundys and other protesters was ambushed on his way to a community meeting. U.S. District Judge Anna Brown refused to allow most mention of the killing of Finicum.

The governments use of the charge of conspiracy to impede federal employees as the heart of their case backfired. U.S. prosecutors often use conspiracy charges to frame up union and other political activists to get stiffer sentences and avoid having to prove that any crime was committed.

The Oregonian newspaper quoted an email statement from Juror 4, who said the prosecution failed to prove conspiracy. He said when jurors asked why conspiracy charges were being used, they were told other charges such as criminal trespass didnt carry as stiff a penalty  up to six years for conspiracy. The air of triumphalism that the prosecution brought was not lost on any of us, nor was it warranted, Juror 4 wrote.

The paper said another juror was especially disturbed when the defense unmasked one of the informers sent in by the FBI as the person who began and organized firearms training.

A discussion broke out immediately outside the courthouse in Portland and in the press about whether or not the participants in the occupation, most of whom are Caucasian, got more lenient treatment than Black Lives Matter protesters or those defending Native American rights.

John Lamb, a chicken farmer from Montana who maintained a daily support vigil for those on trial, told the Militant that Portland Dont Shoot activists were marching near the courthouse after the verdict to protest police brutality. We joined in with their march. Some objected at first because they thought we were racists or white supremacists. When they saw who we were, and that wasnt the case, that our group included people who are Native and Black and Asian and opposed what the government is doing, some of them came back and apologized. We are going to talk again. We are fighting the same monster.

In Burns, former logger Dave Smerski said by phone that he and many others in the region responded happily to the verdict. A sign he erected last year that reads Stand with the Hammonds remains visible in town. He said there are now more FBI and state police in town, more street lights with rotating cameras to monitor people. He noted that 40 Native Americans held a protest in town recently in solidarity with the fight of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in North Dakota.

Ruth Danielson, a neighbor of the Hammonds who supports their fight to get out of prison, told the Militant, I didnt agree with the refuge takeover but to use conspiracy charges against them was wrong and nefarious and Im glad the jury didnt agree with this.

Eleven participants in the occupation previously took plea bargains and have been sentenced. Ammon Bundy called on the prosecution to drop charges against seven others scheduled for trial in February.

Joel Britton contributed to this article.





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End the frame-ups, free the Hammonds and the Bundys!







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(front page)

US shifts UN vote on Cuba, still targets revolution

UNITED NATIONS  For the first time in 25 years, the U.S. government abstained on the annual U.N. General Assembly resolution calling on Washington to end the economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba. But U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power made it clear that U.S. imperialism has not changed its stripes, nor its hostility and hatred for the Cuban Revolution.

The Oct. 26 vote was 191 in favor of the resolution and two abstentions: the U.S. and Israeli delegates.

Power defended Washingtons 55-year economic war against Cuba, claiming that all actions of the United States with regard to Cuba have been and are fully in conformity with the U.N. Charter and international law. The only reason that the Barack Obama administration has adopted a new approach, she said, was because the U.S. policy of isolation toward Cuba was not working  or worse, it was actually undermining the very goals it set out to achieve. And instead of isolating Cuba our policy isolated the United States.

The U.S. ambassador made it sound as if Washington had eased the embargo. She pointed to the December 2014 announcement that led to the re-establishment of diplomatic relations, the opening of embassies in both countries, the resumption of commercial flights between the U.S. and Cuba, and the end to limits on how often Cuban Americans can visit relatives on the island.

Power highlighted measures the Treasury Department announced Oct. 14. These include allowing Cuban pharmaceuticals to be sold in the U.S. if they get approval from the Food and Drug Administration, removing limits on how much rum and cigars authorized U.S. travelers can bring back into the U.S., granting more scholarships to Cubans and other measures aimed at private sector growth.

While there have been some positive steps, the majority of the executive regulations and laws that establish the blockade are still in effect and are rigorously applied by U.S. government agencies, Cuban Ambassador Bruno Rodriguez said. This includes the pressure Washington applies to other nations to adhere to U.S. dictates on trade with Cuba.

The Oct. 14 measures Power referred to have a very limited scope, he said and rather than benefiting Cuba and the Cuban people, they favor the United States.

Rodriguez gave numerous examples of actions by the U.S. government over the last year, including blocking the sale of medical devices to Cuba and preventing Cubans from opening bank accounts that handle U.S. dollars. In September, banks in Pakistan refused to handle a credit for buying 100,000 doses of a vaccine against Hepatitis B that is manufactured in Cuba.

Obama has the power to lift many parts of the embargo, Rodriguez said, Thats why its necessary to judge by the facts.

The Cuban ambassador noted that from the start of the revolution Washingtons goal has been the overthrow of the revolutionary government. Obamas Oct. 14 directive, issued simultaneously with the new regulations, claims that Washington does not seek to impose regime change on Cuba, Rodriguez noted. But its deceitful language does not hide the intention to continue to implement interventionist programs that serve U.S. interests, including funding opponents of the revolution, broadcasting programs aimed at advocating for reforms and refusing to return Guantanamo Naval Base to Cuba.

Delegates from more than a dozen countries took the floor to speak in favor of ending the embargo. Some lauded unselfish aid from Cuba in the face of the aftermath of hurricanes and earthquakes. Others denounced the impact of the embargo on their own countries. The representative from Tonga noted that the hardships and challenges upon the Cuban people also affect students from his country living there.

Unlike in previous years, Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon briefly took the floor. Israel welcomes the progress in relations between the United States and Cuba and hopes this progress will lead to a new era in the region, he said.

Despite U.S. claims to be working to advance democracy in Cuba, we are already free, precisely because in 1959 we rid ourselves of U.S. imperialism and the dictatorship it imposed on us, Rodriguez reminded Power. We will never go back to capitalism.





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End Washingtons economic war against Cuba!







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(front page)

Striking Phila. transit workers insist: No contract, no work!

Militant/Janet Post

PHILADELPHIA  No Contract, No Work! chanted striking bus drivers and maintenance workers outside the Midvale Bus Depot here just after midnight Nov. 1. Some 4,700 members of Transport Workers Union Local 234 at the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) walked out, halting buses, trains and trolleys across the city. Bus drivers, mechanics and trolley drivers picketed the bus depots. Union members had voted two weeks ago not to extend the contract if no contract was negotiated by the midnight deadline.

TWU members say the central issues are health care, retirement pay and safety for SEPTA workers and their passengers.

We must help people understand why were on strike, said Tanya Greer, a bus driver. I took this job 22 and a half years ago because it had decent pay and benefits. Now they want to strip all that away from us, and we work so very hard. All we ask for is support as we fight for what we deserve.

The TWU is fighting for work rule changes to protect drivers and passengers. The union wants a mandatory 14-hour period between shifts, rather than the current nine-hour down time, and to increase the contractually required five-minute breaks between routes to 10 minutes.

SEPTA has had plenty of time to negotiate if they wanted to. The root of it all is lack of respect, said Pete McElleney, a TWU member who works on the overhead lines. The company thinks they can ignore the contract on working conditions and do as they please.

Health care is very important to us in this fight. SEPTA is pushing deep health care concessions, said 33-year-old electrician Chris Conly, who works on 700-volt trolley lines. He and his wife have a newborn who is very sick. Our fight is for the whole working class.

Workers also want no cap on pensions, the same as management has.

SEPTA managers have tried to turn working-class sentiment against the strikers, saying the timing of the strike can keep people from getting to vote in the Nov. 8 presidential election. They say they will seek an injunction against the strike for Election Day.

Democratic Party officials, including Mayor Jim Kenney and Gov. Tom Wolf, both elected as friends of labor, urged the TWU not to strike, and have decried the disruption caused by the workers fight to defend their working conditions and their union. Bob Brady, Democratic congressman in the 1st Congressional District and a former official in the Carpenters union, told the press that the party in Pennsylvania was concerned the strike would weaken turnout for Hillary Clinton.

Regional Rail train lines, which are organized by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and the International Association of Machinists, are the only mass transit running during the strike.

Members of those unions honored a TWU picket at the Wayne Junction Regional Rail train yard during evening rush hour the first day of the strike, causing substantial delays.





Related articles:

Solidarity with TWU strike against SEPTA

On the Picket Line







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(front page)

Turkish govt vies for influence amid US-led

assault on Mosul

Iraqi government troops entered the city of Mosul Oct. 31 in a U.S.-organized assault to wrest control from Islamic State. Over the previous two weeks they had captured the eastern outskirts of the city, together with peshmerga forces from the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish government.

Conflicts between capitalist rivals in the region have intensified, particularly as the governments of Turkey and Iran each seek to assert greater influence as regional powers. They were further exacerbated Oct. 26 when Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced that Washington plans to open an offensive against Islamic State in its Syrian stronghold of Raqqa in the next few weeks.

Thousands of Shiite militias joined the battle in Mosul Oct. 30. They act under the auspices of the Iraqi government, but most are trained and organized by the Quds Brigade, the extraterritorial arm of Tehrans Revolutionary Guards. Its commander, Major Gen. Qassem Soleimani, was reported to be in Mosul in late October.

Posing as the protector of Sunni Muslims and ethnic Turkmen, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced the involvement of the Shiite militia. The Turkish military began moving tanks and armored vehicles to the Turkish-Iraqi border Nov. 1. Ankara already has 2,000 troops in northern Iraq, including 800 at a base near Mosul, despite the opposition of the Iraqi government.

Recent speeches by Erdogan have asserted that Turkey has an historic claim to territory in northern Iraq and Syria, including Mosul, and regards this as part of Ankaras sphere of influence. Maps published by Turkish media have begun showing these regions as part of Turkey. In an Oct. 19 speech that criticized Washingtons collaboration with Kurdish forces in Syria, Erdogan said, We are not obliged to abide by the role anyone has set for us.

Turkish troops and tanks, and a Turkish-backed Arab militia, have been advancing in northern Syria since late August in an operation Ankara calls Euphrates Shield. Both Turkish forces and the Syrian Democratic Forces, led by the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG), are capturing territory from Islamic State and advancing towards the city of al-Bab.

In a televised speech Oct. 27, Erdogan said Turkish forces would prevent the SDF from entering al-Bab and then drive it from the city of Manbij and back east across the Euphrates River. Then we will go toward Raqqa, he proclaimed.

But Washington is depending on the SDF as the main force for a U.S.-led assault against Islamic State in Raqqa. We are afraid to be hit from the back if we move to Raqqa, Saleh Muslim, a Syrian Kurdish leader, told the Seattle Times by phone Oct. 29. U.S. special operations forces and airstrikes have been supporting both the Turkish and Kurdish-led forces in Syria.

Erdogan said he urged President Barack Obama in a phone call Oct. 26 to exclude the SDF from the offensive on Raqqa and collaborate instead with a Turkish-led military assault. White House officials said Obama asked Erdogan to hold back from attacking the SDF while the Raqqa assault is underway, and that Washington would help control the Kurds. Were not in perfect control, the Oct. 31 Washington Post quoted an anonymous White House official as commenting.

The Turkish forces advancing on al-Bab are not far from the city of Aleppo, where the regime of Bashar al-Assad and its backers, including Russian planes and Iranian troops and militias, are carrying out a murderous assault on opposition insurgents for control of the city. A commander of the pro-Assad forces issued a warning Oct. 26 that any Turkish advance towards their positions north and east of Aleppo would be met decisively and with force.

Teheran, which backs the governments in both Iraq and Syria, has repeatedly warned Ankara against intervention in either country.

In Turkey, Erdogan is continuing to arrest Kurdish politicians, close newspapers, and fire thousands of teachers, health workers and others deemed disloyal to the government, using emergency powers adopted following the failed July military coup. Dozens of officials of the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) and Democratic Regions Party (DBP) were arrested in southeastern Turkey in October, including the two co-mayors of Diyarbakir, the largest Kurdish city. They are accused of supporting the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).





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(feature article)

Clintons workfare reform: rulers biggest blow yet to protections won as by-product of workers struggles

From new book by Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes

BY JACK BARNES

The Clintons are now, finally, out of the White House. From the outset of his 1992 presidential campaign, the Socialist Workers Party insisted that Bill Clinton would be a war president, a prison president, a death-penalty president. He would be a president, like those before him, whose course at home and abroad was aimed at serving the class interests of the US ruling families. Above all, we insisted that the Clintons had not been, and would not be, friends of the working class, in city or country.

The same we can say with confidence is true of Clintons successor, George W. Bush, and of the Congress, then and now.

The landmark of the Clinton administrations anti-working-class assault, carried out in tandem with the Republican-controlled Congress, was contemptuously named the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. This brutal, anti-working-class legislation eliminated Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), put a federally dictated lifetime limit of five years on welfare payments to any family, and allowed state governments to cap the number of years at an even lower level than five. States receiving federal block grants under the new Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program are not required to spend those funds on cash payments to families  and more and more often they dont.

The reform was an incarnation of Clintons reactionary 1992 campaign pledge to end welfare as we know it, but it was also more than that. It was the biggest single success of the rulers so far in beginning to erode the federal Social Security system  a concession forced from the employing class in the 1930s as a by-product of massive working-class struggles that built the industrial unions and advanced the integration of Blacks into industrial jobs. Those conquests were widely expanded in the 1960s and 1970s, as the powerful proletarian-based Black rights movement and its broad social extensions wrested further weighty gains from the ruling class: Medicare, Medicaid, SSI (Supplemental Security Income) disability benefits, and cost-of-living protections.

Under the Clintons welfare reform, immigrants without papers were explicitly denied not only TANF benefits but also food stamps, Medicaid, and SSI payments. Even immigrants with legal residency (that is, a Green Card) were barred from food stamps and federal disability protection. TANF and Medicaid eligibility was denied them for five years and then left up to state governments.1

Clintons welfare legislation  not just its basic provisions, but even its name  was taken over lock, stock, and barrel from a plank in the so-called Contract with America promised by the Newt Gingrichled Republican majority that swept into Congress in 1994, two years after Clinton was elected.

The most vocal and historically clearest opponent in Congress of the anti-working-class destructiveness of the bipartisan welfare reform was Democratic senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. The legislation was an act of unprecedented social vindictiveness, Moynihan said. Its consequences for children, women, and others might initially be buffered by the paper-fueled tech-stock bubble of the late 1990s, he said, but these effects would explode with a vengeance during the next inevitable deep recession  like the one were entering right now in 2001.

In a very little while as the time limits come into effect, Moynihan warned, we will say, why are these children sleeping on grates?

Moynihan, a Harvard sociology professor for many years, had long been a critic of AFDC. On their own, Moynihan said, cash payments to dependent children, most of them in families headed by women, couldnt address what he considered the roots of poverty among African Americans: joblessness. Especially among young Black men, it was at disaster levels. Without a federal public works program to tackle that crisis  and this was at the heart of what Moynihan recounted  poorer families in Black communities would continue to be torn apart. More and more of them would be headed by single women, with less and less assistance, unable to provide a stable economic and social haven of support for children.

Vivid descriptions of such devastation of families in working-class districts in nineteenth century England abound in Capital by Karl Marx and The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 by Frederick Engels.

But so long as dog-eat-dog capitalist social relations exist, the family is what children, the elderly, the sick, and other working people have to fall back on.

In 1965, when Moynihan was a little-known assistant secretary of labor in the Lyndon Baines Johnson administration, he had written an internal report entitled The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. The Negro American revolution is rightly regarded as the most important domestic event of the postwar period in the United States, he wrote. Nothing like it has occurred since the upheavals of the 1930s which led to the organization of the great industrial unions. As a result of that struggle, he said, the expectations of Blacks will go beyond civil rights, and they will now expect that in the near future equal opportunities will produce roughly equal results.

Equality isnt possible, however, so long as the racist virus in the American blood stream still afflicts us, Moynihan pointed out. Its not possible so long as the gap in income and living standards between the Negro and most other groups in American society is widening.

Those conditions had been magnified by the rapid migration of Blacks from the rural South to segregated ghettos in northern cities that began during World War I. Moynihan himself had lived much of his childhood in New Yorks Hells Kitchen in an Irish working-class family headed by his mother. Drawing on that experience, he wrote that  like the northward Great Migration of Blacks  it had been the abrupt transition from rural Ireland to large cities in the United States that produced the wild Irish slums of the 19th Century Northeast.

Eventually, the Irish closed that gap, and Moynihan has no doubt that the Negroes will too, said Time magazine in a 1967 cover story about him. But thats where the class limitations of Moynihans bourgeois liberal outlook came into play. He didnt give enough weight to the fact that in addition to many common economic and social conditions bearing down on all working people, workers who are Black confront a unique, concrete historic obstacle to closing the gap systematic discrimination, bigotry, and physical dangers simply due to the color of their skin.

That national oppression is something Irish and other workers who are Caucasian do not confront. Like Italians, Greeks, or many other immigrants, they became white over time in the racist US capitalist society (at least enough to pass as a national grouping). But descendants of African slaves do not  even those who act white. They bear a lasting relic under capitalism of the barbaric slave trade and involuntary servitude. A relic, above all, of the bloody defeat of postCivil War Radical Reconstruction and decades of legal Jim Crow racist segregation across the US South and de facto discrimination nationwide. Its a deeply entrenched legacy that only the overturn of the dictatorship of capital and revolutionary conquest of power by the working class can open the road to fighting to end for all time.

Not only did the Johnson administration reject the proposals in The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, but when Moynihans 1965 report was leaked to the press, he was condemned by many liberals, Black nationalists, and middle class radicals as a racist who blamed the victim, especially Black women. Its clear that most of these critics never bothered to read or seriously consider what Moynihan wrote.2

Nor did Moynihan convince Richard Nixon to take action on public works or other proposals when he served as White House urban affairs adviser in 1969, although Moynihan did get Nixons ear more often than he had gotten LBJs. A Family Assistance Plan proposed by Nixon with Moynihans backing  a monthly guaranteed minimum income for a family of four, regardless of how many parents were in the home  was defeated by a Senate coalition of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans. Nixon implemented the Philadelphia Plan, for the first time setting affirmative-action targets for hiring Blacks on federally funded construction projects. And he ended the draft.

But the percentage of children living below the governments own poverty level kept climbing  from 14 percent in 1968 to 23 percent at the opening of the Clinton administration in 1993. So when Clinton publicly cited Moynihans 1965 report in order to rationalize his pledge to end welfare as we know it, Moynihan had had enough. The senior senator from New York shouted from the rooftops that Clintons legislation promoted cruelty toward families and perpetuated social devastation. That Democratic administration was destined to go down in history as [one] that abandoned, eagerly abandoned, the national commitment to dependent children.

Shortly before leaving office in January 2001, Clinton boasted that 8 million people nationwide had been slashed from state welfare rolls  a 60 percent drop in less than half a decade. What the bourgeois supporters of this legislation dont trumpet so loudly, however, is that the vast majority of these former AFDC recipients, if theyve been able to find work at all, have been pressed into jobs at minimum wage or below it, with few if any health, pension, or vacation benefits.

And that has been during the high point of the upturn in the capitalist business cycle. As the first targets of the legislations five-year limit are cut off permanently from welfare payments in the months ahead, they will find themselves in the midst of mounting layoffs and rising unemployment.

Clintons 1996 act was the first time that an entire group of working people  single mothers and their children  has been eliminated from the kind of protections Social Security is supposed to offer to retirees, children, workers injured or thrown out of a job, and others vulnerable to the instabilities and devastations inherent in capitalism, both in good times and bad.

Whats more, this section of the working class is one thats expanding in the United States. In 1965, when Moynihan wrote The Negro Family, the crisis figure he cited for the number of Black children raised in families headed by single women was 25 percent. A half century later, thats the percentage for all single-parent households headed by women, whatever their skin color. The figure for Blacks has risen to more than 70 percent.

Meanwhile, the poverty, lack of steady employment, and disintegration of families and other social relations  all imposed by the operations of capitalism on millions of working-class men, women, and children  register the inevitable consequences of a social system based on class exploitation and national oppression.

In this regard, another well-known article by Moynihan  a 1993 piece entitled, Defining Deviancy Down  poses questions that are important for the working-class vanguard. Moynihan wrote the article shortly after the spring 1992 social explosion in Los Angeles in reaction to the acquittal of four cops whose arrest and beating of Rodney King, an African American, had been widely televised.

Among the deviant social trends Moynihan focused on were the accelerating breakdown of the family structure, the sharp reduction in real income of poor families receiving AFDC benefits, and the rising violent crime rate (the last of these peaked the following year and has been falling since then). This was not the first time in American history, he said, that such crime, violence, unrest, [and] lashing out at the whole social structure had been seen, especially among jobless young men from broken families. Once again calling on his own working-class family background, Moynihan noted lessons from the wild Irish slums of the 19th century Eastern seaboard to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles.

The biggest danger, Moynihan said, is yielding to those social layers who benefit from redefining the problem as essentially normal and doing little to reduce it  defining deviancy down, in his words. (Moynihan was speaking from his own class standpoint, about dangers to the capitalist government, political parties, and social order they represent.)

On the one hand, wrote Moynihan, This redefining has evoked fierce resistance from defenders of old standards, and accounts for much of the present cultural war such as proclaimed by many at the 1992 Republican National Convention. He didnt elaborate on that reference, but he clearly had in mind the widely publicized convention speech in which Patrick Buchanan recounted (with considerable exaggeration) how US Army and National Guard units  M-16s at the ready  had taken back Los Angeles block by block that spring. In the same way, Buchanan said, we must take back our cities and take back our culture and take back our country. Thats how the war going on in our country for the soul of America will be won, Buchanan said. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself.

On the other hand, Moynihan pointed to solutions, also clearly not to his liking, that were gaining ground among more dominant sections of both ruling-class parties, including the recently elected Democratic administration of Bill and Hillary Clinton. We are building new prisons at a prodigious rate, Moynihan cautioned at the close of his article. Similarly, the executioner is back. There is something of a competition in Congress to think up new offenses for which the death penalty seems the only available deterrent.

Thats why Moynihan, the liberal politician and professor, was opposed to defining deviancy down. But for working people  for reasons of our own independent class interests  the stakes are much greater in not defining down social attitudes, habits, and conditions that divide our class, or that tear apart our political confidence, disciplined functioning, combativity, and morale.

Preying on fellow workers and farmers; judging each other on the basis of skin color, national origin, religion, or sex, instead of what we do; showing up drunk or stoned to a picket line or defense guard  none of this is essentially normal to a working class that is organizing and resisting, a class whose emancipation from exploitation can only be won by our own independent political organization and disciplined action. None exemplifies the norm included by Marx and Engels in the rules they drafted in 1847 for the worlds first communist organization  a way of life and activity which corresponds to the political integrity and aims of the class-conscious workers movement.

Thats the challenge that has faced every revolutionary movement of the working class and oppressed  from the mass workers struggles that forged the industrial unions in the United States; to the Black-led mobilizations for civil rights that brought down Jim Crow segregation and opened the road to internationalist working-class leaders such as Malcolm X; to the Rebel Army that led the workers and farmers of Cuba in a triumphant socialist revolution; to the struggle for a proletarian party that will make possible a socialist revolution in the United States.

1. As a result of growing dissatisfaction with these provisions of the reform, federal legislation adopted in 2002 made immigrants under eighteen years of age with a Green Card eligible for food stamps, as it did adults whove had resident status for at least five years.

2. A half century later, a few liberals and especially nationalist-minded Blacks have acknowledged much of what Moynihan observed and recorded. These include Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of the 2015 best-seller Between the World and Me, written in response to the police killings of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and the friskings, detainings, beatings, and humiliations common to black people. In a 2013 Atlantic magazine article titled Revisiting the Moynihan Report, Cont., Coates said its really hard to separate out segregation from employment and family stability. Thats a subject worthy of debate. But Moynihan didnt get debate. He got condemnation.





Related articles:

Welfare reform  its toll on the working class

Welfare for work promise didnt pay off in end







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Indonesia president condemns rally violence 'chaos'

JAKARTA: Indonesias president urged protesters rioting in Jakarta Saturday (Nov 5) to return to their homes, lamenting the chaos in the capital as gangs of hardline Muslims torched police cars and attacked officers.

violencereligionpolitics

By AFP

Saturday 5 November 2016, 09:27AM

An Indonesian policeman fires a tear gas canister to disperse Muslim protesters near the presidential palace during clashes after a rally against governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, a Christian accused of insulting Islam, in Jakarta on November 4, 2016. Photo: AFP

The violence  just metres from the presidential palace and city hall  marred an otherwise peacefully rally Friday in which 50,000 people marched against Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, a Christian accused of insulting Islam.

The rally turned ugly as night fell and thousands of hardliners clashed with police, setting vehicles ablaze and hurling bottles and rocks at officers, injuring several.

Police responded with tear gas, water cannon and truncheons but it took hours to quell the violence, which later spilled over into a poor neighbourhood in Jakartas north.

An elderly man died but his cause of death was not yet known, Jakarta police spokesman Awi Setiyono told AFP.

In a brief statement just after midnight, President Joko Widodo  flanked by senior officials including Indonesia's military chief, security minister and national police chief  regretted the peaceful march descending into violence.

People should have been dispersed but it ended up in chaos, he told reporters at the palace.

I ask the protesters to go home, and let law enforcement do their job in a fair way.

The protest was triggered by accusations that Purnama, better known by his nickname Ahok, insulted Islam by criticising opponents who used Koranic references to attack him ahead of an election in February.

Purnama apologised for the remarks, but his opponents have built a groundswell of support calling for his arrest and incarceration under Indonesias tough blasphemy laws.

Hardliners have called for his death and promised Fridays turnout in Jakarta would eclipse a similar rally last month that drew 10,000 chanting demonstrators to the streets.

Anger spread beyond the capital, with solidarity marches also held across Java and in cities as far away as Makassar in Indonesias east.

Authorities took no chances in the lead up to the much-hyped Jakarta rally, deploying 18,000 officers and extra soldiers across the capital amid fears that radical elements could infiltrate the march.

The demonstration appeared to be dying down by dusk, but the situation turned hostile by nightfall as hardliners and riot police engaged in skirmishes.

By late Friday the unrest in the city centre had largely been quelled but flared up in another area. Footage aired on Indonesian broadcaster TVOne showed what appeared to be looting at a convenience store in the same neighbourhood.

Widodo  who met this week with religious and political leaders to issue a unified call for calm  blamed political actors for fanning the violence, without elaborating.

He reassured protesters that legal proceedings into Purnamas alleged transgressions would be concluded quickly and transparently.

Indonesia is home to the worlds biggest Muslim population, where a vast majority practise a moderate form of Islam.
Likely too late for Loma food vendors, says Patong Mayor

PHUKET: A meeting held at Provincial Hall this week failed to resolve the looming mass eviction of vendors operating food stalls at the Loma Food Centre on the Patong beachfront, with Patong Mayor Chalermluck Kebsup saying it was likely too late for Patong Municipality to stop its plan from converting the Loma Food Centre into a community building.

patongconstructiontourism

By The Phuket News

Saturday 5 November 2016, 10:29AM

Patong Mayor Chalermluck Kebsup said it was likely 'too late' for Patong Municipality to stop its plan from converting the Loma Food Centre on the Patong beachfront into a community building. Photo: PR Dept

The meeting, held on Tuesday (Nov 1), followed Suriya Sinsoke leading more than 18 vendors to file a complaint at Provincial Hall Thursday last week. (See story here.)

The vendors filed their complaint after Patong Municipality began refusing to renew leases as and when they expired, some as far back as 2013, but more recently with more vendors leases not being renewed in October.

At the meeting were Patong Mayor Chalermluck, Phuket Provincial Chief Administrative Officer (Palad) Poonsak Naksaena, officials from Damrongdhama Centre (Ombudsmans Office), food vendors from Loma Food Centre and Capt Boontop Lanthong from Office of Phuket Public Prosecution.

Patong Mayor Chalermluck said that Patong Municipality had been constantly trying to resolve the issue, but accused the vendors of continually refusing to comply with the lease conditions.

We are not renewing the leases because some vendors do not follow the regulations, she said.

These vendors have been told many times to uphold the lease conditions, but they have ignored us. They set up chairs and tables in the public area (outside the building) and said that if these were kept inside their stalls, they could not sell their food, Mayor Chalermluck explained.

Some vendors refused to pay rent, she added.

Mayor Chalermluck admitted that ousting all the food vendors was unfair to those who did follow the lease agreement, but added that it was likely to be too late for them now.

Today beach business operators asked Patong Municipality to allow those who want to sell and are willing to follow the regulation to stay where they are  but we cannot promise anything to them now, she said.

Patong Municipality wants to renovate this area into a multi-purpose building for the community to use. We have already been approved the budget of B20 million to use for this next year.

If there are any changes now, we will have to start all over again  and right now I cannot give you an answer. We will have to meet to discuss this again, Mayor Chalermluck said.

Vice Governor Teera Anantaseriwidhya, who presided over the meeting, said he would prefer to resolve the issue without either of the parties resorting to legal action.

We held this meeting so both parties can discuss a way out. This issue can be resolved without using the law. However, if this fails, then we might have to resort to using the law, he said.
Phuket author uncovers more thrilling stories of the island's history

The most comprehensive English-language book written about Phukets history, 'A History of Phuket and the Surrounding Region', which details the islands rich and fascinating past from premodern times up until the mid-20th century, is now being released in its second edition.



By Mark Knowles

Saturday 5 November 2016, 12:00PM

The Tong Ho was leased to Phukets farangs so they could escape to Singapore in 1942.

Author and long-time Phuket resident Colin Mackay has updated his book with new information, some from first-hand sources which were provided by readers of the first edition.

Mr Mackay been invited to launch the second edition with a lecture at the Siam Society  the Kings Library  in Bangkok on November 10.

The first edition was very wellreceived both locally and internationally and is now available in many of the worlds most significant libraries, said Mr Mackay.

Im proud to have at last let Phukets long, colourful, yet previously little-known history out of its box.

I got great feedback from the first edition and as Id hoped for, several readers responded by providing me with further new interesting information which I have now incorporated into this second edition.

The new 472-page soft-cover second edition contains several updated and new sections. Mr Mackay spoke to The Phuket Newsabout some of the fascinating new information he has included in the new edition.

For example, when I was researching the Japanese invasion of Thailand in 1942, despite much investigation, I was previously unable to confirm exactly how the farangs (foreigners) on Phuket at the time had managed to escape from the island.

It was well documented that the Allied military command in Singapore ordered a Major Warren Parsons, the Australian manager of Tonkah Harbour Mining Company in Phuket, then the largest on the island, to arm, coordinate and lead the evacuation of Allied personnel from Phuket.

We knew that these 250 or so armed farangs and their families gathered at and defended the Phuket airfield waiting  as prearranged  for planes from Malaya to airlift them out.

But in the two days immediately after the Japanese invasion of the Peninsula their air attacks destroyed most British airfields and their planes in Northern Malaya, so the farangs in Phuket were told by radio that they could no longer be airlifted out as planned and had to escape by themselves.

This is where conflicting versions of their escape arose. Luckily a relative of Major Parsons in Melbourne, who read the first edition of the book, kindly contacted Mr Mackay and sent him a copy of Major Parsons actual warti me diary.

The facts of this daring escape of Phukets farangs from behind Japanese lines is a fascinating new story that I have added to the second edition, he said.

Mr Mackay has also expanded the section covering Phukets warring Chinese triads, who ruthlessly fought for dominance of the islands economy in the 1870s.

When writing the first edition I was unaware of a great massacre that occurred in Phuket in 1879. Then one Chinese scholar in Malaysia who read my book contacted me and introduced me to some new research she has been doing on this period.

At that time the island was a lawless place and two main Chinese triads effectively ran the island  the Gee Hin from Kathu and the Kien Teck from Phuket Town.

Both triads had well over 1,000 armed fighters who fought for control of Phukets lucrative tin mines, tin smelting, birds nest harvest, tax and opium farms.

In 1879 the Kien Teck leaders invited the main Gee Hin leaders for a so called peace conference in a big a wooden house near the market in Phuket Town. After drinking with the Gee Hin leaders, the Kien Teck leaders slipped out and their fighters quickly locked the doors, set fire to the building and threw in explosives.

Anyone who escaped was hacked to death. When the Gee Hin fighters came to try to rescue their brothers, huge vicious street battles raged all night through Phuket Town, Mr Mackay noted.

In the morning hundreds of mutilated corpses littered the bloodstained streets. Today a shrine to the 417 Gee Hin fighters who fell that night still stands in Kathu, he added.

The meticulously researched and colourfully written book deserves a place on every Phuket residents bookshelf for its fascinating stories of the islands long, multi-faceted, and often bloodsoaked and ruthless, past.

The second edition costs B1,000 and is available in several outlets in Phuket, including Seng Ho Books. Or simply visit the website: historyofphuket.com for a full list of outlets or to buy a copy of the book, which will be mailed to your address. An ebook, in epub format, is also available for B700 through the website.
Phuket boat painter stabbed dead by drinking buddy roommate

PHUKET: Police arrested a Phuket boat painter before dawn this morning (Nov 5) for murdering a fellow boat painter in a drunken knife attack at the rented room the two shared in Srisoonthorn only hours earlier.

homicidedeathcrimepolicemarine

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Saturday 5 November 2016, 11:57AM

The knife used in the attack was more than 30cm long. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Suriyan Pudinsai, 31, from Udon Thani, was arrested at about 5am. Police said he confessed to the stabbing. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Police were alerted to the murder at about half-past midnight (Nov 5). Photo; Eakkapop Thongtub

Suriyan Pudinsai, 31, from Udon Thani, was arrested at about 5am for the murder of fellow boat painter Boonam Rawia, 23, from Ubon Ratchathani, who was slain at the mens shared accommodation in Soi Nok Tah Kaew, near Baan Manik, at about midnight.

Thalang Police were alerted to the murder at about half-past midnight and arrived at the scene to find Mr Boonams body fallen in a blood-spattered mess at the door to the room.

Mr Boonam had suffered four knife wounds, one each under his chin, on top of his left shoulder, under his right arm and under his left breast.

One of the knife wounds had penetrated his heart.

Nimit Siri, 22, told police he was drinking with the two men in front of the room when they started arguing, then started hitting each other.

Suriyan then went inside the room and retrieved a large kitchen knife, more than 30cm long, then returned and stabbed Mr Boonam, Mr Nimit said.

He then fled on his motorbike with his girlfriend.

Police alerted officers at the Tha Chatchai Checkpoint, which is Phukets only road gateway to the mainland, but Suriyan returned to the scene at about 5am, when he was taken into custody.

Thalang Police told The Phuket News that he had confessed to the stabbing.

Suriyan has now been charged with murder, police confirmed.
Phuket motorbike taxi driver denies attempted Holloween rape of Russian woman

PHUKET: A man arrested for attacking a Russian woman on Bangla Rd, Patong, on Oct 31 has confessed to robbing the woman, but has denied that he attempted to rape her, police have told The Phuket News.

Russiancrimepatongpolice

By Darawan Naknakhon

Saturday 5 November 2016, 02:17PM

Patong motorbike taxi driver Samlee Seangchan (right), 27, confessed to robbing the Russian woman, but denied he attempted to rape her. Photo: Darawan Naknakhon

Patong Police arrested motorbike taxi driver Samlee Seangchan, 27, yesterday (Nov 4) after tracking him down via CCTV, explained Patong Police Deputy Chief Lt Col Somsak Thongkleng. Col Somak said that he received a report on Tuesday (Nov 1) that a Russian woman, 30 years old, had went to celebrate Halloween on Bangla Rd on the traditional night of Oct 31. At about 2am she hired Samlee to take her back to her hotel in Chalong, but Samlee pulled over along the way and allegedly tried to embrace her, Col Somak said. The Russian woman cried out for help, but Samlee reportedly pushed his hand over her face, he said. Samlee stole B7,000 and US$200 from the Russian woman, then fled on his motorbike, Col Somsak said. Police tracked him down by CCTV. During questioning, Samlee confessed to the charge of robbery, but denied he made any attempt to rape the woman, he said. Police are continuing their investigation.
Phuket mourners depart en masse to Bangkok

PHUKET: A total of 750 people boarded 18 buses and left Tha Chatchai at the northern tip of Phuket at 7am this morning (Nov 5) to travel to Bangkok to pay their respects to the late HM King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died on Oct 13.

culturetransport

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Saturday 5 November 2016, 12:55PM

The 100,000 free travel-accessory packs were donated by key tourism businesses and associations in Phuket. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The van drivers departed Phuket yesterday, with mourners donating what they can to pay for fuel, and the van drivers paying the rest out of their own pockets. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The van drivers departed Phuket yesterday, with mourners donating what they can to pay for fuel, and the van drivers paying the rest out of their own pockets. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Phuket Governor Chockchai Dejamorntham (centre, right) holds up one of the bags containing free travel accessories handed out to mourners travelling to Bangkok to pay their respects to His Majesty as the first free convoy of 18 buses for mourners departed Phuket with Highway Police escort this morning (Nov 5). Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The convoy of 18 buses departed Phuket with Highway Police escort this morning (Nov 5). Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The convoy of 18 buses departed Phuket with Highway Police escort this morning (Nov 5). Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The 18 buses were the first of four government-funded convoys to carry mourners to Bangkok under a nationwide policy to provide free transport to people who would otherwise not be able to fund their own pilgrammage to the Grand Palace to pay their respects to His Majesty.

Phuket was originally allowed to provide free transport 600 mourners on four days: November 6 and 24, December 14, January 2. (See story here.)

That number was raised to 750 people per convoy, and the dates for the first two convoys were changed to today (Nov 5) and Nov 25.

The Dec 14 and Jan 2 convoys remain unchanged.

To register, people can call 076-224822 or register in person at Phuket Provincial Hall, or they can contact their local District Office or municipality. (See story here.)

The mass pilgrimages began in earnest yesterday, with 26 vans fully loaded with 300 people left Phuket Provincial Hall at 1pm.

Sakchai Niyomya, who led the van drivers explained, For these van trips we ask mourners to donate what they can to pay for diesel, and the van drivers will pay the rest out of their own pockets.

The van drivers will drop off the mourners at the Rattanakosin Hotel in Bangkok.

They will leave Bangkok tomorrow (Nov 6) to return to Phuket, Mr Sakchai said.

All mourners on the government-funded convoys and the van trips have been handed free travel-accessory packs donated by key tourism businesses and associations in Phuket.

French Consul in Phuket Claude de Crissey handed over to 10,000 of the free travel-accessory packs the Phuket Governor Chockchai Dejamornthan so they could be distributed to mourners travelling to Bangkok.

Among those who contributed donations to the packs, which mainly comprise toiletries and other personal-use items, were The Kata Group, headed by President Pramookpisit Achariyachai; the Phuket Tourist Association; the Patong Hotel Association; the Thai Hotel Association Southern Chapter; Thai Smile Air, operated by THAI Airways International; and Big C.
The Return of Containment

VENICE  The main element of any US policy towards the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment, the US diplomat George Kennan wrote in 1947 in a Foreign Affairs article, famously signed X. Replace Soviet Union with Russia, and Kennans containment policy makes perfect sense today. It is almost as if, in nearly 70 years, nothing has changed, even as everything has.

Of course, the Soviet Union has been, one might say, permanently contained. But Russia is showing the same expansive tendencies of which Kennan warned. In fact, today, the level of trust between Russia and the West is at its lowest point since at least the end of the Cold War. According to Vitaly I. Churkin, Russias ambassador to the United Nations, the current tensions are probably the worst since 1973, when the Yom Kippur War brought the United States and the Soviet Union closer to a nuclear confrontation than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Such pessimism is warranted. This year alone, the sources of discord with Russia have multiplied and deepened. Russia has withdrawn from a number of nuclear agreements, and the Kremlin recently placed Iskander missiles, which can transport medium-range nuclear devices, in Kaliningrad, near the Polish border.

Moreover, the Ukrainian crisis is far from resolved: the Minsk ceasefire agreements are not respected, and armed conflict may escalate at any moment. And it seems likely that Russia has been intervening directly in the internal politics of Western democracies, using leaks of sensitive documents and financing right-wing populists, from Marine Le Pen to Donald Trump, who would be supportive of the Kremlin.

Then there is Russias role in Syria. The ink was barely dry on a ceasefire agreement negotiated with the US when Russia, along with its ally, President Bashar al-Assads regime, began to carry out massive bombings that decimated Aleppo. When the US expressed its anger, Russia shot back that the Americans were being hypocrites. After all, they are not protesting Saudi Arabias bombings of Sanaa, Yemens capital, which is controlled by Iran-backed Houthis. (To engage in some macabre accounting, the difference is that hundreds of thousands have died in Syria, versus a few thousand in Yemen.)

It seems clear that the West needs to impose some limits on Russia. But how? It is a question that inspires deep divisions among European countries along geographic, historical, political and commercial lines. Even within countries, the question generates considerable tensions.

In Germany, which is preparing for a federal election next year, the Social Democrat Party (SPD) seems to be thinking in terms of detente, while Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Christian Democratic Union takes a tougher line. For the SPD  which seems to be nostalgic for the early 1970s, when the party was led by the charismatic Willy Brandt  this distinction might work well; public opinion polls show that Germans tend to be much closer to the SPD than to Merkel on Russia.

In France, both Le Pens far-right National Front and the far left, led by Jean-Luc Melenchon, support Russia. But, closer to the political center, the differences are significant. On the right, the difference between the moderate but firm line of Alain Juppe  the clear favorite to win next years presidential election  and the understanding advocated by Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Fillon goes beyond nuance. On the left, President Francois Hollandes stance  clear in content, but sometimes incoherent in approach  is far less positive toward Russia than that of, say, former Defense Minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement.

All of this disagreement raises doubts about the capability of the West to define a long term, patient but firm strategy to contain Russian President Vladimir Putins dangerous behavior.

In fact, Putin himself seems convinced that the West has no such capacity. In his view, the West is far too weak, divided, and obsessed with national electoral calendars to offer anything more than harsh words and ineffective action.

Some in the West argue that the key to handling Putin is to capitalize on Russias economic weakness, just as Putin has capitalized on the Wests political weakness. It certainly sounds rational, especially compared to a more diplomatic approach of lifting some economic sanctions in exchange for, say, cooperation in Syria. Responding to Russias razing of Aleppo with carrots would amount to paying tribute to a cynical, criminal policy.

But the stick option  reinforcing the sanctions regime against Russia  may not do the trick, either. For Russias wealthy and powerful, sanctions have little impact. It is ordinary Russians who suffer  and the Kremlin has made it very clear that it does not care much about what happens to ordinary Russians. In any case, Europe and the US are nowhere close to a consensus on toughening sanctions.

If the West is to halt Russias dangerous rush into the unknown, it must find something to agree on. It should, at least, begin to respond to the Kremlins shrewd and highly professional disinformation strategy with far more clarity and candor. Such a policy should be relatively uncontroversial, at least as compared to more concrete foreign-policy moves.

If it is to succeed, the West must recognize the advantages that Russia already wields  namely, Putins understanding of the Western psyche and political circumstances. On the international stage, Putin is tapping anti-American sentiment, which exists whether the US is strong or weak.

Within countries, he is encouraging anti-elitist and anti-globalization movements.

Toward the end of the Soviet era, Russian leaders looked like the rearguard of a lost ideological cause. Today, by contrast, they can be perceived as the avant-garde of a movement toward isolationism, jingoism, and even hyper-nationalism. It is precisely because Western countries have now been swept up in this movement that it is so critical for rational leaders to stand up and advocate coherent strategies for containing Russia.
South Dakotans in NFL Week 8: Don Gardner, Cade Johnson make NFL debuts

Former Jackrabbit teammates elevated from practice squad for first regular season action
By Mira Braneck

braneckm@grinnell.edu

Throughout the fall 2016 semester, student group Dissenting Voices has been working to combat sexual assault and the culture that surrounds it on campus. This work cannot be done alone, which is why Professor Theresa Geller, English, has been collaborating with Dissenting Voices to provide faculty support to their cause.

A couple years ago, when Dissenting Voices went around and asked a bunch of faculty members if they wanted to join Faculty Against Rape (FAR), Professor Geller was the only person who joined, said Leah Barr 19, one member of the Dissenting Voices leadership.

According to the groups website, FAR is a volunteer-run collective dedicated to getting more faculty involved in confronting campus sexual assault  FAR is committed to supporting faculty members who experience retaliation because of their efforts to address sexual violence on campus.

Dissenting Voices is not associated with the College, and members describe themselves as a group of policy-driven activists who aim to fight rape culture on campus and make structural change at the College.

Faculty participation in the discourse surrounding rape culture and sexual assault on campus can often be a controversial subject. Members of the faculty are sometimes reluctant to speak out against their institution in fear of the retaliation from college administrations.

My assumption is that people are afraid about being punished for speaking out  even tenured professors. I dont think that there are any faculty members who on this campus who are pro-rape, but I think that they have to sort of do something to mediate keeping their job, Barr said. And I think that brings up interesting questions of what are professors roles as advisors because all professors are mandatory reporters.

In addition to asking professors to join Faculty Against Rape again, Dissenting Voices has other plans for the semester: eliminating what they see as conflicts of interest in the Title IX office and creating or reinforcing institutional memory at the College.

According to Dissenting Voices, current Title IX coordinator Angela Voos is unable to adequately perform the role of Title IX coordinator because she is housed in the Presidents office and has two additional roles at the College.

The Title IX coordinator, we believe, should be a separate entity from the Presidents office. The rationale that were given is because the Title IX office is housed within the Presidents office, within the physical space and conceptually, its showing students the importance of that office. But to be an important and autonomous office, you can report directly to the President without being in the Presidents office, Barr said. We also need a Title IX coordinator who is full time. Its not fair to demand of Angela Voos that she has three full-time jobs. She is a human being. There are 24 hours in a day. Thats not a reasonable thing to ask of anyone.

Barr noted that the College of Wooster in Ohio, which was recently placed under investigation by the Office of Civil Rights, is similar to Grinnell and employs a Title IX coordinator who holds several titles.

Their complaint was also that their Title IX coordinator had a conflict of interest and their Title IX coordinator had two of the exact same positions that our Title IX coordinator has. So immediately within like a week and a half, they started a national search for a new Title IX coordinator, Barr said. So Im thinking if we can find peer institutions that are doing what I believe we should be doing, that we can create a more convincing argument.

In addition to pushing the College to hire a full-time Title IX coordinator, Dissenting Voices is working on campus to develop greater institutional memory surrounding sexual assault.

Essentially every four years theres an entirely new cohort of students and everyone who has been here is gone, and that makes it really easy for schools to just sort of pedal back on progress, or students arent pushing as hard because they havent seen the things that havent gone right, Barr said. So something that we feel is really important is to keep the momentum going and make sure that people are still angry, because theres a lot to be angry about. And theres hope that if we get angry enough and we work on policy, we can change something. And weve shown that.

One way that Dissenting Voices tries to reinforce institutional memory is by publicizing Grinnells history of sexual assault. However, these efforts are often met with pushback. Barr feels as though the College is not fulfilling its duty to inform students. She sat in on the community values sessions on sexual respect during New Student Orientation, and was shocked that Grinnells federal investigation was not brought up.

They literally did not mention that Grinnell is under investigation by the federal government for violating a civil rights statute, she said. And I think thats something that every student here has the right to know.

Dissenting Voices would also like to see stricter punitive policies surrounding sexual assault on campus.

For the most part, rapists on this campus are not expelled. They sometimes receive sanctions, no contact orders.  [which] dont do anything, Barr said. Rapists know they can rape with impunity. They know that theyre not really going to be punished. So it doesnt deter them. So if we create these policies with more stringent punishments or sanctions, I think the incidents of rape would go down. But the general consensus on campus is you can rape multiple people and not much is going to happen to you.

Barr, along with Dissenting Voices, wants to stress that sexual assault does happen at Grinnell, and that it is an issue that we as a campus must combat.

I think that there was this idea, especially this year  is that this isnt really a Grinnell problem, that we live in this insular, liberal, and in some cases radical community of intelligent people, she said. Our reporting statistics are low, like everywhere else. But the incidents is just as high as it is anywhere else.
Flags in New York City are flying at half-mast today in honor of Sergeant Paul Tuozzolo, the NYPD officer shot and killed yesterday afternoon in the Bronx.

Speaking at Jacobi Hospital, Mayor de Blasio promised the city would support the Sergeant Tuzzolo's family as long as they needed it:

"The City is in mourning, and the family of the NYPD is in mourning, and particularly all the men and women of the 4-3 Precinct are in mourning right now. They lost a very good man, a devoted man, a man who committed his life to protecting all of us. We told his wife, his mother, his father that the NYPD would be with them, with their family for as long as they need help for years and years to come. We will support that family."

At a press conference in front of Jacobi Hospital, Police Commissioner James O'Neil shed light on yesterday's incident, which left Sergeant Tuozzolo dead and Sergeant Emmanuel Kwo hospitalized with gunshot wounds to his leg.

According to O'Neill, patrol officers pulled over a red Jeep shortly before 3 p.m. yesterday that was bring driven by an armed man who was suspected of breaking into a woman's apartment in the Bronx. The suspect, who was later identified as Manuel Rosales, fired a .45 caliber handgun at the officers as they approached his car, striking both of them.

According to the Daily News, two additional officers, including a training recruit with Tuozzolo and Kwo, returned fire, killing Rosales.

Tuozzolo, a 19-year department veteran and 41-year-old resident of Suffolk County where he lived with his wife and two children, was shot in the face and died hours after the incident. Kwo, a 9-year veteran, is expected to survive the gunshot wounds to his leg.

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. released a statement expressing condolences to the friends and families of both officers:

"This heartbreaking incident puts into clear focus both the difficulties our police officers face every day and the true scourge of guns and gun violence faced by our police, our communities and our nation."

New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito also released a statement on the shooting:

"All New Yorkers should be outraged by the senseless violence that continues to needlessly take the lives of law enforcement officers and innocent bystanders in our city and across the country. Our thoughts and prayers are with the NYPD, with the family of Sgt. Tuozzolo and we wish a speedy recovery to Sgt Kwo.

Rosales, 35, was a Suffolk County resident with 17 prior arrests, according to O'Neill. Two of those, per the News, were for domestic violence. Rosales had reportedly broken into his estranged wife's apartment in the Bronx and stayed there for at least two hours, according to the Times, before she was able to call 911, causing him to flee the apartment.


The ladies known for punk rock and protesting are in town. Have a conversation with Maria Alyokhina (Masha) and Alexandra Bogino (Sasha) of Pussy Riot at the Lensic on Sunday, Nov. 13 . You can hear to what they have to say about Russian politics, activism and social issues such as LGBT rights, feminism and opposition to Vladimir Putin at 8pm for only $25 . (Nina Ferrell)

Maria Alyokhina and Alexandra Bogino discuss their feminism-based activism.

Tickets go on sale Friday, September 23rd at 10:00am MST

$25 assigned seating

Meow Wolf and The Lensic Performing Arts Center presents: A CONVERSATION WITH PUSSY RIOT

Featuring Maria Alyokhina (Masha) and Alexandra Bogino (Sasha)

https://meowwolf.com/event/pussy-riot/

Pussy Riot is a Russian feminist punk rock protest group based in Moscow. Founded in August 2011, it has a variable membership of approximately 11 women ranging in age from about 20 to 33. They stage unauthorized provocative guerrilla performances in unusual public locations, which are edited into music videos and posted on the Internet, as well as reported widely by international media. Their lyrical themes include feminism, LGBT rights, opposition to the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom they regard as a dictator, and links between Putin and the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church.

In 2012, five members of the group staged a performance in Moscows Cathedral of Christ the Savior, protesting the Orthodox Church leaders support for Putin during his election campaign. On March 3, two of the group members, Nadezdha Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina were arrested and charged with hooliganism. A third member, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was arrested two weeks later. On August 17, the three members were convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, and each was sentenced to two years imprisonment.

The trial and sentence attracted considerable criticism, particularly in the West. The case was adopted by human rights groups including Amnesty International, and by a number of prominent entertainers. Having served 21 months, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were released on December 23, 2013. They have since been traveling around the world speaking against issues mentioned above in Russia.
First, I would like to thank you for your continuous coverage of the I-81 Project. It is extremely important central New Yorkers remain informed on the process in order to provide insightful and knowledgeable feedback to the Department Of Transportation. However, I would like to point out several mistakes from your recent article about Assemblyman Gary Finch backing the viaduct option.

I believe it is completely unfair to characterize the I-81 project as a political hot potato for candidates and elected officials in central New York. This polarizing language leads readers to believe there is not a consensus among their elected officials. The truth is starkly different. The entire Central New York delegation to Albany, including the Cayuga County and Onondaga County legislators, the Auburn City Council and nine additional central New York towns, have all passed resolutions unanimously and unequivocally supporting maintaining the existing alignment of I-81 through Syracuse. Every elected official holding posts within these municipalities has taken a public stand against rerouting the current footprint of I-81, specifically against the community grid alternative presented by the DOT.

Your article also dubbed the boulevard, which is now referred to as the Community Grid alternative, as the apparent favorite. In no less than nine public opinion polls conducted over the course of the past three years, beginning in November 2013, less than a third of respondents endorsed a community grid alternative. In the most recent poll, conducted by Assemblywoman Pam Hunter, 64 percent of respondents supported rebuilding the I-81 viaduct.

Senator John DeFrancisco studied the information presented by the DOT at the beginning of October and has called for the reconsideration of the feasibility of the tunnel alternative. Various tunnel alternatives studied by the DOT were rejected before a full investigation of the cost, economic and environmental impact. These alternatives were less than $2 billion. This is well within the cost analysis of the project and only several hundred million dollars of the Community Grid Alternative.

Yes, this is a vast amount of money. Do not think we are pushing the cost aside as a non-factor. In 2014, Senator Chuck Schumer encouraged Central New York to think big and choose the best long term solution, even if it is the most expensive. We must continue this line of thought as we reach the most pivotal part of this process!

Decision makers in this process need to look at the community as a whole and make decisions, no matter the cost, to maintain the economic viability and community connectivity we so desperately need.

Ed Wagner

Owasco

Wagner is supervisor of the Town of Owasco
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Organisation: Solace Uganda

Limited

Duty Station: Kampala,

Uganda

Reports to: Logistics

Manager

About US:

Solace Uganda Limited is incorporated in Uganda as a licensed insurance

broker. Solace Uganda started operations as an independent insurance broker in

2015 and opened its first local office in Kampala. Solace Uganda is a full

service general, life and micro insurance broker and facilitates insurance

placements for a broad range of clients from individuals to corporations. The

company is certified and regulated by the Insurance Regulatory Authority (IRA),

and is a registered member of the Uganda Association of Insurance Brokers. The

company is offering dependable services of a well-established agency, with

quality protection at competitive rates, in addition to a complete spectrum of

products to meet all personal and business needs. Through strategic

relationships with Liberty Life, the company has key connections to emerging

markets regionally and globally.

Job Summary: The Sales

Executive requires selling of Insurance Services and Products, and to that end

the suitable person ought to have a good grasp of insurance knowledge and

terminology, or one who can read and quickly understand insurance concepts as

there will always be a need to pitch and explain these to client prospects, or

the need to formulate solutions to address client needs. The SalesExecutive requires selling of Insurance Services and Products, and to that endthe suitable person ought to have a good grasp of insurance knowledge andterminology, or one who can read and quickly understand insurance concepts asthere will always be a need to pitch and explain these to client prospects, orthe need to formulate solutions to address client needs.



Key Duties and Responsibilities:



Quickly respond to customer requests for

services and products, and generate competitive quotation and proposal offers.



Collaborate with other staff and put together

proposal offers to prospects;



Reach out to new and existing customers to

discuss their needs, and to explain how insurance solutions can alleviate

client needs;



Confidently explain services and product

features, and especially on how these are applicable to client needs;



Look for prospects from diverse sources such as

newspapers, Internet sources, directories, trade associations, network of

professional bodies and such similar sources as to create a target list from

which one can have a target sales list.



Maintain customer records and contacts, and make

use of existing in-house automated systems to make follow-ups and create repeat

sales;



Negotiate prices and terms of sales and service

agreements;



Submit orders obtained for processing;



Make quotation, negotiate credit terms and also

ensure compliance with bid and tender requirements;



Have good judgment in selecting services and

products, or assist customers in making choices that suit needs, and also take

up feedback and make collective action for offers that address specific needs.



Showcase efforts in customer retention and

devise means of generating repeat revenue.



Submit weekly reports of engagement and meet set

targets



Experience: Qualifications, Skills andExperience:



The applicant should hold a bachelors degree,

diploma, or its equivalent qualification



Comfort in use of the common productivity

computer applications such as MS Word, Excel or PowerPoint, and Internet

services that include e-mail, instant messaging, social media etc.



Excellent communication and interpersonal

skills, with a probing mindset.



Be persuasive and have a good and pleasant

demeanor with good attention to detail;



Be able to listen and capture client feedback,

and be able to write this up into offers that suit their need;

Personal Competencies:



Initiative  Job requires a

willingness to take on responsibilities and challenges.



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Days after Indian airport operator and developer GMR won an arbitration against Government of Maldives over the soured deal to construct a state-of-art Male airport, after a change of government in the island nation two years back, Maldives government said, it would pay the arbitration amount of $ 270 million to GMR.

The final compensation amount decided by a three member international arbitral tribunal included GMR's debt and equity invested in the airport project along with return of 17 per cent. It will also get ermination and legal cost. The amount will be paid post tax in Maldives to GMIAL (GMR's Maldives Airport unit) by Abdulla Yameens government.

Maldives and GMR had challenged an earlier order of the tribunal in 2014 which held both the Government of Maldives and GMIAL for the damage caused. Maldives government will now dip into its national reserves to pay off the compensation and not challenge this order further.

"We want to move ahead and our government wants to move ahead. We will pay the compensation. It is acceptable to us," said Ahmed Mohamed, Maldives ambassador to India, at the sidelines of the launch of a Maldivian airline in the capital on Friday.

"We have in fact respected the contract and sought first to move arbitration," Mohamed said. "We will now go with it," he said.

GMR had initially sought a compensation of $ 1.5 billion for the cancelled contract over the new government disallowing it tax breaks for developing the Male airport.

The payment of final compensation amount of $270 million to GMR's Maldives unit is expected to be started soon and has received clearances from the finance ministry of Maldives.
Jamaat-e-Islami Hind on Saturday demanded stern punishment for the culprits of the encounter in Bhopal in which eight SIMI activists who had escaped from the Central Jail were killed, and said it appeared extremely suspicious.

Media reports and videos showing the Bhopal encounter make it appear extremely suspicious and raise some serious questions that need to be answered by the government and police, said Muhammad Saleem Engineer, general secretary of JIH.

Engineer, who was addressing a press conference, said that according to the lawyer of the undertrials, the case against his clients was very weak and there was a distinct possibility that they would have been acquitted soon. If this was the case, then they had no reason to escape from prison, he said.

He noted that the incident bears a deep resemblance to the Batla House encounter and custodial deaths of Khalid Mujahid, Qateel Siddiqui and Mohammed Waqas.

The Jamaat, he said, demands a high level judicial enquiry under the Supreme Court to find out the real culprits of this encounter and award strict punishment to the guilty. Jamaat wants the probe to bring out all the facts about the jail break and the encounter, he said.

The JIH has said that it is incorrect to state that one must not question the authenticity of the encounter as it would lower the morale of the police force. The Supreme Court of India has itself said in a judgment that killings in police encounters require independent investigation, Engineer said.

The Muslim organisation also criticised the Delhi Police for its reluctance to question those who allegedly assaulted JNU student Najeeb in full public view before he went missing, and also the lackadaisical attitude of the JNU administration in dealing with the issue.

Engineer also explained the reasons behind Jamaats opposition to Uniform Civil Code and condemned the decision of an inter-ministerial panel to take NDTV India, a leading Hindi channel, off air for a day. He said: This is a direct violation of the freedom of the press and is reminiscent of the dark days of the Emergency where there were arbitrary and punitive curbs on the media. Jamaat demands that this decision should be revoked immediately.
Britain has constantly suffered from "deliberate historical amnesia" about their wrong-doings during their colonial rule in India, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said on Friday.



The former Union minister also disagreed with Vice President Hamid Ansari that there was absence of "emotional unity" among Indians before the advent of colonial rulers.



Speaking at the release of his (Tharoor's) book 'An Era of Darkness - The British Empire in India', the Congress MP said the British have only "portrayed one-sided vision of the colonial rule" so far.



Releasing the book, Vice President Hamid Ansari said: "Famine, forced migration and brutality were principal characteristics of the colonial rule in India," and added these were three examples of why British rule over India was "despotic and anything but enlightened".



The Vice President, however, wondered: "But, is this not the story of all colonial and imperial ventures in history?"



"Was there an India as a cohesive entity before the advent of colonial masters" Ansari asked, and then himself replied that an answer to this question would help understand the process by which the British succeeded.



"We need to accept that there was, in that initial period, no India -- politically or emotionally," he said.



Later, interacting with TV anchor and columnist Karan Thapar, Tharoor disagreed with the Vice President on the point of absence of emotional unity amongst Indians.



Tharoor argued that both schools of thought -- the Hindus and the Muslims -- suggested that there was enough "emotional unity" in different parts of India.



In this context, Tharoor referred to the visit of Adi Shankaracharya to various parts of India -- from south to north and from Gujarat to Puri in Odisha. Similarly, the Congress MP said Indian muslims during their Haj always jointly identified themselves as belonging to the "Hind".



Congress MP said Britain should tender an "apology" to India for their brutality and also teach British children the true history of the "horrendous" colonial rule in India.



Tharoor, also a former UN diplomat, said: "After all, the beauties of the cities like London were built by the resources taken away from India," and added: "The loot in fact was extensive."



Tharoor alleged the past colonial masters have destroyed the textile industry in Dhaka and also carried out the same formula with the steel and shipping industry in south India, which was far superior than that of Britain.



On the apology issue, the former Union minister, however, said he is not expecting the "apology" from British Prime Minister Theresa May, who is arriving in India on November 7.



"It is a co-incidence that the book is being released today, just two days before the arrival of the British Prime Minister," Tharoor aded.




Life has come to a full circle for Kanubhai Gandhi. Kanubhai, whose photograph as a youngster holding his grandfather Mahatma Gandhi's stick at Juhu Beach in Mumbai during the Dandi March is famous, remains on ventilator support at a private hospital in Surat after he suffered a heart attack a few days ago. His left side has been paralysed.

Image courtesy: Gandhi Virtual Ashram website

For the last few months, Kanubhai, 86, has been staying with his wife Shivalaxmi, 90, at Ramakrishna Temple on the famous Athwa Lines of Surat. The couple have no children.

Kanubhai had worked with NASA as a scientist and spent larger part of his life in the United States. His wife was a professor and researcher at the Boston Biomedical Research Institute. The couple returned to India sometime in 2014 and stayed at various places, including Ahmedabad and New Delhi, before choosing to stay in Surat.

He was rushed to the Shiv Jyoti Hospital by the Temple Trust president Kailash Chhabra.

What is surprising is that there has been no help announced either by the Gujarat government or the Union government. According to those taking care of him, except for his two sisters, nobody from Gandhi's family has inquired about Kanubhai. Shivalaxmi suffers from age related issues and hearing loss.

Dhimant Badhia, who runs a weaving centre at the Gandhi Ashram, helped the ailing Gandhi with a personal contribution of Rs 21,000. My ancestors had worked with Gandhiji and he is grandson of (Mahatma) Gandhi. I thought I should help, he told THE WEEK. Badhia said that he had put up a word to other Gandhians and political leaders, including from the Congress.

A couple of days ago, the BJP announced that it would take care of all his expenses. State BJP spokesman Bharat Pandya said that they had given instruction to Surat unit president to visit the hospital, almost daily. Pandya told THE WEEK that they would decide upon the kind of assistance that could be given to Shivalaxmi in case, "God forbid", something untoward happens to Kanubhai.

It is still not known as to where the money that Kanubhai and his wife earned in the United States went. Dilip Patel, a senior journalist working with a vernacular daily in Ahmedabad, said that in the past when Kanubhai stayed in the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad, he had attempted asking this question several times. But Kanubhai did not reply, Patel said.
One of the strangest sagas of this weird, long election has been that of a Jane Doe who filed a suit against Donald Trump, claiming that he raped her when she was 13 years old. Yesterday, Doe voluntarily dropped her suit.

Doe, who also went by Katie Johnson, alleged that Trump had raped her at a sex party hosted by former Wall Street trader and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in 1994. On Wednesday, After Doe/Johnson canceled a press conference with attorney Lisa Bloom, during which she was supposed to detail her allegations against Trump.

In a one-page court filing, Doe/Johnson voluntarily dismissed her lawsuit in federal court yesterday afternoon, putting an end to the story for now. This was Doe/Johnson's second lawsuit against Trump over the sexual assault claims, but the first one was dismissed because it "failed to properly state any specific federal civil rights violations," according to the Daily News.

The Daily Mail spoke to Doe/Johnson and published pictures of her, referring to her as Katie Johnson. In the story, Johnson claims that she came to New York City in 1994 to visit modeling agencies and was recruited to be part of Epstein's underage sex parties. Johnson also claims she didn't know who Trump was until she recognized him on The Apprentice years later.

Earlier in the year, Jezebel explained how the case began making the rounds, and their own attempts to speak with Doe/Johnson. But reporters from the website were turned down by a number of people who claimed to be working with or in contact with Doe/Johnson and ultimately concluded the story was less of a scandal and more a "clumsy" attempt at a smear.
Move aside looks or education (well, at least for a minute), Tinder users now have a new trait to match on. With the last weekend to go before the much awaited US polls on November 8, the global dating app launched a new feature in 16 countries last month to find out which way their users swing as the big day draws near.

For instance, India came up with a clear voteabout 96 per cent of women surveyed in our country have 'swiped right' for the democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. As Tinder users in countries such as the US, UK, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, Spain and the UK weighed in on issues of taxes, immigration, gun control, education and others, their 'vote' swung towards the woman nominee. All except one, Russia, where 71 per cent users said they would vote for Trump despite 76 per cent matching Clinton's views on issues.

Other interesting insights that came up were: Globally, 73 per cent would vote for Clinton with 80 per cent users matching with her on issues. In comparison, 53 per cent of app users in America said they planned to vote for Clinton, 57 per cent preferred a path to citizenship for undocumented citizens, 65 per cent wanted higher taxes for the 1 per cent in contrast with 60 per cent Brazilian users who don't want a tax increase on the 1 per cent. Then, 56 per cent of American users said college tuition should be free, along with 86 per cent of Argentinian users.

The Tinder feature named Swipe the Vote, launched in partnership with Rock the Vote, claims to be one of the largest global polls among millennials ever.
A newsletter from a San Diego Catholic church has warned parishioners that they will go to hell if they vote for Democrats.



The San Diego Union-Tribune says a flier inserted in the October 16 bulletin of the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church called voting Democratic a mortal sin.



It cited five policies -- including support for abortion and same-sex marriage -- that will doom supporters to eternal damnation, the CBS News online reported.



On October 30, the bulletin itself took a Hillary Clinton quote out of context to claim she is influenced by Satan. It also criticised immigration policies and gun control.



The church doubles as an election polling site.



The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego said on Wednesday that the messages do not reflect catholic teaching and are inappropriate. The diocese says people should vote according to their conscience.



"By descending into endorsing one party or another or suggesting outlandishly that if you vote for one party you will go to hell is just flat out wrong," spokesman Kevin Eckery told CBS San Diego affiliate KFMB-TV.


The myriad conversations in the background are incomprehensible to me. Theres not a word of English to be heard. From the repeated sounds of si, I figure out that all this chatter is in some version of Spanish or the other.

I am in Miami, in the sunshine state of Florida, although the clouds have been rather generous with their drizzles all week. I try asking a question, but no one understands. English is considered a foreign tongue here. Despite the drizzle, theres a substantial crowd at an early voting centre at Viscanya.

A row of placards lead up to the venue. Apart from the two presidential candidates, the names of most others who are contesting seats in Congress, Senate and local bodies seem Hispanic.

At first, it seems Clinton shouldnt have a problem, what with Trumps anti-Hispanic rants. But that is just the first thought. Louis Zarnalouai is campaigning for a local candidate not because he supports her, but because hes paid for the job. When it comes to the choice for president, he is still uncertain. He doesnt like Trump too much, but hes Republican, and voting Clinton was not easy. "I think Ill let Jesus Christ guide me. If he doesnt, I will scribble his name all over the ballot paper."

A sign in Miami | Rekha Dixit

Miami, indeed all of Florida, has a substantial Cuban population who are largely Republican, perhaps as a natural protest against the government of their birth country. Also, Cubans dont consider themselves to be the same as other Hispanics. According to US rules, the moment a Cuban gets a toehold in the country, he is under the countrys protection -- unlike the others who struggle to legitimise their stay.

There are more complex demographic dynamics at play in Florida, which, while originally a southern state in attitude, has seen a huge influx of immigrants. Theres enough reason for pollsters to be confused about how Florida will swing. Predictions have put Clinton and Trump ahead of each other regularly, with nothing as conclusive as Ohio. This is Marco Rubio land, announces one yard sign. Indeed, had it been Rubio instead of Trump, there wouldnt have been any indecision. Nor for Democrats if Bernie Sanders was running, emphasises Annete Martin, half Argentinian, half Italian in descent.

Both parties have sent their stars to woo Florida. Trump is the biggest star in his camp, and he has spent much time in the final stage here. Obama himself had spoken in Miami, and the state has seen star performers like Jenifer Lopez. Both sides are keen on getting maximum votes submitted in the early voting -- before some last minute crisis hits either the voters life, or worse, the candidates campaign.

Early voting among Hispanics is high, 129 percent more when compared to 2012.

At the voting centre, I meet several legal experts from an advocacy group, whove come from New York and Arizona to help. The group tries to ensure that voters can exercise their franchise without intimidation or confusion. "This is a crucial state, nothing should go wrong here," says one volunteer, requesting anonymity. They are non-partisan, and their aim is to ensure maximum voting and help the voter. "A confused or scared voter is the worst thing that could happen.

Floridas cruciality comes from its 29 electoral votes, which could, as it has in the past, make the president. Floridas uncanny knack of voting for the man who becomes president has been 100 per cent since 2000.

Early voting is different from Election Day only in one way. On election day, the voter can vote only in the booth assigned to his area, like in India. But during early voting, he can go to any centre in the state. The voter submits an identity proof and the officials feed in the information to the database, getting a print out of his particular county( with the local candidates names printed on the form, too). The voter goes to a kiosk, and with a pen, marks his choice down the line from president to council. Then he goes to the scanning machine to scan his form, which is then submitted into the database. He also returns the paper form, though in some states, the voter can keep a copy.

Theres no ink tattoo on the finger. Instead, the voter gets a sticker which proclaims -- Ive voted. Later that day, as I travel across the city, I see this sticker on so many shirt fronts, laptops, purses voters proudly announcing their deed.
In December 2013, Avani Bansal, who had just completed her masters in law from Oxford University, landed in the district court of Harda in Madhya Pradesh. She had made up her mind to begin her career in litigation the hard waytaking up practice in criminal law in a trial court. She knew it would be tough, but that didnt prepare her for the extremely hostile workplace.

Bansal, 28, who is about to start practice in the Supreme Court, recalls how the male lawyers in the trial court used every tactic under the belt to unnerve herfrom commenting on her attire to making snide remarks about her Oxford degree to getting outright hostile by yelling at her, Zyada hoshiyari na dikhao [Dont try to act smart].

I was one of two or three women in a court where hundreds of lawyers practised, she says. I was an oddity who was stared at, humiliated, who was either an irritant for the male lawyers or a source of amusement. The lawyers were hostile, and the judges never reprimanded them.

If Bansal, a new entrant, had to brave hostility borne out of gender bias in a trial court, a senior lawyer like Indira Jaising says she still has to tackle discrimination in the hallowed precincts of the Supreme Court. Even after I have made it, my word is often treated as less valuable than the word of a male lawyer, she says (see interview).

The bench appears to be no different, with women judges complaining of discrimination, too. Very few of them have made it to the top levels, and even then, their calibre is under great scrutiny. Former Supreme Court judge Gyan Sudha Misra reportedly told a fellow male judge who was constantly questioning her understanding of an issue, Stop judging the judge, and start judging the matter.

And, statistics prove it is a mans world. There is only one woman judgeJustice R. Banumathiin the Supreme Court as against 25 male judges. Only six women have been appointed as judges of the apex court till now. The 24 High Courts in the country have only 64 women judges compared to 557 male judges, and there is not a single woman judge in eight High Courts. While at least 44 names were recommended by the Allahabad High Court collegium to the government recently for appointment as judges, only two of them are women. It took more than four decades after independence for a woman to be appointed as a Supreme Court judge. A woman was appointed to the High Court only in 1959. At no point have there been more than two women judges in the Supreme Court.

While women got the right to practise in 1922, Jaising became the first woman additional solicitor general in 2009. The country has not had a woman solicitor general or attorney general. From 1992 to 2005, at the top three courts of the countrySupreme Court, Delhi High Court and Bombay High Court, only one woman had been designated senior advocate. The designations are on hold in the Supreme Court till it decides on a petition filed by Jaising, urging for greater transparency in the nomination of senior counsels.

Only 12 women have been designated senior counsels by the Supreme Court so far. Only eight women have got that distinction in the Delhi High Court and six in the Bombay High Court. The Allahabad High Court, one of the oldest in the country, has had only one senior woman advocate.

Women lawyers face problems right from when they enter the field. Rucha Anant Pandey, 24, who started practising at the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court a few months ago, says her initiation into the field was in a trial court in Pune, where she handled criminal cases along with a senior. Everyone in the court, from the bailiff to the court clerk to male lawyers asked her, Madam, kya kar rahe ho [What are you doing here]?, referring to her as a misfit in the world of criminal law. A judge once asked her to call her senior, and advised him to give her only certain kind of cases.

No arguments: Clients prefer their cases to be argued by male lawyers, says Supreme Court lawyer Malvika Trivedi | Aayush Goel

Even a seasoned lawyer like senior Supreme Court advocate Meenakshi Arora recalls how some years ago when she was arguing a matter, the judges were extremely hostile and almost threw the file. However, the same argument when made a few years later by a male senior was allowed. Your mind has to be open. Dont look at my gender, dont look at my face, only look at the point that I am making, says Arora.

There are, however, judges who are encouraging towards women. Many years ago, a judge saw me as a well prepared young junior and there was a senior appearing against me. He gave me the full and complete right to argue the matter. That confidence has kept me in good stead for life, says Supreme Court lawyer Malvika Trivedi.

But women are not expected to be aggressive, and if they are, they are branded as cantankerous or rude. Former Delhi High Court Chief Justice A.P. Shah recalls having once recommended a woman lawyer as a judge, but she was rejected apparently because she was rude. If a male lawyer replies in a certain manner to a judge, it is usually taken in the stride. But if the same things were to be said by a woman, it becomes a topic of discussion for the bar or bench, and not in a pleasant way, he says. Shah is known as one of the few High Court chief justices to recommend a good number of women for judgeship; many of the names, however, got rejected.

Women also have to deal with men who are either condescending or patronising. Either they are nasty to you or would want to take you in their protective umbrella, which is the old boys club. They do not like women who stand on their own dint and are strong individuals, says Supreme Court lawyer Shilpi Jain.

If you are aligned to a chamber or are related to a judge or a senior lawyer, you are a part of this club. It helps to have a godfather, says a lady judge in a district court in Delhi. She says there are many examples of women who have made it because they were either related to a judge or a senior lawyer or were affiliated to a certain chamber.

The attitude of clients is also not very encouraging. Trivedi talks about clients getting the case file prepared by a woman lawyer, but wanting their case to be argued by a male lawyer. Also, women lawyers are seen as suited to handle family law cases and social issues, and not trusted with high stake cases. Former Supreme Court judge Sujata Manohar said the inability to get cases is a main reason why women are losing out on judgeship. Women still find it difficult to get litigation work. As a result, there are very few successful women lawyers practising at the bar. So women lawyers rarely figure among lawyers from the bar being considered for appointment as judges of the High Courts.

Women lawyers have to be extra careful about how they dress up, too. A retired judge of the Delhi High Court is still remembered for his nasty comments on the attire of women lawyers. It is said that women were scared to appear before him because of his comments, which ranged from Are you dressed up for a party? to You are so focused on your appearance that you cannot even remember to take the next date from me.

Women judges are also at the receiving end of sexism. There have been instances of losing male lawyers foul-mouthing them. A woman judge in Karkardooma courts in Delhi filed an FIR when she was subjected to sexist abuses by a lawyer. But her own chief judicial magistrate reportedly asked her to withdraw the complaint.

Battling bias: Avani Bansal says she was humiliated by male lawyers during her stint at a trial court in Madhya Pradesh | Aayush Goel

A retired woman judge of the Supreme Court said there was acceptance of judgments passed by her only if they were upheld by a larger bench. Once a woman has reached the top levels in the profession, she has to work even harder to avoid any slip up. One small mistake, and the males in the profession immediately turn around and say, ye to aurat hai [she is a woman, after all], says Arora.

There is also the issue of sexual harassment of women in the field, and this is said to be an important reason why women leave the profession. Jaising said she was subjected to sexual harassment in the Supreme Court two years ago. She calls the menace the hidden dirty secret of the legal profession. She is now fighting the case of a woman judge in Madhya Pradesh who had to resign after she made a complaint of sexual harassment against her senior.

It is ironic that the Supreme Court, which issued the Vishaka guidelines for protection of women against sexual harassment at the workplace in 1997, set up a committee to deal with complaints as required by the guidelines only in 2013.

The committee has received two complaints so far, says Prerna Kumari, general secretary of the Supreme Court Women Lawyers Association. Action was taken in one case. The entry of the lawyer was restricted. In the other case, the complainant was not interested in pursuing the matter further, she says.

Working conditions for women lawyers with regard to infrastructure, such as lack of proper office space and toilets, are an issue. Also, many find it difficult to balance family with the long work hours required in litigation. I have left my children in fever to come to work. As soon as a woman lawyer cites a domestic issue, she is labelled unprofessional, says Trivedi.

No wonder, the dropout rate of women lawyers is very high. Arora says 40 women joined practice with her in the Supreme Court; three or four years later, only four or five were left. The situation is not very different even now. Pandey says her class that passed out from the National Law University in Raipur in 2015 had girls and boys in equal proportion, but only three of the women students have taken to litigation.

A large number of women lawyers are opting for the corporate sector, joining private companies or banks and corporate law firms. And, the main reason for this is their inability to break the glass ceiling.

Justice M. Fathima Beevi, the first woman judge of the Supreme Court, says in the higher judiciary, the percentage of women judges is not very good. It is actually just nominal. We need to look into the reasons for that, she says (see interview).

The standards applied to a woman when considering her for elevation are higher than those applied to a male judge, says Misra. I would say that this happens unconsciously, she says. I guess lack of faith and belief in the abilities of women is still rooted in society and more so in the male psyche and we prefer to have their token presence, especially in the higher judiciary, more for the sake of symbol rather than their equal participation.

A major reason for many deserving women not getting designated as seniors or not getting appointed to the higher judiciary is said to be their inability to lobby for those posts. I cannot go to a party and hang out there with the guys, holding on to a drink or bringing a judge a drink, said a lady judge in a district court in Delhi.

There are complaints about lack of transparency in designation of women as senior counsel. There is a theory in the legal circles about how former Supreme Court judge Ruma Pal was denied the chance of becoming Indias first woman chief justice simply by ensuring that she was sworn in later than a male colleague. Pal is recognised as one of the finest judges the country has had, and it is said that when she was on bench, she was the one who really wore the pants.

Manohar points out that where an examination is involved, there is a good number of women qualifying as judges. There are more women in judicial service as the selection is by an examination and interview. Those who reach the position of district judges are considered for appointment as High Court judges. This is a slow process and any discrimination in promotion would affect a woman judicial officer adversely. This results in less women judicial officers reaching the High Court, she says.

Ripple effect: Former Supreme Court judge Sujata Manohar says the inability to get cases is the main reason why women are losing out on judgeship | Sameer Joshi

Supreme Court lawyer Sneha Kalita, who has intervened in the apex courts hearing on the National Judicial Appointments Commission on the issue of appointment of women judges, says a proper selection procedure with transparency and accountability needs to be set up. There are many eminent women judges and senior lady lawyers. Why should they not be chosen? she asks.

A parliamentary standing committee on law and justice has proposed reservation for women in the higher judiciary. The standing committee, in its report in 2015, recommended that women should have equal representation in the higher judiciary, and to ensure that, reservation could be considered, says Dr E.M.S. Natchiappan, who is former chairman of the committee.

This has, however, evoked mixed responses. While some say it will help in increasing the critical mass of women judges, making the workspace more gender equal, there are others who say that there should be a conscious effort to give representation to women, based on their merit.

Why should there be only one woman judge in the Supreme Court, which is supposed to have representation from all over the country? You should have women in the Supreme Court not just for projection sake but because there are women who merit to be there, says Rekha Sharma, former judge of the Delhi High Court.

But the scenario is bound to change in a few years time, says Bar Council of India chairman Manan Mishra, as more and more girls are passing out of law schools. Only recently, I was at the convocation of the National Law School in Bengaluru, and of the 11 gold medallists, eight were women, he says.

In the 2016 Common Law Admission Test, 21,520 of 45,041 applicants were women; 23,517 of the applicants were men and four were transgenders. Of the 1,974 candidates who cleared the exam, 810 (41 per cent) were women.

Faizan Mustafa, vice chancellor, NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, says most law schools have 30 per cent reservation for women now. The real issue is good female lawyers of ten years seniority who are to be considered for high court judgeship are not available, he says. This gap is soon going to be filled as young lawyers from lower-ranked law schools who joined practice or returned to it after corporate life of few years after payment of educational loans are going to complete 10 years soon. They are energetic, competent and assertive.

The women in law may have changed, but will the men in law also now change?
Haifa is on the "front line" in any action in the north but this blog looks at life in the shadow of danger to all of Israel
Police in Rockland County are investigating two separate incidents involving female victims who were approached from behind by an unknown male subject.

The first incident happened Tuesday on Carmen Court in Chestnut Ridge, while the second happened Thursday on Olympia Lane in Monsey. Both incidents occurred in the driveways of the victims homes after they exited their vehicles, and both took place between 8:30 p.m and 10 p.m.

The victim in the most recent incident said she isnt sure whether she was followed by a suspect in a car or whether he was lurking in a neighborhood. Authorities say he came up behind her and tried to incapacitate her with ammonia in a surprise attack that took place just steps from her side door.

She couldnt scream, because he had her mouth covered, husband Pinny Lipschuptz said. He had some type of ammonia or something on his hands. Her eyes were burning, and she said she knew she should fight back, but she couldnt. He had her in such a grip that she couldnt move.

Lipschuptz said something, perhaps a passing car, may have scared off the suspect, who fled without seriously hurting the victim or stealing anything. The unsettling incident happened on a quiet street where the family has lived for 22 years.

I was born in this town 58 years ago, Lipschuptz said. So it shakes you up when something like this happens in a small town, quiet street.

It is unknown if the incidents are related, but both are being investigated by the Ramapo Police Detective Division with assistance from the Rockland County Sheriffs Department.

Anyone with information is asked to contact authorities.

(Source: WABC)
News, analysis, and archives on the grassroots in Haiti. Nouvel, analiz, ak achiv sou baz yo an AYITI. Noticias, analisis y archivos sobre el pueblo de Haiti.
Train passengers face a Christmas of travel chaos but by planning ahead they can avoid the worst of any disruption  and even save money.

Network Rail, in charge of the countrys creaking railway infrastructure, has already indicated that 200 improvement projects are likely to disrupt travel plans for thousands of commuters over the festive period.

Those travelling to or from London, Manchester and Cardiff and using trains in the South West, Wales, East Anglia and Kent will be hit by the engineering works.

Christmas trains: Advance tickets are released up to 12 weeks before the date of travel

They start on Christmas Eve and will run until January 2  a period chosen by Network Rail because fewer passengers travel at these times.

This work is in addition to the general overcrowding, price hikes, delays and occasional strikes which long-suffering train users put up with all year round.

Southern Railway workers are staging strikes for three days beginning December 22.

With careful planning and by booking early you can avoid the worst of any disruptions  details of which can be found via the future engineering works link on the bottom of the National Rail enquiries website.

In addition, you can save more than 100 by booking in advance  savings that could be used to buy Christmas presents.

Advance tickets are released up to 12 weeks before the date of travel  though the discounts on offer vary between providers. For example, a single journey to Birmingham from London with London Midland can be pre-booked now for 6.

Seasonal service: But you can plan around engineering work

The train operators sell a limited number of discounted advance tickets in batches from now until Christmas. Each batch costs more  until the price reverts to what you would pay if purchasing a ticket on the day of travel.

In some cases it can be cheaper to book a first-class ticket in advance rather than buying a standard class ticket on the day. Providers such as Virgin Trains hand out free mince pies to first-class travellers while standard fare passengers get to be packed in like sardines.

A journey from London to Manchester can cost 22 in advance one way for standard travel with Virgin Trains on December 23 but 81.40 is the cheapest ticket on the day  with a flexible anytime ticket costing 166. Pre-booked first-class travel can cost 43.

Although booking in advance is the best way to save money, you can also drive down costs by split-ticketing. This is where one long-distance trip works out cheaper if it is bought as separate tickets for different legs of the same journey.

Specialist websites such as TicketySplit and Trainsplit will do the legwork for you.

Mike Richardson, owner of website Raileasy  which offers the Trainsplit function  says: Train operators do not offer as many advance tickets as they should. They are aware they have a captive audience over the Christmas period and want to squeeze as much money from travellers as possible.

I saved 37 on my fare - and the ticket is safely stored on my phone Early booker: Rachael Williams has already paid for a trip to see family Rachael Williams books trains well in advance when visiting family and friends at Christmas. The insurance broker has paid 23 for a single journey on December 23 from London to Swansea where her family live. If she had left it until the day of travel, it would have cost more than 60. By choosing to travel before Christmas Eve she will also avoid any possible engineering works. Rachael, 31, from Clapham, South-West London, used the Trainline website to book tickets. Although it meant she paid a booking fee, she liked the convenience of buying a ticket on her smartphone. Rachael says: There is no reason to leave the purchase of train tickets to the last minute. Booking in advance has given me an excuse to sort out my Christmas plans early. Buying the ticket on a phone app means I do not have to worry about losing it. I just press a button on the mobile and the ticket instantly appears  and it can be scanned to open barriers at electronic gates or be shown to an inspector.

Do not fall for train company website claims of cheapest prices. This is an empty boast as you may actually find a better deal by splitting the ticket into different legs.

Richardson says a single journey booked in advance from Birmingham to Glasgow (travelling after 3pm on December 23) costs 46.50. But by split-ticketing, the same journey costs just 18.80.

This is because the journey from Birmingham to Wolverhampton costs 3.80 while the Wolverhampton to Glasgow leg costs 15. Train- split takes a 10 per cent cut of the saving as a fee  2.77  so the actual saving you make is 24.93.

When planning to travel, it pays to be flexible. When you buy advance tickets, they are usually for specific trains and times  open returns are more costly. It is also cheaper to travel after 10am to get off-peak rates.

Online ticket seller Trainline says: You can beat the crowds and get cheaper deals over Christmas by avoiding the busiest days of December 22 and 23.

To make savings book now. Our customers saved a total of 22million by booking in advance for Christmas last year  its a no brainer.

Websites such as Trainline and RedSpottedHanky can do the bargain-price hunting work on your behalf. But be aware they charge for their service.

Flexible: It is cheaper to travel after 10am to get off-peak rates

RedSpottedHanky imposes a 1 booking fee while Trainline levies a booking fee up to 1.50 plus a further 2 per cent if you buy online using a credit card.

A spokesman for the industry trade body Rail Delivery Group says: It is always worth checking out the websites of the train companies directly as you might find they can get you the cheapest tickets available without further charges.

It is also worth purchasing a rail card if you travel at times other than just Christmas  it will soon pay for itself.

Railcards cost 30 and usually offer a third off the price.

Cards available include a 16-25 Railcard for youngsters, Senior Railcard for those aged 60 and over, a Two Together Railcard for two named people and a Family & Friends Railcard  which offers discounts for up to four adults and four children travelling together.

Although adults get a third off fares, the discounts for youngsters on the card aged 15 or under can be as much as 60 per cent.

Train operators occasionally offer special deals. For example, Great Western, whose passengers have suffered from staff strikes in the past, is upping the third off discount for holders of a 16-25 Railcard to 50 per cent for select journeys up to the end of January 2017.

A spokesman for Network Rail says: Upgrades usually take place over Bank Holidays as up to 50 per cent fewer people travel at this time.
K.L. writes: I was cold-called by SW1 Options Limited. The only thing I agreed was to read the companys literature, which I am now sending on to you. It does not say anything concrete and bears no similarity to the verbal promises I was given of returns of 3 to 4 per cent a week. I will decline its offer.

I wish I had room to print all the lies told by this so-called investment company. Any promises you were given about fantastic returns on your money using complex binary options would just make the list even longer.

SW1 Options, which uses addresses in London and also claims links to Israel and to Dubai and Sharjah in the Gulf, has told investors: SW1 Options was founded by a group of established hedge fund managers, traders and analysts with a proven track record of success within the financial arena.

SW1 Options used the name of RD Law, based in Tel Aviv in Israel (pictured) without permission

Well, no it was not. It was founded by Nicholas Alexander Hart, 27, from Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, who has never been registered with the Financial Conduct Authority as any kind of trader or adviser.

When I challenged him, Hart admitted this, promising to change his sales pitch and pleading: I did not at any time try to conspire to misrepresent SW1 Options to clients in any way.

But he failed to name a single one of the experienced people he claimed had a proven track record.

So in that case, since he owns the company and is its sole director, where did Hart himself gain his expertise? He told me: I have only gained self-experience over a number of years. This is from associates, books and training seminars.

In other words, he has not worked in the financial sector and has never been licensed to offer financial advice or carry out a single trade. Although Hart is British, with an Essex home address and his company has used at least three separate addresses in London, terms and conditions issued to investors quote legal wording prepared by law firm RD Law, based in Tel Aviv in Israel.

Hart told me the lawyers requested to be a part of our terms and conditions to generate them more business.

This came as news to RD Law boss Tal Itzhak Ron, who assured me he had never even heard of SW1 Options. He said his firms name had been used without permission.

REVEALED... PHOTO DOUBLE TAKE Peter Allen: Corporate finance adviser at Deloitte, who has no connection to SW1 Options, but whose photograph appears to have been taken Daniel Parris: How the photograph appears on the SW1 Options website, with a biography claiming he is an independent financial adviser

A further puzzle is that SW1 Options decorates its website with awards and titles  Best Broker 2012, Traders Choice 2013  supposedly issued well before the company was set up in 2015.

But perhaps the biggest lies of all are the success stories displayed on the companys website. Daniel Parris describes himself as an independent financial adviser who worked for five years for the Financial Conduct Authority and its predecessor and joined SW1 Options after it poached one of his best clients.

The regulator refused to confirm or deny this, despite knowing there is a huge question mark over whether Parris even exists. You see, I found the picture of Parris displayed by SW1 Options is actually a photograph of Peter Allen, a corporate finance adviser with Deloitte in Belfast.

Deloitte told me last Thursday it had no connection to SW1 Options, explaining: It just looks like it has stolen a photo of Peter from our website and used it.

Other success stories are equally false. So-called senior wealth manager Peter Whistler is really Italian writer and lecturer Daniel Lumera. The photograph of head of analytics Alistair Crown is actually a picture of Ulf-Daniel Ehlers, a university professor in Stuttgart.

SW1 Options is a scam based on a tissue of lies.

This Tuesday, Companies House will announce it is starting proceedings to have SW1 Options Limited compulsorily struck off. This is better than nothing, but when will the authorities which are supposed to protect investors  the Financial Conduct Authority, the Fraud Squad and HM Treasury  wake up and smell the stench that arises from the entire binary options industry?
Shrewd: David Walton applies three tests to the continental companies he is thinking of buying into

Europe may still have its big economic, financial, political and social issues to deal with, but they have not stopped shrewd fund managers making good returns from buying into some of the Continents listed companies.

In the past three years, no one has been shrewder than David Walton, who runs the Marlborough European Multi-Cap Fund. Over the period, he has delivered 65 per cent  better than any of the 96 rival funds trying to generate gains from European equities.

Onlookers should not be surprised. Walton has an impressive curriculum vitae, having worked previously for blue-chip investment houses Baillie Gifford and M&G.

Since October 2013, he has been managing money for investment manager and private client stockbroker Hargreave Hale, which runs seven Marlborough-branded funds.

Under the stewardship of Giles Hargreave, the company has built a strong reputation for fund management and now handles assets worth more than 7billion.

Walton, like most fund managers at Hargreave Hale, is a stock picker first and foremost. The bigger picture (Europes economy) is of secondary importance and he does not take views on particular economies or stock market sectors as some rivals do. All he is interested in is buying outstanding shares that will help him deliver solid long-term returns.

As the funds name suggests, Walton is as happy buying fledgling companies as he is multi-billion pound European conglomerates. It means he can choose from about 3,000 stocks, though currently he is doing the forensics on only 200 and investing in 99.

Choice: Walton wants to hold companies that can grow above the average

He says: Im looking for companies that pass three tests. First, they must be well managed by people who preferably have taken their firms through one or two recessions. This reassures me that they have the nous and acumen to steer through the next recession, which is coming.

Second, I want to hold companies that can grow above the average. Finally, I want to buy a company when its share price does not reflect the potential of the underlying business.

The approach needs meticulous research. It also means spending time meeting those running the firms he is thinking of buying into.

I and Will Searle, assistant on the fund, get to see 450 companies a year, says Walton.

Its about keeping an eye on a broad range of firms  those we might like but whose shares are presently too expensive. All the time, were trying to better understand companies and their management in a quest to uncover the most promising businesses in Europe.

Belgiums Jensen Group is typical of the firms Walton likes to hold. The industrial laundry equipment maker is 51 per cent owned by the Jensen family and is run by a family member, chief executive Jesper Jensen.

The company is the world leader in developing robotic towel and dressing gown folders. The chief executive has been in his role since 1996, says Walton. He has seen it, done it and continues to do it. Its a successful business which continues to expand.

Despite the funds impressive returns, it remains a relative minnow, with assets of just 59million. Yet Walton is confident that with a three-year record behind him, investment advisers will start taking notice.
Richard Harpin began running businesses while he was a teenager, starting out with a mail-order fly-fishing tackle venture and moving on to create Hookers, which made earrings from the same fishing kit.

Today, aged 52, he is chief executive of HomeServe, a company he founded 23 years ago with a 500,000 investment and now valued on the stock market at almost 1.9billion.

Harpin still owns 12 per cent of the group, so he is personally worth more than 225million  a sum many people might choose to retire on. Harpin, however, believes that the best is yet to come at HomeServe and he is determined to be at the helm when it does.

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Chief executive Richard Harpin still owns 12 per cent of the group he founded 23 years ago

The shares are 595p and should move higher as Harpin expands the company both here and overseas.

HomeServe provides consumers with insurance cover against household emergencies, such as burst water pipes, broken boilers and faulty drains  the sorts of problems that arise at just this time of year and which are often excluded from standard household insurance.

More than 85 per cent of homeowners suffer from one of these emergencies at some stage and they are invariably stressful and expensive to remedy. HomeServe aims to make the entire experience as painless as possible.

Harpin started out working with South Staffordshire Water Company in a joint venture. The utility offered customers insurance cover against water-related emergencies, but Harpin ran the business, finding plumbers, sending them out where necessary and making sure the figures added up.

The company became independent, expanded beyond the Midlands and listed on the stock market in 2003, valued at 300million. Now, HomeServe works with 15 UK water companies and has 2.1million customers, which is about 10 per cent of British households.

Protected: HomeServe offers insurance for burst pipes

The UK business is profitable and growing steadily, but Harpin believes that the real opportunities for growth over the next decade come from expanding in the US, opening up in other countries and developing innovative gadgets to make homes less accident-prone.

HomeServe moved into America in 2003 and now has 2.7million customers there. Some City brokers have complained about the slow pace of growth in the US, but in July Harpin bought his major competitor there, Utility Service Partners, for $75million (61million). The deal should really bolster HomeServes US business.

Utility Service Partners has 400,000 customers, but it has signed an exclusive agreement with the National League of Cities, an organisation that buys goods and services on behalf of local authorities and water companies in 19,000 towns and cities across America.

Over the past 13 years, HomeServe has built up its US division by signing contracts with water and energy companies, allowing the group to market its insurance products to their customers. The National League of Cities agreement will give HomeServe access to 66 million homeowners.

The group normally manages to sell cover to about 10 per cent of those receiving its marketing material. Given the customers already on its books, HomeServe should end up with at least eight million US customers over the next few years.

HomeServe also intends to expand into other countries. Besides the UK and America, it currently operates in Spain, France and Italy, but Harpin hopes to move into at least ten more locations and has drawn up a shortlist of contenders, including Holland, Poland, Japan, Brazil, South Korea and China.

In each case, the company intends to work in partnership with a local water or energy company, to reduce the start-up costs and increase the chance of success.

Discussions are ongoing and Harpin expects to open in at least one new country over the next 12 months.

In the meantime, and closer to home, the company is working on several gadgets and services that use technology to manage and prevent domestic emergencies.

These include LeakBot, a device that can detect a leak anywhere in the home by monitoring the temperature of the mains supply. If the temperature is constantly cold, it is highly likely that there is a leak in the house. The LeakBot device alerts the homeowner, via an app, and alerts HomeServe too, so it can come to repair it.

Aviva, the UKs biggest domestic insurer, has already signed an agreement with HomeServe to provide LeakBot devices to selected customers and other insurers are likely to follow.

Leaking pipes are the biggest single problem in the home, costing 650million a year in the UK alone and 17billion worldwide. If leaks can be spotted before they cause serious damage, that will save insurers and homeowners significant sums of money.

HomeServe went through a catastrophic period a few years ago, when regulators fined it 30.6million for misselling. That precipitated a comprehensive overhaul of the UK business and a long, hard look at the group. Today, the company is firing on all cylinders.

Half-year results to September 30 will be released on November 22 and they are expected to be upbeat. Full-year figures should also show good growth, with analysts expecting pre-tax profits to rise 13 per cent to 105million in the year to March 31 with a 21 per cent surge in profits to 127million the following year. The dividend is expected to increase by 10 per cent to 14p next year and to 15.4p in 2018.
Going Dutch

Eurostar is pressing ahead with plans for direct rail services between London and Amsterdam amid a drop in passenger numbers on existing routes.

The cross-Channel rail operator said services between the cities are due to begin at the end of next year.

Fast track: Eurostar believes that its direct four-hour train journeys will greatly enhance transport links between the cities

The London-Amsterdam route attracts more than 3m airline passengers each year.

Eurostar believes that its direct four-hour train journeys will greatly enhance transport links between the cities, with one-way fares from 29.

Line deal

Vodafones Dutch arm has agreed to sell its fixed-line operations to T-Mobile Netherlands in a bid to get EU competition authorities on side.

The deal  for an undisclosed sum  means 150,000 customers fixed- line broadband will be handled by T-Mobile. It made the deal as a concession to regulators to get approval for the larger merger of Vodafones Dutch operations with Liberty Globals Dutch subsidiary Ziggo.

Vodafone shares slipped 1.8 per cent, or 3.85p, to 213.65p.

Summer boost

Virgin Media has posted a 30 per cent boost in income in the past three months driven by summer promotions.

The cable telecoms operator said it was investing in fibre broadband to the home, and added 45,000 new customers during the quarter.

But despite income rising 30 per cent to 85m in the past three months, it has fallen 5 per cent overall this year, to 253.5m, said the firm.

Fleet demand

New car registrations rose marginally last month with an increase in businesses buying fleet vehicles offsetting a slump in demand among individual consumers for the seventh month in a row.

Sales rose 1.4 per cent to 180,168 vehicles in October, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said, driven by strong demand by firms.

Funds up
British drinkers stocking up on their favourite wine for Christmas may find they need a stiff drink at the checkout.

The plunge in the value of the pound has meant the cost of buying wine from the big wine-producing regions  including the Continent, Americas, Australia and South Africa  has shot up dramatically.

But this may prove a boon to Britains fast-growing wine producers, making their vintages more price competitive than foreign rivals.

English wines have seen a real surge as French and New World wines become too expensive

As one of the worlds biggest wine-drinking nations, but one of the smallest producers, Britain is very vulnerable to currency fluctuations. The UK imports 98.5 per cent of the 1.8 billion bottles of wine drunk here each year.

Dan Jago, CEO of London wine and spirits merchant Berry Bros & Rudd, says: There has been such an extreme shift in the value of the pound since the referendum that the cost of buying wine has gone up by about 15 to 20 per cent.

With the exchange rate as it is, we will see the cost of goods going up and price increases on wine across the board are inevitable.

Having traded for almost 320 years, Berry Bros is used to taking the long view, as Jago points out. It bought wine at the current exchange rate eight years ago.

But he adds: This recent change has been particularly dramatic. While it doesnt affect the stock we already have, it means what we buy from now on becomes more expensive.

Were looking very carefully at our pricing and will be putting the price up of some products.

Its not a blanket increase, but markets such as the 2015 Burgundy, which start selling next year, will be really affected, both because its one of the best vintages for years and you have the Forex effect on top of that.

Sparkle: Champagne Lansons Paul Beavis

In contrast, on the firms online trading platform, where private investors can buy and sell fine wines, business has been booming.

Jago says: Theres been a big increase in trading since the Brexit vote particularly from the US and Asia as people are seeing a good opportunity as prices in pounds have fallen by 10 to 15 per cent.

Among wine sellers, Berry Bros, a Royal Warrant holder, isnt the only one to put prices up.

Last month, online retailer Naked Wines emailed customers to say it was increasing the price on half of its wine by about 5 per cent, explaining: The cost of wine has gone up. Back in the good ole [sic] days of early 2016, we lowered our prices when exchange rates were in our favour. Since then the pound has steadily plummeted and duty has gone up (again), meaning the cost of wine has crept up.

Champagne Lanson is the second-biggest champagne brand in the UK. Its managing director Paul Beavis admits that having costs in euros and selling in pounds is not ideal. But he is waiting to see what the effect will be, telling The Mail on Sunday: We are in a planning phase at the moment and looking at the impact of the currency changes.

We dont know what the effects will be, but we do expect things to change next year because it is a pressure were not in control of. It will absolutely have an impact.

Last month, the Wine and Spirit Trade Association estimated that after the pounds fall in value the average bottle of wine from the Continent would go up by 29p. Miles Beale, WSTA chief executive, said: Wine prices are likely to increase. Sterlings fall in value as a result of the Brexit vote is of grave concern. The currency fluctuation has already been felt.

The WSTA is calling on the Government to rethink its excise duty policy, pointing out that planned tax rises on alcohol will add to the problem.

Beale said: Wine consumers could face a double blow if duty rises of 120million are added to the impact of the devaluation of the pound. Together it could cost over 400 million this year alone.

bad year: London wine merchant Berry Bros says certain vintages will be hit

Olly Wehring, editor of just-drinks, an industry news site, told The Mail on Sunday: The bottom line is the price of wine on UK shelves will rise. But for wine costing less than 10 a bottle, consumers are so used to buying at a certain price point they wont pay more for wine.

While big supermarkets are likely to resist putting up prices, they are expected to introduce wines from less-established areas that they can sell at prices consumers are used to.

Supermarkets are used to selling wine at certain prices, such as 3.99 or 4.99, says Jago, who worked at Tesco for eight years. Its difficult to get people to change and you dont want to break the relationship by selling at something like 5.19.

Wehring agrees: There is little brand loyalty at this level, he says. Instead of paying more for their usual brands, customers will look to buy different wines from lesser-known regions for the same price.

A beneficiary could be the domestic market, in particular sparkling wine. Jago says: English sparkling wines are seeing a real surge. Not only are English producers making great wines, theyre seeing real sales, growth in Europe and around the world.
MPs have accused Morrisons of axing staff benefits to fund the 40million cost of preparing for the new minimum wage.

The supermarket has watered down longstanding pay arrangements, abolishing paid breaks and the Sunday rate.

The 15-minute breaks earned staff 1.73 a time, while they used to be paid time-and-a-half for working on Sundays, according to evidence presented to Parliament.

Cuts: Morrisons has ablosihed paid breaks and the Sunday rate

The cases were branded disgraceful by James Berry, Conservative MP for Kingston and Surbiton.

Morrisons announced a year ago it would raise basic pay from 6.93 to 8.20 an hour in March this year. The firm pointed out this was well above the statutory rate of 7.20, introduced in April, which is set to rise to 9 an hour in April 2020.

The rise brought wages in line with those of German discount rival Lidl, which was the first supermarket to raise pay last year. But in one case a Morrisons worker complained to his MP, Helen Goodman, that after his benefits were scrapped his pay rose by just 1.64 a week.

The supermarket, which employs 125,000 staff, is the latest to be drawn into a growing row over cuts to benefits as firms seek ways to fund the cost of the pay rise.

Firms already embroiled in the wages spat with MPs include Marks & Spencer, B&Q, supermarket supply giant 2 Sisters and Ginsters pasty maker Samworth Brothers.

Morrisons said the Usdaw union backed the plan and added: Our staff told us they wanted their pay to be more competitive and simpler. Our hourly rate is now among the best in the sector and more than 90,000 colleagues have benefited. We ensured that nobody is worse off this year as a result of the changes.

But Goodman, Labour MP for Bishop Auckland, said she had been told of the heartache of a family expecting a substantial rise in line with the announcement of the National Living Wage in 2015 by then Chancellor George Osborne, but which received very little.

She said the changes would not be fair on staff who regularly worked weekends, adding: It sets workers against each other. One persons pay rise is at the expense of another.

Berry said: We as customers can also take direct action by not shopping at Marks & Spencer this Christmas. He said it was important to call out those who breach the spirit of the rules but without wrapping them up in further regulation.
The European Commission is probing Goverment assurances to Nissan which persuaded the company to renew its investment in the Sunderland plant.

Nissan said last month it would build the next generation of the Qashqai in Sunderland as well as the next X-Trail  following a meeting between Nissan chief executive Carlos Ghosn and Prime Minister Theresa May.

A Commission spokesman said: We have seen press reports regarding this issue. As a result, the Commission at services level is in contact with the UK authorities. Such exchanges of information are common. In this specific case, the UK authorities have not notified any support to Nissan for assessment under EU state aid rules. We have not taken any formal views on the matter.

Car production: Nissan said last month it would build the next generation of the Qashqai in Sunderland as well as the next X-Trail

A spokesperson for the department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said: We are in regular contact with the European Commission on a range of issues. As the European Commission themselves have said, exchanges like these are common.

Nissan had publicly fretted over whether the UKs departure from the European Union would see it hit with tariffs both on its car exports and supply chain.

Almost two-thirds of cars produced in the UK are exported to the rest of the EU and the industrys supply chain is strung out across the Continent.

The Government has denied that it offered to pick up the cost of any eventual tariffs  with Business secretary Greg Clark saying that Nissan was merely assured that the Governments objective would be to ensure continued access to the markets in Europe and vice versa.
Petrol retailers are predicting that the price of fuel will soar to 120p per litre by Christmas and have written to the Chancellor to demand an immediate cut in fuel duty in his Autumn Statement.

The Petrol Retailers Association argues that the Chancellor has reaped an extra 1billion in fuel taxes this year  which is enough to cover a 3p a litre cut in prices on the forecourts.

Brian Madderson, chairman of the PRA, has written to Philip Hammond ahead of the November 23 statement.

Price increases: Oil is traded in dollars and the falling pound has led to higher petrol prices

He told Hammond that fuel prices are likely to have risen by 16p per litre by the end of the year from 104p per litre in January for combined petrol and diesel to an expected 120p per litre.

Petrol is currently an average of 116p per litre and diesel is 118p per litre. Madderson said: Drivers have been contributing more and more to the Exchequer over the past year as the volume of fuel sold has risen over previous year totals.

Higher revenues have followed and HM Revenue has quietly pocketed an extra billion pounds this year from the fixed excise duty of 58p per litre plus 20 per cent VAT on the windfall extra volume purchased.

Oil is traded in dollars and the weakness of sterling has led to rising prices for drivers. When fuel prices rise, VAT returns to the Treasury also increase.

Fuel tax is money which consumers cant spend elsewhere, added Madderson. Motorists should be given their money back next year by reducing the duty on fuel by a billion pounds  or 3p per litre of road fuel sold.
Three-quarters of UK firms say they have yet to feel any financial effect  positive or negative  from the vote to leave the EU.

But 16 per cent of all businesses, equivalent to 283,000 firms, said the vote had already had a negative financial impact on them, compared with just 5 per cent (85,000) who said it had had a positive effect.

The figures are from a survey of key decision-makers at a representative sample of 500 UK businesses by insolvency and restructuring trade body R3 and market researcher BDRC.

Three-quarters of UK firms say they have yet to feel any financial effect from Brexit

R3 president Andrew Tate said: Uncertainty over the future of the UK-EU relationship may put some important deals on hold, at least temporarily. While our members say they have yet to see any increase in Brexit-related appointments, some have reported an increase in calls from worried business owners looking for advice. And while recent surveys have reported confidence falling since the vote, that doesnt appear to have yet translated into a financial impact for most firms.
Britain's booming financial technology industry  known as fintech  faces an exodus of as many as 250 out of 300 firms, which are being lured to other European financial hubs because of Brexit, says an industry insider.

Tobias Schreyer, co-founder of cross-border payments firm PPRO Group, which was formed 11 years ago in Germany but moved its headquarters to London in 2012, has already opened an office in Luxembourg and has four staff there.

It has been warned that large banks will relocate out of Britain in early 2017 due to repercussions of Brexit on the industry.

Moving abroad: Tobias Schreyer, co-founder of cross-border payments firm PPRO Group, has already opened an office in Luxembourg (pictured) and has four staff there

But smaller fintech companies also provide their services under licence from the Financial Conduct Authority, and Schreyer said he too had to prepare for the worst-case scenario: the loss of EU passporting rights for British financial services providers. Passporting rules allow any EU-based financial firm to sell products across the union.

He said: We have 150 employees in total and about 20 in London. The business migrated to London after we got the UK licence in 2012. The senior staff are all located in the UK. Were a mid-sized firm with long-established relationships with large enterprises in Europe, and we have issued more than a million pre-paid cards. The basis for that is the great EU free market and the EU passporting for financial services.

He said that in the run-up to the referendum, we prepared what we would do if Britain should vote for Brexit. This involved meetings with regulators like the equivalent to the FCA in countries such as the Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium and Czech Republic.

He said: All of them were very friendly. They even started to organise Brexit meetings for interested financial service providers, such as banks and insurers. They had dinners and we were invited to the top-tier banks or investment firms to transfer business to their country.

They are interested in talented and well-paid people who pay a lot of taxes locally. I still receive invitations from Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands where the governments and financial services bodies try to market to UK licence companies.

'They want to get some of the UK fintech talent over and give them investment or accounting support, or creative accounting measures to allow them to do special write-offs of research and development investment or something like that. All of that was offered to us.

He added: Now, a few months later, we have established an office and hired staff, who would otherwise have been hired in London. I would say the transition period will probably be four or five years.

He said the process of establishing a licence there is a big burden and double licensing means costs of 750,000 to 1million a year, as well as the travel and extra accounting involved.

The Government has hailed London as the fintech capital of the world, but Schreyer said: All of them are at different stages of the same process. Some have already decided to go to Ireland, the Netherlands or Luxembourg and they are also preparing for licence applications. They either close their UK office or move a certain portion of their staff from London.

'Theres about 300 fintech companies in the UK, and probably at least 250 of them will need another location. Itll be a challenge for regulators.
A five-day trade mission to China and Hong Kong from Gatwick airport this week will see Jonathan Jones, managing director of English tea brand Tregothnan, and bosses of other small firms seek export opportunities.

Gatwick and its newest airline, Cathay Pacific, subsidised the flights for the Go Global mission, which was organised by business support network Enterprise Nation, with the aim of offering small companies the kind of export opportunities usually reserved for bigger firms.

Tregothnan became Britains first commercial tea grower in 2005 and exports tea via Heathrow airport.

Tea makers: A bee on a Manuka bush at a Tregothnan estate in Cornwall
One in four people in their twenties and early thirties now live with their parents.

The number of boomerang children has soared to 3.3million  900,000 more than in 2003.

It means many families have returned to living patterns seen in the 1940s and 50s, when children would leave home only when married.

Many of the boomerangers are trapped in the family home because of sky-high house prices and rents.

The number of young adults still living with their families has soared by almost 1million over the past 13 years, meaning one in four people in their are still with their parents (file picture)

Often they have returned after graduating from university. Some still live with their parents even after marrying or forming a long-term relationship, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.

Its report also highlighted the plight of parents squeezed between looking after adult children as well as their own elderly parents.

The ONS found that 3.3million people aged between 20 and 34 live at home with their parents  38 per cent more than 13 years ago and 25 per cent of the age group.

The numbers exclude students who return home during the holidays.

Young women were found to be more independent. Only 20 per cent live in the family home compared with 31 per cent of men.

For the wider age group  15 to 34  the number living with parents has gone up from 5.8million in 1996 to 6.5million, a tenth of the UK population.

Sky-high house prices and rents are part of the reason young people are being forced to stay at home with their parents

Harry Benson, of the Marriage Foundation think-tank, said: Many parents must be worried that their children are not flying the nest or forming permanent partnerships. Property prices have clearly got a lot to do with it.

But it may be linked to the return of conservative attitudes, rather than a property price issue, which would affect men and women equally.

'There is some evidence that young adults are becoming more conservative.

NUMBER OF MARRIED COUPLES FALLS A rise in the numbers of cohabiting couples and single parent families was flagged up by the ONS report. The tally of cohabitees with children stood at 540,000 in 1996 but had risen to 1,270,000 this year. Married couples with children went down over the same period from 5,230,000 to 4,809,000. Numbers of cohabiting couples overall more than doubled from 1.5million in 1996 to 3.3million now, the ONS said. Lone parent families with children under 16  or under 18 if still in school or college  went up from 1,631,000 in 1996 to 1,871,000 now. The ONS also reported that 86 per cent of lone parent families were led by a woman, and this could be associated with women being more likely to take the main caring responsibilities for any children when a relationship breaks down and therefore becoming lone parents. Forty-five per cent of all families with offspring now have just one child, up from 42 per cent in 1996. Some of these families may have older children from earlier relationships. Advertisement

It may be that as couples delay marriage, and even cohabitation, young women who were previously likely to leave home in order to get married are remaining safely at home.

'While this may be a worry for their parents, it is at least avoiding the much greater risk of uncommitted cohabitation and subsequent family breakdown.

The ONS report, which drew on the Governments Labour Force Survey, said: Larger numbers of young adults tending to stay at home for longer may be explained by them staying in education or training for longer, delaying leaving the parental home as they formalise relationships and have children at older ages.

'Also it has become more expensive to rent or buy a home.

It said the rise of boomerang children had led to a corresponding increase in multi-family households.

This category, which includes childless couples, has grown from 194,000 in 2006 to 323,000 now.

Families in these households may be unrelated, or related in some way, for example a married couple with their son and his girlfriend, the report said.

Changes in the number of multi-family households may be because of older couples moving in with their adult child and their family, young adults who are partnered remaining in their parents household, and unrelated families sharing.

The boomerang phenomenon can be partly explained by changes in the lives of women, who now settle down and have children later in life.

They are also much more likely to have gone to university than earlier generations.

Their higher incomes have helped push up house prices, so that many couples now need two incomes to buy a home.
The following companies are subsidiares of Prudential Financial: 210-220 E. 22nd Street SSGA Owner LLC, AIG Edison, AIG Star, AREF Cayman Co Ltd., AREF GP II Pte. Ltd., AREF GP Ltd., ASPF II - Feeder Fund GmbH, ASPF II - Verwaltungs - GmbH & Co. KG, ASPF II Management GmbH, ASPF III Scots L.P., ASSURANCE, AST Investment Services Inc., Adlerwerke CB Investment LLC, Administradora de Fondos de Pensiones Habitat S.A., Administradora de Inversiones Previsionales SpA, Aoba Life Insurance Company, Aoba Life Insurance Company Ltd., Asia Property Fund III GP S.a.r.l., Assurance IQ LLC, Assurance Intelligence LLC, BSC CP LP, Braeloch Holdings Inc., Braeloch Successor Corporation, Brazilian Capital Fund GP Limited, Broad Street Global Advisors LLC, Broome Street Holdings LLC, CB German Retail LLC, CLIS Co. Ltd., COLICO INC., Capital Agricultural Property Services Inc., Chadwick Boulevard Investment Holdings Co. LLC, Cibecue LLC, Coconino LLC, Colico II Inc., Columbus Drive Partners L.P., Commerce Street Holdings LLC, Commerce Street Investments LLC, Coolidge LLC, Coral Reef GP, Coral Reef L.P., Coral Reef Unit Trust, Cottage Street Investments LLC, Cottage Street Orbit Acquisition LLC, DICKENS AVENUE HOLDINGS VI LLC, DICKENS AVENUE PARTNERS VI Ireland L.P., DICKENS AVENUE PARTNERS VI US L.P., Dale/P Minerals Limited Partnership, Don Cesar Investor LLC, Dryden Arizona Reinsurance Term Company, Dryden Finance II LLC, EVP II GP S.a r.l., EVP II Horizon GP S.a r.l., EVP II Sprint GP S.a r.l., Edison Place Senior Note LLC, Essex LLC, EuroCore GP S.a r.l., European Value Partners GP S.a.r.l., Everbright PGIM Fund Management Co. Ltd., Flagstaff LLC, GA 1600 Commons LLC, GA 333 Hennepin Investor LLC, GA BV LLC, GA Bay Area GP LLC, GA Bay Area Investor LLC, GA Belden LLC, GA CLARENDON LLC, GA Cal Crossings LLC, GA Collins LLC, GA E. 22nd Street Apartments Holdings LLC, GA East 86 Street LLC, GA JHCII LLC, GA MENLO PARK INVESTOR LLC, GA Manor at Harbour Island LLC, GA Metro LLC, GA TRITON INVESTOR LLC, GA W Paces LLC, GA/MDI 333 Hennepin Associates LLC, GIBRALTAR BSN HOLDINGS SDN BHD, GIBRALTAR INDIA SOLUTIONS LLP, Gateway Holdings II LLC, Gateway Holdings LLC, German Retail Income CP LP, Gibraltar BSN Life Berhad, Gibraltar International Insurance Services Company Inc., Gibraltar International Service LLC, Gibraltar Reinsurance Company Ltd., Gibraltar Universal Life Reinsurance Company, Glenealy International Limited, Global Portfolio Strategies Inc., Gold GP Limited, Gold II L.P., Gold L.P., Graham Resources Inc., Graham Royalty Ltd., Green Harvest Asset Management LLC, Green Tree GP, Green Tree L.P., Greenlee LLC, Halsey Street Investments LLC, Hirakata LLC, IVP Fund GP LLC, Impact Investments Bridges UK S.a.r.l, Inter-Atlantic G Fund L.P., Inversiones Previsionales Chile SpA, Inversiones Previsionales Dos SpA, Ironbound Fund LLC, Jennison Associates LLC, Kyarra S.a r.l., Kyoei Annuity Home Co. 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Kabushiki Kaisha Kyouei Nenkin Home, LINEUP LLC, Lake Street Partners IV L.P., Lotus Reinsurance Company Ltd., MC GA COLLINS HOLDINGS LLC, MC GA COLLINS REALTY LLC, MC Insurance Agency Services LLC, Manor at Harbour Island LLC, Marble Canyon LLC, Maricopa LLC, Market Street Holdings IV LLC, Montana Capital Partners, Morenci LLC, Mulberry Street Holdings LLC, Mulberry Street Investment L.P., Mulberry Street Partners LLC, Mullin TBG Insurance Agency Services LLC, MullinTBG Insurance Agency Services, National Family Assurance Group LLC, New Savanna, Northbound Emerging Manager Fund A LP, Northbound Emerging Manager Fund II - A LP, Orchard Street Acres Inc., PAI Bay Farm LLC, PAI Bayrock Groves LLC, PAI Belvidere Farms LLC, PAI Big Cypress Farm LLC, PAI Corcoran 640 Ranch LLC, PAI DeKalb Farm LLC, PAI Delano 1500 Ranches LLC, PAI Desert Falcon Farms Manager LLC, PAI Flicker Orchard LLC, PAI Good Hope Farm LLC, PAI Hawk Creek Ranch LLC, PAI Hills Valley Ranches LLC, PAI Holly Hill Groves LLC, PAI Hunt Farm LLC, PAI Jackson Bayou Farm LLC, PAI Lake Placid Groves LLC, PAI River Bend Ranches LLC, PAI Wallula Gap Vineyard LLC, PCP V Cayman AIV GP L.P., PEREF II Co-Invest 1 GP S.a r.l., PEREF II GP S.a r.l., PFI EM-Tech Fund I LLC, PG Business Service Co. Ltd, PG Collection Service Co. Ltd., PG Friendly Partners Co. Ltd., PGA Asian Retail Limited, PGA European Limited, PGI Co. Ltd, PGIM AC Co-Invest GP Pte. Ltd., PGIM AVP IV GP S.a r.l., PGIM Advisory Shanghai Co. Ltd., PGIM Agricultural Investments GP LLC, PGIM Australia Pty Ltd, PGIM Broad Market High Yield Bond Fund L.P., PGIM Broad Market High Yield Bond Partners LLC, PGIM Capital Partners Management Feeder VI LLC, PGIM Capital Partners Management Fund VI L.P., PGIM Custom Harvest LLC, PGIM DC Co-Invest GP Pte. Ltd., PGIM DC JV GP Pte. 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Ltd., PGIM Korea Inc., PGIM LTIF Berlin GP S.a r.l., PGIM LTIF Berlin MLP S.ar.l., PGIM LTIF GP S.a.r.l., PGIM Limited, PGIM Loan Originator Manager Limited, PGIM M Campus GP S.a r.l., PGIM Management Partner Limited, PGIM MetaProp Investor LP LLC, PGIM Netherlands B.V., PGIM Overseas Investment Fund Management Shanghai Company Ltd, PGIM Private Capital Ireland Limited, PGIM Private Capital Limited, PGIM Private Placement Investors Inc., PGIM Private Placement Investors L.P., PGIM QUANTITATIVE SOLUTIONS LLC, PGIM REF EUROPE SCSp, PGIM REF Europe GP S.a r.l., PGIM REF Europe Member LLC, PGIM REF Intermediary Services Inc., PGIM Real Estate CD S.a.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Capital VII GP S.a r.l., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest GP S.a r.l., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest L.P., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest SCSp, PGIM Real Estate Co-Invest Holdings LLC, PGIM Real Estate Debt GmbH, PGIM Real Estate Finance Holding Company, PGIM Real Estate Finance LLC, PGIM Real Estate France SAS, PGIM Real Estate Germany AG, PGIM Real Estate Global Debt GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate Global Master Fund GP S.a r.l., PGIM Real Estate Inmuebles II S de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate Inmuebles S. de R.L. de C.V, PGIM Real Estate Italy S.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Japan Ltd., PGIM Real Estate Loan Services Inc., PGIM Real Estate Luxembourg S.A., PGIM Real Estate MVP Administradora IV S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Administradora V S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Inmuebles IV S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Inmuebles V S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate Management Luxembourg S.a.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Mexico S.C., PGIM Real Estate S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate U.S. CORE Debt Fund GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate U.S. Debt Fund GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate UK Limited, PGIM Scots Limited, PGIM Securities Investment Trust Enterprise, PGIM Senior Loan Opportunities Management (Feeder) I LLC, PGIM Senior Loan Opportunities Management Fund I L.P., PGIM Shanghai Company Ltd., PGIM Singapore Pte. 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Ltd., Prudential Trust Company, Prudential Universal Reinsurance Company, Prudential Workplace Solutions Group Services LLC, Prudential do Brasil Seguros de Vida S.A., Prudential do Brasil Vida em Grupo S.A., Prudential/TMW Real Estate Group LLC, Pruservicos Participacoes Ltda., QMA JP EM All Cap Equity Partners LLC, Quartzsite LLC, Residential Services Corporation of America LLC, Rio CP LP, Rock European Real Estate Holdings S.ar.l., Rock Global Real Estate LLC, Rock Kensington Limited, Rock Marty GP S.a r.l., Rock Oxford S.a r.l., Rock UK Real Estate II S.a.r.l., Rockstone Co. Ltd., Rosado Grande LLC, Ross Avenue Energy Fund Holdings LLC, Ross Avenue Minerals 2012 LLC, SCP Apartments LLC, SENIOR HOUSING PARTNERS VI GP LLC, SENIOR HOUSING PARTNERSHIP FUND VI GP LLC, SHP IV Carried Interest LP, SHP V Carried Interest L.P., SMP Holdings Inc., SVIIT Holdings Inc., Sanei Collection Service Co. Ltd. Kabushiki Kaisha Sanei Shuuno Service, Senior Housing Partners V LLC, Senior Housing Partnership Fund V LLC, Sterling Private Placement Management LLP, Stetson Street Partners L.P., Strand Investments Limited, TBG Insurance Services Corporation, TENSATOR HOLDINGS LTD, TF Proveedora S.C., TMW ASPF I Verwaltungs GmbH & Co. KG, TMW ASPF Management GmbH, TMW Management LLC, TMW Real Estate Group LLC, TMW Realty Advisors LLC, TMW USPF Verwaltungs GmbH, TRGOAG Company Inc., The Gibraltar Life Insurance Co. Ltd., The Keynes Dynamic Beta Strategy US Fund GP LLC, The Prudential Assigned Settlement Services Corp., The Prudential Brazilian Capital Fund LP, The Prudential Gibraltar Financial Life Insurance Co. Ltd., The Prudential Home Mortgage Company Inc., The Prudential Insurance Company of America, The Prudential Life Insurance Company Ltd., The Prudential Real Estate Financial Services of America Inc., The WMF Group, Thurloe Commercial Guernsey Limited, USPF V - Verwaltungs - GmbH & Co. KG, USPF V Carry LLC, USPF V Co-Invest LLC, USPF V Investment LP, United States Property Fund VI GP S.a r.l., VIP Australia Holding Company LLC, VIP Australia Trustee Pty Ltd, Vailsburg Fund LLC, Vantage Casualty Insurance Company, Wabash Avenue Holdings V LLC, Wabash Avenue Partners V L.P., Wadhwani Capital Limited, Waveland Avenue Holdings I LLC, Waveland Avenue Partners I Ireland L.P., Waveland Avenue Partners I US L.P., Wellness Services Ecossistema De Bem Estar Ltda., Wellness Services SRL, Yamato Life, and Yavapai LLC.

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Minerals Technologies Inc. develops, produces, and markets various specialty mineral, mineral-based, and synthetic mineral products, and supporting systems and services. The company operates through three segments: Performance Materials, Specialty Minerals and Refractories. The Performance Materials segment supplies bentonite and bentonite-related products, as well as leonardite. This segment also offers metal casting products; household, personal care, and specialty products; and basic minerals, environmental products, and building materials. In addition, it provides products for non-residential construction, environmental, and infrastructure projects, as well as for construction and remediation project customers. The Specialty Minerals segment produces and sells precipitated calcium carbonate and quicklime; and provides natural mineral products comprising limestone and talc. This segment's products are used in paper and packaging, building materials, paint and coatings, glass, ceramic, polymer, food, automotive, and pharmaceutical industries. The Refractories segment offers monolithic and shaped refractory materials; specialty products, services, and application and measurement equipment; and calcium metal and metallurgical wire products that are used in the applications of steel, non-ferrous metal, and glass industries. The company markets its products primarily through its direct sales force, as well as regional distributors. It serves in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Minerals Technologies Inc. was incorporated in 1968 and is headquartered in New York, New York.
NASDAQ is an acronym for the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations. The NASDAQ stock exchange is owned by Nasdaq, Inc. and serves as an international electronic marketplace where investors can buy and sell securities. It is the second largest stock exchange in the world.

The NASDAQ exchange lists stocks from virtually every sector of the economy. Although they are heavily weighted in technology, you will also see them as a leader in fields such as healthcare and biotech, energy and industrials and financial services.

And the NASDAQ is also an index which is referred to as the NASDAQ Composite. When you hear that the NASDAQ was up or down, they are referring to the index.

This index measures over 3,000 stocks listed on the NASDAQ exchange and includes the worlds leading tech stocks including the FAANG stocks. The index is a mathematical average of the stocks that are listed. The NASDAQ index cant be traded. However, investors can purchase an index fund that is similar to a mutual fund or an ETF and is made up of the stocks in the index.

The purpose of this article is to provide a brief history of the NASDAQ, explain how its different from the NYSE and the Dow Jones Index, and why the NASDAQ is important to investors.

What Were the Origins of the NASDAQ?

The NASDAQ started trading on February 8, 1971. It was created as an alternative to the NYSE so as to give new, emerging companies a way into the stock market. Since the NYSE is made up of primarily blue-chip companies with a large market capitalization, many financially sound companies with modest assets had to look for alternate means to raise capital.

At first, the NASDAQ only provided quotations and matched buyers and sellers with dealers. As it started trading, it became a source for speculative, over-the-counter (OTC) stocks to raise capital. However, when it became the first U.S. stock market to conduct online trading, it soon became the go-to exchange for technology stocks that saw it as a more modern way to list their stocks. In a way, it reflected the innovation that those companies represented.

What Are the Listing Requirements for the NASDAQ?

For starters, the NASDAQ is a company. So every company that wishes to be listed on the NASDAQ has to pay an initial listing fee. This fee can be between $50,000 and $75,000. In addition, there is an annual fee to remain as a member. This fee can be as lows as $42,000 or as high as $155,000 depending on the companys size.

But being part of an exchange is not just a matter of paying dues. To be listed, a company must meet a set of requirements. These include but are not limited to:

Quantitative financial requirements (earnings, market cap, and assets)

Corporate governance standards that give clear guidance about issues like shareholder rights and annual meetings

Once a stock is listed, they must continue to meet regulatory requirements by making financial information about the company and the stock available to the public. And, the companies listed on the NASDAQ must meet SEC requirements, including the filing of financial reports. All of this is done to provide transparency to investors. For this reason, as the NASDAQ has grown up it is no longer the domain of speculative over-the-counter stocks.

How is the NASDAQ Different from the NYSE?

Initially, the primary difference between the NYSE and NASDAQ was in the way trades were conducted. The NYSE is an auction market. As the word auction implies, trades occur between buyers who offer a bid price for a stock and sellers who have an ask price. The highest bidding price is matched with the lowest asking price. The NASDAQ, by contrast, started as a dealers market where these dealers served as middlemen between buyers and sellers.

With the advent of trading technology, the difference in methodology between the two exchanges is more subtle. The NASDAQ now automatically matches buyers and sellers similar to an auction system. And the NYSE relies heavily on computers to facilitate their trades. One of the differences remains the presence of human brokers who still man the trading floor of the NYSE.

Another subtle difference comes with how the exchanges ensure liquidity and security. On the NYSE, each security has a Designated Market Maker (DMM) who serves as an auctioneer of sorts. Unlike the NYSE, each security on the NASDAQ has multiple Market Makers to help ensure liquidity. Apple, for example, has 54 registered Market Makers.

Yet another difference can be found in the size and profile of the companies listed with each exchange. As of June 2022, the NYSE includes approximately 2,400 companies with a market capitalization of over $28.2 trillion. The NASDAQ has over 3,300 listings with a total market capitalization of $11 trillion dollars. Why is this significant? The NYSE has been around since 1792 making it the oldest stock exchange and for almost 200 years the only game in town. As a result, it is home to many of what are seen as the blue-chip companies. The NASDAQ, by comparison, generally consists of stocks that are more volatile and growth oriented. In recent years, it is for housing the FAANG stocks (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google/Alphabet).

How is the NASDAQ Different from the Dow?

Both the Dow and the NASDAQ are predictive indicators of the market direction. In the case of the Dow, the stocks can be listed on the NYSE or the NASDAQ exchanges.

The Dow Jones (also known as The Dow) is an index of what are considered the 30 biggest companies in terms of scale and firm returns. When stock reports are given you usually hear reference to The Dow was up X number of points or The Dow was down X number of points. This is referring to the average of these 30 stocks. It is considered to be a broad view of the market in general. You may also hear the phrase advancers versus decliners. This refers to how many stocks in the Dow 30 made gains for the day (advancers) and how many had losses (decliners).

The companies in the Dow 30 make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). Some investors may buy an index fund which contains only the securities that make up the Dow 30.

The NASDAQ is also an index, but it is also an exchange that is made up of over 3,400 individual securities. Many of these securities are in the technology sector. Some of these securities may be part of the Dow 30, but the index as a whole is separate from the Dow. Like the Dow, many investors choose to invest in index funds that are tailored to stocks in the NASDAQ. The USAA NASDAQ 100 Index Fund (USNQX) is one such fund. This fund includes the 100 biggest stocks (non-financial) that are listed on the NASDAQ exchange.

What Does the NASDAQ Say About Investor Sentiment?

The NASDAQ offers growth investors a cue to how much risk the market is willing to absorb at a given moment. For example, when you hear that the Dow is up (which usually means the NYSE is up), it typically signals a time of where investors may be less inclined to take risks. But when the NASDAQ is up and the Dow is down or trailing, it usually signifies that investors are more confident about the overall economy and are willing to assume more risk.

And as we stated earlier, the NASDAQ still plays a critical role in how many young companies go public. There were 34 initial public offerings (IPOs) posted on the NYSE in 2016. This was just three percent of the total volume of IPOs worldwide. By contrast, in that same year, the NASDAQ held 77 IPOs which was seven percent of global IPOs, more than double that of the NYSE.

Some Final Thoughts on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange

The arrival of the NASDAQ stock exchange in the 1970s created a choice for investors that meant more than just choosing Coke or Pepsi. By offering a lower cost of entry and welcoming start-ups with a focus on innovation, the NASDAQ gave these companies a stock exchange that looked like them.

Today, the NASDAQ is the largest electronic stock market with over 3,000 companies listed. And ironically, the five largest companies in terms of market cap are listed on the NASDAQ. However, although this stock exchange has grown up a bit, it still retains its rebellious cache. With its focus on technology stocks, many of the worlds most nimble and innovative companies look to get listed on the NASDAQ as a way to raise capital. It is almost synonymous with technology and serves as a predictor of the broader markets appetite for risk.
The following companies are subsidiares of Novartis: 1 A Pharma GmbH, Abadia Retuerta S.A, Admune Therapeutics, Advanced Accelerator Applications, Advanced Accelerator Applications, Advanced Accelerator Applications International SA, Advanced Accelerator Applications S.A., Advanced Accelerator Applications S.r.l., Advanced Accelerator Applications USA Inc., Aeropharm GmbH, Alcon, Alcon  Couvreur NV, Amblyotech, Amblyotech Inc., Arctos Medical, Arctos Medical AG, Australia Pty Ltd, Beijing Novartis Pharma Co. Ltd., BioMedical Research Co. Ltd., CELLforCURE, Cadent Therapeutics, Cadent Therapeutics Cambridge, Cellerys, Cellerys AG, CellforCure, Chiron Corporation, Ciba-Geigy Japan Limited, Co. Ltd, CoStim Pharmaceuticals, CoStim Pharmaceuticals Inc., Coalesce Product Development Limited, Corthera, Development Co. Ltd., EBEWE Pharma Ges.m.b.H Nfg. KG, Encore Vision, Endocyte, Endocyte Inc., Eon Labs Inc., Farmanova Saglik Hizmetleri Ltd, Fougera Pharmaceuticals, Fougera Pharmaceuticals Inc, Gyroscope Therapeutics, HEXAL AG, Hexal, IDB Holland BV, Iberica S.L.U., Ilaclari Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S, JSC Sandoz, Japat AG, Kedalion Therapeutics Inc., Lek Pharmaceuticals d.d., Lek S.A., Manufacturing Pte Ltd , Navigate BioPharma Services Inc, Neutec Pharma Limited, Novartis (Hellas) S.A.C.I., Novartis (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Novartis (Taiwan) Co. Ltd, Novartis (Thailand) Limited, Novartis Argentina S.A., Novartis Australia Pty Ltd, Novartis Austria GmbH, Novartis Biociencias S.A., Novartis Biosciences Peru S.A., Novartis Bioventures AG, Novartis Business Services GmbH, Novartis Capital Corporation, Novartis Chile S.A., Novartis Corporation, Novartis Corporation Sdn. Bhd., Novartis Deutschland GmbH, Novartis Ecuador S.A., Novartis Farma S.p.A., Novartis Farma  Produtos Farmaceuticos S.A., Novartis Farmaceutica S.A, Novartis Farmaceutica S.A. de C.V., Novartis Finance Corporation, Novartis Finance S.A., Novartis Finance Services Ltd, Novartis Finland Oy Espoo, Novartis Gene Therapies, Novartis Gene Therapies EU Limited, Novartis Gene Therapies Inc., Novartis Grimsby Limited, Novartis Groupe France S.A., Novartis Healthcare A/S, Novartis Healthcare Philippines Inc., Novartis Healthcare Private Limited, Novartis Holding AG, Novartis Hungary Healthcare Limited Liability Company, Novartis India Limited, Novartis Inflammasome Research, Novartis Integrated Services Limited, Novartis International AG, Novartis International Pharmaceutical Investment AG, Novartis Investment Ltd, Novartis Investments S.a r.l., Novartis Ireland Limited, Novartis Israel Ltd, Novartis Korea Ltd., Novartis Middle East FZE, Novartis Netherlands B.V., Novartis Neva LLC, Novartis New Zealand Ltd, Novartis Norge AS, Novartis Ophthalmics AG, Novartis Optogenetics Research Inc., Novartis Overseas Investments AG, Novartis Pharma (Logistics) Inc., Novartis Pharma (Pakistan) Limited, Novartis Pharma AG, Novartis Pharma B.V. , Novartis Pharma GmbH, Novartis Pharma GmbH, Novartis Pharma K.K., Novartis Pharma LLC, Novartis Pharma Maroc SA, Novartis Pharma NV, Novartis Pharma Produktions GmbH, Novartis Pharma S.A.E., Novartis Pharma S.A.S., Novartis Pharma Schweiz AG, Novartis Pharma Schweizerhalle AG, Novartis Pharma Services AG, Novartis Pharma Services Romania S.R.L., Novartis Pharma Stein AG, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Canada Inc., Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Limited, Novartis Pharmaceuticals UK Limited, Novartis Poland Sp. z o.o., Novartis Portugal S.G.P.S. Lda., Novartis Ringaskiddy Limited, Novartis Saglik Gida ve Tarim Urunleri Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S, Novartis Saudi Ltd., Novartis Securities Investment Ltd, Novartis Services Inc., Novartis Slovakia s.r.o., Novartis South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Novartis Sverige AB, Novartis UK Limited, Novartis US Foundation, Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics Inc, Novartis Vietnam Company Limited, Novartis de Colombia S.A., Novartis de Venezuela S.A., Novartis s.r.o., Oriel Therapeutics Inc., PT. Novartis Indonesia, Protez Pharmaceuticals, Pte Ltd, Research Inc, Salutas Pharma GmbH, Sandoz A/S, Sandoz AG, Sandoz B.V., Sandoz Canada Inc., Sandoz Egypt Pharma S.A.E., Sandoz Farmaceutica S.A., Sandoz Farmaceutica Lda., Sandoz GmbH, Sandoz Hungary Limited Liability Company, Sandoz Ilac Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S., Sandoz Inc, Sandoz Industrial Products S.A, Sandoz International GmbH, Sandoz K.K., Sandoz Limited, Sandoz Manufacturing Inc., Sandoz NV, Sandoz Pharma K.K, Sandoz Pharmaceuticals AG, Sandoz Pharmaceuticals d.d., Sandoz Philippines Corporation, Sandoz Polska Sp. z o.o. , Sandoz Private Limited, Sandoz Pty Ltd, Sandoz S.A. de C.V, Sandoz S.A.S., Sandoz S.R.L., Sandoz S.p.A., Sandoz South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Sandoz Ukraine LLC, Sandoz d.o.o. farmaceutska industrija, Sandoz do Brasil Industria Farmaceutica Ltda, Sandoz s.r.o., Selexys Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Shanghai Novartis Trading Ltd., Societe par actions SANDOZ, Spinifex Pharmaceuticals, The Medicines Company, The Medicines Company, Triangle International Reinsurance Limited, Trinity River Insurance Co Ltd, Vedere Bio, Vedere Bio ll, Xiidra, Ziarco, and Ziarco Group Limited.

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Imperial Oil Limited engages in exploration, production, and sale of crude oil and natural gas in Canada. The company operates through three segments: Upstream, Downstream and Chemical segments. The Upstream segment explores for, and produces crude oil, natural gas, synthetic oil, and bitumen. As of December 31, 2021, this segment had 386 million oil-equivalent barrels of proved undeveloped reserves. The Downstream segment is involved in the transportation and refining of crude oil, blending of refined products and the distribution, and marketing of refined products. It also transports crude oil to refineries by contracted pipelines, common carrier pipelines, and rail; maintains a distribution system to move petroleum products to market by pipeline, tanker, rail, and road transport; and owns and operates fuel terminals, natural gas liquids, and products pipelines in Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario. In addition, this segment markets and supplies petroleum products to motoring public through approximately 2,400 Esso and Mobil-branded sites. Further, it sells petroleum products, including fuel, asphalt, and lubricants for industrial and transportation customers, independent marketers, and resellers, as well as other refiners serving the agriculture, residential heating, and commercial markets through branded fuel and lubricant resellers. The Chemical segment manufactures and markets various petrochemicals, benzene, aromatic and aliphatic solvents, plasticizer intermediates, and polyethylene resin. Imperial Oil Limited has a strategic agreement with E3 Metals Corp. to advance a lithium-extraction pilot in Alberta. The company was incorporated in 1880 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada. Imperial Oil Limited is a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil Corporation.
The Boeing Company is the worlds largest manufacturer of airplanes and commands more than 50% of the market in some channels and categories. The company and its family of subsidiaries design, develops, manufacture, sell, service, and supports commercial jetliners, military aircraft, satellites, missile defense, human space flight, and related services worldwide. The company operates through four segments including Commercial Airplanes; Defense, Space & Security; Global Services; and Boeing Capital providing products and services to end-users in 150 countries.

Boeing got its start in 1910 when William E. Boeing developed a love for aircraft. Soon after he takes his first plane ride which leads him to build a hangar and begin construction of his first plane. The onset of WWI helped spur the companys growth but business was cut drastically in its wake. The start of WWII was another milestone for the company and one that led to its current position of dominance. The company was incorporated in 1916 and is based in Chicago, Illinois. Boeing employs over 140,000 people in 65 countries making it one of the most diverse employers on the planet.

The Commercial Airplanes segment is built around the iconic 7-series which includes the 737, 747, and 787. The segment provides commercial jet aircraft for passenger and cargo requirements, as well as fleet support services for regional, national, and international air carriers and logistics and freight companies. In terms of global volume, the company estimates about 90% of all air freight is carried aboard one of its jets. This segment also includes the Dreamliner family of planes. The Dreamliner is a game-changing airplane for many carriers as it opens up the potential for new one-stop destinations because of its capacity and range.

The Defense, Space & Security segment develops and manufactures a range of systems including manned and unmanned aircraft, missiles, missile defense systems, satellites, communications equipment, and intelligence systems for governments. Among the many iconic brands within this segment are the AH-64 Apache, Air Force One, B-52, C-17 Globemaster, Chinook, F/A-18, and the V-22 Osprey VTOL aircraft used by the Marines.

The Global Services segment offers a range of products and services that include supply chain and logistics management, engineering, maintenance, upgrades, conversions, spare parts, pilot and maintenance training, technical and maintenance documents, and data analytics to its commercial and defense customers.

Boeing is also a leader in innovation, leveraging its many decades and avenues of experience to further aerospace and defense technology. Among the many innovations is the MQ-25 Stingray which will be the worlds first autonomous aircraft. The Stingray is only one of many areas of research that also include drones and undersea vehicles.
The great British leader, Winston Churchill, famously said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. True. But I wonder what hed say about the worst election cycle in our lifetime. I know what I am going to say when I go to bed Tuesday night: Im tired. Thank heaven its over.

But when I wake up on Wednesday, I dont want to be a cynic. I want to be hopeful about our ungainly, inefficient, yet indispensable way of governing ourselves. The anger that has so characterized this election, hopefully, will gradually dissipate and a modicum of thoughtful, respectful discourse will slowly emerge.

The movement from bitterness toward civility begins with you and me. I want to suggest that we thank God for our crazy-quilt way of self-government and offer prayers for those elected and those who continue in office. The founder of Methodism, John Wesley, offers this sage advice.

Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt, we may. --John Wesley, Sermon 39: Catholic Spirit.

Some years ago, then Lt. Gov. John Bohlinger invited me to lead a Bible study during one of the Legislative sessions. A few state Senators and Representatives would gather in his office. We prayed. We wrestled with a Biblical text. We listened to each other. Ive looked back on that experience and pondered the pressures that those elected men and women experienced in the worst form of government except for all the others. Its difficult work. Its tempting to become pessimistic. Our elected, as well as appointed, leaders need our prayerful support.

That prayerful support begins in our hearts and minds. C.S. Lewis is reputed to have said, Prayer is not for the purpose of changing God, but rather for changing us. In other words, prayer brings us closer to God and one another. In prayer, God graces us with larger hearts and more open minds. Our upset will lessen. We can start reconnecting.

When we wake up Wednesday, I want to suggest that we hold our officials in our hearts before God. And, I want to add that we need to pray for those who were not elected. They put their hopes and dreams on the line too. Lets pray that the outcome of this election will not be as toxic as the campaign itself.

Our elected and appointed officials have daunting tasks before them. Heres the prayer for sound government we used in Lt. Gov. Bohlingers office. I commend it to you.

O Lord our Governor, bless the leaders of our land, that we may be a people at peace among ourselves and a blessing to other nations of the earth.

To the President and members of the Cabinet, to Governors of States, Mayors of Cities, and to all in administrative authority, grant wisdom and grace in the exercise of their duties.

To Senators and Representatives, and those who make our laws in States, Cities, and Towns, give courage, wisdom, and foresight to provide for the needs of all our people, and to fulfill our obligations in the community of nations.

To the Judges and officers of our Courts give understanding and integrity, that human rights may be safeguarded and justice served.

And finally, teach our people to rely on your strength and to accept their responsibilities to their fellow citizens, that they may elect trustworthy leaders and make wise decisions for the well-being of our society; that we may serve you faithfully in our generation and honor your holy Name. Amen. --Book of Common Prayer, pp. 821-822.

We have the worst form of government, except for all the rest. It is untidy to say the least. But we need to be good stewards of it. In his book Prayers for a Privileged People, my Old Testament professor, Walter Brueggemann, offers this post-election day prayer:

You creator God

who has ordered us

in families and communities,

in clans and tribes,

in states and nations.

You creator God

who enacts your governance

in ways overt and

in ways hidden.

You exercise your will for

peace and for justice and for freedom.

We give you thanks for the peaceable order of

our nation and for the chance of choosing

all the manipulative money notwithstanding.

We pray now for new governance

that your will and purpose may prevail,

that our leaders may have a sense

of justice and goodness,

that we as citizens may care about the

public face of your purpose.

We pray in the name of Jesus who was executed

by the authorities.

 Walter Brueggemann, Prayers for a Privileged People (Nashville: Abingdon, 2008), pp. 149.
One-day Buddhist retreat upcoming

Flowing Mountains Sangha, an Open Way community of mindful living in the tradition of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, will host a Day of Mindfulness on Saturday, Nov. 12, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Covenant United Methodist Church, 2330 East Broadway. The theme is Four Truths/Four Tasks: Its A Practice. Lineage-holding Zen Teacher and senior student of Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh, Rowan Conrad from Missoula, will guide the day. The Day of Mindfulness will include sitting and walking meditation, a Dharma talk, and discussion.

Rowan received Zen teaching transmission from Hanh in 2004. He regularly leads practice at Open Way Mindfulness Center in Missoula, across the northwest region, and in Canada.

For more information or to register, please email flowingmountains@gmail.com or call 495-0290. Registration is requested for event planning purposes, and no fee is charged for attending the event. Donations in support of the teacher are accepted. Participants should bring their own cushion and pad if sitting on the floor, as well as a vegetarian sack lunch for a mindful midday meal together. Tea and water will be provided.
A 21-year-old Helena man is accused of traveling to Kalispell with the intent to have sex with a person he met online who he believed to be 13-year-old girl.

Robert Gerald Ziems is jailed on felony charges of sexual abuse of children and attempted sexual intercourse without consent. He is being held on $100,000 bond.

Court documents filed Thursday allege in September Ziems sent an unsolicited message to an undercover investigator's KIK messenger profile. Ziems is accused of making sexual advances via messenger to the investigator, who was posing as a teenage girl.

Documents say Ziems booked a motel room in Kalispell so the two could meet and then sent the investigator a video of him masturbating in the room.

Ziems allegedly told the investigator he had been with at least one underage girl previously.

"You look so innocent and it makes me feel like I'm taking it away lol," he wrote to the investigator, according to documents filed in Lewis and Clark County Justice Court.

In a subsequent online conversation, Ziem invited the investigator to live with him in Helena and several times voiced his intent to have sexual contact with the person he believed was a 13-year-old girl, court documents say.

People under the age of 16 cannot consent to sexual intercourse per Montana law.
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By Gina Martinez

A man who was caught on tape punching an elderly man to death and walking away this summer has been charged, a spokesman for the Queens district attorney said.

Matthew Smith was charged with criminally negligent homicide and misdemeanor assault by police Monday after the video showed him punching 64-year-old Briarwood resident Patrick Gorman to death following an altercation that occurred after the stranger brushed up against his wife, police said.

But Smiths negligent homicide charge was dropped by prosecutors and he is now facing charges for third-degree assault, said Kevin Ryan, a spokesman for DA Richard Brown. If convicted he faces a maximum sentence of four years in prison.

Prosecutors are not bound by the offenses the police charge in making an arrest,  Ryan said. With the information at hand we felt under present law the charges against Smith are limited to assault in the third-degree. An attack like the one Mr. Smith is charged with, known as one punch homicide, has no proof of villainous intent, which means at most were limited to charging assault, which requires only the intent to cause injury, not death.

Police released surveillance video last week showing Smith, 42, approaching Gorman and striking him in the head with a closed fist, causing him to fall on the ground, police said. Smith fled the location with his wife, Elena Makarova, 39. Authorities familiar with the case said the altercation began when Gorman brushed up against Makarova, who protested and prompted Smith to strike the victim.

The incident occurred on Sunday, June 26, at 1 a.m. when police responded to a call of an unconscious male near the corner of Main Street and Queens Boulevard. When officers arrived, they found Gorman unresponsive, with slight trauma to the head, police said. Gorman was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital, then taken to Jamaica Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The Daily News reported Smith bragged about delivering the fatal blow on Facebook.

The medical examiner has not yet ruled on the cause of Gormans death.

Smith was arrested Monday. Authorities were looking for Makarova, who has been found, but she had not been charged with a crime, police said.
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SCHODACK  An armed robbery at a Schodack jewelry store Saturday resulted in a highway chase and two men in custody, Schodack police said.

Scionti Laurenzo, 22, of Albany, and Peter Watson, 21, of Rensselaer, are accused of robbing the Jewelry Repair Center at 1629 Columbia Turnpike at around 11 a.m. Using a witness description of the get-away vehicle, police spotted Laurenzo and Watson on I-90 westbound near exit 8.
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Atkinson, N.H.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton charged through vastly different corners of America Friday hunting for vastly different voters in a final, frantic push that traced the country's geographic, racial and economic divides.

Clinton and Democratic allies bounced from city to city. She was to campaign in urban centers of Detroit, Pittsburgh and Cleveland on Friday while President Barack Obama was heading to Charlotte, N.C.  all cities where minority voters are crucial.

In Pittsburgh, a city where one in three people is not white, Clinton hammered Trump as "someone who demeans women, mocks people with disabilities, insults African-Americans and Latinos and demonizes immigrants and Muslims."

"Everywhere he goes he leaves people behind," Clinton told rowdy supporters.

Trump, meanwhile, was on a tour of rural areas, hoping to boost turnout among the white, working-class voters drawn to his promise to bring back a lost America. He started his day Friday in Atkinson, N.H., population 6,800 and almost 98 percent white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. From there, he was bound for Wilmington, Ohio, another overwhelmingly white town where just 13 percent of residents have a college degree.

Speaking more than 2,000 miles from the Mexican border, Trump drew loud cheers in Atkinson when he vowed to build a massive wall between the U.S. and Mexico. The crowd booed when he contended that Clinton supports "open borders."

"Her plans would mean generations of terrorism, extremism and radicalism spreading into your schools and through your communities," Trump declared.

In spite of a close race in national polling, Trump's path to victory remains narrow. For example, he must win Florida, where polls show a neck-and-neck race. His campaign is increasingly looking to make up for losses among suburban voters, particularly women, by wrestling up new voters in out-of-the-way places.

The candidates' divergent paths highlighted the yawning gaps between race, place and economics that drive presidential policies.

Trump told his largely white audience in Atkinson that "we have to rebuild our country."

"They've shipped our jobs and they've shipped our wealth to other countries," he said. "To all Americans, I say it is time for new leadership."

Trump's dark views on the economy clashed with a new jobs report showing the unemployment rate declined to 4.9 percent while wages went up in October. The report marks 73 straight months of job growth.

But the Republican said the numbers weren't good enough, and he cast doubt on whether they were accurate.

"These numbers are an absolute disaster," Trump said, reviving his argument that the unemployment numbers released every month by the Labor Department are skewed because they don't accurately account for those who've dropped out of the workforce.

"Nobody believes the numbers they're reporting anyway," he said.

As he spoke, Clinton campaigned in Pittsburgh, delivering a nearly opposite message. She celebrated what she described as the Rust Belt city's rebirth of "confidence" and economic renewal. She asked voters to "imagine two different Americas"  one with Trump in charge, and one with her in the White House.

"Think about what it will be to trust the nuclear codes to someone with a very thin skin," she said, adding Trump could "start a real war, not just a Twitter war at 3 in the morning."

Clinton called the jobs report "good news."

"I believe that our economy is poised to really take off and thrive," she said. "When the middle class thrives, America thrives."

Clinton's campaign has announced two more stops in Philadelphia before Tuesday. Pennsylvania is a state where Clinton has long had a solid lead; it has not voted for a Republican in six presidential elections.

But with polls tightening across battleground states, Democrats are taking little for granted. Former President Bill Clinton worked to drive up turnout in Colorado on Friday, while Vice President Joe Biden was due in Wisconsin, both states Clinton was believed to have locked up weeks ago.

Clinton herself was to wrap her day in Cleveland at a get-out-the-vote rally with hip-hop artist Jay-Z.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., stated back in February that he would not entertain any Supreme Court nominee named by President Barack Obama. He claimed it would be up to the next president to put forward a Supreme Court nominee.

More recently, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., gave voice to the Senate Republicans' real intent: "I promise you that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put up." Although Senate Judiciary Committee Chair, Sen. Charles Grassley , R-Iowa, tried to walk this back and say his colleagues will not wholly stonewall nominees, their actions over the last two years speak louder than words.

McConnell and the Senate majority are doing exactly what they've said they wouldn't do  over the past two years, they've virtually shut down the federal judiciary confirmation process by approving very few judicial confirmations, not just the languishing Supreme Court nomination of Judge Merrick Garland, who was nominated by Obama back in March.

It is bad enough that, because of the Senate's obstruction and McConnell's refusal to fully staff the Supreme Court so that the court would lack a fifth decisive vote, the court's ability to be the final arbiter of the law has been jeopardized in 4-4 decisions and broader uncertainty.

But the Supreme Court vacancy is only the tip of the iceberg. The vast majority of cases are decided by the lower courts that issue decisions on critical issues, including elections, the environment, money in politics, health care, voting rights, marriage equality, immigration and reproductive rights.

And yet, the Senate is shutting down these courts as well. More than 10 percent of the federal judiciary is vacant, compared to 3.7 percent at this same point in President George W. Bush's final year.

There are 114 Article III current and future judicial vacancies nationwide, 54 of which have pending nominees; 25 nominees, from 17 states, including New York, have cleared the Judiciary Committee and are on the floor of the Senate, awaiting votes.

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One of those nominees is Gary Brown. He was nominated to serve on the Eastern District of New York by Obama on July 30, 2015, and reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Nov. 5, 2015. The seat has been vacant almost two years and the vacancy has been officially been classified as a judicial emergency. Similarly, Kathleen Sweet was nominated on March 15, 2016, to serve on the Western District of New York for an additional judicial emergency. Gary Brown and Kathleen Sweet are simply awaiting final up-or-down votes.

It is unacceptable for senators to shut down the third branch of government. Senators will return to Washington after the election, and they must immediately consider these pending nominees. New York's senators, Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, have done admirable work in calling attention to the vacancies that exist in all courts, including those in their home state. Now they and we must make clear to Sens. McConnell, Grassley and other leaders of the majority that We the People expect up-or-down votes during the lame-duck session on Gary Brown and the other nominees. We cannot wait. Senators must do their job now or a co-equal branch will have suffered irreparable damage.

David M. Brodsky, of Manhattan, is an attorney and the Chair Emeritus of the board of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy.
Cashel Cllr Martin Browne has echoed calls for Ireland to accept 200 children from the Calais refugee camp.

He says that the failure of the Irish State to take this opportunity to show compassion for children portrays us in a very bad light, and he calls on all Tipperary TDs to make their position known. Cllr Browne said: The destruction of the refugee camp in Calais has exposed the number of child refugees there, and drawn attention to the number of in-danger refugee children across Europe. According to reports there are 10,000 such unaccompanied children in Europe.

For a State that claims to be a great place for families and children, you'd think we could show a little caring and accept 200 children. This failure to offer support is frustrating. Instead the Government is claiming that a legal technicality will prevent this.

That's unacceptable. There were an estimated 1,500 unaccompanied children living in containers in the camp. The last shelter was torn down on Monday, and those minors now need homes. If one of our Ministers saw a child in trouble on the side of a road would they fail to act because of a technicality? If they saw a child homeless, hungry and in danger would they fail to act?

It certainly seems so. I call now upon the five TD's in Tipperary to state their position. I'd like each of them to pick up a phone and publicly state their support for taking 200 children, or to have the courage to explain why they don't, added Cllr Browne.
Independent TD Mattie McGrath has said that the government is failing to effectively communicate it's post Brexit strategy. Deputy McGrath was speaking after he attended a national discussion on the implications of the Brexit vote at Dublin Castle.

We are constantly hearing that the government is constructing and implementing various strands of a post Brexit strategy.

Yet it remains the case that most businesses out there, particularly those in rural Ireland like the Tipperary mushroom sector which has been decimated, have seen neither sight nor sound of them.

The Taoiseach described the UK referendum vote as the greatest challenge Ireland has faced in the last 50 years. I would have thought that in light of this there would be a more concerted and sustained effort to communicate the government strategy. That has failed to occur.

All of the focus seems to have been on either the multinational sector or the opportunity to gain from the transfer some of Londons financial operations to Dublin. In the meantime small and medium size businesses are more or less being left in the dark.

When I questioned the Minister for Agriculture about this recently he told me that the governments response to Brexit was carefully laid out in the budget proposals. But what small business or farmer has the time to parse through budgetary statements.

There needs to be an immediate focus placed upon communicating to businesses whatever strategy currently exists.

Ultimately this is a matter of leadership.

SMEs and the agri-sector here cannot be left wondering what direction the government is taking, concluded Deputy McGrath.
Inch House, Thurles and Country Choice in Nenagh were named as food hero's at a gala dinner in Dublin last week after receiving Good Food Ireland International Ambassador status thanks to ten years of championing Irish produce.

Nora Egan of Inch House said the award came as a total shock and that they were honoured to have been recognised by Good Food Ireland for their work.

I didn't expect it at all. We knew there were awards being handed out for we didn't know what for. We're thrilled to be recognised at this level.

These awards really put you on the map but they do make things very busy as people hear about it and then want to make a booking but I love what I do so I'm delighted, she said.

My daughter Maureen is now taking over making our black puddings so she will be the third generation of women in the family to carry on the tradition so it's a very exciting time, added Nora of the family's award winning recipe. The Thurles restaurant along with Nenagh's Country Choice which is run by Peter and Mary Ward were selected as food ambassadors alongside the likes of Darina Allen and Rory O Connell, Ballymaloe Cookery School, Martin Shanahan of the Fishy Fishy Cafe and Birgitta Hedin-Curtin of the Burren Smokehouse for their commitment to Irish produce over the last decade.

Speaking at the awards ceremony in Croke Park Margaret Jeffares, Founder of Good Food Ireland told a packed audience that it was important to recognise all those who have worked tirelessly over the past decade to establish Ireland as a food destination.

Many individuals joined our pioneering efforts ten years ago to grow Irelands reputation internationally as a food tourism destination. In ten years I have seen great change and applaud everyone who has made this happen. We are a great country with great food and great people at the heart of it, visitors are now looking for authenticity and it is our aim to stand up and be counted for.

This is one of the latest awards for the Country Choice cafe and shop having been included on the Taste.ie list of top food stores in Ireland this September while the much loved Inch House and restaurant received national attention last year when Daniel O'Donnel and wife Majella stopped by to film for their road trip around Ireland series.
[November 04, 2016] Keller Rohrback Announces Massachusetts Court Approves $300 Million Settlement Agreement in State Street Bank "Indirect Foreign Exchange" Class Action

Attorney Advertising - Keller Rohrback L.L.P. is pleased to announce that Honorable Mark L. Wolf of the United States District Court of Massachusetts has approved a $300 million settlement between plaintiffs and State Street Bank and Trust Company (SBBT). Plaintiffs alleged that SBBT's custodial clients, including ERISA plans, lost money due to SSBT's unfair, deceptive and improper practice of charging excessive rates and spreads in connection with certain foreign exchange transactions known as "Indirect Foreign Exchange Transactions" from January 2, 1998 through December 31, 2009. Keller Rohrback L.L.P. managing partner Lynn Lincoln Sarko played a major role in negotiating this landmark settlement as counsel for ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974) plaintiffs, who stand to recover $60 million out of the $300 million settlement. When asked for a statement Mr. Sarko said, "This settlement took extraordinary patience and persevrance. Although the negotiations were challenging, we had the guidance of an experienced federal Judge, a talented mediator, and sophisticated attorneys on both sides of the table. At the end of the day, we achieved a settlement that provides fair compensation to the injured class members. This fine result is a testimony to the hard work and good faith of all the parties."



The Settlement Administrator will begin distributing settlement proceeds as soon as the Court's Orders allow it to do so. You can read more about this settlement here. Keller Rohrback L.L.P., with offices in Seattle, Phoenix, New York, and Santa Barbara, serves as lead and co-lead counsel in class actions throughout the country. Our Complex Litigation Group is proud to offer its expertise to clients nationwide, and our trial lawyers have obtained judgments and settlements on behalf of clients in excess of eighteen billion dollars.

Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Not licensed to practice law in all States. Please refer to our website for details. The choice of a lawyer is an important decision and should not be based solely upon advertisement. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161104006127/en/

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Two candidates seeking NLCS Board District 2 seat

In this year's general election, two candidates are seeking election to the district two seat on the NLCS board: Adam Parsley and Michael Patton.
If hunters are hoping for an early winter blast to bring game herds down from the high country, theyll likely be waiting awhile.

Montanas general big game season is two weeks old, but the weather has been less than cooperative in terms of mountain snow. A few inches up high make a big difference, allowing hunters to better track animals and pushing them to lower -- and often more accessible -- elevations.

But even as much of Montana saw one of the wetter Octobers on record, precipitation came in the form of rain.

With clearing skies are expected in the coming weeks, forecasters say hunters may remain disappointed. Ten-day forecasts call for little chance of precipitation, making for some stellar days to be outside but not much to get animals thinking about moving to winter range.

Unfortunately its not a good weather pattern for hunters for the first half of November, said Bob Hoenisch, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Great Falls. A high pressure pattern over the U.S. is pushing weather north into Canada.

Elk harvest started off solid in many parts of the state but has since tapered off, said Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Game Management Bureau Chief John Vore.

As elk remain difficult to find, the mid-November deer rut will still kick off regardless if temperatures and snow begin to fall.

Snow does make a difference as it makes an animal much easier to hunt, but its the daylight and the time of year that triggers the rut, Vore said. Deer in the mountain environments may not be driven down and stay up high, but theyll be wandering far and wide looking for does.

Many areas of Montana are reporting above-average deer harvest despite warm weather, which is indicative of an uptick in deer numbers in recent years, he added.
On Wednesday Montana's attorney general and the Public Service Commission joined several other states in submitting comments to the Environmental Protection Agency, criticizing the agency for ignoring the U.S. Supreme Courts stay of the agencys proposed carbon emissions regulations.

Attorney General Tim Fox and the five-member, all-Republican PSC joined with 25 other state attorneys general, two other state public utility commissions and four state environmental quality departments.

Earlier this year Fox joined with other states in challenging the EPAs carbon regulations, which would require Montana to reduce carbon emissions by more than 40 percent. Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, supported Fox's decision, saying the EPA had "moved the goal posts" when issuing its final Clean Power Plan, which requires Montana to reduce its emissions by more than any other state and more than first proposed. That lawsuit resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court issuing an injunction until legal challenges have concluded.

A press release from Fox's office Wednesday said that the EPA is moving forward with a rulemaking process for the Clean Energy Incentive Program, a component of the larger plan, in direct violation of the Supreme Courts stay.

By moving forward with this rulemaking, EPA has ignored explicit instruction from the court, throwing years of well-established case law out the window, Fox said. It is unacceptable for the EPA to flout the rule of law and treat our nations highest court in this manner, and for the sake of preserving the integrity of the institution, I encourage the agency officials to rethink their actions.

The Clean Energy Incentive Program is a regulatory mechanism used to create an incentive for renewable energy development across the country by providing emission reduction credits that count toward states carbon reduction goals.

Fox's press release said the program's existence is dependent on the full regulation being upheld in court and the EPA cannot adopt a regulation to implement another regulation that has been stayed by the federal court.

In representing EPA before the court, the U.S. Solicitor General argued that the Supreme Courts stay would require EPA to halt any further rulemaking action, stating implementation of each sequential step mandated by the Rule would be substantially delayed if the carbon regulations were stayed but ultimately upheld.

Montana PSC Chairman Brad Johnson in a press release criticized proceeding with the rulemaking process.

The EPAs decision to proceed with rulemaking for the Clean Energy Incentive Plan in light of the Supreme Courts stay of the carbon regulations is another stark example of the administrations high-handed disregard for the rule of law.

A study released by the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Montana in 2015 said that to meet requirements laid out in the plan, Montana's largest coal-fired power plant in Colstrip would have to operate just one and a half of its four units. Economist Patrick Barkey told the Missoulian at the time that wouldn't make economic sense. Since then, Colstrip operator Talen Energy has said it will close two of the plant's four units by 2022 as part of a settlement over emissions filed by the Sierra Club and Montana Environmental Information Center.

Also Wednesday, State Sen. Doug Kary, R-Billings, sent a letter to Bullock requesting copies of public records about the impending closure of the two older units, specifically rumors that Talen or its parent company, Riverstone Holdings, plans to shutter the units earlier than previously announced. U.S. Sen. Steve Daines sent a letter to Talen CEO Paul Farr last week asking Farr to disclose any plans to shut down Units 1 and 2 in 2017 and asking if the state was aware of Talen's plans.

"I would like to know if you or your staff had any knowledge or discussions about this matter," Kary wrote in his letter. "No one should find themselves caught off guard about Colstrips potentially earlier than expected closure because political decisions were made to withhold this information."

Kary asked for emails or any other records from July, August and September between Talen and Bullock, as well as many of Bullock's staff.
"Nick Haines, Steve Kraske, Mike Ferguson, Barbara Shelly and Dave Helling provide analysis of key races and ballot issues on both sides of the state line as voters prepare to head to the ballot box next Tuesday."

Here's the local world according to mainstream media sources embroiled in the eternal quest to keep up their social media stats whilst still retaining () credibility.Description . . .Somewhat related on the topic of mainstream media journalism . . .More in a bit . . .
Kansas City Congressman Emanuel Cleaver Breezes Toward Reelection And Challenges Social Media Status Quo

State Senator Ryan Silvey Gloats Amid Missouri Republican Trump Ticket Winning

Kansas City Council Lady Flying High With Support Of Single-Airport Terminal Backers

Brit hottieis once again our inspiration for tonight's consideration of Kansas City movers and shakers.Accordingly, here's a quick list of the top ranking locals who stayed atop the local discourse this week . . .He's Kansas City's strongest political force from a district where he is unbeatable. This week he continued his work for fair housing and equal hiring byAs Democratic Party denizens, our Congressman is one of the few elected leaders who remains confident in his support.This Northland politico doesn't have many friends among Missouri GOP leaders but that doesn't stop him fromamid the demise of KCMO print media andShe'sand what that really means is more Kansas City corporate help to accomplish this controversial goal which most voters rejectAs always, this list has been compiled according toand it's a weekly comprehensive guide to local powerful people.
CHECK OUT MD ALAM FRONT AND CENTER WITH HILLARY CLINTON OFFERING HIS SUPPORT IN THIS CLOSE ELECTION!!!

MD Alam: "I was able to have my child hug and shake (hands with) Hillary Clinton and it was an honor to be appointed as the National Chairman of Muslim American(s) for Hillary Clinton for President 2016 Campaign."

MD Alam is one of the most prolific activists in Kansas City right now and his efforts deserve more attention.Denizens of our blog community remember that Mr. Alam has competed for statewide office in Missouri in the past and during his campaign he has endured somebut also championedAnd now . . .Recently, the activist sent this message our way . . .Pix with Hillary are in short supply this election season given that she is not competing in Missouri. Even the biggest power brokers in KCMO can't get close enough to share a selfie. Thisoffers just a glimpse that the work MD Alam is doing is most certainly high profile and vital to Democratic Party efforts in a divisive and extremely close election.You decide . . .
Stock Market Dooms Clinton

We're not in the biz of making predictions but when the smarter denizens of our blog community offer insight backed up with evidence, we take notice.Like it or not . . .Accordingly . . . Here's a bit of financial wisdom about people voting with their wallets . . .As of Friday's close, minutes ago,Not exactly what you'd expect to see happen in the days before a national election, if the populace are content, and the incumbent party is to maintain control of the White House.So, Hillary Clinton and the Democrats will likely receive a pink slip come Tuesday. You're fired!In Missouri, this is good news for Eric Greitens and other Republican candidates. In the U.S. Senate race, it's a little trickier, as Senator Blunt has been effectively challenged as a "Washington insider" by Democratic challenger Kander, who purposely fails to mention his party affiliation and past in the MO House and Secretary of State's office. That he reaches back 10 years to his couple of months service in Afghanistan, speaks volumes to his strategy of posing as an outsider, in this year of the angry electorate. Blunt should prevail, as he's coalesced a tactic of painting Kander as an Obama/Clinton clone.###########You decide . . .
It is clear none of the communities will have to pay the debts of the other, President Nicos Anastasiades said about the cost and economics of a Cyprus solution

It is clear none of the communities will have to pay the debts of the other, President Nicos Anastasiades said about the cost and economics of a Cyprus solution, in statements on Friday.

Speaking at the Presidential Palace he mentioned that none of the states, which will come out of a federal Cyprus solution, will be expected to pay any debts that could occur in the other state.

MOTHER AND CHILD TO FIGURE IT OUT ON T/C DEBT

The President said that the Greek Cypriot position is that financial debt is exclusively an issue of Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots.

The Mother country and the child will figure it out. And they will not pressure anyone to pay their debt, the President said.

Anastasiades has said that it is baseless and unacceptable to say that the Greek Cypriots should pay.

COVERING THE COST OF A SOLUTION

The President has said that for the first time in history the IMF has involved itself in researching the functional costs and economic data.

The World Bank, he added, is studying the property data and is collecting the specific data.

Anastasiades has also said that the EU and the UN have already started to work systematically on the economy chapter of a Cyprus solution.

I have spoken with the UN Secretary General on creating a fund and not having shareholders to cover the cost of a solution from the first day. There are studies being conducted to have the data for the cost of a solution, which will include the functional costs, he said.

He added that the fund that will be established should be ready after the proposal of a solution is made.

Read more here.

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SYRIZA, the Communist Party and the Centrists' Union condemned on Friday the arrests of the two joint leaders of Turkeys Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) who were detained along with 10 lawmakers

SYRIZA, the Communist Party and the Centrists' Union in Greece condemned on Friday the arrests of the two joint leaders of Turkeys Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) who were detained along with 10 lawmakers earlier in the day.

The persecution of HDP is based on unfounded allegations and are highly political, with the obvious purpose of terrorizing the Turkish Left and every progressive citizen struggling for democracy and peace in Turkey, said SYRIZA in a press release, condemning the arrests of SHDP co-leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, and adding it is deeply concerned about Turkeys slide towards authoritarianism.

The party also called for a protest rally on Syntagma square on November 5, at 14:30.

The Communist Party denounced "the growing authoritarianism of the Erdogan government in Turkey" and condemned the arrests of the co-chairs of HDP and lawmakers.

The Centrists Union said Turkey continues its long tradition of persecuting the Kurds, noting that when the state arrests the political leadership of the Kurds it is like it considers all Kurds an enemy of the country.

The party also urged Europe to put pressure on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to immediately stop the purges of those it calls opponents and respect basic human rights

Read more here.

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Greece's parliament will literally turn green to celebrate the entry into force of the UN Paris Agreement on climate change

Greece's parliament will literally turn green to celebrate the entry into force of the UN Paris Agreement on climate change. The entire building is to be floodlit green on Friday and Saturday night, symbolising the 'green light' for faster action to stop global warming.

The Greek Parliament has adopted the proposal of the UN Climate Change Conference and floodlit the building that houses the Greek lawmakers, which in addition to its distinctive architecture is also notable for its bioclimatic features, according to a parliament press release.

The Greek Parliament ratified the Paris Climate Change Agreement on October 5. It is the first global and legally binding agreement on climate achieved at the Paris Climate Change Conference on December 12, 2015.

Read more here.

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Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades focused on important issues that deal with the four chapters in the Cyprus problem

Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades focused on important issues that deal with the four chapters in the Cyprus problem, in a speech made at the Presidential Palace on Friday.

The President said that he wants to give answers to the ongoing Cyprus discussions and the four chapters, Which in my opinion concern or preoccupy the public.

The new order, as it has been established since 1977 and which has been the framework for negotiations for all my predecessors, involves the transformation of the internal structure of the State of the Republic [only the internal state structure] from a unitary to a federal system of government, a bizonal, bicommunal federation, he said.

NO CONFEDERATION

Anastasiades has clarified that the solution does not involve any form of confederation - a concern expressed by some members of the public - but will instead be a federation.

He added that the joint communique of February 11, 2014 has also outlined the federal nature that Cyprus will have after a solution, and that there will be two states on the island with an equal status, through the single federal constitution.

THREE BASIC VALUES ALREADY SECURED

Anastasiades added that in the negotiations to date, it is clear that three basic values have been secured: a single and permanent international character, a singular sovereignty, and a singular nationality.

This progress is, in some cases, to the benefit of all the Cypriot people, and has comparable provisions to those of the 1960 constitution, or other initiatives and negotiations on the Cyprus problem, he said.

NEGOTIATIONS ATTEMPT TO ESTABLISH EFFECTIVE CO-GOVERNANCE

The President has mentioned that in negotiations significant progress has been made in the chapters of co-governance, power sharing, EU, economy, and to a smaller degree property.

He said that in the negotiating framework, a strong, effective, and functional system of governance is being sought, after a list of powers has been formulated, which will include relations of the state with the EU, defence policy, management of natural reserves, the conduct and security of the land, sea, and aerial borders, as well as immigration policy.

Anastasiades mentioned that the key components of the federal constitutions is to assure that the powers of the state are extended in day-to-day life to all citizens.

I am mentioning that in this context as agreed, each of the states, will have exclusive jurisdiction among other things, to maintain its own independent social security system, its own health system, its own education system, and its own local government, he said.

Each state, he added, will be able to secure its specific ethnic, cultural, and religious character, as it pertains to the communities.

STATES WILL NOT BE REQUIRED TO PAY EACH OTHERS DEBTS

Anastasiades has said that under the agreement for financial stability, which will be governed by the federal government, an obligation will be provided, where each of the states will secure its financial sustainability, no state will be required to pay the financial debts another state creates.

Both for the protection of business and the economic activity of citizens, there will be strict rules ensuring fair competition, and to safeguard European product certification standards and services, he said.

EU MEMBERSHIP OF DECISIVE IMPORTANCE

Of decisive importance to achieve important convergences is our states recognition as a member state of the European Union, and the need to have the basic parts of a solution include the EU acquis, something we have been able to achieve with its [the EUs] more active role at the negotiating table, he mentioned.

The President added that maintaining the EU character has made it necessary to agree on human rights and basic freedoms, which will be strictly regulated.

SOLUTION FRAMEWORK SPECIFICS

Anastasiades has highlighted some of the specifics of a solution, saying that:

1. Each citizen will be able to move freely in all of Cyprus, without any limitations

2. Each individual will have the right to choose where he/she lives, as the right of property will be secured. People will be able to freely practice a profession and business activities wherever he/she chooses.

The President said that to secure the aforementioned rights, it has been accepted that voting rights will be regulated if the individual comes from the other state.

Another of the political convergences, he mentioned, is the demographic character of Cyprus. The President said that it will reflect with small deviations the demographic character of the Republic of Cyprus as it was established in 1960.

The most important thing is that through the above arrangement, it is ensured, that in order to acquire Cypriot citizenship a Turkish national will have to be preceded by four of individuals of Greek origin, he said.

IMPORTANT DIFFERENCES STILL EXIST IN PROPERTY ISSUE

Anastasiades has said that important differences have continued to exist on the property issue, but there has also been progress as the right to property has been recognised through certain processes and remedies including:

- Re-establishment

- Partial restoration

- Exchange of property

- Compensation

He added that to shield the property right, it has been secured that the owner  if not satisfied with the decisions made domestically  can file a case with the European Court of Human Rights.

BENEFITS FOR G/Cs AND T/Cs DISCUSSED

For the first time there is an advanced dialogue on the need for the first day of a solution to provide benefits for all citizens, Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot, he said.

The President added that in this framework they are discussing in a spirit of common understanding, among other things, for the first day to:

- Allow for the return of the sealed city of Famagusta to the lawful residents

- Allow for the immediate return of uninhabited areas in the buffer zone to the lawful owners

- Have a large number of the occupying forces leave the island

DIFFERENCES STILL EXIST

As I have already said differences still exist and there are still different approaches to issues that have been discussed, the President said, making reference to the core issues of Security/Guarantees and Territory.

He added that there is significant divergence in the positions of both sides.

I want to hope that in the negotiations, which will be conducted starting on Monday in Switzerland, we will have progress, which will create a prospective for how we can proceed on the substantive discussions in the security and guarantees chapter, Anastasiades said.

He mentioned that it is not enough to have a rhetoric developed for wanting a solution, nor is it enough to have a rhetoric of understanding for the concerns of the Greek Cypriots.

It should be understood that a respectable solution to the Cyprus problem for all will be to the benefit of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. A solution that will not have allow for winners and losers, he said.

TURKEY WILL ALSO BENEFIT FROM A SOLUTION

Anastasiades mentioned that a solution will be to the benefit of Turkey as well as the Turkish people.

He said that this is why he thinks that in current efforts it is important to have Turkeys decisive contribution, and also the leadership of the Turkish Cypriot community.

GOING TO SWITZERLAND WITH DECISIVENESS

The President said: I want to ensure that I am going to Switzerland with decisiveness, good will, and the necessary will, keeping in mind that a solution will have to respond to the prospects and the concerns of the Cypriot people.

Read more here.

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The only reason why anyone might want the departure of NATO ships currently patrolling in the Aegean was to stop them continuing to control refugee flows, Greece's Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias commented

The only reason why anyone might want the departure of NATO ships currently patrolling in the Aegean was to stop them continuing to control refugee flows, Greece's Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias commented on Thursday.

Kotzias made the statement in a joint press conference with his Polish counterpart Witold Waszczykowski, following their meeting on Thursday morning. He was replying to a Polish journalist regarding a statement made by Turkey's defence minister, who said that NATO ships should leave now that the Alliance's mission in the Mediterranean had ended.

"I think that what is missing in the Turkish thought is to openly tell us how it evaluates the presence of the NATO ships in the Aegean. If they contributed to stopping refugee flows, why should they leave? The only reason why someone might want them to leave is so that there is no control. And you can interpret the world 'control' in all ways that it can be interpreted," Kotzias said.

The two ministers said their talks had focused on bilateral, regional and European issues, especially the refugee crisis. They also had in-depth discussion on further developing bilateral cooperation between the Greek and Polish foreign ministries, which will celebrate the first centenary since establishing diplomatic relations in 2019. Both noted that the European Union must revert to policies of growth and enlargement, becoming a goal for all countries that want to join it.

With regard to the refugee and migration crisis, both ministers agreed that the war in Syria and other conflicts generating refugees must stop, while refugee flows must be contained to the neighbouring countries, such as Lebanon and Jordan, which must be supported. Kotzias announced that he intended to visit Lebanon with his Cypriot counterpart Ioannis Kasoulides in six days time, as a symbolic demonstration of this support.

Problems in the Eastern Mediterranean

The Greek minister said he briefed his Polish counterpart on the problems in the Eastern Mediterranean and Greece's efforts through trilateral diplomacy in the region, as well as efforts toward a security architecture initiated through the Rhodes conference in the summer.

"We are always ready to help the development of Poland's relations with this region, or joint actions," he added.

Kotzias also presented Greek policy with regard to Turkey and its Balkan neighbours, through the new cross-border cooperation, as well as the Cyprus issue.

Waszczykowski agreed that wars were chiefly responsible for the refugee problem and this could not be solved without a solution in the countries the refugees came from. He also outlined his country's proposal for "flexible solidarity".

"We consider that every country in Europe is at a different level of development. Every country must help, of course, but in accordance with its ability," he said. Waszczykowski was in favour of transferring refugees to regional countries, Jordan and Lebanon, while at the same time protecting EU borders.

He said Poland was prepared to take on its share of the burden and had sent warships to the Mediterranean, staff to guard the borders via the EU border agency Frontex and "participates as much as it can."

Crisis with Russia

Waszczykowski also referred to the crisis with Russia, noting that his country was preparing for the possibility of a very serious crisis between Russia and Ukraine. He said that Poland had issued almost one million visas to Ukrainian citizens last year, many of whom intended to stay permanently.

Asked about the 'Balkan corridor', the Polish foreign minister said that it was chiefly economic migrants rather than refugees that had been allowed through this, meaning that most of them would have to be returned to their countries. He also pointed out that forcibly distributing them among countries they did not wish to be in was not very humanitarian.

"In 21st century Europe, we cannot forcibly hold people in centres when they do not want to be there. If we allowed them to enter into Europe, they should be free to go where they want. If we cannot cope with this from the start, then we should have protected our borders from the start and not allowed it," he pointed out.

Kotzias, on his part, said that neither Poland nor Greece were responsible for the refugee crisis or the wars in Syria, Iraq and Libya. "The big problem is that the people who waged these wars and carried out the bombings are asking us to pay the price for their bad choices," he added. The Greek minister also pointed out that countries far richer than Greece had invited the refugees to move and they had responded to this call.

Read more here.

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A report published by the Greek Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs states that there were 147 attacks against religious sites around Greece in 2015.

A report published by the Greek Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs states that there were 147 attacks against religious sites around Greece in 2015. The report, published for the first time, was aimed at raising awareness on issues of religious discrimination and violence, according to Education Minister Nikos Filis.

Specifically, the report points to 137 attacks aimed at Orthodox places of worship, one against a Catholic sites, four against Jewish sites and three against Muslim-related sites.

Filis released the report in the wake of an occupation of a site benchmarked for the construction of a mosque. Police evacuated the site on Friday, detaining 15 people demonstrating against the creation of a place of worship for muslims.

Its high time our country acquires the ways, methods and procedures, so as to be able to speak without fear and passion, said Filis. He said that mutual respect and religious freedom are fundamental pre-requisites to achieve peace within society and national cohesion.

Read more here.

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There are 35 hotels fewer this year than there were in 2015 based on the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels official record of registered members, constituting a major blow to investment prospects for Greek tourism

There are 35 fewer hotels this year than there were in 2015 based on the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels official record of registered members, constituting a major blow to investment prospects for Greek tourism.

Alluding to the grim prospects for new investment opportunities in the hotel industry in connection with what he described as a prevailing haven for tourism-related real estate leasing, the president of the Athens Hoteliers Association, Alexandros Vasilikos, asked: Why struggle to open a hotel when tax-free solutions are available? This legislative void should be filled!

The President of the Panhellenic Federation of Hoteliers, Yiannis Retsos, also believes there is cause to be concerned with respect to the new business landscape emerging in the tourism industry in red or non-performing loans (NPLs), and does not rule out the possibility of the de-hellenization of Greek hotels.

Concern about divestiture has also been voiced by Andreas Andreadis, president of Greek Tourism Enterprises. But with an economy still reeling from an economic crisis, austerity measures caused by three international bailouts, and a refugee crisis as well, there are neither the funds to address the woes of the flagging tourism industry nor the ability to implement change  at least not in the foreseeable future.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
Gulf Bank, Kuwait's fourth-largest lender by assets, has reported a net profit of KD32.8 million ($108 million) for the first nine months, up 11 per cent over KD29.6 million ($98 million) for the same period last year.



The bank's total shareholders equity has increased by six per cent to KD561 million compared to KD529 million in the year earlier period while total assets grew by four per cent to KD 5,621 million.



Credit costs (specific provisions plus write-offs less recoveries) have declined by 69 per cent to KD8.2 million in the first nine months of 2016 compared with KD26.1 million over the same period in 2015.



This decline indicates a continuous improvement in the Banks loan quality. The Banks total loan reserves on the balance sheet stood at KD306 million.



The banks capital adequacy ratio under Basel III is at 17.7 per cent, which is well above the regulatory requirement of 14 per cent.



On the performance, chairman Omar Kutayba Alghanim, said: "I am happy to report Gulf Banks strong financial performance and I am gratified with our ability to continue to grow and maintain our strong capital position."



"The banks double digit growth in net profit and strong capital adequacy ratio are the result of meeting a number of key strategic objectives and reflect the Banks strategy to deliver innovative, easy-to-use products, coupled with a superior customer experience," stated Al Ghanim.



In wholesale banking, the top official said, the corporate banking suite of products continues to attract attention.



"The cash management systems, online salary processing, and collections systems enable clients to perform any number of services quickly and easily. On the Consumer Banking side, our award-winning Gulf Rewards credit card loyalty program has contributed to double-digit growth in total year-over-year spending," he noted.



"Four months into the launch of our Blinking to Bank biometric mobile banking application we have seen a significant growth in the number of customers using mobile banking over last year," he added.



The Gulf Bank said during this period, it launched a number of improvements to better accommodate customers with special needs.



Employees in various branches are now certified to communicate in sign language following the completion of a four-week training program, it stated.



"Our Bayan branch is the first to have a new automated teller machine (ATM) designed for those who have special needs. Features include suitable height for wheelchairs, Braille Keypad, voice guidance for blind clients, increased privacy for the users, and wheelchair accessibility ramps," said Al Ghanim.



Gulf Bank said it has received A ratings from three leading international credit rating agencies - A3 from Moodys, A- from Standard & Poors, and A+ from Fitch.



These ratings reflect the banks strict risk standards, along with its resilient core profitability, and adequacy of its capital buffers, remarked Al Ghanim.-TradeArabia News Service
Thyssenkrupp, one of the world's leading elevator companies, has been presented with the '2016 Project of the Year' award for its innovative iwalk moving walks installed at Prince Mohammad bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Madinah, Saudi Arabia.



These awards are being organised by Elevator World, a leading publisher for the international building transportation industry.



All projects are judged by an impartial panel of experienced industry professionals and experts on several factors, such as: innovation, originality and creativity, challenges overcome, installation methods and techniques, the use of advanced technology, and overall quality of presentation, said the company in a statement.



The iwalk establishes a new benchmark in the industry by revolutionising the way moving walks are devised, manufactured and installed.



The new concept reduces installation space to a minimum without compromising capabilities. It offers greater comfort and more safety for users and helps ease planning, integration and operation for architects, general contractors and the final operator at the same time, stated Thyssenkrupp.



Apart from the 22 award-wining iwalk units, the global technology giant has also supplied and installed 36 elevators, 28 escalators, six inclined moving walks and one outdoor moving walk, it stated.



Saher Cherif, the general manager of thyssenkrupp Saudi Arabia, said: "Our mobility solutions are already present in several important regional airports, such as Dubai, Doha, Riyadh and Cairo. We are proud to have our innovative products highly recognised by industry experts and project stakeholders alike."



The Prince Mohammad bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Madinah is one of Saudi Arabias busiest, especially during the Hajj and Umrah seasons when millions of pilgrims converge to Madinah and Makkah.-TradeArabia News Service
Iraq's federal police forces and army troops attacked the ISIS-held town of Hammam Al Alil, south of Mosul, on Saturday as Iraqi-led coalition forces seek to drive back ISIS militants from their last major Iraqi stronghold.



The Iraqi air force provided air cover for the assault Saturday morning, according to Iraq's Joint Military Command, reported CNN.



Iraqi troops are advancing from three fronts toward Hammam-al-Alil, about 30 km south of Mosul, and have reached the College of Agriculture at its edge, a statement said.



On Friday, the UN refugee agency said it had received reports ISIS has been instructing residents of Hammam Al Alil to hand over boys age 9 and older since the Iraqi-led offensive to recapture the country's second-largest city began October 17.



The boys are apparently being conscripted to fight on behalf of the terror group, Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the refugee agency, told a press briefing in Geneva, Switzerland, said the report.



The long-awaited assault on Hammam al-Alil, the last significant town before Mosul on the Tigris River, will add to the pressure on ISIS fighters.



During a stop on the front lines near Mosul, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi issued a warning to the terror group.



"My message to ISIS: If they want to save their lives, they should lay down their weapons now," Abadi told reporters, according to state-run Al Iraqiya TV. "We will punish the criminals among them, and we will hold them to account."



Iraqi military units were trying to reinforce their presence Saturday in eastern Mosul after fierce resistance stalled their progress a day earlier.



They said Iraqi troops had taken control of the neighborhoods of At Tahrir in the northeast and Kirkukli and Zuhra in the east. Other residents said that ISIS remained in control of the districts of Qudes and Karama, farther south.



ISIS claimed to have carried out a suicide car bombing early Saturday in the eastern neighborhood of Aden, saying it had killed 15 counterterrorism troops and destroyed six military vehicles.



Meanwhile, three roadside bombs in two separate locations killed 11 civilians and injured 18 more Saturday as they fled the town of Hawija on foot, security officials in Kirkuk told CNN.



Thousands of civilians have been forced from their homes as efforts to drive ISIS from Iraq gather pace, with many more expected to follow, stated the report.



The UN refugee agency said 3,000 people had been received on Friday alone at a new camp for displaced families in Hasansham in Irbil governorate, it added.


Twenty of the worlds leading oil industry chief executives will discuss the new energy landscape and different models for partnerships across the industry at a major industry summit which opens on November 6 in Abu Dhabi, UAE.



A major roundtable is being organised on the eve of Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (Adipec) 2016, which will be held from November 7 to 10 at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Center (Adnec).



Senior executives, representing the worlds biggest oil companies from across the globe, have been invited to the Abu Dhabi CEO Roundtable by Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of State and the chief executive of Adnoc Group, said the event organisers.



These include Bob Dudley, the group CEO of BP; Rex Tillerson, the chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil Corporation; Patrick Pouyanne, the chairman and CEO of Total; Saad Sherida Al Kaabi, the president and CEO of Qatar Petroleum; Claudio Descalzi, the chief exective of Eni; Vicki A Hollub, the president and CEO of Occidental; Ben van Beurden, the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell; Eldar Saetre, the president and chief executive of Statoil; Amin H. Al Nasser, the chief executive of Saudi Aramco; Musabbeh Al Kaabi, the CEO of Mubadala Petroleum; Steve Suellentrop, the president of HOC Energy; B. Ashok, the chairman of Indian Oil Corporation and Toshiaki Kitamura, the chief executive and president of Inpex Corporation.



It will provide a high level forum for dialogue regarding the current economic environment facing the energy industry, they added



"The energy industry is evolving. Lower oil prices have placed an increased priority on resilience and efficiency and companies in the industry are independently searching for sustainable strategies in this new energy landscape," remarked Dr Al Jaber.



"We are entering a time where societal, technological, and political trends are reshaping the environment in which oil companies operate. The Abu Dhabi CEO Roundtable will provide a timely opportunity for key industry leaders to openly discuss important issues, including potential areas of partnership to advance the industry," he added.-TradeArabia News Service


Flo, a leading Turkish shoe brand which boasts more than 5,000 different products for consumers of all ages, has announced the opening of its debut outlet at Galleria Mall in Amman, Jordan.



This new and first store in Jordan, joins Flo's other branches in Turkey and Europe to offer the customers; women, men and kids, a big variety of modern footwear from prestigious brands such as Lumberjack, Dockers, Polaris, Butigo and Kinetix, ranging from comfortable, sports, formal shoes, in addition to medical shoes for foot care.



Commenting on the launch, Salim Andrews, the Flo brand manager said: "We are thrilled to open the first Flo store in Jordan here at Galleria Mall."



"The new outlet will offer Jordanian customers a wide variety of modern choices with the best competitive prices, where they will find at Flo everything that suits their needs and taste for the whole family," he added.-TradeArabia News Service


Heres a win for millennial parents: Theyre socking away more for college than their Gen X and baby boomer counterparts.

Proof comes from the latest How America Saves for College survey by Sallie Mae, the educational financial services company, and the Ipsos research firm.

The survey, released this fall, found that millennial parents reported saving an average of $20,155 so far for their kids college. Thats slightly higher than boomer parents, who have saved an average of $18,323, and well ahead of Generation X parents, who reported setting aside an average of $12,428.

Researchers also noticed that millennial parents attitudes on several college savings questions reflected greater optimism than either of the older generations, including having a plan to pay for college, and showing a greater willingness to ask family members and others outside of the family to contribute money to the college kitty.

The survey defined millennials as 35 years old and younger, Gen Xers as 36 to 51, and baby boomers as ages 52 to 70.

What contributed to these generational savings differences? There are no easy conclusions, but the researchers did suggest that fallout from the Great Recession and overall confidence in the future were contributing factors.

In contrast to Millennials optimism, Gen Xers tend to be more cautious when they think about saving for their childrens future education, the report said.

Other key findings:

More parents, especially millennials, are confident in their ability to meet the future costs of college  55 percent this year compared with 42 percent in 2015.

For the first time since Sallie Mae began the study in 2009, the percentage of parents creating a college savings plan exceeded 50 percent.

The number of college-savings parents using 529 state-sponsored college investment accounts reached its highest level since the study began.

In contrast to the positive trends, about one in three parents surveyed said they feel overwhelmed about the thought of saving for college  enough so that theyre not doing anything.

There was one other troubling finding  the lack of family conversations about college costs. It should go without saying that parents talk to their kids about how to minimize college costs and where the money will come from to pay tuition, room and board.

Yet the survey noted that 20 percent of the parents with teenagers acknowledged they had not had any such discussions.

Besides a heart-to-heart with your kids, Sallie Mae offered a three-step approach to ensure that some money will be there when the tuition bills arrive.

Open a savings account designated for college funds. Deposit birthday gifts from family and friends and sign up for free programs that reward you with cash back for college.

Set a goal and make deposits regularly. Use automatic deposits so the money is transferred to savings seamlessly. For example, $50 per pay period amounts to $1,300 a year, and $13,000 over 10 years.

Explore tax-advantaged investments, such as 529 savings accounts, that generally offer more bang for the buck.
National carrier Saudi Arabian Airlines has signed up Aviation Handling Services (AHS) to provide the airline with comprehensive ground handling services for all flights arriving at and departing from Queen Alia International Airport (QAIA).



AHS is a strategic partner of international ground handling services company, Menzies Aviation.



The agreement was publicized during a reception hosted by AHS-Menzies on Tuesday 1 November, 2016, in the QAIA terminal, attended by the Saudi Arabian Airlines management team, airport officials, and several influential figures from the private and public sectors.



The agreement reached between both companies included the absorption of Saudi Arabian Airlines ground handling staff within AHS-Menzies, which has been operating as an official ground handling entity at QAIA since 2008.



Moreover, AHS-Menzies will provide Saudi Arabian Airlines with a wide range of ground handling services, including receiving aircraft and organizing their movement, cargo handling, as well as various technical support services.



This agreement corresponds with AHS-Menzies efforts to expand its business globally and regionally, as it currently works with 20 carriers and airlines that amount to an average of 155 flights per week at QAIA.



Speaking at the signing ceremony, Ferdinando Trella, the general manager of AHS-Menzies, said: "We are extremely proud of our partnership with Saudi Arabian Airlines, which, as one of the largest carriers at QAIA, operates 26 weekly flights from the airport."



"We are confident that this agreement will be mutually beneficial and will allow both parties to achieve their desired results. This agreement will further cement our position as a leader in the field of ground handling services in many countries across the world," he added.



In turn, Muneef Al Math'our, the station manager of Saudi Arabian Airlines Station in Amman, said: "After an extensive study, it was evident to the Saudi Arabian Airlines management that AHS-Menzies offers top-quality ground handling services at QAIA and the other international airports in which it operates, in line with the level of services we provide our passengers."



"Consequently, AHS-Menzies was chosen as Saudi Arabian Airlines Ground Handling Agent in Jordan," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
According to the Mirror, the Loch Ness monster is a creature said to live in Loch Ness in the Highlands of Scotland. This aquatic being is described as a creature large in size, with a long neck, and humps protruding from the water. The monster was claimed to be first seen by a monk in the seventh century. In 1933, the first photograph of the Loch Ness monster was first taken and popular interest and belief began to grow. However, the scientific community has never confirmed its existence.

In addition to that, looks like the Loch Ness monster decided to pack its bag and move to Alaska. On October 18, Bureau of Land Management Fairbanks District Office Public Affairs Specialist, Craig McCaa decided to walk his camera down to the University Avenue bridge that crosses the river to snap a few photographs of ice forming on the water's surface, according to Alaska Dispatch News.

McCaa expected to snap some photos of just snow and ice but instead saw a "strange thing" moving back and forth. The video has been viewed for over 380,000 times and shared by nearly 4,000 people when it was uploaded to the "Bureau of Land Management - Alaska" Facebook page on last week. Social media users' imagination has run wild with speculations.

"I initially thought, and several people thought, it could be some rope that snagged on the bottom of the river with chunks of ice," McCaa told ADN. "Other people have mentioned everything from sea monster to giant sturgeon."

"It's strange thing. I don't know what I would have done if I had come by in a canoe or something," he said of whether the object spooked him personally. "But looking from it above on the University Avenue bridge I didn't feel too threatened." Whether this urban legend is real or not, there has been no scientific explanation behind these sightings.

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It's every traveler's most dreaded situation when on trips; not being able to sleep. While this is believed to be common especially on the first night, sad news is there's not much anyone can do about it.

Australian Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki on his new book "The Doctor" attributes the unrest to the "First Night Effect". Primarily our brain's awake when in an unfamiliar place and relative to the venue's security. This behavior is called "neurological night watch", where the left brain is partly awake and watchful, evidenced in recent research says the doctor.

Doctor Kruszelnicki in his book also likened the experience with that of dolphins and some birds that can sleep at a time, half a brain. During this state, these creatures manage to swim, surface for air and be vigilant of threats.

The best way to remedy this travel constraint according to the doctor, is to make the new place as familiar as possible. Try bringing your pillow, or pajama, or make sure to stay within the same chain of hotels so the mind can be relaxed and comfortable.

Stuff offers the following practical tips to beat your sleepless night during travels.

Reserve a room midway the hallway - rooms located in this part of the lobby have less noise compared to those located at both ends of the hallway. Stay away from rooms near the pool area - pools can be a source of commotion especially when guests go night swimming or gathers by the pool.

Ask for pillow options at the front desk - some hotels offer extra pillows, or one that better fit you in terms of firmness and comfort. Bring earplugs and eyeshades - slightness of noise or light can disturb you so gear up.

Turn off your mobile phone - spare yourself of trivial text messages or wrong calls that can distract to sleep. Put the don't disturb sign on the front door knob - this alerts housekeepers not to intrude and other visitors to tame down to some extent. Consider to bring your own blanket - other than skin issues, the familiar scent and feel on your skin fools the brain that you are in your own bed. But, when all else fails, can I suggest - pray.

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The upscale beachfront hotel, 1 Hotel South Beach, reveals that on December they will be housing the first ever Spartan Gym and pioneer a US-based Bamford Haybarn Spa.

Along with other competitor in Miami, Florida, 1 Hotel South Beach is a notch above the rest to introduce such sophisticated amenities.

The 14,000-square foot area was turned into a Spartan Gym, with cutting-edge-equipment it will aid the costumers to improve their endurance and strength. The gym will include the famous Spartan Race; it is a series of obstacle races of different difficulty and distances. The hotel will hire expert Spartan trainers that will assist and educate the guests.

In the world of sports, Spartan Race includes Sprint, the Super Spartan, the Spartan Beast, and the Ultra Beast. This is held in USA and was adapted by different countries like South Korea, Malaysia, Europe, Australia, Canada and Philippines.

Another first in the U.S. is the Bamford Haybarn Spa. What a relaxing day to be pampered in this world-class facility. According to Luxury Travel Magazine, "The newly constructed spa will feature 12 spacious treatment rooms, three manicure and pedicure stations and a relaxation area known as The Woodland Room. Highly lauded beauty powerhouse Lady Bamford has also curated a Miami-focused menu featuring the brand's chemical-free products in addition to spa packages that include yoga, Pilates and meditation."

The two new amenities have a total of 18,000 square feet space; this will be the central wellness and fitness property of the hotel.

1 Hotel South Beach is known for using reusable and eco-friendly materials. If you're looking for a good swim, take a dip or dive in their four magnificent swimming pools, the Cabana, Center, South and Watr at the 1 Rooftop. They also offer activities for the children ages 4 to 12 years old. The seedling program enables the kids to draw closer to nature, some activities are beachside shell hunting, tree planting and learning about arts and crafts. For those health conscious, you'll love their lobby farmstand. Fresh fruits and vegetables are delivered by local farmers and suppliers.

If you want to relax and de-stress, book now. You can visit their website for more information.

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When research associate Julie Thomason crashed her rental car, she was ready to face the repair bill, but was slammed with a $1,000 charge by the rental car company for "loss of use". Although this fee is legal, rental companies have been using loopholes to jack up their "loss of use" fees and scam customers into paying more.

Technically, according to Auto Slash, the loss of use fee is imposed by the car rental company on its customer to compensate the company for the car's inactivity during repair. This type of fee is charged, regardless of whether it was due to the customer's negligence, or an accident.

In addition, other administrative fees and miscellaneous fees added by the rental company in the event of car wreckage is added quickly adding up to the bill. Here are some tips in fighting against this unfair system.

1. Buy waivers from the rental car companies

Although expensive, the Loss Damage Waiver (LDW) or Collision Damage Waiver (CDW), technically save you from the frightening experience of facing "loss of use fees" and other fees in the event of an accident or collision. The downside is that this is clearly another way car rental companies make money off their customers.

2. Check your own car insurance

In Julie's case, she quickly called her own car insurance company and asked whether they could provide insurance for this loss of use fee incurred while driving a rental car. Thankfully, despite many back and forth discussions, the case was settled thanks to Julie's insurance.

Click here to find out how to go on your very own electric car road trip.

3. Check your State's rules

Besides the insurance policy you have, certain states mandate that personal auto insurance should cover car rental. These states include Alaska, Connecticut, Louisiana, Minnesota, New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island, and Texas.

Click here for the Top Five Small Towns in America you can take a Road Trip To, protected by insurance policy.

4. Ask for documents and read them well

According to USA Today, you can take advantage of some car rental companies' weakness that is of keeping accurate rental records. Ask them to justify fees deemed unreasonable, especially administrative fees, insurance police fees (if you didn't pay for it), and other miscellaneous fees.

5. Check your Credit Card

Some credit cards provide protection from unreasonable fees if you use it to book your rental car. For example, American Express offers the Premium Car Rental Protection Package. At $24.95, the policy explicitly says that it can cover you for loss-of-use.

VISA offers an even better deal, which can cover users not only for collision and damage, but also for "reasonable" administrative and loss of use fees. It can also cover towing, and makes a clear record of fleet utilization log to help in dispute settlement with the rental company. All this is valid as long as the rental period is less than 15 days within the USA or less than 31 days outside of the USA.

Click here to find out about the couple who went on the longest road trip in America.

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Most people would like to go out of town and have a good time with their loved ones and friends during the holidays but, there are always the problem of spending too much during these types of vacation trips. Fortunately, there are affordable places that tourists can go to without spending much, affordable places within the United States.

Here are some cities in the United States that people can visit without spending much, listed by Today. TripAdvisor ranked these cities based on a vacation trip for two people, complete with a three-night hotel reservation, lunch and dinner, taxi or Uber transportation and at least three beautiful sights to see. Most of these cities are found in the Southern part of the United States.

New Orleans provides low price yet good quality food for only $31 each day for lunch meals. The overall expense you'll get in this city can go as low as $1,148. If you desire to get these affordable costs, just make sure to avoid the dates of the popular Mardi Gras, and the Jazz and Heritage Festival, for these events will attract more people, making it harder to get reservations.

Houston is one of the affordable places that vacationers can go to in the Southern part of the United States. The overall expense you can get for a three day trip here can go as low as $1,190. According to Money Crashers, you can even stay in a local hostel located in the museum district that costs as low as $17 per night.

Las Vegas, also known as the Sin City, can offer its visitors hotel accommodations $190 per night. Just make sure that you stay away from the casinos.

Atlanta, which is also one of the cities in the Southern part of the United States, can also provide vacationers a low expense cost of $1,296

Dallas is also a good affordable vacation place where you can spend as low as $1,315.

Here is a video of a day spent in New Orleans:

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For many, snapping a brilliant shot is as important as the journey itself, especially now that there are so many camera options for travelers. From rugged, underwater cameras to dreamy, soft-focus lenses, to retro film types, behind every traveler is a trusty camera, who goes on the adventure along with them and helps them make memories for a lifetime. Here are the top five best travel cameras to take along on adventures.

1. Fujifilm XP 90 - for uncontainable adventurers (get it here)

For just $200, this camera can survive a drop of 5.8 feet and can even go diving with you at depths of up to 50 feet. Available in 4 stylish colors and a lightweight body, you can even tuck it into your bikini while taking the plunge.

2. Olympus Pen F - for style savvy saunters (get it here)

Take Instagram-worthy shots on the fly with this top of the line high camera with instant effect and filter controls contained in a slim 1960s camera body. With its retro metal dials, leather grain and separate viewfinder, it's a great conversation piece when snapping shots of new places and new people. According to Bloomberg, this camera also features a swivel touchscreen and ultrafast focus, as well as built-in Wi-Fi.

Click here to see Instagram's best travel photographers.

3. Leica Sofort - for Instax memories (get it here)

Although instant camera are known to be more style than substance, the Leica Sofort is the best balance of both so far, with a retractable 60mm f/12.7 Leica lens, built-in flash and optical viewfinder. This trendy camera works with Fujifilm Instax cartridges or Leica's own instant film with cream-colored borders. At $299, the camera can be preset to "Party & People" or "Double Exposure" for those hard to light areas, and even features a reflector mirror in front to help up your selfie game.

4. Canon EOS M3 - for the versatile cameraman (get it here)

If you're the type who has a lot of great lenses to begin with, this mirrorless camera also works as an adapter for bigger lenses. According to National Geographic Travel, the adapter is so small, you can hold it as if you were holding a phone. Though this camera has no eye-level finder, the screen has a touch-screen interface chock full of features to make your lenses adapt seamlessly.

5. Nikon D500 - for true travel photographers (get it here)

One of the highest-performance cameras present today, this souped up DSLR not only has 153-point autofocus, dual memory card slots and 4K video shooting, it has also been adapted to resist drops, dust and water. Despite its bulky appearance and 2 pound carbon fiber body, this is the lightest you can get with this much power. At $1,800, you get bang for your buck, because you can even shoot a movie with this camera.

Click here for other innovative gadgets you will need while traveling.

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The 10 days of Fantasy Fest held at Key West, Miami ended Sunday, with many floats and parades aimed at critiquing the current political situation. Besides the serious topic of the event, many Americans, including senior citizens, had come decked in outrageous costumes (or naked) to represent their political beliefs and celebrate the bonds in American's diverse population.

Fantasy Fest was pegged to be an inclusive party, with much influence from the lands South of America, particularly the Caribbean at the Goombay Festival and parade. Many women opted to go naked and painted their breasts in elaborate designs, with some senior citizens also following suit, as a reminder of the freedom America celebrates and has strived for.

In addition, other women who painted their naked bodies did it directly as an insult to Donald Trump, who released several misogynistic statements about women recently, and is running for President of the United States. There were no age barriers as even grandmothers, accompanied by their husbands, significant others and even grandchildren took part in the body painting.

Because of the political nature of the festival, CBS Local reports that some of the parade entries include "Political Voodoo and Ballot Box Barbarians", and "Weekend at Bernie's", referring to Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders. Despite the mainly political themes of the parade, it appears Donald Trump's supporters were underrepresented at the event, with most parodies targeted against the presidential candidate.

Other political messages were on display, including the Key West's highly active LGBT community, who found acceptance on the island when America was still close minded.

Besides the Fantasy Fest, many tourists drawn to the event also visited "Bahama Village" and the island's long established US Navy Bases. Being one of the places in America where most visitors and residents are immigrants, Key West was made to look like a microcosm of America's melting pot culture, and the annual Fantasy Fest is a reminder of that, being celebrated every year and attended by all friends and family.

According to The Huffington Post, despite a lot of nudity and merrymaking, there were no reports of sexual assault or groping, nor any violent encounters, as the cops remained vigilant and tolerant, while maintaining a low profile.

The 2017 Fantasy Fest's theme is "Time Travel Unravels" and is scheduled for October 20-29, so partygoers and costumers have a lot of time to get ready.

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Hundreds of passengers were left stranded at a Malaysian Airport after a plane skidded off the runway during take-off.

AirAsia Flight AK6443 was preparing for take-off from Sultan Ismail Petra airport.

The dailymail.co.uk says, that the AirAsia aircraft was preparing for take-off on Tuesday evening when two of its three landing gears slipped off the edge of the runway and became lodged in the grass and mud.

Flight AK6443, which was scheduled to fly to Kuala Lumpur, and was making a U-turn, when the nose and left landing gears slid off the runway according to Aviation Herald.

Airport manager Ramzi Ahmad told the Malaysian Digest that the aircraft, which was due to depart at 10.25pm, was towed away at 5.45am the next day.

The accident temporarily put the runway at Sultan Ismail Petra airport out of use, which in turn impacted several other flights.

Three flights that were scheduled to land at the Kota Bharu airport were forced to turn back, according to the report.

Passengers were asked to disembarked the plane and go back to the airport to wait for their flight. Many passengers were still stranded at Sultan Ismail Petra Airport at 1.30am according to New Straits Time.

According to stuff.co.nz, the airline confirmed the incident in a statement the Aviation Herald and said that no injuries were recorded.

"AirAsia confirms that flight AK6443 scheduled to depart from Kota Bharu to Kuala Lumpur yesterday night was involved in an incident while taxiing on the runway at Sultan Ismail Petra airport. All guests and crew on board the flight are safe and no injuries have been reported. All guests were attended to and all necessary assistance were provided. All AirAsia flights are operating normally from Sultan Ismail Petra airport today."

Flight AK6446 finally departed from the airport bound to its destination. It flew at 9:00 am the next day.



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Built 75 years ago, Mount Rushmore has been an American landmark where many tourists and patriots visit and pay tribute every year. Despite the many tourists George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln see every year, there is a little known secret inside the mount that most tourists never heard of.

Located in South Dakota, and the setting of many American movies and blockbusters, it has been discovered that Mount Rushmore has a hidden chamber inside of it, which could point to clues about the controversies and intrigues surrounding this mysterious monument, and our founding fathers.

As if from the movie "National Treasure", starring Nicolas Cage, a secret room was behind the large carved head of former president Abraham Lincoln. According to The Sun this secret room was meant to serve as the United States' Hall of Records, and would have kept all of America's history in its annals. It is accessible via an 800 foot staircase and stretches 80 by 100 feet, indeed large enough to contain all of America's history.

While people have quipped that they would not like to live here should Donald Trump win the election, much issue had been thrown at designer Gutzon Borglum back during the creation days of Mount Rushmore. According to The Huffington Post, he envisioned the secret room to house not just important books and documents, but also relics of American history such as the original draft of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. Borglum meant it to be large and iconic so that explorers from future civilizations could easily stumble upon it and find complete information on American history inside it.

After leaving an unfinished 70 foot tunnel behind the faces, and to Bogrglum's dismay, Congress shut down the idea after construction on the facade started. It was eventually completed in the early 1990s and in a twist of events, a titanium vault containing descriptions of Mount Rushmore's construction was mysteriously placed at the tunnel's entryway in 1998. Borglum's descendants entered the chamber as the vault was lowered into place and since then, no park visitors have been allowed to enter, except for the staff.

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Air France-KLM has recently unveiled its plans of creating a lower cost airline that will cater to budget travelers.

The Franco-Dutch carrier is set to compete with other low-cost airlines, having new and affordable routes. The complete plan has not been revealed yet, but it is expected that the new routes will serve cities in Asia and the United States.

"With Trust Together, Air France-KLM regains the offensive with a project which is both ambitious and realistic. It will enable us to capture our share of air transport industry growth by improving the competitiveness of our businesses," said Jean-Marc Janaillac, Chairman and CEO if Air France-KLM in a statement.

"With our nine strategic priorities, we shall be fighting back on every front. Our strength lies in the fact that we are challengers. The status quo is not an option. We must launch a new dynamic to return to a leadership position in our markets," he added.

Air France-KLM has had losses and clashes with trade unions for years. The BBC reported that the Syndicat National du Personnel Navigant Commercial is expressing concern over this, fearing that the new staff of the new project will not be able to enjoy the same benefits.

The goal is to have 10 long-haul planes by 2020, and 30 percent of the operations will be focused on the new routes. Janaillac told reporters that he would explain to unions that in order to reach this, the airline must have money to buy new planes, and cut the costs to "become more competitive."

"My bet is that the [Air France] staff are ready to make a deal this time to secure the long-term future of the company and start growing again," he added, "It is a bet, though."

Learn more about the project here.

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Japan in considered as one of the most expensive places to travel in Asia, that's why it remains a pipe dream for most people. If you plan your trip wisely, however, you will be able to figure our plenty of ways to stretch your money. Here are things that you'd want to keep in mind to enjoy Japan without breaking the bank.

Traveling in groups? Book an Aibnb home.

If you're traveling with family or a group of friend, you would be able to save loads of cash if you book an Airbnb house instead of getting a hotel room. Because most of these homes have a kitchen, you'll be able to cook and save up on food as well, because you'll spend less time eating out.

Keep an eye on tax refunds.

Tax-free shops can give you and 8% refund (consumption tax) if you spend over 5,000 yen. Make sure that you always have your passport on you--this will be your proof that you're a tourist. Read more about the rules here.

Eat food in convenience stores.

Make this a priority. Packed food in Japanese convenience stores are just as delicious as those in the restaurants. The best part? They're way cheaper. From rice bentos to sweet snacks, this is the place where you can definitely get value for your money.

One of the most popular ones is Lawson. This is what chef/author Anthony Bourdain had to say about it: "At Lawson's, you can dig into their unnaturally fluffy, insanely delicious, incongruously addictive egg salad sandwiches. I love them. Layer after layer after layer of awesome. Proud eateries serving who knows what. But it all smells delicious and looks enticing."

Don't go on tours.

Go around the city according to your rules. Having a tour operator plan for you is not only expensive, but kind of boring as well. Plan your itinerary on your own--you'll get to save money and get to know the country better. Everything is on Google, so you can't make excuses!

Ride buses.

Riding Japan's trains is an experience, but if you want to save some cash, taking the bus would be a very smart thing to do. Willer Express is a bus company in cities like Tokyo, Osaka, and Hiroshima that has flexible and attractive rates. You can even buy tickets online. Check them out here.

A budget trip to Japan is possible-all you need to do is do your research and prepare for your trip early. With these tips, you'll be able to stay in one of Asia's most beautiful and energetic countries.

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In the poker-faced diplomacy surrounding Gen. Santa Annas prosthetic leg, its not as if we havent asked nicely.

We have. For three decades, various delegations of Texans have tried to sweet-talk Illinois into sharing the coveted cork leg it has held hostage  wait, strike that  that it has sheltered for the last 169 years.

The reply has grown steadily testier: From Sorry, but no, to just No. Last week, it amounted to Hell, no.

To us, its non-negotiable, said Lt. Col. Brad Leighton, public affairs director for the Illinois Department of Military Affairs, in an interview with the Springfield State Journal-Register. They say they want to start a conversation. That conversation has been made before. Were not interested in a conversation. The answer is no.

The prickly response may have been prompted by the delegation doing the asking this time: a group of students from St. Marys University in San Antonio who want the leg turned over not to Texas, but to Mexico. They were led by an earnest professor who accused the Illinois State Military Museum, where the leg is the prize exhibit, of fetishizing a body part and using it as a freak-show exhibit.

It was never, in a strict title-holding sense, ours to ask for. Texas historys most famed despot, Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, still had both his original legs when he conquered the Alamo and was subsequently defeated at San Jacinto in 1836.

The general lost his leg to a wound during a minor conflict in 1838 between France and Mexico known as the Pastry War. The leg was replaced with a prosthesis, a lifelike cork-and-wood replica clad in a black dress boot.

The leg was captured by Illinois troops after the U.S. victory at Cerro Gordo in 1847. Legend tells us the general fled the field on a donkey, leaving behind a gilded carriage containing the leg, a lockbox full of gold and a partially eaten chicken. The boys from Illinois finished off the chicken, gave the cash to the paymaster and took the leg back home, where it has resided ever since. Finders, keepers, right?

Yet Texas keeps trying to wheedle the leg away. Why? Perhaps because we lay claim to all things Santa Anna: He looms large in our states quasi-national mythology. Hes the cruel dictator every Texas schoolchild knows as the Lone Star States own George III (if that seems a little one-sided, it should be noted that he wasnt uniformly popular with the citizens of Mexico, either).

So Texas keeps asking for a swap, a loan, or an outright gift: To return to Mexico, or for our 1986 sesquicentennial or for a 2014 San Jacinto display. In an editorial published Sunday, the San Antonio Express-News argued plaintively that the leg belongs in new museum that is being planned adjacent to the Alamo (Its what Lincoln would have wanted, was the Express-News bold speculation).

Illinois is sure to say no again. But count on this: Texans are determined, and we dont give up easily.

The Dallas Morning News
New Braunfels, TX (78130)

Today

Mostly cloudy. High 73F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy early with increasing clouds overnight. Low 59F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph.
Mumbai, November 4

Over a week after Cyrus Mistry was ousted as Chairman, Tata Sons today announced organisational changes bringing in S Padmanabhan as the group human resources head.

Besides, the former Tata brand custodian under Mistrys regime Mukund Rajan has been given the responsibility of overseeing operations of the overseas representative offices of Tata Sons in the USA, Singapore, Dubai and China. This is in addition to his existing responsibility of ethics and sustainability.

Harish Bhat, who is responsible for marketing and customer centricity, will henceforth also be responsible for managing the Tata Brand, Tata Sons said in a statement.

In the interim, he will oversee the functions of Strategy and Business Development, it added. Padmanabhan has been given the responsibility of Group Human Resources in addition to his existing role of leading the Tata Business Excellence Group.

Tata Sons further said Gopichand Katragadda will continue to be the Group Chief Technology Officer, while Sanjay Singh will oversee the Public Affairs function out of the Delhi office.

Three members of the now-disbanded Group Executive Council set up by Mistry  Nirmalya Kumar, NS Rajan and Madhu Kannan  have already quit. They have decided to explore options outside Tata Sons and have left the services of the company, the statement added.

On October 24, Tata Sons Board had replaced Mistry as Chairman and appointed Ratan Tata as interim Chairman. The company had said it would find a new Chairman in four months. Tata retorted saying Mistrys removal was absolutely necessary for the future success of the Tata Group and insisted that the decision was a well-considered and serious one for its board members.  PTI

Ronen Sen slams Mistry for leaking documents

Mumbai: Dismissing speculation that he had complimented ousted Chairman Cyrus Mistrys performance but voted for his dismissal, Tata Sons independent director and former diplomat Ronen Sen said such insinuations through orchestrated leaks reflected a mindset of self-centred priorities and perceptions.

Taking a dig at the ousted chairman, he said internal documents were being leaked in a selective and motivated manner by sources close to the former chairman, raising questions on whether these orchestrated leaks, unless denounced by him, will enhance or further diminish the confidence of his fellow directors on the Board of Tata Sons.

Insinuations that I acted differently in the Board room of an iconic company with a great legacy appears to reflect a mindset that measures others by their own self-centred priorities and perceptions, Sen said in a letter to Tatas.

Reports had suggested that Sen along with another independent director Farida Khambata complimented Mistry on his performance as chairman. PTI
Rajinder Nagarkoti

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 5

The newly-appointed Congress in-charge for Chandigarh, Asha Kumari, today ruled out any role for former Union Minister and Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari in the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation elections, scheduled to be held in the third week of December. There are two camps in the Chandigarh Congress- that of former MP Pawan Kumar Bansal and that of former Ludhiana MP Manish Tewari.

On the role of Tewari in the Chandigarh MC polls, Asha Kumari, who was in town to address a Congress workers conference at the Congress Bhawan in Sector 35, said, Manish Tewari is a good leader of Punjab. Every Congressman has the right to speak for the city, but the Chandigarh Congress leadership (pointing towards former MP Pawan Kumar Bansal and Chandigarh Congress President Pardeep Chhabra) is sitting right in front of you.

While interacting with mediapersons at the Congress Bhawan, Asha Kumari also ruled out any division in the party and said, There is no division in the party. There is only one Congress headed by Sonia Gandhi. Pardeep Chhabra is the president of the Chandigarh Congress appointed by the party high command.

On the partys decision to get a loyalty bond signed by ticket contenders, she said, There is nothing new and nothing wrong. It has been the partys pattern for years. I dont know on what basis they (Tewari group) are opposing. Recently, the Manish Tewari group had opposed the decision of the Chandigarh Congress, who had decided to follow the partys Punjab unit pattern wherein the ticket contenders were asked to sign a loyalty bond while seeking a ticket.

Nomination system should have been corrected

Asha Kumari also said that the system of nominating nine councillors in the MC should have been corrected and the Congress would do it after coming back to power at the Centre. She also gave a target to the Chandigarh Congress to win a minimum of 18 seats in the coming MC poll, so that they win all three seats, that of the Mayor, Senior Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor, without any outside or nominated councillors support. The Congress won four Mayoral elections with the support of nominated councillors, but this time, the nominated councillors supported the BJP-SAD alliance.

No quota, winnability to be the only criteria

City Congress in-charge Asha Kumari also clarified that there would be no such quota for the youth and other categories but there would be the criteria of winnability for getting the party ticket. Anybody in the age-group of 25 and 100 years, who is capable of winning, can get the ticket, Asha Kumari said. She also said the party would decide on the ticket after the decision of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, where a petition challenging the reservation of wards was pending.
Tribune News Service

Mohali, November 4

An 18-year-old NRI student of Chandigarh University was killed while another student sustained serious injuries in a hit-and-run case on the Kharar-Ludhiana highway near Khanpur village today.

Both victims, identified as Deepak Mukhtar Gokulsingh, a Mauritius citizen, and Sidhant, were on their way to the university from their paying guest accommodation at Phase 3B1 in Mohali on a motorcycle when some unidentifiable car hit them. Deepak died on the spot while Sidhant sustained serious injuries. The accident took place at around 9 am today.

Both were students of the mass communication at the CU. According to sources, Deepak, who was riding pillion, was wearing a helmet but its quality was very poor. The helmet broke during the accident and Deepak died on the spot, said the sources.

Sidhant was taken to the Civil Hospital, Kharar, from where he has been referred to Max Hospital at Phase 6, Mohali. His leg has been fractured and he sustained injuries on other body parts. However, his condition is stable, said the sources.
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 5

The three accused, who allegedly snatched a womans purse containing Rs 2,000 in cash in Sector 25, were arrested by the local police.

The accused have been identified as Rahul, Jagesh and Vimal, all natives of Uttar Pradesh. The woman was going to Sector 25 from Sector 9 when the accused snatched her purse. The alleged miscreants live near the Sector 17 overbridge, where the incident took place yesterday, the police said.

According to her plaint, three unknown youths, snatched her bag containing Rs 2,000 in cash, Aadhaar card, I-card, SBI passbook and a mobile phone near the Sector 17 overbridge. Following this, a case under Section 356 (assault or criminal force in attempt to commit theft of property carried by a person), 379 (theft), 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the IPC has been registered at the Sector 17 police station.

After we got the information that an incident had taken place near the Sector 17 overbridge, we suspected that those residing near the overbridge could be involved. Following this, we raided the place and during the investigation, arrested them. We are interrogating them to ascertain if they are involved in any snatching incident reported earlier from the city, said a police official investigating the case.

So far, there is no word from the police whether the victim has identified the culprits or the stolen cash and valuables have been recovered from them or not.

Despite the police claiming to nab the snatchers, snatching incidents continue unabated in the city. Three incidents of snatching were reported from the city and two persons were arrested for the crime in two incidents on Thursday.
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 5

The Alumni Association of Biophysics met for its fifth reunion at Panjab University, Chandigarh, today. The old students of the Biophysics Department gathered at the Old Department of Biophysics and relived their memories of tea at the old student canteen on the campus. Later, they moved to ICSSR Complex for a series of talks and introductory sessions.

Prof GS Gupta shared an interesting account of the journey of the Biophysics Department and how it became his own lifes journey. He moved on to an encouraging note of How Life starts at 60.

ASSOBA members unveiled new features of their own website, www.pu-biofizix,org, which serves as the directory of the alumni, and also a point where they can share their news and events. Yoga session was delivered by Prof Raj Marwaha from the US. The old students visited the new campus where the department has now shifted. The day ended with a musical evening and a dinner. The event drew participants from the US, Canada, Australia and Sweden apart from participants from across the country.

The alumni were of the view that they should connect with present students of the department and apprise them of employment opportunities.

I came from Sweden to connect with old friends, and go back to my university days, said Anil Karihaloo, who now leads a research group at Astrazenika Pharmaceutical Company.

Ajay Chhibber who makes it a point to come to India from Canada for the reunion almost every year said Coming back to old friends is a treat. It sure is a wonderful feeling.
Tribune News Service

Amritsar, October 5

Chairman of FLY POP (People for Profit) airlines Navdip Singh Judge visited the Sri Guru Ram Das Ji International Airport here today. The airlines had earlier announced to start a low-cost non-stop flight between Amritsar and London

Judge along with members of the Amritsar Vikas Manch met officials of the airport here today. Judge said FLY POP planned to start six flights on routes which were not served directly by any airlines.

He said flights between Amritsar-London and Ahmedabad-London would become operational in 2017. The flight for Amritsar would start from London at 7 pm and reach Amritsar by 6 am, so that devotees can attend morning prayers at Golden Temple.

He added the journey would cost around 350 pounds, including taxes, and half of the profit of the airline would be given to charities in the United Kingdom and India.

He said they were constantly in touch with the Airport Authority of India and hopefully all formalities would be completed soon. He stated that the Amritsar-London route would be served by Airbus A330-300 with a capacity of 378 passengers.

FLY POP was a crowd-funded project for which money had also been collected through sale of Gold Passes and other benefits for the passengers. The members of the Amritsar Vikas Manch, including Kulwant Singh Ankhi, said, A direct flight between Amritsar and London would be highly beneficial for the NRIs and tourists coming here. Besides, it would also popularise the holy city on the international map.

Ankhi said Judge had admitted that the Amritsar airport was on a par with prominent international airports as far as infrastructure was concerned. He said Amritsar being a holy city, it should be connected to more international destinations. Large numbers of Punjabi NRIs had to visit Delhi to take a flight. If Amritsar is connected with international destinations, it would be better for the economy of the city as well as for the passengers, he said.
Tribune News Service

Hisar, November 5

Finance Minister Capt Abhimanyu today blamed the Congress for Subedar Ram Singh Grewals suicide, alleging the previous UPA government had failed to implement the One Rank-One Pension (OROP) scheme during its 10-year tenure.

If the financial condition is one of the reasons behind his decision to commit suicide, the UPA government is to blamed because it denying Grewal OROP benefit for 10 years, he told the media here.

The Indira Gandhi government had, in 1972, discontinued the OROP scheme for defence personnel, leading to pension-related discrepancies, Capt Abhimanyu said.

Ex-servicemen struggled for 43 years, including 10 years of the UPA government. Prime Minister Narendra Modi kept the promise on the OROP, he claimed.

On the demand for a martyr status to Grewal, the minister said: Suicide cannot be glorified. Being an ex-serviceman, I can say that a soldier is taught to fight and struggle; not to surrender to the circumstances. The narrow thinking of the Kejriwal government failed to differentiate between martyrdom and suicide. Martyrdom is always inspirational, whereas suicide cannot be.

The reason for his decision needed to be investigated, he said.

He hit out at Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi. I appreciate Rahuls gesture to express solidarity with the bereaved family. But the martyrdom of a soldier from Kuruksherta a few days ago failed to draw his attention.

Capt Abhimanyu defended the governments decision to provide Rs10 lakh and a government job to the deceaseds family. A sensitive Chief Minister always helps the needy, he added.
Sumedha Sharma

Tribune News Service

Gurugram, November 5

It takes a visit to quaint village of Mohammad Ahir in Tawdu in Mewat district to blow apart claims of parties about their commitment towards martyred soldiers and their families.

In a modest home, lives Sushila Devi, widow Shaurya Chakra awardee Dev Kumar who had died serving in Afghanistan in suicide bombing in 2008.

For a few years, she lived with pride  the honour of being the widow of a soldier who died serving the country. But pride gave way to disillusionment; she has been struggling to get Shaurya Chakra pension.

My husband was in the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and sent to Afghanistan in 2008. Before leaving, he had told me he may never return and asked me to be proud if he died, Sushila Devi says.

Kumar died in 2008 and was awarded Shaurya Chakra 2009. That was the proudest moment of my life, Devi says.

He was the sole bread earner. I got his pension, but that was not enough. I was then told about Shaurya Chakra pension given by the state. I applied for it and thus started my struggle, said Sushila.

She made regular trips to Chandigarh to check the progress of her application for pension. Initially, men from my family would do visit Chandigarh. Soon, they realised it was a futile task. So, I took it upon myself. I went to Chandigarh almost every week and, every time, officials ignored me. Somebody suggested I meet local leaders, but that was no help either, Devi says.

In December 2014 and July this year, Gurugram MP Rao Inderjit Singh had written to officials on her behalf, but to avail.

He was kind enough to take up my case. But probably all that a soldier gets in this country is an award. Indifference and insult follows. I hope that the hue and cry over the OROP scheme may force leaders to spare a thought about me, Sushila adds.

Nuh MLA Zakir Hussain said, This is ironic. Both the Congress and the BJP have let many like her down. She is not asking for any help, but her right which her husband earned laying his life in the line of duty. The INLD will take her case with Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar.
Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 5

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has made it clear that an order without reason is no order at all. Failure to give reasons amounts to denial of justice. Reasons are the live links between the mind of the decision taker and the controversy in question and the decision or conclusion arrived at, Justice Daya Chaudhary has asserted.

The judgment came in case of a salesman, Sampuran Singh, whose services were terminated on the ground of remaining absent without charge sheet or inquiry proceedings. Justice Chaudhary asserted the principles of natural justice mandated not only the recording of reasons, but also the grant of opportunity of hearing.

Justice Chaudhary added assigning reasons was one of the fundamentals of good administration. The right to reason was, rather, an indispensable part of a sound judicial system. A party has a right to know the grounds on which the order has been passed. One of the salutary requirements of natural justice is to spell out the reasons, meaning thereby, a speaking order is required to be passed.

Justice Chaudhary added the requirement of recording reasons and communication thereof has been read as an integral part of the fair procedure concept. The necessity of giving reasons flowed from the concept of rule of law, which constituted one of the corner stones of the constitutional set up.

The requirement of recording reasons by administrative authorities charted with the duty to act judicially was also an important safeguard to ensure observance of the rule of law. It introduced clarity, checked the introduction of extraneous or irrelevant considerations and minimised arbitrariness in the decision-making process.

Another reason which makes it imperative for the quasi-judicial authorities to give reasons is that their orders are not only subject to the right of the aggrieved persons to challenge the same by filing statutory appeal and revision, but also by filing writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution.

Such decisions can also be challenged by way of appeal under Article 136 of the Constitution of India This power of judicial review can be effectively exercised by the Superior Courts only if the order under challenge contains reasons.

If such order is cryptic and devoid of reasons, the courts cannot effectively exercise the power of judicial review and we cannot countenance a situation in which the administrative authorities vested with the power to decide the rights of the parties may stultify the powers of the Court simply by not recording reasons in support of their decisions or by refraining from communicating such reasons to the affected person.

Allowing the petition, Justice Chaudhary also quashed the impugned orders dated March 3, 2015, before directing the appellate authority to decide the appeal afresh by passing a speaking order.
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan today addressed a conference entitled Armenia-25; The World and Women organized by the Womens Council of the Republican Party of Armenia.

Sargsyan, who also serves as president of the party, told conference participants that the ruling Republic Party was a conservative party that wants to preserve and strengthen our traditional family that has always been the invincible guarantor of the Armenian peoples historic existence.

Sargsyan continued that the woman in Armenian history has always occupied her firm and steadfast place.

Motherhood, the place and role of the mother in the Armenian family, has always been regarded as a source of life and the holiest of holies, Sargsyan said.

The Armenian president said that the role and contribution of women is equally important in society.

We are proud of the achievements of Armenias women in all sectors of life, from culture to education and the army, from business to the health field, Sargsyan said.

The Armenian president, summarizing his partys firm principle regarding women in society, noted: Our society is comprised of established women and men. A woman, a successful woman, must always be represented alongside a successful man. We encourage this. Its our principled position.
Bhiwani, November 5

Contrary to Union Minister VK Singhs remark that OROP protester Ram Kishan Grewal, who committed suicide in Delhi, was a Congressman, another minister Ram Dass Athawale said that Grewals son was his party worker.

Grewals son Jaswant Singh is the block president of my party and he is not a Congressman, said Athawale when asked to respond to the statement of former Army Chief VK Singh about the political background of the deceased.

Athawale, who is chief of the Republic Party of India, reached here today and demanded martyr status for Grewal. He said that he would speak to Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on the issue. One of the deceased sons would be absorbed in the department under him, he stated.  TNS
Pratibha Chauhan

Tribune News Service

Shimla, November 5

Owners of Bantony Castle, the summer palace of the erstwhile rulers of Sirmaur, have objected to part acquisition of the heritage property for which a public hearing was held here today.

With the Draft Social Impact Assessment report of the sprawling property ready, only three objections and suggestions were filed before Sub-Divisional Magistrate (Urban) Hemis Negi. It is the Social Impact Assessment Team of the Himachal Institute of Public Administration (HIPA), which have prepared the draft report. The Department of Language, Art and Culture intends to set up an urban museum at the site of Bantony.

Negi held a public hearing for taking suggestions and objections before the acquisition of the property which is in shambles and on the verge of collapse here. We have received three objections, including one from the owners whose names figure in the revenue records, another three persons who claim to have share in the property and a group of citizens, said Negi.

Having completed the formality of preparing the Social Impact Assessment report, the final report will be prepared after incorporating these three objections and suggestions. It is based on these reports that a team of experts will recommend acquisition.

I along with 10 other co-owners have filed our objections against part acquisition. We will consider the acquisition proposal only if the entire property and not just the main portion is acquired, said Vishwanath Sood, one of the owners. The state government proposes to acquire only 3874.39 sq mt area, which includes Bantony Castle, which is the best chunk of the entire property. However, the entire property is spread over 18,203.55 sq mt.

Bantony Castle and the adjoining Bantony Cottage are in a state of decay and completely unfit and even dangerous for human life. Although these structures cannot be categorised as assets on their present existing condition, they have immense cultural, architectural and archaeological value. Moreover, renovating or reconstructing these structures to preserve its original cultural, aesthetic and architectural value may prove them to be invaluable assets, reads the report.

Bantony Castle, constructed more than 125 years back, was made the headquarters of the police in 1957. It was after the owners won the legal battle that the building was vacated. The prime property which is part of Shimla heritage has been mired in controversies as there were plans to convert it into a hotel by a London NRI, which eventually did not fructify. The owners of the property, valued at several crores, had been opposed to the acquisition but being located in a green heritage zone where there is complete ban on construction they are left with little option.
Our Correspondent

Una, November 5

State BJP president and Una MLA Satpal Singh Satti today asked Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders to stop degrading the status of a martyr.

Addressing mediapersons at the Circuit House here, he termed the incident in which former Army man, Ram Krishan Grewal, committed suicide on the OROP issue as unfortunate.

The BJP leader said if members of the Opposition parties referred to the former soldier, who took his own life as a martyr, then how the country should define the men who make the supreme sacrifice while fighting for the security and integrity of the motherland? He said political parties were doing so to gain cheap political publicity.

Satti said the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party were trying to implicate Prime Minister Narendra Modi in unfortunate mishaps in the country, just for the sake of politics. He advised Congress activists to burning effigies of leaders from Nehru and Gandhi family instead of burning effigies of the Prime Minister. It was Congress leaders who were responsible for the partition of India that led to the biggest migration of human population in the world, besides triggering the death of lakhs of people in India and Pakistan.

Satti said the then deliberate mistake, including the Constitutional provision of a special status state to Jammu and Kashmir continues to give pain and agony to the people of the country. He questioned the reason why the then Congress government had released 90,000 Pakistani prisoners after the 1971 war.

The BJP leader asked the Congress leaders to spell out the financial assistance rendered to the families of martyrs during the 1962, 1965 and 1971 wars against China and Pakistan, adding that during the Kargil war which took place during the NDA regime, martyrs were cremated with honours at their respective native places and their families were given adequate financial compensation, besides alternate avenues for income generation.

Satti said after the Modi-led NDA government took over, India had not only witnessed increased pace of development, but its image in the international forums has also enhanced manifolds. He said today, Pakistan stands isolated on the issue of terrorism, adding that dozens of Muslim-dominated countries were with India on the issue.
Srinagar, November 5

At least 12 people were injured on Saturday in fresh clashes between protesters and security forces, following the death of a 16-year-old boy due to alleged poisoning in Eidgah area of the city.

Qaiser Sofi died at a hospital here on Saturday morning.

After his burial, some youths indulged in stone-pelting on security forces, prompting use of force by the law- enforcing agencies, a police official said.

He said 12 people were injured of which six had sustained pellet injuries.

Sofi was reported missing on October 25 and was found in an unconscious state in Shalimar area of the city six days later and hospitalised, the official said.

However, locals alleged that the teen was force-fed some poisonous substance by security forces.

Normal life elsewhere in the Valley remained affected for the 120th consecutive day due to the separatist-sponsored strike.

While most of the shops, business establishments and petrol pumps across Kashmir were shut, some were open in a few areas in Civil Lines and outskirts of Srinagar, the official said.

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He said most of the public transport continued to remain off the roads but auto-rickshaws and cabs were seen plying at some places in the Valley, including in a few areas of the city here.

The separatists, who are spearheading the ongoing agitation in Kashmir, have been issuing weekly protest calendars since Hizbul militant Burhan Wanis killing in an encounter with security forces on July 8. The separatists have extended the strike till November 10.

While there were no curbs on the movement of people anywhere in Kashmir, restrictions on the assembly of people under Section 144 of the CrPC were in place throughout the Valley, the official said.

He said security forces had been deployed in strength at vulnerable spots and along the main roads as a precautionary measure to maintain law and order as well as to instill a sense of security among the people to carry out their day-to-day activities without fear.

As many as 85 people, including two cops, have been killed and several thousand others injured in the ongoing unrest in the Valley.

Around 5,000 security forces personnel have also been injured in the clashes. PTI
Dinesh Manhotra

Tribune News Service

Jammu, November 5

Battling for life in Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) here, one-and-a-half-year-old Pari is an example how children and women are bearing the maximum brunt of prevailing hostility on the Line of Control (LoC) and international border (IB) in the Jammu region.

Women and children are worst victim of the cross-border shelling, which started following surgical strikes by the Army in some areas of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) on the intervening night of September 28 and 29.

The Tuesday morning, which witnessed worst-ever shelling from across the border, had claimed lives of two children and four women. The deceased children were of the age of five and seven years.

The effect of the shelling from across the border is drastic on children and women as they are virtually made sitting ducks because at the time of firing they could not move to safer places immediately.

In many cases, civilian houses are located near the IB. They do not have any safe bunkers to take refuge at the time of shelling. While young persons immediately move to safer places, children and women usually become victims of firing. The victims of the ongoing cross-border firing include a large number of wounded women, children and elderly people who struggle to access treatment in the absence of adequate emergency health services.

On October 24, a minor boy, Vicky, aged six, son of Varinder Kumar, resident of Bihar, presently putting up at Lalyal in Kanachak, was killed in mortar shelling, while another Bihari labourer Ganya Devi, wife of Chandan, was injured at Lalyal.

The hapless boy was inside his kullah till morning but as soon as he came out, he was hit by a mortar shell and killed. Bihari labourers had been putting up in kullahs at Lalyal and working in the fields of local people.

On same day, 50-year-old Asma Begum, wife of Abdul Rehman, was hit by a mortar shell in her house at Gohlad village in the Malikpur area of the Mendhar sector in Poonch district and died on way to the hospital.

According to official data over 40 women were wounded in the current shelling on the borders. Similarly, the number of children getting injured due to prevailing hostility on the border also touched 20.

Meanwhile, Minister for Health and Medical Education Bali Bhagat on Thursday visited GMCH, Jammu, to enquire about the health of those persons who were seriously injured in Tuesdays cross-border firing, especially Pari.

The minister visited emergency, disaster, orthopaedic, surgery and other units of the hospital and assessed the medicare provided to the patients. He interacted with the patients and enquired about the treatment facilities being provided to them by the hospital.

The minister informed that one control room had been established at the Chief Medical Officers office ingovernment Medical College and Hospital, Jammu, besides 58 ambulances had also been pressed into service to cater to the medical requirement of people of affected border areas from Kathua to Poonch. Besides, 24X7 healthcare services were being ensured by the district and sub-district hospitals as well as primary health centres.
Tribune News Service

Jammu, November 4

Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti today expressed concern over the plight of the people living along the border and the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir.

She said intermittent shelling along the border had triggered a distressing situation in the state, leading to loss of lives and destruction of properties on both sides.

The Chief Minister conducted an extensive tour of the areas affected by the shelling along the LoC in the Nowshera, Poonch and Rajouri sectors and interacted with affected families.

Interacting with people, Mehbooba expressed grief and pain over the loss of lives and damage to the property in border shelling. She said the government was alive to the situation and measures were being taken for the affected.

She said that under the new scheme announced by the Centre, the next of kin of those who have died in the border firing shall get an ex gratia of Rs 5 lakh. She said the families which had lost their cattle would be compensated under the State Disaster Relief Fund norms. She gave cheques to the next of kin of those who died in the border firing.

Mehbooba said there was an urgency to de-escalate the situation, adding that there was no alternative to peace and reconciliation. She said New Delhi and Islamabad should take immediate and effective measures to revive the process of comprehensive and composite dialogue.

The Chief Minister said that instead of squandering their resources on a meaningless conflict, the two countries could be of great help to each other in their fight against the common challenges of poverty and economic deprivation in the region.

Mehbooba also visited a makeshift camp for the people affected by shelling and took stock of the arrangements. She asked the officials concerned to ensure all necessary arrangements for their comfortable stay.

Later, the Chief Minister chaired meetings of the district administration in Rajouri and Poonch. She was briefed by the respective Deputy Commissioners about the measures taken to address the problems of shelling-hit. She also sought details of the schools temporarily shut due to shelling.
Majid Jahangir

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, November 4

The forces took to persuasion rather than bullets to capture a Pakistan-trained militant of the Lashkar-e-Toiba in North Kashmir late Thursday evening.

An armed Umar Khaliq Mir alias Sameer, who was holed up inside a double-storey house, initially refused to give himself up. It took his father and the police more than five hours to convince him otherwise. Sameer, who had joined the militants in May this year, was taken into custody after he surrendered.

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There are rules of engagement and every terrorist is offered a chance to surrender. Since he chose to surrender, we did not open fire, said Deputy Inspector General of Police Uttam Chand.

A joint team of the Special Operations Group of the J&K Police and 22 Rashtriya Rifles cordoned Tujjar village on the outskirts of Sopore, 60 km from Srinagar, on being told that a Lashkar militant was hiding in the area.

Four suspected hideouts were cordoned and the inmates asked to come out. We were informed about Sameer by the owner of the house where he had taken refuge, Senior Superintendent of Police Harmeet Singh said.

The owner was asked to persuade Sameer to give himself up. When he failed in his attempt, the village head was sent on the job, but to no avail. Thereafter, the house owner was sent again with a cellphone to help Sameer negotiate with the police.

During the conversation, Sameer told the SSP that he wished to meet his father. Subsequently, Abdul Khaliq and some village residents were sent inside the house. After a nervous five-hour wait, the militant, accompanied by his father, came out unarmed, the SSP said.

Later, the police recovered an AK rifle, three magazines and two grenades from the house.

It is the first time in the recent past that the forces have persuaded a militant to surrender. After Lashkar commander Burhan Wani was killed in an encounter in July, the forces were criticised for their inability to catch the militants alive.

Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, addressing a gathering of policemen recently, had urged them to try bring the militants back home, make them a part of the mainstream and give them education.

During the over three-month-long unrest in the Kashmir valley, more than 40 militants, all of them foreigners, have been killed. Also, 43 youths, most of them from Kulgam district, have joined militancy, say sources.
Majid Jahangir & Suhail A Shah

Tribune News Service

Srinagar/Anantnag, Nov 5

Security forces shot dead a newly recruited local militant in a gunfight in south Kashmirs Shopian district. He is the first local to have been killed since Burhan Wanis death that triggered an unrest which is nearing four months next week. An Army man was also injured in the gunfight.

The militant, identified as Waseem Ahmed Khanday, resident of Zrakan Kellar, had taken up arms during the unrest and had snatched a rifle from a personal security officer of a former member of the Legislative Council (MLC) and Communist party leader Abdul Rehman Tukroo in Shopian on September 28.

The gunfight was triggered this morning in the Doubjan forest area of Shopian, some 60 km from Srinagar, when a joint team of the police, CRPF and Army launched a search operation following intelligence inputs regarding presence of militants in the area.

As the cordon was being tightened, holed-up militants fired on the forces, which was retaliated triggering a gun battle. One militant was neutralised and one of the Army jawans sustained injuries, a police officer said.

The injured Army jawan was shifted to the Armys 92 Base Hospital in Srinagar and his condition is stated to be stable. Security forces believed that the militants hiding in the area were two to three in number and others escaped during the initial gunfight.

J&K Director General of Police (DGP) K Rajendra Kumar said one militant, Waseem Ahmad Khanday, was killed in the gunfight. He was a local militant of the Hizbul Mujahideen, he said.

He said the slain militant had snatched a rifle from a policeman guarding a former MLC in September.

During the nearly four-month-long unrest that hit the counter-insurgency grid badly across Kashmir, over 40 militants have been killed in the various operations and all them were foreigners. Majority of the militants were killed along the Line of Control while infiltrating into Kashmir from Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK). A few gunfights have, however, taken place in Kashmir hinterland, too. During the unrest, 43 youth have joined militant ranks and Waseem was one of the new recruits who took up arms.

Todays encounter came hours after a militant attack in Dadsara Tral of neighboring Pulwama district that left a police sub-inspector and two policemen injured . The militants had lured the policemen into Dadsara village by firing a few aerial shots and when the police vehicles approached an IED was detonated, which caused injuries to policemen.
Tribune News Service

Srinagar, November 5

Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti has asked the civil and police administration to prepare a road map for healing the wounds of people who have been victimised in the agonising situation prevailing in Kashmir over the past four months.

Kashmir has witnessed a very painful and frustrating situation over the past few months. Now as the situation is returning to normalcy, we have to prepare a road map to pull our people out of this agonising and complicated situation and heal their wounds, Mehbooba said. She was speaking at a meeting of top civil and police officials at the Sher-i-Kashmir International Conference Centre here today.

Recounting the events of the past four months, the Chief Minister asked the civil and police administration to reach out to the families of those who died or suffered injuries in the ongoing situation and also devise a strategy so that their miseries could be lessened. We have to support the affected families in whatever way we can, she said.

Those who died or suffered injuries are our own people. Reach out to their families. I should get the exact figures so that we can take a decision about their future. It will be good to involve elders and local Auqaf committees in the process, she said.

Expressing concern over local youths joining militant groups, the Chief Minister said the civil and police administration should take steps to wean away such youths from the path of violence with compassion. Such misadvised youths must be given an opportunity to return to normal life and provided an honourable livelihood. Get in touch with their families and talk it out with them. We should seriously think about how and what kind of future they should have in a welfare society like ours where every citizen has equal rights, Mehbooba said.

She said the state government would review the cases filed over the past four months against youths participating in street protests. We will review those cases where students and first-timers are found involved. We will talk to their parents and get their assurances that their children will not participate in protests in future. We cant go on arresting people. There should be a different and empathetic plan of action to contain the situation, she said.
Patna: Two woman teachers of a reputed private school here were arrested on Saturday for allegedly sexually harassing a six-year-old LKG girl student. SSP Manu Maharaj said, The statement of the child, who alleged she was sexually harassed by the teachers, has been recorded. During medical examination, it was found that the child bears internal injuries in her private parts. A case has been registered under Section 376 of the IPC and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012. TNS

SIMI encounter: Cops cash reward withheld

Bhopal: After ordering a judicial probe into the Bhopal jailbreak and alleged encounter of eight SIMI activists, the Madhya Pradesh Government has put on hold the cash rewards it had announced for the policemen who took part in the operation. After the announcement of a judicial probe into the incident, the government cannot give cash rewards to anyone till the completion of the inquiry, a highly placed official said. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had announced a reward of Rs 2 lakh each for policemen. PTI

Rajnath for hazard safe sectoral growth

New Delhi: Calling nations to promote hazard safe sectoral development with greater use of sustainable technologies, Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday called for devising strategies on knowledge sharing, risk information system development and assessment of potential risks to make preparatory movements in advance for any kind of disaster. Rajnath insisted there should be focus on mainstreaming people, who live on margins, as they are the most vulnerable and suffer irreparable losses in the event of disasters. TNS

Aditya Pancholi gets 1-yr jail in assault case

Mumbai: A local court on Saturday convicted actor Aditya Pancholi and sentenced him to one-year jail for assaulting his neighbour. The local magistrates court at suburban Andheri has convicted Pancholi for assaulting and criminal intimidation, the police official said. Magistrate Amitabh Panchbhai after convicting Pancholi released him on the bail of Rs 12,000. The police said Pancholi reportedly fractured his neighbour Pratik Pasranis nose at their building in 2005 after an argument over a parking space. PTI

Trouble for Zakir trust

New Delhi: The government on Saturday decided to put controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naiks NGO IRF Education Trust under prior permission category for receiving foreign fund under the provisions of Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA). In a notification, the Ministry of Home Affairs said on the basis of intelligence reports, it had been found that the IRF Education Trust had violated various provisions of the FCRA-2010. TNS

Harris set to be 1st Indian-American Senator

Los Angeles: California's Attorney General Kamala Harris, 51, is on the cusp of becoming the first Indian-American Senator in the US Congress with latest polls placing her far ahead of her rival days before the November 8 presidential election. PTI
New Delhi, November 5

The central government has called a meeting of environment ministers of all neighbouring states on Monday to put an end to crop burning as Delhis pollution level rises to dangerous levels.

As a blanket of haze continued to cover the city with pollution level remaining very high and breaching the safe limit by over 17 times at several places, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal met Union Environment Minister Anil Dave on Saturday to ask the central government to intervene.

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After the meeting, Dave said he has called a meeting of environment ministers of all neighbouring states on Monday and will request them to put an end to crop burning.

"There is an emergency situation in Delhi. The situation is bad, particularly for children, patients, women and elderly. We need to take immediate steps to deal with the situation," Dave told reporters, adding he was also exploring the possbility to call a meeting of chief ministers of all neighbouring states on the issue.

Kerjriwal blamed the practice of crop burning in Haryana and Punjab for the pollution in the national capital, as air quality in the city dips to its worst in 17 years.

Kejriwal claimed that initial studies showed that the smog in Delhi was caused by pollution-laden smoke from the neighbours and even vehicle restriction measures such as the governments odd-even will not help combat the exacerbating problem.



"Pollution has increased to an extent that outdoors in Delhi are resembling a gas chamber. Prima facie the biggest reason seems to be burning of stubble in agricultural fields in Haryana and Punjab in huge quantity," Kejriwal told a press conference.

He asked the central government to intervene to end the practice of burning stubble in the neighbouring states.

"The Centre can sit with the Chief Minister of these states and chalk out a solution. Few reports have put the volume of stubble being burned at around 16-20 million tonnes, he claimed. "Fireworks during Diwali marginally added to the pollution. But other things inside Delhi did not drastically change. So the smog is mainly due to smoke from farm fires.

"I saw smoke across Punjab, Haryana during my visits. We need Centre's help. We are hiring an agency in a week or two to study the sources of pollution in Delhi afresh. The Centre needs to intervene," he said.

The air quality continued to remain alarming in Delhi-NCR because of calm winds.

The average level of particulate matter 2.5 (PM 2.5) was above 400 micrograms per cubic metre or the "severe" category at all the pollution measuring centres including at Anand Vihar in east Delhi, Punjabi Bagh and Dwarka in the west, RK Puram in the south, Mandir Marg in central Delhia.

The maximum level  500 microgrammes per cubic metre  was at Anand Vihar, Punjabi Bagh, Mandir Marg and RK Puram whereas it was marginally lower at 493 in Dwarka.

Private weather forecaster, Skymet Director, Mahesh Palawat said that entire Delhi-NCR was engulfed in a thick layer of smog due to calm winds, which stopped the pollutants for dispersing.

He said that the passing of 'Western Disturbances' over Himalayas made the conditions worst in north India, including Delhi.

"Whenever western disturbance passes over Himalayas, it increases the level of humidity which enhances the capacity of air to bear the pollutants for a long time. This results in thick layer of smog over the cities," Palawat said.

"The situation is expected to remain same tomorrow (Sunday) and the day after. The smog will start dispersing after November 7 (Monday) as dry north-westerly winds with speed 10-15 km/hr are expected to sweep through the region," he said, also blaming crop burning in Punjab and Haryana.

Municipal chools closed



Nearly 17,000 schools running under the three municipal corporations of Delhi were today closed in view of the heavy smog.

"All municipal schools under the three corporations were closed due to the heavy smog and pollution. The order for closure is only for today as of now. As per the situation, we may decide to close them later as well," Leader of Opposition in SDMC, Subhash Arya said.

About 10 lakh students are enrolled in the schools administered by the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), Nouth Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) and East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC).

The development comes says after the National Green Tribunal criticised the central and state government for not doing enough to curb pollution.



Cant breathe

People living in Delhi-NCR complained about respiratory problems and itching in the eyes due to smog all over the region.

"It was difficult for me to breathe properly and my eyes were itching because of high level of air pollution today (Saturday). I did not go for morning walk due to smog. Due to smog the gaze was also turning hazy," Devi Das, a resident of Delhis RK Puram, said.

Similarly Kartik Kumar, who works with a marketing firm, said that his eyes were itching and were turning watery because of high level of air pollution.

"This is the worst level of pollution I have ever seen in Delhi. The entire city is engulfed in smog. The authorities have to take some very serious steps to deal with the situation," he said.

Vivek Chatopadhyay, a senior researcher with NGO Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), said pollutants emitted from diesel cars and truck and crop burning were major contributors to the smog.

"Such situation is usually witnessed a day after Diwali but now this is happening on a normal day. This indicates that the condition has become very very serious. Now the air quality in Delhi is constantly under highest alarming level," Chatopadhyay said.

He said that the present level of smog has proved that the current system of air pollution is a complete failure.

"There is a need to curtail down the pollutants and the government will have to take some very serious measures to deal with the crisis," he added.  Agencies
New Delhi, November 5

Delhi is witnessing an emergency situation due to alarming pollution level, the Centre today said and called a meeting of Environment Ministers of all neighbouring states on Monday to curb stubble burning by farmers.

As a blanket of haze continued to cover the city with pollution level remaining very high and breaching the safe limit by over 17 times at several places, CM Arvind Kejriwal met Environment Minister Anil Dave and sought the Centres urgent intervention to deal with the challenge.

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Kejriwal likened the city to a gas chamber with main reason being smoke from farm fires in Punjab and Haryana and appealed to people to minimise use of vehicles. Dave said he had called a meeting of Environment Ministers of all neighbouring states on Monday.  TNS
New Delhi, November 5

The central government has made it mandatory for Islamic preacher Zakir Naik to seek permission for receiving funds for foreign sources.

The Centre has put Naiks NGO IRF Education Trust under prior permission category under FCRA, which means it now needs the establishments approval to receive funds from abroad.

In its gazette notification, the Home Ministry has said that records that were available and reports from intelligence agencies show that the trust had violated provisions of the Foreign Contribution Regulations Act (FCRA) 2010.

"Now, therefore, the central government in exercise of powers conferred by sub-section (3) of section 11 of the FCRA 2010, hereby specifies that the IRF Education Trust shall obtain prior permission of the central government on each occasion before accepting any foreign contribution in accordance with the provisions of section 12 of the Act and rules made thereunder," the notification said.

Several investigation agencies have accused Naik of using money the trust received for radicalising youngsters and encouraging them to be militant. The central government is also considering cancelling the FCRA registration of Islamic Research Foundation, another NGO that Naik promotes. A final notice has already been issued, said sources.

IRF's registration was renewed in September despite several criminal investigations against Naik. The decision led to suspension of a joint secretary and four other officials of the Home Ministry.

Government also plans to ban IRF under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and is awaiting the Union Cabinets approval.

A draft note based on the inputs from Maharashtra Police, Naik, who heads the IRF and IRF Educational Trust accuses Naik of having made many radical speeches and engaging in militant propaganda.

Maharashtra Police has also booked Naik for radicalising youngsters and pushing them into militant activities, a source said.

Naik also transferred IRF's foreign funds to Peace TV for making "objectionable" programmes. Most the channels programmes are suspected to contain hate speeches in which Naik is reported to have "urged all Muslims to be terrorists", sources have claimed.

Security agencies began to investigate Naik after Bangladeshi newspaper 'Daily Star' reported that a suspect in the Dhaka attack of July 1 ran propaganda on Facebook last year quoting Naik.

The Islamic orator is banned in the UK and Canada for his hate speeches. He is among 16 banned Islamic scholars in Malaysia.

He had been popular in Bangladesh through his Peace TV, although he was often accused of demeaning other religions and even other Muslim sects. The Mumbai-based went abroad when the controversy erupted and has yet to return. PTI/ TNS
New Delhi, November 5

India and China agreed to continue "the pace of high level exchanges" on subjects of mutual interest and concern, including counter-terrorism, during a meeting between National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi, an official statement said on Saturday.

The statement was silent on whether the two sides had discussed issues related to India's NSG membership or India's move for a ban on Pakistani terrorist Masood Azhar.

Doval met with Yang, the Chinese State Councillor, on Friday in Hyderabad. It was Yang's third visit to India in the last two months.

Doval and Yang are the Special Representatives on the Boundary Question of India and China.

"The discussions, conducted in a friendly, open and cordial environment, covered a wide agenda spanning bilateral, regional and international issues of mutual interest," according to a Ministry of External Affairs statement.

"They agreed to maintain the pace of high level exchanges including in the political, economic, defence and counter-terrorism fields." The statement said the officials also agreed that the forthcoming high-level engagement on counter-terrorism "is yet another manifestation of growing convergence of views of the two countries on this pressing challenge facing international community".

However, there was no word if Doval raised the issues related to China hindering India's membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

The statement also didn't mention if they discussed China's vetoing of Indian efforts to get Azhar, chief of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed terror outfit, banned by the United Nations.

However, the statement said: "the two leaders agreed that their consultations during which they exchanged views on various important and pressing bilateral issues have helped to enhance mutual understanding and will contribute to greater mutual trust".

"The two sides appreciated that 2016 is an important year for bilateral engagement with President Xi Jinping's visit to India for BRICS Summit and PM Modi's visit to China for G-20 Summit being the major highlights of high level exchanges.

The two officials also "agreed to hold the 20th Round of Special Representatives Talks on the Boundary Question in India next year."  IANS
Lucknow, November 5

RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav on Saturday said they have come to Uttar Pradesh to strengthen Samajwadi Party and "chase away" the BJP from here like they did in Bihar.

"We are here to strengthen SP. We have chased away BJP in Bihar. Just like 'geedad' (jackal) is chased away we will chase away BJP from UP too," Lalu said before leaving SP's silver jubilee celebrations.

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Former prime minister H D Devegowda, when asked about the possibility of a coalition, said, "We are not in field here. A situation might arise after UP, Gujarat and Punjab polls. We are here to attend silver jubilee celebrations on the invitation of SP."

JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav said they have come to attend the SP function as they have "old relations" with the party. "There are no talks of coalition now. Mulayam Singh Yadav can tell better. The SP is the bigger party here. Talking much on this will not be appropriate at this time," he said. PTI
Goa, November 5

Afghan envoy to India, Shaida Mohammad Abdali, on Friday said terrorism is a major threat, especially to New Delhi and Kabul, adding it is high time the menace was tackled for long-term peace and stability of the region.

Terrorism is our enemy and it cannot exist without supporters. There are supporters of terrorism who have used our people as a tool to achieve political and other objectives, Abdali told ANI.

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Asserting that terrorism is a challenge to Afghanistan, Abdali said it is affecting the countrys democracy and development.

Terrorism is a major threat, especially to India and Afghanistan. It is high time the problem should be tackled for long-term peace and stability of the region, he added.

The Afghan envoy to India urged all to join hands to fight this menace.

Our countries should be committed to dealing with problem posing to both peoples, he added.

Afghanistan has repeatedly blamed Pakistan for supporting terrorists to carry out proxy wars in its territory.

It has also alleged that Islamabad has a selective approach in eliminating terrorists as it targets the bad Taliban but sides with the good Taliban. ANI
Simran Sodhi

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 5

British Prime Minister Theresa May arrives in the capital tomorrow on a three-day visit, her first bilateral trip outside Europe as head of state. Trade and defence are likely to take the priority during the visit.

The recent UK decision to tighten the rules on allowing students to work in Britain after completing their studies will also be on the agenda since it has affected a large number of Indian students.

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Some shades of the past are also likely to play out in the background as the call for a formal apology by the UK leader is expected on the massacre of Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. From the British perspective, increasing trade between the two countries will be high on the agenda. Though as a trade-off, India is likely to demand visa relaxation by the UK to allow more immigration into the UK and ease of getting work visas in the UK.

According to the latest figures, total bilateral trade has fallen from $15.7 bn in 2011-2012 to $14 bn in 2015-2016, despite Indias strong growth. The UK currently occupies the 13th position on the list of Indias trading partners, behind Germany, Indonesia and Belgium.

May will hold talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi Monday though no major agreements are likely to be signed.
Tribune News Service

Srinagar, November 5

At least 30 persons were injured in clashes with police personnel following the death of a teenage boy late last night. Qaisar Hamid Sofi, 17, was admitted to Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) on October 28. He was found unconscious a day after he had reportedly gone missing.

Mourners, carrying his body to the cemetery, raised slogans against the forces for having killed him. As the situation turned tense, the police lobbed teargas shells and fired into the air, resulting in injuries to 30 persons who were taken to the nearby SMHS Hospital.

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After Qaisar's burial, a mob gathered near the Safakadal mosque and threw stones at the police and security personnel deployed in the area. A few policemen were injured. Some civilians were injured too. The police claimed Qaisar was found near the city's CIE complex with froth oozing from his mouth and that doctors at SKIMS had said he had a history of GTCS (epilepsy).
Jupinderjit Singh

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 5

Five days before the Sarbat Khalsa, the Punjab Police today arrested NRI Resham Singh, president of the European unit of the Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar), from the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi. Resham, who reached India to take part in the Sikh congregation to be held at Talwandi Sabo (Bathinda) on November 10, has been booked on the charge of sedition.

The police also conducted raids across the state in the wee hours today at the houses of other Sikh leaders, said Gopal Singh Sidhu, general secretary of the Simranjit Singh Mann-led SAD (Amritsar).

Sidhu, along with Mann and others, today filed writ petitions in various courts, seeking anticipatory bail. Mann also filed a petition accusing the government of trying to scuttle the Sarbat Khalsa.

ADGP (Intelligence) Gaurav Yadav said, Resham was booked for sedition last year when he attended the Sarbat Khalsa. He had left the country before the case was registered. A lookout notice was issued against him and several others at various airports. The arrest was made as per the legal procedure. Yadav denied that raids were conducted at the houses of Sarbat Khalsa organisers.

Sidhu alleged that the state government was not giving them permission to hold the congregation. We are taking private land on lease for the purpose, he claimed.

He, along with representatives of other splinter Akali and hardline groups, met DGP Suresh Arora yesterday. We gave an undertaking that we would be responsible for maintaining law and order during the event. However, the police are still conducting raids to arrest us, he added.
Varinder Singh

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, November 5

Thousands of paddy farmers and more than 45,000 commission agents (arhtiyas) are awaiting the payment of dues amounting to Rs 13,500 crore.

The states mandis have received about 1.4 crore metric tonnes of paddy so far. Payment of Rs 13,500 crore has been made to the commission agents and farmers for about 70 lakh metric tonnes of the crop sold in the markets till mid-October. However, no payment has been made for the crop sold subsequently.

Vijay Kalra, president of the Federation of Arhtiya Association of Punjab, said: The procurement agencies and the Food and Civil Supplies Department released Rs 2,600 crore through the designated portal on October 28, but it was for the crop sold on or before October 15-16. We have not been paid for the sale of paddy in the past 15-20 days. About 10-15 lakh metric tonnes are still lying in various mandis.

Kalra said he had taken up the issue with Food and Civil Supplies Minister Adaish Partap Singh Kairon, who assured him that steps would be taken to ensure early release of the payment.

Ravinder Singh Cheema, vice-chairman of the Punjab Mandi Board and president of the Arhtiya Association of Punjab, attributed the delay to the state governments failure to ensure full utilisation of the Reserve Bank of Indias sanctioned cash credit limit (CCL) of Rs 23,000 for October for paddy procurement.

Of the Rs 23,000-crore CCL for November, nearly Rs 9,000 was allowed to lapse by the state. Most of the farmers have taken advance from commission agents, who have exhausted their bank credit limits.

We have learnt that the state government sent the file for the renewal of the lapsed CCL to the Centre. The latter moved it back to the state with a few objections. The RBI should sanction CCL for crop procurement for the entire season rather than on a monthly basis, said Cheema.

Commission agents have lost an estimated Rs 2.5 crore in the form of interest on the advance extended by them to the farmers, he added.

Director, Food and Civil Supplies, Raj Kamal Chaudhary said whatever money the state had received from the Centre had been paid to the farmers and commission agents. They will be getting the rest of the payment in a week or so, he added.

AAP to hold statewide protests tomorrow

Chandigarh: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has announced statewide protests on Monday against the government's apathy towards farmers. In a press statement, AAP state convener Gurpreet Singh Waraich said there was a lack of adequate lifting arrangements in the grain mandis, adding that the state government was harassing farmers by delaying payment for their paddy. Waraich alleged that the food scam had prompted banks, especially the State Bank of India, to stop lending money to Punjab for further procurement. Waraich said party teams led by the farmers wing were visiting the mandis daily and it had come to light that government agencies were demanding a bribe of Rs 100 per quintal from farmers. In a separate press release, AAP ex-servicemen wing convener Capt Bikramjit Singh accused the Badal government of allowing the liquor mafia to run riot, citing the murder of ex-serviceman Beant Singh in Moga on Thursday night. TNS
London, November 5

The UKs Opposition Labour Party has called on British Prime Minister Theresa May to come clean about the role played by Britain in Operation Bluestar before her three-day visit to India starting on Sunday.

Labour Party Deputy Leader Tom Watson said on Friday that Britains Sikh community deserved to know the truth in the wake of allegations by Sikh Federation UK that the UK Foreign Office had removed files with new evidence of British involvement in the military operation on the Golden Temple in June 1984.

Before her visit to India, May must come clean about the role played by the UK in the attack on the Golden Temple in 1984 and subsequent events. There is increasing evidence that Margaret Thatchers administration worked more closely with the Indian government than was known at the time, Watson said in a statement.

His statement followed claims that the Foreign Office had intentionally removed files referring to the possibility of the Special Air Services (SAS) unit of the British Army being involved after an Indian request for military assistance in the setting up of a National Guard for internal security duties during Operation Bluestar.

While the Foreign Office said it had merely borrowed the files, the Labour Party said the fact the files existed raised important questions.

Watson added: David Camerons previous inquiry failed to reveal the full facts and we now learn that vital new documents relating to the massacre have been removed from the National Archives by ministers. The revelation that these new documents exist suggest that Parliament may have been inadvertently misled by a former Foreign Secretary.

After over 30 years of demanding answers, Britains Sikh community deserves to know the truth, no matter how embarrassing it is for the current government. After the failure of the Cabinet Secretarys internal inquiry, there should be a full independent investigation into these matters.

The Cabinet Secretarys inquiry refers to an official UK government inquiry in 2014 into the exact nature of British involvement in the Indian Army operation at the Golden Temple.

The inquiry had been ordered by then British Prime Minister David Cameron after documents released previously under the 30-year declassification rule had implied British SAS commanders had advised the Indian government as it drew up plans for the removal of militants from Golden Temple.

The report concludes that the nature of the UKs assistance was purely advisory, limited and provided to the Indian government at an early stage in their planning, William Hague, then UK foreign secretary, had told the House of Commons in February 2014.

Sikh Federation UK claims the latest note it found, marked confidential, was written on July 3, 1984, a month after the operation, which points to a more prominent British role.

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The note was written by a civil servant in the Foreign Offices South Asia department and copied to Ministry of Defence officials and the high commissioner in Delhi.

Earlier on Friday, their lawyers wrote to UK home secretary Amber Rudd demanding an independent investigation.

The FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) borrowed some of their files from 1984 that were released to the National Archives so they could read the content following concerns raised by the Sikh Federation. They will return all the files in full shortly, a UK government spokesperson said. PTI
Aman Sood

Tribune News Service

Patiala, November 5

Following the concern shown by the Election Commission pertaining to the use of drugs in state elections, the Punjab State Narcotics Control Bureau has directed the district-level police officers to crack down on drug peddlers.

In a communique shot to senior police officers, including SSPs and commissioners, Ishwar Singh, Director, NCB, has directed them to identify proclaimed offenders and parole jumpers in NDPS cases in their respective areas.

Get in touch with relatives and friends of drug peddlers and make serious efforts for their arrest, reads the letter, which has also been marked to the Punjab Police Nodal Officer, Elections.

The Director has confirmed that a meeting of officers from Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir, Chandigarh and Delhi was held on November 3 where ways and means to check inflow of drugs, especially in the poll-bound Punjab, were discussed.

A senior IPS officer said curbing the entry of drugs into Punjab was possible only if there was ample support from the neighbouring states.

The Election Commission has adopted a tough stance. SHO-level officers have been briefed almost four times in the past 10 days to ensure compliance of the directions to curb the use of drugs during the elections, he said.

Directions have also been issued to check the sale of schedule H drugs without any prescription by chemists.

The police officers have been told to verify the licences of all pharmacists who have the authorisation to store, sell and purchase drugs under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940. Stock maintenance should be made an absolute necessity and action as per rules should be initiated if any violation is found," reads the letter.
Ranjita Biswas

Those familiar with Greek mythology would immediately perk up at the mention of Crete on the Aegean Sea. For, it is related to one of the most ferocious mythical monsters, the Minotaur. Half man and half bull, he devoured prisoners let loose by powerful King Minos in a labyrinth. Crete is Greeces largest island and the fifth largest in the Mediterranean Sea. The Minoan culture is said to have flourished during the Bronze Age (approximately between 3650 BC and 1400 BC) as the dawn of the European civilisation.

History and myth merge together in the imagery of Minotaur. At the excavation site of Knossos, the palace complex of King Minos, near Heraklion, Cretes capital, his legend came alive.

As the story goes, Minotaur was born to Pasiphae, wife of King Minos, through cohabitation with a bull due to a curse by Zeus, supreme god. He grew huge and ferocious. The embarrassed Minos hid the monster in a labyrinth built by architect Daedalus at his orders.

Meanwhile, Androgeus, the Minoan prince went to Athens to participate in the Panathenaic Games. He won all races but jealous competitors killed him. Minos attacked Athens, won and cursed the inhabitants with an onset of plague. Begged by the king Aegeus, he demanded that seven men and seven virgins were sent every year.

According to the myth, Minos sent them to the labyrinth so that the Minotaur could kill them. It was such a complicated construction that no one could ever find the way out alive.

In the third year, prince Theseus, son of Aegeus, volunteered to be one of the seven young men on way to Crete. He promised to kill the Minotaur and end the human sacrifices.

On arrival, Theseus announced to King Minos his intention, but the king knew that even if he managed to kill the Minotaur, he would never be able to exit the labyrinth.

Meanwhile, Theseus met princess Ariadne, the kings daughter, who fell in love with him. To help him come out alive, she gave Theseus a reel of thread and told him to unravel it as he would penetrate deeper into the labyrinth, and could return safely by tracing the thread.

Theseus followed the instructions, managed to kill the Minotaur and save the Athenians. He sailed back, taking Ariadne along with him.

There is another sub-plot to the story. Enraged, king Minos sentenced to death Daedalus, who he believed helped his daughter, and his son Icarus. Escaping at the nick of time both tried to jump down from the precipice of a hill flying. But young Icarus did not listen to his father: Fly not too low, not too high. He flew too high and the wax that held together the wings melted and he fell to death. Myth though it is Icarus remains a symbol of mans eternal wish to fly like birds.

The pottery, jewellery , paintings recovered during the excavation of Knossos showcase a highly developed culture that later influenced the Greek civilisation. Some of these can be seen at the Heraklion Archaeological Museum and the Archaeological Museum in Athens. The presence of the bull head (rhyton) in various artefacts is remarkable.

A historical explanation of the myth refers to the time when Crete was the main political and cultural power in the Aegean Sea. As the vassal Athens and other Greek cities had to pay tribute to Crete, it can be assumed that it also included young men and women for sacrifice. This ceremony was performed by a priest disguised with a bull head or mask, thus explaining the imagery of the Minotaur.

Later, the fight of Theseus and the Minotaur was a popular subject for art as, experts point out, the myth embodies the basic struggle between the natural and unnatural or the civilised versus the uncivilised, which is a common theme in many Greek artistic representations.
Tanushree Podder

Pearl of the Danube, City of Bridges and City of Spas, it has many names. Budapest wears its many names with aplomb. During the communist reign, it was also known as the Happiest Barrack in the Eastern Bloc. That title wouldnt have come without reason.

Coming back to spas, there is an interesting history about them. When the early residents of Budapest discovered that there were innumerable natural springs of warm water lying within the womb of the city, they decided to set up thermal baths. The Celts are known to have enjoyed the warm spring waters as healing water and baths. In the first century, Romans established a province called Pannonia in what is known as the Obuda district today. Ruins of elaborate Roman baths in the Aquincum area vouch for the fact that the Romans enjoyed the medicinal water available in the area. Not surprising since Budapest is known to have more than a 100 springs, perhaps the largest number in any other capital.

In the 13th century, the knights of St John built their healing centre where Rudas Bath stands today. When the Ottoman Turks conquered the city in the 16th century, they were delighted to discover the natural springs. Known for their fascination for baths, they set up several ornate baths around the city, most of them around the Danube. Like the Celts, Romans and the knights, they used the deep underground hot spring waters in the baths for bathing, healing and relaxing. In the next 12 years of Sokoli Mustafas reign, many Turkish baths are built. Special tiles and pipes were imported from Turkey for this purpose. Octagonal Turkish pools (known as ilidzas by the locals) topped with beautiful domes with multi-coloured glasses attracted the inhabitants and the bath culture of the city took a serious turn. Several of them like the Rudas, Kiraly and Veli Bej Bath, dating between 1550 and 1600s are still functional. This was also the time when aqua therapy was advocated by doctors and the healing spa waters became very popular with the locals.

Gellert Hotel, which has a beautiful spa, was constructed in the early 20th century when Odon Lechner, who was known as the Gaudi of Hungary, began designing art nouveau structures. More baths were added and the old ones renovated as the popularity of the thermal baths began drawing tourists to the place and in the early 20th century, Budapest was declared as the City of Spas.

Today, there are more than 15 baths for the public. Many upscale hotels have their own spas. Parties are held in some of the baths like Rudas Bath (on Friday and Saturday nights) and guests can enjoy music and light effects, along with their bath. Many of the citys baths are unisex in nature, especially during the weekends.

Szechenyi baths and pool, an architecturally stunning bath, is about a 100 years old and is one of the most popular ones today. It even offers short guided tours for the visitors.

Besides the bath, one can book a session of massage, mud therapy or hydrotherapy. Most baths have various bath tickets. Full day tickets usually include the use of all bath pools and facilities but not personal services like massage, manicure, etc.
Harish Khare

By Wednesday morning, we should know whom the Americans have elected to be the next occupant of the White House. Till a month ago, it looked as if Hillary Clinton was all set to notch up a runaway victory over her Republican rival Donald Trump. All that has changed. The dead duck is showing all the signs of having been resuscitated. The race stands transformed much too close for the Democrats comfort.

The campaign has become too nastier also. Ugly and unedifying. So much bad blood and so much divisiveness have been injected into the presidential race that the United States would have a major problem: how would the Americans get unified behind the next President of the United States?

The acrimony and the bitterness are unbelievable, almost reminiscent of what the Americans once used to derisively call, the Third World politics. The Americans can no longer afford to speak down to other nations.

It was not always this ugly. My attention was recently drawn to a handwritten note, left behind for President Bill Clinton on his first day in the White House by the outgoing occupant, George HW Bush:

Dear Bill,

When I walked into this office just now I felt the same sense of wonder and respect that I felt four years ago. I know you will feel that, too.

I wish you great happiness here. I never felt the loneliness some Presidents have described.

There will be very tough times, made even more difficult by criticism you may not think is fair. I am not a very good one to give advice; but just do not let the critics discourage you or push you off course.

You will be our President when you read this note. I wish you well. I wish your family well.

Your success now is our countrys success. I am rooting hard for you.

Good luck.

George

What an extraordinary exhibition of grace and civility, from a vanquished man towards the victor. George Bush had every reason to be bitter with the American voters and the man who defeated him, Bill Clinton. President Bush was the hero of the first Iraq War and had every reason to think that the American voters owed him a second term as the President. But Bill Clinton ran a brilliant campaign and forced the American voters to believe that economy and its management were far more important than glories carved out in the distant battlefields.

That note is dated January 20, 1993.

Within a space of 20-odd years, the tone and temper of American politics has changed so dramatically  and, for the worse. Decidedly. It has been a feast of mudslinging. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have smugly called each other names; Trump has even threatened to send her to jail and has refused to commit himself to accept the voters verdict in case he lost. Violence almost broke out; but, many voters may still be able to feel and fear a sense of intimidation on the Election Day. That is not the America the world has known and admired.

A close election would test the American political elites commitment to democratic ideals and practices. In 1960, a very, very narrow victory for John F. Kennedy was gracefully accepted by Richard Nixon; in 2000, it all came down to the counting of a few thousand votes in Florida, yet the loser, Al Gore, accepted the verdict with good grace and good humour. No one can be sure of such fair-mindedness and decency in 2016.

Democratic politics all over the world has become shriller and shriller by the decade. Our current The Tribune series on past elections in Punjab gives an idea of the tone and temper of the days gone by. That past looks so decent and so distant. Gone is the old-fashioned preference for a civilised dialogue; it is impossible to imagine that we in this country have had leisurely campaigns, fairly conducted and dignifiedly contested. And, mind you, all that without any empowered Election Commission playing a tough referee.

It is perhaps fair to suggest that it is the Americans who have lured the democrats all over the world into bad habits. It is the Americans who have introduced advertising techniques in the political arena. Life has never been the same since.

I recommend to all serious students of politics a classic book, The Hidden Persuaders, by Vance Packard. Written six decades ago, this path-breaking book revealed to us how we, both as consumers and citizens, get manipulated by the advertisers  the hidden persuaders into making choices, often against our temperament and inclination.

Packard wrote: The use of mass psychoanalysis to guide campaigns of persuasion has become the basis of a multi-million dollar industry. Professional persuaders have seized upon it in their groping for more effective ways to sell us their wares  whether products, ideas, attitudes, candidates, goals, or states of mind. Packard points out that practices of psychiatry and insights from the social sciences were being used by the persuaders to engineering our consent to their propositions.

When the British edition of The Hidden Persuaders was published, a few months later, in 1957, he wrote a brief note for To British Readers. He told them that Americans have become the most manipulated people outside the Iron Curtain, but he warned the English readers you have little ground for complacency as the techniques and amorality of the hidden persuasion would soon travel to the English shores. And, it did. Tony Blair was the classic product of those selling techniques.

Packard had concluded his 1957 study on a note of indignation. He noted that what the persuaders did was to invade the privacy of our minds and called it their most serious offence. The last line of the book reads: It is this right to privacy in our minds  privacy to be either rational or irrational  that I believe we must strive to protect.

That battle was lost some time ago  and lost comprehensively. Consumers and citizens all over the world have been reduced to hopeless, hapless victims of the alluring charm of the hidden persuader, who cheerfully lends his services to anyone for a price.

Before the Second World War, the totalitarian regimes, such as Hitlers Third Reich, had to stage such massive spectacles like the Nuremberg Rally (of 1934) and had to engage creative filmmakers of the ilk of Leni Riefenstahl to persuade and mesmerise the Germans. Since then, the techniques have been honed finer and finer, subtler and subtler. If you want to sell a scooty, hire an Amitabh Bachchan; if you want to sell a pan masala, hire a Pierce Bronson; if you want to sell a Donald Trump, hire the best of the American advertising talent. And, the rest is history.

A few days after Diwali, Mr RK Saboo, one of the most respected and concerned citizens of Chandigarh, dropped in for a cup of coffee. He is also, it must be noted, an international leader of the Rotarian community. He casually mentioned to me that how a week before Diwali, his wife Usha, a saintly lady, had had a brainwave: why cant the Rotarians do something to express solidarity with the jawans and officers guarding our borders?

That inspiration, according to Mr Saboo, was just the idea that everyone was perhaps waiting for. The mood in the country, anyway, is laced with patriotism and nationalism. So, within days, a local halwai was commandeered to produce 4,000 kg of pure desi ghee pinnis. Four thousand boxes were sent for the soldiers stationed in Leh.

Needless to say that the jawans and the officers were appropriately gratified that the fellow-citizens back home remembered them on the Diwali occasion. And the Rotarians had every reason to feel thankful to Mrs Usha Saboo for coming up with this inspired idea

Next Diwali, I too would like to spend a day with the jawans on the border. For now, its time for a cup of coffee. Join me.

kaffeeklatsch@tribuneindia.com
Saba Naqvi

This past week, one did not have to follow media to get the news, but social media to get the news about media! Arnab Goswami quitting from Times Now has inspired a series of articles about him from journalists, sociologists, ordinary citizens who felt compelled to express their opinion about the enfant terrible of the Indian Republic (one of the more clever commentaries was written by a Pakistani journalist).

NDTV India being instructed to go off air for one day was a serious story that must disturb all of us who are part of the media. There should, in an ideal world, be a collective fight-back from the entire media, but we do not live in an ideal world. The TV industry in particular is notorious for rivalries that are taken to disproportionate levels.

Still, the Editors Guild has protested and hopefully some of us will keep pointing out the unfairness of the decision. NDTV India's most high profile Hindi anchor, Ravish Kumar, has been quite effective in his commentaries on the current regime. So the same set of people who once swore they would never act like the Congress did during the Emergency, have shown the same inclination to muzzle and bully. Still, I am told that the order against NDTV may not stand legal scrutiny so we will have to wait and see if the government backtracks. But there's another media story that also made little waves in our little fish bowl. Akshaya Mukul, a senior journalist in the Times of India, heard the call of his own conscience and did not turn up at a ceremony organized by the Indian Express group to take an award from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Mukul chose to say so publicly (there were other journalists who quietly did not take their awards from the PM). Mukul was given the award for Gita Press, the best book in recent times by a scribe, so kudos to him for his diligent and original work and his brave personal decision.

Yet I do take issue with the manner in which the decision has been interpreted by some sections of the media on social media platforms such as facebook and twitter: Mukul's decision as I understood it, is about a personal choice to not take an award from a particular individual, but this has been presented as a morally righteous path that more journalists should follow in boycotting the current PM.

Sure, that's fine for those who wish to give commentary on politics without ever being part of the action themselves. But in the traditional school of old fashioned political journalism, you boycott no one even if they boycott you.

There are other points to ponder. First, like him or not, Narendra Modi has been elected through a democratic process and last I heard we have not become a totalitarian state. Second, as far as I know it's the job of a journalist to cover things, individuals and governments, regardless of their personal orientation. Third, if we are in the field of political reporting it is our job to try and get access to those in power, like them or not. Fourth, those who presume to base their journalism based on political reporting, cannot simultaneously live in an ivory tower and pass judgement on those humble souls who go to the party offices of political parties day in and out, to get access to information and individuals. At the same time, I would make a distinction between reporting on a regime and cosying up to it.

I did wonder about what my late editor, Vinod Mehta of Outlook would have done if asked to preside over a ceremony attended by a prime minister he may not have liked? He would have made it a point to perhaps tell the PM that the role of the media is to criticize governments, just as Raj Kamal Jha, the editor of the Indian Express group, did last week. He would then possibly have written a title tattle gossipy piece about what the PM said to him privately in his dairy piece. Vinod would also have brushed aside any notion of delicacy of sentiment or emotion among his staff and responded with some colorful language such as that's for the bloody activists and you are a damned journalist!

For 20 years of political reporting, I have been confronted by well meaning people who ask me: how can you bear to cover the BJP? Over time I've become too bored to answer and have responded with facile remarks like 'because it is there". I've also spent some years covering the Congress during their recent decade in power and must confess that professionally, it was just more interesting to cover the BJP. And yes, it's very possible to have long standing contacts in a party that you critique. Off course I never got through to Narendra Modi after the 2002 riots. I covered all the Gujarat campaigns and repeatedly put in a request for an interview. Never got it as he was boycotting Outlook but that didn't stop me from trying.
Shiv Kumar in Mumbai & Prashant Saxena in Chandigarh

There are several factors leading up to Cyrus Mistry's ouster as chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company of Tata Group  the biggest industry conglomerate in the country. An email from Mistry seems to suggest that the overseas dimensions of the tumult override the internal ones ever since Tata decided to invest in Air Asia and Vistara airlines and the huge loans taken by Tata Steel to acquire Corus (UK). The ouster also came at a time when Mistry and Tata Steel were making progress on a potential merger of its European steel operations and were close to a deal with the UK government about financial support and a restructuring of its pension scheme.

At stake, now, is not only the deal but also the future of 11,000 workers at the Port Talbot (UK) steelworks owned by Tata Steel. The visit of UK Prime Minister Theresa May beginning November 6 comes at a time when UK is looking for reviving its investment climate post Brexit (Britain walking out of the European Union) in June this year. British media reports suggest that Mistry's exit could be good news for Tata Steel's 11,000 UK workers because Ratan Tata is a renowned Anglophile who bought the business in the first place.

Just how much the Tatas could matter for the UK government priorities can be gauged from the fact the group also owns Jaguar Land Rover, which employs over 35,000 people in Britain, plus in other brands including Tetley Tea. Reports in the British media say one of the first people the secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy, Greg Clark, had met after assuming office was Mistry in Mumbai. Then, there is the China factor, too. Tata, while offloading its British steel operations, has cited a global oversupply of steel and cheap imports from China, high costs and weak domestic demand.

The Tata Group is the biggest corporate house of the country employing over 6.5 lakh people. As investors scurry to understand the Mistry fallout, the combined market capitalization of Tata Group  the notional value at bourses  fell to Rs 44,000 crore only three days after Mistry's sacking. Though share prices of many of the group companies recovered somewhat, investors are nervously watching for disclosures from the two warring groups  Mistry versus the veteran Ratan Tata as the interim replacement (a five-member search panel will find the successor in four months). Mistry's family firm, Shapoorji Pallonji Group, has 18.4% in Tata Sons the 100- billion salt-to-software conglomerate. Mistry is believed to be considering fighting out the illegal removal.

In perspective

Tata Motors on June 2, 2008, acquired the Jaguar Land Rover business from the Ford Motor Company for a net consideration of $2.3 billion, as announced on March 26, 2008 in an all-cash transaction. Ford has contributed about $600 million to the Jaguar Land Rover pension plans.

Air Asia India began operations on June 2014 with Bangalore as its hub. Air Asia India is an Indian low cost carrier headquartered in Chennai. The airline is a joint venture with Air Asia Berhad (Malaysia) holding 49% stake in the airline, Tata Sons holding 40.06% and Arun Bhatia holding the remaining 10% through his company, Telestra Tradeplace. AirAsia is the first foreign airline to set up a subsidiary in India and the company marked Tata's return to the aviation industry after 60 years, having ceded Air India in 1946. As of February 2016, AirAsia India is the fourth largest low cost carrier in India.

Tata Steel Europe Ltd is headquartered in London with its main operations in the UK and the Netherlands. The Corus Group was formed in 1999 and was taken over by Tata Steel on October 20, 2006 with $ 8.1 billion offer. In January 2009, Corus announced 1,000 job cuts in the Netherlands and 2,500 in the UK due the economic downturn. By late 2014 Tata Group remained 13 billion in debt, which had increased following the acquisition of Corus in 2007, due to reduced demand in Europe. At the end of March 2016 the Tata board rejected a turnaround plan for the Port Talbot site, and announced it would seek to sell all (or part) of its UK steel business.

Mistry, who took over from Ratan Tata four years ago, was seen as restructuring the group by paring down the stretched balance sheets of several companies. These moves were welcomed by investors and the total market capitalization of listed Tata group companies rose from around Rs 4.6 lakh crore to nearly Rs 8.5 lakh crore in the four years Mistry was at the helm of Tata Sons.

The sudden removal of Mistry raises a question mark over the restructuring exercise initiated by him in several Tata group companies, say analysts. Proxy advisory services and watchdog bodies representing investors' interests have also got into the act and would be scrutinizing the proceedings of the battle closely. Market watchdog SEBI has also announced that it would be keeping an eye on the situation.

Mistry no push-over

In the short-term however there is a growing fear of an internecine war within the Tata group that may pull in other industrialists and the Narendra Modi government because state-owned financial institutions are major share-holders in several group companies.

As of now Mistry has shown no signs of surrendering before Ratan Tata. Mistry hails from a powerful Parsi business family, and is girding up for a long-drawn battle with several Tata trusts which hold a majority stake. Mistry who took over as chairman of several Tata group companies after his appointment at the top job at the holding company has shown no signs of quitting these posts. Mistry is still chairman and non-executive director of Tata Motors Ltd, Tata Power Ltd., Tata Global Beverages Ltd, Indian Hotels Co., and some other companies. Since Tata Sons do not hold majority stakes in these companies, Ratan Tata will have to seek the assistance of other minority shareholders, including financial institutions to evict Mistry.

Mistry is going about chairing board meetings making it awkward for several old Tata hands, say reports. Analysts say the procedure for removing Mistry from the boards of listed companies is cumbersome. First Tata Sons will have to propose a resolution . This resolution will then have to be put up for voting by share-holders at an extraordinary general meeting called for the purpose.
Dinesh Kumar in Chandigarh

The ongoing exchange of fire across the 740-km Line of Control (LoC) and the 199-km International Border (IB) is understandably in the news and cause for much speculation. In reality, however, there is nothing unusual about it. Rather the intensity and scale is as yet lower than the decade preceding the unsigned ceasefire agreement reached on 25th November 2003 when Atal Behari Vajpayee was Prime Minster and General Pervez Musharraf was President. It is nevertheless among the most intense since the ceasefire agreement came into effect.

The current spate of firing needs to be viewed in the context of three factors. First, the cross-LoC/IB firing is occurring in the backdrop of the Indian Armys retaliatory attack (termed surgical strike by the government) on terrorist launch pads at five places across the LoC in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) in response to the Sept 18 terror attack on an Army camp in Uri. Unlike in the past when such retaliatory attacks were executed quietly by the Army at the tactical level, this time it was done on the explicit direction of the political executive which then publicly announced it. This has understandably riled the Pakistani Army which is seeking revenge. There is as yet no resumption of firing along the Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL) located ahead of the Siachen glacier reminiscent of the 1990s. Neither has the current fiery dual erupted across the entire length of the LoC or escalated to wanton artillery shelling by both sides. However, last month the Indian Army reportedly fired on Pakistani posts in the Keran Sector of north Kashmirs Kupwara district with stealthily deployed artillery guns in straight fire position to avenge the mutilation of an Army soldiers body.

Second, much of the fiery exchange so far has been along the IB (termed working boundary by Pakistan) . Indian villages located close to the IB pose soft targets. In contrast there are fewer Indian villages located close to the LoC. Even so, the current level of firing has not led to villagers being (temporarily) displaced on a scale reminiscent of September-October 2014 when about 35,000 civilians left their villages.

The third factor is the ongoing tussle between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the Army led by Gen Raheel Sharif. There is uncertainty whether Gen Sharif will retire this month-end as earlier announced or will get an extension. Listing three possibilities, former Chief of Army Staff, General VP Malik, says either Gen Sharif will get an extension or the PM will be forced to demit office. A third and unlikely possibility is that Gen Sharif retires as scheduled paving the way for tyhe PM to appoint a successor.

Irrespective of what is eventually decided, the borders between J&K and POK will continue to reflect the No-War No-Peace environment. The names of soldiers killed in action inscribed on the imposing War Memorial at the Northern Command headquarters in Udhampur tell a sordid story. In the 12-year period starting from the inception of this Army Command in 1972 until 1983, the Army lost a total 12 soldiers along the LoC. In the following six years (1984-1989), the Army lost 480 soldiers mainly on account of the Indian Army establishing posts along the high altitude Saltoto ridge ahead of the Siachen glacier and the consequent fire fights.

There has since been a dramatic rise in casualties. With terrorism and insurgency beginning in December 1989, an estimated 6,245 security force personnel belonging to all uniformed forces in the state have been killed between 1990 and 2016. In 2002, which was immediately after the October 2001 terror attack on the J&K state assembly in Srinagar and the December 2001 terror attack on Parliament, there were 2,644 incidents of firing across the LoC/ AGPL/ IB in that single year.

The ceasefire, which came into effect in 2003, has not been without significant violations. It is, however, difficult to authenticate the exact number of such violations owing to differing figures officially released by India and Pakistan and also because of contradictory figures released by New Delhi. For example, on August 12, 2014 then Defence Minister Arun Jaitley informed Rajya Sabha that 62, 114 and 347 violations, respectively, had occurred across the LoC in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Seven months later on March 17, 2015, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar informed Rajya Sabha that 51, 93, 199 and 153 violations, respectively, had occurred in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. Furthermore, Parrikar listed 183 violations between 2004 and 2010 with the least number recorded in 2004 (just one).

Opinion is divided whether such firing makes any sense. Currently the firing is normal and restricted to low calibre weapons. Artillery guns and interdiction of their lines of communication will sort them out, suggests Lt General JS Dhillon who headed the Srinagar-based XV Corps from 1995 to mid-1997. But the issue begs the question of what cross-LoC firing serves in the long run. For, such firing has not stopped Pakistans ongoing proxy war in J&K. Should not New Delhi be seriously and concertedly working on an effective long-term strategy?

dkumar@tribunemail.com
Vaibhav Sharma

Over the years, a notion has been established that Apple is the cool company that caters to creative people and Microsoft is the dull consumer behemoth that helps millions do the grunt work. You see developers, filmmakers, DJs and photographers all carrying Macs, whereas everybody working on spreadsheets carries the fat Windows laptop. But this idea that the Mac is your window to the creative world, whereas Windows is more of a productivity machine is starting to dissipate. The contrast between the approach of the two companies to the modern-day computer couldnt be more diametrically opposed. In a first, Microsoft and Apple held press events at the end of October within one day of each other to unveil the latest generation Surface machines and MacBooks respectively.

Ahead of times

Apple has consistently been focused on thinner, lighter and faster and in doing so, it has produced remarkable engineering marvels over the years. The MacBook Air was a revolutionary product, years ahead of its time. It took PC manufacturers a long time to come up with offerings that rivalled the Air in performance and design. The fact that Apple would be the hardware leader did not come as much of a surprise, owing to its pedigree. It was the company that popularised the tracking ball on a laptop, re-defined it with the tracking pad, and then took it to a whole new level with the glass multi-touch trackpad that you find on current generation MacBooks. In contrast, trackpad performance on Windows remained choppy, and although multi-touch soon followed, it wasnt nearly as seamless as it was on Apples offerings.

Almost a decade ago, Apple switched to using Intels chips in its machines. This meant that computers coming from both Apple and Microsoft carried broadly similar specifications, as the component supplier was the same. The real differentiation remained in design, with Apple controlling its own destiny and Microsoft bowing down to the judgment of third-party PC manufacturers. But when Microsoft introduced the Surface tablet, the battle lines were clearly drawn. Apple and Microsoft would not only compete on software, but on hardware as well. With Windows 8, Microsoft decided to embrace the touchscreen on its computers, whereas Apple held on to the belief that touchscreens best serve the smartphone and the tablet. It instead relied on the multi-touch gestures built into the trackpad.

With the Surface Book, Microsoft created an almost no compromise laptop that had a really cool detachable touchscreen. When detached, it would still remain a full-fledged Windows 10 computer, albeit with slightly decreased performance and battery life. But when it was docked, the machine was a delight and had a great experience. At a recent event, Microsoft made the Surface Book even better with up to 16 hours of battery life, nuanced design improvements and a spec bump. But the company didnt stop there, and introduced a whole new desktop computer called the Surface Studio that looks like something only Apple could have produced, but unfortunately for Apple, it makes the iMac look like a compromise.

It packs a high resolution 28 touchscreen display that is connected to the tiny base that houses the chips via a zero gravity hinge. This hinge allows the display to sit at any angle, from flat on the desk, angled like a drafting board and up to vertical like a regular monitor. This way you can read, watch movies or even draw on it  positioning it at an angle that precisely suits each of these tasks. The iMac, Apples desktop computer, despite its own brilliant retina display, isnt as fluid or willing to let you sketch on it.

While Apple claims that it is selling every iPhone 7 that it possibly can make, the fact is that it has not been a great week. The company recently released its Q3 results, posting a year-on-year revenue drop, its first yearly sales drop in 15 years, a massive fall in Apple watch sales, and an alarming 30 per cent decline in its China revenue. The mood was only balanced because this quarter Apples chief smartphone competitor, Samsung literally blew itself up.

Looking at future

Expectations were high as the companys MacBook refresh has been years in the making, and at the event Tim Cook & Co. did manage to hit it out of the park. The new MacBooks are everything you could want. Superfast processors, brilliant retina displays, louder speakers, a beautiful aluminium design, thin as you like. The real innovation from Apple was the introduction of a new touch bar that replaces the function keys, with a multi-touch display. The idea is that the space wasted by function keys could now be used to adapt to whatever software youre using. While Apple did show a few cool demos during the introduction, the touch bar could face the same fate as 3D touch on the iPhone  useful, but not addictive enough.

Honestly, I have never been a fan of the idea of a touchscreen on a laptop. You end up smudging the screen, and unlike the smart phone, it cannot be wiped off by running it over your T-shirt. Apples approach, therefore, is more practical, but it is also the safer option. It is because of this difference that Microsoft is coming across as a company willing to take more risks, innovate a little more and deliver products that seem fresh and inviting. It is hard to wow, when all your product adds is a multitouch bar whereas the other side brings a giant touchscreen on a zero gravity hinge and a Surface Dial that when placed on the touchscreen wirelessly works like knob to navigate and pan, and offers a radial menu around it so you never really have to use the keyboard to select or scroll.

It isnt like Apple isnt innovating, but it seems that its focus is now on continuous refinement. That is, perhaps, also a reflection of how ahead it was off the curve. In 2016, however, it is Microsofts offerings that seem like the ones offering a bite of the future.
Neena Sharma

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, November 5

A large number of Congress MLAs have managed to corner a large share of doles from the Chief Ministers discretionary fund for their supporters while BJP legislators got a negligible share.

A greater part of the Chief Ministers discretionary fund has been sanctioned at the request of Congress MLAs and those close to the Congress though it was conceived to help the needy.

More than Rs 267.98 crore has been disbursed from the fund in the past five years but the BJP MLAs could not get more than Rs 2 lakh.

According to the information gathered from the Chief Ministers office under RTI, so far 2,38,051 beneficiaries have benefited from the Chief Ministers discretionary fund since the Congress came to power in 2012.

Ajay Bhatt, Leader of the Opposition and BJP state president, had put forth a proposal of Rs 1 lakh, which is still pending. BJP legislator Adesh Chauhans proposal of Rs 1 lakh and another MLA Harbans Kapoors proposal of Rs 30,000 are still pending.

Those who have managed to get funds among BJP legislators include Mussoorie MLA Ganesh Joshi (Rs 15,000) and Rajkumar Thukral (Rs 1 lakh).

The Chief Ministers office had received 34,700 proposals from April 2016 till today and the budgetary allocations were around Rs 49.76 crore.

In 2015-2016, Rs 72.93 crore was allocated from the discretionary fund and Rs 72.93 crore was given to 103,139 beneficiaries. In 2014-2015, Rs 97.30 crore was allocated and around Rs 97.29 crore was distributed among 58,306 beneficiaries.

The Uttarakhand BJP has been crying foul over the discretionary fund misuse by Speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal to benefit people of his own constituency. However, Kunjwal has not shied away from using Rs 35 lakh sanctioned against proposals submitted by him.

Among the Congress MLAs, Vikram Singh Negi managed to get sanctioned proposals of Rs 50 lakh from the CMs discretionary fund, former MLA Bhim Lal Arya Rs 53 lakh, Vijay Pal Sajwan Rs 50 lakh and Harish Dhami got Rs 30 lakh.

Meanwhile, the BSP legislators also managed to get several proposals sanctioned. MLA Sarbat Karim Ansari got Rs 31 lakh and MLA Haridas was allocated Rs 20 lakh from the Chief Ministers discretionary fund.
Tribune News Service

Mussoorie, November 5

Union Minister of State for Railways Rajen Gohain released the worldwide Oak Grove School reunion logo for 2017 during his inspection visit of Oak Grove School, a residential institution that is run by the Northern Railway for the welfare of its employees in Mussoorie.

The worldwide reunion of the former students from the school would be held from October 27to 29, 2017, said Brijesh Bhutani, secretary of the The Oak Grovian Association.

Junior school students presented a song welcoming the Minister on the occasion.

Rajen Gohen, while addresing the gathering, said the historic structure of the school dated back to 1888 deserved a heritage status for which he would try to nominate the school in the heritage list of the world. He announced Rs 5 lakh for the welfare fund of the school.

Gohen was impressed to see the emotional attachment of old students to the school and wished all the success for the reunion function to be held next year.

He assured the students that he would be spending more time with students on his next visit.

Much to the delight of the old students, a slideshow presentation about the school and its glorious history was showcased on the occasion.

Earlier, he inspected art and craft exhibition displayed by students from the three wings of the school. Later, speaking to the mediapersons, he said work on the Rishikesh-Karnaprayag Railway line would begin soon.

Narendra Modi Vichar Manch members Vijay and Rohit Prasad also met the minister at the guest house of the school and presented a shawl. Vijay, the state vice-president of the manch demanded more schools in the district for the railway employees and increase in the reservation percentage for non-railway students who would be working on the Rishikesh-Karnaprayag railway project. He also demanded upgrading facilities at the railway ticketing agency at the Mall Road in Mussoorie. The Minister directed the DRM Moradabad to do the needful.

Brijesh Bhutani, secretary TOGA, thanked the Minister for gracing the occasion. He said that preparations were on to celebrate the reunion function to be held next year at a grand scale and the logo launch was a first step. He said the old students working around the globe were being contacted so that they can participate during the celebrations next year.

Col Sunny Bakshi (retd), an old student of the school, said the reunion occasion would strengthen the ties among old school friends and he was looking forward to the function next year.

The Old Oak Grovian Association office bearers Brijesh Bhutani, Sunny Bakshi, VK Tanwar, PVR Verma, Ajit Asthana, Sudhanshu Upadhyaya, Sanjiv Kumar, BB Dhuppar, Puneet Monga, DN Tiwari Somnath Thakur, Sumanto Sen, Nidhi Dogra, Mandeep Kumar, GNS Gurudatt, Caroline, Ashok Bagadia and other old students attended the logo function.

DRM Moradabad Pramod Kumar, Divisional Engineer Moradabad Paritosh Gautam, CPO Praveen Kumari and other officials from Railways were present on the occasion.
Melbourne, November 5

A United Nations official said Australian would probably be in breach of the Refugee Convention if it enacted a proposal for a permanent visa-ban for asylum seekers who attempted to reach the country by boat, Fairfax media reported on Saturday.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull proposed last Sunday that asylum seekers sent to the county's offshore processing center's would be prevented for applying for any visa to Australia, even if they had been classified as refugees or resettled in another country.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees regional representative Thomas Albrecht said such a move would likely breach the convention's article prohibiting the punishment of those seeking asylum.

The proposed permanent visa-ban would be applied to anyone transferred to a regional processing center after 2013, including some 1,400 people currently held offshore.

The leader of the centre-left opposition party, Bill Shorten has criticised the plan, but his party hasn't stated whether they will attempt to block the bill in the Senate, where the government doesn't have a majority.

The current policy of sending asylum seekers who arrive Australian waters by boat to countries like Papua New Guinea and Nauru where their status as refugees is confirmed or rejected has bipartisan support in the Australian parliament.

"While solutions for refugees currently on Nauru and Papua New Guinea are critical, third-country settlement for them would not alter Australia's fundamental obligations to provide asylum to those who need and seek its protection, including by sea," Albrecht said, according to Fairfax media.

Reuters
Dhaka, November 5

Two Hindu temples and several houses were burned in Bangaldeshs Brahmanbarhia district, police said on Saturday, as growing attacks on the countrys minority community has led to several people fleeing their homes.

Six Hindu houses were burned down in a predawn attack the districts Nasirnagar, which has so far seen 15 temples and more than 20 houses vandalised after an anti-Islam Facebook post led to protests.

Fearful of escalating attacks, several Hindus have deserted their homes in the area as tensions rise in a country that is largely seen as moderate.

Police detained 33 persons in overnight drives for their involvement in attacks on Hindus on October 30. So far, 44 people have been arrested, Mizanur Rahman, superintendent of Brahmanbaria police, told The Daily Star.

Hundreds  both Hindus and Muslims  protested the attacks at Dhaka's Shahbagh Square, blocking traffic on the busy streets for more than an hour and forcing the ruling Awami League to assure them of action.

"Stern punitive actions await the attackers as the Sheikh Hasina-led government has taken a tough position to this end," Road Transport Minister Obaidul Quader said at a function of a minority community in Dhaka.  PTI
Maiduguri, November 5

Nigerian troops rescued one of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram extremists more than two years ago in a pre-dawn raid today on a forest hideout.

She had a 10-month-old baby boy born to a Boko Haram fighter, said a statement from army spokesman. It was the first army rescue of a Chibok girl.

Last month, Nigeria's government secured the freedom of 21 of the Chibok schoolgirls in the first such release negotiated with Boko Haram. Another girl escaped in May on her own. President Muhammadu Buhari has vowed to secure the release of the nearly 200 schoolgirls.  AP
NEAR HAMMAM AL-ALIL (Iraq), November 5

Iraqi troops advancing towards Mosul battled on Saturday for the last town left between them and the Islamic State stronghold to the north, which is already under assault from special forces fighting inside the city's eastern districts.

Saturday's attack on Hammam al-Alil, about 15 km (10 miles) south of Mosul, targeted a force of at least 70 Islamic State fighters in the Tigris river town, commander of the Mosul operations Major-General Najm al-Jabouri said.

Jabouri said the assault began around 10 am (0700 GMT).

Some militants had already tried to escape across the river, but others put up heavy resistance and the troops had thwarted three attempted suicide car bombings.

"(The battle) is very important  it's the last town for us before Mosul," Jabouri told reporters. Iraqi helicopters were supporting the army, he said, backed also by jets from a US-led air coalition, which had been hitting Islamic State targets in the town for several days.

A military statement said security forces had raised the Iraqi flag over a government building in the town, but did not say whether it was fully under their control.

The army and accompanying security forces aim to push the southern front up to Mosul to join troops and special forces that broke into the city's east this week, taking six districts and carving out a foothold in the militants' Iraq bastion.

Recapturing Mosul would effectively crush the Iraqi half of a self-proclaimed caliphate declared by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque two years ago. His Islamist group also controls large parts of east Syria.

A Reuters correspondent in the village of Ali Rash, about 7 km (4 miles) southeast of Mosul, saw smoke rising from eastern districts of the city on Saturday. Air strikes, artillery and gunfire could be heard.

In Hammam al-Alil, the jihadists had taken hundreds of people as human shields, although Jabouri said it was not clear how many people were left in the town. Before Islamic State swept in more than two years ago, Hammam al-Alil and outlying villages had a population of 65,000.

As well as forcing residents to remain as they came under attack in Hammam al-Alil, Islamic State fighters retreating north in the last two weeks have forced thousands to march with them as cover from air strikes, villagers have told Reuters.

The United Nations said the militants transported 1,600 abducted civilians from Hammam al-Alil to the town of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, on Tuesday and took another 150 families from the town to Mosul the next day.

They told residents to hand over children, especially boys aged over nine, in an apparent recruitment drive for child soldiers, UN human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said.

Jabouri said a man he described as a senior Islamic State figure, Ammar Salih Ahmed Abu Bakr, was killed by federal police  who are fighting with the army in Hammam al-Alil  as he tried to escape from Hammam al-Khalil by car.

Many of the remaining militants were non-Iraqis, he said.

"There are at least 70 Daesh (Islamic State) fighters in the town. The majority are foreign fighters, so they don't know where to go. They are just moving from place to place."  Reuters

People who just fled Samah district of eastern Mosul are pictured at a Iraqi special forces checkpoint in Kokjali, east of Mosul, Iraq, on November 5, 2016. Reuters photo
Los Angeles, November 5

California's Attorney General Kamala Harris is on the cusp of becoming the first Indian- American Senator in the US Congress, with latest polls placing her "far ahead" of her rival days before the November 8 general elections.

Harris, 51, has already got the backing of US President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden to be the state's next Senator, brightening her chances to become the first from the community ever to be a member of the Upper House.

She heads into the US Senate election with a considerable lead over fellow Democrat Loretta Sanchez, whose plan to coalesce Republicans and Latinos behind her has not materialised, according to a new poll.

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Harris is far ahead of Sanchez for US Senate, The Sacramento Bee reported on Friday.

Harris is leading Sanchez, a 10-term congresswoman from Orange, 47 to 23 per cent, among likely voters.

Some 17 per cent remain undecided, and another 13 per cent volunteered that they plan to sit out the contest between two members of the same party. Among those who have already voted, 55 per cent chose Harris, 26 per cent backed Sanchez and 14 per cent said neither, the report said.

While Sanchez has touted herself as the business-friendly choice for disaffected voters, about one-third of Republicans and 12 per cent of unaligned voters told pollsters they would not cast a ballot for either Sanchez or Harris, it said.

That means more Republicans are choosing not to vote at all than to support Sanchez (26 per cent). The survey, released four days before voters head to the polls, also found Republicans do not see much ideological difference between them, the report said.

Harris has never trailed since launching her bid in January last year, with her share of the vote increasing seven percentage points since a May poll. She continues to hold advantages in all major regions of the state, and with voters in all age ranges and educational backgrounds, it said.

Harris, who was born in Oakland, California, is the daughter of an Indian mother who emigrated from Chennai in 1960 and a Jamaican-American father.

California Democrats have overwhelmingly endorsed Harris for US Senate, solidifying her front-runner status in the race to become California's next Senator.

Harris and Loretta Sanchez were vying for their party's seal of approval to replace Senator Barbara Boxer, who is retiring.

If she wins, Harris will make history by becoming the first ever US Senator of Indian-origin.

There have been several Indian-American Congressmen in the House of Representatives, including current member Ami Bera and retired member Dalip Singh Saund, both from California.  PTI
November 4

A federal jury on Friday found Rolling Stone magazine liable of defaming a University of Virginia administrator by publishing a story it later retracted about an alleged gang rape at the school.

The decision followed a three-week trial in US District Court in Charlottesville, Virginia, where the administrator, Nicole Eramo, sued the magazine, owner Wenner Media and reporter Sabrina Erdely for $7.9 million. The jury returns on Monday to determine damages in the case.

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Erdely was found liable of actual malice, a key element in libel law, in six statements in the November 2014 story, "A Rape on Campus." Rolling Stone and Wenner Media were each found liable of actual malice in three statements, according to court documents.

To prove defamation, it must be shown that a media organization published what it knew to be false, or did so with reckless disregard for the truth.

The magazine had reported that a female student identified only as "Jackie" was raped at a university fraternity in 2012.

The story sparked a national debate about sexual assault on U.S. campuses.

The Rolling Stone story resonated with many who saw it as a battle cry against sexual violence on college campuses. That message was undermined as questions arose about Erdely's methods, and the story ultimately collapsed.

Rolling Stone, which admitted that it never sought comment from the seven men accused of the alleged rape, retracted the story in April 2015, and an outside review found the magazine had failed to follow basic journalistic safeguards. It was an embarrassing blow to the pop culture publication, founded by Jann Wenner in 1967.

Campus sexual assault remains a major concern, with some reports estimating that one in five female students will be a victim during their college years.

Eramo, who was then an associate dean of students, accused the magazine of portraying her as the story's villain and as focused on hushing up sexual assault reports. She now works in an administrative role at the almost 200-year-old university, which was founded by Thomas Jefferson and has long ranked as one of the top public universities in the country.

"The jury's verdict is a complete vindication of Nicole Eramo, and a complete repudiation of Rolling Stone's and Ms.

Erdely's false and defamatory article," Eramo's attorney, Libby Locke, said in a statement.

Mark MacDougall, an attorney at New York's Akin Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld law firm, said actual malice did not mean that the defendants had to dislike Eramo or wish her harm.

"When a reporter, an editor or a magazine behave like they don't care whether what they publish is false, that's enough to support a finding of actual malice," MacDougall said in an emailed comment.

In a statement, Rolling Stone spokeswoman Kathryn Brenner said: "We deeply regret these missteps and sincerely apologise to anyone hurt by them, including Ms. Eramo." Reuters
Washington, November 5

The US has confirmed the death of a top Al-Qaeda leader in an air strike in northeastern Afghanistan last month, in a major blow to the terror group in the war-torn country.

"We can now confirm that the precision strike conducted by the US military on October 23 in Kunar, Afghanistan, resulted in the death of senior Al-Qaeda leader Faruq al-Qatani," the Pentagon Press Secretary, Peter Cook, said on Friday.

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Al-Qatani was Al-Qaeda's emir for eastern Afghanistan and one of the terrorist group's senior plotters of attacks against the US, he said.

"This successful strike is another example of US operations to degrade international terrorist networks and target terrorist leaders who seek to attack the US homeland, our interests and our allies abroad," Cook said.

The Pentagon has been hunting for al-Qatani for four years. He had longstanding ties with Osama bin Laden before his death in the 2011 US raid on his Pakistan compound.

He said another Al-Qaeda leader in the country, Bilal al-Utabi, was targeted in a separate strike, though the results of that attack were not yet known.

"We are still assessing the results of that strike," the Pentagon Press Secretary said. PTI
McCLOUD  Inmate Mary Hodges wrote Not Being True to Self in about 10 minutes, hunched over loose-leaf notebook paper a few inches from other prisoners in a cramped room.

It had been an emotionally charged 90 minutes in this chapel space. Volunteer poets led them through the writing exercises that traipsed through memories filled with domestic violence, drugs, child abuse and bad decisions.

Discussion started on the unwritten rules women follow to fit in, whether thats in prison or among peers in high school.

Then, the 20 inmates were asked about the promises they make to themselves. From there, they were asked to craft poems about a time they broke one of their personal rules.

Hodges was the first volunteer to read her work.

She described being in the hospital but being in love. She had angst about tamping down her instincts that grew from unease to internal screaming. She was an artist at making excuses for her abuser.

I knew I was in danger, but I didnt listen. She choked back a sob on the last word, a tear threatening to fall from her eye. She broke her promise to always be true to herself.

Silence. It was the quietest spot in all of the Mabel Bassett prison.

Oh, Mary, said Patricia Rucker, breaking the quiet. Ive been in three writing classes with you but you never broke up like this. What is it about this class?

In those other ones, I never discussed me but would focus on the flowers, sky or anything outside, Hodges said. Im getting closer to getting out. I have to deal with these things that are within myself. Communication skills were never my forte, except for on paper. This is the first time Ive allowed myself to let the paper express me.

This is Poetic Justice.

Power to change: The small but mighty nonprofit launched its efforts to bring the power of words to women behind bars in January 2014 at the Tulsa Jail.

This past July, it started weekly classes at Oklahomas maximum security prison for women in McCloud. Considering the state is No. 2 in the U.S. for the incarceration rate of women, there is a large pool of potential students.

One-fourth to one-third will never leave the prison alive, said Ellen Stackable, executive director and co-founder of Poetic Justice. Weve thought about that a lot  about how to craft the course to give women a sense of their own worth, that they matter. To give them hope because with hope comes power to change.

The sessions differ among the institutions.

The Tulsa Jail course runs for six weeks, but most women are released before the session concludes. At Mabel Bassett, its eight weeks and all women finish. The prison has more than 200 on its waiting list, and each class can have up to 25 women.

At the Tulsa Jail, its like triage. The women are in transition, said Stackable. At Mabel Bassett, we have women here with a 60-year or life-without-parole sentence. So many have been writing on their own for decades before they come into the class.

Like all Oklahoma agencies, the Department of Corrections has suffered slashes to their budgets. Funding for programs was cut years ago.

The corrections part of the Department of Corrections mission largely falls to the kindness and dedication of volunteers.

Mabel Bassett Warden Debbie Aldridge said it is fortunate to have more than 400 volunteers among 57 organizations providing programs including yoga, crochet clubs and faith-based ministries. At least 92 percent of inmates will be released.

Without the volunteers, teachers and mentors who come in to help guide these women and get them on the right path, we would be doing a disservice to the incarcerated women, their families and communities they will one day be part of, Aldridge said.

Most of the Poetic Justice volunteers are teachers, who are among the lowest-paid educators in the nation. Yet, they make sure the weekly classes at the local jail and state prison are staffed. Often, they spend their own money on travel and materials.

These women can lead confident, happy, productive lives in prison. If I didnt believe that, why would I continue to be doing this? Stackable said.

With Poetic Justice, Aldridge says she can see a difference in the attitudes and outlooks of those who complete the session.

It gives them introspection into their lives and what they are here for, Aldridge said. It is also a safe atmosphere where they feel comfortable, confident to open up, can express their emotions in a healthy way and not feel judged.

Grief and regret: At last weeks session, a pall remained from a recent tragedy at the prison.

The suicide of Amber Hilberling, who was convicted in 2013 of killing her husband Joshua Hilberling by pushing him out a Tulsa high-rise building, crept into a poem. It brought the tears, hugs and continued mourning.

Hilberling was liked and considered a friend. Photos of her and an obituary printed from a website circulated the room. They spoke of being mad at God, of leaning on God and of not understanding.

This just doesnt seem real, said Rucker. There is power of coming here and sharing. Its hard, and its really with me. But, Im not alone.

As the wave of grief receded, the women refocused by continuing with their readings.

One spoke about encouraging a friend to take drugs, which led to an addiction. Another regretted not telling her mother of a stepfathers longtime molestation. Another inmate broke down at recounting hearing while in prison that her mother died.

Children took center stage in many poems. A woman had pledged to make her son feel special each time he walked into a room.

Because of my drugs, I could not let him feel that way. I was numb, dumb.

After Ariel Ahhaitty finished her poem, My Mistake, she was left shaking. Her rhythmic recitation wove a tale of dependency and disappointment. Her failing was to be made weak by love.

She has written on her own for years, starting at age 16.

I took up writing to stop from cutting, she said showing the scars along her arms. I still struggle with it.

Ahhaitty says the course gives an outlet to explore other mediums of writing. She said it is a safe space to share.

My legacy is what I leave behind on these pages. I can act a certain way with people, but the real me is what Ive written down here.
Early reactions to State Superintendent Joy Hofmeisters campaign scandal run the gamut from conspiracy theories to partisan politics.

Public education advocates questioned the timing of felony criminal charges being filed against Hofmeister and the former heads of two statewide professional educator associations just days before voters will decide a ballot initiative that would fund across-the-board raises for teachers.

Meanwhile, the Oklahoma Democratic Party pointed to the criminal case as another example of unethical and criminally negligent behavior among Republicans.

Hofmeister was charged Thursday in Oklahoma County District Court with two counts of conspiracy to commit a felony and one count each of knowingly accepting contributions in excess of the maximum allowed by law and knowingly accepting corporate contributions.

She was booked into the Oklahoma County Jail at 9:35 a.m. Friday and was quickly released on $8,000 bond. Court records show Hofmeister pleaded not guilty during an appearance before Special Judge Russell Hall, who scheduled a preliminary hearing conference for Dec. 13.

Prosecutors allege that Hofmeister conspired with others to funnel money from a donor corporation and two education groups into an independent expenditure fund for negative advertising against then-State Superintendent Janet Barresi, whom Hofmeister defeated summarily in 2014s GOP primary.

Also charged in the case are Fount Holland, Hofmeisters chief campaign consultant; Stephanie Dawn Milligan, a political consultant who operated the independent expenditure fund; Lela Odom, who was then executive director of the Oklahoma Education Association; and Steven Crawford, who was then executive director of the Cooperative Council for Oklahoma School Administration.

Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater first announced his investigation into the campaigns of Hofmeister and T.W. Shannon, a U.S. Senate candidate, one week before the June 2014 primary election.

The Tulsa World reached out to Praters office about the charges, including questions about their timing more than two years later and right before another election. His secretary responded, Hes not doing interviews or talking to the press.

Judy Mullen Hopper, a Democrat running against incumbent Greg Treat, R-Oklahoma City, for Senate District 47, said she is suspicious of the timing so close to Tuesdays vote on State Question 779 because Hofmeister has proven to be a friend and advocate for teachers, who stand to get a $5,000 across-the-board raise if voters approve the measure.

I think theres a group behind it that set up the timing to come up at the perfect moment. In my opinion, its rather unscrupulous, said the special education teacher, who retired in 2015 after 35 years at Harvest Hills Elementary School in the Putnam City school district.

Hopper said it is worth noting that she was among a silent minority of teachers who were circumspect about Hofmeister when she was first elected  and also that Hofmeister has endorsed Treat, her political opponent.

We were a little suspicious once Hofmeister got into office because it was not a good relationship with Barresi. It took us a while for us to believe she was real, but she is, Hopper said. I am shocked that anything underhanded was done.

I found out recently from Joy that my opponent had asked her to endorse him and she did so because he had helped her in getting the academic standards through (a legislative vote). Even with that endorsement, I think the world of Hofmeister.

Taking a different tack, the Oklahoma Democratic Party said the criminal case should tell voters that (Hofmeisters) endorsements are based on pure, partisan politics and demonstrates yet another example of never-ending infighting among Republicans concerning our childrens education.

The partys press statement also says Holland and Milligan are public education foes putting their own agendas first and adds that Oklahomans continue to suffer at the hands of unethical and criminally negligent behavior among Republicans and those claiming to be working for our children and education.

Rep. Katie Henke is running for re-election as a Republican in Tulsas House District 71. She said it was disturbing to her that Democrats across the state seized on the opportunity Friday to connect their Republican opponents in local races to a chief figure in the case, Fount Holland of the campaign consulting firm A.H. Strategies.

Theyre the top consulting firm in the state  and there arent many people who do that work, said Henke. Most people use them.

Henke, who has Hofmeisters endorsement, said the accusation of partisanship is also ironic given Hofmeisters consistent track record of working across the aisle since assuming public office in January 2015.

The success of our public school system is not a partisan issue, Henke said. In all my dealings with Joy, she has always put Oklahoma kids first, and I have no reason to believe she wouldnt continue to do that.

Those sentiments were echoed by Angela Clark Little, mother of two Edmond Public Schools students and founder of Oklahoma Parents and Educators for Public Education, a Facebook group with 25,000 members that recently established itself as a political action committee.

I feel like shes done the right thing and shell continue to do the right thing. Shes always put kids first in her focus, said Little. As far as her ability to press forward and do her job, no, I dont think this will affect that.

Little said she feels empathy for Hofmeister, because she, too, is a political novice just learning the ropes of ethics disclosures and campaign finance laws.

This is the first time for me to ever do anything like this in forming a PAC. I wouldnt know the rules for running a campaign, and she needed people to advise her because she had never been in politics before, Little said.

Rules should have been followed, but I also have a hard time with this because, well, its Barresi. We all wanted her out of office, and (Hofmeister) did do something parents and teachers wanted in beating Barresi in the primary.

Barbie Jackson, a third-grade teacher at Sand Springs Public Schools, said she took the time to study all 32 pages of the affidavit outlining Oklahoma County prosecutors allegations in the case.

Companies and corporations give money to campaigns all the time, said Jackson. It seems very fishy and a conspiracy-type thing to be brought up again two years later, right before a huge election when Joy has come out in favor of pro-education candidates and State Question 779, especially with the charges for other supporters of 779, CCOSA and OEA.

John Cox, superintendent of Peggs Public School in Cherokee County, was defeated by Hofmeister in 2014s general election. Contacted on Friday, he would say only that he hopes the criminal case doesnt affect public educations cause at the Capitol in the future, as Hofmeister has vowed to remain in office and fight the charges.

Im very local control. I believe our community knows the best way to run our school, said Cox. And I dont want it to be a deterrent for what public education can do. Theres so much energy put into how bad our public schools are, but we do great things for children.
Tulsa County voters likely set a new turnout record in this years three-day early voting period, casting over 55 percent more votes than in the 2008 presidential election.

The countys early voting period began Thursday at two locations and ended at 2 p.m. Saturday, with 17,855 votes cast during that time span, Tulsa County Election Board Secretary Patty Bryant said.

The previous record turnout was 11,497 in 2008, which was slightly higher than 2012s tally. Bryant said the 2016 early voting total was higher than any in her offices recent records.

This year, early voters marked their ballots at either the Election Board headquarters or Hardesty Regional Library.

On Thursday, 6,416 votes were cast, with 6,869 on Friday and 4,579 on Saturday, Bryant said.

So many voters showed up, lines at times were about 100 people deep, wrapping around both polling locations during the three days.

Though polls closed at 2 p.m. Saturday, so many people were still in line at that time that the final vote wasnt cast until about 3:30 p.m., Bryant said.

Throughout the day, Bryant said, she would take periodic trips outside to mingle with voters and found that most didnt seem to mind the long lines.

They were all so happy, she said. And they were making new friends in line.

Though presidential elections typically draw a higher turnout than other elections, Bryant believes citizens interest in the seven state questions on this years ballot also bolstered numbers. The mild, sunny weather didnt hurt turnout, either, she added.

This year also marks the first presidential election in which the Election Board has operated a satellite polling location, which likely drew more voters from other parts of the city.

The high turnout didnt cause any issues for board staff, save for when Bryant had to call for additional help at the Hardesty Regional Library to assist with lines, she said.

Even with the high early turnout, Bryant still suspects polling locations will be buzzing with voters during Tuesdays general election, though she thinks early voting may result in slightly shorter line lengths.

I still think itll be a high turnout at the poll, even though nearly 18,000 people have already voted, she said. But thats sure going to help on Tuesday to take away part of that crowd from the poll.

Polls on Tuesday will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Seven PKK terrorists and two children were killed in two separate incidents in southeastern Turkeys Sirnak province Saturday, according to Turkish authorities.

In the first incident, two children were killed in a PKK terrorist bomb attack in the southeastern city of Sirnak, a medical source said.

Four other children were injured in the explosion and were still being treated, the source said on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on speaking to the media. The childrens ages and further details were unclear but two died in hospital.

Earlier, the provincial governors office said PKK terrorists had planted a bomb in a street.

Later, the regional governors office said in a statement that at least seven PKK terrorists were killed during a security operation in Sirnak Saturday.

The operation in the provinces Bestler-Dereler region remains ongoing, the statement said, adding that several weapons had also been seized.

An extensive security operation in the region remains ongoing.

The PKK -- listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and EU -- resumed its decades-old armed campaign in July last year. Since then, PKK terrorist attacks martyred more than 700 security personnel and also claimed the lives of many civilians, including women and children, while nearly 8,000 PKK terrorists were killed in army operations.

Anadolu Agency
If you found over Five Thousand dollars in cash, what would you do? Would you return it? Wel
As TV networks roll out the red carpet for their annual programming slates, TV Tonight presents its very first fictional Upfronts.

From Drama to Reality and News -here are 16 hypothetical shows that could easily sit on our screens.

Get ready for a diverse slate pitched at contemporary Australia, that reflects on our past and challenges our present.

Drama

Number 96: The Real Story 2 x 2 hr miniseries

In 1972 when a TV network was struggling in the ratings and about to become bankrupt it pinned its hopes on a brazen new soap set in a block of flats in inner Sydney. Viewers were shocked and titillated by outlandish characters, sex, taboos and liberation, some of which created world TV firsts. And they couldnt get enough of it. But while there were headlines and protests it turned a networks fortunes around and broke social barriers. This is the story of how Australia lost its virginity. But just who will play Abigail..?

Number One Son 3 x 1 hr miniseries

Retired showbiz parents are hurled back into the spotlight when their son is charged with manslaughter after a drink driving accident. But as headlines break and a media hound them for answers it soon becomes obvious that living in their shadow was not easy. Behind closed doors are three lives torn asunder and its about to get a whole lot worse with a damage-control interview masquerading as a family united. Starring John Wood, Robyn Malcolm and Khan Chittenden.

The Ambassadors Daughter 6 x 1 hr miniseries

When the son of the Immigration Minister falls in love with the daughter of the Ambassador from Iran, Canberra is thrown into turmoil. But in the corridors of power there are forces at work to derail young love -and then a boat arrives offshore with family members seeking asylum. Stars Don Hany, Victoria Haralabidou, Dena Kaplan, Rahart Adams, William McInnes and Gina Riley.

The Ross Warren Story 90 min telemovie

David Campbell stars as a regional newsreader with a bright future ahead of him, yet struggling with a personal secret in an era where public perception could make or break a career. But in 1989 when he failed to show for work, family and friends feared the worst. What happened that fateful night in Bondi when his car was found but never his body, and why has the case remained unsolved?

Cronulla 2 x 2 hr miniseries

Just what triggered a violent divide between young surf lifesavers and Middle Eastern Australians on a beach in Cronulla in 2005? It was a fight between the flags, amid a hotbed of tempers, riot police, text messages, abuse, talkback radio and national shame. Featuring Rahel Romahn, Firass Dirani, Tyler De Nawi, Elias Anton, Brenton Thwaites, Sean Keenan, Reef Ireland, Andrew Creer, Camilla Ah Kin, Hugo Weaving, Susan Prior, Sacha Horler and Toni Collette.

Fight for Life 90 min telemovie

To his colleagues Prof. Carl Wood was a bit of a rebel, always thinking outside the box. But he had a dream, unthinkable in the 1970s, to create the worlds first IVF baby. It was controversial, expensive and bitterly divided ethicists, clergy, academics and feminists. But it was also pioneering. This is a uniquely Australian story. Starring Joel Jackson and Sarah Snook.

The Tasty Raid 90 min telemovie

In 1994 in a Melbourne nightclub 463 patrons were detained for seven hours, strip searched and even brutalised, by Victoria Police. Described as Melbournes Stonewall it triggered a media storm and a political backlash -eventually resulting in a class action lawsuit won by Melbournes gay community.

Entertainment

Talkin Bout Your Next Gen 13 x 1 hr series

Buzzers at the ready, beware the bucket of slime, as Amanda Keller takes to the hosting podium in an all-new battle between the Generations. Which came first Pretty Woman or When Harry Met Sally? What year was Napster shut down? And whats a DoDuo anyway? Leading the Baby Boomers is Denise Drysdale; Gen X is led by Sam Pang; Joel Creasey is captain for the Millennials.

Inside the Actors Studio Australia 22 x 1 hr series

Graeme Blundell interviews some of Australias stage & screen performers before an audience of performing arts students, as they chart their career and dissect the art of acting. Featuring both stars and ensemble casts, this is filmed at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Victorian College of the Arts and the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.

Shaun Micallef Down Under 13 x 1 hr series

So what does the rest of the world really think of Australia? Its time to ask. Live from London Shaun Micallef hosts a round-table of international politicians, academics, artists, forward-thinkers and critics to debate the weeks events in Australia and how they impact at a global level. Is a plebiscite the answer? Is the latest Baz film a hit or miss? And were Pistol and Boo really such a threat to the ecosystem? Think Q&A from the other side of the planet talking about the arse end of the world and challenging us to look at our place in the region.

TVTV 40 x 30 min series

What to binge? What to miss? Confused? Overloaded? After 24 years TVTV returns with Amanda Keller, Andrew Mercado and Marc Fennell cutting through a plethora of new titles and TV news bombarding our small screens to make sense of it all.

Comedy

Happily Ever After 6 x 30 min series

Judith McGrath, Deborah Kennedy and Anne Charleston are divorced, retired and loving it.

Documentary

Antarctica 3 x 1 hr series

Australia has the largest territorial claim in Antarctica covering 42% of the land mass. But few of us understand this vast land of ice and water. In this 3 part series, 4K cameras capture a frozen continent in all its striking beauty: the wildlife, the workers, the threat to its environment and our planet. Narrated by David Wenham.

Reality & Observational

Dog Show 10 x 1 hr series

In the little-known world of kennel-clubs and dog-shows there is only one thing that matters: winning at all costs. Now cameras follow 8 proud pet-owners as they battle it out, using every pampering, preening and sneaky trick in the book to claim the Best in Show ribbon. But be warned: not every bitch is on 4 legs.

Sylvania Waters: 2224 6 x 30 min series

25 years after the BBC brought Noeline Baker, Laurie Donaher and their family to national prominence, cameras return to the southern Sydney suburb of Sylvania Waters and find a postcode where Greek, Cantonese, Mandarin, Arabic and Italian sit at home alongside Australians of Anglo-Saxon heritage and an ageing-population enjoys its waterfront homes.

News

Late Night with Roy & HG Nightly x 30 mins

At 10:30 every night its time to bunker down with Rampaging Roy Slaven and HG Nelson (aka John Doyle and Greig Pickhaver) as they cut through the mire, putting their own unique spin on the events of the day. Half an hour every night of news, bullshit and a very straight face. With weather presented by Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat.

 Copyright 2016.
Russian-backed militants launched 38 attacks on positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Donbas over the past day.

This is reported by the ATO Headquarters press center.

The militants launched 25 attacks on ATO troops in Mariupol direction. The enemy shelled positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near Vodiane (16km north-west of Donetsk), and Krasnohorivka (29 km west of Donetsk), using 82mm and 120mm mortars. Ukrainian positions near Shyrokyne (20km east of Mariupol) came under small arms, grenade launcher, and machine gun fire.

Five ceasefire violations were recorded in Luhansk direction. The terrorists shelled Trokhizbenka (33km north-west of Luhansk), Novooleksandrivka (65km west of Luhansk), and Novozvanivka (70km west of Luhansk), using grenade launchers.

Eight more attacks were launched in Donetsk direction. Russian-backed terrorists fired at Ukrainian positions in Avdiyivka (18km north of Donetsk), using 82mm and 120mm mortars, machine guns, grenade launchers and small arms.

ish
No Ukrainian soldiers were killed, but five servicepersons were wounded in the ATO area in eastern Ukraine over the past day.

Spokesman for the Presidential Administration on the ATO Andriy Lysenko said this at a briefing in Kyiv, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

No Ukrainian soldiers were killed, but five servicepersons were wounded as a result of military operations in eastern Ukraine over the past day, he said.

ish
Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman and Head of the IMF mission Ron van Rooden discussed at a meeting on Friday the issues of Ukraine's cooperation with the IMF, the budget process, raising the minimum wage in Ukraine, as well as the government's plans concerning further reforms.

This has been reported by Governments portal.

"The Government and I as Prime Minister consider our cooperation with the International Monetary Fund as a priority task, as well as the implementation of our joint program, in order to change the situation in our country and to provide the necessary structural reforms," the Head of Government said.

Groysman said that for six months the Government managed to achieve some progress. Thus, the Cabinet of Ministers held a deregulation in the energy and pharmaceutical markets, started civil service reform, abolished the state regulation of prices for products, continued decentralization, as well as fight against corruption.

ish
This year Germany allocates over EUR 70 million for projects of technical and financial cooperation with Ukraine.

Ukraine's Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister has said Maksym Nefyodov has said this in his statement on Facebook.

The deputy minister specified that this aid will be also aimed at strengthening local government, support of the united territorial communities, assistance to small and medium-sized businesses and modernization of energy consumption.

ish
The first cohort to begin the Personalized Pathways program in their freshman year will graduate next spring.
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Published November 4, 2016

MONROE, La.  The University of Louisiana Monroe School of Pharmacy is the recipient of a $600,000 estate gift from Mildred Maurer, the school announced at a press conference Friday.

Monroe resident Mildred Maurer passed away in 2014 at the age of 97. She was a former elementary school teacher and Regional Director of the northeast Louisiana Restaurant Association.

In her will, Maurer divided her estate among several entities, including the ULM School of Pharmacy. The funds will go toward the establishment of the Mark and Mildred Maurer Cancer Research Enhancement Fund, the Mark and Mildred Maurer Lecture Series, and the Mark and Mildred Cancer Research Lab.

Maurer was a breast cancer survivor and had developed a keen interest in the breast cancer research of Dr. Paul Sylvester, the B. J. Robison/Pfizer Endowed Professor of Pharmacology at ULM, whom she met 10 years ago at an event hosted at the School of Pharmacy.

Mildred became such a very dear and close friend of mine. I took her out to lunch several times, and I was always amazed at how many people she knew. She would always introduce me to new people. She truly was a remarkable woman, said Sylvester.

When Sylvester learned that Maurer left portions of her estate to him for his research efforts, he was surprised.

The donation was such a great surprise. I knew she was going to donate to the School of Pharmacy, but I didnt know she was going to donate it to my research. When I learned about her wishes, I wanted to make this about her and not about me. I wanted to make something more permanent out of this to honor her and her husbands legacy, so we established a lecture series, lab, and research fund all in honor of Mark and Mildred Maurer, Sylvester said.

Dr. Wilson Campbell, Mildred Maurers neighbor, former ULM professor and department head for Kinesiology, was named the trustee of the Mildred Summers Maurer Testamentary Trust. This trust was created solely for the purpose of supporting the ULM School of Pharmacy.

She loved the Monroe community and in particular she loved ULM. I think I can say with confidence that, within the last few years of her life, one of the most exciting times for her was coming onto the ULM campus and attending many of the functions here that the university puts onShe wanted to give a gift that would keep on giving long after she was gone and I think that she has done that so well in her gift here to ULM, said Campbell.

Dr. Benny Blaylock, Dean of the ULM School of Pharmacy, also expressed his appreciation for the generosity of the Maurer estate, noting that it is donations like this that keep higher education moving forward.

This estate gift facilitates the high quality cancer research being conducted by Dr. Sylvester in the School of Pharmacy. Gifts such as this provide monetary support for talented researchers, graduate students, equipment and supplies necessary to perform research at a level that results in breakthroughs in new and/or improved cancer treatments. The ULM School of Pharmacy is very grateful for this most generous gift, said Blaylock.

In addition to her gift to ULM, Maurer also donated nearly $200,000 to the Shriners and $200,000 to St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital.

Sylvesters current research analyzes Vitamin E compounds and their potential for preventing and/or reducing the risk of breast cancer in women.

To learn more about Sylvesters cancer research, visit https://www.ulm.edu/pharmacy/bps/sylvester.html.
| By Chris Zang

She remembered: data points are people. Its an epitaph that Linda Simoni-Wastila, BSPharm, MSPH, PhD, professor and Parke-Davis Chair of Geriatric Pharmacotherapy in the Department of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research at the School of Pharmacy (SOP), thinks would be fitting for her research career.

For in her 48 research projects, including 31 as principal investigator, that have generated millions of dollars in funding, she never loses sight of the people behind the numbers.

Its a lesson she learned at the University of North Carolina. While in pharmacy school I was lucky to do a stint as a CO-STEP intern in the U.S. Public Health Service. Those four months changed my life, Simoni-Wastila recalls. I rotated through the prison system, U.S. Coast Guard, NIH, and Indian Health Services. I learned about public health, and realized I wanted to work with populations rather than individuals.

Simoni-Wastila with her students and postdocs, and Dr. Perman

That experience also whet her appetite about the role of medications in our health and social systems. That curiosity remains, and is the driving force behind all the questions I ask, she says. Thats the broad brushstroke that defines what I do  how we deal with medicines, and how they impact our health, quality of life, and society.

Joining the SOP faculty in 2001, Simoni-Wastila has carved out a niche in the rapidly expanding area of health policy research. Her work focuses on drug abuse and mental health in vulnerable populations  the young, the elderly, racial and ethnic minorities, and those at risk due to impaired physical and mental health. Her findings have helped shape state and federal policy surrounding prescription drug issues, and medication quality in long-term care and in mental health.

Simoni-Wastila is quick to credit her team of students, postdocs, staff, and faculty. Colleagues say she represents the epitome of collaboration.

Almost every medical university talks about its commitment to interdisciplinary work, yet few researchers embody the spirit of such collaboration as Linda does with her peers, says Gordon S. Smith, MB, ChB, MPH, professor in the School of Medicines Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, who has worked with her on research projects and dissertation committees.

She reaches out to colleagues beyond the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) as well, having served as one of the few clinicians working within the Heller Institute at Brandeis, along with collaborators at the University of Massachusetts and Harvard. Currently, she works closely with colleagues at the Behavioral Health Administration in the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in defining and preventing substance use disorders in the state.

You simply cannot do research on your own. At least not good research, Simoni-Wastila says. I am quite limited in my capacity as a researcher. I surround myself with the smartest methodologists, research design experts, and clinicians I can find. My strength is in framing the problem and asking the questions. I rely on my stupendous colleagues, folks like Gordon Smith, with his expertise in TBI [traumatic brain injury] and alcohol-related crashes, to guide and design our studies, and to interpret their findings.

Smith also cites the cadre of researchers Simoni-Wastila has trained and continues to mentor and Constance M. Horgan, ScD, professor and director, Schneider Institutes for Health Policy at Brandeis University, says she is proud to have served as Simoni-Wastilas mentor and now colleague, working to reduce the epidemic of prescription drug abuse and overdose.

Simoni-Wastila, who says the School of Pharmacy has been most supportive of her research and recalls co-workers were incredible when her father was diagnosed with stage 4 head cancer, says mentoring is a small way of giving back.

Ive been blessed to work with tremendous colleagues, several of whom have served as inspirational mentors. I like to think I pay it forward with my students, trainees, and junior colleagues.

She also does this by being active with many professional associations. Simoni-Wastila served three terms on the Commission on Prescription Drug Abuse and Diversion for the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse. For over five years, she has served as the director of the Statewide Epidemiology Outcomes Workgroup, a collaborative with the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

But ask her about her packed schedule and you find out theres more. You should know I make a mean apricot-pistachio white chocolate biscotti, she confides with a smile.

And shes an author  and not just the 100-plus research papers shes had published. She enjoys writing fiction and short poems, has completed two novels, and earned a masters in writing from Johns Hopkins University in 2015. Dont call it a hobby though.

Hobbies dont make you wake up every day at 5:30 to get that hour in. I take writing quite seriously and expend time and money and effort in bettering my craft. I tend to write dark, edgy stuff about, well, the perils of academia. I write what I research, which, of course, is what I know.'

On Nov. 5, she may have a new topic when she receives her Researcher of the Year Award at UMBs Founders Week Gala. The black-tie setting seems only fitting in that Simoni-Wastila says the award makes her feel like a movie star!

Researcher of the Year is a tremendous honor, and one that humbles me because my work is so much fun, she says. Its also humbling because I dont think of myself as a researcher so much as a teacher. If I wanted to do straight research, Id likely work in the industry or NIH. But projects like the ones I conduct are best done in teams of people. We tend to share a common vision about how to shed light on how to make life better for folks who are the focus of our research.
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There is a significant decline in terms of the tablet sales with the past few months of the year, and even Apple's iPad Pro was not able to bring the figures up on a higher scale.

When sales of Apple, Samsung, Amazon, and other tablet sellers were combined, it only resulted to a total of 43 million units sold within the third quarter of the year. This data shows that there is a yearly decline of around 14.7 percent in terms of worldwide tablet sales.

The analyst from IDC cited the low-cost two-in-one laptops as one of the causes of this noted decline. IDC senior research analyst, Jitesh Ubrani, said that what they intend for tablets is for it to become potential PC replacements instead of just being disposable detachables. He also mentioned that they have also already experienced this kind of situation with slates.

However, despite of this decline, Apple is still leading the tablet sales for its latest iPad Pro models, while their older iPad Air and iPad Mini models were considered as Cupertno's best-selling tablet. Apple, therefore, has only 6.2 percent of sales decline every year, according to CIO.

Aside from Apple, brands like Samsung, Lenovo and Huawei were also making some good sales in terms of their tablet units within the current time of the year; however, they are still affected by the sales decline. One good example is Samsung's TabPro S. Despite the good reviews that the TabPro S has, its sales have remained flat, according to Mac World.

On the other hand, Lenovo's Yoga Book sales is not considered as a sold tablet since it seems to have the feature of a traditional PC rather than a tablet. Amazon has, however, managed to uplift their tablet sales because of their Prime Day sale way back in July. IDC, however, emphasizes that prices for tablets will still remain as it is amidst the decline in sales.
Everything is ready for the rolling out of Android 7.0 Nougat to selected Motorola handsets in December. However, Moto E3 Power and Moto G status remains questionable. Would there still be a possibility for the update to happen on both the two budget-friendly smartphones? Find out here!

Android 7.0 Nougat to Motorola Handsets

Motorola has announced the rolling out of Android 7.0 Nougat to their 15 handsets in December. According to The Verge, one of the eligibility criteria for the device to get the latest android version is it should be a year older model.

The following Motorola handsets are eligible to get the Android 7.0 Nougat upon its official release in December 2016: Nexus 6, Moto Z Play, Moto Z Play Droid, Moto Z Droid, Moto Z Force Droid, Moto Z, Droid Turbo 2, Droid Maxx 2, Moto X Play, Moto X Force, Moto X Pure Edition, Moto X Style, Moto G Plus, Moto G Play and Moto G (4th Generation).

Motorola are known being quick and fast when it comes to android updates. In fact, the company said that Moto G4 and Moto Z are the first ones among the 15 handsets to receive the Android 7.0 Nougat according to Android Central.

Android 7.0 Nougat to Moto G (2015) and Moto E3 Power

The status of Moto G (2015) and the entry-level Moto E3 Power for the Android 7.0 Nougat updates are still questionable. Aside from the two budget-friendly smartphones, there are also handsets under the Moto E series that are not likely to get the new system updates.

Moto E3 Power has 5-inch LCD screen display with resolution 720 x 1280. At the heart of the phone lie the MediaTek MT7635P for the processor and Mali T720 MP2 for the graphics chipset coupled with 2GB of RAM and 16GB internal storage.

Moto G also exhibits the same screen size and resolution with Moto E3 Power. However, the phone is powered by 1.4GHz Snapdragon 410 chip, according to Neurogadget.
When one thinks of the word dirty, mud might come to mind or even a little kid who has just finished eating spaghetti. On a few large fires this summer the words Distributed Real-time Infrared, better known as DRTI and pronounced dirty, meant something completely different to the firefighters on the ground. This Air National Guard platform allowed interagency firefighters and commanders the ability to have real time infrared imagery at their fingertips.

August 2016 - Idaho Air National Guard Airmen from the 124th Air Support Operations Squadron provided real time aerial infrared imagery to interagency fire fighters in Monterey County, California on the Soberanes. The platform and mission they were supporting is known as the Distributed Real-time Infrared platform and Washington and Idaho Air National Guardsmen support the mission. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Joshua Allmaras) The packaged capability is comprised of two sections, an aerial and ground team. The aerial section flies in an RC-26 which provides the overhead imagery products while the ground section breaks up into smaller teams and works directly with various customers on the ground. We are serving two distinct sets of customers, said Lt Col. Shawn Scott, the DRTI program manager. At the tactical level we are providing real time video directly down to the supported commander, be those division commanders or branch commanders. These equate to squadron or group commanders in the Air Force. We come in and provide them with initial products such as the perimeter of the fire. It gives them the eyes they don't necessarily have due to the tremendous amount of smoke in the atmosphere, or because of the terrain, or even the vegetation. This information is critical to the firefighters on the ground. "There is a lot of value in having your folks on the ground. Being able to have eyes in areas you don't have really good eyes on due to smoke and visibility, and knowing exactly where the fire has progressed," said Billy Gardunio, a forest fire management specialist who flew in the back of the RC-6 aircraft as a subject matter expert. The frontline firefighter on the ground is not the only customer for this mission. Our second customer is on the strategic side, said Scott. We take all those fire perimeters we have been collecting and we transmit them in near real time via email back to the planners at the command post, the ICP (incident command post), so they have the most current map available for their planning cycle. One of the unique capabilities of the National Guard is the ability to take their wartime mission skillsets and adapt them to benefit the homeland.

August 2016 - Idaho Air National Guard Airmen from the 124th Air Support Operations Squadron provided real time aerial infrared imagery to interagency fire fighters in Monterey County, California on the Soberanes. The platform and mission they were supporting is known as the Distributed Real-time Infrared platform and Washington and Idaho Air National Guardsmen support the mission. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Joshua Allmaras) "One of the big things about the aircrew was their experience and expertise, said Gardunio. Having worked FLIR (forward looking infrared) for less than 25 hours and to be able to see someone who had over 10,000 hours of sensor time, and the ability for their eye to pick up on stuff rather quickly was very cool." There is a great value being able to support the firefighters. You guys are another source of info, said Jeff Ohs, branch two director from Long Beach Fire. You can't put a value on this type of intel, especially from the safety aspect. There have been many successes during this activation. One of the most incredible successes we had with people in the state was supporting law enforcement, said Scott. When they initiated large areas of evacuations there were hundreds of miles of really gnarly, rocky, dirt roads in which deputies in Boise County were going to be responsible for evacuating campers. The evacuation orders came out on a Saturday, which is a bad time in the summer. We found that we could use the sensor to sweep those areas and make sure there were no campers back there. We accomplished their mission in three hours, which we were told would have taken 24 man hours to completely evacuate those backcountry roads, if they could. One of the biggest fire detection successes was in California. On the Sobaranes Fire we identified a large spot fire, said Scott. This was a big deal because the fire significantly accelerated when the firefighters were going to take tactical actions on the ground. They had a strategy to back burn, but they thought they had more time. When we called to do the debrief, it sounded very busy in the background. The operations chief said, it's a madhouse here because we are accelerating our timeframe for beginning burn operations based on the information you provided, that we had no idea about.' The fire was a lot closer than they had anticipated.

August 2016 - Idaho Air National Guard Airmen from the 124th Air Support Operations Squadron provided real time aerial infrared imagery to interagency fire fighters in Monterey County, California on the Soberanes. The platform and mission they were supporting is known as the Distributed Real-time Infrared platform and Washington and Idaho Air National Guardsmen support the mission. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Joshua Allmaras) Timely information is critical in firefighting. With the Forest Service we have a NIROPS (National Infrared Operations) infrared ship that flies at night that gives us an update on fire size and intensity, but you have to wait until the next night for an update, said Gardunio. This asset [DRTI] provided a more timely update of what the fire was doing during the peak burning hours. The DRTI asset has been in a proof of concept phase until this year, when the Forest Service provided money to support the mission. This is the first fire season it has been officially used to support interagency firefighters. As with most missions there are specific objectives. The objective isn't for the Air National Guard to show that we can come out and be the provider of something nobody else can do, said Scott. The overall objective of this program is to showcase capabilities that we have been using in the close air support community for over a decade now that potentially have applications in the wildland firefighting mission. We stand by and are ready to help if called, but that's not the overall objective. The IDANG has received a lot of support through this whole process. I really appreciate the support we have received from the interagency community at NIFC (National Interagency Fire Center) and the Forest Service, said Scott. We have taken this from the good idea fairy stage to the point that I have guys on the mountain helping firefighters and that has taken a lot of key people. The DRTI platform has been used in support of fires in both Idaho and California this past summer. By U.S. Air National Guard Master Sgt. Joshua Allmaras

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Copyright 2016 Comment on this article
The two leaders have also discussed the bilateral cooperation between Kabul and Moscow.

While praising Moscow's efforts in maintaining harmony and constancy in Afghanistan, CEO Abdullah Abdullah held that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization performs a very important role in keeping peace and stability in the region and keeping the battle against violence and terrorism, as well.

As to the relations between Kabul and Moscow, Abdullah confirmed that the affairs between the two countries

Regarding the relations between Kabul and Moscow, Abdullah said over the past 15 years, the relations between the two nations have basically enhanced.

He even furthered that despite coping with the battle against terrorism, Afghanistan has seen developments and improvements in its different sectors.

On the other hand, Prime Minister Medvedev said that Moscow's stand towards Afghanistan has remained the same as he wished that the joint economic collaboration between the two countries improves.

Medvedev also furthered that Moscow has vowed to continue its support the Afghanistan in all of its sectors including humanitarian aid as well as the grant of more scholarships and training to the armed forces of Afghanistan.

Giving emphasis in the enhanced relations between Kabul and Moscow, Abdullah declared that Moscow has reinforced Afghanistan in its fight against the Al Qaeda and violence before the Taliban administration has fallen.

Abdullah Abdullah is an Afghan politician, serving as Chief Executive of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan since September 2014. From October 2001 to April 2005, he served as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Prior to that, he was a senior member of the Northern Alliance working as an adviser to Ahmad Shah Massoud.

Abdullah ran against President Hamid Karzai in the Afghan presidential election, 2009, coming in second place with 30.5% of the total votes. In 2010, he created the Coalition for Change and Hope (now the National Coalition of Afghanistan), which is one of the leading democratic opposition movements in Afghanistan.


Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto raised his glass and yelled Kanpai as he officially welcomed Morimoto Las Vegas to MGM Grand on Thursday, November 3 (Pictured: Jenni Lee folds paper cranes  Photo credit: MGM Resorts International).

Photo credit: MGM Resorts International.

In true Las Vegas fashion, the grand opening celebration was a spectacle-filled evening with a lion dance parade throughout the resort, Chef Morimotos deconstruction of a 132-pound tuna, the making of a 100-foot maki roll and an energetic party overflowing with Japanese delicacies.

Photo credit: MGM Resorts International.

A mystical show kicked off the nights festivities with a traditional lion dance accompanied by drummers in MGM Grands main lobby. To guests delight, Chef Morimoto made a surprise appearance in the lobby to bring the lions to life by painting their eyes  a symbolic act of bringing good fortune to a new endeavor. The lions leaped and danced as they playfully interacted with the crowd.

Photo credit: MGM Resorts International.

Onlookers were in awe as Morimoto led the grand procession through the casino, shaking hands and taking photos with fans on the way. Upon arrival, the Iron Chef entered the venue to deconstruct a 132-pound tuna fish with his legendary knife-cutting skills.

Photo credit: MGM Resorts International.

Chef was then joined by MGM Grand President & COO Scott Sibella, MGM Resorts International Chief Operating Officer Corey Sanders and MGM Grand VP of F&B Jason Shkorupa, alongside dozens of friends and guests, to create a massive 100-foot maki sushi roll with the fresh tuna.

Photo credit: MGM Resorts International.

Morimoto Las Vegas chic atmosphere created the ideal mood for Las Vegas VIPs to indulge in the restaurants inspired cuisine such as the Hamachi Tacos, Panfried Pork Gyoza, Tuna Pizzas and a boundless lineup of fresh sashimi and sushi rolls.

Photo credit: MGM Resorts International.

Mouthwatering pieces of Japanese A-5 Wagyu and Colorado Organic Lamb Chops sizzled at the teppan tables. Morimotos original cocktails fused with Japanese spirits, such as the Green Dragon and Mango Lotus, refreshed guests throughout the evening.

Photo credit: MGM Resorts International.

Photo credit: MGM Resorts International.

Photo credit: MGM Resorts International.
Felix Rappaport, Luxor President and Chief Operating Officer, was recently honored as Philanthropist of the Year by the Las Vegas Natural History Museum (LNVHM). The recognition was given in appreciation for the donation of authentic reproductions from the Tomb & Museum of the King Tutankhamen, the attraction that closed at the Luxor earlier this year. LVNHM also acknowledged the generosity of the Luxor Resort Hotel & Casino and its parent company, MGM MIRAGE, for the charitable contribution.

For generations to come, museum patrons will be able to see items they may not otherwise have seen, said Rappaport. Im glad residents of Southern Nevada will have this as an educational resource.

The gift included reproductions of the world-famous guardian statues, King Tuts sarcophagus and an array of statues, vases, beds, baskets and pottery. Each item in the collection was precisely recreated and reproduced by artisans using the same tools and original 3,300-year-old methods as ancient Egyptians. The total value of the collection is approximately $3 million.

We are overwhelmed by the generosity of MGM MIRAGE, and feel privileged to have the opportunity to honor Felix Rappaport of the Luxor for helping to make this wonderful donation to the Museum and to the community a reality, said Marilyn Gillespie, Executive Director of the LVNHM.

Rappaport has a history of working to improve the Las Vegas community. In 2007, he was recognized by the National Network of Sector Partners as Trailblazer of the Year for his efforts to address hospitality workforce needs in Southern Nevada. Earlier this year, he was recognized by the Culinary Training Academy (CTA) for his leadership in the opening of a new $10 million training facility while he served as CTAs Chairman of the Board of Trustees.

About the LVNHM

Las Vegas Natural History Museum is a private, non-profit institution dedicated to educating children and families in the natural sciences, both past and present. Through its interactive exhibits, educational programs, and the preservation of its collections, the Museum strives to instill an understanding and appreciation of the worlds wildlife, ecosystems and cultures. The Las Vegas Natural History Museum is located at 900 North Las Vegas Boulevard in downtown Las Vegas. Admission is $8 for adults; $7 for students, seniors and military; $5 for children ages 3-11. Children age 2 and under are free. Museum hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily.
Seven years ago, Madison residents Amy Edge and Jack Sayre bought three wooded acres in Iowa County, thinking it would be their rural haven.

Its our dream land, Edge said.

But the couple are not so sure anymore, now that their property in Highland is in one of the possible corridors being studied for construction of a high-voltage transmission line.

If its eventually chosen by the utility developers and approved by regulators, their property is gone, Edge said.

Sayre and Edge were among 64 people who attended a public meeting on the proposed Cardinal-Hickory Creek project Thursday evening at the Madison Marriott West in Middleton.

The 90- to 135-mile, 345-kilovolt transmission line would connect the Cardinal substation in the town of Middleton to the Hickory Creek substation in Dubuque County.

American Transmission Co., of Pewaukee; ITC Midwest, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and Dairyland Power Cooperative, of La Crosse, are the developers. Estimated cost: $500 million.

Two prospective routes have been identified. One follows Highway 18-151; the other cuts a new corridor, straight west, between Highway 18-151 and Highway 14.

The latter route slices through the Driftless Area of Wisconsin, with hills, rivers and streams untouched by glaciers.

Edge said he is upset that huge transmission towers could disturb the areas natural beauty. The Driftless Area, as a whole, shouldnt have this happen, he said.

The utility companies looking to build the big transmission line say it will improve electric reliability, provide economic benefits and connect to renewable power.

As somebody who came of age during the energy crisis of the early 1970s ... for me to stand against something sold as good because it brings in wind power is appalling to me, said Amy Noble, of Madison. But she said she is not convinced the line is needed to hook up to wind farms.

Nobles family has owned 230 acres in a valley between Spring Green and Dodgeville since 1961. I grew up there, Noble said, ticking off weddings and deaths marked at the rural homestead.

If the transmission line chops through her familys acreage, my refuge is desecrated, Noble said. Im willing to sacrifice for the greater good but I dont trust that thats the case with this.

Earlene Laudin and her family left Madison in 1995 to build their home on a 26-acre site north of Barneveld, where deer and wild turkeys roam and walnut and hickory trees abound. It is also in the potential transmission corridor.

Id like to start thinking about building solar and wind power here instead of trying to bring up Iowas power, Laudin said.

Thursdays meeting was the fourth in four days, drawing a total of 223 people, hosted by the U.S. Department of Agricultures Rural Utilities Service.

Dennis Rankin, environmental protection specialist, based in Washington, D.C., said the agency will issue a report looking at the projects need, potential alternatives and the Driftless Area.

Comments, due Jan. 6, 2017, can be emailed to: comments@CardinalHickoryCreekEIS.us or mailed to: SWCA Environmental Consultants; Attn: Cardinal-Hickory Creek EIS; 200 Bursca Dr; Suite 207; Bridgeville, PA 15017.
Smoke rises from an explosion in a central district of Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, in this still image taken from video November 4, 2016. (Photo: REUTERS/Reuters TV)

The local governor's office said in a statement that the cause of the blast "seems to be a car bomb used by members of the separatist terrorist organisation", a reference to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Two local residents told AFP they had seen a minibus explode outside the police building in the Baglar district.

The explosion occurred just hours after police detained the two co-leaders of the country's main pro-Kurdish party and several other MPs in a major escalation of a broader crackdown against leading Kurds.

An AFP reporter said that several ambulances were dispatched to the scene of the blast, which heavily damaged several residential buildings.

The explosion could be heard several kilometres (miles) away and a thick column of white smoke was seen rising from the site of the explosion.

Gunshots were heard after the blast.

Earlier Friday, police detained Selahattin Demirtas of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) at his home in Diyarbakir while his co-chairperson Figen Yuksekdag was held in Ankara as part of a terror investigation, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.

Their detention appeared part of a large-scale operation against the HDP, which is the third largest party in the Turkish parliament with 59 seats and the main political representative of the Kurdish minority.

NTV television said the pair were accused of spreading propaganda for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) while Anadolu said Demirtas was accused of provoking violence in deadly protests in October 2014.

The raids come as Turkey remains under a state of emergency imposed in the wake of the July 15 failed coup, which critics say has gone well beyond targeting the actual coup plotters.

Thirteen staff from the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper, including the editor-in-chief, were detained on Monday, further heightening strains in Turkish society.

Tensions have surged in the Kurdish-dominated southeast since a fragile ceasefire declared by the PKK collapsed in 2015.

It has since stepped up its insurgency against the Turkish security forces, staging regular attacks that have claimed hundreds of lives among the military and the police.

The HDP seeks to promote the cause of Turkey's Kurdish minority and defend the rights of Kurds as well as those of women, gays and workers.

But the authorities accuse the party of being a front for the PKK and failing to distance itself from terror, claims it has always vehemently denied.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has launched repeated personal attacks on Demirtas, who analysts have seen as the sole politician in Turkey who comes anywhere near to rivalling his charisma.
Clinton is slightly ahead in national polls as the nearly two-year race approaches its climax, and many Americans will be relieved in four days when the bad-tempered spectacle is over.

A Gallup poll published on Friday found that less than half of voters feel that the candidates are talking about the issues that matter to them, and both have historically low approval numbers.

Investors are not happy with their options: Wall Street was down again on Friday despite relatively good news on the jobs front, with the US S&P 500 slipping for the ninth straight session, its longest fall since 1980.

Where enthusiasm is lacking, the 69-year-old former secretary of state and the 70-year-old property mogul are trying to manufacture it, or at least rile up their supporters against the other side.

"I need you to vote. Don't choose fear, choose vote," an exasperated President Barack Obama told a mainly African American crowd in North Carolina, whipping up votes for fellow Democrat Clinton.

Intervening to stop the crowd booing a pro-Trump protester, he resorted to the new campaign catchphrase he uses to signal his mounting disbelief: "C'mon!"

"I want you to pay attention. If we lose focus, we could have problems," he said, deriding Trump's outbursts as those of a crude reality television star beneath the dignity of the presidency.

"And the problem is he's done it so much that it's become almost normal," Obama said. "It's like suddenly reality TV has entered the race for the presidency.

"It's just some stuff that up until this election we would have said is completely disqualifying and yet somehow everybody's gotten accustomed to it, acting like it's normal."

SWING STATE BINGO

While Obama may be annoyed by the intrusion of Trump's pop culture star power into the race, Clinton clings to A-listers like a lifeline - later on Friday, she is to make a joint appearance in Ohio with rapper Jay Z and perhaps his wife Beyonce, after stops in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Trump, meanwhile, was to swing through the swing states of New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania touting his plan to "drain the swamp" of corrupt politicians to his supporters.

He is not expected to mention that two aides to his top ally New Jersey Governor Chris Christie were found guilty on Friday of deliberately causing major traffic jams to punish a political rival.

Both candidates are also saturating the airwaves with ads - mainly negative ones - and dialing the scare rhetoric up to fever pitch.

Clinton's campaign will reach a crescendo in Philadelphia on Monday, where she will appear with Bill Clinton and Barack and Michelle Obama - a union of Democratic Party power families.

Voters can expect to hear not-so-kind comparisons between Trump and the still-revered US founding fathers, who made their Declaration of Independence in the city, and later signed the US Constitution there.

The tone of the race certainly was less than high-brow on Friday.

"Imagine what it would mean for our economy to have someone who built his career exploiting workers, stiffing small businesses," Clinton said in Pittsburgh.

Trump, in New Hampshire, fired back: "How can Hillary manage this country when she can't even manage her e-mails?" referring to the ongoing controversy over her set-up at the State Department.

Pennsylvania voter Frank Behum, who spent 32 years working as an electrician for a steel plant before retiring, said the choice at the ballot box on Nov 8 was not ideal. "You've got to pick the lesser of the two evils here," he said.

Clinton's supporters were getting tense. "It's nerve-racking that Trump's gotten this far," Rachel Zeolla, 27, who works in creative marketing, said at Friday's rally in Pittsburgh.

REPUBLICANS COMING HOME

The campaigns are still jostling for supremacy in the handful of battleground states that will decide Tuesday's election.

Trump has the slenderest of leads in New Hampshire, is up 3.3 points in Ohio and trails by three points in Pennsylvania, according to poll aggregates compiled by RealClearPolitics.

Trump has struggled to recover ground since footage emerged of him boasting of committing sexual assault and a dozen women came forward to allege he had groped them.

But, as the race nears its conclusion, profound Republican skepticism about his controversial candidacy appears to be ebbing.

"I think Republicans are coming home," Congressman Jason Chaffetz told CNN.

Most polls still suggest he is the outsider, but in a race full of unusual twists, a Chinese monkey described as the "king of prophets" has tipped him to win.
A coated steel production of Hoa Sen Group.- Photo vietnamplus

The consultation, related to coated steel sheets imported from China (including Hong Kong) and South Korea, will be organised on December 22 to help related parties express their opinion on the anti-dumping tariffs.

Each party can have three people participating in the consultation. The event is not compulsory and related parties which do not join in the consultation will still be ensured their rights and benefits under the law.

Applications to participate in the consultation should be sent to the VCAs Trade Remedies Investigation Division before 5pm on November 22. Related parties can send their contents before 5pm on December 1.

The ministry promulgated the decision on applying the temporary anti-dumping tariff on imported coated steel sheets from China (including Hong Kong) and South Korea into Viet Nam.

The tariff is in effect for 120 days -- from September 16, 2016 to January 13, 2017.

Steel production surge

MoIT said in the first 10 months of the year domestic steel production continued to see high growth after Viet Nam imposed anti-dumping tariffs on long steel and steel billet. The solutions have assisted local steel producers while reducing imports.Raw steel productivity last month was more than 468,000 tonnes, posting a 26.5 per cent year-on-year increase. The productivity of rolled steel rose by 30 per cent from the same period last year, while that of steel bars was estimated at 397,000 tonnes.

Raw steel reached some 4.2 million tonnes in the 10-month period, or 19 per cent higher compared with the same period last year. Rolled steel and steel bars were 4.29 million tonnes and 3.9 million tonnes respectively.

The ministrys Planning Department said higher building demand in the country has contributed to the increasing productivity. The surge of both steel sale and production over the past 10 months showed that the local steel sector could meet the building demand. Steel prices have been stable in the January-October period.

The latest report from the Viet Nam Steel Association also revealed that its members productivity reached more than 1.48 million tonnes, posting a year-on-year rise of 19 per cent. Steel sale also reached over 1.2 million tonnes, or 23 per cent higher than the corresponding period last year.

Nguyen Van Sua, VSAs vice chairman, said the year-end months would be the peak time for steel consumption, resulting in high demand for steel.

However, it would be difficult for local producers to prevent the flood of cheap steel from China in the context of integration.

The association said imported steel from China so far this year has reached over 7.29 million tonnes, accounting for 60 per cent of the total steel imports into Viet Nam.

Sua said the government should come up with solutions to prevent trade fraud to help local steel producers have strong growth in the near future.

In addition, Vietnamese firms should improve products quality and invest in technologies to reduce production costs and enhance competitiveness in their own market.

The ministry will continue to apply trade defence measures to ensure fair competition with imported products to promote the countrys steel sector.
However, growth is expected over the next few years as increasing numbers of young consumers go online for the first time, largely through smartphones, said speakers at the conference.

Deputy Minister Ho Thi Kim Thoa of the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) told the conference participants he has set a target to grow e-commerce to reach 5% of the nations total retail sales by 2020.

Which, he said, in absolute dollars equates to US$10 billion for 2020.

Tran Thi Phuong Lan, deputy director of the Municipal Department of Industry and Trade, in turn said he estimated that retail e-commerce revenue in the capital city of Hanoi registered US$1.16 billion last year.

Mr Lan also predicted that the e-commerce retail sector would see strong growth over the next few years.

However, despite all the optimism and the strong growth forecasted, retail ecommerce would still account for just 5% of total retail sales by 2020, if the target were to be reached, which puts Vietnam well behind Western countries.

Most notably Vietnam lags far behind China, where retail ecommerce has been estimated to reach 18.4% of total sales in 2016 and is anticipated to grow in the double digits through the end of 2020.

Lai Viet Anh, deputy head of the MOITs E-commerce and Information Technology Department, said she believes the countrys population with its relatively young median age would help expand the e-commerce consumer class.

Vietnamese youth are learning to access the internet via smartphones at a very young age, said Ms Anh, and consequently have shown much more of a willingness to make purchases on their mobile devices than the older generations.

Ms Anh opined that the number of digital shoppersthose who browse or research products online but who havent necessarily completed a purchase transaction would also see their ranks grow over the coming years.

Though Ms Anh is sanguine for the prospects of e-commerce in Vietnam she openly acknowledged that the country lags far behind others in the region in e-commerce (including m-commerce) development.

If one just looks at the absolute dollar value of e-commerce revenue the disparity is obvious, she said, noting that while online sales reached just US$4 billion in Vietnam for 2015 in China it was US$617 billion, the Republic of Korea (US$39 billion) and India (US$14 billion).

The growth of m-commerce over the next few years should make the US$10 billion of revenue by 2020 target readily attainable, noted Ms Anh.

Nguyen Thanh Hung, president of the Vietnam E-Commerce Association, said most urban residents are familiar with e-commerce with the number of rural residents using it is climbing steadily.

This, he noted would also help strengthen e-commerce usage over the next few years.

The implementation of robust 4G networks by mobile carriers (which is already underway) would also help drive increasing digital purchases made via smartphone, particularly from the rural areas.

In addition, the declining costs of 4G devices and service plans would make it much easier for consumers to research, browse and buy via smartphones noted Mr Hung, making the targeted US$10 billion by 2020 a realistic and achievable target.
A protester holds the flag of the Rif Republic as protesters shout slogans in the northern city of Al Hoceima on Oct 30, 2016, following the death of fishmonger Mouhcine Fikri. (Photo: AFP/Fadel Senna)

Mouhcine Fikri, 31, was accidentally killed last Friday in the northern city of Al-Hoceima as he tried to protest against the seizure and destruction of swordfish, which are not allowed to be caught at this time of year.

His death in the Rif - an ethnically Berber region long neglected and at the heart of a 2011 protest movement for reform - also triggered anger in other cities including the capital Rabat.

"Mouhcine we won't abandon you!" protesters cried in Al-Hoceima, according to footage streamed live on social media, holding up photos of Fikri and waving Berber flags.

Fikri's case "concerns all Moroccans suffering from oppression", one woman cried out to fellow protesters by loudspeaker. "We have come to protest against unfairness, against a corrupt system," she said.

Another protest was held in the Rif town of Nador, according to social media.

King Mohammed VI was quick to order a "thorough and exhaustive investigation" into Fikri's death and sent the interior minister to offer condolences to his family.

Authorities earlier this week arrested 11 people suspected of involuntary manslaughter over Fikri's death.

Of those, two interior ministry employees, two fisheries officials, the head of the local veterinary services and three rubbish collection workers were remanded in custody on Tuesday.

It remains unclear who activated the truck's crushing mechanism that killed Fikri.

Thousands attended Fikri's funeral in Al-Hoceima on Sunday after an image of his body - head and arm sticking out from under the lorry's crusher - went viral on social media.

The self-immolation of a street vendor in late 2010 in protest at police harassment sparked Tunisia's revolution and the Arab Spring uprisings across the region the following year.
Two stem cell companies derived from UW-Madison research are coming out of the woodwork.

JangoBio says it is developing ways to reverse hormone imbalances tied to aging without the use of traditional hormone replacement therapy.

Using stem cell technology, JangoBio hopes to restore an individuals regular hormone levels and, in doing so, delay the onset of diseases associated with aging, such as heart disease and dementia.

It may be possible, using certain stem cell types that are present in our body and changing them up so they would integrate in the ovary, for example ... and generate the hormones that you want to produce, said Craig Atwood, JangoBio CEO.

Atwood said the young company, established in 2015, is investigating multiple candidates to identify the best one, through lab tests. Animal tests are just beginning, as well, he said.

Atwood is an associate professor of medicine at UW-Madison and research director of the Laboratory for Endocrinology, Aging and Disease.

He said current hormone replacement therapy can, in some cases, cause complications such as cancer or blood clots, and it only rebalances one or two of a variety of hormones the human body produces.

Were really just sticking our finger in the dike with existing therapies, he said.

Atwood said he would like to finish pre-clinical tests within two years and seek U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to start human tests by the end of 2018.

If the results are positive and all goes well, a product could be on the market in another three to five years, he said. Or less. If a treatment can be devised using a patients own cells, it might not need FDA approval to go on the market, Atwood said. This provides a much faster route to reach the public  about two years, he said.

JangoBio has received a $365,000 Small Business Technology Transfer grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Another company, BrainXell, transforms stem cells into specialized types of neurons  brain and spinal cord cells. It says it will sell the cells to companies working on drugs to fight diseases such as Parkinsons.

BrainXell is based on technology developed in the lab of co-founder Su-Chun Zhang, a professor of neuroscience and neurology at UWs Waisman Center.

The company was formed in 2015 and has five employees.

Bucks for biometrics

A Madison startup with software for biometric identification says it has raised its first $1 million from angel (individual) investors in Wisconsin and overseas.

SimplifIDe says its technology lets businesses identify their customers or employees by all sorts of physical characteristics, such as a persons fingerprint, iris or voice.

One of the reasons for the name, co-founder and CEO Jeff McAllister said, is that theres no need to buy additional equipment. We are using the existing devices that you already own, he said  cell phones, computers or tablets.

He said the technology can be used to verify a persons identity in a variety of situations, such as access to health records or bank accounts, or even picking up a child from day care.

For example: Instead of a bank asking for your mothers maiden name, you could take a selfie, said McAllister.

SimplifIDe began operations in January and finalized the funding round in August, the company disclosed in a news release this week. It has under 15 employees, including five in Madison, McAllister said.

Its board of directors includes former Wisconsin attorney general J.G. Van Hollen and former chief information officer for the state, Matthew Miszewski. Nick Fuhrman and Prathit Bondre are the other co-founders.

Cellectar expands study of cancer drug

Cellectar Biosciences says it plans to start an expanded study of CLR 131, the drug aimed at fighting multiple myeloma, in the first three months of 2017.

Fifteen locations around the U.S. will enroll patients, and the test will include those with several additional types of blood cancer, as well.

CLR 131 will be given along with another chemotherapy drug, oral dexamethasone. Cellectar says it hopes to get initial results on whether or not the treatment is working by the second half of 2017.

The phase 2 study is being conducted with help from a $2 million grant from the National Cancer Institute.
VMI was launched by Start-up Vietnam Foundation, a foundation that funds start-ups in the field of science and technology. VMIs mission is to become a wide and effective network of mentors supporting the new generation of Vietnamese business people.

It would be great if a young person starting a company got help from a person with experience. In reality, there are many successful leaders that want to give back and mentor new leaders but they do not know where to begin looking. On the other hand, many of the young bloods think the old ones are unapproachable. VMI aims to connect them, said Pham Duy Hieu, SVFs director.

At the moment, many organisations already mentoring start-ups, such as the SVF, Hatch! Ventures, Danang Business Incubator (DNES), KisStart-up, SME Mentoring, Saigon Hi-tech Parks incubator, BK Holdings, and the French Alumni Vietnam Start-up Network (FAVSN) have joined VMI.

In 201,6 VMI aims to connect at least 40 mentors with 40 mentees. They will first focus on start-ups already funded by some of the member organisations before expanding to other start-ups next year.

VMI is a non-profit initiative funded by the Swiss governments entrepreneurship programme SECO EP and the Mekong Business Initiative.
Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh (right) speaks at the two-day Viet Nam Summit 2016 that opened on November 3 in HCM City.-VNS Photo Thanh Vu

Organised by The Economist and supported by Vietnam Ministry of Foreign Affairs, sponsored by Indochina Capital, RMIT, and many others, Vietnam Summit is participated by country leaders, experts, and economists. It aims to provide in-depth discussions and debate, as well as looking for solutions for Vietnam and the next steps in its development strategy.

According to Deputy Prime Minister cum Foreign Affairs Minister Pham Binh Minh, after 30 years of renovation, Vietnam has maintained its stable growth of six per cent per year due to a constellation of various different reasons.

One of these is that we [Vietnam] have transitioned from subsidisation to a market economy which wiped out many barriers to growth. Politic utilisation of human resources, proactivity and enthusiasm as well as determination also helped to integrate into the global economy, Minh said.

Vietnam, Minh stressed, also has an active strategy to equitise State-owned enterprises and is currently receiving the first results. The government is determined to push along the equitisation process in order to increase these businesses efficiency, Minh said.

According to Jon Fasman, Southeast Asia Bureau Chief of The Economist, Vietnam has been developed in two poles: industrialisation and Foreign Direct Investment.

Thanks to years of consistent gains, Vietnam has been transformed from one of the worlds poorest countries into a solid middle-income performer, said Fasman.

Foreign direct investment is surging, Samsung and Intel are only part of the tide, thanks in part to the governments record of stable long-term economic planning, he added.

Vietnam, Fasman added, is exposed to global economic headwinds, but its geography connects it to regional supply chains. Moreover, it is expected to benefit from a number of impending trade deals, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

The Economist Intelligence Unit expects Vietnams real GDP to grow by 6.8 per cent in 2016, and even more in 2017.

With a young and reasonably well-educated population, Vietnam is poised to become a hub of innovation in Southeast Asia.
A woman was sexually assaulted early Saturday at the apartment of a man she had just met after leaving a bar near UW-Madisons campus, police said.

The 26-year-old woman went with the man to his apartment after meeting him at Wandos bar, 602 University Ave., said Madison Police Lt. Anthony Bitterman.

Before the woman was able to leave the apartment, the man sexually assaulted her around 2 a.m., Bitterman said.

Bitterman said the man was about 24 years old, had long, black hair and was wearing a black turban. He was described as about 5-foot-7 with an average build.

The police do not have a name or address for the assailant, Bitterman said.
How do the two leading U.S. presidential candidates differ in their policies toward China? In the latest VOA China 360 podcast, senior advisers to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump provided exclusive insight into three key differences between the Democratic and Republican nominees.

Expertise

In an interview with VOA last month, Clinton foreign policy adviser Laura Rosenberger drew a sharp contrast between the foreign policy expertise of real estate tycoon Trump and her boss, a former U.S. secretary of state, U.S. senator and first lady.

"Hillary believes the U.S.-China relationship is maybe the most complex and consequential in the world today and would approach it by expanding cooperation wherever we can, and standing up when China is working against our interests," Rosenberger said, while describing Trump as "somebody who has a very simplistic view of the relationship with China  one that, as a matter of concern, is potentially informed by his own business interests."

Rosenberger cited U.S. media reports alleging that Trump owes significant debts to a Chinese bank and quoting him as raising the possibility of cutting economic ties with China if it prevented Chinese people from visiting the U.S. and staying at Trump hotels.

"Trump would be motivated by the fact that he believes China is harming his businesses. The idea that America could just cut off ties with China is ludicrous. We have so much that we need to work with China on, that we simply cannot wall ourselves off from the rest of the world," she said.

Trump senior defense adviser Alexander Gray pushed back against those criticisms in a separate VOA interview last month.

"Trump has laid out a vision for rebuilding our military and strengthening our alliances, including in the Asia-Pacific, with a ballistic missile defense system. This vision is anything but simplistic  it will provide the stability we need in that critical region," Gray said, adding that Trump's experience as a negotiator "who gets optimal outcomes for himself, his businesses and other parties" is the kind of experience needed to deal with some of Asia's "thorny issues."

Gray said Trump would provide more reassurance to America's Asian allies than Clinton did when she served as President Barack Obama's first secretary of state.

He said Clinton initiated a rebalance to Asia, telling U.S. allies that "we are going to be back in force in the region," while in reality the U.S. "cut back on our Air Force and Navy shipbuilding, sent some ships to Singapore and Marines to Darwin, Australia, and that is about it."

Gray said U.S. allies "can see that the trends are not good," citing North Korea's four nuclear tests during the Obama presidency, China's recent reclamation of 3,200 acres of land to create artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea, and its declaration of an Air Defense Identification Zone in the East China Sea in 2013.

"Instead of talking about an indefensible record, [Clinton's team] wants to talk about innuendo regarding Donald Trump," he added.

South China Sea

Rosenberger said Clinton's policy on South China Sea sovereignty disputes involving China and its neighbors would be to uphold her 2010 declaration, made while she was secretary of state, that the U.S. "opposes the use or threat of force by any claimant" and has a national interest in a "collaborative diplomatic process by all claimants for resolving the various territorial disputes without coercion."

"The U.S. will not take a side on the territorial disputes, but it is important that we not militarize the South China Sea, where we see so much commerce going through, where freedom of navigation is so critical to American businesses," Rosenberger said. "So for Hillary, this is about making sure that China is playing by the rules, while cooperating where we can  for instance, on climate change, where we have seen a lot of U.S.-China cooperation in recent years."

Gray said that kind of dual-track strategy toward China misses a key element.

"Trump is saying: We are going to make sure that the U.S. military has the most comprehensive buildup since Ronald Reagan was president, and we are going to invest in a missile defense system that our allies South Korea and Japan and our Southeast Asian allies want," he said. "Once we have done that, we can say to China: You stepped out of line, your actions are not in keeping with peaceful, liberal order in the region. And we will have the teeth to show that the U.S. is credible."

Gray said the Obama administration's occasional freedom-of-navigation exercises in the South China Sea lack such credibility.

"What China is doing in the South China Sea violates international law, as we have seen in the July ruling by the international tribunal in The Hague. What Trump is going to say is: We are going to restore our naval power, and when we assert our freedom-of-navigation rights like every power in the world, we will do it appropriately. There will be no ambiguity about it."

North Korea

Another focus of both candidates' advisers is China's relationship with its longtime ally and impoverished neighbor North Korea, a state that has drawn international condemnation for conducting a series of nuclear and missile tests this year.

Rosenberger said those North Korean tests are of deep concern to Clinton.

"She believes that we simply cannot and will not allow North Korea to obtain a deliverable nuclear weapon, which would be a direct threat to the U.S.," Rosenberger said. "She also believes that we need to work with our allies to increase the pressure on North Korea, so that it understands that its only choice is to give up its nuclear program. So far, they have been sanctioned, but not to a degree that has inflicted pain."

She said Clinton also would work with China to impose significant additional pressure on North Korea.

"That means doing some things that China may not like  taking a look at our defense posture and making sure we are doing everything we need to do to protect the U.S. and our allies from the threat North Korea poses. It is incumbent on China to make sure that the threat from North Korea is removed, so that China does not face that same kind of pressure from the U.S.," Rosenberger said.

Gray said Trump would seek to negotiate with China rather than pressure it to restrain North Korea.

"Trump is willing to negotiate from a position of strength with China to see if we can come to an agreement. He wants to say it is not in China's interests to have this reckless, rogue nuclear regime on its border, especially when it is showing signs of strain," Gray said, pointing to the August defection of North Korea's deputy ambassador to London and South Koran media reports of senior North Korean military and government officials being executed this year.

"Trump is willing to look at the [U.S.-China] relationship holistically and see if Beijing can play a constructive role with Pyongyang," he added.

VOA Ukrainian service journalist Tatiana Vorozhko contributed to this report.
African states launched a bid at the United Nations on Friday to halt the work of the first U.N. independent investigator appointed to help protect gay and transgender people worldwide from violence and discrimination.

The 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council, based in Geneva, created the position in June and in September appointed Vitit Muntarbhorn of Thailand, who has a three-year mandate to investigate abuses against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people.

In an unusual move, African states circulated a draft resolution on Friday in the 193-member U.N. General Assembly third committee, which deals with human rights, calling for consultations on the legality of the creation of the mandate.

"We therefore call for the suspension of the activities of the appointed Independent Expert pending the determination of this issue," Botswana's U.N. Ambassador Charles Ntwaagae, speaking for the 54-member Africa group, told the committee.

He said the group was concerned "non-internationally agreed notions such as sexual orientation and gender identity are given attention, to the detriment of issues of paramount importance such as the right to development and the racism agenda."

Ntwaagae said that sexual orientation and gender identity "are not and should not be linked to existing international human rights instruments."

Assembly approval needed

The third committee could vote as early as Tuesday on the draft resolution, diplomats said. If adopted, it would then need to be voted upon later this year by the General Assembly.

Being gay is a crime in at least 73 countries, the U.N. has said. The issue of gay rights consistently sparks heated debate at the United Nations.

In 2014, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said the U.N. would recognize all same-sex marriages of its staff, allowing them to receive U.N. benefits. Russia unsuccessfully tried to overturn it last year, with Saudi Arabia, China, Iran, India, Egypt, Pakistan and Syria among 43 states that supported Moscow.

In February, the African Group, the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the 25-member "Group of Friends of the Family," led by Egypt, Belarus and Qatar, protested the launch of six U.N. stamps promoting LGBT equality.

Then a group of 51 Muslim states blocked 11 gay and transgender organizations from officially attending a high-level U.N. meeting in June on ending AIDS, sparking a protest by the United States, Canada and the European Union.
Several hundred people rallied in the suburbs of Melbourne Saturday, after a proposal to house refugees locally drew protest by far right anti-islam groups as well as counter protests.

Political debate around Australias hard-line policy towards asylum seekers has been heated recently. Last week the conservative government announced plans to ban asylum seekers who attempted to reach Australia by boat from permanently entering under any visa category.

Dozens of people belonging to the anti-Islam groups rallied Saturday against a proposal to house 120 refugees from Syria and Iraq at a housing facility for elderly citizens in the Melbourne suburb of Eltham.

They (the elderly citizens) are a bit concerned about it, but they will just wait and see, John Conroy a resident of the facility said.

A heavy police presence separated the anti-Islam group from more than 100 people rallying in favor of the proposal. Previous protests between anti-immigration and pro-immigration groups have led to violent clashes.

Australias current policy of sending asylum seekers who arrive in Australian waters by boat offshore to Papua New Guinea and Nauru, where their status as refugees is confirmed or rejected, has bipartisan support in the Australian parliament.

Last year the government announced a one-time intake of 12,000 refugees fleeing the conflict in Iraq and Syria, saying that ethnic minorities from those countries would be given priority.

Far right political parties are on the rise in Australia, with the controversial One Nation party surprising many by winning four Senate seats at the countrys national elections in July.
The leader of the once-feared Basque separatist group ETA was arrested Saturday in southwestern France during a joint operation by French and Spanish security forces, Spanish officials said.

Mikel Irastorza, 41, was detained in a French village in the Pyrenees, near the Spanish border. Spain's Interior Ministry said he was the "most senior leader of the terrorist group ETA still at large." Irastorza reputedly had been leading the separatist organization for just over a year, since the arrests in France of two of his predecessors.

The couple living at the home where Irastorza was arrested also were detained, and authorities said they expected other arrests to follow.

A police raid last month uncovered a cache of more than 100 handguns hidden in a forest north of Paris, supposedly by ETA, but there was no information on whether that operation was linked to the successful hunt for Irastorza, who has been a fugitive since 2008.

ETA has been blamed for the deaths of more than 800 people since the late 1960s in its push to carve an independent homeland out of territory in northern Spain and southwestern France.

The group has been weakened by attrition and a string of high-profile arrests in the late 1990s and 2000s. ETA, an acronym for the phrase "Basque Homeland and Liberty," has not been linked to any deaths in Spanish territory since 2009; its last known victim was a French police officer killed in Paris in 2010.

The separatists declared a unilateral cease-fire in 2011 but refused to surrender or lay down their weapons. ETA has since sought to negotiate an amnesty with France and Spain, but in its current weakened state it is not seen to possess any significant bargaining power.

Spain has so far resisted any settlement that would allow members of the outlawed group or their supporters make an easy transition to legal political activity in the Basque region.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have very different views on what kind of relationship the United States should have with Russia, and in particular its leader, Vladimir Putin.

The divide has been clear for months, but was crystalized in a 10-second exchange during the final debate between the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates.

"Putin, from everything I see, has no respect for this person," Trump said, referring to Clinton.

"Well, that's because he would rather have a puppet as president of the United States," Clinton replied.

"No puppet. You're the puppet," came Trump's response.

Cooperate or confront

At campaign events and numerous debates throughout the process leading up to Tuesday's election, Trump has discussed the benefit of working with Russia, especially in fighting Islamic State militants. Clinton has stated the need to stand up to Putin and has accused the Russian leader of supporting Trump, including through allegations that Russians were involved in hacking attacks against Democrats.

Two weeks before the election, Putin rejected claims he was trying to boost Trump as "sheer nonsense." He also questioned why, with issues like U.S. government debt and gun violence, Russia was such a hot topic for the candidates.

WATCH: Presidential Candidates React Differently to Russia's Role in Election

"During the election campaign, this should be the topic of discussion, and other unsolved problems," Putin said. "But apparently the elite has nothing to say to calm the public. So it's easier to distract people's attention to rumored Russian hackers, spies, agents of influence, and so on and so forth."

Putin also said his government would work with whichever candidate the American people elect.

The U.S. and Russia did collaborate on the landmark deal that curbed Iran's nuclear program, but that diplomatic breakthrough seems distant, with the governments now on opposite sides of the conflict in Syria and the U.S. imposing sanctions on Russia for its incursion into Ukraine.

WATCH: Clinton's Debate Comments on Russian Espionage Against Americans

"Russia has decided that it's all in, in Syria. And they've also decided who they want to see become president of the United States, too, and it's not me," Clinton said in mid-October.

She added that cooperation with Russia was "fine," but that she also supported efforts to investigate Russia and Syria for possible war crimes over their actions in Aleppo, Syria.

'Tough dealings'

In January, Clinton said she'd had "tough dealings" with Putin during her time as secretary of state and called him a bully.

The feelings appear to be mutual, according to analyst Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution, a policy research group in Washington.

"Putin blames Secretary Clinton for the protests against his return to power in 2012," Wright said. "He thinks the United States, and particularly the State Department, was behind those."

Trump has repeatedly criticized Clinton's stance toward Putin and Russia, including in a speech that came the same day Putin wondered why his country kept coming up during the race.

"She speaks very badly of Putin, and I don't think that's smart," Trump said. "How do you speak so badly of someone?"

Trump said he did not know Putin, but if the U.S. and Russia got along, "it wouldn't be so bad."

WATCH: Trump's Debate Comments on US Need to Renegotiate Defense Pacts

Terrorism expert Malcolm Nance says Trump's position differs dramatically from mainstream Republican and Democratic foreign policy leaders.

Trump has referred to NATO as obsolete, has predicted the breakup of the European Union and has suggested that Russia was playing a positive role in Syria. It's "almost a checklist of Vladimir Putin's requirements," Nance said.

No matter which candidate wins, thanks to webs of allies across the world and the U.S. and Russian positions as two of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, the U.S.-Russian relationship will be an important factor during the next administration.

VOA's Cindy Saine at the White House contributed to this report.
The refugee crisis across Europe, the threat of terrorism, and the 11 million people now living in the United State illegally all are issues for U.S. presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

The Republican and Democratic rivals have dramatically different immigration policies that resonate with some voters and anger others. However, both say they are pursuing policies that will accept immigrants while protecting the nations security.

Trump told supporters in New Mexico last week that a Clinton presidency could let hundreds of millions of people cross the U.S. border, bringing crime in their wake. He offered no basis for the extraordinary number, which would virtually double the U.S. population of 319 million. Clinton, for her part, has said Trumps immigration plan, which includes widespread deportations, would rip the country apart and separate families.

The immigration issue is central to Clintons outreach to Hispanic voters, among whom she has a 3-to-1 lead over Trump, according to a poll released last month by the Pew Research Center.

The United States is a nation of immigrants, Clinton told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in September.

Youre our neighbors, our colleagues, our friends, our families, she said in an address to the Hispanic lawmakers and their supporters. Its a message she is taking to Latino audiences in the final days of campaigning, including in Arizona Wednesday night.

Trump: Vet immigrants

Trumps campaign says he will prioritize the jobs, wages and security of the American people.

For the Republican candidate, U.S. security will be enhanced by blocking immigration from nations with a history of terrorism until all potential immigrants can be thoroughly screened. He called earlier for a ban on all Muslim immigrants, but has since revised that proposal.

Trumps 10-point immigrant plan has as its centerpiece a wall along the southern U.S. border with Mexico, to be paid for by the Mexican government. He would deport criminal immigrants, end the program called catch-and-release, expand the Border Patrol and improve the E-Verify system of workplace enforcement.

The first of a series of controversial comments about illegal immigrants came from Trump as he announced his presidential run last year.

Theyre bringing drugs [into the U.S.], theyre bringing crime, theyre rapists, he said of undocumented migrants, most of whom enter the country through Mexico. And some, I assume, are good people, he added.

Polls show that Hispanics, like other Americans, are concerned with the economy, health care and terrorism, but immigration is a major theme in this election, says political scientist Raphael Sonenshein of the Edmund G. Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles.

Requests for ballots are very high among Latino voters, he said. Theres a tremendous buzz in the Spanish-language media about Trump, and people feel very strongly that hes a serious threat to their community.

Clinton: Keep families together

Clinton is calling for comprehensive immigration reform that will deal with the millions of illegal immigrants.

My proposal will keep families together, she says, ruling out mass deportations, and it will include a path to citizenship.

She promises to implement her plan during her first 100 days in office. She would also fix the family visa backlog, protect the borders and national security, and bring millions of hardworking people into the formal economy.

Clinton promises to uphold programs enacted by President Barack Obama through executive orders called DACA and DAPA, which defer the deportation of those brought to the United States illegally as children, as well as undocumented parents of American citizens and some lawful immigrants who face expulsion.

Trump has promised to end both programs.

Clinton has a history of protecting immigrants and supporting all communities, making sure that we are all welcome, that we are not scapegoated, says California Democrat Fiona Ma, a former San Francisco supervisor and California assembly member.

Trump will keep the country safe, say his supporters.

A survey of Asian-American organizations reveals what they expect from the winning candidate, says Indian-American Reshma Shamasunder of Asian-Americans Advancing Justice, Los Angeles. She says Asian-Americans see access to citizenship services, access to learning English [and] support such as health care as programs that are critically important.

For candidates, the road to the White House requires them to appeal to voters on a range of separate issues. Immigration and security are certainly among this years key issues.
Community groups in Houston are encouraging Asian-American citizens to vote in this year's election. Chinese-Americans, in particular, have not had high turnout rates in past elections, but as VOA's Greg Flakus reports from Houston, that may be changing.
Hundreds of people rallied in Melbourne, Australia, on Saturday after a proposal to house refugees locally drew people both for and against the measure.

Protesters belonging to anti-Islam groups said they were against a plan to settle 120 refugees from Syria and Iraq at a senior housing facility in the Eltham neighborhood.



Anti-immigration demonstrators carried Australian flags and marched near the Elthams Andrew Park. Police presence kept groups separated to avoid clashes.



Pro-refugee supporters, part of the group "Welcome to Eltham," carried colorful signs that read Eltham says yes to refugees.

Most people sort of, keep to themselves. A lot of them are in their eighties and nineties and yes, they just keep to themselves. They are a bit concerned about it but they will just wait and see, John Conroy, resident of Saint Vincents Care Services, said.



The Sydney Morning Herald reported that locals were discussing the idea to settle refugees in the St. Vincents facility, but mostly they were not happy that people from other areas were flooding to Eltham to demonstrate.

Australia has a tough immigration policy and asylum-seekers trying to reach the continent are sent to camps on Nauru or Papua New Guinea, where their status as refugees are either accepted or rejected.

In 2015, the Australian government announced a one-time proposal to accept 12,000 refugees who were running away from areas of conflict such as Iraq and Syria.

But last week, officials announced a plan to permanently ban asylum seekers who try to reach the continent by boat from entering under any visa category.

Meanwhile in Sydney others decided to rally for the closing of detention centersplaces that have been heavily criticized by human rights groups.

The detention centers are no suitable environments for the health of all detainees, but the effects on children are far worse, Brian Owler, president of the Australian Medical Association, said in a statement.

According to immigration figures as of August 31, there are close to 1,589 asylum-seekers among them 1,382 men, 114 women and 93 children being held on Manus Island and Nauru.

Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said the government is maintaining a dialogue with other countries, such as the Philippines, to settle refugees.
Jennifer Rosen-Heinz is a volunteer in our Madison field office. Shes a mom, a progressive Democrat whos spent hours every week making calls. And just last week, she completed her first canvass packet.

Daren Olsen volunteers in Milwaukee. Hes one of our best organizers in the city. Hes an Army veteran. And he also happens to be a lifelong Republican.

In this election, were seeing people from all walks of life united by a desire to make sure we come together to defeat Donald Trumps dark and divisive vision of America.

I know many Wisconsinites are exhausted  even heartbroken  to see how progress in your state has seemingly ground to a halt. But I know you wont let that continue for long.

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, so I spent time in this state. From church camp, to Girl Scout camp, to mini-vacations my family would take on weekends  I admired and enjoyed the beauty of the Badger State.

I also learned about its proud progressive tradition. So I know that even though youve been through some tough years, this election is a chance to show the rest of the country the value of that historic vision and inclusive approach.

Now, I know youre probably wondering how well be able to actually get anything done in Washington. At this point, people are so used to gridlock and grandstanding that they cant imagine that cooperation is still possible.

But I have a long record of working with Republicans to make progress for people  from the Childrens Health Insurance Program to providing more resources for adoption and foster care to reducing nuclear weapons with Russia  Ive been able to find common ground and get parties to cooperate.

Thats why Im determined to be a president for both those who vote for me and those who dont, because thats the only way we can begin to heal our divided nation.

To see that theory put into action, you only need to look back to great Wisconsin politicians such as Bob LaFollette. Fighting Bob rightfully became a progressive hero  and yet, he was also a Republican who worked across the aisle to get things done for this states kids and families.

Thats more important than ever, especially when theres so much we still need to do.

We need to make sure all our kids have great schools in every ZIP code. We need to root out systemic racism and restore fairness and balance to our criminal justice system. We need to stand up for womens rights and finally ensure paid leave and equal pay.

And to reduce the polarization in our politics, we need to finally address campaign finance reform. Thats why Ill work to pass a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, and finally get unaccountable money out of our electoral process.

I cant do it alone. Thats why Russ Feingold must join Tammy Baldwin in the U.S. Senate. Since theyll need allies in the House, we need to elect representatives such as Tom Nelson to help them. Russ and Tom are progressives who like to get things done. And unlike their opponents, theyve never been afraid to stand up to Donald Trump.

We cant get complacent. This race is going to be close. So I need everyone in this state to join Jennifer and Daren in volunteering, voting  and getting all your friends and neighbors to vote too! Thats how on Nov. 8, Wisconsinites will prove once again that partisanship doesnt have to be a barrier to progress.
The president of Indonesia canceled a trip to Australia after a massive rally against a Christian governor accused of insulting Islam erupted into violence in Jakarta, Indonesias capital.

One person was killed and at least 160 people were injured in the violence Friday. Ten people were arrested.

The foreign ministry said President Joko Widodo would reschedule his trip because the current development has required the president to stay in Indonesia.

The trip had been scheduled to begin Sunday, ending Tuesday.

The protest was mounted against Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, an ethnic Chinese and minority Christian, accused of blasphemy. He is reported to have joked to an audience about a passage in the Quran that could be interpreted as prohibiting Muslims from accepting non-Muslims as leaders.

Tens of thousands of people attended the demonstration, which was peaceful, until some protesters clashed with police in the evening. Several vehicles were set ablaze.

Purnama has apologized for his comments, but some Muslim hard-liners have insisted on his arrest for blasphemy.

Indonesia is a Muslim-majority nation.
Farid Khanlou owns Jordan Market in an area of Los Angeles called Persian Square. It's packed with Persian businesses, many of which fly the country's flag from before the 1979 Iranian revolution.

In this heart of the Iranian-American community, the largest group of Iranians abroad, there are some who do not affiliate themselves with either the Democratic or Republican party.

Khanlou said he would not vote for either candidate in the upcoming presidential election because he didn't like Republican candidate Donald Trump and thought Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton would only continue President Barack Obama's policies, such as his national health insurance program, also known as Obamacare.

"Trump, you cannot trust his word, and Clinton, it's bad for the economy. It's bad for me because Obamacare is killing me for my health insurance. This is not right. I'm paying almost $30,000 in health insurance because of the Obamacare," Khanlou said.

According to a poll by Zogby Research Services released at the beginning of the year, 87 percent of Iranian-Americans were registered to vote in the U.S. Of that group, 52 percent were Democrats and 8 percent were Republicans. But 40 percent identified themselves as either independent or having no party affiliation.

Reasons to reflect

The two major party candidates have both made headlines recently that caused many in the American public to question their character.

Reza Goharzad, an Iranian-American journalist and political analyst, said revelations about Trump's recorded comments on women and the FBI's latest disclosure about looking into more of Clinton's emails have had no great impact on Iranian-Americans' views on the candidates.

"I don't believe that [opinions] changed," Goharzad said. "The people who want to vote for Hillary didn't change their vote. The people who are trying to vote for Trump never change because of this videotape that came out. In the Iranian community, you don't find that kind of swing state or swing people who have not yet decided. Most of Iranians, they vote between two parties. They don't have much of undecided."

WATCH: Iranian-Americans Voice Strong Feelings Toward Presidential Candidates

Party affiliations

Goharzad said the older generation of Iranian-Americans who thought the 1979 Iranian revolution occurred because of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who was a Democrat, have traditionally voted Republican.

He said those who were children or young adults when they left Iran almost 40 years ago and their American-born children are largely Democrats.

However, there are Iranian-Americans who vote by issues.

The Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans conducted a survey that showed national security and the economy were the top two issues Iranian-Americans looked at when voting for a candidate.

At the Tochal Market in Los Angeles' Persian Square, Todd Khodadadi said he was concerned about the economy.

"Because I'm Republican, I am supporting Donald Trump. The major reason I'm supporting him is the economy," Khodadadi said. "I believe if he became the president, we can have better economic choices for all of us in the United States."

Trump not taken seriously

Zohreh Forouhi, who was shopping near Persian Square, said she supported Clinton.

Forouhi said she voted for a Republican in the last presidential election, but not this time. "I think I [will] vote [for] Hillary. I did last time for the Republican, but I changed my parties," she said.

She said many of the people she knows do not think Trump is a serious candidate.

"Everybody just thought he's crazy and acting weird and just wants to fight," Forouhi said. "He doesn't care about other people. He wants to make America great, but how? Nobody has any idea."

Issues involving Iran

When it comes to Iran, the Public Affairs Alliance survey showed Iranian-Americans said the top two issues that affected them and were most important to them were promoting human rights in Iran and lifting the U.S. trade embargo against Iran.

A man in Persian Square who would identify himself only as Reza said he was looking at each candidate's policy toward Iran.

"I think the candidates should offer their utmost respect to the Iranians," he said. "Iranians know where their interests lay. But the world community should expose the [Iranian] regime's corruptions and show that it does not represent the Iranian people. It's better for Mr. Trump to stop lying, and he should put a halt to attacking Iranians."

But Bijan Khalili, publisher of the weekly newspaper Iran Shahr, said Trump was attractive to some Iranian-Americans.

"Some of the Iranians really like the way that he talks, being harder against the Islamic Republic because of matters of human rights," Khalili said.

Goharzad said some Republicans within the Iranian-American community think Trump may cause a regime change in Iran.

"[They believe] Trump will change the relation with Iran and the government will collapse and there will be a government change in Iran, so they like Trump," he said.

Change by Iranians

Goharzad said some in the Iranian community who support Clinton believe if there is a change within Iran, they want it to be done by the Iranian people and not with the help of foreign countries.

Reza said he feared Trump's policies. "I think Mrs. Clinton has a better chance, because of Trump's background and profession," he said. "Also, his speeches are aggressive towards the minorities. He's an extremist who poses danger to both the U.S. and the world."

The National Iranian American Council estimates there are 1 million Iranian-Americans in the U.S. Khalili said they would be looking to the next U.S. president to focus more on human rights issues in Iran.
Iraqi government forces traded artillery fire Saturday with Islamic State militants as they attempted to advance into areas of eastern Mosul. Government media reported the troops had entered at least five eastern districts of the city within the past 48 hours and that bitter fighting was continuing.

Iraqi commander General Sami Aridi told state media his forces were continuing to advance. He said his forces had moved into the Mosul districts of Zahra, Karama and Tahrir and were trying to push farther into adjacent areas, but that the battle was still going on.

Commander Qassim Jassam of the Iraqi military's 9th Division said the Islamic State militants were mounting bitter resistance. He contended that IS fighters were being defeated in the Intisar district but had slowed the government advance with at least six car bombs, several suicide bombs and a variety of booby-trapped objects. He said the group was committing atrocious war crimes.

Iraqi forces also gained a foothold in the Gogjali district of Mosul, overcoming heavy fortifications by IS militants in control of the area for the past two years.

The Texas-based private security firm Stratfor released a series of satellite images taken earlier this week that showed IS defenses inside Mosul. A variety of obstacles, including cement barriers, trenches and other rubble, could be seen blocking routes into the city center.

On the western side of the Tigris River, which divides the city, satellite images revealed that IS had created a no-man's land near a strategic former military base and outside the city's main airport. Buildings that might have been used for cover by advancing Iraqi forces had been destroyed.

Government forces trying to reach Mosul from the south of the city reportedly captured the village of Hamam al-Alil, six kilometers outside the city, according to Iraqi state TV. Kurdish forces confirmed that Iraqi flags were now flying from buildings there, near Mosul's airport.

Also, Shi'ite volunteer militiamen, known as "al-Hushd," were reported to have captured four villages west of Mosul, near the town of Tel Afar.

Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi visited the Iraqi army's front lines near Bartella on Saturday, carrying what he described as a message to civilians in Mosul who have been "hostages in the hands of Daesh [IS].".

"We will liberate you soon," Abadi vowed, but he said the push to retake all of Mosul could come in spurts, since Iraqi forces were facing stiff resistance from IS, including roadside bombs, sniper fire and suicide car bombings.

"Our heroic forces will not retreat and will not be broken," Abadi said.

Kurdish news reports said Abadi later flew by helicopter to Irbil, the regional capital of Kurdish Iraq, where he conferred with Kurdish President Masoud Barzani and other top Kurdish officials.

In a televised statement from Irbil, Abadi said: "Our forces [at Mosul] are advancing on all fronts and there is no retreat. There is no delay in military operations, which are going as planned."

He also said the number of civilians who had been displaced from their homes in or near Mosul had been lower than anticipated, but did not give precise estimates of how many Mosul residents had escaped from the area.

Amid the fighting, U.N. officials told Arab media they needed at least $60 million to fund refugee camps that have been set up outside Mosul. The Iraqi government said 29,000 refugees have left areas surrounding the city since military operations began October 17.

One man who fled Mosul with his family complained to Arab media that conditions for refugees were bad and getting worse. He said there weren't enough tents for everyone and that food and sanitation situations were extremely difficult.

Abdel Sitar Shehab, who heads an Iraqi NGO in Tikrit, told Iraq's Asharqiya TV as many as 25 people were sleeping in each tent and that "some refugees are going hungry." Arab media reported a new refugee camp called Hassan al Sham had been set up outside the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil for about 3,000 people.

VOA's Lou Lorscheider contributed to this report from Washington.
Amid chilly diplomacy on many fronts, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry next week intends to place his legacy into the deep freeze.

Kerry is to venture to Antarctica and most likely will step on the South Pole, officials at the State Department announced Friday.

Kerry is to become the first secretary of state and the most senior U.S. official ever to visit the frozen continent.

Kerry's predecessor, Hillary Clinton, now the Democratic Party contender for the presidency, intended to go to Antarctica, but the logistics never fell into place.

The secretary of state will visit McMurdo, which is the largest research station of the U.S. Antarctic Program, as well as surrounding areas on Ross Island and the U.S. government's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.

Skeptical reporters at the State Department immediately quizzed officials about the efficacy of what some of them referred to sarcastically as "people-to-penguin diplomacy."

Any encounters with the flightless birds, however, will be strictly hands off.

"We've been told we're not allowed to touch the penguins," said a senior State Department official.

Science foundation trip

The secretary's trip, hosted by the U.S. National Science Foundation, is not a boondoggle, diplomats insist.

"It's a chance firsthand to see what's going on with climate change research," State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters, explaining that Kerry, who has placed environmental stewardship high on his diplomatic agenda, also will get a chance to see a new, expansive marine protected area in the Ross Sea.

The remoteness of the destination means Kerry will be out of the United States on Election Day.

There is no deliberate attempt by Kerry to place himself as far as possible from Washington when the votes are counted, officials insisted.

The South Pole is 8,700 miles (14,000 kilometers) away from the U.S. capital, while Perth, Australia, is even more distant from Washington  11,550 miles (18,600 kilometers).

November is penguin courtship season, and temperatures next week at the South Pole are forecast to rise to a balmy -13 degrees Fahrenheit (-25 Celsius).

"This schedule was very literally driven by the weather," Kirby explained.

As for Kerry not being in his home state of Massachusetts on Election Day, the State Department spokesman told reporters on Friday, "I know he has voted."
When Islamic State insurgents fired mortar bombs at Iranian Kurdish women fighters holding a desert position in northern Iraq, the women first hit back by singing through loudspeakers.

Then the women opened fire with machine guns.

"We wanted to make them angry. To tell Daesh that we are not afraid," said Mani Nasrallahpour, 21, one of about 200 female peshmerga fighters who left behind their lives in Iran to take on the hard-line Sunni militants.

A commander said Islamic State  known to its enemies by the Arabic acronym Daesh  deliberately targeted the female unit with 20 mortars when the singing began.

Islamic State prohibits singing and music. It has also imposed tight restrictions on women and took hundreds of them as sex slaves since sweeping through northern Iraq in 2014 and declaring a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria.

The Kurdish women are part of a larger armed unit of 600 fighters aligned with the Kurdistan Freedom Party, known by its Kurdish acronym PAK.

This group has joined an array of Iraqi and Kurdish forces who are backed by a U.S.-led coalition in an offensive designed to push Islamic State out of their stronghold of Mosul.

Kurdish nation

It also has a far more ambitious goal of creating an independent Kurdish nation that would stretch across Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria  a concept those nations reject.

"We fight to protect our soil, whether it is the Kurdistan of Iran or Iraq. It does not matter whether it is Daesh or another group that has occupied our soil," said Nasrallahpour, clutching an AK-47 assault rifle.

Their presence is a reminder of the complexities of the battlefield in northern Iraq, where the women recently joined Iraqi male Kurdish fighters in driving Islamic State out of the village of Fadiliya.

Avin Vaysi ran into that fight toting a heavy machine gun and battling Islamic State street by street.

"They are afraid of women," she said. "It is true that Daesh is dangerous, but we are not afraid of them."

So far in the offensive, one woman fighter from the group has been killed.

Like the other peshmerga, Vaysi was enraged by news reports of the militants abusing women. She decided to take matters into her own hands.

"I saw on television that Daesh is torturing women, and it made my blood boil," said Vaysi, 32, who has a Kurdish flag painted on her cheek. "I decided to go and fight them."

The presence of the PAK in northern Iraq is controversial. Iran has pressured the Kurdistan Regional Government to expel the group.

Since the start of 2016, the PAK has clashed with Iran's Revolutionary Guards in Iran at least six times, said Hussein Yazdanpanah, military commander of the group.

Attempts to reach a Revolutionary Guard media office for comment were unsuccessful.

Never captive

On Thursday afternoon, women fighters were lined up on a dirt berm, their weapons pointed at the front line with Islamic State about 700 meters away.

A woman walked by with a sniper rifle strapped to her shoulder. Nearby were a row of captured homemade Islamic State rockets fitted with propane tanks.

Knowing the atrocities Islamic State has carried out against women, Nasrallahpour said the female fighters had made a pact never to allow themselves to be taken captive.

"We always have a bullet ready to use on ourselves in case we are about to be taken prisoner," she said, rolling a Kalashnikov round between her thumb and forefinger.

She and others hope they can get their hands on Islamic State militants.

"We will tear them apart. When they have killed our babies in the womb, why should we show them mercy?" said Nasrallapour.

Fighters say they are treated equally by male comrades.

"We are 100 percent equals. We are proud of the women fighters," said Hajir Bahmani, 27, a male commander.

Female fighters go through six weeks of training that includes target practice and learning how to be a sniper.

"Along with defending our Kurdish land, we are also fighting for women's rights. Like a man, I can fight in the mountains and the desert," said Nasrallahpour.

Breaking stereotypes like keeping women in the kitchen is something the fighters take pride in.

"Here the men cook for us," said Nasrallahpour.
At least 10 bodies were recovered Saturday from a rubber dinghy off the Libyan coast, the Italian coast guard said.

Fifteen operations were conducted during the day, rescuing 2,100 migrants  almost twice as many as Friday, when 1,200 people were rescued.

Another 420 migrants, including seven pregnant women and 78 minors, had been rescued earlier and were brought ashore Saturday at the port of Trapani in Sicily.

Beppe Galea Mallia, chief officer on MOAS (Migrant Off-Shore Aid Station) ship Phoenix Italian, said those migrants were rescued off the coast of Libya in three operations Thursday.

Mallia said no one was in serious medical condition, with the exception of two individuals with broken legs, a couple of cases of scabies and seasickness.

According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, 153,632 migrants have arrived in Europe via the central Mediterranean route this year as of October 24, but thousands have died in the attempt.
When American writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau visited Cape Cod back in the 1800s, he was completely captivated by its rugged beauty and abundant wildlife. He wrote, A man may stand there and put all America behind him."

Today, millions of people visit the hook-shaped peninsula that extends 97 kilometers into the Atlantic Ocean from the coast of Massachusetts.

They come to enjoy the pristine beaches, sand dunes, marshes, ponds, and the many plant and animals species that live in and out of the water.

The Great Outer Beach that so mesmerized Thoreau and other writers is now part of the National Park Service's Cape Cod National Seashore. Located on the outer portion of the Cape, the 180-square-kilometer area encompasses a rich mosaic of marine, estuarine, fresh water and terrestrial ecosystems.

It's no wonder national parks traveler Mikah Meyer decided to spend some time there recently.

A world apart

Mikah, who's on a mission to visit all of the more than 400 sites within the U.S. National Park Service, visited the area after his recent trip to the historic city of Boston, noting that the contrast couldnt be starker.



I completely understand now why it's kind of Boston's retreat. Living on the east coast in D.C. we have Rehoboth Beach, in New York they have Fire Island National Seashore and so Cape Cod National Seashore is like Boston's equivalent 'escape of urbanity'  so while its just a one-hour ferry ride away, you feel like you're in a completely different zone.

Mikah and his travel companion Andy Waldron drove through the charming seaside towns, soaking up the diverse scenery around them.

Because we had a vehicle, we were able to drive along the whole cape, he said. You get to drive along this thin sandbar, with beaches, marshes, and lakes that are in this sandbar. Youve got grass growing under the sand, which is incredible that it still exists because it's basically just sand.

The young men also had a chance to park their van and walk on the sandy trails that cover the dunes on the almost 65-kilometer stretch of beach. It was an exhilarating experience for them both.

A watery world

In addition to diverse plant species, Cape Cod is also home to more than 450 species of amphibians, reptiles, fish, birds and mammals, and a myriad of invertebrates depend on the diversity of upland, wetland, and coastal ecosystems found at Cape Cod National Seashore.

Whales can often be spotted spouting off in the far distance, while grey and harbor seals swim and feed in the ocean closer in. Their growing population in Cape Cods waters has been attracting another species, great white sharks, which have been cruising off-shore in increasing numbers.

Mikah and Andy were walking on a trail high in the dunes when they spotted a few dark shapes in the ocean below. They thought it was logs floating in the water but then realized it was some kind of sea creature.

So we ran down the dunes and we got really close and it was two to three different seals that were just popping their heads up, Mikah recalled. We saw like five or six different ones throughout the course of just 30 minutes standing there.

We had heard from The Visitor Center that there might be whales, but the seals were just completely unexpected and were the surprise that came out of nowhere, Mikah added. So I think that made it extra special.

A quiet refuge

Mikah said he could see why this picturesque peninsula attracts locals as well as out-of-towners.

Just the seals and the whales that we saw spouting right off the coast, and then the amazing colors of the grass and the marshlands and the trees changing colorsit was a totally different world, having just been in Boston where we were freaking out every moment about where we were driving in traffic and noise -- it was a complete juxtaposition.

Mikah and Andy spent their last evening on Cape Cod watching a glorious sun setting over the water.

No noise or traffic there. Just a quiet refuge where they enjoyed a few peaceful moments before continuing on their epic journey.

Follow Mikah

To learn more about his Cape Cod experience and the many other sites he visited during his trip to Massachusetts, Mikah invites readers to visit his website.
Nigerian army officials say government troops have rescued one of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram Islamic extremists more than two years ago.

A military spokesman said Saturday the girl was found late Friday in Pulka, in Borno State, by troops who were screening escapees from Boko Haram's base in the Sambisa forest. The spokesman said the girl was found carrying a baby boy.

The Nigerian government secured the release of 21 of the Chibok schoolgirls last month, the first such release negotiated with Boko Haram. Another girl escaped captivity in May.

Some 276 girls were abducted from a school in northeastern Chibok town in April 2014. Dozens quickly escaped. The government has vowed to secure the release of the nearly 200 girls who remain captive.
President Barack Obama shortened the sentences of 72 convicts serving time in prison for nonviolent drug offenses, the White House said Friday.

Obama has been commuting prisoners' sentences since 2014 as part of his long-standing effort to reform the U.S. criminal justice system. To date he has shortened the sentences of 944 convicts, including 324 who had been sentenced to life terms.

"Our nation is a nation of second chances," White House counsel Neil Eggleston said in a statement explaining the president's action, "where mistakes from the past will not deprive deserving individuals of the opportunity to rejoin society and contribute to their families and communities."

Obama is expected to issue further commutations periodically during his remaining time in office, which will end on January 20 when a new president is sworn in.

The commutation program Obama launched two years ago is the most far-reaching in more than 40 years. He has shortened the sentences of more prisoners than the combined total of such actions by his 11 most recent predecessors in the White House.

Many of the convicts affected by the presidential orders had been convicted of offenses involving crack cocaine, which for years has been punished by more stringent penalties than those handed down to those convicted of using or dealing in powder cocaine. The two substances are molecularly similar, and critics contend the disparity in criminal codes has effectively discriminated against minority communities.

All of the prisoners whose sentences Obama has reduced were obliged to complete curriculums designed to prepare them to re-enter society, such as education certificates, vocational educational programs and substance-abuse programs.
The opposition-run Syrian news agency Thiqa posted a video online Saturday purported to show a missile falling on Darat Izza, a town in northwestern Aleppo province.

The footage showed a huge explosion and large plume of smoke rising over the town.



Russian and government forces continued to bomb rebel positions in the western part of the Aleppo province, Syrian activists said.



According to the Syrian Civil Defense, at least three people were killed and 15 others were injured in the airstrike.



Meanwhile, a temporary Russian halt on airstrikes on rebel-held parts of Aleppo expired.



Although Russian and Syrian officials called for the evacuation, local reports say none of the area's estimated 275,000 residents left the territory.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Saturday that at least 74 civilians, including 25 children, were killed in the 8-day offensive launched by Syrian opposition fighters against the western edge of the government-held part of Aleppo city.

The Syrian military said 80 people were killed in the first three days of the rebel offensive.

It was not immediately possible to reconcile the discrepancy in casualty figures.
Editors note: The State Journal asked Donald Trumps campaign for a column by Trump making his case for the presidency to Wisconsin voters. The campaign sent this column by Mike Pence, his running mate.

In the closing stages of this campaign, Donald Trump has presented a Contract With the American Voter that will rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, secure our porous borders, repeal and replace Obamacare, and finally get our economy growing again.

As Hillary Clinton faces more questions about her integrity as a candidate, I couldnt be more proud to run with Donald Trump on the issues facing the American people. Our comprehensive plan of tax, trade, regulatory, energy and health care reforms is just the right medicine to restore American strength and prosperity.

Our opponents in this race want you to believe that our economy is as strong as it can be, that taxing businesses is the only way to build new infrastructure, that Hillary Clintons dream of an open border is shared by all of us, and that Obamacare is a work-in-progress rather than in total collapse. The people of American know different. Donald Trump and I know different.

To start, we are going to cut taxes for families and employers like I have as Indianas governor. Lower business taxes will incentivize our corporations to build their factories and products in states such as Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Ohio rather than in China, Mexico and Vietnam. Lower personal income taxes will create more consumption, savings and investment and create more jobs and growth.

We are going to dramatically reduce Americas regulatory burden  an astonishing $2 trillion annual hidden tax of almost $15,000 on every American household. On day one, we will impose a regulation moratorium and order every government agency to eliminate wasteful regulations. This streamlining, in the tradition of Ronald Reagan, will make our businesses more competitive globally and deliver cheaper products to our door.

Donald Trump and I also will squarely address this nations severe infrastructure gap. Our American Infrastructure Act will transform Americas crumbling infrastructure into a golden opportunity for accelerated growth. This $1 trillion revenue-neutral plan will create thousands of jobs in construction, steel, manufacturing and other sectors to build the transportation, water, telecommunications and energy infrastructures we need to spur economic development.

We will lift restrictions on access to job-producing American energy reserves and allow vital energy infrastructure projects to move forward  invigorating job growth in energy-producing states from Colorado, the Dakotas, Iowa, Texas and Wyoming to Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Lower energy and electricity costs will make our companies more competitive and boost the purchasing power of Americas consumers  spurring yet more job and economic growth.

Even as Obamacare is imploding, insurance premiums are exploding  up by 116 percent in Arizona, 53 percent in Pennsylvania, and 40 percent in North Carolina alone. Over a million Americans in 33 states are going to lose their plans in 2017. While Hillary Clinton wants to double down on this disaster, we will replace it with a truly affordable system based on more competition and choice.

Finally, Donald Trump and I will usher in a new era in trade policy with our End the Offshoring Act. We will simultaneously crack down on the trade cheaters and renegotiate every bad trade deal Bill and Hillary Clinton have gotten us into  from 1993s NAFTA and Chinas 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization to the 2012 South Korea deal, which has devastated the U.S. auto industry.

The damage being done in communities across our nation is not because of trade itself but because of politicians in Washington, D.C. poorly negotiating trade deals.

Our Contract With the American Voter offers the American people a clear choice. To make America great again, our plan is to grow the nations economy and get government off the backs of hardworking Americans. Clintons plan is to grow government. We ask for your support on Nov. 8. We wont let you down.
Provincial authorities in Pakistan have decided on humanitarian grounds not to deport the green-eyed Afghan woman globally known as the Afghan Girl for her appearance on a 1985 National Geographic cover.

The announcement Saturday came a day after a court in Peshawar, capital of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, found 46-year-old Shartbat Gula guilty of fraudulently obtaining Pakistani citizenship identity and ordered authorities to deport her on Monday.

The Afghan woman was taken into custody about two weeks ago and was later hospitalized because of suffering from Hepatitis C.

On Friday, Gula appeared in the court and pleaded guilty to charges of falsifying documents and staying illegally in Pakistan.

The judge sentenced her to 15 days in prison coupled with a financial penalty of around $1,100. He took into account her 11 days in detention, meaning she would be freed and deported on Monday.

Keeping in view her medical situation that she is suffering with Hepatitis C and she has minor siblings, three daughters and one son, the court took a very lenient view, defense counsel, Mubashar Nazar told VOA after Fridays court proceedings.

Provincial minister Shaukat Yousafazai said Saturday the government decided to seek a review of the deportation orders purely on humanitarian grounds to enable Gula to receive further medical treatment in the country.

Gulas striking green eyes in her famous 1985 National Geographic cover photo, published when she was 12, became a symbol of the turmoil facing Afghanistan at a time when millions of Afghans were forced to take refuge in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. Photographer Steve McCurry, who took the original photo of Gula, found her again in 2002 in a remote Afghan village, and took her portrait again for another magazine cover.

Speaking to reporters on her hospital bed, the Afghan woman told reporters she has not been back to Afghanistan for 13 years.
On Tuesday, U.S. voters head to the polls to elect a new president. The choice between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump is emblematic of a political polarization that has been building for decades and is not likely to ease no matter who is elected. VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.
A U.S. jury has decided against Rolling Stone magazine in a defamation case regarding a discredited story about a gang rape at the University of Virginia.

Court documents say the jury in Charlottesville, Virginia, ruled in favor of Nicole Eramo, a school official who was accused of indifference in the 2014 magazine article "A Rape on Campus."

The jury said the magazine and the reporter on the story, Sabrina Erdely, were liable for defamation, with damages to be assessed later. Eramo has asked for $7.5 million in damages.

"The jury's verdict is a complete vindication of Nicole Eramo and a complete repudiation of Rolling Stone's and Ms. Erdely's false and defamatory article," Eramo's lawyer Libby Locke said. "We are looking forward to the damages phase of the trial."

Rolling Stone responded to the verdict with statement acknowledging "journalistic mistakes" in an attempt to present a complicated issue from a survivor's perspective.

The lawsuit accused Rolling Stone of recklessly and willfully disregarding the facts.

No evidence of rape

The story published in November 2014 alleged that a group of fraternity members gang-raped a female student, identified in the story as "Jackie." The story sparked outrage across the nation, and UVA suspended all fraternities on campus in response.

But over the weeks following the publication of the story, the claims were questioned and local police found no evidence that the rape had occurred.

Eramo said she had been portrayed as "the villain of the story." The article described her as having discouraged the victim from taking the case to the police.

The jury also found that the reporter had not followed journalistic procedure because she had not sought comment from the men identified as the attackers.

Story a "journalistic failure"

A Columbia University investigation of the story resulted in a report calling "A Rape on Campus" a "journalistic failure."

Rolling Stone issued a retraction of the story in April 2015, soon after the Columbia University report.

In addition to the Eramo lawsuit, Rolling Stone faces a separate $25 million lawsuit brought by Phi Kappa Psi, the fraternity implicated in the story. The trial is set to begin next year.
United Nations sanctions monitors warned in an annual report released Friday that possible foreign support for a new military base and seaport in Eritrea and the presence of foreign weapons and equipment were likely in violation of an arms embargo.

The monitors told the U.N. Security Council last year that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had established a military presence in Eritrea as part of the Saudi-led campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen, which lies just 40 km (25 miles) across the Red Sea from the poor Horn of Africa nation.

They said the use of Eritreas land, waters and airspace by other countries to conduct military operations in a third state was not a sanctions violation, but warned that compensation diverted directly or indirectly towards activities that threatened peace and security in the region, or for the benefit of the Eritrean military, would constitute a violation.

Evidence of construction

In the past year the U.N. monitors collected evidence, including the construction of a new military base at Assab airport and a new seaport next to it, indicating there may have been external support for infrastructure development that could benefit the Eritrean military.

The monitors said they have also documented the presence in Eritrea whether for training or transit, of armed personnel and related military and naval equipment of various member states other than Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The U.N. sanctions monitors determined the current terms of the U.N. arms embargo do not allow for such activities and recommended that the Security Council provide advice to U.N. states on compliance with the embargo.

They said it could be reasonably determined that foreign support for the construction of permanent military installations in Eritrea constitutes the provision of technical assistance, training, financial and other assistance to military activities, which is banned under the arms embargo.

The Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates missions to the United Nations were not immediately available to comment on the report by the U.N. sanctions monitors.

Eritreas Foreign Minister Osman Saleh Mohammed told Reuters earlier this year that the United Arab Emirates now uses Eritrean logistical facilities.

The UAE has also trained 4,000 Yemeni fighters in Assab, Eritrea.

The U.N. sanctions on Eritrea were mainly imposed following accusations it backed Somalias Islamist al Shabaab militants, a charge Asmara denies. The U.N. monitors said in the latest report that they had, for the third year in a row, not found any firm evidence of such support.

Eritrea has refused to engage with the U.N. monitors, and they have been unable to visit the country.


Lawyers for Chelsea Manning say the imprisoned transgender U.S. soldier attempted suicide for the second time last month.

Manning was in solitary confinement when she tried to kill herself. She had been placed there after her first suicide attempt in July.

After her July suicide attempt, I watched her begin to piece her life and spirit back together only to have that shattered by the disciplinary proceedings brought against her and then the unannounced initiation of her term of punishment last month, said Chase Strangio, one of Mannings lawyers. She has repeatedly been punished for trying to survive and now is being repeatedly punished for trying to die.

Manning was previously known as Bradley. She was sentenced to 35 years in prison in a case involving a huge security breech.

A U.S. military judge sentenced the former Army intelligence analyst to the lengthy prison term after earlier convicting her of passing more than 700,000 classified documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

The documents included U.S. State Department diplomatic cables and battlefield reports from Iraq and Afghanistan.

During her 12-week trial, her defense lawyers said she leaked the documents in part because of the gender identity crisis she was experiencing a time when the U.S. military expelled personnel who openly identified as gay. The policy has since been changed.

Manning staged a hunger strike for several days in September until the Army agreed to provide surgery to treat her gender dysphoria.
Four months after fighting broke out in South Sudan's capital, Juba, the United Nations Mine Action Service says that it is still working to clear explosive hazards around the city and that the situation in the rest of the country remains critical.

UNMAS, which is tasked with coordinating the clearance of explosive remnants of war (ERW), says it has found on average about 150 new explosive hazards each month in South Sudan since conflict there erupted in December 2013.



A hazard, says UNMAS, can be a small stockpile of grenades, bullets that soldiers have left behind, or a minefield covering millions of square feet. However, landmines actually represent less than half of the known hazardous areas in South Sudan



Kelly McAulay, an UNMAS program officer in Juba, said a majority of the accidents in South Sudan involving explosive hazards are from unexploded ordnance, or UXOs, including grenades or mortars.

No evidence of new landmines

Such accidents disproportionately impact men, specifically young men and boys. Still, the number of victims of such accidents is generally low in South Sudan - approximately 50 per year.



UNMAS keeps a running total of explosive hazards in its information management system for mine action.



"Currently we have got about 750 hazards recorded in that database," said McAulay. She added there is no evidence new landmines have been planted since December 2013, when a political rivalry between South Sudan President Salva Kiir and former First Vice President Riek Machar triggered fighting in Juba that eventually spread across the country.



McAulay said the largest impact mines and UXOs have in South Sudan is preventing the local population from accessing services they desperately need, like water wells, schools or clinics.



"As we know, water is a very scarce resource in many parts of South Sudan and sometimes that can be a strategic target for people who are laying either mines or UXOs," said McAulay.

Ceasefire declared in July

UNMAS said it is aware of 330 hazardous areas in Central Equatoria alone. Equatoria region and Jonglei state are most heavily impacted by explosive hazards.



"Toward the south of the country and around the Equatoria region, that is where we find these really tricky minefields that are very time intensive and cost intensive to clear," said McAulay.



The warring parties in South Sudan declared a ceasefire in July, after fighting erupted near the presidential compound and spread to other parts of the capital. After the ceasefire went into effect, UNMAS received dozens of calls from worried Juba residents who thought there might be lingering unexploded ordnance.



One of those calls was from Lucy Andur, Head Mistress of Greenhill Primary School in Juba's Gudele residential area, which was caught in the middle of fighting. The next day, UNMAS deployed a team to the school, where it found explosive damage and residual hazards such as bullets.

120 schools surveyed, cleared

After working for two weeks, the team found 30 explosive hazards, including one rocket propelled grenade, which UNMAS said can be fragile and sensitive once it's been fired.



"Immediately, when [UNMAS] completed [its work] on the 18th [of August], our children reported to the school," said Andur.



Since January 2015, UNMAS has surveyed and cleared 120 schools in South Sudan, including 21 schools in Leer and Mayendit counties that were caught in cross-fire or occupied by armed actors. Explosive hazards must be removed from an estimated 300 other schools so that children can safely return.



McAulay said UNMAS is prioritizing schools, clinics and Protection of Civilians (PoC) sites. Still, due to limited resources, South Sudan's needs in the area of ERW clearance are increasingly difficult to meet.

More hazards are being found

The more UNMAS staff moves around the country clearing land and declaring it safe, she said, the more hazards they are finding.



"There is still a large part of the country which we haven't yet surveyed and haven't yet thoroughly accessed," said McAulay. She cited Jonglei state, which is largely inaccessible, especially during the rainy season, as well as Upper Nile state; and the northern border region.



"We have largely been unable to access because of political sensitivities and the ongoing conflict," she said.

UNMAS, said McAulay, prioritizes the removal of "urgent critical hazards when they are blocking children from accessing school, when they are around a health clinic, if the hazards are on an airstrip so urgent medical facilities cannot be flown in."



She added that South Sudan residents who come across an item they suspect to be a landmine or UXO should remain at a safe distance and refrain from touching or approaching the object.



Suspicious items, said McAulay, should be reported to the South Sudan Mine Action hotline (+211 92 000 1055).
A car bomb attack near the parliament building in Somalia's capital Mogadishu killed at least three people and wounded six others on Saturday, a security official and witnesses said.

"A car bomb rammed into a security checkpoint close to the parliament house. There are casualties both death and injuries, but I cannot give you a specific number now as an emergency operation to assist the wounded and secure the area is underway," Abdifitah Omar Halane, a spokesman for the Mogadishu regional administration told VOA.

But Aden Mohamed Hassan, a police officer who was among the first responders, said he saw the dead bodies of two soldiers, a suspected suicide bomber and at least six wounded government soldiers.

The suicide bomber was apparently targeting a security convoy which returned from a routine city night patrol, Hassan said.

The attack comes as the first members of the Somalias upcoming national parliament were elected in Garowe, the provincial capital of Puntland.

No group has immediately claimed the responsibility of the attack, but it has the hallmarks of al-Shabab, al-Qaida affiliated group.

Al-Shabab was pushed out of Mogadishu by African Union peacekeeping forces in 2011 but has remained a potent antagonist in Somalia, launching frequent suicide attacks on hotels, restaurants, government buildings and African union troops.
In 20 years of teaching civics, Javaughn Perkins has never encountered a presidential race quite so fraught with educational hazards as the one now entering its final lap.

Among the pitfalls: racial and ethnic slurs, anti-Muslim talk, fat-shaming and name calling.

"A lot of the rhetoric, a lot of the ads that are out there tend to be focused in on issues that, as an instructor, I would not consider good for general conversation," says Perkins, in his classroom at the minority-majority George Washington Middle School in this suburb of Washington, D.C.

"I teach eighth-graders, who are image conscious," Perkins adds.

Some of them are taking the rhetoric personally. One student confided to Perkins that he was turned off when Trump, moving his arms spastically, seemingly mocked a reporter with a disability. The student is also disabled.

With students of all colors, creeds, ethnicities and sizes in his class, Perkins has tried to sidestep "all of the stuff that doesnt matter: sensationalism of the candidates, the sound bites. What you really want to be teaching the kids is how to critically examine the issues."

In classrooms across the country, the presidential race is yielding disparate lessons. Some teachers have complained of a campaign "eliciting fear and anxiety among children of color, immigrants and Muslims" and giving license to crude language and threatening behavior, the rights group Southern Poverty Law Center said in a report it titled "The Trump Effect, singling out Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

But educators also have found fertile new ground for civics exploration.

Perkins, for instance, is teaching about a historic first: a major political party has chosen a female nominee, Democrat Hillary Clinton. Hes also had students look at eligibility requirements for the presidency.

The research "gave us an opportunity to discuss what are some of the other expectations [for] our presidential candidates. Weve looked at who has a law background, who has a political background," Perkins says. His students wondered whether the Constitution should be amended to require government experience.

Limited real-time learning opportunities

Because of the four-year U.S. presidential election cycle, teachers "have only about four opportunities at best while a child is in school, so they dont want to miss this opportunity to teach the civics," says Stephanie Smith, an editorial director for Scholastic News, a national news and current events publication for students.

"We teach the civics, not the circus, Smith emphasizes. And if we need to get into the circus for kids who are a little bit older, we put it precisely on [their] level. And we make sure its accurate and balanced."

Scholastics teacher advisers, representing varied grade levels and communities, encourage tackling even difficult subjects. So, in covering the final presidential debate for fifth- and sixth-grade readers, Scholastic noted Trumps apology for an 11-year-old video recording in which he "makes many highly offensive remarks about women. It also cited the maelstrom over Clintons "handling of top-secret emails while she served as secretary of state," reporting that, "though the FBI determined that Clinton had broken no laws, it still called her behavior extremely careless."

In past elections, "weve focused on education or the environment  issues that were bigger and that kids can connect with," Smith says. This time out, the publication has given more space to exploring, say, national security or immigration.

"We take care to say, In this country, there are 50 million people who are immigrants, and 11 million of them are undocumented,'" Smith explains. " We do very much care about the kids reading this who are immigrants or who are Muslim, not wanting to make them feel singled out.  Well alleviate fear and dispel some of the nasty rumors out there."

Homework for teachers

Jeremy Clabough, a University of Alabama assistant professor of social science education, once taught middle and high school civics and now trains others to do so.

"With this presidential election, with so many statements being thrown around, its important that teachers are spending more time doing their homework to get accurate information  giving an objective standpoint and setting up activities to let students reach their own classrooms," says Clabough, who's working on a book for the Association for Middle Level Education.

He talks about empowering students, going beyond rote memorization to "take information and process it and analyze it and then take civic action." That could mean volunteering for a campaign or attending town hall meetings or asking how to improve the community through public policies, he says. "Its about analyzing positions."

Critiquing political ads

One recent afternoon back in Perkins classroom, nearly two dozen students cluster in small groups that hes given inspirational labels such as Team Creativity and Team Honor. Their mission: to analyze the propaganda in political messages.

Perkins dips into an online archive of presidential campaign commercials from 1952.

One, from 1988, shows then-Vice President George H.W. Bush surrounded by his children and grandchildren, with a photo montage from his years in the military and public office. A 2000 ad for Republican nominee George W. Bush portrays him as a compassionate, conservative leader. A third, from 2008, has then-Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, talking about values he learned from his grandparents straight from the Kansas heartland.

When Perkins tells the class hes going to show ads from the current presidential race, a collective groan arises. "Oh, God, no!" one student exhales.

But they listen quietly as an attack ad shows Clinton saying "its wrong to pit people against each other. ... I believe we are always stronger together." A later ad excerpts a Clinton speech in which she calls some Trump supporters "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic." Theyre "deplorables."

An ad for Trump shows steel workers whove "seen the jobs they love shipped miles" away. A narrator intones that, with Americas steel and American workers, "were going to make America great again for everyone."

Perkins asks students to compare the ads from past and present.

The older ones are "more positive and talking about all the good things" a candidate has "been doing and how hes just so pure. ... Nowadays, its more like, you know, Hes a pig,'" Alexandra Mkrtchyan says.

A male classmate observes a technical difference: "The video quality in the 80s looks terrible."

But the earlier ads also have a different tenor. "In the '80s and '90s ones," another classmate says, "they were sort of more professional and [more current ones] are childish."

"Theyre just bickering during the debate and its, like, not really saying anything," a classmate adds.

Arming with knowledge

After class, the teacher talks about the difficulty of getting adolescents to go beyond emotional responses to the candidates. Its "hard for an eighth-grader to weed through all of that," he says.

Honors student Jonathan Zelaya, while waiting for a bus after school, credits Perkins class with giving him newfound knowledge and a sense of belonging.

Born in the United States to parents from Honduras and El Salvador, Jonathan has wavy dark hair and light brown skin. "Because of what I look like, a bunch of guys are coming up to tell me whats going to happen to me" if Trump is elected, the 13-year-old acknowledges.

But civics class "is helping me learn what happened in the past" on issues such as U.S. immigration policy, Jonathan says. One of the first lessons he learned was that his U.S. birth automatically made him a citizen.

Perkins says he emphasizes the "current, real-world applications" of civics education.

"When students leave my class, I want them to have a sense of the world being bigger than them  and of their responsibility, when they see something that needs to be addressed, to have the empathy and also the skill set to address it."
Turkish police used water cannon and tear gas on hundreds of protesters Saturday in Istanbul to disrupt a march in support of an opposition newspaper whose staff had earlier been arrested as part of a government crackdown.

The protest erupted hours after Turkish authorities ordered nine executives and journalists from the opposition secularist Cumhuriyet newspaper held for trial.

Prosecutors linked the arrests to the newspaper's alleged support for a fugitive cleric suspected of orchestrating a failed coup attempt in July, and for its alleged links to Kurdish militants battling the Ankara government for an autonomous homeland in Turkey's southeast.

Cumhuriyet is one of few opposition newspapers in Turkey still critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who launched a massive crackdown leading to the arrests of more than 100,000 people  including teachers, journalists, police and judges  since the July 15 coup attempt.

The crackdown has sparked widespread human rights concerns among Turkey's Western allies  concerns that mounted Friday when Turkish police detained a dozen lawmakers of the pro-Kurdish HDP (the Peoples' Democratic Party), the country's third-largest political party.

Among those arrested were HDP co-leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag. The HDP lawmakers were taken into custody after failing to respond to summonses by prosecutors asking them to testify in a terrorism propaganda case, according to a statement issued by a government office.

Hours after that roundup, a car bomb killed nine people and wounded more than 100 others near a police station in the southeastern Turkish city Diyarbakir, where some of the lawmakers were being held.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Kurdish militants were responsible for the bombing, and that one suspected member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) was killed in the blast. However, later Friday, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Turkey has been under emergency rule since the failed July coup. There has been a widening crackdown on dissent by Erdogan, who blames the attempted overthrow of his government on Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric who lives in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania.

The government in Ankara has repeatedly called for the United States to extradite Gulen and warns that failure to do so will cause great harm to relations between the two countries.
Italy's foreign ministry says two Italians and a Canadian citizen who were kidnapped in Libya have been freed and returned to Italy.

The ministry says the three men were "liberated" in southern Libya during the night and brought early Saturday on a special flight to Italy.

The ministry provide no other details of their release.

The men were kidnapped on September 19 in Ghat by a group of armed men who blocked their vehicle. The men were technicians with an Italian company, Conicos, which is doing construction work at a Libya airport.
I am Kerry Burgess. This is what I think.
The United States military says this week's deadly clashes with Taliban insurgents in northern Afghanistan "very likely" harmed civilians.

Thursday's pre-dawn joint counterinsurgency air strikes near the northern city of Kunduz killed at least 33 civilians, half of them children, provincial authorities said Saturday.

Two U.S. soldiers and several Afghan commando forces were killed before airstrikes were called, but the U.S. military until now had not spoken about possible collateral damage.

"An initial investigation has determined that efforts near Kunduz on November 3 to defend Afghan National Defense and Security Forces likely resulted in civilian casualties," U.S. military spokesman Brigadier General Charles Cleveland said at a news conference in Kabul.

He backed Afghan officials' assertions that U.S. forces had advised their local partners to undertake the operation in the Boz village to deter Taliban insurgents who were planning additional attacks in Kunduz city. Cleveland said the operation had eliminated several top Taliban commanders.

He promised the U.S. military, with the help of Afghan officials, would work to further investigate and determine the facts related to this event.

The spokesman defended the action, saying "every aspect" of this was clearly aimed at protecting the people of Kunduz.

"But every indication that we have right now is that the Taliban were firing on these friendly forces and every part of this was to defend those friendly forces," he said. "And what we know is that we have had Afghans who have been martyred, we have had Afghan soldiers who were wounded, and we have had American soldiers who were killed and American soldiers who were wounded."

General John Nicholson, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, deeply regrets the loss of innocent lives, regardless of the circumstances, Cleveland said.

The civilian casualties have outraged residents in Kunduz, and they have staged street protests against it. Senior Afghan politicians, including ex-President Hamid Karzai, also criticized the U.S. military for causing the collateral damage.

Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri, while addressing the same news conference, said the joint raid targeted senior Taliban leaders while they were conducting a war meeting.

Both Waziri and Cleveland condemned the Islamist insurgents for using their families as human shields during such activities.

"They conduct meetings in their own houses so if there are civilian casualties they can use it to say the government killed civilians," Waziri said, adding there were women and children of Taliban families among the dead.

But he would not discuss exact figures, nor did he confirm the 33 civilian deaths, saying investigations into the incident were continuing.

The Taliban has confirmed that three of its fighters were killed, but it has not immediately responded to allegations of using members' families as human shields.

The insurgents briefly captured Kunduz about one year ago.

The U.S. military, while conducting airstrikes in support of Afghan forces to evict the Taliban from the city at the time, mistakenly struck a hospital run by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym of MSF. The facility was destroyed, and more than 40 people were killed. Mainly, MSF doctors, staff, patients and their attendants were among the victims.
Vatican-convened talks between Venezuela's government and opposition are the last, best chance to find a peaceful solution to the country's political impasse, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Tom Shannon said on Friday.

In his first remarks since visiting Caracas on Monday, Shannon said Washington would support the talks "as long as it remains viable."

"From our point of view [the dialogue] really is the last best effort to try to find a negotiated, peaceful solution to this," he told reporters. "Absent this dialogue process, Venezuela will find itself in a state in which both the government and the opposition will have to measure themselves through their ability to put people on to the streets."

He said that this kind of mobilization would be "unpredictable and can be very dangerous."

Shannon traveled to Caracas on Oct. 31, a day after initial talks led by the Vatican. He has spearheaded efforts by the Obama administration to ease tensions with Venezuela, which often accuses Washington of trying to topple President Nicolas Maduro's government.

Maduro's adversaries accuse him of creating a dictatorship by blocking a recall referendum on his rule and of illegally overriding the legislature, which was taken over by the opposition in a landslide election last year.

The opposition insists the government allow the referendum, release dozens of jailed opposition activists and respect congressional decisions.

There is no indication Maduro will agree to any of the opposition's demands, and in a speech on Thursday he criticized their timetable and urged patience.

"It is a fragile but very important process, and it's a good faith effort to find a peaceful way out of the political impasse that has crippled Venezuela," said Shannon, who described the negotiations as "the only game in town."

The Vatican, which was instrumental in restoring relations between the United States and Cuba last year, faces a difficult situation in Venezuela, given the few signs of agreement between Maduro and the opposition.

Shannon described the initial meeting as "a huge step" but said the opposition wanted more gestures from the government ahead of the next round of talks on Nov. 11. This included a significant release of political prisoners, he added.

"How the issue of prisoners is dealt with is obviously going to be key to the success of this process going forward," he said, adding that the sides would try to agree on an electoral agenda.
Daesh were in the road, they reached the road between the two villages just down there, then they retreated, maybe two or three of their pick-ups reached there and then they went back to Bashiqa city, says head monk Yousif Ibrahim, one of the Assyrian Orthodox priests and a guardian of the tomb of St. Matthew, or Mor Mattai, a 4th century monk revered as a saint in Syriac Christian churches.

It was the will of our God to protect the monastery from the Islamic State terror group, says the 42-year-old monk, who was born in Mosul, 20 kilometers away and which can be seen from the monastery, the oldest in Iraq, from its perch on the side of the rugged Mount Alfaf.

Columns of black and white smoke are pluming from the city, especially from two of its eastern neighborhoods, which Iraqi elite forces this week managed to overrun after fierce fighting.

The monastery was founded in 363 by the hermit Mor Mattai after he fled persecution in Amid, now modern Diyarbakr, under the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate. Pilgrims have traditionally come to the monastery in search of divine help. Some sleep in the room housing the tomb or near by, hoping the saint will cure an illness or bless them with a longed-for child.

For two years  from August 2014 when IS militants seized Mosul and swept across Iraqs Nineveh plains  the seven monks of St. Matthews monastery refused to leave and were protected by a small detachment of Kurdish peshmerga fighters.

Four kilometers of windy road separated Daesh from the sandy-colored walls of the monastery, which houses not only the tomb of the Mor Mattai but also a library of ancient Christian manuscripts. Many precious relics, including the saints bones, were transported for safe-keeping to the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, Irbil, an hours drive away.

Even so, IS would have had a field day, no doubt, in wrecking the monastery, making it yet another victim of the relentless destruction of heritage and religious sites the terrorist group considers heretical. In Mosul, the militants reduced to rubble last year the 1,400-year-old St Elijah monastery, where the Greek letters chi and rho, representing the first two letters of Christs name, were carved at the entrance.

We have been waiting for two years for the Nineveh plains to be liberated, says Yousif. But even when the plains have been cleared of IS militants, the head monk fears what will happen next.

Like most Christians VOA has interviewed in the last week, Yousif remains pessimistic about the future of Christianity in Iraq. Our people are looking for a guarantee for the tragedy not to be repeated  you have to understand that our problems predate Daesh, says Yousif.

When visiting Mosul even before Daesh I wouldnt wear my religious clothes, says the bearded monk, who, when he isnt talking about dark things, has an infectious laugh. He points to the killing of Christians in 2006 in Mosul in a wave of sectarian violence that took also the life of his older brother. Much of the fury powering that episode of Sunni Muslim violence was in reaction to Pope Benedict XVIs public reflections on Islam during a tour in Germany  when he quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor as calling Islam evil and inhuman.

Among other Christian victims, a Syriac Orthodox Church priest was beheaded. Yousif reflects sadly on what he sees as a long war by Muslim militants to empty Iraq and Syria of Christians. Every period we have a different name  Taliban, al-Qaida, ISIS. Now they are talking about a new group emerging, and every generation they become crueler. Everyone knows what is happening but there is no will by the international community to defend Christianity, he argues.

Since the second century and the origins of Christianity in the Nineveh plains of northern Iraq, Christians have been unfortunate in their neighbors, suffering attacks and massacres at the hands of Persians, Muslims and even, long ago, Kurds. And if geography is destiny, then it is surprising Christians are still here, but for how much longer they arent sure.

Iraqi battlefield success against the Islamic State terror group doesnt mean the sectarianism of the past will be exorcised. Many people here argue an even messier war could succeed this one, with Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds and Christians battling each other in a series of micro-conflicts.

In the once down-at-heel and now wrecked Christian town of Bartilla, part of the monasterys diocese, the population halved in the years after Saddam Husseins ouster and before Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced his caliphate of fear.

Since the 1990s, hostility from the government of Saddam Husseinand, since his fall, sectarian killings and bombings and an increasingly aggressive Islamist political culturehave forced more than two-thirds of Iraqs Christian to flee overseas, to other countries in the region or Europe and the United States, slashing the population from 1.2 million to not much more than 200,000.

The Nineveh plains, the original Assyrian heartland, where many Christians speak Assyrian as their first language and Arabic their second, was experiencing an exodus despite Christian leaders earmarking the strip of land sandwiched between Mosul and Iraqi Kurdistan as a possible place of refuge when sectarian attacks in Basra and Baghdad mounted after the American-led invasion of Iraq.

Now they fear that a deal between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the central Iraqi authorities in Baghdad, an agreement they claim the U.S. has brokered, wont ease their plight  even though that is exactly what it is meant to do. The deal would see Christian majority territory being split between the KRG and Iraq. Many of the big towns, including Bartilla, would remain Iraqi under the plan and it would divide the diocese Yousif and his fellow monks oversee.

Christians fear that the Christian towns and villages that remain part of Iraq will be re-populated by Sunni Muslims  possibly imperiling those Christians who remain.

All week, Christians have been crowding a checkpoint on the Mosul-Irbil highway trying to get permission to visit their homes in Bartilla and other Christian towns, including Qaraqosh. Iraqi soldiers are not allowing most through, saying the towns are not safe yet. But noticeably some Kurdish Shiites have been allowed to pass.

They let others go through, fumes 58-year-old Sami. He arrived in northern Iraq from the southern Iraqi city of Basra last month. A wine-seller, he fled after a friend, another wine-seller and hotelier, was killed. He has a family home in Qaraqosh.

Like nearly all the Christians at the checkpoint, he says none of his family will settle back in the plains unless it forms part of a protectorate guaranteed by international powers or if it becomes part of the KRG.

Abdul, aged 70, agrees, nodding vigorously. No Christian has any life in Iraq, he laments. He left Baghdad and headed to family properties in the plains five years ago after he paid a ransom to kidnappers to free his son. An engineer, he built two houses and a shop in Qaraqosh. He knows they have been razed but wants to salvage personal possessions left.

Asked about the future, he responds bleakly, What can I do?. He adds: If there is any way for me to leave Iraq, I will. It is just impossible here.

On the other side of the checkpoint a lot of destruction awaits these Christians when they are eventually allowed to enter.

Bartilla, a town that dates back more than 1,000 years, is full of collapsed buildings, wrecked storefronts, charred cars. Glass and spent and live cartridges litter streets, theres unexploded ordnance too in the ruins. And in some areas groups of red flags planted by bomb-disposal teams to indicate mines and explosive devices.
The campaigns of U.S. presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are criss-crossing the country in key battleground states in an attempt to energize voters as they enter the final weekend of a grueling and divisive campaign.

Clinton, who is slightly ahead in national polls among likely voters, told supporters Friday in the swing state of Pennsylvania that Trumps history of insulting people did not start when he launched his presidential campaign.

He took out a full a page ad in 1987 to insult [Republican] President Reagan so he has been an equal opportunity insulter, Clinton said to cheering supporters in Pittsburgh.

Clinton will make other campaign stops Friday in the Midwestern states of Michigan and Ohio, where she will be joined by hip-hop mogul Jay Z and his wife and musical performer Beyonce.

Trump will attend campaign rallies Friday in the swing states of New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

A new poll, meanwhile, has found that a great majority of voters are "disgusted" with two presidential hopefuls but that does not appear to have discouraged millions from voting before Election Day.

A New York Times/CBS News Poll found that eighty percent of those surveyed felt the candidates' campaigns have left them repulsed. Yet, more than 36.5 million Americans have already voted early, according to the United States Elections Project.

"These are two individuals that evoke very passionate emotions on both sides," said Democratic political strategist Penny Lee. "They're both beloved within their own base and both despised by the other, so that has caused for some real polarization and very strong points of view," Lee added in an interview with VOA.

Vote for me!



David Almacy, a former White House staffer for former Republican President George W. Bush, told VOA the candidates still have some convincing to do in the waning days of the presidential campaign.

"I don't think anyone's minds are going to be changed between now and then for those who have decided they're voting on issues or political parties. I think for the undecideds in the middle, the challenge is determining between two unpopular candidates which one will actually be the better president."

Because of the strong divisiveness between Trump and Clinton, Almacy said the segment of the electorate who has remained silent about their political preferences are an untapped source of support for whomever can win them over.

Nevertheless, Almacy added: "I do think there is going to be a percentage of those who may not choose to vote because of their distaste for what we've seen over the past two years."

FBI scrutiny



As Clinton and Trump have tried to convince voters they are the right choice for the White House, they have had to endure scrutiny from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. FBI Director James Comey last week opening a new line of investigation into Clinton's improper use of a private email server when she was the country's top diplomat from 2009 to 2013.

The FBI has investigated possible links between Trump advisors and Russian financial figures. When investigating the hacking into Democratic emails, the FBI also looked into whether the cyber-attacks were attempts by Russians to influence the presidential election in Trump's favor.

None of the probes yielded any conclusive evidence that Trump is directly linked to the Russian government.

Lee, the Democratic strategist, said the FBI scrutiny is "is probably a wash" for both candidates.

"Where I do think it has perhaps dampened some enthusiasm is in the Senate races in the down ballot where you might see a little bit more ticket splitting," she said.
The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) on Saturday secured the release on free bail of Advance Musoki, a National University of Science and Technology (NUST) student graduate, who was arrested on Friday during the universitys graduation ceremony for allegedly protesting against President Robert Mugabes governments failure to create employment opportunities.

According to the (ZLHR), attorney Mehluli Dube secured Musokis release from police custody.

In a statement, the ZLHR said, The 23 year-old Musoki, allegedly stood up during the NUST graduation ceremony held on Friday 04 November 2016 and uttered the words mabasa ngaadzoke president (jobs should be available president) three times.

He was charged with committing criminal nuisance in contravention of Section 46 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act.

He is the fourth student to be arrested for demanding jobs from the president at a graduation ceremony.

Three graduating students at the University of Zimbabwe  Tonderai Dombo, Thembinkosi Rushwaya and Alexander Mukamba  protested in front of President Robert Mugabe recently demanding jobs saying the majority of college and university graduates are unemployed due to the current harsh economic situation in the country.

They told VOA Studio 7 soon after their release from police custody that they never they would never come out of the protest alive as the Zimbabwean government has been of late clamping down on protesters unhappy about lack of jobs, Mr. Mugabes leadership and several other issues.

At the same time, attorneys Marufu Mandevere and Kudzayi Erick Kadzere of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights have petitioned the High Court seeking an order compelling Speaker of Parliament of Zimbabwe Hon. Jacob Mudenda from ejecting Mutasa Central constituency legislator Trevor Trevor Saruwaka from attending Parliament business while wearing a jacket bearing the countrys national flag.

Saruwaka caused commotion in parliament recently when he attended a session wearing a jacket with Zimbabwes national flag colors.

In the commotion, some female members of the House of Assembly claimed that they were fondled in some sensitive parts of their bodies.
Newly released voting figures show 33 million Americans have already cast their ballots for the next president, offering analysts tantalizing clues to who might have the advantage in an increasingly tight contest.

That means as many of one-quarter of all votes have already been cast, even as the candidates and their high-profile supporters criss-cross the country delivering last-minute pitches ahead of the official election day Tuesday.

Political analysts say the surge of early voting in Colorado, Nevada and Virginia favors Democrat Hillary Clinton, whose Democratic Party has more campaign workers on the ground to get likely voters to the polls. However there are signs she has problems elsewhere in the nation's central heartland, including Ohio, where fewer people have voted early than in the last presidential election.

Each of the 50 states sets its own rules for early voting and when it can begin.

With just three days of campaigning left before most Americans cast their ballots, polls show a tightening race between Clinton and Republican Donald Trump. The RealClear Politics poll average shows Clinton slightly ahead with 46.6 percent of the vote, compared to 44.8 percent for Trump. Her lead in several key battleground states has also narrowed.



Clinton's advantage has shrunk following last-minute disclosures by the FBI that it is still investigating her use of a private email server. Trump charges that Clinton is so bogged down in legal problems that her election would plunge the United States into a constitutional crisis.

But Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia who edits a leading political newsletter, said it's unlikely the latest FBI disclosures are changing many voters' minds and it's not unusual for polls to tighten in the race's final days.

"This may never have been a 7, 8-point race in Clinton's favor. I think it has settled into a 3 or 4-point face in her favor," he said.

Kondik said the focus on Clinton's email issue has affected her standing, but the campaign has routinely seen support for each candidate dip when they have been the focus of news media attention. He said Trump has helped himself over the past week by avoiding the controversies that have characterized his campaign.

Both candidates scheduled campaign events Saturday in Florida, where the latest polls show the race essentially tied. A Trump rally was scheduled for Saturday in New Jersey with Governor Chris Christie, but was canceled after two of the governor's top aides were found guilty Friday of scheming to create massive traffic jams to punish a Democratic Party mayor.

The University of Virginia's Kondik says the election now hinges less on winning over undecided voters, and more on getting existing supporters to the polls.

"I think almost all voters have already made up their minds. I think the key question is whether voters decide to show up or not," he said.

For Clinton, that means a series of high-profile appearances in Ohio and Pennsylvania aimed at urging voters to show up at the polling stations.

Clinton was to host a concert with pop star Katy Perry Saturday in Philadelphia. On Monday, the final day of the campaign, the Democratic candidate will be back in the City of Brotherly Love for a rally with President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton. Clinton hopes to turn out her supporters in a city considered key to winning Pennsylvania, one of the most crucial battlegrounds of the election.

On Friday, Clinton appeared on stage in Ohio at Cleveland's Wolstein Center with hiphop music star Jay Z and his glamorous wife Beyonce. The candidate told the boisterous crowd, "We have unfinished work to do, more barriers to break, and with your help, a glass ceiling to crack once and for all."

At a campaign rally in Florida on Saturday, Donald Trump told the crowd he does not need celebrities to help energize his supporters.

"We don't need Jay Z to fill up arenas, you know. We do it the old fashioned way. ... We fill them up because you love what we're saying and you want to make America great again, that's about it."
Willem Dafoe, Nicolas Cage, and Christopher Matthew Cook in Dog Eat Dog. Photo: RLJ Entertainment

Reviewing The Sting in 1973, Pauline Kael complained that the movie was for people who think of crooks as sweeties. How naive that sounds now. To make sense of it, you have to remember that, before the counterculture, the American film industrys censors had long ensured that crime would be viewed in the most moralistic terms. When the overt meddling ceased, there was a brief period in which crooks could be magnetic and sexy but at the same time tragically, murderously stupid. The perfect balance was found in Bonnie and Clyde, but it tipped two years later in George Roy Hill and William Goldmans Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which shocked Kael because the filmmakers didnt seem bothered about the scores of Bolivian soldiers that the lovable outlaws were blowing away. (It was the flippant tone that bothered Kael; in his ecstatic carnage in The Wild Bunch, Sam Peckinpah at least had the courage of his nihilism.) In Hills The Sting, the lovability quotient shot way up. You werent supposed to care that the heroes (Paul Newman and Robert Redford again) made their living cheating people because in this case they were cheating a gangster. Was such mindless amorality better than the censors enforced morality? Over the next four decades, filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino have thrown the dilemma in our faces: Just how much are we supposed to like people who do vile things?

I thought of all this watching the exuberantly tacky Dog Eat Dog, directed by Paul Schrader from a script by Matthew Wilder (closely based on a pulp novel by Edward Bunker). The three ex-con thieves played by Nicolas Cage, Willem Dafoe, and Christopher Matthew Cook are sweeties, none more touching than Dafoes Mad Dog, who seems to believe that life can be a long self-improvement project marked by inevitable backward slides into bloodletting. In the pre-credits sequence, he snorts, shoots up, and guts his girlfriend in a sudden rage after she finds he has been visiting a website called Asian Teen Squirters. (He also murders her teenage daughter.) This garish scene  drenched in surreal pinks and blues  is a dandy overture, a reminder that these lovable little men who sees themselves as tender and romantic and even Bogie-like existential heroes are psychopaths whod kill you out of irritation or impatience.

Schraders direction is usually more chill, but Dog Eat Dog plays like John Waters with teeth. Its uproarious  then sobering  then uproarious  then disgusting. Wilders script seems to be teasing us, daring us to like Troy (Cage), Diesel (Cook), and Mad Dog. Troy waxes poetic about making enough money to take a pretty blonde hooker to Nice, where the blue of the water and sky come together into something infinitely lovely, but shes impatient to get back to mailing out head shots and her CD. Troy will later shoot in cold blood a woman who looks a little like her. Theres also remarkable scene between the bald Diesel  whom Troy says, in voiceover, is a big, lug-nut-looking dude but hes very brightIn another universe this guy could have been a lawyer from Stanford  Unfortunately, this is not another universe  and a woman, Zoe (Louisa Krause), who comes up to his hotel room and plays him an Elliott Smith song. Zoe thinks she can be soft around him, but quickly realizes  almost by osmosis  that shes not safe. (Cook is such a sensitive actor that you almost think he could follow her, and Krause is so wonderful that you almost think she could reach him.)

Dog Eat Dog is full of funny, deadpan shoptalk  funny in a ways that are closer to the dry George V. Higgins than the rococo Tarantino. I was blown away by the guy playing the trios matter-of-fact middleman, El Greco: Schrader in his acting debut. El Greco knows Troy is a dope trying to style himself as a brain, but he keeps that to himself. He likes minimal personal risk and good wine and getting the deals done. He responds to the inevitable catastrophe with his temper in check. Hes playing a longer game.

The central event  it comes halfway through the film  is a baby-napping that goes very, very bad, although probably not as bad as it might have gone if you get my drift. The best bit is when Mad Dog blows someones head to smithereens (in close-up) and the baby begins to wail and Troy says to the nanny, Will you shut this baby up?  Wheres the thing you put in the babys mouth? Whats it called? and Mad Dog says, A dick? Dafoe is crazy-good. He makes Mad Dogs madness an extension of his infantilism: When the world doesnt work the way he thinks its supposed to, he kills someone. Hes sad about it, but more because his temper is impediment to personal growth.

I loved almost everything about Dog Eats Dog  until the last ten minutes, when Schrader gets too fancy and Cage (whose desire to push the boundaries of realism often pushes him into camp) lays the Bogie imitation on thick. Theres a transitional sequence thats in the book but inexplicably missing from the film (Was it cut to bring down the length?), and the narrative lurch has the effect of making the climax seem like an absurdist fantasy, exactly what the story doesnt need. It might be that Schrader is too ambivalent about his knuckleheaded protagonist to find the right tone. Cages Troy isnt Bogie  or even Cagney. He doesnt even have the stature for a tongue-in-cheek blowout, especially given the ironic fate of a couple of saintly bystanders. This sweetie-psycho game is a dangerous one. The lines arent fixed but you somehow know when theyve been crossed in the wrong direction.
Shunned By Radio, Hard Rock Is Still Alive And Well In America

In this piece Glenn Peoples looks at hard rock and metal's roll in the industry, for although the style of music has little to no prevalence on commercial radio, new tracks are gaining popularity on streaming services like Pandora.

____________________________

Guest post by Glenn Peoples, Music Insights and Analytics at Pandora

Takeaways:

 New hard rock and metal are disappearing from commercial radio playlists, removing a valuable promotional channel for young, developing artists.  Online radio offers a better opportunity for young hard rock and metal groups to find listeners.  Most of Pandoras most popular current (recently released) hard rock and metal songs have received zero or less than meaningful spins at commercial radio.

Two hard rock bands, one young and one old, walk into a bar. The bartender asks to see the older bands ID. Welcome, she says. I loved your music when I was a college student in the 90s. The younger band hands the bartender its ID. Sorry, she says, fiddling with the knob on her FM radio, youre far too young to be in here. Go get a few radio hits and come back in a decade or two.

Such is the dilemma for young hard rock and metal bands. Radio has all but turned its back on the hard rock and metal stars of tomorrow. Its a shame. Radio has remained the most common source of music discovery, according to numerous surveys over the years. The old-fashioned format is tied with friends/family at 68 percent, according to Edison Research and Triton Digital. Where do fans of metal and hard rock go for new music? Not commercial radio. Metal, and its umbrella genre, hard rock, has become a format for the middle-aged listener. People wanting to find new, hard music will find what theyre looking for at Pandora.

But hard rock and metal do well at Pandora, a democratic platform that rewards songs for their listeners positive reactions, not the decisions of radio program directors. Metal, a sub-genre of the more popular rock category, is tied for 13th in monthly time spent listening and currently gets over 6 million unique listeners per month. Rock, which includes hard rock and other types of rock music, has the most monthly listening hours on Pandora, ranks 2nd in monthly time spent listening and gets 50 million unique listeners each month.

The numbers show the severity of hard rock radios problem. According to Nielsen BDS data, only 10.5 percent of hard/active rock stations playlists are current tracks while 82.9 percent are legacy/golden tracks and 6.6 percent are recurrents (active rock stations have an emphasis on hard rock, recurrents are former current songs that still get spins). For comparison, current songs are 85 percent of music played at both pop and rhythmic (a catchall spanning upbeat rhythmic pop, hip hop and upbeat R&B) and 68 percent at country.

Ghost BC, a.k.a. Ghost, one of the few metal bands with songs popular at both Pandora and hard rock stations.

A side-by-side comparison shows Pandoras appeal for metal fans. Two thirds of Pandoras 30 most popular metal songs have no spins at a panel of monitored radio stations that lean heavily toward hard rock and metal. This list of artists includes True Widow, Lesbian, Charred Walls of the Damned, High Spirits, Skeleton Witch, Salems Pot and Wode, up and coming bands that are far from household names. The songs with meaningful number of spins  more than 100 or so per week  includes Square Hammer by Ghost B.C., a Swedish heavy metal group signed to Loma Vista Recordings, the label founded by A&R exec Tom Whalley thats part of Concord Music Group. Last week, Square Hammer is currently #29 on Billboards Mainstream Rock National Airplay char and #8 on Pandoras metal top 30. Veteran groups Anthrax (represented twice) and Meshuggah also make the list. The 26 lesser-known artists popular with Pandora have received zero or near zero spins at commercial hard rock stations.

Few of the bands in Pandoras top 30 have ever received regular airplay at active rock. None of the top 10 songs on Pandoras New Rock station is currently in the top 25 songs on the Active Rock broadcast chart. On Pandoras New Metal station, the most popular song that receives airplay is I. The Planet by Norma Jean, heard almost exclusively at Christian radio airplay, and Square Hammer, which last week was #29 on Billboards Mainstream Rock National Airplay chart.

And while metal is relatively popular at Pandora, theres still room for improvement at Pandora. Metal accounted for 4.0 percent of US album purchases in the first half of 2016, according to BuzzAngle (track sales and streams were converted into albums for this metric). Yes, metal fans are dedicated album buyers but theyre getting into streaming. Metals share of listening hours at Pandora is currently about 1.5 percent. The 2.5 percentage point spread is indicative of the opportunity to attract metal fans attention that isnt being satisfied by radio.

Active rock radios risk aversion has pushed playlists to the safety of music from the 90s and 00s. Well known names like Disturbed, Slipknot, Korn and Red Hot Chili Peppers dominate playlists and squeeze out the hard rock and metalcore preferred by todays young audience. There are a few theories why that has happened. One issue is the long, difficult slog faced by active rock songs. A Jacobs Media Strategies survey found the average active rock song takes months for a new song to gain get established, requiring radio stations to remain faithful to a song until it resonates with listeners. In comparison, country, which has a reputation for lengthy promotional cycles, sees a new song get established in just a few weeks. But there are more barriers to making hits in active rock  and more [portable people] meter punishment for a bad risk  than in any other format that relies on new music, according to Fred Jacobs of Jacobs Media Strategies.

Radio expert Sean Ross has noticed commercial radios inability to graduate post-Linkin Park hits to CHR, or contemporary hit radio, otherwise known as top 40 or pop radio, he explained in an article last month. At the same time, the common strategy of starting songs at alternative radio means an alternative hit can be tagged with too weird/not rock enough for active rock. (This helps explain why the Hot 100 is devoid of rock songs.)

Active rock programmers have bemoaned a dearth of current product for years, he wrote. Many have responded by becoming more library-based and adding some surprisingly mainstream classic rock (Queen, Steve Miller, Tom Petty). Now stations like KVRK Seattle and KFMB-FM San Diego have emerged that simply eliminate most recent music altogether.

A promotional email by the band The Amity Affliction sums up the state of active rock. The bands single All Messed Up, from an album released on Roadrunner Records, was having a difficult time getting radio play even though, as the email proclaimed, it was outselling and out-streaming half the records on the active rock chart. The point was clear: theres a disconnect between what people are streaming and what active rock programmers are spinning. Broadcast radio is too slow to adapt and incapable of matching streamings diversity and depth. But at Pandora, to borrow a song title from Night Ranger, you can still (hard) rock in America.

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The developer of the upscale Hotel Indigo at 211 Clay Ave. has announced plans to place another full-service lodging establishment locally, this one on the Baylor University side of Interstate 35.

To be called the Cambria, the L-shaped hotel will have 170 rooms spread over four stories and also will feature a five-story tower, said Jacquelyn Baumann, director of sales for the Hotel Indigo Waco-Baylor.

When this hotel opens it will be similar to the Hotel Indigo in quality but much larger, with more than double the number of queen-room types and three times the meeting space to accommodate the groups and teams traveling to Waco, Baumann said.

Kenny Bhaka, who developed the Hotel Indigo Waco-Baylor, also is the driving force behind the Cambria, Baumann said.

We are not planning to announce the specific location until the first quarter of 2017, Baumann said.

Like Wacos Indigo, KB Hotels will manage the Cambria. Wacos Indigo was honored as offering the best guest experience in 2014 among all Indigo properties in North America, she said.

Guests should expect the same great service they have come to expect at the Hotel Indigo Waco-Baylor, Baumann said in an email.

Baumann said Bhaka is considering at least two sites for the Cambria, which likely will open in the fall of 2018.

Fuzzys opens

Fuzzys Taco Shop has opened at Franklin Avenue and University Parks Drive, taking 4,000 square feet on the bottom floor of a building owned by businessman Trent Weaver, who joined franchisees Laur and Casie Cernat in remodeling the interior, installing a wrap-around patio and walkways, and setting up picnic tables and umbrellas.

Weaver said he secured about $38,000 in Tax Increment Financing support to tackle the improvements, which he thinks help create a good-time feel near Lake Brazos.

Weavers building has 17,000 square feet of space available on the second floor above Fuzzys Taco, Bicycle World and the Bangkok Royal restaurant on the first floor.

Work continues on space Giddy Up Glamour has taken between Fuzzys and Bicycle World to sell clothing, jewelry and novelty items.

Were probably 45 days from having an opening on that, Weaver said.

Laur and Casie Cernat are serving as the local franchisees for Fuzzys Taco Shop, and Casie Cernat said business has been booming the past few days.

Just to let people know were not all tacos, I want to say we also serve salads, nachos, quesadillas and fajitas, and we serve breakfast all day, she said.

Bar service is available inside and outside Fuzzys Taco Shop, which seats about 100 indoors and half that many on the patio.

Casie Cernat said nearly all entrees are priced at less than $9.

Michnas downshifting

Michnas Bar-B-Que restaurant, 2803 Franklin Ave., has closed its doors to the public but will offer catering service and meals for special events.

The 30-year-old restaurant underwent a four-month remodel this year before a quiet reopening in April, but the owners have decided to go in a different direction, said Brad Harrell, who is marketing the Michnas building for the local office of Harrell & Associates. It is priced at $449,500.

They will continue hosting private parties at that location until it sells and then they will look for a smaller building, Harrell said.

Many people know Michnas for the large handgun-shaped barbecue pit on the front lawn.

For years, the restaurant has served brisket, sausage, ribs, chicken, turkey, ham, chopped barbecue and a long list of sides. Patrons could eat their fill while examining the many photos of John Wayne and other Western heroes on the wall.

When the eatery reopened after receiving a new look and feel, proprietor Greg Talasek had decided to scrap the daily buffet, saying it was not an efficient use of food. The decor also had changed with the installation of bricks from downtown buildings leveled by the deadly 1953 tornado. Talasek also liberally applied barn wood and created a new Western corner. He and brother-in-law Billy Michna gutted the place and exposed the rafters to create a rustic look and installed new fixtures.

But those changes will become part of the buildings appeal to a new owner, and Harrell said hes receiving inquiries.

The for-sale sign went up Friday, but Harrell said the building actually had been on the market since shortly after the renovation was complete.

Built in 1942, the Michnas building was expanded in 1990 and now covers 7,184 square feet on nearly an acre.

More restaurant notes

The restaurant and dining scene continues to evolve in Greater Waco, and the following are projects in the works:

Exterior remodeling has begun on the former Whataburger building on Valley Mills Drive near Waco Drive that will become Greater Wacos third Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen location. Real estate agent Pat Farrar, who markets the shopping center where Popeyes will serve, said, Something like that typically takes 90 to 120 days, so were probably looking at early spring for an opening.

A Cocos Shaved Ice location is under construction at North 24th Street and Waco Drive, next to The Ranchito #5. The Cocos at 3824 Bosque Blvd. has gained a reputation for serving snow cones and also offers cold drinks and snack items. The new Cocos going up is much larger.

Tandoori Trailer, a food truck that serves authentic Indian food at Franklin Avenue and University Parks Drive, will relocate to Dallas. A post on Facebook says, Beloved Facebook friends, it comes with a heavy heart that we have to announce that we will be stopping service here in Waco. . . . We were really hoping that we would become a stable part of the Waco food truck culture, but unfortunately that did not happen.

Family business awards

Baylor Universitys Institute for Family Business has presented its Family Values award to Pointwest Bank of West and recognized Focus Behavioral Associates in Robinson as the fastest-growing family-owned venture in the state as part of its Texas Family of the Year Award contest.

They and other winners and finalists were recognized during an awards ceremony Friday in the Paul L. Foster Campus for Business and Innovation at Baylor.

The program recognizes outstanding firms whose families demonstrate a commitment to one another, to business continuity and to the needs of their employees, community and industry, according to a press release from Baylor.

The IFB is in its 27th year of celebrating family businesses in Texas, and these firms have risen above the crowd by demonstrating the strength and wonder that merging family with business can create, institute director William Worthington said in the press release.

Other winners include: Small Family Business of the Year, Son Beverage Co., of San Antonio; Medium Family Business of the Year, The Nitsche Group, of Giddings; Large Family Business of the Year, Dalworth Group, of Euless; Community Commitment Award, Stewart Family Orthodontics, of Weatherford; Stewardship Award, Cole Health, of Spring; Well-Managed Award, First Place Foods, of Garland; Founders Award, Diamond C Trailers, of Mount Pleasant; Heritage Award, Don Hewlett Chevrolet Buick, of Georgetown; and Young/New Business Award, Lily Jade, of San Antonio. Award finalists included H&R Manufacturing and Supply, of Willis, and Kemp & Sons General Services, of Fort Worth.
For the first time, Connally ISDs Career Tech Early College High School has partnered with McLennan Community College to offer students a chance to earn course credit, certificates or even an applied associates degree in criminal justice or paramedicine.

The Early College High School has only been open in Connally ISD for three years. The new partnership will add to the courses in 20 career and technology education programs the high school has offered through Texas State Technical College, Principal Hermann Pereira said.

Classes are expected to start for sophomores, juniors and seniors by August 2017 at MCCs Emergency Service Education Center, and recruitment started this month, Pereira said. The Connally ISD school board approved the partnership in October.

Its the perfect segue while theyre still in high school getting credit for high school classes and also getting credit for college work, said Tamara Culver, a criminal justice professor and one of the coordinators of the partnership. They can see whether thats for them, and what I love about our program is they have six different options and can take it as far as they want.

On the criminal justice side, students can earn professional certificates in corrections, forensic science and law enforcement, Pereira said.

The police academy has an age restriction of 21, so our kids wont be able to touch that, but theyll be able to start the course work toward that, he said. All the classes, because of (MCCs) partnership with Tarleton (State University) in the University Center, play into a bachelors degree. Its a great benefit to them and because its an early college model, its free for kids. Its something they would never be able to get their hands on this early.

The paramedicine track will offer two certificate levels and an applied associates degree as a paramedic or emergency medical technician, which then opens the doors for students to enter the schools fire protection technology program when they turn 18, Pereira said.

Because the partnership is career focused, it lines up with what the high school is doing already and allows it to reach more students, he said.

Were the only one thats kind of focused on public services, he said. Im sure theres other campuses around that have sent kids to these courses, but never a large focus like were doing. Were only taking classes there. Were solely focused on kids that want to go that route.

During the first year, Pereira expects to enroll between 20 and 30 students. Connally ISD will then see how the programs grow from there. The districts Career Tech Early College High School already serves 108 students.

Considering the demographics of Connally ISD, opportunities like this can change the trajectory for a student and his or her family, Pereira said. The majority of Connally families are at a blue-collar socioeconomic level, he said. The partnership also represents a shift in education in the county as more students either decide a traditional four-year college route isnt the right option or use career and technical education courses to help pay for college and avoid large student loan debts, he said.

One of the missions of MCC is to provide quality education for those who might not otherwise be able to get it and to serve the community, Culver said. Through the Emergency Services Education Center, I cant imagine serving our community better than preparing emergency services personnel for when we need them.
For now its a mud pit in the middle of some post oak woods in a rural area near Axtell east of Waco  a long way from Malibu.

By summer, it will be a multimillion-dollar surf ranch where you can catch an 8-foot wave or watch a surfing competition.

BSR Cable Park is planning Texas second inland surf park, complete with white sand, digitally controlled waves, and surf pros teaching lessons.

Among the first in line for lessons is owner Stuart Parsons, a champion barefoot skier who opened the Barefoot Ski Ranch as a cable-driven wakeboard course in 2012.

I tried to surf one time, about 10 years ago at Newport Beach, and I stood up for maybe one second, Parsons said. Its pretty humbling.

The BSR Surf Ranch follows on the heels of the 14-acre NLand Surf Park that opened last month in Austin to national attention from outlets such as the New York Times and Houston Chronicle.

The BSR facility would be slightly smaller at 5 acres, including 2 acres of water.

But many surfers may prefer the McLennan County facility, said Bruce McFarland of American Wave Machines, which is installing the computer-controlled, air-based wave system.

This will be bigger and better-quality surf, McFarland said. We have more control with our technology. We can combine pieces of waves and create shape and amplitude. Ultimately, the goal is to find surf like youd find at an ocean with a nice beach environment.

The lagoon will have a bottom of clay topped with a plastic liner. The edges will be covered with 3,000 tons of white sand hauled in from Kosse, Parsons said.

We want people to come in and bring their kids and play at the beach and build sand castles, Parsons said. Youre going to see blue water, white sand, cabanas, a really nice beach, something you wouldnt expect to see in Waco, Texas.

Parsons, who also runs Parsons Roofing, has worked with his family to turn part of a 500-acre ranch into a multifaceted water destination. In the past few years, the facility has added cabins, a restaurant and a 3,600-foot lazy river.

In 2015, BSR added a 120-foot water slide, called the Royal Flush, that became a viral internet sensation through a video that was viewed millions of times.

Parsons said that video created an international following for the park. This summer, the park saw 8,000 to 12,000 visitors a week, making it one of the biggest tourist draws in the county. Most of the visitors were from outside the Waco area, from places such as Dallas, Houston, even Europe, Parsons said.

Waco Convention and Visitors Bureau marketing director Carla Pendergraft said BSR already contributes to making the Waco area a tourist destination. The surf park should mean even more business for restaurants, shops and hotels as people come here for vacations and surfing competitions, Pendergraft said.

I wouldnt be surprised if it becomes a facility for skilled athletes, she said.

McFarland, the American Wave Machines owner, said he expects experienced and professional surfers will be about 10 percent of the market for the BSR facility. And he said he expects them to travel.

Surfers are always looking for waves, McFarland said. In the ocean, some days may be good, but other days, theres nothing. For ardent surfers, if its a matter of driving or flying to Texas versus flying to Tahiti, theres no competition.

McFarland said he expects a boom in surf parks and in the sport itself, which will be included as an Olympic sport for the first time in 2020.
A common saying in politics is that young people dont vote. This isnt entirely true, but its also not entirely false. After ratification of the 26th Amendment in 1971, which lowered the voting age to 18, turnout in this country dropped from 60.7 percent in 1968 to 55.1 percent in 1972. In subsequent years the percentage of Americans who cast a ballot has fluctuated but never reached pre-26th Amendment levels.

We expanded the franchise to include a group that was least likely to exercise their voting rights, and they dragged our voting averages down. Young people have remained the least likely age group to turn up on Election Day.

In 2008, we saw an uptick in youth political participation when President Barack Obamas campaign helped draw young voters out of hiding. Unfortunately these newly engaged voters only stay involved somewhat. Subsequent elections have shown slightly higher levels of youth involvement but not on a par with the initial 2008 election. Now that were facing post-Obama politics, we should all fear young people wont show up to vote.

There are multiple reasons for concern. Young people greatly preferred Bernie Sanders in this years Democratic Party primary. Exit polls suggest that Sanders won more votes from people under 30 than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump combined. According Trumps poll numbers, he might set a new low for Republican candidates among young voters. In the months since the primaries it seems that neither major-party candidate has connected with young voters at Sanders- or Obama-like levels. Perhaps most concerning is the 2016 presidential candidates have failed to energize the masses of politically uninterested young people who dont have good voting habits to fall back on.

Is it possible that young people are engaged in this election, despite their disenchantment with the major-party candidates? Maybe. This election has seen record-breaking increases in voter registration, which is a hopeful sign. In 2012, 12,320 early voting ballots were cast at the voting center on The University of Texas at Austins campus. As of Oct. 21, 2016, halfway through early voting, 10,663 voters had cast ballots on campus.

But despite these promising signs, young people will by and large sit out this election. Why? Young voters face substantial barriers to voting  such as working while in school to minimize student loan debt. They are less likely to identify with a political party, which serves as an effective decision shortcut for many of us. Many havent had a chance to vote before, so they havent had a chance to develop a voting habit. And they tend to be more mobile and less likely to have roots in a community. Roots are helpful for understanding the issues and simply knowing the locations of polling places. And, to be fair, this campaign season has been a rather pitiful advertisement for the promise of getting involved in politics.

Given this sad state of affairs, young people are caught in a catch-22. Candidates dont tend to campaign on issues that matter to them. Maybe young people would vote more if campaigns were more relevant to them; maybe campaigns would address issues that are important to young people if they voted. Young people care about issues like job opportunities, student loans, affordable health care and the environment.

According to survey data, they are much more concerned about the ways LGBT people as well as racial minorities are treated in this country. Ideally, political candidates would recognize how close Bernie Sanders came to winning the nomination because of young voters and start paying more attention to them.

Rather than wait for the next popular candidate to come along, young people must re-establish themselves as a political force by showing up on Election Day. The expansion of the franchise was the right thing for our country to do, but its not enough for the rest of us to just hope young people take it upon themselves to vote. We should talk about why voting matters and why we value their voices in politics. If the tone of the 2016 election is any indication, older generations could desperately use their help.

Bethany Albertson is an associate professor of government at The University of Texas at Austin. George Elliott Morris, an undergraduate student at The University of Texas at Austin, contributed to this piece.
As the presidential race tightens, Hillary Clinton is going to her base, trying to gin up turnout among key Democratic groups. In this election, there is no group as important as women.

Former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, who called out Donald Trump for ridiculing her weight gain, appeared with Clinton at a rally in Florida on Tuesday. At that rally, Clinton declared, "We heard what he does to women. I'm not going to repeat it, but you know Donald Trump was bragging about grabbing women, mistreating women."

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has endorsed Hillary Clinton. Credit:ERIC GAY

She continued, "The bottom line is he thinks belittling women makes him a bigger man. He doesn't see us as full human beings with our own dreams. our own purposes, our own capabilities - and he has shown that clearly throughout this campaign."

Clinton is also targeting women with ads such as these:
Protesters clash with police in central Jakarta. Credit:Roni Bintang "Some Ulema or religious leaders did show they intended to hold a peace rally but some wanted to have a clash," police spokesman Mr Boy said. "We can witness from their outfits who wanted a clash, they did not put on the Muslim attire." Demonstrators rallied in Jakarta after Friday prayers to demand the arrest of the city's governor, Ahok. Credit:Jewel Topsfield Jakarta had been on tenterhooks in the lead up to the rally, as ugly anti-Chinese sentiment mushroomed throughout the country and analysts warned the demonstration could be exploited by extremists.

Former terrorist Nasir Abas, now a consultant to Indonesian police, showed a forum a photo of armed members of the Syrian-based jihadist group Jabhat Fatah al-Sham holding a sign that said: "Punish Ahok or our bullets will." The President had been scheduled to address a joint sitting of Parliament during his three-day trip to Australia, which had been welcomed as evidence the often frosty relationship between the neighbouring countries had turned the corner. "It is with the deepest regret that the visit of President Jokowi ... has now been postponed," the Indonesian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. It said current developments required the President to stay in Indonesia and he had called Mr Turnbull to convey this. "The President has also tasked the Indonesian Foreign Minister to discuss with her Australian counterpart new dates for the visit in the near future."

The statement said relations between Indonesia and Australia were in the "best shape". "It is the mutual commitment of both countries to further strengthen this important relationship. The Government of Indonesia expresses its highest appreciation to the Government of Australia for the exceptional arrangements that have been made for President Jokowi's visit." Mr Turnbull said President Jokowi had called him to express his regret over the decision. "I said we were sorry we would not be able to welcome him to Australia tomorrow but entirely understood the need for him to remain in Indonesia at this time," Mr Turnbull said. "President Widodo thanked me for Australia's understanding and noted his desire to conduct the visit as soon as mutually convenient dates can be identified."

Mr Turnbull said while the decision was disappointing it would not affect the bilateral relationship. Australia Indonesia Business Council president Debnath Guharoy said the council was disappointed the visit had been postponed but understood and supported the difficult decision the president had to make. "We will wait for his visit as soon as possible," he said. "He is a force for good, an agent for the kind of change the bilateral relationship needs today." Indonesia Institute president Ross Taylor said the cancelled visit would be a great disappointment for two leaders who had overseen a very strong rebuild of the bilateral relationship. "We would expect a rescheduling of the President's visit in the near future," he said.

Friday's rally, spearheaded by the militant Islamic Defenders Front, demanded the Jakarta Governor, widely known as Ahok, be jailed for allegedly insulting the Koran. Ahok is being investigated by police after he appeared to suggest in an edited video transcript that voters were being deceived by a verse in the Koran. Some Islamic groups had urged voters not to re-elect Ahok on the basis of verse 51 from the fifth sura or chapter of the Koran, al-Ma'ida, which some interpret as prohibiting Muslims from living under the leadership of a non-Muslim. Others say the scripture should be understood in its context  a time of war  and not interpreted literally. Ahok apologised for the offence caused by his comments and insisted he was not criticising the Koranic verse but those who used it to attack him.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures as he speaks during a campaign rally in North Carolina. Credit:AP An inspection of the chart over a year brings only more misery for Clinton supporters. On it Clinton's blue line runs above Trump's red line and the two appear to breathe in and out like great bellows. Four times over the year the two lines converge and crossover when the bellows are closed. On those occasions alone Trump's support is measured above Clinton's. On the current trend it looks as though the fifth such occasion could fall on Tuesday, polling day. But while these tracking polls are good at measuring public sentiment, they are less effective at predicting the election outcome. This is because the presidential election is actually 50 state elections. Once you understand this, you understand why the betting markets and most analysts still believe Clinton is more likely to win. Election workers flatten ballots so they can be fed through the counting machines in Minneapolis. Credit:Star Tribune/AP Trump's path to victory

Each state in the US is assigned a number of votes depending on its Congressional representation in what is called the electoral college. California has 55 votes, New Hampshire 4. The candidate that wins a state secures its votes. In all there are 538 electors in the college. The candidate that wins 270 votes becomes the president. Members of the Ku Klux Klan on the march in Georgia in April. Credit:AP Given that many states are overwhelmingly Republican or Democratic, the outcome in those are a foregone conclusion. We know, for example, that Clinton will win California and Trump will take Texas. In 2012 Barack Obama won 332 college votes and Mitt Romney 206. Preaching to the faithful: Trump speaks during a campaign rally. Credit:AP

Using that election as a baseline then, Trump needs to win another 64 votes over Romney's total. To do this his campaign targets battleground states, those where polling is close enough for either party to win. The most obvious is Florida, which has 29 votes and where the two candidates are in a dead heat in the polls at 46.9 per cent. If Trump wins Florida he is still in the hunt. If he loses it, his race is over. You can tell both candidates know this. On Wednesday I went to a rally in Miami and a few hours later watched President Barack Obama's motorcade roll past the very same spot. Illustration: Richard Giliberto In any event, Trump could win Florida. He could also win Ohio, which has 18 votes. Now he has 47 of the 64 extra votes he needs to win. He will probably win Iowa, with six votes. He now needs another 11. He might win Nevada, but he has made Clinton's life easier in Nevada by offending the state's rapidly growing Latino population. Even if he wins it he needs another five votes. The next obvious place to look would be New Hampshire, which has four votes. Clinton appears to have a slight lead in New Hampshire, but even if Trump wins it he he will have 269 votes, a tie. He might break the tie by winning one of Maine's votes. (To complicate matters, Maine awards its college votes to each of its congressional districts with a further two granted to the overall state winner.)

This is a pretty tough path. It demands Trump winning on every battleground. This is why he has been recently campaigning in more traditionally Democratic states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania. These are places hit hard by the manufacturing downturn, and which have high proportions of the rural and blue-collar white voters who have been drawn to his message. Victory in one of these states seems unlikely, but if Trump can pull it off he doesn't have to win all those other tight races. And this is why so many in the Trump camp like to talk about Brexit. The Brexit theory After analysts failed to predict the United Kingdom's vote to leave the EU, exit pollsters discovered that there was a substantial minority of voters who turned out at the referendum who had been so disengaged from politics for so long that nobody knew they existed. Once they were motivated to vote, they changed history.

Demonstrators, organised by the civic movement AVAAZ in London, hold placards calling on Americans to vote and avoid getting 'Brexited'. This finding became a source of fascination to Republicans, who knew that if a similar phenomenon existed here  an unrecognised mass of largely white working-class voters  Trump might have already won. The narrow path described above could be an autobahn. The rustbelt states could be in play. Trump started calling himself "Mr Brexit" at rallies and the driving force behind Brexit, Nigel Farage, became something of a folk hero, popping up at the Republican National Convention and on conservative media in the US. Pollsters in America have been busy looking for "shy Trump voters" ever since the theory started bouncing around this year. None have been able to find any, though one pollster, John Zogby, told Fairfax Media last month that this did not necessarily mean they were not out there. A more recent study by Politico concluded this week that the hidden Trump army should have shown up in primary voting, but did not. It was, the analysts said, a mirage. The Comey effect

Polls normally tighten at the end of a race, and this has been the case in the current election. Trump supporters believe that the decision by the director of the FBI to go public about re-opening the investigation into Clinton's emails might give him the momentum to win. Leading US political scientist Larry Sabato, of the University of Virginia, told Fairfax Media this week that the Comey effect was real and was damaging Clinton. But even when he takes its effect into account he still predicts, at present, Clinton winning 293 college votes and Trump 214, with 31 too close to call. There is another thing that the RCP chart tells you too. If you look more closely at those bellows, you see that despite this wild election, despite allegations of Russian interference, sexual assault and systematic dishonesty, the polling has been remarkably consistent. Hillary has had a small but significant lead over Trump since the race the began. Her ceiling has been in the late 40s, his in the mid-40s. And this is remarkable given how different the candidates are, and how vehemently each is disliked by supporters of the other.

Trump's gamble What this tells us that this election was never truly about Trump's staggering, boastful lack of qualification to serve in high office, about pussy-gate or tax returns. It was never about Clinton's emails, the FBI, her likeability or her self-destructive penchant for secrecy. It was about demographics and change. One man who understands this better than most is Robert Jones, the author of The End of White Christian America. In his book Jones demonstrates that sometime in 2013  about the time Trump was championing the racist birther movement (that Obama was foreign-born)  the United States ceased to be a majority white, Christian nation.

A mannequin for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is on display outside an outhouse used as an unofficial voting booth on a farm in New Hampshire. Credit:JIM COLE In 2008 if you bundled up all the Catholics, Protestants and Baptists, you had about 54 per cent of the nation. This year, the same group constitutes about 45 per cent. According to Jones, that figure is declining by a percentage point each year. This figure is central to this election because the Republican Party has come to depend almost exclusively on white Christian voters while the Democratic Party has built a coalition of the other groups. You can trace this back to the Democratic President Lyndon Johnson's signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Blacks left the Republican Party and joined the Democrats. Later, Republican Richard Nixon decided to use this resorting of loyalties to his party's advantage, developing what became known as the "Southern strategy". The GOP would draw increasing numbers of white voters to the polls by using dog-whistled messages to excite racial anxieties. Ronald Reagan embraced the strategy with the war on drugs, and built on it by uniting Protestant and Catholic voters into a "moral majority". (This is how abortion came to be a crucial part of conservative politics.)

No one back then could imagine a time when appealing to the white base would not be a winning strategy. In 2012 Mitt Romney spoke to the same voters of hard-line immigration policies that would make the lives of "illegals" so difficult they would "self-deport". He convinced Christian evangelicals that his Mormon faith was not alien to their own. On election day he was confident of victory. His data analysis team was convinced they had got the right message to the right (white) voters in the right states. That night they were clobbered. As Jones explained to Fairfax Media, Romney's team had hit its targets, but its targets were wrong. Its demographic models were based on data from 2004. Determined to break the cycle, the Republican machine commissioned an exhaustively researched report into the loss, which was published in 2013  just as the demographic shift took place  and became know as "the autopsy". The autopsy found that the Republican Party could no longer expect to win presidential elections by pursuing an ever-larger turnout from an ever-smaller target demographic. As Jones puts it, 2012 was the last time such a strategy could even be considered plausible.

"Public perception of the Party is at record lows," the autopsy read in part. "Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the Party represents, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country. "If Hispanic Americans perceive that a GOP nominee or candidate does not want them in the United States [i.e. self-deportation], they will not pay attention to our next sentence. It does not matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy; if Hispanics think we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies  Other minority communities, including Asian and Pacific Islander Americans, also view the Party as unwelcoming." The party took the report and its authors seriously. Figures such as Marco Rubio, planning a 2016 run, embraced immigration reform. Jeb Bush hired one of the authors. But Donald Trump was watching too, and perhaps already considering a run. He might not know much about politics, but he certainly understood marketing. He fired off a tweet. "New @RNC report calls for embracing "comprehensive immigration reform." http://nbcnews.to/1088vJF Does the @RNC have a death wish?"

The RNC and the conservative political establishment might have understood that demonising minorities would doom the party, but Trump did not care. He is not, after all, a party guy. Trump's gamble this year is that there is just one more presidential race to be won by breathing life into the old animosities. What happens next does not bother him. The GOP machine, the people that Trump dismisses as "the Washington elites" watched on in horror as Trump went about destroying the groundwork it had started to make in outreach to Hispanics. Worse, he seemed determined to shed the support the party had among women too. In 2012 Mitt Romney was viewed negatively by 42 per cent of suburban women. Trump is now seen in a negative light by 60 per cent to 70 per cent of suburban women. In August one of the report's authors, Sally Bradshaw, who has spent a lifetime working for the Republican Party, announced that if the state of Florida looked close she would vote for Clinton. "I can't look my children in the eye and tell them I voted for Donald Trump," she told CNN. "I can't tell them to love their neighbour and treat others the way they wanted to be treated, and then vote for Donald Trump. I won't do it."

Jones' demographic analysis is useful because it does more than just help explain why the polls have been relatively stable throughout such a wrenching campaign. It helps explain a host of other phenomena. It helps explain the rise of what is now known as the alt-right and the return of the old language  and characters of white supremacy. This year we see the former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke is running for the senate. The KKK itself has endorsed Trump and social media is full of brash, proud, overtly racist pro-Trump propaganda. This is not to say that all Trump support is racist, but that racists understand he is addressing racial and cultural anxieties. You can apply a similar analysis to the states that were once reliably Republican but are now in play or Democratic. The southern section of Virginia is Trumpland but it is is being overwhelmed electorally by the state's north, over which the multicultural suburbs of Washington are spreading. Rural North Carolina is solid Republican but its two largest cities, Charlotte and Raleigh, have booming high-tech and banking sectors and are drawing in a younger, more educated, multi-racial population. The same trend is happening in Georgia. In Nevada, Arizona and even Texas the Hispanic population is growing and the Democratic Party is either competitive, or will be in the foreseeable future.
Patrick Norman Pat Chapman is a 34-year-old, Caucasian male who was last known to be in Piedmont which is near the area of Greenville, Missouri on May 10, 2020.

Pat had stayed the night with a friend and his wife at their home. In the early morning when the friend woke to go to work.

Pat was gone in his own Burgundy color 1995 Ford Escort. That is the last anyone was known to have seen him. The vehicle was later recovered on May 29, 2020 in Mill Spring, Missouri.
Morgan Stanley is the 6th largest financial institution in the US. The company is ranked 61st on the Forbes Fortune 500 list and is the 39th largest bank in the world. A financial holding company, Morgan Stanley provides a full range of financial services to clients around the world.

Morgan Stanley was formed in 1935 as a result of the Glass-Steagall Act. Glass-Steagall separated commercial and investment banking in a way that forced the then-largest bank J.P. Morgan & Co to split into two groups. J.P. Morgan & Co. chose to retain the commercial side of the business while partners Henry S. Morga, grandson of J.P., and Harold Stanley took the investment end. In its first year, Morgan Stanley did 24% of the IPO business and maintains a lions share of the market to this day.

The original company existed and grew through acquisitions until 1987 when it merged with Dean Witter Discover & Co. The new Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Discover & Co existed for 14 years until 2001 when the name was shortened back to Morgan Stanley.

The bank is credited in part with both beginning and ending the financial crisis of 2007/2008. The Process Driven Trading unit lost $300 million in one day due to a short-squeeze that popped the bubble in the housing market. After teetering on the brink of failure Morgan Stanley agreed to become a bank holding company regulated by the Federal Reserve, a key factor in the original decision to split from parent J.P. Morgan & Co. Ironically when given the chance, present-day J.P. Morgan refused to buy Morgan Stanley but that was for the better.

Today, Morgan Stanley operates through three segments via offices in 41 countries and employs more than 75,000 people. Revenue in 2021 topped $49 billion and total assets topped $1.15 trillion.

The operating segments are Institutional Securities, Wealth Management, and Investment Management segments. The Institutional Securities segment is by far the largest and most profitable. It offers a range of services and products for businesses, institutions, and entities that include capital raising, strategic advisory, underwriting, advice on M&A, restructuring, and real estate. The Wealth Management segment provides brokerage and investment advisory services for individuals and employers. The services include brokerage, financial planning, company stock-plan administration, insurance, mortgage loans, lines of credit, and retirement planning. The Investment Management segment provides investment products to a range of institutions, organizations, corporations, and governments.
Capital One Financial Corporation was founded in 1988 with the goal of revolutionizing the credit card industry. The companys ground-breaking services were data-driven, opened the doors of credit to millions of people, and today Capital One is one of the worlds largest banks.

The companys commitment to connecting people with responsible credit helped to rank it 10th in the US in regard to total assets and 72nd globally. The company has nearly $400 billion in assets in late 2022 and operated a network of subsidiary institutions including Capital One bank. Capital One Financial Corporation is headquartered in McLean, Virginia, and operates a network of branches and offices throughout the US, Canada, and the UK.

Capital One Financial Corporation is the holding company for Capital One Bank (USA), National Association; and Capital One, National Association, which provides various financial products and services in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Capital One Financial Corporation operates in three segments: Credit Card, Consumer Banking, and Commercial Banking. The Credit Card segment operates a wide range of revolving consumer credit cards while the Consumer Banking segment offers a range of traditional banking and investment products including auto and home loans, savings, and certificates of deposit. The Commercial segment offers business accounts, financing, commercial and multifamily real estate, and commercial and industrial loans.

In the US, the company serves its clients through digital channels, branches, cafes, and other distribution channels located in New York, Louisiana, Texas, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, and California. Digital services include online accounts, account services, loan applications, and investments. Among the many features of banking with Capital One are fee-free checking accounts, cloud-based financial tracking services, and Capital One Cafes. The company operates more than 40 cafes across the US where anyone, not just account holders, can get a coffee or snack as well as improve their financial education. The cafes are equipped with ample public space, nooks for private work, and even event space for meetings.

Capital One continues to advance the digital financial industry to this day. The company was among the first to move its operations to the cloud, doing so in 2012, and it is now developing machine learning, open source, and cloud technology applications to help detect and prevent fraud, secure accounts, and improve banking services.

Capital One is committed to aiding the worlds fight against climate change. To that end, it is pursuing several avenues that include influencing its value chain, fostering a sustainable office culture that is in sync with its surroundings, promoting and financing sustainable energy projects, and transparency in regard to its climate goals.
Yelp Inc. operates a platform that connects consumers with local businesses in the United States and internationally. The company's platform covers various local business categories, including restaurants, shopping, beauty and fitness, health, and other categories, as well as home, local, auto, professional, pets, events, real estate, and financial services. It provides free and paid advertising products to businesses, which include cost-per-click search advertising and multi-location Ad products, as well as enables businesses to deliver targeted search advertising to local audiences; and business listing page products. The company also offers other services comprising Yelp Reservations that provide online reservations for restaurants, nightlife, and other venues directly from their Yelp business pages; Yelp Waitlist, a subscription-based waitlist management solution that allows consumers to check wait times and join waitlists remotely, as well as businesses to manage seating and server rotation; Yelp Knowledge program that offers business owners local analytics and insights through access to its historical data and other proprietary content; and Yelp Fusion, which offers free and paid access to content and data for consumer-facing enterprise use through publicly available APIs. In addition, it provides content licensing, as well as allows third-party data providers to update and manage business listing information on behalf of businesses. Further, the company offers its products directly through its sales force; indirectly through partners; and online through its website, as well as non-advertising partner arrangements. It has strategic partnership with Grubhub for providing consumers with a service to place food orders for pickup and delivery. Yelp Inc. was incorporated in 2004 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Ballot proposal asks Kentucky voters whether there's a right to an abortion
A SPECIAL EVENT THIS WEEK FOR THE HENDERSON COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT

On Thursday, Sheriff Charles McDonald held a ceremony to honor individuals who have recently been promoted within the Henderson County Sheriffs Office.

The ceremony recognized deputies from the rank of corporal through the rank of major and was held in the Bo Thomas auditorium at Blue Ridge Community College.

The invocation was delivered by Sheriffs Office Chaplain James Spence, and Cadet Aaron Speyer led the audience in the Pledge of Allegiance. McDonald delivered the keynote address and spoke on the sacrifice of leadership.

This evening is special because the men and women being honored have chosen to step forward and take on greater responsibilities, not only in their own lives, but in the lives of others, McDonald said. In a time when institutions and positions of authority are being challenged and attacked daily, when people tend to shy away from righteous conflict and defending what is decent and good, many people choose to stay safe and hide in the shadows. They avoid the call to leadership.

"The deputies and detention officers who have accepted promotion have chosen what is noble in accepting the challenges of leadership at the next level.

McDonald explained the rigors of the Sheriffs Office promotional process and expounded upon the traits of a good leader.

Family and friends joined the honorees onstage as the oath of office was administered by District Court Judge Peter Knight. McDonald presented each honoree with his or her badge followed by closing remarks by Chief Deputy Jason Brown. Fellowship and refreshments followed the ceremony.

The following deputies were honored at the ceremony: Maj. Steve Carter, Capt. Benjamin Bryant, Allan Carroll Corthell, Chris Denny, Lt. Andrew Anderson, Tim Fuss, Vanesa Gilbert, Jim McClelland, Neil McDonald, Sgt. Kenneth Clamser, Gerald Hartline, Sonya Matthews, Jake McMurray, Cecilia Rossell, Jordan Warren, Cpl. Jesse Blankenship, Stephanie Cantwell, Jason Capps, Brandon Corn, Cory Justus, Aaron Lisenbee and Jonathan Tankersley.
German medical software company CompuGroup Medical has approached Belgian graphics group Agfa-Gevaert about a possible takeover, the two companies said on Friday last week.



The combined company would have annual sales of more than 3 billion euros ($3.3 billion).

CompuGroup said it had given Agfa's board of directors a non-binding indication of interest but said it was not certain that it would end up making a firm offer.

"The discussions between the companies are at an early stage. No response has been given to the indication of interest and CompuGroup Medical SE has not been able to verify or discuss any of the assumptions and conditions underlying its indication of interest," CompuGroup said.

Agfa, whose market value has shrunk by a third to 616 million euros this year, said its board would evaluate CompuGroup's approach carefully.

The news sent shares in Agfa up 6.2 percent to a six-month high of 3.80 euros.

CompuGroup shares were down 3.7 percent in early trade, with traders citing concerns that the German company would be overtaxing itself with a takeover of Agfa.

"We think a takeover offer by CompuGroup will only occur if they have a solution for Agfa Graphics and the 1.25 billion euros pension liabilities in hand," analysts at KBC said in a note to clients.

CompuGroup has grown through a series of bolt-on acquisitions in recent years, most recently buying a majority in Vega, an Italian distributor of its software, last month.

Agfa, which in 2004 sold its eponymous camera film business which made it a household name, is active in the printing and medical imaging business.

Its healthcare business accounts for about 40 percent of its 2.6 billion euros in annual revenue.



CompuGroup

www.cgm.com

Agfa Graphics

www.agfagraphics.com.au
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 05/11/2016 (2187 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In July 2015, the Huffington Post published an article titled, What the Heck is Beard Oil and How Does It Work?

Around the same time, Winnipegger Dan Carriere posed a similar question, after spying one of his co-workers rubbing clear liquid together in his hands then massaging it into his beard, neck and facial area.

I was like, Is that aftershave or something? says Carriere, 38, who, despite sporting an enviable set of whiskers ever since hes been able to grow a beard, had never used any sort of cosmetic products on his bristles.

He said, Its beard oil. It gets rid of itch, it softens your skin, it makes your beard more manageable here, give it a try.

Carriere applied the oil the way he was shown and noticed a difference almost immediately. He looked at his colleague and announced, I have to get some of this.

Two problems: firstly, Carriere couldnt find a salon in Winnipeg that stocked beard oil, which has grown in popularity in recent years. According to a 2013 New York Times piece on the topic, businesses have become more permissive of facial hair. Secondly, because hes frugal, he wasnt sure he wanted to do what his co-worker had done, which was spend close to $75, plus shipping, for a 50-millilitre bottle ordered in from the States.

After mentioning that set of circumstances to his wife, who had just begun making all-natural creams and lotions for their two-year-old son, she suggested they determine what the components were and whip up a batch themselves.

PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Kyle Von Riesen grooms Dan Carriere's beard.

I have no chemistry background whatsoever  Im strictly blue-collar  but after ordering a bunch of ingredients and learning about different types of carrier and essential oils, I was able to come up with 30 recipes I liked, says the married father of one.

After trying them out on family and friends, I whittled that number down to seven.

Next, Carriere approached the co-worker who introduced him to beard oil in the first place. He asked him if hed be interested in going into the beard biz together. After striking a deal in November 2015, the pair came up with a name, Beard and Brawn Oil Company, established a website (www.beardandbrawn.ca) and began advertising on websites such as Kijiji and eBay.

(Oklahoma, of all places, Carriere recalls when asked where the duos first online order came from.)

On April 29, 2016, Beard and Brawn, which by then had become a one-person operation after Carrieres partner bowed out to spend more time with his young family, was scheduled to be a vendor at Third + Bird, an artisan market held twice a year that routinely draws over 5,000 shoppers.

Because Carriere wasnt certain he could handle that large a crowd by himself, he solicited his pal Kyle Von Reisen, who teaches hairstyling at Steinbach Regional Secondary School, to join him in his booth.

Wait a sec; you sell beard oil, right? And isnt the crowd at Third + Bird predominantly female?

Thats exactly what I said to my wife when she suggested setting up there, Carriere says with a chuckle. My feeling was, This is dude-stuff. Why would I go to a market for a bunch of women?

But thats the thing, interjects Von Reisen, who officially joined the business in May 2016. Ninety per cent of our customers are women, which was proven that weekend when we couldnt take peoples money fast enough for their oil. I mean, whos rubbing against these guys scratchy beards every day and night? Who benefits the most when theyre nice and soft and smell great?

PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Beard and Brawn is a made-in-Winnipeg beard oil that is taming whiskers around the world.

In June 2016, Carriere and Von Reisen heard from Robert Brush, an Australian bloke whose goal, according to his website, is to gather and grade every commercially available beard oil on the planet Earth.

Brush, who has tried 172 different oils to date, was particularly interested in the fellows Winter Spice beard oil because, he told them, hed never encountered one that contained frankincense and myrrh before.

How did Beard and Brawn fare? After trying it out, Brush granted Winter Spice a heady 90 per cent approval rating, noting this husky wintery blend is such that one imagines its purpose is to protect a man against chilling, harsh winter blasts of a cold, soulless wind. (Although Brush makes it sound like hes been to Winterpeg during a January cold snap, he was only imagining what -40 C feels like, he told us when we contacted him Down Under.)

Brush summed his report up by stating, Winter Spice transported me away to a land where I was protected against the elements and every conceivable danger by my unfathomably dense and ferocious beard.

In the case of Beard and Brawn, it was really the excellent therapeutic value of the coconut, castor and avocado oils, along with the unique and balanced scent of peppermint and frankincense, Brush said from his home in Sydney. It is definitely a unique and well-considered recipe.

PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS 'Ninety per cent of our customers are women, which was proven that weekend when we couldnt take peoples money fast enough for their oil. I mean, whos rubbing against these guys scratchy beards every day and night?'

Thanks to Von Reisens industry connections, Beard and Brawns all-natural product line is available in a dozen locations, including Edward Carriere Salon (no relation) on Spence Street, Generation Green at The Forks and Fort Knoxx Barber & Salon in Kenora.

Carriere and Von Reisen were also recently approached by the owners of Brazen Hall Kitchen & Brewery, a new brew pub set to open on Pembina Highway. The management team there is hoping the budding entrepreneurs can create a beard oil that would be exclusive to their establishment.

Their logo is this Viking bearded guy so they asked if we could do something with hops in it, Carriere says, mentioning one of their products, Beerd Wash soap and shampoo, contains a trace amount of beer. Weve had similar requests from a few salons and barber shops but its a matter of finding the time. We both have full-time jobs away from this so we have to be careful about getting too big, too quickly.

Oh, in case you were wondering, yes, Carriere and Von Reisen find themselves noticing other guys beards much more than they used to. While they wont approach hirsute types in coffee shops per se and hand over their card, when theyve been at family functions such as weddings or birthday parties, they have been known to begin conversations with, Nice beard. Do you use anything on it?

For the month of November, Beard & Brawn will donate 10 per cent of all sales to Movember Foundation Canada. (During the rest of the year, the company donates 10 per cent of sales to sponsoring children through WorldVision Canada.)

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca

PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS During the month of November, 10 per cent of Beard and Brawn sales will to to Movember Roundation Canada.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 04/11/2016 (2188 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After weeks of bad news, residents of The Pas finally received some good news Friday  and there may be even better news on the horizon.

Workers at the Tolko paper mill in The Pas have voted in favour of allowing prospective new owners a three-year exemption in making pension payments.

Union officials have said the prospective buyers, American Industrial Acquisition Corp., have indicated as recently as last week a positive outcome of that vote will clear the way for the transaction to acquire the plant in The Pas to be finalized.

PHOTOS BY KRISTIN ANNABLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Tolko Industries

Jim Scott, Mayor of The Pas, said, This is awesome, wonderful news. Its an unbelievable bullet we have a dodged.

In late August, Vernon, B.C.,-based Tolko had announced it was closing the kraft paper mill Dec. 2, claiming after years of efforts the company was unable to improve the mills competitive position.

Tolko is the largest employer in The Pas, with more than 300 workers.

News of the mills closure came on the heels of Omnitrax Canada announcing it was cutting rail freight service from The Pas to Churchill to one train per week from two.

Also in late August, Aseneskak Casino in nearby Opaskwayak Cree Nation (OCN) announced its intention to move within the next two years, putting 147 local jobs at risk. In late October, the IGA grocery store in OCN announced it was shutting down, throwing 47 people out of work.

Last month, Tolko workers voted to accept a 10 per cent wage rollback for five years with the potential new employer, which is to be called Canadian Kraft Paper Industries Ltd. As well, the Town of The Pas has agreed to grant the prospective new owner a tax exemption for the next three years. In 2015, Tolko paid $453,000 in those municipal taxes.

Paul McKie, national representative of Unifor, whose members represent the majority of the 320 Tolko workers, said, Were extremely pleased the plant is not closing and will continue to operate under a new owner.

Officials from American Industrial Acquisition Corp. and Tolko were not available for comment Friday, but there is widespread expectation a deal to acquire the plant is now imminent and could be announced as early as Monday.

Premier Brian Pallister said he is now guardedly optimistic a deal can now be done to save the mill. He called the pension vote a key step.

Im really, really proud of the workers. Theyve had a tough time. Theyve had real uncertainty, Pallister said in Brandon, where the Progressive Conservatives are holding their annual general meeting.

Im also proud of government staff who have been working diligently to do our very best to get the security back in the lives of these people (mill workers) that they deserve to have.

Bill Henderson, a former longtime employee of the mill who was hired by The Pas Community Development Corp. to help with the community response, said its the workers and the town who deserve credit for making concessions.

We were looking for a sustainable solution, said Henderson. There there were a lot of people who put a lot of effort into making this work.

The vote on the pension-solvency payment schedule was not tied to the transaction but is part of the regulatory requirement in Manitoba when any relief in solvency-payment schedules is sought. Members of the pension plans must vote two-thirds in favour, and there were four separate votes involved in this case  members of both Unifor and United Steelworkers pensions plans as well as the retirees and others who will eventually collect pensions from both those unions.

Brandon Ellement of Ellement Consulting Group is the actuary and administrator for both the pension plans.

If there was no risk involved, there would not have been a vote, he said.

He said both of the pensions were in good shape on a going-concern basis. But according to the legislated methodology to calculate pension solvency, the company would have been required to make annual solvency payments of about $10 million for five years.

The province has allowed a three-year moratorium for the new owners, but then the solvency deficiency must be paid off in five years. Ellement said in three years time, the solvency deficiency may be less or more than it is today.

Bond-market fluctuations affect pension solvency, and other market conditions could certainly affect the plants commercial viability in the future.

 with files from Larry Kusch

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 05/11/2016 (2187 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When former senior U.S. agricultural trade negotiator Joe Glauber scans the global horizon, he sees troubled times ahead for free-trade talks.

Late delays to signing the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the EU are just one example. As he was leaving Brussels on his way to speak at the University of Manitoba late last month, Stop CETA banners were hanging from overpasses, and the regional government of Wallonia, a district of Belgium, was poised to block it.

U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump was declaring for the umpteenth time NAFTA is the worst trade deal ever negotiated in the history of this country, promising to pull the U.S. out. Hillary Clinton was distancing herself from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Thierry Monasse / The Associated Press Regional leader of Wallonia Paul Magnette speaks with the media after a meeting at the Egmont Palace in Brussels, Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2016. Belgium is stretching talks to convince its region of Wallonia to give the necessary backing to a trade deal between the European Union and Canada into the eve of a summit to sign the landmark agreement.

Glauber once served as chief economist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a special envoy with the U.S. Trade Representatives Office in World Trade Organization negotiations. He now works for the International Food Policy Research Institute.

He told his Winnipeg audience while trade deals arent the cause of globalization, they have become its face. And for many, that face is ugly.

You have a significant percentage of people in the U.S. who think that trade agreements are basically bad, he said. In the current environment, Glauber is convinced the TPP is in trouble, and negotiations between the U.S. and the EU have little chance of moving forward.

But he also acknowledged the fault lies at least in part with negotiators such as himself and the governments they represent.

We havent done a good enough job communicating the benefits, and weve been poor at treating the casualties of trade deals, Glauber said. Theres real bitterness in these places.

But globalization has been happening anyway, noted Glauber. Despite the inability of negotiators to conclude a new multilateral agreement, global agricultural trade has tripled since 2001.

Jobs and production naturally flow to regions that offer lower costs of production. The increased commercial activity helps developing economies grow, which reduces poverty and increases more demand for the kinds of commodities North American farmers export.

It also creates winners and losers. It would seem the winners in these deals get all the attention, and the losers are largely ignored  until they roar.

The politicians of the economically deprived Wallonia put the brakes on because they could see few benefits accruing to their citizens as a result of CETA. In fact, they foresaw more manufacturing-plant closures and more competition for their agricultural sector in a region that already boasts 16 per cent unemployment, among the highest in Europe.

We want to regulate the market, we want to protect citizens, for that we fought, and I think it was worth it because we were heard, Wallonia Minister-President Paul Magnette was quoted as saying after attaching an addendum that clarifies the deal.

The same could be said about angry tirades against open borders unleashed during the Brexit debate in the U.K. and now during the U.S. election.

There is a message in all this that governments worldwide ignore at their peril. Governments have frequently used the guise of international trade rules as reason to withdraw from commitments to their citizens, giving rise to forces that are embittered and unpredictable.

Instead of using trade deals to accelerate a process that is already moving faster than local economies can absorb, perhaps governments should use these agreements to focus on an orderly transition through checks and balances that leave no one behind.

Laura Rance is editorial director for Farm Business Communications. She can be reached at laura@fbcpublishing.com or 204-792-4382.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 05/11/2016 (2187 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While the world faces its worst refugee crisis on record, Canada is reducing the number of refugees it will receive next year. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship has announced immigration targets for 2017 that reduce the number of refugees Canada welcomes to 40,000 from 55,800.

For Winnipeggers hoping to sponsor those displaced by persecution, fighting and genocide, its disappointing news.

Thats almost a 30 per cent reduction, said Michel Aziza with Operation Ezra. The Jewish-community-led coalition is lobbying Canada to rescue Yazidis facing genocide. On Oct. 25, the House of Commons voted unanimously in favour of a Conservative motion calling on Canada to agree the Islamic State assault on Yazidis is a genocide and to rescue some of those forced to flee northern Iraq within the next four months. So far, Operation Ezra has sponsored and resettled nine Yazidi refugees in Winnipeg but has received requests from 2,700 Yazidi families desperate to come to safety in Canada, said Aziza.

TREVOR HAGAN / FREE PRESS FILES Ilan Mozes (left) and Michel Aziza sort donations for Yazidi refugees in Winnipeg earlier this year. Winnipeg-based Operation Ezra has received requests from thousands of Yazidis desperate to come to Canada, Aziza says.

Our hope is that a minimum of 5,000 Yazidi refugees be brought in the first year, he said. In the context of a genocide, the number has to be significant.

The federal governments projection for immigration levels doesnt offer much hope to those trying to rescue loved ones, said the executive director of Hospitality House Refugee Ministry.

We were misled by all the positive stuff coming out of the ministers mouth and the think tanks, said Tom Denton.

This fall, high-powered economic advisers warned Canada is aging and needs an injection of working-age people to avoid a crisis. It recommended the government gradually increase immigration levels to 450,000 a year over the next five years, with a boost of 15,000 next year for an immigration target of 315,000.

That didnt happen. Canada will, again, bring in 300,000 new arrivals next year.

It was like a return to the status quo, said Denton. The federal government is allotting 10,500 new private refugee sponsorship applications for provinces outside Quebec, he said. Its the same number as 2016.

The faith-based charity started a waiting list to gauge the demand for family-linked refugee sponsorships and to offer some glimmer of hope to Winnipeggers and their loved ones who are at-risk refugees overseas. In just nine days, Winnipeggers put 12,000 people on the waiting list.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 05/11/2016 (2187 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

HAMILTON, N.D.  Inside Luscious Lous, uncertainty is the order of the day.

The venerable bar and grill in this tiny hamlet of 50 residents just 30 kilometres south of the U.S.-Canada border is a modest shoebox of a building, with a hand-painted sign above the door and an atmosphere reminiscent of that dark but comfy rec room in the basement of your best friends house.

However, six days before Americans head to the polls to pick a new president, there is nothing comfortable about the conversation unfolding between the owner and two patrons who have dropped in for a bowl of soup and some midday chat.

Im going to vote, of course, says Wendy Keena, whose nickname is Lou and who has owned and operated the bar for more than 25 years. But I honestly dont know for who. I wont really know until the last minute whos going to get my vote this time. Its really a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-dont kind of election.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Donald Trump supporter Sandra Gustafson at her home in Langdon, ND.

Roger Keney nods in agreement. He and Wendy were born and raised in Hamilton and graduated in 1975 from the final class at the local high school. They talk often about politics, and seem to be in agreement that this is the most difficult voting decision theyve ever faced.

I have voted Democrat in the past but this time, I just dont know, says Roger, who drives a truck for a local fertilizer company. Theres been so much grief from both Donald and Hillary. Im just not sure either one of them is going to do good for this country.

Nobody is very excited about voting for president here. One of them is a crook, and the other one grabs womens asses. Not much of a choice.

In an election that has been rife with lead changes and melodrama in the historic showdown between Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and mercurial Republican nominee Donald Trump, North Dakota offers little in the way of intrigue.

Although Tuesdays ballots list the names of the candidates on each partys ticket, U.S. voters are really deciding on electors who, in turn, cast votes for president and vice-president. The winners must receive 270 electoral votes  an absolute majority of the 538  in order to govern. The state has just three electoral college votes, and thus plays little role in the outcome of a presidential election.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Wendy Keena, owner of the Luscious Lou's 5-81 Country Bar and Grill in Hamilton, North Dakota Wednesday with chats with Roger Keney about the upcoming U.S. Presidential election.

North Dakota has voted solidly Republican in presidential elections for more than 50 years. And despite the national trends that have seen Clinton and Trump see-saw back and forth in terms of support, this is expected to be a solidly red Republican state when all the votes are counted this time around.

The inevitability of the result, and the reality of North Dakotas lack of influence in the federal political system, is evident in the absence of any visible signs of electoral enthusiasm. A tour of Cavalier and Pembina Counties  rustic and sparsely populated regions of mostly farming folk that run right up to Manitobas southern border  reveals little in the way of evidence that a presidential election is less than a week away.

In Langdon, a town of about 1,300 that serves as Cavalier Countys seat, residents cant offer up a single property displaying a Clinton sign, and only two or three where owners dare to publicly identify themselves as Trump supporters. There are smatterings of other signs related to state and local elections that are concurrent with the presidential vote; North Dakota is electing a new governor and lieutenant governor on Tuesday. But the presidential contest is  outwardly, anyway  off the radar.

Its that context that makes Sandra Gustafson stand out. A resident of Langdon, Gustafson is one of the few people in town willing to show support for either presidential candidate with a small shrine dedicated to Donald Trump.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS North Dakota State Senate and House of Representatives candidates signage in Langdon, North Dakota Wednesday. Presidential candidate signs were few and far between.

Gustafsons tiny bungalow has a sign out front endorsing the Republican Trump-Mike Pence ticket, along with TRUMP spelled out in blue duct tape on her garage and storm doors. With a U.S. flag hanging just to the left of the front door, its a bold, even loud, statement in a part of the country that has the volume turned way down.

I figure that if youre going to put out a sign, you should do it well, Gustafson says. And Im a Trump fan. Hillary is just in it for herself, Donald is in it for America. I pray every day that its a landslide victory for Donald.

Her deep commitment is difficult to find elsewhere in Cavalier County. At the Crossroads Family Restaurant in Langdon, Paul and Patty Liebersbach are enjoying breakfast and  much like the patrons at Luscious Lous  fretting about Tuesday. The farming couple from nearby Nekoma have already voted by advance mail-in ballot, but their decisions were difficult ones.

I voted Democrat, Patty says with a shrug and a smile. I havent always been a Democrat, but I really like the idea of a woman president. I think its our time. However, Patty admitted that her decision to support a Democrat in a state with deep Republican tendencies makes it difficult to discuss the election with her friends, many of whom are Trump supporters. They are such strong Republicans, they will vote Trump. We just dont talk about it much.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Donald Trump supporter Sandra Gustafson: 'I pray every day that its a landslide victory for Donald.'

Paul, a longtime Republican, just could not bring himself to support Trump this time around. His backup plan was to vote for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, a native North Dakotan born in Minot, whose polling numbers around the country soared in late summer before some very public gaffes brought the expected crash in his support.

Me voting Republican, a lot of that is my heritage, Paul says. My grandfather voted Republican and my father voted Republican, and I voted Republican the same as they did. But I just dont like Trump, and there are a lot of Libertarian policies that I like. And with only three electoral college votes to be had, we dont have much of an impact on the result, so were free to support independent candidates without screwing up the election.

However, Paul says, there is likely to be a long hangover from this election, which has been nastier and more volatile than any he can remember. All that hate and nastiness, were all just sick and tired of it.

The profound ambivalence that seems to be prevalent throughout Cavalier county is, in many ways, a reflection of what people are going through all over the U.S., says Bo Wood, a professor of political science at the University of North Dakota. Wood says the state will vote for Trump in the majority, but many will hold their noses while they do so.

When push comes to shove, this is a Republican state, he says. And so, theyll vote for Trump. Even though they would have preferred to vote for someone else.

True to that point, North Dakota Republicans did not initially show much appetite for The Donald. The state does not hold GOP caucus or primary votes, choosing instead to elect a slate of unbound delegates at a state convention who are free to go to the national convention and vote as they see fit. Even so, local media found that of the 25 delegates selected in the spring to go to Cleveland in July, the overwhelming majority wanted to support Sen. Ted Cruz, who dropped out of the race in May.

A similar narrative played out on the Democratic side. In the June caucus in North Dakota, left-leaning Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders captured 13 of 18 available delegates with more than two-thirds of votes cast. That result certainly did not help Clinton in the state when she became the Democratic partys presumptive nominee just a month later, Wood says.

As is the case in much of the country, North Dakotans have been left with a disquieting choice of two candidates who are not even close to being their first choices. However, there are collateral issues that have built a tenuous coalition among voters, particularly on the GOP site.

For example, Republicans are fairly united around the need to elect a GOP president to control future Supreme Court nominees, Wood says. There is one vacancy now and at least two others expected during the next four years, and if the Democrats control the White House, it is widely believed Clinton will, in short order, nominate a liberal justice who will make issues at the very core of American society, such as the Second Amendment (the right to bear arms), vulnerable to future court challenges.

Both presidential candidates are profoundly flawed, Wood says. There are a lot of people who really dont like Trump who will vote for him because theyre committed to the Republican party, or because theyre concerned about the Supreme Court, or because they really hate Clinton. So youve got people who are voting, but theyre not voting for someone, theyre voting against someone or something.

This ambivalence has also meant that no local issues  and there have been a couple  seem capable of shifting the course of the election here.

In August, a federal judge struck down restrictive voter identification laws in North Dakota and several other states following legal challenges by native Americans, who claimed the laws were designed to stop them from casting ballots. The voter ID provisions were a hallmark of the Republican-dominated state legislature and could have theoretically sparked a backlash against GOP candidates on Tuesday, but no blowback has been detected.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Paul and Patty Liebersbach in The Crossroads Family Restaurant in Langdon, ND.

The same scenario has played out with the ongoing protests around the $3.8-billion Dakota Access pipeline development near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation south of Bismarck that has pitted the state and pipeline proponent Energy Transfer Partners against native-American protesters and environmentalists. The protesters have blocked access to the construction site, arguing that is sacred land and the pipeline will poison the air and water. Clashes between protesters and private security have at times been violent.

It turns out that Trump is not only an investor in the project, but has received political donations from Energy Transfer executives. In a normal presidential campaign, a story like that might energize the Democratic party and possibly move opinion heading into the election. Not so, this time.

Local issues dont really resonate in this election, or if they do, they create a controversy for one week and then the week following, everyone has forgotten about it, Wood says. This is an election that is all about fear, and nothing else seems to impress them.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Election signage for a District Judge, the North Dakota State Senate and House of Representative by a Pro-life Across America billboard near Cavalier, ND.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 04/11/2016 (2188 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BRANDON  Six months after seizing government  and with their political opponents in disarray  Manitoba Progressive Conservatives were in a mood to celebrate as they gathered for their first annual general meeting since their historic victory.

Isnt it nice to take an hour to introduce all the MLAs? Premier Brian Pallister exclaimed at the evening banquet, after virtually all of the 40 Tories elected joined him onstage, exchanging high-fives.

After more than 16 years in the political wilderness, the PCs were still basking in the glow of an election victory in which they took 52.6 per cent of the popular vote.

COLIN CORNEAU / THE BRANDON SUN Finance Minister Cameron Friesen speaks during a policy blueprint session at the PC Manitoba annual general meeting, Friday afternoon at the Keystone Centre in Brandon.

Pallister encouraged the approximately 400 members in attendance Friday to savour the victory but remain humble.

He told a story that got a big laugh from the crowd. He said he was at the Co-op gas station in Austin three weeks ago. As he fixed himself a coffee, he heard one of two young men behind the counter whisper excitedly that the premier had just walked into the store.

And I turned around to see

Pallister didnt finish the line as the crowd roared.

I tell you that because its important. Its important to remember where weve come from, to remember who we are, to remember what we stand for and to be humble about it.

Pallister said his new government faces monumental challenges.

We were hired after a decade of debt to fix the finances of our province. We were hired by the people of Manitoba after a decade of decay to repair the services of our people, and we were hired by the people of Manitoba after a period of decline to rebuild our economy on the basis of the private sector.

He took a shot at the vanquished NDP, noting two years ago on Thursday marked the second anniversary of the day five members of Greg Selingers cabinet called a news conference to say they could no longer work with him.

The NDP, he said, showed the people of Manitoba what a team does not look like, and we are going to show Manitoba what a team does look like.

Earlier in the day, members participated in policy workshops and heard a 50-minute presentation from election campaign manager David McLaughlin on how the election was won.

Its important to remember where weve come from, to remember who we are, to remember what we stand for and to be humble about it Premier Brian Pallister (right)

The meeting concludes today with a keynote address by the premier and debate on more than a dozen policy resolutions. Several resolutions merely rubber-stamp policies already enunciated by Pallister. However, others build on current policies and would take the party in new directions.

A resolution by the PC Lac du Bonnet constituency association wants the province to work with the tourism industry to provide a worldwide advertising and promotion program that fully showcases the vast recreation opportunities that are available in Manitoba.

A motion by Interlake Tories encourages the exploration of an interprovincial energy corridor to allow Manitoba Hydro to export electricity to neighbouring provinces.

A resolution from the Midland Constituency Association urges the government to review provincial court funding and the speed in which child protection cases are handled.

Another motion from Lac du Bonnet PCs urges a provincially co-ordinated recruitment effort for doctors and nurses, rather than haphazard, regionally driven programs.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca
In the woodworking room at Minnesota State Southeast on Saturday morning, a group of Boy Scouts meticulously cut out windows and learned how to use electric saws for a big project to benefit both a local and national cause.

The kids wore safety goggles and had their hands on different pieces of wood for a specific goal: build six castle bookcases through the help of their instructors, but also through teamwork, dedication and willingness to learn new skills.

In partnership with Team Vogel vs. Cancer, Southeast offered a space on Saturday to unite young learners. The project benefits the 2016 Woodworkers Fighting Cancer, which gives communities a chance to contribute to the fundraiser by reproducing projects that the organization puts out on their website.

At Southeast, after the Boy Scouts complete their project, they will send a photo of the castle bookcases to the organization, who will then donate to the charity on their behalf, which in this case is Team Vogel vs. Cancer.

Scott Christiansen, Team Vogel vs. Cancer member, said Woodworkers Fighting Cancer provides plans and instructions on how to build the projects on their website. The bookcase that the kids planned to build by the end of the day will feature four shelves, a functional drawbridge, battlements and windows, made from two sheets of plywood, glue and screws. Kendell Lumber, a company based in Winona and Rollingstone, donated the wood and materials for the scouts and instructors to use.

Boy Scout leader Craig McMahon was the one who contacted Team Vogel vs. Cancer to give kids extra learning experience and work on a project that served a big cause.

This is supporting the national cancer campaign, but also local families in Winona, and scouts, McMahon said.

They will be proud of their accomplishments in the end, McMahon said.

Across the room, carpenter instructors were moving around tables, guiding the kids step by step on how to cut out different pieces of the bookcase.

Southeast carpentry instructor Ralph Roemer said the kids were learning a variety of practical skills on woodworking and will also understand how the assembly process works.

They will learn how to take a pile of wood and then end up with a complete project, Roemer said. We are really teaching them lifelong skills.

Roemer explained a lot of the skills the Boy Scouts are learning will be skills they can use in their future, too.

We always tell students who graduate from high school to spend a year with us and learn what they can because in the long run, the payback is huge, Roemer said. In a few years they are all going to have a house and need their own maintenance, so if they are able to do that themselves, they will save a lot of money and time.

Sidney McMahon from the Venturing program was attentively reading the instructions on the several components that made the castle case while cleaning small cut out pieces of wood with sanding pads.

I have really enjoyed sanding so far, McMahon said.

On another table, Boy Scout Mason Polus was cutting out windows for the project. He was looking forward to using a power saw, he said.

Not only did the event give a chance to educate Boy Scouts on different woodworking techniques, but it also allowed them to collaborate with organizations such as Team Vogel and the Woodworkers Fighting Cancer, who are all connected through a common purpose: the fight against cancer.

Its really a community effort because there are many groups coming together to build the castles and benefit so many people, McMahon said.

This is supporting the national cancer campaign, but also local families in Winona, and scouts. Craig McMahon,

Boy Scout leader
David Moore wedged a folded-up campaign flyer into the front door of a Baraboo home Friday afternoon as he worked his way down 6th Street, speaking with prospective voters.

The Wisconsin Dells pastor, Sauk County supervisor, and Republican state Assembly candidate admits he doesnt have a large campaign war chest. He hopes its his message that will carry the day when he faces off against incumbent state Rep. David Considine, D-Baraboo, on Tuesday.

I dont have a huge budget to work with, Moore said, adding that he tries to find time for campaigning between other responsibilities. And its tough because I still have a full-time job to deal with. At the county, its budget season. So its hard to find those 27 hours in a day.

With only three days to go, candidates for Wisconsins 81st Assembly District are making their final sprint to the finish line.

Campaign cash differs

Considine, a farmer and retired special education teacher who was elected to his first term in 2014, said he plans to partake in a three-community blitz today through Monday.

I like to be ambitious, said Considine, who spent Friday afternoon knocking on doors throughout Sauk Prairie and Mazomanie. With the help of a few volunteers, he also will focus on Baraboo and Portage in the coming days.

Considine has garnered more monetary support for his campaign. The latest campaign finance reports, filed Monday, show he had about $14,000 cash on hand as of Oct. 24. Moore had nearly $1,500.

The reports show Considine received contributions of just more than $8,000  all from individuals  during the period from Sept. 1 to Oct. 24. Most of those donors are from within the 81st Assembly District.

During the same period, Moore raised about $1,700. Although most of that came from individuals within the district, $250 came from the Republican Party of Sauk County and another $250 came from the campaign of Rep. Amy Loudenbeck, R-Clinton.

Although he has done several fundraisers, Considine said he has not pushed hard for donations under the belief that most of his supporters arent made of money.

If they can come up with 25 or 50 bucks, Im not going to hit them for another donation, he said.

Considine spent about $8,000 during the most recent reporting period. His campaigns largest expenses were newspaper advertisements with Capital Newspapers and consulting fees paid to the Wisconsin Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee.

Moore said its been difficult year for Republican candidates up and down the ticket in terms of fundraising.

His campaign only spent $550 during the seven-week period, with the largest single expense being a $150 ticket to the Republican Party of Sauk Countys Lincoln Day Dinner. The campaign spent another $140 on meals for volunteers.

Messages differ

Moore isnt relying on radio or newspaper advertising, but instead is focusing on social media, signs and flyers. His campaign received much attention for a video he released Monday.

In the video, posted to his Facebook page, Moore talks about his support for the Second Amendment while holding a semi-automatic rifle at the Lake Delton Sportsmens Club.

The National Anthem plays in the background as Moore says Considine has earned his F rating from the National Rifle Association by being a consistent opponent of gun owners rights. He pledges to support legislation that would allow Wisconsinites to carry handguns without a permit and own semi-automatic weapons along with high-capacity magazines. Then, he opens fire.

The video had been viewed nearly 8,000 times as of Friday afternoon, according to Facebook. Moores page also features an endorsement from the anti-abortion group Wisconsin Right to Life.

The bottom line is youre taking someones life, Moore said, adding that Considine opposed legislation to make abortion illegal 20 weeks after conception in Wisconsin. You cant tell me that my children and grandchildren were not human until they were born. They were all human beings from conception.

Considine took issue with Moores Facebok video, saying it paints him as anti-gun.

Thats very interesting, as a person who has resisted a lot of the gun legislation that Democrats have pushed, he said, adding that he supports sensible firearm restrictions. But thats fine. I do want to limit the size of magazines. But I dont want to take peoples guns.

Considine said initiatives he supports that seem to register with voters include reforming public education funding, reversing cuts to the University of Wisconsin System, and a restored reliance on science professionals within the states Department of Natural Resources.
With no one willing to buy a Fifth Avenue house and move it, the city of Baraboo is looking to turn the building  and some land to put it on  to the citys redevelopment agency.

Earlier this year, the city received only one offer to buy a home at 227 Fifth Ave. and move it to a vacant city-owned lot at 212 14th St. That deal fell through when Tim and Stacy Jax found the cost of removing the buildings utilities prohibitive.

Theyve decided they would not want to proceed with that, said City Engineer Tom Pinion.

Upon returning to the drawing board, city leaders explored turning over the home to the Community Development Authority. The CDA would acquire it for no cost, move it to vacant city-owned land at 110 First Ave., and sell it. Community Development Block Grant funds would be used to fund the move.

On Tuesday, the CDA board unanimously endorsed the plan, contingent on the state decreeing it would be a proper use of CDBG money.

Im partial to saving old houses, said CDA board member Stuart Koehler, co-owner of the Ringling House Bed & Breakfast.

CDA Director Pat Cannon said he felt comfortable taking on the project. He offered to ask the state Department of Administration to sign off on using CDBG money.

I like the whole concept, as long as we can handle it, said Vice Chair Joan Fordham.

The CDA took on a similar project when it bought a home on Second Avenue. This time the 24-foot-wide house, last used by local business Imperial Multimedia, would be placed on a 34-foot-wide lot near Don-Rick Insurance.

The house is in pretty good physical condition inside, Cannon said.

The Fifth Avenue parcel lies between a municipal parking lot and the Al. Ringling Mansion parking lot, and presents an opportunity to link the two. The city has reached in principle a lease agreement with Ringling Mansion owner Joe Colossa to open his lot to the public in exchange for the city crew restriping it.

Profit from the sale of the home, once its moved to First Avenue, would go into a revolving loan fund.

The 14th Street property will be put up for sale. Pinion said neighbors have expressed interest.
Over the last several months, I have had the opportunity to attend a variety of meetings in which municipal leaders, community leaders, political candidates and concerned citizens participated. Among the topics of discussion was the issue of infrastructure; in this case, transportation infrastructure. There was no disagreement  regardless of political stance or ideology  that maintenance and improvement of our roads and bridges are essential for our countys fiscal health and safety.

As I listened to and took part in these discussions, I thought about another element of our countys and states infrastructure that I believe is every bit as critical to our states fiscal health and safety: public education. While most civic and social leaders will agree that public education  elementary through post-secondary  is critical to our cultural, economic, and social well-being, I have not heard reference to public education as infrastructure. To frame public education as infrastructure is to acknowledge that a well-funded public education system is not a luxury, but a necessity.

In a 2013 study entitled Recovery: Job Growth and Education Requirements through 2020, researchers from Georgetown Universitys Public Policy Institute outline the emerging workforce needs across the nations economy. Not surprisingly, the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields will see the fastest growing needs. However, the study also documents the projected shortfall of prospective employees across the economy. The authors note, The United States has been under-producing workers with postsecondary education since the 1980s... with the result that the cumulative shortfall of postsecondary-educated Americans has risen each year and by 2020 will approach 20 million. By 2020, this study finds, about 65 percent of jobs in the American economy will require some level of post-secondary education or training.

While the reports findings that nearly two-thirds of all occupations in 2020 will need post-secondary education or training is striking, what is more striking is the breadth of occupational range that these projected 165 million jobs will represent. Though the STEM occupations will create 2.6 million job vacancies by 2020, non-STEM areas such as the arts, community support services, health care support, and the social sciences will together add more than 4 million more jobs.

This report speaks to the need for educational diversity. While we must have more well-trained welders, we also must have more well-trained medical technicians. We must have more engineers, but we also must have well-educated teachers and citizens educated in the areas of government and social support. Outside the framework of workforce development, we must educate the next generation of civic leaders who have strong critical-thinking and communication skills. These latter skills will become ever more important across occupations and professions. We must anticipate this need for educational diversity by investing in our educational infrastructure.

What will be the outcome of understanding public education as infrastructure? When we invest our municipal, county, and state resources in elementary, secondary, and post-secondary public education  much as we invest resources from all levels of government in transportation-related infrastructure  we will establish a diverse base of human capital. This capital will comprise citizens who are civically responsible, which will lead to competent and innovative government; it will be composed of citizens who make up an adaptable workforce; and, just as important, our municipalities, counties, and state will have citizens who volunteer in our communities to provide support that cannot or should not come from government.

Such a public education infrastructure needs a commitment of ongoing funding from all levels of taxing authorities, from the municipal to federal level. Continuous funding will provide for updated physical plants; well-paid faculty and staff, which will result in stability and lower costs over the longer term; a rigorous, highly-regarded educational system, which will attract businesses and industry to our communities as entrepreneurs seek out communities with a commitment to education.

The University of Wisconsin Colleges campuses, of which UW-Baraboo/Sauk County is a part, are supported, in part, by their host counties; in the case of UW-BSC, the city of Baraboo partners with Sauk County to provide this very strong support. The annual investment that Baraboo and Sauk County make in UW-BSC helps support our countys public education infrastructure. The colleges look forward to continuing to work with Baraboo and Sauk County to keep our UW-BSC campus strong and so strengthen our countys infrastructure.

The UW Colleges and UW-Extension have launched an initiative we are calling Tap Into It. Through this initiative at www.uwcx.org, visitors are able to provide input on how UW Colleges and UW-Extension have served Wisconsin residents. I invite Sauk County residents to visit the website to tell the story of how you tap into UW Colleges and UW-Extension, each of which is a critical component of the public education infrastructure of Wisconsin.
ROYAL BLOODLINES

If Beaver Dam had royalty, Harlowe Randall Hoyt would certainly be a prince.

The grandson of two of the citys founding fathers, Hoyt witnessed the communitys development from rural village to a bustling metropolitan area. His maternal grandfather, Dr. Joseph Babcock arrived in Beaver Dam in 1847. He served the community as city physician, town treasurer, collector and school board member. But his greatest contribution to the city and Hoyt was as owner of the Concert Hall, the venue for local theater during the late 1800s.

His paternal grandfather, Dr. Ezra Hoyt, arrived in the city in the mid-1840s, partnered with Babcock in his medical practice and opened the Old Corner Drugstore. But, Dr. Hoyt was also a successful industrialist owning several mills in the city as well as across the state. With such a pedigree, Harlowe was destined for nothing less than greatness.

A BOY OF LETTERS

From an early age, Hoyt exhibited a tremendous capacity for learning.

A voracious reader, his nights would be occupied by pouring over his grandfathers medical books or his Uncle Butler Babcocks law school texts. In later years, his colleagues would comment on Hoyts grasp of medical and legal issues, often times astounding professionals in those very fields.

He was fascinated by all things historical, especially events of the Civil War. Many believe this was fueled by the fact that his grandmother Marietta (nee Hamlin) Hoyt was a cousin of Hannibal Hamlin, Abraham Lincolns first vice-president.

Hoyt was self-taught in the banjo, to such a proficient degree that as an adult he would be asked to sit in with professional minstrel shows. But his great passion was the theater, most specificallyThe Concert Hall. The hall provided him entry to the greatest drama companies, musicians and lecturers of the late 19th century. He stood face to face with such greats as P.T. Barnum, Tom Thumb, Harry Houdini, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Greeley, William Jennings Bryan and Mark Twain.

In fact, years later, when Hal Holbrook put on his legendary one-man show, Mark Twain Tonight, Holbrook sought out Hoyt for advice on how to portray Twain.

Hoyt graduated from Beaver Dam High school with a Modern Classical Course emphasis. He would attend Wayland for two years to pursue their college level courses in English.

Although, he would not yet consider himself a professional, during this time period, Hoyt would have several stories published in dime novels.

A MULTITUDE OF TALENTS

In 1902, Hoyt left Beaver Dam to begin his professional writing career. He quickly landed a reporter position with the newspaper, The Milwaukee Free Press covering the crime beat. Milwaukee afforded Harlowe access to the next level of professional theater.

Over the next decade, Hoyt would experience all aspects of the vaudeville and traveling theater circuits moonlighting as an actor, stage manager, promoter, agent and playwright. In the early 1910s, he authored a series of extremely successful historic melodramas that toured throughout the country. The most notable being The Defender of Cameron Dam.

His newspaper musings would also garner national attention as holiday poems and witticisms would be syndicated to newspapers across the United States and Canada.

His star continued to rise with a promotion to theater critic. Along with those duties, Hoyt would occasionally review the new medium of silent films. That duty brought him in contact with Thomas Edison and other motion picture production companies and in 1908 he wrote his first screenplay, The Miniature for Edison Studios. Other movie scripts would follow for multiple film studios.

HOME IN CLEVELAND

With all of his success, Hoyt, chose Cleveland for his next career opportunity. Cleveland was the perfect fit for Hoyt  a thriving progressive industrial city located in between the East Coast theaters of Broadway and his beloved Midwest home. Cleveland also claimed home to a much respected theater scene.

In 1916, Hoyt joined the The Cleveland Leader as a columnist. But in less than two years, the Leader would be swallowed up by the nationally and internationally respected Cleveland Plain Dealer, which had a reputation for its coverage of regional and national theater. Hoyt had found a home that would last for the next 50 years.

In late 1918, Hoyt would write the reviews for all theatrical productions in the city. In one year, there were 138 commercial theater productions. As Ward Marsh, film critic for the Plain Dealer stated If a man may be said to have been born with a spoon in his mouth, then Harlowe was born with his halo of footlights.

THE HOYT SYNDICATE

Not one to be caught idle, in the late 1920s to mid-1930s, Hoyt was signed by the Publishers Syndicate of Chicago. Out of that relationship, Hoyt produced two syndicated efforts that appeared in newspapers across the U.S.A. and Canada. In the first, he teamed with Walter Scott (who would later go on to achieve acclaim as a Walt Disney Studio animator) to create a biblical comic strip entitled Dramatic Events in Biblical History. Hoyt would relate one of the classic religious tales in a four panel strip each Sunday.

The second was a Hollywood gossip column called Telling On Hollywood written under the pseudonym Robert Grandon. It is hard to fathom a gossip column about Hollywood originating from Cleveland, Ohio, but Hoyts former Milwaukee and Ohio theater contacts provided great fodder since may of those players went on to California. And although it may not have been the first such column, it certainly was one of the earliest.

During World War II, Hoyt wrote patriotic and inspirational stories and columns that appeared in newspapers throughout the country at a time when the spirits of a nation deeply needed an uplifting message.

THE BOOK

In 1955, Hoyt would publish his seminal work  Town Hall Tonight. The book, a lifetime in the making, related the history of small town theaters in the 1880s and 1890s. But more than just merely a record, it was an affectionate account of his childhood days growing up in the small Midwestern city of Beaver Dam. No other work, before or since, has shone such a positive light on the family values held so dear in this city. The book was a huge success with multiple editions printed.

Hoyt retired from the Plain Dealer on his eightieth birthday in 1962 holding the title The Dean of American Theatre Critics. He was the longest and oldest living critic in the country. Congratulations poured in from across the world. One such admirer, Richard Rogers, of Rogers and Hammerstein fame, telegrammed Congratulations On Opening of New Act. Harlowe continued to review for a local Cleveland magazine and the Plain Dealer. He had a tradition of always being accompanied by his wife, Ricklie holding her hand throughout the performance. On Oct. 24, 1970, with Ricklie on hand attending Fiddler On The Roof, Harlow fell ill but insisted on writing the review at the Plain Dealer. Harlowe Hoyt passed away hours later, after he and the review had been put to bed.

This article was based on research provided by Professor Jack Wingets doctoral thesis on Harlowe Hoyt titled Harlowe Randall Hoyt  Rennaissance Man of the Theatre 1882-1971, a Historical Study (1983).
WAUPUN  During the annual Wisconsin State Fire Inspector Association Conference held last week, Waupun Fire Department Fire Inspector Mike Beer received the Wisconsin State Fire Inspector of the Year award.

Beer began conducting inspections for the city of Waupun in November 1997 when he was a paid-on-call volunteer firefighter and moved into a full-time inspectors role in March 2008. He has worked diligently at establishing a relationship with local businesses which sets clear expectations for fire code adherence and safety.

Beer was recognized for his work in transitioning the Waupun Fire Department from a paper inspection format to an electronic format. This transition required a comprehensive review of all business information and days of data entry. This change has resulted in significant improvements relating to follow-up inspections and tracking violations through to completion.

He procured and implemented a program known as The Compliance Engine which allows the fire inspector to track and drive code compliance, reduce false alarm activity, and provide safer communities through third party inspection reporting and maintenance. This program has significantly reduced instances where life-safety systems are out of compliance with established state codes and National Fire Protection Association standards.

He has worked very closely with the administration and teachers within the local school district to help drive code adherence and fire safety at all five schools. Beer also has written a number of grants that have facilitated the purchase of more than 120 smoke alarms and 200 batteries to be handed out to residents within the city.

In addition to his work in Waupun, Beer has served as the WSFIA Area 6 Chairman since September of 2010. In this role, he serves as a representative for fire departments in Dodge, Fond du Lac, Green Lake, Marquette, Ozaukee, Sheboygan and Washington counties and works to coordinate quarterly training for the fire inspectors within Area 6.
JANESVILLE  For the second time in as many months, the possibility of a joint Paul Ryan-Donald Trump campaign appearance was floated and quickly yanked away.

The Republican presidential nominee earlier this week scheduled a Sunday afternoon rally in West Allis, just outside Milwaukee. It was to be Trump's sixth Wisconsin event since he lost the state's primary election to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

"We don't know if it's scheduled firm or not yet, but I intend to do it if he's here," Ryan told reporters Saturday when asked if he would attend the Trump rally. "Here's the point: we're going from here to Mukwonago to go campaign with Mike Pence. So everybody's schedule is a little bit in flux in these closing moments, but if our nominee comes, we'll campaign with him."

Seconds later, a spokesman for Trump's Wisconsin campaign alerted reporters that the event had been canceled, citing a scheduling conflict.

Trump has made a strong play for Wisconsin, despite the fact that the state has not gone for a Republican candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984.

He trails Clinton by six points among likely voters in the Badger State, according to a Marquette University Law School poll released Wednesday.

Clinton herself has not campaigned in Wisconsin since before the primary election, which she lost in Wisconsin to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Vice President Joe Biden held a rally in Madison on Friday, and running mate Tim Kaine is set to tour the state on Sunday.

Kaine's final Sunday event in Wisconsin will be a Green Bay Packers watch party at a La Crosse brewery. Trump's rally was scheduled to begin 25 minutes before the Packers game, which is almost required viewing in Wisconsin.

Ryan and Trump were supposed to campaign together for the first time last month, at an event in Elkhorn designed to showcase Wisconsin Republicans up and down the ballot. Trump's invitation was rescinded the night before that event, when a 2005 recording surfaced of him making sexually predatory comments about women.

The House Speaker has since distanced himself from his party's nominee, although he said this week he voted for Trump.

Ryan had previously indicated he would not campaign for Trump, focusing instead on preserving a GOP majority in the House.

This is the second time Trump has canceled a rally scheduled in West Allis. His last visit to Wisconsin was in Eau Claire last week.

Ryan was in Janesville with GOP Sen. Ron Johnson as part of a statewide tour to support his re-election campaign against Democratic former Sen. Russ Feingold.
Twenty months after Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for president of the United States and 17 months since Donald Trump began his campaign, there is only a short wait now for Election Day.

The Portage Municipal Building saw a steady stream of visitors on Friday, as voters cast in-person absentee ballots on the final day to do so.

Absentee voting has been busy and registrations have been busy too. A lot of people registering, updating their addresses and absentee voting, said City Clerk Marie Moe. Each day its getting a little bit busier and more people are coming in.

As of the final count Friday, 1,607 absentee votes had been cast in Portage with 275 new registrations. Portage has an estimated 8,103 voting-age residents, with 4,881 registered at the end of September.

Moe and other city staff are preparing for a long day of lines on Tuesday, doing what they can to ensure an efficient process.

Were asking people to come in through the front door or the door on the southeast side and then go downstairs, because were going to try to flow them through  to enter here and exit the side door on the northeast, said Moe. Except, obviously, if they need the elevator, they can exit the same way.

Photo ID

Moe emphasized and re-emphasized the importance of voters bringing photo ID, as per Wisconsins 2011 photo ID law, requiring voters to show ID at the poll. The bill was premised on addressing the threat of voter fraud, although opponents have pointed out that cases of in-person voter fraud are rare to the point of being negligible.

When asked in April by an NBC reporter about the odds of the Republican presidential candidate winning Wisconsin, U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Glenbulah, responded: I think that Hillary Clinton is the weakest candidate that the Democrats have put up, and now we have photo ID, and I think that photo ID is going to make a little bit of a difference as well. 

The Trump campaign has insisted on the threat of a rigged election and has suggested citizens go to polls to watch for suspected voter fraud, which has led some to fear voter intimidation.

Election monitors

Election monitors, however, are an expected part of the process locally.

People can observe; we have spots marked off in the polling area and observers are permitted by law to be here, said Moe. Of course, electioneering goes on and observers can watch the process. Theyre there to listen to the people come in and state their name and address and watch the proceedings. And they will also have a badge that says observer. So anybody who would be observing, they would be signed in with our election officials and they will be given an observer badge so people know that they, indeed, are observers.

As part of that same effort to allow voters to go to the polls, experiencing a fair process, free of intimidation, harassment or on-site campaigning, voters are reminded to leave any politically-oriented clothing or accessories at home. Campaign displays of any kind are not allowed within 100 feet of the entrance to a polling place.

Registration and write-ins

If voters are planning on same-day registration, Moe explained they need to bring a proof of residency, which commonly might include a piece of mail such as a utility bill. In order to check on registration status, polling place and ID requirements, Moe recommended that voters go to the website My Vote Wisconsin at myvote.wi.gov.

One aspect of the election that is a clear help for Moe and her staff, including over 25 election officials, is that write-in candidates must be registered to be recorded.

That is just a large time-saving, so that if there is no registered candidate for office, if a person just writes a persons name in, you dont count that. So thats where in prior years, if there was a write-in in every race, youre reporting a write-in vote for every race, so now you only record it if it is a registered write-in.

If a person arrives on Election Day and does not have ID, there is an alternative, although not the recommended route, to use a provisional ballot. In that case, the voter is provided with a ballot that is sealed and put to the side until the person can come back with the necessary documentation.

They can either bring (documents) back to the polls on Tuesday, so they, in turn can put their ballot back through the counter, or they can at least get it back to my office by 4 oclock on Friday to be counted.

If the voter isnt able to make it back with documentation by the end of Election Day, the ballot is sealed in an envelope and placed in a carrier bag until the person comes back with a deadline at the end of the week. If that is the case, though, the ballot will not be among those counted as results are tallied the night of the election.

Polls close at 8 p.m.

The most critical deadline, though, is 8 p.m. Tuesday, when polls in Wisconsin close.

If the line to vote is going out the door, everyone will still get their chance to vote, but everyone needs to be in line on time.

Well have somebody standing there so there wont be any question of if the person was there by 8 oclock, said Moe, and if they happen to come after 8 oclock they would be told that its after eight and polls are closed  cant vote.
GSK plc, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the creation, discovery, development, manufacture, and marketing of pharmaceutical products, vaccines, over-the-counter medicines, and health-related consumer products in the United Kingdom, the United States, and internationally. It operates through four segments: Pharmaceuticals, Pharmaceuticals R&D, Vaccines, and Consumer Healthcare. The company offers pharmaceutical products comprising medicines in the therapeutic areas, such as respiratory, HIV, immuno-inflammation, oncology, anti-viral, central nervous system, cardiovascular and urogenital, metabolic, anti-bacterial, and dermatology. It also provides consumer healthcare products in wellness, oral health, nutrition, and skin health categories. The company offers its consumer healthcare products in the form of nasal sprays, tablets, syrups, lozenges, gum and trans-dermal patches, caplets, infant syrup drops, liquid filled suspension, wipes, gels, effervescents, toothpastes, toothbrushes, mouthwashes, denture adhesives and cleansers, topical creams and non-medicated patches, lip balm, gummies, and soft chews. It has collaboration agreements with 23andMe; Lyell Immunopharma, Inc.; Novartis; Sanofi SA; Surface Oncology; Progentec Diagnostics, Inc.; Alector, Inc.; and CureVac AG., as well as strategic partnership with IDEAYA Biosciences, Inc. and Vir Biotechnology, Inc. The company was formerly known as GlaxoSmithKline plc and changed its name to GSK plc in May 2022. GSK plc was founded in 1715 and is headquartered in Brentford, the United Kingdom.
The following companies are subsidiares of Thermo Fisher Scientific: 236 Perinton Parkway LLC, 27 Forge Parkway LLC, ABR--Affinity BioReagents, ACI Holdings Inc., ARG Services LLC, ASPEX Corporation, Abgene Inc., Abgene Limited, Acoustic Cytometry Systems Inc., AcroMetrix LLC, Acros Organics B.V.B.A., Advanced Biotechnologies Limited, Advanced Scientifics (ASI), Advanced Scientifics Inc., Advanced Scientifics International Inc., Affymetrix Biotech Participacoes Ltda., Affymetrix Biotech Shanghai Ltd, Affymetrix Inc, Affymetrix Japan K.K., Affymetrix Pte Ltd, Affymetrix UK Ltd, Afora S.A.U., Ahura Scientific, Alchematrix Inc., Alchematrix LLC, Alfa Aesar, Alfa Aesar (China) Chemical Co. Ltd., Alfa Aesar (Hong Kong) Limited, Allergon AB, Alphine Mountain Limited, Ambion Inc., Apogent Denmark ApS, Apogent Finance Company, Apogent Holding Company, Apogent Technologies Inc., Apogent Transition Corp., Apogent U.K. Limited, App-Tek International Pty Ltd, Applied Biosystems B.V., Applied Biosystems Finance B.V., Applied Biosystems International Inc., Applied Biosystems LLC, Applied Biosystems Taiwan LLC, Applied Biosystems Trading (Shanghai) Company Ltd., Applied Biosystems de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Applied Scientific Corporation, Avances Cientificos de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Avocado Research Chemicals Limited, B.R.A.H.M.S. Biotech GmbH, B.R.A.H.M.S. GmbH, B.R.A.H.M.S. UK Ltd, BAC BV, BAC IP BV, Barnstead Thermolyne LLC, Beijing Phadia Diagnostics Co Ltd, Bender MedSystems GmbH, BioTrove Corporation, BioTrove International Inc., Bioanalysis Labsystems S.A., Biochemical Sciences LLC, Biolab, BmT GmbH Laborprodukte, Bonsai Tecnologies - Sistemas para Biotecnologia e Industria Unipessoal Lda, Brammer Bio, Bumi-Sans Sendirian Berhad, CAC Limited, CB Diagnostics AB, CB Diagnostics Holding AB, CEPH International Corporation, CHK Holdings Inc., CRS Robotics, CTPS LLC, Capitol Scientific Products Inc., Capitol Vial Inc., Cellomics Inc., CellzDirect Inc., Cenduit GmbH, Cenduit LLC, Cezanne S.A.S., Chase Scientific Glass Inc., Chromacol Limited, Clintrak, Clintrak Clinical Labeling Services LLC, Clintrak Pharmaceutical Services LLC, Cohesive Technologies (UK) Limited, Cohesive Technologies Inc., Columbia Diagnostics Inc., Compendia Bioscience Inc., Comtest Limited, Consolidated Technologies Inc., Consultores Fisher Scientific Chile Ltd, Core Informatics, Core Informatics LLC, Core Informatics UK Ltd., D-finitive Technologies Inc., DCG Systems B.V., DCG Systems C.V., DCG Systems G.K., DCG Systems GmbH, DCG Systems Korea Ltd., DCG Systems LLC, DPI Newco LLC, DSM Pharmaceutical Products Inc., Dharmacon, Diagnostix Ltd., Dionex (China) Analytical Ltd, Dionex (Switzerland) AG, Dionex (UK) Limited, Dionex Austria GmbH, Dionex Benelux B.V., Dionex Brasil Instrumentos Cientificos Ltda, Dionex Canada Ltd., Dionex China Limited, Dionex Corporation, Dionex Denmark A/S, Dionex Holding GmbH, Dionex I LLC, Dionex Pty Ltd., Dionex S.A., Dionex S.p.A., Dionex Singapore Pte Ltd., Dionex Softron GmbH, Dionex Sweden AB, Distribution Solutions International Inc., Doe & Ingalls Investors Inc., Doe & Ingalls Limited, Doe & Ingalls Management LLC, Doe & Ingalls Properties II LLC, Doe & Ingalls Properties LLC, Doe & Ingalls of California Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of Florida Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of Maryland Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of Massachusetts Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of North Carolina Operating LLC, Doublecape Holding Limited, Doublecape Limited, Drakeside Real Estate Holding Company LLC, Duke Scientific Corporation, Dynal Biotech Beijing Limited, EGS Gauging Ltd., EGS Gauging Technical Services Company, EP Scientific Products LLC, Ecochem N.V., EnviroEquip Pty Ltd, Epsom Glass Industries Limited, Equibio Limited, Erie Electroverre S.A., Erie Finance Limited, Erie LP Holding LLC, Erie Scientific Company of Puerto Rico, Erie Scientific Hungary Kft, Erie Scientific LLC, Erie U.K. Limited, Erie UK 1 Limited, Erie UK 2 Limited, Erie UK Holding Company, Erie UK Senior Holding Limited, European Laboratory Holdings Limited, Eutech Instruments Europe B.V., Eutech Instruments Pte Ltd., Eutech Instruments Sdn Bhd, Ever Ready Thermometer Co. 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V, FS (Barbados) Capital Holdings Ltd., FS Casa Rocas Holdings LLC, FS Mexicana Holdings LLC, FSI Receivables Company LLC, FSII Sweden Holdings AB, FSII Sweden Holdings I AB, FSIR Holdings (UK) Limited, FSIR Holdings (US) Inc., FSUK Holdings Limited, FSWH Company LLC, FSWH II C.V., FSWH International Holdings LLC, Fermentas China Co. Ltd, Fermentas Inc., Fermentas International, Fermentas Sweden AB, Fermentas UK Limited, Fiberlite Centrifuge LLC, Finesse Scientific Equipment (Shanghai) Co. 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Vipshop Holdings Limited operates online platforms for various brands in the People's Republic of China. It operates in Vip.com, Shan Shan Outlets, and Others segments. The company offers women's apparel, such as casual wear, jeans, dresses, outerwear, lingerie, pajamas, and maternity clothes; men's apparel comprising casual and smart-casual T-shirts, polo shirts, jackets, pants, and underwear; and skin care and cosmetic products, including cleansers, lotions, face and body creams, face masks, sunscreen, foundations, lipsticks, eye shadows, and other cosmetics-related items. It also provides shoes and bags, which comprises casual and formal shoes, purses, satchels, luggage, duffel bags, and wallets; handbags; apparel, gears and accessories, furnishings and decor, toys, and games for boys, girls, infants, and toddlers; sportswear, sports gear, and footwear for various sporting activities; home furnishings, such as bed and bath products, home decor, kitchen and tabletop items, and home appliances; and consumer electronic products. In addition, the company offers food and snacks, beverages, fresh produce, and pet goods; beauty products; and internet finance services, including consumer and supplier financing, and microcredit. Vipshop Holdings Limited provides its branded products through its vip.com and vipshop.com online platforms, as well as through its internet website and cellular phone application. Further, it offers warehousing, logistics, product procurement, research and development, technology development, and consulting services; software development and information technology support solutions; and supply chain services. Vipshop Holdings Limited was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Guangzhou, the People's Republic of China.
GameStop Corp. is a specialty retailer founded in 1999 and headquartered in Grapevine, Texas. The company was originally known as GSC Holdings Corp. but later changed its name following its IPO. Originally a brand of then dominant Babbages, Gamestop altered the way video games were distributed and it is now the world's largest retailer of video games and video game accessories. The company went public in 2004 and operated 4,573 stores at the start of 2022. Brands under the company umbrella include Gamestop, EB Games, and Micromania as well as 50 pop-culture-themed Zing Pop locations.

Gamestop Corp. provides video games and entertainment products through its global network of e-commerce properties and stores. The company sells new and pre-owned gaming platforms and accessories like controllers, headsets, memory cards, and gaming software as well as in-game products like digital currency, downloadable content, and games. The company also sells new and used memorabilia and collectibles. Genres include TV, movie, comic book, and game characters as well as many other items from pop culture. GameStop Corp. also operates Game Informer, a magazine and website dedicated to the gaming industry including reviews, updates, and new developments in technologies.

Game enthusiasts enjoy two primary benefits of using Gamestop. The first is access to the full range of games and gaming accessories. The second is the ability to sell or trade their old equipment and games for fair prices. All old equipment is refurbished to a like-new state before resale.

In 2021 Gamestop announced it was entering the world of cryptocurrency. The company revealed plans to build an NFT (non-fungible token) platform for listing, selling, and holding digital or digitized artwork and collectibles. The beta version launched in 2022 and has so far seen great success with an average daily volume exceeding $1 million. The NFT marketplace also featured Web3.0 games in which characters and in-game items are held forever on the blockchain. As of September 2022, the most successful retailer on the NFT marketplace was Gamestop Presents, a collaboration of cover art from Game Informer Magazine. Sales at the time were just under 168 ETH or about $221,500.00.

GameStop began a slide in 2016 following a series of bad investments that included a foray into the world of mobile phones. The slide came to an end in late 2021 when shareholders using the Reddit thread Wallstreet Bets orchestrated a short-squeeze and brought on the age of meme stocks.
Deckers Outdoor Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, designs, markets, and distributes footwear, apparel, and accessories for casual lifestyle use and high-performance activities. The company offers premium footwear, apparel, and accessories under the UGG brand name; sandals, shoes, and boots under the Teva brand name; and relaxed casual shoes and sandals under the Sanuk brand name. It also provides footwear and apparel for ultra-runners and athletes under the Hoka brand name; and fashion casual footwear using other plush materials under the Koolaburra brand. The company sells its products through department stores, domestic independent action sports and outdoor specialty footwear retailers, and larger national retail chains, as well as online retailers. It also sells its products directly to consumers through its retail stores and e-commerce websites, as well as distributes its products through distributors and retailers in the United States, Europe, the Asia-Pacific, Canada, Latin America, and internationally. As of March 31, 2022, it had 149 retail stores, including 75 concept stores and 74 outlet stores worldwide. The company was founded in 1973 and is headquartered in Goleta, California.
EMCOR Group, Inc. provides electrical and mechanical construction, and facilities services primarily in the United States and the United Kingdom. It offers design, integration, installation, starts-up, operation, and maintenance services related to electrical power transmission, distribution, and generation systems; energy solutions; premises electrical and lighting systems; process instrumentation in the refining, chemical processing, and food processing industries; low-voltage systems, such as fire alarm, security, and process control systems; voice and data communications systems; roadway and transit lighting, signaling, and fiber optic lines; heating, ventilation, air conditioning, refrigeration, and geothermal solutions; clean-room process ventilation systems; fire protection and suppression systems; plumbing, process, and high-purity piping systems; controls and filtration systems; water and wastewater treatment systems; central plant heating and cooling systems; crane and rigging services; millwright services; and steel fabrication, erection, and welding services. The company also provides building services that cover commercial and government site-based operations and maintenance; facility management, maintenance, and services; outage services to utilities and industrial plants; military base operations support services; mobile mechanical maintenance and services; services for indoor air quality; floor care and janitorial services; landscaping, lot sweeping, and snow removal services; vendor management and call center services; installation and support for building systems; program development, management, and maintenance for energy systems; technical consulting and diagnostic services; infrastructure and building projects; small modification and retrofit projects; and other building services. It offers industrial services to oil, gas, and petrochemical industries. EMCOR Group, Inc. was incorporated in 1987 and is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut.
Mastercard Incorporated, a technology company, provides transaction processing and other payment-related products and services in the United States and internationally. It facilitates the processing of payment transactions, including authorization, clearing, and settlement, as well as delivers other payment-related products and services. The company offers integrated products and value-added services for account holders, merchants, financial institutions, businesses, governments, and other organizations, such as programs that enable issuers to provide consumers with credits to defer payments; prepaid programs and management services; commercial credit and debit payment products and solutions; and payment products and solutions that allow its customers to access funds in deposit and other accounts. It also provides value-added products and services comprising cyber and intelligence solutions for parties to transact, as well as proprietary insights, drawing on principled use of consumer, and merchant data services. In addition, the company offers analytics, test and learn, consulting, managed services, loyalty, processing, and payment gateway solutions for e-commerce merchants. Further, it provides open banking and digital identity platforms services. The company offers payment solutions and services under the MasterCard, Maestro, and Cirrus. Mastercard Incorporated was founded in 1966 and is headquartered in Purchase, New York.
Devon Energy Corporation is an independent oil and gas company headquartered in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The company was incorporated in 1971 by John Nichols and his son J. Larry Nichols and later went public in August 2000. The company has since grown to be included in the S&P 500 and is one of the first energy companies to introduce resolutions requiring the company to monitor its impact on global warming. One time a major player in the global oil market, Devon has since sold off its offshore holdings in an effort to focus on US production and its transition to a lower-carbon future.

Devon Energy merged with WPX in early 2021 in an all-stock merger of equals. The new company is primarily engaged in the exploration, development, and production of oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids in the US midwest. The company operates more than 5,100 wells in Oklahomas Delaware Basis, Eagle Ford Group, and the two locations in the Rocky Mountains. As of late 2022, the company laid claim to 1.625 million barrels of reserves including 44% petroleum, 27% natural gas liquids, and 29% natural gas. Daily production was running in the range of 300,000 BPD in petroleum liquids, 125,000 BPD in natural gas liquids, and 920 million cubic feet of natural gas.

Rick Muncrief, formally CEO of WPX, is now the head of Devon Energy. Mr. Muncrief comes to the table with more than 40 years of experience including 27 years with one of the US Big Three Oil Companies. WPX Energy (Williams Production and Exploration) brought properties in the Williston and Permian Basins to the combined company. Its proven reserves were roughly 527 million barrels of oil and equivalents. The company also owns and operates a midstream network of pipelines and storage facilities it uses to market and deliver its products.

Devon Energy Corporation has pledged to reduce its GHG impact to net zero by 2050. This will be done by a variety of methods that include improving efficiency and leakage, a reduction in flaring, and the electrification of its operations. Near-term goals include a 50% reduction in GHG by 2030 including a 65% reduction in methane release and a 100% reduction in flaring. The company is also focused on reducing its environmental impact by relying on recycled water wherever possible and plans to reduce freshwater usage by 90% in the most active areas. Total greenhouse gas emissions have been in decline since 2018 and fell 17% between 2018 and 2020 alone.




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Parents Urged to Get Their Children Vaccinated Against Flu

This article is old - Published: Saturday, Nov 5th, 2016

Parents across Wrexham are being urged to get their children vaccinated against flu this winter.



Health officials in Wales are urging parents of two  seven year olds to get their children vaccinated against influenza (flu) this winter, to protect them from catching and spreading this potentially serious, highly contagious illness.

This year, the programme is being extended to seven year olds to help protect even more children from flu.

The flu immunisation programme offers a simple nasal spray vaccine for children aged 2-7 to help protect them from catching flu or spreading it to the people around them. It is most effective if given before flu starts to circulate.

For two and three year old children the vaccine will be given at their local GP surgery, and for children in reception class and school years one, two and three, it will be given by the school nursing service at their school.

The nurses will require consent from parents before administering the vaccine to any child.

In addition to children, there are other eligible groups strongly advised to get vaccinated such as those aged 65 and over, or those with serious long-term health conditions. Vaccines are available free of charge to those eligible throughout Wales with many local community pharmacies able to administer the jab, along with general practitioners.

In Wales in recent years, children and adults have been admitted to hospital and intensive care units with flu.

Wrexham AM Lesley Griffiths is encouraging parents to ensure their children are protected from catching and spreading this potentially severe disease.

Ms Griffiths said: Young children are particularly at risk from flu. The virus is easily spread and can especially effect children as their immune systems are still developing.

However, children can be protected by a simple nasal spray vaccination which is quick, safe and completely pain free. Also, for the first time this year, all seven year olds are included in the flu vaccination programme.

I recently received my flu jab from a community pharmacist and would encourage parents and local residents to take advantage of the NHS flu vaccination this winter.
The Australian government is intensifying its attacks on the poor and most socially-vulnerable with plans to slash parental leave payments and calls for an expansion of the punitive Healthy Welfare Card.

The campaign is in line the governments welfare reform measures announced in September and in response to demands from the financial elite for major inroads into social spending in order to cut corporate taxes and force welfare recipients into low-paid work.

Altogether the government is seeking to slash $6 billion from welfare spending over the next four years, in addition to the $6 billion in cutbacks already imposed with the support of the opposition Labor Party since July. The further measures include abolishing Family Tax Benefit end-of-year supplements, ending carbon tax compensation payments for future welfare recipients, freezing welfare eligibility thresholds and extending the time before the unemployed receive dole payments.

Last month the Liberal-National Coalition government also introduced legislation to restrict access to Australias state-funded paid parental leave. It currently provides 18 weeks pay at the minimum wage of $672 a week and allows recipients to combine this with parental payments from their employers.

The government now claims this is double dipping. Under the legislation, those receiving eight weeks pay from their employer will have their government-funded entitlement cut from 18 to 10 weeks, equivalent to a loss of about $12,000.

Social Services Minister Christian Porter said the reforms, which will directly impact at least 80,000 new parents, are designed to make paid parental leave fairer.

In bid to whip up hostility to welfare recipients, Porter last week claimed that thousands of parents receiving welfare payments were financially better off not getting a job.

He cited the example of a single parent, who, he said, could receive over $52,000 from Family Tax benefits and other government payments. This, Porter alleged, was more than the $49,831 take-home pay of a median full-time worker. He declared the government had a moral responsibility to end welfare dependency.

Porters claim, which was prominently featured in the Murdoch press and on talk-back radio, was utterly bogus. His hypothetical example referred to a single parent with four dependent childrena tiny minority of the population.

According to the Australian National Universitys Centre for Social Research, only 9 percent of the 6.7 million family households were single-parent homes with dependent children and only 2.5 percent of these, or about 15,000 households, had four children.

Porter omitted to mention that single parents who worked full-time for the mean annual wage can receive $30,916 in family tax benefits, as well as their wages. Their mean annual income would be over $80,000, not $49,000. Current average family tax benefit payments amount to only about $7,000 per child per year. This is supposed to cover all child-related costs, including food, clothing, education and numerous other expenses.

Porters calculations also did not take into account the governments planned cuts to Family Tax Benefits. Single parent families with four children will lose about $4,000 per year, irrespective of whether the parent is working or not.

As for government and media claims that thousands are double-dipping, according to the most recent data, only 48 percent of employers provided paid parental leave in 2015. Of those, 80.9 per cent offered full pay to employees and only 8.6 per cent topped up the government scheme to full pay. The average period of paid leave was just 10.2 weeks.

Porters assertions are part of the constant drumbeat of government and corporate media claims that welfare spending is out of control and that anyone receiving the below-poverty level government payments is bludging on society. The anti-welfare demagogy is to divert attention from decades of tax cuts for corporations, lower rates for the rich and rising military spending.

The legislation confronts opposition in the Senate where the Coalition lacks a majority. Facing widespread public hostility to austerity measures, Labor and the Greens have postured as opponents to the changes to paid-parental leave. This is a patent fraud given that both parties have consistently supported attacks on welfare spending.

In October 2012, the Greens-backed minority Labor government cut 100,000 single parents off Parenting Payments and forced them onto the Newstart unemployment benefit, a cut of about $120 from their fortnightly income (see: Australian government slashes benefits to single parent families).

In June last year, the Greens made an agreement with the Coalition to impose far-reaching assets tests on the aged pension to slash $2.4 billion from pension spending over four years.

If Labor and the Greens do not strike a deal on parental leave, the government will require the support of eight out of 10 cross-bench senatorsthat is, the small parties and independents that hold the balance of power. Moreover, two senators on whom the government was counting for votes are facing High Court challenges.

The anti-immigrant One Nation party, which holds four Senate seats, has already endorsed the cuts, with Senator Pauline Hanson telling the Australian Financial Review she would support the government if it wanted to go harder. However, the government has yet to get the backing of the three Nick Xenophon Team senators, without which the legislation faces defeat.

Early this week, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull flagged further expansion of the governments cashless Healthy Welfare Card, another punitive measure to undermine the rights of welfare recipients.

Under this scheme, 80 percent of welfare payments to individuals are placed in a Visa-debit account that cannot be used to buy alcohol or gambling products, or to withdraw cash. Most single welfare recipients would only have access to about $50 cash per week.

The card is being trialled on about 10,000 people in the remote communities of Ceduna in South Australia and Wyndham and Kununurra in Western Australias east Kimberley region. The government claims that the cashless welfare card, which was endorsed last year by Labor, will reduce spending on alcohol, gambling and family violence.

The Healthy Welfare Card, which was devised by Fortescue Metals Group owner Andrew Forrest, in fact, is a variation on the Basics Card. This was initiated by the previous Labor government, which continued the Howard Liberal-National governments intervention into Northern Territory indigenous communities in 2007. The Basics Card, which has now been imposed on over 25,000 welfare recipients across Australia, places between 50 and 70 percent of an individuals welfare payments into cashless cards.

Last month, Forrest, a multi-billionaire, told Australias National Press Club that the Healthy Welfare Card should be expanded across Australia, declaring that a cash-based welfare system underpins laziness and rewards bad choices.

The Healthy Welfare and Basic cards have nothing to do resolving unemployment, poverty, substance abuse but are mechanisms for destroying the right to social welfare and another means of blaming the victims for the social ills created by government policies and the profit system.

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Australian government trials new welfare card

[4 November 2015]
The political and constitutional crisis enveloping Britains ruling class is intensifying, following Thursdays High Court ruling that only Parliament has the right to trigger Britains exit from the European Union (EU).

Prime Minister Theresa Mays government hopes to invoke Royal Prerogative powers in an attempt to begin Brexit (British exit from the EU) without a parliamentary vote. The government is to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, which will rule on the case in December.

The crisis has prompted speculation that May, who campaigned for remaining in the EU but leads a party overwhelmingly committed to Brexit, may be forced to call a snap general election over the issue. The Times editorialised Friday, The arguments for an early general election must look compelling in Downing Street this morning, despite the prime ministers assurances to the contrary.

On Friday, Nigel Farage, the interim leader of the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP), said, The neatest, cleanest way to finish this off is for May to call a general election on the basis that Brexit means Brexit, to get a majority and to get on with it.

The governments crisis worsened Friday, with the resignation of Conservative MP Stephen Phillip, prompting a by-election in his seat of Sleaford and North Hykeham. Phillips, who voted for Brexit, admitted that he never believed the Leave vote would win. Since the consequences of it have become apparentespecially as regards access to the Single Marketand with May committed to Brexit, Phillips has been open in his opposition and worked in alliance with pro-Remain forces.

Up to three-quarters of MPs in Parliament are in favour of remaining in the EU, with many determined to reverse the June 23 vote either via a second referendum, or a general election. Phillips applied unsuccessfully to Parliaments Speaker John Bercow for a debate in the Commons on the issue of Parliament being able to vote on Article 50 (the EU legislation which begins formal EU exit). This followed an unsuccessful request on the same issue by former Labour leader Ed Miliband.

UKIP leadership candidate Suzanne Evans announced Friday she would contest the Sleaford and North Hykeham election.

May has a slim parliamentary majority of just 15. The Sleaford and North Hykeham contest follows another by-election in Richmond Park on December 1, prompted by the resignation of Tory MP Zac Goldsmith over the building of a third runway at Heathrow. The seat could be lost to the Liberal Democrats, who are being backed by the Greens as part of the pro-EU progressive alliance.

The High Court ruling has spurred on deepening collaboration between pro-Remain forces. On Friday, the Guardian reported that a cross-party group of Tory and Labour MPs met immediately following the ruling to discuss how it could be used to force May to reveal more about her broad negotiating aims.

The widely-despised former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair is leading this political realignment. Writing in the October 28 New European newspaper, set up by pro-Remain forces following the referendum vote, Blair stated, We are the insurgents now... We have to build the capability to mobilise and to organise. The Remain camp had to make the argument, and not to be whipped into line to support a decision we genuinely believe is a catastrophe for the country we love.

Speaking to the BBC Radio Fours Today, Blair said that nothing was off the table in terms of possible moves to reverse Brexit. If it becomes clear that this is either a deal that doesnt make it worth our while leaving, or a deal that is so serious in its implications that people may decide they dont want to go, theres got to be some way, either through Parliament, through an election, possibly through a referendum, in which people express their view, he said. There is no reason why we should close off any options.

Blairs intervention came just days before the launch of the centre-left Tribune group of 70 Labour MPs, with a speech by Guardian journalist Will Huttonpart of which was republished in the Guardian Wednesday under the heading, The Brexit war can still be won, but we must start fighting back. Hutton wrote, Britain must reaffirm EU membership, which is the bridge to international openness and fundamental to our prosperity  These are the propositions around which the centre and leftand the best of the conservative traditioncan unite.

Central to the aims of the pro-Remain forces is the moulding of Labour as the main pro-EU vehicle of the ruling elite. Immediately after the Brexit referendum, Labours Blairite wing launched a coup aimed at removing party leader Jeremy Corbyn on the basis that he was not sufficiently pro-EU and was a declared opponent of nuclear weapons and war. On Friday, the Guardian editorialised: Parliament is back where it should be, at the heart of the debate. Now Labour must be in the thick of the contest, bold and principled in support of the national interest.

The depth of the divisions within ruling circles is reflected in the language employed by their representatives and in the media. Right-wing pro-Brexit newspapers responded to the High Court ruling by denouncing the treachery and betrayal of the three judges who authored it. Utilising populist rhetoric to hail a battle for freedom and democracy, articles and commentaries warned of civil war, riots and rebellions if the courts and Remain camp force the reversal of Brexit.

The Daily Mail front page consisted of a photo of the three out of touch judges who defied 17.4 million Brexit voters above a banner headline reading, Enemies of the People. The Mail made a derogatory reference, before it was pulled, to one of the judges being openly gay.

The Daily Express evoked World War Two, editorialising, Today, this country faces a crisis as grave as anything since the dark days when Churchill vowed we would fight them on the beaches  Rise up people of Britain and fight, fight, fight.

The Independent cited the comments of UKIP councillor Stephen Raven from the town of Boston where the highest vote for Brexit was recorded. Raven said, If Brexit doesnt go ahead, you are going to get civil uproar. Its not a word I use lightly, but there is going to be a revolution.

The invocations of the sovereignty of Parliament by Mays opponents is just as much cynical hyperbole as is the claim that her government and UKIP are genuinely concerned that the will of the people be honoured. If the judges decision is reversed by the Supreme Court, the same essential arguments will continue utilising different rhetorical flourishes. Two right-wing factions of the bourgeoisie are engaged in a bitter conflict over the best way to secure the interests of British imperialism against both its major rivals and the working class. Both are pro-big business, pro-austerity and pro-war.

The Socialist Equality Party has been vindicated in its decision to oppose support for either reactionary camp in the referendum campaign and in urging an active boycott. The programme advanced by the SEP, in opposition to British nationalism in both its Little Englander and pro-EU guises, was for the political mobilisation of the British and European working class for a socialist workers government and a United Socialist States of Europe. It is only on this basis that the lies being used to line workers up behind rival capitalist factions can be exposed and the working class take an independent stand in its own interests.

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[4 November 2016]
Revelations concerning serious safety issues at Ardent Leisures Dreamworld theme park on Queenslands Gold Coast continue to emerge in the wake of the tragedy last week that claimed four lives.

On October 25, Roozbeh Araghi, 38, Luke Dorsett, 35, Kate Goodchild, 32, and Cindy Low, 42, were killed when the parks Thunder River Rapids ride malfunctioned, tipping over the raft in which they were riding. Two children in the same raft narrowly escaped death.

This week, new information surfaced concerning management decisions to cut manning levels on rides and the inadequate training and supervision of operators. At least one ride at the park, the 13-storey Cyclone roller coaster, was run as a one-person operation, contrary to the manufacturers manual stipulating at least two workers were required.

A former ride operator at the park also told the media that ride attendants were often given only half-an-hour of training before the park opened. He said the trainer would stay with them for a further 15 to 20 minutes and then leave them unsupervised. The tragedy was avoidable and should not have happened, he commented.

This weeks revelations followed others that emerged last week about the companys suppression of safety reports and the intimidation of workers who spoke out on safety issues, pointing to a culture of cost-cutting and cover-up that may have contributed to the disaster.

At the same time, the role of the Australian Workers Union (AWU) in assisting the managements suppression of safety concerns is becoming increasingly evident. Numbers of workers at the park, including ride attendants, are AWU members.

Last week, AWU Queensland secretary Ben Swan insisted the union did hold some very grave concerns about safety of equipment and the operation of equipment and had complained to the management about the unsafe practices for a year and a half. However, it is now clear that the union issued no public statements about the dangers, and, after meetings with the company, allowed them to continue.

The union was fully aware that the one-man operations on the Cyclone ride contradicted the recommendations of the rides Utah-based manufacturer. Dreamworld met with AWU officials in April last year and told them a one-person operation would not increase the risk profile of either the operator or the guests. Ardent Leisures group safety manager Angus Hutchings claimed the company had conducted a long and exhaustive risk assessment process.

The AWU dropped the issue, despite knowing that similar practices were likely to be occurring on other rides. State secretary Swan this week said he was unaware if Dreamworld was diverging from the manufacturers manning guidelines on the Thunder River Rapids ride. But if theyre prepared to deviate from the manufacturers recommendations in one instance, does that mean they deviate in other rides? he said.

In April last year, the company opposed the unions right-to-information requests for documents regarding safety and manning issues. Management visited the AWUs offices to discuss the concerns but the union said no further action was taken. Weve met resistance which has not been constructive or positive, Swan said.

Clearly, however, the AWU decided to let the issue lie. Asked by a journalist why he believed the parks management had blocked the unions document request, Swan said he could not speculate the motivation. Essentially, Swan justified the companys secrecy, saying: To be fair, I dont think its unusual for companies not to want to keep information relating to their internal processes from public gaze.

It is not surprising that Ardent Leisure wants to avoid any detailed scrutiny of its operations. This week more questions emerged over the companys claims about manning levels on the Cyclone, now rebadged as the Hot Wheels SideWinder.

In a media statement, a spokesman from Workplace Health and Safety Queensland (WHSQ) disputed claims made on Monday by Dreamworld chief executive Craig Davidson who said that the ride had been inspected and approved by WHSQ.

The WHSQ spokesman said that the government agency did not approve staffing levels for theme park rides and ordered Dreamworld to produce all documentation relating to the Hot Wheels SideWinder.

The response of the AWU to the Dreamworld disaster, by referring to its supposed record of expressing safety concerns, is standard operating procedure for the trade unions. It is damage control aimed at diverting from any probing of the unions responsibility for helping impose the conditions for such tragedies.

As recent cases show, construction workers die in unsafe conditions, and young inexperienced workers are killed on building sites after receiving no induction and being left to work unsupervised. Tower cranes catch fire or collapse due to lack of maintenance, mine workers die in rock falls and gas explosions because of safety shortcuts and speed ups, and transport drivers, suffering high levels of fatigue, are killed in horrendous crashes.

The unionsfully aware of safety breachesmake mealy-mouthed statements about the right of workers to return home safe and issue empty calls for more vigilant safety reviews. Then its back to business as usual, collaborating with the employers to maximise shareholder returns and profits.

That was the reaction of the unions last month when five workerstwo from the transport industry and three in constructionwere killed in Australia in industrial accidents in a week.

The unsafe industrial conditions are the direct result of the decades-long drive by corporations and their financiers to restructure operations at the expense of workers. Under the banner of making Australian-based companies internationally competitive, the unions have worked in lockstep with governments and employers to undermine and dismantle working conditions and safety standards.

Union-negotiated enterprise agreements over the past two decades have eroded hard-won gains such as safe manning levels, bans on working during wet weather on construction sites, restrictions on excessive overtime and extensive shifts, along with the removal of limitations on the use of casual and part-time labour, often poorly trained.

The unions, which control huge financial resources, including via positions on the boards of superannuation funds, have a vested interest in maintaining the corporate profit system, from which their officials derive substantial benefits and privileged lifestyles.

To this end the unions systematically operate to isolate and break up any opposition by workers to employers cost-cutting attacks on health and safety. This assault has also been facilitated by Labor and Liberal-National governments, state and federal, which have introduced so-called self-regulation of safety standards, with the agreement of the unions. In Dreamworlds case, maintenance inspection was conducted by a private sector engineering firm.

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[7 June 2016]
Europe is reacting to the American presidential election with a mixture of disgust, nervousness and fear. The many commentaries communicate a sense that a political turning point of historic proportions is taking place.

Many interpret the election as a prelude to the end of the trans-Atlantic alliance that has anchored European policy for the past 70 years. The political and military alliance with the US not only drew together imperialist powers that had fought each other in two world wars, it contributed to the stabilisation of Europe and containment of the class struggle.

The American election therefore augurs major new class struggles in Europe. The British Financial Times writes: Rarely in a US presidential election has the choice been so stark and the stakes so high The international order of the past 70 years is fraying, maybe even breaking down.

The German SpiegelOnline notes: Our world may still seem different from an earlier period of crashes and wars. There are, however, more and more parallels. A US President Trump could trigger a new global disaster.

A Trump victory is regarded as the political equivalent of a nuclear power plant meltdown. There are various shades of opinion about the foreign policy of a Trump administration, but there is little doubt that his America first policy would have devastating consequences for Europe.

The European Council on Foreign Relations regards Trump as an existential threat to the transatlantic alliance. If he wins, according to a paper published October 12, he will launch a revolutionary presidency--pulling back from NATO and other security guarantees, undermining key parts of the global free trade regime, and building closer relations with strong-man leaders than with allies.

The German weekly Die Zeit, usually a model of restraint, denounces Trump as a foreign policy adventurist, possibly even a psychopath or fascist.

The Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (Institute of Science and Politics) warns that one can not rely on Trumps unpredictability or extreme positions being hedged in, whether by a consultative staff, the cabinet, the military or Congress.

Fears of a Trump victory are also reflected in public opinion. One poll in Germany this week showed that only 4 percent would vote for Trump if they were eligible to vote in the US election. Some 77 percent said they would vote for Clinton. This is not due to any enthusiasm for the Democratic candidate, however, but rather an overriding desire to stop Trump.

Even among the political elite, enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton is limited. The Financial Times declares that Clinton is despite her faults eminently qualified to be the first woman in the White House, but many other commentaries are more critical. They suggest that an electoral victory for Clinton would at best delay the conflicts associated with the rise to prominence of Trump.

Clintons aggressive attitude toward Russia and her warlike course in Syria are particularly repugnant to broad layers of the European population as well as sections of the ruling class. While the population fears that a military confrontation with Russia could turn Europe into a nuclear battlefield, the ruling class sees its economic and strategic interests at risk.

For example, any intensification of the current economic sanctions against Russia would hit many European countries hard and exacerbate conflicts within the European Union. A number of countries (Poland, Great Britain, the Baltic states) are fiercely anti-Russian, while others (Italy, Greece, Hungary, in part Germany) are pushing for a loosening of existing sanctions and better relations.

If the Germans and Americans fail to reach agreement on Russia and that centre ceases to hold, the European Council on Foreign Relations warns, transatlantic unity will break down and the Western approach to Russia will devolve into confusion.

Many observers, however, realise that Trump is not the cause, but rather the result of a profound crisis of US capitalism that will only intensify under a President Clinton.

But even in the event of a Clinton presidency, the European Council on Foreign Relations document continues, Europe would be foolish not to learn lessons from the experience of Trumps candidacy. Trump represents only an extreme version of a growing feeling in the United States that, in a time of relative decline, the country is getting a raw deal from its allies. The partnership cannot persist along the current lines for too much longer. The promise of future elections fought along Trumpian lines means that America will likely become more self-centred and less predictable as an international partner, no matter who is president.

The ruling classes of Europe understand this all the better because a similar development has taken place in Europe. Decades of attacks on the living standards of the working class, the unrestrained enrichment of a tiny financial oligarchy, and the disastrous consequences of the financial crisis of 2008 have brought class antagonisms to the breaking point.

As in the US, the established parties are largely discredited. Most European countries do not have such a rigorous two-party system as the US, where billionaires and millionaires set the tone for both the Republicans and the Democrats. But the policies of the various established parties in Europe are also virtually identical. They all represent the interests of finance, big business and the wealthy middle classes, i.e., the richest 10 percent.

In country after country, social democratic parties (the British Labor Party under Tony Blair, the Social Democratic Party under Gerhard Schroder, the Socialist Party under Francois Hollande) and pseudo-left parties (Syriza under Alexis Tsipras) have played the main role in attacking the rights of the working class. Those politically profiting from such policies are, in the main, organizations and politicians of the far right. Many commentaries have drawn parallels between the European far right--the French National Front, the German AfD, the Austrian Freedom Party--and Donald Trump.

The comparison is justified. But, as in the US, the entire ruling class is moving to the right in Europe. Its only response to the global crisis of capitalism is militarism, the buildup of the state apparatus, and the whipping up of xenophobia and nationalism.

Twenty-five years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the world increasingly resembles the first half of the 20th century, when economic and social crises and conflicts between the imperialist powers triggered revolutionary class struggles and two world wars.

Only an independent intervention of the international working class can prevent the descent into a new catastrophe. Against this background, the election campaign of the Socialist Equality Party in the US assumes great importance. It is the only party in the elections with a socialist program to unite the working class in the struggle against capitalism. At the heart of the SEP campaign has been the building of an international movement against war.
Asia

India: Haryana health workers strike in second week

Close to 12,000 contract workers, including several hundred doctors, employed under the National Health Mission (NHM) have been on strike across Haryana state since October 25 to demand permanency and equal wages with state health department employees. At least 150 have been sacked and face police charges over their involvement in the strike.

NHM workers are employed in a range of departments, including ambulance, maternal health, vaccinations, adolescent health, birth and death records, child immunisations, nursing and data entry. Some NHM employees said they have been on contract wages for 18 years, even after passing interviews and holding qualifications accepted for permanent workers. An NHM Employees Association spokesman told media that NHM employees get almost one fourth of the salary or allowances being drawn by regular health department employees.

Jalandhar municipal sanitation workers strike

Around 300 contract sanitation workers from the Municipal Corporation of Jalandhar (MCJ) walked off the job indefinitely on Tuesday to demand permanency and an end to the contract system. The Punjab Sanitation Workers Union has accused the state government of falsely promising that it would make 27,000 contract workers across the state permanent. Union leaders called off an eight-day strike by MCJ sanitation workers in April following vague commitments from authorities that demands for permanency and better wages would be considered.

Workers have threatened to extend the strike state-wide if their demands, which also include the immediate permanency of 145 workers and recruitment of another 2,500 sanitation and sewer-men, are not met soon.

Nagaland school teachers strike in third week

The Nagaland Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Teachers Association announced on Tuesday that a classroom boycott by 2,600 teachers in Nagaland, which began on October 17, would be extended indefinitely. The teachers want the payment of six months unpaid wages.

A large number of teachers are demonstrating outside the Directorate of Education in Kohima, restricting access to the building.

Punjab power workers demonstrate

Hundreds of contract workers and their families protested outside the state-run Guru Nanak Dev Thermal Plant (GNDTP) in Bathinda on Tuesday over the temporary closure of the generator. The government is closing three plants in the state for six months, affecting 750 jobs at GNDTP and 2,750 at the Rupnagar and Lehra Mohabbat generators. Workers fear that the government is preparing to privatise the generators. The workers are members of the Guru Nanak Dev Thermal Plant Contract Workers Union.

Andhra Pradesh village revenue assistants protest

Hundreds of members of the Village Revenue Assistants Association demonstrated in Kurnool and Nellore on Monday to demand an 18,000-rupee ($US270) minimum monthly wage, promotions into the fourth-class category and the same retirement benefits as government employees.

The workers include village revenue officers, attenders, watchmen and computer operators in the government revenue department but are not given the same recognition as permanent government employees.

Uttarakhand unemployed yoga teachers demonstrate

The Yoga Qualified Unemployed Federation (YQUF), representing around 20,000 unemployed yoga teachers in Uttarakhand state, said this week that its members would resume protests and rallies begun in 2006 to force the government to provide jobs in public schools and hospitals.

The YQUF ended previous demonstrations after the state government promised to create jobs for the teachers. The union federation says it will intensify action from November 5.

Pakistan: Shipbreaking workers in Gadani protest

Gadani shipbreaking yard workers rallied at the Karachi Press Club On October 30 to demand that employees be legally recognised as workers and allowed to form unions. At least 20,000 people are employed at the Gadani yard, working in extremely unsafe conditions with no basic facilities. A National Trade Union Federation spokesman said workers were not provided medical facilities, education for their children and civic amenities like clean water, gas and electricity.

On Tuesday, two days after the protest, an old oil tank exploded and caught fire while workers were dismantling the ship at the Gadani site. Eighteen workers were killed and over 50 injured, some of them losing limbs. The death toll is expected to rise as there were an unknown number of workers trapped inside the vessel.

Established in the 1970s, Gadani is one of the worlds largest ship-breaking yards. Laborers are often injured or killed on job, mainly due to the lack of any safety standards.

Punjab government school teachers oppose privatisation

Over 100 school teachers demonstrated outside the Lahore Press Club on Monday to oppose further privatisation of the public school system. They are also demanding a pay increase and an immediate end to reprisals by the School Education Department which has been transferring militant teachers to rural areas as a punishment. The Grand Teachers Alliance, representing seven teachers organisations, threatened to launch a province-wide protest on November 10 and a sit-down protest outside the Punjab Assembly in December if its demands are not met.

The privatisation of public schools is being carried out through the Punjab Education Foundation, a non-government organisation, and is targeting some 5,000 schools. Some other public schools have been handed over to the Daanish School System, a similar entity.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health workers strike

Class-IV workers from Lower Dir district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa began boycotting duties at government health facilities on October 26 to demand a health professional allowance. Their action followed strikes and demonstrations in August by government doctors, nurses and paramedics demanding the same allowance. While the government has promised on numerous occasions to grant the allowance, it remains unpaid to most workers.

Burmese garment workers strike enters sixth month

Over 600 workers from the Panda Textile Factory in Singaing township, Mandalay have been on strike for over five months to demand payments they claim they are entitled to under their employment contracts. The textile workers have been demonstrating outside the factory and planned to begin a protest march to Nay Pyi Taw, the nations capital, on Thursday.

The formerly state-owned No.2 Textile Factory was privatised in 2012 under an agreement that required Panda Textile management to retain its workforce on the same working conditions and wages. Workers complained that the new management has cut their pay and forces them to work Saturdays and Sundays, their normal days off, in breach of their employment contract.

Cambodian garment workers protest for wages

More than 50 workers from Phnom Penhs Co-Seek garment factory protested outside the municipal court on Monday to demand overdue back wages after the factory owner disappeared. Protesters said about half of the 200 workers had been paid a portion of their wages by the factorys landlord about 95 employees have received nothing. A representative from the Cambodian Youth Power Union League said workers want the municipal court, which has frozen the factorys assets, to issue another order to auction off its machinery to pay wages.

Indonesian bank employees strike

Hundreds of employees of Bank Danamon, one of Indonesias largest financial institutions, marched from Tugu Tani to the companys headquarters in Kuningan, South Jakarta on October 28 to protest the banks labour policies and to demand their rights. Bank Danamon Workers Union (SP) members want an end to mass layoffs and pension fund cuts.

According to the union, the cutbacks began after the firm conducted a business transformation to maintain profits. Workers at Bank Danamons 1,900 branches have been retrenched, offered relocation or early retirement.

Australia and the Pacific

Queensland: Caltex oil processing workers end strike

Workers at Caltexs lubrication manufacturing plant and distribution centre in Brisbane ended a 10-day strike on Wednesday after the National Union of Workers (NUW) made a deal with management for a new work agreement. NUW members walked off the job after rejecting managements proposed enterprise agreement, which they claimed would reduce the working week from 42 to 38 hours and axe two hours of overtime work currently paid at 160 percent of the standard rate.

The union said that wages would be cut by between 15 to 20 percent and that the company wanted to cap redundancy payouts at 55 weeks, down from 63, and cut superannuation contributions.

While the NUW claims that its new deal with company represented a win saying, Wages paid for each hour worked are largely maintained, details on the revised proposal are scant. The agreement is reported to contain annual wage increases, increased penalty rates and a reduction in hours worked.

New Zealand: St John ambulance paramedics impose work bans

Paramedics employed at St John New Zealand, a government-subsidised ambulance service, began low-level industrial action on Thursday after talks with management for a new work agreement failed on Tuesday. Work bans include not wearing uniforms, completing paperwork or covering extra shifts.

The Ambulance Professionals First union, which cover over 1,000 ambulance workers, announced several weeks ago that its members would begin industrial action on November 4 after workers rejected managements pay offer. St John offered a one percent pay rise in return for the elimination of time-and-a-half for extra work, which is used to cover under-staffing. Workers want the extended working hours cut, complaining that it is unsafe because they are near breaking point from exhaustion.
Two refugee boats capsized this week in the Mediterranean near the Libyan coast, leading to the deaths in a 48-hour period of about 240 people. This brings the total number of refugees who have died trying to cross the Mediterranean and reach Europe to 4,220, more than ever before in a six-month period. The European Union bears full, criminal responsibility for this massive loss of life.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, 31 refugees were rescued in the most recent incident. Statements made by the survivors indicate there were approximately 270 people on board the two dinghies. So far only 12 bodies have been recovered.

The two dinghies departed not far from the Libyan capital of Tripoli on Tuesday night. A few hours later, they capsized in the channel of Sicily, about 25 nautical miles from the Libyan coast. The rescue operation coordinated by the Italian coast guard, which included five ships, came too late to save most of the passengers.

Two severely injured people who survived the capsizing were transported by helicopter to Palermo, Sicily. The other survivors, most of whom came from Guinea in West Africa, were taken to the island of Lampedusa. A heartrending scene unfolded there, as reported by Pietro Bartolo, a doctor, in Repubblica, the Italian newspaper. At one point a desperate survivor showed Bartolo the photo of his child who was nowhere to be found after the disaster.

The mayor of Lampedusa, Giusi Nicolini, called the deaths genocide. Humanitarian corridors must be set up immediately or else we will never stop counting the dead, he said.

This most recent refugee catastrophe follows on the heels of a series of incidents in the central Mediterranean route between Libya and Italy over the past few weeks. On October 27, a Danish merchant ship rescued 339 refugees from the sea. They had been tossed into the water when their dinghy capsized due to bad weather. Fifty-one refugees are missing from this episode, and only one corpse was recovered from the water.

On the night before that disaster, the Libyan coast guard reported that a dinghy with 126 refugees on board capsized 23 nautical miles from Tripoli, not far from the location of the most recent tragedy. A coast guard ship rescued 29 survivors, but an additional 97 refugees remained missing.

At almost the same time, a ship belonging to the aid organization Doctors without Borders (MSF) discovered a dinghy with 29 dead bodies on board. They had all succumbed to petrol vapours. Only three days later, the Libyan Red Cross reported that 16 corpses had washed up on the coast of Zuwarah in northwestern Libya.

With two months to go, the deaths of 4,220 people trying to cross the Mediterranean in 2016 are already a horrifying record. In the course of the previous two years, a total of 3,279 refugees drowned in the Mediterranean, according to statements by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The Mediterranean route has produced the highest number of refugee fatalities by far. The IOM estimates that more than 5,530 refugees have died worldwide so far this year. Some 299 refugees have died on the US-Mexico border, 149 have died in Central America, 435 in the Sahara and North Africa, 94 in the horn of Africa, 96 in the Middle East and 61 in Southeast Asia.

It is striking that the number of fatalities in the Mediterranean has risen so dramatically even though a smaller number of refugees has taken this route this year. Last year, over a million travelled to Europe, compared to only 340,000 this year.

The deaths are taking place in the central Mediterranean even though the European Union and NATO have enormously increased the number of ships in the sea. In fact, however, these ships are not responsible for rescuing refugees, but for keeping them out of Europe.

In October 2014, the European Union made a conscious decision to accept an increase in the number of deaths in order to deter refugees. With the blocking off of the Balkan route earlier this year, the refugee deal with Turkey and the so-called war on traffickers, the EU has drastically and deliberately increased the risks for refugees.

A study titled Destination Europe, from the MEDMIG (Mediterranean Migration) project, released November 2, noted that Since the beginning of 2016 the rates of death have increased from 1 in 54 to 1 in 46 people among those crossing via the Central Mediterranean route and from 1 death in every 1,063 arrivals to 1 death in every 409 arrivals via the Eastern Mediterranean route.

Another of the groups research papers alleges that European governments have contributed to the European migration crisis by blaming people smugglers, rather than conflict, for increased migration to Europe. The failure to open up safe and legal routes to protection and the focus on border security has actually driven demand for the smugglers.

In previous years traffickers used discarded merchant and fishing boats with satellite telephone and GPS equipment. Today, in order to avoid detection by stepped up surveillance, they rely almost exclusively on dinghies that are not suited to maritime conditions. In addition, according to the report, traffickers were now looking for alternative routes or sending boats onto the water at night when they were less likely to be detected and also to be rescued.

Meanwhile, the European Union is strengthening its military presence on its outer borders. At the beginning of October, the new European Border and Coast Guard Agency, which replaced Frontex, was deployed. The new agency not only has more extensive refugee deterrence and deportation powers than Frontex. It is also has significantly more personnel and supplies at its disposal, including over 1,500 permanently deployable border soldiers, its own ships, airplanes and helicopters, and a yearly budget of 330 million ($US 367 million).

The response of EU Commissioner for Migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, to the deaths of 4,220 refugees dripped with cynicism. Speaking to the news media at the opening of the Bulgarian-Turkish checkpoint Kapitan Andreevo, he called the agency a symbol of a Europe that is efficient in addressing the migration and security challenges we are facing in cooperation with our neighbours. A symbol that we are determined to preserve our freedom of movement, without internal borders.

Avramopoulos thanked the employees of Frontex: Throughout all these months of the ongoing refugee crisis, these people have been working tirelessly and it is thanks to them that today we are in a much better situation than one year ago. He ended his speech with a barely concealed threat to the refugees: It is now our duty and responsibility for those who arrive at our borders to keep delivering in the same vein on all aspects of our comprehensive migration policy.

The European Union is cooperating ever more closely with North African countries to stop the flow of refugees before they even reach the coast of the Mediterranean.

In Tunisia, the German federal police is training border guards. The Zeit reported that the Tunisian forces were being supplied with trucks, pick-ups, speedboats, trailers with lamp posts for watching the border at night, thousands of combat helmets and flak jackets, hundreds of protective barriers and telescopes, dozens of thermal imaging cameras and night-vision devices, and, in the near future, Dingo armoured vehicles.

In order to keep out refugees, the EU also supports dictatorships in Sudan and Ethiopia, where a state of emergency was recently declared. For European weapons companies, refugee deterrence has become a billion-euro business in which above all Airbus, Leonardo-Finmeccanica and Thales have muscled in to provide thermal imaging cameras, drones and helicopters.
The article posted below is an edited version of the comment on Loving that appeared as part of the WSWS coverage of the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival.

Written and directed by Jeff Nichols

Official public opinion in the US, spearheaded by media outlets like the New York Times, claims that Americans have never been so obsessed, traumatized and divided by race. The same argument is made by various left organizations and all those outfits that stand to gain resources and political access allotted according to race or ethnicity.

Beyond the immediate striving for privileges by layers of the upper middle class, the unprecedented racialism coming from the media and the establishment has a more general political aim: to weaken and divide the working class on the eve of great struggles against social inequality, poverty and war.

At present, a considerable portion of the filmmaking community is consumed by selfish identity politics and the pursuit of personal celebrity and wealth. Another group of artists, however, is being propelled by the current crisis to consider more carefully the questions that really matter and produce work on that basis.

Loving, directed by Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, 2011; Mud, 2012; Midnight Special, 2016), belongs in the second category. The film opened Friday in New York City and Los Angeles and will open in other US cities over the coming weeks. Loving has aroused considerable and genuine (as opposed to media-generated) interest and anticipation.

Nichols film is a fictional re-creation of the landmark Mildred and Richard Loving case in Virginia in the 1950s and 1960s, which ultimately led to the striking down of state laws banning interracial marriage in the US. Politically and legally momentous, the Loving story is also a testament to the profoundly humane potential of the American working class and its deep feeling for fairness.

In the present political and ideological context, the determined struggle of the LovingsMildred was black and Native American and Richard whitefor their basic rights cuts across and threatens to shatter the racialist narrative so widely and noxiously promoted. One can anticipate that Nichols movie will be attacked as color-blind, one of the gravest insults in some circles today, by the identity politics crowd. Arguments for separating the races are increasingly the norm within the left.

Loving refutes the view that race is the fundamental dividing line in society with sensitivity and inspired performances.

The courtship of Mildred Jeter (Ruth Negga), an 18-year-old black woman, nicknamed String Bean, and Richard Loving (Joel Edgerton), a 23-year-old white construction worker sporting a crew-cut, is an intense affair. They live in rural Caroline County in Virginia, a state that bars interracial marriages. When Mildred becomes pregnant, the loving couple drives to Washington, D.C. to get married. The year is 1958.

A few weeks later, local Sheriff Garnett Brooks (Marton Csokas) and his deputies break into the Lovings bedroom in the middle of the night. Mildred calmly but anxiously explains to the hate-filled cop that Im his wife. Richard points to the marriage license hanging on the wall. The sheriff growls that the couple was born in the wrong place. (God made a sparrow a sparrow and a robin a robin.) Richard and Mildred are thrown into jailhe for one night, she for several days.

The Lovings are brought before local Judge Bazile (David Jensen) who rules, Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

Mildred and Richard are convicted of the felony crime of miscegenation. To avoid spending a year in jail, they plead guilty and are given a 25-year suspended sentence on condition they leave the state.

Separated from their families in Virginia, Mildred and Richard move to a working class neighborhood in D.C. As director Nichols told an interviewer, These were not wealthy people, these were working people. Their life never stopped. Mildred is miserable and misses the open country and the feel of grass and soil under her feet. As her family growsthe couple now has three childrenso does her discontent.

After she sees scenes of the mammoth August 1963 March on Washington on television, Mildred, counseled by her cousin, writes to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who forwards the letter to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The Lovings are contacted by ACLU lawyer Bernard Cohen (Nick Kroll), and eventually his colleague Phil Hirschkop (Jon Bass).

For Mildred, the final straw is her son being struck and injured by a car on a crowded city street. The Loving family moves back to Caroline County (northeast of Richmond), despite the risk of imprisonment. Cohen and Hirschkop file a motion on behalf of the Lovings in the Virginia trial court to vacate the judgment and set aside the sentence on the grounds that the violated statutes run counter to the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution (which addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law). The Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals subsequently upholds the constitutionality of the anti-miscegenation laws. Mildred states quietly but firmly: Its a principle. Its a law. If we win we will help a lot of people. And further on: We may lose the small battles but win the big war.

The Lovings, supported by the ACLU, appeal the decision to the United States Supreme Court in 1967. Despite the urging of their lawyers, Mildred and Richard do not attend the oral arguments in Washington. Richard is fed up. After nearly 10 years of dealing with the legal system, he simply wants the justices to know that I love my wife, and it is just unfair that I can't live with her in Virginia. His simple declaration creates one of the films most tender and devastating moments.

The high court rules unanimously in favor of the Lovings, striking down Virginias law, and ending the ban on interracial marriages nationwide. Chief Justice Earl Warren, in his opinion for the unanimous court, observed, Marriage is one of the basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our very existence and survival  The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy.

Lovings postscript notes sadly that Richard was killed in 1975 by a drunk driver. Mildred lost her eye in the collision. She died in 2008.

American demographics and attitudes have experienced a sea change since the 1950s and 1960s. The percentage of new marriages between blacks and whites in 2010 was twenty times higher than in 1950. More than 15 percent of the marriages in 2010 occurred between individuals who did not identify themselves as members of the same racial or ethnic group.

The Pew Research Center noted in 2015: The share of multiracial babies has risen from 1% in 1970 to 10% in 2013. And with interracial marriages also on the rise, demographers expect this rapid growth to continue, if not quicken, in the decades to come. The same Pew report estimated that 6.9 percent of the US adult populationone out of 14could already be considered multiracial, some 17 million people.

In terms of views toward interracial marriage, acceptance is almost universal, for example, within the younger generation. In 2014, 85 percent of Americans 18 to 29 indicated they had no problem with a family member marrying a person of a different race or ethnicity.

Nichols film is an understated and restrained but powerful dramatization of a case that vanquished the anti-miscegenation statutes. Those represented, as the Lovings lawyers argued before the Supreme Court, perhaps the last vestiges of slavery laws in the US. Virginias law was adopted in 1662, remaining in force for more than 300 years. The outcome of the 1967 case was a byproduct of the mass struggles of the period. Loving retells the case as social upheaval is once again on the horizon.
A New York Times/CBS poll published Thursday documents the disgust of the American people with the 2016 election campaign and their alienation from the two major corporate-controlled parties. By a margin of 82 percent to 13 percent, better than six to one, those polled said the campaigns of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have filled them with revulsion.

According to the Times account, With more than eight in ten voters saying the campaign has left them repulsed rather than excited, the rising toxicity threatens the ultimate victor. Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic candidate, and Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee, are seen as dishonest and viewed unfavorably by a majority of voters.

Both campaigns insult the intelligence of the American people. Trump appeals to raw anger, denouncing his opponent as a criminal who should be put in jail. Clinton and the Democrats alternate between portraying Trump as a sexual predator and smearing him as a tool of Moscow. Neither offers any serious program for improving the living standards and social conditions of the working class, the vast majority of the American people.

The election campaign is one more sign of the profound dysfunction of the US political system, in which two corporate-controlled parties, each defending the interests of the super-rich, enjoy a political monopoly. The Times/CBS poll is a statistical verification of what the Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist Web Site have long argued: the two-party system leaves working people disenfranchised.

The recourse of both campaigns to personal smears and scandalmongering is a means of evading any discussion of the urgent issues that confront the electorateabove all, the worsening social crisis and the mounting danger of a third world war.

To cite two examples of developments ignored by both campaigns:

Fridays newspapers reported that suicide has overtaken automobile accidents as a cause of death of children aged 10 to 14. One could hardly imagine a more devastating commentary on the dismal prospects that America in 2016 offers the new generation.

Another report, published in the British Guardian, noted that life expectancy in McDowell County, West Virginia, once the heart of US coal mining, has declined to that of Ethiopia. In 2008, the nearly all-white county voted for Barack Obama. In 2016, 91.5 percent of Republican primary voters cast ballots for Trumpa vote of indignation and despair.

Each of the candidates, in different ways, seeks to direct social tensions within the United States along reactionary lines.

Clinton is the candidate of the status quo, representing the alliance of Wall Street, the military-intelligence apparatus and the complacent and self-satisfied upper middle class, where identity politics holds sway. Her program, were she to state it honestly, is to outwardly direct the social crisis in the form of intensified US military violence, first in the Middle East, but ultimately against Russia and China, both of which possess nuclear arsenals.

Trump represents an attempt to direct social tensions along extreme nationalist lines, appealing to racist and fascistic forces. While he claims, falsely, to have opposed US military interventions in the Middle East, he glorifies the US military and promises to unleash unlimited violence on any country that resists US demands. In the end, his pledge to Make America Great Again is little more than the English translation of Hitlers slogan, Deutschland Uber Alles.

That these are the alternatives presented to voters on November 8 is a product of the protracted decay of the US political system. It is more than four decades since the sharp shift to the right began in both parties, in the aftermath of the mass social protests of the 1960s and early 1970s against the Vietnam War and for the extension of civil rights.

The Democratic Party abandoned its former commitment to economic improvements for working people and began to restructure itself as the party of Wall Street and identity politics, appealing to newly privileged layers of blacks, women, gays, etc. The Democratic Leadership Council, under its chairman, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, became the vehicle of this transformation. In Hillary Clinton, this rightward movement has reached its culmination. The Democratic candidate has become the consensus choice of the political establishments in both parties.

The Republican Party incorporated the former defenders of Jim Crow segregation and became the dominant party in the South, while maintaining its traditional ties to big business and the military. Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign with a rally in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers had been murdered 16 years before, and gave a ringing defense of the Jim Crow Souths slogan of states rights. Trumps embrace by the KKK and the white nationalist alt-right is not an aberration, but the logical conclusion of a process that has paved the way for the emergence of an outright fascist party in America.

As Leon Trotsky once wrote, the domination of reaction signifies this, that the social contradictions are mechanically suppressed (Intellectual Ex-Radicals and World Reaction, 1939). The principal mechanism for the suppression of social contradictions in America has been the trade unions. From the late 1970s on, and especially after the smashing of the PATCO air traffic controllers strike in 1981, the AFL-CIO unions have worked systematically to undermine and break strikes, assist the employers in wage cutting and plant closures, and subordinate the working class politically to the ever more right-wing policies of the two capitalist parties.

There is a definite limit to this process, however. Today, the unions are as sclerotic and discredited as the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union on the eve of its collapse in 1989-1991. The first signs of a resurgence of the class struggle in America, in a series of contract rejection votes and strikes, have already demonstrated that workers will have to fight not only the corporations and the government, but the unions as well. As the class struggle intensifies, workers will have to develop new forms of organization that make possible a struggle not just at the level of the workplace, but on the plane of national and international politics.

The Times/CBS poll confirms the overriding feature of the 2016 campaign: the growing gulf between the American population and the corporate-controlled two-party system. Working people are moving to the left, but the two major parties continue to lurch to the right.

In the current election cycle, the political radicalization in the working class was expressed most openly in the mass support for the Democratic primary campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Thirteen million people, including the vast majority of young people who took part in the primaries, voted for a candidate claiming to be a socialist and opponent of the billionaires, an unprecedented political development in America. In the end, Sanders capitulated, endorsed Clinton, and demonstrated that his claim to oppose corporate domination of the political system was a fraud.

Working people must draw the necessary conclusions. It is impossible to fight the capitalist class through the two-party system that it controls. The working class must build its own political party to defend its own class interests. This requires a political break, not only with the Democratic Party, but with all those organizations and political tendencies that defend, apologize for and cover up for the Democratic Party.

The Socialist Equality Party has campaigned in the 2016 elections on the basis of this perspective. Our candidates, Jerry White for president and Niles Niemuth for vice president, tell the truth to the working class, confident that events will prove the correctness of the socialist program. We fight to prepare the revolutionary political leadership required for the struggles into which the working class will enter after November 8.
Yesterday, Turkish police arrested at least 11 top members of the majority-Kurdish Democratic Peoples Party (HDP), including party cochairs Figen Yuksekdag and Selahattin Demirtas.

Leading Turkish parliamentarians across the country were assaulted, arrested and frog-marched into police custody. Police seized Demirtas after raiding his home in the capital, Ankara, and stormed Yuksekdags residence in Diyarbakr, the largest city in Turkeys mainly Kurdish southeast. Also arrested were HDP lawmakers Ferhat Encu, Leyla Birlik, Selma Irmak, Abdullah Zeydan, Idris Baluken, Srr Sureyya Onder, Ziya Pir, Gulser Yldrm and Nursel Aydogan.

A crowd protested around Balukens home in Diyarbakr as police seized him and tried to force him into their vehicle. Get your hands off me! I represent thousands of votes. You cant shove my head and take me like that, Baluken told police officers before they forced him into the vehicle and drove him away to detention.

As HDP officials were rounded up, a car bomb exploded in Diyarbakr, killing two police and seven civilians and wounding over 100 people. The attack, claimed by the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), reportedly targeted a police building. The HDP denies having links to the PKK.

The move to decapitate the HDP, a major parliamentary party in Turkey, shows that the state of emergency imposed in response to the failed NATO-backed coup in July against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is rapidly transforming Turkey into a presidential dictatorship. These powers will, sooner rather than later, be turned against social and political opposition in the working class. With Kurdish nationalist fighters in Turkey and Syria already clashing with Turkish forces, moreover, the arrest of top HDP officials will only intensify the ethnic tensions and bloodshed in the Near East.

After Demirtas posted a statement on Twitter that Police are at my door with a warrant to forcibly take me away, social media sites including Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and YouTube were taken down in Turkey. Ars Technica reported that Skype was also being choked inside the country. Turkish officials have often blocked Internet access after major crisesincluding the October 2015 bombings in Ankara, and the arrests of two co-mayors of Diyarbakr last monthin order to censor information and limit social protest.

Yuksekdag, Demirtas, and the other HDP officials were arrested for refusing to testify in probes of their alleged support for terrorism. These charges relate to the October 2014 battle between Kurdish and Islamic State (IS) forces in Kobane, Syria; a December 2015 Democratic Society Congress (DTK) meeting in Diyarbakr province, where HDP officials demanded broad autonomy for Kurdish areas in the region; and for alleged ties to the banned Kurdish Communities Union (KCK).

HDP members are reportedly issuing a common defense against these charges, which was prepared when the Turkish parliament voted to lift its own immunity in June in order to facilitate crushing the HDP.

Only the people who have elected me can question me about my political activities, the joint defense declares. We are the elected representatives of the people. We represent the people who voted for us, not ourselves. I am standing in front of you as a parliamentary representative and a member of parliament with impunity. I will never allow anyone disrespect to the identity that I represent and the will of my people. The defense adds that HDP officials will not be extras in a judicial theater play ordered by Erdogan.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yldrm supported the arrests yesterday, insisting that officials should pay the price for terror activities. He confirmed that the state had deliberately taken down the Internet for security purposes, adding that the shutdowns were temporary.

The arrests came only days after the arrest Monday of a dozen top journalists, including editor Murat Sabuncu, at the opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet. They face charges of working for the PKK and for Feithullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric exiled in the United States whom Erdogan accuses of launching the July coup against him.

US and European officials condemned the crackdown on the HDP, with White House spokesman Josh Earnest declaring Washington deeply disturbed by events in Turkey.

European Union (EU) chief diplomat Federica Mogherini issued a statement declaring that the HDP coleaders were trusted and valued interlocutors of the EU. It added that the arrests compromise parliamentary democracy in Turkey and exacerbate the already very tense situation in the South East of the country.

US and EU warnings about the accelerating collapse of Turkish parliamentary democracy are hypocritical and false, painting the imperialist powers as defenders of democracy in Turkey. Above all, they have worked to undermine parliamentary democracy in Turkey, criticizing Erdogans policies from the standpoint of their imperialist interests.

Less than four months ago, Washington and Berlin tacitly backed a coup, organized out of NATOs Incirlik air base in Turkey, that nearly toppled Erdogan. While fighters from Incirlik and army troops tried to murder Erdogan and seize key infrastructure around Turkeyreprising plans of NATO-backed coups in Turkey of 1960, 1971, and 1980US and European officials made only bland statements calling for continuity in Turkey. The coup was aimed above all at breaking up Erdogans developing ties with Russia and China.

Erdogan, having narrowly escaped with his life, is now launching a broad crackdown inside Turkey, targeting all suspected supporters of Gulen, Kurdish nationalist groups and the media.

The policy being pursued by Erdogan is no doubt deeply reactionary. However, it does not require deep political insight to see that he is above all reacting to crises caused by the Syrian war, for which the United States and the European powers bear primary responsibility.

When Washington and the EU pressured Erdogan to drop his zero problems with neighbors foreign policy and embrace their war for regime change in Syria five years ago, this proved to have vast and unforeseen consequences. Turkey became a key transit point for the supplying of NATO-backed Islamist opposition militias in Syria like ISIS and the Al Nusra Front.

Above all, the precarious peace in Turkey between Turks and Kurds collapsed when Washington then sought to use Syrian Kurdish militias as proxies on the ground in Syria. By nourishing Kurdish separatist aspirations in Syria and nearby regions of Turkey, which also fell victim to terror bombings by IS networks in Turkey, the NATO proxy war in Syria dragged Turkey itself into a civil war.

The Erdogan governments current aggressive military intervention in Syria and Iraq, primarily in an attempt to block the emergence of a separate Kurdish state along its southern border, goes hand in hand with an attempt to crush internal opposition.

Both are also sharpening tensions with the imperialist powers. As Erdogan clashes with Washington over the Obama administrations refusal to allow Turkish troops to fully participate in the US-led onslaught against Mosul, tensions are also erupting between Erdogan and EU officials over the crackdown on the media.

On Thursday, Erdogan sharply attacked German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had said the day before that the detention of the Cumhuriyet journalists was highly alarming, and he accused Germany of supporting terrorism.

Terror is like a scorpion. Eventually it will bite the one who is carrying it. I dont see a bright future for Germany. It has become a place where terrorists take refuge. There are racist attacks against Turks in Germany. It is unacceptable that Germany protects terrorists, Erdogan said, adding, If Germany doubts whether [the Gulen organization] is a terrorist group, I invite them to come and visit the Turkish Parliament and Special Forces buildings, which were bombed on July 15.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) -- Children went outside the classroom to explore science in fun ways at Kate Sullivan Elementary.

The school held its annual "Science Carnival" Friday in front of the school on Miccosukee Road.

Several organizations presented booths, featuring expert speakers and interactive games and lessons to enrich the students' learning of different aspects of science.

The ABC 27 Storm Team mobile weather lab was on hand, with chief meteorologist Casanova Nurse demonstrating the use of "green screen" technology used in TV weathercasts.
YAKIMA, Wash.  A 19-year-old man shot multiple times Friday night is expected to survive, though his injuries are serious, police said Saturday.
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21 years after the shocking murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, his family gathered for a remembrance ceremony at Mt. Herzl. Dalia Rabin, the daughter of the former Prime Minister, said during the ceremony, "I'm beginning to think that the incitement of the past is still not over." Following a newly released report detailing the seriousness and increase of incitement in Israeli society, Dalia Rabin may be right.

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The data revealed in the report on hate conducted by the Berl Katznelson Foundation shows that in the last year, there was a 50 percent rise in expressions of incitement and violence on the internet against government institutions including the cabinet, the IDF, the Israeli Police and others. More than six million racist expressions were recorded on the internet marking a 1.5 increase from last year.

Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot and Sgt. Elor Azaria (Photo: Yariv Katz and Gil Yohanan)

Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot has himself become a target for internet incitement in the last year following his perceived handling of the Elor Azaria incident, in which the soldier is on trial for shooting an already-neutralized terrorist. The report found that there was a fivefold increase in expressions of incitement against Eisenkot and a threefold increase of expressions of violence and incitement against the IDF.

Similarly, the report details a 175% increase in violent expressions on the internet against the judiciary and judges compared to last year. Additionally, a 160% increase was also noted in expressions of violence against the President, Reuven Rivlin.

President Reuven Rivlin (Photo: Ohad Zweigenberg)

"We wanted to examine internet discourse on government institutions and national symbols, which are the foundations of democracy in Israel and the results astounded us," said Eran Hermoni, head of the education center at the Berl Katznelson Foundation. "The volume of online discourse and violence against these institutions is unprecedented. The fact there is a dramatic rise in incitement and hate against the IDF, the Chief of Staff, the Justice system and freedom of the press shows us that there is a tunnel being dug beneath democratic institutions in Israel and that puts us all in danger."
Following a lifelong dream, American actor Houston Mack traded California and Hollywood for Kibbutz Yagur, Hebrew courses and the Paratroopers Brigade.

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After acting in school plays at 10 years old, Houston Mack's career took off and landed him an agent, recurring roles in television series, and finally films such as You, Me and Dupree, Stop That Cycle and Latchkey.

Houston Mack (Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

During the summer of 2013, Mack's life changed and he decided to immigrate to Israel and began studying Hebrew at Kibbutz Yagur. In December 2015, Mack was drafted into the IDF and began his service at the Michve Alon training base before being drafted into the Paratroopers Brigade.

"I always dreamt of joining the army, not necessarily the IDF, but just being a soldier," said Mack. Mack's father served in the Marines, while one of his grandfathers was a pilot and the other a sniper both in the US Army. "I was exposed to the Paratroopers Brigade and I decided I want to join the IDF, the army of the Jewish people, my people."

Mack with Kate Hudson

For Mack, the journey is just beginning. "I want to advance here in the Paratroopers, to contribute to the country and the army and become an officer. I want a good future for our country. If I can contribute, it is my responsibility to do that."

Mack's parents at first did not understand his plans. They had never been to Israel and they thought it was a dangerous place. However, in time they understood and Mack's mother came to Israel for the first time after Mack finished his beret march and received the distinctive maroon beret of the Paratroopers.

Mack and Owen Wilson

Following his military service, Mack plans to contribute to Israeli society internationally. "My dream is to study film here in Israel and present Israel positively in world cinema."
Conflict between Palestinian Police and Bedouin residents broke out this week in the Rashaida area of the Judaean Desert after the Palestinian Authority announced its intention to build a large cement plant near the Khatsatson Stream.

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On Wednesday, planners from the Palestinian Authority arrived in the area and were met with protests from Bedouin families from the Rashaida tribe, who live in the area. Residents fear the construction of the plant and related infrastructure will lead to health hazards, pollution and noise that will harm the desert environment and push their herds from traditional pastures.

Site of cement plant (Photo: Regavim)

NGO Regavim told Ynet that the plant should be built in within Area B, which is jointly controlled by the Palestinian Authority and Israel, because it can cause serious environmental damage. The NGO further claims that the planned site is in an area specified by the Oslo Accords as forbidden for building by both parties.

"It is clear that the construction of a plant of this type, to a very high degree of certainty, will cause severe environmental damage, specifically to the Khatsatson Stream area," said Oved Arad, Manager of Land Division at Regavim.

Boaz Arazi, an attorney representing Regavim, appealed to the Minister of Defense, the Minister of Environmental Protection and the Civil Administration to take the necessary steps to halt construction of the plant in order to protect Israeli, environmental and public interests.

In a letter, Arazi claims, "The family of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is involved in the construction of this plant and there are serious concerns that this involvement is impacting the planning and approval process of this project."
Turkish authorities arrested the leaders of the country's main pro-Kurdish opposition party in a terrorism investigation on Friday, drawing strong international condemnation of a widening crackdown on dissent under President Tayyip Erdogan.

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Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, co-leaders of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), were jailed pending trial after being detained in overnight raids, officials said. Ten other HDP lawmakers were also detained, although some were later released.

Photo: EPA

Protests in Turkey ()

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The arrest of elected members of the Turkish parliament's third largest party, and the detention or suspension of more than 110,000 officials since a failed coup in July, may "go beyond what is permissible", the UN human rights office said.

The United States expressed deep concern, while Germany and Denmark summoned Turkish diplomats over the Kurdish detentions, and European Parliament President Martin Schulz said the actions "call into question the basis for the sustainable relationship between the EU and Turkey".

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told reporters: "Turkey is a nation of laws, nobody has preferential treatment before the law ... What has been done is within the rule of law."

Photo: Getty Images

Protests in Turkey following arrests of Kurdish lawmakers (Photo: Getty Images)

The HDP lawmakers were arrested after they refused to give testimony in a probe linked to "terrorist propaganda", Yildirim said, adding that "Politics can't be a shield for committing crimes".

Hours after the detentions, a car bomb killed nine people and wounded more than 100 near a police station in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir where some of the lawmakers were being held.

The HDP, which made history last year by becoming the first Kurdish party to win 10 percent of the vote and enter parliament, said the detentions risked triggering civil war.

In a video message on a website close to the Kurdish PKK militants, one of the group's top commanders, Murat Karayilan, said the group would intensify its three-decade-old armed struggle against Turkey and called on Kurdsthe country's largest minorityto react.

Detained heads of the HDP (Photo: Reuters)

Photo: AP

The arrests of elected lawmakers from the HDP, which won more than five million votes at the last general election, heightened concern among Western allies about the political direction of Turkey, a NATO member and a buffer between Europe and the conflicts raging in Syria and Iraq.

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said she was "extremely worried" by the arrests, and raised her concerns in a telephone call with Turkey's foreign and EU affairs ministers late on Friday.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Ankara had a right to fight terrorism, but could not use it to justify gagging opponents.

Photo: Reuters

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused EU member states of supporting the PKK and dismissed the bloc's criticism as "unacceptable". Turkey began negotiations to join the EU in 2005, but has made glacial progress, and there is no prospect of it joining anytime soon.
Four new fennec foxes were born at the Ramat Gan Safari and have made their debut by jumping, frolicking and curiously approaching the fence of their enclosure.

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The quadruplets were born to Penny and Louie, both nine years old, who immigrated to Israel from Britain and France, respectively.

This is the second litter of the proud parents and their largest. The first litter produced three kits, with only two surviving.

Photo: Erez Erlichman

Video: Erez Erlichman, Music: What a bright Day - Nicolai Heidlas ( :  , : What a bright Day -Nicolai Heidlas )

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Shlomit Sharon, who works in the park's predator department and is responsible for nutrition, told Ynet, "The male and female live together in nature and their mating in the Safari was successful. They all currently live together with their offspring, a male and a female, who were born two years ago.

"We discovered Penny was pregnant when she began to be aggressive toward caregivers who entered the enclosure to clean dishes by barking and trying to expel them."

Photo: Erez Erlichman

Photo: Ramat Gan Safari

After giving birth, the caregivers do not see the kits for two weeks. The mother apparently hid the newborns in a large clay pot planted in the soil for the foxes.

"They slowly left their den and began to go out and explore their environment," said Shlomit. "All four survived the first two months and we hope that continues. They are currently nursing and the mother is teaching them to eat meat and fruit by ripping off little pieces for them. The father and two older siblings help to guard over the kits and hide them when there is loud noise. They play primarily in the morning and early afternoon and are extremely curious."

Photo: Erez Erlichman

Safari officials stated that the foxes will be moved to a new enclosure in several months where emphasis will be placed on a sandy environment, rich vegetation and plenty of rocks for hiding and play. However, when the kits reach sexual maturity, the Safari will have to find them new homes in Israel and abroad.
Efforts by the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) received significant support this week from the President of the European Parliament and the British Government for fully endorsing the return of property stolen from Jewish victims during the Holocaust and World War II.

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President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz announced his full support, saying, "I am fully committed to raising awareness of the Holocaust and atrocities committed against the Jewish people in Europe," he said. Schulz also added that he fully supports the implementation of decisions by the European Parliament regarding the return of stolen property.

Ledger listing art stolen by Hermann Goring (Photo: AP)

Schulz expressed his support in a letter to MEP Gunnar Hokmark, chair of the European Alliance for Holocaust Survivors.

Baroness Joyce Anelay of St. Johns of the British Foreign Ministry announced that the British government is determined to push Poland and other countries in Central and Eastern Europe to take care of aging Holocaust survivors.

"This government places great importance to the support of families tragically affected by the Holocaustincluding the important issue of restitution," Anelay wrote in a letter to the WJRO and the Chief Executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Gillian Merron, who urged the British government to increase restitution efforts.

Gideon Taylor, Chief of Operations at the World Jewish Restitution Organization, said, "This is a big step that will allow us to justly and compassionately see to the well-being of aging Holocaust survivors and returning stolen property."
SHKODER- Thousands gathered in prayer Saturday at a cathedral in Albania to celebrate the beatification of 38 Albanian Catholic martyrs executed or tortured to death during the former communist regime.

In April, Pope Francis officially recognized as martyrs Archbishop Vincens Prenushi and 37 other priests who died in prison or were murdered from 1945 to 1974 by the late communist dictator Enver Hoxha's regime, which banned religion in 1967 and persecuted its believers.

During Francis' visit in 2014, big posters of the 38 clergy were placed along the Martyrs of the Nation Boulevard in Tirana, the capital.

On Saturday, up to 20,000 people attended a Mass at the Shen Shtjefni cathedral in the city of Shkoder, 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of Tirana, together with five cardinals and senior Albanian officials. The few thousand inside the cathedral were outnumbered by the many thousands surrounding it.
PARIS- A French soldier has been killed in an attack in northern Mali after a mine exploded as his armored vehicle passed by during a supply mission, French officials said Saturday.

The French Defense Ministry said the attack took place Friday afternoon northeast of the Malian town of Kidal and that Fabien Jacq, a 28-year-old staff sergeant with the French Barkhane force in the country, died overnight. The mine hit two French armored vehicles, wounding another French soldier.

The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist publications, said the Mali-based Ansar Dine extremist group claimed responsibility for the attack on Twitter and on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app popular among extremist groups.
A mountainous Palestinian community in the West Bank, Al Jab'a differs in many ways from surrounding Israeli settlements but it shares one worry with its neighbors - a shortage of water.

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In the last few decades the West Bank has seen rainfall decrease and groundwater levels fall with drought expected to become "more frequent (and) more intense", according to a 2012 United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) report.

Water (Photo: Shutterstock)

Residents of Al Jab'a, who once had to walk for hours daily to fetch water, do have limited access to Israeli water supplies in their concrete homes due to a reservoir, pipeline and a pump built in 2013 by an Italian non-governmental organization.

But the water provided is not enough, according to families in Al Jab'a, a village of about 150 houses 12 km (7 miles) southwest of Bethlehem. They also fear their system could be demolished as it was not officially approved.

"Before, we had to walk many times a day to the nearby springs to fill our bottles and buckets," said Omar Musa, 18, who lives with his parents and five siblings near the reservoir in a house atop a hill.

"I was happy when I knew I would have water at home."

He estimated that his family saves about six hours a day by not having to fetch water for their use, crops and livestock.

Water Restrictions

But numerous rural and Bedouin communities in the West Bank are not connected to a network run by Israel's national water company, Mekorot, which is responsible for supplying water to Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territory.

In Al Jab'a, only 10 percent of homes were part of the Mekorot distribution system until the pipes and reservoir completed in 2013 extended the network to the remaining households. Water piped by Mekorot is pumped up the hill to be stored in the reservoir.

But this has not completely resolved the community's water problems. Residents say the Mekorot system supplies water only intermittently and at low pressure. When supplies flow, families must hurry to store as much as they can.

In addition, residents like Musa and his family fear the reservoir could be demolished by the Israeli authorities because, like many of their homes, the structure was built without an official permit.

Construction by Palestinians is forbidden in Area C, a designation covering about 60 percent of the West Bank, including Al Jab'a.

Many buildings in the West Bank are illegally built, thus aren't connected to the water grid (Photo: Gil Yohanan)

Between 2010 and 2014 only 1.5 percent of requests for building permits in Area C were approved, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

An application for a permit for the Al Jab'a reservoir by GVC, the Italian development organization that built it in partnership with UNICEF, was turned down, GVC said.

According to Israeli authorities, issuing demolition orders for structures built without permission is a legitimate measure, a 2015 OCHA report notes.

An assessment by UNICEF in 2015 showed that 400,000 Palestinians from 1.7 million living in the West Bank were in need of improved water, sanitation and hygiene services.

Israel points out that it provides the Palestinians with double the 30 million cubic meters of water annually that was agreed to in the 1995 Oslo accords.

Bring Back Cisterns

Gregor von Medeazza, chief of the water, sanitation and hygiene programme at UNICEF in East Jerusalem, said water remains a persistent sore point between Israel and Palestinian communities in the West Bank.

"Water should be a source of collaboration and should bring people together," he said. "At the end of the day, they all share the same water resources."

Von Medeazza said that UNICEF is concerned about ensuring measures are in place to use water carefully and help communities adapt in the face of growing scarcity.

Water is trucked in to many communities (Photo: Elad Municipality spokesperson)

"It means having rational use of (the) water available and making sure there is no wasting of water," he said. With climate change bringing more variable rainfall, "it is also important to emphasize that there is a question of accessibility and human right to a minimum amount of water", he said.

Apart from building reservoirs, Von Medeazza suggests rehabilitating around 300 ancient cisterns - underground storage tanks dating from Roman times that once collected water in the rainy season. These have the potential to be used today and would be a cost-effective measure, he said.

Around 80 such cisterns have been restored so far by a coalition of non-governmental organizations.

"The long-term vision is to increase the current access (to water) of people living in remote places," Von Medeazza said. "We have the technical solutions to extend services and connect communities. What we need is further support from all parties (Israelis and Palestinians) for this to happen."

For his part, Musa in Al Jab'a remains worried but resolute.

"We are really afraid of losing our reservoir," he said. But "we are not leaving our house nor our community".
Coalition Chairman MK David Bitan (Likud), speaking at a Holon Saturday cultural event marking 21 years since the assassination of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, claimed that the murder was "not a political act."

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He explained, "It wasn't a political murder, and it wasn't connected to politicians," speaking before the annual memorial service for the slain Israeli leader to be held Saturday night. "It was a murder that was committed by a man who wanted to stop processes."

He added that the state must fund the Rabin memorial rally and that he was pained to hear that the rally lacked sufficient official funding this year. "I am for a state ceremony," he said. "If I had to take the decision, I would fund that rally and hold a state rally, not a leftist rally ."

David Bitan speaking in Holon (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

Addressing the public broadcasting controversy, Bitan said that establishing a joint team of the Prime Minister's Office and the Finance Ministry caused the dismantling of the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA). Incidentally, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon (Likud) insisted that Bitan not be part of that joint team. The coalition chairman said, "I don't envisage a scenario in which the authority won't be cancelled."

He claimed that the IBA was comprised of "clear leftists" who want to implement their own agenda. Bitan said, "We checked the Facebook of employees in the authority. The authority will be clearly anti-governmental."

The coalition chairman leader later rejected the claim that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bamboozled him when he delayed closing the IBA. "I am in constant and good contact with the prime minister," he claimed. "There's a hierarchy. The final decision is that of the prime minister, and I respected that. The media deals with the authority obsessivelySoviet engagement. You're doing this because of your friends in the authority. We aren't afraid of the media; we've learned to live with a media against us."

Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and Secretary General of the Labor Party MK Hilik Bar criticized Bitan's words. Referring to Rabin's assassin, he said, "Yigal Amir didn't have a Facebook to probe, but you don't need to be the chairman of the coalition to understand that this was a political assassination in the clearest form possible. The murder was preceded by organized incitement, hatred, persecution by the extreme right, marking targets and calls of 'traitor.' That same hatred, persecution, marking and incitement exists today as wellagainst journalists, judges, IDF officers and anyone who thinks differently from the government."
Eilat's new, modern Ramon Airport is set to open by April, but those who fly the 45 minutes from Tel Aviv are expected to run into delays when they exit the terminal.

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Contrary to the currently operating Eilat airport, which is located inside the city, the Ramon Airport is to be 19 km north.

When the new airport was announced, the Ministry of Transport promised a light rail to carry passengers to and from the city. However, it has come to light that the system will not be set up for years.

Eilat's current airport (Photo: Yair Sagi)

Eilat's Mayor Meir Yitzhak Halevi recently wrote to Transport Minister Yisrael Katz on the subject. The mayor asked Katz to intervene and urgently widen Highway 90 to prepare for the increase in traffic.

"There is already gigantic transportation chaos at the entrance to the city today, with traffic jams on weekends, on vacations and on holidays," Yitzhak Halevi wrote. "If dramatic transportation improvement doesn't take place before the airport's opening, the chaos will become intolerable and will severely damage the quality of life of the tourists and residents."

According to data from the Eilat Municipality, it takes ten to 20 minutes to enter the city. The new airport is forecasted to extend this to 45 minutes, the same amount of time as the flight from Tel Aviv.

One potential solution is laying rail lines to Eilat, which the ministry is continuing to promote. But in the interim, the municipality is seeking the removal of traffic circles at the entrance to the city and the relocation of the police and customs checkpoint, which also hinders traffic. Another infrastructure improvement is the demarcation of separate lanes for travel to and from the city and the airport.

The Ministry of Transport commented that they were working on a plan whose planning phase was to be completed by the end of the year and whose construction phase would be "a few months." However, they refused to say that the improvements would be completed before Ramon Airport opens.
WASHINGTON  Melania Trump was paid for 10 modeling jobs in the United States worth $20,056 that occurred in the seven weeks before she had legal permission to work in the country, according to detailed accounting ledgers, contracts and related documents from 20 years ago provided to The Associated Press.

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The details of Mrs. Trump's early paid modeling work in the US emerged in the final days of a bitter presidential campaign in which her husband, Donald Trump, has taken a hard line on immigration laws and those who violate them. Trump has proposed broader use of the government's E-verify system allowing employers to check whether job applicants are authorized to work. He has noted that federal law prohibits illegally paying immigrants.

Mrs. Trump, who received a green card in March 2001 and became a US citizen in 2006, has always maintained that she arrived in the country legally and never violated the terms of her immigration status. During the presidential campaign, she has cited her story to defend her husband's hard line on immigration.

Melania Trump (Photo: AFP)

The documents obtained by the AP show she was paid for 10 modeling assignments between September 10 and October 15, during a time when her visa allowed her generally to be in the US and look for work but not perform paid work in the country. The documents examined by the AP indicate that the modeling assignments would have been outside the bounds of her visa.

It is highly unlikely that the discovery will affect the citizenship status of Mrs. Trump. The government can seek to revoke the US citizenship of immigrants after the fact in cases when it determines a person willfully misrepresented or concealed facts relevant to his naturalization. But the government effectively does this in only the most egregious cases, such as instances involving terrorism or war crimes.

The disclosures about the payments come as Mrs. Trump takes on a more substantial role advocating for her husband's candidacy. She made her first speech in months Thursday, in which she spoke of her time working as a model in Europe and her decision to come to the US

"As a young entrepreneur, I wanted to follow my dream to a place where freedom and opportunity were in abundance. So of course, I came here," she said. "Living and working in America was a true blessing, but I wanted something more. I wanted to be an American."

The documents obtained by the AP included ledgers, other accounting documents and a management agreement signed by Mrs. Trump from Metropolitan International Management that covered parts of 1996 and 1997. The AP obtained the files this week after seeking copies since August from employees of the now-defunct modeling firm, after Mrs. Trump made comments earlier this summer that appeared inconsistent with US immigration rules.

A New York immigration lawyer whom Mrs. Trump asked to review her immigration documents, Michael J. Wildes, also reviewed some of the ledgers at AP's request. Wildes said in a brief statement that "these documents, which have not been verified, do not reflect our records including corresponding passport stamps." He did not elaborate or answer additional questions asking for clarification. Wilde appeared to be referring to Mrs. Trump's arrival in the United States on Aug. 27, 1996, one day after the ledgers list a charge for car service to pick up Mrs. Trump from the airport. Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks also did not answer additional written questions from the AP.

Since questions arose earlier this year, Mrs. Trump has declined to publicly release her immigration records. Wildes, the immigration lawyer, released a letter in September that laid out the details of what he said Mrs. Trump's immigration records show, including a seven-week window in which Mrs. Trump was in the US before her work visa was issued.

During that seven-week period, the ledgers list modeling work for clients that included Fitness magazine and Bergdorf Goodman department store. The management agreement, which said it was not an employment agreement, included a handwritten date of Aug. 27, 1996. The top of the document said it was "made and entered into as of this 4th day of September 1996."

Many of the documents were part of a legal dispute related to the dissolution of the firm in the late 1990s and found recently in storage. The accounting ledgers for the firm's models were listed on hundreds of pages of continuously fed paper that appeared yellowed with age. They were authenticated by a former employee who worked at the firm at the time. The employee spoke on condition of anonymity because this person feared retaliation and threats from Trump's presidential campaign.

Exhibit markings with the records were also consistent with documents filed in New York state court, including a deposition of one former partner that referred to the same exhibit number. The sworn testimony describing the exhibit's content matches the documents obtained by the AP.

Melania Trump and Mike Pence at the third presidential debate (Photo: AFP)

A former partner, Paolo Zampolli, who previously told the AP that he recruited Mrs. Trump to come to the US as a model, confirmed that the contract language was used by his firm and his signature appeared on the document. Mrs. Trump's signature on the contract resembled her signature on her marriage license recorded in 2005. Asked about the two dates on the document, Zampolli said he usually vacationed in Europe each August and likely arranged for the contract to be formally executed when he returned to New York after Labor Day, even though Mrs. Trump had signed it eight days earlier.

Zampolli previously told the AP that Mrs. Trump obtained a work visa before she modeled professionally in the United States. He said the ledgers for Mrs. Trump were consistent with printouts used by his firm at the time, but he would not personally vouch for them because he said money matters were handled by the company's chief financial officer, who has since died.

Zampolli said he did not recall Mrs. Trump working without legal permission. "Honestly, I don't know. It's like 20 years ago," he said. "The contract looks (like) a real one and the standard one."

Foreigners are not allowed to use a visitor visa to work for pay in the US for American companies. Doing so would violate the terms of that visa and could prohibit a foreigner from later changing his or her immigration status in the US or bar the foreigner from the United States again without special permission to come back. The E-verify system started in 1997after Mrs. Trump came to the countryand was dramatically expanded after 2007.

Some ledgers obtained by the AP identify Mrs. Trump by her professional name and detail her involvement with the modeling agency from July 18, 1996, through September 26, 1997. Other documents from the same accounting ledgers identify Mrs. Trump as Melanija Knaus and list $20,526 in gross earnings for the period before she was granted her work visa on October 18, 1996. The documents also show the modeling company paid for her rent, lent her money and paid for her pager.

Some ledgers were first made available to True.Ink, an online lifestyle publication, and then independently obtained and verified by the AP.

Metropolitan International Management managed the careers of about 65 women in 1996 and 1997, according to court records. It paid the women as independent contractors, collecting a 20 percent commission and deducting expenses. The ledger shows that the firm also deducted federal taxes from the models' gross earnings, including Mrs. Trump's.
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Washington, DC - Vice President Joe Biden spoke with Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili of Georgia to congratulate him on his party's victory in Georgia's parliamentary elections. The Vice President commended Georgia's democratic leadership in the region. He also reiterated U.S. support for Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders and condemned Russia's ratification of a "treaty" with Abkhazia on setting up a joint armed force.

The leaders agreed that Georgian Dream's strong majority imposes a great responsibility on the government to lead inclusively and reach out to all pro-reform forces as it crafts its policies. The Vice President encouraged the Prime Minister to use the election results to continue Georgias democratic and economic reforms that will further Georgia's integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions.
Kano: Northern Nigeria has become the latest battleground in the proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, after violent clashes between supporters of rival groups from the two main branches of Islam.

Members of the Izala movement, backed by mainly Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia, last month attacked the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), which is sympathetic to Shiite majority Iran.

IMN ceremonies in at least four northern cities to mark the annual Shiite day of mourning, Ashura, were targeted, with the worst riots in Kaduna, an Izala stronghold. At least two IMN supporters were killed.

Witnesses and local media said mobs who looted and set fire to homes and businesses over two days shouted "No more Shiites".

Sectarian tensions in Nigeria`s Muslim-majority north had already been running high, especially in Kaduna, after the state government banned the IMN as an unlawful group and a security threat days earlier.

That followed a recommendation from the judicial inquiry it commissioned to investigate clashes in Zaria city last December in which soldiers killed more than 300 IMN members.

Those clashes and the recent escalating tension indicate that the proxy Saudi-Iran conflict -- well-known in places such as Lebanon, Yemen and Syria -- is now being played out in Nigeria, experts said.

"It is a fact that Saudi Arabia has been financing anti-Shia campaigns in many areas of the world," political scientist Abubakar Sadiq Mohammed, from Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, told AFP.

"If the attacks against the Shiites escalate, of course Iran will support them and Saudi Arabia will support the attacks on Shiites."Izala leader Abdullahi Bala Lau has been accused of stoking anger by declaring that Nigeria`s constitution only recognises Sunni Islam.

His group has close relations with Riyadh and Nigeria`s government while its satellite television station, Manara, also broadcasts fiery anti-Shiite rhetoric.

Leaders from Saudi Arabia and Iran both contacted Nigeria`s President Muhammadu Buhari after the Zaria attacks.

Iran`s President Hassan Rouhani called for restraint and accused "a group" of "sowing the seeds of discord among Muslims in Islamic countries" in what was seen as a clear reference to Saudi Arabia.

Nigerian media reported that Saudi King Salman backed Abuja`s crackdown on the IMN, describing it as a "fight against terrorism".

The Sunni jihadists of Boko Haram have killed at least 20,000 people in northeast Nigeria since taking up arms against the government in 2009.

Riyadh has largely refrained from openly backing Nigeria`s fight against the ultra-conservative Salafist rebels but Mohammed noted it was "quick to do so in the case of IMN".

"The responses of Iran and Saudi to the Zaria clashes belie sectarian undercurrents," he added.

In March, Saudi clerics attended an Izala-organised conference on "deviant Islamic ideologies" in Nigeria and have since been preaching in the country.

In May, Iran`s envoy to Nigeria called for the release of IMN leader Ibrahim Zakzaky and described his detention as "unfair", straining diplomatic ties. He was later recalled to Tehran.A senior Nigerian security officer said IMN`s religious beliefs were immaterial but its alleged disregard for law and order was an issue, as was its lack of recognition of the Nigerian state.

IMN started out as a student movement in 1978 and morphed into a Sunni revolutionary group inspired by the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979.

The group switched to Shia Islam in 1996 due to Zakzaky`s close association with Iran, worsening mutual resentment with conservative Wahhabists, including Izala, which was founded in 1978 by a Saudi-trained cleric.

Islamic history expert Dahiru Hamza said Izala`s focus had up to then been against those in the mystical Sufi tradition, whose beliefs they considered heretical.

"They shifted their focus on Shiites who were getting more organised and challenging the Salafi influence by winning more converts in the territory under the Salafi control," he added.

Izala received funding from Saudi Arabia and wealthy adherents, allowing it to establish mosques and schools. It also encouraged members to participate in politics, gaining government allies.Izala`s preaching against IMN and Shia Islam has increased since last December. It openly supported the military crackdown in Zaria and even called for harsher action.

Lau dismisses claims he is fuelling tensions as a smear campaign.

At least five northern states have followed Kaduna`s example in banning the IMN from holding public processions.

"The ordinary people took the ban on IMN as a ban on Shia (Islam) because IMN is the more prominent Shia group due to its public activities like street procession," said the editor of the Shia newspaper Ahlulbayt, Muhammad Ibrahim.

"This worried us because we saw how Izala followers were spreading the information that the government banned Shia and the people began to believe it."
New York: Authorities say a New York City police sergeant has been fatally shot and another has been wounded in an exchange of gunfire with a suspect in the Bronx.

Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo (KWOH'-moh) announced the sergeant's death yesterday. He says the other officer was shot in the leg and is undergoing treatment.

Authorities say the gunman was killed. They say he had fired on officers who had stopped his car near a ballfield following a brief pursuit.

A law enforcement official identifies the suspect as 35-year-old Manuel Rosales. The official says a woman called 911 after Rosales broke into her home, violating an order of protection.

The official wasn't authorised to discuss an ongoing case and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

A lawyer who previously represented Rosales says his client wasn't violent.
Washington: Melania Trump was paid for 10 modeling jobs in the United States worth USD 20,056 that occurred in the seven weeks before she had legal permission to work in the country, according to detailed accounting ledgers, contracts and related documents from 20 years ago.

The details of Mrs Trump's early paid modeling work in the US emerged in the final days of a bitter presidential campaign in which her husband, Donald Trump, has taken a hard line on immigration laws and those who violate them.

Trump has proposed broader use of the government's E-verify system allowing employers to check whether job applicants are authorized to work.

Mrs Trump, who received a green card in March 2001 and became a US citizen in 2006, has always maintained that she arrived in the country legally and never violated the terms of her immigration status.

The wife of the GOP presidential nominee has said through an attorney that she first came to the US from Slovenia on August 27, 1996, on a B1/B2 visitor visa and then obtained an H-1B work visa on October 18, 1996.

The documents obtained by the AP show she was paid for 10 modeling assignments between September 10 and October 15, during a time when her visa allowed her generally to be in the US and look for work but not perform paid work in the country.

It is highly unlikely the discovery will affect the citizenship status of Mrs Trump. The government can seek to revoke the US citizenship of immigrants after the fact in cases when it determines a person willfully misrepresented or concealed facts relevant to his naturalization.

But it effectively does this in only the most egregious cases, such as instances involving terrorism or war crimes.

The disclosures about the payments come as Mrs. Trump takes on a more substantial role advocating for her husband's candidacy. She made her first speech in months Thursday, in which she spoke of her time working as a model in Europe and her decision to come to the US.

The documents obtained by the AP included ledgers, other accounting documents and a management agreement signed by Mrs Trump from Metropolitan International Management that covered parts of 1996 and 1997.

The AP obtained the files this week after seeking copies since August from employees of the now-defunct modeling firm, after Mrs Trump made comments earlier this summer that appeared inconsistent with US immigration rules.

A New York immigration lawyer whom Mrs Trump asked to review her immigration documents, Michael J Wildes, reviewed some of the ledgers at AP's request. Wildes said in a brief statement that "these documents, which have not been verified, do not reflect our records including corresponding passport stamps."
Washington: The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies are examining faked documents aimed at discrediting the Hillary Clinton campaign as part of a broader investigation into what U.S. officials believe has been an attempt by Russia to disrupt the presidential election, people with knowledge of the matter said.

U.S. Senator Tom Carper, a Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, has referred one of the documents to the FBI for investigation on the grounds that his name and stationery were forged to appear authentic.

In a document forged to appear as though Carper was writing a letter to Clinton, Carper is quoted as saying the Department of Homeland Security had advised him of a risk that a "massive" cyber attack "could change the election results in favour of a specific candidate." The document dated October 3 was reviewed by Reuters.

It concludes, "Any suspicious incident will be immediately reported to your assistants so that a recount of votes could be timely organised. You will not lose the election because of some compromised electronic voting systems." The fake Carper letter is one of several documents presented to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Justice for review in recent weeks, the sources said.

Carper spokeswoman Meghan Pennington confirmed on Friday that the senator had sent a copy of the letter to the FBI and the Senates chief law enforcement officer.

"Our office became aware of a fake letter on Senator Carpers official letterhead and immediately referred it to federal law enforcement to investigate its genesis," Pennington said.

As part of an investigation into suspected Russian hacking, FBI investigators have also asked Democratic Party officials to provide copies of other suspected faked documents that have been circulating along with emails and other legitimate documents taken in the hack, people involved in those conversations said.

A spokesman for the FBI confirmed the agency was in receipt of a complaint about an alleged fake letter related to the election but declined further comment. Others with knowledge of the matter said the FBI was also examining other fake documents that recently surfaced.

U.S. intelligence officials have warned privately that a campaign they believe is backed by the Russian government to undermine the credibility of the U.S. presidential election could move beyond the hacking of Democratic Party email systems. That could include posting fictional evidence of voter fraud or other misinformation in the run-up to voting on Nov. 8, U.S. officials have said.

Russian officials deny any such effort.

In addition to the Carper letter, the FBI has also reviewed a seven-page electronic document that carries the logos of Democratic pollster Joel Benensons firm, the Benenson Strategy Group, and the Clinton Foundation, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

The document, identified as a fake by the Clinton campaign, claims poll ratings had plunged for Clinton and called for severe strategy changes for November that could include staged civil unrest and radiological attack with dirty bombs to disrupt the vote.

Like the Carper letter, it was not immediately clear where the fraudulent document had originated or how it had begun to circulate.

On Oct. 20, Roger Stone, a former Trump aide and Republican operative, linked to a copy of the document on Twitter with the tag, If this is real: OMG!!

Benensons firm had no immediate comment. Craig Minassian, a spokesman for the Clinton Foundation, said the document was fake. He said he did not know if the FBI had examined it.

Stone did not respond to emails requesting comment.

A spokesman for the Clinton campaign, Glen Caplin, said the document was a fake and part of a desperate stunt to capitalise on the leak of Democratic emails by Wikileaks.

The developments highlight the unusually prominent role U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies have played in a contentious election and an ongoing debate about how public they can or should be about their inquiries.

FBI Director James Comey, a Republican appointed by President Obama, touched off an outcry from Democrats last week when he alerted Congress that agents had found other emails that could be linked to an inquiry into Clintons use of a private email server when she was Secretary of State, effectively re-opening an investigation he had closed in July.
Miami: US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump asked on Saturday in Tampa, Florida, for the Hispanic and African American electorate's vote in this vital state, where polls show him in a technical tie with rival Hillary Clinton.

"What the hell do you have to lose?" Trump asked Latino and African American voters, and at his first rally of the final sprint to next Tuesday's elections he promised to fix what is wrong with the country.

Before the elections he will visit eight states, including another visit to Florida next Monday, EFE news reported.

Trump said that African Americans and Latinos are suffering in Florida's cities and all over the country from high crime rates, the worst education and no jobs, problems that he vowed to remedy if he wins the November 8 election.

He also said that Democrats always forget about these minority voters once the elections are over.

These segments of the electorate, which polls indicate massively support ex-Secretary of State Clinton, could be vital for determining who will win Florida's 29 electoral votes - which Trump needs to obtain the total of 270 that will give him the key to the White House.

Latinos represent 16 per cent of Florida's registered voters, while African Americans make up 13 per cent, and their vote is crucial in these Florida elections, where surveys point to the Democrat having a minimal lead, EFE news added.

In Florida, 4 per cent more Latinos have come out for early voting or have voted by mail than in 2012, while African American participation has dropped 7 per cent compared to the last presidential election when the candidate was President Barack Obama, who finally won the state.

Trump said he felt good about the voting results up to now, which on Saturday showed a difference of less than 7,300 between the registered Democrats and Republicans who have already voted, out of a total of 5.7 million registered voters in Florida.

The real-estate magnate said the final vote of African Americans and Hispanics will be very different from what people think.

He said Clinton is the candidate of the past, while his is the movement of the future, and it's time for change, for new leadership.

According to a poll taken by the website Real Clear Politics, Clinton leads Trump by less than 2 per cent nationwide.
Fayetteville: The race to the White House is tightening with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton leading her Republican rival by just two percentage points, a latest opinion poll has said.

An estimated 200 million US voters would elect their next president on November 8. More than 35 million of them have already casted their votes.

Fox New in its latest poll yesterday said that Trump (43 per cent) was trailing behind Clinton (45 per cent) by two percentage points.

A week ago Clinton was up by three points and by six points in mid-October.

"The FBI action forced Clinton to play defense in the closing week," said Democratic pollster Chris Anderson.

"But the number of voters who will move out of her column to someone else will likely be minimal. If the election really comes down to the wire, perhaps it makes a difference in a battleground," said Anderson who conducts the Fox News Poll with Republican counterpart Daron Shaw.

Another major media outlet for the first time projected Hilary's electoral college votes below the half way mark of 270.

The CNN in its latest projections of electoral maps predicted 268 electoral college votes, two short of the half way mark of 270 required to be declared elected in the 2016 presidential elections.

On the other hand Trump still has a long way to catch up.

CNN projections gives him 204 electoral college votes.

The six battle ground States as per CNN now are Arizona, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina.

The major US media outlet reported that Trump has gained quite a bit in the past two weeks, in particular after the FBI Director James Comey announced last week to re-open the investigation in to the alleged email scandal of Clinton.

In RealClearPolitics, which keeps tracks of all major polls, Clinton's lead in the average of polls is 1.6 percentage points.

The "polls only" model of legendary Nate Silver from 'The New York Times' said that Clinton had 67.8 percentage chance of winning the November 8 presidential elections.

The Huffington Post on the other said that Clinton had a 97.9 per cent chances of winning the elections, even as Trump appears to have a late surge.

Princeton Election Consortium also gives Clinton a much higher chance of winning the election.
Islamabad: Several banners appeared in Rawalpindi on Saturday, urging Pakistan Army Chief General Raheel Sharif to contest the general elections in 2018.

This comes as the military chief is just a few weeks away from the completion of his tenure, reports the Dawn.In bold letters, the banners call for `no extension but reduction` - asking for reduction from two to one year the minimum duration before a retired government servant can enter politics as well as urging General Raheel to enter the political arena and contest national elections in 2018.

The banners also called on the government and the opposition to bring to an end "their divisive politics".

The banners say there was hope that by taking part in the elections, General Raheel`s party "will secure majority votes and he will be elected prime minister, leading the country on the path to becoming a success".

The posters named a Sheikh Rasheed Amjad Ali, member of a group called the Awami Monitoring Cell (Rawalpindi), as the man who has organised the campaign.Previously, banners calling for General Raheel to continue as the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) popped up in cities across the country.
Lucknow: RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav on Saturday said they have come to Uttar Pradesh to strengthen Samajwadi Party and "chase away" BJP from here like they did in Bihar.

"We are here to strengthen SP. We have chased away BJP in Bihar. Just like 'geedad' (jackal) is chased away we will chase away BJP from UP too," Lalu said before leaving SP's silver jubilee celebrations.

Former Prime Minister H D Devegowda, when asked about the possibility of a coalition, said, "We are not in field here. A situation might arise after UP, Gujarat and Punjab polls. We are here to attend silver jubilee celebrations on the invitation of SP."

JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav said they have come to attend the SP function as they have "old relations" with SP.

"There are no talks of coalition now. Mulayam Singh Yadav can tell better. SP is the bigger party here. Talking much on this will not be appropriate at this time," he said.
New Delhi: A thick shroud of menacing grey haze blanketed the national capital today as pollution level breached the safe limit by over 17 times at places, prompting Chief Minister Arvind Kerjriwal to describe Delhi as a "gas chamber" and seek the Centre's intervention.

Kejriwal appealed to people to minimise the use of private vehicles in view of the situation and switch to public transportation facilities.

The extent of pollution surpassed even the post-Diwali levels, while smog brought down visibility to around 200 metres across the city. Monitoring agencies recorded 'severe' quality air and advised people to avoid going outdoors.

Kejriwal told a press conference that the smog was mainly a product of raging farm fires in neighbouring Punjab and Haryana. Later, he raised the issue with Union Environment Minister Anil Dave in a meeting at the latter's residence.

While the 24-hour average of respirable pollutants PM 2.5 and PM 10 was 355 and 482 micrograms per cubic metre respectively, real-time figures were alarmingly high.

Anand Vihar, for instance, recorded PM 10 level at 1,711 micrograms per cubic metre at 2 PM -- around 17 times above the safe limit.

The safe limits of these ultrafine particles are 60 and 100 respectively. Even the level of gaseous pollutants like NO2 violated the prescribed standards for human inhalation as per real-time readings.

Lt Governor Najeeb Jung has also called for a high-level meeting on Monday to take stock of the immediate, short-term and long term measures, in which he invited Kejriwal, health minister Satyendar Jain, environment minister Imran Hussain, the Delhi Chief Secretary, and representatives of Police and the civic bodies.

Kejriwal said vehicle restriction measures like 'odd-even' scheme will not be able to bring down the smog as initial studies suggest that the "large-scale" influx of pollutant-laden smoke from Punjab and Haryana has aggravated the situation.

He said the Delhi government has very few methods at its disposal and the Centre needs to intervene.

"Pollution has increased to an extent that outdoors in Delhi are resembling a gas chamber. Prima facie the biggest reason seems to be burning of stubble in agricultural fields in Haryana and Punjab in huge quantity," Kejriwal told a press conference.

Shutting down of schools for a long time was not a feasible solution, he said, when asked about the decision of the civic bodies to keep schools run by it closed for a day in view of pollution.
New Delhi: Schools running under the three municipal corporations of Delhi have been ordered to be closed on Saturday in view of the heavy smog, the worst the national capital has faced in 17 years.

"All municipal schools under the three corporations will be closed tomorrow due to the heavy smog and pollution. The order for closure is only for a day as of now. As per the situation, we may decide to close them later as well," Leader of Opposition in SDMC, Subhash Arya said.

About 10 lakh students are enrolled in the schools administered by the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), Nouth Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) and East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC).

"The decision was taken today at a meeting held in the wake of severe pollution Delhiites are reeling under. And, since the smog is worse during the morning, it was decided to close the schools," said Arya, also the former Mayor of south Delhi.Arya, also the former Mayor of south Delhi.

The national capital is facing the worst smog in 17 years, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) had said yesterday, while asking the Delhi government to issue health alerts and convey that children should stay indoors as there is a state of health emergency due to peaking air pollution.

Peak level of respirable pollutants PM 2.5 and PM10 had also violated the safe limits by over 15 times at places like R K Puram. The prescribed standard of PM 2.5 is 60 micrograms per cubic metre, but it touched 955 in real-time during early morning hours.

Admitting that the enforcement of rules for tackling air pollution was "weak", the Environment Ministry today asked states to "strictly" implement a host of measures, including checking spread of fly ash from Delhi's Badarpur plant and shutting down of old brick kilns.
Shimla: As many as eighteen persons have been killed and more than 25 have received injuries after a bus fell into a gorge near Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh on Saturday afternoon.

Over speeding was the cause of the accident, said the police.

The ill-fated bus with over 45 persons on board was enroute to Kullu town from Mandi when it fell into the river near Bindravani, some 175 km from the state capital, on National Highway 21.

Superintendent of Police P.K. Thakur said 18 persons died in the accident.

He told IANS that the injured have been admitted to the Zonal Hospital in Mandi.

The toll could increase as most of the injured were in critical condition, a police official said.

The bus has been retrieved from the river.

Witnesses told police that the driver, who was overtaking a truck, lost control over the vehicle while saving a motorcyclist from a head-on collision.

A survivor told the police that the cause of the accident was over speeding and bad condition of the road.

It took hours for rescuers and the police to climb down the mountain and bring up the bodies. Eyewitnesses said the administration had a tough time in extricating the victims from the bus, although locals and passersby started the rescue operations before the authorities could reach the spot.

14 dead & over 25 injured after a bus falls into a gorge near Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh, rescue ops underway pic.twitter.com/9yTvS1BO3M
New Delhi: As politics over the ex-serviceman's suicide continues, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Saturday said that only four to five percent of retired Army men are facing problems in getting their pension as per One Rank, One Pension (OROP) and the mater will be resolved in next two months.

"At least 95 percent of ex-servicemen have already received the benefit of OROP. While those who have yet not received the revised pensions are very old pensioners, probably from 1962 war. So, records are incomplete," Manohar Parrikar, who addressed the media over OROP row today, said.

"We are in the process of completing the records of these rest 4-5 percent and it will be done in the next two months," Parrikar said.

Hitting out at Opposition parties for causing uproar after an ex-serviceman Ram Kishan Grewal committed suicide over the delay in One Rank, One Pension scheme, Parrikar said, "Parties who are in opposition are politicizing OROP issue. Army men are very happy with OROP implementation. At least 95 percent of army veterans who have received the benefits of OROP are very happy."

"Those who have become politicians, those who have formed a political party... Even in our party there are ex-servicemen politicians, as is the case with other political parties too. They think like politicians and not like ex-soldiers. I cannot discuss about them," Parrikar said to a query about the politicisation of the OROP issue.

"So, if they (ex-servicemen associations) are satisfied, then the rest who indulge in politics, I cannot satisfy them. I can assure you and you can go to the ex- servicemen," he said, adding that he was in constant touch with ex-servicemen and working actively to overcome the obstacles they face.

"...the 1962 war was 54 years back. There are 1965 war (with Pakistan) pensioners, 1971 war pensioners and many who are family pensioners. Their old records are not available with the pensions department," he said.

Parrikar said that his ministry was working at alternative ways to help bring these four to five per cent former soldiers under the OROP umbrella, by gleaning their service details from other records and by getting them to sign affidavits about their service tenure. They would get the OROP benefits over the next two months, he added.
Bhubaneswar: Ahead of Panchayat elections in Odisha, BJP on Saturday announced plans to organise a large meeting here on November 25, where party president Amit Shah will sound the poll bugle and "expose the inefficiency, inertia and misrule" during 17 years of BJD rule in the state.

"Many national leaders including party president Amit Shah will join the mega event being organised at Bhubaneswar on November 25," BJP's Odisha unit chief Basant Panda said at a preparatory meeting for the 'Maha Samavesh' ahead of the panchayat polls next year.

Claiming that the conclave will "lay the foundation" for establishing BJP government in the state, Panda alleged the state remained "backward" due to "inertia, inefficiency, misrule and rampant corruption" during the BJD rule in the last 17 years.

He alleged that the BJD government has failed to ensure proper health care, education, power, good roads, drinking water and irrigation facilities in the state. It also failed to ensure safety and security for children, women, farmers, tribals and Dalits.

Accusing BJD of complaining about negligence by the Centre to "hide its failure and inefficiency", Panda said the state has been depending heavily on the Centre to undertake all development activities.

He also accused the Chief Minister of making false announcements as all the programmes have turned out to be "hollow".

Speaking at the meeting, BJP leader and Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said while health services have collapsed in Odisha, education sector is in complete disarray and youths are facing growing unemployment during the BJD rule.
Noida: In an unfortunate incident, a 21-year-old student of Amity University in Noida allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself at his hostel room.

G Sai Krishna, a native of Telangana, was a first year student of post graduate diploma in facilities management. He had joined the course recently.

He allegedly hanged himself last evening.

The hostel was empty at that time as other students had gone for Diwali holidays, SHO of Sector 39 Police Station, Amarnath Yadav, said.

Krishna was rushed to a hospital, where he was declared brought dead, the SHO said.

What led him to commit suicide?

A few days back, Krishna was scolded by his father regarding his studies and also for borrowing money from someone and not being able to pay it back, SHO of Sector 39 Police Station, Amarnath Yadav

Krishna's father is an advocate.

Suicide note

He has left a note written in Telugu, addressed to his parents.

In his note, Krishna wrote that committing suicide is not easy and told his parents that they have done a lot for him, Yadav said.

The body has been handed over to his family after post-mortem.
Jaspur: Rubbishing opposition's charge that the Modi government is interfering in Shariat matters, Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi today welcomed the ongoing debate on triple talaq and Uniform Civil Code, saying the discussion is a sign of healthy democracy.

"The Modi government has not been interfering in religious or Shariat matters. Some people are spreading this misconception for their narrow political gains. They are trying to divert the attention from the government's agenda of development for all, including minorities," he said.

Noting that there is nothing wrong with the ongoing debate, the Union MoS for Minority Affairs said, "There should be a positive discussion on triple talaq and Uniform Civil Code. Debate and discussion are the important part of any democracy. National consensus should be achieved through national debate."

Addressing a "Progress Panchayat" at Jagatpur Patti village near Jaspur in Uttarakhand's Udham Singh Nagar district, he claimed many political parties are accusing the Narendra Modi government of interfering in religious and Shariat matters as part of a "negative propaganda" against the Centre.

"Development agenda alone can defeat people and parties with such negative agendas," the Union Minister said and claimed that "masters of corruption" are unable to digest a "corruption-free, development-oriented governance" provided by the Prime Minister.

Modi had succeeded in providing clean, honest and transparent governance which has resulted in the socio-economic empowerment of the poor, weaker sections and the minorities at the ground level, Naqvi claimed.

He said 'Progress Panchayat' has nothing to do with votes, but it is a "draft of development".

The Union minister said the objective of 'Progress Panchayat', launched on September 29 from Mewat in Haryana, is to ensure that the benefits of Centre's schemes reach the targeted beneficiaries and get a feedback on the hurdles in implementation of the schemes at the ground level.

Observing that preparing policies and schemes on paper is not enough, Naqvi said, "We have to make sure that these schemes, aimed at the welfare of the needy, are producing results on the ground."

"The ministry should go to people, listen to their problems and resolve those. Then only we will be able to provide the fruits of development to the last person of the society," he said.

Naqvi also said the minority affairs ministry has been working on different strategies for the welfare of Muslim community.

These include protection and development of waqf properties, free those from the clutches of 'waqf mafias' and establishing a one-man Board of Adjudication at Central-level to deal with complaints regarding waqf properties, he said.
New Delhi: Mocking the Opposition, Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu on Saturday said, it has become a fashion to blame Prime Minister Narendra Modi for every issue in the country.

In an apparent reference to Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's criticism of PM Modi, over the issue of One Rank One Pension and alleged suicide of ex-serviceman Ram Kishan Grewal, the senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader said, Modi ji's name is dragged in issues for publicity.

Further criticising the Opposition, Naidu said, earlier Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was blamed for everything and now the Prime Minister is being targeted.

Earlier, if there was no rain or somebody didn't have a child, RSS was blamed, Naidu quipped.

Rahul and Kejriwal have been severely criticising PM Modi over OROP and alleged suicide of Grewal.

The Congress vice president accused the Prime Minister of lying on the issue of OROP.

The Congress leader had said, "What Prime Minister is calling OROP, it is actually only pension enhancement and not OROP, so Modi ji please stop lying and implement OROP."

The BJP hit back saying both Rahul and Kejriwal were in "competition" to abuse PM Modi and to tarnish his image.

"There is a competition between the two leaders (Rahul and Kejriwal) on who can act better and who can abuse the Prime Minister more?," BJP secretary Shrikant Sharma told reporters here.

The suicide by an Army veteran over OROP has snowballed into a huge political show with Rahul Gandhi, Kejriwal and other opposition leaders attacking the Modi government on the issue.
Dhaka: In fresh attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh, unidentified miscreants set ablaze some of their houses and damaged two temples in central Brahmanbarhia district where several places of worship of the minority community were vandalised earlier this week, police said.

Miscreants set fire at least six Hindu houses in a predawn attack yesterday in central Brahmanbarhia district's Nasirnagar, the place where at least fifteen temples and more than 20 houses were vandalised after a Facebook post deemed offensive to Islam sparked outrage in the country.

"They (miscreants) fled the scene immediately after torching the houses and two small temples were also damaged," a police officer told PTI.

Many Hindu families have deserted their houses after the attacks on temples and have taken refuge in other areas.

Tensions have escalated in the neighbourhood after the fresh assault yesterday.

Police in overnight drives detained 33 persons for their alleged involvement in the synchronised attacks on Hindus in Brahmanbaria on October 30.

With this, police has detained a total of 44 people in connection with the attack, Mizanur Rahman, superintendent of Brahmanbaria police, told The Daily Star.

Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters yesterday rallied in the capital demanding stern action against perpetrators of attacks on Hindus.

Several hundred Hindu youths joined by Muslims staged a street protest at central Dhaka's Shahbagh Square.

Several political and rights groups also held another rally in front of the National Press Club demanding immediate and stern actions against the culprits.

The protesters at Shahbagh area enforced a blockade on the busy streets around the area for more than half an hour and forced ruling Awami League's joint general secretary Mahbul Alam Hanif to get out of his car, stuck in barricade, and express solidarity with them.

The protesters also demanded resignation of a minister who had earlier accused journalists of "exaggerating" the Nasirnagar attacks.

"(Livestock) Minister Sayedul Haque was in the area just few days after the (Sunday) attacks while a fresh attack took place after he visited the scene," general secretary of Bangladesh Puja Celebrations Committee said.

The protests yesterday prompted newly elected Awami League general secretary and Road Transport Minister Obaidul Quader to reiterate the government's tougher stance against the culprits promising to bring them to justice quickly.

"Stern punitive actions await the attackers as (Prime Minister) Sheikh Hasina-led government has taken a tough position to this end," he said at a function of ethnic minority community in Dhaka.

He urged the Hindus not to consider themselves as a minority group and said "the government is with you".
Thane: A notorious criminal has been arrested from Navi Mumbai and stolen jewellery worth around Rs 13.8 lakh seized from him after cops cracked 21 cases of house-breaking in the region.

According to Joint Commissioner of Navi Mumbai police Madhukar Pandey, the arrested accused Jashpalsingh Gopalsingh Koranga, 31, is a resident of Nevali, near Hajimalang Hills.

The Crime Branch officials had a tip-off that the accused was to visit the Janta Market at Turbhe and laid a trap on Thursday and nabbed him late in the evening, police said.

The probe team which interrogated him recovered 460 gms of gold ornaments which he had allegedly mortgaged. The booty was valued at around Rs 13.8 lakh, the official said.

Police have booked him under sections 454 (lurking house trespass or house-breaking), 457 (lurking house-trespass or housebreaking by night in order to commit an offence punishable with imprisonment) and 380 (theft in dwelling house) of the IPC.

Two of Singh's associates are on the run and police have launched a manhunt to nab them, Pandey said.

The official said that around 21 cases have been registered against Singh of which five are in Koparkharine, one in Turbhe MIDC, three in Rabale, two each in Rabale MIDC, APMC, Vashi, Nerul, Kharghar and Sanpada areas.

He said that offences of attempted dacoity and theft of vehicles have been registered against him with the APMC police station.

Apart from these, cases of housebreaking thefts with Naupada police at Thane city and also attempt to murder in Pound Police station of Pune Rural have been registered against Koranga.
Poonch: Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch disrict have started a signature campaign in favour of Muslim personal law.

Scores of males and females have appealed to the government not to change the law on triple talaq.
New Delhi: In an embarrassment for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), party MP Shatrughan Sinha, condemned the police action on opposition leaders and the family of ex-serviceman Ram Kishan Grewal.

The BJP MP disapproved of the alleged police action against the family of the Army jawan.

The detention of various Opposition leaders including actor-turned politician also Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal didn't augur well with Sinha.

Commenting on the protests and detention of various political leaders, following Grewal's alleged extreme step, the BJP MP tweeted, I wish the Delhi situation after the death/suicide of an army veteran was handled in a more matured, proper, practical and fair manner.

Instead of sympathy, the martyr's family got beaten up, that too in Police Station (where else?). And leaders with huge followings, who... matter in society, were detained with brute force & taken into custody. Why don't we understand that opposition leaders are not enemies, Sinha tweeted.

He called for urgent solution to the OROP issue in the interest of the armed forces.

The suicide by the ex-armyman over OROP has snowballed into a huge political show with opposition leaders viciously attacking the Narendra Modi government on the issue.

Rahul, Kejriwal and other opposition leaders are attacking the Modi government over the suicide of former soldier Ram Kishan Grewal, who allegedly took the drastic step demanding OROP's implementation.

A former Rajputana Rifles subedar, the 70-year-old allegedly consumed poison at a Delhi park on Tuesday evening demanding the immediate implementation of the scheme.

BJP has accused Rahul and Kejriwal of playing politics over the ex-armyman's alleged suicide.

I wish the Delhi situation after the death/suicide of an army veteran was handled in a more matured, proper, practical and fair manner.  Shatrughan Sinha (@ShatruganSinha) November 4, 2016

Instead of sympathy, the martyr's family got beaten up, that too in Police Station (where else?). And leaders with huge followings, who...  Shatrughan Sinha (@ShatruganSinha) November 4, 2016

..matter in society, were detained with brute force & taken into custody. Why don't we understand that opposition leaders are not enemies..  Shatrughan Sinha (@ShatruganSinha) November 4, 2016

What are we trying to prove..that Power is Permanent?? Good sense must prevail, cutting across party lines & leaderships...sooner the better  Shatrughan Sinha (@ShatruganSinha) November 4, 2016
New Delhi: Has Indian Army avenged the brutal killing and mutilation of its jawan Mandeep Singh?

According to a media report, India retaliated with fire assault after Mandeep Singh's mutilation and killed at least 40 Pakistani soldiers in a strike conducted on October 29.

Pakistan suffered major losses in the Oct 29 strike as maximum damage was done in Keran sector because four posts of Pakistani army were badly hit by Indian Army's firing, according to a report in CNN-News18.

After surgical strikes by Indian Army in Pakistan's territory, 18 infiltrations have been foiled so far.

Mandeep Singh's brutal killing

On Oct 28, terrorists, aided by cover fire by Pakistani Army, crossed the Line of Control and killed sepoy Mandeep Singh, a soldier with the 17 Sikh Regiment, and mutilated his body.

The barbaric incident happened in Macchil sector of Kupwara district in Jammu and Kashmir.

The jawan's family members had demanded that Pakistan be taught a lesson for harbouring terrorists. His brother Sandeep Singh had demanded that the family wanted 10 Pakistani heads for the price of one.
Kathua (J&K): Union minister Jitendra Singh on Saturday claimed that reports of students hitting the streets in the Valley demanding reopening of educational institutions is an "uprising of children versus the uprising of separatists".

"The children are coming out with their parents protesting in the open for reopening of schools... This is virtually a children's uprising versus a separatists uprising," he told reporters here.

The current unrest in the Valley has exposed the "duplicity" of the Kashmir-centric politicians who do not want schools to open, the Minister of State in the PMO said.

"If you see into the positive side of this, this (unrest) has provided an opportunity to the people of Kashmir to see through the designs and the duplicity of these so called Kashmir-centric politicians," he said.

The state government and the Centre were keen in opening of the educational institutions so that the students' career does not get affected.

"As far as the success in restoring education and reopening the schools, the Centre and the state are working in close coordination and they would achieve this and as far as the restoration of the confidence of the children is concerned, one notable aspect is that their parents themselves are keen that schools should be reopened so that the children's career does not get disrupted," Singh said.

Lashing out at Kashmir-centric politicians, he said while they wanted the children of the poor to resort to stone pelting, their own kids were getting quality education within and outside the country.

"These politicians exposed themselves by instigating the children of the poor to take to the stone pelting while they themselves have lodged their children in the safe havens within the country and abroad," he said.

Singh said while most of the Kashmir-centric politicians have their children studying in the best institutions in the country and abroad the children of the poor for whom the schools are meant are being gutted down.

The Union Minister further said that the proposal to build concrete bunkers for all border households is under active consideration of the government.

Asserting that the "misadventure" along the borders will not affect the pace of development works, he said proposal of bunker to every family living close to border will soon be realised.

1140 modern toilet facilities are being built along the border, he added.
Srinagar: At least 12 people were injured on Saturday in fresh clashes between protestors and security forces, following death of a 16-year-old boy due to alleged poisoning in Eidgah area of the city.

Qaiser Sofi from Eidgah area of the city died at a hospital here this morning.

After his burial, some youth indulged in stone pelting on security forces, prompting use of force by the law enforcing agencies, a police official said.

He said 12 people were injured out of which six have sustained pellet injuries.

Sofi was reported missing on October 25 and found in an unconscious state in Shalimar area of the city six days later and hospitalised, the official said.

However, local residents of the area alleged that the teen was force fed some poisonous substance by security forces.

Normal life elsewhere in the valley remained affected for the 120th consecutive day due to the separatist-sponsored strike.

While most of the shops, business establishments and fuel stations across Kashmir were shut, some were open in few areas in Civil Lines and outskirts of the summer capital Srinagar, the official said.

He said most of the public transport continued to remain off the roads but auto-rickshaws and cabs were seen plying at some places in the Valley, including in few areas of the city here.

The separatists, who are spearheading the ongoing agitation in Kashmir, have been issuing weekly protest calendars since Hizbul militant Burhan Wani's killing in an encounter with security forces on July 8.



The separatists have extended the strike till November 10.

While there were no curbs on the movement of people anywhere in Kashmir, restrictions on the assembly of people under Section 144 CrPC were in place throughout the Valley, the official said.

He said security forces have been deployed in strength at vulnerable spots and along the main roads as a precautionary measure to maintain law and order as well as to instill a sense of security among the people to carry out their day-to-day activities without fear.

As many as 85 people, including two cops, have been killed and several thousand others injured in the ongoing unrest in the Valley.

Around 5000 security forces personnel have also been injured in the clashes.
Srinagar: Security forces on Saturday clashed with a group of protesting mourners carrying the body of a teenager who died in a hospital here previous night days amid conflicting reports about the cause of his death.

Qaisar Ahmed, 16, was brought to the hospital on October 28 in an unconscious state. His family alleged he bore torture marks when he was found a day after he went missing from his home in Shalimar area on outskirts of Srinagar city.

However, police claimed that the boy had consumed poison. Ahmed died around 10 pm on Friday.

His body was taken in a procession on Saturday morning for a funeral at martyrs graveyard in Eidgah area of the old Srinagar city.

A police spokesman said some angry protesters from the procession threw stones at security forces, resulting into a clash. Police used tear smoke shells and pellets to disperse the angry protesters that caused injuries to over a dozen civilians and security men.

In another incident, three policemen, including a junior level officer, were injured on Friday night in an improvised explosive device (IED) explosion in Dadsara village of Pulwama district.

Police said militants fired some shots in the area to lure the security men out of the police station after which they exploded the IED.

A school was torched in Saidunara area of Bandipora district during the night taking to 29 the number of educational institution set ablaze by unknown miscreants during the past few weeks in the Kashmir Valley.
Jammu: One terrorist was killed and an Indian Army jawan was injured after an encounter broke out between security forces and ultras in a village in Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir on Saturday.

Sources said at least two militants were holed up in the area and the encounter was underway.

Local residents woke to the sound of gunfire as security forces personnel cordoned off the Dubjan area in the district, according to ANI.

Police assisted by security forces cordoned off Dobjan village, 60 kms from Srinagar, after getting information about presence of four militants there, a police official said. He said as the security forces moved to the target house, hiding militants resorted to firing in an attempt to break the cordon.

The security forces retaliated the fire. One militant was killed and a soldier injured, the official said. A fierce gunbattle was going on when the last reports were received, he said.

Today's incident comes hours after a police party was attacked by militants on Friday night when they were on their way to investigate gunshots heard in Dadsara village in Awantipora area of Pulwama.

The local residents woke to the sound of gunfire as security forces personnel cordoned off the Dubjan area in the district.
Kozhikode: After the arrest of a newborn's father, Kerala Police took a Muslim religious preacher into custody early on Saturday for advising against breast milk for a child until the fifth azan call.

The arrest took place after a mother, despite repeated persuasions by the doctor and paramedical staff, refused to breast feed her second child following the delivery on Wednesday at 1.30 pm due to religious reasons.

Abubacker, the father of the newborn was also taken into custody on Friday and after questioning him, the police called in Hydrose Thangal on Saturday morning and took him into custody.

Speaking to IANS, a police officer said both of them will be produced in court later in the day.

The police has registered a case against the parents under the Juvenile Justice Act for denying the infant his right.
Shivpuri: A primary school teacher in Shivpuri district of Madhya Pradesh committed suicide after being subjected to humiliation in police custody.

Apart from being thrashed and stripped, Manoj Purohit was also allegedly made to lick shoes of the policemen.

According to officials, Purohit, an assistant teacher with the Sajapur Primary School, was arrested by the police on charges of gambling. Purohit, who also runs private bus service, reportedly had an argument with the police earlier too.

Purohit, 30, consumed poison on October 30 and died at the Jhansi Hospital on Thursday. In his suicide note, he blamed five policemen and a self-acclaimed journalist for his suicide.Police have registered case against the six accused.

The Madhya Pradesh Human Rights Commission has issued notices to the Inspector General of Police (Gwalior Range) and the Superintendent of Police of Shivpuri, seeking reports on the incident by November 29.
Buldhana (Maharashtra): Eleven persons arrested in connection with alleged rape of a minor girl at an ashram school in Maharashtra's Buldhana district have been remanded in police custody for a week by a local court.

While the case was registered against 13 persons yesterday, two are absconding. Those arrested include staff members of the school who allegedly did not report the incident to the police.

Ashram shalas are government-run or government-aided residential schools, mainly for tribal children.

Eleven persons, including the main accused Ittusingh Pawar (23) who worked as a sweeper in the school, the headmaster, staff and members of the school management were arrested on Thursday night.

They were produced in the court late yesterday evening, which remanded them in police custody for a week.

Pawar has been charged under section 376 (rape) of the Indian Penal Code while others were booked under various other relevant sections.

The incident came to light after former Maharashtra minister Eknath Khadse was approached by the family of the victim who hails from his Assembly constituency Muktainagar.

According to police, the girl, a std IV student at Nanji Kokare Adivasi Ashramshala at Lokanda Pala in Khamgaon taluka of Buldhana district, told her parents about the rape when she went home for Diwali vacations.

Police are looking for Bharat Vishwasrao Lahudkar, headmaster of primary section, and the clerk Vijay Kokare.

Those who were remanded in police custody include president of the institute which runs the school, Gajanan Kokare, secretary Sanjay Kokare, joint Secretary Purushottam Kokare and the main accused Pawar.
Mumbai: The Maharashtra Police have arrested four more people in connection with alleged rape of two minor girls at a government-aided tribal residential school in Buldhana district.

15 people have been arrested so far in the shameful case.

The Police yesterday arrested the main accused who is a 23-year-old school employee, the headmaster, staff and members of the school management, last night.

District Guardian Minister Pandurang Phundkar, who is camping in his constituency (Khamgaon) to monitor the progress of the investigations, said that so far two girls have came forward with complaints of alleged abuse.

Reports say that many more girls could have been sexually exploited by the school authorities.

A Special Investigating Team (SIT) has been formed to probe the case as police suspect that more children could have been sexually exploited.

Acting swiftly, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has taken cognizance of the reported incident of rape and asked the District Magistrate to investigate and submit a detailed report within a week.

Maharashtra has more than 1,000 residential schools called ashram shalas which are run either directly by the state government or by trusts supported by the state government through grant in aid. Around 4.45 lakh students are studying these schools, out of which 1.99 lakh are girls.
Mumbai: A local court on Saturday convicted Bollywood actor Aditya Pancholi and sentenced him to one-year imprisonment for assaulting his neighbour.

"The local magistrate's court at suburban Andheri has convicted Pancholi for assaulting and criminal intimidation", a senior police official said.

The Magistrate Amitabh Panchbhai after convicting Pancholi released him on the bail of Rs 12,000.

According to police, Pancholi hit his neighbour Pratik Pasrani and reportedly fractured his nose at their building in 2005.

The police had said that Pancholi's guest had parked his vehicle at the space earmarked for Pasrani at 'Magnum Opus' Apartments in suburban Versova.

Pasrani objected to it and asked the security staff to clear the vehicle following which an altercation broke between the duo and the actor assaulted Pasrani, they had said.

The police initially registered a non-cognizable case but the medical examination revealed that Pasrani's nose was broken, so the police registered a case of grievous hurt and criminal intimidation.
Lucknow: Festering antagonism in Samajwadi Party's first family was on public display again today as the warring party satraps Akhilesh Yadav and Shivpal shot barbs at each other at an event called to celebrate SP's silver jubilee, barely two days after putting up a united show.

Uttar Pradesh's ruling party has been witnessing a fierce fight between Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal, state SP chief, despite repeated attempts by party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav to broker peace.

With top leaders of socialist-leaning parties present at the event, a move seen as an attempt by Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav to forge an alliance ahead of the assembly polls hardly a few months away, the two exchanged cutting remarks that exposed the deep divisions within.

Also Read: Samajwadi Party silver jubilee event: No peace in Yadav clan; Shivpal takes dig at Akhilesh, shoves CM's aide on stage

Shivpal fired the first salvo when he, in not so subtle manner, hinted at Akhilesh having got the chief minister's chair as he was Mulayam's son.

"Some people get things because of fate, some through hard work and some as part of inheritance. But some keep doing hard work through their lives and don't get anything," he said.

Asserting that he had done good work and cooperated with Akhilesh in the last four years, an emotional Shivpal said," I want to tell popular CM Akhilesh that whatever sacrifice you want from me, I will make. I never want to become Chief Minister. You can insult me, sack me as many time (as minister) as you want, but I am prepared to give even my blood for the party."

With swords out at the event literally, Akhilesh hit back when his turn came.

Pointing towards Gayatri Prasad Prajapati, a minister in his government who he had sacked over graft allegations but later reinducted on Mulayam's insistence, Akhilesh said," Prajapati has presented me the sword. You give me sword and don't want me to use it." The Chief Minister was apparently hinting at opposition from Shivpal's camp over sacking of ministers facing corruption charges.

He had also sacked Shivpal Yadav from the ministry in a tit-for-tat action after Mulayam expelled cousin Ram Gopal Yadav. Ram Gopal, a Rajya Sabha MP, has been backing the Chief Minister in his fight against his uncle.

Apparently rejecting criticism over his lack of political and administrative experience, Akhilesh said,"If you want to put me to test I am ready for that. Our target is to defeat BJP and BSP in 2017 elections. This UP election will decide future of the country".

With the party he founded facing tough times ahead of the crucial assembly polls a few months from now, Mulayam, who had brought son Akhilesh and brother Shivpal together for the flagging off the Chief Minister's 'Vikas Se Vijay Ki Ore' rath yatra on Thursday, chose to keep silent on the internecine strife.
Saharanpur: Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday launched its poll campaign for Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections 2017, with party president Amit Shah hitting out at the Yadav family and Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati.

Addressing the BJP supporters here, Shah launched a scathing attack on Samajwadi Party family saying, what the ruling party cannot follow the development path as uncle (Shivpal Yadav) and nephew (Akhilesh Yadav) are busy fighting with each other.

Taking pot shots at BSP and SP, the BJP president said, while uncle and nephew are busy abusing each other, 'bua ji' (Mayawati) is also busy hurling abuses at the duo.

"SP and BSP cannot improve law and order of Uttar Pradesh. Only BJP can provide a UP free from hooliganism," Shah asserted.

He urged the electorate to vote for BJP so that development can be carried out at fast pace in Uttar Pradesh.

Vote for BJP as it is the only party which can put UP at the top slot in overall development, Shah exhorted.

While advocating for abolition of triple talaq practice, Shah said Muslim women should get their rights.

"Hue and cry was raised over BJP govt's stand on triple talaq, vote bank politics should not be done on women's rights," Shah opined.

Accusing Congress leader Rahul Gandhi of playing politics over OROP and ex-Armyman Ram Kishan's alleged suicide, the BJP president said, Rahul is talking about OROP, but it is the BJP government which implemented the policy whereas Congress dragged it for decades.

A soldier commits suicide and they are doing politics for vote bank, this is disgusting, the BJP president said.

With an eye on the 2017 Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Shah launched Parivartan Yatra' from Saharanpur today.

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, Kalraj Mishra, Keshav Prasad Maurya, Sanjeev Balyan and Sangeet Som were present at the event.

The BJP will launch four 'Parivartan Yatras' from Saharanpur, Lalitpur, Sonebhadra and Ballia.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to address multiple public rallies during the 'Parivartan Yatras'.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address six regional meetings during the 192-day-long exercise ending in December 24, while Union Ministers Rajnath Singh and Kalraj Mishra, two leading saffron faces from the state, will be the key speaker at 10 meetings each.

The BJP president will address 10 other rallies. The party has planned 30 rallies of its national leaders. Uma Bharti will attend six of them.

BJP has 71 Lok Sabha MPs from the state which has 80 seats.

BJP allies Ram Vilas Paswan and Ramdas Athawale, two Dalit faces of the NDA, and Uprendra Kushwaha will also be joining the yatras.
Hawijah: A bomb blast on Friday killed 12 civilians, among them women and children, who had fled the jihadist-held Hawijah area in northern Iraq, officials said.

The deaths highlight the extreme danger faced by civilians trying to flee areas held by the Islamic State group, who may be targeted by the jihadists as they seek to escape and then have to navigate bombs the militants have planted.

Hawijah is a town in Iraq`s Kirkuk province that was seized by IS along with swathes of other territory in the summer of 2014.

Police Colonel Fatah Hassan said the displaced Iraqis had left the Hawijah area on foot but were picked up by police who were transporting them to the west when the bomb ripped through the vehicle.

Hassan, a police lieutenant colonel and Iraqi lawmaker Mohammed Tamim all confirmed that 12 displaced Iraqis were killed.

Hassan said one of the policemen trying to help them was also killed, while both police and displaced civilians were wounded.

An image obtained from police of the aftermath of the blast showed a pile of ashes along with one badly burned body in the back of the twisted remains of a white pickup truck.

The charred remains of a woman and at least one other victim lie on the dirt road behind the truck.

The lieutenant colonel said that the truck had apparently run over a bomb, an account that was initially confirmed by Hassan as well.

But Hassan later said that the blast appeared to have originated inside the vehicle, and may have been caused by explosives potentially placed by IS inside bags the women were carrying.

Lamia Haji Bashar, one of two Yazidi activists who won the European Parliament`s prestigious Sakharov human rights prize, previously lost an eye and suffered burns to her face when one of her friends stepped on a bomb while they were fleeing Hawijah.

Bashar and Nadia Murad, the other activist, were both enslaved and raped by IS which has carried out a campaign of massacres and kidnappings targeting members of the Yazidi minority.

Farther west, Iraqi forces are fighting to retake the IS-held city of Mosul, where a million-plus civilians still live.

Fighting has been limited to the city`s outskirts for now, but aid workers fear that the battle may result in mass displacement of civilians as it progresses.

Those fleeing Mosul will also be exposed to bombs planted by IS, as well as the extreme danger of being caught up in the fighting between security forces and jihadists.
Mogadishu: A car bomb exploded near parliament in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Saturday, a security official told Reuters.

It was unclear whether there were any casualties, but the official said it was likely a suicide attack.

"A car bomb exploded near the area of the parliament house," Col. Abdiqadir Hussein, a police officer, told Reuters.

"We suspect it is a suicide car bomb."
Kabul: At least 11 civilians have been killed and 12 others injured in an explosion in Afghanistan`s northern Faryab province.

The Khaama Press quoted officials, as saying that the incident occurred when a vehicle in which the civilians were traveling hit an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) planted by militants on a roadside.

The governor`s spokesman Jawid Didar was quoted as saying that several women and children were among those wounded.

No group has claimed responsibility for the incident so far.

Taliban group is, however, being blamed for the incident.
Lahore: Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief and Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed has criticised the Nawaz Sharif government for giving a "cool" response to India over alleged atrocities in Kashmir, saying people in the Valley need Pakistan's "full practical support".

"The Pakistani government's response to India over atrocities in Kashmir is cool and by doing so it is not pleading the case of oppressed Kashmiris," Saeed said, delivering Friday sermon at JuD headquarters Masjid-e-Qadsia.

He said there is no value of one or two statements in favour of Kashmiris by the Prime Minister and other members of his government rather they need "full practical support".
Fayetteville (US): Donald Trump has criticised President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for dragging the US into wars overseas and said the rival presidential candidate's foreign policy would mean "generations of terrorism" into American schools, but his plan would put "America first".

"(Obama and Clinton) have dragged us into foreign wars that have made us less safe and they've left our borders wide open at home," he said at an election rally in New Hampshire.

"Isn't it interesting how we fight for other people's borders, lose the lives, the money - most important are the lives, the great lives. We lose lives, the money, and yet we want to have open borders, right? Explain that," he said.

"We fight for borders for other countries - half the people never heard of these other countries. They want borders and then we leave our borders open. And they've shipped our jobs and they've shipped our wealth to other countries. To all Americans, I say it is time for a new leadership," Trump said.

The criticism came as Trump and Clinton blitzed the battleground states yesterday, with days to go for the election that will decide the next US president.

Clinton's long-held lead in New Hampshire has collapsed in recent days and nationwide the gap between them has remarkably narrowed to the margin of error in some opinion polls after the FBI revived questions about the Democratic nominee's use of a private email server as secretary of state.

The FBI announcement of investigating new Clinton emails was immediately latched on to by the Republican candidate, and that helped him soar his ratings a week short of Election Day.

Both the candidates have launched aggressive campaigns in the final stretch and both are concentrating more on getting their supporters to vote rather than swaying those undecided.

In New Hampshire, Trump said the failed policies of Obama and Clinton resulted in the emergence of Islamic State group.

"Our new foreign policy will put America first. You haven't heard that for a long time. Hillary brought death and disaster to Iraq, Syria, Libya, she empowered Iran and, she unleashed ISIS. Now she wants to start a shooting war in Syria in conflict - and this in conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia that could seriously lead to World War III. I think she's an unstable person to start off with, I really do," he said.

HeAlleging that Clinton wants a 550 percent increase in Syrian refugees to flow to the US, he said: "that's over and above the thousands and thousands being let in right now by Obama."

"Her plan would mean generations of terrorism, extremism, and radicalism spreading into your schools and throughout your communities. When I'm elected president, we will suspend the Syrian refugee programme," he said
Lyon: A French court has handed a three-month suspended jail sentence to a teenager who named his domestic wifi network after the Islamic State group, his lawyer said today.

"There was no sympathy for terrorism! There was only the word 'Daesh21'," explained lawyer Karima Manhouli, saying he would appeal his client's criminal conviction.

Daesh is a widely-used Arabic acronym for IS.

"It was a stupid act by a young man of 18 who can't explain why he did it," he said.

The case came to court in the eastern town of Dijon after a neighbour saw the name pop up on a list of available wifi networks in July and called the police.

"There was an investigation and searches but nothing was found. There is nothing to suggest (my client) shares this ideology. On the contrary, he strenuously denies it," Manhouli said.

The court handed the youth a suspended jail sentence after he turned down an offer of 100 hours of community service.

The lawyer said there had been a spate of similar criminal charges since January 2015 when authorities were instructed to quickly prosecute suspected cases of sympathy for terrorism.

On November 13, France will mark the first anniversary of coordinated jihadist attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead.
Mosul: Iraqi special forces cleared buildings on Saturday in neighbourhoods they entered in eastern Mosul a day earlier, after pushing out Islamic State militants in their drive to take back the city.

Fighting continued in the morning, with both sides firing mortars and automatic weapons on each other's positions, while the Iraqi troops also responded with artillery. Clashes were most intense in the al-Bakr neighborhood. Sniper duels played out from rooftops in the mostly residential areas, where the majority of buildings are two stories high.

"Daesh is in the city center and we must be very careful as our forces advance," said Maj Gen. Sami al-Aridi of the Iraqi special forces, using the Arabic acronym for the IS group. With more densely packed neighborhoods ahead, his forces will be challenged to avoid both higher military and civilian casualties.

As he spoke, dozens of civilians in the Tahrir and Zahara districts emerged from their homes, some of them carrying white flags, and headed toward the troops to be evacuated from the battlefield.

The special forces launched a two-pronged assault deeper into Mosul's urban center on Friday, unleashing the most intense street battles against IS militants since the offensive to retake the city began nearly three weeks ago.

At least seven special forces troops have been killed in the fighting.

More than 3,000 Iraqi troops took part in the assault under heavy US-led coalition air support, but the pace of the fight also slowed as Iraqi forces moved from fighting in more rural areas with few civilians to the tight, narrow streets of Mosul proper.

At least seven suicide attackers in explosives-laden vehicles attacked troops on Friday, five of whom were killed before nearing their targets.

The operation to retake Mosul is expected to take weeks if not months. Moving from neighbourhood to neighbourhood in house-to-house battles through warrens of booby-trapped buildings is time consuming and Iraq's military has repeatedly opted for slower operations in an effort to minimise casualties.

Some 1 million civilians still remain in the city, complicating the advance. IS militants have driven thousands of residents deeper into the city's built-up areas to be used as human shields, while hundreds of others have fled toward government-controlled territory and thousands have headed west into Syria.

Mosul is the last major IS stronghold in Iraq, and expelling the militant group from the city would be a major blow to the survival of its self-styled "caliphate" that stretches into Syria.
CAIRO: Islamic State claimed responsibility for a car bomb in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir on Friday that killed eight people and wounded more than 100, the group`s Amaq news agency said.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said earlier on Friday that Kurdish militants were responsible for the attack, and that one suspected member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was also killed in the blast.
Kuwait City: Kuwaiti opposition groups are aiming for a comeback in parliament after a four-year election boycott, seeking to reverse what they see as the deteriorating political situation in the Gulf state.

More than 30 prominent Islamist and liberal opposition figures and former lawmakers have registered to run in the November 26 polls in the hope of forming a formidable political force.

Kuwait`s 50-seat parliament is considered the most powerful of its kind in the Gulf Arab states thanks to its legislative and monitoring capacities.

But most of the political clout in the oil-rich country still lies with the emir, and a senior member of the Al-Sabah ruling family will be mandated to form a government regardless of the poll outcome.

The opposition groups boycotted two general elections in 2012 and 2013 in protest at a change in the voting system brought unilaterally by the government.

The opposition alliance said at the time that the change, later endorsed by Kuwait`s constitutional court, would allow the government to control parliament and promote autocratic rule.

"The opposition has discovered that the boycott was not the right choice. In fact, they found that they have only isolated themselves," political analyst Nasser al-Abdali said.

"I think the boycott has considerably weakened the opposition as a whole," Abdali, the head of Kuwait Society for the Promotion of Democracy, told AFP.

Kuwait`s Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah last month dissolved parliament over a dispute over a hike in petrol prices and called for snap polls.

The opposition held massive street protests in 2011 and 2012 demanding democratic reforms and an elected government in the emirate, which has a population of 4.3 million, of which 70 percent are foreigners.

But over the past two years, the strength of the opposition, which last controlled parliament in February 2012, weakened considerably.

The change in the voting system and the opposition boycott together helped elect a pro-government assembly that critics often described as a "rubber stamp" parliament.

By boycotting the polls, the opposition sent an important message against the government`s "unconstitutional practices" that undermined true democracy, Islamist candidate Mohammad al-Dallal said."After four years (of opposition boycotts), the political situation has deteriorated, corruption became rife and both the government and parliament failed to deal with major economic and security issues," Dallal, a former opposition MP, told AFP.

"That is why the participation of the opposition became necessary to enforce reforms, confront corruption and strengthen democracy," he said.

Former liberal opposition MP Abdulrahman al-Anjari admitted the boycott failed to achieve its goals.

"The boycott failed to abolish the government change in the voting system," Anjari, who is running for office, said at a symposium this week.

"Parliament should not be left without opposition," he said.

But several opposition figures, including former three-time parliament speaker Ahmad al-Saadun, have decided to continue with the boycott saying participation will not solve any problem.

The opposition is rejoining polls while one of its prominent leaders and former MP Mussallam al-Barrak is serving a two-year jail term for criticising the ruler in public.

Kuwait has the Gulf`s oldest elected parliament, but under the constitution the emir has extensive powers and can dissolve the legislature at the recommendation of the government.

Ruling family members occupy the key portfolios of defence, foreign and interior.

While parliament has the power to vote the prime minister and cabinet members out of office, the set-up means change is not easy.

Political analyst Mohammad al-Ajmi believes the opposition will have a limited presence in the next parliament, and "will not be a big or effective force."

"I think the next house will be dominated by pro-government lawmakers," the sociology professor told AFP.

Abdali said he thinks that the opposition could have 10 MPs in the next parliament but many of them will be new faces.

The elections come as Kuwait, which sits on around seven percent of the world`s proven crude reserves, grapples with a sharp fall in oil prices that pushed it into a budget deficit after 16 years of surpluses.
New York: Booker prize winning Indian-born author Salman Rushdie described Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as a "sexual predator" and asked Americans to "focus" as they choose their next president.

"Trump will go on trial in November accused of racketeering, and again in December accused of child rape. He is a sexual predator, hasn't released his tax returns, and has used his foundation's money to pay his legal fees," Rushdie said, according to an online post in literary website 'Lithub'.

The website has put together views of 22 renowned writers about Trump as election day approaches after a long campaign cycle, saying "in times like these, it's worth considering the words and insights of those among us who've dedicated their lives to giving voice to thought?but if nothing else, you can at least count on a good writer to come up with an eloquent insult or two."

Rushdie asks America to focus on choosing its next president, saying the spotlight should be on how Trump behaves and not on some emails that Clinton didn't send.

Trump "has abused the family of a war hero and...Oh, but let's talk about some emails Hillary didn't send from someone else's computer, that weren't a crime anyway, because that?s how to choose a president. Come on, America. Focus," he said.

Acclaimed British novelist J K Rowling said Trump has the temperament of an "unstable nightclub bouncer", he "jeers" at violence when it breaks out at his rallies and wears his disdain for women and minorities with pride.

Rowling said Trump has offered "unworkable" solutions to complex problems like terrorism and immigration.

"He achieved this pre-eminence by proposing crude, unworkable solutions to complex threats. Terrorism? 'Ban all Muslims!' Immigration? 'Build a wall!' God help America. God help us all," she said.

Expressing concern that Trump's "stubby fingers" are currently within "horrifyingly close reach" of America's nuclear codes, Rowling said the slogan 'Make America Great Again!' comes from a man who is "fascist in all but name".
ANKARA: Turkey`s military hit 71 Islamic State targets in Syria over the last 24 hours, the army said on Saturday, intensifying strikes against the militant group, which has claimed responsibility for the latest bomb attack in southeast Turkey.

Five Islamic State fighters were killed in the strikes, as were five Turkey-backed rebels and one Turkish soldier, the army said in its statement.

It said coalition forces conducted five air strikes, killing another eight Islamic State militants.

Turkey is backing a group of Syrian Arabs and Turkmen in northern Syria in its Euphrates Shield operation, which has swept Islamic State from its southern border.

The Sunni hardline group has claimed responsibility for a car bomb in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir on Friday that killed nine people and wounded more than 100.
British Justice Minister Liz Truss, seen in October 2016, issued a brief statement belatedly offering support for the independence of the judiciary, "upon which our rule of law is built"

British Justice Minister Liz Truss offered her belated support for the independence of the judiciary Saturday after the High Court faced a string of political attacks over its controversial ruling on Brexit.

Truss had been criticised for staying silent over the backlash against Thursday's landmark judgment that the government cannot start the process of leaving the European Union without parliament's approval.

One newspaper denounced the three judges as "enemies of the people" while members of Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative party accused them of "judicial activism" and of seeking to undermine the June referendum vote for Brexit.

"The independence of the judiciary is the foundation upon which our rule of law is built and our judiciary is rightly respected the world over for its independence and impartiality," Truss said in a brief statement.

"In relation to the case heard in the High Court, the government has made it clear it will appeal to the Supreme Court. Legal process must be followed."

Just a few hours earlier, the Bar Council, which represents barristers in England and Wales, had issued a statement of regret at the minister's silence over "serious and unjustified attacks on the judiciary".

As justice minister and Lord Chancellor, Truss took an oath to defend the independence of the judiciary.

"A strong independent judiciary is essential to a functioning democracy and to upholding the rule of law," the council said in a statement.

The High Court ruled that the government did not have the power to trigger Article 50 of the EU's Lisbon Treaty, which sets off a two-year countdown to leaving the bloc, without prior approval of parliament.

The ruling prompted outrage among supporters of Brexit, sparking fears that it could delay the process that May had promised to start by the end of March.

Before the ruling, the prime minister had condemned those who brought the legal challenge, saying they were trying to "subvert" democracy.

Story continues

- Early election? -

The court decision has fuelled speculation that May might call an early election to strengthen her support in the House of Commons before the EU vote.

Her slim majority was reduced further on Friday when pro-Brexit MP Stephen Phillips resigned, accusing the government of becoming too right-wing.

The next election is not due until 2020, but The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that ministers were now discussing the option of bringing the date forward.

Thursday's ruling caused the pound to soar, amid speculation that parliament's involvement may result in a softer break between Britain and the EU.

The majority of MPs wanted to stay in the bloc, and they may now demand guarantees on staying in Europe's single market before allowing Article 50 to be triggered.

Brexit-supporting newspapers reacted with fury Friday to the court's decision, with The Daily Mail's "Enemies of the People" headline echoed by The Daily Telegraph's headline proclaiming "The judges versus the people".

Communities minister Sajid Javid said the case was an "attempt to frustrate the will of the British people", while former government minister Iain Duncan Smith accused the court of "judicial activism".

Bob Neill, the chairman of parliament's scrutiny committee on justice affairs, urged May to intervene, saying personal attacks on judges "have no place in a civilised land".

Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's Brexit negotiator, said the criticism of the judges "would make Poland's Kaczynski or Hungary's President Orban proud".

On Friday, May called EU leaders to reassure them of her confidence of overturning the High Court ruling, and her commitment to triggering Article 50 by the end of March.
By Fumbuka Ng'wanakilala DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Tanzania plans to further tighten controls on its mining sector to ensure that the country maximises the benefits from its wealth of natural resources, President John Magufuli said on Friday. Africa's fourth-largest gold producer also has vast deposits of natural gas, coal, diamonds, uranium and gemstones. "Tanzania has a lot of minerals, but there have been a lot of funny deals ... we have to look carefully at our laws so that we move forward as a country," Magufuli told a news conference at State House in the country's commercial capital, Dar es Salaam. Magufuli said his government recently approved new mining regulations aimed at ensuring that the benefits of the mining sector are shared more equitably between multinational mining companies and the state. Since coming to power in 2015, Magufuli has promised to root out tax evasion, corruption and mismanagement. "Some of the gold mines even have airstrips - how do you monitor what those planes are carrying from the gold mines? ... our country should not continue to be robbed." Gold exports alone earned Tanzania $1.27 billion in 2015, down from $1.32 billion the previous year, largely due to a fall in global commodity prices and output. Major gold mining companies in Tanzania include Acacia Mining Plc (previously known as African Barrick Gold), which has three gold-producing mines, and AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. Magufuli said some mining companies export mineral sand for smelting abroad and said the country must build its own gold smelters to stop such exports. Tanzania passed a mining law in 2010 that increased the royalty paid on minerals like gold from 3 percent to 4 percent and required the government to own a stake in future mining projects. The Mining Act also requires mining firms to list on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (DSE) and in September the government approved regulations to enforce that law. All mining firms operating in Tanzania now must list on the stock exchange not later than two years after the approval of the new regulations. The new rules also require a holder of a special mining licence to have a minimum of 30 percent local ownership of all paid up shares. (Editing by Elias Biryabarema and Elaine Hardcastle)
STEAM

International School Nord Anglia Collaborates with MIT to Produce STEAM Curricula

Nord Anglia, a network of 43 international K12 schools, is collaborating with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) curricula.

The curricula, already underway this fall, guides students toward adopting multidisciplinary approaches to learning and problem solving with real-world applications, according to a news release.

For instance, this autumn children in 13 schools are being challenged in three phases to solve a real problem in their local communities:

They must identify and describe an environmental problem in their city and the impact on the overall health of the city, including air, food, water, energy, transportation and waste;

They will then use the skills they learned through the guidance of MIT experts and STEAM teachers to question and delve deeper through research, analysis and the collection of data;

The final stage will focus on addressing the problem and creating a solution, which the students will present at MIT.

Each Nord Anglia school offering the new STEAM curricula will have a state-of-the-art maker space in which students can develop practical solutions to the challenges identified.

The curricula will eventually be introduced to more than 35,000 students in Nord Anglias 43 schools around the world. Nord Anglia Education has campuses in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and nine in North America, including schools in Boston, Chicago, Houston, New York and Washington, D.C.

The collaboration also entails professional development at MIT for STEAM discipline teachers at Nord Anglia schools. Teachers will have an opportunity to attend annual workshops at MIT, which will expose them to the latest thinking, research and tools in STEAM. Nord Anglia teachers will also learn new ways to support student creativity, invention, reflection, risk taking and perseverance through STEAM-related challenges.

Finally, the collaboration between Nord Anglia and MIT will provide teachers and students with an annual opportunity to visit MIT and participate in a range of STEAM-related activities, including robotics, coding and bioengineering.

As educators, we have an enormous responsibility to ensure that todays students are well prepared for tomorrows workplace, said Andrew Fitzmaurice, CEO of Nord Anglia Education, in a statement. Traditional schooling teaches subjects individually, and fails to encourage students to tackle challenges in a holistic way. Nord Anglia enhanced STEAM curriculum will encourage students to think across subjects, collaborating and honing their creativity to help tackle real-world challenges.

This new venture comes one year after Nord Anglia launched a performing arts collaboration with the Julliard School.

Nord Anglia Education is headquartered in Hong Kong. For more information, visit the organizations website.
REDONDO BEACH, CA--(Marketwired - Nov 5, 2016) - TDM Financial, a leading financial publisher and network, recently posted an article examining opportunities in the European Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market.

The Software-as-a-Service ("SaaS") industry is expected to generate more than $160 billion in annual revenue by 2020, according to Transparency Market Research. While the United States accounts for the majority of the market, European markets have been quickly closing the gap in a number of niches. France's Mailjet, Greece's Workable, and Germany's ChartMogul have all raised millions in venture capital while several U.S. firms have setup satellite offices.

Many large SaaS companies have expanded into Europe, but the best opportunities may lie in niche subsets of the market. For example, Accelerize Inc.'s (OTCBB: ACLZ) CAKE platform targets performance-based marketing rather than CRM or accounting applications that have much more competition. The company has been steadily expanding its global presence with customers across more than 40 countries around the world.

To read the article click on the link or copy and paste the URL into your browser: http://www.tdmfinancial.com/why-is-the-european-saas-market-ripe-for-growth/

About TDM Financial

TDM Financial is a leading financial publisher with a network of properties targeting vertical industries and market niches. With distribution across leading financial platforms, these properties attract hundreds of thousands of investors each month with compelling content authored by expert financial writers and analysts.

For more information, visit www.tdmfinancial.com.

Legal Disclaimer

Except for the historical information presented herein, matters discussed in this release contain forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. TDM Financial is not registered with any financial or securities regulatory authority, and does not provide nor claims to provide investment advice or recommendations to readers of this release. TDM Financial may from time to time have a position in the securities mentioned herein and may increase or decrease such positions without notice. For making specific investment decisions, readers should seek their own advice. TDM Financial may be compensated for its services in the form of cash-based compensation or equity securities in the companies it writes about, or a combination of the two. For full disclosure please visit: http://secfilings.com/Disclaimer.aspx.
For the past several months, a small team at Mozilla has been working on an experimental new Web API and an accompanying browser feature called FlyWeb.

What does it do?

In short, FlyWeb provides an API for web pages to host local web servers for exposing content and services to nearby browsers. It also adds the ability to discover and connect to nearby local web servers to the web browser itself. This feature allows users to find and connect to nearby devices with embedded web servers such as printers, thermostats and televisions as well as local web servers hosted in web pages via the FlyWeb API.

Enabling web pages to host local servers and providing the ability for the web browser to discover nearby servers opens up a whole new range of use cases for web apps. With FlyWeb, we can finally reach a level of richness in cross-device interactions previously only attainable via native apps. In addition, the built-in service discovery feature in the browser offers device makers and hobbyists a new way to leverage existing web technologies for users to interact with devices across all platforms.

Publishing a server from a web page

Here is an example that uses the FlyWeb API to create a server from a web page that responds with a simple Hello FlyWeb HTML document.

navigator .publishServer('Hello FlyWeb') .then(function(server) { server.onfetch = function(event) { var html = ` <h1>Hello FlyWeb!</h1> <h3>You requested: ${ event.request.url }</h3> `; var options = { headers: { 'Content-Type': 'text/html' } }; event.respondWith(new Response(html, options)); }; }) .catch(function(error) { console.log('publishServer() failed :-(', error); });

The call to publishServer() returns a promise and opens a security prompt to the user asking for permission to create and advertise a local server. If accepted and the server publishes successfully, its promise resolves to a FlyWebPublishedServer object that contains an onfetch() callback that will be invoked any time a resource is requested from the HTTP server. The onfetch() callback expects a FlyWebFetchEvent argument which references a standard Request object that holds all the details of the HTTP request. If the user denies permission to create the server, the promise will be rejected.

When the server gets published, an mDNS announcement is broadcast on the local network with the name specified in the call to publishServer() . The announcement is sent over the local network via UDP multicast on port 5353 and the mDNS packet is comprised of a PTR, SRV and A record as shown in the diagram below. The PTR record names the _flyweb._tcp service type and references an SRV record with the name of the service being advertised. The SRV record then references an A record by its target hostname and specifies the TCP port that the service is listening on. Lastly, the A record specifies the IPv4 address where the service can be reached. Optionally, a TXT record may be included to specify any additional metadata about the service such as the base URL where the services UI can be accessed. A TXT record may likely be used in future implementations for storing a key for handling encrypted connections.

Anatomy of an example mDNS response packet containing a FlyWeb service advertisement

Connecting to a FlyWeb service

As explained earlier, FlyWeb is comprised of not only a new API for publishing web servers, but also a user-facing feature in the browser for discovering and connecting to them. In the current implementation in Firefox Desktop, this feature can be found in a toolbar menu that reveals a list of nearby FlyWeb services for the user to choose from. In Firefox for Android, the FlyWeb menu item navigates the user to an about:flyweb page for displaying the same list of services in a mobile-friendly format.

Since FlyWeb is still an experimental API and feature, it is currently only available in Nightly and Developer Edition (Aurora) builds and it is required that the dom.flyweb.enabled pref be turned on under about:config. Note that Nightly builds may occasionally be broken or unstable, so Developer Edition (Aurora) builds are recommended.

When populating the list of FlyWeb services, the browser broadcasts an mDNS query packet via UDP multicast on port 5353. All nearby clients advertising FlyWeb services will respond to this query packet with the same mDNS response packet they previously sent when they were first announced. The mDNS query packet for FlyWeb services will always be the same as seen in the diagram below. It simply contains a single PTR record that specifies the _flyweb._tcp.local service type.

An mDNS packet for querying FlyWeb services

When selecting a FlyWeb service to connect to, the browser generates a random UUID hostname for composing http:// URLs and a new browser tab is opened with a UUID-based URL that refers to the selected service. The primary reason for randomly generating a hostname like this is to prevent accidental or malicious sharing of origin-specific data such as cookies between two different FlyWeb services. Since FlyWeb enables users to connect to services on local networks, it could be possible to connect to two separate servers on two separate local networks that both share the same local private IP address (e.g. 192.168.1.2). By assigning a new random origin upon connection to a FlyWeb service, we can avoid data leakages between different servers that both operate under the same IP address when traveling between networks. In some existing mDNS implementations, _http._tcp services can be resolved via the .local pseudo-TLD using a hostname provided by the mDNS advertisement. However, this approach is still susceptible to the same potential data leakages if a server either accidentally or maliciously adopts a duplicate hostname of another previously-connected server.

So, in the example above, nearby clients would see a Hello FlyWeb service listed when opening the FlyWeb toolbar menu in their browsers. When the user selects it, a new tab is opened with a URL like http://f65e7350-883d-2e4c-8ad5-c275ceff96b2/ that renders a simple HTML response.

Serving other resources from a page

Its likely that youll want to serve up additional content from your FlyWeb server beside plain, simple HTML. No problem! Since the FlyWeb API relies on the same Request and Response objects found in Service Workers, your server can send any type of response body supported by the standard Response object from ordinary strings to Blob data. By using the Fetch API, we can load in remote resources for a FlyWeb server to respond with.

navigator .publishServer('Hello with a Logo') .then(function(server) { server.onfetch = function(event) { if (event.request.url === '/logo.jpg') { fetch('/assets/logo.jpg') .then(response => response.blob()) .then(blob => event.respondWith(new Response(blob, { headers: { 'Content-Type': 'image/jpeg' } })); }); } else { var html = ` <h1>Hello FlyWeb!</h1> <img src="/logo.jpg" /> `; var options = { headers: { 'Content-Type': 'text/html' } }; event.respondWith(new Response(html, options)); } }; });

When an initial page is loaded for a FlyWeb service, all additional resources on that page can derive their URLs from the pages UUID-based URL. Therefore, in the above example, the root HTTP request will respond with an HTML document that contains an <img> element which will fetch logo.jpg from the root of the same origin as the initial HTML document. Inside our onfetch() callback, we check for requests for that particular resource and then fetch the image remotely before responding with it. This type of HTTP request handling should seem familiar to anyone who has built server-side applications with the standard Node.js http module.

Advertising services from devices

Since FlyWeb is based on existing protocols like HTTP and mDNS, it is incredibly easy to build standalone services and devices that advertise themselves using it. By leveraging FlyWebs service discovery feature built-in to the browser UI, we can give device makers and tinkerers the ability to provide rich user interfaces for devices using familiar web technologies without relying on native platform-specific apps.

With the advent of IoT, hardware hacking has gained momentum in recent years with hobbyists everywhere. From the many iterations of the Raspberry Pi to the ultra low-cost ESP8266, there are no shortage of options to choose from when selecting a hardware platform. Fortunately, most of these hardware platforms already have existing implementations of HTTP servers and mDNS responders. Lets take a brief look at what it would take to get a FlyWeb service up and running on some of these platforms.

Node.js on a Raspberry Pi

Since the Raspberry Pi is capable of running a Linux-based operating system, there are a wide variety of tools available for hosting an HTTP server along with an mDNS responder including Node.js, Python and Ruby. In this particular example, were going to use Node.js to advertise our simple Hello FlyWeb service. Also, keep in mind that this example is not written to work exclusively on the Raspberry Pi. Nearly any platform that is capable of hosting a Node.js environment, including a laptop computer, should be able to run it.

To update Raspbian with the latest version of Node.js from the NodeSource PPA, run the following commands:

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get remove nodejs curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_6.x | sudo -E bash - sudo apt-get install nodejs

In our example, we are going to use the mdns NPM package so that we can advertise mDNS services through Avahi in Node.js. Before you can install the mdns package from NPM, you will need to have the libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev package installed. To install these packages, simply run:

sudo apt-get install libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev sudo npm install -g mdns

Note that the libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev package provides Avahi headers for Apple Bonjour compatibility. This is required since the mdns package utilizes the Apple Bonjour API directly. Because of that, this Node.js example can also run on macOS/OS X systems by simply installing the mdns package from NPM. This example will also run on Windows systems provided that Apple Bonjour is installed. See the mdns README for more information.

var http = require('http'); var mdns = require('mdns'); var server = http.createServer(function(request, response) { var html = ` <h1>Hello FlyWeb from Node.js!</h1> <h3>You requested: ${ request.url }</h3> `; var options = { headers: { 'Content-Type': 'text/html' } }; response.writeHead(200, options); response.end(html); }); server.listen(3030, function() { var advertisement = mdns.createAdvertisement( mdns.tcp('flyweb'), 3030, { name: 'Hello FlyWeb' } ); advertisement.start(); });

As you can see, this is just a very simple Node.js web server using the standard http module. The only additional bit of magic required to make this service discoverable by the FlyWeb UI in the browser is the mDNS advertisement. Using the mdns module, we wait until the HTTP server is listening, then we create an mDNS advertisement with a _flyweb._tcp service type. We also specify the port that the HTTP server is listening on as well as the name we want to display to the user when they discover it in the browser. In this case, we are listening on port 3030, but this value is arbitrary and it can be any port you like.

Embedded HTTP server for ESP8266

The ESP8266 Wi-Fi chip has become one of the more popular pieces of hardware among IoT enthusiasts and for good reasons. For under $5 USD, it includes a full TCP/IP stack, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi with WEP and WPA/WPA2 support, a 32-bit RISC CPU, 1MB built-in flash memory and 16 GPIO pins. It is possible to build fully-functional IoT devices with the ESP8266 without any additional CPUs or microcontrollers. Programming a device like this in C++ is much closer to the hardware and therefore, the same example requires a bit of additional boilerplate code.

#include <ESP8266WiFi.h> #include <ESP8266WebServer.h> #include <ESP8266mDNS.h> ESP8266WebServer server(80); void handleRequest() { String html = "<h1>Hello FlyWeb from ESP8266!</h1>"; server.send(200, "text/html", html); } void setup() { String accessPointName = "FlyWeb AP"; WiFi.mode(WIFI_AP); WiFi.softAP(accessPointName.c_str()); server.on("/", handleRequest); server.begin(); MDNS.begin("Hello FlyWeb"); MDNS.addService("flyweb", "tcp", 80); } void loop() { server.handleClient(); }

One important distinction between this ESP8266 example compared to the others is that this example will create an open Wi-Fi access point automatically instead of joining an existing network. Even though this device can easily be programmed to join an existing network, by starting off in access point mode we can explore a particularly interesting use case.

Typically, IoT devices built around the ESP8266 are headless which means they do not have access to any display or output device. This poses a difficult problem since the device needs to be connected to an existing Wi-Fi network to be useful. One possible workaround is to start a new open Wi-Fi access point like the above example, but instead of serving up the devices normal web interface, we can render a list of nearby Wi-Fi networks and allow the user to configure the device to join their existing wireless network. The device could also advertise this ESP8266 Config service via FlyWeb which would enable the user to simply connect to the open Wi-Fi network, select the ESP8266 Config service from the FlyWeb toolbar menu in their browser and configure the device. Once configured, the device could automatically join the existing Wi-Fi network and the user can easily discover and connect to it via FlyWeb in their web browser without any additional steps.

Potential use cases

Once youve grasped the concept of what FlyWeb is, it doesnt take too long before you begin imagining some of the interesting use cases it enables. Whether you are a front-end web developer looking to push the limits of what is possible in the browser or an IoT hardware hacker in search of an easy way to provide user interfaces for your devices, FlyWeb opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

Offline peer-to-peer multiplayer gaming

Touch-screen controlled quadcopter drones

Cross-platform local network file sharing

Discoverable smart home devices (e.g. thermostats, TVs)

Where do we go from here?

As mentioned earlier, an initial version 0 implementation has landed in Firefox Nightly and Firefox Developer Edition (Aurora) with the dom.flyweb.enabled preference disabled by default. Our implementation is currently undergoing a security review to ensure that it is not introducing any new exploitable vulnerabilities before including it in the other release channels.

A team has also been exploring commercial opportunities for FlyWeb revolving around consumer hardware products. From a technical perspective, we would also like to explore the potential to utilize Bluetooth as a transport layer. We believe that Bluetooth could expand the scope for use cases weve already identified and may also enable additional use cases that arent possible with the current implementation.

Lastly, wed like to begin having discussions with other browser vendors. We strongly believe that FlyWeb fits in as a natural extension of the web platform and could pave the way for a whole new generation of web apps that werent previously possible. Because of this, we would love to see widespread adoption from other browsers to help propel FlyWeb forward as a new web standard.

Additional information
Camber significantly broadens HIIs existing capabilities and customer base



Acquisition and reorganization consistent with Path to 2020 strategy to optimize and expand services portfolio

Strong financial profile expected to make Camber accretive to earnings and cash flow in the first full year

Transaction to be funded utilizing existing balance sheet cash; no change to shareholder free cash flow distribution objectives

Camber will become a foundational component of new HII Technical Solutions segment

NEWPORT NEWS, Va., Nov. 02, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Huntington Ingalls Industries (NYSE:HII) announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Camber Corporation, a government services company headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama. The planned acquisition has been approved by the HII Board of Directors and is expected to close in late 2016, subject to certain regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.

Camber is a $364 million revenue generating, pure-play provider of sophisticated mission-based and information technology solutions. Major customers are the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army; Federal and civilian customers to include the Administrative Office of the United States Courts and the U.S. Postal Service; and the intelligence community. With its strong position and capabilities in growth areas, including agile software and network engineering, modeling simulation and training, unmanned systems, systems engineering, and data analytics, Camber significantly broadens HIIs existing service offerings and customer base.

This acquisition is consistent with our Path to 2020 strategy to optimize and expand our services portfolio while continuing to invest in our shipbuilding business and returning substantially all free cash flow to shareholders, said Mike Petters, HIIs president and CEO. Camber has an impressive and complementary array of people, capabilities and relationships that make it a great fit for us, and we are excited to welcome Cambers 1,700 employees to the HII family.

HII will acquire Camber for $380 million, which includes approximately $25 million of tax benefits, subject to customary closing adjustments. The purchase price reflects a buyers multiple (net of estimated tax benefits) of 8.6 times Cambers adjusted EBITDA for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2016 (which excludes certain non-recurring expenses). The transaction is expected to be accretive to earnings per share and cash flow in the first full year and will be funded with cash on the balance sheet.

Upon closing of the Camber acquisition, HII will reorganize its services businesses to establish a new reportable segment consisting of Camber and the following HII subsidiaries: AMSEC, Continental Maritime of San Diego, Newport News Industrial, SN3, Undersea Solutions Group and UniversalPegasus International. The new segment, to be named HII Technical Solutions, will enhance strategic and operational alignment among the services businesses, expand opportunities for growth and improve performance transparency. Including Camber, the Technical Solutions segment is expected to generate approximately $1 billion of combined revenue in FY17, with operating margin in the low single digits, expanding to an expected 5%-7% range by 2020. HII Technical Solutions will be led by Andy Green, who will serve as executive vice president of HII and president of the Technical Solutions segment, reporting directly to Mike Petters. Green currently serves as corporate vice president of corporate development, with responsibility for all business development activities related to marine technical services and shipbuilding.

The acquisition of Camber and the establishment of our Technical Solutions segment under Andys leadership builds upon our strong heritage as a valued and trusted partner to our customers, Petters said. Moreover, the combination of Camber and our existing services businesses provides an excellent platform for future growth and value creation for our shareholders.

A fact sheet with additional information about the Camber acquisition and the newly formed Technical Solutions segment can be found on the Investor Relations page of the HII website at www.huntingtoningalls.com.

About Camber:

Camber was founded in 1990 and within five years was named to Inc.s list of fastest-growing companies in the United States, specializing in aviation sensors and simulations; chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosives (CBRNE) research and development; training and logistical support; information technology support; and training. Camber has continued to add highly specialized capabilities to its portfolio of services, including agile software engineering and IT; all hazards; modeling, simulation and training; unmanned systems, intelligence analysis and operations; and engineering and management. Camber is headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama, and has a major workforce concentration in the Washington, D.C., area and other locations in the U.S. and around the world, including Europe, the Middle East and Asia. For more information, visit: www.camber.com.

About HII:

Huntington Ingalls Industries is Americas largest military shipbuilding company and a provider of engineering, manufacturing and management services to the nuclear energy, oil and gas markets. For more than a century, HIIs Newport News and Ingalls shipbuilding divisions in Virginia and Mississippi have built more ships in more ship classes than any other U.S. naval shipbuilder. Headquartered in Newport News, Virginia, HII employs nearly 35,000 people operating both domestically and internationally. For more information, visit:

HII on the web: www.huntingtoningalls.com

HII on Facebook: www.facebook.com/HuntingtonIngallsIndustries

HII on Twitter: twitter.com/hiindustries

Forward-Looking Statements

Statements in this release, other than statements of historical fact, constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in these statements. Factors that may cause such differences include: changes in government and customer priorities and requirements (including government budgetary constraints and changes in customer short-range and long-range plans); our ability to win new contracts and perform our contracts effectively; changes in procurement processes and government regulations and our ability to comply with such requirements; our ability to compete within our markets; our ability to effectively integrate Camber into our existing business operations and achieve projected operating results; our ability to achieve the results we expect from the formation of the new Technical Solutions segment; and other risk factors discussed in our filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. There may be other risks and uncertainties that we are unable to predict at this time or that we currently do not expect to have a material adverse effect on our business, and we undertake no obligations to update any forward-looking statements. You should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements that we may make.
English Lithuanian

Vilnius, Lithuania, 2016-11-04 15:47 CET (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On the initiative of the INVALDA INVL, AB, which is a shareholder of the AB INVL Baltic Real Estate (legal entity code 152105644, address of the registered office: Gyneju str. 14, Vilnius, Republic of Lithuania, hereinafter, the Company), alternative draft decisions on issues of the agenda of an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders to be held on 10 November 2016 at 9:30 a.m. were received.

The alternative draft decisions of the 10 November 2016 extraordinary general meeting of shareholders of the Company on issues No. 1, No. 3 and No. 4 of the agenda of the extraordinary general meeting of shareholders are provided below:

Draft resolutions of the Companys extraordinary general meeting of shareholders:

1. Approval of the new wording of the Articles of Association of special closed-end type real estate investment company INVL Baltic Real Estate.

To approve new wording of the Articles of Association of special closed-end type real estate investment company INVL Baltic Real Estate, by replacing the text of the Articles of Association in full (enclosed as an annex to this notification).

To authorize Egidijus Damulis or Andrius Dauksas (both with a right to reauthorize other persons) to sign the Articles of Association of special closed-end type real estate investment company INVL Baltic Real Estate.

3. Selection of the depository of the special closed-ended type real estate investment company INVL Baltic Real Estate.

To select AB SEB bankas, as a depository of the special closed-ended type real estate investment company INVL Baltic Real Estate.

4. Approval of the Depository Services Agreement of special closed-ended type real estate investment company INVL Baltic Real Estate.

To approve the Depository Services Agreement of special closed-ended type real estate investment company INVL Baltic Real Estate (enclosed as an annex to this notification).

The Company provided the information, which according to legal acts must be provided when notifying of the convocation of a meeting, on 20 October 2016 by publishing a notification on material event. An updated ballot paper is enclosed with this notification.
MILLWOOD, Md., Nov. 4, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Project HOPE announced an airlift of medicines and supplies to Haiti today as health needs persist one month after Hurricane Matthew blasted through the Caribbean nation.

Project HOPE, a global health development organization, has been working closely with Haiti's Ministry of Health and other NGOs in response to the disaster. The medicines and medical supplies will be delivered to the Cholera Treatment Center located at GHESKIO, a Haitian health care and research facility in Port-au-Prince and to the Albert Schweitzer Hospital, a 100-bed hospital in Deschapelles, in the Artibonite Valley, where previous cholera outbreaks have occurred.

"We're collaborating with the government and local partners to support Haiti's health system, which has been seriously compromised by the disaster," said Scott Crawford, Senior Director of Humanitarian Operations at Project HOPE. "We are delivering a range of much-needed medicines and supplies including antibiotics, water hydration tablets, gloves, saline solution, sponges, gauze, water purification units, and generators."

Haiti's health facilities were severely damaged or destroyed by the hurricane and there are about 3,500 suspected cholera cases. The government will begin a cholera immunization campaign next week as cholera spreads quickly once the bacteria enters the water supply. Additional medicine and medical supply donations valued at over $8 million dollars are also being processed for health facilities in coordination with the Ministry of Health.

Project HOPE has also been deploying medical volunteers to the southern region of Nippes. The HOPE medical team is providing direct patient care at the St. Therese Hospital in Miragoane and is also involved in the assessment of needs and health capacity building.

Medical volunteer deployments will continue in the coming weeks as health needs evolve. The death toll from the Category 4 storm stands at 546, according to the government and the UN says 1.4 million Haitians need help, out of 2.1 million affected by the hurricane. HOPE is coordinating its operations based on the recommendations of the Ministry of Health which is closely monitoring all regions affected by the storm.

Since the 2010 earthquake, Project HOPE has sent medical volunteers to train and assist local health care professionals in areas affected by cholera. The NGO provided health care to more than 1,000 Haitians in the aftermath of the disaster and distributed more than $60 million of donated medicines and supplies.



About Project HOPE

Founded in 1958, Project HOPE (Health Opportunities for People Everywhere) is dedicated to providing lasting solution to health problems with the mission of helping people to help themselves. Identifiable to many by the SS HOPE, the world's first peacetime hospital ship, Project HOPE now provides medical training and health education, and conducts humanitarian assistance programs in more than 30 countries. Visit our website projecthope.org and follow us on Twitter @projecthopeorg.

Photos accompanying this release are available at:

http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=41829

http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=41830
As of August 26th, 2021 Yahoo India will no longer be publishing content. Your Yahoo Account Mail and Search experiences will not be affected in any way and will operate as usual. We thank you for your support and readership. For more information on Yahoo India, please visit the FAQ
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YEREVAN.  The public will be more disappointed if the Government of Armenia were to announce that the salaries will be raised but this does not happen, rather than it were to announce that they will not be raised in the 2017 budget.

The Minister of Finance, Vardan Aramyan, told the aforementioned to reporters, after Mondays National Assembly hearings on the draft state budget for next year. He noted this while reflecting on the expected economic growth, which is at the basis of this budget.

Yes, I believe that a 3.2-percent economic growth is realistic, noted Aramyan. And we can achieve this [goal].

When asked whether the Armenian society will be disappointed given that salaries and pensions will not be raised next year, the minister responded that the public will be more disappointed if he were to lie.

You need to be honest, and ensure a stable economic climate for the community, added the minister. You need to sacrifice something to gain something.

I sacrificed the increase in pensions and salaries, which I could have done short-term, but I wouldnt have been fair and honest towards them.

Its not honest to jeopardize the long-term task [of ensuring economic growth] by resolving a [solely] one-year problem.
YEREVAN.  The opposition National Self-Determination Union (NSU) Party of Armenia has decided to run in the 2017 parliamentary election by way of forming a democratic union with other political forces, NSU Chairman Paruyr Hayrikyan said at a press conference on Saturday.

In his words, the forming of this democratic union will become the shortest way to change the situation in the country.

This union will receive 80 percent of the votes in the parliamentary elections, added Hayrikyan. We will put aside all differences, even the fundamental [ones].

Our objective is to achieve a majority in parliament with a single team, whereas we will discuss the differences later on, in parliament.

The NSU leader expressed a conviction that this is an effective option.

And when asked with which political forces the party would form such a union, Paruyr Hayrikyan responded: With all forces except for the [ruling] Republican Party [of Armenia], since the Republicans also will come here after a phase. However, in general, we dont rule out anyone.
YEREVAN.  Considering the disproportionate distribution of revenues in Armenia, a 3.2-percent economic growthwhich the 2017 State Budget draft specifieswill not lead to major results, economist Vilen Khachatryan said at a press conference on Saturday.

The economist described this also as a growth by inertia.

If we assess the 32-percent economic growth in numerical expression, this will amount to $350 million for the $10- to $10.5-billion GDP, stressed Khachatryan. What does this amount mean to an economy like [in] our country?

If we divide it equally among the 3 million people [in Armenia], it will be about $100 for each [person in the country]. And if we consider [the fact] that revenues are distributed disproportionately in our economy, we cant expect major results in case of such [economic] growth.
YEREVAN.  Prime Minister of Armenia Karen Karapetyan, who is in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR/Artsakh) on a working visit, on Saturday paid a visit to the NKR National Assembly (NA), where he had a tete-a-tete with NA President Ashot Ghulyan.

Armenian News-NEWS.am has learned from the Press Office of the Government of Armenia that, subsequently, Karapetyan and Ghulyan met with chairpersons of the committees and heads of the factions of Artsakh parliament.

The NKR NA speaker welcomed the format of the talk with the PM of Armenia and members of the government. In Ashot Ghulyans words, this meeting aims to discuss the next steps toward the strengthening and deepening of the already-high-level ties between Artsakh and Armenia.

Underscoring the talk with the NKR MPs, Karen Karapetyan, in turn, noted that this will enable to listen to their observations and views with respect to the avenues for the development of the economies and the raising of the security of Armenia and Artsakh.
YEREVAN.  Minister of Education and Science of Armenia Levon Mkrtchyan received Mikhail Shvydkoy, the Russian President's Special Representative for International Cultural Cooperation; and Oleg Shapovalov, Special Counselor to the Embassy of Russia in Yerevan.

Armenian News-NEWS.am has learned from the Ministry of Education and Science that the minister said, despite Armenias historical friendly relations with Russia in the educational and cultural sector, todays youth in Armenia have certain challenges with respect to Russian language proficiency and access to contemporary Russian professional literature.

Shvydkoy, for his part, expressed willingness to assist Armenia in developing methodical manuals for teaching Russian as a foreign language and training Russian language teachers, and in several other joint projects to be implemented in this domain.
The Armenian National Committee of Canada is deeply concerned regarding the recent detainment and arrest of Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, co-chairs of Turkey's pro-Kurdish HDP (Halklarn Demokratik Partisi) party.

As a part of our strong commitment to human rights, justice and democracy, we strongly condemn such acts by the Erdogan Regime, that overtly undermine the democratic institutions, values and the inalienable rights of the people, said Shahen Mirakian, President of the ANCC, in a letter addressed to the Honourable Stephane Dion, Canadas Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Strongly opposing the regimes divisive and manipulative politics, the HDP has been the only Turkish political party to publicly acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, calling upon the Turkish government to face its own history. Garo Paylan, an HDP parliamentarian of Armenian origin has been a strong voice within the party apparatus and on multiple occasions, he has publicly challenged the Erdogan regime for its unwarranted actions.

We call upon the Canadian government to immediately condemn the actions of the Turkish government and exert the necessary political pressure on their authorities to free the HDP parliamentarians that were arrested on trumped-up charges and baseless accusations, said Mirakian.
By PTI: Srinagar, Nov 5 (PTI) At least 12 people were injured today in fresh clashes between protestors and security forces, following death of a 16-year-old boy due to alleged poisoning in Eidgah area of the city.

Qaiser Sofi from Eidgah area of the city died at a hospital here this morning.

After his burial, some youth indulged in stone pelting on security forces, prompting use of force by the law enforcing agencies, a police official said.

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He said 12 people were injured out of which six have sustained pellet injuries.

Sofi was reported missing on October 25 and found in an unconscious state in Shalimar area of the city six days later and hospitalised, the official said.

However, local residents of the area alleged that the teen was force fed some poisonous substance by security forces.

Normal life elsewhere in the valley remained affected for the 120th consecutive day due to the separatist-sponsored strike.

While most of the shops, business establishments and fuel stations across Kashmir were shut, some were open in few areas in Civil Lines and outskirts of the summer capital Srinagar, the official said.

He said most of the public transport continued to remain off the roads but auto-rickshaws and cabs were seen plying at some places in the Valley, including in few areas of the city here.

The separatists, who are spearheading the ongoing agitation in Kashmir, have been issuing weekly protest calendars since Hizbul militant Burhan Wanis killing in an encounter with security forces on July 8.

The separatists have extended the strike till November 10.

While there were no curbs on the movement of people anywhere in Kashmir, restrictions on the assembly of people under Section 144 CrPC were in place throughout the Valley, the official said.

He said security forces have been deployed in strength at vulnerable spots and along the main roads as a precautionary measure to maintain law and order as well as to instill a sense of security among the people to carry out their day-to-day activities without fear.

As many as 85 people, including two cops, have been killed and several thousand others injured in the ongoing unrest in the Valley.

Around 5000 security forces personnel have also been injured in the clashes.PTI MIJ DV

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By PTI: Kolkata, Nov 5 (PTI) West Bengal state Congress president Adhir Chowdhury today mocked Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjees statement on the ban on NDTV India alleging that assault on journalists by goons of her party were a regular affair in West Bengal.

"We all have protested against the ban on NDTV. But the West Bengal government has started this practice long back such as stopping of government advertisements if newspapers and channels dont sing paeans of the government. Along with this goes assault on the journalists. So when our Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee protests against it, we feel surprised," Chowdhury said.

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The Chief Minister yesterday criticised the central government for putting a one day ban on Hindi news channel NDTV India and said it showed that an "emergency-like situation" prevailed in the country.

"NDTV ban is shocking. If Government had issues with Pathankot coverage, there are provisions available. But ban shows an Emergency-like attitude," Banerjee had said in a statement. PTI PNT NN BSA

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News

Microsoft Promising Smaller Windows 10 Updates with Unified Update Platform

Microsoft plans to reduce the size of future Windows 10 updates by a third with a coming "Unified Update Platform" technology.

This emerging technology potentially can reduce Windows 10 download sizes by "approximately 35% when going from one major update of Windows to another," Microsoft explained in its announcement this week. The amount of processing time on devices also is expected to decrease with the new technology.

Some Windows Insider Program mobile device testers using Windows 10 build 14959, released this week, could soon see the effects of the Unified Update Platform technology. It will have an extra benefit for them because it will let mobile users upgrade to the latest Windows 10 release all at once, instead of via incremental hops, Microsoft is promising.

PC users that are participants in the Windows Insider Program also will see smaller Windows 10 update releases from the Unified Update Platform technology, Microsoft suggested. However, that's coming sometime "later this year," the announcement indicated.

Microsoft eventually plans to implement the Unified Update Platform with other Windows 10-based products, such as Internet of Things devices and the Microsoft HoloLens augmented reality devices. The timing for a general, production-ready rollout wasn't indicated in Microsoft's announcement.

Microsoft releases its Windows 10 updates on a monthly basis. It also periodically delivers major operating system feature upgrades, which happen a few times per year. The monthly updates are "cumulative," meaning that they contain all past update releases. Consequently, the size of Windows 10 updates can get somewhat large, such as over 3GB, which can be problematic for mobile devices that may lack sufficient storage space.

The update size issue is partly addressed by "differential download package" technology, which just delivers the changed bits, instead of a full download, Microsoft's announcement explained. That approach apparently is part of the coming Unified Update Platform scheme.

The Unified Update Platform perhaps will be helpful to individual end users. On the IT management side, Microsoft has its Windows Update Delivery Optimization feature, which can be refined via Group Policy settings. It's a peer-to-peer client update scheme that got initiated with the Windows 10 version 1607 "anniversary update," released in August. The Delivery Optimization solution is designed to download the update bits from PCs and the update bits from Microsoft's datacenters as a way of reducing the potential bandwidth hit that organizations may face when Windows 10 updates arrive. The scheme reportedly taps unused portion of a network's upload capacity to perform the PC upgrades.

System Center Configuration Manager users have an alternative to Delivery Optimization called "Client Peer Cache." It rolled out with preview version 1604, but it will be available in a later System Center Configuration Manager release, according to this TechNet article. An early look at the Client Peer Cache preview, as described in this May blog post by management consultancy 1E, found that it had some rough aspects at that time.

BranchCache is Microsoft's other, more venerable system for managing bandwidth issues, especially with remote updates. BranchCache is designed for organizations with spread-out operations and is available via the Enterprise or Education editions of Windows 10, although some of its BITS capabilities are in the Pro edition. BITS, or Background Intelligent File Transfer Service, is Microsoft's technology for handling the timing of file transfers within a network.
Florencia was just 10 years old when her stepfather suffocated her with a plastic bag. Lucia was 16 when two men drugged her, raped her and fatally impaled her on a spike. Joseline was 22 when she was found strangled to death, her body covered in bruises. They are three of the latest victims in a wave of horrific violence against women and girls that is stoking outrage in Latin America. These three young women's countries -- Chile, Argentina and Mexico -- have, like much of the region, been swept by protests condemning domestic violence, machismo and what activists call a culture that values women less than men. The movement is gaining momentum. In Peru, President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski joined a protest in August that drew 50,000 people. Across the region, powerful labor unions and political parties are joining in. "There is a change, and it's very important," said Lakshmi Puri, the deputy executive director of UN Women. "This whole cry of zero tolerance is now catching on everywhere." Puri compared what is happening in Latin America to her native India, where shock over the brutal gang rape and torture of a 23-year-old student unleashed a historic protest movement in 2012. "It's that same outrage now that is being provoked by this gruesome and brutal violence that is perpetrated against women and girls" in Latin America, she told AFP. She condemned the region's "culture of machismo," saying it fueled the violence. Of the 25 countries that register the most women's murders worldwide, half are in Latin America, she said. - Social networks - "It's tremendously dangerous to be a woman in Latin America," said Ariadna Estevez, a researcher in human rights at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Mexicans have been protesting violence against women for at least 20 years, she said -- starting with the brutal murders of hundreds of women and girls in Ciudad Juarez, on the US border. But that movement was mainly confined to victims' friends and families. Lately, there has been a broader, region-wide "wake-up call," she said. In Argentina, the protests started last year with a movement called #NiUnaMenos (Not One Woman Less). Born on Twitter and Facebook, it has since spread to several other countries. In Mexico, it is called the Violet Spring (#PrimaveraVioleta). "Social networks played a fundamental role," said Estevez -- and not just to mobilize people. "It was also a form of catharsis," she said. "A lot of women had never talked about sexual harassment and the violence they had faced. You realize it's not just you, it's the majority of women." That is the case in Brazil, where the hashtag #MeuPrimeiroAssedio (My First Harassment) has gone viral. In Uruguay, where social worker Fanny Samuniski has been helping abused women for years, she says she has noticed a change. "Now they arrive asking, What are my rights?" she said. - New generation - In Uruguay, one of the first countries in deeply Catholic Latin America to legalize divorce and abortion, 19 women have been killed by their partners or exes so far this year, activists say. One case horrified the country in June, when a man set fire to his ex-girlfriend's house, badly burning her and killing her three daughters and a friend. "Women are reporting (domestic violence) much more, but they still put up with it for 10 years first," said Samuniski. Part of the problem, she said, is they often have no means to support themselves. She is pushing for Uruguay to pass a law imposing harsher sentences for "femicide," as 16 Latin American countries have done. Samuniski, who is nearly 80, said she has seen an awakening in the region. "The women of my generation were much more timid. They (the younger generations) are fighters," she said. Women today are "born and raised in another context," with more access to economic and educational resources, said Maria Nieves Rico, an Argentine who focuses on gender issues at the UN's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Change in the region will take time, but "we are hearing their voices, and that always helps. Silence does not," she said.
Credit: Holger Mette Creative #: 183888582 International food stall at Camden Market, London

Getty / Holger Mette

Britain's 4 billion curry industry, which largely backed Brexit, says that it feels "angry" and "betrayed" by politicians in the wake of the vote.

Businesses serving up some of the country's favourite dishes, including "national dish" Chicken Tikka Masala, are worried about the post-Brexit clampdown on immigration, as they are already struggling to hire chefs, according to the Financial Times.

Currently it costs nearly 30,000 for a UK restaurant owner to pay for a visa for a chef from the subcontinent  most come from India and Bangladesh  and many believed that leaving the European Union would spell an end to the expensive system, with a new "points-style" immigration system which would boost immigration from the sub-continent.

A points-based system would select migrants on the basis of their contribution to society, and would be determined by the government setting out annual quotas for different types of skills and work. Brexit campaign group Vote Leave sent out leaflets suggesting that such a system would boost immigration from Asian communities, arguing that it would end the free movement of migrants from Eastern Europe, and be less discriminate to countries outside the EU.

However, Prime Minister Theresa May has already ruled out a points-style system, as she believes it would increase immigration levels, and her Home Secretary Amber Rudd has since said that she intends to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands.

Pasha Khandaker, president of the Bangladesh Caterers Association, campaigned vocally for the Leave vote and told the Financial Times that he was "very disappointed" by the government ruling out a points-style immigration system.

He said: "I am very disappointed, when Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Priti Patel, prominent figures from the governing party, they were clearly saying that they would introduce a points-based system of immigration."

Story continues

"My organisation supported Brexit for several reasons but the main reason was to bring people from abroad to help our industry to survive," he said, adding that British workers were largely unwilling to work the night-time shifts required in a curry house.

His organisation is now worried about mass restaurant closures if May's new immigration policy makes it more difficult to hire chefs.

Chris Parsons, chair of the India practice at law firm Herbert Smith Freehills, said that it would be "politically ... rather difficult for Theresa May and the rest of the government to say were closing European immigration down but we want to encourage lots of Chinese and Indians to come in."

Barry Gardiner, Labour's shadow trade secretary, said that the idea that Brexit would boost immigration from India was a "pack of lies" told by Brexit campaigners. He said: "There is a real sense of anger in India about this, they remember what was said before the referendum and were surprised by ministers anti-immigration rhetoric at the Tory conference."

NOW WATCH: Here's how much $100 is worth in every state

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SEE ALSO: Brexit is going to make British families poorer in 2017
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Leading members of China's parliament said on Saturday two Hong Kong lawmakers-elect who called for the city's independence from China had damaged the territory's rule of law and posed a grave threat to China's sovereignty and security. The comments, carried on state TV, come ahead of what is expected to effectively be a ruling by Beijing on the fate of Yau Wai-ching, 25, and Baggio Leung, 30, who set off fierce debate when they pledged allegiance to the "Hong Kong nation" and displayed a "Hong Kong is not China" banner during a swearing-in ceremony for the city's legislative council in October. Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese control in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" formula that gave the territory wide-ranging autonomy, including judicial freedom guided by a mini-constitution called the Basic Law. China's parliament, the National People's Congress, has a right to weigh in on the Basic Law, and on Saturday senior members of the NPC discussed a draft interpretation of the Law's article that requires Legislative Council members and other officials to pledge loyalty to Hong Kong as a part of China when taking office. The Chinese lawmakers agreed that the legislators-elect from Hong Kong had "humiliated the nation and the people", according to China Central Television (CCTV). They "brazenly challenged the Basic Law, impeded the normal operations of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region political organs, damaged Hong Kong's rule of law, assaulted the baseline principles of 'one country, two systems', and created a serious threat to the nation's sovereignty and security", it said. "If this kind of situation continues it will harm the immediate interests of the people of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the interests of national development. The central government cannot sit by indifferently," they were quoted as saying. As such, an NPC interpretation was "very timely and extremely necessary". The oath-taking incident made waves in the former colony, where the topic of independence from China was once regarded as taboo but has come to the fore since months of pro-democracy protests in 2014 failed to secure any concessions from Beijing. The parliamentary meeting in Beijing ends on Monday, the state news agency Xinhua said. Earlier in the day, the Communist Party's top newspaper, the People's Daily, ran an editorial that said anyone "who splits the nation or promotes 'Hong Kong independence' is ... unqualified to stand for election or hold public office provided for in the Basic Law". The NPC Standing Committee has interpreted the Basic Law four times since 1997, including once when neither the city government nor its courts requested it. After the abortive swearing-in of Yau and Leung, Hong Kong's chief executive filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction to prevent another ceremony for them taking place. Hong Kong's High Court struck down that request but approved a judicial review of the pair's membership of the legislature. The Hong Kong Bar Association has said an intervention by Beijing now, as a local court was hearing the case, would deal a severe blow to the city's judicial independence and undermine international confidence in Hong Kong's autonomy. (Reporting by John Ruwitch; Additional reporting by Venus Wu in HONG KONG; Editing by Catherine Evans and Stephen Powell)
Within six months of its creation under then-President Richard Nixon, the Environmental Protection Agency issued the original National Ambient Air Quality Standards required by the landmark Clean Air Act to address six pollutants, one of them generally described as particulate matter.

As it turns out, 1971 was the same year that All in the Family debuted with its outspoken, narrow-minded patriarch, Archie Bunker. Indeed, the standards have been around for a long time.

Still in effect today, the Clean Air Acts National Ambient Air Quality Standards set the baseline for states, each of which can independently make its own air-quality rules, so long as they are equal to or more stringent than the federal regulations. The act requires the EPA to review the standards every five years to make sure they protect human health and the environment.

The 1971 standards measured airborne particulate matter in terms of total suspended particles by counting those particles smaller than 100 microns captured on a filter.

Using this method, official measurements include natural sources as wind-blown desert dust, unpaved roads and sea salt. Sea salt is not an issue in New Mexico, but the dust caused by unpaved roads and winds blowing across the deserts certainly is and by modern standards these large particles are practically boulders with little impact on respiratory health.

Through the 70s and well into the 80s, the EPA regulated and monitored particulate matter in terms of total suspended particles, but, like Archie Bunkers views on society, the measure for particulate matter became outdated. Both monitoring technology and the supporting risk science evolved.

The EPA concluded it should pay attention to small particles, since studies clearly demonstrated that particulate matter composed of particles smaller than or equal to 10 microns are capable of penetrating deeper into the lungs and present the greatest concern for asthma and other respiratory diseases.

Since reducing health risk was truly the goal, and since total suspended particle standards do little to reduce that risk, the EPA tossed them into the wind in exchange for a standard that considered respirable particle size, composition and relative respiratory risk.

The total suspended particle standard was replaced in 1987 by PM10 standards, which regulate only particles with an aerodynamic diameter of 10 microns or less.

Despite the fact the EPA and its air-quality standards evolved through the years, New Mexico is stuck in 1971. It is one of only three states that have not more narrowly focused their regulation of particulates to PM10 or less.

The EPA continues to support conclusions it reached in 1987 and 1997 studies about the respiratory risks of smaller particles that penetrate and deposit in the respiratory tract.

That means the New Mexico Environment Department still monitors and regulates particles the relative size of boulders, which does not benefit respiratory health. That means New Mexico continues to burden industry with costly regulations on the larger, low-hazard dusts merely due to outdated, state-level ambient air quality standards.

So, thanks to PM10, New Mexicans can breathe easier. But NMEDs continued enforcement of outdated standards leaves New Mexicos economy in the dust by imposing unnecessary and costly compliance on New Mexico businesses that does essentially nothing to reduce respiratory health risks.

New Mexicos antiquated TSP standards put New Mexico at a substantial disadvantage to surrounding states.

Its time to revise the state implementation plan to reflect current science and to assure attainment of the EPAs more modern National Ambient Air Quality Standards for particulate matter. The financial cost of aligning New Mexicos ambient air quality standards with the risk-reducing federal policy would be essentially zero, and at no expense to respiratory health benefits.

ACI believes modernizing how New Mexico monitors and regulates air quality is a no-cost, win-win for everyone, and will create a positive economic impact that will be nothing to sneeze at.
Earlier this month, Ben Stiller, the prolific writer, producer, director and actor, announced that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and is now cancer-free. What is unusual is that today many doctors are following the governments U.S. Preventative Service Task Forces 2012 recommendation not to test men with the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test.

Ben had been tested in 2012 anyway. The governments recommendation was strongly based on the PSA test results rushing men into treatment for cancers which were not aggressive and would not cause harm in the near term.

The treated men often had undesirable side effects like erectile dysfunction and incontinence, infections and sometimes even death. The task force also depended on studies that seemed to show no reduction of prostate cancer deaths after the PSA test had been approved.

Ben took issue with the governments recommendation, as he believes his doctor, by testing him, saved his life.

Before proceeding, I should say something about myself. I am a 14-year prostate cancer survivor.

In 1996, at age 56, my doctor gave me my first PSA test. When my PSA rapidly rose in 2002, further testing showed I had an aggressive prostate cancer. With the help from a local prostate cancer support group, who educated me on available treatments, I found the right doctor, the right treatment, and I am now cancer-free.

Cancer-free is a term needing to be used with caution, and the term only means that the doctors cannot find any evidence of the disease at this time. I will be looking over my shoulder the rest of my life to see if the disease may be reoccurring, and in spite of long time favorable results, I dont consider myself cured.

Because of the support group help I received, I am a strong believer in support groups. I have been very active in the Prostate Cancer Support Association of New Mexico, whose mission is to provide men and their families in New Mexico with the most current information about prostate cancer treatment and detection, and provide emotional support following diagnosis, during treatment and beyond.

The organization is where patients can share their experiences with the disease. It should not be surprising that members believe that the governments edict to not recommend PSA testing is very ill advised.

The association has seen men whose lives have been cut short by lack of timely testing and others who have had their quality of life enhanced by being cancer-free for some time.

I encourage anyone wishing to get more information on prostate cancer to check www.pcsanm.org.

What men need to understand is that the PSA test is imperfect and is only a check engine light for the prostate. The interpretation of the results of PSA testing needs the knowledge and understanding of the doctor. Patients must educate themselves to be equal partners in the decision whether or not to treat or to keep track of the disease.

At this time, the PSA test is the only test readily available for screening for early detection of this disease. CNN reported that Ben Stiller wrote this about PSA testing: This is a complicated issue and an evolving one. But in this imperfect world I believe the best way to determine a course of action for the most treatable, yet deadly, cancer is to detect it early.

The Prostate Cancer Support Association of New Mexico, as an organization whose members have benefited from screening with the PSA test, concurs with Ben.
The Andheri court hearing the case also slapped a fine of Rs 20,000 on the actor. The incident took place in 2005.

By Vidya : Actor Aditya Pancholi has been sentenced to a one-year imprisonment for assaulting his neighbour in Mumbai.

Magistrate Amitabh Panchbhai of Andheri court today sentenced the actor to jail for one year and slapped a fine of Rs 20,000. The incident as reported took place in 2005.

PANCHOLI'S VERSION



Speaking about the incident, Pancholi said that the complainant used to live in his society as a tenant and he did not know about it.

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"One day, a friend of mine had come to visit me. He found the parking spot empty and parker his car there. The tenant came and parked his car right in front of my friend's car, blocking its way", Pancholi said. When Pancholi came down to see his friend's car blocked, the complainant alleged that he was assaulted "unprovoked" by Pancholi.

COMPLAINANT'S CLAIMS



The complainant had claimed that he had suffered fracture injuries, and had suffered a bleeding nose due to the assault. Pancholi, on the other hand, says that the claim of the fractured limb and assault was an "afterthought as that was why the case was registered a day later."



Aditya Pancholi convicted in 2005 assault case: Sentence not to be executed till one month, Pancholi gets 1 month to appeal in higher court ANI (@ANI_news) November 5, 2016

Later, Pancholi's lawyers moved the court for bail. Pancholi said, "It is very harsh sentence. It's not like I was found involved in a terrorist activity or some bomb blast. I definitely will appeal against this order. After being granted bail, Pancholi paid the bail amount of Rs 12,000 and tried to see to it that he could leave the court immediately.

Also read: Aditya Pancholi allegedly assaults reporter

PREVIOUS CASE OF ASSAULT



This is not the first time the actor has landed in a controversy. He had been booked for assaulting another neighbour Bhargav Patel in 2013, while there is another case registered against him of assaulting pub bouncers in a drunken state in Juhu in 2015. The brawl that time had been over Pancholi's wanting the DJ to play his favourite Hindi track.

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The rule of law means more than law and order, and self-government means more than federal government programs.

That the Republicans have embraced an authoritarian nationalist is shocking.

That the Democrats are led by an unabashed big government advocate is less surprising, but still out-of-sync at a time when Americans clearly are rejecting business-as-usual.

Voters deserve another choice.

They need the rule of law to be bolstered, not undercut. This is about empowering citizens to live their business and personal lives with certainty, and without fear of disturbance by the whim of an over-reaching government.

A self-government ethos of free people is nowhere to be found on Hillary Clintons 37-point laundry list of special interest campaign issues.

Americans need another choice, and thats why Im running for president as the nominee of the Libertarian Party.

When I ran for governor of this state in 1994, I ran as an outsider and as an entrepreneur. I had taken my handyman construction firm and grown it into a business employing more than 1,000 New Mexicans.

And I won re-election by a better and more comfortable margin than my initial an unexpected victory as governor.

That same can be said for my running mate, Gov. Bill Weld of Massachusetts, who cut taxes 21 times in his state and left it a better place than when he began.

Both Gov. Weld and myself did this by governing as fiscal conservatives and social liberals.

Thats where most Americans want their government to be: Leadership that is neither bullying nor self-indulgent.

Running for president should not be a quest for personal power. It should be a quest to make Americans lives and opportunities better. That was my goal as your governor, and it is my goal today.

Sadly, from Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, we have spent the past several months listening to them talk about one another, not about the American people.

In a Democratic Party debate last year, when asked which enemy she was most proud of, she said: Probably the Republicans. That pretty much sums up the polarization that has rendered Washington, DC, entirely dysfunctional.

We havent heard a plan from either side to make America safer with a foreign policy that is focused on defending Americans lives and property, rather than regime-change and costly interventions on the other side of the globe.

Clinton has traveled far from opposing the Vietnam War in the 1970s. She endorsed George W. Bushs disastrous war in Iraq. As Secretary of State, she was responsible for promoting counter-productive policies in Libya, Egypt and Syria. These should not be Americas wars.

Donald Trump? Does anyone believe we would have fewer wars and more international stability under his rule?

Our nation needs the confidence that it has a commander-in-chief who will act predictably and responsibly to defend America  and not to aggress elsewhere in our name.

We need prudent and proven skeptics of military interventions like myself and Weld. And we need a President who is a skeptic of the broader notion that government should do more, rather than less.

And thats why Americans are warming to our message of getting government out of personal lives, and limiting its role in daily life. We would do this by advocating that government spend less and do less, and by decentralizing decision-making to states, local governments and the private sector.

Unlike both Trump and Clinton, we will respect the rule of law and our civic traditions of self-government.

Gary Johnson served eight years as New Mexico governor starting January 1, 1995.
Weve all heard complaints that this election is rigged. It is, but the media did not do it, the Clintons did not do it and the Russians did not do it. We, the people, rigged it by electing politicians over and over again that have no interest in competition.

It is not election fraud that defines this rigged election, but a fraudulent electoral system. This is what we mean:

Wouldnt you love to have a business where you get to decide who your customers are, who the competition is, how much the product will cost and how much profit you are going to make? Throw in for good measure a pure monopoly  or duopoly  with the government protecting your exclusive franchise and you have just described our electoral system. No one can ever compete!

Politicians get to decide who their customers (voters) are before the voters get to decide who they want in office. This is backwards. Every 10 years politicians create safe districts for themselves or pour the opposition into a few districts so there is no competition for most seats.

New Mexico has the least number of candidates with competition in the nation. This means the election is rigged heavily towards the incumbent.

Politicians get to decide who their competition is because they have erected discriminatory and unfair barriers to getting on the ballot.

Did you know that independent and minor party candidates in New Mexico have to turn in between three and 10 times the number of signatures to get on the ballot that Democrat and Republican candidates do?

This means the election is rigged heavily towards the incumbent.

Politicians have an incentive to keep campaigns expensive. Unless you are wealthy, corrupt or a party regular tightly aligned with the true believers of either major party, you cant compete because you cant raise enough money to pay for media buys.

Did you know that the average Congress member spends more time raising money than working on their job? This means the election is rigged.

Politicians have created a monopoly in most districts. The proof is that most have no competition. About 70 percent of all elections in New Mexico have one person in the race.

When there is competition it is usually in the primary where Republicans are only concerned about getting hit from the right and the Dems from the left, so it pushes the candidate, political dialogue and the urge not to compromise further to the far right and far left.

Neither major party seems interested in competition, only beating the other team. But neither team seems able to govern  just look at the gridlock in Santa Fe and Washington.

So when you vote in this 2016 election cycle, remember that where the candidates stand on taxes, defense or education really is not terribly important because in the end they are not going to solve the problem. The current system does not reward doing the hard work of compromise, that of listening and building coalitions  the hard work of policy formation.

It is because the election is rigged. Only We The People can fix it.

How? Non-partisan redistricting commissions so that incumbents cant create their own safe seats. Public financing of campaigns or other reforms like limiting contributions to in-district donors so that even middle-class voters can afford to run for office. Open primaries, instant voter run-off and fair ballot access requirements so that more voters have more choices in all public elections, including the primaries.

New Mexico Open Primaries is dedicated to educating New Mexicans about these critical issues. Here is a link to where you can find our candidate survey results: www.nmopenprimaries.org

Twenty-five percent of New Mexicans and nearly half of Americans prefer to be independent from the two major parties and the trend is growing.

The first major party to help de-rig elections is going to be tremendously successful. Which one is going to step forward?

Want to help get open primaries in New Mexico? Get involved through CivNet or the NM Open Primaries webpage. De-rigging the election starts with you.
rhetoric: a. A style of speaking or writing, especially the language of a particular subject: fiery political rhetoric.

b. Language that is elaborate, pretentious, insincere, or intellectually vacuous: His offers of compromise were mere rhetoric.

 thefreedictionary.com

While political rhetoric can be a jungle to wade through, it shouldnt be filled with quicksands of lies.

Yet this election season has provided a bipartisan bog of them, as well as an argument for reforming the state election code to better regulate campaign advertising and super political action committees.

Senate Democratic floor leader Michael Sanchez says he has never been to Hawaii, yet a mailer sent by a pro-Republican political committee states as fact he went to the Aloha State on a taxpayer-funded junket. House Majority Leader Nate Gentry, R-Albuquerque, says he has never been a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council, though a mailer from a pro-Democratic super PAC says he belongs to the group that pushes for conservative legislation.

State election code does not explicitly bar false campaign advertisements or set penalties for using them, so voters are stuck bushwhacking through a jungle of lies. Its hard enough to determine with regular political campaign spin which candidates will truly represent your interests; blatant falsehoods on shiny color cardstock make that path unnavigable for the average voter.

Moving forward, the New Mexico Legislature should tighten the election code appropriately while respecting constitutional free speech. Prohibiting clear fabrications and providing penalties for them would be a good place to start.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
Five-year-old Maggie Swanson holds a Nexus tablet computer up to a small colorful drawing of a turtle. The tiny blonde girl scans a paper barcode next to the picture and a recording of her own voice pops up on the tablet screen.

When a turtle gets very scared, it can pop his head right back in its shell, she says in the recording.

Maggie looks happy to hear herself.

Its me, she says.

This innovative interactive mural is the work of Sandia Vista Elementary kindergarten teacher Michelle Garmon, an instructional technology pro who constantly looks for ways to build students computer skills.

Last year, Garmon was named a local Public Broadcasting Service Digital Innovator, an award that comes with free monthly trainings and access to digital media.

She used her new skills to create the pond storyboard incorporating the voices of her class.

First, the kids studied aquatic life such as fish, cattails, ducks and turtles. Then Garmon used her laptops Audacity program to record the students explaining what they had learned in their own words.

The project built the childrens vocabularies, digital skills and science knowledge  and it allowed them to share their own feelings; for instance, cattails look a lot like corn dogs.

They loved working on this  they all had a hand in it, Garmon said. I get goosebumps when they really want to learn.

PBS was also impressed with the storyboard.

Garmons project was recently featured on the organizations national blog for innovative teaching.

Garmon, a lifelong fan of Sesame Street, said she jumped up and down when she heard they were interested.

I almost fell out of my chair, she added. There are a lot of really good things happening in education right now, and it is kind of overshadowed by the bad. Its good for me and good for the class and the state of New Mexico.

Next, Garmon will work on a Thanksgiving mural project that incorporates recordings of the kids talking about gratitude.

These projects take the walls away from the classroom and lets the world in, she said. Its so inspiring to me.
The long campaign season is almost over and voters head to the polls Tuesday to decide the countrys next president, but also state and county officials, a hospital mill levy and flood control bond issue.

In Rio Rancho, registered voters will be able to cast ballots from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday at any of 17 voting convenience centers. (For the full list of Election Day voting convenience centers in Sandoval County, see Page 5.)

Locally, the election will determine the races for two state House and three state Senate seats, in addition to two Sandoval County Commission positions, county treasurer and county clerk.

Vying for the House District 23 seat are Democrat Daymon Ely of Corrales and Republican incumbent Paul Pacheco of Albuquerque.

House District 57 incumbent Jason Harper, a Republican, seeks a third term. He is being challenged by Democrat Donna Tillman. Both are from Rio Rancho.

House District 60 incumbent Tim Lewis of Rio Rancho and House District 44 incumbent Jane Powdrell-Culbert of Corrales are unopposed. Both are Republicans.

In Senate races, Democratic incumbent John Sapien of Corrales and Republican Diego Espinoza of Rio Rancho are bidding for the District 9 seat.

The Senate District 10 candidates are Democrat Dave Simon and Republican Candace Gould, both of Albuquerque.

In Senate District 40, Democrat Linda Allison is challenging Republican incument Craig Brandt. Both are from Rio Rancho.

In Sandoval County races, incumbent Nora Scherzinger, a Democrat from Corrales, and Republican Jay Block of Rio Rancho are competing for the District 2 county commission seat.

Two Rio Ranchoans, Democrat Alexis Jimenez and Republican Dave Heil, seek the District 4 position on the commission.

The candidates for county clerk are incumbent Eileen Garbagni of Bernalillo and Republican Donald Lemm of Rio Rancho.

The race for county clerk is between incumbent Laura Montoya, a Democrat from Rio Rancho, and Leroy Lovato of Bernalillo.

Mill levy, flood bond

Sandoval County voters will also vote for or against a Sandoval County hospital mill levy and a special district flood control bond issue.

Voters will decide whether to extend a 4.25 mill levy to support the two hospitals in Rio Rancho for another eight years. The levy, which was first approved in 2008, provides nearly $13.5 million annually to Presbyterian Rust Medical Center and UNM Sandoval Regional Medical Center.

Voters will also decide whether to pass a $21 million bond issue to fund projects proposed by the Southern Sandoval County Arroyo Flood Control Authority.

Early voting in the county ends today. For the list of early voting sites, see the Journals online voter guide, ABQJournal.com/voter-guide.
Copyright  2016 Albuquerque Journal

The rain falling outside the Albuquerque Convention Center on Friday afternoon did little to dampen the spirits of an estimated 400 family members, friends and fellow New Mexico National Guardsmen who welcomed home the 126th Military Police Company from the Middle East.

Thanksgiving has come early to the people of the state of New Mexico, Brig. Gen. Andy Salas, the state Guards adjutant general, told the crowd; the 126th wasnt initially scheduled to return until January.

Salas thanked the soldiers families, their employers, the Blue Star Mothers, elected officials, law enforcement and the community for the support they give their deployed soldiers.

About 120 soldiers with the 126th performed various military police custom inspections-type work while deployed, such as inspecting cargoes at maritime ports and airports across the Middle East. Working mainly out of Camp Arifjan, in Kuwait, units of the 126th also deployed to Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Iraq and Afghanistan. They returned to the United States on Oct. 23 and, after going through the demobilization process at Fort Bliss, Texas, returned home this week.

Gov. Susana Martinez, the state Guards commander-in-chief, welcomed the troops home, thanking them for their service  and thanking their families for the sacrifices they make while their loved ones are serving thousands of miles away, often in harms way.

This is one of the best parts of being governor of New Mexico  yellow ribbon ceremonies, Martinez said.

What you do for this country, I can never, ever say enough. How blessed we are that you wear the uniform.

Martinez pointed out Spc. Rene Lopez, sitting in the front row with her husband, Spc. Jassen Lopez, who deployed together and left their four children  ages 3, 5, 6 and 8  in the care of parents and sisters while they served in the Middle East.

You have served our country in an honorable way, she said.

All of you are true Americans, and we thank you, the governor said.

Capt. Joshua Walsh, commander of the 126th,was on stage with his 14-month-old son, Ryker, and his wife, DaCyn Walsh, who talked about how the yellow ribbon has become a symbol of remembrance of men and women who served in places far from home.

Near the conclusion of Fridays Yellow Ribbon Welcome Home Ceremony, they removed a large yellow ribbon from a tree, officially welcoming the 126th home.

Holding Ryker just before the ceremony began, Capt. Walsh said, Its really good to be back.

It was a good deployment and learning experience, but its good to have all the families together again, he said.

Its amazing, to have her husband back after 10 months, said DaCyn Walsh. Life will be a lot easier with him home.

Glad to be back, said Sgt. Kevin Roberts as he held his 2-year-old daughter, Sienna, prior to the ceremonys start.

She was kind of shocked to see me. Shes used to seeing me in a video chat, he said of his daughter.

Roberts, who turns 27 next week, and his girlfriend, Jennifer Velasquez, alternated holding Sienna  who was dressed in her Sunday best.

It went by fast, Roberts said of the 10-month deployment. We stayed pretty busy.

Spec. Skyler White, 24, of Clovis, was returning from his second deployment with the Guard: In 2012 he was part of a yearlong peacekeeping mission in Egypts Sinai Peninsula.

Im very happy to be home. Its great, he said as he hugged his wife, Holly, who had a birthday two weeks before his return.

Its the best late birthday ever, Holly White said. I couldnt have asked for anything better.

Also welcoming White back were his parents, Marlin and Deanna White.

Im so excited that hes back home, said Deanna White. I couldnt wait to get him in my arms again.

He looks great, the specialists mother said. He went from a boy to a young man during the deployment.

Maj. Jason Peete, serving as emcee for the hourlong ceremony, gave four of the deployed soldiers challenge coins from former Army Cpl. Hiroshi H. Hershey Miyamura of Gallup, who received the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions during the Korean war.

The coins were given in recognition of outstanding performance during deployment, Peete said, noting that Miyamura had planned on presenting the medals personally, but was unable to for medical reasons.

Those receiving the coins were: 2nd Lt. Matthew Nguyen; Staff Sgt. Charles Davis; Sgt. James Sheehan; and Sgt. Bradley Kalblinger.

A fifth coin will be given to Sgt. 1st Class Jason Schlensig, who did not attend the ceremony because of illness.
Copyright  2016 Albuquerque Journal

With three days until Election Day, Hillary Clintons once double-digit lead over Donald Trump in nationwide polls has evaporated amid reports that the FBI is investigating more of her emails, prompting worry among some New Mexico Democrats and a burst of optimism among Republicans in the state.

Since FBI Director James Comey notified Congress a week ago that agents would scrutinize a cache of emails found on a computer used by a top Clinton aide and her estranged husband, former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., national polls in the presidential race have narrowed.

Clintons lead has slipped from as much as 10 points in some polls to a 1.6-point advantage, according to an aggregation of nine national polls by RealClearPolitics on Friday.

The Comey publicity obviously contributed to a narrowing of the margin between Clinton and Trump in battleground states, including in Western states, said Brian Sanderoff, president of Research & Polling Inc. in Albuquerque, which conducts the Journals polls.

Typically, New Mexico behaves like other states and goes up and down with national polls, Sanderoff added. But Democratic candidates for president perform better in New Mexico than they do at the national level. Thats what makes the state different and a little difficult to predict.

A new Journal Poll of the presidential race in New Mexico  based on telephone surveys conducted after Comeys bombshell announcement on Oct. 28  will be published in Sundays newspaper.

New Mexico has long been considered safe Clinton territory in the 2016 presidential race, but Trump, the Republican nominee, said this week in Albuquerque that he would capture the states five electoral votes. Trump and his vice presidential running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, have made five campaign stops in New Mexico this election cycle. Clinton and her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, have made no public appearances in New Mexico.

Joey Smallwood was voting early for Clinton in Santa Fe on Friday. He told the Journal he viewed Comeys public discussion of the Clinton investigation as a complete overreach into the political spectrum. The FBI has historically aimed to stay out of election politics.

Im definitely concerned, hearing that its a dead heat now, Smallwood said before he voted. It could happen. My worst nightmare could come true  a Trump presidency.

But a few hours later, Trump supporter Deborah Rhoades pumped gas into her car in Albuquerques Northeast Heights and praised Comeys decision to inform Congress  and by extension the American people  of the additional Clinton emails.

Its an important reminder about who she is, Rhoades said of Comeys disclosure to Congress about the ongoing Clinton investigation 11 days before the election. Theres always another scandal with the Clintons. I do think weve got a shot in New Mexico now.

Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., acknowledged Friday that Clintons lead has eroded since Comeys letter to Congress, which Udall criticized as a violation of long-standing FBI policy. But Udall said Clintons slipping poll numbers could give voters  especially independent or undecided voters  reason to think carefully about their votes In New Mexico.

When you go into an election and its close, it makes everybody think about their vote extra hard, Udall said. I wouldnt be surprised if (Green Party candidate) Jill Steins voters  or (Libertarian candidate) Gary Johnsons voters are thinking this is really close, my vote makes a difference. And it may well be some of the Trump voters reconsider Do we really want him as our president? 

Debbie Maestas, chairwoman of the New Mexico Republican Party, told the Journal on Friday that the narrowing race and latest revelation about the FBI and Clintons emails could cause New Mexico voters to envision a grim Clinton presidency besieged by congressional investigations.

If she does get elected, do we really believe shell even serve a four-year term? Probably not, Maestas said. Theyre looking at it and saying, Im actually going to have to think about this. Hillary Clinton may not be my president even if she is elected. 

Debra Haaland, chairwoman of the New Mexico Democratic Party, said Clinton continues to have strong support in New Mexico.

Early vote numbers continue to show that Democrats are excited and motivated to vote for Democratic candidates up and down the ballot, Haaland said. New Mexicans wont be fooled by Donald Trump, who has done nothing but divide us and tear people down with hateful rhetoric, bigoted policy proposals, and bullying while demeaning anyone who disagrees with him.

Lonna Atkeson, director of the Center for the Study of Voting, Elections and Democracy in the political science department at the University of New Mexico, said she has long thought pundits were too quick to assume Clintons dominance in New Mexico.

I predict there will be an Electoral College victory for her in the state, but Im not expecting a mandate out of New Mexico, she said.
These scammers picked the wrong person.

Anne Kass of Albuquerque, a retired District Court judge, was a recent victim of identity theft.

The ensuing crime  which appeared to involve long-term, tactical planning, as Kass put it  featured falsified credit card applications, a hold placed on Kass mail delivery and more.

But Kass, who saw her share of schemes and maneuvering as a longtime Family Court judge, caught on quickly enough to avoid losing any money.

Its been a D.G.O.  a damned growth opportunity  learning about how this works, Kass said.

It started with two phone calls, a day apart, from credit card companies that wanted to talk about finalizing Kass applications. Kass had applied for neither. The next day, she received two envelopes in the mail from an out-of-state bank. I thought they looked like junk mail, but opened them because I recalled the two earlier calls, she said in a letter to the Journal.

One was about finalizing her application to Lowes, the other to Toys R Us. Again, she had not applied for either.

Kass called the bank, which spotted her problem as one of identity theft. The former judge contacted Albuquerque police and made sure a fraud alert was issued with credit reporting agencies.

But that wasnt the end of it.

When Kass failed to receive any mail for a few days, the retired judge contacted the U.S. Postal Service and was surprised to learn that a hold had been placed on her mail. The thiefs likely plan was to collect whatever credit or debit cards had been issued in Kass name.

The scammer could have done this with a fake ID.

Kass advice: pay attention to what looks like the daily junk mail. If a credit card company sends you a letter (or calls you) about finalizing an application rather than just submitting one, it may well be that a fraudster has applied in your name. Call the credit card company.

Her second recommendation: take action if you dont get any mail for an unusual amount of time.

Albuquerque police Sgt. Will Dorian is not surprised by any of this. Many of these schemes, he says, start with mail theft, and that includes letters dropped into the big blue public mailboxes  even those right outside the post office. (Thieves fish by inserting a long object with a sticky substance on the end and hauling up pieces of mail, says Dorian).

The thief can use that mail to steal an identity and create a twin.

Its almost like theres two of you, Dorian says.

Dorian pointed to a local case in which a man and his wifes identity were stolen by someone who has opened 20 different accounts in their names. The thief so far has tried to charge $100,000 on fraudulent cards during a cycle in which the couple is alerted to a charge, the card is canceled and the thief responds by opening a new account.

Make sure, Dorian advises, to alert credit card companies when your identity is stolen or there is an unauthorized charge on your account, and contact the postal service when youre a victim of mail theft.

Also, make sure to file a police report, Dorian says, so you can work with the officer assigned to the case. When police are alerted immediately to an unauthorized purchase, they can more easily solve the case  especially if the purchase was made at a store that has a video system, Dorian said.

As for protecting your mail, the U.S. postal inspector for New Mexico advises checking mail every day.

To send an outgoing letter, the safest bet is to walk it into the post office rather dropping it into the outside box, says C. Smith, who is based in Albuquerque.

The blue boxes are safer than the community boxes, but walking inside is safer than the blue boxes, he says.

Ellen Marks is assistant business editor at the Albuquerque Journal. Contact her at emarks@ abqjournal.com or 505-823-3842 if you are aware of what sounds like a scam. To report a scam to law enforcement, contact the state Consumer Protection Division toll-free at 1-866-627-3249.
Copyright  2016 Albuquerque Journal

When a three-week-old medical marijuana seedling named Dorothy made her public debut at the New Mexico State Fair in September, state officials scrambled to pull the plug on her appearance.

Now the New Mexico medical cannabis company that sponsored Dorothys field trip is facing state sanctions that could cost the company more than $100,000, said Duke Rodriguez, owner and CEO of Ultra Health LLC, one of the states 35 licensed medical cannabis producers.

With this kind of damage to our reputation, to our patients, and to our ongoing business, we certainly are going to defend this, Rodriguez told the Journal on Friday. A hearing on the appeal on the matter is set for Nov. 30 in Santa Fe.

The seedling was slated for a 10-day stint at a booth Ultra Health rented at the fair, but the plant was ejected on opening day, Sept. 8, after New Mexico State Police and fair officials were notified.

Rodriguez told the Journal the seedling was displayed wholly for educational purposes.

But health department officials informed Ultra Health that removing the medical marijuana plant from the companys Bernalillo production facility to the State Fair violated state law that requires cannabis production facilities be housed on secured grounds.

The removal of a cannabis plant to an off-site location constituted both a change of location for the nonprofit producers production and a substantial change to the entitys production plan, states a Sept. 16 letter to Ultra Health from state medical cannabis program director Kenny Vigil.

The penalty imposed is suspension of all sales and distribution by the company for five days, and a $100 fine, according to the letter.

Rodriguez told the Journal the sanction is an overreaction.

Never did we say we were intending to produce, cultivate or distribute cannabis for the state fairgrounds, he said.

As for the security concerns, Rodriguez told the Journal, The plant was under the control and administration of our licensed personnel the entire time and the maximum amount of time that the plant stayed on that campus was less than nine hours, Rodriguez said. He said the seedling wasnt flowering and had only trace levels of THC, a mind-altering ingredient in marijuana.

If they would simply have left it at a $100 fine we might be open to a settlement of such a minor fine, but what they have proposed is a sanction greater in value than $100,000, Rodriguez said. The $100,000 is just the immediate cash impact. The long-term damage to the program and the patients is even greater.

New Mexico has authorized more than 30,000 cardholders to legally use pot for any one of more than 20 medical conditions.

For example, in Hobbs, we are 95 percent of the market, Rodriguez said. Those patients will have no alternative other than going back to the black market to secure their medicine, which is the absolute wrong message to patients or for the program.
Copyright  2016 Albuquerque Journal

Mayor Richard Berrys administration hasnt submitted a contingency plan  even after city councilors called for one  in case the city never receives the $69 million grant necessary to pay for construction of Albuquerque Rapid Transit.

Crews are already ripping out medians and carrying out other work to prepare Central Avenue for the project, with the expectation that Albuquerque will be reimbursed once the Federal Transit Administration approves the grant.

The city and its consultants say its standard industry practice to begin work before a grant is final  an assertion backed up by an expert who isnt involved in the project.

Nevertheless, without the grant in place, city councilors in September directed the administration to submit a contingency plan for what will happen if the city doesnt get the full $69 million. They wanted a response by Tuesday explaining what the impact would be on basic ART operations, ridership projections and where the bus line would go.

The administrations written response to councilors doesnt cover any of that.

Instead, Bruce Rizzieri, Albuquerques transit director, simply said the congressional appropriation process is still underway. Furthermore, he said, no Small Starts project that has reached a similar stage  recommended for funding in the presidents budget proposal, for example, and with an environmental clearance  has ever failed to get the money.

Councilors say they still want a contingency plan.

I am extremely concerned and disappointed, Ken Sanchez said. Any management company or firm would have a contingency plan in place.

Sanchez, a Democrat from the West Side, supports Albuquerque Rapid Transit. He is also the sponsor of the legislation, adopted unanimously by the council, that called for submission of a contingency plan and other information.

Council President Dan Lewis, a Republican who has voted against ART, said he still expects a contingency plan. The council is set to meet Monday, when the administrations report is scheduled for introduction.

Weve asked for a presentation on Monday, Lewis said, and I expect that there will be a contingency plan as any good administrator would have in place.

Michael Riordan, one of the mayors top executives, said the city will consider its options if the money doesnt come through. He released a written statement to the Journal on Friday.

In the unlikely event that the full funding is not awarded, he said, the city will need to evaluate all the resources available at that time, including other federal funds, in order to complete the project.

Albuquerque Rapid Transit is a $119 million plan to build a nine-mile network of bus stations and bus lanes in the middle of Central Avenue. Most of the money would come from the federal government, the bulk of it through the $69 million Small Starts grant.

A federal lawsuit opposing the project is pending.
By Akshaya Nath: It has been more than 44 days since Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa has been hospitalised and for the first time, the AIADMK will be going in for by-election without their cheif's active participation. But the AIADMK IT wing has come up with a solution for this issue. They have brought in technology to cover the gap.

iPAD CAMPAIGNING

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From campaigns that are conducted with leaders visiting different sites, the AIADMK has got itself going using iPad campaigning. Party workers carrying Amma's message have been going door to door and showcasing the iPad campaign. This is the first of its kind in the state and AIADMK has been saying that this isn't the first time that technology has been used by the party for campaign.

In 2014, during the elections, AIADMK had introduced telephonic message from Jayalalithaa to the people of TN, and during the 2016 elections, the AIADMK had actively used WhatsApp campaign to reach out to people.

The three constituencies of Tamil Nadu going to polls/by-poll on November 19, in the absence of Amma this election are very crucial for the party as this is one of the most important testing phases and a time to prove that the party still has the people on its side.

Also read:

BJP to support AIADMK in Puducherry by-election



To make sure that the people are reminded of all that the government has done, the content shown in the iPad highlights the achievements of the regime. It also gives a detailed presentation on the state's growth under AIADMK government.

"The people are welcoming this campaign a lot. They are very impressed and as we showcase the achievements and works done by the government, women have been coming forward and thanking Amma for her initiative," said a party worker who has been campaigning using the iPad.

As the state is gearing up for the by-election in the three constituencies, it needs to be seen on November 19 as to how efficient AIADMK has been with its innovative iPad campaign.

--- ENDS ---
In the nearly six months since 55-year-old Thomas Mitchell was found dead in the parking lot of Hotel Cascada earlier this year, police have refused to detail what happened to him.

As recently as Tuesday, police spokesman Fred Duran would not say what injuries Mitchell suffered or why nobodys been charged in the case.

But an autopsy report released to the Journal on Friday shows he died from blunt force and asphyxial injuries and that his death was a homicide.

The investigation into Mitchells death began after Stephen Wills, a security guard working at Hotel Cascada, called police around 2 a.m.

Wills had found Mitchell dead, his legs and torso under a car in the hotel parking lot. Mitchell had blood on his body and face, and had a visible injury to the left side of his head, an officer wrote in the police report. Mitchells toxicology report shows he had a large amount of alcohol in his system.

Earlier on the night of Mitchells death, the security guard encountered another man at the hotel. That man, an 18-year-old, was covered in blood, banging his head against a wall in the parking lot, according to a police report.

After Wills found Mitchell dead in the parking lot, he again spotted the 18-year-old as he was getting into a car and detained him.

Police learned the teen had been staying at the hotel for a friends graduation party, and he told them he had been in a scuffle before the security guard found him, outside and bloody.

The teen said he was getting beaten and he fought back.

The officers put the teen in a hazmat suit and took DNA samples, photographs of his injuries and fingerprints, standard practice for people suspected in homicides.

Police have refused to say if the teen is a suspect in Mitchells death or if they believe he acted in self-defense. Online court records show he has not been charged.

Duran said Mitchell is from Albuquerque, but police reports show he was not staying at the hotel that night.

In what police say appears to be a coincidence, Wills, the security guard, was himself gunned down three months later while on patrol at a southeast Albuquerque apartment complex.

Duran said there is no evidence connecting the two deaths.

Police have also been mum on Wills death, refusing to release police reports in the case. His autopsy shows he was shot eight times in the face, chest and arms.

The case remains unsolved.
LOS ALAMOS, N.M.  Dozens of former nuclear employees, their families and caretakers gathered this week at what was once headquarters for the top-secret program that produced the worlds first atomic bomb.

The commemoration of the annual Cold War Patriots National Day of Remembrance came as the federal compensation programs meant to help workers who were exposed to radiation and toxic chemicals have been under increased demand and scrutiny.

The number of nuclear veterans seeking compensation under the programs has spiked in recent years, and the payouts are only expected to grow, The Santa Fe New Mexican reported (http://bit.ly/2ewCuXo).

The amount of medical benefits paid to former Los Alamos National Laboratory employees has doubled since 2009, and some with the Cold War Patriots are concerned the federal well will dry up.

The U.S. Labor Department also is reconsidering proposed regulations after receiving complaints about more bureaucratic red tape.

Those who qualify include Department of Energy employees and contractors who worked at specific sites at Los Alamos between 1976 and 1995. They can receive a lump sum of $150,000 and medical expense coverage. But the process can be laborious, and some have had claims languish for years.

The remembrance gathering was held Monday at Fuller Lodge in Los Alamos.

Kevin Fitzpatrick is with Cold War Patriots, a group devoted to those who helped build the nations nuclear stockpile. He has family and friends who worked at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant and have fallen ill.

A key concern of the Patriots, he said, is making sure the money that has been earmarked stays within this group.

There also are lingering questions about how the health of the future generation of nuclear workers will be protected.

Fitzpatrick said people came up to him after Mondays presentation  one of 11 remembrance events held across the country  and said they didnt realize the extent of what happened while working at the lab because it was so secretive.

A lot of them did things that they didnt know, we didnt know, the harmful extent of exposure to radiation and toxic substance, he said. The Department of Energy is now confronting it head on.

Mondays event largely framed the Manhattan Project and the creation of the atomic bomb as a triumphant and noble pursuit of the American people. The health implications werent overtly mentioned, but instead were referred to generally as the sacrifice workers made for their country.

Pascual Chavez, 93, worked at Los Alamos for 41 years. After he was discharged from the Navy, his mother urged him to get a job, which resulted in a career working with beta, gamma, alpha and X-ray particles.

We had exposure meetings to tell us what our exposure was, he recalled. As far as I knew, it wasnt excessive, but something must have happened.

He has colon cancer and participates in the government compensation program. Its only in the last year that he has required in-home care.

Others attended the event to remember loved ones and co-workers who have died. Some said they were curious about receiving benefits or sharing information with others who have nuclear-work related ailments.

___

Information from: The Santa Fe New Mexican, http://www.sfnewmexican.com
By Siraj Qureshi: The Samajwadi Party completes 25 years today and a huge celebration has been organized in Lucknow to commemorate this occasion. However, when it comes to comparing the participation by party men in Akhilesh Yadav's Vikas Rath Yatra to those participating in the Silver Jubilee celebrations of Samajwadi Party, the difference is quite obvious and stares in the face.

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While the party workers were going head over heels to participate in the flagging off of Akhilesh's Vikas Rath Yatra in Lucknow, the attitude of those participating in the silver jubilee celebrations appears lacklustre and is an indicator of the losing grip of the Saifai family over the party organization.

Most of the party men who have gone to Lucknow to attend the silver jubilee celebrations of Samajwadi Party are either those who have been given some responsibility during the celebrations, or those who are close to either Mulayam Singh Yadav or Shivpal Yadav, or those who are trying their best to maintain their position in the party organization through Shivpal's support.

Also read: Samajwadi Party silver jubilee: Show of unity that wasn't



India Today came across several such faces that are looking for a golden future for themselves in the changed party scenario. A senior SP leader told India Today that there was a very small difference between the timings of the Vikas Rath Yatra launch and the silver jubilee celebrations and it is not possible for all party workers who have just returned from Lucknow, to go back to Lucknow a day later to attend the silver jubilee.

AKHILESH SUPPORTERS SHUN SILVER JUBILEE

Several Akhilesh supporters told India Today that the silver jubilee celebrations have been shunned by many Akhilesh supporters who wish to show their affinity towards the young Chief Minister and are angry with the treatment he is being meted out by the party.

Also read: SP silver jubilee: I don't want to become CM, you can insult me, Shivpal tells Akhilesh



SP City President Raisuddin told India Today that the junior party functionaries did not wish to get entangled in the Saifai family feud. He said that he and his team were all soldiers of the party and it was their duty to obey every party directive, so they had sent 41 buses and 25 cars filled with party workers to the silver jubilee celebrations.

RATH YATRA, SILVER JUBLIEE TO IMPACT 2017 ELECTION



Social activist Layiq Ahmed said that the effect of this Vikas Rath Yatra and Silver Jubilee celebrations on the 2017 election results will be an interesting thing to watch out for. He said that the people of UP are seriously following the Saifai family feud and will keep this in mind when they go out to vote for their next chief minister. He said that the party's internal strife has created an open field for the opposition parties - BJP and BSP and they will benefit a great deal from it.

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Also read: Akhilesh returns Shivpal's taunt: Some people will listen but after destroying Samajwadi Party



However, he added that the elections are still far and that Mulayam Singh Yadav is a seasoned player of this game. He could still pull an ace out of his sleeve to give the opposition a run for its money.

Also read: Mulayam, Shivpal missing in Akhilesh's video campaign that says whole of UP is his family



--- ENDS ---
Update, November 6, 2016: Missing man Diarmuid Lawlor has been located today after a 12-day search.

November 4, 2016:

Gardai in Dublin are seeking the publics help in tracing a missing man.

32-year-old Diarmuid Lawlor was last seen on October 26 at around 6pm at Singe Street, Dublin 8.

He is described as being 5 foot 7 in height, of slim build with a light beard and short black hair. When last seen he was wearing a black jacket and black jeans.

Anyone who has seen Diarmuid is asked to contact Kevin Street Garda Station.
According to the Pentagon, Qatani was Al Qaeda leader was tasked with re-establishing Al Qaeda safe havens in that mountainous part of the country.

The airstrike was carried out on October 23 in Kunar province. Photo: Reuters

By Indo-Asian News Service: The Pentagon has confirmed that Al Qaeda's top leader in Afghanistan, Faruq al-Qatani, was killed in a US strike.

The airstrike was carried out on October 23 in Kunar province, located 230 km east of Kabul and along the border with Pakistan, the Pentagon announced on Friday.

SUCCESSFUL AIR STRIKE

"This successful strike is another example of US operations to degrade international terrorist networks and target terrorist leaders who seek to attack the US homeland, our interests and our allies abroad," the US Department of Defence said.

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According to the Pentagon, Qatani was Al Qaeda's leader for north eastern Afghanistan and was tasked with re-establishing Al Qaeda safe havens in that mountainous part of the country.

However, Afghanistan's intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, which had already announced Qatani's death a few days ago, identified him as the leader of Al Qaeda in the country.

In addition to Qatani, the US also targeted Bilal al-Utabi, another senior Al Qaeda leader and whose death is yet to be confirmed by the Pentagon.

Meanwhile, the NDS has already announced the killing of Utabi, who it identified as Qatani's second-in-command.

Also watch video



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So alcohol isnt a drug???First post here, but hey...might as well go all in....bad pun intended. One really needs to study the effects of cannibus on each individual. There are thousands of different compounds in cannibus....us humans even have cannabinoid receptors in our brain, much like dopamine receptors. The different cannabinoids each have different effects...from "couch lock" to a "speedy" kind of buzz...most of what is out there is a mix of Sativa(heady) and Indica(lock)...so just depends on what you get. The more medical cannibus is researched....the more we will know. Problem is that we can barely get any legitimate studies because everything is still "illegal"....go figure....big business doesnt want to see it legalized, especially big pharma...it does cure and treat many ailments. FACT....just do some research......in whatever capacity you are able to...lol.It was really only made illegal to boost the black markets after the end of alcohol prohibition and to boost alcohol sales. I mean really, how many pot head fights do you hear about...compared to alcohol related fights. There are no alcohol receptors in our brain...all it does is kill our livers.But to each their own...choose your poison....or medicine...whatever floats that boat in your hand.....Just a little knowledge for everyone....
URBANA, Ill.  Soybeans were planted on nearly 84 million acres in the U.S. in 2016, but only a tiny fraction  less than 1 percent  were grown organically.

This number has been increasing in recent years, and a group of University of Illinois researchers wants to give organic growers the tools they need to combat pathogens and insect pests, so they summarized some practices to fight diseases and pests organically.

Its not an easy task, but it can be done, said University of Illinois and USDA Agriculture Research Service crop pathologist Glen Hartman.

First-ever effort

Hartman and colleagues produced a comprehensive report (agronomy-06-00016 (1)) summarizing the disease and pest problems faced by soybean growers in the United States. For the first time, the report compiles specific organic management practices and products tailored for each scenario.

By detailing the tools needed to successfully grow organic soybeans, the researchers hope more growers will give it a try.

There is a movement for organic agriculture, but so far, soybeans havent been a major player, Hartman notes.

Size neutral

The researchers want to encourage small-scale vegetable farmers that are already using organic practices to add soybeans to the mix.

The expansion of the organic meat and dairy markets, combined with strong consumer interest in organic soy-based foods like tofu and edamame, are increasing the demand for organically grown soybeans.

Over half of organic soybeans are imported, but several companies and entrepreneurs are working to increase the domestic supply. Those who are selling organic soybeans today are getting almost twice as much per bushel compared to conventional soybeans.

Profit potential

Organic meat is probably double or triple the price compared with conventionally raised meat. And thats partly from the cost of organic feed. Whoevers producing this is going to make some money, Hartman said.

Bags of frozen edamame sell for about $3 at the grocery store, and there might be 40-50 pods per bag. Thats equivalent to one or two plants. You can grow maybe 100,000 plants in an acre. You can do the math, and thats a rough calculation, but there could be a lot of profit involved.

Graduate student Theresa Herman also sees the potential for increased edamame production in the United States.

I have talked to school food service companies about incorporating edamame in school lunch programs. Its a good source of protein, and kids eat the beans voraciously. Theyre crazy about edamame, she said.

Production problems

Soybeans grown for edamame appear to be more prone to insect and disease problems than grain soybean, and non-GMO grain varieties available to organic growers may not have the disease and pest resistance that is present in many elite conventional cultivars. However, there are organic solutions for both.

In the report, the researchers lay out strategies in a number of categories, including biological control, cultural practices, breeding priorities, and organic pesticide products.

Rotations to different crops are commonly used by organic growers, Hartman said. Organic producers have cover crops and alternative crops that are not used in most corn and soybean systems. They might have a four- to six- to eight-year rotation, which is one of the best ways to reduce diseases.

Need more research

Although the researchers point to the promise of longer rotations and cover crops, they would like to know more about the effectiveness of organic products and practices in real-world settings.

We want to be able to experimentally test some of the products growers are using in organic soybean systems. We want to learn what their constraints are, and how we can help them, Hartman said.

A lot of people are happy with the way they do things, but they want to know more about why and how their system is working.

Current and potential organic soybean growers can contact Hartman directly, at 217-244-3258.
Six days into the attack on Hindu temples and houses in Nasirnagar upazila of Brahmanbaria, police recovered an idol of Goddess Laxmi from a mosque in the upazila.

Acting on a tip-off, a team of police recovered the idol from the mosque at Bitui village, Officer-in-Charge of Nasirnagar Police Station Abu Zafar told The Daily Star.

Police suspect that this could be one of the idols stolen on October 30 during the attack on five Hindu temples that left 100 people injured.

Imam of the mosque Mohammaed Shahabuddin saw the idol after he finished his call for Fajr prayers and informed the police, a correspondent reports from the spot.

On October 30, around 200 religious bigots attacked at least five temples and vandalised and looted about 100 Hindu houses in several localities in Nasirnagar over a Facebook post purportedly from the account of one Rasraj Das. The attackers also beat up more than 100 people.

The attack was made claiming that the post hurt the religious sentiment of the Muslims.

Before his arrest and the systematic mayhem, Rasraj claimed he had nothing to do with the post, but apologised for it anyway. Relatives say his account may have been hacked.

Five days into the attacks, five Hindu homes were torched in Nasirnagar yesterday, spreading panic among the already frightened minority community.

Source : Daily Star
Bangladesh : Idols of Hindu deities were destroyed in Jessore, Bagura, Faridpur attacking three temples. Two miscreants handed over to the police after public beating at Jessore.

Priest Sadhan Kumar Pal was reciting Gita at Sarbajanin Kali Temple at Dharmatala area on 10 pm, 2nd November.

That moment some miscreants lead by Shamim and Jasim tried to snatch the Gita from the priest. When priest tried to hinder them they started to destroy the idols of the goddess.

Local people went their by hearing the noise. And they caught Shamim and Jasim red handed, beat them and handed to the police and then admitted to the hospital.

A case have been filled against Shamim and Jasim and mentioning some other unknown person.

On the other hand,. miscreants destroyed 4 idols at Dhunat of Bagura. On Tuesday night idols broken in a temple situated by the side of the Ichamati river. On the same night, same idols breaking happened in a family temple at Boyalmari of Faridpur.This happened in a Family temple of Ananda Biswas, dweller of Rupapat village of Rupapat Union.

Police visited the place.

Source : Eibela 24
Dhaka : A 10-year-old young lady has purportedly been raped in Savar on the edges of the capital.

The presumed attacker was recognized by the young lady as unknown person, an adolescent who used to visit her family now and then, her mom, a housemaid, told columnists at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) yesterday.

Around 10:00pm on Monday, rapist met the young lady and requesting that her go to a neighborhood reasonable in adjacent Arapara territory with him. As she concurred, they went to the reasonable where he got her some dry sustenance.

While returning, rapist, in any case, took the young lady to a nursery close Savar transport stop and assaulted her for the duration of the night, said the mother, including, the young lady was discharged in the morning.

Later, her relatives took her to Savar Upazila Health Complex. She was moved to DMCH for better treatment.

Reached, SM Kamruzzaman, officer accountable for Savar Police Station, said they have heard in regards to the occurrence. Police were attempting to capture the suspect, he said.

In the interim, DMCH sources said the casualty would be admitted to the One-stop Crisis Center at the doctors facility, once her condition progresses.

Source : Eibela24
Who else is pumping money into the election campaign of Clinton?

by Lukas Esmerald Sat, Nov 5, 2016 1:17AM
A fire, which broke out at 11.30pm on Thursday, gutted much of the three-storey sandstone building which had lain idle for more than 10 years. In recent times people occasionally gathered there for cider parties.

Since it was built in the 1830s, Kilmoyle, better known as the Bishops Palace, was home to a succession of Catholic leaders of the diocese of Limerick.

The last bishop to inherit the residence, Donal Murray, decided it was not suitable as a home and moved out in 2005.

At the height of the Celtic Tiger in 2007 the property, which stood on more than six acres, was sold to young tycoon Aidan Brooks for a reported 26m.

As Mr Brooks moved most of his property portfolio abroad after the crash, he disposed of Kilmoyle for 1.1m to Gerry McManus, brother of billionaire JP McManus. Last year, Mr McManus placed a planning notice indicating he intended to apply to carry out seven works on the site.

The house before the incident

These included proposals to alter and modify the main house and construct a gate lodge, courtyard buildings, and an underground garage.

The fire may have been started by people living rough, who had come for a drinks and drugs party.

The last full-time resident at Kilmoyle was the late Bishop Jeremiah Newman. He built up one of the countrys finest private collections of books and manuscripts which were shelved in a magnificent library.

Newman played host to academics and historians who came to marvel at the collection and enjoy his hospitality.

His guests often included political foes whom Newman clashed with in his sometimes controversial sermons. However, at Kilmoyle the cudgels were set aside and wounds soothed with the help of an exquisite wine cellar.

As darkness fell over Kilmoyle last night, the smell from the burnt out ruin still lingered. It seemed like a ghostly reminder of nights when Limericks grand residence saw guests smoke fine cigars accompanied by a good claret to soothe and lubricate lofty conversation.
US Presidential Elections' Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton asks for Amitabh Bachchan in one of her leaked emails.

By India Today Web Desk: As US Presidential Elections' Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's 'leaked emails' continue to create much furore, it appears that in one of her emails, she had once expressed interest in Amitabh Bachchan.

National political reporter with The Washington Post Jose A DelReal tweeted a picture of one of the leaked emails in which the former US secretary of state is seen asking her Pakistani-origin aide Huma Abedin about Amitabh Bachchan.



Yet another afternoon sifting through Clinton emails, like old times. This is the most interesting one I've found yet: pic.twitter.com/06GQPsfoev Jose A. DelReal (@jdelreal) November 3, 2016

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The email dated July 2011, shows Clinton asking Abedin, "What's the name of the famous older Indian actor we met a few years ago?" Abedin replied, "Amitabh bachan (sic)."

However, the leaked emails do not provide further context as to why Clinton wanted to know about the 74-year-old actor.

ALSO READ: Bachchan family miffed with Aishwarya's intimate scenes in ADHM? Abhishek chooses football over wife's film

ALSO SEE: FULL US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS 2016 COVERAGE



The vast quantity of leaked emails threaten Clinton's presidential campaign as the elections have entered their final moments. FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) James Comey wrote a letter to Congress asking for a new inquiry into the emails.

Clinton's aide Abedin is currently caught in between a political storm after FBI began investigating some 650,000 emails found on a laptop belonging to her estranged husband, former Congressman Anthony Weiner, that may be related to the investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state during President Barack Obama's first term.







(With inputs from PTI)

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Beyonce and Solange, the sisters who made news as one of the pairs of solo siblings to score No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200, with seven other musicians are a part of the 2016 Ebony Power 100.

The two are joined by Chance the Rapper, Lupe Fiasco, Donald Glover, Killer Mike, John Legend, Nas and The Weeknd.

The Ebony Power 100 is put together by the Ebony Magazine. It is done to recognise those who lead, inspire and demonstrate through their individual talents, the very best in the Black American community.

The theme for this year's edition is 'power in numbers.' Ebony is also unveiling four special covers featuring Legend, Nas, Ava DuVernay and Simone Biles.

According to the editor-in-chief of EBONY, Kyra Kyles, the 100 nominees are setting up platforms to improve different aspects of black life.

These 100 individuals are not only authoring their own success stories, they are leveraging their platforms in order to improve various facets of black life and render us visible on the world stage,

2015's nominee list included Janelle Monae, Jesse Williams, John Legend, Kendrick Lamar, Prince, Stanly Nelson, D'Angelo and J Cole.

By: Jeffrey Owuraku Sarpong/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Actor Brad Pitt is seeking joint custody of his six children in his split from Angelina Jolie, court filings show.

The move comes after Ms Jolie asked for full physical custody of all the children, who are aged eight to 15.

Ms Jolie cited irreconcilable differences when she filed to end the marriage on 19 September.

Reports suggest that Mr Pitt is being investigated over an incident with his eldest son Maddox on a plane.

A child welfare agency in Los Angeles is examining what happened during the incident on a private flight in mid-September, US media say.

The actors have reached a temporary agreement so the Fight Club star can visit his children while the welfare investigation continues.

California divorce courts generally favour joint custody, but the outcome of the plane row could affect the judges decision. The actors may also hammer out a deal privately to avoid the matter being aired in public.

Brad and Angelina pictured with their children in November 2011

Mr Pitts custody request was included in his response to Ms Jolies divorce petition. He revealed that the pair separated on 15 September, one day after the alleged plane altercation.

Mr Pitt and Ms Jolie have been together since 2004 but only wed in August 2014, at their childrens urging. They grew close while filming the 2005 film Mr & Mrs Smith, in which they played a couple in a stagnant relationship.

Their union was Mr Pitts second marriage, after a divorce from Friends star Jennifer Aniston, and Ms Jolies third after Billy Bob Thornton and Jonny Lee Miller.

The couple have six children together  Maddox, Pax, and Zahara, who are adopted, and biological children Shiloh and twins Knox and Vivienne.

The initial divorce papers were filed at Los Angeles Superior Court

Brad Pitt, producer Arnon Milchan and Angelina Jolie arrive at the premiere of Mr & Mrs Smith in 2005

Pictured in 2005, the couple arrive at Tokyos international airport with their daughter Zahara

Mr Pitt, 52, and Ms Jolie, 41, married privately at their French estate in Provence. Their children served as ring bearers and helped illustrate Ms Jolies white Versace dress with their drawings.

Both actors are known for their philanthropic work away from the screen.

Academy Award winner Ms Jolie became a special envoy for the United Nations in 2012, and is a passionate advocate for refugees. She has also raised awareness of breast and ovarian cancers after going public with her decision to undergo a preventative double mastectomy.

Meanwhile, Mr Pitt built homes in New Orleans for victims of Hurricane Katrina, and has made sizeable aid donations to Haiti through the estranged couples charity, the Jolie-Pitt Foundation.


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Kano (Nigeria) (AFP) - Nigerian troops early Saturday rescued another of the missing Chibok schoolgirls seized by Boko Haram Islamists, during an operation near the border with Cameroon, a spokesman said.

The girl, who was found along with her baby son, was one of the more than 200 schoolgirls taken by the Islamist group from their hostels in the remote town of Chibok in April 2014.

The mass abduction drew global anger and attracted unprecedented attention to the seven-year Boko Haram insurgency.

News of her rescue came barely one month after 21 other Chibok girls were released by Boko Haram.

Army spokesman Sani Usman told AFP that "Nigerian army troops rescued another Chibok schoolgirl at Pulka," in Borno state near the Mandara mountains separating Nigeria from Cameroon.

Usman later said in an official statement the girl was rescued "at about 6.00am while (the army was) screening some escapees from Boko Haram terrorists hideout in Sambisa forest."

He identified her as Maryam Ali Maiyanga, adding that she was carrying a 10-month-old son.

"She has been taken to the unit's (army's) medical facility for proper medical check up," he said.

Boko Haram has waged a seven-year insurgency against Nigeria that has claimed at least 20,000 lives and spilled across the country's borders

The Bring Back Our Girls lobby group confirmed the release.

"We are happy with the news... We have confirmed the name of the freed girl to be among those on our data base," BBOG campaigner Aisha Yesufu told AFP.

"Our hope is that the government will work towards an early release of the remaining girls so that we can bring this sad episode to a close," she added.

The 21 Chibok girls released last month were freed following negotiations between the Nigerian government and Boko Haram brokered by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Swiss government.

Local residents in the town of Barki where the 21 were freed said they were exchanged with four Boko Haram prisoners, but the government denied this.

The government said at the time it had received a commitment from Boko Haram to secure the release of 83 other girls believed to be from Chibok being held by a different factions of the extremist group.

Usman said Saturday "it is imperative to state that troops have been working round the clock to clear remnants of Boko Haram terrorists wherever they might be hibernating and also rescue all persons held hostages by terrorists".

The insurgency in Nigeria's mainly-Muslim north has killed at least 20,000 people and made more than 2.6 million homeless since 2009.
By PTI: Itanagar, Nov 5 (PTI) Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu today called on Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in New Delhi and had a detailed discussion on all issues of the state.

Discussing on various issues confronting the state, Khandu submitted a detailed memorandum inviting attention to various development aspects of the state and the coordinated support required from the central government.

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The memorandum included development issues, pay commission, infrastructure development apart from financial liabilities, an official communique informed.

Khandu informed Jaitley that the present government has inherited huge liabilities of previous several years.

He said the situation has been further aggravated by the fact that several schemes of the Government of India now stood delinked, the burden of implementation of which has fallen upon the state government.

Giving a patient hearing for half an hour, the Finance Minister was considerate about the issues of Arunachal and assured full support.

While extending his gratitude to Jaitley for sanctioning National Film Institute for the state, Khandu invited him to lay the foundation stone of the prestigious institution.

Jaitley is likely to visit for the same after the Parliament session, the release added. PTI UPL SUS SUS

--- ENDS ---
Rome (AFP) - Two Italians and a Canadian who were kidnapped in the south of conflict-torn Libya in September have been released and flown to Italy "in good health", the Italian government announced Saturday.

The Italians, Danilo Calonego, 66, and Bruno Cacace, 56, and Canadian Frank Poccia were freed during the night "due to the effective cooperation with local Libyan authorities," it said in a statement.

The three men were kidnapped on September 19 in Ghat, close to the Algerian border, where they worked for an Italian company that carried out maintenance at the airport. An armed group blocked their vehicle and took them hostage.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi praised Libyan security forces and expressed his "sincere gratitude for the solidarity" shown by several mayors in the south of Libya.

Italy's foreign ministry said the three arrived in Italy at around 3am (0200 GMT).

In Rome, where prosecutors had opened an investigation into a suspected terrorist kidnapping, a magistrate debriefed the three men for seven hours, according to the Italian AGI news agency.

They said they had been well-treated and that their captors were most likely common criminals with no religious or terrorist affiliations, the agency reported.

Several Italian companies are present in Libya, a former colony, and their expatriate staff have often fallen prey to kidnappers in recent years.

In July 2015, four Italians working for a construction company were kidnapped near an oil field operated by Italian oil giant ENI in the region of Mellitah, west of Tripoli.

Two of the hostages were killed more than six months into their ordeal, likely in clashes between jihadists and local militiamen.

The other two were freed in March this year, in a raid on Islamic State group hideouts near the capital.

Chaos has engulfed Libya since the 2011 NATO-backed ouster of dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
The Workshop on the African Union Commodities Strategy and meeting of the Commodities Task Force, organized by the Department of Trade and Industry of the African Union Commission (AUC) commenced today at the Hilton Nairobi, Kenya. The main Objective of the Validation Workshop is to validate the key recommendations of the Commodities strategy with Private sector stakeholders and other key actors, as well as deliberate on the effective implementation of the strategy.

On behalf of H.E Mrs. Fatima Haram Acyl, Commissioner Trade and Industry, Mr. Nadir Merah, Head of Trade Division welcomed the participants to the Validation workshop. In his speech he recalled the decision of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government in May 2013 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where Heads of State and Government came up with the African Union Agenda 2063. Bearing in mind that the Commodity Strategy is one of the flagship Programmes of the Ten Year implementation Plan of Agenda 2063, he stated that  The AUC was mandated to develop a strategy to use commodities as a driver for achieving the structural social and economic transformation of Africa and Agenda 2063. He added that the meeting was expected to come up with recommendations towards the effective implementation of the strategy through an implementation mechanism and an Action Plan.

The AU Commodities Strategy reviews the state of play for high-priority commodities sectors in Africa, namely agriculture, mining, and energy. It considers current trends and outlooks, as well as sector-specific opportunities and challenges. The Strategy lays out sector-specific as well as cross-cutting strategic interventions to catalyze commodity-led industrialization and navigate volatile commodity prices. The draft strategy will be submitted to the policy organs for consideration next month.
Statement attributable to Paul Thomas Arkwright, British High Commissioner to Nigeria:

I would like to thank the Nigeria Environmental Society (NES) for hosting this event and for inviting me to give a short goodwill address today. My name is Paul Arkwright, and I am the British High Commissioner to Nigeria. I am going to share some thoughts on the theme of sustainable development and stakeholders participation in the green economy and how these relate to our environment.

Before I came to Nigeria, I was the UKs Director for multilateral policy and so responsible for overseeing our input to and negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. The agreement to the SDGs was a truly significant moment. Seven of those Goals are designed to support the protection of the environment and green economic growth. Failure to act to support these goals could lead to significant and dangerous effects globally, even the extinction of the human race.

I believe we can do more to support growth and innovation in a new global green economy. Nigeria needs to be part of that positive agenda, and the global green economy, weakening its dependence on oil and strengthening its green industry. I firmly believe this is an area where we should look to strengthen our bilateral collaboration. This requires us to be innovative and to support research that can help to improve social and environmental safety. The UK and Nigeria are well-placed to do this together.

But first lets talk about the risks. According to the 2011 Climate Change Vulnerability Index (CCVI) published by the UK-based risk company Maplecroft, climate change could result in a loss in GDP in Nigeria of between 6% and 30% by 2050, worth an estimated 100 to 460 billion US dollars. According to reports commissioned by the UKs Department for International Development, if no adaptation is implemented, between 2-11% of Nigerias GDP could potentially be lost by 2020.

In addition to the global climate risks, there are immediate local impacts of the carbon economy in Nigeria. The 2011 UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report outlining the findings of an independent and comprehensive study of oil pollution in Ogoniland in Nigeria concluded that there were high levels of pollution exposing local communities to contaminated groundwater and soil.

So I commend the President Buhari and the Honourable Minister for the launch of the clean-up of Ogoniland in June, and we are aware one billion dollars has been committed by international oil companies to this oil clean-up exercise. We hope and expect that these funds will boost employment and drive development among Ogoniland communities devastated by contamination from spills.

In the UKs bid to ensure a safe and secure environment, our Department for International Development (DFID) runs a 14 million Facility for Oil Sector Transparency and Reform project to reduce the many incentives for misuse of power and capture of oil revenues in Nigeria. In part it also attempts to help address the environmental challenges in the Niger Delta.

Our UK minister for Africa, Mr. Tobias Elwood was in Nigeria recently and he visited Abuja and Port Harcourt. Minister Ellwood overflew part of the Niger Delta and saw first-hand the devastating environmental damage caused by decades of oil spills and the challenges of policing the riverine areas to prevent oil bunkering and illegal refineries. He and I visited a community in Ogale (Rivers state) that has been severely affected by oil spills caused in part by archaic pipeline infrastructure, and drew black and oil scented water from a well which, according to the UNEP 2011 report, held water containing 900 times the World Health Organisation level of benzene.

Our DFID funded FOSTER project has helped with establishing a strong foundation for support of the cleanup of Ogoniland by engaging with members of local communities drawn from four local Government areas in Ogoniland. Through this and other ways my team on the ground here in Nigeria is helping as we can, and I can assure you that the UK will continue to do so.

On the global stage, the UK is a strong supporter of the Green Climate Fund (GCF). This is the main new multilateral fund for scaling up climate finance as a key new vehicle for implementing the Paris Agreement. It will help developing countries adapt to climate change and follow low-carbon development paths.

A significant percentage of that climate finance is flowing to Nigeria. As of September 2015, sixty two million UK pounds from the UKs Global Environmental Fund and Clean Technology Fund had been put to projects in Nigeria to support adaptation and the wider fight against climate change.

In the UK, we have used a mixture of tax measures and policies relating to energy, transport and agriculture to promote green investment, backed by a legally binding carbon budget to drive our national low carbon transition. The UK has already reduced its emissions by more than a quarter since 1990. We are on track to reduce them by more than 50% by 2030. The PM has announced that the UK will sing the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Im delighted that the Agreement enters into force today.

And our message to companies in the UK and globally is that climate change is a threat and an opportunity: the Green economy in the UK was valued at 120 billion in 2014. This green economy represents amazing opportunities for Nigeria too. And I agree with the Honourable Minister that the private sector is key to this.

I want to reiterate that it is only through working together that we can make sure our environment is protected and improved for generations to come. I spoke with the Honourable Minister for the Environment on this just a few days ago. We agreed that the challenges were huge, the opportunities also significant, and the only way to move ahead was through global partnership. I commend the work of the Nigeria Environmental Society and the many other strong voices within the NGO sector helping to support this, and I am delighted to learn of the close collaboration between the NES and relevant institutions in the UK.

Thank you and good luck to everyone with this work. I look forward to cooperating with you, and to hearing about the outcomes of this important conference.
A multi-agency convoy led by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has delivered lifesaving humanitarian assistance to families trapped for four months by increased insecurity in, and around, the town of Yei in South Sudan.

The convoy of 38 trucks transporting one month of food rations including sorghum, yellow-split peas, and vegetable oil from WFP, water, sanitation and child protection items from the UN Childrens Agency (UNICEF) and shelter items from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) arrived in the town on Friday.

We have deployed a rapid response team to provide food to nearly 52,000 people who have been cut off from food supplies for four months, said WFP South Sudan Country Director Joyce Luma.

Yei is traditionally a place where people can grow their own food but since violence intensified in July people have been forced to leave their crops to rot in the field while they remain hungry. We are bringing assistance now but we are advocating for free and safe movement so that people can cater for their own food needs.

Following an outbreak of violence in the South Sudanese capital of Juba in July, there has been a spike in conflict in the southern part of the country which is the most agriculturally productive region. This has kept farmers from their fields and disrupted food markets  as there have been ambushes along trade routes including the road between Juba and Yei.

The insecurity has also forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes for safety in neighbouring Uganda; estimates indicate that 295,000 South Sudanese refugees have arrived in Uganda since July.

The current response in Yei comes after WFP provided 9,000 people with food at the end of October in the villages of Logwili and Loka West in Lainya County where people have also fled into bushes as a result of increased insecurity.

With the support of donors including Canada, the European Union, Finland, Germany, Japan, Luxemburg, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America, as well as several private donors, WFP has provided food and nutrition assistance to 3.2 million people in South Sudan this year.
05.11.2016 LISTEN

ACTS 1:4-5; 1 CORINTHIANS 12:12-14

1. THE PROPHECY OF THE BAPTISM WITH THE SPIRIT

If there was any subject in the New Testament that has created confusion and division among Christians, it is The Baptism with the Spirit. In his book, The Holy Spirit, chapter 5, Dr. Billy Graham tells a story about a time when he was attending a Bible College in Florida. He said that he visited a brush arbor revival meeting, where an old-fashioned Southern revival preacher was preaching. The place was jammed to capacity. Dr. Graham writes, The speaker made up in thunder what he lacked in logic, and the people loved it. Have you been baptized with the Holy Spirit? the preacher asked the audience during the sermon. Dr. Graham says that the preacher knew many in the audience, because he would point to some and ask, Brother, have you been baptized with the Spirit? and the man would answer, Yes, bless God. The preacher said to the young Billy Graham, Young man, have you been baptized with the Holy Spirit? Yes, sir, Graham replied. The preacher then asked Dr. Graham when were you baptized with the Holy Spirit? The preacher had not questioned the others on this. Dr. Graham replied the preacher, the moment I received Jesus Christ as my Savior. The preacher looked at him with a puzzled expression, but before going to the next person the preacher said to young Billy Graham, That couldnt be. Here is Dr. Grahams own words, I do not doubt the sincerity of this preacher. However, in my own study of the Scriptures through the years I have become convinced that there is only one baptism with the Holy Spirit in the life of every believer, and that takes place at the moment of conversion. I hope the old preacher lived long enough to see what God has done through Dr. Grahams life and ministry.

Before I deal with our focal text, let me give you the passages where the baptism with the Holy Spirit is prophesied. There are seven passages in the New Testament where the baptism with the Holy Spirit is mentioned. They are: Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16; John 1:33; Acts 1:5; 11:16; and 1 Corinthians 12:13. The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) and the Gospel of John are the prophetic records of John the Baptist concerning the ministry of Jesus Christ. Acts 1:5, is Jesus quotation of John the Baptist, which He applies to Pentecost. Acts 11:16, is Peters quotation of what Jesus promised them before His ascension and the coming of Pentecost. Peter applies this statement to Cornelius experience as similar to Pentecost.

When John the Baptist and Jesus spoke of the baptism with the Holy Spirit, the event or the experience was in the future. Both of them were making a promise or giving a prophecy. When Peter refers to the same subject it was a past event. Remember that Peter was the preacher on the Day of Pentecost. It was the same Peter who preached to Cornelius and his household and witnessed how they too were baptized with the Holy Spirit (Acts 10-11). Now lets deal with 1 Corinthians 12:12-14.

II. DIVERSITY IN UNITY V. 12

The Church of Corinth was a church that was ridden with all kinds of problems because of their carnality (3:1). There were all kinds of factions in this church. There were those who prided themselves with possessing more spectacular gifts than others. This pride has created spiritual elitism that was disrupting the unity of this Christian community. There were those who looked down upon other believers as unspiritual and second-class, because they didnt have certain spiritual gifts. Apostle Paul therefore set out to write 12-14 to correct this misconceptions and doctrinal deviations. In verse 12, Paul compares the church (body of Christ) to a human body. The human body is a unit with many parts. The Church likewise, is a unit with many parts. Each part has a specific function that is necessary to the body as a whole. The parts are different for a purpose, and in their differences, they must work together. As believers, we are to avoid two pitfalls. 1. You and I are not to be too proud of our abilities. You should not regard your spiritual gifts as more important than others. 2. You should not think that you have nothing to contribute to the body of Christ. There are some Christians whose favorite phrase is I cant. How different are these Christians from the Apostle Paul who said, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I cant syndrome is not humility, but false humility. If you are a genuine Christian, Christ has given you at least one spiritual gift that He wants you to use to serve Him and others in and outside His church. Paul is concerned about the unity of the church. However, the caution is that unity is not uniformity. The error and fallacy of the Corinthian Church was their insistence that unity means uniformity. In other words, since you have the gift of tongues you expect every Christian to speak in tongues. Since you have the gift of prophecy you expect every Christian to prophesy. Since you have the gift of teaching you expect everyone to be able to teach. Paul says that this is a doctrinal and practical fallacy. It is a doctrinal error because the New Testament does not teach that. It is a practical fallacy because the human body is not made up only of hands. There are many parts to the human body and to the church. In both there is unity in diversity. The fact that you dont have the same spiritual gifts that I have does not make you an inferior Christian and vice versa. Instead of comparing ourselves to one another and giving room to Satan to create disunity, we should use our different gifts, together, to spread the Good News of salvation. Every Christian is significant to Christ and His church. Every Christian is a plus in the kingdom of God.

III. BAPTISM WITH THE SPIRIT: THE UNIFYING WORK OF GOD VV. 13-14

The New Testament does not teach or command Christians to be baptized with the Spirit. Nowhere in the NT are Christians subsequent to the Day of Pentecost said to be baptized with the Spirit. Pentecost was the anointing and fulfillment of the prophecy of the baptism with the Spirit. Since Pentecost the Holy Spirit is available for all who repent and believe and are baptized into Christ. On the Day of Pentecost the 3000 who repented and were baptized received the forgiveness of sin and the gift of the Holy Spirit. The 3000 converts were not to wait for the Holy Spirit as the 120 had waited. Why? Because the waiting is over. Pentecost has already come and the Holy Spirit is here. Today too, Christians are not told to wait for the Spirit. Neither are we told to pray for the baptism with the Spirit. For we are already baptized with the Spirit (v. 13). The original disciples were told to wait for the coming of the Spirit, but this was before Pentecost. Ever since Pentecost there has been no need for waiting meetings for the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Why do you wait for a Person who is already here? Why do you look for something that is already in your possession? The baptism with the Spirit is our Christian initiation. It is our starting point as Christians, not our goal. The moment you trusted Jesus Christ, you were saved. When you received Jesus Christ as your Lord and personal Savior, you were baptized with the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The key passage in all of the New Testament on The Baptism with the Holy Spirit is 1 Corinthians 12:13. The baptism with the Holy Spirit is defines as the imperceptible work of God by which the believing and repentant sinner is placed by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ at the moment of conversion. If you are saved, you received the Spirits baptism, because the baptism is what happens at the moment of your salvation when the Holy Spirit places you in the body of Christ, you got all of the Spirit there is for you to get. The real question is this: Does the Spirit have all of you? Now lets analyze the text (v. 13). Notice the word all, it is inclusiveall believers not some but all Christians. The phrase, were all baptized is in the aorist tense. It describes something that happened in a definite point of time in the past. Not only is the verb baptized an aorist tense stating something that happened in the past, but it is also used in a passive sense. In other words, the subject is being acted upon. You did not baptize yourself. Whether water or spiritual baptism you dont baptize yourself. Someone does it for you. Here Jesus is the baptizer and the Holy Spirit is the element into which the object (thus Christians) is baptized.

Notice the phrase, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free. The Holy Spirit baptism removes racial, ethical and social barriers that exist among people. The Holy Spirits baptism transcends racial and social distinctions. In Christ, Jews, Greeks, slaves, or free have equal significance. Therefore, the common life in the Spirit has eliminated the significance of the old distinctions hence we have become one body. We dont lose our individual identities, but we have an overriding oneness in Christ.

And we were all made to drink of one Spirit simply means that the same Holy Spirit completely fills our innermost beings. We were all made to drink of one Spirit is synonymous with the first statement, For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body. All Christians have been saturated with one Spirit (John 4). In verse 14, Paul is saying that although the Spirits baptism unites us in Christ, however, we are also diverse. Diversity is no accidental attribute of the body. It is of its very essence. No one member is to be equated with the body. It takes many members to make up one body. The feet or the head alone do not make up the human body. Every aspect of the human body is important, though each of them performs a different function. We have different interests and gifts, but we have a common goal as Christians, and that is to serve Christ, live for Him, and bring glory to Him. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is indeed the universal work of Christ. It doesnt matter what your tradition might say. It doesnt matter what your denomination might say. It doesnt matter what your mom, dad, or aunt might say. It doesnt matter what the preacher on TV might say. It is therefore wrong to ask someone, have you been baptized with, in, or, by the Holy Spirit. What matters is this: have you put your trust in Jesus Christ? Have you received Him as your Lord and personal Savior? If you have then you have been baptized into the family of God. Jim Cymbala, the pastor of Brooklyn Tabernacle Church says, God only has one family. He doesnt have two or three families.

The baptism with the Holy Spirit is an unrepeated work of God. It is unrepeated in the sense that you get it once and you never need it again. There is no text in the New Testament that teaches that you must be baptized with the Holy Spirit. The baptism of the Holy Spirit must always be distinguished from the filling of the Holy Spirit. The baptism with the Spirit happens once, the filling of the Spirit can happen many times. The baptism of the Spirit is a past event, but the filling of the Holy Spirit is a present reality. The baptism with the Spirit is for all believers; the filling of the Spirit is for obedient believers. The baptism of the Spirit is never commanded; the filling of the Spirit is commanded in Scripture (Eph. 5:18; Gal. 5:16, etc.). The baptism with the Holy Spirit is positional truth; the filling of the Holy Spirit is experiential and practical. The baptism with the Holy Spirit places the believer in the body of Christ; the filling of the Spirit enables the believer to live for Christ. The baptism with the Spirit indicates that the Holy Spirit is resident in your life; the filling of the Spirit shows that the Holy Spirit is the president of your life.

There is also a difference between the baptism with the Spirit and the baptism with water. Water baptism is a symbol of which the Spirit baptism is the reality. In other words, when you are saved, we baptize you as a symbol of what has really taken place in your life. The baptism with the Spirit is not the second blessing as some would have us to believe. It is the first blessing never to be repeated. The filling of the Spirit is the second, tenth, twentieth, and hundredth blessings.

Let me use this illustration in closing. Have you ever watched a movie or television drama where someone is placed in the witness protection program? Somebody who has agreed to witness for the prosecution is told, If you bring testimony against this guy in the Mafia (or whoever might be), we will take it upon ourselves to protect you from harm. Here is the way it is supposed to work: The witness is taken out of his environment and placed in a totally new environment. He is given a new name, a new house, a new job, and a new identity. Yes, he still has the same voice. He still has the same body and the same personal characteristics. But his whole identity has been changed. He has been placed in an entirely new environment.

That is what happened to you when you received salvation. That is Gods witness protection program. He picked you up out of where you were, and He set you down in a whole new environment, under His protection. That new environment is called the body of Christ. Therefore, if you have made Jesus the Savior and Lord of your life, you most certainly have the baptism with the Holy Spirit. You have it! And you have it forever, never to lose it. Therefore, live your life victoriously for Christ and do not let anyone put you down.
Panelists for Joy FM's Ghana Connect programme Friday have unanimously dismissed calls by legislators of Ghana's Parliament for a better condition of service as "slothful."

The discussants which include Fellow at IMANI Ghana, Isidor Kpotufe, Policy analyst, Patrick Stephenson and law student of Mountcrest University College, Elvis Ampadu wondered why the Members of Parliament (MPs) would be asking for more when the nation is already outspending taxpayers' money on them.

The 'appalling' condition of service legislators enjoy came up during the last sitting of Parliament when leader of Volta Caucus Joseph Amenuwode read a tribute for the late Hohoe North MP, Prince Jacob Ahiakpor.

There was a chorus in the House that the life of an MP after the experience of Parliament is unspeakable and one that casts a slur on the country. They want Ghanaians to prevail on the Executive arm of government to improve their benefits.

Former legislator and labor expert Austin Gamey contributing to the programme said with the exception of few retired MPs who are working because of their expertise, the rest are languishing in squalor.

He advocated for a new condition of service package which would ensure that MPs make SSNIT contribution. This arrangement he believes would help former MPs live a comfortable life. But the panelists, who cut across the various population segment of Ghana disagreed.

Mr Stephenson advanced a radical opinion saying MPs should be blamed for if they are unable to live a comfortable life after they vacate the House.

Mr Ampadu who had studied Political Science at the University of Ghana and has played a key role in the Ghanaian student front held a moderate view yet strong. He wants the MPs to learn how to manage the benefits they receive as a legislators in the country.

Listen to full Audio below:



Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
Perth (Australia) (AFP) - Dean Elgar and JP Duminy guided South Africa into a commanding position on the third day of the opening Test against Australia in Perth Saturday.

At tea on the third day the visitors were 295 for three in their second innings, an overall lead of 293 with seven wickets in hand.

Elgar was unbeaten on 112, but Duminy fell to the last ball before tea for 141, the pair adding 250 for the third wicket after the Proteas lost two early second innings wickets late on the second day.

Duminy chased a wide ball from Peter Siddle (2-35) and got a fine edge, being given out on a decision review after umpire Aleem Dar had turned down the Australian appeal.

The left-hander had faced 225 balls, hitting 20 fours and one six.

Both batsmen made their Test debuts at the WACA Ground and the pair each notched their fifth Test centuries between lunch and tea.

For Elgar, it would have been particularly sweet as he was dismissed for a pair on debut in 2012.

At tea he had faced 281 balls, hitting 14 fours and one six, reaching triple figures with a lovely cover drive from the bowling of Nathan Lyon.

Duminy and Elgar had few problems with an Australian attack which appeared to wilt in the heat, with first innings destroyer Mitchell Starc struggling with his control and looking little like the player who claimed four wickets on the opening day.

Starc, in his first Test since a nasty leg injury and coming off a limited preparation, bowled a host of wayward deliveries and grew increasingly frustrated as the day wore on.

His woes were compounded when he misjudged a high ball at mid-on when Elgar was 81 and failed to get a hand to the difficult chance.

The South Africans will be one bowler down in the Australian second innings, with champion quick Dale Steyn expected to be out for at least six months due to a shoulder problem which is likely to require surgery.

South Africa's J.P. Duminy (left) and Dean Elgar leave the ground during the first Test against Australia in Perth, on November 5, 2016

However, they will also be encouraged by some inconsistent bounces on the third day as the pitch started to deteriorate.

That they could be in such a strong position was remarkable given they appeared to be all but out of the match 24 hours earlier.

After winning the toss and being dismissed for 242, the South Africans appeared certain to be facing a massive first innings deficit when Australia cruised to 158 for none before lunch on day two, but the home side then collapsed in stunning fashion to make just 244.
Nairobi (AFP) - "The dream becomes reality", "Our son, our hope": the headlines in the Kenyan press in 2008 captured pride and excitement after the election of Barack Obama.

Eight years later, enthusiasm for the outgoing president has faded on a continent that he is accused of forsaking.

The election of the first black president of the United States on November 4, 2008 sparked scenes of jubilation in Kenya, the homeland of Obama's father. A public holiday was declared in honour of his victory.

There were widespread hopes that Obama would do much for Africa, but as he prepares to hand over to either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, he is accused of neglecting the continent.

"Africa had unrealistic expectations towards Obama given his origins," said Aly-Khan Satchu, a Kenyan economic analyst. "Especially during his first term, Obama was less involved in Africa" than his predecessor George W. Bush.

The election of US President Barack Obama sparked scenes of jubilation in Kenya, but now he is accused of neglecting the African continent

"People judged him very harshly during his first mandate because he didn't do much for Africa," said Liesl Louw Vaudran, an analyst at the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies think tank.

Satchu attributes this to the US recession and the need for Obama "to show the American public that he was the president of the USA".

"During his second term, I think he tried to address this issue and he did more for Africa," Satchu said.

Obama slow to engage

Obama was slow to engage in Africa, a continent far from the heart of US interests, preferring to make the Asia-Pacific region the centrepiece of his foreign and economic policy.

Unlike George W. Bush, whose PEPFAR programme has helped save the lives of millions of Africans with HIV/AIDS, Obama has launched no transformative initiatives on the continent. His 2013 "Power Africa" plan has fallen well short of its promise of doubling access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa, generating just 400 megawatts (MW) of the 30,000 planned by 2030.

Then US senator Barack Obama visits Nairobi in 2006 during the second leg of an Africa tour that took him to Chad and Djibouti

Obama's African appearances have also been limited. There was a brief stopover in Ghana in 2009 -- where he declared, "Africa doesn't need strongmen, it needs strong institutions" -- and then a tour of Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania in 2013, followed by a visit to Ethiopia and Kenya in 2015.

On each occasion he urged Africans to take their destiny into their own hands, and sought openings for US companies to invest in the continent.

He has moved to substitute a traditional aid-based policy with one of more equal trade-based partnership, with some success: African exports to the US, excluding oil, increased by nearly a half between 2009 and 2015.

Sarah Obama, a grand mother of US President Barack Obama, sings and dances with villagers in November, 2008 after Obama won the US presidency

Security and counter-terrorism remained a key priority for US efforts. Obama "expanded considerably the US military presence in Africa," said Achille Mbembe of South Africa's Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research. Nevertheless, success in the fight against jihadist groups such as the Shabaab in Somalia and Boko Haram in Nigeria has been elusive.

Similarly, efforts to foster democracy have faltered with a string of disputed or deficient elections and a growing trend among African leaders of clinging to power in defiance of constitutions.

'Arrogant... racist'

African frustration with Obama has found resonance even in his own family, with half-brother Malik enthusiastically campaigning for Trump on Twitter, and even accepting an invitation to attend the final televised presidential debate in Las Vegas last month.

African frustration with President Barack Obama has found resonance in his own family, with half-brother Malik (R) enthusiastically campaigning for Donald Trump on Twitter

Malik's position is not, however the norm, and many Africans readily denounce Trump's views.

"Hillary Clinton, she is someone with a vision but this guy -- how do you call him? -- he is arrogant and a racist, he can be angry and even start more wars," said Benjamin Namkobe, a 31-year-old motorcycle taxi driver in Nairobi.

Neither candidate has made much mention of Africa in their major speeches since being named their party's candidate, but this is no surprise, said J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington.

"Africa largely does not figure into the electoral dynamics of the United States," said Pham, adding that "foreign policy in general" takes a back seat.

He pointed out that US policy towards Africa "tends to enjoy bipartisan support", meaning it does not represent a point of differentiation in debates.

It also means little change is to be expected, whoever wins.
The Ghana Police Service says it will devise stringent security measures to monitor the activities of vigilante groups during the general elections.

The Service has declared its commitment to also ensure that heavily built men, otherwise referred to as macho men, are arrested if they unlawfully interfere with the electoral process.

The Director General of Operations of the Ghana Police, COP Christian Tetteh Yohuno, made these remarks when the top hierarchy of the service interacted with two body building groups in Accra.

He said the Police Service will be vigilant during the elections, to ensure that the activities of vigilante groups are thoroughly checked.

We met all the leadership of the political parties at a forum in Ada, and they all signed a communique saying that, they are not going to give any backing to any vigilante group. We have denounced the use of vigilante groups. If you are following them to cause trouble, it means that whatever problem you create, you will face it.

The Attorney General has made it clear that, activities of vigilante groups are illegal; so don't give yourself out to any politician to misuse you. When you get yourself into trouble; the laws will deal with you, so send this message to all your people, and tell them that the Police and other security services will not sit down for any vigilante group to cause trouble in this country.

IGP warns vigilante groups

The Inspector General of Police (IGP), John Kudalor, had earlier cautioned political parties against forming vigilante groups ahead of the November polls.

According to him, the police will act professionally before, during and after the November general elections.

Our personnel have been warned of the possible negative implication of taking a partisan position in the discharge of their duties hence will not hesitate to take action against violent groups belonging to the political parties; because professionalism is our watchword.

As a result, I will entreat you to avoid joining or making use of vigilante groups since these groups are illegal and alien to our laws, he added.



By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana

Follow @EfeAnsah


Bailable warrants were issued against five top officials over alleged trespassing into Rajmahal hotel complex and razing down heritage structure.

By Rohit Parihar : In a set back to the state government and Jaipur Development Authority (JDA) Metropolitan Magistrate Number 11, Jaipur issued bailable warrants against five officials on a plea filed by Jaipur royalty whose Diya Kumari is ruling BJP MLA, against their alleged tresspassing into Rajmahal Complex and razing down heritage structure located there on August 24.

Shikhar Aggarwal who has been removed as JDA commissioner on November 3, had led a thousand personnel to take control of what JDA claimed was its land which royalty never disputed and lock main entrance to the palace, which royalty insisted has been its following a court decree. Royalty also called the action a contempt of court in locking the gate and razing a heritage structure.

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Aggarwal and then JDA secretary Pawan Arora who too has been moved out yesterday, Rahul Jain, IPS officer and two other officials have been asked to appear before the court on November 25 against a bailable bond of Rs 25,000.

They face charges under IPC 341,447,506,166,167 and 120 B.

The government subsequently opened the gate a day after which a local court asked JDA to rebuild the structure at its cost. Later, on JDA's appeal, Rajasthan High Court stayed court order in as much as rebuilding the structure but allowed the main gate to remain open.

The high court also has asked Aggarwal and principal secretary urban development and housing Mukesh Sharma to be present in court and file their affidavits later this month on why the gate was closed and later opened.

Also read:

JDA seals main entrance of Jaipur Palace, shocks all with drastic action



--- ENDS ---
The Electoral Commission's appeal to the Supreme Court following the High Court ruling that quashed the disqualification of the Progressive People's Party (PPP) Flagbearer from the Presidential race may not have the desired trickled down effect, a private legal practitioner, Akoto Ampaw, has cautioned.

He has indicated that, it would be wrong for the Commission to assume that a successful application at the Supreme Court would resolve the five other lawsuits it is saddled with, following its disqualification of 12 presidential aspirants.

Speaking on Eyewitness News, Mr. Ampaw said it is erroneous for the EC to assume that sending Nduom's application to the High Court; the determination would resolve the other pending applications.

He also explained that, assuming without admitting the case that was an error on the face of the record by the judge and therefore the Supreme Court were to quash the decision of the high court on that basis, it would not affect the other applications, the other applicants.

So that decision would not be authority enough for the applications that are pending in the High Court, compelling the High Court judges to comply with the Supreme Court decision, he added.

ECs legal tussles

Mr. Ampaw's comments follow his letter to the EC , demanding answers to seven questions following his fears that the election timetable on December 7 may be compromised.

His concerns stem from the Commission's ongoing legal tussles with political parties whose presidential aspirants were disqualified from participating in the elections because of errors on their nomination forms.

The EC recently decided to head to the Supreme Court to overturn a High Court judgment quashing the disqualification of the PPPs Flagbearer, Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom.

It is also fighting lawsuits from the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), the National Democratic Party (NDP), the Independent People's Party (IPP) and the People's National Convention (PNC).

The parties ostensibly want the court to compell the EC to allow them to correct the mistakes on their presidential nomination forms. The PPP and the All Peoples Congress (APC) have been succesfull in that regard.

Allowing parties to correct errors the way foward

Mr. Ampaw contended that, the only way that the determination in the Supreme Court would resolve all the outer pending applications, is when the Supreme Court dismisses the EC's application, and the EC then comes to reason and says all of you come and make the correction. But if the EC wants to be combative even if the Supreme Court dismisses its application, it may still continue with the pending applications.



By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Three passengers who were said to be travelling from Frankadua in the Eastern Region towards Juapong in the Volta Region were on Wednesday burnt to death at Nudu in the latter region on board a taxi.

The fire reportedly ignited when the cab in which they were travelling moved over a rump.

According to the police, the driver of the cab sustained serious burns before he was able to escape.

He was subsequently rushed to hospital for treatment.

Three persons who occupied the back seat could however not escape and were therefore trapped to death.

There was no fire tender immediately available and the public looked on helplessly.

The names of the victims were not readily available at the time of filing this report.

 GNA


Former Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Martin A.B.K Amidu, has filed an application at the Supreme Court, praying it to allow him to examine National Democratic Congress (NDC) bankroller, Alfred Agbesi Woyome, in the controversial GH51.2 million judgment debt paid to him.

I have this morning, 4th November, 2016 filed an application at the Supreme Court for leave to examine the Judgment Debtor as the citizen public interest Plaintiff in favour of whom the case was decided for the Republic of Ghana, Mr. Amidu declared in a statement issued in Accra yesterday.

Mr. Amidu's action follows a move by the Attorney General to discontinue an oral examination of Mr. Woyome, despite serving an earlier notice.

The notice of discontinuance stated in part, Please take notice that the 1st Defendant Judgment Creditor [Attorney General] herein has this day [26th day of October, 2016] discontinued the present application to orally examine the 3rd Defendant Judgment Debtor [Alfred Agesi Woyome] with liberty to reapply.

The Supreme Court in 2014 ordered Mr. Woyome to pay back GH51 million fraudulently taken from the state, after Mr Martin Amidu had challenged the legality of the payment in court.

He also accused government of being reluctant in enforcing the Supreme Court's judgment ordering it to retrieve the amount from Mr. Woyome.

I have examined the circumstances surrounding the government's reluctance to enforce the judgment and orders of the court with the seriousness which the matter deserves. I share the view expressed by objective and reasonable members of the public that because the government was the 1st Defendant/Respondent against whom the Supreme Court made declarations of unconstitutional conduct in paying the judgment debt to Alfred Agbesi Woyome, the government has been pretending for purely political reasons at each turn to take steps to enforce the judgment and orders of the court only to deliberately abort them.

I agree that the government's objective has always been to create the appearance and impression in the minds of the unsuspecting public that it is complying with the enforcement orders. The Attorney General's latest application to discontinue the government's application to examine its financier, Alfred Agbesi Woyome, is one more such tricks to deceive the public and obstruct the course of justice, he added.



Presidential Intervention

Mr Amidu also alleged that the Attorney General, Marietta Brew Appiah-Opong, withdrew her application to examine Woyome because President Mahama personally gave an order.

He said the AG backtracked in order to protect some National Democratic Congress (NDC) officials, who benefited from the GH51 million fraudulent payout.

In my application I filed today [November 4, 2016], I made use of information provided to me that '.when the Judgment Debtor was served with the order of the court, he went to inform the NDC of which he is a member and financier; and the incumbent government, in particular the Attorney General and the President, personally that should the order applied for by the government for his examination be not discontinued, he will have no option at his appearance at the court than to disclose truthfully and faithfully to the court on oath the names of all NDC and government beneficiaries of the judgment debt, which was paid to him as a result of the unconstitutional conduct of the Attorney General declared in the decision of this Court.'

I have also stated the information available to me and my belief that the NDC and the government realizing the power of this court pursuant to its order granted for the examination of the 3rd Defendant/Respondent/Judgment Debtor to order the judgment debtor or officer to produce any books or documents in the possession of the judgment debtor relevant to these questions at the time and place appointed for the examination took to panic resulting in the President instructing the Attorney General upon her own advice to him, to discontinue the application for examination of the judgment debtor which the court had already ordered, Mr. Amidu averred.

The allegation comes on the back of claims by pressure group, OccupyGhana, that the AG gave up on the case in order to protect Woyome's accomplices, who belong to the governing NDC.


Omanhene of the Mpohor Traditional Area in the Western Region, Osabarima Kwaw Entsie II, has assured the flag bearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, that the chiefs and people of Mpohor would support his government to succeed if he wins the December 7 presidential election.

According to the traditional ruler, the late Stephen Krakue, one of the founding fathers of the NPP, hailed from the Mpohor area and that the people have always supported the 'elephant' party.

It was the late Stephen Krakue who initiated most of the development projects in this area when he was a member of Busias government. The projects included schools, clinic and pipe-borne water, he disclosed.

He stated, So the people of Mpohor are poised to support the next NPP government to implement its intended policies and even others the party has not mentioned, if it wins the December 7 polls.

Osabarima Kwaw Entsie stated this when Nana Akufo-Addo paid a courtesy call on him at his palace at Mpohor as part of Nana Addos three-day tour of the Western Region.

This is the second time Nana is touring the region ahead of the December 7 presidential and parliamentary elections.

He has already toured the northern part of the region.

The chief commended the NPP standard bearer for starting the second phase of his three-day campaign in the region from Mpohor and also seeking the blessings of the traditional rulers at the palace.

He noted that the people of Mpohor consider the NPPs standard bearer as a brave person, who is capable of winning the 2016 presidential poll.

He appealed to Nana Addo not to forget the people of Mpohor when the NPP emerges victorious in the poll.

He urged the next NPP government to help complete a state-of-the-art community centre, which was started by a former NPP MP for the area, Evans Amoah in honour of the late Stephen Krakue.

Nana Akufo-Addo was grateful to the chiefs and people of Mpohor for the warm welcome accorded him and promised that the next NPP government would never forget the people.

He told the traditional rulers at the palace that he was in the area to introduce himself to them and seek their permission to campaign in the area.

Prior to addressing a mammoth rally at the communitys park, the NPP flag bearer and his entourage had visited the tomb of the late Stephen Krakue where he laid a wreath on behalf of the party and interacted briefly with family members.

Commercial activities at the Mpohor area came to a standstill due to the presence of Nana Akufo-Addo and his campaign team in the area. Nana Addo was mobbed by residents who abandoned their commercial activities.

The residents also praised the previous NPP administration for the construction of some roads, health and educational facilities in the area.

They also stressed the need for all registered voters in the community, who have become impoverished under the National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration, to vote massively for the NPP to ensure prosperity in Ghana.

The residents bemoaned the fact that most social intervention programmes like the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) introduced by the erstwhile NPP administration under President Kufuor had collapsed.

We are hopeful that the NPP would resuscitate the scheme to benefit all Ghanaians when given the mandate, they indicated.

There was excitement when Nana Addo and his entourage finally got to the Mpohor Park to address hundreds of residents and party supporters.

Nana Addo told the gathering that all the policies of the NPP contained in the partys 2016 manifesto would be implemented to benefit all Ghanaians.

He appealed to the electorate to vote massively for him and the NPP Member of Parliament (MP) for Mpohor, Alex Agyekum, to ensure effective development next year.

Radio Interview

Touching on National Farmers Day, Nana Addo praised the hardworking Ghanaian farmers for working hard to produce the food for consumption and industrial use in spite of the numerous difficulties.

Speaking in an interview with Takoradi-based Skyy Power FM earlier, Nana Addo assured farmers that the next NPP government would implement policies that would improve their lives.

From Emmanuel Opoku, Mpohor


Former Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Martin A.B.K. Amidu, has descended heavily on the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), Charlotte Osei, describing her as 'incompetent' and 'inexperienced.'

He has therefore, called on Ghanaians to watch her every step during this election.

Mr. Amidu, popularly called Citizen Vigilante due to his exploits in the fight against corruption, also said the EC boss was appointed by the NDC government to fulfill what he called a 'rigging agenda,' and said Mrs. Osei is becoming dangerous for the country.

According to the crusader, the EC boss does not look like a person who is capable of supervising a peaceful, free and fair general election on December 7  which is about a month away  due to her 'intransigence' and 'arrogance.'

Currently, there are a flurry of civil suits against the EC over the disqualification of some presidential aspirants; and many have expressed the fear that it might disrupt the timetable for the election, but the EC has insisted that there is no cause for alarm.

The election date of 7th December, 2016 is just about a month away and the Commissioner has the impudence to tell citizen voters that she is capable of conducting the election within two weeks, forgetting that her pride, intransigence and arrogance are already depriving the aspiring candidates of political parties and others who may eventually qualify to be on the ballot of their constitutional right to equal opportunity and time to canvass the electorate for their votes before the election, Mr. Amidu said in a statement he issued on Tuesday.

The Electoral Commissioner does not appear to understand that the letter and spirit of the 1992 Constitution on the representation of the people enjoins her to ensure that every political party and its aspiring presidential candidate or an individual aspirant has equal time and opportunity to canvass for the votes of the electorate, he said.

Mr Amidu said the statement made by the EC Chair to the media to the effect that the commission was going to supervise a successful general election, notwithstanding the flurry of suits demonstrates once more the incompetence, inexperience and utter lack of understanding of the letter and the spirit of the 1992 Constitution mandating the Commissioner to supervise the organization of a free, transparent and fair multiparty presidential election.

He posited, Printing ballot papers for the presidential election means nothing to the rights of a political party and its candidate or individual aspiring candidates and their supporters who might have been deprived of an equal, fair and transparent right to participate in the electioneering campaign 'intended to influence the composition and policies of the Government' to be elected.

According to Mr. Amidu, Every citizen has a fundamental guaranteed right to join a political party and to participate freely with that political party in shaping the political will of the people, to disseminate information on political ideas and other programmes and to sponsor candidates to the office of the President of Ghana.

He said such a guaranteed right is rendered nugatory and pointless when candidates have only two weeks to canvass the electorate for support for the election on 7th December, 2016, adding, There can be no free, transparent and fair elections when any of the disqualified aspiring candidates and any political party sponsoring them have their names added to the ballot more than three weeks belatedly, because the Commissioner's preferred and approved candidates would have had an unequal advantage over them in the contest for the presidency.

Mr. Amidu indicated, I have already said elsewhere that this Commissioner was appointed with a rigging agenda. Let us as citizens defend the Constitution by watching her every step during this election.

By William Yaw Owusu


An Accra High Court yesterday  for the second time  ordered the Electoral Commission (EC) to reverse its decision of disqualifying Hassan Ayariga, presidential candidate of the All People's Congress (APC), from contesting in the December presidential poll.

The court, presided over by Justice Barbara Tetteh-Charway, said there are procedures to be followed before a candidate could be disqualified.

Ruling

She said although the commission saw 30 mistakes on the presidential forms of Ayariga and identified same to him for correction, the EC should have hastened slowly.

In the view of the court, the argument by the EC on the face of it sounds logical but it's flawed, adding that in the present case, things looked far from perfect.

The judge was emphatic that the commission failed to notify the applicant who stood nominated, before his disqualification, indicating that the EC acted unfairly.



Rush

The court posited that the EC should have been patient and act in a manner that would enhance the integrity of the process.

Ms Tetteh-Charway said the EC could not be said to have acted fairly, especially when it did not give the affected party the chance; and ordered the commission to give Ayariga the opportunity to amend his forms and submit them.

Maxwell Korbina Loghan, lawyer for Ayariga, was asking the court, among other things, to order the EC to afford his client the time to correct the mistakes as appeared on the face of his nomination papers and to add his name on the presidential ballot paper for the election.

Thaddeus Sory, lawyer for the EC in opposing the motion, said the commission offered Ayariga the opportunity to correct the errors prior to the submission of his nomination forms.

He stated that the EC spotted over 30 errors on the nomination forms of Ayaraiga.



Nduom's Fate

In a related development, the Supreme Court has set Monday, October 7, 2016 to deliver its ruling in the matter brought before it by the EC.

The commission is praying the apex court to quash the high court ruling ordering it to allow Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, presidential aspirant of the Progressive People's Party (PPPP), to contest in the December elections.

The EC had run to the court days after the lower court had quashed its decision to disqualify Dr Nduom.

The high court, presided over by Justice Eric Kyei Baffour, held that the EC must allow Dr. Nduom to correct the mistakes on his nomination papers and submit them.

However, a seven-member panel of Supreme Court, presided over by Justice Sophia Adinyira, ordered lawyers for the parties  Sory for the EC and J. Ayikoi Otoo for the PPP  to file their various statements of case by close of yesterday.

Mr Sory had told the court that he would rely entirely on the statement of case as filed.

Other judges on the panel are Anin-Yeboah, P. Baffoe-Bonnie, Vida Akoto-Bamfo, Anthony A. Benin, Yaw Apaw and Gabriel Pwamang.



Edward Mahama

Meanwhile, another high court has fixed November 10 to deliver its ruling in the case filed by Dr. Edward Mahama, presidential aspirant of the Peoples National Convention (PNC), contesting his disqualification from the presidential election.

He is among 12 others disqualified from the presidential race after the EC had detected various anomalies on their nomination forms.

The court, presided over by Justice Afua Norvisi Aryine, said the court had received the statements of case of both parties.

Dr. Raymond Atuguba, lawyer for Dr. Mahama, described the disqualification of his client by the EC as unreasonable.

He said the commission had per its action also violated six different human rights of his client.

Mr Thaddeus Sory, who opposed the motion, urged the court to dismiss it, saying it was erroneous.

By Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson

[email protected]




A 93-year-old man, who was adjudged the Overall Best Farmer in the Ashaiman Municipality for the year 2016, has expressed worried about the indiscriminate sale of farmlands in the area by the relevant authorities.

He therefore urged the Ashaiman Traditional Council and the Municipal Assembly to reserve land for farming.

Alhaji Abdul Malik Yaba, who rears cattle, sheep, Guinea fowls, donkey, has 10-acre maize farm and four-acre mango plantation.

He made the appeal when he was crowned the Overall Best Farmer for Ashaiman at the 32nd Farmers' Day celebration.

For his prize, he took home a Wellington boot, four cutlasses, fridge, television set, wax print, knapsack sprayer and a certificate.

A total of 11 farmers received prizes during the programme.

The citation accompanying the award stated that the father of 27 started farming at the age of 25 when he was a cowboy.

At a tender age, he stated trading in livestock in Burkina Faso, Kumasi and Ashaiman. He currently employs seven young workers on his farm and also offers financial support to onion farmers.

Ibrahim Baidoo, the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) of Ashaiman, in a keynote address, stated that Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has supplied ASHMA with crop seeds worth GH204,360 for onward distribution to farmers whose fields were destroyed by floods in June 2015.

He said that the Ashaiman Municipal Assembly (ASHMA) intends to attract more youth into the farming through the establishment of Farmer Service Centers to provide tractor services for farmers.

The farmers are only to register at the service centers where they would be issued with identity cards to benefit from the service.

Mr. Baidoo sounded a warning to unscrupulous people who smuggle fertilizers to neighbouring countries to sell.

Let me hasten to state that the law would not spare anybody who indulges in such nefarious practices in the municipality. When caught, they would be dealt with severely to serve as deterrent to others.

On his part, Nii Annan Adjor I, Regent of Ashaiman, who chaired the occasion, assured the farmers that land would be reserved purposely for farming.

According to him, a committee comprising the Assembly, Traditional Council and the farmers would be set up to ensure that farmers have adequate land to farm.

From Vincent Kubi, Ashaiman




The Accra Regional police have apprehended two men who are said to have specialized in attacking drivers and passengers while on board vehicles.

The suspects are Bashiru Amadu 21, a scrap dealer and Richmond Yahaya, 23-year-old trader.

The alleged modus operandi of the two is attacking their victims while the traffic is moving slowly and escape to the nearest bush or slum area.

Many passengers have reportedly had their bags, mobile phones and monies snatched through this means by the suspects.

However, luck was said to have eluded Bashiru Amadu and Richmond Yahaya when the police apprehended them in the act at Madina, Accra, with the help of some passersby.

Confirming the story to DAILY GUIDE, ASP Effia Tenge, spokesperson to the regional police, said the two suspects often operated in and around Madina.

She said on October 22, 2016, at about 7:30 pm while there was traffic jam at Madina, the two suspects conspired and snatched a mobile phone of a passenger who was receiving a call in the front seat of a vehicle and took to their heels.

The victim raised an alarm and with the help of some police personnel and passersby, they were arrested.

The said mobile phone was retrieved from them upon their arrest.

Police investigations revealed that the suspects had been plying their trade in the area for some time now.

What they do is to walk aimlessly along the road looking for a victim to attack, ASP Tenge posited.

According to her when the two suspected criminals see victims in vehicles with their bags on their laps and the glass rolled down, they attack the person while traffic is in motion slowly and run to a nearby bush or kiosk.

By the time the victim gets out of the vehicle to chase them, he would have vanished into thin air.

She claimed lots of victims had been attacked through this means.

The two men have been taken to court and have been remanded into police custody to reappear on November 8, 2016.

By Linda Tenyah-Ayettey

( [email protected] )


Rome (AFP) - Two Italians and a Canadian who were kidnapped in the south of conflict-torn Libya in September have been released and flown to Italy, the Italian government announced Saturday.

The Italians, Danilo Calonego, 66, and Bruno Cacace, 56, and Canadian Frank Poccia were freed during the night "due to the effective cooperation with local Libyan authorities," it said in a statement.

The three men were kidnapped on September 19 in Ghat, close to the Algerian border, where they worked for an Italian company that carried out maintenance at the airport. An armed group blocked their vehicle and took them hostage.

Italy's foreign ministry said the three arrived in Italy at around 3am (0200 GMT), but gave no details on their state of health. It was also not clear when Poccia might return to Canada.

Rome prosecutors, who had opened an investigation into a suspected terrorist kidnapping, were to speak to the two Italians later Saturday.

Several Italian companies are present in Libya, a former colony, and their expat staff have often fallen prey to kidnappers in recent years.

In July 2015, four Italians working for a construction company were kidnapped near an oil field operated by Italian giant ENI in the region of Mellitah, west of Tripoli.

Two of the hostages were killed more than six months into their ordeal, likely in clashes between jihadists and local militiamen.

The other two were freed in March this year, in a raid on Islamic State group hideouts near the capital.

Chaos has engulfed Libya since the 2011 NATO-backed ouster of dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
Vice President Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, has yet again defended government's decision to scrap allowances for trainee nurses in the country.

According to him, any attempt to restore the allowances will have negative consequences on the quality of education provided to trainee nurses.

Speaking at the Nalerigu Nursing and Midwifery College while on a campaign tour of the Northern Region, Mr. Amissah Arthur explained that, the decision to discontinue the allowances for trainee nurses, has yielded positive results, including an increase in enrollment of students.

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) government in 2015, scrapped the trainee nurses' allowance, arguing that it was to allow the various nursing training institutions admit more trainees.

Although some trainees challenged government and called on it to rescind its decision, government has remained adamant, claiming the decision is in the best interest of country.

Hoever, President Mahama recently announced that government would pay GH150 each in allowance to some 34,500 nursing students, per the recommendations of a committee set to look into the matter.

But the leadership of the trainee nurses said the amount was woefully inadequate as it was short of about GH250 of what they had been receiving previously.

Kwesi Amissah-Arthur while at the Nalerigu Nursing and Midwifery College said, We want to invest some of the resources of this country for the future. If I stand here and just say that the alawa has been reintroduced, you will be happy and then we will go home; but then it will have an implication for the futurebecause it means that the school blocks that we want to build for the growing population, we may not be able to do it.

The allowance system had been eliminated with trainees now having access to the Students Loan Scheme.

'We'll restore nursing and teacher trainees allowances'

Meanwhile, the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), has said it will fully restore the scrapped allowances for trainee nurses and teachers, if voted into office in the upcoming elections.



By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Amit Shah also accused other political parties of doing politics over the triple talaq issue even as the matter is pending before the court.

By Supriya Bhardwaj: BJP president Amit Shah on Saturday said that the practice of triple talaq should be abolished. He was speaking at the flagging off event of first of the four parivartan yatras that the BJP planned to undertake in the UP ahead of assembly elections.

Launching the election campaign of his party at Saharanpur in western UP, Shah said, "Customs like Triple Talaq should be abolished. Muslim women should be given equal status."

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POLITICS OVER TRIPLE TALAQ



Amit Shah further said that other parties are doing politics over the issue of triple talaq. Shah's comment has come at a time when the matter is being heard in the supreme court, where the Centre submitted an affidavit arguing against triple talaq.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also spoken against triple talaq saying that in the name of tradition lives of Muslim women could not destroyed.



READ: Exclusive: Will never form government with BJP's help, says Mayawati

BJP ONLY 'GUNDA-FREE' PARTY

Kicking off his party's election campaign in UP, BJP president Amit Shah said that SP and BSP sheltered politicians with criminal background. He said only BJP is 'gunda-free' party in UP while flagging off parivartan yatra.

Amit Shah said that SP and BSP ruined the state in the fifteen years of their alternate rules. Shah said that despite chief minister Akhilesh Yadav's claim no development took place in UP under his government.

ALL ABOUT PARIVARTAN YATRA



The flagship programme of BJP's Mission 356+, Parivartan Yatra, will also be launched from three other cities Jhansi; Robertsganj and Ballia in next couple of days.

These four yatras will culminate in Lucknow on December 24. These Parivartan yatras will cover a total of 17, 000 km across 403 constituencies of UP.

The highlight of these Yatra's is the seven public meetings that will be addressed by PM Modi. BJP plans to highlight the work done by NDA government through these meetings.



WATCH THE VIDEO HERE:





SLAMS SP, BSP

BJP president slammed SP and BSP accusing them of indulging in corruption and ruining the infrastructure of Uttar Pradesh. He said that the leaders of SP are busy fighting themselves while BSP waited to be benefitted from their family feud.

"Those who were given power to bring development in UP are busy insulting each other. Uncle (UP SP chief Shivpal Yadav) is abusing nephew (UP CM Akhilesh Yadav); nephew is abusing uncle, in turn and Bua (BSP chief Mayawati) is abusing both of them while UP is suffering," Amit Shah said at Shahranpur.

"If Behenji (Mayawati) returns to power, UP will not benefit. Rather 50-60 more statutes will be erected", Shah said. He also raised the issue of Taj Corridor scam and accused Mayawati of bringing in a mafia raj in UP under her government.

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READ: RSS, BJP hold co-ordination meet in Delhi on pro-poor welfare schemes in 5 poll-bound states

"Akhilesh Yadav used to say that Mukhtar Ansari and Afzal Ansari (of Quami Ekta Dal) will not be allowed in SP. Now, what can you (Akhilesh Yadav) say," asked the BJP president.

"Only BJP is gunda-free party in UP. We are laying down the foundation of the upcoming BJP government in UP by launching election campaign from western UP like we did during the Lok Sabha polls," Amit Shah said.

Meanwhile, SP, BSP and Congress have hit back at BJP by stating that the party is indulging in divisive politics.



COUNTERS RAHUL OVER OROP

Speaking on the occasion, Amit Shah accused the opposition of doing politics over suicide of an ex-soldier.

He said, "Rahul only talks about OROP. It was the BJP government implemented the policy which Congress dragged for decades."

"A soldier commits suicide and they are doing politics for vote bank. This is disgusting," Shah said.

MODI TO ADDRESS RALLIES

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The four yatras will converge in Lucknow on December 24 after traversing over 17,000 km. The second parivartan yatra will be launched from Jhansi on November 6 while the third and fourth from Sonbhadra and Balia on November 8 and 9, respectively.

The party has planned 30 rallies of its national leaders. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address six regional meetings.

BJP President Amit Shah will address 10 other rallies. Union Ministers Rajnath Singh and Kalraj Mishra will be the key speakers at 10 meetings each. Uma Bharti will attend six of the public rallies.

SEASON OF YATRAS IN PROGRESS

It is the season of Yatras in poll-bound Uttar Pardesh. Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi's Kisan Yatra followed by UP CM Akhilesh Yadav's Samajhvadi Vijay Rath Yatra and now BJP's Parivartan Yatra. Interestingly, now the comparison of these Yatras is talk of the town in UP. Not just the public, even leaders have started comparing the yatras.

Kairana's MP Hukum Singh during Parivartan Yatra said, "Samajvadi Rath broke down after a while because it was made of corruption. But wait and see our Rath... How fast it will run across the state as it is built of honesty."



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MAHAGATBANDHAN

The political corridors in Lucknow have been abuzz with the possibility of a grand alliance coming up in Uttar Pradesh on the lines of the one that happened in Bihar.

Reacting to these reports, Union Minister Sanjiv Baliyan said, "If other political parties are coming together to fight us, it means BJP's position has strengthened."

UP BJP chief Keshav Prasad Mauriya said that those who are against BJP should come together and fight them. "Akhilesh, Mayawati, Rahul should sit in one bus and campaign against us but Lotus will bloom in UP" he added.



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Presidential hopeful of the Progressive People's Party (PPP), for the December 7 polls, Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, has assured the leadership and members of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), of his party's commitment to job creation when voted into office to govern the country.

Dr. Nduom, who met the leadership of the TUC in Accra to share his party's vision with the Union, said his party when voted, will create jobs for the teeming unemployed youth scattered across the country.

According to him, the only way out for the country to turn its fortunes around was not to rely on empty promises like some other political parties are doing.

We are talking from what we have done in the various sectors of the economy in some communities across Ghana, which we know and believe it will work for the whole country, he said.

The PPP 2016 flagbearer noted that, about 53% of the Ghanaian population is into agriculture, yet that is where poverty is endemic.

A PPP-led government will work hard to eradicate all preventable diseases like malaria to increase productivity in all sectors, he promised.

Answering a question posed to him by a member of the Union on whether Ghana needs the Bretton Woods institutions, especially the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dr. Nduom made it clear that Ghana does not need any of the Bretton Woods institutions before it can thrive.

We do not need anybody from anywhere to come and tell us what to do as a sovereign nation. Ghanaians want the easy way out hence always running to the waiting arms of these multinational institutions anytime there is difficulty, he stressed.

In this regard, he promised that a PPP government under his watch will not succumb to the whims and caprices of the Bretton Woods institutions no matter the situation.

For instance, he cited the examples of China and Korea, and how these countries rejected the Bretton Woods institutions.

However, he said through some sacrifices and dint of hard work by those countries, they are now better off.

See where China and Korea are? This is the kind of decisions we will opt for in order to build our economy, he further stressed.

Secretary General of TUC, Dr. Anthony Yaw Baah, on his part, thanked Dr. Nduom for making time to share with the Union his party's vision, policies and programmes.

He indicated that, the TUC does not do politics, but rather works with governments, and for that matter we are ready to work with any government.

Dr. Baah however wished the PPP flagbearer and the party well in their campaign for the presidency.



By: citifmonline.com/Ghana
A-39-year old herbalist from Ankagyare near Aluku, Mr.Mustapha Awuni has been adjudged the overall best farmer at the 32nd national farmers celebration day at Aiyinasi in the Ellembelle District.

He took home a mini-tractor motor vehicle valued at GHC14,000,10 machetes,a solar lamp,wellington boots,a cloth,6 bags of fertilizers and a T-shirt.

The overall second District best farmer went to Mr.Daniel Boateng who took home a motor cycle,a wellington boot,4 machetes,a knapsack sprayer and a bar of key soap.

In all,24 outstanding farmers in the District received awards in different categories with all other farmers at the awards ground taking home a machete and a bar of soap for their contributions to the development of Agriculture.

This year's celebration,is under the theme,"Agriculture:A Business Response To Economic Growth"Addressing the gallant farmers,the Member of Parliament for Ellembelle,Mr. Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah acknowledged the pivotal role farmers play to the socio-economic development of the nation with its contribution of 40% to the Gross Domestic Product(GDP).

He said to boost farming activities in the area,the Menzezor Agricultural Research Institute would be revived next year adding that the Ellembelle Food Bank initiative which formed part of his manifesto would come into force next year to serve as a buffer stock to farmers.

"The Food Bank would not allow farm produce to go waste as farmers would have market and value for their products",Mr.Buah assured.

Mr. Buah who is also the Minister for Petroleum,said Ellembelle had been chosen as a cocoa producing District hence the construction of the Aiyinasi-Samreboi cocoa growing roads.

He urged farmers to conform to the weather patterns in a bid to reap bumper harvest.He noted with concern that problems such as bush fires and lack of proper fertilizer application as manure to crops was also a major challenge facing farmers.

The MP advised farmers to venture into livestock production as 70% of the product is imported.He however asked farmers to form co-operative unions to access loans to boost farming activities.

The District Director of Agriculture,Mr.Bernard Donkor said government would continue to invest more in the sector to ensure food security and food sufficiency

He said government had embarked upon a pilot project towards the vaccination of livestock to improve the healthy conditions of pigs .He bemoaned that the District could only boast of 3 Agricultural extension officers to inspect farming activities which was a major setback.

An Assistant Director in charge of the Coastal Sustainable Landscape Project,Mr.Emmanuel Ntiwul said his outfit had embarked upon a climate smart vegetable production to ensure that farmers do not apply contaminated chemicals to produce vegetables.

Later in an interview,the District best farmer advised the youth to go into Agriculture to reduce poverty and better their living conditions.
The work of twenty-three (23) farmers in the Sagnarigu district of the northern region were appreciated as part of the 32nd National Farmers Day Celebration in the district.

The farmers includes; District best maize farmer, District best cattle farmer, District best yam farmer, District best youth farmer, Best pig farmer, Best groundnut farmer Best ruminant rarer among others.

The farmers went home with prizes including; cutlasses, Wallanton boots, roofing sheets, Bicycles, processors, insecticides, knapsacks among others.

In his speech, the District Chief Executive or DCE, Alhassan Mohammed Sorogu-doo thanked farmers in the country for their immense contributions to the national development.

" The clock kept tickling and today we have assembled here to commemorate the 32nd anniversary of a unique day in the lives if our farmers who have contributed and keep contributing significantly to sustain our lives through the development of agriculture in particular, and the socioeconomic development of the district and Ghana at large. He stated.

The theme for this year's celebration "Agriculture; a business response to economic growth" according to honourable Mohammed Sorogu-doo was appropriate more especially at this time when agriculture has moved beyond only food but a practice as a business.

He lauded government for it's contributions towards the enhancement of agriculture in the country to the improved technology.

"Ladies and gentlemen, in recent times, the increase of food production has been more possible due to the various kinds of technology made available by government and other agencies as part of share Growth Policy of the NDC government" he noted.

"These interventions include the availability and use improved seeds, agro chemical, organic and inorganic fertilizers and good lands management policies" he added.

He said the district in its effort to reduce cost of farming as a way to encourage farmers subsidized thirty three thousand, eight hundred and eighty three (33,883) 50kg bags of compound fertilizers and twelve thousand, eight hundred and forty (12,840) 50kg bags of ammonia fertilizers to a total number of four thousand, three hundred and four (4,304) farmers in the district.

He also said government through its partner organizations ; Resiliency In Ghana (RING) distributed five hundred and seventy ruminants to a hundred and forty women in five communities during the 2016 crop season.

"These include; Yilo Nayili, Nobisco area, Tampio Kukuo, Kumbu yili, and Kanvuli Kpawumo" he counted.

He used the occasion to call on the youth to venture into agriculture especially now that it's not more for only subsistence but a way of business.

Mr. Mohammed Sorogu-doo also called on Ghanaians to be peaceful and work towards achieving it, adding that, Ghana is the only we have and stand to suffer should we disturb the peace we enjoy today.

In all one Alhassan Mohammed, a 45 years old farmer from Wayamba, a community under the district was adjudged the district best farmer and went home with a tricycle known as motor king donated by the NDC's parliamentary candidate for Tamale North constituency, Alhaji Alhassan Suhuyini, two bags fertilizer, a box of roofing sheet, a cutlass, knapsack, processor and a pair of farm boots, with Ibrahim Barikisu from Kasalgu also won the district female best farmer of the year.

Present were; the DCE, the district agric director, the district coordinator, chiefs, political party reps, religious leaders, farmers, media and the general public.
The former Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC), Dr. Kwadwo Afari Gyan, was on Friday honoured as the 'Best District Fish Farmer' as part of the 2016 National Farmers Day event.

Dr. Afari-Gyan received the recognition at the Greater Accra regional celebration of the 32nd National Farmers Day event under the theme: Agriculture: A Business Response to Economic Growth.

Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, who hails from Anyimon, in the Berekum Municipal District in the Brong Ahafo Regio, has always expressed his love for farming, which he has been involved in for more than 20 years as a hobby.

While in office as the EC Chairman, he made no secret of his desire to go into fish farming fully during his retirement.

Dr Afari-Gyan, led the team of commissioners that conducted Ghanas presidential and parliamentary elections from 1996 to 2012, and was part of the Commission that conducted the 1992 elections, as a Deputy Commissioner.

At the end of his service, he received the highest national award for his meritorious service to the country.



By: citifmonline.com/Ghana
Anti-corruption crusader, Sydney Casely-Hayford, believes government's handling of the Woyome saga is symptomatic of Ghana's failing democracy.

His assertion follows a move by the Attorney Generals office to discontinue an oral examination of the businessman, Alfred Agbesi Woyome, over the controversial GHc 51 million judgment debt paid to him.

Mr. Casely-Hayford suggested that, the AG's office, led by the Minister for Justice, Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong, is clearly forced to protect the government, a proof that the AGs office is not indipendent of government.

This now tells you why our democracy doesn't work. It doesn't work because the AG who is supposed to be an independent prosecutor to ensure that all of these is sorted out, is now conflicted because the AG is now trying to protect its government, he said on The Big Issue.

Appiah-Oppongs job on the line if she follows Amidu

Mr. Casely-Hayford further opined that, Mrs. Appiah-Oppongs job would be on the line like the former AG Martin Amidu if she doesnt kowtow to the governments demands.

Mr. Amidu was was sacked in 2011 for misconduct, a move Mr. Casely-Hayford described as one of the biggest travesties of justice we ever did for the people of this country as he contended that, the former AG was rather sacked because he decided to pursue businessman, Alfred Agbesi Woyome in the judgment debt saga.

Do you think that if the AG decided to pursue this case and follow it through, there would be no repercussions on her from government? How difficult would it be for her to be sacked tomorrow? How difficult was it for Amidu to be sacked. For the first time in recent history, we had an Attorney General who was actually prepared to put his foot down and prosecute cases that he thought had to be done irrespective of whether you were government or whether you were private, he stated.

The recent turn of events have compelled Mr. Amidu to file an application at the Supreme Court, praying it to allow him to examine businessman, Mr. Woyome over the judgment debt.

Martin Amidu

Mr. Amidu, has also alleged that Mrs. Appiah-Oppong, withdrew her application to examine Woyome because President John Mahama personally gave an order .

Mr. Amidu in a statement after filing the application to examine Mr. Woyome, argued that the AG backtracked in order to protect some National Democratic Congress (NDC) officials, who benefited from the GHc51 million paid Mr. Woyome.

Background to Woyome saga

Alfred Woyome was paid GHc 51 million after he claimed to have helped raise funds to construct stadia for purposes of hosting the CAF 2008 Nations Cup.

Alfred Agbesi Woyome

However an Auditor General's report released in 2010, said the amount was paid illegally to the National Democratic Congress (NDC) financier.

The Supreme Court in 2014 subsequently ordered Mr. Woyome to pay back the GHc 51 million fraudulently taken from the state, after Mr. Amidu challenged the legality of the judgment debt paid the businessman and two other companies; Waterville and Isofoton.



By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Marrakech, Morocco  Humanity will look back on November 4, 2016, as the day that countries of the world shut the door on inevitable climate disaster and set off with determination towards a sustainable future.

The Paris Climate Change Agreement  the result of the most complex, comprehensive and critical international climate negotiation ever attempted  came into force today.

The Agreement is undoubtedly a turning point in the history of common human endeavor, capturing the combined political, economic and social will of governments, cities, regions, citizens, business and investors to overcome the existential threat of unchecked climate change.

Its early entry into force is a clear political signal that all the nations of the world are devoted to decisive global action on climate change.

Next weeks UN climate change conference in Marrakech represents a new departure for the international community, and the first meeting of the Paris Agreements governing body, known as the CMA, will take place during it on November 15.

This is a moment to celebrate. It is also a moment to look ahead with sober assessment and renewed will over the task ahead.

In a short time  and certainly in the next 15 years  we need to see unprecedented reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and unequalled efforts to build societies that can resist rising climate impacts.

The timetable is pressing because globally greenhouse gas emissions which drive climate change and its impacts are not yet falling  a fact which the Marrakech meeting must have at the front of its concerns and collective resolve.

The World Meteorological Organization has now confirmed that the average global concentration in the atmosphere of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, reached the symbolic and significant milestone of 400 parts per million for the first time in 2015 and broke new records in 2016.

This means that the world is not nearly on track to meet the Paris Agreements primary goal to limit global warming well below 2C and as close to 1.5C as possible to prevent dangerous climate tipping points, beyond which we may lose the ability to control the outcome.

Paris delivered a gift of hope for every man, woman and child on the planet. Yet todays celebration can also rest on the assurance that the policies, technology and finance to achieve these goals not only exist, but are being deployed as never before.

The Paris Agreement swept into force on an unprecedented wave of action and pledges to build a global renewable energy industry, clean up existing power, production, construction and agricultural sectors and re-engineer economies and societies to be more resilient to the climate impacts already in the system.

Our collective ability to enact rapid change has changed for good because of the Paris Agreement, and particularly for the following reasons:

In Paris, Governments formally accepted to lead climate action and presented a global set of national plans for immediate action, pledging never to lower efforts and to raise their ambition over time. They are now accountable and have the means to drive change even faster through more, stronger, climate-friendly policies and incentives.

and presented a global set of national plans for immediate action, pledging never to lower efforts and to raise their ambition over time. They are now accountable and have the means to drive change even faster through more, stronger, climate-friendly policies and incentives. Within a few short years ideally no later than 2018  governments and parties will have completed the details of a rulebook which will measure, account for and review global climate action. This will ensure transparency on all sides needed to accelerate climate action by making sure that everyone is involved in the effort and is delivering to the best of their abilities.

This will ensure transparency on all sides needed to accelerate climate action by making sure that everyone is involved in the effort and is delivering to the best of their abilities. Furthermore, Governments agreed to strengthen adequate technology and financial support to developing nations so they can build their own sustainable, clean energy futures.

so they can build their own sustainable, clean energy futures. Finally and importantly, non-party stakeholders are showing increased interest and commitment to lowering the carbon emissions and supporting governments and parties in their fight against the dire effects of climate change.

We expect the Marrakech COP 22 conference to accelerate work on the rulebook and to see emerge a definable pathway for developed countries to materialize the flow of USD $100 billion per year by 2020 in support of climate action by developing ones.

Very large-scale reallocations of investment are necessary. UN estimates show that achieving sustainable development will require USD $5-7 trillion a year, a large slice of which must fund the transition to a low-carbon, resilient world economy. To fulfill these investment needs, we will need to look at creative funding options, beyond the traditional ones and in which both public and private sector flows are aligned and scaled-up.

This, too, is happening but needs to speed up. UN data show global financial flows over the past few years ratcheting up to the point where one trillion dollars a year should be achievable in the near future. This means governments, the multilateral and the private sector raising and allocating tens of billions of dollars at a time towards climate investments.

The foundations of the Paris Agreement are solid and other key features of humanitys new home are starting to rise. Yet, we cannot and we must not rest until the roof is in place. This November in Marrakesh we will make sure it will be in place, sooner rather than later.

For more information go to www.infomediacop22.com
A Deputy Communications Minister has dismissed a claim by a former Attorney-General that the president stopped legal proceedings against a businessman who is to refund GHC51 million to the state.

Felix Kwakye Ofosu said this claim by Martin Amidu is nothing more than 'recycled propaganda of the opposition New Patriotic Party' (NPP) bent on tarnishing the President's image.

Alfred Woyome was back in the news this week after news broke that the Attorney-General will no longer question the NDC financier in court over the five-year-old scandal.

Attorney-General Marietta Brew Appiah-Opong

The news has once again raised questions about government's commitment to retrieve the unlawfully paid monies even after a court has ordered it to do so more than two years ago.

Pressure group, OccupyGhana in a statement released this week lamented about the matter, describing the attitude of government as lethargic.

It is clear to us that this government and its Attorney-General are either scared of Woyome or do not have the moral courage to pursue him for our money, the statement said.

Mr Amidu, who played key role in getting the Supreme Court (SC) to order government to retrieve the money, has filed an application at the SC to examine Woyome himself.

He claimed President Mahama is to be blamed for the withdrawal of the application because Mr Woyome has threatened to expose some key government officials.

But the deputy Communications minister was emphatic that "for the avoidance of doubt, Mr Martin Amidus claim is gratuitous falsehood".

Kwakye Ofosu said the former A-G is far removed from the corridors of power to have access to any relevant information on the president's directives on the matter.

"He left government four years ago [so] how do you get up, stand on radio or issue a statement and say the president is being blackmailed, he said on Joy FM/MultiTVs news analysis programme Newsfile on Saturday.

Contributing to the show, Mr Amidu who has earned the accolade Citizen vigilante for his anti-corruption posture said if the A-G was interested in retrieving the money it would have called for an adjournment of the application and not discontinuance.

Mr Kwakye Ofosu cited a letter dated October 27, 2016, in which counsels for the embattled businessman pleaded with the A-G to recall the application for a meeting to be convened for the settlement to be discussed.

Although he believes the length of the matter has created the impression that government is not interested in retrieving the money, he said President Mahama has given no such directive for the application to be withdrawn.

It is not true that government has not taken any action, he said, adding the bank account of Mr Woyome worth $100,000 has been garnisheed by government.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Austin Brakopowers | Email: [email protected]
The Incumbent Member of Parliament for the Asutifi South Constituency, Alhaji Collins Dauda, and the Parliamentary Candidate of the Convention People's Party (CPP), Raymond Kofi Dankwah, on Friday failed to turn up for a 2016 parliamentary debate.

The debate was organised by the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), with support from the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), and Coalition for Domestic Elections Observers (CODEO), and its partner organizations towards next month's general election at Hwidiem in the Asutifi South Constituency of the Brong Ahafo Region.

The debate was to provide a platform for the parliamentary aspirants to outline their vision to the constituents. A similar debate organized by the local council of Churches in the area two weeks ago, was also boycotted by the NDC, CPP and the PNC.

According to the organizers, all necessary consultations and discussions were done; and therefore expressed surprise and disappointment at the absence of the NDC and CPP at the event.

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) parliamentary aspirant for the constituency, Cecilia Gyan Amoah, and the Peoples National Conventions (PNC) parliamentary aspirant, Adu Samuel, who participated in the programme answered questions on the Economy, Education, Health, Corruption, Disability and Oil and Gas sector amongst others.

The NPP parliamentary candidate in a remark, said education, health, agriculture and job creation was her priority areas, and appealed to electorates to vote massively for the NPP in the upcoming elections, to enable her execute her vision to bring development to the area.

He noted that the NPP was the only party with the antidote to the countrys unemployment situation with its policy on industralisation.

On his part, the PNC candidate tasked electorates to cast their votes for a peaceful leader who is focused on development. He touted his credentials as an educationist and a development worker, as a sure way to woo investors in the area to create job opportunities to reduce poverty.

The Hwidiemhene, Osudumgya Barimah Appiah Dwae Boafo II, in a speech read on his behalf by Nana Gyimah Karikari II, commended organizers for the programme, and hoped it will afford residents the opportunity to demand and track politicians on their promises.

He tasked the aspirants to conduct their campaigns in peace without insults or intimidation.

This, according to him, will ensure that candidates highlight only their strengths and priority projects, and tasked electorates to ignore and vote out candidates who insult or cause trouble in the constituency.

He expressed disappointment with the absence of the NDC and CPP, and appealed to the organizers to conduct deeper consultation with all parties and stakeholders to ensure a smooth conduct of subsequent debates.

In his welcome address, Nana Hagan of CODEO Secretariat, disclosed his outfit in collaboration with CDD-Ghana, has conducted the debate since 2004, to afford parties the opportunity to highlight policy issues affecting the society.

He said the main interest of the organizers was to help make the 2016 election campaign issue-based and less of personality driven attacks, addressing issues that affect the lives of the people, and reduce the situation where campaigning is full of insults and intimidation of political opponents.

The debate, which is happening nationwide, has been organized in Banda, and similar ones will be organized for Kintampo South and Tano South early next week.



By: Mashoud Kombat/citifmonline.com/Ghana
By Bernard Bekoe, GNA

Nyinahin (Ash), Nov 04, GNA - The National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) has reminded all key actors in the December 07 polls to accept to play it fair to keep the nation calm.

Alhaji Alhassan Yakubu, the Ashanti Regional Director, said it was important for everybody to show good faith and demonstrate high level of sincerity.

He gave the reminder at a 'focus group discussion' at Nyinahin in the Atwima-Mponua District.

The programme was organized by the Commission with support from the European Union (EU) and the goal was to assist everybody to get right with the law.

It brought together representatives of the various political parties, religious and opinion leaders, youth groups and other civil society organizations.

Alhaji Yakubu asked that all accepted to play their expected roles well to ensure peaceful conduct of the election.

He advised the political parties and their supporters to avoid intolerance and doing anything to undermine the unity and stability of the nation.

Mr. Sotiris Bazikgebru, the EU Representative in Ghana, expressed confidence in the electoral system and said he had strong conviction that next month's presidential and parliamentary elections would be another success.

GNA
Half-Assini, WR, Nov 4, GNA - Mr Alfred Ayah, Western Regional Coordinator of the Petroleum Commission (PC), has urged farmers in oil producing areas to produce quality food crops to meet the demand of the international market.

He noted that crops produced currently in such areas were nothing to write home about, resulting in some oil companies importing vegetables and meat products from Cote D'ivoire and South Africa.

Mr Ayah said this at Half-Assini during a public forum organized by the Ministry of Petroleum in collaboration with the Petroleum Commission as part of its community sensitization exercises in the four coastal districts of Ghana's oil and gas enclave.

The forum attracted more than 174 participants drawn from Community Based Organizations, workers, fishermen, traditional rulers and a section of the public.

It was aimed at educating them to be abreast with the Local Content Law of Ghana's Oil and Gas industry and to take advantage of its opportunities to enhance their socio-economic development.

The Coordinator therefore tasked Local farmers to position themselves very well by improving upon their businesses to enable them to benefit from the industry.

Mr Ayah noted with concern that the way and manner local farmers produced Vegetables and Poultry products in the Country leaves much to be desired thus not attracting foreign investors.

He therefore urged the farmers to use scientific methods in their farming to enable their produce attract the patronage of oil companies in future.

The Regional Coordinator said his outfit was determined to offer technical advice to Ghanaian farmers on scientific ways of producing food crops to meet International Standards.

Mr George William Somiah, the Jomoro District Chief Executive, in his welcoming address, said it was an undisputed fact that the district was benefiting from the Oil and Gas industry since Ghana's discovery of oil in commercial quantities some six years ago.

He mentioned the Jubilee Partners such as Tullow, GNPC, KOSMOS Energy and Eni Foundation that were providing social interventions in the area in terms of education and health facilities as well as road networks.

Mr Somiah assured the citizenry of their fair share of the oil and gas industry.

The participants expressed grave concern over the high cost of LPG in the bountry as compared to nearby Cote d'ivoire, and inadequate streetlights in the oil enclave communities in the area.

Similar programmes are being held at Ellembelle, Nzema East and Ahanta Municipal and District Assemblies.

GNA
BJP president Amit Shah hopes to replicate his party's astonishing electoral success achieved during the general elections in the upcoming assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.

By India Today Web Desk: State leaders will play a key role in BJP's bid to capture power in Uttar Pradesh. BJP president Amit Shah will flag off the first of the four 'Parivartan Yatras' on Saturday in Saharanpur, when Samajwadi Party is expected to hog the limelight with its silver jubilee ceremony in Lucknow.

Top BJP leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address several public meetings during the parivartan yatras.

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READ: Exclusive: Will never form government with BJP's help, says Mayawati

The party has planned 30 rallies of its national leaders. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address six regional meetings.

BJP President Amit Shah will address 10 other rallies. Union Ministers Rajnath Singh and Kalraj Mishra will be the key speakers at 10 meetings each. Uma Bharti will attend six of the public rallies.



Watch the video here:



OTHER YATRAS

The second parivartan yatra will from Jhansi on November 6 while the third and fourth from Sonbhadra and Balia on November 8 and 9, respectively.

Amit Shah and Kalraj Mishra will be present during the launch of all the four yatras, while Rajnath Singh will be present at final three venues.

READ: All eyes on allies as SP celebrates its silver jubilee; Lalu, Sharad, Deve Gowda in Lucknow

The four yatras will converge in Lucknow on December 24 after traversing over 17,000 km.

ALLIES ONBOARD

BJP allies Ram Vilas Paswan and Ramdas Athawale, two Dalit faces of the NDA, and Uprendra Kushwaha will also be joining the yatras. BJP has 71 Lok Sabha MPs from the state which has 80 seats.

With slogans like 'purn bahumat, sampoorn vikas; bhajapa per hai vishwas' (full majority, complete evelopment; we have faith in BJP), the party hopes to accomplish its mission-256 in UP assembly polls.



(With inputs from PTI)

ALSO READ:

RSS, BJP hold co-ordination meet in Delhi on pro-poor welfare schemes in 5 poll-bound states







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By Stephen Asante, GNA

Kumasi, Nov 04, GNA - Twenty-one (21) farmers in Kumasi have been honoured with prizes for their outstanding contribution to the growth of agriculture in the metropolis.

They took home bicycles, knapsack spraying machines, wellington boots, mattresses, cutlasses and certificates.

This was at the metropolitan farmers' day celebration held at Sokoban.

Adom Farms, which is into vegetable and livestock farming, was adjudged the overall best farmer in the metropolis and received in addition to the items given to all the award winners, an LED television.

'A business response to economic growth', was the theme chosen for this year's event.

Mr. John Alexander Ackon, Ashanti Regional Minister and acting Metropolitan Chief Executive (MCE), saluted the farmers for their hard work and contribution to the economy.

He encouraged them to adopt improved farming practices to boost crop yield and returns.

He described as heartwarming the substantial increase in vegetable production in the metropolis, achieved through the use of appropriate technology and strong agricultural extension service support.

Kumasi now tops the production of spring onions and lettuce in the region.

He underlined the determination to grow the nation's agriculture, citing the recently launched Ghana Agricultural Sector Investment Programme (GASIP), designed among other things to support infrastructure development and technology transfer.

Mrs. Beatrice Asante-Mante, the Metropolitan Agricultural Director, called on the youth to take to farming, saying, it was a rewarding business.

GNA
Accra, Nov. 4, GNA - The German Swiss International School (GSIS) in Accra has inaugurated its 30 kw solar system to beef up its energy supply.

The facility is made up of 120 solar modules equivalent to 250 watts, a backup system with a battery capacity of 16kwh voltage that continuously supplies 120 kwh of electricity to the school in a day during power outtage.

The project, which costs 80,000 Euros, is being funded by the Federal Republic of Germany and MP-tec, a German solar system in Ghana.

Mr Christoph Retzlaff, German Ambassador to Ghana, said the GSIS was a crowned jewel in German's bilateral cooperation with Ghana.

He said the GSIS fostered cultural tolerance, stressing: 'In the time of insecurity where we see so much populism, nationalism and prejudice in the world, it is of outmost importance that we learn to deal with different cultures and backgrounds that we are exposed to, and that is what GSIS does to foster understanding in the world.'

Mr Retzlaff said the project would generate interest in the students to learn more about solar and also keep them abreast of contemporary technology, adding the facility was critical to the conditions of climate change.

He said the solar power renewable energy had become a brand name for Germany and the introduction of solar system in Ghana and would help address the problems of power supply.

He congratulated the dedicated staff of the school for successful 50 years of work in the school.

In honour of Mr Soltermann, one of the founding fathers of the school, the ceremony also witnessed the inauguration of a chemistry laboratory christened 'Soltermann Science-Room'.

The chemistry laboratory, made up of equipment such as microscopes, chemicals, machine and electronic devices, would equip students with practical and experimental know-how in science education.

The ambassador, therefore, urged the pupils to take interest in natural sciences to generate new ideas to finding solutions to societal and scientific problems.

Mr Cay Goetz, Chemistry/Biology Teacher at the school, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, said science education was not only going to consist of memorizing information from textbooks but also to perform experiments to improve on science facts.

GNA
Tamale, Nov. 4, GNA - Dr Abbas Adam, Acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Tamale Teaching Hospital, said here on Friday the hospital recorded over 1,500 neonatal births in 2015.

This makes it the highest record of neonatal births in hospitals across the country.

Dr Adam made the disclosure in Tamale when Mr Koji Makino, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Country Representative to Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, paid a courtesy call on him during a three-day tour of JICA -funded projects in the Northern Region.

He explained that neonatal medical cares were provided by Teaching Hospitals to premature babies and those born with certain infections and defects.

He said the large catchment area of the TTH, which covers the Brong-Ahafo, the northern part of the Volta, Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions, Southern Burkina Faso and Northern Togo. had accounted for the large numbers of neonatal care admissions at the hospital.

Dr Adam lauded Japan for the technical support it had provided for the training of staff of the NICU of the hospital.

He said the Japan trained staff, especially Dr Mumuni Alhassan, the Head of the NICU, after his training programme, returned home to transform the NICU into a centre of excellence.

"JICA always sets the pace for others to follow," Dr Adam, also a beneficiary of the JICA training programme stated.

He also appealed to JICA to extend the collaboration with the NICU to other units of the hospital such as the Emergency and Accident Unit and the Intensive Care Unit.

He said the Ghana government was putting up a new facility for the NICU, which when completed by 2018 would accommodate 80 neonatal cases.

He said the current NICU facility which accommodates 40 cases was being over -stretched.

Dr Alhassan said the culture of discipline and punctuality inculcated in him during his six weeks study visit in Japan had empowered him to transform the NICU.

He said due to the high level of commitment, discipline and punctuality among staff of the Unit, neonatal mortality had been reduced drastically.

Alhaji Abdulai Abdel Kadiri Zakaria, TTH Director of Nursing Service, appealed to JICA to renew the training programme and technical cooperation with the Hospital.

Mr Makino recounted that the JICA training programme started in Ghana in 1976 and since then more than 3,000 Ghanaians had benefited from it.

He said since the goal of the training programme was to share experiences, transfer knowledge and technology to overseas participants using the adopt and adapt approach in a wide variety of fields in Japan or a third county, its assessment would help evaluate the overall contribution of Japan to the development of Ghana.

He said various government officials had benefited from the JICA training programmes and were playing their key roles in the socioeconomic development of Ghana.

He said JICA could continue to support the TTH, especially the NICU.

GNA
By Dorothy Frances Ward, GNA

Pokukrom (Ash), Nov 04, GNA - A 50-year old lecturer at the Business University of Costa Rica, Professor Allan Kwasi Yeboah, has emerged the overall best farmer in the Ashanti Region.

The lecturer is into poultry, rabbit and food crop farming, aquaculture, operates a mini abattoir and cold store.

He is employing a total of 39 people on his farms.

He was honoured alongside 23 other farmers for the strong contribution to the growth of agriculture at the regional farmers day celebration held at Pokukrom in the Ahafo-Ano South District.

For his prize, he was presented with a tricycle, wellington boots, motorize sprayer, bags of fertilizer, wheel-barrow, cutlasses and certificate.

The other award winners also took home wellington boots, bags of fertilizer, cutlasses, motorize sprayers and certificates.

Mr. Alexander John Ackon, the Regional Minister, applauded the farmers for the hard work and sacrifices they had been making to keep the economy going.

He urged them to form viable cooperatives to give them access to capacity-building programmes and credit facilities to expand their farming ventures.

This, he indicated, had the added advantage of creating the opportunity for them to share experiences to improve the agricultural value chain.

He repeated the government's determination to strengthen the nation's agriculture sector by improving the road infrastructure, construction of modern market facilities and supply of inputs.

Mr. Ackon highlighted the need for farmers to go into agro-processing and said that was critical to value addition and ensuring food security.

The Regional Agriculture Director, Mr. Joseph Yeng Faalong, asked them to adopt best farming practices by heeding the advice of the agriculture extension service.

GNA
05.11.2016 LISTEN

Kintampo (B/A), Nov. 04, GNA - Dr Ahmed Yakubu Alhassan, Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), on Friday called for a multi-sectoral approach to address emerging challenges in the agriculture sector.

He said challenges in the sector were enormous and required collective approach and contributions from the private sector to make the industry attractive not only to increase food productivity but also encourage the youth to go into commercial farming.

Dr Alhassan made the call in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on the sidelines of the 32nd National Farmers' Day celebration at Kintampo in the Brong-Ahafo Region.

About 80 award winners and several deserving farmers were honoured in the celebration which was under the theme 'Agriculture: A Business Response to Economic Growth'.

The ultimate national best farmer will receive a three-bedroom house while other farmers would be going home with prizes including tractors, combine harvesters, motorbikes and tricycles as well as other farm inputs and logistics.

Dr Alhassan said the government had increased efforts to transform the agricultural sector and made it vibrant to spur socio-economic growth and development.

He said the crop sector had been improved significantly, adding that local cassava now remained a major resource material for most of the brewery companies in the country.

Some of the award winners who spoke to the GNA called on the youth, especially those in Brong-Ahafo, to take advantage of the fertile and vast land in the region and engage in commercial farming.

They debunked the notion that farming was a preserve for the poor and school dropouts and emphasised that 'agriculture is a lucrative business' and a potential source of wealth for the people.

The farmers, however, added that the government must do more to make the sector attractive to motivate the youth to regard farming as s serious business.

Mr. Godfred Alimo, the 2016 National Best Fingerlings Producer, pointed out that the cost of feed remained the major challenge confronting the aqua-culture industry and appealed to the government to subsidize it.

He said farmers in the sector had to spend huge sums of money to import the feed, which was discouraging many of them to remain in the business.

Mr. Francis Sam, the National Citrus Best Famer, called for a national board to regulate the citrus industry.

He said successive governments had shown little or no attention to help the sector to grow and mentioned lack of market and standardised price as the major challenges facing farmers in that sector.

Mrs. Yaa Agyemang Prempeh, National Best Pig Farmer, lauded efforts being made by the government to improve on pig production, saying initially marketing was very slow but with government intervention the business was doing well.

Mr. Davies Narh Korboe, Chairman of the Award Winners Association and the 2009 National Best Farmer, called for a review in the organisation of the national Farmers' Day celebration.

He observed that private sector participation in general organisation of the award was very low and because of that it had been difficult for successive governments to identify and address some major challenges facing the farmers.

GNA
Peki (VR), Nov. 4, GNA - Madam Helen Ntoso, Volta Regional Minister has said the National Democratic Congress (NDC) had "done more than enough" in the Region and urged the electorate to vote massively to retain the Party in government.

She said, "Since 1957, this is the time Volta Region can boast of development projects."

Madam Ntoso was addressing a rally at Peki as part of Mr Julius Debrah, Chief of Staff's campaign tour of the Region.

The Regional Minister enumerated infrastructural projects in the Region and said no political party could throw dust in the eyes of the people because they had seen what government had done and continue to do in the area.

Mr Elvis Afriyie, a Minister at the Presidency, said a tour of the Region indicated that government 'has done a lot and laid solid foundation for major development in the Region'.

He described President John Dramani Mahama as a "World class" Leader and asked the electorate to vote massively for him and Mr Rockson-Nelson Defeamekpor, the NDC Parliamentary Candidate for the area.

Togbe Ayim Mordey VI, Acting President, Peki Traditional area commended government for infrastructural development irrespective of the economic and energy challenges.

He expressed concern about the quality and slow pace of work on the Eastern Corridor road and appealed to government to fix roads in the Traditional area.

Togbe Ayim also asked government to upgrade the Peki Government Hospital, create a market and a craft village to enhance economic activities in the area.

Mr Debrah assured the chiefs and people of Peki of government's commitment to address their concerns.

He said, "there are better days ahead", and appealed to the people not to abandon their "baby"- NDC, at the polls.

GNA

By A.B. Kafui Kanyi, GNA
Ho, Nov. 5, GNA - The National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE) in partnership with the Inter-Party Dialogue Committee (IPDC) and the Electoral Commission, is to organise a Parliamentary Parties and Independent Parliamentary Candidates debate in Ho.

The debate, with support from the Ghana News Agency and funded by the European Union is expected to attract identifiable groups such as Faith Based Organisations, civil society organisations, the Media, People with Disability, radio stations and Security Agencies.

Mr Kenneth Kponor, Volta Regional Director, NCCE, told the Ghana News Agency that the essence of the debate was to provide a platform for the candidates to interact with the public and solicit commitments from them on Issue-Based Campaigning.

He said it was also aimed at providing a non-violent campaign season and ensuring tolerance and peace before, during and after the December general election.

GNA
By Bertha Badu-Agyei, GNA

Koforidua, Nov 5, GNA - A capacity training workshop for staff of the Ghana News Agency (GNA) staff, across the country to upgrade their knowledge on election reporting is underway in Koforidua under the 'GNA Tracks Election 2016 project'.

The GNA Tracks Election 2016 project is being sponsored by Ghana Oil Company limited (GOIL), the Nation's foremost indigenous oil marketing company to enable the Agency to resource its staff ahead of the December 7 elections.

As part of the project, the electorate would be sensitised on the various issues raised by the political parties as captured in their various manifestoes, the Electoral Commission and other governance institutions.

Alhaji Mohamed Nurudeen Issahaq, Acting General Manager of the GNA, in an opening remarks at the workshop, said the Agency owed it as a duty to report accurately and credibly to the nation, to ensure a successful election so that the outcome would be acceptable to stakeholders.

He expressed the hope that the workshop would serve as the platform for the staff to refresh their minds and to prepare adequately for the elections.

Reporters and stringers of the Agency from the Central, Western, Volta, Greater Accra and Eastern regions are attending the second workshop in Koforidua from the November 4-November 6.

The first workshop was organised in Sunyani from November 1- November 3 for the Northern Region, Upper East, Upper West, Brong Ahafo and Ashanti Region.

Mr Mawusi Afele, a former Supervising Chief Editor of the Agency, who took participants through the GNA terms of reference on the elections urged reporters of the agency to exhibit high levels of professionalism to ensure a free and fair elections.

He called on the regional and district editors/managers to work out plans to cover the elections across the country to provide unbiased and credible information to the public as nation's only wire service.

Mr Afele cautioned staff of the agency from taking information and reports from other colleagues and advice reporters to get their information from the authorised sources and officials to prevent the spreading rumours and allegation.

The GNA Tracks election 2016 project, aims at ensuring gender and social inclusion in national politics and to provide voice for the youth, vulnerable groups, opinion leaders and the broader spectrum of the society, and to contribute to achieving peaceful polls.

Another objective of the project is to create a platform to dissect the manifestoes of all political parties and provide in-depth analysis of each thematic area to the electorate to enable them make informed judgments and choices.

GNA
By Iddi Yire, GNA.

Accra, Nov. 5, GNA - The Electoral Commission (EC) is resolute in doing everything to deliver lawful, as well as credible, fair, transparent and inclusive polls on December 7.

Mrs Charlotte Osei, the EC Chairperson, said: "I am confident we will succeed. We have history with us; we have a reputation for delivery in Africa."

"I am convinced that our recent innovation and reforms have strengthened us, and have modernized us as an institution."

She said the reforms the Commission had embarked upon would empower it deliver another credible polls on December 7, which would help Ghana further consolidate its 24 years of democratic and electoral success.

Mrs Osei said this at the Royal Institute of International Affairs- Chatham House, in London, a copy of which was made available to the Ghana News Agency.

Speaking on the theme: 'Ghana's 2016 elections: processes and priorities of the Electoral Commission," Mrs Osei urged international stakeholders to begin to hold African politicians to a higher level of scrutiny discourse during African elections; saying this would promote free, fair and transparent elections on the continent.

She dismissed claims that the Commission is subject to political interference.

She said the EC had instituted a whole suite of legal measures to ensure that the December 7 polls are as transparent as possible.

Mrs Osei said Ghana's electoral system is strong and more transparent than most electoral systems globally, which makes it impossible for anyone to rig the election.

She said this year, the Commission is engaging over 145,000 officers to help conduct the polls.

Mrs Osei said one of the greatest challenges facing Ghana's election is the potential for the media to call the election results ahead of the EC, which may tend to create confusion in the minds of the voting public.

"We have identified at least 81 constituencies as hotspots with the probability of election related violence and we are working closely with the police, who have themselves identified over 5,000 polling stations as hotspots.

"I am happy to report that the Police Administration has assured us of their readiness to deal with the full force of the law with anyone who attempts to break the peace at any of the 29,000 polling stations on Election Day," the EC Chairperson said.

GNA
Accra, Nov. 5, GNA - Madam Heather Cameron, the Canadian High Commissioner to Ghana, has launched the Canadian-funded 'Rural Sanitation and Hygiene Market Development in Northern Ghana (RUSHING)' project in Tamale.

A statement from the High Commission and copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra said 'RUSHING uses a private-sector-led approach to increase demand for sanitation products amongst the rural population'.

It said the project aims to produce and sell over 61,500 toilets and reach over 300,000 people in Ghana's northern regions by increasing the demand for toilets while supporting local business investment in the sector to meet the demand.

The statement said according to a 2015 data, only 9 per cent of rural Ghanaians have access to improved sanitation and 77 per cent of people practice open defecation.

It said approximately 19,000 Ghanaians die each year from diarrhea, including 5,100 children under five - nearly 90 per cent of which is directly attributed to poor water, sanitation and hygiene.

The statement said the design phase of the project which focused on building an in-depth understanding of targeted communities has been completed to ensure that the product meets the needs of potential customers.

'Prototypes were tested by rural Ghanaians and the winning toilet design is now being produced in Tamale where it is marketed under the brand "Sama Sama", the statement said.

During her visit, Madam Cameron met with Brian Kiger, iDE Ghana Country Director, and the project team.

iDE is implementing this 5-year project, valued at CAD $10.7 million. iDE designs and delivers Market-based solutions in agriculture and WASH to develop lasting solutions to poverty.

In almost every area of modern life, companies market their products to the consumer.

Madam Cameron was also able to speak with the first few customers of 'Sama sama' toilet including Mr Ishawu Abdul Rahaman from Savelugu, who said, 'We are proud to be the first family customer of this newly-designed toilet.

'Since its installation in our house, everyone knows that our family no longer needs to go out in the open. Our purchase has generated a lot of interest from neighbours and friends, who now wish to know how to acquire a similar facility'.

For Mrs. Aliatu Abdullah, another 'Sama Sama' customer said the new toilet has provided her with a sense of safety as she no longer has to go wandering in the bush at night to attend to the call of nature.

GNA
By PTI: Mumbai, Nov 4 (PTI) Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today termed as "very serious" the allegations of rape of a minor girl at a government-aided tribal school in Buldhana district and said all the accused have been arrested in the case.

"All accused have been arrested by the police. A team of police officials led by a woman IPS officer will probe the case. My government has taken cognisance of the incident," Fadnavis said in a statement.

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The Chief Ministers statement, however, was silent on the exact number of the victims and the accused arrested so far.

State DGP Satish Mathur has said eleven persons have been arrested in connection with the case while search is on for remaining two.

The minor girl was allegedly raped at the government- aided tribal residential school following which 11 people, including members of school management, were arrested last night.

An SIT has been formed to probe the case as the police suspect that more children could have been sexually exploited.

The CM said, "A team of officials led by a woman IPS officer will probe the case. All directors of the ashram shala are being arrested."

Ashram shala is also known as tribal residential school in Maharashtra.

"Women police officers will visit all ashram schools, aided and government-run, in the state and speak to the girl inmates to find out whether laid down standard operating practices (SOP) related to security of the girls are being followed or not.

"Strict action would be taken if any lapses are found," the CM said.

Earlier in the day, the DGP announced setting up of a Special Investigative Team (SIT), headed by a senior IPS officer, to investigate the case.

The top cop had said only one girl has complained of rape. PTI MR NSK AAR

--- ENDS ---
By Edmund Quaynor, GNA

Accra, Nov. 5, GNA - The National Seed Trade Association of Ghana (NASTAG) and the Seed Producers Association of Ghana (SEEDPAG) have congratulated this year's national farmers' day award winners.

This was contained in a joint press release by the two associations, a copy of which was made available to the Ghana News Agency.

It said as the nation celebrated its hardworking farmers, nobody should ignore the reality of climate change - rising temperatures, reduced rainfall and longer dry periods.

The two associations called on the farmers to find new ways of doing things by adopting 'climate smart agriculture' to increase productivity, boost national food security and reduce greenhouse emissions.

They also called for the use of certified seeds, early maturing and drought tolerant seed varieties, which have been developed by the research institutions and the universities.

NASTAG and SEEDPAG said all crop farmers obtained their planting materials from certified agro-input dealers and certified seed producers' to raise crop yield.

GNA
Accra, Nov. 5, GNA - Mr Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, the Vice President, says government would continue to work with the private sector to develop the agricultural sector in the country.

He described agriculture as a principal private sector enterprise, which contributes significantly to the nation's Gross Domestic Product.

Mr Amissah-Arthur said this at the 32nd Northern Regional Farmers Day Celebration held at Walewale.

The event was held on the theme: "Agriculture: A Business Response To Economic Growth".

He said there is high risk associated with Agriculture and government would continue to implement the right policies and programmes for the farms to be productive for farmers to earn more revenue.

"To minimise the risk, government is investing in the area of agricultural infrastructure like mechanisation, irrigation, supporting the fishery sector and improving the road sector, especially in the cocoa producing areas", he said.

Mr Amissah-Arthur expressed the hope that investment in the sector by government would improve agric productivity, farmers' income and welfare of Ghanaians, especially those who rely on the sector.

GNA
05.11.2016 LISTEN

A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns (Mario Puzo, The Godfather).

AKUFO-ADDO AS ATTORNEY GENERAL

We should not overlook persistent sensational rumors that have it some anonymous University of Ghana law professors have been known to have secretly written legal briefs and arguments for Akufo-Addo as a lawyer of his firm and as Attorney General.

At least we know of one case where Tsatsu Tsikata reportedly wrote the arguments for Akufo-Addo in the matter of the Republic vs. Agama (Tsatsu To Bloody Akufo-Addos Nose Again! Daily Post, January 4, 2016). The Daily Guide continues:

Akufo-Addo knew that he will be no match for Tsatsu. Thus, jittery, he committed blunders even first year university students will not commit.

The paper continues elsewhere:

Then as Attorney-General, Akufo-Addo proved to be no match for Tsatsu to the extent that after the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favour of Tsatsu in the matter of the legality of the Fast Track Court, many Ghanaians began to call for the resignation or dismissal of Akufo-Addo as the Attorney-General. In the long run, Kufuor had no choice than to remove him from that position and appoint him Foreign Minister.

Finally, we may recall the shocking controversy surrounding Attorney General Akufo-Addos filing the states case against Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata as the President Versus Tsatsu Tsikata rather than as The State vs. Tsatsu Tsikata.

Some still claim that this egregious procedural mishap irritated John Kufuor to the extent that he finally was compelled by it to approve Akufo-Addos secondment to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

It is the exclusive province of Mac Manu to disabuse the minds of Ghanaians that his boss is not a better alternative to President Mahama.

Thus far it has only been an emotional outpouring from the NPP camp. This is gnawing at Akufo-Addos political capital and his partys electoral fortunes.

Still, we can only hope that Akufo-Addo will not carry this baggage of technical depravities and procedural lapses into the Flagstaff House should the NPP win the upcoming general elections.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Akufo-Addos going about literally begging the electorate to try him constitutes an emblem of outright desperation, a grudging failure in political strategy in pitching his candidacy as a formidable, convincing and viable alternative to the trial and error presidency of Mahama.

Trying to plant his candidacy as ansatz in the community psychology of the people may turn out to be counterproductive in the long run. Not that we are totally ruling out trial and error as bearing a mark of heuristic import ofor as being integral tothe human condition or experience.

Of course, trial and error is important in the natural sciences, mathematics, law and jurisprudence, discovery-based science and analytics, the social sciences, and experimental science.

The idea, however is that the NPP has woefully failed to pitch the candidacy of Akufo-Addo as deserving of a viable alternative desideratum.

Meanwhile, the leadership and supporters of the NPP mount their campaign trail and brand Mahama as a trial and error president.

Yet the same people unabashedly present Akufo-Addo to the world as a trial and error presidential candidate, a political restatement of pouring new wine into old wineskins.

It means, among other scenarios that we are possibly going to have another new political song or anthem in the same old, trite sanctimonious voice of incompassion. It also means we have ideological Siamese twins whose political voices are almost indistinguishable. It turns out we are at the stage of a confluence of twinned stagnation in productive leadership. This is what happens when there is a dominant, entrenched schadenfreude duopoly in the political life of a people.

However, if what Akufo-Addo says is right that the people need a change in the status quo then from our perspective he, together with his policy advisors and strategists and campaign team, have not made a convincing pitch of his candidacy as a formidable contender for the Flagstaff House to the people, for change can also mean retention of the old orderof the status quo, as has been the structural motif throughout the Fourth Republic.

Certainly, we are looking at the Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) and the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. When all is said and done, political and moral and social clamor for wind of change should not be an act of grinding, if not grudging, desperation.

That clamor of moral, social, and political instrumentalism, of course, must surely come from an inner conviction of intellectual, spiritual and experiential strength. It is the natural tendency of human beings to look where strength, not weakness, resides in leaders particularly in dispensations of popular frustration, hopelessness, and helplessness.

Besides, true and strong leaders do not beg; it is only the weak ones who do so. On the other hand it is the people who rather approach these leaders and beg them to lead them. This was in the case of Kwame Nkrumah. Sadly, Akufo-Addos presidential candidacy does not exude this bold assertion of political strength. His inexcusable lame idea of riding on the presumed sympathy of the masses to political power does not cut the mustard. Sympathy can be tricky.

Perhaps public perception will eventually radically change toward Akufo-Addo at the eleventh hour, when he will be ushered in as the occupant of the Flagstaff House, an interesting working hypothesis whose theoretical eventuation we happily look forward to.

But, alas, the voting psychology of the Ghanaian electorate is as reluctantly or grudgingly fickle as the leopard or cheetah spots of the chameleon.

For the rest, we live to see!

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert.

Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers (Martin Luther King, Jr.).

More so, President Mahama is the Commander-in-Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces and therefore has the added advantage of using the military to quell any post-election violence.

If there is post-election war for any reason, no one including Mac Many will be the beneficiary.

Our security outfits should therefore stay alert and light years ahead of potential subverters both within and outside the NPP and the NDC.

When all is said and done, Ghana is all we have as a people not for the present generation but for generations yet unborn.

Here is Nelson Mandela again:

The African Nationalism for which the ANC stands is the concept of freedom and fulfillment for the African people in their own landPoverty goes hand in hand with malnutrition and disease

The incidence of infant mortality is one of the highest in the worldThese diseases not only destroy the vital organs of the body, but they result in retarded mental conditions and lack of initiative, and reduce powers of such concentration.

The secondary results of such conditions affect the whole community and the standard of work performed by African labourers.

There are two ways to break out of poverty. The first is by formal education, and the second is by the worker acquiring a greater skill at his work and thus higher wages

Poverty and the breakdown of family life have secondary effects. Children wander about the streets of the townships because they have no schools to go to, or no money to enable them to go to school, or no parents at home to see that they go to school, because both parents have to work to keep the family alive.

This leads to a breakdown in moral standards, to an alarming rise in illegitimacy, and to growing violence which erupts not only politically, but everywhere.

Is Mandela not speaking to our present conditions, our plight?

These are some of the familiar problems we need to come together and solve, and not to engage in unnecessary warlike rhetoric and political divisiveness. There is no need politicizing everything!

Besides, war or anarchy is not the answer to rising disease burden, hunger and malnutrition, homelessness, poverty, infant mortality, problems with developmental psychology, and so on. War or anarchy will aggravate these conditions.

In fact, war must always be the last resort in the pursuit of conflict resolution strategies.

In the meantime we shall ask our leaders to desist from talking about war and rather think about how we can fight poverty. Here is Mandela for the last time:

Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity; it is an act of justice. Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. YOU can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom.

A WORD OF ADVICE TO GHANAIANS AND AFRICAN LEADERS

We need to unburden ourselves of this Sisyphean juggernaut of harsh social, economic and political realities. Thus we cannot continue in our stinking vomit of arrested development. Hence political pragmatism, non-partisan interest in the implementing social intervention programs, social responsibility, accountability and transparency, patriotism, pursuit of gender equality, political correctness, inter-ethnic respect, and hard work should be the guiding principles for Ghanaian leaders.

Let us, therefore, shun the politics of imperial cultism and get down to the business of doing right by our country and people.

Mandela and Nkrumah, both of whom properly belong in the martyrology of political and moral greatness, are closely watching us to see where exactly we are taking the continent!

End of series!

REFERENCES

Jeremy Diamond. (October 20, 2016). Donald Trump: 'I Will Totally Accept' Election Results 'If I Win.' Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/20/politics/donald-trump-i-will-totally-accept-election-results-if-i-win/

Ghanaweb. NDC Not Ready To Relinquish PowerMontie Trio Member. October 30, 2016.

Max Fisher. Read The Most Important Speech Nelson Mandela Gave. The Washington Post. December 5, 2013.

Ghanaweb. Akufo-Addo Saved Ghana From DoomDr Anthony Baah. November 1, 2016.
Ezinlibo (WR), Nov. 5, GNA - As the December general elections approaches; the chiefs and people of Ezinlibo in Western Region have been urged to conduct themselves peacefully.

Any breach of the peace in the town during the elections would tarnish the hard won reputation of the area.

Mr Dan Bossoe, an Accra based Philanthropist and Chairman of "Friends of General Blay" an NGO operating in the area, said this over the weekend when he addressed the people during a fund raising ceremony in support of a development projects in the town.

The programme organized by the Chief and people of Ezinlibo as part of activities marking this year's annual Kundum Festival was under the theme: "Peaceful Elections and Community Development".

Mr Bossoe, who was the guest of honour at the event, donated GHC 5,000.00 and one hundred bags of cement to support development projects.

Earlier, the Chief of the town, Nana Kolorah Blay IV, said over the years the festival was celebrated as a social event that the situation has changed and now it is a period where development projects are initiated and implemented.

He said the community has in the last two years embarked on the construction of a 16- seater water closet facility, lorry park and a market to improve their lots.

Nana Blay said the water closet facility and market were at various stages of completion.

Earlier, Madam Kukuah Abbey, a Takoradi based resident of the town, was installed the development Queen Mother of the town.

Am amount of GH 10, 000.00 was realized from the fund raising ceremony.

GNA
05.11.2016 LISTEN

Accra, Nov. 5, GNA - Mr Francois Pujolas, the French Ambassador says the political and socio economic stability in Ghana has made it a haven for investors the world over.

He said business organisations in France were highly interested in the Ghanaian market adding 'we in France have great confidence in the Ghanaian market, and this is buttressed by the political stability that pertains in the country.'

Mr Pujolas said this in Accra at a programme to announce Air France's commencement of weekly flights to Accra from Paris - Charles de Gaulle and back.

He said Ghana has a great deal to offer in the area of tourism saying, 'we can see a growing will in Ghana to develop its tourism potential and added that there were high indications that more French tourists would be visiting Ghana".

Mr Pujolas said Ghana and France had been improving upon their ties of friendship and mutual cooperation, adding that there was a 20 percent increase from last year in the number of Ghanaian students studying in France.

The French Ambassador said the new flights were thus not only a symbol, but reflected the reality of a standing situation and that the future held a great promise for mutually gainful co - operation between the two countries.

Starting February 28, 2017, Air France would offer three weekly flights to Accra from Paris.

A statement from the airline said the flights would be operated by Airbus A330 with a capacity of 208 seats until March 27, 2017, to be replaced by a Boeing 777-200 with 312 seats and equipped with the latest new Air France travel cabins for the entire summer season.

It said the flights would strengthen Air France's presence in Africa, as well as the Air France-KLM Group's presence, as KLM already flew daily from Amsterdam to Accra.

It said with the new service, 'we would provide Air France customers with even more connecting opportunities at Paris Charles de Gaulle, both to and from Europe and North America'.

GNA
By A.B. Kafui Kanyi, GNA

Ho, Nov. 5, GNA - Pensioners in the Volta Region have chastised political parties in the country for their silence on the welfare of pensioners in their manifestos ahead of the December general elections.

'We have not heard of the name of pensioners in all the manifestos and we will say that there is no future of pensioners in the country,' a press release, signed on behalf of pensioners in the Region by Reverend Professor W.K. Opare, Chairman, Ho Local Pensioners Association, said.

'It is as if we are not alive. Though we retired, we are not tired. We still have a lot to offer the country. We are the oil in the ship of the State and should not be ignored and neglected,' Mr Opare said.

The release said the omission showed that the political parties were not 'pensioners and the aged friendly' and asked them to remedy the anomaly before the polls.

GNA
05.11.2016 LISTEN

By Iddi Yire, GNA

Tamale, Nov. 5, GNA - The Japan International Cooperation Agency's (JICA) Project for Sustainable Development of Rainfed Lowland Rice Production has led to a boost in rice production in the Northern Region.

Mr William Boakye-Akyeampong, the Northern Regional Director of Agriculture, said comparisons between Project Farmers and Non-Project Farmers confirms the effectiveness of the project.

He said while project farmers were producing 2,693 kilogrammes of rice per hectare (kg/ha) the non-project farmers had 1,228kg/ha.

He said the project has enhanced and brought about notable improvement in the rice value-chain in the region and led to improvement in farmer's income and the standards of living of beneficiary households.

Mr Boakye-Akyeamlong said this when Mr KOJI Makino, the JICA Country Representative to Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, paid a courtesy call on him, as part of his three-day tour of JICA funded projects in the Region.

The project, which is being implemented by JICA in collaboration with the Government of Ghana, is a transfer of technology involving land management, extension of high yielding varieties and good quality seeds, and appropriate soil management and fertilizer application.

Phase one of the project started in the Northern and Ashanti Regions from July, 2009 to December, 2014, which achieved significant increase in paddy rice production by the target farmers, which led to an increase in their profit margin.

Phase one of the project also developed the Rice Extension Guidelines for District Agricultural Departments to disseminate techniques to the farmers.

Based on this, the Government of Ghana asked the Japanese Government to assist in the implementation of the second phase of the project, which spans May, 2016 to April, 2021.

The implementing districts in the Northern Region include Tamale, East Gonja, West Mamprusi and Sagnerigu.

That of Ashanti Region are Asante Akim North, Asante Akim Central, ATWIMA MPONUA, AHAFO ANO North and Adansi South.

The Northern Regional Agriculture Director said rice had become one of the major food staple crop in the country due to population growth and urbanisation.

He called for the scaling up of the project to cover the entire nation, in order to make Ghana self-reliant in rice production.

Mr Boakye-Akyeampong said Ghana depended largely on imported rice to make for the deficit in domestic supply and it is vital to increase rice production to ensure food security.

An elated Mr Makino, expressed his joy over the success story of the project.

He said currently, JICA, in collaboration with the Government of Ghana, was implementing cooperation in six sectors namely health, infrastructure, agriculture, education, governance and private sector development.

The Country Representative said these project areas were selected through a dialogue with the government of Ghana based on her development strategy and Japan's cooperation strategy outlined in the Tokyo International Conference for African Development.

Mr Makino said JICA would continue to provide support for capacity development, policy and institutional capacity improvement as well as social and economic infrastructure, thereby stimulating sustained poverty reduction through equitable growth and human empowerment.

The tour took Mr Makino and his entourage to rice farms in the East Gonja District, where he interacted with project farmers.

Madam Mariam Haruna, a project farmer, expressed her gratitude to JICA for coming to their aid.

Madam Haruna said before enrolling onto the project, she was harvesting five bags of rice per hectare, but now she is harvesting 30 bags per hectare.

She urged JICA to extend the project to cover other farmers, in order to help boost rice production in the country.

Mr Yussif Ahmed, the Northern Regional Schedule Officer for the JICA Project, said the project was a success which would go a long way to help address poverty alleviation in the country.

GNA
By Iddi Yire, GNA

Tamale, Nov. 5, GNA - Mr KOJI Makino, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Country Representative to Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone has lauded Ms Fukuyama Yukari for winning the Best Foreign Teacher Volunteer Award at Ghana's 2016 Best Teacher Awards.

He said Ms Yukari's achievement has brought honour to both Japan and the foreign volunteer community in Ghana.

Mr Makino gave the commendation in Tamale during his three-day official tour of JICA funded projects in the Northern Region.

Ms Fukuyama Yukari, who is also a Japanese national, arrived in Ghana on July 2, 2015 to start her volunteerism in the Tamale Metropolis, her area of expertise is primary school teaching.

Her assignment would be ending on March 17, 2016.

Some of the activities she had carried out so far include an easy way of teaching the multiplication with song for class three pupils of Wataniya Arabic Primary School, Tamale.

Others are teaching of paper crafts for both pupils and teachers to be used as Teaching and Learning Materials (TLMs) for effective teaching and learning.

Mr Makino said currently, there are 83 Japanese volunteers; with young volunteers constituting 78 and five senior volunteers throughout the country.

He said out of the total number of 83, 45 were females and 38 males.

The Country Representative said Ghana's quota of volunteers from Japan this year is the highest in the world; stating that Ghana has been the highest beneficiary over the past decade.

He announced that JOCV would be celebrating its 40th anniversary next year, since the first batch of volunteers came to Ghana in 1977.

He said, so far over 1,300 Japanese volunteers have provided services to different communities in Ghana.

Mr Makino also paid a working visit to Nanton-Zuo Primary School, Tamale; which was built by JICA, where Ms Fukuyama Yukari was volunteering.

An elated Ms Fukuyama Yukari expressed gratitude to JOCV and the Japanese Government for giving her the opportunity to serve in Ghana.

Mr Issahaque Abdulai, the Personnel Officer of the Tamale Metropolis Education Directorate, who is also in-charge of JICA Education Projects in the Metropolis, said the collaboration between JICA and the Metropolis dates back to July 14, 1989, when the first volunteer was received.

He said since then, 15 volunteers have been dispatched to the Metropolis.

Mr Christopher Dery, the Deputy Tamale Metropolis Director in-charge of Planning and Statistics, lauded Japan for the volunteerism initiative.

He appealed to the Japanese Government scale-up the number of volunteers for the Tamale Metropolis.

Mr Abdul's A. Samiyu, the Head Teacher of Nanton-Zuo Zion Primary School, hailed Japan for establishing the school for the community.

He also praised the volunteers for accepting posting to depraved communities like Nanton-Zuo.

Launched in 1965, the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCV) is a unique cooperation scheme of JICA, in which, young Japanese volunteers have been dispatched to work and live in developing countries for a two-year service term.

The objective of the scheme is to assist the process of socio-economic development in the recipient countries.

Since JICA Volunteers scheme started, nearly 49,000 volunteers have been dispatched to countries all over the world.

The exchange of notes which paved the way for the establishment of the JOCV in Ghana was signed on February 17,1977, the first batch of volunteers was dispatched to Ghana, which consisted science and mathematics teachers, one vegetable growing volunteer and one rice cultivation volunteer.

GNA
Accra, Nov. 5, GNA - Air France will begin three weekly flights to Accra-Ghana, from Paris-Charles de Gaulle, starting 28th February, 2017.

Mr. Jean-Raul Tauzin, the Country Manager of KLM for Ghana and Nigeria, said this during a press briefing in Accra on Thursday.

He said Air France was expanding on one of the most important markets on the African continent for traffic to and from Europe and North America.

'These flights would be operated by Airbus A330, with a capacity of 208 seats, until March 27th, 2017, then by Boeing 777-200 with 312 seats and equipped with the latest new Air France travel cabins for the entire summer season,' he said.

Mr Tauzin added that the three-weekly flights would strengthen Air France's presence in Africa, as well as the Air France-KLM Group's presence, as KLM already flew daily from Amsterdam to Accra.

He said with this new service, 'we would provide Air France customers with even more connecting opportunities at Paris-Charles de Gaulle, both to and from Europe and North America'.

A news release from Air France, gave the air line's flight schedules from 28th February to 27th March, 2017 as follows; AF780 leaves Paris-Charles de Gaulle at 13:30 and arrives at the Kotoka International Airport at 19:05 the same day.

It would then leave Kotoka International Airport at 22:25 and arrives at Paris-Charles de Gaulle at 6:00 the following day.

The release said' from 28th March 2017, AF780 leaves Paris-Charles de Gaulle at 15:30, and arrives at the Kotoka International Airport at 1950 the same day.'

It added, 'AF731 leaves the Kotoka International Airport at 23:40 and arrives at Paris-Charles de Gaulle at 8:00 the following day.'

Flights, the release said, would operate on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

GNA
05.11.2016 LISTEN

I was very happy when a woman called me concerning her husbands prostate cancer. She happens to know everything about his prostate cancer including Gleason score and I was amazed. She was very proactive and so much concerned about her husbands condition. This is what women should be doing. So, if you or a loved one has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, you may already be familiar with the Gleason scale. The Gleason scale, developed by physician Donald Gleason in the 1960s, provides a score that helps predict the aggressiveness of prostate cancer.

A pathologist begins by examining tissue samples from a prostate biopsy under a microscope. To determine the Gleason score, the pathologist compares the cancer tissue pattern with normal tissue.

According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), cancer tissue that looks most like normal tissue is grade 1. If the cancer tissue has spread through the prostate and deviates widely from the features of normal cells, it is grade 5.

The pathologist assigns two separate grades to the two predominant cancer cell patterns in the prostate tissue samples. The first number, called the primary grade, is determined by observing the area where the prostate cancer cells are most prominent. The second number, or secondary grade, considers the area where the cells are almost as prominent.

These two numbers added together produce the total Gleason score or sum. This is a number between 2 and 10. A higher score means the cancer is more likely to spread

Fig 1.



When you discuss your Gleason sum with your doctor, ask about both the primary and secondary grade numbers. A Gleason score of 7 can be derived from differing primary and secondary grades, for example 3 and 4, or 4 and 3. This can be significant because a primary grade of 3 indicates that the predominant cancer area is less aggressive than the secondary area. The reverse is true if the score results from a primary grade of 4 and secondary grade of 3.

The Gleason score is only one consideration in establishing your risk of advancing cancer and in weighing treatment options. Your doctor will consider your age and overall health, as well as additional tests to determine the cancer stage and risk group. These tests include digital rectal exam (DRE), bone scan, MRI or CT scan.

Your doctor will also consider your level of prostate-specific antigen (PSA), a protein produced by cells in the prostate gland. PSA is measured in nanograms per milliliter of blood (ng/ml). PSA level is another important factor in assessing the risk of advancing cancer.

According to the NCI, a Gleason score of 6 or lower, a PSA level of 10-20 ng/ml, and an early tumor stage places you in the low-risk category. Together, these factors mean that the prostate cancer is unlikely to grow or spread to other tissues or organs for many years.

Some men in this risk category monitor their prostate cancer with active surveillance. They have frequent checkups that may include DREs, PSA tests, ultrasound or other imaging, and additional biopsies.

A Gleason score of 7, a PSA between 10 and 20 ng/ml, and a medium tumor stage indicates medium risk. This means that the prostate cancer is unlikely to grow or spread for several years. You and your doctor will consider your age and overall health when weighing treatment options, which may include surgery, radiation, medication, or a combination of these.

A Gleason score of 8 or higher, accompanied by PSA level higher than 20 ng/ml and a more advanced tumor stage, signifies a high risk of advancing cancer. In high-risk cases, the prostate cancer tissue looks very different from normal tissue. These cancerous cells are sometimes described as being poorly differentiated. This point is still considered early-stage prostate cancer because the cancer has not spread. High risk means the cancer is likely to grow or spread within a few years.

While a higher Gleason score generally predicts that prostate cancer will grow more quickly, remember that the score alone does not predict your prognosis. When you evaluate treatment risks and benefits with your doctor, be sure that you also understand the cancer stage and your PSA level. This knowledge will help you decide whether active surveillance is appropriate or guide you in selecting treatment that best suits your condition.

Here is a look at what the numbers mean, how to interpret your results, and where the scale fits in with the outcomes of other tests.

Gleason scores range from 2 to 10 and indicate how likely it is that a tumor will spread. A low Gleason score means the cancer tissue is similar to normal prostate tissue and the tumor is less likely to spread; a high Gleason score means the cancer tissue is very different from normal and the tumor is more likely to spread.

The lowest Gleason score of a cancer found on a prostate biopsy is 6. These cancers may be called well-differentiated or low-grade and are likely to be less aggressive  they tend to grow and spread slowly. Cancers with Gleason scores of 8 to 10 may be called poorly differentiated or high grade

Gleason Pattern 1 (Grade 1) This is a rare pattern of very well-differentiated growth of closely packed but separate, uniform, rounded to oval, medium-sized acini

Gleason Pattern 2 (Grade 2) This well-differentiated pattern forms less well-defined masses that are not as circumscribed as pattern 1

Gleason Pattern 3 (Grade 3) This moderately differentiated grade is the most common pattern of growth of prostatic adenocarcinoma,

Gleason Pattern 4 (Grade 4)This is a high-grade and poorly differentiated carcinoma growth, with raggedly infiltrative masses

Gleason Pattern 5 (Grade 5)This is the most poorly differentiated pattern of prostatic carcinoma, which presents in two forms5A and 5B.

Number of cores

An ideal report also specifies how many samples, or cores, were removed during the biopsy. The standard number of cores used to be six: three from the right side of the prostate and three from the left. However, this limited sampling meant that cancerous portions of the prostate, if there were any, might be missed. As a result, as many as one in four patients eventually diagnosed with prostate cancer was told, on the basis of the initial biopsy, that he did not have cancer  meaning that the test provided a false-negative finding.

Today, most doctors agree that an initial biopsy should include at least 10 to 12 core samples. In certain situations, some doctors recommend doing a saturation biopsy, which typically removes 12 to 14 cores  and sometimes as many as 20 or more  but less agreement exists about this practice.

Anatomic location

Ideally, the pathologist who prepares your report will have separated and labeled the core samples according to what part of the prostate they came from. This labeling will tell you and your doctors whether the cells came from the right or left side and whether they were drawn from the apex (counterintuitively, at the bottom), mid zone (middle), or base (top) of the prostate. In a saturation biopsy you may see even more detailed labels, such as RMA and RMB to differentiate between the right mid zone near the apex and the right mid zone closer to the base. Similarly, the report may refer to three zones: the peripheral, central, and transition zones (see Figure 2). All of this information can be invaluable in helping to determine the general location of the tumor, which helps guide treatment decisions.

Zones of the prostate

To help your doctor more precisely determine the location of prostate cancer or another condition, such as high-grade PIN, your pathology report may name specific areas. For example, it may refer to the apex, located at the bottom of the prostate; the base, at the top; or the mid zone, the area between the apex and base. Alternatively, it may note three zones: the peripheral zone (1), the central zone (2), and the transition zone (3). Seventy percent of prostate cancers arise in the peripheral zone. Few arise in the anterior prostate.

Example of An ideal pathology report

Mens Health Hospital

Department of Pathology

Dodowa

PATHOLOGY EXAMINATION REPORT

Patient Name: John Doe

Medical Record #: 01020304

Date of Birth: 04/01/26 (Age: 81) Sex: Male

Procedure performed by: Dr. Yen

Specimen #: S00-9999

Procedure date: 07/15/07

Report date: 07/16/07

Gross description by: Dr. Cock

DIAGNOSIS:

Prostate needle biopsies: 21

A) R5A: Fibromuscular tissue only; no prostatic epithelium seen.

B) R5MA: Atypical glandular focus suspicious for adenocarcinoma.

C) R5M: No malignancy identified.

D) R5MB: No malignancy identified.

E) R5B: No malignancy identified; focal chronic inflammation.

F) R4A: No malignancy identified.

G) R4MA: No malignancy identified; focal chronic inflammation.

H) R4M: No malignancy identified.

I) R4MB: No malignancy identified.

J) R4B: No malignancy identified; focal chronic inflammation.

K) L5A: Fibromuscular tissue and colonic mucosa; no prostatic epithelium seen.

L) L5MA: Adenocarcinoma, Gleason score 7 (3 + 4), involving 50% of core.

M) L5M: Adenocarcinoma, Gleason score 8 (4 + 4), involving 70% of core.

N) L5MB: Adenocarcinoma, Gleason score 8 (4 + 4), involving 80% of core.

O) L5B: Adenocarcinoma, Gleason score 8 (4 + 4), involving 80% of core.

P) L4A: No malignancy identified.

Q) L4MA: Adenocarcinoma, Gleason score 7 (4 + 3), involving 80% of core.

R) L4M: Adenocarcinoma, Gleason score 8 (4 + 4), involving 80% of core.

S) L4MB: Adenocarcinoma, Gleason score 8 (4 + 4), involving 80% of core.

T) L4B: Adenocarcinoma, Gleason score 8 (4 + 4), involving 70% of core.

U) L seminal vesicle: Seminal vesicle, no malignancy identified.

Note: Perineural invasion is seen. Focally, a tertiary Gleason 5 pattern is noted.

Clinical Data: None given.

Gross Description: Received in 21 formalin containers labeled with the patients name, John Doe, the medical record number, and additionally labeled R5 apex, R5 mid-apex, R5 mid, R5 mid base, R5 base, R4 apex, R4 mid apex, R4 mid, R4 mid base, R4 base, L5 apex, L5 mid apex, L5 mid, L5 mid base, L5 base, L4 apex, L4 mid apex, L4 mid, L4 mid base, L4 base, and left seminal vesicle are multiple prostate cores measuring up to 2.5 cm, entirely submitted in cassettes AU respectively.

Check this also



What the Numbers Means

Fig 2



If you are confused talk to me

Dr. Raphael Nyarkotey Obu is a Research Professor of Prosatte Cancer and Holistic Medicine at Da Vinci College of Holistic Medicine, Cyprus. His clinic can be located at Dodowa-Akoto House. Consultation Hours: Monday-Friday @ 9am-5pm

References

Understanding Prostate Cancer: The Gleason Scale - Healthline

www.healthline.com  Prostate Cancer  Home

Sep 6, 2013 -

Peter A Humphrey (2004)Gleason grading and prognostic factors in carcinoma of the prostate.Modern Pathology
The punishment was introduced in 2014 and cops in Shenzhen city of China have brought it back again. Those who blind others on road with their high-beam headlights are made to look into full-beam headlights for a minute.

By India Today Web Desk:

Cops in the southern city of Shenzhen in China are onto something really bright and amusing. Drivers who dazzle others on road with high-beam headlights are in trouble.

A punishment that was first introduced in 2014 faced the ire of people who questioned the authorities saying this might damage the eye. Some even called it "violation of human rights".

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Shenzhen Traffic Police posted photos of their campaign on their official Weibo account which is a famous Chinese microblogging website.

"Tonight we are carrying out punishments using a high beam," the post reads.

The photos show people sitting directly in front of a car's headlight which are put on high-beam, making violators take the doze of their own medicine.

Photo: Twitter - @PDChina

The post hos gotten more than 90,000 likes and been shared more than 95,000 times already.



PUNISHMENT OPTIONAL, NOT OPTIONAL

Official media reports say that the drivers are fined 300 yuan (Rs 3000 approximately) apart from making them stare into the full-beam lights for a minute.

Photo: Twitter - @PDChina



Other news reports on the other hand suggested that the headline punishment is optional. Although it is unclear why anybody would opt for staring into lights for minute and even pay a fine.



CRITICISM AND REACTION

Back in 2014, cops faced serious criticism for such a punishment. It seems the punishment is back again, still facing the same old disapproval from many, this time around, the reaction has been largely positive.

On their microblogging site Weibo, many people were supporting the punishment.

"Am I the only one who thought a minute was too short?" reads one comment, which garnered 12,000 likes from other users.

Another person feels the campaign is "long overdue", while one berates "selfish, inconsiderate drivers".



AND ONE FOR THE PUN-ISHMENT: Dear people driving at night, please use Chhota Beam.

--- ENDS ---
The Chair of the Electoral Commission, Mrs Charlotte Osei, and the Electoral Commission risk being sued by some Ghanaian residents abroad. These Ghanaians are famously known back home in Ghana as burgers

Why are these Ghanaians doting on the possibility of causing her arraignment, some people may ask? The answer is simply that, they have taken their annual holiday to proceed to Ghana to exercise their franchise on 7 December 2016. Therefore, any deferment of voting date from 7 December 2016 to any later date will cause them great inconvenience.

When holidays are taken, they last for a period. There is always a start date and an end date. One must resume their work in line with the agreed date for ones return to work according as entered on their holiday request form.

Look at the money spent on air ticket from say America, Australia or Europe to Ghana with the sole intention of going to cast your vote as an active citizen of Ghana. How will you feel if for the negligence of a person resolutely determined to intentionally cause some breaches in the hope of fraudulently assisting another person or party of her preference to win an election, make you suffer the repercussions of her evil acts by being compelled by circumstances not to vote because of postponement of the election date?

Anyone who is made to suffer any such loss of airfare and/or the sole benefit of their holiday is by law able to sue for loss of money and damages hence some burgers planning to go down that line should Charlotte Osei by her obstinacy, impudence and dictatorial nature cause the adjournment of the 7 December 2016 election date.

I think it is about time Charlotte Osei resigned because God is not ready for her to rig the upcoming elections for any particular person and/or party of her choice.

While I was in the middle of writing this publication, a work colleague alerted me to have received a phone call from his Ghanaian friend residing in the US who says his own house is not far from Charlottes in New Jersey and that he has seen Charlottes husband and children move from Ghana into the house. He was ready to give me the address but I declined it for the fear of mistakenly publishing it to unintentionally put Charlottes familys life in some sort of danger.

I understand the law so I had better avoid such circumstances that will put me in conflicting situation vis-a-vis the American or European laws. Would I not be held culpable should I publish the address of her house in New Jersey and something fatal coincidentally happens to the family? Yes, I will; so why then should I go down that silly road while there are other better ways of getting her off her devious path so assumed?

Charlotte Osei should bear in mind that God will not pardon her should she compromise the justice and peace and security of Ghana by her preposterous actions. She could probably have been employed to do a job other than what Ghanaians have officially been made aware of.

Could she not have been purposely tasked by President Mahama to come to rig Election 2016 for him and the NDC hence her obvious intransigence to always do things contrary to acceptable electoral principles? However, now that the tides are against her, she should think twice before carrying out her nefarious activities for which President Mahama might have employed her.

If she thinks to be able to weather that storm of legal suits, and defy the wish of the majority of Ghanaians to achieve her secret objective of say, rigging the election, let her carry on but she should not forget that obstinacy is the cause of the horns of the hornbill. There is coming a day that she will regret her dastardly actions, bite her finger and say, had I known, but it would be too late to undo the evil that she has or had done.

Does she aspire to escape to New Jersey in the US after setting Ghana ablaze? She can run but she cant hide. If you run away from God, you are still under Him, thus, you can never escape from God Se wo dwane Nyame a wo hye nnase, so an Akan proverb goes.

The blowing wind for change is mightier for Charlotte Osei to resist it! Inshah Allah!

More grease to the elbows of those burgers who are planning to drag Mrs Charlotte Osei to court in an unlikely event of him postponing the election date due to her seemingly ongoing evil machinations bordering on stubbornness and pure vanity.

Rockson Adofo
Boko Haram insurgents have killed Lieutenant Colonel Muhammad Abu Ali, who recaptured the Baga town of Borno state from the Islamist sect in 2015.

Army acting spokesperson Col Sani Usman Kukasheka

This was revealed on Saturday, November 5 by Sani Usman, army spokesman, who said Ali was killed in an encounter with the insurgents late on Friday, November 4.

Ali led one of the armys fiercest-ever battles with Boko Haram in February 2015 that led to recapturing of Baga.

READ ALSO: 5 terrorists, 1 soldier dead in another failed suicide attack (photos)

The statement by Usman on Saturday read: Yesterday at about 10.00pm suspected Boko Haram terrorists attacked a 119 Battalion Nigerian Army location at Mallam Fatori, northern Borno State. The troops fought gallantly and repelled the attack, killing 14 Boko Haram terrorists.

Some dead Boko Haram insurgents after Friday night fight

More Boko Haram insurgents killed

Unfortunately, we lost an officer and 4 soldiers, while 4 other soldiers sustained various degrees of injuries during the encounter. One of those killed in action, was Lieutenant Colonel Muhammad Abu Ali, the Commanding Officer of 272 Task Force Tank Battalion.

It will be recalled that because of the late senior officers exceptional bravery and gallantry, he was given an accelerated promotion from the rank of Major to Lieutenant Colonel and was decorated by the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General TY Buratai at Gamboru Ngala on 9th September 2015 during an operational visit.

Some weapons seized from the dead insurgents

READ ALSO: 21 released Chibok girls were not assaulted by B/H  Report

So far, the troops have recovered 1 General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG), 7 AK-47 rifles and a large quantity of ammunition. Mopping up and exploitation are ongoing.

More weapons

Meanwhile, barely three weeks after 21 Chibok girls were released by Boko Haram, another Chibok girl has been rescued. She was rescued by Nigerian troops in Pulka, Gwoza area.

This was also disclosed by the spokesperson of the Nigerian Army, Colonel Sani Kukasheka Usman.

Source: Legit.ng
By PTI: Kolkata, Nov 5 (PTI) To boost exports of goods to Bangladesh and explore business opportunities, a 13-member CII Eastern Region delegation would visit Dhaka from November 8 to 10.

Led by Arun Mishra, Chairman, CII Eastern Region Investment Task Force and Vice President (Project Gopalpur) Tata Steel Limited, the delegation would especially focus on power, mining, electronics, steel, textiles, infrastructure, healthcare, light engineering, skill and education sectors.

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"The aim of the CII business mission is also to make a strong case for the Eastern and North-Eastern States of India, understand how we can work more closely with our Bangladeshi counterparts and create a win-win situation for both," Arun Mishra said.

During the visit, the CII delegation would meet a host of senior officials, especially those associated with the Power and Industry Ministries in Bangladesh, Investment Development Authority and also Bangladesh Bank.

"Bangladesh is not only India?s largest trading partner in South Asia, but also a natural ally for businesses in India," T V Narendran, Chairman, CII Eastern Region, and Managing Director, Tata Steel Ltd, said.

"There is a huge scope to popularize Indian products and raise the volume of bilateral trade and investment, especially at a time when many countries have turned their focus on Bangladesh," Narendran said.

The potential sectors for investment in Bangladesh are power, power cables, cement, steel, pharmaceuticals, textiles, spinning, frozen foods, leather, electronics, agro-based industry, IT, ceramics, light engineering and natural gas based industries, he added. PTI AKB SUS JM

--- ENDS ---
- A boat mishap in Niger state has wiped three generations in one family

- A total of seven people died in the accident

- It happened on River Gbako in Katcha local government area of the state

A total of seven people have died in a boat mishap which occurred at River Gbako in Katcha local government area of Niger state.

Boat mishaps are a regular occurrence in Nigeria especially in rural areas

To make matters worse, three people representing three generations from the same family died in the accident.

Malam Ahmed Inga, Director General, Niger State Emergency Management Agency told journalists in Minna today, November 5, that four women and three children drowned when the boat they were travelling in capsised.

He further explained that the boat was conveying 10 female farmers from Balsa community to a rice farm across the river.

According to The Punch, Inga however said three women were rescued by local divers after the accident, which occurred at about 11am.

Yabagi Ibrahim, the owner of the farm lost a wife, a daughter and granddaughter in the unfortunate incident, he added.

Two months ago, a serving corp member identified as Dayo, in Rivers state died after falling off a boat and drowning in a river.

Source: Legit.ng
- The Nigerian Army is trudging on in its quest to rid the country of terrorists

- This is despite the recent loss of one of its commanders

- Operation KARYA GWUIWA is ongoing

The Nigerian Army troops of 27 TASK FORCE BRIGADE have continued its ongoing clearance operation against Boko Haram terrorists in a joint Operation nicknamed "Operation KARYA GWUIWA".

A shanty occupied by Boko Haram terrorists raided by the troops

In line with that, the formation has carried out clearance operations on suspected Boko Haram terrorists hideouts at Ajigin, Golgore, Njibulla, Doksa 1, 2 and 3 villages located at southern parts of Borno State.

During the operation, they neutralized 37 Boko Haram terrorists at Ajigin and recovered 3 AK-47 rifles, a statement by Army spokesman, Colonel Sani Usman stated.

A make shift bed used by Boko Haram terrorists

A vigilante group member however lost his life while six soldiers were wounded during the clearance operation.

READ ALSO: OPINION: UNBELIEVABLE! This is what is killing Nigerian soldiers

The troops also captured one Boko Haram terrorist named Musa Jubril and one female believed to be sex slave in captivity by the insurgents.

One of the makeshift houses of terrorists razed

The statement further stated that eight motorcycles, stored raw foodstuffs and bedding were also recovered from the terrorists hid-out.

Another makeshift building by the insurgents

Not deterred, the troops have continued with the clearance operation and also maintaining blocking positions to further neutralize and destroy any fleeing Boko Haram terrorists.

Meanwhile, there have been out pouring of emotions by Nigerians over the death of Lieutenant Colonel Muhammad Abu Ali.

Ali and four other soldiers were killed late on Friday, November 4 by Boko Haram insurgents after a fierce battle, a statement by Usman announced this morning.

Ali, a recipient of the Chief of Army Staff Award for exceptional bravery and excellence, led the army units that recovered Gamboru-Ngala, Baga and several communities from the terrorists.

READ ALSO: Abubakar Shekau begging for help in tragic e-mails (FULL TEXT)

His death came at a time the Nigerian troops are gradually flushing out the insurgents into extinction with sustained attacks on their hideouts.

Source: Legit.ng
Jason Acosta Wins the Inaugural PokerStars Festival New Jersey Main Event

November 05, 2016 Mo Nuwwarah Editor

Jason Acosta said he was good at winning flips, and that proved to be an absolutely vital skill for him at PokerStars Festival New Jersey. It enabled Acosta to prevail over a field of 208 players to win the $1,100 Main Event for a $38,220 first-place prize, roughly triple his previous total of live winnings.

To do so, Acosta had to prevail over New Jersey online poker legend Michael Gagliano in the heads-up match, erasing a massive deficit in the process. Gagliano settled for second and $28,116, his second five-figure cash here at Resorts Casino Hotel after taking down the $2,000 Six-Max to open the festival.

Acosta qualified for the tournament by playing in a 5,000 StarsCoin satellite on PokerStarsNJ. He then took off work for the week and treated himself to something he doesn't get to do often.

"I usually don't get to play live tournaments too much," he said. "Obviously, when you can get into an $1,100 event for a couple of StarsCoin, it's going to make it worth the trip. I don't know if I would normally drive down here to play an $1,100 event that would take me from Tuesday to Friday. But, since it's basically a freeroll, I couldn't pass up the opportunity."

The tournament kicked off Day 3 already in the money with 23 players left. Headliners included two-time World Poker Tour champ Darren Elias, bracelet winners Chris Dombrowski and Jack Duong, and PokerStars Team Online Pro Randy Lew.

While none of those players would find a way to advance to the final table, Acosta did, through a little bit of luck and his trademark flipping skills. First, he doubled with ace-king against the jacks of Rocco Dicondina with 13 players left. Then, he got his last 10 big blinds in on the unofficial final table bubble with ace-five against the nines of Jovy Ounthongdy, flopping an ace to survive.

Acosta was still one of the shortest stacks at the beginning of the final table, while Matt Affleck had the lead after cracking Tom Revello's kings with queens just before the final table started.

However, it was Eli Kim grabbing the early lead when he won a three-way all in with aces against the queens of British qualifier Peter Smyth and the sixes of a short-stacked Ounthongdy. Dicondina and Sridhar Sangannagari went bust to leave it a five-handed battle.

At that point, it was time for Acosta to put his flipping skills to use again. He got tens in against the ace-king of Affleck and managed to hold despite a flop. He then got it in a little better than that, shoving 28 big blinds over a Kim open with ace-king and winning against king-queen.

Affleck went out fifth after Gagliano three-outed him for most of his stack, and then Acosta moved into the lead for the first time when he won with queens against the tens of start-of-day leader David Johnston. Johnston was left short and busted soon after.

Then, Kim got himself in a massive flip against Gagliano that looked like it would decide the tournament. With blinds at 15,000/30,000/5,000, Kim opened to 70,000 on the button. Gagliano made it 215,000 in the small blind. Kim came back with a four-bet to 650,000, and Gagliano shoved. Kim called for 1.8 million or so, saying he felt Gagliano was probably shoving light.

Gagliano:

Kim:

The flop came ace-high, and Gagliano had more than a 7-1 lead going to heads up. It looked like a mismatch of epic proportions with the accomplished online player and World Series of Poker bracelet winner against the short-stacked 30-year-old amateur from Little Ferry, N.J. Acosta had no illusions.

"He's obviously a much more accomplished player than me and I knew I was at a huge disadvantage," Acosta said.

Of course, Acosta got the comeback started by winning another race. He held with sixes against ace-eight to double to a workable 30 big blind stack. Then, a key cooler happened on a board of . Acosta shoved over a sizable bet on the end with and got a tank-call from Gagliano, who had for an inferior straight.

"I pretty much coolered him," Acosta said of the spot. "From there, I just tried to stay real aggressive. It's gonna be tough to outplay somebody like that. He's not gonna make any mistakes, so I pretty much had to wait for spots were I had better hands than him."

Acosta mostly stayed in the lead from there, making big hands at the right times and finally ending on, what else, a flip. His ace-king prevailed against sixes when the board double-paired to send him the trophy and prize money.

From there, it's back to the grind for Acosta, but not of the poker variety.

"Go to work," he said simply, when asked what's next.

Final Table Results

Place Player Country Prize 1 Jason Acosta USA $38,220 2 Michael Gagliano USA $28,116 3 Eli Kim USA $20,683 4 David Johnston USA $15,215 5 Matt Affleck USA $11,193 6 Sridhar Sangannagari USA $8,234 7 Rocco Dicondina USA $6,057 8 Peter Smyth UK $4,455
By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 5 (PTI) Congress today restructured its North-East coordination committee with Meghalaya chief minister Mukul Sangma as convener as part of attempts to retain hold in the region, which, the party alleged, is being "actively destabilised" by BJP.

Announcing the Committee, Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said the committee has been set up to protect the inclusive character of the north-east region as BJP and RSS have made "insidious attempts" to communally polarise it. "In order to protect the very inclusive character of North Eastern India, in order to preserve its unity and diversity, the Congress President and Congress Vice President have reconstituted the North East Co-ordination Committee," he told reporters. He was flanked by Sangma, former Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Nabam Tuki and AICC Secretary incharge Jai Kumar. The North East Congress Coordination Committee will have Lal Thawala, chief minister of Mizoram, Okram Ibobi Singh, chief minister of Manipur, D D Lapung, Meghalaya PCC chief, besides state Congress chiefs of Assam, Manipur, Tripura, Nagaland, Arunachal and Sikkim as its members.

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Former Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi and former chief ministers of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Manipur are permanent invitees to the committee. Tewari said "in the past 28 months, one thing has become very evident that both the BJP and the Central Government have been working overtime to destabilize North Eastern India. "Their inability to manage the larger geo-strategic environment, has resulted in repeated intrusions by Chinese into Arunachal Pradesh," he said, adding that there was a major intrusion in June 2016, another intrusion in Sept 2016 and two days ago in Demchok in Ladakh where there is stand-off between PLA and Indian Army over construction of an Irrigation Canal under MNREGA Scheme. "In addition to that, there is the whole spectre of internal subversion, the repeated destabilization of elected Congress Government notwithstanding, very severe strictures which were passed by none other than the Honble Supreme Court of India. "Coupled with that, you have this very insidious attempt by the RSS and the BJP to try and communally polarize the North Eastern part of India. The statement by one of the Assam Ministers, who is part of the purported North East Democratic Alliance, is reprehensible, is shameful and deserves to be condemned in the strongest possible terms," he said. Sangma said the platform will look at issues in North East, bring leaders onto one platform and "ensure that we protect the region from agendas which are detrimental". "We look forward to serving the people, because our mandate is to carry forwardagendas which are in sync with the aspirations of the people," he said.

BJP recently formed a North-East Democratic Alliance headed by Himanta Biswa Sarma, a former Congressman who is seen as number two in the new BJP government in Assam. (MORE) PTI SKC RT

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Scott Cunha creates unforgettable looks for the Oscars, Grammys, and more. With 356k+ IG followers, Scott is a favorite among Hollywood's elite. Interviewed by Winn Claybaugh, Scott shares the passion and youthfulness on which the industry thrives.

By: MASTERS Audio Club

Celebrity Hairstylist Scott Cunha

Contact

Jenny Hinz

***@paulmitchell.edu Jenny Hinz

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--known for styling gorgeous, voluminous, and effortlessly chic hair that never looks "too done," has made his mark on Hollywood, creating unforgettable looks for the Oscars, Grammys, Golden Globes, SAG Awards, fashion spreads, and various other events. His knack for innovative hairstyles has made him a social media favorite with over 356,000 Instagram followers, and a favorite among fashion and Hollywood's elite. He has worked with Diane Kruger, Erin Wasson, Sienna Miller, and Emma Roberts, and his client list includes Nicole Richie, the Kardashians (Kim, Khloe and Kourtney), Kendall and Kylie Jenner, Miley Cyrus, Lucy Hale, Colton Haynes, Alessandra Torresani, Nicole Scherzinger, Jamie Chung, Padma Lakshmi, and Jayson Blair.After studying at Paul Mitchell The School Rhode Island, where he perfected his craft, Scott landed at the renowned Andy Lecompte Salon in Los Angeles. Soon after arriving in California, Scott's enthusiasm and undeniable talent sent him on a world tour with Miley Cyrus. Since then, he has been a featured stylist in bothandmagazine as a talented, fresh face in the industry. His work has been featured in such publications asandMost recently he has joined E!'s Style Collective as a beauty expert and was featured on their digital and social media platforms during Oscars week 2016.Scott has mastered precise short cuts for both men and women and feathery, soft layers for long tresses. His greatest tool is his brilliantly artistic eye, allowing him to draw inspiration from timeless movies. Scott fuses the elegance of classic hairstyling with the more contemporary styles found in the work of many photographers and artists, most notably Helmut Newton and Karl Lagerfeld.Interviewed bythis overnight success (13 years later!) has the passion and youthfulness on which our industry thrives.For more information, visit www.mastersaudioclub.com . Follow Scott Cunha on social media at @ thescottycunha or contact Kent@theonly.agency The monthly MASTERS audio program features interviews, success secrets, and business-building presentations by the absolute best leaders in and out of the beauty industry. With subscribers in countries around the world, MASTERS boasts the most complete library and history of what makes the beauty industry great. Founded in 1995, MASTERS lets you hear the actual voices of your favorite artists, educators, and mentors as they tell their own stories and share their amazing wisdom for success., founder and host of MASTERS Audio Club, has interviewed over 400 industry icons for MASTERS to date, including NAHA winners, best-selling authors, major manufacturers, distributors, salon owners and stylists, makeup artists, and more. The MASTERS roster includes luminaries like Vidal Sassoon, Yosh Toya, Sam Brocato, Robert Lobetta, Ruth Roche, Vivienne Mackinder, and Robert Cromeans, to name just a few.For more information, visit www.mastersaudioclub.com and follow us on Facebook @ Winn Claybaugh. Now available in CDs and downloadable MP3s.
Veterans Day Special Human Interest Feature: Ray Bows has worked for three decades to keep the memories alive of Fallen Vietnam Heroes. His book "In Honor and Memory" gives historical perspective to one family weeks before Veterans Day is celebrated.

By: Bows Military Books

1 2 3 "In Honor & Memory" by Ray Bows & Pia Bows Page 364-Shannon Wright Compound- In Honor & Memory PFC John Francis Shea Fallen Hero Vietnam War 3-19-1964

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-- Special Human Interest Veterans Day & Military History FeatureLITTLE KNOWN VIETNAM VETERAN'S BOOKS HONOR FALLEN HEROES & CONNECT FAMILIES TO UNKNOWN HISTORYJust weeks before Veterans Day, Retired MSGT Ray Bows'"In Honor and Memory" inspires family.For nearly three decades Ray Bows and his wife Pia have been researching the history of installations in Vietnam that were named after fallen Vietnam War heroes."It's been my life passion because it's important that we not forget the sacrifice of those fallen soldiers," said Ray Bows. "The soldiers who fought in Vietnam suffered on the battlefield and they suffered when they came home because they were not honored for answering their country's call to duty. The sacrifices of the fallen Vietnam heroes are even that more significant;so I have worked to honor those that gave their all!"Bows' memorialization project that began in 1987 is a self-funded project. He does not solicit donations nor authorizes anyone to do so on behalf of the project. The purchases of Bows' books from his website or book signings are an investment for future publications and enable continued research."Ray Bows' work is very important to my family and the thousands of military families like ours and too many of them don't even know about his books. With our mother dying six years to the day of our father's death in Vietnam, my siblings and I had little knowledge of our father's impact in Vietnam," said Jackie Wright. "As children and most of our adult lives, we did not know about the 'Shannon Wright Compound' in Vinh Long, Vietnam. So, it is a treasure to know that someone chronicled the history and that knowledge will now be available for generations to come."Wright, who grew up near Fort Benning, GA, and is now based in the San Francisco Bay Area, first found out about the work of Ray Bows from veteran Steven Elliott of Jacksonville, Florida, also the home of Sp5 Wyley Wright Jr. Elliott had found out how to contact her from the Internet stories concerning the reburial of Sp5 Wyley Wright Jr. and his wife Ouida F. McClendon Wright at Arlington National Cemetery during the 50and 44anniversaries of their death (See story link: http://sfbayview.com/ 2015/04/love- story-at-arlington- national-cemetery/ ). Elliott had been searching for years for a photo of Sp5 Wyley Wright Jr. to help Bows whose nearly thirty-year investigation had left him empty-handed."Did you know that Ray Bows wrote a book that includes information about the 'Shannon Wright Compound'?" queried Elliott. "I promised Ray I'd help him find a picture of your dad and I was finally able to from the photo you posted on the Internet," added Elliott. "For years, I searched schools, libraries and found nothing. Thank you for posting the photo and helping me keep my promise to a fellow veteran."The photo Elliott referenced, and that is included in the 800-page "In Honor and Memory - Installations and Facilities of the Vietnam War," was hand-painted by Vietnamese photographer Quang Van Phat. It was the last anniversary present that Sp5 Wyley Wright Jr. signed to "Ouida, the love of my life." After going to Vietnam in June 2015 to find the "Shannon Wright Compound," it is also the photograph that sisters Jackie Wright and Phyllis Wright Cameron shared with the family of artist Quang who died in 1999. See the link of finding the "Shannon Wright Compound" https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Z-Drc0kdRxw . Here's a link to meeting the Quang Family: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=zXTjODHjbBM& feature=youtu.be Growing up, the Wright siblings, Jackie, Joe, Stanley and Phyllis, had no idea that their father was honored by the "Shannon Wright Compound" installation. Just finding out about the honor a few years ago, Bows' book gave them more clarification about the naming of the installation than they had. Given the times, the sixties, it was indeed an honor for a Black man to be named along with a white officer in recognition of their dedication.In addition to "In Honor and Memory," Bows' book "Vietnam Military Lore: Legend, Shadows and Heroes," which is presently out of print, gave more background about Lt. Kenneth A. Shannon and Sp5 Wyley Wright Jr. In phone conversations just weeks before Veterans Day is celebrated, Bows shared with Wright his experience connecting with families such as the Shannon's that he spoke with years ago and his gratitude to finally connect with the family of Sp5 Wyley Wright Jr. He is looking forward to speaking to as many families as possible.In the case of the Wright Family, they are consoled to know that the two families connected with them by the Vietnam War, the Shannons of Lynchburg, VA and the family of PFC John Francis Shea of Willimantic, CT, can see that their loved ones are recognized for their valiant service. PFC John Francis Shea died in the March 9, 1964 helicopter crash with Sp5 Wyley Wright Jr. They had both volunteered to serve as honor guards for then Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara who was viewing the troops that were "Military Advisors" at that time in the Vietnam War."Bows' work should be in every military base library and in as many places as possible," said Wright. "It's an inspiration for thousands of families and for past and current soldiers to know that someone cares that much. If a compilation of installations named in honor of soldiers that have died in wars since the Vietnam War has not been written, hopefully Bows' work will inspire someone to do so."Bows' work can be found at http://www.bowsmilitarybooks.com/ about.html . "Military history is more than strategies, guns, munitions, aircraft, ships and such ... It's people's lives. Bows' life's work 'makes it plain' that it is the lives of people that make up every line of history," added Wright.Contact Ray Bows:Cell Phone: 386 566 2089Email: namlore@hotmail.com Mail:BOWS (BMB)P.O. Box 1865New Smyrna, Florida 32170Related Articles:From Arlington to Vietnam Marine War Memorial Magazine Spring 2016Veterans Don't Serve AloneFathers are ForeverKPOO San Francisco Radio Review114Aviation Company Reunion 2015Posted Courtesy of Wright Enterprises - Contact Jackie Wright, 415 525 0410
Report finds rapid diplomatic advancement, strong private sector momentum, and bureaucratic hurdles for engagement.

By: The Cuba Consortium

Contact

Bellwether Strategies for The Cuba Consortium

Susan Nelson

***@bellwetherstrategies.net Bellwether Strategies for The Cuba ConsortiumSusan Nelson

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-- Just under two years after a historic breakthrough in U.S.-Cuba relations, diplomatic dialogue has advanced remarkably quickly. Today, there remains strong momentum for engagement  more diplomatic agreements are in the works, more commercial contracts are being negotiated, and more visitors are traveling across the Florida Strait than ever before. U.S. public opinion on the opening of Cuba has also grown increasingly favorable across party lines. However, political and bureaucratic resistance remains in place, made more complicated by the persistence of the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba. So found a groundbreaking new report by The Cuba Consortium, an assembly of prominent companies, non-profit organizations, investors, academics, and entrepreneurs organized under the auspices of The Howard Baker Forum to track and examine the normalization process in both countries.Today, The Cuba Consortium's First Annual Report, which focuses on the progress made in the bilateral relationship since this groundbreaking renewal of formal ties, will be released to the public. The first of its kind, this report will serve as a "Report Card" for the status of U.S.-Cuban relations in diplomacy, economics, politics, commerce, and tourism.According to Scott Campbell, Founder of the Consortium, "This report is a resource for understanding the state of play in the normalization process, its ups and downs and the practical opportunities for pro-engagement American actors. However, normalization is not a forgone conclusion. While great progress has been made, domestic politics in both countries can yet upset the process."This report is authored by renowned American University professor and co-author ofBook of the Year,, Dr. William LeoGrande, and contains revisions and contributions by the Consortium.The full report can be accessed here ( http://files.thecubaconsortium.org/ media/TheCubaConsortiu... ).The Cuba Consortium is an assembly of companies, non-profit organizations, investors, academics, and entrepreneurs organized to track and examine the normalization process in both countries and to inform and prepare its members for opportunities to engage Cuba. They are complemented by foreign policy, political, economic, international development, legal, and cultural experts who have specialized knowledge of the diplomacy, politics, and economics of the normalization process.The Consortium is organized by The Howard Baker Forum ( http://howardbakerforum.org/ OurPrograms/ The-Cuba-Consorti... ), a bipartisan convener of public policy conferences and roundtables founded by the late Senator Howard Baker and designed to advance sound foreign and domestic policies, and led by a number of Cuba experts, trade lawyers, international business specialists, and former government officials to advise and educate its members. The experts come from a wide range of universities, business schools, law firms, institutes, think tanks and foundations, and from Congress and senior levels of the U.S. government.
CPR Cell Phone Repair is pleased to announce a new Master Franchise Agreement for the countries of Nigeria, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso.

Contact

Shari Kosec

Director, Onboarding and Franchisee Relations

skosec@cellphonerepair.com

216-674-0645 x616 Shari KosecDirector, Onboarding and Franchisee Relations216-674-0645 x616

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-- CPR Cell Phone Repair, the world's largest and fastest growing retail mobile device repair franchise network, is proud to announce a new Master Franchise Agreement for Nigeria, Cameroon and Burkina Faso. The Master Franchise Agreement establishes a plan to advance CPR's highly successful franchise system into Africa, one of the world's largest and fastest growing markets for mobile devices.CPR Cell Phone Repair signed the Master Franchise Agreement with Abdoulaye Bamogo and BBC & Partners, a group of pan-African technology executives to expand CPR's franchise services into other countries across Africa.With a population of almost 1.2 billion, Africa is one of the fastest growing markets for mobile phones. Mobile phones are more than a simple communication device for African consumers, as mobile banking, mobile trading, and mobile education are developing more quickly there than any other place in the world. Mobile devices are critical component of daily life and African consumers rely heavily on their use.Abdoulaye Bamogo has an extensive background in industrial engineering with companies such as Coca Cola, PMGI Paris, and Total Nigeria. In 2010, he formed his own management consulting business that focuses on technologies and innovation. Mr. Bamogo received his MBA from University de Versailles and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He currently lives in Paris with his wife and two children."We are thrilled to have signed this Master Franchise Agreement with Mr. Bamogo and BBC & Partners. Africa is certainly an enormous market for smartphone services and it's continuing to grow. This partnership is an extraordinary opportunity to expand CPR's global footprint in Africa," stated Josh Sevick, CPR President.Founded in Orlando, Fla. in 1996, CPR Cell Phone Repair is the fastest growing wireless technology franchise in North America and operates over 275 locations internationally. As a pioneer and leader in the electronics repair industry, CPR offers same-day repair and refurbishing services for cell phones, laptops, gaming systems, digital music players, tablets and other personal electronic devices. CPR was named an Entrepreneur Magazine Franchise 500 (2016) ranking and earned top brand on the Inc. 500. For more information about CPR Cell Phone Repair and franchise opportunities, visit http://www.cellphonerepair.com/ or call 877-856-5101
Hyundai Motor India is one of the biggest automotive exporters in the country

As most countries are currently under a stage of lockdown due to coronavirus pandemic, automotive sales have almost hit a halt globally. One of the leading car exporters from India, Hyundai Motor India Ltd. (HMIL) has reported a major drop in exports. In April 2020, the South Korean automaker could export only 1,341 units. This is still a decent figure compared to other major exporters.

The situation is even worse in the domestic market, as not even a single unit was sold due to the ongoing lockdown. As the lockdown has been extended, automotive dealerships would remain closed for a longer period while OEMs gradually open their plants to work with limited resources.

Auto exports have been falling ever since coronavirus started spreading across the globe. If we take Hyundai Creta exports as an example, a total of 4,538 units were exported in February 2020. The number dropped to 2,508 units in March 2020. Barring a few exceptions, this trend applies to all of Hyundais export products.

In fact, Hyundai exports most of its cars that are sold in the Indian market. The export portfolio includes Creta, Venue, Verna, Elite i20, Aura, Grand i10, Grand i10 Nios, and Santro. Hyundai exports them to 88 countries located across four continents.

Auto exports are a major revenue generator for Hyundai India. In January, the company achieved a new milestone by exporting 3 million cars. The three-millionth car to be exported was a Hyundai Aura. The compact sedan was launched in January at a starting price of Rs 5.80 lakh ex-showroom.

HMIL started its export operations since 1999. Over the years, the company has achieved several milestones along the way. The first million-mark was achieved in 2010 and the second million came in 2014. Last year, Hyundai had a market share of 28% in the exports category.

To lend a helping hand in these challenging times, Hyundai has started manufacturing ventilators. The company has partnered with Frances Air Liquide Medical Systems for this initiative. Initially, 1000 ventilators will be supplied to healthcare centres. Production would be increased depending on how the situation evolves in the coming weeks.

In April, Hyundai had sourced COVID-19 testing kits from South Korea for the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). A total of 25,000 test kits (worth around Rs 4 crore) were imported by the company. The brand has also donated Rs 5 crore to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Relief Fund and Rs 7 crore to PM Cares relief fund.
A new study published in Scientific Reports by University of Delaware researchers and colleagues reveals that 100 feet below the surface of the ocean is a critical depth for ecological activity in the Arctic polar night -- a period of near continuous winter darkness.

It is at this depth, the researchers said, that atmospheric light diminishes in the water column and bioluminescence from marine organisms becomes the dominant light source. It also is the site of significant changes in the composition of luminescent organisms present in the water column.

"It turns out that approximately 100 feet in depth is an important transition zone," said Jonathan Cohen, a UD assistant professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment and co-author on the paper.

The research team has been studying how much biological activity takes place in the Arctic polar night since 2012, when UD's Mark Moline, director of the School of Marine Science and Policy and colleagues in Norway and Scotland began exploring how sea life copes with continuous winter darkness in Svalbard, Norway. Prevailing scientific thought until then was that the food web remained dormant during the polar night.

The researchers said that bioluminescence can help explain how some organisms feed and maintain activity during the polar night period and how light can still be involved in ecological processes even during a time of darkness.

Taking roll call

One interesting finding in the current study is that as depth increased, the amount of bioluminescence in the water column increased and the zooplankton community composition changed.

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"As you go deeper into the water, we saw fewer dinoflagellates and more copepods, krill and ctenophores, which give off brighter bioluminescent light," said Cohen, who joined the research team in 2013.

This community change is not associated with any physical conditions of the water, the researchers said. Rather, it correlates to what the researchers term "bioluminescence compensation depth," the transition point at which atmospheric light diminishes in the water column and bioluminescence takes over.

"This points to the functionality of bioluminescence structuring the vertical distribution through behavior possibly independent of migration," said Moline.

This is an important finding as the Barents Sea south of Svalbard, Norway, is home to a large and globally important fishery. Fishermen in the region are tremendously interested in understanding how changes in zooplankton -- like copepods -- and zooplankton availability will affect commercially important fish species like cod and herring.

The researchers knew from other studies that the distribution of zooplankton and krill in the water column increased at around 100 feet.

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"When the sky gets brighter at midday during the polar night period there is more atmospheric light available underwater for predation than at night, so marine organisms like copepods retreat lower into the water column where it is darker. We wanted to know how this light interacted with bioluminescence to influence life in the water column," Cohen said.

The researchers first attacked this issue by taking atmospheric light measurements in 2014 and 2015, while also measuring bioluminescence in the water. This led to a more detailed study in 2015 of which planktonic species produced light. Finally, they put it all together to think about how bioluminescence can be a light source during the polar night.

Then UD graduate student Heather Cronin, working with Cohen and Moline, created what is called a photon budget, or light budget, to measure how much light comes from the atmosphere and how much light comes from inside the water itself with organisms glowing through bioluminescence.

To quantify the amount of bioluminescence and to identify what marine organisms were present, the researchers used a pumping system in the water column to drive the organisms into a specialized device equipped with a sensitive light meter.

As the organisms entered the device, turbulence created by the pump stimulated the animals to luminesce or glow. Using luminescence kinetics, or the time course of light production and dissipation, the researchers measured how the light intensity inside the pump changed with time in order to identify the marine species present.

"Luminescent marine organisms each have a unique light signature. By looking at the time series light generated by a flash within the instrument, we were able to determine who was there making the flash," Cohen explained. "It's a useful tool, particularly at this time of year when relatively few species are present."

Bioluminescence is known to play a critical role in helping marine organisms avoid predators and even hide themselves in plain site. At the same time, Cohen continued, it appears that krill and potentially fish are using the additional bioluminescent light from the copepods to find food.

"We know from analysis of gut contents that fish and seabirds are active and feeding in Svalbard fjords during polar night," Cohen explained. "Our research suggests that bioluminescent light may be one of the ways that they find food in the dark."

Climate change connection

One looming concern under climate change scenarios is the loss of sea ice.

According to Cohen, scientists are just beginning to appreciate that climate change will change the light environment, which will impact the timing of the ice algae and phytoplankton blooms that spur the spring growing season, maybe even causing it to occur earlier in the year.

In the Arctic, for example, sea ice is part of what makes the water column dark. So, if the depth at which atmospheric light transitions to bioluminescent light is important in structuring the zooplankton community and the ecological interactions among organisms, then understanding how much atmospheric light will be present in the water column with less sea ice is significant for understanding food web dynamics.

The novelty in the team's work is the focus on putting numbers and data to the processes that occur directly before the spring cycle begins. The next step is to make similar measurements further away from Svalbard to validate their findings in the open ocean.

"Being able to measure this transition depth gives us something to look at across seasons and across years that could have important implications for food web impacts in a rapidly changing Arctic," Cohen said.
Cecilia the chimpanzee has spent years living alone in a concrete enclosure at a zoo in Argentina - but that's all set to change.

Proyecto Gran Simio

In an historic ruling this week, Argentine Judge Maria Alejandra Mauricio declared that Cecilia isn't a thing, but rather a being who is "subject to nonhuman rights." She ordered that Cecilia be released from her barren home at the infamous Mendoza Zoo and sent to live among her own kind at a sanctuary.

Dodo Shows Wild Hearts Orphaned Deer Runs Back To The Wild With Her Best Friend

Proyecto Gran Simio

The decision comes on the heels of an extensive case filed by the Association of Officials and Lawyers for Animal Rights (AFADA) and the Great Ape Project (or Proyecto Gran Simio), some two years in the making. The NGOs had filed for a writ of habeas corpus on Cecilia's behalf, arguing that the circumstances of her confinement without companionship were unlawful and that her health was deteriorating as a result. Judge Mauricio agreed, stating in her verdict that nonhumans indeed possess rights related to their "animal essence," and decreeing that Cecilia should be transferred to the Great Ape Project's sanctuary in Brazil within the coming months - the first time a habeas corpus case for an animal has resulted in this action. "We're not talking about the civil rights enshrined in the Civil Code," she told the journal Los Andes, "but instead the species' own rights: to development, to life in their natural habitat." With that, Cecilia will soon go from this ...

Flickr/Mario Gonzalez

... to this - a lush sanctuary where she can finally be herself.

Proyecto Gran Simio
Two persons were arrested from near Kalindi Kunj area of Delhi with fake currency notes worth Rs 3.87 lakh.

By Tanseem Haider: Delhi Police arrested two persons in connection with a fake currency racket. Fake currency notes of Rs 1,000 amounting to Rs 3.87 lakh were recovered from the possession of the accused.

The police received a tip off regarding two persons involved in a fake currency racket on October 27. The police were informed that the accused were to come near Kalindi Kunj to trade currency notes. Following the tip off, the police laid a trap and sent a decoy customer and the duo were later arrested.

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Interrogations revealed that the accused obtained the fake notes from a person in Uttari Dinjapur, West Bengal who in-turn got it from Bangladesh.

Earlier also they had brought fake currencies on four occasions from the same person and delivered it to their sources in Mumbai and Delhi and they used to earn 20 per cent of the total delivered amount.

This consignment was to be delivered partly in Delhi and partly in Mumbai.



Also read:

Four members of International Fake Indian Currency Note racket arrested

Fake coin racket busted by Delhi Police



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<p>Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary</p>

In August 2016, animal control picked up two stray potbellied pigs. They were skinny, malnourished and had horribly dry skin. One of the pigs even had deep scars around his neck, perhaps from a dog attack.

Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary

After spending a few weeks at a North Carolina animal shelter, the pigs were put up for auction. The shelter was at full capacity, and it wanted to get rid of the pigs as soon as possible. On the day of the auction, no one bid on the pigs.

Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary

A woman from a rescue group called Saving Grace was at the shelter that day when she noticed the pigs. She contacted Alesja and Alex Daehnrich, a German couple that runs Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary, a small rescue farm in Durham, North Carolina. Could they foster these two pigs? The woman asked. Alesja and Alex couldn't say no. "I actually had no idea I was going to pick up pigs that day," Alesja Daehnrich tells The Dodo. "I was at work all dressed up wearing high heels when I got a call in the morning about two pigs needing a foster home. I drove to get them after work, my coworkers gave me towels to place in the car and the rescue had crates for me."

Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary

The pigs turned out to be brothers, and they were as close as brothers could be. "They ate, slept and rooted together," Alesja says. Rooting is a natural pig behavior that involves searching the soil for food. They named the brothers Piggeldy and Frederick after a German pig cartoon.

Dodo Shows Adopt Me! Scared Little Dog Is So Full Of Joy Now  And Looking For A Family

The day Piggeldy and Frederick arrived | Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary

Frederick was the braver of the two - he was happy for Alesja and Alex to touch him and hand-feed him treats. Piggeldy, on the other hand, didn't want anything to do with his foster parents.

Frederick was the brave one - he let Alex hand-feed him | Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary

Then the unexpected happened. When Alesja and Alex took the pigs to the vet for vaccinations and neutering, the vet discovered a large tumor around Frederick's bladder. "The tumor was so big that it was inoperable and the veterinarian felt it was only humane to let him cross over the rainbow bridge," Alesja says. "We all were crushed, and most importantly, worried about Piggeldy, as he was the insecure one who depended on Frederick."

Piggeldy mourning for his brother | Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary

Piggeldy was lost without his brother, and he went through a period of deep mourning. "When Piggeldy came home, he searched for Frederick everywhere and when he realized he wasn't coming back, he was mourning the loss of his brother," Alesja says. "He wasn't moving much and just laid in the middle of the yard, staring. While he ate breakfast and dinner, he didn't show any excitement. It was heartbreaking to see him so sad."

Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary

Alesja and Alex did everything they could to cheer Piggeldy up. "We tried to work from home when possible, and I even sat in hay with him with my laptop doing work," Alesja says. "I laid in hay with him for hours, just rubbing his belly and massaging him. It seemed to comfort him when I talked to him, as he always responded with a grunt."

Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary

After about a week, Piggeldy perked up. He started trotting up to Alesja and Alex for belly rubs and squealing with excitement when he saw them. They soon realized that Piggeldy didn't need to find another home - he was already home. They also decided it was time to introduce Piggeldy to the rest of the animals, which included dogs, chickens, ducks, peacocks, horses, mules and another potbellied pig named Kevin.

Frosty the dog and Kevin the "diva" | Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary

The thing about Kevin, according to Alesja, was that he's a bit of a "diva." He'd arrived at the sanctuary as a piglet after his original family decided he was "too much" for them. And he was spoiled - very spoiled.

Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary

"Kevin grew up in the house as an only pig, sleeping on the couch, getting anything he wants and trying to rule the farm," Alesja says. "He would protest if he didn't get something he wanted and would occupy himself by opening drawers in the kitchen, raiding the pantry or getting into horse feed in the garage."

Kevin taking a bath | Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary

Kevin's diva status didn't seem to bother Piggeldy one bit. As soon they met through the fence, Piggeldy knew he wanted to be friends with Kevin.

The first time Piggeldy and Kevin meet | Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary

"It didn't take long for Piggeldy to follow Kevin inside the house through the doggy door," Alesja says. "He checked stuff out and the next day he followed him again, only this time, he never left. All of a sudden, Piggeldy disappeared and when we went to look for him, he just tucked himself in in Kevin's bed and fell asleep. Starting this day he became an inside pig along with Kevin. They share a room together where they sleep."

Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary

The pigs also love to make a mess of Alesja's closet. "I jokingly say that they play dress up," she says. "Piggeldy often falls asleep on a pile of shoe boxes. They never touch the shoes, they just love playing with the boxes and paper. Somehow they do not touch my husband's stuff - only mine. They know they aren't supposed to as when I come in and say, 'what did you guys do?' they make these high-pitch squealing noises as if they say, 'We know, we are in trouble.'"

Piggeldy and Kevin messing up Alesja's closet | Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary

While Kevin taught Piggeldy about being an indoor pig, Piggeldy taught Kevin about the outdoors. "After a while we noticed that Kevin was out and about doing what pigs do," Alesja says. "Piggeldy somehow was able to correct his behavior by communicating with him. Somehow they found this common language and what seemed impossible before became the norm."

Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary

Soon Kevin and Piggeldy were outside together all the time, snacking on acorns and using trees as scratching posts.

Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary

"Before Piggeldy joined our family, Kevin never wanted to share; he would not want to share the couch or pool with a dog," Alesja says. "But with Piggeldy, they now share the pool. It took Kevin a while to learn, but we now see them together all the time. They snooze together in the middle of the day."

Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary

"We love them both so much!" Alesja says. "We've never had pigs before and when we adopted Kevin, it was quite an eye opening experience. We love all of our animals, but these two have a very special place in our hearts and we have a special kind of bond with them."

Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary
Ashley Madison  or just Ashley, as the hookup websites new management team calls her  has more users now than before last years infamous cyber attack, according to the men brought in for her massive makeover.

Toronto-based Ruby Corp.  formerly Avid Life Media  said Ashley Madison currently has 49 million users  up from 36.5 million in July 2015, the month before a high-profile hack that exposed clients personal details including home addresses.

Gone are the fake female profiles and false security promises that came to light when hackers made public the companys user profiles and sensitive internal documents last year.

Most conspicuously absent from the newly polished Ashley: the sites core purpose  its promise of facilitating extramarital affairs.

We wanted to humanize her, so we started talking about Ashley as her.  said Rob Segal, CEO of Ruby Corp.

We wanted to help her because she needed some love and support like a starlet that needed to get back on her path.

Segal said since he took over the CEO reins early this year and began to reposition the brand, female visitors to the site have grown by 20 per cent.

And females are the gold standard for all online dating.

Before the hack, the company said, the sites male-to-female ratio was 6:1, now its 5:1 (by comparison OK Cupid claims it has 1.5 men for every woman on the site).

Despite the management shakeup and a shift in public relations tactics, the life-or-death question looms: can the target of one of the most public data breaches of all time pull off a comeback?

Public perception aside, Ruby still faces major hurdles: multimillion-dollar class-action lawsuits and an investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Segal said the company cannot comment on those ongoing investigations. He also declined to comment on the financial implications if the users lawsuits succeed.

Meanwhile, the rebranding challenges Ashley faces are threefold: expand the customer base away from those seeking affairs, attract more women with a female-friendly approach and convince users their data is safe.

Rubys new leadership team of CEO Rob Segal and president James Millership took the reins in April, replacing former CEO Noel Biderman, who resigned at the end of August 2015, within weeks of the Toronto companys highly publicized hack, the perpetrators of which have still not been found.

The parent company of Ashley Madison, and other controversial dating sites such as CougarLife and Established Men, changed its name in July to Ruby  a moniker chosen for its feminine, modern, multi-faceted and clean associations.

The new Ashley Madison is focused on facilitating open-minded hookups, such as for polyamorous couples or singles looking for a BDSM partner  or all of the above.

The fastest-growing category (in dating websites) is this open-minded one, as people really begin to question 20th-century values and apply a new 21st-century approach to human sexuality, Segal said.

He and Millership are familiar with turning companies around. After selling the once-struggling e-sports company World Gaming to Cineplex in September 2015, they were ready for a new challenge.

So, when recruiters came knocking, they were game  with some caveats.

I knew the story too, who didnt? Segal recalled.

So I talked to James about it and I said Do you want to try this one on for size? 

Before agreeing to come aboard, the pair conducted nearly five months of investigation into the company  bringing in consultancy Ernst & Young to audit its customer base and Deloittes cybersecurity team to improve its online payment system and monitor the site around the clock.

The audit found that the company had been using fake female profiles, as data from the hack suggested, but the practice ended in late 2015.

It also found that 45 per cent of users were actually single  and those who were married werent necessarily looking for a real-life affair.

We thought the company could reposition itself, if it first could address what had happened, Segal said.

We wanted to change the wrapper of Ashley, we wanted to move it away from the approach it had taken before, which was shock-and-awe tactics and it didnt appeal to women.

But they face a unique turnaround challenge, because there were so many things going wrong all at once said Michael Mulvey, a marketing professor in the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa.

The data in their system is the epitome of what youd want to keep private and discreet: especially since that was such a big part of their brand promise.

Despite legitimate and expensive efforts to beef up security, the company might not be able to shake the perception its untrustworthy, he said.

Im curious to know whether consumers are forgiving and forgetful.

Still, he believes the company stands a chance of recovery because the nature of the industry its in attracts risk takers.

Theyre a bit more Teflon in that industry, stuff doesnt seem to stick as much, he said.

They have this core appeal to the fundamental pleasure principle  seeking gratification, doing what maximizes pleasure and not worrying about the consequences.

For better or worse, Ashley Madison has massive brand awareness. And that was the key reason they decided to stick with the moniker, rather than start from scratch with a new open-minded dating site.

We felt that the online dating space was exploding and we thought the company had the size and the cash flow. It would be a very difficult space to enter if we were not of that size, Segal said.

And the team sees a massive opportunity in this space  what they believe is a middle ground between run-of-the-mill dating sites and the other extreme  escorts and porn.

We looked at dating as a continuum, Segal said, adding that competition in the open-minded middle is small and disparate.

We want to go out and acquire or build other brands, Millership said, adding that theyre exploring opportunities in other open-minded markets such as Italy, France, Brazil and Japan.

But before they can conquer the open-minded world, the pair have to focus on repositioning the brand in its home base of North America.

To that end, the sites former slogan Life is short, have an affair, has been replaced with simply Find your moment.

The find your moment campaign taps into feedback from users who spoke of how being on Ashley Madison made them feel sexy, desired or wicked in the moment.

One of its new ads recently aired on NBC  the first time Ashley Madison has been allowed to advertise on prime-time network television, the partners boast.

But the new Ruby heads are also well aware that their major challenge is dealing with the security fallout from the hack.

Ruby agreed to a list of compliance terms with privacy commissioners in Canada and Australia this summer. Management said the company is ahead of schedule on putting the recommended cybersecurity measures in place.

And in its most recent move to convey how serious it is about cybersecurity, the company brought in Chantal Bernier, former Canadian privacy commissioner as a special adviser.

Rubys new management realize theyre not going to build the trust of customers overnight, but they are betting there are enough curious people out there open-minded enough to give the cheating website a second chance.

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Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch has given the matter a lot of thought, especially while making his new documentary Gimme Danger about proto-punkers Iggy Pop and the Stooges.

Hes concluded that the best rock n roll bands have a certain stupidity about them. Theyre not dumb  although they enjoy dumb fun  but they have a knuckleheaded side they lovingly embrace.

Jarmusch calls it the stupid factor, that je ne sais quoi where even the smartest rockers embrace their inner idiot for fun and profit.

You find the stupid factor in all the great bands, whether its the Ramones or the Sex Pistols, Jarmusch asserts, during a break from presenting Gimme Danger at TIFF 2016 (the film opens Friday at TIFF Bell Lightbox).

Its a good thing to have in there. It means theyre saying, Were no more serious than you are. This is just rock n roll, so here we go. There has to be a little bit of the stupid factor, otherwise its too elitist or condescending. When rock n roll people seem like theyre looking down on you because theyre a little bit above you, theyve lost the essence of rock n roll.

How about the Rolling Stones? Do they have the stupid factor?

Yeah, sure! Under My Thumb is so blatantly misogynistic, its celebrating a kind of very stupid thing.

How about Talking Heads, those cerebral rockers whom Jarmusch once made a video compilation film about. Surely not stupid?

Theres definitely a stupid factor there. With Psycho Killer, David Byrne is also making fun of his own persona, and he wore that giant suit (in concert film Stop Making Sense).

Pushed to name a band that doesnt have the stupid factor, Jarmusch gives a pained expression and suggests U2 might qualify.

I dont want to start dissing bands, really. But some bands seem a little too ... earnest. U2 kind of strikes me that way. Im sure theyre good guys, but theres a kind of earnestness that is off-putting to me.

Jarmusch, 63, certainly knows his rock, just as surely as this Cannes regular knows film  his other 2016 movie Paterson, starring Adam Driver as a poetic New Jersey bus driver, is sure to end up on many critics Top 10 lists.

Hes also made movies with Neil Young and Tom Waits. Hes in an indie band named Squrl. He hails from Akron, Ohio, the same state as Cleveland, home of the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Cleveland was the site of the Moondog Coronation Ball, the 1952 event generally considered to be the first major rock concert.

And what could be more rock n roll cool than Jarmuschs shock of wild white hair, shades and perpetual all-black attire?

But lets get back to the Stooges, the original smart band with the stupid factor  why do you think they called themselves the Stooges? Theyre credited with inventing stage diving and the three-chord assault that would later birth the punk movement, but they dont get no respect.

Theyre ranked a mere 78th on Rolling Stones 100 Greatest Artists list, ahead of Talking Heads (No. 100) but behind the Sex Pistols (No. 60), the Ramones (No. 26), U2 (No. 22) and the Stones (No. 4).

Gimme Danger draws on Jarmuschs friendship with Iggy, whom hes known for 25 years, and also his deep appreciation of a band he blithely asserts is the best rock n roll band ever, despite numerous personnel changes and deaths, a shunning by many critics that bordered on hostility and the occasional punch in the face from an audience member.

All of us making the film love the Stooges, Jarmusch says.

Our thing was, well, the Stooges made The Stooges, Fun House and Raw Power, three of the most seminal rock records ever. And that was when they were about 23 years old and still had to go home to their moms!

Innovation is usually treated as being marginal by the mainstream, so the Stooges are no exception. They are a primal force in the history of rock n roll and yet they were treated like dirt.

Iggy Pop is certainly no dummy, even if he did release an album called The Idiot and was notorious for slashing his bare chest with glass onstage, long before Sid Vicious and other punks copied him.

Iggy reads classical literature and listens to classical music at home, along with not-so-classical stuff. But when he confronts the audience during a show, its an affectionately exuberant expression of the stupid factor.

When he gives the audience the finger, they give it back, and hes saying, I love you, you are me! And when he says, F--- you! hes saying, I love you! and the audience loves it, Jarmusch says.

Because they know its a coded thing. Its just love. We are him. He is sacrificial for us, and thats very strong. Diving into the audience isnt metaphor. Its the literal expression of I am you  Im going in! He did that from the beginning and hes not going to stop.

Peter Howell is the Stars movie critic. His column usually appears Fridays.

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It may be tempting to read into Mel Gibsons Hacksaw Ridge an unspoken or even unconscious attempt to tie the narrative to the actor/directors personal travails.

Thats not how he sees it.

The film is the true story of Second World War soldier Desmond Doss, a devout Seventh-day Adventist played by Andrew Garfield, who endured abuse and ridicule when he refused to carry a gun as a conscientious objector. Yet Doss heroically braved death as a battlefield medic, saving many lives, later winning the U.S. Medal of Honor.

The bushy-bearded Gibson, 60, is hoping for his own belated redemption, 10 years after the American-born Aussie derailed his career through drunken anti-Semitic and sexist rants to California highway cops. A devout Catholic, awaiting the birth of his ninth child (this one with new girlfriend Rosalind Ross), Gibson feels hes atoned and his transgressions are a dim thing in the past, as he recently told Variety.

But hes not about to compare his torments to the ones experienced by Doss, who died in 2006 at the age of 87.

Ive never been faced with anything like some of the situations that faced Desmond Doss, Gibson says from Los Angeles.

I mean, Ive never actually had to stick my life, literally, put my life on the line for somebody else, and be willing to sacrifice it for someone else. When one has children, I think that that would be a fairly easy thing to do, because theyre your kids. But what if it was just for some other Joe?

For Desmond, it didnt matter to him if (a wounded soldier) was his brother, or if he was American or Japanese or Norwegian or from Timbuktu. Desmond just showed the ultimate act of love for his brothers, by putting his life on the line for the life of another. Thats why I dont think Hacksaw Ridge is a war story. Its a love story.

Gibson is joined on the line by British-American actor Garfield (The Social Network, The Amazing Spider-Man) who at 33 is the subject of Best Actor buzz for his performance, just as Hacksaw Ridge is earning Gibson some of his best reviews since Braveheart won him Best Picture and Best Director kudos at the 1995 Oscars:

Im amazed that a story this strong about an American war hero took Hollywood decades to make, stretching back to a failed attempt by fellow war hero Audie Murphy and Casablanca producer Hal Wallis.

Gibson: Well, the rights belonged to the man himself (Doss). He wanted to live more or less in obscurity, and not grandstand his exploits or the greatness of what hed done. He was very humble, and he gave all the credit to God, you know, for any actions that he did.

What made him finally change his mind?

Gibson: Audie Murphy, Hal Wallace, and other people had gone to see him over the years. He finally was prevailed upon, I believe, by the documentarian Terry Benedict (who made a 2004 doc on Doss) to leave his life rights to someone and that there was benefit in telling his story. Because it has the power to inspire others, and I hope thats what it does. I hope that we can all take a piece of this story and maybe in some time and some place we can apply it to our own lives somehow.

Andrew, how did you find your way into the character of Desmond Doss? You put across his strengths and insecurities very well.

Garfield: Hes an aspirational figure. He was a really beautiful human being to try and discover the essence of. The power of him is that hes just a man, just a human being like the rest of us, but he manages to somehow get beneath his own animal nature, his own humanness. He kind of owned all of that, but then found underneath it the essence of himself. Thats where he was operating from in his life, that true deep self, which is of course incredibly hard to access, and incredibly hard to know.

We spend our whole lives attempting to get there, attempting to come home to ourselves in some way. Desmond was that miracle human being who was able to get quick access to that as a young man  in the midst of such oppression and abuse  from his own army and from his own family  he managed to stay true to his own beliefs, to his own core values. I dont mean the dogma of his church so much  I mean the values that are kind of intrinsically etched on his soul. And to withstand the tsunami of other peoples disapproval in that way and being totally misunderstood and misperceived is a revolutionary act.

Hacksaw Ridge is unsparing in its depiction of the visceral horror of war, just as one of your earlier career successes Gallipoli was. Why is it important to show that on the screen?

Gibson: I think its necessary to show it and to pay tribute to the veterans. You know, to show the kinds of things that those men were subjected to and how difficult that would have been and could we do that? I think its necessary to put the audience in the foxhole a little bit, to experience that war. And also to take Desmond and to introduce him into that element. It tells you what it must have taken to not bear arms. To not kill another. But to go in there, fearlessly, and continually sacrifice himself for his fellow soldiers and to crawl into dangerous situations.

In many ways, Hacksaw Ridge is a story about healing, which is not what you expect from a film like this.

Gibson: This was Desmonds war. His war was very personal to him, but if more people were like that, I dont think there would be war! Thats not going to happen, but it certainly is worth thinking about and its a way of looking at war.

How do you think a movie like this will be received in these volatile times we live in, where wars are happening everywhere?

Gibson: I think it will be received very well. I think its a refreshing and inspiring, uplifting message. And even for the veterans, those guys who have seen action, I think would respond to this in a way that we who have not cant respond. We had veterans in the film, including (ex-Aussie Commando) Damien Thomlinson, whose legs were blown off Afghanistan. He kind of re-enacted his own thing in this film, and for him, it was an entirely different experience to what it would be for myself or Andrew, since we havent seen that kind of action. And he approached it with trepidation, but we were able to access some of that through him, and it was profound.

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A controversial university is taking its legal fight over accreditation for its law school to the nations top court, in the wake of starkly different court rulings on the issue in three provinces.

Trinity Western University, a private Christian university in British Columbia, intends to open a law school in 2018. But it has faced an uphill battle in getting the program accredited by several law societies, including in Ontario.

At issue is TWUs community covenant, which students must abide by and which bans sex outside of heterosexual marriage. It has been decried by critics as homophobic.

The Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC), which regulates the legal profession in this province, voted 28-21 in 2014 to deny accreditation, meaning potential graduates would not be able to practise law here.

Law societies in Nova Scotia and British Columbia made similar decisions, but they were later overturned by the courts in those provinces. Meanwhile, the Ontario decision has been upheld by the Ontario Court of Appeal.

The court endorsed the criticism around the covenant last June.

My conclusion is a simple one, wrote Justice James MacPherson for a unanimous three-judge panel in a 50-page judgment. The part of TWUs community covenant in issue in this appeal is deeply discriminatory to the LGBTQ community, and it hurts.

MacPherson wrote that the decision not to accredit does infringe on TWUs right to freedom of religion, but not to the point where it must be overturned.

The LSUCs decision not to accredit TWU does not prevent the practice of a religious belief itself; rather it denies a public benefit because of the impact of that religious belief on others  members of the LGBTQ community.

The university is now asking the Supreme Court of Canada to hear its appeal of the Ontario ruling. Legal observers say its likely the court will grant that request given the mixed messages being delivered by courts across the country.

I think that theres going to be a lot of issues to reconcile here, just because each province has taken a different process, said lawyer Douglas Judson, an outgoing director of Out on Bay Street, a group of LGBTQ professionals that acted as an intervener in the case before the Ontario courts.

Ontario, Nova Scotia and British Columbia are the only three provinces where law societies voted to specifically deny accreditation, according to the universitys factum filed at the Supreme Court, while most other provinces have granted accreditation.

Just this past Tuesday, the B.C. Court of Appeal sided with TWU.

A unanimous panel of five judges delivered a ruling that was the exact opposite of the Ontario Court of Appeals decision, namely that the negative impact on TWUs religious freedoms would be severe and far outweigh the minimal effect accreditation would have on LGBTQ rights.

This case demonstrates that a well-intentioned majority acting in the name of tolerance and liberalism can, if unchecked, impose its views on the minority in a manner that is in, itself, intolerant and illiberal, the court found.

Nova Scotias top court ruled in June that the provinces Barristers Society was wrong to deny accreditation, finding that it did not have the authority to issue rulings whether someone in British Columbia unlawfully violated the Human Rights Act or the Charter.

In its Supreme Court factum  on which the Law Society of Upper Canada took no position  Trinity Western relies on a 2001 Supreme Court decision that found the B.C. College of Teachers (BCCT) was wrong to deny accreditation to the universitys teacher education program because of its religious code of conduct.

The LSUC made the same error as the BCCT by refusing to accredit TWU in the name of the public interest because of a belief that TWUs religious code of conduct is discriminatory, lawyers for the university argue.

Notwithstanding the obvious societal shift on LGBTQ rights since 2001, the court today is also not dealing with the exact same set of issues as it was then, said University of Windsor law professor Richard Moon, who has written on TWUs accreditation challenges.

He said the BCCTs argument at the time was that potential graduates of the teaching program were not being properly trained to teach in the public school system due to a code of conduct seen as discriminatory.

The Supreme Court didnt buy that  I think they were wrong  they said that unless theres evidence of graduates engaging in sexual orientation discrimination in the schools, its easy to reconcile religious freedom with sexual orientation equality, he said.

In the current case dealing with the law school, the argument is that there is a barrier to being admitted to the school in the first place due to the covenant, Moon said.

The argument here has not focused on whether this will adequately train lawyers in a diverse community. Instead the argument has been: Does this covenant in effect mean a kind of entry barrier to students with diverse sexual identities? And so its really about discrimination at the intake point, as opposed to the downstream effects.

The B.C. Court of Appeal touched on this point this week. It found that creating 60 new law school seats at TWU, which brings the Canadian total to about 2,500, would divert some law school hopefuls from programs elsewhere, and therefore increase the number of seats available to LGBTQ applicants at other universities.

Judson, the outgoing director at Out on Bay Street, said it trivializes the issue to boil it down to a numbers game as the court did.

What is concerning to me is the idea that maybe institutions are taking away from this that the rights and the hurt of LGBTQ people are not necessarily on equal footing as those of other equity-seeking groups, he said. If you change LGBTQ for women or black people or Jews, would those rights succeed?

With files from The Canadian Press

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OTTAWA  Canadas Governor General says this country is making small but important contributions to ending the historic conflict between Israelis and Palestinians  even as some fear the prospects for peace are dimming.

David Johnston wrapped up an eight-day, three-country tour of the Middle East on Saturday in which he affirmed Canadas support for a negotiated Middle East  preferably with the creation of an independent Palestine alongside Israel.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asked Johnston to visit the region. Johnston is the first Canadian Governor General to make state visits to Jordan and Israel.

The tour, which also included a stop in the West Bank, is expected to feed into the Liberal governments effort to recalibrate Canadas Middle East policy.

Trudeau has promised a more balanced position after a decade of hardline Canadian support for Israel under Stephen Harper.

Johnston told The Canadian Press in an interview from Jerusalem that resolving the historic conflict by creating an independent Palestine living in co-existence with Israel will help solve many of the problems currently plaguing the Middle East.

The way forward in this very specific region is a two-state solution and a just, longstanding and comprehensive peace, Johnston said in an interview from Jerusalem.

And if one can achieve that, one goes a long way in dealing with some of the larger problems that exist throughout the region.

The Governor General said that is the message he repeatedly conveyed to Israeli and Palestinian leaders during his trip, as he encouraged them to resume long-stalled negotiations.

Anything we can do to encourage the representatives of those two peoples to get together face-to-face to negotiate the challenges, that is very much what we want to do, he said.

But Canada is also supporting the push for peace with projects aimed at laying the foundation for a prosperous and secure Palestinian state, Johnston said.

He cited several university projects as well as money for a forensics lab at a Palestinian police station and solar panels at a school for blind children as examples of Canadas work in the region.

The federal government says Canada spent nearly $30 million on different development and aid projects in the West Bank and Gaza in 2014-2015.

One has to find a resolution to this conflict, and the role of a middle power like Canada is to encourage it as much as we can, he said.

We always come back to the idea that Canadas more direct role is to be helpful on the innovative and humanitarian and development front.

Yet there are growing concerns over the fate of the peace process, and fears that a new round of armed violence between Israelis and Palestinians could break out at any moment.

Negotiations have been stalled for several years, with each side accusing the other of creating obstacles towards a negotiated settlement.

Palestinian leaders have been accused of encouraging and even inciting attacks against Israelis in East Jerusalem and other areas.

Israels government has in turn been criticized for moving ahead with plans to build on land that the Palestinians claim as their own. It has also been accused of being secretly against the two-state solution.

The UNs Middle East envoy, Nickolay Mladenov, warned last month that the two sides could end up sleep-walking into another armed conflict, as has happened several times in the past 15 years.

Johnston, who described the political situation in the Middle East as complicated, said Israeli and Palestinian leaders all told him they wanted peace  though they differed on the best path to get there.

He said Canada was firm in its view that a two-state solution was the best solution, and anything we can do to encourage the representatives of those two peoples to get together face-to-face to negotiate the challenges, that is very much what we want to do.

The Governor Generals visit also took him to neighbouring Jordan, which has been overwhelmed as more than 650,000 Syrian refugees and 55,000 Iraqis have flooded across its borders over the past few years.

Johnston toured one of the largest camps for refugees who have fled the war in Syria, at one point playing soccer in bare feet with Syrian children.

He was also on hand as Canadas ambassador to Jordan, Peter MacDougall, announced nearly $20 million in funding to help the countrys municipalities cope with the influx of refugees.

Jordan is crying out for help, Johnston said. Its very prepared to do its share, but unable to do more than its share.

A United Nations appeal for $320 million to help the refugees has only been half-funded by the international community.

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MONTREALConnect the dots between Quebecs police corps and the half-dozen or more investigative journalists who were put under surveillance over the past decade and you will find a gaggle of judges potentially derelict in their gatekeeping duties.

In each of the spying episodes that have come to light over the past week, the police had to convince a judge to sanction the surveillance and, in some cases, to do so more than once.

The evidence submitted to the courts by the Surete du Quebec (SQ) and the Service de police de la Ville de Montreal (SPVM) to secure surveillance mandates is under seal but not for long. Those affidavits will eventually be out in the open as a result of an upcoming public inquiry or the legal procedures undertaken by the media.

It may be that an unspecified number of provincial and municipal police officers testifying under oath pulled the wool over the eyes of a yet-to-be-determined number of gullible justices of the peace. But based on the information released this week, securing a courts approval to spy on a journalist in Quebec amounts to little more than a formality.

In theory, the names of the journalists who were the targets of the police surveillance should have given pause to any judge mindful of his or her responsibility to protect the freedom of the press. The list reads like a whos who of Quebecs investigative reporters.

At the time the SQ went to court to access Alain Gravels phone records he was the host of Radio-Canadas Enquete program. The shows revelations gave impetus to the creation of a provincial commission of inquiry into corruption and collusion in the construction industry.

Isabelle Richer, who succeeded Gravel as one of Enquetes co-hosts, cut her teeth covering the justice beat. For years, she was a constant presence at Montreals Palais de Justice. She would be a familiar figure to anyone who toils in the provinces courts.

Gravel, Richer and their Radio-Canada colleague Marie-Maude Denis were spied on by the SQ for five years. Deniss husband, who is also a journalist, seems to have had his phone put under surveillance for the simple reason that he is her partner.

Between 2008 and 2013, the numbers of all their incoming and outgoing calls were logged by the police. That is the period they spent investigating collusion between the construction industry and various orders of government. Their stories would not have come to light without the co-operation of sources operating under the presumption that their identities were protected.

With 222,000 followers, Patrick Lagace  the La Presse columnist who was revealed to have been under surveillance by the Montreal police earlier this week  may be the only Canadian journalist to have a Twitter following approaching that of the CBCs Peter Mansbridge. (Chances are Lagace boasts more police followers than the anchor of The National.)

In Lagaces case, the SPVMs spying expedition was the object of more than 20 surveillance mandates.

There have been years when Denis Lessard, La Presses veteran correspondent at the national assembly, has come up with far more scoops than the sum of his press gallery colleagues. It is a fact of elected life in Quebec that members of the national assembly wake up at night wondering when  and not whether  Lessard will get his hands on information they would rather keep private. He, too, was the subject of SQ surveillance.

Quebec is a tightly knit society with less than six degrees of separation between members of its chattering class.

The scoops dug out over that same period by the journalists who were spied on by police were central to the political conversation in Quebec.

And yet it seems the police spying operations raised no red flags within the justice system. The request or requests to access their phones and track their movements seem to have been treated as a matter of routine.

Retired Superior Court judge John Gomery led the federal inquiry into the sponsorship scandal between 2004 and 2006 and then went on to head Quebecs press council until 2014.

From Gomerys perspective, this weeks debacle does not result from an overly weak legal protection of journalist sources as much as from weak-kneed judges who are failing to enforce the existing law.

The notion that Quebec police forces would go on a spying spree on the provinces top investigative journalists is troubling; the fact that it was all done legally is the opposite of reassuring.

Chantal Hebert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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If youre a big union having trouble with your own small union representing support staff at headquarters, who ya gonna call?

Union busters?

Surely not. Law firms dont normally advertise themselves in such stark terms (and never mind copyright infringement with the Ghostbusters movie franchise).

Union avoiders?

Surely no major union would hire a lawyer who highlights his skills in union avoidance. Or who boasted online, We fight unions hard.

Dont be so sure.

Last month, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) hired a self-described management-side lawyer, Matthew R. Vella, to investigate members of its own staff union amid an internecine battle. The growing civil war goes before the Ontario Labour Relations Board on Monday, where unionized workers have filed an unfair labour practices against the union they work for.

On his web page at the law firm Loopstra Nixon, Vella declares that he represents employers, putting union avoidance at the top of his list.

It says he joined the firm last year after operating his own successful labour employment practice for nine years. That would be Vella Labour Law, where he boasted about defeating an organizing drive by a major Canadian union.

Working with the management team, we were successful in having the union defeated by a wide margin, according to the website, which was taken down Friday.

At Vella Labour Law we fight unions hard. We fight to win.

Vella was hired last month by OPSEU, which represents 130,000 public sector workers in sectors such as hospitals, community colleges, correctional services, and the LCBO.

The sprawling union has a support staff of more than 375 who are themselves represented by the Ontario Public Service Staff Union (OPSSU), with duties such as labour organizing drives (you know, the opposite of union avoidance) and helping to negotiate collective agreements. Some were outraged to hear that Vella would be coming into their workplace to interview them for an investigation ordered by OPSEU management.

Pati Habermann, president of the small staff union, sent an email this week alerting her members to their right to a union steward if approached by OPSEUs newly hired lawyer conducting a probe into alleged threats or bullying in the workplace.

Habermann told me OPSEUs administrator of employee relations, Bob Eaton, responded by emailing her that the giant union had second thoughts about Vella  who had come highly recommended for the job  and would find someone else.

OPSEUs Eaton did not respond to several phone calls and emails with detailed questions.

Reached by telephone, OPSEU president Warren (Smokey) Thomas declined to comment: I got nothing to say to you. Send me an email if you got a question.

He added, I dont trust ya, goodbye, before hanging up. Thomas did not respond to emailed questions.

In a telephone interview, Vella said, Im not comfortable commenting on the retainer or why it was terminated.

What does union avoidance mean? Vella explained that if the employer doesnt want to be unionized, he can be of assistance. You know, I help  Im a management-side lawyer.

Subsequent to his joining Loopstra Nixon, his old Vella Labour Law is now sort of just defunct, he noted. Asked why its website was still online this week (indicating Copyright 2016), Vella said it was automatically renewed.

Shortly after our interview, the Vella Labour Law website was taken down Friday and can no longer be viewed online.

Neither Vella nor OPSEU would say whether he would be paid despite his services no longer being needed, nor whether he would keep any initial retainer that he may or may not have received.

This isnt the first time OPSEUs hiring of an outside lawyer has sparked controversy.

Earlier this year, five senior executives in OPSEUs central management team served a notice of libel against activists from OPSEU locals who had raised questions about the workplace culture at headquarters. The libel lawyer hired by the OPSEU managers (including Eaton, who is also executive assistant to union president Smokey Thomas) alleged the union activists had defamed management when demanding an investigation of an allegedly toxic work environment at headquarters.

After a column revealing the controversy last April, and a tense debate on the floor at OPSEUs annual convention, union delegates voted to pay the mounting legal fees of the intended defendants who were threatened with the libel suit. And delegates voted overwhelmingly for an emergency resolution to formally investigate, amid allegations that a toxic work environment exists in the union, including allegations of systemic sexual harassment experienced by staff, culminating in sexual assault charges against one former staff member . . . recently reported by Canadas largest media outlet.

However, Habermann, who sits on the task force (representing members of the staff union), says no outside consultant has yet been hired, nor has any investigation or report been completed on the underlying problems.

She anticipates prolonged hearings starting Monday at the Labour Relations Board over her unions 58-page submission accusing OPSEU of bullying, intimidation, retaliation, threats, surveillance, unjustified suspensions, firings, disciplinary actions and investigations intended to harass members, after 12 staff were suspended and four terminated in the wake of contract negotiations last summer.

OPSEUs Thomas and Eaton did not respond to emailed questions about any progress made by the task force, nor about the upcoming Labour Board hearings.

Martin Regg Cohns political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca , Twitter: @reggcohn

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A Toronto man has been charged with first-degree murder for allegedly killing 34-year-old Sylvia Consuelo in January.

Consuelo was found dead at around 4:45 a.m. on Jan. 30 by several acquaintances whod arrived to visit her at her Jamestown-area apartment, according to the Toronto Police Service.

Det.-Sgt. Hank Idsinga told a news conference in February that Consuelo was killed by a suspect who broke into her building, brutally sexually assault and beat her, then suffocated her to death.

Surveillance-camera video released by police at the time showed a suspect walk in and out of Consuelos apartment building.

Idsinga also said that Consuelo, an extremely vulnerable resident of our city, lived alone, had three children who no longer lived with her, and had difficulties with mental heath.

The Toronto man has faced charges for home invasions in the past.

Const. Victor Kwong confirmed that he is one of three suspects charged for robbing a house and stabbing a 24-year-old man in Mississauga last June.

Najib Amin, 29, was scheduled to appear in court Friday morning.

With files from Laura DaSilva

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Halton police have arrested a driver who failed to remain at the scene after a 13-year-old boy was struck by a vehicle in Burlington on Friday evening.

Emergency crews rushed to the intersection of Appleby Line and Taywood Dr. just before 5:30 p.m.

Police say the boy was struck in a crosswalk as the vehicle made a turn at that intersection.

The boy sustained critical injuries and was rushed to Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital, and then airlifted to SickKids Hospital.

Police said the driver initially fled the scene, but then later returned to the area and was arrested.

The intersection is closed for an investigation.

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Eric Trump along with Trump's other kids, Donald Jr. and Ivanka, have been at the front and centre of the campaign, trying to drum up support for their father.

By India Today Web Desk: Donald Trump's son, Eric Trump who is the executive vice president of The Trump Organisation, today took part in an 'aarti' and a puja ceremony organised by Indian Americans in order to bless the Trump Campaign ahead of election day on November 8th.

Eric Trump along with Trump's other kids, Donald Jr.and Ivanka, have been at front and centre of the campaign, trying to drum up support for their father's candidacy.

#WATCH: Donald Trump's son Eric takes part in an 'aarti' ahead of Election Day on November 8 #Florida pic.twitter.com/XM0HRgkYw3 ANI (@ANI_news) November 5, 2016

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TRUMP AND HINDUS

Donald Trump has enjoyed the backing of a considerable section of Hindu Americans ahead of the polls. A movement called 'Hindus for Trump' has gained steam in the US and the Republican Hindu Coalition even organised an event last month in New Jersey where Indian Americans in droves endorsed the candidate.

Even in India, several right-wing organisations like the Hindu Sena have performed pujas praying for Donald Trump to be named commander-in-chief of the world's only super power.

BATTLE STILL ON

With just 3 days to go ahead of the election, Donald Trump and his Democratic rival for the presidency, Hillary Clinton are focussed on trying to drum up support in the swing states.

Both candidates campaigned in Florida on Saturday, as the state with its high number of electoral votes is crucial in deciding the outcome of the election.

ALSO READ:

Hindu Sena celebrates Donald Trump's victory ahead of US election

Trump in trouble? Democrats sue Donald for 'voter intimidation' in 4 states





--- ENDS ---
Wheres the buzz, my sisters?

The vibe, the love, the expectation of the shattering of the most impenetrable glass ceiling blocking the path to the Presidency of the United States of America?

Hillary Clinton is on the verge of becoming the first woman to lead the free world, but, unlike the candidacy of her predecessor, Barack Obama, this historic anticipation seems, well, restrained.

Hillary cant overtly play the gender card because opponent Donald Trump is so blatantly and aggressively misogynistic and sexist that he might tip the balance against her, some argue.

Right. And Obama wasnt similarly constrained?

Nasty and toxic are only two of the nicer adjectives to describe the presidential race in 2016, an epic contest straining the bounds of decency, if not democracy, others argue. Cant you see they want to kill the woman?

Similar fears were at the top of the emotional matrix in 2008, remember. Wasnt there a palpable fear that he might be assassinated amidst the whoops of O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma?

Its 2016, the final argument goes. Women are conspicuously free and dont need President Hillary to affirm their place in America.

Undoubtedly. As soon as Obama became president many conservatives conjured up the vision of a post-racial America. If racist, evil, slave-holding America could elect a black president, certainly that society had crossed the Rubicon and there was little need for the do-gooders and activists to brandish placards and invent slogans.

Huh? Eight years later America refuses to comprehend the difference between Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter. Its like going to your mechanic with a busted transmission and the mechanic insists, But, sir, all engine parts matter.

By now, I had expected more from the sisters. More passion, more verve, more enthusiasm. More than Madonna and Beyonce and Oprah Winfrey. More spilling over into ordinary Canadians, even. Where is the Canadianwomenforhillary chapter in Toronto? Any sisters planning an election-night party next Tuesday?

In 2008, the sisters were there for the Bro, if you know what I mean. On the trail. In the debating societies. On the block. As surrogates. Rocking the HOPE and CHANGE Obama gear. And, on election night, wiping away the mascara streaking down the cheek as another barrier bit the dust.

Im with Hillary  emails be damned. You wish to crucify her for Benghazi? Didnt your heroes send young men and women into Iraq on the basis of the lie of weapons of mass destruction? Nobody went to jail for that, but you want to lock up crooked Hillary?

And the alternative is the crazy billionaire dude who thinks it a virtue to skirt around paying taxes; who relishes in going bankrupt and shrugs at stiffing hard-working small business owners with unpaid bills; a candidate so epically unsuited and unfit for office that his victory would be North Americas electoral folly of modern times, replacing Rob Fords ascension here.

Hillary got me, finally, when she displayed more grace in losing the 2008 Democratic primary than most men show while winning. That was her moment, her turn, her victory that the upstart black dude snatched away. And she sucked it up.

Now, weighted down with decades of experience  that was supposed to be a good thing  and baggage that seem disproportionately unearthed, shes back.

The prospect of a woman president is not a small matter. Less than 100 years ago a woman couldnt vote in America. Imagine that. Fewer than 40 years before I was born, a son could tell his mom, Sorry, mom, you cant vote. No. Not allowed. You might get too emotional in the voting booth.

Thats how ridiculous we are as human beings: we build walls between our closest, most precious selves.

Write the year 1920 on a piece of paper and stare at it. Thats the year the 19th amendment was passed giving American women the right to vote. Many women alive today were born into a country in which they did not have the right to vote. They are alive to bear witness to another moment of history  chewing off their nails as the race tightens to an uncertain end.

Tough doesnt begin to describe Hillary Clinton. Shes competed on male terms and withstood all thats been thrown at her.

Would she be a great president, even a good one? Who knows.

White men have had their chance 55 times. A black man had a shot for two terms. This time, the best man is a woman named Hillary.

Sisters, rejoice! Its only a matter of time.

Royson James column appears weekly. Contact him at rjames@thestar.ca .

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Community leader Kay Blair had a hugely successful career, but always maintained a proper perspective on life.

Its OK to do well. But weve got to keep the doors open for each other, she informally told a small group of senior women from the non-profit sector in a video filmed by Planet Africa TV. We sometimes dont want to connect because were doing well and the others are not doing well . . . But we have to find a way to be humble and to be supportive of each other.

As executive director of Etobicoke-based Community MicroSkills Development Centre since 1988, Blair led an organization that annually provides settlement, employment and self-employment services to tens of thousands of immigrants, low-income women and youth in the GTA.

Blair also held a number of other leadership roles elsewhere in the community. From 2011 to 2014, she was chair of the board of the William Osler Health System. Between 2009 and 2014, she sat on Centennial Colleges Board of Governors, the last year as chair.

She was a leader, but a humble leader, said Debbie Douglas, a friend of Blairs for the last 32 years and currently executive director of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI). Blair served two terms as president of OCASI in the late 1990s. She was as comfortable in the boardrooms of Canada as she was in a pub or Caribbean restaurant, Douglas said.

Blair died on September 26 at age 62. She had been diagnosed with sarcoma less than four years ago.

She always took the stance as a supporter or mentor or champion of others, said Ontario education minister Mitzie Hunter, who first met Blair many years ago at a women and technology workshop. She was one of the leaders of the community we could turn to for advice.

Community engagement and giving back was part of her DNA, said Brampton mayor Linda Jeffrey.

Blair was twice named one of Canadas 100 most powerful women. She also received a YWCA Women of Distinction Award, a Premiers Award, and many other honours.

Blair joined MicroSkills in 1988 when it had just four staff and two desks. The then four-year-old organization was a project waiting for a vision, said Jane Wilson, who has worked at MicroSkills since its creation. The organizations name came from its initial purpose to train women to become microfiche technicians.

Blair was incredibly energetic and fast paced, said Wilson, director of womens and newcomer services at MicroSkills. Blair was strongly committed to getting women into better paying jobs. She wasnt content with the status quo, said Wilson.

Blair understood the barriers faced by immigrant women looking for work, said Wilson. She had a great belief in peoples innate skills and their potential to acquire new skills, she said.

To see someone walking into our agency and theyre all folded under and theyre scared, theyre unsure whats going to happen in their life, Blair said in a video posted on TVOs YouTube channel. And to see in a very short while, the shoulders are up and theyre feeling confident and theyre ready to take the world on, that keeps me going.

Under her leadership, the organization grew to almost 200 staff at its peak, becoming a multi-service agency offering many programs to its clientele.

Kay Anderson was born in St. Catherine, Jamaica, in 1954, the second of nine children. As a young adult, she was known to take part in sit-ins in Jamaica, fighting for political change, said her son, Karim Blair.

Kay Blair came to Canada in 1976. Empowered after ending an abusive relationship, she began helping other abused women. She battled her way out, said Karim.

Her experience gave her a special insight when she later became a counsellor at the Emily Stowe Shelter for Women.

When a woman gets here, shes in shock for three days. Then she realizes shes not alone and she feels very positive about herself, Blair told the Toronto Star in 1985. Then, reality sets in; she becomes desperate. She cant get housing and getting welfare seems so difficult.

While Blair had an impact on the community, she was also a big influence on her extended family. You have taught us to express our thoughts, remain strong during adversity and always leave the door of opportunity open for the next person, niece Michelle Miles said in the eulogy she delivered at Blairs funeral. You taught us that compassion is key and that as black women, we can engage and change the world.

While Blair was the first member of her family to come to Canada, she helped four of her siblings join her over the years. These individuals and their children stayed with Blair until they got a chance to settle in to their new environment.

Aunty Kay, as the anchor of our family, you kept everyone in check, you kept everyone clothed and made sure everyone had what they needed to succeed, all in the name of love, Miles said in her eulogy. It has been an honour and a privilege to have you in my life, and although I would rather more time, I am grateful that my idol is my Aunty Kay.

Blair leaves behind her two sons, two grandchildren, eight siblings, and 22 nieces and nephews.

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Freedom of speech is clashing with gender identity. At least, some on the University of Toronto campus think it is.

U of T Prof. Jordan Peterson has received national media attention following the release of a YouTube lecture series in which he spoke about his refusal to use non-binary pronouns  words others than he and she  and criticized political correctness.

He took issue both with Bill C-16, federal legislation that would change the Canadian Human Rights Code and Criminal Code, making discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression illegal, and with the Ontario Human Rights Commissions definition of gender identity, which is described as a persons sense of being a woman, a man, both, neither, or anywhere along the gender spectrum.

I dont believe that its intelligent and appropriate for the government to mandate the words that its citizens should speak, Peterson said.

Its one thing to tell people that theres certain words they cant say, but its an entirely different thing to tell them there are words that they have to say.

His commentary prompted another professor at the University of Toronto to step forward and offer a counter-argument.

A. W. Peet, who identifies as non-binary and uses the pronoun they, says this is not a debate on freedom of speech, but rather about human decency.

I think its just basic human decency to address someone how they would like to be addressed, Peet said.

For instance, if Jordan wants to be called Jordan, I dont suddenly start calling him Julie, because Im too lazy to have a different name for him.

Peet said academics who wish to critique the way society works need to balance that with having a conscience.

And I would argue thats where Peterson has been letting the rest of us down, Peet said.

Peterson insists, however, that its self-aggrandizing and narcissistic to demand that other people use a special form of address when they only want to have an initial conversation with you.

Peterson has also said if anti-discrimination and anti-bias training, which is being rolled out for the University of Torontos human resources and student life departments and staff in the vice-presidents office, is expanded to include other faculty, he will not participate.

Peet said that on top of this being not ethical, its just not smart for attracting great intellectual talent to the University of Toronto.

We want to try to have as many minds come here as possible who are really brilliant, and we want to foster them and help them feel supported so that they can do those awesome intellectual things that were bringing them here to do, Peet said.

After Peterson made his comments, he received a letter signed by David Cameron, dean of the faculty of arts and science, and Sioban Nelson, vice-provost of faculty and academic life, asking that he refrain from making such statements.

Peterson refused.

This has led to campus tumult. In the past two weeks, a number of students have taken up Petersons cause and held two freedom-of-speech rallies.

Maria Morcz, a U of T student and one of the organizers of the second rally, said those who try to paint us a transphobes or racists or bigots are absolutely wrong.

All we want is the freedom to say what we think, the freedom to debate and the university to support these rights that we believe are fundamental, she said.

Jacob Ritchie, a U of T student who had no plans of attending the rally, said he felt compelled to speak up in protest as he walked by.

Ritchie said he believes those at the rally care about free speech and are just misguided.

The bill very specifically penalizes discrimination against groups of people and doesnt really limit anyones freedom of speech unless theyre in a position of power, Ritchie said.

The University of Toronto has since agreed to host a debate with Peterson, although details are not yet available. Media relations director Althea Blackburn-Evans said Peterson has the right to express his views, but that faculty members also have responsibilities to create a learning environment at the University of Toronto thats free from discrimination.

The universitys mandate is to foster discussion and debate around topics that can often be very controversial, Blackburn-Evans said.

Conversations around gender-neutral pronouns and accommodation of the transgender community are happening across the country.

Both Gabrielle Bouchard, the trans advocacy co-ordinator at Concordia Universitys Centre for Gender Advocacy, and Sara-Jane Finlay, associate vice-president for equity and inclusion at the University of British Columbia, had positive things to say about efforts to accommodate transgender students on their campuses. At Concordia, more offices are displaying signs asking people to specify what pronoun they want to be addressed by, Bouchard said. UBC is updating its discrimination and harassment policy to include gender identity and gender expression.

But both agree more steps need to be taken. And not just on university campuses.

I think its something thats more broadly about Canadian society, Finlay said.

When the legislation was introduced into parliament to include gender identity and gender expression, it raised the level of awareness about what it means to be a trans or gender diverse person in Canada.

So, I think, thats a conversation thats happening in a lot of places, not just in academic institutions.

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KANSAS CITY, MO.Chelsea Manning attempted suicide for the second time in recent months while the transgender soldier remains imprisoned in Kansas for leaking classified information, two of her attorneys said Friday.

Attorneys Vincent Ward and Chase Strangio declined to divulge details of Mannings suicide attempt last month at a military prison at Kansas Fort Leavenworth. Wayne Hall, an Army spokesman, said medical privacy laws barred him from discussing the matter.

But Mannings attorneys cited her prison conditions  including the solitary confinement that her legal team says she received as punishment for her July suicide attempt  as contributing to their clients fragile mental state.

Strangio, in an email to The Associated Press, called her treatment since her 2010 arrest and subsequent time serving a 35-year sentence demoralizing and destabilizing assaults on her health and humanity.

After her July suicide attempt, I watched her begin to piece her life and spirit back together only to have that shattered by the disciplinary proceedings brought against her and then the unannounced initiation of her term of punishment last month, Strangio wrote. She has repeatedly been punished for trying to survive and now is being repeatedly punished for trying to die.

Strangio added he worries about Mannings ability to keep fighting under these relentless abuses.

Manning, arrested in 2010 as Bradley Manning, was convicted in 2013 in military court of leaking more than 700,000 secret military and State Department documents to WikiLeaks. Manning was an intelligence analyst in Iraq at the time.

In 2014, the ACLU sued the U.S. Department of Defence over its refusal to treat Mannings gender dysphoria.

Manning staged a several-day hunger strike in September until the Army agreed to get her treatment for her gender dysphoria, including surgery recommended in April by her psychologist, the ACLU said.

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BASSE GUINAUDEE, HAITIFor nearly three decades, Ericq Pierre lovingly grew majestic mahogany and cedar trees, creating a lush canopy in his childhood hamlet, the place where his parents eked out a living from the earth.

But then Hurricane Matthew tore through the rare patch of green in this heavily deforested nation, wiping out as much as 70 per cent of Pierres forest with 225-km/h winds.

This is destruction, pure destruction, an emotional Pierre, 71, said standing atop a rocky cliff, surveying the desiccated limbs and exposed roots littering the ground. When you have 25-year-old mahogany trees, it is not something that can be built back in a year.

The now-toppled trees were supposed to help Pierre, a retired agriculture specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank, fulfil a vision to give back to his homeland. The part-time Aventura, Fla., resident and respected Haitian technocrat began nursing plants in Saincrit, located between the villages of Sassier and Duranton on the outskirts of Jeremie, as his way of saving Haiti.

Now, he joins the tens of thousands of farmers, homeowners, investors and other dreamers who fell victim to Matthews wrath. In this remote southwestern corner of Haiti, no one was spared.

Gone are the agricultural fields that provided a livelihood for small farmers in the still-inaccessible remote inlands.

Gone, too, is the terracotta-red covering of the centuries-old Cathedrale Saint-Louis Roi de France in Jeremie, the capital of the Grand Anse region, where many of the properties are held by members of the Haitian diaspora like Pierre.

Can you imagine one day visiting Central Park and there are no trees? Can you imagine the disappearance of the cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C? asked Simon Desras, Haitis current environment minister. This storm has not only sped up deforestation, it has set us back significantly.

In poverty-stricken Haiti, where land is everything, the people of the Grand Anse lived off their trees. Even as deforestation encroached with charcoal barons tapping the surrounding mountains for fuel and revenue, this isolated region remained a rare reservoir of lush vegetation and rich forests.

I loved the trees. My daughters will tell you, Dad is always with his trees,  said Pierre, the father of four girls. Now I dont know what Ill do.

While Jeremie is often cited as the city of poets by intellectuals, the Grand Anse Department is le grenier  the breadbasket  of a starving nation. The region produces corn, coffee, cocoa and breadfruit. It also is where farmers harvest trees for food, trade and timber using tree- and crop-planting techniques.

The techniques had helped create 17-per-cent tree cover in Haiti, with almost half of it in Grand Anse, said environmentalist Jean Vilmond Hilaire, who recently carried out a study on the storms ecological impact on behalf of the Haiti Audubon Society.

The storm, he said, destroyed between 8 and 10 per cent of the trees in Grand Anse.

Pierre, a trained agronomist, knows all too well about Haitis losing battle with deforestation. He also believes the recent hurricanes are linked to climate change and will likely become more frequent. Fewer trees mean more erosion and landslides.

The Grand Anse needs a development plan, he said. This is a department with a lot of potential. Agriculture can flourish again.

Pierres forest sits on six hectares that his father, Benoit Pierre, worked as a farmer, transforming sugar cane to alcohol.

He used it for the education of his kids, Pierre, one of seven children, said proudly. The trees were everything.

Mother Nature has taken more from Pierre than his trees in recent years. His sister, Madeleine Pierre, was killed in Haitis catastrophic 2010 earthquake when her home in the capital city of Port-au-Prince collapsed, killing her and her 25-year-old son.

Pierre planted his first tree, a mahogany, on May 2, 1989, a year after his father died. Over the years, he planted 2,699 more, along with 1,000 cedars, all without using an ounce of fertilizer.

He did so not for the timber, which can fetch as much as $912 for one mahogany tree, but to keep the land in the family and to show the world that Haiti can be green.

These were precious trees, he said. I knew nobody was going to cut them for charcoal and they were long term.

Stopping mid-way up the cliff, the sound of dry leaves being crushed under his feet, he pointed out the spot where he was born and then the storm-damaged concrete house in the distance that he had helped his father build.

He wondered what to do next.

I will not complain. But at my age, I am not inspired to start planting again.

Pierre spent 33 years at the Inter-American Development Bank, eventually becoming a board member representing Haiti before retiring in 2013.

One of Haitis most respected political personalities, he was nominated twice for prime minister, falling victim to politics both times. He is known as much for his proud Jeremie roots as his outspokenness on what ails Haiti and how to fix it.

A lot of people are really thinking of returning, and are buying land to take their retirement here, Pierre said about Jeremies flourishing diaspora in Miami and Boston. This is a dream, to come back. But the problem of the Grand Anse is its isolation.

Before Matthew, the region was struggling to catch up with the rest of Haiti, a country plagued by poverty, a depressed economy and vulnerability to natural disasters exacerbated by human-caused deforestation.

Its main city of Jeremie generally had only six hours of electricity a day. And despite a recent development push, a 92-kilometre road connecting Jeremie to the port city of Les Cayes in the south remains unfinished after 10 years.

Still, proud Jeremiens like Pierre and Francois Chavenet, a former president of the Chamber of the Commerce and Industry of the Grand Anse Department, believed  and invested.

There was a plan to rehabilitate the citys French-colonial wood-frame homes with their balconies and arched verandas, and the 19th-century coffee warehouses. Pressure also had been building to do something about the citys entrance, now made uglier as missing vegetation revealed hidden shacks and an emerging slum.

With the aftermath of Matthew, everything is back in the drawers, said Chavenet, who had been preparing to embark on a new seaside real-estate and tourism venture showcasing the regions environmental potential when the hurricane hit Oct. 4.

Now, with the impact of Matthew on the whole environment . . . everything (we were planning) is like science fiction.

Just before the storm, newly elected Jeremie Mayor Claude Harry Milord had issued an order to stop the charcoal trucks from coming into the city to chop down trees.

The storm put that on hold, he told Pierre after a late-night motorcycle ride to Pierres house to plead his frustrations about aid trickling in. He also echoed complaints that the aid was only going to supporters of particular political parties.

And politics continue to influence aid. The presidential elections, postponed from Oct. 9 and reset for Nov. 20, have brought every major presidential candidate to town offering assistance.

The situation has never been good for Jeremie, Pierre said. This is a city with no infrastructure, one that has never had any . . . and where deforestation is progressing.

But before Matthew, he said, there was hope. People like me and others were returning.

The fallen trees are only part of his hurricane losses.

After the storm, as he stepped through the door of his home, he was at a loss for words. The multi-level white house overlooking the port of Jeremie that he had named Villa Philonise, in honour of his late mother, was a mess. Brothers Jacques and Dominique had downplayed the damage.

Que vais-je faire avec cette maison? he said in French, asking himself what to do with the storm-damaged house as he saw the sky through the gaping wooden rafters that had been covered with metal sheeting. The windows were all blown out. Four of eight solar panels had been blown away by Matthew.

I wanted to modernize things, he said, proudly.

The home had four bedrooms, four full bathrooms and two half baths. Hed invested more than $300,000 in the property. Like many here, Pierre didnt have insurance.

I do not know what I am going to do. Im a very old man. Im still thinking.

As he spoke, it started to rain, flooding his hardwood floors.

Hed started building the house two years ago, pouring his heart and savings into the cornerstone of his dream. On the 1.2-hectare property, he had planned to build a bed-and-breakfast so returning diaspora and visitors could witness the transformation of Jeremie that he hoped to help lead.

I dont think I will be pursuing that dream but, at the same time, I dont want to quit, he said. I dont know yet.

As he grapples with whether to rebuild, his thoughts also turn to whats happening outside of his walls. Many Haitians in the area are being forced to fend for themselves and aid agencies that dont know the area are acting without needed guidance.

He worries that the Grand Anse is going backward in time to 1954, the year that Hurricane Hazel hit Haiti, creating a desert in the region, crippling food production.

My dad always told me that is when misery started to fall on the family, after Hazel, he said. And now, over 60 years later, this is the same thing.

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ROME  A Canadian and two Italians who were kidnapped in southern Libya by armed men in September were freed unharmed and brought to Italy in the early hours of Saturday, Italian authorities said.

Italian Premier Matteo Renzi expressed thanks to the Libyan authorities and security forces for their role in liberating the men, technicians who were involved in projects at an airport.

"Today is a moment of relief and joy that I would like to share with the families of our technicians," Renzi said.

The ministry identified the Italians as Danilo Calonego and Bruno Cacace and the Canadian citizen of Italian origin as Frank Poccia.

Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said the two Italians had not been mistreated during their captivity and were in good health. He did not comment on the state of the Canadian citizen.

The Canadian government would only confirm it's offering consular assistance to the Canadian, but did not speak to his condition.

Authorities said they were liberated during the night and brought to Italy on a special flight early on Saturday.

The men were kidnapped on Sept. 19 by armed and masked men who blocked their vehicle in Ghat, a city in southwestern Libya in the Sahara desert near the border with Algeria.

A number of criminal and extremist groups operate in the area, but it wasn't immediately clear which group was involved in this case or what the motive was.

ANSA news agency said they are all technicians involved in projects at the airport in Ghat. The Italians were employed by an Italian construction company. It was not immediately clear whether the Canadian worked for the same company or another one.

With files from The Canadian Press

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BAYBAY, PHILIPPINES  Philippine police killed a town mayor in his jail cell in a purported gun battle on Saturday, the second killing in a week of a politician linked to illegal drugs under President Rodrigo Dutertes brutal crackdown.

Rolando Espinosa Sr., the mayor of the town of Albuera in the central province of Leyte, and a fellow inmate were shot dead before dawn after they fired at officers who staged a raid in search of firearms and illegal drugs in the provincial jail in Leytes Baybay city, police said.

Some officials and an anti-crime watchdog have called for an investigation of the circumstances of the killings, wondering how the mayor and the other inmate got hold of guns and what prompted them to clash with several policemen while in detention.

Offhand, I can smell extrajudicial killing, said Sen. Panfilo Lacson, a former national police chief, adding that the suspicious deaths were the biggest challenge to the credibility of the national police force, which is undertaking the anti-drug crackdown.

Last week, police allegedly killed another town mayor, Samsudin Dimaukom, and nine of his men in a gun battle in the southern Philippines.

Espinosa and Dimaukom were among more than 160 officials named publicly by Duterte in August as part of a shame campaign. Espinosas son, an alleged drug lord, was arrested in the United Arab Emirates capital city of Abu Dhabi last month.

After being linked by Duterte to illegal drugs, Espinosa surrendered to the national police chief in August in a nationally televised event. He was later released, but was arrested last month after being indicted on drug and illegal possession of firearm charges.

Police estimate that more than 3,600 suspected drug dealers and users have been killed since Duterte took office on June 30. Many of those killed in the initial months of the crackdown were poor drug suspects, and police said high-value targets, including mayors and drug lords, would be their next target in a new phase of the crackdown that was launched late last month.

The unprecedented crackdown and killings have helped ease crime, but the U.S. and other Western governments, along with human rights watchdogs, have been alarmed and called for an end to the killings. One human rights advocate has called the killings under Duterte a human rights calamity.

Duterte has lashed out at President Barack Obama and other critics, saying he was dealing with a pandemic that has afflicted politics, corrupted even generals and threatened to turn the country into what he describes as a narco state similar to some Latin American countries.

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WASHINGTONU.S. intelligence agencies do not think Russia is capable of using cyber-espionage to alter the outcome of Tuesdays presidential election, but they warn that Moscow could continue meddling after the voting has ended to sow doubts about the legitimacy of the result, U.S. officials said.

The assessment reflects widespread concern among U.S. spy agencies that a months-long campaign by Russia to rattle the mechanisms of American democracy will probably continue after polls close on one of the most polarizing races in recent history, extending and amplifying the political turbulence.

U.S. security officials have not ruled out Russian-sponsored disruption on Election Day. In recent weeks, officials at the Department of Homeland Security have collected evidence of apparent Russian scanning of state-run databases and computer voting systems. Whether they were really trying hard to get in, its not clear, a U.S. official said.

Still, the decentralized nature of U.S. polling would make it extraordinarily difficult to subvert a nationwide race. Instead, U.S. officials said it is more likely that Russia would use hacking tools to expose or fabricate signs of vote-rigging, aiming to delegitimize an election outcome that Republican candidate Donald Trump has said he may refuse to accept if he does not win.

I think its correct to say the Russians dont think they can dictate the outcome, said Rep. Adam Schiff (California), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. But even as votes are being tallied Tuesday, Schiff said, Russian intelligence services are likely to be looking through their troves of hacked documents and seeing what they can release.

Whether Trump or Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton prevails, Schiff said, the United States can expect a lot more of the same in terms of cyber-malevolence and influence from Moscow.

U.S. officials said there is still time for last-minute disruptions, even if the overall election appears relatively secure. Several officials said they fear that even an isolated operation that forces a voting system offline could erode confidence.

Schiff and others said they remain worried that Moscow could dump doctored documents over the weekend that appear to expose illegality by the Clinton or Trump campaigns  disclosures designed to create confusion among voters and that would be difficult to disprove before citizens cast their votes.

No forgeries have so far been identified among the thousands of files that U.S. officials believe were stolen by Russia and essentially laundered to the U.S. public and media through the WikiLeaks website.

The fact that Russia has so far refrained from altering documents or planting forgeries among the leaked emails is seen by some U.S. officials as potentially setting the stage for a more sinister plot.

The media and public have come to see the WikiLeaks stockpiles as authentic, increasing the potential impact if Russia were to insert a deliberate but compelling falsehood.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly denied any Russian involvement in the election-related hacks. But those assertions have been dismissed by U.S. intelligence agencies and cybersecurity experts, with some saying that Russia engaged in sloppy tradecraft or seemed not terribly concerned about covering its tracks.

Anxiety about late-election vulnerabilities has factored into President Barack Obamas administrations reluctance so far to retaliate against Russia.

The White House has opted against authorizing any countermeasures despite high confidence across U.S. spy agencies that Russia alone orchestrated the digital theft of thousands of sensitive documents posted online in recent months by WikiLeaks. The releases have included hacked files of the Democratic National Committee and emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, among others.

The White House has been weighing countermeasures for months but worried that retaliating before the election would give Moscow time to inflict more direct damage in the waning days of the campaign.

Escalation in the cyber-realm can happen quickly, a senior U.S. official said. Those urging restraint say they believe the Russian threat would be diminished after Election Day. Officials said the White House is also reluctant to take decisions on an escalation that could have profound implications for the next president.

U.S. officials said the options under consideration include kicking more suspected Russian intelligence officers out of the United States, imposing new economic sanctions against Russian entities tied to the alleged hacking and potentially launching cyberattacks on Russian computer systems.

Obama used cyberweapons to hobble Irans nuclear program early in his first term but has been reluctant to go down that road again, aides say.

The administrations decision could depend on what the Russians do in the coming days. An election-disrupting attack would probably trigger a more aggressive U.S. response, according to officials. They say the stakes have been made clear to Moscow.

The election-related tensions are part of a broader escalation in the level of antagonism between the United States and its former Cold War adversary. The two countries are fighting a proxy war against each other in Syria, are competing for influence elsewhere in the Middle East and are at odds over Russian intervention in Ukraine.

The hack of the DNC was blamed on Russia by cybersecurity experts and U.S. officials the moment it was publicly disclosed in June. The administration formally went public with its case last month, issuing a statement from Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. and Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson concluding that intrusions were authorized by Russias senior most officials.

Even so, there is still disagreement among some agencies and analysts over Moscows objectives. The White House has maintained that it does not believe Russias operations have been aimed at delivering an election win for Trump, who has praised Putin and argued there is no evidence of Russian involvement in the hacks  a position at odds with what he has been told in classified briefings.

The operations could be a more general effort to embarrass the United States and disrupt democratic institutions.

Clinton has said that Russia is seeking to ensure her defeat, a contention some U.S. intelligence officials say they believe is supported by the one-sided nature of the leaks. U.S. officials have speculated that Putin harbours personal animosity toward Clinton, believing that while serving as secretary of state she helped incite mass protests in Moscow that embarrassed the former KGB operative.

Even if there are no further election-related disruptions and Clinton emerges victorious, some U.S. officials believe that Russia has already accomplished many of its goals.

Theyve weakened Secretary Clinton by dumping information from her campaign manager and others, Schiff said.

The leaks have exposed infighting between Clinton and her former Democratic opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, forced the resignation of the DNC chief and  perhaps most importantly  cast Russia and its capacity to inflict damage as an ominous figure looming over the 2016 campaign.

They enjoy being the subject of discussion in an American election, Schiff said. It enhances their prestige in a bizarre way that theyre considered a player. This is also their way of payback, and I think they are delighting in that.

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Donald Trump will likely lose on Nov. 8, but the political earthquake he represents will endure. The crucial question is how?

Ironically, it may not be in the United States, but in Europe  with the threatening resurgence of its extreme-right political parties  where Trumps aftershocks will be most dramatically felt, even after his electoral defeat.

If Hillary Clinton survives these tense final days and wins the U.S. presidency by a decisive margin, most Americans will want to see the end of Trump. And this will include most Republicans.

To exact their revenge, embittered Republicans will undoubtedly reach to the crude methods of the Russia of old  how ironic is this?  to try to airbrush the disastrous Trump era out of its partys history. Whether or not they succeed, the probability is that, in the U.S. at least, Trump and what he represents will be a spent political force for the foreseeable future.

But not in Europe. That is what I have come to learn after spending the last week here. Regardless of whether he loses, Trumps surprising candidacy  cloaked in a racist populism that exploits fear and division  has breathed new life into the many extremist parties in Europe that are seeking to gain power.

Trumps likely defeat will be irrelevant. After all, he will still get the support of perhaps 40 per cent of American voters. And lets remember that populists are often popular only until they actually achieve power. Losing can have its benefits.

The challenge for these once-fringe parties has been to break into the mainstream. Rather than being dismissed as grubby and unsavory, they want to be seen as respectable alternatives to the forces in power. Although the chaotic influx of refugees into Europe has bolstered their popularity, these minority parties are now benefiting from unexpected foreign allies.

Russias despotic President Vladimir Putin, an outspoken Trump supporter, is widely believed to be covertly funding many of these parties. And Trump, an ardent admirer of Putin, has pushed racist and anti-immigration positions that are supported by these parties.

Not-so-strange bedfellows, it seems. It is all so cosy.

Of course, Trumpism, such as it is, has not yet won over mainstream public opinion or the political establishment throughout Europe, except among Russians, whose state media lavishes Trump with praise. Opinion polls elsewhere indicate that most Europeans loathe him and would regard his election as a catastrophe.

That view is shared by most European leaders. French President Francois Hollande has said that Trump makes you want to throw up. And German Foreign Secretary Frank-Walter Steinmeier has called Trumps candidacy grotesque.

But not all European leaders share that view, seemingly influenced by the growing popularity of their extremist opposition parties. The president of the Czech Republic and the prime minister of Hungary have both endorsed Trump, while leaders of Slovakia and Poland have supported anti-Muslim views embraced by Trump.

In these final days of the campaign, we will be hearing a lot about the race tightening, and the so-called hidden Trump vote. That stuff keeps the media in business.

But let us not lose sight of the wider picture.

Extremist European party leaders are crackpots in the same sense that Trump is. And thats not a state secret, shared only by you and me. Its a view overwhelmingly accepted by both Europeans and Americans alike.

I remember November 2008, when Americans had the opportunity to elect an African-American president for the first time. Incredibly, polls on the eve of that election suggested that Barack Hussein Obama would win.

I was living in the Middle East then, working for Al Jazeera English in Qatar. Few of my colleagues at the time  suspecting that something would intervene  believed that Americans, in the end, would elect Obama. I actually did.

On Thursday, while campaigning for Clinton in Florida, Obama was right when he said, the presidency shines a light on who we are.

Americans know that, and I am certain it will be reflected in their decision on Nov. 8. And given their history, I suspect that Europeans also know what is at stake for them in this anxious period ahead.

Tony Burman is former head of Al Jazeera English and CBC News. Reach him @TonyBurman or at tony.burman@gmail.com .

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Even as Congress party is protesting against the concession to organizer, Maharashtra government has decided to go ahead with the Coldplay concert.

By Mayuresh Ganapatye: Though band 'Cold Play's tickets have been almost sold out on online portal but still there is uncertainty as opposition is adamant on their stance about concession granted to the concert.

But the government is firm on its stand as the show will go on. Speaking to TV TODAY state Home Minister Deepak Kesarkar said that "Why it should be banned? People across world will be coming to this event. Industrialists will be declaring donation for good cause in this event and this the main aim of this event."

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"Whatever donation will be announced in this it will get announced by government and certainly money will get used for poor people," he added.

It is one of the most anticipated events on Mumbai's cultural calendar on September 19. Coldplay's Mumbai performance is part of the Global Citizen Festival, and the line-up also includes rap mogul Jay-Z, Bollywood stars like Aamir Khan, Ranveer Singh, Katrina Kaif et al.

Organisers of events that are meant to raise social awareness are eligible for a 70 per cent discount on rent and related charges. Opposition parties in Maharashtra have alleged that the BJP-led state government was trying to derive political mileage ahead of local civic polls from the Coldplay concert.

CONGRESS WANTS CONCERT AFTER POLLS



Congress Mumbai unit president Sanjay Nirupam called upon state election commissioner J S Saharia and demanded that the concert either be postponed in the view of the election code of conduct being in force or given permission after the poll process is completed.

Speaking to India Today Sanjay Nirupam said ,"State government has invested in the event organised by a private NGO. The MMRDA headed by the chief minister Fadnavis has given a concession of 75 per cent in fare to the organisers for the ground at BKC. The government has also given tax exemption to the show. The tax exemption was given when the code of conduct was in force, and thus we have filed Complaint in EC against it."

Mumbai Congress Chief's protest to concert received jolt when former Congress MP from Mumbai Milind Deora tweeted about it. In his tweets he wrote that it was unwise to demand a ban on Coldplay and that musical concerts do not determine elections. He added that Congress has always favoured a culturally vibrant Mumbai.

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Coldplay's Mumbai concert in trouble as Global Citizen runs into political controversy



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WASHINGTONHillary Clinton has a reputation for cautious centrism. Her platform isnt cautious or centrist. She is running an ambitious, liberal domestic policy agenda that would take America significantly further left.

If Congress were willing to co-operate. And it very probably wouldnt be.

A Clinton presidency would almost certainly face the same relentless Republican opposition that has frustrated Barack Obama. Passing any important law would be difficult. Like Obama, Clinton would probably have to find creative and controversial ways to circumvent Congress.

Id vote against something meaningful happening legislatively in the next couple years, said William Howell, a University of Chicago political science professor who studies the presidency. Where we see change, big change: its not likely to be through legislation. Its going to be on the international front through treaty-making and executive agreements, its going to be domestically through rule-making.

The legislative issue is the divided, hyper-conservative state of the Republican Party. The party has veered sharply to the right since the end of the George W. Bush presidency, especially in the House of Representatives.

Polls suggest the Democrats are unlikely to win back control of the House on Tuesday. And Speaker Paul Ryan, who is no moderate but also no member of the partys burn-down-the-house insurgent faction, is likely to face so much right-wing pressure that his speakership may quickly be in peril from the same Freedom Caucus forces that made John Boehner miserable.

The insurgents who topple an establishment do not go away. They never have in the past, said Samuel Popkin, a University of California, San Diego professor who advised the Bill Clinton campaign in 1992 and is working on a book called Republican Crackup and the Future of Presidential Politics. They never disappear. They reorganize.

Republicans have been transparent about their motives. Abandoning even the pretense of willingness to work with the new president, some House Republicans have already announced that they would not only obstruct Clinton at every turn but investigate her for alleged pre-presidency misdeeds.

Even before we get to Day One, weve got two years worth of material already lined up, Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chair of the House Oversight Committee, told the Washington Post in October. He added: Shes not getting a clean slate.

The unusual declarations of war have not been limited to the House. Three Republican senators have said or suggested they would attempt to block any nominee Clinton puts forward to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court, leaving the court with eight members.

While they are unlikely to succeed on that front, their general refusal to co-operate would be buoyed by Clintons unpopularity  with the party base, much of which believes she is a criminal, but also more generally. If Clinton beats Republican Donald Trump on Tuesday, as polls suggest she is likely to do, she would be the most unpopular person to win a presidential election in modern American history.

This driving force on the far right to take it to the Democrats and certainly Hillary Clinton is going to be a real impediment to a Clinton presidency, Howell said. Even if she didnt have these big negative ratings, shed face big challenges, particularly on the legislative front . . . but at the margin, it does not help that shes coming in with negatives above 50 per cent.

There is much Clinton can do without Republican help. Obama has given her a template for governing through unilateral action. And the president has a free hand in many foreign-affairs matters.

Clinton would, for example, get to kill the Trans-Pacific Partnership  if she is indeed sincere about her new-found opposition  and put the final nail in the coffin of the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta. She would be able to pursue a harder line with Russia and a warming of relations with Israel. And as commander-in-chief, she could change U.S. strategy in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

It is her expansive domestic program that appears least likely to become reality.

She has vowed to immediately pursue comprehensive immigration reform that would offer a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. She has adopted most of former rival Bernie Sanders plan to make public colleges and universities tuition-free for most students.

And she has promised universal access to preschool, tens of billions to make child care more affordable, sharp tax hikes for the very rich, and universal background checks for gun purchases.

Perhaps the most likely proposal to get through Congress is one of the least sexy: infrastructure spending.

Top Obama budget official Peter Orszag, among other experts, thinks she has a chance of winning bipartisan approval for her proposal for $275 billion in new infrastructure spending over five years. Trump has also called for a big boost in infrastructure spending.

I cant imagine that that wouldnt give the Republicans convulsions, said Popkin. How are they  some of them are going to say, Its money, we shouldnt spend it, but most of them are going to say, We need the jobs, we need the roads, we need the bridges. . . . I hope thats the first thing she does.

A Clinton presidency may end up being most consequential, on the domestic front at least, for protecting Obama achievements.

Trump, for example, wants to repeal Obamacare. Clinton would keep it and try to tweak it. Trump, who does not believe climate change is real, wants to scrap Obamas landmark limits on carbon emissions from power plants. Clinton would keep them.

In this election, President Obamas entire legacy is on the line, she said on Thursday in North Carolina, and she was not wrong.

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Editors' pick: Originally published Nov. 3.

To say the least, it has been an interesting presidential campaign.

With six days before most voters make their choices for president, the race has taken a final, unexpected twist as Republican nominee Donald Trump narrowed Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's once seemingly insurmountable lead.

Election guru Nate Silver gives Trump a 25%-30% chance of winning. That's about double what Trump's chances were last month following the debates, for which his performance was panned, and the release of a videotape in which he bragged about forcing himself sexually on women.

Yet the campaign starting with the primary season has been filled with more surprises than perhaps any election in history. Trump's competitiveness -- and the performance of self-described socialist Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont -- have been the biggest surprises, of all. Neither seemed to have the widespread support to make an effective run for president, and Trump has defied most wisdom in how he has run his campaign, clashing even with members of his own party.

Clinton has run a more conventional campaign but has struggled to escape the taint of an ongoing investigation into her use of a private server while she was secretary of state under President Obama.

World stock markets have been jittery about the race's outcome, probably more so if the unpredictable Trump wins. The markets did not cotton to Brexit or the continued existentialist musings of Federal Reserve bankers on a possible rate hike.

Below are four characteristics of the election.

Controversies Are Ongoing

The 2016 presidential race between Clinton and Trump has focused more on controversies than substance. Trump's list of ill-advised remarks, revelations about his past behavior socially and in business, and the behavior of a number of his followers is lengthy.

Earlier this week, a video showed one of Trump's supporters at a rally shouting an anti-Semitic slur, and The New York Times ran two stories about his efforts to avoid paying taxes and get around New York construction ordinances. Earlier in the campaign, Trump mocked a disabled reporter and insulted an Iraq war hero.

Meanwhile, Clinton has had to address FBI director James Comey's announcement that the FBI had found new emails that might be related to a previously closed investigation into her use of a private email server. In July, he determined that there was not enough evidence to file criminal charges. But during a separate inquiry into a possible inappropriate relationship between former Congressman Anthony Weiner and an underage minor, FBI agents found emails that may indicate that Clinton compromised national security.

The Polls Disagree

Most polls since the primaries ended have shown Clinton with a lead nationally and in most key battleground states. Yet there have been outliers, including a tracking poll by the Los Angeles Times/USC that has shown Trump tied or in the lead for much of the past few weeks.

According to the political website RealClearPolitics, Clinton remains three to five points ahead in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, but she trails in Florida and is tied in North Carolina after leading their since the debates. An ABC News/Washington Post poll gave Trump an 8-point lead in honesty.

But the back and forth in polling seems unique to this campaign. Clinton held a sizable lead following the Democratic convention this summer only to have Trump rebound in September.

Undecided Voters Remain Key

Some pundits have said that Trump's recent surge is the result of Republican voters deciding to support their party, despite their distaste for his personal deportment and incendiary statements.

That may put the onus on the 8% of voters who have not yet decided.

According to the Wall Street Journal/NBC News national polling, 30% of the undecideds call themselves Republicans, compared with 21% who call themselves Democrats. That could be good news for Trump, although early voting in some states seems to favor Clinton.

The Rise of Millennial Voters

Millennials have been a big focus of candidates this year. Clinton has struggled at times to connect with younger voters. But a recent USA TODAY/Rock the Vote Poll shows that even though the millennials are backing Clinton over Trump by more than 3-1.

Still, some millennials may be turned off by the latest server-related news.

Explaining the importance of the millennial turnout in next week's election, President Obama told comedian Samantha Bee on her show Full Frontal, "Young people have a bigger stake in this election than anybody."

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.
Dean Stockwell, left, as Admiral Al Calavicci and Scott Bakula as Dr. Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap. (NBC/Getty Images)

As a kid, I couldnt get enough Quantum Leap. I never watched new episodes because television was a rare treat during the school year, but on summer vacation  with no oversight from my working parents  I watched it every day. Reruns aired around lunchtime on some cable channel or another; USA, maybe? The details are as hazy as those humid D.C. afternoons, yet I can almost tap into the buzzy excitement I felt before spending an hour with the a-dork-able Dr. Sam Beckett.

Sam, played by Scott Bakula, was an earnest everyman, not to mention a brilliant physicist, and he was trapped in a time-travel loop. Each episode, he teleported to a different era and inhabited a strangers body to alter history for the better. All the while, he kept hoping the next leap would bring him home.

I wasnt a science fiction fan, but the show won me over anyway. Every adventure was so singular, and the series was remarkably progressive. Sam became a leggy blonde in the 1960s dealing with sexual harassment and a black man fighting discrimination in 1955, but also an unenthusiastic Ku Klux Klan member from Alabama. At one point he landed in the body of Lee Harvey Oswald.

He was literally walking in other peoples shoes, experiencing their predicaments, privileges and indignities. If any television series helped me become more compassionate, this was the one. Then again, who am I kidding? I also just really adored Sams witty sidekick, a hologram named Al (Dean Stockwell), who had a naughty sense of humor and a twinkle in his eye. No one could see him but Sam, so he sometimes liked to joke about secretly watching women change clothes  a habit that might not get the same laughs today.

The show ran from 1989 until 1993, and I doubt I watched it once I became a teenager. By then, must-see TV was required viewing, and, like a lot of high school girls, I fell under the spell of dramas fueled by angst, like My So-Called Life and Party of Five.



In Grease, Sally Olsson (Olivia Newton John) changes her look to be with Danny Zuko (John Travolta). (Paramount Pictures)

It was another 15 years before I thought about Quantum Leap again. I had recently moved to the West Coast, where all the chill vibes, hiking trails and fresh avocados werent enough to lighten the debilitating weight of homesickness. My entire family, including one precious baby niece, were thousands of miles away. To ease my pain, my sister flew out to visit me one weekend and, during a late night after too many glasses of wine, we stumbled across an old episode of Quantum Leap while flipping through the channels.

It felt like kismet. Here I was, watching a show about time travel that could transport me to another, happier era. For one hour, I could leap home.

But there was a malfunction.

The show in front of me wasnt as brilliant as the one in my memory  and it wasnt just because of Als peeping Tom jokes. To be fair, the episode about a trapeze artist in a traveling circus wasnt a series standout. Still, everything looked so dated. In the year Iron Man came out, of course the special effects on a show from 1990 were going to seem shoddy. But the acting, too, was campier than I recalled, the story duller. The voice-over narration was overbearingly superfluous and the opening credits sounded like a synthesizer-filled parody.

We lasted about 10 minutes, then decided to watch Flight of the Conchords instead.

I havent watched Quantum Leap since, but Ive thought about it a lot. What had changed? Was it just my sad mind-set that night? The show was nominated for Emmys, and the leads won Golden Globes for their performances, so it couldnt have been that bad. Now that its streaming on Netflix, I could give it another shot, but Im afraid of what will become of those carefree summer memories. Because time and again, I revisit a show or a movie only to feel profoundly disappointed.



Goldie Hawn as Gloria Mundy and Chevy Chase as Tony Carlson in the 1978 action-comedy "Foul Play." (Paramount Pictures)

The reasons arent always the same. Sixteen Candles was a laugh riot when I was 12, but watching it recently, I couldnt overcome the racist caricature of Long Duk Dong. The most romantic movies of my childhood revealed themselves to be shams, years later, when I realized the male leads were selfish jerks who didnt deserve the girl. (Looking at you, Reality Bites.) Nightmare on Elm Street gave me actual nightmares; now it all looks laughably fake. And I regretted encouraging my niece (whos no longer a baby) to watch Grease last summer as it dawned on me that the slumber party mainstay had an extremely dubious message: If he doesnt like you the way you are, try wearing tighter pants.

Then again, even as our culture has changed, some dated movies beyond the celebrated classics still thrill me. Ive watched Tootsie more times than I can count, and my fond feelings for the movie only get deeper. A little action comedy called Foul Play was my favorite movie as a girl, although now Im more charmed by the chemistry between Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase. And, while the clothes and music are so very 80s, Baby Boom still has a remarkably timely message about being a working mother that I couldnt have begun to understand when I first saw it decades ago.

Is it better to leave the shows and movies we once loved in the past? Maybe. But sometimes even the disappointment is worth it in a way. Sometimes, when things dont hold up, we learn lessons about our societies, our sensibilities and ourselves.

One late night in Northern California, Quantum Leap let me down. I realized then that a show couldnt transport me back home after all. But then I figured out I didnt need it to. I could transport myself  for good.


Aarron Loggins (ASL Cousin Kevin), from left, Russell Harvard (Tommy) and Carl Williams (Cousin Kevin) in The Who's Tommy, at Open Circle Theater in Silver Spring. (Doug Wilder)

The Friday morning feature of whats happening on Washington stages. This week: Straight White Men, the latest exploration of identity by Young Jean Lee, begins previews at Studio Theatre, while Sense and Sensibility (at Folger Theatre) and Freaky Friday (the new Disney musical at Signature Theatre) keep gliding along. In the ETC. category, the interactive, democracy-themed Beertown closes this weekend, and Theatrical Selections  the series of political plays getting free readings around town  concludes Monday night at Studio with Ivanka, a riff on Medea from Bad Jews writer Joshua Harmon.

PREVIEWING

American Hero. A dark comedy about struggling workers in a sandwich shop, by Bess Wohl (off-Broadways recent Small Mouth Sounds). Through Nov. 20 at Rep Stage, 10901 Little Patuxent Pkwy., Columbia. Tickets $40. Call 443-518-1500 or visit repstage.org.

Broadway Bound. Shirley Serotsky directs a revival of Neil Simons semi-autobiographical 1986 comedy. Nov. 10-Dec. 18 at 1st Stage, 1524 Spring Hill Rd., Tysons Corner. Tickets $30. Call 703-854-1856 or visit 1ststagetysons.org.

Carousel. Arena Stage Artistic Director Molly Smith (South Pacific, Oklahoma!) returns to one of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classics. Through Dec. 24 at Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St. SW. Tickets $50-$119. Call 202-488-3300 or visit arenastage.org.

[Molly Smith talks with Geoffrey Himes about Carousel]

The Girl in the Red Corner. The D.C. playwrights collective The Welders launches its second generation with a premiere about a troubled young woman training in mixed martial arts, by Stephen Spotswood. Through Nov. 20 at the Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H St. NE. Tickets $30. Call 202-399-7993 or visit thewelders.org.

Little Thing, Big Thing. A caper involving a nun and thief; Sasha Olinick and Nanna Ingvarsson make up the cast of Donal OKellys two-actor play, produced by Solas Nua. Nov. 10-27 at Flashpoint, 916 G St. NW. Tickets $35. Visit solasnua.org.



Parting is such sweet sorrow: Ayana Workman as Juliet and Andrew Veenstra as Romeo in Shakespeare Theatre Companys production of Romeo and Juliet, closing Nov. 6. (Scott Suchman)

Mary Poppins. The Disney musical flurry continues (see the new Freaky Friday at Signature Theatre) with this local staging of the 2006 Broadway hit. Through Jan. 1 at Olney Theatre Center, 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Rd., Olney. Tickets $43-$80. Call 301-924-3400 or visit olneytheatre.org.

Milk Like Sugar. Kirsten Greenidges drama of teenage pregnancy; Jennifer Nelson directs for the Mosaic Theater Company. Through 27 at the Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H St. NE. Tickets $40-$60. Call 202-399-7993 or visit mosaictheaterdc.org.

Six Degrees of Separation. Keegan Theatre takes on John Guares 1990 drama  also being revived on Broadway next spring  about a well-to-do white family duped by a young black man. Nov. 5-Dec. 7 at Keegan Theatre, 1742 Church St. NW. Tickets $45. Call 202-265-3767 or visit keegantheatre.com .

Straight White Men. The area premiere of the identity drama by Young Jean Lee (Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, Church, The Shipment). Nov. 9-Dec. 18 at Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St. NW. Tickets $52-$90. Call 202-332-3300 or visit studiotheatre.org .

Tame. Playwright Jonelle Walkers new play riffs on The Taming of the Shrew, focusing on a grieving lesbian in 1960s Texas. Through Dec. 11 at Gunston Arts Center, 2700 South Lang St., Arlington. Tickets $30-$35, with pay-what-you-can performances. Call 703-418-4808 or visit wscavantbard.org.

CONTINUING

Emily Kester in the title role of Sarah Ruhl's "Eurydice" at NextStop Theatre. (Traci J. Brooks)

43: The Greatest Deaths of Shakespeares Tragedies. Nu Sass Productions revisits and revises its 2013 Fringe Festival compilation of the Bards death scenes. Through Nov. 13 at the Logan Fringe Arts Spaces Trinidad Theatre, 1358 Florida Ave. NE. Tickets $30. Visit www.nusass.com.

[Roger Catlin on the 2013 Fringe Festival 43]

Eurydice. A re-imagining of the Orpheus myth from Sarah Ruhl (Dead Mans Cell Phone, Stage Kiss). Deft supporting actors, a fluid pace and a sure grasp of the balance between lyrical sadness and knife-edged whimsy that characterizes this 2003 play. (Celia Wren) Through Nov. 20 at NextStop Theatre, 269 Sunset Park Dr., Herndon. Tickets $35. Call 703-481-5930 or visit nextstoptheatre.org.

[Celia Wren on Eurydice]

Freaky Friday. The polished, peppy and predictable new musical adapted from the popular young adult novel and a couple of Disney movies of the same title is an ideal show for grown-ups looking for a completely wholesome activity to share with the kids in their lives. Composed with aplomb by Next to Normal songwriters Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey and bookwriter Bridget Carpenter, the musical, in a world premiere at Signature Theatre, offers two marvelously sung, resonantly comical central performances by Heidi Blickenstaff and Emma Hunton. . . . The stakes are so clearly laid out, and the plot points so easy to anticipate, though, that Freaky Friday has about it a prefabricated feel. A highly accomplished, squeaky-clean after-school special is what it reminds you of. (Peter Marks) Through Nov. 20 at Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. Tickets $40-$99. Call 703-820-9771 or visit www.sigtheatre.org.

[Peter Marks reviews Freaky Friday]



Jason Gotay (Adam) with Robert Walters, Tanisha Moore, Thaddeus McCants, Julian Ramos, Katie Ladner and Shayna Blass in Disneys "Freaky Friday" at Signature Theatre. (Jim Saah)

The Night Alive. Irish dramatist Conor McPhersons closely observed study of a down-and-out man and the battered woman he rescues from the street, staged only last fall at Round House Theatre and now being revived just down the block by Quotidian Theatre. The smaller new production suggests the beautifully written dramas depressive and exuberant poles, but its haunted by the spectre of the sturdier Round House version, which still feels visible in the rear view mirror. Through Nov. 20 at the Writers Center, 4508 Walsh St., Bethesda. Tickets $30. Call 800-838-3006 or visit quotidiantheatre.org .

Rameaus Nephew. The stage adaptation of Enlightenment philosopher/critic Denis Diderots misanthropic dialogue, from Spooky Action Theater. The conversation, which includes some lively anecdotes, constitutes the plays entire dramatic action, more or less. Presumably to compensate for the lack of showier incident, Henrichs production abounds in conspicuous stage business. . . . The hyperbolic acting style eventually becomes grating. (Celia Wren) Through Nov. 13 at the Universalist National Memorial Church, 1810 16th St. NW. Tickets $30-$40. Call 202-248-0301 or visit spookyaction.org.

[Rameaus Nephew reviewed by Celia Wren]

Sense and Sensibility. Boss Austen at the Folger Theater, from the New York troupe Bedlam. Modeled closely on their hit off-Broadway production, still running in Greenwich Village, the Folger spinoff (with a completely new cast) successfully bottles the spirit of the 19th-century novelist afresh, in its rendering of the pure-hearted Dashwood sisters and the waves of cattiness and misfortune that batter them this way and that. Its an enterprise so fleet of conception that it quite literally glides through the stories of the romantic struggles. (Peter Marks) Through Nov. 13 at Folger Theatre, 201 E. Capitol St. SE. Tickets $30-$75. Call 202-544-7077 or visit www.folger.edu.

[Peter Marks reviews Sense and Sensibility]

The Year of Magical Thinking, starring Kathleen Turner at Arena Stage. (C. Stanley)

[Putting together Sense and Sensibility: Peter Marks talks with the creators]

The Whos Tommy. Russell Harvard of the New York productions of Tribes and Deaf Wests Spring Awakening is featured in the title role; the Open Circle Productions features a mixed cast of disabled and non-disabled performers. American Sign Language is thoroughly integrated into the concept: The famed deaf dumb and blind kid of the Pinball Wizard lyric is indeed deaf. . . . Among the multiple Tommys  different ages, different communication methods, sometimes regarding each other from both sides of the storys conceit of a mirror  Harvard dominates the second act as the older Tommy. He delivers songs in impassioned ASL while dancing and working in sync with Will Hayes, who sings the part in a vulnerable tenor. (Nelson Pressley) Through Nov. 20 at the Silver Spring Black Box Theater, 8641 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring. Tickets $30-$45. Visit opencircletheatre.org.

[Nelson Pressley on Tommy]

[How Open Circle integrates disabled and non-disabled performers ]

To Have Done With the Judgement of God. Theatre du Jour revives its surreal 45-minute staging from earlier this year. The visual shock tactics certainly fit the bill: If there ever was a text that called for surreal pageantry, it is this delirious rant by Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), the French thespian, theorist and sometime mental-asylum patient who is perhaps best known for his manifestos proposing a Theater of Cruelty. (Celia Wren) Through Nov. 21 at DC Arts Center, 2438 18th St. NW. Tickets $20. Call 202-462-7833 of visit theatredujour.org.

[Celia Wren reviews To Have Done With the Judgement of God]

The Year of Magical Thinking. Kathleen Turner returns to Arena Stages intimate Kogod Cradle in the solo adaptation of Joan Didions bestselling memoir about coping with her husbands death and her daughters illness. Turner cant help but heat up Didions frosty The Year of Magical Thinking. Her one-of-a-kind voice is a steady low boil, and as she fixes the Arena Stage audience with a commanding gaze and announces warningly that grief hits us all, you can tell Turners in for a fight. (Nelson Pressley) Through Nov. 20 at Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St. SW. Tickets $40-$90. Call 202-488-3300 or visit www.arenastage.org.

[Year of Magical Thinking reviewed by Nelson Pressley]

CLOSING



Rachel Zampelli (Kendra) and Maria Rizzo (Betty) in The Gulf at Signature Theatre, closing Nov. 6. (Margot Schulman)

The Gulf. A new two-character relationship drama unwinding in real time from Audrey Cefaly, whose Maytag Virgin made a splash at last years Womens Voices Theater Festival. Rachel Zampelli and Maria Rizzo play Southern lovers adrift on a small fishing boat, neatly realized in Signature Theatres extremely intimate Ark space by set designer Paige Hathaway. The audience eavesdrops on the women as they spend a lazy afternoon in Kendras beloved boat, with Kendra fishing for channel bass  and Betty fishing for a deeper commitment from Kendra. (Peter Marks) Joe Calarco directs. Though Nov. 6 at Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. Tickets $40-$89. Call 703-820-9771 or visit www.sigtheatre.org.

[Peter Marks reviews The Gulf]

Kiss. Plays rarely pull the rug out from under audiences as successfully as Guillermo Calderons Kiss is managing the trick at Woolly Mammoth. The funny, searingly topical show comes on like a campy melodrama as American actors stage a soap opera script they found online. Its by a Syrian writer who they think is hiding underground in the Middle East. Theyre mostly right, but what they dont know drives a lot of the surprises in Kiss, which is easily one of the most urgent and gripping performances of the new theater season. (Nelson Pressley) Through Nov. 6 at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, 641 D S t. NW. Tickets $20-$69. Call 202-393-3939 or visit www.woollymammoth.net.

Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey and Tim Getman in Kiss at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. (Teresa Castracane)

Romeo and Juliet. Alan Pauls relatable staging is youthful and pulsing with club music, but Shakespeares accessible tragedy isnt as ablaze as it aspires to be, despite a giant hot red set. Jeffrey Carlson is a zesty, brooding Mercutio, and Andrew Veenstras Romeo and Ayana Workmans Juliet are appealing, yet the famous plot and its quick-burning romance dont quite find the urgent gear the play needs: The language seldom sings. (Nelson Pressley) Through Nov. 6 at the Lansburgh Theatre, 450 Seventh St. NW. Tickets $44-$118. Call 202-547-1122 or visit www.shakespearetheatre.org.

[Nelson Pressley on Romeo and Juliet]

ETC.

Beertown. dog & pony dcs devised, interactive, quirky piece on democratic process, first seen in 2011, now revised and updated in time for the elections home stretch. It may be a mock proceeding, but Beertown really does hammer home, at a pivotal moment, the notion that every vote counts. (Peter Marks) Through Nov. 7 at the Thurgood Marshall Center for Service and Heritage, 1816 12th St. NW. Tickets $17-$27. Visit www.dogandponydc.com.

[Peter Marks on the updated Beertown]



Jacob Yeh, left, and an audience member counting votes in "Beertown" by dog & pony dc, directed by Rachel Grossman. (Ryan Maxwell)

The Capitol Steps. The longtime political satirists, tearing laughs from the headlines. Fridays and Saturdays in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center Amphitheater, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Tickets $40.50. Call 202-397-7328 or visit www.capsteps.com.

Ivanka. An adaptation of Medea tailored to Donald Trumps daughter, from Bad Jews playwright Joshua harmon; this is the last entry in Theatrical Selections, the series of free Monday night readings of politically themed works at several area theaters, Monday nights until the election. Nov. 7 at 7:30 p.m. Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St. NW. Call 202-332-3300 or visit studiotheatre.org.

[Peter Marks talks to Theatrical Selections organizers]

POTUS Among Us. A diverting interactive show . . . this nutty immersive spoof of a presidential campaign allows theatergoers to winnow down a field of (fictional) crackpot political candidates, based on mini-debates, mini-stump speeches and such game-show-style faceoffs as a competition to shamelessly curry favor with Walmart. (Celia Wren) Through Nov. 6 at Source, 1835 14th St. NW. Tickets $15 in advance, $20 at the door. Visit www.witdc.org.

[Celia Wren on POTUS Among Us]

Shear Madness. The indestructible interactive comedy whodunit, at 12,000-plus performances in the Kennedy Centers Theater Lab. Ongoing. Tickets $50-$54. Call 202-467-4600 or visit www.kennedy-center.org.
April Campbell says she is still hopeful that the slaying of her 16-year-old son, Randall Young, will be solved, but its been three months since she spoke with Chicago police detectives. (Joshua Lott/For the Washington Post)

After April Campbells 16-year-old son was shot to death in May about four blocks from their home, she took it upon herself to help police find the killer.

Campbell, 49, disabled with a spinal injury, grabbed her walker and went door to door on the citys South Side trying to piece together a motive and gather evidence.

She found witnesses and urged them to talk to police. She collected Facebook posts by people who seemed to claim credit for his killing. She tracked down a shop owner who had a security camera that might have recorded her sons killer.

Campbell shared what she had found with detectives and then began calling to see whether they had followed up on the leads.

I called back, no answer. I called back, hes on vacation. I called back, he wasnt in. I called back, hes out in the field, Campbell said. Its just, nothing. Nothing, you know?

Rosemary Palmer-Gant, holding a photo of her son, William Tristen Palmer, near where he was fatally shot, says she turned over information about his alleged killer to Chicago police, but the case remains unsolved. (Joshua Lott/For the Washington Post)

The death of Campbells only son, Randall Young, is part of Chicagos growing body count of unsolved homicides. The city is on pace to have one of its deadliest years in two decades, and some residents blame police for perpetuating the violence by leaving killers on the streets.

Last year, Chicago police cleared homicides at one-third the rate they did 25 years ago  a time when they faced twice as many killings, according to a Washington Post analysis of police data obtained through a public records request.

The department has gone from having one of the best clearance rates nationwide to one of the worst.

In Chicago, police consider a homicide cleared for one of two reasons: a suspect has been charged, or the killer has been identified but cannot be prosecuted, which includes cases in which the suspect is dead or witnesses refuse to cooperate.

In 1991, Chicago police solved about 80 percent of all homicides in the city, compared with about 62 percent by police nationwide, according to data from the FBI and Chicago police. Since then, the national rate has remained fairly constant, but Chicagos dropped below 26 percent last year, the worst clearance rate for police in any large city in the country, The Post analysis shows.

Everything has just gone south in Chicago, said Thomas Hargrove, founder of the Murder Accountability Project, a Washington-based nonprofit group that tracks unsolved homicides nationwide. Everything has hit Chicago harder. Their murder rate is higher than other cities, and their failure to solve those murders is much worse.

In the past 25 years, there have been more than 16,000 people killed in Chicago, reinforcing the citys reputation as one of the nations most violent. In 1991, amid the scourge of crack cocaine, police logged 929 homicides and reported clearing 741 of those cases.





After peaking in the early 1990s, homicides in Chicago fell steadily each year for the next decade, and during much of the 2000s, the city saw fewer than 500 homicides a year. But the past two years have seen a surge in killings. As of Wednesday, 626 people had been killed this year in Chicago.

With each passing year, more killings have gone unsolved. As of August, Chicago police had cleared just 1 in 5 of the citys homicides in 2016, The Post analysis shows. If homicide clearances continue their current downward trend, Chicago detectives would be solving just 1 in 10 killings citywide by 2023.

Chicago police and city officials did not dispute The Posts findings.

But they said multiple factors explain the decline  noting, in particular, that the vast majority of the citys homicides are gang- or drug-related, the types of killings in which witnesses may be reluctant to come forward. In the past, top department officials have publicly blamed the problem on a no snitch street code, saying that many residents refuse to cooperate with investigators.

Police officials also said advances in technology  such as DNA evidence and the proliferation of video recording  have forced detectives to meet a higher burden of proof before prosecutors will file criminal charges.

Over the last 25 years, the nature of closing cases has certainly changed, Chicago police spokesman Frank Giancamilli said in an email to The Post about the challenges that police face in solving homicides. He said, for example, that the increased use of guns to commit homicides has reduced physical evidence.

This is all in addition to the reluctance of some witnesses and victims to provide information to detectives for fear of being identified, he said.

In response to the upswing in violence, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has pledged to hire 1,000 police officers, including 200 detectives, in the next two years.

***

Crucial to solving homicides is community trust, said city officials and national policing experts.

But the Chicago Police Department, the second-largest municipal police force in the nation, with about 12,000 officers, has been roiled by corruption and scandal, including allegations of brutality against blacks and the 2010 conviction of a former police commander who led a torture ring over three decades. The disgraced commander, Jon Burge, was convicted of obstruction of justice and other crimes for denying in a civil lawsuit that he and detectives under his command burned, suffocated and used electrical current on more than 100 black men to compel their confessions, some of which later proved to be false.

The department has experienced frequent turnover in leadership: Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson is the citys sixth top cop in the past 25 years. His predecessor resigned amid a national uproar following the release of a dash-cam video of the 2014 police-involved killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who was holding a knife when he was shot 16 times by an officer.

The McDonald shooting  and the videos release a year later  prompted renewed scrutiny of the Chicago Police Department and led the Justice Department to launch an investigation into whether city police have a pattern of civil rights violations.

We will not succeed at turning back the rising tide of violence without changing and rebuilding critical relationships with residents, and especially with communities of color, Emanuel said in a September speech on gun violence at the citys Malcolm X College.

April Campbells son was killed in one of those communities, West Englewood, site of more than 650 homicides since 1991. The city is divided into 77 community areas, and of those, West Englewood is among the deadliest.

Police declined to discuss the killing of Campbells son or other open cases. We dont comment on open investigations and are actively pursuing leads, Giancamilli said.

In the past 25 years, West Englewood has had the biggest drop in the percentage of homicides solved among the community areas that had at least 10 killings.

In 1991, West Englewood had 43 homicides, of which 40 were solved, according to The Posts analysis. Of the 24 killings in West Englewood as of August, just two have been cleared.

What happened to police work? Campbell said, exasperated. What happened to investigation?

The three-square-mile, predominantly black community is home to about 35,000 residents. Its a mix of modest single-family homes. The businesses are mostly off-brand grocery stores bookended by cellphone shops, beauty supply stores, currency exchanges and fast-food restaurants. The median income is a little more than half the national average.

A drive down a stretch of street named for Emmett Till takes one past hand-painted wooden signs affixed to trees: NSA, No Shooting Allowed, My Day is Complete, I Heard a Child Laugh and No Shooting Zone.

Many contend that the growing ledger of unsolved homicides here and across the city leaves killers free to commit more violence and leads to a feeling of general futility.

Its a cyclical tsunami, all stemming from, I think, a systemic disregard and disrespect for constituents that police take a pledge to serve and protect, said state Sen. Jacqueline Y. Collins, whose district includes West Englewood.

Collins said there is a lack of commitment and follow-up by homicide detectives that is exacerbated by a lack of trust between the predominantly white police force and black residents in the highly segregated city. Many of the homicides, if they go unsolved, perpetuate the violence because that individual will continue to prey on the community, she said.

Amid the spike in homicides, some city officials and academics have suggested that officers have pulled back from policing for fear of public scrutiny.

They dont want to be a news story themselves . . . and its having an impact, Emanuel told U.S. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch at a meeting in Washington last year. The mayor told Lynch that officers had become fetal.

One critical step for police would be to hire more black and Hispanic detectives, said residents and local leaders in West Englewood.

People like to see people who look like them. And they feel comfortable [with] people who look like them, said Chicago Alderman David Moore, who lives in West Englewood. Moore noted that two-thirds of city residents are black or Latino but that most of the homicide detectives are white.

Until we increase the number of African American detectives, this is going to continue to be an issue, Moore said.

Police said that in recent months they have ramped up efforts to hire minorities and to better reflect the citys racial composition.

***

As police brass vow to put more officers into the citys most violent neighborhoods, police union officials said staffing levels and decisions by police leadership about deployment are among the reasons the department isnt solving more homicides.

From the early 1990s through about 2003, the department had upward of 1,400 detectives; as of August, there were 868, said Dean C. Angelo Sr., president of the departments largest union, which includes all detectives.

The department lost some detectives through a buyout  which began about six years ago and is being offered through June 2017  that incentivized early retirement for health benefits.

The detectives who remained were overwhelmed, Angelo said, and some new ones lacked experience.

Going into investigations after seven weeks of 40 hours worth of training at the academy, you dont go upstairs to the detectives division and start working murders as the lead or lone investigator, Angelo said. It doesnt work that way.

In addition, the department in the mid-1990s moved its gang-crime specialists out of many of the South Side neighborhoods, weakening police intelligence and the relationship with residents, Angelo said. In the past, detectives would provide gang-crime specialists with information about the identities of alleged killers and would accompany detectives on interviews with the suspects, Angelo said.

To compensate for the gaps in intelligence, residents say some homicide detectives have pushed victims families to gather evidence and provide investigators with leads. Angelo did not dispute this.

Rosemary Palmer-Gant, 59, said detectives urged her to help find her 32-year-old sons killer.

In June, William Tristen Palmer was found dead in the passenger side of a car near the familys West Englewood home, shot multiple times.

When my baby was murdered, I received phone calls from several people because we started getting information right away about who the killer was, she said. Palmer-Gant said she and family friends turned over what she had to investigators, including links to the Facebook profile of the alleged killer.

She was following up on every lead, Palmer-Gant said of the detective. Then, she said, that detective was reassigned. The new investigators told her that they needed more information.

They said, Why dont you go get one of the witnesses?  Palmer-Gant recalls. She said she was stunned and told them: You want me to go and knock on the door of the person whos supposed to have something to do with my sons murder?

His killing remains unsolved.

Residents say, and police acknowledge, that some high-profile cases, such as the recent killing of Nykea Aldridge, the cousin of Chicago Bulls star Dwyane Wade, receive more police attention and are more likely to be solved.

Its in the big-money part of the city. Its someone with a name, or someone with a connection, and its the headline, Angelo said of heater cases, or high-profile homicides. And that moves manpower.

Within two days of Aldridges slaying, which drew national media coverage, two suspects had been arrested and charged.

Several West Englewood residents said in interviews that people often know who committed less-prominent killings.

Some residents said the no snitch rule that police blame for unsolved homicides applies to gang members and not to most people in the community. But they said witnesses fear cooperating with police  even anonymously  because detectives cant assure them that they will be protected, especially if they must face the accused in court.

People are afraid because not all of the police, [but] some of them, say youll be protected. But then, you open your mouth and your house get shot up, said Clarence Franklin, 31, a former gang member and now a youth advocate for the nonprofit I Grow Chicago who has lived in West Englewood since 1996. Snitches get stitches.

Kenneth Johnson is the new police commander in the district that includes West Englewood. One month into the job, he said that adding officers will help but that one of the critical problems is rebuilding trust with the community. He recently sat down for dinner to discuss concerns with area residents at the Peace House, a once-abandoned home in West Englewood that is now a community center.

I believe we had a stronger relationship with the community. And I think that has to be fostered and reestablished in order to solve crimes, Johnson said as he arrived for the dinner in October. We cant do our jobs, we cant solve crimes, clear crimes without the cooperation of the public.

***

After Randall Youngs death, Campbell said she feared that the high school freshman, who was known as a volunteer who fed the homeless, might be labeled a thug or gangbanger and that no one in the city would solve his case.

So, using her walker, Campbell said she canvassed West Englewood to piece together a possible motive. She said she learned that a brewing feud between block cliques  not gangs  had escalated into gunfire over turf.

Someone alerted her to a Facebook post from a person taking credit for the killing. It said: Yeah, we merced somebody over there, short-handing the word mercenary as street slang for getting killed. She shared that information with detectives.

Moments before her son was shot six times, he had been at a convenience store at a gas station in the neighborhood with several friends. One of them later told her that the person who killed her son may have been in the store as well. She called police and told them the store had a video camera.

She then contacted the store owner, who confirmed that he was recording that night but warned her that he typically kept the footage only one week.

Days later, she checked back with the detective.

Did yall go up there and get the tape? she said she asked. He was like, No, we havent sent nobody yet. 

Seven weeks passed before Campbell heard again from police: They had sent someone to the store, but it was too late. The video was gone, she said.

Almost seven weeks later, he said, We sent a team out there, and there was nothing there,  Campbell recalls being told. Really? Really?

Campbell said shes still hopeful that her sons killing will be solved, but its been three months since she spoke with detectives. She recalled something one of the detectives had said to her.

Once he told me, everybody look at them shows like 48 Hours. Its not like that. Thats what he told me, Campbell said. I said I wish it was because at least theyre going out, trying.

Lowery and Rich reported from Washington. Adeshina Emmanuel in Chicago contributed to this report.
Last years wrapping paper contest winner was Henry Clark, 9, of Silver Spring, Maryland. His creative design featured poinsettias and toucans, which both come from southern Mexico. (Henry Clark)

Halloween is in the bag. Turkey Day is coming up. And just around the corner: a set of holidays that feature a whole lot of decorative paper, wrapped neatly (or hurriedly) around homemade gifts or store-bought toys.

The holiday season isnt about receiving presents. But in the spirit of giving, KidsPost wants to see your best design for an original gift wrap  the kind of wrapping paper youd be proud to use on a December gift for Grandma or even on a card for Mom or Dad.

Our annual Holiday Wrapping Paper Contest is open to artists age 13 and younger. Design your gift wrap, then mail it to us, and a panel of judges will choose 12 finalists, based on execution and creativity. Well pick three finalists from each age group: 6 and younger; 7- and 8-year-olds; 9- and 10-year-olds; and 11-, 12- and 13-year-olds.

The judges will also select one winning design from the finalists, and it will be printed in KidsPost on December 14 as a sheet of gift wrap. A story about the winner will be published in print and online, and designs from all the finalists  as well as a few honorable mentions  will appear on kidspost.com. All finalists will receive a KidsPost prize pack. The winner also will receive tickets to a play at Imagination Stage.

Here are all the rules and guidelines. Ask a parent, guardian or teacher to help make sure you understand them. And get to work! All entries must be received at KidsPost by December 6.

Five-year-old Kelly Mullen won our 2014 contest with a geometric Christmas tree pattern. (Kelly Mullen)

No purchase necessary. The contest is open to kids age 13 and younger. One entry per child. Immediate family members of Washington Post employees are not eligible. The contest is open only to residents of the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia at the time of entry. It is sponsored by WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post. Many will enter, a few will win.

On the back of your entry, write your name, age, telephone number (this is important!), address and school name. ALSO IMPORTANT: We need your parents or legal guardians consent along with your entry. If you are entering from home, your parent or legal guardian should print his or her full name on the back of your entry and sign underneath his or her printed name. If you are entering from school, your teacher should provide his or her name and signature when submitting entries on behalf of students. Submission of an entry allows The Post to reproduce the image in print and online with the artists name. A parent or legal guardian of finalists will be required to sign an affidavit of eligibility and verification and a release form.

Bold, bright colors and repetitive patterns will probably work best.

 No commercial characters, please. (That means no Mickey Mouse, for example.)

The winning design will be printed at 11 by 17 inches. Its best to make your design as close to that size as possible.

Dont use a computer. Use markers, crayons, paint, pencils, chalk, construction paper cutouts or whatever else strikes your fancy.

Dont use store-bought stamping tools or stencils. You may make your own stamps out of potatoes or erasers.

Bright colors havent always won the wrapping paper contest. In 2013, 12-year-old Cole Goco won with a design that was partly inspired by the style of his favorite cartoon, Calvin and Hobbes. (Cole Goco)

No color photocopies or emailed entries. We need to see the original artwork.

Send your entry to: KidsPost Wrapping Paper Contest, The Washington Post, 1301 K St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071.

Entries must be received by December 6. Well contact the finalists by December 9. Sorry, but because of the volume of mail, entries will not be returned. Questions? Send them to kidspost@washpost.com with wrapping paper contest in the subject field.
Donald Trump speaks Friday during a campaign event at the airport in Wilmington, N.C. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

In the tabloid business, the practice is called catch and kill.

That phrase was circulating on Saturday after the Wall Street Journals solidly reported story that the National Enquirer  no stranger to checkbook journalism  had laid out $150,000 in August to a former Playboy magazine Playmate, who says she had a lengthy adulterous affair with Donald Trump a decade ago.

The paper paid for exclusive rights to Karen McDougals story but never published it, the Journal reported. Thus: catch and kill, otherwise known as trapping a story to keep it out of the public eye, for one reason or another.

The tabloid, run by Trump pal David Pecker, is one of a tiny handful of papers to endorse Trump for president. (The Enquirers parent company claims that it paid McDougal not only for rights to an unspecified personal story, but also to write a fitness column.)

Trump, through a spokeswoman, has denied the affair. And of course, such a story would not have revealed anything new about Trumps character, nor would it have been disqualifying to his candidacy.

Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron and Post reporter David Fahrenthold tell Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan how the revelation of Donald Trumps 2005 lewd comments about women came about. (The Washington Post)

The Enquirer, which Trump has repeatedly said deserves to win a Pulitzer Prize for its revealing of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwardss love child, also published an evidence-free story on Saturday that Hillary Clinton is addicted to narcotics.

Combine this with the debunked reporting by Fox News of a likely Clinton indictment after the election, and then add in the much-tweeted photo of CNNs paid pundit Corey Lewandowski shoulder-to-shoulder with Trumps campaign brass, labeled teamwork, and the conclusion is obvious: Were ending this campaign deep in the journalistic gutter.

The worst of the media is on full display, as if someone had set out to show just how terrible we hacks could look in these last moments before Election Day.

To be sure, some great journalism has been published over the course of the campaign. But it largely has been drowned out by the unsavory.

Yes, there has been terrific reporting by The Washington Post and others, but its been like one of those beautiful houses that survives in a blighted neighborhood, Micheline Maynard, a business journalist and educator, wrote on Facebook.

The big picture is that the neighborhood is blighted, she added. And I dont know how were going to get people to move back in.

Shes right. The media, never well loved, is less trusted than ever. Its under attack  often for valid reasons, but not always. And the good actors, an ever-smaller core, get drowned out by the bad.

Consider: Fox News Bret Baier had to apologize last week after reporting that an indictment could be expected to result from an FBI investigation of the Clinton Foundation.

[Fox News apologizes for falsely reporting that Clinton faces indictment]

But the indictment stories, based on next to nothing, had already been blasted out into the political ecosystem  exaggerated beyond recognition and taken as duly reported fact.

Over at CNN, head honcho Jeff Zucker has been in high dudgeon about Donna Braziles ethical blunder, which caused her to be summarily (and properly) dismissed as a network pundit, after she leaked a debate question to the Clinton campaign.

But he has expressed no qualms about Lewandowskis continued presence on the network, even as Twitter featured the compromising photo from Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway: Lewandowski, herself and spokeswoman Hope Hicks, showing them all working together toward the same end.

Lewandowskis hiring at CNN after leaving the Trump campaign is one of the worst embarrassments in a campaign season in which the competition for such a dubious prize is fierce indeed. Not only had Lewandowski carried out Trumps blacklisting of news organizations, including The Post, but he also had signed a nondisclosure agreement, which meant his on-air commentary was by definition tainted.

Meanwhile, fake news is everywhere. The Drudge Report, in one of the most bizarre examples, has been promoting a story about Clinton campaign adviser John Podesta drinking bodily fluids at a secret Satanist dinner. Though absurdly false, the tale had plenty of believers, inspiring hundreds of thousands of related tweets and plenty of news stories on right-wing sites.

You could chalk a lot of this up to the silly season that always precedes a big election. And you could hope the hysteria and disinformation dies along with the weirdest campaign in memory.

But even as the worst of media grows exponentially, the best is deeply threatened. The Wall Street Journal  whose journalistic standards are historically top-notch  is laying off reporters this month to reduce costs.

And as print advertising revenue slips into something perilously close to free fall, much more of that is sure to come.

In this case, the Journal let us know what the Enquirer had done. That takes time, money, skill and reporting talent. When those wither, journalism will be in worse trouble.

Yes, thats possible.

For more by Margaret Sullivan visit wapo.st/sullivan
Urbana Middle School girls wear homemade T-shirts that say I am more than a distraction. Clockwise from top: Sophie Beers-Arthur, Sola Beers-Arthur, Allison Crittenden, Summer Campbell, Sophia Plaschke, Emma Sweeney and Abby Carioti. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

Shortly after her daughter arrived at school, Eboni Banks got a phone call. Her sixth-grader was wearing leggings and her shirt apparently wasnt long enough, in violation of her schools dress code. Her daughter asked: Could Banks please bring a pair of jeans to school?

Banks rushed to Mattawoman Middle School in Waldorf, Md., where she found her daughter, then 11, sitting in the nurses office, rather than class, because of her attire: a black waist-length short-sleeve shirt, pink sweater jacket and a pair of black-and-pink leggings. Under school rules, the outfit crossed the line. Leggings could be a distraction.

I couldnt believe they forced her to miss reading, Banks said. School administrators told her that October morning that if girls wear leggings, they must wear shirts that extend at least to their fingertips, an effort to cover up what might draw attention during the school day.

Banks is challenging that dress code, which she sees as unfairly targeting girls. She has taken the issue to administrators, the school board and to federal officials, filing a civil rights complaint alleging gender bias.

Administrators are being allowed to discriminate . . . and engage in body shaming behaviors, Banks wrote in her complaint.

[At Fairfaxs Mount Vernon High, no more jeggings as pants]

Dress code clashes across the country have focused on girls attire that school district officials deem too suggestive or revealing; some schools have turned to uniforms as a solution. As leggings have grown in popularity, they have become a flash point in some school districts, said Jo Paoletti, a University of Maryland professor and dress historian who focuses on gender expression.

The definition of what is sexy or inappropriate changes all the time, Paoletti said. Fashion keeps inventing things, and then the dress code writers have to figure out whether to be outraged and ban things.

[N.C. school system considers restriction on skinny jeans, aims to stop bullies from body-shaming ]

Girls in some schools have pushed back against dress codes that they say are anti-female and were created so boys dont get distracted. Some have taken to social media, using such hashtags as #iamnotadistraction. Girls at a middle school in Frederick County, Md., recently waged a protest, spurring an effort for change.

Banks said her daughter is an honor roll student at her school in Charles County. She loves school and dreams of being a doctor; that she missed 20 minutes of reading class over a couple inches of fabric, was outrageous, Banks said.

My concern is that it has a negative impact on girls and their self-esteem and how they feel about their bodies, she said. Theyre going to be pulled out of class and missing instructional time because of this nonsense? Its just so blatantly discriminatory, and its so sexist. It made my blood boil.

[Rockville students dress code violation stokes debate over wearing tights as pants]

Banks said school officials mentioned the rule at Mattawomans back-to-school night but that the dress code was not enforced. The day her daughter got called out  Oct. 6  she said she saw other girls wearing leggings, seemingly without consequences.

Banks brought the issue to a vice principal, then the principal. Banks said the principal told her she made the leggings rule because black and Latino girls tend to have badonkadonks or junk in the trunk, a stereotypical reference to the size of their buttocks.

I was totally shocked, said Banks, who, like the principal, is African American. The schools enrollment is 74 percent black and 8 percent Hispanic.

Principal Sonia Jones said in an interview with The Washington Post that she never made such comments.  Junk in the trunk and badonkadonks are not in my vernacular, she said. I would never refer to a students body parts in such a way when I was talking to a parent or anyone else. Its unprofessional.

Jones said she has emphasized the dress code in several ways, including at parent meetings and during morning announcements. At back-to-school night every year, she gets a standing ovation when she reviews the dress code, she said.

The leggings rule does not discriminate against minority students or girls, she said.

Boys have to pull their jeans up over their hips, she said. We have expectations for all of the children.

She said her goal for the schools students is career and college readiness, which includes helping them recognize that different occasions in their life call for different attire.

School district officials in Charles County say that Bankss daughter was not singled out. As with a police officer issuing a speeding ticket, not all violators are caught at any given time, they said.

The young lady was in violation, said Marvin Jones, an executive director of schools. They asked her to do what they would do with any other student.

The districtwide dress code in Charles County does not allow suggestive, provocative or excessively tight clothing. There is no mention of leggings in particular, but principals may create additional rules, and all eight of the countys middle schools require that leggings be worn only with shirts that extend to the fingertips, officials said.

The leggings rule reflects districtwide requirements about the length of shorts and skirts, with a fingertips provision, Marvin Jones said. He said clothes viewed as unsafe or distracting to the school environment are unacceptable. With leggings, the concern is distraction, he said.

Its not anything we believe to be unfair to the girls, he said.

For those who break the rules, district officials said standard practice is to send students to in-school retention  a kind of study hall for students with minor infractions  until a parent arrives with replacement clothing. If parents cant come, administrators often offer items such as gym shorts or longer T-shirts, said district spokeswoman Katie OMalley-Simpson.

Such dress code violations are not typically considered disciplinary offenses and there are no records related to how many such violations occur each year, Charles County officials said.

Girls at Urbana Middle School in Frederick County, Md., reacted to enforcement of dress code restrictions about spaghetti straps and short shorts in August with a protest, creating bright yellow T-shirts that read, I am more than a distraction.

To me, its not about being able to wear certain kinds of clothing, said Sophia Plaschke, 13, an eighth-grader at Urbana Middle who was part of the protest. Its more about the message behind it. What the administrators are basically saying is that its the girls responsibility to cover up so that the boys dont get distracted.

Urbana Middle School Principal Peter Daddone has since offered to work with the students to create a dress code that falls within district guidelines and is fair and equitable.

The dress code was really sexist, said Sola Beers-Arthur, 13, who was involved in the protest. It had a bunch of rules for girls and almost none for the boys.

Banks said she is waiting to hear back from federal officials about her civil rights complaint. An Education Department spokesman said the Office for Civil Rights does not publicly confirm whether it has received specific complaints; if an investigation is opened, the office informs those involved and the public as appropriate.

Banks said her daughter was upset the day of the incident, but has let it go. Banks has pursued it, she said, because she feels a larger conversation is needed.

I dont want other girls to be humiliated like that and taken out of class, she said. Its degrading.
By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 4 (PTI) India and Sri Lanka today decided to set up a Joint Working Group (JWG) on Fisheries to meet every three months and hold a meeting between the Ministers for Fisheries every six months during extensive ministerial- level talks here on possible mechanisms to find a permanent solution to the emotive issue of fishermen.

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Ministers of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj and Agriculture Radha Mohan Singh held comprehensive discussions with Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera and Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Development Minister Mahinda Amaraweera on "possible mechanisms to help find a permanent solution to the fishermen issues", a joint press statement said here.

Minister of State for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Pon Radhakrishnan and Sri Lankan Member of Parliament M A Sumanthiran were also part of the two delegations.

"The two sides agreed on setting up of a JWG on Fisheries to meet every three months and a meeting between the Ministers for Fisheries every six months. The delegations would include representatives from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, the Coast Guards and Navies of both countries. The 1st Ministerial Meeting would be held on January 02, 2017 in Colombo," the statement said.

Expediting the transition towards ending the practice of bottom trawling at the earliest, working out the modalities for the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for handing over of apprehended fishermen, and ascertaining possibilities for cooperation on patrolling are among the Terms of References for the JWG.

The issue of release of detained fishing vessels will be discussed at the first JWG meeting, the statement said adding the Ministers noted that the process is underway for the release of fishermen presently in custody on either side.

Both governments agreed on the setting up a hotline between the two Coast Guards, and expediting the provision of communication tracking sets to the fishermen.

"The problems relating to fishermen and fishing in coastal waters between India and Sri Lanka has been a long pending issue between the two countries. The Ministerial Meeting today was an important and positive step, leading to actionable outcomes and a clear path towards a permanent resolution of the issue," official sources said.

Both governments agreed to the request by the Fishermen Associations that there should be no violence and no loss of life in the handling of fishermen by the Navies and Coast Guards of the two countries.

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The ministers also decided to encourage the Fishermen Associations of the two countries to meet every six months to take further their dialogue from the meeting held on November 2, 2016 in New Delhi. PTI PYK RT

--- ENDS ---
Korryn Gaines stared into her cellphone camera.

This is for anybody who wanna know what Im doing, she said, panning down to a shotgun perched in her lap. She turned the camera toward her pajama-footed 5-year-old son, who smiled and waved. Then back to herself.

Im m----- f------ tired, but the devil at my door, and hes refusing to leave, said Gaines, 23, with a cartoon blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Im at peace. Im in my home. I aint trying to hurt nobody. . . . I am not a criminal.

Outside Gainess Randallstown apartment, Baltimore County Police were in the midst of a tactical operation aimed at coaxing Gaines out. Minutes later, they would secure a warrant for her arrest on charges of assault and resisting arrest, alleging that she pointed a shotgun at an officer after police kicked in the door to serve preexisting warrants on her and her fiance that morning.

Eight family members gathered at a church nearby, desperately waiting for answers.

The Baltimore Sun obtained the video through a public-records request for the evidence that prosecutors reviewed to determine that the fatal police shooting of Gaines and the wounding of her son Kodi  at the end of a six-hour standoff on Aug. 1  were legally justified.

The evidence includes the contents of Gainess mobile phones, hours of police radio chatter never before heard by the public, hundreds of photos and documents, and statements from the officers involved. It provides a rare look at the build-up to a deadly police encounter, at a time when such incidents are under intense national scrutiny.

While most of the case file presents the police version of events, Gainess own voice is present through extensive recordings she made while police staged outside her home. She used at least two devices to communicate through an array of platforms, including text messages, FaceTime, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.

The department ultimately took the unprecedented step of asking Facebook and Instagram to temporarily deactivate her accounts, believing social media was distracting her from negotiations with police.

Key points in the encounter  including when officers entered the apartment and fatal shots were fired  were not recorded, either by Gaines or police. The officers were not wearing body cameras.

Gainess killing has spurred intense controversy in the months since. Gainess family has filed a lawsuit against the county and some of the officers. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund has called for an independent review of Gainess death and police department policies.

Police declined to comment for this article, citing pending litigation in the case. An administrative review of the incident remains open. A separate review of the tactical response, standard after any barricade situation, also remains open.

At the door

It was already 80 degrees outside when Officers Allen Griffin and John Dowell arrived at the three-story Carriage Hill apartment complex that Monday morning, looking for Apartment T4.

Police had two warrants: one for Gaines and another for her fiance, Kareem Courtney, 39. Gaines was wanted for failing to appear in court on charges related to a March traffic stop. Courtney was wanted on an assault charge related to domestic violence allegations filed by Gaines.

Griffin knocked on the door about 9 a.m., announcing they were police. No one answered, but the officers said they could hear coughs and a crying child.

They called for another officer from the Woodlawn precinct, who went to the apartment buildings rental office and got a key for the apartment. Officers tried to open the door with the key, but it was chain locked.

Dowell then kicked in the door, and Griffin went inside, according to documents filed in Baltimore County District Court. Gaines, seated on the floor, allegedly pointed a shotgun at Griffin and told the officers to leave.

At 9:41 a.m., tactical officers and members of the departments Hostage Negotiation Team were paged to the apartment. Police were now describing the incident as a barricade situation.

At the start, there were four people in the apartment: Gaines, Courtney, Gainess 5-year-old son Kodi and the couples 1-year-old daughter. But Courtney left apartment with the 1-year-old and surrendered to officers. He told police that he had tried to bring Kodi out as well, but the child went back to his mother.

Now, it was only Gaines and Kodi in the apartment on Sulky Court, and an increasing number  eventually dozens  of tactical, hostage negotiation and patrol officers outside.

Previous encounter recorded

Gainess communications and social media activity became central to the standoff.

Gaines turned to her devices throughout the day to document her interactions with police  something she had done before.

In March, Gaines was arrested by county police for disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and other charges after being pulled over on traffic violations. In videos she recorded of that encounter, she discussed incidents of police brutality and killings of black people across the country.

Gaines also told an officer during the stop that she believed Baltimore County police would kill her.

In the days after her March traffic stop, she wrote in an Instagram post that all she could think about was Sandra Bland, the 28-year-old woman who died in a Texas jail days after her arrest during a contentious traffic stop.

J. Wyndal Gordon, a lawyer for the Gaines family and for Courtney, believes that Gaines, like other black Americans, was psychologically affected by seeing images of police killings across the country.

Gaines also had suffered from anxiety and depression, her mother said in an interview. In the summer of 2014, she had a breakdown and was hospitalized. At the time, her mother said Gaines was filled with anxiety about how to handle a large monetary settlement related to a lawsuit over her exposure to lead paint as a child.

Talks continue

Throughout the Aug. 1 standoff, officers discussed what mobile devices Gaines was using and how they could open a direct line of contact with her. One officer wondered about Gaines posting messages on social media, and whether they could disrupt her access.

Police commandeered the apartment of Gainess next-door neighbor, Ramone Coleman, drilling holes in his living room, bedroom and bathroom walls to monitor Gainess movements with surveillance equipment connected to video monitors.

Gaines used her phone to record police, at times posting videos to social media.

Gaines also recorded phone conversations with a police negotiator, Sgt. Kathy Greenbeck.

So right now, all were really looking for, is for you to come out without any weapons, and for your son to come out, so that we can talk with you, Greenbeck said.

Okay, well, what you just said is just not what I got from these people who are standing outside my door, Gaines replied.

Gaines recounted to the negotiator her traffic-stop arrest in March, when she said she was kidnapped by police and suffered a miscarriage of twins during hours of mistreatment starting at the police departments Woodlawn precinct.

Goodness. So that was a bad experience, Greenbeck said.

Gaines said she believed the officers at her door were trying to take her back to the precinct. According to police, Gaines was taken to Northwest Hospital after scuffling with officers during the traffic stop, treated, and then processed at the precinct and released.

Well, I can hear how upset you are about that. And I am so sorry that you . . . the negotiator began, before Gaines interrupted.

About 2 p.m., police asked Facebook to shut down Gainess account but didnt immediately hear back. They also asked the company to shut down her Instagram account. Police officers consulted with a psychologist about their decision to make the request, according to their notes.

Weve never done it before, an officer said on the radio. The decision would prove controversial among activists who say it prevented Gaines from posting video of police at a time when citizen videos of law enforcement have sparked a national dialogue about police brutality and misconduct.

About 2:40 p.m., Gaines recorded another video of herself. She was holding the shotgun up near her chest, pointed forward. She checked behind her, cleared her throat and looked down at the guns trigger. Her shoulders shook.

At 2:45 p.m., police confirmed they had shut down power to Gainess apartment. They discussed bringing in cooling stations for other residents who would be affected.

As the afternoon wore on, police believed their negotiations were breaking down.

Is she still somewhat calm? an officer asked over the radio at one point.

No, she is now mostly rambling, still about the previous arrest and the previous contact with us, another responded.

Shots fired

At 3:21 p.m., Gaines had entered the kitchen of her apartment, according to police.

Three minutes later, police noted Gaines was highly agitated and screaming at officers to get back.

A minute later, they noted it appeared Gainess Facebook and Instagram were down.

Then, at 3:26 p.m., a voice came across the SWAT tactical channel: Shots fired. Shots fired.

Officer Royce Ruby Jr., who fired the fatal shots, said in a statement that the shooting happened after Gaines, who had been sitting on the floor within view of the officers through much of the day, ran into her kitchen.

Ruby, who also was outside Gainess front door, wrote that he could see the muzzle of the shotgun and a piece of her hair at the entrance to the kitchen. Police commanded her to drop the gun.

Then Ruby saw her gun raising up and sticking further into the hallway, pointed at the officers next to him, he wrote.

Fearing for their lives, he fired through the drywall at her head, he wrote. She then fired her shotgun for the first time, he wrote, but did not strike any officers.

Ruby and the other officers then rushed in, trying to reach Gaines before she could pump the shotgun and fire again, he wrote.

As Ruby rushed to Gaines, he wrote, he saw her turning the shotgun toward him. Ruby wrote that he was in fear for his own life and the boys life when he fired three more rounds at Gainess center mass, as Kodi was moving from her side, to behind her and away.

No other officers fired a weapon.

Gordon, the Gainess family attorney, said police should have waited Gaines out longer. Ruby should not have shot into the apartment, Gordon said  especially through a wall, when Kodi was there, next to his mother.

After the shooting, an officer asked over police radio whether Kodi could be brought to the family members waiting outside. Instead, he would be rushed to the hospital.
The Federal Transit Administration is struggling to hire and retain enough qualified people to oversee the safety of Metro and the network of state-based agencies that monitor many of the nations subway and light-rail systems, according to a new report released Friday.

The FTA, which took responsibility for the safety of Metros rail system a year ago, is still working to develop policies for such supervision, and it does not yet have a clear plan for transitioning back to a state-based oversight system, according to the audit by the U.S. Department of Transportations inspector general.

[Read the audit by the Department of Transportations inspector general]

Coming a year after the FTA assumed oversight of safety at Metro, the report could raise new questions about whether federal safety oversight will be effective, given a lack of data and specific standards. It may also renew debate over whether U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx made the right decision in putting the FTA in charge of Metrorail safety.

The National Transportation Safety Board last year urged Foxx to assign the Federal Railroad Administration to oversee safety in the Metrorail system.

The inspector general did not take a position in that debate.

Our review did not assess which Operating Administration  FTA or FRA  was better suited to assume direct oversight of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, the reports authors wrote, noting that Congress has directed the Government Accountability Office to review that question.

The 22-page report builds on previous work by the inspector general examining the FTAs ability to move from a grant-making function to focusing additionally on ensuring passenger safety of the nations subway and light-rail systems.

The report offered seven recommendations for creating a system that would hold transit agencies accountable for the safety of their millions of passengers, such as providing clear guidance for when the federal government would step in to provide direct oversight.

In a letter responding to the audit, FTA acting administrator Carolyn Flowers said her agency concurred with the inspector generals findings and would implement the recommendations by the end of 2017. An agency spokeswoman said Friday that there would be no additional comment.

The FTA was still building its safety oversight team when Foxx announced in October 2015 that the federal government would take direct responsibility for ensuring the safety of Metros rail system. The inspector generals report said the additional responsibilities have strained the FTAs resources, forcing the agency to bring in experts from other agencies within the Department of Transportation as well as consultants.

Metro had experienced several disturbing events when Foxx decided to intervene. In a January 2015 smoke incident, one passenger died and scores were sickened when their train was stuck in a tunnel that filled with smoke generated by an electrical fault on the tracks. That was followed by a train derailment that August. There were no serious injuries, but the subsequent investigation found that Metro officials had known for a month that the section of track where the derailment occurred was damaged but failed to fix it.

Foxx and others, including the NTSB, concluded that the Tri-State Oversight Committee (TOC), a board that included representatives from the District, Maryland and Virginia charged with oversight of Metro safety, was ineffective. But there were different views on how to address the TOCs shortcomings.

In an urgent recommendation released in September 2015, Christopher A. Hart, the chairman of the NTSB, requested that Foxx assign oversight responsibilities to the Federal Railroad Administration, a bigger agency with greater enforcement authority. But Foxx said he did not agree that was the wisest or fastest way to bring about the necessary safety improvements at Metro. He promised a robust program, noting that the FTA would draw on the expertise of other agencies within DOT, including the FRA.

[Foxx rejects NTSB recommendation to shift Metro oversight to FRA]

Foxx is the first secretary of transportation to take that step under authority given to him by Congress in 2012. That legislation gave the secretary the ability to intervene when it has been determined that state-based oversight has failed.

In December, concern about the FTAs ability to take on that role led the DOTs inspector general to announce that it would conduct a follow-up audit of the FTAs ability to take on the additional responsibilities of Metro.

[DOT IG audit will examine FTAs oversight of Metro]

In the letter announcing the audit, Mitchell Behm, assistant inspector general for surface transportation audits, noted that even with the FTAs additional oversight powers, the agency still might face significant challenges in carrying out these new responsibilities.

In a 2012 audit, the inspector generals office had raised concerns about whether the FTA was equipped to take on the additional role of safety oversight. That audit was completed in anticipation of the FTA having expanded responsibilities for safety under legislation that would later be passed by Congress. The review found gaps in data collection and in the level of staffing devoted to safety oversight. The audit also recommended that the FTA establish national safety standards to bring uniformity to its oversight efforts. States would still be free to create their own standards but would be required to meet baseline requirements for safety.

[Read the DOT IGs 2012 audit]

FTA officials said they have since expanded staffing and had begun to address concerns about the quality and type of data the FTA collects. The inspector general acknowledged those efforts in the report released Friday.

But in this most recent audit, it is clear that the inspector general remains concerned that the FTA has put only voluntary standards in place.

A lack of mandatory standards coupled with a lack of data could prevent the FTA from providing pro-active safety oversight, the report said.

Unless FTA addresses these challenges, it may be unable to meet the Federal transit safety goals and objectives that are central to its enhanced safety oversight authority, the report said.

The reports authors also noted that NTSB staffers agreed with their concerns that making safety standards voluntary diminishes their effectiveness as an oversight tool.

The other recommendations include:

Finalize procedures and policies for when the FTA takes control of safety oversight of a transit system and communicate those policies internally and to the rail transit industry.

Finalize procedures for returning safety oversight to state-based agencies.

Finalize a plan to create a data-driven, risk-based oversight system.

Ensure that state safety organizations are audited regularly.

Finalize a plan for updating the National Safety Plan to deal with major emergencies.
Metro riders aggravated by their trains crawling along some stretches of track at bicycle speeds in recent weeks shouldnt expect relief any time soon.

Data shows that the transit agency has instituted dozens of slow speed limitations since a Silver Line train derailed in July, with the number of mandatory slowdowns issued because of track conditions jumping from 10 that month to 87 in August.

Since then, speed restrictions  a sign of degraded tracks and worn equipment in need of urgent repair  have cropped up across the system at a steady clip, addressing all manner of issues: rotten rail ties that pose a derailment risk, worn concrete that raises structural concerns, cracked rail joints, broken fasteners and defective studs that further threaten safety.

A log of the active restrictions in place on Oct. 27 offers a snapshot: Nine of the 15 restrictions were on the Red Line for stretches ranging from 700 feet to three-quarters of a mile. Glenmont-bound trains were slowed to 15 mph for 1,500 feet outside the Takoma station because of defective crossties. Elsewhere on the Red Line, downtown-bound trains were slowed to 15 mph near the Rhode Island Avenue station, where falling concrete raised structural concerns in August. Those repairs are part of SafeTrack Surge 10, now underway.

By Thursday, after a stretch of the Red Line from NoMa to Fort Totten was taken out of service for SafeTrack repairs, the list of track-related restrictions had shortened considerably  though seasonal slowdowns to prevent trains from slipping on leaves were present in much of the system. Other restrictions were in place on the Orange, Red and Green lines for various reasons.

Riders have noticed. In its latest vital signs report, Metro identified speed restrictions as one factor in a steady decline in on-time performance in the most recent quarter  a measure of how often customers were delivered to stations on time  from 71 percent in July to 64 percent in September.

Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld said the new restrictions are the result of more aggressive inspections and a bolstered emphasis on safety after the July 29 derailment. Metro also has instituted software changes aimed at slowing down trains on straightaways and stretches of the system designed for higher speeds in an effort to prevent another chronic problem: red-light overruns.

Translation: Slow-going is the new normal. Pressed on when riders can expect advertised travel times to return across the system  in areas not undergoing SafeTrack surges  Wiedefeld responded, When its safe.

[Federal takeover of Metro? Board chairmans proposal triggers debate but has some support]

If we think its safe, well have the advertised speed limit, he said. If we feel theres an issue, then were not going to have it there. Thats a change of approach. If we are to be serious about safety, and to have safety trump service as weve said, that has to play out.

Riders, those on the Blue and Yellow lines in particular, are feeling the pain and take issue not so much with the need for slowdowns but with the lack of published information about them. They are especially critical of a speed restriction between the Reagan National Airport and Braddock Road stations, a stretch where a SafeTrack surge disrupted service in July.

I timed it . . . took 10 minutes to get from Braddock to Reagan. Would feel better if I knew why speed restrictions necessary, one rider tweeted last week.

Late last month, Diane Owen, a 54-year-old federal employee who rides the Yellow Line from Huntington to Gallery Place every day, began to note the stop-and-go rides near National Airport. She was aggrieved that Metro did not post a clear notice about the restriction, even though it began adding 15 minutes to her commute each way, in her recollection, and made her late enough to one meeting that she had to email in.

Id feel somewhat less frustrated if I hear information because it tells me that someone notices that it affects us, she said. It just seems odd to me that when I check online for rail advisories or rail alerts that I couldnt find anything.

Wiedefeld said recently that the agency has no problem being transparent about the restrictions, saying it has nothing to hide. Metro says the restriction outside the National Airport station was imposed for safety purposes after two Federal Transit Administration inspectors had to jump out of the way of a speeding train in a close call Oct. 20.

[Close call: Speeding Metro train nearly strikes federal inspectors on tracks]

Although it initially stretched for about two miles, the restriction was cut back last week to about three-quarters of a mile.

The problem: An S-curve and a large tree create a blind spot on an aerial structure where inspection and maintenance crews perform work, the agency said. Metro spokesman Dan Stessel said the agency has contacted the National Park Service to gauge whether the tree can be removed.

Systemwide, the temporary speed restrictions limit speeds through hazardous areas to 15 mph in some places and 35 mph in others. In other parts of the system, Metro has capped maximum speeds permanently.

[Budget proposal paints grim portrait of Metros future]

At a recent safety subcommittee meeting, chief safety officer Patrick Lavin told board members that on stretches of the Silver Line, trains had been observed going 75 mph on straightaways.

There are stretches of the Green Line designed to handle speeds up to 79 mph  from Georgia Avenue to Greenbelt and from Anacostia to Branch Avenue  where trains are allowed to travel 65 mph. Otherwise, the speed limit in the system is 59 mph. A Metro spokeswoman said the operators of the Silver Line trains were disciplined for the speeding, which was occurring from McLean to East Falls Church and from Wiehle-Reston East to Spring Hill.

Software changes being made over the next two years will prevent trains from exceeding 60 mph, Lavin said. He told the board that the change probably would add a few minutes in travel time but was part of a renewed emphasis on safety. In an interview Friday, Lavin cited the increased prevalence of slowdowns as evidence of a changing culture.

Were turning the corner in having people actually going out there, reporting defects, recognizing that theyre not going to be challenged or suffer any negative consequences for reporting, he said.

Metros inspection practices before the derailment remain under investigation, officials said.

Meanwhile, a day after Metros chief operating officer, Joe Leader, drew parallels to the New York City subway systems decline of the 1980s in making his case to the board for more track-repair time for Metro, Lavin offered further insight. Conditions in New York were far worse, Lavin said  but it was clear how the state of that system informed his thinking about Metro.

We had train operators operating at full speed over tracks that were known to be bad, so pretty much we implemented systemwide slow speeds, said Lavin, formerly a top safety investigator for the New York subway system, where he worked for 33 years before joining Metro. At one point, he said, derailments were occurring in the New York system every 28 days.

Board member Robert Lauby, who is chief safety officer for the Federal Railroad Administration, said speed restrictions are one of several tough choices that Metro has to make to restore its system to a state of good repair, even if rider satisfaction suffers.

Speed restrictions are inconvenient for service, certainly, he said. The whole idea is in the past, customer service was king and safety just took a lower priority. So now that were putting an emphasis on safety, customer service is going to suffer a little bit until you get to the point where the state of good repair is in place and both customer service and safety can come up at the same time  its almost like a balancing act.
Two men were arrested Saturday in connection with spray painting at several buildings in downtown Washington including the Trump International Hotel and the FBI building, both on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Eric Roberts, 27, of Florida, was arrested and charged with defacing government property and resisting arrest. Danny Hamilton, 35, of Louisiana was charged with destruction of D.C. government property for damaging a police cruiser and with resisting arrest, according to the D.C. police.

The police said in a release that both men were arrested for offenses that occurred during the Million Mask March demonstration.

The march, which has become an annual event in a number of cities around the world, is loosely organized by the Anonymous movement to protest a variety of targets including government surveillance, censorship and corrupt political systems.

The graffiti at the FBI building appears to include a depiction of the groups symbol, the Guy Fawkes mask, which has also been used by members of the Occupy movement, and the word Corrupt.


A letter written July 4, 1863, by John Winn Moseley after he was wounded and captured in the Battle of Gettysburg. (Library of Virginia)

The opening line still hurts across the years.

Dear Mother  I am here a prisoner of war & mortally wounded.

John Winn Moseley was writing home from the Gettysburg battlefield on July 4, 1863. He was a 30-year-old Confederate from Alabama being cared for by his Yankee captors.

I can live but a few hours more at farthest, he wrote. I was shot fifty-yards of the enemys line. They have been extremely kind to me.

Moseley died the next day. His letter  on delicate blue paper, stained with what might be blood  made it to his mother in Buckingham County, Va., and the family kept it ever after. Now it has come to light in a trove of Civil War documents that the State Library of Virginia discovered in a surprisingly straightforward way: It asked state residents to bring them out of their homes.

From 2010 until last year, as Virginia observed the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, archivists traveled the state in an Antiques Roadshow style campaign to unearth the past. Organizers had thought the effort might produce a few hundred new items. They were a little off. It flushed out more than 33,000 pages of letters, diaries, documents and photographs that the library scanned and has made available for study online.

[How to view the artifacts]

The materials are a stream of fresh perspectives on the war, from North and South. There are new facts about battles and events, and new windows into the struggles of Reconstruction and emancipation. But most of all, its the details, and the raw human voices, that shortcut time and bring life to a terrible period in the nations history.

Thomas I would like to no how you like to wash by this time or whether you wash your self or not, Frances Fisher wrote to her husband eight days after he left to fight. She and their three children, plus a grumpy father-in-law, were home in Wytheville.

Your father tries to quarel with me a heep a times but I wont listen to him and he soon gets tired of quarling by his self, she wrote. She closed with an unexpectedly tender verse, saying she was anxious for the time When you can come and see your sons three/ And love and sleep with me.

She died of illness before the wars end.

Its not unusual to find such letters in the hands of private families  after all, millions of people were caught up in the Civil War, and letter-writing was never more popular. But to have so much surface at once is overwhelming, said author James I. Bud Robertson Jr., the retired Virginia Tech historian who served as spiritual guide to the project.



Historian James I. Bud Robertson Jr. is photographed at his home in Colonial Beach, Va. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

As someone who has spent his career writing about the effects of the war on common people from both sides of the fight, Robertson reveled in the rich cache of new material. He agreed to write a book based on the documents  Civil War Echoes: Voices from Virginia, 1860-1891, published in September by the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission  but was able to use only a small fraction of what was found.

Last summer, the state library delivered all the scans to his home, on the Northern Neck  boxes of color printouts, because Robertson, 86, dislikes using a computer. He rigged a magnifying device on the desk in his upstairs office and spent every morning and afternoon poring over the letters and diaries. It was like Christmas around here for about six weeks, he said. At lunch he would share some of the most moving accounts with his wife, Betty, sometimes overcome with emotion.

Out of 1,600 collections of materials, Robertson pulled from only about 140. He used less than a third of his notes for the book. That little book could be written three or four times, he said.

The documents opened vivid and intimate scenes of daily life, such as when Marshall Frantz of Roanoke wrote to his sister about missing the family routine:

Sometimes on Sunday when we hardly know it is Sunday here I can picture you all off in my mind. . . . You all are fixing to go to preaching. There is Pappy dressed up with his shoes off sitting in his shirt sleeves reading and Ma telling Ange what to get for dinner, you dressing Marty and Charlie and Emory hollering after you and saying doggone it, Jude, wheres my shirt. 

But what stood out above all was the suffering and loneliness  and the creative phonetic spelling. Robertson logged 27 versions of the word diarrhea, and that doesnt include the s-word, he said.

Disease killed more men than war wounds. Plaintive notes about sorry conditions and the aftermath of battle still ring with horror.

Wyatt Akers of Montgomery County, Va., wrote home about the battle of Seven Pines: It would raise the hair on any mans head to see the wounded and hear the groans. I was present when they commenced cutting off one mans leg but I had to leave. I could not stand and see the performance.

Maj. Henry DeShields of Heathsville described capturing Union cannons along the James River. Working in darkness to dislodge the big guns, he and his men realized what they were stepping on: the wounded & dying Yankees that had fought bravely at their guns. I shall never, never forget what a night of nights  the cries and groans of the wounded calling for water & for help . . . .

Such descriptions, Robertson said, should dispel any attempt to romanticize the war.

People who see the Confederacy as some sort of Gone with the Wind, magnolia and moonlight and sipping mint juleps  they miss the point completely, he said. The Confederacy was born in confusion and died in chaos.

Virginia State Library archivist Renee Savits looks at a letter from the Ford-Taylor family papers, which came to light during the state's legacy project over the past few years. (Gregory Schneider/The Washington Post)

Some materials  such as the papers of DeShields and the diaries of Fauquier County resident Betty Gray  deserve to be published on their own as readable accounts of the period, Robertson said.

Many of the documents were gathered by Renee Savits, one of two state archivists who spent about five years traveling around with digital scanners. Local historical groups would put the word out and schedule events at libraries or community centers.

Savits was caught off guard by the long lines of people who showed up. We didnt realize what the response would be, she said. It was so exciting. People were so happy and so interested in it.

Because the high-resolution scans took three minutes per page, a single diary could take hours. Savits usually didnt realize what she had until much later.

After lengthy processing and cataloguing, all the images are available to the public on the state librarys website. The library is hoping readers will volunteer to transcribe the letters for easier study. Few of the materials wound up in the librarys possession; the archivists gave advice on preservation but didnt want to discourage people from participating by suggesting that the state might take their family treasures.

Virginia Coleman Hoag was thrilled when she heard about the effort. Her family has been in Buckingham County about 300 years. She moved back to her ancestral property in 1969 and her uncle gave her an old Bible that held a folded letter on delicate blue paper  the dying words of John Winn Moseley. It was tattered, and at one point Hoags well-meaning mother-in-law tried to repair it with Scotch tape.

Moseleys connection with her family had been lost over the generations. Moved by his letter, Hoag and her husband spent years traveling to Gettysburg, Pa., and visiting courthouses, trying to get more information.

They were rewarded mainly with odd coincidences. Driving around Antietam, they stopped the car at a random monument  only to find that it belonged to Moseleys regiment. Volunteering in the Buckingham library, Hoag overheard two women from Texas researching an ancestor  and it turned out they were distant cousins of hers who had also run across Moseleys name.



Virginia Coleman Hoag of Dillwyn, Va., holds the letter written by John Winn Moseley before he died at Gettysburg. (Gregory Schneider/The Washington Post)

Strangest of all, Hoag and her husband were listening to NPR in the late 1980s and heard a historian quote from a particularly touching Civil War letter  their own. They had no idea how he knew about it.

So when the Virginia legacy project rolled through Buckingham County, it all came together. Hoag brought Moseleys letter. Robertson eventually got a copy in the trove of materials sent by the state library.

He didnt realize it right away, but Robertson had seen Moseleys words before. He was the historian who had read the passage on NPR. As it turned out, one of Hoags relatives had sent Robertson a copy of a different family letter that quoted from Moseley. Now, Robertson was seeing the original for the first time.

Hoag was able to supply the few details she had gathered about her ancestor: He was born in Buckingham County, moved to Alabama at age 3, and joined the Confederate army in that state  which is why he had no records in Virginia. He had survived 11 battles before Gettysburg. His sister was Hoags great grandmother.

Today, his letter hangs in the foyer of Hoags home, behind protective glass, where the words haunt every visitor.

I have no doubt about the final result of this battle and I hope I may live long enough to hear the shout of victory, before I die. I am very weak. Do not grieve my loss. I had hoped to have been spared but a righteous God has ordered otherwise & I feel prepared to trust my cause in his hands. Farewell to you all. Pray that God will receive my soul. Your unfortunate son, John.

One mystery remains: the location of Moseleys grave. Its possible he still lies on the battlefield at Gettysburg, like so many others, unremembered but for his letter.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks during his presidential campaign, at the Bayfront Park in Miami, Florida. (Cristobal Herrera/EPA)

 Donald Trump, running mate Mike Pence and key campaign surrogates will swing through Virginia in the elections frantic home stretch, making a play for a purple state long seen as safe for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

The Republican nominee will hold a 10 p.m. rally Sunday at a fairgrounds in the Northern Virginia swing territory of Loudoun County. Pence, the governor of Indiana, was scheduled to appear at a rally at George Mason University Saturday at 8 p.m.

Two of Trumps children  Donald Jr. and Ivanka Trump  will come to Northern Virginia on Sunday and Monday, respectively.

Trumps decision to appear in a populous, purple Washington exurb cuts against his broader strategy of running up the vote in heavily red, rural areas. Much of his last-minute appeals have been in tiny burgs like Selma, N.C., population 6,000.

His foray into Northern Virginia appears to be a bid to hold down Clintons margins in a region that, excluding the exurbs, leans heavily Democratic.

[Rural strategy takes Trump to very red places in final days]

Were going right into the lions den, said John Fredericks, a conservative radio host and chairman of Trumps Virginia campaign. Were taking it right to their base. Were going to have a much better showing in Northern Virginia than anybody dreamed of. We are going to win Virginia.

Trumps planned visit comes as some Virginia Republicans were expressing newfound optimism about his chances here based on tightening polls. Clintons decision last week to resume TV ads in the state and dispatch running mate Sen.Tim Kaine to his home state for two election eve rallies also raised hopes that Virginia was back in play.

At a moment in the campaign when time is even more precious than money, Trumps 11th-hour visit signals some confidence that he can win the state. In addition to Trump, Pence and the Trumps children, the campaign will dispatch Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to hit suburban Richmond and rural Farmville and Lynchburg on Monday.

Virginia is a state that is notorious for breaking late. 2016 is no exception, Mike Rubino, Trumps Virginia senior adviser, said in a text message. Mr. Trumps America First policy agenda is tailor made for this state and we are investing heavily in Virginia over the final days to ensure his message reaches every voter.

[Republicans dare to hope: Did Virginia get her swing back?]

A Washington Post compilation of battleground-state polls finds Clinton winning Virginia 45 percent to Trumps 41 percent. Poll averages calculated by The Post reflect recent surveys that also include Libertarian Gary Johnson, Green Party candidate Jill Stein and independent candidate Evan McMullin in states where they are on the ballot and where results are available.

Some neutral analysts and more than a few Republicans remained skeptical of Trumps chances. Clinton does not need to win Virginias 13 electoral votes to pull off a victory, but Trump has a much narrower path to the White House without them.

Its hard to judge Trumps strategy by his travel schedule when he has done events in Baltimore and Washington state, said Nathan L. Gonzales, editor and publisher of the nonpartisan Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report. Theres a difference between declaring that a state is in play and it being a toss-up or even within reach. Trumps team apparently believes they have a chance in Virginia, but theres probably an easier to path to 270 [electoral votes] for him without winning the commonwealth.

Brian Zuzenak, director of Clintons Virginia campaign, said Democrats are working hard in the state and remain confident that the former secretary of state will prevail.

[Trump confounds many Republicans with last-minute push in Virginia]

We are proud of the organization we have built, and throughout this campaign we have seen Hillarys message and vision resonate with voters across the Commonwealth, he said in an email.

Virginia was always expected to be a battleground, but Clinton had enjoyed a comfortable lead here for so long that both sides pulled their TV ads in the summer.

Trump returned with a $2 million television ad buy two weeks ago and appeared at a Virginia Beach rally on Oct. 22. But even some Republicans dismissed those moves as a wasteful attempt to dispel rumors that he was pulling out of the state entirely.

Yet Republicans saw more reason to hope last week given tighter polls and Clintons six-figure ad buy. Kaine announced election eve rallies in Northern Virginia and Richmond  perhaps signaling a surprising need to shore up support in a state where he presided as a popular governor and which he represents in the U.S. Senate.

At least so far, the Clinton campaign has not disclosed any plans to bring the candidate back to Virginia. She has not appeared at an event here since July.

I dont think Democrats are taking anything for granted, but there are bigger concerns than Virginia on the electoral map, such as Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, and maybe even Michigan and Wisconsin, Gonzales said. If there is any space between up for grabs and in the bag, thats where Virginia would fall.
Robin Ficker, a Montgomery County Republican activist running the petition campaign to place term limits on the 2016 Montgomery ballot, talks with residents outside a Giant Food market Nov. 7 in Germantown, Md. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Grumpy voters angry at the political establishment have played a leading role in the drama of this years national election. But its not clear whether the ire runs deep enough to affect local governments in our region.

Answers will come Tuesday with results of ballot questions in each of the Washington areas three largest suburban counties. As voters decide whether to raise taxes (Fairfax), expand the County Council (Prince Georges) or enact term limits (Montgomery), they will signal how much trust they retain in their elected officials.

Robin Ficker, a well-known Montgomery anti-tax activist, said the sour mood was a big help in his latest attempt to force council members and the county executive to step down after three four-year terms (or two full terms and part of a third).

People just realize that its the same old, same old in government, Ficker said. They want some fresh ideas. They want something new. Thats why I think term limits is going to pass this time.

Thomas E. Dernoga, a former Prince Georges council member, made a similar point about his work against expanding the body from nine to 11 seats. He said he has personally spoken to at least 2,000 voters while canvassing and has heard lots of anti-incumbent, anti-establishment views.

These are unhappy people, Dernoga said.

[Government-loving Montgomery seems poised to adopt term limits.]

Across the Potomac River, voicing the establishment perspective, Fairfax Board of Supervisors Chairman Sharon Bulova (D) worried that antigovernment sentiment would block adoption of a tax that is intended to bring in revenue to be used to raise teachers salaries.

This is probably the unhappiest, angriest presidential election that I ever remember, Bulova said. I hope that doesnt rub off when people are looking at [local] bond referendums and the question of a meals tax.

Heres a look at how public attitudes about government are playing out in each contest.

Fairfax meals tax

If Fairfax voters decide to add a 4 percent tax on restaurant meals and prepared foods, it would be the first time in memory that they endorsed a higher tax by direct, popular vote. They rejected a similar meals tax proposal in 1992. They also voted no in a 2002 referendum on increasing taxes to improve transportation.

But supporters think residents might break with history because they care so much about protecting the countys renowned public schools. The measure is projected to raise nearly $100 million a year, with 70 percent legally required to go to education.

If the outcome is yes, then the vote would mark another step in Fairfaxs gradual shift to the left  a change that has converted the former Republican stronghold to a Democratic bastion.

Im pleased to say that Virginia has become more blue, said Gloria Rubin, first vice president of the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers. People are willing to . . . vote for the meals tax to support the schools.

Opponents express confidence that voters are too sore about tax increases and wasteful spending to go along.

A restaurant executive who has attended four community meetings to discuss the proposal said many people expressed resentment about it.

In general, theyre upset with the way the county spends money, said Claude Andersen, a vice president of Clydes Restaurant Group, which owns two restaurants in Fairfax. They look at [the tax] as just another money grab that will go into a big hole somewhere.

[In wealthy Northern Virginia, intense fight to sway voters on meals tax.]

Supervisor Pat Herrity (R-Springfield) faulted the Democratic-dominated board for seeking to raise taxes so soon after adopting a $100 million real estate tax increase, which took effect this year.

Its really going to be a test of how many common-sense, fiscally conservative people are left in Fairfax, Herrity said.

Prince Georges council expansion (Question D)

In Prince Georges, most of the political establishment is supporting the proposal to add two at-large seats to the County Council. They say it would improve accountability, by pushing the body to focus more on whats best for the county as a whole.

The current nine members are often faulted for concerning themselves only with the narrow interests of their own geographic districts.

But opponents of expansion fear its a devious effort to do away with term limits, which bar council members from serving more than two four-year terms. A yes vote on Question D would mean that current council members could run for the at-large seats when their eight years were up.

The liberal group Progressive Maryland opposes the self-serving nature of what theyre trying to do, trying to sneak things past the voters, said Executive Director Larry Stafford, a Prince Georges resident.

Critics also complained that it would cost about $1 million a year to pay for the salaries, staff and offices of two new council members.

These objections disappoint supporters of expansion, who view themselves as reformers trying to improve the quality of Prince Georges government.

[Prince Georges revives old debate about adding at-large council seats.]

They think the council needs a mix of at-large and district representatives, similar to the model used in Montgomery and the District. They said the lack of at-large members gives Prince Georges less clout than its neighbors on regional bodies such as the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

Former state delegate Justin Ross, a supporter, said: If Question D were to fail, its because people are frustrated with county government. The irony is, thats the same reason people support it.

Montgomery term limits (Question B)

While Prince Georges is considering what many see as a way to weaken term limits, Montgomery will vote for the third time since 2000 on a Ficker-inspired proposal on whether to adopt them.

Opponents say term limits are bad public policy, because they prevent voters from retaining effective legislators with institutional memory.

They strip legislative bodies of their expertise and experience, which end up residing in the staff and lobbyists instead. said Tom Moore, a former Rockville city council member who chairs the No on B committee.

Critics are also trying to taint the bid by linking it to Fickers reputation for repeatedly backing highly visible but unsuccessful anti-spending or anti-incumbent measures. They are highlighting Fickers support for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who is unpopular in Montgomery.

The message weve taken is, we want to keep Trump-Ficker politics out of Montgomery county, Moore said.

Ficker responded that term limits has nothing to do with Trump. He continued: Term limits is not about me. This is about the 18,000 people that signed our petition to put it on the ballot.

Ficker said the public has turned against the council because of a nearly 9 percent property-tax increase the past spring, and a vote to raise council members salaries to more than $130,000 by the end of 2017.

He accused council members of taking steps to protect incumbents, such as setting primary election dates at inconvenient times to ensure low turnout.

Noting that four of the nine current council members have served three full terms, he joked, The only turnover Ive seen in Montgomery County is sold by Pepperidge Farm.
After the epizootic of 1872 ended, horses returned to the streets of Washington. Above, a Metropolitan Railroad streetcar is pulled at the intersection of O Street NW and Wisconsin Avenue. (Library of Congress)

On the 9th of November, 1872  a Saturday  a reporter from the Richmond Daily Dispatch walked through the Virginia capitals downtown neighborhoods, amazed at what he saw. Or, rather, by what he didnt see.

The streets, he reported, were nearly deserted; the hack-stands were unoccupied, and the appearance of things at the depots was still more striking.

People were out and about  trains were discharging passengers at the citys stations  but there were hardly any horses. He counted a single horse-drawn cab and just one horse-drawn omnibus. The delivery wagon from Carter & Christian grocers was being pulled by a bull. They find that it is better than nothing, the reporter wrote.

Richmond  like Washington 100 miles north  was gripped by the epizootic, a scourge that was to underscore just how dependent Americans were on what literally were their workhorses.

For months in the fall of 1872, newspapers in the District reported on the epizootic, first with reassurances that the horse disease would not reach Washington, then with details on how it had.

On Oct. 31, reporters from the Evening Star visited every large stable in the city and reported nothing worse than the typical colds to which horses, like humans, were susceptible. In none of the stables was a single animal found with swelled throats, a copious discharge from the nose and eyes, and the convulsive fits of coughing which are said to characterize the Canadian epidemic.

Yes, blame Canada, for that is where the disease was first noted, in late September 1872 in a set of towns north of Toronto, including one called Owen Sound. Two weeks later, horses in Montreal were sick. By Oct. 17, the contagion had spread to Rochester, N.Y., and by the 22nd to New York City.

By Nov. 1 it was detected in Washington, although it doubtless had arrived earlier. Those colds the Star reporters noticed were probably symptoms.

The onset was quick. In a matter of hours, an infected horse would become sluggish, with a drooping head and bowed legs, as if trying to seek relief from weariness. This was followed by shivering and coughing  dry at first, then gurgling. The unmistakable signs were watery eyes and a mustardy discharge from the nostrils. If there were no complications, the sickness lasted about a week.

The consensus name for the ailment was epizootic  the animal version of epidemic  but there were many others, including horse malaria, equine influenza, horse catarrh, horse bronchitis, equine scourge, horse distemper, horse plague, epihippic, hippozymosis and hippo-malaria.

Infection rates were 80 to 99 percent. Imagine if our cars, trucks, buses and subway trains had a similar breakdown rate. Blissful for a while, but how would anything get done?

And so it was in cities across North America. In Washington, the horse-drawn streetcars were shut down. The fire department had no horses to pull heavy steamers. Horse- and mule-drawn traffic on the C&O Canal stopped. Doctors couldnt visit patients. In Richmond, the contractor responsible for removing corpses from the city apologized that he was unable to remove any more at present. His horses were too sick.

Pity the poor horse owner looking for medical advice. Newspapers filled up with ads for patent medicine remedies and stories of dubious homemade cures. A retired cavalry officer claimed to have saved every horse afflicted during a similar outbreak in New Mexico in 1868. He had ordered his men to thoroughly rub spirit of turpentine on the jaws and necks of the animals. The resultant blisters were an unfortunate side effect.

A Maryland farmer insisted that the influenza could be treated by lighting a match under the horses nose to induce violent sneezing from the sulfur and phosphorus fumes. It had cured his sheep, he said.

If none of that worked, you could administer a mixture of powdered bayberry and slippery elm bark. Or aconite and belladonna. Or ammonium and arnica . . .

But probably the best advice came from an Alexandria, Va., doctor named Johnson, who told the Alexandria Gazette that a horse owner should do for his animals that which he would do for himself, or advise his friend to, were either laboring under a severe influenza. That meant taking a few days off work and getting comfortable. Keep the horse warm under a blanket, Dr. Johnson advised.

Unfortunately, it was impossible to find a horse blanket in Washington. Dealers were sold out.

The germ theory of disease had not yet been universally embraced, so all sorts of possible causes of the disease were raised, including a frigid, pestilential wind from the direction of Greenland and hay grown during an unusually warm spring.

James Law, the great Scottish-born veterinary professor at Cornell University, prepared a detailed report for the U.S. Agriculture Department on the epizootic. Law hypothesized that the disease was caused by one of two things: fungi spores or a pathogenic element present in infinitesimal granules of organic matter. He suspected, correctly, that it was the latter.

In the final analysis, the great epizootic of 1872 was more inconvenient than dangerous. On average, only 1 to 2 percent of horses died from it.

That reassuring fact didnt keep one wag from observing, Wherever the epizootic has appeared it has been followed by cheap sausages.

Talk about bad taste.

Twitter: @johnkelly

Have a question about the Washington area? Write answerman@washpost.com.

For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/johnkelly.
Gene R. La Rocque, a retired Navy rear admiral who witnessed the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941 and who later irritated many former colleagues with his outspoken criticism of Pentagon practices and what he considered a suicidal nuclear arms race, died Oct. 31 at a hospital in Washington. He was 98.

The cause was kidney failure, said his daughter, Annette La Rocque Fitzsimmons.

Adm. La Rocque (pronounced la-ROCK) joined the Navy in 1940, served in the Pacific throughout World War II and rose to the rank of two-star admiral, or rear admiral upper half.

During the 1960s, he became one of the top strategic planners for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. In 1968, he was sent to Vietnam to assess the conduct of the war and turned in a critical report questioning the U.S. mission in Indochina.

Fundamentally, he said in a 1986 profile in the New Yorker magazine, I couldnt find anyone to tell me why the United States was in Vietnam and what it was we were trying to accomplish.

Adm. La Rocques analysis made him persona non grata at the Pentagon  It was easier to keep the war going than to say call it off   and he was passed over for promotion. When he retired from the Navy in 1972, he founded the Center for Defense Information, one of the first independent organizations relying on retired military officers to analyze defense policy with a skeptical eye.

Adm. La Rocque, who was later joined by retired Rear Adm. Eugene Carroll, guided CDI for more than three decades. The group accepted no contributions from the government or from defense-related companies.

Its widely read newsletter, Defense Monitor, exposed excessive spending by the Pentagon and highlighted programs and weapon systems that Adm. La Rocque considered wasteful or unnecessary. He often pointed out that the military used to manufacture its own weapons rather than rely on profit-motivated defense contractors.

His views made him one of the favorite military figures of liberal lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and he was a frequent presence on television and in the media. His larger goal, however, was to speak out against the threat of nuclear annihilation. He called for the dissolution of NATO and the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact and advocated for greater cooperation in science and culture.

There are, unfortunately, some in the United States who believe that the Soviets are the enemy that we must defeat by war, he told the New Yorker. I think the enemy is nuclear war.

Adm. La Rocques organization was the first to publish a reliable estimate of the number of nuclear warheads stockpiled by the United States and the Soviet Union: 50,000. When he appeared on Soviet television in 1983, saying the administration of President Ronald Reagan supported a large U.S. military buildup, the fallout from the defense establishment was immediate.

He was hardly divulging state secrets, but more than 500 retired admirals took out a full-page advertisement in the Washington Times condemning CDI and Adm. La Rocque (and misspelling his name in the process). His former boss, onetime Chief of Naval Operations Elmo R. Zumwalt, said, I believe that if La Rocques ideas prevail my children will not live out their lives in freedom.

When both men testified at a congressional hearing in 1985, Zumwalt refused to shake Adm. La Rocques hand.

When Adm. La Rocque was still in uniform, the Navy often sent him to schools, where he spoke of the harsh reality of war, drawing on his experiences in World War II.

I told them its just a miserable, ugly business, he told oral historian Studs Terkel for his 1984 book The Good War.

Adm. La Rocque was aboard the destroyer USS Macdonough at Pearl Harbor when Japanese airplanes attacked on Dec. 7, 1941. He spent four years aboard ships in the Pacific and took part in many battles, sometimes going ashore with a rifle and sidearm.

After the war, Adm. La Rocque threw away many of his military mementos. He wouldnt watch movies about World War II.

I hate to hear someone say, He gave his life for his country  I dont believe it, he said in 1986. Its the country that takes life away from these kids in the name of honor and glory.

Gene Robert La Rocque was born June 29, 1918, in Kankakee, Ill. His father, a car dealer who lost his business during the Depression, later ran a furniture store.

Adm. La Rocque studied at the University of Illinois but left to join the Navy shortly before graduating in 1940. He received a bachelors in 1963 from George Washington University and a masters in international affairs from Georgetown University.

After his service with the Joint Chiefs, Adm. La Rocque was shifted to the Navys Pan-American Naval Affairs office, and he spent his final three years in uniform as director of the Inter-American Defense College at Fort McNair in Washington.

Despite his repeated clashes with Pentagon brass, Adm. La Rocque was invited to speak to U.S. service academies and the United Nations. He continued to lead CDI until the mid-2000s. The organization merged with the Project on Government Oversight in 2012.

His first wife, the former Sarah Sally Fox, died in 1978 after 32 years of marriage. His second wife, Lili Kerekes Danchik, died in 1994 after 14 years of marriage.

Survivors include three children from his first marriage, John C. La Rocque of Ashburn, Va., James C. La Rocque of Suffolk, Va., and Annette La Rocque Fitzsimmons of Woodstock, Va.; two stepsons; six grandchildren; and a great-grandson.

After founding CDI, Adm. La Rocque learned that his forthright views of the countrys military practices earned him a spot on one of President Richard M. Nixons enemies lists.

It may be that the phones in my office are tapped, he told the New Yorker. I sincerely hope they are. Im very anxious to get everything we know to the White House and to Congress, even if it has to be done through wiretaps.
By PTI: From Anisur Rahman

Dhaka, Nov 5 (PTI) In fresh attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh, unidentified miscreants set ablaze some of their houses and damaged two temples in central Brahmanbarhia district where several places of worship of the minority community were vandalised earlier this week, police said.

Miscreants set fire at least six Hindu houses in a predawn attack yesterday in central Brahmanbarhia districts Nasirnagar, the place where at least fifteen temples and more than 20 houses were vandalised after a Facebook post deemed offensive to Islam sparked outrage in the country.

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"They (miscreants) fled the scene immediately after torching the houses and two small temples were also damaged," a police officer told PTI.

Many Hindu families have deserted their houses after the attacks on temples and have taken refuge in other areas.

Tensions have escalated in the neighbourhood after the fresh assault yesterday.

Police in overnight drives detained 33 persons for their alleged involvement in the synchronised attacks on Hindus in Brahmanbaria on October 30.

With this, police has detained a total of 44 people in connection with the attack, Mizanur Rahman, superintendent of Brahmanbaria police, told The Daily Star.

Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters yesterday rallied in the capital demanding stern action against perpetrators of attacks on Hindus.

Several hundred Hindu youths joined by Muslims staged a street protest at central Dhakas Shahbagh Square.

Several political and rights groups also held another rally in front of the National Press Club demanding immediate and stern actions against the culprits.

The protesters at Shahbagh area enforced a blockade on the busy streets around the area for more than half an hour and forced ruling Awami Leagues joint general secretary Mahbul Alam Hanif to get out of his car, stuck in barricade, and express solidarity with them.

The protesters also demanded resignation of a minister who had earlier accused journalists of "exaggerating" the Nasirnagar attacks.

"(Livestock) Minister Sayedul Haque was in the area just few days after the (Sunday) attacks while a fresh attack took place after he visited the scene," general secretary of Bangladesh Puja Celebrations Committee said.

The protests yesterday prompted newly elected Awami League general secretary and Road Transport Minister Obaidul Quader to reiterate the governments tougher stance against the culprits promising to bring them to justice quickly.

"Stern punitive actions await the attackers as (Prime Minister) Sheikh Hasina-led government has taken a tough position to this end," he said at a function of ethnic minority community in Dhaka.

He urged the Hindus not to consider themselves as a minority group and said "the government is with you". PTI AR ASK ZH ASK

--- ENDS ---

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During hypnotherapy, the practitioner will use words to help you relax deeply, then offer suggestions for coping with your health concerns. (PAULA CONNELLY/ISTOCKPHOTO)

When you think about hypnotherapy, its probably in the context of a swinging pocket watch and a voice intoning, You are getting very sleepy. But neither watches nor sleep are part of hypnotherapy or clinical hypnosis, which is the therapeutic use of hypnosis. Heres what research suggests  and what you probably dont know  about this complementary therapy.

You are aware and in control

During hypnotherapy, the practitioner will use words to help you relax deeply, then offer suggestions  through stories or mental images  for coping with your health concerns. Hypnosis does not, as some may fear, put you under the hypnotists control or make you unaware of whats happening around you. In fact, youre hyperfocused, like being engrossed in a great book or movie.

Other things fade into the background, so you can more easily respond to therapeutic suggestions, says Gary Elkins, director of the Mind-Body Medicine Research Laboratory at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Afterward, you dont suddenly come to, wondering where youve been and what you did. Most people recall sessions clearly.

People have varied reactions

Almost anyone can be hypnotized to some extent, but some people are more receptive than others. Theres a range, Elkins says. Most of us are in the middle, about 10 percent are very high and about 10 percent are very low.

Most studies find that four or five sessions are enough to make a big impact, though people who are in the lower range might need more to get the desired effect, Elkins says. People can often also practice on their own at home if necessary.

Its no magic bullet, but . . .

Hypnosis seems to be more effective at easing involuntary symptoms, such as hot flashes and pain, than it is at helping people overcome unhealthy habits such as overeating, smoking and drinking. Heres where the research is strongest:

Irritable bowel syndrome. British researchers first studied the use of hypnotherapy for people with IBS  a disorder characterized by diarrhea, constipation and cramps  in 1984. Those who had treatment reported substantial benefits, while those given a placebo and undergoing psychotherapy didnt. A recent review confirms those benefits, finding substantial relief reported in all 35 studies analyzed.

Chronic pain. A study of 100 veterans with lower-back pain found that people who underwent hypnosis reported less pain and better sleep than those treated with biofeedback, which can include deep breathing and muscle relaxation. Other research suggests that hypnosis may help ease pain from arthritis, fibromyalgia and other conditions.

Cancer-treatment side effects. Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York investigated whether hypnotherapy helps cancer patients with the pain, nausea and anxiety that often accompany breast cancer surgery. In the study, women undergoing a breast biopsy or lumpectomy who received hypnosis needed less anesthesia and reported less pain, nausea and fatigue than women who did not.

Hot flashes. Elkins trained 187 menopausal women in hypnotherapy. After four weeks, sensations of heat and sweating had dropped by about 70 percent. After three months of hypnotherapy at home with audiotapes, the decrease averaged 80 percent. And many women slept better.

So should you consider it? In some cases, yes, says Marvin M. Lipman, chief medical adviser for Consumer Reports. In selected patients with certain complaints, hypnotherapy can be a boon and, whats more, virtually without side effects, he says.

If you decide to try it . . .

Talk with your doctor first if you have major depression or another significant mental-health disorder.

Find certified hypnotherapists through the Society for Clinical & Experimental Hypnosis (sceh.us) or the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis (asch.net).

Look for practitioners who are also licensed in such fields as social work and nursing.

Ask whether your insurance plan will cover hypnotherapy. It may do so if the therapy is part of treatment offered by a certified health-care provider who takes your insurance.

Copyright 2016. Consumers Union of United States Inc.

For further guidance, go to www.ConsumerReports.org/Health, where more detailed information, including CRs ratings of prescription drugs, treatments, hospitals and healthy-living products, is available to subscribers.
Nearly a month since floodwaters consumed this hamlet in rural South Carolina, few have returned. The fear is that many never will.

Nichols was not directly hit by Hurricane Matthew, but its location 50 miles inland from Myrtle Beach, between two converging rivers, caused it to fill up like a bathtub after 18 inches of rain fell.

A stew of water, fuel, fertilizer and sewage settled in homes for over a week. As the water receded, toxic black mold grew rampant, leaving nearly all of the towns 261 homes uninhabitable. Brown lines, which start midway up once-white doors and get increasingly darker closer to the floor, show how the receding water got nastier and nastier, said the Rev. Eddie Collier, pastor of Nicholss Methodist church.

His is among homes already gutted to the studs, thanks to the help of church volunteers and AmeriCorps members. Many more need to be gutted. Collier said he is encouraging parishioners and neighbors to come back to clean out. The longer they wait, the more unsalvageable their homes will be, he said.

He saw one set of neighbors briefly: They threw up their hands and left. I havent seen them since.

Most of the people in town recently were there only to clean up. Lifetimes worth of belongings was piled high along the streets. On some, the stench of molded furniture, wood and carpeting mixed with rotting food in garbage bags, waiting to be hauled off.

Looking at a yard full of trashed belongings, Bill Gleason got choked up as he motioned to family photos.

Im fine except when I talk about the pictures, he said.

He and his wife, who recently got a job with a propane gas company in Nichols, moved in two weeks before 2 feet of contaminated water consumed their home. I just sunk pretty much everything I had into renovating this place.

Theyre not coming back.

Nothing has been done at James Joness home. The 69-year-old Vietnam War veteran said he cannot even walk inside because of his respiratory issues. Jones tried to get help through the Department of Veterans Affairs, he said, but was told he does not qualify for homeless assistance, since he owns a home.

Were in bad shape, he said.

Few residents, if any, had flood insurance. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency is offering pittance.

Mayor Lawson Battle said he worries about the citizens who couldnt make ends meet before this happened.

Most of the towns 400 residents are retired or disabled, and they cannot afford to take out the low-interest loans FEMA offers, he said.

These people are not getting the resources they need to even get back to town, he said, noting 300 vehicles were also ruined. Its going to take a huge miracle to fix Nichols.

The towns six churches and all 22 businesses were flooded. Glass fronts along Main Street smashed from the pressure; 5 feet inundated the pharmacy, washing residents prescriptions into the watery mix.

By last Friday, only a seed-cleaning business and auto mechanic shop had reopened.

Were trying to salvage and get help to the farmers, said Nichols Farm Supply owner Jimmy Devers, 66, whose ancestor founded the town. He and his wife are living in their homes second floor: I was lucky because it didnt get the whole house.

Devers said the gas station he partially owns will reopen, but he is unlikely to reopen the laundromat, which was struggling anyway.

Two weeks after the flood, the towns family doctor reopened elsewhere in Marion County. With 4,000 area patients, James Carroll said, he had no choice.

I dont know whats going to happen to Nichols  where theyre going to get the money from, said Carroll, who hasnt decided whether to rebuild his home along the Little Pee Dee River. I love the town  loved practicing there  but it forced me to do something fast.

Hazel Lee, 63, a school cafeteria manager, thought she was nearing retirement.

I cant now because its like starting all over again, she said. I had to throw away everything.

Standing outside the shell of her home of 40 years, she pointed to a refrigerator that floated into her yard from a neighbors and a walk-in freezer that floated a half-mile from a grocery store. Staying with family, she and her 72-year-old husband hope to eventually move back.

Itll be like a ghost town, she said. If I could afford it, I would relocate myself.
Thousands of South Koreans took to the streets in the city center to demand President Park Geun-Hye to step down on November 5, 2016 in Seoul. (Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

SOUTH KOREA

Thousands call for president to resign

Tens of thousands of South Koreans poured into the streets of downtown Seoul on Saturday, using words including treason and criminal to demand that President Park Geun-hye step down amid an explosive political scandal.

The protest, the largest anti-government demonstration in the capital in nearly a year, came a day after Park apologized on live television amid rising suspicion that she allowed a mysterious confidante to manipulate power from the shadows.

Park should squarely face the prosecutions investigation and step down herself. If she doesnt, politicians should move to impeach her, said Kim Seo-yeon, one of the many college students who participated in the protest.

Earlier in the week, prosecutors arrested Choi Soon-sil, the daughter of a late cult leader and a longtime friend of Park, and detained two former presidential aides over allegations that they pressured businesses into giving $70 million to two foundations Choi controlled.

There are also allegations that Choi, despite having no government job, regularly received classified information and meddled in various state affairs, including the appointment of ministers and policy decisions.

 Associated Press

TURKEY

Opposition papers staff arrested

Turkish authorities ordered the editor and senior staff of a leading opposition newspaper be arrested pending trial, as more pro-Kurdish officials were detained, sparking protests against the widening crackdown.

Prosecutors said staff at the paper, one of the few still critical of President Tayyip Erdogan, were suspected of crimes committed on behalf of Kurdish militants and U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is accused of instigating a failed coup attempt in July. More than 110,000 judges, teachers, police and civil servants have been detained or suspended in a crackdown that Erdogans critics say is quashing legitimate opposition.

Police fired tear gas and a water cannon on about 1,000 protesters in central Istanbul who were trying to get to the offices of the secularist Cumhuriyet newspaper. Nine of its journalists and executives were detained on Monday.

Meanwhile in Paris, thousands of protesters, most members of Frances Kurdish community, marched in Paris to protest Turkeys arrest of the co-chairs of the Peoples Democratic Party, or HDP, and several other party lawmakers for alleged ties to Kurdish militants.

 Reuters

British Labour leader says E.U. exit plan doesnt exist: Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Britains opposition Labour Party, says Prime Minister Theresa May is resisting democratic scrutiny of the Brexit process because it has not developed any plans for leaving the European Union. Corbyn called on May to immediately spell out her Brexit negotiating terms to Parliament now that Britains High Court has ruled that Parliament must give its approval.

Three captives in Libya released: Two Italians and a Canadian citizen kidnapped in southern Libya in September were freed unharmed and brought to Italy, authorities said. The men, technicians working on an airport construction project, were seized Sept. 19 by armed, masked men in Ghat, in southwestern Libya. Criminal and extremist groups operate in the area, but it wasnt clear which group was involved.

Bank bailout vs. refugees called bankruptcy of humanity: Pope Francis denounced the scandalous amounts of money that governments and world institutions have found to save ailing banks but not suffering people, including migrants who are dying as they try to cross the Mediterranean Sea. At a meeting that included environmentalists, labor activists and indigenous rights activists, Francis called such government policies a bankruptcy of humanity.



South Africa president says he isnt afraid of going to jail: South African President Jacob Zuma says he is not afraid of going to jail, in a defiant response to those who say he should resign because of alleged corruption scandals. Zuma said he has already spent time in prison, referring to the 10 years he was jailed as an anti-apartheid activist.

Another Fillipino politician is killed by police: Philippine police killed a town mayor in his jail cell in a purported gun battle on Saturday. Rolando Espinosa Sr., the mayor of the town of Albuera in the central province of Leyte, is the second politician linked to illegal drugs under President Rodrigo Dutertes crackdown. Police allegedly killed Samsudin Dimaukom and nine of his men in a gun battle in the southern Philippines last week.

 From news serives
Hillary Clintons top priority, if she is elected president, shouldnt be enacting an infrastructure plan or pushing immigration reform. It should be  must be, if she is to succeed on any substantive front  to combat her own worst instincts.

To be clear, I desperately want to see Clinton elected, not only because the alternative is Donald Trump and not only because it is time for a woman in the White House. Clinton has the experience, intelligence, skill and discipline to be an excellent president.

But she has also repeatedly displayed tendencies, overlapping and toxically reinforcing, that could undermine all those positive attributes:

To believe  correctly, in my view  that she is the victim of an implacable political opposition, and to respond by hunkering down and lashing out.

To believe  again, correctly  that she is being held to different, higher standards than others, and, rather than accepting this unpleasant reality and adjusting her behavior accordingly, to rail against it on the theory that nothing she does will ever satisfy the critics.

The Posts Matt Zapotosky breaks down the unknowns following the FBIs announcement on Oct. 28 that it will renew its Hillary Clinton email probe. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

To believe that her own good works are so extensive, and her goodwill so evident, that questions about her behavior can stem only from the malicious intent of political enemies, or the ravenous appetites of a hostile media.

To respond to demands for information by elevating lawyerly caution over political judgment. To apologize if and only if circumstances require  and then not until the passage of time and the imperative of contrition have drained the moment of any sincerity. To bet that any potential problem will blow over, not fester, even if unhappy experience dictates the exact opposite.

Finally, to surround herself with a closed circle of advisers inclined more to enable than to prevent, and to reinforce Clintons us-against-the-world mentality rather than to challenge it.

These instincts were on display from the moment of Bill Clintons 1992 presidential campaign through the Clintons two terms in the White House. They reappeared during Hillary Clintons 2008 presidential campaign and again  with a vengeance  this time around.

If there is an episode that encapsulates most if not all of these instincts, it is, of course, her handling of those damn emails.

These self-destructive instincts were on display at the outset of the email mess. Clinton wanted to keep emails on one device; her staff complied and accommodated when it should have pushed back  hard.

Burned by the serial scandals and non-scandals of her husbands administration, Clinton prioritized maintaining what she once mournfully described as a zone of privacy over ordinary rules regarding doing government business on government devices. Once again, that instinct for self-protection backfired. I dont want any risk of the personal being accessible, she told aide Huma Abedin in one email.

These self-destructive instincts continued when the email issue first arose. Thinking like a lawyer advised by other lawyers, Clinton chose to delete emails that she deemed personal. She had the legal right to do so, and it wouldnt have been a big deal, before she left office, to expunge personal emails written from a government account.

But the mass deletion of emails that Clintons team alone deemed personal, conducted after the State Department asked for its official archives back, was guaranteed to create a firestorm when it became public. As anyone who has spent as much time in Washington, under as much of a microscope as Clinton had, should have known it inevitably would.

Why didnt they get this stuff out like 18 months ago? So crazy, exasperated former Clinton adviser Neera Tanden asked in an email when Clintons private server and mass deletion became public. I guess I know the answer. They wanted to get away with it.

After the email story broke, Clinton had to be pressured to choke out an apology. Tanden, again, nailed it: Apologies are like her Achilles heel. Once more, the details dribbled out, grudgingly and, as a result, inflicting even more damage.

Even before the unfortunate letter from FBI Director James B. Comey fanned the email flames, a President Clinton was certain to face incessant, multiple investigations from congressional Republicans seizing on what Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Utah) described as a target-rich environment.

All of this is unfortunate, outrageous  and unavoidable. If Clinton continues to be her own worst enemy, if she were to behave in office as she has too often before, she will make it all that much worse. She needs to guard against this by learning, finally, from the mistakes of the past.

Read more from Ruth Marcuss archive, follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her updates on Facebook.
They share ideas and ideology, friends and funders. They cross borders to appear at one anothers rallies. They have deep contacts in Russia  they often use Russian disinformation  as well as friends in other authoritarian states. They despise the West and seek to undermine Western institutions. They think of themselves as a revolutionary avant-garde just like, once upon a time, the Communist International, or Comintern, the Soviet-backed organization that linked communist parties around Europe and the world. Now, of course, they are not Soviet-backed, and they are not communist. But this loose group of parties and politicians  Austrias Freedom Party, the Dutch Party for Freedom, the UK Independence Party, Hungarys Fidesz, Polands Law and Justice, Donald Trump  have made themselves into a global movement of anti-globalists. Meet the Populist International: Whoever wins the U.S. election Tuesday, its influence is here to stay.

Although it is often described (by me and others searching for a shorthand) as far-right, the Populist International has little to do with the right that has thrived in Western countries since World War II. Continental European Christian Democracy arose out of a postwar desire to bring morality back to politics; Gaullism came out of a long French tradition of statism and secularism; Anglo-Saxon conservatives had a historic preference for free markets. Most of them shared a Burkean small-c conservatism: a dislike of radical change, skepticism of progress, a belief in the importance of conserving institutions and values. Most of them emerged out of particular local and historical traditions. All of them shared a devotion to representative democracy, religious tolerance, Western integration and the Western alliance.

By contrast, the parties that belong to the Populist International, and the media that support it, are not Burkean. They dont want to conserve or preserve what exists. Instead, they want to radically overthrow the institutions of the present to bring back things that existed in the past  or that they believe existed in the past  by force. Their language takes different forms in different countries, but their revolutionary projects often include the expulsion of immigrants, or at least the return to all-white (or all-Dutch, or all-German) societies; the resurrection of protectionism; the reversal of womens or minorities rights; the end of international institutions and cooperation of all kinds. They advocate violence: In 2014, Trump said that youll have to have riots to go back to where we used to be, when America was great.

Sometimes they claim to be Christian, but just as often they are nihilists and cynics. Their ideology, sometimes formalized and sometimes not, opposes homosexuality, racial integration, religious tolerance and human rights.

The Populist International holds these goals to be more important than prosperity, more important than economic growth, more important than democracy itself. Like the parties that once formed the Comintern, they are eager to destroy existing institutions  from independent courts and media to international alliances and treaties  to obtain them. This week, Britains Daily Mail, a newspaper that propagates the ideas of the Populist International, actually denounced three high-court judges as Enemies of the People because they decreed that Britains exit from the European Union would require parliamentary consultation. Trump is only one of many politicians  Polands Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Hungarys Viktor Orban  who have launched attacks on the principles of their own constitutions.

Like their Comintern predecessors, the Populist International also understands that there is much to be gained by mutual support. German Christian Democrats would never have dreamed of campaigning on behalf of British Tories. And although they had much in common, Tories didnt intervene directly on behalf of U.S. Republicans. By contrast, Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party, has openly campaigned for Trump, even appearing in a spin room to plug the Republican nominee after one of his debates with Hillary Clinton. Geert Wilders, the xenophobic Dutch politician, showed up at the Republican National Convention, where instead of observing, as a Dutch Christian Democrat would have done, he agitated on behalf of Trump, too. All of the populist parties and newspapers use the narratives put out by Sputnik, the Russian news service that serves as an endless source of conspiracy theories and fake news. This week, a fake account of a refugee in Austria acquitted of raping a child  originally broadcast on Russian state TV  was repeated by Russian President Vladimir Putin and then across Europe, including (again) in the Daily Mail.

All the signs are that the movement is still growing. If Trump loses, the story isnt over: His campaign will no doubt metastasize into a television channel and a news network, and will continue to spread. But his failure will encourage the antidotes  the citizens parties, based on ideas rather than charisma, the independent journalists, the democracy movements  that have begun to emerge.

And if Trump wins? The Populist International will be invigorated, not just in the United States but around the world. Trump will be its leader, his daughter Ivanka will be its heir apparent, and liberal democracy, and the West as we know it, may cease to exist. Think about that before you vote.

Read more from Anne Applebaums archive, follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her updates on Facebook.
In his Oct. 26 op-ed, Trumps next act, Garrison Keillor argued that Bob Dylan is no Homer. True enough. Unlike Homer, Dylan is an actual person who has composed, recorded and performed a wealth of songs, the depth and breadth of which are unmatched in the contemporary American songbook. Were not even sure if Homer existed.

What seems agreed upon by classical scholars is that The Iliad and The Odyssey were handed down by Greek bards and written down when the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, probably in the 9th century B.C.

So, perhaps it would be more correct to say that Homer was no Dylan. What seems clear is that Keillor knows little of the work of his fellow Minnesotan, or of his bardic predecessor.

George Anthony Spanos, Arlington
THE BIG question after Tuesdays election will not be whether Obamacare is repealed, Social Security expanded or the Ryan budget passed. It will be whether the nations leaders act to preserve our republic  or hasten a descent toward a banana republic.

Their first priority must be preserving and restoring the countrys democratic institutions and culture. The new president must advance an agenda and tone consistent with the goal of cultivating national unity. But it is just as important that Congress be open to  and seek  the same. That means looking for compromises where they are still possible, staffing the government in an orderly way and slowly rebuilding trust between the countrys disparate factions.

Unfortunately, many congressional Republicans appear set on making an already corrosive atmosphere in Washington even more toxic. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Utah), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, promised to mire the country in years of investigations if Hillary Clinton wins. Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) raised the possibility that Republicans would block any Clinton Supreme Court nominee. Now Republicans are brazenly and irresponsibly discussing the true nuclear option: impeachment.

Assuming she wins and the investigation goes forward and it looks like an indictment is pending, at that point in time under the Constitution, the House of Representatives would engage in an impeachment trial, Rep. Michael McCaul (Tex.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said last week. All options are definitely on the table, Rep. Trent Franks (Ariz.), chairman of a Judiciary subcommittee, said when The Post asked him about impeachment. I would say yes, high crime or misdemeanor, Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, told a Wisconsin newspaper. Other high-profile Republicans have warned of a constitutional crisis. When we asked House Speaker Paul D. Ryans office about this talk, a spokeswoman replied, Our only focus right now is on beating Democrats, noting that the speaker would be campaigning with Mr. Johnson.

Barring some truly new and explosive revelation, an impeachment drive would ultimately fail. A two-thirds majority of the Senate would not convict, and that outcome would reflect more than just partisanship. This sentence should not need writing: There is no substantiated charge against Ms. Clinton that would warrant impeachment, or even talk of impeachment. Despite suggestions otherwise, there is also no imminent indictment against the Democratic nominee, or any available evidence suggesting that indictment is a realistic possibility. Instead, what the nation has seen over the closing days of this campaign is a party preparing to (mis)use extraordinary congressional powers for despicable political ends.

Factionalism and the naked quest for power are overwhelming the rule of law and essential civic norms. The FBI has become embroiled in a presidential election, with law enforcement agents selectively leaking material in an apparent effort to damage a political candidate who has been neither indicted nor convicted of any crime. Talk of impeaching the next president on trumped-up charges is becoming routine. Republicans must ask themselves if surrendering to their worst political instincts is worth surrendering their country.
Tuesday evening, after Election Days tranquility, new clamors will erupt as analysts with agendas tickle portents and lessons from the torrent of election returns. Herewith some developments to watch.

 In the 17 elections since World War II, the winner has averaged 385.4 electoral votes, the loser 145.1. In six elections (1952, 1956, 1964, 1972, 1980, 1984), a major-party candidate won fewer than 100. In the seven elections after 1984, no Democrat has received fewer than 111 (Michael Dukakis in 1988) and no Republican fewer than 159 (Bob Dole in 1996). Measure Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump accordingly.

 Republican nominees popular-vote totals this century are: 2000 (George W. Bush) 50,455,156; 2004 (Bush) 62,040,610; 2008 (John McCain) 59,934,814; 2012 ( Mitt Romney) 60,932,152. Measure Trumps total accordingly, bearing in mind that there are 10 million more eligible voters in 2016 than in 2012 and nearly 20 million more than in 2008.

 In 2012, Romneys totals in 10 swing states were: Texas, 4,569,843 (57 percent); Florida, 4,163,447 (49 percent); Pennsylvania, 2,680,434 (47 percent); Ohio, 2,661,407 (48 percent); Michigan, 2,115,256 (45 percent); Virginia, 1,822,522 (47 percent); Arizona, 1,233,654 (54 percent); Colorado, 1,185,243 (46 percent); Nevada, 463,567 (46 percent); New Hampshire, 329,918 (47 percent). Use these numbers to measure Trumps success at enlarging the Republican electorate.

 In 1976, when Jimmy Carter narrowly defeated President Gerald Ford, 20 states were won by five points or less; in 2012, just four were. In 1976, Ford won California and Illinois with 49.3 percent and 50.1 percent, respectively. Carter won Texas with 51.1 percent. Tuesday will show how much has changed in four decades.

 In nine consecutive elections (1980-2012), Florida has been more Republican than the nation. Is it still?

 In 1976, a majority of House seats were won by 10 points or less. In 2012, most were won by at least 20 points. Watch Tuesday night for further evidence of the extent to which representatives now pick their voters rather than voters picking representatives. And for how many incumbents are defeated by an electorate supposedly seething against insiders.

 The blue wall consists of 18 states and the District of Columbia (totaling 242 electoral votes) that have voted Democratic in at least six consecutive elections: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state, Wisconsin. Will Trump, who vowed to expand the battlefield, carry any of these?

 The Republicans red wall (in at least six consecutive elections) consists of 13 states with 102 electoral votes: Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Wyoming. Will Clinton come close to carrying Texas? Will she lose any age cohort there other than voters over 65?

 Will Trumps louche lifestyle cost him culturally conservative Utah, which last voted Democratic in 1964, and which since then has voted Republican by an average of 36.1 points?

 The only Democrat to carry Arizona since 1948 was Bill Clinton in 1996. If his wife duplicates that feat, will this be because the states Mormon community recoiled from Trump?

 In 1984, when Ronald Reagan carried 49 states, under-30 voters were the most Republican age group.This year, will it be, for the fourth consecutive election, the most Democratic?

In less than a week, the United States will have a new president-elect. These are the pivotal points in Donald Trump's and Hillary Clinton's campaigns that led to this moment. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

 A large and growing portion of voters acknowledge no religious tradition. They were 12 percent of the 2012 turnout and Democrats carried this secular cohort by 44 points. How much support did such voters give Trump, who has vowed to spiritize America?

 In 1928, a Brooklyn Democratic boss explained why he was funneling political funds to the candidate for New Yorks governor, Franklin Roosevelt, rather than to down-ballot candidates: As the Staten Island ferry enters its slip, he said, it drags in all the crap in the harbor behind it, adding, FDR is our Staten Island ferry. Trump might be the opposite. Watch whether his undertow drowns Reps. Barbara Comstock (Va.) and Mike Coffman (Colo.), Republicans with chilly relations with Trump, both representing similar districts  Northern Virginia and suburban Denver, respectively.

 Will Trump become the first Republican in 60 years to lose whites with college educations?

 Will Trump achieve even Romneys 17 percent of the nonwhite vote?

 Will Trump hold Clinton in Georgia below the 46 percent that Barack Obama won in 2012?

 Finally, Winston Churchill enjoyed the story of the man who, upon receiving a telegram reporting his mother-in-laws death and asking for instructions, replied: Embalm, cremate, bury at sea. Take no chances. What instructions will Tuesday evenings returns give to Republicans about what to do with Trumps approach to the electorate?

Read more from George F. Wills archive or follow him on Facebook.
Regarding the Oct. 21 editorial The District vote is about more than statehood:

In 1869, women were given the right to vote in Wyoming. By 1920, when women gained the right to vote in the rest of the United States, Wyoming women had been voting for a half-century. Today, 147 years after Wyomings act, women in the District still do not have the right to vote for representation in Congress. Neither do the men. As residents of a state with a smaller population than the Districts, Wyomingites should be champions of the right to vote in the District. No right is more precious in a free country. Nothing would be fairer.

The District has around 672,000 residents, roughly 100,000 more than we have in Wyoming. D.C. residents are subject to all federal taxes and pay far more in total revenue than we do. More Washingtonians have made the ultimate sacrifice while serving in the military. While the federal government has a large role in the District, it owns a smaller percentage of D.C. land than the nearly 50 percent of Wyoming that it owns.

Polls show that 82 percent of the American public think that D.C. voters should have the same voting rights as the rest of us. Almost as many think they already have that right. In 1961, D.C. residents were given the right to vote for president of the United States. They were given three electoral votes, the number they would have if they were a state. In fact, the District is treated like a state in hundreds of statutes. This is the only capital of any democracy in the world whose residents do not have voting representation. People of the capital of the free world should have a vote in Congress. Ironically, Americans living overseas can vote for Congress  unless their home address is in Washington, D.C.

Some in Wyoming will argue against this. Most people in the District are Democrats. Most people in Wyoming are Republicans. People in the District are urban dwellers. We in Wyoming are mostly rural. Many people in the District are black. Most of us are white. In 1890, when Wyoming was being considered for statehood, the fact that our women had the right to vote was an issue. When the United States asked Wyomingites if they could do something about this, legend has it that we responded: If we cant bring our women, we aint coming. Supporting the right of Americans who live in the District to become the 51st state is the right thing for Wyomingites to do. It says that our state motto, Equal Rights, is more than a motto in Wyoming. It is a core value that we hold dear for all Americans  even ones not like us.

Paul W. Hansen, Jackson, Wyo.
"The laboratory at Jalandhar has confirmed that the ducks died due to avian flu. We have sent the sample to Bhopal for reconfirmation and it has found positive H5N1 virus, commonly known as bird flu, after reexamination on Friday," said GS Jakhar, director general of Haryana animal husbandry department.

By Ajay Kumar: Even as pollution has choked the national capital region, the scare of avian flu continues to haunt everyone. And now Haryana too is affected by it with nine ducks found dead at Hisar's Blue Bird Tourist Complex.

ALARM BELLS RINGING

Alarm bells are now ringing loud in the region: the Gurugram wildlife department has shut down the Sultanpur National Park and Bird Sanctuary. Mass culling of birds has been ordered by the administration. The ducks were found dead on November 1 at the tourist complex. The wildlife department then sent the dead ducks to laboratory in Jalandhar to ascertain the reason for death.

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It was suspected that the ducks died due to H5N1 virus. "The laboratory at Jalandhar has confirmed that the ducks died due to avian flu. We have sent the sample to Bhopal for reconfirmation and it has found positive H5N1 virus, commonly known as bird flu, after reexamination on Friday," said GS Jakhar, director general of Haryana animal husbandry department.

EPIDEMIC

Following the lab report, Jakhar directed mass culling of ducks, hens, cocks and other birds within the radius of one kilometre from the tourist complex. "So far, the wildlife and animal husbandry officials have culled 929 birds, including 120 ducks, 598 hens/cocks and other birds," Jakhar said. He added that the situation is of epidemic proportion in Hisar. The departments are doing everything so that the disease doesn't spread among the birds in other parts of the state. Blue Bird Tourist Complex is situated 160 kilometres from Delhi on the Delhi Fazilka National Highway.

Spread over 20 acres, it also houses a water body developed by Haryana Tourism. Meanwhile, two ducks were found dead in mysterious circumstances in adjoining Rohtak district. The samples of the dead birds have been sent to the laboratories in Jalandhar and Bhopal. The Haryana forest department has directed concerned departments in Panchkula, Jhajjar and Gurugram to monitor the birds. Rambir Singh, conservator of forest south circle (wildlife) told Mail Today that Sultanpur National Park and Bird Sanctuary has been closed following avian flu scare in Hisar.

PRECAUTIONARY MEASURES

"Though there has been no report of bird deaths from the Sultanpur Park, we have taken the precautionary measures to shut down for visitors following death of birds in Hisar and Rohtak," Singh said. "We have put up a signboard at the gate of Sultanpur park to inform visitors about the situation. The park will remain closed till further notification. Wildlife officials have been directed to keep a close watch on the birds. They should inform us if anything untoward is noticed," Singh added. The doctors and experts have been provided binoculars so that they can keep a watch on the birds, he said. Sultanpur-Farukhnagar-Jhajjar corridor is known as natural habitat for migratory birds that arrive from Siberia, Mongolia and Eastern Europe. Singh pointed out that migrant or domestic birds have a tendency to fly in groups and they stay together at natural places. Therefore, the chances of infection among these birds are on the higher side.

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ALSO READ:

Bird flu scare: Here's what you need to know about the virus





--- ENDS ---
Danielle Pletka is senior vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Donald Trump is probably going to lose the election Tuesday. For many Republicans and conservatives, that will be a blessed release from an annus horribilis. But we will make a fatal error going forward if we do not acknowledge what Trump got right and attempt to fix the problems that enabled his hostile takeover of the GOP.

Consider the Trump themes that resonated deeply with tens of millions of Americans: We dont win anymore. We have no strategy to fight our enemies. Our allies arent paying enough freight. Defense cuts and feckless leadership are projecting American weakness. Trade deals help only some Americans. Washington doesnt work. Separate the bill of particulars from Trump the person, and the reality is, these complaints make sense. And Congress has the constitutional and political power to do something about it.

Take NATO: Trump was right that our allies should be spending more on defense. They made a commitment to a floor of 2 percent of gross domestic product for defense spending, and only the United States, Britain, Poland, Estonia and Greece are meeting it. But threatening them, a la Trump, or labeling them free riders, a la Barack Obama, are both wrong.

The right choice is for Congress, through legislation, to press the new administration into renegotiating how the terms of the NATO pledge are fulfilled. If Europeans arent able to muster popular and legislative support for increasing their defense budgets, they should be asked to set aside funding to better support U.S.-NATO operations. Congress should also insist they pay more to support U.S. facilities and U.S. troops stationed on their soil.

If they wont, Washington can stop paying for a lot of the bells and whistles NATO nations enjoy without actually harming NATO missions themselves. We can cut funding for headquarters staff and offices, command posts and other bloated trappings of NATO command. Think we cant cherry-pick like that? Check out the history of foreign relations authorizations and appropriations.

Trump also is right when he complains that our feckless fight against the Islamic State and years of disinvestment in our military are projecting weakness in a dangerous world. The United States is not winning, but that does not mean we cannot win. Even after years of (reversible) defense budget cuts, America can still manage limited engagements such as a no-fly zone in Syria, for example. And Congress should have the courage to support this humanitarian use of U.S. power.

There is also an alternative between Trumps preference for backing dictators and the all-out nation-building for which we have shown little talent. In the 1980s, under Ronald Reagan, the United States supported  with the bipartisan encouragement of Congress  opposition movements the world over. In the 1990s, under Bill Clinton, the United States supported  at the bipartisan direction of Congress  opposition movements in Iraq. These are policies that represent both a strategy and an endgame. A return to a strategy of supporting freedom movements is an opportunity to move from U.S. and coalition-led military operations to foreign-led transitional governments in places such as Syria and Libya.

Think Congress cant get the executive branch to play ball and dedicate energy, financing and leadership to political solutions abroad? Think again. Without funding, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (not to speak of everyone else) cant function. Congress has billions in leverage.

Trade is a more complex challenge. The truth is that deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership have been oversold  not because their benefits dont vastly outweigh their costs, but because the pro-trade side fails to acknowledge that some workers truly end up displaced. The guy who loses his job when his factory decamps to China can be forgiven for thinking elites are full of it when they intone on the universal benefits of free trade.

Congress can take on the hard challenge of getting workers the skills they need to compete in todays economy. It can take on the special interests in universities, schools and unions that oppose these changes and the fancy pants who sneer at the need for vocational and technical skills, which could better prepare workers for advanced manufacturing. It can work with states to expand apprenticeship and other work-based learning programs. It can offer the long-term unemployed living in areas with limited job opportunities assistance to move to cities with tighter, stronger labor markets.

None of this is rocket science, but of late, many sensible and even bipartisan suggestions seem to fall on deaf ears. Hostility toward experts and the establishment is rooted in the same exhaustion with policies that dont work and politicians who do nothing but spin.

Its not that Americans dont want to engage with the world, its that they want to engage successfully. This theme was among Trumps most resonant against Hillary Clinton: For 30 years, shes been doing this. . . . She doesnt do anything about anything other than talk. With her, its all talk and no action.

Frankly, he has a point. And not just about Clinton. Now is the GOPs chance to reunite the party and do something for the American people. All of them.
Outside of Washington, Republicans dominate state politics. Thats especially true when it comes to governors mansions: The GOP holds 31 out of 50 seats.

And if they pick up just one more Tuesday, Republicans will tie a modern-day record for the most seats controlled by their party, set in 1998.

Democrats arent going to let that happen without a fight. Despite a challenging election cycle in which they are defending five open seats, Democrats are in a position to hold on to most of those and even knock off a Republican governor.

Still, even the worst-case scenario for Republicans on Tuesday has them with a solid, 29-seat majority. With 12 seats up for this cycle  only six of those competitive  theres not a lot of opportunity for Democrats to change the GOP-heavy map, said Louis Jacobson, who handicaps gubernatorial and other state races for Governing magazine.

At the end of the day, its not going to be a dramatic difference, Jacobson said. The GOP is going to be far ahead in terms of governors seats.

But there will likely be some shuffling of which party controls which state. Heres a rundown of the top six governors races, in order of least to most likely to flip parties.



Justice speaks during a gubernatorial debate in Charleston, W.V.a, on Oct. 4. (Tyler Evert/AP)

West Virginia: The race to replace term-limited Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin is all about the Crocs-wearing, coal-loving, Hillary Clinton-critical, Democratic billionaire Jim Justice. Justice would be a Republican in any other state, and hes a favorite to win this open seat. Hes up by double digits in every quality poll in the past month. Republican Bill Cole, president of the state Senate, hasnt been able to nudge his way into the conversation with such a colorful character. But with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump up from 20 to 25 points in this state, its still an open question how many Republicans will vote for Trump and cross the ballot for Justice. If Republicans can turn this mansion red, they could hold on to it , they could hold on to it for a long time.



Van Ostern, left, and Sununu debate at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, N.H., on Tuesday. (Thomas Roy/AP)

New Hampshire: Even though Republican Chris Sununu, an executive councilor and the son of a former popular governor, has the name recognition, Republicans acknowledge that he hasnt run a pitch-perfect campaign in this open race to replace Gov. Maggie Hassan (D), who is running for Senate. For one, if youre a Republican trying to win the governors seat in a state that has had mostly Democratic governors since 1997, suggesting the election is rigged might not be the best campaignstrategy. Executive Councilor Colin Van Ostern (D) isnt nearly as well known, but he has a solid progressive grass-roots network and will probably benefit from Clintons turnout machine. Polls are all over the place, suggesting the result could be unpredictable.



Gregg and Holcomb participate in a debate for Indiana governor at the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville on Oct. 25. (Alex Slitz/AP)

Indiana: The decision by Gov. Mike Pence (R) to leave his seat to run as Trumps vice president was both a blessing and a curse to Indiana Republicans. Republicans concede that they probably would be down if Pence were in the race, but they also had just 100 days or so to introduce voters to his less-tarred replacement, Lt. Gov. Eric Holcomb. Most polls show former state House speaker John Gregg (D) leading, but this is a state Trump is expected to win by as much as 10 points. Republicans are hopeful that undecided voters will vote Republican further down the ballot, too, despite not really knowing who Holcomb is.



Koster speaks during a debate in the race for Missouri governor in Branson on Sept. 30. (Jeff Roberson/AP)

Greitens speaks during a debate in the race for Missouri governor in Branson on Sept. 30. (Jeff Roberson/AP)

Missouri: Both sides say this race to replace term-limited Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon is basically tied. Since Missouri is a red-leaning state, a tie would generally favor Republicans and, thus, hand the race to former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens. (This is another state Trump is expected to win, by six to 10 points.) That means Missouri is one of Republicans best pickup opportunities. But Democratic Attorney General Chris Koster is doing what he needs to in his bid to keep this out of reach for Republicans. The former Republican got an endorsement from the National Rifle Association, and he has consistently led in polls as the percentage of undecided voters dropped from 8 percent in October to 5 percent in November.

Vermont: The surprise of the cycle may be Vermont, which is Republicans best pickup opportunity. After the September primary, the state rocketed to the top of our most-likely-to-flip list. Vermont likes to switch up which party holds the governors mansion, and, unfortunately for state Transportation Secretary Sue Minter (D), shes running in the shadow of Gov. Peter Shumlin (D), who is retiring after three terms amid a struggling economy and anemic approval ratings. Lt. Gov. Phil Scott (R) was up seven points in a WCAZ-

Burlington poll out Monday.



Cooper, left, and RPat McCrory debate at WRAL studios in Raleigh, N.C. on Oct. 18. (Chris Seward/AP)

North Carolina: One of the hardest things to do in politics is unseat a sitting governor. But Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper looks poised to do it. Cooper is leading or tying Gov. Pat McCrory (R) in almost every public poll. He got help from the governor himself: Polls show that the transgender bathroom bill McCrory signed into law in the spring is still hurting him. And Cooper will get a boost from the presidential race and Clintons aggressive turnout machine in the state.

Democrats may pick up one or two seats Tuesday, but so could Republicans. That means Republicans will continue their dominance of governors mansions  at least until 2018, when 36 seats are up and the GOP is playing defense.


A flag hangs at the Chizvachon Restaurant, where many politicians stop, a day before the New Hampshire primary in Manchester, N.H., in early February. In the final hours before the vote, Americans remain bullish about their prospects. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

At long last, Americans get to decide. More than usual, most people dont like their choices. More than usual, many Americans believe that people who dont agree with them are not only wrong but are also best avoided.

On the eve of the election, America is afraid. People talk about buying guns to protect themselves from troubles to come. They talk about places they steer clear of and people they dont talk to anymore. Casual conversations have blown up into hurtful arguments. Friends vanish from Facebook feeds. People who used to put up yard signs dont for fear of what their neighbors might do. And people who thought things were improving, in their own lives and in their communities, wonder whether they missed the real story, a darker tale of division and despair.

But America is also what its always been, a green field of possibility, a place where people relish rogues and truth-tellers, and a place where being appalled by politicians is part of the deal, something that can even bring people together.

Only eight years after millions of Americans poured into the streets in spontaneous, joyful celebration of the election of the nations first black president, optimism seems to have been sucked out of the countrys marrow, replaced by a heavy anxiety, a sense that things arent right and cant easily be fixed.

The candidates for president have made it harder to be optimistic, many Americans say. One candidate said things were so bad that only he could make America great again. The other asked people to consider that the country would be stronger together. But neither captured the hearts or hopes of any broad cross-section of the people. Neither offered any grand idea for a more secure, happier future. There was no New Deal, no Great Society, no Thousand Points of Light.

Yet in the final hours before the vote, Americans remain bullish about their prospects, eager to keep plugging, for themselves and their children. In interviews across the country, whether theyre voting for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, anyone but them or no one at all, Americans almost uniformly say that the politicians are clueless but that the people will eventually do what needs getting done.

***



On the eve of the election, America is deeply polarized, heavy with anxiety and distrustful of the other side. And although many are appalled by todays dark politics, they are taking comfort in a bedrock of American exceptionalism: its people. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

Melinda Powers opens the heavy door of the industrial oven and carefully removes a fragrant, steaming apple crisp. She inspects it meticulously. At 19, she dreams of opening a bakery. She worries that this election is her obstacle.

To get from the culinary studies program at Newbury College in Brookline, Mass., to a business of her own, Powers expects shell need her parents help. But theyre fighting over politics right now, and its bad enough that Powers could see them breaking up, which would probably nix her bakery plan.

Powerss parents met at Winchester Repeating Arms  an Irish American guy who produced gun parts and an immigrant woman from Cape Verde who inspected guns. They fell in love on the shop floor.

But the election has driven a wedge between them. Hes for Trump; shes for Clinton. My dad jokingly brings it up all the time, Powers said, but my mom doesnt think its funny at all. Trump offends everything shes ever worked for.

Powerss mother is so disturbed by the racism and anti-immigrant sentiment shes seen this year that she sometimes threatens to move back to Cape Verde if Trump wins. My dad obviously doesnt want to leave his Harley-Davidson buddies behind and move to a foreign country where he doesnt speak the language, his daughter said.

The campaign has also divided Powers from her old friends from Blue Hill Regional Technical High School in Randolph. Most of those friends are white, and all but one support Trump. My white friends think they can say racial stuff more than they used to, Powers said. They use the n-word a lot more now. . . . There is more hate directed toward other races and toward immigrants.

Powers is still an optimist; no matter who wins, she will work hard to achieve her dreams. She says she still believes America is the greatest country. But shed thought the battles over racism were fought for me long ago, and now she sees a hate that masquerades as humor. We can be driving somewhere, she said, and theyll be like, Melinda, sit in the back. Then theyll laugh. After a while, you do feel slightly left out, because at the end of the day, we are not all the same. I am the different one.

***



In interviews across the country, Americans almost uniformly say the politicians are clueless but the people will eventually do what needs to be done. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

Optimism, perhaps the most exceptional of American traits, is down. A Washington Post-ABC News poll found earlier in the fall campaign that 42 percent of Americans were bullish about the next year, the lowest number since 2004, the first national election after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Yet here was Sheila Rushing, 67, knocking on doors, even on doors of houses that looked empty, with boards slanting over the windows. Rushing had avoided politics for years, a job requirement: The work that got her through divorce, at the Detroit museum of African American history, was a nonprofit, limiting her political activity. But when she retired, she canvassed for the first black president and now for Hillary Clinton.

Im doing great, she said. Glad and blessed. Glad that the Lord woke me up.

Rushing, like many Detroiters, was offended when Trump declared that black Americans were living in hell. The past eight years were no hell. She had raised her grandson, Armando, after his father died when the boy was 14. He turned 26 on Halloween, and Rushing had helped him through high school and on to Wayne State University to get his degree in criminal justice. And now hes working. Rushing took pride in her own ability to pay off her home note, and she thanked Obama for the bigger Pell grants that got Armando through school.

Rushing learned this fall not to broach the subject of politics with some friends. It was too raw. Still, she knocked on another door. The home was empty but not abandoned. She left a flier with a picture of Clinton and Obama deep in conversation in the Oval Office. Protect his legacy, it read.

***



Passions are running sky high in this high-stakes election. Friendships have been lost. Marriages have been tested. Facebook friends unfriended. Neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton has captured the hearts or hopes of any broad cross-section of the people. Neither offered any grand idea for a more secure, happier future. There was no New Deal, no Great Society, no Thousand Points of Light. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

Nearly half of Americans  45 percent in a Post-ABC poll in September  believe the United States is less great than it has been in the past; 37 percent said it is about the same; and 16 percent said it is greater. The idea that the country has grown less great is much more common among Trump supporters (77 percent) than among Clinton backers (21 percent).

Through the years, pessimism about the countrys direction has been stronger among supporters of the party thats out of power. In 2008, as the economy weakened and the war in Iraq dragged on, an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll found that 77 percent of Obama supporters said the nation was in a state of decline, compared with 57 percent of those backing the Republican, John McCain.

Tony Kadlcek first came to the United States from Czechoslovakia in 1990, soon after the revolution against his countrys communist regime. His uncle invited him to visit, and while in Chicago, Kadlcek met the woman who would become his wife. The next year, Kadlcek legally migrated to the United States to be with her. He got a job with the commercial HVAC business that his wifes family owned. He still works there.

But 12 years ago, the couple moved farther from Chicago, to Lisle, a suburb to the citys southwest, because of corruption and crime, he said. Now he drives through Chicago, sees dilapidated buildings and worries about crime. There were 17 murders over one October weekend, he said. Obama promised to be a uniter, but it seems like he divided us. People hate cops; blacks and whites seem more separate now.

Kadlcek, 47, likes his life; he has four kids, makes a good living and owns his own home as well as a six-apartment building that he rents out. But the buildings value has not recovered since the economic crisis, and he partly blames Obama. He and his wife, a legal secretary, are fed up with high taxes, debt, corruption and illegal immigration. When their kids go to college, they might move to Wisconsin or Indiana. Frustrated about whats happened to the country, he worries about a crackdown on guns; he recently bought an expensive rifle, so that if Hillary wins Ill be grandfathered in. He likes Trumps slogan, Make America Great Again, because it admits the country has gone downhill.

But Kadlcek isnt advertising his support for Trump. In years past, he put bumper stickers on his Cutlass Supreme, going back to Dole-Kemp in 1996. Not this time: People are afraid if you have a Trump sticker on your car or a Hillary sticker, someone will key it.

***



Food carts can be seen in every part of New York City. The mobile carts are a common way that some new immigrants get their start in business in the United States. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

Most folks put aside their differences of race attitudes and political leanings to root for the home team during the Friday night football games. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

Mae and Daniel Harrison are riveted to the campaign news  well, she is. He can take only so much. Both of them have seen the campaign eat away at relationships. Theyve argued with fellow shoppers in grocery lines. They avoid Trump supporters. And for the first time in many years, theyve felt unwelcome in some places.

We are fearful of going too far away from home because of what we see, Mae said.

The campaign is all the 74-year-old retired United Methodist pastor talks about these days. When her girlfriends call, she cant help but get into the emails. After a pastor friend from Texas phoned and declared shed be voting for Trump, Harrison held her tongue. She hasnt called back. Not until after the election.

The Harrisons, who live in Fort Washington in Prince Georges County, Md., read the paper, then have the TV on much of the day, CNN and MSNBC mostly. Its Trump and Clinton, and Trump, and Trump. Mae listens as she flits about the house. Daniel sometimes rebels.

Cut that off, Mae, he tells his wife. I dont like the sound of his voice.

Watch Netflix instead, he says. Sometimes, she does. But come 6 p.m., the temptation is too much, and she puts the news back on. Daniel gives up and goes upstairs to the computer or to watch a game show.

Daniel, 78, a retired microbiologist, grew up in Louisiana. Mae, a former teacher, came from North Carolina. For two accomplished African Americans from the South, Trump has unearthed a past they thought they had left behind when they moved to a prosperous, majority-black county in the shadow of Washington.

Now, the name-calling and bullying of the campaign has them wondering whether the old hatreds had only gone dormant. At a restaurant in Virginia, a group of bikers stared them down. At the supermarket, Daniel argued with a man who couldnt see how Trump was bringing out hatred. At a church event, Mae sat well away from a black woman who said supportive things about Trump.

She cant stop thinking, even if Clinton wins, what will the backlash look like? How long does this last? When does the healing begin?

***



A crowd in Ohio listens to Hillary Clinton in Columbus, Ohio, in late July. In interviews across the country, underneath all our divisiveness lies a dogged faith in the unique excellence of the American people, which  despite our disappointment in politics  nourishes hope for the healing to come. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

Healing is normally the last thing Brent Beaupre thinks about around the family campfire in Kennebunk, Maine. On sweet summer nights, with three generations gathered, all should be copacetic. But one night this summer, Beaupres grandmother turned to him and asked, Youre not going to vote for her, are you?

Oh, but I am, Beaupre said. He tried to explain himself. And then his grandmother turned to him again and said, But youre not going to vote for her, are you?

They went at it. Cant you see how crazy he is? Beaupre said.

Yeah, but shes the biggest criminal ever, his grandmother replied.

Its like talking to a wall, Beaupre said. I love these people to death, but theres nothing that permeates.

Hes 21, and this will be his first vote, and what he sees is utter alienation of each side from the other. With the Romney-Obama cycle, you had two incredible intellects who very much knew their subjects, he said. It was about the defense of our country. It was about the national deficit  real topics. I feel in this election cycle its about sensationalism, whatever grabs the media.

With his stylish leather shoes and blue Oxford shirt, Beaupre moves with professional efficiency through the sea of denim and sweatshirts on the campus of Suffolk University in Boston. An honors student with a major in finance and a minor in big data, he has been offered a job upon graduation with a major bank.

Im a gay man who wants to work in financial services who comes from a conservative household and now lives in a very liberal city, he said. Its a constant back and forth.

The first in his family to attend college, hes nonetheless worried about the future. My friends entering the industry have been told point-blank that we should be wary of the economic situation were in, Beaupre said. If the economy doesnt do well, our jobs are going to disappear. Everybodys waiting for this election; everything is on hold.

***



A coal train runs parallel to the road in the heart of coal country. Coal mine jobs are down in West Virginia and many local miners are not fans of Hillary Clinton as they perceive her to be anti-coal industry. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

A sign in front of a local bar reminds people to vote or give up the right to complain. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

Business is good for Ryan Snyder. Life is good, too, even if good does mean 12-hour workdays, seven days a week.

Snyder, 33, puts those hours into a little country breakfast-and-lunch spot in Goochland, Va. He bought Satterwhites Restaurant from his father in January. The place sits at a rural crossroads thats unlikely to stay rural. Four miles away, the Richmond suburbs stretch out  a Whole Foods, a glitzy mall, and, if electric car guru Elon Musk gets his way with state officials, soon a showroom for six-figure Teslas.

For now, Satterwhites sticks to what it has always been. The menu sticks to old favorites, such as salt herring with biscuits or toast for $7.85. Snyder thinks about adding a few items. Nothing fancy. If its not broke, he figures, dont fix it.

He does think Washington is broken. Congress cant get anything done, and the federal government gets too involved in a lot of things. And now this unacceptable choice. I dont think Ive heard anyone say, I like Hillary or I like Trump,  Snyder said.

He cant stand Hillary. I think shes a liar, he said. And Trump is Trump. You cant go to world leaders and just run your mouth. He wont vote for Clinton. Maybe Trump or Gary Johnson, though he knows the Libertarian Party nominee has no chance. Snyder and his wife have stopped talking about the election; Brittany thinks Trump is a misogynist. Ryan doesnt disagree; he just mistrusts Clinton more.

He expects little from whoever wins. But he remains upbeat about his own prospects. He and Brittany expect their first child in February. In September, they bought their first house, a brick rancher near a big dairy farm, 10 minutes from work.

Things look good outside the restaurant, too. New shopping centers, office parks and housing have gobbled up farmland and attracted more diverse residents. A Hindu cultural center and temple popped up about a mile away.

Some Satterwhites regulars grumble about the new development, but Snyder likes it fine: Itll do nothing but increase my business. New development means new people, some of them new to America. Snyder is concerned about terrorists, but he doesnt think it makes sense morally or economically to turn everyone away.

He figures the people at the new Hindu center are educated and ready to work, he said. How do you turn that away? Were all immigrants in this country, so you cant shut the borders down.

***



For many Americans, this election is about our very way of life and who we are as a people. Many Clinton supporters are disturbed by what they see as racism and anti-immigrant sentiment from Trump, and many Trump supporters view Clinton as criminal and conniving. Nearly half of Americans  45 percent in a Washington Post poll in September  believe the United States is less great than its been in the past. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

For many immigrants, there is a special urgency to this election, because of Trumps harsh rhetoric about keeping out Mexicans and Muslims, and because there have been so many deportations, with the prospect of many more.

As the sun set Wednesday night, Rosa Rosales walked the bridge from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, to El Paso eating from a cup of corn and chilis. She paid her 50 cents to reenter the United States, and she was home, where she is a citizen. She had gone across the border to get her medicine.

The politicians fight forever about immigration, and Rosales walks the bridge. They fight forever about health care, and Rosales walks the bridge.

A home care nurse, she has no use for Trump or Clinton. She voted early, writing in her senator, Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), mostly because he agreed with her that Obamacare is no good. Too expensive, and its wrong to punish people who lack insurance, she said.

She supported Obama eight years ago, but when she needs simple care, she crosses the border. If she has something big, like the kidney stone that bedeviled her a few years back, she stays in Texas.

She fears Trump. Hes a racist; hes rude, Rosales said. He has a lack of respect for women. Im a Mexican, and I think he will do something against Mexican people.

Rosales crossed the marker between the United States and Mexico and let out a little cheer. She had her dinner and her medicine, and she was okay.

Halfway across the southern edge of the country, Rafael Marin is secretly obsessed with the election. Patrons come into his downtown Miami shop, Richards Fruit Center, for fresh fruit and smoothies. Marin, 59, plays 80s pop on the radio  no political talk shows. He likes to keep the vibe cheerful and positive.

In the citys busy working-class hub, people hang out drinking Cuban coffee, arguing about the election. But in Marins shop, he tries to keep things peaceful. He hears Ugh, those emails? and he pivots to Can I get you anything else?

The rest of the country could learn a lot from downtown Miami, he said: We all live together, and our language is a mixed language  Spanish, English, all used together . . . a beautiful thing. Son of a Puerto Rican father and a Jewish mother, Marin lives in a city where nearly everyone is an immigrant of some sort, coming here from somewhere else. So Marin doesnt get Trump, doesnt want America to be seen as unwelcoming. Marin likes Clinton, marvels at her ability to withstand attacks and investigations.

Whatever happens, he said: America will be fine; it rises and it falls like the waves. We owe some money, so what? Our credit is good, and we get to live here, in America.

A customer asks in Spanish whether raspberries, pineapple and ginger make a good smoothie. Marin nods in approval. Any blend is a good blend.

A thousand miles to the north, in Barstow, Va., Lynda Trinh Frank recalled the night four decades ago when her family left Saigon and piled into a lifeboat. Franks mother lined up her six kids and told them they could each take one bag. Frank packed her toothbrush, pajamas and Smurf comic books. Six years later, after time in a refugee camp in Arkansas, her family was naturalized and living in Richmond, and Frank renamed herself after Lynda Carter, TVs Wonder Woman.

Now 50, Frank wonders whether her five half-Vietnamese, half-Caucasian children will have the same country that we hoped to live in when we came here. She left her job as a telecom consultant with a six-figure salary to be a full-time mom. Im here, she said. I help shape my children. Her kitchen is decorated with childrens artwork, Bible verses, and portraits of saints and Jesus.

Frank has instilled antiabortion values in her children from early on. Her youngest daughter, staying home from parochial school with a broken arm, whines; her arm itches and shes bored.

Could you offer your suffering for the babies? Frank asks.

So they wont get killed, Mom? the 7-year-old replies.

Exactly, Frank says.

She wants leaders who will reject abortion and lower taxes. She has helped put up Trump-Pence signs. She likes Trumps hard stance against illegal immigration and applauds his evolution into antiabortion beliefs.

She worries that America no longer reflects her familys values. The last eight years, instead of empowering people, its gimme, gimme, gimme,  she said. Everything is a race issue. Look, Im an Asian. Im ethnic. Im a minority. I dont say, You need to give me a job because Im Asian and a woman. No.

***



A barber ship displays a sign in support of Donald Trump. Some Americans worry that the country no longer reflects their values. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

Carol Blaser sits in her Ford Mustang in the lot outside the hair salon where she works in Ann Arbor, Mich. She downs a McDonalds cheeseburger, worrying not about the election, but about her son, about his illness  one that, as she said, nobody runs a 5k for.

Her adult son is mentally ill, in and out of the justice system, 31 now, doing better with good medication. But she frets about him when her clients go on like the talking heads on cable news, yammering about low-information voters and the Paul Ryan effect.

Earlier that day, while cutting the hair of a homebound customer at his townhouse, the mans wife came into the living room to demonstrate their lifelong Democratic support by showing off a vintage 1990s T-shirt that read, Support Hillarys Husband. I wish I was that sure, Blaser, 58, said later. One day I wake up and think Im going to vote one way; one day I wake up and think Im going to vote another.

Blaser hasnt spent the past year glued to the TV and Facebook following the twists and turns. Shes been too busy with life. Two of her kids got married. Her daughter came out as a lesbian. Her 30-year-olds three kids had birthdays in October.

And shes leaving Delias Salon, where she has rented a chair for 16 years, because Delia raised the rent by $30, to $230 a week.

Her neighborhood is dotted with Trump-Pence yard signs, and she considers herself conservative, but she voted for Obama twice after going for Republicans Bob Dole and George W. Bush. From what she can glean, Trump is an idiot about a lot of things, but Clinton is a conniving little b---h.

Im leaning towards Hillary just because shes the least evil, but I dont know if shes evil or not, she said. I dont know! Do any of us really know what goes on, what they go through?

Her absentee ballot sits on her counter, and I keep walking by it and looking at it. I want to fill it out and get it away from me, but I dont know what to do. This damn election.

Hernandez reported from Prince Georges County, Md. Lee reported from Prince William County, Va. Fisher reported from Washington. Catherine Clabby in Fayetteville, N.C.; Scott Clement in Washington; Steve Friess in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Kari Lyderson in Bolingbrook, Ill.; Renae Merle in Elizabeth, N.J.; April Capochino Myers in Baton Rouge; Nick Romeo in Palo Alto, Calif.; Robert Samuels in Miami; Katherine Stewart in Boston; Laura Vozzella in Goochland County, Va.; David Weigel in Detroit and El Paso; and Wesley Yiin in Sitka, Alaska, contributed to this report.
Marijuana is processed at Los Suenos Farms in Avondale, Colo. Voters in several states will decide on ballot initiatives to legalize marijuana for recreational or medical use. (Brennan Linsley/AP)

Theres a lot more on the ballot Tuesday than candidates for president and Congress.

Voters in 35 states will have the chance to weigh in on a host of ballot initiatives  about 160 in all  that could have a major impact on national drug, economic and tax policies.

Residents of Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada will vote on whether to legalize the recreational use of marijuana for adults. Polls show voters favoring legalization in all of the states, although some of the margins are small. Voters in Arkansas, Florida, Montana and North Dakota will vote on legalizing medical marijuana.

Advocates think support for marijuana legalization has galvanized in California and across the country since Colorado legalized marijuana in 2012, followed by Alaska, Oregon and Washington. They also say that approval of Californias ballot measure, which includes a five-year moratorium on industrial-scale growing and carve-outs for small farmers, will send a signal that the rest of the country is ready for legalization.

The California initiative is going to be the gold standard, said Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which is supporting legalization.

There are more than 150 ballot measures being voted on across the country Nov. 8. Here are some of the most common and controversial. (Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post)

In an interview with Bill Maher on Friday, President Obama said he does not think legalization of marijuana is a panacea, but that if the initiatives are approved, about 20 percent of Americans will live in a state where marijuana is legal  making enforcement difficult for federal authorities.

The Justice department, DEA, FBI  for them to try to straddle and try to figure out how theyre supposed to enforce some laws in some places and not in others, that is not going to be tenable, Obama said.

But some longtime marijuana farmers in Northern California are leery of the measure. They are wary of some of the measures big-pocketed donors, including Facebook and Napster co-founder Sean Parker, and worry that it could create factory farming of marijuana in the state.

Theres a ton of fears, said Chrystal Ortiz, a second-generation marijuana farmer on the Humboldt County Sun Growers Guild.

Gun-control advocates are looking for victories in Maine and Nevada, two rural states with robust gun cultures that will vote on whether to close a loophole in federal law and require background checks for almost all gun purchases. Californians will decide if they want to ban the sale of high-capacity magazines and require background checks for ammunition purchases. In Washington state, residents will vote on whether to allow family members to seek a temporary order barring a person from access to firearms if the person is determined to pose a risk to themselves or others.

Frustrated by congressional inaction, gun-control proponents are pursuing a strategy reminiscent of the one taken by same-sex marriage activists a decade earlier, attempting to change the law state by state.

[Heres how gun control advocates are hoping to finally win on Tuesday]

In Colorado, voters will choose from a number of initiatives, including whether to create a single-payer health-care system.

The health measure has split liberals in the state, with supporters saying it will save Colorado residents money and curb health spending, and opponents arguing that the program will be too big and have a larger budget than the state government.

Voters will also have the chance to make assisted suicide legal in the state  a controversial measure that has been enacted in six other states  and to decide it should be harder to put initiatives on the ballot.

Coloradans will also join residents of Arizona, Maine and Washington state in choosing whether they want to raise the minimum wage. Polling has shown strong support for the measures in each state. Arizona, Colorado and Maine have proposed raising the minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020; Washington wants to hike it to $13.50 by 2020. The Arizona and Washington measures also mandate paid sick leave for employees.

Theres been so much media coverage of Trump and Clinton . . . that its hard to compete, said Jonathan Schleifer of the Fairness Project, which has worked to put the wage initiatives on the ballot.

Maine Gov. Paul LePage likened increasing the minimum wage to the attempted murder of senior citizens because it is pushing people to the brink of survival, he said on a South Portland radio station.

In California, the pharmaceutical industry has spent millions of dollars fighting a proposition that would limit the price state agencies pay for prescription drugs, requiring them to pay no more than the Department of Veterans Affairs. It was spurred by stories of massive increases in the price of EpiPens and other drugs. Opponents worry it could drive up the cost of pharmaceuticals for residents who get their drugs through private plans.

A number of criminal justice initiatives are up for a vote, including some on the death penalty. In Oklahoma, voters will consider an amendment allowing the legislature to provide for any method of execution not prohibited by the U.S. Constitution. Voters in the state will also decide if they want to change the classification of certain drug and property crimes from a felony to a misdemeanor and, if enacted, start a fund that funnels money toward treatment programs. The two questions have bipartisan support and the backing of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Voters in California will choose between two competing ballot measures on the death penalty: one that would bar the practice and another that would speed up the execution process. And Nebraska residents will decide if they want to repeal a 2015 law that eliminated the death penalty in the state.


McCain debates Kirkpatrick on Oct. 10 in Phoenix. (Ross D. Franklin/AP)

Arizona

Sen. John McCain (R) is poised to win a sixth term after a tough two-front battle with his states far-right wing and Democrats accusing him of flipping his positions to fit the moment.

McCain, 80, first had to get through a primary against Kelli Ward, who ran as a tea party insurgent proudly backing Donald Trump and aped Trumps criticism of McCain over veterans legislation. McCain won comfortably, but received a tad more than 50 percent of the GOP vote.

That set up a quick and potentially difficult general-election battle against Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D), who represents the states largest district. But McCain quickly galvanized most of the Republican vote, running as a check against a possible Hillary Clinton presidency and trying to steer clear of discussing Trump.

Kirkpatrick has aired tough ads showing McCains changing positions, including in 2010 calling for a danged fence along the Mexican border. But Washington Democrats took a pass on engaging the race. Both the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and its super PAC ally, Majority PAC, have not devoted resources to the race.

McCain formally dumped Trump in early October. A CNN poll showed him with a 13-point edge in the past week.

 Paul Kane



Harris gives a thumbs up to supporters during her visit to the campaign office of Rep. Ami Bera in Elk Grove, Calif., on Nov. 3. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP)

California

When Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) announced her retirement, California Attorney General Kamala Harris became the instant front-runner. Other Democrats stepped back, and no strong Republicans came forward in the deep-blue state.

Enter Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D). Sanchez made it through the June primary, defeating several GOP candidates to finish a distant second to Harris. State election rules allow the top two finishers, regardless of party, to advance to the general election. But the Orange County congresswoman has struggled to catch up to Harris, who in recent polls was leading by more than 20 points.

Sanchez has campaigned as a moderate and shed hoped to mobilize Latinos, Californias largest ethnic group. She has modest leads with Latino voters in polls, but Harris boasts double-digit margins with nearly every other demographic group.

Harris has the backing of the California Democratic Party, labor unions and progressive groups, and President Obama, who appeared in a campaign ad for her.

Sanchez, 56, would be the first Latina elected to the Senate. Harris, 52, whose parents emigrated from Jamaica and India, would become the second black woman elected to the Senate since 1992.

 Vanessa Williams



Rubio, right, and Murphy debate on Oct. 26 at Broward College in Davie, Fla. (Wilfredo Lee/AP)

Florida

The most important day in Floridas Senate race was June 22, when GOP Sen. Marco Rubio announced that he would seek reelection  reversing a pledge he made when he began his ill-fated presidential campaign. Without Rubio, Republicans faced a messy primary featuring several unknown, untested candidates. Democrats, meanwhile, thought they had a winner in Rep. Patrick Murphy, a young up-and-comer who had triumphed in the nastiest and most expensive House race of 2012. Rubios reversal instantly gave the GOP an advantage, and they have not given it up.

Rubio and GOP allies have spent tens of millions of dollars attacking Murphy, trying to paint him as a spoiled rich kid with a questionable professional record. Murphy has fought back with ads capitalizing on Rubios presidential ambitions and his poor Senate attendance record while pursuing them. But Democrats pulled millions of dollars of ad reservations over the course of the fall as other races proved to be more competitive, leaving Murphy unable to match Rubio dollar for dollar.

Murphy hasnt caught up in polling, but hes not far behind. A late influx of Democratic spending and a stronger-than-expected Clinton win could spell an upset  and a devastating loss for Rubio.

 Mike DeBonis



Kirk, right, and Duckworth debate on Oct. 27 at the University of Illinois in Springfield. (Seth Perlman/AP)

Illinois

Sen. Mark Kirk (R) has used a wheelchair since he had a stroke in 2012, and against virtually any other opponent, his return to the Senate would be a powerful narrative on which to run.

But his Democratic opponent, Rep. Tammy Duckworth, has a story just as powerful, having lost her legs in 2004 when her helicopter in Iraq was struck by an enemy rocket. It was during her recuperation that her home states two Democratic senators  Richard J. Durbin and Barack Obama  drafted her into politics. She has run a cautious but competent campaign withstanding attacks on her tenure as head of the state Department of Veterans Affairs and on her thin legislative record.

For Kirk, meanwhile, reelection was a tough bet, as Illinois last elected a Republican senator in a presidential year in 1972. And Kirk is his own worst enemy, talking his way into controversies that culminated in the most stunning congressional debate gaffe of 2016.

After Duckworth described her familys military heritage, Kirk said he had forgotten that your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington. Although Duckworths mother is a Thai immigrant, her late fathers lineage can be traced to the Revolution.

 Mike DeBonis



Bayh participates in debate for Indiana's open U.S. Senate seat in Indianapolis on Oct. 18. (Michael Conroy/AP)

Young participates in debate for Indiana's open U.S. Senate seat in Indianapolis on Oct. 18. (Michael Conroy/AP)

Indiana

Everything changed in Indianas Senate race when former senator Evan Bayh (D) announced on July 11 that he would be running to retake his seat. Until that day, Republicans were convinced that Rep. Todd C. Young (R) had an easy path to victory. Bayh entered the race with strong support from Democrats, who have fond memories of his time as governor and senator.

But Bayh proved ill-prepared for a punishing Senate contest and has been pummeled by accusations that he is a Washington insider who is out of touch with Hoosiers. First, he incorrectly listed the address of his Indianapolis condominium, then he battled reports that he spent the final days of his last Senate term interviewing for high-paying jobs.

A poll conducted Oct. 22 to Nov. 3 by WTHR-TV and Howey Politics shows Bayh trailing by five points.

Young, who served as a Marine, has made a name in the state as fresh-faced alternative to Bayhs storied career. His campaign has benefited from a flood of outside support from groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Senate Leadership Fund, the Karl Rove-backed super PAC run by former aides to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

 Kelsey Snell



Kander speaks to supporters at a St. Louis union hall on Nov. 1. (Jim Salter/AP)

Blunt, left, and his wife, Abigail, campaigns in Missouri on Oct. 8. (David Weigel/The Washington Post)

Missouri

Many Republican and Democratic operatives agree: No Senate challenger has run a better race than Jason Kander (D), Missouris secretary of state. It was a viral TV ad that had Kander assembling a military-style rifle with a blindfold that caught Washingtons eye, but its months of disciplined, pitch-perfect campaigning that puts him within a hair of unseating Roy Blunt (R) in a state likely to favor Donald Trump by double digits.

Kander, who was an Army intelligence officer, has leaned heavily on his military background and has found a receptive audience for his attacks on Blunt as a Washington insider.

Republican groups have been forced to come to Blunts rescue, financing ads linking Kander to Hillary Clinton and President Obama  some of them showing Kanders face morphing into theirs.

Kander, meanwhile, has not passed up an opportunity to remind voters that Blunt lives in a D.C. mansion and that his wife and three of his children are lobbyists. And although Blunt has not distanced himself from Trump, he fits the profile of the D.C. denizen Trump is running against. Virtually every independent poll since September has shown a tied race or Blunt leading within the margin of error.

 Mike DeBonis



Cortez Masto shakes hands with Heck after an Oct. 14 debate in North Las Vegas. (Erik Verduzco/AP)

Nevada

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reids retirement announcement rocked Nevadas political scene, creating the GOPs only chance to capture a Democratic seat on the Senate battleground.

The race pits Rep. Joe Heck (R), who represents the Las Vegas suburbs, against former state attorney general Catherine Cortez Masto (D), who would be the first Latina senator. The state is difficult to poll, both because of its new Hispanic population and because employees working in the Las Vegas gambling and nightlife industry are hard to reach.

Divergent polls show Heck leading by about seven points, or Cortez Masto ahead by the same margin. Neither candidate has broken through policy-wise, nor has eithers personality crashed through the din of commercials here.

Much of Hecks campaign isnt focused on his rival but instead on Reid  casting him as a villain who chose his puppet to succeed him. And Cortez Mastos is focused on Donald Trump, trying to energize Hispanics and mocking Hecks wavering support for the GOP nominee.

The race may be decided in the rurals, counties far away from the Las Vegas Strip where Trump is expected to do well. Heck has withdrawn his support for Trump and called for him to quit the race, which may be why he is underperforming there.

 Paul Kane



Ayotte, left, and Hassan during a Nov. 2 debate. (Jim Cole/AP)

New Hampshire

For months, polls in New Hampshire have shown Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) in a near dead heat with Gov. Maggie Hassan (D). The latest Boston Globe poll, conducted at the end of October, showed Ayotte leading by 2.5 points, well within the margin of error.

The outcome of the closely watched race is expected to play a critical role in determining which party will hold the Senate majority next year.

Ayotte, a former state attorney general, has struggled to overcome a powerful downdraft created by the unpopularity of Donald Trump. She sank in the polls when struggling to respond to a leaked 2005 recording of Trump talking about kissing women and grabbing them without their consent  at first standing by Trump and eventually rescinding her support.

Hassan has benefited from running as a well-liked sitting governor but she has struggled to eke out a consistent lead. Hassan had to overcome her own gaffe when she struggled to answer whether she thinks Hillary Clinton is honest and trustworthy.

The race has attracted more than $89 million in spending from outside groups, making it the second most expensive Senate contest this year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

 Kelsey Snell



Strickland greets a poll worker before voting at the Franklin County Board of Elections on Oct. 27. (Jay Laprete/AP)

Portman tours Pioneer Pipe while campaigning in Marietta, Ohio, on Oct. 25. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Ohio

Sen. Rob Portman (R) was originally expected to be fighting for his political life in the campaigns final days.

A consummate insider, having worked in both Bush administrations and as part of the House GOP leadership, he seemed ill-suited for the anti-Washington environment epitomizing this cycle.

But Portman seems to have prevailed after running what was probably the best race of any Republican candidate this year. He raised more money than all but one Senate Republican (Patrick J. Toomey, who is in a close contest), and spent it early and often, a smart tactic in hindsight.

His ads reintroducing voters to their first-term senator were effective, portraying his work to fight an opioid crisis with Senate legislation and to combat sex trafficking. Meanwhile, Portmans negative ads battered Ted Strickland, who began the race as a well-liked former governor. But after being reminded of the job losses during Stricklands term, voters had turned against the ex-governor by late August. National Democrats abandoned the race.

Of the 10 most recent public polls, all in October, Portman had a lead of at least 11 points. GOP strategists are already studying this campaign as a blueprint for future Republican Senate races.

 Paul Kane



Burr and Ross in a debate on Oct. 13. (Gerry Broome/AP)

North Carolina

Sen. Richard Burr (R) cuts an increasingly rare figure on Capitol Hill, a low-octane throwback to a time when the soul of the GOP was country-club conservatism, not sharp-edged populism. He has the old-school campaign ethos to match.

National Republicans fumed as he stuck with the winning formula from his previous two runs: Keep your powder dry until October, then hold on for dear life at the end. His opponent is Deborah Ross, a lawyer and former state lawmaker whose record as a civil-rights advocate many assumed would be too liberal for the state.

But Ross has proven a masterful fundraiser and fierce campaigner, and an avalanche of ads highlighting her past objections to the states sex-offender registry seem not to have deeply affected voters. Polls have shown a tight race for months, and although Burr has had a small lead in most recent polls, he has not been able to run far ahead of Donald Trump in a state where Democrats are making an extra-hard turnout push.

The final week was roiled when Burr was recorded in a private meeting cracking a joke about gun owners putting a bullseye on Hillary Clinton. Ross, meanwhile, has benefited from a pair of presidential visits.

 Mike DeBonis



McGinty and Toomey at a debate at Temple University in Philadelphia on Oct. 24. (Matt Rourke/AP)

Pennsylvania

The most expensive Senate race in history is in Pennsylvania, topping $140 million by late October, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The money reflects the stakes of this contest. Democrats always believed their path to the majority probably required knocking off Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R). Toomey tells supporters everywhere that their votes will keep the Senate in Republican hands.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), the incoming Democratic leader, recruited neophyte Katie McGinty, persuading Vice President Biden to coax President Obama to endorse her in the primary.

Toomey and McGinty are basically deadlocked. McGinty has held a small lead in the past few polls  but over the past month, four showed the race tied and four gave Toomey a slight lead.

Toomey is performing well in the vote-rich Philadelphia suburbs. But he is doing less so in the rural stretch between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, in part, strategists say, because he hasnt said whom he supports for president. That may work near Philadelphia, where Hillary Clinton is crushing Donald Trump, but Trump is well-liked elsewhere.

Whichever party wins this race will have the edge to win the majority.

 Paul Kane



Johnson, left, and Feingold, right, meet in their second and final debate Oct. 18 in Milwaukee. (Mark Hoffman/AP)

Wisconsin

For months, Democrats considered Wisconsin a near-certain pickup. It has been a reliably blue state in presidential years, one-term incumbent Ron Johnson (R) had not done much to raise his profile and well-known former senator Russell Feingold (D) had signed up for a rematch.

Summer polls showed Feingold with a double-digit lead, but the well-respected Marquette Law School Poll found last week that that margin had shrunk to a single point amid a late GOP ad blitz.

In the final week of the campaign, about $6 million was spent by campaigns, party committees, super PACs and outside groups  many of which had canceled earlier reservations.

Johnson, an Oshkosh plastics manufacturer, has sought to refresh his image as a no-nonsense outsider businessman, while casting Feingold as a career politician and a throwback. Feingold, meanwhile, has relentlessly driven a middle-class economic message focused on opposition to trade deals and tax loopholes, while tarring Johnson as an advocate for corporate interests.

Although the race has tightened, Democrats and some Republicans think Feingold has an edge: Early voting has outpaced expectations in Democratic strongholds, and Johnson is only now showing signs of outpacing Donald Trump.

 Mike DeBonis
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says he feels guilty that he never served in the military  and his comments over time show just how uncomfortable the issue makes him. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says he feels guilty that he never served in the military  and his comments over time show just how uncomfortable the issue makes him. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

Democrat Hillary Clinton will spend the final days of the election trying to protect her lead in key battlegrounds, reflecting a tightening, unusually volatile race against Republican Donald Trump.

Trump, whose electoral college prospects are narrower, is banking on a late-hour attempt to win at least one blue-leaning state  and to dramatically drive up turnout in rural areas in a collection of battlegrounds where he must prevail on Tuesday.

With four days left on the campaign trail, both candidates and surrogates blitzed across the country Friday, making stops in states where polls have narrowed in recent days. The frenzied final days also include celebrity appearances  Jay Z and Beyonce headlined a get-out-the-vote show with Clinton in Cleveland, and Stevie Wonder played a Love Trumps Hate show on her behalf in Philadelphia  and endless ads airing in battleground states.

Clinton stopped on Friday in Pennsylvania and Michigan, two states where she has consistently led Trump, as well as Ohio. She brought a new urgency to her message at a rally in Pittsburgh, focusing on the danger that she said a Trump presidency would present to the country and asking supporters to imagine Trump taking the oath of office in front of the Capitol and being in charge of the nations nuclear arsenal.

Think about what it would mean to entrust the nuclear codes to someone with a very thin skin who lashes out at anyone who challenges him, Clinton said. Imagine how easy it would be that Donald Trump would feel insulted and start a real war, not just a Twitter war at 3 in the morning.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton called on supporters to vote and volunteer in the final days of the election. Rapper Jay Z closed the concert by performing his 1998 single "Hard Knock Life." (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)

Clinton urged supporters to stage an intervention with friends and family members who plan to vote for Trump by explaining to them that anger is not a plan.

Sometimes the fate of the greatest nations comes down to a single moment, Clinton said. This is one of those make-or-break moments for the United States. This is in your hands.

[Clinton up 47-44 in Post-ABC News Tracking Poll, despite Trumps 9-point edge on dealing with corruption]

Trump continued a tour of small towns in rural counties on Friday, first stopping at a country club in Atkinson, N.H. He continued to Wilmington, Ohio, between Cincinnati and Columbus. He planned to end the day in Hershey, Pa.

Besides reminding supporters of Clintons scandals, Trump focused on promises to return lost manufacturing jobs, protect residents from what he described as dangerous undocumented immigrants and get rid of crime in faraway major cities.

Dont let the pundits, the politicians or the media tell you what kind of a country you have, Trump said in Wilmington. Dont let them limit your dreams because they want to limit your dreams. You can have any future you want.

The final-days travel schedules of Trump and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, reflect a dire need to win vote-rich swing states including Florida and North Carolina, where Trump is to campaign on Saturday.

The latest Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll shows Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in a dead heat nationally. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

Lately, Trump has made many stops in out-of-the-way places, most of which are already certain to break heavily for Republicans.

His advisers say they think he can win over rural white voters by a much bigger margin than Republican nominee Mitt Romney did in 2012  and come away with significantly more votes, which they gamble will offset his weakness among suburban Republicans in battleground states.

As part of a bid to steal a blue-leaning Midwestern state, Trump is also set to return on Sunday to Wisconsin, a state that a Republican nominee has not won since 1984. The many white blue-collar voters in the state have raised hopes among Trump and his allies that he has a chance there.

Although Clinton, in contrast, needs only to hold on to leads in the states where she is ahead, she intends to fight for votes beyond those, her campaign manager, Robby Mook, said Friday.

We built our operation for a wide map from the beginning of the campaign, Mook said in a phone call with reporters.

And while Trump is trying to drive up turnout among white voters, Clinton is putting a premium on minority voters, who polls suggest are likely to break heavily in her favor.

Mook touted what he called the Hillary coalition  Latinos, Asians, African Americans, suburban women and millennials  that he said has on the whole been turning out in strong numbers in battleground states where there is early voting.

Mook said the campaign is confident that its early-voting totals will amount to a firewall on Election Day, or, as he described it, a lead that Donald Trump is incapable of overcoming.

He cited several states where Clinton stands to benefit from the strong early-voting turnout, particularly among Latinos, including Florida, Nevada and North Carolina.

In Michigan on Friday, Clinton made a pitch aimed at boosting African American turnout in a state where her advisers have suggested Trump could be doing better, given its manufacturing losses and large population of working-class whites, Trumps strongest constituency.

At a rally in Detroit, Clinton talked about issues including criminal justice reform, college affordability and systemic racism, all of which are of particular importance to black voters. She also criticized Trump for portraying the lives of black people as being all about crime and poverty and despair.

Were doing everything we can to make sure that we get the numbers that we need, Clintons campaign chairman, John Podesta, told reporters earlier Friday. Michigan is a state that we feel like weve got a lead, and we want to make sure that we hold that lead.

We want to make sure that we get the vote out and make sure people are enthusiastic. We want to end with a crescendo of enthusiasm, he said.

The Clinton campaign also began airing television ads in Michigan for the first time in the general election this week.

Trump will make one last swing through two Western battleground states: Colorado and Nevada. He also plans to campaign in Iowa, a state where he has performed consistently well in the polls in recent months.

And Trump is slated to hold his final event before Election Day on Monday night in New Hampshire, the state where he notched his first primary win.

Polls have shown Clinton leading in New Hampshire for a long time, but recent surveys signal a turn in Trumps direction. New Hampshires many white working-class voters  as well as its independent streak  make it a volatile place where Republicans hope voters will break late toward Trump.

Clintons schedule is being driven in part by a desire to make stops in states that have not had early voting, in hopes of providing a burst of momentum ahead of Tuesday.

The schedule of Clintons running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, illustrates the campaigns dual focus on trying to protect leads as well as contest close states.

On Monday, Kaine is to return to his home town of Richmond to rally voters in Virginia, a state where Clintons lead has dwindled in recent weeks.

The plans of the two tickets also highlight a Democratic advantage that will be on full display in coming days: a much stronger and deeper bench of surrogates that can fan out across the country.

Besides Clinton and her running mate, the Democrats are also dispatching a sitting president, a former president, a sitting vice president, a popular first lady and Clintons former primary rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Obama campaigned on Clintons behalf Friday at two rallies in North Carolina, a state that could go either way on Tuesday and where early-voting participation has lagged among African Americans, a key part of the presidents coalition in 2008 and 2012.

And on Monday, a full slate of Democratic stars plans to join forces in Philadelphia for a final push of Clintons candidacy. Joining her, the campaign says, will be Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, and Bill and Chelsea Clinton.

Wagner reported from Washington. Jenna Johnson in Wilmington, Ohio, and James Hohmann in Selma, N.C., contributed to this report.


In this Nov. 4, 2016, photo, voters wait in line to cast ballots at an early polling site in San Antonio. Your parents were right: Math really does matter. After all of the tumult and tedium of a long, ugly presidential campaign, Election Day is all about which candidate can win enough states to get to 270 electoral votes.(AP Photo/Eric Gay) (Eric Gay/AP)

With hours until Election Day, the wildest U.S. presidential race in memory has grown more competitive in most of the battleground states, although Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton continues to hold a broader path to victory than Republican Donald Trump.

The political map suggests that Clinton can lose several key states long assumed to be in her column and still reach the 270 electoral votes she needs to win.

Trump, meanwhile, has a new reason for optimism, as a growing number of states appear potentially within his grasp. But to win, he would have to take nearly all of them.

The 11th-hour fluidity of the race had the two campaigns scrambling the travel plans of the candidates and their top surrogates. In Trumps case, it is an effort to grab what he considers emerging opportunities in the sprint for the finish line; in Clintons, as insurance against surprises Tuesday in territory she has considered hers.

Trump said Saturday that he and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, will hold campaign events in Minnesota, a state that has not voted for a Republican since 1972. A Trump campaign official insisted that the move was not a feint and that internal polling showed the Republican only three points behind Clinton there.

In a sign that Democrats are suddenly anxious about Michigan, on Monday, Clinton will be in Grand Rapids and President Obama will campaign in Ann Arbor. Trump and Pence will also be in Michigan in the next two days.

At a rally Saturday in Tampa, which is a bellwether of crucial Florida, Trump said his campaign is moving aggressively to seize upon openings it sees across the country.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump outlined what he sees as his path to victory, predicting wins in big swing states like Pennsylvania and Florida, during a campaign rally on Nov. 5 in Reno, Nev. (The Washington Post)

Were going into what they used to call Democrat strongholds where we are now tied or leading, the billionaire real estate developer said.

He predicted that he will win Florida and Pennsylvania  which both voted for Obama in the past two elections  and said that he is doing phenomenally well in North Carolina, where both candidates have invested significant time and resources over the past few weeks.

Later Saturday evening, Trump was rushed off the stage by security officials at a rally in Reno, Nev., as some kind of disturbance was taking place in the front of the room where he was speaking. People in the crowd scattered as U.S. Secret Service and uniformed officers jumped the barricades to apprehend an unidentified man and lead him out of the room.

Local reports said the man, who identified himself as Austyn Crites, 33, was released shortly after the incident.

Trump later concluded his rally without further incident. The Secret Service said in a statement that no weapon was found. Crites said he was holding Republicans against Trump sign when he was tackled by people around him.

Clinton held a rally in south Florida that was cut short by rain. She was set to hold an event Saturday night in Philadelphia that would feature a performance by pop star Katy Perry, whose song Roar is featured in Clintons closing ad running in 11 battleground states. Beyonce and Jay Z headlined a concert for Clinton on Friday night in Cleveland.

Also on the line Tuesday is control of the Senate, where Republicans are defending 24 seats, compared with 10 for the Democrats. Trumps performance at the top of the ticket could determine whether Democrats pick up the five seats they need to regain the majority  or four, if Clinton wins and her vice president, Tim Kaine, has a tiebreaking vote.

The tightening of the race in many of these battleground states is providing a little bit of lift to our Senate races, and in some of these cases, it is going to be decisive, said Steven Law, president of the Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

I think were really on the razors edge, Law said of his partys prospects of holding the Senate. Trumps final position in all of this is uncertain. I dont think hes close enough to the pin yet to lift most of these races into the win column.

On Thursday, the Cook Political Report predicted that Democrats will pick up four to six Senate seats, enough to gain control if Clinton is elected, but less than its earlier forecast of a five- to seven-seat gain.

Republicans also are bracing to lose seats in the House, which would diminish the largest majority they have held there since 1928. Neither side, however, expects a wave large enough to restore control to Democrats, who lost it in the 2010 midterm elections.

Clinton began the final weekend of campaigning with a narrow lead over Trump in the ongoing Washington Post-ABC News Tracking Poll. Through Friday night, the rolling survey showed Clinton at 48 percent and Trump at 43 percent, among likely voters. Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson was at 4 percent, and Green Party nominee Jill Stein was at 2 percent.

Thats the largest margin between the two major-party candidates this past week  and a sign that Clinton may be starting to recover from a fresh round of attention to her use of a private email account and server while she was secretary of state.

Clintons decision to ignore a directive that official business be conducted where possible on a government email account has dogged her since it became public last year. It reinforced the publics long-standing doubts about her honesty and judgment, and sparked an FBI investigation of whether national security might have been compromised.

A new chapter in that saga opened on Oct. 28, when FBI Director James B. Comey informed Congress that new emails, possibly pertaining to the investigation of Clintons private account, had surfaced during a separate inquiry involving disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), the estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

Before that development, Clinton appeared in control of enough states to put her well over the 270 electoral-vote mark. The tightening of the polls since then has left enough states in doubt this weekend to force a modification of those earlier predictions.

A quartet of battlegrounds has dominated the Clinton campaigns calculation throughout the fall campaign: Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Obama won those four in 2008 and all of them but North Carolina in 2012.

Until recently, it appeared that Trump needed to sweep all four to overcome Clintons and the Democrats electoral-map advantage. But as the race has tightened, Ohio seems to have moved into the Republican column, and other states outside those four have potentially come into play.

The GOP nominee is looking to states including Michigan, New Hampshire and Wisconsin to make up a potential deficit, should he not win Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

One force that is factoring into both sides assessments is that more Americans are voting before Election Day, either by mail or in person. Upward of 37 million voters have already cast ballots. In key states such as Colorado, Florida, Nevada and North Carolina, it is likely that over half the electorate will have done so before Tuesday.

Those votes have not been counted, but strategists from both parties are poring over the data about who has voted and to get a preview of the contours of the 2016 electorate. The figures also give them a sense of possible trouble spots.

In past years, more Democrats have participated in early voting.

This year, however, it appears as though Republicans are closing the early-voting gap in many key states. But it is not clear whether this reflects greater enthusiasm and better organization on their part, or just a shift in the behavior of people who would have shown up anyway on Tuesday.

Polling and early-voting data suggest a number of electoral cross currents as the race heads into its final two days.

Clinton has struggled to reassemble some version of the coalition that twice elected Obama, the combination of African Americans, Hispanics, single women and young voters.

Hispanic turnout appears strong, based on early-voting data. That is a major reason Democrats think Nevada will be an easy win for Clinton, although the polls are close and Trump scheduled a stop there Saturday.

Clinton also has a double-digit advantage among female voters, who in 2012 accounted for 53 percent of the electorate.

But the Clinton campaign is worried about turnout among African Americans. The Democratic nominee and her top surrogates have made repeated visits to major cities in an effort to stoke enthusiasm among those voters, and she will end her campaign with a big rally in Philadelphia.

Based on early vote returns, we know that strong get-out-the-vote efforts in the African American communities in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida and North Carolina will be needed to win on Tuesday, AFL-CIO political director Michael Podhorzer said.

For Trump, one challenge is a socioeconomic split in the white vote. He has strong support among white voters without college degrees, but has seen an erosion in the traditional support for Republican nominees among white voters with college degrees.

This has been a central dynamic of the campaign, and Clinton campaign officials view it as a potentially decisive factor in an electoral map that has shifted since the last election.

In less than a week, the United States will have a new president-elect. These are the pivotal points in Donald Trump's and Hillary Clinton's campaigns that led to this moment. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

The split between college-educated and non-college-educated white voters has moved states such as Colorado and Virginia toward the Democrats, while giving Trump more hope of capturing industrial states in the Midwest such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio, where there is a higher concentration of non-college-educated voters.

Democrats remain skeptical that Trump, who boasts of his ability to bring new Republican voters to the polls, can crack what in recent cycles has been a blue wall in the upper Midwest.

Trump is making a last bet on white, non-college-educated men in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, Podhorzer said. Thats been tried by Republican candidates before, and it hasnt worked.

Entering the final days of campaigning, Clinton maintains her advantage over Trump in voters perceptions of their qualifications and readiness to serve as president. By 55 percent to 36 percent, likely voters say she is more qualified, and by 58 percent to 32 percent they say she has a better temperament and personality to serve as president.

Clinton also is considered the candidate who better understands the problems of people like you and has the stronger moral character. In both cases, her advantage over Trump is in the single digits.

However, on the question of who is more honest and trustworthy, voters are more evenly divided, with 44 percent citing Trump and 40 percent naming Clinton. Perceptions of Clintons honesty have deteriorated in the final 10 days of the campaign, particularly when there was intense focus on renewed attention to her email problems.

Scott Clement in Washington; Jose DelReal, traveling with Trump; and Anne Gearan, traveling with Clinton, contributed to this report.
U.S. military officials here acknowledged Saturday that U.S. airstrikes in embattled Kunduz province on Thursday had likely resulted in civilian casualties when Afghan and U.S. forces, searching for a reported meeting of Taliban leaders in a village, faced significant enemy fire and called for air support.

The U.S. officials did not provide numbers or details of the casualties, but Afghan officials and witnesses have said that 30 civilians, including many women and children, were killed and about 25 others wounded when their homes in Bozi Kandahari village were bombed as the families slept. Two U.S. service members and three Afghan Special Operations forces were also killed in fighting there.

[Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai denounces deadly NATO airstrikes ]

The civilian deaths have drawn sharp criticism from rights groups and some Afghan leaders, including former president Hamid Karzai, who has long complained that Western bombings and raids cause needless deaths and undermine the war against Taliban insurgents.

Thursdays incident came just over a year after an errant U.S. airstrike in Kunduz City killed 42 people in an emergency hospital amid heavy fighting. Taliban fighters, who seized the strategic northern city for more than a week in October 2015, attacked it again a month ago and have remained active in the surrounding area ever since, taking cover in residential areas to avoid capture.

Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, issued a statement saying: I deeply regret the loss of innocent lives, regardless of the circumstances. The loss of innocent life is a tragedy and our thoughts are with the families. He said U.S. military officials will work with Afghan authorities to investigate the incident and provide assistance to the villagers.

U.S. and Afghan military officials spoke at a joint news conference here Saturday, although their accounts of the events Thursday differed slightly. The U.S. officials said Afghan forces, with assistance from U.S. advisers, raided the village in search of Taliban leaders who were planning additional attacks in Kunduz City.

Coming under heavy fire from multiple locations, they said, the forces defended themselves with ground fire and U.S. air-to-ground engagements. The U.S. officials said several Taliban leaders and members were apparently killed in the clashes, but that the insurgents continue to pose a threat to Kunduz.

Afghan military officials gave a more detailed description, saying that the raid had been prompted by intelligence reports that a senior Taliban leader in the area, Maulvi Mutaqi, was holding a meeting in a house in Bozi Kandahari. Late Wednesday, they said, Special Forces were lowered into the village from helicopters.

After our commandos descended, they came under fire from four directions. Thats when we asked for air support, Gen. Mohammed Radmanash, a spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, said in an interview. He said that both U.S. and Afghan attack helicopters responded, and that Mutaqi and more than 20 other Taliban forces were killed.

The cause of the civilian casualties are the Taliban, because they use peoples homes to shelter and hide, Radmanash added. The senior defense spokesman, Gen. Dawlat Waziri, said that some of the civilians killed in the airstrikes were family members of two local Taliban leaders.

[NATO and government forces are increasingly responsible for Afghan civilian deaths]

But a senior leader of Bozi Kandahari, in a lengthy telephone interview Saturday, denied there were any Taliban members in the village and said government forces had been harassing the residents because they were originally from Kandahar, the birthplace of the ethnic Pashtun Taliban in southern Afghanistan. Most Kunduz natives are of Tajik or Uzbek ethnic origin.

The leader, a livestock trader who gave his name as Jamaluddin, said everyone in the village was asleep late Wednesday when armed troops appeared, putting up ladders to rooftops and breaking through doors.

There were Afghans and foreigners. They were screaming at everyone not to move, he said. He said some villagers began defending themselves with stones and other objects. Then the bombing started and continued for five hours, he said.

My cousin Noor Ali and 18 of his family members were killed. Their house was destroyed and parts of it are still burning, Jamaluddin said. We buried the dead yesterday, but neighbors are still going through the rubble, looking for anyone who is alive or for bodies to bury.

He said four houses were bombed, killing 35 people including 18 children and 8 women.

You need to ask the authorities why they did this. There were no Taliban here, but we as Muslims have to defend our honor and privacy, he said. If there were Taliban here, the government forces wouldnt have dared to come.

Jamaluddin said both government and Afghan fighters enter the village often. We are hospitable to both sides. But the government considers us all Taliban, just because we come from Kandahar, he said. If they keep behaving this way, everyone in Kunduz will rise up and become a Taliban themselves.

President Ashraf Ghani expressed sadness over the casualties and sent a delegation to the village to investigate the bombings. Karzai was far more critical, saying his concern over civilian casualties caused him to refuse to sign a security agreement with Washington, which Ghani signed as soon as he took office. Today, about 10,000 U.S. forces remain in Afghanistan, along with combat aircraft that they are allowed to use to assist Afghan ground forces in trouble.

Just show me one example of a bombing that has taken us one step closer to peace, Karzai said Friday, adding that he had called families in Boz Kandahari to express his concern. Fifteen years after U.S. and NATO forces began fighting in Afghanistan, he asked, Do we have more Taliban or less, more radicalization or less, more terror or less? Is this really a war on terror, or is it something else in which the lives of Afghans dont matter?

Read more

A humanitarian crisis looms in Afghanistan as the number of displaced climbs

The U.S. spent billions building roads in Afghanistan. Now many of them are beyond repair.

Two senior al-Qaeda figures targeted in Afghanistan, Pentagon says

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news
By Hardeep Dugal: Hollywood star Mila Kunis recently opened up on being a victim of sexism in Hollywood. The actor admitted to being told by a producer that her career would be over if she refused to shoot semi-naked scenes.

Kunis said, 'I was no longer willing to subject myself to naive compromise that I had previously been willing to. I was livid, I felt objectified, and for the first time in my career I said no. I'm done compromising, even more so, I'm done with being compromised.' She added that she would continue to stand up for herself.

Jennifer Aniston wrote a column slamming the media for dehumanising women. Picture courtesy: Instagram/aniston.theroux

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The statement came just days after 'Friends' star Jennifer Aniston too decided to stand up for herself. Brad Pitt's former wife wrote a column in a leading portal slamming the media for dehumanising women by reducing them to their relationships or wombs. 'I'm fed up with the sport like scrutiny and body shamming that occurs daily under the guise of journalism,' she said.

Aniston isn't alone in making a powerful statement. Remember Jennifer Lawrence's repeated remarks on gender bias and actor Patricia Arquette's famous 2015 Oscar acceptance speech where she spoke about pay parity and demanded equal rights for women. Amongst those who cheered for her the most that day were singing sensation Jennifer Lopez and three time Oscar winner Meryl Streep.

Also read: Was pressurised into having kids, says Adele as she gets very real about postpartum depression



Considered to be amongst the most powerful women in Hollywood, Meryl Streep has spoken on several important issues including the 'Think Equal' initiative which talks about female education.

Jennifer Lawrence has repeatedly remarked on the gender bias women in Hollywood face. Picture courtesy: Instagram/jenniferonfire Jennifer Lawrence has repeatedly remarked on the gender bias women in Hollywood face. Picture courtesy: Instagram/jenniferonfire

Last but not the least, Sandra Bullock announced that she gave racism lessons to her Afro-American son. She said, 'He also knows that there's sexism, he knows that there's homophobia, he knows a lot for a 5 3/4-year-old, but I think if you don't start the conversation very early on, you're doing them a disservice.'

With more and more stars speaking openly about significant issues, here's wishing more power to these powerful women.



--- ENDS ---
Political activists protest outside Parliament in London on Thursday as they call for American citizens to cast their votes in next weeks U.S. presidential election. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)

In the seaside cafes of Beirut, the whole thing looks like a bad joke. To persecuted journalists in Burundi, it amounts to a total loss of dignity. The government-scripted press of Beijing diagnoses an empire moving downhill. And the spin doctors of the Kremlin see cause for pure and unambiguous delight.

The U.S. presidential election  Americas quadrennial chance to showcase for the world how democracy works in the most powerful nation on Earth  has become instead an object lesson in everything that ails a country long seen as a beacon of freedom and hope.

Debates devoid of issues and deep in the gutter of personal insult. Interference from foreign intelligence services. Endless leaked emails, and FBI investigations that could extend long beyond Tuesday.

Americans may cringe watching their own election at close range. But the worlds reaction has been, in a sense, even more poignant and foreboding.

People in small and distant countries who count on the United States to stand up for democratic values have been astonished to see the essential components  a free press, the rule of law, respect for the outcome of elections  trammeled.

What do everyday people around the world think of the U.S. presidential election and the Democratic and Republican front-runners? We wanted to know, so seven reporters from Washington Post foreign bureaus asked a random selection of people on the street what they thought of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. (Jason Aldag/The Washington Post)

Long-standing allies have been left to wonder whether the essential American character has changed, and whether the United States can be relied on when it counts.

Adversaries have looked on with glee, surprised at how easily the country that casts itself as the greatest can be knocked off kilter.

And even though the campaign still has days to go  with the outcome very much in doubt  the damage to American moral standing may already be done.

I heard the election is being controlled by Russia. Is it true? asked Anas al-Abed, 27, a Beirut cafe worker who said he has been following the campaign closely ever since he read that the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, had bragged about assaulting women.

America always spoke to Arab countries as if they had so much to learn, he said. And now we see their own democracy involves choosing between a woman from a dynasty and a man who says the system is manipulated. If thats democracy, then we dont want it.

[Will Trump be Brexit times five? He may need to be if he wants to win.]

This is not the first time that Americas international reputation has been dealt a grievous blow. In recent years, the Iraq War brought global perceptions of the United States tumbling, only to be revived by the election of President Obama  who remains broadly popular overseas.

But political analysts worldwide said that never before have they seen a presidential campaign do so much to directly undermine Americas core credibility.

Its very shocking and disturbing to see this happening on such a scale in the richest country on Earth, said Koichi Nakano, a political-science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo.

It is not, of course, happening in a vacuum. Democracies from Southeast Asia to Western Europe are under pressure from within as populism and xenophobia surge. Autocrats from Moscow to the Middle East, meanwhile, are feeling emboldened.

It isnt just about this election, said Jacob Parakilas, deputy head of the U.S. and Americas program at the London-based think tank Chatham House. It fits into a broader framework of rising nationalism and the destruction of existing political norms.

But with the breakdown of those norms happening so vividly in America  a nation that proselytizes the virtues of democracy more aggressively than any other  the global swing toward less free and open societies could accelerate no matter who wins Tuesday.

This campaign makes the implicit argument that the U.S. model of liberal democracy isnt what its cracked up to be, Parakilas said.

[Across Europe, revulsion at Trump but little idea of what to do about him]

Americas top diplomat has acknowledged as much. Speaking to students in London on Monday, Secretary of State John F. Kerry called the campaign downright embarrassing and said that it has already damaged American influence.

Thanks to the election, he said, he is greeted with skeptical looks  or worse  when he sits down with some foreign minister in another country or with the president or prime minister of another country and you say, Hey, we really want you to move more authoritatively towards democracy. 

In the state-controlled media of Americas nondemocratic rivals and adversaries, the campaign has only exposed what they long knew the country to be  a declining and morally bankrupt power.

We are seeing the failure of U.S. democracy, wrote Zhang Zhixin, an expert on American politics at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations.

The message is not only that America is floundering but also that China, prosperous and stable, is growing strong in its place.

With Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte promising to separate from the United States and realign with Chinas ideological flow, Communist Party-approved writers seem to see an opening for more shifts in Chinas favor.

A recent piece in Xinhua, the state-controlled news wire, cited work by Li Wen, an academic at the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences, who argued that instability in the United States shows the twisted mentality of an empire moving downhill.

In Russia, the campaign has not exactly reshaped perceptions of the United States. But it has reshaped Russians perception of what their country is capable of doing to the United States.

Russian observers barely hide their joy at the notion that Americans think that Moscow has the power to affect the outcome of a U.S. presidential election.

When we hear that we are sitting here in Moscow and interfering in Americas life, that makes us all happy, said Gleb Pavlovsky, a political consultant who served at the Kremlin between 1996 and 2011. We dont need to do anything; we can just sit here and organize elections in the United States.

Like most Russians, Pavlovsky is unwilling to acknowledge the U.S. administrations accusation that Kremlin-sponsored hackers have been meddling in the campaign.

But in a country where people feel the United States has overplayed its hand as the worlds sole superpower, American officials consternation over Russias suspected role is seen as payback  and a possible political advantage.

The feeling is that the chaos, the turbulence that all this is causing in the American electoral process is good for Russia, said Alexei Venediktov, editor in chief of Ekho Moskvy radio. Whoever wins will have to deal with domestic upheaval and internal problems, rather than paying attention to Russia, and that is a good thing.

[After Clinton, Trumps real enemy is globalism]

To U.S. allies, however, it is potentially disastrous. Trump has struck fear into the hearts of European leaders with suggestions that he may not come to the aid of fellow NATO members if they are attacked. Several have broken with protocol  which calls for strict neutrality  and denounced the Republican nominee, while praising his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

But Europe is confronting its own backlash against international cooperation.

Across the continent, anti-immigration politicians who want to pull their nations out of the European Union have exulted in Trumps success.

Until about a year ago, when I would meet American counterparts, theyd ask, What is happening in Europe?  said Marietje Schaake, a member of the European Parliament. She listed far-right leaders and parties that no longer seem so alien in America.

Were seeing a shared challenge arising: challenges to the open economy and open democracies, she said.

Among some American allies, the U.S. campaign has even been a strange source of comfort because their own politics no longer look so bad.

Israel, known for its bare-knuckles brand of political jousting and for corruption cases that have snared presidents and prime ministers, has been unusually fixated on this years race.

Our politicians are perhaps not as crooked or corrupt as yours, said Jonathan Rynhold, a political scientist at Israels Bar-Ilan University. Ours are fairly mild by comparison.

In India, too, the effect of such an ugly contest has been surprisingly validating.

For many middle-class Indians, the U.S. is a model for democracy. But watching the election campaign there now makes Indians feel slightly superior, said Shiv Visvanathan, a government professor at O.P. Jindal Global University.

It has also been deeply disquieting.

How can such a trigger-happy nation be part of the great nuclear club, and take global decisions? he asked.

[What is the long-term effect of Donald Trump?]

Many in the Arab world are asking similar questions and are particularly unnerved by the rise of Trump, said H.A. Hellyer, a political analyst and author of a book on the 2011 Egyptian uprising.

The fact hes a genuine contender has damaged American standing almost everywhere  not least within the Arab world and the wider region, Hellyer said. His discourse, which has attacked Muslims . . . is not marginal. It is now mainstream, and thats deeply troubling.

The worry has also been especially acute in Mexico, where opinions toward Trump are overwhelmingly negative  no surprise given that his signature issue is building a border wall. He also launched his campaign by calling Mexican migrants rapists.

Mexicans accustomed to feeling indifferent toward the U.S. presidential campaign have found themselves actively rooting for Trump to lose.

For the first time there is a distinction: Theres an American good guy and an American bad guy, said Ilan Semo, history professor at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City. It was never like this in Mexico.

The angst over Trump is so deeply felt that the peso plunges every time his poll numbers rise, and there could be an immediate recession in Mexico if he comes to power, said Jonathan Heath, an economist in Mexico City.

Anxiety about the presidential contest extends far south of any potential future border wall.

Latin America has been shifting back toward the political center in recent years after a long period dominated by left-wing populism. But the new crop of pro-business leaders has found that no one in the presidential race is willing to stick up for the principles of free trade and open markets that the United States has been pushing in the region for years.

Political whiplash is happening in Africa, too. For many on the continent, Obamas election had been a triumph, evidence that American democracy could be a model of liberalism and tolerance.

Now, eight years later, Trumps threats to jail his political opponent mimics the behavior of some of the continents own less-than-democratic leaders.

Among them is President Pierre Nkurunziza of the small central African nation of Burundi. He was sworn in for a third term in August 2015, and exiled activists have been lobbying the United States to help halt the extrajudicial killings and repression that have characterized his new term.

The campaign, however, has offered little cause for optimism in a country such as Burundi, far from Americas geopolitical priorities but in dire need of help from a superpower.

Elvis Banyankiye, a 28-year-old Burundian who is now studying in France, said he had once hoped the Americans would do more to pressure his government to stop human rights violations. Watching the U.S. presidential campaign stagger from one new low to the next, his expectations sank.

The U.S. has been a model for how to conduct elections. We used to see tolerance in the debates, he said. We are losing confidence in that.

David Filipov in Moscow; David Agren in Mexico City; Rama Lakshmi in New Delhi; Nick Miroff in Havana; Karla Adam in London; Emily Rauhala and Congcong Zhang in Beijing; Ruth Eglash in Jerusalem; Carol Morello in Washington; Anna Fifield in Tokyo; Kevin Sieff in Kigali, Rwanda; Rael Ombuor in Nairobi; Michael Birnbaum in Brussels; Heba Mahfouz in Cairo; and Louisa Loveluck in Beirut contributed to this report.

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British court delivers blow to E.U. exit plan, insists Parliament has a say

An NFL team based in soccer-crazed London? It could happen.

A punch. A death. And now a fear in Britain that a surge in hate crimes is here to stay.

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Samar Hijazi, a Syrian refugee in Lebanon, greets her grandson Hamza as she returns to the Bekaa Valley camp where she lives after a judge granted her a divorce on Oct. 22. (Kristen Chick/For The Washington Post)

Samar Hijazi stood in front of the judge of the Sunni sharia court in this Bekaa Valley village last month as he addressed her in rapid-fire bursts from behind an imposing desk.

This is against Gods will, he said. If you divorce, youll have problems with your children. God will be against you. God wont bless you. Will you reconsider?

No, she said firmly.

The judge pronounced her divorced. Just like that, Hijazi, 45, was freed from a 33-year marriage to a man she described as abusive and domineering. The refugee from Syrias war had long wished for such an ending, but it had never seemed possible in her old life. That changed when the family fled to Lebanon two years ago. With shelter and food provided by aid organizations, she was less dependent on her husband. And as she began making decisions for the family and venturing out of the house alone, she felt, for the first time, self-sufficient.

When her husband delivered a beating that left bruises all over her body, she decided she had suffered enough.

Hijazi waits in the Sunni sharia court in the Bekaa Valley before her divorce petition hearing. Her experiences as a refugee brought her to the point where she felt strong enough to take the step, she said. (Kristen Chick/For The Washington Post)

In Syria, because of the family and social pressure, I submitted to him, she said. But here, the circumstances weve passed through made me stronger. Here, I feel independent.

For some Syrian women living in Lebanon, the bitter realities of life as a refugee have nourished an unexpected side effect: empowerment. Difficult economic and legal circumstances have pushed women to take on more responsibilities within their families, including many that were once a mans domain. Uprooted from some familiar social constraints and exposed to programs promoting womens rights through contact with aid groups, some of them have obtained a degree of personal autonomy they never experienced in Syria.

[Four maps that explain the chaos of the Middle East]

More than a million Syrian refugees live in Lebanon, seeking refuge from a war that has raged for more than four years. Amid fears that the influx would overwhelm the fragile country, in 2014 the government began requiring visas for arriving Syrians. Last year, it introduced stringent residency requirements that made obtaining legal status impossible for many of them. That has sharply restricted mobility  and the ability to work  for men, who are more at risk of arrest for undocumented status than women.

As a result, the women shoulder much of the burden of taking care of the family. It is an enormous shift for those who in Syria never left their houses without a male relative.

Many of these women come from conservative societies where men do everything and women stay at home, said Nibal Al Alow, senior social counselor at Basmeh and Zeitooneh, an organization founded by Syrian expatriates that works with Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Now they have to register the children in school, buy the food, take children to the doctor and take care of everything. Women have taken on larger roles.

[Heres what ordinary Arabs think about the Syrian refugee crisis]

Increasingly, that means women are working outside the home. The resulting economic empowerment is a major catalyst for change, giving women more say in decisions such as how the family spends its money or whether to send children to school.

For Um Mohamed, a 28-year-old mother of two, moving to Lebanon opened a door to the world beyond her home. In Syria, she rarely left the house, and never by herself. Her husband shopped for food, and she stayed home to cook and take care of the children. But in Lebanon, he doesnt work, and she takes a minibus to a womens empowerment center run by the Amel Association aid group in a Beirut suburb to learn how to make jewelry and decorative wall hangings that sell for small sums.

In the beginning, my husband didnt want me to come here, and he tried to convince me not to, said Um Mohamed, who asked that her full name not be used for fear of angering her husband. But she prevailed, partly because of their difficult financial situation.

Im happy about it. I feel I can come and go as I like, she said, a smile creasing her lightly freckled face.

She now dreams about opening her own business when she eventually returns to Syria.

Yet as in Um Mohameds case, the increased freedom for women often stems from the disempowerment of men. Many Syrian men say they feel ashamed of being unable to provide for their families and allowing their wives to work while they sit at home.

When you talk about what is being a man [in Syrian society], its the person who is responsible for the family, who provides the money and the house, said Gisele Abichahine, a psychotherapist who works at the Men Center run by Abaad, a civil society organization focused on gender equality.

When they cant provide these things, she said, some channel the resulting fear and frustration into physical violence against their wives and children  a widespread problem among Syrian refugees in Lebanon, according to aid groups. Empowering women can make it worse.

And not all women have experienced progress in Lebanon. For those who came from less conservative families in urban areas of Syria, the move can restrict their freedom, said Maria Assi, director of Beyond Association, which works with refugees. Girls and women who may have gone out freely at home are now kept inside by fathers and husbands afraid for their safety here or constrained by new neighbors from more conservative areas.

Still, for many women, the change has been significant. Hijazi was married at age 12 and bore six children in quick succession. They all lived under the thumb of her husband, who she said didnt allow her to leave their home in a Damascus suburb without him. She said he beat her and the children. When she fled to her parents house, they sent her back.

The first time she stood up to her husband was when she demanded the family leave Syria in 2014. Their home had been bombed, and destruction followed them everywhere they fled. One son was detained at a government checkpoint and never heard from again, and two sons-in-law were killed in airstrikes, leaving seven grandchildren fatherless. Hijazi insisted it was time to leave, despite her husbands opposition.

He was behaving like he was God, controlling my life, she said. And when I took this decision, thats the first point I started feeling independent from him.

Now she lives in a spare and tidy prefabricated structure in a dusty refugee camp in Lebanons Bekaa Valley. A small bed is pushed against the wall in the corner, and a brown flowered curtain hides shelves neatly piled with clothes and suitcases. Its small, but its hers, and its safe.

At her age, Hijazi is unlikely to remarry. But even if she did, she said, she would never accept a husband who restricted her freedom.

I want to prove to myself that I exist and I am on my own, and to be free, she said.

Suzan Haidamous in Bar Elias contributed to this report. The reporting was supported by the International Womens Media Foundation Reporting Grants for Womens Stories Initiative.

Read more

For many Syrians in Lebanon and Jordan, now is the time to go

Syrian rebels open major counteroffensive amid siege of Aleppo

Lebanese lawmakers pick Hezbollah ally Michel Aoun to end presidential logjam

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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While New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) wasnt charged in the Bridgegate trial, the case produced a steady stream of new allegations against the governor that probably will haunt him. (Mary Schwalm/AP)

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christies political career sustained a serious blow Friday after two of his former allies were found guilty of conspiring to shut down the nations busiest bridge to punish a local mayor who refused to support the governors reelection bid.

While Christie wasnt charged in the Bridgegate trial, the case produced a steady stream of new allegations against the governor that probably will haunt him as he tries to position himself as a significant player in a potential Donald Trump administration. Christie has been a forceful advocate of the Republican presidential candidate and serves as head of Trumps transition team.

On the first day of the trial, which began early last month, prosecutors alleged that Christie knew about the plan to tie up traffic on the George Washington Bridge as it was happening. A key witness who admitted his own role in the affair would later testify that when he told Christie about the plot, Christie laughed.

Christie has said that he did not know about the bridge plan and repeated that claim in a statement Friday. The New Jersey governor said he was saddened by the choices those close to him made.

Todays verdict does not change this for me, he said. But let me be clear once again, I had no knowledge prior to or during these lane realignments, and had no role in authorizing them. No believable evidence was presented to contradict that fact. Anything said to the contrary over the past six weeks in court is simply untrue.

But Christie, once a rising Republican star with aspirations to win the White House, has been stained by the scandal, which suggested a darker side to his tough-guy image.

It taints his legacy, said Brigid Harrison, a political science and law professor at Montclair State University. No one will be able to think about Gov. Christies tenure in office without having it be colored by these convictions.

Christies job-approval ratings are already at their lowest point. A Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll released in mid-October found that just 21 percent of residents approved of the job he was doing, down from 26 percent in June. And more than half of voters  52 percent  said they thought there was sufficient proof that Christie was aware of the lane closures and didnt try to stop them.

William E. Baroni Jr., the former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and Bridget Kelly, Christies former deputy chief of staff for legislative and intergovernmental affairs, were both convicted of all the counts against them, the U.S. attorneys office in New Jersey said.

During the trial, the defense for Kelly and Baroni tried to pitch them as Christies scapegoats. Prosecutors described them as the governors loyal lieutenants intent on helping their boss run for president.

In an interview Friday with Fox Newss Bret Baier, Trump was asked whether he still has confidence in Christie. His answer was lukewarm. Well, I have great confidence in him, Trump said. I have not been following the trial. I dont know really. He added: Itll be interesting to see what happens. But I do like him very much, and I do have confidence in him, and I hope it all works out well for him.

In the past Trump had been critical of Christie over the matter, saying last December, during the Republican primaries in which the two were rivals: He totally knew about it.

Speaking at the Peterson Fiscal Summit in Washington, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) predicted that the widely covered traffic scandal involving former aides and appointees will not harm his political future as he weighs a run for president in 2016. (Associated Press)

It is unlikely that Christie will be charged in the case, unless new evidence were to emerge to help bolster the assertions of witnesses.

Baroni and Kelly were charged with conspiring to misuse Port Authority property by fraud and conspiring to deprive people of their civil rights. The way federal prosecutors told it, the two Christie allies were seeking to punish Mark Sokolich, the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, for refusing to support Christies reelection bid. Working with David Wildstein, a former Port Authority executive, they orchestrated a shutdown of the lanes and toll booths on the George Washington Bridge and tried to cover their tracks by claiming that the closures were part of a traffic study.

Wildstein, who pleaded guilty, testified as a witness for prosecutors in the case, claiming that he told Christie what was happening during a 9/11 memorial service, and that Christie laughed.

We were all very relaxed, Wildstein testified, according to an account of the trial by the New York Times. The Times said a prosecutor asked Wildstein if he was bragging, and Wildstein responded: Very much so.

Kelly said she told Christie of the lane closures before they happened, though she claimed she thought they were part of a legitimate traffic study that needed her bosss approval.

NJ.com reported that she also said that officials in the governors inner circle were aware of what was happening and seemed unconcerned.

It just wasnt a big deal, she said, according to NJ.com.

Attorneys for Kelly and Baroni did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

Read more:

The Bridgegate trial is over. So is Chris Christies political career, probably.

The door just opened to charge Chris Christie with a crime on Bridgegate
President Obama speaks to reporters during his visit to the Federal Correctional Institution, El Reno, outside Oklahoma City in July 2015. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

President Obama granted clemency to 72 more federal inmates Friday, boosting the total number of inmates he has given commutations to 944, including 324 prisoners who were serving life sentences.

What President Obama has done for commutations is unprecedented in the modern era, said White House Counsel Neil Eggleston, who has to approve the commutations before they are sent to the president.

At least 469 of the total clemency petitions that have been signed by Obama were prepared by Clemency Project 2014, a group of about 4,000 volunteer lawyers from across the country who signed up over the last two years in what has become one of the largest pro bono efforts in the history of the American legal profession.

We are thrilled to see more frequent grants of clemency, said Cynthia W. Roseberry, project manager for Clemency Project 2014. These grants represent 72 reunited families. They also represent hope to others who have applied. We are grateful that President Obama is keeping his word to grant more clemency.

The White House and Justice Department were criticized earlier this year by sentencing reform advocates for moving too slowly in granting commutations to inmates serving harsh sentences who met the criteria set out by Justice officials to be released early. But the administration has significantly picked up the pace.

The department is moving full steam ahead, said Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates.

Kevin Ring, vice president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, said that the inmates granted clemency Friday are not getting relief or mercy.

They are getting justice, Ring said.

But some of the inmates granted clemency this time, as in the past few months, will not be released immediately. Since last summer, many of the inmates granted clemency will still have to spend years and, in some cases, decades more in prison.

Its sobering to think that some of them will still have to spend many more years in prison, Ring said, but thats why Congress needs to act.

Bipartisan efforts at criminal justice reform on Capitol Hill, including legislation that addresses long mandatory minimum sentences, has not moved forward.

Only Congress can achieve the broader reforms needed to ensure our federal sentencing system operates more fairly and effectively, Eggleston said.

After being sentenced to 35 years in prison for a nonviolent drug offense, Donel Clark was granted clemency by President Obama in March 2015. Now living in Fort Worth, Clark is adjusting to life on the outside. (Editor's note: This video was first published on Oct. 8, 2015.) (Nicki DeMarco, Nikki Kahn and Sari Horwitz/The Washington Post)

The following are the names of those granted commutations Friday (via the White House):

Antonio Lee Alls  Bradenton, Fla.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine; attempt to possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine; Middle District of Florida

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (March 5, 2008); amended to 240 months imprisonment (March 18, 2016)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to a term of 150 months imprisonment.

Monica Lorraine Amaker  Bluefield, W.Va.

Offense: 1. Conspiracy to distribute a quantity of cocaine base and hydromorphone;

possession with intent to distribute a quantity of hydromorphone; Southern District of West Virginia

2. Possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base,

also known as crack; possession with intent to distribute a quantity of

cocaine, also known as coke; possession with intent to distribute a quantity of morphine; possession with intent to distribute a quantity of marijuana for remuneration; carrying a firearm in relation to a drug trafficking crime; felon in possession; Southern District of West Virginia

Sentence: 1. 87 months imprisonment; six years supervised release (Oct. 25, 2005); amended to 66 months imprisonment (July 20, 2009); amended to 46 months imprisonment (March 13, 2012)

2. 300 months imprisonment (consecutive); 10 years supervised release

(Feb. 28, 2006)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

William Baldwin  New Haven, Conn.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base; District of Connecticut

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (April 21, 2009)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Nov. 4, 2018, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

John Barnes  Greene, R.I.

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute cocaine base; possession with intent to distribute cocaine; District of Rhode Island

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Aug. 28, 2006)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

James Edward Blackmon  Lancaster, S.C.

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute a quantity of cocaine and 50 grams or more of cocaine base; District of South Carolina

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Feb. 21, 2008)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to a term of 270 months imprisonment.

Joshua Chuntay Booker  Panama City, Fla.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute more than 50 grams of a mixture and substance containing cocaine base; Northern District of Florida

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Jan. 14, 2009)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Nov. 4, 2018, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Lasalle Boone  Portsmouth, Va.

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute cocaine base; possession of firearms by a person previously convicted of a felony crime; Eastern District of Virginia

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (June 19, 2008)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

Justin L. Border  Davenport, Iowa

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute drugs; possession of drugs with intent to distribute; felon in possession of firearm; Southern District of Iowa

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Aug. 11, 2003)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

John London Bradshaw  Milwaukee

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute five grams or more of cocaine base; possession with intent to distribute five grams or more of cocaine base; Western District of Michigan

Sentence: 360 months imprisonment; eight years supervised release (Dec. 18, 2006)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to a term of 262 months imprisonment, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Marvin Dontrail Brookins  Elizabethtown, Ky.

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute 352.56 grams or more of cocaine; possession with intent to distribute 80.442 grams or more of cocaine base; possess with intent to distribute 1,707 grams of marijuana; Western District of Kentucky

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Aug. 1, 2005)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

Fermon Keith Brown, Jr.  Fort Walton Beach, Fla.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute cocaine base; Northern District of Florida

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release; $1,000 fine (Jan. 28, 2000)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Nov. 4, 2018, and unpaid balance of $1,000 fine remitted, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Zoann Brown  Rowan, Iowa

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of methamphetamine mixture; Northern District of Iowa

Sentence: 292 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (May 2, 2007)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Nov. 4, 2018, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Brian Keith Buckery  Johnson City, Tenn.

Offense: Possess with intent to distribute and distribute five grams or more of cocaine base; Western District of Virginia

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; eight years supervised release (Jan. 26, 2009)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to a term of 151 months imprisonment, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Derrick Bullard  Philadelphia

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute cocaine base; Eastern District of Pennsylvania

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (March 5, 2004)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

James Edward Burns  Homerville, Ga.

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute five grams or more of cocaine base; Middle District of Georgia

Sentence: 235 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (Oct. 26, 2005)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

Albert Campbell  Miami

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and cocaine base; Southern District of Georgia

Sentence: 420 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (May 19, 1995)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

Dwayne Edward Coe  Hamptonville, N.C.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine, cocaine base, methamphetamine, and crystal methamphetamine; Western District of North Carolina

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Nov. 3, 2008)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to a term of 180 months imprisonment, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Michael Cooper  Baltimore

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute cocaine, cocaine base, and heroin; District of Maryland

Sentence: 188 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (Dec. 1, 2006)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Nov. 4, 2018, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Howard Gregory Cromer  Rome, Ga.

Offense: Possession of firearms by convicted felon; possession with the intent to distribute at least five grams of methamphetamine after a conviction for a prior drug offense; possession of firearms in furtherance of a drug trafficking offense; Northern District of Georgia

Sentence: 180 months imprisonment; eight years supervised release (Jan. 25, 2008)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Nov. 4, 2018, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Williamson Dimanche  Lake Wales, Fla.

Offense: Distribution of 50 grams or more of cocaine base; Middle District of Florida

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Dec. 5, 2007)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

Eric Marquan Dogan  Taylors, S.C.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine; District of South Carolina

Sentence: 188 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (March 23, 2007)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

Michael Jerome Felder  Johnsonville, S.C.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base and a quantity of cocaine; possession with intent to distribute and distribution of five grams or more of cocaine base; possession with intent to distribute and distribution of a quantity of cocaine; District of South Carolina

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Feb. 29, 2008)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to a term of 151 months imprisonment.

Ricardo Flores  Laredo, Tex.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute a quantity in excess of five kilograms of cocaine; Southern District of Texas

Sentence: 360 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (March 1, 1999)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

Darryl Dewayne Frazier  Austin

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine and aiding and abetting; Western District of Texas

Sentence: 262 months imprisonment; five years supervised release; $3,000 fine (Nov. 5, 1997)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017, and unpaid balance of the $3,000 fine remitted.

Terrance Everett Fuller  St. Louis

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute cocaine; Eastern District of Missouri

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Feb. 26, 2004)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

Roger Sherman Gaston  Sanford, Fla.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine base and cocaine hydrochloride; Middle District of Florida

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (June 29, 1998)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

Jimmy Dean Gibson  Good Hope, Ala.

Offense: Conspiracy to manufacture, possess with the intent to distribute, and to distribute a controlled substance (methamphetamine); manufacture of 50 grams or more of a mixture and substance containing a detectable amount of methamphetamine; possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute; distribution of a controlled substance (three counts); Northern District of Alabama

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release; $3,634.75 restitution (April 20, 2001)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to a term of 292 months imprisonment.

Martin Godbersen  Sioux City, Iowa

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute 50 grams or more of methamphetamine mixture following a felony drug conviction; possession with intent to distribute 50 grams of methamphetamine mixture following a felony drug conviction; Northern District of Iowa

Sentence: 226 months imprisonment; eight years supervised release (Nov. 22, 2005)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on May 3, 2017.

Jose Gonzalez  Columbus, Ind.

Offense: 1. Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than 500 grams of

methamphetamine (mixture), 50 grams or more of methamphetamine (actual), 500 grams or more of cocaine, and 100 kilograms or more of marijuana; Southern District of Indiana

2. Supervised release violation (Conspiracy to distribute marijuana); Southern District of Indiana

Sentence: 1. 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Jan. 15,

2004)

2. 12 months imprisonment (consecutive); $10,000 fine (Jan. 15, 2004)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Nov. 4, 2018, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Brian Goodine  Seneca, S.C.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute five or more grams of cocaine base (two counts); District of Maine

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; eight years supervised release (Aug. 1, 2002)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

Donald L. Graham  Cincinnati

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute crack cocaine; distribution of crack cocaine and aiding and abetting (two counts); Eastern District of Kentucky

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Aug. 1, 2008)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

Delfon Lebrew Hare  Riverdale, Md.

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base (two counts); District of Maryland

Sentence: 360 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (June 27, 2008)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to a term of 180 months imprisonment, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Kenneth L. Harlan  Terre Haute, Ind.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and distribution in excess of 500 grams of methamphetamine (mixture); distribution in excess of five grams of methamphetamine (actual) (four counts); distribution of less than five grams of methamphetamine; Southern District of Indiana

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Nov. 30, 2006)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Aug. 4, 2017.

Daniel Holmes  St. Helena Island, S.C.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and distribution of cocaine base (crack) and cocaine; District of South Carolina

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Nov. 24, 2008)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to a term of 240 months imprisonment.

Samuel Rodney Holmes  Augusta, Ga.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base; possess with intent to distribute and to distribute five grams or more of cocaine base; District of South Carolina

Sentence: 360 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Sept. 15, 2008); amended to 324 months imprisonment (Nov. 24, 2015)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to a term of 240 months imprisonment.

Dion James  Florence, S.C.

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute cocaine powder and cocaine base; conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine powder and cocaine base; District of South Carolina

Sentence: 360 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (Dec. 14, 2000)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

Kevin Lee Johnson  Bossier City, La.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute 50 grams or more of crack cocaine; distribution of five grams or more of crack cocaine; Western District of Louisiana

Sentence: 360 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Dec. 4, 2006)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to a term of 180 months imprisonment.

Sean Johnson  New Orleans

Offense: Violation of the Federal Controlled Substance Act (two counts); Eastern District of Louisiana

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Aug. 18, 1999)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Nov. 4, 2018, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Stevie Wayne Johnson  Dallas

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine; possession with intent to distribute cocaine; Eastern District of Texas

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; three years supervised release; $15,000 fine (Oct. 25, 2001)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017, and unpaid balance of the $15,000 fine remitted.

Desmond DJuan Jones  Decatur, Ala.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of a mixture and substance containing cocaine base; possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of a mixture and substance containing cocaine base; distribution of five grams or more of a mixture and substance containing cocaine base; committing an offense while on pretrial release; Northern District of Alabama

Sentence: 264 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Feb. 5, 2009)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

George Andrew Kelley  Temple, Tex.

Offense: Conspiracy to manufacture and distribute methamphetamine; Western District of Texas

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; three years supervised release; $1,000 fine (March 30, 2005)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Nov. 4, 2018, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Mandy Martinson  Mason City, Iowa

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute 500 grams or more of methamphetamine mixture and marijuana; possession with intent to distribute five grams or more of methamphetamine mixture; possession of a firearm during a drug trafficking crime; Northern District of Iowa

Sentence: 180 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (Jan. 26, 2005)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Dec. 4, 2016.

Jimmie Lee Mason  Rock Hill, S.C.

Offense: Distribution of more than 50 grams of cocaine base (crack); Eastern District of North Carolina

Sentence: 262 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (Dec. 5, 2006); amended to 180 months imprisonment (Nov. 10, 2008)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on April 30, 2017.

Demetrius McLaughlin  Dade City, Fla.

Offense: Conspiracy to manufacture 50 grams or more of methamphetamine (actual); possessing or distributing pseudoephedrine, knowing it would be used to manufacture methamphetamine; Middle District of Florida

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Dec. 3, 2004)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to a term of 188 months imprisonment, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Ricky Mitchell  Waycross, Ga.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and distribution of cocaine hydrochloride and crack cocaine; Southern District of Georgia

Sentence: Life imprisonment (Dec. 16, 1997)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to a term of 360 months imprisonment, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Manuel Muniz  Austin

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of methamphetamine and 500 grams or more of cocaine; Western District of Texas

Sentence: 235 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (May 28, 2008)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to a term of 151 months imprisonment.

Juan Carlos Munoz  South Sioux City, Neb.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute 500 grams or more of methamphetamine within 1,000 feet of a protected location; Northern District of Iowa

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Oct. 4, 2002)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

Oscar Luke Muse  Roanoke, Va.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute and possess with the intent to distribute more than 50 grams of cocaine; possession with intent to distribute more than 50 grams of cocaine base; possession of cocaine; Western District of Virginia

Sentence: 312 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (June 7, 2006)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Nov. 4, 2018, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Jerome Nalls  Jonesboro, Ga.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine base; Northern District of Georgia

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (March 11, 2003)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

Cory Shane Peacock  North Little Rock, Ark.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute more than 500 grams of methamphetamine; possession of a firearm during a drug trafficking offense; Eastern District of Arkansas

Sentence: 420 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (May 3, 2006)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Nov. 4, 2018, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Demetrius Carl Phillips  Pensacola, Fla.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base; Northern District of Florida

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release; $500 fine (June 13, 2006)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Nov. 4, 2018, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Bessie E. Pittman  Miami

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute at least five kilograms of cocaine; Southern District of Florida

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (June 19, 2003)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

Bradford S. Potts  Copperas Cove, Tex.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine and 50 grams or more of cocaine base; Northern District of Florida

Sentence: 360 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release; $1,000 fine (May 19, 2004)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

Kirk Pryor  Hendersonville, N.C.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and cocaine base; Western District of North Carolina

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (June 25, 2002)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to a term of 292 months imprisonment, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Madison Pugh, Jr.  Akron, Ohio

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute and possession with intent to distribute cocaine, aiding and abetting; Northern District of Ohio

Sentence: Life imprisonment (Aug. 21, 1996)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to a term of 360 months imprisonment, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Christopher G. Rhodes  St. Louis

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute cocaine base; Eastern District of Missouri

Sentence: 294 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (Sept. 18, 2003)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Nov. 4, 2018, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

James Henry Robinson  Fort Pierce, Fla.

Offense: Possession with intent to distribute over 50 grams of cocaine base; carrying a firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime; Southern District of Florida

Sentence: 300 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (March 3, 2003)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

Corey D. Rosendary  Erie, Pa.

Offense: Possess with intent to distribute and distribute five grams or more of cocaine base; Western District of Pennsylvania

Sentence: 210 months imprisonment; four years supervised release (Aug. 10, 2004)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

Michael Lee Roth  Primghar, Iowa

Offense: Conspiracy to manufacture and distribute 50 grams or more of methamphetamine actual and possess and distribute pseudoephedrine following felony drug conviction; travel in interstate commerce and aid and abet travel in interstate commerce with the intent to promote and facilitate a business enterprise involving the manufacture and distribution of controlled substances; Northern District of Iowa

Sentence: 248 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Dec. 8, 2008); amended to 240 months imprisonment (March 12, 2015)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to a term of 180 months imprisonment, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

David Ray Roy  Montross, Va.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute cocaine base; distribution of cocaine base (two counts); Eastern District of Virginia

Sentence: 360 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (March 23, 2007); amended to 324 months imprisonment (Oct. 27, 2010); amended to 262 months imprisonment (Jan. 2, 2012); amended to 210 months imprisonment (Feb. 18, 2016)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to a term of 168 months imprisonment, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Gerald William Sachsenmaier  Jim Falls, Wis.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute cocaine; distribution of cocaine; Western District of Wisconsin

Sentence: 262 months imprisonment; six years supervised release (Aug. 17, 2005)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Nov. 4, 2018, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Kenneth Sanders  Naples, Fla.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine base; possession with intent to distribute cocaine base (four counts); embezzlement (five counts); Middle District of Florida

Sentence: Life imprisonment; two years supervised release (Dec. 1, 1995)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Nov. 4, 2018, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Jeffery William Strain  Kansas City, Mo.

Offense: Conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine, actual, 50 grams, or more; manufacture methamphetamine, actual, 50 grams or more; Western District of Missouri

Sentence: 292 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (Dec. 15, 2005)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Nov. 4, 2018, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Gregory Scott Taylor  Midland, Tex.

Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than 50 grams of methamphetamine; Western District of Texas

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Feb. 6, 2002)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Nov. 4, 2018, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Juliano Torres  Flushing, N.Y.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute; Eastern District of New York

Sentence: 240 months imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Nov. 30, 2006)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

Adam G. Townsend  Springfield, Ill.

Offense: Distribution of at least five grams of cocaine base (crack); illegal possession of firearm by felon; Central District of Illinois

Sentence: 262 months imprisonment; eight years supervised release; $1,220 fine (April 20, 2006)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to a term of 188 months imprisonment, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Leonel Cano Vela  Davenport, Iowa

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute cocaine; Southern District of Iowa

Sentence: 360 months imprisonment; eight years supervised release (March 17, 2003)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

Robert James Wallace  White Marsh, Md.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance, aiding and abetting; District of Maryland

Sentence: 262 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (Feb. 25, 2005)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Nov. 4, 2018, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Mark Jeffrey Ward  Detroit

Offense: 1. Possession with intent to distribute cocaine base  crack; possession

of stolen firearms; Eastern District of Michigan

2. Possession with intent to distribute cocaine base  crack; bond violation; Eastern District of Michigan

Sentence: 1. 108 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (June 10,

2008); amended to 71 months imprisonment (Aug. 6, 2014)

2. 240 months and one days imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (July 7, 2009)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Nov. 4, 2018, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Charles Edward Williams  Winter Haven, Fla.

Offense: Conspiracy to manufacture and distribute methamphetamine; possession of a precursor material with intent to manufacture methamphetamine; possession of a precursor material with knowledge that the material will be used to manufacture methamphetamine; Middle District of Florida

Sentence: Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Oct. 19, 1992)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on March 4, 2017.

Kelly J. Winkenhofer  Buford, Ga.

Offense: Conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of methamphetamine; Middle District of Florida

Sentence: 210 months imprisonment; five years supervised release (Nov. 20, 2006)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Nov. 4, 2018, conditioned upon enrollment in residential drug treatment.

Lester Martin Works  Caryville, Fla.

Offense: 1. Distribution of more than five grams of a mixture and substance

containing cocaine base (five counts); distribution of more than 50 grams of a mixture and substance containing cocaine base; Northern District of Florida

2. Supervised release violation (conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine base); Northern District of Florida

Sentence: 1. Life imprisonment; 10 years supervised release (Feb. 6, 2008)

2. 60 months imprisonment (consecutive) (Feb. 6, 2008)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on Nov. 4, 2017.
Among Vladimir Putins headaches as he headed into the weekend were an international tug of war over a medieval saint, an infamous revolution he would rather that no one remembered and crowds of angry men calling for his imprisonment.

And you think you had a rough week.

The Russian president, when he is not fighting a proxy war with the United States in Syria or trying to outwit U.S. presidential campaign managers, has a day job that entails keeping together a massive multiethnic country whose 140 million people, 25 years into Russias post-Soviet existence, still struggle to find a common message to rally around.

And because there is no serious political opposition, internal dissent, no second-guessing  Vladimir Putins only adviser is Vladimir Putin, says Alexei Venediktov, editor in chief of Ekho Moskvy radio  it falls to the Russian leader to address the problem himself.

[How Russias lone aircraft carrier will change the fight in Syria]

National Unity Day is a holiday Russian President Vladimir Putin created in 2005. It restored the long weekend in early November Russians had become accustomed to when the Soviet Union celebrated the Bolshevik Revolution on Nov. 7. The Unity Day holiday commemorates the 1612 defeat of Polish and Cossack invaders by Russians. (David Filipov / The Washington post)

Putin has tried mixing and matching shards of Russias fragmented history to create a version his countrymen can embrace while discarding some of the uglier material. He has tried to come up with a national idea for them no fewer than three times: After toying with competitiveness and saving people, earlier this year he told a meeting of regional business leaders that he had settled on patriotism. He has publicly asked legislators to define the Russian nation by law, although there is confusion about what that means.

We dont really know what its going to be, Ildar Gilmutdinov, head of the legislative committee charged with drafting the bill, acknowledged last week.

A recent poll published by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center found that 44 percent of respondents to the question said the country had found unity, down from 54 percent a year ago.

Then there was Fridays national holiday, the first day of the three-day weekend in November that used to be reserved in Russia for celebrations of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. In 2005, the Kremlin replaced that with National Unity Day, a commemoration of an early 17th-century military victory credited with ending the strife-torn years called the Time of Troubles. It was a way to let Russian people keep their long weekend without the annual reminder that a rabble of commoners can overthrow an autocrat.

More recently, Unity Day has evolved into an effort to contain and co-opt nationalist sentiment among ethnic Russians, and head off the chance that any of the countrys 190 or so ethnic minorities will spring the kind of separatist ambitions that led to more than a decade of bloodshed in Chechnya.

At first glance, the holiday on Friday went spectacularly: Braving a damp, chilly snow, tens of thousands of marchers moved peacefully through a heavy police presence in central Moscow, waving the Russian tricolor and banners proclaiming We Are United and United We Cannot Be Defeated, and chanting slogans such as Motherland! Freedom! Putin!

Outside the Kremlin, Putin unveiled a large statue of Grand Prince Vladimir, who according to legend converted eastern Slavs to Orthodox Christianity in 988. He praised his medieval namesake as a farsighted ruler who laid down a moral foundation that defines our lives to this day.

Members of a Russian veterans group called the Combat Brotherhood march through central Moscow as part of Russian National Unity Day celebrations on November 4, 2016 in Moscow, Russia. (David Filipov/The Washington Post)

That brought a rebuke from Ukraine, in conflict with Russia since Moscow seized Crimea in 2014, which sent a tweet reminding the Russians that Prince Vladimir  called Volodymyr in Ukrainian  ruled from Kiev, where his statue has gazed over the Dnieper River for generations.

More worrisome discord on Unity Day was found closer to home, in a southeastern Moscow neighborhood where hundreds of ultranationalists chanted Glory to the White Race. One slogan made an allusion to sending Putin to a prison colony in the Far East; another chanted a sinister response to the more benign slogan repeated downtown: Blood, fatherland, faith. Grim riot police with batons kept the crowd in control; authorities agreed to allow the protest just before Unity Day, fearing an unsanctioned rally might get violent.

Theres this sense that this holiday hasnt taken root, was the deadpan comment of Russia-24 TV analyst Peter Lidov. Something is missing.

Putin is not the first Kremlin leader to try, and fail, to come up with a miracle pill for unification.

In the dying days of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev tried to consolidate the country with his idea of socialism with a human face. Boris Yeltsin made anti-Communism his rallying cry until the Communists were gone; then he told Russias regions to take as much sovereignty as you can swallow, which led to years of conflict in Chechnya. Yeltsins most loyal newspaper then held a contest, but no one came up with a Russian slogan that stuck like, say, the American Dream.

In a way, Putin has come the closest to that. The English word Russian is actually the translation of two distinct concepts: Russky, which refers to ethnic Russians; and rossiisky, which is in the formal Russian name for the country and refers to the nation as a whole, similar to what many Americans mean when they say Americans.

On National Unity Day, when Putin took that concept for a spin, handing out the first-ever medals for service to the rossiisky nation, other people started saying it.

So theres that.

Read more

We need a Stalinist mobilization': How Russian pols responded to Euro 2016 soccer rout

Putin wants revenge and respect, and hacking the U.S. is his way of getting it

In search of the Russian meaning of life

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news
Chinese President Xi Jinpings visit to Bangladesh last month is a sharp expression of the sharpening geo-political rivalry between China and India, which is backed by the US. India, the US and Japan are increasingly intervening in Bangladesh to put pressure on the government of Prime Minister Sheik Hasina in order to undermine Chinese influence.

Xis visit to Bangladesh on October 14 was the first by a Chinese head of state since President Li Xiannian toured the country in 1986. The trip was clearly aimed at countering Indias efforts to strengthen relations with Dhaka. Xi met with Hasina, Bangladesh President Abdul Hamid and opposition Bangladesh National Party (BNP) leader Khalida Zia.

On arrival in Dhaka, Xi emphasised the importance of Bangladesh to China as a partner in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region. He said Beijing was ready to deepen political mutual trust and elevate our relations and practical cooperation to a higher level. A joint statement declared that 2017 would be the year of friendship and exchanges.

During Xis visit, the two governments signed 27 agreements involving $US24.45 billion in assistance and investment for Bangladesh. Moreover, 13 Chinese corporations signed joint venture agreements worth $13 billion with Bangladeshi companies.

Jiang Jingkui, director of the Centre of South Asian Studies at Beijing University, told the China Daily that the South Asia region, which was not Chinas traditional focus, has become more important in recent years especially after China put forward the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013. The initiative involves massive Chinese spending on infrastructure to more closely link Africa and the Eurasian landmass.

Beijing is well aware that Washington is seeking to harness India as a frontline state in its war preparations against China. The Obama administration has encouraged New Delhi to build its regional influence, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Afghanistan, at Chinas expense.

In June last year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Dhaka and signed 22 agreements, including on maritime security and to establish special economic zones (SEZ) in Bangladesh. Significantly, India also proposed a means to end the four-decade border dispute between the two countries. However, Modis promises of a $2 billion credit line and the release of another $800 million, which had been agreed previously, have been dwarfed by Xis offers last month.

China is also Bangladeshs leading military equipment provider and the two countries have robust training and military exchange programs.

Chinese investments are increasing. Just one day before Xis visit, Chinas Jiangsu Etern Company signed a four-and-a-half year deal worth $1.1 billion to strengthen the power grid in Bangladesh. Etern also won a bid for a power plant project for $304 million in August.

Rivalry with India is growing. In July, Indias state-owned Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) signed a contract to construct a 1.32 MW power station worth of $1.6 billion with Bangladesh, undercutting Chinas Harbin Electric International Company.

Beijing had agreed to build a deep-sea port at Sonadia Island of Bangladesh, south of Chittagong. However, Dhaka cancelled the project early this year claiming it was not commercially viable. The real reason was the opposition of the US and India, along with Dhakas decision to allow Japan to build an alternative port just few kilometres away.

China is trying to counter Indian allegations of the dangers posed by Beijings influence in South Asia. Its state-owned Global Times wrote on October 12: Some Indian people may mistakenly flatter themselves when they think Chinas Belt and Road initiative is aimed at balancing Indias influence.

Nevertheless, New Delhi has been strengthening its ties with Dhaka. In the wake of Xis visit, Bangladesh Prime Minister Hasina was asked by the Hindu on October 18: Isnt it a valid concern for India that Bangladesh could become Chinas string of pearls in the region. Hasina rejected claims that Bangladesh is inclining more towards China, saying, India is best poised to benefit from the Bangladeshi market.

Asked why trade with India lagged behind trade with China, Hasina said: It depends on the private sector, where they want to buy goods from We also plan for the establishment of Indian SEZs at Mongla and Bheramara that would increase the FDI [foreign direct investment] flow into Bangladesh and narrow the trade gap.

On October 29, an article in the Diplomat warned about the burgeoning relationship between China and Bangladesh and called on New Delhi to address all unfinished business with Bangladesh to counter China. In particular, the article proposed concluding an agreement to share water from the Ganges River to provide larger supplies to Bangladesh.

The article also suggested: India must also expeditiously bring the Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, and Nepal ( BBIN) transport agreement fully into effect, recognising the fact that China is going all-out to bring the Bangladesh, China, India, Myanmar (BCIM) project online.

For her part, Prime Minister Hasina has supported New Delhi on key issues. Significantly, she joined India in boycotting the summit of SAARC, the South Asian regional grouping. New Delhi blamed Islamabad for the terrorist attack on a military post at Uri in Kashmir on September 18.

India has recklessly ramped up tensions with Pakistan by carrying out military attacks inside Pakistani territory on September 28, saying these were surgical strikes against terrorist camps. The Hasina government supported Indias actions and accused Pakistan of exporting terrorism to other countries.

Washington is also seeking to boost its influence in Bangladesh. In August, US Secretary of State John Kerry paid a visit to Dhaka. Washington has used the rising number of terrorist attacks by Islamist extremists over the past three years to strengthen its ties with the Bangladeshi military and intelligence apparatus.

The Hasina government, which confronts a worsening economic and social crisis, is desperately manoeuvring: seeking economic assistance from China while maintaining close ties with India and trying to avoid alienating the US. As tensions between China and the US continue to escalate, this balancing act will become increasingly impossible.
Two former officials who worked closely with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have been found guilty on all charges in connection with the 2013 lane closures on the George Washington Bridge, a long-running scandal commonly known as Bridgegate.

After nearly five days of deliberations, a jury in Newark, New Jersey, read the verdict on Friday, declaring Bridget Anne Kelly, the former deputy chief of staff to Christie, and Bill Baroni, the former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, guilty of all seven charges they each faced, including conspiracy, fraud and civil rights deprivation.

Baroni and Kelly were convicted of plotting to close lanes on the George Washington Bridge connecting New York and New Jersey as part of a revenge plot against a Democratic mayor who wouldnt endorse the Republican governors 2013 re-election bid.

Baroni and Kelly each face up to 20 years in prison and sentencing has been set for Feb. 21, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The Bridgegate saga spanned nearly three years and cast a shadow over New Jersey Gov. Christies Republican bid for the presidency. Fridays verdict comes as Christie  who GOP nominee Donald Trump appointed the head of his transition team in May  remains tasked with staffing a possible Trump administration.

Christie has repeatedly denied any involvement in the lane closures and hasnt been formally charge with any wrongdoing, the Journal reports, although witnesses and documents in the trial contradicted his claims.

However, earlier this month a judge ruled there is enough evidence for a New Jersey residents official misconduct complaint against Christie  for his alleged failure to stop the lane closures  to go forward. A spokesperson for Christie told PEOPLE the governor planned to appeal the ruling immediately and that this is a dishonorable complaint filed by a known serial complainant and political activist with a history of abusing the judicial system.




By PTI: From Yoshita Singh

New York, Nov 3 (PTI) India, which scripted history with its successful maiden Mars orbiter mission, has the potential to be a big player in the global space program and could even see its private sector develop its own SpaceX, award-winning author Stephen Petranek says.

Petranek, author of the book How Well live on Mars, says that humans will live on the Red Planet by the year 2027.

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"There is no reason why a country as big as India cant have a massive space program. In many ways what India accomplished by orbiting Mars is as successful as much larger organizations like the Russian space agency, NASA and European space agencies (have achieved)," Petranek told PTI in an interview here.

The author says space programs are going to be one of the biggest businesses in the future, which will lead to competition among nations.

"I wont be surprised to see a company in India start developing and becoming its own Space X (the aerospace behemoth founded by Elon Musk), he says.

Petranek is among the "big thinkers" for National Geographics ambitious project MARS, a six-part series that will take its viewers to Mars and explain the possibility of life on the red planet using drama and documentary.

The National Geographic Channel aims to re-imagine factual storytelling with its biggest production series, which will premiere on November 14 in 171 countries and 45 languages.

MARS is set both in the future and in the present day and tells the story from the vantage point of a fictitious crewed mission to the red planet in 2033.

National Geographic received exclusive access to film Musk and his team at SpaceX mission control as they successfully landed their Falcon 9 reusable rocket on a drone ship off the East Coast of the US this past April.

"The future of humanity is fundamentally going to bifurcate along one of two directions: either were going to become a multi-planet species and a spacefaring civilization, or were going to be stuck on one planet until some eventual extinction event.

"In order for me to be excited and inspired about the future, its got to be the first option," says Musk in the series.

Petranek says while the Indian space program currently is like a "smaller NASA", he would not be surprised to see private industry in India become a big player in the space program and exploration given the expertise and capital in India.

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By getting an important satellite to Mars, India has shown that it has the technology that even the Russians have not been successful at, he says.

"Russians have not been that successful. They have launched 17 satellite to Mars, most have crashed. We are going to see countries like Japan, Australia, Brazil all developing a bigger and better space program and we are going to see a lot of that move into the private industry.

"I would not be surprised to see a private space company in India grow and develop given the potential space exploration has in future." PTI YAS BK AKJ BK

--- ENDS ---
President Obama Reveals Daughter Sasha and Malia Are Already Dating  but Hes Totally Not Worried

President Barack Obama has plenty of worries as the leader of the free world  but his daughters love lives are not among them.

Obama spoke with Raleigh radio station WDCG about some of his favorite moments from his time in office  and revealed that recently his daughters, Malia, 18, and Sasha, 15, have started ditching family dinners.

Asked what hell do when his daughters start dating, the president answered, Oh, that happened. The truth is, Im pretty relaxed about it for two reasons. One is Michelle  shes such a great example of how she carries herself, her self-esteem, not depending on boys to validate how you look or not letting yourself be judged by anything other than your character and intelligence.

He added, Hopefully Ive been a good example in terms of how I show respect to my wife.

The second reason he doesnt worry about his girls is more straightforward: They have Secret Service.

Between the armed guards and his job title, Obama said he sympathizes with any potential suitors.

These poor young men come by the house, he said, laughing.

They have no idea, the DJ replied.

Oh, they have an idea, Obama joked. I describe for them.
Benedict Cumberbatch in Doctor Strange. (Photo: Disney/Marvel)

Warning: The following post has major spoilers for Doctor Strange

Doctor Strange Will Return, promises the end of Doctor Stranges closing credits reel. And, as per Marvel Studios tradition, two sequences tucked away in that lengthy list of actors, crew members, and special effects wizards point to the exact nature of that return. (The movie is in theaters now.) In fact, you can look for his first reappearance a year from now on Nov. 3, 2017. Thats when Thor: Ragnarok, the third solo adventure for Chris Hemsworths Asgardian warrior  who famously sat out Marvels recent Captain America: Civil War, preferring to hang with his new buddy Darryl  arrives in theaters.

And just as Ant-Man provided a small glimpse of Captain America: Civil War during the closing credits, Doctor Strange features what may be a completed sequence from Ragnarok, which recently wrapped production under the guiding hand of New Zealand writer-director Taika Waititi. (In a recent interview, Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson confirmed that Waititi directed this specific scene but declined to say whether it will definitely appear in Ragnarok.) Before landing this high-profile Marvel gig, Waititi was best known for helming comedies like What We Do in the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and this scene displays his trademark flair for droll humor.

Related: Jeff Goldblum Preps for Thor: Ragnarok and More Photos From the Set

At the Sanctum Sanctorum, Doctor Stranges New York headquarters, we see that the Sorcerer Supreme-in-training (Benedict Cumberbatch) is in the midst of a conversation with an unseen guest. Earth has wizards now? a familiar deep voice asks, as we cut from Stranges bemused face to a bearded, ponytailed Thor, dressed in casual street wear rather than his usual armor. Declining his hosts offer of tea, Thor instead requests his preferred beverage  brewed from hops and barley, rather than leaves  and Stephen politely obliges by conjuring up a giant glass of beer, which Thor quaffs quickly.

Story continues

The two go on to discuss the exact reason for the Asgardians visit to the Big Apple, especially since hes brought along his troublemaking brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston, who isnt glimpsed onscreen). Thor clarifies that theyre hunting for his missing father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins), which means hes finally learned about the fast one that Loki pulled on him at the end of Thor: The Dark World. As you may recall, that film found the mischief-maker dying while fighting alongside his brother, only to assume his adopted fathers visage in an attempt to rule Asgard after Thor turned down the job of king.

Related: Doctor Strange Glossary: Your Ultimate Guide to the Sorcerer Supreme, From Astral Planes to the Vishanti

Finding where Loki stashed the real Odin is the impetus for Thors journey in Ragnarok, which Hemsworths co-star, Mark Ruffalo, aka the Hulk, has previously described as an intergalactic buddy road movie. And now theyve got another friend to help them ease on down that road, as Strange volunteers his services. Allow me to help you, he says at the end of the scene, suggesting that his help will consist of using his wizardry to point Thor and Loki (and maybe Hulk) toward the dimension where Odin currently resides. Gotta wonder if Strange will also inform his new pal that one of those infernal Infinity Stones is currently in his possession in the form of the time-rewinding device the Eye of Agamotto.

Chiwetel Ejiofor as Mordo. (Photo: Disney/Marvel)

After doing a fellow Marvel hero a solid, Doctor Stranges second end-credits are all about the inevitable Strange sequel. Having decided that the path of the recently deceased Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) is no longer his own, Karl Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor) pays a visit to Jonathan Pangborn (Benjamin Bratt), the former paraplegic who originally pointed Strange to Kamar-Taj. Already disillusioned by the revelation that his former teacher used dark magic to prolong her life, Mordo is equally unhappy that Pangborn is, in his eyes, abusing his power by using magic to make his shattered body move. So he strips the poor man of his magic, leaving him writhing on the floor. He then hints at his future plans, stating that the real problem with the world today is that there are too many sorcerers.

With that chilling declaration, Mordo effectively announces himself as Stranges nemesis for the next movie and beyond, a role the character has occupied in Marvels comic book universe since his introduction in the pages of Strange Tales #111. (Hardcore Marvel zombies will no doubt note that his chosen phrase, Too many sorcerers, has obvious echoes of the Scarlet Witchs universe-altering No more mutants, which kicked off 2005s AvengersX-Men cross-over event House of M, set in an alternate reality where the mutant population is drastically diminished.) It also places a ticking clock on Stephens journey to replace the Ancient One as the earths designated Sorcerer Supreme. Because if Mordo achieves magical supremacy first, you can bet hes not going to be a kinder, gentler magic man.

Related: The Doctor Strange Movie Before Doctor Strange: A Visit to the Marvel Lost and Found

Watch Benedict Cumberbatch talk about the magic in Doctor Strange:




The New Voice of Ukraine

The use of sea surface and aerial drones to attack Russian warships in their base in Sevastopol was an unparalleled success, editor-in-chief of Censor.NET outlet Yuriy Butusov said in an interview with Radio NV on Oct. 30.
Former Heli Orient employees gathered at the Singapore Recreation Club on Friday night. Photo: Nicholas Yong

They came to the Singapore Recreation Club (SRC), many of them retired or close to retirement, to party the night away and reminisce about old times. But this wasnt just any ordinary gathering.

In an age where company loyalty is almost unheard of, a group of former colleagues is keeping the torch burning for their now-defunct company - a full 30 years after it folded.

Some 80 former employees of aviation services provider Heli Orient have come together in Singapore, some from as far afield as Portugal, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Starting with a SRC dinner on Friday (4 November), the former workmates will also reminisce about old times over bowling and games of darts in the coming days. It will all culminate in a gathering on Monday at a lounge in East Camp Seletar Airbase, where they will watch the sun set over the former site of their company. The area is currently being redeveloped.

The dinner venue at SRC was plastered with hundreds of photos from the old days at Heli Orient. Photo: Nicholas Yong

The gathering is the brainchild of Doreen Cady, 62, and her former colleagues, who took a year to organise it. But its not the first time they have reunited. Back in 2006, Cady also helped organise a gathering that drew some 120 former employees.

Every one of them, since they left the company, their lives have never been the same, said Cady, who worked a total of 10 years at Heli Orient as a secretary. Working in Heli Orient was the highlight of their working lives.

Ms Daniel, 59, who is based in Toronto and changed her travel plans in order to make it for the reunion, concurred.

This is the best company that I have ever worked for. There was so much commitment from the staff, and an equal combination of work and fun, said Daniel, who worked in the sales department for six years.

An aviation industry pioneer

Heli Orient staff in their heyday. Photo: Doreen Cady

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Once upon a time, Heli Orient was one of the largest aircraft sales and support organisations in Asia. Headquartered in Singapore, it sold helicopters and fixed wing aircraft and had about 600 employees.

Established in 1969, Heli Orient folded in 1986 after its parent company decided to get out of the aviation business.

Heli Orient was founded and led by managing director Brian Woodford, a Briton whom Daniel remembered as a distinguished figure who made everyone feel at ease and also loved children.

Heli Orient boss Brian Woodford would dress up as Santa Claus for Christmas parties. Photo: Doreen Cady

Cady remembered an office Christmas party where Woodford decked out his helicopter in a Christmas theme. Dressed as Santa Claus, he flew down in the helicopter and handed out presents to the employees children.

Australian retiree Rolly Knowles, 78, worked in a variety of roles at Heli Orient, including financial director, for a decade. He fondly recalled spending many happy hours with his colleagues, including competing in the companys sporting club against his counterparts from Malaysia.

The widower told Yahoo Singapore, This gathering reconfirms what I knew many years ago, in that we had a camaraderie amongst the staff that went beyond just day to day.

I have doubts whether this sort of office and culture can exist in this day and age. Everyones life is just so frantic.

40 years of friendship

Doreen Cady (right) with her former colleague Linda Sim, who is now a nun. Photo: Nicholas Yong

At the dinner on Friday, the attendees, many of whom are retirees, were in high spirits. At one point, several of them jumped up on stage and danced to the tune of Love Is In the Air.

Sadly, the man who started it all could not be there: Brian Woodford passed away in 2014. But Woodfords widow Laura, who was married to him for 36 years, was present. She did not work for the company, but often helped to organise office and charity of events.

Its heartening for me that after 40 years, we have gathered like this, said the grandmother of two, who still lives in Singapore.

Im really touched. Despite the company ceasing operations and my husband being called home, I continue to see the Heli Orient spirit. We had really great times and bad times, but we always stuck together.

Asked if there will ever be another reunion like this, Cady said with a laugh, It will depend on my energy level.
Associated Press

The Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted a temporary hold on Sen. Lindsey Graham's testimony in a Georgia investigation of possible illegal interference in the 2020 election by then-President Donald Trump and his allies in the state. The court left no legal impediments in the way of Graham's appearance before a special grand jury, now scheduled for Nov. 17. The South Carolina senator, a top Trump ally, had argued that a provision of the Constitution, the speech and debate clause, shields him from being forced to testify.
By Alexis Akwagyiram LAGOS (Reuters) - One of more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by jihadist group Boko Haram from their school in northeast Nigeria's Chibok in 2014 has been found by soldiers, a Nigerian army spokesman said on Saturday, weeks after the militants released 21 of the girls. Around 270 girls were kidnapped in April 2014 by the Islamist militant group, which has killed 15,000 people and displaced more than two million during a seven-year insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic caliphate in north-east Nigeria. Dozens escaped in the initial melee, but more than 200 remained missing for more than two years. Sani Usman said the girl, Maryam Ali Maiyanga, was discovered by troops who were screening escapees from Boko Haram's base in the Sambisa forest on Saturday morning in Pulka, Gwoza Local Government Area, in Borno State. "She was discovered to be carrying a 10-month-old son, named Ali. She has been taken to the unit's medical facility for (a) proper medical check up," said Usman. Bring Back Our Girls, a group of campaigners with close ties to relatives of those abducted, said "preliminary investigations" showed the girl was number 198 on its register of the kidnapped girls. In a statement, the campaign group said she was from Askira Uba, a district of Borno state, and was abducted along with her twin who is yet to return. Last month, 21 of the girls were released by Boko Haram following talks with the government brokered by the International Red Cross and the Swiss government. The government has vowed to rescue the girls still being held. The first of the schoolgirls to be found was discovered by soldiers on the edge of the Sambisa forest, a former colonial game reserve in Borno state about 100 km (60 miles) from the village of Chibok, in May. MILITARY OFFENSIVE Nigeria's military has been carrying out a large-scale offensive in the vast woodland area and other parts of Borno state, the epicentre of the insurgency, in the last few weeks. Usman said troops killed 14 suspected Boko Haram militants on Friday during a clash at Mallam Fatori, northern Borno State. "We lost an officer and four soldiers, while four other soldiers sustained various degrees of injuries during the encounter," he said. Boko Haram has kidnapped hundreds of men, women and children but the kidnapping of the Chibok girls brought worldwide attention to the group and widespread condemnation. The group, which last year pledged loyalty to the militant group Islamic State, controlled a swathe of land around the size of Belgium in early 2015. Nigeria's army, aided by troops from neighbouring countries, has since recaptured most of the territory, although the jihadist group still stages suicide bombings in the northeast, as well as in neighbouring Niger and Cameroon. (Additional reporting by Afolabi Sotunde, in Abuja; Editing by Alexander Smith and Catherine Evans)
Ahmed has been missing since October 15 after an on-campus scuffle allegedly with the members of ABVP the previous night.

By Shalini Lobo: After Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung asked Delhi Police to step up efforts to trace missing JNU student Najeeb Ahmed, the force has made a small video with his details that will be shared on its official Twitter handle and aired across news channels.



While there has been little progress in tracing the whereabouts JNU student Najeeb Ahmed who has been missing since October 15, the blame game over his disappearance continues in the university campus.

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SIT TEAM QUESTIONS ABVP ACTIVISTS



The SIT team yesterday questioned nine ABVP activists, including Vikrant, who were allegedly involved in a brawl with Najeeb in the JNU hostel.

27-year-old Ahmed, an M. Sc student of School of Biotechnology at JNU, has been missing since October 15 after an on-campus scuffle allegedly with the members of ABVP the night before.

Also read: Delhi Police pulling out all stops in effort to locate missing JNU student Najeeb Ahmed



A senior Delhi police officer has said, "We have created a small teaser with details about contact numbers and Najeeb's photographs so that maximum people get to know about the matter and we can find him," a senior police officer said.

Police said over 20,000 posters of Najeeb have been pasted in Delhi and outside.



DELHI POLICE TEAMS SENT TO OTHER CITIES



Delhi Police teams have been sent to Ajmer, Kota, Bareilley, Roorkee, Faizabad, Azamgarh, Badaun and other neighbouring cities.



Yesterday, Jung held a meeting with top cops, including the Special Commissioner (law and order), the Joint CP (South-East Range), and the head of the SIT and took stock of the investigation in the case. He also increased the reward money from Rs one lakh to Rs two lakh to whoever informed the police about the whereabouts of the missing student.

Yesterday, a delegation of BJP-backed ABVP met Delhi Commissioner of Police BS Bassi and presented him with a memorandum stating 3 demands - an inquiry against Umar Khalid, Anirban and Najeeb's roommate Qasim. Secondly, a search of all the faculty members' flats and thirdly, safety and security of the ABVP workers involved in the scuffle with Najeeb before he disappeared.



UMAR, ANIRBAN SPOTTED WITH NAJEEB



"According to residents, Umar and Anirban were spotted with Najeeb before he disappeared. So there is a possibility that they forced him to go into hiding or he might have run away because of them. These are people of suspicious reputation", said ABVP President Alok Singh.

"The ABVP has been accused of beating, threatening and kidnapping him. This is the reason we went to meet the Delhi Commissioner of Police," said its Joint Secretary Amina Sonkar.

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Also read: Missing JNU student Najeeb was naive, incapable of attacking anyone: Roommate



However Umar Khalid, one of the three students against whom the ABVP demanded an inquiry, has ridiculed the ABVP's claims. "This is ridiculous and outrageous. On the first day they blame JNUSU, then JNUTA and now they have narrowed down to the 3 of us. If the ABVP is so confident about our role in Najeeb's disappearance, they should go to the police and claim the 2 lakh reward", he said.

"Those who beat Najeeb should be interrogated. Instead, they are the ones demanding an inquiry against the other students", said AISA President Rama Naga.

While LG Najeeb Jung has claimed action in the case with the Delhi police printing over 20,000 posters, putting them up in and around Delhi and also increasing the reward to 2 lakhs for any information on Najeeb's whereabouts, little progress seems to have taken place inside JNU campus with posters there still mention only Rs. 50 000 as reward.

KEJRIWAL TOOK PART IN JNU SOLIDARITY MEET



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While participating in a solidarity meeting at JNU on November 3, Delhi Chief Minister Kejriwal had said Najeeb would come back only when PM Modi could be made to realise that he was losing votes over the issue.

Kejriwal, who has had frequent run-ins with the Delhi Police, said the force would not dare to pursue any investigation in this regard as "RSS students' wing ABVP was involved in the brawl following which Najeeb went missing."

(WITH INPUTS FROM PTI)



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The Hollywood Reporter has released its fourth American Film Market daily issue, which features a look at why U.S. comedies are falling flat, a chat with Tommy Wirkola and exclusive sales news of Steve Coogan and Paul Rudd's new movie.

No Jokes at AFM

Sacha Baron Cohen's remake of hit Danish R-rated comedy Klown with Annapurna Pictures instantly became one of the market's splashier offerings. But even the oversized clown shoes of Ali G can't hide the fact that independent U.S. comedy - especially the out-and-out gut-busters that skew toward the male audience that flocks to Baron Cohen - is having a trickier time generating global laughs. One exec tells THR: "American comedies just don't seem to travel as well as they used to."

Moving on Ideal Home

International buyers are moving in on Ideal Home, THR has learned exclusively. Written and directed by Andrew Fleming, the comedy stars British comic actor Steve Coogan and Paul Rudd as a bickering gay couple whose extravagant lives are turned upside down by a new addition to the family.

Talking With Tommy Wirkola

The Norway-born helmer moves into new territory with the upcoming sci-fi film What Happened to Monday?, starring Noomi Rapace as seven identical twins in a futuristic world where families are limited to one child because of overpopulation. The director of Dead Snow and Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters spoke to THR about how he juggled septuplets, what he thinks about Netflix and the latest on the Hansel & Gretel sequel.

Click here to download the Day 4 PDF.

Click here to download the Day 3 PDF.

Click here to download the Day 2 PDF.

Click here to download the Day 1 PDF.
FilmRise has acquired all North American distribution rights to Redwire Pictures and Content Medias supernatural heist thriller The Vault, starring James Franco, Francesca Eastwood, Scott Haze, and Taryn Manning.

Dan Bush directed the film from an original screenplay he co-wrote with Conal Byrne. FilmRise plans to release the film theatrically in the U.S. in the second quarter of 2017.

Content Media is handling sales for the film at the American Film Market.

Redwire Pictures Luke Daniels and Content Medias head of production Tom Butterfield produced The Vault.

Eastwood and Manning play estranged sisters, while Haze portrays their troubled brother. The sisters are forced to rob a bank in order to save their brother who burned down a warehouse owned by a notorious gangster. Franco plays an assistant bank manager who promises to help put the sisters back on track in return for a percentage of their take.

We are thrilled to be releasing The Vault, a terrifying thriller that is sure to keep audiences on the edge of their seats, said FilmRise CEO Danny Fisher. Performances across the board are exceptional, including James Franco and Taryn Manning.

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By Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - African states launched a bid at the United Nations on Friday to halt the work of the first U.N. independent investigator appointed to help protect gay and transgender people worldwide from violence and discrimination. The 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council, based in Geneva, created the position in June and in September appointed Vitit Muntarbhorn of Thailand, who has a three-year mandate to investigate abuses against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people. In an unusual move, African states circulated a draft resolution on Friday in the 193-member U.N. General Assembly third committee, which deals with human rights, calling for consultations on the legality of the creation of the mandate. "We therefore call for the suspension of the activities of the appointed Independent Expert pending the determination of this issue," Botswana's U.N. Ambassador Charles Ntwaagae, speaking for the 54-member Africa group, told the committee. He said the group was concerned "non-internationally agreed notions such as sexual orientation and gender identity are given attention, to the detriment of issues of paramount importance such as the right to development and the racism agenda." Ntwaagae said that sexual orientation and gender identity "are not and should not be linked to existing international human rights instruments." The third committee could vote as early as Tuesday on the draft resolution, diplomats said. If adopted it would then need to be voted upon later this year by the General Assembly. Being gay is a crime in at least 73 countries, the U.N. has said. The issue of gay rights consistently sparks heated debate at the United Nations. In 2014, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said the U.N. would recognize all same-sex marriages of its staff, allowing them to receive U.N. benefits. Russia unsuccessfully tried to overturn it last year, with Saudi Arabia, China, Iran, India, Egypt, Pakistan, and Syria among 43 states that supported Moscow. In February the African Group, the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the 25-member "Group of Friends of the Family," led by Egypt, Belarus and Qatar, protested the launch of six U.N. stamps promoting LGBT equality. Then a group of 51 Muslim states blocked 11 gay and transgender organizations from officially attending a high-level U.N. meeting in June on ending AIDS, sparking a protest by the United States, Canada and the European Union. (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
Shkoder (Albania) (AFP) - Thousands of people gathered on Saturday to celebrate the beatification of 38 Catholics executed or tortured to death in Albania under the regime of communist dictator Enver Hoxha.

Vatican officials and clergy from several European countries joined 20,000 members of Albania's small Catholic community for the beatification mass at the cathedral in the northwestern city of Shkodra.

"The communist dictatorship's religious genocide took their lives but it could never kill their dignity, their faith, their spirit...," said Vatican representative Cardinal Angelo Amato.

Seven bishops, 111 priests, 10 seminarists and eight nuns died in detention or were executed between 1945 and 1985, accused of having hidden arms to overthrow the regime, or of being spies or traitors.

Hoxha, who died in 1985, tried to eradicate religion from his country, officially declaring it an atheist state in 1967.

Several thousand people crammed into the cathedral for the mass while thousands more followed via big screens from outside.

Photographs of the 38 were displayed on a huge cross at the cathedral's entrance.

"They were all cruelly executed, they even had no grave where their families could mourn them," said Angelo Massafra, the archbishop of Shkodra, adding that the remains of only 10 were ever found.

Father Ernest Simoni, 88, who spent nearly two decades doing forced labour in prison and in the fields, told AFP before the mass it would be uplifting.

"Today I feel reborn with the beatification of 38 martyrs, a number of whom I personally knew," said the clergyman who on November 19 will become only the second Albanian to become a cardinal.

"This is the faith and life that triumph over cruel violence and social injustice," he said.

More than 30 years after Hoxha's death, the dictator's dream of an atheist country has long since disappeared.

According to the national institute of statistics, 56.7 percent of Albania's three million people identify as Muslims, while more than 10 percent are Catholic and almost seven percent Orthodox.
By Fergus Jensen JAKARTA (Reuters) - From rescue helicopters to air surveillance equipment, defence manufacturers jostled in Jakarta this week to claim one of the region's biggest prizes: a slice of Indonesia's shopping list as the country updates its ageing air and sea security capability. While it is not part of the dispute over claims in the South China Sea, Indonesia objects to China's claim to waters around the Natuna Islands and has been ramping up military exercises and patrols in the region. At this year's annual defence gathering, just weeks after the largest Indonesian exercise to date off the Natuna archipelago, corridors were jammed and industry executives reported one of their busiest years at a time of high interest across the region after a lull of over five years. Indonesia, which faced a U.S. arms embargo until just over a decade ago, has yet to nail down a winner for the highest profile item on its wish list - a squadron of jets to replace its ageing Northrop F-5 fighters, as talks continue with Russia to buy Sukhoi Su-35 jets. Rival contenders for the deal include the Saab Gripen combat jet, the Eurofighter Typhoon and Lockheed Martin's F-16s, according to industry stakeholders. Most offers include the jets and industrial cooperation. "The situation here is obviously concentrating people's minds," said Robert Hewson, spokesman for Saab. "So we have found a lot of interest in people talking to us about our radar products, our airborne surveillance products, because they need to be able to extend their horizons." Indonesian President Joko Widodo had promised to double the country's defence budget, clean up procurement and modernize its ageing military equipment. Since he took office, the country's total defence spending has jumped around 26 percent - though next year should actually see a slight dip to 108 trillion rupiah ($8.3 billion). Much of the effort, as with other countries in the region, includes a push to bring skills to Indonesia through joint ventures and partnerships, like a deal with South Korea which analysts initially said could cost up to $8 billion, to develop a mid-level fighter jet programme. Korea Aerospace Industries said this week it is working with Indonesia's state-owned aerospace company Dirgantara Indonesia (PTDI) on joint marketing efforts, as well as a drone development programme for surveillance. French defence firm Thales said it was getting interest in its air defence offerings, after selling to Malaysia last year, as other countries consider how to upgrade existing technology with lasers to improve accuracy. Indonesia will also seek to upgrade its heavy-lift helicopters, and the annual show saw Boeing promoting additional Apache helicopters and its Chinook. Indonesia has already ordered eight AH-64E Apache helicopters. "Maritime surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities are moving to the forefront around the world and we certainly see that in Southeast Asia," a Boeing spokeswoman said. ($1 = 13,078 rupiah) (Reporting by Fergus Jensen in Jakarta; Additional reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor, Agustinus Beo Da Costa and Eveline Danubrata; Writing by Clara Ferreira Marques; Editing by Stephen Powell)
Donald Trump 's refusal to release his tax returns is beginning to seem less an aberration than a prelude. And that has open-government advocates worried that a decades-long standard of transparency is at risk of extinction.



This week, two Republican governors, New Jersey's Chris Christie and Illinois' Bruce Rauner, broke with their own past precedent in declining to release their returns ahead of Election Day.



In a statement to Politico, a Christie spokesman was duly dismissive: "The Governor and Mrs. Christie will release their taxes when they are ready to do so." Christie did release his returns last October, following his announced run for president.



Rauner, meanwhile, is insisting that he wants to wait until his family foundation files it returns, before he releases any information. In an email exchange with CNBC.com, Rauner's spokesman ignored questions about whether Rauner was behaving any differently than his party's frontrunner when it came to financial disclosure.



"I am afraid that this is [a] case of defining deviancy down," said Trevor Potter, the former head of the Federal Election Commission who served as chief counsel to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign. "Once the tradition is broken and someone effectively gets away with it, other people look at it and say they can do the same thing."



Despite rounds of polls confirming the American electorate's expectations for tax returns, watchdogs concede that Trump has paid little price for his resistance. And they only expect that other politicians are taking note.



"There has been enormous pressure on Trump to release his tax returns," said Anne Weismann, executive director of the Campaign for Accountability. "He has gotten away with it with seeming little ill-effect on his campaign and it doesn't surprise me if other candidates say: Why should I release mine?"



Following the resignation of Richard Nixon, Congress passed laws requiring presidential nominees, members of Congress, and other federal officeholders to reveal certain personal financial information each year. Although those have never required income tax returns, every presidential nominee and most major party candidates since Nixon have nonetheless provided them. Many gubernatorial and congressional office-seekers likewise followed suit.



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Beyond the information and revelation of the documents themselves, open-government advocates argue, this nonlegal standard of disclosure has represented a rare example of political compromise.



"Democracy doesn't work if the attitude of people running for leadership is 'I will get away with whatever I can get away with and what the law doesn't specifically prohibit,'" said Yochai Benkler, a Harvard Law professor and advisor to the Sunlight Foundation. "That is a barely acceptable way for people who work in the private sector."



House members are required to annually file statements of their personal finances. In addition, all but three states  Idaho, Michigan, and Vermont  require state legislators to file financial disclosure statements, although the extent of those disclosures can vary widely. (You can see the disparities in this table provided by the National Conference of State Legislatures). But while these statements do reveal certain information about public officials' assets, investments, and liabilities, they do not provide the same nuance and detail that can be found on a common IRS Form 1040, which might show offshore investments, charitable contributions, specific debts and how taxes are paid or avoided.

In response to Trump, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, proposed legislation in May called the Presidential Tax Transparency Act. The moonshot bill would authorize the IRS to release presidential nominees' tax returns in the event the nominee declined to do so voluntarily. The legislation has only nine co-sponsors; A twin bill in the House has 33, including two Republicans.



Potter said that if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency, the dynamic in Washington might be right to pass this kind of legislation. "I could see the [Clinton] administration and Congress say we ought to put this standard into law, but if that doesn't happen, I think Trump has defined the standard down."



Other reformers argue that a legislative recourse would be far-fetched no matter who is in the White House. The best hope, they say, is for voters to punish nondisclosers.



And that has advocates turning their attention to the Missouri governor's race, which has been seized in recent weeks by a cat-and-mouse game over Republican nominee Eric Greitens' refusal to release his returns. In response, his opponent, Democratic Attorney General Chris Koster, has refused to participate in debates until those returns have been made public. A St. Louis Post-Dispatch poll released this week found that 68 percent of registered likely voters in the state want their office-seekers to release returns. Polls show the race in a virtual deadlock.
Guy Fawkes

"Guys" is one of those words that you probably use a lot without really thinking about it.

But the word "guy" has some pretty explosive origins  literally.

The term actually comes from Guy Fawkes, a 17th-century participant in the failed 1605 Gunpowder Plot (and the inspiration behind those creepy, mustachioed, "V for Vendetta" masks that Anonymous wears).

Fawkes was a Catholic during a time of great religious conflict and persecution in England. He was also a member of a group of thirteen conspirators who wanted to restore a Catholic monarch to the throne. Their idea was to blow up Parliament with barrels of gunpowder in order to kill the Protestant King James I, the Privy Council, and the bishops of the Church of England.

Fawkes was not the leader of the group. He's remembered because on November 5, 1605, he got caught in the basement of Parliament with enough gunpowder to level the building (authorities had been searching the building after receiving an anonymous tip).

Things ended pretty badly for Fawkes. He was most likely horrifically tortured on the rack. He managed to escape a grisly execution by jumping off the scaffold and breaking his neck. For centuries, England has celebrated the foiling of the plot by burning effigies of Fawkes and other figures on November 5. Those likenesses became known as "guys." According to the Boston Globe, the term morphed into a way to describe creepy people. Over time, it became a generic term for men, although today it is often used as a gender-neutral phrase.

With all that in mind, can you call your coworkers "guys" in the office? Just in time for Guy Fawkes Night in England, Business Insider spoke with three office etiquette experts about whether or not it's OK to call people "guys" at work.

All three experts urged people to avoid the term in the workplace. However, as with most things, it often really just depends on your company's office culture.

Etiquette expert and speaker Jacqueline Whitmore says it's not a good idea to call coworkers "guys" at all.

Story continues

"It is not proper etiquette to refer to everyone as 'guys,'" she told Business Insider. "This is a slang term and should be avoided. Use 'you all' or 'everyone' instead."

Business communications expert and speaker Barbara Pachter agrees that it's rather casual and informal. She recommends "team" as a substitute.

"Saying 'you guys' is very casual and informal," she says. "Using 'you,' 'the team,' or 'everyone' is more professional. And writing 'you guys' in an email seems sloppy."

She also notes that while some consider the term relatively gender-neutral now, others view it as a term to describe a group of men.

National etiquette expert Diane Gottsman says that "guys" is a term of familiarity, friendship, and even endearment. She also notes that it's rarely meant to be an offensive phrase.

"However, in a professional setting it's best to err on the side of caution and refrain. It may come across as too informal or lacking sophistication," Gottsman says. "While not everyone may be offended to hear coworkers refer to fellow colleagues as 'guys,' clients, supervisors, and colleagues may or may not not appreciate the informality. The lack of formality may come across as inarticulate in a professional, conservative business environment. In less formal situations, it may be less of an issue, but why take a chance?"

So the consenus is, if you work in a somewhat formal environment, it's better to refrain from calling people "guys," or things might just blow up in your face.

NOW WATCH: Nigel Farage just told the European Parliament lawmakers 'you've never had proper jobs'





More From Business Insider


Today in 5 Lines

A federal jury convicted two former aides to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie over the George Washington Bridge lane closures in 2013. A jury found Rolling Stone magazine liable for defamation in a suit related to the now-debunked 2014 article about an alleged rape at the University of Virginia. The U.S. added 161,000 jobs in October, while the unemployment rate dropped slightly to 4.9 percent. The Paris Agreementwhich includes 96 countries and aims to combat climate changeofficially became international law. President Obama shortened the sentences of 72 inmates, bringing the total number of commutations granted during his presidency to 944.

Today on The Atlantic

No Pressure: Arizona, a Republican-leaning state, may be in play for Democrats this election. Conor Friedersdorf traveled to the state to talk to these newly relevant voters as they weighed a decision that could affect the fate of the whole country.

One Heck of a Year: Trevor Noah took over as host of Comedy Centrals The Daily Show at the beginning of a highly contentious and unusual U.S. presidential race. Here are his thoughts on the 2016 election and todays political commentary. (Vann R. Newkirk II)

On the Road: Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders hit the campaign trail in North Carolina this week in an attempt to shore up support for the Democratic nominee. North Carolina, after all, is significant for Clinton, who could secure a victory against Donald Trump if she wins the state. (David A. Graham)

Follow stories throughout the day with our Politics & Policy portal.

Recommended: The End of Trump?

Snapshot

A dog wears a Chicago Cubs bandana during the World Series victory parade on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Jerry Lai / USA TODAY Sports

What Were Reading

On the Inside: The halls of New Yorks Attica Correctional Facility bustle with opinions about the 2016 election. John J. Lennon, an inmate at the maximum-security facility, captures life inside, where most of the guards favor Trump while the prisoners back Clinton. (The Marshall Project and Vice)

Story continues

Recommended: The Conservative Case for Voting for Clinton

What It Took: Politicos Michael Kruse examines Hillary Clintons lifetime in the public eye. Her guarded personality, he writes, was forged through a career-long collision with the constantly shifting set of gender-based expectations people have put on her."

Its Not That Easy: Claims of voter fraud have raised questions about the legitimacy of the election process in the United States. ProPublica unpacked these concerns in this interactive graphic. (Susie Cagle)

Down the Rabbit Hole: Huffington Posts Luke OBrien joined the young leaders of the alt-right to trace the origins and future of the movementa new kind of white nationalism, born online and bred through social media.

Trouble in Utah: The Republican nominees team is working hard to garner support in one of Americas most conservative states, but two major hurdles stand in his way: Utahs large and disapproving Mormon population, and third-party challenger Evan McMullin. (McKay Coppins, BuzzFeed)

Visualized

The Voter Suppression Trail: In this New York Times video game, users can choose characters of different socioeconomic backgrounds to get a sense of the obstacles they face when trying to vote.

Question of the Week

This week we asked you what you wouldnt want the FBI to find in your emails, and you sent us some  interesting responses. Our favorites:

Dirk Bloemendaal is worried the agency might find anything related to a yoga routine in his inbox.

John Stanford would hope to keep hidden a note to friends that John Podestas (Hillary Clintons campaign chairman) risotto isnt that good.

And from Miguel Velez: A notice that Trump won the election. Youll find out in four days, Miguel. Four days.

-Written by Elaine Godfrey (@elainejgodfrey) and Candice Norwood (@cjnorwoodwrites)

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Six people out of the 12 injured have sustained pellet injuries.

After his burial, some youth indulged in stone pelting on security forces, prompting use of force by the law enforcing agencies. Photo: Reuters

By Press Trust of India: At least 12 people were injured today in fresh clashes between protestors and security forces, following death of a 16-year-old boy due to alleged poisoning in Eidgah area of the city.

WHAT HAPPENED

Qaiser Sofi from Eidgah area of the city died at a hospital here this morning.

After his burial, some youth indulged in stone pelting on security forces, prompting use of force by the law enforcing agencies, a police official said.

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He said 12 people were injured out of which six have sustained pellet injuries.

Sofi was reported missing on October 25 and found in an unconscious state in Shalimar area of the city six days later and hospitalised, the official said.

LOCALS ALLEGE FORCED POISONING

However, local residents of the area alleged that the teen was force fed some poisonous substance by security forces.

Normal life elsewhere in the valley remained affected for the 120th consecutive day due to the separatist-sponsored strike.

While most of the shops, business establishments and fuel stations across Kashmir were shut, some were open in few areas in Civil Lines and outskirts of the summer capital Srinagar, the official said.

He said most of the public transport continued to remain off the roads but auto-rickshaws and cabs were seen plying at some places in the Valley, including in few areas of the city here.

AGITATION CONTINUES

The separatists, who are spearheading the ongoing agitation in Kashmir, have been issuing weekly protest calendars since Hizbul militant Burhan Wani's killing in an encounter with security forces on July 8.

The separatists have extended the strike till November 10.

While there were no curbs on the movement of people anywhere in Kashmir, restrictions on the assembly of people under Section 144 CrPC were in place throughout the Valley, the official said.

He said security forces have been deployed in strength at vulnerable spots and along the main roads as a precautionary measure to maintain law and order as well as to instil a sense of security among the people to carry out their day-to-day activities without fear.

5,000 SECURITY FORCES INJURED SO FAR

As many as 85 people, including two cops, have been killed and several thousand others injured in the ongoing unrest in the Valley.

Around 5,000 security forces personnel have also been injured in the clashes.

Watch video here



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MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Several hundred people rallied in the suburbs of Melbourne on Saturday, after a proposal to house refugees locally drew protest by far right anti-Islam groups and counter protests. Political debate around Australia's hardline policy toward asylum seekers has been heated recently, with the conservative government last week announcing plans to permanently ban asylum seekers who attempted to reach Australia by boat from permanently entering under any visa category. Dozens of people belonging to the anti-Islam groups rallied on Saturday against a proposal to house 120 refugees from Syria and Iraq, at a housing facility for elderly citizens in the Melbourne suburb of Eltham. "They (the elderly citizens) are a bit concerned about it but they will just wait and see," John Conroy a resident of the aged-care facility said. A heavy police presence separated the group from more than 100 people rallying in favor of the proposal. Previous protests between anti-immigration and pro-immigration groups have led to violent clashes. Australia's current policy of sending asylum seekers who arrive in Australian waters by boat offshore to Papua New Guinea and Nauru, where their status as refugees is confirmed or rejected, has bipartisan support in the Australian parliament. Last year the government announced a one-off intake of 12,000 refugees fleeing the conflict in Iraq and Syria, saying that ethnic minorities from those countries would be given priority. Far right political parties are on the rise in Australia, with the controversial One Nation party surprising many by winning four Senate seats at the country's national elections in July. (Reporting by Jarni Blakkarly; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
The Avengers stars are on a mission to get President Barack Obamas attention in support of protestors aiming to halt the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Protestors say the 1,172-mile conduit that is planned to cross the Missouri River would put their communitys sole water source at risk and destroy sacred Native American sites.

Among those joining the protesters in solidarity are actors Mark Ruffalo, Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans. In the past few weeks, all four Avengers stars took to social media to share their support  and encourage President Obama to join forces with them.

Take a stand for our brothers and sisters in #StandingRock! Join me in telling @barackobama to just say #NoDAPL. Period. Sign the petition and #StandWithStandingRock at the link in my bio, Ruffalo, also known as the Hulk in the Marvel films, said in a video bringing attention to the cause.

Soon after, Jackson shared a video with the same message, and captioned his post, Im saying #nodapl and @barackobama should too! Sign the petition and standwithstandingrock.net #standwithstandingrock.

Last week, Chris Hemsworth shared a message about how he was stupidly unaware when he decided to wear a traditional dress of First Nations people to a New Years Eve party. In the first post, the Thor actor wore his superhero costume and held a sign that said, We stand with Standing Rock #WaterisLife #NoDAPL #MniWiconi. And on Friday night, the actor posted another Instagram post, encouraging his followers to sign the petition.

Chris Evans took to Twitter to lend his support to the cause, sharing a tweet with a link to the Standing with Standing Rock website. Tell @POTUS to say #NoDAPL by signing the standingwithstandingrock.net petition!! the star, who played Captain America, wrote.

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Other celebrities, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Shailene Woodley and Susan Sarandon, have joined in to support the months-long protests against the multi-billion dollar oil pipeline project. The protests came to a head last Thursday as police officers in riot gear faced off with protestors.

At least 141 people were arrested, many of whom were members of the Standing Rock nation and other tribes who are opposed to the construction of the pipeline.




President Barack Obama, in a long-in-coming appearance on HBOs Real Time With Bill Maher, warned of both Donald Trump and the Balkanization of an American media that leaves the public with difficulty sorting out whats true and whats not.

Look, Obama told an unusually serious Maher on tonights episode, if I watched Fox News I wouldnt vote for me either.

In an interview taped in the Roosevelt Room of the White House earlier this week and aired tonight (watch it above), Obama reflected on his upcoming exit (It is time, he said, before adding, I think Im as good a president now as Ive ever been), health care (If I was designing a system from scratch, I would probably have looked at a single-payer system) and even GMOs (We need to follow the science).

But the topic naturally and predictably turned to the election battle between Trump and Hillary Clinton, and on a night when Maher all but ditched comedy in favor of anger and even outright fear, Obama ended the interview with a direct plea: The stakes are high. The choice in this election should be really clear, the president said before running through a list of the issues his administration has addressed, from climate change, health insurance, Wall Street excess and immigration reform. Every single issue weve made progress on in the last eight years is going to be on the ballot.

Anyone who sits on the sidelines or makes a protest vote is a vote for Trump, Obama said, and that would be badly damaging to this country, and damaging for the world.

The interview came after Mahers near-yearlong on-air campaign to get Obama on the show, efforts that included a national petition at whitehouse.gov.

We  and I do mean we  have been trying to get President Obama on this show a long time, Maher said at the end of an urgent and often serious monologue preceding the taped interview. I know this is a comedy show, Maher said at one point, his voice rising, and well try to keep it on that level  but its not f*cking funny. There is a slow moving right-wing coup moving in on us. Media do your f*cking job!

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Maher started the conversation with Obama by repeating his oft-noted opposition to the profit motive in health care, prisons, the military, elections, and, I would add, news gathering.

Obama drew the line at the latter, raising the spectre of state run media. After Maher suggested a return to the days when news divisions of media companies were loss leaders not driven by profits, Obama said the days of fat and happy media monopolies would be unlikely today. The question I have when it comes to the media is how do we create a space where truth gets eyeballs and is entertaining and we can build a common conversation.

When I leave here, one of the things Im most concerned about is the Balkanization of the media, where youve got 800 stations, youve got all these websites, and people have difficulty just sorting out whats true and whats not.

We can have a disagreement about how to deal with climate change, but if we have a big chunk of the country that discounts what 99 percent of the scientists say completely, its very hard to figure out how we move the democracy forward.

The conversation then turned to pot laws (You and I, said Maher, could have had both of our lives ruined not by smoking it, but by being arrested for it), and Obama said the addiction should be treated as a health issue.

Look, Im an ex-smoker

Ex?, Maher interjected, to which Obama replied firmly, Ex, then winked and said hes still chewing the heck out of Nicorette. When I passed health care reform, I think Ive had my last cigarette.

Finally, the conversation arrived at its inevitable conclusion, as Obama addressed what he called the conversation in the aftermath of the rise of Trump, this notion that part of whats happened is that both Republican and Democratic elites have neglected the white working class.

The truth is that every policy Ive put forward would make a huge difference with the life of the white working class, and the black working class and the Latino working class, he said, citing raising the minimum wage, the Affordable Care Act, strong unions and consumer finance protection.

At the end of the 17-minute segment, Obama listed one further accomplishment: Even though I wasnt on the show that often, he told Maher, I watched it all the time. Maher looked pleased for one of the few moments of the evening. Joining his roundtable of guests for the evening  comedian Martin Short, journalist David Frum and former Mich. Gov. Jennifer Granholm  Maher, fretting over a Trump victory, said, Im gonna be honest with you, Ive had a couple drinks.

I can be honest with you, Short shot back, youve had more than a couple of drinks.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXH5agV7skw&w=605&h=340]

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Bayonne (France) (AFP) - The most senior ETA leader still at large was arrested Saturday in southwest France, Spanish authorities said, dealing another major blow to the embattled Basque separatist group.

Mikel Irastorza, 41, was found in a home in the French town of Ascain, in the Pyrenees region bordering Spain, the interior ministry said in a statement.

The couple housing Irastorza -- a 59-year-old Basque exile and his 56-year-old wife -- were also taken into custody, French sources said.

Anti-terrorism prosecutors in Paris authorised the arrests and the three are due to appear before a judge in the French capital.

On Friday French authorities opened a preliminary investigation into alleged criminal association with a terrorist organisation.

The Spanish statement said the raid, led by French security forces working with Spanish police, was aimed at the "leadership structure of ETA".

Irastorza was described by the ministry as "currently the most senior leader of the terrorist group ETA still at large".

Spain said other arrests could follow.

Founded in 1959, ETA waged a violent decades-long campaign for an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France, and is blamed for the deaths of more than 800 people.

It declared a ceasefire in October 2011 but has refused to give up its weapons, and is seeking to negotiate its dissolution in exchange for amnesties or improved prison conditions for the roughly 350 ETA members held in both countries.

Spain's new Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido, who was only appointed on Thursday, welcomed the arrest.

"As long as the terrorist group fails to give up its weapons for good and refuses to dissolve itself, the Spanish government will continue to fight the scourge of terrorism," Zoido told reporters.

About 200 people protested against the arrest of Irastorza in Ascain in the evening, heeding a call by several Basque national movements.

On October 12 France and Spain announced the discovery of an ETA weapons stockpile in Carlepont, 120 kilometres (75 miles) from Paris.

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Six days later, ETA accused Spain and France of not wanting to "seek reasonable solutions" for peace in the Basque region.

ETA's influence has waned in the Basque region, its ranks thinned by arrests over the years on both sides of the border. Most ETA members are in prison and only about 20 are still at large, according to French and Spanish authorities.

Public support has also dwindled as many Basques view the armed campaign for an independent homeland as belonging to the past.
DeSOTO, TX / ACCESSWIRE / November 5, 2016 / DeSoto Independent School District, located 15 miles south of Dallas, has a long history of providing some of the most successful, ambitious and comprehensive magnet programs in North Texas. In 2016, DeSoto's graduating class of 525 seniors earned $9 million in scholarships. What many parents and educators don't know is that the district's secret lies within its robust curriculum offerings, specifically their magnet program. The program is comprised of fifteen comprehensive programs that are also open to out-of-district students including neighboring Dallas ISD students. DeSoto ISD's Magnet and Innovative Programs have a comparable magnet offering in size, graduates and alumni success as Dallas ISD.

On Saturday, Nov. 12, from 9 a.m. to noon, DeSoto High School will host Magnets Attract, a unique event showcasing programs that students can apply for beginning in December. DeSoto ISD Magnet and Innovative Programs are tailored to give students and their parents the power to choose an education path based on personal interests and passion.

DeSoto ISD's Magnet and Innovative Programs allow students in all grade levels from pre-K to high school to take ownership of their educational experience through the arts, law, business, medicine, linguistics and leadership. Pursuant to the transformation of science and technology in education, the Desoto ISD Magnet program also offers iSTEAM 3D curriculum at all middle schools and high school.

DeSoto ISD's Magnet schools have curriculum that emphasizes a particular educational focus such as: engineering, science, technology or the arts. DeSoto ISD's magnet schools open doors of opportunity and sparks the imagination of students, preparing them to become responsible citizens in a global society.

DeSoto ISD is dedicated to creating a districtwide, college-bound culture among students, parents and faculty members alike. Magnets Attract is being held as part of DeSoto ISD Family Day. Family Day session topics include STAAR/EOC Test Information, ACT/SAT, College Readiness, The Graduation Plan, IB Programs, Financial Literacy, PTA, Parent Involvement and much more. Student classes during Family Day include Respect, Leadership, Character and Bullying.

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DeSoto ISD Magnet and Innovative Programs offer learning experiences that engage students while supporting interest that will open pathways to success. Programs include:

 Collegiate Magnet Program (Upon graduation, an Associate Degree is earned along with a high school diploma from DeSoto High School (DHS))

 Early College High School (Upon graduation, an Associate Degree is earned along with a high school diploma from DHS)

 International Baccalaureate Diploma Program (DHS)

 iSTEAM3D Magnet Academies (all three middle schools)

 West International Male Leadership Magnet Academy (Gr. 6-8)

 East Medical Magnet Academy (Gr. 6-8)

 McCowan Fine Arts Magnet Academy (Gr. 6-8)

 Amber Terrace Discovery & Design Early Childhood Academy (pre-K)

 Northside Business and Law Magnet Academy (Gr. 3-5)

 Ruby Young Medical & Environmental Sciences Magnet Academy (Gr. 3-5)

 Woodridge Fine Arts Magnet Academy (Gr. K-5)

 Cockrell Hill Linguistics Magnet Academy (Gr. K-5)

 The Meadows STEAM Magnet Academy (Gr. 1-5)

 Frank D. Moates Blended Learning Magnet Academy (Gr. 2-5)

North Texas parents and students are encouraged to attend this informal, make-your-own-pace event. All of DeSoto's 15 magnet programs will showcase their unique offerings and capabilities through breakout sessions, performances and Q&As. Participants will also learn about the application and selection process. Door prizes will include a $1,000 scholarship, iPads and gift cards. Free breakfast will be available from 8-9 a.m., and food trucks will be on-site with lunch available for purchase.

A grand prize drawing for a $1,000 scholarship will be given to ANY current DeSoto ISD student who meets the eligibility requirements and attends all the sessions.

Event information:

WHAT: Magnets Attract: DeSoto ISD Magnet and Innovative Programs Showcase

WHO: DFW metroplex parents and students grades pre-K to 12

WHEN: Saturday, Nov. 12, 9 a.m. to noon

WHERE: DeSoto High School, 600 Eagle Drive, DeSoto, Texas 75115

COST: Free

Agenda for the DeSoto ISD Family Academy including Magnet Showcase:

7:30-8 a.m. Registration

8-9 a.m. Breakfast and Student Performances

9:10-9:50 a.m. Session One

10-10:40 a.m. Session Two

9 a.m.-noon Magnets Attract

11:15 a.m.- noon Guest Speaker and Drawings *

* Must attend both sessions and three Magnet Showcase tables to win

Event registration for the Family Academy is available online at www.desotoisd.org.

About DeSoto Independent School District:

DeSoto ISD is a small suburban school district serving over 9800 students district wide just 15 miles south of Dallas

Specialized funding within the district such as the Let's GEAR UP grant allows DeSoto the opportunity to invest in its staff through professional development and in students with specialized education opportunities that enhance self-awareness and promote college. In addition, Let's GEAR UP offers parents with insights and training that promote financial literacy and preparation.

Through DeSoto's Magnet & Innovative Programs structure DeSoto ISD students can benefit from specialized magnet curriculum from kindergarten through the high school studies. Magnet programs focus on the arts, law, business, medicine, linguistics, leadership and offers iSTEAM 3D curriculum at all middle schools and high school.

DeSoto magnet school FAQ available here.

Media Contact:

Beth Trimble

Executive Director of Communications, DeSoto ISD

972-274-8212 Ext. 205

Dana Cobb

TrizCom PR

972-955-9747

dana@trizcom.com

SOURCE: DeSoto Independent School District via Submit Press Release 123
COTONOU (Reuters) - A court in Benin on Friday dropped all charges against prominent politician Sebastien Ajavon who was accused of drug trafficking in connection with a haul of 18 kg (40 pounds) of cocaine found last week in a shipping container. "He has been freed on the benefit of the doubt," judge Jacques Hounsou told a tribunal in the commercial capital Cotonou, citing a lack of proof against him. Ajavon, who is also one of Benin's richest businessmen, came third in a presidential election in March. Detained more than a week ago, he denied charges of transporting and trafficking illegal drugs when he appeared before the tribunal. Maritime police discovered the haul at the port of Cotonou in a container destined for one of his companies. West Africa, with its porous borders and corruptible officials, has for over a decade been a transit point for Latin American cocaine en route to Europe. But improved maritime policing in recent years has helped reduce the volume of cocaine passing through the region. (Reporting by Allegresse Sasse; Writing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg; Editing by Bernard Orr)
An encounter between the security forces and ultras in the Shopian district today resulted in the killing of one militant and injury of a soldier.

By Shuja-ul-Haq : A militant was killed and a soldier injured in an encounter today between security forces and ultras in a far-flung area of Dobjan village in Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir.

Sources said the militant has been identified as a local who had reportedly joined the outfit Hizbul Mujahideen recently.

The encounter broke out after security forces launched a search operation in the Dobjan village. The forces reportedly had 60 inputs about the presence of few militants there.

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A police source said, "The forces have been on a lookout and received a tip off about the presence of these militants. The area is a far flung one and the police and army jointly sent teams".

ALSO READ | Srinagar: 12 injured in clash with security forces following death of a 16-year-old boy





MILITANTS RESORTED TO FIRING, 3 ESCAPED



When the security forces moved to the target house, the hiding militants resorted to firing in an attempt to break the cordon, triggering an encounter.

An official said the encounter led to the death of one militant and injury of a soldier.

The official said that three militants, however, managed to escape. A weapon has also been recovered from the spot.

Also Read:

Kashmir: After 120 days of unrest, situation in the Valley improving

Future of Kashmir students uncertain as 31 schools destroyed in Valley

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Beyonce and Jay Z performed at a Hillary Clinton rally and it was incredible, of course

In the wise words of Beyonce Stars in her eyes/She fights for the power, keeping time/She grinds day and night/She grinds from Monday to Friday/Works from Friday to Sunday! In this case these lyrics are the anthem for not only Beyonce, but Hillary Clinton as well! On Friday, Beyonce and Jay Z performed at a Hillary Clinton rally in order to boost turnout because Ohio is a swing state.

Over the last couple of years Beyonce has been more open to letting the world know that just because she is private about her thoughts on politics, the economy and affairs of the world, that does not me she doesnt have an opinion. But since she does have such a large platform we have seen her become more vocal about her thoughts.

A video posted by Beyonce (@beyonce) on Nov 4, 2016 at 10:45pm PDT

Eight years ago, I was so inspired that my nephew, a young black child, could grow up knowing his dreams could be realized by witnessing a black president in office  and now, we have the opportunity to create more change. I want my daughter to grow up seeing a woman lead our country and know that her possibilities are limitless.

Beyonce & Jay Z & Hillary & You? hillaryclinton.com/makeaplan A photo posted by Hillary Clinton (@hillaryclinton) on Nov 4, 2016 at 6:51pm PDT

Over the weekend Clintons campaign will feature celebrity concerts and appearances. Stevie Wonder performed at a concert in Philadelphia on Friday night, while Jon Bon Jovi will be hosting his own concerts in St. Petersburg, Florida, on Saturday and Charlotte, N.C., on Sunday. Katy Perry will appear with Clinton in Philadelphia on Saturday.

On Friday, Trump criticized Clinton for appearing with the two performers. Throughout his campaign, many Americans thought he would grow to understand that the context of his words are so limiting to what this country has become. But the fact that he would criticize Clinton for appearing with two self-made African Americans shows that his thoughts will never change.

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"I'm with her!" @Beyonce A photo posted by Hillary Clinton (@hillaryclinton) on Nov 4, 2016 at 8:18pm PDT

Beyonce is single handily responsible for changing so many womens (and men) lives. Whether it was learning to become comfortable with your body, aspiring to be more than just a wife and mother, and most importantly, to love yourself. Jay Z has also come so far from being the boy from Brooklyn that grew up in the Marcy Projects. There is no denying how inspiring these two are.

A photo posted by Beyonce (@beyonce) on Nov 4, 2016 at 10:43pm PDT

So Hillary Clinton, we applaud you for sharing the stage with Beyonce and Jay Z last night. We just kind of wished someone would have introduced them and told the crowd to scream for Mrs. Beyonce Knowles Carter and Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton, if youre nasty!

The post Beyonce and Jay Z performed at a Hillary Clinton rally and it was incredible, of course appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Beyonce just SLAYED in a polka dot pantsuit at a Hillary Clinton event and we are not worthy

And now for the moment weve all been waiting for. Beyonce has officially joined the #imwithher train and even headlined a concert in support of Hillary Clinton in Cleveland yesterday. As expected, Beyonce tore up the stage, strutting her stuff during the Get Out The Vote event  and her outfit of choice was so fitting!

Beyonce wore a very appropriate polka dot pantsuit while performing, and looked super regal! Not to mention, were completely obsessed with her dancers blue suits as well! And underneath they sported the greatest surprise of all  #imwithher campaign tees!

Beyonce and her crew sure know how to get the party started! They always come prepared to slay!

Jay Z Holds Get Out The Vote Concert In Support Of Hillary Clinton

Yes, Beyonce. The best revenge is always your paper. But can we talk about your sequined blouse for a second?! Its FIERCE.

Jay Z Holds Get Out The Vote Concert In Support Of Hillary Clinton

I mean, what can we say? At this point, we can pretty much bet that Beyonce will always bring her A-game to the stage  in fashion and performance. And with the election date quickly approaching, its nice to see mainstream stars showing up to support the Democratic candidate.

Hillary Clinton Campaigns In Key Swing States

Theres no argument that with Beyonce on the side of Hillary Clinton, theres going to be an influx of Beyhive members rushing to the polls to cast their votes Tuesday.

The post Beyonce just SLAYED in a polka dot pantsuit at a Hillary Clinton event and we are not worthy appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Screen Shot 2016 11 05 at 1.26.17 PM

Liberal comedian Bill Maher on Friday night said it was wrong for Democrats to have portrayed former Republicans as villains, explaining that they cried wolf when it wasnt necessary.

The Real Time host contended Donald Trump, the current Republican presidential nominee, was truly dangerous for America, on the other hand. He lamented that liberals had previously described other Republicans in similar terms, a move he said weakened their ability to get individuals to heed their warnings this time around.

I know liberals made a big mistake because we attacked your boy [President George W. Bush] like he was the end of the world, Maher told panelist David Frum, a former speechwriter for Bush. He wasnt.

Maher continued: And Mitt Romney, we attacked that way. I gave Obama a million dollars, I was so afraid of Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney wouldnt have changed my life that much, or yours. Or John McCain.

They were honorable men who we disagreed with. And we should have kept it that way. So we cried wolf. And that was wrong, Maher said.

Watch the clip below (warning: it contains inappropriate language):

The HBO hosts comments jived with a column National Review Online editor Charles Cooke published earlier this week. In his column, Cooke said Democrats have exhausted all language to attack Trump.

When the rhetoric used to describe Donald Trump and Mitt Romney is indistinguishable to all but the most tuned in, something has gone seriously wrong in the culture, Cooke wrote.

Others, however, expressed disagreement. Business Insider senior editor Josh Barro contended in a column that liberals did not give Romney the Hitler treatment, arguing that Republicans were unfairly trying to assign some of the blame for Trump on Democrats.

NOW WATCH: 'HOLD UP!': Watch Obama defend a Trump protester and scold the crowd at a Clinton rally





More From Business Insider


Real Time's Bill Maher finally scored a highly sought-after sit-down with President Obama.

After months of campaigning on-air for Obama to visit his HBO show, Maher sat down with the president for a taped interview that aired Friday, during which he tackled a range of topics and gave his final plea to those who are still undecided about the upcoming election.

When asked about his readiness to vacate The White House after an eight-year run, Obama reflectively answered, "It is time. This has been a great run. I've loved this job. It is a singular privilege. I think I am as good a president now as I've ever been."

Obama added, "I now see the wisdom of the founders, at a certain point - you have to let go for the democracy to work. There has to be fresh legs. You have to have the humility to recognize that you are a citizen and you have to go back to being a citizen when this office is over."

Read more: President Obama Says a Trump Win Would Make Him "Fear for the Future of Our Country"

Maher also questioned the president about his healthcare initiative and whether or not he achieved his expectations.

"My goal in the affordable healthcare act was, if I could get millions of people insurance, then that's my goal," Obama said. "Because for them this is not an abstraction. I see it as a starter home and then the question is how do make sure everyone is getting it - there are still gabs in coverage."

The judicial system was also one of the topics Obama discussed, and he passionately described it as broken with dire need of repair.

"I don't believe the criminal justice system should be affected by the profit motive - this is the awesome power of the state that says we can take their freedom away, we can lock them up," he noted. "The notion that you might want to incentivize locking more people in, or keep them in longer, or not provide the kind of rehabilitation services that can get them out of there is a problem."

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He continued, "I'm proud of the work we've done and trying to do along those lines - we still have a lot of work to do."

Maher raised a pet issue - legalization of marijuana - noting that "you and I could both have had our lives ruined not by smoking it, but by getting arrested for it." Obama acknowledged a need for "a more serious conversation about how we're treating marijuana and our drug laws in general."

Read more: President Obama Defends Trump Supporter Who Heckled Him During Rally

The president also shared his concerns about the tactics of the media and how it has encouraged a climate of general distrust with consumers, telling Maher, "The question I have when it comes to the media is how do we create a space where the truth has eyeballs? The thing I am most concerned about when I leave is the balkanization of the media where you've got 800 stations and all these websites and people have difficulty just sorting out what's true and what's not."

The interview wasn't complete without referencing the ongoing elections and the volatile energy that has worn out the country for months.

Maher mentioned Obama's upcoming trip to Ohio as part of his campaigning itinerary on behalf of Hillary Clinton, and couldn't resist a dig on Donald Trump's quote about "rigged elections."

"Yeah, I know you're off to Ohio, you've got an election to rig!" Maher joked.

Both men broke into laughter, before Obama seriously reiterated why this election can't be underestimated.

Read more: Bill Maher Pens Blistering Essay on Hillary as "Charlie Brown," Trump and Why Bernie Sanders, Socialist, Can Win

"The stakes are high; I know we are getting the gong but I will say this - the choice in the election should be really clear," he said. "I've worked with Hillary, I know her, she cares deeply about ordinary folks, her policies are aligned with yours and mine." "Anybody sitting on the sidelines or deciding to engage in a protest vote - that's a vote for Trump and that will be badly damaging for this country - and that will be damaging for the world."

For months, Maher had waged an on-air campaign to persuade Obama to appear on Real Time before leaving office. Obama (to whose 2012 re-election campaign Maher famously contributed $1 million) had previously appeared on such niche programs as Marc Maron's podcast, Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee and the Zach Galifianakis-hosted talk-show spoof Between Two Ferns.

Maher's audience agreed with him, to judge from the more than 320,000 signatures collected on an online petition he launched in February to win the president over.

Check out the Real Time interview below.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was set to spend the weekend campaigning for Donald Trump, but some of his appearances were reportedly cancelled on Friday shortly after two of his former allies were convicted of conspiracy and fraud for participating in a 2013 scheme to close access lanes on the George Washington Bridge.

On Thursday, the Trump campaign had announced that Christie would be spending Saturday stumping for Trump in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. However, soon after the verdict was announced, Paul Steinhauser, political director of NH1 News, said a campaign source told the channel that Christie would not be coming to New Hampshire.

The reported cancellation of Christies events in the Granite State came as Democrats have attacked him for the verdict in the so-called Bridgegate trial. Christie and the Trump campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Yahoo News about the criticism and whether the events are still taking place as planned.

Christie is the chairman of the Republican nominees transition team, which plays a key role in planning for a potential Trump administration. Speaking to reporters on Friday, John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clintons presidential campaign, suggested that Trump should strip Christie of his position. Podesta referenced Trumps repeated vows to fight corruption and drain the swamp in Washington, D.C.

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He might want to attend to whats going on on the side of what hes doing in the campaign, Podesta said, according to a campaign pool report. So, rather than just crisscrossing the country and hopscotching, talking about cleaning up the swamp, he might start by draining his own swamp, and asking Mr. Christie to resign as the head of his transition.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. (Photo: Brian C. Frank/Reuters)

In September 2013, Christies allies allegedly ordered four lanes closed on the George Washington Bridge, which spans from New York City to New Jersey, to retaliate against a mayor who didnt endorse the governors reelection bid that year. The shutdown led to days of gridlock in the town of Fort Lee, N.J., which sits at the base of the bridge.

Christies former chief of staff, Bridget Kelly, and Bill Baroni, one of the governors appointees at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which oversees the bridge, were found guilty on Friday of all charges in the federal case. Witnesses testified that Christies allies enacted the lane closure plot at the governors behest.

Christie has consistently maintained that he had no role in the lane closures and his aides acted without his knowledge. Nevertheless, the scandal became a significant roadblock in his political career. Christie was widely seen as a powerful potential contender in this years presidential election. The Bridgegate scandal damaged his poll numbers and his campaign was ultimately unsuccessful. After withdrawing from the race, Christie endorsed Trump. Christie has said the Bridgegate case played into Trumps decision not to tap the governor as his running mate.

The governor addressed the verdict Friday in a written statement in which he said he was saddened by the case. Let me be clear once again: I had no knowledge prior to or during these lane realignments, and had no role in authorizing them. No believable evidence was presented to contradict that fact. Anything said to the contrary over the past six weeks in court is simply untrue, Christie said, adding, As a former federal prosecutor, I have respected these proceedings and refused to comment on the daily testimony from the trial. I will set the record straight in the coming days regarding the lies that were told by the media and in the courtroom.
New Delhi (AFP) - British Prime Minister Theresa May will lead a major business delegation to India this week, using her first trip outside Europe since the Brexit vote to push for more trade with the world's fastest-growing major economy.

While her government cannot yet formally open negotiations with the Indians on a trade deal, observers say May wants to send a message that Britain is already on the lookout for new bilateral accords outside the European Union.

After flying into New Delhi late Sunday, May is due to address a conference of Indian industrialists before holding talks with her counterpart Narendra Modi who is also keen to ramp up bilateral trade.

The two leaders spoke by phone earlier this week when May sent greetings for the Hindu festival of Diwali.

"Both leaders agreed there is substantial scope for further strengthening of bilateral cooperation across a range of sectors, including science and technology, finance, trade and investment," Indian foreign ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said of the call.

May will be accompanied by dozens of businessmen, including the inventor James Dyson who was a vocal supporter of the campaign to pull Britain out of the European Union.

Liam Fox, another prominent figure in the Brexit camp who now heads a new department for international trade, will also be part of the delegation which will travel to the southern tech hub of Bangalore on Tuesday.

Fox is to hold talks with his Indian opposite number Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday which will specifically focus on bilateral trade issues.

Britain -- which voted to leave the EU in a June referendum -- cannot officially begin negotiations on any bilateral trade deals until after it has actually left the bloc, something unlikely to happen before 2019.

Dhruva Jaishankar, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings India thinktank, said that should not prevent the two countries from seeking common ground, pointing out how Delhi has been frustrated in its efforts to seal its own free trade deal with the EU.

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"India's importance for Britain is from the fact that it is one of the world's fastest growing economies and a huge market," Jaishankar told AFP.

"And India sees an opportunity post-Brexit as the long pending India-EU free trade agreement hasn't seen much movement and so there is an opportunity for it to get more favourable (trade) terms from the UK."

- 'Shrewd destination' -

The Spectator, a right-wing British magazine that is influential in the governing Conservative party, said May's visit had "huge significance" and the premier had "chosen her destination shrewdly".

"For the first time in four decades, a British Prime Minister can discuss doing trade deals -- something which we have until now been forced to contract out to officials in Brussels," it wrote in an editorial.

"Britain's historic links with India make it an ideal place to begin forging our post-Brexit relationship with the world. We share a common language and there is a huge Indian diaspora in the UK."

India has the added attraction of being the world's fastest growing major economy, having outpaced China for more than a year.

Although growth has slowed recently, the International Monetary Fund has forecast GDP will expand by 7.6 percent in the 2016-17 financial year.

Despite their historical ties from the colonial era, bilateral trade is at a relative low level, measuring 14 billion dollars last year -- smaller than the volume of trade between India and Germany.

And ties have not been helped by Britain's imposition of visa restrictions on Indian students wanting to stay on after completing university courses.

The restrictions, brought in by May in her previous job as interior minister, have led to a near 50 percent fall in the number of Indian students enrolling in British universities, according to Swarup.

The analyst Jaishankar said May would have to tread carefully, knowing the Indian government would like to see an easing of the restrictions but aware that immigration is now a toxic political issue among British voters.

"She will have to navigate these issues carefully, at least in public. Anything she speaks on visa regime that appeals to public in India won't resonate well with Brexit voters," he said.
OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) - Burkina Faso has notified the United Nations that it will withdraw soldiers deployed as peacekeepers in Sudan's troubled Darfur region by July next year, the foreign minister said late on Friday. The West African nation, which has a battalion of 850 soldiers serving in the nearly 14,000 troop strong U.N.-African Union hybrid mission, has suffered a series of deadly attacks at home amid a rise in Islamist militant violence. Burkina Faso's government said in May that it would seek to bring some troops home to help reinforce domestic security. "We have great need of battle-hardened soldiers, men of experience, men who have been on the ground. So the troops that will come from Darfur will be precious for securing our borders," Foreign Minister Alpha Barry said. Burkina Faso was rocked in January by an attack on a hotel and restaurant in its capital, Ouagadougou, claimed by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, that killed 30 people. It has continued to suffer sporadic attacks this year. "From April 2015 to October 2016 we've had some 20 attacks, including two kidnappings of foreigners," Barry said. "We can't continue to have our troops abroad while we have internal needs to confront this asymmetrical war." The Darfur mission, UNAMID, was established in 2007 to try to stem the violence in the restive region, where prosecutors for the International Criminal Court accuse Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of committing genocide. Barry said Ouagadougou had also requested that its troops serving in a U.N. peacekeeping mission in neighboring Mali be deployed to areas along the border with Burkina Faso. "There is no problem in principle concerning this question," Mahamat Saleh Annadif, the head of the Malian mission, MINUSMA, said on Friday following a meeting with Burkina Faso President Roch Marc Christian Kabore. "Even now, this contingent is not very far and in the coming days a redeployment will take place so it is even closer." Mali has been a haven for Islamist militants since groups, some with links to al Qaeda, seized its desert north in 2012. They were pushed back by a French military intervention in 2013 but have stepped up attacks across the region this year. (Reporting by Mathieu Bonkoungou; Writing by Joe Bavier; Editing by Catherine Evans)
By Robin Respaut

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Californians are expected to pass a ballot measure on Election Day legalizing recreational marijuana, and the prospect has cities and counties seeing dollar signs.

Proposition 64 would impose state taxes on the cultivation and sale of marijuana. But it also allows local jurisdictions to add taxes of their own, something many cities and counties said they plan to do.

Economists warn that burdensome taxes and fees on the nascent industry could backfire, fueling the black market and pushing marijuana businesses to decamp for towns where its cheaper to operate. For many city and county officials across California, however, the promise of new revenue to fill budget gaps and fund services is too alluring to pass up.

More than 60 local marijuana measures will appear on ballots across California in Tuesday's election. In Monterey, a scenic county along the states rugged central coast, officials said new local marijuana taxes and fees, if approved, could bring in $30 million, nearly double the countys $16 million budget deficit.

In Coalinga, a Fresno County community of about 13,000, officials hope to solve a $3 million budget crisis with marijuana taxes. Central Californias King City anticipates new revenues of $1 million to $2 million, or almost 30 percent of the citys general fund.

Proposed marijuana taxes in Gonzales, population 8,400, are projected to hit $1.6 million, more than the city collects annually in sales and property taxes combined.

There is no other business that would generate this type of revenue, Gonzales City Manager Rene Mendez said. Its easy to see why this is something that communities want to pursue.

Some California communities have gone further, announcing plans to reinvent themselves as hubs for the industry.

Desert Hot Springs in Southern California, a town that narrowly skirted bankruptcy after the financial crash, was one of a few cities to pass a marijuana tax in 2014. It is eager for marijuana revenue. The city passed an ordinance to allow for growing and processing businesses to legally operate.

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Mayor Scott Matas said it's already having an effect  real estate prices on vacant and dilapidated industrial parcels have skyrocketed as investors stand poised to build manufacturing sites and open nurseries.

Forecasts for local marijuana taxes  which will be collected in addition to state taxes  are staggering. Desert Hot Springs current general fund is about $15 million. But city leaders project marijuana tax collections could reach $1 million next year and, eventually, climb to $50 million if all the available land gets fully built out.

If the industry takes off, the revenue could be life-changing for this community, Matas said.

For more on U.S. states and marijuana, see this graphic: http://tmsnrt.rs/2fBzYmV

OUTSIDE ADVICE

Many of the California communities hoping to cash in on recreational marijuana formed their plans after meeting with David McPherson of HdL Companies, a Southern California consulting firm specializing in revenue strategies for local governments. The former Oakland tax administrator said he believes marijuana provides a rare opportunity for new job growth and tax revenue that could help struggling communities keep pace with rising pension costs and infrastructure and school funding needs.

Its almost like the next dot com, he said.

McPherson is working with 40 communities on marijuana issues and has helped draft a dozen local tax measures for Tuesday's ballots.

Cities have really struggled to balance their budgets," he said. "This is a new industry thats going to increase significantly and create jobs and more employment in their communities."

Not all municipalities have embraced high marijuana taxes. Some said they hope to squash the black market by keeping taxes low, so legal businesses can better compete with the illicit supply.

In Mendocino, a longtime marijuana-growing region in Northern California, county officials scoffed at initial projections by McPherson of up to $110 million in annual local taxes  a potential cash infusion equivalent to 60 percent of the county's general fund. Instead, the county proposed a measure with a much lower tax rate.

These numbers are designed to make government drool and say,How much can we get out of our cultivators and farmers? said Jude Thilman, a Fort Bragg resident and member of the Mendocino Cannabis Policy Council at a May meeting of the Mendocino County Supervisors. The farmers are not doing that well. People are barely getting by.

Nate Bradley, head of the California Cannabis Industry Association, worries that high taxes would encourage farmers to continue growing marijuana illegally. We want to pull these guys out of the hills. But if youre looking at them like theyre ATM machines, they are not going to come out of the hills.

Some cities want to avoid the whole issue by banning all marijuana farming and sales within their jurisdictions, something allowed by the ballot measure.

In Orange County south of Los Angeles, Placentia Mayor Pro Tem Craig Green said the city has no plans to allow marijuana sales or cultivation.

There are problems with the cannabis business, such as the increased costs to law enforcement, he said. It ends up costing more in the end.

(Reporting by Robin Respaut; Editing by Sue Horton and Lisa Girion)
(This version of the story corrects the name of the NGO in paragraph 6 to Mother Nature) By Chris Arsenault KOH SRALAU, Cambodia (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Cambodian officials have promised to investigate problems in the sand mining business following complaints from fishermen that dredgers have been stealing the shore beneath their boats on an industrial scale. "Serious actions" will be taken against anyone inappropriately exporting sand, Cambodia's Ministry of Mines and Energy said in a statement late on Wednesday. The ministry's move came after the release of U.N. trade data compiled by campaigners this week, showing Singapore has imported more than 72 million tons of Cambodian sand since 2007. The Cambodian government reported less than 3 million tonnes of sand exports during that period. The discrepancy, worth more than $740 million, led a coalition of campaign groups to call on Monday for an investigation into what has happened to around 69 million tonnes of missing sand. "The amount of illegal mining is massive," said Som Chandara, an activist with Mother Nature, one group questioning the government's accounting of sand exports. "It's making a bad situation for the communities by polluting the water," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, standing on top of a pile of sand. The Ministry of Mines and Energy pledged to investigate the cause of the difference between the U.N. data and its own. The government maintains it has "completely eradicated lawless sand dredging" but said in a statement posted on Facebook that the industry still "faces some challenges". As cities across Asia expand, and demand for construction materials rises, campaigners say large-scale sand mining has seriously impacted coastal ecosystems and the land itself. MISSING BEACHES "Seven beaches have already disappeared because of the mining," said Louk Pou, a fisherman on Koh Sralau, an island that is a hotspot for sand extraction 300 km (186 miles) west of Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh. "They're just gone and the people can't enjoy them anymore," Pou told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Residents in the village of stilted wooden homes, narrow concrete footpaths and colorful small boats say sand dredging has plunged their once reasonably prosperous fishing community into poverty. Large cranes and barges began appearing in the coastal region of bright green mangrove forests in 2000, Pou said. Before dredgers - licensed to politically connected Cambodian businessmen and often operated by Vietnamese firms - began plunging into the waters to extract sand from the bottom, Pou said he earned more than $50 a day fishing for crab from his small motorboat. Now his daily income is less than $10, and he can no longer afford to send his children to school - complaints echoed by other villagers. "There have been big changes in fish stocks here," said fisherman's wife Neak Sopheap. Dredging machines and sand barges dump their waste directly into the river, fishermen say. They blame "sticky oil", which now covers their nets, for decimating the crab population. "The land has been disappearing and some of the mangrove forests have collapsed," Sopheap said during an interview on the patio of her wooden home jutting into brackish water where a river flows into the sea. Her neighbor, Ek Sophal, nodded in agreement as she mended a plastic fishing net. "Families are borrowing a lot of money and going into debt because there isn't enough fish," Sophal said. "The government needs to stop this dredging." Local media reported on Thursday the government had temporarily halted sand exports by companies that hold valid permits while officials investigate campaigners' allegations. The Ministry of Mines and Energy did not respond to requests for further comment from the Thomson Reuters Foundation. It provided no details of how its investigation into sand mining would be carried out, nor when it would be concluded. Government officials have previously said sand dredging is sustainable and can actually help local ecosystems by preventing landslips. Travel support for this reporting was provided by OpenLandContracts.org, an initiative of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment. (Reporting By Chris Arsenault; editing by Megan Rowling; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)
By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 5 (PTI) Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena will arrive here tomorrow to take part in a global conference on tobacco control which is being hosted by India for the first time.

Sirisena will take part in the Seventh Session of the Conference of Parties (COP7) to World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) to be held from November 7 to 12.

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The COP7, which will lead into a Delhi Declaration for supporting measures for tobacco control, will be inaugurated by Union Health Minister J P Nadda.

"President of Sri Lanka, Maithripala Sirisena, is a special invited speaker at the conference," the Health Ministry had said recently.

Sirisena was Minister of Health of Sri Lanka until November, 2014 when he announced his candidature for the 2015 presidential election.

Sirisena will arrive tomorrow evening after which he will meet President Pranab Mukherjee. He will attend the CoP7 on November 7 and depart in the evening.

It is the first occasion that a COP meeting is being held in India and signals a strong commitment of the government to increase international co-operation and awareness of the WHO FCTC globally and especially in the WHO South-East Asia Region, the Ministry said.

Around 1,500 delegates are expected to participate in the conference from around 180 countries along with other observers in official relations with the WHO FCTC Secretariat in Geneva.

The WHO FCTC is the first global evidence-based public health treaty that recognises the right of all people to the highest standard of health.

The treaty was developed by countries in response to the globalisation of the tobacco epidemic. There are at present 180 Parties to the Convention.

India has been the forerunner in ratification of this public health treaty and was the seventh country to ratify the Convention in 2004. PTI TDS SMN

--- ENDS ---
MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Two Somali soldiers died and five others were injured when a car bomb claimed by Islamist group al Shabaab exploded on Saturday near the parliament in the capital Mogadishu, police said. Al Shabaab has stepped up its campaign of bombings and gun assaults in Mogadishu in recent months ahead of parliamentary elections which are expected to take place within weeks. Col. Abdiqadir Hussein, a police officer, told Reuters the explosion had occurred near the parliament building, while another police officer, Major Hussein Nur, said the car bomb hit a military vehicle at a junction checkpoint. "2 soldiers died and 5 others were injured," Nur said, adding police, military and security forces were on the scene when the attack occurred. Al Shabaab, which once ruled much of Somalia, wants to topple the Western-backed government in Mogadishu and drive out African AMISOM peacekeepers made up of soldiers from Kenya, Djibouti, Uganda, Ethiopia and other African nations The group's radio station Andalus said a suicide car bomb had been driven by "a mujahid" into Sayidka junction "where a convoy of the apostate government security forces were passing." Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaabs military operations spokesman told Reuters the group had killed 17 soldiers and injured more than 30 others in the attack. The group usually gives far lower numbers of casualties on its side and much higher death tolls for the security forces. Witnesses said security forces had sealed off the area and nearby roads were blocked following the bombing. Much of Somalia has been in a state of lawlessness and chaos since the early 1990s following the toppling of military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. A central government backed by the west and AMISOM has tried to restore order and rebuild but it has struggled under relentless attacks by al Shabaab. (Reporting by Abdi Sheikh and Feisal Omar; Writing by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Alexander Smith)


Credit: Jamie McCarthy/Getty

With help from Victoria's Secret and 35 million Instagram followers, model and actress Cara Delevingne has taken control of a negative narrative about her body.

In a piece from Sunday, Britain's The Sun asserted that Delevingne had not been cast in the 2014 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show because she was "bloated." And on Friday Delevingne shared an official letter addressed to her from Victoria's Secret CMO and Ed Razek (also the executive producer of the VS Fashion Show ). In the piece, he defends the 24-year-old and refers to the outlet's assertions as "a complete fabrication."

VIDEO: 10 of Cara Delevingne's Best Instagrams

"Contrary to The Sun's claims, which they never bothered to fact check with me, Victoria's Secret made every effort to have you in the London show," Razek wrote to Delevingne. "As a matter of fact, you were the first person invited, months ahead of everyone else. The alleged casting, where supposedly disparaging comments were made, never happened. There was NO casting. You had already been enthusiastically confirmed."

Razek went on to cite the real reason for the model's absence--there were scheduling conflicts with a film she was shooting at the time.

Delevingne made it clear that she will not tolerate baseless body-shaming, posting a photo of the letter along with this caption directed toward The Sun: "it's shameless to discuss women's bodies just to sell papers #bloated @victoriassecret."

 it's shameless to discuss women's bodies just to sell papers #bloated  @victoriassecret A photo posted by Cara Delevingne (@caradelevingne) on Nov 4, 2016 at 4:16am PDT

As a show of The Victoria's Secret team's sincerity, Razek concluded his letter by inviting Delevingne to walk in the upcoming 2016 show, writing, "If you're free on November 30, please join us in Paris. As always, we'd love to have you. No casting necessary!"

RELATED: Kendall Jenner and Karlie Kloss Will Return to the Catwalk at the 2016 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show

Take that, Delevingne detractors!
Cara Delevingne set the record straight about being told she was too bloated to walk the Victorias Secret Runway

According to an article published by the The Sun, a U.K. news website, Cara Delevingne wasnt invited back to walk in the 2014 Victorias Secret Fashion show because the former model supposedly looked bloated. According to the Sun, Delevingne was called bloated during the 2014 Victorias Secret casting call. The article (originally posted October 30th) has since been taken down.

Delevingne received a letter from Edward Razek, Victorias Secret CMO and executive producer of the annual Fashion Show, disproving the allegations made by the Sun. The model, who walked for the previous two Victorias Secret Fashion Shows, posted Razeks letter on her Instagram.

Her caption reads, Its shameless to discuss womens bodies just to sell papers.

Amen, sister.

it's shameless to discuss women's bodies just to sell papers #bloated  @victoriassecret A photo posted by Cara Delevingne (@caradelevingne) on Nov 4, 2016 at 4:16am PDT

In his letter, Razek explains that in actuality, Delevingne was the first model invited to walk. Victorias Secret made every effort to have you in the London show, he writes.I know, because I was the one making the effort.

Cara Delevingne Victoria's Secret 2013

Delevingne was forced to turn down Razeks invitation due to the fact she was filming Paper Towns at that time. Razek regrets her absence stating, You would have made the show better, as you do anything and everything youre involved in.

Razek concludes his letter with, So allow me to extend the invitation once again. If youre free on November 30, please join us in Paris. As always, wed love to have you. No casting necessary!

Cara Delevingne Victoria's Secret 2013

In 2015, Delevingne revealed to Londons The Times Magazine that she wont be participating in the fashion industry anymore. It made the former model hate her body. In light of these recent false reporting, we totally understand how one could get very sick of the constant scrutinization.

Were not only proud of Cara for sticking up for herself in this recent situation, but also for standing up to the fashion industry by exposing the body shaming that is still alive and well within it. The more exposure the subject of fashion industry body shaming gets, the demand for change will get louder and louder.

The post Cara Delevingne set the record straight about being told she was too bloated to walk the Victorias Secret Runway appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump Reuters/Carlo Allegri

With just days until the presidential election, Republican candidate Donald Trump has garnered considerable attention from US business leaders.

Some, like billionaire Mark Cuban, have spoken out against Trump, while others like Peter Thiel are enthusiastically backing the Republican candidate. Heres a look at 10 of the most prominent business people backing Trump.

Steve Forbes

Steve Forbes Credit: Adam Jeffery/CNBC

Steve Forbes, chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes Media, officially voiced his support for the Republican candidate in a July interview with CNNs Poppy Harlow.

Well, Ive said always that I would endorse the Republican nominee, and hes about to become that, Forbes told Poppy Harlow on New Day.

Forbes admitted that he and Trump do not always see eye to eye on international and domestic policy, but also thinks the opposing party gets it wrong.

I made it very clear I disagree with him on immigration  were not going to deport 11 million people  and on tariffs, he told Nick Gillespie on Reason TV in August. But the key thing is those things that I do disagree withon the Democrats side theyre just as bad.

Carl Icahn

Carl Icahn Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid

Billionaire Carl Icahn has publicly supported Trump since his candidacy was in its infancy, with Trump even offering his the position of Treasury Secretary. In a short video he posted on his website in September called Danger Ahead, Icahn said that America needs a president that could move Congress.

Maybe hes brash, but hes willing to say what he believes, Icahn said in the video. The middle class guy whos making $50,000 a year realizes Im being taken advantage of.

Icahn praised Trump for his plan to end carried interest that allows hedge fund investors to pay a lower tax rate. He also finds his outsider status appealing to voters who he says are fed up with 30 years of no tax change.

You have this movement to a guy like Donald Trump because you want somebody whos not beholden to an establishment, Icahn said.

Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel Credit: Yahoo Finance Video

Pay-pal (PYPL) co-founder and multi-billionaire Peter Thiel gave his case for supporting Trump at a recent speech to the National Press Club.

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No one would suggest that Donald Trump is a humble man, Thiel told the crowd, acknowledging criticism over his language on Twitter and in recently released Access Hollywood video. But the big things hes right about amount to a much-needed dose of humility in our politics.

Thiel also defended Trumps constituency as those unsatisfied with the Obama administration.

Its not a lack of judgment that leads Americans to vote for Trump, he said. Were voting for Trump because we judge the leadership of our country to have failed.

Rupert Murdoch

Jerry Hall and Rupert Murdoch. Credit: Reuters/Neil Hall

It took a while for this media mogul to come around to the Trump Train.

The owner of The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post had originally been a vocal critic of a Trump presidency, tweeting Trump finally loses it when the candidate likened competitor Ben Carson to a child molester and When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country? last summer.

New York Magazines Gabriel Sherman got the scoop in may that Murdoch intends to fully back Trump in the general election against Hillary Clinton.

The New York Post, which once displayed Don Voyage on its front page, issued an endorsement of Trump in April while the Wall Street Journals editorial team has continued to historically abstain.

From his tweets, its clear that Murdochs support has derived from his desire for the Republicans to mend a disjointed party.

If he becomes inevitable, [the] party would be mad not to unify, Murdoch tweeted in March.

John Paulson

Donald Trump and John Paulson Credit: AP Photo/Seth Wenig

Hedge fund titan John Paulson is hedging his bets on a Trump presidency. Trump named Paulson, the founder of investment firm Paulson & Co. who made fortunes betting against subprime mortgages that led to the financial crisis, to his economic policy team in August.

Paulson has shown his support by hosting a large fundraiser for the candidate in New York City last summer. Trump has shown his support for Paulson by investing in his funds as of last July.

Steve Wynn

Steve Wynn. Credit: AP Photo/Vincent Yu

Casino owner and business rival Steve Wynn (WYNN) held back support of Donald Trump for most of his candidacy. In August, Wynn told Bloomberg News that he believed both parties have made incredible promises to the American public without coming up with a payment plan that includes more than taxing the rich.

I yearn for a more adult discussion of these things and when I hear it Ill cast my vote, and support people like that, he said in the interview. In the absence I keep my hands in my pocket, and my wallet too.

Wynn now sings a different tune. Fox Business reported in September that Wynn was serving as an unofficial advisor to the Trump campaign. Later that month, Wynn told ABC-affiliate KTNV that Trump is stable enough to be president.

In a personal conversation about any substantive issue, Donald Trump is focused and intelligent, Wynn said.

Ken Langone

Ken Langone Credit: Kate Rooney/CNBC

Home Depots (HD) co-founder, Kenneth Langone, has also been vocal about his support for Trump, telling CNBCs Closing Bell earlier this month: I think hell do a hell of a good jobat least Im hoping.

Predicting a landslide win for Trump, Langone said that Trump has a good reputation as a business executive.

I think its going to be a romp, he told CNBC. I know people whove done business with him, and theyve had a good experience. You hear all these stories about his business practices. You cant prove it by me.

Brian France

Brian France Credit: AP Photo/Alan Diaz,

When NASCAR CEO and chairman Brian France endorsed Donald Trump last spring, he faced furor from some of his fans.

I was, frankly, very surprised, that my diversity efforts for my whole career would have been called into question, over this, in my view, a routine endorsement, he said in an interview with the Associated Press.

The executive, who admitted to having campaigned with both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in years past, said that he does not see eye to eye with Trump on all issues, but the real estate mogul turned politician has his vote regardless.

Im not supporting him for all of his views, or his immigration views, France said. I happen to be very enamored by the excitement hes brought and the voter turnout that it is creating.

Sheldon Adelson

Sheldon Adelson Credit: Reuters/Mike Segar/File Photo

Disillusioned with Obamas policies over government spending, health care and international deals, chairman and chief executive of Las Vegas Sands Corp (LVS) Sheldon Adelson wrote his endorsement of Trump in The Washington Post in May.

The alternative to Trump being sworn in as the nations 45th president is frightening, he wrote, explaining that his ideal presidential candidate would have a similar experience of being the chief executive over the publics money.

It turns out that is exactly what we are getting in Trump, he wrote. He is a candidate with actual CEO experience, shaped and molded by the commitment and risk of his own money rathera success story that exemplifies the American spirit of determination, commitment to cause and business stewardship.

Jack Welch

Jack Welch Credit: AP Photo/Elise Amendola

The executive chair of Jack Welch Management Institute adamantly told Bloomberg TV in June that he would vote for for just about any human being against Hillary Clinton in this election.

He was hopeful that Trump would continue focus on creating jobs, defeating ISIS and rebuilding America, and spend less time making comments that could land him in hot water.

Obviously I wish he would speak less about things like judges in Indiana, he had said to Bloomberg in June after he came under fire for his comments about a federal judge presiding over a Trump University lawsuit. Anybody could beat Hillary Clinton but were trying not to with these statements.

Please visit this page for more on the 2016 presidential election.
By Alex Dobuzinskis

(Reuters) - U.S. Army soldier Chelsea Manning, who is serving 35 years in prison for passing classified files to WikiLeaks, attempted suicide last month for the second time, her attorney said on Friday.

Manning attempted suicide on Oct. 4, at the start of her stay in solitary confinement for attempting suicide the first time in July, said lawyer Chase Strangio, from the American Civil Liberties Union.

An Army spokeswoman declined to immediately comment.

Manning, 28, who is held at the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, military prison, is a transgender Army private who was born male and revealed after being convicted of espionage that she identifies as a woman.

She tried to take her own life in July after what her lawyers said was the Army's denial of appropriate healthcare.

Strangio in a statement on Friday said authorities have refused to "adequately treat her gender dysphoria" and criticized the sentence of several days in solitary confinement that was imposed on Manning.

"She has repeatedly been punished for trying to survive and now is being repeatedly punished for trying to die," Strangio said.

She has been returned to the general population section of the prison, Strangio said.

Manning has been a focus of a worldwide debate on government secrecy since she provided more than 700,000 documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

Among the files Manning leaked in 2010 was a gunsight video of a U.S. Apache helicopter firing on suspected Iraqi insurgents in 2007, an attack that killed a dozen people, including two Reuters news staffers.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Mary Milliken)
Washington (AFP) - Imprisoned transgender US soldier Chelsea Manning tried to commit suicide last month while serving time in solitary confinement for a first attempt in July, her representatives said Friday.

Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst sentenced to 35 years in prison for handing classified documents to anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, tried to kill herself on October 4, according to a statement she dictated to supporters by phone 11 days later and released by The New York Times.

American Civil Liberties Union rights group attorney Chase Strangio confirmed the attempt on Twitter.

"After her July suicide attempt, I watched her begin to piece her life and spirit back together only to have that shattered by the disciplinary proceedings brought against her and then the unannounced initiation of her term of punishment last month," Strangio said.

Manning's four-page statement, addressed to the inspector general of the intelligence community, indicates she attempted to commit suicide on the evening she was placed in solitary without prior notice.

She was later placed on suicide watch in a special housing area.

Much of the statement described strange events that she said took place on the night of October 10, less than a week after the suicide attempt. These included a simulated attack on the prison and a mock rescue attempt, in which she refused to participate.

The events could not immediately be independently verified.

Manning, 28, who was previously known as Bradley, was convicted in 2013.

Manning ended a five-day hunger strike in September after the Army agreed to provide surgery to treat her gender dysphoria.

She was arrested in 2010 while serving as an intelligence analyst at a US base near Baghdad after sending 700,000 documents -- military war logs and US diplomatic cables -- to WikiLeaks.

Manning has repeatedly decried her treatment at a men's military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

The soldier has been hailed by supporters as a hero for exposing what they see as US abuses in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but denounced by prosecutors as a traitor who put country and comrades at risk.
Bratislava (AFP) - China cancelled a top-level bilateral meeting with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico on Saturday, the government in Bratislava said, in a move seen as a snub after the EU country's president met the Dalai Lama.

Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang met 16 counterparts from across central and eastern Europe in Lativa's capital Riga on Saturday for talks focused mainly on developing trade.

The Chinese leader had been scheduled to hold a bilateral meeting with Fico, who is also steering Slovakia's six-month rotating presidency of the European Union until the end of December.

"The Chinese side cancelled the bilateral meeting with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, scheduled ahead of today's summit," the Slovak government was quoted as saying Saturday by the local SITA newswire.

Leftist Fico moved quickly to mend fences with Beijing, telling reporters in Riga he had invited the Chinese prime minister to visit Slovakia.

"I regret that instead of adding energy to further projects with China, we must repair the damage that has been inflicted," said Fico, quoted by SITA.

He told reporters in October that President Andrej Kiska's move to meet the Dalai Lama had "clearly damaged Slovak-Chinese relations".

Kiska, a millionaire businessman and philanthropist turned liberal politician, met privately with the Tibetan spiritual leader on October 16 in Bratislava.

Beijing accuses the Dalai Lama of supporting separatism and violence in Tibet, a region it has ruled since 1951.

The Dalai Lama fled to India after a failed uprising in 1959, but is still revered by many Tibetans in China and beyond.

The Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry vowed that Beijing would react against Slovakia for the meeting, criticising Kiska for ignoring China's "strong opposition" to the move, which it insisted undermined Slovakia's promise to support the "one-China" policy.

Bilateral trade relations between eurozone member Slovakia and China tallied at more than six billion euros ($6.7 billion) in annual turnover last year, according to the Slovak Economy Ministry.
By Venus Wu HONG KONG (Reuters) - China's top parliamentary panel will discuss Hong Kong's mini-constitution and how it should be interpreted, the Chinese-ruled city government said on Friday, to try to end a crisis over a fledgling independence movement but raising fears of legal interference. The Hong Kong government confirmed that the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress would consider provisions of Hong Kong's Basic Law related to political allegiance this weekend. The move comes as the Hong Kong government tries to disqualify two newly elected legislators promoting independence from China, amid growing speculation that Beijing would intervene. A National People's Congress delegate in Beijing told Hong Kong media the request to intervene came from the standing committee. "I believe the reasons involved national unity and territorial integrity," said Hong Kong delegate Maria Tam. Hong Kong, a former British colony that returned to Chinese rule with wide-ranging autonomy in 1997, was rocked by street protests calling for democracy in 2014 and more recently by calls for independence, an idea that is anathema to Communist Party rulers in Beijing. China's state news agency Xinhua said parliament head Zhang Dejiang, who is one of China's most senior Communist Party officials, and other top NPC members heard a report on Friday about the issue. The meeting proposed that the NPC Standing Committee review a "draft explanation" of the article in Hong Kong's Basic Law governing the swearing-in of the territory's lawmakers and other officials on Monday, it said. The Standing Committee has used such powers before, but many across the political and legal elite of the global financial hub fear any intervention from Beijing will deal a severe blow to Hong Kong's vaunted judicial independence. IRREPARABLE HARM The Hong Kong Bar Association said such intervention would undermine international confidence in Hong Kong's autonomy. "The irreparable harm it will do to Hong Kong far outweighs any purpose it could possibly achieve," it said in a statement on Wednesday. Foreign diplomats say they are watching the situation, stressing the importance of the rule of the law to the city's international reputation. A separate legal system, along with extensive personal freedoms, is part of the "one country, two systems" formula under which Britain handed Hong Kong back to China. The move is likely to pre-empt a court case under way that could disqualify the two pro-independence lawmakers yet to be sworn in to the Legislative Council. Yau Wai-ching, 25, and Baggio Leung, 30, had their swearing-in oaths invalidated last month over language and a banner that was deemed derogatory to China. The Hong Kong government has asked the courts to disqualify the two on the basis that they declined to take their oaths of office and do not comply with the Basic Law. The Hong Kong government statement said the committee would discuss an article in the Basic Law requiring legislators to "swear allegiance to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China". Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said the government was paying close attention to the issue, but refused to elaborate when queried repeatedly at a news conference. "After the interpretation happens, we will comment for sure," he said. Hong Kong's Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma told media he would not comment due to the court case. Hong Kong University law professor Simon Young warned of a troubling disconnect between Beijing, which wanted action, and the Hong Kong government, which preferred to let the citys legal system deal with the issue. During the hearing, a government lawyer said the dispute "can and should be" resolved by the Hong Kong judicial system, echoing the position of Justice Secretary Rimsky Yuen. "We have never been in this situation before ... and my worry is that if they act with too much urgency with an interpretation, there could be flaws that will mean a second and third interpretation would be needed," Young said. It would be difficult for a sweeping constitutional interpretation to deal with all the gray areas and nuances of local laws, which provide for extensive freedoms, he said. New lawmaker Leung, speaking on Wednesday, said Chinese intervention would destroy Hong Kong's autonomy. "Our whole election system cannot be messed around like this, even though it is already handicapped," he said. "If this logic stands, what's the point of having elections? Why don't we just ask Beijing to nominate people for us?" (Reporting by Venus Wu; Additional reporting by John Ruwitch in SHANGHAI; Editing by Greg Torode, Nick Macfie and Jacqueline Wong)
By India Today Web Desk: Travelling to this tropical destination is a dream a lot of us share as travellers. More so, because it is a favourite holiday destination of Bollywood celebrities, and quite naturally, their pictures inspire us to be there even more.

But flying to the place hasn't been that easy. Usually, travellers would first fly to Colombo and then take a flight to Male from there.

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But things are about to change for the good. Mega Maldives Airlines, the largest international airline of the Maldives is all set to launch non-stop flights between New Delhi and Mal, and that too thrice a week.

Also read: From London to Goa: Direct flights will bring more than 300 travellers six times a week



"We are thrilled with the positive response both in India and in Maldives to our new services to India. The resort and hospitality community of Maldives is clearly throwing open their doors to an excited and dynamic Indian market", said George Weinmann, founder and Chief Executive Office, Mega Maldives Airline. "The Maldives is consistently ranked among the world's best tourist destinations. It is also increasingly popular with Indian tourists with over 52,000 guests arriving in 2015, and growing at almost 20 per cent per year in recent years."

Starting November 15, the first non-stop service between the two capital cities will complete the journey in 3 hours 40 minutes (outbound) and 4 hours and 20 minutes (inbound). It will be the fastest service available and will cut travel time between New Delhi and Male by two to eight hours, as compared to other existing flight options.

The flight departs from New Delhi will depart at 8:50 am (Tuesday and Sunday) and 10 am (Friday) and will arrive in Maldives at 12:35 pm. Similarly, the flight will depart Maldives at 3:15 pm (Monday, Thursday, and Saturday), and will reach New Delhi at 7:25 pm. In another option from Male, a flight will depart at 10 am on Fridays and will reach New Delhi at 1:50 pm.



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By Amanda Becker and Emily Stephenson CLEVELAND/HERSHEY, Pa. (Reuters) - Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump battled over the strength of the economy in the final stretch of their race for the White House on Friday, with Clinton praising the latest U.S. jobs report and Trump dismissing it as a fraudulent disaster. With four days left in an often bitter contest that has tightened in the last week, each candidate attacked the other as unfit to be president in a late push for votes in battleground states that could decide the outcome in Tuesday's election. Clinton leads Trump by 5 percentage points, according to a Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll released on Friday, maintaining her advantage in the national survey even as the race tightens in several crucial swing states. In the Oct. 30-Nov. 3 opinion poll, 44 percent of likely voters supported Clinton while 39 percent supported Trump. Clinton wrapped up her day of campaigning with a nighttime concert in Cleveland headlined by rapper Jay Z. He was joined by rappers Big Sean, Chance the Rapper, and J. Cole, and by his wife, popular singer Beyonce, as a surprise guest. "We have unfinished work to do, more barriers to break, and with your help, a glass ceiling to crack once and for all," Clinton said at the concert. At his final rally of the day in Pennsylvania, Trump mocked Clinton for her celebrity supporters. "I am here all by myself. Just me, no guitar, no piano, no nothing," he said. Earlier in the day at a rally in Pittsburgh, Clinton cited the government's latest jobs report as evidence of the economy's strength. The report showed higher wages for workers as well as the creation of 161,000 jobs in October and a dip in the unemployment rate to 4.9 percent from 5 percent. "I believe our economy is poised to really take off and thrive," Clinton told the gathering, after being introduced by billionaire investor Mark Cuban. "When the middle class thrives, America thrives." Trump disputed Clinton's rosy view, telling a crowd in New Hampshire that the jobs report was "an absolute disaster" and was skewed by the large number of people who have stopped looking for jobs and are no longer in the labor market. "Nobody believes the numbers anyway. The numbers they put out are phony," he said, referring to the figures released by the U.S. Labor Department. The economy and the candidates' competing visions for the future could be critical in swaying voters in ailing Rust Belt states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Both candidates made stops in Ohio and Pennsylvania on Friday, with Trump adding a stop in New Hampshire and Clinton adding one in Michigan. Each of those states is key in the state-by-state quest for the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. TIGHTENING POLLS The race has tightened significantly in the past week, as several swing states that are considered must-wins for Trump shifted from favoring Clinton to toss-ups, according to the Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation project. The two candidates are now tied in Florida and North Carolina, and Clintons lead in Michigan has narrowed so much that the state is too close to call. Ohio remains a dead heat, and Clinton has a slight lead in Pennsylvania. Clinton is still the favorite to win Tuesday's election, with a clearer path to winning of the Electoral College. But Trump now has a plausible route to victory, especially if there is a sharp fall in turnout among African-Americans from the levels of the 2012 election. Trump, a New York businessman and former reality TV star, has made a pitch for blue-collar workers who have been angered by free-trade deals and feel abandoned by Washington. But his protectionist rhetoric - he has promised to review trade agreements - appears to be having mixed success in the Rust Belt. Reuters/Ipsos polling from mid-October found a majority in both Ohio and Pennsylvania believe that international trade benefits Americans by keeping the cost of goods low, although they also think it hurts "average Americans" by depressing wages and causing job losses at home. Clinton appears to be leading among labor union households in both states, the poll found. She has a double-digit lead with women in both, while Trump has a more modest lead with men. Among whites, Trump has a 7-point lead over Clinton in Ohio and a 3-point lead over Clinton in Pennsylvania. In the final stretch, the two candidates continued to paint a dire scenario of life in the United States if their opponent captures the White House. Trump said the FBI's fresh examination of emails that may be related to Clinton's use of a private email server for government work while she was secretary of state could lead to "a constitutional crisis." "Aren't we tired of all this stuff?" he asked. "America deserves a government that can go to work on Day One." GET-OUT-THE-VOTE PUSH Clinton suggested the volatile Trump, who has feuded with and insulted a wide array of people and groups including Muslims, Mexican immigrants and women, was too unpredictable to trust. "Think about what it would mean to entrust the nuclear codes to someone with very thin skin who lashes out at anyone who insults him," she said. Clinton has deployed high-profile supporters to campaign for her in the final days of the long race. President Barack Obama praised her work as his first-term top diplomat during an appearance in North Carolina. She was outstanding in her job. She was loyal to me, he said. Obama is trying to energize African-Americans, with whom he is very popular, and young people to turn out for Clinton the way they did for him in 2008 and 2012. Hispanic groups in swing states cranked up their get-out-the-vote efforts for the final stretch of the race on Friday, hoping to push the contest Clinton's way. (Additional reporting by Maurice Tamman and Luciana Lopez in New York, Roberta Rampton in North Carolina; Writing by John Whitesides and Jeff Mason; Editing by Leslie Adler and Mary Milliken)
By Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Clinton Foundation has confirmed it accepted a $1 million gift from Qatar while Hillary Clinton was U.S. secretary of state without informing the State Department, even though she had promised to let the agency review new or significantly increased support from foreign governments.

Qatari officials pledged the money in 2011 to mark the 65th birthday of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton's husband, and sought to meet the former U.S. president in person the following year to present him the check, according to an email from a foundation official to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta. The email, among thousands hacked from Podesta's account, was published last month by WikiLeaks.

Clinton signed an ethics agreement governing her family's globe-straddling foundation in order to become secretary of state in 2009. The agreement was designed to increase transparency to avoid appearances that U.S. foreign policy could be swayed by wealthy donors.

If a new foreign government wished to donate or if an existing foreign-government donor, such as Qatar, wanted to "increase materially" its support of ongoing programs, Clinton promised that the State Department's ethics official would be notified and given a chance to raise any concerns.

Clinton Foundation officials last month declined to confirm the Qatar donation. In response to additional questions, a foundation spokesman, Brian Cookstra, this week said that it accepted the $1 million gift from Qatar, but this did not amount to a "material increase" in the Gulf country's support for the charity. Cookstra declined to say whether Qatari officials received their requested meeting with Bill Clinton.

Officials at Qatar's embassy in Washington and in its Council of Ministers in the capital, Doha, declined to discuss the donation.

The State Department has said it has no record of the foundation submitting the Qatar gift for review, and that it was incumbent on the foundation to notify the department about donations that needed attention. A department spokeswoman did not respond to additional questions about the donation.

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According to the foundation's website, which lists donors in broad categories by cumulative amounts donated, Qatar's government has directly given a total of between $1 million and $5 million over the years.

The Clinton Foundation has said it would no longer accept money from foreign governments if Clinton is elected president and would spin off those programs that are dependent on foreign governments.

"MATERIAL" INCREASE

Foundation officials told Reuters last year that they did not always comply with central provisions of the agreement with President Barack Obama's administration, blaming oversights in some cases.(http://reut.rs/2fkHPCh)

At least eight other countries besides Qatar gave new or increased funding to the foundation, in most cases to fund its health project, without the State Department being informed, according to foundation and agency records. They include Algeria, which gave for the first time in 2010, and the United Kingdom, which nearly tripled its support for the foundation's health project to $11.2 million between 2009 and 2012.

Foundation officials have said some of those donations, including Algeria, were oversights and should have been flagged, while others, such as the UK increase, did not qualify as material increases.

The foundation has declined to describe what sort of increase in funding by a foreign government would have triggered notification of the State Department for review. Cookstra said the agreement was designed to "allow foreign funding for critical Clinton Foundation programs" to continue without disruption.

The State Department said it has no record of being asked by the foundation to review any increases in support by a foreign government.

Asked whether Qatar was funding a specific program at the foundation, Cookstra said the country supported the organization's "overall humanitarian work."

"Qatar continued supporting Clinton Foundation at equal or lower levels" compared with the country's pre-2009 support, he said. He declined to say if Qatar gave any money during the first three years of Clinton's four-year term at the State Department, or what its support before 2009 amounted to.

In another email released by WikiLeaks, a former Clinton Foundation fundraiser said he raised more than $21 million in connection with Bill Clinton's 65th birthday in 2011.

Spokesmen for Hillary Clinton's campaign and Bill Clinton did not respond to emailed questions about the donation.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said that major donors to the Clinton Foundation may have obtained favored access to Clinton's State Department, but has provided little evidence to that effect. Clinton and her staff have dismissed this accusation as a political smear.

Last month, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman ordered the Donald J. Trump Foundation to stop fundraising in the state, saying it had not registered to solicit donations.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Additional reporting by Tom Finn in Doha; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Andrew Hay)
By Aaron Ross KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo's capital Kinshasa fired tear gas on Saturday to disperse opposition supporters seeking to defy a ban on public protests and rally against plans by President Joseph Kabila to stay in power beyond the end of his mandate this year. Police officers in riot gear and armored trucks patrolled the perimeter of the field where opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi was meant to address supporters. Outside Tshisekedi's house in the nearby district of Limete, police fired tear gas to disperse small groups of opposition supporters, witnesses said. "The police shot tear gas at the activists near the entry to Limete," said Bienvenu Bambale, one of several opposition leaders milling about outside Tshisekedi's house, adding that the rally had been canceled so as not to risk violence. The signals of French broadcaster Radio France Internationale and U.N.-funded Radio Okapi had been disabled on Saturday morning, as is often the case when the opposition protests. Kabila, who succeeded his assassinated father in 2001 and went on to win disputed elections in 2006 and 2011, is required by constitutional term limits to step down on December 19. But his ruling coalition and part of the opposition agreed last month to delay a presidential vote until April 2018, citing a lack of financing and logistical problems registering millions of voters. The main opposition bloc, however, has rejected the accord and more than 50 people died in anti-government street protests in September. Kinshasa's provincial governor banned all political demonstrations in the aftermath of September's violence and refused to be swayed by requests from the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights this week that peaceful protests be allowed. Police spokesman Pierre Mwanamputu said on Saturday that police were dispersing all gatherings of more than 10 people but that the situation remained mostly calm. While the rally's suppression marked a setback for an opposition that has generally struggled to mobilize large numbers in the streets, its leaders vowed new efforts to raise pressure on Kabila to quit power. "On December 19, we will call all Congolese to chase Kabila from his palace," said opposition member Bambale. International donors fear that the political impasse could reignite chaos in the Central African giant, where millions died in regional conflicts between 1998 and 2003 and which has never experienced a peaceful transfer of power. In response, the United States has imposed financial sanctions against three generals for alleged human rights violations and the European Union is considering similar measures. (Editing by Joe Bavier and Stephen Powell)
TOKYO, Nov 5 (Reuters) - This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of the Toyota Corolla, one of the world's best-selling cars.

Since the first model went on sale in Japan on Nov. 5, 1966, some 44.3 million Corollas have been sold globally through the end of September, including the Corolla Fielder station wagon and other variants, the Japanese automaker says.

Here are some milestones along the way and where it stands today.

CAR FOR THE MASSES

In the late 1950s, as Japan's economy recovered from World War Two, automakers aimed to produce an affordable car for the average family, most of whom didn't have a vehicle.

Toyota Motor Corp first came out with the Publica, which wasn't very well received. In 1966, it introduced the sportier two-door Corolla with a jaw-dropping plan: to build 30,000 of them a month at a time when Toyota's total monthly production was 50,000 vehicles.

The car sold well as Japanese consumers aspired to get the "3 C's" - color TVs, cars and coolers (air conditioners). Three years after the launch, the Corolla became the country's top-selling car and helped usher in an age of motorisation in Japan.

"BETTER THAN AVERAGE"

The man in charge of developing the original Corolla, Tatsuo Hasegawa, had designed aircraft during the war, and incorporated some aircraft aerodynamics into the new car.

His concept for the Corolla was "80-plus-points" - in short, a car with a more-than-passing grade on several counts that gave customers the feel of a better-than-average product.

For the first-generation Corolla, the going-the-extra-mile "add-on" was its sportiness, despite being a family car. Hasegawa gave the car a 4-speed manual transmission operated by a gearshift on the floor, instead of the more typical 3-speed, column shifter at the time.

The Corolla also had a 1,100cc engine, a bit larger than that of its rival, the Nissan Sunny.

Toyota has stuck to its tradition of introducing new technologies to the masses with each remodelling of the Corolla. Now in its 11th generation in Japan, the car is made in 13 countries around the world and sold in more than 150 countries.

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NO LONGER KING

After 33 straight years as Japan's top-selling model, the Corolla lost the crown in Japan to rival Honda Motor's Fit hatchback in 2002.

It is now also outsold by the Toyota Aqua and Prius hybrid-only models as domestic customers opt for more fuel-efficient cars.

The outlook at home is bleak, with the overall car market due to shrink further along with the population. Domestic sales of the Corolla are now about a quarter of their peak of around 400,000 in 1973. But the Corolla is still a cash cow in the United States, where it is the No.2 best-selling passenger car model so far this year, behind only the Toyota Camry.

(Reporting and writing by Malcolm Foster and Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
The cost to a U.S. company of a single lost or stolen digital record containing sensitive or confidential information reached $221 this year, up 2% year over year. The average total cost to a company from a data breach rose 7% to $7.01 million.

On average, a single breach involved nearly 30,000 records, in a range of 5,125 to 101,520.

The research was conducted by the Ponemon Institute and was sponsored by IBM. The data are based on information from 64 U.S. companies, and most of the breaches reported in this year's study occurred in 2015. The study did not include breaches involving more than 100,000 records because "they are not indicative of data breaches incurred by most organizations" and would have artificially skewed the results.

ALSO READ: America's Richest (and Poorest) States

The Ponemon/IBM study also looked at the cost of data breaches globally. A total of 383 companies from 12 countries (including the 64 U.S.-based companies) participated. The global average cost of a data breach rose to $4 million, and the average cost for each lost or stolen record reached $158.

While the cost of a single record's loss or theft is highest in the United States ($221), Germany ($213) and Canada ($211) are not far behind. The year-over-year increase in the cost of losing a record was $22 in Canada and Belize, the largest increase among the 12 countries included in the study. Costs dropped slightly in the United Kingdom (from $163 to $159) and Australia (from $133 to $131).

ALSO READ: Pentagon to Lockheed: Take It or Leave It

The total average cost of a data breach was highest in the United States at $7.01 million. In Germany, the total reached $5.01 million, just ahead of Canada with $4.98 million. France (total cost of $4.72 million) and the Arabian cluster of Saudi Arabia and the UAE ($4.61 million) round out the top five.

The 2016 reports are available at the IBM Security website.

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A Pennsylvania father whose girlfriend allegedly killed their son and threatened their daughter  and sent him taunting text messages as she did both  was charged in the case himself for allegedly not seeking help despite knowing his children were in danger, PEOPLE confirms.

Andre Price, Jr., 23, was charged with two counts of felony endangering the welfare of a child, according to a news release from police in Allegheny County, Pennyslvania.

Price is the father of 17-month Andre Price III, who was allegedly smothered to death by his mom, 21-year-old Christian Clark, according to a criminal complaint obtained by PEOPLE. Clark allegedly also attempted to kill the couples 2-year-old daughter.

Police allege that for more than two hours, Clark threatened to kill the children and sent mobile photos and videos of the children in distress to Price, but that Price made no efforts to intervene or sent first responders, according to the news release.

Clark allegedly sent texts to Price that said, Im killing them and Ima ruin both our lives.

Police said Clark believed Price was cheating on her and lying to her. At one point, she allegedly blamed her sons death on Price, texting: Andre is dead cus daddy couldnt tell the truth.

Police allege that one of the videos Clark sent showed their sons lifeless body, face-down on a bed. In the clip, Clark could allegedly be heard saying, Ah, look  Angel is still alive and sweating. Your son on the other hand is not even breathing.

According to the complaint, a second video featured both children, with the daughter crying as Clark said, First of all, she is clearly fine, because watch  see she is not dead.

The criminal complaint alleges that Clark was seen in the video grabbing her daughters head. Him on the other hand, he doesnt budge, Clark allegedly said in the clip, lifting up her sons limp head, according to police. So you might want to call the ambulance.

 Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.

According to the complaint, Clark later apologized, texting, Sorry I did this. I stg I didnt mean to.

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Soon after that last text was sent, Clark called 911, and police arrived at her McKeesport, Pennsylvania home to find her son unresponsive. Paramedics transported him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Clarks daughter was treated at an area hospital but suffered only minor injuries.

The criminal complaint alleges Clark told police she had smothered the boy by holding him face-down on the air mattress for about a minute.

Clark is being held without bail in the Allegheny County jail on charges on criminal homicide and attempted homicide. A preliminary hearing in the case has been scheduled for Nov. 16.

Price has not entered a plea and his preliminary hearing has not been scheduled yet, a police spokesman tells PEOPLE.

It was unclear if Clark or Price have retained attorneys.




UPDATED 6:57 p.m. ET:

A representative for Dave Chappelle commented to Variety about the original reports regarding his comedy show on Friday night.

Dave is disgusted by the tone of the election and especially by the idea that his comedy would be misconstrued to defend [Donald T]rump. His comedy show blasted both candidates, the rep said, adding, By the way, he voted for Hillary [Clinton].

ORIGINAL: Dave Chappelle shared his opinions about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during a surprise show on Friday night in New York. The comedian will make his Saturday Night Live hosting debut on Nov. 12  the first episode post-election Tuesday.

According to the Observer, Chappelle slammed the media for twisting Donald Trumps words in the leaked 2005 Access Hollywood tape in which Trump tells Billy Bush, When youre a star, they let you do it. You can do anything, and the now-famous line, Grab em by the py.

What I heard on that tape was gross, the Observer reported Chappelle saying. But the way I got to hear it was even more gross. You know that came directly from Hillary.

Chappelle added that, to him, Trumps comments could not be classified as sexual assault, according to the Observer, which is published by Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner, husband to Ivanka Trump.

Sexual assault? It wasnt. He said, And when youre a star, they let you do it. That phrase implies consent. I just dont like the way the media twisted that whole thing. Nobody questioned it, Chappelle said.

The comedian said that he had already voted for Clinton in Ohio, but did not hold back expressing his doubts.

Shes going to be on a coin someday. And her behavior has not been coin-worthy, he said. Shes not right and we all know shes not right.

The comedian also joked about his SNL hosting duties.

You know theres a pool going on whether or not I show up. I got $100,000 that says I wont.

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Katy Perry, Performing for Clinton, Answers Critics: 'I Am Using My Voice'

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Michael Moore: Bernie Sanders Would Have Easily Defeated Donald Trump 'Without the Baggage'
By PTI: From Lalit K Jha

Fayetteville (US), Nov 5 (PTI) President Barack Obama appeared to be critical of FBI over disclosure about the bureaus investigation into the private email server used by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

"When you are investigating a case, then, unless you have unearthed something, you need to just do your job. If there are things that you think are worth presenting, then you present them to a prosecutor," Obama told MSNBC in an interview.

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Obama, however, gave a clean chit to the FBI Director Jim Comey.

"Jim Comey is a good man. I do not believe he was trying to influence election one way or the other. I think, he is a serious public servant. He wants to do right thing. I think, the overwhelming majority of FBI feel the sake. The overwhelming majority of people in the Justice Department feel the same way," he said.

Last week, Comey sent a vague letter to Congress notifying lawmakers that the bureau had unearthed emails that appear "pertinent" to its investigation into Clintons server. The news has shaken her campaign, with rival Donald Trump saying its evidence of serious wrongdoing.

"What, I have said that all of us think about maintaining these norms. If there are things that you think are worth presenting, then you present them to a prosecutor. The prosecutor then makes a judgment. The prosecutor can make a decision either to file a charge or not to file a charge," he said.

"But we give enormous power to our law enforcement officials to keep us safe, to do a great job, to protect us. But we also put these norms and rules in place, some of them written, some of them unwritten, to make sure that any of us are not suddenly affected by innuendo or rumors. That?s true for an ordinary citizen and is true for somebody who is running for president of the US," Obama said.

He also alleged that Trump lacks "basic standard" of decency and reiterated that he is unfit to be president of the country.

"If you think that Ive done a good job, if you believe that Michelle has done a good job, everything that weve done over the last eight years will be reversed with a Trump presidency. And everything will be sustained and built on with a Hillary Clinton presidency," Obama warned in the interview.

Obama yesterday addressed two rallies in North Carolina, a key battle ground State.

"I think a lot of people still cant believe that Donald Trump would be elected president. There may be a complacency setting in," he said. PTI LKJ PMS

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Delhi state was compared to a "gas chamber" Saturday by its chief minister, as 1,800 schools were shut following one of the city's worst-ever pollution spells.

Thick smog has blanketed the capital for days, with local and central authorities meeting to resolve the crisis.

"The pollution has gone up so much in the last 15-20 days that it is like a gas chamber outside," Delhi state chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said.

He said fireworks during the recent Diwali Hindu festival only "marginally added" to the pollution levels, which are fuelled by vehicles and trash burning.

He said it was not possible to keep the schools closed for longer than a day.

"The primary reason for the current spell is crop burning in our neighbouring states," Kejriwal added.

India's environment minister Anil Madhav Dave is expected to meet the heads of Delhi's neighbouring states next week.

"Exchanged views on taking emergency measures to curb pollution. Advised Delhi govt to implement all possible measures to improve situation," Dave said on Twitter.

New Delhi's air quality has steadily worsened over the years, a result of rapid urbanisation that brings pollution from diesel engines, coal-fired power plants and industrial emissions.

It also suffers from atmospheric dust, the burning of crop stubble in farms around the city and pollution from open fires lit by the urban poor to keep warm in winter or to cook food.

The reading for pollutants in the atmosphere breached the 1,000 microgram mark for the first time in one neighbourhood in south Delhi -- 10 times the World Health Organisations recommended level -- earlier this week.

A new study by UNICEF says some 300 million children live with outdoor air so polluted it can cause serious physical damage, with the situation most acute in South Asia.
By Lizbeth Diaz MOLCAXAC, Mexico (Reuters) - In the small southern market town of Molcaxac, 650 miles (1050 km) from the U.S. border, Alicia Villa is praying to God that Republican candidate Donald Trump does not become the next president of the United States. Over the past two decades, as Mexico's rural economy stalled, Molcaxac and hundreds of towns like it became dependent on dollars sent by relatives who made the perilous journey north, a lifeline she fears will be cut by a Trump White House. Villa, 65, said funds sent by a daughter working illegally as a house cleaner in Sacramento, California have supported her family for 12 years because the work she does as receptionist in Molcaxac does not pay enough to make ends meet. "I am Catholic and I have asked God and the Virgin of Asuncion that he lose," Villa said of Trump, placing her head in her hands and intoning a prayer in the square of the deeply religious hill town dominated by a striking blue church. Inside, the church was adorned with notes thanking migrant relatives for money sent to help build homes, start businesses and pay for marriages in the town surrounded by rivers, mountains and meadows in the state of Puebla. "Trump says he will kick out everyone who doesn't have papers and we really need them to be there," said Villa, adding that she had not seen some family members living in the United States in 20 years. Trump, a real-estate tycoon who has narrowed the gap with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton ahead of next Tuesday's vote, has vowed to make it harder for illegal immigrants to live and work in the United States, to increase deportations and to limit remittances unless Mexico pays billions for a wall along the nearly 2,000-mile (3,200-km) U.S.-Mexico border. Such policies would take a heavy toll in Molcaxac, where local authorities say more than 70 percent of the population lives on remittances sent home by immigrants to the United States, many of them undocumented. "Our town has improved a lot since our people started to leave for the United States," said stonemason Esteban Marquez, whose workshop was partly funded by remittances from one of his children. 'NOTHING FOR THEM' HERE Mexico has more than 5 million citizens living without regular papers in the United States, or about half of the entire undocumented population. Those men and women send back a large chunk of Mexico's foreign exchange earnings, contributing more than $20 billion in remittances wired this year through September. According to Mexico's Central Bank, Puebla received $1 billion in remittances in the same period, making it the fifth biggest recipient among Mexican states. So many people from Puebla live in the New York area that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Trump supporter, visited the state in 2014. Couriers have grown rich transporting salsas and fresh cheese to homesick natives up north. The money has transformed places like Molcaxac, a picturesque town dotted with well-built homes attesting to the flow of dollars. It is not just the potential loss of income Trump could spark that worries Molcaxac locals. The lack of employment in rural Mexico is one of the main reasons drug gangs find it easy to recruit among young people and those deported from the United States, they say. "Here in Mexico, the truth is there is nothing for them," said stonemason Marquez. "The people who stay need to survive, and since there is no work, they get pulled into crime." 'VOTE FOR THE LADY' Opinion polls in the run-up to the election suggest that Villa's prayers stand a good chance of being answered, with most putting Clinton consistently ahead of her Republican rival. But the polls also show her losing ground in the final stretch. Real Clear Politics, which averages the results of most major polls, shows Clinton's advantage had declined from 4.6 percentage points to 1.7 points over the past week. Even those of more modest means in Molcaxac are on edge with America's election. "Only God knows if they are going to be able to stay there," said Serafina Martinez, who at 70 still works in the fields. She worries it would be hard to survive without the little her son in California sends when he can. "I would like him to keep helping us with pennies," said Martinez, her curved back laden with firewood and groceries. Still, the uncertainty has also helped locals in an unexpected way: the Mexican peso's value plunges every time Trump advances, making the dollar remittances stretch further. But there is no doubt in the minds of Molcaxac's townspeople that they would rather see Clinton in the White House. Clinton has proposed comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship, and says she will end detention of immigrant families. "I think she will win, and that gives us hope that our relatives will be able to regularize (their papers)," said Teresa Amador, selling flowers in the main market. "I have a son who was born there, and he is going to vote for the lady." (Writing by Natalie Schachar; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Mary Milliken)
By Enrico Dela Cruz MANILA (Reuters) - A mayor on Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's list of top drugs suspects was killed during a shootout at a prison on Saturday, police said, in the latest high-profile killing in his bloody war on narcotics. Rolando Espinosa, mayor of Albuera town in central Leyte province, turned himself in to the national police chief in August after Duterte asked him and his son, Kerwin, to surrender over their involvement in the drug trade. Espinosa was later allowed to go home but on Oct. 5 was arrested on charges of illegal possession of drugs and firearms. He is the second local government executive on Duterte's so-called "narco-list" killed during police operations. The shootout took place after Espinosa and inmate Raul Yap fired at a team from the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group who was on a mission to serve a search warrant against the detainees for firearms and illegal drugs, police said. "As a matter of procedure, this incident will undergo investigation to establish the facts and circumstances surrounding the incident," Eastern Visayas Regional Police Chief Superintendent Elmer Beltejar said. Some lawmakers expressed alarm over the killing of Espinosa inside his detention cell, with the chairman of the Senate committee on justice and human rights, Senator Richard Gordon, describing it as a "slap in the face" of the country's criminal justice system. Gordon said he may file a resolution to look into such drug-related killings, while Senator Panfilo Lacson was quoted by local media as saying that Espinosa's death was "a clear case of EJK (extrajudicial killing)." "There's got to be a lot of questions that must be answered," Gordon said in an interview with news channel ANC. Police said they recovered a .45 caliber pistol and a .38 Super pistol from the cells of Yap and Espinosa. A small sachet containing suspected methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia were also found inside Espinosa's cell, police said. The presidential palace described Espinosa's death as "unfortunate" and said an investigation was ongoing. Espinosa had publicly denied any part in the drug trade but said his son was peddling "shabu" (methamphetamine), which he gets from a jailed Chinese drug trader. Espinosa's son, Kerwin, was arrested by Abu Dhabi police last month, according to Philippine National Police chief Director General Ronald dela Rosa. In October, Samsudin Dimaukom, a powerful mayor in Duterte's troubled home province of Mindanao, was also killed along with nine of his guards in a shootout, according to police. More than 2,300 people have been killed in police operations or by suspected vigilantes in connection with the anti-narcotics campaign since Duterte took office on June 30. Duterte said on Friday his war on drugs had cut back the supply to "very low" levels and thanked China for supporting his crackdown, but swore repeatedly at ally the United States for criticizing it. (Reporting by Enrico dela Cruz; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Stephen Powell)
Donald Trump

Donald Trump, during a campaign rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on Friday night, gave a startlingly different account of how President Barack Obama handled a protester earlier in the day.

Obama was in Fayetteville, North Carolina, rallying voters for Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton. At one point, a protester held up a Trump sign from among the crowd, and the crowd lost it, yelling and booing at the man.

The incident generated headlines not because of what the protester did, but because of how Obama reined in the crowd:

"First of all, we live in a country that respects free speech, second of all it looks like he may have served in our military, and we've got to respect that. Third of all, he was elderly, and we've got to respect our elders."

Here's how Trump framed the incident to his own audience hours later:

"He was talking to the protester, screaming at him, really screaming at him. By the way, if I spoke the way Obama spoke to that protester, they would say, 'He became unhinged!' ... And he spent so much time screaming at this protester and frankly, it was a disgrace."

During Obama's event in North Carolina, he struggled to refocus the crowd, but ultimately implored them with a familiar call to action: "Don't boo, vote."

The Clinton campaign has deployed the president to Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, and Pennsylvania  key battleground states for the Democratic presidential nominee  hoping Obama's high popularity would boost voter turnout.

NOW WATCH: 'HOLD UP!': Watch Obama defend a Trump protester and scold the crowd at a Clinton rally

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Perth (Australia) (AFP) - Centuries to Dean Elgar and JP Duminy guided South Africa into a commanding position on the third day of the opening Test against Australia in Perth Saturday.

At stumps on the third day the visitors were 390 for six in their second innings, an overall lead of 388 with four wickets in hand although the injured Dale Steyn is not expected to bat.

Vernon Philander was on 23 and a subdued Quinton de Kock was 16, the latter having been given a life on one when Adam Voges grassed a tough chance from the bowling of Mitchell Starc.

Duminy, who made 141, said he and Elgar initially set themselves to simply occupy time at the crease and added that the visitors would again look to keep Australia in the field for as long as possible on day four.

He suggested an Australian run chase would be complicated by the fact the pitch was starting to become more difficult to bat on.

"There is still a lot of work to be done in this Test match and we won't have Dale Steyn in the fourth innings," he said.

"The pitch deterioration, the cracks have definitely opened up a bit more and can play in favour.

"We have to put the ball in the right areas, but we saw in the last hour how much the ball did."

- Australia wilts in heat -

Australian captain Stephen Smith was satisfied with the application of his bowlers on day three, but conceded his side was paying for its batting frailties 24 hours earlier.

However, he believed his side could chase down a large total.

"We let ourselves down yesterday, to get only two runs in front was not good enough, the batters didn't do the job," he said.

"But there is no reason why we can't chase a total down.

"I believe anything's chaseable."

The day belonged to Duminy and Elgar, who came together when the Proteas lost two early second innings wickets late on the second day.

The pair put on 250 for the third wicket as they repelled the Australian attack for most of the day.

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Both batsmen made their Test debuts at the WACA Ground and the pair each notched their fifth Test centuries between lunch and tea.

Duminy eventually fell to end the partnership, chasing a wide ball from Peter Siddle (2-47) and getting a fine edge, being given out on a decision review after umpire Aleem Dar had turned down the Australian appeal.

The left-hander had faced 225 balls, hitting 20 fours and one six.

Elgar's 127 buried the memories of his horror Test debut in Perth, when he faced just 22 balls and was dismissed for a pair on debut in 2012.

The opener faced 316 balls and batted for 471 minutes, eventually falling to a tired attempt to drive against Josh Hazlewood (2-97), slicing a catch to Starc in gully.

Duminy and Elgar had few problems with an Australian attack which appeared to wilt in the heat, with first innings destroyer Starc struggling with his control and looking little like the player who claimed four wickets on the opening day.

Starc, in his first Test since a nasty leg injury and coming off a limited preparation, bowled a host of wayward deliveries and grew increasingly frustrated as the day wore on.

His woes were compounded when he misjudged a high ball at mid-on when Elgar was 81 and failed to get a hand to the difficult chance.

The South Africans will be one bowler down in the Australian second innings, with champion quick Steyn expected to be out for at least six months due to a shoulder problem which is likely to require surgery.

Australia will have to produce its greatest ever fourth innings run chase at the ground to win the match, but the home team will take heart from the 2008 Test between the two sides, when South Africa chased down 414 on the final day.

That South Africa could be in such a strong position was remarkable given they appeared to be all but out of the match a day earlier.

After winning the toss and being dismissed for 242, the South Africans appeared certain to be facing a massive first innings deficit when Australia cruised to 158 for none before lunch on day two, but the home side then collapsed in stunning fashion to make just 244 as the match turned on its head.
By Brijesh Pandey: It was a poignant scene from the stage at the Janeshwar Mishra park in Lucknow. When Lalu Yadav hugged both Akhilesh and Shivpal Yadav and the SP leaders smiled and waved a sword gifted to them by their supporters, the RJD chief asked the UP CM to touch his uncle's feet and seek his blessings. Akhilesh did as he was asked.

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But lakhs of cadres and political observers looking for any signs of thaw between the two Samajwadi Party leaders were left completely disappointed. How deep the faultlines are was clearly visible at the Silver Jubilee celebrations of the Samajwadi Party at the Janeshwar Mishra Park in Lucknow.

SHIVPAL REBUKES MINISTER JAVED ABDI

Shivpal Yadav first rebuked Minister Javed Abdi, who was singing praises of CM Akhilesh Yadav. Shivpal almost pushed Abdi away and warned the supporters raising slogans in favour of Akhilesh to not break the discipline of the party.

Also read: Akhilesh returns Shivpal's taunt: Some people will listen but after destroying Samajwadi Party



When Shivpal Yadav stood up to welcome the guests on the stage of the Samajwadi Party function in Janeshwar Park, nobody had thought he would actually welcome Akhilesh. But that is exactly what he did. But an emotional Shivpal was also heard hitting out at the Uttar Pradesh CM and other "schemers" within the party, whom he seemed to blame for the infighting in SP.

Shivpal told Akhilesh, "Whatever people say or irrespective of how many times you sack me, you can't deny the fact that I have cooperated so much with you. Whatever work you have entrusted me with has been performed well. Shivpal added, "You can use me as much as you can. If you want my blood, I will give it to you but won't say a word". He listed out the kind of work done by the PWD, Irriigation department and other ministries under him and said that the work done in these departments was exceptional. Hitting out at the bureaucratic red tapism, Shivpal said that there were bureaucrats who created impediments in the work being done by him. He added that Akhilesh could sack him as many times as he wanted, but he won't utter a word. Shivpal made it clear that his contribution to the party into making it what it was today could not be ignored.

Putting to rest the speculation that he was harbouring intentions of becoming the chief minister of UP, Shivpal said emphatically that he would never become CM as he had no intention of becoming the same. "I have already made that clear", he added.

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SOME TRYING TO CREATE RIFT BETWEEN US, SHIVPAL TELLS AKHILESH



Without naming Ramgopal, Shivpal reminded Akhilesh that there were some people who were trying to create a rift between them. Directly referring to Akhilesh, he said, "I know that you felt bad when I said that some people get everything because of their luck, some get it because of their hard work, some never get it despite working hard for their entire lives while some inherit it. There are a few psychophants who are enjoying in the government, whereas several Lohiyawadis, who have given their life for the party, have been sidelined.

Also read: SP silver jubilee: I don't want to become CM, you can insult me, Shivpal tells Akhilesh



Referring to the treatment meted out to him, Shivpal said that while he could tolerate any insult meted out to him, he would not tolerate any insult directed towards Mulayam Singh Yadav.

He said, "If anybody doesn't adhere to the party discipline, he has no place in the party. Nobody gets bigger just by having a bigger post. Gandhiji had no post, but he was such a great man. I am willing to work without any post and will follow the orders of Netaji without fail."

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This speech of Shivpal has made it clear that despite the efforts of several quarters of the SP and other parties, no rapprochement is in sight between Chacha and Bhatija.



--- ENDS ---
CAIRO (Reuters) - An Egyptian judge who tried former president Mohamed Mursi in 2015 survived an assassination attempt on Friday when a parked car exploded as his vehicle drove by, the Interior Ministry said. The target was Judge Ahmed Aboul Fotouh, who presides over a felony court in a district of Cairo. The blast caused no injuries, the ministry said in a statement. Judges, policemen and other senior officials have increasingly been targeted by radical Islamists angered by the hefty prison sentences imposed on members of the now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. A newly-emerged militant group, the Hasam Movement, claimed responsibility for Friday's bombing, which occurred in the eastern Cairo neighbourhood of Nasr City. "The Hasam Movement's central bombing squad targeted the regime's dog and one of hell's judges Ahmed Aboul Fotouh using a car bomb near his house," the group said in a statement. "To every unjust judge you still have a chance to think it through and leave this dirty swamp that is unfairly referred to as the judiciary." Aboul Fotouh was one of three judges on a panel that in April 2015 sentenced Mursi, also a senior official in the Brotherhood, to 20 years in jail after finding him guilty of inciting violence that led to the death of 10 people in clashes with security forces in December 2012. The Brotherhood, which says it is a peaceful organisation, won Egypt's first free elections after the 2011 uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule. But Mursi, its presidential candidate, was himself deposed after mass protests against his rule and replaced in 2013 by the then-head of the armed forces who is now the president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Sisi has since overseen a crackdown on the opposition in which hundreds of Brotherhood supporters have been killed and thousands, including Mursi, jailed or sentenced to death. Hasam - an acronym in Arabic for the Forearms of Egypt Movement that doubles as the word for decisiveness - has claimed seven attacks since July, including the one on Friday. It says it is responsible for an attempt to assassinate of a senior prosecutor with a car bomb and an attempt to gun down Egypt's former top Muslim cleric. The group also killed a senior police chief earlier this year. The group's statements mix Islamist rhetoric with anti-government slogans, setting it apart from jihadist groups such as Islamic State, which is leading an Islamist insurgency in North Sinai and has killed hundreds of soldiers and police. The Interior Ministry said on Friday it had arrested members of Hasam and another new militant group, along with weapons, explosives and evidence that the organisations had been set up by the Muslim Brotherhood. There was no immediate comment from the Brotherhood. [nL8N1D55RI] (Reporting by Mohamed el Sherif; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - An El Salvador judge on Saturday ordered the seizure of assets owned by ex-President Antonio Saca and six of his former officials as they face charges of stealing some $246 million of public funds, the attorney general's office said. Judge Nelly Pozas ruled that there was enough evidence proving the involvement of the accused to embargo properties in their names, prosecutor Jorge Cortez said. The judge also decided to keep all seven men in pre-trial detention. Antonio Saca, 51, who was captured last week during one of his sons weddings, is charged with embezzlement, illegal groupings and money laundering. Saca, who owns radio stations, was president of the Central American country from 2004 to 2009 with the Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena) party. "I believe I am totally innocent and we came to this process...to disprove the accusations," Saca said in court on Friday. El Salvador, which has refused to set up an international impunity commission as Guatemala did, has begun a crusade against corruption, but only in past administrations. The former leftist president Mauricio Funes is currently under political asylum in Nicaragua. (Reporting by Nelson Renteria; Writing by Christine Murray, Editing by Franklin Paul)
Petrol and diesel prices have been hiked by 89 paise and 86 paise per litre respectively. The hike will be effective from midnight tonight.

By Press Trust of India: Petrol price today was raised by 89 paise per litre, the sixth increase in rates since September, and diesel by 86 paise a litre, the third increase in a month. The price hike announced by Indian Oil Corp (IOC) is excluding local sales tax or VAT and will be effective from midnight tonight.

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After including VAT, petrol in Delhi will cost Rs 67.62 a litre from midnight tonight, up Rs 1.17 from Rs 66.45 per litre currently. Similarly, diesel will cost Rs 56.41 a litre after including VAT in Delhi, up Rs 1.03 as compared to Rs 55.38 at present.

This is the sixth increase in petrol price since September 1, the last hike being on October 16 by Rs 1.73 a litre. The five previous hikes had totalled to Rs 6.36 a litre and after including todays increase, the price of petrol has gone up by Rs 7.53 per litre in just over two months. In case of diesel this is the third price increase in a month, the previous being of Rs 2.77 per litre on October 16.

The three price increases total to Rs 3.90 a litre. "The current level of international product prices of petrol and diesel and rupee-US dollar exchange rate warrant increase in selling price of petrol and diesel, the impact of which is being passed on to the consumers with this price revision," IOC said in a statement. IOC said the movement of prices in the international oil market and INR-USD exchange rate shall continue to be monitored closely and developing trends of the market will be reflected in future price changes.

Also read: Petrol price hiked by Rs 3.38, diesel by Rs 2.67 per litre in Delhi

--- ENDS ---
Elon Musk

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he doesn't think Republican candidate Donald Trump is the right person to lead the United States of America.

"I feel a bit stronger that he is probably not the right guy. He doesn't seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States," Musk said during a CNBC interview covering a range of topics on Friday.

Musk said Hillary Clinton's economic and environmental policies are the "right ones," but he added "I don't think is our finest hour in democracy in general."

However, when asked if political risk was a threat to Tesla's business model, Musk said he doesn't expect much impact.

"I don't think it's very high, it's not going to make too much of a difference honestly," he said.

However, that may not be the case for all carmakers making electric cars.

On Thursday, the Obama Administration designated 48 interstates as EV corridors where there will eventually be charging stations every 50 miles. A Trump presidency, though, could threaten the implementation of that initiative meaning that the long-term adoption of electric vehicles could suffer because of a lack of infrastructure.

Tesla, though, won't have this problem because it already has its own charging infrastructure, Musk said.

"Tesla already has a nationwide charging network, so it wouldn't make any difference to Tesla customers," Musk said. "You can go anywhere in the United States on Tesla's charging network right now."

NOW WATCH: The Apple of China just unveiled a phone thats more powerful and better looking than the iPhone





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Emilia Clarkes new movie may be out in 2017 and the news is keeping us warm through the winter

Emilia Clarke maybe the Mother of Dragons, but shes got a big new movie coming out in 2017! Guess were just going to have to forget shes the Khaleesi for a little while.

The new movie, A Voice From The Stone, was just recently bought by Momentum Pictures. The gothic mystery is based on a novel by Italian author, Silvio Raffo. Clarke plays a nurse who arrives at a foreboding castle in Tuscany and must care for the heir to the place, who cant speak. As she cares for her patient, Jakob, played by Edward Dring, she gets sucked into the mystery the castle offers.

However, the boys silence might not be entirely of his own doing. Variety reports that the boy, seems to be under the spell of a malevolent force trapped within the stone walls.

According to Deadline, the supernatural thriller also stars Caterina Murino, Remo Girone, and Lisa Gastoni. It also has truly epic surroundings, being filmed almost exclusively in Italy. Sounds like a fantastic gothic spooky story, and we cant wait.

We guess Emilia Clarke needed to take a break from being scary to take a turn at getting scared!

Ok, were hyped for an Emilia Clarke new movie, but what about Game of Thrones?

Although the new movie is due for release in the first part of 2017, Daenerys hasnt forgot that winter is here. Currently filming season 7, the entire Game of Thrones set has been beleaguered with rumors and spoilers.

@thechemicalbrothers know how to get this cast on its FEET... bringing that badass beat to Bilbao baby. All the love to @nathalieemmanuel my girl never leaves a bredren in da club....#shinyhappysweatypeopleparties A photo posted by @emilia_clarke on Oct 30, 2016 at 3:39am PDT

The premiere date for the seventh and final season of the HBO hit has been pushed back because of weather, which sucks. BUT, the delay has left us plenty of time to speculate about all those rumors. Apparently, its also left Emilia Clarke plenty of time to star in spooky supernatural thrillers.

Which is totally fine by us. A Voice Within The Stone is just the thing to help us wait the winter out.

The post Emilia Clarkes new movie may be out in 2017 and the news is keeping us warm through the winter appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Key creative talents behind Lionsgates La La Land and Hacksaw Ridge took the stage this morning to a packed and enthused room at Deadlines The Contenders event at the DGA Theatre. For La La Land, Emma Stone appeared alongside writing-directing prodigy Damien Chazelle, composer Justin Hurwitz and musician-turned-actor John Legend. She hammed it up for the cheering audience and discussed her unorthodox, unofficial audition for the role of Mia.

Stone told moderator Pete Hammond of Deadline that Chazelle and Hurwitz had come to New York to see her in Cabaret  on a night the actress had a cold. That felt like my unofficial audition that I didnt get to pick. You came to that performance? I was on cold medicine,' Stone joked, suggesting that her time on Broadway was the best possible preparation for the role. It definitely helped in preparing for the role because I felt I had a certain stamina I wouldnt have had before in any capacity, she said.

Adored by critics in its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Chazelles follow-up to his Best Picture Oscar nominee Whiplash follows a jazz pianist and an aspiring actress struggling to make ends meet in a city known for crushing hopes and breaking hearts. Set in modern Los Angeles  and even featuring a musical number for which the director shut down part of an L.A. freeway  the original musical about everyday life explores the joy and pain of pursuing your dreams.

Although Whiplash was made first, per Chazelle, that was only because his and Hurwitzs dream project was all but impossible to get financed. For some very strange reason, nobody wanted to make an original jazz musical, he laughed. Its really bizarre. The director noted that Whiplash was a fairly angry movie, which he says was no coincidence. I put my frustration into that, Chazelle shared. The film opens December 9 in limited release then goes wide the following weekend.

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RelatedMel Gibson On Hacksaw Ridge: The Deadline Q&A

Also appearing at the Lionsgate panel were Oscar-winning director Mel Gibson  bringing a movie to audiences for the first time in 10 years  and sound designer Kevin OConnell, who discussed their experiences working on Hacksaw Ridge with real-life veterans.

A war drama based on the true story of WWII conscientious objector Desmond Doss, who refused to carry a gun through battle yet saved the lives of 75 men, the film stars Andrew Garfield in the lead role. Also premiering in Venice, Hacksaw Ridge bowed to a standing ovation.

During the panel moderated by Deadlines Mike Fleming Jr., Gibson related an emotional anecdote about a veteran who auditioned for the film, re-enacting the moment he lost his limbs to war. It was cathartic for him; he was emotional, and afterwards he was elated, the Oscar-winning filmmaker said. He said it was one of the most therapeutic things he could ever imagine doing. We were all in tears.

RelatedHacksaw Ridge Review: Mel Gibsons World War II Film Is Remarkable & Inspiring

Gibson spoke about what compelled him to make the film, noting that Doss is kind of the pinnacle of heroism. I just found it inspiring.

Speaking about the films staggering violence, Gibson suggested that the portrayal of war is necessary to understand PTSD and other mental illnesses treated with so little empathy stateside. The ferocity of the battle gives the audience an idea of what its like to be at the epicenter of that kind of carnage, to have some empathy for the vets, he said.

Hacksaw Ridge was filmed in Australia on a relatively low budget of about $40M. The film was written by Andrew Knight and All the Way scribe Robert Schenkkan.

Opening this weekend, Hacksaw Ridge is expected to gross around $12.5 million.

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Encore: Mel Gibson Q&A On 'Hacksaw Ridge'
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said he was shocked by remarks by Germany's European commissioner that offended China, gay people and French-speaking Belgians this week, but was convinced they do not represent his true views.

Juncker was commenting in his first interview on the matter since Guenther Oettinger last week called Chinese people "slit-eyes", joked about "compulsory gay marriage" and railed at a Belgian region's efforts to block an EU-Canada trade deal.

"A Commissioner cannot hold such views. I told him he had to apologise to those who could have felt targeted," Juncker said in an interview with the Belgian newspaper Le Soir on Saturday.

Oettinger apologised on Thursday, saying he realised his remarks had "hurt" people. But the long delay before he issued an apology sparked an outcry that threatened to jeopardise trade ties with China.

His U-turn came a day after the Chinese foreign ministry condemned his remarks and said they reflected a "baffling sense of superiority" among Western politicians.

Oettinger, 63, had previously accepted only that his comments on Oct. 25 had been "somewhat sloppy".

Juncker said he only learned of the comments on Wednesday night after a long holiday weekend: "I couldn't immediately turn my attention to this Oettinger's clumsiness."

But he said a conversation with the Commissioner convinced him that the comments did not represent his true opinion and that they "shared the same views".

"I sincerely think these comments did not convey his thoughts. He is a liberal man on social issues, and so I was surprised," Juncker told Le Soir.

Last Friday, before his comments had been widely reported, Juncker announced a promotion for Oettinger, who has a reputation for plain talk, from digital affairs to vice president for the budget.

The Commission is battling for public support for the European Union in the face of rising nationalist opposition exemplified by Britain's vote to leave the bloc in June.

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Public outcry over Oettinger's comments comes after a scandal over whether former European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso broke ethics rules by taking a job at Goldman Sachs.

Juncker said in the interview he would propose extending the period during which former EU commissioners are banned from lobbying, from 18 months to three years.

"Maybe I waited too long before saying my thoughts on the ethics. The important thing is that I have drawn lessons from it for myself," Juncker said.

(Reporting by Alissa de Carbonnel; Editing by Alexander Smith)
Salt Lake City (United States) (AFP) - Serious, discreet, polite -- Evan McMullin is the exact opposite of Donald Trump.

And the 40-year-old Mormon and ex-CIA operative is defying the odds as he offers conservatives in staunchly Republican Utah an alternative to the former reality TV star.

"I'm the only true conservative in this race," insists the Republican-turned-independent candidate who just weeks ago was an unknown on the campaign trail.

With only days to go before the US presidential election, McMullin is closing in on the Republican presidential nominee in Utah, which has turned into a battleground state.

Should McMullin win the vote in Utah, he would be the first non-Republican presidential candidate in 50 years to be elected in the majority-Mormon western US state.

As he seeks to make history, McMullin has been canvassing Utah, meeting with volunteers, holding question-answer sessions with Hispanic Americans and posing for souvenir photos.

With a trim build, blue eyes and a shaved head, McMullin has positioned himself as the white knight who can save America from "two highly corrupted, self-interested candidates not fit for office" -- that is Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and Trump.

"Let's not let this state go to Donald Trump. Stand with us on principles, stand for liberty, equality for all races and religion in this country," he told a group of university students this week in Salt Lake City, the state capital.

His message has not fallen on deaf ears amid sexual assault allegations against Trump that have shocked this puritanical community.

Trump's anti-Muslim rhetoric is also not sitting well with the faith-based values of Mormons who have often been persecuted and faced religious bias.

Mormons also hold more liberal views than other Christian groups toward immigration, with many of them traveling on missions each year around the globe, including to South America where the Mormon Church has many followers.

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"Do you also want to build a wall on the border with Mexico?" one woman asked McMullin during a recent campaign rally.

"We have to secure the border, experts recommend a wall in some places, sensors in other places. But I don't think Mexico will pay for it," he answered to laughter.

"I'm against deporting 11 million undocumented people, to not disrupt families and our economy," he added, drawing applause from his audience.

But despite his conservative stand, McMullin is by no means conventional. He is single and has no kids at an age when many of his fellow Mormons are already grandparents.

His divorced mother married a woman. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon Church, opposes homosexual marriage, saying a true marriage is only between a man and a woman.

- Death threats -

Born in Provo, Utah, the heartland of Mormon country, McMullin spent two years in Brazil on a mission for the church and then worked with refugees in Jordan before spending 11 years with the Central Intelligence Agency doing counterterrorism work.

After two years at the investment bank Goldman Sachs, he headed to Washington, becoming national security adviser for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and then chief policy director for the House Republican Conference.

McMullin put himself forward as a third-party candidate against Trump and Clinton in August with backing from a group of Republicans turned off by Trump's rhetoric.

His candidacy and rising popularity are likely to hurt Trump's prospects in Utah where McMullin could capture the six electoral votes at stake.

In a tight race, that could prevent the two top candidates from clinching the necessary 270 electoral votes to win the White House.

Under the 12th Amendment of the US Constitution, it would then be up to members of Congress to vote for the next president.

Aware of the danger, Trump has been hitting out at McMullin, describing him as "this character that's running all over the state... going from coffee shop to coffee shop."

"You've never heard of me because while you were harassing women at beauty pageants, I was fighting terrorists abroad," McMullin, who has reported receiving death threats from Trump supporters, has retorted on Twitter.

Mitt Romney, the unsuccessful 2012 Republican nominee for the White House who is also a Mormon and part of the Never Trump movement, has yet to endorse a candidate in the race.

But he has given McMullin his list of supporters -- for a price -- and McMullin's running mate, Mindy Finn, has previously worked with Romney.

Though McMullin's campaign has managed to raise $1 million mainly from small contributions, he has not attracted big donors.

The independent candidate has said that after the election on Tuesday, he hopes to start "a new conservative movement" but it was not clear whether that would be within the "Grand Old Party" or on his own.
EXCLUSIVE: Heres an exclusive look at political comedy Swing State, starring Taryn Manning, Sean Astin, Angela Kinsey, Billy Zane and Ted Levine. The film follows a bohemian Seattle DJ who uses his on-air charisma to create a fictitious conservative radio personality that becomes an overnight sensation.

Pic has been sold to The Orchard and Netflix in the U.S. and VMI Worldwide is selling remaining territories to international buyers at this years American Film Market.

This clip features a scene between the fictitious radio personality Charles Fern (Alex Beh) interviewing conservative firebrand Ann Alcott (Elaine Hendrix).

Given todays global political state of mind, were excited for AFM buyers to see Swing State following The Orchard and Netflixs U.S. release, said VMI Worldwide president Andre Relis. The film is a comedic and timely commentary on the influence that power-hungry personalities, even if exaggerated or fully fictitious, can hold.

Director Jonathan Sheldon said: Its about an opportunist who games an anxious electorate for personal gain. As the real presidential election was shaping up this year, I pushed Swing State through post-production so that Charles Fern, our absurdist conservative commentator, could have his message heard.

Take a look at the clip above.

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By Lawrence Hurley WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When President Barack Obama leaves office on Jan. 20 after eight years, several of his major initiatives will still hang in the legal balance, meaning the U.S. courts and his successor will play a major role in shaping his legacy. Ongoing legal challenges by Republican-governed states and business groups are targeting Obama's signature healthcare law, his plan to combat climate change, a key immigration initiative, his transgender rights policy, his "net neutrality" internet rules, overtime pay for workers and other matters. Most of the cases are awaiting rulings by trial judges or regional federal appeals courts and could be bound for the U.S. Supreme Court, but are unlikely to get there until after the winner of Tuesday's election, pitting Democrat Hillary Clinton against Republican Donald Trump, is sworn in. Unless the U.S. Senate changes course and confirms Obama's nominee, appellate court judge Merrick Garland, to fill the vacant ninth seat on the ideologically split Supreme Court, the next president would be responsible for selecting a new justice who could cast the deciding vote in these cases. The Supreme Court has already agreed to decide a major transgender rights case. Obama's administration is backing a female-born transgender high school student named Gavin Grimm, who identifies as male and sued in 2015 to win the right to use the school's boys' bathroom. A ruling, which also could resolve similar litigation around the country, is not due until the end of June. In another transgender rights case, a number of states challenged the Obama administration's May guidance to public schools nationwide to let transgender students use bathrooms of their choice. A federal judge blocked the policy in August while the litigation continues. Because Obama during much of his presidency has faced a Republican-controlled Congress hostile to his legislative initiatives, he has often bypassed lawmakers and used executive power to advance policy goals. "Despite having majorities in both houses of Congress, Republicans have refused to govern. Instead, this litigious Republican Party has rushed to the courts with partisan lawsuits," White House spokesman Eric Schultz said. Those challenging Obama have vowed to fight on unless his successor changes course. "Should a new administration rescind those policies and respect the bounds placed before it, we will happily direct our energies elsewhere," added Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has helped spearhead various legal challenges to Obama. Clinton, backed by Obama in her White House bid, could be expected to leave in place or even expand on his initiatives and to defend them in court. Trump, if elected, could quickly reverse Obama executive orders as promised. But undoing large-scale regulations like power plant emissions rules could be more complicated. "It's not at the stroke of a pen," said Sean Donahue, a lawyer representing environmental groups that backed Obama administration climate rules known as the Clean Power Plan. Trump would have to undergo a new, lengthy rule-making process, according to legal experts. CLEAN POWER PLAN The case with the biggest potential long-term impact is the challenge by states and industry groups to Obama's Clean Power Plan, which would curb greenhouse emissions mainly from coal-fired power plants. The rules are an important legacy issue for Obama. They also are vital to U.S. obligations under last year's international climate change treaty. A federal appeals court heard oral arguments in September. A ruling is not due for months. The case is likely to go to the Supreme Court on appeal. The Supreme Court put the regulations on hold in February while the litigation continues. Republicans and conservative groups have launched numerous challenges to the 2010 Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. The Supreme Court in 2012 and 2015 issued rulings preserving Obama's top legislative achievement. Now, another Republican-led legal challenge is making its way through the courts. The administration has appealed a district court judge's May decision that the federal government cannot spend billions of dollars to provide subsidies under Obamacare to help individuals buy policies from private insurers without congressional approval. Separately, the administration is seeking in federal court in Texas to revive Obama's 2014 executive action to protect millions of immigrants in the country illegally from deportation and give them work permits. The plan, challenged by Texas and other states, has been barred by the courts. The Supreme Court, split 4-4, in June left in place lower court orders blocking the plan, and in October declined to revisit that ruling. Other Obama regulations have been targeted by business groups. A federal appeals court in June upheld Obama's landmark "net neutrality" rules barring internet service providers from obstructing or slowing down consumer access to web content. The case remains under appeal. In September, states and business groups filed a legal challenge to an administration rule to extend mandatory overtime pay to millions of workers. A ruling is not due until after Obama leaves office. Graphic: Courts weigh Obama legacy - http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/USA-COURT-LEGACY/0100308B0JZ/index.html (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Amy Stevens and Will Dunham)
On November 5, 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt won a third term in officean unprecedented act that would be barred by a constitutional amendment a decade later.

FDR320

Roosevelts decision to break the precedent set by George Washington was made in July, 1940, as the United States neared its entry into World War II.

The third-term decision dominated his election campaign against the Republican contender, Wendell Wilkie. In the end, Roosevelt won the election by a wide margin, and he was able to win a fourth election in 1944.

But the popular fallout about the concept of a long-term president led to the ratification of the 22nd amendment in 1951.

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once, the amendment read, in a clear reference to Roosevelt.

So why were people so upset with Roosevelts decision to seek a third term, and even more people opposed enough to approve a constitutional amendment?

Franklin Roosevelt wasnt even the first Roosevelt to seek a third term in the White House. His distant cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, ran unsuccessfully as a third-party candidate in 1912, after declining to run in 1908. President Ulysses S. Grant also sought a third term in 1880, but he lacked enough party support to get a nomination.

The first president, Washington, set the two-term precedent in 1796, when he decided to pass on a third term, setting up a scramble between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in the fall race.

In 1799, a friend urged Washington to come out of retirement to run for a third term. Washington made his thoughts quite clear, especially when it came to new phenomena of political parties.

The line between Parties, Washington said, had become so clearly drawn that politicians regard neither truth nor decency; attacking every character, without respect to persons  Public or Private,  who happen to differ from themselves in Politics.

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Washingtons voluntary decision to decline a third term was also seen by many people as a safeguard against the type of tyrannical power yielded by the British crown during the Colonial era.

That message wasnt lost on Theodore Roosevelt, who considered running in 1908 despite his public pledges in to the contrary. Instead, he backed William Howard Taft as a surrogate candidate, but the urge to control his own political party lead Roosevelt back to the campaign trail in 1912.

In 1940, Franklin Roosevelt decided to break the Washington precedent after World War II broke out in Europe and Nazi Germany overran France. The move caused some key Roosevelt supporters within the Democratic Party to leave the Roosevelt campaign.

The Republicans campaigned heavily against a third-term president, and the Democrats countered with claims that Wilkie was a third-rate candidate.

Later in the campaign, Roosevelt insisted that he was in the race to keep America out of war in Europe, and he easily defeated Wilkie on Election Day.

But talk about a presidential term-limits amendment started in 1944, when Republican candidate Thomas Dewey said a potential 16-year term for Roosevelt was a threat to democracy.

In March 1947, a Republican-controlled Congress approved a 22nd Amendment, with an exception that would exclude a president in office from term limits during the ratification process. It took until February 1951 to get enough states to ratify the amendment, and President Harry Truman decided to opt against running for a third term. Since then, some members of Congress have introduced efforts to repeal the 22nd Amendment, but they havent made it out of committee.

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By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 5 (PTI) State-owned Punjab National Banks net profit fell by 11.5 per cent to Rs 549.36 crore for second quarter as the provision for bad loans rose, even as "green shoots" are visible on stressed assets front.

The bank had reported a net profit of Rs 621.03 crore during the July-September quarter last fiscal.

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"The green shoots are being seen as stressed assets ratio now reduced to 13 per cent. From here onward, we would like to see the reduction happening gradually. Many of the numbers, whether it be the income or cost of deposits, net interest margin, GNPA, NNPA all are moving in a positive trajectory," MD and CEO Usha Ananthasubramanian told reporters.

She said the bank has been the front-runner in CASA (current account, saving account) mobilisation and continues to be stronger on that. Operating profit is the inherent strength of the bank which has been getting more and more strong.

Total earnings of the bank during July-September quarter of current fiscal rose by a marginal 3.8 per cent to Rs 14,218.27 crore as against Rs 13,701.93 crore a year earlier.

The profits of the bank were squeezed as provision for bad loans and contingencies went up by 34.6 per cent to Rs 2,533.76 crore for July-September as against Rs 1,882.08 crore year earlier.

A major portion of provision were kept aside for bad loans.

Gross non-performing assets (GNPAs) moved up to 13.63 per cent of the gross advances during the quarter as against 6.36 per year ago, while net NPAs rose to 9.10 per cent compared to 3.99 per cent year ago.

Ananthasubramanian also informed that one account worth Rs 3,000 crore of ABG Cement has been on the way of upgradation with the change in management of the company, and it has encouraged the bank to revisit such other accounts.

"We worked along with the promoter where we bring about a management change that has helped us in upgrading the account. Its a labour of almost an year. Successfully the management change happened and company name is changed and brand name is changed," she added.

This kind of success has given PNB lot of encouragement to look at these opportunities where the bank can engage itself with the promoter and ensure certain turnaround, she added.

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Among other key financial of the bank during the quarter, the non-interest income grew by 76 per cent year-on-year to Rs 2,388 crore. However, net interest income fell by 10.2 per cent to Rs 4,322 crore. Net interest margin of the bank stood at 2.51 per cent.

The bank witnessing a qualitative growth in credit portfolio and it is now focusing more on small ticket strategy, brand building and digitisation to further growth, she added. PTI KPM BAL

--- ENDS ---
By Jon Herskovitz AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - In the Texas county known as the buckle on the "execution belt" for sending more people to the death chamber than any other nationwide, both candidates in the campaign for top prosecutor are calling for moderation in capital punishment. What is happening in Harris County, Texas, reflects a change across the United States, where new death sentences are set this year to hit the lowest levels since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976 as many prominent prosecution offices lose their zeal for execution. In Harris County and other district attorney offices across the country, prosecutors have increasingly sought life in prison without the possibility of parole instead of death sentences. While support for the death penalty is still high, it has fallen over the years due to factors including troubled prosecutions that have lead to more than 150 people on death row being exonerated. "Harris County is generally considered to be 'Exhibit A' when it comes to the death penalty in the United States," said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which monitors U.S. capital punishment. "It has also experienced some of the greatest changes in attitude of any county in the United States." The county, which includes Houston and is Texas' largest with about 4.5 million people, has sentenced 116 people to be executed since 1976. In past races for the county's top prosecutor, campaigns boasted about how many people they sent to death row. But no more. "It is a terrible image for our city and our county," said Democratic candidate Kim Ogg, who is leading Republican incumbent Devon Anderson in public opinion polls ahead of Tuesday's election. A LIKELY RECORD LOW Across the United States, 49 new death sentences were handed down in 2015, a drop from a recent peak of 315 in 1996, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. This year's number is not yet available but it is expected to be lower than last year and below the 137 in 1977, the year after capital punishment was reinstated, the center said. In Harris County, 27 percent of people polled this year by Rice University's Kinder Institute said they felt the death penalty was generally the appropriate sentence for a first-degree murder, down from 41 percent in 2000. According to a Harvard University Law School study this year, three people sentenced to death in Harris County have been exonerated and there have been dozens of instances of prosecutorial misconduct in death penalty cases. One of those cases involved Alfred Brown, whose murder conviction and death sentence were overturned in 2014 after an appeals court determined evidence that showed he was nowhere near the crime scene at the time of the killing had been wrongfully withheld. Anderson, the incumbent district attorney, has called for greater restraint in capital punishment cases. She will not send inmates to death row if they can be reformed, campaign spokeswoman Sara Kinney said. Since Anderson took office in 2013, there have been four new death verdicts and none since 2014, according to her office. Between 1993 and 1998, the county averaged about 12 a year. "She has shown that she will consider far less than any of her predecessors and she is doing that in the best interests of justice," Kinney said in an interview. Prosecutors across the United States have been considering the death penalty far less in recent years, especially as the option of life in prison without parole has been used as a sentencing option in more states, such as Texas, where it was put on the books a decade ago. Capital punishment advocates have balked at the idea that expenses or drug shortages should be a factor when deciding punishment, saying the death penalty is an instrument of justice and must used for those who deserve it. Ogg said in an interview that, if she wins, she wants to set the bar for pursuing death sentences as high as possible. "Under an Ogg administration, you will see very few death penalty prosecutions," she said. (Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Bill Trott)
Santiago (AFP) - Chilean police used tear gas and water cannon to break up a protest Friday against the country's privatized pension system, which opponents say is leaving many retirees in poverty.

Protesters set fire to at least two buses, forcing passengers to flee, and blocked some two dozen streets with burning barricades in the capital Santiago on a day of nationwide demonstrations.

Launched in 1981, Chile's "pension fund administrators" (AFPs) have been held up by pro-market politicians and pundits worldwide as a model of how to privatize a national pension system.

But opponents say the system has left the 10 million Chileans enrolled in it with deplorable retirement benefits far short of the Pinochet regime's promise of 70 percent of workers' last paychecks.

The average pension is less than the minimum wage in Chile.

The protests came on the same day as a strike by public sector workers demanding a raise, adding to the pressure on center-left President Michelle Bachelet.

Protesters disrupted the morning commute in Santiago by blocking off streets and attacking buses with Molotov cocktails.

Thousands later gathered at a central square in Santiago, the Plaza de Armas.

"I'm 70 years old and I worked for more than 40 years for the government. My pension is 300,000 pesos ($460) a month," said retiree Juan Ugarte.

"I don't know what the solution is, but no more AFPs."

Protesters later tried to march on the seat of government, but police broke them up with tear gas and water cannons, arresting 68 people.

Some 10,000 people protested in Santiago and 58,000 nationwide, the interior ministry said.

On August 21, another protest against the pension system drew half a million people, according to organizers. It was one of the largest marches in recent years in Chile.

Pinochet's dictatorship lasted from 1973, when he came to power in a military coup, until 1990. It remains heavy baggage for Chile.

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Despite the atrocities committed by his regime, which killed an estimated 3,200 people and tortured 38,000, Chile's constitution and much of its policy framework still date to his rule.

Bachelet, Chile's first female president, won a second term in 2013 promising deep reforms.

But her popularity has since plunged amid a corruption scandal involving her son, and it is unclear whether she still has the political capital to deliver on her reform agenda.
A Ryanair flight from Belgium to Malta was forced to divert to Pisa, Italy, on November 3, after a fight broke out mid-air. Passenger Tommy Engerer shot this video, which shows two men throwing punches at each other, while crew and passengers try to calm and contain the situation.

The Times of Malta, citing Engerer, reported that the fight was between two men and their respective female partners.

Later in the video, the pilot can be heard telling the plane that the situation was not acceptable at all, and announcing that the flight would be diverted to Bologna, Italy. It was eventually diverted to Pisa, where police arrested the four people involved in the fight, according to reports citing a Ryanair spokesperson. Credit: YouTube/Tommy Engerer
All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone is an urgent and fascinating documentary. Even if you belong to the choir its preaching to, it has the rare distinction of being a movie you can agree and argue with at the same time. The title makes it sound like a portrait of I.F. Stone, the trend-setting investigative journalist (he died in 1989) who in his highly influential self-published newsletter, I.F. Stones Weekly, tweaked and railed against the sins of the U.S. government  and the mainstream media, though back then it was known simply as, you know, journalism  from the early 50s through the early 70s. Stone, you could argue, was the missing link between Thomas Paine and the Internet. All Governments Lie treats him as the original political blogger, though it doesnt offer much more than a thumbnail sketch of Stone. His gadfly spirit hovers over the movie, but his life and work occupy maybe 10 minutes of it.

We see Stone in clips, where he looks like a jovial owl in Coke-bottle glasses, wearing the outfits of a portly professor, and he explains his reporting methods, which were so unsexy at the time that they now seem completely exotic. He didnt call government officials, and he wasnt even accredited to attend a White House press conference. Instead, he went into back rooms and pored through documents and transcripts to learn what was really going on.

The result? In 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson and his Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, engineered the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the two contrived acts of North Vietnamese aggression that were used as a trigger to launch the war in Vietnam, the mainstream media didnt discover or acknowledge the truth  that the U.S. had misrepresented the incident  for years. But I.F. Stone got to that truth the week after it happened, one of countless scoops he nailed while under the mainstream radar. In the movie, Michael Moore compares Stone to Toto in The Wizard of Oz, tugging back the curtain to reveal the power elite hiding behind their image of authority. Its a comparison that Moore takes comfort in, because it means that we dont have to be so frightened of whats behind the curtain.

I.F. Stone, known as Izzy (the perfect rock-star-of-dweeb-investigators nickname), was one of the great journalists of the 20th century, and he deserves a movie of his own. But All Governments Lie is mostly devoted to the pluck and courage of his present-day inheritors. Its a portrait of roughly half a dozen independent reporters, a few of whom have achieved notoriety, who are carrying on the tradition of renegade muckraking that Stone almost singlehandedly put on the map in the postwar era. The Intercept, an on-line investigative site, was launched in 2014 by Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras (from Citizenfour) along with Jeremy Scahill, with financial backing from the eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Greenwald calls it The spirit of I.F. Stone, but funded with $250 million, and the site has done a great deal to unearth the new surveillance security state, including a story we see about the use of German satellite towers to coordinate assassinations by U.S. drones.

The movie tips its hat to people like Amy Goodman, whose global news program Democracy Now! straddles radio, TV, and the Web, and John Carlos Frey, who we see reporting a cataclysmic story about 200 Mexican immigrants whose bodies were discovered in mass graves in Brooks County, Texas, 70 miles from the border. Mostly, though, All Governments Lie focuses on big game like the rah-rah run-up to the Iraq War, which it uses to illustrate the thesis that the mainstream media  all of it  has become a bought-and-paid-for tool of government and corporate power.

On dark days, theres a good case to be made for that. The propaganda that paved the road to the war in Iraq (the acceptance of WMDs, the Colin Powell testimony, even the preposterously alleged Saddam/Al-Qaeda connection) went, for the most part, egregiously unquestioned by the mainstream media, notably The New York Times. That has now made the Iraq War drumbeat a kind of Rosetta Stone for independent journalism. Yet as you watch All Governments Lie, the anti-mainstream-media arguments are repeated so often, and so broadly, that they become a kind of catechism: All media is controlled by advertisers. Reporters arent allowed to question The System. Greed, corruption, and government-sanctioned criminality are shrouded in narcotizing fake news. Theres truth to all of this  especially if you tend to get your news from network TV. But if youd just arrived from Mars and watched All Governments Lie, youd come away thinking that independent journalism in America was the only kind of journalism you could trust. And that, to put it mildly, is an overstatement.

One of the reporters featured in the movie is Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone (which, the last time I checked, was part of the mainstream media). Taibbi is indeed a great reporter, and the film salutes him for taking on the titans of the financial industry with a certain bombs-away tude. (Its a tone that echoes Stones sarcastic wit.) Yet the news that hes uncovered doesnt necessarily speak truth to power any more than the reporting you regularly see in, say, The New Yorker. (He just brands himself as an upstart more than Jane Mayer does.) In the movie, Michael Moore tells a story about how he went to visit I.F. Stone in the mid-80s, and Stone told him that when youre reading the newspaper, you should skip the front page and go right to page 17, where the real action is. But another way to put that is that if its on page 17, at least its in there. The question is: Wherever its placed, will you get people to read it? If the Donald Trump era has taught us anything, its that the mainstream media can be woefully irresponsible (e.g., exploiting Trumps every utterance for ratings), but it can also be incisive and exploratory in ways that dont always make a difference.

Directed by Fred Peabody in a mode of lively documentary prose, with Oliver Stone as one of its executive producers, All Governments Lie suggests that the kind of fearless independent reporting practiced by I.F. Stone is alive and well  and that if anything, its gaining traction. The films arguments about the blizzard of fake news (the Kardashians, etc.) that swirls around us are undeniable. At the same time, the fragmentation of our attention spans  and the general dislocation from reality  that has led to a society engulfed by conspiracy theory, not to mention an outsider presidential candidate who lies more often than the government does, cant be blamed on mainstream media. The problem is more profound than that. In the movie, Glenn Greenwald, the investigative heir of I.F. Stone who has arguably fallen closest to the tree, is correct when he says, with trademark eloquence, The entire system breeds a certain orthodoxy, it breeds a certain kind of range of pieties. And if you deviate too far from them, it will reject you. What hes saying is probably true of the media in virtually any society: It will never reject the system thats the basis of its reality. The question is whether thats corrupt, or whether its just life.

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A Florida ballot initiative backed by energy utilities and an array of right-leaning organizations could damage efforts to expand solar power in the state. Now an eleventh-hour attempt by opponents to get it removed from the ballot has failed.

On Friday, the Florida Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the Florida Solar Energy Industries Association and Floridians for Solar Choice to have the Rights of Electricity Consumers Regarding Solar Energy Choice initiative, better known as Amendment 1, withdrawn for deceptive language. The groups have argued for months that despite its sunny-sounding title, the measure would elevate to the states constitution an effective near ban on net metering, a practice that helps ratepayers recoup the costs of the expensive equipment more quickly, or to contract with third-party providers to install and maintain solar arrays in return for the income from the extra current.

Dozens of Florida newspapers, conservation groups, local officials, and political groups, as well as solar industry groups, have urged voters to reject the measure.

Amendment 1 opens the door for the monopoly utilities to go to the legislature or the public service commission and ask for fees to be imposed upon solar users, or to take some sort of negative stance or in another way hinder net metering, said Tom Kimbis, interim president of the Solar Energy Industries Association. If utilities can drive up the cost of solar by pushing up the fees or cutting off net metering, that makes solar less affordable and cuts off expansion. Kimbis termed the ballot measures language deceptive, noting that the rights of the state to protect consumers, public health, and the safety and welfare of state residents, along with the right of consumers to own or lease solar equipment installed on their property to generate electricity for their own use, are already covered by various Florida statutes.

The Florida measure is just one of several efforts around the country to increase the costs of rooftop solar, which utilities fear will weaken their control of power distribution, Kimbis said. These include Nevadas move in 2015 to reduce fees and rates paid to customers with solar arrays connected to the grid. In addition to changing the terms of agreements many ratepayers had counted on to help them pay for solar systems, the move prompted major solar equipment retailers to lay off hundreds of employees and exit the state.

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RELATED: Sunny States Are Sabotaging Solar Energy

The group leading the campaign for Amendment 1, Consumers for Smart Solar, has denied that it has tried to mislead voters. This is just political grandstanding, Sarah Bascom, a spokesperson for Consumers for Smart Solar, said in an email. Elevating this right to a constitutional right ensures that special interest groups (our opponents) who want solar in Florida done on their termswithout consumer protections and with unfair subsidieswont be able to avoid current laws that protect consumers.

But in mid-October, the Miami Herald released a recording of a conference speech in which the policy director of a right-leaning think tank acknowledged that Amendment 1s wording was meant to confuse voters. Solar polls very well, Sal Nuzzo of the James Madison Institute told the audience. To the degree that we can use a little bit of political jiu-jitsu and take what theyre kind of pinning us on and use it to our benefit either in policy, in legislation or in constitutional referendumsif thats the direction you want to takeuse the language of promoting solar, and kind of, kind of put in these protections for consumers that choose not to install rooftop.

The Center for Media and Democracy, which supplied the recording to the Herald, has documented that the $24 million campaign to pass Amendment 1 was funded by power utilities, as well as groups with ties to right-wing political networks such as the Koch brothers operation. Much of this happens in secret in other states, said Nick Surgey, the groups research director. Were benefiting here in part because campaign finance laws in Florida require disclosures of funding for this campaign.

The utilities collectively have been making a concerted effort recently to appear more conscious of the effects of climate change, he added. The encouraging thing is that the reason theyre having to mislead people is that solar polls so well.

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 Rich Countries Are Still Pushing Dirty Energy on Poor Ones

Original article from TakePart
By Ian Simpson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Long-frustrated backers of statehood for the District of Columbia are pinning their hopes on a first-ever referendum on Tuesday in a long-shot bid to become the 51st U.S. state. Invoking the colonial-era demand of "no taxation without representation," supporters say becoming a state would end Washingtonians' status as second-class citizens because they lack representation in Congress. But opponents dismiss the referendum as a "fool's errand" destined to fail because of partisan political hurdles and the need to amend the U.S. Constitution, a procedure accomplished only 17 times since 1789. The District of Columbia was carved out to serve as the nation's capital, but it is not a state. Its 672,000 residents have no voting representative in the Senate or House of Representatives although they pay federal taxes, though they do have a delegate in the House. A "yes" vote could help pressure the new Congress and president - either Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump - to admit the District of Columbia as a new state, though even advocates admit that is unlikely anytime soon. A "yes" vote would simply be an expression of public support for statehood, a non-binding measure without any legal force. "Statehood's the only way that we can have the same rights and responsibilities as all the other citizens of the United States," District of Columbia Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said. The overwhelmingly Democratic capital city was fed up with Republican lawmakers espousing the rights of states and cities to self-governance and then interfering with local issues such as abortion and marijuana legalization, Mendelson said. "That's so antithetical to democratic principles, but that doesn't seem to bother some of these folks," he said. The referendum seeks to upend the Constitution's provision giving Congress legislative control over the District of Columbia. Voters will cast a single "yes" or "no" vote on the referendum's four parts: admission as a state, its boundaries, approval of a constitution, and guarantees of a representative form of government. The new state would embrace the current 68-square-mile (176-square-km) district except for a core of federal property around the White House, Capitol and monument-rich National Mall. The District Council approved the referendum unanimously, and a Washington Post poll in November 2015 showed 67 percent of residents backed statehood. The Democratic Party's national platform also supports the idea. "If you're not part of a state, large parts of the constitution don't apply to you," said statehood advocate Ann Loikow. Mayor Muriel Bowser and other statehood backers took the vote's design from the successful bid in the 1790s by Tennessee, then a federal territory, to become a state through a referendum and petition to Congress. Supporters and skeptics say that even if the referendum passes it would face a dead end in Congress, where Republicans would oppose statehood since it would add Democratic senators and a representative to Congress. Besides the political obstacles, Roger Pilon, a constitutional scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, called the statehood quest a "fool's errand" because of constitutional obstacles. For the District to become a state, Congress would have to propose an amendment to the Constitution, which would then have to win a two-thirds majority vote in both the Senate and the House. Even if an amendment could win approval in both houses of Congress, it would face another big hurdle: approval by the legislatures of at least three-fourths of the 50 states. Washingtonians have tried to achieve statehood before, but never by an up-or-down referendum. Congress ignored a statehood petition that included a constitution voters ratified in the 1980s. The House of Representatives rejected a statehood bill in 1993, and it failed to reach a Senate vote. A constitutional amendment for voting rights in Congress fizzled in the 1980s. (Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Leslie Adler)
Paris (AFP) - A French soldier deployed in a counter-terrorism force in Mali died from injuries sustained in a mine blast, the defence ministry said Saturday, in the latest deadly jihadist attack on foreign forces.

The Islamist group Ansar Dine, which has ties to Al-Qaeda, claimed the attack on social media, saying it took place some 60 kilometres (40 miles) from the northern town of Kidal.

In a statement, the French defence ministry said "two armoured vehicles in a logistics convoy... came under attack from an explosive device as they were driving to the northeast of Kidal."

"The explosion led to the death of Staff Sergeant Fabien Jacq, lightly wounded another soldier," the statement said, adding that three other soldiers were concussed in the incident.

The French army said that there were 60 vehicles in the convoy and that it was unclear how the device was detonated.

A foreign military source in Mali confirmed to AFP that Jacq was serving with Operation Barkhane in the north-east of Kidal, and that two vehicles had been "blown up by an explosive device" leaving the soldier badly injured.

The death of Jacq, 28, brings to 16 the number of French soldiers killed in Mali since France first intervened militarily in January 2013 to help drive back Islamist jihadists who had overrun parts of the west African country, a former French colony.

Vast swathes of the country remain out of the control of Malian and foreign forces.

The continued threat by jihadists active in Mali was further demonstrated by the release by an al-Qaeda-linked group, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) of a video Friday showing the execution of two Malians for "collaborating" with French troops and Mauritania.

Two men identified as Mohamed Ould Beih and El-Hussein Ould Badi are respectively accused of being paid to recruit informants and of showing French troops jihadists' weapon stashes.

After the men are shown being shot dead by a firing squad in front of a large group of nomadic tribesmen, a commentary issues the threat of a similar fate to the local population if they are tempted to sell information.

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The clip entitled "Traitors 2" was released by AQIM's media arm Andalus Media, lending it significant credibility.

It appears to be a sequel to a December 2015 video named "Traitors" in which two Malians and a Mauritanian were killed for similar reasons, also before an audience.

The men in the latest video are identified as being from Timbuktu in northern Mali, but the site of the killings is not identified.

- Broad offensive -

France's initial Operation Serval in Mali was later replaced by Operation Barkhane, a broader offensive against Islamist groups with some 3,000 French soldiers deployed in five African countries.

Three French soldiers were killed in April when their vehicle also struck a mine in the north of Mali.

Last month six French troops were wounded in a similar explosion.

French President Francois Hollande "hailed the sacrifice" of Jacq, the defence ministry statement said.
The popular TV actress' parents believe that the police neglected certain aspects of the case.

By India Today Web Desk: Pratyusha Banerjee's alleged suicide case has taken a new turn after the transcript of her last conversation with boyfriend Rahul Raj Singh being released yesterday. Her lawyer, Neeraj Gupta, even suggested that Rahul had pushed Pratyusha into 'prostitution' because she mentioned the word in the transcript.

And now, Pratyusha's parents are going to seek a re-investigation of the whole case.

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Neeraj Gupta, speaking on behalf of the parents, told PTI that the police seems to have missed out on some key aspects of the case, and re-investigating it is only fair.

Also read: Pratyusha Banerjee case: THIS was the last conversation between the actress and Rahul



"Police didn't investigate the case properly. They ignored many important aspects. As of now, we don't have entire charge sheet. Once we get it, we will study the documents and file a fresh application on Monday," Gupta said.

Gupta alleges that the police need to take a much closer look at Pratyusha's blood and viscera reports. He further claims that the newly released transcript reveals the name of a third person who was threatening Pratyusha, and the police need to find out who and where he is.

Pratyusha Banerjee, who shot to fame with her portrayal of Anandi in Balika Vadhu, was found hanging in her Goregaon flat on April 1, 2016.





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Banjul (Gambia) (AFP) - The Gambia's first ever female presidential candidate has withdrawn from the race and will endorse the single opposition candidate challenging President Yahya Jammeh, she said Saturday.

In a statement sent to AFP, Isatou Touray said she was dropping out of the contest "so as to offer my unflinching support and cooperation to the coalition" of opposition parties which last month picked businessman Adama Barrow to represent them in the December 1 election.

Touray, a development expert and campaigner against female genital mutilation, said the choice of a single opposition flagbearer was "an unprecedented achievement in our nation's history" and one she felt compelled to support.

She added that "Team Isatou" would now focus on supporting the "formidable force" fighting to remove Jammeh, who has been in power since 1994.

Touray had said she would stand as an independent candidate in the polls, focusing on welcoming back the Gambian diaspora and creating jobs.

Now in her sixties, Touray has had a colourful career, winning a US State Department award for empowering Gambian communities in 2008 but arrested in 2010 over corruption allegations when she was deputy director of the Gambia's development institute.

She was acquitted of all charges.

Touray is currently executive director of leading women's group the Gambia Committee against Harmful Traditional Practices, which fights to stop female genital mutilation.

Barrow is a member of the United Democratic Party (UDP) -- the country's principal opposition movement -- whose leader and several top officials are serving three-year jail sentences for holding public protests.

Campaigning for the election begins on November 16.

On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch said intimidation of opposition parties, media repression and politicised security forces have "all but extinguished" the chance of a free and fair election.
BOSTON (AP) -- Red Sox fans will soon have another memory of recently-retired slugger David Ortiz when traveling out of Boston's Logan Airport.

An employee of JetBlue Airlines announced to Big Papi and a crowd that the airline was naming Gate 34 in Terminal C after him during a private party to honor the star at a restaurant in Boston's Seaport District on Friday night.

''You mean I'm going to have my own gate at the airport?'' Ortiz said, holding a microphone on the stage. ''You're (messing) with me, aren't you?''

The event was sponsored by JetBlue, MasterCard, Bank of America and Dunkin Donuts and was billed as ''an evening dedicated to honoring David Ortiz.''

The 40-year-old slugger retired after his 20th season in the majors when Boston was swept in the ALDS by Cleveland last month.

He went out with a solid regular season, hitting .315 with 38 homers and 127 RBIs in his 14th and final with the Red Sox.

Boston picked up his option on Thursday as a formality.
(Adds GE comment)

By Jeffrey Dastin

Nov 5 (Reuters) - General Electric Co is seeking to remove an engine part from service after an American Airlines jet erupted in flames last week, it told air carriers in a letter seen by Reuters on Saturday.

The manufacturer has identified a "limited number" of parts closely related to one used by American that had a "material anomaly," according to the letter sent on Friday.

All but one of the parts are now out of service, GE said in the letter. It added that it was working with the single airline with an aircraft still equipped with the part to ensure its removal from service.

GE did not name the airline. A company spokesman, Rick Kennedy, confirmed that GE had sent the letter and said it was still in the early stage of an "intense investigation."

On Oct. 28, American Airlines Flight 383 from Chicago to Miami aborted takeoff following an "uncontained" engine failure, a rare event in which components spew from an engine and can tear through the aircraft cabin or rupture fuel tanks in the wings. The airline was flying a Boeing Co 767 aircraft with CF6-80C2 engines made by GE.

In this instance, the failure caused a fuel leak that resulted in a fire, though no one aboard was seriously injured.

An American Airlines spokesman said none of the company's aircraft in operation had the additional parts that GE referred to in the letter. The spokesman added that American was turning over a part from an engine not in operation to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) for further examination.

U.S. investigators have yet to assign blame for last week's incident. However, they said on Friday that a so-called stage 2 disk in the engine showed what appeared to be cracking.

The disk's corrupted material likely indicated a manufacturing defect, either by the parts or metal maker, said Jim Hall, a former NTSB chairman.

In its letter, GE stressed the reliability of its CF6 engines which it said had flown more than 400 million hours since the 1970s.

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GE will update engine operators if action is later required, the letter said.

Bloomberg earlier reported news of the letter from GE.

(Reporting By Jeffrey Dastin in New York; Editing by Tom Brown)
By Gernot Heller and Andrea Shalal BERLIN (Reuters) - German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel called for a resumption of long-stalled efforts to negotiate a global free trade accord on Saturday, warning that a proliferation of bilateral trade deals could lead to varying standards and rules. "The best thing would be an agreement under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO)," Gabriel said during a business conference in Hong Kong. "We should restart discussions in the WTO even as we are negotiating comprehensive bilateral agreements," he said, before heading back to Germany. In the absence of a global trade agreement, Gabriel said it was important that bilateral trade deals also include social, climate and consumer standards, beyond simply reducing tariffs. Gabriel welcomed an offer made by China during his visit to begin intensive discussions with Germany and the European Union about its steel exports to Europe. "Of course we will accept the Chinese offer and negotiate at all levels to reach a solution," he told the Funke media group. "But it's too soon to talk about an 'all-clear' signal since this is a really big dispute. We must protect our steelworkers from unfair competition and subsidized steel exports from China that could crowd out the competitive and ecologically sound European steel industry." The European Union last month imposed provisional import duties on two types of Chinese steel, the latest in a series of trade defenses set up to curb subsidized steel exports that EU officials say have resulted in job losses and plant closures. The German minister said resistance to free trade agreements such as the one signed last week by the European Union and Canada was largely due to insufficient communication by governments about the benefits of such accords and the failure to include citizens and societal groups. Activists in the Netherlands have gathered almost two thirds of the signatures needed to lay the groundwork for a referendum on the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), which they say overly favors the interests of multinational companies. A referendum defeat would throw up a further obstacle to the ratification of CETA, which was almost scuttled last month by a regional assembly in neighboring Belgium. (Writing by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Alexander Smith)
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f272958%2fglamourbrasil

Despite decades of pushback, it takes a long time for racist caricatures to die.

At Glamour Brasil recently staff members shared a photo to the company's Instagram that featured a group of employees bowing and making "slanty eyes," a gesture widely interpreted to be mocking of Asian cultures.

SEE ALSO: GOP senator attacks his opponent, a war hero, for her Asian heritage

The post was up for over 48 hours before it was finally taken down Friday. On Twitter, Glamour Brasil apologized for the photo, which was initially taken to celebrate the magazine's "Glamour in Japan" project.

"We would like to apologize to those who have felt offended! We didnt have that intention and really regret what happened," the magazine wrote.

Em relacao ao post de Instagram publicado em 1 de novembro, sobre nossa viagem ao Japao, gostariamos de nos desculpar. pic.twitter.com/6F0Q16eTNE  Glamour Brasil (@GlamourBR) November 4, 2016

The initial post inspired outrage both on Instagram and Twitter, with many expressing shock that the magazine would post something so regressive in 2016.

Caption says "with our little eyes pulled, are the people who made everything happened." @GlamourBR is disgusting. @CondeNast https://t.co/6M9oNT5SIS  B the cereal killer (@brattyb2) November 4, 2016

DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT, GLAMOUR BRASIL! https://t.co/L47Q0BabHl  Rayberry Relish  (@prancingpapio) November 4, 2016

Mashable has reached out to Conde Nast, Glamour's parent company, for comment.

RELATED: Social media is obsessing over Michelle Obama's state dinner dress
GettyImages 483209460

A Republican congressman wrote the nation's top four television executives on Friday and notified them that he intended to request a hearing on supposed media bias.

I am writing to inform you that I intend to request a hearing to explore network media bias in coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign, wrote Kevin Cramer, a member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

The letter was sent to the top executives at ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox.

Cramer cited a recent Gallup poll that showed Americans trust in media has hit an all-time low. He also referenced a Harvard University study that found negative coverage of Trump increased after the GOP primaries.

I am alarmed by recent polls and studies, which seem to confirm that our national network news has devolved from fact-based journalism to surreptitious propaganda, Cramer wrote.

The North Dakota congressman said he did not favor a return to the Fairness Doctrine, a former Federal Communications Commission policy that required broadcasters to give equal time to contrasting political viewpoints, but told the television network executives that the privilege to broadcast a free signal is a privilege afforded to very few, and with it comes tremendous responsibility.

Trump has frequently railed against the media throughout the 2016 campaign cycle. In September, the Republican presidential candidate took credit for reducing the trust Americans have in media to a historic low.

NOW WATCH: A model that has correctly predicted the presidential election since 1980 says Clinton will have a landslide victory





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By Makini Brice PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haiti's interim President Jocelerme Privert defended a government-coordinated storm relief effort on Friday, saying aid had reached some 2 million victims of Hurricane Matthew, amid anger about uneven distribution of food and other materials. The category-4 hurricane hit Haiti a month ago, killing as many as 1,000 people. It wiped out crops, led to a spike in cholera cases and left tens of thousands homeless in the already fragile country. Privert said the storm cost Haiti $2 billion in damage, nearly a quarter of the annual GDP of the poorest country in the Americas. Haiti has been determined to avoid mistakes made after a devastating 2010 earthquake, when foreigners led the aid effort and billions of dollars were spent with disappointing results. While United Nations officials and charity leaders publicly praise the government for leading the response to the disaster, critics and some victims say aid has been politicized, with disproportionate supplies distributed to people close to political leaders. Security forces shot dead at least one person and injured others in clashes over aid delivery in the hard-hit port town of Les Cayes this week, while there have been instances of road blocks and looting in areas where trucks carrying food, hygiene kits, tarps, water and medical supplies pass through. Privert admitted aid distribution remained a challenge because many communities were still inaccessible. He also said looting and misappropriation of aid were partly to blame for the problems, but said nowhere had been left behind. There is not a single community, accessible or inaccessible, that has not received assistance from the state, Privert said, citing medical supplies delivered to Rendel, a community grappling with a cholera outbreak, by helicopter. Privert did not specify what kind of assistance had reached the 2 million people, saying only that 788 tons of food and non-food items had been delivered. That represents a relatively small amount for each of the 2 million he said received aid. All communities will be accessible by Nov. 13, which is also the deadline for restoring functionality to some 300 voting centers before a scheduled presidential election on Nov. 20, Privert said. No one can prevent the Nov. 20 elections from occurring, the interim president said, rejecting a widely held view that it will be difficult to organize a vote with a large swath of the country struggling to recover. The first round of the presidential election was held on Oct. 25, but was ultimately scrapped after political leaders alleged widespread fraud. Privert gave statistics that 546 people died and 128 disappeared in the storm, although local officials have told Reuters that 1,000 people died in the hurricane. (Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Bill Rigby)
Nestled on a picturesque plateau in Pennsylvanias northeastern region, Hazleton is the kind of postindustrial city that for decades looked as though its best days were behind it. Thats why artist James Moran revealed on canvas the vitality of his hometown of Hazleton not as he saw it, but as it waswhen the city was in its heyday in the first half of the last century.

Moran, who passed away in March, was born in 1940, a time when the downtowns of American cities featured blocks of cinematic quality: neon lights, flashing marquees, bustling stores, and packed diners. In Morans youth, Hazleton possessed all these features, instilling a perception that the city was larger than its real size. And so, after the neon lights were turned off and the downtown facades had started to crumble, it was the more nostalgic vision of Hazleton that would inform Morans work. But nostalgia erases the hard edges and magnifies the romantic. It also undermines the value of the present. Which is why Hazleton is in many ways a perfect expression of the themes of 2016.

Hazletons prosperity was the consequence of geological serendipity. The city sits on the worlds richest vein of anthracite coal, which propelled a massive influx of immigrants to Hazleton from Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe in the 19th century. Morans ancestors were peasant farmers who hailed from Donegal, Ireland; they immigrated to the New World to labor in Hazletons mines. Upon arrival, they settled in one of Hazletons surrounding coal-company-owned patch towns, and along with other Irish newcomers eventually established their own ethnic enclaveDonegal Hillwhich abutted the citys downtown.

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Hazletons economy, unlike other parts of the region, wasnt exclusively dependent on coal. Most immigrant families needed supplemental income, and it was through picking the plateaus abundant huckleberry bushes or finding employment in the citys shirt factories and silk mills that wives, mothers, and children could financially endure. It was a city of extremesmassive wealth and widespread poverty, grand Victorian mansions and dilapidated shantiesbut its residents, whether beneficiaries or casualties of its economy, adopted an enduring pride in their melting-pot culture.

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Moran appreciated this culture, but he also resented the community leaders disregard for Hazletons architectural and industrial heritage. His training in fine arts at Brooklyns Pratt Institute, combined with a native sons love for the city, served as a catalyst for his paintings of Hazletons lively pastpreceding even his own memories and back to when the ornate buildings he loved were erected and Hazleton boomed. Morans true inspiration, in other words, was Hazletons Belle Epoque, a period between the two world wars when local industries thrived, a leisure culture reigned, and neighborhoods clamored with the sounds of familial vigor.

His paintings, stylistically reminiscent of the Ashcan School, illustrate the building facades of Hazletons once densely packed urban landscape. Through impressionistic brush strokes and warm pastel colors, Moran outlines a stage of theaters, banks, trolleys, breweries, and train stations. The buildings are Morans main characters, handsome and poised and releasing light onto crowded downtown streets. The people he portrays at street level often appear somber, intimating an indifference toward their impressive surroundings, a reminder perhaps that prosperity has its expiration date.

Moran painted the citys radiance and its profound sense of history. After all, towns like Hazleton once heated, mechanized, clothed, and protected the countrys coastal cities.

Did Moran realistically capture Hazletons past, or did he affectionately depict an imagined history? The answer of course is: both.

A visit to the local museums vast archives of newspaper clippings, photos, and silent film testify to Morans accurate interpretation of street scenesnot to mention Hazletons wealth and urbanity. Between the citys incorporation in 1891 and the Great Depression, Hazleton transformed mining technology, became the third city in the nation to have a full city-wide electric grid, recruited a textile magnate to build the worlds largest silk mill, and pioneered an electric third rail later adopted by the Long Island Railroad. Innovation sparked prosperity, and during this same period, Hazletons compact downtown blossomed with department stores, high-rise office buildings, a half-dozen theaters, and the first skyscraper in the state exclusively constructed out of steel. In 1912, the states secretary of internal affairs reported that Hazleton was one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the state, estimating that over 30 languages were spoken on its streets. It was also part of the same region portrayed in John OHaras Gibbsville, PA, short stories that unveiled the social mores of Americas small-city country-club elite.

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Of course, as in Gibbsville, Hazletons flourishing past also had a darker history. But unlike OHara, Moran did not depict it. The regions oppressive and dangerous mining industry instigated labor disputes and political violence. In 1897, striking miners marching just outside Hazleton were massacred by a Luzerne County sheriffs posse. The shocking event mobilized miners and, within five years, led to major victories for the United Mine Workers. Subsequent UMW strikes, compounded by a declining demand for coal after World War I, imperiled much of Hazletons economic health. Poverty, crime, and limited educational opportunities were also part of Hazletons urban milieu.

Moran understood this, but he intended his paintings to remind viewers of what Hazleton had lost because of urban renewal. In the 1960s and 1970s, the citys redevelopment authority, armed with federal funding, oversaw the clearance of residential and commercial blocks in the citys Donegal Hill neighborhood. The citys intention was to recruit new businesses and increase parking for downtown merchants. The result was the displacement of hundreds of families and merchants, hastening the downtowns decline during a period of deindustrialization and suburban expansion.

James Moran / Greater Hazleton Historical Society

Urban renewal infuriated Moran, who mourned the eradication of historic landmarks. In one painting, The Lights Go on Again, he displays the downtowns train station. The brick edifice glows in the melancholic stillness of a winter night; back then, trains provided passenger service to New Yorks Penn Stationthat is, before the station was razed for a parking lot in 1963. In They Talk at the Feeley, set in 1929, Moran focuses attention on the ornate Feeley Theatre, which met the wrecking ball for yet another parking lot. He presents the theater surrounded by a city of lightilluminated buildings, a passing electric trolley, and a well-dressed crowd navigating a rain-soaked evening.

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The Feeley was located on Hazletons Wyoming Street, a commercial stretch that by the early 2000s was better known for its bars and drug deals. In 2006, a series of high-profile crimes in the neighborhoods vicinity contributed to Hazletons local lawmakers decision to pass severe illegal-immigration ordinances, a move that attracted national attention, led to a Supreme Court battle, and highlighted the citys massive wave of Latino migration.

James Moran / Greater Hazleton Historical Society

In recent years, however, the Latino communitylike the immigrants at the turn of the centuryhas become part of the lifeblood of Hazleton, and the downtown has witnessed a revival. Morans passing occurred as the remaining historic buildings began to undergo restoration projects and draw new tenants. Since 2014, the downtown has attracted restaurants and over 40 businesses. On Wyoming Street, an ongoing mural project pays tribute to the thoroughfares historic contributions and immigrant experience to instill hope for the citys future.

Still, challenges remain in Hazleton, where many residents of duplex-lined neighborhoods question their citys future, lament its present maladies, and yearn for a past when their neighborhoods were stable, their parishes were open, and an industrial economy thrived. Like Moran, they yearn for a past that occurred mainly before they were born. They express frustration over the socioeconomic shrapnel of contemporary urban dysfunction: crime, drugs, gangs, blight. And so, Morans halcyon work speaks to them. Through Morans paintings, they discover the forgotten radiance of their city and rekindle a profound sense of their history and culture. After all, Hazleton was part of an assembly line of communities in Pennsylvania that once heated, mechanized, clothed, and protected the countrys coastal cities. But in a globalized-information economy, these same coastal cities now thrive to the detriment of towns like Hazleton.

In the 2016 presidential race, Donald Trump has tapped into the sense of longing felt by so many in the working class in Hazleton and across postindustrial America. These communities nurture a combination of inherited New Deal optimism and Pat Buchanan-inspired nationalism. Their nostalgia has found refuge in the populism and ethos of Trumps campaign.

Morans artistic intentions, however, were never political, yet his paintings glaringly remind its viewers of what was lost in one postindustrial city. But Moran himself loved Hazleton through all of its iterations. Every building that was brought down to make space for a parking lot did not dampen his love. But sometimes it broke his heart. If Moran conveyed any message through his paintings, it was simply for Hazleton residents to love their hometown.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
The actor celebrated his birthday yesterday with his close friends, who showered him with love and gifts.

Rithvik Dhanjani was showered with love and gifts on his birthday. Picture courtesy: Twitter/rithvik_RD

By India Today Web Desk: Your birthday is that time when you want to feel special and cared for the most. And while they might lead a high-flying life, actors have the same expectations on their birthdays--have your friends throw you a surprise party, so that all of them can spend some quality time together.

So when Rithvik Dhanjani, the actor who is famous for his role as Arjun Kirloskar in Pavitra Rishta and the winner of Nach Baliye 6 with actress Asha Negi, celebrated his birthday yesterday, he wanted the same old things--good company and an awesome time.

Just look at all the gifts Rithvik got from his friends. Picture courtesy: Instagram/rithvik_d

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Also read: When Rithvik Dhanjani got caught in a landslide



His friends didn't disappoint him, and threw him a birthday bash to remember.

Rithvik was so touched by his friends' gesture, and of course, the loads of gifts they got for him out of love, that he posted this on his Instagram: "Thank you soooo much guys...year after year, every year you guys make it so special".

We're glad that the charming young actor had a good time on his birthday.







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The 150th episode of CBS Hawaii Five-0 crossed some ts and dotted some is with regards to Steve and Doris complicated dynamic. But it also brought some closure to a thread thatd been dangling for well over a year.

RELATEDHawaii Five-0s Alex OLoughlin Reflects on 150 Episodes, Hints at His Exit Plan

Crashing McGarretts cozy home-cooked dinner date with Lynn, Catherine Rollins (played by Michelle Borth) stormed into the picture to deliver the news that Doris had been captured and imprisoned at a CIA black site in Morocco, in the course of trying to spring Wo Fats father. As Steve busily prepared to launch a rescue op, Catherine made wonderfully awkward small talk with Lynn, who let slip that a marriage proposal was imminent at the time Catherine bailed on Steve last season.

Catherine made no big, obvious deal upon hearing that she missed out on a proposal, though the topic eventually came up after Doris rescue was successfully pulled off (with help from Chin Ho, Kono and Grover)  as detailed in the dialogue sample shared below.

When Catherine revealed to Steve that she knew about the proposal, why did he push for what her answer might have been? I think its an important piece of information, Alex OLoughlin tells TVLine. I mean, [wanting to know] out of curiosity is one reason, but also, I think he wants to hear her say, It wasnt you, you werent the problem. I was the problem.'

Indeed, the former couples discussion of this very delicate piece of personal business came just as Catherine was about to flit off to another covert assignment  one she didnt give any thought to bailing on, even after admitting she would have said yes to being his wife.

RELATED Five-0 Casts Rookie Blues Missy Peregrym as Dannys Sister

Meanwhile,

Hawaii Five-0

should fans of Steves comparatively nascent romance with Lynn (played by Sarah Carter) interpret his interest in Catherines hypothetical proposal response as any kind of slight, a red flag?

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Absolutely not. No fking way, OLoughlin makes clear, adding that Catherine is not the one who got away but the one who was not meant to be.

As far as Im concerned, he was just curious, the actor adds, because for him to get serious with anyone else  really serious, if thats what happens  he needs closure on [Catherine], and [hearing her answer] gives him that closure. Hes like, OK. How ironic. I guess this just wasnt in the cards, you know.

Grade Episode 150 and then revisit McRollins (latest) good-bye below:



MCGARRETT

Do me a favor, tell me something 

are you happy, doing what youre doing?

CATHERINE

Yeah. I am.

MCGARRETT

All right. Good. Thats good.

[They hug goodbye]

MCGARRETT

Thanks for coming to get me.

CATHERINE

You know, just because Im not in your life

doesnt mean I dont still care about you.

MCGARRETT

I know. I know.

CATHERINE

See you around, sailor.

[Begins to climb steps, stops, turns, comes clean]

I know about it.

MCGARRETT

What?

CATHERINE

I know what you were going

to do before I left. Im sorry.

MCGARRETT

Just, you know, out of curiosity. If Id have

asked, what would you have said?

CATHERINE

[Thinks for barely a moment]

I would have said yes.

[McGarrett processes, nods. Then, before they say goodbye]

Hey  Lynn, she seems like a nice girl. I hope that

works out. You deserve to be happy.

What did you think of H50 No. 150, which also included Chin Ho losing his bid to delay Saras adoption, and Grover comically enlisting his son to get the 411 on Graces boyfriend for Danny?

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Nearly half of Americans say they have tried marijuana at least once in their life.

With more people lighting up than ever (and nine states voting on the legalization of marijuana on Election Day), it's important to remember how many fatally overdose on the drug.

Zip. Zero. That's according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which collects data on a range of other substances, both legal and illicit, and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

For comparison, opioids, which include prescription pain relievers and heroin, killed more than 28,000 Americans in 2014. Nearly 88,000 people die from alcohol-related causes every year, which makes alcohol the fourth leading preventable cause of the death in the US.

It's pretty impossible to ingest a lethal dose of marijuana.

David Schmader, author of "Weed: The User's Guide," spoke with experts and crunched the numbers on how much bud it would take to kill someone.

"Even aspirin can kill you if you take too much, but a fatal dose of marijuana would require ingestion of fifteen hundred pounds in fifteen minutes  a physical impossibility for any human, even Snoop Dogg," Schmader writes in his book.

This handy diagram from "Weed: The User's Guide" might help:

This is how much marijuana it would take to kill you  from @davidschmader's excellent book, "Weed." pic.twitter.com/ZM5qIjK1re  Melia Robinson (@meliarobin) November 4, 2016

One reason for this impossibility is the way the brain works. When a user ingests marijuana, chemicals in the plant ride the nervous system to the brain and latch onto molecules called cannabinoid receptors. Those little holding cells influence pleasure, memory, coordination, and cognition, among other functions, which is why getting high affects thinking and behavior.

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Cannabinoid receptors are not found in the brainstem areas that control breathing. Thus, "lethal overdoses from cannabis and cannabinoids do not occur," The National Cancer Institute explains.

Marijuana isn't harmless, however. The psychoactive ingredient that gets users high, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, is a powerful intoxicant. Having physical abilities and judgments impaired can lead users to put themselves in unsafe situations.

marijuana dispensary

And while there are no recorded cases of deaths from marijuana overdose, one bong rip too many can make users feel incredibly uncomfortable. Their heart starts to race, hands tremble, and anxiety strikes. There are things they can do to mitigate a "What I have done?" high.

In his book, Schmader recommends users tell themselves that they're in no real danger.

Drink some water to stay hydrated and eat a snack  preferably one that is ready-to-eat and does not require operating a stove  to boost your blood sugar. Call up a trusted friend, Schmader says, or Google search "Maureen Dowd Colorado" to feel less alone.

NOW WATCH: 4 tips for people smoking marijuana for the first time





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MARIJUANA 4X3

Marijuana legalization, both recreational and medical, will appear on the ballot in nine states on November 8. And it's been a hot-button issue this election cycle.

Though this election season has been contentious, both Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, and Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, have similar thinking on the issue of marijuana legalization.

Both candidates have expressed support for medical marijuana, and have encouraged the federal government to allow more states to vote on legalizing marijuana.

Recreational marijuana is currently legal in four states, and 24 states have varying forms of medical marijuana laws on the books.

MARIJUANA GRAPHIC

Donald Trump, the brash billionaire, has flip-flopped somewhat on this issue throughout his public life.

Recently, Trump has supported state's rights to choose how to legislate medical marijuana, but has not expressly called for legalization.

"In terms of marijuana and legalization, I think that should be a state issue, state-by-state," Trump told The Washington Post. " Marijuana is such a big thing. I think medical should happen  right? Dont we agree? I think so. And then I really believe we should leave it up to the states."

He has also expressed support for medical marijuana, telling Bill O'Reilly in February that he's, "in favor of medical marijuana 100%."

"I know people that have serious problems and they did that they really  it really does help them," Trump said.

But, Trump also called Colorado's legal marijuana industry a "real problem," in the same interview with O'Reilly, a departure from his position in 1990, when he told The Miami Herald that the US needs to "legalize drugs to win" the war on drugs.

And, Mike Pence, Trump's running mate, has expressed his opposition to marijuana legalization and governs a state with some of the harshest marijuana-sentencing laws.

Trump's campaign has not taken a definitive stance on the issue, according to the campaign's website. For it's part, the Marijuana Policy Project gives Trump a "C+" grade on marijuana legalization.

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Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, has said that she will support states that are "moving towards" both recreational and medical marijuana legalization.

She has also called for removing marijuana from Schedule 1  a move the DEA declined to make in August  which would free up scientists and policymakers to access marijuana for further research.

"Theres some great evidence about what marijuana can do for people who are in cancer treatment, who have other kind of chronic diseases, who are suffering from intense pain," Clinton told Jimmy Kimmel in March. "Theres great, great anecdotal evidence but I want us to start doing the research

Clinton, however, is still measured in her support for recreational marijuana. She's said that she doesn't want the federal government to "interfere" with states like Colorado that have chosen to legalize recreational marijuana, and said that she wants to learn "what works and what doesn't work."

Clinton's campaign, like Trump's, hasn't taken an official stance on marijuana. The Marijuana Policy Project gives Clinton a "B+" on the issue.

On Election Day, five states, including Arizona, California, Massachusetts, Maine, and Nevada, will be voting to legalize recreational marijuana. Another four states will be voting on legalizing medical marijuana, including Florida, Arkansas, North Dakota, and Montana.

California's vote is particularly crucial. 60% of Americans support legalizing marijuana, according to the latest Gallup poll. If California's vote goes through  which is looking likely  that means that the world's sixth-largest economy would have legal weed, potentially affecting the rest of the country's attitude.

NOW WATCH: Everything we know about Donald Trumps unhealthy diet





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* Beholder ends stellar career with 18th win * Even-money favourite Songbird finishes second (Adds detail, quotes) By Mark Lamport-Stokes ARCADIA, California, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Beholder, expertly ridden by Gary Stevens, inflicted the first ever defeat on Songbird in an exciting photo finish to win the $2 million Breeders' Cup Distaff by a nose at Santa Anita Park on Friday. Songbird, unbeaten in 11 prior starts, had led the 1 1/8 mile race almost the entire way but was pipped at the post after a strong charge home by Beholder, a 6-year-old mare running the final event of her distinguished career. Forever Unbridled, with Joel Rosario on board, finished a length and a quarter behind in third with Stellar Wind, the joint second morning-line choice with Beholder at 5-2, placing fourth. Previously the winner of the 2013 Distaff and the 2012 Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies, Beholder signed off with a lifetime record of 18 wins from 26 lifetime starts. "I've had some good feelings in racing but this is tops here," said Stevens, a 53-year-old who has won 11 Breeders' Cup races, including four Distaffs, and has twice retired from competitive racing due to lingering knee problems. "I've been in battles before but never for the length of the stretch - five-sixteenths or a quarter of a mile of street fight (with Songbird). "For six years old, the way she (Beholder) has been managed throughout her career allowed her to do what she had to do today in her final day of racing. It's probably the most emotional race of my career because she's so special to me." For Beholder, Friday's win represented overdue good fortune at the Breeders' Cup as she was unable to defend her Distaff title in 2014 due to a fever and was scratched from last year's Classic as a chief rival to American Pharoah because of illness. "She gave me absolutely everything," said Stevens, who was also on board when Beholder won the 2013 Distaff as a 3-year-old filly. "She has never given me everything like she gave me today. "And I have a new respect for Songbird, even in defeat. As a 3-year-old, she laid it all out on the line today. This was horse racing at its best." Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith, who had guided even-money favourite Songbird superbly for the entire race, paid lofty tribute to Beholder. "The real Beholder showed up today," said Smith. "That was probably the best race she has run in her life. My filly made her reach down as deep as she has. In losing, I feel like we won." The Distaff, which highlighted the opening day's four-race card at the Breeders' Cup, was previously known as the Ladies' Classic. (Editing by Andrew Both)
Nov 5 (Reuters) - German-born jockey Freddy Tylicki has been told by doctors that he was paralysed from the waist down after sustaining spinal injuries in a fall at Kempton Park in England, the Injured Jockeys Fund (IJF) said on Friday. Tylicki, who was one of a quartet of jockeys involved in the four-horse pile-up on Monday, was taken to the major trauma unit at St George's Hospital in south London after he was air-lifted from the course by helicopter. "After his fall at Kempton Park Racecourse earlier this week, Freddy Tylicki... has since undergone surgery to his spine," IJF chief executive Lisa Hancock said in a statement. "His surgical team have confirmed that Freddy has a T7 paralysis, which means he has movement in the upper half of his body but not his lower. Freddy remains in intensive care and is not receiving any visitors for the foreseeable future." Champion jockey Jim Crowley suffered a broken nose in the pile-up while the other two riders managed to walk away unhurt. (Reporting by Shravanth Vijayakumar in Bengaluru; Editing by John O'Brien)
(MOSUL, Iraq)  ISIS fighters launched counterattacks Saturday against Iraqi special forces in eastern Mosul, emerging from populated areas deeper in the city to target the troops with mortars and suicide car bombs in clashes that raged late into the night.

Artillery shelling thundered across the city as snipers traded fire from rooftops and civilians emerged from the front lines waving white flags. There were fresh indications that other residents were being held back by the militants to be used as human shields.

The seesawing battle highlights the challenges ahead for Iraqi forces as they press into more densely populated neighborhoods of the countrys second largest city, where they will not be able to rely as much on airstrikes because of the risk of killing civilians.

Daesh is in the city center and we must be very careful as our forces advance, said Maj. Gen. Sami al-Aridi of the Iraqi special forces, using the Arabic acronym for IS.

The special forces entered the Gogjali district, on the eastern edge of Mosul, on Tuesday, marking their first major foray into the city itself after more than two weeks of fighting in its rural outskirts.

ISIS fought back Saturday, pushing the special forces from the southern edge of the neighborhood. Both sides fired mortar rounds and automatic weapons, while the Iraqi troops also responded with artillery. Snipers dueled from rooftops in residential areas, where most buildings are just two stories high.

Dozens of civilians emerged from their homes over the course of the day, some carrying white flags. Many civilians traveling with children and elderly relatives said they had to walk more than 6 miles (10 kilometers) to reach a camp for the displaced.

Just a few kilometers (miles) from the clashes, Iraqi officers coordinating airstrikes with the U.S.-led coalition watched live drone footage showing a team of ISIS fighters regrouping near the front line.

Theyre moving in front of the mosque, an Iraqi soldier said as he called in an airstrike, which moments later flattened a small building. Civilians moved into the area soon thereafter, and the soldiers said the militants appeared to have corralled them there to prevent further strikes.

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Daesh have continued to hide behind civilians and facilitate harm to them, said Col. John Dorrian, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, which has been launching airstrikes to aid the Iraqi advance.

He said Iraqi forces and the coalition developed a plan that is intended to reduce the possibility of civilian casualties and collateral damage.

But Iraqi Cpt. Naqib Jaff, who was covered in dust after helping to hold positions east of Mosul overnight, said the air support hasnt been enough and that the coalition was only striking suicide car bombs.

He said that in previous operations against ISIS-held towns and cities, civilians would be moved away from the front lines, allowing forces to advance. But he said in Mosul, his men have been ordered to keep families inside their homes.

Weve never been in such a situation before. We would be fighting and there would be a family right next to us, he said.

The government has ordered residents to stay inside, fearing a mass exodus from the city, which is still home to more than 1 million people.

The advance of the Iraqi forces was also slowed by fortifications erected by the extremists in the more than two years since they captured the city. Trenches and berms have turned the streets and alleyways of a neighborhood once named after former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein into a maze.

Satellite images show rows of concrete barricades, earthen mounds and rubble blocking key routes into the city center. The images, taken Monday by Stratfor, a U.S.-based private intelligence firm, showed that IS fighters have cleared terrain and leveled buildings around Mosul airport and a nearby former military base on the west bank of the Tigris.

Mosul is the last major ISIS stronghold in Iraq, and driving the militants out would deal a major blow to their self-styled caliphate stretching into neighboring Syria.

Iraqi forces have made uneven progress since the operation to retake Mosul began on Oct. 17. The territory they have retaken inside Mosul is just a small fraction of the city, which measures more than 9 miles (15 kilometers) across.

On Saturday, Iraqi forces advanced toward the town of Hamam al-Alil, which lies along the Tigris River about 9 miles (15 kilometers) from the southern edge of Mosul. Kurdish television channel Rudaw broadcast live footage of Iraqi troops and armored vehicles amassing outside the town as an attack helicopter fired rockets.

Up to 1,600 civilians may have been loaded onto trucks and forcibly relocated from Hamam al-Alil to the IS-held town of Tal Afar earlier this week, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said Friday. It warned that the captive civilians might be taken as far as Syria to be used as human shields. Another 150 families from Hamam al-Alil were moved to Mosul itself, the U.N. said.

Other civilians have embarked on their own harrowing journeys to escape the fighting.

Ghanim Abd fled his home in Gogjali when Iraqi forces entered on Tuesday and found shelter in an abandoned home deeper inside Mosul. The 56-year-old said he and his children and grandchildren made their way down alleys they feared were littered with roadside bombs after the family ran out of food.

On Saturday, after government forces pushed further into the city, they were able to return home, but he said there was no telling how long they would be able to stay.

The battle is so harsh, we dont know where to go next.

___

Associated Press writers Adam Schreck in Irbil, Iraq, Balint Szlanko at Qayara Air Base, Iraq, and Brian Rohan in Baghdad contributed to this report.
MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Indonesian President Joko Widodo said there will be "no compromise" to his country's sovereignty in the contested South China Sea, ahead of a visit to staunch U.S. ally Australia. The comments come after Australia's foreign minister, Julie Bishop, on Tuesday said the two countries were considering joint naval patrols in the contested waters. China claims almost the entire South China Sea, through which about $5 trillion worth of trade passes each year. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam and Indonesia also claim part of the sea. "In regards to Indonesia's sovereignty, I don't compromise. I don't compromise," Widodo told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Saturday. Indonesian warplanes staged a large-scale exercise last month in the waters around the Natuna Islands archipelago, following a spate of face-offs between the country's navy and Chinese fishing boats in the gas-rich southern end of the South China Sea. China, while not disputing Indonesia's claims to the Natuna Islands, has raised Indonesian anger by saying the two countries had "overlapping claims" to waters close to them, an area Indonesia calls the Natuna Sea. Australia has previously drawn criticism from China for running surveillance flights over disputed islands in the South China Sea and supporting U.S. freedom of navigation exercises there. Widodo will hold meetings with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Sunday amidst warming ties and a renewed push for a bilateral trade agreement between the two neighbors, expected to finalised next year. The relationship between Indonesia and Australia reached historic lows under former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who Turnbull ousted in a party room coup in September last year. (Editing by Leslie Adler)
Despite some noises about a grand alliance of the socialist leaning parties in the UP assembly elections, the SP event in Lucknow failed to strike right notes.

JDU leader Sharad Yadav, UP CM Akhilesh Yadav, RLD chief Ajit Singh, JDS president HD Deve Gowda and SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav at SP silver jubilee function in Lucknow on Saturday (Photo: @aninewsUP)

By India Today Web Desk: The stage was set for a Bihar-style grand alliance for the upcoming assembly elections in UP. But, the silver jubilee ceremony of Samajwadi Party could not lead to what it was purportedly planned to achieve.

Only RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav was optimistic. Speaking on the occasion to mark the 25 years of SP, Lalu Prasad said that he and leaders of other socialist-leaning parties came to Uttar Pradesh to strengthen Samajwadi Party and "chase away" BJP from UP like they did in Bihar.

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READ: SP silver jubilee: Samajwadi show of unity that wasn't

LALU CHALLENGES BJP

"We are here to strengthen SP. We have chased away BJP in Bihar. Just like 'geedad' (jackal) is chased away we will chase away BJP from UP too," Lalu said before leaving SP's silver jubilee celebrations.

Lalu Prasad slammed the Modi government for the ongoing tension along Indo-Pakistan border and LoC. He held the central government responsible for unrest in the Kashmir Valley.

"What is the use of a 56-inch chest when you are not able to control the situation in J&K for so many days," asked Lalu Prasad.

WATCH:





TALKS OF GRAND ALLIANCE

With leaders from JDU, JDS, RLD and INLD attending the silver jubilee function, talk of grand alliance was natural. But, apart from Lalu Prasad, all other leaders kept the cards close to their chest.

Former Prime Minister H D Devegowda, when asked about the possibility of a coalition, said, "We are not in field here. A situation might arise after UP, Gujarat and Punjab polls. We are here to attend silver jubilee celebrations on the invitation of SP."

READ:Akhilesh returns Shivpal's taunt: Some people will listen but after destroying Samajwadi Party



JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav said they have come to attend the SP function as they have "old relations" with SP.

"There are no talks of coalition now. Mulayam Singh Yadav can tell better. SP is the bigger party here. Talking much on this will not be appropriate at this time," he said.

READ: SP silver jubilee: I don't want to become CM, you can insult me, Shivpal tells Akhilesh



Desperately looking for new friends, RLD chief Ajit Singh called for an alliance between the followers of Ram Manohar Lohia and Choudhary Charan Singh.

"It is time to set aside personal differences and defeat communal forces. Let's forget our differences and unite. No development is possible without social amity," Ajit Singh said.

WATCH:





--- ENDS ---
By Fergus Jensen and Agustinus Beo Da Costa JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia's President Joko Widodo postponed a visit to Australia on Saturday after a mass protest in Jakarta that briefly turned violent as Muslim extremists pressed for the resignation of the capital's governor, a Christian they say insulted the Koran. Widodo has faced criticism for failing to rein in hardline groups that had promised for weeks to bring tens of thousands onto the streets of the capital, and during Friday's protest his office said he was inspecting a rail project at the airport. At a news conference after midnight on Friday, he blamed "political actors" for fanning popular anger over city Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, who is standing for re-election in February, competing with two Muslims for the job. The governorship of the capital is a powerful position and one held by Widodo before he became president two years ago. Widodo had planned to use his Nov. 6-8 visit to Australia to cement improving ties, with a focus on economic and maritime cooperation and efforts to counter Islamist militancy. "Looking at the latest situation and condition in Indonesia that require the presence of the president, President Joko Widodo decided to postpone his scheduled state visit to Australia," a statement from his office said. The protest against Purnama, the first ethnic Chinese to hold the position of Jakarta governor, was largely peaceful but in the evening the crowd grew restive and police restrained them with tear gas and water cannon fire. One person died and more than 100 were injured in the violence, many of them police officers. Three vehicles were torched and 18 were damaged, national police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar told a news conference on Saturday. Clashes broke out in a north Jakarta area where there are large communities of non-Muslims and about 15 people were arrested there for looting a minimart, Amar said. Some Chinese-owned shops and restaurants were shuttered in northern Jakarta on Saturday, while security officers guarded a temple and a school, according to a resident. A spokesman for the Islamic Defenders Front, a group that led the protest, denied responsibility for the violence and said the "provocateurs" were the police who fired tear gas. The group may organize another protest if the legal process against Purnama for his Koran comments is not allowed to run its course, said Munarman, who goes by one name. "If the law is ignored ... then we will call for similar action." WIDODO BLAMES 'POLITICAL ACTORS' Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim population, but most follow a moderate form of Islam and protests on such a large scale are rare. Ethnic Chinese make up just over 1 percent of Indonesia's 250 million people, and they typically do not enter politics. Indonesian Chinese have faced persecution and violence in the past, especially during the turmoil that gripped Jakarta when former strongman Suharto was toppled in the late 1990s. About a dozen Muslim groups have accused Purnama of insulting Islam after he jokingly said his opponents had used a verse from the Koran to deceive voters. The verse implies that Muslims should not choose non-Muslims as leaders. Police are investigating the case against Purnama, who has apologized for his remarks, insisting he was not criticizing the Koranic verse but those who used it to attack him. Purnama, popularly known as 'Ahok', is a no-nonsense reformer with little patience for the corruption widely blamed for the chaos and dilapidated infrastructure of an overcrowded city of 10 million. He remains popular despite efforts by Muslim groups to vilify him and is seen as the frontrunner in the election, though many voters are angry with him for evicting thousands from slums to modernize Jakarta. Widodo, a Muslim, has vowed not to interfere in any legal proceedings against Purnama, who is an ally of the president. But he told the news conference that any legal process involving Purnama would be executed "swiftly, firmly and transparently". He criticized politicians - whom he didn't name - for inciting die-hard protesters after most had already gone home. " ... we deplore the incident after the Isha prayers, when [demonstrators] should have already disbanded but became violent. And, we see this was steered by political actors who were exploiting the situation," he said. A former furniture salesman who became the first president of Indonesia from outside the military or political elite, Widodo struggled in his first year to assert himself but since then he has built alliances across the political spectrum. Analysts say that by openly supporting Purnama he could weaken his support base. "From his perspective this visit to Australia just doesn't seem to match the urgency of this happening in Jakarta: although it's not conceivable that he might be overthrown ... it is conceivable that he could be greatly reduced in power to support the re-election of Ahok," said political analyst Wimar Witoelar. (Additional reporting by Angie Teo and Eveline Danubrata in JAKARTA and by Jarni Blakkarly in MELBOURNE; Writing by Eveline Danubrata and John Chalmers; Editing by Catherine Evans)
Its not the worst injury report of the year, but theres always something important to sort through. Get out your clipboards and lets run our audit.

 Big changes in Kansas City this week, with Alex Smith (concussion) and Spencer Ware (concussion) both ruled out for the home date against Jacksonville. Backup QB Nick Foles showed a willingness to press the ball downfield last week, and he specifically clicked with previously-slumping TE Travis Kelce. Charcandrick West gets the start in place of Ware  remember, Jamaal Charles is on IR  and becomes an interesting start.

[Play our $125K Baller | Free Yahoo Cup entry | Tips for your Daily lineup]

Charcandrick West is needed in Week 9

 Delanie Walker (groin) is going to be a game-time decision for the late start at San Diego. Have other options ready, just in case. On the plus side, its a week with more schedule balance; there are six games that kick off after the 1 pm ET wave this week.

 Carlos Hyde (shoulder) had a limited practice week and will come down to a game-time decision against the Saints. It could turn into a messy committee if Hyde is out, with DuJuan Harris, Mike Davis and Shaun Draughn all potential ball carriers.

 Ben Roethlisberger (knee) did some work all week and seems on track to start against Baltimore. Ladarius Green (ankle) doesnt appear ready to return, though he did some work at practice this week, but Sammie Coates (hand) should be close to 100 percent.

 The Lions limited Theo Riddick (ankle) to partial practices all week, but he still looks likely to play against Minnesota. Given how difficult it is to run inside on the Vikings, Riddicks perimeter work as a receiver could be a key component to this game.

 With Hunter Henry (knee) out of the mix for Week 9, old reliable Antonio Gates should be needed plenty against Tennessee. Tyrell Williams (knee) and Travis Benjamin (knee) both practiced Friday and are expected to play.

 Ty Montgomery (illness) isnt listed on the injury report, so it sounds like hell be good to go against the Colts. James Starks (knee) was able to practice this week, but hes not ready for game action. Randall Cobb (hamstring) had a week of limited practice and looks like a game-time decision.

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 The Colts dont have T.Y. Hilton (hamstring) on the injury report, but he missed some practice time during the week, so make sure you double-check his available on game day. TE Dwayne Allen (ankle) might be able to go, but hes been passed in the pecking order by Jack Doyle.

 Jeremy Maclin (groin) had a limited practice Friday after missing the previous session. The Chiefs expect him to go against Jacksonville, but give him a look Sunday just to be sure. Its an early start at Arrowhead.

 The Saints are world famous for keeping us guessing, and an odd day of Michael Thomas news emerged Friday. Thomas didnt practice in the final session of the week, attributing it to a stomach bug. The team later listed Thomas as a limited participant, citing an ankle injury. But on the final report of the week, Thomas is not carrying a questionable tag. Add it all up and it sounds like Thomas goes at San Francisco, but Id certainly double-check everything midday Sunday.

 The Bills continue to limit LeSean McCoy (hamstring) in practice, though hes hoping to play Monday at Seattle. This could come down to a game-day decision. Mike Gillislee is the handcuff of interest; hes at 5.9 YPC for his brief career. Barring a setback, Robert Woods (foot) is expected to play.

 Steve Smith (ankle) wants to go against Pittsburgh, and he was able to practice in full Friday.

 DeVante Parker was a full go at practice all week, though the Dolphins nonetheless list him as questionable. With the Jets on the docket (awful in pass coverage) and six teams on bye, its an interesting time to take an upside swing at Parker, or Kenny Stills.

[Week 9 rankings: Overall | FLEX | QB | RB | WR | TE | DEF | K]

 Jerick McKinnon (ankle) did some work the last two days and thinks hell be good to go against Detroit. Good luck with that offensive line. Matt Asiata is around as a goal-line option. The Vikings are also moving into a new era with OC Pat Shurmur; Norv Turner resigned earlier in the week.

 Amari Cooper (back) is expected to give it a go against Denver on Sunday night. The Broncos are always a formidable matchup, though theyll be without CB Aqib Talib.

 The Buccaneers are hoping to get Doug Martin (hamstring) back next week against Chicago. With the Tampa Bay backfield riddled by injuries, Martins return would be especially welcomed. Antone Smith (knee) was injured in Thursdays loss and is out for the year. Well also keep an eye on Mike Evans, who is currently in the concussion protocol.

 Cody Kessler is set to start against Dallas, and the Browns expect Terrelle Pryor (hamstring) and Corey Coleman (hand) to both play.
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fstory%2fthumbnail%2f27008%2fscreen_shot_2016-11-05_at_4.14.13_pm

Tensions are high in the world of penguin relationships this week.

In a very graphic new video from National Geographic, a male penguin returns home to his mate only to find her with another male penguin.

Then, a battle ensues and, well, let's just say the hero doesn't always come out on top.

SEE ALSO: This illustrator is turning sad facts about animals into hilarious cartoons

Yes, friends, it's true: after a bloody, bloody battle, the female penguin waddled away with the other man.

The internet was instantly shaken to its core. How was anyone supposed to believe in penguin love anymore? How was anyone supposed to believe in any sort of love?

in the end of the day the dude penguin is gonna find someone who appreciates him for who he is and mrs. penguin is gonna realise her mistake  troye sivan (@troyesivan) November 5, 2016

You vs the penguin she told you not to worry about pic.twitter.com/mb7RA0CQoj  Ahmad_shaw (@WhiteArabi) November 5, 2016

this penguin thing has me like pic.twitter.com/d7V3Y77JXm  Remi Cruz  (@missremiashten) November 5, 2016

me: today is gonna be good



penguin drama: hi



me: pic.twitter.com/ZYNXZ6qMSa  logan (@foolssivan) November 5, 2016

You don't brawl, you dap up the other penguin, keep it moving & do you https://t.co/8u6D4rEPNF  Chad Johnson (@ochocinco) November 5, 2016

"he makes one last plea to his wife.....but she's got no time for losers" pic.twitter.com/oV4SITWMVW  JusJulius (@FunnyJulius) November 4, 2016

Still, some took the female penguin's side.

Story continues

"You ain't married to no average bird boi!" pic.twitter.com/pH0t7hlRoc  Me (@zuri_too) November 4, 2016

I'm honestly team female penguin. don't slander my girl.  josh edwards (@joshuedwrds) November 5, 2016

How we know he wasn't coming home from cheating? He could've been doing her dirty for years. We need a backstory on this penguin fight pic.twitter.com/XIAacCRLHh  Allure (@Drebae_) November 5, 2016

Please, someone anthropomorphize another animal so that we may believe in something again.

BONUS: Florida man hangs out with baby sharks and captures awesome footage
By Babak Dehghanpisheh NEAR HAMMAM AL-ALIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi troops advancing towards Mosul battled on Saturday for the last town left between them and the Islamic State stronghold to the north, which is already under assault from special forces fighting inside the city's eastern districts. Saturday's attack on Hammam al-Alil, about 15 km (10 miles) south of Mosul, targeted a force of at least 70 Islamic State fighters in the Tigris river town, commander of the Mosul operations Major-General Najm al-Jabouri said. Jabouri said the assault began around 10 a.m. (0700 GMT) and some militants had tried to escape across the river, although others put up heavy resistance and the troops had thwarted three attempted suicide car bombings. "(The battle) is very important - it's the last town for us before Mosul," Jabouri told reporters. Iraqi helicopters were supporting the army, he said, backed also by jets from a U.S.-led air coalition which had been hitting Islamic State targets in the town for several days. A military statement said security forces had raised the Iraqi flag over a government building in the town, but did not say whether it was fully under their control. The army and accompanying security forces aim to push the southern front up to Mosul to join troops and special forces that broke into the city's east this week, taking six districts and carving out a foothold in the militants' Iraq bastion. Recapturing Mosul would effectively crush the Iraqi half of a self-proclaimed caliphate declared by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque two years ago. His Islamist group also controls large parts of east Syria. "WE WILL LIBERATE YOU" Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, speaking on a visit to the eastern battle front, said he brought "a message to the residents inside Mosul who are hostages in the hands of Daesh (Islamic State) - we will liberate you soon". Abadi said progress in the nearly three-week-old campaign, and the advance into Mosul itself, had been faster than expected. But in the face of fierce resistance, which has included suicide car bombings, sniper fire and roadside bombs, he suggested that progress may be intermittent. "Our heroic forces will not retreat and will not be broken. Maybe in the face of terrorist acts, criminal acts, there will be some delay," he said. So far the area which the army says it controls in east Mosul remains only a small part of the city which was home to 2 million people before Islamic State took over in 2014. More than 1 million remain in the city - by far the largest under Islamic State control in either Iraq or Syria. A Reuters correspondent in the village of Ali Rash, about 7 km (4 miles) southeast of Mosul, saw smoke rising from eastern districts of the city on Saturday, while air strikes, artillery and gunfire could be heard. The United Nations has warned of a possible exodus of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Mosul. So far only 31,000 have been displaced, of which more than 3,000 have already returned to their homes, said William Lacy Swing, head of the International Organization for Migration. "The numbers are not as large so far as had been expected. We'd heard figures all the way up to 500,000 or 700,000," he told Reuters. "We're trying to prepare accordingly, but it's very difficult to do contingency planning with any level of accuracy because we don't know what theyre going to find when they get inside". In Hammam al-Alil, the jihadists had taken hundreds of people as human shields, although Jabouri said it was not clear how many people were left in the town. Before Islamic State swept in more than two years ago, Hammam al-Alil and outlying villages had a population of 65,000. As well as forcing residents to remain as they came under attack in Hammam al-Alil, Islamic State fighters retreating north in the last two weeks have forced thousands to march with them as cover from air strikes, villagers have told Reuters. The United Nations said the militants transported 1,600 abducted civilians from Hammam al-Alil to the town of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, on Tuesday and took another 150 families from the town to Mosul the next day. They told residents to hand over children, especially boys aged over nine, in an apparent recruitment drive for child soldiers, U.N. human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said. Jabouri said a man he described as a senior Islamic State figure, Ammar Salih Ahmed Abu Bakr, was killed by federal police - who are fighting with the army in Hammam al-Alil - as he tried to escape by car. Many of the remaining militants were non-Iraqis, he said. "There are at least 70 Daesh fighters in the town. The majority are foreign fighters, so they don't know where to go. They are just moving from place to place." (Additional reporting by Stephen Kalin in Ali Rash and Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Catherine Evans and Alexander Smith)
By Conor Humphries DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland's foreign ministry is investigating reports that an Irish citizen died in a suicide attack near the Iraqi city of Mosul, a spokesman said on Saturday. The Islamic States (IS) al-Jazeerah Province in northern Iraq on Friday said Abu Usama al-Irelandi detonated an explosive-laden vehicle, killing and wounding dozens, the SITE Intelligence Group, a U.S. company that monitors Islamist websites, reported. Abu Usama is a pseudonym used by Irish Islamic State sympathizer Terence Kelly. Pictures posted by Islamic State sympathizers on Twitter showed a man resembling Kelly posing with a machine gun in front of an armored car. "The martyrdom-seeking brother Abu Usama al-Irelandi - may Allah accept him - set off with and detonated his explosives-laden vehicle on another gathering of apostates, in Aghazil al-Kabir village, south of Tal Afar, killing and wounding dozens of them, and destroying several of their vehicles," SITE quoted the IS statement as saying. Tal Afar is around 80 kilometers west of Mosul. Reuters could not immediately confirm the report. Ireland's Foreign Ministry said it was looking into reports of an Irish citizen's death, but declined to comment on their identity. "The department is aware of media reports concerning an Irish citizen in Iraq and is seeking to clarify the situation," the Irish Foreign Ministry spokesman said. Kelly was brought up Catholic in central Dublin and converted to Islam in his early 30s in Saudi Arabia, where he worked as a nurse for three years, converting in prison after he was arrested for illegally brewing alcohol. He also used the pseudonym Khalid Kelly. Kelly repeatedly praised al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden in interviews with the Irish media and was arrested in 2011 for making threats against U.S. President Barack Obama ahead of his visit to Ireland. He traveled to Pakistan and later told interviewers that he had trained with militants there. Iraqi troops on Saturday advanced towards Mosul, battling for the last town left between them and the Islamic State stronghold to the north, which was already under assault from special forces inside its eastern districts. Recapturing Mosul would effectively crush the Iraqi half of a self-proclaimed caliphate declared by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque two years ago. His Islamist group also controls large parts of east Syria. (Reporting by Conor Humphries; Editing by Alexander Smith)
Jaime King is making a Mistletoe Promise.

In the upcoming Hallmark movie, the actress stars as Elise Donner, a divorcee in her 30s who isnt too fond of Christmas.

One day, Elise meets single attorney, Nick (Luke Macfarlane), and the two end up bonding over their mutual dislike for the holidays. So, Nick proposes a deal to help them both get through the holiday season.

Its about two people that really have terrible memories of the holidays and Christmas, King tells PEOPLE about the movie based on the Richard Paul Evans novel of the same name.

I think that so many people experience that and not everybody has a Holly Jolly Christmas,' she adds.  its really important to tell stories from that point of view.

However, in real life the actress loves the holidays. But King admits, she doesnt like holiday music. I like holiday music for a couple of days, but my husband is obsessed with holiday music, so it starts playing early November, she explains.

As for the familys own holiday traditions? The couple and their two sons, James Knight, 3, and Leo Thames, 15 months, typically spend Christmas with Kings longtime friend (and James Knights Godmother), Jessica Alba and her family.

Its always really fun. Its like being with an extended family, says King, whos also passed on another cute holiday tradition to her children, which was started by her parents.

Ever since I was born, my mom and dad would get us an ornament that was very indicative of our personalities, says King, adding that anything with chocolate and animals was because had a sweet tooth.

So when the mom-of-twowho later realized the majority of her childhood ornaments were from Hallmarkwas gifted an ornament made from one of the Mistletoe Promises set props, it was that much sweeter to give to her son, James Knight. It just meant so much to me, says King.

As for Kings other baby boy, Leo Thames, hes now kissing a lot, shares the proud mama.  fantastic. He says, I love you, and then he kisses you.

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The family also hit a major milestone of their own: their first family vacation, since Leo Thames was born last July.

Our trip to Maui was amazing, says King. We had the Pearl Harbor premiere in Maui and I fell in love with Hawaii then. Particularly, the Four Seasons , I love it there.

She continues: It was really, really special to all be together and be in this place that Ive loved for so long.

Another new experience for the family? King and her husband are preparing to leave their little ones at home for the first time.

My husband and I have never left them their whole lives, and were getting ready to this Sunday for a couple of nights because Im going to do Alec Baldwins game show and to support Hillary for election night, explains King.

She adds: Im really nervous because thats the first time that the two of us have ever been away.

The Mistletoe Promise premieres this Saturday at 8 p.m. ET on the Hallmark Channel.




TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan Display Inc's state-backed main investor is readying some $500 million in aid for the struggling Apple Inc (AAPL.O) supplier, whose capital has withered as smartphone sales slow, the Asahi newspaper said on Saturday.

The Innovation Network Corp of Japan is focussing on a plan to issue subordinated bonds, which are lower in repayment priority than other debt, to raise about 50 billion yen, the newspaper said.

Japan Display said in August the fund had pledged full financial support as the company seeks help weathering future market swings, in particular lapses in demand for iPhones from Apple, whose products account for more than half of Japan Display's sales.

Japan Display, facing difficulties raising its own funding after two years of losses, wants long-term financing for such growth areas as organic light-emitting diode displays and displays for automotive use, the Asahi said.

The fund could decide on the aid as soon as this month, the newspaper said.

Officials from Japan Display and INCJ could not be reached immediately for comment.

INCJ tried earlier this year to broker a merger with rival Sharp Corp , which was instead bought by Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (2317.TW). Japan Display was formed in 2012 by combining the display units of Hitachi Ltd , Sony Corp and Toshiba Corp .

($1 = 103.1200 yen)

(Reporting by Kentaro Hamada and Yoshiyasu Shida; Writing by William Mallard; Editing by Leslie Adler)
Japan's Kojiro Shiraishi will make history on Sunday by becoming the first Asian sailor to compete in the gruelling Vendee Globe solo round-the-world yacht race.

But the non-stop journey through the most treacherous seas in the world should be easy compared to the problems the 49-year-old encountered to compete in the race known as the 'Everest of the Seas'.

"The route to participating in this race was fraught with difficulties. I was one of the last to qualify and buy a boat, in April," Shiraishi told AFP.

"That was very late for such a project. My biggest fear was not being able to be on the starting line, not to find the budget and a good boat.

"But now that I am here in the Sables d'Olonne, I am relaxed, I feel no apprehension concerning the race and there is no part of the journey that I dread more than any other."

Prince Albert of Monaco will launch the race at 1302 (1202 GMT) Sunday, with Shiraishi sailing out of the French port aboard 'Spirit of Yukoh' in honour of his mentor, Yukoh Tadda, the Class II winner of the 1982-83 BOC Challenge, the precursor to the Vendee Globe.

The sailor from Tokyo already has a long history in ocean racing and is targeting a top 10 finish in the 29 sailor field in his monohull yacht in the hope of making sailing a popular sport in Japan.

"Being the first Japanese skipper to race will, I hope, make people understand the importance of the Vendee Globe," he said.

Shiraishi is already a seasoned seafarer having completed two solo circumnavigations of the globe and has also several team records.

At the age of 26 he sailed around the world single handed and he finished second in the 2006-2007 Velux Five Oceans stage race.

He was a member of the crew onboard Bruno Peyron's giant catamaran Explorer when it set the record for crossing the Pacific between Yokohama and San Francisco in 1998.

But none of that can compare with what faces him over 21,638 nautical miles (40,073 km) where the record of 78 days 02 hours and 16 minutes was achieved in the last edition in 2013.

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"There is not a single race like this in the world. It's exceptional, simply magnificent but unfortunately little known in Japan.

"I have three major goals: to be the first Japanese to participate, to contribute to the democratisation of sailing in Japan, and then I'd like to finish in the top 10."

Shiraishi has been overwhelmed by the public support in France with hundreds of thousands expected to pack the port and surrounding coastline on Sunday.

"The public, all these people who flock to the village and the pontoon, who come to see us, come to see the boats, a Japanese person can not understand it, the passion, fervour. My countrymen will be surprised to discover it all.

"I'm lucky to have two big Japanese televisions that follow me: TV Asahi and NHK. TV Asahi will do one 'live' per week with the boat, and I think it will be followed by many people."
Lalu Yadav attempted an onstage truce by pushing Shivpal Yadav to bless Akhilesh Yadav, shaming Akhilesh to touch his uncle's feet but this only underlined the reality that all remained not well.

By India Today Web Desk: The Samajwadi Party organised a show of unity to mark 25 years of the party but it was anything but that. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle and state party chief Shivpal Yadav remain bitter rivals while party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav seemed more helpless than ever to keep his family and the party united.

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RJD chief and Bihar leader Lalu Yadav, whose daughter is married in the extended Yadav family, attempted an onstage truce by pushing Shivpal Yadav to bless Akhilesh Yadav, shaming Akhilesh to touch his uncle's feet but this only underlined the reality that all remained not well.

#WATCH: Samajwadi Party Rajat Jayanti program underway in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. pic.twitter.com/Jp5drdrRYj ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 5, 2016

So much so that Javed Abidi, a minister in Akhilesh Yadav, was pushed away from the microphone by Shivpal Yadav when the young leader was waxing eloquent about the chief minister being the true inheritor of Mulayam Singh Yadav's legacy.

Watch video

Also read:

SP silver jubilee: I don't want to become CM, you can insult me, Shivpal tells Akhilesh

"Some people inherit everything without making any effort while others toil forever and get nothing," Shivpal Yadav repeated in his address, in what is being called a direct attack on chief minister Akhilesh Yadav.

"Sack me as many times as you want but so know that I have worked and achieved more than you. Insult me as much you wish to but any insult to Netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav) will not be tolerated," he said, once again hinting at Akhilesh and his supporters.

Also read:

Akhilesh returns Shivpal's taunt: Some people will listen but after destroying Samajwadi Party

Akhilesh Yadav on his part kept the smile intact but the tension was all to palpable. He said the people of UP have given him the sword and he will use it, referring to the symbolic sword gifted to him on stage.

Watch video

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Jim Faris, the father of Little Miss Sunshine co-director Valerie Faris and a film editor in Hollywood for more than four decades, has died. He was 97.

Faris, who worked on TV comedies like The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet and That Girl as well as on several hourlong series executive produced by Aaron Spelling, died Oct. 14 at a hospital near his home in Santa Cruz, Calif., his daughter told The Hollywood Reporter.

Faris edited Spelling-produced shows including Mod Squad, The Rookies, S.W.A.T., Charlie's Angels, Dynasty and Family, for which he received an Emmy nomination in 1978.

Earlier, he worked on the famed ABC comedy Ozzie & Harriet in the 1950s and then on such '60s Warner Bros. Television shows as Bourbon Street Beat, 77 Sunset Strip, Cheyenne, Hawaiian Eye and Lawman. He directed an episode of the latter as well.

Faris also edited the 1970 TV special Horton Hears a Who!, the pilot of Gilligan's Island and episodes of The Addams Family, Combat! and Here Come the Brides, and he contributed to the 1981 film Taps.

Faris attempted to clear up just what a film editor does in a 2010 interview with the Santa Cruz Sentinel. "A lot of people think of editing as just putting slices together," he said. "A dictionary has all the words of the English language in it, but it's not a great novel."

A native of Kansas City, Mo., Faris came to Los Angeles in 1943, inspired to work in show business after meeting a film lobbyist in Washington, D.C. He began his career at MGM, where he worked as a sound editor and film editor on the 1944 films Gaslight and National Velvet and on Tex Avery and Tom & Jerry cartoons.

It was at MGM where Faris met Paula Forbes, who was working as a supervising painter on the Tom & Jerry shorts, and they married on June 6, 1948.

He and his wife left Los Angeles in 1983, and he was one of the five founders of a retirees group affiliated with UC Santa Cruz called Lifelong Learners, which more than 30 years later has more than 600 members, the family noted. The couple also hosted film seminars in their home for decades.

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Valerie Faris' husband is Jonathan Dayton, who teamed with his wife to helm the best picture nominee Little Miss Sunshine (2006). Jim Faris can be seen in the popular film eating scrambled eggs.

In addition to his daughter, son-in-law and wife of 68 years, survivors include his sons Jim and Brian, their respective spouses Natasha and Catherine and his grandchildren Stephen, Benjamin, Sarah, Francesca, Augusta, Everett and James.

A celebration of his life will take place at 3 p.m. on Nov. 25 at the Pacific Cultural Center in Santa Cruz.

Read more: Hollywood's Notable Deaths of 2016
John Legend isn't blaming the CMAs for the backlash over Beyonce's performance with the Dixie Chicks received at the organization's award show earlier this week; he says it's America's fault.

Speaking with TMZ, Legend said that Beyonce "killed it" and "The Dixie Chicks were wonderful" before stating that he can't blame country music for the racism that surrounds it.

"There's a problem with racism in America, I'm not blaming country music for that," he said. "I know a lot of great country music writers and artists. I don't think it's their issue, I think it's an American issue."

Legend continued, taking a jab at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump: "America has a problem with racism, I think. That's why we have a racist candidate with 45 percent of the vote. That's America, that's a big part of America."

As for the accusations the CMAs tried to "scrub" Beyonce's performance from their website and social networks, Legend was similarly understanding.

"They probably weren't used to getting that much hate on their site and they probably wanted to scrub it of the hate," he said. "But obviously the CMAs weren't being racist by including Beyonce, the people who were being mad about her were being racist, it's not CMA's fault."
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned European firms he would block attempts to cut special deals with Britain ahead of formal Brexit negotiations.

In an interview published on Saturday, Juncker said he had heard industrialists' concerns in a meeting with French President Francois Holland and German Chancellor Angela Merkel but told them not to interfere in the negotiations.

"I take issue with the attempts in some countries, especially in industrial circles, to reach an agreement with the British for their sector before the other 27 (member states) have spoken," Juncker told Belgian newspaper Le Soir.

"I told them not to interfere in the debate because they will find me on their way: This is a negotiation between 27 and the United Kingdom."

Juncker's comments appeared to be a warning to European firms after Japan's Nissan agreed to build new models in Britain after reassurances from Prime Minister Theresa May that it would receive support to preserve its competitiveness in the EU market after Brexit.

The head of the EU executive also repeated what has become a mantra of "no negotiation without notification" for European leaders - that the EU will not so much as talk to the British until May formally triggers a two-year countdown to Brexit under Article 50 of the EU treaty.

May has pledge to do so by March next year.

(Reporting by Alissa de Carbonnel; Editing by Alexander Smith)
BERLIN (Reuters) - A hat-trick by Salomon Kalou gave Hertha Berlin a 3-0 victory over Borussia Moenchengladbach on Friday to lift them to third in the Bundesliga and leave their opponents without a win in five games. The Ivorian put the hosts ahead with a header at the far post in the 18th minute before making it 2-0 from close range. Gladbach winger Patrick Herrman limped off with a foot injury and, to make matters worse, defensive midfielder Christoph Kramer was sent off in the 39th minute for a second caution. The visitors fought back though and they had the upper hand after the break with keeper Rune Jarstein repeatedly coming to Hertha's rescue. Former Chelsea striker Kalou then sealed Hertha's win with a low shot in the 84th minute. Hertha have 20 points from 10 matches, three behind Bayern Munich who host Hoffenheim on Saturday. Second-placed RB Leipzig, on 21, entertain Mainz 05 on Sunday. Gladbach, who last won in the league in September, are 11th with 12 points. (Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; Editing by Tony Jimenez)
Hrithik Roshan and Kangana Ranauts saga is known to all. The infamous controversy had been the talk-of-the-town for the majority of 2016. The two often take cryptic digs at each other at various events, grabbing headlines each time.

Recently, reports were doing the rounds that the actors bumped into each other at director Vishal Bharadwajs office. Reportedly, as Kangy was leaving the building, HR was entering it. The two spotted each other and proceeded to ignore the other. Further, it was being said that the actress kept her head down and walked towards her waiting car. On the other hand, Hrithik was alleged to be too shocked to react and quickly went back to his car. He entered Vishals office only after he was sure that Kangana had left the building!

Recommended Read: Why Kangana thinks her life is very different from Ranbir Kapoors

Now these reports happen to be quite funny because Kangana has been shooting for Hansal Mehtas Simran in the US since past one and a half months! Ms.Ranauts official spokesperson spoke on these rumours and said, Its a completely false story as Kangana is out of the country since past 1.5 months to shoot for Simran. And there is no patchwork left for Rangoon either.

Even Kangana rubbished the reports and quoted,This is rubbish and I wont entertain any rumour that silly people are spreading.

Guess gossipmongers now need to rest the Kangana-Hrithik topic, and move onto a new one maybe!
John Kerry, an ardent champion of the fight against climate change, will become the first top US diplomat to visit Antarctica, where the world's largest protected marine reserve was just created.

The State Department announced Friday the itinerary for Kerry in what will be one of his last trips as secretary of state before President Barack Obama's administration ends on January 20.

During his November 10-18 world tour, Kerry will visit Antarctica, New Zealand, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco -- for the COP22 climate talks -- and Peru for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, which Obama will also attend.

From November 10 to 12, Kerry will make history as the most senior US official to travel to Antarctica.

He will visit McMurdo Station, the largest US research station in the region, as well as surrounding areas on Ross Island and the government's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.

His visit comes about two weeks after the October 28 international agreement that created the world's largest marine protected area aimed at preserving the pristine wilderness of Antarctica.

After years of negotiations, a deal was reached by the 25 members of the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) to protect marine fauna and flora in a massive area of the Ross Sea.

Proposed by the United States and New Zealand, the reserve covers more than 598,000 square miles (1.55 million square kilometers) -- roughly the size of Britain, Germany and France combined -- of which 1.12 million square kilometers is a no-fishing zone.

Kerry is a longtime advocate in the fight against global warming: he was a key force in the Paris global climate agreement struck late last year that took effect Friday, and also sponsored an international conference on oceans.

He will be in Marrakesh on November 15-16 at the COP22 meeting, where he will deliver a speech "that highlights the urgency of addressing climate change and the importance of continued ambitious climate action around the world," the State Department said.

The US diplomat will stop in Wellington on November 12 and 13 in his first visit to New Zealand. In Oman on November 14, he will discuss the war in Yemen. The next day, he will travel to Abu Dhabi for talks on regional conflicts, such as Syria.

Kerry will wrap up his journey in Peru, where he is due to attend ministerial meetings of the 21-nation APEC on November 15 and 16 in Lima.
Kipper Clothiers is raising the bar for clothing brands serving the LGBQT community

As much as we love shopping, it can be such a drag sometimes, dont you think? Like, has there ever been anyone in the history of all humanity who hasnt wanted to break down in tears while trying on jeans? Finding clothes that fit well can be a challenge for anybody, and if what youre looking for not only caters to the needs of the LGBTQ community, but is also ethically produced and made of high quality, it can feel damn near impossible to get what you need. And that is seriously demoralizing!

Enter Erin Berg and Kyle Moshrefi of Kipper Clothiers.

kipperheadshots07152654

Erin and Kyle met while working in the San Francisco fashion scene, and tired of the lack of options for lesbians and transgender men they banded together to form Kipper Clothiers  a brand that is dedicated to providing high-end, beautifully tailored clothes that meet the needs of their community.

A photo posted by Kipper Clothiers (@kipperclothiers) on Oct 6, 2016 at 12:19pm PDT

We had a chance to ask them a few questions about their backgrounds and their clothes, because we absolutely love that they are filling this niche in the fashion world!

Can you tell us a bit about your clothing line and how your backgrounds helped influence the clothes?



Kyle Moshrefi (Co-founder & Chief Creative Officer): The Kipper Casual clothing line was born out of the idea that we want Kipper Clothiers to be a one-stop-shop; a place where you can not only get the formalwear you need, but the day-to-day essentials as well. The best thing about this line is that you can pair any of the garments with a suit and it will still look incredible. For example, you can wear our custom blazer with our custom denim. You can wear the Henley under one of our custom flannel button up shirts. You can wear the polo with a pair of our custom trousers. The options really are limitless. Having worked for Everlane for several years, I really learned to appreciate and understand how important having basic pieces in your wardrobe really is. We wanted to bring that simplicity into our brand to help make getting dressed easier.



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Kipper Clothiers

What made the two of you want to go beyond formal wear and expande the line?

KM: Erin and I felt like it was time to expand what we offer at Kipper Clothiers. We wanted it to be a one stop shop for all your clothing needs, so adding basics to the mix seemed like a natural next step for us. Kipper Clothiers

What are some of the major differences between the way your clothes are made and clothes that are mass-produced? What does this mean for your customers?



KM: A lot of people think that the casual line cannot be altered at all  this is not the case. We do not mass produce any of these items. We make them as they are ordered which allows some minor adjustments to be made. By not mass producing, we can also ensure that time and attention is spent on each garment that is made specifically for the client. Kipper Clothier

What are some of the challenges that LGBTQ people can possibly have when it comes to finding comfortable and stylish clothing and how do you troubleshoot that with your clothing? What need is this fulfilling?

Erin Berg (Co-founder & Chief Operating Officer): Our LGBTQ clients come to us so excited at the promise of clothes that fit properly and a high end shopping experience that was created exclusively with them in mind. We are constantly told horror stories of gender non-conforming clients getting extremely poor or no customer service when shopping in mens or womens sections. We wanted to be the opposite of that. We have created a safe space for LGBTQ clients to express themselves through clothing that not only matches their gender identity, but also matches their own personal style. When creating Kipper Casual, we wanted our LGBTQ clients to have access to basics and denim so they can build the cornerstones of a great wardrobe that they will feel confident in. Kipper Clothiers

What is your favorite piece of clothing you have in your line?

KM: Definitely the Henley. Henleys are so versatile and can be worn in so many different ways. It can be worn by itself, under a blazer, under a button down, with a cardigan, etc. You can dress it up or wear it casually. It really is the one piece that can expand your wardrobe in so many ways. Kipper Clothiers

When someone makes an appointment with Kipper, what can they expect?

EB: Clients have one-on-one appointments with a Kipper stylist where they discuss their individual needs. Many of our clients come in looking to create a look for a special event in their life or wanting to custom build a wardrobe that suits their lifestyle. We then explore fabric and design options from our formal collection including suits, tuxedos, button-down shirts, and our casual wear collection, including raw denim, polos, chinos and Henleys. We like to build outfits that are easy to mix and match so that clients leave with outfits they can wear both in their professional and personal lives. We take body measurements and custom fit all of our pieces to our clients. Each client gets their own personal pattern for every piece we create together. Once their garments come back 5 to 6 weeks later, we work with a tailor to get the exact fit every client is looking for.

Erin Berg co-founder of Kipper Clothiers

Whats the best part of designing this line?



EB: With Kipper Casual we have created a line that is truly androgynous. We have always been known for creating garments that have been labeled as menswear for women, but with this new line we are moving passed that by creating garments that are essential for any wardrobe, wherever you are on the gender spectrum.

Thank you, Erin and Kyle!

With such loving attention to detail and beautiful craftsmanship, its no surprise to us that theyre beloved by some of our favorite LGBTQ stars.

Rockin' a custom made suit from Kipper Clothiers on "The Mindy Project"! Proud to support great small businesses. pic.twitter.com/yN33kOmHWM  Fortune Feimster (@fortunefunny) March 29, 2016

We have no doubt that line inspires some serious devotion, because who doesnt want some expertly tailored clothes made to fit you perfectly?

#FBF to when I bought this custom shirt from @kipperclothiers! Nice to sometimes treat yourself to fancy duds. A photo posted by Hannah Hart (@harto) on Aug 21, 2015 at 4:21pm PDT

What better way to shop for a new outfit than by supporting an inclusive brand that wants to open up the market to each and every last one of us. Stop by Kipper Clothiers in San Francisco or visit their website for more info on their awesome clothes!

The post Kipper Clothiers is raising the bar for clothing brands serving the LGBQT community appeared first on HelloGiggles.
"The upcoming UP elections will decide the political future of the country," said Akhilesh Yadav.

By India Today Web Desk: Akhilesh Yadav launched a counter attack and said that he was ready for every test. "We will do everything to bring the party back to power," said Akhilesh.



UP SP president Shivpal Yadav took a swipe at chief minister Akhilesh Yadav while making welcome speech at the silver jubilee ceremony of the Samajwadi Party in Lucknow.

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Shivpal said, "Some people inherit power without doing anything while others get nothing despite sacrificing their entire lives. You were hurt at my statement. But, it is true that many people just keep working for the party without getting much in return."



#WATCH: Samajwadi Party Rajat Jayanti program underway in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. pic.twitter.com/Jp5drdrRYj ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 5, 2016

Here are the LIVE updates:



UP government has done impressive work during its tenure: Mulayam Singh



Will beat the communal forces: Mulayam Singh



Samajwadi Party is for the poor: Mulayam Singh



There is no rift in the Samajwadi Party: Lalu Yadav

What is the use of a 56 inch chest when you are not able to control the situation in J&K for so many days?: Lalu Yadav pic.twitter.com/X7mr5pXMyd ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 5, 2016

In last few years, UP government has set an example for rest of the states, be it in construction of roads or anything else: Akhilesh Yadav



Our government is a glowing example of good governance: Akhilesh Yadav



The upcoming UP elections will decide the political future of the country: Akhilesh Yadav

We will do everything to bring the party back to power, said Akhilesh Yadav.



I assure you that we will come back to power and not let communal forces succeed: UP CM Akhilesh Yadav in Lucknow. Aapne mujhe talwar bhent ki hai, aur talwar doge toh chalayenge hi: UP CM Akhilesh Yadav in Lucknow pic.twitter.com/BO78ojTqFI ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 5, 2016





Shivpal said, "I have taken great risks in building Samajwadi Party. I have worked day and night for the party."

"Only those who work for the party should get post in party and government. No one should get a post if he does not work for the party," Shivpal said.

"It is because of Netaji's struggle and the risks he took that SP was able to form government in UP not once, but thrice," said Shivpal Yadav.

RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, RLD chief Ajit Singh, JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav, JDS leader HD Deve Gowda, Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) leader Abhay Chautala, KC Tyagi (JD-U) and noted lawyer Ram Jethmalani are attending the event.

I don't want to become CM. You can insult me, sack me but I am ready to give even my blood for party, said Shivpal Yadav to Akhilesh.



Earlier, Shivpal Yadav pushed state minister Javed Abdi away from the mike as the latter praised CM Akhilesh Yadav in his speech.

#WATCH Shivpal Singh Yadav shoves SP leader Javed Abidi on stage during the SP Rajat Jayanti program in Lucknow (UP) pic.twitter.com/mZx7ZvHx7L ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 5, 2016

Also read:

All eyes on allies as SP celebrates its silver jubilee; Lalu, Sharad, Deve Gowda in Lucknow

How Samajwadi Party's silver jubilee celebration is show of strength by Shivpal Yadav

From Vikas to Vijay Yatra, trainee Uttar Pradesh CM Akhilesh Yadav flexes his muscles

Yadavs show unity before Akhilesh's solo roadshow

Can Mulayam manage to keep Akhilesh, Shivpal united till poll ticket distribution?



--- ENDS ---
Happy birthday, Kris Jenner!

The famous momager of the Kardashian-Jenner clan turned 61 on Saturday, kicking off her celebrations one night early at celeb hot spot Catch LA in West Hollywood, California.

WATCH: Kendall Jenner Celebrates 21st Birthday in Two Sexy Ensembles

Her eldest daughter, Kourtney Kardashian, was by her side the entire night, documenting the night via Snapchat, naturally.

Snapchat

Following in her footsteps was Chrissy Teigen, who stepped out with husband John Legend.

Snapchat

Judging by her Snapchats, she was a big fan of one particular appetizer -- the s'mores pizza!

Snapchat

WATCH: Kardashian and Jenner Girls Share Adorable Video For Mom Kris Jenner's 60th Birthday

Kris' boyfriend, Corey Gamble, sat right next to the birthday gal, smiling and joining the star-studded group as they sang "Happy Birthday" to Kris and pal Simon Huck, who was also celebrating his special day.

Snapchat

"Double birthday dinner last night @simon_huck @krisjenner," Jonathan Cheban later wrote on Instagram, accompanied with a group photo.

Double birthday dinner last night @simon_huck @krisjenner   A photo posted by Foodgod (@jonathancheban) on Nov 5, 2016 at 7:06am PDT

He also shared a selfie with Kris, which he captioned, "Happy Birthday to the kindest most generous person I know! Love you for always being there for everyone you love! Ohh..and looking more beautiful every year! #family."

Happy Birthday to the kindest most generous person I know! Love you for always being there for everyone you love! Ohh..and looking more beautiful every year! #family A photo posted by Foodgod (@jonathancheban) on Nov 5, 2016 at 9:34am PDT

WATCH: Kris Jenner Impresses Daughter Kylie With Sexy 'Alice in Wonderland' Costume

While Kris was partying with friends, Khloe Kardashian was at home babysitting sister Kourtney's three kids, Mason, 6, Penelope, 4, and Reign, 1, whom she shares with Scott Disick. On Saturday, she was the first of her siblings to wish her mom a happy birthday via social media.

Story continues

"Happy birthday mama!! My greatest wish is to grow up and be as fantastic as a mother as you have been to us!" she captioned a sweet family photo from last year's Gatsby-themed soiree. "Thank you for always being there for every single one of us! You are our angel! I love you mommy!"

Happy birthday mama!! My greatest wish is to grow up and be as fantastic as a mother as you have been to us! Thank you for always being there for every single one of us! You are our angel! I love you mommy! A photo posted by Khloe (@khloekardashian) on Nov 5, 2016 at 7:36am PDT

Meanwhile, Rob Kardashian and his pregnant fiancee, Blac Chyna, delivered massive balloons to Kris' home, which spelled out, "Happy Birthday" and "Love You."

WATCH: Kris Jenner Shares Rarely Seen Flashback Photos of Kim for Her 36th Birthday

"Thank you Rob and Angela for the amazing Birthday Balloons!!!!!!" Kris wrote on Instagram. "So so sweet I love you guys!!!!!@robkardashian @blacchyna #blessed."

Thank you Rob and Angela for the amazing Birthday Balloons!!!!!! So so sweet I love you guys!!!!! @robkardashian @blacchyna #blessed A photo posted by Kris Jenner (@krisjenner) on Nov 5, 2016 at 9:08am PDT

Kim Kardashian didn't post anything on social media, as she's been silent following her traumatic robbery in Paris, France, last month, with the exception of a Facebook post that has since been deleted. She did, however, give her mom a pretty epic gift.

"Thank you Kimberly for making me my Birthday Kimoji!!!" Kris wrote, sharing a screenshot of the Kimoji which shows her holding a "Queen of F**king Everything" phone case. "I love you so much my beauty @kimkardashian #kimoji #priceless."

Thank you Kimberly for making me my Birthday Kimoji!!! I love you so much my beauty  @kimkardashian #kimoji #priceless A photo posted by Kris Jenner (@krisjenner) on Nov 5, 2016 at 9:58am PDT

Priceless, indeed!

WATCH: Kris Jenner Celebrates Her 60th Birthday At Gatsby-Themed Soiree

Related Articles
Frankfurt (AFP) - Several thousand Kurds marched in the western Germany city of Cologne on Saturday in support of pro-Kurdish politicians jailed in Turkey the previous day.

The demonstrators -- numbering 6,500 according to Cologne police and up to 15,000 according to the protest's organisers -- carried flags and banners promoting the People's Democratic Party (HDP).

On Friday, the HDP's two leaders, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, and several of the party's legislators, were remanded in custody by a court in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir.

The United States and European Union have both raised alarm over the arrests, in a crackdown since the country's July 15 coup attempt.

Police in Cologne said Saturday's march took place without incident.

Numbering around a million, the Kurdish community in Germany is the largest in Europe.

The country is also home to the world's largest community of people of Turkish origin.

In late July, some 40,000 people marched in Cologne in support of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Elsewhere, more than 2,000 Kurds staged a demonstration in Paris carrying placards with slogans such as "Turkey bombs, Europe stays silent".
Kuwait City (AFP) - Kuwait will issue billions of dollars worth of bonds in international markets to finance a budget deficit resulting from low oil prices, a report said Saturday.

Finance Minister Anas al-Saleh said Kuwait will issue US dollar-denominated sovereign bonds of up to $9.6 billion during the 2016/2017 fiscal year which ends March 31, Al-Qabas newspaper reported.

This comes on top of a $6.6 billion domestic debt programme which is already underway.

Kuwait, like other energy-rich Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, has already taken on tens of billions of dollars in foreign debt to finance budget shortfalls.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and United Arab Emirates have sold bonds or took syndicated loans to plug their deficits.

The minister's decree did not specify the share of Islamic sukuk bonds in the planned issue.

It will be the country's first foreign debt in around two decades.

Kuwait recorded a budget deficit of $15 billion last fiscal year, breaking a 16-year run of surpluses.

Oil income contributed around 95 percent of public revenues in those years. During the past two years, oil has lost around 60 percent of its value.

The emirate, home to 1.3 million Kuwaitis and 3 million foreigners, is also projecting a budget shortfall of $29 billion this fiscal year.

During surplus years, Kuwait piled up around $600 billion in its sovereign wealth fund in holdings mostly in the United States, Europe and Asia.

Like its Gulf peers, Kuwait has taken some austerity measures that include liberalising prices of diesel and kerosene and hiking petrol prices.

A dispute over petrol prices led parliament being dissolved and snap polls set for November 26.

Parliament a few months ago approved a law to raise heavily subsidised power and water fees but exempted citizens.
"With the event, SP will be formally launching its election campaign," said Shivpal Yadav, adding that its main objective was not to let BJP form government in Uttar Pradesh.

By India Today Web Desk: The Samajwadi Party is celebrating its silver jubilee today. JD(U), RJD and RLD leaders are also present at the event.



"Samajwadi and Lohiawadi leaders will be sharing the stage with netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav)", said SP state president Shivpal Yadav.

Here are the LIVE updates:

"It is because of Netaji's struggle and the risks he took that SP was able to form government in UP not once, but thrice," said Shivpal Yadav.



Lucknow: Samajwadi Party Rajat Jayanti Programme to be held today, party workers gather at the venue pic.twitter.com/kQw8gQoFPh ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 5, 2016



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Thousands of Samajwadi Party workers are present at the Janeshwar Mishra park in Lucknow.

Janeshwar Mishra park in one of the biggest parks in entire Asia and Samajwadi Party claims that it will play host to 3-4 lakh workers. Special emphasis have been made to ensure that the function should be a grand success.

Close to 20 thousands chairs have been placed at the venue and several speakers put up at various parts of the park so that people can listen to the speeches of the leaders without overcrowding the main venue.



Also read:

How Samajwadi Party's silver jubilee celebration is show of strength by Shivpal Yadav



WHO ARE ATTENDING THE EVENT



HD Deve Gowda, RJD Chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, RLD Cheif Ajit Singh, JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav, Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) leader Abhay Chautala, KC Tyagi (JD-U) and noted lawyer Ram Jethmalani are some of the prominent names to attend the event.

"With the event, SP will be formally launching its election campaign," Shivpal said, adding that its main objective was not to let BJP form government in Uttar Pradesh.

In a press conference, the SP state unit chief had said, "After forming majority government in UP in 2017, all secular forces will unite to uproot the BJP government at the Centre."



UP CM Akhilesh Yadav and Senior JDU leader Sharad Yadav at Samajwadi Party Rajat Jayanti program in Lucknow pic.twitter.com/Bh1IrJcV6S ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 5, 2016

Also read:

From Vikas to Vijay Yatra, trainee Uttar Pradesh CM Akhilesh Yadav flexes his muscles

Yadavs show unity before Akhilesh's solo roadshow



Meanwhile, Shivpal said that the entire route from SP headquarter to Janeshwar Mishra park, the venue for the silver jubilee celebrations, is dotted with hoardings and banners welcoming workers for the event.

"We are expecting a huge crowd. We are expecting over 5 lakh people. The event will also pass a strong message for BJP and rival parties," convenor of the event and Cabinet minister Gayatri Prasad Prajapati said.

HEAVY SECURITY DEPLOYMENT

Elaborate security arrangements have been made by police to ensure security of VVIP guests and party workers.

"Besides a DIG level officer, there would be five Superintendents of Police (SP), 24 ASPs, 39 Circle Officers and a considerable number of PAC personnel as part of the security cover for the event," IG, Lucknow Zone, A Satish Ganesh said.

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Watch the video here:





Br>

Also read:

PariWar at rath yatra: Akhilesh exuberant, Shivpal uneasy as Mulayam does balancing act

Can Mulayam manage to keep Akhilesh, Shivpal united till poll ticket distribution?



--- ENDS ---
As per the Kollywood grapevine, actor Sai Pallavi of Premam fame has been paired opposite Santhanam in the upcoming film, which will be directed by Selvaraghavan.

By India Today Web Desk: Following the success of his horror comedy Dhilukku Dhuddu, Santhanam is doing big in the industry. The comedian-turned actor will be playing the lead role in ace filmmaker Selvaraghavan's upcoming yet-untitled flick.

ALSO READ: 25 Years of Gunaa- Why Kamal Haasan's classic didn't make the cut

ALSO READ: Kamal Haasan's birthday- Director Perarasu pens a special birthday song



As per the latest developments, actor Sai Pallavi, who shot to fame of the stupendous success of the Malayalam film Premam, has been roped in to play the leading lady.

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Though there aren't any confirmation regarding this, it seems like Sai Pallavi is a huge fan of Santhanam and that she's really looking forward to work with him.

The film will see Santhanam playing the role of a corporate employee. Ever since the announcement, it raised many eyebrows in the industry and one has to wait and see if this combo can make any impact on the audience.

Meanwhile, Santhanam has announced his next project titled Sakka podu Podu Raja with ace comedian Vivekh playing an important role.

Santhanam, who is currently shooting for Ks Manikandan's Odi Odi Uzhaikkanum, awaits the release of Server Sundaram, in which he plays a chef.

--- ENDS ---
Shutterstock/Getty

Aside from Russian President Vladimir Putin and the so-called alt-right, Donald Trump has reportedly demonstrated a strong relationship with propaganda while on the campaign trail. Whether or not the Republican nominee himself, members of his staff, or both are actively reading or disseminating the stuff remains to be seen, but according to a new report by BuzzFeed, ample evidence suggests pro-Trump elements are doing just that  in the Republic of Macedonia.

According to the report, which builds on prior publications by the Guardian and an English-language Macedonian news site, a small town in the former Yugoslav state has experienced a digital gold rush as locals launched at least 140 US politics websites:

These sites have American-sounding domain names such as WorldPoliticus.com, TrumpVision365.com, USConservativeToday.com, DonaldTrumpNews.co, and USADailyPolitics.com. They almost all publish aggressively pro-Trump content aimed at conservatives and Trump supporters in the US.

Despite the thousands of shares, likes and comments these online platforms are generating for the Trump campaign across social media, however, it seems the young Macedonians running them dont actually support the real estate mogul. In fact, they dont care whether or not the egregiously false information they disperse on a regular basis has any actual effects on the American election. Theyre just trying to make some money:

I started the site for a easy way to make money, said a 17-year-old who runs a site with four other people. In Macedonia the economy is very weak and teenagers are not allowed to work, so we need to find creative ways to make some money. Im a musician but I cant afford music gear. Here in Macedonia the revenue from a small site is enough to afford many things.

Whats more, many of the website moderators interviewed by BuzzFeed stressed Trump wasnt their first choice. A few focused on pro-Bernie Sanders and leftist content, hoping fans of the Vermont senator, rival Hillary Clinton or both would take the bait. They didnt, but judging by the number of clicks and Google AdSense checks his named generated for the young entrepreneurs, Internet users in the U.S. overwhelmingly [preferred] to read news about Trump. So much that some supposedly earn $5,000 per month or up to $3,000 per day.

(Via BuzzFeed and New York Magazine)
new splash ghost boat greg sancoff

In the summer of 2007, a US Navy carrier strike group of approximately 20 ships was decimated while on patrol in the Middle East. Some 20,000 sailors were killed.

The group, comprised of an aircraft carrier, five amphibious ships, and several cruisers, was overwhelmed by a swarm of fast attack boats laden with explosives, missiles launched from ground sites, and low-flying aircraft. The assault was "over in five, maybe ten minutes," Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper said at the time.

Fortunately, it was only a training exercise.

No ships were actually sunk. No sailors lost their lives.

But the Millennium Challenge Exercise of 2002  which tested US military capabilities five years into the future  exposed a critical gap in the Navy's defenses: No matter how much firepower or armor a ship might have, it's entirely possible that at least some among a large swarm of small boats could penetrate those defenses and inflict major damage. And countries like Iran have taken notice.

"The US military has never found a way to stop that type of swarm attack against the US fleet," Gregory Sancoff, the CEO of Juliet Marine Systems, told Business Insider. "They're incredibly difficult targets."

While the military hasn't yet perfected a solution, Sancoff believes he has it.

It's called Ghost, and it's a stealthy, small boat that can be outfitted with a variety of weapons to fight back in danger areas such as the Strait of Hormuz. But the US Navy doesn't want it, and the government of the United States seems to be doing everything it can to stop anyone else from having it as well.

ghost stealth boat

When a serial entrepreneur decides to build a stealth boat

Sancoff did things differently than most in the defense contracting world. Instead of waiting around for the Pentagon to put out requirements or solicit contract proposals, he saw the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, and the revelations from Millennium Challenge, as the catalyst for building his next company.

Story continues

Like most entrepreneurs, he saw a problem that needed a solution. So he just decided to build it.

"We are the model the Secretary of Defense is looking for," he said, of Defense Secretary Ash Carter's push for companies outside the defense establishment to start building things for the Pentagon.

Sancoff had built successful companies outside of the defense industry plenty of times. He built low-cost portable IV pumps for hospitals with his first company, Block Medical, which he later sold for $80 million. Then he started a different company, and sold that for $400 million. And then he sold yet another in 2004.

After that, Sancoff wanted to start something that would be helpful for his country. He named the company Juliet Marine Systems, and its flagship project was called Ghost.

juliet marine systems

Sancoff, along with some outside investors, put down roughly $20 million to make it happen. He hired engineers and naval experts, and assembled a board with an impressive array of former Navy admirals to help advise him.

Then he got to work, building a prototype of the design he came up with. That was in 2007. It took him about four years, and $5 million of his own money, but eventually his full-scale Ghost prototype was ready to hit the water outside Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Maine, where it was built.

There are a few things the Ghost does very well: Its clever design makes its radar signature minimal, so most larger ships won't even pick it up on their radar displays. And since its cockpit sits far above the water, it can literally cut through waves for a smooth ride, reducing the slamming effect that rough water would have on a crew.

"You can sit there and drink your coffee going through six-foot swells," Sancoff told Bloomberg. But Ghost's most cutting-edge feature is its propulsion technology, which has far-reaching implications for navies with access to it.

"He put the propellers at the forward end of these two hull forms," Rear Adm. Jay Cohen (Ret.), the former head of the Office of Naval Research, and now a board member for Juliet, told Business Insider. "It's like riding on two fins attached to two submarines. But instead of pushing, they are pulling."

ghost stealth boat

Sancoff's design was a super cavitating propulsion system  the propellers create a gas bubble through which the fins then move  which is a more efficient and faster way to move a boat through water with far less drag.

"The beauty of that is they are very stable," Cohen said. "It's like front wheel drive versus rear wheel drive."

Sancoff said that he made plenty of overtures to the Navy and the Pentagon about what he was working on. The Office of Naval Research initially balked at his idea prior to the completion of a prototype, according to Bloomberg. Then, he claims, a call came from DARPA, which eventually led to contract negotiations for the Ghost.

"To me, this was a no brainer," Cohen, the ONR Chief from 2000 to 2006, said. "Had I been chief of naval research [at that time], I absolutely would have invested in a cooperative agreement for a couple of million dollars." As Cohen explained, the ONR's budget is mostly dedicated to investments that will probably turn into viable projects down the road, but about 10% of that budget is set aside for "high risk, high gain" projects like Sancoff's  systems that can be bought and fielded much quicker than going through the slower defense acquisition funnel.

"The Congress and the Navy are very supportive of this because basically, if it's successful, you can introduce it immediately as a solution," Cohen said. "And if its not, youre not wasting your money on an acquisition program.

But that didn't happen.

rear admiral jay cohen

The next thing you know I get a contract from them and I look at it and they want all the patent rights," he said. Sancoff, believing the Ghost could have many more uses outside the military market, scoffed at the idea of losing his intellectual property. He turned down the contract, thinking eventually the US Navy would go for it, and if not, he could sell to a friendly nation such as South Korea, Japan, or the UK.

Instead, about a month later, Sancoff said, "I had secrecy orders slapped on my company. They took it anyway. They went and they grabbed my four patents, put secrecy orders on them, and they didnt call me."

Sancoff and Cohen believe that DARPA may have contacted ONR to shut him out of any further opportunities to do business with the Pentagon. Then the Navy issued secrecy orders over Juliet's four patents, which meant the company couldn't sell the boat, or even show it to anyone.

"This thing reeks of conspiracy," Cohen said.

Almost as soon as he had built the cutting-edge boat, Sancoff's dream of turning it into a business was fading away.

Both DARPA and The Office of Naval Research declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation. The Department of Justice also declined to comment.

'This is like a bad soap opera'

US Navy aircraft carrier

If youre wondering why innovators like Greg Sancoff and others dont come to the US government to do business anymore," Cohen told Business Insider. "This is the kind of hubris by government service people of not invented here that could significantly degrade our national security if its not nipped in the bud."

According to Cohen, it's likely that the Navy saw potential in Ghost's technology but its culture of investing mostly in internal projects tainted any hope of adoption. At one point in 2014, Adm. Michelle Howard  then serving as Chief of Naval Operations  even toured the boat and, according to Cohen, later asked ONR about it. They said the design was "dangerous," Cohen claimed, of rumors he heard afterward.

Howard did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, theyre funding other supercavitation initiatives," Cohen said.

Juliet Marine Systems was slapped with a secrecy order in October 2009. Then in March 2010, it was lifted without explanation. The orders were reinstated in August, and then lifted again in June 2011.

"It just completely stifled the innovation," Sancoff said. "It stifled our schedule and our financial plans, and we basically sat around for long periods of time with little money.

rear ghost boat

So Sancoff decided that if the US government didn't want Ghost, perhaps some US allies would. In the times he wasn't under secrecy order, he was hearing positive feedback from outside the United States. But his outreach to friendly nations was stifled by the State Department, using export regulations on defense-related systems.

If Juliet wants to take a meeting with South Korea, for example, it has to file paperwork with the State Department. And since it's naval technology, State then goes back to the Navy to ask for their opinion before issuing a decision. And pretty much every time, Sancoff said, those decisions come along with plenty of caveats.

"They tell us basically you cannot discuss anything with any foreign country unless we see it first," Sancoff said. "We absolutely believe theyd like us to go out of business. They dont want to see this technology used by other countries.

First and foremost among things Juliet cannot discuss, according to one export license the company shared with Business Insider, is the Ghost boat, and its supercavitating hull. It also said it couldn't talk about its stealth capabilities, or Ghost's ability to employ various US weapons systems.

Essentially, Juliet is hindered by a Catch-22 that says, sure you can do business outside the United States, as long it's not your main line of business.

"This is like a bad soap opera. You cant write this," Cohen said. "This is either incompetence at its height or it's a Machiavellian plot and you know what, its somewhere in between the two.

What happens next?

juliet marine systems ghost

Juliet's bureaucratic nightmare continues to this day.

Because the company can't do business with anyone, Sancoff has had to lay off most of his employees. He has been in contact with Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and she has set up meetings with Navy officials and written letters on the company's behalf, but those efforts have only gone so far.

"It doesnt seem right for the US government to tell a company like Juliet Marine that the Department of Defense is not interested in the cutting-edge vessel and propulsion technology the company has developed at its own expense, while also telling the company that the technology is too advanced to permit them to share it with our nations closest allies and partners," Ayotte told Business Insider in a written statement.

"DoD will increasingly need innovative American defense suppliers in the future, and the Pentagon would be wise to not adopt policies that will drive those companies out of business or out of the defense sector."

cockpit ghost boat

In July 2015, Sancoff decided to take the government to court over the secrecy orders, alleging that they resulted in a loss of business opportunities and revenue. Juliet's complaint says the orders delayed critical sea trials, discussions with potential partners, the marketing of its product, and stifled its ability to hire employees and raise additional investment.

Government lawyers have denied any damage has been caused by those orders, court filings show.

Now more than a year on, the case has moved slowly in the US Court of Federal Claims. Discovery has produced more than 37,000 documents from Juliet, while the government has only produced about 5,000. And for almost all of Juliet's filings, the government does not respond without first asking for an extension, adding weeks and months of delay.

"They are doing everything they can to stonewall us, redact everything they can redact, and fight us until the very end," Sancoff said.

But Sancoff is confident that he will emerge victorious. And though he's had to lay off most of his employees as he fights the government, he told Business Insider they would all be re-hired once the case is settled.

Greg Sancoff and the backers of Juliet Marine will be damned if they will allow the federal government to run out the clock," Cohen said. "They are not inclined to do that.

"We will never give up this company," Sancoff said.

NOW WATCH: A Navy SEAL told us why we should 'do something that sucks' every day





More From Business Insider


An Oregon man fleeing from police ended up getting stuck in a deep badger hole, police said.

Gregory Morrow, 22, was allegedly evading police in a stolen truck with another man, Jerry Boatman, and a dog, when police decided to terminate the chase due to safety concerns.

Read: Man Steals Cop Car and Records Joyride on Facebook Live as Police Chase Him

An air and ground search later continued and they eventually found 35-year-old Boatman and he was arrested for escape and a parole violation.

Police kept searching and found the dog that was with the two men, which fled into a badger hole. As they were trying to get him out, police said they heard Morrow screaming from inside the hole.

After an hour and a half Morrow was rescued and taken to the hospital for minor injuries.

Read: 'Drunk' 12-Year-Old Leads Police on Car Chase and Crashes Twice: Cops

Morrow also had a parole violation warrant and police said his charges are pending.

Most likely Morrow would have died from exposure as he would not have been able to free himself, police said in a statement.

Watch: Why Newlywed Groom Led Police on High Speed Chase in 'Just Married' Car

Related Articles:
Charleston (United States) (AFP) - A man who filmed a white South Carolina police officer shooting an unarmed black man five times in the back testified Friday that he agonized for days over what to do with the potentially incriminating footage.

Feidin Santana was walking to work on April 4, 2015, in North Charleston, South Carolina, when he stumbled into the middle of a police foot chase.

Santana filmed the encounter between 50-year-old Walter Scott and North Charleston policeman Michael Slager, which ended with the fatal shooting of Scott and Slager claiming self defense.

Days later, Santana released the video to media outlets, leading to Slager being swiftly fired from his job and arrested on charges of murder.

Santana, a 23 year old barber, instantly became a minor celebrity, visiting New York for prominent media interviews about his footage and being praised for providing a new perspective of the police encounter.

The footage of the shooting reverberated within the United States as it occurred during much public scrutiny of lethal police force against black men.

During testimony Friday, Santana said his decision to release the video was a tortured one.

He said he hesitated to release it for days because he feared for his safety.

Only when he learned that Scott had died, and the police were claiming the shooting was justified, did the immigrant from the Dominican Republic share the video to challenge the record of what was said to have occurred.

Santana, who did not witness the entire interaction between Scott and Slager, insisted he never saw Scott attack Slager or grab the policemans Taser, as Slager had claimed.

Instead, he testified, Scott was trying to elude Slager, shaking free from his grip and "determined to get up and get away from that Taser."

When Slager shot eight bullets toward Scotts back, killing the suspect, Santana was shocked.

"That's something I will never forget," said Santana, who filmed the incident from behind a fence. "It's something I didn't expect."

Story continues

Over the next few days Santana scoured the Internet for online commenters who expressed doubt about the police version of events.

After finding a sympathetic local Black Lives Matter leader, Santana eventually showed the video to relatives of Scott, obtained a lawyer, and then shared the footage with the media.

The murder trial resumes Monday.
Chicago (AFP) - New Zealand's Maori All Blacks cruised past the United States Eagles 54-7 to open their three-match tour of North America and Europe with a comfortable victory.

Japan-born loose forward Akira Ioane on Friday scored twice as the New Zealanders outclassed their American hosts by eight tries to one at Chicago's Toyota Park.

Wing James Lowe dotted down in the corner after 11 minutes to put the Maori 5-0 ahead with Ihaia West adding the conversion.

Ioane's first try from a peel at the front of the lineout put the tourists 12-0 ahead, with West again adding the conversion.

Lowe grabbed his second of the night in the 34th minute, touching down under the posts for a converted try after a clever chip from West split the US midfield.

The New Zealanders then took full advantage of the sin-binning of US Eagles hooker James Hilterbrand, stretching their lead when captain Ash Dixon barreled over from close range to make it 26-0. West added the conversion to give the Maori a 28-0 lead at half-time.

Ioane punished poor Eagles marking at a maul early in the second half to put the New Zealanders 33-0 up before West once again converted.

USA captain Todd Clever drew the biggest cheer of the night when he was driven over for a try converted by William Holder for 35-7.

But the Maori All Blacks were soon back on the charge again, with prop Kane Hames, replacement scrum half Brad Weber and prop Joe Royal all crossing for late scores.

The Maori All Blacks now head to Ireland to play Munster on November 12 before wrapping up their short tour against Harlequins on November 17.
By PTI: Srinagar, Nov 5 (PTI) A school building was gutted in a fire in Bandipora district of Kashmir, taking the number of schools damaged during the ongoing unrest in the Valley to 32, police said today.

"A fire broke out in old building of Government High School (which housed a primary school) at Saidnara in Bandipora district last night," a police official said.

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He said fire tenders were rushed to the spot but could not save the building from being destroyed.

Police said it has taken cognisance of the incident and started investigation to ascertain the cause of fire.

As many as 32 schools have been targeted by unknown persons since the unrest began in Kashmir on July 8 following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in an encounter with security forces.

Jammu and Kashmir High Court last week took suo moto cognisance of the incidents and directed the state government to ensure that the schools are protected. PTI MIJ AAR

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Marni is getting into the holiday spirit with a new online capsule range, the Blinky Collection.

Inspired by the German abstract art of the 1960s, the limited edition collection blends geometric patterns and high-voltage colors in three different repeated combinations, focusing on the primary hues of red, blue and yellow. The initial 'M' is also a recurring theme throughout the series, appearing on the pieces as a bold motif in various sizes.

The 11-piece collection includes a gilet, a woollen mini-skirt, a cotton t-shirt with a contrasting trim, a pair of patterned socks and a nylon anorak with rib-knit cuffs at the neck. Accessories include a silk scarf, a block-color wallet, resin and gold earrings and a brooch and charm in the form of the house's signature letter 'M'. A Marni Pocket Bag has also been revamped in the three colors of the collection.

This is not the first time Marni has taken inspiration from the art world -- last year the Italian house chose to incorporate its Autumn/Winter 2015 collection into art shot by Boston-born, UK-raised photographer Jackie Nickerson. It also teamed up with Brazilian artist Veio on a sculptural project called "Becoming Marni" for the 56th edition of the Art Biennale in Venice.

The Marni Blinky Collection will be available from Marni.com until January 72017, priced from $90 - $1,760.
Meghan Markle has officially resurfaced!

After avoiding the public eye ever since news broke that she was reportedly dating Prince Harry last month, the Suits actress was spotted leaving her home in Toronto, Canada, on Wednesday.

WATCH: Prince Harry Made a Secret Visit to Girlfriend Meghan Markle in Toronto

Dressed in a black coat, sunglasses and beanie, the brunette beauty was all smiles as photographers captured her heading back to the set of the American drama series for a night shoot.

SOLO via ZUMA Press

Earlier this month, royal expert Katie Nicholl told ET that the 32-year-old prince is "very into Meghan."

"It's a bit of a whirlwind romance," Nicholl continued. "They've been dating very secretly for the past three months."

The two reportedly crossed paths in May, when Harry was also in Canada to promote the Invictus Games. A source told ET that Harry made another secret visit to Toronto to visit Markle last weekend.

WATCH: Prince Harry Reportedly Dating Meghan Markle

"Meghan has met Harry's close inner circle of friends," another source tells ET. "They really like her, and like that he is happy."

To hear more on how their rumored romance came to be, watch the video below.

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Mexico City (AFP) - A Mexican official pressed the authorities Friday to investigate whether US presidential candidate Donald Trump committed tax fraud in a failed condominium project in Tijuana.

Jaime Martinez Veloz, the head of the Commission for Dialogue with Indigenous People of Mexico, took documents to the attorney general's office in the hope it will lead to a probe by tax authorities.

Martinez, a former federal lawmaker, said authorities in the northwestern border city of Tijuana found no building permits related to the Trump Ocean Resort Baja Mexico project.

Trump settled a US lawsuit in 2013 with some 100 would-be condo buyers after the project fell through and was never built.

The billionaire real estate investor said he only licensed his name for the project but was not involved in building it, the Los Angeles Times reported at the time.

"Today where, as he says, there would have been a beautiful building, there is a hole, a pit that demonstrates the illegality and fiscal fraud that were committed," Martinez told reporters in front of the attorney general's office, adding that he was filing the complaint on a personal capacity.

An official at the attorney general's office, who spoke on condition of anonymity, could not confirm whether the complaint was processed by the authorities, but he said officials usually take them and examine whether there is enough evidence to open a case.

The Trump campaign did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Trump, who faces Democrat Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's presidential election, has angered Mexicans for calling migrants from Mexico "rapists" and drug dealers, as well as vowing to make their government pay for a giant wall across the border.
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The Mexican government on Friday disqualified one of the consortia competing in a tender to build and run a national wholesale mobile network, leaving just one bid remaining for the long-delayed project.

An official at the Ministry of Communications and Transport said at a news conference that the group made up of Rivada Networks and Spectrum Frontier did not present the required 1 billion peso ($52 million) bid bond on time and so was disqualified.

That leaves a consortium called Altan, which includes Mexican companies Megacable and conglomerate Alfa's unit Axtel, as the sole bidder.

Depending on the bid, the network could be one of the largest infrastructure projects carried out under President Enrique Pena Nieto. The winner is scheduled to be announced on Nov. 17.

The network, which must cover at least 85 percent of the population, was part of a sweeping telecoms reform aimed at curbing the dominance of Carlos Slim's America Movil.

(Reporting by Christine Murray; editing by Grant McCool)
Osnat Shurer knows good fortune when it strikes. At Deadlines Contenders event today, the producer of the highly-anticipated animated musical Moana talked about how the project landed Broadways hottest name in years: Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Talk bout lucky, right? Shurer said about Miranda, who cowrote some of the music for the film, during the Contenders Pixar/Disney Animation panel. We went to New York and met with a number of songwriters. I just want to say, for the record, this was before Hamilton. I loved the bilingual quality he had In the Heights. We just loved him, we loved his energy.

Shurer recalled when Miranda first told her about his unusual upcoming projecta musical about the Founding Father conveyed through hip hopand how she could never have foreseen its incredible success. I thought, Two months and Ill have him full time, she joked.

Directed by Disney icons Ron Clements and John Muskerthe artists behind such classics as Aladdin and The Little MermaidMoana is set some 2000 years ago in the Pacific Islands, and follows a young woman setting out in search of a fabled island using only the stars and her incredible navigational skills. With the titular character voiced by AuliI Cravalho, the film also stars Dwayne Johnson, Jemanine Clement and Alan Tudyk.

Shurer said the film also features many contributions from real Pacific Islanders, in the cast and the production team. She noted that she was inspired by the resourcefulness and remarkable skills possessed by the islanders as they made their long-ago migrations. The thing that struck us was how amazing these feats were, Shurer told Deadlines panel moderator Anthony DAlessandro. Our story plays on the mystery that the scholars arent quite sure why the migration stopped and why it continued again.

Shurer spoke of a research trip alongside the films directors, a transformative experience that also changed the nature of the film. We came back with a totally different story and changed ourselves forever, she said.

Story continues

Also appearing today as part of the Pixar and Disney Animation panel were producers Clark Spencer of Zootopia and Lindsey Collins of Finding Dory, projects which have grossed over $1 billion worldwide in a stellar year for Disney.

Zootopia follows a small-town bunny headed to the sprawling city of Zootopia with dreams of being a police officer, combatting stigma and bunny stereotypes along the way. Spencer spoke of Zootopias political resonancecould he have foreseen the way in which the film plays today, amidst daily headlines of Donald Trumps latest incendiary remarks? I wish we could say we had that kind of forecasting, but no, he said.

Addressing the thematic underpinnings of the film, and a message that is perhaps more vital than ever in these final pre-election days, Spencer said, We looked deeply at the idea of talking about predator and prey. It got us talking about using animation as an allegory to talk about bias, and we got really excited about that.

On the subject of Dorythe long-awaited sequel to 2003s Finding Nemo, which pursues a narrative from the perspective of the forgetful blue tang fishCollins said that director Andrew Stanton initially was reluctant to take on a sequel, feeling that the story had been told. He was done. He felt resolved about Nemo, and was in the press actively saying there wouldnt be a sequel, she said.

But after re-watching the film, Stanton recognized that there was more to say. He was like, Wow, Im really worried about Dory! I think she could get lost again tomorrow, Collins explained. For him, it was almost like a parent feeling, as if youd sent your child out into the world unprepared or unfinished.

Collins also discussed her own voicing of a character within the film, and the process by which producers and behind-the-scenes talent get involved in that capacity. Were up in Northern California, so we have very limited access to our cast. We iterate so much that we pull in-house people to read lines, because were moving so fast, she said before leaking an interesting reveal.

Im the voice of Dory until Ellen [DeGeneres] comes in and blows me away.

Moana hits theaters on November 23, just in time for Thanksgiving.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Thousands of Russians have been fighting in Syria in anti-government ranks, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview published on Saturday, issuing a warning of possible attacks by them on their return home. Last year, Moscow launched an air campaign to hit the targets of militants who have waged a war against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. There are also numerous jihadists from Russia who filled the ranks of anti-government forces. "You probably know that thousands of Russian citizens and individuals from other post-Soviet republics are fighting in Syria," Medvedev told Channel 2 Israel ahead of a visit to Israel next week, according to the interview transcript. "These completely brainwashed people return home as professional murderers and terrorists. And we don't want them to stage something similar in Russia after their Syrian stints expire." "We have already experienced this, including in the context of the Caucasus war in the 1990s. First of all, we want them to stay there. Second, the Syrian Government asked Russian leaders to help them reinstate law and order," Medvedev said about the wars Moscow waged in Chechnya. By December 2015, some 2,900 Russians had left to fight in the Middle East, Alexander Bortnikov, director of the FSB, the Russian security service, said at a sitting of the National Anti-terrorist Committee late last year. According to official data, more than 90 percent of them left Russia after mid-2013. Moscow is now fighting Islamic State and other militant groups in Syria that the Kremlin says pose a threat to the security of Russia and the world. The Kremlin has justified its campaign of air strikes in Syria by saying its main objective was to crush Islamic State. Medvedev reiterated that Syrian people should decide their political future and system of the country themselves. "We don't know whether this system would have any place for Bashar al-Assad or someone else, this is not our business, and it must be decided by the people of Syria. But we dont want Syria to disintegrate into a number of enclaves and sectors (in line with a Libyan-style scenario), where each sector would be controlled by separate terrorist groups," Medvedev said. (Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Stephen Powell)
Paris (AFP) - Britain's Andy Murray became the new world number one on Saturday after Milos Raonic withdrew from their Paris Masters semi-final because of injury.

The walkover will see Murray, 29, move to the top of the rankings for the first time in his career after replacing long-time incumbent Novak Djokovic.

The Scot's climb to the ATP rankings' summit caps a remarkable year which has seen him win a second Wimbledon crown and mount a successful defence of his Olympic title in Rio.

"I think that's the most satisfying thing, really. It's been such a difficult thing to do during my career because of how good the guys around me have been, the guys ahead of me," said Murray.

"Obviously it's unfortunate the way that it happened today. I would have liked to have done it on the court, but it's been many years of work to get here.

"I never thought I'd be No. 1 in the world and never imagined that was something that was going to happen."

Murray had needed to reach the final to supplant Djokovic at the top following the Serb's defeat to Marin Cilic in the last eight.

But he didn't need to hit a single ball as Raonic announced his withdrawal in a hastily-arranged press conference just an hour before the scheduled 1530 GMT start.

The Canadian said he had suffered a muscle tear in his right leg in his previous match, sending Murray through to face John Isner in Sunday's final.

"This morning I had trouble waking up and getting out of bed," said Raonic, who hurt himself in Friday's quarter-final win over Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

"I had some tests and an MRI half an hour ago and they found that I have a tear, Grade 1 tear in the right quad."

- Djokovic respect -

Murray will be confirmed as the new number one -- the 26th different player in history to hold top spot -- when the latest rankings are released on Monday.

He is the oldest first-time number one since 30-year-old John Newcombe of Australia in June 1974.

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Djokovic, whose 122-week reign at the top is set to come to an end, praised Murray's remarkable rise which coincided with a tumultuous second half of the year for the Serb.

"He's definitely a player who deserves that. Undoubtedly much respect for what he has done," said Djokovic.

"To see how he has raised his level in the last 12 months is quite extraordinary."

Murray will meet Isner as he targets a maiden Paris Masters title after the big-serving American toppled Cilic 6-4, 6-3 in the first semi-final.

Isner, who also reached the last four in 2011, broke the ninth seed at 4-all before serving out for the first set.

Cilic sealed his place at the Tour Finals in London this week and then snapped a 14-match losing run against Djokovic, but the Croat couldn't maintain that level against Isner.

The American seized control again at 3-3 in the second set and inflicted his first defeat on Cilic in seven attempts with another break of serve.

Isner will bid for his first Masters 1000 title after reaching the final at Indian Wells in 2012 and Cincinnati in 2013.

"It's going to be a huge challenge for me," said Isner. "Andy, of course, is one of the all-time greats in my opinion.

"I have never beaten him before. He's had my number. But also I had never beaten Cilic before coming into this match.

"If I want to have any chance, I have to play extremely well."

Meanwhile, Raonic's injury throws his participation at the prestigious November 13-20 Tour Finals into doubt, although he refused to rule out taking part just yet.

"I still have the possibility of making it, but I was told five to ten days. So I'm on the borderline for that," he said.
YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's plans to arm and train non-Muslim residents in the troubled north of Rakhine State is likely to "aggravate an already dire human rights situation", the International Commission of Jurists, a human rights watchdog, has said. Soldiers have flooded the Maungdaw area along Myanmar's frontier with Bangladesh in Rakhine in response to coordinated attacks on three border posts on Oct. 9 in which nine police officers were killed. The government said a group of some 400 Rohingya Muslim militants attacked the posts. It has said five soldiers and at least 33 suspected insurgents have been killed in the military operation since then. Security forces have blocked access to aid workers and most journalists to the area. Rohingya Muslims have accused the army of summary executions, rapes and setting fire to homes of civilians. The government and the military deny that. Rakhine State police chief Colonel Sein Lwin told Reuters this week his force had started recruiting new "regional police" from among the ethnic Rakhine and other non-Muslim ethnic minorities in the area. "Establishing an armed, untrained, unaccountable force drawn from only one community in the midst of serious ethnic tensions and violence is a recipe for disaster," said Sam Zarifi, ICJ's Asia Director, said in a statement on Friday. Min Aung, a minister in the Rakhine State parliament and a member of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, said this week the recruits would help protect residents from the militants behind the Oct. 9 attacks. Deputy commander of Rakhine police, Col. Thit San, contacted by Reuters on Saturday, rejected the criticism, saying there will be no problems with the force as it would be under police command. "We already did that training previously, that is normal police recruitment as five or six times before, there were no problems then," said Thit San. Only citizens would be eligible to sign up for the police training, officials said, ruling out the 1.1 million Rohingyas living in Rakhine State, who are denied citizenship in Myanmar as they are regarded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Initially, 100 recruits aged between 18 and 35 would undergo an accelerated 16-week training program, beginning in the state capital, Sittwe, this month, police said, adding they would be given weapons and other equipment "like police". Ethnic Rakhine political leaders have urged the government to arm Buddhists against what they say is rising militancy among the Rohingya. The ICJ said such force would lack the training and oversight to perform policing functions in accordance with human rights and professional policing standards. It said there seemed to be no "accountability mechanism" in place to deal with instances of misconduct and abuses, calling for establishment of a professional police force. (Reporting by Antoni Slodkowski, Simon Lewis and Wa Lone; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
Sinha was angry at the treatment that was meted out to the family members of former soldier Ram Kishan Grewal who according to him were beaten up in police station.

By Rohit Kumar Singh: BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha has slammed the Central government over the handling of the situation which followed in the national capital post the suicide committed by former soldier Ram Kishan Grewal over the issue of OROP.

SHATRUGAN IS ANGRY

In a series of tweets, Shatrughan Sinha said that the situation in Delhi could have been handled in a better and pragmatic manner.

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"I wish the Delhi situation after the death of an army veteran was handled in a more mature, proper, practical and fair manner", tweeted Shatrughan Sinha.

Sinha was angry at the treatment that was meted out to the family members of former soldier Ram Kishan Grewal who according to him were beaten up in police station.

Also read: Suicide of ex-jawan raises several question over Defence Ministry's efforts to implement OROP



"Instead of showing sympathy, the martyr's family was beaten up, that too in police station( where else)", tweeted the BJP MP.



ATTACKS OWN PARTY

He further attacked his own government in the manner in which Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal were detained after police used force on them for protesting Ram Kishan Grewal's suicide. He said that opposition leaders were treated in a manner as if they were enemies.

"Leaders with huge following, who matter in society were detained with brute force and taken into custody. Why don't we understand that opposition leaders are not enemies", tweeted Sinha.



WHAT ARE WE TRYING TO PROVE: SINHA



Slamming the Centre, Shatrughan raised questions whether Centre was trying to prove that power was permanent?

"What are we trying to prove...that power is permanent? Good sense should prevail, cutting across party lines and leadership...sooner the better", tweeted Shatrughan Sinha.

Also read: BJP lying on OROP, stabbing army in the back: Arvind Kejriwal to India Today



He demanded that Centre must address the OROP issue soon in the larger interest of the jawans and country.

Watch:

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People in the United States are understandably preoccupied with certain domestic matters at the moment. Its a pity, though, that they arent paying attention to another election thats taking place not too far away. This Sunday, Nov. 6, Nicaraguans will be going to the polls to vote for their own president. In contrast to the U.S., however, the outcome there is virtually foreordained.

Incumbent President Daniel Ortega, 71, has amended the constitution to allow himself to run as many times as hed like, tilting the playing field in his favor. With no real opponent, Ortega is sure to extend his presidency to a third consecutive term. His running mate is his 65-year-old wife, Rosario Murillo, who will likely extend the Ortega dynasty well beyond the nine years hes already been in office. This means that Nicaragua, one of Central Americas poorest countries, is now facing the extinction of its last remaining vestiges of democracy, probably condemning it to a prolonged period of personalism and corruption.

Yet this development is meeting with resounding silence from the United States, a country that long had an almost obsessive interest in the fate of Nicaraguan democracy. Throughout the run-up to this election, even when the pro-government electoral council disqualified the leading opposition candidate, Washington has remained virtually silent, raising only timid public expressions of concern. Meanwhile, U.S. media attention on the region has focused on catastrophic political meltdown in Venezuela.

Members of Congress have tried to fill the policy vacuum by proposing an impractical and unhelpful solution: banning international financial assistance to Nicaragua until the country essentially becomes democratic. This would be profoundly counterproductive, cutting off a potential point of leverage and hurting the countrys business class more than the intended target: Ortega and his corrupt circle of allies. Luckily, there is another set of policy options that can nudge Nicaragua back on to a path of democratic opening while avoiding the current extremes of inaction and overreaction.

But first, a bit of background is in order. Ortega has dominated Nicaraguan politics ever since the 1979 Sandinista Revolution, which established a radical left regime a few hundred miles south of the United States just as anti-communist crusading Ronald Reagan was about to enter office. Throughout the 1980s, Washington committed considerable resources to dislodging Ortega and his party, a policy that seemed to bear fruit when the Sandinistas were forced to relinquish power after an electoral loss in 1990.

Yet just nine years later the wily Ortega was back. Facing an explosive sexual molestation charge from his own stepdaughter, the Sandinista leader negotiated a deal with then-President Arnoldo Aleman, who was himself mired in corruption charges. The two of them agreed on a power-sharing deal, essentially dividing up key institutions among their own parties (and allowing them to evade their legal problems in the process). In a stroke, Ortega metamorphosed from a Marxist revolutionary to a pragmatic deal-maker, catapulting himself into a role as a national power broker that ultimately enabled him to retake the presidency in 2006. He hasnt relinquished the office since, assisted by a series of cynical maneuvers that have systematically hollowed out the countrys electoral and judicial systems while preserving a democratic facade.

Surprisingly, all of this occurred when the United States was actively attempting to bring Nicaragua into the fold of liberal regional institutions. The centerpiece of this strategy was a 2005 trade arrangement between Nicaragua and the United States that was part of Washingtons broader free trade agenda for Central America. At the same time, the U.S. initially included Nicaragua in the Millennium Challenge Account, the George W. Bush administrations development assistance program, which tied U.S. development assistance to progress on accountability and transparency. The assumption was that liberal trade and economic policies, along with assistance linked to pro-democratic reforms, would create more politically and economically liberal U.S. allies.

It was a policy that completely overlooked what was actually happening in Nicaragua. Soon after his election, Ortega brought Nicaragua into the regional leftist alliance created by the then-president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez  an alliance dedicated (ironically) to thwarting U.S. influence in the region and its free trade plans. Venezuelas oil was a boon to Ortega and his government. At one point, it was estimated that the energy-strapped Central American country was receiving 27 thousand barrels of oil per day. At the height of the oil boom between 2004 and 2012, when Venezuela was flush with cash, it also showered its Central American ally with gifts, including $728 million in bilateral cooperation in 2012 alone, 76 percent of which was channeled through the oil collaboration agreement between the two countries.

The cash provided by Venezuelan oil allowed Ortega and his government to establish universal free health care, eliminate school fees for the poor, develop a national micro-finance program, and establish a housing give-away program  all dependent on Venezuelan patronage, which has dropped off with the collapse of global oil prices. More than their sustainability, however, the problem with these entitlements is that they were shamelessly branded as Sandinista/Ortega giveaways, a form of institutionalized patronage explicitly linked to the political fortunes of the man in power. This is a strategy strikingly reminiscent of the working of Somoza dynasty that the Sandinistas overthrew in the 1970s, which maintained its power through similar dispensation of favors. It is this continuity, as well as Ortegas effort to perpetuate himself in power, that has led many to compare the Sandinista leader to his right-wing predecessor.

The comparison goes beyond Ortegas consolidation of power over the legislative, electoral and judicial branches, the nepotistic control over the economy, and the governments dominance of the media. Ortegas decision to make his wife his running mate is clear evidence of his aspiration to establish a dynasty. Few doubt that Murillo, who enjoys considerable popularity as first lady and has shown herself to be a powerful force in presidential palace decision-making, is being positioned to eventually run for president, extending the rule of the Ortega clan.

Meanwhile, Washington has essentially stood by  a remarkable abdication of leadership in regard to a country that has long stood at the forefront of U.S. policy in the region, and which is a member of a U.S.-led trade bloc.

Someone is beginning to pay attention  thought not necessarily to the most positive effect. In September this year, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and Representative Albio Sires of New Jersey in the House and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas sponsored the Nicaraguan Investment Conditionality Act (NICA-Act). The bill directs the Administration to oppose loans for Nicaragua from international financial institutions until the Secretary of State certifies the Government of Nicaragua is taking effective steps to hold free and fair elections, promote democracy, strengthen the rule of law, and respect the right to freedom of association and expression.

A large part of the problem is that Nicaragua is still caught in the bipolar debates left over from the Cold War, which are reflected in the Cuban-embargo language of the NICA-Act. Democrats want to avoid the shadow of the gringo heavy hand in Central America. Cold War Republicans still see in Nicaragua  and Ortega in particular  a sinister challenge to U.S. interests and values. Trapped between these ideological extremes are those who hope that spreading economic liberalism and development below the Rio Grande will inexorably bring governments in line with U.S. values and interests.

Thanks to the economic and developmental links that have emerged since 1990, the U.S. does have a series of carrots and sticks at its disposal. Here are a few that it can use:

First, theres nothing that says that CAFTA-DR cant be tweaked to support the values it was intended to bolster. So why not identify the economic sectors that have been infected by the Ortega familys nepotism and reduce their level of tariff-free access to the United States? Crony capitalists dont deserve access to a free market, especially when they are violating free markets themselves. In short, block notoriously corrupt, Ortega-controlled economic sectors from U.S. market access.

Second, U.S. development assistance to Nicaragua is not important enough to make a difference to threaten a cut-off. But collectively cutting aid from the European Union and other countries (including the U.S.) might have an impact. The U.S. must work with its allies who have professed a commitment to democracy to condition their assistance to Nicaragua on democratic reforms. Sure, Ortega will win Sundays election, but pressure should be applied so that the next round of elections is open and democratic.

Third, the hemisphere has a set of norms and policies to defend democracy. The Democratic Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS) empowers member countries to denounce violations of representative democracy and voluntarily impose sanctions in the cases of democratic erosion. Its high time that the OAS convened to discuss the situation in Nicaragua. That will require initiative by member states. Thanks to recent political changes in Argentina, Brazil, and Peru, there is a growing pool of courageous, pro-democratic governments in the region. The U.S. needs to work with them to trigger this discussion.

Finally, theres the tool of individualized sanctions, which Washington has already used to prevent Venezuelan officials from traveling to the United States and engaging in financial transactions on U.S. soil. The same should be applied to corrupt officials in Nicaragua  in particular the members of the Ortega family that have extended their control over the Nicaraguan economy in areas such as the media, construction, and gasoline stations. Other governments in the region should be persuaded to follow suit.

Though Venezuelas crisis has absorbed most of the international communitys attention to the region of late, its not the only place south of the border where democracy is under threat. But while U.S. leverage in Venezuela is limited, Washington has plenty of policy carrots and sticks it can apply to the erosion of democracy in Nicaragua. The trick is using them correctly.

Photo credit: INTI OCON/AFP/Getty Images
Kano (Nigeria) (AFP) - Nigerian troops on Saturday rescued another of the missing Chibok schoolgirls seized by Boko Haram Islamists, in an operation near the border with Cameroon, a spokesman said.

The girl, found along with her baby son, was one of the more than 200 schoolgirls taken by the Islamist group from their hostels in the remote town of Chibok in April 2014.

Dozens of the girls escaped in the hours after the kidnapping but more than 200 are still unaccounted for.

The mass abduction drew global anger and attracted unprecedented attention to the seven-year Boko Haram insurgency.

News of the latest rescue came barely a month after 21 other Chibok girls were released by Boko Haram.

Army spokesman Sani Usman told AFP that "Nigerian army troops rescued another Chibok schoolgirl at Pulka," in Borno state near the Mandara mountains separating Nigeria from Cameroon.

Usman later said in an official statement the girl was rescued "at about 6:00am while (the army was) screening some escapees from Boko Haram terrorists hideout in Sambisa forest."

He identified her as Maryam Ali Maiyanga, adding that she was carrying a 10-month-old son.

"She has been taken to the unit's (army's) medical facility for proper medical check up," he said.

The Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) lobby group confirmed the release.

"We are happy with the news... We have confirmed the name of the freed girl to be among those on our database," BBOG campaigner Aisha Yesufu told AFP.

"Our hope is that the government will work towards an early release of the remaining girls so that we can bring this sad episode to a close," she added.

BBOG later said in a statement on Saturday that "preliminary investigations on our part, show that Maryam Ali (Number 198 on our list), a school prefect, is from Askira Uba and was abducted along with her twin, Halima Ali (Number 197), who is yet to return."

The group, which has been at the vanguard of local campaigns to free the girls, commended "the federal government under President Muhammadu Buhari, the military and other security formations working day and night to rout the terrorists and rescue all Nigerians in captivity."

Story continues

The 21 Chibok girls released last month were freed following negotiations between the Nigerian government and Boko Haram, brokered by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Swiss government.

Local residents in the town of Barki where the 21 were freed said they were exchanged with four Boko Haram prisoners, but the government denied this.

The government said at the time it had received a commitment from Boko Haram to secure the release of 83 other girls believed to be from Chibok being held by a different faction of the extremist group.

Usman said Saturday "it is imperative to state that troops have been working round the clock to clear remnants of Boko Haram terrorists wherever they might be hibernating and also rescue all persons held hostages by terrorists".

Boko Haram's insurgency in Nigeria's mainly-Muslim north has killed at least 20,000 people and made more than 2.6 million homeless since 2009.
Paris (AFP) - Andy Murray can depose Novak Djokovic as world number one on Saturday but the British star insists he won't let the pressure of the historic occasion knock him off course.

The 29-year-old Wimbledon and Olympic champion will take over top spot in the rankings if he defeats Canada's Milos Raonic in the Paris Masters semi-finals.

His path opened up on Friday after he saved seven set points in an extraordinary opening tie-break before clinching a 7-6 (11/9), 7-5 win over Tomas Berdych in the quarter-finals.

Earlier, 12-time major winner Djokovic had lost 6-4, 7-6 (7/2) to Croatia's Marin Cilic, a defeat which looks likely to end the Serb's 122-week reign on top of the ATP world rankings.

"Before the match there were a few more nerves maybe than there was earlier in the week. But once I got out there, I didn't feel any different to any other match," said Murray.

"If it happens this week, great. But if not, I'm not putting any extra pressure on myself this week because I still think I have an opportunity to do it in the future.

"But obviously I'd love to do it Saturday if I can."

Cilic had lost all 14 previous meetings with Djokovic but snapped that miserable run with his victory.

Djokovic, the record four-time Paris champion, arrived in the French capital needing to reach the final to ensure he remained ahead of a rapidly approaching Murray.

But the Serb's challenge fizzled out against an in-form Cilic, the 2014 US Open champion.

"Credit to Marin and congratulations. He definitely played better today, and he deserved to win," said 29-year-old Djokovic.

"I wasn't on the level that I could have been on. Obviously, there are things I could have done better. And just in important moments I wasn't able to deliver."

Despite his disappointment, Djokovic will have another chance to convince he is far from in decline at the World Tour Finals in London next week.

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"The drop of form is normal in sports. I'm not too concerned about how the future will go for me," said the Serb, who has appeared a shadow of his former self since wrapping up a maiden French Open title in June which allowed him to clinch a career Grand Slam.

"You can't always expect to win. In terms of what the future brings to me, that's not in my hands. I'm going to obviously keep playing at this level as long as I feel like that's the right thing for me."

American John Isner faces Cilic in last four after he outlasted compatriot Jack Sock 7-6, (8/6), 4-6, 6-4.

Raonic defeated Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 6-2, 7-6 (7/4) in the late quarter-final, a result which allowed Austria's Dominic Thiem to tie up the eighth and last spot in the World Tour Finals next week.
Focus Features brought with it four films to Deadlines the Contenders event today at the DGA Theatre, including animated feature Kubo and the Two Strings. Director-producer Travis Knight discussed the challenges of making something that is a small-scale movie and make it feel like a large epic.

The pic took five years to make. Its filmmaking at the pace of a glacier, Knight quipped to Deadlines Pete Hammond, who moderated the panel. You have to be completely committed or slightly mad, but when you devote that much time of your life, you want to make sure it matters and its meaningful. Written by Marc Haimes and Chris Butler, the feature, which marks Knights directorial debut, was released in August and has taken in $67.6M worldwide to date.

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Buchan/DDH/REX/Shutterstock (7059547dy) Tom Ford The Contenders 2016: Presented by Deadline, Los Angeles, USA - 05 Nov 2016

The real center of the story is about finding people in your life that you love, that mean something to you, and not letting them go, said Nocturnal Animals writer-director Tom Ford during his films portion of the panel. Its a cautionary tale of what can happen to you if you do let them go. The romantic thriller starring Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon and Aaron Taylor-Johnson bows November 18 in limitd release and expands nationwide December 9. When asked about his jump from fashion to film, Ford said: I love fashion but its quick and does not last very long. Film is forever. For someone who has a story to tell and who loves to design things, the ultimate design is to design peoples lives and it lives forever.

RelatedNocturnal Animals: Tom Fords Stylish Noir Revenge Tale Lights Up Lido  Venice

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Buchan/DDH/REX/Shutterstock (7059547cw) Jeff Nichols The Contenders 2016: Presented by Deadline, Los Angeles, USA - 05 Nov 2016

Focus Features Loving is the biopic about the real-life couple Richard and Mildred Loving, whose interracial marriage became the center of a landmark civil rights case, debuted this weekend in limited release. Writer-director Jeff Nichols talked about relevance of the case 50 years later. The sad reality is that were going to need this film and this story in 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, he said. The reality is equality is not something we just solve. It is something that every generation has to define for itself. Right now were in a period where we need a new definition of how were going to deal with equality. The film, which premiered in Cannes, stars Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga.

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RelatedJoel Edgerton, Ruth Negga & Jeff Nichols On How The Quiet Of Loving Speaks Volumes  Toronto Studio

Also on hand in the DGA Theatre was A Monster Calls illustrator Jim Kay. The film, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, was written by Patrick Ness and follows a boy (Lewis MacDougall) who seeks the help of a tree monster to help him can cope with his single mothers terminal disease. Felicity Jones, Sigourney Weaver, Toby Kebbell and Liam Neeson star. After positive audience and press reactions from early screenings, Focus Features mounted an aggressive festival rollout for the movie. A Monster Calls launches a top 10-city limited run on December 23 before going wide in 1,500 theaters on January 6.

Related stories

Focus Features' 'Loving' Finds Audience Affection in Debut; 'Moonlight' Rises Over $1.3M - Specialty Box Office

Encore: Jeff Nichols Q&A On 'Loving'

Deadline's The Contenders Photo Studio 2016: Emma Stone, Denzel Washington, Amy Adams & More
The judges at Nuremberg

Last month marked the 70th anniversary of the end of the Nuremberg trials. The tribunal, which consisted of judges from the United States, the Soviet Union, France and Great Britain, was created to try prominent members of the Nazi Party for war crimes after the conclusion of World War II.

During the trials, which began in November 1945 and concluded in October 1946, 24 German officials and party members were tried, including Hermann Goering and Martin Bormann. Of the 24 officials indicted at Nuremberg, 12 were sentenced to death; seven were sentenced to imprisonment spanning from 10 years to life; three were acquitted; and two trials never proceeded.

After World War II, the most feasible options for the Allies were to release the Nazi officials, an almost unthinkable act which would have essentially affirmed that no crimes took place; to hold the Nazi leadership accountable outside through extra-judicial means; or to create a tribunal and hold trials.

The atrocities committed by the Nazis during the war were unprecedented. For that reason, international law had not addressed a course of action for punishing war crimes on such a grand scale. Britains Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, claimed that the guilt of the accused war criminals was so black that they fell outside  any judicial process. Indeed, the suggested method of justice for Axis leaders by top British officials, including Winston Churchill, was death by firing squad without trial. However, both the Soviet Union and the United States insisted on some sort of war tribunal to legitimize the punishments. Whether this insistence was for political reasons or moral reasonsor a mix of the twois a matter of debate.

The trials have been called one of the greatest feats of international law until that time. The scale and scope of the trials was immense. While many believe that the Nuremberg trials were responsible for delivering justice to the most evil force the Earth had ever seen, some have taken a more critical stance on the trials and the precedents they established.

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During his trial, Hermann Goering wrote in the margins of his indictment, The victor will always be the judge and the vanquished the accused. While acknowledging the horrific atrocities carried out by Goering and other Nazi officials, some historians have had similar qualms, even going so far as to call the trials Victors Justice.

Criticism stems from what could be called a retroactive creation of international law. Because of the unprecedented nature of the Holocaust and the Nazi regime, international law as it existed at the time did not suffice to prosecute those indicted, so the Allies fudged a new law and applied it ex post facto. Those laws prohibited what became known as crimes against humanity. At the time, some legal experts believed that if the trials were to be considered legitimate, law must be applied as it was written when the crimes took place. Even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at the time, Harlan Fiske Stone, claimed that the trials were a lynching party.

Despite these criticisms, the Nuremberg trials were momentous, for a number of reasons. They are remembered by many as an important development in how justice is carried out for war crimes on both the international and state levels. The trials acknowledged that the crimes committed by the Nazis were not done by some intangible entity; they were committed by men. Even further, the trials held those men accountable for their actions. By establishing that individuals were responsible for the crimes of a state, the Allied Powers hoped to prevent such crimes from occurring again in the future. As Nuremberg prosecutor Whitney Harris explained, For the first time in history, absolute rulers were brought to account before the law. There is no longer any state, or any ruler of any state, who can claim total immunity from the law.  The age of empires has passed. At Nuremberg we put tyranny on trial.

In addition, much of the information that we now know about the Holocaust was disclosed during the trials, including reports regarding the more than six million people systematically killed by the Nazis. Robert Jackson, chief U.S. prosecutor and future Supreme Court Justice, declared, Unless record was made  future generations would not believe how horrible the truth was.

Perhaps the greatest contribution of the Nuremberg trials was to elevate the rule of law and procedural justice above the urge for retribution and retaliationeven in one of humanitys darkest moments. As Justice Jackson stated, the existence of the Nuremberg trials was one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason. This commitment to law and international cooperation defined a principal difference between the Allied Powers and the Axis Powers.

To this day, the trials have influenced how war crimes are tried, not just internationally but also within the jurisdiction of the United States. For example, under the Alien Tort Statute, foreign citizens are able to be convicted or seek justice for human rights violations within the U.S. court system. Indeed, within the last 10 years, numerous federal district courts have relied on the Nuremberg trials in finding that corporations can be found liable for aiding and abetting human rights violations abroad. The Obama administration has also used the Nuremberg trials as support for closing the military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Seventy years after the final verdicts at Nuremberg, it is clear that it was one of the most important legal moments in modern history, if not the greatest trial in history.

Maggie Baldridge is an intern at the National Constitution Center. She is also a recent graduate of Dickinson College.

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Goa's facilities to expectant mothers ensure that 99 per cent deliveries are now in hospitals. The state also provides free pick-up and drop facility to pregnant women giving birth in government hospitals.

KERALA

Best big state

Why No.1

Kerala has the lowest infant mortality rate (12 per thousand live births) among big states.

99.7% births assisted by trained personnel, highest across country.

Pharmacy at Thycaud Government Hospital

The state has the lowest infant mortality rate (12 per thousand in 2013), scores highest (99.7 per cent) in trained, assisted births and has the best female-to-male population ratio (1,098:1,000) in the country. Kerala has a well-structured public healthcare system with 5,335 doctors, 7,898 nurses and 6,244 caregivers in its government hospitals. The health department runs 681 primary health centres and 171 public hospitals, and 8 speciality hospitals with a bed strength of 5,482. The state spent Rs 1,250 per person on health in 2015-16. A 20 per cent annual increase in allocation is expected in 2016-17. "Now some 3 million poor families are covered under health insurance," says health minister Shailaja Teacher. "We are improving infrastructure at state hospitals with local community support."

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ASSAM

Most improved big state

WHY NO.1

Infant mortality rate dropped by 5 percentage points between 2012-13 and 2013-14.

Health expenditure up by Rs 363 per person (2014-15), among top three states; tops in new registered doctors in '15: 594.

GOA

Best state

WHY NO.1

Goa has the lowest infant mortality rate amongst all states.

8 doctors per 1,000 people in Goa, highest amongst all small states.

Every Goan's health is taken care of by the government. That is our success," says deputy CM Francis D'Souza, who handles the health portfolio. Every Goan residing in the state for over five years has mediclaim, with 447 diseases covered in the scheme including psychological and chronic lifestyle problems. Another huge success is the state's infant mortality rate (IMR), now the lowest in the country at nine per 1,000 children. Goa's facilities to expectant mothers ensure that 99 per cent deliveries are now in hospitals. The state also provides free pick-up and drop facility to pregnant women giving birth in government hospitals. After delivery, a 10-year immunisation programme is detailed for the baby. "A call centre has been set up to send reminders," says Dr Vandana Dhue, Chief Medical Officer with the directorate of health services. "Free drugs and diagnosis are also provided in the first year.

MIZORAM

Most improved state

WHY NO.1

Assisted births up to 75.97% by 2013-14.

Spending on public health up 60% since 2012.



--- ENDS ---
President Barack Obama

President Barack Obama, after all of his campaigning for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the final days of the presidential election, was asked how he would feel about handing the power of the Oval Office to a President Donald Trump.

In a Friday night interview on MSNBC, Rev. Al Sharpton, an MSNBC host, asked Obama to picture standing in front of a newly elected Trump on inauguration day.

"Can you imagine how you would feel standing on the steps of the Capitol having to hand over the power and watch him put his hand on that Bible and become your successor?" he said.

"No," Obama responded, succinctly.

It is a multilayered notion for Obama to ponder, because of Trump's years-long history of questioning Obama's legitimacy as a president and as an American citizen. After five years of driving the so-called birther movement, Trump only weeks ago acknowledged publicly that he believes Obama was indeed born in the United States.

The president continued Friday:

"You know, the thing is, I don't take any of this personally because he is not who's fit to be president in any circumstances. I would feel deeply frustrated not because of anything he said about me, but because I would fear for the future of our country. And I say that mindful of the fact that there are disagreements between Republicans and Democrats."

Obama Hillary Clinton election 2016

Obama has been driving an increasingly impassioned appeal for Clinton in recent days, as the race tightens and the chances of a Trump win inched closer to reality. However, he expressed some concern that it may be hard to dislodge voter complacency, because the idea of a Trump win is still far-fetched for many.

"The main thing that I've been trying to explain to people is ... everything that we've done over the last eight years will be reversed with a Trump presidency," Obama said.

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Peripheral disruptions from an FBI investigation of Clinton's private email server have added to the urgency on both the Democratic and Republican sides  with the former seeking to reassure voters, and the latter raising the volume of their attacks on Clinton's trustworthiness.

Despite this, Obama said he is heartened by what he has been seeing on the campaign trail:

"The good news is that what we've seen over the last several days is in Florida, in North Carolina, in places all across the country, votes generally have been up. We have seen in the African-American community big surges in early votes, big surges in Latino votes, big surges in youth votes."

Reiterating his indictments of Trump's qualifications  and, in some cases, lack thereof  Obama added: "When you have a choice ... the idea that you would sit on the sidelines is unacceptable."

NOW WATCH: Obama pleads for voters to reject Trump: 'The fate of the republic rests on your shoulders'





More From Business Insider


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Friday that he does not believe FBI Director James Comey was trying to influence the presidential election when he decided the agency would examine newly discovered emails in its probe of Hillary Clinton's private server. "Now I've said before and I'll say again, Jim Comey is a good man," Obama said in an interview on MSNBC. "And I do not believe that he is in any way trying to influence the election one way or another. I think he is a serious public servant who wants to do the right thing," Obama said. (Reporting by Eric Beech)
(Photo: Getty Images)

President Barack Obama isnt like other dads, hes a cool dad. At least, thats what it sounds like when it comes to his daughters dating lives. This week he became Dad In Chief while on the campaign trail for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Speaking to Raleigh radio station WDCG, Obama said he wasnt worried about Malia and Sasha dating for all the right reasons. President Obama explained that Sasha and Malia have already started dating and he has one major reason for why he trusts them so much. Her name is Michelle Obama. Because of course it is.

President Obama explained that his wife is such a great example of how she carries herself, her self-esteem, not depending on boys to validate how you look or not letting yourself be judged by anything other than your character and intelligence. Seriously, could Obama be any sweeter? Apparently so. He added, Hopefully Ive been a good example in terms of how I show respect to my wife.

Cue the waterworks. Michelle and Barack continue to be #couplegoals and show us what long-lasting love looks like. No wonder hes not worried about Sasha and Malia dating; they have a great example of enduring love to admire daily.

This radio interview serves as a refreshing reminder that yes, the president is just like us. (Or at least like the cool dads of the world.) But it also goes to show that trust goes a long way. Oh, and that President Obama has raised some awesome daughters.

Any president who declares himself (or herself!) a feminist is cool in our books, but the cute factor didnt stop at the comments about Michelle. Obama went on to say, I really dont worry about because theyre really solid, smart girls.

Please say it one more time for the people in the back, Barry. And while were at it: cheers to all you girls out there who are solid and smart AF.

The post Obama says hes not worried about Malia and Sasha dating for the best reason appeared first on HelloGiggles.
By Roberta Rampton and Emily Stephenson FAYETTEVILLE, N.C.,/HERSHEY, Pa. (Reuters) - President Barack Obama chastised supporters at a rally for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in North Carolina on Friday, as tensions spiked when a supporter of Republican opponent Donald Trump began protesting. But that didn't stop Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, campaigning a few states away at the time, from telling a completely opposite version of what happened, condemning Obama for screaming at the protester. The incident happened in clear view of reporters covering the rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where a predominantly African American crowd was jammed into a gym at a state university to hear Obama stump for Clinton. Obama had just said Trump was unfit to lead the country when he was interrupted by a white-haired white man in a beret and suit jacket with what appeared to be military patches, who stood up in the stairwell of the bleachers, waving a Trump campaign sign. The crowd turned its attention to the protester, screaming and booing at the man. Obama repeatedly told the irate crowd to "focus" and to "settle down." "Everybody sit down and be quiet for a second!" Obama said. "You've got an older gentleman who is supporting his candidate," he said as the protester was led away. "We live in a country that respects free speech," he said. "It looks like he might have served in our military  weve got to respect that." In Trump's version, Obama scolded the protester, not the crowd. "He was talking to the protester, screaming at him, really screaming at him," Trump said. "By the way, if I spoke the way Obama spoke to that protester they would say, He became unhinged, Trump said. (Writing by Roberta Rampton Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by Leslie Adler and Jacqueline Wong)
LAGOS (Reuters) - One of more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Islamist militant group Boko Haram from their school in north-east Nigeria's Chibok in 2014 has been found by soldiers, a Nigerian army spokesman said on Saturday. Around 270 girls were kidnapped by the jihadist group, which has waged a seven-year insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic caliphate in the north-east, in April 2014. Sani Usman said the girl was discovered by troops who were screening escapees from Boko Haram's base in the Sambisa forest on Saturday around 06:00 a.m. (0500 GMT) in Pulka, Gwoza Local Government Area, in Borno State. The girl, Maryam Ali Maiyanga, was "discovered to be carrying a 10-month-old son", the army spokesman said. Last month, 21 of the abducted girls were released by Boko Haram following talks with the government brokered by the International Red Cross and the Swiss government. The first of the schoolgirls to be found was discovered by soldiers on the edge of the Sambisa forest, a vast woodland area, in May. (Reporting by Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Alexander Smith)
A Philippine mayor President Rodrigo Duterte named as being involved in the illegal drug trade was shot dead in jail on Saturday, police said, the second local official implicated in narcotics to be killed in two weeks.

Duterte, 71, won May elections in a landslide on a promise to kill tens of thousands of criminals to prevent the Philippines from becoming a narco-state, and has launched an unprecedented war on drugs that has left more than 4,000 people dead.

He had named several local officials, policemen and judges as being involved in the narcotics trade and urged them to surrender.

In August, he accused Rolando Espinosa, the mayor of Albuera town in the central island of Leyte, and his son of drug trafficking and demanded they turn themselves in, giving police a "shoot on sight" order if the two resisted arrest.

Mayor Espinosa then surrendered to the national police chief, saying he feared for his life, and was arrested last month.

But early Saturday morning, police said Espinosa was killed in his cell in the provincial jail after he shot at officers during a search for illegal firearms.

"He fired on the raiding team. The raiding team fired back and this led to the mayor's death," chief inspector Leo Laraga of the regional police told AFP.

He added that another inmate accused of drug trafficking was also killed, after he too fired at the officers.

The national police said it was investigating the circumstances surrounding Espinosa's death as well as possible collusion between guards and inmates to get guns and drugs into the jail.

Police chief Ronald dela Rosa previously said Espinosa had been listed in official records as a "drug protector", whose son Kerwin controlled the narcotics trade in the Albuera region.

Kerwin was arrested in the United Arab Emirates last month and is set to return to the Philippines to face drug trafficking charges.

In August, six of the Espinosas' supporters died in a gunfight with police outside the mayor's property in Albuera where officers said they recovered guns and several grenades.

Another mayor accused of drug trafficking was killed in the southern Philippines in late October.

Police said Samsudin Dimaukom and his security personnel opened fire after anti-narcotics police stopped their vehicles at a checkpoint on suspicion they were transporting illegal drugs.
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While some Clinton voters picked up the phone and knocked on doors this election, others chose to display their support in more glamorous ways: by deleting their Trump-supporting friends on Facebook.

It's a familiar trend, heightened in the past few weeks as the election draws to a close and as Trump's insults and allegations have magically grown even more hysterical and repulsive. While Twitter activists fight for their cause using hashtags, Facebook users most commonly execute the nuclear option: defriending.

It's an irresistibly fun weapon and a sometimes necessary defense  but inspires no lasting change, and ultimately only helps one person: the person behind the post.

SEE ALSO: Facebook's vote planner wants to help you understand your ballot

If you've spent any time on Facebook in the last 18 months, chances are you've written, witnessed or been the subject of a post announcing this crackdown. All tend to follow a very similar, mildly irritating formula:

Starts with: "I don't normally talk about politics on Facebook, but . . ."

Links to The Washington Post Trump takedown of the day

Somewhere includes the clause, "This election is different," and a strangely nostalgic reference to Mitt Romney

Ever-so-subtly references the Holocaust/Hitler

Labels Trump as one of the following: racist, misogynist, demagogue, sentient creamsicle, water-logged Ken doll, leftover sack of liposuction skin with a mouth

Concludes that anyone who supports Trump is also one of these things, and is therefore not worthy of their esteemed Facebook friendship

Promises to violently delete anyone they come across who support Trump: no f*cks given.

While the structure of these posts may feel annoyingly familiar to some, the writers behind them often come from an understandable place. At this point, there are so few groups left untouched and unharmed by the Trump campaign, it's truly boring to recite them: immigrants, women, people of color, queer people, war heroes, people with disabilities, my mom. Even crying babies have experienced the wrath of Trump  and sadly do not have the social media/SEO skills to speak out against injustice.

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Some Clinton supporters just don't want to keep someone in their Facebook family who's willingly voting for a man who's bragged about sexual assault and wants to deport whole populations of people. For some Clinton supporters, voting for Trump isn't just wrong: it's evil, demonstrating a profound lack of character, judgment and good fashion sense.

Sure, as pundits have repeatedly noted, Clinton supporters have little chance of dissuading people from voting for Trump.

"There's probably nothing that can change a Trump or Clinton supporters' mind," the data gods at FiveThirtyEight wrote in July. A study conducted last October found that Trump supporters were more likely to evaluate a Trump's statement as true even when it was patently false, leaving little room for growth.

Still, while it may feel thrilling and moral for a progressive to excise Trump voters from their Facebook feeds, it's an inherently ineffective form of social activism, a grand rhetorical exercise that hardens hearts and minds instead of changing them.

For one, there is no gap like the information gap between conservative and liberal readers. The two parties read vastly distinct publications (if you want a migraine, spend ten minutes on Breitbart, then Salon) and gather their data from wildly disparate sources. By "bravely" kicking Trump supporters off their Facebook feed  which takes the full strength of one finger  they only serve to further isolate Trump voters from the data and stories both parties need to actually broaden their worldview.

Facebook compounds this information segregation by only promoting ads and friends that are likely to appeal to the user, i.e. those that most closely match their political affiliation. Sometimes, it's not even that Trump or Clinton voters disagree with you  it's that they don't have access to the same information, and literally don't know what you're talking about.

So while it's most likely impossible for a Clinton voter to persuade a Trump voter at this point (or vice versa), it's plausible that  to the extent that Facebook will allow these disparate animals to intermix  Clinton voters can expose some Trump supporters to new ways of thinking, different facts and divergent stories.

Maybe.

There are other risks. By publicly expunging Trump fans from their feed, Clintonistas only legitimize some Trump supporters' biggest complaint: that they're a persecuted minority, victimized by the liberal elite. Progressives, by their account, are out to destroy free speech, labeling anyone who disagrees with them racists and sexists, before silencing them.

Clinton voters, in some of their minds, are only interested in hearing diverse voices when the voices sound exactly like them; a public Facebook defriend only confirms that lurking, popular suspicion.

Of course, there are exceptions, times when defriending a Trump supporter is the healthiest and safest option. There's a difference between advocating for your candidate and harassing someone for their views. If a Clinton supporter suddenly finds one of their Trump friends flooding their wall with pics of disembodied fetuses burning in a dumpster, then defriending them is easily the safest (and only) thing to do.

And keeping someone in your Facebook family doesn't mean you have to keep them in your actual family. If you're a queer person and one of your closest friends is a big fan of Mike Pence's decision to withdraw funding from AIDS research and redirect it to conversion therapy, then a friendship breakup, not just a Facebook friendship breakup, might be in order. Close friends are not distant sexist uncles who occasionally post misspelled Hillary Clinton email memes. These are two different levels of intimacy, with two disparate levels of expectations.

It might seem impossible for Clinton supporters to keep those who disagree with them in their Facebook feeds  but how hard is it, really, to listen? Part of the liberal vision is to hear, though not necessarily accept, all voices, as hateful as some of the voices may sound. Trump voters are their neighbors, however alien they may seem to some. And before some of these Clinton supporters throw stones at the "racist Trump thugs" in their network, some degree of self-examination is in order. New York City, for example, is home to one of the country's largest population of progressives  and one its most segregated school systems. Imagine if conservatives in the South (where schools are often less segregated) were to defriend all their progressive friends in New York attending segregated ones.

Who would be left to be friends with?

So if you're a Clinton supporter, and you're thinking about writing an emo Facebook post defriending all the Trump supporters in your life, stop for a second and try to imagine who it is, exactly, you're helping. There are plenty of ways to help your candidate and your country  but they require boots on the ground, old-fashioned volunteerism, and listening. Breaking up doesn't change minds  it just makes you feel better about yourself.

RELATED: So Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump walked into a charity dinner
GUJARAT

Best state

Perception of entrepreneurial environment the highest, at 0.31.

The perception of government support to entrepreneurs is the second highest, at 0.29.

Long before the Centre embarked on entrepreneurship development, the Gujarat government was nurturing it. Just last month, the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) allotted plots to 200 entrepreneurs at the first-ever Vibrant Gujarat Start-up Summit. Gujarat's Centre for Entrepreneurship Development is helping set up a Rs 250 crore fund for start-ups. D. Thara, managing director, GIDC, says: "The schemes to encourage entrepreneurship are part of a larger ecosystem where the government plays the role of a facilitator." Juhi Kancha, 28, of Automint, an automobile software start-up that was given aid, says, "The government aid took care of almost all our expenses."

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DELHI

Best small state

WHY NO.1

Topped small states in openness to start new business, at 0.27, perception of government support to entrepreneurship, at 0.18, and perception of entrepreneurial environment, at 0.10.

Easier, quicker access to investors and a host of enabling organisations are some of the reasons why Delhi has emerged as a major entrepreneurial hub. The downturn in the realty sector has led to a spurt in incubators-spaces where entrepreneurs pay per seat and their requirements for an office space are taken care of. "Incubators really help entrepreneurs because, essentially, the first question that an entrepreneur battles with is where to sit," says Aditi Balbir, CEO of V Resorts, a resort chain. The city's expansive road network to other states and good public transport have eased logistical challenges. The tough part: getting permissions and finding technology talent.



--- ENDS ---
Washington (AFP) - Polls in the last week of the presidential campaign showed the race tightening between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Prone to dangerous tangents, the Republican managed to stay on message. And Democratic heavyweights led by President Barack Obama launched a final frenzy of campaigning for Clinton.

A brutal, divisive and at times tawdry election campaign that began nearly two years ago ends on Tuesday night, with 82 percent of Americans saying they are sick of it.

The following are snippets from the last week of campaigning before Election Day.

- Polls tighten -

Clinton was the clear favorite two weeks ago but her lead has narrowed in battleground states and at the national level.

She has gone from a seven-point cushion at the national level on October 18 to just 2.4 points, according to a polling average compiled by RealClearPolitics: 45.3% for her, compared to 42.7% for Trump as of Friday.

The candidates are neck and neck in several key battleground states including Florida and North Carolina. Trump has made up some ground in others, according to the polling average.

Clinton and Trump, both highly unpopular, appealed to Americans to get out and vote. Democrats in particular are worried about the prospect of lower turnout among blacks, who might be less inclined to vote than in 2008 and 2012 when Obama was running.

- Trump talks to himself -

Trump's rambling, stream of consciousness outbursts and insults have been a fixture of the campaign, but this week he seemed to have learned the virtues of self-control.

"Nice and cool. Right? Stay on point, Donald, stay on point. No sidetracks, Donald -- nice and easy," Trump said Wednesday, tongue in cheek, at a rally.

He hit Clinton hard on news from the FBI that it is looking at emails that might be pertinent to an earlier probe of her use of a private server while holding the job of secretary of state.

That controversy, a bad dream that will not go away for Clinton, does not appear to have hurt her significantly in the polls.

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But it could provide fodder for opposition Republicans in the US House and Senate who have vowed to block her at every turn, prompting Trump to claim that a "constitutional crisis" could occur if she is elected.

- Heavyweights -

Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, former president Bill Clinton, Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Chelsea Clinton were all mobilized this week in a last ditch push to get out the Democratic vote in swing states.

Clinton, 69, kept up her attacks on Trump, calling him unfit to hold the office of the presidency. She also relied on star power to try to get young people and minorities to vote.

Music star Pharrell Williams campaigned Thursday evening in North Carolina, Jay Z and Beyonce will do so Friday in Ohio and Katy Perry is scheduled to appear Saturday in Florida.

For her very last rally on Monday evening, Clinton will be backed by the Obamas, her husband and her daughter.

- Speech in Spanish -

Clinton's vice presidential running mate, Tim Kaine, made a bit of history by giving a speech entirely in Spanish. He did it in Arizona, a battleground state that borders Mexico and in which she trails Trump.

He addressed as his theme the advantages that come with immigration. The Clinton campaign said it was the first time a speech was given wholly in Spanish at a US presidential rally.

Kaine learned Spanish in 1980 while working with Jesuit missionaries in Honduras.

"No hablo espanol perfectamente," Kaine said in the speech. That means, "My Spanish is not perfect."

The New York Times ran a headline in Spanish the next day that said Kaine did fine.

"Well, Senor Kaine, hablaste espanol muy bien," it said. You spoke Spanish very well.
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Venezuela is going through a "very ugly" situation and there could be bloodshed ahead if talks between the government and opposition fail, a papal envoy told an Argentine newspaper after his visit to Venezuela this week. Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli had been in Caracas for Vatican-convened talks as an angry opposition stepped up its protests against socialist President Nicolas Maduro after authorities scuttled a recall referendum. The oil-rich country is also suffering from a prolonged recession and severe shortages of food and medicine. In an interview published Saturday in Argentina's La Nacion newspaper, Celli did not hide his concern, as he described "exhausting" late-night talks with the two sides. "If it happens that one side or the other wants to end the dialogue, it's not the pope but the Venezuelan people who will lose, because the road ahead could truly be that of blood," Pope Francis' envoy told the paper from Rome. "And there are people who would not be afraid of bloodshed. That is what worries me." Maduro's adversaries accuse him of creating a dictatorship. They insist the government should allow the referendum, release dozens of jailed opposition activists and respect congressional decisions. But there is no indication Maduro will agree to any of their demands, and in a speech this week he criticized their timetable and urged patience. "There is no doubt that the situation is very ugly," said Celli. "Not just politically, but at a social and economic level. There is no food or medicine." Celli's concern mirrored remarks on Friday by Tom Shannon, a top U.S. diplomat who also was in Caracas this week and called the talks "the last best effort to try to find a negotiated, peaceful solution to this." "Absent this dialogue process," Shannon said, "Venezuela will find itself in a state in which both the government and the opposition will have to measure themselves through their ability to put people on to the streets." Celli is due to return to Venezuela for the next round of talks on November 11. Shannon said Washington would support the talks "as long as it remains viable." (Reporting by Nicolas Misculin, Writing by Rosalba O'Brien; Editing by Mary Milliken)
One of my earliest memories is of sneaking sticky, cold fig preserves from far back in the refrigerator. Not even a kindergartner yet, I had to strain and struggle to reach the jar.

Working quickly to avoid detection, I spooned deeply into a jar I believed to be filled with fig preserves but was, in fact, hot pepper relish. At first I tasted a familiar cold sweetness, then an unexpected sharpness from vinegar and spice, all rapidly obliterated: My mouth was on fire. A trap, I thought. Perhaps even divine retribution for stealing.

Soon after, my father purchased a small farm in the country, 12 miles outside of town. The more remarkable feature in the landscape was an extraordinarily large fig tree situated behind a dilapidated, never-painted farmhousemonument and testament to a long-abandoned homestead.

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The limbs were so massive and sturdy they could easily support the full weight of a 200-pound Methodist minister (a fig-fanatic friend of my father's) and, in fig season, regularly did.

In July and August, my whole family would head out to the farm several times a week for fig picking and return with plastic buckets, enameled dishpans, and brown paper bags from the Piggly Wiggly brimming with bounty. But we rarely ate them fresh. There was a single preparation for figs in the Peacock household: my mother's whole, stem-still-attached fig preserves.

As a chef, I have made my mother's fig preserves over the years, both at home and in the restaurants where I have worked. But it wasn't until recently that I had a fig tree of my own.

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Six years ago, I bought a 180-year-old house in the Black Belt of Alabama. I fell in love with it instantly, but what stopped my heart on my first visit was the enormous old fig tree on the back edge of the property.

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Since then I've established my own tradition of summer fig picking and preserving, inspired by my childhood.

I pick twice a day in peak season, morning and evening, and there is almost always an ironstone platter lined with fig leaves and filled with fruit on the table. Occasionally I make jam, and I still put up whole fig preserves. But now my personal tradition is making and putting up brandied figs, a nod to the brandied peaches I used to make each summer with my late friend and mentor Edna Lewis.

For these, whole fruit is picked at full ripeness with stem still attached; packed in half its weight's worth of sugar; and brought ever so gently to a slow simmer and allowed to cool, repeatedly, until the figs are coaxed to a candied translucence. Then and only then, I add a discrete quantity of good brandy and put the figs away, not to be seen again until December. My mother believesand I agreethat preserves improve in the jar and that eating them should not be rushed.

Each summer when making the first batch of brandied figs, I put up a jar to pen on my birthday, the winter solstice, December 21. I eat those first brandied figs over ice creamvanilla or coffeeaccompanied by warm brown sugar shortbread. For very special and deserving friends, I mail a jar or two each season with a handwritten tag that says, "Do not open until the winter solstice." It's well worth the wait.

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Jarred Figs Made Easy

The process is simple and slow: Patience here yields perfection.

1. Place rinsed figs in a single layer in pan, handling gentlyfresh figs bruise easily. Cover with sugar to macerate for up to two days.

2. Slowly bring figs to a gentle simmer over low heat; cool and steep. Repeat twice. This process thoroughly candies the figs.

3. Distribute figs evenly in canning jars; cover with hot brandy syrup. Seal and wait; the flavor develops amazing nuances over time.
ATHENS (Reuters) - About 1,000 Kurds and pro-Kurdish supporters marched to the Turkish embassy in Athens on Saturday, chanting "Fascist Erdogan!" to protest against the detention of Kurdish leaders in Turkey. The leaders of Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) were jailed pending trial on Friday as part of a terrorism investigation, drawing condemnation in the West of a crackdown on dissent under President Tayyip Erdogan. In Athens, demonstrators unfurled large Kurdish flags and held up banners depicting HDP co-leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag. "No to Erdogan's dictatorship," a banner read. The representative of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Greece, Ibrahem Muslem, said the arrests were "an attack against democracy and humanity around the world." "We want freedom for Selahattin Demirtas," said another protester, 23-year-old Levent. Police in riot gear blocked the demonstrators from reaching the embassy. On Saturday, Turkish authorities ordered the formal arrest of nine staff members of a leading opposition newspaper and detained more pro-Kurdish officials. More than 110,000 officials, including judges, teachers, police and civil servants, have been detained or suspended following a failed coup in July. (Reporting by Gina Kalovyrna; Writing by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Stephen Powell)
Arcadia (United States) (AFP) - Queen's Trust, with Frankie Dettori aboard, delivered a stirring stretch run to snatch victory at the wire in the $2 million Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf at Santa Anita Park on Saturday.

Trained by Michael Stoute, Queen's Trust gave Europe a first victory in this year's edition of the Breeders' Cup, the $28 million extravaganza that concludes later Saturday in the $6 million Classic.

"The pace was a bit slow for her and the straights are a bit short, but when I got to Lady Eli's back wheels, I was confident I would catch her," Dettori said. "She dug very deep today and it's great for the team."

The victory was the seventh for Stoute in the Breeders' Cup and his third in the 1 1/4-mile Filly & Mare Turf.

He won the same race with Islington in 2003 and Dank in 2013.

For Queen's Trust, it was a second career victory.

"She has been unlucky in running a few times this year, but it all came right today," said Cheveley Park Racing Manager Chris Richardson. "Frankie gave her a superb ride."

Queen's Trust denied favorite Lady Eli a fairytale finish. The Chad Brown-trained filly, winner of the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf two years ago, was idle for more than a year after suffering tendinitis and a life-threatening bout of laminitis.

"I was thrilled the way she ran today," Brown said. "Frankie rode a fabulous race and it was just two great horses down to the finish line. Naturally, I'm disappointed, but still very proud of her."

Avenge, trained by Richard Mandella and ridden by Flavien Prat was third, holding off Aidan O'Brien's Irish and Yorkshire Oaks winner Seventh Heaven by three-quarters of a length.

Following the race, Dettori gave a shout-out to German jockey Frederik Tylicki, who has been left paralyzed below the waist after a four-horse pile-up at Kempton Park southwest of London on Monday.

"We are thinking of you, Freddy," Dettori said.
Delhi has also done away with attestation requirements for some 200 types of affidavits required for availing public services. Senior citizens above the age of 60 who have no regular income are being given financial assistance of Rs 1,000 a month.

DELHI

Best small state

WHY NO.1

There are 1.9 mobile subscriptions for every person in the state.

33% of the population use LPG gas pipelines or cylinders.

Ashok Jana moved to Delhi 15 years ago. Along with his wife, he earns about Rs 35,000 a month, owns a jhuggi, has a bank account and was recently issued a credit card. One of his two daughters is differently abled, and will soon join a special school-Jana hopes to utilise a state subsidy of Rs 1,500 a month for her education. The paperwork is daunting and tedious but he is hopeful of being able to provide her with a safe learning environment. In its 2016-2017 budget, the state announced that all social welfare and security schemes would be linked to Aadhaar, ensuring that the subsidy reaches the beneficiary directly. Delhi has also done away with attestation requirements for some 200 types of affidavits required for availing public services. Senior citizens above the age of 60 who have no regular income are being given financial assistance of Rs 1,000 a month. Currently, close to 400,000 senior citizens avail of it.

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DELHI

Most improved small state

WHY NO.1

Rural bank branches up from 22.5 per 100,000 people in 2013 to 25.6 in 2014.

Number of broadband connections up from 17.7 per 100 people in 2014 to 37.9 in 2015.



MAHARASHTRA

Best big state

WHY NO.1

10 broadband subscribers per 100 people, highest in large states.

Four rural bank branches for every 100,000 people, twice the national average.

An LPG filling centre, Nagpur

Maharashtra boasts many impressive statistics on development: for example, out of 10 towns declared 'open defecation free' by the Centre, five are in Maharashtra. Almost 18 per cent of households have LPG connections, with the national average at 16 per cent. There are four rural bank branches per 100,000 people, twice the national average. The state has 10 broadband subscribers per 100 people (highest among large states) and 37 public IT parks. 33 per cent of all sugar factories in India are located in Maharashtra. The state is also leading in education, with 21 new deemed universities and three new private universities. There has also been growth in emergency medical services: There are 233 new ambulances with advanced life support systems and 704 equipped with basic life support.

HIMACHAL PRADESH

Best improved big state

WHY NO.1

Mobile subscribers in the state increased from 63 per 100 in 2014 to 72 per 100 in 2015.

LPG consumers in the state increased by 9% from 25 per 100 in 2014 to 27 per 100 in 2015.



--- ENDS ---
Washington (AFP) - After Iraqi security forces eventually recapture Mosul, the Islamic State group will be left with only Raqa in neighboring Syria as a bastion, and the jihadists' self-proclaimed "caliphate" will be largely gone.

The US-led coalition has been striking IS across both countries for more than two years, and has long held Raqa in its sights -- an IS defeat there would be a defining endpoint of the campaign.

But Pentagon chief Ashton Carter surprised commanders last week when he declared the actual assault on Raqa could start "in the next few weeks," after British Defense Minister Michael Fallon made a similar prediction.

Privately, many high-ranking Pentagon officials were caught off-guard, and expressed skepticism the Raqa push could start so soon, given the Gordian knot of unpredictability in the chaos of Syria.

Carter's timeline is "a little more ahead of what I have been hearing so far," one US defense official told AFP on condition of anonymity, choosing his words carefully.

Another US defense official said the military's expectations for Raqa -- a city with a pre-war population of about 220,000 -- didn't match Carter's timeline.

And a third military official said that while the assault could theoretically start in weeks, it may take "single-digit months," pushing the possible timeline out to "nine months or less."

That official added the assault may yet start before 2017, "but it could drag on further for other reasons we can't control."

"It's up to" the local forces, he added. "We are ready if they are ready."

Even before the start of a ground offensive, likely to be fought along similar lines to the one happening in Mosul, coalition planes must complete the "isolation," "shaping" and "envelopment" of Raqa.

This entails non-stop strikes on IS fighting positions and the slicing of supply lines into and out of the northern Syrian city.

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Coalition spokesman Colonel John Dorrian said those operations had already partially succeeded, and had helped cut routes from Raqa to and from Europe.

"What we're talking about is a higher level of isolation that greatly reduces the freedom of movement of Daesh to go into and come out of that city," he said.

- Unknown factors -

Military officials are grappling with a slew of unknowns that have not been at play in the Mosul fight.

Whereas Iraqi security forces are a mostly cohesive fighting force under centralized control, the US-led coalition is relying on a more nebulous fighting crew in Syria.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) number around 30,000 fighters, two thirds of whom are Kurds fighting under the banner of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG,) with Syrian Arabs broadly making up the rest.

Some among the SDF's ranks are hardcore fighters, while others are newcomers to the conflict.

The coalition has spent months instructing SDF members, including on how to call in air strikes, but the Pentagon admits some Arab fighters still haven't completed the weekslong training.

The murkiness about who will conduct the Raqa offensive -- US special forces will only be watching from behind the frontlines -- was hardly addressed this week by Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook, who said the number of US-backed Syrian fighters would "snowball" as operations advance.

"There are going to be more people who want to join the effort to dislodge" IS, he said without going into details.

Further complicating matters is Turkey.

While the United States views the YPG as its best proxy fighting force in Syria, Turkey considers it a terrorist offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK,) which has been waging an insurgency inside Turkey since 1984.

NATO member Turkey supports the recapture of Raqa, but wants to limit Kurdish influence and prevent Kurdish cantons on either side of Raqa from forming a contiguous bloc, as Ankara vehemently opposes the creation of a Kurdish state.

The YPG are expected to push toward Raqa but not enter the mostly Arab city, clearing the way for Arab SDF to do so.

Another question is the role Turkish troops will play -- YPG advances toward Raqa could be slowed if the fighters are looking behind their backs at the Turks.

And then there's Russia.

While Moscow is currently focusing on Aleppo and other regions in support of President Bashar al-Assad, Russian jets are using the same air space as the coalition, prompting fears of a midair collision that could fundamentally alter the calculus.
Physical copies of Travis Scott's new Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight album finally arrived in stores today, and the physical version included a thank you letter from Travis to his fans.

While Travis himself couldn't find copies of the album, he urged fans to send photos if they found the elusive CD in the wild, and one finally came through with a photo of his note. In the message, Travis thanks fans and collaborators for their support and says, "Who knew I would make it to a second album." Read the full note and see photos of the physical release below.

First I want to thank God for getting me here to this point. Who knew I would make it to a second album. Thank u to my fans for the continued support and thank u for never abandoning the ship. I will continue working on inspiring you guys. I wanna thank my guy Los for coming thru every day wit a nigga to work on this bro WE DID IT. To my engineer Blake, u the shit, thanks for dropping everything. THANK YOU SICKAMORE FOR DEVOTING YOUR LIFE TO THIS SHIT. THANKS FOR COMING THROUGH. LETS GET OUR FIRST NUMBER 1! To Chase b, David, Easy, Bizzy THANK YOU FOR BEING THE BEST BROTHERS EVER. THANK YOU NICK KNIGHT. U THE MAN BRO. THANKS FOR COMING THRU FOR ME IN SUCH CRUNCH TIME. THANK YOU TO THE RADIO STATINS FOR THE CONTINUED SUPPORT. TTo my label, thank you for the help. Thank u LARRY JACKSON for giving me this platform. THANK YOU MARK G FOR COMING IN HELPING THE KID. I love u Mom, Dad, Jordan, Josh and Marcus.

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Evan McMullin

Presidential elections in America are typically seen as a binary choice between two major-party candidates  currently, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

But the 2016 election brings the potential of a spoiler  and Republicans have taken notice.

If independent candidate Evan McMullin, a former Republican congressional policy leader who just entered the race three months ago as the "Never Trump" candidate, wins his home state of Utah, it's possible that neither Trump nor Clinton would reach the requisite 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

McMullin is currently polling between 20% and 24% in Utah, but just weeks ago, polls showed the race deadlocked between McMullin, Trump, and Clinton, a notable feat considering that Utah is a reliably deep-red state.

McMullin's popularity in Utah is also striking considering the fact that, in a recent poll, only 52% of voters said they were aware enough of his candidacy to offer an opinion on him. And of those who are aware of him, four out of five say they view him favorably.

Trump is aware of the problem. He attacked McMullin last week and noted that his campaign could have a "major problem" if McMullin threatens him in Utah.

"The guy takes votes away from me," Trump told Fox News last week. "You know, we're going to win Utah. But he takes votes away from me, this man who I never heard of. ... Now, if for some reason we lose Utah that could have a very devastating impact on the overall."

Other prominent conservative voices have also bashed McMullin in recent weeks.

Conservative commentators Laura Ingraham and Lou Dobbs have attacked McMullin on Twitter:

Blame the #NeverTrump folks (Romney?) for pushing McMullin in Utah. Voters won't forget. https://t.co/7wUk7oNiOa  Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) October 26, 2016

And Sean Hannity, a Fox News host and Trump loyalist, went off on McMullin on his radio show last week.

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"Who's this idiot that's running third party that's killing Trump out in Utah," Hannity said. "Who put him up? What was it? The Bush people? The Romney people?"

If McMullin managed to pull off a win in Utah, hed be the first candidate outside of the Democratic and Republican parties to win a state in a presidential election since 1968.

And his campaign views Republican attacks as a sign of Republican panic.

"The Republican Party has major internal and organizational issues both in Utah and beyond," McMullin campaign manager Joel Searby told Business Insider in an email. "Everyone acknowledges that. And now Evan and our movement are offering a viable conservative alternative. So I believe they feel threatened."

Still, his only shot at the presidency is to win Utah, block Trump and Clinton from reaching the set number of electoral votes they need, and then hoping that once the decision goes to the House of Representatives, they could pick him for the presidency.

Data journalism website FiveThirtyEight puts McMullins odds of becoming president at 1% to 3% and his chances of winning Utah at 12%.

In interviews with Business Insider, some Republicans shrugged off the threat that McMullin could pose to Trump.

"Two new polls came out today that show hes in the low 20s at best, said Sean Spicer, communications director for the Republican National Committee. "I am literally appalled by the media fascination with this. There is no evidence that he is within single digits in a state, and yet it garners national news. It is embarrassing for the press."

Spicer referred to McMullin as a one-off independent candidate and said there is no evidence to suggest that talk of him winning Utah is "anything more than a bunch of folks in the media."

But even if victory seems somewhat unlikely for McMullin, voters in conservative, religious Utah appear reluctant to support a Republican nominee whose candidacy has been mired by scandal.

"I think a lot of people in Utah have significant moral sensibilities," said Ben Carson, a prominent Trump surrogate and former Republican presidential candidate. "And, you know, when you look at some of the things that Donald Trump has said, you remember, this is a guy who was a billionaire playboy. So the sensibilities are going to be quite different I think than your average Iowa citizen."

In one recent scandal, Trump was recorded making lewd comments about women. The recording, from 2005, was released last month. One poll showed that 94% of Utahns had watched or heard about the recording, and 51% said they believe Trump should drop out of the race altogether.

Carson cautioned Utahns against casting a "protest vote" against Trump on Election Day.

"I've been so impressed with the intelligence and the common sense of the people in Utah," he said. "And I think when push comes to shove, they will recognize what's going on and how taking a risk in a situation that is a no-win situation like with Evan McMullin doesn't make a lot of sense."

In the days leading up to the election, McMullin will be traveling across the state in an effort to consolidate support.

NOW WATCH: Trump had a great response when he was asked to name one thing he liked about Clinton





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President Duterte traveled to Beijing recently, promising to announce his countrys separation from the United States and alarming the White House and his own defense secretary.

But something different happened. Instead, Duterte kept the alliance with the United States intact, appeared to reach an understanding with China to allow Filipino fishermen to return to disputed waters and, by threatening a geopolitical realignment, distracted from US objections to his countrys growing human rights abuses.

Rather than switch allegiances between the two nations, Duterte managed to play them off each other, in that way improving his position with both and cementing his image at home as a strong nationalist unbeholden to foreign powers. And he did it while keeping his nations security guaranteed by a 65-year-old treaty with the United States.

Whether he knows it or not, Duterte is following a strategy that leaders used throughout the Cold War: balancing between the powers by threatening to change loyalties. That strategys track record illuminates why Dutertes seemingly reckless actions have borne him such fruit, and could offer a hint at his goals.

The historian John Lewis Gaddis called this a new kind of power balancing in his 2005 book, The Cold War: A New History, which chronicles midsize nations in Asia, Africa and Europe that won concessions from the Soviet Union and the United States by hinting they might swap sides.

Though these threats were often empty, the superpowers so feared losing ground against one another that they quickly catered to the whims of smaller countries.

The very compulsiveness with which the Soviet Union and the United States sought to bring such states within their orbits wound up giving those states the means of escape, Gaddis wrote. Tails were beginning to wag dogs.

Dutertes actions call to mind, for example, Josip Broz Tito, the communist leader of Yugoslavia who broke with Moscow in the Cold Wars first years by declaring himself nonaligned. The United States rewarded him with economic aid; the Soviet Union, desperate to keep Tito from joining NATO, rewarded him with autonomy and shows of respect.

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In the end, Tito won concessions from both sides, enhanced his image at home  and remained in the communist fold. Rather than becoming a victim of the Cold War, he exploited it to his advantage.

Duterte, likewise, distanced himself from his US sponsors just enough that China, eager to win him over, offered him $9 billion in low-interest loans and allowed Filipino fishermen to return to certain disputed waters in the South China Sea. Yet Duterte returned home to a country that is still protected by the US military.

China didnt woo Duterte. Duterte wooed China, M. Taylor Fravel, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said of the deal in a Twitter post.

Fravel, in an interview, said he was skeptical that Duterte would follow through on his threats to cut ties with Washington, which he has already walked back. Still, the threats had helped him ease tensions with China.

He thought the Philippines isolation from China was not good for the Philippines, Fravel said. And so he wanted to end that.

Other Cold War leaders pitted the superpowers against each other as a means to win independence from them and extract concessions along the way. Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt took handouts from both sides, for instance, and relied on them to eject a 1956 invasion by British, French and Israeli troops.

China, now a target of this strategy, was once among its cleverest exploiters. Mao Zedong, though aligned with the Soviet Union for decades, bragged of wielding a pair of disputed islands in the Taiwanese Strait as two batons that keep Eisenhower and Khrushchev dancing, scurrying this way and that.

This sort of balancing has another benefit: giving leaders a freer hand to act against their patrons wishes.

In the weeks before Duterte threatened to separate from the United States, Washington had withheld an arms sale and increasingly criticized his support for vigilante and police violence that has killed 2,000 people. Now, US focus has shifted to preserving the alliance  something that security analysts doubt Duterte would ever really break.

 New York Times News
By Ian Simpson

(Reuters) - A federal jury on Friday found Rolling Stone magazine liable of defaming a University of Virginia administrator by publishing a story it later retracted about an alleged gang rape at the school.

The decision followed a three-week trial in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville, Virginia, where the administrator, Nicole Eramo, sued the magazine, owner Wenner Media and reporter Sabrina Erdely for $7.9 million. The jury returns on Monday to determine damages in the case.

Erdely was found liable of actual malice, a key element in libel law, in six statements in the November 2014 story, "A Rape on Campus." Rolling Stone and Wenner Media were each found liable of actual malice in three statements, according to court documents.

To prove defamation, it must be shown that a media organization published what it knew to be false, or did so with reckless disregard for the truth.

The magazine had reported that a female student identified only as "Jackie" was raped at a university fraternity in 2012. The story sparked a national debate about sexual assault on U.S. campuses.

The Rolling Stone story resonated with many who saw it as a battle cry against sexual violence on college campuses. That message was undermined as questions arose about Erdely's methods, and the story ultimately collapsed.

Rolling Stone, which admitted that it never sought comment from the seven men accused of the alleged rape, retracted the story in April 2015, and an outside review found the magazine had failed to follow basic journalistic safeguards. It was an embarrassing blow to the pop culture publication, founded by Jann Wenner in 1967.

Campus sexual assault remains a major concern, with some reports estimating that one in five female students will be a victim during their college years.

Eramo, who was then an associate dean of students, accused the magazine of portraying her as the story's villain and as focused on hushing up sexual assault reports. She now works in an administrative role at the almost 200-year-old university, which was founded by Thomas Jefferson and has long ranked as one of the top public universities in the country.

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"The jurys verdict is a complete vindication of Nicole Eramo, and a complete repudiation of Rolling Stone's and Ms. Erdely's false and defamatory article," Eramo's attorney, Libby Locke, said in a statement.

Mark MacDougall, an attorney at New York's Akin Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld law firm, said actual malice did not mean that the defendants had to dislike Eramo or wish her harm.

"When a reporter, an editor or a magazine behave like they dont care whether what they publish is false, thats enough to support a finding of actual malice, MacDougall said in an emailed comment.

In a statement, Rolling Stone spokeswoman Kathryn Brenner said: "We deeply regret these missteps and sincerely apologize to anyone hurt by them, including Ms. Eramo."

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington, additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Scott Malone, Mary Milliken and Leslie Adler)


Credit: Matthew Brookes

Ruth Negga will soon become a household name. The 34-year-old actress has plenty of credits under her belt (including a starring role on AMC's Preacher), but it's her breakout performance in Loving, opening today, that is earning her major Oscar buzz.

In the film, Negga and co-star Joel Edgerton play Mildred and Richard Loving, an interracial couple living in civil rights-era Virginia. When the couple discover they're pregnant, Richard proposes to Mildred. But in 1958, Virginia still had strict anti-miscegenation laws in place, so the pair drives to Washington, D.C., in order to marry. Authorities quickly discover the Lovings have violated Virginia law and arrest them. The arrest is the beginning of a years-long battle, eventually culminating in the ACLU taking on the Lovings' case and bringing it all the way to the Supreme Court.



Credit: courtesy Focus Features

Negga's nuanced portrayal of Mildred is often what propels the film, as the story slowly builds on the Lovings' relationship, their growing family, and their struggle to live a normal, quiet life while at the center of one of the most important cases of the time.

RELATED: What to Love about Interracial Marriage Drama, Loving

"As a black person, I've always been interested in racial history, especially in America," Negga told InStyle at the Toronto International Film Festival. "It was quite shocking to me that a couple who had such a huge impact on American legal history wasn't at the front of our consciousness."

The opportunity to bring the Lovings' story to light, along with Mildred's bravery and determination, was part of what drew Negga to the role. "I just thought, what an incredible story and what an incredible woman. Our film shows her going from sort of a young, naive, sweet girl, to a girl who's still lovely and sweet, but finds her strength. And I think as a woman of color at that time, it's really quite extraordinary."

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Credit: courtesy Focus Features

Negga calls Mildred one of her "heroes" and hopes that viewers will feel the same way after seeing the film.

"The discussion about strong female characters is becoming a bit more intelligent now. It's not just necessarily a certain type. There's many different forms of strength and I think that on the surface Mildred wouldn't strike you as your typical strong lady but she had a very quiet tenacity."

VIDEO: 10 Films We're Excited to See at the Toronto Film Festival

Negga brings that quiet tenacity to life on screen, and it plays perfectly with Edgerton's equally subtle portrayal of Richard Loving, which is also garnering acclaim.

"Joel is one of the most supportive actors I've ever worked with. He's just such a good energy on set. I think that he brings a kindness and a joy," Negga said of working with Edgerton.

Loving opens in theaters today, Nov. 4 and expands on Nov. 11. Watch the trailer above.
In the social sector, Goa has performed better than most states, spending a third of its budget-Rs 2,175 crore-on welfare schemes, such as Ladli Laxmi, under which parents get Rs 1 lakh transferred to their bank accounts on the birth of a girl child.

GOA

Best state

WHY NO.1

Except e-governance, Goa improved or retained 2015 rankings in all categories.

The state features among the top 5 in 9 out of 10 categories.

Goa's strides in development have made it the star among small states and given it an identity as Destination Next. Take healthcare for example. This year, Goa didn't report any case of mosquito-borne diseases, such as chikungunya or dengue. The state's emergency medical response number 108 has been geared up to respond to calls in no more than 15 minutes. Allocating more than 15 per cent of the annual budget to the power sector has paid off. Goa is now totally electrified. The state has the highest number of mobile phone users and television viewers among the small states. In the social sector, Goa has performed better than most states, spending a third of its budget-Rs 2,175 crore-on welfare schemes, such as Ladli Laxmi, under which parents get Rs 1 lakh transferred to their bank accounts on the birth of a girl child. Scholarships for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes have benefitted some two lakh students. The state has been adding to its tourism infrastructure; this year, 6,558 km were added to the road network and some 500 hotels and lodges built. Government buildings are being made eco-friendly. "Work of Mopa international airport will begin in November. A corridor to transport iron ore in the Quepem-Sanguem mining belt is our next goal," says CM Laxmikant Parsekar.

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PUDUCHERRY

Most improved state

WHY NO.1

Except education and environment, state maintained or improved its rank in other categories.

In six categories, Puducherry is among the top 5.

Puducherry Chief Minister V. Narayanasamy

Puducherry Chief Minister V. Narayanasamy's mantra of governance is clear. "As the head of the state, my primary job is to offer people all amenities and a safe environment so that they can generate wealth for the state," he says. Under him, the Puducherry government has been striving to create a model that blends welfare and development. For example, the chief minister has introduced a unique scheme of doorstep payment of pension to widows and senior citizens through mobile ATMs. The state government claims some 50,000 people have benefitted from the initiative since its launch a few months ago.

Narayanasamy also realises the potential of industrialisation in the power-surplus state. "We have already launched a new industrial policy, offering many incentives to potential investors," he says. "Since then, we have received nearly 250 applications. Companies, such as Lenovo, have expressed interest in setting up a manufacturing unit. We have 17 engineering colleges, so there is no dearth of manpower too." Now that the centre is working to boost regional air connectivity, Puducherry will soon be linked better to key cities, giving its tourism industry, which accounts for 16 per cent of the revenue, a leg-up. The other big development is that the Puducherry port will soon operate as a satellite of the Chennai port.



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ZURICH (Reuters) - Saint-Gobain (SGOB.PA) remains committed to its deal to take over Sika (SIK.S) by buying out the controlling stake held by the founding family of the Swiss firm, the French company's chief financial officer told Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger.

Guillaume Texier said he was confident of a successful outcome despite a setback last week when a Swiss court ruled against the family and in favour of Sika's board, which is opposing the deal.

The executive said Saint-Gobain fully supported the Burkard family's decision to appeal against the verdict, which he was confident would be overturned by a higher court.

"We are prepared for a long legal dispute," Texier said in the interview published on Saturday.

"We knew it was highly probable that Sika or other parties would use legal means. We are however covered in terms of time with an option that allows us to extend the contract with the family until the end of 2018."

Saint-Gobain was prepared to wait because it so far has not paid anything, while Sika was becoming more attractive because of the rise in its stock market value, he said.

The row erupted nearly two years ago when Saint-Gobain offered 2.75 billion Swiss francs ($2.84 billion) for the 16 percent stake held by the Burkards, which would give it control of Sika because it comes with nearly 53 percent of the voting rights.

Sika's board responded by reducing the family's voting power to 5 percent, blocking the takeover. The move was contested by the Burkards but upheld by a court in Zug.

"As we said very clearly after the recent judgement we remain fully committed to the deal," said Texier. "We are optimistic, patient and strongly believe that our common project will succeed."

($1 = 0.9681 Swiss francs)

(Reporting by John Revill; Editing by Catherine Evans)
samsung galaxy note 7

Samsung is a company that hates to fail.

That may seem obvious (who actually revels in failure?), but most companies don't react to setbacks the way Samsung does.

The best example? That famous story from 1995 where the companys chairman set 150,000 defective phones ablaze in a giant bonfire in front of Samsungs factory in Gumi, South Korea with thousands of employees watching.

The demonstration doubled as a dire warning: Dont let it happen again.

Two decades later, with Samsung reeling from the damage of its defective Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, employees are bracing for another bonfire.

Only this time insiders expect Samsung to burn a lot more than faulty electronic devices.

It's almost certain that the playbook that transformed Samsung into a consumer electronics powerhouse will get substantial revisions.

And as Samsung prepares for its annual executive reorganization  a yearly purging of the top ranks that's coming up in a few weeks  its likely well see a lot of heads roll, especially at the top. This wasnt just any screwup. It was one that erased billions from Samsungs market cap and gave Apple and Google an opportunity to reap the rewards from those fed up with the Samsung brand.

Lockdown

Internally, Samsung is on lockdown. Even people I normally talk to within the company have been unusually tight lipped as the investigation continues into what exactly caused the Galaxy Note 7 to explode. The theory among those I have spoken to seems to be that Samsung is withholding all the information it can until the annual reorganization happens. Then the healing can begin.

To recap: After weeks of reports that the Note 7 devices overheated or exploded, causing dozens of injuries and the evacuation of a Southwest Airlines flight, Samsung made the decision last month to recall the phone and cancel the Note 7 line for good. A separate product recall involving washing machines that have injured consumers when the lids flew off has further tarnished Samsung's reputation.

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One person close to Samsung told me the company's electronics group is currently reevaluating everything from marketing to design to engineering to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. That means changes in leadership as well as in culture.

Samsung built its brand by being first to market with the coolest and newest technologies, from smartphones to televisions. The company released 6 smart watches in the year before Apple released the Apple Watch, and Samsung is regularly among the first to showcase slick new breeds of televisions like curved OLED displays.

But that strategy now looks like a liability.

As Bloomberg reported, Samsungs rush to beat Apples iPhone 7 couldve been one of the reasons why the Note 7 turned out to be defective.

Normally, Samsung wouldve solved the Note 7 problem and moved on by now, this person told me. But in this case, the company is slowing down and evaluating everything in its product development cycle.

Given the urgency under which Samsung has operated for so long, this deliberate pace investigating the matter may well represent the first sign of a major culture shift.

samsung galaxy note 7 exploded

If we don't change, we don't survive

The stakes couldnt be higher. Samsung appears to be aware that it could suffer the same fate as other former industry leaders like Nokia and BlackBerry unless things drastically change. People Ive spoken were optimistic that the Note 7 crisis could be the catalyst the company needed to change how things work at the company.

If we dont change, we dont survive, another person close to Samsung told me. And, for the first time, insiders are getting the sense that things actually are changing.

Part of that change, it seems, is to make sure products are fully baked before releasing them to the public. Moving quickly is admirable, especially in the tech world, but not at the expense of making a product thats safe to use. Samsung learned a hard lesson. Now its getting ready for a change.

The change won't be easy. The culture of urgency is deeply entrenched in the company and broadly diffused across disparate operations that include everything from the production of semiconductors to batteries.

It's especially important going into 2017. Before the Note 7 turned out to be a dud, Samsung was gearing up for its next major flagship device that should launch early next year. Unfortunately, those plans have been tainted by the Note 7, and Samsung will have to rethink how it pitches the phone to the public. The device is said to be another radical transformation in design, according to early rumors, and Ive been told to expect some impressive new products throughout the year. (Sorry, I wish I had more details than that.)

But if Samsung wants those devices to be successful, itll have to prove that its learned its lesson and has the processes in place to make sure all future products are safe.

Do you know anything about whats happening at Samsung following the Galaxy Note 7 debacle? Email me at skovach@businessinsider.com. (Im discreet!)

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(Reuters) - The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego denounced one of its parishes on Friday after its worshippers were told that voting for Democrats is a "mortal sin" that could lead to an eternity in hell. The Diocese said the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in the neighborhood of Old Town made the statement in an insert to a weekly leaflet given to churchgoers on Oct. 16, calling abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia and other political issues "non-negotiables." "It is a mortal sin to vote Democrat," the insert read, with the words underlined and bolded. "If your bishop, priest, deacon or other parishioners tell you to do so, you must walk away from them. Your immortal soul and your salvation are at stake." On Tuesday, voters will pick the next president after an often bitter contest that polls suggest has tightened considerably in the last week. While several states are too close to call, polls have shown Democrat Hillary Clinton leading over Republican Donald Trump for some time in California where the parish is located. Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy said in a statement that the parish, which will also serve as a polling place, violated its religious duties with the political comments. "It is contrary to Catholic teaching to state that voting for a Democrat or Republican automatically condemns the voter to hell," the statement said. "The Catholic Church does not endorse specific candidates, use parish media or bulletins to favor candidates or parties or engage in partisan political activity of any kind." The parish's pastor, Richard Perozich, did not respond to calls and an email on Friday. The Diocese also took issue with a column in the parish's Oct. 30 bulletin that railed against abortion and constraints on tax-exempt organizations from certain political activity, and blames elected officials for allowing U.S. society to be "enslaved" to sin. "Satan has deceived many Christians to convert to worldly values from Christian ones," the bulletin reads. "The devil does this through the tactics outlined by Saul Alinsky with the outcome as Hillary Clinton has stated, 'And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed,' to draw us away from God's teachings." Alinsky was a pioneer in community organizing in Chicago known for confrontational, though nonviolent, tactics to achieve social change. Clinton has been a lifelong Methodist, attending first as child with her parents and later attending a Methodist church as first lady. Trump on the other hand has been backed by religious conservatives and evangelicals. Richard Schmalbeck, a professor at Duke University School of Law with expertise in non-profits, said the statements appear to violate requirements for tax-exempt organizations around political activity. "Anything that clearly disparages a candidate is intervention in opposition to a candidate, and I think saying the devil operates through a person would count as disparagement," he said. Schmalbeck said it seems unlikely, however, that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service would aggressively pursue revoking the church's tax-exempt status given its recent history of not going after churches that have made similar comments. (Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
Kano (Nigeria) (AFP) - Northern Nigeria has become the latest battleground in the proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, after violent clashes between supporters of rival groups from the two main branches of Islam.

Members of the Izala movement, backed by mainly Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia, last month attacked the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), which is sympathetic to Shiite majority Iran.

IMN ceremonies in at least four northern cities to mark the annual Shiite day of mourning, Ashura, were targeted, with the worst riots in Kaduna, an Izala stronghold. At least two IMN supporters were killed.

Witnesses and local media said mobs who looted and set fire to homes and businesses over two days shouted "No more Shiites".

Sectarian tensions in Nigeria's Muslim-majority north had already been running high, especially in Kaduna, after the state government banned the IMN as an unlawful group and a security threat days earlier.

That followed a recommendation from the judicial inquiry it commissioned to investigate clashes in Zaria city last December in which soldiers killed more than 300 IMN members.

Those clashes and the recent escalating tension indicate that the proxy Saudi-Iran conflict -- well-known in places such as Lebanon, Yemen and Syria -- is now being played out in Nigeria, experts said.

"It is a fact that Saudi Arabia has been financing anti-Shia campaigns in many areas of the world," political scientist Abubakar Sadiq Mohammed, from Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, told AFP.

"If the attacks against the Shiites escalate, of course Iran will support them and Saudi Arabia will support the attacks on Shiites."

- Partisan support -

Izala leader Abdullahi Bala Lau has been accused of stoking anger by declaring that Nigeria's constitution only recognises Sunni Islam.

His group has close relations with Riyadh and Nigeria's government while its satellite television station, Manara, also broadcasts fiery anti-Shiite rhetoric.

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Leaders from Saudi Arabia and Iran both contacted Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari after the Zaria attacks.

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani called for restraint and accused "a group" of "sowing the seeds of discord among Muslims in Islamic countries" in what was seen as a clear reference to Saudi Arabia.

Nigerian media reported that Saudi King Salman backed Abuja's crackdown on the IMN, describing it as a "fight against terrorism".

The Sunni jihadists of Boko Haram have killed at least 20,000 people in northeast Nigeria since taking up arms against the government in 2009.

Riyadh has largely refrained from openly backing Nigeria's fight against the ultra-conservative Salafist rebels but Mohammed noted it was "quick to do so in the case of IMN".

"The responses of Iran and Saudi to the Zaria clashes belie sectarian undercurrents," he added.

In March, Saudi clerics attended an Izala-organised conference on "deviant Islamic ideologies" in Nigeria and have since been preaching in the country.

In May, Iran's envoy to Nigeria called for the release of IMN leader Ibrahim Zakzaky and described his detention as "unfair", straining diplomatic ties. He was later recalled to Tehran.

- Power and influence -

A senior Nigerian security officer said IMN's religious beliefs were immaterial but its alleged disregard for law and order was an issue, as was its lack of recognition of the Nigerian state.

IMN started out as a student movement in 1978 and morphed into a Sunni revolutionary group inspired by the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979.

The group switched to Shia Islam in 1996 due to Zakzaky's close association with Iran, worsening mutual resentment with conservative Wahhabists, including Izala, which was founded in 1978 by a Saudi-trained cleric.

Islamic history expert Dahiru Hamza said Izala's focus had up to then been against those in the mystical Sufi tradition, whose beliefs they considered heretical.

"They shifted their focus on Shiites who were getting more organised and challenging the Salafi influence by winning more converts in the territory under the Salafi control," he added.

Izala received funding from Saudi Arabia and wealthy adherents, allowing it to establish mosques and schools. It also encouraged members to participate in politics, gaining government allies.

- Banning order -

Izala's preaching against IMN and Shia Islam has increased since last December. It openly supported the military crackdown in Zaria and even called for harsher action.

Lau dismisses claims he is fuelling tensions as a smear campaign.

At least five northern states have followed Kaduna's example in banning the IMN from holding public processions.

"The ordinary people took the ban on IMN as a ban on Shia (Islam) because IMN is the more prominent Shia group due to its public activities like street procession," said the editor of the Shia newspaper Ahlulbayt, Muhammad Ibrahim.

"This worried us because we saw how Izala followers were spreading the information that the government banned Shia and the people began to believe it."
Indian filmmaker Leena Yadav (Parched) has signed on to direct Secret Sky, the true and tragic love story between two teenage boys in Iran, where homosexuality is illegal and punishable by the death penalty.

Carol Polakoff's Viewfinder Pictures and Daniel Dreifuss's Anima Pictures are developing the human rights film based on a true story. It follows the two teens as they're put in prison, go to trial and pay the ultimate price for their crimes. A female lawyer (also inspired by a real person) attempts to fight for their freedom.

Micah Schraft and Abdi Nazemian are producing the film, which is planned as Yadav's English-language debut. Gersh represents Yadav and Viewfinder, and is presenting the film to foreign buyers this week at AFM. It's slated to shoot in early 2017.

"This story, though political in nature and about civil rights, must be delivered through the heart," says Polakoff, "and Leena has shown that she can make a beautiful film that will not only move viewers, but also deliver a socially impactful punch. She has uncommon courage and passion, and holds nothing back."

Yadav most recently helmed Parched, which followed the lives of four women in rural India who rebel against century-old cultural practices and patriarchal traditions, and break free to explore the true meaning of what it is like to be alive. After making the festival circuit, the film was released in seven countries, including the U.S., France, Belgium, Netherlands, Mexico, Spain and Colombia. She's repped by Gersh.
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2016 / Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Chesapeake Energy Corporation ("Chesapeake" or the "Company") (CHK) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Western District of Oklahoma, and docketed under 16-cv-01150, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons or entities who purchased or otherwise acquired Chesapeake securities between February 27, 2015 and September 28, 2016 both dates inclusive (the "Class Period"). This class action seeks to recover damages against Defendants for alleged violations of the federal securities laws under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the "Exchange Act").

If you are a shareholder who purchased Chesapeake securities during the Class Period, you have until December 5, 2016 to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll free, ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and number of shares purchased.

[Click here to join this class action]

Chesapeake engages in the acquisition, exploration, and development of properties for the production of oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids from underground reservoirs in the United States. The Company holds interests in natural gas and liquids-rich resource plays across the United States. Chesapeake owns interests in approximately 32,400 oil and natural gas wells.

The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Company's business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) Chesapeake had improperly accounted for the acquisition and classification of oil and gas properties; (ii) Chesapeake lacked effective internal financial controls; and (iii) as a result of the foregoing, Chesapeake's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.

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On September 29, 2016, pre-market, Chesapeake announced receipt of a subpoena from the U.S. Department of Justice "seeking information on [the Company's] accounting methodology for the acquisition and classification of oil and gas properties and related matters."

On this news, the Company's stock fell $0.63, or 9.33%, to close at $6.12 on September 29, 2016.

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com.

SOURCE: Pomerantz LLP
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / November 4, 2016 / Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Mylan N.V. ("Mylan" or the "Company") (MYL) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Southern District of New York, and docketed under 16-cv-08000, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons or entities who purchased or otherwise acquired Mylan securities between February 21, 2012 and October 5, 2016 inclusive (the "Class Period"). This class action seeks to recover damages against Defendants for alleged violations of the federal securities laws under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the "Exchange Act").

If you are a shareholder who purchased Mylan N.V. securities and/or the securities of Mylan's SEC registrant predecessor, Mylan Inc., during the Class Period, you have until December 12, 2016 to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll free, ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and number of shares purchased.

[Click here to join this class action]

Mylan, together with its subsidiaries, develops, licenses, manufactures, markets, and distributes generic, branded generic, and specialty pharmaceuticals worldwide. The Company provides generic or branded generic pharmaceutical products in tablet, capsule, injectable, transdermal patch, gel, cream, or ointment forms, as well as active pharmaceutical ingredients. Among other products, Mylan manufactures and sells the EpiPen Auto-Injector (the "EpiPen"), a branded device for injecting a measured dose of epinephrine by means of auto-injector technology to treat severe allergic reactions. Mylan is based in Hertfordshire, the United Kingdom.

Medicaid is a U.S. government insurance program for persons whose income and resources are insufficient to pay for health care. Jointly funded by the state and federal governments, Medicaid is the largest source of funding for medical and health-related services for Americans with low income. Between 2011 and 2015, Medicaid spent approximately $797 million on purchases of EpiPens from Mylan.

The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Company's business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) Mylan paid Medicaid significantly lower EpiPen rebates than legally required; (ii) Medicaid had previously advised Mylan of the Company's obligation to pay higher rebates; (iii) Mylan therefore knowingly and systemically overcharged Medicaid for EpiPens in violation of federal law; (iv) millions of dollars of Mylan's revenue from EpiPen sales were the result of the foregoing illegal conduct by the Company; and (v) as a result of the foregoing, Mylan's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.

On September 2, 2016, Inside Health Policy published an article stating that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services ("CMS"), a federal agency whose responsibilities include, inter alia, working in partnership with state governments to administer Medicaid, had "informed Mylan that [the Company] incorrectly classified EpiPen as a generic under the Medicaid rebate program, which caused financial consequences for federal and state governments by reducing the amount of quarterly rebates Mylan owed for its product."

On this news, Mylan's share price fell $1.95, or 4.65%, to close at $39.97 on September 2, 2016.

On October 5, 2016, Bloomberg reported that the CMS had issued a letter stating that Mylan had for years overcharged Medicaid to buy the Company's EpiPen shot, despite being told that the Company needed to provide bigger discounts under the law. The CMS letter stated that from 2011 to 2015, the U.S. Medicaid health program spent approximately $797 million on EpiPens, including rebates of roughly 13%, rather than the discount of 23.1% that the U.S. should have received. The letter stated that the government had previously "expressly told Mylan that the [EpiPen] product is incorrectly classified."

On this news, Mylan's share price fell $1.19, or 3.13%, to close at $36.84 on October 6, 2016.

On October 7, 2016, Mylan announced that it had reached a $465 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice and other agencies to resolve questions raised about the classification of EpiPen for Medicaid rebate purposes.

On October 7, 2016, Mylan also announced that the Company had "received a document request from the Division of Enforcement at the [SEC] seeking communications with the CMS and documents concerning Mylan products sold and related to the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program, and any related complaints."

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com.

SOURCE: Pomerantz LLP
Kerala has the lowest incidence of murder and kidnappings, while Puducherry registered only 3 cases of rape and molestation in 2015.

KERALA

Best big state and most improved

WHY NO.1

Incidence of violent crime at 4%, one of the lowest in India. On an average, violent crime rate is 11%

The murder and kidnapping figures are among the lowest in India.

Murder rate dropped by 8%. Nationally, the figure is 5% 1.

Cases pending dropped from 16% in 2014 to 10% in 2015.

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Thiruvananthapuram Police Commissioner G. Sparjankumar receives complaints

Kerala has the lowest incidence of murder and kidnappings, as per the latest data available (2014). In the case of other crime variables too, Kerala is in the top 10 that makes it the best state in terms of law and order. The Kerala police has a strength of 56,246 for the 3.38 crore population in the state. This means a ratio of one police officer for 680 people, which is the among the best in the country. In 2015, 653,976 cases were registered, of which 185,445 cases were for drunken driving. The total number of cognisable crimes under the IPC during 2015 stood at 2,57,057. "The primary duty of the police is to maintain law and order in the state," says Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. "We are installing more CCTV cameras across the state to monitor crimes. By early next year, every nook and corner will be under CCTV surveillance." The modernisation of the police force is also a priority. "We want to improve infrastructure at police stations, which will have a direct impact on delivery of service to the public. The aim is make the police people-friendly, more humane and cut corruption in the department at all levels," the CM, who also holds the home portfolio, points out.

PUDUCHERRY

Best small state and most improved

WHY NO.1

Only 3% of crime is violent, compared to the national average of 11%

Puducherry registered only 3 cases of rape and molestation in 2015.

Total number of crimes under CrPC has gone down from 3,120 in 2014 to 2,041 in 2015.

Pending cases down from 5,247 in 2014 to 3,440 in 2015.

In her address to the Assembly on the opening day of the budget session this year, Puducherry Lt. Governor Kiran Bedi said, "We need to focus on law and order so that we can make Puducherry a zero crime Union territory through surveillance and modernisation of police force." Unlike their counterparts in the capital, Bedi and Puducherry Chief Minister V. Narayanswamy are in sync when it comes to the top priority of their administration-law and order. "People must feel safe and our government will ensure that," says the chief minister. While Bedi is directly monitoring the situation-through a WhatsApp group of civil servants and policemen who keep her updated-Narayanswamy's focus has been to rid the state of illegal lotteries, the use of ganja, land grabbing and petty crimes such as chain snatching. "Land grabbing has been a big menace. We are soon going to confiscate benami properties of all anti-social elements," he says.



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ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish authorities briefly barred cars from entering and leaving Istanbul's main Ataturk Airport on Sunday after police fired shots when a motorcycle refused an order to stop, CNN Turk said. One of two men aboard the motorcycle was wounded and detained and the second was apprehended by police after a pursuit, the private broadcaster reported. No police or civilians were reported hurt. In June, suicide bombers suspected of belonging to Islamic State killed 41 people and wounded some 240 others with gunfire and explosives at the airport. The latest incident did not affect flights at Ataturk, Europe's third-busiest airport, the channel reported. Ataturk is the hub of state-run carrier Turkish Airlines. It was not immediately clear why the police ordered the men to stop. On Friday, a car bomb detonated in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, killing 11 people and wounding at least 100. Officials blamed the autonomy-seeking Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), although Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the group's Amaq news agency. Kurdish militants, Islamic State radicals and far leftists have all staged attacks on civilians in Turkey in recent years. (Reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley; editing by Grant McCool and Tom Brown)
By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Friday his space launch company is aiming to return its rockets to flight in mid-December following a launch pad accident two months ago.

During an interview with CNBC, Musk said investigators had figured out why a Falcon 9 rocket burst into flames on Sept. 1 as it was being fueled for a routine, preflight test.

The accident destroyed a $200 million Israeli communications satellite and grounded the Falcon 9 fleet for the second time in 14 months.

The cause of the accident was a fueling system issue that inadvertently produced solid oxygen inside the rockets upper stage tank. The oxygen then reacted with a carbon composite bottle containing liquid helium that sits inside the oxygen tank, triggering an explosion.

I think weve gotten to the bottom of the problem, said Musk, who is also chief executive of Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA.O). He added that the issue had never been encountered in the history of rocketry.

Musk did not specify what mission would launch next, nor whether SpaceX would fly from a new launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, or from its West Coast site at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

SpaceXs primary launch pad, located just south of Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, was damaged in the Sept. 1 accident. SpaceX has declined to release details on the extent of damage.

The company has a backlog of about 70 missions, worth more than $10 billion.

Also on Friday, NASA and Orbital ATK Inc (OA.N) said Orbitals next cargo run to the International Space Station would use the heavier-lift Atlas 5 rocket, made by United Launch Alliance, rather than Orbitals Antares booster. The switch will allow NASA to fly an extra 660 pounds (300 kg) of cargo to the station while SpaceX returns to flight.

NASA hired Orbital and SpaceX to fly cargo to the station after the shuttles were retired in 2011.

Terms of Orbitals contract with United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) and Boeing Co (BA.N), were not released. The launch is targeted for early 2017, NASA said.

(Reporting by Irene Klotz; Editing by Bill Rigby)
By Sonya Dowsett MADRID (Reuters) - Spain said security forces had arrested the head of Basque militant separatist group ETA in south-western France on Saturday in a joint operation between the French domestic intelligence service and Spanish police. Mikel Irastorza was detained in a house in Ascain, a village near the Pyrenees mountains, the Spanish Interior Ministry said in a statement, adding that the 41-year-old leader of the illegal organization had been on the run since 2008. Irastorza had led ETA for just over a year since the arrests of two previous leaders in France last year, the ministry said. "(The arrest) is a crushing blow to ETA, removing its leadership and eliminating the part that controlled arms and explosives," it said, adding that the operation remained open. French and Spanish media reported that Irastorza is being held in the French city of Bayonne. ETA, which does not normally comment in such situations, was formed in the late 1950s during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco and aims to establish an independent Basque state in northern Spain and southern France. The group killed over 800 people over several decades through bombings and execution-style killings. However, ETA has been severely weakened in recent years after hundreds of its members were arrested and some of its weapons were seized. It called a unilateral ceasefire in 2011 and pledged to turn in its weapons, although a full handover has yet to happen. A Spanish man and a French woman were also arrested, the ministry said, alleging they had given shelter to Irastorza and were the owners of the house where he was arrested. (Editing by Alexander Smith)
Samsung so badly wants you to stop using your Galaxy Note 7, its even stopping it from connecting to wireless networks.

Samsung this week published a notice on its site saying that any Galaxy Note 7 owners who try to connect to cellular networks in New Zealand on November 18 or later will be out of luck. While the devices will still be operational for offline activity, they wont be able to connect to any cellular network in the country to place calls, use data, or send SMS messages.

Between November 4th - 18th, we will contact our customers on at least two separate occasions with information about this network discontinuation event to ensure they have received adequate notice, Samsung said in its statement. We would like to thank our Note7 customers for their patience and understanding.

MORE: Best Galaxy Note 7 Alternatives

Samsung has had a rough few months after reports in August surfaced, saying the Galaxy Note 7 was overheating and causing some units to explode. Soon after, Samsung apologized, offered replacements, and said its second-run of devices would be safe. However, some of those devices also exploded.

Over the last couple of months, Samsung has been trying its best to get back the more than 2 million Galaxy Note 7s believed to have been in the wild. The company has issued a global recall, discontinued the handset, and made clear to all customers how dangerous it might be.

To sweeten the pot a bit, Samsung has offered credits to customers and cited government agencies who have banned its smartphone from traveling in hopes of getting back its troubled devices. Samsung has even offered customers in Korea a 50-percent-off deal on next years handsets if they bring back the Galaxy Note 7.

To make it easy for customers to get a new Samsung smartphone, the company has erected kiosks in airports across the world.

But alas, some Galaxy Note 7 owners are unwilling to hand over the smartphone, leaving both them and those around them in danger.

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Samsungs move in New Zealand appears to be the nuclear option: when all else fails, ban the smartphones from accessing networks and try to retrieve them. But New Zealand is a rather small market and its unclear whether Samsung will expand its blockade to other countries at some point in the future.

Regardless, anyone who still has a Galaxy Note 7 should listen to Samsung (and just about everyone else) and return it. Theres no good in owning a smartphone that can explode at a moments notice.

Samsung did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether it would expand its blockade to other parts of the world.

See also : 21 Most Hilarious Galaxy Note 7 Memes
With no noted dissents, the Supreme Court on Saturday acted to put back into effect an Arizona law passed earlier this year that makes it a crime, with a potentially heavy fine, for anyone to pick up and deliver another voters ballot to a polling place. The law, applying to mail-in ballots that are popular among minority voters, had been blocked on Friday by a 6-to-5 vote of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

courtfreize535

The Justices order contained no explanation, but said that the ballot collection ban will be in effect while the en banc Ninth Circuit Court considers a challenge to it by advocacy groups. That court has set a hearing on the dispute for mid-January.

The legislative sponsors of the measure argued that it was necessary to prevent voter fraud. Its opponents said that it will fall heavily on Hispanic and Native American voters who have little transportation and no available secure mailboxes in cities or rural areas.

A similar law had been passed by the state legislature in 2011. At that time, Arizona was still required under the 1965 Voting Rights Act to get approval in Washington, D.C., for any changes in their election laws or procedures. The Justice Department refused to clear the measure without more information, but the sponsors they repealed the measure rather than risk having it blocked by the Department.

After the Supreme Courts 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, essentially ending the clearance requirement for the states covered by it, the legislature passed the bill anew. When that faced a possible referendum of the voters, it was repealed again. It passed again in March of this year.

The law treats any collection and delivery of another voters ballot as a serious felony, with punishment of up to a year in jail and a fine up to $150,000.

It is unclear how wide the impact of the Supreme Courts order will be on voting in Arizona. Early voting began on October 12, but ended on Friday. But, if the law had remained blocked, advocacy organizations this weekend, on Monday and on election day Tuesday still could have helped voters get their ballots delivered by the close of voting at 7 p.m. (Arizona time) on Tuesday.

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Although the Supreme Court did not explain why it was allowing the law to go back into effect, state officials in asking for that had relied heavily upon a 2006 decision by the Court in the case of Purcell v. Gonzalez that generally bars changes in election procedures close to an election.

The opponents, however, argued that the Ninth Circuit Courts order against enforcing the collection ban would have no actual effect on election procedures. Their brief told the Court that county officials were not enforcing the law anyway, and that it would only introduce confusion for the Supreme Court to put the law back into effect by setting aside the Ninth Circuit Courts action.

Legendary journalist Lyle Denniston is Constitution Dailys Supreme Court correspondent. Denniston has written for us as a contributor since June 2011 and he has covered the Supreme Court since 1958. His work also appears on lyldenlawnews.com, where this article first appeared.

Election Resources on Constitution Daily

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Billions of people around the world still cook inside over open fires. They burn dung, wood and charcoal to fuel the flames, clouding their homes with toxic fumes.

For activists and entrepreneurs, this has seemed like an easy fix: Design a cleaner cookstove, get it in the hands of the people who need them, and harmful emissions of "black carbon," or soot, that damages people's lungs and contributes to climate change will decline.

In recent years, millions of impoverished families have received clean cookstoves via public and private initiatives. Yet black carbon is still a major health problem, in part because families can't afford to fix the clean cookstoves when they break.

SEE ALSO: 2 billion children are breathing toxic air, UNICEF reports

Now a team of scientists in California might have found a way to crack the cookstove code.

Using wireless data technology and cell phone networks, the group designed a system that enables women in rural India to use and repair cleaner stoves and be compensated for doing so.

A woman uses a wood-fired hearth to cook in Gauhati, India, June 9, 2016.

Image: anupam nath/AP

They published the results of their two-year pilot project in the Oct. 31 online edition of Nature Climate Change.

"We're looking to empower women to not only be able to afford the stoves, but afford to keep the stoves running," said Nithya Ramanathan, a senior researcher for Project Surya, which led the initiative.

The team is planning to grow the project from 4,000 homes in rural India to a million households within the same region. At that scale, "a literal cloud of air pollution would disappear," Ramanathan told Mashable.

Black carbon is made of tiny particles that come from burning solid biomass such as dung and wood. When regularly inhaled, it can cause lung cancer, heart disease and other illnesses.

PM2.5 is fine particulate matter with a median diameter of less than 2.5 microns.

Image: UNICEF

The World Health Organization estimates around 4.3 million people die prematurely each year from illnesses linked to household air pollution.

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Public health experts who weren't involved with the experiment said they were excited by the initial field results and the potential to use wireless technologies to spur greater use of clean cookstoves.

"It is time the rural development world fully embraced modern IT techniques such as these," Kirk Smith, a professor of rural environmental health at University of California, Berkeley, said by email from India.

The experiment

Because not all cookstove designs are created equal, Project Surya limited its pilot project to a certain type of "forced-draft" stove. The $70 model still burns cheap biomass, but it uses fans to lower fuel use, shorten cooking times and limit harmful smoke.

Hillary Clinton, left, listens as Radha Muthiah, executive director of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, speaks at a New York summit. Clinton launched the public-private initiative in 2010 as U.S. secretary of state.

Image: bebeto matthews/AP

Starting in May 2014, the team worked with 4,038 households in the eastern Indian state of Odisha.

Nexleaf Analytics, Ramanathan's non-profit tech company, developed a wireless sensing system to monitor the families' use of the cookstoves. About 450 homes had the wireless sensors, while the remaining households manually logged their usage.

The team found that one hour of cooking on the clean stove reduced air pollution by about 0.003 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. Women could earn $6 for each avoided ton, or about $32 a year if they used the stove for five hours every day.

That's a sizable chunk of change for families who typically earn just $2 a day. But it wasn't enough to push women to go out, buy extra fuel and run their stoves longer than needed to rack up extra credits, Ramanathan said.

An Indian woman weighs wood to sell as fuel, mainly to be used for cooking, at a shop in Gauhati, India, June 9, 2016.

Image: AP photo/anupam nath

The 17-month experiment encountered a few hitches.

Within the first six months, about half of the stoves broke down, and only half of the duds were repaired. Women in isolated villages also had trouble collecting their cash payments.

Through trial and error, Project Surya found the best way to pay women was to send credits via cell phones through M-Pesa, a money transfer service similar to PayPal. Local agents cashed out the credits at banks in town and then traveled to villages to hand women the cash.

Researchers are now working to build local repair networks, said Tara Ramanathan, Nithya's sister and a program director at Nexleaf.

Their father, Veerabhadran Ramanathan, heads Project Surya and is a prominent climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.

Scaling up

Women in Project Surya's pilot project earned about $70,000 in total carbon credits. With a million participants, payments would likely total about $100 million a year.

The funding could come from governments and financial institutions in developed countries, which have pledged to invest $100 billion a year to finance climate change projects in developing economies, Nithya Ramathan said.

An Iraqi woman bakes bread using a mud stove in Baghdad in 2006.

Image: Akram Saleh /Getty Images

But public health experts said Project Surya's initiative has several kinks to iron out if it's going to scale to millions of households.

Smith, the Berkeley professor, said the team should also attach wireless sensors to the conventional, polluting stoves. In his own research in northern India, Smith found that families continued to use their traditional stoves even with a cleaner model in the house  a process known as "stacking" that undermines the health benefits of new, cleaner stoves.

Rema Hanna, a Harvard University economist who led an extensive field study on clean cookstoves in 2012, said that while she applauded Project Surya's work, further research is needed to see if this model can actually curb indoor air pollution or financially motivate families at a larger scale.

"Before we start scaling up financial incentives, I would encourage even more testing of this model in other settings," she told Mashable.

Hanna said that in general she believes researchers should postpone initiatives to deliver clean cookstoves to rural communities, given how many stoves end up broken or unused.

"Researchers should focus on both improving stoves and testing other potential solutions before we spend lots of money and resources doing large-scale stove interventions," she said.
Rome (AFP) - Ten bodies were recovered on Saturday from a rubber dinghy off the Libyan coast, the Italian coastguard said, adding that 2,200 other migrants were rescued during the day.

Sixteen rescue operations were conducted Saturday -- almost twice as many as on Friday when 1,200 people were rescued.

An AFP correspondent aboard the Topaz Responder, a search and rescue ship chartered by Maltese NGO MOAS and the Italian Red Cross, saw several hundred people, including children, being rescued on Friday and Saturday.

Migrants shrouded in foil survival blankets crowded onto the deck of the vessel following the rescue efforts in which at least one baby was saved during the early hours of Saturday.

The Red Cross tweeted that 707 people were on board the vessel on Saturday.

Meanwhile, the Libyan Red Crescent said it recovered the bodies of another six migrants on a beach west of Tripoli on Saturday, taking to 40 the number of drowned migrants found along the North African country's coast since Sunday.

People smugglers have exploited the chaos gripping Libya since the 2011 uprising that overthrew dictator Moamer Kadhafi to traffic migrants across the Mediterranean to Europe.

As many as 4,220 migrants have died trying to cross the Mediterranean so far this year, a higher number than the full-year totals for 2014, 2015 or any other year on record, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Pope Francis on Saturday called the situation of migrants "shameful" and "a bankrupcy of humanity".

"The Mediterranean has become a graveyard, and not just the Mediterranean," he said, adding that there were also "many graveyards near walls, walls stained with the blood of innocents".
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle met in Toronto and have gotten quite attached since. (Photo: Getty Images)

Its only been a few days since Suits actress Meghan Markle was first linked romantically to Prince Henry of Wales (better known as Prince Harry), and shes already feeling the glare of the spotlight. Shes even made headlines for something as simple as leaving her Toronto home to go to work!

Although weve never dated anyone in the royal family, we feel weve learned a thing or two watching the media coverage over the years. Thats why we thought wed take this opportunity to share some dos and donts that Harrys new gal pal should keep in mind as she embarks on the adventure of her royal relationship.

Lady Diana Spencer (later to become Princess Diana) was surrounded by photographers from the very beginning. (Photo: Tim Graham/Getty Images)

Do expect that every aspect of your life will be inspected. That lesson has been clear since Diana Spencer first met Prince Charles in the late 1970s. Ironically, Charles was dating her sister, Lady Sarah Spencer, before Diana caught his eye. The British public quickly became enamored with the preschool assistant, and the tabloids followed her every move. Indeed, every word Markle, 35, has ever said about her hopes, dreams, likes, and dislikes, have already been dissected. Shes even had a relative, her half-sister, start talking trash about her. Unfortunately, thats the price you have to pay for a high-profile romance.

Royal wedding obligations in 2011 werent very different from what was expected in 1981. (Photo: Getty Images)

Dont plan on an intimate little wedding. This may be putting the cart before the horse, but it needs to be accepted from the outset. Prince Charles and Princess Dianas wedding on July 29, 1981, was watched by over 750 million people  and this was in the pre-Internet era. Meanwhile, Prince William and Princess Kates nuptials on April 29, 2011, had 72 million YouTube streams, in addition to the 37 million people who watched them exchange vows on television in the United Kingdom alone. Heads of state attended both, and the respective wedding dresses inspired bridal fashion for years afterward. Since Prince Harry is one of the worlds most eligible bachelors, there could possibly be even more interest when hes finally ready to take the plunge!

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Kate Middleton and Prince William always seemed like a perfect match. (Photo: Indigo/Getty Images)

Do keep your inner circle tight and scandal-free. Say what you will about Kate (and folks have had plenty to say), but the royal family could not have asked for a more perfect addition. The Duchess of Cambridge made nary a misstep during her courtship with Prince William, and really, none since. The only scandal shes had to endure came at the hands of paparazzi who zoomed in to obtain snaps of Kate sunbathing topless while on vacation somewhere she felt relatively sure of her privacy. While it was a hard lesson to learn, weve never seen snaps like that of her again!

Prince Charles and his second wife, Camilla Parker Bowles, have been married since 2005. (Photo: Tim Graham/Getty Images)

And last, but not least, dont worry. Dating is hard, whether youre with a royal or not. So Markle should always remember If its meant to be, its meant to be. Thats the lesson Prince Charless second wife, Camilla Parker Bowles, learned as their complicated, decades-old love story  put on hold while they were married to others  finally resulted in a civil wedding in 2005. Bowles, who is now known as the Duchess of Cornwall, says she would never take the title of queen should Charles ever inherit the throne. It seems that being together is its own reward. Seems like a good lesson for the possible bride of the third in line to the throne?
If there is a single theme linking the three films under discussion this morning at the Weinstein panel at Deadlines the Contenders event, its how single-minded obsession impacts the lives of the obsessed and their friends and families alike. Nowhere was that more evident than in discussion of The Founder, which tells the story of controversial businessman Ray Kroc, who ended up acquiring and then building out the McDonalds empire.

As played in the film by Michael Keaton, Kroc is a driven, thirsty man looking for a big score and willing in the end to step over anyone to find it. And according to co-star Laura Dern, who plays Krocs long-suffering wife Ethel, Keaton perfectly captured Krocs intense narcissism, which Dern compared obliquely to another huckster businessman.

As Dern put it this morning, the film gets across having a fire that defies compassion of others around you  one she wryly said were witnessing  everywhere you look right now. That obvious but apt reference to GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump got huge laughs from the audience; nervous laughs as it happens. We are only three days out from the election.

Dern told moderator Pete Hammond of Deadline that she was privileged to have been able to watch Michael be so radically brave in the role and said he captured something in the eyes of a man who loses himself, which the film explores while chronicling Krocs rise to corporate titanhood.

The John Lee Hancock-directed film, which has been moved around the release schedule, is getting an Oscar-qualifying run before going wide on January 20.

Also under discussion this morning, Lion, directed by Garth Davis and written by Luke Davies, with Davis and star Dev Patel on hand at the DGA Theatre in WestHollywood. The drama is based on the nonfiction book A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley. Lion will be released November 25 by The Weinstein Co. The film bowed at Toronto to critical raves for the filmmakers and its stars Patel, Rooney Mara, David Wenham and Nicole Kidman.

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RelatedRooney Mara, Dev Patel & Director Garth Davis On Lions Emotional Journey  Toronto Studio

Finally, director Stephen Gaghan and producer Teddy Schwarzman were on hand to talk up their Matthew McConaughey-starring Gold. The film was inspired by the Bre-X mining scandal, when gold supposedly was found in the jungles of Indonesia. After the Canadian company announced it to the world, its stock soared and Bre-X went from rags to riches  until it was revealed that the gold was fraud.

The Weinstein Co. acquired the film after a CAA auction for a whopping $15M minimum guarantee and a P&A guarantee north of $20 million to release it on more than 2,500 screens.

Gold was scripted by Patrick Massett & John Zinman and Black Bear Pictures Teddy Schwarzman financed the film. TWC wasnt sure the film, which also stars Bryce Dallas Howard and Edgar Ramirez, would be ready in time for an Oscar-qualifying run, but it is getting just that when it gets released on Christmas Day.

As part of the presentation, a clip about Weinsteins summer hit Sing Street was also shown off.

Related stories

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Justin Timberlake On The Time He Cried At Himself Watching 'Trolls'- The Contenders

Netflix's 'The Little Prince' Director On Challenges Of Adapting Classic Novel - The Contenders
Life in Kerala reflects its Overall Best Big State crown: it's the safest, healthiest, most environment-friendly and only second-best in education and agriculture.

KERALA

Best state

WHY NO.1

Kerala topped three categories-law and order, health and environment.

It found place among top five states in five out of 10 categories.

Life in Kerala reflects its Overall Best Big State crown: it's the safest, healthiest, most environment-friendly and only second-best in education and agriculture. The state has shown improvements in all categories except inclusive development, in which it slipped three ranks. Infant mortality in Kerala was the lowest (12 per thousand live births) in 2013 against the all-India average of 30. It reported 99.7 per cent births assisted by trained personnel in 2013-14, the highest in the country. Violent crime in the state is one of the lowest: 4 per cent. Spending on education increased by 25 per cent from 2013-14 to 2014-15, 4 percentage points higher than the all-India mark. In Kerala, you breathe easy, literally. Respirable Suspended Particulate Matter concentrations were the lowest in 2013; tree cover (outside forest area) increased from 7.09 per cent in 2013 to 7.59 per cent in 2015. "Our government is committed to improving the quality of life through best practices of governance," says Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. The focus now, he says, is on tackling corruption, reviving traditional industries, and honing entrepreneurship. "I am confident Kerala will emerge as major start-up destination in the future," adds Vijayan.

advertisement

TAMIL NADU

Most improved state

WHY NO.1

Tamil Nadu showed improvement in eight out of 10 catergories.

It ranked among the top 10 states in nine categories.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa

Tamil Nadu has emerged as a major building block in the national economy. It was ranked the second economically most competitive state in 2016, on the basis of macroeconomic stability, financial, business and manpower conditions, quality of life, infrastructure development and governance. It is one of the three most-preferred states for investment and one of the eight states where poverty dropped at a higher rate than the all-India average. Its per capita income is the third highest among the big states. Health, education and safety of women are other areas the state made strides in. Tamil Nadu has the lowest infant mortality after Kerala. At 42 per cent, the gross enrolment ratio in higher education is the highest. Eighty per cent of the 72 million population is literate. The state has developed into an innovation-based economy with a strong performance in manufacturing and services. Largely free of communal, left-wing extremist and religious fundamentalist violence, Tamil Nadu pioneered all-women police stations, which now operate in every police subdivision.



--- ENDS ---
Tel Aviv (AFP) - Thousands of people attended a memorial rally for slain Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin on Saturday, despite earlier fears it would be cancelled, an AFP journalist said.

Organisers put the number at around 50,000, while Israeli media said 20,000. Police did not give an official estimate.

There had been fears that lack of funding would for the first time in 21 years prevent the annual event in the central Tel Aviv square which bears the name of the Nobel peace laureate shot dead at the site by a Jewish extremist on November 4, 1995.

The rally has traditionally been a display of respect for Rabin and of support for peace with the Palestinians, which he sought.

On Monday, the usual organisers said they had been unable to raise sufficient funds to hold the commemoration and that it might not be possible to go ahead.

It was only on Friday that the opposition Zionist Union, a parliamentary alliance of Rabin's Labour party and the centrist HaTnuah, said it would step into the breach.

"I could not resign myself to the cancellation of the rally," Labour leader Isaac Herzog posted on his Twitter account.

"We decided to preserve the tradition and to take over the organisation of the event."

The intervention of the centre-left comes despite a pledge by those close to Rabin after the murder to hold a major non-partisan rally in his memory each year for all Israelis.

"It's sad that the evening has become a political event, but we came anyway because the important thing is the goal of raising our children in a better country," said Ayelet Barak, who like many others attended the event with her young children.

Many youth activists wore T-shirts bearing logos of Israeli opposition parties or with slogans such as "We do not forgive or forget".

Herzog gave a fighting speech from the podium.

"Tonight we are not lighting candles, we are going to war for our democracy," he said.

Mass peace rallies have become increasingly rare in Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government seen as the most right-wing in the country's history.

Rabin won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for his role in negotiating the Oslo peace accords, which envisioned an independent Palestinian state.

Rabin's killer, Yigal Amir, was opposed to the Oslo accords. He is serving a life sentence in prison.
Tens of thousands of banner-waving protestors marched through the streets of Seoul on Saturday, demanding President Park Geun-Hye resign, a day after she apologised and accepted full blame for a crippling corruption scandal.

In one of the largest demonstrations seen in the South Korean capital in years, there was little sympathy for Park who, in an emotional televised address to the nation on Friday, had talked of her loneliness and "heartache" at the explosion of public anger in recent weeks.

"Her speech made me even more angry," said Park Mee-Hee, 44, who was marching with her teenage daughter.

"She kept making ridiculous excuses as if she was totally innocent. She should step down right now," she said.

The scandal has focused on a close personal friend of the president, Choi Soon-Sil, who has been arrested for fraud and also stands accused of meddling in state affairs -- including official appointments and policy decisions -- despite holding no official position.

The crisis has shattered public trust in Park's judgement and leadership, and her approval rating has plunged to just five percent -- a record low for a sitting president.

Police said more than 40,000 had turned out for Saturday's candlelight rally -- more than double the size of a similar anti-Park protest the week before.

Organisers said the number was closer to 200,000, after a Seoul court overturned a police ban on the demonstrators marching along the city's main ceremonial boulevard.

- 'Under siege' -

Around 20,000 police were mobilised, but while the tone of the banners and slogans was angry, the event was largely peaceful, with many school and college students as well as couples carrying infants or walking with their young children.

Punching their fists in the air, they chanted "Resign Park Geun-Hye" and "You are under siege".

Choi Soon-Sil, 60, was formally arrested on Thursday on charges of embezzlement and abuse of power, but public anger has largely focused on the allegations that she interfered in government affairs.

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The South Korean media has portrayed Choi, whose late father was a shadowy religious leader and an important mentor to Park, as a Rasputin-like figure who wielded an unhealthy influence over the president.

"I couldnt answer when my kid asked me who is the real president?", one speaker, a mother with three children, told the crowd at the rally.

"What is really irritating is the fact that Choi was acting like a regent for Park, controlling her decision-making", said 20-year-old political science student Kim Do-Hyun.

In an effort to restore a semblance of trust in her administration, Park has reshuffled ministers and senior advisers, bringing in figures from outside her ruling conservative Saenuri Party.

In her televised address, she agreed to be questioned by prosecutors investigating the charges against Choi, and sought to portray herself as an over-trusting friend who had let her guard down at a moment of weakness.

- 'Lonely' Park -

Her voice choking with emotion, Park said she had been living a "lonely life" as president and had turned to Choi for company and help.

"I trusted my personal relationship, but was careless and not tough enough with my acquaintances," she added.

The formal investigation is focused on allegations that Choi leveraged her close relationship with the president to coerce local firms into donating large sums to dubious non-profit foundations that she then used for personal gain.

Despite the mass protests and public apologies, Park is seen as unlikely to resign with just over a year of her single term in office left to run.

The main opposition party has threatened to agitate for her ouster unless she devolves more of her extensive executive powers, but it is wary of forcing an early presidential election it would not be confident of winning.

Whatever transpires, the very personal nature of the scandal has severely undermined Park's ability to govern, turning her into the lamest of lame-duck leaders at a time of slowing economic growth, rising unemployment and elevated military tensions with North Korea.

"I think she should step down as she has lost all her moral authority as president", one protestor, a 53-year-old who gave his family name Ahn, told AFP.
The Paris Agreement, a binding international accord to combat climate change, went into force Friday night. More than 190 countries have adopted the agreement, including China and the United States.

Were live-blogging the news stories of the day below. All updates are in Eastern Daylight Time (GMT -4)

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Since he began tracking U.S. elections in 1980, Allan Lichtman, a distinguished professor of history at American University, has gained the admiration of his peers for correctly predicting every presidential race since 1984. He does it not with the kind of "big data" analysis that has made media stars out of the likes of Nate Silver. Rather, he uses a relatively simple, 13-point system - derived, believe it or not, from the same inexact science that predicts earthquakes. And according to his system (which is outlined in his book Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House), the election has long belonged to Donald Trump. With three days left to Decision 2016, The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Prof. Lichtman to see if he was standing by his results. If you're expecting a gleeful prophet of doom, think again. As this conversation will make abundantly clear, no one is unhappier about his findings than Lichtman himself.

How did you come up with this system?

I'd love to tell you I did it by a lot of brilliant thinking, but I did it by accident. In 1981, I was a visiting scholar at CalTech and I came across another visiting scholar - a renowned mathematician and world's leading authority of earthquake predictions from Moscow. He suggested we use the methods of earthquake prediction to predict elections.

I was very skeptical. So I started to think about it: Everything we know about elections is stolen from geophysics anyway, right? "Landslides." "Political earthquakes." "Volcanic change." And so we conceptualized elections in geophysical terms. As stability, the party in power keeps the White House. Earthquake, the party in power is tossed out.

We looked at the political environment, elections from 1860 to 1980, guided by the thesis the presidential elections are primarily judgments on the strength and performance of the party heading the White House. That's how we divide the 13 key factors. Then we arrived at the decision rule that 6 or more keys going against the party in power predicts their defeat. And that system has correctly forecast every American presidential election since then. Eight in a row, from 1984 to 2012.

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Read more: Clinton vs. Trump?: Hollywood Filmmakers Predict the Results

And the keys are saying Trump will win! How, uh, sure are we about that?

I'm not confident at all. I'm not a hedger. I have never hedged a prediction. I have stuck by predictions contrary to the polls and pundits many times in the past. I predicted a George H. W. Bush victory in May of 1998 when he was trailing Michael Dukakis by 17 points in the polls and every pundit had written him off. I predicted the very-hard-to-call 2012 election back in 2010, and stuck with my prediction even after Obama's disastrous first debate the polls turned against him.

But for the first time I have qualified my prediction. My prediction is based on history and for the first time in Donald Trump we have a history-smashing candidate: We never had a candidate before who has no record in public service; a record of enriching himself throughout his life at the expense of others, whether through bankruptcies, his Trump Foundation or Trump University; we've never had a candidate who has called into question the integrity of democracy and threatened not to accept the result of the election; we've never had a candidate who openly brags about sexually assaulting women and then 12 women come forward saying he did that. Back in 2012, a guy named Herman Cain was the favorite for the Republican nomination. Then three or four women accused him of sexual harassment and he was driven out the of the race. Unlike Cain, Trump brags about sexual harassing women.

And so you have two contending forces here: The force of history, that it should be a change election, in which a generic Republican should win - if it was John Kasich or Jeb Bush it would be no question. But you have Trump, a candidate so far out of the box he may be capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Then you have so many other things that are troubling and unprecedented in this election. You have the Russians meddling in this election. We've never before had a foreign power blatantly interfering to help elect their preferred candidate. You have the FBI, not just once but twice releasing damaging material just weeks before an election. So this election keeps me sleepless at night I have to say.

Is it perhaps time to revise your trusted 13-key system?

Well, here's the big question: Is this election an anomaly, that we're not going to see again? Or are we seeing a permanent and I think very negative change in our politics: when it's OK to assault women; when it's OK to be endorsed by the Klu Klux Klan; when it is OK to demean democracy; when it is OK for foreign powers to intervene blatantly in our election. When things are so polarized that neither side is likely to accept the legitimacy of the other side. I don't mean just being opposed to it. I mean saying, "This is not acceptable."

Read more: MSNBC's Joy Reid on Election Day Predictions, Donald Trump's Scar on the GOP

One of the keys refers to the candidates' charisma. But that has to be somewhat subjective, no?

You're dealing in human systems. So, yes, some of the keys involved judgment, but the judgments are pretty constrained. And they've been answered retrospectively. Quite clearly, Hillary Clinton, as I define it, is not the once-in-a-generation inspirational candidate like Ronald Reagan or FDR. Now, you may think Trump is charismatic - but he is only charismatic to a slice of the electorate.

Unlike say a Ronald Reagan who had broad appeal, who brought out a lot of Reagan Democrats, Trump does not fulfill. You can't call a candidate charismatic of whom 60 percent of Americans do not view as fit to be president.

But then to what do you ascribe this Teflon quality he has? There's no depths to which he can seemingly go and the polls barely move.

Regardless of his reprehensible personal characteristics, there are many Americans who say I am going to overlook that and vote for change. A generic Republican would be a much easier prediction. The other thing about Donald Trump and these negative characteristics that people seem to be overlooking is you have two entities, and on the other side pumping out all kinds of negative information about Hillary Clinton.

50,000 leaked docs, traced to Russians, on the Democratic side. Republican side? Zero. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out which side the Russians are on. The media has swallowed hook, line and sinker on WikiLeaks. Marco Rubio, to his credit, said it right: No one should be using WikiLeaks because it sets a horrible precedent for U.S. elections. Yet the media goes on and on and on. Can you imagine if we had leaked emails from Paul Mannafort or Roger Stone of Stephen Bannon?

The second thing of course is [FBI Director] James Comey. He has unbelievably broken precedent after precedent to intervene in this election on the side of Donald Trump. The first thing was when he found that Hillary Clinton hadn't done anything to recommend prosecution he should have kept his big mouth shut. He had no business opining and editorializing the fact the she was very careless in her use of emails. Imagine you are being investigated about your business by the FBI about your financial transactions. The FBI found you hadn't done anything illegal, but the director went out on his own volition to say you had been extremely careless in your financial transactions. It would have wrecked your business. And that's just what Comey did. Then, much worse, 11 days before the election, he drops this bombshell of these emails. He's no political novice. He knew it would be a huge bombshell. It was an immense benefit to Donald Trump. It's showing up in the polls. And it contained no information. It served no public purpose except to cover himself. "Apparently pertinent." "May not be significant." So you have these two entities, the FBI, whose integrity has been shredded, and the Russians on the other side. James Comey should resign today.

What do you tell your concerned family members and friends?

I tell them I'm very fearful about our democracy. I'm almost 70 years old and it doesn't matter that much to me - but it matters so much for my kids what's become of our democracy. The FBI becoming a political player. Unbelievable. The Russians with impunity influencing our elections. Will it now be open-season for any foreign power that has a favorite candidate to jump in and interfere in our elections? I worry about claims that our democracy is rigged. That our elections aren't legitimate. I worry that the worse elements of our society have been stirred up. Ku Klux Klan newspaper just endorsed Donald Trump. Can you imagine the Ku Klux Klan endorsing a major-party candidate? Every anti-Semitic group, neo-Nazi, White Supremacist group has been encouraged by this election to think their time has come. I'm Jewish. And I know this is how it starts. And it worries me to the marrow of my being. And I study these issues. I wrote a book about FDR and the Jews. This is how these things begin. I encourage everyone to read Sinclair Lewis' book, It Can't Happen Here. It can happen here.

So with 3 days left to the election, you're standing by your system. You predict a Trump win.

We'll see. On the one hand I'll be the biggest genius in the world. On the other hand, I'll be the most depressed person in the world.
Ahead of the release of its farewell studio album, hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest has this week revealed the cover art and guest roster for "We got it from Here... Thank You 4 Your service," due out November 11.

The first full-length album from the group in 18 years, "We got it from Here..." will drop nearly eight months after the death of founding member Phife Dawg, who performed on every one of the group's previous studio albums.

The farewell album will include raps from Phife Dawg along with contributions from a number of guest artists. Co-founding member Q-Tip revealed in an interview with the New York Times that guests will include Jack White, Andre 3000, Kendrick Lamar, Elton John, Busta Rhymes and Consequence.



A Tribe Called Quest formed in the mid-1980s and was active in the early 1990s, when the group put out the seminal hop-hop albums "The Low-End Theory" and "Midnight Marauders." Along with De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest was part of the Native Tongues movement, which was known for positive, Afrocentric lyrics and eclectric musical influences and which led the way to what is now called conscious hip-hop.



Throughout the '90s the group released five albums; the last, "The Love Movement," came in 1998, and the group disbanded the same year.



Despite a reunion tour of the US in 2006, that 1998 album remained the group's last until plans were revealed in August for this sixth and final album.

In a handwritten note posted on Facebook, Q-Tip said that while the album was not finished at the time of Phife Dawg's death, "he left us with the Blue Print of what we had to do."



"We got it from here... Thank You 4 Your service" is currently available for pre-order. Those who do will receive the digital album on the day of its release, with other items (such as a vinyl album, CD, hoodie, T-shirt, sweatshirt or flight jacket) to arrive later. Pre-order via smarturl.it/ATCQ_D2C.
Private Desmond Doss walked into the bloodiest battle of World War IIs Pacific theater with nothing to protect himself save for his Bible and his faith in God. A devout Seventh Day Adventist and conscientious objector, Doss had enlisted as a medic and refused to carry a rifle.

The fighting took place on the hellish Maeda Escarpment in April 1945. The battlefield, located on top of a sheer 400-foot cliff, was fortified with a deadly network of Japanese machine gun nests and booby traps. The escarpment, nicknamed Hacksaw Ridge for the treacherously steep cliff, was key to winning the battle of Okinawa. The mission was thought to be near-impossible, and when Dosss battalion was ordered to retreat, the medic refused to leave his fallen comrades behind.

Facing heavy machine gun and artillery fire, Doss repeatedly ran alone into the kill zone, carrying wounded soldiers to the edge of the cliff and singlehandedly lowering them down to safety. Each time he saved a mans life, Doss prayed out loud, Lord, please help me get one more. By the end of the night he had rescued an estimated 75 men. (The always modest Doss reckoned he saved about 50, but his fellow soldiers gauged it closer to 100. They decided to split the difference.)

Now, the unbelievable story has come to life in the Mel Gibson-directed Hacksaw Ridge, with Andrew Garfield starring as Doss. The film earning a 10-minute standing ovation at its red carpet world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September.

Doss never lived to see his story on the big screen. He died in 2006, and while he spent much of his later life retelling the incredible events of that night, he was always reluctant to trust Hollywood with his story. I grew up in a house where there was an endless stream of people coming through the door wanting to make a movie, write a book, etc, Dosss only child, Desmond Jr., tells PEOPLE. The reason he declined is that none of them adhered to his one requirement: that it be accurate. And I find it remarkable, the level of accuracy in adhering to the principal of the story in this movie.

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 were very accurate with Desmond and what happened to him, veteran producer Bill Mechanic tells PEOPLE. But, he admits we were not accurate on some of the details around it, like the exact backstory of Dosss father, or the chronological details of his marriage to his wife, Dorothy. If youre a slave to the complete facts, than youre not making a movie that is compelling, argues Mechanic.

Minor embellishments aside, the film has been both celebrated and criticized for its gritty realism, which includes close-ups of everything from spurting arteries to rats feeding on human entrails. Oh yes, it was graphic, said Joe Clapper, a 95-year-old Okinawa veteran tells PEOPLE of the film. But when youve been there, thats what its like.

Okinawa was the bloodiest battle of the Pacific and the second most bloody battle of World War II, adds Mechanic. Doss was also a medic, so its not like you can just show soldiers getting shot next to him  you have to see what hes working on. You have to put him in hell essentially before you can see the decisions that he made and who he was, how strong his faith was and how courageous he was.

Dosss faith and courage were forged growing up in Lynchberg, Va., the middle child of William Doss, a carpenter and WWI veteran, and Bertha Doss, a homemaker. As depicted in the movie, young Doss was captivated by a framed poster of the Ten Commandments hanging in his childhood home. He was particularly intrigued by a illustration of the Sixth Commandment, showing Cain murdering his brother Abel. His father, played by Hugo Weaving in the movie, suffered from alcoholism and depression relating to the PTSD he suffered in the war. In the movie, a young Doss wrestles a gun out of his fathers hand during a fight between his parents. The scene draws on a real event in Dosss life, in which a fight between his father and uncle made him swear off guns.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Doss was working at a shipyard in Newport News. His position made him eligible for deferment, but despite his inherent pacifism, Doss felt a moral obligation to fight for his country. He hoped that by joining the army as a medic, he could avoid carrying a weapon, and even believed he might be allowed to rest in honor of the Sabbath on Saturdays.

While Doss viewed himself not as a conscientious objector, but a conscientious cooperator, his fellow infantrymen and superiors did not see it that way. When he arrived for basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C., he quickly became an outcast from the rest of the recruits. His slight stature and shyness did not improve the situation, and many soldiers believed he would be a major liability in battle. As shown in the film, Doss was subjected to physical and psychological abuse, and endured several attempts by his superiors to have him discharged from the military.

Undeterred, Doss deployed with the 307th Infantry, 77th Infantry Division, in the summer of 1944. While not depicted in the movie, he served as a medic on Guam and in the Philippines prior to the Battle of Okinawa. During that battle, Doss sprinted through heavy enemy fire to save his fellow soldiers. The danger was even greater for Doss as the Japanese often targeted medics. He ended up serving for two more weeks before being wounded by shrapnel from a grenade. Despite his injuries, he continued to treat other soldiers until his arm was broken by Japanese fire.

President Harry S. Truman presented Doss with the Medal of Honor on Oct. 12, 1945. He was the first conscientious objector to receive the honor. He spent the first five years after the war recovering from his injuries, and ultimately lost a lung to tuberculosis. His injuries prevented him working full-time, and he devoted the rest of his life to working with his church.

Growing up as Dosss son, Desmond Jr. says he heard the tale of his fathers heroics many times. Despite knowing the storys facts, Desmond Jr. says he does recall asking his father a personal question about that night. What on Earth were you thinking? he says with a laugh. And I never really got the answer I was looking for. Even at a very private, intimate level, he just wanted to give all the glory to God and never seemed to acknowledge his role. Still, Desmond Jr remembers wanting to ask, Did he not understand that its not right to stand up in the middle of a hail fire of bullets?

Doss was happy to speak about the battle with church groups and audiences all over the country, but Desmond Jr. says the scars from the war never faded. The war is never over and it was the same thing with my dad. It went on and on and on, and even after hes dead its still going on now with this movie, he explains, adding, How can the war be over for you when youre missing an arm, or missing an eye? How does your family relate when they send you off and you come back in a wheelchair. Its just never over.

But Desmond Jr. takes solace in the lives his father saved, and while he hardly ever hears from the survivors, he knows there are entire families that might not exist without his dad. I did see on Facebook recently that someone had written that their grandfather wouldnt be alive without my dad saving them. So there is that connection, he recalls. Something swirls up in you to think that someone youre close with made such a difference in peoples lives. Its very heartwarming.

Hacksaw Ridge hits theaters in limited release Nov. 4.




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Donald Trump on Saturday criticized Jay Z for the foul language he used while performing a concert at a Hillary Clinton rally the night before, saying that if he were to use such words he would find himself in hot water.

I actually like Jay Z, but you know, the language last night. Oh. Oh. I was thinking, maybe Ill just try it? Should I use that language for one event? Can you imagine if I said that? Trump rhetorically asked a crowd at a rally in Tampa, Florida.

Jay Z repeatedly used the n-word and dropped f-bombs while rapping for a get out the vote effort Friday night in Ohio. He was joined by Beyonce, Big Sean, and Chance the Rapper.

He used every word in the book, Trump said. I wont even use the initials because Ill get in trouble, theyll get me in trouble. He used every word in the book last night.

The Republican presidential nominee boasted that he was able to attract massive crowds without Clintons star power, before again highlighting the language employed at the concert.

In Hershey, Pennsylvania, last night, we had an arena, we had 27,000 people show up, many couldnt get in, he said. Far more than Jay Z had with their free tickets. Free tickets! Far more. And Beyonce. And I like the both, but he used language last night that was so bad.

Trump added: And then Hillary said, I did not like Donald Trumps lewd language. My lewd language! Ill tell you what: Ive never said what he said in my life! But that shows you the phoniness of politicians and the phoniness of the whole system, folks.

Clinton has strongly criticized Trump for crude comments he has made toward women in the past. In October, her campaign specifically homed in on comments captured on a leaked 2005 Access Hollywood tape. Her campaign also cut a minute-long ad featuring other past Trump comments to paint him as a poor role model for children.

Kellyanne Conway, Trumps campaign manager, also seized on Jay Zs language to zing Clinton.

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Because our children are listening, right Hillary? she asked in a tweet, referring to the Clinton ad, which showed kids watching the comments made by Trump over the years.

Clinton and Trump are both holding multiple events this weekend as they sprint toward the finish line. Election Day is on November 8.

NOW WATCH: Watch Trump repeatedly photobomb Clinton during the debate





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The most disturbing takeaway from this year's study is that five big states - UP, Bengal, Bihar, MP and Rajasthan - which account for 40 per cent of total Lok Sabha seats, find no place among the winners, while South Indian states have walked away with most honours.

In December 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had talked of "the most important role" states play in India's progress. He talked of India moving forward "on the strong shoulders of the states, and not from Delhi alone". Ten months later, the PM will be pleased to know that the states are not just "walking shoulder to shoulder", in certain areas they have marched ahead of his central government. According to the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, states have raised spending on roads, ports and power plants by 29 per cent between April and July. This is certainly good news because a one per cent increase in expenditure by states leads to a 0.11 per cent lift in gross domestic product compared with a 0.04 per cent boost from Central government investment, as revealed by an RBI study in 2013. Meanwhile, in the same period, spending by the Union government fell by 33.7 per cent. If states are spending more than the Centre today, there has also been a big change in the revenue-sharing arrangement between the Centre and the states. The Modi government implemented the 14th Finance Commission recommendations, retaining just 38 per cent of the pool of resources for the Centre and transferring the rest, 62 per cent, to the states. The tilt towards the states has not just given them more spending power, but is changing the country's politics.

The political discourse may still be dominated by the noise of electoral sops, caste, religion, family feuds et al but performance has become an integral buzzword on public platforms. So, despite slogans on the beef ban or the Ram temple, Modi's development agenda and the Gujarat model still remain the best advertisement for the BJP in electoral battles. The Samajwadi Party may be on the verge of a split in Uttar Pradesh, yet Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav is banking on the mega infrastructure projects completed during his tenure to boost his poll chances.

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This transition towards states emerging as nerve centres of growth has also helped in promoting a performance competition of sorts, a trend India Today captured in 2003 in its first State of the States study, done in association with Indicus Analytics, now part of Nielsen. In the past 14 years, that has also been one of the fundamental goals of this study-to inspire a healthy battle for excellence among the states. It was also important to maintain a balance, highlighting not just the traditionally richer states but emerging growth zones as well. So we do have states like Maharashtra, Punjab, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat, which consistently feature among the top five performers in various categories. But then there are also the phenomenal turnaround stories, like former BIMARU states Bihar and Madhya Pradesh clocking nearly 10 per cent growth, almost double that of Maharashtra or Punjab.

This year we have come up with a new methodology to rank the states. We are evaluating the states under two broad sections-best-performing and most improved. For best-performing states, the records of 2013-14 have been considered. For most improved states, year-to-year improvement between 2012-13 and 2013-14 has been considered. So Kerala may be the best-performing state in health, but if its one-year performance between 2012-13 and 2013-14 is evaluated, it's the 12th most improved state. Andhra Pradesh is the best state in infrastructure but it's ranked 15th among most improved states. On the other hand, Bihar is the worst performing in infrastructure, but the seventh most improved in the same category. Traditionally, Bengal's economy has not been among the leaders, ranked 15th among the best-performing states, but with its performance after 2012, it is the third most improved economy.

This year's study has also thrown up other interesting nuggets, some of which go against the grain of conventional wisdom. So the state which has made the maximum improvement in law and order is, surprisingly, Bihar, up from 19th position in 2004 to 8th this year. But it's also the state which makes the maximum appearances among the bottom five across all categories.

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However, the most disturbing takeaway from this year's study is that five big states-UP, Bengal, Bihar, MP and Rajasthan-which account for 40 per cent of total Lok Sabha seats, find no place among the winners. While South Indian states have walked away with most honours, Punjab has seen the biggest fall-the winner of eight years has dropped to seventh spot.

We have also added two new categories this year-e-governance and entrepreneurship-and changed the variables of some other categories. We have replaced governance with law and order and clubbed consumer market under the broader category of economy.

Follow the writer on Twitter@KDscribe



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As Donald Trump climbs in the polls, gold prices are following suit.

The yellow metal returned to the $1,300-an-ounce milestone for the first time since early October, closing Friday at $1,303.30 an ounce, a 2.2% weekly gain. The safe-haven investment has risen five of the last seven sessions and is closing in on a 52-week high of $1,364 an ounce.

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 posted red ink on nine consecutive days for the first time since 1980.

Trump has made jobs, taxes and the economy cornerstones of his campaign. Still, investors are expressing uncertainty over how a victory for the Republican nominee, a real-estate mogul with no prior political experience, would play out.

The CBOE Volatility Index (CBOE:VIX), commonly called the VIX, jumped 1.95% on Friday and was up 36% for the week, another sign that investors have grown more skittish over the Nov. 8 vote with Clinton and Trump in a tight race.

According to the latest Fox News poll, Trump is now trailing by a mere two points to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, 45% to 43%. Trump has closed the gap with Clinton or taken the lead in several battleground states like Colorado, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and New Hampshire, based on polls released this week.

Trump captured momentum in the race after the FBI informed Congress that it restarted its investigation into Clintons use of a primary email server during her tenure as Secretary of State. FBI agents are also investigating pay-to-play allegations involving the Clinton Foundation.

The rally in gold prices also coincided with a surprise ruling in the U.K., where a high court said the nations exit from the European Union must go up for a vote in Parliament.

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Although Tunisia's tourism industry seems to be going through an unending chill, Mohamed Ben Sheikh is convinced there are good days ahead thanks to the nation's vineyards.

Standing on a hillside on his land, he says, "Our country is rich in local produce."

Among these assets, the ancient culture of winemaking is undergoing something of a revival in this overwhelmingly Muslim-majority country which has a reputation of being one of the most liberal in the Arab world.

For decades, Tunisia has relied heavily on tourism but almost exclusively targeting beachgoers and sun worshippers. But the instability that followed its 2011 Arab Spring uprising has sparked a major crisis, forcing the north African country to rethink its strategy.

And one of the possibilities is attracting wine enthusiasts.

"Wine is a premium product which relates to both land and history. It is a way of promoting Tunisia," says Ben Sheikh, president of the chamber of alcoholic drinks producers.

At the Neferis vineyard in Grombalia, perched on hills overlooking the Mediterranean some 40 kilometres (25 miles) southeast of Tunis, Ben Sheikh is trying to develop a wine route as an "alternative" form of tourism which he is hoping to be able to offer tour operators next year.

Besides wine-making Tunisia is home to many archaeological sites, he adds. "We should create cultural tourism."

- 'Rome's wine cellar' -

Tunisia is no newcomer to vineyards. It has been producing wine for at least 2,800 years, Ben Sheikh says.

"Carthage was the granary of Rome but it was also its wine cellar. It had a great agronomist, Magon, who was the first to write treaties on winegrowing," he explains.

The idea is develop a tour stretching from the capital Tunis to the nearby Cap Bon peninsula, mixing archaeology with visits to local vineyards.

And it is the wine aspect which is most likely to surprise.

Following a post-independence decline partly due to Europeans buying their own produce, according to industry veteran Belgacem D'Khili, Tunisia's winegrowing industry experienced something of a revival in the 1990s.

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At the time, the government promised to reclaim public land and bring in foreign investment in a step which saw the emergence of seven companies for agricultural development.

Twenty years on and the bet seems to have paid off.

Tunisian wine, which relies on old grape varieties such as Carignan, is branching out into newer varieties such as Chardonnay, Viognier or Verdejo. To date, it counts seven AOCs.

For that, "we need investment in new technologies, and cooling the wine at controlled temperatures during fermentation," says Rached Kobrosly, who is in charge of quality control at the Neferis winery.

Spread over 450 hectares (about 1,100 acres), Neferis produces 1.2 million bottles every year and Kobrosly says they compare among the world's best. He cites as examples Italy's typically rich red wine Amarone and classified French wines such as Saint-Emilion and Pomerol, both from the Bordeaux region.

Kobrosly says the 32 million bottles emerging from Tunisian wineries -- and almost all of it consumed domestically -- "has a very great chance of being exported" and sold in overseas markets.

- 'No image' -

But despite the optimism the figures remain modest.

Although the sector earns approximately 80 million euros ($87 million) annually and contributes 25 million euros to state coffers in taxes, revenues from wine exports do not exceed 10 million euros.

This is partly due to the limited scale of vineyards -- only 15,000 hectares on a national level -- and a near total absence of any marketing strategy.

"The problem with Tunisian wine is not one of a bad image but the fact there's no image!" says Kobrosly.

"To reinforce its touristy appeal, events have to be launched around grape harvests and wine cellars," says Tahar Ayachi, a journalist specialising in heritage and tourism.

"There was a time when one celebrated harvests and where one pressed grapes in village squares," Ayachi adds.

D'Khili, who has for years headed the "Vignerons de Carthage" wine cooperative, says there is "long-term work" ahead.

But with "the revolution in quality in the last 20 years, we have the tools to succeed."

D'Khili, who is trying to promote Shadrapa, a picturesque domaine nestled on the banks of the Medjerda river about 70 kilometres west of Tunis, says the site could become a huge tourist draw.

"We are close to Dougga, one of the most beautiful archaeological sites and we are working in tandem with some of the bed and breakfast places in the area," he says.

"Viticulture is the sector of the future."
Tunis (AFP) - A Tunisian soldier has been killed in his home near central Mount Mghilla, an area where jihadist fighters operate, public television reported late Saturday.

Citing defence ministry spokesman Belhassen Oueslati, the television channel said that army and national guard units had launched a search for the unknown attackers.

Tunisian authorities gave no comment when asked for further details by AFP.

Tunisian forces have, since 2012, been trying to flush out groups of extremists holed up in the country's mountainous regions, notably Mghilla and Chaambi, in the central Kasserine region.

Since a revolution in 2011, Tunisia has seen the rise of a jihadist movement responsible for the deaths of dozens of soldiers and police officers as well as civilians.

A total of 59 tourists have also been killed.

The country has been under a state of emergency since a string of deadly attacks in 2015.
By Tuvan Gumrukcu and Osman Orsal ANKARA/ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish authorities ordered on Saturday that the editor and senior staff of a leading opposition newspaper be arrested pending trial, as more pro-Kurdish officials were detained sparking protests against the widening state crackdown. Police fired tear gas and water cannon on a crowd of around 1,000 protesters in central Istanbul who were trying to get to the offices of the secularist Cumhuriyet newspaper. Nine of its journalists and executives were detained on Monday Prosecutors said staff at the paper, one of the few still critical of President Tayyip Erdogan, were suspected of crimes committed on behalf of Kurdish militants and U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is accused of instigating a coup attempt. Since the failed coup in July, more than 110,000 judges, teachers, police and civil servants have been detained or suspended in a crackdown that Erdogan's critics say is quashing legitimate opposition. "The international community is outraged. What are you trying to do? Are you trying to create a Turkey where everyone is in jail?" the head of the main opposition party, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, said. "What has the Cumhuriyet newspaper done? Have they planted bombs somewhere?" On Saturday, authorities appointed a new mayor to Sirnak municipality, part of a campaign over recent weeks of replacing pro-Kurdish officials in the mostly Kurdish southeast. A bomb in Sirnak province on Saturday killed two children and wounded four, an attack that the local governor's office blamed on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). A second bomb later exploded at the municipal office before the new mayor's arrival, wounding one security force member, the governor's office said. A total of 17 PKK militants have been killed since Friday in Sirnak, it said. On Friday, the co-leaders of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) were jailed pending trial and several others were arrested. Erdogan has accused Turkey's third-largest party of links to the PKK which has carried out an insurgency for three decades. "SHEEP AT A BUTCHER'S" The HDP denies that and says it is working for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. It says it is being targeted by Erdogan in a drive to help the ruling AKP push through a constitutional change that would give him the executive presidential powers he has long sought. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has said the HDP lawmakers were detained after refusing to give testimony in a probe linked to "terrorist propaganda". One HDP member of parliament detained on Friday and then released said the party had no intention of cooperating. "You will have to keep waiting if you expect us to show our necks like sheep at a butcher's," Sirri Sureyya Onder was quoted as saying by the Dogan news agency. "We will not be instruments in your false legal actions." The scope of the crackdown has rattled the West. German Justice Minister Heiko Maas said Turkey's treatment of the media was "completely unacceptable", telling the Donaukurier newspaper that Ankara was violating the core values of the European Union which Turkey hopes to join. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said she was "extremely worried" by the arrests, and raised her concerns in a telephone call with Turkey's foreign and EU affairs ministers late on Friday. The United States expressed "deep concern", while the lira currency fell to a record low. Hours after Friday's detentions, a car bomb killed 11 people and wounded more than 100 near a police station in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir where some HDP lawmakers were being held. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, the jihadists' Amaq news agency said. But the Diyarbakir governor's office said the bomb was the work of the PKK, citing intercepted communications between Kurdish militants. Some 170 newspapers, magazines, TV stations and news agencies have been closed in the crackdown, leaving 2,500 journalists unemployed, Turkey's journalists' association said. Cumhuriyet's previous editor, Can Dundar, was jailed last year for publishing state secrets involving Turkey's support for Syrian rebels. He was later released and is now overseas to avoid arrest. (Additional reporting by Gulsen Solaker and Umit Bektas in Ankara; Ebru Tuncay in Istanbul; Andrea Shalal in Berlin; Writing by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by David Dolan and Stephen Powell)
ANKARA (Reuters) - The car bomb that killed 11 people and wounded 100 in the southeast Kurdish province of Diyarbakir on Friday was the work of Kurdish militants and not Islamic State, the local governor's office said. Following the attack on Friday, Islamic State claimed responsibility for the car bomb, according to the group's Amaq news agency. But the Diyarbakir governor's office said in a statement on Saturday that it was "clear" the bomb was the work of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), citing intercepted communications between PKK militants. (Reporting by Umit Bektas and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Catherine Evans)
Istanbul (AFP) - An Istanbul court on Saturday remanded in custody nine staff from the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper, in an intensifying crackdown a day after the leaders of the country's main pro-Kurdish party were also jailed.

The arrests added to growing international alarm over the use of a state of emergency implemented in the wake of the failed July 15 coup against critics of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The Cumhuriyet executives and writers, including prominent names in Turkish journalism, will now be held in custody ahead of a trial, the date for which has not been set.

Nine MPs from the opposition pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP), including its co-leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, were also detained pending a trial on terror charges expected to begin Friday.

Istanbul police used tear gas, water cannon and plastic bullets to break up a protest by hundreds of people against the arrest of the deputies, AFP correspondents said.

There were also protests outside Turkey, with large pro-Kurd rallies in France and Germany on Saturday.

A total of 13 staff from the Cumhuriyet (Republic) newspaper were detained in raids on Monday in a swoop that amplified concerns about press freedoms in Turkey.

Among the nine to be held ahead of trial were Cumhuriyet's editor-in-chief Murat Sabuncu, celebrated cartoonist Musa Kart and influential anti-Erdogan columnist Kadri Gursel.

However, columnists Hikmet Cetinkaya and Aydin Engin were released on bail on health grounds and because of their age. Two other suspects from the newspaper's accounting department were released without charge.

The suspects are charged with links to the Kurdish militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the movement of US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen, blamed for the failed coup bid. Gulen denies the accusations.

- 'Worrisome trend' -

Demirtas and Yuksekdag, meanwhile, spent a first night in custody after their arrest on Friday.

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Although their initial hearings took place in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, both were flown to prisons in the west of Turkey -- well away from their strongholds in the east.

After his arrest, Demirtas said in a written statement read by his lawyer that he was the victim of a "civilian coup by the government and the (presidential) palace".

Dogan news agency showed dramatic footage of Demirtas arriving in Edirne province, close to the Greek and Bulgarian borders, aboard a helicopter before being taken to prison in a multi-vehicle convoy.

Their arrest, along with those of the seven other HDP MPs, on various charges of membership of the PKK and making "terror propaganda" for the group, sparked immediate alarm among Turkey's Western allies.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said she was "extremely worried" over the detentions while US State Department spokesman John Kirby said there was a "worrisome trend" of limiting freedom of expression in Turkey.

- IS said to claim attack -

The jailing of the HDP MPs took place hours after a bomb attack in Diyarbakir Friday outside a police headquarters killed 11 people and wounded over 100, according to an updated toll.

The government immediately blamed the PKK for the attack.

But the Amaq news agency, which is linked to the Islamic State jihadist group, said that its fighters were behind the bombing, the SITE Intelligence Group said.

There has so far been no comment from the PKK. But the HDP suggested the bomb attack may have targeted its leaders, saying Demirtas and Yuksekdag were held at the police complex before being taken to court.

With tensions escalating, the Turkish authorities sparked further controversy by slapping restrictions on social media and messaging services including WhatsApp.

Users were still encountering problems loading social media on Saturday and also using Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections which Turks often use to circumvent such restrictions.

Kirby said that in a telephone call Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Turkish foreign ministry number two Umit Yalcin that "restricting the internet undermines confidence in Turkey's democracy and economic prosperity".

In Germany thousands of Kurds -- 15,000 according to the protest's organisers -- marched in the western city of Cologne on Saturday in support of the jailed pro-Kurdish politicians.

Meanwhile more than 2,000 Kurds staged a demonstration in Paris, carrying placards with slogans such as "Turkey bombs, Europe stays silent".
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish police used water cannon and tear gas against crowds of protesters in Istanbul on Saturday, a Reuters cameraman at the scene said, in an attempt to block them from marching to the office of an opposition newspaper whose staff had been arrested. The protest in central Istanbul came hours after Turkish authorities ordered the formal arrest of nine staff members of the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper and detained more pro-Kurdish officials, widening an anti-terrorism probe that has drawn condemnation from the West. On Friday the co-leaders of the pro-Kurdish opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) were also jailed pending trial. Tear gas filled some streets in the Sisli neighborhood of Istanbul, another Reuters reporter near the scene said, while police helicopters were heard buzzing overhead. (Reporting by Osman Orsal, Ebru Tuncay and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Catherine Evans)
The promos of the new show are expected to be out soon.

By India Today Web Desk: TV actress Gurdeep Kohli Punj, best remembered as Dr. Juhi Singh from the famous show Sanjivani, is all set to make her comeback on small screen.

She took a break from work during her pregnancy after ending her stints on the shows Diya Aur Baati Hum, and Dil Ki Baatein Dil Hi Jaane.

Also read: Pratyusha Banerjee update: Parents to demand re-investigation

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Kohli, who was last seen in Star Plus' Diya Aur Baati Hum, will be seen in forthcoming fictional TV series, Sethji. She will be playing the protagonist in the show, which will be aired on Zee TV.

The show has Kohli playing a strong female lead, and that's just the sort of role most actors want to bag these days.



According to a report in Tellychakkar, "Offshore Productions' Sethji will revolve around a village of Maharashtra which is lead by Sethji. She is a strong lady who would lead the village, and the villagers would strictly follow the rules made by her."

The promos of the upcoming show are expected to come out soon.

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A two-time cancer survivor violated his schools dress code when he wore a cancer "survivor" t-shirt.

Tyler Powers, 16, who attends Ridgewood High School in Florida, was told by his teacher to go to the in-school suspension room because he violated the schools new dress code policy that says logos on students t-shirts cant be larger than a quarter.

Read: Teens Found Dead in Suspected Double Suicide a Day After Posting Smiling Selfie

Powers was wearing American Cancer Society Relay for Life survivor t-shirt.

He had three options. He could stay in ISS (in-school suspension), call his parents to bring him a new shirt, or use a shirt that the school gives him until the end of the day.

Powers chose to use a school shirt.

I have purple Ridgewood shirt. I assumed the shirt I grabbed that morning was a school shirt, Powers told InsideEdition.com. I was extremely disappointed in the staff, anyone who has been at the high school for two weeks knows that I am a two-time leukemia survivor.

Powers was first diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia when he was 5 years old and cured at age 7, but later relapsed and was cured again at age 10.

The school district said the teacher who approached Powers was following the rules.

"She never noticed what was on his shirt and he ever mentioned anything about being a cancer survivor," Linda Cobbe, spokesperson for Pasco County Schools told Today.com "If he had said something, she would have listened empathetically and explained to him how the logo size limit applies to all shirts and that they can't discriminate by allowing one student to wear a special shirt."

The new dress code is part of a pilot program aimed at improving academic and discipline problems at the school, including poor test scores, attendance rates and gang activity, according to the school.

Powers said he chose to wear a school t-shirt instead of stay in in-school suspension because hes never had a disciplinary issue on his record.

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Overall Im disappointed. They are saying they want to send a positive message through the dress code but having a good at spirit school and being able to wear what you want, that helps you in school, Powers said.

Read: Girl, 11, Brings Note to School Saying Mom is Being Held Against Her Will

Powers dad, Timothy Powers, said he thinks the school needs to rethink the dress code.

I think they need to reel it back in. The big thing is the dress code they have there is not the standard county dress code, Timothy told InsideEdition.com. It seems to follow the whim of the principal.

Watch: Counselor Talks 14-Year-Old Student Out of Using Gun He Brought to Middle School

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KABUL (Reuters) - The top American general in Afghanistan promised on Saturday an investigation into civilian casualties caused by an air strike in support of Afghan special forces and their U.S. advisors near the northern city of Kunduz this week. More than 30 civilians, half of them children, were killed on Thursday after a strike on the village of Buz Kandahari, just outside Kunduz, that was called in when a special forces raid encountered heavy fire from Taliban militants. General John Nicholson, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said he deeply regretted the loss of innocent lives. "An initial investigation has determined that efforts near Kunduz on November 3 to defend Afghan National Defense and Security Forces likely resulted in civilian casualties," he said in a statement. "We will work with our Afghan partners to investigate and determine the facts and we will work with the Government of Afghanistan to provide assistance." The raid targeted three Taliban leaders in the village, who officials said were planning attacks on Kunduz. It met "significant enemy fire from multiple locations" and called in support from U.S. aircraft. Afghan officials said 33 civilians, including 17 children, appeared to have been killed. The intensity of the fighting, in which three members of the Afghan special forces and two U.S. advisors were also killed, underlined how precarious the situation around Kunduz remains, a month after the insurgents threatened to overrun the city. Defence Ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri said the Taliban militants targeted in the raid were senior figures in the movement who had been targeted in their own houses. "They weren't ordinary people who had gathered. They were leading fighting in Kunduz. They were the commanders of their military commission," he told a news conference, adding that they were evidently willing to use their own family members as human shields. "They hold meetings in their own houses and if there are civilian casualties, it's an achievement for them because they can say the government killed civilians," he said. (Reporting by James Mackenzie and Mirwais Harooni; Editing by Catherine Evans)
By Keith Coffman

DENVER (Reuters) - A federal judge in Colorado blocked enforcement of a 19th-century state law that bans voters from showing a completed ballot to others, the latest in a flurry of mixed legal rulings on whether to restrict election "selfies" on social media.

U.S. District Judge Christine Arguello in Denver issued a preliminary injunction against an 1891 Colorado statute that makes it a misdemeanor offense to reveal the contents of one's ballot.

The ruling came in response to two separate lawsuits by voters challenging enforcement of the law on grounds that it violates their free-speech rights.

"By issuing an injunction in this case, Coloradans get what they are entitled to - clarity on an issue that implicates fundamental constitutional rights," Arguella wrote in her 26-page ruling.

The controversy erupted last week after Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey reminded voters of the law, which he said would "include posting your completed ballot to social media."

However, prosecutors from several jurisdictions, including Denver, filed declaration with the court this week saying they would not enforce the misdemeanor law unless evidence showed that voter intimidation or coercion was involved.

"Based on our review of applicable law and societal changes, including the ubiquity of social media ... the District Attorney's Office would not charge anyone with an offense ... for taking a photograph or video of a completed Colorado mail-in ballot," Denver prosecutor Joseph Morales wrote.

Colorado is among 18 states that have laws restricting the taking of photographs in voting booths or of completed ballots. Courts in other states and federal jurisdictions have issued mixed rulings against enforcing such bans.

Federal judges in New York and California refused this week to block enforcement of state laws barring voters from taking photographs of marked ballots, saying it was too close to next Tuesday's presidential election to issue such injunctions.

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Colorado's attorney general cited the California and New York decisions in defending Colorado's law.

Lawyers for the Colorado voters said the state's mail-in voting system, which allows ballots to be filled out anywhere and then either mailed or dropped off, sets Colorado apart from California and New York, where voters must cast ballots at a polling place.

Last month, a federal court sided with a voter who challenged a Michigan anti-selfie statute as a free-speech violation.

(Editing by Steve Gorman and Jacqueline Wong)
By David Randall

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. presidential election is looking like less of a certainty for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton than it did a month ago, prompting mutual fund managers to brace for more volatility by raising cash and getting their buying lists ready for opportunities.

"The market has been pricing in a Hillary victory, and now with the introduction of the Comey letter, there's a stronger possibility that the base case doesn't happen," said Phil Orlando, portfolio manager of the New York-based Federated Global Allocation (FSTBX.O) fund.

FBI Director James Comey wrote Congress last Friday that more of Clinton's emails would be scrutinized as part of an investigation into Clinton's use of a private email system while she was secretary of state.

The benchmark S&P 500 stock index has shed nearly 2 percent since Comey's letter was made public, and notched its longest losing streak in nearly five years.

Orlando said his fund has been raising cash out of the possibility that the market could fall as much as 10 percent from the all-time high of 2,193.81 it notched Aug. 15.

And Orlando is not the only one. Lipper data released on Thursday showed investors fled U.S. based stock and bond funds in the latest week. Nearly $7.7 billion left taxable bond funds in the seven days through Nov. 2, the largest weekly withdrawals this year by a wide margin, while U.S. equity funds showed $3.4 billion in outflows.

His fund is now neutral to the market, he said, in order to guard against the possibility that either Republican nominee Donald J. Trump wins the election, or that Democrats win both the Senate and the House in addition to the presidency, both of which outcomes would push the market down at least another 5 percent, he said.

The market volatility has also caused anxiety for retail investors, according to Phil Blancato, chief executive of Ladenberg Thalmann Asset Management in New York, who has cautioned against overreacting to the market movements caused by the election.

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"Ive had multiple people call us up to say 'lets raise cash in my account' because of the election," said Blancato.

"Having to talk them off a cliff is becoming almost comical at this point because of the idea that suddenly the world is going to fall into the ocean because Trump wins the election."

Terri Spath, chief investment officer at Sierra Investment Management in Santa Monica, California, has been selling as the market's volatility picks up, shifting more assets into emerging market debt and floating rate loans that should be more "insulated" from the results of the U.S. election, she said.

"We think it's going to be a tight race and we're willing to step out of the way if volatility picks up," she said.

One area in which she has been buying, however, is infrastructure and transportation related stocks that have dropped more than the broad market, she said.

Both candidates have pledged to spend more on rebuilding bridges, tunnels and other links, while the iShares Global Infrastructure ETF (IGF.O), one of the best proxies for global infrastructure stocks, is down 4.3 percent over the last month.

Eric Marshall, a fund manager at Dallas-based Hodges Capital, said he welcomed the sell-off because the U.S. market had been steadily rising since February except for a short fall after the so-called Brexit vote.

He is drawing down his approximately 8 percent stake in cash to buy more healthcare and consumer companies that have fallen over the last week, he said, and is preparing to buy more should either Trump wins or the Democratic party sweeps the election.

"The Brexit blip was the last time when you could have made some money, and we're ready to be opportunistic again," he said.

(Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
ZURICH (Reuters) - UBS <UBSG.S> has completed most of the cost savings at its flagship wealth management division with around 400 positions eliminated, the unit's president, Juerg Zeltner, said in an interview published on Saturday.

"Due to the decline in earnings, we had to intervene on the costs side," Zeltner told Swiss newspaper Finanz und Wirtschaft.

"No-one likes to do that, but the current cost/income ratio of almost 65 percent protects the profit and gives us a better starting position."

There could be more staffing reductions by the end of the year, but "most of it is behind us," Zeltner said.

The Swiss bank will cut several dozen jobs at part of its private bank, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters last week.

Zeltner said the lender would also benefit from its Europabank plan to organize its European Wealth Management into a single entity in one location, freeing up capital while reducing costs and complexity.

(Reporting by John Revill; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
London (AFP) - A former British business minister said Saturday he was seriously misled by the Ministry of Defence over a missiles deal with Saudi Arabia, which is spearheading airstrikes in Yemen.

Vince Cable told The Guardian newspaper that he was given specific assurances about the checks that would be carried out on the use of British-made missiles.

Cable, who was in office from 2010 to 2015 and responsible for authorising export licences, said he blocked a deal for a consignment of laser-guided Paveway IV missiles as he was concerned about civilian deaths.

After being assured that Britain would be involved in decisions about what was being bombed, he signed the licences.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) told The Guardian that it had no military personnel in the "targeting chain" and had offered Cable no such assurances.

"That is categorically contrary to what I was told was going to happen," Cable said.

"If what they are now saying (is) I was not offered oversight on an equivalent level to the Americans, and that this would involve oversight of targeting, then I was seriously misled.

"That is total fabrication because that was very specifically stated.

"My very clear understanding was that the equipment would be supplied to Saudi Arabia on the very clear basis that British personnel would have oversight of what the Saudi air force was doing, on the same basis as the Americans."

The war in Yemen escalated in March 2015 when the Saudi-led coalition launched a military campaign to push back the Shiite Huthi rebels after they seized the capital in 2014 and then advanced on other parts of Yemen.

The coalition has come under pressure over the high civilian death toll from its bombing campaign.

The MoD told The Guardian while it had agreed to "increase oversight of the targeting process" last year, that did not involve oversight of targeting itself.

"British personnel are not involved in carrying out strikes, directing or conducting operations in Yemen or selecting targets and are not involved in the Saudi targeting decision-making process," a spokesman said.

Britain is preparing a draft United Nations Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Yemen and negotiations based on a UN peace roadmap that has been rejected by both sides in the conflict, according to a proposal obtained by AFP on Thursday.
LONDON, Nov 5 (Reuters) - British politicians called for an end to the harsh criticism of judges who dealt a blow to the government's Brexit preparations, with a former attorney general saying the attacks by some fellow lawmakers and newspapers reminded him of fascism.

England's High Court ruled on Thursday that the decision to begin Britain's formal divorce talks with the European Union should be taken by parliament, not the government.

The ruling, which could delay Prime Minister Theresa May's plans to start the Brexit negotiations by the end of March, was met with fury by some lawmakers and British newspapers.

Sajid Javid, a member of May's cabinet, called the ruling an "unacceptable" attempt to "frustrate the will of the British people", while The Daily Mail newspaper said the three judges who handed down the ruling were "enemies of the people".

Other Conservative lawmakers have now pushed back against the criticisms.

"There is something smacking of the fascist state about them (the attacks)," Dominic Grieve, a former British attorney general, was quoted as saying in The Times on Saturday.

"It shows either a total misunderstanding of the UK constitution, which such critics periodically extol - or a deliberate desire to destroy it."

Bob Neill, the Conservative chairman of parliament's justice committee, warned the attacks were "threatening the independence of our judiciary" and had "no place in a civilised land" and he called on May to intervene.

A former justice minister under Labour prime minister Tony Blair, also called on the government to show it had no quarrel with the judges and had total confidence in them.

"The British public continues to have confidence in the independence and quality of judges. But both are undermined by this Brexit-inspired media vitriol," Charles Falconer wrote in The Guardian newspaper.

May told other EU leaders on Friday she believed the court ruling would be overturned and said she would stick to her Brexit timetable.

(Reporting by William Schomberg; Editing by Alexander Smith)
(Recasts with statement by minister)

By William Schomberg

LONDON, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Britain's government defended the independence of the country's judiciary on Saturday after three judges came under a wave of criticism from newspapers and a senior official for dealing a blow to the government's Brexit preparations.

Justice minister Liz Truss, under growing pressure to back the judges, issued a brief statement saying the independence of the judiciary was the "foundation upon which our rule of law is built" and said Britain's legal system was impartial.

England's High Court triggered an angry response from some lawmakers and newspapers on Thursday when it ruled that the decision to begin Britain's formal divorce talks with the European Union needed to be approved by parliament and could not be taken by the government alone.

Sajid Javid, a member of May's cabinet, called the ruling an "unacceptable" attempt to "frustrate the will of the British people", while The Daily Mail newspaper said the three judges who handed down the ruling were "enemies of the people".

The protests prompted other Conservative lawmakers to rally behind the judges.

"There is something smacking of the fascist state about them (the attacks)," Dominic Grieve, a former British attorney general, was quoted as saying in The Times on Saturday.

"It shows either a total misunderstanding of the UK constitution, which such critics periodically extol - or a deliberate desire to destroy it."

Bob Neill, the Conservative chairman of parliament's justice committee, said the attacks were "threatening the independence of our judiciary" and had "no place in a civilised land."

A group representing senior lawyers in England and Wales, the Bar Council, urged Truss earlier on Saturday to condemn the "unjustified attacks" as a matter of urgency.

"A strong independent judiciary is essential to a functioning democracy and to upholding the rule of law," the Council said.

Stephen Glover, a columnist for the Daily Mail, stood by the newspaper's coverage of the court ruling and said he did not think judges would be cowed by the criticism of their decision.

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"To imagine that this has had some terrible, devastating effect on British society is literally crazy," he told the BBC.

May told other EU leaders on Friday she believed the court ruling would be overturned and said she would stick to her Brexit timetable.

(Editing by Catherine Evans and Robin Pomeroy)
Jerusalem (AFP) - UN Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov said Saturday that residents of the Gaza strip need jobs and hope more than a harbour and airport, a reference to recent comments by Israel's defence minister.

In an October interview with Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds, Israel's hardline defence minister Avigdor Lieberman said that another war with Palestinian militants in Gaza would lead to their complete destruction.

He suggested however that if Gaza's Hamas rulers ceased hostilities "we will be the first to invest in a port, an airport and industrial areas."

In remarks broadcast Saturday by Israeli public radio, Mladenov said Gaza, where thousands of homes were destroyed or damaged in a 2014 war with Israel, said residents in the enclave had more pressing concerns.

"Let's resolve the real problems that we have today. People live in desperate conditions in Gaza," he said.

"Yes, it's important to have an airport and a seaport in Gaza but I don't want us to be distracted by that from resolving the real issues that we face today."

The World Bank said in a September report that just 10.7 percent of the 11,000 houses that were totally destroyed in 2014 had so far been rebuilt and about 50 percent of partially and severely damaged houses are still awaiting repair.

The unemployment rate in the coastal territory is over 40 percent, with close to two thirds of young people out of work.

"People have lost hope," Mladenov said. "Life is gone and this is what makes Gaza more dangerous and more explosive."

But Mladenov added that he did not see Gaza and Israel heading for another war -- for now.

"I think there's an understanding everywhere; in the international community, in Israel and in Gaza itself, that it is in nobody's interest right now to sleepwalk into another conflict," the envoy said.
Information and Broadcasting Minister Venkaiah Naidu today said that action against NDTV ban was taken in the interest of the nation's safety and security.

By Press Trust of India: Denouncing references to the Emergency in the context of the one-day ban on NDTV India channel, Information and Broadcasting minister Venkaiah Naidu today said the action against the Hindi news channel was taken in the interest of the "country's safety and security".

Addressing a press conference, he said the NDA government has the highest regard for freedom of media and politicisation of such issues will only affect the safety and security of the country.

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He also slammed Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi for "talking about the dark days of Emergency". "I was surprised, aghast. Some people talked of Emergency-like situation. The action was taken in the interest of the countrys safety and security", he said.

Also read: NDTV India blackout: Opposition leaders, top editors demand withdrawal of ban



"I do not know how they are saying this is the first time. I read in a newspaper today that it is first time (that Government has issued a ban on a television channel). Shall I give the list of how many times channels were ordered to go off air?", he asked. Listing out the names of some of the channels that were banned in the past, he said, "AXN was banned for two months. FTV was banned for two months. Enter10 for one day. ABN AndhraJyoti seven days. Al Jazeera was banned for five days for showing wrong map of India.

BAN ON CHANNELS NOT NEW



"These are all done earlier. Now they are saying it is done for the first time, murder of democracy, Emergency reminiscent and all", he noted. "People know what is good and what is bad and people understand what is required in the larger interest of the country. That is why I saw that people on social media supported the Governments stand except some people who are not well informed", he said. "Politicisation of such issues will affect the safety and security of the country", Naidu, who is here to attend a conference organised by Builders Association of India, said.

Also read: Mumbai Press Club condemns NDTV India blackout order over Pathankot attack coverage



Maintaining that the Government was duty bound to act on such issues and does not require to approach the courts, he said, "I have to answer tomorrow in Parliament. I have to answer people tomorrow."

"Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi is talking about dark days of Emergency. Do you know what is Emergency? Some people who were in the Congress at that time and now in different political parties also joined the chorus now because it has become a fashion. They just want to use each and every occasion to criticise the government and take the name of the Prime Minister for each and everything", he said.

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Also read: NDTV India banned: Arvind Kejriwal asks other channels to go off air in solidarity



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JUBA (Reuters) - The United Nations voiced concern on Friday for the safety of a top aide to South Sudanese former vice president Riek Machar after he was extradited to his homeland from Kenya, where he had been granted refugee status. South Sudan's 2015 peace accord unravelled three months ago when forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and to estranged ex-deputy Machar battled each other on the streets of Juba for several days. Machar subsequently fled South Sudan and has since been replaced as vice president although he has exhorted his supporters to reorganise for an armed struggle. Machar's spokesman James Gatdet Dak also fled the country, finding sanctuary in Kenya, but police collected him from his Nairobi home on Wednesday and put him on a flight to South Sudan's capital Juba the next day, officials said. "He was deported from Nairobi by the Kenyan authorities and received by the South Sudanese government authorities, presidential spokesman, Ateny Wek Ateny told Radio Tamazuj, a South Sudanese radio station based abroad. Ateny could not be reached by Reuters for clarification of Gatdek Dak's current status. A Kenyan government source confirmed Gatdet Dak's extradition but did not explain the legal grounds for it. The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said it was "deeply concerned about the well-being" of Gatdek Dak and said his extradition appeared to violate his right to protection under the international refugee convention. UNHCR said it had unsuccessfully urged Kenyan authorities not to extradite Gatdet Dak. Kenya has taken part in African Union mediation to end the South Sudanese conflict and President Uhuru Kenyatta recently visited Juba for talks with Kiir. Amnesty International called Gatdek Dak's repatriation a "brazen and dangerous attack on refugee rights" and said he now faced a "grave risk of torture and other ill-treatment." (Reporting by Denis Dumo; writing by Elias Biryabarema; editing by Mark Heinrich)
The 2016 presidential election has been attracting wall-to-wall coverage in the US as the race has become increasingly narrow ahead of 8 November.

But what is the view of the contest for the White House around the world? Sky News' team of correspondents take a look:

:: Israel

Alex Rossi, Middle East Correspondent

It is at the moment the big question in the holy city of Jerusalem - "What will America's next president mean for Israel?"

The relationship with the US has been strained over the last eight years. President Barack Obama and Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu have had major public spats at times.

Disputes over the handling of Iran, the treatment of the Palestinians and settlement building in the occupied territories made for great headlines and left the world with the impression that there was no love lost between the two men.

So will the tensions persist?

US policy towards Israel has historically transcended whoever's feet are under the desk in the Oval Office - it is strategy not tactics, remember.

Shared interests and values still create a common bond but the US is changing - and so too is Israel.

The American Jewish community is more divided than ever before on Israel and its policies towards peace and the Palestinians.

Israel's coalition government has been described as the most right wing in history and the expansion of the settlements - in terms of population density - means there are now more than half a million Israelis living across the 'Green Line' in the West Bank.

For the US, a country steeped in constitutional liberalism, these issues could drive a wedge between the two countries.

:: India and Pakistan

Neville Lazarus, India Reporter

Never before has the US election been watched so carefully here in New Delhi and Islamabad.

Whoever wins will have to hit the ground running as hostilities between the two nuclear-armed neighbours are running ever so high.

During his campaign Donald Trump has equated the relations between the two countries as a "very, very hot tinderbox".

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Hillary Clinton is concerned about Pakistan running full speed to develop tactical nuclear weapons in their continuing hostility with India.

Both acknowledge the gravity of the situation.

The peace process between the two countries is almost broken, and infiltration and subsequent attacks by militants on security forces have led to military strikes.

There are near-daily ceasefire violations across borders killing dozens as both governments refuse to engage in talks.

Over the last few years India has tilted towards Washington while Pakistan has hedged its bets with China for economic and military ties.

Delhi fondly remembers the Clintons when they began engaging with India in the mid 1990s, but it has been the Republican Party that India has had close and substantial co-operation with, particularly on nuclear issues, trade and security.

:: China

Katie Stallard, Asia Correspondent

A recent editorial in China's Global Times newspaper summed up the choice now before American voters as: "Republican Donald Trump is seen as an unreliable lunatic, while Democrat Hillary Clinton is believed to be a liar that can't be trusted."

Viewed from China, this election is not just about the two candidates going up against each other, but the very system of Western democratic politics they represent.

An earlier edition pointed out that "Mussolini and Hitler came to power through elections", noting comparisons with Mr Trump. The subtext is not subtle.

The further this election cycle descends into scandal and acrimony, the more citizens here are told to be grateful for the comparative stability of one-party rule.

It is excellent public relations for authoritarian rulers everywhere.

As to who China's leadership actually wants to win, there is certainly no love lost with Mrs Clinton who they see as hectoring on human rights and anti-China - but Mr Trump is unpredictable.

And fun though this whole spectacle has been, ultimately the Communist Party values stability above all else.

:: South East Asia

Tom Rayner, Foreign Correspondent

In the Asia-Pacific region, political leaders play a game of allegiance and the two candidates in the US election are likely to bring very different tactics to the table.

It is a diplomatic arms race - competing with expansionist China to woo other countries in the region. The more on side, the better.

The new player will face immediate decisions, not least how to deal with the tub-thumping anti-Americanism of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte.

Mr Obama has refused to meet Mr Duterte, and issued withering statements, but has refused to be drawn into a major scrap with a historical ally.

Mrs Clinton would probably do the same. But it seems deeply unlikely such tolerance would be afforded to Mr Duterte by Mr Trump. And that is where things get interesting.

A long-standing characteristic of US policy in Asia-Pacific has been tolerance towards allies, allowing them to mouth off from time-to-time, to bite the hand that feeds them.

It has never been about being friends for the sake of it - the bottom line is maintaining better overall relations with those individual countries than the relations they have with the Chinese.

:: Europe

Mark Stone, Europe Correspondent

All but one of the EU member countries have signalled, openly or otherwise, their desire for a win for Mrs Clinton. Only Hungary's right-wing populist Viktor Orban has endorsed Mr Trump.

Most main opposition parties in Europe also support Mrs Clinton.

If she wins the White House, it would represent a degree of continuity for the trans-Atlantic relationship. She is a known quantity. She may be more interventionist than Mr Obama, but that presents manageable, established challenges that Europe is used to.

Mr Trump represents the unknown. European governments have paid closer attention to him as the campaign has progressed.

In July he put conditions on US military support for NATO allies. With an increasingly assertive Russia on Europe's eastern frontier, this could become problematic quickly.

American support for the European project has, subtly, been key over the past decades, encouraging co-operation.

A Trump presidency, with its domestic, nationalist priorities, could further damage an already wounded European Union.

Lots of questions surround the prospect of Mr Trump winning the election, because the truth is Europe is not sure what to expect.

:: Canada

Amanda Walker, US Correspondent

A gesture of sympathy and encouragement - "America, you guys are already great" - referenced the ubiquitous Trump campaign mantra.

Canada is used to being in the shadow of her big brash sister - this message put forward by an ad agency was like putting a hand on her shoulder and saying "you'll get through this".

Lots of Americans joke about "moving to Canada" if Donald Trump wins.

Judith Timson writes a weekly column in the Toronto Star. She said: "It's the number one topic of conversation here and two words are being used - anxiety and fascination.

"It's an amazing spectacle but there's also high anxiety about who's moving in next door - is it the bigot and the bully or is it a woman who's going to make history?"

The world is watching this unprecedented election but geography makes the Canadian perspective more intense.

Mr Trump says the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is the worst deal ever, while Mrs Clinton has more recently been trying to distance herself from the US, Canada and Mexico agreement she once supported.

The rise of protectionism could be a challenge for Canada.

:: Africa

Alex Crawford, Special Correspondent

The self-appointed police officer of world democracy appears to be hovering remarkably close to electing a leader who does not seem to be much of an advocate.

Decades of having a metaphorical American finger wagging at African leaders who pay scant regard to democratic principles may just be about to come to an end.

A President Trump seems to promise an authoritarian leadership bent on protectionism and isolationism with little sympathy for those who are different to him or who are not American.

We can certainly fairly assume a President Trump may be against handing out dollops of aid or even continuing liberal free trade agreements.

On the other hand, Africa knows much more what it is getting if Mrs Clinton moves into the White House.

As First Lady and a former US Secretary of State, she has left a big Clinton footprint over many parts of Africa, particularly South Africa.

But there are many too who doubt her and America's sincerity and who feel she and the Obama administration could and should have done much more for Africa.

:: Trump vs Clinton on key issues for America

:: What time the polls close and when to expect a result

:: The states that will decide the outcome

:: The Electoral College and how you win a Presidential election

:: Analysis: How Donald Trump's bid is similar to Brexit campaign
The statute of John Harvard at Harvard University. Source: Harvard University/Wikimedia

By Morgan Housel, Yahoo Finance Contributor

One of the most persistent fallacies is the reflexive association of wealth with wisdom, investor Ed Borgato tweeted this week.

Another is the association between intelligence and good decisions.

Not only are they two separate things, but there are instances where high intelligence prevents people from making better decisions.

Here are two Ive seen.

1. Intelligence increases the ability to fool yourself with elaborate stories about why something happened.

Average people can often learn faster than the super-intelligent, because the super-intelligent try to cram the real world into the theories theyve been taught, while average folks are better at accepting the real world at face value.

Heres the thing: We judge others based solely on their actions, but when judging ourselves we have an internal dialogue that justifies our mistakes and bad decisions.

If youre a fund manager who earned terrible returns, I may be able to instantly point out what went wrong: Buying during a bubble, selling during a panic, not enough diversification, whatever.

But if Im a fund manager who earns terrible returns, I can tell myself a story justifying my decisions and explaining the outcome. The Fed distorted the economy I might say, or Look at my model. Its the market thats wrong!

Two things come from this.

One, we think of ourselves as less flawed than other people, because we rarely hear the internal justifications other people have for their mistakes, but were keenly aware of our own.

Two, the smarter and more creative we are, the more elaborate stories we can tell ourselves to justify our poor decisions.

A normal person could never predict 19 of the last two bear markets and still consider themselves a market oracle. You need an advanced degree and an Excel model with 100 tabs to justify that kind of mental gymnastics. A normal person isnt capable of leveraging their portfolio 100-to-1, losing everything when the market sneezes, and blaming it on a 25-sigma event. You need a PhD in physics to convince yourself of that.

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When youre blessed with intelligence youre also cursed with the ability to use it to concoct intricate  and often false  stories about why things happened. Especially stories justifying why you, Mr. Smartypants, made a mistake.

2. Intelligence pushes you toward the idea that complex problems require complex solutions.

Try spending a quarter million dollars on a PhD program and then devoting your career to telling people that you cant predict the economy, or that they should just buy index funds. It must be hard. You worked hard and spent a fortune learning something complex, and you want to use what you were taught.

But some of the most complex problems require the simplest solutions, since simple solutions are the ones that navigate around  rather than trying to steer through  parts of a problem that are fundamentally unknowable. The brilliance of a dollar cost averaging strategy is not that it knows what the market will do next. Its that it doesnt need to know for it to work.

Robert Weinberg, a brilliant MIT cancer researcher, once explained why people like himself arent interested in simple solutions, even when theyre effective:

Persuading somebody to quit smoking is a psychological exercise. It has nothing to do with molecules and genes and cells, and so people like me are essentially uninterested in it  in spite of the fact that stopping people from smoking will have vastly more effect on cancer mortality than anything I could hope to do in my own lifetime.

The irony of some of our biggest problems is that they have solutions too simple for the people working on them to find intellectually stimulating. The same is true for companies that can innovate like geniuses but consider brand, UX, and marketing too simpleminded to care about.

Even when a problem requires a complex solution, the ability to communicate it in simple terms is indispensable to getting people to take you seriously. Albert Einstein, Warren Buffett, and Steve Jobs are all brilliant, but a lot of people are brilliant. What made them famous is their ability to distill complexity into something elegant and simple enough for average people to understand, or even use.

Sometimes I wonder: How many academics have discovered something amazing, but written it in a paper thats so dense and complex that no one else can understand it?

A lot, I imagine.

Read more from Morgan Housel here.
A South Carolina woman who was found chained like a dog in a metal storage container on Thursday, after being missing for two months, told police she saw her captor shoot her boyfriend, according to reports.

Kala Brown, 30, whod been missing along with her 32-year-old boyfriend, Charlie Carver, since the end of August, made the statement after police announced an unidentified body had been found on the same 100-acre property where Brown was imprisoned.

Read: Hundreds Mourn Victoria Martens, 10-Year-Old Brutally Murdered as Mom Allegedly Watched

Registered sex offender Todd Kohlhepp, the owner of the property, was arrested on Thursday morning and charged with kidnapping.

At a bond hearing for Kohlhepp on Friday afternoon, 7th Circuit Solicitor Barry Barnette said Brown told authorities that on August 31st, she and her boyfriend, David "Charlie" Carver, went to Kohlhepp's property where she witnessed Kohlhepp shoot Carver, according to NBCNews.

Barnette also said he is confident there will be a murder warrant in connection with the case.

Authorities discovered multiple guns and ammo on the property as well, according to reports.

Kohlhepp, who was convicted of raping a 14-year-old at gun point when he was 15, allegedly chained Brown by the neck and ankle in the container and fed her regularly.

Police found Brown after acting on a tip they received, according to reports. When they arrived to the property, they heard banging and then discovered Brown trapped inside a container.

Brown reportedly told officials that there may be four bodies on the property.

Read: Mom Allegedly Kills 17-Month-Old Son, Texts Video of Child's Lifeless Body to Father: Cops

On Friday Browns family released a statement on her behalf:

While Kala is doing well physically, emotionally she's having good moments and bad moments, the family said. She's requesting privacy at this time and will make an official statement as soon as the authorities give her permission to do so. Right now Kala needs time to process and begin to cope with the events that have occurred. She thanks everyone for their love and support.

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Watch: Wife of Orlando Shooter Says She Was 'Unaware' of Husband's Intentions

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By Nia Williams CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Woodfibre LNG will start building British Columbia's first liquefied natural gas processing and export terminal in 2017, it said on Friday, a project that would grant Canada a long-awaited opportunity to enter the global market. The facility near Squamish, north of Vancouver, will export 2.1 million tonnes a year once it is operational in 2020, according to a company statement. However, Woodfibre is relatively small compared to other proposed LNG projects in the province and will have little impact on weak Canadian natural gas prices, said Samir Kayande, a director at research group RS Energy. More than a dozen LNG projects have been proposed for British Columbia, but the global slump in energy prices has undermined their feasibility and delayed investment. In September, Canada approved a proposed C$36 billion, 12-million-tonne-a-year LNG project by Petroliam Nasional Berhad. But Petronas, as the Malaysian state-owned oil company is known, has yet to give the final go-ahead, and Canadian aboriginal and environmental groups have filed lawsuits to stop it. Privately held Woodfibre said its Singaporean parent authorized funds for the facility after British Columbia offered a competitive electricity rate for LNG projects. Woodfibre, based in Vancouver, is a subsidiary of Pacific Oil & Gas Ltd, which is part of the Singapore-based RGE Group of companies. Byng Giraud, country manager for Woodfibre, said in a statement the cheaper rates were what allowed the "go forward" decision to happen. The plant will be powered using electricity rather than natural gas. The British Columbia government, which is keen to develop an LNG industry, welcomed the green light for the C$1.6 billion project and said it would be one of the largest private sector investments in the southern part of the province. Gas for the facility will come from northeastern British Columbia via Spectra Energy and Fortis Inc-owned pipelines. Environmental group the Pembina Institute warned the project would make it harder for British Columbia to meet its 2050 carbon emissions targets. Squamish Mayor Patricia Heintzman said the announcement was somewhat "jumping the gun" as there are 25 environmental conditions put forward by the Squamish First Nations still being worked out. Squamish Chief Ian Campbell could not be immediately reached for comment. Woodfibre has legally committed to and will continue to work to meet those obligations, said company spokeswoman Jennifer Siddon. (Reporting by Nia Williams in Calgary; Additional reporting by Catherine Ngai in Vancouver; Editing by James Dalgleish)
Hershey (United States) (AFP) - Pennsylvania's working-class conservatives see Donald Trump as a savior who can bring back jobs and revolutionize Washington. But should he lose, there is genuine concern about the Republican Party, and whether it can even survive.

The men and women who populate the industrial towns of Pennsylvania and other Rust Belt states were derided by Barack Obama in 2008 as "bitter" Americans who "cling to guns or religion."

Eight years later, with the White House on the line, the slight remains fresh for many in rural parts of the state, who feel increasingly isolated from the decisions made in Washington.

Trump is the provocative real estate mogul who turned politics on its head with an antagonistic, 18-month presidential campaign that bested 16 fellow Republican challengers.

In doing so he left a yawning chasm between the Republican leaders and the millions who embraced a grass-roots movement.

Should Trump win on November 8 the party will be his -- a stunning seizure of political power that could change the course of American conservatism for decades.

If he loses, Republicans have major rebuilding and healing ahead.

Some Trump supporters openly ponder the Grand Old Party's demise, and believe that many who were swept up in support for the former reality TV star could abandon the party.

"I doubt that they'll go back into the fold," Ken Bleistein, 66, told AFP at a crowded Trump rally Friday in Hershey, Pennsylvania, four days before Election Day.

The retiree said he "wouldn't be surprised" if conservative Trump supporters -- who resent leaders like House Speaker Paul Ryan for turning their backs on the controversial nominee -- flee as the party seeks to reassert control over a restive flock.

Pennsylvanians may feel particularly aggrieved. The state has shed manufacturing jobs, and its unemployment rate is higher than the national average.

The state has not voted Republican in a presidential race since 1988. Its rural territory is overwhelmingly conservative, but the heavily Democratic metropolis of Philadelphia has strength in numbers.

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Of the dozen voters interviewed in Hershey, all expressed varying degrees of outrage at the Republican Party for refusing to fully endorse Trump, or for failing to follow through on promises like repealing Obamacare once the they gained control of Congress.

- 'Revolution!' -

"They've moved to the middle, they've compromised, and that's really got a lot of conservative people into a tizzy," Roger Springer said at the aptly named American Dream Diner in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's capital.

"I feel we need to go back to our principles and stick up for what we believe is right," said Springer, who runs a potato growers' cooperative. He believes Trump is the man to do that.

The 67-year-old Springer believes that calls for revolution and pitchfork demonstrations by infuriated conservatives are blown out of proportion.

"But there definitely will be ramifications for the party," he said.

"There's gonna be a revolution!" insisted drywall finisher Wayne Hess, 56, as he talked with other Trump supporters in Hershey.

But he walked back his rallying cry, stressing that the party would maintain cohesion.

"If you're Republican you still stick with Republican," he said.

"I'm talking about taking the country back. Whatever it takes. Voting doesn't work," he said. He believes that the revolution he predicts "will be rallies and uproar."

Military veteran Nathaniel Valentin, 20, also believed change was coming, but not through armed insurrection.

Valentin said he'd like to see change through the ballot box.

"It's really going to begin with us," he said. "Either they're going to push it away and say this is usurpation, this is tyrannical, or we're going to go along with it."

- Party healing? -

Outraged, and with a tenuous attachment to traditional conservative principles, several Republicans have spoken openly about leaving the party over the leadership's failure to embrace Trump.

One Trump supporter, Attorney Jerry Tarud, 50, doesn't see a mass exodus coming.

"There's nothing else out there," he said succinctly.

But a collective sense of loss and victimhood could fuel Trump supporters into splintering from the party and damage prospects of future presidential victories, said Saladin Ambar, chair of the political science department at Lehigh University.

"It may not die and go away like the Whigs," he said, referring to the short lived 19th century party.

"But it could die as a relevant party in terms of winning national elections."

Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway refused to consider defeat. She told AFP that the candidate has "done his job in unifying the party" far more than Republicans who have been reluctant to support him.

As for conservatives thinking of quitting the GOP: "They ought not to do that," Conway said. "There is not a comfortable place for them in the Democratic Party."

Meanwhile, Logan Sechrist, a 27-year-old welder-fabricator from Lebanon Pennsylvania, is sick of Republican leaders only pretending to understand the struggles of everyday Americans.

"As middle-class Americans we're sitting here getting screwed day in and day out," he said.

If Trump loses, Sechrist expressed worry about a post-election return to the status quo in Washington.

"I guess we go back to getting screwed."
Meet Wang Dashun, the man who is reshaping our views on age barriers.

By India Today Web Desk: Wang Deshun--an 80-year-old man from China--is causing a stir, and for all the right reasons.

The man being called "China's hottest grandpa" first drew international attention last year when he walked topless with a chiseled body and a well-groomed mane, during a runway show at China Fashion Week.

Picture courtesy: Instagram/the_fashion_elder

Also read: Want to live till you're 117? The world's oldest lady tells you how



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Deshun, a Chinese actor and artist, started his modelling career at the age of 79. Since then, he has become a role model for people as he's remarkably reshaping the idea of being old.

"One way to tell if you're old or not is to ask yourself, 'Do you dare try something you've never done before?' " he told The New York Times.

Picture courtesy: Instagram/bodywellusa

"Nature determines age, but you determine your state of mind," he said.

Wang Deshun is confronting the age barrier like no other man on earth. Picture Courtesy: Twitter/camparired Wang Deshun is confronting the age barrier like no other man on earth. Picture Courtesy: Twitter/camparired

Wang Deshun, a father of two children and a grandfather of a 2-year-old, has received accolades for staying fit and challenging himself to embrace the new, at a ripe age of 80. So after cranking up the techno at his 80th birthday party, he wants to go parachuting next!

If you believed age can determine your dreams, nothing can shatter that idea better than this 80-year old man.

Take a closer look at him with this video:







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By Letitia Stein (Reuters) - A New York City police sergeant wounded during a shootout in the Bronx has been released from the hospital, Jacobi Medical Center said on Saturday, a day after a second officer was fatally shot during the exchange of gunfire. Sergeant Emmanuel Kwo had been hospitalized after being shot in the leg. Sergeant Paul Tuozzolo, a 19-year veteran of the force, was pronounced dead at the hospital. The suspect, 35-year-old Manuel Rosales, was also killed. He opened fire on police with a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun as the officers responded to a call that he had broken into a nearby apartment armed with a gun. The New York Police Department was continuing to investigate on Saturday. The shootout came after Rosales had forced his way into the home of his 29-year-old estranged wife, while their 3-year-old son was present, New York City Police Commissioner James O'Neill told reporters. Another child, 13, and a woman, 50, were also at the home. Rosales had 17 prior arrests in Suffolk County on New York's Long Island, police said. Court records indicate that he was due to appear in court there on November 16. Newsday reported that a 35-year-old with his name faced aggravated harassment and second-degree criminal contempt of court charges in domestic violence court. Tuozzolo became the first New York City police officer killed while on duty since October 2015. "As we mourn the loss of Sgt. Tuozzolo we'd like to thank community members, clergy and law enforcement partners for the outpouring of support," the New York Police Department said on Twitter on Saturday. (Reporting by Letitia Stein in Tampa, Fla., Editing by Franklin Paul)
You may have seen the word Balayage banded about on social media in connection to hair, but not actually know what it is. Its the popular hair colouring technique of the moment and I went to get it done at the Rainbow Room International salon on Glasgows George Square.

Balayage roughly means to sweep in French and this hair technique involves your hair stylist randomly painting different colour tones directly onto your hair in order to achieve a more un-done, textured look. It basically mimics how your hair would be naturally lightened on holiday in the sun, so it has a much more natural effect than stark, linear foil highlights. You also dont notice regrowth lines nearly as much with Balayage compared to foil highlights.

I started off with dark brown hair that was one solid block of colour, so first of all, my stylist Eilidh had to cover my roots again with dark brown, then bleach random sections of my hair with foils to lighten it. You need the heat from foils to get a really light shade when starting with dark hair, so thats why my stylist had to start with this instead of going right into the Balayage technique. After the foils I now had a mixture of brown and blonde sections.

She then washed this out, applied a deep conditioning mask and then went off to mix up some bowls of hair dye in a few different tones of blonde and light brown. She then painted these onto different strands of my hair freehand (the Balayage step).

When my hair was blow dried and curled with tongs I had hair with so much depth and dimension to it. I couldnt believe how natural and pretty it looked. I am now a Balyage devotee and I dont think Ill ever get anything else done to my hair again. I love having dark roots, but also being able to be partly blonde too. The whole process of doing my hair took around three hours, but it was definitely worth it, and maintaining it at future visits wont take nearly as long.

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This YouTuber recreated Beyonces CMA gown with breakfast cereal and we are LOLing

A few days ago, the internet went wild when rumors started flying that Beyonce was going to perform at the Country Music Awards. Her performance with the Dixie Chicks was on fire and Beyonces CMA gown was fierce as heck too, but this YouTuber who is famous for recreating pop stars iconic outfits, replicated Beys very own CMA gown using cereal and marshmallows. It may be the best thing weve seen come from the 2016 CMAs.

Queen Bey slayed not only her performance, but the gown was everything we want and TBH, expect, to see from Beyonce. It was elegant, and covered in beautiful details like flowers and lace. Mina Gerges, a YouTuber from Toronto, Canada, had his own take on her gown and were seriously dying of LOLs.

Heres Beys:

A photo posted by Beyonce (@beyonce) on Nov 2, 2016 at 9:09pm PDT

And heres Gerges food-centric take:

A photo posted by Mina (@keepingupwithmina) on Nov 4, 2016 at 12:12pm PDT

Gerges, who chats about celebrities, fashion and everything else thats fun in the world on his YouTube channel, Its Mina Gerges, recreates pop fashion for his social media followers this CMA gown is literal perfection.

At first glance, he did a really great job at nailing the power and personality of Beys pose from head to toe, plus his dress looks amaze.

But, when you take a closer look at his gown, youll see one major difference: his looks good enough to eat.

So I made this Beyonce dress out of marshmallows and fruit loops pic.twitter.com/OrOPLTycZq  mina (@ItsMinaGerges) November 4, 2016

So I made this #Beyonce dress out of marshmallows and Fruit Loops , Gerges captioned his social share. Never felt more fierce in my LIFE! 

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This isnt the first time hes been able to totally nail celebrity fashion  hes put his own take on other celebrity gowns in the past.

Katy Perry at the Met Gala.

A photo posted by Mina (@keepingupwithmina) on May 3, 2016 at 1:57pm PDT

Lady Gagas iconic meat dress was no match for his creativity.

I made #LadyGaga's Iconic meat dress out of play doh because the #MTV #VMA's tonight Tag me in your fav looks tonight and I might remake it #MTVVMA #VMA2015 A photo posted by Mina (@keepingupwithmina) on Aug 30, 2015 at 3:35pm PDT

And he even killed another Beyonce look  her Met Gala gown and that swoon-worthy pony.

A photo posted by Mina (@keepingupwithmina) on May 6, 2015 at 9:41am PDT

Seriously, were LOLing in the best way because were both jealous he can make this look so effortless, and delicious, too.

The post This YouTuber recreated Beyonces CMA gown with breakfast cereal and we are LOLing appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Zipcar is making it easier for you to get to your polling place on November 8th

Countless people run into a major problem on Election Day  they dont have access to affordable transportation. In an effort to combat the issue, Zipcar is offering free rentals to its subscribers on November 8th so voters can get to their polling places and cast their ballots in this historic election.

The car rental service is making over 7,000 cars available to its members from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. local time on Election Day. In a statement released on Friday, Zipcars vice president of marketing Andrew Daley said:

At Zipcar, we know our community of Zipsters are actively engaged in civic affairs and passionate about issues, but may also need quick and easy access to transportation in order to vote. Regardless of political affiliation or sentiment, we believe that voting is a civic duty, and we want to ensure that access to transportation isnt a barrier to casting a ballot.

We're just gonna leave this here. November 8  6pm-10pm #DRIVEtheVOTE #USA A photo posted by Zipcar (@zipcar) on Nov 3, 2016 at 3:39pm PDT

The company encourages everyone to carpool with family and friends so as many people as possible make it to the polls.

Zipcars are available in hundreds of towns and cities across America, including over 500 college campuses  so the effects of the #DRIVETheVOTE initiative will be far-reaching.

Although many companies stay out of politics altogether, some are sacrificing sales this year in order to encourage people to vote. For example, Patagonia is shutting down all retail and online sales and urging customers to cast their ballots for politicians who will fight against climate change.

This is arguably the most important election in history, so its great to see companies like Zipcar provide their customers with a way to make their voices heard.

The post Zipcar is making it easier for you to get to your polling place on November 8th appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Obamas speech in North Carolina is totally giving us chills, but in a good way

Somehow, this election is finally nearing its end. But there is still work to be done! And President Obama just visited North Carolina to campaign for Hillary Clinton, and, wow  he had so many amazing things to say. During his visit to North Carolina, Obama talked a Trump presidency and urged not just Democrats, but everyone, to really pay attention this election season. And if theres one person whose advice well definitely take into consideration this election, its Barack Obama.

See the speech for yourself!

All in all, it was an empowering and SUPER moving speech.

We dont win this election, potentially, if we dont win North Carolina.

Like, whoa. This was a big deal type of speech.

If you disrespect women before you are elected president, you will disrespect women when youre in office. Imagine what youll do when you actually have the power to violate the Constitution along those lines?

He explained,

I hate to put a little pressure on you, but the fate of the republic rests on your shoulders. The fate of the world is teetering.

On one hand, yeah, its a lot of pressure. But, hearing that, we feel more empowered than ever. Like, yes, we can do something to change the state of our country.

It may not change everything, and there are so many other ways (beyond voting!) that we can continue to make a difference. But we have a vote, so if we can, why not use it?!

The post Obamas speech in North Carolina is totally giving us chills, but in a good way appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Between 3 million and 5 million years ago, a series of volcanic eruptions formed the Galapagos archipelago, a chain of 19 islands and dozens of islets. The area is still volcanically active, and the islands endure a constant cycle of uplift and erosion. Fresh eruptions are still seen.

Located in the Pacific Ocean roughly 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, the Galapagos Islands existed mostly untouched for millions of years as an all-star cast of plants and animals found their way there and thrived. In the 1800s, humans started arriving, including pirates and explorers. The most famous early visitor was Charles Darwin, a young naturalist who spent 19 days studying the flora and fauna of the Galapagos in 1835. In 1859, Darwins On the Origin of Species was published, which introduced his theory of evolutionand the Galapagos Islandsto the world.

The fame of these islands has steadily grown since then. The archipelago became Ecuadors first national park in 1959, and the Galapagos were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978. Today, more than 200,000 people visit the Galapagos every year to see the animals and landscapes that are unique to this region.

As amazing as you think the Galapagos Islands will be, they routinely exceed expectations. Its a place where lizards swim, birds walk, and humans, for once, dont take center stage.

How to Get There: Land or Sea?

The first decision you have to make about visiting the Galapagos Islands is also the most difficult. Do you want to be based in a hotel on one of the three inhabited islands, exploring other islands and areas via day-trip boat rides? Or do you want to be based on a live-aboard boat, which provides your accommodation and your mode of travel from island to island?

There are three main differences to consider when choosing between land and sea.

Cost: A trip to the Galapagos Islands is pricey. However, its easier to craft a less expensive Galapagos experience if you choose to be land-based. These days, there are hotels and restaurants at many price points on San Cristobal Island, Santa Cruz Island, and (to a much lesser extent), Isabela and Floreana islands. Live-aboard boats come in a range of price points, too; however, all but the most bare-bones boats still add up to more than a land-based vacation.

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Cruise Ships, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

Time management: If you choose a land-based vacation, you will spend a lot of your time in the Galapagos getting from your hotel, onto a day-trip boat, out to the days destination, then back to your hotel. On the other hand, travelers on live-aboard boats sleep in cabins on the boat, which does most of the navigation from place to place during the night. This means passengers wake up in a new destination ready for a full day of exploration.

Access: Because land-based explorations are limited to the five islands that can be reached in one day, land-based travelers will never be able to visit the more distant islands that boat-based itineraries include.

Bottom line: Unless youre terrified of boats, suffer from seasickness, or hate the idea of being on a boat for a week, book a cruise. Youll waste less time running back and forth, and youll ensure that you will see as many distinct areas of the Galapagos Islands as possible.

Scuba divers who want to focus on underwater adventures have a few options in the Galapagos Islands as well. The Galapagos Sky, Galapagos Aggressor III, Humboldt Explorer, Galapagos Master, and Nortada are live-aboard boats that were designed specifically for scuba divers. They ply the waters all the way to the little-visited northernmost islands in the Galapagos archipelago, where deep, cold, current-filled diving yields time with manta rays, whale sharks, sunfish, and hammerhead sharks. These are for experienced divers only.

Land-Based Logistics

Most of the islands in the Galapagos archipelago are uninhabited. However, a wide range of hotels exist (primarily on Santa Cruz Island and San Cristobal Island), and a range of day-boat options operate out of harbors on those islands as well. Be sure to book a hotel thats located near the harbor (not in the highlands) so youre close to where youll be boarding your boat for day trips.

For example, the 21-room Golden Bay Hotel & Spa is located right on the harbor of San Cristobal Island. You can watch sea lions cavort on a small beach directly in front of the hotel, and day-trip boats leave from a dock thats no more than a three-minute stroll away. Book the corner suite with a living-room bathtub with a view and glass walls that slide fully open to eliminate all barriers between you and the world-famous nature outside.

The Angermeyer Waterfront Inn is right on Puerto Ayora (also called Academy Bay), on Santa Cruz Island. Their newest room has been cleverly fashioned inside a beached wooden boat.

Or you can book a hotel that owns and operates its own boats to ensure a seamless standard of service and the most practical and convenient itineraries. For example, the unparalleled Pikaia Lodge, in the highlands of Santa Cruz Island, has its own boat that is used exclusively for guests on packages that include land and sea adventures.

The Finch Bay Eco Hotel, on Puerto Ayora/Academy Bay on Santa Cruz Island, also has its own boat. The Sea Lion has its own chef and a capacity for 20 passengers and two guides (many other day-trip boats carry 16 passengers and just one guide). Sea Lion itineraries also encompass all five of the islands that day-trip boats are allowed to visit.

Boat-Based Logistics

Most live-aboard boats offer five- to eight-day itineraries, with set departure dates and set routes. Routes are dictated by Galapagos National Park officials to mitigate crowding and environmental stress. Your boat will offer a northern itinerary or a southern itinerary (sometimes called eastern and western itineraries), alternating weekly. Both itineraries offer wonderful land excursions, plenty of time in the water, and ample opportunities to see the famous and distinct flora and fauna of the Galapagos.

If youre set on seeing a particular species in the Galapagos, talk to the tour operator to pick the month and the itinerary that will give you the best chance of a spotting. Some species are seasonal, and many exist only on specific islands. For example, the waved albatross, also called the Galapagos albatross, is not a full-time resident. They just show up for mating in the spring and summer.

Boats in the Galapagos Islands are limited to a maximum of 100 passengers, but most boats carry substantially fewer than that. The benefit of traveling on a smaller-capacity vessel is a more intimate onboard experience and faster transfer times between your main vessel and the rubber dinghies. Smaller boats also tend to have more character and history. For example, the 18-passenger M/Y Grace was a wedding present from Aristotle Onassis to Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier III. The newlywed couple honeymooned on the boat, and some say their daughter Stephanie was conceived aboard.

Larger-capacity boats tend to have more onboard services, like guest lectures and medical facilities.

Pacific Green Sea Turtle, Galapagos Island, Ecuador

When to Go to the Galapagos

There is no bad time to visit the Galapagos Islands. Ive visited in March, May, and December, and the adventure was unique and wonderful in each season.

June through December are the cooler and dryer months. Even though its the dry season, a garua (or light, misty rain) is still possible, particularly in December. Skies can be cloudy and gray.

January through May are the warmer and wetter months, but the rain creates brilliantly clear blue skies between showersgreat for photography.

March and April tend to be the hottest and wettest months. August tends to be the coolest month.

Water temperatures vary as well because of the powerful ocean currents in the archipelago. In the cool and dry season (June through December), the colder currents dominate and the water temperature dips lower. A wet suit (provided to you) may be required while snorkeling during those months, but the upside of colder water is that the cold current brings in huge quantities of plankton, which attract hungry marine life in abundance.

Booking in Advance

Last-minute deals are sometimes available for travelers who have the time to arrive in the islands and spend a few days searching for sales. However, the Galapagos Islands are a major tourist destination, so book well in advance. Dive boats, in particular, tend to fill up fast because there are so few of them.

What to Bring to the Galapagos

Basic supplies are available at small shops on San Cristobal and Santa Cruz islands, but prices are high and the selection is limited. Its best to have the essentials with you, including:

Sturdy closed-toe walking shoes with a durable sole. Though land excursions are generally short and trails generally tame, you may be walking over jagged volcanic rock and other obstacles from time to time.

Sandals or flip-flops to wear in towns and on board boats. Leave the heels at home, especially if youve booked a boat-based itinerary. Even the most luxurious boats have narrow, steep stairways which are nearly impossible to navigate safely (or gracefully) in heels.

Lots of water-resistant and high-SPF sunscreen. Ecuador is on the equator, which magnifies the strength of the rays, and most Galapagos excursions are completely exposed to the sun.

A hat with a brim for sun protection during land excursions.

A skin to wear during snorkeling excursions for sun protection during kayaking and snorkeling excursions. When water temperatures are colder, a wet suit will be provided for you to wear. When water temperatures are warmer, however, you may want to skip the bulky wet suit and just wear a skin instead.

Insect repellent. I was never particularly pestered by insects in the Galapagos, at any time of the year, but it can happen.

Seas are generally calm, and boat captains take great care in choosing protected anchoring spots. However, if youre prone to motion sickness, bring some Dramamine with you. Prescription preventions like Scopolamine patches work well, too. Note that Scopolamine is generally not available for sale in Latin America.

If you have fins, a mask, and a snorkel that you love, bring them with you. Snorkeling gear is provided, but the quality and cleanliness varies.

Rain gear and good weather protection for your camera. You will be traveling on boats and in dinghies, and rain showers can occur at any time. If youre exploring an island when wet weather rolls in, there will be no place to shelter out of the rain.

There are ATMs on Santa Cruz and San Cristobal islands, but they can run out of cash, so bring some with you to cover tips. Credit cards are also often accepted at shops and restaurants. The official currency of Ecuador is the U.S. dollar.

What Not to Bring to the Galapagos

The introduction of nonnative plant species is considered a top environmental threat to the Galapagos Islands, so do not bring any fruits, vegetables, or plants of any kind with you. Anything that might have seeds or spores clinging to it, such as the soles of your shoes and any outdoor gear or camping equipment, should be washed and inspected thoroughly before bringing it to the islands. The threat of invasive plant species is so great that visitors arriving to the Galapagos have to sign an affidavit swearing that theyre not bringing in any food, animals, seeds, or dirty camping gear.

Blue Footed Boobies, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

Getting to the Galapagos Islands

Flights to the Galapagos Islands depart multiple times each day from Quito or Guayaquil on mainland Ecuador. Flights from the U.S. are plentiful to both cities. Hotel options are better in Quito and, in general, Quito is a more compelling city with a stunning colonial center, which was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978. It has enough good museums, shopping, and restaurants to easily fill a few days. However, Quito is located at over 9,000 feet, so altitude can be a problem for travelers arriving from lower elevations. Steamy Guayaquil, Ecuadors largest city, is at sea level, so altitude is not a problem. However, the hotel and restaurant selection is much more limited in Guayaquil.

Recommended hotels and restaurants in Quito

Casa Gangotena, on the newly restored Plaza San Francisco in the heart of the colonial center of Quito, is the best hotel in Ecuador, combining history, style, and service.

In 2017, a 10-room boutique hotel will open in the citys central San Marcos neighborhood. Each floor of the three-level Illa Hotel Boutique, located in a renovated mansion, will offer different decor around the architectural themes of colonial, republican, and contemporary.

Zazu is the only Relais & Chateaux restaurant in Ecuador. For a more casual experience, head to sister restaurant Zfood, where a Hamptons-style fish-shack vibe is replicated perfectly and seafood reigns supreme. Dont miss their reinvented Bloody Marys.

Under the guidance of chef-owner Daniel Maldondo, Urko stays focused on showcasing Ecuadorean ingredients and flavors. Go for the tasting menu to get a full sense of what Maldondo calls cocina local.

At Lua Restaurante, Peruvian and Ecuadorean flavors meet and minglethe crowd here is very sophisticated.

Recommended hotel in Guayaquil

Hotel del Parque, in a restored building on the citys leafy Parque Historico, is the only sophisticated boutique hotel in the city. The hotel has 44 rooms in a building that dates back to 1891 and includes a spa where you can book a massage in a repurposed church bell tower.

If youre booking your own flights from mainland Ecuador to the Galapagos Islands, remember that there are two airports on two different islands in the archipelago. San Cristobal Airport is on the island of the same name. Baltra Airport, which runs entirely on sun and wind power, is on tiny Baltra Island, which is separated from Santa Cruz Island by a narrow channel. Be sure youve booked flights to the same island you will be based on, or where your boat departs from and returns to.

In 2012, Ecuadors president Rafael Correa abolished fees at national parks and reserves in the country; however, Galapagos Islands National Park was not part of that exemption, and still requires a $100 entrance fee per person, which is payable only in cash upon arrival at either airport in the Galapagos Islands. In addition, each visitor must buy a $20 transit card, which is also payable only in cash at the airport.

Before you Go to the Galapagos

Read:

My Fathers Island by Johanna Angermeyer

Published in 1998, this book is an account of the authors German ancestors, who were among the first to settle on Santa Cruz Island. Their challenges and triumphs will humble you and give you valuable perspective about the hand of man in the Galapagos. Members of the Angermeyer family still live on Santa Cruz Island, where they run the Angermeyer Waterfront Inn.

Watch:

The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden

Released in 2013, this documentary cleverly splices video footage, letters, and other archival material to recount a real-life murder mystery involving a self-proclaimed baroness, her lovers, and other settlers on Floreana Island in the 1930s. Cate Blanchett narrates one of the main characters.

Study:

On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

This classic and its author will be referenced repeatedly during your time in the Galapagos. Bone up on Darwins seminal theory of evolution, which was inspired, in part, by observations he made in the archipelago.
Allen Institute executives say their operation can serve as a model for future research.

Big Science, Team Science, Open Science: In this weeks issue of Neuron, two top executives at Seattles Allen Institute for Brain Science lay out a manifesto for the future of large research projects.

Christof Koch, the institutes president and chief scientific officer, joins forces with President and CEO Allan Jones to explain why they think the approach developed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen provides a model for understanding the brain, the genome and other scientifically complex phenomena.

One gifted professor working with her graduate student and post-doctoral fellow in isolation will not tame the vast beast that is the genome and the brain, they write.

Instead, they point to the team approach thats best exemplified by the legions of physicists who contributed to the discovery of the Higgs Boson at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe, and the detection of crashing black holes by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory.

Big Neuroscience isnt yet in the same league as Big Physics: The LHCs experimental groups add up to more than 10,000 scientists and engineers, while a mere 100 researchers contribute to the Allen Brain Observatory. Nevertheless, Koch and Jones say theyre learning important lessons from the institutes experiments in Team Science.

We have learned  that to build a well-functioning team with a strong esprit de corps, it is critical to jointly and cooperatively align on specific common goals, build trust by open and transparent decision-making, a maximal sharing of both responsibilities and credit, and nourish morale by a dense web of formal and informal means of communication, they write.

Open Science is arguably the most distinctive frontier for the Allen Institute, which has received $500 million from Paul Allen since its founding in 2003.

From the very beginning, all of the institutes products have been made freely available to scientists and the public. Today, that store of research amounts to more than 3 quadrillion bytes of data.

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Koch and Jones argue that open science is particularly suited to 21st-century research.

For millennials, communicating via texts and images is part of their social online experience growing up, they write. Thus, it comes natural to young scientists to freely and openly share data, computer code, and manuscripts.

They also say open access to data can address one of the scientific communitys biggest current bugaboos: the difficulties encountered in replicating the results of biomedical experiments, which Koch and Jones characterize as a crisis.

The executives make two recommendations for accelerating the pace of discovery and addressing the replication crisis:

Detailed code for the complete analysis of data and procedures should accompany every publication. The most convenient form is a Jupyter Notebook, a Python-based web application for the creation and sharing of documents that contains live code, equations, figures, and explanatory text.

Common data should be used for placing research data and relevant metadata online in a curated repository. Increasingly, funding agencies are receptive to such initiatives and the attendant costs. With rare exceptions for singular findings, the era of illustrating discoveries via nothing but a flat PDF file, with representative results that are often the most expected or cleanest responses, ought to be coming to a close.

Koch and Jones finish off their essay with a shout-out to other researchers involved in Big Neuroscience efforts led by the United States, Europe, Japan, China, Australia, Canada and South Korea (all of which are spotlighted in Neuron):

With bright eyes, we look toward a future in which we, together with the worldwide community of researchers from individual laboratories at universities and independent research institutes, will decipher the most highly organized piece of excitable matter in the known universe: the human brain.

More from GeekWire:
(Reuters) - Alphabet Inc's venture capital arm CapitalG, earlier known as Google Capital, disclosed an investment in Snapchat by adding the social networking firm's logo to a page on its investment portfolio website. CapitalG has not made a formal announcement and it was not clear when Google made the investment. The company was not immediately available to comment. (http://bit.ly/2focX4i) Snap Inc, which operates the popular messaging app Snapchat, has hired Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc as lead underwriters for an initial public offering. The banks were notified last month that they had been awarded one of most coveted and potentially lucrative IPO mandates in recent years, as the Venice, California-based company vies for a $25 billion valuation in the stock market. Snapchat, which lets users send smartphone photos which automatically disappear after a few seconds, has proven popular among teenage users. The company had reportedly rejected an acquisition offer from Facebook Inc that would have valued the company at $3 billion or more in 2013. (http://reut.rs/2f35J7m) (Reporting by Subrat Patnaik in Bengaluru and Liana Baker in New York; Editing by Bill Rigby)
A woman working at a call centre and her male friend were on Saturday shot at by a man, who had allegedly been stalking her for some time.

By Himanshu Mishra: A woman working at a call centre and her male friend were on Saturday shot at by a man, who had allegedly been stalking her for some time. The incident took place near Siri Fort area of south Delhi. The shooter shot himself too after that. All three have been taken to the AIIMS Trauma Center.



Two shot at by a person near Delhi's Sirifort Auditorium, who later shot himself too. Condition of all three remains serious. pic.twitter.com/LEwyam7hM9 ANI (@ANI_news) November 5, 2016

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The shooter is the son of a CISF constable and used his father's licenced revolver in the crime. The woman and her male friend work for a telecom firm's BPO.



--- ENDS ---
Reuters

Movie theater chain Cineworld Group on Monday announced a bankruptcy settlement with its landlords and lenders, clearing the way for the company to borrow an additional $150 million and make a $1 billion debt repayment. Landlords and junior creditors dropped their opposition to the billion-dollar debt repayment after Cineworld agreed to pay at least $20 million in rent that will accrue after Sept. 30. Britain's Cineworld, which filed for bankruptcy protection in Texas in September with less than $4 million in cash on hand, previously did not intend to make any post-September rent payments until the end of its bankruptcy.
How Hackers Broke Into U.S. Voting Machines in Less Than 2 Hours

A vote counting machine to be used in a number of states for the upcoming election is vulnerable to hacking, according to a new report.

Researchers at cybersecurity startup Cylance said they were able to hack into the Sequoia AVC Edge Mk1, used to count votes in states including California, Florida, and New Jersey, and change the final tally it produced.

The Edge machine is a touch-screen variant of the Sequoia AVC Advantage, one of the oldest and vulnerable, electronic voting machines in United States, as Politico put it in a recent cover story. The article detailed how a separate group of academics had also been able to hack into these machines, even infecting one Edge with malware that allowed it to do nothing but play Pac-Man.

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In Cylances hacking demonstration, researchers were able to alter the memory of the machine as well as the paper trail it created to change vote counts and precinct records. To pull off the hack, the researchers slipped in a custom PC memory card that overwrote software embedded on the device. (The company said it wouldnt release more specific details about the attack for election integrity reasons.)

Stuart McClure, CEO of Cylance, said the problem likely extends beyond this model to anything that uses a touch screen and compact flash model, referring to the machines design. Asked about the likelihood of such an attack on election day, he said, we don't have the threat intelligence to say it is going to happen, but we know it is quite easy and possible to do.

You can watch the demo below, or here.

Cylance recommended that election officials and volunteers inspect the machines software and hardware for problems, and monitor them for evidence of tampering. Something as simple as covering the machines input slots and back panels with duct tape may help reveal whether someone has tried to meddle with them.

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Cylance said it had notified Dominion Voting Systems (n?e Sequoia), the voting machines maker, and government authorities about the threat. Cyclance said that it had spoken with the government, but had not heard back from Dominion.

Dominion did not immediately reply to Fortunes request for comment.

In order to affect the elections outcome, hackers would have to pull off a coordinated series of attacks on a massive scale while going undetected. But most cybersecurity experts are less worried about the mass manipulation of voting machine records than they are about disinformation campaigns designed to undermine faith in the election and the democratic process.

In recent months U.S. intelligence agencies have blamed Russia for breaking into computer networks operated by campaigns and political parties, and for having leaked private communications between officials and other documents to the public. Russian officials have dismissed the allegations.

Though researchers have warned about the possibility of hacking voting machines for some time, a likelier scenario on election day, experts say, involves targeted attacks against media outlets, attempts at manipulating or throwing into doubt sources of real-time news, or denial-of-service strikes against key parts of Internet infrastructure. Last week, for example, there was a massive Internet outage on the East Coast by an unidentified hacker or hackers.

Other states that use the Sequoia AVC Edge Mk1 are Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, according to VerifiedVoting.org.

See original article on Fortune.com

More from Fortune.com
We have met the African woman who's bum could put Kim Kardashian and others to absolute shame.

Sorry Ghanaians, but the lady with the famed "biggest bum in Africa" is not from Ghana. Eudoxie Yao is from Ivory Coast and in all honesty, her backside would put even Vera Sidika's to shame.

Here are some wild photos of the biggest bum in Africa;

1. Here she is advising us to never lose hope

I mean how can she lose hope with the behind!

READ ALSO: Ghana's Mona battles with Kenya's Vera in lifestyle battle

2. Just look at that ass

Are you not drooling?

3. Seriously, this must be so heavy

We wonder how she carries it around

4. God must have spent extra time on her body

Everything looks mesmerizing

5. Did I tell you shes got a huge front too?

Perfect combination

6. Too hot to handle

Always bae.

7. And sometimes her clothing can't contain all the goods

Spilling out

8. Damn girl!!!!

That ass is speaking to me!

9. What that ass do?

Maybe we will never really know.

When shes not busy wearing skimpy clothes and taking photos on the gram, she spends her time touring the world and spending all the money her voluptuous body is reportedly fetching her.

READ ALSO: Africans who have proudly bleached their skin

BONUS: Signs you are good in bed

Source: YEN.com.gh
Aspects of that policy included the unprecedented broadcast, on Iranian state media, of the last two presidential debates. But this move seems to have gone hand in hand with the broadcast, also on state media, of the Netflix political drama series, House of Cards, which depicts the Machiavellian rise to power of a fictional US President. Some Iranians, interviewed by the international press, reported believing that the show constituted an accurate depiction of the lust for power in American politics.

The regimes efforts to foster this perception did not end with the conclusion of the last American presidential debate last month. In fact, CNN reports that Khamenei made reference to the presidential campaign in a speech to Iranian students, ahead of the 37th anniversary of the Iran Hostage Crisis. The supreme leader suggested that the behavior of the two major party candidates was sufficient for the annihilation of the reputation of the United States. He also repeated his message on Twitter, where he claimed that the political campaign had confirmed Irans longstanding anti-US rhetoric.

That rhetoric has apparently been intensifying over the past year, since the conclusion of nuclear negotiations in July 2015, and particularly since the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in January. EA WorldView indicated on Thursday that the supreme leader had used the American presidential elections not just to deride Washington but also to criticize and warn the administration of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani over the prospect of pursuing more general detente between the two countries.

It is understood that some level of improvement in Iranian-Western relations is necessary for the Islamic Republic to modernize and upgrade its oil industry and other sectors of its economy. This fact no doubt helps to explain why Khamenei signed off on the nuclear agreement despite being the standard-bearer for Irans self-perception as a nation too proud to negotiate with its traditional enemies.

In the months since the implementation of the JCPOA, Khamenei has tried to walk back his support for the nuclear agreement, albeit without revoking it. And EA WorldView points out that in the past two weeks especially, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps  representing the same sort of hardline perspective as the supreme leader  have stepped up their criticism of the Iranian governments pursuit of foreign investment.

But the IRGC stands to benefit from increased foreign investment in the country, provided that that investment does not correlate with increased Western influence over Irans political activities and cultural life. It is generally understood that it is that influence in particular that the IRGC and the supreme leaders office are attempting to undermine with the recent growth in propaganda directed against the American political system and the US military.

One clear aspect of this propaganda is the attempt to portray the JCPOA not as a mutual agreement between Iran on one side and six world powers including the US on the other, but rather as an instance of Iranian victory over foreign pressure. This perspective was presented unequivocally by Salar Abnoushi, a senior figure in the IRGC. Speaking to Iranian state media, Abnoushi declared, The IRGC has defeated enemies in several fronts. The enemy surrendered and accepted to negotiate with us. And now all of our problems are being solved and our country is becoming stronger in all fronts.

The Daily Mail indicates that Abnoushi was evidently not satisfied to credit this situation with making Iran more resistant to Western influence. Instead, he suggested that the Islamic Republic would soon challenge the US on its own territory, saying that elite fighters affiliated with the IRGC will be in the US and in Europe very soon. Abnoushi went on to say that that fighting force and its mandate to protect the system of absolute clerical rule have no border and no limit.

As if to justify such threats, IRGC deputy commander Hossein Salami marked celebrations of the 1979 hostage-taking by claiming that the US was in strong decline, that it no longer represented the leading power in the world, and that it could no longer afford to influence the world of Islam.

According to Agence-France Presse, Salami also reiterated the regimes rejection of any curbs on its development or testing of ballistic missiles. And speaking more generally, he declared, Our fight with the Americans will continue. Pursuing our ideals in the world of Islam and in Iran, we will recognize no stopping point or red line.

Although these speeches can certainly be categorized as hardline propaganda, they may also have bearing upon an understanding of Irans global policies and ambitions. Indeed, many policy analysts have determined that, at least in terms of its aspirations, Iran truly has no stopping point. In the Middle East, the IRGC has injected itself into conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and Bahrain. And on a global scale, the regime continues to extend its hand into Latin America, and thus very near to the borders of the US.

This fact was highlighted by Eurasia Review on Thursday, in an analysis of the threat that the Islamic Republic poses to the US in the Western Hemisphere. The article concluded that that threat is real, as evidenced by Irans persistent presence in Latin American regions that had formerly been hotbeds of activity for Iran-backed terrorists like Hezbollah. The extent to which Latin American countries accept an Iranian role today is variable, as is the extent to which they are willing to allow their relations with Iran to conflict with established relations with the US. But earlier reports have indicated that even Cuba has made exceptions to its domestic laws in order to foster a relationship with Iran. Eurasia Review suggests that other nations in the region are similarly interested in encouraging this relationship, both for the sake of economic interests and so as to resist having their foreign alliances dictated by the US.

Of course, Western critics of the Iran nuclear deal have expressed concern that as long as Iran retains its current global ambitions, the US is endangering itself by allowing the Iranians access to more financial resources and a broader global reach. In the run-up to presidential elections that may determine the future of US policy toward Iran, the persistence of anti-American propaganda strongly suggests that those ambitions are far from diminishing.
The article suggests that four years after his death, Beheshti has come to embody the spirit of resistance in Iran, in an ongoing struggle [between] freedom of expression and government repression. It also points out that the final entry in his blog pointed out that regime authorities had specifically threatened him with death, and that he vowed to not remain silent even in the face of such conditions.

After being arrested on October 30, 2012, Beheshti was subject to a series of beatings lasting until November 3, at which point he died from internal bleeding, with signs of hemorrhaging found in his lungs, liver, kidneys, and brain. Forty-one other persons being held as political prisoners in Evin Prison at the time signed a letter testifying to the fact that signs of torture had been clearly visible on his body.

Because of the public attention given to the case, it was apparently all but impossible for it to be swept entirely under the rug. But the Iranian judiciary held only one person, Akbar Taghizadeh, responsible for Beheshtis death and sentenced him to only three years in prison for manslaughter. This verdict has been strongly protested by Beheshtis family, and Global Voices insists the prosecution was part of an effort to falsely portray Beheshtis death as an isolated incident.

Interestingly, the sentence handed down against Taghizadeh is shorter than those given to various individuals for their peaceful political or social activities. Notable recent examples include Narges Mohammadi, whose sentence of 16 years for founding an anti-death penalty group was upheld on appeal in October, and Robin Shahini, who was apparently targeted for an 18 year sentence based solely on his residing in the US and his publication of online posts critical of the Iranian regime.

Whats more, Global Voices notes that the regime has not shied away from death sentences for online activities. It also emphasizes that a digital record of activism puts Iranians at particular risk. Iranian law allows for the death penalty in instances of a wide range of vaguely-defined offenses such as insulting the sacred, spreading corruption, or enmity against God. And long periods of pre-trial detention frequently suggest that authorities initiate cases in absence of evidence or charges, then build the strongest case from various online records and personal histories.

Global Voices names two persons who were given death sentences for their political activism in 2011. And the article points out that the broader crackdown continues to this day. It remains to be seen whether this will result in additional death sentences, although it has already been reported that Iran has carried out a number of recent mass executions, mostly of non-violent drug offenders.

It is worth noting, however, that some members of the Iranian parliament, as well as Iranian Justice Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi, have expressed interest in reforming the death penalty law to reduce the number of instances in which it is applied to drug traffickers. But as Iran News Update pointed out previously, Pourmohammadi specifically advocated this change on the basis of pragmatic and not humanitarian concerns.

Although Iranian officials have taken pains to deny any foreign influence, the sheer number of executions and other killings has brought much scrutiny to the Islamic Republic. In this context, death penalty reform may serve much the same purpose as the trial of Akbar Taghizadeh, namely to given the false impression of having addressed domestic and international concerns, but without actually changing the regimes repressive policies.

There are other examples, also, of current or former regime officials being prosecuted or otherwise punished. But like the Taghizadeh case and Pourmohammadis death penalty discussions, the focus is generally not on human rights issues. For instance, Fox News reported on Thursday that former prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi, a recognized serial abuser of human rights and a man internationally dubbed the butcher of the press, had been convicted in an Iranian court.

The charges against him, however, relate not to these human rights abuses  including the fatal torture of at least three anti-government protestors  but rather to financial corruption for the waste of public funds while Mortazavi headed Irans Social Security Organization. This situation led Hadi Ghaemi, the executive direct of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, to say that the sentence is yet another example of rampant impunity in Iran. No justice is being delivered here [and] sentencing him to flogging, if meant to demonstrate a serious punishment, is just physical barbarity that does nothing to hold him accountable in any meaningful way.

That impunity is arguably reflected in Western entities treatment of the Islamic Republic following last years nuclear agreement, which resulted in large-scale relief from economic sanctions against Iran. Both during and after the negotiations leading up to that agreement, various human rights organizations accused the United States and Europe of putting too much focus on the nuclear issue and the prospect of renewed trade ties with Iran, to the detriment of human rights advocacy.

It is possible that the half-hearted prosecution of certain human rights abusers, or the theoretical discussion of death penalty reform, has helped to justify this trend, in line with US President Barack Obamas claims that the nuclear deal would promote moderation inside the Iranian regime. But the crackdown against activists, web users, and dual nationals has undermined the notion of moderation. Nevertheless, there is considerable pressure from Western businesses and some government representatives, to continue de-sanctioning the Islamic Republic and pursuing investment therein.

In one example with particular relevance to human rights abuses and other illicit Iranian behaviors, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that Greece had broken away from the policies of the US and the European Union with regard to one Iranian bank, Bank Saderat.

In spite of the general relief from nuclear-related sanctions under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, sanctions on Bank Saderat were meant to remain in place over the long term, as a result of the financial institutions apparent ties to Irans support of terrorism throughout the world. Twenty-seven members of the EU were prepared to continue enforcing those sanctions, which Iran was in the process of challenging, but the Greek government took it upon itself to block those sanctions in hopes of facilitating trade and financial transactions with Iran.

The Wall Street Journal suggests that this move may set off a trend whereby other Western nations, eager to regain full access to Irans oil and expert markets, similarly undermine the established sanctions regime. This seemingly gratifies early criticisms of the nuclear deal, which suggested that provisions for snap-back of economic sanctions were grounded in fantasy and would be difficult to implement without reestablishing international will for enforcement actions against Iran.

Not only that, but the Greek move broadens those criticisms beyond nuclear-related sanctions, demonstrating that some countries now feel comfortable lifting pressure on Iran over its support of terrorism. If this is the case, it is arguably not long before some Western entities decide to similarly neglect pressures over human rights. Indeed, some human rights advocates would argue that the West as a whole has been doing this since even before the conclusion of the nuclear negotiations.
This has happened, he explained, because the West has not succeeded in addressing the Iranian regimes dangerous and evil behaviour. The West has given concession after concession and in January this year the U.S. government and the mullahs regime performed a prisoner swap, which also involved Washington paying $1.7 billion in hard cash to Tehran, including $400 million that was forked over to Iran on the same day that the American hostages were released.

Obamas administration say that the payment was not a ransom and was nothing to do with the prisoner exchange, however others do not agree  including members of Congress. It appears that Iranian officials do not agree either. They boasted at the time and have now upped their game when it comes to taking hostages in order to get more money from Western counterparts.

Recently the Iranian regime has increased the number of arrests of foreigners visiting Iran. Since the prisoner swap there have been at least six dual-national Iranians that have been arrested and some have been handed prison sentences for made-up charges of acting against the countrys interests. However, Basiri points out that none of them are current or former activists against the regime  they are in fact simply bargaining chips. This just goes to show the level of corruption in the regime.

Januarys ransom seems to have whetted the regimes appetite for more funds. Sources close to the Iranian regime have said that Irans ransom demands could go up to $2 billion.

Speaking about the human rights abuses in Iran, Basiri said that tens of thousands of people have been executed without a fair trial in the country. The United Nations has described the state of conditions in Iran as extremely worrying. Executions have been going on for a long time, and the countrys track record indicates that nothing is going to change any time soon.

He said that U.S. administrations have tried to deal with the human rights issue. For example, the Iran-Contra affair in which the Reagan administration negotiated the release of American hostages held by Hezbollah (the Iranian regimes proxy in Lebanon) in exchange for an arms deal. Although the hostages were released, it did not stop them taking more after the deal.

History is repeating itself  perhaps in a much more dangerous way  and incentivized by the lack of firmness toward its trampling of international laws and human principles, the Iranian regime is continuing to arrest and incarcerate foreign nationals in order to strengthen its hand in its interactions with its counterparts and peers.

He adds: Only a firm policy can steer the Iran policy in the right direction  one that does not overlook any of Tehrans misdeeds, and holds the Iranian regime to account for the crimes it has committed against its own people and across the world. The next U.S. president will have a chance to adopt the right approach and show some backbone and determination. In the meantime, lives will be hanging in the balance.
[November 04, 2016] G-SHOCK Launches Fourth Maharishi Collaboration Watch

DOVER, N.J., Nov. 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Casio G-SHOCK announces its fourth collaboration with UK-based pacifist military design brand Maharishi. Inspired by the beauty and strength found in natural elements, the new limited edition MUDMASTER GWG1000MH-1A timepiece features Maharishi's British Bonsai Forest print in a new stretched Camouflage variant, complemented by bright orange luminous indicators on the face. Reminiscent of the spiraling and interlocking patterns found in wood grain, British Bonsai sees a graphic update to the traditional camouflage pattern, integrating manipulated shapes to create a 'stretch' variant, the overall effect reminding us that camouflage is rooted in nature. A considered development, as the elongated graphics are well suited for a watch strap. A video has been created to celebrate the latest collaboration and showcase the design of the limited edition timepiece, which you can watch here: http://bit.ly/G-SHOCK-Maharishi. The GWG1000MH-1A boasts an atmospheric pressure sensor (altimeter/barometer), temperature sensor (thermometer), and magnetic sensor for compass readings, part of G-SHOCK's Triple Sensor technology, as well as Multiband 6 technology, which allows for the most accurate timekeeping. The timepiece also features Tough Solar power, and a shadow dispersing solar panel dial, which enables high-capacity solar-charging.



features that makes G-SHOCK the leader in Absolute Toughness, including a structure that is Mud, Shock and Vibration Resistant, 200M Water Resistant, Full Auto Double LED Lights, World Time with 29 time zones that include 29 cities + UTC, 4 Daily Alarms and 1 Snooze Alarm, 1/100th second Stopwatch, Countdown Timer, 12/24 Hour Formats, and a day and date display, all in a 56.1mm case. The GWG1000MH-1A retails for $850 USD and is currently available for online pre-order at www.maharishistore.com. The watch will hit shelves in December at the G-SHOCK NYC SoHo store, select Macy's, select fashion boutiques, and www.gshock.com.

About G-SHOCK

CASIO's shock-resistant G-SHOCK watch is synonymous with toughness, born from the developer Mr. Ibe's dream of 'creating a watch that never breaks'. Over 200 handmade samples were created and tested to destruction until finally in 1983 the first, now iconic G-SHOCK hit the streets of Japan and began to establish itself as 'the toughest watch of all time'. Each watch encompasses the 7 elements; electric shock resistance, gravity resistance, low temperature resistance, vibration resistance, water resistance, shock resistance and toughness. The watch is packed with Casio innovations and technologies to prevent it from suffering direct shock; this includes internal components protected with urethane and suspended timekeeping modules inside the watch structure. Since its launch, G-SHOCK has continued to evolve, continuing to support on Mr. Ibe's mantra "never, never give up." www.gshock.com About Casio America, Inc.

Casio America, Inc., Dover, N.J., is the U.S. subsidiary of Casio Computer Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, one of the world's leading manufacturers of consumer electronics and business equipment solutions. Established in 1957, Casio America, Inc. markets calculators, keyboards, mobile presentation devices, disc title and label printers, watches, cash registers and other consumer electronic products. Casio has strived to realize its corporate creed of "creativity and contribution" through the introduction of innovative and imaginative products. For more information, visit www.casiousa.com. FOR MEDIA INQUIRIES CONTACT: Erica Mapa / Kellyn Slone

Cornerstone

(212) 741-7100

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[email protected] Sue Vander Schans / Alli Colasacco-Sharpe

CASIO AMERICA, INC.

(973) 361-5400

[email protected]

[email protected] Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161104/436428 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/g-shock-launches-fourth-maharishi-collaboration-watch-300357917.html SOURCE Casio, Inc.

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[November 04, 2016] Fitch Affirms Texas Instruments L-T IDR 'A+' and S-T IDR 'F1'; Outlook Stable

Fitch Ratings has affirmed the ratings for Texas Instruments (News - Alert) Incorporated (Texas Instruments), including the Long-Term Issuer Default Rating (IDR) at 'A+' and Short-Term IDR 'F1'. The Rating Outlook is Stable. Fitch's actions affect $5.6 billion of total debt, including the undrawn $2 billion Revolving Credit Facility (RCF). A full list of rating actions follows at the end of this release. KEY RATING DRIVERS Solid Financial Flexibility: Fitch expects TI's financial flexibility will remain solid, supported by low leverage and Fitch's forecast of $1.5 billion to $2 billion of annual free cash flow (FCF; cash from operations less capital spending less dividends) through the intermediate-term and solid liquidity, which is supported by $3.1 billion of cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments and commercial paper (CP) program with capacity of up to $2 billion. Leading Market Positions: Fitch expects TI's wide product breadth, greater sales channel scale and manufacturing cost leadership have driven leading share positions in analog and embedded processing and position the company to take additional share in analog over time. Fitch estimates TI's share is roughly 2x its closest competitor, which is made more important by the stickiness of customer relationships given significant accumulated design collaboration with customers. In addition, TI's scale supports its expansive catalogue products set and consignment inventory model, which enables share gains at customers marginally consolidating suppliers. More Predictable Results: Fitch expects more predictable operating results, given the company's increasing exposure within automotive and industrial markets with secular growth trends and longer-product life cycles. Fitch believes TI's large breadth of catalogue products sold through distribution partners, for which TI uses a consignment inventory model that enables tighter channel inventories and more even front-end production utilization rates, diversifies operating results. Increasing Handset Exposure: Fitch expects increasing exposure to its largest handset customer, which could reach the mid-teens of total sales versus just over 10% more recently, could partially offset product and customer diversification with volatility around product cycle share and commercial success. At the same time, Fitch notes TI's manufacturing cost leadership from 300mm wafer capacity could mitigate risks around product cycle risk. Commitment to Shareholder Returns: Fitch expects TI will continue using 100% of cash flow for shareholder returns, including dividends approaching 50% of annual pre-dividend FCF. Fitch anticipates TI would curtail share repurchases should the company face meaningful near-term headwinds, although FCF (Fitch defined as after dividends) and, therefore, stock buybacks should be structurally lower as the company approaches its target dividend pay-out. Substantial Investment Intensity: Fitch expects continued high investment levels to support technology and cost leadership, although the company's capital expenditures are relatively low given TI's strategy of buying 300 millimeter (mm) equipment from distressed sellers and, otherwise, trailing edge technology used in analog and embedded processing markets. Nonetheless, Fitch expects R&D intensity to remain significant and, combined with capital intensity, represent mid- to high-teens as a percentage of revenue through the longer-term. KEY ASSUMPTIONS Fitch's key assumptions within the rating case for TI include: --Flat revenue in 2016 and low-single digit growth through the remainder of the forecast period, driven by strength in automotive and industrial and partially offset by tepid demand for communications infrastructure and personal computers; --Operating EBITDA margin near current levels of 45%, driven by higher gross profit margin and cost savings related to the company's restructuring program; --Capital spending is in the mid-single digits as a percentage of revenues, including expansion of the company's 300mm analog capacity; --TI uses 100% of pre-dividend FCF, proceeds from equity compensation plus net debt issuance for shareholder returns, with expectations for dividends approaching 50% of pre-dividend FCF; --TI will continue debt reduction by meeting upcoming debt maturities with available cash as it has done since 2013; and --No significant acquisitions, despite continued consolidation in the semiconductor industry. RATING SENSITIVITIES Negative rating actions could result from sustained share losses in focus segments leading to: --Structurally lower revenue resulting in sustained FCF near or below $1 billion; --Lower base line operating profitability resulting in sustained debt/EBITDA at or above 1.5x. Positive rating action is unlikely, given the company's smaller scale for the rating category and event risk within the context of fragmented analog and embedded processing markets. LIQUIDITY TI's liquidity was solid as of Sept. 30, 2016, and supported by: --Approximately $3.1 billion of cash, cash equivalents and ST investments, although Fitch estimates roughly 80% of cash, cash equivalents and ST investments is located inside the U.S.; and --An undrawn $2 billion credit facility due March 2021 that fully back-stops TI's $2 billion CP program. Fitch expectation for $1.5 billion to $2 billion of annual FCF through the intermediate-term also supports liquidity. Total debt was $3.6 billion as of Sept. 30, 2016 and consisted of: <> --$250 million of 0.875% senior notes due March 2017;



--$375 million of 6.6% senior notes due June 2017; --$500 million of 1% senior notes due May 2018;

--$750 million of 1.65% senior notes due August 2019; --$500 million of 1.75% senior notes due May of 2020; --$250 million of 2.75% senior notes due March 2021; --$500 million of 1.85% senior notes due May 2022; and --$500 of 2.25% senior notes due May 2023. FULL LIST OF RATING ACTIONS Texas Instruments Incorporated --Long-Term Issuer Default Rating (IDR) 'A+'; --Short-Term IDR 'F1'; --Commercial Paper program 'F1'; --Senior unsecured revolving credit facility 'A+'; --Senior unsecured notes 'A+'. National Semiconductor Corp. (News - Alert) --Long-Term IDR 'A+'; --Senior unsecured notes 'A+'. The Rating Outlook is Stable. Date of Relevant Rating Committee: [November 3, 2016] Summary of Financial Statement Adjustments - Fitch made no financial statement adjustments that depart materially from those contained in the published financial statements of Texas Instruments Incorporated. Analysts should refer to the relevant section of the Data Control Form and discuss and agree the proposed disclosure at the rating committee. This disclosure should appear after the analyst contact information. Additional information is available on www.fitchratings.com. Applicable Criteria Criteria for Rating Non-Financial Corporates (pub. 27 Sep 2016) https://www.fitchratings.com/site/re/885629 Additional Disclosures Dodd-Frank Rating Information Disclosure Form https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/press_releases/content/ridf_frame.cfm?pr_id=1014384 Solicitation Status https://www.fitchratings.com/gws/en/disclosure/solicitation?pr_id=1014384 Endorsement Policy https://www.fitchratings.com/regulatory ALL FITCH CREDIT RATINGS ARE SUBJECT TO CERTAIN LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS. PLEASE READ THESE LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS BY FOLLOWING THIS LINK: HTTPS://WWW.FITCHRATINGS.COM/UNDERSTANDINGCREDITRATINGS. IN ADDITION, RATING DEFINITIONS AND THE TERMS OF USE OF SUCH RATINGS ARE AVAILABLE ON (News - Alert) THE AGENCY'S PUBLIC WEB SITE AT WWW.FITCHRATINGS.COM. PUBLISHED RATINGS, CRITERIA, AND METHODOLOGIES ARE AVAILABLE FROM THIS SITE AT ALL TIMES. FITCH'S CODE OF CONDUCT, CONFIDENTIALITY, CONFLICTS OF INTEREST, AFFILIATE FIREWALL, COMPLIANCE, AND OTHER RELEVANT POLICIES AND PROCEDURES ARE ALSO AVAILABLE FROM THE CODE OF CONDUCT SECTION OF THIS SITE. FITCH MAY HAVE PROVIDED ANOTHER PERMISSIBLE SERVICE TO THE RATED ENTITY OR ITS RELATED THIRD PARTIES. DETAILS OF THIS SERVICE FOR RATINGS FOR WHICH THE LEAD ANALYST IS BASED IN AN EU-REGISTERED ENTITY CAN BE FOUND ON THE ENTITY SUMMARY PAGE FOR THIS ISSUER ON THE FITCH WEBSITE. Copyright (c) 2016 by Fitch Ratings, Inc., Fitch Ratings Ltd. and its subsidiaries. 33 Whitehall Street, NY, NY 10004. Telephone: 1-800-753-4824, (212) 908-0500. Fax: (212) 480-4435. Reproduction or retransmission in whole or in part is prohibited except by permission. All rights reserved. In issuing and maintaining its ratings and in making other reports (including forecast information), Fitch relies on factual information it receives from issuers and underwriters and from other sources Fitch believes to be credible. Fitch conducts a reasonable investigation of the factual information relied upon by it in accordance with its ratings methodology, and obtains reasonable verification of that information from independent sources, to the extent such sources are available for a given security or in a given jurisdiction. The manner of Fitch's factual investigation and the scope of the third-party verification it obtains will vary depending on the nature of the rated security and its issuer, the requirements and practices in the jurisdiction in which the rated security is offered and sold and/or the issuer is located, the availability and nature of relevant public information, access to the management of the issuer and its advisers, the availability of pre-existing third-party verifications such as audit reports, agreed-upon procedures letters, appraisals, actuarial reports, engineering reports, legal opinions and other reports provided by third parties, the availability of independent and competent third- party verification sources with respect to the particular security or in the particular jurisdiction of the issuer, and a variety of other factors. Users of Fitch's ratings and reports should understand that neither an enhanced factual investigation nor any third-party verification can ensure that all of the information Fitch relies on in connection with a rating or a report will be accurate and complete. Ultimately, the issuer and its advisers are responsible for the accuracy of the information they provide to Fitch and to the market in offering documents and other reports. In issuing its ratings and its reports, Fitch must rely on the work of experts, including independent auditors with respect to financial statements and attorneys with respect to legal and tax matters. Further, ratings and forecasts of financial and other information are inherently forward-looking and embody assumptions and predictions about future events that by their nature cannot be verified as facts. As a result, despite any verification of current facts, ratings and forecasts can be affected by future events or conditions that were not anticipated at the time a rating or forecast was issued or affirmed. The information in this report is provided "as is" without any representation or warranty of any kind, and Fitch does not represent or warrant that the report or any of its contents will meet any of the requirements of a recipient of the report. A Fitch rating is an opinion as to the creditworthiness of a security. This opinion and reports made by Fitch are based on established criteria and methodologies that Fitch is continuously evaluating and updating. Therefore, ratings and reports are the collective work product of Fitch and no individual, or group of individuals, is solely responsible for a rating or a report. The rating does not address the risk of loss due to risks other than credit risk, unless such risk is specifically mentioned. Fitch is not engaged in the offer or sale of any security. All Fitch reports have shared authorship. Individuals identified in a Fitch report were involved in, but are not solely responsible for, the opinions stated therein. The individuals are named for contact purposes only. A report providing a Fitch rating is neither a prospectus nor a substitute for the information assembled, verified and presented to investors by the issuer and its agents in connection with the sale of the securities. Ratings may be changed or withdrawn at any time for any reason in the sole discretion of Fitch. Fitch does not provide investment advice of any sort. Ratings are not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security. Ratings do not comment on the adequacy of market price, the suitability of any security for a particular investor, or the tax-exempt nature or taxability of payments made in respect to any security. Fitch receives fees from issuers, insurers, guarantors, other obligors, and underwriters for rating securities. Such fees generally vary from US$1,000 to US$750,000 (or the applicable currency equivalent) per issue. In certain cases, Fitch will rate all or a number of issues issued by a particular issuer, or insured or guaranteed by a particular insurer or guarantor, for a single annual fee. Such fees are expected to vary from US$10,000 to US$1,500,000 (or the applicable currency equivalent). The assignment, publication, or dissemination of a rating by Fitch shall not constitute a consent by Fitch to use its name as an expert in connection with any registration statement filed under the United States securities laws, the Financial Services and Markets Act of 2000 of the United Kingdom, or the securities laws of any particular jurisdiction. Due to the relative efficiency of electronic publishing and distribution, Fitch research may be available to electronic subscribers up to three days earlier than to print subscribers. For Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and South Korea only: Fitch Australia Pty Ltd holds an Australian financial services license (AFS license no. 337123) which authorizes it to provide credit ratings to wholesale clients only. Credit ratings information published by Fitch is not intended to be used by persons who are retail clients within the meaning of the Corporations Act 2001. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161104006114/en/

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[November 05, 2016] Gigastone Urges Customers to Be on the Lookout for Fake Products and Confirms Its Entire Range of iOS Flash Drives Are Apple MFi Approved

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 5, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Gigastone, the Leading Global Mobile Technology Accessory Brand announced today; that in light of the recent torrent of press, relating to Apple claims regarding counterfeit Apple products, it feels it is important to reiterate that its entire range of iOS Flash Drive and Flash Drive Reader products, are Apple MFi Approved. Gigastone wants to assist customers with strategies to prevent purchasing fake substandard products. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161104/436491 In much the same way customers are being duped into purchasing Apple products that are not the real thing, many other leading brands are suffering the same fate. For example, those same customers are being duped into believing that certain products that bear the MFi logo and appear to be Apple approved, are in actual fact cheap reproductions. Apple has a stringent program whereby manufacturers of Apple mobile technology accessories, can submit their products and receive the coveted "Made for iDevices," MFi approval. The process maintains that certified Apple accessories bearing the MFi mark, meet the high standards required to be associated with the high quality authentic Apple products. Harold Katz, Gigastone Chief Marketing Officer commented, "Many mobile technology accessories available online, claiming to be MFi approved, are not and don't meet the exacting standards required for MFi approval." He went on to elaborate, "Companies like Gigastone expend huge effort, ensuring that its products are of a high quality and meet and exceed industry standards. Maintaining these standards can make it more difficult for quality conscious suppliers, like Gigastone, to effectively compete in some situations. The end result is that the real loser is the customer, who is left with a substandard product that many times does not work." Gigastone urges all customers to take the time to investigate the authenticity of products prior to their purchases; Visit the suppliers site to ensure that the product in question exists.

Ask the supplier for referral to authorized vendors.

Google the product and review the results for signs of questionable suppliers.

Search poduct reviews for customers that have suffered at the hands of dubious suppliers.

If the price of the same product varies greatly when searching on Google Shopping, it is more likely that the cheaper products may be fake.

Be aware that large Online Retailers list both their own product lines as well as 3 rd party vendor products, not necessarily authenticated by the site being visited.

party vendor products, not necessarily authenticated by the site being visited. Ask the seller if the product is authentic and if the approval marks it bears are genuine.



Gigastone distributes a full range of memory products as well as mobile technology accessories, including the Gigastone iOS Flash Drives. The iFlashdrives come in a number of configurations to meet the needs of the Apple iPhone and iPad users. The Gigastone iFlashDrive software allows users to:

Backup iPhone data from your device to the external memory of the Gigastone iPhone Flash Drives.

Backup can be done automatically. (Photos/Contacts/Calendar)

iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox and Facebook Album data can be moved to the external Gigastone IOs Flash Drive.

The data is secured by Touch ID Security and/or Encryption.

All photos, movies and data is accessible from the iPhone or iPad without having to move the data from the external iOS Flash Drive to a iDevice.

The Gigastone iOS Flash Drives have both Lightning and USB adapters or removable MicroSD cards, so backed up data can easily be moved to any computer without the need for the iDevice.

Data can also be copied from a computer to the iOS Flash Drive and accessed from an iPhone or iPad. The full Gigastone i-FlashDrive range can be viewed on the Gigastone Web Site. About Gigastone Gigastone is the leading global mobile accessory brand, specializing in state-of-the-art, high-end mobile peripherals and technology. For two decades, Gigastone has been distributing technology to all the major big-box and Electronic Commerce stores. Gigastone has leveraged its engineering, manufacturing and quality control skills to drive world-class production and deliver quality products. A uniquely positioned company, poised to continue to grow and maintain its leadership in the fast paced consumer electronics space. Gigastone currently has eight major offices around the globe; USA, Canada, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, France, Brazil and China, with distributors in Asia, the Americas, and Europe. Notable distributors include Walmart, Costco, Target, Best Buy, Amazon, Guo Mei, JD.com, E-Mart and The Source. Gigastone continues to launch world-class mobile peripherals, constantly diversifying its product range to meet consumer demand. Customer focus is the key to ongoing Gigastone global success. Related Images image1.png

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image4.png Related Links BBC - Apple complains Amazon's US site is selling fake products

Los Angeles Times - Many 'genuine' Apple products on Amazon are dangerous fakes, Apple says Related Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RFLmZ5920c This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gigastone-urges-customers-to-be-on-the-lookout-for-fake-products-and-confirms-its-entire-range-of-ios-flash-drives-are-apple-mfi-approved-300358002.html SOURCE Gigastone

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SPRINGFIELD  For many, the 2016 races for the Illinois General Assembly represent a series of battles in a proxy war between first-term Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and longtime House Speaker Michael Madigan of Chicago, chairman of the state Democratic Party.

Rauner and his fellow Republicans have cast Tuesdays election as a choice between reform and the status quo created by the Democrats long dominance of state government. Theyve made Madigan public enemy No. 1 in a multimillion-dollar ad barrage linking every Democratic candidate to him.

If voters like the way things are going in the state of Illinois, if they like what the state Legislature has done, they should vote for Democrats, they should vote for  Mike Madigans candidates, said Nick Klitzing, executive director of the state Republican Party. If they want a new direction, if they believe that reform is possible in Illinois, then they should give Republicans a shot.

Madigan and his fellow Democrats, meanwhile, argue that the election offers a chance to defend the middle class against the extremism of Rauner and GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Democrats are focused on trying to put the state back on track, trying to work cooperatively, said Steve Brown, a spokesman for Madigan and the state party. Thats what weve been trying to do for almost two years now, met at every different turn with an agenda that really wants to disadvantage middle-class families, put more money in the pockets of the 1-percenters.

Nearly halfway into Rauners term without a full state budget in place, others, including former Republican Gov. Jim Edgar, view the balloting as a contest between the wealthy governors money, more than $32 million of which is bankrolling the GOPs campaign efforts, and his record.

However one views the elections, Tuesdays outcome will help chart the course Illinois takes to end its historic budget impasse and right its fiscal ship. Lawmakers and the governor put that fight on hold until after Election Day by passing a stopgap spending plan this summer that runs through Dec. 31.

The balance of power in the next General Assembly will come down to the results in a handful of high-profile, high-cost legislative races downstate and in the Chicago suburbs. Southern Illinois and the Quad Cities area have become major battlegrounds, with Republicans taking aim at Democratic incumbents and both parties trying to flip seats long held by the other side.

All 118 House seats are on the ballot, though only 48 are contested. Republicans need to pick up just one seat to end the Democrats 71-member, veto-proof majority, which has existed on paper more than in practice. In the Senate, where 40 out of 59 seats are on the ballot, there are 13 contested races. Republicans would need to gain four seats to end the Democrats better-functioning 39-member supermajority.

Republicans would need even bigger gains to win control of either chamber, something almost no one believes will happen in a presidential election year, when Democrats typically get a boost from higher voter turnout.

Klitzing said that in a presidential year with a legislative map drawn to favor Democrats, picking up just one seat in either chamber would be historic.

The fact that were on offense and were positioned to even win one seat is a sign of just how entrenched Madigan is and how much voters want to throw out the current status quo, he said.

Given all that Republicans and outside groups supporting their candidates have spent, Brown said, Im not sure  how you call that a victory.

Despite the record-breaking sums being spent by both sides, David Yepsen, who retired Monday as director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University, said anyone whos expecting a major shift in the political landscape come Wednesday is likely to be disappointed.

Were going to wake up on the day after the election, and Bruce Rauner will still be governor, and the Democrats will still be in control of the Legislature, Yepsen said. And what is going to change as a result of this? If anything, I think the partisanship will continue.

After a bruising campaign season that has featured months of relentless TV ads and mailers in some districts, the Democrats will come in angry, he said.

Now, the race for governor in 2018 will be on, Yepsen said. And so we move right from this campaign right into the partisanship of that campaign.

Even if Republicans do succeed in weakening the Democrats grasp on control of the General Assembly, the question of whether it will be to the benefit of voters remains, said Kent Redfield, a campaign finance expert and emeritus professor of political science at the University of Illinois Springfield.

The GOPs main line of attack against Democratic candidates is that each one is a wholly owned subsidiary of the speaker, Redfield said.

All of the money on the Republican side is coming from the governor or the governors allies, he said. So Im not sure that replacing somebody who is or appears to be a wholly owned subsidiary of the speaker with somebody who is or appears to be a wholly owned subsidiary of the governor is really doing much for the democratic process.
Yes, its a sales tax. Yes, it would be an added tax in Coles County. Yes, Illinois continues to cut funding to schools. Yes, I want more local control of tax revenues. Yes, our schools have over $2 million in unmet maintenance needs. Yes, I would rather everyone pay a little bit more in a sales tax than property owners paying a lot more to pay for to school facility projects. Yes, I care about the economic success of our community. Yes, I am a twelve year veteran of the CUSD # 1 Board of Education. Yes, I am voting yes on November 8.
My name is Michelle Skinlo. I have served on the Mattoon CUSD 2 Board of Education for 25 years. During that time I have been witness to many changes in education. The biggest one is the funding by the state for education. We have realized a significant loss of funding to our district. We have made many cuts to help with our budget. We have attritioned staff from teachers, administrators, to support personnel. Our board stands strong together in our promise to pay off the bonds and lower our share of the property tax for the community. Please vote yes for the County Schools Facility Tax. Visit our web site for accurate facts and information: Citizens for Coles County Schools.
As a sophomore at Charleston High School, I understand the importance of the 1% CSFT sales tax increase. The increase will produce almost $5 million in revenue for schools in Coles County to help make repairs and improvements to school facilities. Recently, I received a flyer for the opposition, and there are a few things Id like to address.

The flyer for the opposition says that there is no sunset date to this tax. This tax can be used for repairs and maintenance for the schools. There is no sunset date to the work that needs to be done to the schools.

The flyer also questions whether a leaky roof is easily fixed. Sure, you could put a Band-Aid over the leak, but eventually its going to need to be fixed.

The flyer also mentions unfunded pension liabilities. However, that argument has no place on that flyer. It is explicitly stated that revenue from the sales tax cannot be used for salaries. This includes pension payments. Ill say that again: The revenue from the sales tax cannot be used for salaries, which includes pension payments. The whole argument about unfunded pension liabilities has absolutely nothing to do with the sales tax increase.

The flyer fears that the Coles County school boards will bond money and raise property taxes to pay for them. However, the school board has never increased the sales tax and property taxes at the same time, so there is no reason for them to suddenly do it. Unlike other school districts (for example, the CPS), we elect our school board members instead of appoint them, so we are assured that the board will represent the community.

Thats why you should vote yes on November 8th to help Coles County schools.

Tanner Lassak, Charleston
Why is it that people like Les Combs and Cora Weber [Trilla] want people to raise their PROPERTY TAXES by VOTING NO on the school Facility Tax (1% sales tax)? If the Coles County School Boards need to fix a problem that falls under the Life Safety fund, they can sell bonds without our vote. And guess what? The bonds are paid off 100% through PROPERTY TAXES.

However, problems such as leaking roofs, water lines, building security issues and disabled access can better be paid for through a sales tax that is not tied to PROPERTY TAXES with visitors to Coles County contributing at least 30%. No bonds necessary because the work will be paid for from the Sales Tax.

But Combs and Weber state in opinions school board members in Coles county are lyin to the public about the Sales Tax. These politicians known as School Board members must be lying because their lips arent moving. I wouldnt be surprised if some of them are felons, muggers, carnivores, and car thieves. Being politicians they may even aspire to higher offices since being a sex pervert and liar qualify for the top job. Oh, wait, we voted for these school board members. And I thought I knew them as friends and neighbors.

Its surprising that a flaming liberal state like Iowa voted in such high numbers for a 1% Sales Tax that the whole state put it into law. And foolishly, agriculturally heavy counties such as Douglas and Shelby Counties voted FOR the 1% SALES TAX. Obviously they havent paid attention to Les Combs or Cora Weber.

I mean how badly can our schools need this sales tax? You drive by the schools and the yards are mowed, no water is gushing out the walls, and there are no boarded up windows. And check this for lyin school board members. The Charleston School Board said they were paying off building bonds and PROPERTY TAXES would be going down in 2015. Well they slipped up this time cause my taxes did go down $315.00. You just cant trust them school people to lie anymore.

Well, you can tell when Les and Cora are fabricating. Their lips are moving. They tried to convince me to raise my property taxes by voting no, but I gotta go with the State of Iowa, and many Illinois counties and VOTE YES on November 8th for the 1% SALES TAX ...

Stan Adkins, Charleston
 And He shall reign for ever and ever  Joel Kontinen Praising God has been an essential part of Christmas since a group of shepherds...
When most of us hear the words Have I got a great deal for you! we grab our wallets because experience suggests any forthcoming deal wont be great.

Similarly, when someone says, Heres the straight talk, our baloney meters redline because we know the coming talk will be about as straight as a hounds hind leg.

We in agriculture, however, often use language like a great deal and straight talk to promote cheap food and arcane farm policy. When someone outside of agriculture questions either view, we not only cling to our righteousness, we go a step further and tell them they are wrong.

In fact, its hard to think of any other sector in the American economy that insists on telling its customers they are wrong.

Need proof? For years nine out of 10 consumers have asked for country of origin labeling (COOL) on retail meat and poultry sold in the U.S.

Wrong! our hog and cattle groups declare; whats best for our meatpackers  global sourcing and no labeling  is whats best for you. Besides, COOL is illegal under the trading rules we helped write!

Little wonder trade took a beating in 2016 election campaigns; the straight talk used to sell these great deals was neither straight nor great.

The latest example of agricultures righteousness comes courtesy of U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance, or USFRA, an ag advocacy group funded by farm and commodity organizations and agribusiness.

In late October, USFRA began a straight talk campaign to counter yogurt maker Dannons effort to source its inputs, mostly milk, from farmers who choose to follow the companys new rules on animal welfare and other practices right down to the dirt.

Dannon, the American subsidiary of the French food giant Danone, made no bones about its motives in initiating its sustainable milk program last April. It hoped to tap into the publics growing concern about the source of its food, noted the New York Times.

And, of course, make money doing it  just as companies including Nestle and General Mills and Unilever had done earlier, added the Times. But USFRA did not begin straight talk campaigns against those food giants.

Dannon, however, crossed an unseen line, explained the online ag news service DTN Oct. 27, when it advocated that its milk-supplying farmers commit to sourcing only non-GMO feed for dairy cattle producing milk for three [Dannon] yogurt product lines.

That step, Randy Mooney, a Missouri dairy farmer and chairman of National Milk Producers Federation, told DTN, was the tipping point. (NMPF, like Dairy Farmers of America, Dannons previous milk supplier, are both members of USFRA.)

Tipping point, shmipping point.

The fight, which Dannon said it welcomed, is not about genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Instead, its about the word sustainable. Dannon has its own definition to fit its own marketing plan, it says, that promotes simplicity and purity of products.

USFRA, too, has a definition of sustainable, noted DTN, and it includes biotechnology and practices that should define sustainable agriculture.

Moreover, USFRA explains, its Dannon campaign is the beginning of a new willingness to publicly call out food companies that criticize food produced with genetically modified organisms.

That should keep the hired hands at USFRA busy for years because calling out food companies that ask farmers and ranchers to deliver what the marketplace demands will be as unending as it will be unsuccessful.

The companies, after all, dont make the market; they follow the market. Thats the way the market works. Thats, in fact, the way it has always worked.

What doesnt work  whats never worked  is telling your customer theyre wrong. Show me someone who says the markets wrong, a friend once mused, and Ill show you someone whos on the wrong side of the market.

Exactly. The market is your partner, not your enemy.
Nebraska State Patrol investigators say an Aurora man lured an 18-year-old woman from Chadron and raped her after they met online.

They arrested Ross J. Carstensen, 40, Tuesday, and prosecutors charged him with first-degree sexual assault in the Oct. 17 incident.

The woman told Nebraska State Patrol investigators she connected with a man calling himself Brandon on Facebook Oct. 1, according to an arrest affidavit.

He asked her to meet at Streeter Park in Aurora and told her he'd be waiting in a white Volkswagen Jetta, the affidavit says.

When she arrived at 10:45 a.m. on Oct. 17, she saw the Jetta, but the man inside wasn't the man she knew as Brandon, she told investigators. He told her he'd take her to meet Brandon at his house, and she got into the car, the affidavit said.

The man, later identified as Carstensen, took her to a big brick house and, once they got inside, set a security system, she told investigators.

He told her to go downstairs to meet Brandon, then locked the basement door leading to the outside and told her to go into a bedroom and undress, she told investigators.

That's when she knew what was about to happen.

The man grabbed her arm and directed her toward the bed, where he raped her, then stopped to take a phone call, according to the court document.

She thought about trying to get away, she told investigators, but she was afraid and the man was blocking her way out. The woman said she heard him say, "I'm going to give it another 10 minutes," and then he came back in the room and continued to rape her, the affidavit said.

Afterward, she told investigators, he made her eat part of an apple, then let her use the bathroom and took her back to her car, according to the court document.

She drove back to Chadron and went to a hospital, where she reported the rape.

Investigators developed Carstensen as a suspect based on the woman's description of the home, and she later identified him from a photo lineup, the affidavit said.

Investigators believe Carstensen created the fake Facebook profile and picture to lure the woman to Aurora, according to the affidavit.

The Nebraska Attorney General's Office was named special prosecutor in the case after the Hamilton County Attorney's Office said it may have a conflict of interest. That conflict wasn't specified in court documents.

Carstensen is out of jail on $75,000 bail.
It took Brant Mickelson eight arrests to have his fifth DUI charge dropped.

After being ticketed on the felony charge in Lincoln in September 2009, he moved back to North Dakota and missed his first court appearance, which set in motion a series of events unusual for a drunk driving case.

A Lancaster County judge issued a warrant for his arrest, and, seven times over seven years, law enforcement detained him on it -- in North Dakota, Minnesota and Illinois.

Each time, Nebraska authorities declined to bring him back to face the charge.

In March, the state finally decided to extradite Mickelson, 55, after he sat in jail for a week when Homeland Security detained him at Chicago O'Hare International Airport upon his return from missionary work in the Philippines.

And now, a Lancaster County district judge has ruled the state violated Mickelson's constitutional right to a speedy trial and dismissed the case against him.

The state was "grossly negligent" in failing to pursue Mickelson sooner, Judge Susan Strong said in her order Tuesday.

"A mistake or error in refusing to extradite can be overlooked on one or maybe even two occasions, but to fail or refuse to extradite on seven separate occasions is inexcusable," she said.

Mickelson and the state both were to blame, she said, but the state was more at fault.

"Although (Mickelson) cannot avoid the reality that the delay was initially caused by his own actions, the government must accept responsibility for the majority of the delay," she said.

At a hearing in September, prosecutors gave no explanation for the seven-year delay, she said.

But on Friday, Lancaster County Attorney Joe Kelly said the sheriff's office made a mistake in how the warrant was entered in the national law enforcement database. It should have approved extradition from all states, but instead said Lancaster County only would extradite from neighboring states.

"Prosecutors had no knowledge of the mistaken data entry or that he was being detained and then released in these other jurisdictions," Kelly said. "Prosecutors are not involved in that part of the process."

The policy always has been to extradite on a charge like this, Kelly said. That hasn't changed.

Mickelson's attorney, Darik Von Loh of Lincoln, said he never has seen a case in which the state declined to extradite so many times, then pursued it.

"After a certain period of time, you should have the ability to live your life again, free of concern of a warrant," he said Thursday.

Mickelson admitted to Strong that he broke his promise to go to court and never took care of the warrant because he didn't have the money, according to the order.

In September, Von Loh asked Strong to dismiss the charge, alleging among other things that the state had violated Mickelson's right to be brought to trial within six months of being charged.

Twice in that time, he was detained. But instead of sending law enforcement to bring him back from Jamestown, North Dakota, he sat in jail 10 days each time before being released, Strong noted in her order.

Meanwhile, Mickelson got sober, got a job with a tree trimming service and got involved in his church, which led to mission trips to the Philippines, where he married and had a child, Von Loh said.

He's trying to bring them to the U.S. and is relieved the warrant is no longer looming, the attorney said.

Von Loh said the state should pursue extradition if it wants to prosecute. If it doesn't, he said, it should drop the charge.

"People have a right to move on," he said.
A generation of students has come and gone since Southeast Community College proposed expanding its academic transfer program in the capital city.

In a 30-page plan submitted to the Nebraska Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education in fall 1993, SCC stated plans to give students at its commuter Lincoln campus the opportunity to take classes for credits that would transfer to a four-year institution.

Increased availability of academic transfer programs will permit community colleges to play a much larger role as feeder institutions into four-year colleges and universities and will, at the same time, contribute to the intellect of our states workforce, the plan said.

The following year, SCC welcomed some 750 students into its academic transfer program housed in an abandoned shopping mall in downtown Lincoln that was converted into classrooms and office space.

But in its original proposal, SCC alluded to limits to its growth: The maximum number of students to be served would be directly related to the fiscal, physical and human resources available to meet student demands."

Today, SCC occupies most of the former Centrum -- now known as Education Square -- as well as the former Gallup building near 66th and O streets, in addition to its traditional campuses in Lincoln, Beatrice and Milford.

As many as 1,500 students take courses at Education Square every year with the goal of transferring to four-year institutions, said Carolee Ritter, dean of SCC-Lincolns Division of Arts and Sciences.

Some 900 additional students -- many of whom are co-enrolled at other postsecondary institutions -- also take SCC courses downtown to earn credit in courses ranging from anatomy to music, Ritter said.

Were maxed out down here, she said.

On Tuesday, SCC will ask voters across its 15-county district to authorize an unprecedented $369 million investment in facilities supporting its career and technical education, academic transfer and continuing education programs.

The plan includes building a $120 million campus on the site of the Lewis Ball Fields near 21st Street and Capital Parkway and becoming part of the Telegraph District under development east of downtown Lincoln.

The new campus would be home to the majority of SCCs academic transfer courses, said Vice President for Instruction Dennis Headrick, as well as expanded opportunities in other areas. For example, SCC could offer fine arts courses.

Some general education courses would continue to be taught at the Lincoln campus at 8800 O St. as part of the career education track.

Headrick said locating a campus -- as opposed to a classroom facility like Education Square -- near the University of Nebraska-Lincoln could lead to opportunities for greater collaboration and articulation of courses between our institutions.

Creating a distinctive SCC campus near downtown also would improve the visibility for the college and help students of all ages, Ritter said.

Its my goal to have the most seamless transfer process for students from their high schools to here and from here to wherever they go next, she said.

Shanya Morris, 18, at SCC to complete general education courses, is the type of student Ritter believes would benefit from the new campus.

A 2016 graduate of Parkview Christian High School, Morris said she got a late start on looking at postsecondary options, but has enrolled in English, math and sociology classes in her first quarter at Education Square this fall.

I really didnt think about what college I wanted to go to, so I thought I would go to SCC and afterwards if I wanted to transfer, I would transfer to UNL, she said.

All of Morris classes are on the first floor of Education Square, which is a flurry of activity each morning and into the afternoon as students hop off the bus to take classes or venture through the skywalks connecting to parking garages.

Its going good so far, said Morris, who has a goal of becoming a dental assistant.

Money from the $369 million bond issue also would pay for renovation of the academic building and new dormitories at SCCs main Lincoln campus, Headrick said.

In Beatrice, the bond would pay to replace several buildings at the former John J. Pershing College, a liberal arts school built in the 1960s and acquired by SCC in the mid-1970s. The focus in Milford is the Nebraska Trade School, converted in 1941 from a veterans home.

The bond also would support adding more learning centers across SCCs 15-county area. Centers in York, Plattsmouth and Nebraska City have opened, while centers in Wahoo, Hebron and Falls City are under development.

Supporters of the SCC plan, labor and business leaders in Lincoln and Southeast Nebraska have said creating new facilities at the community colleges campuses will bolster the regions workforce and help draw new companies to the area.

Those proponents, including the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce, two construction and building trade councils and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said local businesses benefit from the education SCC provides.

Opponents, which include the Lincoln Independent Business Association, Nebraska Farm Bureau, Nebraska Cattlemen, Nebraska Soybean Association and other groups, have called it Too Much. Too Long. Too Risky.

They say the increase to property taxes would strain production costs to agriculture and be detrimental to small business owners.

If approved, the bond would add 3.9 cents to the existing SCC tax levy of 7.52 cents per $100 of valuation.

The owner of a $150,000 home would expect to see a tax increase of $58 annually to support the bond. The Farm Bureau estimates the proposal would mean a $1.52 increase in annual property taxes for each acre of land.
OMAHA -- Sen. Bernie Sanders hopes to once again turn Omaha into a "blue dot."

President Barack Obama claimed a single electoral vote from Nebraska in 2008, winning the congressional 2nd District over Republican Sen. John McCain by a margin of 3,300 votes.

Speaking to a crowd of 850 people at Metropolitan Community College Friday night and just days before the general election, Sanders, the former Democratic presidential candidate, said Nebraska must step up once more to support Secretary Hillary Clinton.

In the next four days, weve got to do everything we can to make sure Donald Trump is not elected president of the United States, Sanders said.

Vermonts independent senator said he believes the election between Clinton and the Republican nominee could come down to a single electoral vote.

The vote in this district.

Stumping on behalf of Clinton, Sanders touched on themes that he said Democrats share with Republicans:

Raising the minimum wage to a living wage.

Providing paid family leave for mothers and fathers after the birth of a child.

Ensuring pay equality in the workplace.

Finding clean energy solutions to break an addiction to fossil fuels.

Working to combat global climate change.

Sanders said each of these issues resonates with Nebraskans as well as with voters across the country.

We have made real progress in the last eight years economically, but we have more to do, he said. I do not believe most of the people who are voting for Mr. Trump are racist or sexist; I think most of them are a people who are hurting.

Our job is to reach out to them and tell them we are going to create an economy that works for them, not just the billionaires.

Making a lengthy point in the middle of his 40-minute speech Friday night, Sanders said Clinton works to "create an economy for everyone." If elected, Sanders said, Clinton will in her first 100 days introduce a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United decision in an effort to steer the U.S. away from becoming an oligarchy where a few wealthy people control the country.

Clinton also will work to develop a better educated workforce by launching new programs for college students, Sanders said.

Secretary Clinton and I believe we must make colleges and universities tutition-free, Sanders said. I want every person in this country who has the ability and desire to get a higher education, regardless of the income of his or her family, to have that opportunity.

That message resonated with Cyndi Griffin, 28, who stood in line for two hours with 2-year-old daughter Makenzie on her hip to get into the rally.

The stay-at-home mom from Bellevue said she was a big supporter of Sanders and switched her support to Clinton after his speech at the Democratic National Convention in August.

"Politics is important to all aspects of our lives," Griffin said. "Whether it's the president or to retain or repeal the death penalty. All of it."

Eileen Fonseca, who stood in line with her husband, Jesse, said it was time for a woman to be elected to the country's highest public office.

She wants that woman to be Hillary Clinton, whom she admired as first lady, and whom she backed in the 2008 primary election.

"I believe that young people don't understand how hard a woman has to fight to get anywhere," Fonseca said, who added the scandals and charges of corruption against Clinton are overblown by her political rivals.

"If someone were to look in my email and scrutinize those ... they could make anything of it," she said.

Jesse Fonseca said he split from many family members who are supporting the real estate magnate and TV celebrity Trump.

"Look at the choices -- it's obvious," he said.

Standing in line ahead of them, Joe Mettenbrink, 65, said he became a Democrat during the Nixon era and became a big believer in the Affordable Care Act. A Trump presidency, Mettenbrink said, could spell the end of the law.

"It ain't perfect, but it's better than what we've got," Mettenbrink said. "It can be fixed -- you just don't chuck the whole thing and throw it away."

Sanders said he and Clinton agree that all Americans should have affordable access to health care. Living 50 miles from the Canadian border, Sanders said, he envisions an America that also views health care as a right.

He closed by recounting progressive strides America has made when people of different backgrounds band together to enact change.

When we stand together and have the courage to have a vision of the future, theres nothing we cant accomplish, Sanders said.

Although not yet old enough to vote, Omaha South High School student Angel Ruiz said he had wanted to see Sanders speak. Ruiz, too, said he backs Clinton and fears Trump's divisiveness.

"She doesn't promote hate; she promotes equality," said Ruiz, 17. "Trump is a dangerous person, his rhetoric and everything he says is so hateful toward other people."

The Fonsecas, both longtime Democrats, said they planned to buy an expensive bottle of wine to celebrate if Clinton wins Tuesday night.

"It'll be a Cabernet," Eileen said.
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I cannot speak for others, but I do not believe that James Comey of the FBI has used KGB hackers to plant emails in Anthony Weiner's laptop and thereby rig the election for Donald Trump, whose double is waiting in a Russian sub off Staten Island, but I keep hearing this from people and so I'll have to look into it. Nor has it been established for certain that Mr. Comey is the love child of Clyde Tolson by J. Edgar Hoover (the J. stands for Jennifer), but on the other hand we don't know that it's not true, and Mr. Comey does seem to have J.'s lovely liquid eyes.

Meanwhile, let us be clear that if this election is stolen from Hillary by last-minute machinations, you Republicans are in deep trouble. We lefties are not patsies who you can play footsie with. Vengeance shall be wreaked.

We are taking names and we know where you live. If Hillary loses, your hairdresser Heather (a Democrat) is going to cut your hair with pinking shears and color it mauve and trim your eyebrows to look like Bette Davis. She will massage your shoulders and press hard on a certain nerve that makes your voice squeaky and trembly.

You drop by your favorite cafe and Hazel, a Democrat, will bring you coffee with cream though you never take cream but absent-mindedly you drink it and you wind up staying home for 48 hours, driving the porcelain bus.

Hillary has got this election in the can and if you and your KGB pals attempt dirty tricks like give Democrats pens with invisible ink to mark their Xes or jam the voting lever with wads of bubble gum or put our ballots in the fake box full of composting worms or use X-ray binoculars to see through our clothing and spot the ACLU cards in our pockets and hand us the trick ballot that goes blank when exposed to kryptonite, you will pay for this big time. Do not think otherwise.

Schoolteachers, health care workers: all Democrats. No more special help for your kids having trouble with algebra so give up any thought of college -- they are headed for jobs in the hospitality industry, washing dishes, scrubbing toilets. Your urine test at the doctor's will reveal a previously unknown strain of flesh-eating bacteria and you will wind up in long-term care, tended by -- you guessed it -- a woman named Carmelita who will not take you to the toilet unless you ask her in Spanish. ("Necesito el toilet, por favor.")

Did you know that 95 percent of all psychiatrists are progressive Democrats? If Hillary loses, you will be declared mentally incapable and put under the guardianship of your lesbian daughter who hasn't spoken to you in three years. She will bring her German shepherd Namaste who stares at you relentlessly and snarls if you pick up a telephone. Good luck with that.

As you know, we in the media are totally Democratic and when your wedding story appears in the paper, don't be surprised if the bride has a mustache and the groom's eyes are off-kilter. Your name will be misspelled and instead of "is employed as a data imaging specialist at NorCom," it will be "is currently doing time for wire fraud in a federal facility in Oklahoma." Send us your birth announcement and we will rename it Hillary and put "Stronger Together" on the onesie.

Your wife is a Democrat so I'd advise you not to eat home-cooked meals for maybe five or 10 years. And as for your little blue pills, your wife knows about identical little blue pills that will make a man suddenly interested in fabrics and interior decor.

I hope it does not come to this. Ours is a great country and we say let the candidate with the most votes win, but if you carpet-chewers want to play a different game, bring it on. Microsoft and Apple have come up with a powerful whammer-jammer that, should it come to this, God forbid, will shut down the ignition of every RV and pickup truck in America and make the radio play NPR at high volume and instead of the latest CD by your beloved Anthrax Fruit Bats or Demented Loners you will be listening to Ira Glass talk about hipster millennials and the cultural phenomenon of plaid shirts and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
Based on the available evidence, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is entirely serious about its request for a tombstone along U.S. 30 near Blair as a memorial for 33 pigs killed in a crash in October.

And not just some token display either. PETA wants a five-foot tombstone etched with a portrait of a sorrowful swine and the words In Memory of the Pigs Who Suffered and Died at this Spot.

Pardon us for struggling to keep a straight face while the Department of Roads decides what to do with the request.

Were not the only ones.

Comedywire.com has a page of jokes about roadside memorials for pigs. Well sprinkle them through the remainder of this editorial.

Mourners are asked to bring lettuce, tomatoes.

The truck that flipped over at a roundabout south of Blair was carrying the pigs to slaughter. The pigs death at the packinghouse might have been more humane, but the crash did not shorten their lives by much.

Locals have gathered funds for a bronzed smoker.

PETA noted that the crash was not the first to kill pigs near Blair.

"Multiple crashes in the same town have left pigs dead on an already terrifying trip to the slaughterhouse, all for some people's fleeting taste of bacon," said PETA president Ingrid Newkirk.

Here lies bacon, spare ribs and pork chops. BBQ services at noon. Side dishes will be served in lieu of flowers. Donations will be accepted by Boars Head and Oscar Meyer.

One of the jokesters on the website offered an out for the Roads officials who are deciding what to do with the request.

The highway department is resisting this memorial due to the fact that none of the pigs was wearing a seat belt.

Actually we think the Roads Department has a valid reason for turning down the request. PETA wants the memorial to proselytize for the vegan lifestyle. Those who choose to be vegan should be accorded respect for their decision, of course.

But there are many tax-paying Nebraskans, in a state in which the livestock industry is a significant segment of the economy, who would object to the public right-of-way being used for a sign that PETA wants to carry the words, Try Vegan.

Next theyll try a memorial on the back of every package of bacon.

PETAs requests for similar memorials in other jurisdiction, including Utah and Virginia, have been turned down. So was a request made to Arizona officials for a memorial to honor turkeys killed in a crash.

It should be noted that the deaths of many humans in crashes go unmemorialized in Nebraska. We think the Department of Roads has ample justification to say no to PETAs request.
It's bad enough that the big money interests have coerced the governor of North Dakota to unleash his overly armed and armored goons to route and antagonize unarmed peaceful protesters at Standing Rock on tax payers expense, but to enlist the aid of Nebraska law enforcement officers, through the generosity of Pete Ricketts, is an outrage ("Ricketts says he was 'happy' to have State Patrol help with Dakota Access protests," Oct. 28). Even if their compensation is not on Nebraska taxpayer's expense, was their training and certification not? Will the state be compensated for this?

Judging by the Governor's generous offer, one could surmise that Nebraska has a surplus of law enforcement officers on hand to farm out. That, being the case, might it suggest that Nebraska has too many to begin with, which does not reflect well on the credibility of those making appropriations, not to mention that since the officers are being paid as a side job, indicators seem to point to the state perhaps not compensating its officers enough. Whose uniforms, badges and weapons will they use?

One would think that Nebraskans have better things to do with their hard-earned money than to finance a standing force of mercenaries. Apparently, if Governor Ricketts can toss in a few hundred thousand dollars to promote his death penalty agenda, surely he can pitch in for such a noble cause as subduing and intimidating unarmed, peaceful protesters on behalf of his good buddy in North Dakota and his cronies in the banking industry.

David Pilcher, Lincoln
I am a farmer outside of Plymouth and have some concerns with the $369 million thirty-year Southeast Community College bond that will be on the ballot next week. The decline in prices for agricultural commodities the last few years have forced most farmers to take a hard look at the expense side of their operations. Property tax is a yearly fixed cost that has increased every year I have been farming. I have to pay this tax if I harvest a bumper crop or if I dont harvest a single bushel.

Southeast Community College receives revenue from property taxes, tuition and state aid and, for 2015-2016, property taxes were the largest source of revenue for the college. The proposed bond will be paid for exclusively by increasing property taxes in the fifteen-county Southeast Community College district. I am disappointed that this proposal did not seek to increase all three revenue sources equally to pay for the bond.

The community college system is an important part of Nebraskas education system but looking at the agricultural economy, at this time and for the next several years, I question if we can justify raising property taxes to replace every single building on the Beatrice campus. Were other sources of funding explored and can other sources of funding be found? Looking at the changes being proposed for the three campuses, I have to wonder if we are going to bite off more than we can chew or pay for. At this time, I am not able to vote for this bond measure and would encourage other property-taxpaying patrons to also vote no.

Vern Jantzen, Plymouth
Anniversary celebration The Rev. David R. Green will celebrate his ninth anniversary as pastor at 2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 5, at Gregg Chapel Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, 2237 Howe St. Musical selections, tributes and reflections will be shared, followed by a reception.

All Saints celebration

All Saints will be celebrated during the 5 p.m. vespers service Saturday, Nov. 5 and at the 9:15 a.m. traditional service Sunday, Nov. 6, at Living Faith Lutheran Church, 2915 Wright Ave. Special music on Sunday will be provided by the Living Faith Choir. A service of remembrance will begin at 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 6. Attendees will remember members and friends who have died during the past year.

A contemporary worship service begins at 10 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 6, in the Sturtevant Sportsplex, 10116 Stellar Drive, Sturtevant. The praise band Selah will lead the music.

Ministry anniversary celebration set

The Rev. John Bodnar and his wife Marlas 25th anniversary of ministry will be celebrated during the 10:30 a.m. worship service Sunday, Nov. 6, at First Evangelical Free Church, 2401 Ohio St. A potluck lunch and time of celebration will commence at noon in the church fellowship hall.

All Saints Sunday

All Saints Sunday will be celebrated at the 9:15 a.m. worship service Sunday, Nov. 6, at Trinity United Methodist Church, 3825 Erie St. Holy Communion will be celebrated. Attendees will remember members and friends who have died during the past year. Members of the congregation will be invited to come forth and light a candle for someone they want to remember. The Chancel Choir, under the direction of Tony Roland, will present Come to the Banquet.

Lifelong Learning presentation

The next Lifelong Learning session begins at 10 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 6, in Vogel Hall at St. Richard of Chichester Catholic Church, 1509 Grand Ave. The presentation will feature various speakers including Police Chief Art Howell who will share examples of the beautiful works of mercy that they are involved in within the Racine community.

Anniversary celebration

Raymond Christian Fellowship, 8638 Highway K, will celebrate its 160th anniversary Sunday, Nov. 6. The Rev. Bryan Johnson, former pastor, will bring the message at the 10:45 a.m. worship service. A potluck lunch, pie auction and ice cream social will follow the service.

All Saints observed

Attendees will light candles and remember saints during a special time at the 10 a.m. worship service Sunday, Nov. 6, at Covenant Presbyterian Church, 40 Ohio St. Participants will give glory to God for the lives of those who have died in the past year. It is also Communion and Stewardship Commitment Sunday.

Commitment Sunday

There will be a blessing and consecration of members 2017 Pledge Commitments during the 8 and 10:15 am. services Sunday, Nov. 6, at Yorkville United Methodist Church, 17645 Old Yorkville Road. The sacrament of Holy Communion will be celebrated. The choir will sing the communion hymn Remember the Lord at the 10:15 a.m. service. The 8 a.m. service includes praise songs accompanied by Russ Fanning on guitar. The congregation is invited to bring items for care packages for young adults and college students.

All Saints Sunday

All Saints Sunday will be celebrated during the 10:45 a.m. worship service Sunday, Nov. 6, at Faith United Methodist Church, 1013 Harmony Drive. Members and friends who have died in the past year will be remembered. A bell will chime for each person and their family will be given a flower in remembrance. Holy Communion will be celebrated.

Siena Center programs

The following programs are being offered at the Siena Retreat Center, 5637 Erie St.:

Integral Ecology, 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 12. This day of reflection probes Pope Francis concept of integral ecology and what relationality and responsibility ask of the human family today. Presenter Linda Gibler is on the faculty of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. Cost to attend is $35 including $10 non-refundable deposit and noon meal.

Women for Women, 9:30 a.m. to noon Saturday, Nov. 19. At each gathering, women will have time for prayer, meditation and reflection. Participants will read and discuss Wayne Mullers A Life of Being, Having and Doing Enough. Cost to attend is $10 per session.

For more information or to register for a program, go to www.SienaRetreatCenter.org or call 262-898-2590.
RACINE  A Racine man was arrested Wednesday after he was allegedly connected to three forced entry burglaries that took place in the city.

Nickolas C. Laws, 18, of the 1100 block of Erie Street, admitted to committing the crimes to police after his arrest, according to the criminal complaint.

Two incidents took place at Lakeside Mini Mart, 1003 Center St. The first was reported by the manager on Sept. 21, when he reportedly arrived and noticed the back door had been forcibly opened.

The manager noticed that cash, cellphones, cellphone accessories, cigarettes and cigars were missing, the complaint said. Video surveillance reportedly showed two black male suspects.

The store was reportedly broken into again on Oct. 21, and the manager found forced entry into the business from the rear door. Items taken included cigarettes, candy, lighters, condoms and energy drinks, according to the complaint.

A third incident occurred at Villa Mobile Store, 1303 Villa St., on Sept. 23. The same technique was allegedly used by forcing entry through a rear door. This time the two suspects broke glass on a rear door to gain entry.

The owner was contacted when a burglar alarm went off around 11:16 p.m. Cell phones were stolen from the store and the display cases were ransacked, the complaint said.

Laws faces three felony charges for burglary of a building or dwelling and three misdemeanor charges for bail jumping. He is scheduled for a preliminary hearing at 9 a.m. Nov. 9 at the Racine County Law Enforcement Center.

Laws remained in custody as of Friday night at the Racine County Jail, online records showed.
WIND LAKE  A Wind Lake man faces three felony charges after he was reportedly found in possession of child pornography.

Brandon Schmidt, 26, of the 6600 block of Edgemere Drive, was discovered by a Waukesha Police Department detective, who tracked child pornography to Schmidts IP address, according to the criminal complaint.

The detective reportedly found nine pieces of child pornography connected to the IP address and turned the investigation over to the Racine County Sheriffs Office.

The Sheriffs Office executed a search warrant at Schmidts home. Schmidt admitted to downloading child pornography, the complaint said.

Schmidt faces three felony charges for possession of child pornography. He is scheduled for a preliminary hearing at 9 a.m. Nov. 17 at the Racine County Law Enforcement Center, 717 Wisconsin Ave.

Schmidt remained in custody as of Friday night at the Racine County Jail, online records showed.
Beer, biere, bier

In Belgium, beer (biere in French, bier in Flemish but said just like beer in English) is an institution. As much as the Mannekin Pis (terribly disappointing and underwhelming) and frites (delicious in every which way), beer is an integral part of Belgian identity.
Bhairahawa airport project freed from green shackles

The Gautam Buddha International Airport project in Bhairahawa has been permitted to extract sand and gravel needed for its construction from the Tinau River using mechanical devices, raising hopes that the scheme will be completed within its revised deadline of June 2018.
Blurred lines

It seems like a standard drunken hook-up for Ayan Sanger (Ranbir Kapoor) and Alizeh Khan (Anushka Sharma) when they meet at a party somewhere in London, where both are presently residing.
Co-ops to be required to submit accounts online

The government will soon be able to get instant updates on the financial health of the cooperatives operating in the country as they will be required to submit financial details online.
Deuba addresses India Ideas Conclave in Goa

Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba arrived in Goa, India, on Friday to participate in India Ideas Conclave 2016 organised by India Foundation.
Economic journalist Neupane no more

Economic journalist and former editor of Karobar national daily Sanjay Neupane died of brain tumor on Saturday.
Feasibility studies of MCC projects to be completed within January

The feasibility studies of energy and roads projects that will be built or maintained using funds provided by the US government will be completed within January,
Forging ahead

Somraj Tamang has always been fascinated with ritual masks. A resident of Thimi, Tamang apprenticed with a Chitrakar family, the traditional mask makers of the community, to learn and eventually master the craft for himself.
Housing aid signing process begins in Valley

More than one-and-a-half years since the Gorkha earthquake, the government has started signing agreements in the Valley for the distribution of the first tranche of the house reconstruction aid.
Indian President's visit proves Nepal's capability in providing security: Defence Minister Khand

Minister for Defence, Bal Krishna Khand, has stated that the successful visit of the Indian President, Pranab Mukherjee, to Nepal has proved that Nepal is capable of providing security to any VVIPs visiting Nepal.
Indian prez visits Janakpur, Pokhara

Indian President Pranab Mukherjee, who wrapped up his three-day state visit to Nepal on Friday, said he was overwhelmed by the warm reception and hospitality extended to him by the residents of the ancient city of Janakpur.
Indian prezs trip successful in building mutual trust: Cabinet

A Cabinet meeting on Friday concluded that the three-day state visit of Indian President Pranab Mukherjee to Nepal was successful in building mutual trust and confidence.
Indonesia protest: Jakarta anti-governor rally turns violent

Indonesian police have used tear gas and water cannon to subdue protesters as thousands of hard-line Muslims marched against Jakarta's governor.
Mukherjee terms visit mission of friendship

Indian President Pranab Mukherjee has described his three-day state visit to Nepal as a mission of friendship that reflects the priority that India attaches to further strengthening unique relationship with Nepal.
NC leader Sujata Koirala diagnosed with breast cancer

Nepali Congress leader Sujata Koirala has been diagnosed with breast cancer during her recent visit to Malaysia.
Pakistan to deport 'green-eyed girl' back to Afghanistan

The Afghan woman who famously appeared on the cover of National Geographic in 1985 will be deported from Pakistan after serving a short prison sentence.
Salmon Diplomacy

Our incompetent government sure knows how to welcome bideshi guests. Yes, declare a public holiday so that millions of us can stay home and spend quality time with our families.
Smoke and oil

Dusk was approaching as I headed towards Eba Bahi, along a busy street that shoots straight out of Mangal Bazaar towards Lagankhel.
Solitude in the crowd

You can fall in love with the mountains, but never fall out of it. As soon as you get the first taste of the Himalayan air, you realise that there is no turning back
Works underway to amend constitution: Minister Mahat

Minister for Foreign Affairs Prakash Sharan Mahat on Saturday said the Nepali Congress (NC) had taken a leading role in implementing the constitution as 'it had tirelessly fought to promulgate the constitutional document'.
Yadav slams major parties for not being serious

Federal Socialist Forum  Nepal Chairman, Upendra Yadav, today accused the major political parties of not being serious even after setting deadlines seven times for constitution's amendment.
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Craig Sager grew up in Illinois and has been rooting for the Cubs his whole life. This season he threw out a first pitch at Wrigley Field and led the crowd in Take Me Out to the Ballgame.

And it turns out the TNT sideline reporter puts his money where his mouth is.

According to Sagers son, Craig Jr., Sager has bet on the Cubs to win the World Series every single year since 1981, as described in his not-yet-released autobiography Living Out Loud. This week, he cashed in on a $1,000 bet, as his team won its first World Series title since 1908.

Congrats to the @Cubs and my Dad for finally being able to cash in after 35 years. #FlyTheW #LivingOutLoud pic.twitter.com/LgpVYMujtJ  Craig Sager II (@CraigSagerJr) November 3, 2016

In December, the Cubs were going off at about 6/1 to win the World Series, meaning Sager is likely due for a check of something like $6,000. Not bad, not bad.

In even better news for Sager and his family, he apparently had a successful procedure this week as he continues to fight leukemia. Sager has been pretty much bed-ridden in recent months, but he did get an allowance from his doctor to go to an NLCS game at Wrigley Field.

Just two Cubs fans celebrating a successful procedure, a birthday & a WORLD SERIES in the same day!!!! #SagerStrong #ThankYouCubs pic.twitter.com/zvWU7XoDS8  Craig Sager II (@CraigSagerJr) November 4, 2016

The Cubs World Series title has produced so many great stories about people who have waited incredibly long times to see their favorite team win a championship, and Sagers is as touching as any. As he wrote in his book to explain why he kept picking the Cubs, You gotta think positive.
Former FDC Presidential candidate rtd Col Dr Kizza Besigye has cautioned government against printing new currency.

Besigye days that given the current economic situation in the country, there is a likelihood for top government officials to conspire with the Governor Bank of Uganda Emanuel Mutebile to print new money.

Describing the move as highly criminal, Besigye says that the economy will be slapped into a financial mess.
Gen Elly Tumwine has expressed shock at the death of one of their own Maj Gen Oketa.

Oketa who has been the deputy coordinator of Operation Wealth Creation died last night at Kadic hospital in Kampala.

Speaking to Kfm Gen Tumwine said his loss was a great blow to the UPDF and the country at large.

He however encourages fellow military officers to soldier on and work to positively contribute to development of the country.
The opposition shadow minister for foreign Affairs Atkins Katusabe says Uganda should not withdrew its Membership from the international criminal court.

The concerned, comes after three ICC Member states from Africa decided to withdraw its Member ship the latest being Gambia where the international criminal court chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda hail from.

Katusabe who is also the Member of Parliament for Bukonzo west in Kasese district says Legislators should advise government on this issue.

He says that Uganda still needs this court.

A number of countries have been threatening to leave the international criminal court Uganda inclusive.
ANGOLA  Early voting was expected to hit about 14 percent of registered voters by the close of business Friday in Steuben County.

By mid-afternoon, total early voting had surpassed 3,125 voters, both walk-in and mail. Steuben County Clerk Shelley Herbert was expecting more than 200 walk-in voters on Friday and a brisk day again today. Voting is available from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. today at the Steuben County Courthouse on the Public Square.

Weve gotten busier as the weeks gone on, Herbert said.

This election has topped 2008 when a record 2,912 people voted early as then-Sen. Barack Obama was elected as the United States first black president.

After today, people can vote early in the courthouse from 8 a.m. to noon on Monday. After that, people will have to go to the polls on Tuesday between the hours of 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Herbert is expecting a busy Election Day in this presidential contest year. A contentious battle has been waged between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump.

Our turnouts usually pretty heavy on Election Day, Herbert said.

There also are spirited races for U.S. Senate and Indiana governor. In the race for the open U.S. Senate seat, Republican U.S. Rep. Todd Young, R-9th, is going up against former governor and Sen. Evan Bayh, Democrat. Running for governor are former state House Speaker John Gregg, Democrat, versus Republican Lt. Gov. Eric Holcomb. Also in the race is Libertarian Rex Bell.

The presidential candidates have been pushing early voting. On Thursday the Associated Press reported that Clinton was possibly getting more people out early to vote than Trump.
Judge Carmaine Sturino of Dakota faces a challenge from Caledonia attorney Tim Guth in the election for the Houston County position in Minnesotas 3rd Judicial District.

Sturino was appointed in August 2015 by Gov. Mark Dayton to replacing longtime Judge James Fabian, who retired.

Carmaine Sturino

Carmine Sturino has a sign hanging in her kitchen: We can do hard things.

Its a philosophy Sturino believes in, and one she brought to the one-judge bench in Houston County when she was appointed.

My career has been public service and volunteer work, Sturino said, which is my job now.

After graduating from Drake University Law School, Sturino spent 14 years as an attorney, practicing exclusively in Minnesotas 3rd Judicial District. That included work as a public defender, prosecutor, private attorney and conciliation court referee, a career that spanned criminal, civil, family court, jury verdicts, plea negotiations and agreements.

She got good advice early on from a colleague about being a judge.

Making a good decision now is better than a perfect decision later, she said.

Sturino said she wants to ensure a culture of accountability, as well as advocate efficiency in the court system.

I am not afraid to try new things, to learn from my mistakes, to think outside of the box and to do what I need to do in order to better serve our community, she said.

Shes also not afraid of the challenges the border county faces, which include resources and communications.

Resources are concern because just in her year on the bench the judge need in Houston County has gone from 0.7 or 0.8 to full-time. Although the caseloads have increased, staffing hasnt. Theres also the reality of an increasingly electronic state of filing, something the entire county has had to adjust to.

Its been a huge learning curve, Sturino said.

Theres another part of the learning curve, and thats the realization of the greater need for drug treatment, prevention and education. Meth and heroin are becoming a larger problem in the county than ever before, she said, and continuation of the monitoring process known as the drug patch, as well as establishment of treatment courts at the other end, are both needed. Also increasing in the county is the need for quality foster care.

If the local population doesnt know the number of cases are on the rise, she said, theres no incentive to educate and inspire them.

Tim Guth

Judges need to be listening more than talking, said Tim Guth.

Thats one of the reasons hes motivated to run for Houston County judge. Theres another.

I believe that judges should be elected by the people they serve rather than appointed, Guth said. Thats why I ran.

Three things hed like to do if elected all fall under the heading of reform.

The attorneys on trials have to have their cases settled by the Wednesdays before the following Monday jury selection, he said. I dont want jurors sitting around at $20 a day while theyre losing money.

Hed also like to establish a veterans court, where those struggling with PTSD, and alcohol or drug issues can get help.

I would also like to start a drug court for nonviolent people who cant beat their addictions on their own, he said.

Guth grew up in Caledonia, where he now live, and he attended St. Olaf College, then Hamline Law School, passing the Minnesota bar exam in 1984. He then went into Army as a private. He was given a waiver to try out for special forces, went through basic and advanced individual training, then jump school, and then sent to Fort Bragg, where he passed his Green Beret special forces courses, which took a year. He came out a sergeant.

By 1988, Guth was back in Minnesota as assistant Winona County attorney, where he spent five years, with 40 jury trials as a prosecutor; hes been involved in 28 more in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Since 1993, he has been in private practice, licensed in both Minnesota and Wisconsin, covering Houston, Winona and Fillmore counties, as well as serving public defender clients in La Crosse and Monroe counties.

The establishment of a drug court, which many counties already have, is important to Guth.

One thing that Minnesota has, unlike Wisconsin, Guth said, is, if you get convicted of a felony in Minnesota, and you successfully complete probation, it turns into a misdemeanor.

That, he said, would be very important for drug offenders and veterans who, through no fault of their own and due to the things theyve seen, would like to have a pathway out.

A lot of self-medication is happening with veterans, he said, and hed like to see a pathway to treatment.

We have the VA in Tomah, Guth said, 40 miles away. They have a substance abuse and alcohol classes over there. If youre a veteran, you can go there.

Guth has personally gotten several Green Berets into the program. Something similar hasnt happened in Houston County, though.

I dont think anybody wanted to start it because, possibly, money issues, he said.

In his private practice, he focuses on criminal defense, which he runs out of his office in La Crosse.

The big thing, and I would like to see happen, he said, is, in Wisconsin, guardian ad litems have to be lawyers. In Minnesota, they dont. And thats another issue that should be addressed. Often times, lawyers know whats going on in court, and lay people dont. I would like to see that change.
Theres something to be said for documenting our important life events, snapping photos and putting them up on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Its a natural extension of the old photo album on the coffee table when visitors come to call, except it doesnt take up space in your living room and you only have to tell the story once to share it with all of your friends.

Plus, when you take a selfie and share it on social media, you get to share your excitement instantly and maybe even encourage your friends to come join you immediately. For big, nationwide events, we get to share our own perspectives and experience them all at once, even with our friends spread out across the country.

Unfortunately, Wisconsinites wont be able to do that on Election Day Tuesday  at least, not with a photo. Our state has a long-standing ban on what the kids call ballot selfies (although they do not typically include a persons self).

Despite loathing the inaccuracy of the name, I love the idea of ballot selfies. We should be proud of voting and who we vote for. It should be a conversation we have with our friends and family that is passionate but pleasant, without polluting our relationships. Sharing our votes on social media is a great way to get our friends excited about participating in our most important responsibility as citizens.

Alas, we in Wisconsin are not allowed to join the fun.

More specifically, it is against the law to show your marked ballot to another person, according to Wisconsin Elections Commission spokesman Reid Magney.

If you take a picture of your ballot and you keep it to yourself, thats fine, Magney said.

The law predates smartphones and selfie-culture, dating back to the days where film cameras were the norm, rather than a rarity. It turns out the law wasnt designed to kill fun, but rather it serves a practical purpose.

The reason you cant show your ballot to another person is to prevent people from getting paid for how they might vote, Magney said.

Its a lot harder to talk someone into paying you to vote for a particular candidate if you cant show them a receipt.

Magney wasnt aware of any cases where someone has been prosecuted for their Election Day fun  he said mostly an investigation would only occur if another person filed a complaint  but he still warns against taking the chance.

We tell people, Dont post pictures of your ballot to social media because somebody might file a complaint against you, Magney said.

Wisconsinites also arent supposed to take photos at polling places after officials instituted a camera ban designed to avoid disturbances at the polling place. You dont want somebody outside the polling place taking photos of voters as they come in because that might make some people uncomfortable.

Somebody could use it as an intimidation thing, Magney said. We dont want anyone disturbing or potentially intimidating voters; however, theres also the First Amendment.

I get the arguments against our selfie ban, though Ill point out that the constitutionality of the law is questionable. Two states  New Hampshire and Indiana  that specifically outlawed ballot selfies had those laws struck down in federal court, with two different judges finding it restricted the free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.

U.S. Judge Paul Barbadoro in August 2015 struck down the ban in New Hampshire, ruling that the state failed to prove the law furthered a compelling government interest of preventing vote-buying in the absence of proof that the vote-buying was actually occurring.

That said, Im not recommending anyone go the route of challenging the constitutionality in the courts by going ahead and posting a ballot selfie and then hoping a court rules in your favor. Instead, I want to encourage the people who get our votes to take a look at Wisconsins statute and remove the restriction. We shouldnt be limiting our rights without some seriously compelling proof that there is a real problem that needs to be solved. (This is the same reason I oppose Wisconsins voter ID law.)

There is some good news for those with smartphone dependence. You are allowed to text, and nothing says you cant Google some candidates if you get in the voting booth and suddenly forget who your candidates are.

However, I  and Magney  cannot stress enough how important it is to plan ahead. Even if youre out of data, have no internet and need to make a quick trip to the library to use theirs, visit myvote.wi.gov/en-us/" href="https://myvote.wi.gov/en-us/" target="_blank">myvote.wi.gov, know who is on your ballot and know what you need to vote.

As Magney said, Do it now. Find your polling place. Make sure youre registered, and make sure you have the right ID.

I dont want to get into the constitutionality of voter ID, but as it stands right now, thats the law in our state. In addition to myvote.wi.gov, take a gander at bringitwisconsin.com to see what you need to meet the requirements of the voter ID law, where your nearest Department of Motor Vehicles is and when its open, and what exceptions can be made in the case for indefinitely confined voters or those whose religious beliefs prevent them from being photographed.

If your ID doesnt work, if its expired, if you forget it at home the clerk can issue you a provisional ballot and youll have until 4 p.m. Friday to bring your identification to the municipal clerk, but its always better if you dont chance it.

People should not wait, Magney said.
The 14,000 Cuban refugees of the Mariel boatlift who were brought to Fort McCoy in 1980 have been unfairly represented as predominantly criminals, poor unskilled laborers and the mentally ill, according to a UW-L professor.

The refugees, mostly males in their teens or 20s, were a portion of the nearly 125,000 Mariel refugees who fled Cuba in 1980 when the countrys leader, Fidel Castro, let people leave during a period of turmoil and civil unrest. Many narratives describe acts of violence and sexual assault inside the fort and crime in communities after the refugees were allowed to leave, such the story of Lene Cespedes-Torres, who was convicted of killing his sponsor Berniece Taylor in Tomah.

During a presentation Friday afternoon at the 2016 North Central Council of Latin Americanists conference at the UW-La Crosse, modern languages professor Omar Granados presented evidence that only a small fraction of the refugees were criminals or suffered from mental illness and that most crimes were perpetrated by whites who created an unwelcome environment for the new residents. Media reports fueled negative impressions of the refugees.

It is hard to deal with this, Granados said. But it is so relevant to our world today. I cant not show it to my students.

Granados blamed the violence at Fort McCoy on the Federal Emergency Management Agencys decision to institute a system of self-government of the barracks, with Warhawks  wearing donated UW-Whitewater jackets  running the buildings and carrying knives, clubs and other weapons to enforce order. He cites Kathleen Mann, the lawyer who represented Cespedes-Torres and many other Mariel refugees, who described the refugees as victims of anti-Cuban sentiment and said that most crimes were the result of a lack of understanding of U.S laws and an inability to communicate in English.

El Mercurio de McCoy, a bilingual publication written by the refugees at the camp, provides a better picture of the immigrants and their experiences, he said, highlighting social life at the camp, reporting on world affairs and helping prepare refugees with English homework and articles on American history and geography, as well as offering legal, immigration and basic health advice. Granados pointed out the blog of Cespedes-Torres, who maintains his innocence to this day.

This contrasts with statements from others at the time, including Janet Jenkins, a former La Crosse lawyer who also defended Cespedes-Torres. She, along with former La Crosse Mayor John Medinger, a refugee sponsor, local law enforcement officials and UW-L political science professor Joe Heim all told the Tribune in interviews that La Crosse went from welcoming to distrustful as the incidents of crime rose after the refugees began arriving.

It was a mess because the policy was not well thought out and planned, Jenkins said in a 2005 Tribune story. President Carter was well-intentioned and so good-hearted, but we were taken advantage of. Most of the refugees were criminals, and most have come and gone.

One thing both Granados presentation and the Tribune coverage agree upon was that very few of the refugees remained in the La Crosse area. Many were transferred to other refugee centers or settled in major Latin American population centers such Miami or Los Angeles.

Providing a venue for such research is an important part of the NCCLA mission, the organizations president and UW-L professor Christine Hippert said. This year marks the first time the organization has held its annual conference in La Crosse, and she said the two-day conference that ends today is especially relevant as immigration and refugees are topic of political conversation this election year.

(The Mariel refugees) were a sad chapter in La Crosse history, she said, one that we dont want to reproduce.
PHOENIX -- Ballot harvesting will remain a crime in Arizona, at least for this election.

In a brief order this morning, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a day-old order of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocking the state from enforcing the law which makes it a felony to deliver the ballots of anyone else. The justices gave no reason for their decision.

Today's order is not the last word.

The justices sent the case back to the appeals court for full consideration of the question of whether the state law is illegal. That process could take months.

In keeping the law in place, the high court rejected last-minute argument by Democrats that the law, which took effect only three months ago, should be kept on hold in the interim. They argued that the harms to voters in not being able to allow others to take their ballots to polling places outweighs any interests of the state in enforcing the law.

Instead, they agreed with attorneys for the state and the Arizona Republican Party that changing the law now, just days ahead of Tuesday's election, would cause unnecessary voter confusion.

The law was approved earlier this year by the Republican-controlled legislature amid claims that allowing anyone to deliver anyone else's ballot creates an opportunity for fraud.

Legislators did agree to create exception for family members, people in the same household and certain caregivers. Anyone else is subject to a penalty of one year in state prison.

Friday, 4.pm.: Appeals Court suspends ban on ballot harvesting for Tuesday election

PHOENIX -- Unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes, Arizonans won't face prison time for helping a neighbor or anyone else return an early ballot.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday blocked Arizona from enforcing a new law, which makes it a felony to collect the ballots of anyone else and bring them to the polls. The law, adopted earlier this year by the Republican-controlled legislature, provides only narrow exceptions for family members, those in the same household and certain caregivers.

Friday's ruling does not mean HB 2023 is illegal. That will be hashed out through a full-blown trial, a process that could take months or longer.

But Chief Justice Sidney Thomas, writing for himself and five others on the 11-member panel, said he and his colleagues believe it is appropriate to prevent the law from taking effect for this election.

Thomas pointed out that "ballot harvesting'' was never considered illegal until this year. He said that weighed heavily on the decision of the majority to conclude there would be no real harm to the state in perhaps only delaying its implementation while its legality is decided by the courts.

"The injunction does not affect the state's election process or machinery,'' he wrote. "It simply would enjoin enforcement of a legislative act that would criminalize the collection, by persons other than the voters, of legitimately cast ballots.''

Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain, writing a dissent on behalf of five of the 11 judges, called that argument "incomprehensible.''

"Of course HB 2023 directly regulates the state's election process or machinery: It governs the collection of ballots which obviously is integral to how an election is conducted,'' he wrote. "But under the majoritys Orwellian logic, regulations affecting get-out-the-vote operations are somehow not regulations of the 'electoral process.' ''

And O'Scannlain called it "irrelevant and incorrect'' for the majority to say an injunction is appropriate because a violation of the new law could land someone in state prison for a year.

There is a possibility that Friday's order may not be the last word.

In a prepared statement, Secretary of State Michele Reagan said she thinks the three-judge panel that upheld the law just a week ago got it right. She said her office is "currently working with counsel to draft an appeal to the Supreme Court asking them to stay the order.''

The attorney general's office was exploring whether to seek an emergency stay from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Arizona law allows all voters to request an early ballot. It can be mailed back or taken to a polling place.

Until now, there has been another option: Give the ballot to someone else. That has allowed both political parties, community groups and even special interests to go door-to-door -- especially after it's too late to put a ballot in the mail -- and ask people if their early ballot is sitting on a table and needs to be taken to the polls.

Groups aligned with Democrat interests have generally been more active with those efforts and more successful.

Earlier this year the legislature, at the behest of Reagan, a Republican, voted to make the practice a felony amid arguments that it created the opportunity for fraud. The Republican majority was undeterred by statements from Democrats that tampering with ballots or refusing to return them already is illegal and that there has never been a proven instance of fraud.

The state and federal Democratic parties along with the Clinton campaign and others sued, charging that the law is racially discriminatory. That allegation is crucial as the federal Voting Rights Act makes it illegal for states to enact laws or regulations that have a disproportionate impact on minorities.

Thomas, in the earlier three-judge ruling that upheld the law, said the evidence is there.

"The record demonstrated that, in many rural areas with a high proportion of minority voters, home mail delivery was not available, and it was extremely difficult to travel to a post office,'' he wrote.

Thomas also said that 14,000 registered voters on the 2.8 million acre Tohono O'odham reservation have no home mail delivery. He said a ban on allowing people to collect ballots from residents there clearly affects them.

But Judge Sandra Ikuta, who wrote the majority opinion for the three-judge panel, said there was "no evidence that these categories of voters were more likely to be minorities than non-minorities.''

She acknowledged that there are several rural communities that lack home delivery that are almost exclusively populated by minorities, places like San Luis and Somerton. But Ikuta said there also are lots of rural places with few minorities, places like Colorado City, Quartzsite, St. David and Wickenburg, which also lack home delivery and are equally affected by the ban.

"Similarly, while the record shows the Tohono O'odham Nation lacks home mail service (the plaintiff) does not point to evidence showing that HB 2023 has a disproportionate impact on members of the Tohono O'odham Nation compared to non-minorities who also live in rural communities,'' Ikuta wrote.

Both the majority of the 9th Circuit and the dissenting judges do agree that there is no evidence of fraud. Thomas said that undermines the arguments made by Republican lawmakers of why the new restriction is needed.

But O'Scannlain said none of that matters legally. He said the state's desire to prevent fraud before it happens is important enough.

"Arizona does not have to wait until it possesses such evidence before it acts,'' he wrote. "It may be proactive, rather than reactionary.''
Democrats are in an uproar over FBI Director James Comeys recent letter to Congress, announcing the bureau is reopening its investigation into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clintons secret email server during her tenure as secretary of state. Democrats have cried foul, saying Comeys announcement so close to Election Day could sway the outcome of the vote.

Its quite a turnabout from July, when Republicans were accusing Comey of playing politics with his announcement that the bureau would not seek charges against Clinton for her extremely careless use of the private email system.

Has the FBI become too political? Can federal law enforcement be trusted after this election? Joel Mathis and Ben Boychuk debate.

Joel Mathis

Understand: The decision by FBI Director James Comey to announce a renewed inquiry into Hillary Clintons emails, made even as advanced voting had begun across America, was not wise. The bureau has long operated under a Department of Justice edict to strenuously avoid the appearance of meddling in elections, and that edict was plainly ignored here.

On the other hand, its easy to see why Comey arrived at the choice. Not to act  to keep quiet  would also, inevitably, have been seen as a political decision. Republicans wouldve accused Comey of withholding information critical to the public understanding of a presidential candidate. He wouldve been savaged, again, much like hes been savaged by Republicans since he originally announced he was recommending against charges in the matter.

Instead, Democrats are howling. The man was damned if he did, and damned if he didnt.

Clintons defenders are angry, too, because Comey broke with precedent when recommending against the charges, explaining publicly the reasoning behind his decision  and criticizing Clinton pretty heartily for using an unsecure email server in the first place.

But again: Its easy to see why he did so. Yes, the FBI is silent on most matters of investigation. But most such matters dont involve the presidential nominee of a major political party. And Attorney General Loretta Lynch had previously said, after an embarrassingly publicized meeting with Bill Clinton, that she would accept the FBIs recommendation in the matter  no matter which way it swung. That placed the burden on Comey to produce an explanation.

He did so, breaking with precedent, clearly hoping to convince the public that the decision was apolitical.

Theres no such thing as apolitical in presidential politics. When his decision favored Clinton, Republicans were mad. When his decision put her back under a harsh spot spotlight, it was Dems turn to be furious. The FBI couldve done everything according to Hoyle, and wed still be debating whether the agency is too politicized. Which is why, in the end, Comey shouldve followed the DoJs edict.

Its an election year, after all. Everythings too politicized.

Ben Boychuk

President Barack Obama in April assured Americans that there is no political influence in any investigation conducted by the Justice Department, or the FBI, not just in this case  referring to Hillary Clintons misuse of a private email server to conduct public business  but in any case.

Guaranteed. Full stop, the president said. Nobody gets treated differently when it comes to the Justice Department, because nobody is above the law.

Does anyone really believe that anymore? Especially now?

Lets face it: James Comey is hopelessly compromised. The FBI director is supposed to be independent from politics. But when youre working under a Democratic administration and the target of your investigation is not only the Democratic Partys nominee for president but also potentially the first woman to occupy the Oval Office, politics is the very air you breathe.

Politics very nearly derailed the FBIs criminal investigation into the Clinton Foundation for fraud and influence peddling. That probe has long been reported, but wasnt officially confirmed until this week.

The Wall Street Journal recounted an argument between an unnamed Justice Department official and FBI second-in-command Andrew McCabe.

McCabe reportedly asked: Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation? The official paused and said no  what else would he say? But the message to back away from a politically sensitive target was clear.

It gets worse. Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik is leading the Justice Departments new effort to expedite the process of examining the laptop of Clinton lieutenant Huma Abedin and her estranged husband, Anthony Weiner.

And who is Kadzik? Hes a former attorney for Marc Rich, the multimillionaire who received a dubious pardon from former President Bill Clinton during his final hours in office in 2000. Kadzik also represented Clinton campaign chief John Podesta when, as White House deputy chief of staff, he testified before independent counsel Ken Starrs grand jury in 1998.

Fantastic lawyer, Podesta wrote in a 2008 email (since leaked). Kept me out of jail. Good to know.

Rightly or wrongly, the FBI and the Justice Department now have reputations as instruments of the Washington power elite. Nobody is above the law? Well see where these investigations go if Clinton wins Tuesday.
DES MOINES, Iowa (TNS)  It was a chilly spring day when an Iowa farmer spotted something odd in his freshly planted cornfield: a short, bald Asian man on his knees, digging up seeds.

Not just any seeds  special inbred seeds, the product of years of secret research and millions of dollars in corporate investment, so confidential that not even the farmer knew exactly what he was growing.

The Iowa resident approached the trespasser, who grew flush and nervous, stammering something about being from a local university. When the farmer diverted his attention briefly to take a phone call, the stranger bolted to a waiting car and sped away.

That curious encounter eventually led to an exhaustive five-year federal investigation and prosecution into one of the most brazen examples of Chinese economic espionage against the U.S., a crime that annually costs American companies at least $150 billion.

The FBI pulled out all the stops to catch the spies. Agents obtained surveillance warrants from the nations secret intelligence court, planted GPS-tracking devices on cars, trailed operatives from airplanes and bugged their phones.

The probe culminated in October with a three-year prison sentence for Mo Hailong, 47, a Chinese citizen and U.S. legal resident who works for a Chinese conglomerate.

Federal officials say the prosecution of Mo, also known as Robert Mo, sent a message to China and others that economic espionage will not go unpunished.

But outside experts say the case also revealed the difficulty, and sometimes futility, of bringing justice to those responsible for feeding Chinas ravenous appetite for U.S. intellectual property.

Mo, who is being treated for a rare form of cancer, received a sentence that was even more lenient than the maximum five years laid out in his plea deal. Five others indicted in the plot remain free in China, out of the reach of U.S. law enforcement. And though the FBI suspected the Chinese government was involved in the thefts, it was never able to prove the link.

Worse, even though the scheme was exposed, Chinese companies almost certainly got their hands on some of the lucrative seeds. Five years before his arrest, court records show, Mo was being praised by his superiors for the quality of seeds he already had stolen.

You have to have some kind of stick to get them to think twice, said Melanie Reid, professor at Lincoln Memorial Universitys Duncan School of Law. Because these investigations can be quite complicated and many of the players are in other countries and protected from U.S. prosecution, it is unclear whether these types of cases are making a dent. Theft of trade secrets is not only promoted by Chinese government policies and state-backed companies, but it also reflects their societal attitude toward intellectual property. They simply dont see stealing U.S. trade secrets as a crime.

Some U.S. law enforcement officials echoed those observations, saying there is no clear evidence on the ground that such prosecutions have slowed Chinas quest for U.S. secrets.

But they say doing nothing isnt an option either, and they note that aggressive prosecutions against other forms of espionage by Chinese, such as cyber hacking, appear to have deterred such acts.

The Mo case highlighted the challenges of such prosecutions, which often span the globe and require the assistance of scientists, analysts, linguists and corporate executives who can be wary about cooperating for fear of disclosing their trade secrets.

Proving the Chinese government was involved in the theft was seen as critical to deterring future attempts, but not surprisingly, China refused to cooperate or turn over information and suspects for trial.

According to a review of court filings and interviews with U.S. law enforcement and FBI officials, some of whom spoke about the case for the first time, the investigation got a kick-start because the farmer jotted down the license plate number of the rental car.

He reported the incident to DuPont Pioneer, the global agriculture giant that owned the seeds. The Johnston, Iowa-based company used the rental car license number to identify Mo, and then passed along the information to FBI Special Agent Mark Betten of the bureaus Des Moines office.

Betten soon learned that a local sheriffs deputy had spotted Mo and two other men acting suspiciously near a second Iowa seed-testing field, this one used by Monsanto, an agricultural corporation headquartered near St. Louis.

Mos appearance in two such testing fields operated by separate companies  more than 85 miles apart  sparked Bettens curiosity. The agent did some sleuthing and discovered that Mo had recently mailed to his home in Florida 15 heavy packages containing corn samples.

Betten also learned that Mo was the U.S.-based director of international business for Beijing Dabeinong Technology Group, also known as DBN, a Chinese conglomerate that sells seeds through a subsidiary called Beijing Kings Nower Seed Science & Technology Co. Both are considered to have close ties to the Chinese government. Mos sister was married to DBNs billionaire chairman.

The interest in Iowa seed was plain: Chinas demand for corn is expected to outstrip supply in the next decade. To close that gap, China would benefit from planting better corn seed  like the kind being produced by Pioneer and Monsanto.

Creating robust seeds requires the breeding of two pure inbred lines of seed to craft a hybrid that is later sold to the public. Developing a single inbred can cost as much as $30 million to $40 million in laboratory testing, field work and trial and error; companies evaluate scores of inbreds to develop a single hybrid.

Though he worried his supervisors would balk at an investigation involving something seemingly as mundane as corn seeds, Betten ramped up the probe. By 2012, agents were trailing Mo as he sped across Iowa, Indiana and Illinois. Following the spy was not easy because he sometimes engaged in counter-surveillance maneuvers, such as driving slowly, then fast, making U-turns and watching traffic for possible tails.

Betten and other agents watched as Mo visited agriculture supply stores and purchased Pioneer and Monsanto seed, stashing it in a rented storage locker. The store clerks never should have sold the seeds to Mo and his colleagues because they had not signed required contracts with the companies.

A few weeks later, Mo and two Kings Nower employees wheeled five large boxes destined for Hong Kong into a FedEx store in suburban Chicago.

After the men left, agents swept in. They discovered 42 bags of hybrid seeds in the boxes; each bag was marked with its own code, presumably to help identify the contraband. The FBI replaced the seeds with others already commercially available in China and shipped them on their way.

Stepping up their surveillance, the agents listened to secretly recorded conversations of two Kings Nower employees  Lin Yong and Ye Jian, both Chinese citizens who live in China  discussing their crimes as they crisscrossed farm country in search of seeds.

After six weeks of seed gathering, Ye and Kings Nowers chief operating officer, Li Shaoming, tried to spirit their haul to China. As they were departing Chicagos OHare International Airport on Sept. 30, 2012, customs officers searched the men and their luggage and found thousands of stolen seeds, much of it hidden in resealed boxes of microwave popcorn.

Meanwhile, customs agents stopped another of Mos associates trying to cross the border into Canada and found corn seed hidden in his luggage too.

The men were allowed to leave the country, but the seeds were seized.

To bring criminal charges, the FBI first had to genetically test the seeds to prove they were the product of U.S. trade secrets. It took the bureau nine months to iron out the agreements with Pioneer and Monsanto to conduct the tests at an independent lab. Neither Pioneer nor Monsanto understandably wanted the other to have their secrets, let alone a Chinese company, Betten said.

The tests revealed that many of the seeds were inbreds belonging to both companies. In December 2013, agents arrested Mo at his home in Boca Raton, Fla. By then, the other defendants were outside the U.S.

Pioneer declined to comment on the case. Monsanto said in a statement that it fully cooperated with the FBI and is pleased this matter has been concluded.

Mo pleaded guilty to conspiring to steal trade secrets. Subdued and apologetic at his Oct. 5 sentencing, Mo removed his wire-rimmed glasses to wipe away tears, saying that he had destroyed everything I had wanted in life.

Looking down at Mo, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Rose said she felt bad for the mans plight but hoped her sentence would send a message to China that it needed to halt its economic espionage. She cited the crimes cost and reviewed the investigations extensive history, the secret warrants, wiretaps and the tens of thousands of pages of court filings she had reviewed.

To think, she said, this all started with a man in a field.

You have to have some kind of stick to get them to think twice. ... Theft of trade secrets is not only promoted by Chinese government policies and state-backed companies, but it also reflects their societal attitude toward intellectual property. They simply dont see stealing U.S. trade secrets as a crime. Melanie Reid, professor at Lincoln Memorial Universitys Duncan School of Law.
From Arrowhead to West Salem, voters across the state are considering the future of their school districts when they go to the polls. Citizens in 46 districts will be asked to approve referenda.

Some questions relate to the building of new facilities. However, 46 percent of this years referenda are for the ongoing expenses of operating local schools.

I received many calls about school funding, property taxes and the problems underlying the questions voters face on the ballot.

Arent referenda usually passed to build something new? an Eau Claire man recently asked me. For many years, most school referenda asked voters to approve new construction. About 10 years ago, there began a steady rise in the number of referenda to increase property taxes to pay for school operations.

Referenda for operations include the usual costs related to the daily operations of a school: keeping the lights on, heating the building, transporting students and paying for staff. Personnel costs make up 70 to 80 percent of a schools budget. Logically a school that needs money to pay ongoing expenses needs that money for staff costs.

Many constituents tell me they are unhappy about paying salary costs through referenda. Somehow they can justify a new gym but not a new math teacher.

Early in 2011, a law known as Act 10 eliminated most union protections for teachers. Consequences of losing those protections led to increased costs. Teachers retired early. Fewer college students graduated with a teaching degree. The resulting teacher shortage caused competition between school districts for the few teachers left to fill critical positions.

Also in 2011, majority party lawmakers made deep cuts to state support for public schools in the 2011-13 state budget. They also diverted more state money to private schools.

The result is that today the actual state dollars going to public schools is lower than the amount public schools received a decade ago. This little known budget fact combined with increasing costs helps explain the increase in school referenda for operations.

Not only are there fewer dollars, but those dollars are flowing through a decades old formula that does not match todays world.

Schools are paid by the state on a per student basis. This method does not match the pattern of expenses  or cost structure  schools experience. In other words, there is a fundamental disconnect between what drives school revenue and what drives school costs. For example, when three students leave from a class of 20, district revenues are cut by 15 percent. But the cost of teaching a class of 17 is almost the same as teaching a class of 20.

In addition, the school general aid formula assumes that every student costs the same to educate regardless of background, capability or language skills. Consider, for example, that over 70 percent of primary grade students in Arcadia are English language learners. Consider, for example, that child poverty doubled in Wisconsin over a decade. Students from a difficult family background can perform at the same level as their peers upon graduation, but these students cost more to educate.

Finally, the school formula assumes every district has the same cost structure regardless of whether it has 300 or 3,000 students, and regardless of whether it covers 15 square miles or 150 square miles. Any rural superintendent will tell you the state pays only about 10 cents of every dollar of transportation costs.

Fewer state dollars, higher costs, fewer teachers, children who need more resources  all these factors add up to needs at the local school that are increasingly not met by state resources. So voters are asked to pony up through their property tax bill.

Property tax is an antiquated measure of wealth. Property-rich farmers in 1848 might have been the wealthiest of folks. However, no longer does property value match real wealth.

Passing referenda will stop the hemorrhaging at our schools. However, the fundamental problems in school funding must be fixed. Real reform must accomplish three things: reduce our reliance on property taxes, recognize some students cost more to educate and recognize that school districts face different challenges and therefore different cost structures.

Until we have enough votes to pass those changes, please vote to support your local school.

Democrat Kathleen Vinehout, Alma, represents the 31st state Senate District.
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(6) Nov 15 (5) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (6) Nov 12 (5) Nov 11 (4) Nov 10 (4) Nov 09 (2) Nov 08 (5) Nov 07 (4) Nov 06 (8) Nov 05 (5) Nov 04 (6) Nov 03 (6) Nov 02 (5) Nov 01 (5) Oct 31 (6) Oct 30 (6) Oct 29 (5) Oct 28 (5) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (5) Oct 25 (8) Oct 24 (7) Oct 23 (4) Oct 22 (7) Oct 21 (5) Oct 20 (5) Oct 19 (5) Oct 18 (6) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (2) Oct 15 (2) Oct 14 (2) Oct 13 (6) Oct 12 (9) Oct 11 (3) Oct 10 (6) Oct 09 (4) Oct 08 (5) Oct 07 (6) Oct 06 (6) Oct 05 (7) Oct 04 (5) Oct 03 (4) Oct 02 (5) Oct 01 (8) Sep 30 (3) Sep 29 (6) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (9) Sep 26 (4) Sep 25 (4) Sep 24 (5) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (6) Sep 21 (4) Sep 20 (4) Sep 19 (5) Sep 18 (7) Sep 17 (6) Sep 16 (7) Sep 15 (4) Sep 14 (8) Sep 13 (3) Sep 12 (7) Sep 11 (8) Sep 10 (5) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (8) Sep 07 (5) Sep 06 (6) Sep 05 (4) Sep 04 (7) Sep 03 (5) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (4) Aug 31 (5) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (5) Aug 28 (5) Aug 27 (4) Aug 26 (3) Aug 25 (7) Aug 24 (6) Aug 23 (6) Aug 22 (6) Aug 21 (5) Aug 20 (5) Aug 19 (5) Aug 18 (5) Aug 17 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16 (2) Feb 15 (1) Feb 14 (1) Feb 13 (1) Feb 12 (2) Feb 11 (1) Feb 10 (2) Feb 09 (1) Feb 08 (1) Feb 07 (1) Feb 06 (1) Feb 05 (5) Feb 03 (1) Feb 02 (1) Feb 01 (1) Jan 31 (4) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (4) Jan 28 (2) Jan 27 (5) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (5) Jan 24 (3) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (4) Jan 21 (3) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (4) Jan 18 (3) Jan 17 (2) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (5) Jan 13 (5) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (3) Jan 09 (5) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (4) Jan 06 (3) Jan 05 (4) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (6) Jan 02 (3) Jan 01 (4) Dec 31 (4) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (5) Dec 28 (5) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (4) Dec 24 (1) Dec 23 (4) Dec 22 (3) Dec 21 (5) Dec 20 (5) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (4) Dec 17 (5) Dec 16 (4) Dec 15 (6) Dec 14 (4) Dec 13 (4) Dec 12 (5) Dec 11 (5) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (5) Dec 08 (4) Dec 07 (4) Dec 06 (5) Dec 05 (4) Dec 04 (4) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (3) Nov 30 (4) Nov 29 (4) Nov 28 (5) Nov 27 (4) Nov 26 (4) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (5) Nov 23 (4) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (4) Nov 20 (4) Nov 19 (5) Nov 18 (4) Nov 17 (4) Nov 16 (3) Nov 15 (5) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (4) Nov 12 (4) Nov 11 (4) Nov 10 (3) Nov 09 (3) Nov 08 (3) Nov 07 (4) Nov 06 (4) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (3) Nov 03 (2) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (3) Oct 30 (4) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (4) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (3) Oct 25 (3) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (3) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (3) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (3) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (4) Oct 15 (5) Oct 14 (3) Oct 13 (6) Oct 12 (4) Oct 11 (4) Oct 10 (3) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (3) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (3) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (3) Sep 26 (5) Sep 25 (5) Sep 24 (4) Sep 23 (5) Sep 22 (4) Sep 21 (4) Sep 20 (5) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (5) Sep 17 (5) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 (5) Sep 14 (4) Sep 13 (3) Sep 12 (6) Sep 11 (6) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (4) Sep 08 (3) Sep 07 (3) Sep 06 (3) Sep 05 (4) Sep 04 (4) Sep 03 (3) Sep 02 (3) Sep 01 (4) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (3) Aug 29 (4) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (4) Aug 26 (3) Aug 25 (4) Aug 24 (4) Aug 23 (3) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (3) Aug 20 (5) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (3) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (5) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (3) Aug 12 (4) Aug 11 (3) Aug 10 (3) Aug 09 (4) Aug 08 (2) Aug 07 (2) Aug 06 (2) Aug 05 (2) Aug 04 (2) Aug 03 (3) Aug 02 (4) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (2) Jul 30 (5) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (3) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (6) Jul 24 (3) Jul 23 (4) Jul 22 (4) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (4) Jul 18 (4) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (4) Jul 15 (5) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (4) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (5) Jul 09 (2) Jul 08 (2) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (2) Jul 05 (2) Jul 04 (3) Jul 03 (4) Jul 02 (5) Jul 01 (3) Jun 30 (2) Jun 29 (3) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (5) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (3) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (2) Jun 20 (4) Jun 19 (3) Jun 18 (3) Jun 17 (1) Jun 16 (5) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (2) Jun 13 (5) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (2) Jun 09 (2) Jun 08 (2) Jun 07 (2) Jun 06 (2) Jun 05 (2) Jun 04 (2) Jun 03 (2) Jun 02 (4) Jun 01 (3) May 31 (4) May 30 (5) May 29 (3) May 28 (3) May 27 (3) May 26 (4) May 25 (4) May 24 (2) May 23 (4) May 22 (4) May 21 (5) May 20 (6) May 19 (4) May 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16 (5) Feb 15 (4) Feb 14 (3) Feb 13 (4) Feb 12 (3) Feb 11 (3) Feb 10 (4) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (3) Feb 07 (4) Feb 06 (3) Feb 05 (3) Feb 04 (3) Feb 03 (5) Feb 02 (4) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (3) Jan 30 (3) Jan 29 (4) Jan 28 (3) Jan 27 (2) Jan 26 (4) Jan 25 (3) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (4) Jan 21 (3) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (3) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (4) Jan 13 (3) Jan 12 (6) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (4) Jan 09 (3) Jan 08 (4) Jan 07 (3) Jan 06 (4) Jan 05 (3) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (5) Jan 02 (4) Jan 01 (3) Dec 31 (2) Dec 30 (2) Dec 29 (2) Dec 28 (3) Dec 27 (3) Dec 26 (2) Dec 25 (2) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (3) Dec 22 (3) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (4) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (5) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (3) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (2) Dec 11 (6) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (4) Dec 08 (6) Dec 07 (5) Dec 06 (3) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (4) Dec 03 (3) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (4) Nov 30 (2) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (2) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (5) Nov 24 (4) Nov 23 (6) Nov 22 (5) Nov 21 (4) Nov 20 (2) Nov 19 (5) Nov 18 (7) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (4) Nov 15 (6) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (4) Nov 11 (3) Nov 10 (3) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (3) Nov 07 (2) Nov 06 (2) Nov 05 (2) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (4) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (2) Oct 31 (3) Oct 30 (4) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (2) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (3) Oct 25 (2) Oct 24 (2) Oct 23 (2) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (2) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (2) Oct 17 (2) Oct 16 (2) Oct 15 (2) Oct 14 (4) Oct 13 (2) Oct 12 (3) Oct 11 (2) Oct 10 (2) Oct 09 (4) Oct 08 (4) Oct 07 (4) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (5) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (6) Oct 01 (6) Sep 30 (5) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (7) Sep 26 (4) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (5) Sep 23 (8) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (3) Sep 20 (6) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (5) Sep 16 (7) Sep 15 (3) Sep 14 (4) Sep 13 (3) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (5) Sep 10 (5) Sep 09 (7) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (2) Sep 06 (7) Sep 05 (4) Sep 04 (4) Sep 03 (2) Sep 02 (2) Sep 01 (2) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (3) Aug 29 (3) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (3) Aug 26 (4) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (3) Aug 23 (3) Aug 22 (4) Aug 21 (4) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (3) Aug 17 (2) Aug 16 (2) Aug 15 (5) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (5) Aug 12 (10) Aug 11 (5) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (5) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (6) Aug 05 (5) Aug 04 (5) Aug 03 (3) Aug 02 (5) Aug 01 (7) Jul 31 (5) Jul 30 (4) Jul 29 (4) Jul 28 (3) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (5) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (5) Jul 23 (5) Jul 22 (7) Jul 21 (5) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (5) Jul 18 (6) Jul 17 (5) Jul 16 (5) Jul 15 (6) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (3) Jul 12 (2) Jul 11 (2) Jul 10 (2) Jul 09 (2) Jul 08 (2) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (2) Jul 05 (2) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (3) Jul 02 (2) Jul 01 (8) Jun 30 (6) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (6) Jun 27 (6) Jun 26 (6) Jun 25 (6) Jun 24 (6) Jun 23 (4) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (4) Jun 19 (5) Jun 18 (8) Jun 17 (6) Jun 16 (5) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (5) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (6) Jun 10 (4) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (5) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (3) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (4) May 31 (2) May 30 (2) May 29 (2) May 28 (2) May 27 (4) May 26 (4) May 25 (3) May 24 (2) May 23 (2) May 22 (3) May 21 (5) May 20 (4) May 19 (2) May 18 (3) May 17 (3) May 16 (3) May 15 (4) May 14 (5) May 13 (3) May 12 (4) May 11 (3) May 10 (4) May 09 (4) May 08 (4) May 07 (3) May 06 (2) May 05 (3) May 04 (4) May 03 (2) May 02 (3) May 01 (3) Apr 30 (3) Apr 29 (4) Apr 28 (2) Apr 27 (3) Apr 26 (4) Apr 25 (2) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (2) Apr 22 (2) Apr 21 (4) Apr 20 (4) Apr 19 (5) Apr 18 (7) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (10) Apr 15 (5) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (4) Apr 12 (5) Apr 11 (4) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (7) Apr 08 (4) Apr 07 (7) Apr 06 (4) Apr 05 (7) Apr 04 (5) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (5) Mar 31 (5) Mar 30 (5) Mar 29 (7) Mar 28 (6) Mar 27 (5) Mar 26 (5) Mar 25 (6) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (5) Mar 22 (5) Mar 21 (4) Mar 20 (3) Mar 19 (6) Mar 18 (6) Mar 17 (2) Mar 16 (4) Mar 15 (5) Mar 14 (4) Mar 13 (5) Mar 12 (5) Mar 11 (4) Mar 10 (4) Mar 09 (2) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (3) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (4) Mar 02 (4) Mar 01 (5) Feb 28 (6) Feb 27 (4) Feb 26 (4) Feb 25 (6) Feb 24 (2) Feb 23 (3) Feb 22 (4) Feb 21 (6) Feb 20 (2) Feb 19 (6) Feb 18 (4) Feb 17 (2) Feb 16 (3) Feb 15 (6) Feb 14 (6) Feb 13 (6) Feb 12 (9) Feb 11 (5) Feb 10 (3) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (7) Feb 06 (3) Feb 05 (4) Feb 04 (5) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (3) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (4) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (3) Jan 28 (2) Jan 27 (2) Jan 26 (3) Jan 25 (4) Jan 24 (4) Jan 23 (2) Jan 22 (2) Jan 21 (5) Jan 20 (4) Jan 19 (5) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (4) Jan 16 (3) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (3) Jan 12 (3) Jan 11 (2) Jan 10 (8) Jan 09 (6) Jan 08 (2) Jan 07 (2) Jan 06 (3) Jan 05 (2) Jan 04 (2) Jan 03 (2) Jan 02 (2) Jan 01 (2) Dec 31 (2) Dec 30 (3) Dec 29 (3) Dec 28 (3) Dec 27 (2) Dec 26 (2) Dec 25 (2) Dec 24 (2) Dec 23 (2) Dec 22 (2) Dec 21 (2) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (2) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (2) Dec 16 (2) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (2) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (3) Dec 10 (5) Dec 09 (3) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (2) Dec 06 (3) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (5) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (3) Nov 30 (4) Nov 29 (4) Nov 28 (2) Nov 27 (2) Nov 26 (2) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (2) Nov 23 (2) Nov 22 (2) Nov 21 (2) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (3) Nov 18 (2) Nov 17 (2) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (5) Nov 14 (4) Nov 13 (2) Nov 12 (2) Nov 11 (2) Nov 10 (2) Nov 09 (2) Nov 08 (2) Nov 07 (3) Nov 06 (6) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (5) Nov 03 (5) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (5) Oct 31 (7) Oct 30 (5) Oct 29 (4) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (2) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (4) Oct 24 (4) Oct 23 (4) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (2) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (2) Oct 18 (2) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (5) Oct 15 (4) Oct 14 (2) Oct 13 (2) Oct 12 (4) Oct 11 (5) Oct 10 (4) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (2) Oct 05 (5) Oct 04 (5) Oct 03 (4) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (5) Sep 30 (2) Sep 29 (2) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (6) Sep 26 (2) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (2) Sep 22 (2) Sep 21 (2) Sep 20 (2) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (3) Sep 16 (2) Sep 15 (4) Sep 14 (3) Sep 13 (5) Sep 12 (4) Sep 11 (6) Sep 10 (2) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (5) Sep 06 (4) Sep 05 (4) Sep 04 (3) Sep 03 (2) Sep 02 (3) Sep 01 (3) Aug 31 (2) Aug 30 (2) Aug 29 (3) Aug 28 (6) Aug 27 (3) Aug 26 (2) Aug 25 (2) Aug 24 (3) Aug 23 (2) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (5) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (3) Aug 18 (2) Aug 17 (5) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (5) Aug 13 (2) Aug 12 (2) Aug 11 (2) Aug 10 (2) Aug 09 (2) Aug 08 (5) Aug 07 (5) Aug 06 (6) Aug 05 (2) Aug 04 (5) Aug 03 (2) Aug 02 (3) Aug 01 (2) Jul 31 (4) Jul 30 (2) Jul 29 (2) Jul 28 (2) Jul 27 (2) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (2) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (2) Jul 21 (3) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (2) Jul 18 (3) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (5) Jul 15 (2) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (2) Jul 12 (3) Jul 11 (2) Jul 10 (2) Jul 09 (2) Jul 08 (2) Jul 07 (2) Jul 06 (2) Jul 05 (2) Jul 04 (2) Jul 03 (2) Jul 02 (2) Jul 01 (3) Jun 30 (3) Jun 29 (7) Jun 28 (3) Jun 27 (2) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (1) Jun 24 (2) Jun 23 (3) Jun 22 (5) Jun 21 (3) Jun 20 (2) Jun 19 (2) Jun 18 (2) Jun 17 (2) Jun 16 (2) Jun 15 (2) Jun 14 (2) Jun 13 (3) Jun 12 (3) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (2) Jun 09 (4) Jun 08 (2) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (5) Jun 05 (3) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (2) Jun 02 (2) Jun 01 (4) May 31 (2) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (3) May 27 (2) May 26 (2) May 25 (2) May 24 (2) May 23 (2) May 22 (3) May 21 (3) May 20 (2) May 19 (2) May 18 (4) May 17 (7) May 16 (2) May 15 (2) May 14 (4) May 13 (3) May 12 (4) May 11 (4) May 10 (4) May 09 (3) May 08 (2) May 07 (2) May 06 (2) May 05 (1) May 04 (2) May 03 (4) May 02 (3) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (1) Apr 29 (3) Apr 28 (2) Apr 27 (3) Apr 26 (2) Apr 25 (2) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (2) Apr 22 (2) Apr 21 (2) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (5) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (4) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (3) Apr 12 (3) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (4) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (2) Apr 06 (3) Apr 05 (3) Apr 04 (1) Apr 03 (1) Apr 02 (1) Apr 01 (2) Mar 31 (2) Mar 30 (3) Mar 29 (2) Mar 28 (3) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (3) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (2) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (3) Mar 21 (4) Mar 20 (2) Mar 19 (3) Mar 18 (1) Mar 17 (2) Mar 16 (2) Mar 15 (1) Mar 14 (3) Mar 13 (1) Mar 12 (2) Mar 11 (1) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (2) Mar 08 (1) Mar 07 (1) Mar 04 (2) Mar 02 (2) Feb 28 (1) Feb 24 (1) Dec 31 (4) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (4) Dec 28 (5) Dec 27 (3) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (4) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (3) Dec 22 (4) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (3) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (3) Dec 10 (3) Dec 09 (3) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (3) Dec 06 (3) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (3) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (3) Nov 30 (3) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (3) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (3) Nov 23 (3) Nov 22 (3) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (3) Nov 18 (3) Nov 17 (3) Nov 16 (2) Nov 15 (3) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (4) Nov 11 (3) Nov 10 (4) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (4) Nov 07 (3) Nov 06 (3) Nov 05 (5) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (3) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (4) Oct 30 (3) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (2) Oct 27 (4) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (4) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (3) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (4) Oct 20 (4) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (4) Oct 17 (4) Oct 16 (3) Oct 15 (3) Oct 14 (3) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (3) Oct 11 (3) Oct 10 (4) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (4) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (4) Oct 02 (5) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (4) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (4) Sep 26 (3) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (3) Sep 20 (3) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (3) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 (3) Sep 14 (3) Sep 13 (3) Sep 12 (4) Sep 11 (4) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (4) Sep 08 (4) Sep 07 (3) Sep 06 (3) Sep 05 (3) Sep 04 (3) Sep 03 (3) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (3) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (4) Aug 29 (3) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (3) Aug 26 (3) Aug 25 (4) Aug 24 (4) Aug 23 (5) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (3) Aug 20 (3) Aug 19 (3) Aug 18 (3) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (3) Aug 12 (3) Aug 11 (4) Aug 10 (5) Aug 09 (3) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (5) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (3) Aug 03 (3) Aug 02 (3) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (3) Jul 30 (4) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (5) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (3) Jul 24 (3) Jul 23 (4) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (3) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (4) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (4) Jul 15 (3) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (5) Jul 11 (4) Jul 10 (4) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (3) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (5) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (3) Jul 03 (4) Jul 02 (3) Jul 01 (6) Jun 30 (4) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (3) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (4) Jun 25 (5) Jun 24 (4) Jun 23 (3) Jun 22 (5) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (4) Jun 19 (4) Jun 18 (5) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (5) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (3) Jun 13 (3) Jun 12 (3) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (5) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (4) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (5) Jun 05 (4) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (4) Jun 02 (5) Jun 01 (3) May 31 (4) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (3) May 27 (3) May 26 (4) May 25 (4) May 24 (4) May 23 (4) May 22 (3) May 21 (3) May 20 (4) May 19 (3) May 18 (3) May 17 (4) May 16 (3) May 15 (4) May 14 (3) May 13 (4) May 12 (1) May 11 (3) May 10 (3) May 09 (3) May 08 (3) May 07 (4) May 06 (3) May 05 (4) May 04 (4) May 03 (3) May 02 (3) May 01 (6) Apr 30 (3) Apr 29 (3) Apr 28 (3) Apr 27 (5) Apr 26 (3) Apr 25 (3) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (3) Apr 22 (3) Apr 21 (3) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (3) Apr 17 (4) Apr 16 (3) Apr 15 (4) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (3) Apr 12 (3) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (3) Apr 09 (3) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (3) Apr 05 (3) Apr 04 (3) Apr 03 (3) Apr 02 (3) Apr 01 (3) Mar 31 (3) Mar 30 (3) Mar 29 (3) Mar 28 (4) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (3) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (3) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (3) Mar 21 (3) Mar 20 (3) Mar 19 (3) Mar 18 (3) Mar 17 (3) Mar 16 (4) Mar 15 (3) Mar 14 (3) Mar 13 (3) Mar 12 (4) Mar 11 (3) Mar 10 (4) Mar 09 (4) Mar 08 (3) Mar 07 (3) Mar 06 (4) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (3) Mar 03 (3) Mar 02 (3) Mar 01 (3) Feb 28 (3) Feb 27 (3) Feb 26 (3) Feb 25 (3) Feb 24 (2) Feb 23 (3) Feb 22 (3) Feb 21 (3) Feb 20 (3) Feb 19 (3) Feb 18 (3) Feb 17 (3) Feb 16 (3) Feb 15 (3) Feb 14 (3) Feb 13 (3) Feb 12 (3) Feb 11 (4) Feb 10 (3) Feb 09 (3) Feb 08 (3) Feb 07 (4) Feb 06 (3) Feb 05 (3) Feb 04 (4) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (4) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (3) Jan 30 (3) Jan 29 (3) Jan 28 (5) Jan 27 (4) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (5) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (3) Jan 21 (4) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (5) Jan 18 (5) Jan 17 (4) Jan 16 (3) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (5) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (4) Jan 09 (3) Jan 08 (3) Jan 07 (3) Jan 06 (3) Jan 05 (3) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (3) Jan 01 (4) Dec 31 (3) Dec 30 (3) Dec 29 (3) Dec 28 (3) Dec 27 (3) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (3) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (4) Dec 22 (3) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (4) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (4) Dec 10 (3) Dec 09 (3) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (3) Dec 06 (4) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (3) Dec 03 (3) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (3) Nov 30 (3) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (3) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (4) Nov 23 (6) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (5) Nov 20 (4) Nov 19 (4) Nov 18 (4) Nov 17 (4) Nov 16 (3) Nov 15 (2) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (2) Nov 11 (3) Nov 10 (2) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (5) Nov 07 (3) Nov 06 (2) Nov 05 (2) Nov 04 (3) Nov 03 (2) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (2) Oct 30 (6) Oct 29 (5) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (5) Oct 26 (3) Oct 25 (4) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (4) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (5) Oct 20 (4) Oct 19 (4) Oct 18 (4) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (2) Oct 15 (3) Oct 14 (3) Oct 13 (2) Oct 12 (2) Oct 11 (2) Oct 10 (3) Oct 09 (4) Oct 08 (2) Oct 07 (2) Oct 06 (2) Oct 05 (3) Oct 04 (2) Oct 03 (4) Oct 02 (3) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (3) Sep 29 (4) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (2) Sep 26 (2) Sep 25 (2) Sep 24 (1) Sep 23 (1) Sep 22 (2) Sep 21 (2) Sep 20 (1) Sep 19 (1) Sep 18 (1) Sep 17 (2) Sep 16 (1) Sep 15 (2) Sep 14 (2) Sep 13 (1) Sep 12 (1) Sep 11 (2) Sep 10 (2) Sep 09 (1) Sep 08 (1) Sep 07 (2) Sep 06 (1) Sep 05 (1) Sep 04 (2) Sep 03 (1) Sep 02 (1) Sep 01 (1) Aug 31 (2) Aug 30 (1) Aug 29 (1) Aug 28 (1) Aug 27 (1) Aug 26 (1) Aug 25 (1) Aug 24 (1) Aug 23 (2) Aug 22 (1) Aug 21 (1) Aug 20 (2) Aug 19 (1) Aug 18 (1) Aug 17 (2) Aug 16 (2) Aug 15 (1) Aug 14 (1) Aug 12 (1) Aug 09 (1) Aug 08 (1) Aug 07 (1) Aug 05 (1) Aug 04 (1) Jul 31 (1) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (5) Jul 28 (2) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (3) Jul 24 (3) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (4) Jul 17 (6) Jul 16 (5) Jul 15 (3) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (4) Jul 11 (3) Jul 10 (4) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (4) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (5) Jul 05 (4) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (4) Jul 02 (5) Jul 01 (3) Jun 30 (4) Jun 29 (6) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (4) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (4) Jun 23 (4) Jun 22 (6) Jun 21 (3) Jun 20 (3) Jun 19 (6) Jun 18 (5) Jun 17 (5) Jun 16 (5) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (4) Jun 13 (5) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (4) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (3) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (4) Jun 04 (5) Jun 03 (5) Jun 02 (4) Jun 01 (5) May 31 (4) May 30 (4) May 29 (4) May 28 (5) May 27 (5) May 26 (5) May 25 (4) May 24 (5) May 23 (4) May 22 (4) May 21 (3) May 20 (6) May 19 (4) May 18 (4) May 17 (4) May 16 (5) May 15 (3) May 14 (3) May 13 (4) May 12 (3) May 11 (3) May 10 (3) May 09 (3) May 08 (3) May 07 (3) May 06 (3) May 05 (3) May 04 (3) May 03 (3) May 02 (3) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (6) Apr 28 (3) Apr 27 (3) Apr 26 (3) Apr 25 (4) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (3) Apr 22 (3) Apr 21 (4) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (3) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (3) Apr 15 (4) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (6) Apr 12 (4) Apr 11 (4) Apr 10 (5) Apr 09 (7) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (4) Apr 06 (4) Apr 05 (4) Apr 04 (6) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (4) Apr 01 (3) Mar 31 (4) Mar 30 (5) Mar 29 (5) Mar 28 (6) Mar 27 (5) Mar 26 (5) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (4) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (3) Mar 21 (5) Mar 20 (3) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (4) Mar 17 (5) Mar 16 (5) Mar 15 (3) Mar 14 (6) Mar 13 (4) Mar 12 (4) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (4) Mar 09 (7) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (4) Mar 03 (4) Mar 02 (6) Mar 01 (4) Feb 28 (4) Feb 27 (4) Feb 26 (5) Feb 25 (4) Feb 24 (5) Feb 23 (5) Feb 22 (6) Feb 21 (6) Feb 20 (3) Feb 19 (6) Feb 18 (7) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (5) Feb 15 (7) Feb 14 (5) Feb 13 (5) Feb 12 (6) Feb 11 (8) Feb 10 (4) Feb 09 (6) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (3) Feb 06 (6) Feb 05 (3) Feb 04 (6) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (3) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (6) Jan 28 (3) Jan 27 (6) Jan 26 (6) Jan 25 (4) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (5) Jan 22 (5) Jan 21 (5) Jan 20 (5) Jan 19 (5) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (5) Jan 13 (3) Jan 12 (4) Jan 11 (5) Jan 10 (3) Jan 09 (6) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (4) Jan 06 (5) Jan 05 (6) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (2) Jan 01 (4) Dec 31 (3) Dec 30 (3) Dec 29 (5) Dec 28 (3) Dec 27 (3) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (4) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (4) Dec 22 (5) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (4) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (7) Dec 17 (5) Dec 16 (5) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (5) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (6) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (3) Dec 08 (5) Dec 07 (4) Dec 06 (3) Dec 05 (4) Dec 04 (5) Dec 03 (5) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (6) Nov 30 (5) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (4) Nov 27 (4) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (5) Nov 24 (3) Nov 23 (4) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (4) Nov 20 (5) Nov 19 (5) Nov 18 (4) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (3) Nov 15 (4) Nov 14 (4) Nov 13 (4) Nov 12 (4) Nov 11 (3) Nov 10 (4) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (3) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (4) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (5) Nov 03 (4) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (3) Oct 30 (5) Oct 29 (4) Oct 28 (5) Oct 27 (5) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (3) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (5) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (4) Oct 20 (2) Oct 19 (4) Oct 18 (2) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (4) Oct 15 (5) Oct 14 (4) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (4) Oct 11 (4) Oct 10 (2) Oct 09 (5) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (5) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (6) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (5) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (4) Sep 26 (4) Sep 25 (5) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (4) Sep 21 (4) Sep 20 (2) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (4) Sep 17 (4) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 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Our community in Flagstaff is awesome! El Capitan Fresh Mexican Grill wants to thank all of you, yes, every one of you who came, donated, FB, spread the word and helped with Tacos for Tatas.

It was El Capitan's sixth event to raise money for breast cancer. This event was bigger and better than expected! Our staff, family, and friends had a great time last Thursday, Oct. 27. Pink hard tacos were offered all month long, the Artsy Bra display (donated by Zeta Tau Alpha), the taco eating contest, raffle prizes and silent auction were all a huge success! We will be able donate even more than in previous years. Thank you, thank you.
A Chinese education company has given thousands of dollars to representatives of top universities in the United States.

Reuters news agency says the money was for services to help Chinese students apply to these schools. Reuters suggests the company did more than help the students.

In October, Reuters reported on claims of cheating by eight former employees of Dipont Education Management Group. The company is based in Shanghai.

Six of the former employees say they wrote application essays for students. Almost all universities in the U.S. require students to prepare their own application materials.

Another former employee of Dipont told Reuters she changed letters of recommendation teachers had written for students. And another said the company let a student remove bad marks from the records of his academic performance in high school.

Dipont released a response on its website shortly after Reuters published its story. The company denied the claims and said Reuters had misrepresented the educational exchange between the U.S. and China.

The company has a relationship with about 20 U.S. colleges and universities. This includes Vanderbilt University, Wellesley College, Tulane and the University of Virginia.

Admissions officers from these schools have attended special Dipont events in China each summer since 2014. The events involved personal meetings with students to help improve their success in applying for college.

Dipont paid for the travel costs of the admissions officers attending the event, Reuters said. Reuters also said emails it reviewed show Dipont gave money to some of the officers.

The Institute of International Education is an organization that researches international student exchanges. The organization reported that more than 300,000 Chinese college students studied in the U.S. in 2015.

There is a lot of competition among both students and universities. Schools look to international students to help increase income from tuition payments. Hundreds of Chinese companies are offering services to help students get into top schools.

The companies often charge a lot of money for this help, but sometimes that help may go too far.

In the past year, Reuters, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and VOA have reported incidents of cheating on college application materials from China.

Dipont founder and chief executive Benson Zhang says his company is not involved in any wrongdoing.

Many [schools], students and overseas colleges consider us one of the most ethical companies in China, he told Reuters in an interview. Zhang denies claims from the former employees that they tried to report incidents of rule-breaking.

If there had been such a case, it [was not] reported to me, he said. But I guarantee you, if such a complaint comes to my attention, I will deal with it [severely].

Zhang added that problems with one or two employees do not mean there are problems with the entire company. He said he recently gave $750,000 to a University of Southern California (USC) research center. The research center in Los Angeles, California is meant to fight college application fraud in China.

But there are concerns about this money. The company gave the money to USC through a New York-based non-profit company called the Council for American Culture and Education Inc. The non-profit was created in 2009 to help Dipont make connections in the American higher education system.

However, Reuters says the non-profit failed to correctly report its links to the Chinese company on its tax forms. The office of the New York Attorney General has said it will review the non-profit group. That could lead to an investigation if it appears that New York law was violated.

Former Dipont employee Bruce Hammond says he tried to warn several schools about the company. In 2014 Hammond emailed officials at the University of Southern California, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Duke University and others. He wrote that Dipont was one of the companies most responsible for fraud in the application process.

The USC fraud research center told Reuters it has been investigating Hammonds claims. But the center defended Dipont as a reliable and valuable partner.

Information provided by Dipont shows that admissions officers from 22 colleges and universities have attended its summer workshops since 2014. The gatherings are held in Shanghai.

The company paid for the cost of officers flights. Emails show that, in some cases, admissions officers could choose less-costly flights in exchange for up to $4,500 in cash.

Officials from Vanderbilt University, Pomona College and others admit to accepting free flights. But the Vanderbilt dean of admissions -- Douglas Christiansen -- said his admissions officer refused the cash. Christiansen told Reuters it would have been improper to accept the money.

Louis Hirsh is the chair of the admissions practices committee at the National Association for College Admission Counseling. He told Reuters U.S. admissions officers are able to accept payments for travel costs when visiting American high schools. But they cannot accept money for recruiting students in the U.S.

However, Hirsh told Reuters there is no rule about payments to school officials who are counseling international students.

Sarah K. Lee was Diponts director of college counseling from 2010 to 2012. She told Reuters she learned of counselors writing essays for students as early as 2010. She said counselors told her they feared losing their jobs if they did not do everything their bosses told them to do.

The USC Center for Enrollment Research, Policy and Practice is investigating Reuters claims now.

Im Jill Robbins.

And Im Pete Musto.

Steve Stecklow, Renee Dudley, James Pomfret and Alexandra Harney reported this story for the Reuters news service. Pete Musto adapted it for VOA Learning English. Mario Ritter was the editor.

We want to hear from you. How common is cheating in your country? Do companies offer services to help students apply to U.S. universities? Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

apply  v. to ask formally for something, such as a job, admission to a school or a loan, usually in writing

essay(s)  n. a short piece of writing that tells a person's thoughts or opinions about a subject

letter(s) of recommendation  n. a formal letter that explains why a person is appropriate or qualified for a particular job or school

academic  adj. of or relating to schools and education

tuition  n. money that is paid to a school for the right to study there

fraud  n. the crime of using dishonest methods to take something valuable from another person

Inc(orporated)  adj. formed into a large, legal business or organization that under the law in the U.S. has the rights and duties of an individual and follows a specific purpose

review  v. to look at or examine something carefully especially before making a decision or judgment

improper  adj. not following rules of acceptable behavior

recruit(ing)  v. to find suitable people and get them to join a school, company, organization or the armed forces

counsel(ing)  v. to listen to and give support or advice to someone especially as a job
Afghanistan is facing another crisis.

This time it is a housing and food shortage, resulting from the return to the country of about 800,000 Afghans this year. They had been staying in Pakistan and Iran.

Neighboring countries, particularly Pakistan, have taken in several million Afghan refugees over the past 40 years. But Pakistan and Iran have been pushing the refugees to return home.

The people returning to Afghanistan include undocumented deportees. They were expelled, but lack documentation.

Ive returned after a long time, a man named Azad Khan Minumdai told VOA. I left because the situation in Pakistan had become very difficult. One has to protect ones honor.

Afghans living in Pakistan reported increased police harassment. But they are having a hard time finding shelter, water and food in Afghanistan.

Haji Ghulamullah returned home with his clan of 600 to 800 families. Many of the families have little money to pay for their own food or water.

Ghulamullah said Afghanistans Ministry of Refugees and Reparations promised to build homes and provide water. But the ministry has yet to make good on its promises, he said.

He said he called Afghan officials to ask for help. One official advised him to close roads by launching a street protest. He suggested such action might put pressure on the government.

The United Nations says it recognizes the problems faced by people returning to Afghanistan.

U.N. officials made an appeal for more than $150 million in emergency aid. But so far, it has only received about 13 percent of the requested money.

With winter weather coming soon, the United Nations is worried about a humanitarian crisis.

Afghanistan has faced almost nonstop military conflict since 1973, when the armed forces ousted the government.

This week, Afghan officials reported that at least 30 civilians were killed in clashes between government forces and Taliban fighters. The United States military provided assistance to the Afghan forces. Two U.S. soldiers were reported killed in the fighting.

Despite (this) tragic event, we are steadfast in our commitment to help our Afghan partners defend their nation, said General John Nicholson. He is commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan.

In Washington, another U.S. government spokesman said Pakistan can help bring about stability by acting against militants on Pakistani soil who seek to attack its neighbors.

State Department spokesman John Kirby was asked this week about protests against the government in Pakistan. The New York Times newspaper reported that 1,500 people supporting the opposition party have been arrested.

The United States will continue to support freedom of assembly and freedom of expression, Kirby said.

Im Bruce Alpert.

Ayesha Tanzeem reported on this story for VOANews.com. Bruce Alpert adapted this story for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section and share your views on our Facebook Page.

____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

particularly  adv. more than usually

harassment - n. to interfere with someone, often in a repeated way

clan - n. a large group of people who are related

assembly - n. a group of people who gather together

stability - n. the quality or state of something that is not easily changed or likely to change

steadfast - adj. very loyal to a person, belief, or cause

commitment - n. a promise to do or give something
Today's story is called "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It is about something strange that happened long ago in a valley called "Sleepy Hollow". It was written by Washington Irving. The story is told by Doug Johnson.

The valley known as Sleepy Hollow hides from the world in the high hills of New York state. There are many stories told about the quiet valley. But the story that people believe most is about a man who rides a horse at night. The story says the man died many years ago during the American Revolutionary War. His head was shot off. Every night he rises from his burial place, jumps on his horse and rides through the valley looking for his lost head.

Near Sleepy Hollow is a village called Tarry Town. It was settled many years ago by people from Holland. The village had a small school. And one teacher, named Ichabod Crane. Ichabod Crane was a good name for him, because he looked like a tall bird, a crane. He was tall and thin like a crane. His shoulders were small, joined two long arms. His head was small, too, and flat on top. He had big ears, large glassy green eyes and a long nose.



Ichabod did not make much money as a teacher. And although he was tall and thin, he ate like a fat man. To help him pay for his food he earned extra money teaching young people to sing. Every Sunday after church Ichabod taught singing.

Among the ladies Ichabod taught was one Katrina Van Tassel. She was the only daughter of a rich Dutch farmer. She was a girl in bloommuch like a round red, rosy apple. Ichabod had a soft and foolish heart for the ladies, and soon found himself interested in Miss Van Tassel.

Ichabod's eyes opened wide when he saw the riches of Katrina's farm: the miles of apple trees and wheat fields, and hundreds of fat farm animals. He saw himself as master of the Van Tassel farm with Katrina as his wife.

But there were many problems blocking the road to Katrina's heart. One was a strong young man named Brom Van Brunt. Brom was a hero to all the young ladies. His shoulders were big. His back was wide. And his hair was short and curly. He always won the horse races in Tarry Town and earned many prizes. Brom was never seen without a horse.

Sometimes late at night Brom and his friends would rush through town shouting loudly from the backs of their horses. Tired old ladies would awaken from their sleep and say: "Why, there goes Brom Van Brunt leading his wild group again!"

Such was the enemy Ichabod had to defeat for Katrina's heart.

Stronger and wiser men would not have tried. But Ichabod had a plan. He could not fight his enemy in the open. So he did it silently and secretly. He made many visits to Katrina's farm and made her think he was helping her to sing better.

Time passed, and the town people thought Ichabod was winning. Brom's horse was never seen at Katrina's house on Sunday nights anymore.

One day in autumn Ichabod was asked to come to a big party at the Van Tassel home. He dressed in his best clothes. A farmer loaned him an old horse for the long trip to the party.

The house was filled with farmers and their wives, red-faced daughters and clean, washed sons. The tables were filled with different things to eat. Wine filled many glasses.

Brom Van Brunt rode to the party on his fastest horse called Daredevil. All the young ladies smiled happily when they saw him. Soon music filled the rooms and everyone began to dance and sing.

Ichabod was happy dancing with Katrina as Brom looked at them with a jealous heart. The night passed. The music stopped, and the young people sat together to tell stories about the revolutionary war.

Soon stories about Sleepy Hollow were told. The most feared story was about the rider looking for his lost head. One farmer told how he raced the headless man on a horse. The farmer ran his horse faster and faster. The horseman followed over bush and stone until they came to the end of the valley. There the headless horseman suddenly stopped. Gone were his clothes and his skin. All that was left was a man with white bones shining in the moonlight.

The stories ended and time came to leave the party. Ichabod seemed very happy until he said goodnight to Katrina. Was she ending their romance? He left feeling very sad. Had Katrina been seeing Ichabod just to make Brom Van Brunt jealous so he would marry her?

Well, Ichabod began his long ride home on the hills that surround Tarry Town. He had never felt so lonely in his life. He began to whistle as he came close to the tree where a man had been killed years ago by rebels.

He thought he saw something white move in the tree. But no, it was only the moonlight shining and moving on the tree. Then he heard a noise. His body shook. He kicked his horse faster. The old horse tried to run, but almost fell in the river, instead. Ichabod hit the horse again. The horse ran fast and then suddenly stopped, almost throwing Ichabod forward to the ground.

There, in the dark woods on the side of the river where the bushes grow low, stood an ugly thing. Big and black. It did not move, but seemed ready to jump like a giant monster.

Ichabod's hair stood straight up. It was too late to run, and in his fear, he did the only thing he could. His shaking voice broke the silent valley.

"Who are you?" The thing did not answer. Ichabod asked again. Still no answer. Ichabod's old horse began to move forward. The black thing began to move along the side of Ichabod's horse in the dark. Ichabod made his horse run faster. The black thing moved with them. Side by side they moved, slowly at first. And not a word was said.

Ichabod felt his heart sink. Up a hill they moved above the shadow of the trees. For a moment the moon shown down and to Ichabod's horror he saw it was a horse. And it had a rider. But the rider's head was not on his body. It was in front of the rider, resting on the horse.

Ichabod kicked and hit his old horse with all his power. Away they rushed through bushes and trees across the valley of Sleepy Hollow. Up ahead was the old church bridge where the headless horseman stops and returns to his burial place.

"If only I can get there first, I am safe," thought Ichabod. He kicked his horse again. The horse jumped on to the bridge and raced over it like the sound of thunder. Ichabod looked back to see if the headless man had stopped. He saw the man pick up his head and throw it with a powerful force. The head hit Ichabod in the face and knocked him off his horse to the dirt below.

They found Ichabod's horse the next day peacefully eating grass. They could not find Ichabod.

They walked all across the valley. They saw the foot marks of Ichabod's horse as it had raced through the valley. They even found Ichabod's old hat in the dust near the bridge. But they did not find Ichabod. The only other thing they found was lying near Ichabod's hat.

It was the broken pieces of a round orange pumpkin.

The town people talked about Ichabod for many weeks. They remembered the frightening stories of the valley. And finally they came to believe that the headless horseman had carried Ichabod away.

Much later an old farmer returned from a visit to New York City. He said he was sure he saw Ichabod there. He thought Ichabod silently left Sleepy Hollow because he had lost Katrina.

As for Katrina, her mother and father gave her a big wedding when she married Brom Van Brunt. Many people who went to the wedding saw that Brom smiled whenever Ichabod's name was spoken. And they wondered why he laughed out loud when anyone talked about the broken orange pumpkin found lying near Ichabod's old dusty hat.



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Words in this Story

burial  n. the act or ceremony of burying a dead person in a grave

crane - n. a type of tall bird that has a long neck and long legs and lives near water

rebel  n. a person who opposes or fights against a government

Revolutionary War  n. the war for American independence from Britain

shake  v. of your voice: to produce sound in an unsteady way because you are nervous, angry, sad, etc
LEXINGTON, Neb. - Hundreds of Lexington High School students prepared for their future Wednesday morning at the Senior Seminar.

The east gymnasium served as a career fair/college fair where nine businesses, 21 colleges, five military groups, Job Corps and the Department of Labor had booths.

Also, hands-on activities provided to students included: a college application session, a let's find a job session, a session on filling out the FAFSA for financial aid and a transition session on preparing for life beyond high school.

Kelsey Miller a regional manager with the Nebraska Department of Labor, helped organize the event with LHS Guidance Counselor Michele McKeone.

Miller said the school does a great job making sure the students have basic questions to ask businesses and colleges to start the conversation. She noted that social media is a great tool for discovering possibilities but it can't replace the face-to-face conversations gained at the Senior Seminar.

"Our goal is to educate students on the possibilities in Nebraska, specifically in their own area. Give them a chance to see what type of education is required for their desired job, find a school that can help them follow their path, and allow them the opportunity to meet with employers so when they're ready to enter the workforce, they have a connection," Miller said.

She said she heard from a college representative that the turnout was great and that it was beneficial for her to come. An employer stated that he just likes to plant the seed and maybe not tomorrow but in a year or so, they'll be interested in contacting him, Miller said.

Miller said another employer shared that although students seemed to know the majority of their business, they were surprised to find out how many different occupations are under one roof.

"Michele McKeone was the one that put this awesome event together and should be credited. Senior Seminar consists of more than just the career/college fair portion. Seniors had 5 total sessions to attend include job searching, college applications, and transitioning," Miller said.

Pat Samway, a representative from Lexington Regional Health Center at the career fair, said she recommends students interested in nursing to take the nurse aide class offered at LHS.

Samway said the hospital is a big believer of growing its own nurses, meaning it aims to find talented staff locally or encourage them to take necessary courses to work their way into their desired career.

"The administration has always been very supportive of continuing education, we have tuition reimbursement," for staff, Samway said.

She continued, "We have a lot of RNs seeking their masters degree. We have some CNAs that have become LPN, LPNs that are RNs and RNs that are nurse practitioners."

Maggie Schneider, an admissions counselor at Colby Community College in Colby,Kan., said visiting high schools and college fairs is her main way of recruitment.

Schneider said she always recommends students go on a campus visit to a school they are interested in because it allows the student to get a feel for the campus, town and talk to teachers in their career field.

Kris Jones, a diesel technology instructor from North Central Kansas Technical College in Beloit,Kan., said his college is always looking for the right students.

Jones said regardless of if a student knows what career field they want or not, it's important for them to know their options.

The positives of pursuing a technical or skilled trade career is that they only require a one or two year program, less college debt and prepare students for good paying jobs straight from school, Jones said.

"Our college has a 100 percent job guarantee if a student graduates and might be willing to move to work. The demand is there for blue collar jobs, which are in high abundance. Our society needs skilled labor," Jones said.

Abby Schademann, an admissions representative with Wayne State College, said she encourages students to apply to encourages students to visit and apply to their three top college choices.

Timothy Anderson, a field recruiter for the United States Postal Service, said it was important for students to learn about employers that can provide them part-time and full-time jobs and opportunities for career growth, like USPS.

No matter if a student wanted part-time hours or lives in a small or big town, the USPS had work opportunities for them,Anderson said.

"There are not just opportunities as a mail carrier or clerk but also in management as well. We like to promote from within the company," he said.

Clay Hernandez, a LHS senior at the event said he was still undecided about his career choices.

Hernandez said attended the senior seminar allowed him to focus on college stuff for a full-day, something he hasn't been able to do yet this year.

The days events helped him focus on scholarship and other deadlines, Hernandez said.

"I feel more calm with myself now. The career fair helped me pave my way to my future," he said.
LEXINGTON, Neb. - Students, parents, volunteers and community members gathered Wednesday afternoon to celebrate the importance of after school programs in Lexington.

The annual Lights On Afterschool Rally was held at the gymnasium of the Orthman Community YMCA. The rally was emceed by Gustavo Ramirez with the YMCA.

More than 600 people attended the event, according to the organizers.

Speakers at the event included Lexington Public Schools Superintendent John Hakonson and Nebraska State Senator Matt Williams of the 36th district, which includes Lexington.

Hakonson, a strong supporter of LPS's Academy after school programs for elementary schools and Multiple Choices program at the middle school, said about 700 students benefit from the programs each day.

"As a superintendent and parent, I like the homework help. The program has become an extension to school. It provides a safe, affordable option for so many working parents who can't pick up their kids after school,' Hakonson said.

Lexington after school programs are in the 11th year and are fortunate to receive federal 21st Century Grant funding, he said. Applying for and continuing to receive federal funding would allow the after school programs to continue to thrive into the future, Hakonson said.

Williams said that the young elementary and middle school students at the rally are the most important asset of the community and state.

When a person encounters adversity or sees a problem, he or she is prone to do one of three things - to quit, to blame or to step up and work together, Williams said.

"The Lexington School Board, community recognized there was a need for you to have a place after school to work on homework that was safe. No community in the state has stepped up like Lexington, no school district has stepped up like the Lexington School District," Williams said.

A video was shown at the rally with interviews with administrators, students and volunteers shown.

After school program provide "homework help and enrichment activities. Students can try things that they might not normally try," said Bryan Elementary School Principal Drew Welch in the video.

The highlights of the rally where dances from students from each of the four elementary schools and from Lexington Middle School.

Students from the same school wore after school t-shirts of the same color and danced to up-beat energetic songs.

After the rally, an expo was held featuring numerous local businesses and non-profits and a light meal was served at the LMS cafeteria.
It is often asserted that the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 proved that HWA was right and he really did see the future.

This of course is nonsense. Herbert W. Armstrong said that Christ would return within twenty years in his book Mystery of the Ages. (PCG has since deleted those words so someone in there knows HWA spoke nonsense.) How convenient for them to forget this.

Also Herbert W. Armstrong never said the Soviet Union would collapse. He thought it would survive intact until a few years after Christ's return. It shows how biased some many in the COGs are that they never seem to notice this. This inconvenient truth is just tossed into the memory hole.

It is true that HWA said that some Eastern European states would break away from Moscow's orbit and join the European Empire he said would arise at any moment. But he never talked of the Soviet Union collapsing. He did not teach that. Also he portrayed the rise of the European Empire to be far quicker then what has actually happened. In Mystery of the Ages Christ was supposed to return by 2005 at the most.

So assertions that the fall of the Berlin Wall somehow prove that HWA was right is just complete nonsense spread by people who, for whatever reason, are still in denial that HWA was a false prophet who merely talked out of his own "human reasoning".
Politics may be the topic of the day, but it was music that many were supporting Saturday night in St. Petersburg.

Hillary Clintons running mate Governor Tim Kaine shared the stage with Jon Bon Jovi at their Get Out the Vote concert in St. Petersburg.

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The purpose of the show is to encourage voter turnout. The doors at the State Theatre were scheduled to open at 6 p.m., but fans and supporters were wrapped around the Central Avenue venue hours before.

Bon Jovi thrilled the crowd packed into the venue for the event, but he made sure to remind everyone there that the music this night had a purpose.

"[E]verybody in Pinellas and Hillsborough knows as goes Hillsborough County, usually goes Florida and in most cases, the United States of America," said Bon Jovi. "You guys should really know that your vote really matters."

At that point, Kaine joined the rock star on stage. He made one final pitch to get out the vote in these final days before Election Day, borrowing a few lyrics from the evening's headliner.

"I dont wanna be another wave in the ocean. Im rock, not just another grain of sand," said Kaine. "Were not just waves in the ocean, folks. And were not just grains of sand. Weve got power. Weve got power politically and nobody more than in Florida. If you put your votes behind Hillary Clinton, it is done. She will be President."

Kaine also surprised and delighted the crowd by breaking out a harmonica to perform alongside Bon Jovi.

All in all, the "rally gone rock n' roll got rave reviews. But when asked who was the bigger draw, there was little question among the attendees.

"Bon Jovi! C'mon, let's be real, sorry," said Clinton supporter Donita Price. "They were both great. Both short, nice, it was good, Bon Jovi all the way!"



Kaines visit is part of a big push by the Clinton campaign to encourage early voting in Florida. Clinton and President Barack Obama have visited the state in the last few weeks.

The president is expected to campaign for Clinton in Central Florida Sunday, making a stop in Osceola County for a Get Out the Vote event. He will be joined by musician Stevie Wonder.
A Plant City police officer fired his gun at a suspect after responding to reports of a theft. According to police, it was in self-defense.

A Plant City police officer shot a suspect Saturday



Authorities say the man was attempting to flee when a confrontation ensued



The investigation is ongoing

At 1:45 p.m. Saturday, the officer  who has yet to be named  reportedly located the suspect on Drane Street. When the suspect attempted to flee, authorities say a confrontation ensued.

During the tussle, police say the officer fired his gun in self-defense.

The suspect, described as a white male, was taken to a local hospital. By 4:30 p.m. Saturday, there had been no official update on his condition.

The investigation is active. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Hillsborough County State Attorney's Office are involved.

Authorities say the police officer involved did not have to be treated for any injuries.